2016 Democratic Thread

[Quin]

How you react to the emails will almost certainly depend on how you already felt about Clinton. A diehard Bernie Sanders fan who sees Clinton as a corporate Democrat driven by expedience will find confirmation in her vacillation over what kind of Wall Street reform to support, her backing of the Bowles-Simpson plan that would have cut spending on entitlement programs, and her musing in a paid speech that “you need both a public and a private position” on policy. In mentioning the dual positions, she was making a comparison to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and the unsavory political machinations Honest Abe had to undertake to achieve ratification of the 13th Amendment.

 

Those who view Clinton as hopelessly liberal, craven, and corrupt will seize, as the Trump campaign has, on her stated “dream” of “a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.” They’ll smell conspiracy when they read hints that a Clinton campaign spokesman who formerly worked for the Justice Department got a heads up on a court hearing related to the release of her State Department emails. The Trump campaign said it was evidence of “collusion” between the campaign and the Justice Department, but notice of the hearing would have been public information.

 

The most common thread in the Podesta emails, however, is that they show a political candidate being political. Not much more, and not much less. Clinton is a mainstream Democrat who admires “moderates” and pragmatism. And yes, she did move to the left to defeat an insurgent liberal opponent.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archiv...s-trump/503711/

 

As for abolishing filibusters, I can't see it happening. Dems will think of it as too valuable a tool, sadly.

[bmags]

Agreed all around. The procedural filibuster is a stupid rule.

I'd like if senate took on house rules for filibuster. Let symbolic obstruction occur, but let senate do its business.

[StrangeSox]

The Senate filibuster was never intended to be used the way that the Republicans have used it since 2008. The Senate is already set up that way by design, and especially now considering the Democrats need 7-8 million more votes to have a majority in the House. That SHOULD be a full-blown mandate, but it ends up just being a thin temporary majority for the Dems.

 

The filibuster was just an accident of history from when John Q. Adams was rewriting the Senate rules in the early 1800's, and nobody even really "discovered" this One Weird Trick To Halt All Laws That Senators HATE! for years/decades. People act like it was some deliberate mechanism or that it's built into the Constitution or something rather than just a parliamentary procedure quirk.

[lostfan]

Simpson-Bowles was something everyone praised in public but nobody actually supported. It's something you either have to support in total or you don't support at all, but people would cherry-pick and say "our deficit plan is in line with the Simpson-Bowles proposals." Democrats would support the parts that had tax increases, Republicans would support the parts that had spending cuts.

[lostfan]

The filibuster was just an accident of history from when John Q. Adams was rewriting the Senate rules in the early 1800's, and nobody even really "discovered" this One Weird Trick To Halt All Laws That Senators HATE! for years/decades. People act like it was some deliberate mechanism or that it's built into the Constitution or something rather than just a parliamentary procedure quirk.

It's not even IN the Consitution IIRC.

[StrangeSox]

It's not even IN the Consitution IIRC.

 

No, and it's not a law either. It's just a procedural thing that fell out of some other changes they were making and wasn't even intentionally put into the rules.

 

There's a pretty good summary about the history of the filibuster from Brookings that's from Congressional testimony.

 

The House and Senate rulebooks in 1789 were nearly identical. Both rulebooks included what is known as the “previous question” motion. The House kept their motion, and today it empowers a simple majority to cut off debate. The Senate no longer has that rule on its books.

 

 

 

What happened to the Senate’s rule? In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr was presiding over the Senate (freshly indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton), and he offered this advice. He said something like this. You are a great deliberative body. But a truly great Senate would have a cleaner rule book. Yours is a mess. You have lots of rules that do the same thing. And he singles out the previous question motion. Now, today, we know that a simple majority in the House can use the rule to cut off debate. But in 1805, neither chamber used the rule that way. Majorities were still experimenting with it. And so when Aaron Burr said, get rid of the previous question motion, the Senate didn’t think twice. When they met in 1806, they dropped the motion from the Senate rule book.

 

 

 

Why? Not because senators in 1806 sought to protect minority rights and extended debate. They got rid of the rule by mistake: Because Aaron Burr told them to.

 

 

 

Once the rule was gone, senators still did not filibuster. Deletion of the rule made possible the filibuster because the Senate no longer had a rule that could have empowered a simple majority to cut off debate. It took several decades until the minority exploited the lax limits on debate, leading to the first real-live filibuster in 1837.

 

I was wrong, it was Aaron Burr and not JQA

Edited October 12, 2016 by StrangeSox

[Quin]

No, and it's not a law either. It's just a procedural thing that fell out of some other changes they were making and wasn't even intentionally put into the rules.

 

There's a pretty good summary about the history of the filibuster from Brookings that's from Congressional testimony.

 

 

 

I was wrong, it was Aaron Burr and not JQA

 

I know Hamilton: An American Musical came out and makes Burr look pretty bad, but holy s*** this dude.

 

Burr's f***-ups set in stone so much dumb s*** for the modern day.

 

Fun fact: He founded what eventually became Chase Bank.

[StrangeSox]

Whenever I hear "Aaron Burr," I always picture that 90's Got Milk? commercial with the guy eating a peanut butter sandwich and trying to call into some radio contest. Effective advertising, I guess.

[lostfan]

Whenever I hear "Aaron Burr," I always picture that 90's Got Milk? commercial with the guy eating a peanut butter sandwich and trying to call into some radio contest. Effective advertising, I guess.

I think we all do.

[Quin]

I think we all do.

 

I did, now I can only picture Leslie Odom, Jr.

[Kyyle23]

Whenever I hear "Aaron Burr," I always picture that 90's Got Milk? commercial with the guy eating a peanut butter sandwich and trying to call into some radio contest. Effective advertising, I guess.

 

 

fun fact, that was directed by Michael Bay

[StrangeSox]

What? No way. I don't believe it. There wasn't a single explosion and no CGI.

 

Wait...unless...the entire thing was CGI?!

[Kyyle23]

What? No way. I don't believe it. There wasn't a single explosion and no CGI.

 

Wait...unless...the entire thing was CGI?!

 

it was before someone handed him a detonator and green screen

[southsider2k5]

I know Hamilton: An American Musical came out and makes Burr look pretty bad, but holy s*** this dude.

 

Burr's f***-ups set in stone so much dumb s*** for the modern day.

 

Fun fact: He founded what eventually became Chase Bank.

 

Learn something new every day. Thanks.

[chw42]

I am getting sick of talking about wikileaks in this election cycle.

 

Whenever they publish anything, probably 90% of people (that might be too conservative, it's probably more) who talk about it don't actually read any of it themselves and have no intention of ever doing so, but they feel knowledgeable enough to discuss it and they make a lot of noise. Of the small percentage of people who actually DO read the documents, they are looking for something to take out of context, with full knowledge that other 90% will parrot 2-3 sentence excerpts all over social media as "proof" of something they already wanted to believe. The "everyday Americans" thing was already discussed, so another example is HRC saying "you need a public position and a private position." She got mocked everywhere for bringing up Lincoln but if you read the speech transcript that literally is what she was talking about. Another example: "DNC officials are racist and said they wanted to do taco bowl outreach with Hispanics." If you read that e-mail exchange it's very obvious what was happening there, two people who work for the DNC (who are themselves Hispanic) were mocking Trump's taco bowl tweet.

 

When people do this, and it's most people, it's impossible to take them seriously. There's just no point. I leave them where they are.

 

Absolutely on point. Please read the source! Just because it's Wikileaks doesn't mean the people who talk about it can't spin it some way without a given context.

[Quin]

Learn something new every day. Thanks.

 

Yup. Hamilton and Burr might've been the most overlooked significant politicians until the musical came out.

 

Hamilton - Nation's financial system, the Coast Guard, desire to have a standing army, New York Post, crucial part of building the constitution, setup Wall Street, the US mint, essentially decided the 1800 election to elect Jefferson.

 

Meanwhile Burr sets up Chase Bank, his trial vs. Thomas Jefferson established the power of the judicial system, he's the reason the loser no longer becomes VP and he twice was part of schemes to create new nations, once in New England and once in the Louisiana Territory.

 

Considering the two were initially friends, if they could have set aside differences they might have left an even bigger impact.

[southsider2k5]

Yup. Hamilton and Burr might've been the most overlooked significant politicians until the musical came out.

 

Hamilton - Nation's financial system, the Coast Guard, desire to have a standing army, New York Post, crucial part of building the constitution, setup Wall Street, the US mint, essentially decided the 1800 election to elect Jefferson.

 

Meanwhile Burr sets up Chase Bank, his trial vs. Thomas Jefferson established the power of the judicial system, he's the reason the loser no longer becomes VP and he twice was part of schemes to create new nations, once in New England and once in the Louisiana Territory.

 

Considering the two were initially friends, if they could have set aside differences they might have left an even bigger impact.

 

I knew most of that other stuff. I had a great Econ history class in college. Hamilton was a big focus of that. Hamilton is 100% the father of modern banking in the United States, even if Andrew Jackson tried to torpedo it.

 

I have also come across some interesting Burr stuff over time. The Chase stuff was completely new though.

[bmags]

I don't think Hamilton would've been forgotten without musical but it did set a nice corrective from the common wisdom that came out of jeffersons hits on his character

[southsider2k5]

Another interesting factoid to connect all that is that there are those who believe that Aaron Burr was connected to the murder of Meriweather Lewis, through traitor James Wilkinson.

[Quin]

I knew most of that other stuff. I had a great Econ history class in college. Hamilton was a big focus of that. Hamilton is 100% the father of modern banking in the United States, even if Andrew Jackson tried to torpedo it.

 

I have also come across some interesting Burr stuff over time. The Chase stuff was completely new though.

 

Which makes it funnier that they were going to take Hamilton off the $10 before Jackson off the $20.

 

Another aspect is how if the Federalists didn't sink with Hamilton's death, they might have been able to get a standing army and national bank in place for Madison's presidency. The US probably wins the War of 1812 without a razed Washington and probably annexes Canada.

 

History is fun.

[southsider2k5]

Another interesting factoid to connect all that is that there are those who believe that Aaron Burr was connected to the murder of Meriweather Lewis, through traitor James Wilkinson.

 

https://play.google.com/store/books/details...g&gclsrc=ds

[lostfan]

Which makes it funnier that they were going to take Hamilton off the $10 before Jackson off the $20.

 

Another aspect is how if the Federalists didn't sink with Hamilton's death, they might have been able to get a standing army and national bank in place for Madison's presidency. The US probably wins the War of 1812 without a razed Washington and probably annexes Canada.

 

History is fun.

Yeah I didn't really understand that either. If you want me to take a person off a bill, it's gonna be Jackson 10x out of 10.

[southsider2k5]

Yeah I didn't really understand that either. If you want me to take a person off a bill, it's gonna be Jackson 10x out of 10.

 

People love to throw the term worst President ever around, but in my eyes it is Andrew Jackson, then everyone else.

[Quin]

People love to throw the term worst President ever around, but in my eyes it is Andrew Jackson, then everyone else.

 

Jackson, Pierce and Buchanan are the easy top 3.

[southsider2k5]

Jackson, Pierce and Buchanan are the easy top 3.

 

 

Thinking about it for a few minutes, and leaving all of the typical hyperbole behind of Nazi, fascist etc behind, Andrew Jackson might be the best comp for a Donald Trump presidency.

 

And yes, I am going to post that on facebook too