Presidential Election 2016

[thatchio]

I couldn't agree more about the idea of upsetting the status quo that I see Hillary representing. I haven't heard substantive ideas or clear enough values from her to suggest that she won't keep the country from continuing its priority on profits for corporations. The process needs agitation and a limited/focused Libertarian/Progressive alliance may be what's needed to accomplish that.

I also find Hillary supporters incredibly annoying when they suggest she is the inevitable candidate or when they talk about Bernie as a spoiler. There is no entitlement to the Presidency nor is a candidate who out earns votes a spoiler...instead it is the failure of the other candidate to earn votes.

[David Greene]

None of us support the drug war. None of us support police brutality. We know black people aren't equal like they should be, but what additional racist structures are you referring to? Will blacks be refused entry to college because they're black, even though it's free? Will people not hire blacks just because of their own unconscious racist tendencies, even when they need the labor? I really just don't see where things would go. What am I missing here? Are we just talking past each other because of unspoken assumptions, only having a slight difference in opinion? I think a comprehensive anti-poverty push would do wonders.

Thank you for these honest questions.

I very much believe that simply 'letting Blacks participate in the market" will go nowhere, because racism is as much a social problem as an economc one.

I'm very much not an expert but here are the issues that come to mind beyond what you've listed:

- Employment discimination (you'd better believe it happens!)
- Transportation investment greatly biased toward the automobile
- Suburban development models which began as deliberate efforts to keep Blacks out and which perpetuates that goal today, though it may not be what's intended.
- Continued (successful!) efforts to dismantle Affirmative Action
- A health care system that utterly fails Black people (even worse than it utterly fails everyone else)
- Housing discrimination
- Continued shiftig of funding away from urban public schools
- A school suspension epidemic
- The whole school-to-prison pipeline
- For-profit prisons
- The general privatization of everything
- People that don't care/blame the victims when police slaughter Blacks
- Anyone who meets "Black lives matter" with "all lives matter."

I know that you probably include some of these under your broad categories of eduction, employment and so one, but I think it's necessary to call out specifics so we know exactly what we're talking about. For example, employment discrimination happens in subtle ways as demonstrated by the experiments with submitting identical resumes under different names. The biases are so deeply ingrained that people don't even know they're acting on them. That's what I mean when I say it's a social problem as much as an economic one. It's a huge problem that no one politician or no one administration is going to fix. We need to keep advancing the ball until we reach the goal of eradicating racism.

Many of these issues negatively affect all of us but they affect Blacks more because of our history and theculture.

We're talking about addressing centuries of oppression in all of its forms. That means intentional action to not just stop the oppression but reverse it. That means giving preferences to people who have been oppressed. As yet, we are far from a place where we're ready to do that. That is a huge part of the problem.

It is not enough to simply "open opportunity." "Color blindness" is exactly the wrong approach. We need to actively address the current and historical oppression and right the wrong. That means seeing color with eyes wide open. That means in some cases whites have to give things up.

[Tiller]

A reminder of Bernie's organizing event today:

http://time.com/3976557/bernie-sanders-house-party/

http://bernie.to/events-map
https://berniesanders.com/video/

[PigsEye]

A reminder of Bernie's organizing event today:

http://time.com/3976557/bernie-sanders-house-party/

http://bernie.to/events-map
https://berniesanders.com/video/

That sounds kinda neat. I wonder when he will hold a rally in Hillary's backyard in NYC, and then we can see if he draws a bigger crowd or not.

[Tiller]

While there's lots of news (endorsements, New Hampshire, ect),

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz ... hear-truth

[mulad]

Rachel Maddow dug into the NBC archives for some video of Sanders in the '80s. Includes keywords "gentrified" and "parking" (on the part of a reporter, not Sanders himself):

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watc ... 4479811515

[Tiller]

Some of the more major recent happenings:

Sanders breaks 30% nationally, Hillary drops below 50% (Better than Obama was doing at this point in time):
https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/po ... 12764.html
Sanders overtakes Hillary in NH by 7%, Iowa Poll numbers are about the same as the national numbers above (30-50):
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... medium=RSS
National Nurses Union Endorses Sanders:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post ... ses-union/
Release of his comprehensive Racial Justice Platform:
https://berniesanders.com/issues/racial-justice/
New website made by the grassroots volunteers on reddit with Bernie's stance on every issue:
http://feelthebern.org/

[MNdible]

Witch Nate Silver still pegs Hillary's odds of being the Democratic nominee at 85%.

The campaign press more or less openly confesses to a certain type of bias: rooting for the story. Inevitability makes for a really boring story, especially when it involves a figure like Clinton who has been in public life for so long.

Instead, the media wants campaigns with lots of “game changers,” unexpected plot twists and photo finishes. If the story isn’t really there, the press can cobble one together by invoking fuzzy concepts like “momentum” and “expectations,” or by cherry-picking polls and other types of evidence. The lone recent poll to show Sanders ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire made banner headlines, for example, while the many other polls that have Clinton still leading, or which show Sanders’s surge slowing down in Iowa and nationally, have mostly been ignored.

[LakeCharles]

And that other 15% when it's not Hillary includes over 5% for Biden. Meaning he pegs Sanders at less than 10% shot at the nomination.

[Tiller]

Yeah, no, I don't really care what nate silver thinks. Statistics, lacking proper contextualization, are as good as lies, and his website is noticably biased. Further, His spiel about the media, while true, is something that actually helps the Sanders campaign, since name recognition and Hillary's "inevitability" are his two largest obstacles. The media pumping up Bernie's canidacy is nothing but helpful.

corroboration of the previous national poll:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/p ... z3jIIyh7eX

Some sources that compile Bernie-related news/information (I just found the latter today):
https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/
http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Bernie%20News%20Roundup

[MNdible]

Nate Silver's reputation is pretty stellar; I'm not sure why you think he's got a bias.

Your previous comments pretty clearly reveal your bias, though. Which is fine, of course, but it's sort of weird to attack somebody who's doing straight ahead analysis just because they're not telling a story you want to hear.

[Tiller]

I'm not sure why you think he's got a bias.

Nearly everything and everyone is biased in some way, including statistics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_e ... sychology)

Your previous comments pretty clearly reveal your bias, though.

Yup, Everyone has bias, see my previous comment^

just because they're not telling a story you want to hear.

My problem with it is how he contextualizes it. Any "straight ahead analysis" can end up meaning different things to different people.

As an example, It's truthful to say Hillary is currently polling 10% better than she was in 2008, however, that ignores the fact that 2008 was a crowded field, so of course she's doing marginally better. Likewise, Donald Trump is leading the GOP field, and in some cases, he's been doing as well as the next two people combined. That doesn't mean he will win though, because there are over a dozen more people running against him.

The omission of information can be just as effective as the inclusion of lies. I wouldn't be such a stickler on the topic if it wasn't for the fact that it happens way too often in the media, usually to push a pre-defined narrative. It's amazing how much of a difference a few words can make.

https://imgur.com/SnQapag

[MNdible]

Whatever, guy. I'll let you return to curating your collection of cherry-picked pro-Bernie news sources. Sorry for interrupting.

[Tiller]

No problem man. Feel free to keep enjoying the appeals to authority, faulty statistics, and bedrock evidence that you've got going on.

[Nathan]

No problem man. Feel free to keep enjoying the appeals to authority, faulty statistics, and bedrock evidence that you've got going on.

Yikes, you could at least tale some of Bernie's style and candor if you're going to promote him.

[Tiller]

I can't though, because we aren't just talking policy here (which is the easy part). When someone has clearly made up their mind, and dismisses you, then there isn't much to be done.

In hindsight, I could have made some 10+ paragraph refutation of the article instead, but at this point in the race, then we'd just go around in circles like with 3A/3C (I've already been down that road on this topic before)(which also isn't very productive). That is, even assuming there was a willingness to have such a conversation.

[trigonalmayhem]

Nate Silver is a great statistician but predictions made this far in advance are pretty meaningless. It might be an 85% chance as things stand today, but people are fickle and prone to changing their minds. The primary is not being held now, so I'd be a lot more interested in his statistical analysis closer to the fact instead of using polls this far out to discourage other candidates.

[Tiller]

A livestream for those who can't see the hype in person:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrnC8VoQkx8

Also, it'd prolly be a good idea to rename this thread to a general "Election 2016" thread, so we can also talk about 'The Donald'
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/25/9206795/do ... pareidolia

gotta talk about the serious issues, now! the semblance is uncanny

[Tiller]

First Trump, and now "Mike Huckabee: Presidential Candidate Says Ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford Still 'the Law of the Land'"

[Tiller]

so, uh, Sanders now has a bedrock-lead in NH, and it's looking like Iowa has followed the same path, and he's been making some inroads in earning support from african americans. Still a month until the first debate~

On the republican side, it looks like Trump and Carson are currently doing pretty well. Fiorina is doing decent as well. I was sort of hoping the democratic nominee could face a Bush/Walker ticket. How likely is it that some combination of Trump/Carson/Fiorina is chosen? (I don't like the look of Carson/Fiorina, though it's sort of ridiculous that neither have held political office, not that things like that matter as much as they used to )