The 2016 US Election (Part III)

[maraxus2]

This is spoken like a person who neither knows nor cares much about American politics.

For me, an outsider and a Marxist, this is a pick your poison situation. Clinton is a dedicated crazy globalist, though, and as an anti-globalist who is devoted to destroying obnoxious deals like TTIP, stopping the corporate takeover of the world is a bit more important than petty US politics. In fact, i see oligarchs on Bloomberg arguing for Clinton every day.

Seem's to me it's less of a "pick your poison" situation as a "poison someone else" situation. That petty US politics directly impacts the health and well-being of literally hundreds of millions of people here in the States, many of them black, brown and indigent. They will suffer direct and obvious harm if Trump wins the election.

But hey, whatever you need to think to satisfy your do-nothing ideology.

On the other side, Trump is the oligarch. He is the capitalist elite. And he's crazy. The only bright spot is.. If Trump is such a loose cannon that he can wreck the corporate paradise of globalist free capital flows in ways he himself cannot anticipate (I've read teh stock market would plunge if Trump were elected), then it would be a case of capitalists shooting themselves in the foot. I'd like to see their sour faces if it happens.

Or the other, more obvious, thing could happen; Trump could completely cede his Presidential administration to the actual oligarchs and assorted jackals who run Congress. He's intellectually lazy, venal, and not particularly interested in actually being President. Only the wilfully ignorant would think that a Trump administration would wreck the "corporate paradise of globalist free capital flows" (whatever the fuck that means), rather than letting the foxes into the chicken coop.

Capitalists are everywhere these days. I don't need to care a lot about which brand of mine enemies runs the burning chariot.

You also don't need to give a shit if you subscribe to a nonviable ideology. Must be nice! You can have all the self-righteousness and crocodile tears for global suffering you want, with none of the intellectual or moral responsibilities of doing anything about it.

[The Romulan Republic]

You would pull that shit. It was mathematically nearly impossible. Is that better for your then still extant fever dream of a Bernie Nod, you flaming pile of pain in the ass?

I'm sorry that you find facts (which you even, in your roundabout way, concede are facts) so enraging.

This nonsense again? People should start putting "Trigger Warning: DNC" on their posts so you can stop yourself from getting offended.

I merely calmly explained what was factually inaccurate about that post.

You and FireNexus (neither of whom were even involved in the discussion) got driven into a knee-jerk rage at me, yet again, because I don't conform to your entirely partisan narrative of the primary.

Who the hell got "triggered" their?

Since you are posting nothing of substance, I feel no real need to continue arguing the point, and would rather not let your flaming drag this thread back into the gutter. I will of course answer Bug-Eyed Earl if he responds to my post, but if anyone actually wants to have a more comprehensive, substantive discussion on the internal workings of the DNC, the history of the last primary, or the role of progressives within the Democratic Party, I respectfully suggest that we create another thread for that discussion.

[K. A. Pital]

They will suffer direct and obvious harm if Trump wins the election.

Hence why I said Trump is marginally worse. And I need to take into account the billions of humans who will be dominated by "benevolent" corporations if globalism continues to run its course as it does now, not just a fraction of 4% of the world's population, sorry.

Or the other, more obvious, thing could happen; Trump could completely cede his Presidential administration to the actual oligarchs and assorted jackals who run Congress.

Very much so. If Trump is the second coming of Reagan, then this is the most likely outcome. And that's why Trump is worse.

Only the wilfully ignorant would think that a Trump administration would wreck the "corporate paradise of globalist free capital flows" (whatever the fuck that means)

This means that if Trump is actually so self-centered that he'd destroy NAFTA, TTP and TTIP by stopping US free trade deals, he'd save millions of people here, or even billions across the world, from total corporate domination. At least in the mid-term.

And vice-versa, if Clinton or Trump - no matter which of them - succeeds in forcing deals like TTIP down others' throat, millions of people in nations where universal education and a vast public-sector support system were the norm rather than the exception, will turn into a privatized US-like hellhole of a nation where children are saddled with "education debt" from the start of their damn lives, where health insurance is firmly in the pocket of supercorporations and costs spiral out of control and companies can sue nations for worker-friendly (or even "profit-cutting") legislation.

And this madness is planned to be elevated to a supranational status. By none other than "progressive" Barack Obama. I have little doubts that his successor will carry on with this job. Hence, as you understand, any consideration of a Clinton presidency has to take into account the globalist threat. Although the same applies to Trump as you correctly note, his anti-globalism could be all talk and no do.

[FireNexus]

Accidental double post. Ignore.

[FireNexus]

I'm sorry that you find facts (which you even, in your roundabout way, concede are facts) so enraging.

TRR, it's not the fact that technically Bernie wasn't totally mathematically eliminated that enrages me. It is the fact that now, still, you can never let someone stating that it was impossible for Bernie to win pass without correcting. Even though no meaningful difference exists between "needs 70% in California" and "needs 101% in California".

"Mathematically impossible" was close enough to reality that it may as well have been true. Even now, you still behave rhetorically in a way that implies it's unfair to Sanders to state that he was never going to win the nomination despite his failing to do so in exactly the way predicted in February.

It's enraging because it's just a reminder that Bernie's campaign, and the knife-twisting among millenial voters of having a progressive icon legitimize decades of GOP FUD in his predictably doomed run, bears significant responsibility for how close this election is.

If he had dropped out when he's reached the point of diminishing returns, we may well be talking about a Clinton landslide and a Dem majority in both houses of Congress. Because Bernie Sanders used his time in the spotlight to "get platform concessions" that his tactics made basically symbolic, and got those concessions by doing unnecessary damage to an already somewhat damaged nominee in the year of Donald Trump, we're probably not going to get those.

You repeating "Well he could have won" after he lost in the way he was obviously going to, is just salt in that wound. You were one of the people who was defending that strategy, even after you recognized it was probably not going to happen. And so every time you go all "Feel The Bern!", I'm going to be pissed squarely at you, both personally and as a representative of the smug, know-nothing, cut off your nose to spite your face "Political Revolution".

It's not facts that piss me off. It's that you fucking morons used those facts to strengthen Trump and will never, ever admit it.

[Terralthra]

FireNexus, you realize that the margin of pledged delegates was smaller than the number of superdelegates, right? The pledged delegate race stood at 2,205 to 1,846, a margin of 359. There were 712 superdelegates. Had, say, Sec. Clinton dropped dead of a heart attack, or been indicted, the superdelegates changing their votes - which they could do at will until 25 July - would have pushed Sen. Sanders into the lead, 2,558 v. 2,205.

Sec. Clinton won. Be happy about that, rather than inventing a reality where it wasn't a close race, or pretending to "impossibility" that was not the case.

[maraxus2]

snip

Listen man, I'm just pushing against your contention that Trump is only marginally worse than Clinton, and by "such a tiny margin" at that. If you're hanging your hat on Trump's obviously insincere opposition to bad trade deals, more power to you. But there's no evidence whatever that he'd do anything to stop US free trade deals. He's so insincere about his opposition to them, and such a venal and greedy person, it seems very obvious that it'd only take a little influence peddling to get him to change his tune on free trade. And lord knows that the actual plutocrats in the US are fantastic at peddling influence. So not only is your weird Trumpian hope (he'll heighten the contradictions! He'll kamikaze capitalists into other capitalists) weird, it's frankly pretty delusional.

Whatever you know about economics, and I generally do agree with your critiques of global capitalism, you pretty obviously know nothing useful about American politics. This is why it's disappointing to see you and other left-wingers making common cause with anti-Clinton right-wingers. You basically don't have common cause with them apart from a mutual and apparently deep hatred for Clinton and Obama. This does not strike me as the wisest means to create progressive change or undermine global capitalism.

Hence why I contend you have a do-nothing ideology. You can make all the grouchy criticisms of global capitalism you care to, but since it manifestly isn't going anywhere anytime soon, you don't actually have to take responsibility for anything.

[The Romulan Republic]

FireNexus, you realize that the margin of pledged delegates was smaller than the number of superdelegates, right? The pledged delegate race stood at 2,205 to 1,846, a margin of 359. There were 712 superdelegates. Had, say, Sec. Clinton dropped dead of a heart attack, or been indicted, the superdelegates changing their votes - which they could do at will until 25 July - would have pushed Sen. Sanders into the lead, 2,558 v. 2,205.

Sec. Clinton won. Be happy about that, rather than inventing a reality where it wasn't a close race, or pretending to "impossibility" that was not the case.

I'll add that it is unfair to blame Sanders or his supporters as a group (blame the Busters all you want) for it being a close race, unless you are going to blame the losers in every contentious primary. And I doubt very much that people like FireNexus would have blamed Clinton or the Democratic Party for, for example, trying to tie Sanders to communist oppression, racist vigilantism, and inciting violence, if Sanders had won the primary and then found himself in a close race.

I do feel that it might be better to save these divisive discussions until after the general election (recall that I am not the one who raised the topic of the primary in the first place here), but part of the reason that I find it so important to counter these narratives about the primary whenever I see them is because I know that some people, like FireNexus, are already looking to the next battle, not against Trump or the Republican Party, but against the progressives in their own party- that even as they rightfully demand our support to stop Trump and the Republicans, they are hypocritically trying to undermine our future credibility, and preparing to pin the blame on us and on Senator Sanders if, God forbid, Clinton loses.

And I do maintain that this is a dangerously short-sighted approach, and one the Democratic Party as a whole cannot afford. The fact that Sanders lead, not only among teenagers and college students but among voters under... what was it, 35? 40? That should tell you that progressivism is the likeliest future of the party, and that if they insist on trying to marginalize progressives, they will risk losing voters badly.

And because I actually do care about stopping Trump, and the Republicans, including any future Trumps, I consider that prospect unappealing.

[The Romulan Republic]

Mind you, if current trends continue, if Clinton and Kaine can come close to repeating the first debate performance, then its looking increasingly like this won't be a close race, in the end.

Edit: Checked fivethirtyeight just now- Now-cast, Polls-only, and Polls-plus all have Clinton at over 70% chance to win. Now-cast is over eighty. Polls-only and Now-cast also both have Florida, Ohio, NC, and Nevada all back in the Democrat-leaning column (Ohio hasn't flipped yet in Polls-plus).

Even better, Iowa is moving back into toss-up territory in Now-cast and Polls-only, and even Arizona is back up to over 40% chance of a Democratic win in the Now-cast.

So if we hold Bernie responsible for the state of the race, I'd say you ought to be singing his praises.

In reality, of course, no one person or factor has primary responsibility for the current state of the race, and the only individuals who can even be said to have played a decisive role on their own are Clinton and Trump.

[Elheru Aran]

And that's another thing:

Tonight is the VP debate. Will it be a sideshow, or will it be a memorable moment of the election? Only time shall tell!

[FireNexus]

FireNexus, you realize that the margin of pledged delegates was smaller than the number of superdelegates, right? The pledged delegate race stood at 2,205 to 1,846, a margin of 359. There were 712 superdelegates. Had, say, Sec. Clinton dropped dead of a heart attack, or been indicted, the superdelegates changing their votes - which they could do at will until 25 July - would have pushed Sen. Sanders into the lead, 2,558 v. 2,205.

Sec. Clinton won. Be happy about that, rather than inventing a reality where it wasn't a close race, or pretending to "impossibility" that was not the case.

Jesus, you missed the point too, huh? The point isn't that there weren't scenarios that could have resulted in a Bernie win. The point is that those scenarios were unlikely, and scenarios involving him winning a majority of pledged delegates were essentially impossible. The scenarios that didn't probably wound up with someone else being nominated. The Democratic Party was not going to nominate Bernie Sanders because the person who actually won died.

Excusing Bernie's Scorched Earth Hail Mary because the idea of him winning did not completely defy the laws of physics is exactly the kind of bullshit I'm so pissed off about. Bernie lost. At the latest, it was clear that he had no viable path to a majority of pledged delegates by April 15th. So we knew he was going to lose by then. And it wasn't actually even close.

A Bernie supporter accusing me of inventing a reality where it wasn't close is rich. It wasn't close. That was the Bernie not refrain at the time, and apparently up until today, but it wasn't. Clinton won by 12% of the popular vote, and just under 10% of the pledged delegates. The Superdelegates were never going to vote for Bernie, and if you want to invent a reality where they were, that's up to you.

But again, after April 15th, the writing was on the wall and both Bernie and the BernieBots refuse to this day to acknowledge it despite the fact that their predictions were consistently hilariously wrong and their specific tactics actually appear to have had major negative impacts on Democratic performance among millenials.

So fuck off with your BernieBot proclamations that it was close enough to justify the validation of baseless GOP attacks to win an unwinnable race.

Why am I STILL fucking having to argue with BernieBots who contend their candidate did better than he actually did?

[FireNexus]

I'll add that it is unfair to blame Sanders or his supporters as a group (blame the Busters all you want) for it being a close race, unless you are going to blame the losers in every contentious primary. And I doubt very much that people like FireNexus would have blamed Clinton or the Democratic Party for, for example, trying to tie Sanders to communist oppression, racist vigilantism, and inciting violence, if Sanders had won the primary and then found himself in a close race.

That depends? Did the loser abandon positive campaigning midstream for negative tactics when it became clear he'd hit a ceiling (despite still bullshitting around as if he's not going negative, kid gloves or no)? Did the loser spend the ENTIRE FUCKING PRIMARY questioning the validity of literally every primary he lost? Did the loser cheat then blame the party conspiring against him when they punished him?

Sanders definitely deserves the blame for the close race. He made baseless accusations questioning whether the party conspired to fix the fucking vote, accusations the Busters predictably still take seriously. He stoked GOP talking points about Clinton directly at his millenial base, ensuring that they'd never grow to trust her no matter what she did. Then he fucking refused to concede for a month after HE LOST and prevented Clinton from consolidating.

Fuck you and your "not fair". It's totally fair to say that Bernie Sanders unnecessarily weakened Clinton and the Democrats with millenial voters despite the fact that he couldn't win. For a long time. Bernie Sanders acted like a spoiled crybaby asshole and managed to convince a lot of people that it actually was unfair he was sent to his room.

[The Romulan Republic]

And that's another thing:

Tonight is the VP debate. Will it be a sideshow, or will it be a memorable moment of the election? Only time shall tell!

I think it probably won't be decisive or even a huge deal in and of itself- neither Kaine nor Pence is a particularly colourful personality, but both are experienced and presumably somewhat competent politicians.

Unless someone flubs it badly, its main significance, if it has any, is likely to be to momentum- a Kaine win will likely keep Clinton's post-debate momentum going. A loss or draw might blunt it.

Of course, considering the talk about Trump handing over most of the duties of the Presidency to his Vice President if he wins, perhaps it ought to get a lot more attention and significance.

[maraxus2]

Jesus, you missed the point too, huh? The point isn't that there weren't scenarios that could have resulted in a Bernie win. The point is that those scenarios were unlikely, and scenarios involving him winning a majority of pledged delegates were essentially impossible. The scenarios that didn't probably wound up with someone else being nominated. The Democratic Party was not going to nominate Bernie Sanders because the person who actually won died.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I agree with you that the chances of the Soups ever voting for Bernie, especially when he'd been going around calling them corrupt corporatocrats, was functionally nil. But if Clinton died (good lord, perish the thought), he'd have a much stronger case to make than anyone else.

Excusing Bernie's Scorched Earth Hail Mary because the idea of him winning did not completely defy the laws of physics is exactly the kind of bullshit I'm so pissed off about. Bernie lost. At the latest, it was clear that he had no viable path to a majority of pledged delegates by April 15th. So we knew he was going to lose by then. And it wasn't actually even close.

wellll, there's not much evidence that he exactly hurt her by staying in that long. You'd have figured there would be, since he was going around campaigning against the Democratic Party. But there's not much evidence that he actually hurt Clinton's favorability ratings in any significant way. Plus, youngsters are by far and away the most supportive age demographic in Hillary's camp.

[The Vortex Empire]

Fuck you and your "not fair". It's totally fair to say that Bernie Sanders unnecessarily weakened Clinton and the Democrats with millenial voters despite the fact that he couldn't win.

How exactly do you reconcile this belief with the objective fact that the youth support Clinton over Trump more strongly than any other age group?



Seems to me you should be thanking Bernie for getting his base of young voters to become Hillary's strongest age group of supporters.

[The Romulan Republic]

Jesus, you missed the point too, huh? The point isn't that there weren't scenarios that could have resulted in a Bernie win. The point is that those scenarios were unlikely, and scenarios involving him winning a majority of pledged delegates were essentially impossible. The scenarios that didn't probably wound up with someone else being nominated. The Democratic Party was not going to nominate Bernie Sanders because the person who actually won died.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I agree with you that the chances of the Soups ever voting for Bernie, especially when he'd been going around calling them corrupt corporatocrats, was functionally nil. But if Clinton died (good lord, perish the thought), he'd have a much stronger case to make than anyone else.

Excusing Bernie's Scorched Earth Hail Mary because the idea of him winning did not completely defy the laws of physics is exactly the kind of bullshit I'm so pissed off about. Bernie lost. At the latest, it was clear that he had no viable path to a majority of pledged delegates by April 15th. So we knew he was going to lose by then. And it wasn't actually even close.

wellll, there's not much evidence that he exactly hurt her by staying in that long. You'd have figured there would be, since he was going around campaigning against the Democratic Party. But there's not much evidence that he actually hurt Clinton's favorability ratings in any significant way. Plus, youngsters are by far and away the most supportive age demographic in Hillary's camp.

Thank you for at least being fair enough to acknowledge that.

And I hope that you will acknowledge that since mid-July, Sanders has worked committedly, and somewhat effectively, on Clinton's behalf. He was as good as his word in the end- he fought it out to the end (more or less), and then he got behind the winner.

[maraxus2]

Thank you for at least being fair enough to acknowledge that.

And I hope that you will acknowledge that since mid-July, Sanders has worked committedly, and somewhat effectively, on Clinton's behalf. He was as good as his word in the end- he fought it out to the end (more or less), and then he got behind the winner.

Don't get me wrong; I still hate you and think you suck. There's just not much evidence for the contention that he actually hurt her standing. There's still plenty of things to criticize; namely his until-quite-recently rather lackluster stumping on Clinton's behalf.

[The Romulan Republic]

Leaving aside maraxus2's pathetic grudge against me for not being goodthinkful enough, I encourage everyone to actually read the article he linked to. You wouldn't know it from his post, but while it does criticize Sanders' past campaigning for Clinton a little, it largely praises his efforts on behalf of Clinton.

[maraxus2]

Leaving aside maraxus2's pathetic grudge against me for not being goodthinkful enough, I encourage everyone to actually read the article he linked to. You wouldn't know it from his post, but while it does criticize Sanders' past campaigning for Clinton a little, it largely praises his efforts on behalf of Clinton.

Sanders has done more events in the past three days than he did during the two months between the DNC and October 1st. Contra what you said, he has not "worked committedly" on Clinton's behalf. He was quiet for about two months, came out of the woodwork at the end of September, strayed off message for most of those early speeches, and only came around literally in the last few days or so.

This is why I hate you and think you suck. I try to help defend your position with arguments and evidence far stronger than your wishy-washy bullshit, then you get mad when I don't "acknowledge" things that literally didn't happen.

[The Romulan Republic]

So, any predictions for the debate tonight?

I don't really know much about Pence, but I'm going to cautiously predict a Kaine win, but not as much of a decisive knock-out as Clinton vs. Trump round one is generally considered to be.

[Terralthra]

FireNexus, you realize that the margin of pledged delegates was smaller than the number of superdelegates, right? The pledged delegate race stood at 2,205 to 1,846, a margin of 359. There were 712 superdelegates. Had, say, Sec. Clinton dropped dead of a heart attack, or been indicted, the superdelegates changing their votes - which they could do at will until 25 July - would have pushed Sen. Sanders into the lead, 2,558 v. 2,205.

Sec. Clinton won. Be happy about that, rather than inventing a reality where it wasn't a close race, or pretending to "impossibility" that was not the case.

Jesus, you missed the point too, huh? The point isn't that there weren't scenarios that could have resulted in a Bernie win.

Ah, I see the difficulty here. The problem is that I know what the phrase "mathematically impossible" means, and you don't. Ah, well. Algebra isn't for everyone!

[Q99]

So, any predictions for the debate tonight?

I don't really know much about Pence, but I'm going to cautiously predict a Kaine win, but not as much of a decisive knock-out as Clinton vs. Trump round one is generally considered to be.

Neither is overly aggressive in manner, both do research, but Pence holds some truly horrible view that Kaine may nail him on,especially when it comes to women and such. Kaine is generally the more successful of the two too.

Kaine should hold the edge.

[Terralthra]

Yeah, Gov. Pence has said and done some truly outrageous things when it comes to equal rights for women and LGBT people, reproductive rights, etc. If the moderator or Gov. Kaine can make stand up to his own record, given Mr. Trump's existing problems with the treatment of women, that should be counted as a win.

[Rhadamantus]

Fuck you and your "not fair". It's totally fair to say that Bernie Sanders unnecessarily weakened Clinton and the Democrats with millenial voters despite the fact that he couldn't win.

How exactly do you reconcile this belief with the objective fact that the youth support Clinton over Drumpf more strongly than any other age group?



Seems to me you should be thanking Bernie for getting his base of young voters to become Hillary's strongest age group of supporters.

Obama versus Romney among millenials was nowhere near that close. If you're going to use a graphic, place it in context.

[Terralthra]

Fuck you and your "not fair". It's totally fair to say that Bernie Sanders unnecessarily weakened Clinton and the Democrats with millenial voters despite the fact that he couldn't win.

How exactly do you reconcile this belief with the objective fact that the youth support Clinton over Drumpf more strongly than any other age group?



Seems to me you should be thanking Bernie for getting his base of young voters to become Hillary's strongest age group of supporters.

Obama versus Romney among millenials was nowhere near that close. If you're going to use a graphic, place it in context.

Pres. Obama/Gov. Romney amongst 18-29 year-olds was 60-37%, for reference, a 23% margin. However, I don't blame Sen. Sanders for Sec. Clinton's marginally poorer support amongst younger voters, compared to Pres. Obama. I blame Pres. Obama's apparent futility to accomplish much of anything toward his agenda in the past 6 years, leading to understandable apathy in his constituencies.