2016 United States Election

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That is an amazingly slanted article for Snopes, which is usually pretty objective. It relies only on accounts by Sanders supporters and an extremely inconclusive video. You can hear people shouting, but it is impossible to tell what they are saying. At most, the article should say that the claim is disputed, not that it is false.

[Cerin]

According to the 'English only' article that Voronwë linked to, it sounds like it wasn't an issue of language at all, but that the Sanders people didn't want a Clinton supporter doing the translating.

edit

In fact, both articles present the same perspective from Huerta herself -- that the reason Sanders supporters didn't want her speaking was because she is a Clinton supporter, not because of her language. And yet, the false narrative is immediately seized upon, accepted and repeated, just as it was with the John Lewis incident.

[Cerin]

Sanders seems to have more than some. And I suspect that in a potential Clinton-Trump contest, many of them will vote for Trump. You see much of that same misogynistic, America-first anti-Immigrant, anti-establishment types that are attracted to both of them.

This is an absolutely noxious statement that I am shocked and disappointed to see on this website. I might just as well say that in a Sanders-Trump contest, many of Clinton's supporters will vote for Trump because you see much of the same pro--Wall Street, war mongering types attracted to both of them. But of course, I wouldn't say such a thing. I'm really sickened by this statement.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I might just as well say that in a Sanders-Trump contest, many of Clinton's supporters will vote for Trump because you see much of the same pro--Wall Street, war mongering types attracted to both of them.

I actually don't think that would be a completely unreasonable thing to say. Although I wouldn't put it quite like that, I do think that if Sanders were to win the nomination (which I now think is very unlikely after Nevada), many of the people who would have voted for Clinton would not vote for Sanders and that Trump would have a good chance at winning. And Clinton certainly is more hawkish and more "pro-Wall Street" than Sanders is. However, I don't really see very many pro--Wall Street, war mongering types attracted to Clinton. Whereas I do see plenty of misogynistic, America-first anti-Immigrant, anti-establishment types that are attracted to Sanders (which is not to say that all, most, or even many of his supporters fall into that category, but all you have to do is read comments at various sites to know that plenty of them exist).

One way or the other, I continue to see a Trump presidency as becoming more and more likely.

[Cerin]

Trump is in many ways an accurate reflection of our nation's presence in the world: A bully, a braggart, with an over-inflated sense of his own superiority and importance, ruthless to anyone who crosses him, a shallow celebrity representing a shallow, celebrity-crazed culture, displaying bad manners and bad taste, unenlightened, brash, overbearing and unapologetic in the midst of a more civilized world. He'd actually be the perfect president to represent this country.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

There's an eye opener and no mistake!

Sadly, I largely I agree with you. Although it does make me wonder how Obama managed to get elected twice?

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

[Primula Baggins]

And that is a comforting thought.

Although neither of Obama's Republican opponents offered the kind of alternative that Trump would—they were both decent men.

[Inanna]

I think we might see an incumbency effect here - Obama's presidency makes A Trump presidency more likely.


---------------
Please bear with my typos & grammar mistakes. Sent from my iPhone - Palantirs make mistakes too.

[Cerin]

I do not consider vulture capitalists to be decent men.

[yovargas]

Sadly, I largely I agree with you. Although it does make me wonder how Obama managed to get elected twice?

Easy - Trump is not an accurate reflection of our national character, only the loudest part of it. Not unlike, say, ignorance, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness are not an accurate reflection of the Christian religion despite being the portion of Christianity that gets the most press and public attention.

[Frelga]

No true Scotsman, eh?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sadly, I largely I agree with you. Although it does make me wonder how Obama managed to get elected twice?

Easy - Trump is not an accurate reflection of our national character, only the loudest part of it. Not unlike, say, ignorance, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness are not an accurate reflection of the Christian religion despite being the portion of Christianity that gets the most press and public attention.

Any more than violent jihad is an accurate reflection of the Muslim religion.

I hope you are more right than I think you are, my dear yov.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is a good summary of why Rubio as the "moderate" choice is really a wolf in sheep's clothing, largely quoting or paraphrasing from Rubio's own site.

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/20/11067932/r ... than-trump

[Primula Baggins]

When all his positions are lined up next to each other, it does make a frightening picture. And these radical, in some cases unconstitutional proposals are what some now call conservative.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, liberal New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has something to say about Bernie Sanders' campaign:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/opini ... .html?_r=0

[Cerin]

It's quite funny, seeing stalwarts of the status quo publicly fretting about Sanders undermining the credibility of the 'progressive' economic agenda. There wouldn't even be a progressive economic agenda without the Sanders campaign.

[yovargas]

I am not nearlt knowledge enough on the subject to form an informed opinion, but it would be better for there to be no "progressive economic agenda" at all if it is based on falsehoods.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

yov, it is a false choice. People like Krugman (who is a very progressive economist) support most if not all of Sanders' program (for that matter so does Hillary Clinton). What Krugman is pointing out is not that the program is bad, it is that the justification being put out in support of the program is wildly unrealistically rosy. As he says:

These claims for the Sanders program aren’t just implausible, they’re embarrassing to anyone remotely familiar with economic history (which says that raising long-run growth is very hard) and changing demography. They should have set alarm bells ringing, but obviously didn’t.


And there’s an even larger issue here: Good ideas don’t have to be sold with fairy dust.
Mr. Sanders is calling for a large expansion of the U.S. social safety net, which is something I would like to see, too. But the problem with such a move is that it would probably create many losers as well as winners — a substantial number of Americans, mainly in the upper middle class, who would end up paying more in additional taxes than they would gain in enhanced benefits.

By endorsing outlandish economic claims, the Sanders campaign is basically signaling that it doesn’t believe its program can be sold on the merits, that it has to invoke a growth miracle to minimize the downsides of its vision.

Equally important is his point that:

In the past, the Sanders campaign has responded to critiques by impugning the motives of the critics. But the authors of the critical letter that came out on Wednesday aren’t just important economists, they’re important figures in the progressive movement.

For example, Alan Krueger is one of the founders of modern research on minimum wages, which shows that moderate increases in the minimum don’t cause major job loss. Christina Romer was a strong advocate for stimulus during her time in the White House, and a major figure in the pushback against austerity in the years that followed.

The point is that if you dismiss the likes of Mr. Krueger or Ms. Romer as Hillary shills or compromised members of the “establishment,” you’re excommunicating most of the policy experts who should be your allies.

So Mr. Sanders really needs to crack down on his campaign’s instinct to lash out. More than that, he needs to disassociate himself from voodoo of the left — not just because of the political risks, but because getting real is or ought to be a core progressive value.

[axordil]

There's a good examination of how the myth of the "English Only" chant came to be, for those who enjoy watching train wrecks, at: http://studentactivism.net/2016/02/21/t ... nly-chant/

I believe McCain was and is a decent human being at heart, who, like all politicians, sometimes ends up supporting things he probably doesn't like to further ones he does. Romney, on the other hand, is a rudderless opportunist, Trump with a bit more restraint and a lot less charisma.

Krugman is both right and missing the point. All long-term economic forecasts are fairy dust, because at this point in history it's impossible to predict what you can't predict. The number of unknown unknowns, to channel Rumsfeld on the one thing he got right, has simply gotten too high. So we may as well choose a model on moral and ethical grounds as any other, since twenty years from now robots will either be 3-D printing cars out of graphene or fighting off radioactive mutant cockroaches anyway.

[yovargas]

twenty years from now robots will either be 3-D printing cars out of graphene or fighting off radioactive mutant cockroaches anyway. [/color]

Why not both?