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Vader

The Next President

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Also Illinois, MO and Ohio aren't the south. Bernie did worse than even projected when he needed to beat the projections to stay viable. I'll keep the faith until the end and continue donating my time and money towards the campaign.

 

I think he is right, we need a political revolution that doesn't start and stop at the white house. 34% of the Senate and 100% of the House are up for reelection is 2016, this could be a good year to make serious gains for progressives using the message and momentum he has generated.

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That would be my other hope. That congress is filled with progressives. Because they would at least oppose Clinton on some things.

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The hope for me now is that, the longer Sanders stays in the race, the further Clinton is forced to the left to engage with his base. Anything that forces her to make concessions beyond "lesser evil" and "united front" fear-mongering is good. She's also picked up some of his policies, at least for now, so she's not just saying, "I'll see what I can do," about, say, the banks anymore.

I still worry about Clinton overall. I think she is a much weaker candidate than most people credit: record unlikeability, prone to gaffes (the AIDS comment and asking where Bernie was in the nineties, in the same week!), and still undergoing three separate federal investigations. She is possibly the candidate I'd be least likely to match up against a fascist demagogue, given the choice.

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Agreed Gorm. I hope Bernie keeps pushing Hillary left. What I hope for is obviously not a Trump nomination, but if he does become the nominee that that will suppress enthusiasm and therefore voter turn out of (semi) rational republicans, and that the democratic party, no matter who is the nominee, does everything it can to mobilize it's young and Black voters to actually go vote.

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Former Speaker Boehner just said that if the Republican Convention ends up being a Contested Convention (where none of the people running hit the required delegate count) he is going to back the current Speaker, Paul Ryan, for president. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

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Agreed Gorm. I hope Bernie keeps pushing Hillary left. What I hope for is obviously not a Trump nomination, but if he does become the nominee that that will suppress enthusiasm and therefore voter turn out of (semi) rational republicans, and that the democratic party, no matter who is the nominee, does everything it can to mobilize it's young and Black voters to actually go vote.

 

A disenchanted Republican base that doesn't turn out is possibly the best outcome, as it gives the Dems a better shot at re-capturing some legislative seats, and hopefully make some headway in getting more Dems into statehouses.

 

The Democrats badly, desperately need better organization and movements in states to get state legislatures back.  I'm not sure there's a more important political battle to be fought right now next to the presidency, to try and reverse the attacks on voting rights and gerrymandering at the state level.  If not for gerrymandering, the House and Senate would look like radically different beasts.

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Democrats might be able to take a majority in the senate, but the house is another matter entirely.  House districts have been so thoroughly designed to win republican seats in many states that even low voter turnout for republican candidates can result in a victory, not to mention the number of seats they need to win over is much higher there.  However the real test of control in any house now isn't so much about the majority as it is the super majority, which might be technically possible but certainly isn't practical.  After all, even within the republican party there is enough of a obstructionist faction that republican agendas can hardly get through.  Personally I worry more about the Bernie crowd going their own way if he doesn't get the nomination.  I'm not sure how widespread it is, but I've heard a lot of talk in that direction, or people suggesting that it's either Bernie or the Green party, which might be enough for Trump to win.

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I'm not convinced that the people who would insist on voting for Bernie would've voted anyway if he hadn't been there. Keep in mind it's mostly young people.

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I'm not convinced that the people who would insist on voting for Bernie would've voted anyway if he hadn't been there. Keep in mind it's mostly young people.

 

Yeah, for some reason, people don't like to acknowledge that this is the risk of running a centrist candidate under the aegis of the Democratic Party: you won't attract nearly as many independents or young voters as someone further to the left. Personally, I'm surprised that Clinton's not courting those groups more aggressively; the idea that she needs to stay close to center to attract "reasonable Republicans" defecting because of Trump is a total fantasy, more outlandish than anything that's ever come out of Sanders' mouth. Simply relying on Sanders to act as a sheepdog to herd the left back into the Democratic voting base is a strategy that'll be prone to backfire, I think, and vote-shaming them has never really been able to pick up the slack, historically speaking.

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Former Speaker Boehner just said that if the Republican Convention ends up being a Contested Convention (where none of the people running hit the required delegate count) he is going to back the current Speaker, Paul Ryan, for president. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

 

Since you're a liberal minded voter, you should laugh and find a friend to high five.

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I have the opposite read where I think people are profoundly underestimating Clinton's viability as a general election candidate. In this case the conventional wisdom is correct as opposed to the sea of hot takes and Slatepitches that make up how most people are digesting this election.

 

People are underestimating her because she lost to Obama in 2008, and because people underestimated how strong a candidate Bernie Sanders is, and so she appeared kind of weak comparatively because she wasn't crushing it even harder. But it is pretty obvious she is running an incredibly strong campaign.

 

Sanders managed to capture a huge swath of the white liberal city-dwelling demographic of the Democratic base. Unfortunately for him, this does not make up the majority of the Democratic base, not even close.

 

If you look at raw numbers of votes, Clinton is outperforming everyone, including Trump. And Republicans are much better at voting in primaries than Democrats. When it comes time for the general election, Clinton's position will be even stronger.

 

Clinton doesn't need to attract "reasonable Republicans" (whatever that means) as Gormongous puts it. All she needs to do is convince people that generally vote Democratic in elections to continue to vote for Democrats and she will win this election. There will be some true Bernie Sanders believers that decide not to vote for her and would rather watch it all burn, but most people that generally vote for Democrats will be genuinely terrified of a Trump presidency. As we move away from primary season most people will realize that they'd rather vote for Clinton then hand the election to Trump. Because they will think about what it means to have Donald Trump select Supreme Court justices, to have unprecedented surveillance and assassination powers, the ability to pardon whomever he pleases, what it would mean for the Black Lives Matter movement, for abortion rights, for all the people that currently have healthcare that used to have none, and they will realize that a centrist corporate-friendly Democrat is still a much better deal. Just as Republicans that currently are horrified by Trump will make peace with Trump in the general election, Democrats and left-wing voters will do the same with Clinton because that is how electoral psychology works. And Clinton will win because Democrats have the better electoral math.

 

And this doesn't even have to be a total loss for Sanders. If he can use his considerable influence down ballot to get some more progressive and left-wing Democrats into office then he'll have shifted the political balance into something better than the status quo.

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In the same question-and-answer session here, Boehner referred to Ted Cruz as "lucifer."

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If you look at raw numbers of votes, Clinton is outperforming everyone, including Trump. And Republicans are much better at voting in primaries than Democrats. When it comes time for the general election, Clinton's position will be even stronger.

 

Not to cherry-pick from your whole thing, but of course she's outperforming everyone in votes. Until yesterday, the Republican primary was split four ways, albeit unevenly, and Clinton's currently ahead of Sanders in the Democratic primary. This is a non-fact and has minimal predictive value for how she will fare in a general election, especially against an opponent who is actually willing to use her twenty-odd years of scandals and gaffes against her.

 

I agree with other posters that Trump is liable to enervate much of the Republican base in the election proper, possibly in equal proportion to the angry reactionaries and independents that he'll pick up, but relying on the Democratic machine to churn out another win because there's no better option at hand is exactly the reason that Clinton doesn't exactly have a commanding presence among younger voters and the further left.

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And this doesn't even have to be a total loss for Sanders. If he can use his considerable influence down ballot to get some more progressive and left-wing Democrats into office then he'll have shifted the political balance into something better than the status quo.

 

In all honesty, I think this is a best case scenario. I love Bernie's domestic policy, but the harder I look at his foreign policy the more I think he would be a natsec liability. Pulling the party left and getting people in power who are empowered to improve conditions domestically is better than having him in the situation room.

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In all honesty, I think this is a best case scenario. I love Bernie's domestic policy, but the harder I look at his foreign policy the more I think he would be a natsec liability. Pulling the party left and getting people in power who are empowered to improve conditions domestically is better than having him in the situation room.

I guess I don't see how he would be any more of a liability than Obama was coming in. There is evidence of his good judgement in terms of the Iraq War and supporting the Contras. 

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I guess I don't see how he would be any more of a liability than Obama was coming in. There is evidence of his good judgement in terms of the Iraq War and supporting the Contras. 

 

Obama's foreign policy has been pretty disastrous -- the destruction of Libya, the entire Syrian civil war, worsening corruption in Afghanistan, and continued drone wars that serve only to push more people to radicalization. Even the pivot to Asia has largely been a failure, with worsening tensions between China and Japan and the Abe cabinet losing tremendous amounts of support based on its support of Article IX revision to appease American hegemony. And these are only broad brushstrokes -- once you get into the nitty gritty, the Obama doctrine has been one of ignoring opportunities, and losing out when it takes on the wrong risks.

 

Being "no worse than Obama" is not a comforting endorsement.

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In all honesty, I think this is a best case scenario. I love Bernie's domestic policy, but the harder I look at his foreign policy the more I think he would be a natsec liability. Pulling the party left and getting people in power who are empowered to improve conditions domestically is better than having him in the situation room.

Obama's foreign policy has been pretty disastrous -- the destruction of Libya, the entire Syrian civil war, worsening corruption in Afghanistan, and continued drone wars that serve only to push more people to radicalization. Even the pivot to Asia has largely been a failure, with worsening tensions between China and Japan and the Abe cabinet losing tremendous amounts of support based on its support of Article IX revision to appease American hegemony. And these are only broad brushstrokes -- once you get into the nitty gritty, the Obama doctrine has been one of ignoring opportunities, and losing out when it takes on the wrong risks.

 

Being "no worse than Obama" is not a comforting endorsement.

 

Honestly, the more I learn about Clinton's foreign policy experience, the more I think that having a complete novice in the situation room would be better than having Clinton back in there, with more power than she had as Secretary of State.

And all of this is not to mention Clinton's well-known work spearheading the destruction of Libya (which was, like Bush's war against Iraq, largely done under false pretenses and contrary to information on the ground) and the mishandling of Syria and Ukraine. Clinton is wholly the inheritor and, in many cases, the instigator of Obama's worst foreign policy missteps, most of which show that her friendship with Kissinger isn't just a matter of tea and good music.

 

 

EDIT: And lest any of you think that's liable to change with Clinton at the reins herself, she even suggested last month that the way to stabilize Libya and Syria are US military presences, much like the sixty-year deployments in Germany, Japan, and South Korea.

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Clinton is predictably bad. Sanders would be unpredictably bad. I don't disagree with anything you said (except maybe laying more of Libya at Samantha Power's feet) -- I just prefer someone who's predictably bad. America is already incredibly politically unstable enough.

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I don't know that Clinton is predictably anything, she seems just as liable to reverse her positions as support them.  Her superpac accepted 130k from the private prison lobby, and if you go to her website right now on the issue of criminal justice reform she says she will end the era of mass incarceration and end private prisons, which is contrary to those lobbies' agendas.  That is just one example but her entire platform is rife with this kind of thing-- she accepts money from a lobby and then declares her platform to be something opposed to what that lobby wants.  Granted most of those promises are vague, saying things like "strengthen the law" and other catchphrases, but at some point I wonder what will she actually do?  Will she really overturn Citizens United?  The thing that allows her to gather as much money as she has?  As a senator, and the secretary of state she has proven herself to be subject to the whims of these monied interests, and while she says things that conflict with their wishes she continues to act in a way that conflicts with those promises.  I don't think Sanders necessarily made Clinton move to the left, he has undoubtedly made her campaign to the left, but beyond that I've seen no indication there will be any follow through.

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Dunno if that's next-president material but I will quickly add that despite Mitch McConnell declaring the senate will be bad employees by not doing their job (btw fire them in November by electing other people) eight senate Republicans have stepped up to say they will started the vetting / confirmation process. But yeah, out of all the "we don't like Obama THIS MUCH" moves, this is the most transparent and nobody - not even Republican constituents - are buying it.

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It's next president material in that I hope that it loses the republican candidate some votes, but I guess this feels like it's just turning into the election 2016 thread now?

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I think it's actually quite an important issue regarding the presidential race.  It's no secret that the unprecedented obstruction started with Obama, mostly due to a procedural rule change regarding filibusters, but I personally am curious whether or not it will proceed once he leaves office.  Given that obstruction, the Supreme court in recent years has become an even more important part of the government, creating precedents for everything from handgun bans to same sex marriage and reproductive rights.  Assuming the obstructionism persists, that trend will continue onto the next presidency, especially if we end up with a democratic president.

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I think it's actually quite an important issue regarding the presidential race. It's no secret that the unprecedented obstruction started with Obama, mostly due to a procedural rule change regarding filibusters, but I personally am curious whether or not it will proceed once he leaves office. Given that obstruction, the Supreme court in recent years has become an even more important part of the government, creating precedents for everything from handgun bans to same sex marriage and reproductive rights. Assuming the obstructionism persists, that trend will continue onto the next presidency, especially if we end up with a democratic president.

Uhhhhh I don't think the obstruction started with Obama. The 107th Congress was pretty strong precedence, with Democrats stalling a lot of appellate court nominees in committee even though Bush elevated a Clinton appointee as peace offering. It wasn't until Republicans regained a majority in the Senate with the 108th Congress that a lot of those blocked nominations went through. I wasn't paying attention before that and looking up the history is unwieldy on a phone, but in my memory this is a fight that Democrats started. Republicans are just escalating.

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