US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6457

On December 21 2016 01:23 Doodsmack wrote:


Do you feel the same way about Russia?

On December 21 2016 13:07 zlefin wrote:

re: first paragraph;
the dues kinda matter.
A party is a mutual support alliance. while it's not the system I prefer, as I dislike political parties, that's the way it is.
And as always, there's the perception/reality difference. If it's perceived he's not doing enough to support the party, then there's no sense of mutual obligation to support back. There's a lot more to being in a party than voting similarly.
Just because he's a political liberal doesn't make him a Democrat.
and it's politics, Names matter. Symbols matter.

your other points were dealt with by other people so I'm not gonna argue them.

On December 21 2016 09:38 Thieving Magpie wrote:


There was nothing to address. Preventing people from other parties from doing last minute changes to their allegiance and letting their temporary populist surge split the party is exactly what superdelegates were meant to stop. The fear was if a republican would do it, but turns out independent white men do it also.

On December 21 2016 14:37 GreenHorizons wrote:


Yes we all must remember that although Hillary lost the election, her help of down ballot candidates made a huge difference... The party apparatus basically condemned it's members to support Hillary because of all the aspects that Hillary supporters are saying need to stick around. They were wrong about Hillary and they are wrong about this.

Also I saw a bit back people still being skeptical about Bernie not getting a fair shake from the DNC. When even Harry Reid says the DNC was obviously unfair, I think it's fair to say the DNC clearly didn't give Bernie a fair shake.

Reid has no reason to lie about it, and as the Senate Leader of the Democrats I think he knows about the DNC.

Mag's point about "the rules are to keep the Democratic party the Democratic party" is also ridiculous. Need only go back a generation or two to realize how silly of an idea that is.

The rules are set up to keep power where the establishment players want it, plain and simple. We fiddle with them occasionally to give the impression that they are democratic, but it's usually only a superficial illusion.



Yeah, because a Huckabee is totally going to ride that populist independent surge to the Democratic nomination. Somehow you made your position sound even more ridiculous.

The Democratic National Committee tried to provide CNN anchor Wolf Blizter with questions to ask Donald Trump, the latest WikiLeaks email dump has revealed.

Among the batch of 8,263 emails released on Sunday night, one shows that staff working for the network hosts asked DNC staffers what questions they should put to the Republican candidate.

They also asked for advice when it came to an appearance from former candidate, Ted Cruz.

An email dated April 28 entitled 'Cruz on CNN' reads 'CNN is looking for questions. Please send some topical/interesting ones.'

That email was sent from DNC research director Lauren Dillon to other officials and staffers.

Days before that, on April 25 she asked for questions from officials and staffers for an interview that CNN's Wolf Blitzer would be conducting with Trump.

'Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Trump on Tues (sic) ahead of his foreign policy address on Wed,' Dillon wrote in the email that was entitled 'CNN questions for Trump.'

Numerous questions were submitted by a group of DNC staffers and officials for 68-year-old Blitzer to ask the billionaire.

However, in a follow-up email, she informed the group of staffers that the Trump interview ended up being cancelled.

'CNN said the interview was cancelled as of now but will keep the questions for the next one Good to have for others as well,' Dillon wrote in the email.

DNC deputy communications director Christina Freundlich responded to Dillion's email with 'Boo', seemingly showing that she was disappointed.

Blitzer, who has been working at CNN since 1990, did end up interviewing the real estate mogul on May 4.

That interview took place right after both Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out of the Republican presidential race as candidates.

A CNN spokeswoman told the Daily Mail Online the emails are 'completely unremarkable'.

On December 21 2016 21:44 farvacola wrote:
This notion that the Democratic Party is rightfully insular and, in most cases, justifiably outright hostile towards "outside influence" from politicians like Sanders is unproductive and a huge part of why the election turned out the way it did. Make no mistake, Hillary's failure was the establishment party's failure, and to double down on devices of procedural purity in the wake of a huge electoral failure is to bury one's head in the sand. Democrats cannot be a party of inclusion while practicing politics of procedural exclusion, it's that simple.

As an aside, this would be one of Ellison's positives as DNC chair that many overlook; the dude has clearly signaled that he does not approve of the status quo operation of the party, and if Democrats are going to gather any kind of consensus in time for 18/20, they are going to need to draw in voters that were not drawn in by Hillary's platform and the way in which her campaign was run. That said, Perez is likely still a fine choice so long as he recognizes that the party conducted itself especially poorly during the past few years.

On December 21 2016 14:03 LegalLord wrote:
The relative strength of the US in the world is definitely decreasing relative to the 90s-00s. I don't see it as a winning strategy to look for every possible powerful nation and make rivals out of them. The problem with a "tough" FP is that people fight back and you just might sustain real, lasting injuries that way.

It's clear that China does perceive the US as a nation that is likely to oppose it in the future and is aware of the need for an alliance in opposition to the US though.

On December 22 2016 01:02 farvacola wrote:
Trump's electoral success has proven that the traditional "liberal voter, conservative voter" dynamic is too tired to keep bearing weight, so turning to it now makes no sense, particularly when its clear that "moderates" are actually an incredibly complicated amalgam of different groups of people, some of which have fairly unpredictable voting patterns. So yeah, the solution isn't to move farther away, it is to show folks just how close by everyone really is. Again though, Perez is good too, his ties to labor would be incredibly helpful as I think the labor movement is where forward is.

On December 21 2016 23:59 Gorsameth wrote:

And if you check Trumps email they probably asked his camp for questions they would want to ask Hillary.

But I'm sure people are much more interested in spinning this as a conspiracy.