The Politics Thread

[Vee]

You also think Don Jr. is the second coming of JFK Jr.

[DramatistDreamer]

Kaine's involvement in anti-housing discrimination issues has garnered him praise, particulary among Black legal scholars, he's also fluent in Spanish and has the potential to connect better with the Latino community (his pronunciation is certainly better than de Blasio's , who is also sorta fluent). Trade issue aside, he's probably seen as more liberal than the vanilla guy that he appears to be.  

 

The video in this article provides a pretty good summary as to why HRC picked Kaine:

 

Hillary Clinton Selects Tim Kaine, a Popular Senator From a Swing State, as Running Mate

[cassadine1991]

I found this awfully convenient a week before the DNC

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/22/politics/dnc-wikileaks-emails/

 

[quartermainefan]

Wkileaks likes to go for maximum effect.     Why was the DNC playing favorites?   In another news outlet I read how they were in discussions with Meet The Press host Chuck Todd on how to shape the narrative.  That's just bullshit and what the hell is wrong with him and them?    If they were to lose the election and it was revealed because liberal Sanders voters stayed home, they would have no one to blame but themselves.    I applaud wikileaks and the work they do on bringing truth to power.    Clearly Chuck Todd and his chums at NBC had no interest in reporting this news, so someone had to.   If the democrats had only been neutral, and not try to rig the system just the way Bernie said they did all along, then these emails wouldn't exist.  

[Vee]

Of course the DNC played favorites and of course the press colluded with political factions. In other news, water is wet. It happens with the right and the conservatives constantly, never more intensely than in the 2000s during the Bush administration. Is it good? No. Is it a fact of life? Yes, insofar as it can be managed.

 

WikiLeaks is run by what can be described as a sketchy character at best, but this leak was actually masterminded by the Russians. Notice their calculated hacks almost always benefit destabilizing the future of the West. Trump is what they want in power.

[Juliajms]

I think the fact that they wanted to use Bernie's religion against him is news. In addition, what the hell was that person thinking writing that in an email? And while the system being rigged isn't very surprising to some of us, I think the internet is waking more people up to these shenanigans and they don't like what they are seeing. I'd say that's part of why Bernie got such a foothold.

 

The Republican establishment tried to do the same thing to Trump. In fact they came at him even harder, it just didn't work. Hell, I'll even admit I wish it had.

[Vee]

I don't condone how political machines operate. That being said, I know we have to live with them and I know they do both good and bad. Let's not forget the same machine got a lot of great people elected over the years. You don't get good work done with being a little dirty. What tires me out is people on social media acting shocked, shocked! Call me when we have a media monopoly like Rupert Murdoch's printing mass disinformation and polluting the public discourse and consciousness for thirty years, then I'll get upset about some shifty strategy emails from a party in pursuit of long-term goals like gun control and labor rights. Basically, there are far bigger problems.

 

The Republicans had no idea how to deal with Trump. If they had they'd have stopped him sooner.

[marceline]

 

I'm just starting to sort through this stuff but it doesn't look to me like the organization wanted to use Bernie's religion. That was just an idea tossed out there by a staffer. Seeing as how it never happened that tells me that he got overruled. A lot of this freak out is about bad brainstorming.

 

Frankly I'm glad to see there were some people who didn't want to treat him with kid gloves. This guy joined the party just so he could exploit its resources then spent his campaign railing against it and its key constituencies. Poor people don't vote, black people were in the tank for Clinton (which...umm yeah), the south was a waste of time. My biggest annoyance with this news is that it just makes the Berniacs go back to hashtagging all over the internet again.

Edited July 24, 2016 by marceline

[JaneAusten]

I am just going to wait until the end of next week before I get really worried.  I hope the media really steps up in the fall and starts really treating Trump not like a ratings bonanza but the danger that he is to our democracy. The only pleasing part of this is that he has basically destroyed the republican party so maybe just maybe something new can come along for true conservatives(not the bible thumpers) that people who I would consider true conservatives can embrace. I'd almost feel sorry for people like Lindsay Graham or John McCain, etc if I didn't believe they indirectly contributed to this entire movement themselves by blinding themselves to what their party was turning into.

 

I do think there could be more foreign driven leaks and nothing would make the Russians happier than to see the leader of the west destabilized and potentially taking a lesser role in NATO.

 

[DramatistDreamer]

Actually Trump and the RNC convention rated lower than Mitt Romney and rated worse than John McCain in their perspective years. To me that says ratings flop.

Edited July 23, 2016 by DramatistDreamer

[Khan]

Here's my question: has Donald Trump, win or lose, destroyed the GOP?  If so, then where does it go?  Does it cede the party to those of Trump's ilk and form a new party?  Does it slide over and redefine (or attempt to redefine) the Democratic party?  Or does it just "wait this out" and attempt a take-back four years down the road?

As I've said elsewhere, you KNOW the RNC was scraping the bottom of the barrel when they asked Scott Baio to speak.    No way was the convention going to be a ratings-grabber with such a piss-poor lineup of speakers and guests.

[quartermainefan]

I don;t understand how everyone isn't outraged.   "yes the sysrem is rigged, that isn't news".   And it wasn't news to Bernie either, and just because that is the way the system is rigged doesn't make him wrong for speaking out against it or his supporters for declining to go along with the rigging.  If the democrats want to rig the system against a guy who got just 1 million votes less than Hillary, maybe two, then they are basically telling over 40% of their voters to shut up, they don't count, the primaries are meaningless, and vote all you want but the nominee is Hillary.

 

Now I know some people don't care because they want Trump to lose, but for the less cynical, for the honest Bernie supporters for whom his religion is not an issue and who don't have NBC hosts shilling for their candidate, they would be perfectly in the right to sit the election out if they wanted.  Maybe that guy who wrote the religion email and Chuck Todd can cast 10 million votes in their absence, since they are all about rigging things.   "He's right but I don't care" is not an adequate response to Bernie's accusations of rigging.    Wikileaks is shady?   So what, they didn't tell a single lie.  "This helps Putin and Trump"...that's right it does, so why do it in the first place?   Was she not able to secure the nomination without shenanigans?  

[DRW50]

If Hillary wins they'll just become known as opposing her and hating her and wanting to put her in prison. 

 

If Trump wins, they're probably screwed.

[Juliajms]

I'm as outraged as I can be under the circumstances. As Marceline said, HRC didn't use that plan, thank goodness. I'll be honest, Hillary and Debbie could have convened a coven to put a hex on Bernie or stuck needles in a voodoo Bernie doll and I would still vote for Hillary. I liked him, even if didn't agree with all of his policies, but never Trump.

 

Any liberal who sits out this election is cutting off their nose to spite their face.  Trump has said he won't stand by our NATO allies, he's said he doesn't feel the need to pay our debts. I like Mr. Robot as much as anyone, but I don't want to live it.  His surrogates have said he'll put troops on the ground to fight ISIS. All of those things are insane and will destroy us. Oh, and then there's that part where he said we should kill the children of our enemies. That's what gets the bulk of my outrage.  I know some people here disagree with me, but not even Ted Cruz is as dangerous as this madman. He's close, but we'd survive him. I may be an atheist, but I do believe that a house divided against itself can't stand and Trump is doing his best to tear us apart. Even if he loses in the fall he's damaged our country with his hate.

[DRW50]

It makes people feel better to say everyone is the same so why bother. Or everyone is the same so show how edgy you are and vote for Stein or Johnson. A lot of people feel nothing will change with Clinton, and they want change. What they don't seem to get is that even if their lives aren't good now, they will probably get a whole lot worse with this man in power. 

 

I get why people are unhappy that a white man is her pick, and I also get why some find the whole "he speaks Spanish!" patronizing (it is patronizing), but this article, some of which I agree with, mentions that the identity politics are more like the GOP stereotypes of the party than what the party should actually be. 

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/case-for-tim-kaine.html

Edited July 24, 2016 by DRW50