2016 US Presidential Election Thread XIII

[LuckyNumber7]

I don't see why any of that makes criticizing the pneumonia thing okay.

What she did -- you or I probably would've done. If you want to criticize her on other talking points, and say she isn't open about things, go on and do that. But you don't get to just lump this in there. This isn't somehow "proof" of your point, if it's normal behavior.

[Popmartijn]

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

It's the lack of transparency that opens up the possibility that they could hide a bigger issue from the public, just as her e-mail response continually changed with the public's growing knowledge of what happened.

But the thing is, she is fairly transparent. Certainly more transparent than Trump, likely more than Stein, Johnson (and also Sanders) too. About her whole life is made public, including tax records, health records, policy records, work schedules, etc.
This was also remarked in an article a few days ago: Trump is secretive, too. Why do we only hear about Clinton’s secrecy?

Only, with about 25 years of being told she is/must be hiding something and spreading some outright lies about her I have the feeling her opponents have succeeded in what they were trying to achieve. No-one is believing Clinton anymore.

It's just so much work. Making Hillary the nominee is like picking the dog from the shelter with an abundance of issues to deal with...this would have been a lot easier with someone that brings in millions like Bernie or someone safe like Biden. But people are in such a rush to elect a woman. My response? Baby steps.

It's more like that she's likely the best dog you can get from the shelter. Only, you've been told all the time that there are an abundance of issues to deal with. Not that there are many, but you're led to believe that way.
With Bernie, it's a cute old dog, but without any information of the many issues he might have ('But he looks soooo cute!'). Biden is the friendly dog, that unfortunately was hiding in the back for too long until the persons picking up a dog from the shelter were already away.

[Moonlit_Angel]

This conversation's making me want to go to a shelter and take home a dog now.

[LuckyNumber7]

I think you're going for a stretch there on Stein and Johnson.

Typically, third party candidates rely on being open and relatable. They're going to be the most out-there candidates known.

[iron yuppie]

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

But if she knew she was terminally ill and had two years to live, would she actually tell us?

There is no way she is egomaniacal enough to take office knowing full well she would die within a year or so.

[BigMacPhisto]

Originally Posted by Popmartijn

It's more like that she's likely the best dog you can get from the shelter. Only, you've been told all the time that there are an abundance of issues to deal with. Not that there are many, but you're led to believe that way.

Right. So the best Democrat that could have been the nominee and in the most favorable environment ever for Democrats with a high approval rating sitting President, a great economy and a historically massive demographic advantage is the woman who can't even clear 45% in the polling averages? The one who in four-way polling is now merely two points ahead of Donald Trump - the lowest polling Republican since Goldwater?

Not to mention that a great share of the third party vote is in fact a reaction to her candidacy (usually harming her more than Trump in the polls) or that there's at least a few million young Democrats that won't even vote for her according to a recent FiveThirtyEight article.

No, she's absolutely a weak candidate when it comes to campaigning. Historically terrible, in fact, for this party.

And of course it fucking matters. It's all about getting people to the polls and the many down ballot elections and propositions that are occurring across the country. Clinton is muting enthusiasm and could cause millions of those on the left to not even show up. But I guess we should just ignore the ample evidence of how general voters, the public and left-leaning minds feel and act like she's some legendary political figure that everybody secretly loves.

Again, being the nominee does not make you the strongest candidate. I can't begin to understand why people can't wrap their head around that logic.

[LuckyNumber7]

Did you think, in a time like the current one, with the state of current media, that somehow the polarity of red v blue was going to change?

Seriously? It should have, and did, get worse. National polls will be closer than ever I imagine. I still expect the current state of the electoral college and political map to favor democrats. That's ultimately why the term "landslide" gets thrown around.

[DaveC]

awesome, let's talk some more about bernie sanders and the primaries! we haven't done nearly enough of that here.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by DaveC

awesome, let's talk some more about bernie sanders and the primaries! we haven't done nearly enough of that here.

You know he would have slaughtered Trump right? He would have made the blacks stay in at night and quiet as well.

And the messiah never gets sick. We had the perfect candidate and threw it away.


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[BigMacPhisto]

The public likes what it doesn't like and they don't like Hillary. Should have went with someone they like more, like anybody else with a (D) in front of their name.

But that's the Democratic establishment for ya. They just don't understand what Americans really want.

[Popmartijn]

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

No, she's absolutely a weak candidate

[...]

Again, being the nominee does not make you the strongest candidate. I can't begin to understand why people can't wrap their head around that logic.

I actually agree with you on this. Clinton is a weak candidate. Though she's the best for the job. It's just that doing the job and getting chosen for the job are two different animals.
I've seen it being argued that campaigning is a very male activity, with all the shouting, the bluster, the showmanship, trying to upend the other. Whereas Clinton's female actions (the listening tours, among others) don't translate well to overall voter enthusiasm (not to mention the 25-year smearing campaign which now lead many to believe she is pure evil). Plus, her campaigning is not as exciting as Trump's.

I think during the primaries the Democratic voters looked more at the contents, at what a Clinton presidency would be like. Whereas in the general campaign it's more like what Clinton looks like right now (as shouted out by Trump). Which is not presenting her in her best light.

[DaveC]

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

The public likes what it doesn't like and they don't like Hillary. Should have went with someone they like more, like anybody else with a (D) in front of their name.

But that's the Democratic establishment for ya. They just don't understand what Americans really want.

right, you're the only one who really knows what americans want

narcissist, delusional, closed-minded, sore loser, bigoted (i toned this last one down, for the record)...ya know, for someone who claims to hate labels so much you sure do a bang-up job of making them stick to yourself.

[BigMacPhisto]

Originally Posted by Popmartijn

I think during the primaries the Democratic voters looked more at the contents, at what a Clinton presidency would be like.

Eh, that's giving too much credit to voters (regardless if they voted for Sanders or Clinton). Most people don't pay much attention to politics or make a choice on some emotional reasoning or a scant bit of knowledge. Case in point, the polling that found that most Clinton supporters couldn't even name a single policy platform.

There's plenty of well informed people and many in this thread that supported Clinton because of her experience and/or policies, that's certainly true. But Clinton really had a built in win from the start between black voters that saw her as an extension of the Obama Presidency and moderate (and sometimes slightly racist) white voters that supported her in 2008.

Clinton has her own issues with generating excitement, but I don't really see that as the problem at all. Being too defensive and inadvertently playing into the image that a large swathe of the public has of you (sometimes based on false smears, sometimes based on the truth) is what has really harmed her candidacy. She won't take a stance on anything risky, she'll go for months without answering media questions, the campaign will try to say that something never happened and then keep changing their statements when more evidence comes out - whether it's her health, e-mails, etc.

And on top of all that, the campaign became exactly what we all feared and what many of us expected given her high unfavorable ratings. It's merely an attack on Trump for being a bad man who says bad things rather than about what Clinton can do for the country. And it's the latter, a positive image for the future like Obama in 2008 that actually gets people to the polls, not a lot of negativity about the other guy. See how well that worked for John Kerry in 2004.

[bono_212]

A vote for Hillary is a vote for racism.

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[Axver]

Originally Posted by trojanchick99

As for the debates it's going to be a farce. Trump will be applauded when he can spell cat, after having been supplied with the letters c and t. Clinton will be lambasted for not being able to solve the Riemann Hypothesis.

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

But if she knew she was terminally ill and had two years to live, would she actually tell us? I think we all know the answer is no. It's the lack of transparency that opens up the possibility that they could hide a bigger issue from the public, just as her e-mail response continually changed with the public's growing knowledge of what happened.

But if she knew she was a lizard person, would she actually tell us? I think we all know the answer is no. It's the lack of transparency that opens up the possibility that they could hide her true lizard form from the public, just as her e-mail response continually changed with the public's growing knowledge of what happened.

[anitram]

We actually had a politician run and nearly win in Canada though he knew he was terminal and died only a few months after that election. Which again, he could have won. He remains one of the most beloved figures in polls regardless of the fact the public knows he wasn't forthright.

(No, I don't think that Hillary is one foot in the grave.)

[DaveC]

Who are you referring to?

[namkcuR]

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

But if she knew she was terminally ill and had two years to live, would she actually tell us? I think we all know the answer is no. It's the lack of transparency that opens up the possibility that they could hide a bigger issue from the public, just as her e-mail response continually changed with the public's growing knowledge of what happened.

It's just so much work. Making Hillary the nominee is like picking the dog from the shelter with an abundance of issues to deal with...this would have been a lot easier with someone that brings in millions like Bernie or someone safe like Biden. But people are in such a rush to elect a woman. My response? Baby steps.

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

Right. So the best Democrat that could have been the nominee and in the most favorable environment ever for Democrats with a high approval rating sitting President, a great economy and a historically massive demographic advantage is the woman who can't even clear 45% in the polling averages? The one who in four-way polling is now merely two points ahead of Donald Trump - the lowest polling Republican since Goldwater?

Not to mention that a great share of the third party vote is in fact a reaction to her candidacy (usually harming her more than Trump in the polls) or that there's at least a few million young Democrats that won't even vote for her according to a recent FiveThirtyEight article.

No, she's absolutely a weak candidate when it comes to campaigning. Historically terrible, in fact, for this party.

And of course it fucking matters. It's all about getting people to the polls and the many down ballot elections and propositions that are occurring across the country. Clinton is muting enthusiasm and could cause millions of those on the left to not even show up. But I guess we should just ignore the ample evidence of how general voters, the public and left-leaning minds feel and act like she's some legendary political figure that everybody secretly loves.

Again, being the nominee does not make you the strongest candidate. I can't begin to understand why people can't wrap their head around that logic.

BMP, you are making assumptions and generalizations.

You keep going on and on about how everyone is in a hurry to elect the first female president and that's the only reason Hillary is the nominee, but I'm not sure you realize how reductive that is, how insulting it is to so many people who are supporting her. As though it can't be any other reason.

Furthermore, if we're just talking about the Democratic political establishment, the elected class, I would argue that if there's a strong bias towards Hillary - and there is - it's not simply because she's a woman, it's at least as much, if not more so, because she's center-left and Bernie isn't. The party has seemed to be hellbent on retaining its centrist credentials in recent years. I mean, it's been centrist for the better part of forty years, but under Howard Dean's chairmanship, it seemed to be drifting leftward - we had the 2006 waive elections where we gained control of both houses in Congress and Pelosi, a native of San Francisco, one of the cradles of progressivism in America, became the Speaker of the House(and yes, the first female one), and we had the 2008 election where Obama became a phenomenon.

And then Dean's term ended, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz became chairperson, and the party has seemed to want to correct its leftward lurch. So if you want to make generalizations about an institutional bias towards Hillary, it might be more appropriate to make it about the DNC being afraid of being too leftist than making it solely about wanting to elect the first female president(though I'm sure there isn't a Democrat or a Progressive who doesn't like that idea because, frankly, we should all want to break that glass ceiling).

Another generalization you're making is that all Hillary supporters - whether originally Bernie supporters or Hillary from the start - thought she was going to have an easy campaign. I can't speak for everyone, but I've always felt that a Hillary Clinton general election campaign would be brutal simply because I'm not sure I've seen an institutional hatred for a political candidate as ugly and fierce and relentless as the hatred the Republican Party and the right-wing have for Hillary in my lifetime(only ones that come close are Bill Clinton and Obama). It's one of the reasons I was so happy for Obama to come along in 2008, because I knew the GOP would make a Hillary general election campaign unbearable.

Now, this is the part where you say, 'but we could've had Sanders this time', but what you seem to refuse to want to admit is that a Sanders general election campaign would've been unbearable too for different reasons. We would've heard the words socialist and communist approximately 1000 times a day, and Bernie did not, from my point of view, give any indication during the primaries that he could adequately combat that line of attack. I mean, he wasn't even asked the question enough, but the few times he was, his response was too broad, too gentle, and too bland. He would just go into his, 'you know, if you poll people policy by policy, they actually like the sorts of policies we're talking about', and 'we already have socialism here, medicare is socialism, public education is socialism, the post office is socialism, etc etc'.

The GOP's socialist and communist attacks would have been vicious and relentless, and I wanted to see him be able to combat that by saying, listen, in a soviet-type communist system, the government owns everything, there is no freedom of the press and freedom of speech is very limited. We would have to repeal several amendments from the bill of rights including the first amendment. And do you seriously think this is what I want? Do you think I want to take away your freedom of speech, have you live in a society where the only news you get is the news the government produces, where every good you buy is manufactured by the government, etc etc, is that really what you think I want? That's ridiculous! All I want is for everyone to have healthcare, for the minimum wage to be higher, and for quality education to be available to everyone, that is it!

I wanted to see the ability to mount that kind of a vigorous counter-attack on the inevitable socialist/communist attacks and I didn't see it.

So either one of them would've given us a brutal general election campaign and to say that it would've been easy-peasy if we'd just nominated Bernie is just denial. I mean yeah, we wouldn't talking about the nominee's unfavorables or e-mail or pay-to-play every day, but we'd be buried in other nonsense about how electing Bernie would mean the end of our country as we know it.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by DaveC

Who are you referring to?

Jack Layton.

[DaveC]

Originally Posted by anitram

Jack Layton.

ah right. i was thinking of the liberal mp (mauril bélanger) who had als and died just this past summer, but was confused because your description didn't match, didn't even think of layton.

and to be honest i don't think that comparison works very well. layton was already the incumbent mp, leader of the national ndp party, and absolutely adored in his riding. he publicly announced his diagnosis well over a year before that election and only really took a turn for the worse a couple months after the election (the election was in may, that was the "orange crush" election where they became the official opposition if you recall, and it was july before he became unable to work anymore), and only a month before he died. he certainly did not know he was terminal before the election, and i strongly suspect that if he had known he wouldn't have run, and simply lent his support and name to campaigning for the ndp as much as he could before the end.

he won his seat and his party made enormous gains at the expense of the incumbent opposition party, but he didn't come anywhere close to "nearly win(ning)" if you're referring to becoming prime minister. the conservatives won an easy majority.