We already know the results of the upcoming election

@SumKindaMunster

Because they thought the "extreme" candidates would be the easiest to beat.

The MSM did much the same when they gave Trump loads of free coverage in the 2016 Republican primaries, thus helping him defeat the other Republicans.

The NYT, WashPo, etc. thought Trump would be the easiest candidate for Hillary to beat in the general election.

@Thinkerbell the world said Americans were not stupid enough to elect trump.

America proved the world wrong, indeed they were,

@Thinkerbell I recall. One wonders if this strategy will finally be put to bed when some of these guys defeat their Democratic challengers.

@Ryderbike Who's a grumpy bear? Hm? Who's grumpy? 😆

@Ryderbike


Wrong.

The world forgot what an incompetent candidate Hillary was.
She blew the Democratic nomination in 2008 to an unknown freshman senator that no one had ever heard of.

The 2016 campaign was mostly Hillary being Hillary again.

@Thinkerbell Hillary was the most qualified candidate to ever run for president.

Trump the least qualified and most corrupt.

@Thinkerbell @Ryderbike This fucking guy. 👆 Desperately throwing shit against the wall hoping something sticks. 😆

@Ryderbike

Then Hillary should have defeated Trump easily.

But she ran too incompetent a campaign.
The 2008 past was prologue.

@SumKindaMunster It’s called “ratfucking.” You support a nut job because you think your candidate will have an easier time beating them. Of course, it can backfire.

If you don’t like it, end private campaign financing and PACs and go to exclusively public financing.

@Thinkerbell Trump is a great example of ratfucking backfiring spectacularly.

@Ryderbike Most qualified candidate, terrible campaigner. Hillary would have done better in a parliamentary system where only other MPs would vote for her.

@LeopoldBloom
Yah let me get right on that Bloom, cuz that's totally within my power.

I absolutely support that notion by the way. If it was up to me, you can be damned sure that's exactly what would happen.

So I noticed you didn't comment as to whether or not you think "ratfucking" (how adorable you have a colloquial term for it) is a good idea.

You support this effort? The DNC spending money to support Republican candidates in the primary?

@LeopoldBloom trump is the poster child for everything wrong with America,

@LeopoldBloom


And a great example of the smug, out-of touch media that couldn't believe they had failed so spectacularly until 8 p.m. on the very night of the election.

@Thinkerbell Clinton's nomination was not an example of ratfucking. FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 25% chance of winning, and he won. If someone handed you a four-chamber revolver and asked you to play Russian Roulette, you'd probably refuse. Clinton also ran a spectacularly bad campaign. There was also, as you point out, a lot of smugness. Democrats kept thinking "this is what will make Trump's supporters abandon him" without realizing that nothing would have that effect. It's understandable because Democrats are willing to abandon their leaders over even minor scandals. Cf. Franken, Al; Dean, Howard; Hart, Gary.

Ratfucking is when one party supports the most extreme candidate in the other party's primary because they think that will give them a better chance of winning that if they ran against a more moderate candidate. The danger of course is if the nutjob wins.

@LeopoldBloom

That's exactly what the MSM did with Trump against his Republican primary opponents, thinking to help Hillary. How much the DNC may have been involved, I don't know, but I highly doubt there was no coordination.

@Thinkerbell And that is an excellent example of how ratfucking can backfire. However, I wouldn't credit Trump's win to the media alone. He tapped into a current of white nationalism that appealed to a lot of people. It also helped that he was already famous, and the belief that he was independently wealthy led many people to assume he wasn't corruptible. Even the very left-wing electoral-vote.com summarized Trump at the start of his campaign as a billionaire who "can't be bought." Of course, when the truth came out, his fans didn't care.

Trump is also very charismatic, at least to the people who like him. Either you really like him, or really hate him. So he engenders a lot of enthusiasm on both sides.

Historians will be talking about Trump and this period in history for centuries.

@Thinkerbell @LeopoldBloom Actually the Clinton campaign had the ultimate expression in "ratfucking" in the Pied Piper campaign detailed in this article by the Atlantic.

https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/

Essentially, Clinton's campaign conspired with several media outlets to promote Trump's rhetoric and give him extra attention and air time. The goal was to then use Trump's words against the eventually Republican
nominee.

Additionally, if you read the article you will see they conspired against Sanders as well, even though at that point Clinton hadn't secured the nomination and it should have been kept open and fair for both candidates.

Obviously this backfired spectacularly and was only exposed by Wikileaks after the 2016 election.

I have a hard time believing this is the first you would have heard of this, bloom.

@SumKindaMunster That theory was out in the open even before Clinton was nominated. The phenomenon of "Bernie bros" who voted for Trump may have had an effect; the only question is how large it was. While I supported Sanders at the time, he wasn't a Democrat, and only joined the party at the last minute because he had even less of a chance to win as an independent. So of course the party apparatus favored the candidate who had been a member for decades. Anything else would have been unfair. Even if the superdelegate votes had reflected the overall percentages, Clinton still would have won. Sanders never had enough support, he just had enthusiastic support. Kind of like how the Grateful Dead was never a popular band, but what fans they had were really dedicated.

I already said that the promotion of Trump was an attempt at ratfucking that backfired. However, Trump had a substantial lead in the polls from the moment he declared. He would have been the nominee even without Democratic or media involvement. The race was basically for who would be #2 and presumably pick up Trump's votes when he "inevitably" lost support, which is why none of the other Republicans wanted to attack him, as they didn't want to alienate his supporters. Remember when Trump said Ted Cruz' dad killed JFK and that Cruz' wife was ugly, and Cruz didn't even complain? Even at that point, he thought he could either pick up Trump's voters or that the Republican party apparatus, that clearly didn't want Trump to be the nominee, would figure out a way to give him the nomination.

@LeopoldBloom
It's not a "theory" bloom, it happened. People lost their jobs over it.


Supposing that's true. Did that make it ok that Clinton and the DNC methodically used their resources to spike his campaign? Shouldn't it have been a fair contest to the end, if, as you say, Clinton would have won anyway?


Bullshit Bloom, he struggled to get the nomination. Remember "Never Trump"? They didn't want him as the nominee and I am certain the Pied Piper campaign caused lots of issues for the Republicans...but it blew up in her face too. Reminds me of the saying about how tyrants sow the seeds of their own destruction...😆


Yes, this goes to my point about "Never Trump" and the assumption Trump would not get the nomination.