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CPAC 2021

gnome said:
If what he actually said was far dumber, wouldn't that have been the better thing to run with, and be more accurate in the bargain?

And I don't see how you can say there was no blowback, it became a piece in the whole "fake news" drumbeat, adding fuel to it.
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The claim of fake news only mattered to Trump's base. The meme hurt Trump with everyone else, especially Trump voters who lost faith in his ability to handle the pandemic.
 
Craig4 said:
How many people believe Donald Trump told Americans to drink bleach? I'd hazard a guess and say millions. He said nothing of the sort. I watched the news conference live and he never said people should drink bleach. He actually said something far dumber but because he's an incompetent orator, it wasn't very clear. I have no problem at all distilling his inane ramblings down to, "Drink bleach" even if he didn't say it. That press conference and the fallout from it almost certainly cost him votes. There was no blow back on Democrats.
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An enlightened observation.
The difficulty is that once one disavows oneself of the duty to demonstrate their positive claim "Donald Trump told people to drink bleach", they also let their political opponents off the hook for being dishonest.

That leaves us with two religions arguing over who's god is better.
 
Craig4 said:
The claim of fake news only mattered to Trump's base. The meme hurt Trump with everyone else, especially Trump voters who lost faith in his ability to handle the pandemic.
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Most assuredly not so. By observation, there were plenty of people who were no particular fans of Trump that were quite put off by that kind of media behavior, and it drove them CLOSER to Trump. I know a handful personally--they specifically said that they despised Trump but that the behavior of the left affected them.

Once again I am starting to wonder about your sincerity. I have not heard someone argue so hard in favor of the need to be deceptive in campaign messages. It's a strange hill to die on, as they say.
 
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Stacyhs said:
The Republicans are excellent at marketing because they are excellent at three things: lying, sticking together, and repeating the lies together.
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Yup, OTOH the Dems still have some shred of decency and integrity. Imagine if the current governor of NY was a Republican and their legislative houses were GOP controlled. Think he'd be facing impeachment?
 
gnome said:
Why would any sane person want to troll people into thinking they are white supremacists? I mean, ha ha those stupid liberals, but in the meantime people think you're a Nazi. That doesn't sound like a win.
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Well the trolls that did were already pretty much white supremacists.

This is one of those things that tend to annoy the heck out of me. A bunch of White Supremacists and Trolls on 8Chan decide to troll Liberals by taking an innocuous symbol and using it so that Liberals would go off about it, and their predictions were right.

Instead of saying. Dumb White Supremacists are trying to steal something that isn't theirs let's stop them by over saturating the marketplace with it and making it useless as a sign, Liberals all clutched their pearls and denounced anyone doing the OK symbol in any photo as a white supremacist, thus conceding the battlefield to them. All that was done was to teach them that their tactic worked. How long before they take something else? "Sorry LGBTQI+ Community, White Supremacists have taken use of the Rainbow to mean something offence, so you can't use it any more."
 
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PhantomWolf said:
Well the trolls that did were already pretty much white supremacists.

This is one of those things that tend to annoy the heck out of me. A bunch of White Supremacists and Trolls on 8Chan decide to troll Liberals by taking an innocuous symbol and using it so that Liberals would go off about it, and their predictions were right.

Instead of saying. Dumb White Supremacists are trying to steal something that isn't theirs let's stop them by over saturating the marketplace with it and making it useless as a sign, Liberals all clutched their pearls and denounced anyone doing the OK symbol in any photo as a white supremacist, thus conceding the battlefield to them. All that was done was to teach them that their tactic worked. How long before they take something else? "Sorry LGBTQI+ Community, White Supremacists have taken use of the Rainbow to mean something offence, so you can't use it any more."
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Ironic dogwhistles work the same as the other kind.
 
The beauty of the bleach thing was that it wasn't Biden. It came from Democratic aligned third parties. Biden could still take the high road in calling out lies while his independent allies spread the meme that Trump said we should drink bleach.
 
gnome said:
It is effectively saying that the voters can't be trusted to make the right decision,
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A big part of the electorate can't be trusted. They can be given all the information and still choose to ignore it. Universal suffrage is a bad concept.
 
RolandRat said:
A big part of the electorate can't be trusted. They can be given all the information and still choose to ignore it. Universal suffrage is a bad concept.
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To apply a famous quote: "...except for all the others."

Look, if your idea is not to let everyone vote, advocate for that and see where it gets you. Let's not claim to have a democracy and then rely on deceiving voters to get the "right" outcome.
 
Craig4 said:
The beauty of the bleach thing was that it wasn't Biden. It came from Democratic aligned third parties. Biden could still take the high road in calling out lies while his independent allies spread the meme that Trump said we should drink bleach.
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Here I'm perceiving a back-handed attempt to discredit something by agreeing with it in an obviously malicious manner. Your phrasing of the claim is indeed not what President Trump said. It's ok just to say that. You don't have to put on a mask and talk about how great it is to tell people that's what he said. Back off the troll irony, would ya? I see it for what it is, you're not fooling anyone.
 
RolandRat said:
A big part of the electorate can't be trusted. They can be given all the information and still choose to ignore it. Universal suffrage is a bad concept.
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Gnome has a better answer above, but I would also say, this applies to way more Republicans than Democrats. How do you propose to sort these uninformed voters?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Gnome has a better answer above, but I would also say, this applies to way more Republicans than Democrats. How do you propose to sort these uninformed voters?
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Well the first sort would remove anyone who believes politicians drink the blood of new borns, anyone who thinks 9/11 was implemented with CGI planes and anyone who thinks Alex Jones tells it as it is.

We can implement additional filters later.
 
gnome said:
Here I'm perceiving a back-handed attempt to discredit something by agreeing with it in an obviously malicious manner. Your phrasing of the claim is indeed not what President Trump said. It's ok just to say that. You don't have to put on a mask and talk about how great it is to tell people that's what he said. Back off the troll irony, would ya? I see it for what it is, you're not fooling anyone.
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No, I really am that morally flexible.
 
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If someone tells me that they're OK with lying to manipulate people politically--it makes it a little hard for me to take them at their word how sincere they are. Or, increasingly, to take seriously any political argument they make.
 
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RolandRat said:
Well the first sort would remove anyone who believes politicians drink the blood of new borns, anyone who thinks 9/11 was implemented with CGI planes and anyone who thinks Alex Jones tells it as it is.

We can implement additional filters later.
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Who gets to determine these filters?
 
RolandRat said:
A big part of the electorate can't be trusted. They can be given all the information and still choose to ignore it. Universal suffrage is a bad concept.
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OK, what is your criteria for who should have the franchise?
Problem is that every time I see this suggested it ends up being "I want only those who agree with me to vote".
 
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RolandRat said:
A big part of the electorate can't be trusted. They can be given all the information and still choose to ignore it. Universal suffrage is a bad concept.
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dudalb said:
OK, what is your criteria for who should have the franchise?
Problem is that every time I see this suggested it ends up being "I want only those who agree with me to vote".
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At least one Republican (a state legislator in AZ) has come right out and said pretty much the same thing (Business Insider)- that "everybody shouldn't be voting":

A Republican Arizona state lawmaker, who chairs a committee overseeing election administration, said that new voting restrictions are needed because "everybody shouldn't be voting" and "we have to look at the quality of votes."
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"There's a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans," Kavanagh told CNN. "Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they're willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don't mind putting security measures in that won't let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn't be voting."
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"Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they're totally uninformed on the issues," Kavanagh further told CNN. "Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well."
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I would say that, first, Republicans pretend they're "concerned about fraud," but, in the absence of any evidence for meaningful fraud, that's only pretense- what they really don't mind is imposing "security measures" that do nothing for the security of the electoral process in the hope that it will do more for their own party's security.

Secondly, if someone is so uninterested in the issues that he won't want to vote, he won't vote- nothing about making it easier to vote forces anybody to do so. And making it harder doesn't automatically exclude only people who aren't interested- someone who might be as totally interested in and informed on the issues as Kavanagh himself isn't, by definition, going to be someone who can pass the "quality" hurdles he wants to set up.

His whole argument is a convoluted exercise in begging the question, an assumption that a "quality" that can't be counted or even really objectively defined needs to come first, and is a more realistic and desirable aim than a simple count of quantity from which a quality is extracted.
 
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