State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

[Winnie]

As I explained to Apathy, people in cities vote for democrats because the conservatives disdain city people.

Simple as that.

With a few exceptions high population density areas vote Democrat while low population density votes Republican.

Why would you vote for someone who openly disdains you?

Exactly my point. James Carville said that Pennsylvania is "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between."
That was said with contempt, which the Democrat party shares today.
Hillary lost a state that Obama twice carried comfortably. (Racist?)
In my neck of the woods, she carried Lackawanna County. That's easy. Her father is buried in Scranton. Washburn St cemetery if you want to make a pilgrimage. Her ne'ere do well brothers still infest Lake Winola. So the eejits up Scranton way think of her as family. Not so much the clear eyed stalwarts in Luzerne County. Slowly throwing off the shackles of the Democrat mob bosses! Our fetters rent in twain!

[Adam smiths left nut]

Replacing one crook with another isn't exactly progress.

[Winnie]

Replacing one crook with another isn't exactly progress.

Attrition.

[WTF on the road]

The painful reality is that neither major party gives a rats ass about their citizens provided they can misdirect anger at some "other" be it a different color, religion or political persuasion. The right blames immigrants or liberals or Muslims while the left blames conservatives, evangelicals or gun nuts. The reality is that fundamental structural challenges in a global economy are very very complex impossible to solve by any single national government, much less a pissant local city or county government.

The US has yet to even address in an honest fashion the massive shift in economic power from manufacturing to finance capital, from Detroit and Pittsburgh to Wall Street. Last year the bonus payments on Wall Street exceeded the total earnings of the bottom three quintiles of the American working population. Bitching about coal or textile or steel while Wall Street bends the economy over is absolutely fiddling while Rome catches fire, blows up and then falls over.

[Macunaima]

God knows why, but Democrats were responsible for it...

And that about sums up the entirety of your argument, doesn't it?

Here's the thing, OFM: "communists" like me have been saying it's a one-party system for a hound's age. Now, once-prosperous white working class men have found this out and what do they do? They DOUBLE DOWN on the very beliefs and attitudes that fucked them over in the first place.

So yeah, I get it: the Democrats suck. No shit. So let's vote for a man who is everything we hate in Democrats dialed up to eleven. Yeah, that'll give us some change, for sure. And while we are at it, let's call everyone to the left of Himmler "communists" and "terrorists" and let's make excuses for Nazi thugs who go marching through the streets because, golly, their hair might have been mussed by some adolescent antifas.

I can only laugh -- bitterly -- when I see Trump-voting family members now scared shitless because they'll lose the only health care they ever had. What, they didn't think the man meant what he said? Oh, no, I get it: they thought he was just going to go after those free-loading immigrants and niggers, not them! They're good patriotic white Americans! Surely Trump wouldn't turn on them?

I get the anger at the Democrats, I really do. But when you're political response is to vote for a man who'll put you in a worse place and much quicker.... then you're a fool and an idiot.

Kinda hard to not feel scorn for a substantial portion of the white American working class -- which is my background, by the way -- when their go-to solution for everything is and always has been "I will sell other workers who don't look like me down the river if only you'll give me some guns and let me take a few potshots at them first".

GUNS are more inportant to your average yahoo than any other issue out there. That's because the illusion of being a citizen and being free to fear-monger about people who don't look or act like you has always been way more important to the majority of the white American working class than actual freedom.

This is you at your most obnoxious, condescending and superior self.
You assume racism when it isn't there.
Straw man arguments.
And so on.

What part of Trump's racism have you had a hard time understanding, Winnie?

[Macunaima]

The painful reality is that neither major party gives a rats ass about their citizens provided they can misdirect anger at some "other" be it a different color, religion or political persuasion. The right blames immigrants or liberals or Muslims while the left blames conservatives, evangelicals or gun nuts. The reality is that fundamental structural challenges in a global economy are very very complex impossible to solve by any single national government, much less a pissant local city or county government.

The US has yet to even address in an honest fashion the massive shift in economic power from manufacturing to finance capital, from Detroit and Pittsburgh to Wall Street. Last year the bonus payments on Wall Street exceeded the total earnings of the bottom three quintiles of the American working population. Bitching about coal or textile or steel while Wall Street bends the economy over is absolutely fiddling while Rome catches fire, blows up and then falls over.

How many leftists have killed gun nuts, Winnie? How many leftists are agitating for them to be kicked out of the country?

This shit is 't symetrical and the fact that you obviously, sincerely, think it is points towards a deeper problem.

[Macunaima]

Let's put it a different way: there is only one sort of person who can honestly and intelligently say that Hilary and Trump are the same thing and that's a person who...

1) Doesn't need to feel at risk for their life or freedom when police approach them (and who probably, naively, believes that police represent justice);

2) Will never need to worry about getting a legal and safe abortion or having affordable access to birth control;

3) Has no close non-American family members (or close friends for that matter);

4) Certainly has no trans friends or relatives;

5) Has few if any LGB friends or relatives;

6) Has no real worries about where their health care is coming from.

7) Has few if any black friends or relatives.

This kind of person is really the only type who can vote for a Trump with a clear conscinece because the REAL differences between Trump and Hilary are academic or non-extant to them.

I test out negative on five of those seven characteristics, so there is no way in hell I'd see the differences between Trump and Hillary as a wash. But if all you are concerned about is the return of privileges lost from some half-imagined American Golden Age, then yeah, I can see why you'd think there's no difference.

[rebelyell2006]

I tested negative on just (1) and (6), but only because I have few friends and relatives. Extend it to associates and coworkers, and that changes things completely. And yet, everybody knows who I voted for.

[Adam Smiths Left Nut]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/04/politics/ ... index.html

He's worried Trump would be a liar if he deports the Dreamers.

I got bad news for you buddy.

[General Apathy]

Mac, I reject your assertion and purity test.

The issue was never that there was no difference.