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The Tragedy of 2016
Hillary Clinton’s speech about Donald Trump and the alt-right is excoriating. She didn’t need to lie, spin, or exaggerate. All she needed to do was describe Trump and the company he keeps. She did so competently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP6Q-OEXm4k
The odds seem to me overwhelmingly high that she’ll be elected. She may well be working with a Democratic Congress. GOP primary voters handed her the only candidate in the firmament whom she could handily trounce.
Midway through, she says, “The last thing we need in the situation room is a loose cannon who cannot tell the difference — or doesn’t care to — between fact and fiction. And who buys so easily into racially tinged rumors.” Any other candidate would have been able to keep the focus on Clinton’s own inability to distinguish between fact and fiction. But Clinton’s species of dishonesty pales in comparison. Hers is the typical self-serving dishonesty of all politicians, magnified. Trump’s is that of a man living in a malign fantasy world. He seems to believe his own lies. They’re dangerous lies to believe.
And what a tragedy. The Republican Party will not easily recover from this. GOP primary voters have in effect left us with a one-party state. The party with which we’re left is full of rotten ideas, but this election won’t be about that. It will — properly — be about keeping a loose cannon who can’t tell between fact and fiction out of the White House.
I’ve read the Democratic Platform through. The word “investment” is used 74 times. In almost all cases, it’s a euphemism for “increased federal spending.”
We need an economy that prioritizes long-term investment over short-term profit-seeking.
The Democratic Party believes that supporting workers through higher wages, workplace protections, policies to balance work and family, and other investments will help rebuild the middle class for the 21st century.
We will increase investments to make quality childcare more affordable.
And we will fight for robust funding to end homelessness in our cities and counties once and for all, through targeted investments to provide the necessary outreach, social services, and housing options for all populations experiencing homelessness.
If we are serious about reversing the decline of the middle class, we need major federal investments to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and put millions of Americans back to work in decent paying jobs in both the public and private sectors.
And we will protect public health and safety by modernizing drinking and wastewater systems. These investments will create secure, good-paying middle-class jobs today and will substantially increase demand for American-made steel and other products manufactured in the United States.
Democrats will make investments to spur the creation of millions of jobs for our young people.
Democrats will spur investment to power the rural economy.
And we will make investments in affordable housing near good jobs and good schools.
We will continue to work on a government-to-government basis to address chronic underfunding, and provide meaningful resources and financial investments that will empower American Indian tribes through increased economic development and infrastructure improvements on tribal lands.
We believe that by making those at the top and the largest corporations pay their fair share we can pay for ambitious progressive investments that create good-paying jobs and offer security to working families without adding to the debt.
Bold new investments by the federal government, coupled with states reinvesting in higher education and colleges holding the line on costs, will ensure that Americans of all backgrounds will be prepared for the jobs and economy of the future.
There is almost no discussion of the conditions that lead to private investment. There is not a single use of the phrase “national debt.” The word “debt” is used 21 times; of these, 13 involve promises to make college debt-free. In one case, it explains: “We believe that by making those at the top and the largest corporations pay their fair share we can pay for ambitious progressive investments that create good-paying jobs and offer security to working families without adding to the debt.” No hard numbers are on offer. There is the usual promise to make the shortfall appear by “[tackling] waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Suggesting that the Democrats haven’t learned a thing from experience, there’s this promise: “We must make sure that everyone has a fair shot at homeownership. We will keep the housing market robust and inclusive by supporting more first-time homebuyers and putting more Americans into the financial position to become sustainable homeowners.”
This election should have been about these ideas. Instead, it’s about keeping an outright lunatic away from the nuclear codes. “A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military,” she said. And she’s right.
Had the GOP leadership been braver, Paul Ryan would have given the speech Hillary Clinton gave. He could have defined conservatism in opposition to Trump. But he didn’t. The failure of the GOP leadership to repudiate Trump ensures that the GOP will be tainted by him, and in all likelihood unelectable, for years to come. The GOP was given a choice between Clinton and dishonor. They chose dishonor, and now we will have Clinton.
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Precisely. This is infuriating.
As an ardent #NeverTrump, I have to have to explain this often: Trump won’t lose because of the few hold-outs like me; he’ll lose because he is a horrible, dangerous candidate and has been since Day 1. That 40% of the GOP primary electorate (which is a minority of the GOP electorate, which is a minority of the general electorate) couldn’t — or just didn’t want to — face up to that is on them, not me.
Don’t you remember the Robert Zubrin “Nazi” err national socialist posts? Ricochet has been that portal you speak of for months now. Claire Berlinski is just following in Zubrin’s footprints.
Let’s not forget for a moment that a not-insignificant portion of Trump’s margin of victory was supplied by Republicans from the northeast. As we have seen in the past 3 election cycles, the candidate favored by areas of the country that are unwinnable by Republicans keeps on getting the nomination.
That’s a recipe for winning, I tell you.
Anyone who runs apartments buildings in a decent sized city will have racial discrimination cases filed against them. I worked in real estate development in Chicago and that is just how the system works any non-white, non-male applicant for an apartment or job who is declined will file a complaint with Equal Rights Commission. The Commission actively encourages them to file no matter what the circumstances. Seven complaints in certainly not proof of actual discrimination. Seems like a small number for such a large real estate developer.
This should be a post by itself.
Absolutely true.
This is a good run-down of her speech from Ben Shapiro. I’m pulling out one part that stuck out to me:
As pointed out above, whoever ran against Hillary would be literally Hitler. We’re TIRED of it.
Continuing Shapiro’s bit from above:
Yeah, the overplayed, dog-earred, edge-worn race card. So tired of it . . .
Which leads to:
And I’ve heard it suggested elsewhere that Hillary’s (and by extension, her media lapdogs’) strategy is to make Trump into such an infernal figure that she can create a reason to skip debating him altogether.
I have no interest in casting my vote for Donald Trump. But the antics of Hillary and the left make me almost want to do it out of spite.
Cruella de Kill is watching.
The indignant responses the author is receiving is confounding. She pointed out clear Conservative ideology that Democrats have promised to violate in campaign promises. Practically a road map for Trump to steer towards policy. In disagreeing with you she becomes a Nazi? This is the exact reason I stopped being a Liberal–intolerance of information, simply because of its source or language that isn’t lockstep with your own.
Ideas are only damaging when your convictions are weak. Strategy is no place for confirmation bias or in the parlance of criticizing the Left “Pearl-Clutching”. Learn, adapt, and survive.
Who among the candidates would have actually beaten here, and moreover how would they have done so? Did you see the hamfisted way Cruz ran his primary campaign? Or Rubio? I rather doubt that any of the others would have stood much of a chance. They might have gone “honorably” like Romney, but they still would be miserably behind by this point.
I think folks are responding to things like:
rather than the standard Democrat fantasy economics.
A post about the Democratic Platform that wasn’t wrapped in ‘Trump is the Devil’ hyperbole would be an interesting one.
And I think to outmaneuver your enemy, you should be able to dismantle their argument without dismissal. To do so, you should know their concepts so well, you are able to argue from their position. Classical Rhetoric is in desperate need of revival.
I don’t think so. The e-mail scandal, the Clinton Foundation? Voters don’t like her and don’t trust her. She’s the second-most unpopular major party candidate since polling began. Trump is the first. All the GOP had to do was put up someone who didn’t cause revulsion. I think Rubio could have won. Cruz, not so much — he’s not naturally likeable. But Rubio could have won.
I guess this part of Trump’s appeal. Obama, the media, and the left in general are probably just as much to blame for Trump as the primary voters.
The “impartial” Supreme Court is openly politicized. The “neutral” media is openly pulling for one side. Academia, supposedly interested in open and honest debate, indoctrinates youth into leftist groupthink. The President legislates from the White House with his phone and pen, and uses his bully pulpit to openly mock and demonize political opponents.
All the same alarms we’re hearing about Trump now were raised for Romney, and for Bush. If you voted for Romney last time, you’ve already been branded a hateful, out of touch, racist bigot. So why not vote for Trump?
I probably won’t, but I can kind of understand it.
Well, that call would have been wrong. Rubio, for one, would have cleaned her clock. But he wasn’t conservative enough because of one thing he did once so we chose someone not conservative who will have a hard time winning lots of votes. This to send a message to the conservative Republicans in office who weren’t conservative enough. Because they are the reason we lose all the time.
We sure straightened them out!
“Likeable”, though, only goes so far. What was Rubio for? Who was Rubio for? Those things were never all that clear. If Trump is rather gaffe immune, Clinton is definitely scandal immune. Nothing has stuck, in no small part because Republicans have always overplayed the scandals and then gotten out maneuvered by the Clinton team – going back over 20 years now. Rubio showed no signs of being deft enough or ruthless enough for that kinds of dance. He may have been nice, but she’d have flattened him.
I agree that the savaging Rubio took was ridiculous, but at the same time his inability to negotiate the PR side of that, and letting himself get torpedoed by that, did not bode well for a national campaign against the far more vindictive Clinton machine.
Catching up now… but yes, it wouldn’t have been close.
Most of them would have won. Clinton support is capped. A low bar to clear. Unfortunately, Trump’s flop isn’t of the Fosbury variety.
Explain “the posterity of Americans” as opposed to what is going on today. Good luck.
For decades we’ve been stuck having to choose between electability and conservatism. In 2016 we finally had not one but several electable conservatives, and the primary voters went with someone who is neither conservative nor electable.
And when he loses it will, of course, be everybody’s fault but theirs.
Nah, that’s nothing. His campaign set up perfectly for victory all the way through. Cruz with the early lead, then as others dropped out and they moved to the less conservative states he would strengthen. But then Trump.
What Trump did was bring in a chunk of voters from the 70% of people who don’t typically show up. While the other umpteen were fighting to split up the 30%. He was taking a small slice of a large pie while everyone else was fighting for the largest slice of the small pie.
For the longest time, the small pie was all there was. But Obama showed there was another big pie in his primary fight with Clinton. Trump followed that model. (Although, I believe it was by accident.)
Rubio and friends didn’t do anything wrong. Trump just found the loophole.
I’ll believe these hypotheticals/alt-history conclusions when made by folks who predicted at the beginning of the year that Trump would be the nominee . (That rules me out, too, of course.)
I guess I missed the comment accusing Berlinski of being a Nazi. Would you please quote it for me? The indignant responses, if you care to re-read them, are about Berlinski calling Trump, and by extrapolation, his supporters, RACISTS. Excuse me for the CAPS…now I am getting indignant.
Rubio, whom I favored, couldn’t even win his own State. Sorry…woulda, shoulda, coulda won’t even get a cup of coffee.
Then again, that kind of sounds like a defense of bad behavior, like allowing rioters “a space to destroy”, because they’re angry.
Not doing woulda. Just trying to draw the correct lesson rather than the lesson people who follow politics draw.
Sometimes the facts get in the way of the truth.
Not trying to provoke a fight over this, but good leaders have to know how to handle loopholes on the fly and how to ditch well laid plans when things go pear shaped. This is just my personal assessment: Rubio did not acquit himself in that test.
And if we are trying to attract new members, this sort of relentless anti-our-nominee post will not do it. If I’m googling around and I see this, I won’t find it a pleasant place, and I certainly won’t be paying for the privilege. We’ve all heard it. We all know where the editors stand. We don’t need it on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, and we do not need it on the Main Feed.
Mike, you have a steadfast support of reality.
As a third generation American whose ancestors are of east German origin, my sense of the immigration issue is clear and was drilled into me by my forebears when I was a tot. The USA is a miracle worth sharing and suffering huge privations for. We are no longer the USA without Trump being elected. That is the state of affairs presently, and I have little patience for the naysayers at this juncture, what with Satanic Hillary slavering over the possibility of using our nation in even more fiendish ways than Obama.
I won’t read Ricochet until December. Depressing posts, a majority, laden with little insight and fact, are boring and enraging me. Intellectual and moral cowardice are already in plentiful supply at 95% of media outlets.
Spare me.