General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 230

You can dislike both. But if you don't vote for one of them you are saying they are equally bad. Wanting Clinton to win and voting for her doesn't mean you like her it just means you understand how to compare two candidates beyond "are they good or bad"

 

There are a lot of reasons people are uncomfortable voting for Clinton. Does this conversation have to happen on every page of this thread?

 

Political viewers, when you heard Trump's comments regarding the emails and Russia, did you take his comments to be serious or sarcastic?

 

Couldn't you also be saying, "Neither candidate represents my views or stands for what I believe in"?

 

Were you in a coma from 2008 until yesterday?

 

No you're saying there's a better choice.

 

Nope, been alive and awake every single day, reading the news just as you do. Obama has rescued the economy and it's now thriving, almost better than ever

 

Sarcastic.

The liberal media has really sunk to new lows when it comes to attacking Trump. The guy is enough of a moron without inventing these other faux outrages.

 

HOLY FUCK LOL

 

I know right?? Seeing reality sure is nice

 

I love being lectured on every page by liberals who, more than likely, don't do anything aside from vote. You know, folks who claim to vote for Clinton for me, yet I never see them at Black Lives Matters organizing meetings, or trying to organize unions. It's awesome.

But, seriously, this election is terrible and every conversation pertaining to it, particularly with liberals. We get it. It is life or death. Trump is really Boris of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame. America will be change the Stars and Stripes to guns and an image of Putin winking.

 

I didn't think he was being serious but I thought it was irresponsible. There's no good reason to involve Russia in an election and that stands for both parties. Even if the hackers were traced to Moscow, that doesn't mean this was political. The whole thing is embarrassing.

 

Trump was probably sarcastic, but it's still incredibly irresponsible to be saying something that like, out in the open in front of press. Just a complete idiot; like he purposely does not want to win

 

I "defend" it when people make arguments with logical holes in them.

This is where that projection of intellectual dishonesty comes into play. I didn't "justify" shit. I pointed out, and I am 100% correct in this point, that the tough on crime laws that passed in the 90s were not just, contrary to popular Dom belief, a racist plot by upper class white people and white politicians to lock up black people. It was an answer to pressure that was building up not just from affluent white people, but from poor people in the inner cities who were desperate from something to do be done about the crime in their neighborhoods. This isn't a "justification", it's just a truth, one you like to ignore a lot. Another truth is people were much less educated on the problems implicit bias creates in the criminal justice system. Now we have a lot more research that is a lot more available (thanks to the internet and social media) and, low and behold, half of the country (mostly those evil liberals you hate) are screaming for criminal justice reform.

I voted for an "Independent" in the 2014 Senate election because my senator is basically a corporatist shill, even though he has a bunch of other policy stances I agree with.

No, if you're not ready to start your armed revolution to create instant change tomorrow, then it is not yet the point where electoral politics can be ignored and abandoned.

Umm, no. One does have to face the political realities of America, but this is a separate issue from Clinton being left wing on a decent amount of issues. Her health care stance alone has been in favor of an American public health care system since...forever? But oh, that's right, she didn't get it done in the early 90's as first lady, and instead had to settle for CHIP, which only helped a few million children, and not all Americans. I know in Dom land, only helping some when you can't help everyone is just unprincipled neoliberalism that shouldn't have compromised with conservatives to help those children...but I'd wager there's a few million people who got health care out there that would look at you a little funny for your "principles".

You do realize when I say things that advocate "remaining inside the party system", that I'm not saying that you should stop agitating from outside the system too, correct? You keep saying you're getting organized. If you're that well organized, it shouldn't matter what the party does to stop your candidate, because the voting is what matters. Especially at the local level, where insurgent candidates have a much easier time breaking down walls than at the national level, because no one votes in local elections. You could literally alter the primary outcome of a city council with 500-1000 votes in a place like Baltimore's district 12, where only ~20-25% of the population voted in the Dem primary, and the margin of victory between #1 and #2 was less than 200 votes. But hey, I get it, beating the pavement everyday to canvass neighborhoods and knock on doors is fucking hard work. I'm not saying it's easy. But you're saying (or implying, rather) it's impossible. It's not impossible at all if your able to get enough people to listen to you.

I do not "hate" the radical left, I find your dishonesty annoying. I don't weild anything, nor do I have to say anything for anyone else to get the sense from you feel you're better. You are purist in that you have said in the past that you won't vote for someone who agrees with >> half of what you want because there are things they aren't as far left on. This literally withholds support for programs that could help thousands, or millions, in the name of your "principles". It has nothing to do with what I consider "legitimate", and everything to do with your hypocrisy in accusing others of not caring about marginalized peoples while you engage in tactics that hurt marginalized peoples. Or, rather, would hurt marginalized peoples if you could convince enough people to just not participate.

Yes, but you don't get to ignore the very real consequences of the positions you support just because it's already happened in the world, and because it's less damaging to your vision.

Yes, but you do know Democrats no longer endorse those policies, right? This was addressed up top.

It did. You do know Clinton vetoed two bills on welfare reform, and his administration was completely split on whether or not to sign the third attempt, and some admin officials resigned their positions over the pro-signing forces winning, right? But, no, we must ignore reality and social pressures--The welfare system prior to the 1996 reform bill had shown to keep people out of work, and pressure built up again on both sides, and not just at the political level, to do something about this...those very same pressures you insist are integral to getting politicians to pass the laws you want them to pass--created an environment where the people that voted wanted something changed. This is why people need to vote.
Oh...you also know that the two Democratic nominees this past primary ran on expanding social welfare safety nets in 2016 (read: not 1995), right? And that the party they are running against believes these programs need to be abolished altogether, correct? Hey, at least Trump is saying he wants to protect Social Security and Medicare. So the old white people will get spared when we defeat evil Hillary.

Hey, if we're gonna keep making blanket decisions on a political party based on stances the party took 20 years ago, then shit, the Dems of the early-mid 90's were fantastic! After all, in the 70's they were the party that had just ushered in the Great Society social welfare programs, lost an election to a 'conservative' cheater that supported a public health care system and environmental protection laws, etc. But, no one in their right mind does that, because everyone knows the Democrats of the 90's were moderate right wing hacks. That was a change that took time and getting their asses kicked by a right wing swing in the country. Now the swing is going back the other way. They just adopted the most progressive agenda in god knows how long.

Are the policies keeping that in place still being endorsed by the democrats?

Umm...no. 500,000 Iraqi's died due to George W Bush's invasion of Iraq--something Clinton refused to do. And his administration did it by lying about the evidence they had for WMDs to Congress and the American people.

But these aren't real differences to you, no matter that Clinton killed 499,960+ less Iraq people. Since there's no real difference between a few dozen deaths and 500,000 deaths to you, you try to proclaim the moral high ground by advocating a system you say will result in no Iraqi deaths---and hope nobody catches on to your bullshit logic.

You have also made no efforts to put it in plain sight. You talk about all the good that can/will/should come for marginalized peoples, but don't talk nearly as much about how many millions of them will have to die to make it possible. IF they can make it possible.

No, even those that refuse to fight on either side will suffer. It is a historical fact of war that the people that suffer the most during times in war are the poor and the marginalized. Even those who don't get swept up in your fight for socialist glory and aren't on the firing lines as the counter-revolutionaries fight back will starve and face lack of resources in ways not even they've had to face before despite living in poverty in America. Yes, it does get that much worse.

That is not my argument, as highlighted above, but yes, that will also happen. And I'm simply saying you can take power from the ruling class without killing millions of people, and that liberation can be sought without killing innocents who want no part in your revolution. It just doesn't happen as fast as we'd like and, I suspect more importantly to you, it doesn't result in a socialist system that has abolished the capitalist system. See? I can make passive aggressive assumptions about your more nefarious, true motivations too.

Yes, Hillary will undoubtedly be more hawkish than Obama, whatever that they mean. Pretending this is a reason to advocate a strategy that will put a Republican into power is....how do you put it?...intellectually dishonest. It's also a good way to guarantee you don't push the Dems left on foreign policy considering we know what Trump is running on as it pertains to fighting ISIS, and how that strategy winning an election will push the other party to adopt the same rhetoric. We saw this in the 1980s and what happened to the Dem party after Reagan.

They matter--I just understand the reality is I can't stop them all from happening tomorrow, or even a year from now. Instead I will speak out personally to anyone who will listen on those subjects, and vote for candidates that will speak out against those things. And, yes, despite all of the talk about Obama doing too much on the foreign stage, it is an inarguable fact that he has considerably pulled back the American military apparatus from where it was prior to his Administration. There is zero doubt that America is in at least 2 or 3 other ground wars if a NeoCon is still the president during the last 8 years. But, again, these differences don't matter to you because they're not perfect.

I've said that domestic policy that effects Americans is more important to me. And that's because it is both easier to affect--people pay attention to domestic policy far more than foreign policy, so it's easier to motivate pressure behind a certain policy--and easier to see tangible effects. So, yes, if a candidate runs for office who's #1 priority is a public health care system, but has roughly the same foreign policy as Barack Obama, they'd get my vote in a second. Because I'm not going to abandon millions of Americans who don't get health care because they're priced out of it so I can make a point about a foreign policy that I disagree with. I don't need to stroke my own intellectual ego that much that I can just say "eh, nah, fuck you guys, I already got my health insurance, I need to make a point about this guy's foreign policy instead...so don't vote for him."

The only one lying here, by omission and purposeful intellectual dishonesty, is you.[/quote]

 

Considering she's campaigning on overturning Citizens United, I'd say it's a pretty bad strategy.

 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/2...ecovery-still-limited-to-top-one-percent.html

 

Your reality is a joke. 15% of Americans are living in poverty, wages haven't kept pace with inflation or productivity in decades, inequality is at a breaking point, and we sink young people into billions of dollars worth of debt for worse jobs than they've ever gotten. You're delusional.

 

From where the economy was in 2008/2009, we've made an incredible recovery; problems do exist, that I don't deny, but it's amazing the growth that has taken place since then, especially regarding unemployment

 

Unemployment measurements are a joke

 

Oh ok, gotcha

 

There have been long stretches of time for me not having a job and not being counted as unemployed because I wasn't drawing unemployment benefits.

 

Unemployment Indicators Only Tell Part of the Story

 

I agree that the economy isn't where it needs to be and in many ways believe that the influence of the president is overstated. Still, I'm doubtful that the middle and lower class would be better off economically under Romney/Trump than Obama/Clinton.

 

The economy is better than it's ever been!