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  #4426  
Old 04-08-2017, 07:25 AM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm View Post
I believe it was then that you mocked my predictive abilities in your defense of Hillary, because, I guess, just what the U.S. needed was … another four to eight years of the Clintonistas! Heaven forfend that we a real Democrat be put back in the White House.
I’m not sure who you are talking about here — me? So, I am to blame for Bernie losing? :lol: Gosh, I wish I had such powers.

:rolleyes:
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm View Post
As per my fresh post upthread, my argument was not that “maybe Trump was better”; but rather than, if one were to believe his stated positions on certain key issues, he could indeed seem to be the lesser of two evils on those issues to tens of millions of working-class voters.
Yes, we've already established that if you append a bunch of things you did not say to your post from back then, it's much less ridiculous.

You did not, however, say those things last spring. You did hedge a bit after you were repeatedly pressed on how ridiculous that post was, but not in the manner you just did. It's hard to believe that it was your original intention when even after I initially criticized your post, you said this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm View Post
But please don’t get the wrong idea here. I will never vote for Trump, nor do I deem him “trustworthy” on anything. I am simply pointing out that given what he has said on certain key issues, vs. what Clinton has said (which is often different from what she has said in the past), there is no reason to think that Clinton is necessarily the lesser of two evils on those particular issues.
[bolding mine]

There are no disclaimers about how one might get that impression, or that it should be clear, but it would not be if you take Trump at his word (and ignore all the times he said the opposite, of course).

You preferred to pretend that they were equally dishonest, and/or that Trump was entirely unpredictable, when his record of actions in his life made it pretty clear the he, for example, does not give a single shit about working people. It was clear who would have better policies, even just going by Trump's public statements and record. Which I pointed out at the time - that thinking he was the lesser of two evils didn't just require assuming he wasn't lying, but that you would have to choose to disbelieve his many statements that contradicted those positions! It's not good enough to say based on his statements - because his statements did not consistently support the positions you were suggesting he might hold!

Now that that it seems none of the "intriguing possibilities" have come to pass, you have applied your strongest hedges yet to them, reducing them down to basically making no claim whatsoever. They're just a hypothetical about something incredibly implausible, or about how low information voters might see it. That's not how you presented it at the time.

And of course, that's about that "lesser evil" post.

This post... contains no such hedges.
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm View Post
The lesser of two evils is not at all clear in 2016

I will add that I think Trump, if elected, will do nothing to impede gay or transgender rights and will not appoint Scalias to the Supreme Court. All his rhetoric suggesting he will do such stuff is malarky to gull the rubes he knows he must court to win the nomination of the Dumb Party. The G.O.P. elites hate and fear Trump (just check out the hysterics at the Red State blogs) because they know he essentially is a socially liberal Democrat from New York who in the past has supported abortion rights, gun control, higher taxes on the "hedge fund guys" and has donated to and schmoozed with Hillary and other Demos. Additionally, on foreign policy, Hillary is the interventionist, neocon hawk in this race. Trump's recent foreign policy speech deployed the rhetoric of a fourth-grader, probably because Trump knows that most Americans have a fourth-grade mentality, but certain core principles he expressed were sound, foremost among them: do not go abroad in search of dragons to slay. Hillary, of course, is the biggest dragon slayer there is. How may times, dating back to 2008, has she mused aloud about "obliterating" Iran!

No, indeed, even if you support the "lesser of two evils" voting idea, it's not at all clear who the lesser evil is here.
But I'm sure I just forgot to read between the lines. When you said "I think Trump [...] will not appoint Scalias", it was incredibly uncharitable to suggest you really thought that.
Quote:
Or I suppose you are probably criticizing progressive Bernie voters in general for continuing to attack Clinton even when it seemed likely she would win the nomination. But this gets to the heart of why you now retroactively belittle my articulation last summer of a plausible Rust Belt path to victory from Trump, and why you are mistaken to do so.

You see, Erimir, you’ve got it precisely bassackwards. People from the left attacking Hillary did not cause Hillary to lose the election. Hillary caused Hillary to lose the election.
Right, I forgot that Hillary Clinton was the only person who had any agency when it came to the 2016 election. Similarly, Bernie caused Bernie to lose the primary, eh?

And not merely "attacking" and not when it merely "seemed likely". Making character-based attacks, often on the basis of innuendo, and promoting conspiracy theories about the DNC, and so forth. And when it was (not "seemed") extremely likely that she would be the nominee.

Sorry you didn't get your way, but once that was clear, yes, you should've focused your strategy on winning the general election with the nominee we were going to have.

(Also I don't see how your prediction about the Rust Belt affects whether these attacks were damaging and counterproductive.)
Quote:
Bernie supporters yelling from the left at you Hillary supporters were saying loud and clear:

Wake up! She doesn’t connect with the working class. That’s because she’s a Wall Street tool. She is not a good candidate. This is a Change Year. Either Bernie or Trump is likely to go to the White House. Why? Because tens of millions of working-class people have been utterly shit upon by for decades by the neoliberal globalist agenda embraced by both parties and they are fucking fed up.
I mean, if you want to say that other factors were important. Sure.

But no, there's no fucking way that saying "she's a Wall Street tool" or "she's not a good candidate" was helpful. You might want to say it didn't matter much, it wasn't that harmful. But it was harmful. You can't possibly think that you HELPED by doing that. And the chorus of other assholes saying the same shit certainly contributed as well.
Quote:
And she lost.

Blame you and her, not me or Bernie supporters, for the calamity of Trump.

You own it, not us.
I’m not sure who you are talking about here — me? So, I am to blame for Bernie losing? :lol: Gosh, I wish I had such powers.

Oh wait, I guess I can do this too:

I’m not sure who you are talking about here — me? So, I am to blame for Hillary losing? :lol: Gosh, I wish I had such powers.

So yup, there's no basis on which to criticize me for anything. I was merely a blameless and passive observer. :phew: no need to consider my behavior for future elections.

Guess what, sweetheart: You have agency too, despite your self-serving attempts to deny it. There is no exclusive ownership here.

(Of course, people like James Comey and Putin and the despicable assholes in the GOP and yes, Hillary Clinton and people on her campaign, and yes, Bernie Sanders too, have a far greater share of responsibility for the outcome than any of us by far.)
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  #4427  
Old 05-04-2017, 04:16 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election | FiveThirtyEight
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  #4428  
Old 05-08-2017, 12:33 AM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Comey thought she might win, but was concerned she wouldn't. He played both sides of the fence and comes out like a shit stained diaper, but no criminal charges from either side.

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  #4429  
Old 08-16-2017, 12:15 AM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Yup, three months later and I'm still feeling pretty good about the claims that

1. it was always obvious that Trump was far worse than Clinton
2. voting for a third-party or staying home because you didn't like Clinton was self-indulgent, stupid and harmful to the country (although of course not as harmful as voting for Trump)
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  #4430  
Old 08-16-2017, 01:01 AM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Quote:
Originally Posted by erimir View Post
Yup, three months later and I'm still feeling pretty good about the claims that

1. it was always obvious that Trump was far worse than Clinton
2. voting for a third-party or staying home because you didn't like Clinton was self-indulgent, stupid and harmful to the country (although of course not as harmful as voting for Trump)
Sadly, I expect a good portion of low information voters aren't paying attention any more now that the election is done. It's also possible there's a lot of people who don't get that no direct condemnation of white nationalists is almost as good as saying, "good job" to them.
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  #4431  
Old 08-16-2017, 07:54 AM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

But not all those who voted for a third-party or stayed home because they didn't like Clinton would consider themselves "low information". Far from it.

And one or two of them read this thread ...
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  #4432  
Old 08-16-2017, 08:58 AM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Quote:
Originally Posted by mickthinks View Post
But not all those who voted for a third-party or stayed home because they didn't like Clinton would consider themselves "low information". Far from it.

And one or two of them read this thread ...
Yes, I was bemoaning my expectation that low information voters probably aren't paying attention to Trump's antics. My comment doesn't exactly follow from erimir's statement, nor should you infer that I think a 3rd party or non- voter is automatically a low information voter.

not that soothing people who didn't vote for Clinton is high on my agenda, though, so I won't pretend to care if someone is insulted.
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  #4433  
Old 09-06-2017, 04:18 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Hillary Breaks Silence on Bernie and She's Not Wrong | Advocate.com

From the linkThe Democratic nominee for president faults "Bernie Bros" for their sexism and Sanders for helping Trump slide into the presidency.


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  #4434  
Old 09-06-2017, 05:11 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

This passage from Clinton’s book is pretty remarkable.

Quote:
“Throughout the primaries, every time I wanted to hit back against one of Bernie’s attacks, I was told to restrain myself.
You were told to restrain yourself? You wanted to be president. Don’t you make your own decisions?

Also, she very often did hit back against his attacks — this is just more of the good ol’ Clintonista disingenuousness, pioneered by her lower-lip-biting hubby during his retrogressive presidency.

Quote:
Noting that his plans didn’t add up…
Is that really true?

Quote:
… that they would mean raising taxes on the middle-class families …
Would they really?

Quote:
… or that they were little more than a pipe dream …
Evidence? Argument? Maybe elsewhere in the book she fleshes this out? :rolleyes:

Quote:
… all of this could be used to reinforce his argument that I wasn’t a true progressive.
But you aren’t a true progressive! True progressives don’t vote for a war in Iraq on non-existent justifications. True progressives don’t shill for Wall Street. True progressives don’t give a blank check to the American empire’s war machine. Etc.

Quote:
My team kept reminding me that we didn’t want to alienate Bernie supporters. President Obama urged me to grit my teeth and lay off Bernie as much as I could. I felt like I was in a straitjacket.”
Amazing. So here is the power dynamic of women being told to shush by men (which is real) and Hillary remains quiet — capitulating to and ratifying that very unfortunate dynamic!

This is just one passage from the book, of course, and lacks a broader context, but to me it just sounds like self-serving bullshit and is also ahistorical. Every candidate for a major party presidential nomination faces fierce intra-party competition for that prize. Thus all to some extent are hobbled by a bruising primary competition. Clinton was actually lucky that she only had two opponents for the nomination, one of whom dropped out early. Historically at least half a dozen and often more candidates compete for a nomination.

There’s no doubt Clinton was the victim of sexism, even from a lot of Bernie supporters. But that’s life, unfortunately. Maybe if she really had told Trump to back the fuck off when he was stalking her on stage during the debate, she would have won.
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  #4435  
Old 09-06-2017, 07:24 PM
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I read some of your foolish scree, then just skimmed the rest.
 
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Why is she acting like if only she had fought harder she would have won the Dem nomination.
I'm confused, didn't she beat Bernie?

Like, no one gives a shit about how effective the policies of someone who *didn't* become the nominee will be. And if this is all to eventually blame 'bernie bros' for her loss against Trump then she's more out of touch than I had assumed.
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  #4436  
Old 09-06-2017, 08:46 PM
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I read some of your foolish scree, then just skimmed the rest.
 
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Got around to reading the article, what a bunch of shit.
Quote:
"President Obama urged me to grit my teeth and lay off Bernie as much as I could. I felt like I was in a straitjacket.”
Yeah, it's Obama's fault, or Bernie bros fault, or anyone's fault but her own.

Quote:
"...paving the way for Trump's 'Crooked Hillary' campaign,”
Looks who's super out of touch, she's blaming Bernie for 'crooked hillary' as if that narative hasn't existed since the Clinton presidency.

I am curious how much the Bernie crowd manifested in her popular vote winning run, like is there an actual drop off in dem voters in high Bernie areas or is this just all imagined boogie men that keeps her from blaming herself.
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  #4437  
Old 09-06-2017, 09:27 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Personally I'm sick of hearing about it. Everyone failed miserably. There, blame assigned. Stop eating each other and get some shit done.
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  #4438  
Old 09-06-2017, 10:02 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm View Post
This passage from Clinton’s book is pretty remarkable.

Quote:
“Throughout the primaries, every time I wanted to hit back against one of Bernie’s attacks, I was told to restrain myself.
You were told to restrain yourself? You wanted to be president. Don’t you make your own decisions?
She decided to hire those people as advisors, and Obama was the president who got elected twice. If she had said "President Obama and all my advisors told me to attack, but I felt it better to exhibit restraint" you'd probably be saying "Look, she won't take good advice." I'm assuming you don't think a president should generally ignore their advisors (after all, we're experiencing what that can be like right now), so what's your point here?

I thought it was persuasive reasoning at the time to go easy on him, because she didn't need to go all-out to defeat Sanders. But that was operating on the assumption that Bernie wouldn't have run a bitter dead-end* campaign practically all the way to the convention. In hindsight, it would've been better for her to run harder against him and spend down more of her money to win a larger victory to prevent the idiotic narrative that he "almost" won and DNC perfidy in scheduling two debates on Saturdays and talking shit in private explained his loss.

But hindsight is 20/20. If we/the Democrats had known the Russian hacking and Comey shit would happen, obviously a lot of things would've gone down differently.

*By which I mean, he basically had no ability to win after mid-March. He needed like a 30 pt swing in the polls - and for it to happen before the next major primaries. Obviously nothing of the sort happened.
Quote:
Also, she very often did hit back against his attacks
She countered his attacks, sure, in saying they were wrong. She attacked him from the left on gun control. But she left a loooooot of potential attacks unused. She didn't really attack him from the right, or his personal history.
Quote:
Quote:
Noting that his plans didn’t add up…
Is that really true?
He said we'd save more money on drugs than we even spend on drugs, so it was definitely at least a little true. He also had an analysis projecting unrealistic economic growth under his plans, etc.
Quote:
Quote:
… that they would mean raising taxes on the middle-class families …
Would they really?
Yes, really. Countries with single payer have higher taxes in general, including for the middle class. Bernie's plans would have even increased taxes on the working class. This isn't even a controversial claim. Might as well ask "would I really pay higher taxes if I lived in Sweden?" :duh:

Now, they would certainly get benefits in exchange for these taxes, so particularly for the lower income brackets the benefits of single payer would likely outweigh the increase taxes. Exchanging your insurance premiums for taxes isn't necessarily a net loss. But for a lot of Americans, their main takeaway would be "your taxes will go up."
Quote:
Quote:
… or that they were little more than a pipe dream …
Evidence? Argument? Maybe elsewhere in the book she fleshes this out? :rolleyes:
Well, it is just one leaked page, so it's a bit much to act like it's an outrage that she doesn't elaborate. Either way, plenty of people have made arguments about why getting, say, single payer through the likely Congress Clinton or Sanders would've had to work with would've been extremely difficult if not impossible.

Which isn't even getting into how public opinion on some of those issues could sour if exposed to the predictable attacks that would be levied against them. Even Bernie primary voters weren't willing to pay enough taxes to fund his proposals. Maybe they could be convinced that it was worth it, but anti-tax sentiment in America is real and ads running on rotation about middle-class families being hit with thousands of dollars in new taxes (leaving out that they'd save by no longer be paying private insurance premiums) is a serious problem. Combined with the rural/conservative bias in the House putting the median Congressional seat to the right of the median American, and it would be difficult even with a small Democratic majority.

So yes, I think it's right to say that Bernie's plans wouldn't have come to fruition. A Democratic Senate majority was very plausible though. A House majority would've been a best case scenario. Executive actions and judicial appointments (in particular Scalia's replacement) would've likely been the most important thing to come out of a Clinton or Sanders presidency.
Quote:
Quote:
… all of this could be used to reinforce his argument that I wasn’t a true progressive.
But you aren’t a true progressive! True progressives don’t vote for a war in Iraq on non-existent justifications. True progressives don’t shill for Wall Street. True progressives don’t give a blank check to the American empire’s war machine. Etc.
Well, if a "true" progressive is only one that takes the progressive stance on every possible issue, then vanishingly few are. Bernie Sanders isn't a true progressive either!

True progressives don't say leave gay marriage to the states.
True progressives don't support protecting gun manufacturers from liability.
True progressives don't support bombing Yugoslavia.
True progressives don't support raising prison sentences for drug offenses.
True progressives don't support wasteful military manufacturing just because it's in their state.
True progressives don't support leaving most medical care* under corporate, for-profit control.
Yada yada. It's easy enough to come up with disqualifiers.

*Not health insurance, the actual provision of care. Only a neoliberal would want our hospitals and drug manufacturers to be run for profit!

It's better to evaluate holistically than to look at whether there are any deviations from a pure line, and it's still the case that her platform and overall record were progressive. If you take her meaning to be that his argument was implying that she's a centrist or conservative - and plenty of people did, characterizing her as "basically a Republican" - then I don't see anything objectionable about it. She wasn't basically a Republican, or even close.
Quote:
Quote:
My team kept reminding me that we didn’t want to alienate Bernie supporters. President Obama urged me to grit my teeth and lay off Bernie as much as I could. I felt like I was in a straitjacket.”
Amazing. So here is the power dynamic of women being told to shush by men (which is real) and Hillary remains quiet — capitulating to and ratifying that very unfortunate dynamic!
You concede that these sexist dynamics are real, but then immediately blame her for being persuaded that being more outspoken would alienate people?
Quote:
This is just one passage from the book, of course, and lacks a broader context, but to me it just sounds like self-serving bullshit and is also ahistorical. Every candidate for a major party presidential nomination faces fierce intra-party competition for that prize.
Al Gore didn't. Also in previous races, non-competitive candidates dropped out after it was clear that they couldn't win. Clinton stayed in longer than she should have in 2008, but she was viable for longer than Sanders was and the final result was much, much closer. So that was different about this primary. We also didn't have such a manifestly authoritarian, racist, sexist and temperamentally unsuited candidate on the other side. You all like to say that you predicted Clinton could lose to Trump (of course, Russian ratfucking and partisan behavior by the FBI* never played into these predictions at the time) - if so, Bernie Sanders and his supporters should've seen it as an all-hands-on-deck situation once it was clear that Clinton would be the nominee. It rather seemed to me that Bernie Sanders's late primary campaign was premised on the notion that Clinton had very little chance of losing to Trump, hence there was no reason to try to unify right away.

Either way, there's no way for her to lay blame elsewhere without it being "self-serving", regardless of whether her claims are accurate. Just because she made mistakes doesn't mean that nothing she says there about Bernie is true.

*The FBI investigation was brought up in many cases, but generally not while portraying it as a witchhunt or hypothesizing that Comey would screw over Clinton while simultaneously shielding Trump because he is a Republican.
Quote:
There’s no doubt Clinton was the victim of sexism, even from a lot of Bernie supporters. But that’s life, unfortunately.
So "that's life" therefore she should be criticized for ever talking about it?
Quote:
Maybe if she really had told Trump to back the fuck off when he was stalking her on stage during the debate, she would have won.
I rather doubt it. And she would be hearing no end of grief over how her moment of shrillness cost her the election.

Just as her moment of honesty in talking about the deplorable segment of Trump's voters (she didn't characterize them as all being deplorable!) is used against her, including by people who apparently think or thought that characterizing Clinton's supporters and mainstream Democrats as "corporate whores" and "shills" is the way to win them over to socialism.

Last edited by erimir; 09-06-2017 at 10:14 PM.
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  #4439  
Old 09-06-2017, 11:02 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ari View Post
Why is she acting like if only she had fought harder she would have won the Dem nomination.
I'm confused, didn't she beat Bernie?
She could've won by more, she ended the primary with a lot of cash on hand and a lot of potential attacks against Bernie unused.

Doing so would've changed the narrative about the primaries. But this is hindsight. Going all out to crush Bernie before March 15 (spending more in Michigan say, despite the polls predicting a solid win for her) might've resulted in him dropping out, and changing the course of the campaign significantly (for example, the emails released in the DNC hack? All from April or later - the ones discussing Bernie wouldn't have existed if he had dropped out in March). She's discussing the campaign, not sure why she wouldn't talk about what happened in the primaries in the book What Happened. If you think the primaries had any relevance to the general election, then what's confusing?
Quote:
Like, no one gives a shit about how effective the policies of someone who *didn't* become the nominee will be.
Like I said, it's called What Happened. If you don't give a shit about stuff that happened in the past, why do you care about what it says at all? She's saying she could've attacked his policy proposals more forcefully.
Quote:
And if this is all to eventually blame 'bernie bros' for her loss against Trump then she's more out of touch than I had assumed.
What does "eventually" mean? Solely? Primarily?

She lost by 80,000 votes. A lot of factors played into that. As Kael says, everybody fucked up.

And there's nothing unusual about her behavior here - tell me which presidential loser prostrated himself and accepted all the blame for their loss. There is none.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ari View Post
Got around to reading the article, what a bunch of shit.
Quote:
"President Obama urged me to grit my teeth and lay off Bernie as much as I could. I felt like I was in a straitjacket.”
Yeah, it's Obama's fault, or Bernie bros fault, or anyone's fault but her own.
Yes, that's probably what her book says, based on one page. I'm sure she never thinks she made any mistakes.
Quote:
Quote:
"...paving the way for Trump's 'Crooked Hillary' campaign,”
Looks who's super out of touch, she's blaming Bernie for 'crooked hillary' as if that narative hasn't existed since the Clinton presidency.
Having someone on the Democratic side validate that narrative is unusual and damaging. A lot of voters operate on heuristics, and one of them is that if both Democrats and Republicans are making the same claim, then it's more likely to be true. Democrats will tend to dismiss attacks that are coming exclusively from Republicans and vice versa.

Likewise, if Sanders had been the likely nominee and was leading, and Clinton was attacking him as a lazy layabout who sat around being a bum and stealing cable and the like until he was 40 before he came up with the bright idea of taxing rich people, it would not have been great.
Quote:
I am curious how much the Bernie crowd manifested in her popular vote winning run, like is there an actual drop off in dem voters in high Bernie areas
An analysis I saw found that about 12% of Bernie primary voters voted for Trump, with an additional 8% voting for third-party candidates. This was even higher in PA, with 16% voting for Trump. These numbers are only for registered Democrats, however. It's possible (I'd say probable) that the defection rate was higher for independents who voted for Bernie.

This is enough to have swung the election if they had all voted for Clinton. However, the rate of defection was not unusually high compared to other elections, and Clinton got some Republican defectors too (about a third of Kasich primary voters voted for Clinton, for example). And importantly, the segment of Bernie voters who voted for Trump were not necessarily ones who would've voted for any Democrat. There were Trump > Sanders > Clinton voters in places like West Virginia, who were registered Democrats who voted for Sanders only to register their displeasure with Clinton or the Democratic Party generally, not because they were progressives who long for socialism (those same voters, after all, voted for Jim Justice in the Democratic gubernatorial primary). Clinton tended to win the primary vote among voters who wanted the next president to continue in the vein of Obama, while Sanders would win both those who wanted a more liberal president AND a more conservative president (winning the latter by a smaller margin, however). Those protest/ratfucking voters would not have voted for Clinton or Sanders in the general election. I would guess that many of them were Clinton voters during the 2008 primaries, who voted for her because they didn't want a black president or simply to prolong the Democratic drama.

That same analysis found that Sanders-Trump voters were significantly less likely to think that, say, whites are advantaged versus other races (compared to others Sanders voters).

Nonetheless, none of that precludes Bernie's attacks during the primaries from having cost enough votes to make up that 80,000 vote difference, because, of course, only a minority of voters voted in the primaries at all. But plenty of other people heard things that were said during them.

The most blame outside of Clinton's campaign, though, I would assign to the media, Comey/the FBI and Russia. Bernie's behavior and that of others on the left had an effect too, but not as large as those. And of course, the large segment of voters who liked Trump's racism deserve even more. The Republicans who knew he was awful but couldn't stand to let Democrats get a win deserve more.
Quote:
or is this just all imagined boogie men that keeps her from blaming herself.
These aren't mutually exclusive. We already had the whole thing about her debate moment with Trump. I'm sure there will be plenty of second-guessing about her own behavior in parts of the book aside from the 1.5 pages that we've seen as of yet.

But like I said, the margin was very narrow and things aren't monocausal. Hillary making mistakes doesn't mean Bernie made no mistakes that affected anything.

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  #4440  
Old 09-06-2017, 11:07 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

It's interesting that she seems to think she could win the hardcore Bernie Bros over.
There's nothing she could have said or done to win over the sexists and stayed in the race. That's not how sexism works, you can't just talk your way out of it. It's just like racism, there's no amount Obama could have done to convince racists he wasn't evil.

Ultimately the buck stops with her, a good leader doesn't blame everyone else for their failure.
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  #4441  
Old 09-06-2017, 11:14 PM
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"And there's nothing unusual about her behavior here - tell me which presidential loser prostrated himself and accepted all the blame for their loss. There is none."

Everyone else is being a dick, why shouldn't I?
And we're not even talking about during the election, we're talking about her 'I would have been better' book, if she would truely have been better, "It's everyones fault but my own." Doesn't paint a good leader that we just missed out on.
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  #4442  
Old 09-06-2017, 11:22 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Left out of this is how mick is being a shit-stirrer... :stirpot:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ari View Post
Ultimately the buck stops with her, a good leader doesn't blame everyone else for their failure.
I rather get the impression that some think Clinton shouldn't blame anyone else.

Is she allowed to think that other people made mistakes or damaged her campaign? Or must she say it's all her fault?

And, I would note, she's not the president. I rather expect she wouldn't be talking about her grievances with Sanders if she were (she's not Trump). She's not our leader though, so...

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Originally Posted by Ari View Post
Everyone else is being a dick, why shouldn't I?
Not accepting 100% of the blame isn't "being a dick". It's being human and it's also accurate anyway. She's not the only person who made mistakes, I don't see why there's a demand that she not mention anyone else's mistakes.
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And we're not even talking about during the election, we're talking about her 'I would have been better' book,
Eh? The book isn't about how she's better than Sanders. And I think it's uncontroversial here that she's better than Trump.
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if she would truely have been better, "It's everyones fault but my own." Doesn't paint a good leader that we just missed out on.
Good leadership isn't taking the blame for everything. It might be in some situations, but this is politics. The incorrect notion that the president is solely responsible for things is a big part of the reason why Republicans won such resounding victories in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Even if Obama did fuck up in Benghazi and was to blame for people dying, I wouldn't want him to say the buck stops here and I caused them to die - and thereby let Romney win the 2012 election. That wouldn't have been good progressive leadership, that would've been handing the country to the GOP.

And I'm sorry, but I've yet to hear a mea culpa from Sanders about all the mistakes he made that led him to lose the Democratic primaries. And I've certainly heard plenty of "everybody's fault but Bernie's" accounts of that loss. The media blackout, the DNC scheduled a debate on a Saturday, Clinton got the establishment on her side, she got the superdelegates, the superdelegates being included in delegate counts made people think he couldn't win, the DNC talked shit about him privately, she only won because of the Confederacy, etc. etc. Does this make you think that Sanders is a bad leader? I don't see the left asking him to prostrate himself and apologize for losing the primaries, instead I see plenty of them who want him to run again.

Then again, maybe there's something in Our Revolution that I'm unaware of, but my impression is that it's all about what a triumphant moral victory he won, how right he is about things in America, and how he's changing the world.

On the "no agency for anyone but the candidate" theory of things, Bernie should be accepting blame for Trump because he failed to beat Clinton, otherwise he's not demonstrating good leadership.

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  #4443  
Old 09-07-2017, 01:32 AM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Quote:
Originally Posted by erimir View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ari View Post
Ultimately the buck stops with her, a good leader doesn't blame everyone else for their failure.
I rather get the impression that some think Clinton shouldn't blame anyone else.

Is she allowed to think that other people made mistakes or damaged her campaign? Or must she say it's all her fault?
I mean frankly I'm annoyed at the general concept of people in power passing the buck to others, but that's really just my personal gripe and nothing to do specifically with Clinton.

However, there is a big difference in how someone frames something. "I chose to follow bad advice" is different from "I was given bad advice" as one takes responsibility and the other doesn't. Of course she could easily say this in the book and it wasn't plucked out. When someone often puts on the air of "shut up and listen to me, I know what's best" I generally expect the good ones to admit that they fucked up when it goes wrong, instead of everyone else fucked up.

(Of course all of this is really about what makes a good leader, which is quite different from what makes an electable president.)
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  #4444  
Old 09-13-2017, 08:10 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Anyway, unsurprisingly, the reviews suggest that she doesn't dwell on Bernie much compared to other factors like her own campaign, Russia, the FBI/Comey, the media (mainstream and right-wing) and sexism, and she also offers praise to Bernie in parts outside that excerpt.

Almost like one page excerpts leaked because they were "juicy" aren't an accurate summary of the thesis of a book.

Nonetheless, I do agree that Bernie's late primary campaign was harmful. So was Hillary's in 2008. But the stakes were lower in 2008 for various reasons (better fundamentals for Democrats, and Trump being far worse than McCain, and Democrats already controlling Congress and highly unlikely to lose it even if McCain won). Saying "So what, that's politics" isn't really a rejoinder to that. Hillary's 2008 run doesn't get mentioned much except to defend Bernie, because it's not very compelling given the level of Democratic success in 2008. But Obama probably could've won by more and brought along even more Democrats in Congress (unlikely to have changed the senate results as there weren't any really close races won by Republicans, but it could've at least helped Franken get seated immediately which would've been pretty helpful). It should've been a lesson, but lessons of mistakes made during successful election cycles are rarely learned. Bernie's 2016 primary, however, ought to be a lesson for the 2020 primaries - regardless of which candidate is the loser clinging on after they have no path to the nomination. I won't support Kamala Harris or Kirsten Gillibrand running bitter dead-end campaigns against Bernie Sanders, and I didn't support Clinton doing so in 2008 when it was occurring (although I was less of a political junkie and wouldn't have had as detailed arguments).

Saying it's just politics isn't a justification for continuing a harmful and hopeless campaign because you personally can't accept that you lost. The winner obviously needs to be able to respond, but that doesn't excuse the loser's behavior. Which isn't to say it's unforgivable - obviously Hillary was forgiven.

But in the counterfactual where Obama lost in 2008, I have a hard time believing that Hillary would've been held as blameless. The same people who hold Bernie blameness now would probably bring up the fact that she caused Obama to lose every time she popped back into the news. And it would be correct to give her some of the blame (especially in a narrow loss).
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  #4445  
Old 09-13-2017, 08:31 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Along those lines:

Is Hillary Clinton Right About Why She Lost? | FiveThirtyEight (Spoiler: Yes.)

The whole piece is worth reading, but I felt the conclusion was especially insightful:

Quote:
natesilver: I’m repeating myself here, but a lot of the admonitions that Clinton is getting from the press are about the media pre-empting discussions that could make them look bad and call into question their editorial decision-making.

perry: We should talk about that. Why can’t The New York Times say “we covered Clinton’s e-mails too much”? The Times admitted at some point that the weapons of mass destruction coverage ahead of the Iraq War was bad. The paper survived that, and my guess is gained credibility from it.

It’s obviously true. They must know that.

We are hinting around about the media stuff so much here that we may want to get just to the issue. I think we are really saying the Times, Politico, NBC News, etc., can’t say “Clinton is right in some ways” without saying “we were wrong.” But journalists are supposed to be for truth, not defending themselves at all costs like businesses or politicians. I should note: I covered the 2016 campaign for NBC News. In my writing and television appearances, I was critical, at times very sharply, of how Clinton handled the email controversy. I haven’t gone back and examined all that coverage, but I’m generally of the view that I personally covered the Clinton e-mails too much.

micah: To that point, and not to end on a self-deprecating FiveThirtyEight brag, but we have a history of saying “we fucked up” when we fuck up. While painful in the moment, it’s really not that hard and has long-term benefits. It’s like eating salad.
I haven’t read Clinton’s book yet, but it sounds like an awful lot of the coverage thus far has been based on people with grudges taking small excerpts out of context, which is pretty much exactly what I expected to happen with it, all things told. Clinton is pretty much a walking example of Lewis’ Law in action, and she proves it applies to journamalism just as much as it does to Internet comment sections.
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  #4446  
Old 09-13-2017, 11:18 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

I can totally go with Comey as the deciding factor. I think she could've bounced back from the first ouburst, months before the election, where he was condemning her in the process of absolving her, but his second totally needless yet ridiculously noisy outburst just before the vote was unrecoverable.

I mean fuck, that was a great little stutter step. "Oh wait, we just found her emails on the computer of Tony "Cock Shots" Weiner's old squeeze. We have to review them in case there's something new here, like the maybe the deleted emails, mmmkay"? Then a few days later, "n/m, we already saw these".

In this case Hilly did sort of screw up by having an associate of Weiner on her team, but that would have stayed sub rosa without Comey's antics.
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  #4447  
Old 09-13-2017, 11:36 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

But that problem stemmed from Huma Abedin being her chief of staff while she was Secretary of State, from 2009 to 2013, while being engaged or married to Weiner (mid-2009 onward). Weiner didn't get into trouble for sexting until 2011, and there wasn't any criminal investigation against him until 2016. The emails in question were found on Weiner's laptop, or a laptop that was jointly-owned but in Weiner's possession at the time of the investigation of his sexting. So Abedin evidently checked her email on that laptop at some point. But, of course, as we all know... when you check your email on a different computer, you tend to get the same emails that were in your inbox already. Which is why it was obvious they almost certainly wouldn't find anything new or important.

In other words, I don't think there's any way to label having Abedin on staff as a screw up on Hillary's part, unless you expect politicians to be able to foresee how a butterfly's wing flaps will cause a tsunami.

Or more accurately, how a butterfly's wing flaps will cause a normal-sized wave that the director of the FBI will portray as a tsunami and the media will hype up so much that it causes a mass panic fleeing the coast leading to deaths from car crashes and stampedes.
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  #4448  
Old 09-14-2017, 01:03 AM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

Which is why it's bizarro to me that so many think it's all Hillary's fault or she should've foreseen all of these things.

Think of some of the crazy shit that had to go wrong for Trump to win by 80,000 votes in three states while losing the popular vote by 3 million, leaving aside intentional strategic campaign choices...
  • She chose to use the private server she and her husband had already set up for campaign activities , and a private email address (@clintonemail.com), largely because previous Secretaries of State had done so and she wanted to use a single mobile device instead of having a separate one for government and personal email. People outside the administration were aware of as early as 2013, but nothing was made of it until 2015 when the Benghazi investigation turned up bupkis to indict Clinton specifically relating to that incident. In fact, relating to her predecessors, Colin Powell had actually advised her to follow practices which made it even easier to violate record keeping laws. Powell had been dismissive of security concerns regarding his use of private email and deleted all of his emails from his time as secretary, yet faced no significant criticism by the media or any of the people crusading against Clinton. But Clinton should have foreseen that her actions would at the very least become a real scandal, even if we grant that she couldn't have foreseen that they would inexplicably become the biggest scandal of the 2016 election, despite her actions being less objectionable.
  • The GOP decides to use their leverage in budget negotiations after winning control of the House to cut funding for embassy and consulate security
  • The attack on the Benghazi consulate created a pretext for a fishing expedition against Clinton, eventually leading the GOP to focus on her emails after requesting all her emails ostensibly to search in vain for "the one email that proves Clinton killed them all" but in actuality looking for any trivial misconduct they could use to extend the investigation. The focus on her emails led them down two paths: the use of the email server and whether she had mishandled any classified information.
  • Out of tens of thousands of emails, she happened to have a handful of emails that either contained information that was unclassified at the time but later was classified or that were not properly marked as classified, enabling the GOP to portray her as negligent in the extreme, despite lacking any frame of reference to what sort of classified leakage is typical or expected. Tbh, the low number of emails they found sounds like she did a pretty good job, actually, but instead it was portrayed as scandalously high.
  • After a couple weeks of Trump and co. accusing Clinton of being on her death bed, she catches pneumonia. Understandably not wanting to validate that ridiculous narrative, she tries to power through a 9/11 memorial event and faints from dehydration. The media portrays this as evidence of her corrupt secretiveness.
  • Her campaign chair John Podesta receives a suspicious email and asks an IT staffer whether it is safe. The IT staffer says that he needs to change his password, but makes a typo and says the email is "safe" rather than "unsafe", and Podesta then has his emails stolen
  • The media portrays perfectly ordinary emails in Podesta's emails as scandalous, following the dishonest framing ham-handedly pushed by Wikileaks, even though it was already obvious at that point that Russia was trying to influence the election and they thus should've been more skeptical of the framing being pushed by Wikileaks.
  • Her husband happens to be at the Phoenix airport at the same time as the Attorney General who he personally knows, and impulsively decides to call her over for a chat. This leads to questions about Lynch's objectivity in dealing with the already bullshit email scandal. This decision, at least in part, leads the director of the FBI to decide to deliver a speech excoriating her for negligence yet concluding that no reasonable prosecutor would bring criminal charges(!) rather than following typical FBI protocol and merely offering a recommendation of no charges to the DOJ without comment.
  • The husband of one of her top aides is caught sexting a teenager, leading to a criminal FBI investigation, leading them to search his electronic devices and find duplicate emails from Abedin's email account and the director of the FBI decides yet again to break FBI protocol and make a statement that they've found new emails before even looking at them to see whether they've likely to be noteworthy (they weren't, of course)
  • The media decides to dedicate entire front pages to these revelations despite the fact that it was predictable that nothing new would be found and at any rate they didn't know anything yet.
  • The media also hyped up occurrences like Clinton Foundation donors asking for diplomatic passports as part of a diplomatic mission (Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea to free some journalists) and then not receiving them, or Clinton pressuring Bangladesh on behalf of Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus, and generally portraying the Clinton Foundation as shady while ignoring that it did a lot of good things. An unsavvy or inattentive reader would have likely concluded that the Clinton Foundation was far shadier than the Trump Foundation, which was used for self-dealing and tax evasion, was dishonestly portrayed as coming from Trump's own money and achieved extremely little in actual charitable aims by comparison to the Clinton Foundation.
  • Polls in the Midwest states were off by the largest margin of the statewide polls, while national polls were fairly accurate and correctly showed a Clinton lead. This includes both media polls and internal polls - the Trump team thought he was almost certainly going to lose the election up until the last week as well. This led to a complacency regarding that region and (most*) election forecasts to overestimate Clinton's chances, likely leading to complacency among many voters who might've otherwise voted for Clinton (there were certainly people like Susan Sarandon who argued Clinton had it in the bag and it was safe to vote Stein even in states like PA, and voters in those states who agreed). The fact that the polls would be off in a group of similar states is not that unlikely, but is still another random and unlikely factor that hurt. It was similarly likely that she would've instead been overestimated in, say, New England/NY and lost Maine and New Hampshire and won the other states by narrower-than-expected margins... while winning the Midwest swing states and thus the election. Yet she is blamed for not recognizing that the polls were wrong and campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan, despite the fact that they would be insufficient to change the election result without Florida or Pennsylvania, where she campaigned extensively. And hell, if she had won FL and PA that would've been enough even without WI and MI. Or FL + AZ or NC...
I'm pretty certain that Clinton would be president if not for any of several of these events individually, and any of them could have plausibly flipped the election (I'm not certain that complacency caused by polling error in the Midwest flipped the election or Hillary's bout with pneumonia did, but it's at least somewhat plausible). Yet all of them lined up to make it possible for Trump to win.

And all this is while only obliquely mentioning things that Trump and Russia did, or Trump's billions in free media coverage, elements in the FBI covering for Trump, actions by Bernie Sanders or third-party candidates, etc. Bill Clinton's meeting wasn't Hillary's fault**, and her choices regarding email servers were bad but closer to "running a stop sign" bad than "presidential election-deciding scandal" bad.

That's a lot of bad breaks, but Clinton is evidently expected by many to take responsibility for all of it that's even marginally under her control, like these were predictable occurrences. As discussed in that 538 chat, I think a lot of that narrative is the media attempting to deflect their own responsibility for providing shitty coverage.

*FiveThirtyEight had Trump with a far from trivial chance to win, although we can't really know whether a 30% chance was the right amount or not. Given the narrowness of Trump's win, Clinton's popular vote victory, and unusual events that contributed, etc. it seems more right than not.

**To be honest, there were times when I thought he might be subconsciously sabotaging her...

Last edited by erimir; 09-14-2017 at 03:11 AM.
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  #4449  
Old 11-04-2017, 01:25 AM
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Breaking: The Wikileaks email dumps were carefully curated and in some cases outright edited.

I'm certain I raised this as a possibility multiple times last year. The fact that our press corpse (spelling intentional) swallowed the email "leaks" hook, line, and sinker proves a number of things about political discourse and reporting in this country, none of them pleasant. Unfortunately, I don't expect any of them to learn from their mistakes.
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  #4450  
Old 11-29-2017, 11:38 PM
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Default Re: 2016 Presidential Race

The Republican tax plan demonstrates, yet again, that Trump is deviating from Republican orthodoxy and wants to raise taxes on the wealthy, or at the very least, on capital gains and Wall Street hedge fund guys!

Oh, what's that?

Trump's tax plan is actually a tax hike on the large number of poor and middle class households (and basically a wash on another large segment) and a huge giveaway to the wealthy and, in particular, provides the largest benefit to the idle, lazy rich rentier class and doesn't raise taxes on capital gains? And by eliminating the estate tax but keeping stepped-up basis valuation of assets means that inheritors of assets can pay little to no tax at all when they sell them? So he's actually going to effectively lower capital gains taxes? And it will result in cuts to Medicare?

Oh. And not only is he not raising taxes on Wall Street, and has filled his cabinet with Wall Street cronies, but he's working to deregulate them and gut the CFPB?

If only there had been some way to know that Trump was open to entitlement cuts! Like if he had said he was open to entitlement cuts!

If only there had been some way to know that Trump wouldn't raise taxes on Wall Street assholes and would instead do their bidding! Like if he had declared his intention to dismantle Dodd-Frank and thus the CFPB during the primaries!

If only there had been some way to know this, other than the fact that he was running as the nominee of a party that had been openly pushing for all these things for years, and that he would rely on a Congressional caucus that was dedicated to that for achieving ego-stroking accomplishments and protection from investigation of his corruption and criminality and would thus need to give them things they want, and that he had no knowledge or understanding of policy and was content to delegate it to right-wing hacks like idiot "economist" Stephen Moore!

Who could've known Trump, a narcissistic money-grubbing, unionization-opposing, contractor-cheating, sweatshop-outsourcing, compulsively-lying piece of shit, would be in favor of policies that give him and his family millions and billions in tax cuts and screw over average Americans? WHO?

Sadly, there was no way to know whether he was sincere or not when he claimed he was opposed to cuts to Medicare and things of that nature.

Indeed, things were so unclear that it was possible to approvingly cite idiots like Walker Bragman who wrote pieces like this: A liberal case for Donald Trump: The lesser of two evils is not at all clear in 2016

A selection of gems from that prescient piece:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Walker Bragman, walking upper-middle-class brocialist self-parody
Ban all Muslims from entering the U.S.? Not a chance.
[...]
Basically, we will not have immigration reform, but we will not have people rounded up in the streets and deported.
[...]
Progressives and Democrats should be focusing on the election in 2020 because 1) it is a census year — meaning the makeup of the House of Representatives for the following decade will depend on down-ballot voting — and 2) there may be openings on the Supreme Court.
This is too idiotic to pass up, even though it was just as obviously stupid back then. His argument for maybe we should let Trump win was that we want to be positioned for 2020 when there might be a SCOTUS opening... even though there was already a Supreme Court vacancy in 2016!
Quote:
In 1999, he supported efforts to eliminate our national debt. In 2000 [Trump] supported “tough on crime” policies, called for prosecuting hate crimes against homosexuals, criticized U.S. dealings with China, saying we’re “too eager to please,” and criticized the Communist country for their record on human rights. He has supported the assault weapon ban, waiting periods, and background checks, called for universal health care. and was tentatively pro-collective bargaining, arguing that unions “fight for pay, managers fight for less, and consumers win.” In 2010, he called for government partnering with environmentalists before undertaking “projects.”
[...]
Even today, Trump is to the left of Hillary Clinton on some issues. He supports medical marijuana, while she says “more research” needs to be conducted. He’s against super PACs — instructing those supporting his campaign to return all the money to the donors.
[...]
[Trump] opposed [the war in Iraq]
[...]
Trump's foreign policy talk has alienated our allies like the United Kingdon, and that isn't something to take lightly. However, it has also earned praise from Vladimir Putin.
Oh, praise from Putin! How appealing!
Quote:
We have no way of predicting who Trump would appoint, but we can speculate with Hillary Clinton. While she has said that her litmus test for nominees will be commitment to overturning Citizens United v. FEC, there is little reason to trust her [...]
This is the single most important, and inclusive problem today because it affects our ability to deal with every other issue. It is also the one area Democrats are not necessarily better than Republicans.
Other than the fact that all of the Democratic appointees on the court voted against Citizens United, including two appointed by Bill Clinton and the Democrats have been opposed to it from the very day it was handed down. And the fact that Trump announced his list of Federalist Society-approved judicial nominees beforehand and they were all going to be strong Citizens United supporters.
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President Barack Obama's recent Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, is one of the judges responsible for the disastrous SpeechNow.org v. FEC ruling which gave us Super PACs, and upheld Citizens United.
And here good Walker Bragman reveals he doesn't know the difference between the Supreme Court and a circuit court.
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In the end, it is doubtful that the more negative aspects of Trump's platform will ever come to pass.
Who could've known that this dudebro would be so comprehensively wrong before the election?!

WHO?
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