Hillary Clinton 2016 - Politics & Religion

RIHYONCE

satiemaniac wrote:

She, like any Democrat, will be better than the Republican choice, but far from desirable. If she's anything like her husband or the current president (or you know, herself as a Senator), she will be yet another hawk who bafflingly isn't called out as such anywhere. Domestic policy will be floundering and tired, and, again, if anything like these two most recent Democrats, much too little (for whatever reason you want to ascribe) to create the broad, radical adjustments needed to serve the working class people Democrats pretend to care for so much. I'd be shocked, as well, if she didn't carry on the tried and true Democrat practice of lining the pockets and protecting the asses of all the CEOs in the immediate vicinity while trying to claim some moral superiority over Republicans who are much more straightforward about doing such.

yeah, pretty much this entirely.

Jasonconfused
If We Make It We Can All Sit Back and Laugh

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Location: Washington

Revolution909 wrote:

DID YOU KNOW that Clinton beat Obama in the popular vote during the 2008 primaries, by almost 300,000 votes!? The electoral college system is bizarre, surely it does a massive disservice to American democracy. It takes all the nuance out of the real voting figures and just heaps a load of point/electoral college votes on someone who may have as little as 50.1% support in that state. [/i]

The electoral college is clearly a flawed system, but I don't pretend to know how to fix that. I think it'd be a mistake to just let it all be decided by the popular vote, because then you'd have California, New York, and Texas making all the decisions for the rest of the country.

meccalecca wrote:

Elizabeth Warren is amazing, but she'd be destroyed by the extreme right if elected to office. If the GOP goes against everything Obama tries to pass through now, just imagine what would happen with Warren.

Like you said, the whole two party system is where it's fucked. Until the two party system is annihilated, gridlock will continue to cripple the government. I'm not an Obama apologist. He's made plenty of mistakes, but I do think he'd accomplish far more without the GOP crushing everything he attempts to get done. The Dems have had to compromise in such ways where we end up getting totally 3rd rate versions of proposed legislation. Without such insane opposition, we might have gotten a good Universal health care system. Instead we got the Affordable Health care act, which is simply better than what we had, but crap compared to pretty much any developed nation.

Anytime we have to meet half way between sound logic and corrupt, deranged lunacy, we lose.

I agree with this completely.
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meccalecca
Voice of Reason

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Location: The Land of Enchantment

Jasonconfused wrote:

Texas making all the decisions for the rest of the country.

I'm cool with NY and California running the show, but I can't picture a worse thing for America than Texas making our decisions.

Everyone would be required to carry at least one gun, creationism taught in all schools, dealth penalty, goodbye to women's rights. fuck. it's scary to even think about it
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sp4cetiger

Quote:

The electoral college is clearly a flawed system, but I don't pretend to know how to fix that. I think it'd be a mistake to just let it all be decided by the popular vote, because then you'd have California, New York, and Texas making all the decisions for the rest of the country.

It's not really that different from deciding by popular vote, since electoral votes are proportional to population. But then... that 2000 election... yeah, ok, it's pretty different.

Romanelli
Bone Swah

Gender: Male
Location: Broomfield, Colorado

Moderator

Revolution909 wrote:

• Could she, as a Democrat, defeat a Republican challenger?

This is where the questionnaire realistically ends. Clinton will not win the White House, nor will any other Democrat in 2016. Since the defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012, the Republican party has been in full campaign mode. How do they win the Presidency back? The same way they replaced Jimmy Carter with Ronald Reagan, and the same way they replaced Bill Clinton with George W. Bush. The Republican party has campaigned endlessly with lies and done everything possible to make the current administration look as bad as possible. The Republicans will not win by having better ideas, or by having a better direction. They will win by making the other guy look really, really bad. It's working really well right now, and they will win the White House back in 2016. Regardless of who runs on either side. The 2016 election is already over...because the majority of the American people believe everything they're told, especially if it's negative. The Republican party depends on it, and they thrive on it.
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Jasonconfused
If We Make It We Can All Sit Back and Laugh

Gender: Male
Location: Washington

Romanelli wrote:

This is where the questionnaire realistically ends. Clinton will not win the White House, nor will any other Democrat in 2016. Since the defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012, the Republican party has been in full campaign mode. How do they win the Presidency back? The same way they replaced Jimmy Carter with Ronald Reagan, and the same way they replaced Bill Clinton with George W. Bush. The Republican party has campaigned endlessly with lies and done everything possible to make the current administration look as bad as possible. The Republicans will not win by having better ideas, or by having a better direction. They will win by making the other guy look really, really bad. It's working really well right now, and they will win the White House back in 2016. Regardless of who runs on either side. The 2016 election is already over...because the majority of the American people believe everything they're told, especially if it's negative. The Republican party depends on it, and they thrive on it.

No doubt, Republicans run a crazy effective bullshit propaganda campaign, but I think that if they ever realistically want a chance at getting back in power, they need to drop the batshit crazy social issues. They're losing the people, and fast. The only thing with a lower approval rating than the Republican Party right now, is Congress.
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Revolution909

Age: 29
Location: Galway, Ireland's 4th City

sp4cetiger wrote:

It's not really that different from deciding by popular vote, since electoral votes are proportional to population. But then... that 2000 election... yeah, ok, it's pretty different.

Indeed it's not completely different, however is was different enough to allow 2000 and indeed the 2008 Democratic primary to happen.

Now I'm not intimately familiar with how this works but sometimes you get people called faithless electors. This is when an elector in an electoral college can decide, despite what voters have said with their votes, to vote for someone other than the person that they have pledged to vote for. This is not democracy.

Granted such scenarios havn't happened too recently (1970s-1980s?) and some states have laws prohibiting this, but still. It can happen.
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Revolution909

Age: 29
Location: Galway, Ireland's 4th City

Jasonconfused wrote:

The electoral college is clearly a flawed system, but I don't pretend to know how to fix that. I think it'd be a mistake to just let it all be decided by the popular vote, because then you'd have California, New York, and Texas making all the decisions for the rest of the country.

I disagree. Smile

Firstly, I will say that California, New York and Texas under popular vote would have a large influence over the way the vote goes. But they have that now, with their high numbers of electoral college votes.
Also, from what the Internet and some simple arithmetic tells me, there are approximately 80 million people in these states combined. The entire US population is around 320 million. The population of "the rest of America" is 240. Therefore, the population of rest of America (and thus popular vote sway) outnumbers the CA-NY-TX three to one. So to say they will be making decisions for the rest of the country is simply not true.

Secondly, under popular voting the US would get a more accurate representation of their opinion/vote. Taking Texas in 2012 as an example, 4.5 million votes would have gone to Romney BUT Obama would have gotten 3.3 million voters from TX.
The way things are, everyone in Texas is just percieved as "REDREDRED" when in fact, only around around 57% voted Republican in 2012. The Democrat voters in Texas (and indeed Republican voters in Blue States etc) are having their voice taken away from them by the electoral college system.
What we see now is that voters in swing states (some with small populations) are deciding everything coming election day. To be frank, it would be fairer that CA-NY-TX were wielding the type of influence swing states have, since it's CA-NY-TX and other highly populated states that actually have the people in them.
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Revolution909

Age: 29
Location: Galway, Ireland's 4th City

Romanelli wrote:

This is where the questionnaire realistically ends. Clinton will not win the White House, nor will any other Democrat in 2016. Since the defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012, the Republican party has been in full campaign mode. How do they win the Presidency back? The same way they replaced Jimmy Carter with Ronald Reagan, and the same way they replaced Bill Clinton with George W. Bush. The Republican party has campaigned endlessly with lies and done everything possible to make the current administration look as bad as possible. The Republicans will not win by having better ideas, or by having a better direction. They will win by making the other guy look really, really bad. It's working really well right now, and they will win the White House back in 2016. Regardless of who runs on either side. The 2016 election is already over...because the majority of the American people believe everything they're told, especially if it's negative. The Republican party depends on it, and they thrive on it.

See this, by not being in the US myself, is where I feel I'm not getting an accurate sense of public sentiment in the US. From the outside looking in, it's OBVIOUS that a Democrat president is better than a Republican one, but how fogged up this is for the average American by propaganda is hard to gauge over here in Europe.

Is the american electorate not smart enough to see through the Republican narrative for what it is? (genuine question)

I personally cannot see how a Republican nominee, who will no doubt have outdated views on policy issues , social issues, America's place in the world etc., can win in 2016.

I would be shocked and disappointed in the American electorate if what you say comes to pass. Sad

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Revolution909

Age: 29
Location: Galway, Ireland's 4th City

Also, why is it that the GOP aren't being crucified by negative public opinion for their lack of action in Congress? It is them who insist on obstructionism, yet it seems Democrats are taking the blame the whole time.

Is it ineffective media? Lack of "Democratic propaganda" (for lack of a better word)?
Conservative propaganda?

How is it that the Democrats, by all accounts, are looking at losing their majority in the Senate? Mad

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