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

maniac spitefully pulling the country apart with his bare hands

so we would be living in the TrumpVerse?

you guys are describing the exact scenario GOP is saying is happening right now under Obama.

where are you going with this?

over a cliff

Re: Adam Bruneau. I have clear memories of every president from Kennedy onward and a fairly good understanding of every administration beginning with LBJ. I can honestly say that every president has signed off on laws and pursued policies that I thought were harmful and contrary to good government, but I can honestly say that, on balance, more harm was done by the least harmful Republican than by the most harmful Democrat.

This is a subjective call, because it pits LBJ's Great Society initiatives and Vietnam escalation (much good & much harm) against Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon (much harm) set beside his ineffectiveness and general lack of accomplishment (I well recall Whip Inflation Now), but I think it is defensible. If it becomes a question of the aggregate harm done by each party's presidents, then the Republicans have done much more harm. By far. Reagan alone sees to that, even without the addition of Dubya.

Many years ago I read G.Stephanopoulos's memoir and iirc he made the Clinton White House sound like a battle between Gore and the political advisers (pushing to the center) and Hillary (pushing to the left) Nearly identical to takes about Obama WH btw

― Blowout Coombes (President Keyes), Wednesday, February 17, 2016 7:34 PM (1 hour ago)

that's interesting. i should prob finally get around to reading that.

Charles Pierce calls him The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs.

Killer Mike getting shit from the HillBill Machine

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/killer-mike-sexism-uterus-sanders-clinton/463167/

"I'll take 'URLs that sound like Underworld lyrics" for $600"

chronic chronic chronic

Killer Mike getting shit from the HillBill Machine

saw this on WaPo - out of context it sounds bad, in context it's pretty wgaf

greil marcus on why he supports HRC:

It’s clear she’s a poor candidate. Far too many people don’t like her and they don’t trust her. Some of that has to do with a congenital inability to answer a question about some pseudo-scandal directly (even a supporter like me had to think, “How dumb do you think we are?” when she explained her e-mail account with the need to talk to her mother about Chelsea’s wedding and how it was a hassle to carry two Blackberrys when obviously she wouldn’t have been carrying any). But by comparison, has any major news item touting the e-mail story—and the New York Times ran daily or daily-multiple stories for weeks and goes back to it at every chance—have they or any major news organization brought up the fact that the George W. Bush administration routinely channeled White House Iraq e-mails and millions more on controversial subjects to the Republican National Committee server, so they would be protected from FOI and the courts, a violation infinitely bigger, more serious, and more corrupt than anything Hillary has been accused of? But a lot more of why people don’t trust Hillary is phony noise kicked up by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, which existed when she named it and exists now—then it really had a source and a center, Richard Mellon Scaife, now it’s more diffused but no less real—and the New York Times, which is congenitally unable to run a single story on Hillary without a deep dig of some kind, regardless of how harmless the story is otherwise. They still refer to Whitewater, a story they invented, or were fed, as if it ever amounted to anything.

http://greilmarcus.net/ask-greil/

"Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon (much harm)"

this was lousy but was it 'much harm'? the harm was already done. nixon never regained any credibility or favor.

Well, thanks to the Ford pardon Old Man Ronnie got a pass on Iran-Contra

established precedent that the President is above the law

xp

like, no matter what happens or nakedly criminal a President may be, he/she must not be prosecuted under any circumstances "for the good of the country" is now an established political truism

that post is, um, missing some words but you get the idea

thank you, Most Incoherent Critical Eminence of All Time, for going from A to Not-A there.

yeah my sister said the exact same words to me that KM quoted xp

(that was a ref to Marcvus obv)

at least the pardon cost Ford that squeaker of an election

xps

Ford's premature pardon of Nixon short-circuited the necessary precedents for how to handle a lawless president.

presidents have gotten away with worse since, no pardons needed.

well, worse/in the same ballpark, i dont want to have that argument again

man i shudder to look back on Marcus's pro-Clinton 90s writing, that stuff seems like it's from a whole other country now

a lot of really awful people came up in the Ford administration

http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Vulcans-History-Bushs-Cabinet/dp/0143034898

i mean i guess that's true of any GOP administration from our perspective isn't it.

yeah marcus's argument that clinton was better than bush or reagan not because of his policies but because he made ppl feel "more welcome in america" or whatever seems especially ridiculous now

baby boomers

In light of the Killer Mike thing, I don't think what he said was *that* bad in context, but I'm still just gonna reiterate this (SD = Sady Doyle)

The thing is I think SD is identifying real sexism, I don't think it's just a matter of seeing everything through a distorting lens. I do see a lot of ugly, stupid comments from male Sanders supporters. Granted, we're talking about the internet, so you don't really know who you're dealing with or how many there are. But I have seen a few friends or friends of friends do it, and I really, really wish men would just stop accusing women of only voting for Hillary because she's a woman, that is just so not men's place to say, and it smacks of conservative "race card" type rhetoric. And I get how that probably makes SD feel even more like circling the wagons around Hillary.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Monday, February 8, 2016 5:19 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when it comes down to it, i have a lot more respect for hillary supporters that *are* openly doing so because she's a woman, because fuck that *is* truly important, than for those who try to jury-rig up an apologetic progressive case for her

man alive otm (have not looked into killer mike soundbite)

the weirdest thing about that Killer Mike bit is that he did it exactly the way Trump does it (ie, the "I'm just quoting what someone else said!" excuse)

Oh God, shut up about 'HillBill' machine every time there's a story that's critical of someone other than her. Such a crybaby response. 'Wah, a story is against US, must be big bad establishment!!!' Grow up, Killer Mike said something kinda dumb, media made it worse. That's what happens.

When we have, if not 50, then let's say at least 30-40 women senators, and maybe at least 15-20 female governors, then maybe it will be ok for men to complain about women backing women qua women.

it would be truly important, goole, if we weren't facing an extinction event that requires the dismantling of the current US economy versus otoh an entrenched status quo Third Way Democrat who won't move the ball enough.

yeah marcus's argument that clinton was better than bush or reagan not because of his policies but because he made ppl feel "more welcome in america" or whatever seems especially ridiculous now

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, February 17, 2016 3:33 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

accidentally bombing the chinese embassy in belgrade was kind of like "suspicious minds"

Like I said, I think it's important, I just don't think it's important enough in this case. If it was Hillary vs some male mainline democrat I'd probably say "time for a female president."

I don't have an "us" you goddamn Dane in a china shop

http://s12.postimg.org/5w9ycc48t/jebbushdickhead.jpg

im pretty okay supporting HRC, her being a woman is super important to me and i don't really think she'd be considerably different from obama in terms of policies, and i do think she has a better chance in the general than sanders

idk, i know this is a super weird election and that a sanders v trump or sander vs cruz matchup would be a little unpredictable

"if we weren't facing an extinction event that requires the dismantling of the current US economy"

i think if sanders makes this case he stands no chance in the general. ppl are accepting of socialism as an enhancement or mediation of american capitalism but i don't think the polity is looking to "dismantle" the current US economy and would find such a prospect terrifying.

when it comes down to it, i have a lot more respect for hillary supporters that *are* openly doing so because she's a woman, because fuck that *is* truly important, than for those who try to jury-rig up an apologetic progressive case for her

― goole, Wednesday, February 17, 2016 4:37 PM (16 minutes ago)

yup

i haven't gotten thru either of these yet but they look to be taking on this topic w/ different angle from SD

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/02/why_one_feminist_woman_is_voting_for_hillary_clinton_over_bernie_sanders.html

http://www.thenation.com/article/which-women-support-hillary-and-which-women-cant-afford-to/

the weirdest thing about that Killer Mike bit is that he did it exactly the way Trump does it

i have no idea how Trump does it but sounds like bullshit.

the idea that a man can't say that is some fucking liberal PC garbage, embodied by that Doyle chump.

i don't think the polity is looking to "dismantle" the current US economy

oh no, it's not, that's why we're doomed.

The feminist case for Sanders makes sense to me, I just kind of think it loses some of its salience when it's men making that case.

that Goldberg piece is v good

xp

yea great piece, i agree w/ pretty much all of it

Listening to James Adomian & Anthony Atamanuik doing their Sanders vs Trump routine, I do wonder what actually would happen if you get Bernie or Hillary sharing the same the same stage as the guy. Both have very true, righteous justifications to loathe everything about him, but would both be able to handle him in his blowhardy train-careening-off-the-track-and-not-caring? It's like they both hav had to put up with conservatives fuckheads giving them shit in real-time for years, would they be able to deftly counter it or would they get flummoxed? How does that 2-6 hours of television play out?

On a related note, here's the recent Comedy Bang Bang appearance of the Sanders/Trump show, where Gilbert Gottfried occasionally chimes in to ask them about very specific episodes of early 80s American sitcoms:

http://www.earwolf.com/episode/trump-vs-bernie/

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/feb/17/us-presidential-election-campaign-live-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-donald-trump-nevada-caucus-south-carolina-primary

Everyone agrees these things don't mean anything anymore, and now Trump reverses the process completely--he'll turn this into a 10- or 15-point bump in the polls.

Greil Marcus wrote one Clinton essay at the height of impeachment hysteria that's almost as stirring as Joan Didion's "Vichy Washington," but he's a classic case of a writer becoming besotted with a literary creation that has no bearing on reality.