2016 USA Presidential election thread I: The warm-up

[Inshiya]

You...realize Ginsburg retiring does absolutely nothing for overturning Citizens United, right?

Didn't really think I needed to point that out since it's so obvious. Hence why I included the 1-2 other justices getting up on age as well.

Her retiring and being replaced by a pro-corporate-speech president does however drastically hurt the chances of overturning Citizens United.

[archibaldcrane]

Unrelated, but I just realized that the current 9 justices were nominated 1 per presidential term essentially. Reagan has 2, Bush 1 has 1, Clinton has 2, Bush 2 has 2, and Obama has 2.

[Inshiya]

Currently Stephen Breyer is 74, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia are 76 and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a pancreatic cancer survivor, is 79.

Ginsburg certainly won't live another decade, or at least won't be functional for another decade. Scalia will live for ever on sheer hate alone.

Kennedy and Breyer are showing signs of age, but Kennedy would ultimately be a loss I think, as he has shifted more to the left on corporate speech concerns over time.

[Gredival]

"Overturned" makes it sound too simplistic though. You can't just pass a law to overrule the Supreme Court - you either need to have them revisit the issue with new justices or amend the Constitution, both of which are very difficult and/or require years or decades to accomplish.

It depends. Some rulings can be overturned through Congress legislating. SCOTUS' role is merely interpretation, which means that nothing aside from constitutional questions (which would require an amendment) are untouchable if the law being interpreted is amended.

I haven't studied the opinion, but I'm betting that money being speech is the constitutional question. The whole corporations being persons can be tinkered with. If they are legislatively redefined in a way that they aren't people or they aren't entitled to speech, then there's no issue.

[archibaldcrane]

Good point.

[Sho]

Scalia will live for ever on sheer hate alone.

Truer words my friend, have never been spoken.

---

Meanwhile, Glenn confused on why Donald Trump is so loved by conservatives:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/14/medi...ump/index.html

GOP is in such a broken state, they don't know what the fuck they want anymore as a collective. And it's great. To be fair, Beck speaks the honest truth... conservatives seem to be in love with Trump for absolutely no reason at all. He eschews almost all of their values, and was a previous Democrat.



The reality is, stupid people want to be ruled by a strong alpha male type.

[Mertron]

scalia can't retire, i plan on having my students read his dissents for years to come

[Gredival]

scalia can't retire, i plan on having my students read his dissents for years to come

Are you a law prof? I swear the worst thing you could ever hear in law school was that guy that raised his hand to go "Professor, I concur with the Scalia dissent"

[Mertron]

English comp/lit

his rhetoric is amazing

[Gredival]

Truer words my friend, have never been spoken.

---

Meanwhile, Glenn confused on why Donald Trump is so loved by conservatives:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/14/medi...ump/index.html

GOP is in such a broken state, they don't know what the fuck they want anymore as a collective. And it's great. To be fair, Beck speaks the honest truth... conservatives seem to be in love with Trump for absolutely no reason at all. He eschews almost all of their values, and was a previous Democrat.



The reality is, stupid people want to be ruled by a strong alpha male type.

I think this piece nails it "The key to Trump’s appeal is his suggestion, which he utters repeatedly, that mainstream Republican leaders are deliberately sidelining both the issue of border security and the broader issue of immigration—a complex topic within both major parties—in order to shore up support among the country’s growing Latino population.

Trump’s implication of GOP cowardice is seductive to the segment of Republican voters who believe they’ve been sold out by the GOP to various elite interest groups who have relentlessly lobbied for immigration reform."

http://blackbag.gawker.com/is-donald...p-h-1723925057

[Sho]

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/...o-run-against/

If anyone can actually stomach Ann Coulter, skip to 3:30 because it made me laugh a bit.

Ann Coulter is such a large idiot she shouldnt be up for discussion in any form or fashion.

[Sho]

Trump’s implication of GOP cowardice is seductive to the segment of Republican voters who believe they’ve been sold out by the GOP to various elite interest groups who have relentlessly lobbied for immigration reform."

http://blackbag.gawker.com/is-donald...p-h-1723925057

Also true. I live around a ton of middle/upper class conservatives, business owners. They are all enraptured by Trump for this very reason as well. Not only this, but they feel they've been sold out to special interest groups for a long range of topics including education, fracking, and gambling (casinos) as well. The problem with this is, they are hyped off the fumes of seemingly populist ideals, and no substance or plan. Its honestly no different from Bernie Sanders, but at least with Sanders he'll be able to have a coherent plan drawn up if he takes this run of his seriously.

At any rate, the Donald has promised to outline his plan by next week, so we'll have to see. I think the reality is that no one, including Sanders and Trump realized they would get so much support over Bush snd Clinton in key states.
---
There's a myriad of problems for Clinton's campaign, each of which have to be examined individually. 

She's automatically a product of dynastic politics -- if you look at recent passing years (sans Obama), we've had 24 years of political families, 28 if we elect Clinton or Bush.  People have in fact gotten tired of such politics, which is a factor in Sander's surge (alternatively Trump as well).  To some on the left, it's the same car with a slightly worse driver at the wheel.  People want to see a new face, even if it comes in the form of a 73 year old Socialist.

Clinton is also still suffering from supporting the Iraq War, something that cost her the primaries vs Obama.  Far from this, she was generally bad at her job as Secretary of State.  She got it wrong with Libya.  She got it wrong with Iraq.  We can go back further to her as a senator and say that she got it wrong with Ukraine and Georgia as well.  She further chose to not capitalize on Osama bin Laden's defeat and killing by keeping troops in Afghanistan, though this can be blamed more on the administration than her.  Pragmatism won't work in this case because she appears to have a genuine disconnect in dealing with middle eastern countries. Of course this can be rectified, if she picked a less than pragmatic Secretary of State to counterbalance her ideals.  She's for all intents and purposes a war hawk, and not in a good way.  However, this makes it easy for her to work with conservatives and Neocons concerning foreign policy.

As far as political standing, she's further to the right than most Democrats, and extremely far from the left where Sanders and Warren would be.  Slightly to the left of Obama, and even further from there from her husband (Who is Centre Left).  Unlike Maroot, I doubt that she'd be able to garner any conservative independents on anything that isn't foreign policy.  She would however be able to rope the shit out of the conservatives in the Democratic party, and by extension, some of the liberals in the Republican party.

Then you have the dust up over her email server, which has actually damaged her reputation pretty badly and is currently being used as a shining Clinton slaysword by every GOP candidate.  Its largely a gigantic distraction, but one that is highly effective when you realize a lot of the electorate (both sides) have the collective intelligence of a toaster.

She finally has a lot of domestic agendas that she's yet to touch upon, which has in part emboldened Sanders to go full throttle with his ultra liberal agenda.  The fact that Bernie is receiving so much love and adulation is his main strategy from his aides, it casts Clinton in a negative light as an uncaring candidate who is too busy with politics as usual to have a serious domestic/social agenda.

[archibaldcrane]

Hillary is not right of center in the Democratic party. Why do people keep saying this?

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/h...on-is-liberal/
"Clinton was one of the most liberal members during her time in the Senate. According to an analysis of roll call votes by Voteview, Clinton’s record was more liberal than 70 percent of Democrats inher final term in the Senate. She was more liberal than 85 percent of all members. Her 2008 rival in the Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama, was nearby with a record more liberal than 82 percent of all members — he was not more liberal than Clinton."

[Blubbartron]

Probably because the statistics are pointless without context. If you judge how liberal someone is by how they vote, the thing that matter is what things are up for vote in the period you look at. If she voted against abortion limits 200 times, that's great, but I care more about the 10 times she voted in favor of corporations over regular citizens. (bullshit numbers are bullshit, but you get the gist, I'm sure)

[notorious bum]

Quit quoting 538 like it's the bible, it's truly facepalm worthy in this context.

[Headspace]

You guys

Who is playing Hillary in the BENGHAZI movie starring Jim from The Office?

[archibaldcrane]

Lol, attack my metric without supplying one of your own.

Excellent debate, chaps.

[kuronosan]

Quit quoting 538 like it's the bible, it's truly facepalm worthy in this context.

Says the guy whose arguments consist entirely of quotes.

[notorious bum]

Fuck off, politics isn't like playing fantasy football.





Okay, a lot of it actually is....

[Roranora]

Frank Gore is prime for a big season.