You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[A Black Falcon]

For both of you, the idea you have that Bernie would be doing better now than Hillary is is, in my opinion, very mistaken. Yes, she has made a few questionable moves recently, including deciding to spend August fundraising instead of appearing in public and hiding her illness because she just wanted to work through it, but it's hardly some disastrously messed up campaign, they're mostly doing a good job. I think your anti-Democratic Party perspectives skew your views here... yes, seeing her lead fade has been incredibly frustrating and maybe she could have done more, but I definitely put more of that blame on the press, and perhaps also the public at large, for giving Trump a pass because he's said so many horrendous things that people just stop paying attention to what he's saying. We will see this again today when there will probably be almost no reaction to his latest barely-coded call for someone to shoot Hillary. Poll numbers regardless, Trump should have been completely ruled out for any kind of serious anything long ago. But instead he gets mostly positive press because reporting on Trump helps the ratings.

But anyway, how would Bernie be doing? He'd be attacked harshly and unremittingly on all of the many things he could be attacked on but Hillary basically never mentioned. She treated Bernie very lightly on the major attack lines you could hit him for outside of the policy arena, but Trump would never do anything of the sort. He'd hit him hard on all sorts of issues, and it would hurt Bernie a LOT versus his theoretical policy positions. Sure, Bernie would have more enthusiasm from the liberal base, but he'd have less from the center, and you need both left and center to win. Sure, Trump is an extremist, but do you really think that so many centrist or Republican foreign policy people would be endorsing Bernie, for example? I don't think so. So, the result of a Bernie v. Trump race would be that the third parties would probably be polling even HIGHER than they are now. I don't know what the end result would be, but there are fewer strong liberals in this country than strong conservatives last time I checked, so it probably would be not great for our side. And besides, if a motivated liberal base was really all you needed to win, Bernie would be the nominee right now! He isn't, because you need more than that. And anyway, there are major issues I think she is better on.

This right here is exactly my problem with her. Clinton, by all rights, SHOULD be the progressive candidate that gets things done. However, she's got a track record of bending over backwards for backwards people. Corruption is the only word for it. That doesn't mean I think she's an evil money grubbing politician, it means that her values have been weathered away by a system rife with corruption. By that I mean that age old problem of trying to do the right thing, and in the process of trying to do that right thing, you compromise, because it seems like it's the only way to get it done. Time and time again, and now that corruption is so bad it's seeping out into the general populace, and getting average people to say "well, she lied but all politicians lie, I mean, that's just what they have to do to get the job done". Have we all as a people just given up on moral behavior? I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about the general notion that sometimes it's better to fail in your objective than become the thing you hate. We USED to believe that. Heck, there's half a dozen Star Trek episodes where the captain would rather blow up their own ship than do something unethical, because it ALWAYS seems like a small sacrifice at the time, and it always turns out to be that road to hell.

Look, I'm going to vote for Clinton, because of all the things you said, but corruption is corruption, and while we don't have much in the way of a choice this time, I'm not seeing Hillary as being a two term president. She's not the first, but every time we make an argument like that, it just gets worse. At some point, a stand has to be taken, and as public as every little thing is this cycle, it's certainly going to be even worse the next. The democrats would be wise to not just automatically nominate her next time, I think.

But hey, I could be wrong. Clinton could turn her back on the corporate backers, and it would be glorious if she did so. She could be the president she dreamed of being when she was in her 20's, and I would welcome it. In 4 years, if she was behind a number of major pushes for progressive policies, even if they failed at the legislative level, I'd change my mind on her.[/COLOR]

... What? Hillary is not corrupt. There has never been a shred of evidence that she's actually corrupt, there are just allegations that fall apart once you look at the details. Clinton Foundation pay-to-play? Nope, didn't happen. There were donors who wanted access but didn't get anything beyond what you'd expect people like them (often fairly prominent figures) to get, etc... but no actual corruption. This whole Clinton Foundation "scandal" is so messed up in the way the press has reported it, because their foundation is in the top tier as far as spending its money on the actual cause is concerned, etc. It's a model of how to run an effective charitable foundation. And yet the press spins it into a negative story about her because of things that are not true... it's frustrating, and is one of many reasons why Trump has improved in the polls recently.

And on that note, another reason is that as always, Trump gets a pass for doing infinitely worse things. Clinton is being wrongly accused of corruption and "pay-to-play"? Trump has a PROVEN RECORD of funding pay-to-play efforts, often successful! How did the Trump Foundation scandal, about how his "foundation" just uses other peoples' money and none from Trump himself since 2008, how he pays off elected officials with money from his foundation to get them to not investigate some of his other crimes, etc. The Pam Bondi "I illegally give you this money so you don't investigate me" scandal is the most obvious example of this of course! Sure, the press reported on it, but so many reports focused far more on Hillary's not-actually-corruption "scandal" than on Trump's proven, factual record of actual corruption. It's pretty awful stuff.

Now, yes, I know, you mean "corruption" more generally, in that you seem to consider all donations corrupt. But you need PROOF to say that donations cause corruption, and nothing in Hillary's emails or record provides ANY support for that! It's more like the opposite, as far as I have seen. Hillary does have an unfortunate tendency to be a bit too secretive, as you see with her hiding her illness because she just wanted to work through it, but she is not corrupt. Trump is.

But, this is not just a problem HRC and her campaign is responsible for. Liberal media, especially that which favors Clinton (DKos, looking at your ugly orange shit here), and the Party in general, are great at illustrating the moral bankruptcy of conservatives. They are great at jumping on every gaffe and pointing out every single stupid or hateful thing conservatives say. Problem is, it is preaching to the choir. DKos is every bit as much a Democratic echo chamber as Breitbart is for racists and shit heads. Republicans have a ceiling (or, perhaps an Electoral Blue Wall) because they have only invective while not even pretending to care about finding actual solutions to anything ever. This is not nearly as egregious on the Dem side but it still dominates the internal discourse. I already know the GOP has fucked up everything. I know they're terrible human beings who believe that human empathy is a sign of weakness. What I don't know is why we sit back and gripe about this instead of taking the fight to them in the venue of public opinion. Trump is going to fuck everything. What is Clinton going to do? Not fuck everything? Not be as bad? I mean obviously. How about, instead, a proactive approach that advances the cause of progressive politics instead of interminably playing defense against an opponent which, by rights, should have been rendered ineffective a decade ago? Instead, the Democrats almost compulsively play down to the Republicans and give them advantage after advantage they could never achieve on their own.

Clinton will be good, not just "not as bad". Also comparing Daily Kos to Breitbart is totally absurd! Yes, it's a Democratic echo chamber, but Breitbart is a far-right extremists' haven, with all kinds of incredibly disgusting articles there. You don't see that on liberal sites like Daily Kos.

However, I do agree with the core of your complaint here, that the Democratic Party doesn't do a good job of pushing its agenda or pushing back against the Republicans. This is a tough issue, though -- even if it's often frustrating, is it really a good idea to go down closer to their level? But on the other hand, the Democrats historically are weak on pushing for their policies compared to the Republicans, and that is a consistent source of frustration. The Republicans seem to instinctively push, while Democrats instinctively back off and refuse to follow a tougher line because we're too nice to behave that rudely... which makes it hard to get your policies through when the other party IS behaving that way. This is why almost all of the gerrymandering in this country is Republican-leaning, etc.

So, what do you do? I do wish that the real solution would be for the Republicans to stop behaving terribly, or at least to put more laws in place to stop their worst abuses (gerrymandering, etc.). But how do you get to that point without acting horrendously as their party has? The idea probably is something in between, being tougher than Democrats often are but refusing to emulate the terrible idiocy their party has descended to. (On a related note, while she's far from perfect, Hillary's fairly tough as far as Democrats go.)