Sam Wang has some observations for the nay-sayers who are unimpressed with Hillary Clinton’s post-convention bounce:
I have seen some sniffy comments in the news that Hillary Clinton’s post-convention bounce is smaller than Bill Clinton’s bounce in 1992. However, by current standards, Hillary Clinton’s bounce is large. As I wrote the other day, post-convention bounces have been small for presidential elections since 1996, which I suggest is a symptom of political polarization: voters get entrenched in their support.
And, in any case, Gallup says that people hated the Republican convention.
Americans are evenly divided on whether they view the Democratic Party more favorably (44%) or less favorably (42%) after the party’s national convention last week. However, their ratings of the Republican Party after the GOP convention two weeks ago were significantly worse, with 35% saying they viewed the party more favorably and 52% less favorably.
More people watched Donald Trump’s speech than watched Hillary Clinton’s, but maybe that wasn’t such a good thing for Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign, through their Breitbart News cutout, has decided to go highly negative on Gold Star father Khizr Khan’s career and professional associations.
Also, Trump is now saying that he’s concerned that the election will be rigged, making it not unlikely that he won’t concede gracefully if he loses.
Apparently, Green Party candidate Jill Stein did some kind of online townhall thing and said that if she is elected president she will pardon Edward Snowden and make him part of her cabinet. Maybe she needs a pocket Constitution so she can read up on the advise and consent provision. She’s getting five percent in the latest CNN poll which also shows Hillary with a commanding 52%-43% in the two-way race.
Congress decided to go home without giving the president the money he requested for containing the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Now there’s an outbreak in Miami.
Federal health officials on Monday advised pregnant women to avoid a Miami neighborhood — marking the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned against travel to any area within the continental United States — as a Zika outbreak in South Florida has led to 10 more local cases spread by mosquitoes.
The advisory extends to all expectant mothers, and women planning on becoming pregnant who have traveled to a one-square-mile area north of downtown Miami — including Wynwood, Midtown and the Design District — on or after June 15, said CDC Director Tom Frieden.
This is what we get when we vote for a hyper-partisan political party that doesn’t believe in science.
Jill Stein also seems to think that WiFi endangers our precious bodily fluids.
As for Trump complaining the election will be rigged, it’s loser talk. He got a few brutal news cycles after picking a pointless and un-winnable fight with the Khans, and now he’s pitying himself in public. It couldn’t happen to a nice guy.
And that vaccines cause autism. Plus she has about as much charisma as last weekend’s lawn clippings.
Object to candidates on the basis of their records and stated policy positions and not internet rumor crap. You’re in the area of those that pushed birther and Benghazi nonsense (and all the fake crap about Gore) and no self-respecting person does that.
She’s not anti-vaccine, but she’s a bit all over the place on the topic. Depending on which quote you choose, she’s either staunchly for vaccines or highly skeptical based on a deep distrust of the FDA.
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/29/jill-stein-on-vaccines-people-have-r
eal-questions
A statement like this is used by anti-vaxxers to claim she’s on their side:
“As a medical doctor, there was a time where I looked very closely at those issues, and not all those issues were completely resolved,” Stein said. “There were concerns among physicians about what the vaccination schedule meant, the toxic substances like mercury which used to be rampant in vaccines. There were real questions that needed to be addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don’t know if all of them have been addressed.”
Given the track record of the FDA in regulating medicines that is one of the agencies least subject to regulatory capture (at least on the drug certification side), yet in her talks she makes it sound like nothing they do can be trusted. This is similar to her statements about Clinton – there is a grain of truth there, but she takes that and runs with it to an absurd extreme and ends up drawing very harmful conclusions.
Yeah, she’s pandering to a tiny fringe faction that for whatever reason gravitates to the Green Party. A faction that hears something closer to anti-vaxx in what Stein has said than they hear from the other candidates and conclude that there’s some there there for their belief. Not admirable on Stein’s part. But hardly the the most dangerous, disingenuous pandering through blatant lies we’ve seen this election cycle. Has she done a 180 pander??
Democrats spend a whole lot of time and energy focusing on fringe lefties. Perhaps because it’s easy to disparage the irrational beliefs among such people. But is a belief in a sky god any less irrational than a belief that vaccines are harmful? One could say that without vaccines people get sick and die and religion doesn’t kill people. Except religion does kill people.
I’m not buying that Stein is anti-vaxx. Nor am I going to trash anyone for making the point that science is ever a closed book, even in an area that seems fairly well established like vaccines.
I’m also not buying that HRC is anti-TPP. That is inconsistent with her record. But a whole lot of Democrats believe it.
But there’s nothing in her statements that’s Meanwhile, the other two c
Turns out Stein is anti-WiFi.
http://gizmodo.com/now-jill-stein-thinks-wi-fi-might-be-hurting-kids-1784664503
We are now in literal tinfoil hat territory. The more we learn of her other views, the more I understand her insane assessment of Clinton.
Jill Stein. The Vegan Palin.
(Courtesy John Cole.)
Seriously, check out her Salon interview. This was from a sympathetic interviewer trying to help her out. She’s nucking futs.
Did you read beyond the headline?
Argue with that and not a sensationalist headline that’s is false.
(Keep up with this crap and you’re going to push people to vote for Stein.)
The wifi CT statement is made immediately after the blurb you quoted.
She didn’t make a wi-fi CT statement, but that wouldn’t conform to you political agenda; so, you misrepresent what she said.
Marie3, it’s okay. We’ve both been posting here a long time.
Did you listen to the video? She said it. I watched the video before posting.
Yes, I listened to it. And within the full context of what she said, there’s nothing woo-woo in it. Her focus was on the proliferation of screens in the classrooms of young children and that is accomplished with Wi-Fi (because it’s cheaper than hard wiring).
Given what’s known about brain development in young children, employing a precautionary principle seems like a good approach to me. Or would you prefer to be with those that decades ago that scoffed at the idea that exposure to lead was particularly harmful for children or denied that tobacco was a carcinogen?
When the effects of something won’t be testable for decades and impact most of those in a generation, caution seems the wiser approach. Are there any advantages for people being exposed to and heavily using screens from a very young age? And if there are, is there no long-lasting harm for some?
While the general public is beginning to become aware that the high-stakes testing implemented with NCLB has been a waste of money, do we even ask what harm it has done and what that cost will be?
The Atlantic – The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland. Finland is #1!
Finland’s education success has the rest of the world looking north for answers. Tech played no role in that.
Personally, I’m not sufficiently “Americanized” to be part of the anti-vax, anti-wi-fi, anti-GMO food movements. Simple answers to complex questions, mostly driven by narcissistic parents seeking answers to why their kid has difficulties and/or isn’t a genius, is quintessentially American. GMO foods are probably safe enough (humans are reasonably good garbage pits), but that doesn’t mean they aren’t problematical because they are bankrupting small farmers and decreasing the bio-diversity of foodstuffs. Once gone, they won’t be easy to recapture if we discover that small farmers and bio-diversity is vital to all of us and the planet.
We sure could have used some of that cautiousness when GWB/Cheney were pitching war to get Iraq’s WMD. And you know what, it was people scoffing at those that urged caution that were the dummies. And they employed the same strategy that you’re using to denigrate and scoff at Stein. Who were the “woo-woos” in that instance?
Marie3, I know I’m stepping in it, but after reading your remark about “narcissistic parents”, I have to ask: are you yourself a parent? (I am.) And if so, have you ever raised a child with learning disabilities? (I have.) You’re entitled to your opinions regardless of the answers to those questions, of course, but let me tell you: when your child has learning disabilities, you will go to considerable lengths to try to nail down what is the cause and whether anything can be done to alleviate the situation.
I happen to think the anti-vaccine claims (for example) are ridiculous. We know now that the medical-journal article that set off the hysteria was fraudulent. (The journal retroactively stated that.) However, I can pretty easily see how parents who feel stymied as they watch their kids’ struggles could latch on to far-fetched claims and conspiratorial nonsense.
I urge you to lose the line about “narcissistic parents”. It’s disrespectful and undermines whatever points you are trying to make.
Once again, you’re misinterpreting my comment because it provides you with yet another opportunity to attack me. I never said a word in disrespect of parents, teachers, and caregivers that have the unenviable and very difficult task of raising, teaching, caring for those that are challenged.
My comment was confined to those that latch onto a simple explanation without any valid scientific facts (often in denial of facts that do exist) and turn it into their mission. The anti-vaxxers, both those the believe it explains their child’s difficulties and those that fear it could harm their children, actually hurt children. In this country not so many due to herd immunity. That is a definition of narcissism. That’s not to say that any vaccine is 100% safe/harmless for 100% of the population, but the risk is extremely small when weighed against the high value. It’s like people that at one time claimed they would have died in an accident if they had been wearing a seat belt. Public policy can’t be based on a one in a million event; not when the million or dead or seriously injured.
I did not attack you. Good lord. I pointed out, quite politely, where I thought your phrasing was insensitive.
“[D]riven by narcissistic parents seeking answers to why their kid has difficulties and/or isn’t a genius” is what you wrote. With that phrasing, you didn’t need to explicitly disrespect anyone else.
“[N]arcissistic parents seeking answers to why their kid…isn’t a genius.” Tell you what: Go to your neighborhood elementary school and try out this sort of phrasing on parents of young kids who are struggling on account of learning disabilities. If they take offense, explain how you didn’t mean them, you meant some other, hypothetical parents.
Good luck.
Should add that most Americans are concerned about the causes of all diseases and syndromes. Want the causes identified and treatments developed to prevent and/or cure them. But humans do have a propensity to buy snake oil and there are always others around more than happy to exploit that propensity by profiting from selling snake oil.
Raising the age-old question: does she believe this crap, or is she just exploiting the loons?
She is an actual doctor, so one presumes she knows better.
It seems that between 4:54PM and 4:59PM–@twitersgoodboy confirmed the legitimacy of the screenshots–Stein revised her response from “There’s no evidence that autism is caused by vaccines” to “I’m not aware of evidence linking autism with vaccines.”
So trimming her sails would characterize it.
Remember the OTHER doctor? Dr. Ben Carson.
Marie from above is right. Having an MD means you have to give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove they’re a flake.
Once proven, however …
vaccines have very little risk of infection and no scientific evidence of causing autism. Jill is concerned. If she believes it dangerous she is being disingenuous. If she doesn’t believe it, she is pandering. For the record, the study purporting to prove the link was faked, and any physician suggesting that children shouldn’t get vaccinated from MMR (other than for autoimmune and allergies) should be ashamed of themselves.
WiFi corrupts youths brains? Welcome to the world of Alex Jones. I guess Enquiring minds want to know. I suppose that research should be done, if only to guarantee the safety of Wi-Fi. Its what scientists do. Until someone shows something real, though…
Given that Stein seems to have played both sides of the vaccine issue, my inclination is to suspect she’s merely cynically pandering. No big surprise. I expect a certain amount of that from most political candidates. That said, it’s hard to take seriously the notion that Stein is a candidate for those wishing to make a “principled” stand against either Trump or HRC. Mi dos centavos.
“Ever hear of fluoridation, Mandrake?”
Trump will try to give ANY excuse he can for things not going his way. His personality makes it impossible for him to admit that the truth is he has brought all of this negativity against him himself. Thus look for more far fetched reasons to come out of Trump in the future.
Being a latecomer myself to the whole party unity thing, I can understand a principled opposition to Clinton. But supporting Stein is the opposite of a principled opposition, as Booman seems to be pointing out.
Nader, for all his warts, actually had real progressive accomplishments at the national level that showed what he was made of. He had for a long time taken on tough, unpopular fights. Stein, on the other hand, seems to be very cynical — she attacked Bernie when he was in the primary, only to then forget her attacks on him and start praising him as soon as she saw a chance to get some of his support, and then turned around again and started attacking him when she saw that that might help her. And working with Fox News, for any reason, is just anti-progressive. Looking at her views, they’re not even the real principled left policies that she should and could be promoting (her climate plan, which matters a lot to me, is extremely vague and not aggressive enough). There’s room for a real progressive voice to her left, one who both has real accomplishments and real plans.
Donald Trump is the unrestrained result of the last 50 years of the republican party playing footsie with the racists and bigots who use to have to hide in the shadows. He is what they have enabled and sown to keep winning with ever increasing rhetoric and spin. They tended the political soil and fertilized the minds with bigotry and hate, and the GOP elite are surprised tRump is the result?
Well the karma Gods have brought all their hard work home to roost in the GOP.
Well congratulations GOP, you worked very hard building the conditions and political atmosphere which tRump exploited to show you where the GOP 2016 really stands. No not the over paid political lobbyists nor the talking heads, but those the GOP DEPENDS on to win.
tRump is exactly the person they were heralding but trying to deny with all the dog whistles and states rights crap they have spewed. Given Lee Atwater’s admission right before he died, any reflective GOP operative should have been able to see where their crazy train ride would end. Right where we currently are at, a loud mouthed braggart who has dispensed with the dog whistle to out maneuver the rest of the clown car participants to grasp the crown from them.
It was inevitable given they refused to admit their operations foundation and aims, and the number of hucksters who each election cycle tried to out do the rest. One would eventually just jettison the mask and PC dog whistles and go all in on the truth about what the voting base wanted. 2016 is the predictable result, but given the non-reflective way the GOP operates they are surprised, even if the rest of th sentient adults on the planet aren’t.
Karma, sometimes it hits with a full roundhouse punch to the head, tRump is the GOP’s gift from Karma this election cycle.
I would personally both support a pardon for Snowden and placing him in a position of some authority for the regulation and restraint of data privacy. But I’m not voting for Stein.
I guess we might gave to put down a Trump revolt in the event of a loss. Well I dont really feel bad about mashing their faces in, but the collateral damage would make it undesireable.
I’d be worried if I wasn’t smack dab in the middle of Trumps strongest demographic (white, male, 60-66). The only revolution I can make now is when I whirl around in my easy chair.
I’d wondered why Clinton was bothering to campaign in Omaha today – one electoral vote, on the way to Colorado, etc. – but still seemed strange.
Then it turns out Warren Buffet was a surprise rally guess and he announced a new GOTV program. Now it makes sense.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-buffett-idUSKCN10C3AS
Re: the convention reviews, they’re meaningless. I subscribe to the thinking that all opinion polls are essentially meaningless, especially since they fail to capture the degree of motivation behind a stated opinion. Furthermore, the meaningful aspects of opinion polls are captured in candidate preference polls anyways. So, I’ll just stick with those.
I’d prefer to see Snowden behind bars, but I doubt either of us will get our wish
Apparently, Green Party candidate Jill Stein did some kind of online townhall thing and said that if she is elected president she will pardon Edward Snowden and make him part of her cabinet. Maybe she needs a pocket Constitution so she can read up on the advise and consent provision. She’s getting five percent in the latest CNN poll which also shows Hillary with a commanding 52%-43% in the two-way race.
I find it hilarious, in a black humor kind of way, that so many people are spending so much time on line harassing and denigrating Stein supporters. It’s funny that no mention is being made of the fact that Gary Johnson polls higher than Stein. Does anyone think that Stein or Johnson is going to get what percentages they’re presently polling at?
Interesting observation. Maybe since the Democrats no longer have Bernie Sanders to disparage on what they seem to regard as the left side of them, they now zoom in on the next best target, Jill Stein, who offers them in fact little. Does it satisfy a need to clear the field of anyone who might challenge them however ineffectively out of fear they might somehow be seen as guilty by association. Intolerance anyone? A pre-election purge. Curiously the Republicans seem to just ignore Gary Johnson. By the way, Donald Trump is a crackpot but his ‘fear’ that the election will be rigged is just a copycat reaction to the Democratic ‘fear’ that it might be hacked by Russia, which strikes me as international fear-mongering, criminally insane, very dangerous. Let them bring back paper ballots if they’re so afraid that the option on hacking voting computers will no longer be a friendly monopoly.
Well, after Nader, I think it’s perfectly understandable why people would scrutinize left of center third party candidates and debate whether it “makes sense” to vote for those candidates, regardless of how much of the vote they are likely to bring in. People who are potentially receptive to Stein may be reachable, or at least relatable, in ways that Johnson supporters are not.
Nader? Oh, he’s the boogeyman of the Democratic right-centrists because he supposedly stole votes from them. You can turn it around and say they didn’t earn thosevotes, which may be more accurate: that’s democracy—or at least was. No such thing as ‘stealing votes’ exists. People vote out of conviction or spite or strategically but they are not the victims of thieves. Unless the voting machines are hacked by Russia. So you think Johnson’s supporters are not ‘reachable, or relatable’ to Republicans? You’re not clear. And Stein is to potential Democratic voters. That’s my point. Stein is being treated like a threat, a ‘theif’, and she can’t be tolerated. Maybe those people simply prefer to vote for Stein for whatever reason. The Democrats and their supporting media (which is nearly all) would do better to spend their time and energy on down ticket candidates and dosing their work with honesty that plain people can understand and, above all, feel. Voting is basically an emotional exercise.
Odd what a different place Nader occupies in the minds of Democrats sixteen years after the fact than Perot occupied for Republicans a year after the fact. And no, the evidence that Perot was a non-factor in the 1992 election and didn’t hurt GHWB isn’t half as solid as Democrats claim.
Concern about hacking by Russia seems pretty legitimate. This sort of thing has gone on (just as the US no doubt tries to hack Russian sites.) When Trump talks about rigged elections, however, well, unless you subscribe to the idea that state elections officials everywhere are somehow in cahoots with each other and/or controlled by an overarching power–remember that it’s the states, not the federal government, that runs elections–then the “rigged” talk has only one plausible purpose: ginning up an excuse for Trump voters to reject election results as illegitimate unless their man wins.
The obvious answer is that Gary Johnson draws equally from Trump and Clinton, or very close to it. So he doesn’t really affect the nature of the race.
Another consideration is that Jill Stein is attempting to capture some of the worst excesses of purportedly liberal thought in this country; anti-vaccination being primary among them. As a parent, I’m particularly sensitive to that issue.
What I’ve seen on-line is little about Stein supporters and a lot about Stein herself. She’s nuts. She is basically a single-purpose Clinton attack machine, and when she gets to the rationale she frequently goes way off the deep end into tinfoil hat territory (the WiFi thing is that quite literally). On the issues she supposedly cares about Clinton is night-and-day better than Trump, yet she paints Clinton as worse than Trump.
Basically she’s Trump in Green clothing. I’ve always been fond of the Green party – especially in multi-party democracies – and it’s horrible that she is their standard bearer.
By contrast, Gary Johnson is your run-of-the-mill Libertarian. Starts out with a completely unworkable fantasy political theory, but when pressed shows an underlying Republican bent on all of the “hard” issues. His opposition to military adventurism is rooted in traditional Republicanism, not liberal realism or pacifism. He doesn’t stand out for special criticism like Stein does.
And someone who graphically describes to a large audience that her plane was under sniper fire and she had to run across a tarmac in fear for her life is sane?
Perhaps Stein has some CT type stinkin-thinkin, but that wouldn’t make her unique among the 2016 Presidential nominees. When CT type stinkin-thinkin is broadly accepted we call it CW, but it’s not wisdom, only conventional CT stinkin-thinkin.
You’re really resorting to the right-wing argument technique of defending Stein by trying to redirect to something Clinton did? Seriously?
Compare any in-depth Clinton interview to the one Stein gave for Salon. You won’t agree with all of her positions (likely no one here will) but they are grounded in reality. Stein’s are not. She comes up with arguments why Clinton is actually worse than Trump, as measured by progressive values, and the arguments vary from “totally devoid of logic” to “utterly batshit insane”.
It’s like a wingnut, when confronted with Bush’s acknowledgement that there were in fact no WMDs, bringing up Lewinsky.
Haven’t you noticed by now that any topic will serve Marie as a hook for bashing Clinton?
I do and it disappoints me a lot. Marie was one of my favorite commenters over the years. I don’t mind not liking Clinton, but that the anger is derailing the quality of the comments.
I hear you. I used to respect her; she destroyed that.
I still respect Marie. Hoping this is temporary – I’ve written some posts over the years that were too infused with anger and later regretted myself.
She’s not nuts, but does appear under the thrall of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.
How do those more-favorable/less-favorable surveys handle those of us who couldn’t possibly feel less favorable about the Republican Party than we already do?
That is the problem with these kind of binary surveys – they don’t measure intensity. And this does lead to misleading results. For example, a big deal was made in 1979 how Carter’s numbers were lower than Nixon’s. With Nixon, everyone but die-hard wingnuts (before we had the term wingnut) wanted him to resign and that’s what the numbers reflected. With Carter, there was no “wingnut reserve” to give him approval even if he machine-gunned a bunch of boy scouts on national TV like Nixon had, so the universal disappointment in his ineptness regarding the economy gave him worse numbers.