I did like how she said she loved Denmark, but Bernie’s ideas won’t work here.
It’s tough for me because ideologically I don’t have too many issues with what I see as the real Clinton. But I hate serial dishonesty in a President, so my sympathies are with the socialist.
If the Supreme Court were to say that the verb tenses don’t matter (which might at least have some plausibility - weak tea, but better than running implication arrows backward), they could say that because he’d served more than half of Hillary’s term as of July 5, 2019 in your example, that his second election to the Presidency back in 1996 was invalid, since he had just become ineligible to be elected to the office of President more than once.
Never mind that he basically agrees with the Democratic Party on everything except guns and race-based affirmative action and has advocated prison reform since 2009. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
Webb makes a good case for Commander in Chief. If you are a pragmatist as I like to think I am, the US is likely to be involved in acts of warfare in the immediate future. We may not like it, but that is probably what will happen. In situations like that it would behoove us to have someone with military intelligence at the helm.
But those people can be included when we need them without electing them president. Their sense of duty is up to it. In the big picture, we need a national leader with domestic priorities before foreign wars. At this point I still think Bernie has the best ideas.
And not only did he give the Democrats the majority in 2006, without him there’d be no ACA.
If liberals were actually able to purge everyone they didn’t like, pretty much none of the accomplishments they point to as part of their heritage would ever have happened.
That’s what you elect your Congressman for. A President does need to have domestic focus, I agree, but that focus is should be less on new ideas and more on how to make the government work. Sanders does have experience and a record on that, so that’s all peachy. O’Malley of course stands head and shoulders above all of them.
Full thoughts:
H. Clinton-Did a solid job simultaneously delineating her progressive credentials while differentiating herself from Sanders as a “realist” and even as a “capitalist”. I’m also glad she was unapologetic about her role in bringing down the murderous Gadaffi regime in Libya and generally advocating a position of cautious strength. I think from what I’m seeing she is moving towards a “social corporatist” or “social market” ideology on the German model where social insurance/welfare guarantees are provided by a mixture of direct government provision as well as through negotiation between government, business, and labour. I’ve always believed this is both more politically palatable and effective than straight social democracy, and hope that her presumable nomination drives the political discourse in this country in that direction. It also gives me the hope that Mrs. Clinton may become a sort of centre-left American Angela Merkel in terms of effectiveness. The usual unfortunate remarks on guns and (especially) abortion was not surprising but nonetheless disappointing.
B. Sanders-Again a very solid performance discussing his key issues such as income inequality, breaking up the banks, workers’ rights, global warming, and the like, also differentiating himself clearly as the “real deal” apart from Clinton. Senator Sanders’s realistic view on gun control and especially the impossibility of automatically imposing the Bloombergian/suburban mom view on the whole of the country was wonderful to hear at a Democratic Party debate. The most unfortunate statement on his part was his insistence on calling himself a “democratic socialist” thus unnecesarily alienating a large number of voters rather than “social democrat” which he actually is considering he does not support mass nationalizations as opposed to a greatly enlargened welfare state and which is an ideology that actually has potential for mass support.
J. Webb-The hidden gem of the current pack of candidates. One of the few candidates who remembers the critical role the white working-class vote of Appalachia, Ozarkia, and elsewhere played in maintaining Democratic congressional majorities necessary to establish and perpetuate the New Deal/Great Society welfare state, it was refreshing to hear a Democrat speak of his mother growing up chopping cotton and picking strawberries in rural Arkansas, mention the struggling whites of the Appalachian mountains, and making that wonderful quip about who his real enemy was. This is not even taking into account his solid policy statements on the threat of Chinese power, supporting nuclear power, and scepticism regarding gun control. His opposition to the Iran Deal is probably his grossest policy error but on the whole he’s running the wrong strategy by trying simultaneously to be the “radical centrist” working-class populist which he should be double down and the anodyne, effeminate, degenerate “No Labels” type of Beltway Media moderate heroism/Bloombergianism that has been dead since 2007. Incidentally its clear he was unfairly treated by the hosts, considering he was passed over the question on Syria despite having been Undersecretary of Defense.
M. O’Malley-The most overrated candidate in this race. Takes largely generic progressive stances and came off as little more than a copycat of Sanders. This doesn’t even take into account his questionable policies as mayor of Baltimore and the fact that at the end of his term, a Republican was able to win in one of the most Democratic states in this country.
L. Chafee-However, O’Malley is not the biggest loser in this race (as Mr. Trump would put it) because of the presence of this fellow. Words cannot describe the amount of contempt I feel for Mr. Chafee whose disastrous performance in this debate was amusing to watch. Where should we start? His excuse (used twice!) that “everybody else voted for it”? His cucking for Putinist aggression? His Snowden apologism? Amongst eminent Rhode Islanders, I’d vastly prefer the late H.P. Lovecraft for all of his xenophobia and “fascistic socialism” to the biggest loser in American politics: Lincoln Chafee.
Looks like O’Malley tried to suggest switching America to electric power by 2050 or something, but the debate mods threw the question out to the audience moderator, so nutz to that.
Green power just isn’t supported by the media elite. They have to lose, sorry, but I appreciate the good you do, Media Elite.
Qin Shi, I disagree with you on multiple points, but I must say that was some eloquent shit right there. Nicely done.
Here’s a rundown from the NYT of reaction to the debate from the right and left. It’s pretty much unanimous: Hillary dominated.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned: a very, very clever framing by Hillary of her candidacy (the closing line of her opening statement, granted, which means it was probably honed by the sharpest politicos in the biz, with the help of focus groups):
“[A]nd, yes, finally, fathers will be able to say to their daughters, you, too, can grow up to be president.”
What’s especially brilliant about this is that she said “fathers” rather than “mothers” or “parents”. She (and her team) know that the mothers don’t need this reminder. If they’re not horrendously right wing, they are very likely to feel some solidarity with Hillary by the time November 2016 rolls around. But her weakness is with men, and this is a great way to hit any dad of a daughter where it counts. Basically, “do you want to look your daughter in the face and try to explain it to her when she looks up at you with her innocent round eyes and wonders sadly ‘why don’t girls get to be president, Daddy?’” Genius.
Ha! And he was the one who told two different people not to shout or raise their voices. Unbelievable.
Really?
Yep, as a father, you can tell your daughter that she can grow up to marry a President and then she’ll be able to run for President herself.
Sorry, but Obama’s biography was much more compelling. At least he did it himself.
Frankly I think there has been a backroom deal where all the dems including Sanders, are secretly going to slowly back out of the race and hand everything to Hillary.
Sanders of course will be the last and might be a vp candidate but I think that if he could get Hillary to agree to back some of his ideas he will back away and give her his support.
Not doing this will be political suicide for the democrats because a Republican will come in and win.
Obviously the polls are not scientific, which is mentioned later in the article, but his message clearly does resonate more than Hillary, so why was this blindsided?
Based on online polls?
I think you mean “whitewashed”; “blindsiding” is attacking someone from an unexpected position.
People tend to perceive non-scientific polls incorrectly. They probably think something akin to “ok, it’s not scientific, but it’s still a poll, probably just a little less precise.” Whereas actually, it’s no data at all. It’s useless. It tells you nothing at all. There is literally nothing there for the media to report on.
The focus groups are a different beast, however. Depending on how they were conducted, the data coming out of them could be meaningful.
Isn’t CNN owned by Time Warner, which donated to the Hillary campaign?
And focus groups.
Yes.
cite?
It sure sounded like it. Free college tuition, $15/hr minimum wage, paid maternity leave, lower student loan interest, free government health care. How do we pay for it? Tax the hell out of the Wall Street fat cats.
I noted that none of them went near the notion of having colleges scale back on the millions of dollars spent on athletic programs. Coaches make far more than professors, stadiums cost a fortune to build and maintain, teams travel all over the country; if that money was used to offset tuition, the country would be in far better shape. But I know that football has become a national obsession, and that sports is a sacred cow that no politician wants to gore.