Democratic Election 2016 - Hillary Clinton Megathread [OFFICIAL]

[Cthulhu 2020]

No. They are not black holes for votes. And No there is not just two candidates. Gary Johnson is in some polls in the double digits. And if you seriously believe that the only choice is between the two status quo horrible candidates then you are part of the problem. Both are horrible choices.

It needs to stop being portrayed as such. That there are only two choices. Hell. If if you throw everyone else out. You still have the choice to vote for neither of them. So by that regard you have a third choice at the very least. Also if neither boob gets enough votes and enough electoral collage votes then neither of them wins via elections. Yeah the House might pick one or the other but maybe not.

There are reports. I can dig for sources. That when asked in phone polls who are you voting for for President. The only time that another candidate is mentioned by the caller is when the person called brings up other choices or their name. Which skews the numbers. I bet you if you stuck someone else up there with Hillary and Trump on the debate floor. You'd get different poll numbers. Lower for boob 1 and boob 2.

With these two candidates being brought up by the Democrats and Republicans and no mention of anyone else running is dishonest and Un-american.

The primaries are the time to sort out if the candidate you want is liked enough to be elected. It was close, but Bernie lost, and Gary Johnson getting double digits means nothing.

Citing that there have been "studies" and "polls" where people say they'd vote for a third party but just won't isn't very helpful. As I said, the primaries are the time to vote for WHO YOU WANT and get it out of your system, because the primaries aren't yet determining who will be president.

Come the presidential election, UNTIL WE GET ELECTORAL REFORM, there are only two choices. And I'm not just saying this. A candidate must get 270 electoral college votes or there are run offs until someone wins. The only realistic way that happens is two candidates in the end. So instead of leaving the country without a president for months, we just have primaries to sort out who those two finalists are.

The 270 electoral college votes thing is how our two party system came about. While in the past there were many more parties, it was only realistic to have two candidates running so we didn't have multiple run off elections, and that being the way it is, the two most popular parties become the two choices.

[Orbitus]

People still haven't explained what Hillary stole.

Or why she is a crook. Just because Trump says it, they have to parrot it like they need a fucking cracker.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Or why she is a crook. Just because Trump says it, they have to parrot it like they need a fucking cracker.

It's really weird that the Trump supporters are most often the ones to call others sheep when... well yeah, we know what's going on with Trump and Sean Hannity and all that stuff.

[Moralgy]

Or why she is a crook. Just because Trump says it, they have to parrot it like they need a fucking cracker.

What are all the cute little names they have come up with. I've seen crooked hillary 20 million times the past few weeks, but I know there are a few more.

[Orlong]

So, if you hate Soros so much, then you must really hate the Kochs, considering they have pledged to donate almost $1 BILLION to help elect Republicans to the Whitehouse. Including Donald Trump. https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...6a0_story.html

That article is well over a year old (Jan 2015) and the Kochs have said repeatedly that they will not support Trump. They are also scaling way back the amount they were going to spend So dont try to spread false statements.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...ate-gop-224499

Koch’s donation marks his first significant check of the 2016 election cycle. It’s especially notable because he has increasingly expressed frustrations with the political process, and with presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, in particular.

The billionaire real estate showman’s stances on trade and other fiscal issues run counter to the brand of free-market conservatism espoused by Koch and his younger brother, David Koch. And the network of advocacy groups spearheaded by the billionaire brothers, which had initially planned to spend $889 million in the run-up to the 2016 election, has indicated it does not intend to spend money boosting Trump.

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People still haven't explained what Hillary stole.

All the furniture, flatware, curtains, and some decorations from the White House for starters

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No one is answering the important questions such as, did the Fart-in happen?

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/...c-fart-in.html

Its too early yet. It is planned to happen during Crooked Hillary's acceptance speech

[Orlong]

Lying on the internet is a special kind of pointless.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact...nton-stealing/

Clinton’s itemized list caught the eye of the Washington Post and provided plenty of fodder for the curious. People gave the president a notable quantity of golf clubs. Movie star Sylvester Stallone gave him a pair of boxing gloves. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg sent him china. And one Steve Mittman from New York gave him two sofas, an easy chair and ottoman worth $19,900.

The problem was, Mittman and a few others included on the list said they never intended their gifts to go to the Clintons. They thought they were donating to the White House itself as part a major remodeling project in 1993.

This is where the questions of provenance get muddy. Some gifts are intended for the government, and must stay in the government’s hands, while some are intended for the person living in the White House. But it’s not always as simple as "this is mine" and "that is Uncle Sam’s."

Within about two weeks of the publication of the Post article, public criticism escalated, and the Clintons announced that they would pay the government nearly $86,000 for items that were actually government property. A few days after that, they also returned about $48,000 worth of furniture (including the sofas, chair and ottoman from Mittman).

Not a lie at all. They should have been arrested for grand larceny liky any other person who stole over $100,000 worth of government property instead of being allowed to say "my bad, you caught me, here is some money to pay for it"

[Orlong]

You should probably pay attention to the fact where they call it mostly false and that was when the claim was only $200,000, not "all."

I never claimed they stole $200,000 worth of furniture. I said they stole a bunch of stuff

[Cthulhu 2020]

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact...nton-stealing/

Not a lie at all. They should have been arrested for grand larceny liky any other person who stole over $100,000 worth of government property instead of being allowed to say "my bad, you caught me, here is some money to pay for it"

I'm not sure this is what people had in mind when they keep calling her a thief and a crook. It's also incredibly pointless.

And I mean if defining Hillary as a Crook, as people call her Hillary the thief or Hillary the Crook, or Crooked Hillary, or say that she's stolen something, I have to wonder why they're not pointing out all the hundreds of thousands/millions Trump has scammed from people.

Also, this:

According to top ethics lawyers, it’s at least debatable -- and at worst hyperbolic -- to say the Clintons "stole" the items. A congressional investigation found poor tracking of ownership and final disposition of gifts, which makes it hard to speak definitively of wrongdoing. In fact, two items the Clintons returned were ultimately sent back to them. Finally, it’s worth making clear that the "force" they responded to was political pressure, not legal jeopardy.

Apparently people just lost track of who owned what and they eventually were like "oh yeah that's ours".

So yeah, Hillary "stole" in that she took some stuff that nobody was sure who it belonged to at first, and Trump intentionally scams people. You choose which is worse.

[Orlong]

So yeah, Hillary "stole" in that she took some stuff that nobody was sure who it belonged to at first, and Trump intentionally scams people. You choose which is worse.

If youre not sure that its yours you find out who it belongs to. You dont just take it

[Cthulhu 2020]

Perhaps they genuinely thought those things were theirs and it was a simple misunderstanding between the Clintons and the people who had originally donated them.

But I mean... Trump, come on man, if he can scam you out of your money then you DESERVED to get scammed, so the Trumpster did nothing wrong. AM I RIGHT OR AM I RIGHT?

[Theodarzna]

As I pointed out before, Trump has a clear, bumper sticker campaign slogan that people can project their own beliefs onto. Everywhere you see people saying Trump is going to do something when he... hasn't said he's going to do that. "Make America Great Again" fits on a hat and people can project their own wet dreams about what "great" means to them and think Trump will be the best thing since sliced bread. It's how a lot of starry eyed liberals got so pissed off with Obama, he ran a campaign on hope and change, and when those people didn't get hope nor the change they wanted (we got change of course) they were upset.

In the hypothetical world where Trump has a greater than 10% chance of being elected and he becomes president, there's going to be a lot of disappointed people.

I think your reliance on the "Their just idiots that don't understand whats good for them," trope sounds an awful lot like "Blacks just vote for Democrats 'cause they get free stuff!" line. Both effectively ignore the deeper reasons for bloc voting in favor of self-gratifying and self serving answers that don't really place any of the burden for failure on the party but instead externalizes the problem and makes it a defect of the bloc instead.

But that’s not the point. The question we need to ask is this: what are the consequences of the violent disruption Trump has visited on our delicately balanced political system? Look what he has done. He has dynamited the free-trade consensus that dominated Washington for so many years, he has done it with force, and in the process he has made himself the choice of many millions of Americans who have watched their economic situation deteriorate and heard their concerns brushed off by the Thomas Friedmans and the Bill Clintons of the world.

And Democratic leaders seem to be preparing to run exactly as they have always run. Hillary Clinton is pivoting to the right just as other Democrats did before her because ... because, well, that’s what Democrats always do. Her first big move after securing her party’s nomination was to choose Tim Kaine as her vice-presidential candidate – a man who voted for fast-tracking the Trans Pacific Partnership and a supporter of his state’s right-to-work laws. He is, as a recent headline proclaimed, “a Democrat Wall Street can like”.

Appropriately enough, Wall Street personnel are reportedly flocking to the convention in Philadelphia, eager to be reunited with the party that, for a time during the primary season, seemed to be turning away from them. Other accounts suggest that Hillary intends to reverse course on trade as soon as it’s possible to do so.

Do Democrats and their supporters even glimpse the danger in such moves? On the contrary: they seem to think it shows statesmanlike gravitas. On Monday, Bill Scher wrote, of Hillary Clinton:

She tapped Sen Tim Kaine despite his support for the ‘fast track’ law designed to ease ratification of multinational trade agreements. She’s reached out to anti-Trump Republican hawks by embracing the philosophy of American Exceptionalism, declaring that ‘if America doesn’t lead, we leave a vacuum, and that will either cause chaos or other countries will rush in to fill the void’. Her aides told the New York Times earlier this month that her governing strategy would be squarely based on bipartisanship, the antithesis of Sanders’ vision of steamrolling Congress via grassroots revolution.

Let’s see: trade agreements, outreach to hawks, “bipartisanship”, Wall Street. All that’s missing is a “Grand Bargain” otherwise it’s the exact same game plan as last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. Democrats seem to be endlessly beguiled by the prospect of campaign of national unity, a coming-together of all the quality people and all the affluent people and all the right-thinking, credentialed, high-achieving people. The middle class is crumbling, the country is seething with anger, and Hillary Clinton wants to chair a meeting of the executive committee of the righteous.

When Democrats sold out their own rank and file in the past it constituted betrayal, but at least it sometimes got them elected. Specifically, the strategy succeeded back in the 1990s when Republicans were market purists and working people truly had “nowhere else to go”. As our modern Clintonists of 2016 move instinctively to dismiss the concerns of working people, however, they should keep this in mind: those people may have finally found somewhere else to go.

Same source.

I think you ignore Middle Class and Working Class concerns at your own peril and mock their situation at yours, and Clinton's own peril.

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Here is a nice video by Thomas Frank about the subject of Bill Clinton and the DNC's general abandonment of the Working Class.

[akris15]

I do find it funny that Rasmussen actually has Clinton in the lead in their polls from July 25-26 (before Trump did the Russia Hack Comments). For those who dont follow polling Rasmussen was that poll where if Clinton was up by 10pts a few months ago she would be down by 2 in their poll. I still stand by Rasmussen being a junk poll but I find it ironic.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I think your reliance on the "Their just idiots that don't understand whats good for them," trope sounds an awful lot like "Blacks just vote for Democrats 'cause they get free stuff!" line. Both effectively ignore the deeper reasons for bloc voting in favor of self-gratifying and self serving answers that don't really place any of the burden for failure on the party but instead externalizes the problem and makes it a defect of the bloc instead.

Is this actually replying to me? Cause uh... I don't think you got the message.

Hillary lacks a message at all, even one that people can project their hopes for the presidency on. She may lose voters because of that. And yeah, it's a "Voters are flocking to the guy who promises a big ambiguous message and you're falling for it," cause you can see it happening. Just like it did for Obama. Romney lacked a clear message. Obama just had a slogan of Hope and Change.

It's been pretty well talked about and is very observable. Trump supporters are projecting a lot onto Trump that he hasn't actually said or put in his campaign. Meanwhile "They're voting for Obama to get free stuff" was definitively created by the right.

People project themselves onto others all the time, their opinion of them. "He dindu nuffin wrong" comes from relatives who truly believe the person they love is a good person who would never do anything to deliberately harm others. But of course it's been twisted into mockery. Everyone projects. Most unknowingly. Have you never cracked a psychology book?

[Theodarzna]

Is this actually replying to me? Cause uh... I don't think you got the message.

Hillary lacks a message at all, even one that people can project their hopes for the presidency on. She may lose voters because of that. And yeah, it's a "Voters are flocking to the guy who promises a big ambiguous message and you're falling for it," cause you can see it happening. Just like it did for Obama. Romney lacked a clear message. Obama just had a slogan of Hope and Change.

It's been pretty well talked about and is very observable. Trump supporters are projecting a lot onto Trump that he hasn't actually said or put in his campaign. Meanwhile "They're voting for Obama to get free stuff" was definitively created by the right.

People project themselves onto others all the time, their opinion of them. "He dindu nuffin wrong" comes from relatives who truly believe the person they love is a good person who would never do anything to deliberately harm others. But of course it's been twisted into mockery. Everyone projects. Most unknowingly. Have you never cracked a psychology book?

Yes, from what I gather you are arguing a bit more "Well Hillary just can't appeal to these rubes." and trying very hard to psychoanalyze why people vote as they do without simply letting them tell you their own narratives of why they are discontent. It reminds me a bit about how today we no longer even bother to ask people why they are unhappy in their own words but assume its a medical issue or they need some Mindfulness class or something.

What Romney lacked also was they he wasn't running as a populist, hell Obama's first run was partially a populist run, he had all sorts of very populist policies, for example he chided Hillary as if she were going to bring in a bunch of Rubinites to be her economic advisors, and guess what Obama did? Yeah he did just that.

What you seem to be doing is just that, paving over peoples economic frustrations and their own narratives about their lives in order to ignore the obvious problem, and that is that on a deep philosophical level the Democrats seem to always (IMHO intentionally) betray these types of voters. Republicans now also betray them but at least offer a platform to vent decades of frustration upon, and at the end of the day that is better than nothing. The problem Clinton is going to have is she is selling us a rosy economic vision, that America is great, everything is great and all problems are just "minor hiccups," or something. This won't go over well in a country for whom 70% do not like the direction we are going, were the vast majority of new jobs are poverty wage jobs.

The Democrats today, for the most part, do not believe in Solidarity, and it shows. Did you watch the Thomas Frank video?

[Omega10]

The problem Clinton is going to have is she is selling us a rosy economic vision, that America is great, everything is great and all problems are just "minor hiccups," or something.

The Hillary "rosy economic vision" is that things are not as horrible as Trump makes them out to be. I agree with Hillary.
Hillary believes that America is great, and Trump makes it quite clear he does not think it is great. I agree with Hillary.
Hillary does not believe that "everything is great and all problems are just minor hiccups". She has never said anything like that at all. America has some major problems, Hillary is aware of the gravity of these problems, and she will do a much better job than Trump at dealing with these issues.

[Theodarzna]

The Hillary "rosy economic vision" is that things are not as horrible as Trump makes them out to be. I agree with Hillary.
Hillary believes that America is great, and Trump makes it quite clear he does not think it is great. I agree with Hillary.
Hillary does not believe that "everything is great and all problems are just minor hiccups". She has never said anything like that at all. America has some major problems, Hillary is aware of the gravity of these problems, and she will do a much better job than Trump at dealing with these issues.

Yes, if you, like me live on the coastal bits of America, everything is very good. These past thirty years have made the lives of many inhabitants of San Jose, Palo Alto, and NYC very very delicious. Yes, if you find great meaning in the hop content of a beer, then this economy and condition is great.

But if you are the 70% for whom things seem to get worse year on year, if you are part of those people that live in fly over country and either cannot afford the elite education OR you find your career path has been casualized and uberized, then you have a very different view of America. As America has in many areas undergone Appalachification, so to has the dismay at the declining livelihood of the many for the ever enrichment of the lives of some.

Trump is going to capitalize on this were Hillary simply does not know how, nor does her Party particularly care to. The Democratic party simply doesn't do the downtrodden anymore. They are no longer about Solidarity, its just not a party value.

[Omega10]

Trump is going to capitalize on this were Hillary simply does not know how, nor does her Party particularly care to. The Democratic party simply doesn't do the downtrodden anymore. They are no longer about Solidarity, its just not a party value.

Trump said in a debate that "American wages are too high." How does reducing your salary make things better for you? How does that help people pay their bills? And if he follows the Kansas economic model that Gov Brownback has implemented in Kansas, first he will substantially lower taxes for the wealthy and for corporations, and then, as Kansas recently did, raise taxes that mostly affect the middle class and the working class.

How does this help the people that you are talking about? The answer is: it does not. He has absolutely no plans that he has promoted that would help the people that you are waxing poetically about. Trump has outsourced many American jobs overseas over the course of his career. How does this help American workers?

Trump has proven with his actions that he works to exploit and impoverish American workers. His statement about American wages being too high suggests he will continue this behavior pattern. American workers will lose a lot if Trump wins.

I wish Hillary would focus more on helping the people you are talking about. People like me. But at least she is trying, and unlike Trump, at least she is not trying to undermine us.

[belfpala]

I do find it funny that Rasmussen actually has Clinton in the lead in their polls from July 25-26 (before Trump did the Russia Hack Comments). For those who dont follow polling Rasmussen was that poll where if Clinton was up by 10pts a few months ago she would be down by 2 in their poll. I still stand by Rasmussen being a junk poll but I find it ironic.

Look at http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...tion-forecast/ ... Nate Silver has a track record.

[Bollocks]

Is your question "What's wrong with it aside from the things that are wrong with it?"

I say this, because ISDS are overblown out of proportion. People make too big of a deal about it.

[akris15]

Look at http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...tion-forecast/ ... Nate Silver has a track record.

What I am pointing out is completely different than what you posted. First off that the "polls only" forecast of "right now" which "right now" is a terrible time to judge because we are going to convention season and the polls won't stabilize for a week or two. Also Nate generally stands by his "poll's plus" forecast which is 60/40 right now but again this is a TERRIBLE time to say "well X is winning".

The joke was Rasmussen is a notoriously biased Polling service which this election season while every other poll showed that Clinton was up +10 points Rasmussen was always saying she was losing. Now Rasmussen is saying she has a small lead and all the other polls are having her losing. Its like Rasmussen wants to be a special snowflake every polling session.