22nd July 2016, 7:51 PM
Weltall Wrote:Something has happened, perhaps not bad enough to physically split the party, definitely bad enough that Clinton polls roughly even with a literal TV character. And that 538 forecast has dropped Clinton's chances from 80% to 60%. What does she do better than start with a huge lead and gradually leak it away throughout a contest?Trump is getting the usual convention bounce. It'll recede very soon as we head into the Democratic convention.
Quote:As a defense, Clinton and other Democrats being too gullible and scared to make the right choice is not really that much better than making the wrong choice on purpose.'
I do somewhat agree, but still I have always mostly blamed Bush & co., not the Democrats, because the war was his and Cheney's idea. I very much believe that no Democratic president would ever have gone to war with Iraq then, no way. And Hillary would not do that today either. Senate Democrats do deserve some blame, but Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld deserve almost all of it. Remember how they got Colin Powell to lie to the UN to help their case, even!
Quote:Of course they wanted it and of course they would have gone to any lengths to get that war going. That does not excuse Senate Democrats for making it easier for them.Sure, but if it was going to happen either way that vote doesn't matter as much as if it could have actually stopped the war.
Quote:Whether they would have defeated the Bush administration in stopping the war is not important. The fact that they gave him what he wanted without a fight speaks terribly of every Democrat who cast votes which did so. That includes your candidate of choice, and it was not an aberration on her part. She is generally pro-war and pro-intervention, cut from the same Cold War stripe most politicians of her era were, and guilty of the same lack of imagination which is necessary to adapt to a world in which America's foreign policy challenges, specifically in regards to the use of military force, do not involve competing superpower states.For all of our failings America has done a great deal to make this world a better place, and unfortunately sometimes that requires a military element. Of course there have been some disastrous failures, most notably Iraq and Vietam, but there are also successes. You sound WAY too isolationist here for me. I am not an isolationist.
Quote:And that assessment is the generous one, which assumes that Clinton and like-minded Democrats aren't acting as willing instruments of the military-industrial complex, as they are of the financial industry. Clinton picked my former governor Tim Kaine as VP, a man who is all about deregulating the finance industry. I'm sure that's just because he's getting bad intelligence.I agree that the Kaine choice is a bit disappointing, but he is a liberal with good ratings from all the major liberal rating groups. He may help with some groups Hillary is struggling with too, who knows. I would have liked to see Elizabeth Warren, but hopefully he'll be fine.
Quote:That's not where the Democratic Party needs to be. It needs to be wanting reforms that reduce how many people of any demographic are unfairly penalized by the justice system, having lives ruined and fortunes destroyed because of non-violent offenses. America has the largest rate of incarceration of any country in the world by a huge measure. Clinton and the Democratic Party do not recognize this fact as problematic and indeed are still, as a party, not yet willing to embrace decriminalization of drugs and the legalization of cannabis in particular. Too many special interests don't want this to happen, from law enforcement to private prison corporations, which all rely on a steady stream of inmates to sustain a business model/funding.As you may recall, I have always strongly opposed legalizing any illegal drugs. If it was up to me tobacco would be illegal too, and you can make a good case for alcohol as well (on the one hand it doesn't automatically hurt others, but on the other hand it is the most deadly drug in the country in terms of the number of people it kills...). My opinion on drugs has not changed over the years, I've always been against drug legalization. It's been sad to see America head towards legalizing marijuana, it's a mistake.
Clinton is right on target for her party, the party is way behind and progressing only because of people like Bernie Sanders making people aware of what's happening.
As for sentencing, though, America often sentences people too harshly, but Europe seems to often sentence too lightly. The ideal is probably somewhere in between, and of course without any racial bias in sentencing as currently exists.
Quote:Can you point to any significant foreign intervention America has participated in since the second World War that resulted in a better and more peaceful world? I mean maybe Korea counts.You think the first Iraq War "sowed the seeds for global Islamic terror"? I don't know about that. It was the second Iraq war, not Desert Storm, that did that. I think the first Gulf War was a success and did make the world a better place, in keeping Sadaam from destroying Kuwait, in showing that the US and Russia could actually work together in the new post-Cold War world, and more. I thought that the economic sanctions, blockade, and partial no-fly zone of Sadaam's Iraq that the US imposed between the two wars did more good than bad, overall, as well; for example it kept Sadaam from rebuilding any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons programs as he had had before, thankfully, among other things. Some did suffer there because of it, but there was also a benefit.
Note: I don't mean those that saw immediate success, but lasting success. Desert Storm was a walkover that sowed the seeds for global Islamic terror and a badly destabilized region
For some more, you mention it, but the Korean War is a clear-cut case of American intervention making things better. South Korea only exists today as a free nation because of us. A Kim dynasty ruling unified Korea would be a worse world for sure!
And for another easy example, Kosovo was a very successful and badly-needed campaign which I supported at the time, and it helped finally stabilize Eastern Europe after nearly a decade of war. Remember I lived in Slovenia in 1990-'91 as Yugoslavia fell apart, and it was frustrating to see the US not do enough for so long, until the '95 Dayton Accords and then again the '99 bombing campaign to stop Serbia from attacking Kosovo. It was a great success and directly led to Milosevich's much-needed ouster.
I imagine there are probably more than these, and there definitely are if you include things like economic sanctions (Obama's sanctions on Iran to get them to the nuclear deal were a very good move!), but for military actions, those are the ones that come to mind. Of course there are others which were bad to awful ideas, mostly Cold War actions such as Vietnam, Granada, Cuba, Iran (overthrowing Mussadeh is one of our bigger foreign policy mistakes of the Cold War, perhaps), etc, but it certainly was not all bad.
Quote:This makes it okay?As I said I have never once cared what email server she used or uses, so long as it was secure, so sure.
Quote:"Several dozen" top Clinton aides may find themselves unable to gain higher security clearance because of their involvement. Clinton herself faces only herself as an obstacle in her pursuit of the ultimate security clearance. The bus has plenty of room underneath.Yeah, I'm sure that's going to go real far in a Clinton administration...
Quote:There are people who murder other people over chump change, and $250,000 is not chump change. No one who takes money in that amount from corporations who have vested interests in manipulating the political system should be allowed to participate in it as a public servant. You trust a candidate because they have a D rather than an R, that's folly.The much bigger folly is saying that every single member of congress is corrupt, which is what you are saying if you believe what you say here. Influenced, yes. Corrupt, absolutely not. And while it is huge, big-money lobbyists are not the only influence our members of congress see.
On the other hand though, I would love to see a campaign finance system which does not require all House members to spend multiple hours almost every day calling donors begging for money, as we have. That is a terrible system which really should not be... but those people aren't all corrupt because they're asking for money, no way.
Quote:One candidate made this an issue during the primary and one didn't. So yeah, these things need to happen, but the majority of Democratic voters didn't think they were that important. Structural reform of our political process? Nah, I'd rather have a woman president.This is completely false; Hillary has made campaign finance reform, and overturning Citizen's United, important elements of her campaign. The Democratic Party's position on SuperPACs basically is "we'll use them because we have to to win, but what we really want is a better campaign finance system that gets rid of this stuff".
Quote:"I'd love to but republican obstructionism" followed by a wink you can't see but you can almost hear.What wink? The Republicans today are the most obstructionist any party has ever been in this nation's history. But she will try anyway. This is one reason we really need to win back the Senate this November, that would be a huge help!
Quote:As disappointing that you don't see how bad an idea it is to nominate a candidate who is trusted by 33% of Americans whatever the reasons (and it's not because 66% of America is sexist).Everybody unconsciously believes some kind of negative gender stereotypes I am sure, you can't escape the culture you grow up in.
And as for trust, her numbers will go up once she's elected.