Tendo City

That is, you lost your party to Donald Trump. Congratulations?

A Black Falcon Wrote:That is, you lost your party to Donald Trump. Congratulations?

The Democratic Party sucks too

Yeah, the democrats have some pretty major issues internally as well. In fact, the whole party system is pretty corrupt.

But, and this is important, the Republican party is the festering open sore in the center of all that corruption. Take any major matter of corruption, and you'll find it refined into pure poison in that particular party.

Personally, I believe both parties need to go away forever so we're forced, as a nation, to really think about who and how we select candidates. Look at what we've got here, two dynasties in a supposedly electoral process. If people were really voting, the odds that the son of a previous president would end up being the next president, or that the wife of a previous president would end up being the next president, would be ridiculously low. There would just be too many other candidates for such a remarkable coincidence to happen. However, here we are. I'm not saying Hillary isn't qualified independently of being married to Bill, but seriously, what are the odds she'd be the number one, if it weren't for that dynastic connection? Same with George Bush II: The Revenge (and, for that matter, the nomination of a Jeb, two individuals who seem to have been "born into" their political careers). I mean, look at that, people are RAISED by politicians to be the NEXT politicians, and it works! How is it they can get away with this if the old message we were taught as kid (You could even grow up to be president!) was actually in any way true?

So yes, the whole system is corrupt, but the republicans are far worse than corrupt. If forced to pick between two corrupt parties that break their promises, I'm going with the one that makes promises I actually believe in. While the democrats go against their promises, the republicans are the ones making the promises who's entire premise is dishonest (like "protecting the definition of the word marriage", where protection the definition of a word to begin with is a ridiculous notion anyway).

This is the image that I can't get out of my mind when I think about what kind of meaning there is in the choice we have in November.

From the days when Donald Trump was just an obnoxious real-estate owner and reality TV star, not a neofascist xenophobe playing up race hatred to win nomination...

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Personally, I believe both parties need to go away forever so we're forced, as a nation, to really think about who and how we select candidates. Look at what we've got here, two dynasties in a supposedly electoral process. If people were really voting, the odds that the son of a previous president would end up being the next president, or that the wife of a previous president would end up being the next president, would be ridiculously low. There would just be too many other candidates for such a remarkable coincidence to happen. However, here we are. I'm not saying Hillary isn't qualified independently of being married to Bill, but seriously, what are the odds she'd be the number one, if it weren't for that dynastic connection? Same with George Bush II: The Revenge (and, for that matter, the nomination of a Jeb, two individuals who seem to have been "born into" their political careers). I mean, look at that, people are RAISED by politicians to be the NEXT politicians, and it works! How is it they can get away with this if the old message we were taught as kid (You could even grow up to be president!) was actually in any way true?

Huh? But having a name and family connection to a popular politician of the recent past is a proven way to get an edge, politically. What do you mean by "if people were really voting"? People have been voting, all year. I wish we had more primaries and fewer caucuses, caucuses are undemocratic and suppress turnout, but people certainly have been voting.

That's my point exactly. Having a family connection may be a "proven way to get an edge", but it SHOULDN'T be! It's a stupid way to pick someone, and it's one the US supposedly abandoned when they rebelled against the British Crown!

It's not the "voting" part that's in doubt, it's the "people" part. The two big companies (sorry, "parties") currently in charge of US politics always end up deciding exactly who we get to pick from, and how we go about picking from them. These primaries are unique in that they've gone on for about a thousand years now and let far more states than usual actually get a say, but that say is "tainted". Way too many are picking the candidate they think will "win" the primary instead of the one they actually WANT to win the primary. It's insanity.

Regardless of whatever else happens, I'm very much convinced that the system is broken and in dire need of repair. A start would be flushing the two parties away and starting fresh. It'd force us as citizens to take a much more active role. Sometimes, you need destruction of something before something new can be built.

P.S. That photo is a big example of the problem. There's "the elites" and then there's us. When was the last time someone born into poverty actually won one of these things?

Dark Jaguar Wrote:That's my point exactly. Having a family connection may be a "proven way to get an edge", but it SHOULDN'T be! It's a stupid way to pick someone, and it's one the US supposedly abandoned when they rebelled against the British Crown!

It's a natural human reaction, though. How could you possibly keep people from thinking about connections between people? It's one of those things we instinctively think of. And we don't have royalty that lasts -- think of how, so far in American history, there have not been more than two people from the same family who became president. Several families have two, none three.

Quote:It's not the "voting" part that's in doubt, it's the "people" part. The two big companies (sorry, "parties") currently in charge of US politics always end up deciding exactly who we get to pick from, and how we go about picking from them.

Actually all public officials are chosen in primaries or caucuses, they aren't just appointed. Sometimes you do have a nobody face a sitting member of congress and win, it's not impossible, just rare...

Now, our campaign finance system is totally, horribly broken, that's for sure. Members of the House spend an INSANE amount of time fundraising, and corporations have a horrendously large influence over policy and who gets elected (through mountains of dark-money TV ads and such). We need to get rid of Citizen's United, that should be a key priority for the next administration, and ideally redo the whole campaign funding system, because it really does not work. But this is a different issue from what you're talking about. (Oh, and gerrymandering reform, to get rid of the mostly right-wing gerrymanders that make Democrats winning near-impossible in many states, is vitally important as well!)

Quote:These primaries are unique in that they've gone on for about a thousand years now and let far more states than usual actually get a say, but that say is "tainted". Way too many are picking the candidate they think will "win" the primary instead of the one they actually WANT to win the primary. It's insanity.

It's not just about "think" versus "want", choosing which candidate to support in a primary is often hard... you need to consider who you agree with most on the issues, sure, but which issues? In most cases one candidate is better on some issues, and the other on others. That's certainly true in this race with Bernie and Hillary, I agree with one more on some issues and the other more on others. And while Bernie is great on some issues, his lack of details is a real problem; too many vague statements, not enough details. Hillary's the other way around on that of course, but I, at least, like her focus on details.

But also, but voting for who you think can win IS valid, because if you get an unelectable person as your nominee, it makes it much more likely that the worst result will happen, the other party winning. Think of Republican Tea Party senate nominees in the last couple of cycles who said really dumb things and lost in the general, after getting nominated because of their super-far-right stances -- Republican primary voters voting for purity helped Democrats win later. And that's good for us, but it does show who electability matters.

Quote:Regardless of whatever else happens, I'm very much convinced that the system is broken and in dire need of repair. A start would be flushing the two parties away and starting fresh. It'd force us as citizens to take a much more active role. Sometimes, you need destruction of something before something new can be built.

The Republican Party sure could use some rebuilding (to become a functioning party again that believes in the concept of government), but you're going to have political parties, people have to organize their political actions with others somehow. You can't have a true democracy in any society with more than a small population, you need representative democracy, and this means parties.

Now, it would be nice if we had a electoral system that allowed for more parties. Yes, multi-party systems mean messier governments with sometimes fragile coalitions, but it's a more interesting and representative system, and America probably would be better off with some system that wasn't just our strict first-past-the-post design that ensures we must have two and only two parties in order for anything to function. But you're going to o far when you say 'the parties need to be destroyed', unless you have a better explanation for what you wish could be done.

Quote:P.S. That photo is a big example of the problem. There's "the elites" and then there's us. When was the last time someone born into poverty actually won one of these things?

Bill Clinton grew up middle-class in a troubled home. Hillary was also middle class, though she didn't have a troubled family like Bill.

A Black Falcon Wrote:From the days when Donald Trump was just an obnoxious real-estate owner and reality TV star, not a neofascist xenophobe playing up race hatred to win nomination...

You don't just flip a switch and just suddenly turn into Benito Doucholini one day. Trust me.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not all that sure he means half of what he says or that he intends to do anything along the lines of building a giant wall. Maybe it's because I don't want to take him seriously, but he doesn't make it easy. He scares me a lot less than Ted Cruz, who is a theocrat and an ideologue and the Zodiac Killer.

Quote:But also, but voting for who you think can win IS valid, because if you get an unelectable person as your nominee, it makes it much more likely that the worst result will happen, the other party winning. Think of Republican Tea Party senate nominees in the last couple of cycles who said really dumb things and lost in the general, after getting nominated because of their super-far-right stances -- Republican primary voters voting for purity helped Democrats win later. And that's good for us, but it does show who electability matters.

I just don't get the assertion that Clinton is electable; it's a common meme but the evidence does not support it. She's never won a contested election in her life, and just about every general election poll has her performing significantly worse against Trump than Sanders. The fact that an unknown Senator from Vermont is taking her to the wire, with her universal name recognition and dozens of DNC fingers on the scale, sounds to me like a terrible omen going up against someone who's really going to tear into her soft underbelly.

I think it remains to be seen if the Republican Party ends up fracturing as a result of Trumpmania. If so, I think progressives need to follow suit and break away from the Democratic Party.

That's a good point Welty. If the Republican party dissolves after this, there will be no strategic necessity to cling to the democratic party just to keep the other giant beast from winning. It'll go back to a huge host of much smaller parties representing numerous viewpoints, rather than this false dichotomy we're stuck with now.

ABF, I see where you're coming from, but when you ask "what would we replace it with if the current party system went down?" you come across as someone who thinks the entire political system would collapse without these two parties in place. I have a bit more confidence than that. I'm pretty sure our democracy would survive if they both came tumbling down with no other giant parties to fill the void.

When I said some vote based on who they think will win, I wasn't just talking about the "strategic voting" thing, I'm actually talking something a lot dumber than that. There are a large number of voters who literally think voting is about picking "the winner" and being able to say they won, like it's a lottery. It's not strategy to them, it's about not being stuck voting for "the loser". Even in the presidential elections, between exactly two candidates, check the poles. When one candidate or the other starts to get a lead, that lead suddenly swells as a lot of voters switch sides to be on "the winning team". It's completely idiotic, but as you might point out yourself, also has a place in history, where not switching sides to the presumptive winner usually meant you were going to be killed. There are basically no consequences to being on the "losing side" any more, but people still want to "win" the election by picking the one who wins.

Weltall Wrote:You don't just flip a switch and just suddenly turn into Benito Doucholini one day. Trust me.

True, he's been heading down the crazy road for several years now -- think of how Trump was one of the top Obama birthers, he mentioned birther stuff constantly for years. If he was ever friendly at all with the Clintons, I highly doubt that survived past '08... unless you believe the highly entertaining, but unlikely, conspiracy theory that he';s actually working for them as an agent to destroy the Republican Party. :p

Quote:To be perfectly honest, I'm not all that sure he means half of what he says or that he intends to do anything along the lines of building a giant wall. Maybe it's because I don't want to take him seriously, but he doesn't make it easy. He scares me a lot less than Ted Cruz, who is a theocrat and an ideologue and the Zodiac Killer.

And this is part of why Trump is so scary -- it's so hard to take him seriously that you can overlook just how terrible he really would be as president, if he somehow won...

Quote:I just don't get the assertion that Clinton is electable; it's a common meme but the evidence does not support it. She's never won a contested election in her life,

That's not true, she has won two -- her first election to the Senate, which was competitive even if it is and her race this year for Democratic Presidential nominee. And yes, she's won, Bernie may technically still be in the race but it's over.

Quote: and just about every general election poll has her performing significantly worse against Trump than Sanders.

This is only because Sanders has been treated incredibly nicely by the Clinton campaign, and because the Republicans also are saying absolutely nothing negative about him. The Kochs even managed to say something nice about Sanders! That kind of thing doesn't happen by accident, they were just trying to get their favored opponent, so that after he's formally nominated they can open the floodgates and destroy him. And they would, there's plenty in his history that is great grounds for attack ads. And as for Clinton, she's been super-easy on him in order to not alienate his voters. This campaign has had some negativity, mostly from Sanders' supporters with their obnoxious waves of Hillary-hate, but compare this to even '08 and there is no comparison, that primary was much more negative.

Quote:The fact that an unknown Senator from Vermont is taking her to the wire, with her universal name recognition and dozens of DNC fingers on the scale, sounds to me like a terrible omen going up against someone who's really going to tear into her soft underbelly.

The upside here is that everyone already knows all the bad things about Hillary, She's been attacked from both left and right constantly for decades now. So far this campaign, Hillary has faced the most negative press, and the least positive press, and yet she's winning anyway. There are no surprises, and the attacks have already been used. She'll do fine.

Quote:I think it remains to be seen if the Republican Party ends up fracturing as a result of Trumpmania. If so, I think progressives need to follow suit and break away from the Democratic Party. [/COLOR]

Their party is fracturing, but we'll end up with two parties for sure, whatever those parties are. Most likely they'll be the Republican and Democratic ones, but who knows. Again, this country's political system allows for only two parties, so this really isn't an option. If we could change the political system, getting rid of first-past-the-post, etc, then sure... but that's probably not happening. Remember, you need a majority of the Electoral College to win the presidency. If no candidate has a majority of Electoral College votes, then the House decides, with one vote for each state, and this means Republicans win every time. And beyond that, since you can only have one winner in each district in all lower-level elections, it is very hard for a third party to gain any strength -- voting third party only ends up helping the party you most disagree with.

For one thing which would help here, I'd love to see ranked-choice voting go nationwide! It's a more complex but great system, and we started using it here in Maine for the Portland mayor's race a few years ago. There will be a referendum on this November's ballot over making that the rule for the governor and other major statewide races as well, and that'd be great and a huge improvement. Look up ranked choice, it's a good system.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:ABF, I see where you're coming from, but when you ask "what would we replace it with if the current party system went down?" you come across as someone who thinks the entire political system would collapse without these two parties in place. I have a bit more confidence than that. I'm pretty sure our democracy would survive if they both came tumbling down with no other giant parties to fill the void.

I can't imagine how this could ever actually happen, but other parties would form in their place; political parties seem to be a natural result of having a representative democracy.

A Black Falcon Wrote:That's not true, she has won two -- her first election to the Senate, which was competitive even if it is and her race this year for Democratic Presidential nominee. And yes, she's won, Bernie may technically still be in the race but it's over.

Bernie should have never been in the race given all of his tremendous disadvantages. It was only because Clinton has so many glaring flaws as a candidate that this went anywhere.

Quote:This is only because Sanders has been treated incredibly nicely by the Clinton campaign, and because the Republicans also are saying absolutely nothing negative about him.

I don't know what you've been looking at, but the Clinton campaign has been hideously ugly towards Sanders for months. I won't forget Clinton surrogate John Lewis implying that Sanders wasn't involved in the civil rights movement so as to sway black voters, or that incident in Nevada where Dolores Huerta and America Ferrera invented tales of Sanders supporters chanting "English Only" in order to sway Hispanics against him. That was the shit that made me decide not to vote for her in the general election.

Quote:The Kochs even managed to say something nice about Sanders! That kind of thing doesn't happen by accident, they were just trying to get their favored opponent, so that after he's formally nominated they can open the floodgates and destroy him. And they would, there's plenty in his history that is great grounds for attack ads. And as for Clinton, she's been super-easy on him in order to not alienate his voters. This campaign has had some negativity, mostly from Sanders' supporters with their obnoxious waves of Hillary-hate, but compare this to even '08 and there is no comparison, that primary was much more negative.

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/24/charles-koch-says-he-could-possibly-support-hillary-clinton/?_r=0"]Is this happening by accident?
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There has been equal amounts of vitriol from Clinton supporters online. I've seen tons of it. I get it, too. People get heated when they support their side. I just don't get why people support her. The best thing you can say about her is that Trump is worse. Clinton won't help out the poor or make things better around the world, because she's a throwback to the Democrats of the 80s and 90s, who were (to coin a phrase) cuckolded by Reagan and are afraid to be progressive in any meaningful sense. She won't inspire voters to take back congress. Hell, she'll probably be facing impeachment from day one because that's what the GOP loves to do. In 2008, America wanted Hope and Change. Now, the best we can hope for is "Let's Not Even Bother Trying".

Quote:The upside here is that everyone already knows all the bad things about Hillary, She's been attacked from both left and right constantly for decades now. So far this campaign, Hillary has faced the most negative press, and the least positive press, and yet she's winning anyway. There are no surprises, and the attacks have already been used. She'll do fine.

She is winning the Democratic primary because her surrogates control the party. The rules in place favored her, and she has Super PAC money in virtually limitless amounts. That won't be the case against Trump.

Weltall Wrote:Bernie should have never been in the race given all of his tremendous disadvantages. It was only because Clinton has so many glaring flaws as a candidate that this went anywhere.

Her main "glaring flaw" is that she's a woman. My mom is convinced that most liberals supporting Bernie do so because of sexism, and I can't call her entirely wrong because, well, it's mostly men who are the most angry at Hillary, and consciously or unconsciously there probably is a connection there... and she also thinks a socialist could never win, but that's fairly obvious; "socialist" still polls INCREDIBLY badly in this country.

If Hillary was a man in this same position, he surely would have someone running against him to his right, but I do think that that person would not be doing as well as Bernie is; sexism has to be a part of why he has done so well... or at least unconscious gender bias, but that's the same thing in the end. Sure, "we want someone more liberal" is real, but it's not the only factor, I don't think.

Quote:I don't know what you've been looking at, but the Clinton campaign has been hideously ugly towards Sanders for months. I won't forget Clinton surrogate John Lewis implying that Sanders wasn't involved in the civil rights movement so as to sway black voters, or that incident in Nevada where Dolores Huerta and America Ferrera invented tales of Sanders supporters chanting "English Only" in order to sway Hispanics against him. That was the shit that made me decide not to vote for her in the general election.

Sanders people have done things dozens of times worse towards Clinton and you know it. You're making a mountain out of a molehill, while ignoring everything done by your side, and that's wrong. (Oh, and that's not really what John Lewis said.) And if we go back to '08 with this, the Hillary dead-enders who claimed "I'll never vote for Obama because of [thing X he did to the Clintons] eventually almost all came around and supported Obama, because that's what you do -- you vote for your party's nominee once they has been chosen unless you have an INCREDIBLY good reason to not do so, like, they are Donald Trump. But the Democratic Party has not nominated someone like Trump probably ever, so that's safe.

For instance on the "Bernie people are awful' front, though, back in March I went to the caucus here. Look up my thread on how THAT went, with the people behind be badmouthing Hillary for hours while we waited in line. Or more recently, last Friday and Saturday, I was a Hillary delegate at the Maine Democratic Convention. Now, Bernie won this state 2-to-1, so it was a very heavily Bernie-favoring crowd even though the race is over. So what happened? Well, at the convention, there were two big speeches, one for each candidate. Bernie had local ex-state government guy Troy Jackson and some person from Vermont, and Hillary had ex-Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank... and a bunch of people decided that it'd be a good idea to heckle Barnie, because he supports Hillary and is thus awful, a corporate shill, etc, etc. It was unbelievable, I've never seen anything like that! How could people be so rude that at the state convention you HECKLE a speaker just because they disagree with you, so much and so consistently that sometimes they cannot speak? Terrible behavior there, it really encapsulated the attitude I have seen from Bernie fans -- people too likely to be vocally obnoxious towards the other candidate, and irrationally angry at people who agree with you 95% of the time, threatening to help people who agree with you near-0% of the time win out of pointless spite. As Barney Frank said, he voted once for someone he thought was perfect... but by the time he stood for re-election, he realized that he didn't think he was perfect anymore (because no one can be perfect and get anything done in congress.). Heh... amusing stuff. :)

Oh yeah, and our local House of Representatives member, Chellie Pingreee, also was heckled by people angry that she has endorsed Hillary. How could any so-called "progressive" support Clinton? I must heckle them until they come to their senses! Get over yourself, there are plenty of great reasons to support Hillary.

Naturally, there was no heckling of any Bernie supporter's speech. I have never heard anyone insult Bernie like the things people say about Hillary to Hillary supporters.

Quote:[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/24/charles-koch-says-he-could-possibly-support-hillary-clinton/?_r=0"]Is this happening by accident?
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No, that's a reaction to how much he dislikes Trump. The Kochs have been notably silent in the Republican presidential race this year because they didn't like any of the top candidates. At this point, I expect them to mostly ignore the presidential race and spend their money on trying to help lower-level Republicans win, to hold Congress in a likely Hillary Clinton administration. So we've got a lot of work to do to win Congress too, if we want anything to get done in the next term!

Quote:There has been equal amounts of vitriol from Clinton supporters online.

That is absolutely false. The hate is extremely disproportionate! I've experienced it both in person and online, and it's bad. It's so bad that we have so-called liberals repeating right-wing talking points about Hillary, which is just absurd. There are some Hillary fans disappointed by Bernie's negative turns, and I am disappointed by his constant intonations that she's probably corrupt but I can't prove it so I won't actually say it (so don't, if you have no proof and it's not true!), and by him not giving up now that he has lost and we need to unite to start working to defeat probably the most dangerous person to run for President in a very long time, but I still like him on a policy level, certainly, and I imagine most Hillary supporters would agree there. Both are great on policy though; 93% similar voting records in congress and all that.

Quote: I've seen tons of it. I get it, too. People get heated when they support their side. I just don't get why people support her. The best thing you can say about her is that Trump is worse. Clinton won't help out the poor or make things better around the world, because she's a throwback to the Democrats of the 80s and 90s, who were (to coin a phrase) cuckolded by Reagan and are afraid to be progressive in any meaningful sense.

Why do I support her? Because she's the better candidate. Because she has actual plans to turn her campaign promises into policies, something he does not have. Because she cares about the details, and not just empty rhetoric. Because it's time for a woman president. Because America will never elect a socialist. Because Bernie's fans have been incredibly obnoxious and rude, while Hillary supporters never behave the same way back.

(I supported Hillary over Obama in 2008 as well, you may or may not remember. She had the more liberal health care plan, among other things.)

Quote:She won't inspire voters to take back congress.

She'll do much more for this than Bernie would. Bernie's problem is that he's too absolute, you've got to be fully with him for him to support you . So, he has done almost no fundraising for Democratic house or senate campaign committees this year, while Hillary has raised a lot of money for the DNC and lower-level committees, to get some of the money we will need to compete in November. With Bernie as the nominee, where does the money to win tough senate races come from? He won't help them, they aren't pure enough for him. So we lose those races, along with the Presidency, and give Republicans a trifecta? Awesome.

And as for "energy and excitement", if that was real then Bernie would be winning the nomination.

Quote:Hell, she'll probably be facing impeachment from day one because that's what the GOP loves to do. In 2008, America wanted Hope and Change. Now, the best we can hope for is "Let's Not Even Bother Trying".

No, it's "change, but at a pace that actually will happen."

Quote:She is winning the Democratic primary because her surrogates control the party. The rules in place favored her, and she has Super PAC money in virtually limitless amounts.

That helped, but no, she's winning because people decided she was the best candidate running. Bernie's losing because of his own problems, foremost among them his total failure to appeal to minorities.

Quote:That won't be the case against Trump.

Money is certainly a huge, huge problem, yes. Citizen's United was an anti-Hillary group in 2008, remember, and the lasting impact of that decision that allowed an infinite flood of money into politics is horrible and sad. There were big problems before that, but that decision made things much worse. But even so, the Democrats have a very favorable map, and it should be easy for Hillary to win this election. All credible polling shows Hillary with big leads, and Trump's record-breaking negatives combined with Obama's rising popularity numbers should be enough to overcome Hillary's own negative numbers, and break that final glass ceiling. Here's hoping.

Getting to spar with you again is so much fun!

A Black Falcon Wrote:Her main "glaring flaw" is that she's a woman. My mom is convinced that most liberals supporting Bernie do so because of sexism, and I can't call her entirely wrong because, well, it's mostly men who are the most angry at Hillary, and consciously or unconsciously there probably is a connection there... and she also thinks a socialist could never win, but that's fairly obvious; "socialist" still polls INCREDIBLY badly in this country.

I guess there are some Sanders supporters who really don't like women, but probably not much more than there are misandrists supporting Clinton. Remember that the Bernie coalition started off as support for Elizabeth Warren. I have no doubt in my mind that should she have run instead of Sanders, her level of support would be on the same level (if not higher, she was not an independent). I mean, I'm a man, and I'm angry at Hillary, but her genitalia don't form the core of any reason why.

I don't really think the 's' word is such an obstacle anymore, thanks to right-wingers inadvertently devaluing the term so hard and often over the last eight years. Comparing Sanders to Stalin or Pol Pot falls flat within 30 seconds of listening to him talk. And, for all that, he outpolls Trump very comfortably. This sentiment is, in large part, the 'cucking' I mentioned previously: Dems are too afraid of Republicans (even when they are clearly falling apart at the seams, apparently) to effectively counter them. GOP gerrymandering and unlimited campaign money are some of the reason why the GOP dominates all lower levels of government, but the rest of the reason is because the Democrats lack backbone.

Living in Maine, your caveman retard governor notwithstanding, you don't really see a lot of that. Your Democrats are fairly safe. But, watch one run in Kentucky in 2014:



Alison Lundergan Grimes' strategy to unseat Mitch McConnell was "I'm not one of those liberals". As you might be aware, McConnell is now Senate ML. Why would any undecided or leaning voter find that message resonating? Why would any conservative voter opt to change their mind?

No spine. No principles. This is why Democrats control the White House and little else.

Quote:If Hillary was a man in this same position, he surely would have someone running against him to his right, but I do think that that person would not be doing as well as Bernie is; sexism has to be a part of why he has done so well... or at least unconscious gender bias, but that's the same thing in the end. Sure, "we want someone more liberal" is real, but it's not the only factor, I don't think.

The scenario you described already happened, with Obama.

Quote:Sanders people have done things dozens of times worse towards Clinton and you know it. You're making a mountain out of a molehill, while ignoring everything done by your side, and that's wrong. (Oh, and that's not really what John Lewis said.) And if we go back to '08 with this, the Hillary dead-enders who claimed "I'll never vote for Obama because of [thing X he did to the Clintons] eventually almost all came around and supported Obama, because that's what you do -- you vote for your party's nominee once they has been chosen unless you have an INCREDIBLY good reason to not do so, like, they are Donald Trump. But the Democratic Party has not nominated someone like Trump probably ever, so that's safe.

That is because Hillary supporters are Democratic partisans. A lot of Sanders supporters are new to the political process, for the first time having the sense that there was a point to it. They have little or no connection to the Party and no incentive to contribute to its success. I count myself among that number. The ones who will stick around are the ones who go along with the lesser of two profound evils. I don't think that's going to be the case this time, on either side of the political spectrum.

Quote:For instance on the "Bernie people are awful' front, though, back in March I went to the caucus here. Look up my thread on how THAT went, with the people behind be badmouthing Hillary for hours while we waited in line. Or more recently, last Friday and Saturday, I was a Hillary delegate at the Maine Democratic Convention. Now, Bernie won this state 2-to-1, so it was a very heavily Bernie-favoring crowd even though the race is over. So what happened? Well, at the convention, there were two big speeches, one for each candidate. Bernie had local ex-state government guy Troy Jackson and some person from Vermont, and Hillary had ex-Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank... and a bunch of people decided that it'd be a good idea to heckle Barnie, because he supports Hillary and is thus awful, a corporate shill, etc, etc. It was unbelievable, I've never seen anything like that! How could people be so rude that at the state convention you HECKLE a speaker just because they disagree with you, so much and so consistently that sometimes they cannot speak? Terrible behavior there, it really encapsulated the attitude I have seen from Bernie fans -- people too likely to be vocally obnoxious towards the other candidate, and irrationally angry at people who agree with you 95% of the time, threatening to help people who agree with you near-0% of the time win out of pointless spite. As Barney Frank said, he voted once for someone he thought was perfect... but by the time he stood for re-election, he realized that he didn't think he was perfect anymore (because no one can be perfect and get anything done in congress.). Heh... amusing stuff. :)

I guess it's a lot harder to heckle a candidate when he draws crowds ten times the size. Hillary supporters tend to do their dirty work on the internet. I went to Sanders' Kentucky rally last week in Lexington and I heard Hillary supporters trying to that. It's just that they were too few in size to matter.

Oh, and there was this sad frat boy while I was outside in line, rolling by and yelling TRUMP 2016. Except, there was a red light, so his car (he was in the back seat) couldn't move. Watching him slump in his seat as his window rolled up was THE image of the campaign season for me.

Quote:Oh yeah, and our local House of Representatives member, Chellie Pingreee, also was heckled by people angry that she has endorsed Hillary. How could any so-called "progressive" support Clinton? I must heckle them until they come to their senses! Get over yourself, there are plenty of great reasons to support Hillary.

That would be energy best spent helping your candidate win, I agree.

Quote:Naturally, there was no heckling of any Bernie supporter's speech. I have never heard anyone insult Bernie like the things people say about Hillary to Hillary supporters.

You must never visit Daily Kos anymore, then.

Quote:No, that's a reaction to how much he dislikes Trump. The Kochs have been notably silent in the Republican presidential race this year because they didn't like any of the top candidates. At this point, I expect them to mostly ignore the presidential race and spend their money on trying to help lower-level Republicans win, to hold Congress in a likely Hillary Clinton administration. So we've got a lot of work to do to win Congress too, if we want anything to get done in the next term!

Yeah, he dislikes Trump, but what is there about Clinton for the Koch brothers to dislike, really? They are representative of what Sanders claims is wrong with American politics, but there isn't that much ideological conflict between them and Clinton.

Quote:That is absolutely false. The hate is extremely disproportionate! I've experienced it both in person and online, and it's bad. It's so bad that we have so-called liberals repeating right-wing talking points about Hillary, which is just absurd. There are some Hillary fans disappointed by Bernie's negative turns, and I am disappointed by his constant intonations that she's probably corrupt but I can't prove it so I won't actually say it (so don't, if you have no proof and it's not true!), and by him not giving up now that he has lost and we need to unite to start working to defeat probably the most dangerous person to run for President in a very long time, but I still like him on a policy level, certainly, and I imagine most Hillary supporters would agree there. Both are great on policy though; 93% similar voting records in congress and all that.

You want to talk about right wing talking points? These are some I've heard from Hillary supporters, directed at Sanders:

He's a socialist!
He's going to raise your taxes!
He is soft on foreign policy (apparently, thinking before you start a war makes you 'soft')
Everything will get more expensive if the minimum wage goes up
Sanders supporters just want free stuff
Unicorns and rainbows

etc. like, are you on Kos or Free Republic? Hard to tell at times.

Bernie supporters use RWTP to impugn Clinton's character. Clinton supporters use RWTP to impugn Sanders' policies. I find that to be a lot more distasteful.

Quote:She'll do much more for this than Bernie would. Bernie's problem is that he's too absolute, you've got to be fully with him for him to support you . So, he has done almost no fundraising for Democratic house or senate campaign committees this year, while Hillary has raised a lot of money for the DNC and lower-level committees, to get some of the money we will need to compete in November. With Bernie as the nominee, where does the money to win tough senate races come from? He won't help them, they aren't pure enough for him. So we lose those races, along with the Presidency, and give Republicans a trifecta? Awesome.

Bernie is raising money solely from individual contributions. Clinton can easily raise money for others, because the majority of that cash is coming from connected and very wealthy people or SuperPACs. Furthermore, why waste his energy raising funds for Democrats like Alison Grimes above, who have no chance of winning?

Quote:And as for "energy and excitement", if that was real then Bernie would be winning the nomination.

There are obstacles energy and excitement can't overcome, such as closed primaries, people being de-registered to vote (this happened to me), votes being lost or miscounted, tremendously biased coverage in the media, and all the other tricks in a career politician's sleeve.

Quote:No, it's "change, but at a pace that actually will happen."

How is Clinton going to accomplish anything with a GOP senate, representing an electorate that loathes her on a personal level? Even if she's sincere about half the promises she makes, it won't matter. It's going to be like Obama's first term, only much worse.

Quote:Money is certainly a huge, huge problem, yes. Citizen's United was an anti-Hillary group in 2008, remember, and the lasting impact of that decision that allowed an infinite flood of money into politics is horrible and sad. There were big problems before that, but that decision made things much worse. But even so, the Democrats have a very favorable map, and it should be easy for Hillary to win this election. All credible polling shows Hillary with big leads, and Trump's record-breaking negatives combined with Obama's rising popularity numbers should be enough to overcome Hillary's own negative numbers, and break that final glass ceiling. Here's hoping.

Great, I love getting to choose between which candidate I dislike less. CU was anti-Hillary in 2008, but she can't not love it now, it is largely why she is winning.

But, thanks to the electoral college and living in a non-swing state, I don't have to make that choice.


I saw a saying that fits well. "Hillary Clinton is the best candidate for the government we have. Bernie Sanders is the best candidate for the government we need."

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hill...ut-aliens/

Just thought I'd put this out there.

Weltall Wrote:Getting to spar with you again is so much fun!

Too bad you're still wrong, albeit much less so than before. :p

Quote:I guess there are some Sanders supporters who really don't like women, but probably not much more than there are misandrists supporting Clinton. Remember that the Bernie coalition started off as support for Elizabeth Warren. I have no doubt in my mind that should she have run instead of Sanders, her level of support would be on the same level (if not higher, she was not an independent). I mean, I'm a man, and I'm angry at Hillary, but her genitalia don't form the core of any reason why.

Sorry, but gender is at the core of why people hate Hillary. No other factor is remotely near as important.

As for Elizabeth Warren, she is a woman, yes, but she benefits from not having faced over 20 years of constant gender-based attacks. And would she really be doing as well as Bernie is? Maybe, but we'll never know. He has done an impressive job of winning over younger liberals, men particularly. If both were women, would it be as dominant a win for Warren as it is for Bernie? Who knows... And anyway, she'd never have run because she doesn't want to derail the candidacy of what will probably be the first woman to be president.

Quote:I don't really think the 's' word is such an obstacle anymore, thanks to right-wingers inadvertently devaluing the term so hard and often over the last eight years.

No, "socialist" is still one of the worst things you can call someone in American politics: http://www.gallup.com/poll/183713/social...aling.aspx And there has been no sign in a dramatic shift since that poll.

Quote: Comparing Sanders to Stalin or Pol Pot falls flat within 30 seconds of listening to him talk. And, for all that, he outpolls Trump very comfortably.

Again, the "but polling says Sanders does better!" argument fails because Sanders is not being attacked. If he was his numbers would be radically different. Radically different. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016...mber-polls There is absolutely no comparison between Hillary and Bernie now because she's being attacked from all directions relentlessly in a way I have never seen in this party, while Bernie's barely even been touched by Dems while Republicans are completely silent about him. After the anti-Bernie ad campaigns he would do worse than Hillary in November, absolutely no question.

Quote:This sentiment is, in large part, the 'cucking' I mentioned previously: Dems are too afraid of Republicans (even when they are clearly falling apart at the seams, apparently) to effectively counter them. GOP gerrymandering and unlimited campaign money are some of the reason why the GOP dominates all lower levels of government, but the rest of the reason is because the Democrats lack backbone.
Living in Maine, your caveman retard governor notwithstanding, you don't really see a lot of that. Your Democrats are fairly safe. But, watch one run in Kentucky in 2014:

[video=youtube;z7Pa16JPUlY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7Pa16JPUlY

Alison Lundergan Grimes' strategy to unseat Mitch McConnell was "I'm not one of those liberals". As you might be aware, McConnell is now Senate ML. Why would any undecided or leaning voter find that message resonating? Why would any conservative voter opt to change their mind?

No spine. No principles. This is why Democrats control the White House and little else.

Someone running as a clear liberal in Kentucky would also have lost, though. Different states are different, people can't win everywhere with clearly liberal campaigns... I'd love to see a country where you could do that, but right now the South is still very conservative, unfortunately. So yeah, she lost and that campaign failed, but it's not like running left of that would have helped...

Quote:The scenario you described already happened, with Obama.

Indeed, his gender was a huge help for him, versus Hillary. She'd almost certainly have never lost the '08 Presidential nomination if she were male.

Quote:That is because Hillary supporters are Democratic partisans. A lot of Sanders supporters are new to the political process, for the first time having the sense that there was a point to it. They have little or no connection to the Party and no incentive to contribute to its success. I count myself among that number. The ones who will stick around are the ones who go along with the lesser of two profound evils. I don't think that's going to be the case this time, on either side of the political spectrum.

This is entirely true, yes. An older woman Hillary delegate commented about the hecklers that 'I wonder if I'll ever see them at one of these again', and it does seem unlikely; people who care about the party are not going to do that.

Quote:I guess it's a lot harder to heckle a candidate when he draws crowds ten times the size. Hillary supporters tend to do their dirty work on the internet. I went to Sanders' Kentucky rally last week in Lexington and I heard Hillary supporters trying to that. It's just that they were too few in size to matter.

It's not about the size of the crowds, it's about the kind of people who make up their audience, and the nature of the Hillary hate-campaign that hyas been ongoing for 24 years now since she entered the White House and dared be more than the traditional nonpartisan First Lady. Most Hillary supporters like Bernie just fine,or did until he started saying untrue things about her during this campaign.

Quote:That would be energy best spent helping your candidate win, I agree.

And then helping either one of them win in November, because that's the most important thing.

Quote:You must never visit Daily Kos anymore, then.

I read it every day, why? Mostly stick to the main page and elections page, though, not the user articles and stuff.

Quote:Yeah, he dislikes Trump, but what is there about Clinton for the Koch brothers to dislike, really? They are representative of what Sanders claims is wrong with American politics, but there isn't that much ideological conflict between them and Clinton.

:loi: What in the world are you talking about? The Kochs and Clinton disagree on almost every single issue! I mean, in that statement there he said something about 'if she changed positions on lots of issues' or something like that, and that is not going to happen. Hillary and Bernie agree on 90-something percent of issues. Hillary and any Republican today agree on very few.

Quote:You want to talk about right wing talking points? These are some I've heard from Hillary supporters, directed at Sanders:

He's a socialist!
He's going to raise your taxes!
He is soft on foreign policy (apparently, thinking before you start a war makes you 'soft')
Everything will get more expensive if the minimum wage goes up
Sanders supporters just want free stuff
Unicorns and rainbows

etc. like, are you on Kos or Free Republic? Hard to tell at times.

No, not at all.

-Socialist - They issue here isn't that he is one, many Hillary supporters like socialism too. The problem is that in our country no socialist can win a general election. And this is a huge issue, when we need to win this year, particularly to take the Supreme Court -- we have a once-in-40-year chance to turn this court around, from conservative to liberal, and we MUST take it! (Yes, the court has been conservative for that long.)

-On taxes, whether his tax plan is good or bad for someone depends on their individual circumstances. I haven't looked into it in great detail, but that does seem to be the case. And it opens him up for obvious, sure-to-work attack ads ass well, about "Bernie will raise your taxes". That kind of fearmongering works.

-Foreign policy - This has always been one of my major issues with him, yes. It's not that his positions are wrong, many of his are good. It's that he clearly does not care much about anything outside of the US, and the US banking industry in particular. I watched most of the debates, an the best he ever did at foreign policy was barely passable, while she did great every time. I disagree with Hillary on her Iraq vote of course, but she has said that that vote was a mistake, and I definitely believe that she would not do anything like that as President -- she has said as much herself, certainly. And while she should have been more credulous, she WAS lied to by Bush & Cheney, to help get votes. And more importantly, for today's foreign policy issues, she has the better and clearer foreign policy positions. She cares a lot about foreign policy, and that's a plus for her over Bernie.

- Hillary supports raising the minimum wage, as do probably all Democrats. The only issue is how much to raise it, but that's not as important as finally raising the federal minimum wage is in the first place...

- And your last two points are the same, comments pointing out how Bernie has few specifics behind his plans, only vague generalizations, while Hillary is a policy person who has much more detailed plans for everything. This isn't really an attack so much as it is a comparison of their natures. I prefer Hillary's to Bernies, myself, as policy matters... of course it's best to have both, like you see in Bill Clinton, but she doesn't have Bill's natural charm, unfortunately.

Quote:Bernie supporters use RWTP to impugn Clinton's character. Clinton supporters use RWTP to impugn Sanders' policies. I find that to be a lot more distasteful.

There are virtually no right-wing talking points against Bernie, so this is not true. The only shred of truth to it is pointing out ways that he will be ripped apart as a general election candidate, such as his embrace of socialism, raising taxes, etc. That isn't "repeating right-wing talking points", it's saying "those right-wingers will say this and Bernie has no defense against it". There's a huge difference there.

And besides, falsely impugning someones character is very, very bad, and Sanders supporters have done that to Hillary a lot.

Quote:Bernie is raising money solely from individual contributions. Clinton can easily raise money for others, because the majority of that cash is coming from connected and very wealthy people or SuperPACs.

What? This makes no sense. Where you get your money doesn't matter as much in the end as what you do with it. Hillary is using the money she is raising to support both her own campaign, and the campaigns of Democratic state parties around the country. Bernie is not doing this. So, in November, with Bernie we would do MUCH worse at a state level because of his refusal to raise money for and support lots of state and federal congress candidates.

Quote:Furthermore, why waste his energy raising funds for Democrats like Alison Grimes above, who have no chance of winning?

Sometimes you spend money on races like those if you think you have an off-chance of winning, as does happen sometimes -- think of how we won the North Dakota, Montana, North Carolina, Nevada, and Missouri Senate races in 2012. It will be very hard to hold those in 2018, but regardless, you can't win those in the first place if they had no money. And second, sometimes you spend a small amount of money on a race to try to get the other party to have to use resources on it that they would otherwise be spending on tougher races; this can be a good strategy.

Quote:There are obstacles energy and excitement can't overcome, such as closed primaries, people being de-registered to vote (this happened to me), votes being lost or miscounted, tremendously biased coverage in the media, and all the other tricks in a career politician's sleeve.

Bernie's the career politician in this race, more so than Hillary. But besides that, he has benefited more from our system than been hurt by it -- his numerous wins in caucus states prove this. Bernie would not have done nearly as well in most any of those states had they had primaries instead of caucuses, but at low-turnout caucuses, he can win due to his energized base. And as for closed primaries, I am quite fine with those; why should independents be allowed to choose who our nominee is? They aren't in the party! I support allowing registration on the day of the election, as we have here in Maine (same-day registration is great!), but don't like open primaries/caucuses.

Quote:How is Clinton going to accomplish anything with a GOP senate, representing an electorate that loathes her on a personal level? Even if she's sincere about half the promises she makes, it won't matter. It's going to be like Obama's first term, only much worse.

Well, we'll hopefully win back the Senate, first. And with Trump as their candidate we have a shot at this. And second, Hillary would follow Obama's lead in legislating by executive order or through the cabinet offices, when nothing can be passed. Bernie's more absolutist stances make me more skeptical about him getting things done, particularly in his main policy promises, which require impossible-to-pass legislation.

Quote:Great, I love getting to choose between which candidate I dislike less. CU was anti-Hillary in 2008, but she can't not love it now, it is largely why she is winning.

... Again, what? Hillary has made it very clear that one of her only requirements for any Supreme Court nominee she chooses is that they must be for women's reproductive rights and against Citizen's United. She greatly dislikes that decision. However, we can't win against the Kochs and such with their near-infinite floods of money unless we use what resources we have, even if they are from sources that we'd love to ban if we can get a Supreme Court in to overturn that decision. I would love to say "no, don't take any of that money", but as long as you're clear that you want it stopped once we get a court in that can do that, and you will fight for that as she will, we kind of have to; can't win otherwise.

And on that note, more reasons to support Hillary over Bernie is that she has been a lifelong advocate for womens' rights, while Bernie just votes the right way once something comes up for a vote. The former is better, of course. She also is much better on gun rights; guns are maybe Bernie's weakest point for me, he's way too pro-gun!

Quote:But, thanks to the electoral college and living in a non-swing state, I don't have to make that choice.

That's true, if you were still in Virginia your vote would matter in a way that it probably won't in Kentucky.

Quote:I saw a saying that fits well. "Hillary Clinton is the best candidate for the government we have. Bernie Sanders is the best candidate for the government we need."

There is some truth to this, but again, it depends on the issue -- regardless of our government she'd be better on women's and gun issues, and due to her caring more probably would get more done in foreign policy as well.

So Nevada Bernie supporters at their convention one-upped Maine's hecklers and went with lots of yelling, chair-throwing, and threats. Pleasant... but at this point, I am not exactly shocked, sadly. :(

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory...k-39157813

Why should we be nice? We're getting screwed.



And here in Kentucky, Hillary magicked up 3k votes out of nowhere with 99% of precincts remaining (and a Sanders lead), and our Secretary of State (the "I'm not Barack Obama" loser previously mentioned) is a huge outspoken Hillary fan. My party registration was removed at one point and I had to register a second time, good thing that I knew to look and kept on top of it, otherwise I would have not been able to vote yesterday. The DNC is thoroughly corrupted and disenfranchising voters like myself. Their ideology is not as terrible as the GOP, but it isn't that much better, and they are every bit as awful in terms of what they will do to preserve their power.

After casting my ballot, the very next thing I did was change my registration to independent.

Nobody is being disenfranchised, that is a myth being propagated by people who have a hard time understanding the reality that more people support Hillary than Bernie. No votes are being "magicked" up; that 97/3 thing was just a glitch which they later corrected. Nobody is being cheated out of anything. MORE PEOPLE SUPPORT HILLARY. This is reality.

I'm not trying to "sit on the fence" here, but you're both right, just about different things.

Sanders voters ARE being disenfranchised, mainly because all voters are being disenfranchised by the two-party system and the way it sets up these primaries.

Clinton IS the more popular candidate, even once you take that disenfranchisement under consideration.

Those two issues aside, there's a bad trend among a certain branch of Sanders supporters that so distrust Clinton they might simply abstain. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-...ers-voter/

ABF, this is not a license to say "the Sanders supporters doomed us to Trump" in the event that such a situation happens. Ultimately, the ones that would be responsible for this are the Trump supports and the Trump supporters alone. It wouldn't matter WHAT Sanders supporters did if no one supported Trump, and that's where the blame needs to lie. It's much like how so many Dems got so mad at the third party voters in the 2000 election, saying that the presence of a third candidate "stole" all the votes that would have gone to the Democrats. That's not true, and getting mad at voters for supporting a third pillar because they weren't voting "strategically" is putting the blame in the wrong place. The ones responsible for Bush Jr are, and always have been, the people voting for Bush Jr. They're the ones to get mad at.

Guilt tripping people just because they aren't following the two party system like good little voters is just plain wrong, if you ask me.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:I'm not trying to "sit on the fence" here, but you're both right, just about different things.

Sanders voters ARE being disenfranchised, mainly because all voters are being disenfranchised by the two-party system and the way it sets up these primaries.

People are not being "disenfranchised" if they chose to not join a party. That's them choosing to not play a part in how we choose candidates in this country, not anything wrong with the system.

Quote:Clinton IS the more popular candidate, even once you take that disenfranchisement under consideration.

This is quite true, and it's unfortunate that a lot of people supporting Sanders are in denial of this. They talk about the "will of the people" as if only Bernie could possibly represent the peoples' will, while Hillary got more votes, a lot more votes! This clearly means she has the will of the people behind her, not him.

Quote:Those two issues aside, there's a bad trend among a certain branch of Sanders supporters that so distrust Clinton they might simply abstain. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-...ers-voter/

ABF, this is not a license to say "the Sanders supporters doomed us to Trump" in the event that such a situation happens.

Yes, it would be, if that horrible scenario came to pass. Fortunately, however, most will end up supporting Clinton, once the heat of this campaign passes, so this is quite unlikely.

Quote:Ultimately, the ones that would be responsible for this are the Trump supports and the Trump supporters alone. It wouldn't matter WHAT Sanders supporters did if no one supported Trump, and that's where the blame needs to lie. It's much like how so many Dems got so mad at the third party voters in the 2000 election, saying that the presence of a third candidate "stole" all the votes that would have gone to the Democrats. That's not true, and getting mad at voters for supporting a third pillar because they weren't voting "strategically" is putting the blame in the wrong place. The ones responsible for Bush Jr are, and always have been, the people voting for Bush Jr. They're the ones to get mad at.

Guilt tripping people just because they aren't following the two party system like good little voters is just plain wrong, if you ask me.

This is quite wrong. First though, the Bush part, because it is a very good example. I've always blamed several things for why Bush became president and not Gore: 1) Gore campaign failings -- he won, but it could have been a stronger win. Distancing himself from Clinton was a mistake. 2) The Supreme Court, for going against the peoples' vote [in Florida] and deciding, 4-3, that Bush is president even though had Florida finished counting Gore almost certainly would have won. 3) People in Florida who believed Ralph Nader's false statements about "the two parties are the same" and voted for him, or were confused by that infamous "butterfly ballot" and voted for someone else instead of Gore. The bottom line is, like it or not, but voting for a third-party candidate IS basically voting for the main-party candidate you most dislike. That is how our system works. And I do wish we had a better system which allowed for more parties, but it's an okay system as it is and it works fairly well.

What is NOT directly to blame are people who voted for Bush. Here's why. I have put many hours into volunteering for the Maine Democratic Party in the 2010, 2012, and 2014 campaigns. And in all three of those campaigns, the partys' efforts are focused on turnout. Getting people who support you to vote is the #1 most important thing for every competitive campaign! Talking to voters and trying to convince them to support your side is key as well, but the most important thing is getting people who support you to the polls. Once someone has clearly stated support for another candidate, we stopped calling that person; their vote is probably lost. Certainly their turnout matters as well, but those 2010 and 2014 losses were much more because Democrats don't care enough to vote in midterm elections at the same rates Republicans do, rather than Republicans getting amazing turnout. There might be an exception to this in the Maine 2nd Congressional District in 2014, where wide Republican wins were fueled by several factors including very high turnout on their side that election, but even there, had we gotten similar turnout on our side there it wouldn't have been as bad... regardless of how the other side is doing, you win by getting your side out to vote. Of course, this only applies to competitive races, not ones in seats dominated by one party, but still, it is true.

So, you're saying independent voters aren't really being good citizens, because a good citizen is one that picks a party? Are you kidding me? I reject that entirely.

As an aside, let me describe how the primaries went for me in Oklahoma. This state, as you may already know, picked Sanders. What you may not be aware of (it's public knowledge but rarely reported) is that Oklahoma law has set up primary votes so that individual parties can, depending on their whims, decide whether or not independent voters can vote for that party's primary. So, one term I can vote, and the next I can't, depending on whatever the higher ups in that party decide. In this case, Dems allowed independents to vote, and Republicans did not. It all felt very arbitrary. For my part, when I got in line, I soon found out that if I'm an independent voter, I have to state out loud for all and sundry to hear that "I am here to vote for the democratic candidate", which isn't a very good feeling when it's as likely as not you'll be surrounded by people who interpret that as meaning I'm some limp-wristed socialist.

Let me just say this. It's a bit contradictory to say at once "they are individual parties and can run themselves as they see fit" and also "you need to accept that this is how our system works and if you don't pick a party you're not really a contributing member of the process". I'll end by saying that if you are claiming that the Republicans aren't at fault just because your campaign decided not to focus on them as lost causes, that's pretty weird, and not at all my point.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:So, you're saying independent voters aren't really being good citizens, because a good citizen is one that picks a party? Are you kidding me? I reject that entirely.

As an aside, let me describe how the primaries went for me in Oklahoma. This state, as you may already know, picked Sanders. What you may not be aware of (it's public knowledge but rarely reported) is that Oklahoma law has set up primary votes so that individual parties can, depending on their whims, decide whether or not independent voters can vote for that party's primary. So, one term I can vote, and the next I can't, depending on whatever the higher ups in that party decide. In this case, Dems allowed independents to vote, and Republicans did not. It all felt very arbitrary. For my part, when I got in line, I soon found out that if I'm an independent voter, I have to state out loud for all and sundry to hear that "I am here to vote for the democratic candidate", which isn't a very good feeling when it's as likely as not you'll be surrounded by people who interpret that as meaning I'm some limp-wristed socialist.

You could solve all these problems by just joining a party. There's no reason not to! Being independent gets you nothing in this country.

However, on the issue of caucuses, yeah, they are awful. Caucuses need to go away and be replaced with primaries! Caucuses are unrepresentative, depress turnout, don't usually have an entirely secret ballot, and when a lot of people DO turn out the lines quickly get horrendously long, like the 4-hour wait I had to deal with earlier this year to vote in the Maine caucus. And fortunately the state party listened, and we'll be switching back to a primary system soon. That'll be good. I made a thread about it at the time, and I do like some things about caucuses (getting to meet people more directly, talk to candidates' representatives or local officials without needing to go to the convention, etc.), but the drawbacks are much worse than the benefits.

Quote:Let me just say this. It's a bit contradictory to say at once "they are individual parties and can run themselves as they see fit" and also "you need to accept that this is how our system works and if you don't pick a party you're not really a contributing member of the process".

What contradiction? The parties are independent organizations, not directly a part of our government, but informally they are vital parts of it and control much of how our political system works. So if you don't choose a party you are choosing to have less of a say in how America is governed. In a super-Republican-dominated state like Oklahoma maybe this doesn't matter as much as it does in some places, but in the abstract it's important. I know some people make the choice to not join a party, or to join a third party, because they hate the parties or really believe in one of the minor parties, but that isn't going to make the system change; the two main parties are too powerful for that, and won't just give up their power. Saying "you are not a participant in the process" if you aren't in one of the two main parties goes a bit far, as outsiders do sometimes matter -- Maine has elected independent governors and US senators for example, Ralph Nader got just enough votes to help Bush "win" in 2000, etc -- but you do have less of a voice. And anyway, despite issues, all things considered the American system has mostly worked pretty well -- no other nation has been a representative democracy for as long as America has! There are increasing problems now, due to the hyper-partisan atmosphere today with parties much more clearly divided than they were in most of the 20th century, but I do think we'll survive them. But political parties will always be a part of any representative democracy, because through experience we have learned that you cannot organize people without one.

Quote:I'll end by saying that if you are claiming that the Republicans aren't at fault just because your campaign decided not to focus on them as lost causes, that's pretty weird, and not at all my point.

The thing you can control best in an election is motivating your supporters. You win by motivating your supporters more than the other side can motivate theirs. If you lost in any competitive race, it's because the other side was more motivated. But you can't control what the other party is doing, only your own! So naturally the most important factor in any election is how well you got your side out to vote, and the main reasons you lost are that you failed to motivate your voters as much as the other side motivated theirs'. And since you can't control them, this means the problem was in your get-out-the-vote effort, messaging, advertising, what have you.

Of course this is simplifying a complex topic, but to talk about my own experiences volunteering for the Democrats again, once you've called someone and they clearly state a preference for the other candidate, you probably do not call that person again. They're lost to you.

Again, what you're saying only makes sense if your main focus is making "your party" win. If you're looking at the two parties from the outside, then you hold each individual to the fire for their choices. I don't care that Democratic campaign workers consider converting republican voters a lost cause. That doesn't change the fact that they voted for Bush, and that led to all manner of problems. By majority, Bush voters are responsible for voting in Bush.

At any rate, back on topic, yes, the Republican party is the biggest joke of them all. Donald Trump recently has said he considers regret "unhealthy", which explains why he keeps making the same blunders over and over again. He can't learn from the past.

This is what the philosophy to "live in the moment" gets you, people!

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Again, what you're saying only makes sense if your main focus is making "your party" win.

That is what American politics is about, so of course. That is our political system.

Quote:If you're looking at the two parties from the outside, then you hold each individual to the fire for their choices. I don't care that Democratic campaign workers consider converting republican voters a lost cause. That doesn't change the fact that they voted for Bush, and that led to all manner of problems. By majority, Bush voters are responsible for voting in Bush.

Majority? But more people voted for Gore, remember... millions more. Bush only won because Florida was razor-close and the Supreme Court voted 4-3 to stop counting votes there at a time when Bush was ahead in the recount, something which probably would not have held up. So yeah, the Supreme Court has the first responsibility for his presidency. But as for voters, I really do think it matters more that Gore couldn't get a few more votes in Florida than however many Bush got.

Quote:At any rate, back on topic, yes, the Republican party is the biggest joke of them all. Donald Trump recently has said he considers regret "unhealthy", which explains why he keeps making the same blunders over and over again. He can't learn from the past.

This is what the philosophy to "live in the moment" gets you, people!

Trump has said that he doesn't believe he's made any mistakes, or something like that, so yeah, that sounds about right. And here's hoping he keeps making mistakes all the way to a bad loss in November! Right now he's doing decently in the polls, while Hillary struggles, mostly because of recalcitrant liberals who refuse to support Hillary due to Bernie still not having given up. Over the next month we should see Hillary's numbers go up, as they finally admit to the reality that she is the nominee. And considering how ridiculously horrendous Trump is on almost every issue, it's incredibly important that that happens...

If Bush hadn't gotten all those votes, the few that voted for a third party wouldn't have mattered though. That's the point I'm trying to make. Being mad at people because they voted for a third party just perpetuates all the problems with the two party system you've been pointing out. And yes, it is ridiculous that someone with a bigger majority vote can lose due to the electoral college system.

I've heard suggestions about a voting system where everyone casts "ranking" on the candidate they want instead of a singular "this one" vote. Top pick would get three, second pick gets two, like that. In that way, a third party candidate might actually have a chance. Let's say you've got two candidates capturing the votes of polar opposites of America. Everyone picks the candidate they want, but it's close over and over again. Add this new system, now maybe a third candidate turns out to be liked by everyone, just not as loved as their more partisan candidate. Then the "second place" votes for that candidate would win against the "first place" votes of the other two. It would more fairly reflect the will of all Americans, if nothing else. It wouldn't be without it's flaws, but as an accurate representation of the will of the people, it would be an improvement.

... I don't understand, why don't you want to join a party? There's no reason not to I can think of!

I mean, I do support ranked-choice voting, and will vote for it this November (ranked choice for state elections is a referendum this November here in Maine), but not because I think we need more parties; with our political system as it is, there really need to be only two parties. Remember, if one presidential candidate doesn't get a majority of electoral votes, the House decides the next president! So unless we completely change the Constitution, you've got to have only two major Presidential candidates at least.

That's not how it used to work though! There used to be many competing parties. Even having the house determine the winner would still indirectly result in the will of the people being expressed, since the people are who vote for the members of the house.

That said, THAT could be changed as well. No one needs to "completely" change the constitution, it would just take an amendment to change THAT part of the constitution, and you KNOW that. I'm not sure why you're being intentionally misleading here, but this leads to my next point.

I won't join a party I don't actually support. Now, I HATE the republicans, but the democrats are only a bit better. I really just don't trust that the democratic party is honest at all. I'll be voting for the democratic candidate when the election comes about, but that's out of necessity, not because the democratic candidate actually represents my ideals. There are MANY like me, people far to the left of the democrats (it's why I keep saying that in terms of worldwide politics, the democratic party is actually a centrist party). No, I don't believe I'll be able to "change things from the inside". Working for a group you dislike in the vain hope you can change them "from within" never really seems to work all that well. I'll tend to go where my ideals are more properly matched. Every argument you are making is basically saying "give up, this is just the way it is", as you swallow your values in favor of the "winning strategy". You may have given up on more substantial change, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to accept it. I mean, yeesh, don't you watch anime? Isn't this the part where the ignorant yet determined hero tells the "pragmatist anti-hero" they lost because they gave up on people and on change?

Quote:Every argument you are making is basically saying "give up, this is just the way it is", as you swallow your values in favor of the "winning strategy".

That is basically the slogan for Clinton 2016. 2008 was "Hope and Change" and a thoroughly optimistic election, all the vitriol aside. The Democratic platform for 2016 is a total repudiation of hope and change. Clinton is the better choice because she personifies only most of what's wrong with American politics. It's enough for the low-info Democrats, I guess we'll see if the low-info American public as a whole buys it.

I don't know what to predict other than the lowest turnout for a presidential election ever.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:That's not how it used to work though! There used to be many competing parties.

When? There has never been a period in American history with three major parties that actually last. There are a few single elections with more than two parties, but the third parties quickly get subsumed into one or the other major party, because our system turns out to be designed for two parties. Something like the Progressives of the early 20th century, or the numerous parties of 1860... those things do not last, within an election or two all those groups join a major party. America has never been a true multi-party state like a lot of European countries are.

Quote: Even having the house determine the winner would still indirectly result in the will of the people being expressed, since the people are who vote for the members of the house.

Remember, the rules for the House voting for president are not just "each member votes". They are "each STATE DELEGATION votes". Huge difference there: the Republicans would win every time because they have a gerrymandered-in majority in many delegations, and also control many small states while Democrats do better in larger ones.

Quote:That said, THAT could be changed as well. No one needs to "completely" change the constitution, it would just take an amendment to change THAT part of the constitution, and you KNOW that. I'm not sure why you're being intentionally misleading here, but this leads to my next point.

I won't join a party I don't actually support. Now, I HATE the republicans, but the democrats are only a bit better.

"Only a bit"? That's, like, the understatement of the decade! There is a MASSIVE difference between the two parties now. Once it wasn't as huge, but now, it's immense. The extreme rightward movement of their party has led to the Republicans now being a party that only barely, with a lot of argument, maybe believe that perhaps government should be allowed to function. Meanwhile, the Democrats believe in us having an actual functioning country. The Republicans believe

Quote: I really just don't trust that the democratic party is honest at all.

Why not? Both parties generally follow their basic principles, of the Democrats for helping poorer people and the Republicans for helping richer people.

Quote:I'll be voting for the democratic candidate when the election comes about, but that's out of necessity, not because the democratic candidate actually represents my ideals. There are MANY like me, people far to the left of the democrats (it's why I keep saying that in terms of worldwide politics, the democratic party is actually a centrist party). No, I don't believe I'll be able to "change things from the inside". Working for a group you dislike in the vain hope you can change them "from within" never really seems to work all that well. I'll tend to go where my ideals are more properly matched.

Actually, working from the inside to try to change a party towards a direction you prefer can work. Look at Donald Trump, and how he has taken over the Republicans! He did that from the inside, through their process, against the wishes of almost all party leaders. And also on their side, the rise of the Tea Party movement is another example of this. Or on the left, of course a major component of Bernie's campaign is to move the Democratic party to the left, as left-of-the-party candidates have done before. Howard Dean may have lost to Kerry in the Democratic primary in 2004, but his term as Democratic Party chair was quite important, his 50 State Strategy was a very different idea that worked well...

Quote:Every argument you are making is basically saying "give up, this is just the way it is", as you swallow your values in favor of the "winning strategy". You may have given up on more substantial change, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to accept it. I mean, yeesh, don't you watch anime? Isn't this the part where the ignorant yet determined hero tells the "pragmatist anti-hero" they lost because they gave up on people and on change?

I haven't given up on accomplishing change! Two things here, First, Hillary is also a great, very liberal candidate. You are underselling her liberalism, she's no centrist. I supported her in '087 and have again this year, and I think she'll be a very good president. It's about time we had a female president too, that is needed.

But also, I think that the best way to actually get change is to actually have people in office... and Bernie would never win a general election. And anyway, one some issues, such as guns, Hillary is the one who is more liberal and more likely to bring change...

And last, the kinds of change we most badly need, that would allow for more good to happen in this country, require significant changes to our election system, most importantly to get rid of gerrymandering and to control money in politics. If we could do those two things then maybe things would actually start moving again, instead of being stuck in this incredibly stupid loop of "let's have a massive fight over basic spending bills because half of the Republican Party would rather see the US go bankrupt than 'feed the beast'" while nothing actually useful happens in Washington... yes, it's been a very frustrating 5 1/2 years since the Republican takeover of 2010, for any of us who follow politics. :( The Democrats got so much done in that short period of 2006-2010 when we controlled the House!

Weltall Wrote:That is basically the slogan for Clinton 2016. 2008 was "Hope and Change" and a thoroughly optimistic election, all the vitriol aside. The Democratic platform for 2016 is a total repudiation of hope and change. Clinton is the better choice because she personifies only most of what's wrong with American politics. It's enough for the low-info Democrats, I guess we'll see if the low-info American public as a whole buys it.

Exactly zero things you say here are in any way true. Hillary Clinton stands for several things, including the hope of having our first female president, for continuing Obama's domestic programs (Obama will be campaigning hard for Hillary, and she is very close to him on most issues!), for stronger gun laws than we would see from Bernie, for change for the better on many issues... saying "but Bernie is better on certain issues" ignores that the two of them are extremely similar in most of the ways that matter. Remember their 93% the same voting records in the Senate, etc.

And this is VERY important, it also ignores that Bernie's economics-are-everything focus ignores many of the real roots of problems in this country. Bernie badly lost minorities this year because in part of that economic focus -- black people do not believe that just reducing the influence of big banks and fixing income inequality will fix racism, because it won't. One of Hillary's stronger moments in one of the debates was when the made this point, and it's very true. Do everything Bernie says about economics, and we'd still have a hugely racist system very discriminatory against minorities. Hillary is much better at recognizing that, and minorities responded by supporting her. This is why Bernie lost; his campaign was pretty much over by mid February, when he failed badly in the South.

And on that note, Hillary won a big win in the US Virgin Islands primary a few days ago. Results, 6 delegates for Hillary, 1 for Bernie, and he only BARELY got that one, he was close to non-viable -- it was like 86% to 13%. And the Puerto Rico caucus is today, and it's sounding like it will also be a huge wipeout in Hillary's favor -- 70-30 Hillary sounds likely. Bernie only wins with white people, particularly white men.

Here's the thing, I think parties SHOULD die. I don't WANT parties to "last" for generations. Parties should come and go as dictated by the times.

That makes no sense, how could any electoral democracy function without lasting political parties? None ever has, and I can't imagine it working either... people naturally organize into groups, it's human nature, and to win an election you usually need some kind of organization, list of postentially interested voters to contact, etc. Only policial parties can provide those things, and what would be the advantage of getting rid of them regularly?

As for why we have only two, that's mostly because the Founders were inspired by the British Parliament, who at the time had two parties, Liberal and Conservative ("Tory"). But it's very common to break things down to two opposing sides, because more can get confusing, or just dysfunctional. Look at countries like Italy with probably far too many parties, it's a mess... I understand the appeal of more parties so people can have a party that more directly represents their interests, but the downside there is that it makes legislating more difficult, and for a Presidential system like ours, electing a President a massive pain. We'd need a different presidential electoral system with more parties, and the discord between the president and congress would probably often be even worse than what Obama has experienced... but on the other hand being able to vote for someone who more represents your views IS a good idea, so it's difficult. Having ranked-choice voting for some elections is a good step forward, particularly for primaries, local races, and such, but lots of major national parties? I'm not on board with that, it would probably cause as many or more problems than it'd solve.

I don't recall any mention of "parties" in the constitution.

There's that contradiction again. You want to say parties aren't government bodies (they aren't) but that they should be a completely indispensable part of how the government functions. Is that it? Doesn't that sound like a bad idea? I mean, it really does feel like two secretive groups have been theatrically fooling us all into thinking we have a say and just picking our candidates behind the scenes. Too much of it all is being controlled by a bunch of corrupt officials. The more I see "behind the curtain", the more I hate how it works now. So tell me, in all honesty, if the democratic party died tonight and was replaced by a super-progressive party that more aligned with your own views, would you consider that a good change?

Why is Hillary Clinton disliked? A thread on another forum made me think of that, and I wrote something up on the subject that I want to post.

There's only one reason why people hate Hillary, consider her a bad candidate, and all the rest: she's a woman. And not only that, but a woman with political ambitions! A woman!

There are two main categories of Hillary-haters now:

1) People who have hated her for decades. These are mostly conservatives who despise her for being a woman who has an interest in high political office. Women aren't supposed to want that kind of thing, but she does! And she's liberal and successful, too! She got off on a wrong foot with the right, with her determination during the Bill Clinton administration to not just be your traditional First Lady, but a First Lady with an actual political agenda, starting with health care. You aren't supposed to push policies as a First Lady, you're supposed to just be the social leader of Washington! And on top of that, add on eight years of Republican lies about the so-called "scandal-plagued" Clinton administration -- that is, eight years of failed attempts to actually connect the Clintons to any real nefarious activity, but that set up people for the "Clintons are corrupt" narrative that never has been true -- and you have a Right who despite Hillary. As my right-wing aunt said years ago, "she's evil, evil, EVIL!"

And on top of that, over the past 25 years the right wing in this country has moved far to the right, as purity became prioritized over getting anything done, and compromise, something required for any policy to actually happen, became demonized. This hurt all Democrats' standing with Republicans, but someone they hated from the beginning like Hillary has surely suffered more -- she's been one of the most-hated figures by the right for decades, after all.


2) Liberals, mostly men and younger women who do not remember the Clinton administration all that well, along with Bernie of course, who are attacking her from the left this primary season. The problem is, while you can make a list of claims about here that sounds like gender is not an issue, it is. Yes, there are real policy issues you can disagree with Hillary about. Bernie did a good job laying out many of those disagreements. But some people took this too far, and descended into gendered criticisms. Given Bernie's heavily male support base this isn't too surprising, but it is disappointing. Whenever someone mentions her tone of voice, doesn't notice that Hillary was criticized far more than Bernie for raising her voice during debates, mentions pretty much any of the so-called scandals or her so-called untrustworthiness, or her vote on Iraq while male Democratic leaders who voted the same way as she did there such as Biden or Kerry get more of a pass, and plenty more, those are gender-based attacks. "Hillary for Prison"? Would any Democrat say that about a male Democrat running in our party's primaries? I doubt it!

Returning to the "corruption" and "untrustworthy" points, because they are so important, both of these claims build on the legacy of all of those manufactured scandals of the '90s, because of the Republican Party's hate for both Clintons, because of her unwillingness to be a traditional First Lady, and such. The email or Benghazi scandals would not be as big a deal without that '90s history, whether or not today's 18 year olds remember it. And while I expect today's super-far-right Republican Party to say such things, it was somewhat shocking to see Democrats attacking her along somewhat similar lines. I know that our political system is getting extremely polarized, and have experienced bad behavior aimed towards people of both genders, it is worse for women. The traits people want to see from a politician are traditionally male speaking traits, and women are punished for speaking like that: women cannot yell like Bernie does because that is looked at negatively, women are "abrasive" and looked on negatively when they speak like men do, and more.

So, Hillary Clinton is "untrustworthy" and a "liar" not because she's less trustworthy than other politicians, she isn't. All politicians say a mixture of true and untrue things, and Hillary ranks well compared to this years' other presidential contenders: Democrats, Republicans. She is every bit as trustworthy as any other politician, for whatever that's worth, and more so than most any Republican. She is called those things because of the Republicans' success at marking her as "scandal-plagued" due to their 24-year-long hate campaign against the Clintons that has turned up pretty much nothing (sorry, I don't think the email scandal is anything significant) and because of conscious and unconscious discrimination against her because of her gender. Women should not be ambitious or want political office, they should be satisfied with planning the house parties for their husbands' wives' get-togethers, after all!


To be clear, of course people can oppose Hillary on purely policy-based grounds, without gender being a factor. You can, and many have, though any liberal should vote for her in November as a statement against the insanity of today's Republican Party, of course! But it's hard to get away from gender stereotypes, unfortunately, and most of us of both genders still think them whether we want to or not, and this has been a HUGE hurdle Hillary has had to struggle past. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, I have always through that her gender was the primary reason why Hillary lost to Obama; his color held him back in this country, but not as much as her gender, it turned out in the end. It's fantastic that this time she finally broke through that last glass ceiling, all that's left is to win in November!

Dark Jaguar Wrote:I don't recall any mention of "parties" in the constitution.

True, they were an unintentional result of how the system was designed. They did come into existence pretty much immediately, though, starting with the Federalists v. the Anti-Federalists, as people quickly realized that you need some kind of organizational structure, having everyone running separately doesn't work well.

Quote:There's that contradiction again. You want to say parties aren't government bodies (they aren't) but that they should be a completely indispensable part of how the government functions. Is that it? Doesn't that sound like a bad idea?

Not to me, no. What's so bad about parties? Wouldn't it be horribly confusing if every candidate was independent? And how would you run a campaign, anyway? Would people need to spend even MORE time fundraising? Where would the voter lists come from, would there be a federal voter database available to all candidates? I can't imagine why people in this country would complain about such a thing... :p These details matter.

Quote: I mean, it really does feel like two secretive groups have been theatrically fooling us all into thinking we have a say and just picking our candidates behind the scenes.

No, that's more what they used to do, when candidates were chosen in those "smoke-filled [back] rooms", and not in a popular vote. Our current caucus and primary system exists to give actual people more of a say in choosing candidates, and while establishment figures still have the advantage, it succeeds at that. I mean, that's how Obama beat Hillary in '08, through the primary/caucus system.

Quote: Too much of it all is being controlled by a bunch of corrupt officials. The more I see "behind the curtain", the more I hate how it works now.

While there certainly is some corruption in politics, I do think that people like to exaggerate how bad it is, sometimes...

Quote: So tell me, in all honesty, if the democratic party died tonight and was replaced by a super-progressive party that more aligned with your own views, would you consider that a good change?

Wouldn't it be easier to just make the Democratic Party more liberal? But really, the answer to this question is, can this party actually win? Or would it be like the Green Party, a party with some good ideas (and some ideas I disagree with) but that's too extreme for the electorate? Because you need to either win or influence the winner to make policy.

I regularly read the comments on facebook's NPR page, and I have to say, I'm continually astounded by the heaps of vitriol leveled at Clinton by Bernie supporters. They're indistinguishable from republicans, taking every talking point from their playbook, even bringing up Benghazi! This e-mail "scandal" is a non-issue, nowhere near as compelling as Clinton's support for the Iraq war or her interventionalist policy.

These god damn Sanders supporters... I loved the guy and voted for him in the primary, but holy god damn jesus his supporters are the Ron Paul voters of this election. "Media blackout! Liberals are puppetmasters controlling the media and shoving Hillary Clinton down your throat!" Calm the hell down. You don't see this level of both enthusiasm for their candidate and acromony for the other side from Clinton supporters.

Sanders himself needs to bow gracefully out of the race and put his support behind Hillary. It's over, he lost fair and square. Even without superdelegates, Clinton has won both the popular vote and pledged delegates. Time to pool our resources and beat out Crazy Donald Trump. It's concerning that Trump recently polled higher than Hillary in a recent national poll. Democrats need to lock arms and block this mad man from taking the White House.

It'll happen, it's basically the one option left. I would say those more extreme Bernie supporters don't represent me. It's weird how those types just sorta emerged from the woodworks, in the same way all those Trump supporters did. The more militant Bernie supporters don't seem to realize their own hypocrisy. At least the Trump supporters aren't hypocritical, they're just nuts. I read some shouting about how ANY means that defeats the evils of social injustice is justified, and I can't help but think of that old saying about becoming monsters to fight them. I read others saying if I decry such extreme methods I'm part of the problem, and I worry about the implied threat.

I'm all for social change, and Bernie seemed to me the most likely to actually push said agenda (though I've little doubt he's still a power grubbing opportunistic politician, at least the band wagon he was trying to attract led to good policy I could get behind), but all that said, some of them are pretty extreme. There is one clear difference though. Trump actively tries to get his supporters to behave violently, and Bernie decried such resorts.

At any rate, as much as I would prefer a number of other options to Hillary, none of those options are available now. It's her or Trump, and it CAN'T be Trump (spoiler alert: it won't be), so her it is. Still, it's a disappointing pick.

Oh, ABF, you dodged my question up there. I'm saying if it was a given, it was a done deal that the democratic party died in your arms tonight, the next day would you vote for an up and coming party that aligned with your beliefs, as literally the only other option would be voting for Trump?

Dark Jaguar Wrote:It'll happen, it's basically the one option left. I would say those more extreme Bernie supporters don't represent me. It's weird how those types just sorta emerged from the woodworks, in the same way all those Trump supporters did. The more militant Bernie supporters don't seem to realize their own hypocrisy. At least the Trump supporters aren't hypocritical, they're just nuts. I read some shouting about how ANY means that defeats the evils of social injustice is justified, and I can't help but think of that old saying about becoming monsters to fight them. I read others saying if I decry such extreme methods I'm part of the problem, and I worry about the implied threat.

Indeed, at least Trump supporters are open about hating Hillary for being a woman. Her liberal detractors, in contrast, deny that her gender has anything to do with why they hate her, but that's not true at all, gender is absolutely a factor. As I said in my last post it's not the ONLY factor, but it's an important one.

On a maybe related note, I have some relatives in New Hampshire' they used to be in Vermont, but moved not long ago. My aunt voted for Hillary, but my uncle voted for Bernie and now apparently is at the "I might write in Bernie's name" stage... as if not supporting Hillary and thus helping Trump become president would somehow be good for the left wing in America?

Quote:I'm all for social change, and Bernie seemed to me the most likely to actually push said agenda (though I've little doubt he's still a power grubbing opportunistic politician, at least the band wagon he was trying to attract led to good policy I could get behind), but all that said, some of them are pretty extreme. There is one clear difference though. Trump actively tries to get his supporters to behave violently, and Bernie decried such resorts.

At any rate, as much as I would prefer a number of other options to Hillary, none of those options are available now. It's her or Trump, and it CAN'T be Trump (spoiler alert: it won't be), so her it is. Still, it's a disappointing pick.

I don't think it's disappointing at all, I think it's great.

Quote:Oh, ABF, you dodged my question up there. I'm saying if it was a given, it was a done deal that the democratic party died in your arms tonight, the next day would you vote for an up and coming party that aligned with your beliefs, as literally the only other option would be voting for Trump?

I didn't dodge the question, though. If the Democrats were replaced with a more liberal party and the American people responded by having more people vote for the Republicans than currently do because that new party is too liberal, then that would be bad. But if everyone who currently votes Democratic would support that party too, then sure, that may be good, depending on how, exactly they're more liberal.

Sacred Jellybean Wrote:I regularly read the comments on facebook's NPR page, and I have to say, I'm continually astounded by the heaps of vitriol leveled at Clinton by Bernie supporters. They're indistinguishable from republicans, taking every talking point from their playbook, even bringing up Benghazi! This e-mail "scandal" is a non-issue, nowhere near as compelling as Clinton's support for the Iraq war or her interventionalist policy.

These god damn Sanders supporters... I loved the guy and voted for him in the primary, but holy god damn jesus his supporters are the Ron Paul voters of this election. "Media blackout! Liberals are puppetmasters controlling the media and shoving Hillary Clinton down your throat!" Calm the hell down. You don't see this level of both enthusiasm for their candidate and acromony for the other side from Clinton supporters.

Sanders supporters can deny it all they want, but sadly enough, her gender is absolutely a factor in why some Sanders fans believe and repeat right-wing lies about Hillary... I don't think they would treat a male candidate as they do her.

Quote:Sanders himself needs to bow gracefully out of the race and put his support behind Hillary. It's over, he lost fair and square. Even without superdelegates, Clinton has won both the popular vote and pledged delegates. Time to pool our resources and beat out Crazy Donald Trump. It's concerning that Trump recently polled higher than Hillary in a recent national poll. Democrats need to lock arms and block this mad man from taking the White House.

Good post. But no, most recent thing I hear is that Sanders still refuses to endorse unless Hillary agrees with more of his positions. You lost, you can't make demands like that anymore Bernie

Quote:Sanders supporters can deny it all they want, but sadly enough, her gender is absolutely a factor in why some Sanders fans believe and repeat right-wing lies about Hillary... I don't think they would treat a male candidate as they do her.

That's a nice, unfalsifiable claim you keep making over and over again. I can do it too.

Clinton supporters can deny it all they want, but sadly enough, his religion is absolutely a factor in why some Clinton fans believe and repeat right-wing lies about Bernie... I don't think they would treat a gentile candidate as they do him.

Neither is true of either candidate's supporters in general. This sort of claim exists because it helps delegitimize the progressive voter bloc, which has been Clinton's goal from the moment Sanders entered the contest. Talk about your right-wing lies.

Nice try, but Clinton supporters do not repeat right-wing lies about Bernie as if they are true. That's something that's only gone one way this election cycle.

Hillary Clinton won... and is being held to a sexist double standard anyway (read article).

Weltall Wrote:This sort of claim exists because it helps delegitimize the progressive voter bloc, which has been Clinton's goal from the moment Sanders entered the contest. Talk about your right-wing lies.

In what kind of anti-reality could something this silly ever be true? Did you read anything at all about Hillary's actual policy positions? She's progressive in many ways.


There is someone being de-legitimized by Bernie supporters claiming that Hillary's direction is wrong for the party, but it's not progressives -- it's minorities, minorities and women. I covered the women side a few posts ago, with some links backing it up. For the minorities side, see this really good article from a few days ago about how this race has revealed the racial divide in the Democratic Party: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2...ide-213948

A Black Falcon Wrote:Nice try, but Clinton supporters do not repeat right-wing lies about Bernie as if they are true. That's something that's only gone one way this election cycle.

Horse shit, sir. There has been no end to the right-wing inspired attacks from the Democratic right on Bernie Sanders and his policy positions. Clinton wants a lower minimum wage, lower taxes on corporations, no significant changes in how virtually anything is done in politics or business.

Besides, I don't think anyone on the right is going to accuse Hillary Clinton of being a war-mongering wall-street toady who acts progressive only when she is digging for votes and who exercises poor judgment every time she is in a position to direct policy. Right wingers are more about ben gozzey 24/7 and generally taking her down on technicalities as they did Bill and nobody else cares about that. And even they don't get sexist about her all that often. Why be sexist about Hillary when she gives opponents so many better reasons to oppose her?

Of course, that's not the point. The "sexism" is the fact that a man is opposing the will of a woman, and not just any woman, but the annointed one who deserves to be president because she's female.

Quote:In what kind of anti-reality could something this silly ever be true? Did you read anything at all about Hillary's actual policy positions? She's progressive in many ways.

Reading a Hillary Clinton policy position and claiming that she stands for something is like reading today's weather and insisting that every day is sunny and hot. From bombing Syria to "superpredators", there's far too much about her that conservatives would love if they weren't insane. And then she reverses course when people pay attention.

Quote:There is someone being de-legitimized by Bernie supporters claiming that Hillary's direction is wrong for the party, but it's not progressives -- it's minorities, minorities and women. I covered the women side a few posts ago, with some links backing it up. For the minorities side, see this really good article from a few days ago about how this race has revealed the racial divide in the Democratic Party: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2...ide-213948

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqLfvQfuvsA

Clinton supported policies in the 1990s that have filled our (private, for-profit) prisons with millions of black inmates. Naturally, private prison lobbyists supported her campaign until the fact became embarrassing to her. She and her husband have done more damage to the black community through crime bills and 'welfare reform' than any Republican could have hoped for in the last 20 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iTrqHvTk_0

"Marriage is between one man and one woman" is not exactly my idea of a progressive policy position. She finally abandoned it in 2013. That was years after I did.

When Bill became President, he worked with the Republicans to sell our country off to the wealthy. Why on earth should we expect any different from Hillary?

Weltall Wrote:Horse shit, sir. There has been no end to the right-wing inspired attacks from the Democratic right on Bernie Sanders and his policy positions. Clinton wants a lower minimum wage, lower taxes on corporations, no significant changes in how virtually anything is done in politics or business.

Clinton wants a higher minimum wage, higher taxes on corporations, and significant change if we can ever get a congress in office that would actually pass anything positive. Don't be deceptive by making minor disagreements sound like she's against good works she strongly supports.

Quote:Besides, I don't think anyone on the right is going to accuse Hillary Clinton of being a war-mongering wall-street toady

Not true things. Most on the right want far more war than any Democrat would ever go along with, and she's no more owned by Wall Street than Barack Obama (who also took money from Wall St., then increased regulations on them) or any previous Democrat so that's nonsense.

Quote:who acts progressive only when she is digging for votes

Utterly untrue statement, as her and Bernie's 93% identical voting records in the Senate prove, or her quite good fact;-check rating I already linked earlier:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/...l-candida/ She was one of the most liberal senators in the country while in office from 2000-2008! Bernie's absurd "you're either 100% on my side or you are corrupt" standards don't work in actual politics, which is why Barney Frank has been right about Bernie for over 25 years now, since Barney first criticized Bernie's "with me or against me" tendencies back in the early '90s.

Quote:and who exercises poor judgment every time she is in a position to direct policy.

Not true either. She did very good job in the Senate, and a great job as head of the State Department. The emails thing is an extremely minor, pretty much irrelevant issue that only exists because of the right-wing Clinton-hate "let's invent nonexistent scandals to tar the Clintons with" machine.

Quote:Right wingers are more about ben gozzey 24/7 and generally taking her down on technicalities as they did Bill and nobody else cares about that. And even they don't get sexist about her all that often. Why be sexist about Hillary when she gives opponents so many better reasons to oppose her?

Did you even read any of my links about this?

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10909354/mor...b-woodward - That Bob Woodward video was pretty shocking, seeing a famous journalist being so blatantly sexist like that...

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11879728/hil...nomination - Research shows that women's voices are looked on negatively when they speak like we expect men to. Also, Hillary doesn't get the credit she deserves for her political skills.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/1...linton-won - And yet somehow it's HER who needs to make the changes to meet the man's demands, something Obama did not have pressed on him back in 2008 when he won.

Etc etc. You cannot say that gender has been an incredibly huge drag on her candidacy, it would not be true. This sketch from Jimmy Kimmel's show (with Hillary as the guest) a few months ago remains one of the best explanations out there of the problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2wBpYT6Zlo

Quote:Of course, that's not the point. The "sexism" is the fact that a man is opposing the will of a woman, and not just any woman, but the annointed one who deserves to be president because she's female.

Hillary is in no way "anointed". She won through hard work, through decades of slowly building up relationships within the party and the American people. She put in hard work for a long time to get to this point. That's not an anointment -- that's politics at work, as it should be. And even then it was really hard, as we see from the 2008 defeat. But this time she finally cracked that final glass ceiling, and it's fantastic! See the second Vox link above for more on this issue.

Quote:Reading a Hillary Clinton policy position and claiming that she stands for something is like reading today's weather and insisting that every day is sunny and hot. From bombing Syria to "superpredators", there's far too much about her that conservatives would love if they weren't insane. And then she reverses course when people pay attention.

The idea that Hillary is somehow any less trustworthy than any other politician is a flat-out lie. The only part of it that is true is that 25 years of right-wing attacks (aimed at her because of her gender first have sunk in even on the left, making people predisposed to believe such falsehoods.

As for questionable statements though, Bernie has a long history of them as well, all politicians do. Hillary did not attack him on anything other than policy, though, to her credit, because she knew she could win on issues alone.

The one actual issue you bring up there is Syria. Syria is indeed an incredibly complex problem, and Hillary has said that she supports a no-fly zone, but is opposed to using ground troops. We definitely need to do SOMETHING to try to end that horrible war, but when there are few to no good actors to work with, it's hard to come up with a good plan... ISIS and Assad are both horrible, the Syrian Kurds aren't the answer (and are somewhat friendly to Assad, too), and the other rebels are losing thanks to Russia's support for Assad, and a lot of them are radical islamists too, anyway. So I don't know what the best thing we can do is, but Hillary's policies as I understand them sound like a decent start. Obama has done a good job fighting ISIS, but we need to oppose Assad more too, and a no-fly zone should help with that. But she's quite right to oppose ground troops, that would be another horrible Afghanistan or Iraq-like morass we'd be stuck in forever. We definitely need to stay away from that kind of thing if at all possible... which is one reason to vote for Hillary, when the Republicans certainly can't be trusted to not invade, Trump or no! They're hopeless imperialist warmongers.

But anyway, no, she isn't a pacifist, for anyone who wants that from a candidate. She's not a warmonger, for sure, but isn't a pacifist. But Bernie isn't one either; he focused so much on her Iraq vote because it is one of the few differences between them, foreign policy-wise... other than his repeated "even if she says her vote was wrong don't trust her because she was wrong back in '04" statements, if you watched the debates, they agreed about most everything in the foreign policy sections.

Quote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqLfvQfuvsA

Clinton supported policies in the 1990s that have filled our (private, for-profit) prisons with millions of black inmates. Naturally, private prison lobbyists supported her campaign until the fact became embarrassing to her. She and her husband have done more damage to the black community through crime bills and 'welfare reform' than any Republican could have hoped for in the last 20 years.

The crime bill did much more good than bad, and the bad effects were unintentional. Crime rates went down dramatically during the Clinton presidency, you know, and that bill likely had some kind of role in that. The black community supported it at the time, and now both Bill and Hillary admit that the bad effects of it need to be fixed. Hillary won overwhelming margins in black communities in this primary because of her support for doing more to combat racial injustice. As a white person I can't identify personally with minorities' struggles, but that they supported her this strongly despite that bills' negative side-effects says a lot. Of course, that she is on the right page for future policy surely helps there a lot.

Quote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iTrqHvTk_0

"Marriage is between one man and one woman" is not exactly my idea of a progressive policy position. She finally abandoned it in 2013. That was years after I did.

At least she has changed her mind on that, unlike Bernie's shameful reluctance to support significantly stronger gun laws, something the horrendous massacre in Orlando again shows our countries' desperate need for. And yes it can happen, with the right Supreme Court justice choices, something which of course requires a Democrat in office!

Quote:When Bill became President, he worked with the Republicans to sell our country off to the wealthy. Why on earth should we expect any different from Hillary?

Because she isn't her husband? They are different people you know! She's always been known as being more liberal than Bill is.

Quote:The one actual issue you bring up there is Syria. Syria is indeed an incredibly complex problem, and Hillary has said that she supports a no-fly zone, but is opposed to using ground troops. We definitely need to do SOMETHING to try to end that horrible war, but when there are few to no good actors to work with, it's hard to come up with a good plan...

Our plan should be to do nothing. It's an awful and tragic war to be certain, but interfering with foreign affairs has never ended well. Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, South America... it's time we stopped meddling in other country's affairs. Cut military spending, pull out, let these people deal with their own problems. It's not our business.

I don't know that I agree that sexism plays such a strong role in the attacks on Hillary. To be certain, you'll see a crazy here and there calling her a cunt. And certainly, the left has it's own problems at times with female politicians (see: Sarah Palin). Not as bad as the right, mind you, but there's a decent portion that's problematic.

Still, most of the criticism I see directed towards Clinton are either policy issues or non-scandals. But it's very rare that I see overt sexism, at least in my circles. I guess you could make the case that she faces higher scrutiny as a woman, as Obama did for being black, but you see mud slinging from all sides, and Hillary's honestly doesn't seem all that different.

Hmm... after reading your links ABF, maybe you're right about the sexist behavior towards Hillary. I retract my last post, perhaps I was being myopic.

Yes, there's a large group of sexists going nuts over Hillary. It's been an issue since her first campaign and it isn't right. Weltall's points about her past policies can't be dismissed out of hand though ABF. She's saying her policies are different now, but we can't forget her past so easily.

As for Syria, and any other country that suddenly has a crisis like this in the future (we can be sure plenty will come and go), I've learned from history that America used to have a far more productive method than the ridiculous dichotomy of "should we send in troops or do nothing?". Namely, nation building in a much more literal sense. BEFORE the wars start in a country, America can offer aid in the form of building new schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. Note the specifics. We can't just write a check and send it to these countries, as their corrupt leaders will inevitably spend it on something horrible. We need to dictate the terms by actually doing the work ourselves. This used to be how America handled things, for at least a decade or two, before officials switched to the "invade them" strategy while simultaneously framing the dichotomy to make sure everyone nicely forgot about the existence of any other way.

So, we don't send in troops when these things are going on internally because we've seen what happens, but we try to provide a bottom level that internal change can build on. Oh, and we should certainly help provide an escape route and a home for refugees, though refugees have ALWAYS had a world-wide status of pariah, a lot of countries are at least opening their doors. It remains to be seen just how well the citizens of countries like Canada will treat their refugees in the long term (history shows the longer the stay the more resentment tends to build), but it's certainly an important first step that America isn't taking.

Sacred Jellybean Wrote:Hmm... after reading your links ABF, maybe you're right about the sexist behavior towards Hillary. I retract my last post, perhaps I was being myopic.

Indeed, the worst sexism aimed at Hillary is not the "overt" stuff you mentioned in your first post on this page, it's the casual sexisms of gender discrimination that you see in those link of mine and beyond. As those things are less obvious than the latest outrageous Donald Trump statement they are much easier to overlook, but overall they are much more important as more people believe and state those kinds of things than the blatantly obvious sexism of the Trumpist right. It's far too easy for people to write off Trump, but then do some maybe conscious or maybe unconsciously sexist thing as well... And that's why I like that Kimmel sketch so much, it makes that point well.

Personally I'm waiting for Trump to casually imply that Hillary can't be president because her husband was already president.

"Now I gotta ask, like, can Hillary legally be president? I don't know, but I mean her husband was in the white house, he did that thing there twice, you know *weird expression*, so I mean, she's already been first lady twice, and so, is she eligible? I mean, I'm not saying she's not but it's a good question. I just wanna know."

I totally expect that or something like that to leave Trump's mouth at some point.

Oh, I will say this. It's never over. Did... did anyone get that reference? The Phantasm movies? Silver floating ball full of weapons? Creepy "Tall Man" using silver balls to turn people into weird zombies? Anyone? Just me? Okay.

Um, what I mean is that, faced with only these two candidates, I'm going with Hillary. Yes, she'll do some good things. Yes, her track record is questionable. Yes, a recent statement after last weekend's shooting about "finding these people better online" by "working with our tech companies" smacks of a NSA power grab we all really need to keep an eye on. And yes, she'll be the first female president, and the only things I actually agree with from either of the two candidates are coming out of her mouth, not Trump's. BUT! This is important, she needs to have some checks and balances put into place. Let's make sure she can't do anything particularly harmful without a lot of pushback. So, let's make sure to pay a LOT of attention to local elections, from representatives and senators to even smaller level stuff like county comptroller or whatever. This has always been something we should have been doing, but why not really make it a focus? Sanders can even lead the charge on that. On a national stage, this is going to be very hard to drum up the support for, simply due to the local nature of these elections, but let's at least get the passion going to start with.

On the note of local elections, the local party primary elections were last Tuesday. I voted, as there were several competitive races this time, most notably for my local State Senate seat. This is a very Democratic seat so the general election will be a wipeout for the Dems, but the primary was a hard-fought race with three candidates, two of them sitting State House members from within the district. There was some controversies too, as one candidate went negative, to some criticism. I was pretty surprised by the results, I thought it'd be close but it wasn't.

Good article covering the results: http://www.pressherald.com/2016/06/14/ch...mary-race/

For me, the big negative for Chipman was that he wasn't a Democrat until last year and I'm sure I disagree with him on some issues (and he supported Bernie too), while the big negatives for Russell were that she's a huge Bernie fan who was behind that anti-superdelegates measure at the Maine Democratic Convention that I opposed, and also has made legalizing marijuana her main focal issue, something that I also, of course, oppose. And on top of that, she's also the one who went negative, attacking Chipman with some not-entirely-true claims about his support for health care reform (the article above has more). So, though I have some issues with both candidates, I ended up voting for Chipman; his focus on issues like housing, drug addiction, and such, normal issues, is better than hers on more polemical issues. He got more endorsements from major party figures too, despite only just joining the party, which says something about how Russell had isolated herself. Due to this being a very strongly pro-Bernie district I thought her strong support for him would mean more than it did in the end, though, and Chipman won 2-to-1.

Of course nationally this doesn't matter much, but yes, local politics are also important.

Quote:Um, what I mean is that, faced with only these two candidates, I'm going with Hillary. Yes, she'll do some good things. Yes, her track record is questionable. Yes, a recent statement after last weekend's shooting about "finding these people better online" by "working with our tech companies" smacks of a NSA power grab we all really need to keep an eye on.

The thing we really need to do to stop this kind of shooting is ban public ownership of assault rifles.

How is that a response to my quote? I mean, yes, assault rifles should be banned the same way we ban a lot of weapons that are frankly overkill, but nothing about my quote had anything to do with that.

Anyway, you're judging people that supported Bernie? I'm not sure I follow. I mean, so far you've been saying Hillary is the pragmatic "will actually accomplish stuff" candidate, and that's why you support her. That's a respectable position, but now you're saying dems that supported Bernie are so wrong that you consider them bad candidates? I'm not following. Is this a loyalty thing, or is there something about Bernie's policies you consider downright amoral? Also, what's wrong with changing the democratic party's "superdelegate" system? That system DOES seem broken, regardless of whether or not it's to blame for Bernie's losses.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:How is that a response to my quote? I mean, yes, assault rifles should be banned the same way we ban a lot of weapons that are frankly overkill, but nothing about my quote had anything to do with that.

To more directly answer the question then, of course I oppose the NSA getting too much power, but there probably are legal things we could do to keep a better eye on people like that shooter who were known to be suspicious... he was on a terrorist no-fly list or something, remember.

As for guns, it's quite disappointing that the Republican Party continues to be owned by the NRA and just blocked all four gun bills that came up for a vote in the (US) Senate. :(

Quote:Anyway, you're judging people that supported Bernie? I'm not sure I follow. I mean, so far you've been saying Hillary is the pragmatic "will actually accomplish stuff" candidate, and that's why you support her. That's a respectable position, but now you're saying dems that supported Bernie are so wrong that you consider them bad candidates? I'm not following. Is this a loyalty thing, or is there something about Bernie's policies you consider downright amoral?

There are a couple of things here. First, Bernie and his supporters said a lot of very negative things about Hillary this campaign, so sure, that's part of it -- I don't see them taking those back, you just see some now saying "we'll vote for her because Trump is worse".

But beyond that, Bernie has spent months now hurting his once-good name with his refusal to concede. By refusing to concede even though he lost and the voting is over, Bernie hurts the party and our chances this November. Yes, Trump is hated enough that if he remains the Republican nominee, and that is a question, we'll probably win anyway, but we should not rely on that! When a candidate loses, they concede. They don't run an ego-trip campaign all the way until the convention even though you lost months ago for no reason other than to assuage your ego and to hurt the party. The last time a Democrat did that it was Ted Kennedy's 1980 campaign, and we all know what that helped bring us: President Reagan.

But it is about more than just if the candidate supports Bernie -- I didn't vote against Russell just because she supports Bernie more strongly, the other issues were more important. I's the marijuana, polemics vs. focus on more 'normal' issues, her negative campaigning (yes, that's still often considered bad at least around here), Chipman getting most of the major endorsements from local Democratic leaders (I do pay attention to that), and other campaign-finance issues like this that make me think the right person won. I would have supported whoever won in the general though, no question about that!

Quote:Also, what's wrong with changing the democratic party's "superdelegate" system? That system DOES seem broken, regardless of whether or not it's to blame for Bernie's losses.

What about it is broken? I think I said this before, but I find it very odd that in the very year where we see exactly why the Democrats have superdelegates, somehow we're supposed to agree that they are bad? What? I mean, superdelegates exist to keep a too-extreme or crazy candidate from winning -- that is, to stop something like a Donald Trump disaster from happening to the Democrats. To be clear, Bernie is not such a disaster, but Trump very much is. If the Republicans had a superdelegate system like we do, Trump miught not be the presumptive nominee right now, you know, given how much the party leaders dislike him. Superdelegates have not yet overturned the will of the voters, and would not unless there was a VERY good reason, so I think they're not a problem; indeed, I think the whole campaign against them is headlined by unhappy Bernie supporters who wrongly think that without them Bernie would have done better this year. He didn't lose because of superdelegates though, he lost because of his total failure in the South.

Well-behaved women rarely make history.