The way to defuse him and win votes is to get a team of comedy writers to come up with commercials making fun of him. And it’ll piss him off no end. Win-win.
And this is why I stand by my pet theory: Clinton/Franken 2016!
I’ve said this before but Franken has cultivated a serious demeanor since his first Senate campaign. I think it highly unlikely he would choose to become Hillary’s wisecracking sidekick. He made a public apology when he got caught rolling his eyes at a political opponents speech, for Pete’s sake.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2010/08/mcconnell-to-franken-this-isnt-snl-028416
Oh, yeah, I agree. Franken is a super smart and serious guy. I was just making a flippant remark. I do think Franken would be awesome at skewering Trump, but yeah, he deserves better than being Clinton’s sidekick.
As you say, he has cultivated a serious demeanor (including comporting himself respectfully in his congressional dealings).
But that doesn’t mean he can’t still get off a pithy one-liner. 
But would he take it if offered, I wonder? Certainly he’d be a well qualified spare-POTUS, in the event of the unthinkable. And the first Jew to hold the vice presidency, if that matters. Of course, that’s still less important than being a senator.
I think he’d almost certainly take it, but I think he’s probably not very likely to be picked.
I tend to agree, however much I’d like to see it. He just doesn’t bring much electoral advantage other than that.
One thing I would like to see Clinton do early in the campaign is to highlight her plans to help small businesses grow as a key element of her economic plan.
Small businesses by their very nature are less likely to outsource or move production out of the country. And if the Small Business Association is to be believed
That sector can use help recovering, specifically the help that the access to credit and targeted tax that Clinton proposes would provide.
And not only everyone love small business as an institution but it specifically resonates with particular demographics, such as Hispanics who are exploding in the small business space, and can be a significant part of rebooting rural economies. The former where energizing her turnout is key and the latter where Trump’s strength needs to be attacked the most.
Right now much of the small business community likes Trump. She has to get out front and change that. Go after what is percieved to be his strength. Get out arguments made by Forbes and The Economist that Trump is the enemy of small business as a community.
She needs to make it clear that despite the fact that he managed to finagle his hands onto money designed to benefit small businesses that he is not a small business owner and never has been, that he instead has a history of making promises to small business that he never intended to keep and stiffing them later. That that is what his fantasy tax plan would be, just another promise to break as part of how he does business, by exploiting honest small businesses … and widows.
DSeid, the campaign needs to hire you. 
What really surprised me was the milquetoast way they dealt with the West Virginia thing. Granted, it hasn’t gone blue for 20 years, and it’s only 5 EV, but you’d think they could have come up with something better than “I made a mistake.” I saw the statement West Virginians are up in arms about, and it wasn’t what it was blown up to be. Hillary couldn’t have explained that?
I posted this in the Stupid liberal idea of the day thread but thought it deserved to be here as well.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story about Hillary Clinton’s $100,000-a-head fundraisers, and this caught my eye:
This is the same Lynn Forester de Rothschild who, butt-hurt when Obama beat Clinton in 2008, became the public face of the PUMA Movement and said some very incendiary things about President Obama:
She never even came around after he won and picked Hillary as his Secretary of State as she supported Jon Huntsman in 2012.
She is a horrible, horrible person, and Hillary seems to think that having her raise money for her is worth the price of all the Sanders supporters viewing this as more grist for the mill and even the Obama supporters who recall Rothschild’s remarks against him and the acrimony between Obama and Clinton in 2008.
There is no evidence that she has changed her views in the past four years either.
At a time when the Democratic party needs to be uniting, Hillary runs to one of the biggest dividers you’re likely to find, all because she happens to be a Holding Company billionaire CEO with her wallet open.
Pretty shitty.
Bernie lost. Deal with it.
But in some other way than helping Trump, okay, sport?
Anything she could have said would have been similarly misrepresented or worse, wouldn’t it?
You don’t pay attention very well. I’m the guy who started a thread about annoying Sanders supporters. The one where I conceded him losing a long, long time ago.
Your inability to actually comment on what I posted and instead lay an ad hominem attack on me is cute though.
I really don’t care that Hillary is holding $100,000 a plate fundraisers, unlike some Sanders supporters. I don’t even care that she did it with a Wall Street CEO.
But that specific one? You really don’t see that as pretty dumb?
Not by you, of course. Not by you.
This thread is about Clinton. Pay attention.
I know. That’s why I posted something about Clinton here. In this thread. About her.
Yet your ad hominem response brought up Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, so maybe you’re the one who got confused about what the thread was about?
Unless Rothschild has changed her views, I agree that it was shitty for Hillary to have a fundraiser at her place. It won’t affect my vote, but it’s shitty.
This is precisely how I feel, incidentally. And I don’t think she has changed her views but I could be mistaken. I didn’t find anything that would indicate she had.
Oh wow, another example of Hillary Clinton not living up to the litmus test. :rolleyes: I’m not just picking on Sanders voters but on everyone who engages in this sort of nonsense. Seriously, I don’t care if Hillary Clinton begs for votes or tries to get cozy with business. In the end, she will do what it takes to win votes, and she long ago that she prefers the utilitarian view of politics over the oligarchal view. Unlike Trump who appeals to the masses to vote for the interests of the view, she sometimes appeals to the interests of the few in order to serve both them and the masses of people who vote for her. I really - don’t - effing - care. It doesn’t matter. What matters is voter participation. What matters is the message that voters send not only in presidential years but in mid-term cycles and in state-level elections as well.