Quote:
Originally Posted by Ari
so saying 'pay up' means nothing and saying 'oh I see you don't honor your bets' means nothing. All it means is that they're playing the Trump game.
|
Oh I agree that pointing out his word is worthless won't accomplish anything. I can see why she took the bait but I also don't think it matters that much at this point.
It would be dumb to waste any time mocking Trump for that in the actual 2020 campaign though.
Quote:
|
Sure even Trump admitted he's born in the US, and yet Trump was still elected. Getting Trump to say, once, that the Birth Certificate was real didn't actually accomplish anything.
|
I don't think you can conclude that because Hillary didn't win that nothing actually accomplished anything. I think her debate performances accomplished something. If she hadn't handled him so well in the debates, and the Comey letter still comes out, you could easily see Trump winning the popular vote.
Margins matter, and the fact that Trump won doesn't mean that any particular thing didn't do anything. If it moved the margin, it made him closer to losing.
So the question is whether Trump's birtherism being treated as an issue
for him rather than an issue
for Obama helped or hurt Trump's vote margin. I'm not so sure that it helped Trump.
Obviously, Trump used the opportunity to lie about Clinton and all, but he still had to back down and he clearly didn't like doing it (and clearly his advisors had to convince him to do it).
Quote:
|
One of the things I don't think the democratic party has realized yet is that facts, figures and truth, mean absolutely nothing to a huge swath of american voters. It's all about the feeling, the emotion of the situation. Many want to *feel* like they are winning, it doesn't matter if they really are winning or not, it's all about the feeling of being on top. To knock Trump down a peg, and make his voter base shrink away from celebrating him they need to make those people feel like they backed a loser.
|
Trump backing down on the birther stuff seems to me not like a win for him, even with the other lies he spewed at the occasion.
Anyway, I don't know whether it was the right move for Warren or not, but it probably won't be clear until later whether it was or not. She certainly didn't handle aspects of it very well, IMO. But the more important thing is how the story is handled if and when she's actually running for president... which will still be months off.
I think the goal is, for example, not to have the media (in interviews or debates) asking her dumb questions about whether she really has any Native American ancestors or whether she claimed minority status, the way Clinton had to answer questions about the stupid email shit like 100 times even though nothing new would be gained. How they react to Donald's blathering today isn't very relevant to whether she succeeded at that...