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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 13th, 2016, 4:34 pm
by Tiller
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1484723

Supreme court justice Scalia may have just died.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 13th, 2016, 4:38 pm
by MNdible
Wow. Shit's about to get real in the Senate...

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 13th, 2016, 4:57 pm
by Tiller
Yup it's all over the place. This is going to be a mess. I imagine they will stonewall any Obama nominee, though I don't know how this will play in November, particularly for some Senators.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 13th, 2016, 8:33 pm
by LakeCharles
Well you are very self-righteous, I'll give you that.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 13th, 2016, 8:38 pm
by grant1simons2
This GOP debate is a joke. I love it.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 13th, 2016, 9:28 pm
by Snelbian
I had a long angry rant posted, but I've decided it's not worth it.

This thread has now completely skipped over the fact that Tiller is accusing John Lewis of being somehow stooping to cheap tricks to discredit the Great White Messiah. Which is weird, because I'd have thought that at that point some flags would have at least gone up.

To be clear, it is absolute fucking bullshit to accuse John Lewis of underhanded tactics and swiftboating in not liking your preferred candidate. Take your White Savior Complex bullshit and shove it.

I'm done considering Sanders. I'm done pretending that his campaign is not being run on the momentum of ill-informed, sexist, racially tonedeaf, delusional children with a shallow grasp of recent political history and no grasp of how government works in reality. Because I'm sorry. It is. And this thread has made that abundantly clear.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 14th, 2016, 3:57 am
by Tiller
To be clear, it is absolute fucking bullshit to accuse John Lewis of underhanded tactics and swiftboating in not liking your preferred candidate. Take your White Savior Complex bullshit and shove it.
John Lewis isn't running against Bernie Sanders, Hillary is, though I suppose Hillary does enjoy deflecting criticism of herself onto others. Hillary is the one I accused of potential swiftboating, and who the brunt of my criticism is aimed at. I'm sure that's how others took it because John Lewis isn't involved with the Chicago picture thing. John Lewis also hasn't misrepresented the CBC PAC as the CBC in the media, said Nevada was 80% white (erasing Latinos, who don't count as minorities anymore because they won't be a "wall" for Hillary :roll: ), implied Bernie is racist or sexist, lied about Bernie's policies, etc etc etc. Those all fall on Hillary, the buck stops with her.

If you look at the original instance with John Kerry, the people that were part of the whole "swiftboat veterans for truth" group weren't just machiavellian conservative ideologues. Many I'm sure just had fuzzy or conflicting memories. I'm sure many also did brave and dangerous things. And yet we still know how 2004 turned out. Karl Rove's politicization of it helped them win. I'm sure at least some of those vets also wanted Bush to win, but that doesn't change who was responsible.

John Lewis has done many brave and great things fighting for justice, and he's worked towards good ends for a long period of time, which is why I have great respect for him. That doesn't mean he is completely infallible, nor completely above criticism. His comment had 2 interpretations, and the negative one was used very widely by the media because it was implied by his tone. He has since clarified his comment, as it was problematic as presented, and because there was pushback.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/john-lewis-c ... ie-sanders

Such white messiah, many savior complex, doge wow. I, personally, really don't like it when I see people say things like "black people are voting against their best interests", because of the big negative connotations to that, causing the conversation to instantly go to shit, with or without Hillary supporters (who love being indignant on the behalf of black people, and using them as a political football, or "firewall", if you prefer. So much for that "white savior complex"), and dividing people. I automatically avoid that shit at this point, but go ahead and try to read some other small thing into something it's not.

For length reasons, I can't just write a paragraph to qualify every single thing said. Even though I've had my share of long posts, I've cut things out all the time to reduce length. A day or two back, I wrote a conceptual post about change and conservatism (I think also in response to you), and an offhand sentence at the end was picked out, the rest ignored. I could have doubled the size of the post to also write about that topic, but it was tangential to what I was saying. Then I addressed the responses with a post I kept relatively short, and another point was pulled out, meat ignored. Then I just didn't respond, because I didn't feel like we should clog up this threat speculating our way through conterfactuals. Then of course, we saw the predictable chorus about the general election, the HOW-DARE-YOU-VOTE-IN-A-WAY-I-DON'T-LIKE "self-righteous[ness]" (yes, LakeCharles, there's always plenty to go around when it's primary season. It's a good thing we all purchased our pitchforks when that whole Nicollet mall thing happened, even if it's not as big of a deal as we first thought, since we'll be needing them for the next several months, and it saves money over renting them), which there wasn't much of a point in responding to.

I don't even entirely remember where I was going with this paragraph. It was going to be something like how there's a trade off between length and clarity, and if this thread is going to be at all useable then we need to cut some of the crap, but not quite that, just related, and worded in a better way. Discourse is just really going to suck for a while.

And while we're at it: "his campaign is being run on the momentum of ill-informed, sexist, racially tonedeaf, delusional children with a shallow grasp of recent political history and no grasp of how government works in reality."

Ignoring the bitterness and the whole "ad hominem" thing, then I'm sure you'll find it hilarious that we'll be taking over the democratic party, if not this election, relatively shortly thereafter. ;) :D

Also I would be totally ok if you pm'd me the rant (if you still have it), no hard feelings, responses, anything like that (It's the passion of primary season). It would just be fun to look at if Bernie were to win. :)

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 14th, 2016, 12:29 pm
by Nick
Just bizarre

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 15th, 2016, 6:09 pm
by VAStationDude

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 15th, 2016, 6:14 pm
by grant1simons2

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 15th, 2016, 6:23 pm
by VAStationDude
scrutiny of Sanders unachievable proposals will not negatively affect his chances in the primary. Donald Trump idiotic ideas have made him the clear favorite on the gop side.

The issue is his agenda simply can not be enacted in 2016 America. There are too many powerful groups (physicians and seniors) who benefit immensely under the current health care system and are extremely fearful of change. the event of a Sanders general election victory don't expect any legislation as groundbreaking as ObamaCare. This is why going Bernie or bust is dumb.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 15th, 2016, 8:05 pm
by trigonalmayhem
I'm done considering Sanders. I'm done pretending that his campaign is not being run on the momentum of ill-informed, sexist, racially tonedeaf, delusional children with a shallow grasp of recent political history and no grasp of how government works in reality. Because I'm sorry. It is. And this thread has made that abundantly clear.
oh be honest, you were never seriously considering him anyway. your remarks make that abundantly clear. All hail the status quo!

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 15th, 2016, 8:07 pm
by trigonalmayhem
scrutiny of Sanders unachievable proposals will not negatively affect his chances in the primary. Donald Trump idiotic ideas have made him the clear favorite on the gop side.

The issue is his agenda simply can not be enacted in 2016 America. There are too many powerful groups (physicians and seniors) who benefit immensely under the current health care system and are extremely fearful of change. the event of a Sanders general election victory don't expect any legislation as groundbreaking as ObamaCare. This is why going Bernie or bust is dumb.
If the objective is merely to 'hold the line' against conservative trolls in congress, I trust him to do that over Clinton who will want to 'accomplish' something and leave a legacy behind because it's all about her ego. She's already so centrist-moderate-pragmatic-sellout-whatever that she barely has to budge to find common ground with the crazies on the right. And they will twist her arm to let her get anything done, so she can either do nothing and damage her image (nope) or cave in to terrible shit just to leave her mark on history, good or bad.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 16th, 2016, 2:04 am
by Chef
I don't normally read the Huffington Post but I found this to be a pretty good analysis of the recent history of the Democratic party and the importance of the Clinton/Sanders contest within the context of it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin- ... 09940.html
On economic policy, contemporary establishment democrats have more in common with contemporary republicans than they do with the FDR/LBJ democrats. Carter and Clinton took the party away from economic progressives. The Democratic Party, which was once the party that saw economic inequality and poverty as the core causes of economic instability, now sees inequality and poverty as largely irrelevant.

Instead of eliminating inequality and poverty to fuel the capitalist system and produce strong economic growth, establishment democrats now largely agree with establishment republicans that the problem is a lack of support for business investment.

So Bernie Sanders is not merely running to attempt to implement a set of idealistic policies that a Republican-controlled Congress is likely to block. He is running to take the Democratic Party back from an establishment that ignores the fundamental systemic economic problems that lead to wage stagnation and economic crisis.
Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal building on the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. She doesn't understand the pivotal role inequality plays in creating economic crisis and reducing economic growth. She has been taken in by a fundamentally right wing paradigm, and if she is elected she will continue to lead the Democratic Party down that path.

Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist building on the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. He understands that inequality is the core structural factor in economic crisis and that growth in real wages and incomes is required for robust, sustainable economic growth.

It doesn't matter which one is more experienced, or which one's policies are more likely to pass congress, or which one is more likely to win a general election, or which one is a man and which one is a woman. This is not about just this election, or just the next four years.

This is about whether the Democratic Party is going to care about inequality for the next decade.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 16th, 2016, 10:47 am
by amiller92
Yup it's all over the place. This is going to be a mess. I imagine they will stonewall any Obama nominee, though I don't know how this will play in November, particularly for some Senators.
Now's a good time to remember how important it is to elected a Dem (any Dem).

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 16th, 2016, 10:50 am
by amiller92
I'm done considering Sanders. I'm done pretending that his campaign is not being run on the momentum of ill-informed, sexist, racially tonedeaf, delusional children with a shallow grasp of recent political history and no grasp of how government works in reality. Because I'm sorry. It is. And this thread has made that abundantly clear.
Can I just say: don't do this. Don't decide which candidate to support based your perception of their supporters behavior. Pick the candidate, not the support base.

Edit because I found what I had previously missed and to elaborate.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 21st, 2016, 12:08 am
by Tiller
http://usuncut.com/politics/snopes-rumo ... ers-false/

There just isn't anything to add anymore. Posting this in case someone here missed the fact-check.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 21st, 2016, 9:12 am
by mulad
Despite what I had repeated earlier about the low chance of polling out of Nevada before the caucuses, it turns out there were a few pollsters who released their numbers, and they turned out to be relatively accurate. I'm disappointed that Sanders came in at 47.2%, 5.5 points below Clinton, but that's a long way from where he had been at the end of last year when he only showed 28% support in polls. Both candidates gain delegates from Nevada, with Clinton so far estimated to get 19 to Sanders' 15, according to the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the Republican primary in South Carolina awards delegates based on the winner of each U.S. Congressional District, as well as other at-large delegates allocated based on the statewide winner. Trump ran the table there and will get all 50 delegates from the state despite only winning 32.5% of the overall vote. Rubio and Cruz almost tied for second place at 22.5 and 22.3%, respectively -- both of them overperformed versus pre-primary polling by a few points, with Rubio seeing the largest gains (perhaps a rebound from New Hampshire where he had been the greatest underperformer?)

Jeb Bush came in 4th place with 7.8%, though that was far enough below his polling estimates in the 10-11% range that he dropped out of the race last night. Kasich also underperformed polls by about 1.4 points to come in at 7.6%, so I think he's the most likely person to drop out next, especially since he probably has the smallest amount of money of anyone left. Carson was last with 7.2%, but probably still has a lot of campaign cash available.

The Republican caucus in Nevada happens this Tuesday, and the Democratic primary in South Carolina is Saturday, then Super Tuesday (when Minnesota has caucuses) is just after that.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 21st, 2016, 10:02 am
by Didier
Bush is out, so the "establishment" eggs are starting to go to Rubio's basket. Though even if everyone who voted for Bush voted for Rubio, Trump still would have won South Carolina.

Also, I've seen Bernie has started running ads pretty regularly here.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 21st, 2016, 10:38 am
by VAStationDude
Clinton will be the nominee. After three contests favorable to Sanders she and Sanders have each won 51 delegates. South Carolina and a bunch of large Super Tuesday states favor her heavily. There is absolutely no path for Bernie to overcome her super delegate lead.