POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

Normally you would be right but Franken is a different animal. He is a known commodity because of his comedy and he is from the midwest and is very popular here. Plus he doesnt talk down to people like many smart liberals do.

I pray that you're right but even though it plays in Minnesota nice I doubt it works in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Ohio.

[Handyman]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

I pray that you're right but even though it plays in Minnesota nice I doubt it works in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Ohio.

Oh I would bet money it does...especially when it comes up against Trump's lies.

He also has the thing Hillary never had (but her hubby did) charm and charisma.

[Kepler]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

Plus he doesnt talk down to people like many smart liberals do.

I think a lot of that is affect. Franken talks like a midwesterner so it's not perceived as patronizing. Likewise Clinton as a southerner. Northeastern liberals are criticized as patronizing even when they aren't -- it's just a bias. Middle America is so keyed up about supposedly being patronized by those mean old coastals that they read it into everything. It's like college sophomores reading everything as racist or sexist. It's on them, not the interlocutor.

Everybody is equally full of sh-t: working class heroes as well as university twits. Everybody is primed to be defensive towards those they believe aren't respecting them. Sometimes it really is warranted, but most of the time it's snowflakes just wanting to feel aggrieved.

[Kepler]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

He also has the thing Hillary never had (but her hubby did) charm and charisma.

Put starkly, Franken has the affect of someone genuinely concerned and telling the truth while Hillary has the affect of someone going through the motions and lying. Franken is listening; Hillary is just waiting for her next turn to speak.

Now Trump it seems puts out two completely different signals to the smart and the dumb. The smart (and this is both parties) immediately identify him as a liar and a con artist, and after a few minutes they realize he's a vain and stupid liar and con artist. The dumb appear to fall for him hook, line and sinker. While the rest of us are thinking "but it's so OBVIOUS!" they really eat him up. The thing that blew my mind during the campaign was realizing that it's not just people who like that he says outrageous and hurtful things, because they're malicious in the same way. There are some of those, but mostly he actually has people believing him. There's a sucker born every minute and my goodness this was a reminder.

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

I would say that the blueprint for Dems is the Bill Clinton formula. Franken could maybe aww shucks it up a little here and there enough to pull it off.

The problem to me for Dems is that the kind of broad appeal Midwestern Dem that really could win going away, doesn't seem to be what the Party wants at all.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

I think a lot of that is affect. Franken talks like a midwesterner so it's not perceived as patronizing. Likewise Clinton as a southerner. Northeastern liberals are criticized as patronizing even when they aren't -- it's just a bias. Middle America is so keyed up about supposedly being patronized by those mean old coastals that they read it into everything. It's like college sophomores reading everything as racist or sexist.

This. "All skyscrapers are phallic! Patriarchy! "

Some of these people need a good reality check. Their way of life is dying, but they refuse to admit it, or try to find other ways of making a living. We shouldn't bring back coal just to suit the whims of a bunch of aimless, angry white people in West Virginia, but we do need to find other blue collar work for them to do so that they lay off shooting H and popping Xannies. That is the challenge at hand, and also what needs to be explained to the smug Ivy grads who don't give a crap about them.

[MaizeRage]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

That is the challenge at hand, and also what needs to be explained to the smug Ivy grads who don't give a crap about them.

Had to laugh at the two articles on this front page. And yet people are still trying to tell me that the candidate that proposed major improvements to rural internet infrastructure was the one that didn't care about them. Playing into the weaknesses of vulnerable people(their fears and their prejudices) is not the same as giving a crap about them. In fact, it's the opposite.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

Had to laugh at the two articles on this front page. And yet people are still trying to tell me that the candidate that proposed major improvements to rural internet infrastructure was the one that didn't care about them. Playing into the weaknesses of vulnerable people(their fears and their prejudices) is not the same as giving a crap about them. In fact, it's the opposite.

He proposed a $1 trillion infrastructure spending package - they liked hearing that a lot more than Hillary's token "spend more on tech". Now that's been pushed off to next year, and most likely will fade into memory. Way to keep your promises, Donnie.

[trixR4kids]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

Agreed, it's true that they need more blue collar jobs but really there just needs to be more jobs in general that pay a living wage. And while people hate the idea of fast food and other lower skilled workers making $15 an hour it really isn't that much different than other blue collar jobs that receive similar pay. Min wage probably wouldn't be a bad place to start.

[aparch]

He proposed a $1 trillion infrastructure spending package - they liked hearing that a lot more than Hillary's token "spend more on tech". Now that's been pushed off to next year, and most likely will fade into memory. Way to keep your promises, Donnie.

But he's going to get that wall built to keep out "those" people!

Speaking of the wall, I saw a photo going around Twitter this morning of a screenshot of Fox News with the wall details: 30' tall, pretty from the US side, and something else. The follow up image was a Google search for a 32' ladder.

[jericho]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

Also, imagine if Franken were the nominee, all the Stuart Smalley campaign ads we'd get. It'd be glorious. Trump would go insane. That, and he needs to pick Jill Stein as a VP, so we can have the Franken-Stein ticket.


That would be a monster ticket.

[Handyman]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

I think a lot of that is affect. Franken talks like a midwesterner so it's not perceived as patronizing. Likewise Clinton as a southerner. Northeastern liberals are criticized as patronizing even when they aren't -- it's just a bias. Middle America is so keyed up about supposedly being patronized by those mean old coastals that they read it into everything. It's like college sophomores reading everything as racist or sexist. It's on them, not the interlocutor.

Everybody is equally full of sh-t: working class heroes as well as university twits. Everybody is primed to be defensive towards those they believe aren't respecting them. Sometimes it really is warranted, but most of the time it's snowflakes just wanting to feel aggrieved.

Or he just talks like everyone else does and people like that. He has never been one to act like he knows better even in arguments in the Senate...it is why Senators like him.

The problem with the Eastern Liberals is they all act like their smartest person in the room and we should all be honored to hear their opinions. They also speak in absolutes (see: your contention that all misogynists are Republican) which leaves a lot of people out of their oversimplifying generalizations.

[Handyman]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

Also, imagine if Franken were the nominee, all the Stuart Smalley campaign ads we'd get. It'd be glorious. Trump would go insane. That, and he needs to pick Jill Stein as a VP, so we can have the Franken-Stein ticket.


That would be a monster ticket.

Then they could use the old "Tonto-Frankenstein-Tarzan" bit from SNL...FIRE BAD!!!

[Kepler]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

The problem with the Eastern Liberals is they all act like their smartest person in the room and we should all be honored to hear their opinions. They also speak in absolutes (see: your contention that all misogynists are Republican) which leaves a lot of people out of their oversimplifying generalizations.

It is ironic that you use an absolute in decrying absolutes.

Again, I think much (not all) of this is just how you hear it. I've been all over the country and there are people who think they're God's Gift everywhere, and there are people who are modest and circumspect everywhere.

Part of what the Midwest might view as arrogance is just the aggressiveness that Northeasterners need to get a word in edgewise. Regions have different speeds and different moods, and when people aren't in their element they can be misinterpreted.

Likewise there is parochialism and snobbery everywhere. There is no snobbery more absolute and judgmental than Country Snobbery, where if you haven't fixed a tractor manually to get the north forty in before sunset you're nothing. Everybody everywhere builds a medal stand where they just happen to be at the top.

Country mouse / city mouse rivalry is probably as old as Uruk. I firmly believe the vast majority of instances in which each thinks the other is being obnoxious to them, it's just a misunderstanding. As a co-worker said to me after knowing me for 5 years, "we used to think you were putting on airs and being showy because of your vocabulary, but we finally figured out that's just the way you all talk."

The other thing is subtext and humor vary with region. So for example speaking in "absolutes" is very much a thing among people who I went to college with because we all have a firm grounding that nothing is ever absolute and everything is various types of distribution. When you know the guy who is speaking is a natural statistician, when he says "x are A and y are B" you implicitly translate that to a statement about probabilities and tendencies. I'll give a related example: when I make a statement which upon later evidence turns out to be false, I encapsulate all that information with "I lied." I have actually had some of my local coworkers look at me aghast until they figure out that "I lied" means a string of implied statements that are roughly "at the time I based my working assumptions on this data, but later information has caused me to revise.... blah blah blah" I'm bored just thinking about it. So, "I lied."

We all use these idioms so naturally and unconsciously that when we are a fish out of water we have to be very careful. I almost got fired the first day at a new job because I jokingly said something like "well you think that because you're an idiot..." Again, where I come from that means "you're obviously very smart so the fact that you and I differ means we probably have some hitherto unidentified difference in basic assumptions or .... " again, blah blah blah.

I'm circling around with that last example to what I think is the thin-skinnedness of midwesterners sometimes. When for example I said "... an idiot" I didn't realize at the time I was the only college graduate in the room -- it just would never have occurred to me 15 years ago to even think about that. But they all sure did. So that seemed like an unbelievably jarring and obnoxious statement because it reinforced all their prejudices about me that I wasn't even aware they had. Now, 15 years on, I know to be very careful about hurting feelings and coming off wrong -- for example, I am very careful with vocabulary, I make sure I use the simplest accurate term, and I don't use word play or puns or other verbal games that are antenna touching where I come from but misunderstood where I work. That is an extra imposition on me due to the fact that these people are completely convinced that if somebody uses a word they don't know that's a calculated insult. That's on them, but I want an effective and enjoyable work environment so I make the effort.

My advice is for everyone to listen more, criticize less. My assumption when my feathers are ruffled is that it's a miscommunication. I give the benefit of the doubt until it just becomes impossible due to repeated enemy action. Only then do I, er, employ countermeasures.

[bronconick]

Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt

But he's going to get that wall built to keep out "those" people!

Speaking of the wall, I saw a photo going around Twitter this morning of a screenshot of Fox News with the wall details: 30' tall, pretty from the US side, and something else. The follow up image was a Google search for a 32' ladder.

Since he's gutting the Coast Guard, they could just boat around