Quote :

"LOL. There isn't an "abortion epidemic" in this country. You don't know what the fuck you are talking about."

There is a thread for abortions. That is not the point here.

The positive spin here is that for him, as a republican candidate, his position on abortion is a sign that he isn't going to insist on pushing every generic republican platform like a Cruz, Bush, or Perry would more than likely do.

Plus, it should be incredibly obvious by now that he won the election by taping into the lower middle-class, which is actually a very good thing coming from a republican candidate. He didn't put himself in a position where he has to demolish abortion and gay marriage to satisfy his electorate: He needs to focus on getting jobs back. That goal, as unlikely as it may seem, is actually good for the American People.


[Edited on November 13, 2016 at 3:15 PM. Reason : a]

11/13/2016 3:13:35 PM

Oh, you mean those manufacturing rest belt jobs? I'm sure they're all going to come roaring back any day now.

11/13/2016 3:15:21 PM

It's gonna be even worse when all the truck drivers get replaced by robots, something that is definitely possible in the next four years.

11/13/2016 3:22:41 PM

There are tools at his disposal to encourage repatriation of offshore money and even jobs. They might be damaging in the long term, but they exist.

If he's serious about infrastructure improvements those are more potential blue collar jobs. They won't be permanent, UT they don't necessarily have to be of they can be a stop gap until other policies go into effect.

There are ways to dial back globalization or slow it down. I don't particularly like it, but they might be shirt term beneficial for the working class.

You can't hold back the tide of automation and globalization but you can blunt its influence and pace. That's an achievable goal if it's also coupled with things like changing emphasis in education and fiscal policy.

[Edited on November 13, 2016 at 3:25 PM. Reason : Dbsjdj]

11/13/2016 3:23:46 PM

Quote :

"Oh, you mean those manufacturing rest belt jobs? I'm sure they're all going to come roaring back any day now."

That is also a piss-poor attitude. Countries like Germany still have manufacturing jobs at a much larger percentage of the GDP than they are in America. So, to say that it is a "sign of the times" is also a bit defeatist.


[Edited on November 13, 2016 at 3:25 PM. Reason : a]

11/13/2016 3:24:35 PM

You people are insane if you think this GOP congress is going to do a goddamn thing about the poor and middle-class. The only party that's had any interest in helping those groups over the last half-century are the Democrats. Mitch McConnell has already said infrastructure is a non-starter. Paul Ryan isn't interested in anything other than cutting the top marginal tax rates and slashing entitlements. You think they are suddenly going to become the champions of the common man? Remember that picture, "We told them it would trickle down" with all those old people laughing? The next version of that will be "We told them their factory jobs would come back".

[Edited on November 13, 2016 at 3:43 PM. Reason : .]

11/13/2016 3:39:51 PM

Nobody is saying that there isn't any uncertainty here, but it is what the guy ran on and there certainly is precedent for it. The Obama mindset of "China isn't giving those jobs back to us" is a bit absurd, to be honest. Just give the Donald a chance and see what happens. It is not like Clinton would have been any better in this regard.

I mean, I have a fairly liberal posting record on TWW, and here I am trying to convince y'all that it certainly could have been worse. Yes, it hurts that he is basically a celebrity with no governing experience. It is certainly disparaging that he never opened up his taxes. But again, Trump on the stump was not the standard Republican, and he did attack some of the cracks in our armor to great success.



[Edited on November 13, 2016 at 3:52 PM. Reason : a]

11/13/2016 3:43:55 PM

Quote :

"You people are insane if you think this GOP congress is going to do a goddamn thing about the poor and middle-class. The only party that's had any interest in helping those groups over the last half-century are the Democrats. Mitch McConnell has already said infrastructure is a non-starter. Paul Ryan isn't interested in anything other than cutting the top marginal tax rates and slashing entitlements. You think they are suddenly going to become the champions of the common man? Remember that picture, "We told them it would trickle down" with all those old people laughing? The next version of that will be "We told them their factory jobs would come back". "

Democrats have been relying on this reputation for 30 years now while only proposing band-aid solutions, and that reputation has finally worn off and it has bit the Democratic Party in the ass.

Democrats have stood idly by as all of the FDR New Deal reforms have been eroded, and it has allowed the anger and resentment of post-industrial towns to be swooped up by the nationalistic ramblings of a mad man who is only a cunt hair away from espousing racial purity as an economic solution to their problems.

Democrats have purged and silenced the socialists from their ranks, which would have appealed to the voters they just lost. But instead of addressing this issue, they'd rather engage in vote shaming rather than correcting the slow drift to neoliberalism that the party currently represents.

11/13/2016 4:17:14 PM

Oh shut the fuck up with your self-righteous bullshit. Your dumbass peaced out on Obama after 2 years because he didn't immediatly shutdown the military and nationalize the banks. You can blame "us" all you want, but at least we were in the game. For the record, those "band-aid" solutions have resulted in the only substantial gains the middle class has made since the New Deal. That's how government works, you can't just create prosperity by fiat.

This kind of petty in-fighting is only going to cause us the nominate some populist dipshit like McGovern, and get waxed just like he did in 1972. Hell, the fact that Nixon was getting impeached at the time he laid that wood makes the parallels even more stark. Luckily, cooler heads are prevailing within' the party and are looking to put Keith Ellison in charge. He's a good bridge between the Clinton/Obama era and the Sandersistas.

11/13/2016 4:26:34 PM

^ Yeah, good luck with your "shut up and fall in line" strategy. I'm sure that'll work this time

11/13/2016 5:42:28 PM

delaying the Trump University court hearings until after he is president. Lol.

11/13/2016 5:49:42 PM

Quote :

"Steve Bannon, the Trump campaign CEO and executive chairman of Breitbart News, as chief strategist and senior counselor"

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/13/politics/donald-trump-reince-priebus-white-house-chief-of-staff/

Definitely the most disturbing part of this whole thing.

11/13/2016 5:58:53 PM

Yep a true white supremacist/anti-semite is now going to be in one of the highest positions of a presidential administration. If you question the need to protest, you need not go any further than that reality.

11/13/2016 6:21:58 PM

Yo how much you wanna bet Shrike's profile pic is a safety pin and his status is asking Michelle Obama to run for president

11/13/2016 6:52:29 PM

Quote :

" "Oh, you mean those manufacturing rest belt jobs? I'm sure they're all going to come roaring back any day now." That is also a piss-poor attitude. Countries like Germany still have manufacturing jobs at a much larger percentage of the GDP than they are in America. So, to say that it is a "sign of the times" is also a bit defeatist."

Germany has government institutions in place that train people from grade school and numerous high end manufacturing companies, comparing us to them is ridiculous. Republicans would never set up a similar system.

[Edited on November 13, 2016 at 7:20 PM. Reason : Comparing!]

11/13/2016 7:11:26 PM

^^^^ shit, you think the other way around would be better? Bannon as Chief of Staff?

Not that he should, but that guy was gonna have a role in this administration. I view appointing Priebus as a slight nod towards moderation.

11/13/2016 7:39:29 PM

president trump is seeming less and less scary. transcript of his cbs interview:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-donald-trump-family-melania-ivanka-lesley-stahl/

[Edited on November 13, 2016 at 9:51 PM. Reason : .]

11/13/2016 9:50:53 PM

Quote :

"Oh shut the fuck up with your self-righteous bullshit."

I love it. I fucking love it.

11/13/2016 11:06:21 PM

+400k for not taking the salary

11/14/2016 12:01:31 AM

He can say that all he wants since none of us is ever going to see his tax returns anyway.

11/14/2016 12:07:53 AM

has he announced who the first lady is? I was assuming it would be Ivanka.

11/14/2016 12:13:50 AM

Quote :

"Not that he should, but that guy was gonna have a role in this administration. I view appointing Priebus as a slight nod towards moderation."

This is how trump gets you. Having reince in there moderates the blatant antisemite? It moderates the guy running a website that pushes misinformation as their raison d'être? You can't make such a blithe dismissal of this.

Same for the other trump backpedals... on he's not going to repeal ACA but might gut Medicare, he's not going to build a wall, maybe it's a fence in some places, he doesn't want to hurt the clintons but he'll see.

What if Obama had made Louis Farrakhan a close advisor? Seems like the pundits and media are not doing their jobs.

He's following the same path as his campaign. Between his back pedaling, these appointments, the weird tweets, trump U, the massive conflict of interest he has with his businesss, there's too many targets to go after, and the media is unable to point a coherent picture.



[Edited on November 14, 2016 at 1:33 AM. Reason : ]

11/14/2016 1:29:32 AM

https://twitter.com/borzou/status/798051394527711233

Iran government social media mocking trump for trump steaks.

11/14/2016 2:03:26 AM

BReitbart used to be the website Fox News watchers made fun of to say "at least we're not as bad as them"



Murdoch must be worried this will start to eat into his market.

11/14/2016 3:13:43 AM

I'm only saying, what if he'd made Bannon chief of staff?

11/14/2016 6:21:47 AM

I find it funny the same people that were telling me to give Obama a chance in '08 are screaming now to have the electoral college removed, to have him impeached, to have a "do over" etc.

And that if I tell people to give Trump a chance, I'm the one that is hypocritical. This election nonsense has got to stop. I still don't like Trump, but he's the president for the next four years, like it or not. We survived 8 years of Bush, we'll survive 4 years of Trump.

11/14/2016 8:21:05 AM

Stop being so milk toast.

11/14/2016 8:38:52 AM

Quote :

"We survived 8 years of Bush"

Many survived but lost their job, savings, and house.... Trump is even more of a puppet than bush and look who he has for advisors.

11/14/2016 9:56:33 AM

Quote :

"Just for clarity, President-elect Trump ditching campaign promises that could never have been kept is evidence of cynicism, not moderation."

https://twitter.com/dsorennie/status/797959611382759424

11/14/2016 10:11:29 AM

^
Dude get over it. You're just as bad as the Tea Party right now.

11/14/2016 10:18:58 AM

http://gizmodo.com/10-headlines-from-the-white-houses-new-chief-strategist-1788935071

Here's a good primer on bannon but doesn't really begin to capture the vileness of breitbart.

11/14/2016 10:25:21 AM

Why are we believing anything his ex wife says? Yes Breitbart is shitty clickbait garbage, but that article you linked is just as bad.

Democrats continuing do the thing that caused them to lose.

11/14/2016 10:48:11 AM

The article didn't need to really even quote his ex-wife.

He is a self-proclaimed ethno-nationalist and has at best appealed to antisemitic feelings before. It's Ok to say that. Saying that about Bannon didn't cause anyone to win or lose but even if it did so what? It should be said.

11/14/2016 11:05:32 AM

Campaign's over folks, back to reality! About those coal jobs ......

https://thinkprogress.org/mcconnell-admits-jobs-war-on-coal-8938da18e5e3#.s633t1vx5

Quote :

"McConnell also noted that he did not intend to spend any government dollars to help those who have lost coal jobs and may not regain them. “A government spending program is not likely to solve the fundamental problem of growth,” McConnell argued. “I support the effort to help these coal counties wherever we can but that isn’t going to replace whatever was there when we had a vibrant coal industry.”"

..

Another note on McConnell: he's from Kentucky, which happens to be one of (maybe the only?) red state which both accepted the Obamacare medicaid expansion and set up their own exchange. Over half a million people in that state gained insurance thanks to the law. There will be political consequences if he rams through a repeal of the law that doesn't do something for those people.

[Edited on November 14, 2016 at 11:11 AM. Reason : .]

11/14/2016 11:07:52 AM

To be fair, McConnell is right. But we all knew, on here anyway, that the promise to bring "clean coal" jobs back was a complete lie. Deep down the people who live in coal country knew it too... but at least someone paid attention to them.

11/14/2016 11:27:31 AM

^^^
You're grossly underestimating the danger of having white nationalist rhetoric leaking out of the executive branch. The bully pulpit is the most powerful tool of the president and the courts and legislature can't stop racists from being empowered and spreading their disease.

When you normalize bannin, who just a few months ago would be unthinkable to have guiding a president, you're letting fascism creep.

There's validity to the idea of this being like the boy who crowd wolf, we love to call each other Hitler in America, but when there's actually a wolf and you see it,it doesn't help to just sit back and say "shouldn't have cried wolf...".

You don't have to look much farther than the dozens of editorial boards that almost always endorse the Republican or who have never endorsed anyone, coming out against trump to see this is not the same as the past.

11/14/2016 11:28:05 AM

I'm not trying to normalize Bannon, but calling Breitbart white nationalist is a little absurd. They're Republican clickbait.

11/14/2016 11:36:09 AM

* anti-establishment clickbait

They certainly have a history of fostering some pretty shitty people and have said some pretty shitty things. Personally I'm fine with allowing them to have their little safe space but it makes me uneasy having a guy like Bannon in the ear of the presidency.

Criticize me all you want about that. Doesn't matter to me.

11/14/2016 12:05:00 PM

No I agree. I just don't agree with throwing every anti- word in the book at everyone close Trump. It's needlessly divisive.

[Edited on November 14, 2016 at 12:16 PM. Reason : .]

11/14/2016 12:15:23 PM

There is quite a bit of rationalizing going on still with the left. Labeling EVERYONE a certain way I guess makes some people feel better. It's a form of otherism just like people rightfully accused Trump of doing.

It's easier to say "normal good people like me didn't cause Trump; it was those bad racists and antisemites" than it is to look hard at the reasons why. Just like it's easier to say most immigrants are criminals instead of an extreme minority.

It's almost like some fucked up real-life horsheshoe theory experiment.

11/14/2016 12:22:20 PM

Needlessly divisive like questioning the president's birth origins?



To me, it just seems like you are asking us to wipe Trump and Co. slate clean and give him a chance. Why?

11/14/2016 12:22:54 PM

Calling Bannon racist, which he is, does not directly impugn the people that voted for trump. I understand why trump supporters don't like that characterization, but it's their jobs to come to terms with who their candidate is and who he surrounds himself with.

It's not the job of people who oppose anti Semities to spare the feelings of people who voted for racist by staying quiet. How is it trump can say Mexico is sending rapists and criminals but some "he assumes" are good people, then call the American judge in his case unfit because he's a Mexican, call for a ban on Muslims, and say the US is a nation "under one god", but it's the progressives that are wrong to call him out on this?

[Edited on November 14, 2016 at 12:33 PM. Reason : ]

11/14/2016 12:33:22 PM

^^
I'm asking people to move forward and focus on pushing Trump in the right direction. To me, based on the CBS interview, he's keeping an open mind. That's an opportunity for us.

Alternatively, we can keep namecalling and ensure a horrible 4 years.

It's shame I'm the odd one out here. Even Obama is willing to let the past go in hopes that we can work together.

^
Because it's campaign rhetoric that he's dropped since winning the election.

I'm also failing to see how Bannon is a racist. All I've seen is that he's an alt-righter who makes dumb jokes about race.

[Edited on November 14, 2016 at 12:42 PM. Reason : .]

11/14/2016 12:39:28 PM

Earth to echo chamber:

You realize a staggering number of women traveling across the border illegally are raped, right?

You realize a judge from a country you are harsh towards may be biased against you, right?

You realize "Muslim" isn't a race, right?

11/14/2016 12:41:31 PM

^^How many times has Obama extended his hand toward conservatives only to have them spit in his face? When are liberals going to learn you can't reason with these people.

Throughout Hillary's campaign you reminded us she wasn't going to do half the things that she promised, that she was a liar. Now I'm supposed to accept the things Trump, a verified serial liar, says in an interview at face value? Why? I'll just keep assuming the worst.

You can try to push him in the right direction (the exact same thing I implored you and others to do to Hillary btw, you dismissed it) but do you really think your voice is gonna be heard over the deplorables chanting "lock her up?"

[Edited on November 14, 2016 at 12:49 PM. Reason : Arrow]

11/14/2016 12:47:40 PM

Are we seriously debating whether or not the least qualified candidate in history, who only just took up politics last year as a hobby just to boost his own sense of self worth, and used nationalistic and racist sentiment to appeal to white impoverished America, actually deserves a chance?




No, man. This was not a normal election. We did not have civil disagreements on minor policy disputes. We've slowly built up the largest and most destructive government for decades. We've created the largest surveillance state known to mankind, have the highest levels of incarceration on the planet, have the largest military that the planet has ever known, and have systematically stripped average Americans of their due process. And we just gave all of that to a madman who is now surrounding himself with members of the radical right who openly fan the flames of racial hatred and hyper masculinity (a message that is being received to a rabid base of gun owners, by the way).

And you people want to give this motherfucker a chance? Fuck that.

We're fucking screwed, man.




[Edited on November 14, 2016 at 1:02 PM. Reason : ]

11/14/2016 12:52:32 PM

We are screwed and the nation is fracturing quickly. the US is dangerously polarized.

11/14/2016 1:14:24 PM

Quote :

"Throughout Hillary's campaign you reminded us she wasn't going to do half the things that she promised, that she was a liar. Now I'm supposed to accept the things Trump, a verified serial liar, says in an interview at face value? Why? I'll just keep assuming the worst."

Total false equivalence. Every politician makes campaign promises and doesn't keep them. This is about what he's said after the election.

Quote :

"the exact same thing I implored you and others to do to Hillary btw, you dismissed it"

Damn fucking right I dismissed it, because after she won, she appointed Tim fucking Kaine as VP, hired DWS to her campaign, and the Dems appointed Donna Brazile as DNC chair. And she continued to demean progressives. I don't even need to mention the Wikileaks revelations.

Alternatively, Trump won, immediately started with a message that he would work for all Americans, told his supporters to stop doing dumb shit, has been extremely respectful toward his opponents and Obama, and has shown himself to be open to compromise and cooperation. Yeah he hired Bannon, someone who gave him immense support during his campaign, as a strategist. Big deal. Doesn't mean he will agree with everything Bannon says.

Quote :

"do you really think your voice is gonna be heard over the deplorables chanting "lock her up?""

No, what worries me is that my voice won't be heard over people calling Trump supporters deplorables. I've posted a little in r/The_Donald and it's been a very welcoming environment, even after outing myself as a Bernie delegate and Stein voter.

If I'm wrong about all this, I'm wrong. I don't care. We'll see.

11/14/2016 1:18:07 PM

Quote :

"'m also failing to see how Bannon is a racist. All I've seen is that he's an alt-righter who makes dumb jokes about race."

First, I am keeping an open mind with Trump.

But how is this better? It never matters if a person is a racist in the true sense of the word if the core of your philosophical appeals to that type. Does it serve any purpose to make jokes about race? Or call feminists dykes? This isn't some idiot on the radio. It's basically the equivalent to the chief of staff to the president.

11/14/2016 1:19:13 PM

^^^^ Get a therapist and go cry it off, SJW

People cared more about corruption than push grabbing, better learn to get over it.

[Edited on November 14, 2016 at 1:20 PM. Reason : ^^^^]

11/14/2016 1:20:02 PM