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The Next President

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Is it always the same debate? I'm really concerned by how willing she seems to be to use the military to overthrow foreign leadership. I'm still going to vote for her, but I'm distresssed by this compromise. Is that the issue Bernie supporters usually bring up about why they don't like Clinton?

 

Not always, but then again most discussions usually start, end or are prolonged by memes which tend to hash the same points over and over again. The Democratic side, if my facebook feed is to be believed, is far more focused on each candidate's past record.  On the rare occasions I've stepped into these debates I'm usually perturbed by how little each camp's supporters know about even their favored candidate's platform let alone their competitors.  Usually if John Oliver didn't say it, or it can't be summed up in a few words over an image, it doesn't get discussed.

 

This whole primary process reminds me of one experience that has always stood out to me during my junior year in high school.  I was invited to attend Boys State, which is basically a mock government camp where each high school social studies program (basically history) sends 2 students to participate.  Everyone gets together at a college campus, the program lasted a week or so.  We spent most of our day discussing government and over the course of that week we ran mock elections, the winners of which would go on to Boys Nation as senators representing their state in further mock elections.  I remember one guy in particular who went out on the stage walking with a cane, and started talking about his his campaign platform of supply side economics to a roaring cheering crowd.  Now here I was in Massachusetts, surrounded by people who made a point of saying how much they hated Bush and all his policies (this was in 2004) cheering like hell for a guy who had basically adopted his platform.  How these kids, all ostensibly the highest performing students in their respective schools, were completely oblivious to the facts of the matter, and either unable or unwilling to do even a cursory amount of investigation.  Throughout the course of this election the more I see people in my social circles try to brand themselves one way or another, or use any and all means to prove they were right from the start, the more I remember this particular event.  I can't help but feel like I'm once again surrounded by dozens of really smart people who aren't really paying attention, and were content to just be involved.

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I've seen such a spread of concerns that it would be quite overhasty to suggest that it's anything close to "always the same debate." I've seen Bernie supporters accuse her of (among other things): corruption, murder, only being in the running because she's a woman, being a Republican, being best friends with Trump, being indistinguishable politically from Trump, not supporting various policies that Bernie supports (including a number of policies she does in fact support), and plenty of other stuff that I can't recall as of right now.

 

My frustration is that it's basically never debate. It's just accusation and hollering. I feel similarly to Chris. Hillary is not my most preferred candidate, but her positions most mirror mine. I don't always like how her campaign is run, but I think of all the available realistic options she's the one. She's also the most likely to be elected Actual President, sick twitter burns or not, and has been for months and months.

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I don't like Hillary and have no problem saying so. She's better than Trump, but she's just More of the Same, otherwise, and More of the Same is not what the country needs.

 

I also see wild accusations of racism and shit thrown all willy nilly at Bernie.

 

Wish people wouldn't act like it's all one-sided.

 

Makes it really difficult for me to even pretend to want to be involved in politics ever again. This election cycle has done nothing but show me how fucked up it all is and how much I hate it and I hate the people involved and I never ever ever want to look even accidentally in the vague direction of politics.

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I'm worried that the Left is turning into Republican primary voters in that both groups are demanding more and more ideological purity from their candidates. I can't begrudge anyone disliking Hillary, but this attitude that I've seen some liberals (exclusively on twitter) profess conflates supporting Hillary with murder. It's a dangerous path to set down.

 

What really bothers me is that of course a politician who has ascended as far as Clinton will have a ton of compromises and questionable decisions in her past. National politics under any political system is going to be fraught with this stuff and pretending otherwise strikes me as a little naive. Sanders enjoys the benefit of being from a small, very liberal state, a fact that I never see his followers cop to. If he was running in a state like New York, or California, there's no way his policies would be as liberal as they currently are, because he would no longer have the luxury of appealing to a very niche portion of Democratic voters.

 

Finally, I'm kind of bummed that the numbers show Clinton getting more demographic support that mirrors the actual population of America, but yet Sanders is cast as the politician of the people. Whether you like it or not, more Americans (and more diverse Americans!) voted for Clinton and seem to think that she would be a better presidential nominee than Sanders. I want the Democratic party to get pushed more to the left but I also want to win the presidency (and more state and local elections, so I hope that all the young Sanders supporters get active in those spheres as well).

 

Really the final part, I'm so exhausted by the vitriol surrounding the Clinton/Sanders divide that I cannot even feel happy that Clinton is the first woman to get the nomination. I've seen too many people say they are disappointed that it is Clinton who has this honor and not some other, more deserving woman. The problem is, I doubt that there will ever be a woman who actually "deserves" being the first female presidential nominee, because of the gross standards that we hold all women to, especially successful women.

 

/end

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I'm worried that the Left is turning into Republican primary voters in that both groups are demanding more and more ideological purity from their candidates. I can't begrudge anyone disliking Hillary, but this attitude that I've seen some liberals (exclusively on twitter) profess conflates supporting Hillary with murder. It's a dangerous path to set down.

 

What really bothers me is that of course a politician who has ascended as far as Clinton will have a ton of compromises and questionable decisions in her past. National politics under any political system is going to be fraught with this stuff and pretending otherwise strikes me as a little naive. Sanders enjoys the benefit of being from a small, very liberal state, a fact that I never see his followers cop to. If he was running in a state like New York, or California, there's no way his policies would be as liberal as they currently are, because he would no longer have the luxury of appealing to a very niche portion of Democratic voters.

 

Finally, I'm kind of bummed that the numbers show Clinton getting more demographic support that mirrors the actual population of America, but yet Sanders is cast as the politician of the people. Whether you like it or not, more Americans (and more diverse Americans!) voted for Clinton and seem to think that she would be a better presidential nominee than Sanders. I want the Democratic party to get pushed more to the left but I also want to win the presidency (and more state and local elections, so I hope that all the young Sanders supporters get active in those spheres as well).

 

Really the final part, I'm so exhausted by the vitriol surrounding the Clinton/Sanders divide that I cannot even feel happy that Clinton is the first woman to get the nomination. I've seen too many people say they are disappointed that it is Clinton who has this honor and not some other, more deserving woman. The problem is, I doubt that there will ever be a woman who actually "deserves" being the first female presidential nominee, because of the gross standards that we hold all women to, especially successful women.

 

/end

I agree the vitriol is problematic, but I don't think holding candidates to ideological standards is necessarily a bad thing.I for one am extremely worried that the democratic party is becoming a urban, professional class party and is leaving workers behind. There are very few substantive differences between the GOP and the DNC on economic and foreign policy and that is really troubling.

 

Obama and Clinton were looking at downsizing Social Security until grassroots activists and the Sander campaign forced change.

http://www.thenation.com/article/how-expanding-social-security-went-from-economic-fantasy-to-mainstream-talking-point-in-three-short-years/

Social security is part of the bedrock of the new deal coalition. Similarly there is little support for raising the minimum wage in the upper levels of the DNC.

 

Hillary has said fracking is something that should be decided by states and localities, hardly a good left position on the environment. 

 

On foreign policy the debate seems to be how much war and how fully should we support autocratic regimes, not should we be using drones to kill ten civilians for every terrorist while we prop up the corrupt autocratic regimes that drive more people to terrorism.

I know this election is being called "the most important election ever" but they all get called that and at some point the left needs to take a stand and not let the DNC hold civil rights hostage so we have to vote for candidates that support terrible economic, environmental and foreign policy.

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I don't like Hillary and have no problem saying so. She's better than Trump, but she's just More of the Same, otherwise, and More of the Same is not what the country needs.

 

I don't think anyone (here) has an issue with someone not liking a candidate. It's perfectly acceptable! It is very unsettling when two actually very ideologically similar candidates get skewered repeatedly by each other's, let's be clear, fanatics.

 

At the same time, I don't know what "More Of The Same" means in this sentence. It's non-substantive. It is ok to say you don't like a candidate.

 

Really the final part, I'm so exhausted by the vitriol surrounding the Clinton/Sanders divide that I cannot even feel happy that Clinton is the first woman to get the nomination. I've seen too many people say they are disappointed that it is Clinton who has this honor and not some other, more deserving woman. The problem is, I doubt that there will ever be a woman who actually "deserves" being the first female presidential nominee, because of the gross standards that we hold all women to, especially successful women.

 

It's incredibly frustrating. It's strange to talk about who "deserves" something in this way. I'll be frank, Hillary Clinton might be the most qualified presidential candidate in history.

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Oh I didn't know it was okay to say I don't like a candidate. Thanks for letting me know. What?

 

More of the same means exactly what it says. I don't know what's confusing about it? Four/eight (please not eight) more years of Obama. The country needs more than tiny incremental highly compromised steps to survive the coming decades. The world does. Even Sanders isn't really enough, but he's at least a step in the right direction. Or would have been.

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Oh I didn't know it was okay to say I don't like a candidate. Thanks for letting me know. What?

 

 

Aw, that's nice of him!

 

 

I don't know why you keep doing this, but it's rude. It makes me not want to participate in conversations when you act like this, and I'd appreciate it if you would stop.

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My response to you was meant to be a friendly joke 'cause I thought the phrasing was funny! Sorry!

 

My response to Badfinger was legitimate bafflement!

 

Shrug.

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I'm worried that the Left is turning into Republican primary voters in that both groups are demanding more and more ideological purity from their candidates. I can't begrudge anyone disliking Hillary, but this attitude that I've seen some liberals (exclusively on twitter) profess conflates supporting Hillary with murder. It's a dangerous path to set down.

 

What really bothers me is that of course a politician who has ascended as far as Clinton will have a ton of compromises and questionable decisions in her past. National politics under any political system is going to be fraught with this stuff and pretending otherwise strikes me as a little naive. Sanders enjoys the benefit of being from a small, very liberal state, a fact that I never see his followers cop to. If he was running in a state like New York, or California, there's no way his policies would be as liberal as they currently are, because he would no longer have the luxury of appealing to a very niche portion of Democratic voters.

 

I don't know when it's appropriate to care about ideological purity except in a primary election. Clinton has some very troublesome things in her record: not gray areas, like voting to go to war against Iraq during a period of heightened patriotism, but consistent behavior as secretary of state where she directed the sale of weapons to oppressive regimes in Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and wherever else the Clinton Foundation has found fundraising opportunities. She currently employs the same policy firm as Cruz and Rubio and has been courting former Bush donors for sometime now. These aren't made-up concerns and I was relieved when Jill Stein said in an interview what I've thought for months: 

 

Trump says very scary things—deporting immigrants, massive militarism and, you know, ignoring the climate. Well, Hillary, unfortunately, has a track record for doing all of those things. Hillary has supported the deportations of immigrants, opposed the refugees—women and children coming from Honduras, whose refugee crisis she was very much responsible for by giving a thumbs-up to this corporate coup in Honduras that has created the violence from which those refugees are fleeing. She basically said, "No, bar the gates, send them back." You know, so we see these draconian things that Donald Trump is talking about, we actually see Hillary Clinton doing.

 

And it’s not only the militarism that Trump talks about, it’s Hillary’s massive record of militarism: the rush into Libya, which was really—you know, she was the prime mover behind that campaign, which the military advisers were largely against; her approval for the war in Iraq and so on; you know, her threat to bomb Iran; and, you know, she—and her demonization of Russia and China, and the pivot against China. We are rushing towards war with Hillary Clinton, who has a track record.

 

And on climate, you know, Trump talks terrible on climate, although in Ireland, I believe it is, he does believe in climate change: He’s trying to build a wall to protect one of his luxury golf courses in Ireland, because he’s worried about sea level rise from climate change, according to the papers that he’s filed for that permit. And on climate, Hillary Clinton established an office to promote fracking around the world, while secretary of state.

 

So, the terrible things that we expect from Donald Trump, we’ve actually already seen from Hillary Clinton. So I’d say, don’t be a victim of this propaganda campaign, which is being waged by people who exercise selective amnesia. They’re very quick to tell you about the terrible things that the Republicans did, but they’re very quick to forget the equally terrible things that have happened under a Democratic White House, with two Democratic houses of Congress.

 

I don't fault anyone for voting for Clinton. She's a proven politician in a time of great national anxiety and that's always carried water. However, the aggressive campaign to handwave her substantial faults as baggage that every "true" politician has will not only hurting Democrats as a party, it will hurt America as a nation and (most worryingly, given Clinton's record) it will hurt the world as a community. I'm having a lot of trouble now that the only mainstream candidate (discounting Jill Stein, of course) who has neither the intent nor the history of killing innocent civilians by drone is de facto out of the running. I'm having a lot of trouble now that the party that's supposed to represent my interests has chosen a candidate who

 that Gaddafi had been sodomized to death with a knife. That video makes me ill and I think about it every time people talk about Clinton as misunderstood or getting a bad rap. I want to vote for no more war and the lives of billions of non-Americans around the globe and I don't have that opportunity, yet somehow that's all Trump's doing and none of Clinton's.

 

I also see wild accusations of racism and shit thrown all willy nilly at Bernie.

 

Wish people wouldn't act like it's all one-sided.

 

Yeah, the narrative has also been aggressively shaped around the identity politics of this election and, somehow, it always breaks Clinton's way. In general, young people of all demographics voted for Sanders, even when the demographic itself voted for Clinton, but apparently the latter is significant while the former is just naivete. Rolling Stone had a good article about how treating Sanders as an insurgent who's been defeated is a mistake that'll be costing the Democrats for decades. Luckily, I'll have a front row seat.

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I think for the left to really get what it wants, it has to acknowledge that the president isn't the person who's going to do it. For decades, Republicans have built a really impressive operation that has put a lot of conservatives in power across less-visible offices that can be effectively secured for a lot less money than it takes to mount a successful presidential campaign. That kind of focus is what the left badly needs, in my opinion. No president is going to be able to enact sweeping legislative change. The system simply isn't designed to allow that; if anything, it was designed NOT to allow that. The president is a steward, not a legislator. Frankly I think it's kind of amazing that Obama managed to even get something as big as the ACA through, and that's still only a small part of what's needed to really overhaul health care in this country. But I don't even really expect something on that scale to happen again any time soon, in terms of what's coming from the president's administration. I don't understand why anyone thinks Sanders individually would be able to enact broad social and political change as president. For that to happen the left also needs more representatives, more senators, more judges, and so on. When people use their one individual presidential candidate not getting picked as an excuse to disengage from politics, to me I just read that as misconstruing what the president actually does. Between the power of veto, and the power to appoint supreme court justices, and the authority as commander in chief, then president has a lot of very important power, but none of it is legislative.

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Oh I didn't know it was okay to say I don't like a candidate. Thanks for letting me know. What?

 

More of the same means exactly what it says. I don't know what's confusing about it? Four/eight (please not eight) more years of Obama. The country needs more than tiny incremental highly compromised steps to survive the coming decades. The world does. Even Sanders isn't really enough, but he's at least a step in the right direction. Or would have been.

 

1) We were in a discussion about the sustained vitriol and infighting in politics, especially about candidates who are wildly similar. That wasn't an invitation to twig, it was to a general you.

 

2) It's not perceived at all as bafflement. You do this all the time; it's exquisitely rude. You disagree with someone, but rather than being direct and asking for clarification or more detail you push the onus onto whoever you're responding to and say it can't be understood or it wasn't clear or they aren't saying the right thing. If you were genuinely questioning, ask your question.

 

3) More of the same WHAT? What is the thing you fear will be the same? What steps? What is the direction you believe Sanders would lead the USA towards that another candidate wouldn't?

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all right this exquisitely rude person is now out

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I just wrote a huge-ass post about Hillary Clinton then deleted it all, haha.

To boil it down to a paragraph, I basically think that the specific breadth and depth of her experience is extremely impressive and very unusual for a presidential candidate, as it involves both years of experience as a legislator but also years of experience as a critical figure within the US foreign policy apparatus. I think absolutely anyone who is involved with the latter in particular is going to end up having plenty of questionable grist for the mill, both legitimate and frivolous. It's simply impossible for me to imagine anyone having to step into that position and not having to make difficult or sometimes unsavory decisions. That is NOT an excuse for poor or morally questionable decisions. But I am very strongly against litmus tests as a methodology for choosing candidates. That's the exact mentality that disturbs me so deeply about the post-Tea Party right. When I look at the entirety of Hillary Clinton's career, and filter out the spurious attacks largely originating from the right (many of which have sadly been adopted by some on the left), it is true that you are still left with some unsavory elements. But I don't believe any person could be put through her volume and types of experience without that, especially when it involves having to step into the middle of ongoing US foreign policy. Despite it all I think when you take a look at all she has done and tried to do, I think she comes out impressive and admirable on balance and I think and hope she'll be a good president.

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Yeah, I agree with Chris' fear of a litmus test.

 

I remember in the 2008 election when people were saying Obama was a better choice than Hillary because he didn't vote for the Iraq War. But he wasn't even in a position to vote for the war (while he publicly expressed his opposition, he wasn't a US Senator at the time). I don't think the vote for the war was a good one, but who knows what Obama would have done if he had been in a position where he had to actually follow through with his public statements. Similarly, who knows what kind of decisions Sanders would make if he had a more diverse constituency (like say, the rest of the United States).

 

I'm really happy that Sanders did as well as he did, because I think it would have been bad for Clinton to go unchallenged. And I'm really hopeful that the Sanders movement will turn into an important state and local force. But I refuse to buy into this idea that Hillary Clinton is basically a Republican, or Thatcher reincarnated.

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To boil it down to a paragraph, I basically think that the specific breadth and depth of her experience is extremely impressive and very unusual for a presidential candidate, as it involves both years of experience as a legislator but also years of experience as a critical figure within the US foreign policy apparatus. I think absolutely anyone who is involved with the latter in particular is going to end up having plenty of questionable grist for the mill, both legitimate and frivolous. It's simply impossible for me to imagine anyone having to step into that position and not having to make difficult or sometimes unsavory decisions. That is NOT an excuse for poor or morally questionable decisions. But I am very strongly against litmus tests as a methodology for choosing candidates. That's the exact mentality that disturbs me so deeply about the post-Tea Party right. When I look at the entirety of Hillary Clinton's career, and filter out the spurious attacks largely originating from the right (many of which have sadly been adopted by some on the left), it is true that you are still left with some unsavory elements. But I don't believe any person could be put through her volume and types of experience without that, especially when it involves having to step into the middle of ongoing US foreign policy. Despite it all I think when you take a look at all she has done and tried to do, I think she comes out impressive and admirable on balance and I think and hope she'll be a good president.

 

If nothing else, I agree that there's really no way not to be a war candidate after 9/11 (and maybe for the rest of this generation). Lots of people voted for Obama as an anti-war candidate and (surprise) he turned out to be the most warlike of war candidates. His use of the Espionage Act and drone strikes is orders of magnitude beyond Bush, which mostly gets a pass because of good intentions and being "one of us." It's a gross world in which we live.

 

However, I do reiterate that the activities of the Clinton Foundation in the Third World are enormously worrying to me and those emphatically aren't the wages of being your average politician. I find it frustrating that Trump's troubled history as a businessman in the private sector is appropriate for us to scrutinize but not the Clinton Foundation's involvement in, say, blood phosphates in Morocco and the Western Sahara. I would feel maybe 65% better about voting for Clinton if the Clinton Foundation didn't exist, honestly.

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Some of these issues stem from the issues with a two party system. I am a member of Socialist Alternative which is a rather small political party who is not running a candidate for president. My options for voting for president are:

 

The Green's candidate who has no hope of winning and might not even get on the ballot in all 50 states, but who is probably closest to me politically.

The Democratic candidate who I disagree with on economic, environmental and foreign policy issues and partially align with on social justice and civil rights issues.

The Libertarian candidate who might actually make it into the debates, but who I fundamentally disagree with on just about everything and has no hope of winning.

The Republican candidate who is a terrible racist, misogynist asshole whose policies are confusing and mostly unformed, but I will most likely hate.

 

This is further complicated by the fact that we do not use the popular vote to elect our president. There is a good chance that Minnesota will go for Hillary, all she needs is 50% of the vote +1 vote, every vote after that is effectively meaningless. However if I vote against her I will still in effect be voting for her because my residency in the state effects its population which is how electoral votes are allocated.

At this point I am leaning Green because it is where my vote will have the most impact. If they hit 10% of the national vote they would get federal funding and if they get to 15% might get into the presidential debates. Neither of these scenarios are particularly likely right now.

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Is it possible to cast a "blank" vote in the US? As in, a vote that is for none of the available candidates but which still counts toward the total voter count? 

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Is it possible to cast a "blank" vote in the US? As in, a vote that is for none of the available candidates but which still counts toward the total voter count? 

 

That's a good question. I'm not sure. You could definitely turn in a ballot where you voted for other non-presidential offices, but leave the president boxes unchecked. I'm not sure how that would be counted. Probably still as not a vote at at all, specifically in the case of the the presidential election. Maybe voting for a write-in but not writing anything.

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I just wrote a huge-ass post about Hillary Clinton then deleted it all, haha.

I have started doing this about things I care about on the internet and it has improved my life significantly.

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What would be the point in voting with a blank ballot?

It shows you are willing to show up and vote, you just dont want to vote for any of the available options. Some countries actually include a 'protest vote' option on the ballot so it can be interpreted correctly. My political science professor in South Africa always used this option because she had serious issues with how the voting system worked in SA and the ANC always wins anyway.

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It shows you are willing to show up and vote, you just dont want to vote for any of the available options. Some countries actually include a 'protest vote' option on the ballot so it can be interpreted correctly. My political science professor in South Africa always used this option because she had serious issues with how the voting system worked in SA and the ANC always wins anyway.

 

I kinda view the Green Party vote this way. It sounds like I'm joking, but I'm not. I voted for Cynthia McKinney in 2008 because of my disillusion with politics.

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