Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

#NeverTrump

56 Comments

What it means, and what it doesn’t.

Yes, that’s all it means. I am not going to support Donald Trump. The notion that non-support of Trump is support of Hillary is nonsense.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Will Trump win in a blowout? It could happen. I’ve never said he can’t win the election, just that he’ll be a terrible president. Hillary will be worse.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Hillary’s people “freaked out” by the polls. They’ve been and continue to be in denial about what a truly awful candidate she is. They don’t care about lies and corruption, but Americans do.

[Update a while later]

“‘Crooked’ means crippled for Hillary Clinton“:

Democrats…have been operating on the assumption that most Americans shared Clinton’s belief that talk of her misconduct was just more slander from the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Her inability to get ahead of Trump by a comfortable margin even though he spent the weeks after clinching his nomination going off on racist tangents is remarkable. The problem for her isn’t so much that he has risen—he is still stuck at the same low number that he’s had in national polls for months—as it is that she has declined or failed to gain ground.

Looking ahead, it’s hard to predict how a race between two deeply unpopular candidates will turn out. Trump’s undisciplined character and his alienation of elements of the Republican coalition and inability to appeal to non-white and young voters may ultimately cancel out Clinton’s weaknesses. But the one thing we know for sure is that the Democrats will nominate a crippled candidate. No amount of spending or spin can sell Hillary Clinton to the American people as either honest or competent.

Yup.

[Update a while later]

“Hillary managed her emails like [other] criminals I’ve known.”

Meanwhile, here’s a deep dive into her email mess from Ars Technica. One thing not mentioned; how did the classified info get from the SCIF to her server?

56 thoughts on “#NeverTrump”

  1. I am #NeverTrump as well, but only because I live in a non battleground state. Trump will win my state (SC) regardless of my vote. But voting for him (or her) won’t be on my conscious.

    If by some fantastic Sci-Fi circumstance I was the deciding vote and I only could choose between Trump and Mrs Bill Clinton…. I’d have to vote Trump.

    1. Same here, especially now that he’s picked Pence as his running mate. Of course Indiana is going to go Trump — but I won’t have voting for him (or Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend’s wife) on my conscience.

      But if there were no third-party options, and writing in a protest candidate weren’t an option, yeah, Trump’s the lesser evil.

  2. Non-support of Trump is 50% support of Clinton. That’s how a two-party system works. You are saying that you feel that Trump will be just as bad a president as Clinton.
    If you don’t feel that way, you should vote for Trump.
    Personally, I think most of the fuss about him is nonsense. He’s a fairly bright guy who shoots his mouth off too much. And not very conservative. A million times preferable to a movement liberal like Clinton, leaving aside her corruption.

    2. “a fairly bright guy” would not have ran every casino into the ground and commit bankruptcy after bankruptcy.

      “a fairly bright guy” would not brag that womanizing was his “Vietnam” and the reason that was the reason he was a draft dodger.

      “a fairly bright guy” would not have 3600 lawsuits against him for cheating and failing to pay hundreds of small businesses and contractors and business partners.

      “a fairly bright guy” would not been named and involved in 169 federal lawsuits.

      “a fairly bright guy” would not have hundreds of millions in debt to german bankers and then sit and diss Germany during an election.

      1. This is the kind of nonsense that partisans hug close to their hearts. There is no one in the top rank of American business or politics or any field who is not bright.
        Your examples prove little other than that he skates close to the edge – even if they were good examples. None of them will cost him a meal. Probably none of them will cost him a worry.

      2. would not have ran every casino into the ground and commit bankruptcy after bankruptcy

        How did the rest of Atlantic City’s casinos do? This is like saying someone is a horrible person and businessman for losing money during the housing crisis.

        a fairly bright guy” would not brag that womanizing was his “Vietnam”

        This is why an all volunteer army works best. Many people dodged the draft and for people on the left, it is considered a badge of heroism. Besides that, voting for Clinton puts a draft dodger back in the White House.

        would not have 3600 lawsuits against him

        Litigation is very common for billionaires. Look how many lawsuits Google has been involved in. Are they stupid?

        would not have hundreds of millions in debt to german bankers and then sit and diss Germany

        Why, are they going to change the loan agreements on him because he said something about their country?

        All of these “gripes” pale in comparison to the corruption and incompetence of Crooked Hillary, the Butcher of Benghazi, Reseter of Russia, and Madam of the global bribery network of the Clinton Foundation.

        Hillary’s only accomplishment at the State Department was getting Gaddafi analy raped on international TV. How did that work out for Libya, the rest of the ME, and Europe?

        1. Doesn’t matter what the rest of Atlantic city did.. the converstion is about trump.. if he was so smart he would have been smarter than the pack and not failed.

          Stop trying to justify stupidity and reward it.

          He dodged the draft because he was stars and striped patriot not afraid to give his life for his country.

          Stop trying to justify his cowardice and reward it.

          Google is a corporation .. Trump is an individual con man. Here is a new twist.. try actually Googling trump and read what his partners have said about him in their lawsuits… sheesh

          Stop trying to justify his cons and reward him for it.

          1. I view it more as keeping Hillary out of the White House. She is a disgusting person with a terrible record in positions of power.

            Trump could be bad but we know Hillary will be abysmal. After messing up Libya, Iraq, and the Russian Reset, a person doesn’t magically become skillful.

            The only thing Hillary is good at is corruption and that is due mostly to the team she surrounds herself with. It would be a return to some of the darkest recesses of America’s past.

            Don’t reward Crooked Hillary and the fascist Democrat party.

    3. Yeah, the point of fact that sorta has brought me around to Trump is that he does operate a variety of businesses that all in all employ about 35,000 people. Compare this to Hillary who by and large only services herself and the 400 hundred or so immediate underlings that operate her ‘foundation’. She provides nothing more than insider favors to to those who shill out the $250k for one of her 15 minutes speeches. In my book Trump is far more admirable for providing a livelihood to a multitude of people across all walks of life versus Hillary who primarily benefits the D.C. sphere.

  3. When asked to choose between a shit sandwich and a shit souffle, just say you’re on a diet.

  4. I’m also in a non competivie state… (CA) if my vote actually counted in the outcome I’d hold my nose and vote Trump.
    As it is I’l either vote Johnson or not vote at all….

  5. Gosh, if there were only somebody else running. Oh, I don’t know, how about two two-term governors with strong records of budget cutting? Nope, not perfect. But far better.

    It isn’t a two-party system, Mike, as much as the two parties want to make us think so.

    1. They don’t have a chance of winning and neither does the Green Party. You only have two meaningful choices. Pretending otherwise is cute but futile. Either Clinton or Trump will be President.

  6. Trump was not my preference in the primaries, but I do not agree with the nevertrump movement, at all.

    However, I think I understand them, because I held my nose and voted for McCain in 2008, even though I despised him. Part of doing so was vowing to never vote for somebody like him again. So, while I don’t agree with the nevertrump crowd about Trump, I understand how they feel, because that’s how I’d have felt about the nominee had it been Bush or Rubio (I said from the start of the race there was no way I’d ever vote for either of those bastards, in the primary or the general).

    2. I understand how they feel, because that’s how I’d have felt about the nominee had it been Bush or Rubio

      Same here but I would have voted for either, even though they were not my preferred candidate. The NeverTrump crowd expected that 99% of Republican voters would do the same. They knew their preferred candidates didn’t appeal to most Republicans but that most would vote anyway.

      Always the GOPe wants voters to suck it up and vote for them knowing that the GOPe will stab their constituents in the back when in office. Never will the GOPe suck it up and vote for someone that isn’t their preferred candidate. If they did, we might have had Cruz as a candidate.

      The GOPe thinks that if they pull convention shenanigans and somehow boot Trump from the ticket, that people will just vote for whomever they replace him with. They are all, “It doesn’t matter, they will just hold their nose and vote for the Republican over Hillary.”

      That wouldn’t happen but it illustrates how they always demand compromise but never compromise.

  7. “The notion that non-support of Trump is support of Hillary is nonsense.”

    You can say that until you are blue in the face, but you will be wrong every time.

    There are 2 people running for President (who can realistically win). If you don’t vote for Trump, you are aiding Hillary, like it or not.

    That is the reason we have Obama the last 8 years; conservatives playing the self-righteous card and not voting for the GOP nomination.

  8. There’s something to be said about the notion, “if you want the job, you’re not qualified to have it.” It’s always about bad choices.

    Many will choose alternatives.

    Each of those is making half of vote for both DT and HRC.

    So yes, they are voting for both. Blue faces indeed. Not deciding is deciding.

    1. Just like RUSH (the band, not the radio guy) said years ago:

      “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”.

  9. I held my nose for McCain; I can vote for Trump. My conscious won’t abide doing at least that to stop Hillary Clinton. Don’t tell me Trump will disappoint, because A) I already know, B) McCain would have disappointed as well, and C) Bush disappointed too (both of them). I blame George.

    He’s not up this year, but #NeverCornyn.

  10. how did the classified info get from the SCIF to her server

    From the article:

    Of the more than 31,000 e-mails examined by State, Intelligence Community, and FBI investigators, a very small fraction—110 messages in 52 e-mail chains—contained classified information. The majority of that was sent to Clinton by her staff or other Foreign Service officials from within State using OpenNet’s Internet mail gateway, and classification markings were not used properly on any of those e-mails.

    It isn’t clear that any of the emailed information has been traced back to a SCIF.

    1. We don’t really know because Crooked Hillary destroyed the evidence. For any other person, this is a crime. But it is pretty common in the Obama administration as it has happened in every single agency he controls.

    2. If it was Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information, it came from a SCIF by definition. That’s where TS/SCI is born and dies, FYI.

      1. But if her staff was taking information off that system and stripping the markings, it can’t be Hillary’s fault. Its not like she controls them.

    3. Once again Jim; you don’t know the subject matter. Your ignorance is so vast on this topic; you really have no idea what you just wrote.

      It’s the equivalent of saying; “It isn’t clear that any of the emailed information has been traced back to the Internet.” Or “It isn’t clear that any of the classified email information has been traced back to the United States Government.”

      1. You misunderstand. My comment wasn’t that we don’t know whether any of the email came from SCIFs. It was that we don’t know whether State, the FBI, or anyone else has figured out when, where, and by whom any of the information was moved from an SCIF to unclassified email.

        2. There was a vast right wing conspiracy feeding classified information to Hillary and her staff. They made it look like normal course of State Department business and even set up a private server for her.

          The entire operation from beginning to end was set up and controlled by Hillary. If her underlings did something, it is because they were ordered to.

        3. I didn’t misunderstand. Your revised statement isn’t as ignorant, but it is the heart of why everyone that knows what a SCIF is knows the FBI didn’t do a thorough investigation.

  11. The notion that non-support of Trump is support of Hillary is nonsense.

    Non-support of Trump (assuming it takes the form of not voting for him) is support of Hillary. Likewise, non-support of Clinton is support of Trump. It’s a zero-sum game.

      1. In the state I vote in, my vote won’t matter.

        That could be but maybe check the polling closer to election day to see if it is true.

      2. In the state I vote in, my vote won’t matter.

        I understand this, but to be blunt; isn’t your no vote then just virtue signaling? If your home was still in Florida; would you make the same stand? Even if you don’t think it is virtue signaling; I think it is for many of the #NeverTrump folks. Not that going to the polls while holding the nose is much better; but I’ll acknowledge that here and now.

        I agree with the rebuttal to Jim; it’s not zero sum. Hillary Clinton totally beat Barack Obama in the popular vote of the 2008 Primary; but she lost. It’s not zero sum.

        2. Hillary Clinton totally beat Barack Obama in the popular vote of the 2008 Primary; but she lost. It’s not zero sum.

          I’m not sure you understand what zero-sum means. You are right that the primary popular vote is not the same thing as the delegate vote, just as the general election popular vote is not the same thing as the electoral college vote (see: 2000). But the contests are still zero-sum; every vote and every delegate for Obama was not available to Clinton, and vice-versa.

          Either Trump or Clinton is going to win. A vote for neither, or choosing not to vote, is tacit support for the winner.

      3. Lots of things aren’t zero-sum, but elections are. Your single vote won’t make the difference no matter what state you live in, but it still matters.

        FWIW, the person who thinks everything is zero-sum is Donald Trump. His entire world view revolves about making deals, where the measure of a deal is how much better you come out than the other guy. He thinks that trade that is good for a trading partner is by definition bad for us. He thinks that alliances that are good for our allies must be bad for us. “Winning” to Donald Trump isn’t about making things better, it’s about beating someone.

  12. The Ars Technica article slavishly comes up with excuse after excuse. The wicked IT people were keeping her from using her Blackberry (she set up the email server before the theatrical Blackberry demands), there’s no evidence for intent (in other words, she committed multiple felonies, but we’ll chose to pretend that evidence of intent matters more than the evidence of wrongdoing), the evil Republicans did it too, let’s ignore her making bank on the Clinton library, etc.

    Ars Technica is the only discussion forum where I’ve been banned (climate change article, for which I was disagreeing on the usual assumed basic principles for the more alarmed side, and received a 24 hour ban). I’m not surprised that the same entity which cleans up its public discussion on an ideological basis would also put forth a nakedly partisan interpretation of the Clinton emails.

  13. I’ve been amused at everyone saying that Hillary is a lock since she able to outspend Trump by a zillion to one in TV ads. Yes, but the problem is that those TV ads showcase HILLARY, and that reminds everyone just how fundamentally unlikeable the woman is.

    If her campaign handlers were smart, they would commission rafts of new TV ads in which Hillary never appears at all. Just attractive, approachable citizens talking about how their lives have been improved by government (think “Life of Julia”), then the Hillary 2016 logo. Not a single photo or soundbite from the candidate. Not one.

    That’d be a smart way to spend the money. Broadcasting clips of her campaign speeches is probably helping Trump as much as Hillary.

  14. “Time for America to start acting like a superpower.”

    This can only happen if we clean our own house first.

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