Joe Biden beats Donald Trump, officially making Trump a one-term twice impeached, twice popular-vote losing president

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

18 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

I'm aware he'll be unshackled, but I believe America will still come out the other side in one piece. We will be battered and wounded, but we won't be fucked.

 

Edit: I think that Trump already proved that he is TERRIBLE in so many ways, but we have survived 4 years of him. We will survive Trump 2.0. 

Edit 2: This doesn't mean I endorse Trump or his policies, or think what he's doing is okay. This is a difference between many people here being pessimists about the future while I am more optimistic about the long run. We have taken a dark detour for the time being, but I believe this will be short lived. Laugh it up and mock me, I don't really care. None of us know for sure what's coming. I think people will come around.

The second term will be worse than the first

 

Not to mention, the campaign won't even tell what Trump will want to do in term 2. After all, bush 2 ran on ???? In 2004, but as soon as the campign was over, he was pushing for full social security privatization. I doubt Trump would attempt something that politically stupid, but think in that same line of thought.

[thewhyteboar]

If Trump wins, the federal courts will be packed with 27 year old fascists. We will be even more fucked than we are now. 

[skillzdadirecta]

26 minutes ago, thewhyteboar said:

If Trump wins, the federal courts will be packed with 27 year old fascists. We will be even more fucked than we are now. 

This seems to elude a lot of voters for some reason and they will stay home if their guy isn't nominated.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I need to stay out of this thread for my mental health. 

[thewhyteboar]

Judicial and cabinent appointments are so important for how an administration functions but are so rarely talked about on the campaign trail. 

[Ricofoley]

1 hour ago, thewhyteboar said:

If Trump wins, the federal courts will be packed with 27 year old fascists. We will be even more fucked than we are now. 

This is what I worry about much moreso than anything Trump himself would do in a 2nd term

[Massdriver]

Biden or Bernie could pull off a win. 45% chance on predictwise. I think trump will win, but the evidence is more or less a coin flip. He has a lot of bad things going for him too. Let’s hope once the nominee is decided, everyone gets behind this person and gets it done. 

[Massdriver]

10 hours ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

I need to stay out of this thread for my mental health. 

I’m going to continue being optimistic. @Signifyin(g)Monkey @sblfilms  @mclumber1@SaysWho? are on this team I hope! 

[Ricofoley]

The other thing I worry about is if Trump loses the popular vote by even more than last election but still wins the electoral college--which seems very possible--I can see a lot of young people voting for the first or second time just kind of saying, "oh, okay, so what I do just doesn't matter at all" and checking out of the political process entirely. A bunch of Federalist Society goblins on the bench overturning policies that a majority of people support won't help there either. Ideally, people would get angry and we'd get some of that early 2017 protest energy again, but I could see it swinging totally the other way and people just checking out entirely.

[SaysWho?]

7 hours ago, Massdriver said:

I’m going to continue being optimistic. @Signifyin(g)Monkey @sblfilms  @mclumber1are on this team I hope! 

 

Thanks for thinking of me.  

[Spork3245]

49 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

Thanks for thinking of me.  

I was thinking of you

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

9 hours ago, Massdriver said:

I’m going to continue being optimistic. @Signifyin(g)Monkey @sblfilms  @mclumber1are on this team I hope! 

If we can survive a Civil War and Woodrow Wilson, we can survive damn near anything.

 

Besides, to me Trump is actually less of a threat than other forces at work that need to be addressed—the social Balkanization promoted by social media, the ‘new’ business model being pioneered by big tech where people aren’t compensated for the value (I.e., data) they produce, the effects of the continued exponential increase in private debt.

 

Getting Trump out of the White House won’t fix those problems—though you could argue it would help.  They’ll need to be fixed over the course of many presidencies with old-fashioned American ingenuity, perseverance and gumption.  And as a parent, I see that the generations ahead still have plenty of that.  Although I wish they’d put down their iPhones and get off my damn lawn! (or at least get off the abomination we call Twitter)

[Massdriver]

2 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

 

Thanks for thinking of me.  

You absolutely belong on this list, and I think I’ve missed some others. Bottom line is the few optimists here make it easier to continue participating. Gloom and doom posting all the time isn’t sustainable or healthy for me nor is it realistic. 

[SaysWho?]

Hillary: Bernie is a career politician and "nobody likes him"

 

Quote

In the doc, you're brutally honest on Sanders: "He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it." That assessment still hold?

 

Yes, it does.

 

If he gets the nomination, will you endorse and campaign for him?

 

I'm not going to go there yet. We're still in a very vigorous primary season. I will say, however, that it's not only him, it's the culture around him. It's his leadership team. It's his prominent supporters. It's his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it. And I don't think we want to go down that road again where you campaign by insult and attack and maybe you try to get some distance from it, but you either don't know what your campaign and supporters are doing or you're just giving them a wink and you want them to go after Kamala [Harris] or after Elizabeth [Warren]. I think that that's a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions.

 

Speaking of, he allegedly told Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2018 that he didn't think a woman could win, a statement he vigorously denies. How did you digest that?

 

Well, number one, I think [that sentiment] is untrue, which we should all say loudly. I mean, I did get more votes both in the primary, by about 4 million, and in the general election, by about 3 million. I think that both the press and the public have to really hold everybody running accountable for what they say and what their campaign says and does. That's particularly true with what's going on right now with the Bernie campaign having gone after Elizabeth with a very personal attack on her. Then this argument about whether or not or when he did or didn't say that a woman couldn't be elected, it's part of a pattern. If it were a one-off, you might say, "OK, fine." But he said I was unqualified. I had a lot more experience than he did, and got a lot more done than he had, but that was his attack on me. I just think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a president who's going to try to bring us together, and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, demeaning, degrading behavior that we've seen from this current administration.

 

[Keyser_Soze]

11 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

You absolutely belong on this list, and I think I’ve missed some others. Bottom line is the few optimists here make it easier to continue participating. Gloom and doom posting all the time isn’t sustainable or healthy for me nor is it realistic. 

I’ll be the one who decides if he posts gloom and doom

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Optimism as a(n) ethical/moral/intellectual/psychological value amuses me greatly!

[Kal-El814]

15 hours ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

He's wrong about video game violence, but dead on with the tech Bros

Any politician who bitches about video game violence who has ever had a hard on for actual war should be launched into orbit. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 hour ago, SaysWho? said:

Hillary: Bernie is a career politician and "nobody likes him"

 

 

Hillary calling someone else a career politician it top lol

[Firewithin]

14 hours ago, thewhyteboar said:

 

EAT THE RICH

[Massdriver]

1 hour ago, SaysWho? said:

Hillary: Bernie is a career politician and "nobody likes him"

 

 

Bernie has 2 endorsement from the U.S. Senate, current and former combined, Mike Gravel and Patrick Leahy. I think Hillary is partially correct that at least in the U.S. Senate, very few of his fellow senators like him. That raises questions about what he could actually get done as president.

[SaysWho?]

I don't think many people liked Trump and that guy is filling the courts quickly.

 

Likability doesn't really factor into it. I've no doubt Ted Cruz would have gotten plenty (of bad) accomplished with a Republican Congress.

[SaysWho?]

Plus, Patrick Leahy is the only Senate endorsement that matters. That fucker stood up to The Joker and isn't intimidated by thugs.

[Massdriver]

4 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

I don't think many people liked Trump and that guy is filling the courts quickly.

 

Likability doesn't really factor into it. I've no doubt Ted Cruz would have gotten plenty (of bad) accomplished with a Republican Congress.

Well it may not factor into what he gets done, but it doesn't help. In any case, there's something about working with the guy that senators don't like.

[SaysWho?]

Just now, Massdriver said:

Well it may not factor into what he gets done, but it doesn't help. In any case, there's something about working with the guy that senators don't like.

 

Let's put it this way:

 

More Americans like Bernie than Hillary. Hillary lost the election and has gotten very little done as not president.

[Jason]

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Not being well liked by congress, whose approval ratings are just below the flu and kicking puppies, is a bit of a selling point imo.

 

 

Also,

 

[osxmatt]

I understand the optics of a comment like this, but Hillary needs to go away.

[Jason]

37 minutes ago, osxmatt said:

I understand the optics of a comment like this, but Hillary needs to go away.

 

 

[skillzdadirecta]

3 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

Optimism as a(n) ethical/moral/intellectual/psychological value amuses me greatly!

Especially in the face of stark reality... seeing the bright side of a particularly dark situation has what value exactly? Sometimes things are what they are.

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

9 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

 

He’s got it backwards—Hillary’s intervening to give Sanders a boost right before the vote.  Anti-establishment sentiment rules the electorate right now, and nothing boosts your anti-establishment cred and energizes rebellious voters more than being subject to the wrath of a Clinton!  I wouldn’t be surprised if she and Bernie planned this on day one of his campaign. 

[Dodger]

18 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Especially in the face of stark reality... seeing the bright side of a particularly dark situation has what value exactly? Sometimes things are what they are.

 

 

You two are the exact type of people who get diagnosed with some horrible disease and end up dead a month later because you've already given up hope on life. Optimism in the face of insurmountable odds is basically how anything great has been accomplished in the history of mankind. If we all went around shrugging our shoulders saying well we're fucked anyway nothing would ever get done. 

[skillzdadirecta]

1 minute ago, Dodger said:

 

 

You two are the exact type of people who get diagnosed with some horrible disease and end up dead a month later because you've already given up hope on life. Optimism in the face of insurmountable odds is basically how anything great has been accomplished in the history of mankind. If we all went around shrugging our shoulders saying well we're fucked anyway nothing would ever get done. 

There's a difference between fighting a horrible disease, something I just went through with a close family member, and reading the writing on the wall regarding the political climate of the country and seeing things for what they are. Do I think things can change? Absolutely yes. But i don't think they will when most of the folks advocating for that change either absolutely refuse to see what the problems really are because they just don't want to face the ugly truth or they are truly oblivious. As long as "Progressives" continue to stick their heads up their own asses and pretend everything smells rosey, they will continue to be happy losers. The Progressive Left is only "political movement" that sees an outright loss as some degree of winning. It will also cut its own nose off to spite its face. So forgive me if I don't see a lot of "hope" in today's electorate after all we've seen in the last ten or so years. Would I LOVE to be proven wrong? Yes because I think the stakes are high as hell, but am I preparing for the worse outcome (A second term of Trump) YUP.

[SaysWho?]

1 hour ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Not being well liked by congress, whose approval ratings are just below the flu and kicking puppies, is a bit of a selling point imo.

 

 

Also,

 

 

 

[SaysWho?]

I think there's a balance between seeing things as they are and predicting the worst outcome all the time. Like, you have to understand how many minority and LGBT Americans and women go through things on a daily basis that I don't. And that they never "were OK" or "just got through it fine" when someone else was elected president.

 

But damn, as someone who was saying that Alabama could very well vote Democratic and that Democrats looked to make big gains in 2018, it seriously got to me when anytime I'd post something, the first response would be, "But it won't matter because [insert every worst case scenario to counter any best case scenario that could possible happen]," and it wasn't good for me. I see so many people protesting and making calls and going to their state capitols to fight for the environment and going to town halls that it's made me happy to see so many people fighting for things I believe in and knowing that many others wanted to see similar things accomplished that I do.

 

I think we're a better country than when I was in high school. I felt like strange when I'd meet person after person who didn't think gays should get married; now one of my best friends, who's gay, can get married in this country, and gay kids can elect to serve openly (we still have to change things for our trans friends). I think we're better for having legalized marijuana in as many states as we have and made it easier to access medical marijuana. And the ACA isn't a perfect law, nor the final answer on health care, nor is it ideal, but I think it's a damn sight better than the nothing we had before it and at least gave us a cheaper alternative between jobs, more time to save after college by staying on our parents' insurance, and more people with preexisting conditions coverage.

 

I think the best thing I've tried to do -- we'll see if I have this mindset if Trump wins -- is to have some kind of vision of things I want to see, and know that election losses are setbacks, not permanent. Part 1 of a national health insurance program is finished; now the fight goes on for a better and cheaper one. Gay Americans getting married is finished; now we have to continue to fight against anti-LGBT judges who want to reverse other gains or show people that gay marriage legalization =/= end of discrimination. We're winning in a bunch of states on gerrymandering, so despite the SCOTUS law, we can still may progress state by state (not to mention over half a dozen states have an independent commission drawing districts).

 

If you think of it as a movement that you have to march toward, then it's easier to accept losses as I had to here when Dems made progress in a bunch of areas but not for Florida governor or Senator.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Pessimism in the face of insurmountable odds doesn't mean that one gives up or stops fighting.  All it means is that you're now fighting for your own personal honor and self-worth rather than some larger hope of making things better. 

 

In other words, you do your damnedest to have a "good death"!