2016 USA Presidential election thread I: The warm-up

[Xajii]

it could also stem from the fact that despite being a leading figure of liberalism for 25 years and one of the most liberal members of the Senate during her time there she's facing a barrage of character assassination from the left much of which is being lifted directly from the Republican playbook

Yep. It's very frustrating for anyone who's been around long enough to see what's happening, tbh.

When Sanders started his campaign he would've never picked up on the GOP talking points about Hillary, but now it's pretty much all he's throwing out there. It's a hail-mary for his last stand at the polls, I guess, but it's still sad to see.

Do people not realize that nothing he's saying is novel and that she's survived literally all of these baseless attacks before? This is the lady who sat there for 11 hours while GOP grasped at straws to "gotcha" her on Benghazi. She's just fucking sick of it, and I don't blame her.

I mean, her voting record is almost identical to Sanders, that's what gets me. But his campaign has shifted towards doing everything they can to make her look more like a Republican than a Democrat. The data doesn't back it up, but I guess you think her tone is weird or some shit. Gimme a break.

[Dotsudoku]

Yep. It's very frustrating for anyone who's been around long enough to see what's happening, tbh.

It's frustrating for someone who hasn't even been around that long, too. My political education is still very much a work in progress, but it's immensely disparaging to watch all of my peers fall for such an obvious smear campaign. I avoid the the topic of who I'm voting for like the plague among my(predominantly liberal) friends, coworkers, and the like

[Xajii]

It's frustrating for someone who hasn't even been around that long, too. My political education is still very much a work in progress, but it's immensely disparaging to watch all of my peers fall for such an obvious smear campaign

Good on you. I give younger people a slight pass, given that they trend towards finding their preferred Internet circles and gathering their information and the appropriate way of assessing that information from those circles. With that approach, it's not a surprise that when sites like Reddit, huffpo, Tumblr, etc. start to share these "stories" and "secrets" or whatever... a lot of young people think they're ahead of the curve, that they know something the general public doesn't, that Hillary voters are the ones with wool pulled over their eyes.

Here's a good article on how the GOP has done an amazing job of enacting this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us...nton.html?_r=0

[Xantavia]

You don't understand real world politics in any functional capacity, do you? All of those points have been addressed over and over and over in this thread. It doesn't matter what party/candidate you favor. Bottom line is if you don't win the election, you cannot put any of your policies into law. You have to win. Let me repeat that: YOU HAVE TO WIN.

It is very unlikely for Bernie to win the election with the way he's currently going about things. Not to mention that if he does win the election, he's not helping much (or any) of the downticket races for Congress that he needs to push his policies through.

Everybody has to draw their own line in the sand where they think change can start. For me, winning at all costs is not worth it. You continue to play by the old rules to win, I think it is likely you will continue to play by the old rules once you are in office. Telling everybody to fall in line and play it safe undermines those who want to see things shaken up. It hides how much support a certain idea had at the end because people were convinced not to "waste" their vote on it.

[Gredival]

Here's another good article about the hypocrisy of saying that Hillary takes money from Wall St. and Big Oil by using aggregated donations from company employees.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...l-fundraising/

This was posted by Barbara Boxer, who we all know is a corporate shill that loves Big Oil and Wall St.

The latest attacks from the Sanders campaign on Hillary Clinton are baseless and should stop. Both Hillary and Bernie accepted donations from fossil fuel workers, and both care deeply about the environment. As the lead Democrat on the enviro committee, I have seen Hillary Clinton's passionate & effective leadership on the environment first-hand. The last thing we need is for the Democratic race, which we have been so proud of, to devolve into GOP-style mudslinging.

[archibaldcrane]

Bernie shaming anyone on carbon emissions when he wants to shut down the industry responsible for over 60% of the nation's zero-carbon electricity is a joke.

[Rooney]

Everybody has to draw their own line in the sand where they think change can start. For me, winning at all costs is not worth it. You continue to play by the old rules to win, I think it is likely you will continue to play by the old rules once you are in office. Telling everybody to fall in line and play it safe undermines those who want to see things shaken up. It hides how much support a certain idea had at the end because people were convinced not to "waste" their vote on it.

By all means, vote for Bernie in the primaries. I think that is a good thing. What I'm advocating is taking what you can get during the general election, and then pushing for more. Getting, say, 25% of the policies you want with a second choice candidate is still better than having your preferred candidate win the nomination and lose the election (and most likely losing ground on the issues you care about). Bernie and Hillary supporters will still get at least something they want if the other candidate wins the nomination and the election. Both sides will get none of what they want if a Republican wins. Abstaining from voting (or voting 3rd party/write-in) is essentially a vote for the Republican candidate. That is the point pragmatists keep trying to make.

We're not telling you to stop supporting Bernie. We want you to vote for him in the primaries if he is your preferred candidate. We're saying to support Hillary if she gets the nomination, because you'll get at least some of what you want out of it. If you truly believe the system needs to change that drastically, then you had better be very politically active during every election cycle (especially at the local level: schoolboards, city councils, and such are very important!).

[kisada]

It's frustrating for someone who hasn't even been around that long, too. My political education is still very much a work in progress, but it's immensely disparaging to watch all of my peers fall for such an obvious smear campaign. I avoid the the topic of who I'm voting for like the plague among my(predominantly liberal) friends, coworkers, and the like

this is the boat i'm in. it's like, holy fuck, it's unbelievable how many people lack basic critical thinking skills.

[kisada]

By all means, vote for Bernie in the primaries. I think that is a good thing. What I'm advocating is taking what you can get during the general election, and then pushing for more. Getting, say, 25% of the policies you want with a second choice candidate is still better than having your preferred candidate win the nomination and lose the election (and most likely losing ground on the issues you care about). Bernie and Hillary supporters will still get at least something they want if the other candidate wins the nomination and the election. Both sides will get none of what they want if a Republican wins. Abstaining from voting (or voting 3rd party/write-in) is essentially a vote for the Republican candidate. That is the point pragmatists keep trying to make.

We're not telling you to stop supporting Bernie. We want you to vote for him in the primaries if he is your preferred candidate. We're saying to support Hillary if she gets the nomination, because you'll get at least some of what you want out of it. If you truly believe the system needs to change that drastically, then you had better be very politically active during every election cycle (especially at the local level: schoolboards, city councils, and such are very important!).

unfortunately, no matter how many times you say this, there are clearly some out there who either refuse to, or are incapable of processing it.

[Quicklet]

Apparently people are okay with political corruption as long as it's their side that's doing it.

[Rooney]

As is being so hypocritical that you complain about the results of a process that you refuse to participate in because you won't get 100% of what you want. Apparently.

[dasva]

Apparently people are okay with political corruption as long as it's their side that's doing it.

Welcome to politics

[Ragnus]

I have a friend who is going through something similar to Hillary. He just turned 40 last year and he's finding it hard to believe that people are calling him moderate to conservative when he was considered, in his own words, a gibbering, insane liberal by almost everyone around him.

[Gredival]

Apparently people are okay with political corruption as long as it's their side that's doing it.

I think we're missing a few steps in the logic ladder between money coming from employees of corporations, or even money from corporations, and outright corruption.

Money can buy a politician's ear, but that's no guarantee of anything. Obama received something from both AT&T and Verizon, people thought he appointed Wheeler to be a crony yes-man for them, and instead we got far stronger net neutrality regulations than anyone could have hoped for.

[Quicklet]

Wheeler is the exception rather than the norm though.

This goes beyond just fundraising, but it infects practically every major level of federal elected/appointed government, and for all the things Obama has done right during his presidency, he has done so very much that is wrong and needs to be fixed to avoid catastrophe in the future. For a lot of people, it's not sufficient to say "well we're making strides on the social issues, so that's good enough" when ignoring the other issues could put all of that in jeopardy.

As far as the fundraising semantics, I think it's disingenuous to focus on the employee aspect and downplay having lobbyists bundling large amounts of contributions together. Individual low-level employees are not putting in hundreds of thousands of dollars into the system, so when a politician plays dumb with the voters they shouldn't be surprised to be called out on it. At the very least, if someone is going to argue that you have to play the game to win, they need to be transparent enough to convince the skeptics that they're on the level. Telling them "I know better than you, so just trust me" is not going to fly in 2016.

[Xajii]

Still waiting on literally any evidence of corruption

There are a number of legitimate criticisms of Hillary Clinton, and I can understand why a person who ranks certain issues quite highly on their "care-o-meter" would have trouble voting for her; corruption, however, just ain't one of 'em.

[archibaldcrane]

Individual low-level employees are not putting in hundreds of thousands of dollars into the system,

You do realize that this is exactly how Bernie's campaign is mostly funded, right?

[Tyche]

Archi, your new show has made gawker.com headlines. I haven't watched any legitimate TV news, but I assume Katrina on there is getting some publicity.

[Quicklet]

You do realize that this is exactly how Bernie's campaign is mostly funded, right?

There's a difference between someone working a phone bank getting people to chip in $20-30 at a time vs a lobbyist who puts together 20-40 max contributions and will ask Hillary for an ambassadorship to some random country in return, or perhaps would be lobbying her administration on things like Keystone or regulations on fossil fuels.

[Gredival]

There's a difference between someone working a phone bank getting people to chip in $20-30 at a time vs a lobbyist who puts together 20-40 max contributions and will ask Hillary for an ambassadorship to some random country in return, or perhaps would be lobbying her administration on things like Keystone or regulations on fossil fuels.

Let me quote another poster.

Still waiting on literally any evidence of corruption

You have absolutely no evidence. I have just as much evidence to support my claim that Bernie is doing the exact same thing with employees of gun manufacturers. The difference is just that you think it's believable that Hillary would do this because you don't trust her and you trust Bernie.

Which goes back to the point everyone else has. The narrative that Hillary is selling voters short is only believable due to an intense decade long smear campaign by the right that is now being co-opted by the fringe left that supports Bernie.