I don't pretend to understand it.

Another thing is, there are sockpuppets all the fuck over the place. A lot of the sort of one-note axe grinding and DU-focused drama farming that happens on this board, it's designed to make you think it's coming from a whole big group of people, but it's pretty much the same crowd, they just use a whole bunch of accounts. Maybe 5-10 actual people, max.

They think they're being clever, but it's pretty fucking transparent.

I mean look at this thing. I suppose I could hang ornaments on it.

You're gonna have a tough time arguing that there is sentience-level brain development at that point.

"Oh, but there's a heartbeat!"... that must mean it's already a little tiny person, right?

http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2015/07/beating_human_heart_tissue_grown_in_lab_video.html

Uh, no. Cells, like heart cells, self-organize to the point of beating. There is a continuum of existence from fertilization to birth, but only anti-choicers take the decidedly theological; not based in science; position that at the moment of conception by magic, this-



becomes the functional (and, by their thinking, legal) equivalent of this.



Now, I like babies too. But a fertilized egg is not a fetus at 6 weeks is not a baby. And regardless, the ONLY person fit to make a determination about what a woman should be "allowed" to do vis a vis her own reproductive system, is the woman in question. These decisions are too crucial, too personal, too life situation-specific, to leave to total strangers, panels of priests, Ohio legislators with a history of domestic violence complaints, etc.



And most abortions take place in the first trimester. This bullshit about women running around pregnant for 8 months and then aborting because they feel like it is James O'Keefe, right-wing bullshit, the same people who want you to believe that Planned Parenthood calles pregnancies "parasitic". Derp.

Okay, that's pretty funny.

No sale.

So when we're doing the math we would do well to not count on those votes, at all.

Arguably one might make the case that the difference, for instance, between the Green performance in 2012 & 2016, that could be pointed at and said "stupid fucks, you should have voted for Hillary".

But, really, anyone who didn't vote for Hillary, one could make the same argument.

As to your first question, I think Clinton the candidate did an exemplary job from the Convention onward. But I think her campaign made some profound tactical errors around ignoring the rust belt as well as not coming up with a simple cogent message to the economic anxieties of those voters.

that's an "I left the stolen car to continue trying to evade the police chase on foot" job

Well, I guess that's your business.