This whole election can be summarized with "The only way way to stop a bad oligarch is with an oligarch that's even better connected." I don't think that's a new normal as much as no one is trying to pretend any longer that it isn't true.
The new normal would be the blatantness connected to Trump's open white nationalism and hatred combined with the receptiveness of a large portion of the electorate. It was always an undercurrent of RNC electoral strategy, but Trump made it an his central theme and has succeeded without an attendant set of coherent polices. For me, and many who would be on the receiving end of that outrage, it is a frightening prospect. I don't want to see the clock dialed back to the 1950s. Frankly, I give a damn. This has always been a game of elites. Hell, most modern candidates attended the same small set of elite Universities and live in the same social networks. No one is pretending there aren't plutocratic elements.
It bears repeating: neither candidate bothered to mention Social Security or Medicare until the final debate's final topic. That is how bad both of these candidates are. However, Clinton's supporters keep making the claim that she is the more coherent candidate. Do coherent candidates ignore 50% of the US budget during three nationally televised debates? Yeah, I didn't think so.
In fairness to both candidates, the debate topics were stupid and constricting to start with. There wansnt much room to discuss substantive issues, social security or global warming. And, besides, Trump was following his primary strategy of steering away from substantive policy to accusations and stump speech material. And Clinton was left responding to those things.
Yes, when Clinton made sure to bring up Alicia Machado (a person her campaign made sure was front and center) in the debates unprompted she was simply "responding to Trump's stump speech material".
She was armed for Trump's ribbing. And Machado was evidence in discussing Trump's temperament and attitude toward women. A topic of the debate. Let's not pretend ANY debate with Trump in it was gonna be an intellectual exchange.
Lets also not pretend that Clinton was "simply responding to Trump's stump speech". And WHY did the first question of the debate (explaining Trumps trailer trash comment) take almost the first 30 minutes of the debate? Was that because it was THAT important or because the left leaning media made sure it was?
Interesting, but very long, article on how Team Hillary were glad Trump was the nominee. I had to snip parts out to make it short enough to post. Click the link for the whole story... They Always Wanted Trump Much more at the link. Maybe Trump has a point about it being rigged since Hillary and her team helped him win the GOP...
If Hillary can't decide whether she needs to board a plane or get in a car, then I'm totally comfortable with her deciding whether she is trying to push the button on the TV remote control or the button to launch the nukes.
If it was rigged by the Clintons then it just shows how gullible many of the GOP voters are if they bought it and nominated the guy. If Trump loses and drags the GOP with him they only have themselves to blame. This was the candidate that they nominated according to the rules of their party.
I think these "she's secretly really really ill!" are my favorite of the nutty memes. She's just given a super-secret injection of competence sauce before debates, congressional grillings, campaign stops, etc.! Then it's back to the medical muumuu, the colostomy bag, and drooling in between seizures. LOL. If she is a bit sick, that puts her in good company with FDR and JFK and Michael Jordan's famous flu game.
Every Republican challenger lost to Trump by trying to be above the fray and and talk about their issues. Then when they tried to sling mud, they couldn't outdo Trump. HRC opted to beat Trump at his own game and allow him to self destruct, because her team saw it as opportunity given the voters dislike of him and it would stick with people more than a discussion about the policies. Basically it was a particular strategy that was chosen because Trump was her opponent. The campaign would have played out entirely differently if Clinton had faced Kasich, Cruz, Jeb, or Rubio. Also to be fair, Clinton released a good deal information about her proposed policies on her website and with numerous speeches during the campaign. No one wanted to cover those. Instead everyone just kept asking her and campaign about the e-mails.
