US Politics

Kaos said:
Exactly.

Its convenient to pin the blame on collusion and the ignorance of voters, but the cold reality is she lost because she wasn't able to garner the support of progressive/moderate voters. Or more simply, she lost because she was a bad candidate, and you'd have to be a pretty awful candidate to lose to Trump.
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Its a combination of all of the above (Eboue). She was a candidate with negatives on both sides of the fence - leftist progressives and right wingers who have always hated the Clintons. That is however not a sign that Bernie would've fared any better. He would've been run through the barrel just as Cruz, Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Hillary were and would've likely faced a similar fate.
 
Kaos said:
Take a look at the treatment Eboue gets here from 'progressive' voters for having the audacity to vote Jill Stein, a genuinely progressive candidate.
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But isn't she actually a bit of a nutter masquerading as being progressive?
 
Maagge said:
But isn't she actually a bit of a nutter masquerading as being progressive?
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She had fairly middle of the road social policies among Dems. Where some may fault her is on her forward leaning foreign policy views but that is something all Presidents do when they reach office. They are introduced to information not available to the general public that cause them to alter their views.
 
There's plenty of room for discussion of Clinton's failings and transgressions but there's a whole thread for that...people bringing it up in this one tend to be tacitly trying to deflect from the Trump/Russia issue at-hand. Which clearly has more ground than a conspiracy theory considering it's being given a full investigation with well-respected officials overseeing it.
 
Il Prete Rosso said:
One of the few wealthy people I truly admire. Built his empire literally from scratch and through a lot of hard work.
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You forgot paying poverty level wages, timing toilet breaks for workers, taking billions from governments in tax breaks, refusing to collect sales tax for years, predatory pricing, anti union intimidation, tax avoidance, forcing employees to wait in security lines without pay, etc
 
Eboue said:
You forgot paying poverty level wages, timing toilet breaks for workers, taking billions from governments in tax breaks, refusing to collect sales tax for years, predatory pricing, anti union intimidation, tax avoidance, forcing employees to wait in security lines without pay, etc
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Yeah, anyone I've known who's worked for Amazon has pretty much been universally negative about it - horrible working atmosphere, treated unfairly, paid-off at little notice, not paid a lot etc.
 
Kaos said:
I have to say I'm a little bemused at how defensive posters are here regarding Hillary Clinton.

Given how most posters are extremely vocal with their disgust towards Trump (and rightly so), whenever anyone questions Hillary's integrity the same posters get so dismissive and defensive it's borders on condescension.

Its hardly a conspiracy theory to suggest that she's a morally compromisable individual with links to questionable factions. Heck, the Obama administrations covert support of Al Qaeda affiliated groups was probably one of the worst kept secrets in the middle East. In fact anyone who's observed their foreign policy over the last 50/60 years would know the US has a history of supporting extremist factions to topple and undermine their secular and Soviet-friendly rivals. They did it in Latin America, in Afghanistan and now they're doing it in the middle east.

This isn't just some lazy "but her emails!!" deflection customary of the right, but rather a genuine concern of the credibility and integrity of a presidential candidate who's has an open track record of being hawkish and objectively unfit to represent the progressive voice of America, and by proxy the free world. Yet if anyone progressive has the audacity to bring this into scrutiny the same way they'd do with Trump then they're met with derision and ridicule.

And you wonder why many voters on the left voted third party or just stayed at home. Hence it didn't surprise me Trump won, collusion or no collusion.
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The problem is the criticism is a double standard. Every single President has sat on the same issue of aggressive American foreign policy and the only person to pick up flack was Hillary not even Obama. Well I suppose Bush did, for destabilising the whole middle east. Then you have the right wing media who cheerled all manner of invasions taking the moral highground and it simply does not sit right.

Hillary has been the only candidate in my memory being called 'crooked' because of donations from business despite the fact all candidates have relied on donations from business.
 
WackyWengerWorld said:
The problem is the criticism is a double standard. Every single President has sat on the same issue of aggressive American foreign policy and the only person to pick up flack was Hillary not even Obama. Well I suppose Bush did, for destabilising the whole middle east. Then you have the right wing media who cheerled all manner of invasions taking the moral highground and it simply does not sit right.

Hillary has been the only candidate in my memory being called 'crooked' because of donations from business despite the fact all candidates have relied on donations from business.
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Good points. The sexism on display on Hillary was pretty obvious.
 
Fergies Gum said:
Congressman Issa is retiring. The coward has bottled it as he knew his seat was one of the most likely to flip to the dems.
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Wow...that is actually surprising. Now Cali just has to get rid of Rohrbacher and Nunes for the perfect GOP smackdown.
 
Raoul said:
Wow...that is actually surprising. Now Cali just has to get rid of Rohrbacher and Nunes for the perfect GOP smackdown.
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Can you move the post to the politics thread. Something must be up as i clicked on the "US politics" page, but it directs me to this thread instead.
 
Kentonio said:
That's not the same at all. You don't have to be a Hillary fan to think that not voting for her was very dangerous (dependant on the circumstances). If Eboue lives in a solidly red or blue state then good on him, but if he's in a swing state then voting third party in an election where Donald Trump was a candidate was not a smart idea. Unless you genuinely believe that Hillary would be as bad for America as Trump is, in which case you're sure as feck not a progressive.
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If you're in a situation where you essentially feel forced to vote for a candidate you severely dislike and who you feel is anithetical to your values, then the notion of democracy becomes obsolete. If the outcome of an election is going to be highly undesireable either way then what's the point of voting anyway? At the very least you can exercise your democratic right and do the audacious thing of actually voting for a ticket you feel best aligns with your values, in other words the whole appeal behind democracy.

As for Hillary being less of a disaster for Trump, while she's almost objectively more fit to being President (but again pretty much all of us are a better fit than the incumbent Orange crook), her track record doesn't exactly suggest she'd have been particularly great either. Say she drags the US into another disastrous military campaign (not entirely unfeasible considering her openly hawkish stances), then the voters who reluctantly gifted her their vote have to live with that on their conscience, knowing full well something like that would have been a feasible possibility.
 
Kaos said:
If you're in a situation where you essentially feel forced to vote for a candidate you severely dislike and who you feel is anithetical to your values, then the notion of democracy becomes obsolete. If the outcome of an election is going to be highly undesireable either way then what's the point of voting anyway? At the very least you can exercise your democratic right and do the audacious thing of actually voting for a ticket you feel best aligns with your values, in other words the whole appeal behind democracy.

As for Hillary being less of a disaster for Trump, while she's almost objectively more fit to being President (but again pretty much all of us are a better fit than the incumbent Orange crook), her track record doesn't exactly suggest she'd have been particularly great either. Say she drags the US into another disastrous military campaign (not entirely unfeasible considering her openly hawkish stances), then the voters who reluctantly gifted her their vote have to live with that on their conscience, knowing full well something like that would have been a feasible possibility.
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Is that really the case? I feel like it's fair enough to be able to look and a candidate and recognise that there's a lot you dislike about them, while also recognising that they're the most electable candidate who's going to implement some of what you want. If I'd been in the US then despite my dislike of Clinton I'd have still voted for her because things like liberal justices in the SCOTUS etc would've been done under her watch instead of the opposite happening under Trump.

Obviously the US political system needs reform, and desperately needs to be altered so that we don't see the same two-party system being endlessly perpetuated because there's no alternative...but at the same time I think it's fair enough to recognise when you don't necessarily agree with everything a politician says while still understanding that they'll implement far more of what you want to see than the other guys.
 
Silva said:
how did someone from a wealthy family, who went to Princeton then worked at hedgefunds ever make anything of themselves, so amazing, so hard working, oh man
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Bezos, the world's richest man, is entirely self made. He literally founded Amazon in his garage.
 
Raoul said:
Its a combination of all of the above (Eboue). She was a candidate with negatives on both sides of the fence - leftist progressives and right wingers who have always hated the Clintons. That is however not a sign that Bernie would've fared any better. He would've been run through the barrel just as Cruz, Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Hillary were and would've likely faced a similar fate.
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While I agree it wouldn't have been guaranteed that Bernie would have been more successful, one thing you could guarantee he'd do, which Hillary miserably failed to do, was garner his the progressive base. If you can't even garner your base and are vehemently disliked on both sides of the political spectrum, then that severely brings into question your viability and competency as a candidate. This was further dignified by the fact she ended up losing to essentially the most unfit candidate in recent US history.

Also with this:
Raoul said:
Good points. The sexism on display on Hillary was pretty obvious.
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While I'm not denying sexism being a factor, predominantly from the right, I think its an exaggerated and quite frankly lazy excuse that Hillary's supporters and Hillary herself love to comfort themselves with. Nevermind the fact that 62% of white women voted for Trump, the unapologetic misogynst, or the fact that she was disliked even by her own base - i.e the folks most likely to find sexism reprehensible. No, its because she was a woman. Do you honestly think Elizabeth Warren for instance would have attracted the same universal contempt?
 
Kaos said:
While I agree it wouldn't have been guaranteed that Bernie would have been more successful, one thing you could guarantee he'd do, which Hillary miserably failed to do, was garner his the progressive base. If you can't even garner your base and are vehemently disliked on both sides of the political spectrum, then that severely brings into question your viability and competency as a candidate. This was further dignified by the fact she ended up losing to essentially the most unfit candidate in recent US history.
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It's also worth noting that Bernie would've probably been a lot more competent than Hilary in the Rust Belt - his message of change would've probably resonated with a lot of the dissatisfied voters who plumped for Trump, and may have been enough to gain him the Presidency.

Hilary's problem per se wasn't getting votes - in the vast majority of democracies she'd have been the winner because she comfortably beat Trump votes wise. The problem was ultimately where she was getting those votes - Bernie could've conceivably got a smaller voting % than she did while still winning the Presidency considering how narrow some of the margins were.
 
Raoul said:
Bezos, the world's richest man, is entirely self made. He literally founded Amazon in his garage.
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With 300 grand from his wealthy parents and a plethora of contacts in hudgefunds/wall street. He's a fecking poser who has taken advantage of a broken system that rewards sociopathic behaviour.
 
As berbatrick has pointed out many times, Hillary was fine with regards to the Democratic base - Bernie's advantage was always in independents.

And as Cheese said, the Supreme Court alone should've settled the decisions of most unsure folk. But the right were far quicker to grasp that.
 
Silva said:
With 300 grand from his wealthy parents and a plethora of contacts in hudgefunds/wall street. He's a fecking poser who has taken advantage of a broken system that rewards sociopathic behaviour.
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His parents were middle class. Dad was a petroleum engineer at Exxon. Bezos generated all his wealth through is own efforts of being a tech geek who made money before Amazon, then having an idea along with the cojones to operationalize it into something.
 
Raoul said:
His parents were middle class. Dad was a petroleum engineer at Exxon. Bezos generated all his wealth through is own efforts of being a tech geek who made money before Amazon, then having an idea along with the cojones to operationalize it into something.
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No middle class families own 25,000 acres of land. And none it of justifies the way he treats the actual people who generate Amazon's wealth.
 
Kaos said:
If you're in a situation where you essentially feel forced to vote for a candidate you severely dislike and who you feel is anithetical to your values, then the notion of democracy becomes obsolete. If the outcome of an election is going to be highly undesireable either way then what's the point of voting anyway? At the very least you can exercise your democratic right and do the audacious thing of actually voting for a ticket you feel best aligns with your values, in other words the whole appeal behind democracy.
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Because one of the main lessons of life is you very rarely get to pick a perfect option. This was a binary choice between 'pretty shitty, but not that different to the status quo' and 'omfg what is this racist, misogynistic asshole who will do his damnest to ruin the lives of millions of people and put the peace of the world at risk'.

It doesn't take a fecking rocket scientist to figure out which is preferable.
 
Silva said:
No middle class families own 25,000 acres of land. And none it of justifies the way he treats the actual people who generate Amazon's wealth.
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True or not, it had nothing to do with Bezos founding Amazon and becoming what he is today. Its all on Jeff Bezos himself, not on whether his adopted Dad owned land in Texas (which by the way is very cheap, especially in those days). So your point is pretty speculative.
 
Raoul said:
True or not, it had nothing to do with Bezos founding Amazon and becoming what he is today. Its all on Jeff Bezos himself, not on whether his adopted Dad owned land in Texas (which by the way is very cheap, especially in those days). So your point is pretty speculative.
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Nothing speculative about it. Middle class families can't afford to give their kids $300K to start a business.
 
For the record, I didn't vote for Jill Stein. It's just a lie that fishfingers has repeated often enough that people have started to believe it.

I voted straight dem ticket with the exception of President. I willingly threw my vote aside because as kaos said, so much of what she represents and what she would do is antithetical to my values. It was a protest vote borne out of deep dissatisfaction with the lack of a candidate who was against wars of empire and who wasn't beholden to corporate interests.
 
Silva said:
With 300 grand from his wealthy parents and a plethora of contacts in hudgefunds/wall street. He's a fecking poser who has taken advantage of a broken system that rewards sociopathic behaviour.
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Wonderful start but 300k to world's richest is quite amazing. As a comparison, Trump equals a monkey selecting random stocks.
 
Eboue said:
For the record, I didn't vote for Jill Stein. It's just a lie that fishfingers has repeated often enough that people have started to believe it.

I voted straight dem ticket with the exception of President. I willingly threw my vote aside because as kaos said, so much of what she represents and what she would do is antithetical to my values. It was a protest vote borne out of deep dissatisfaction with the lack of a candidate who was against wars of empire and who wasn't beholden to corporate interests.
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I'm really curious to know how many did this or voted Dem plus Trump in the 3 swing states and if they now regret it.
 
Kentonio said:
Because one of the main lessons of life is you very rarely get to pick a perfect option. This was a binary choice between 'pretty shitty, but not that different to the status quo' and 'omfg what is this racist, misogynistic asshole who will do his damnest to ruin the lives of millions of people and put the peace of the world at risk'.

It doesn't take a fecking rocket scientist to figure out which is preferable.
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What if I object strongly to the status quo? What if maintaining the hollowing out of America so that Wyatt Koch can create more shirts is ruining the lives of millions? it's not theoretical. Tens of thousands of Americans die every year due to lack of health care. As such I refuse to vote for a candidate who just last year said "single payer will never ever happen". How many people have died in wars that Hillary supported and still hasn't learned the lesson from? How could I claim to care about that and vote for someone who still thinks Libyan intervention was a good idea?
 
MTF said:
Most kids that get $300k to start a business, don't end up with Amazon.
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True. A person could be gifted $3 billion up front and still not wind up creating something like Amazon. It takes a great idea, hard work, and an intense, unrelenting desire to succeed.
 
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