2016 Democratic Thread

[greg775]

Glad to read Bernie supporters and Bernie will not give up. They are furious at the media for declaring Hillary the winner before the California primary. Of course that hurt Bernie. Why go out of your way to vote if she's already got the nomination?

 

Can you imagine eight years of Hillary that are coming? There is no way in hell she is going to get ANYTHING passed. So we just have to hope things get no worse than they are now cause nothing good will be happening. The Congress despises her and won't pass a thing.

[LittleHurt05]

The daughter of the first African American president will get to cast her first vote for the first female presidential candidate. (Stolen from a tweet).

 

I think this party can be fairly content with that.

 

Who cares that our party's candidate is really s***ty too, at least it's not a white male. American politics 2016.

[StrangeSox]

I posted this same article in the stanford thread because it's directly relevant there, but it's also relevant to all of the nonsense some are trying to peddle about Trump's comments not really being racist maybe or how liberals are the real racists because they acknowledge that racism exists.

 

http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/brock-tu...re-impact/10288

 

Judge Aaron Persky empathized with Brock Allen Turner and could easily imagine what it would be like to lose sports fame (as Persky enjoyed), to lose a Sanford education (as Persky enjoyed), to lose the sort of easy success and high regard that a young, reasonably affluent Stanford graduate (like Persky was) can expect as a matter of right. Judge Persky could easily imagine how dramatically different a state prison is from Stanford frat parties, and how calamitous was Turner’s fall. That’s how Judge Persky convinced himself to hand such a ludicrously light sentence for such a grotesque violation of another human being.

 

But most people fed into the criminal justice system aren’t champion athletes with Stanford scholarships. Most aren’t even high school graduates. Most are people who have lived lives that are alien and inscrutable to someone successful enough to become a judge. Judges might be able to empathize with having to quit their beloved college, but how many can empathize with a defendant who lost a minimum-wage job because they couldn’t make bail? How many can empathize with someone more likely to sleep by a dumpster than exit a frat party next to one? They can conceive of the humiliation of being on the sex offender registry after getting into an elite university, but can they conceive of the humiliation of being stopped, frisked, detained, and beaten with impunity because of the color of their skin? Experience teaches that the answer is usually no.

 

This means that the system is generally friendly to defendants who look like Brock Allen Turner and generally indifferent or cruel to people who don’t look like him. No high school dropout who rapes an unconscious girl behind a dumpster is getting six months in jail and a solicitous speech from the likes of Judge Persky. Judges take their youth as a sign that they are “superpredators,” not as grounds for leniency. If you tell a judge that they aren’t a danger to others, the judge will peer over his or her glasses and remark that people who rape unconscious girls in the dirt are self-evidently dangerous, and don’t be ridiculous. Judges don’t think that a good state prison stretch will have too severe an impact – after all, what are they missing, really?

 

So you won’t find defense lawyers like me cheering Brock Turner’s escape from appropriate consequences. We see it as a grim reminder of the brokenness of the system. We recognize it as what makes the system impossible for many of our clients to trust or respect. And we know that when there’s a backlash against mercy and lenient sentences – when cases like this or the “affluenza” kid inspire public appetite for longer sentences – it’s not the rich who pay the price. It’s the ones who never saw much mercy to begin with.

 

There are two ways to see good fortune and bad fortune. You can say “someone who has enjoyed good fortune should be held to a higher standard, and someone who has suffered bad fortune should be treated with more compassion.” But America’s courts are more likely to say “someone who has enjoyed good fortune has more to lose, and someone who has suffered bad fortune can’t expect any better.”

 

Judge Persky and his ilk can’t stop being human. But they are bound by oath to try to be fair. When a judge says you are very fortunate and therefore it would be too cruel to interrupt that good fortune just because you committed a crime, they are not being fair. For shame.

 

 

[bmags]

Who cares that our party's candidate is really s***ty too, at least it's not a white male. American politics 2016.

 

Great comment.

[StrangeSox]

"At least our candidate isn't a Giant Orange Racist Baby" is a fine selling point.

[bmags]

Noted non-racist Pat Buchanan was also pushing this line.

 

In a damage control conference call a few days ago, Trump directed his surrogates to double-down on his remarks and accuse the media of being the real racists for questioning Trump.

 

This whole thing is just a completely unforced error, too. That Trump U was a big scam was going to be in the media, but the judge wasn't (and hasn't been) saying anything about Trump. Trump is so pathetically thin-skinned that he just had to lash out, and since then he's been unable to simply shut up about it. It's only the first full week of June and we've already hit "historic political gaff" levels. I guess we'll see exactly how much anything really mattes anymore if Trump can weather this storm plus Trump U plus guaranteed multiple future episodes.

 

The judge postponed until after the hearing per Trumps lawyers request. If they felt litigating this in the public eye was a worthwhile fight for them, why ask to postpone?

 

 

[ptatc]

"At least our candidate isn't a Giant Orange Racist Baby" is a fine selling point.

This is why deciding between the two is really going to be tough.

[StrangeSox]

This is why deciding between the two is really going to be tough.

Voting for the one who isn't a thin-skinned con artist with no apparent grasp on policy at all and is a big racist to boot seems like a pretty easy call?

 

edit: or at least not voting for Trump seems like an easy call!

 

Edited June 8, 2016 by StrangeSox

[ptatc]

Voting for the one who isn't a thin-skinned con artist with no apparent grasp on policy at all and is a big racist to boot seems like a pretty easy call?

There are plenty of problems ie. honesty and integrity on the other side as well.

[Balta1701]

Voting for the one who isn't a thin-skinned con artist with no apparent grasp on policy at all and is a big racist to boot seems like a pretty easy call?

A few weeks ago a guy on NPR (it's the Dem threat, you should expect it) had a nice point. To paraphrase...he is a Republican and thinks that Hillary Clinton is wrong on everything...but he'll be voting for Hillary Clinton because at least if she's wrong, she's wrong within normal parameters. She's not going to suddenly lash out and nuke something. The direct quote was "They've got this button — this briefcase. He's going to find it."

[DrunkBomber]

This election is tough. For how much I dislike Hillary there is still no way I could vote for Trump. Im just going to vote for Gary Johnson.

[StrangeSox]

There are plenty of problems ie. honesty and integrity on the other side as well.

I think those problems are vastly outweighed by Trump's own problems with honesty and integrity, plus he has the temperament and bigotry problems as well.

 

Maybe that's not enough to get you to vote for Clinton because you have those issues with her plus don't agree with her on policy, but it seems like a pretty compelling reason to at least not vote for Trump.

[LittleHurt05]

Great comment.

 

Thanks

[StrangeSox]

This election is tough. For how much I dislike Hillary there is still no way I could vote for Trump. Im just going to vote for Gary Johnson.

 

It's only June so polls only matter so much, but it's looking like this year will be the LP's best showing. They may break 5%, which means they'd be eligible for federal election funds (irony!), but it's tough to see Johnson polling consistently above 15% to get in the debates.

[bmags]

A few weeks ago a guy on NPR (it's the Dem threat, you should expect it) had a nice point. To paraphrase...he is a Republican and thinks that Hillary Clinton is wrong on everything...but he'll be voting for Hillary Clinton because at least if she's wrong, she's wrong within normal parameters. She's not going to suddenly lash out and nuke something. The direct quote was "They've got this button — this briefcase. He's going to find it."

 

Josh Barro wrote this up.

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trum...andidate-2016-5

 

It's annoying that I have to be forced to concede the flloor to people in this thread who hate Hillary Clinton and democrats under the assumption that they are terrible, but the reality is that even if they are terrible, they are terrible in a way that will not lead to possible nuclear war or degradation of the institutions of the country.

 

Hillary Clinton on her own is a very strong candidate with policies you can point to as helpful to this country. Donald Trump is an idiot with a single policy, to build a wall between the US and Mexico, and then a bunch of other crap that he can't remember day to day, and a foreign policy that consists of saying a bunch of things about how he built hotel deals in places. All the while he has threatened the freedom of the press, Americans of Mexican descent as being mentally unfit to hold public office and inherently unpatriotic, Muslim Americans, and a horrendous life of hatred of women. All that so bad that serious issues like the fact that he begged for business from Gaddaffi, a leader who had performed terrorist acts against the United States: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldvi...gaddafis-money/

 

This is not about a candidate with a difference in policy. If you back Trump I have to wonder if you care about not only the United States, but the greater world out there. If you have ever known anyone of color, a woman, anyone. In a world of cynical politics, this is the most cynical candidate I've ever seen. And he emerged straight from the Repulbican ID.

 

So yeah, Hillary Clinton routinely finds herself in conflicts of interest she doesn't turn down or avoid. But her worst scandal probably is on par with non-scandals from Trump, like when he rescinded the contracts to the early buyers of the Trump Tower in Chicago when he realized they were worth more, after they took the initial risk in the build of the building.

 

But please, do more research. We haven't yet seen enough.

[StrangeSox]

Josh Barro wrote this up.

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trum...andidate-2016-5

 

It's annoying that I have to be forced to concede the flloor to people in this thread who hate Hillary Clinton and democrats under the assumption that they are terrible, but the reality is that even if they are terrible, they are terrible in a way that will not lead to possible nuclear war or degradation of the institutions of the country.

 

Hillary Clinton on her own is a very strong candidate with policies you can point to as helpful to this country. Donald Trump is an idiot with a single policy, to build a wall between the US and Mexico, and then a bunch of other crap that he can't remember day to day, and a foreign policy that consists of saying a bunch of things about how he built hotel deals in places. All the while he has threatened the freedom of the press, Americans of Mexican descent as being mentally unfit to hold public office and inherently unpatriotic, Muslim Americans, and a horrendous life of hatred of women. All that so bad that serious issues like the fact that he begged for business from Gaddaffi, a leader who had performed terrorist acts against the United States: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldvi...gaddafis-money/

 

This is not about a candidate with a difference in policy. If you back Trump I have to wonder if you care about not only the United States, but the greater world out there. If you have ever known anyone of color, a woman, anyone. In a world of cynical politics, this is the most cynical candidate I've ever seen. And he emerged straight from the Repulbican ID.

 

So yeah, Hillary Clinton routinely finds herself in conflicts of interest she doesn't turn down or avoid. But her worst scandal probably is on par with non-scandals from Trump, like when he rescinded the contracts to the early buyers of the Trump Tower in Chicago when he realized they were worth more, after they took the initial risk in the build of the building.

 

But please, do more research. We haven't yet seen enough.

 

No, two policies. Don't forget his Muslim ban.

 

[bmags]

No, two policies. Don't forget his Muslim ban.

 

Oh but he didn't actually mean that. And the wall may be a metaphorical wall. So perhaps he has no policies.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

For the best Trump research, follow @BuzzFeedAndrew on twitter. BuzzFeed's clickbait garbage funds one of the better political research/reporting groups out there right now.

 

[StrangeSox]

Oh but he didn't actually mean that. And the wall may be a metaphorical wall. So perhaps he has no policies.

Sure, but you only need to wait another hour or maybe even just one more sentence for him to actually double-down on those policies and grow the wall by another 10'.

[southsider2k5]

It's only June so polls only matter so much, but it's looking like this year will be the LP's best showing. They may break 5%, which means they'd be eligible for federal election funds (irony!), but it's tough to see Johnson polling consistently above 15% to get in the debates.

 

That is who I am voting for, and telling everyone who doesn't like Trump or Clinton. Getting a third choice would be so nice.

[pettie4sox]

That is who I am voting for, and telling everyone who doesn't like Trump or Clinton. Getting a third choice would be so nice.

 

Plus he thinks Trumps a p****. Can't beat a guy who speaks his mind... oh wait

[StrangeSox]

On the other hand, the LP policy platform is pants-on-head crazy

[southsider2k5]

On the other hand, the LP policy platform is pants-on-head crazy

 

Compared to the rest of this election cycle, meh.

[Texsox]

I'm looking strongly at a 3rd party candidate. For me it will be easy to vote for someone else. I know Texas will go to Trump. The Aggie crowd in College Station (the epicenter of Texas conservatism) will drown out the UT Austin liberals. As much as I would like to help close the gap, I'm not certain Hillary is my first choice.

[pettie4sox]

On the other hand, the LP policy platform is pants-on-head crazy

 

The whole deal with every f***ing problem yourself policy?