[US Election 2016] Democratic Primary Megathread II

[Farnhamia]

Who do you support for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Presidency? While Clinton seems a prohibitive favorite, Martin O'Malley and Jim Webb (one of whom has declared and the other of whom has expressed interest) provide experience and non-threatening moderate viewpoints to those suffering from Clinton fatigue, and Sanders has supporters who make up for in vigor and passion what they lack in numbers. I don't think that Biden is going to declare, but he's in the poll anyway, and while I like Chafee, I'm honestly confused as to what he thinks he's going to accomplish with this.

Me? I'm Sanders all the way, though if Clinton gets the nomination, I'll almost certainly vote for her against any of the GOP candidates.

What are your thoughts?

Mod Edit: Restarted as we approached the 500-page limit. All applicable rules apply, especially the one against trolling via political nicknames. And added the poll.

[Farnhamia]

And here's a link to the previous version: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=343584

[Trumpostan]

This is quoted from the now locked thread:

Okay, here's the thing with the Democratic primary: everyone imagines they are supporting the one candidate who can save us from the abyss and feel aggrieved and belittled by the other side. I am personally a Bernie Sanders supporter, but the truth is that this is not a battle between good and evil so much as an awkward contest between two animals who evolved in entirely different ecosystems.

Hillary Clinton is like a grizzled hunter in the Amazon. Every day is a battle for survival. She has suffered every venom and poison imaginable and from her time as being the wife of a Democratic governor in a red state to being Secretary of State to the most besieged administration in modern history, she has lived her entire life in a rainforest filled with things determined to kill her. Her political survival instincts have adapted accordingly.

Bernie Sanders is like a wallaby. He hails from the benign ecosystem known as Vermont, where he lacks any natural predators. He will be the beloved senator from Vermont for as long as he cares to be. So he hops around wherever he wants, unafraid that anyone might use his words to crucify him. Propose a $15 minimum wage? Just have a friendly chat with anyone who disagrees. Call yourself a "socialist?" Sure, why not? We're all friends here. On the other side of the world, though, if Hillary Clinton channels her inner Eleanor Roosevelt, the Republicans call it a seance. Write a few State Department e-mails from your personal server? Suddenly there's a major Congressional investigation, even though nobody cared when previous Secretaries of State did exactly the same thing.

Bernie's instincts have evolved so he feels no danger in exposing his head to say what he thinks, however far afield it may be from current political reality. Hillary's instincts, on the other hand, have adapted in a harsher environment, where extreme cautiousness and distrust are rewarded.

Likewise, the two candidates' strengths and weaknesses are a direct consequence of their respective environments. Three decades of jungle warfare against Republicans has left Hillary battle-tested and well-versed in the dark arts of political campaigning. She will, I have no doubt, annihilate whoever emerges from the Republican Convention and be drinking out of their skull by November. But at the same time, this experience has made her reticent to take strong positions, to say things that could be later used against her. She tends to "evolve" rather than stand on principle. Bernie has no such qualms, and has from the very beginning taken principled stands on the Iraq War, universal health insurance, gay marriage, etc. which while controversial at the time, have since been borne out by history. He is the forward-thinking visionary that Hillary is not, but he also seems naively unprepared for the shitwave of dirty tricks and false accusations that will come his way if and when he has to run a national campaign against a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz.

I'm not telling you who to vote for in the Democratic primary. Thanks to decades of self-selecting news coverage, extreme right wing radio, and the derangement induced by the reality that the white male vote is no longer enough to carry national elections, the GOP field has been reduced to an incoherent fever dream of xenophobia and obsolescence. Either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would be infinitely preferable to anyone in that mental ward. This primary is not a choice between good and evil, as some Democrats have made it out to be, but rather the choice between different types of leaders, the visionary vs the tactician, whose approach to politics has largely been forged by differences in environment rather than character.

I take my hat off to whoever wrote that. We should never forget the real enemy are rabid reactionary right wing extremist republicans who now even proclaim a president isn't allowed to nominate a Supreme Court Justice just because... well... just because they want another bigot to replace the deceased bigot (RIP). They cannot stand the idea that we might actually get a competent judge who isn't mentally stuck in the late 18th century with caveman ideas about women and gays. For the past seven years, in my opinion the Republican Party has become a political terrorist organization, lobbing political grenades at anything they disagree with.

Obama has done such a wonderful job considering seven years of deranged opposition from people who are absolutely pissed (it seems) that a black man has the audacity to do stuff that doesn't exclusively benefit middle aged white males. We cannot afford to squander this election on petty squabbling about Sanders vs Clinton. Vote for the winner, that is what I will do even if I would prefer Sanders I will not skip the election if I don't get my way.

[Wallonesia]

Uhh... guess Sanders did a good job on "breaking up the big threads and tear them into tiny little pieces"

I'm an avid viewer of foreign politics and I know my vote won't count despite all those rantings on my Twitter feed but I'd be more than happy to see a white-haired 74 year old socialist from Vermont at the White House. Still, I don't mind Hillary as well

[Bodegraven]

Will there be a new poll and an updated OP?

More on topic, I wonder what is going to happen with the Supreme Court. It is quite likely that whoever Obama nominates for SCOTUS will not get confirmed. Does anyone here maybe have an idea on what the difference could be between a Clinton and Sanders administration?

Personally I think that, if the nominee simply hasn't gone to a vote yet, Clinton will keep pushing for their nomination. After all, her campaign is running for a large part on the fact that she will consolidate what Obama has achieved. Sanders would be more of a wildcard, although I would imagine he could nominate someone like Pam Karlan.

[Farnhamia]

Will there be a new poll and an updated OP?

More on topic, I wonder what is going to happen with the Supreme Court. It is quite likely that whoever Obama nominates for SCOTUS will not get confirmed. Does anyone here maybe have an idea on what the difference could be between a Clinton and Sanders administration?

Personally I think that, if the nominee simply hasn't gone to a vote yet, Clinton will keep pushing for their nomination. After all, her campaign is running for a large part on the fact that she will consolidate what Obama has achieved. Sanders would be more of a wildcard, although I would imagine he could nominate someone like Pam Karlan.

I'll let Yum edit the OP if he wants. I did add a new poll.

[Ashmoria]

Will there be a new poll and an updated OP?

More on topic, I wonder what is going to happen with the Supreme Court. It is quite likely that whoever Obama nominates for SCOTUS will not get confirmed. Does anyone here maybe have an idea on what the difference could be between a Clinton and Sanders administration?

Personally I think that, if the nominee simply hasn't gone to a vote yet, Clinton will keep pushing for their nomination. After all, her campaign is running for a large part on the fact that she will consolidate what Obama has achieved. Sanders would be more of a wildcard, although I would imagine he could nominate someone like Pam Karlan.

I think the difference between a Clinton and sanders administration would be in what things they work on first, what things they emphasize, what things they push hardest. exactly what those things would be is more for you to judge than for me to tell you my opinion of.

either will face the same kind of lies and obstruction that the current president does.

[Wallonesia]

Will there be a new poll and an updated OP?

More on topic, I wonder what is going to happen with the Supreme Court. It is quite likely that whoever Obama nominates for SCOTUS will not get confirmed. Does anyone here maybe have an idea on what the difference could be between a Clinton and Sanders administration?

Personally I think that, if the nominee simply hasn't gone to a vote yet, Clinton will keep pushing for their nomination. After all, her campaign is running for a large part on the fact that she will consolidate what Obama has achieved. Sanders would be more of a wildcard, although I would imagine he could nominate someone like Pam Karlan.

I still foresee an HRC administration as an extension to Obama's, gun control this, ACA that. Once Bernie gets the seat he'll probably go straight down on Wall Street. Might also nominate a VP that would double the cause (cue Sen. Warren), but his stance on other things like foreign policy is still a main concern to me, because from day to day Sanders keeps moaning about the top 1% and I'm yet to hear what he'll do on international relations.

[Ostroeuropa]

Given Clintons rush to copy Sanders, assuming both she and trump get the nomination, anyone wanna give odds on her aping some of Trumps positions and rhetoric?

[Ashmoria]

Given Clintons rush to copy Sanders, assuming both she and trump get the nomination, anyone wanna give odds on her aping some of Trumps positions and rhetoric?

no

that doesn't reflect modern political thought. today candidates don't try to persuade the other side. they try to turn out the vote on THEIR side because voter participation is so low that increasing your turnout make a bigger difference.

[Ostroeuropa]

Given Clintons rush to copy Sanders, assuming both she and trump get the nomination, anyone wanna give odds on her aping some of Trumps positions and rhetoric?

no

that doesn't reflect modern political thought. today candidates don't try to persuade the other side. they try to turn out the vote on THEIR side because voter participation is so low that increasing your turnout make a bigger difference.

I thought both sides rushed to the centre to pander to the middle ground while demonizing the opponent as a turrible extremist.

[Ashmoria]

no

that doesn't reflect modern political thought. today candidates don't try to persuade the other side. they try to turn out the vote on THEIR side because voter participation is so low that increasing your turnout make a bigger difference.

I thought both sides rushed to the centre to pander to the middle ground while demonizing the opponent as a turrible extremist.

she's already in the middle. she isn't going to start blathering about building a wall.

[Ostroeuropa]

I thought both sides rushed to the centre to pander to the middle ground while demonizing the opponent as a turrible extremist.

she's already in the middle. she isn't going to start blathering about building a wall.

You're sure?
It's a popular stance.
Maybe i'm just hoping she will because I want the election to become a complete farce with them both arguing over how high they are gonna make the wall.

[Ashmoria]

she's already in the middle. she isn't going to start blathering about building a wall.

You're sure?
It's a popular stance.
Maybe i'm just hoping she will because I want the election to become a complete farce with them both arguing over how high they are gonna make the wall.

*shaking my head*

I'm very sure. she cant win without the Hispanic vote.

[New Chalcedon]

This is quoted from the now locked thread:

Okay, here's the thing with the Democratic primary: everyone imagines they are supporting the one candidate who can save us from the abyss and feel aggrieved and belittled by the other side. I am personally a Bernie Sanders supporter, but the truth is that this is not a battle between good and evil so much as an awkward contest between two animals who evolved in entirely different ecosystems.

Hillary Clinton is like a grizzled hunter in the Amazon. Every day is a battle for survival. She has suffered every venom and poison imaginable and from her time as being the wife of a Democratic governor in a red state to being Secretary of State to the most besieged administration in modern history, she has lived her entire life in a rainforest filled with things determined to kill her. Her political survival instincts have adapted accordingly.

I disagree. While she has suffered more than her share of slings and arrows, she's also had more than her share of upsides too:

1) It's not exactly fair to classify 1980s Arkansas as a "red state". Yes, its Electoral votes had gone to Reagan twice, but it still had had only one Republican Governor since Reconstruction (Winthrop Rockefeller, who served one term in the late 1960s), and David Pryor, the Governor before Clinton, had won 65% of the vote, as did most of the other elected positions in the Arkansas Executive. The Democrats enjoyed a supermajority in the state legislature, with 94 of 100 State House members and all 35 State Senators being Democrats. Both Senators were Democrats, and had been since Reconstruction.

Arkansas was hardly a trying place to be a Democrat in the 1980s.

2) Upon deciding to enter the Senate, Clinton (wisely) "shopped around" until she found a Democrat in a Democratic State who happened to be retiring, in order to benefit from a Democratic tilt without having to challenge an incumbent Democrat. She gave some thought to her native Illinois (but didn't want to wait four years to challenge Pete Fitzgerald, not to mention that she lacked particular connections with the Illinois Democratic Party), then to Arkansas where she already had a pre-made support base (but didn't foresee that Tim Hutchinson would self-destruct).

Eventually, she settled on New York, where four-term Democratic Senator Daniel Moynihan was retiring. With Moynihan's backing, she easily breezed past the primary for Senate, and was gifted with facing first Rudolph Guiliani (who started a very messy divorce in the middle of the race), then after he pulled out "for health reasons" Rick Lazio, a low-profile Republican, in a State which had sharply trended Democratic over the previous decade. In 2006, she benefited from a Democratic wave and a Republican field that seemed determined to implode. Not to mention that she got to skip any previous elected office at all - how many would-be Senators got to do that back then?

3) While Clinton was the Secretary of State, she was largely left alone by Congress, and her approval ratings reflected the general consensus that SoS is a largely non-partisan job. What's more, at least one decision she made then (to have her own private email server host emails in violation of her own Departmental guidelines) has come back to bite her in the ass, with the FBI recently expanding its probe into the situation to determine the extent of any national security breaches that occurred as a result.

None of this is to say that she's cruised it easy - she hasn't - but she hasn't been in a constant political jungle, either. And many of her own political wounds are self-inflicted. If she had conducted herself more transparently in previous years, people would not now be convinced of her dishonesty. If she hadn't waffled and equivocated on just about every issue out there, people would be more prepared to believe that she has principles.

Bernie Sanders is like a wallaby. He hails from the benign ecosystem known as Vermont, where he lacks any natural predators. He will be the beloved senator from Vermont for as long as he cares to be.

Bullshit. How did he get to that job as an openly avowed socialist (not to mention an independent in an electoral system notoriously unfriendly to anyone not a Democrat or Republican)?

He worked his butt off. From the elections of 1972, when he gathered just 1% of the vote against Democrats and Republicans, he kept soldiering on, eventually running against (and beating) a Democratic incumbent by just 10 votes to become Mayor of Burlington. As a socialist. His comfortable re-elections were largely as a result of his exceptional skills as the Mayor, being able to work with Democrats, Republicans and interest groups from all over the community to benefit Burlington.

Incidentally, at the time he was elected as Mayor of Burlingham, Vermont had been a solidly Republican State since before the Civil War, with a brief interruption in the mid-1960s. The Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Auditor and Attorney-General were all Republicans, Republicans held a comfortable majority in each chamber of the State legislature and Lyndon Johnson had been the only Democrat to ever win Vermont at the Presidential level, sixteen years earlier.

At the time he won his first Statewide race (in 1990, defeating incumbent Republican Peter Smith), just one Democrat had ever preceded him in the position of Representative (Bill Meyer had won one election in 1958 and was defeated in 1960), when Sanders won his Senate seat (succeeding a retiring Republican) his senior colleague (Pat Leahy) was also the first Democratic Senator ever elected from Vermont...while Vermont is a safely Democratic State today, it certainly wasn't when Sanders first won office!

So he hops around wherever he wants, unafraid that anyone might use his words to crucify him. Propose a $15 minimum wage? Just have a friendly chat with anyone who disagrees. Call yourself a "socialist?" Sure, why not? We're all friends here.

Such bullshit. Suuuuuch bullshit. Do you think he won all of those elections as the outside candidate against Democrats and Republicans by playing pattycake? No - he won them by engaging in retail politics, hustings politics with a deft touch. His first Senate victory in 2006 was characterised by his Republican opponent red-baiting and sliming him at every turn, and he ended up with sky-high favourability ratings - and a landslide win, despite being out-spent 2-1 by Tarrant in the biggest-dollar election in Vermont history. Why? Because he's authentic. Because he knows what people want to hear, and how to say it in such a way as to both please them and be honest to himself.

On the other side of the world, though, if Hillary Clinton channels her inner Eleanor Roosevelt, the Republicans call it a seance.

I...haven't seen that.

Write a few State Department e-mails from your personal server? Suddenly there's a major Congressional investigation, even though nobody cared when previous Secretaries of State did exactly the same thing.

1) It wasn't "a few" "State Department" emails. It was all of her work-related emails, including ones containing classified information as determined by the FBI, not a Congressional investigation.

2) Her actions were ruled by a Judge Robert Emmerson (a Bill Clinton appointee) to be in direct conflict with governmental policy - he then went on to excoriate Hillary Clinton (remember, this judge wasn't a Republican appointee!) by saying, "We wouldn't be here today [having the investigation] if this employee had followed government policy".

3) This comes under the "self-inflicted wounds" I mentioned earlier. If she's only followed her own Department's code of conduct, she wouldn't be under FBI investigation for potentially breaching national security.

4) Clinton is only the second Secretary of State to use email much herself - the other being Colin Powell. Albright didn't use email at all, Rice only occasionally. Clinton is only the second Secretary of State to regularly use emails at all in an official capacity. Kudos for being up to speed with tech, Mrs. Clinton, but why the private server?

Bernie's instincts have evolved so he feels no danger in exposing his head to say what he thinks, however far afield it may be from current political reality. Hillary's instincts, on the other hand, have adapted in a harsher environment, where extreme cautiousness and distrust are rewarded.

For Sanders, see above - he's no stranger to rough-and-tumble in politics.
For Clinton - when was the last time her caution and distrust were rewarded? As I recall, her flaws as a candidate led her to lose the primaries last time 'round.

Likewise, the two candidates' strengths and weaknesses are a direct consequence of their respective environments. Three decades of jungle warfare against Republicans has left Hillary battle-tested and well-versed in the dark arts of political campaigning. She will, I have no doubt, annihilate whoever emerges from the Republican Convention and be drinking out of their skull by November.

I respectfully disagree, for two reasons.

1) Clinton fatigue - it's a real thing. Not her fault, but not something she can do much about either.
2) Her sky-high unfavourable ratings, especially among independent voters, and even more so in swing States. She's enjoyed the upside of universal name recognition, now she's experiencing the downside - she has zero room to grow. People who dislike her aren't going to change their minds after all these years and suddenly start liking her, and her campaign's incredible tone-deafness on key issues isn't helping with first-time voters, either.

But at the same time, this experience has made her reticent to take strong positions, to say things that could be later used against her. She tends to "evolve" rather than stand on principle.

Yes, she "evolves", but it's perceived as being out of expediency. More damagingly, it's perceived as being politics as usual when people are sick of politics as usual.

Bernie has no such qualms, and has from the very beginning taken principled stands on the Iraq War, universal health insurance, gay marriage, etc. which while controversial at the time, have since been borne out by history.

And he copped his share of flak over them at the time and since.

He is the forward-thinking visionary that Hillary is not, but he also seems naively unprepared for the shitwave of dirty tricks and false accusations that will come his way if and when he has to run a national campaign against a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz.

See the 2006 election. See the red-baiting being engaged in by Clinton supporters (*coughClaireMcCarthycough*). See the gender card being played by the Clinton campaign, in which Clinton supporters have alternately claimed that there's a special place in Hell for women who don't support other women (I wonder if Albright voted for McCain/Palin in 2008 - or is she going to Hell, too?), or that female Bernie supporters are only "in it for the boys" (Thanks, Gloria).

The Clinton campaign's overall tone is one of a reeking, narcissistic entitlement syndrome run amok, with a side note of historical revisionism.

I'm not telling you who to vote for in the Democratic primary. Thanks to decades of self-selecting news coverage, extreme right wing radio, and the derangement induced by the reality that the white male vote is no longer enough to carry national elections, the GOP field has been reduced to an incoherent fever dream of xenophobia and obsolescence. Either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would be infinitely preferable to anyone in that mental ward. This primary is not a choice between good and evil, as some Democrats have made it out to be, but rather the choice between different types of leaders, the visionary vs the tactician, whose approach to politics has largely been forged by differences in environment rather than character.

I take my hat off to whoever wrote that. We should never forget the real enemy are rabid reactionary right wing extremist republicans who now even proclaim a president isn't allowed to nominate a Supreme Court Justice just because... well... just because they want another bigot to replace the deceased bigot (RIP). They cannot stand the idea that we might actually get a competent judge who isn't mentally stuck in the late 18th century with caveman ideas about women and gays. For the past seven years, in my opinion the Republican Party has become a political terrorist organization, lobbing political grenades at anything they disagree with.

Obama has done such a wonderful job considering seven years of deranged opposition from people who are absolutely pissed (it seems) that a black man has the audacity to do stuff that doesn't exclusively benefit middle aged white males. We cannot afford to squander this election on petty squabbling about Sanders vs Clinton. Vote for the winner, that is what I will do even if I would prefer Sanders I will not skip the election if I don't get my way.

Putting up a politics-as-usual candidate against, say, Trump will turn into a disaster. Especially when that politics-as-usual candidate is prone to unforced errors and negative campaigning as Hillary Clinton is.

[Eol Sha]

Yes, very nice repost from Myrensis. Cool analogies, too. Although, don't wallabies live in Australia? The land of death and despair?

[Eol Sha]

she's already in the middle. she isn't going to start blathering about building a wall.

You're sure?
It's a popular stance.
Maybe i'm just hoping she will because I want the election to become a complete farce with them both arguing over how high they are gonna make the wall.

I'm sure there will be campaign staff and surrogates who won't totally discount the continued building of a fence. Meanwhile, Clinton will probably ignore such questions and go back to her talking points on immigration reform.

[New Chalcedon]

Yes, very nice repost from Myrensis. Cool analogies, too. Although, don't wallabies live in Australia? The land of death and despair?

Mhm - although it must be admitted that they're one of the few things not constantly trying to kill us. XD

[Blakk Metal]

Why is Bernie Sanders so popular? All he does is spout leftist boilerplate with no personality or logos.

[Northern Davincia]

And how the fuck could you hate Obama and love America equally? I don't hate goddamn Dominionist Stalinist White Nationalists as much as I love America. If you had a choice between helping America or harming Obama and you found that a hard choice, you're not a patriot. You're a goddamn partisan.

Allow me to educate you. I believe firmly that harming Obama's agenda and helping America are the same thing.
There is no choice in the matter.

- Opined that African-Americans are better off not going to the best colleges, because they can't keep up with them;

Scalia was a firm opponent of Affirmative Action, one of the absolute worst policies to originate from the 20th century.
He acknowledged that Affirmative Action brings in students, who were not prepared for higher education, to universities where they face more difficulty than students who rightfully earned their place.

Edit: This is my response to the previous primary thread.

[Valrifell]

Why is Bernie Sanders so popular? All he does is spout leftist boilerplate with no personality or logos.

You answered your own question

[DBJ]

Sanders is insane, a dangerous ideologue. Hillary is pretty bad, but still much better than sanders.

[The United Territories of Providence]

Sanders is insane, a dangerous ideologue. Hillary is pretty bad, but still much better than sanders.

Wut?

[The United Territories of Providence]

In the very unlikely event that Hillary ties or loses South Carolina...what happens next? Because the gap used to be huge, but 19 points considering the make up of that state...plus that margin of error...I'm very surprised at how small the gap is.

[Camicon]

(Image)

In the very unlikely event that Hillary ties or loses South Carolina...what happens next? Because the gap used to be huge, but 19 points considering the make up of that state...plus that margin of error...I'm very surprised at how small the gap is.

A margin of error of nearly 9 points renders that entire poll complete and utter garbage. Can't trust anything about it.