You know nothing, Matt Baume.

Yup. Seems about right.

Step back from the ledge, man. True, Hillary's speech will fall flat with Trump's base. They are who they are, but that's not who Hillary's trying to convince. Why bother? There's no reasoning with those fucking troglodytes. She's claiming the center, which Trump's followers are nowhere near, and which he's left completely undefended. As long as she inspires decent turnout on the left, it's a sound strategy.

I think, anyway. Maybe. Fuck, who knows...is it time to drink yet??

So you're fretting over folks who have already decided to support Trump? Those people have self identified themselves as irretrievable. Ideally they ought to marked with a large "T" on their foreheads so that they can be avoided in the future; nonetheless they're gone.

A mind lost to Trump is a mind lost forever, as a friend likes to say.

At this point, what could be said that would damage Trump's popularity? Perhaps a recording of him accepting a bribe, and even then he'd claim it was a media conspiracy.

Thinking about that three to five percent of ignorant, glassy-eyed, mouth-breathing undecided voters--who can't distinguish between reality teevee and actual reality and who'll decide the election--is enough to give anyone night terrors.

"Let's take a picture of him in bed with a prostitute."

"He'd just buy up all the copies and mail 'em out as Christmas cards."

- 9 to 5

I think Trump voters simply don't care about his childish Twitter rants, or at least aren't paying any attention to it. The media are barking up the wrong tree trying to take him out from that angle. He's getting votes from people who are so intensely in agreement with what he's saying about American political corruption that they've decided it's all that matters and are looking the other way on the other stuff.

@3- "As long as she inspires decent turnout on the left, it's a sound strategy. "

But the thing is, she doesn't and she isn't trying to. She's firmly camped in the center and competing for the center-right. Her supporters spend all their time insulting leftists (I've heard people called "sexist Bernie Bros" way more often than I've heard Bernie supporters say anything sexist) and telling them to shut up.

It seems like you're just ad-libbing pseudo-punditry to be provocative just for the sake of being provocative, Matt.

I miss Paul Constant's campaign posts. There's no depth in Matt Baume's writing.

She's not trying to sway Trump voters over to her side, she's trying to sway Sanders' supporters over to her side (or more precisely, sway them away from not voting at all).

Trump is an absolute piece of shit, but writing off his supporters as mouth breathing troglodytes is a huge mistake. Sheer abject partisanship is what's driving this insanity roller coaster and why a huge amount of republicans will vote for the man despite not liking him at all. We need to deal with that, and writing off huge swaths of the population as idiots is a shitty way to start.

Politics have long stopped being about rationality in America and we have almost every single institution to blame. But if we can't find a way to actually create a dialog and stop writing people off that, yes, vote for horrible and racist things, we're never going to find a way out of this labyrinth. We don't have the privilege of mocking our peers any more.

Is this tongue-in-cheek? Seems like maybe it is.

See a doctor for that shoulder you dislocated patting yourself on the back for this one, Mr. Baume.

Unfortunately, this limp dick bull shit that you are hoping to slide in as a covert-op shill job for Bernie is fooling exactly zerobodies.

@13 Yeah it would be a mistake to write off huge swaths of the population as idiots...Except for the small problem that huge swaths of the population are in fact very much idiots.

Shockingly enough, contempt does little to change minds. Vox ran a great article on how honest communication and listening, rather than shouting down people and telling them they're wrong, can actually soften people's beliefs and even change their opinions. Or at the LEAST keep them from voting on them.

Shouting at people, mocking them, telling them they're wrong is satisfying. Trust me, I've been there, it is. It won't make the world a better place. If you honestly give a shit, stop focusing on how you're right, even though you are, and learn to engage with people that are wrong. Otherwise you will keep seeing people like Trump and keep wondering why.

I think Matt's writing this election cycle has been outstanding.

@17: Your required reading: @19.

@19 I'd say 'honest communication' is just about as much a waste of time as shouting and mockery is when we are talking about people who are absolutely impervious to any rational argument, which describes a large minority of the American electorate pretty accurately, some even on the left sadly enough.

Not sure about how to keep them from voting though. This Trump University thing might be getting some traction. If the yahoos get the idea that their boy has made a pile of money bilking people just like them they might get a bit demoralized.

@23: Are Bernie supporters whom say they would vote for Trump (I know one) instead of Clinton because they hate her so much also trash or should we have conversations with them?

@11,

I really enjoyed Paul's posts and miss him too, but feel like you may be misremembering things a bit by suggesting there was a whole lot of substance in his political posts. Perhaps a tiny bit more than Matt's, but then I don't know that Paul was generating a post every single day as Matt does. I seem to recall him more posting when something topical or noteworthy came along.

As a degreed librarian I'm so embarrassed and ashamed to have this writer as a supporter of libraries. All that reading gone to waste. Matt you should really ask for a refund from whatever higher education entity you attended. Your post reads like someone whose head is so so far up Bernie Sanders ass. And something cited from a site like Vox @19--wow.

I honestly envy the intellectually surety of anyone posting on the stranger, in Seatte, of their political opinions being born of strenuous rationality and self reflection rather than cultural and demographic trends. Born in another part of the country to different circumstances and you'd just as surely be a mouth breathing troglodyte. Please keep that in mind.

@28 It was a report on an extensively peer reviewed study. I invite you to read it yourself before you assume my extremely outlandish claim :"hey about a push to talk to people like they're people" merits that much disdain.

Honestly, I wonder about people that would rather not believe in a world where we can talk to each other and actually try and grow our shitshow of a national dialog. If the evidence is there, why not give it a try? What do we all have to lose?

If a "likely majority" of American voters wanted this kind of idiot for a President, how come it has taken this long?

@24: Angry children throw tantrums as catharsis, not really to get what they want. It is about venting the rage at not getting their way, that they have not learned to control yet. It is not about being constructive.

So. Matt Baume frets about the triumph of the fascist yam while materially assisting his efforts by painting the Democratic candidate as a lost cause. Nice try Bernie Bro but ain't nobody falling for this shit anymore.

The Beast has arisen. If elected, he will main and kill millions, many of them Americans. He boasts he could gun down any random American in the streets and still get elected. I'm not sure how the fascist yam can make it any clearer. If you think for a fuckin' second Hillary would be worse than the fascist yam you have no business opining on politics.

@22, "If the yahoos get the idea that their boy has made a pile of money bilking people just like them they might get a bit demoralized."

No, they won't, because they believe that they are sharp enough to never be bilked. And they admire anyone who makes money, no matter how they make it.

I dunno, I think I might be OK with voting for a candidate who doesn't think this is a Reality TV contest.

I guess that's where you and I disagree, Matt.