22nd June 2016, 7:28 AM
That's true, but the no-fly list is still incredibly problematic, with no due-process at all, or a way to challenge being put on it, or any way to ever be taken off of it. The no-fly list is, frankly, unconstitutional. At best, a bill to keep anyone on the list from being able to buy the gun at least makes it less hypocritical.
Your argument for superdelegates seems to break down to: "Superdelegates: Don't you worry your pretty little heads, we know what's best for you."
And on Bernie not giving up, well, we'll see how the wind blows there (he is a politician after all, and ultimately I'm sure he'll fall in line), but is that really a reason to hate those who supported him? Sure, you'll pick candidates regardless of that, but you really seem to have a major bone to pick with Bernie on reasons of... well, "he's getting in the way". He attacked Hillary, yes, but he made some good points, and it's a political debate! What did you EXPECT? He's causing the democratic party problems, so you hate him. Well, parties SHOULD have problems, they SHOULD be challenged, and Bernie should serve, if nothing else, as a constant reminder that there's people who aren't happy with how things currently are, and how things really do seem to be controlled by a couple of warring factions, with the primary motivations being maintaining power, with actually serving the people secondary. Hillary is going to do more things for the people than Trump, that's a fact, but the reason I supported Bernie was that he actually seemed like he would do MORE of those things. I have little doubt that, push comes to serve, power will come first with both current candidates.
I've said all this to you, but I'm arguing the opposite with my family. You see, I'm stuck in the terrible position of having to get all the Bernie supporters in my family to vote anyway, on an "anti-Trump" platform. That's not easy, because historical "anti-other candidate" platforms lose, but this is the position we're in. Bernie fired up the base far more than Hillary did, and now he's out, so their position is "4 years of Trump might teach the democrats a lesson that we want real change". My uncle, for example, believes that Trump would cause less damage by sheer virtue of both sides of the aisle completely deadlocking him at every single point, so Trump would be put in a worse position than Obama was and ultimately be diffused. THIS is where we are, and you can kick and scream and say it's all Bernie's fault for making Hillary seem untrustworthy, but that's myopic. People have distrusted Hillary right from the start. Yes, some of it is the sexist block, but a lot of it comes down purely to the thing you keep pretending doesn't exist, Hillary's connections to big money. Why did people trust Sanders? He's run the platform he's run entirely on campaign donations. Regardless of how much of that is just a stunt carefully engineered to make him look the part vs how much was him genuinely sticking to his beliefs, the end result is the same. He's not going to serve the interests of major companies. If he's going to betray us, it'll be purely out of his own heart, a genuine betrayal just like mother used to make, and none of that corporate factory produced betrayal. Hillary will do some good things, but it's all those things she won't do, the feet she's never going to dare step on (to make sure those funds come back in for her second term run) that terrify the Bernie supporter so much. It's the big problem with the parties as they stand. They're far more interested in winning than in the policies. The republicans don't hate Trump because he's a bigoted idiot, but because that bigotry and idiocy will lose him the general election.
You're in a bad position here. There are a number of voters out there who, seeing two candidates they don't trust, are weary of being told "please just vote for the lesser of two evils one more time, NEXT time actual change will happen I promise!". A number are willing to watch the current political scene BURN TO THE GROUND so that we can just rebuild it from scratch, and I'm desperately trying to convince them just to keep things stable. You're dealing with a large number of liberal voters who think change can only now come when the current party system gets taken down, and Trump seems just the sort of natural disaster to make that happen. My only argument against them is that while Trump may very well implode the Republican party, the Democratic party will be completely unscathed and perhaps stronger after a Trump presidency. We would then have a de-facto one party system forever. I don't care how much you support the democrats "no matter what" (you can't seem to answer my question), you MUST admit that if the democrats were the only choice that could actually win elections, it would render democracy invalid and the democratic party would go full-corrupt within a few terms.
Your argument for superdelegates seems to break down to: "Superdelegates: Don't you worry your pretty little heads, we know what's best for you."
And on Bernie not giving up, well, we'll see how the wind blows there (he is a politician after all, and ultimately I'm sure he'll fall in line), but is that really a reason to hate those who supported him? Sure, you'll pick candidates regardless of that, but you really seem to have a major bone to pick with Bernie on reasons of... well, "he's getting in the way". He attacked Hillary, yes, but he made some good points, and it's a political debate! What did you EXPECT? He's causing the democratic party problems, so you hate him. Well, parties SHOULD have problems, they SHOULD be challenged, and Bernie should serve, if nothing else, as a constant reminder that there's people who aren't happy with how things currently are, and how things really do seem to be controlled by a couple of warring factions, with the primary motivations being maintaining power, with actually serving the people secondary. Hillary is going to do more things for the people than Trump, that's a fact, but the reason I supported Bernie was that he actually seemed like he would do MORE of those things. I have little doubt that, push comes to serve, power will come first with both current candidates.
I've said all this to you, but I'm arguing the opposite with my family. You see, I'm stuck in the terrible position of having to get all the Bernie supporters in my family to vote anyway, on an "anti-Trump" platform. That's not easy, because historical "anti-other candidate" platforms lose, but this is the position we're in. Bernie fired up the base far more than Hillary did, and now he's out, so their position is "4 years of Trump might teach the democrats a lesson that we want real change". My uncle, for example, believes that Trump would cause less damage by sheer virtue of both sides of the aisle completely deadlocking him at every single point, so Trump would be put in a worse position than Obama was and ultimately be diffused. THIS is where we are, and you can kick and scream and say it's all Bernie's fault for making Hillary seem untrustworthy, but that's myopic. People have distrusted Hillary right from the start. Yes, some of it is the sexist block, but a lot of it comes down purely to the thing you keep pretending doesn't exist, Hillary's connections to big money. Why did people trust Sanders? He's run the platform he's run entirely on campaign donations. Regardless of how much of that is just a stunt carefully engineered to make him look the part vs how much was him genuinely sticking to his beliefs, the end result is the same. He's not going to serve the interests of major companies. If he's going to betray us, it'll be purely out of his own heart, a genuine betrayal just like mother used to make, and none of that corporate factory produced betrayal. Hillary will do some good things, but it's all those things she won't do, the feet she's never going to dare step on (to make sure those funds come back in for her second term run) that terrify the Bernie supporter so much. It's the big problem with the parties as they stand. They're far more interested in winning than in the policies. The republicans don't hate Trump because he's a bigoted idiot, but because that bigotry and idiocy will lose him the general election.
You're in a bad position here. There are a number of voters out there who, seeing two candidates they don't trust, are weary of being told "please just vote for the lesser of two evils one more time, NEXT time actual change will happen I promise!". A number are willing to watch the current political scene BURN TO THE GROUND so that we can just rebuild it from scratch, and I'm desperately trying to convince them just to keep things stable. You're dealing with a large number of liberal voters who think change can only now come when the current party system gets taken down, and Trump seems just the sort of natural disaster to make that happen. My only argument against them is that while Trump may very well implode the Republican party, the Democratic party will be completely unscathed and perhaps stronger after a Trump presidency. We would then have a de-facto one party system forever. I don't care how much you support the democrats "no matter what" (you can't seem to answer my question), you MUST admit that if the democrats were the only choice that could actually win elections, it would render democracy invalid and the democratic party would go full-corrupt within a few terms.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)