As we have previously discussed, this election has become a hate fest as both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton who seem to be trying to get people to vote against their opponent rather than vote for them. These remain the two least popular candidates in the history of presidential politics. It is a bizarre campaign as Republicans selected the only person who could lose to Clinton and Democrats selected the only person who could lose to Trump. In the meantime, a recent poll shows that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders now stands as the most popular politician in the United States. If Clinton loses today, many are likely to blame DNC officials in pushing Clinton over Sanders who might have not only won the White House but swept Congress. Clinton is still favored to win but the popularity of Sanders raises the question of whether he was the crossover candidate that both parties were seeking. Of course, he has not been the target of attacks in this general election, which has left his image strongly positive. However, it is remarkable that we now have elections between people who are viewed negatively as dishonest or untrustworthy by 60 percent of voters.
While Obama’s favorable ratings have risen to his highest numbers in 45 months, Sanders is still above him. More importantly, he is 10 points higher than Hillary Clinton’s and 19 points higher than those of Donald Trump.
The question is how a hate-focused campaign can get voters out of bed and in line for hours. This is why I previously called this the “Game of Thrones election” and quoted Sandor “The Hound” Clegane, “Hate’s as good a thing as any to keep a person going. Better than most.”
Soon the majority of the working class will be members of the minority community. Bern was a unifier and Trump with his divisive rhetoric has split the working class. There are long lines of working class Latinos in Nevada and Florida that are very anxious to vote against him. There are also many working class Asians and African Americans that feel the same way. What was needed was a change agent without the racist rhetoric. In my view that is the winning ticket.
Just how is proposing stealing property from some and giving it to the lazy considered a unifier?
That plan of stealing labor from workers and paying it to lazy heirs has always worked in the past.
Whose labor has been ‘stolen’?
Every paycheck the govt. steals your property.
Done, sure. Worked? I’m not so sure it works.
There is no ‘minority community’. No candidate who advocates anything worthwhile or distinct of specific is a ‘unifier’.
It wasn’t racist rhetoric. It was anti-Democratic Party rhetoric. It was pro-American rhetoric. Therefore, like with any non-Democrat candidate, the “racism” slur gets handed out. If Hillary was the GOP candidate, and Trump the DNC candidate, then people like SWM would be calling anything Hillary said, “racist rhetoric.”
In 2020, 2024, 2028, etc., the Democrats will still be calling their opponents racists, or if they are black, Uncle Toms. Because race baiting works for them. Check in every four years and see if I am not right.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
But HRC and her minions destroyed Bernie. SO now we are left with Trump.
SWM, It’s MANHATTAN! The Trumps are the only Republicans there.
Imagine Hillary going to vote in Montana.
Hey Autumn! I combined several days related posts on Naked Capitalism into one readable pdf file for ease of use. Here is a link to it. It’s like 36 pages, and the subject matter and references would be over most people’s heads, but I think you are somebody who can appreciate it. I love the Zootopia Chapters!
https://t.co/zl1966J1Gb
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Michael Aarethun, stated it well. Also, Bernie is just as scary as Hillary. Life long politician who wants to steal your property and give it to the lazy. I guess the fact that this is so attractive to so many shows how lazy, entitled and irresponsible we have become.
I will return to my two axioms if you will, Discriminate and judgment are needed to be truly free. Sanders would have attacked both of these.
re: ” Life long politician who wants to steal your property and give it to the lazy.” That would be Bill, Dubya, Obama and HRC. They are all about subsidizing the ultra wealthy donors from Wall Street.
As well as the lazy welfare state.
A Trump Empire Built on Inside Connections and $885 Million in Tax Breaks
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/nyregion/donald-trump-tax-breaks-real-estate.html?_r=0
The way Donald J. Trump tells it, his first solo project as a real estate developer, the conversion of a faded railroad hotel on 42nd Street into the sleek, 30-story Grand Hyatt, was a triumph from the very beginning.
The hotel, Mr. Trump bragged in “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” his 1987 best seller, “was a hit from the first day. Gross operating profits now exceed $30 million a year.”
But that book, and numerous interviews over the years, make little mention of a crucial factor in getting the hotel built: an extraordinary 40-year tax break that has cost New York City $360 million to date in forgiven, or uncollected, taxes, with four years still to run, on a property that cost only $120 million to build in 1980.
The project set the pattern for Mr. Trump’s New York career: He used his father’s, and, later, his own, extensive political connections, and relied on a huge amount of assistance from the government and taxpayers in the form of tax breaks, grants and incentives to benefit the 15 buildings at the core of his Manhattan real estate empire…
“Donald Trump is probably worse than any other developer in his relentless pursuit of every single dime of taxpayer subsidies he can get his paws on,” said Alicia Glen, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development, who first battled Mr. Trump when she worked in Mr. Giuliani’s administration.
In seeking those subsidies, Mr. Trump is not that different from many other developers. But the level of subsidies he has received along with his doggedness in claiming them seem at odds with his rhetoric as an outsider candidate who boasts of his single-handed success and who has denounced what he calls the pay-to-play culture of politics and a “rigged” system of government.
Donald Trump: The ‘Anti-Corporatist’ Candidate?
Is he the fierce anti-corporatist many of his supporters see him as? Of all the mystical qualities that Trump supporters attribute to their candidate, the one I find most curious is that Trump is the “anti-corporatist” candidate. Trump? “Anti-corporatist”? Really?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428575/donald-trump-and-corporate-welfare
If there were a corporatist hall of fame, Trump’s name should be emblazoned across the front in huge red letters, the way it is on his casinos. We are, after all, talking about a candidate who has just finished attacking his leading rival, Ted Cruz, for insufficient devotion to ethanol subsidies. This is not an aberration. Trump has rarely met a proposal for corporate welfare that he didn’t love.
Republicans have been highly critical of the Obama administration’s propensity to throw money at so-called “green energy” companies. But Trump is just as big a supporter of taxpayer subsidies for alternative energy sources. Defending his support of subsidies for wind turbines, for instance, Trump explained that “you need subsidies” because it can be hard for wind to be competitive in energy production, particularly when prices for fossil fuels are so low.
Trump’s support for corporate welfare can’t be explained away as pandering to key voter groups, either. It’s heartfelt and longstanding. As far back as 1986, Trump opposed Ronald Reagan’s tax reform because it eliminated corporate loopholes, including special tax breaks for real-estate developers; he warned that it would be “a disaster for the country.”
He was wrong, of course, about Reagan’s tax plan, but his tune hadn’t changed by 2009, when he backed TARP and the bailout of the big banks. In fact, Trump was willing to go even further, actually nationalizing the banks. As he told Larry King, “Whether they fund them or nationalize them, it doesn’t matter, but you have to keep the banks going.”…
Trump may have flip-flopped on all sorts of issues, but when it comes to corporations feeding at the public trough, he’s been steady as a rock.
The meme about “stupid, angry, Trump voters” is the EXACT meme used to describe Brexit voters. What I see possibly coming out of this election is a schism in both parties, w/ viable 3rd and maybe 4th parties emerging. I grew up ethnic, blue collar. My old man was a staunch Democrat. He died in 1989. But, he saw the Democrats abandoning white, blue collar people starting in the 80’s.
Actually, starting around 1966. See James Q Wilson’s research in Boston with surveys undertaken that year. Ordinary residents were most concerned about street crime, an issue not on the radar screen at city hall.
This is not surprising. Kasich and, to a lesser degree, Rubio, are exponents of business-as-usual (and Rubio’s not the sharpest tack in the box). Hilligula is a thoroughly ghastly character, someone with hardly one redeeming feature or one accomplishment (beyond being a talented grifter). Trump is a manifestation of carnality. Sanders is straight up and had a productive eight years as Mayor of Burlington, to the point where the city’s politics can be denominated in terms of before and after Sanders. Cruz is a straight up guy as well, but the media despise him and that moves the needle among low information voters. (The third party candidates this year are seriously lame).
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/07/the-flat-earth-set-helped-donald-trump-hijack-the-gop-and-crash-it-into-the-ground.html?via=desktop&source=facebook “It wasn’t really a coalition of angry working-class voters that led Trump’s flat-earth crusade. It was a coalition of angry rich media figures who know, even if they are wrong, there is a lot of money to be made denying reality. It’s Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Steve Bannon, Rush Limbaugh, and the usual carnival barkers, most of whom are too smart to believe their own nonsense. But they have made fortunes peddling bile and prejudice and the market continues to be good.” TRUMP TV.
So which part of the equation was the fuel and which part was the flame?
If dopey fantasy helps you feel better, I suppose it’s harmless.
Yes. Obviously a person can make a fortune peddling bile and validating ignorance. But why would anyone want to? That person is selling their soul for money.
That’s funny SWM!
It’s late in the game and Hillary has it locked up.
But if you want to read the ultimate takedown of Donald the D-grade huckster, check this out:
http://deadstate.org/veteran-journalist-lists-trumps-lies-and-shady-business-dealings-in-devastating-tweetstorm/
I don’t believe any of Donald Trumps shady business dealings compromised national security.
Just saying.
By locked up I assume you mean rigged. Hell, why doesn’t the AP just come out already and declare her the winner?
The only rigging going on is the GOP’s voter suppression or do you support the closing of polling places in black communities?
“The only rigging going on is the GOP’s voter suppression”
~+~
Are you kidding?
The entire Democratic Presidential Primary was rigged to boot Bernie and favor Hillary! Is this not obvious? After that fiasco, why would anyone trust the DNC to maintain the integrity of the vote at this stage? Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was implicated as one of the actors in the scandal. After that, Hillary appointed her to an assignment to help “get out the vote”. How can anyone trust the DNC to be the great purveyors of enfranchisement when they sabotaged the person polled to be the most popular candidate among voters?
The DNC has nothing to do with the tallying of votes today. Almost all the battleground states have republican Secretary of States. Nor do they have anything to do with republicans closing polling paces in the minority neighborhoods. Yes they did rig the system against bernie.
Darren,
Do you deny that the GOP has been attempting to suppress the voting of those likely to vote for Democratic candidates?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBxZGWCdgs
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Thousands of opinions have been written on why people favor various candidates. Nobody really knows. It’s impossible to predict which issues will become important and how anyone will respond to those issues. There are too many diverse influences all constantly changing . We live in a dynamic world. Hillary Clinton has spent her life strategizing the path to the presidency. She still may not have gotten it right and even if she did, staying in the Presidency is as challenging as getting there in the first place. Impeachment can happen for any reason, from peccadillos to war crimes to emails or totally contrived “corruption” as happened to Dilma Rouseff in Brazil with help from US regime change experts.
If she wins and gets impeached it’s still a loss. Kaine is all about the TPP and fracking. Establishment leprachaun.
Autumn, I’m all for your suggestion to start freakin Today on Tulsi Gabbard 2020!
Yes Roscoe! Just got back from the polls – only an hour wait. Mixed group in my precinct – blacks and veterans – it will be interesting to see how the vote plays out. You are right: we should start pushing for Tulsi ASAP!! =)
Here’s to Bern getting the Senate Budget Committee Chair. It was looking good before Comey’s actions but the dems chances of taking the senate have been diminished.
Rothenberg has never projected better than a tie for the Democratic caucus in the Senate. The seat you’re most likely to pick up is Mark Kirk’s. Kirk’s about the least reliable vote in the Republican caucus.
Year That Trembled And Reel’d Beneath Me
by Walt Whitman
Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me!
Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me,
A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me,
Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,
Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
And sullen hymns of defeat?
Roscoe, thanks for this. I hadn’t read that one. Apropos.
Reblogged this on sdbast.
Reblogged this on Citizens, not serfs.
Bernie was a wave – his army climbed out of the woodwork – people that had never been active joined up and he took on the establishment and fought them to a stand still even given all the cheating and corruption in the coronation of clinton – clinton is probably still holding some of his relatives hostage until after the election –
Face it clinton is a loser – with all the media, the corrupt DNC, money laundering and bribing and threatening anyone that backed Bernie – she was not able to put Grandpa away – a guy with a bad hair do – funny accent – one rumpled suite and a recycled campaign sign and starting poling numbers below Rocky and Bullwinkle – Bernie was a winner – as was his army
Too bad the DNC is so corrupt – Bernie would have so terrified the power structure with his army – the powers would have listened – would have swept the house and senate both
and starting poling numbers below Rocky and Bullwinkle
Actually, he polled better as an unannounced candidate than Martin O’Malley did as an announced candidate. About as well as all three minor candidates combined. He didn’t quite make it across the finish line. Bill Clinton nostalgia among Southern blacks was decisive.
I remain convinced that the Clintons threatened Bernie or his family. I also think he knew the DNC would take him down but he worked hard and got his message out there awakening millions of people of all ages, backgrounds and ethnic groups. And those of us who felt the Bern will never forget it. And we will also harbor a lifelong hatred of the Demoncratic party – we hope it implodes.
In the meantime we will trundle off to the polls and vote for Jill or Donald.
I think SM has it partially right. Bernie will get the Senate Budget Committee Chair for the meager price of his soul and half the country’s empty pockets. Here’s hoping that’s all we loose since war with Russia (not to mention old folks) is now fully on the table. Bernie has a long history of deflating which he likes to call compromise. Every time that boils down to
bargaining, er,giving, um, throwing away 90% or more of what ever he’s pushing in a given cycle.Anyone who thinks he moved Clinton so much as a millimeter to the left, should consider sharing the weed. We’re going to need it after tonight.
Schumer, if he becomes the majority leader, will most certainly give Bernie the committee. That is a big if though as people are said to be ticket splitting . They are voting for Clinton and Rubio or Clinton and Portman.
Bernie will well serve, off on the left, jabbing away aided by Elizabeth Warren.
Elizabeth Warren is a fraud.
I’ll drink to that
Attached to her puppet strings.
Bernie is popular with voters but not with most US Establishment power brokers. Had he been the Democratic nominee you would have seen the Establishment power brokers turn on him just like the Establishment power brokers turned on Upton Sinclair when he ran for governor in California in 1934. (There is a great book out there about that election, read it too long ago to recall the title.)
But with Trump running on the other ticket, what would the Establishment power brokers have done? Soiled their britches, perhaps. And then would have tried to get Bloomberg to run as an independent.
Bernie versus Trump would have helped tear apart the two main political parties. A real shame that did not come to pass.
Don, yes Bernie was too dangerous and he would have chosen a Progressive as VP. Trump unfortunately got stuck with Pence instead of Gen. Flynn – so if he is “topped” the Republicans have one of their own. Love Upton Sinclair – bought a book at the library booksale by him “The Cup of Fury”
Granted, “the power brokers” don’t like Sanders–he won’t protect them. I was a little perplexed with Prof. Turley’s interrogatory: “whether [Sanders] was the crossover candidate that both parties were seeking.” Sanders appealed to no Republican that I know of.
Sanders is a de facto Green who thinks he can change the Democratic Party from within even though he’s an Independent. There’s something wrong with that twisted position (namely, it’s failure to acknowledge those “power brokers” of which you wrote), and while I commend his gutsy platform in the end I think there’s something more to the story. Perhaps it was his ultimate lack of political will or insidiousness that may surface in fifty years.
Steve,
I agree with you. Although I don’t consider myself a Republican (I consider myself a conservative libertarian) Sanders does not appeal to me at all. He’s a life long politician and a self proclaimed socialist. What is appealing about that?
But Hillary has some kind of leverage over Bernie according to the leaked emails. Anyway, I figure that Hillary will win, and frankly if she does, then America deserves her.
J H Kunstler thinks the economy will tank during the next 4 years regardless of who wins, and that if HRC is the Prez, the onus will fall on her. But I still think we are about 8-9 years out at least before SHTF. Who knows?
I suggest that poorer people invest heavily the next few years in Vienna sausages, canned corn, and oatmeal and rice. They;re cheap, and it will beat having to kill and eat your pets, although you will probably have to hide them from your hungry neighbors. Hey, its happening in Venezuela.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
2024 is the beginning of the end.
Very likely. Quantitative easing is cool for a while, but the NIRP/ZIRPs will screw mightily with non-Federal pensions. Then, if we actively print, that will solve many problems, but result in high inflation rates. Not necessarily hyper-inflation, but it won’t take hyper-inflation to put most Americans on the street. Heck, just 10% or so for a few years will start a negative feedback loop of plunging demand. Most Americans can’t put their hands on $500, without a payday loan or cash advance at 37%.
Buy Vienna sausages. 44 cents a can at Kroger. About 200 calories. 3 cans a day will keep you alive. For a while.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeek – Better to get bags/cans of beans/lentils – more protein and few if any additives. Also, get some big pots and grow collards or kale – hearty, healthy plants and easy to grow even on a balcony. Pasta is also inexpensive. Aldi is inexpensive overall. I, too, think there are some tough times ahead – and I see more and more homeless up here in the ‘burbs. My parents were post Depression chillun so they taught us how to survive.
Beans, rice, lentils, oats, have an indefinite shelf life, no additives, easy to cook. Plus, potatoes grow almost anywhere.
Get yourself a kitchen garden, at least on your roof or balcony.
Yes, even on Mars
i would suggest these are for the most part the group that does not know which of the following killed or had killed more people. Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tze Dung, Temujin, Lyndon Johnson, or George Bush. I would further suggest these are from the group looking for a free ride on the backs of others hard work – those who have zero understanding of economics and the two acronyms TANSTAAFL and BOHICA.
In short the uneducated social promotions of the country following in the never held a job foot steps of Barak Obama.
Let them eat Bagels or perhaps golf shoes.
So who killed the most people? I would say it is a toss up between Stalin and Hitler. Trump would kill the most of any candidate this year. But killing can be for the good of the people. That is what gets people elected. Bush just went to war in the wrong Eye country. Stalin killed the most Germans. Hitler should have sent the gypsies to Russis. Israel should send the terrorists called “Palestinians” back to Jordan. America should send the Texans back to Texas.
Yes, and the DNC ran him out. How’s that for enfranchising voters?
Reblogged this on Scoop Feed.