Senate The 2016 General Presidential Election

New Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee ad up in the Philly area (can't link to it from the hospital) basically profiles an illegal hispanic immigrant a couple of years back who raped a child but couldn't be instantly deported due to Philadelphia being a sanctuary city and that Katie McGinty supports such actions. The ad is viscerally disgusting on many levels, and makes no attempt to hide the fact that it:

1) Insinuates that all Hispanic immigrants are child rapists
2) Sanctuary cities are lawless havens for said individuals
3) Democratic lawmakers give free passes to such individuals at the expense of "real" Americans to garner minority votes and that such votes are fraudulent
4) Conducted in an ominous tone, as if the illegal Hispanic child-rapist is right outside your door and a vote for Katie McGinty will result in him bursting through to wrestle your child to the ground and attack her.

It's a blatantly prejudiced piece of filmmaking that plays to the worst of the lowest common denominators. I can understand this coming from a Super PAC (although I would still never condone it), but from the Senate Republican Campaign Committee?

Disgusting.

Peace,

V-03

 

Well sanctuary cities should be ended. Immigration is a federal issue and it is the feds who have primacy not any local government.

But, these cities wouldn't be necessary and they could be ended if we had a national system in place that managed immigration effectively, meaning amnesty and allowing law abiding people and their extended families in to stay. I'm in favor of chain amnesty so long as those family members are not violent offenders and/or some drug dealer with multiple offenses.

 

Bunch of new polls out today show a tightening of the race both nationally and in swing states.

Ohio is now tied, and Hillary has lost support among all groups. Not surprising, giving the negative news cycle of the past two weeks, but still a bit troubling.

Of bigger concern is a Pennsylvania poll that now has Toomey leading by seven when before, McGinty had been up by three. That's a rather large swing towards the Republican candidate, and given that there's been no live polling of Pennsylvania in three weeks, the state of the race in my stomping grounds is currently unknown.

Yes, I'm being "anxious Vaderize" again, but her campaign should not pull advertising from anywhere. Nor (as a Politico article suggested yesterday) should they simply be looking to "run out the clock". Clinton still needs to campaign, to advertise, and to give speeches, hardcore. Nate Silver had an excellent analysis of this today, noting that there's been a "small, steady swing towards Trump". If it continues at the same pace, he would beat Hillary by three points on November 8th.

She needs to put him away in the debates, and come prepared to swing back on her controversies and weaknesses. Hard.

 

She's fine-- I promise. Trump is not winning this election.

 

I would also advise not using the "running out the clock" strategy, but it's not what you think it is V03 -- it's about addressing more things like the emails and Clinton Foundation rather than sitting on the lead and not doing anything.

Also, never worry about individual polls -- keep looking at overalls and trending.

 

ccmmmooonnn trump, daddy's got post-post-postin' to do!

 

Would someone block Vaderize03 s access to all websites featuring polls? We need an intervention.

Honestly though, Vaderize, just use the RCP average as your guide nationally and in battlegrounds.

 

Chocolate will do it. Large quantities of chocolate. Or cheesecake from the Factory.

Think I'll go have some...

 

Been away from the election coverage for a few days, and what I've come back to is the good news that the Clinton Foundation story amounts to even less than I thought it was, and the bad news that the networks news, especially ABC, keeps reporting on it as if it is something.

Tons of media organizations have taken the AP to task for its inaccuracies in covering the foundation, a story which other news outlets used as a source for their reporting. The AP article was incorrect in the numbers it cites, claiming that half of those with whom Clinton met gave to her charity when the actual number was more like 5% and, even more, about 1% who gave to the charity got a meeting with Clinton; it was misleading in its wording saying "the intermingling of access and donations...fuels the perception that giving money to the foundation was a price of admission for face time with Clinton"; and it was sensational in its tweet headline: "AP analysis: More than half of those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation."

Even though the AP admits that the tweetline was sloppily written and that they're "not that good with tweets," the AP refuses to take the tweet down (even though all the links I now click about the original story re-route me to an AP story about the controversy about their article rather than the article itself).

The Washington Post was highly critical of the AP's depiction of the Clinton Foundation in this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...story-on-clinton-foundation-donors-all-wrong/

Vox is even more critical here: http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12618446/ap-clinton-foundation-meeting

And CNN and CNNmoney has written 2 pieces on it: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/29/opinions/ap-gets-it-wrong-on-clinton-reyes/ and: http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/26/media/associated-press-hillary-clinton-investigation/


Let's see if the broadcast news can fess up to their reporting errors, especially ABC and NBC, though that would take great courage when the majority of their audience is elderly and white.



The original article's wording strongly insinuates a quid pro quo scenario exists, but even its own examples fell far short of proving this.

The AP's only examples of "untoward" meetings between Clinton and donors include 3 meetings with a Nobel Peace prize winner, Clinton introducing the chair of the Kennedy Center (and Clinton donor) when she attended the Kennedy Center Awards, and meeting with an executive from Estee Lauder about a public-private partnership to raise money for AIDS education and prevention!!!!

And that's literally it. Those are the APs examples that supposedly show "the price of admission for face time with Clinton," yet the networks ran with this story and Trump used AP's story as proof of Hillary's corruption.

The more that you look into this story, the less there is to it. At least there are some good journalists out there who are willing to admit this.

 

The AP story didn't have inaccuracies. It explained, at length, that it tabulated only non-government officials, and explained why it did so: because Secretaries of State meet with governmental officials all the time anyway, so they would be literally indistinguishable. The other types of meetings, being rarer, and somewhat harder to obtain, become a reasonable place to look at the effect of donations. They did so, and reported the numbers accurately with what has been released as of the time of their report.

Nor do they need to "demonstrate" anything. The fraction of meetings itself was most of the story. Given that over 60% of her meetings with non-governmental officials were with her own donors, the case is either that A) Clinton Foundation donors got preferential access to Hillary Clinton or B) Hillary Clinton believes that overwhelmingly, the only people who are genuinely worth meeting with are donors to her foundation. A, if true, is seriously objectionable and troubling, for the exact same reasons that she supposedly opposes Citizens United. B, if true, is incredibly arrogant in its naivete, and highly concerning for the underlying endorsement of oligarchy.

The media isn't the one with an honesty problem here.

 

Darth_Nerdling, what percentage of non-state business meetings did she have with donors? That's the story. You can spin it as 5% of all meetings. They have thousands of those. Who is she allowing in as non-state business access? Overwhelmingly they were donors.

Nice to see Hillary has plebs doing the whitewashing for her.

edit: chummers was too complimentary for Clinton.

 

Clinton Campaign Slogan: "I'm With Her"
Clinton Personal Slogan: "I'm With My Donors"

 

I suppose at some point you have to search for a way to justify your support for her. So I can understand this need to scrub all wrongdoing from her when the appearance, at the very least, is troubling. Everybody wants to think they're not only backing a winner but the right one.

 

Given the two choices, I'd rather people experience cognitive dissonance and lie unconvincingly to themselves than to simply be comfortable with Clinton's Pragmatism from the outset. At least the former means they can still recognize something is wrong.

 

Well, if you're going to re-use arguments, so will I.

On the whole, it really seems to me that the following is the worst that can be said about Hillary's behavior in relation to the Clinton Foundation. Virtually every politician (including your beloved Barack Obama) give face time to big donors because the behavior of those donors helped those politicians make it to where they are, or they give them even more than face time (Caroline Kennedy, Japan). Furthermore, a large percentage of these politicians also receive material gain from donors or lobbyists in roundabout ways within the law (trips, connections, jobs for their kids, jobs after they leave office, etc.).

So, in the typical situation (which is basically every politician), you have a politician giving someone face time as "payback" for that person's ability to advance that politicians career or you have a politician actually receiving material gain.

In this situation, unlike most politicians who give face time for material gain or for payback for political advancement, Hillary is instead giving face time as "payback" for helping to eradicate AIDs in Africa and the opioid epidemic in the US.

Again, all politicians do this, all of them. Obama too. In fact, the real story here, the real distinction that should be made is that what Hillary is doing far better than what her peers are doing.

That's the worst you can make out of this. She's acting like a typical politician but with far more altruistic motives, and her behavior may not even amount to that. But at its worst, she's turning a screwed up system on its head and making something good out of it.

No, I don't have to search for a way to justify my support. It's easy.

If Trump wins, it'll take progressive/liberals 20 years to dig ourselves out of the hole left by a conservative Supreme Court, a Congress that will repeal/alter tons of liberal legislation, and whatever the crazy bat**** stuff that Trump gets us into.

If Hillary wins, they'll mostly be gridlock, some incremental progress, a liberal Supreme Court for a generation, and possibly the collapse of the GOP or its transition into a permanent minority party.

I don't have to love Hillary. I'm not asking for Hillary's hand in marriage. I'm just looking at the alternatives, including third parties, and concluding that the scenario with Hillary as president is the best course for the country, so I'm voting in a way to bring about that scenario since the contrast between a Hillary future and a Trump future is so stark.

 

Congratulations for demonstrating you have no concept of the concerns behind campaign finance reform. A fundamental principle is that by doing things people want--even if what those people want is something otherwise "good"--you create space to influence them. This effect is magnified if they literally give you more access and your concerns more time in return for these acts. Thus, even if someone doesn't consciously intend, they can begin to be influenced by the thoughts and concerns of donors, simply because they are around them enough.

For most politicians, this is a limited problem. People can only really donate to their re-election campaigns, which only come up every few years. By maintaining a free-standing foundation, Clinton is unique in that she allows this dynamic to be perpetual and unending. This allows for lots of corollaries, like timing gifts/donations to coincide with important business. Whereas at least someone has distance from whatever good feelings they have towards a donor from an election campaign several months (or years) ago, they can make sure such feelings are fresh. Even more unique to Hillary Clinton, other politicians are barred by law from receiving such things from foreign interests. There are also donation caps. Via her Foundation, Clinton can receive them from any source, at any time, in any amount.

If you believe that any of these rules have any meaning or purpose, you probably shouldn't be okay with the giant loopholes Clinton drives through them. The problem with repeating arguments is they sound just as terrible the second time around. Maybe you should try some that actually address the relevant issues.

 

Wocky how about addressing the rest of his post?

Or are you going to jump on the "A Trump presidency will bring about the liberal revolution" bandwagon? (Spoiler alert: it won't).

 

Lol as if liberals revolt.

 

What is there to address?

We as voters set the boundaries of acceptable behavior politicians. We used to have certain boundaries around the idea of money, influence, and access. Aided by the Supreme Court, Hillary Clinton is obliterating them. Even if you believe she is magically flawless and perfectly incorruptible, your decision to cheerlead these moves will have reverberations when other politicians try to follow in her footsteps. Once you establish this as a norm, you can hardly balk at their doing so.

Over time, the loss of meaningful democracy from this sort of barely concealed and ever-worsening influence peddling could far outweigh the battles of the moment that are supposedly tying to you so very blindly into endorsing every imaginable action that Hillary Clinton takes. Because having a nuanced view that sometimes people don't do everything right is apparently too much to ask.

 

Wocky, try again.

Politicians spend between 25% and 50% of all their time raising money, either by attending fundraisers or hitting up people on the phone. Tom Daschle estimated that in the 2 years before an election senators spend 2/3rd of their time raising money. The Democratic Congressional Campaign committee asks Democratic house members to spend 4 hours every day raising money.

Here's a fun refresher on the subject:




Hillary's 85 meetings with donors to a charity over 2 years vs. an average of 4 hours of time and/or 2/3rds of one's time raising money.

So, unlike the way you depict it, the amount of time HRC has spent meeting donors truly pales in comparison with how long congressmen are in contact with donors and, again, their goal is far less altruistic.

Once, again, the big story here is that what Hillary is doing is far superior to what her peers are doing, rather than the opposite.


And, yeah, please don't let this response distract you from replying to the other half of what I said too.

Yeah, tell me about it. They form drum circles and chant "This is what Democracy looks like."

 

Your calculations are flawed, though. Her foundation activities are not substitutive; they are additive. Clinton in an elective office--or running for one--spends just as much time as the rest do interacting with donors. So she's not actually any better here. She just interacts with more donors for longer periods, because she is fundraising for more things more constantly than any other politician.

 

The comparison being made is between her conduct at the State Department (not as a candidate now) with business as usual in DC, and in this comparison, she fares far better.

The media: It's so horrible that Hillary is meeting Foundation donors who include a Nobel Peace prize winner, Bill Gates, and Elie Wiesel!

Well, if they put it in the context of congressmen spending the 4 hours a day on the phone hitting up people for money and 2/3rd of their time raising money in the years before an election, then what Clinton is doing looks a little different.

The media is being irresponsible here, especially the implications of quid pro quo. Either they should put this story in proper context, or they shouldn't cover this story because it's misleading.

Their coverage makes what Hillary is doing seem like the exception, when it's really pretty tame and far more altruistic than what's going on in virtually every congressman's office across DC.



And this is what others are asking you to respond to:

 

But, again, your analogy is a false one. The access time she gives to donor is a supplemental channel for donor influence beyond her already considerable activities as a Presidential candidate. That supra-structural addition is necessarily more concerning than someone who spends such time as a candidate alone. The comparison you want to make isn't a relevant or even sensible one.

Further, I already responded to the rest of your "Hillary or Die" post. The post number is 3094. Have fun.

 

Oh, I missed this one.

Yeah, I just strongly disagree. The GOP repealing tons of progressive legislation, a conservative Supreme Court for a generation, and the election of unhinged vengeful uninformed unpredictable bigot is far worse in my mind than the "unique corrupting influence" that is Hillary Clinton (which in my mind, amounts to business as usual in DC, and probably far less than that) and a liberal Supreme Court for a generation and the possible implosion of the GOP.

Also, I have been critical of Clinton. I've criticized a lot of what she's done with the email scandal and her choice to do the Wall Street speeches and I have other criticisms of her that I haven't shared. In fact, I think I was the first here to criticize the excuses she gave in her Fox News interview. I also disagree with a number of her political positions.

But there was some politician who kept saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good," and I guess I took him too seriously (he was probably a hypocrite; I'm so naive), and actually, when he first ran, I think he relied on like the most Wall Street money ever raised for a presidential candidate (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...y-clinton-barack-obama-set-new-wall-street-f/ ), and I think he was the one who asked Hillary to be Secretary of State, despite her connections to the Clinton Foundation, and it was his people who crafted the rules that detailed how Hillary and the Clinton Foundation should co-exist, so I guess if we really are heading down into an inescapable abyss of corruption, it's kind of that guy's fault. Thank God, no one here would've ever voted for him.

 

Guys, Rachel Maddow shared these absolutely real polling questions posed to African-Americans and Hispanics about whether they have a more favorable opinion of Trump or the following things:






On every level, these are the greatest polls of all time.