Senate The US Politics discussion

She never 'very quickly" rallied to Obama's side. She refused to concede even after Obama had mathematically won the contest. Not that the gap between them was irrecoverable, but that he literally had the delegates to clinch the nomination. She didn't actually give up until the National Convention itself. That was only afterwards implying for months that Barack Obama was trying to disenfranchise voters from states that had violated DNC rules by advancing their primaries even though the number of votes to be had there was marginal, and the rules were neither set or enforced by Obama allies. Were Sanders at least stuck with policy based attacks, she spent the latter part of her campaign making racial insinuations against Obama. Even once the general election opened up, embittered Hillary voters were enough of a phenomenon that Sarah Palin was selected on the serious theory that another female candidate might appeal to them.

Yes, John Kerry was terrible. Nothing will surpass the hilarity of him saying glibly "Yeah, I voted for it--BEFORE I VOTED AGAINST IT" with a tone that made it clear he thought he had just made a slam dunk from free throw line. We've all seen awkward, tone deaf politicians before. On both sides (Hello, Governor Romney). The difference is that in those other cases, we can have a frank discussion about their shortcomings. With Clinton, for whatever reason, there is his huge front matter about heroic and impossible her task was.

Yes, people are bigots. They disadvantaged her because she was a woman. She was also, on her own, not a good candidate.

EDIT: Also, appleseed. Trump's name-calling thing is dumb. Do you even know what he called Clinton? I don't. The only opponent he ever effectively "defined" and destroyed was Jeb Bush. The others mostly self-destructed of their own obvious flaws.

 

I don’t think there can be a convincing argument that her gender was a net-liability. Women have voted in greater numbers than men in presidential elections since 1980 and the gap is widening. Is there still sexism and misogyny in society? Yes, but it's just not a compelling excuse in this situation.

Ok, so you agree she is not a talented politician by her own admission? So why was she running in the most complicated and competitive election in the world? It might not be fair that "boring" people don't get elected president, but that's just how the world is.

I disagree, she is not a strong debater. Sanders was more compelling and he's no Mark Anthony himself. She has difficulty showing emotional range in debates and is wooden.

Of all the talking-points that surround her, this one is probably the most transparently ridiculous. She was not the most qualified, unless you don’t think that having held executive office or having a proven record of winning competitive elections are qualifications. She is a technocrat.

She is responsible for her loss more than any other person/factor. She didn’t campaign in Wisconsin. She didn’t campaign in Michigan. She didn’t adopt any of Sanders’ platform to unify her base at the convention. She oriented her stump speech around wagging her finger at Trump rather than presenting an alternative. She was afraid to criticize the Obama administration’s shortcomings and explain how she would improve. She was afraid to take chances.

 

Crooked Hilary.

 

First, I fundamentally disagree on being more responsible than any other factor. And that's due to the sheer power and scope of social engineering which is what Russia did when they "hacked" the election. They specifically targeted demographics of people to influence their opinion of Hillary. If it was bad, they made it worse. If it was on the fence, they kept them from hopping over. If it was good, they tried to turn them against others like Sanders' supporters. There is a reason social engineering is so effective. Second, the Comey memo falls into the area of things Hillary had NO control over. She had already addressed the emails and spoke with the FBI. It was, to her knowledge, done. She had wrapped the debates by that time and frankly, there wasn't enough time to undo the damage that memo did. And if you want to blame her decision about the email server- Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, Jared Kushner, James Comey and more did it too. So not uniquely Hillary. At all. And that's to say nothing of the numerous members of Congress who likely did it as well. Second, it's true she didn't campaign in those states. But it's equally true that appleseed is correct: evidence of voter suppression specifically in Wisconsin exists. It would have made a difference campaigning- I don't disagree, but it ignores the far greater threat voter suppression continues to pose if you focus on the lack of campaigning only as to why she lost Wisconsin in particular.

Again, many factors were at work. And many of these were out of her control. Of the things she could control, her mistakes were in where to campaign, which staff to listen to/hire, and choice of VP. Shall I list the far more numerous list of mistakes Trump made? Hillary shares a part of the blame- no denying that. But to blame the loss SOLELY on her is misguided at best. Name a candidate that faced the same factors she did. You can't. So it's impossible to know how others would have performed in a similar situation. Hypothetically, let's say Barack Obama was running back in 2008 and the economy was fine. Let's say McCain had picked Lieberman or someone safe as his VP. And let's say Obama ran the exact same campaign except that Kenyan Muslim thing reared it's head the weekend before the election along with questions of his citizenship with the governor of Hawaii saying they were reviewing the authenticity of the birth certificate for some reason and then the next day they say it's fine and was just a small typo or clerical error. Guess what? Damage would already be done.

I'm also not really interested in fair or right. Fact is, she did win the people's vote just not the electoral and the legitimacy of the electoral has been thrown into question due to Russian interference, voter suppression and the fact it's an antiquated system. The fact this is the second time and this time is far more egregious in terms of gap between popular to electoral also does not help matters. That's not the point however. Boring politicians lose all the time. Gore and Kerry both lost. The difference is how they lost vs. how Hillary lost and the level of accountability thrust on her vs. the other two.

Why was she running? Because she was the most qualified. And on to that point, name me someone more qualified in history to run for president for the first time. Not even FDR, John Quincy or George W fit those standards despite being related to sitting presidents. Heck, Nixon and George HW come closest as VPs. But take away being a VP, and most of these people are eliminated. Compared to Bill, W, and Obama in their first term, she was the most qualified to jump right in. And certainly when compared to Trump, it's not even a contest. Heck, compared to Trump, Michelle Obama could run next election and still have more experience than he did going in.

Again, she made plenty of mistakes. But to blame her solely for these shortcomings ignores how much was out of her control and how much those out of control threats impacted the election overall.

 

I'm sorry, but the e-mail thing was uniquely Hillary. There really is no similar case. She was a senior government official at a time when e-mail and the internet were mature forms of communication even in official government business, and there were White House policies in place mandating records retention. She deliberately ignored these, even though legislation to the exact same effect was moving through Congress. She went out of her way to violate the spirit of government transparency policies.

Yes, probably in part because she was paranoid after years of Republican attacks. That's an explanation, but not an excuse. She already sunk her campaign over it. Are you guys really going to keep up this rearguard defense? What she did wasn't it right. It was against the spirit of things you purport to want. Her handling of subsequent questions about it was contemptuous of the public, and the sort of hard-headed doubling down that would be disastrous in policy-making. There was nothing good here. Just admit she was wrong about this one thing and everyone move on with their lives. Why was it so hard for her to say? Why is it so hard for you?

 

Trump calling out Iran on Twitter, in all-caps, in a reaction more over a headline than the actual substance of anything said, and implicitly threatening nuclear Armageddon (or something similar) is kind of terrifying.

Or at least it would be, except for the fact that he said this to North Korea: "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States... They will be met with fire and the fury like the world has never seen." Compare with today's outburst: "Never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before." And we know how that turned out.

But then I remember that John Bolton wasn't around then, and you can only try the "Come at me, bro" style of international diplomacy so many times before someone calls your bluff, or there is some other unintended consequence.

But I'm just so exhausted from all of this that I can't be bothered to be outraged anymore.

 

I can't wait for Trump's next threatening tweet where he reveals he was in the Navy SEALS and has been trained in gorilla warfare.

 

Nah, he won't do that one. His draft-dodging records are public.

 

So are the multiple indictments for and multiple intelligence assessments of the Russian election interference he keeps calling fake.

 

Fair enough. He will do that one, and explain McCain never served in the military and stole his record.

 

Yeeaaaaaah my post was a reference to the tough guy copypasta, which Trump's posts to foreign leaders resemble.

 

You think that would stop him saying something stupid?

I think you underestimate the Cheeto in chief stupidity.

 

Please don't call the President silly names. It'll offend people here and he'll tweet at you in caps.

 

Wocky- where have I said she was right? My entire point has been that she made mistakes but there is a difference between contributing to her loss and being solely responsible. Overwhelming evidence has shown Russian interference and the Comey memo did the most damage. It’s not like she didn’t address the emails- she did. It was reopened the weekend before the election- how do you counter that? My point all along is that the idea of blaming Hillary solely for the loss is wrong because objectively, she did everything other male candidates did or have done in her position. The difference was the three things she could not control: the memo, Russia, her gender.

What she could control, she is responsible for. I’ve already addressed that multiple times. I am not defending that. What I am defending is the idea that she didn’t work hard enough, want it bad enough, and didn’t speak enough about her policies- she did more than most candidates and far more than Trump. The popular vote validates that. The fourth factor she couldn’t control is voter suppression.

So yes, she should have campaigned in other states- but as I alluded to, when? Traditionally you don’t do it in August during the Olympics and the nomination wasn’t locked til July. September was walking pneumonia and preparing for the first debate. October was a media blitz and two more debates. It’s easy to blame her, but objectively look at her schedule and the timeline of events and aside from a flyover and a quick photo op, there was simply little time to put actual work into those states. Yes she should have done it anyway. And yes, her campaign was stupid for turning down canvassing offers there. Not denying that. My point is, if another candidate had made this mistake and lost with all these other factors- would they still be blamed as much? This is more like: “Hillary should have known better” when in fact, no one in her position could have controlled the outside factors that dealt the critical blow to her campaign. So again, not defending dumb decisions- she made them. But I am defending the idea that she is the main or sole reason for losing. That’s factually inaccurate based on all we know so far.


Now, as to Trump’s unhinged tweet, I think we’re in for an interesting week of unraveling. He wants to change the narrative. He tried insulting athletes and that failed. He tried attacking Cohen and that failed. So now it is on to attacking other countries. The all cap threat is dangerous and exactly why he should not be on Twitter. The real concern is his state department will back him. Meanwhile, Gowdy suggests Trump aides should quit over not being in the room with Putin. The same Gowdy he made a fool of himself in the congressional hearing two weeks ago. I don’t think the Russia narrative gets dropped this week. And I think we’ll start to see some fallout by August. This week is likely more news on the tapes- which is why Trump is so agitated.

 

It's not so much that it'll offend people, but it's sinking to his level, which is what he wants.

Don't give him what he wants.

 

They can't, they aren't a functioning democracy, the people in charge want to keep him there (bloody deep state ) and enough of his population agree with him to comfort the people in charge (go away, deep state )

 

Na

I think I will continue calling Hair Furor names it amuses me

 

Spoiler: Hair Furor

Spoiler: And a bonus

 

This is Trump trying to change the subject from his horrible Putin meeting, nothing more.

In other words, it's the 11-year old having a tantrum. Please treat it as such.

 

Ugh, yes, this is a huge problem. I keep having recurrent waves of such exhaustion myself, and I fear for the larger effect it may be having (in the country as a whole) of increasing overall apathy or the sense of "giving up" and further disengaging (which of course was already a problem pre-Trump and part of what led to his success).

Edit: And I continue to be stunned at the level of apparent apathy/ignorance I regularly encounter in everyday life (from people across the political spectrum) as to even the most basic details of current news stories.

 

I thought Iran was famous for not having nuclear weapons, but trying to develop from "nuclear reactor tech" to "nuclear bomb tech" in secret?

With there being much debate over whether they in fact stopped trying up to 10 years ago?

 

Correct in essentials. Iran are something like two or three years away from producing a nuclear bomb if they restarted their programs today and were left to their own devices (you don't make bomb-grade fissile matter out of thin air), although they are quite a while longer away (on a scale of a decade or more) from developing an intercontinental delivery platform for an atomic bomb.