20th June 2016, 7:38 PM
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.