Recognize
Posted on November 7, 2016 by David M Willis

356 thoughts on “Recognize”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    who called Robin can’t keep her hands off Leslie XD

    1. factorsofx

      ITS_HAPPENING.gif

    2. Doctor_Who

      Just had to take a poke at Holtzmann. Or is that one Jillian?

      1. Fart Captor

        Neither. That would be Leslie’s sternum. Robin may have no tact, but she’s clearly above groping strangers.

        It’s sad how that puts her far and above a real-life presidential candidate.

        1. Haven

          Well, he won’t be a real-life presidential candidate for much longer….

        2. Gigafreak

          He will stop being a candidate by either succeeding or failing to become president.

          Unless you mean he will somehow stop being real-life instead. Are we going to send him through the Phantom Tollbooth or something?

        3. Thursday Violist

          Oh! Yes. That is a great idea. Let’s find a way to turn people and events into fiction. Or…wait. People usually use “Real Life” to compare with “on the internet”.

          So, we just need to get Mr. Trump addicted to World of Warcraft or webcomics or something like that.

        4. thomas wrobel

          Personally, I liked the idea of making him a pretend president and running it as a reality show.

        5. SgtWadeyWilson

          So… like Zaphod, but nobody lets him near anything like a spaceship?

        6. Emperor Norton II

          Oh, they’ll let him near a space-ship… Where all the “controls” are fake, and in fact is automated to go into orbit for the rest of his life. It’ll be filled with food and booze and porn; and every now and then, ground control will contact him to say “Your policies are being implemented with smashing success. Mexico just agreed to pay for that wall that we finished in just two months!”

          Sure, it’s better than he deserves. But I think this is the best option, really.

        7. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          This is basically the what the Culture does in the science fiction novels of Iain M. Banks. The irredeemably power-hungry and such are encouraged to get addicted to virtual reality computer games where they can have the kind of fun they like without hurting anyone.

          (Though in his later books he brings up the question of at what level of complexity do simulated people become real people deserving of sapient rights.)

        8. hof1991

          I’m reading the only one of his books I haven’t read. Finishing it will be like saying goodbye to a friend. Even though he’s been dead a while, he was alive as long as I didn’t finish the last book. (and the short story collection is essential)

        9. Historyman68

          OMg we’re gonna Dave Chapelle him!

        10. Idontcarenomore

          This version of Robin seems to be more crude than Shortpacked’s version. I mean to say that SP Robin didn’t have a really good grip on current events, but underneath the self centered, sugar craving, sometimes obnoxious person, was a basically decent human being. She did sponser the ‘Outlaw Cancer” bill in congress, and meant it. Like I said, not the brightest bulb, but still, the brain was there when she decided to bother to use it. She was not mean.
          This Robin is crude and she is mean – a la the Trumpesque referral to “the parents of some dead guy..”.
          I like the old Robin. Don’t think I’m going to like this one much.

        11. Deanatay

          Hmmm… tiny hands… crude, obnoxious behavior… no concrete policies… demonstrably insane, yet people irresistibly attracted to him – er, her… impossible candidate, yet it seems she has a chance of winning… it’s almost as if Robin’s a stand-in for someone…

        12. imnotash

          I mean, most of the characters are way more likeable than in the original (except Carla imo, but that’s probably because she’s not really in focus). he needs to balance out the obnoxiousness somehow. I really wish it wasn’t robin, but she’s not really a main character here, so I guess its ok.

        13. A5PECT

          We’ve only seen DoA Robin through the lens of her political career. We have yet to see how she behaves once she’s away from her office and the public eye.

    3. Ana Chronistic

      gonna go to bed early in case I have to stand in line ALL DAY so I’ll just leave this here for no reason doot doot

  2. Mr. Mendo

    Nice to see Robin’s still as good with social cues as ever! 😉

  3. AnvilPro

    I’m beginning to think Robin isn’t a great role model for… anyone.

    1. tim gueguen

      I’m sure one of the authoritarian countries on our planet would think she’s lovely.

      1. BBCC

        Terrifyingly enough, I’m sure there are some countries that would consider her a vast improvement.

        1. Reltzik

          I’m also imagining her marrying into a royal family in a nation where royalty exists primarily to keep the tabloids in business.

      2. Deanatay

        “Dear Ms. DeSanto:

        I am writing to you to express my extreme thankfulness that you are a patriotic and faithful citizen… of the United States. Thank you, and please, never change.

        Your bud,
        Kim Jong-Un

    2. Charles Phipps

      Hey, those people online started it! Weirdly, I do wonder if Robin is a military veteran in this world and who would give her a gun.

      1. GhostWriterL

        Maybe she went to an ultra expensive “military school” where they had fancy uniforms and pretended to march to classes. Oh, and because her education was so important, she got deferments from any actual military obligation, up until it magically happened that she had a wicked hangnail and got medically disqualified.

        SHE ALMOST SERVED, THAT’S THE SAME AS HAVING HAD A 20+ YEAR CAREER WITH MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS AND BEING IN COMBAT! That hangnail hurt a lot, you know… it was so bad it was almost the same as getting a limb blown off by an IED!

        Oh, and someone gave her a medal. She doesn’t know what it’s for or what its significance is, but she posed with it on TV once. It may or may not be in a sock drawer in a hotel she stayed at for a campaign stop that she totes forgot about… or it may or may not have gotten tossed in the garbage after the photographers left.

        1. ANeM

          The medal was actually just a chocolate coin glued to a piece of ribbon. After the press left she pulled off the foil and ate it.

  4. Fauna Sarcastic

    Robin’s dump stat is Tact

    1. MatthewTheLucky

      She had to drop something for all that Speed.

  5. BBCC

    I…..
    ROBIN. STOP.

    Also, Leslie, the fuck?

    1. Charles Phipps

      Yeah, let her get in the Twitter war!

    2. Doctor_Who

      “ROBIN. STOP.” would be a good alternate title for Shortpacked.

      1. Chaucer59

        Is it just me, or is this version of Robin more douchey than her SP counterpart. I always felt she was a phoney, but this version seems more like a Trump/Palin clone than ever in SP.

        1. Charles Phipps

          This is Robin if she never had any cause like defeating aliens to distract her from pure selfishness. Imagine Robin without Ethan and Amber but only politicians to bring out the worst in her.

        2. sun tzu

          Considering some of the shit SP!Robin pulled… honestly, she was pretty heinous. It’s just that SP was a more comedic, less realistic setting than DoA, so her heinousness mattered less.

        3. foamy

          Shortpacked Robin created actual utopia for awhile, which means — even though it only lasted a short time — she accomplished more good than anyone else in that universe ever did.

        4. BBCC

          Ehhh, yes and no. Robin at the start was pretty dickish. She grew up a lot towards the end, though and I’d be comfortable saying she was a better person afterwards.

        5. Idontcarenomore

          It’s not just you. SP Robin was selfish and self centered. She tried to do good with her ‘Outlaw Cancer’ bill. She bought Leslie a house big enough for all the friends to live in (yes she used funds that weren’t earmarked for her, but did it for others..not right, but at least thinking of others).
          She tried and she did grow as a character.

          This Robin is more crude I think. And she is mean..ie: the Trumpesque “call of some dead guys parents…”.

          I like old Robin. Don’t think I like this one much, and am afraid of what she will do to Leslie now.

        6. timemonkey

          This is just Robin when she’s not scared away from responsibility and when she doesn’t have any friends to act as common sense.

        7. Orion Fury

          That does seem to hold true for many characters that weren’t ‘good’, like Mike and such. Without the wackiness of the Walkyverse to shore up their personalities, the flaws shine through much stronger.

        8. Historyman68

          That’s an interesting idea.

        9. Archivist

          I just can’t believe that since the last election she’s evolved from Palin to Trump, like the world’s most horrible Pokémon.

      2. MM

        Except for the times where “MIKE, STOP,” or “FAZ, STOP” would be more appropriate.

  6. Bagge

    I’m with Dorothy – it IS great that Robin takes time for a college class. Dorothy is sure learning a lot about politics just from watching the congress woman in action.

    Gotta love Robin’s lack of impulse control. “Pandering… flirting… twitter fighting…” all in within a minute.

    1. BBCC

      If nothing else, she’s learning what not to do and what she can and can’t get away with.

    2. Charles Phipps

      I wonder if Dorothy will be horrified at the realization Robin is more electable as President than she is.

      1. Bagge

        I sincerely doubt that is news to hear. She will make her way to office anyway! And she will do it while retaining her integrity and honesty. Dorothy is awesome like that.

        1. Bagge

          *her

      2. Solenoid

        Ah, but that’s simply the electorate of today! Dorothy will be running in the future! Which, due to comic time dilation, is probably the 2070’s.

        1. Anorak

          the first election in that time period would be 2072

        2. begbert2

          You’re assuming that the republicans won’t find some way to make Trump dictator for life.

          Not that they like him all that much, but they’d dismantle the entire government if that allowed them to keep the office away from Clinton.

        3. timemonkey

          Somebody would shoot him long before that happened. I’m honestly surprised it’s taken this long.

        4. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          Well an atheist could never get elected today, so things will have to be different for her to have a chance.

        5. Needfuldoer

          I did the math once, and at its current rate DoA will hit summer break in about 20 years.

        6. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          But when will they go to Florida for Spring Break?

        7. thejeff

          Florida will be under water by then. 🙂

    3. Reltzik

      Hey, politicians these days have to be campaigning all the time. Her hyperactive attention span is probably the secret of her success.

      …. granted it’s probably not very good once she’s IN Congress, but that’s not the important part of the job.

  7. Charles Phipps

    Honestly, I’m not sure what Leslie is trying to accomplish here. There’s better places for seducing Robin. Does she really think there’s a not embarrassing or intelligently driven side here? I admit, though, I do love how Robin is exactly the same as in Shortpacked but because of the world being more serious–she’s horrifying.

    1. Doctor_Who

      I’m beginning to think this IS Shortpacked’s Robin. She took Cadburry Cream Egg cereal and ran so fast that she ended up in an alternate universe, where she ran for congress as practice for doing so when she got back home, which makes perfect sense if you’re Robin.

      All of DoA is a midquel to Shortpacked.

      1. NoHeart6265

        headcannon accepted

      2. Orion Fury

        Damn it Barry!

    2. Bagge

      I think this is the compromise between the parts of her brain that screams “NO, BAD IDEA” and the parts of her… the parts of her that screams “I WANT THAT!!!” (‘Leslie’ and ‘Jessica’ if you will).

      Inviting Robin to class is a good enough excuse for Leslie to spend time with Robin that she can overlook the fact that Jessica was in charge of the dress code for today.

      So, yeah, Leslie is not exactly optimizing for either Teaching or Seduction but tries to multitask, which has a… slight potential for embarrassment.

      1. Emperor Norton II

        Just goes on to prove what science keeps telling us: Humans will always function sub-optimally when trying to multi-task.

        1. Reltzik

          Whereas we function perfectly and without error when focused on single tasks.

        2. Gesc

          I’m reading this as sarcasm, although I guess there’s truth in it?

      2. Needfuldoer

        Everybody has an upstairs brain and a downstairs brain, but not enough blood to simultaneously run both at full capacity.

        1. Orion Fury

          Sometimes it seems like there are some that don’t have enough blood to run them one at a time.

    3. Romanticide

      Leslie is not thinking completely with all her capacity at the thought of getting close to Robin…

  8. Justin Time

    Aw Robin noooooooooo stop being garbage in this universe.

    1. begbert2

      She’s a politician. She HAS to be garbage – it’s a job requirement.

      1. JessWitt

        Can we ask Robin to be “less garbage” instead?

  9. tim gueguen

    Robin, you are evil.

    1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Nobody knows what it’s like to be the bad gal,
      To be the sad gal,
      Behind black eyes,

  10. butts

    Yes, Dotty, that’s definitely why Les brought Robin

  11. Keulan

    I’m suprised Robin remembers Leslie was at the rally.

    1. Charles Phipps

      I wonder if this Robin is a virgin or just sleeps with all of her supporters. It’s hard to say with her being Trumpalin.

      1. Fart Captor

        I’m kinda grossed out by the “she’s evil and therefore she must sleep around” aspect of this comment.

        1. Charles Phipps

          Donald Trump isn’t just a miasma of pure evil. Well, he is, but I was actually referring to the fact he….has a lot of sex. He also has a lot of money. So, three qualities!

        2. Fart Captor

          He claims to have a lot of sex. I’m not inclined to take his word for it.

          Even considering the fact that he’s married and has children that look like him. Not that I don’t think he’d sleep around. I just can’t even imagine his wife being terribly enthusiastic about it.

          I mean, ignoring the fact that he looks like a ravenously hungry dog got into a pumpkin patch and somebody molded the resulting output into roughly the shape of a human head, there’s no possible way someone that narcissistic, stubborn and egotistical isn’t horrifically bad in bed.

        3. Willoughby Chase

          > stubborn and egotistical isn’t horrifically bad in bed.

          Hopefully we’ll never find out either way. I’ve had enough of Trump’s shenanigans. He has a couple of dates in the courtroom soon. I’m hoping that will settle his hash, but I doubt it.

        4. thejeff

          He’s rich and famous. I’m sure he’s been able to parlay that into a decent amount of sex – even if not as much as he boasts. Especially back in his younger days. Buying modeling agencies to get access to and influence over attractive women, that kind of thing.

        5. Fart Captor

          Yes, most men as “rich” add he is wouldn’t need to buy a modeling agency and run beauty pageants just to meet women.

          That’s because he is repulsive on every level.

        6. BBCC

          Also him buying their places of employment for influence over them is incredibly creepy and rape-y.

    2. MatthewTheLucky

      Leslie was at the rally? Was she behind Jessica?

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        She was stalking Jessica, they have this weird twincest thing going on.

    3. Fart Captor

      That she not only remembers, but is all smiley and excited about it is making me giddy

  12. achallenger

    willis you cantravel thru time cant u? this shits getting creepy

    1. foamy

      His buffer runs about two months and a bit, yes? The U.S. Republican and Democratic conventions, and Mr. Trump’s public feud with the Khan family, were in late July, three months and change back. No time travel involved. :p

      1. Reltzik

        What are you talking about? Of course time travel’s required!

        (Into the future at a standard 1:1 rate.)

      2. MM

        Yeah, if he could make predictions that accurately, Robin wouldn’t have a phone to tweet on because her staff would finally have gotten it away from her.

      3. Chris Phoenix

        Wow*, it’s hard to believe that we’ve had that many months of Trump behaving this way… and he’s still in the running.

        * “Wow” replaces about five expletives that I edited out – heartfelt but unnecessary in a public comment.

        1. Idontcarenomore

          It’s not hard to believe…it is friggin’ incredible to believe.

        2. foamy

          For comparison’s sake, an entire Canadian federal election can occur in approximately the length of Willis’ buffer. :p

        3. Kamino Neko

          Hell, we’ve had entire governments which were shorter than the US election season. (Joe Clark’s blip in between Pierre Trudeau’s last two terms was less than 10 months – it was entirely possible for someone to be conceived on one election day, then born the next, frex. There’s several others in the same range, too.)

        4. Orion Fury

          Show off.

  13. (((Mkvenner)))

    I can’t wait till Thursday.

  14. Griffin

    Now that these two are hanging out in this verse I wanna go back and read their Shortpacked! love story.

    “Teach, you remind me of my lesbian.”

  15. BBCC

    Dammit, Robin, you ALMOST had a strip this universe where you didn’t do anything wrong.

    1. Doctor_Who

      Gotta kinda figure that’s how Trump’s handlers feel sometimes.

      “Six more minutes and he’ll have made it a day without doing anything horrible!”

      “Hey, who let Donald near a cellphone? He just tweeted that Rosa Parks was a four, max, and he would never march with anyone below an eight.”

      “…Motherfucker.”

      1. BBCC

        I feel so so bad for his PR team. Not too bad though – at some point, you gotta revoke the man child’s twitter privileges.

        1. Woobie

          I thought he was too old to figure out this social media smartphone stuff. Like Hillary and her Blackberry.

        2. BBCC

          He uses his twitter to be horrible regularly.

          And what’s wrong with blackberry? (Had one until 2 years ago).

        3. Idontcarenomore

          Doesn’t take a lot of brains to figure out how to use social media, it does take a lot of brains to keep that crap out of your private business, your email, your pc, your laptop, your auto…..

        4. Tomas

          How can you possibly feel bad for a team that’s trying to drag the country down into the toilet. That’s like mourning the contractors who died aboard the 2nd Death Star.

        5. BBCC

          Bad for them in the “That cannot be easy, and I sympathize that it has to suck” sense. Not in the “Did nothing wrong and still good people” sense.

        6. TheTJ

          Lots of folk do. They were just contractors building something for what IS the rightful governing body (Evil though it may be) and it’s not like they were all working on the weapon aspect of it.

          I’m sure there was one guy on DS2 whose only job was to build bed frames in the barracks. All he did day in and day out was put together thousands of Metal Pre-fab boxes to set mattresses into so the government workers would have a place to sleep once this space station (With a giant Death-Ray) was up and running.

          He had nothing to do with policy, or who the gun was aimed at, or any say in the matter at all. It’s entirely possible he didn’t even KNOW about the death ray part. We knew because we were given a privileged POV and learned everything we needed, but do you think the Empire went around with fliers for their super-secret project with all the details spelled out? No, in all likelihood they probably just got the cheapest and most efficient contractors to help put together all these nuts and bolts and kept all the Death Ray parts off limits and need-to-know for the civilians.

          So yeah, I’d say it sucks all those innocents died on the 2nd Death Star.

          …Although it’s not like Trumps PR team doesn’t know what they’re getting into, so it’s hardly equivalent to begin with.

        7. Reltzik

          You gotta kinda wonder how badly the galactic economy was hurt by the destruction of both Death Stars. I mean, those were majorly expensive projects that got blown up. Holy Recessions, Batman!

          …. and in a similar vein, if politics ever got fixed and campaign money vanished from the advertising industry…

        8. 3oranges

          The major effect to the economy would have been building a death star in the first place, taking money from other things and helping whatever industries build them. The object itself doesn’t really provide any economic benefit. So I think the only consequence of blowing it up, besides the loss of people, is that they were then wasteful enough to build another one.

        9. begbert2

          Arguably, blowing up the death stars was good for the economy, since the death star was clearly pretty bad for Alderaan’s economy and didn’t bode well for the economies of any other planets it was destined to visit.

        10. Fart Captor

          Stable governance is usually good for the economy. Thwarting the Rebellion once and for all would have been a boon to the Imperial economy.

          Supply lines and trade routes would stop coming under attack (apart from the occasional pirate), those rebelling planets not blown up would start contributing to the economy again, because rather than costly ground invasions our infrastructure-destroying bombing campaigns, they would have surrendered to the threat of their entire planet being destroyed

          The Alliance on the other hand, with it’s more traditional mode of space warfare, would have faced a much longer road to economic stability upon defeating the Empire

        11. Lailah

          ‘occasional pirate’ someone isn’t up on Star Wars. independent Spacefarers are like, 30% pirate by volume, and 40% smuggler.

          There’s seriously not a lot of honest trade. XD

          Anyway, completely miserable people constantly engaging in acts of resistance by actually destroying infrastructure is even worse than blowing up shipping.

        12. BBCC

          Correct me if I’m wrong – I’m pretty sure at least some of the Death Star in the old EU was built with slave labour. Any word on the new one?

          If so, yeah, that DOUBLY sucks for them because they REALLY had no say.

        13. Willoughby Chase

          Tread careful – I voted remain.

          I like the EU, and any comparison to the Third Reich I regard as silly and 6th Form politics, particularly as it’s currently more democratic than the UK.

        14. Wizard

          I didn’t know.there even was a vote to remain in the Expanded Universe.

        15. BBCC

          EU = Expanded Universe. Not European Union. I don’t think Europe exists in Star Wars. XD

        16. Willoughby Chase

          @wizard and @bbcc Thanks for the explanation.

          It’s a hot topic – amongst a few – on this side of the Atlantic.

        17. Showler

          It’s canon that the Empire exterminated all life on Geonosis to hide the construction of the Death Star there. I doubt contractors fared much better.

        18. Lailah

          You’re not generally the rightful governing body after a coup d’etat

        19. BBCC

          Keep in mind that by the time the empire formed, the Senate had already (legally) transferred all their practical powers to him. By the time he created the empire, the Senate was basically glorified consultants.

          Still a coup, but as a practical matter, there wasn’t much left to do.

        20. Lailah

          No, they had strengthened him, but they hadn’t transferred all or even most practical power, and had the formal ability to block what he did; they chose not to exercise many of his measures. If they had, he wouldn’t have needed a coup.

        21. BBCC

          Interesting, because the novelization for Episode 3 said that one of the measures the Senate passed rendered the Senate, effectively, toothless, which is why Palpatine didn’t need to try very hard to turn it into an empire.

        22. Vulcanodon

          You are exactly right. For the United States’ first death-ray project (code-named Manhattan) the contractors who built the facilities did NOT know what they were working on. Even machinists making bomb parts did not know; Richard Feynman had to advocate for them to receive safety training for working with U-235 after he discovered some of them had made Zippo lighter flints out of the stuff. They weren’t allowed to know what that strange warm pyrophoric metal was.

        23. Historyman68

          This far and nobody’s quoted Clerks yet? I feel old.

      2. Willoughby Chase

        Trump’s aides have “wrested control” of his twitter account from him.

        So presumably they’ve changed his password.

        1. Reltzik

          Or relocated the post-it on which his password was written.

        2. thejeff

          Yeah, as of the last week or two. Probably has a lot to do with the narrowing gap. One more twitter explosion on his part could have negated all the negatives of the FBI leaks.

    2. BBCC

      Okay, fine, an archive crawl shows there’s a few strips where she hasn’t been terrible. Fine, Robin, you win this round!

      …..Which still makes her better than Drumpf, so, yay, Robin?

      Who am I kidding, a trained piglet would probably make a better President than Trump.

      1. Chaucer59

        You mean—he’s NOT a trained piglet?

        1. BBCC

          Nope, he’s the Racist Pumpkin.

        2. Reltzik

          Clearly not trained.

        3. Reltzik

          Also, he doesn’t have piglet’s adorable stutter.

        4. Idontcarenomore

          Wonder about some of the reports..particularly from “The Hill” website that has stated that he has been to Russia several times. in meetings with Putin, and Putin may have ties on him.

          All I know is, even without that crap, how can a man who has ADMITTED on tv that he has assaulted women, never paid taxes (because the govt. is too stupid to know what to do with the money anyway), stated that ‘I could shoot someone on the main street and I would still win the election”, and of course, any other number of choice items….still be running for the highest office in the land.
          Wonders never cease do they?
          Remember this: we get the govt. we vote for: and it starts with the local offices in our states.

  16. Just Me

    Robin’s fine, as long as she doesn’t run for President.

  17. Stephen R. Bierce

    The one song that comes into my head is the one I don’t want to play.

    1. Idontcarenomore

      “We’re on the Eve of Destruction”?

  18. Kay

    I…

    Robin….

    Plz stop being Trump. ;;

    1. butts

      To our knowledge, Robin has never sexually assaulted anybody.

      1. Jay Eff

        She also wouldn’t eat a Trump taco bowl to prove she “loves Hispanics.”

        1. BBCC

          Robin is Latina, so she probably wouldn’t need to do that anyways.

        2. Willoughby Chase

          Leslie wants to eat a Latina taco bowl …

      2. Joe Archer

        much to Leslie’s regret right now?

        1. BBCC

          I….would hope Leslie doesn’t regret not being sexually assaulted by Robin.

      3. Reltzik

        …. in this universe.

  19. Bagge

    Panel 5 has already played out in Leslie’s dreams about 500 times.
    (“Me… No, you must have confused me for Jessica. A very common name.”)

  20. lia47

    jeez these strips continued adorableness really hinges on what happens two days from… wait. tomorrow. fuck.

  21. Saaaam

    Poor Leslie, loving a female trump

  22. Shiro

    “…before you totally kill my crush on you!!” Poor Les.

    1. Fart Captor

      I’m going to go into denial and believe that she’s said something thoughtless and insensitive rather than deliberately awful like what Trump said about the Khans.

      Leslie can still fix her!

  23. Jay Eff

    ROBIN: “What do ya mean I ain’t got no tact? I’ll kick your ass!!”

    1. Joe Archer

      #DeSantoNoTactYourAss

      1. Fart Captor

        #DeSantoHugeTactsOfLand

        1. Orion Fury

          It’s only a matter of perspective because of the horizon point is lower for her.
          #DeSantoNotSoGreatPlains

    2. Reltzik

      #DeSantoTactIcs

      1. Joe Archer

        That tag is too short for one of Robins’

        1. Reltzik

          Yup, it’s one of Manley’s.

  24. MimsyWhimsy

    I love that this strip (written weeks in advance) was posted within hours of the news that Donald Trump’s aides have taken away his Twitter account in order to stop him from causing more scandals on social media. Clearly Willis predicted the future.

  25. DinaWho

    Well, we know when this strip was drawn.

  26. DarkoNeko

    Oh, USA went back to winter time finally. Back to 6AM updates !

  27. Peny

    Oh good this is today’s comic; that’s a relief because I had a weird dream last night where the comic was that Leslie handed out a quiz (even though like Robin was in the room about to guest-speak) and Walky decided to fail it so he could spend all of the quiz time working on a doodled love letter to Robin which included a hot doodle of his naked body but then Leslie and Dorothy saw that and got pissed at him and Robin saw it and got disgusted and everyone became so pissed at each other that they decided to spend 3 days straight (no breaks) doing nothing but college studying to prove how better they were than everyone else (which I guess makes minimal sense to Dorothy and Walky if this comic was written by a dumbass) (also a stereotypical fat mayor and Judy Hopps from Zootopia were there for some reason) and because they decided to study with no breaks for 3 days straight they became super smart and the room they were in became like a separate university altogether but everyone collapsed (and I think like 2 people died, I know the fat mayor was one of them) from exhaustion and also the comic was taking too long to draw so Willis decided to give up on his computer and just sketch it halfway through.

    1. OldGranddad114

      you should probably lay off the cough syrup, dog

      1. Idontcarenomore

        Roflmao

      2. Kamino Neko

        Lay off all dogs. It’s not nice to consume pets.

    2. Thursday Violist

      That reminds me of some dreams I used to have sometimes. Even though they were pretty nonsense, I was so convinced that they had actually happened.

      One time: I went to class; one of my classmates was a stick figure; the other was a fish swimming around in air. I said “hi” to them like normal, then class proceeded as planned.

      1. Peny

        Yeah, I’ve had a few dreams about a big project that was due and I didn’t finish it, then I’d wake up and remember that I didn’t do that project and it was due today. After panicking for a few minutes, I’d finally realize I never had any project in the first place.

        I used to not have too many dreams anymore, but they’re started up again and they’re always weird. Sometimes I wonder if someone’s drugging me in my sleep…

    3. Tenn

      I think I read a Harry Potter fanfic like that once…

  28. Architex

    I hope the next generation of women will know to use ‘whomever.’ Jeez, Dorothy.

    1. Jason

      Nah, that’s not a direct object, that’s a … predicative nominative? I forget the term. Nominative complement? It’s different cuz it’s a be-verb.

  29. zathael

    The alt text almost killed me I laughed so hard.

  30. Kernanator

    Can’t imagine what this was based on. Nope, not at all. As if anyone in politics would ever act like this, hahaha…ha…ah…

    *insert attempt to simultaneously sigh and sob here*

  31. Leorale

    Everyone please go vote, okay?

    1. Fart Captor

      Vote as hard as you can

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Been there, did that, forgot the sticker was in my pocket and laundered it.

    3. Jason

      I think that if someone is reading DoA and the comments, they’re the kind of person who probably was going to vote anyway.
      …I hope a LOT of people in America voted. Trump has a vocal, insane, hate-fueled small minority. But you can be sure they’re going to vote- and if people who AREN’T in that crazy group don’t, well…

      Just… don’t be like the UK, America. Please. Be better than us in this.

  32. Tomas

    Ah, the good ole days, when we thought that publicly slandering gold-star parents would be the worst thing a presidential contender could do.

    Such bittersweet nostalgia; such an innocent time.

  33. BBCC

    Soooooooo, I guess you could say tiny hands are Robin’s only weakness? 😉

    /shot

    1. Pl0x

      Hahahaha.

      I don’t like the connection between Garnet and Trump though. 🙁

      1. NoHeart6265

        Hey, she could have moment of weakness and rescind on the whole “not using gem powers against humans” thing

      2. BBCC

        Yeah, the difference here is Robin is someone we WANT defeated.

        On the plus side, Robin is nowhere near as bad Trump just by virtue of not having committed sexual assault or said anything outright racist or homophobic/transphobic that we’ve seen, and she seemed unnerved by the revelation she didn’t pay her interns. Thankfully.

  34. Fart Captor

    OH MY GOD these two are adorable. Especially Leslie in the last panel.

    1. Bagge

      Get a room, you two 🙂

      1. Emperor Norton II

        You wish.

  35. Reltzik

    …. someone remind me how we’re supposed to satirize politics in the Age of Trump?

    1. SgtWadeyWilson

      I wanna say: “With a bottle of whiskey in hand,” and I don’t even drink.

      1. OldGranddad114

        You can always stick a rag in that whiskey and grab a lighter, man. Or give me the whiskey. Whichever.

        1. inqntrol

          Or even better:grab the bottle, drink from it, keep a bit of the whiskey in your mouth, grab a torch and spit on it. Bam! Fire breathing! Now you can pretend to be a dragon.

        2. Reltzik

          Cool in movies. Sounds like a good way to accidentally set yourself on fire in practice.

        3. inqntrol

          You know what they say, no pain, no gain.

        4. SgtWadeyWilson

          Even cooler in person. The nearest Renaissance Festival usually has a fire manipulator, and watching him breathe fire never gets old, especially when he teams up with the acrobat to do the really crazy stuff.

        5. Reltzik

          Sure. But if you do it yourself, expect to get burnt.

        6. ety

          That’s really not the best way to accomplish the fire breath trick for various reasons… the alcohol content being one of the more important ones. You need to be able to tightly purse your lips in order to spray a fine mist, if you want the desired effect, and numb lips really don’t help with that.

          There’s also really just not that much alcohol in it when it comes to providing fuel for fire (though it should be enough for that in particular, just not really for other things).

      2. takashid

        i don’t either and at this point I’m still like “pass me the bottle”

    2. Idontcarenomore

      No need to. Just watch a Trump speech.

    3. Kamino Neko

      You can’t. We are in the post-satire age.

      1. Deanatay

        Is that anything like the ‘post-truth’ age?

  36. nobodybasically

    It’s terrifying how Trump has managed to do so much worse since Willis wrote this satire. The buffer is starting to damage me emotionally. o_o

    1. OldGranddad114

      At least we get to keep that horse fucking ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTmI-P_cSbQ ) dumb shit out of office Tuesday?

      1. Orion Fury

        I’m scared to click thru…

  37. Kate

    I’m certain that the factually inaccurate pro-trump ads I am seeing while reading this weekend’s DoA are just because those /haunt/ me ever since moving to Ohio, but it is still /so weird/ seeing them here.

    1. BBCC

      It could also be similar to the groups with anti-gay agendas wanting to host ads here – so that they’re spending money somewhere that its basically pointless and a waste of money.

    2. Willoughby Chase

      I’m in the UK and I’m seeing adverts for GCHQ – the UK’s equivalent of the NSA and it’s partner in spookery most of the time.

      1. fogel

        What are they advertising, jobs? Or PSAS about what they do? OR, offering their services to the public at reasonable rates, financing available?

  38. Charles Phipps

    I hope Leslie gets Robin elected somehow. Just for the horror value.

    1. Pl0x

      She voted for the opponent though – Jake Manley.

    2. Pl0x

      Either way, she’s already the incumbent.

    3. Deanatay

      Re-elected, remember – she’s been elected before, and is the current incumbent. In this way, she differs from Trump.

      1. Deanatay

        D’ohh, ninja’d

  39. BenRG

    Dealing with Robin is a bit like dealing with an irresponsible and highly-excitable teenager. In other words, it’s something Leslie should be good at!

    Maybe it’s me but a rally with thousands of people there and she remembers Leslie? Could be significant.

  40. Rikunda

    Oh how Trump has changed.

  41. Heather

    Maaaan. I mean I do pity Leslie with a side of ‘you can do better lady!’ in my head but the more Robin is on screen as it were the more I pity Roz. She’s related to /this/. This is what means people expect her to toe the party line. And she’s awful. If anything some could argue she’s morally obliged to ruin her political career. (Unless her main opponent is somehow even worse but… how?!)

    I mean being related to any politician is sometimes terrible but it does make me wonder: what if Trump has a kid/grandkid some day who absolutely despises his policies? If one of his kids finally sees the light? Who begins to see how awful he is? What will they do?

    1. Idontcarenomore

      His daughter Ivana has pulled an ad this week endorsing him because it is connected with her own private business, and she said she thought it best to keep them separate.
      This is the daughter that until now has endorsed him publicly.

      1. Idontcarenomore

        Sorry I think it is spelled Ivanka? no edit.

        1. jeffepp

          Ivana was her mother. So, not a big gaff.

    2. JBento

      Hasn’t one of Trump’s sons distanced himself from the awfulness a long time ago? I think I read something about it in passing a couple of months ago.

  42. JessWitt

    Please, pretty please give Robin some redemption in future strips.

    1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Redeem Robin! Win valuable prizes!

  43. Eldritch Gentleman

    I stand by what I said in the last strip. Leslie really needs to upgrade her taste in women…

  44. KSClaw

    Why do I feel like I could distract her further by throwing something shiny?

  45. Bluewind

    Random Side Note
    (sorry if I come off sounding like an advertisement but I thought this might help some people and tried very hard to keep neutral)

    For those of you in the US who didn’t vote early or who still are having trouble deciding on who to vote for for the various positions that the government currently has available, I have a great website to help you figure out which candidates come closest to your beliefs. It has a lot of interesting statistics so you not only see how much you agree with someone’s stated opinions, but what exactly you agree with them on, how much you agree with them on the question, and how others voted on the question. You can also share it with friends so you can compare their stats with your own stats using a tool which is a great way to open up a dialogue if you’re the type. A zip code gives you local elections and a list of issues on your ballot. How accurate it is depends on rather you’re willing to keep hitting more so you can see and answer most of the questions (each has a button you can press to find out more about like what an estate tax is and the ability to look at options outside of yes or no answers).

    https://www.isidewith.com/political-quiz

    1. Bluewind

      That being said, if you do get Trump as the candidate you most agree with, please consider voting for someone else for president. It’s your right as a citizen of the United States to vote how you see fit, but the site can only go by his current stared opinions which tend to change.

      1. thomas wrobel

        Also worth looking at his running mate Pence – who while less outwardly “crazy” has some truly horrible things he has supported.

        Just some of Mike Pence Policys;

        Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation. (Nov 2007)
        Voted YES on Constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman. (Jul 2006)
        Voted YES on making the PATRIOT Act permanent. (Dec 2005)
        Voted YES on Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage. (Sep 2004)
        Voted NO on enforcing against anti-gay hate crimes. (Apr 2009)

        http://www.ontheissues.org/Mike_Pence.htm

        I dont think people are paying enough attention given Pence is likely going to be doing more actual politics then Trump.

        1. BBCC

          He also wants to replace federal funding for AIDS research with reparative therapy.

        2. Li

          AKA, conversion “”therapy””, programs that sometimes use actual electrodes on people’s genitals in an attempt to “turn” them straight.

        3. BBCC

          Also lots of them involve “Corrective” rape.

        4. Bluewind

          Oh yes. I’m aware. And it scares the hell out of me. It’s just that I would rather people take the survey and maybe consider a third party than go on a rant about Trump and Pence.

          Personally, I think our system needs an overhaul. We need to get rid of the electoral college which causes some people’s votes to be worth more than others depending on the state they live in and just have an election based on numbers.

          Then there is how we vote which basically forces people to vote between one of two people because third parties have such a hard time getting the votes to compete and their candidates often get little to no exposure in the news or debates. In this election, there are many people who prefer a third party candidate over Clinton or Trump, but feel forced to vote Republican or Democrat. I propose that the vote itself should have the ability to pick your main and secondary candidate when voting. Once the votes are tallied, the two with the highest percentage of main votes will move on. Everyone who did not vote for one of the two winners of the main vote then has their secondary vote from their ballot counted and added to the total numbers of the two winners of the main vote (if applicable). The winner is the one with the most total votes. A system like that would make people less afraid to vote for the candidate they side with the most instead of settling automatically for one of the two most popular. What do yall think?

        5. Fart Captor

          Ranked voting would fix a lot of this nonsense.

        6. Bluewind

          Oh and the voting season itself! Oh my god over 500 days of bullshit is too damn long! Let’s have 1 month of campaigning for the primary and 2 months of campaigning for the main event maximum. It’s still a long time but at least it’s more reasonable than over a year and a half. And while we’re at it, let’s add a donation cap on donation per person (that’s right I said per PERSON. I don’t think corporations should be allowed a say in our elections) and total per candidate. I’d rather you not spend the gross of some countries on ads and crap we are all tired of seeing at this point. And hey, let’s cap total airtime allowed for commercials too because it’s currently freaking ridiculous.

        7. BBCC

          I think the us system is very complicated. It’s a lot easier around here – vote for your party and the leader of the party with the most votes wins the PM-ship. Then again, we have 4-5 plausible parties (well, more like 3 plausible ones and two semi-plausible ones);

        8. JBento

          @BBCC: Over here, we go one better. The leader of the party with the most votes gets invited by the President for PM-ship (technically, the President doesn’t have to invite the most voted party, but I don’t think they ever did otherwise). Since we have multiple parties (2 with a large enough base to be viable as a primary government party, 3 more with a large enough base to be able to strike deals to viabilise the government), things get extra fun.

          For instance, last election, the most voted party (a coalition of the two biggest right-wing parties) couldn’t get absolute majority, and since they’re all assholes, when they formed the government, they promptly got blocked on, well, everything. So THAT got disbanded, and the President invited the leader of the 2nd most voted party, because he cut a deal with two left parties to viabilise his government. As a result, our government currently is (for the first time) a centre-left party being held in check by two left parties, because they can pull the rug at anytime the centre-left starts getting too assholish. Multi-party systems are the best systems (for bonus points, this is much to the chagrin of the previous spanish PM and german financial institutions – suck it, assholes).

        9. BBCC

          Yeah, we’ve gotten a few coalitions before here as well. Sounds neat!

        10. Lailah

          A third party is a waste of your motherfucking vote in the states, if it’s not a congressional seat. Your presidential vote is totally fucking irrelevant when it goes to a third party presidential candidate.

          We do need a multiparty system. It /does/ have the side effect of meaning we’ll have a party that is actually BASED on its xenophobia, but I think that’s a worthwhile trade, given that we’d have an easier time representing views in general, and by all appearances, most aren’t that horrible rn.

          But in the system we actually h ave, a third party vote for the presidency is a waste. And bluntly, I don’t see a way to change that without revolution. The rules are written such that you need margins that are basically impossible with an informed electorate (Cynically, small wonder given that a bunch of white landowning men who wrote the system to benefit them put it that way. Though in fairness, even I would suspect ignorance due to a lack of data over outright malfeasance. Though the actual intent was that the senate would pick the president, so maybe that’s unfair, and they were just ignorant on the exact ways to properly protect their majority…)

          Even putting that aside, Stein is terrible too, and the third parties literally should not promote their own presidential candidates. Why? Because they’re wasted votes /and/ wasted money. The system /is/ written to exclude them, but when you do that shit, you’re playing into it. Support a presidential candidate who can win, but put your money into the congress and senate – local seats too (I had mistakenly, in my youth, thought the Greens did a better job of this than they actually do.)

          The parties /have/ changed within the system. You /could/ try to supplant one. But the only plausible way is the long game (And I’ll concede I think it’s a long shot – you might, however, influence the development of the other parties more towards your position)

        11. BBCC

          @ Lailah – I believe Bluewind meant to vote third party if you are considering Trump/Pence. AKA split the vote and keep Trump out.

          It is true though that third party votes are unlikely to get any influence without either a revolution or a serious SERIOUS series of reforms.

        12. Bluewind

          Nope. What I meant was exactly what I said. If you get Trump on the survey, consider an alternative because it’s been shown that he changes his mind often and fact check sites site him as lying much more than any other candidate for president who have been checked. He’s really the equivalent of a false positive because odds are what someone might agree with now will most likely change. I’m not judging anybody on their beliefs (I’m an atheist polysexual democrat living in a bible belt red state in a small town full of Trump signs and a sister who is afraid of gay people so if I started I think I would die) or trying to split the vote, but I do think that if enough people vote third party it could cause a lot of changes here and maybe they could gain on their ability to be viewed as a legitimate option. If you don’t like Hillary Clinton, there are other parties out there with a candidate you might align better with other than her or Trump. And I don’t think our voting format would need a revolution to change, just enough people deciding it’s bullshit.

        13. Lailah

          “enough people have to think it’s bullshit”

          Yes: 66%. That’s not happening with a remotely educated electorate. Like, the only reason Slavery was constitutionally barred as ‘early’ (YES I KNOW) as it was is that close to half the country literally didn’t get a vote (Punitive Reconstruction being what it was. Not exactly /mad/ here, but it /is/ true.) It took 200 years to get 66% of all states to think /congresscritters picking their own pay/ was bullshit. When the rules were written, they were written without an awareness of their effects, in many ways. The idea was it shouldn’t be that common, but /this/? It’s considerably less than 1 a decade, and the original copy is a compromise document to start with that was supposed to be capable of evolving.

          And you know, now it’s taken on pseudo-religious status as holy writ from on high. Thus making it even harder to amend the constitution, much LESS to change the basic system of voting entirely. Like, I hope it happens, but acting like it’s remotely easy or likely just tells me you don’t understand the gravitas of the problem.

          Like, I agree that Proportionate or Rating systems are easily and handily superior, but /Britain/ went back from a proportionate system to FPTP.

        14. Bluewind

          Oh I don’t think it will be easy. Not at all. It will take time and boat loads of public education, but I don’t think it would take an outright revolution.

    2. Bluewind

      Do you guys think I should post this on the next comic as soon as it pops up? Some people might miss this one since I wasn’t able to post until hours after the comic was published.

      1. JBento

        Honestly? If your goal is to shift people’s votes to one candidate or another, I don’t think you need to bother. Unlike elections that aren’t a veritable shitshow, this one isn’t about people who aren’t sure who to vote for. Anyone that would consider voting for Trump is never going to vote Clinton. I feel this election is a matter of mobilisation – the sides have been decided pretty much from the start, it’s just a matter of how many from each actually bother to show up.

        1. Bluewind

          Actually, there are a lot more things to vote for than just who will be president. A lot of offices need to be filled. The site is actually really good at pointing you towards candidates in a lot of positions that match your views. A lot of people forget that we vote for more than who will be president.

  46. Sam

    Yup, that is Robin alright. Hyperactive, rash, impulsive, selfish, pretty much no attention span. Some people are saying she is worse than Shortpacked but those are all traits she had in SP – she hurt Leslie in SP a few times because of these exact traits as well. SP was just more comedic because dead people came back to life in it and stuff which often counterbalanced Robin’s natural awful behaviour and she eventually started to grow out of some of it.

    1. thejeff

      Yeah, the personality is about the same – at least before she grew out of it in SP!, but the politics are worse.

    2. Dana

      Appearances aside, she’s got to be somewhat more serious in this universe. It’s more realistic here, and it strains credulity that even Trump could get away with everything she did in the Walkyverse. I mean, Trump strains credulity with everything he does, but that’s something else.

  47. BenRG

    Suddenly, I’m wondering if Robin’s glasses are an affectation; another pretence to make her look ‘Congressional’. I also wonder if Leslie’s ultimate destiny is to be Robin’s brain-to-world filter to stop the avoidable own goals and other gaffes.

    1. Heather

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/impressions/#comments

      Right on the money.

      1. Heather

        Wait I misread your comment completely in my eagerness to link up evidence, sorry about that.

    2. Vulcanodon

      You can always tell when a politician is wearing ‘smart glasses’ (Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, to name two). Do an image search on them, and look at pictures with a three-quarter view showing their cheek line through the lenses. If there is an actual prescription, the line will distort. If the line is the same with or without the lenses, the glasses are fake.

    3. Emperor Norton II

      You think Leslie will take control of Robin’s twitter account?

  48. Emily

    This whole debacle is so gross. Make better choices Leslie you’re a grown ass woman not a teenager with her first crush.

    1. Commodore Jeep-Eep

      As you said – moral backbone of a sponge.

  49. jeffepp

    Joe and Joyce (I’ll just call them JoJoy, or JoyJo?) are now doing lovey-dovey texts now. But, that will change when the lesbians start wraslin’.

    1. Spencer

      JoJo.

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Well of course. Joe isn’t going to waste time texting with live lesbian wrestling right there in front of him.

  50. Kirbilius Clausius

    Is Robin not a combat vet herself in this universe? The minimum age for a congressperson is more than enough time for a tour in the military. I’d find it hilarious if she was the fastest person on Seal Team 3 or 4 and then didn’t sign up again because she wanted a low responsibility job, like retail or Congress.

    1. Fart Captor

      We know very little about her so far. Given the sort of politician she’s a parody of, actually serving in the military rather than simply fetishizing it would break the mould

  51. JBento

    You hear that sound? That’s Leslie’s credibility getting flushed down the drain.

    USAmericans: tomorrow you vote. Hopefully, not for Trump. Remember, not voting means you can’t call bullshit on the government. And when you get local elections, then Vote 2: Vote Harder.

    1. Joe Archer

      Regarding the vote – this G+ post pretty much sums it up:
      https://plus.google.com/+BrendanMcMullan/posts/9yGC2wpSXoe

  52. Lumpy Frogsnuggler

    I hate to say it, but over the course of this arc I’ve lost a lot of respect for Leslie.
    She’s knowledgeable enough to understand how much Robin’s policies hurt her community and her students, but she decided to ignore all that because she has a crush on a sleazy bigot.

    I thought you were better than this Ms. Bean. I really, really did.

    1. Maveric1984

      Love is blind and all that jazz.

      Or in this case, lust.

      1. Sam

        And it is backed up by scientific research that it is too – obviously only to a certain degree but that certain degree can cover a lot, your brain will create excuses and alter your interpretations of actions and blind you to flaws to a rather extreme extent when it is allowed to choose based on crushes.

        It is why some people are able to be lovey-dovey, get married and then completely fall apart before even a year has passed – brain blinds, then it stops tricking you. Then what were you thinking says person X to themselves.

    2. Commodore Jeep-Eep

      White established gayz strike again. They’ll always throw everyone less pale and rich and behind LG under the bus and then act martyred when they get called on it.

      1. JBento

        LG?

        1. Fart Captor

          From the LGBTQIAA acronym. The first two letters tend to get the most attention

        2. JBento

          Oooooh, now I get it – “behind LG” meaning the BTQIAA part.

          Thanks.

      2. Lailah

        Not always, but far too god damned often.

  53. Some1

    guys I think I’ve figured out who Dumbing of Age will proceed

    Okay…

    so somehow they will capture Mary, who will reveal that Bloomington has a primed nuke hidden somewhere in it, forcing them to form an alliance with her. Through this Mary will perform a heel face turn, and will do things such as…learn to respect Leslie, visit Carla’s place of birth, and better understand Becky and Dina’s relationship. Eventually, Mary’s pastor will call her over video phone and reveal that he was the one who planted the bomb. Mary will end up telling him to fuck off. Later, after Joyce has stopped the bomb, Ruth will come back and refuse to share a home with Mary. Despite Mary trying to make things better. Eventually a group of idiotic pastor boys will show up, with the intention of bringing home Toe Dad. Mary will be scared and assume they are after her. Ruth will flip over there car, and mend her and Mary’s relationship. They will later decide that they have to get rid of the pastor boys, ending with Joyce floating down a river with the craziest one.

    Leslie will sing a song about how she can’t move on from Robin.

  54. Zaidyer

    Much like with Jon Stewart, I feel Shortpacked bowed out a little too early. Remember that? Remember when we all thought it was gonna be business as usual from now on, instead of what we actually got? “We’ve seen it all,” we said to ourselves. “There’s nowhere left to go with this. Now rest our heroes.”
    Since then we’ve learned that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. And this, I think, is the reason Robin’s corner of Shortpacked is bleeding over into this comic. Where things have consequences. Where this brand of rhetoric is able to carelessly stoke the flames hatred that burn in men like Ross MacIntyre. Where it can be not just morbidly silly, but also horrifying.
    And I think Willis’s own crushing realization that “It was never about being a good person, because this is what my family wants” will come into play soon enough. Which means Joyce and Becky are in for a journey down a long, dark road. And Leslie, well… she’ll have to decide for herself whether staring into the abyss is worth a starry-eyed crush.

  55. Ashley Lightheart

    Getting a bit touchy now aren’t we~?

    1. Fart Captor

      “NOT TOUCHY ENOUG- Wait, no! Still in class!”

      1. Orion Fury

        NOT ENOUGH CLASS DISMISSAL!

  56. Emperor Norton II

    By the way (and no relation to this particular strip), something good might come soon…

    1. Emperor Norton II

      For a certain value of “good”, that is.

    2. JBento

      Sarah?

  57. Roger Sterling

    Tiny hands? How could that possibly be releva-

    …oooooh

    seriously Robin’s a Trump analogue? I missed that?

    1. Emperor Norton II

      In Shortpacked, she started out as a Sarah Palin parody.

      In DoA, she’s currently a slightly more competent and likable Trump.

      But then again, naked mole rats are more competent and likable than Trump. Although most of them refuse to say “Fo’rizzle”, though. They are a bit boring that way.

      1. Orion Fury

        Faz is more competent that Trump, and he has the graphs to prove it.

    2. Amazi-Stool

      Well, you obviously missed #makedistrictninegreatagain!
      (“They’re also making fun of you for using a nineteen-character hashtag”).

  58. Emperor Norton II

    So, today’s comic, written three months ago, shows Leslie trying to stop Robin from making horrible tweets.

    This happens two days after The Toupéed One’s staff stopped him from making horrible tweets.

    Willis, do you have the power to look into the future or something?

    1. BBCC

      No, see, if this was accurate, Trump’s PR team would have taken away his twitter back in October, as Leslie is trying to do here.

      1. Emperor Norton II

        I think it’s safe to say that this is a case of reality just being plain wrong.

    2. Orion Fury

      I think this comic was written around the same time as the DNC, when Trump had made bigoted statements about the mother of a fallen soldier.

  59. chris73

    I’ve always wanted to visit the USA, its my number one overseas destination to visit but for the life of me I cannot understand how a country like the USA with all of its population and resources can come up with Clinton and Trump as the nominees…

    1. JBento

      From what I understand, they got Clinton because she’s the favourite of the Democratic Party leadership, and they got Trump because that’s the way the Republican Party has been heading in the past few years – the rise of the Tea Party and Palin as a VP candidate were warnings that nobody paid heed to.

      1. thejeff

        They got Clinton because she’s popular with Democrats in general. She did have massive support with the leadership, because she’s been working for that for a decade or more. She had organization and support at all levels though.
        Sanders mostly drew his support from outside the party – generally people to the left of the party, at least on economic & foreign policy issues. Minorities strongly supported Clinton though.

        As for Trump, I’m not sure I’d say no one paid heed to the warnings: More that they saw them and tried to use them, winding up like the man riding the tiger, who’s doing great but can’t get off. It’s the culmination of the old Southern Strategy (and the follow-up co-opting of the Religious Right.) Promise them hate and they won’t care about your actual policies, but now the crazies have taken over the asylum and without them there isn’t enough left of the party to win anything.

    2. Emperor Norton II

      Clinton is, if nothing else, very competent at what she does. She’s been fighting for her validation since she started law school, and is tough as hell. And she knows how to play the system to her advantage better than practically anyone. True, that doesn’t sound like great praise, but there are hardly anyone in the system who doesn’t play that game.

      Plus, there are certainly worse political views out there. Some of the primary debates between her and Sanders were described at the two of them agreeing too damn much to make it worth watching.

      As for Trump… Yeah, you got me on that one.

      1. JBento

        See, I used to think that about Clinton, but this campaign has proven that wrong. It has been blunder after blunder from someone that I thought to be politically competent, even if I didn’t like what those politics actually were. The Democratic Party best already be looking for someone to put up 4 years from now, because the only reason this year has an actual electoral race is because neither party put up LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE.

        1. Emperor Norton II

          Which exact blunders are we talking about?

          The e-mail “scandal”? I mean, as of today, that has pretty much officially been put dead by none other than Mr. Blunder-man himself, James Comey, and he wasn’t part of her campaign.

          True, her handling of it wasn’t great; but that was probably because it involves a fair bit of not really understanding the political implications of what was, to her, technological choices based on convenience.

          Apart from that… I don’t really remember anything particularly blunder-ish that she’s done.

        2. JBento

          Here’s a list, off the top of my head:

          1) “Mrs. Clinton, what are your plans for the economy?” “Oh, I’ll put my husband on that, he’s the one that understands that stuff.” This was, obviously, in jest (I dearly, dearly hope) but this is terrible: the economy is the ONE issue that everyone agrees on the right non-answer.

          2) When she was endorsed in person by a… high-profile feminist whose name I can’t recall (I have Warren stuck in my head for some reason, because that’s obviously the wrong answer), the endorsement was literally “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women .” Hm. Any actual qualifications you want to mention besides “she has a vagina, and so do you”? No? Well, that wasn’t too b- “and all those girls voting for Sanders are just following the boys.” DAMN IT! Welp, let’s hope if she wins the primaries, she doesn’t need the people she just alienated (hey, turns out she really, really does). Did her team not go over the speeches of her endorsers at the rally? Because that’s campaigning 101.

          3) The FBI’s announcement that they wouldn’t prosecute her (the first time) was ridiculously bad. I wish I could find it, because it’s filled with words that I very much do not want associated with a country’s leadership, let alone one with access to nuclear weaponry. Bonus points for advising against prosecution because even though what she did was illegal, they couldn’t find any evidence of criminal intent (try running someone over with a car while DUIing and see how far “but I didn’t mean to” gets you). And this could all have been avoided if she hadn’t decided that carrying two blackberries instead of one was too much trouble.

          4) Icing on the cake: after spending the entire fucking primaries being accused of favoritism by the democratic leaderships in detriment of Sanders, when emails leaked out showing that, if said favoritism didn’t happen, it was at least considered, what does she do to the woman who sent those emails? Distance herself? Of course not, that would have been a non-idiotic move – she offers her a position in her campaign staff.

          I swear I spent like half of this campaign wondering if there was a competition between her and Trump about who could throw the election harder.

        3. Lailah

          Sanders did sort of suck at women in comparison. He had the right policies, but he didn’t really think of them as priorities. This is fucking important when many states are launching pretty direct attacks on our rights. It’s pretty standard of honkie men to say “well, those laws aren’t enforceable” while completely ignoring that they totally are de facto even if they aren’t de jure.

          As far as point 3:
          AYFKM!? Criminal intent is a massive part of a crime. “Try saying that with a DUI”. Sure, that’s easy. *It is criminal to intend to drink, and then drive*. For fuck’s sake.

          As far as 4: OF COURSE SHE WAS THE FAVORITE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. Bernie was a fucking Johnny-come-lately who explicitly was only in the party long enough to try to get a presidential candidacy. I’m a bit bummed he left, because that pressure on whoever’s next would carry more force if he /wasn’t/ only in the party to get a nomination. None of those leaks show that anything really came of that favoritism.

          Your ‘wondering’ tells me you really don’t care about policy. You’re only concerned with gaffes. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!?

        4. JBento

          I’m saying that while those things don’t affect her actual competence, they do affect her IMAGE, which is the what actually matters in an election. And Clinton has enough experience with elections (she was pretty involved in her husband’s two winning ones) to avoid those fuck-ups.

        5. Lailah

          ….Then why even bring up Comey? She literally doesn’t have control over that. He’s partisan /against/ her. Of course he worded it badly for her.

        6. Emperor Norton II

          1 and 2) Honestly don’t remember these things. Guess they got lost in lots of other issues. 2) does sound bad, but 1) does sound, like you say, a joke. I’d need more context before deciding how inappropriate that was.

          3) OK, I’ll just link to this one:
          https://medium.com/the-curious-civilian/admit-it-the-clinton-email-controversy-bothers-you-yet-you-dont-actually-know-what-the-clinton-511dc1659eda#.hb4xoak14
          Yeah, she’s not good with technology. Which also pretty much describes pretty much all career politicians; because they have no intrinsic interest in it. They want what works without a fuzz, and couldn’t care less how it works.

          And much of it could also been avoided if it hadn’t been been blown waaaaaay out of fucking proportion. Which was not her campaign’s doing. That prize goes to… Well, practically everybody else.

          4) So in other words, someone in the party is clearly in favour of her… And she offers that person to be on her campaign staff. Strangely enough, I’d also choose someone who I sincerely thought would do a good job on my behalf.

        7. thejeff

          For 4) Actually as I understand it, she didn’t give DWS a real job. She gave her an honorary position that pretty much amounts to “here’s a fancy hat and title. Go sit over there and stay out of the way.”

          More generally: She ran a damn good campaign. The convention was a wonderful contrast to Trump’s disaster. She brilliantly owned him in the debates – setting him up and pushing him to overreact. Maybe not a hard thing to do, but she was controlling the whole performance from the start.
          For someone who’s not a natural public speaker – like her husband or even Obama, she’s done very well.

          She’s been handicapped by misogyny, by 30 years of propaganda aimed at smearing her and by the unprecedented hacking of her campaign – that’s going to be a reality from now on and it’s going to change things. Politics is dirty business and one campaign getting its dirty laundry aired while the other keeps theirs secret is going to be crippling. Honestly, from what little I know of political campaigning, I’m kind of amazed how clean the Clinton campaign was – partly because Sanders wasn’t a serious threat so they didn’t have to do or even really consider anything too nasty.
          Can you imagine what the internal workings of the Trump campaign would look like, if all their internal correspondence got released? The stuff they talked about but decided was too toxic to use?

    3. BBCC

      Clinton is one of the most qualified candidates they’ve had in decades, and her views line up with Sanders a vast majority of the time. If you read her policies, they actually aren’t that bad. Selling her and Trump as in any way equal – morals or politics wise – is doing her a serious mis-service. Is she the best? No, but she’s nowhere near as bad as Trump on any level.

      1. chris73

        All I know is I’d be abstaining from voting if I were eligible, from my perspective voting for someone because they’re the least worst option is not a reason to vote

        1. JBento

          This is… bad. There ARE other candidates on the ballot; they won’t win, but if you would have found one of them to not be awful a vote for them would at least indicate your wish for something different. At worst, vote blank. Not showing up at all doesn’t say you’re displeased with the current crop, it says “eh, I’m cool with any of them.”

        2. chris73

          Well the libertarian guy didn’t seem to be playing with a full deck of cards and the green lady (Jill Stein?) didn’t seem to understand basic economics so yeah if I was American I’d be abstaining

          Of course most of my knowledge of American politics comes from John Oliver and Stephen Colbert…

        3. JBento

          Libertarians are never a valid anything, and my issue with Stein is her pandering to anti-vaxxers. Vote blank (as in, show up, and put in your ballot without anyone marked).

        4. Lailah

          No. That’s fucking asinine. None of this “Oh my gosh, I can’t vote for a lesser evil” shit. I already said she’s not, but fuck your moral purity. Some of us have to live with the consequences of it. ‘Moral purity’ is going to screw us. Trump doesn’t just need to lose. He needs to lose BADLY. We *NEED* the next republican candidates to look at the consequences of fascism and racism and say “No, we can’t do that”, not “Well, as long as I can keep from saying rape is cool, I’m in.” Not just for American brown, black, and asian people, though we’re certainly the immediate beneficiaries. We need that to help stem the rising tide /of/ that fascism and racism across the developed world. Donald Trump ran on a campaign of pure, unfettered evil, much as Brexit (mostly) did. Brexit won. That’s bad. But if it had lost barely, that wouldn’t have helped sink their xenophobia back intot he quagmire, it just would have stalemated it. And that racism *NEEDS* to die. Trump *NEEDS* to lose, and lose badly. If your vote doesn’t contribute that, well, fucking thanks, I guess.

        5. JBento

          If I were going to vote in this election, I’d vote Clinton. I was addressing chris73 claim that, if they were USAmerican, they wouldn’t vote.

          But since you brought it up, I’m not sure that it’d be good for Trump to lose by a landslide. My reasoning for it, however, is predicated on the fact that I don’t think Clinton is a good choice for running your country, either – since we disagree on this, it’s not worth it to go over it (furthermore, I’d rather Trump lose by a landslide than risk him winning, so any action on that direction would require me to have fine control over the electoral college).

          So, yes, I want the lot of you to vote Clinton.

          Final note, lest Willis decides to delete everything political from the comments section and be done with it: I hope I’m wrong. I hope Clinton wins, and she reveals herself to be the greatest president ever and she solves a myriad issues. I really do. I just don’t have all that many reasons to believe that hope’ll come true.

        6. Lailah

          I don’t really care if she’s the greatest ever. I just need her to enact a third of her damn platform, and I have pretty good reason to believe she’ll do that much. Given that she’ll be naming 3 justices if she wins, that alone is massively important. But I also need this nativist bullshit to fucking /die/.

          As far as ‘well it’s okay for clinton to win but not by a landslide’, WHAT!? If your primary problem is you don’t want her in charge, you *ALREADY* got your problem. The landslide has /nothing to do/ with her position. The landslide is important for its long term consequences.

        7. thejeff

          Trump needs to lose in a landslide to show the white male supremacists that they’re really all alone.
          But even more importantly and more practically, she needs the Senate. I’d settle for a squeaker of a win for her, if we get to 50 Senators. Better than the other way around. Especially with Republican Senators openly talking of not needing 9 SC Justices and just denying her any appointments indefinitely.

        8. JBento

          @thejeff: That still confuses me. Scalia, may his corpse rot and the devouring worms not be poisoned, is dead for, what, half a year now? Aaaaaand still no substitute? Can the Senate really just say “eh, whatever, we don’t want to do it” for, well, ever? From my understanding, there’s at least two SC justices that aren’t going to be around for all that long – can they deny THOSE, too? Isn’t there a minimum required? What happens if you keep getting democratic presidents and a republican senate and they all die?

        9. thejeff

          Article Two of the Constitution: “”he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Judges of the supreme Court…”

          That’s basically what we’ve got to go on. That’s always been interpreted as the President nominates, but they are only confirmed with the consent of the Senate. This is unprecedented and without a Democratic majority to push them through may lead to a serious crisis. The SC needs a quorum of 6 to act.
          Theoretically, under the current understanding of the law, there is no requirement for the Senate to act. They can sit on their hands as long as they please. And in the case of lower court federal judges have long done so. Though some have made it through, there’s a serious backlog of nominations and shortage of judges on the district courts due to the same kind of obstruction.
          The remedy is political. They should pay a political price for such obstruction and thus the situation should fix itself – the obstructing Senators will lose elections and their replacements will act. The Republican party is currently dedicated to the idea that government is itself bad and thus keeping it from acting is a good thing. This is in many ways the root of the current problem: Republicans break government, then win votes by talking about how government is broken. It’s a vicious circle and it’s a relatively new thing.

        10. Lailah

          I suspect that a trump win means that Obama will name a nominee, under the argument that by not even holding hearings, Congress abdicated its appointed rights and trusted in his judgement to name a nominee.

          It’ll only ever work once, but hey.

        11. thejeff

          It wouldn’t even work once.
          He’s named a nominee: Merrick Garland. He could try to declare that silence is consent and Garland is a Justice, but I doubt the Court would seat him. Frankly, I doubt even the liberal Justices would accept it at this point. He could try a recess appointment, but if the Senate doesn’t officially go into recess, the Court will again rule against it. He doesn’t really have any options.

          Now, if this goes on through Clinton’s first term and even more so if there are other nominees waiting, the Court may be willing to act – more so as we get closer to a quorum of 6. Very hard to say though.

          That’s what makes this a Constitutional Crisis.

        12. Lailah

          Comedians who expressly state you have a duty to vote are where you’re getting the idea to abstain? AYFKM?

        13. chris73

          What is your problem?

          I said: “Of course most of my knowledge of American politics comes from John Oliver and Stephen Colbert”

          Meaning my views of American politicians and their policy platforms are formed via guys like that (and others of course) and that’s why I’d abstain from voting because I will not vote for a candidate based on someone not being as bad as the rest

        14. Lailah

          “I won’t mitigate evil because the end result isn’t perfect” is my fucking problem. Especially if asshats saying it contribute to the continued mainstreaming of white supremacy.

        15. Lailah

          I mean, I also disagree that her qualification is ‘she’s not that bad’, but if it were, THAT MEANS SHE’S LESS BAD. For fuck’s sake, you have a moral imperative to do what you can to stop or lessen evil. Your hands may often be tied, but it’s a damn vote. You /explicitly/ can do this. (Assuming your franchise isn’t under threat)

        16. chris73

          Seriously? First off I’m not American so I can’t vote and secondly I’ve seen first hand how important democracy is (I was in East Timor peace keeping with the NZDF) so don’t deign to lecture me about democracy.

          Choosing to abstain from voting is a valid form of participation and in my view is a better option then voting for someone “just because”

        17. Fart Captor

          Everything Lailah said.

          Even if it were a choice between two bad candidates, it’s a choice between a shit sandwich and moldy baloney. Not a great choice, but it’s an easy one, and not one I’d want other people to make for me

        18. Fart Captor

          @chris73:
          Choosing to abstain is, by definition, NOT PARTICIPATING

        19. chris73

          I’d choose to not eat the shit or moldy baloney sandwich

        20. thejeff

          Hey! You’re from New Zealand? Think you could sneak a refugee in if things go bad? 🙂

          I spent a few months there as a kid, long ago. Up in the Bay of Islands in a town I’m sure I can’t spell. Always wanted to go back, but it’s never worked out.

        21. Lailah

          You’re not ‘eating a shit sandwich’. You’re playing a role in deciding, by your admission, whether a lesser or a greater evil reigns. You choose to forefeit that choice – you deliberately sit by. Perhaps the lesser evil wins. Perhaps the GREATER FUCKING EVIL WINS. And you, and people like you, are fucking part of it, because you stood by and let it fucking happen.

          Abstaining can be a ‘valid’ part of the process, in taht you have a right to do it. But I sure as fuck, as someone who is dealing with the evil you choose to twiddle your thumbs about, have a right to judge you for that vote.

        22. Fart Captor

          @chris73:
          Well done, you’ve found the loophole in my analogy and my argument is defeated.

          Except there’s GOING to he a president. The US doesn’t have a “none of the above” option that triggers a new election like some countries have.

          I’d have to look it up to check if we even have a rule that requires a minimum percentage of the electorate to vote for the election to be valid. If we do, it’s low enough that it never comes up.

        23. chris73

          “You’re playing a role in deciding, by your admission, whether a lesser or a greater evil reigns.”

          A lesser or greater evil is still evil.

          “You choose to forefeit that choice – you deliberately sit by.”

          Yes because I do not want to grant consent to be governed by a lesser or greater evil

          “Perhaps the lesser evil wins. Perhaps the GREATER FUCKING EVIL WINS.”

          Evil will still win no matter the outcome

          “And you, and people like you, are fucking part of it, because you stood by and let it fucking happen.”

          Because its a choice, as soon as you take away that choice and make it mandatory then it becomes something else

          “Abstaining can be a ‘valid’ part of the process, in taht you have a right to do it.”

          Theres no can be about it, it absolutely is valid when you have no confidence in any of the candidates

          “But I sure as fuck, as someone who is dealing with the evil you choose to twiddle your thumbs about, have a right to judge you for that vote.”

          Your “righteous indignation” does not give you the right to judge me anymore then I have the right to judge you

        24. Lailah

          A theoretical ‘none of the above’ in the USA means the Senate picks with no further input from the people, actually. And the entire point of the system was to trigger that ALL THE TIME. The rabble weren’t supposed to vote for the head of state – they wouldn’t know anyone but their own state’s figures – obviously, and a local figure wouldn’t really be known in the other states, right? Political parties circumvented that, by providing broader association and a political platform, so even in an era of less information you could feel you had something to do with a potential, distant president’s politics, but they weren’t part of the point.

          Probably for the best, given that the point was a disenfranchising of the people.

          “A lesser or greater evil is still evil.”
          A lesser evil is still fucking lesser. You have a god damn moral imperative to lessen evil. Anything less, is putting your own fucking purity above the actual concerns of real people.

          ‘Evil will win regardless of the outcome’, but you can make that evil lesser (By your own terms – Clinton is blatantly not an ‘evil’). Let’s say your choices were – gay people were sequestered away and ignored, their rights trampled” and “Gay people were executed” – are you seriously telling me it’s okay to not act? Your choices are a greater evil, and a lesser, after all. You are supposed to fucking /lessen/ evil.

          My ‘righteous indignation’ does nothing for my ability to judge you. The effects your fucking actions and positions have, however? Those still give me plenty of fucking reason to judge you.

        25. chris73

          First off I have no idea if what you’re saying about the senate is true or not, being that I’m not from the USA and we (NZ) have MMP which, while not perfect is better for representation for everyone

          Secondly I don’t the vote in your country

          Thirdly what a candidate says to get elected is generally different to their actions once they’re in power

          Fourthly Clinton, through the Clinton Foundation, doesn’t appear to have an issue with accepting money from countries where gays are routinely executed, amongst other crimes. To me accepting money is condoning the actions of the country and that’s evil

        26. thejeff

          Lailah: The House actually. In the event of no candidate winning a absolute majority of the electoral college, the election goes to the House.

          It’s not clear to me that was supposed to be how it normally worked and it didn’t from the very start, even before parties became as potent as they did. The early winners were well known across the country from Revolutionary days.

        27. Lailah

          We were going to run out of founding deities right quick. Many of them were pretty old or decrepit when the constitution was written, and slightly more of them by the time it was ratified. And Adams and Jefferson ultimately still relied on proto-political parties to help get their spot. Many contemporary voters wouldn’t know either particularly well, but they could rely on local politicians campaigning for them as well.

          On its own, I might not feel cynical about it, but given everything they’ve written, the bulk of the folks at the convention were not happy with commoners qua commoners. And given the likely trajectory of those presidential elections without a political party of some sort, well.

        28. LiamKav

          “Fourthly Clinton, through the Clinton Foundation, doesn’t appear to have an issue with accepting money from countries where gays are routinely executed, amongst other crimes.”

          Hypothetically, do you have a problem using products made via child labour? Is everything you own ethically sourced? If not, do you consider yourself evil?

          (I would like my government not to negotiate with countries with terrible human rights records. But I imagine situations like this are slightly more nuanced and complicated.)

        29. Fart Captor

          Even if all the options are bad (and they aren’t), that doesn’t mean they’re all equal.

          When one candidate is threatening to jail their opponent, refused to accept the results of the election unless their in his favor, and has spewed so much hate that there has been a steady increase in hate speech/crime throughout his candidacy, YOU NEED TO FUCKING VOTE!

          Refusing to vote accomplishes NOTHING. No matter how similar your options may seem, voting still accomplishes more than nothing. Changing how the system works so that there are better options will require people to be MORE involved in politics, not less.

        30. chris73

          When you say you need to vote, do you mean need to vote for anyone or just Clinton?

        31. Lailah

          Because of the way the US is structured, it does mean Clinton. Well, technically you could try to stage a revolution, but that would probably be a far worse choice than participating in the system as it is, in terms of its effects. You don’t have a useful other choice, because it’s a two-party system, and it’s not likely to change the system from the inside (66% national majorities are basically impossible, especially within one lifetime)

        32. chris73

          Basically then Fart Captor is saying you must vote for Clinton and no one else, that’s not democracy that’s heading towards democracy how Zimbabwe practices it

        33. BBCC

          Your alternative is Trump getting in to office. Even you have admitted Trump is far, FAR worse than Hillary.

        34. David M Willis

          “please vote for the person who can win office who won’t put people in concentration camps”
          “OH SO YOU’RE SAYING I HAFTA VOTE FOR THE NON-FASCIST GUY, WHAT IS THIS, ZIMBABWE????????”

          are you for real

        35. Fart Captor

          I’m saying that in this election specifically, Clinton is – in my opinion – the best choice by far, and that even if she weren’t, a Trump presidency would be catastrophic.

          But in a more general sense I am saying that if you abstain rather than pick whoever you consider the lesser evil, you accomplish NOTHING.

          “Refusing to consent” to the options presented is a meaningless gesture, because the choice will be made, with or without you.

          If you want better options, then people need to pay attention to the house and senate races, since it’s congress that decides how the election rules work. And also the state house and senate, since they make the rules for how the US Senate and House elections work.

          And if you don’t like the choices, then people need to actually show up for and vote in the party primaries, and actually get involved politically. A buddy of mine didn’t like the whole Superdelegate nonsense with the Democratic primary, so he got involved and ran to become a convention delegate. Because getting MORE involved in the process actually has a chance of bringing about change.

          Staying home and pouting about it does not.

        36. thejeff

          “Must” in the sense of it being the only reasonable choice not in the sense of there being people with guns forcing you to do so.

          You could abstain. You could vote for one of dozens of third party or independent candidates. You could write in your own name or Mickey Mouse, which have about the same effect. You could even vote for Trump.

          You could have voted in the primaries to affect the choices we all ended up with.

          But in the end, the way the system works, now that we’ve gotten to this point, the only people who have any realistic chance of winning are Clinton and Trump. You can choose between them or throw up your hands and say you don’t care.

        37. chris73

          My alternative is for people to vote (or not) for who they believe is the best candidate

          I get that democracy is like free speech in that both are wonderful until someone says something you don’t agree with or a candidate comes along that you despise but that’s the price you pay

        38. thejeff

          Chris: Perhaps, but shouldn’t best candidate include some realistic assessment of their chances of winning? I mean, I’m sure no one will come closer to matching my ideal platform than I do, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to just write myself in.
          But once you decide that chance of winning doesn’t count, why not?

        39. BBCC

          Well, sure, if you took “must” to mean “can not” instead of “should not.”

          Saying you disagree with something someone said (or even that what they said wasn’t okay) or that you despise a candidate and people shouldn’t vote for him =/= taking away free speech or democracy.

        40. Fart Captor

          @chris73:
          You’d been saying both candidates suck, so you’d abstain. I was pointing out that even if I granted that Hillary sucked (and I don’t), the two are not equal.

          Even if both were bad (and again, they’re not), one of them is so awful, that if the polls showed that the rotting corpse of Richard Nixon had the best chance of defeating Trump, that’s who I’d be telling people to vote for.

          Although frankly, I’d rather people vote than not, even if they’re gonna vote for Trump. If somebody genuinely thinks that a racist, bankrupt sexual predator is the best choice for president, they should own that horrifying shit.

          I don’t want anyone to be able to weasel out of the blame by thinking “well I didn’t vote for him! I just didn’t want to vote for that extremely competent woman for some reason!”

        41. chris73

          “please vote for the person who can win office who won’t put people in concentration camps”

          “OH SO YOU’RE SAYING I HAFTA VOTE FOR THE NON-FASCIST GUY, WHAT IS THIS, ZIMBABWE????????”

          are you for real

          Nice misrepresentation Willis

          Aside from that, I’m not voting in the election because I’m not an American citizen, I can’t vote in the election

          I will however remind you its your country that has put up candidates in the two major parties that have the rest of the world are laughing at you

          I’ll remind you its your country that’s still doesn’t have proper representation of voting, I mean seriously try MMP

          While your country is still talking about making history with the first female elected leader my country has had two

          Voting for women in the USA was ratified 1920, well done only 27 years after my country

          Oh and well done on allowing Native Americans the vote in 1924, except for those that weren’t allowed to vote in some states until 1957, but then I suppose kudos for the Voting Rights Act 1965 for African Americans

          My country on the other hand: “All Māori men were able to vote from 1867 and all European men from 1879.”

          As I understand it “Since June 26, 2003, sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex as well as same-sex adolescents of a close age has been legal nationwide”

          Not bad, of course in NZ it was 1986 but that’s nothing either country should be proud of

          That’s the country I grew up in, learned about democracy in and formed my opinions of democracy in and am proud of for what we’ve done

          Can you say the same about your country?

        42. chris73

          @Fart Captor

          @chris73:
          You’d been saying both candidates suck, so you’d abstain. I was pointing out that even if I granted that Hillary sucked (and I don’t), the two are not equal.

          I agree with you, Trump is worse then Clinton but I couldn’t vote for either

          Even if both were bad (and again, they’re not), one of them is so awful, that if the polls showed that the rotting corpse of Richard Nixon had the best chance of defeating Trump, that’s who I’d be telling people to vote for.

          Fair enough

          Although frankly, I’d rather people vote than not, even if they’re gonna vote for Trump. If somebody genuinely thinks that a racist, bankrupt sexual predator is the best choice for president, they should own that horrifying shit.

          I agree with you on this as well

          I don’t want anyone to be able to weasel out of the blame by thinking “well I didn’t vote for him! I just didn’t want to vote for that extremely competent woman for some reason!”

          I can understand that, if you choose not to vote then you also can’t complain about the candidate you do get

        43. Lailah

          “I’ll remind you its your country that’s still doesn’t have proper representation of voting, I mean seriously try MMP”

          We /can’t/. Not in /practical/ terms. It’s a superior system, you’re totally fucking right. But it’s not the one we god damn have. And changing to it requires a /66% majority of the states approval/, or alternately, 66% of I believe the Senate. The latter will never happen, because it’s being voted on directly by those who would lose from it. The former is only a /practical/ impossibility, because a 2/3rds majority is basically impossible. There’s a reason why it took almost 200 years to approve congress not getting to vote on its own pay raises. And that’s sort of a ‘no-duh’ that pretty much anyone from any political stripe the country has /ever/ had should agree to. The literal only reason Slavery was made illegal as ‘quickly’ (YES I KNOW) as it was is that the South couldn’t vote on it (They didn’t have reps in congress at the time, due to punitive reconstruction measures) Changing our system is damn near impossible – even if it weren’t, we have to operate iwth the one we actually have.

        44. chris73

          @Lailah

          I get that with the way the USA is set up then changing anything is damned difficult (so props to the people that went out did get things changed)

          As I said before the USA is a country I want to visit and I certainly don’t judge all americans by the standards of Trump, I guess I got a little hot under the collar there

          I’m sure the USA will vote in the better candidate

        45. Amake

          Well, anti-democratic movements like that of Trump has that effect of undermining democracy. We see that here clearly in the reduction of choices available to the responsible, ethical human adult with the ability to vote in the US elections to one: Vote for Clinton so that the least number of people will die.

          I promise it’ll make a difference. White supremacists all over the world are watching, looking for validation. Please give them nothing.

        46. Orion Fury

          I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that those here say ‘you’ to you, chris, were not actually talking to you, but to ‘you’, as in, those who are eligible to vote in the US, but are abstaining from voting.

          Oh well, you work with the tools you have, and hope for better ones down the line, perhaps even building them with what you already have.

        47. Fart Captor

          Orion Fury: That is how I was using it. Though much of what I was saying about abstaining not being a meaningful gesture applies to most democratic elections. Participating less in any democracy makes its problems worse, not better.

          This whole election had me stressed out and tense, especially the last week or so, so hearing “Nah, there’s no point in even voting” immediately makes me salty.

      2. JBento

        That Trump is ridiculously much worse than Clinton (and, likely, anyone else) is undeniable by anyone whose very existence does reality a disservice. The issue lies in that sucking less is still sucking.

        1. Lailah

          Clinton really doesn’t suck though. That’s the fucking point. Her platform is actually really good unless you live in the middle east and are brown, at which point yes, it’s a matter of sucking less.

          Aside from her being a hawk, the worst I can say at this point is she’s not that good at data security, and well. She’s a US government official, of course she’s not (Strictly speaking, it’s not her job to be, but it being that endemic is a bit of a problem). She’s not going to be as hard on the finance sector as I’d like, but given her platform, she’s still likely going to work to constrain them somewhat. She wants to limit gun ownership. She’s good for pretty much every minority within the states itself, trying to expand our paths to citizenship, and curtail this voter suppression horse shit we’re dealing with. She wants to limit the violence the states are causing on us through the police (though tbf I don’t see how the hell she’s going to manage that) She wants stronger protections on our right to abort, better federal aid for the poor, and a stronger obamacare.

          If she were a lesser evil, then you would still need to vote for her, because you have a damn moral imperative to prevent and lessen evil, but she’s just not.

        2. JBento

          As a citizen of a country that’s part of NATO, there’s no “aside from being a hawk” for me. “Being a hawk” is a huge issue.

          As for her platform, that’s anyone’s guess. You see the site Bluewind linked above (https://www.isidewith.com/political-quiz)? If you gave the exact same answers at the start of the campaign and two months ago, your affinity with Clinton could change for at least 30% (it did for me). It was also not that long ago that she called young black men “super-predators.” She’s nowhere near as bad as Trump, but to say she’s not the lesser evil is disingenuous. It’s just that in this election the whole crop sucks, so we need to recalibrate our standards for it (and hopefully we can go back to having actual standards four years from now).

        3. Emperor Norton II

          ” It was also not that long ago that she called young black men “super-predators.” ”

          NO!

          NO!

          NO!

          SHE DID NOT DO THIS!

          She called -gang member- super-predators (which they are). She did not mention race at all; that’s something that a bunch of right-wingers started putting up (OK, to be fair, it could possibly have been some zealous Sanders supporters…)

        4. Lailah

          The main problem with that idea is that, as far as far too many are concerned are concerned, all non-white people who don’t preen their respectability perfectly are criminals until proven otherwise. Many of those who /do/ preen respectability are pretenders. Clinton’s intent and diction w/ the Super-Predator thing isn’t actually relevant – it was playing into the racist message regardless. That’s a problem.

          Just, you know. A 20 year old one, when she supported a law that even those who ended up hurt by it supported.

        5. thejeff

          And one that black people seem to have gotten over, since they overwhelmingly support (if perhaps not as enthusiastically as they did Obama), so who is my lily-white ass to question that.

        6. Lailah

          Why? She’s not going to start a war. She’s going to maintain drone bombing and pointless embargoes. That’s fucking bad, it’s not really a bad that affects NATO countries. This notwithstanding that y’all literally don’t have to go to war when we start one (NATO signatories quite pointedly sat out of Iraq). Y’all just jump on the fucking bandwagon because obviously we’re doing something right.

          The super-predator thing was 20 motherfucking years ago. That’s a fucking /while/. And here’s a fucking critical factoid, honkey:
          THE BLACK COMMUNITY OF THE ERA THOUGHT IT WOULD WORK. They supported that law too. Most people are law abiding and want to believe the system works, and we as a country didn’t have that much data on the relatively young war on drugs at the time.

          She’s not the lesser evil if you give two tiny fucks about those of us who’s rights she’s trying to expand and protect. She’s flawed, but that only makes her a ‘lesser evil’ if the standard is fucking perfection. And if it is, you have no place in earthly politics.

        7. BBCC

          I could respect protest votes/abstaining under two conditions:

          1) If the majority of vote splitting were in the right wing camp, cutting Trump’s chances of winning more than Hillary’s (because make no mistake, Trump is fucking EVIL. Hillary is not, and even if she were, it is nowhere near the same degree, making the ‘choice’ completely false).

          OR

          2) The Republican nominee were someone SURVIVABLE. I dunno, who was the best potential nominee, Jeb Bush? (I actually don’t know, can someone fill me in on that?) If they had chosen someone who, even if they suck, were at least survivable for women, PoC, the disabled, the poor, and LGBT+ folks, that’d be different. Then you aren’t putting people’s lives at risk by protesting/abstaining.

          As one of my American friends put it –

          “I survived Bush. I could have survived Romney. I will not survive Trump.”

        8. thejeff

          Of course, a lot of people didn’t survive Bush. He was a horrible disaster. Admittedly, Trump would likely be worse, but let’s not excuse that walking disaster just because his party has gotten even more insane since.

        9. BBCC

          That’s true. There were also a lot of people who wouldn’t have survived Romney. My friend was only speaking for himself, but I believe the point (that Trump’s far more dangerous and less survivable) stands. Bush’s probably the most incompetent president in recent memory. Let’s hope he stays that way tomorrow.

    4. Tadpole7

      While I do believe one should vote for a presidential candidate I respect the choice of someone to abstain regardless of my personal opinion of that. I will note that there’s a lot of other races and proposals on the ballot that are closer to home that could use votes even if one doesn’t choose to pick a president.

      Abstaining in the U.S. is a valid form of participation. I’m personally opposed to it but I do feel that the choice to not participate is an important option to have.

      That said, I do believe there’s a difference in choosing between evils ( lesser or greater is perspective). I often don’t like or am indifferent to who is on the ballot. I pick one who can , in my opinion, can do the job and either support or at least cause less damage to the issues I care about.

  60. Tenn

    Tomorrow’s strip:

    “Wait, what? You were at her rally?!”

    “I DON’T AGREE WITH HER POLITICS! SHE JUST MAKES ME MOIST! PLEASE DON’T JUDGE ME!”

  61. JBento

    I need to calibrate my timing. At what time do the election results start coming out? I assume you start getting results for the east coast first, and then progress through the time zones until the Hawaiian results come in, even though the whole thing might well be decided when Florida checks in.

    1. thejeff

      Pretty much. Polls close in Florida at 7 Eastern Time. North Carolina at 7:30. 8PM for most of the rest of the interesting parts of the east coast. Results will generally start being announced soon afterwards.

      In some cases polls will be held open until everyone in line has voted. In some cases that means hours. Generally they don’t announce anything official until all the polls for the state are closed.
      If the results are an obvious majority for one side, the state will be called nearly immediately. Polls close in NY at 9. It’ll be called for Clinton by 9:05. 🙂 FL & NC are the ones to watch. If either is called early for Clinton, it’s all over. If they’re too close to call or both go for Trump, it’s going to be a long night.

      Of course, if you’re truly a purist, the polls in Alaska don’t close until midnight eastern time. 🙂

      1. JBento

        Ugh, 7pm eastern is my midnight. Odds are I’m still two nights away from seeing the end of this.

        Thanks.

      2. chris73

        Theres still time to come to NZ, our right wing parties are to the left of US left wing parties 🙂

  62. John

    Hmm. Just occurred to me that, as Jessica had a sign over her face all night, it must be Jillian and Holtzmann that Robin’s recognizing.

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