2016 US Election: what happened in Nevada?

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Myshkin said:

None of these quoted, nor those that you didn't quote, are the unsupported one-line arguments you seem to be proposing they are. Further, getting back to your original point, are the "establishment" republicans making those arguments against Trump wrong?

Repeated demands for Sanders to drop out because he's hurting Clinton?  Fellow democratic senators suggesting Sanders be stripped of his positions as a consequence?  Complaints about the boorish behavior of (some) Sander's followers behavior?  That is how I interpreted those comments.

At least superficially like those directed towards Trump and his followers, at least until his victory.  (Though, yes, Trump held no political office.)

It has less to do with 'right and wrong' as it does with the political establishment as a whole seeking to suppress the (improbable) prospect of genuine (needed positive) change.

I have said this repeatedly for years now (in different forms) :

'Events are reaching the point that they cannot be controlled or significantly influenced by traditional (establishment) methods.'  This concerns resources such as oil and water as much as anything else.  We (the world, not just the US) is faced with multiple catastrophes becoming manifest over the next few years which the 'establishment' has been in active denial about.  Being committed to the old systems, they CANNOT adapt without destroying themselves in the process.  (I made a similar prediction about the then USSR back in 1980.)

More directly relevant (as pointed out by another poster here and subsequently ignored) :

Sanders 'movement' to all intents and purposes is a revamped version of the 'Occupy' movement from a few years ago.  The 'left' democratic party comes closest to their goals, but those goals are utterly unacceptable to the current democratic party establishment.

More, this movement, under whatever name you choose to call it, is not going to go away.  Economics and political skullduggery will contribute to near exponential growth over the next few years. 

To be blunt: we are in the opening stages of a (global) economic / resource / climate catastrophe that will take several decades, minimum, to attain true stability.  The society that emerges from this 'long depression' is very likely to be very different from what we currently consider to be 'normal.'

Am I clear?   

[Kalbear]

Yep. You're also wrong.

[mormont]

9 hours ago, Altherion said:

First, you are completely misunderstanding the issue with Clinton.

And you are completely misunderstanding the issue with Trump.

It's not that he will necessarily be willing or able to do any or all of the wild things he claims he will do. For the most part, he'll get blocked by the courts, or the Senate, and when that happens he'll likely lose interest, blame someone else and go back to sculpting his hair.

It's that he has already done serious damage to individual Americans and to the US, just by the things he has said and the impact that has had, both economic and social. It's that he is dangerously ignorant of basic political facts. It's that this ignorance makes the country, the economy and individual Americans vulnerable. Under Trump, there won't be any 'roll of the dice'. A 'roll of the dice' implies you're as likely to get a six as a one. That won't happen. There's no six on that dice. It's all ones.

There'll be paralysis and infighting, social discord and political gridlock, international loss of influence and economic decline. Neither US allies nor investors have any confidence in Trump: nor does his own party. And as he fails to deliver on his promises, neither will his voters. He'll need to find someone else to turn their anger on, and he won't care who that is, as long as it's not him.

As a figurehead, he's divisive at best: as a leader, he isn't: as a President, he would be a disaster.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

13 hours ago, Altherion said:

First, you are completely misunderstanding the issue with Clinton. It's not that her morals are dubious (this is true too, but it's true of almost every politician and certainly of Trump) or anything about her personally, it's that she is the establishment candidate. To vote for her is to vote for the status quo, with perhaps a dash of escalation in the Middle Eastern conflicts. Second, I don't think that many people really believe the apocalyptic claims about Trump. It's not plausible that he would destroy the US economy given the damage he would be doing to himself and it's very unlikely that he'd actually be able to implement the more extreme of the things he has said (he has already "evolved" on many of them).

An elected leader destroying the economy while managing to enrich himself and his friends is hardly unprecedented in world history.

[TrackerNeil]

8 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Given that, anyone on the Left who is attacking Hillary is basically doing the job of the Republicans. Which, as anyone who can remember 2000 knows, is a really, really bad thing. I think Hillary will be a perfectly OK President (she's further Left than she was in 2008, for a start), but even if you dislike her, she's the only thing standing between Donald Trump and the White House. And if Trump wins 2016? Playing russian roulette with the entire world is not remotely funny.

 

4 hours ago, mormont said:

It's that he has already done serious damage to individual Americans and to the US, just by the things he has said and the impact that has had, both economic and social. It's that he is dangerously ignorant of basic political facts. It's that this ignorance makes the country, the economy and individual Americans vulnerable. Under Trump, there won't be any 'roll of the dice'. A 'roll of the dice' implies you're as likely to get a six as a one. That won't happen. There's no six on that dice. It's all ones.

There'll be paralysis and infighting, social discord and political gridlock, international loss of influence and economic decline. Neither US allies nor investors have any confidence in Trump: nor does his own party. And as he fails to deliver on his promises, neither will his voters. He'll need to find someone else to turn their anger on, and he won't care who that is, as long as it's not him.

As a figurehead, he's divisive at best: as a leader, he isn't: as a President, he would be a disaster.

These are important to remember, particularly for those who consider joining the Bernie-or-Bust crowd. It's easy to say, "Hey, I didn't vote at all, so I am not to blame," but in a democracy a decision to not make a choice is a choice. You either help steer the nation in (what you feel is) generally the proper direction or you do not. Reasonable people can disagree about what is best, but even the BoBs seem to believe that Trump is a disaster, so there's no real disagreement on that score.** Therefore, sitting out the election is IMO a vote for Trump.

**Admittedly, there are some BoBs who seem to think there is no real difference between Clinton and Trump, but those people are wrong and view politics through a distorted lens.

[Horza]

21 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

 

These are important to remember, particularly for those who consider joining the Bernie-or-Bust crowd. It's easy to say, "Hey, I didn't vote at all, so I am not to blame," but in a democracy a decision to not make a choice is a choice. You either help steer the nation in (what you feel is) generally the proper direction or you do not. Reasonable people can disagree about what is best, but even the BoBs seem to believe that Trump is a disaster, so there's no real disagreement on that score.** Therefore, sitting out the election is IMO a vote for Trump.

Also, at the risk of getting off topic, there is more to US politics than presidential elections. Steering the country in your preferred direction is more than pulling one lever every four years.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

10 hours ago, Shryke said:

There were issues in Nevada during the caucus I believe, though not near as bad as elsewhere as I remember. But none of that has anything to do with the clusterfuck that went down there last week.

The clusterfuck was all about Sanders' people there not knowing or understanding the rules and also getting pissed off their attempt to game the system in Sanders' favour got shot down in favour of going with how the voter's voted in the initial caucuses.

Yes, but I'd take the actual caucus in Nevada as starting point, of how the convention could get that toxic.

No, idea how factual true the following narrative is, but that's the beauty of perception, it does not have to be accurate. The interpretation of the situation matters. Anyway, from what I recall from the media coverage it was mainly the Sanders camp that brought that issue up, because apparently it affected mostly Sanders supporters (again, if not true, perception tops facts). And apparently it actually was a big deal (at least to them), and the DNC tried to down play it at the beginning. So the Sanders supporters felt like that the DNC was in their mind stealing that caucus from Bernie. If you follow that narrative, you can somewhat see where that anger came from.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

25 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

 

These are important to remember, particularly for those who consider joining the Bernie-or-Bust crowd. It's easy to say, "Hey, I didn't vote at all, so I am not to blame," but in a democracy a decision to not make a choice is a choice. You either help steer the nation in (what you feel is) generally the proper direction or you do not. Reasonable people can disagree about what is best, but even the BoBs seem to believe that Trump is a disaster, so there's no real disagreement on that score.** Therefore, sitting out the election is IMO a vote for Trump.

**Admittedly, there are some BoBs who seem to think there is no real difference between Clinton and Trump, but those people are wrong and view politics through a distorted lens.

Again, I think you guys make more of the Bernie-or-Bust folks, than you should. The election is over 5 months off. You saw how quickly that broken GOP rallied behind Trump, once the primaries are over; and what happened to the Never-Trump guys? Just stop that patronizing and gloating towards the Sanders folks, unless you really want to drive them away from the general election. Wait for the primaries to end, and the convention to crown Hillary. They will have cooled off by then. Unless you want that fire to keep on burning.

[Shryke]

47 minutes ago, Notone said:

Yes, but I'd take the actual caucus in Nevada as starting point, of how the convention could get that toxic.

Why? What was special about Nevada?

You are confusing the situation that went down recently with the original caucus, which while a big blow for Sanders' campaign was not actually divisive. It was a fiasco with not enough ballots and long lines and shit, but mostly died down eventually. It's not like it was Arizona where the DNC, Clinton and Sanders are all suing the state over the fiasco.

More importantly it was neither the cause of current clusterfuck down in Nevada nor was it the start of a notable uptick in nasty campaigning of any sort.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Am I confusing it with Arizona?! Now you really make me wonder...

I thought Nevada was the terrible primary where the Sanders folks screamed foulplay after that fiasco of a primary. 

[Kalbear]

This drama on the trump subreddits is amazing. It's like looking at an alien world. With nazis.

http://www.vox.com/2016/5/21/11701482/donald-trump-subreddit-drama-europeans

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Notone said:

Am I confusing it with Arizona?! Now you really make me wonder...

I thought Nevada was the terrible primary where the Sanders folks screamed foulplay after that fiasco of a primary. 

That was arizona. Nevada had some worries but for the most part people were okay.

[Mr Fixit]

22 hours ago, Shryke said:

But of course all those answers are either bullshit or contradictory of his previous stances or outright harmful to the political process as a whole and his professed policy positions as well. So we are stuck with him basically trying to burn the place down around himself because he can't do otherwise without admitting defeat and ending his campaign and he wants people to keep voting for him for various reasons.

I agree. He should have bowed out already, just like Hillary in 2008. Right? PUMA rings a bell? No?

 

[Altherion]

12 hours ago, mormont said:

It's that he has already done serious damage to individual Americans and to the US, just by the things he has said and the impact that has had, both economic and social. It's that he is dangerously ignorant of basic political facts. It's that this ignorance makes the country, the economy and individual Americans vulnerable.

Political "facts" are not truly facts in the same sense as the laws of nature -- human beings created them and we can change them. I wouldn't be so sure that Trump is ignorant of them. It is entirely possible that he is fully aware of them and deliberately ignoring them as a means to an end.

In any case, the campaign he has run so far is much more amusing than the run of the mill political campaigns the people who gave more than $100M to J. Bush and Rubio wanted to have. More importantly, Trump has brought certain aspects of the US political system to light. For example, it was widely believed that to make politically incorrect statements the way he did would immediately doom any candidacy, but he figured out a way to make them work. He also revealed that most of the people who vote for the so-called "conservatives" don't actually care much about the "conservative" ideals (resulting in a bunch of hilarious articles in conservative publications).

Quote

 

Under Trump, there won't be any 'roll of the dice'. A 'roll of the dice' implies you're as likely to get a six as a one. That won't happen. There's no six on that dice. It's all ones.

 

I disagree. It is no trivial thing to win the nomination of one of the two ruling parties. Trump is either fantastically lucky or a lot smarter than he deliberately appears to be. It should become more clear as he takes on Clinton.

Quote

There'll be paralysis and infighting, social discord and political gridlock, international loss of influence and economic decline. Neither US allies nor investors have any confidence in Trump: nor does his own party. And as he fails to deliver on his promises, neither will his voters. He'll need to find someone else to turn their anger on, and he won't care who that is, as long as it's not him.

There is already undoubtedly paralysis and infighting as well as social discord and political gridlock and they will almost certainly remain regardless of who is elected president. International loss of influence and economic decline are more debatable -- it depends on influence with whom and whose economic well-being one cares about.

[Shryke]

51 minutes ago, Mr Fixit said:

I agree. He should have bowed out already, just like Hillary in 2008. Right? PUMA rings a bell? No?

Yes. I remember no one thought well of them either. And kept telling Clinton it was over and she should drop out and stop going so negative.

[The Marquis de Leech]

One area where Sanders is perfectly right to have a go at certain people:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/21/bernie-sanders-debbie-wasserman-schultz-dnc-primary

Clinton may be the nominee (and thus ought to be left alone) but Debbie Wasserman Schultz is fair game.

[The Marquis de Leech]

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

This drama on the trump subreddits is amazing. It's like looking at an alien world. With nazis.

http://www.vox.com/2016/5/21/11701482/donald-trump-subreddit-drama-europeans

Poe's Law applies, of course.

[Myshkin]

5 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

One area where Sanders is perfectly right to have a go at certain people:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/21/bernie-sanders-debbie-wasserman-schultz-dnc-primary

Clinton may be the nominee (and thus ought to be left alone) but Debbie Wasserman Schultz is fair game.

Not if you don't buy the DWS as corrupt Clinton agent narrative. To me this just smacks of petty vindictiveness. Not really a quality I want in my President.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Just now, Myshkin said:

Not if you don't buy the DWS as corrupt Clinton agent narrative. To me this just smacks of petty vindictiveness. Not really a quality I want in my President.

Yes, but DWS is utterly incompetent. She really has no business as DNC chair.

[Shryke]

17 minutes ago, Myshkin said:

Not if you don't buy the DWS as corrupt Clinton agent narrative. To me this just smacks of petty vindictiveness. Not really a quality I want in my President.

DWS isn't a corrupt Clinton agent, she's just a corrupt incompetent who has no place running the DNC and bears major responsibility for alot of the issues the party has been having since she took over.

Just off the top of my head she's directed the recent terrible midterm strategies for the Dems, she's buddy-buddy with the payday loan industry (/spit) and she's actively protecting Republican seats because the current reps are friends of hers/connected to her.