I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

If by some horrible twist of fate, he actually gets the nom, I expect him to swing to the center so fast it will make heads spin.

Oh and just for some extra doomsayin' if you thought the gross insubordination and other general bullshit from our boys in uniform has been disgusting under Obama, hoo boy are we in for a treat under HC

― Sith Dog (El Tomboto), Wednesday, February 10, 2016 9:02 PM

really? i mean yeah she's a broad and too smart etc. but is that worse than being black/HUSSEIN/secretly hating america?

here they all are at the Swinging Center

http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/GTY_trump_wedding_clintons_jef_150806_16x9_992.jpg

I know that the Sanders camp believes they can turn out people who’ve become alienated from the political process. As long as I’ve been following politics, it has been a left-wing fantasy that legions of disconnected non-voters will suddenly flood the polls if they’re offered a sufficiently progressive candidate. I’ve never seen anything save wishful thinking to back it up.

tbh i mostly believe this. left-wingers like to imagine that there’s this huge demographic of disaffected people who are natural progressives but just don’t realize it yet. i have a lot less faith in people than these folks, i guess.

So what I just said is that this really is going to suck no matter who wins. Lesser of two evils indeed, possibly like I've never experienced.
― Sith Dog (El Tomboto), Wednesday, February 10, 2016 7:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yup. i’m already gearing up for the most depressing general presidential election since i started voting.

btw, thought experiment: if term limits weren’t a thing, obama would win a third term, wouldn’t he? even though his numbers are kind of low right now.

^^^
possibly!

wow, david mamet has endorsed cruz? i knew he had passed through the looking glass, but wow.

seems fitting that most of trump's celebrity support comes from other megalomaniacal, macho types.

you know i rly used to think this

It's not just that he uses the term "socialist". I think his specific policies, as a whole, are just too far left to be viable in a national election. I think that does by default make HRC a better candidate. Her policy goals are more realistic.

― o. nate, Wednesday, February 10, 2016 8:22 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but the gop is literally throwing up donald fucking trump and ted cruz, a man unloved in all his life's endeavors. at this point the winner of the dem nomination is the likely winning candidate. i know that his far leftism will get trashed but cruz and trump are such fucking easy targets! it doesnt even matter! this is a weird election! embrace this shit! the gop is not going to nominate a "safe" choice this year, so rolling the dice with bernie is a worthwhile bet.

like cruz is repulsive on a molecular level and the anti-trump animus is so strong that no amount of centrist pivoting will work, the gop brand is so fucked

this. the most mystifying thing to me in this whole campaign is the assumption (even by sanders! at least publicly) that hillary clinton is this extremely accomplished, long-serving politician. she was barely in the senate longer than obama (and never held elected office before that, unlike him), she was a shitty cabinet member, what else...? i guess her just being in the public eye for so long has fooled people into thinking that amounts to something more than it does.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Wednesday, February 10, 2016 5:12 PM

c'mon now. she lived in the fucking white house for eight years, she's been a senator and a secretary of state, and no one has ever accused her of being dumb. you can argue that she was no good at those roles and you can argue that that experience does not necessarily translate to being a good 'decider-in-chief', but tbph she knows more about the way the federal government works than basically any non-incumbent ever

there are plenty of reasons not to vote for her, but disdaining her qualifications is bullshit

most of Sanders' Big Ideas were advocated somewhere on the mainstream political spectrum in 1966-76. I know you ppl who weren't alive don't quite believe it even tho you've read books about it, but it's true.

which is why I don't consider him a socialist!

i know, youre ok

i think you could recognize that living in the white house and being a senator give you a lot of insight into how the federal government works, and also believe, fairly, that someone could have done those things and still not be an "extremely accomplished, long-serving politician."

Could Eleanor Roosevelt have made a good president? Who knows.

Yeah, he doesn't want to socialize the means of production. Is it basically a strategic move on his part? "Own it before they try to tar you with it"?

3xp

he calls himself a democratic socialist

This is basically how I understand democratic socialism and it's pretty far from what Sanders is advocating. I might call him a social democrat, which isn't the same thing imo.

I think a social democrat is more literally what Sanders is but I also don't know that the order of the two words is super important except for pedants.

"Democratic socialist" definitely sounds a lot edgier than "social democrat" in the context of American politics, where anything "socialist" has historically been a no-go. God bless Bernie for rehabilitating the term. Gives me hope for the future.

Yeah, tbc, I'm not worked up about the accuracy of his usage. I'm just curious about/interested in why he made the choice. It seems intentionally edgy, as you say.

surely it's just a legacy of the cold war, when he presumably first started using it - - - i'm a socialist yes but don't confuse me with an autocratic command-economy guy, i'm a DEMOCRATIC socialist. that sounds dumb but in a weird way i get it - it at least hints at what the politics might be although still leaving a huge range of what policies you might be advocating for. conceptually speaking it may actually be a better description of the position than "social democrat," notwithstanding that the latter has a conventional definition understood by millions and millions of people (a few thousand of whom live in the US but nevermind).

Couldn't remember who won Nevada in 2008, only that there was some dust-up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Democratic_caucuses,_2008#Casino_Caucus_Lawsuit

Clinton won the vote by about 5%, Obama won a few more delegates. Large Latino vote. I would think Sanders could win it coming off New Hampshire, but I don't know.

I'm pretty sure the GOP is getting 10% with Latinos in the general so they're kinda fucked

ok, so clinton is a massive political opportunist and will go whichever way the prevailing political winds blow. my question is, is this really the worst possible outcome?

obviously this has bad features. if somebody runs on opposing a canadian oil pipeline and then decides to do a volte-face because the energy lobby gave them a lot of money, sure, that sucks.

on the other hand, let's talk gay marriage. clinton was all in favor of the "traditional family" or whatever until the gay rights movement really turned up the heat, and then she starts quoting macklemore or whatever. so yes, she refused to stand by her principles, but those principles were crap principles and weren't worth standing by. and then you have everybody on the republican side still chanting "adam and eve, not adam and steve".

so clinton is a politicians' politician, an untrustworthy snake, but one that gives much more power to the will of the people than the rabid ideologues who control the republican party. if we want change, isn't it better to have a president who's amenable to it, under the right conditions, than one who will close down the schools rather than integrate them?

"my question is, is this really the worst possible outcome?"

Considering who is running on the Republican side obv the answer to this question is a resounding no.

so clinton is a politicians' politician, an untrustworthy snake, but one that gives much more power to the will of the people than the rabid ideologues who control the republican party. if we want change, isn't it better to have a president who's amenable to it, under the right conditions, than one who will close down the schools rather than integrate them?

no one on this thread's arguing in favor of the GOP.

their presidents are the only ones who get Democrats marching

"Could Eleanor Roosevelt have made a good president? Who knows."

Lady Bird could have done it. She was a smart cookie.

As long as I’ve been following politics, it has been a left-wing fantasy that legions of disconnected non-voters will suddenly flood the polls if they’re offered a sufficiently progressive candidate

left-wingers like to imagine that there’s this huge demographic of disaffected people who are natural progressives but just don’t realize it yet

tbh many right-wingers also have similar fantasies - about there being a silent majority of conservatives who will vote when offered a sufficiently conservative candidate. Also that lots of nonvoters are natural conservatives who don't realize it yet, and if limited government / freedom were sold correctly it is a path to certain victory.

Dem debate in WI tonight, tune in for HRC 112.0

a friend of mine posted this on facebook, the front page of the Richmond Times Dispatch:

http://i.imgur.com/0tQoS7a.jpg

something seems misleading about the way they're presenting the results, but i can't quite put my finger on it...

As long as I’ve been following politics, it has been a left-wing fantasy that legions of disconnected non-voters will suddenly flood the polls if they’re offered a sufficiently progressive candidate

was cool when that actually happened with obama tho

Karl, there were 284K rep votes and 249k dem votes - so the rep bar would be taller - perhaps not that much taller, it's hard to tell. Or do you mean something else?

It makes it look like Trump got more votes than Sanders did.

xp that line was probably the most OTM thing in the Goldberg piece. OTOH I don't think that's the only component of the "revolution" Sanders is talking about -- it's also about reenergizing the voting left and encouraging other progressive candidates to run, particularly on small donations.

This raises another question for me though, re the economics of small donations. I gave money to the Sanders campaign and it was the first campaign contribution I've ever made. But I don't know how many different progressive candidates I could contribute to, year after year, and more importantly I'm not sure how much people less well off can do that and how much total money it can produce. Like I don't know if this is sustainable vs just a momentary burst of excitement.

saw christie's behavior toward rubio in the last repbulican debate described as a "murder suicide"

So, every Liberal Democ has that fant where he puts over the message "I've got something for EVERYBODY!!!" and they all go YEAH!!!

was cool when that actually happened with obama tho

Yeah except for the progressive part

he wuz their rockstar

Sanders strikes me as smart and I feel like he is *up to something* here, but I would love to be able to pick his brain about whether he really has a grand strategy here or not.

Give your cents to candidates and your money to causes. The causes push the candidates.

Karl, there were 284K rep votes and 249k dem votes - so the rep bar would be taller - perhaps not that much taller, it's hard to tell. Or do you mean something else?

249k dem votes is about 87.6% of the 284K republican votes, so the blue bar should be 87.6% of the height of the red. this is what it would look like if it were proportionately presented, since 438 pixels is 87% of 500 pixels:

http://i.imgur.com/Wa6NIZ9.jpg

i doubt they did it on purpose or anything, i think they just don't khow how to accurately present information

was cool when that actually happened with obama tho

obama's platform was never particularly progressive and he got to surf in on the worst financial crisis since the great depression / a messy of a bush presidency. if the political atmosphere today were what it was in 2008, who knows, bernie might actually have a chance. so who knows, maybe he will after 8 years of ted cruz.

messy = mess

actually the blue bar should be even higher, since i couldn't measure all the way to the top of trump's head

i feel like woodward and bernstein!!!!!11

so who knows, maybe he will after 8 years of ted cruz.

our first octogenarian jewish socialist president

I think they did it for graphic reasons -- if they switched positions you wouldn't be able to fit all the GOP candidates in the red bar. I doubt it was deliberate distortion but who knows.

yeah, i'm sure it was just incompetence, but you should never present data in a misleading way just so you can fit a headline in or fit all the GOP candidate names in.

im finding it really difficult to feel invested this election. bernie is fine i guess and i agree w/ a lot of his policies, definitely more than HCm but i find it really difficult to get excited by him the way so many of my #feelthebern friends do who post like 25 fucking things a day on FB about how evil HC is and how much of an amazing hero bernie is. like there is little to convince me that he is any different than previous leftist democratic candidates who fail in every primary. this feels very true to me:

As long as I’ve been following politics, it has been a left-wing fantasy that legions of disconnected non-voters will suddenly flood the polls if they’re offered a sufficiently progressive candidate

left-wingers like to imagine that there’s this huge demographic of disaffected people who are natural progressives but just don’t realize it yet

though i do remember feeling very optimistic about obama and back then i really did see him as a bright new wave challenger to standard moderate democrats like HC. i remember really really hating HC in 2008 the way my friends do now. but now i am just kind of eager for this primary to be over, w/ HC as the nominee. it is kind of shitty i know but maybe i'm more cynical than i used to be? there is something very annoying about my #feelthebern friends and my response is kind of "omg stop trying to make bernie happen"

i have a lot of friends trying to convince me otherwise but im really not optimistic about bernie's chances in a general election even against some slimy shitbag like cruz or perhaps especially trump.