dagblog - Comments for "Truth Before Transition"

He's not even swamp draining

Michael Maiello — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 19:53:41 +0000

There is an attempt to

rmrd0000 — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 01:15:22 +0000

In reply to And the problem is that WE,

There is an attempt to normalize the abnormal. We have to remember that Hillary got millions more votes. Trump is trying to normalize Vladimir Putin. Trump's children are running his business and sitting in on top level meetings. When I mention these facts to Trump supporters, they appear to be the pod people from " Invasion of the. Body Snatchers". They have a single idea that Trump will clean the swamp. They know the line, but they cannot accept the fact that Trump is bringing more Neely crawling critters to the swamp.

And the problem is that WE,

CVille Dem — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 00:55:36 +0000

In reply to Will read the Lakoff links,

And the problem is that WE, AS DEMOCRATS DON'T KNOW HOW TO REACH THESE PEOPLE?????

Give me a break!

Will read the Lakoff links,

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 00:13:35 +0000

In reply to The facts are our strongest

Will read the Lakoff links, thanks, tho re facts:

According to Public Policy Polling research conducted Dec. 6 and 7, here’s what Trump voters think about a series of top-shelf stories, according to those surveyed:

40 percent of Trump voters insist that he won the national popular vote.

60 percent of Trump voters think that Hillary Clinton received millions of illegal votes.

73 percent of Trump voters believe that George Soros is paying anti-Trump protesters.

29 percent of Trump voters don’t think California votes should be allowed to count in the national popular vote.

67 percent of Trump voters think the unemployment rate went up under President Obama. Only 20 percent accurately believe it went down.

39 percent of Trump voters think the stock market went down under Obama. And 19 percent are unsure.

14 percent of Trump voters think Hillary Clinton is connected to a child sex ring run out of a Washington pizzeria. Another 32 percent aren’t sure one way or another. Only 54 percent are certain that Pizzagate is a myth.

The facts are our strongest

rmrd0000 — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 13:09:55 +0000

In reply to So how do we respond - do we

The facts are our strongest ally. George Lakoff, a linguist at Berkeley, has written extensively on how to develop language to counter Trump. The first rule is not to repeat his language or message because that frames the argument just as he desires. The Left's response to the suspected Russian hack is classic. The first response should be to call for a special committee that takes away suspicion of bias to investigate the matter. Let the committee investigate. When the first response is to call the CIA report into question, you play into Trump's hands.

https://georgelakoff.com/2016/12/15/how-to-help-trump/

Trump will attempt to cut takes while improving healthcare, job training, etc. He will recreate the economic disaster of Kansas. Language that notes Trump's debt increasing programs is needed. We just need skilled people creating catch phrases that explain the goals of Democrats. The public nods off on details.

Edit to add:

A link to an interview with Lakoff

“Hillary now has two and a half-million votes over Trump. The person who the majority of Americans wanted to be president isn’t president. If you’re in the media, why are you there? You’re there for the public good. You’re there to tell the truth. You’re there to make sure that the truth is always told and not hidden. That’s your job. It’s not being progressive or democratic or anything like that. It’s your job!” http://www.wnyc.org/story/george-lakoff/…

So how do we respond - do we

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 05:21:02 +0000

In reply to The public does not feel the

So how do we respond - do we give up facts too, do we figure out how to present facts that catches, do we give up? "Eat or be eaten", "Adapt or die" - it seems our days as the rhetorical frog with the slowly increasing heat is no longer sustainable.

The public does not feel the

rmrd0000 — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 04:06:49 +0000

In reply to The problem with criticizing

The public does not feel the need to inform itself and much of the media no longer focuses on facts.

The problem with criticizing

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:24:02 +0000

In reply to Perhaps Sanders supporters

The problem with criticizing Hillary's campaign strategy is that she was under a full-court press for 1 1/2 years, while we're expecting her to strategize and run a normal campaign.

In most campaigns, you release some policy position and it gets a bit of attention. In this one, it was a pivot between Donald's latest daily brain fart, her emails or the Goldman Sachs transcripts, later replaced by the daily Wikileaks leak.

I am interested in the post-mortem on the ground game and media campaign they ran, especially in swing states. But when you're boxed in, you do things to break out of the box, not what you'd do in a more straightforward situation. In one statement I heard they assumed it was a GOTV campaign - that everything was so polarized, there was limited ability to persuade anyone of anything.

And yes, even her own side kept attacking on everything from Haiti to the Clinton Foundation, to saying "superpredator" 20 years ago in the middle of a crime crisis, gross exaggerations of NAFTA's effects, making her out to be the biggest warmonger we've ever had, making her elitist, etc. "Getting the money out of politics" - a brilliant tactic when the challenger has no money. Trump then ran with that and turned his part into "I don't need the money". So in a campaign year flush with cash and private PACs & unregulated spending & $27 money bombs, Hillary was the only one dinged for raising money. So in 2020 we'll solicit only small donations?

If Hillary came riding on Obama's coattails, it became incumbent to destroy those coattails. The primaries bizarrely started with resurrecting the single payer discussion when most of America is undersold on Obamacare as it is. Double down on what most hate? The debate about fracking was just as bizarre - control it, fine, but a ban? When it's part of over 50% of oil & gas production and responsible for our global drop in prices?

Even when it came to the debates, everyone had an opinion on what she "had to do", and when it came down to it, she seemed to destroy Trump in all 3. Combined with Pussygate, how *did* he rise from the grave?

A large part is simply repeating over and over and over and even over again how bad the economy is doing. Did you know how bad the economy is doing? It's doing bad, everyone says it, you just have to ask around, bad bad bad bad bad. And those immigrants, taking all our jobs? More bad - and Hillary did all that. Bad NAFTA, bad immigrants, bad terrorists - build a wall, waterboard the terrorists, make America great again. 3 simple steps to win again. Wall, Waterboard, Great. Plus lock her up. If only she'd thought of that. But then, she's a chick, so it wouldn't work. Manly power, testosterone - that's what America's missing. White light, white heat. Who knows, it'll take some time to understand.

I was reminded yesterday about another forgotten event - how AP "recounted" the delegates and prematurely declared Hillary the winner the day before the primary when she was expected to clinch. Everything was designed to take the wind out of her sails.

Even with Obama, I have difficulty clalming his strategies were wrong. Maybe he got as much done as possible - maybe pushing harder instead of being effective would have just been used against him. They already passed the blame for the 2008 crash onto him. A lot of Americans don't seem to realize the drop in unemployment. They don't seem to realize the tiny numbers of domestic terrorist attacks were miniscule, and that a much bigger danger was either gun deaths (often by whites pretending to "defend themselves") or deaths by entanglement with police. While the marketing of Obamacare might have been too clever by half, how did so many Americans miss the improvements with the economy? What do they expect to happen now?

The author of a NYT op-ed

rmrd0000 — Sun, 18 Dec 2016 23:25:47 +0000

In reply to I had no problem defending

The author of a NYT op-ed piece suggested that Republican s would have shut down American if Trump had won by 3 million popular votes but lost the electoral college count and Hillary had ties to Russia. They appeared on "All In" on Thursday, Chris Hayes was aghast at the idea that Democrats would resort to tactics everybody agrees would be used by the Republicans. Hayes is a supporter of the Left but uses the same double standard for Democrats as anybody at Fox News employs. Republicans would at tsk, tsk for their actions. Democrats would be labeled unpatriotic Communists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/opinion/buck-up-democrats-and-fight-li...

I had no problem defending

rmrd0000 — Sun, 18 Dec 2016 22:43:24 +0000

In reply to Perhaps Sanders supporters

I had no problem defending Hillary. She had a history of trying to help. It cannot be denied that the media held Clinton to a different standard. Trump calls the media liars at every one of his victory tour rallies. Trump was never called to task. Female NBC reports have been attacked by Trump yet the NBC main anchors pretend that nothing happened.

Some on the Left have a hair trigger attacking Democrats before they turn attention to Republicans. The chorus calling to close the Clinton Foundation was typical. Now we have people wondering why Obama is not publicly announcing a Cyberwar with Russia. This attack on Obama comes before yelling that the Republicans are now agents of Russia. Any intelligence agent has to be concerned that any reported information will find its way to Putin. Even the partisan FBI director accepts the conclusions of the CIA that Putin wanted Trump in place. Some on the Left attacked the CIA report as bogus. Their initial push was to agree with Trump that the CIA was wrong.

We have a voting population that is gullible and a portion of the Left that uses Republican talking points. We have a lazy press corps that acts as stenographers for Trump and the GOP. Our rights are under assault and the attacks are focused on the Democrats.

We are screwed.