2016 US Presidential Election Thread IX

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Well that's why Nader voters should have only voted for him in safe States, so he could keep some influence.


At some points in this thread, we've been individualizing groups of people unnecessarily. This is sort of the opposite, though. Nader supporters aren't/weren't just a set of numbers that you can allocate. This is what I was calling "ideal." In a perfect world, you could balance everything everywhere and Nader could get all of his votes happily.

I made a point about this in totally unbalanced states -- why don't the 100,000 Nader voters in Florida play ball and trade their votes with Texas democrats, who apparently have no responsibility whatsoever? Let all 100,000 Florida voters vote for Gore in place of the Texas Democrats that would've, and they can vote Nader!

The above scenario I describe actually was attempted. Nader's Traders! A ridiculous idea that undermines the electoral college entirely. Got a lot of states mad for what was essentially attempts at crowd organized election fixing.

I honestly think that this argument will just keep circling around and around though. There's a fundamental disagreement. I don't agree with denying the antecedent. Those responsible for electing Bush were the republicans who voted for him. Inadvertently, Ralph Nader's decision to run aided in Bush's victory. More importantly, Al Gore's inability to be a good enough candidate for those voters lost him their vote. Most importantly, Florida's balloting was effectively made to fuck Al Gore, likely thanks to the Republican Party of Florida.
 
Well that probably won't hold up, but right now it makes sense. People are "moving to Canada" with their vote, so to say. I'm sure when the debates kick up, a lot of people will start to "pick the lesser of two evils." But I wouldn't be surprised if those third party candidates stand a chance to get their voter threshold that they need to expand (~5%).
 
You guys just don't understand math.

Trump: 2+2 = whatever you want it to be, we just print more.

Sanders: 2+2 = millions, the messiah could feed the nation with just one fish and one piece of bread.


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wait i thought 2+2=5
 
In a close election like 2000, your throwaway vote could have made a difference and we would have been spared the horrors of the Bush presidency. You can't sit back and pretend like you have no responsibilities here whatsoever for said vote because the parties have failed to cater to you and "earn" your precious vote.

I'm not going to pat you on the back and applaud your dignity and purity.

In fairness to Nader voters, it's not as if 9/11 and what followed in terms of the Bush presidency was foreseeable. Yes, you could have thought at the time that he'd be a worse president than Gore because of certain of his policies and the way he used the religious right at the polls, but nobody could have predicted the depth of his administration's incompetence.

Today you have the benefit of hindsight, but back then, and I do remember that election very well, it simply was not as if you had a great Obama-type candidate running against Sarah Palin. It simply was not seen or perceived that way, and a lot of it had to do with the fact that the original Bush president wasn't great but wasn't a disaster either and the family was generally viewed as fairly intelligent, professional, etc.
 
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In fairness to Nader voters, it's not as if 9/11 and what followed in terms of the Bush presidency was foreseeable. Yes, you could have thought at the time that he'd be a worse president than Gore because of certain of his policies and the way he used the religious right at the polls, but nobody could have predicted the depth of his administration's incompetence.

Today you have the benefit of hindsight, but back then, and I do remember that election very well, it simply was not as if you had a great Obama-type candidate running against Sarah Palin. It simply was not seen or perceived that way, and a lot of it had to do with the fact that the original Bush president wasn't great but wasn't a disaster either and the family was generally viewed as fairly intelligent, professional, etc.




I don't remember it that way at all. Yes, Bush said things like he wasn't into nation building, and the scope of his vision for domestic policy was a tax cut for the wealthy, but I was also living and working in Europe at the time and fielding questions from drunk, distressed Europeans about the possibility of a Bush presidency. I shared many of their concerns. I remember the born-again thing as being dangerous, as well as the eagerness to start small wars. The GOP had taken a dangerous turn during the 1990s, with Buchanan and his 1992 convention speech that still makes my blood run cold, and Bush was seen as the idiot puppet through which various groups representing bad interests (guns, oil, environmental destruction, fundamentalist social policy) had found their socially acceptable voice.

I agree, no one thought it would get quite so bad, but there were clear differences, and warnin signs.

And it underscores the silliness of dismissing the two parties of being the same.
 
And that's some white privilege.

Ugh. Just stop. Everybody on the left would suffer under Trump. It's also ironic that you keep bringing up this line when the situation for black Americans both economically and socially has become worse for them since Obama took office.

I also don't see how Trump would be even remotely as bad as Bush. Not only would he not being taken seriously by members of his own party, but he has a lot of weird populist and pseudo-leftist beliefs and proposals which automatically make him to the left of practically everybody that ran for the Republican nomination. I could honestly give a fuck that he's a racist because

1) So are the other Republicans. They just use more subtle forms of dog whistling. I find it ironic when people post angry missives about Trump on Facebook and ignore the fact that he's merely going along with the same tactics the party has used for decades...a Trump Presidency is less right-wing than Ted Cruz, Rubio, etc. so they shouldn't have been actively hoping that Trump would fail in his quest for the nomination, especially when polling showed Trump to be the worst candidate for the general election.

2) And it's not like Trump can on his own just enact some anti-Civil Rights laws, and even if he got his own party to go along with it, the Supreme Court would rule against practically all of it as discriminatory for obvious reasons, even with their right-leaning slant. Therefore, most of his opinions are just that, opinions. Frankly, I don't mind it if I were to live with neighbors that were closeted racists but caused no problems and kept their home exteriors clean, etc. since it's not like most people have much of a relationship with people they live near. At the end of the day, all that matters are the actions and Trump can't really act on half that shit.
 
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Turnout in the 2000 general election was a meager 51.2%. Go blame the millions upon millions of Democrats that didn't bother voting for that loss, not a much smaller amount of Nader voters, most of whom said they weren't even going to vote if he wasn't in the race.

If we just do an even Republican/Democratic split for those remaining voters (which is even under-counting left leaners given Democrats having a huge registration advantage even then and tending to vote less in general), that means there were 50 million voting age potential Gore voters that didn't bother voting at all. That's a lot more than Nader's 2.9 million, eh?
 
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Ugh. Just stop. Everybody on the left would suffer under Trump. It's also ironic that you keep bringing up this line when the situation for black Americans both economically and socially has become worse for them since Obama took office.

I also don't see how Trump would be even remotely as bad as Bush. Not only would he not being taken seriously by members of his own party, but he has a lot of weird populist and pseudo-leftist beliefs and proposals which automatically make him to the left of practically everybody that ran for the Republican nomination. I could honestly give a fuck that he's a racist because

1) So are the other Republicans. They just use more subtle forms of dog whistling. I find it ironic when people post angry missives about Trump on Facebook and ignore the fact that he's merely going along with the same tactics the party has used for decades...a Trump Presidency is less right-wing than Ted Cruz, Rubio, etc. so they shouldn't have been actively hoping that Trump would fail in his quest for the nomination, especially when polling showed Trump to be the worst candidate for the general election.

2) And it's not like Trump can on his own just enact some anti-Civil Rights laws, and even if he got his own party to go along with it, the Supreme Court would rule against practically all of it as discriminatory for obvious reasons, even with their right-leaning slant. Therefore, most of his opinions are just that, opinions. Frankly, I don't mind it if I were to live with neighbors that were closeted racists but caused no problems and kept their home exteriors clean, etc. since it's not like most people have much of a relationship with people they live near. At the end of the day, all that matters are the actions and Trump can't really act on half that shit.



You can say things out loud but it doesn't make them true.
 
I don't remember it that way at all. Yes, Bush said things like he wasn't into nation building, and the scope of his vision for domestic policy was a tax cut for the wealthy, but I was also living and working in Europe at the time and fielding questions from drunk, distressed Europeans about the possibility of a Bush presidency. I shared many of their concerns. I remember the born-again thing as being dangerous, as well as the eagerness to start small wars. The GOP had taken a dangerous turn during the 1990s, with Buchanan and his 1992 convention speech that still makes my blood run cold, and Bush was seen as the idiot puppet through which various groups representing bad interests (guns, oil, environmental destruction, fundamentalist social policy) had found their socially acceptable voice.

I agree, no one thought it would get quite so bad, but there were clear differences, and warnin signs.

And it underscores the silliness of dismissing the two parties of being the same.

That's funny because I also spent considerable time in Europe around then (UK and continental) and have a very different recollection - mostly that people just weren't that into the election, basically reflecting the low turnout in the US. Neither candidate was seen as particularly exciting.
 
So, is the Sanders vs. Trump debate actually going to happen? They've both said yes. :hmm:

Upon doing more research, Trump's team is actually talking to networks about it. It would be a pretty easy thing to do for charity since they could just demand that the networks donate a certain share of advertising revenue over to the charities that Trump/Sanders support.

It will be great to have a debate between the platforms that a majority of Democrats and Republicans respectively support, rather than confusing things by having some corporatist try and argue that she's on both sides of the aisle.
 
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It will be great to have a debate between the platforms that a majority of Democrats and Republicans respectively support, rather than confusing things by having some corporatist try and argue that she's on both sides of the aisle.

:lol: fuzzy BigMac math


They're both idiots for doing so.

Sanders comes off as desperate, and will expose his lack of plan to both the right and left now that they don't have that hated shrew in the room.

Trump can't debate one on one.

They both have rather short fuses and I wonder how that will play out.


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Or a new post office needing a name?

This debate would be bad. Both just shouting slogans at each other and the crowds going crazy.

And it would hurt only one person, and that's Clinton. Maybe she can debate Ted Cruz on another network


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don't get me started on my hatred of fptp. i've long been in favour of mmp. it would also allow for coalitions which...oh look at that, would help allow for third parties to gain greater representation. the green party could form a coalition with the democrats, for example, so there would be no "wasted" votes.
 
And it would hurt only one person, and that's Clinton. Maybe she can debate Ted Cruz on another network


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I've been going back and forth on this; I think this could go either way.

She could just let them yell at each other and show all the "independents" that both extremes are full of shit. Or they'll gang up on Hillary and Trump wins out.


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So, is the Sanders vs. Trump debate actually going to happen? They've both said yes. :hmm:

Upon doing more research, Trump's team is actually talking to networks about it. It would be a pretty easy thing to do for charity since they could just demand that the networks donate a certain share of advertising revenue over to the charities that Trump/Sanders support.

The very idea of this potential debate is sexist :madwife:
 
And it's about white privilege too since it's a debate that minorities can't afford to allow to happen! :sad:
 
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Sanders has a pretty lengthy bunch of DNC platform proposals alone and this doesn't even account the racial justice side of things or Israel-Palestine as he has appointed Cornel West and a Palestian activist to the group writing the platform for the convention. Nor does it go into the changes he wants to make concerning the primary process and including younger/poorer activists into the party's fold rather than letting it be headed by older, whiter and richer individuals.

Taking from this lengthy interview:

Bernie Sanders: He Speaks About Attacks, Democratic Platform


What are the top four or five policy proposals you want to convince the Democratic Party to adopt at the convention?

We start off with the assumption that in some areas, there’s going to be broad agreement already. I don’t think there’s going to be much of a debate, frankly, that we need to raise the minimum wage actually to $15 an hour. We don’t have to waste time on that. I think that will probably pass quite overwhelmingly. Secretary Clinton has not come out for the [New York Sen. Kirsten] Gillibrand bill which is in the Senate on paid family and medical leave. I don’t think there’ll be much debate on that. I think we’ll have that as well.

I think the issues of contention will be the understanding that Secretary Clinton has been wrong in supporting virtually every single one of these trade policies. I think what this campaign has shown is that working people understand that NAFTA and CAFTA and PNTR with China have been disastrous for working families. I think there will be some opposition to my point of view but I have the feeling that we’ll win that debate as well.

Secretary Clinton has come up, as usual, with a very complicated and convoluted approach on higher education. You got to spend half your life filling out forms and checking your income every day. I’m not sure that we will not win fairly easily on the issue of making public colleges and public universities part of what we consider to be public education, making it free. I suspect we’ll win that one as well.

I think the real debate will center around how aggressively we take on the fossil fuel industry. I will push for a tax on carbon. Secretary Clinton now opposes that. I think the crisis on clean water is one of the evolving crises in our country around the world. I think you’ve got to ban fracking.

I think a very contentious issue of where there will be a debate—serious debate—and I think we have a shot to win. When I tell you we’re going to have a debate, almost all of my supporters will be supportive and then we can get some of Clinton’s supporters. I don’t think it’s going to be, these votes will come down all Sanders versus all Clinton. And I think, you’ll see, you’ve got progressive people, you’ve got Clinton with the support of some unions there, and some of those people will come over to us on the issues.

I think a contentious issue which we have a shot to win is whether or not we break up the large financial institutions and we create a new financial system not based on a handful of giant Wall Street banks. That will be contentious. If I were a betting guy, I’d think we’d win that. But we may not.

I think the polls suggest that among Democrats there is strong support for a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. And my guess is we’ll probably win that one too. We may not. But I think we’ll win that one as well.

The other issue that will be contentious is tax reform and making sure the wealthy and profitable corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

So those are a few of the issues. I think we’ll win most of them. I think the Wall Street fight will be a difficult one, it may not be, depending on the wording of tax reform, that will be tough. Medicare-for-all I suspect we’ll win but we may not.
 
And it's about white privilege too since it's a debate that minorities can afford to allow to happen! :sad:



Don't forget their unearned sense of entitlement (Bernie's demands! Donald's rich so he's right!) and hermetically sealed certitude (math!).

It really would be nice to watch two shouty men try to mainsplain their vague, nonspecific plans/slogans and total lack/interest in foreign policy to one another.

IMMA BUILD A WALL!
IMMA MAKE WALL STREET PAY FOR THAT WALL!

Maybe a grand compromise can be reached? The two of them live in unicorn and puppy land, so why not?
 
I think a contentious issue which we have a shot to win is whether or not we break up the large financial institutions and we create a new financial system not based on a handful of giant Wall Street banks. That will be contentious. If I were a betting guy said:
Granted this is just what he wants in the platform, which is fine and dandy

I just have yet to see how this is implemented. What are the effects on the economy for breaking up the banks? Is there a short term dip in the economy followed by long term benefit and growth?

How many jobs are lost breaking them up? How many are gained. What are the down stream effects to people's accounts, mortgages, IRA, 401ks?

I agree the system is set up in a way that favors the companies / Wall St, but they are an important part of our economy too. This would need to be a very delicate, slow change....something that doesn't happen in one term, or potentially two terms.

And this goes for all of Bernies proposals. It's just not that simple and his website basically makes it seem like we just need to raise taxes on income, raise taxes on corporations, and somehow jumpstart a 2% GDP to 5.3% and sustain it

I want to see more details from Bernie (and All politicians). We've seen the effects of extreme right wing policies "trickle down", I don't see the opposite of that working either.

We can improve the program's we have, and still reach a "New Deal" America

I listen (or read) what Bernie has to say and I come away thinking, man the USA really sucks. We're just the worst

In reality, despite all the shortcomings, we are living in the golden age of society. Always improvements, but we have never had it better


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We have not "never had it better"...especially in terms of middle class income, income inequality, the unemployed and underemployed and rising poverty. Things have not become better economically than they have been in the recent past although the economy has made substantial improvement from the depths of the recession.

I also don't understand why Clinton's "solutions" are thought of as sensible a lot of the time. You're just making the assumption that they're nuanced and about "slow change" because they don't go as far, when in reality, they are the simple nudges in the direction of the big banks (for example) that you would expect from someone who was beholden to them due to campaign contributions. This isn't rocket science. Look at campaign contributions and how certain industries or unions funded a given candidate in the past and you'll always see them show the most unwillingness to go after those particular groups. That's always the case.

If you really think the bankers on Wall Street are dumb enough to just give her money without already knowing they'll get what they want in return, then I have a bridge to sell you. Like Obama in 2008 over McCain, they were certain he would win and wanted to get listened to by the future President who once elected appointed a bunch of their Wall Street cronies to key posts.

We can talk all we want about how best to implement left-leaning policies and such and disagreeing with Sanders or the vagueness of some of his proposals is certainly fine. But to act at all like Clinton's economic and foreign affairs proposals are anything close to what the left truly wants is just plain bonkers. The problem isn't Clinton's implementation of change being too weak, it's the fact that it's often not enough change to begin with...it's like said industry is always putting the thumb on her proposals and saying, "Well, wait a minute. We don't want that."

And again, Clinton will accomplish nothing through the House anyway to actually try and put limits on shadow banking or bring about a $12 minimum wage, so you still end up with jack in that regard whether you elect her or Sanders. Republican House = No dice. To me, I'd rather see real liberalism be stonewalled then have your demands watered down for no reason. It likely won't be until well into the 2020s that Democrats can elect a President with the full wind of Congress in their sails. Until then, it's going to be a lot of talk and no action thanks to the Republican House.
 
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Don't forget their unearned sense of entitlement (Bernie's demands! Donald's rich so he's right!) and hermetically sealed certitude (math!).

It really would be nice to watch two shouty men try to mainsplain their vague, nonspecific plans/slogans and total lack/interest in foreign policy to one another.

IMMA BUILD A WALL!
IMMA MAKE WALL STREET PAY FOR THAT WALL!

Maybe a grand compromise can be reached? The two of them live in unicorn and puppy land, so why not?
[emoji813]
 
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