Presidential Election 2016

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mulad
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby mulad » January 24th, 2016, 9:03 am

There's always some sort of third-party candidate running, so I don't feel like getting too up in arms about it yet. Besides, there were fully 10 presidential tickets who got more votes than the official Gore-Bush spread in Florida -- every single party that was in the race. That state had way bigger problems than Nader.

I'll wait until Bloomberg actually starts campaigning to really worry about his impact on things, though. If he does get into the race, it will be interesting to compare it to 1992, when Ross Perot managed to get 19% of the vote -- though he also ran a series of half-hour infomercials, a couple of which were full of charts and graphs explaining his plan to balance the budget. Of course, he received zero electoral votes despite the fairly strong showing in the popular vote.

That was a strange campaign, though, and I've forgotten a lot of the strangeness. He didn't take criticism well, distrusted a lot of his campaign advisers, he dropped out of the race for a while (partly because he thought his family was the potential target of assassins), reentered the race, ran those odd infomercials, etc. Anyway, he still managed to do remarkably well as an independent in '92. He ran again in '96, this time under the Reform Party banner, though he only received about half as much support. Still, that likely helped Jesse Ventura's gubernatorial run in '98, who is the only Reform party candidate to have won such a high office.

I think Ventura's third-party status significantly slowed down his ability to get things done because the Democrats and Republicans didn't want to work with him as much as someone of one of their own parties. For some issues, it may have been good that he was slowed down. Sanders, Bloomberg, and Trump all have a tinge of "other" to them that won't sit well with the major parties. Sanders is running in the Democratic primary, but he's been an independent. If Bloomberg actually won as an independent, he'd be the first since George Washington. Trump has identified as a Democrat in the past, but who knows what he is now -- he still has zero endorsements by significant political figures, so I'd expect him to be pretty much shunned by the Congress if he somehow got elected.

The presidential winner exerts a pull on downballot races, at least for the first election (second-term races tend to be pretty anti-incumbent). I personally expect a significant surge of Democratic support this year, no matter whether the candidate is Sanders or Clinton. The shift in representation in Congress should help them achieve something. I don't expect candidates to achieve everything they talk about on the campaign trail -- there's always a need to compromise while trying to move the ball in a particular direction. As a senator, Sanders has shown the ability to compromise and get things done, and he has the highest approval rating of anyone in the Senate. I still don't understand why he's only had two endorsements by members of Congress, though -- are they all just jealous?

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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby LakeCharles » January 24th, 2016, 10:55 am

Rubio has small lead over Cruz and Trump, Clinton up by 34 vs Sanders in Minnesota

http://www.startribune.com/rubio-clinto ... 366314221/

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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Didier » January 24th, 2016, 12:26 pm

Oh for sure, take the guy seriously who is running third party in a first past the post election. Especially if they plan on campaigning for three months. No wide eyed optimism there.

Bloomberg had the advantage of outspending his opponents 15:1 in his mayoral elections. He could spend $1 billion of his own cash and not break 2%.
You're right. The billionaire former mayor of New York City considering a third-party campaign is irrelevant to the election, and I'm the only one talking about it. Let's talk more about Bernie.

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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Didier » January 24th, 2016, 12:28 pm

And the irony of all this is that I like Bernie and would vote for him.

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Sacrelicio
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Sacrelicio » January 24th, 2016, 2:42 pm

You're doing the usual thing, and assuming government is static. (and being snarky instead of substantive, though I guess I would only expect the former from you)
I'm giving as much substance as Sen. Sanders does when he is asked how he would implement any of his policy proposals. Government may not be static (insofar as the actors change constantly and the bounds of "acceptable discourse", the so-called Overton window, can and sometimes do change) but the structural constraints of the system are. The Sanders campaign has yet to advance any plan for how he would either 1) convince the opposition to accept any of his policies, 2) win a durable filibuster-proof progressive majority in the Senate and House, or 3) lower the bar for smaller (and still entirely hypothetical!) congressional majorities to pass legislation despite significant opposition. This is important, because by any interpretation a Sanders win would only create further incentives for Republicans (and moderate Democrats) toward zero-sum opposition, both because any successes of a Sanders administration would inevitably destabilize conservative positioning (cf. the difficulty of the R's Obamacare "repeal and replace" position) and because their ideological opposition would be deep and undoubtedly genuine.

Look, if Sanders were able to give a better answer to this question than "my election in itself would rewrite the rules," I would have a much more positive view of his campaign and his effect on the race. But I haven't seen that at all. I believe the record of the last eight years, in which a Democratic President who espoused broadly popular progressive policies was almost totally stymied by the structural limitations of American federal government, gives the lie to his argument. Cruz and Rubio can run on conservative maximalism because it's extraordinarily easy to imagine how their proposals might become law. That isn't true for Sanders.
I like Bernie, I like most of his platform, and I think he's whipping up a lot of support for a more social-democracy type of government and bring to the forefront left wing policies that help the middle and lower classes.

I do not think he can win, nor do I think he could even do the actual job of president for a single day.

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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Tiller » January 25th, 2016, 12:10 pm


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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby David Greene » January 25th, 2016, 12:25 pm

Coates posted a rebuttal to complaints about his reparations piece. Good stuff.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... on/425022/

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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby masstrlk67 » January 25th, 2016, 3:36 pm

nor do I think he could even do the actual job of president for a single day.
So I promise that I'm asking this in good faith, not as snark, but what does this actually mean? I hear this critique of Sanders often, and I honestly don't understand. Like, he wouldn't be able to hire a competent staff of administrators? Or just that he wouldn't be able to collaborate with Congress (but how would Hillary then)? Could you or anyone else who agrees be more specific?

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Tiller
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Tiller » January 25th, 2016, 4:38 pm

On the [healthcare] attacks from last week (two weeks ago?):

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/vox- ... -yglesias/

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Sacrelicio
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Sacrelicio » January 25th, 2016, 6:37 pm

nor do I think he could even do the actual job of president for a single day.
So I promise that I'm asking this in good faith, not as snark, but what does this actually mean? I hear this critique of Sanders often, and I honestly don't understand. Like, he wouldn't be able to hire a competent staff of administrators? Or just that he wouldn't be able to collaborate with Congress (but how would Hillary then)? Could you or anyone else who agrees be more specific?
Choosing a cabinet, appointing the right people, meeting with foreign heads of state, working with Congress...those kinds of things. I'm not basing this off of any deep knowledge, I'm just thinking that Sanders is a little too out there to do the job. Sure, Hillary won't hit it off with Congress right away but it won't be any worse than Obama. I don't know if Sanders would really know what to do to get things done whereas I don't doubt Hillary's competence at all.

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Nathan
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Nathan » January 25th, 2016, 7:43 pm

Bernie has been working with the Congress for decades right? I think he has an idea how to go through the process. Things almost only get done along party lines anymore so it's not that hard to figure out what to veto and not. Lol. He definitely needs a blue congress to get what he wants done, but in the meantime he and Hillary basically hold the same power:hold things off until there's a better majority.

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Tiller
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Tiller » January 25th, 2016, 9:55 pm

This Townhall turned into a softball league once they started questioning Hillary, though I can't say I wasn't expecting that. #ClintonNewsNetwork

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Nick
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Nick » January 25th, 2016, 10:31 pm

hashtags don't work on the forum
Nick Magrino
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Tiller
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Tiller » January 26th, 2016, 12:08 am

They do in terms of syntax. Emojis not so much Image

mattaudio
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby mattaudio » January 26th, 2016, 9:28 am

People who use emojis are the worst. I bet Clinton uses emojis on her private email server. And I bet Sanders has a lengthy, consistent history of fighting the oppression of the emoji.

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Nathan
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Nathan » January 26th, 2016, 9:57 am

No one uses emojis anymore, get with it. Bitmoji is life now.

trigonalmayhem

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby trigonalmayhem » January 26th, 2016, 12:33 pm

If anyone else is going to be feeling the Bern in St Paul tonight I'll see you there. I won't recognize you and you won't recognize me, but I'll see you.

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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby Snelbian » January 26th, 2016, 9:39 pm

Feel the Bern might be the worst political slogan I've ever heard. I want to vote for a candidate, not a venereal disease.

Seriously though, I just automatically stop taking an argument seriously when someone says that.

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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby seanrichardryan » January 26th, 2016, 10:00 pm

Yes. That.
Q. What, what? A. In da butt.

mulad
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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Postby mulad » January 26th, 2016, 10:42 pm

I went, and it was pretty packed at the RiverCentre. That lower-level convention hall is on my list of most disappointing event spaces in the entire Twin Cities, though. Did anyone else get taunted by having to weave through the Xcel Center before being looped back around to the convention hall area? I was hoping for a half-decent chance to sit down while waiting, but there's nothing in the convention hall. Did anyone end up in the overflow space? Was that the Roy Wilkins Auditorium?

Anyway, it was pretty good to hear how Sanders has refined his stump speech, if only because it only gets whittled down to a couple sound bites in normal news coverage. There was a contingent or two up near the podium that got some "Black Lives Matter" chants going as Sanders was speaking, but it was as if they hadn't been there for any of the speech up until that point, since he had talked about a few relevant issues. Then he launched into a part of the speech directly discussing police and the justice system, and they persisted with some chants after that. He could have said more, I suppose, but that's true of any other issue in his platform too. Did those protesters have a particular demand beyond what he was already saying? It was hard to tell.

I'm glad I was able to get on the first bus going my direction without being crowded out. I remember watching packed #16 buses go by back when I went to a political event in college, and that wasn't so fun. I suspect some of the other routes from St. Paul may have been busier, though.


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