U.S. Election: It's Gonna Be a Huge Thread, It's Gonna Be the Best Thread!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Depends on the detergent brand.

Dodge much?

I'm not implying it makes her corrupt. I'm sure the actions were perfect legally. But it sure does undercut any claims she makes that she will champion campaign finance reform.

[TrackerNeil]

6 minutes ago, Maester Drew said:

Party leaders and part base ain't the same thing. I think many of you are underestimating the support Trump can get from an average Republican voter.

I agree, but Clinton and Sanders are receiving widespread support from the rank-and-file as well. Trump wasn't until very, very recently.

[alguien]

15 minutes ago, Maester Drew said:

I'dd actually argue both Dubya and Obama were responsible. Bush for getting us there in the first place and Obama for botching up our withdrawal.

That's a fair criticism of Obama, and honestly, I'm not sure how accurate it is. I'd need to read up more.

I feel OK in apportioning the vast majority of the blame for that 'clusterfuck' on W, though, since he started the whole mess and lied to get support for it. 

[Maester Drew]

Just now, alguien said:

I feel OK in apportioning the vast majority of the blame for that 'clusterfuck' on W, though, since he started the whole mess and lied to get support for it. 

I fully agree

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I agree, but Clinton and Sanders are receiving widespread support from the rank-and-file as well. Trump wasn't until very, very recently.

Which I find troubling. Looks like their hatred of Clinton trumps their hatred of Trump. 

[Maester Drew]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Which I find troubling. Looks like their hatred of Clinton trumps their hatred of Trump. 

Most voters usually fall inline behind the presumptive nominee when their own preferred candidate didn't win.

So, I don't see it as troubling, but rather expected.

[lokisnow]

28 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Dodge much?

I'm not implying it makes her corrupt. I'm sure the actions were perfect legally. But it sure does undercut any claims she makes that she will champion campaign finance reform.

not really, just a joke. distributing funding through various networks of the party seems non-objectionable, did I miss something? The Media that Cried Wolf means that they scream bloody murder about anything and everything related to Clinton, so I pretty much just automatically dismiss every anti-Clinton story as meaningless, baseless lying and misrepresentation since this is an accurate description of every anti-Clinton Media story ever reported in all of human history.

I like Barry Whitebeard very much, he is successfully uniting democrats behind Clinton in this very thread! Go Team!

 

[TrackerNeil]

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Which I find troubling. Looks like their hatred of Clinton trumps their hatred of Trump. 

Certainly party elites backing Trump are using ambition as their guide--either that or fear that opposing Trump will cost them their jobs. It's dismaying but perhaps not surprising that Republicans are willing to see Donald Trump ruin the nation to prevent Hillary Clinton from ruling it. That party has been dysfunctional for about twenty years, and nominating Trump is merely another symptom of the disease.

[Maester Drew]

4 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

I like Barry Whitebeard very much, he is successfully uniting democrats behind Clinton in this very thread! Go Team!

Not me though

[Kalbear]

21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Dodge much?

I'm not implying it makes her corrupt. I'm sure the actions were perfect legally. But it sure does undercut any claims she makes that she will champion campaign finance reform.

Maybe? Obama did similar things and also championed campaign finance reform, because (and this makes sense) he isn't going to go into a fight with his hands tied. For me, corruption applies when you clearly would desire to do something that is shady and would likely do it again. Clinton has been kind of absurdly open about this sort of stuff, which either implies one of two things: she knows that it's not great but will do it because it's what the field can do, or she doesn't care that it's not great and will do whatever it takes to win.

I think that which you think it is has a lot more to do with your personal view.

I also think that if you want corruption, Trump is a lot clearer of a candidate. Here's someone who doesn't reveal his taxes, who says that he's doing a campaign without donations and is paying his own money but is in fact taking a loan for it (which will end up making the campaign actually profitable for him). He has dealings with mafia and his own senior advisor was laundering money for the mob. Like, this isn't hard!

[BloodRider]

1 hour ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

You're confusing 'electability' with base of suppose.  The electability standard is 51% of voters.  Someone who gets 49% of voters can still have a broad base of support.

But fine, let's play it your way.  We'll say he has 37% of of all Republican Primary Voters.  Sanders has 42%.  Does he have a narrow slice?  Is that 5% enough to promote him?

What is your threshold for moving beyond 'narrow slice of supporters'?  Does someone who wins 90% of ten votes have a stronger base of support than someone who wins 40% of 1000 votes?

I gave you numbers; Trumps numbers.  That is the standard I would use to define a narrow slice of fervent supporters.  To whit, to date Trump has shown that he is supported only by a narrow slice of the country.  Why do you want to talk about made up numbers?  

This whole sidebar got started because I posted a survey about how low he is polling right now.  On the whole, people fucking hate him, and barely 10% find him strongly favorable.  You countered with the number of votes he has in total from Republican primaries.  I am merely pointing out why that means nothing - especially as a counter to his current poll numbers, which are - again - really shitty.   

Frankly, I don't really care if you believe me.  I am more commenting on the misuse of statistics and illogical conclusions made by the Trump supporters.  Dance around the numbers all you want, but unless the landscape goes through some fundamental shift over the next 6 mos, Trump is a washout, and perhaps the best thing to happen to the Dems since Nixon.

[Bold Barry Whitebeard]

1 hour ago, alguien said:

That list I posted (though impressive) was by no means complete. It left off one of the things I thought most relevant, putting in place international sanctions that were instrumental in bringing about the Iran nuclear deal. (also LGBT resolutions through the UN, repairing international relations damage caused by Bush, etc.)

Could you send me a link to this? I'm actually not familiar with what role she played in Russian relations. 

Lots of things wrong here. And to be fair, everyone supported Arab Spring movement and the results have varied country by country. I'll grant you, I'm not a fan of how things ended up in Libya, nor Clinton's role in it, despite the US being petitioned by France and the Arab League to do air strikes. And let's not kid ourselves, ISIS was a result of W's preemptive Iraq invasion. 

Not true at all.   Isis is a result of the civil war in Syria, which is due to the Arab Spring.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

Not true at all.   Isis is a result of the civil war in Syria, which is due to the Arab Spring.

And because the US bombed Libya...Syria got taken over in part by ISIS? How does this make any sense at all? You realize that Libya is a wee bit far away from Syria, right? Like, ya know, on a separate continent?

Arguably the problem was that Clinton's plan to do more in Syria was rebuffed by Obama, and that inaction led to ISIS getting more of a foothold there - but ISIS still has the majority of its territory, support, and money in Iraq. It is led by people that came from Iraq. It's hard to say if Syria could have been helped with more troops or more support or not, but there's at least an argument. But blaming Clinton for not doing anything when her desire was to do something seems really odd. Obama said, flat out, no. 

If you think Syria is the problem, the US response to Syria is on Obama's doorstep, because Clinton disagreed with what the US ended up doing. 

[Bold Barry Whitebeard]

3 minutes ago, BloodRider said:

I gave you numbers; Trumps numbers.  That is the standard I would use to define a narrow slice of fervent supporters.  To whit, to date Trump has shown that he is supported only by a narrow slice of the country.  Why do you want to talk about made up numbers?  

This whole sidebar got started because I posted a survey about how low he is polling right now.  On the whole, people fucking hate him, and barely 10% find him strongly favorable.  You countered with the number of votes he has in total from Republican primaries.  I am merely pointing out why that means nothing - especially as a counter to his current poll numbers, which are - again - really shitty.   

Frankly, I don't really care if you believe me.  I am more commenting on the misuse of statistics and illogical conclusions made by the Trump supporters.  Dance around the numbers all you want, but unless the landscape goes through some fundamental shift over the next 6 mos, Trump is a washout, and perhaps the best thing to happen to the Dems since Nixon.

You made the statement that Trump's supporters are a 'narrow slice', but you refuse to define what that is.  40%, or 37% if you prefer, is not really that far off than any other nominee in recent history, especially if you consider the large number of nominees in the primary.  Trump, in a field that had 17 candidates at one point, has gotten more votes than the Republican record holder, George Bush, got in a much narrower field.

His favorability numbers may in fact be low, and he may in fact lose the election.  That doesn't change the fact that as far as primaries go, he has just as much, if not more, voters supporting him than most other candidates.

[Bold Barry Whitebeard]

1 hour ago, alguien said:

Could you send me a link to this? I'm actually not familiar with what role she played in Russian relations.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/3/russian-fm-sergey-lavrov-failed-reset-was-inventio/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset

[alguien]

11 minutes ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

Not true at all.   Isis is a result of the civil war in Syria, which is due to the Arab Spring.

Since it started as ISI (Islamic State of Iraq) , and was founded by Al Queda in Iraq in 2006 (who would never have been there if not for W) and only later expanded into Syria in 2013, I'm pretty sure you're incorrect. 

Linky. 

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/3/russian-fm-sergey-lavrov-failed-reset-was-inventio/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset

So...let's go through the timeline.

In 2009 the reset happens. The US gets to fly over to get to Afghanistan, gets sanctions against Iran (which led pretty directly to the Iran nuclear deal being done), and lifts sanctions against Russia.

In 2012 Clinton leaves office as SecState.

In 2014 Russia annexes Crimea after bad elections. The US imposes sanctions. Russia declares the reset to be failed. 

So...two years after Clinton leaves bad shit happens, and she gets blamed for said bad shit? 

[Bold Barry Whitebeard]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

And because the US bombed Libya...Syria got taken over in part by ISIS? How does this make any sense at all? You realize that Libya is a wee bit far away from Syria, right? Like, ya know, on a separate continent?

Arguably the problem was that Clinton's plan to do more in Syria was rebuffed by Obama, and that inaction led to ISIS getting more of a foothold there - but ISIS still has the majority of its territory, support, and money in Iraq. It is led by people that came from Iraq. It's hard to say if Syria could have been helped with more troops or more support or not, but there's at least an argument. But blaming Clinton for not doing anything when her desire was to do something seems really odd. Obama said, flat out, no. 

If you think Syria is the problem, the US response to Syria is on Obama's doorstep, because Clinton disagreed with what the US ended up doing. 

Are you going to pretend that the protests and the fall of the government in Morocco didn't inspire the revolt in Libya?  That both were unconnected to the fall of Mubarak?  Which was unrelated to the civil war in Syria?  They were all linked to the Arab Spring, which Clinton supported both diplomatically (pushing out Mubarak) and militarily (bombing Libya).  She then went on to support the rebels against Assad.

I'm not blaming her for not doing anything.  Bombing Syria would have been just as bad.  What she, and Obama, did wrong was support the revolts against all the leaders in the middle east.  Diplomatically or militarily.

Certainly ISIS has a foothold in Iraq now, but they got their momentum in Syria.  If you're going to blame the Iraq War for that, you may as well blame WWI for causing the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The fact that ISIS has currently succeeded in Iraq is more the result of Maliki dismantling the Sunni militias and leaving a power vacuum in the north and west.

[alguien]

Just now, Kalbear said:

So...let's go through the timeline.

In 2009 the reset happens. The US gets to fly over to get to Afghanistan, gets sanctions against Iran (which led pretty directly to the Iran nuclear deal being done), and lifts sanctions against Russia.

In 2012 Clinton leaves office as SecState.

In 2014 Russia annexes Crimea after bad elections. The US imposes sanctions. Russia declares the reset to be failed. 

So...two years after Clinton leaves bad shit happens, and she gets blamed for said bad shit? 

Yes, I was just about to write something to that effect. I think BBW's criticism was a difference in meaning (overcharged vs. reset) on the button?

Which is nonsensical as claiming people were confused when Kennedy said "Berliner". German people knew what he meant, it wasn't a big deal at all, and people cheered at the speech. 

[BloodRider]

13 minutes ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

You made the statement that Trump's supporters are a 'narrow slice', but you refuse to define what that is.  40%, or 37% if you prefer, is not really that far off than any other nominee in recent history, especially if you consider the large number of nominees in the primary.  Trump, in a field that had 17 candidates at one point, has gotten more votes than the Republican record holder, George Bush, got in a much narrower field.

His favorability numbers may in fact be low, and he may in fact lose the election.  That doesn't change the fact that as far as primaries go, he has just as much, if not more, voters supporting him than most other candidates.

And again I say - The conclusion stated here represents a profound misunderstanding of Statistics and polling.  Percentages are ratios, and turning a ratio into a discussion about just the denominator is frankly lying with numbers.  What is a bigger numerical lie is when you expand the denominator from one comparison to the other and pretend that doesn't further decrease his numbers.  Basic Math fact:  Increasing the denominator of a ratio while keeping the numerator the same makes the ratio smaller.  So when you go from total number of Republicans who voted in the Primary to total votes his ratio of support goes down.  And it was already small enough when we were only talking about Republicans who voted in the Primary.

At this point, I am not doing this to convince you of anything, but more to point out to others where your analysis is flawed, and why.  But by all means - continue to embarrass yourself here.