Off Topic Politics Thread

point taken

 

Trump is looking a little out of his depth already repeating himself but Hilary is doing far to much polite smiling. She comes across as very fake.

 

Corbyn doesn't appeal to the public. He is just more appealing than the Blairite or these days rebranded "moderate" alternative.

However that does not mean people are going to vote for him. They won't continue voting Labour just because of the name.

 

Not so long ago, Gore was destroyed by the press and public for rolling his eyes at Bush's answers during a debate. Now Clinton is being criticized for coming across as "fake" for smilely politely.

Early opinion seems to be that Clinton answered the questions better and "looked more Presidential" but that Trump will pick up more voters. This is a sad commentary on the mindset of America.

 

It wasn't smiling politely really. She was doing that fake smile you do. Trying to look so happy while listening to Trump and it was pretty obvious. She should have just had a serious listening face instead.

I watched it live and my opinion in the early exchanges was that she was a bit too confident and "should" have been an easy target for Trump but he wasn't prepared properly and quite clearly was losing his way and forgetting the "script." He then kept meandering on to his fall backs of "deleted e-mails" and "30 years of doing nothing" etc often quite randomly. The early question was on jobs and the economy and when he lost his way he started on about ISIS.

Hilary's problem with the early first half hour was not just the way she looked fake. That is minor really but she didn't really attack Trump properly when he was an open goal almost from the start. When he attacked her she just smiled and laughed it off rather than coming back with anything. Conversely while he was getting "emails/her history" in there without her answering it he didn't do it often enough. He could have kept on at her and try to get her to bite.

So that first half hour was almost like Hilary being a mother whose children are all moaning about her and her saying (she didn't say the words but you know what I mean) "Have you quite finished?" and then moving onto a subject she wanted to talk about.

For that first half hour Trump ranted and raved but Hillary didn't take advantage of his weakness at all. It was as if she thought the best policy was to let Trump do the talking and hopefully dig his own hole and that her safest tactic was to keep quiet and make it all about him. The whole laughing off and beaming smile just made her look like she didn't care what he was saying about her and that didn't come across well.

She was better after the half hour where she stopped the beaming constantly and started to look serious and actually target Trump's tax returns and talk about subjects that she is "strong" on. Not subjects that I think she is strong on policy as such. policies where she is seen as being on the side of even if the policies obviously don't work. Minorities, women etc.

There was only one more moment later on when Trump was losing it that she visibly went further than just the smile where she actually laughed and said something like "OK, Wow" and she was beaming so hard that you could see she was thinking "This is going so well".

I would say she edged it because Trump just wasn't at the races, missed own goals, was rambling a lot and didn't really remember the things he should have rehearsed. She was better in terms of her speaking but laughing off the subjects of the e-mails, the foundation and her back history didn't look good and she should have been listening with a serious face on and not beaming with delight when Trump was speaking. She was also visibly looking at her notes more and more frequently as the debate went on and many people on Social media were asking "has Hillary been briefed beforehand on the questions? She is reading pre-written answers here." Obviously she just had notes of answers that were bound to come up but the longer the debate went it didn't look good her keep looking down and err, umming while she found her place.

What came across to me is just how bad these 2 are. Trump would get nowhere near doing well in the UK. HE is no Farage that's for sure and Hillary is already a decade out of date for the UK. That polished smarmy style went out with Blair and wouldn't get back in. Cameron only lasted so long because he had the Lib Dems to hide behind and no viable opposition.

I expect in 2 weeks time Trump will have been practising much more because last night he was a bit like a rabbit in the headlights.

Interesting stuff but I am amazed it has come to these 2. All the other options for both sides must have been terrible. Either that or the US is just in such a mess that the governing elite are even further from the ordinary man than they are over here.

From what I gather from US political commentariat it is all about the first half hour as people get bored and switch over or just lose a bit of interest.

So I can see why some are saying Trump will have gained voters. She hardly said anything in that first half hour and it was all Trump (even though Trump wasn't that good.)

She easily won the latter exchanges as Trump had run out of steam by then just repeating things he had already covered and filling in with his "I will, I tell ya, I will do this, you bet I will" etc.

 

These guys should be employing me. lol. The Speccie seem's to agree with my summary of the debate:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/0...-wins-debate-donald-trump-looks-like-plonker/

 

I think pretty much every candidate comes across as fake because you know they want to straggle the other person. Clinton's job is made more difficult than most because no one with any common sense could hold a "serious listening face" while Trump is spewing outlandish claims and ridiculous lies.

She can't really attack Trump too hard, because then she's just getting dragged down to his level. He owns that gimmick. All Clinton can really do is act like a normal Presidential candidate and hope that there are enough reasonable people. You can't try to reason with the unreasonable.

That's why I said earlier that Clinton is in a tough situation. The bar is set so low for Trump that if he tells just 80% lies and insults and trots out 1 or 2 halfway decent thoughts, he wins. Everyone already knows Clinton's policies and they've been picked apart.

They both did a good job... I mean, not really but considering the absurd contest they find themselves in. Clinton got in a few jabs while sticking mostly to answering the questions. Trump got in a few coherent policy points while mostly sticking to his gimmick that the US is going to hell in a handbasket, and Clinton is to blame for everything that's gone wrong in the last 30 years, and if he is elected he will just like, change things bigly.

His gun control quote was perfect. He will simply keep guns out of the hands of bad people, while making sure all the good people will have guns to protect themselves. Just like he will "extreme vet" every immigrant to ensure only the good ones get in and the bad ones are kicked out. And he will attack the right groups in the right way in the Mideast while not attacking the wrong groups in the wrong way.

As long as the voters don't question how he actually plans to bell the cat, he's golden.

 

I actually stayed up to watch it - it was like my grandmother trying to debate with a non too intelligent 12 year old boy. (except when they were talking about Cyber crime when it was like my grandmother trying to debate with my grandfather) At least Trump has done a bit of Geography recently and has learned that China, Japan and Korea are basically in the same part of the world. God Help America!

 

apparently he didn't say "bigly" but big league - not much better though

 

looked like trumps camp advised him (if he takes advice) to go easy on her so not to look like a bully against a little lady. he was much more fiesty against men. its like a pitbull with a muzzle. Hopefully the next 2 with audience participation will be better and will ruffle a few feathers

 

Trump would be pretty stupid to go after Clinton. Everyone is expecting him to do that, and that he'll go overboard. And everyone who hates Clinton is already on his side.

Trump is astonishingly thin-skinned. He can dish it out, but can't take it. Like when he went after the Gold Star parents. Or now the ex-Miss Universe who know one cares about. It's a useless distraction for him. It actually puts him on the defensive and takes him off message because he should be trashing Clinton. But he took the bait every time last night.

Clinton though, has ice water in her veins. People have hated her since before she was even in politics. She's heard it all. No one but her could go through a 16 hour Congressional Hearing without revealing anything information, or generating so much as even a soundbite.

So if they actually get in a throwdown, Clinton will just do her passive-aggressive, know-it-all, smarmy thing again and Trump will blow his top and come out the worse. Clinton is a good crier too, so she's got that in her arsenal as well.

What Trump needs to understand is that the majority of undecideds are really looking for a way to vote for him. They're not going to vote for Clinton. And as such, the bar is set spectacularly low. All he has to do is show them he can go a full debate without losing his cool. He doesn't have to back down. He can go aggressively after Clinton on Bengazi or economics as long as he sticks to policy discussion.

 

would like to see her squirm abit

 

No one truly knows whether he is saying "bigly" or "big league." The debate has raged for months. FTR, I'm on Team "Big League."

 

One of the (many) dangerous things about Trump is he is also a bully. It's quite clear to me he'll not pick any fights with Putin but will happily harangue Mexico for, well, just being Mexico.

I'm convinced he'll win now. Polls mean nothing really, many who will not admit it publicly will vote for him in private.

 

I don't know. People talk about how Trump is transforming politics (either good or bad), and how he's tapped into voters and stuff.

But post-primaries, it's really kind of the opposite. People personally dislike Hillary Clinton a lot. They are not happy with Obamacare, they are not happy with the state of the country, they are angry at "politics as usual," they are worried about the changing times and cultures. I mean seriously, it should be a slam dunk for a Conservative candidate.

If he would just start saying "We" sometimes instead of always "I" he would win. If he would take an extra day to actually properly prepare for a debate, he would win. If he could stay on message for more than 15 minutes at a time he would win. If he would listen to just 30% of what his handlers are advising he would win. If he could shut his idiot son up for a few weeks, he would win.

There's dozens of ways of very simple ways for Trump to win the election. It's all laid out for him, has been for weeks. So in that respect, it's really kind of hard to see how Trump can lose.

But at some point, you have to think if he's been too lazy or egocentric to do the obvious for this long, what's going to change?

 

I can't see Hilary winning. People aren't voting for Trump per se. They are voting against "business as usual" and it doesn't matter what Trump does, the pressure is all on Hillary to convince people that she isn't just continuity. While she won the debate easily the problem is that she was quite happy to sit back and let Trump talk his garble and that isn't enough for her to win.

She won that debate but I think Trump will come out of this ahead and each debate she stands back and reads from the script that hasn't changed in 30 years, overjoyed that she is easily winning the debate she remains in most people's eyes continuity.

Anyway much more entertaining is the UK scene. Is anyone doing a sweepstake of how many seats UKIP will take in the next election? Jeremy has given up on the North this afternoon so it will be a catfight between the Tories and UKIP north of me. Be very interesting because a lot of these seats will not vote Tory and that only leaves UKIP. How can any leader of a working class party look at the results of the referendum and come to the conclusion that publicly stating at Labour conference that they are backing "unlimited immigration." Even the Blairites will be up in arms because they like to keep their support of that policy quiet and put on their false "empathy" hats when they parade round the North.

At this rate the only red on the map after 2020 will be in London and Manchester.

 

The only bits worth living in anyway

 

I think Trump was successful in tapping into a certain section of white voters who just want a change to the system. But those people are already counted in his base now. They're not enough.

In the US as of now, I think the majority of people lean conservative. Plus the Clinton haters on top of that. That's easily enough to capture the election if you can unite them all. The problem for the last probably 10 years has been that no one can unite all the conservatives. Trump is going to have to do this too. That's why he's getting Cruz's endorsement and the GOP is threatening any Republican who doesn't endorse him. If Trump were a true outsider, he would be considered a major threat to the GOP and they wouldn't be getting behind him in this way.

If Trump wins, the large bulk of his votes are going to come from the same old bloc of white men and their obedient wives that always votes for the GOP, plus the Ted Cruz votes.

That said, it's important for any Conservative to make these people they AREN'T part of the system. But its a falsehood. Fox news and Limbaugh have been around now for 20+ years, claiming the "outsider" role. The vast majority of governors are Republican. They control most state legislatures. They've been in control of the House of Representatives the vast majority of the time.

The people voting for Trump are doing so because they hate liberals/Clinton more so than because they like Trump. But the people voting for Clinton are doing so because they hate GOP/Trump more so than they like Trump.

Voting for who you believe is the lesser of two evils because you can't stand the other side is the very definition of politics as usual.

The same was true, btw when Obama won. He didn't get people voting against the system. What he mostly did was get people who support him to actually get off their asses and vote for once. But it was young people and minorities who have been part of the liberal base for years. Obama just had a good groundgame and grassroots strategists.

 

If Trump gets in, the US will get what it deserves. However, the worry is what it might do to global politics and the fall-out could be enormous. I worry that it could easily lead to US isolation, Russian aggression and things unravelling.
Trump has no principles, is arrogant and dangerous. How anyone can even consider voting for him is beyond me and anyone saying they're doing so as a "protest" must be retarded. I think the Democrats probably made an error in selecting Hillary, though Bernie was no better. However, at least she's a politician and not a self-serving buffoon.

 

I'm not so sure you are right on Obama. I watched a lot of that election and his speeches live from when he came from nowhere to beat Hillary and onward. It was his Oratory skills that were just mesmerising and he sold his vision so well to people. I know all politicians will say anything to get in but he was ridiculously good and cool to boot. Hillary was a shoe in at the start of that campaign and he was nowhere but his charisma and oratory just reeled all the momentum to his side.

Yes I get that he was something different but it was more than that.