2016 Presidential Election (General Election)

[TheRifleman]

This is what I'm for.
smaller central government, lower taxes, lower regulations country where our basic constitutional rights are secured.

This is nothing what TRUMP represents: But the reality is people like RON PAUL will never win. So that is why TRUMP is Rising.

I think younger generation understands they are screwed and they will vote for anybody but the establishment especially after watching Hilary steal the democratic election from Bernie by those SUPER DELEGATES. So basically you really don't have a vote.

I will say onething Bernie Sanders would have beaten in this presidential race Trump. Hilary Clinton I'm not that sure.

 

[tysmith95]

Kentxie, Not sure where to begin with this.

I'm betting you live in Kendall Square in your condo and possibly went to school at MIT as an economist and study a bunch of useless economic models that are complete nonsense at this point.
The statement you say stay out of a topic you have no idea what your talking about shows how clueless you are to life in general.

Rifle, look at his avatar. He didn't go to MIT. However I don't understand how some conservative people always complain about the Ivy's, MIT, Stanford, ETC. So being smart is a bad thing? Also it's pretty hypocritical considering the fact that most conservative politicians went to top schools (Trump Included).

 

[Jouhou]

This is what I'm for.
smaller central government, lower taxes, lower regulations country where our basic constitutional rights are secured.

This is nothing what TRUMP represents: But the reality is people like RON PAUL will never win. So that is why TRUMP is Rising.

I think younger generation understands they are screwed and they will vote for anybody but the establishment especially after watching Hilary steal the democratic election from Bernie by those SUPER DELEGATES. So basically you really don't have a vote.

I will say onething Bernie Sanders would have beaten in this presidential race Trump. Hilary Clinton I'm not that sure.

See rifle? The rest of us get that, that's a far better way of expressing your viewpoint. Most people do think the system is broken, but most of us are sure Trump will break it more because he would essentially be an elected dictator. Hillary would be boring, status quo but I do not wants to see this country to go into the hands of someone who lies more often than the truth, and the only time he tells the truth it's when he's talking about how he feels about rosie O'Donnell.

The time to make a statement about this is when we don't run the risk of handing this country over to the Orange one.

 

[TheRifleman]

See rifle? The rest of us get that, that's a far better way of expressing your viewpoint. Most people do think the system is broken, but most of us are sure Trump will break it more because he would essentially be an elected dictator. Hillary would be boring, status quo but I do not wants to see this country to go into the hands of someone who lies more often than the truth, and the only time he tells the truth it's when he's talking about how he feels about rosie O'Donnell.

The time to make a statement about this is when we don't run the risk of handing this country over to the Orange one.

Disagree: system is very broken because of the corrupt scum in office. The clintons have been part of the problem. Not sure how govt employees become worth hundreds of millions of dollars why they continue working in politics.
The estabishment has put everybody in key spots to keep themselves out from being held accountable. Trump is a businessman not a dictator he never choose to seek public office so the realty is I will vote for trump over the broken corrupt liars in office.

 

[Jouhou]

Disagree: system is very broken because of the corrupt scum in office. The clintons have been part of the problem. Not sure how govt employees become worth hundreds of millions of dollars why they continue working in politics.
The estabishment has put everybody in key spots to keep themselves out from being held accountable. Trump is a businessman not a dictator he never choose to seek public office so the realty is I will vote for trump over the broken corrupt liars in office.

But he lies more often than a normal politician. This is at heart of why the "left" is confused on what the hell is going on here.

To everyone else, I have talked to many trump supporters, they aren't necessarily evil or stupid or anything like that. It seems that most of their anger at us is our condescending attitude when they argue with us emotionally rather than logically. The difference between them and us I think is that they are feelers and they feel emotions that Trump resonates with- but he also puts words in their mouths. He speaks like he knows why they are upset and he's the only one who knows the solution. To us he sounds like a used car salesman, we do not resonate because the content of what he's saying defies logic. We aren't as emotionally driven.

What I'm saying is a lot of the trump people are counter intuitively very emotional people and they actually tend to care more about social unity than we do. We shouldn't rail on them as if they are beneath us, we are the cold hearted ones in a sense. Even if we are trying to warn them of being duped, we sound cold and emotionless, just like Hillary and any other politician appears to someone who cares about interpersonal warmth.

Just hate the threat Trump presents to the nation and hope that his supporters realize some day that our cold logic doesn't mean we don't care about others or our social fabric.

 

[bigpicture7]

This is what I'm for.
smaller central government...

Sure: excessive, poorly designed regulation is bad for society. But you must have missed my prior point about the government: it must employ a substantial portion of our population (about 1/3), because private industry cannot and will never offer full employment to the population. So the issue is more: how do we make GREAT USE of our government, not how do we reduce it to near-zero.

...country where our basic constitutional rights are secured.

This requires a government. Chaos, barbarism, theft, cheating (and even worse things) are all but guaranteed without one. Are those our values?

...But the reality is people like RON PAUL will never win.

That's because everyone knows libertarianism is a pipe dream that doesn't work
(did I mention the need for the public sector to employ 1/3 of our people, and the fact that chaos, barbarism, theft, cheating is what happens without government).
Oh, and by the way, an unregulated economy is not one where supply and demand beautifully equalize: it is simply one where everyone just works on nastier and nastier ways to cheat. Do you like football? If so, would you enjoy watching football where there are no referees and that the home team can rig the goalposts so they become higher and narrower when the opponent is trying to kick a field goal toward them? A fair game - just like a fair economy - is one that rewards people who become better and work harder AT THE FAIR GAME.

 

[Justin7]

after watching Hilary steal the democratic election from Bernie by those SUPER DELEGATES.

Again, you are afraid to look at the facts because deep down somewhere you know you've been played and accepting that would force you to see something in yourself that you are ashamed of.

Either that or you're just a troll.

 

[odurandina]

Well, aren't we all a bunch of ass-douches today!. Sadly, as deplorable as Trump may be, the real world is an even more disparaging and inconvenient place for the liberal idiologue. You'll are running out of places to hide.

Manufacturing is for developing countries.

Lmfao. Wow. That won't buff out. Check your Rust Belt geography. As near as makes no difference, the Rust Belt begins about 97mi from the eastern beaches and extends to about 67mi from the Pacific.... and from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico (strays a bit further inland up by Sacramento, CA and the Tahoe region). That's one seriously humongous, formerly prosperous region of the country... and could benefit from a few more (deplorable/manufacturing) jobs you intellectual elites love to hack on.

Services and high tech is for developed countries.

Dammit if we're not sending those awesome high tech and finance jobs offshore too. Had lunch with a stock broker lately (one of the lucky ones who's job wasn't eliminated)? Our most prolific national product is outsourcing jobs, and of course, DEBT.

...you boneheads with no background knowledge on Economics....

Yeah, that UCSD revisionist economic/liberal sociopath/monetary history garbage sucked quite a bit. Stopped short of telling my commie professors what a bunch of epic commie whack jobs they were. i survived, in any case.

And really, stop talking about the economy. You know nothing...

My pastor, Milton (Friedman) is gone, and now you wanna take his place... Sorry, not today. Old Milt wrote the bible; (A Monetary History of the United States/re; Nobel Prize) and Money Mischief.... Hopefully you'll read up on somebody not named Krugman or Reich.

Study your M1 M2, M3... of course, it's hardly monetary policy that got us here.... nor is it just something you blame on the Democrats. The Republican's deserve their fair share of blame (what with running the CIA, silly Empire and endless warfare all over the world. Back to Friedman; The M2 and M3 tell you a lot more about where our economy has been, the present, and where it's going. Jim Davidson is another who (eats faux economists for breakfast).... He called this mess 2 decades ago. I hope we can just keep sailing along.

All you do is throw around words like stagflation...

Used for expediency to describe our hollow recovery ... For the booksmart liberal utopia Clinton supporter, perhaps 'zombie economy' or 'DEAD CAT BOUNCE,' is more appropriate. You're faith in your sacred wingnut institutions is about to be crushed.

There are a few exceptions; Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Johnston County, (KS). But, once you leave the coastal areas, we're still on the wrong side of a >25 year period of lost jobs and stagnant wages. When people go out of work, they experience disturbingly-long periods of unemployment... only to eventually return to lower-pay.... (McJobs for all those Deplorables)...

But the hollowing out of our economy isn't limited to the Rust Belt: Prices for housing, food, education, healthcare and transportation are an extreme burden for dozens of millions of Americans. Then there's the staggering education debt dragging on our young people like a ball and chain: Add that to the Baby boombers trading in their stocks and downsizing their homes to pay for prescription drug cataclysm. In a few years we could see a housing meltdown of nightmare proportions.

Life has rarely been harder for such a high % of people for such an extended period. You have to go back to about 1940....

The last several so-called economic recoveries have occurred with very flat, real dollar wage increases, and less and less participation by the greater population. With each passing downturn there's a widening gap between the haves and have nots. The Republicans deserve there share of the blame, but this has by and large occured during a period of unprecidented DEMOCRAT rule.

Our economy is far worse than the 1970s. And while the current version of stagflation isn't happening with exactly the same signature, including high interest rates, or an even longer period of runaway inflation, we are certainly living in the aftermath of decades of manufacturing moving offshore, corporate downsizing, abysmal wage increases, and sharp increases in food and cost of living prices.

The US has a sub-5% unemployment rate and an unusually low inflation rate

Damn them lies and statistics. U6 and (U7/total) under-employment, labor participation, and income levels all continue to occur at disturbing (deflationary) levels.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louisef...the-real-unemployment-rate-12-6/#1e17c46a1e12

U7 (victims of history)
http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2013/10/u-7-unemployment-rate-is-162-millions.html

shut up.

Ah, the soft-spoken, modern day Bolshevik. Stifle all dissenting opinion. Your commie overlords created a whole new tolerant class on America's college campuses. Well played.

deep down somewhere you know you've been played....

Americans (not born into privilege) have been played.

 

[Lrfox]

This is what I'm for.
smaller central government, lower taxes, lower regulations country where our basic constitutional rights are secured.

This is nothing what TRUMP represents: But the reality is people like RON PAUL will never win. So that is why TRUMP is Rising.

I think younger generation understands they are screwed and they will vote for anybody but the establishment especially after watching Hilary steal the democratic election from Bernie by those SUPER DELEGATES. So basically you really don't have a vote.

I will say onething Bernie Sanders would have beaten in this presidential race Trump. Hilary Clinton I'm not that sure.

He's rising because A) there are a lot of people who still aren't happy with the current state of affairs (perfectly understandable) B) He's playing on fear/uncertainty and scapegoating "others" for our problems (if it sounds familiar it's because it has happened before and the results are always disastrous) and C) He's somehow managed to convince a large chunk of the population that Donald Trump (and this is the part that blows my mind) is working in the best interests of Americans (not himself, you know, like he always has and always will) to overcome the exaggerated problems which he presents. The guy literally paints the picture of America as a hellscape and his fiercest supporters eat it up.

And Bernie wouldn't win. Like Trump, Bernie would inspire core supporters better than Hillary would. But Bernie, like Donald, has the big problem of reaching beyond his choir. Trumps has a passionate base. More passionate than Hillary's and a large part of that is the nature of the election cycle (Hillary represents the status quo and Donald represents change). The people who don't want things to change as much are going to be far less impassioned than those "fighting for change." Call it the vocal minority.

Hillary will most likely win. No, it won't be a "landslide" but I don't think it'll be as close as some of the more recent elections (i.e. 2000). While Trump has certainly tapped into something that's worthy of concern, his appeal beyond his choir isn't large enough to force the "change" his supporters so desperately want. Unless something dramatic happens in the next month, Trump won't sway enough of the moderate/undecided voters to take the election. There's dissatisfaction with the system, but it hasn't reached "revolutionary" levels yet and Donald Trump is as unconvincing to most as the figurehead to lead such a political revolution as he is polarizing. He's not the guy to do it. Frankly, Liz Warren is one to watch on that front. She scares a lot of people on the far right, but she's got the reputation for fighting "Wall Street" and fiery personality (without alienating huge segments of the population) to be a pretty big contender next time around. I think she'd be crushing him this time around simply because she can get under his skin better than Hillary can and she presents to the public better.

Oh, and finally, Hillary didn't "steal" the primaries from Bernie. She won over 55% of the popular vote too. A lot was made of how close Bernie was and how unfair the super delegates are, but he really wasn't that close (a 12% gap in the popular vote is a landslide in political terms). The trash talk and the party seemingly uniting against Bernie and his supporters is pretty disgusting, and it's indicative of a problem within the party; but nothing was stolen. He lost fair and square.

 

[tysmith95]

Rifle vs everyone on this thread (excluding odura).

 

[odurandina]

having seen 100,000 migrants (riding the Narco Train) from my safe zone in the surf, 7km north of the Tropic of Cancer. Some were terrorists. Many were rapists (as told by the locals). Not all. Not all. Most just hungry, looking to get their next meal.

I think Hitlery should let 1 billion migrants come. That will add to the PC awesomeness on our college campuses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGfP8CyJAhg

 

[KentXie]

Rifle, look at his avatar. He didn't go to MIT. However I don't understand how some conservative people always complain about the Ivy's, MIT, Stanford, ETC. So being smart is a bad thing? Also it's pretty hypocritical considering the fact that most conservative politicians went to top schools (Trump Included).

To them, knowledge is bad. It's funny because if you went back to the 1950s, this is exactly how the followers of Mao Zedong sounded like when they launched the Great Leap Forward. They discarded years of research and studies for their own conspiracy theories and blame those with knowledge as conspirators against them.

 

[odurandina]

i consider myself an enough open borders is enough kind of special asshole.

Our country's infrastructure is a wreck. We have people living cradle to grave light years from living anything close to the American Dream.

The Dems want to debunk 75 million AMERICANS as deplorable.

What kinds of facts does this violate?

 

[bigpicture7]

And I'm a grateful-that-there-was-room-at-Ellis-Island-100-years-ago-when-my-grandfather-escaped-genocide-in-his-home-country kind of asshole, who has by the way worked on America's "wreck" infrastructure for most of my career (and now train others to do as such).

 

[DZH22]

And I'm a grateful-that-there-was-room-at-Ellis-Island-100-years-ago-when-my-grandfather-escaped-genocide-in-his-home-country kind of asshole, who has by the way worked on America's "wreck" infrastructure for most of my career (and now train others to do as such).

I have a couple things worth pointing out regarding your overly snide remark.

First, it sounds like he came here legally. Millions upon millions of people have not come here the right way, and are hoping to be rewarded with amnesty.

Second, we really needed immigrants at the time, as the US was a developing country. That's no longer the case. There are plenty of people already here who are completely underutilized.

Third, immigrants of old came here and worked for their living. Now, many are on entitlement programs, especially those with anchor babies. They take more from the system than they pay in. I would advocate that all benefits for non-Americans be cut to $0. (except for "refugees", and that needs to be limited in scope and time) The working class should not be expected to support a bunch of non-American freeloaders.

Personally, I have no problem with legal immigration. However, at approximately 1 million per year, the US already takes in well more than any other country. There is no need to add to this number. Plenty of people do it the right way, like your family, and I applaud them for it.

I don't understand why Democrats have such a hard time differentiating because legal and illegal immigration. It's one of a few reasons I jumped off that train and am now staunchly independent. America is already being crushed by the weight of its own problems. If we try to take on the rest of the world's problems as well, the country will collapse. Let's try taking care of our own, because the shit is starting to hit the fan.

EDIT: It's time we made English the national language. There absolutely HAS to be a common way for us all to communicate. It should be a prerequisite for immigrating here.

 

[kmp1284]

I've voted Republican my entire life but the prospect of a Trump presidency combined with the pseudo-legitimacy he has given to the worst elements of American society absolutely petrifies me.

Moody's on Trump ... https://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/2016-06-17-Trumps-Economic-Policies.pdf

and on Clinton ... https://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/...s-of-Secretary-Clintons-Economic-Policies.pdf

One more for good measure...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ry-in-november-could-cause-a-global-recession

 

[DZH22]

I've voted Republican my entire life but the prospect of a Trump presidency combined with the pseudo-legitimacy he has given to the worst elements of American society absolutely petrifies me.

Interestingly, I know a lot of people who always voted one way and are now voting the other, from both sides of the aisle. It really comes down to which issues are most important to you.

In broad terms, lots of people say "how can you vote for (insert either candidate) due to issues A, B, C, and D?!" I might actually agree with you completely on these issues, and am not fond of voting "against" them, but I just happen to be more concerned with issues W, X, Y, and Z this time around.

Regardless of who we are voting for, I think most of us should be able to agree that these are the worst candidates in the last 20+ years, if not ever.

 

[tysmith95]

The blue collar former (or current) union workers are leaving the Democrats and supporting trump in droves. On the other hand well educated fiscal conservatives are turned off by the prospect of a Trump presidency. Also many conservative minorities are turned off by Trump's rhetoric.

And I agree with DHZ, I watched some of the Romney Obama debates the other day. Both candidates were much better than the ones this election cycle. Honestly if the Republican party elected someone like Romney or Kasich they would be leading by 10%. The dems would also be up by even more than that if someone like Biden was running.

 

[datadyne007]

I've voted Republican my entire life but the prospect of a Trump presidency combined with the pseudo-legitimacy he has given to the worst elements of American society absolutely petrifies me.

Moody's on Trump ... https://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/2016-06-17-Trumps-Economic-Policies.pdf

and on Clinton ... https://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/...s-of-Secretary-Clintons-Economic-Policies.pdf

One more for good measure...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ry-in-november-could-cause-a-global-recession

Everything you need in two handy charts from Moody's:

 

[Lrfox]

Interestingly, I know a lot of people who always voted one way and are now voting the other, from both sides of the aisle. It really comes down to which issues are most important to you.

In broad terms, lots of people say "how can you vote for (insert either candidate) due to issues A, B, C, and D?!" I might actually agree with you completely on these issues, and am not fond of voting "against" them, but I just happen to be more concerned with issues W, X, Y, and Z this time around.

Regardless of who we are voting for, I think most of us should be able to agree that these are the worst candidates in the last 20+ years, if not ever.

I disagree. I do think Trump is one of the worst Republican candidates ever. However, I don't think Clinton is one of the worst democratic candidates in the past few elections cycles. I think her opponent (by nature of who he is) has dragged her name through the mud. There are a lot of people who are absolutely convinced she should be in prison (if not on death row). However, a lot of the vitriol surrounding her is overblown.

But as someone who has voted Dem twice and Republican twice since being of voting age, I don't think she's worse than Gore or Kerry. As much as people love to hate on Bush (myself included), I can't see either of those two doing a better job. She doesn't excite people the way Bill did or Barack did in 2008, but she's not even close to being the bags of suck that Gore and Kerry were. To borrow from Trump, they were losers. But even in 2000 and 2004, the choices were "Meh" and "Meh." Now you have "Holy Shit!" and "Meh." That'll make anyone long for the days of Meh and Meh.