US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4439

On July 26 2016 01:14 KwarK wrote:

No, the electoral college is what creates this dynamic. The popular vote means that a vote is a vote, a predictable vote is worth as much as a swing vote, you just want more of them. This situation means that gaining votes only matters if you gain them in the right places, otherwise you're not changing shit.

Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, indicated that he believes "Russian state actors" had some involvement in the leaked Democratic National Committee emails that show top Democrats writing off Sen. Bernie Sanders's chances during the primaries.

"There's evidence Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole those emails, and there are experts saying they are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump," Mook told CNN's Jake Tapper in an interview that aired Sunday on "State of the Union." "I don't think it's coincidental these emails were released on the eve of our convention here."

Mook said the idea that Russia leaked Democrats' emails to possibly help Trump was "disturbing."

"We need to be concerned Trump and his allies made changes to the platform to make it more pro-Russian, and we saw him talking about how NATO shouldn't intervene [in Russian disputes]. So I think when you put it all together, it's a disturbing picture," he said.

In a statement emailed to The Washington Post, Trump's campaign called that assertion a "joke."

"This shows that Hillary Clinton will do and say anything to win the election and hold onto power in the rigged system," said Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser for Trump.

When Tapper pressed him further, Mook made a connection between the June breach of the DNC's network by Russian government hackers and WikiLeaks's publication on Friday of 20,000 emails from DNC officials.

Some of those emails appear to show party officials questioning Sanders's viability and discussing how to use his faith against him.

"If they are the ones that took them, we have to believe they are the ones releasing them," Mook said.

He doubled down on that assertion in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
However they got released, some of the emails could be damaging to the Democratic Party's attempts to unify at its convention in Philadelphia this week. The DNC is supposed to be neutral throughout the primary process, but Sanders spent much of it accusing the DNC and its chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), of supporting Clinton behind the scenes.

[Democrats grapple with intraparty divisions two days before convention opens]

Wasserman Schultz will not speak at the convention, CNN reported.

On Sunday, Sanders repeated his call for Wasserman Schultz to resign. Mook didn't go that far in his interviews on Sunday, instead saying, "I'm going to leave that to the DNC, because I don't have all the facts."

Researchers have concluded that the Democratic National Committee was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies, and metadata from the released emails suggests that the documents passed through Russian computers.

On July 26 2016 01:31 KwarK wrote:

This election is a pretty big one for that outlook. On the one side you have Clinton with the tagline of "basically more of the same, if you think America is pretty great then good for you, 4 more years of great". On the other you have Trump with "everything sucks and I will dramatically change everything and it'll be amazing, if you think America should be great again then vote for me".

Trump is attacking the trade agreements that put cheap goods, food, clothes and so forth in stores, the stable postwar international peace dominated by American strength and NATO, the agreements that keep us out of Iran, the good relations with our southern neighbor and pretty much everything else about the status quo. Whether or not you agree with Trump you have to acknowledge that he has very big plans on pretty much every subject. Even on things that aren't even a part of the political discussion like the 14th Amendment which nobody thought would be an election issue until Trump mentioned in passing that he wanted to dispose of it.

So if you don't really care, Clinton. If you want everything to change then Trump. But unless you live in one of the key battleground states then you might as well stay home either way.

On July 26 2016 01:49 Nyxisto wrote:
Seems pretty tinfoil hat like but I think it's pretty clear that Russia would be happy about a Trump presidency.

On July 26 2016 01:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
"Being an honorary chair of a campaign—a position that involves no responsibilities, no employees, no budget, and no duties—is not a promotion from being chair of the DNC.

Being an honorary chair does not mean that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is “in charge of” Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It doesn’t mean anything. That is, unless you think President Obama’s 2012 campaign was run by actress Eva Longoria; or former Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee; or high school guidance counselor Loretta Harper—all of whom were among 24 people who served as honorary co-chairs of Obama’s 2012 campaign.

Being an honorary chair is not a job. It’s a courtesy. It’s the associate producer of politics. It’s an empty title handed out to help ease Debbie Wasserman Schultz out of her chair and make it slightly more palatable for her to leave a job she’d done (badly) for five years without putting up a fuss.

It’s a face-saving sop.

But it’s not nothing. It’s a gesture extended to a old friend in a bad moment. It’s a moment of being empathetic and trying to both ease the pain for everyone caught up in bad situation while acting to preserve the peace.

If you don’t like that, you’re probably not going to like Hillary."

~ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/07/25/1551930/-Debbie-Wasserman-Schultz-did-not-get-promoted-and-she-s-not-running-Hillary-s-campaign?detail=facebook

On July 26 2016 02:02 Gorsameth wrote:

The point is the timing. When someone steps down over impartiality issues you don't go around and hire her minutes later as the party she was partial for, its just stupid.

If you want to give her the face-saving sop then do it after the convention.

On July 26 2016 01:59 zeo wrote:

Whats wrong with peace in the World?

On July 26 2016 02:00 Sent. wrote:
Ask Putin

On July 26 2016 02:02 Gorsameth wrote:

The point is the timing. When someone steps down over impartiality issues you don't go around and hire her minutes later as the party she was partial for, its just stupid.

If you want to give her the face-saving sop then do it after the convention.

On July 26 2016 02:04 Nyxisto wrote:


Nothing and we're largely living in one because, all valid criticism aside, the US hasn't gone off the deep end.

On July 26 2016 02:07 zeo wrote:

Has Obama given his Nobel Peace Prize back yet?