quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It's that time again...
Well that was an interesting race. The conservative primaries were insane and they trotted out all their old school crazy and we all laughed at their barely cloaked bigotry and gaffes and lip service crankery. eventually of course the backers pushed through the vaguely least wingnutty one that had a ghost of a chance at winning. But its not like they were going to bet Hillary "snoozer" Clinton who breezed right through the comparatively most boringest primary. Though those were some super weird general election shenanigans as they tried to plant FUD on her like always. I like how yet again Nate silver called it but conservatives were in denial. See you all in 2020
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I'm pretty sure its way too soon for that; his models require a lot of polls.
Anyone there's no contest in my mind who to mentally support when it comes to the issues; between the USSC nominations, the Iran nuclear deal, healthcare, entitlements, foreign policy, etc; there's not a single reason for me to remotely consider wanting a Republican candidate over Hillary.
Whenever the Republicans occasionally support something sane my response is usually "stopped clock is right twice a day" which annoys my conservative thread but its true. Their ideology outside of a few minor and obviously trivial technology related issues is so backwards, reactionary, and regressive that I'd have to be a maddeningly blind narrow minded single issue voter for that ONE issue to outweigh the harm to millions of people.
Mental hypothetical support, but my friend is half American and can technically vote. So its relevant in our discussions.
And Hillary, while more Hawkish than Obama, is going to be less Hawkish than the GOP.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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the republican playbook will respond to Hilary's generally hawkish centrism with the proclamation that it is, as anything the Democratic Party does or is, the most far left liberal thing ever.
The resultant revisionary declarations will shift how they define the nebulous "middle" and more importantly shift how far out their definitions and declarations of conservatism are.
Which may be super hilarious, so.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Like another two dozen people have joined the GOP Primary with even more slated to join in the next few months.
I think they're figuring: what the hell, it's already a circus and anything could happen, why not try? And with all the money flying around, why not indeed?
I wonder when the last time was that this many candidates of any real prominence announced for a primary.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: Meanwhile over on the Democrat side of things we just twiddle our thumbs with Hillary and Crazy Ol' Bernie.
"And that's why we runnin' for a third term!" "No we're not." "Oh...well who the hell said that?!"
Don't forget O'Malley! He just when official!
He has no chance. I figure he's running either for a cabinet position or to raise his profile for the next election cycle.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Jan 2002
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What's curious is the reluctance to address how disastrous and embarrassing the Iraq war has been for the U.S by both parties. In retrospect, Saddam's regime, which, despite being horrendous in some ways, was secular and protective of Christians, seems like a godsend compared to the chaos and ugliness Saddam's removal has unleashed on that region. Somehow or other the people who urged the country towards that disastrous war are still confident and 95% of the Republican contenders are groveling in front of Zionist billionaires who for some reason or other appear eager about the U.S being endlessly hostile to countries Israel doesn't like.
Anyway, Chris Mathews has been on fire the past few weeks and has been calling out Neocon shamelessness.
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It is worth noting that the Iraq War has been going on for 12 years now. After your CBO's estimates of a long-term cost of 2.4 trillion and between 100,000 as documented by leaked US logs to 500,000 excess deaths as recorded by peer-reviewed medical journals, it is worth asking how you got here and what safeguards are being put in place to make sure that another huge mistake, arguably the worst in modern US foreign policy doesn't happen again.
Instead, it seems like you'll be electing Hilary Clinton who is pretty straightforward in her support of the war in the first place.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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there are better answers given more complete potentials for change but my legitimate and serious answer is to say the first step is "no more Republican presidents"
barring some dramatic change in the habits of both our primary parties and a serious period of unlikely soul searching with the current establishment republicans, this is a Good Idea
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Here is Chris Mathews again going on a rant against the NeoCons. This was a few months earlier and the context is Rand Paul announcing he's running and a so called "Foundation for Secure and Prosperous America" running ads against him scare-mongering about his stance on the Iran deal. Mathews says there's "piggish money" behind the Neocons. Them balls.
We had a discussion in class (I'm doing my MAm after three years break after BA) recently and one of the students said that 99% of black Americans voted for Obama both in 2008 and 2012. I checked wiki, and it's actually 95% and 93% respectively, but it's still high. I can't help but think that black people voted for Obama JUST because he is black. Is this assumption correct? By comparison, white Americans in 2012 voted 59% for Romney.
I mean, there is no 95% in democracy. 95% is something that happens in Belarus or in North Korea.
Is it because black poeple are/feel so oppressed, that they chose a black president? Or because it was a historic event? And if so, why only black considered it to be historic?
Posts: 723 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Black americans already have a strong propensity towards voting Democratic and the populist message that Obama was working on in the elections already gets a lot of play along the comorbid and associated socioeconomic factors that black americans have to deal with at a disproportionately high level. Also, for most of this lifetime of black voters, Democratic policies were infinitely more favorable to them and the Democratic party has afforded them more representation overall.
If Obama had been white you still would have seen a severe majority vote for him among blacks. But the opportunity to have the first black president in American history doubtlessly pushed that up some, though to what degree is super debatable. 10 percent perhaps? I don't know.
It's not like the racial issue was all that was going to keep them from voting for McCain or Romney, obviously.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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In 2000, 90% of blacks voted for Gore. In 2004, 88% of blacks voted for Kerry. Even back in the 80's, Mondale got 91% of the black vote.
Perhaps it is clear to the black community that the Republican party does not care about them - or worse yet, actively works to hurt them. They haven't forgotten the Republican party's Southern Strategy:
quote:You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
93%/95% is barely a few points higher than the usual. Obama being black certainly didn't hurt (wouldn't you be ecstatic to finally be able to vote for someone one who might actually understand your community for once?) but it wasn't a particularly significant impact on those numbers IMO.
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Yeah, it's worth it for people to pay attention to what Atwater is saying there — he's basically describing pretty perfectly how the Republican party adopted a pretty clear and consistent strategy of dogwhistling messages to a racist base, that continued handily through to Reagan.
It is, unsurprisingly, still prominent in a way targeted against blacks today. It's easy to catch a whiff of it in 90% of conversations the right is having about "thugs" or food stamps and the evermortal Welfare Queens mythology.
Long story short though is that the black community largely just has absolutely no faith that conservatives are anything but antagonistic to them and they vote accordingly.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Truth be told the same would likely have happened long since with the poorer voters as well, given how often GOP interests occur against their own interests, but the GOP has coopted and in some cases genuinely believes in a variety of 'values' issues that keep things split for them.
Szymon, your questions while it's worthwhile to ask them, I wonder what your response would be if I were to point out that historically white Americans have voted nearly 100% for white men, and to speak of it in a way that suggests some racism or fault on those voters parts...would you accept such a 'question' as inoffensive? Or the suggestion that somehow the results were fraudulent?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I know several black people who voted for McCain in 2008 (he was very popular with the military voters) and then turned around and voted for Obama in 2012. After the events of the past several years, I'll be absolutely shocked if a Republican candidate takes more than 5% of the black vote.
To answer your question, Szymon: if the race came down between, say, Ben Carson vs. Hilary Clinton, do you think 95% of black voters - or even a *majority* of black voters - would vote Republican? I would argue the demographics would not shift dramatically.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
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well, it's fairly new ground to cover so it's not exactly the same.
the primary issue is that people adopted dogwhistle rhetoric for a race into dogwhistle rhetoric against Obama specifically.
and they did so strongly enough that at least as of a year ago Republicans who thought Obama is a U.S. born citizen are a minority. as far as I know this is even still the case. as absurd as it is to contemplate.
at any rate conservatives like to traffic two patently delusional narratives about minority voting amongst themselves: the first is that only 'race loyalty' accounts for why blacks wouldn't vote against Obama (this is offensive on multiple levels but whatev) and the second is that hispanic voters are "naturally conservative" and would come right back over to the republican platform once they stop being so unreasonable towards the GOP for their zealous use of hispanics as cultural bogeymen.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Szymon, your questions while it's worthwhile to ask them, I wonder what your response would be if I were to point out that historically white Americans have voted nearly 100% for white men, and to speak of it in a way that suggests some racism or fault on those voters parts...would you accept such a 'question' as inoffensive? Or the suggestion that somehow the results were fraudulent?
If I were to answer a question: "Why did white people always vote 99% for a white candidate (in the US)?" Because of historical reasons, I guess, the establishment was always white, there probably were few black candidates in the first place, black people didn't even have a right to vote 70 years ago, same situation as with women, society as a whole needs to learn blah blah blah.
When I heard about that 99%, and then confirmed on wiki that it was indeed something like that, I created a null hypothesis, that black people vote for Obama just because he is black. And I chose you, as a forum of US citizens, to test the hypothesis, because it seemed irrational (and I, as a market-liberal, believe that people are rational, to certain extent). I say "null hypothesis", because "assume" sounds like I believed in that, and I really didn't
Now, the argument, that 88% black people voted for Democrats always, is an argument that proves the hypothesis wrong - now I think that 5-10% of black people voted for Obama because he was black, and not 90%. Like 5-10% of women would vote for Hilary because she's a woman, and 5-10% of men would vote for any man but her, because he's a man.
This just creates another, much more probable hypothesis, that 90% of black Americans are simply democrats, for various historical reasons. It's a normal, rational situation, where poorer people want a bigger state.
I hope I didn't offend anyone and I hope I made myself clear Posts: 723 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:It's a normal, rational situation, where poorer people want a bigger state.
Well, that's possible. But as noted in the Atwater quote above, Republicans have spent the last sixty years telling their white southern base that they don't trust black people any more than their voters do.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Again, I would note that the issue is not black and white. Its not "why do blacks vote for Obama so much?" or even "why do blacks vote for democrats so much?" The real question that should be asked is why modern Republicans do such a great job of turning off anyone that's not white.
When you take the focus off asking what's different about blacks or what's special about Obama and instead focus on what's horribly wrong about Republicans you'll be a lot closer to describing reality.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:It's a normal, rational situation, where poorer people want a bigger state.
Well, that's possible. But as noted in the Atwater quote above, Republicans have spent the last sixty years telling their white southern base that they don't trust black people any more than their voters do.
I would say it's a normal, rational situation, in which the black people (poor or otherwise, because they are not all poor, or even 95% poor), recognize that the "small state" ideology is in a thinly veiled gambit to empower a white, wealthy subclass. Whether you're a rich black person or a poor black person, you can recognize when someone's political priorities involve disenfranchising, dehumanizing, and marginalizing you and people like you.
I have known more than one black republican, but not more than three. And not one of them was the least bit unaware of what a large part of their own party's platform was really about. They were there despite that knowledge, and they were, to a person, intent on changing it.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: It is worth noting that the Iraq War has been going on for 12 years now. After your CBO's estimates of a long-term cost of 2.4 trillion and between 100,000 as documented by leaked US logs to 500,000 excess deaths as recorded by peer-reviewed medical journals, it is worth asking how you got here and what safeguards are being put in place to make sure that another huge mistake, arguably the worst in modern US foreign policy doesn't happen again.
Instead, it seems like you'll be electing Hilary Clinton who is pretty straightforward in her support of the war in the first place.
Hillary doesn't have even remotely the same level of motivation as Neocons to go knee deep into Iran on superfluous reasons.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote: Jeb Bush is under growing pressure to acknowledge what to some voters and a number of campaign finance lawyers seems obvious: He is running for president.
The lawyers say Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, is stretching the limits of election law by crisscrossing the country, hiring a political team and raising tens of millions of dollars at fund-raisers, all without declaring — except once, by mistake — that he is a candidate.
quote:Just what you want in a candidate for President: someone who tries to weasel around laws for his own personal benefit.
It's not like he'd later be charged with enforcing and carrying out the law as head of the executive branch or anything.
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"Nobody is tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump. Nobody." -Donald Trump
The army using suicide bombing tactics? Enlisting children into the armed forces? What are the limits of Pres. Trump's toughness!?
Posts: 1194 | Registered: Jun 2010
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Aside from how stupid it is for him to say that religion should stay out of politics (though goodness, I would relish trying it out, as an experiment), I admit I am pretty surprised at how badly Jeb is so far at this sort of thing. Repetitive though outwardly sincere campaign statements are one bit of bread and butter for politicians, and so is an even more useful skill: 'don't make stupid gaffes'.
Of course the truth about what he actually said about Iraq in the big stuff people quote is a bit more nuanced than it seems without context, but also 'avoid answering questions in a way that looks bad' is also a fundamental.
I would have expected him to be more polished than this. Too long out of the governor's office?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I think Jeb is actually just plain too much like Hillary.
Both of them hate the politics of politics. They hate canned answers and speeches and rubbing elbows. They both just want to govern, and they, at a fundamentally basic level, don't understand why elections aren't about ideas.
They all hate the cult of personality stuff, and maybe because they're both really bad at it, but that's the reason why he's having so many gaffes, that, and as Rakeesh says, his lack of recent experience and being out of the game too long.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:When people ask, between now and Election Day, 2016, what the Schiavo case was about—pity or bitterness, faith in God or science, conviction or political posturing, the judiciary against the executive, or maybe arrogance—their interest may be in Jeb Bush’s motives. Examine the Schiavo case, and try to find the moderation that is so often casually ascribed to Jeb: it isn’t easy. It’s worth sorting out the balance of pragmatism and ideology in his character, as well as his interest in playing to the G.O.P. base and his own Catholic faith—but the policy consequences are the same. That’s clear in Bush’s manhandling use of Terri Schiavo.
Then there is Bush’s sense of how far to push, and that he was entitled to do so. In August, 2003, he wrote to one of the many judges involved, “I normally would not address a letter to the judge in a pending legal proceeding…. However, my office has received over 27,000 emails reflecting understandable concern for the well-being of Terri Schiavo.” A Times report published last weekend, about Jeb’s many notes and requests to the White House on other matters when his father worked there, suggests that he “normally” wasn’t shy at all about asserting influence inappropriately. At the very end, after the autopsy confirmed that Terri’s brain really was too damaged for the sort of consciousness that her parents imagined, Bush wrote to a state prosecutor asking him to investigate Michael Schiavo, suggesting that there had been a sinister gap between when Schiavo found his wife collapsed and when he called 911. “I urge you to take a fresh look at this case without any preconceptions as to the outcome,” Bush wrote. The prosecutor found nothing.
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Does the RNC have a say on who can announce their candidacy as a Republican? Are they approving all these people as candidates or is all the candidates need is enough signatures?
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: Does the RNC have a say on who can announce their candidacy as a Republican? Are they approving all these people as candidates or is all the candidates need is enough signatures?
At this point I don't think they even need signatures. Just have to find someone in the media willing to listen and say that they're running.
Posts: 572 | Registered: Jun 2013
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To announce a run they need no approval. To actually appear on a ballot they need to meet the signature threshold.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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an update to that last post: he didn't last in second place for very wrong
he said even worse things about brown people and quickly became #1 in the republican polls. Was polling at about 2% before, and now has almost twice the support of his closest rival in the entire republican field.
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That they're brining in drugs and crime and rape but he's sure that some of them are good people. That's pretty old news, Gaal.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I knew that but I thought that's what Sam was referencing in his first post and his update said that he said even worse things.
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