US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3572

On April 07 2016 23:29 kwizach wrote:

Declaring I misinterpreted/straight up distorted the facts does not make it true. Nowhere in my post did I misrepresent the facts. I also did not argue that his campaign was imploding.


Well, given that you wrote an entire post explaining that it was "a bit dumb" for Clinton to go negative and that it could hugely backfire, I provided some context to point out that Sanders had been going negative, and had in fact been attacking Clinton's character, for quite some time. I didn't say you were denying that Sanders had gone negative.


"Largely positive" is very vague, and I'm certainly not saying that he's been as vicious as plenty of political campaigns in the past. Yet there is no denying that he has been going negative for some time now, with the first cracks in his stance appearing at the end of January/beginning of February. In what had been until then a campaign focused almost essentially on the issues, he started including jabs at Clinton not for her positions on various topics but through innuendos that she was doing Wall Street's bidding and that she was in the pocket of special interests because of her campaign contributions. You don't need to be outright saying "she is corrupt" to be clearly sending a negative message about someone to the voters. This was still very tame, though, but it continued until March saw his campaign and Sanders himself substantially double down on these attacks on her character and integrity. It's too bad, because he initially rejected attacking her like that, and it was his view that even her paid speeches were not something he should criticize her for, saying she had the right to make money. And now, as we saw this week, his rhetoric has gone even beyond that, arguing that she is "unqualified" to be president. I don't think either Hillary or Obama ever said that about each other in 2008. Again, I'm certainly not saying Sanders' campaign is outrageously more negative than many other campaigns (the 2008 Democratic primary took many nasty turns), but he said his campaign would remain entirely positive and that has simply not been the case for more than one month.


The idea that Hillary Clinton is anywhere close to destroying the Democratic Party is ludicrous. She has been a Democrat for decades, has worked relentlessly for years to raise money for the Democratic party and for Democrats running for office at various levels, is still doing that, and she's repeatedly tried to focus on opposing Trump and the GOP rather than on defeating Sanders in this race. Meanwhile, around the turn of the 1990s, Sanders called the Democratic party and the GOP "tweedle-dee" and "tweedle-dum", and argued that the Democratic party was "ideologically bankrupt". Did he work with the Democrats? Sure, since he's obviously much closer to them than to the GOP (and that's also the only way he was going to get committee assignments). Yet even now, on his facebook page, he presents himself as an Independent and not a Democrat. With regards to actually damaging the party, he recently said in a TYT interview that to a large extent the Democratic party was the "party of the upper middle class and the cocktail crowd and the heavy campaign contributors", and that if he didn't win the nomination, he'd ask "what is the Democratic establishment gonna do for us?", essentially saying they were going to need to work for his endorsement or else. He's the one who has used demonizing rhetoric to present Hillary and the Democratic party as out-of-touch with ordinary citizens, as if he had a monopoly on talking to, and working for, the people. Clinton saying that the young people who fell for specific distortions weren't doing their own research doesn't even come close, since all she was saying is that looking into the matter should lead anyone to conclude she's not in the pocket of the oil & gas industry. Sanders, meanwhile, has essentially been portraying the major figures siding with Hillary as "the establishment" and disconnected from the reality of ordinary citizens, wielding a brand of populism which can be particularly divisive and which has been divisive in other countries.


Perhaps you should have paid a closer look to the tweet from Nancy Cordes that you just cited, since in her first sentence she mentions "calls for him to apologize to Sandy Hook victims". Who did those calls come from? Like I said, families of the Sandy Hook victims (first five seconds of the video):



Did Hillary join in on the criticism? Sure, but the fact remains, as I wrote, that he was asked about a query for him to apologize coming from relatives of the Sandy Hook victims, and he ended up saying that Hillary should apologize for the dead in Iraq.


Nobody is arguing that Sanders supported the Sandy Hook massacre, obviously. This is about his comments about the suit that some families of the victims are trying to bring against gun manufacturers.

Again, he's saying Hillary should apologize for the dead in Iraq in his response to relatives of Sandy Hook families asking him to apologize for his comments on their desire to sue gun manufacturers. I'm not sure in which universe that is not a negative response, but in any case 1. Hillary did already apologize for her vote and 2. to place the responsibility on Clinton for the all of the American deaths which resulted from the Iraq war solely for her vote (which she explained at length at the time (before casting it) was first and foremost a means to force Saddam Hussein to the negotiating table through the threat of intervention) is hardly fair. Was her vote a terrible mistake, for which she should strongly be criticized? Absolutely. But his statement goes beyond that and is, as I pointed out, another example of him and his campaign lashing out against Clinton much more negatively than what was previously the case.


Erm, "not entirely true"? No, see, when you use "quote unquote", it means you're quoting someone verbatim. It wasn't true at all that Clinton called him unqualified. It's a false statement, and it's a false statement which he used to justify calling her unqualified. With regards to the interview, the facts are again how I described them: Clinton went out of her way to not say that he was unqualified. She was certainly making the argument that he was unprepared with regards to one of his core issues and to implementing his agenda, but being unprepared is very different from being unqualified. She was as civil as can be in her criticism of Sanders for his answers in that interview. The facts are, therefore:

1. Clinton voiced criticism of Sanders for his lack of preparedness with regards to the implementation of his own platform
2. Clinton refused to call Sanders "unqualified" although the host baited such an answer three times
3. Sanders made the false assertion that Clinton had called him "unqualified"
4. Sanders declared that it was Clinton who was unqualified to be president.

As I mentioned previously, I don't think the Obama vs Clinton primary ever went as far as one of the two declaring the other was "unqualified" for the presidency. There was Clinton's "telephone call at 3 AM" ad whose purpose was to argue to make the case that she was the one who was ready to take a call like that, but it's obviously not on the same level as outright saying your opponent is unqualified. That is an outrageous statement to make when your opponent is as qualified as Hillary is.


No need to change the word he used -- he didn't say she was not ready, he said she was "unqualified". Merriam-Webster defines qualified as "having the necessary skill, experience, or knowledge to do a particular job or activity : having the qualifications to do something". Hillary Clinton is not unqualified to be president, and she's in fact one of the best qualified presidential candidates in recent elections for that job. Disagreeing with Clinton on the issues is perfectly fine, as is criticizing her judgment on decisions she's made. Yet saying she's unqualified is on another level (and yet again attacking her integrity with no substance to back it up is also pathetic), and it's simply false.


I agree with that assessment. I was objecting to your use of the term "steamroll", however, which is not the same as simply winning. I don't see Sanders as having any chance of greatly overwhelming Clinton by sizable margins in NY and PA, in the very unlikely event that he does win those states.


I agree with the term impatient, and "frustrated" would be accurate as well. She's impatient/frustrated on two levels: she was hoping to no longer have to expend funds in pursuit of the Democratic nomination at this point, hoping to be able to focus on the general election and use them in battleground states instead. She is also frustrated at the dishonest character attacks targeting her -- she's been facing smears like that from the Republicans for 25 years, but it's very disappointing to see progressives go that route. And it's especially disappointing considering the need to achieve as large a Democratic victory as possible in November, so it's an obstacle to achieving unity. It's perfectly justified for her to be impatient and frustrated in this respect.

I'm not comfortable making a blanket statement about what "Clinton's aggression" is going to result in, since we don't know what her campaign is actually going to do. It'll depend. And I'm not questioning why you're posting, so I see no reason for you to question my motives.

On April 08 2016 07:38 Naracs_Duc wrote:
To the Sanders supporters, I have a question for you.

A lot of the stuff that people want from Bernie are things that are best fought in the Senate and in Congress, where laws are actually made. The presidency, for the most part, is for more macro directions in how our country moves and not for control of the word for word statements about a passed bill or law. The overly specific things being asked for like having a more liberal version of laws already in place (ACA, Dodd Frank, etc...) are things that are best controlled through midterm and local elections, not the presidential campaign. After all, the president can only sign something or veto it--the details of what gets signed or veto are up to someone else. Why waste your energies on the white house when there's more impactful voting elsewhere?

On April 08 2016 07:43 KwarK wrote:

Votes aren't a zero sum game. We don't have to not vote for people we support elsewhere just because we voted for people we support here. That's not how it works.

Your question is absurd. It's literally "why don't you vote for people you support when it's really important and then people you don't support when it's pretty important but not as important as the first one?". The answer is "because that'd be really stupid".

On April 08 2016 08:19 Kipsate wrote:
President can't pass policies but he can lead political discourse, public opinion and put it on the agenda, thats why its valuable. Also spending energy on nationals/primaries and on congress/senate elections is not mutually exclusive.

We should all be able to agree: no one should be poor in a nation as wealthy as the US. Yet nearly 15% of Americans live below the poverty line. Perhaps one of the best solutions is also one of the oldest and simplest ideas: everyone should be guaranteed a small income, free from conditions.

Called a universal basic income by supporters, the idea has has attracted support throughout American history, from Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King Jr. But it has also faced unending criticism for one particular reason: the advocates of “austerity” say we simply can’t afford it – or any other dramatic spending on social security.

That argument dissolved this week with the release of the Panama Papers, which reveal the elaborate methods used by the wealthy to avoid paying back the societies that helped them to gain their wealth in the first place.

Roads and transportation infrastructure. Educated workforces. Courts and legal systems. Innovations sparked by government funding, such as the internet. No one – no matter how smart or hard working – joins the American or global elite without making use of these shared resources.

But while working and middle-class families pay their taxes or face consequences, the Panama Papers remind us that the worst of the 1% have, for years, essentially been stealing access to Americans’ common birthright, and to the benefits of our shared endeavors.

Worse, many of those same global elite have argued that we cannot afford to provide education, healthcare or a basic standard of living for all, much less eradicate poverty or dramatically enhance the social safety net by guaranteeing every American a subsistence-level income.

On April 08 2016 08:36 Acrofales wrote:

...

Really?

1. The Panama papers (so far) include hardly any reveals of Americans, and definitely no high profile reveals so far... so using the Panama papers as the umbrella for this rant against the rich is extremely dumb if you're aiming your sights at the US elites.

2. The Panama papers don't bring a giant reveal that people have been evading taxes, they just bring evidence. Pretty important, but it's not as if the very idea that the rich avoid taxes is the amazing news that we only know of because of the Panama papers.

3. Even ignoring the above 2 facts, it's a complete non-sequitur. Just because the rich are evading tax, doesn't mean that there is suddenly money for universal income.

And this criticism is coming from someone who on general principal supports a universal income

On April 08 2016 08:36 Acrofales wrote:

...

Really?

1. The Panama papers (so far) include hardly any reveals of Americans, and definitely no high profile reveals so far... so using the Panama papers as the umbrella for this rant against the rich is extremely dumb if you're aiming your sights at the US elites.

2. The Panama papers don't bring a giant reveal that people have been evading taxes, they just bring evidence. Pretty important, but it's not as if the very idea that the rich avoid taxes is the amazing news that we only know of because of the Panama papers.

3. Even ignoring the above 2 facts, it's a complete non-sequitur. Just because the rich are evading tax, doesn't mean that there is suddenly money for universal income.

And this criticism is coming from someone who on general principal supports a universal income

On April 08 2016 07:38 Naracs_Duc wrote:
To the Sanders supporters, I have a question for you.

A lot of the stuff that people want from Bernie are things that are best fought in the Senate and in Congress, where laws are actually made. The presidency, for the most part, is for more macro directions in how our country moves and not for control of the word for word statements about a passed bill or law. The overly specific things being asked for like having a more liberal version of laws already in place (ACA, Dodd Frank, etc...) are things that are best controlled through midterm and local elections, not the presidential campaign. After all, the president can only sign something or veto it--the details of what gets signed or veto are up to someone else. Why waste your energies on the white house when there's more impactful voting elsewhere?

Trump’s New Magic Number Is 40 Percent Of The Vote

While there will continue to be some variance from state to state, Trump is now usually going to have to be in the 40s to win. That’s a problem, because as you can see from the bottom half of the chart, it’s not clear that his performance is improving much at all. (This is also apparent in national polls, where Trump’s share of the vote has grown only to 40 percent from 35 percent before Iowa.) Of the six states where Trump’s Minimum Winning Vote Share has been at least 40 percent – Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Utah and Wisconsin – Trump has won only two.

Part of the problem is that Republican voters seem to be behaving tactically, gravitating toward the most viable non-Trump alternative in their state. In Wisconsin on Tuesday, Cruz beat his polling average by about 10 percentage points. But Kasich underperformed his by 5 points, suggesting the presence of a #NeverTrump vote.

Furthermore, because Trump tends to do poorly with late-deciding voters and doesn’t have much of a turnout operation, Trump has tended to hit his polling averages right on the nose instead of gaining from undecided voters. If he’s at 37 percent in the polling average in a state, that’s a reasonably good estimate of his election-day vote; you don’t necessarily want to round up a few points to account for undecideds, as you would for most candidates.

Source (538)

On April 08 2016 09:34 Souma wrote:

"To the Sanders supporters," this is up there with one of the dumbest things I've heard lately in this thread. Every candidate is talking about the same shpeel. Please do not try and single out Sanders as someone talking about policy that would need a vote of Congress to pass. Not that that matters in political discourse anyway.

Also what the hell is: "... overly specific things being asked... are things that are best controlled through midterm and local elections." I'm so confused. When was this decided?

This thread is getting more ridiculous by the day holy mother of. I'm now officially done. GL to Hillary.

On April 08 2016 10:09 Naracs_Duc wrote:


You know its not the president who presents and votes on bills and laws right? He can only approve or veto what is presented to him.