I am not happy to see Sanders sliding further away from the nomination — and I am not enthusiastic about Clinton. But I have to agree with George Takei.
I am not saying that Sanders should surrender — he should keep fighting for his cause as long as possible, and he should be doing his damnedest to shape the party platform (and maybe, as hope keeps whispering in my ear, maybe he’ll make a miraculous victory), but we have to focus on crushing the Republican party in all branches of government, and also on keeping the pressure on a certain conservative Democrat who is likely to be the nominee.
Okay, this is kind of creepy…I just posted a long comment on the politics thread about Bernie boys and their inability to tell Clinton from the Republicans despite their significant difference on women’s health issues. Basically, they’re saying that women are so unimportant that not only will they not vote for Clinton to protect women’s health, they can’t even tell the difference between a candidate who supports reproductive freedom for women and one who has openly advocated slavery for women of reproductive potential. Thanks for putting us in our place so thoroughly, guys. What with Clinton and Elizabeth Warren and Angela Merkel, we were in danger of thinking that we might be real people worthy of respect and able to participate in the political process.
Honestly, I don’t know how we “keep the pressure” on Hillary while admitting that we’d vote for her anyway. If the goal is “beat the Republicans at all costs” then we can’t use votes as leverage, and in light of that fact no amount of protesting will achieve results. But I have a hard time seeing another choice. I’m personally not willing to had the country over to regressives (more than it already is, anyway) to make an ideological point…
…I feel stuck is what I’m getting at.
This puts pacifists in an awkward position, though- Clinton is guaranteed to bomb some country or another during her presidency. Probably a few of them. Voting for her makes one complicit in those attacks. Yes, Clinton is the only choice that has anything like an acceptable domestic policy, but on foreign policy, she’s a disaster and a moral hazard.
To me, endless warmongering is the most important issue facing the US today, and Clinton is one of our primary warmongers.
And I should say, assuming she defeats Sanders, she’s the only thing with anything close to an acceptable domestic policy. Sanders is too conservative for my tastes, but represents a mild, incremental, baby step towards a better view of the purpose of an economy.
@3: While you’re probably right, it’s unclear that Trump or Cruz is any better on the warmongering issue. Voting for the least overall evil is a long and proud American tradition.
@3: Sanders is guaranteed to bomb somebody or another. Specifically, he has supported air strikes in Syria. He has come out in favor of extending the occupation in Afghanistan (which he also voted for, apparently–I had thought that he voted against it, but it seems I was wrong). There’s just not going to be a serious candidate for US president who is a pacifist in the near future. Sanders would talk more about his “reluctance” than the other candidates, but he’d bomb all the same.
As a Brit, hailing from a country that elected a regressive idiot to power in both our last elections, I am perhaps in no position to ask this, but I would still entreat our transatlantic cousins to listen to George Takei on this – Clinton isn’t much of a progressive, and has made troubling decisions and political alliances in the past, but she is still vastly preferable to anyone on the Republican side. This election is looking more and more like it will come down to a hold your nose and vote for the
betterless bad option sort of deal, and for all Clinton’s faults she is far, far less toxic than, say Trump… or Cruz… or Rubio…A few days ago, President Obama was in the UK pretty forcefully putting forth the case for the UK to vote to remain on the EU from an American perspective on the basis that he had a right to intervene in the sovereign affairs of an allied nation because the US had a legitimate economic and political interest in the outcome. On that basis, it is worth bearing in mind that the rest of the world has a similar (if not significantly greater) legitimate interest in the outcome of the US elections. We can’t vote in your elections, but we still get saddled with the consequences of the policies of the candidate you choose, every bit as much as you do.
So, (assuming Clinton wins the Democratic nomination) even if you can barely stand Clinton, pleases still vote for her. If you can’t do it for your own future, do it for the future of the rest of humanity who get no say in this. You identify your President as the ‘leader of the free world’. Don’t let that leader be someone like Trump, or history will judge you harshly.
But I didn’t vote for Clinton! I voted for Sanders in my state’s primary.
The thing is that next November, I’m most likely going to have to choose between a conservative Democrat I’m going to spend the next 4/8 years complaining about, or a flaming asshole who will drag the country farther towards destruction and corruption, and who will turn the Supreme Court into a bastion of theocracy. It really isn’t a hard choice.
I like the Vox idea of Sanders helping down-ballot Democrats get elected – we have a good opportunity there, with Trump voters not particularly loyal down-ballot and some establishment Republicans staying home.
As an NC resident I’d love to know which General Assembly races have a chance of going D – small donations can make a real difference in such races. (And we got rid of straight-ticket voting recently).
Gerrymandering may actually help if we can get some momentum – the way it was done was to set up a small number of D districts with large D majorities, and the rest with small R majorities, to maximize seats per vote share. So a small +D swing could make a big difference.
Paraphrasing what I wrote recently in the Moments of Political Madness thread: The objective, the goal, is to ensure a loon does not win. In this particular upcoming general election, it will presumably be either Secretary Clinton or Senator Sanders vs a loon(with an outside chance of an unexpected loon should the thugs’s convention be brokered and they wind up choosing someone else (a possibility I’ll ignore here)). Which makes the decision much easier than some imply: Mark your ballot for the dummie. It doesn’t matter which dummie, because the objective is to keep the loon out of the White House! (If it happens to be the dummie you support, fine; if not, put a clothespin on your nose on the day, vote, and mark the ballot for the stinking dummie.)
If it’s not your preferred dummie, marking your ballot for that dummie does not mean you approve of that particular dummie or that dummie’s stated or probable policies. It’s a tactical vote to try and prevent the thugs’s loon from winning. The clothespin symbolically makes clear you think that the dummie is disgusting.
And get the anti-loon’s to vote!
You also want to try to get non-loons into congress, mostly so the non-loon president does not have to deal with a lunatic asylum.
Yes, it would be vastly better if there was a choice between several thoughtful sane candidates, and the loonies had no chance and could be ignored, but that isn’t what is happening. The upcoming general appears to be coming down to a simple matter of STOP THE LOONS!
remyporter @ 3;
Cmutter @ 5 is right – this is one of those instances were there really is no unalloyed good option, but rather a choice between evils. In such cases, the best outcome a moral actor can achieve is to choose the lesser evil, and given that all the Republican candidates would likely be considerably more inclined to warmongering than Clinton (just look at Trump’s posturing over ISIS), and would pair that with heinously harmful domestic policies that would attack fundamental rights, Clinton may as well have a thirty foot sign over her head reading ‘get your lesser evil right here’.
Either Trump or Cruz will/would also tank the economy, destroy education, decrease voting rights for poor people and minorities, probably start yet another aggressive war, and shift the country further to the right. It shouldn’t be a hard choice and I’m not sure why it is.
Sanders wouldn’t be a pacifist. He has denied being a pacifist in so many words. He’d be another Obama-like: probably not starting many new wars, but continuing those that he inherits, bombing and using drones. Doesn’t anyone remember the 2008 campaign? I was mansplained to any number of times about how Clinton was “too aggressive” and how Obama would never do anything evil in his foreign policy. Or…not. Sanders would be the same.
I see this sort of argument a lot, but I’m not convinced it’s true. At its most extreme, it becomes “participating in the system in any way makes you complicit in everything it does”, which I think most people would agree is silly, but I can’t see any real difference between the two positions other than degree.
At the end of the day, there is an element of duress involved here – the election is going to happen, and you are going to have to deal with the results whether you want to or not. There is no way to opt-out of the consequences. Given that, you are more-or-less compelled to try and make the best of the situation – and that compulsion means that you’re not really “complicit”, because you’re not able to make a truly free choice as to whether you want participate or not.
Twice, in the past, I have held my nose and voted for Bill Clinton.
So, yes, I can do that once again for another Clinton.
The reason that I consider myself an Independent, is that the Democrats are hopelessly incompetent. But that still leaves them as way ahead of the Republicans.
A quote directly from Sanders’ site: “We live in a dangerous world full of serious threats, perhaps none more so than the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda. Senator Sanders is committed to keeping America safe, and pursuing those who would do Americans harm.”
Does that sound like a pacifist to you? I like a lot of Sanders’ foreign policy positions and he seems to at least understand that ISIS is Bush’s creation. But he would continue Obama’s foreign policies if elected. He would no more be the pacifist you want than Obama is.
Yes. This is why I am so irritated with people who confuse marking their ballot for someone with actually supporting that someone and/or that someone’s probable policies (or voting “for” that someone, as it is often phrased). Ideally, it would be the case you are voting for the someone and at least some of the policies, but that is only possible when there is a choice. With thugs’s loons as the opposition, as will very probably be the case in the upcoming general, you have been denied a choice, denied a chance to make have nuanced input, and are forced into voting anti-loon with symbolic gestures — e.g., the clothespin on the nose — to make clear the candidates are stinking disgusting slime.
Voting for Clinton and Obama gave us:
1. A better economy than existed under either Bush
2. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
3. The ACA. Imperfect as it is, it’s better than what we previously had, which was nothing at all. No, repealing it wouldn’t make the masses rise up and demand universal health coverage. It would just make more people dead.
4. No new wars in 8 years.
5. Recognition of marital rights. Not directly due to Obama, but he at least didn’t prevent it from happening. (Unlike Clinton I, who, IMHO, was a worse president than Obama…suggesting that there is not a trend towards increasingly conservative Democrats.)
Okay, so not utopia, but not the dystopian mess that the Bushes left either. And not the one that Trump would create.
reposting from my own FaceBook timeline:
first glance, it may look like I’m saying the vote for POTUS is irrelevant, but on closer examination, it says that POTUS is not the only vote to worry about. Be sure to #voteblue in EVERY office on your ballot. Maybe, maybe, perhaps, the Repubs will get a hint of what people actually want, instead of all the fantasy rubes they imagine. I hope.
I dont understand the pacifist argument for rejecting Hillary. She is the most progressive candidate regarding guns and regulating the gun industry. Not Sanders. Not the republicans. That alone is a good enough reason to vote for her. A pacifist reason!
By any fair comparison to Sanders, she is a mostly progressive candidate, not a conservative. As a woman, I need her laser focus on reproductive rights for women. I did not cotton to Sanders’ trivializing them. Or the republicans denying them. I find immense value in her promise to pick a cabinet that looks like America, 50% women.
Not even close. Hillary all the way. And it is clear she is winning because of her focus, her agenda. By millions of votes from people who look like all of America.
Choosing between two evils?
A lesser evil (Clinton) and a greater evil (Trump)… that seem a horrible choice.
Im not much informed about american politics, but Clinton seems to me someone that is not honest, i simply find her not trustwhorty; but Trump… well he both make me laugh and frightens me to see him at the helm of the USA.
Maybe is slightly better to have an person that i find dishonest leading your country (and the greatest military in the world) than an fascist.
Why? What acts or statements make you see her as dishonest? Politifact gives her a 49% true/mostly true rating, similar to Sanders’ 51% rating and far better than Trump’s 9% true/mostly true rating. The media likes to paint Clinton as “dishonest”, but I’ve never seen anyone come down with a solid statement of why.
As for Trump, don’t laugh at him if he gets elected: He promised that one of the first things he’d do as president would be to work for changes in the libel laws that would make it illegal to say anything bad about him.
WTF is there no “none of the above” option on the ballot?
[piling on with 21]
I think that might be so because all the others, in opposition, keep saying she lies about anything, all the time; that everything she says is incidentally caused by current public opinion, regardless of her actual beliefs. I disagree
I ackowledge she can easily be noted for mistakes, and opinions she has changed over time. Yet to characterize her as “dishonest” is superficial. Between Clinton and Trump, Clinton definitely loses the dishonesty race, also against Cruz. She is clearly the least dishonest of those 3. Sanders, IDK.
That is not just saying “she is the ‘least negative’ “. Just noting that she has a few negatives among a lot of positives. nota bene
As for honesty issues regarding Hillary, I hope whoever feels distrust of her has consulted the history of republicans sliming her for 25 years and perhaps wondered a bit whether their distrust is based in reality or manufactured and just seeped in based on that sexist history.
And even in this campaign some charges against her have been disingenuous, inflaming a sense of distrust. For instance, that charge that she takes all that money from oil and gas companies for her campaign (something illegal which she has not done), well, it turned out what was really meant was that she has taken money from individual employees who work at oil and gas companies. And it does not follow that those employees want her to do nothing about climate change, to lessen regulations on that industry. My husband is one of those oil and gas company employees who gave her money along with me and we both desperately want her to do what she says she will do: regulate our industry more even to the point of outlawing fracking if need be and treat climate change as the imminent disaster we all know it to be. We want to stop it. We think she has the best chance of doing that.
So there is that.
And there is the fact she has released all of her tax returns going back decades and Sanders has only released 2014, which I believe may not even be the full return, just the summary. It was because of her transparency that he knew she charged top dollar for her speeches to Wall Street. Yet he wants to force on her a new standard of transparency (transcripts of her speeches) when he is unwilling to abide by the historical one of releasing full tax returns for multiple prior years. Nope. Not fair.
My feelings, anyway.
And finally, there is Berne’s attempt to create a toxic waste dump in south Texas where mainly poor Hispanics live, an area my husband, a Mexican American, grew up near. It was a politically expedient choice for Berne, same as his gun position protecting gun manufacturers and against gun regulation. Nope, he is the same expedient politician Hillary has shown herself to be. I was not impressed, nor was my husband. We had an easy choice. Hillary all the way. We will work with great pride for her to become our next president.
#21- dianne
Hello dianne.
I don’t really know how to explain my distrust on Clinton… she seems (to me) someone that i really not trust, someone fake. It is only a personal perception. Maybe im wrong?I could be wrong… but she seems to me some kind of sleazy car salesman.
And when i laugh about Trump, apparently i don’t explain correctly what i mean about the “laugh”: i find appaling, ridiculous, some kind of horrible bad joke, that someone like him can be the future president of your country. The laugh could be called an “nervous laugh”, if this is correct.
Im an foreigner, so i don’t vote in your election (neither live in your country), but this is my (possibly flawed) perception of the american presidential election pre-candidates:
Sanders – seems honest and capable
Clinton – seems fake
Cruz – seems an familiar of the Inquisition
Trump – seems an fascist
Also, as to the supposed lack of enthusiasm the media so loves to use to discredit Hillary’s support, see this awesome article.
http://bluenationreview.com/why-older-women-are-so-enthusiastic-about-hillary/
My enthusiasm is boundless!
dianne: In a lot of cases, I think it’s people remembering her husband’s administration. Whether that’s fair or not really depends on how strong a voice you think she had in decisions made by Bill. Note: I’m not talking about the sex scandals, here. Rather, I’m talking about specific policy decisions that were outright reverse-course choices made by Bill once he was in office. DADT is probably the biggest one, but there’s also his environmental record and his welfare positions.
(Hell, I think he gets too big a pass on abortion rights–it’s worth noting he said flat-out that he’d sign a late-term abortion ban that dropped the word “physical” from the physical health exemption. If the GOP had called his bluff, he would’ve been signing the biggest restriction on abortion since Roe v. Wade.)
So if Hillary was influential in Bill’s decision-making, she bears some of the responsibility for all of that. If not, then she was being disingenuous, at best, when she included her 8 years as First Lady when claiming to have more government experience than Barack Obama in the 2008 election.
There’s a fundamental difference in many people’s minds between a lie you tell to advance your position, and a lie you tell about your position; the name “Clinton” is rather inextricably linked to the latter.
A good way to ‘put pressure’ on the Dems to stay leftwards would be to support/donate to liberal downballot candidates (in particular, ones for state legislatures).
dianne @ # 17: …No new wars in 8 years.
Oh, really?!?
People talking a lot about Clinton’s flaws here, but President Trump is The Darkest Timeline. Calling her the lesser of two evils is wildly understating the difference between the candidates.
If you can’t get enthusiastic about voting for Clinton, get enthusiastic about voting against Trump.
A thousand times this.
If you want people to believe Bernie’s political revolution is possible, then it’s time to start electing politicians who’d support it.
Yeah, that’s a very good point. Presidential elections are not the place to achieve radical change – it’s a long, slow slog down in the trenches.
And while we’re talking about the ways a friendly legislature can support a revolutionary candidate, consider that the GOP controls the vast majority of the government right now.
President Trump will have a lot of allies ready to back him up if he ends up following through on some of his promises.
Vote Blue No Matter Who: Because even an abusive parent is “family.”
Frankly, if you want to convince me to vote for Clinton, you probably shouldn’t list a bunch of commonsense liberal positions that Clinton opposes outright or plans to “compromise” at the first possible opportunity.
The last time I had a chance to vote for somebody for president — even for a nomination for president — that I really liked was in 1968 (which was also the first time I got to vote for a president at all, at the age of 24). So when my candidate, Eugene McCarthy, lost the California primary, I watched the victory speech by RFK, and decided that I could probably support him if necessary. As he finished (“On to Chicago”), I turned the TV off and went to bed about 3 minutes too early, and only learned the next morning that he had been assassinated. Then I watched HHH get the nomination and sling his arm over the shoulder of that stinking Mayor of Chicago while his police were rioting in the streets outside. I held my nose and voted for HHH anyway, because anyone with any sense already knew that RMN was exactly the thug that he proved to the world and to history that he was.
I will be damned if I will vote for anybody but Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination in June, and I don’t care how lost the cause is by then. Nobody is going to cheat me out of a second opportunity in my life to cast a heartfelt vote. Sometimes I think California ought to move its primary to sometime in fall, after the conventions, so they can make it obvious that they wish to be irrelevant.
Come the end of October, I’m going to be watching the polls closely. If I can get away with it without worrying about California’s electoral college vote, I’ll leave the POTUS line blank on the November ballot. But if there is any chance of my vote being at all significant, I will, again, hold my nose and vote for the more civilized of the two conservatives. And of course, the state and local offices need to be kept in the hands of progressives as much as possible. (And do you think someone who came of age in the 60’s would miss a chance to vote for a legal and regulated marijuana market?)
Why don’t I trust Clinton? I worry that she feels entitled to the power of the presidency, and when she gets it she will assume she has a mandate to do whatever she wants with it. When Rachel Maddow interviewed her after her victories this week, she asked if there were any aspects of Sanders’ positions that she might be willing to adopt in order to attract his supporters to her cause as it becomes nearly certain that she will win the nomination. Her answer was to quote statistics on how many more votes she had gotten than Sanders. Now, politicians often respond to a tough question by answering a different one that ignores the issue; but what she seemed to be saying was, to hell with Sanders’ issues and supporters, it’s all about her. If that’s what she does from a position of strength among “friends”, what will she do when she feels vulnerable among enemies?
I really hope she can tone down her image as a warlord, which she seems to want to cultivate. I really liked her line in that same interview about the President being the “convener in chief” to start needed discussions. If I really have to do it, I will vote for her; but I do hope that I won’t need nasal reconstruction surgery afterwards.
Here’s what Bernie Sanders had to say (bears repeating):
BTW, to be clear: Despite my earlier commentary on Clinton & honesty, I fully intend to vote against whichever thug is dominating the Republican ticket in November, and to encourage every last person in my circle of associates to do the same. I’d vote for Lieberman before even the mildest of the Republican Clown Car that started off this primary season.
I always tell my American chums: Democrats can be shamed into doing the right thing. Republicans have no shame. A chimp in a tux would be a better option than anything that has floated to the top of the Republican toilet.
Matrin @#2:
1. Tell her how you feel. Remember that all first term presidents want very much to get reelected to a second term.
2. Work to make sure your state sends people to Congress who support your views. The Presidency is not a dictatorship, Congress has much power to shape even a very popular president’s agenda.
3. Remember that undoing what the corporatists have done to America in the last 50 years will take much more than four years of effort, no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office. Load the pipeline with good future candidates. What are the policies of your state representatives and your city councilpersons? Can you help some of them get into higher office?
4. Help the young generations. Who is on your local school board? What are their policies. Could you be on it?
5. Start working with your local Democratic Party. Make your views known to them, and work to push them in the direction you favor. All politics is local.
For me, there’s one issue that completely eclipses everything else, and that’s climate change. Obama has done some pretty impressive things about it — not perfect, but better than we might have expected. I don’t know what Clinton would end up doing, but at least she says the right things.
There is no way that Trump would not be horrible for the climate, and thus, for ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET. I am reminded of the wind farm in Scotland, which he went to court to try to shut down, because he felt it spoiled the view from his golf course. Expand that to the entire nation and the entire world, and we can kiss our ice caps and coastlines goodbye.
All the other issues pale in comparison, which is why I will be enthusiastically pulling the switch for Clinton in November.
We all know Bernie marched with MLKing. But do we all know this about Hillary?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/us/politics/how-hillary-clinton-went-undercover-to-examine-race-in-education.html?_r=0
I didn’t. Maybe that type of work and relationship building over decades with people of color explains her enthusiastic support among them, not that she is “the anointed one” as Ms. Sanders said today. The amount of derogatory labeling of Hillary is absolutely appalling, even among “progressives”!
Hillary has admitted that her vote on Iraq was wrong. Bernie still continues to assert that his votes against the Brady Bill were correct! That his vote to give gun manufacturers immunity was correct. I prefer a politician who can admit when she or he is wrong. And then I can trust she or he will do better. Hillary is the one who passes that test, not Bernie.
No thank you. Hillary isn’t blue anyway. She is either a calculating opportunist willing to shed whatever convictions she pretends to have like a used condom, or a closet Republican. A vote for Hillary is a vote to start another useless war. And lets not forget the “super-predators” and how that continues to result in dead bodies in the streets today.
It boils down to two choices: In Trump we have an asshole but one in which a hostile Senate would prevent almost everything he would want to do. In Clinton we have someone who shares (or exceeds) the majority of her opponent’s bad points but who would be serving with a Senate too petrified with fear to say no to her. Who would WANT to be the more dangerous choice? Trump easily. But would would have the most OPPORTUNITY to do real damage? Hillary. I’ll be spending the next few months hoping Trump gets hit by a bus but under no circumstances will I vote for Hillary.
re 42:
I could well be wrong, so correct me please, if so.
I thought Bernie was advocating immunity for gun mfgs only as a way to stay focused of the dealers who were selling the guns (illegally) to anyone who walked in, without checking if the customer was licensed. I know the answer could have been “why not both”. The problem being diverting attention from (metaphorically) “local”, to “global”, which would raise the opposition barriers even higher.
ugh, I’d appreciate (sincerely) being corrected if this is a figment of my imagination.
But what do we actually know about this “dangerous” choice for president, Hillary? That she voted the same as Bernie over 90% of the time when she was in the senate; that she gave and Bernie accepted, $10,000 from her PAC to get him elected to the senate! That she raised money all throughout this campaign for down ballot democrats when Bernie did not and instead he tried to shame her for the fundraisers she held in order to accomplish the goal of electing down ballot democrats.
What do we know about dead bodies accumulating due to a candidate’s vote in the senate? Bernie voted for that crime bill associated with her “super-predetor” comment, not Hillary, and just when action was building to sharply lessen gun deaths due to the passage of various gun regulations, Bernie sided with the NRA against the bill to hold manufacturers accountable and we now have the slew of deaths associated with gun violence. Something experts say would have been lessened for sure if that bill had passed. The NRA worked to support Bernie’s candidacy. But he is not blamed for that while Hillary is blamed for Wall Street support. Not fair. Not logical.
Ever really listen to Trump the Bully? There are many useless wars waiting to happen, and will happen. There hasn’t been anything from HC even close to the asshole rhetoric of Trump. Some people live in the past. I’m in the present.
Look, folks, the time for arguing about whether Bernie or Hillary is better? That time is over.
I voted for Bernie in the primary on Super Tuesday, and that was my shot at “sending a message” to the establishment. But the majority of the party has spoken, and whether I like their choice or not, I have to live with the results. Now the comparison is just between Clinton and Trump, and that pick is so easy, I don’t see how anyone could be so blind as to say she’d be the same or worse.
The President nominates Supreme Court Justices.
Democrats (B. Clinton, Obama) Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan
Rethugs (Reagan, Bush, Shrub) Scalia, Kennedy, Alito, Thomas, Roberts
If you don’t notice a pattern, you are politically blind.
Who do you want to nominate somebody to replace Scalia? Trump (nominee approved by the Heritage Foundation) or H. Clinton? And for lower court appointments?
Look at the total picture, not just your pet peeves.
Come on, let’s be honest, first, it’s going to be Trump vs Hillary. And second, Hillary is a moderate right-wing politician. She delivered progressive promises (loaded with “nuances”) and I am willing to bet she’ll move to the right at the general election. Third, she’ll obviously much better than Trump but if she moves to the right at the general election then probably it is better not to vote for her.
@43
This is based on nothing but vague insinuations. Her actual voting record was among the most progressive in the Senate. On any issue where she’s shaky, Trump is solidly on the wrong side.
You don’t know what “blue” looks like. If throwing a tantrum because we didn’t nominate your fave is more important to you than Roe v Wade, then you aren’t nearly as liberal as Hillary.
Here, Here. Exactly.
I only bring up the contrast with Bernie now, even though it seems certain her opponent will be Trump or some other Republican nightmare because even today, his top advisor, his wife, continues to use disparaging labels that undercut Hillary for the general election and diminishes the amount of support she has accumulated among people of color. That and the fact that it is the BernieorBust crowd that continues to speak of Hillary in such vile terms unconnected to her actual record using all the lies the republicans have spread about her for 25 years. If she is so dangerous, then so is Bernie since she helped to elect him and voted the same as him almost always, so that argument holds no water. That’s my point.
Anyone considering writing in Sanders or some similar move if Clinton is nominated, can you please tell me what you expect to happen if you do? What’s the best case scenario? A write in campaign for president just isn’t going to happen. And if Sanders can’t get the Dem nomination, he’s not going to win an independent run. Do you want a Trump presidency? (I realize that sounds sarcastic, but I mean it seriously: Is a Trump presidency a better outcome in your opinion than a Clinton presidency?)
http://feministing.com/2016/04/28/why-tom-perez-is-the-feminist-vice-president-we-need/
Just saw this on Feministing.com.
Why would you expect the Senate to be hostile? If Trump wins he’ll probably have a coattail full of tea partiers riding along with him and they’ll be anything but hostile. And no one thinks the House has any chance of turning blue.
@42:
When someone kills hundreds of thousands of people, they ought to be in prison. “Admitting they were wrong” doesn’t buy them any favors.
Especially when they repeat the offense. Clinton supported Iraq until it became such a disaster that it was a political liability for her, at which point she admitted she was wrong to have supported it— and then supported war in Libya and Syria and Pakistan.
You really can’t count it as a point in her favor that she “admits” to mistakes so blatant they’re hurting her career while continuing to support the exact same policies. Clinton has never seen a war she didn’t like, and if you vote for her on the assumption she won’t start another war, then you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.
@46:
Tu quoque fallacy. Murder is not justified by the existence of a more prolific murderer.
This “I can’t remember anything that happened more than 10 minutes ago” attitude is why we’re in this mess. Those who do remember the past are doomed to say “I told you so.”
@47:
Well, if you’re a straight, cisgender able-bodied white American, then I’m sure the difference seems important.
Speaking as someone who is not, on the other hand, allow me to politely ask you to check your privilege. Both Clinton and Trump agree that I should die, and being told that the difference is like night and day because Clinton will be better for people more privileged than myself is incredibly aggravating.
@48:
I notice you omitted one inconvenient name from the D list.
Funny you should mention “living in the past.” Obama’s current pick for the Supreme Court is a right-wing extremist who believes the Constitution doesn’t guarantee the right to due process. Clinton’s picks are unlikely to be much of an improvement.
@53:
It’s as likely to be better as it is to be worse.
Trump with a Democratic Congress (who is willing to hold him back) would be the best outcome. The government would remain gridlocked, but because many people are inclined to blame the President when things go wrong, it’d mean good news in 2018 and 2020.
Clinton with a Republican Congress would be worse, since gridlock would continue but the Democrats would be less likely to benefit from it.
Clinton with a Democratic Congress would be far worse than either of those options, since a Democratic Congress would be unlikely to resist their own President and would let Clinton’s far-right agenda destroy the party’s chances in 2018 and 2020, just as Obama did in 2010 and 2012.
Trump with a Republican Congress would be the worst option of all, obviously, but it should be noted that voting write-in or third-party cannot lead to this outcome and can, in fact, prevent it— people who vote Green or write in Sanders for the Presidential race are probably going to vote for Democratic candidates in Congressional races, and if people otherwise inclined to skip the election entirely can be motivated to the polls to vote for a Green president, it may well swing Congress to the Dems.
Jake Harban, that is pure D nonsense! You can’t just assert stuff as true to make it so!
@49
Moderate right-wing relative to what? She’s far to the left of the current US government and its policies. Even if she were to move to the right during the general, that would still be the case. Losing this election will move both the US and the Democratic Party to the right, and will hurt millions of underprivileged people in the process. Who is it better for?
Here’s a fun difference in foreign policy, where Hilary is basically indistinguishable from Republicans in ways where innocent people will definitely die.
Hilary is openly and utterly unquestioning in her support for Israel, and they (being their militaristic leaders) love her right back.
OTOH, Bernie has taken major flak from pro-Zionist groups for mentioning Israel’s bombing of civilians and positively talking about Boycott Divestment & Sanctions. His mere voicing of this would already mean Israel would be less emboldened to keep killing Palestinians if Bernie got elected, because they rely on the US to cover them against UN sanctions and the like for their open war crimes and flagrant violations of international law. Israel is set to hate Bernie with a passion from now on.
So yeah, they’re different on foreign policy. Even if Bernie is somehow exactly as militant as Hilary otherwise, it will kill definitely more Palestinians using our bombs and our money if Hilary keeps giving Israel that kind of support/defense, and I trust she’ll keep that horrible promise.
I’m not sure Republicans can even possibly be worse than Hilary here, short of encouraging Israel to nuke the West Bank or sending our own troops to kill Palestinians.
Israel already built a wall to keep Palestinians “out” (penned in, really), already have race-based road blocks and monitoring, already have a racist apartheid state against Muslims where they have less rights, already commit war crimes against innocents, already dehumanize and starve Palestinians at every flipping turn, between spouts of more open killing and violence.
All the most horrible possible ends of Republican ideas for American minorities are already being carried out in Israel. They even have us to help pay for all their killing and discrimination, just like Trump wants Mexico and China or whoever to pay for the wall he wants.
That’s the kind of fun extra blood we get on our hands for voting Hilary. Even Trump is less trusted by Zionists than Hilary; she has the record to back up her words of supporting Israel 100%. I mean, technically, with Obama, she said to stop building illegal settlements, but she’s retracted that since and is sucking up hard.
When asked if he thought Hillary’s vote on Iraq caused the deaths, if she was responsible for the deaths in Iraq, Sanders said “of course not.” You argue in hyperbole. No need to respond to such nonsense.
There won’t be a Democratic congress. It’s not going to happen, at least in 2016. It might in 2018: the US does love gridlock, but it might not. Claiming that it will happen in 2016 because of all the Bernie supporters voting independent and then voting Democratic in the other elections is just completely fantasy. It’s not going to happen. People voting straight party line leads to the “coattail” effect. Most of the Green/Independent voters would vote for president and nothing else. Even if they did vote for the legislative elections, if Clinton is not pure enough for you, are you really going to hold your nose and vote for, say, Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania (running on a platform of “strong defense” and continuing the ACA) or whatever “pro-life” “democrat” Kentucky comes up with? Doubtful.
And in the mean time, you get two years of Republicans in both legislative branches and the presidency. Trump could probably get his wall through. That would mean a massive resource drain and either a huge bill or a conflict with Mexico. So, an invasion of Mexico? Crippling sanctions on Mexico that would lead to their society deteriorating further and more refugees getting past that wall. (Because there’s already walls along the border and they do all squat.) Which means instant underclass and scapegoat in one. Special IDs for Mexicans, perhaps? Well, why not? The ones for Muslims would probably have already gone past the Republican congress.
Mean time, Trump can also get started on his plan to pass laws to punish women who have abortions. Yeah, I know, he supposedly backtracked on that one, but he’ll be wanting support from the right and that’s an easy one for him to go for. Illegal abortion and deaths due to sepsis will spike.
Likely, Trump would repeal the ACA and replace it with…nothing. Which will mean not only people losing health insurance, but also higher healtcare costs as care currently being given in the clinic moves back to the emergency room. More people die needlessly. There will be no sudden demand for “real” health care reform. The US is not going to go for universal health insurance any time soon. That’s a fantasy.
Trump’s tax “reforms” will mean that the rich have even more money. Which means more media consolidation and less accurate and unbiased information available to the public. And more people living in severe poverty. Poor people, as Sanders pointed out, don’t vote. There goes the 2018 Democratic congress you were hoping for.
Trump promised to do “worse than waterboarding.” I expect him to keep that campaign promise. He also promised to attack ISIL (though to be fair, Sanders and Clinton did too). Probably with indiscriminate bombing. That means more terrorist attacks.
As for the 2020 elections, will we even need those? Surely after the terrorist attacks of 2019 it’s obvious to everyone that we need strong leaders (TM) like Trump.
@59: Once again, Sanders is calling for continued involvement in Afghanistan and boots on the ground in Syria. He has also produced a fair amount of rhetoric about the need to fight terrorism. None of the candidates is all that good on foreign policy. Sanders’ ability to understand that ISIL is essentially a Bush product impressed me favorably and I think he’s marginally–but only marginally–better on Israel, but I don’t make the mistake of thinking that he’d be anything close to a good candidate on foreign policy.
Not sure how seriously to take this, but here’s a comparison between Clinton, Sanders, and Trump.
http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/compare/35-40-70/Bernie-Sanders-vs-Hillary-Clinton-vs-Donald-Trump
@59
It sucks that we won’t have a candidate who’s more sympathetic to the Palestinians in November’s elections. Given the fact that it won’t be on the ballot this year, is this a good reason to return to coat hanger abortions?
@ Jake 56:
“Trump with a Democratic Congress (who is willing to hold him back) would be the best outcome”
Bingo! And what I can’t stand about segments of today’s reactionary Left that they would rather vote for someone with the inclination and ABILITY to do real damage, rather than put up with a different scumbag with little ability to affect his agenda merely because one has a (D) instead of an (R) in front of their name.
Sanders, unlike his supposed followers, continues to impress by maintaining realistic goals instead of threatening to hold his breath until he turns blue. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/following-clintons-victories-sanders-targets-new-goals
And one another note that came up, lets stop beating the old dead horse of “holding gun manufacturers accountable”. Accountable for what, exactly? The Lawful Commerce Act did absolutely nothing to protect manufactures or dealers who are accused of allowing straw purchases, falsifying paperwork, selling to prohibited buyers, or violating any of the other thousands of laws regulating firearms in this country. And for those who haven’t been paying attention, the BATF has been very proactive these last number of years in going after those accused of such violations. What the law did is protect manufacturers against liability when no law was broken… the claim in the 1990s was that they “flooded the market”, the claim now is that they are selling weapons which should not be available on the civilian market. It doesn’t matter what one’s opinion on these are. Both can certainly be topics of discussion and debate and that is why laws get passed. But the idea that you can use the courts to punish and destroy a company for a completely legal activity is insane and dangerous in the extreme.
He has flip-flopped on the issue in the past, and in fact in one of the debates he even supported planned parenthood. In fact, that “punishing the woman” position was so ridiculous that it showed he does not even know the standard talking points among the anti-choice crowd. It is obvious that he does not care about abortion rights, transgender rights, gay rights or any of these social stuff because there is no money, no gain for him. Ted Cruz is a religious nutjob so he actually has some (fucked up) principles but Trump lacks those. Why should Trump care if women choose to abort or not? He only cares about himself and he will do whatever he thinks that can get him the job, money, and power and those could be pretty much anything. Basically, on issues that do not benefit Trump personally, nobody knows what President Trump would do, not even Trump himself.
Indeed, he does not know the standard anti-choice rhetoric. So where did he get this idea? It appears to have been his own. Don’t kid yourself: Trump is entirely misogynistic and he would go for an anti-choice law. Maybe only to appease his more right wing supporters or maybe to please his shadier business partners who want to add back alley abortions to their prostitution earnings or maybe out of shear sadism. Do you really believe that the fact that he came up with his own plan on how to punish women rather than relying on a “pro-life” talking point means he is LESS sincere about wanting to enslave women?
I notice the argument has shifted from “vote independent because Clinton is too right wing” to “Trump’s not really all that right wing and he doesn’t mean it anyway.” So I guess you really want Trump. Okay, but at least have the backbone to admit it.
@57:
Do you object to any specific things that I said or are you just asserting that it’s all nonsense and assuming that makes it so?
@59:
Well, unless the Palestinians are selfish idealists, they’d happily support their own oppression in order to make sure that some white able-bodied upper middle class Americans are slightly better off. (Warning: High levels of sarcasm detected in the preceding sentence.)
@60:
Yes, and? I’d be willing to vote for Sanders for President, not for God. No one ever claimed he was infallible.
In fact, voting for Sanders over Clinton was one of those “lesser of two evils” choices that the Democratic brand loyalists swear up and down that I’m never willing to make.
@61:
And why do you think that’s the case?
I know some people like to “live in the present” and “look forwards, not backwards” but back in 2008, the Republican Party was in tatters. They’d just backed three disastrous wars and crashed the entire economy. Right-wing ideals were thoroughly repudiated, and the Democrats were swept into power, taking complete control of the government.
Unfortunately, they were right-wing Democrats like Obama, who largely continued the same failed policies as the Republicans before them, even bending over backwards to give the powerless Republicans themselves a say in the government they’d just been unequivocally voted out of.
And as a result, the Democrats lost control in 2010 and onwards. Had they enacted liberal policies, ended the wars, broke up the banks, stimulated the economy, passed health care reform, raised the minimum wage, and created a sensible welfare state, they wouldn’t have lost to the Republicans in 2010. If they’d actually prosecuted the myriad Bush-era criminals, there may not have been a Republican Party to oppose them.
But now you’ve forgotten the last eight years entirely. You simply look at the polls, assume the Democrats will lose, and expect me to support the same failed policies that led us into this dire state to start with.
Look, if you just assume from the outset that even the most tepid centrist policies like universal health care are far-left “fantasies,” then why are you even bothering to vote at all?
@66:
If you can’t see the difference between: “I’m going to vote for the candidate I support” and “I’m gonna hold my breath until I turn blue,” then you aren’t allowed to compare Clinton, Sanders, and/or Trump.
Jake Harban @ 56 & treefrogdundee @ 65;
The best outcome would be an actually progressive candidate with an actually progressive Congress to back them up (well, actually a legitimately left wing unicorn whose flatulence reverses anthropogenic climate change would be the best outcome, but if wishes were horses…), but we can’t afford to bet the future of humanity on what if scenarios and long shots.
The reality on the ground is that the likely choice is between a potentially rather questionably liberal Democrat in Clinton who will probably be facing a hostile Congress, or a flaming fascist arsehat in Trump who will probably be supported by a Congress loaded with posturing chickenhawks more than happy to back his innumerable heinously oppressive and irrational policies. Relying on Congress to hold him back is staggeringly naive in the current political climate, and making such a wager and getting it wrong would have dire repercussions for the US and the entire world.
You may be happy to play Russian roulette with the future of humanity, but you might want to refrain from being quite so judgemental toward other members of the US electorate who aren’t so sanguine about betting their lives, and potentially the lives of the entirety of humanity, on a roll of the electoral dice.
The safer option is Clinton over Trump, whether you recognize the fact or not, and with stakes this high now is not the time for a Hail Mary play that relies on everything working out just so in order to work.
Disclaimer first: I’m pretty happy with Clinton myself, and prefer her to Sanders in terms of how effective she would be as a President both on domestic matters and foreign affairs. I think she’ll continue to nudge the country to the left on social issues, especially women’s issues and is committed to improving the lives of minorities as well. Given her likely opponent will be of all people Donald Trump, it’s looking like the Democrats will re-take control of the Senate and will be able to tip the balance of the Supreme Court to the left, and make it possible to revisit issues like Citizens United and roll back the erosion of abortion rights that Republicans have been responsible for. Realistically, this is about the best that can be hoped for until after 2020 and the next round of redistricting U.S. House districts.
@62:
It seems small just to cite facts, but Hilary didn’t repeat anything about Palestinian deaths, in debates or at AIPAC. She talked about the Israeli deaths, repeated excuses for why Israel kills civilians, promised to be more gracious to Israel’s leaders than Obama.
I’m not even sure it’s that marginal a difference: being able to see Muslim foreigners as humans is kind of a big deal considering who our war on terror is almost always targeted at, and all this obviously dehumanizing shit our candidates say (or fail to say) about Israel/Palestine is basically pure terrorist PR material.
Even if I end up voting for Hilary (California doesn’t need my vote; the state is going to go to HIlary if she’s candidate, and I may write in since I can, and she’s not getting my primary vote), I know that extra blood will be on our fucking hands, and it’s not something we should deny, not even on a fucking pragmatic level.
Even if we care little enough to allow the killing with our money and bombs and international cover, know that this issue will continue to radicalize people willing to kill us Americans for our support.
@64:
Can I criticize a monstrous position in our presumptive candidate where the potential cost in innocent lives is in the thousands, and which threatens regional stability and our own safety, along with being some of the most morally horrifying things we’ve ever passively allowed, let alone fucking funded?
That okay with you?
I’m not saying “vote Trump”, but we do need to expect more of our fucking candidates instead of just saying “oh, she’s OBVIOUSLY the lesser of two evils on other stuff, let’s never criticize anything lest we get fucked by a Republican”.
@72:
Funny you should mention Russian roulette. Both Trump and Clinton want me dead, so it’s more like asking me to throw myself in front of a bus to save your privileged ass and expecting me to be enthusiastic about it.
The problem with taking the “safer” option is that every time you do it, you guarantee that in the next election, the “safe” option will be worse, the stakes will be higher, and the odds of a Hail Mary pass even more remote. Your strategy is penny wise and pound foolish.
@74
You’re right to criticize her position on this, and I don’t begrudge your vote for Sanders.
Given what the original post is about, I’m interpreting the criticisms of Hillary as an indication that people are planning not to vote for her in November if she wins. Interpreting it that way makes sense based on the context of the post you’re replying to.
I have a big problem with the mindbogglingly stupid idea that she might be a right-winger in disguise (contrary to her own voting record), therefore Donald “I announced my candidacy with an overtly racist screed against Mexican Immigrants” Trump is somehow the lesser of two evils.
If that isn’t your position, then I’m not arguing with you. Her position on Palestine is bad.
Nope. Sorry. People who say “I’m always voting for the Democrat no matter how lousy” are exactly how we got into a position where a moral and ethical bankrupt like Clinton, who has been on the wrong side of nearly every issue at the time it came up, can run a successful campaign against someone who basically spent 30 years being right. Clinton ought to have been laughed at when she announced her candidacy — a pro-war, pro-War-on-Drugs, historically anti-gay Democrat who was on the take from several industries and was associated strongly with a disastrous trade deal (now two of them) and a bunch of policies which at best didn’t mean to be horribly racist — she ought to have faced so much scorn that it actually physically bounced her out of the room and across the street. But we’re so used to eating shit sandwiches served up by the Democratic Party that everyone agreed she was a Very Serious Politician.
It is precisely this stupid “I’ll vote for whatever right-winger the Democratic Party Apparatchiks spew onto the ballot” attitude which has permitted the right-of-center takeover of the party in the last 30 years, and it was a deliberate move made precisely using that strategy. People like George Takei (and the rest of you who agree with him) are just asking for everything to get worse over time.
Hey, wanna start a betting pool? I bet that after the election — possibly even after the primary but certainly after the general — Clinton will return to being pro-TPP and pro-fracking, and the TPP will pass more or less unchanged within a year. Any takers?
I don’t have time to wade through this whole thread right at the moment, but this caught my eye:
@#6, dianne
At the moment, both the official government of Syria and Russia — which is acting at the official government’s request — want bombing. So bombing is respecting the local government’s wishes, even if it’s a dumb idea overall.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has said she wants 70,000 troops on the ground in Syria to enforce a no-fly zone, which will involve overriding the official government — yay, that’s always such a great idea, it doesn’t make us more enemies or anything — and shooting down Russian planes (say hello, World War III). How you can be so incredibly dense as to think this is equivalent is beyond me.
Well, is HC the lesser of two evils? And, at this stage in the 2016 election cycle, how to you propose to change the dynamics already in place. Or, for that matter in 2020? Many who complain don’t seem to want to do the legwork necessary to change the dynamics.
Sometimes I wonder how much of the Hate Hillary crowd is just Bernie Dudebros. Anybody but a woman.
Do we have any evidence that electoral losses move the Democratic Party to the left? On the surface, it seems false.
The idea just makes me think of Bill Clinton, who was elected in the wake of us losing five of the previous six elections.
Nope, and the numbers say otherwise. Maybe a million or so on the left of the party, and several million up for grabs in the middle.
The ONLY way to move the democratic party left is for the those wanting to do so, to make the effort starting at the local level, and keeping it for for 20+ years. The complainers don’t seem interested in doing the work.
@ Gregory #72:
First off, the fact that I wouldn’t vote for Hillary if someone threatened to cement my feet and throw me in the East River doesn’t mean that I’m judging others who will vote for her. We all have our personal political issues that are especially dear to us and it would be arrogant of me to assume everyone’s priorities are the same as mine. So no, I won’t be thinking less of anyone who decides to hold their nose and vote for Hillary. I just hope come November that sentiment is extended to those of us who stay home. Second, while the House isn’t going to change hands anytime soon, the Senate will almost certainly go Democrat (at the absolute least, there will certainly be enough votes to block anything onerous the Republicans try to push). The chance of having a Republican Senate and President that can collaborate are FAR lower than of that for the Democrats. If I’m playing the odds, it is far safer to hope against Hillary.
@ Jake #75:
“The problem with taking the “safer” option is that every time you do it, you guarantee that in the next election, the “safe” option will be worse, the stakes will be higher, and the odds of a Hail Mary pass even more remote.”
I need that on a bumper sticker. Now!
@ Nerd #78:
“And, at this stage in the 2016 election cycle, how to you propose to change the dynamics already in place. Or, for that matter in 2020?”
Nobody has any illusions of changing the 2016 dynamics, hence all the talk of having to put up with Trump being blocked at every turn by a Democrat Senate as the best of two shitty outcomes. As for 2020, the DNC isn’t run by idiots. With Trump as a candidate, this year will be the poster-child of the term “Theirs to lose”. If Hillary is defeated, the party brass will have absolutely no way to ignore the fact that said loss was 100% due to the fact that they served up a candidate that the voters found repugnant. The Republicans may be unable to learn from their mistakes but the DNC isn’t.
No matter how you people want to spin it, a vote for Hillary is a vote to put Goldman Sachs in the pilot’s seat, to fuck up Middle East stability even more than it is, to turn a blind eye to police shootings of unarmed people, and to strip-mine our National Parks. No thank you.
I think Anthony Flores has the best last word for anyone flirting with the idea Trump is better than Hillary.
https://medium.com/@AGFlores/bernie-supporters-people-of-color-need-you-to-vote-for-hillary-and-youre-going-to-need-us-6fd67ca7a1b#.pvlx32wc8
What makes you even think that would be the case. Read politics. Red Dog Democrats are DINOs, and would not close down debates and essentially make the Senate another rethug part of Congress.
Think realistically, not idealistically.
@75, Jake Harban:
Really? I haven’t heard about the “kill Jake Harban” part of their platforms. Could you explain this one a little more?
Care to show me one iota of evidence President Trump wouldn’t be worse? Or has your paranoia got the better of you?
@81
I’m worried about Hillary Clinton’s management of the Middle East, so I’m delivering the Presidency to someone who thinks everyone with brown skin is part of ISIS. I’m worried about Wall Street’s influence, so I’m delivering the Presidency to someone who made billions of dollars by cheating people. I’m worried about police brutality, so I’m going to deliver the Presidency to someone who thinks the government was right to show “strength” in Tienanmen Square, and who promises to use the police to round up 12 million undesirables. I’m worried about our National Parks, so I’m going to deliver the Presidency to someone who thinks climate change is a deliberate hoax.
There are zero issues Hillary is iffy on where Donald Trump isn’t enthusiastically worse.
Hoping a hypothetical small majority Senate will be able to contain the worst impulses of the scariest major Presidential candidate in any of our lifetimes is a bad gamble, especially considering he’s definitely going to be able to get his way on executive actions and most of his nominees.
Checks and balances aren’t foolproof, and they aren’t an excuse to be stupid.
If Trump wins, we’re going to end up sacrificing some of the most important political wins in US history and ruin our relationships with the rest of the world, all just to push the Democratic Party further to the right when they realize they can’t win with Hillary Clinton.
You’re right about one thing. We definitely have different priorities.
@84:
I’m disabled. I can’t work. I may not be able to work in the future.
At the moment, I can rely on family support but there’s a limit to how much my family can support me; they’re burning through their savings (and I’ve already burned through mine) and expecting this to last four years is more than a little optimistic.
When the family support runs out, I will be forced to rely on the social safety net, which is insufficient. I won’t be able to afford food or housing, so I’ll end up on the streets and die.
Obviously, I can avoid that early grave if the social safety net is expanded, but both Clinton and Trump want to slash it further. I can also avoid it if my disability can be mitigated or undone, but that will require medical intervention that I can’t afford unless we have health care reform— which Clinton and Trump both oppose.
@85:
Your fallacy is: False dichotomy. And/or tu quoque.
So, we should support Sanders by repudiating his support of Clinton.
Ok, gotcha.
So we like Sanders because he’s right about stuff, but we shouldn’t support Clinton, even though Sanders says we should…
If Sanders is that wrong on Clinton, why support him at all? And if he’s not, why buck him?
Really? Who is the other VIABLE choice? Grow up.
@88:
Your fallacy is: False dichotomy.
If you could have chosen your preferred candidate in 2012 without regard for what other people wanted, would you have picked Obama or Stein?
I bet that after the election — possibly even after the primary but certainly after the general — Clinton will return to being pro-TPP and pro-fracking, and the TPP will pass more or less unchanged within a year. Any takers?
You can also bet Clinton will push through the $1t nuclear weapons upgrade (which will actually cost twice that and will mean the US stomps all over the test ban treaty) …
If I actually BELIEVED a fucking thing any of these slimewads said I’d have to vote Trump because he’s at least lied and said he’d reduce imperial military expenditures. Such a pretty lie.
And the US tumbril industry has all moved to China. It’s gonna be awfully ironic to give our oligarchs a ride in those. Maybe we can outsource a guillotine-as-a-service – so cheap and so convenient!
Easy fuckwitted idjit, Obama, who was elected and prevented the rethugs from controlling the Presidency, Senate, and House, with all the idiocy seen in many states since then. Stein got 0.3% of the vote and was totally non-viable and wouldn’t budge the democrats at all. I live in reality. Why do you think your idjit question was at all relevant?
You didn’t answer the question.
Which candidate would you genuinely prefer? That is, if Obama and Stein each had exactly 50% of the vote and you were asked to cast the tiebreaker ballot, who would you have picked?
Only you, the troll, gives a shit about reality. The reality is Stein was never an entity, nor will be, in my political leanings, until the proper progression from local to state to national is seen. Either show us her political experience in the give and take of government, or shut the fuck up about a nobody. Your choice, which will your your idiotology or practical politics.
You didn’t actually answer my question.
It’s not that hard. Obama or Stein? Which one did you genuinely prefer?
Because you can agree with someone’s policy opinions, without necessarily agreeing with every position they hold?
No candidate from any party shares my political views 100%, so I’m not seeing why it is that strange to agree with a candidate on the whole but disagree on any specific point.
You were answered. You didn’t like the answer. Dolt.
@ Nerd #83:
Who knows if Trump actually intends to push for any of the promises he is making. My gut tells me he is only pandering to the inbreds who will vote for him. Not that that makes him any less of a scumbag or any less frightening. But if he were to actually push for a ban on Muslin immigrants or the building of a border wall, do you honestly think there would be a SINGLE Democrat who would vote in favor of such a thing? Hell, plenty of Republicans have publicly said he is out of his mind. Please tell me which Trump campaign promises ANY Senate Democrat would roll over for.
@ Nerd #85:
As I’ve said before, its a matter of power being split. A dictator Trump would be a nightmare beyond imagination. But in the real world, we will have a Senate that will block anything he pushes for. As opposed to if Hillary gets in, in which case we would have a Senate who would bend to her every whim.
@ llama #86:
“considering he’s definitely going to be able to get his way on executive actions”
Why do you think I go nuts whenever I hear some member of the reactionary Left praise executive orders or demand that we fill the courts with ideologues who will issue pleasing rulings without regard to legal basis? We have a balance of power for a reason, which is why executive orders should be used as sparingly as possible because sooner or later the shoe will be on the other foot.
@ Anri #88:
I’m not against Clinton because she will beat Sanders. I’m not against her because I disagree with some of her policies. I’m against her because I disagree with virtually everything she stands for. Progressives have eternally damned Republicans for far less than what she has done. To support her now is pure hypocrisy.
Do you have any evidence for those claims? If not, dismiss them.
Don’t do that.
That’s not actually an answer.
Which candidate would you genuinely prefer to have won in 2012, Obama or Stein? You don’t need to write a dissertation regarding your reasoning; you just need to tell me which candidate you’d rather have seen in the White House, without regard for strategic concerns about how other people would vote. If you could have simply appointed either one President without regard for anyone else’s opinions, who would you have picked? Obama or Stein?
If you don’t even know your own opinions, I don’t see how you can participate in a political debate.
Imo, I see nothing manifestly wrong/contradictory in each of the (roughly) three groups talking here (those who find Clinton unacceptable and will vote 3rd party, or “none of the above”; those who will vote for her as the lesser of two evils; and those who like her, despite imperfections). I wouldn’t extend that relativism to, say, Trump supporters, though, because it’s really difficult (for me) to believe in the “reasonableness” of people who heard Trump’s birtherism, deportation, anti-refugee, and anti-muslim rhetoric, and enthusiastically asked where to sign up…
I don’t know why people seem to think that 2 years or 4 years of Trump would make people “see the light” and vote the way they want them to. If Trump is elected, the US will have its strong leaders, fences, and walls. That’s what US-Americans want. Why would they want change? Well, apart from the economy falling apart, which it will if Trump is elected and gives his friends tax breaks and bailouts. But Bush got re-elected in a bad economy by shouting 911! a lot. If Trump doesn’t have a 911 to shout about, he can make his own. He’ll have a reason that we can’t change leaders now in 2020.
And then there’s the Trump libel laws. Trump quite literally said that one of his first priorities would be to change libel laws to stop the media from saying mean things about him. Congress will support him in that. No credible projection has both houses of Congress switching to Democrat in this election and only the very most optimistic ones predict either the house or the senate to go Democratic. So Congress will go along with it. Heck, congresspeople can read history books too and may well realize that they’re at risk of being kicked out in 2018 when they tank the economy and people are looking for a change, any change. But if the media can’t say anything mean about them, well, then they’ll get re-elected because no one will be able to say that it’s their fault.
Obama. Stein has never held a national level position and I don’t have enough information to know whether she’s competent to or not. I mean, really, I’d prefer Angela Merkel or Sigmar Gabriel, so maybe I should have written one of them in instead of voting for Obama, huh? That would certainly have been realistic.
Of course. 98 Senators voted for the Patriot Act. We already have a border wall with Mexico. Why wouldn’t they vote for expanding it, especially any “purple state” Democrats whose voters favor the wall. Remember, if Trump wins, it will be on the platform of building a wall. That was his first issue and still his biggest. It will be a popular position or at least perceived as a popular one. Why shouldn’t the Democrats join in? How is it that the Democrat running for president is corrupt and basically a Republican but you expect those in Congress to be perfect liberals and never compromise on social justice issues?
Even if the Democrats all did hold firm and vote against the wall and the IDs, there will be enough Republicans to pass those laws without the Democrats. Again, if you aren’t willing to vote for the Democrat for president, are you going to be willing to vote for the at least as right wing Democrats running for Congress? Because quite a lot of them are to the right of Clinton. If it’s no use voting for Clinton because she’ll only make things worse then surely there is no logic in voting for even more right wing Senate and House Democrats.
Sorry to keep pounding on this, especially since everyone else who cares is probably asleep right now, but re the argument that if Trump is elected Congress will go Democratic in 2018 even if it doesn’t in 2016: Consider the 2002 elections. The Republicans gained seats in both House and Senate in those elections. There was a very specific reason for this extremely unusual result: the WTC attacks. Can anyone really, with a straight face, insist that it’s not possible or even not probable that there would be a similar attack in the first 2 years of a Trump presidency? Especially since politicians can read the history books and draw conclusions about the effects of the attacks on Bush’s popularity and his party’s electoral chances just as much as anyone else can.
BTW: I do not believe there is any realistic probability that Bush knew about the attacks ahead of time or planned them himself. Ironically, it was Michael Moore’s movie that convinced me of this: If Bush had planned the attacks or even let them happen knowing what was going on, he would have had a better response than to sit listening to “My Pet Goat” for another 5 minutes after he was told.
Jake Harban @ 96: You didn’t ask me, but…
Based on what they say? Probably Stein.
Based on who’s been vastly more effective in the real world? Obama.
Your turn.
Based on their record of legislation, who do you prefer?
I mean, hell, I could give a good speech about all the cool things I would do as president and fail to get out of the margin of error, too, but that’s doesn’t make me a good voting choice. Why not vote for me?
In fact, why shouldn’t I just write myself in?
No-one is closer to my views than myself, and so long as we’re not actually concerned with candidate viability, it would be the vote with the least hypocrisy possible – the candidate with views most aligned with my own.
@39, moarscienceplz
But as we already admit we’ll vote for her over any Republican there’s no incentive to listen to us. And it’s unlikely that a primary challenge against a sitting president will work.
Which is all well and good, but it doesn’t change the fact that the president has a significant amount of authority. The veto alone makes it endlessly important in a contested congress. And this whole “they don’t have to listen to us” thing still applies down ticket. If I already admit that I’ll vote for any Democrat over any Republican, there’s no incentive to listen to us. Though, admittedly, a primary challenge is more likely to be successful down ticket.
I understand that, but it has to start sometime, and we’re already admitting that we’re willing to hand over the presidency to anyone who isn’t a Republican for almost a decade (if we elect for one term they are already the presumptive nominee for the second), which gives absolutely no incentive for any candidate to listen to us. And, yes, it is important to find candidates that would be good in the future, but (again) these people have nothing but their own conscience to keep them progressive once they secure a nomination as we’re already voting for a Democrat no matter what.
Again, we lose all leverage with the party when they know that vote is assured. If you say you’ll vote for them regardless, they have absolutely no incentive to listen to you.
It might sound like I’m advocating burning the party here, to be quite frank I’d love to do it, but I’m not. I’m not willing to to deal with the fallout from that. However, despite this, I’m sure as shit not going to be happy about having to vote for someone I don’t want as president, but as I live in a swing state I essentially have no choice.
I know I’m doomsaying here. I’m not looking for solutions, it is unlikely they will be found here, I’m mostly just venting.
Why are you harping on the already answered question? Theory on how one would rule is for mental wankers. Solid working experience in government is golden, as it allows you to know how things are really done. Which is why the green party is irrelevant, and will remain irrelevant, until they are at all levels of government, so they can support somebody in the top spot. If you won’t figure out why I answered as I did from the above, you aren’t thinking.
No? How about fundraising, canvassing, and the risk that unenthusiastic voters will decide not to vote? Clinton might be fool enough to not realize that those are risks of ignoring her potential voters, but she doesn’t strike me as likely to make that error. This is even more true of congressional candidates who have smaller constituencies* and therefore more incentive to seek not just the vote but the enthusiasm of as many as possible.
*Though according to the Economist, the ratio of representatives to constituents is something like the third largest in the world in the US. I think after India and…I forget the other. Maybe China. So the politicians have less personal interest in voters in the US than they might have in other countries.
Jake Harban @ 75;
As a differently abeled person, no one is contesting the severity of your problems, or that a Clinton administration would probably be no bed of roses for you, but if you honestly think that Trump is only a threat to the ‘privileged’ you have terminally parted company with reality. Listen to Trumps electoral pitch, the one that has secured him such terrifyingly broad based support – it comprises attacks on the bodily autonomy of women (hardly a privileged social group), flaming racism about the supposed ‘threat’ from foreigners, specifically Mexican migrants and Muslims (Trump seems to either be ignorant of, or simply ignores the existence of, US born Muslim citizens), neither of which can reasonably be termed privileged in modern day America.
His economic polices are run away deregulation and free market absolutism, both of which hurt the marginal, not the elite. His foreign policy is poorly enumerated, but seems to boil down to trying to enact a series of battle scenes from the Lord of the Rings movies, only replacing the Orcs with ISIS (or in realistic terms reams of mostly innocent people from the Middle East) and trading up from swords to modern firepower, a recipe for the catastrophic worsening of an already horrifying situation in countries like Syria, whose population I would hesitate top term ‘privileged’.
Your suffering is real, but that doesn’t mean that the suffering of others in the world is imaginary or somehow rendered meaningless. Considering all the varied groups of people who will be harmed by a Trump Presidency in the likely event that Congress can’t magically hold such an extreme figure fully in check, then I don’t see how anyone can conceivably argue that a Trump win is a better outcome than a Clinton government.
I am not asking you to ‘save’ me – as you say, I am relatively provided and as a Brit will probably be largely insulated form the worst extremes of a Trump administration’s policies. I am asking you and other American voters to consider all the implications of a Trump government before you allow, by action or omission of action, such a scenario to come to pass. It is not people like me that need to be saved from Trump – it is the most vulnerable in the US and across the globe who are most at risk.
Engendering a fatal catastrophe today makes any imagined and frankly less than credible aspirations toward long term ‘wisdom’ utterly moot. Clinton is far from perfect, and yes supporting her today may mean tomorrow’s ‘least bad’ option is worse, but Trump is a menace to America and the world who, if able to obtain presidential power, will ruin countless lives, and in the event of a crisis can pretty much be relied upon to enthusiastically take the worst possible option.
People made similar arguments during the election when Bush took power by questionably legal means, arguing that we were better off with a Republican buffoon than an allegedly corrupt Democrat in Al Gore. Look how that strategy turned out, with the Middle East consumed by an ever worsening conflagration and the worst terror group in history able to trace its origins almost directly to the consequences of Bush’s foreign policies, and Trump makes Bush look like a master politician and diplomat by comparison. I shudder to think what we may be lamenting in ten or fifteen years time if Trump takes power, assuming any of us are still alive to lament anything.
treefrogdundee :@ 81;
I am having some difficulty squaring you statement against judgemental attitudes with your words @ 65;
That seems pretty judgemental to me, and extremely uncharitable in your interpretation of why progressives might be more than a little leery of voting for an open fascist like Trump.
The fact that you confidently assert that the Congress will go Democrat and stay that way to a sufficient degree to pull Trump’s fangs does not make it so. If the electoral cards fall other than you expect, or if an unforeseen event shifts the balance of the political spectrum within the Congress, as the 9/11 attacks did in the Bush years, then your strategy leaves one of the most extreme Presidents in modern US history in charge of the most powerful state on earth and able to act with a free hand.
You say playing the odds Trump is safer than Clinton, but that is because you and I are assessing the risks, and thus the weighting of the odds, differently. Considering the extreme character of Trump’s proposed polices and that magnitude of threat they represent, you have to factor that into the equation. Imagine you have two choices, one that leads to 1% risk of harm happening, and the other to a 10% risk of harm. All things being equal, you choose the 1% – lower risk right? In that scenario, you are right, but that assumes that the severity of potential harm is equal.
What if the 10% risk of harm is the harm that could be caused by one person with a flick knife, and the 1% risk is the harm that could be caused by a person with a nuclear warhead? The calculus has to shift, since handling one person with a flick knife from a security point of view is relatively easy, and even in a worst case scenario the level of danger is comparative limited, whereas one person with a nuke and the preparedness to use it could kill hundreds of thousands or millions at a stroke. Even a much smaller risk of such a catastrophic event still leaves avoiding that outcome the higher priority. In this election, Trump is the person with the nuke. Saying he probably won’t push the button really isn’t guarantee enough. Better by far to deal with Hilary and her political flick knife – it doesn’t help those on the sharp end I admit, but politics is an imperfect system, and often all you can do is minimize the harm, and avoid the most terrible of outcomes.
The feministhomaker did a wonderful job of expressing the ideas that I was about to express myself.
I am, and have been for a while, a supporter of Hillary Clinton.
I have one thing to add:
I’ve supported The Clinton Foundation for some time, too. If you look at what the CF does for women and children around the world, and look at HRC’s support of that foundation, as well as what women in third world countries feel about her, I think that it is fairly clear that she would not start wars that would put those women and children in danger.
@ 110, dianne
That kinda flies in the face of #VoteBlueNoMatterWho, though.
@109:
Still not an answer. Why is this so difficult for you? Two other people have answered and I didn’t even ask them. Who would you genuinely have preferred in the White House, Obama or Stein?
@111:
Of course not. I just pointed out that, being disabled, Trump might well kill me. The problem is, so would Clinton. And I’m hardly the only marginalized person for which this is true— Clinton is a warmonger, so she’s already killed quite a few marginalized people and plans to kill a quite a few more, and that’s just for a start.
And for what it’s worth, I’m disabled, as in can’t work and can barely do much of anything, not “differently abled,” whatever that means.
Why is this event “likely?” The President has little real power; if their opponents control Congress, there’s little they can do.
OK, just to make it clear, I fully intend to vote against Trump. That much is a given.
If, by some miracle, Sanders manages to win the primary, I will vote for Sanders. If, by some miracle, Clinton promises support for liberal policies and gives a costly signal to prove she’s serious, I’ll vote for Clinton. Otherwise, I’ll vote for Stein.
But no matter what, I’ll vote against Trump. And if you consider voting for Stein to be an “action” or not voting for hard-right Clinton to be an “omission of action” in support of Trump, then you can fuck right off and take a look at your own country’s politics.
Yes, I know. The people most at risk from a Trump presidency are the people most vulnerable across the US, like, say, a disabled person who can’t work, like, say, ME and the most vulnerable across the globe like, say, people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, and every other country Clinton wants to declare war on or already has.
You know, as one of those privileged people who will be isolated from the worst of Trump or Clinton, can you please stop mansplaining how Trump Is Bad? Believe me, I already fucking know.
Yes, and so was Dole and Bush and McCain and Romney.
The point of that, which you seem to have missed, is that in every election, there’s a lousy Democrat running against a “menace” Republican, and if you support the Democrat anyway you guarantee that the next election will feature a lousier Democrat running against a more menacing Republican.
Voting for a lousy Democrat out of fear of a menace Republican is short-term thinking, and it’s how we’re in this mess in the first place.
I know memories are woefully short, but at the time, Clinton was one of Bush’s most enthusiastic backers. Her policies are taken right out of Bush’s playbook. Clinton is basically another Bush.
And now we’re asked to vote for another Bush because the Republican alternative is worse. We already know how this will play out because we’ve seen it before. Reagan and Bush Sr. were horrible, so we voted in Democratic Bill Clinton to fix things. Bill Clinton continued most of their right-wing policies. Gore promised to continue them further, and expected us to vote for him simply because Bush Jr. was worse so people were at most lukewarm about supporting him. Bush Jr. took power and enacted policies even worse than any that had come before, so we voted in Democratic Obama to fix things. Obama continued most of Bush’s right-wing policies and Hillary Clinton promises to continue them further and expects us to vote for her simply because Trump is worse so we’re lukewarm about supporting her.
You don’t have to be a genius to see how this ends. If Trump wins, he enacts policies even worse than any who have come before, and then we’ll elect a Democrat who continues most of them and then runs against a Republican who is worse still. If Clinton wins, she merely delays the inevitable; we get another four years of Obama’s right-wing policies followed by a rematch with Trump that he’s more likely to win.
Penny wise. Pound foolish.
Stop being so melodramatic. I may not be alive, but you certainly will be.
And we’ll have a Democratic candidate promising to continue building the border wall and deport all Muslims and kill everyone in the Middle East and a whole thread full of the same people who despised Trump for those policies chanting “vote blue no matter who” because the Republican candidate wants to invade Mexico, kill all Muslims, and nuke the Middle East.
Nope, nope, nope. This time, I refuse to play this game. My loyalty to the top-ticket Dem candidate is not a given and I say this for the first time in my life. I’ll lay my reasoning out without engaging point-for-point (I’ve done that elsewhere and it IS fruitless) because so many of Hillary’s supporters are proudly thick and aggressively dismissive when it comes to communicating with the typical Sanders’ supporter. It sort of boils down to this… you damnable and ass-faced zombies… listen here… call me and other Sanders’ supporters “Bro” again. I dare you. *Sneer*
The truth is, Hillary must earn my vote and so far she isn’t even trying. Clinton professes familiarity with, while remaining dismissive of, Sanders’ stated platform positions. She wants some of us to believe that Bernie’s record as an activist, a leader, and a legislator is historically not substantially different from her own record. She audaciously alleges that he just isn’t True-Blue, whatever that means. Her own and other establishment democrats most recent disappointment to our party’s progressive wing is the ham-handed, rude and crude unleashing of you, you cash-fueled Brock’bots. And you, too, you Hillary True Believers who either oppose, misrepresent, or assimilate Bernie’s and mine own positions in every social media thread everywhere.
For me, this summer and fall, Hillary’s task will be to begin to woo me. Will she and her proxy army of Brock’bots even begin to try? This is the question for which I will require an answer. If I perceive the answer that I’m expecting or else a non-answer, I’ll today affirm to you that I won’t ever try to sway someone against voting for your candidate, but that is all you’ll get from me. That is my current definition of Party loyalty and you’ll need to assimilate that this summer and fall.
I’ll close by saying that, though I live in a deep-blue state, I’ll be voting for progressive Democrats down-ticket in November. I am counting on a democratic takeover of the U.S. Senate, after all. Hillary Clinton and you-know-who-you-are can go paddle your canoe wherever it takes you, for all I care. I believe that I can tread water for four more years.
And your non-paranoid evidence is?????
You aren’t sounding very rational. Take a deep breath, a weeks break, and try again.
Unless you will condemn Drumpf for what he does say, you can’t criticize HC for what you imagine she says….
Since you don’t even know your own beliefs, I don’t think you’re qualified to participate in this thread.
If you could have unilaterally appointed Obama or Stein to the White House in 2012, which would you have picked? This is an incredibly simple question; if you can’t answer it you might want to think twice before you open your mouth.
@Jake Harban. I hadn’t realised PZ had made you the guardian of the thread able to decide who could and couldn’t participate in it. Am I breaking any rules if I participate do you think, or do I have to fill in a questionnaire about who I would vote for first.
Why are YOU being an asshole about your stupid question? It has been answered several times. But you don’t want to acknowledge people makes decisions based upon their criteria, not yours.
Why don’t you answer this question: If Stein was president, which caucus would she contact about a new proposal? It wouldn’t be the green caucus, as it doesn’t exist.
@119:
Do you really need me to explain that a snide comment directed towards a troll is not intended to be a sweeping declaration that all people must literally obey?
@120:
Still no answer. It’s a simple question— if you could make the choice unilaterally, who would you rather see in the White House, Obama or Stein? Either way, you only have to type five letters. Is that really so difficult?
If you don’t know which candidate you like best, you’re hardly in a position to be haranguing other people on who they vote for.
You’re wrong. Or, perhaps, you personally can (in your deep-blue state), but the causes and movements you seem to hold dear cannot. Leftwing movements, especially the most radical, do not thrive in conditions of political repression. Movements need to be able to communicate, organize, mobilize, and protest, and far-Right movements and regimes recognize that a primary task in their rise to power is to make this difficult if not impossible.
If there’s one aspect of Trump, his campaign, and its support that has become overwhelmingly clear it’s authoritarianism. He and his supporters haven’t just shown contempt for marginalized groups but also active hostility toward activists. He’s worked to silence critics and protesters at every turn, from endless litigating to encouraging violence against them. He’s portrayed protesters at his rallies as losers and bad people. He’s aligned with people like Joe Arpaio and other authoritarian-criminal “tough guys.” He’s declared that he would decree war crimes. He would have millions of people deported and arrested. He supports targeted surveillance of entire religions. He’s proposed immigration bans for Muslims. He has obvious disdain for women’s and environmental movements. He loathes the media and stokes hatred of reporters he perceives as a threat. He sees politics in terms of domination, and is disgusted by those he sees as “weak” underdogs. And he has a lot of support for these ideas at least in the legislative branch.
Under a fascistic Trump presidency, what do you think would likely to happen to leftwing movements? These conditions would not be conducive to the growth of these movements, or even their survival or the preservation of past gains. Black Lives Matter? Pro-choice? Environmental and animal liberation? Anti-war? Human rights for Muslims and migrants? The transnational labor movement? Leftwing movements in Latin America? Anti-War on Drugs? Atheism, secularism, science? Universal health care and higher education? Anti-debt? Anti-imperialist? Anti-capitalist?…
These will be crushed or scrambling just to be able to continue to operate and preserve the status quo. Activists will be monitored, harassed, arrested, deported, attacked in the streets,… We can’t take this lightly. The goal is to block the (further) rise of the far Right. In light of the possibility of a Trump (or Cruz, or Kasich) presidency, what you think of Hillary Clinton or her supporters or how rude or dismissive you think they are is truly beside the point.
If your argument is that given your state if she’s the nominee she’ll win there anyway, that’s a different argument (although this year I wouldn’t take any chances). But making this about any Democrat having to earn your vote is seriously ill-considered. You don’t have to support or trust in her or the party (nor should you). You just have to help block the Republican candidate. Bernie Sanders recognizes the urgency of this, and I’m surprised so many others on the Left don’t.
Voting is far from the only or most significant political act. At best, it’s a means of obtaining and preserving the best conditions for activism. No one can seriously and in good faith argue that these conditions would be better under a Trump or any Republican presidency than a Clinton one, and if she’s the nominee these are the only realistic options.
Since you are so stupid to continue to ask the already answered question, you are being nothing but a boring creobot type asshole who thinks they have a gottcha question, and I stopped playing your game the second time you asked; there would be no direct answer from me. Find another victim for your game of assholery.
You never did answer it. Obama or Stein? It’s a simple question and fundamental to the issue at hand, yet you’re completely unable to answer it.
I can answer it. Several people in this thread have answered it even though I didn’t ask them. Why can’t you?
Jake Harban can’t you recognise sarcasm in response to your snideness?
I have. You need to shut the fuck up and listen. Nor will YOU, the asshole, get the direct answer you, as an asshole, demand. You don’t deserve one. Lose the asshole attitude. You don’t control anything on this thread.
Still no answer— just more shrieking insults that I dared to ask what beliefs you’re trying to argue.
You’re clearly a bit too emotional right now. Why don’t you calm down, and later, when you’re capable of rational thought, you can come back and tell me who you’d genuinely have preferred in 2012, Obama or Stein?
No, not beside the point. The Far Left has ever been and always will be vilified by exceptionalist Americans who can’t even be bothered to vote, by centrist voters who feign thoughtfulness while they pretend to weigh cookie-cutter candidates from both sides, by too-many Party elitists like Hillary, by so-called conservatives who are driven primarily by their hatred and/or fear of the Left. My loyalty has always been a given even while never actually having been earned by my Party’s leadership. This time is different and here is why. I’ve observed closely the sidelining of Bernie supporters like me. Note the media’s playbook and Hillary supporters’ playbook this primary season are in parallel to each other. The invective spewed and the lies (YES, LIES!!!) directed at me and my “Bros” this year have revealed to me the futility of standing with those who actively despise, dismiss, or misrepresent the values which I hold dear.
To address the undue alarmism in the remainder of your admittedly thoughtful and well-intended post, I’d agree with you in that I too reason that it would be bad for America in the short-term if we were to see a fascistic Trump Administration take over the Executive Branch. However, here is a news flash for you: Donald Trump is not actually a Nazi. The too Spray-Tanned One is not going to be elected Chancellor or Fuehrer of America. He will not be able to outlaw #BLM or even come close to squelching free speech by those who will be loudly opposing him. Not. Going. To. Happen. Jeez! Many, many, many people will oppose him in the streets, in the schools (wow, Millennials will stand united, won’t they!) and in every public space, really. In places, the ground will physically be quaking under the foot-stomps of enraged youth. The world will vocally rise up to stand united against any such President Shithead. You and I will be on the same team then. Today, we are not such.
As to the long-term effects of such a worrisome election outcome, I’ll repeat below what Susan Sarandon actually said recently concerning her potential to vote for Hillary in November. First I’ll insist that those who insist on misquoting Susan, meaning Team Hillary’s army of haters that populate Twitter and everywhere else online, as well as the mainstream media who can’t be bothered to quote her actual words… honestly, they can all push rope. First off, she did not say that she would vote for Trump over Hillary if Bernie doesn’t win the Dem nomination. Lies about Susan’s statement are now taken as gospel truth by liars and haters, but still… here goes nothing. This is what Susan and I think about voting for a presumed candidate Hillary many months from now… “I DON’T KNOW!”
I’ve spent years basking in the surety of knowing that Hillary was going to run in 2016. And that she was going to kick some Republican ass. However, this year I’ve come to realize that she is so not a candidate that I can love. Since I can’t vote for the principled Elizabeth Warren yet I can vote for the principled Bernie Sanders, the latter is what I have chosen to do. In the near-term, I’d like to remind you that there is a potentially game-changing Democratic primary going on TODAY and maybe you all could shut the Hell up with your premature demands of support for your candidate? Maybe you can’t? Enjoy your candidate’s presumed victory (congratulations are due you, for sure) but please stop being so obnoxious in your conquest because you are surely going to be disappointed in my answer to you right now. Get over it. Whatever.
Why don’t you stick your stupid asshole already answered question where the sun don’t shine. You don’t deserve an answer, and if you have been listening for the last year, you DO know the answer. You are just too stupid to listen.
Jake Harban, you have stepped over the line and become a bully harasser. You will back off if you ever want to read the answer.
Still no answer. You’re not a creationist, are you? Because this level of evasiveness about the most basic tenets of what you believe is rarely seen outside of cdesign proponentsists being asked who they think the “designer” is.
Or are you just pissed that I presumed you’d prefer either Obama or Stein? In that case, allow me to apologize and ask again— if you could have unilaterally chosen the President in 2012, who would you have picked? Obama, Stein, or Romney?
Yes, completely beside the point. I’m an anarchist – the very far Left. I have no illusions about the attitudes toward and treatment of the far Left on the part of Liberals, in any country. And I’m telling you that regarding the question of whether you would cast a vote for a Democratic presidential candidate it is not the issue on which you should focus. (Of course that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on it at all, but in this specific context it’s an irrelevant distraction.)
Your mistake in my view has been to continue to retain any illusions whatsoever about Liberals or Democrats. Again, I’m not recommending that you support Clinton in any form other than casting a vote, much less that you continue to demonstrate any party loyalty. Nor that you should expect any great progressive accomplishments from her administration. And certainly not that, should the Clinton campaign make an effort to, in your word, woo people like you, you should believe it for a second. (Really, that’s an odd demand coming from someone who doesn’t seem naïve about Clinton specifically or politicians in general.) My only concern, again, is with preserving a space in which we can fight for our goals, including against the government.
If the energy of the movement associated with the Sanders campaign could continue after he was elected, it can continue even if he’s not the Democratic nominee. My suggestion is to channel that energy into far Left movements themselves rather than presidential campaigns, but to use elections strategically to build or maintain the best conditions for those movements, obtain some goals, and ward off the far Right. Frankly, when you talk about Clinton and the Democratic party, you sound a bit like a spurned lover, and I think that’s dangerously distorting your views.
He’s an authoritarian with fascistic tendencies and a lot of support on the Right, both from white supremacists and from people with power. That should make everyone – and not just in the US – very afraid. He’s a buffoon, but his authoritarianism and its appeal to many people are very real.
It’s irrelevant, because that’s not what I’m suggesting, but for the record Hitler was not elected either Chancellor or Führer.
My argument isn’t that he would single-handedly be able to outlaw movements, but his control of the executive branch combined with support from others on the Right would make conditions bleak for these movements. At best, they would be fighting a defensive fight for four years rather than working to advance their goals. And even that best-case scenario isn’t likely. The long-term outlook would be very bad.
I don’t know why you’re responding to me as if I were part of “Team Hillary’s army of haters” who’s misrepresented Sarandon’s remarks. I’m not. I actually saw the interview with Chris Hayes in which she made the remarks when it was on live. I know exactly what she said. She made precisely the sort of argument you might be suggesting here – about a Trump presidency possibly serving (or at least not obstructing) leftwing ends by ushering in the revolution. To many people this seems intuitively plausible, but it’s fundamentally mistaken. This is an area in which I have expertise, and I’m saying that the best possibilities for effective radical movements (and those subject to the least violence and suffering) are not found under oppressive regimes but under Liberal or socialist ones. This is because, as I discussed in my post above, effective radical movements don’t rest fundamentally on anger but on organization and action. The conditions for organization and action under authoritarian governments are massively circumscribed. Now, I’m not optimistic that the backlash from the Right under any circumstances won’t be extreme and violent, but giving them more power in a situation in which a more liberal government is an option would be extremely foolish and harmful. If many, many people can oppose Trump’s actions in the streets, the same people can oppose Clinton’s, and with much better chances of success and less possibility of violent reprisal.
Hillary Clinton is not “my candidate.” Here’s what I posted about her a few days ago, and they’re the same sentiments I expressed in 2009. No candidate is my candidate – I’m an anarchist. My point has nothing to do with her specifically or any other Democrat, because that’s not how I approach politics. I live in a country with an electoral system I didn’t choose and do not want. But a clear-eyed approach to my goals requires that I use that system as effectively as possible. I’ll say it again: Refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton should she be the Democratic nominee is contrary to your interests if you’re on the far Left, as Bernie Sanders recognizes. If you’re in a deep-blue state, the best outcome would be that in your case it won’t have an effect on the outcome. But it would still be stupid.
George Takei has had more to say:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/george-takei-compares-trump-fear-mongering-to-anti-japanese-hysteria-during-wwii/
SC (Salty Current) @132, you are correct when you said that I sound like I feel spurned by the Democratic Party and by Hillary especially. I do! My support is clearly being taken for granted. Hillary’s spokesperson said just a day ago that she “has been forced to the Left enough already.” If Team Bernie gives in today we are not likely to see any further change. Bernie’s message to Team Hillary is that, “no, she has not yet been forced to the Left enough.”
My rage is not directed at you, but at Team Hillary. I was hoping to be more clear on that. Often, what I could be saying in ten words I’ll say in twenty, instead. I have not known of your posting history, but I can review it. I see your left-side “Blog List” looks interesting. It’s a lot to digest and I’ll gladly defer to your expressed expertise on revolutionary movements.
Getting back to my only core point here, I’ve repeated that all persuasions directed at me including yours here are premature. Period. In August and September, I’ll probably also be in pragmatic persuasion mode for the Democratic Party. Not today, though! Today, I am clumsily expressing that I’ll push back on all demands for me to pipe down and get in line. I’ll even be denouncing more gently-worded premature arguments for Party unity, such as Takei’s and your own.
Hillary’s supporters should check themselves though they won’t, I think. Hillary Clinton could show Party leadership today, while promoting unity down the line, by leaning in to actively hear from Team Bernie today. Instead, she shows no backbone while more and louder brow-beats resound. “How dare I?,” is what I’m getting. How about this?… Instead, Team Hillary’s tone (!!!) must change. Let me enjoy the luxury of being able to articulate rage when my concerns are discounted even while my support is expected.
I do not think that my being vocal today is on par with being stupid in November, for I’ve said that I am voting Blue in a deep-Blue state. For the time being, the ball is in Hillary’s court and we shall see, won’t we? I can’t support her today, period. That is the sum of my message, though I do frequently stray off-message. Thank you in advance for accepting that I am not being stupid, I am feeling hurt and I am expressing anger. There is yet time for me to remain angry and hurt. And there is yet time for Hillary to shift further towards the Left.