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CubsWoo posted:I suppose Hillary could win in a walk if one of her campaign planks was a day one executive action directing the Department of Education to zero out all outstanding federal student loans. But as long as we're dreaming, I'll take one of those ponies Vermin's offering. So you don't think there would be any backlash from the financial community for such an action?
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Nov 10, 2014 06:13
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CubsWoo posted:Wasn't the dream to have a President who wasn't beholden to the big banks and removing the debt shackles from what is becoming a lost generation of Gen Y/Millennials? Well, she certainly wouldn't win in a cakewalk as you assumed. Youth don't vote, and promising to forgive their student debts wouldn't get enough of them to the polls to offset the frenzy the business conservatives would whip up for the Republican candidate. Any policy aimed at youth specifically is a non-starter, politically.
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Nov 10, 2014 06:25
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My Imaginary GF posted:That's not true. Gutierrez cares about Gutierrez. Old people tend to be well aware of the effects of age. They generally don't want someone their own age running the country.
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Nov 11, 2014 03:00
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Nereid posted:Hilariously, I always interpreted "natural born" to mean born here or a US military base abroad. There is no clear definition of it (which is part of the problem), but it's generally interpreted to mean someone who is a citizen from birth, not naturalized. The Founders were rather paranoid of European nobility trying to take over their new government.
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Nov 12, 2014 00:41
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Pretty sure Canada isn't a military base. But good to know. Seeing the dems doing a birther argument right back at the republicans would be pretty hilarious.
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AYC posted:Or they pretend to and use their age as an excuse not to change their minds. You'll understand when you're older.
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Nov 12, 2014 03:54
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crowoutofcontext posted:Its been said before in this thread that older voters may be familiar with the negative affects of aging. And more to the point they will be able to evaluate more accurately just how a candidate's age is affecting them. Hillary is in darn good shape for her age, and may get a lot of "you go, girl" support. McCain had significant problems that way, as he looked like death warmed over and did not look like a guy who could handle the job. There's no hard and fast rule on this. Every candidate will be evaluated differently.
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Nov 12, 2014 06:28
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shadow puppet of a posted:The right wing media thread just reminded me (sorry Joementum) that Joe Liberman is still alive and once considered vice presidential. He's now 72. I doubt he's going to be doing much of anything other than cheerleading.
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Nov 14, 2014 03:35
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GlyphGryph posted:Well, I mean, technically, yeah. You can. Same way you make the other states not move earlier (threaten to ignore all or a good chunk of their results) It becomes more a matter of whether or not completely making GBS threads all over Iowa and New Hampshire is really worth it. Shifting the opening primaries around to other states would be nice, but not really that crucial.
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Nov 16, 2014 03:35
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Ninjasaurus posted:I've been discussing politics with my dad again after watching Game Change (highly recommended movie, Julianne Moore nails it as Sarah Palin) and he seems to be all fired up for Scott Walker. My dad just wants a President who "knows how to encourage business" (he watches CNBC every single day) and knows what they're doing when it comes to foreign policy (he's criticized Bush and Obama for the messes they've made in the Middle East). And of course, being a Republican, he loves the union-busting Walker did. Remind your dad that the two Presidents most clearly identified as businessmen were George Bush and Herbert Hoover. Running the government like a business hasn't worked out too well.
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Nov 22, 2014 20:33
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Zwabu posted:Re: Scott Walker - how many U.S. Presidents have not had a college education? Harry Truman was the last one. Don't know how many before him.
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Nov 23, 2014 02:07
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Alter Ego posted:He was, then Ferguson happened. Rand Paul has an awesome plan for defeating ISIS, but you'll have to elect him before he'll tell you what it is.
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Nov 25, 2014 23:16
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Full Battle Rattle posted:Do/did the "Silent Majority" and the "Moral Majority" overlap? The Moral Majority didn't exist until the '80s, but the demographics do overlap.
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Nov 28, 2014 02:45
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Carter was one hell of a president In reality, he was mediocre. His Georgia Mafia was ignorant of how Washington operated and alienated everyone. He tried to bully Congress who just got mad and refused to cooperate with him. As a result, he was not good at getting anything done and got blamed whenever anything went wrong. He's been a fantastic ex-President, probably one of the best ever. In office, though, he wasn't much to write home about.
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Dec 8, 2014 04:58
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Eschers Basement posted:No good process ever ends with "which is how we got Agnew." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwk_epMblW4
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Dec 11, 2014 00:10
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Rygar201 posted:Personally I think expecting Presidential candidates to view the office as Cincinattus and the Dictatorship is pretty stupid. I want someone who wants the job, and its attendant responsibilities, stresses, and various drawbacks. We still expect our presidents to exhibit some 18th century reluctant gentleman temporary politician air thiughy It's basic psychology. People get turned off by naked ambition and instinctively act to thwart it, while a reluctant hero responding to popular acclamation is far more appealing. If you are actually driven by naked ambition, you will gain more power by acting like you don't want it. Manipulating the masses is essential to be successful in politics.
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Dec 16, 2014 22:44
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Fulchrum posted:Its their idea! The whole idea is a Heritage foundation Conservative Alternative to a federal healthcare system. The only part the Heritage Foundation contributed is the part that conservatives hate the most, the individual mandate.
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Jan 6, 2015 02:14
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BiggerBoat posted:People say this all of the time but I'm not convinced it's true. I remember caring about Gore, Palin, Cheney, Lieberman, Biden to an extent, Ryan...poo poo, even Ferraro. I think the VP slot is there to round out the ticket/platform and to attract voters who aren't 100% entirely keen on the nominee. I think it matters. At least it matters to me because it tells me something about the candidate. Running mates are something of a reflection of the decision-making process of the nominee. A good pick matters in that it confirms good judgment, while a bad one raises doubts. Hence good running mates have little positive effect on the ticket, while bad ones can hurt. Palin's net value is questionable, because the people she fired up were solid Republican voters to begin with and the bulk of them didn't like McCain. Meanwhile, centrists who were OK with McCain were turned off by her and became more likely to vote for Obama.
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Jan 28, 2015 19:24
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Winter Stormer posted:I'm loving it. Rand Paul has a pretty solid circumstantial case that vaccines cause serious mental disorders, at least.
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Feb 3, 2015 04:33
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I know some mostly sensible, business-type Republicans who happen to be strongly pro-vaccination, and Christie and Paul coming out and saying stupid poo poo just gives me more ammunition. Like, it's one thing to give climate change short shrift - the changes are slow, the symptoms can be (mis)interpreted as 'just the weather' or whatever - but any fool can draw a very direct line between low vaccination rates and the resurgence of diseases from the bad old days.
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messagemode1 posted:Big fan of Jeb Bush coming out for vaccines. Well, he finessed it a bit. He stated that parents should get their kids vaccinated, which is fine as far as it goes, but he declined to comment on whether the government should require vaccinations. If pressed on the issue, I suspect he would come down on the "freedom" side as well.
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Feb 5, 2015 00:40
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Christ, they're still calling them money bombs? Rand's supporters are unusually susceptible to viral campaigns.
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Feb 7, 2015 02:46
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Believing that your vote is the only one that should have to matter is a pretty selfish way of thinking about it. Of course your singular vote doesn't matter, that's the whole point of a democratic society. The purpose of voting is to determine majority and minority opinions, and to measure support for those ideals. If they win, great, but if not, that vote is still a permanent mark that whatever ideals a particular party has possess some measure of support, for better or for worse. I don't begrudge people for voting for (Actual) third parties, but I do feel that not voting at all is probably the worst thing you can do, and is the reason why the whole "Your vote doesn't matter" narrative needs to be dispelled. I've found voting to be a powerful tool for forcing me to clarify exactly what I think about politics and issues. Rather than forever debating the pros and cons of issues in my head, voting makes me quantify my values and choose a person who best represents my own views. Thus it makes me define exactly who I am and what I stand for. That has spinoffs in other areas of my life, as well. I vote for my own sake. So the issue of whether or not my vote makes a mathematical difference is beside the point, as far as I'm concerned.
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Feb 7, 2015 17:16
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Idran posted:Why does most of this thread keep reading V. Illych L. as saying "your vote doesn't matter, so don't vote"? He's explicitly saying "your individual vote isn't likely to have much impact, so don't vote tactically, vote based on your actual political positions, even if that means voting for a third party". The latter is an entirely different argument from the former, but most people in this thread are arguing against the former. Third parties will never have any power to effect any legislation or make any changes in the way the country is run, like it or not. There is no difference between voting third party and not voting at all.
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Feb 8, 2015 03:40
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Bob Ojeda posted:I guess that's true if you vote a straight third party ticket, and somehow also vote third party on any propositions or local measures? But that seems like kind of a fringe scenario Propositions and local measures are not party-based, generally. In a race with a 3rd party candidate, voting third party will have exactly the same effect as voting for no one.
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Feb 8, 2015 04:53
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V. Illych L. posted:your vote does nothing but make yourself feel better anyway i don't understand why this is so hard to understand This is how we get minority white governments running majority black cities, like Ferguson, MO. The people who think their vote doesn't matter don't vote, and the people that do end up running the place. There actually is a difference between 0.000001 and 0. Add enough 0.000001s together and you get a meaningful number. This is why political parties exist - collective action by large groups of people (like all voting the same way) have impact on the world where isolated individuals do not.
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Feb 8, 2015 19:59
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V. Illych L. posted:yes I agree but this has nothing to do with my point, which is that voting one of the major parties rather than third party so as not to "waste" your vote is completely nonsensical at an individual basis A vote as part of collective action to effect change matters. A vote for a party that will never have any impact on the political process is a waste. Nothing matters at an individual level in politics. That's not a particularly useful insight, in and of itself. Third parties in American politics are feel-good ideological purity zones, nothing more.
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Feb 8, 2015 20:11
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Joementum posted:Last 126 years, actually. Grover Cleveland was the last not-Harry-Truman President to not have a college degree Presumably he was still 34 credits short of graduating by the spring of his senior year. He just said gently caress it, I'm outta here. He was not a good student. Maybe he should have tried the University of Idaho instead of Marquette.
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Feb 12, 2015 03:42
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this_is_hard posted:no, I think science's answer on that one is "You can't prove a negative," evidence of absence, etc. Science's answer is "we can't know so we don't care." Science is based on empiricism. Absence of evidence matters only when that evidence should be present. There is no physical test to prove definitively the existence of God, so there is no evidence for science even to be looking for.
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Feb 12, 2015 20:37
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Lustful Man Hugs posted:Jesus Christ. How do you become that loving evil and petty? Rush is a ratings whore. He doesn't care why people are paying attention to him.
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Feb 13, 2015 04:35
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Nintendo Kid posted:It's not so much that, as they already built maximum hate for her in the populace susceptible to hating her. Everybody else figured out whether they liked her or hated her by now, which is something sort of unique in recent candidates. My hope for the 2016 campaign is that the GOP gets so ugly that they start chasing away women in general, as they have with every other demographic group identified with their opponents for the last 40 years.
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Feb 15, 2015 00:39
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Swagger Dagger posted:Binders full of women and the constant assault on their reproductive rights/earning potential/insert gendered issue here is already doing this Women were only D+4 in November (51D/47R). I'm hopeful that gap can be driven to double digits or more in 2016.
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Feb 15, 2015 00:47
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Captain_Maclaine posted:My thoughts exactly about Bush the Elder; he's really not in good enough shape to be there in person, both from the perspectives of optics and his own health. I can't imagine anyone with an ounce of brains would bring Bush the Lesser on, as doing so would be begging the next media cycle to tie the GOP candidate to his various terrible failures. The can just set up an empty chair and pretend it's him. Republicans are good at that sort of thing.
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Feb 16, 2015 05:11
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My Imaginary GF posted:Non-televised, of course. His odds would improve markedly if he were actually a Democrat.
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Feb 17, 2015 00:49
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DaveWoo posted:I could see him doing a tribute to his dad or something like that. Cuomo will probably get a spot if he wants one. The party obviously is hoping he has eight years of Hillary's presidency to mend fences for a shot in 2024. If he's still a flaming turd then, there's little lost now.
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Feb 17, 2015 04:51
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Parallax Scroll posted:I don't normally pay attention to repub primaries but it's actually important this time since I'm not voting for hillary I'm not nuts about Hillary, but no one on the Republican side is conversant with reality, so it's not really a contest.
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Feb 20, 2015 01:36
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OneTwentySix posted:With regards to Walker, I just don't see how someone can run a presidential campaign when their home state has done so absolutely horrible economically under his leadership that they're considering missing a debt payment. Even if I was a Republican that liked all the other horrible things he's done, I can't see how someone could look at him and say, "yeah, I want that for the rest of the country." Plus the whole no-degree thing - how is this guy in any sense a viable candidate? Either one of those should make you a joke candidate. He did the Right Thing by conservative ideology. It doesn't matter that he trashed his state. Ideological purity matters more than results.
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Feb 21, 2015 19:19
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SpiderHyphenMan posted:Back on Topic: Does this Giuliani thing actually have serious legs of being relevant to the primaries? Like I don't think any of the 37 GOP debates are gonna feature the question "Do you think Obama loves America?" (as great as that would be) but is there any chance of this still being A Thing a few months from now when all the people we know are going to run actually file with the FEC and officially declare their candidacy? It's been A Thing for the last eight years. I don't see any reason for it to stop now. It's not going to have any effect at all at this point. Dog whistles will never go out of style for the GOP.
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Feb 21, 2015 22:20
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rakovsky maybe posted:This is just being a non-crazy Republican. Whatever gets 50.1%. Webb isn't going to get any traction this cycle, anyway.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:20
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gnarlyhotep posted:Please bear with me because I am very stupid. So you're saying that even though there was a majority vote for Gore, Bush won because there wasn't any fuckery going on? I am purposely not counting the electoral college because it's bullshit. For being bullshit, it's how Bush got elected. Your opinion of the rules does not change their applicability.
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Feb 22, 2015 06:51
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gnarlyhotep posted:I'm not debating my opinion of the rules, in fact you are talking about exactly what I'm talking about. Which is that there is no democracy and probably never has been. [citation needed] Who do you think is responsible for 9/11? Do you think men actually walked on the Moon? Where do you stand on vaccines and autism?
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Feb 22, 2015 06:58
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gnarlyhotep posted:I don't know who was responsible for 9/11 and don't care. When you start spouting crazy unsupported conspiracy theories ("there is no democracy and probably never has been.") my first response is to doubt your sanity. There is no evidence whatever to support that assertion. It's something that you hear from an angsty 15-year-old. Powerful groups and individuals certainly influence elections. That has been true throughout history. There is a rather large difference between influence and control, however, and you seem unable to make that distinction.
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Feb 22, 2015 07:12
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