US Politics: Let's Discuss US Politics

[Mudguard]

At this point, I don't see how anyone can say with a straight face that the Democratic Party primaries weren't rigged for Clinton.  The Clinton campaign gained control over the DNC in August 2015, 6 months before the first votes were cast.  Wasserman-Shultz was part of the Clinton campaign in 2012.  The head of the Iowa Democratic Party campaigned for Clinton in 2012.  Elizabeth Warren thinks it was rigged.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Yeah, I think the one half decent defense the DNC has is that Bernie never became a member of the Democratic Party. Outside of that, the whole thing pretty much stinks.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

GOP Tax Bill Mentions Stephen Curry By Name

 http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article182341661.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

/Steve's Bike Shop is not hiring, but you call fill out an application if you like

[Bonnot OG]

28 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

At this point, I don't see how anyone can say with a straight face that the Democratic Party primaries weren't rigged for Clinton.  The Clinton campaign gained control over the DNC in August 2015, 6 months before the first votes were cast.  Wasserman-Shultz was part of the Clinton campaign in 2012.  The head of the Iowa Democratic Party campaigned for Clinton in 2012.  Elizabeth Warren thinks it was rigged.

OMG, the Democratic party was heavily in favor of the actual democrat and not the lifelong Independent turned Dem come lately. What a shocker. 

No seriously, Sanders and his campaign are so fucking incompetent they just signed the papers without ever actually reading what they said. 

So where were the primaries rigged exactly? Were the voting stations tampered with? Is that why Sanders was unable to beat Clinton in the primaries? 

God the Cult of Bernie is nauseating. 

[Altherion]

5 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

OMG, the Democratic party was heavily in favor of the actual democrat and not the lifelong Independent turned Dem come lately.

Not exactly. The reason the one and only serious competitor to Clinton was a lifelong Independent is because every Democrat saw the lay of the land and knew they had no chance. Sanders was able to mount a credible challenge precisely because he was relatively different in both ideology and funding sources. In the end, he was no match for the Democrat machine and it was most definitely rigged against him too, but its influence was far greater in clearing the field of nearly all long-term Democrats other than Clinton (the solitary exception with actual participation in a primary being O'Malley, but he got some utterly negligible fraction of the vote and quit almost immediately).

[Week]

How many fake votes were cast for Hillary over Bernie? Especially in the southern states where his message didn't connect. How guilty is Hillary for "rigging" a contest that she won by 3.7 million votes?

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Why are we still litigating the Democrats' process.  OMG.  Hillary lost.  She was frankly not that great a candidate (better than the alternative, but still).  Why are people still moaning on about this stuff a year later when frankly energy would be better spent putting together a strategy for 2018 and 2020?  And frankly, move on from Sanders.  There has to be someone age 35-55 that the Democrats could get excited about on a national basis?

[Altherion]

5 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

There has to be someone age 35-55 that the Democrats could get excited about on a national basis?

Does there? I'm sure there are individuals who can excite fractions of the Democratic base, but it's not obvious that there is anyone who would be popular with a broad majority. I think they'll still get nearly all of the votes for the same reason that Clinton and Trump did from their respective parties, but there's nobody particularly exciting on the horizon (which might not mean much -- Obama wasn't too famous in 2005).

[GAROVORKIN]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Why are we still litigating the Democrats' process.  OMG.  Hillary lost.  She was frankly not that great a candidate (better than the alternative, but still).  Why are people still moaning on about this stuff a year later when frankly energy would be better spent putting together a strategy for 2018 and 2020?  And frankly, move on from Sanders.  There has to be someone age 35-55 that the Democrats could get excited about on a national basis?

 

Because even a year on,  the disbelief and shock of Trump winning an election which he wasn't supposed to win , hasn't gone away and for some, it won't go away until the next election.  

[Rippounet]

23 hours ago, Altherion said:

However... what is abstract and what is debatable depends in considerable extent on whom one is dealing with. For a considerable number of Americans, the people who wrote those articles and books are representatives of the evil that has corrupted American academia. Not only will they ignore the scholarly research, but they will be openly distrustful of any conclusions based on it. For a much larger number, these works are simply inaccessible -- even if they had the motivation to read them, they simply don't have the time. Thus, the vast majority relies on summaries given by their media source of choice and the latter are not unanimous.

In any case, it doesn't actually matter whether their impressions are correct or not -- or in any case, it matters much less than the fact that there are a lot of them, they are angry and they're armed.

Yes, I agree.
That is a separate problem however, but one which is especially thorny in these times. If people won't trust solid research and deliberately choose to rely instead on their own erroneous impressions there's not much one can do.

23 hours ago, Altherion said:

It's not a matter of belief -- it is the avowed policy of both government and academia as well as quite a few corporations and I've witnessed it first hand. For example, I went to a high school for which admission was by examination: everyone takes the same test (a combination of math and English) and the people above a certain score get in... except that threshold for certain groups is lower than for everyone else. Since the total number of seats is limited, this is a zero-sum game and assistance to any one group is discrimination against others.

Yes, that's the one. And government discriminates against poor whites in precisely the way I mentioned above: a significant fraction of the contests in our society are either over a fixed resource and thus zero-sum (e.g. admittance to a good university, most government funding, etc.) or over a diminishing resource (e.g. quality jobs in many geographic regions and several professional fields) and thus even worse than that. Government does not set out to discriminate against poor whites -- its putative motivation is to assist minorities -- but such discrimination is the outcome.

Hmmm... I can't find any fault in your logic. If resources are scarce, any program based on race alone would end up being discriminatory in nature.
But then the root problem would be the number of people who need assistance -regardless of race. Fifty years ago it was obvious that minorities were in dire need of some assistance ; it seems the number of whites who would need the same level of assistance is far greater today. I would conclude that a society in which poverty has become such a widespread problem should offer a considerable number of available programs for the poor -all of them.
To phrase it differently, affirmative action should only be one of many tools to address the problem of poverty.
And of course, it this is not the case, i.e. if the poor are ignored (collectively) while affirmative action programs remain, then of course, it will fuel intense racial resentment.
Still, all this doesn't really answer anything I've said. Which is that if American politicians are ignoring the suffering middle-class, then that is the problem. It doesn't make programs providing minorities with extra opportunities unfair ; it only makes them insufficient for all the various social problems at hand. But then, that was not their purpose. They were designed for specific objectives that haven't been reached. The fact that white poverty has also become a problem in the meantime would require more inclusive programs with a significantly greater amount of resources.

The issue I have is not necessarily what you are saying, it is the way you present your arguments. By talking of "anti-white discrimination" you use the language of racial resentment to discuss problems that go far beyond race.
As I recall, Johnson's "Great Society" had tons of anti-poverty programs, many of which were color-blind. Perhaps the people to blame are those who got rid of such programs, one after another. And who often did it with the blessing of many whites who believed that they primarily benefitted minorities.
And perhaps, if a significant portion of the electorate had not been so preoccupied with minorities in the first place, they might have sought to protect the programs that they could benefit from some day.

Just one example to illustrate my line of thought. Private education in the US really took off in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education because many white parents did not want their children to attend desegregated schools.
What they didn't realize was that their children might not be able to afford private education for their own kids and that supporting the attacks on public education would end up harming their own interests.
So today you have public schools that are mediocre for everyone and affirmative action programs to help the best members of minorities get their education.
And the children and grandchildren of the people who hated on the government for forcing racial integration are quite often those who now say they feel "ignored."

I don't have any miracle solution to offer, but it seems to me that racial resentment is what has been used, again and again, to hurt everyone. And the anger that the "ignored" feel today is both misdirected and counter-productive. If anything, it will be used against them. Again.
Of course, because the anger today is so much greater, it might end up having even more devastating consequences.

23 hours ago, Altherion said:

I fully agree with you that it wasn't the case half a century ago, but the multi-millionaire activists of today are a far cry from the people who fought (and sometimes died) for civil rights. The names alone are a dead giveaway.

I am not sure who you are referring too here.

[Mudguard]

48 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

OMG, the Democratic party was heavily in favor of the actual democrat and not the lifelong Independent turned Dem come lately. What a shocker. 

No seriously, Sanders and his campaign are so fucking incompetent they just signed the papers without ever actually reading what they said. 

So where were the primaries rigged exactly? Were the voting stations tampered with? Is that why Sanders was unable to beat Clinton in the primaries? 

God the Cult of Bernie is nauseating. 

The Hillary Victory Fund and the agreement that gave the Clinton campaign control of the DNC are two separate things.  The disclosure of the August 2015 agreement that gave the Clinton campaign control of DNC staffing and strategy is a new disclosure.

You can ask the same questions regarding the general election.  Were voting stations tampered with?  No.  Trump won the most electoral votes, so that's the end of the discussion?  People voted in the general and elected Trump, yet we rightly care about Russian interference in our election.  The process should have been fair in both the primaries and general election, but they weren't.

Doesn't matter that Sanders was a lifelong Independent before the primaries.  If he qualified to run in the Democratic Party primary, he should have been afforded a fair opportunity in the race.  Him being an Independent doesn't excuse rigging the primary.  Maybe he would have lost anyway, but he should have been given a fair shot.

[all swedes are racist]

26 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Why are we still litigating the Democrats' process.  OMG.  Hillary lost.  She was frankly not that great a candidate (better than the alternative, but still).  Why are people still moaning on about this stuff a year later when frankly energy would be better spent putting together a strategy for 2018 and 2020?  And frankly, move on from Sanders.  There has to be someone age 35-55 that the Democrats could get excited about on a national basis?

well i am not trying to get into more bullshit over the campaign, but the brazile excerpt maybe kinda highlights why there isn't a candidate put forward by the dems that folks can get excited about

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

The Hillary Victory Fund and the agreement that gave the Clinton campaign control of the DNC are two separate things.  The disclosure of the August 2015 agreement that gave the Clinton campaign control of DNC staffing and strategy is a new disclosure.

It isn't, and point of fact Sanders himself signed onto it in 2015.

2 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

You can ask the same questions regarding the general election.  Were voting stations tampered with?  No.  Trump won the most electoral votes, so that's the end of the discussion?  People voted in the general and elected Trump, yet we rightly care about Russian interference in our election.  The process should have been fair in both the primaries and general election, but they weren't.

Why?

Serious question here: why is there any obligation that the Democratic primaries are fair in any meaningful way? 

2 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Doesn't matter that Sanders was a lifelong Independent before the primaries.  If he qualified to run in the Democratic Party primary, he should have been afforded a fair opportunity in the race.  Him being an Independent doesn't excuse rigging the primary.  Maybe he would have lost anyway, but he should have been given a fair shot.

How precisely was the primary rigged?

[fairwarging]

On 10/31/2017 at 5:30 PM, OldGimletEye said:

As not the brightest kid in class, as I sit back here doodling away and daydreaming, I have a bit of sympathy for when people do stupid stuff.

But, then there is doing stupid stuff and then there is doing bat shit crazy insane stupid stuff. It’s easy to forgive people doing stupid stuff. But not so much when, they are doing bat shit crazy insane stupid stuff.

And Holocaust Denial is bat shit crazy insane stupid stuff and not forgivable. If somebody says, “Oh, I’m a Nazi, but I’m not for that nasty ethnic cleansing stuff, cause it never happened.”, I just think they are deserving of my contempt as a Nazi that openly acknowledges what they did.

I actually lost a friend last spring, my only friend in the area, because he started arguing this with me. He was into a lot of conspiracy theories, but benign, funny ones like bigfoot and aliens. And then came this. At first I thought he was joking, and then came the phrenology and other scary stuff. 

I once jokingly wondered why anyone would join the 'conspiracy theories' subreddit on Reddit, because the existence of a bunch of other bizarre conspiracies would weaken the credence of your own pet conspiracy theory, but I think some people go out there and swallow all of it.  

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Sword of Doom said:

No seriously, Sanders and his campaign are so fucking incompetent they just signed the papers without ever actually reading what they said. 

This is just a fucking stupid argument. By no means did Sanders sign an agreement that in August 2015 gave him complete control over DNC staffing, and an inordinate amount of control over DNC strategies.

Sanders' campaign signed a Joint Funding Agreement. That's where the similarities between the JFAs ends. Joint Funding Agreements are nothing new. What IS new is a JFA that gives someone who isn't even the party nominee almost total control over national party fundraising, strategy and staffing. And that did so to the extreme detriment of the state parties which said campaign was purporting to be fundraising on behalf of.

But no, you're right. It's Bernie Bros all the way down.

[ThinkerX]

9 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Serious question here: why is there any obligation that the Democratic primaries are fair in any meaningful way? 

Trust.  Somebody willing to invoke 'unfair measures' at that point, WILL, beyond all doubt, invoke unfair measures upon attaining power (winning both the primary and the general.)  Therefor, the democratic party's contender, in terms of honesty/corruption, automatically become as vile as the republicans so often denounced here.  The swamp returns.

 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It isn't, and point of fact Sanders himself signed onto it in 2015.

Serious question here: why is there any obligation that the Democratic primaries are fair in any meaningful way? 

Sorry, but in point of fact, Sanders' campaign did NOT sign on to the agreement giving Clinton's campaign near-total control over DNC staffing, fundraising and strategy. Neither did Sanders sign on to an agreement that purported to raise money on behalf of state parties, but which was actually funneled to the national party and ultimately to the Clinton campaign.

And fucking seriously? Why should elections be fair? I've seen you on here complaining plenty about tactics Republicans are implementing to make voting unfair.

If the DNC wants to go back to selecting its candidate rather than allowing voters to select the candidate, it needs to come out and say so. But given that Clinton was a shit candidate, maybe that's not such a super idea.

[Mudguard]

29 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Why are we still litigating the Democrats' process.  OMG.  Hillary lost.  She was frankly not that great a candidate (better than the alternative, but still).  Why are people still moaning on about this stuff a year later when frankly energy would be better spent putting together a strategy for 2018 and 2020?  And frankly, move on from Sanders.  There has to be someone age 35-55 that the Democrats could get excited about on a national basis?

I think it's important that Democrats are energized about their own party.  It's not sufficient to present a candidate that is simply "Not Trump" and expect to win.  Clinton losing to Trump proved that.  What killed Democrats was poor turnout.

Part of regaining Democrats' enthusiasm for their own party is to get rid of the corruption that was infesting the party.  Yeah, the DNC is trying to clean house, but I think it's also important that people acknowledge the mistakes of the past election.  To pretend that everything was done perfectly ethically in the 2016 primaries despite mounds of evidence is going to turn a lot of people off.  Or to argue that the rigging was fine because Clinton would have won anyway also isn't going to inspire confidence in voters.

Clinton won the primary, but there were a lot of Sanders supporters.  I'm sure that a lot of them were upset about the rigged primary.  Most Sanders supporters ended up supporting Clinton, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that more would have voted for Clinton in the general if the primary was run in a fair manner.  I don't think it's safe to assume that all these voters will automatically vote for Democrats in the midterms and next general election.  The Democrats are going to have to work to earn back their votes, and I think it would be helpful to acknowledge the mistakes in the 2016 primaries.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, Sword of Doom said:

OMG, the Democratic party was heavily in favor of the actual democrat and not the lifelong Independent turned Dem come lately. What a shocker. 

No seriously, Sanders and his campaign are so fucking incompetent they just signed the papers without ever actually reading what they said. 

So where were the primaries rigged exactly? Were the voting stations tampered with? Is that why Sanders was unable to beat Clinton in the primaries? 

God the Cult of Bernie is nauseating. 

But that's not the way it's supposed to work. Say what you want about the RNC, but they played by the rules. The constituency picks the candidate, not the party. 

I wouldn't go so far as to say that it was rigged, but the DNC did everything in their power short of rigging it.

That said, I think Hillary likely wins it anyway, even without the DNC putting its' fingers on the scale. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

53 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Does there?

Yeah, there does. A 76 year old is not the answer anybody outside of a Trumpist wants at this point.