Kaine is personally opposed, but maintains the practice should not be outlawed. That’s a view shared by a significant percentage of pro-choice advocates. That’s the whole “choice” part of it. If we’re electing Kaine as president, that’s still a good alignment. But we’re not, we’re talking Clinton:
[QUOTE=Hillary Clinton]
Politicians have no business interfering with women’s personal health decisions. I will oppose efforts to roll back women’s access to reproductive health care, including Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. As president, I’ll stand up for Planned Parenthood and women’s access to critical health services, including safe, legal abortion.
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2007? Almost a decade ago, when less than a third of Americans supported gay marriage? Welcome to the present (we’re running a real nation). Hell, I have family members STILL opposed to it, and that’s with an aunt and an uncle both in same-sex marriages, with relationships that have lasted 25+ years.
Progressive tax, have you looked at her proposals? I figure that an extra $100 billion a year, with half of that coming from the top 0.1%, seems pretty progressive. What in there isn’t? Clinton, big money, blah blah blah, a slightly true attack that has been blown far out of proportion.
As for minority rights, I’ll let her actions speak for themselves. Aside from Bill’s big crime bill, what bad things has she done to/against minorities? I’d like to think the legal aid clinics and promise to improve sentencing, even retroactively, can at least start to improve and make up for that.
As it happens, I’m in an industry that does better in wartime and is mostly immune from rest of the economy at large
Excuse my language but that just so much horseshit. If I choose not to vote for Clinton it will be because she’s already helped put policies in place that harm me or mine. It’s just common sense to want something better. But go ahead, keeep ignoring that and pointing out the other guy is worse.
Aha. So in other words, it’s alright with you if a Trump takes us to war, because you’ll personally do better economically. Good to know.
That’s some really twisted logic. The other guy is worse, but people should vote for him because they want something better? The horseshit ain’t on my end.
Clinton is not exactly a pacifist. The fact of the matter is, I am easily a 5%er, so Republican policies would benefit me more. As it happens, most of my family is not and I’m not a selfish asshat and try to vote for policies that benefit the most people. Plus Racism.
At no point did I advocate for Trump anfd I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth. I said my conscience says I should leave the POTUS spot blank. It’s not my fault that my prefered party picked a nominee who’s already betrayed me before. I didn’t even really have a chance to choose otherwise.
OK, let’s clarify things here. You just granted that Trump is worse, right?
[QUOTE=Stuffy]
But go ahead, keeep ignoring that and pointing out the other guy is worse.
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So you now have basically two options. You can either vote for the candidate who would not be worse, or you can act in such a way as to help the worse candidate win, by voting for him, voting for neither, or not voting at all. There is no other formulation.
And that is EXACTLY what I said above. So I will thank you to learn to keep a civil tongue, especially when you’re wrong.
I didn’t bring it up directly since it’s sort of outside the scope of the thread, but there are a lot of people whose advocacy of Clinton goes as far as “we need a vagina in the whitehouse!” - at least dozens of times I’ve seen when someone has been open to the idea of liking Clinton and asked someone to sell her on them, that’s the response.
No, i don’t want to vote for her because of her judgment, her policies, and who she actually serves. People are trying to badger me into voting for her - convincing me that I’m forced to do so - I find their invitation to join their little club less persuasive when they’re all unpleasant, unwelcoming, and not the sort of people I’d want to side with.
I can’t believe you all think “let’s tell them what bad people they are for having any misgivings about our Perfect Candidate, ridicule them, and then tell them they’re responsible for anything that goes wrong because we forced such a shitty candidate in an election that would’ve otherwise been a landslide” is a good recruitment tactic towards people who are trying to stomach your candidate but can’t quite do it.
We had something similar in 2008, when Obama voters were generally good, welcoming people with honest advocacy that you could feel good about being part of. And we had a similar group of abrasive, condescending people telling us to bend over and take Clinton because you have to.
I’m not going to do this because it’s petty, but whenever any of you tell us that not voting, or that voting third party is the same as voting for Trump, I want to vote for Trump out of spite and say “well I was going to vote third party anyway, and you said that’s the same as voting for Trump, so I might as well do that!”
If Trump wins, I would say the Trump voters have a little bit more responsibility than people who didn’t vote for either Clinton or Trump. And in fact I would say hardcore Clinton supporters are more directly responsible. Trump’s campaign is such an outlier and such a shitshow that the only possible reason that it won’t be a Reagan vs Mondale landslide for the democrats (which would spill into congress) is their choice to nominate the worst possible fucking choice for their candidate. You should be fucking outraged that your party has the chance of a lifetime and they fucking squandered it on Hillary Clinton.
“Oh but the people chose her!” - bullshit, she was annointed. No one ran against her because it was “her turn” except the guy who had nothing to lose to get his message out, and they rigged the primaries against him. The democratic party is forcing us to accept Clinton despite literally any other semi-viable democratic candidate being an easy win against Trump.
If your candidate loses, it’s your own damn fault for deliberately choosing the worst candidate, not the people who have too much integrity to vote for such a candidate.
To expand on that last point, if I were a hardcore democrat, I would be angry that Hillary was shoved down my throat even if I liked her. Because is not going to be some uniquely great, once in a century sort of president. There are other democrats who could do just as well. But we do have a once-in-a-century sort of opportunity - the Republicans have gone insane and pushed the craziest candidate from a major party in history. They punted not on the presidential election, but a lot of the congressional ones too. Trump would inspire a huge turnout in the other side and that effect would spread to congress, too.
But instead you nominated the person who might be the second most unlikable candidate in the country, handicapping yourselves to ensure that it’s a close race. I mean for fucks sake, seriously folks - if Trump is running, and constantly bungling his campaign, and otherwise being a complete fucking joke - and the best you can do is probably a 60% chance to beat him, you’ve fucked up massively.
You had a rare opportunity to elect an actual left-leaning candidate who would win in a landslide with congressional support - this is the biggest opportunity the left has had since at least LBJ and possibly FDR - and you completely squandered it by nominating Clinton. At best - the absolute best case scenario - is that Clinton beats Trump and we get another 4-8 years of third way Clintonism which protects the status quo and furthers us down a path of corruption and oligarchy. You’re handed the most golden opportunity possible and that’s your best outcome.
Your party fucked up, you fucked up, and any consequences that stem from that are from your mistake of failing to take advantage of this rare situation, of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not from people who refuse to fall in line and support such an awful decision.
If that’s the case, then I question the intelligence and the quality of the company you keep. I’ve been around Hillary voters for years and narry a one of them has mentioned anything about needing a vagina in the White House. Many of those who support Hillary now supported Barack Obama in 2008.
Look, at this point, I don’t care. I don’t think anyone else has much hope in convincing you to change your mind. You’re free to toss your vote and increase the odds of a man-made disaster if that’s what you choose – you’ve been given that legal right. You have a civic responsibility but your ego’s too bruised to have that conversation apparently, so I’ll spare you. We get it – this is about you.
Logically, if you vote in a way that makes Donald Trump’s presidency more likely, you’re responsible. Sometimes we vote for the wrong person without knowing it at the time, but this is not the case now. You absolutely know that as much as you hate Hillary she is a clearly superior candidate to Donald Trump. You might be right in predicting that she won’t be as progressive as the rest of us hope she might be. You might be right in that she might turn out to be the Hillary of mass incarceration and Bengazi than the Hillary that tried to push healthcare reform nearly 20 years before Obama did or the Sec of State that achieved a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, or the first lady who supported the Brady bill and Assault Weapons bill. But you can’t expect anyone here to take you at your word when you believe that Clinton is just as bad or even worse than Trump. You are making a decision to vote against Hillary, in spite of the fact that you (as we all know) believe that she is the better choice. I get that some people can be utter douchebags when trying to argue politics, and I’ve been one myself at times – as have a lot of other Hillary Clinton voters and…a lot of Bernie Sanders voters. We’d all do well to speak with each other with civility. But don’t seriously expect to tell us that you’re willfully making an illogical choice for president and expect us not to hold you accountable for misusing your civic duty. Not your voting right, your civic duty.
As for voting against the system, that’s all well and good. But she has as much chance of winning the election as the bottle of wine that’s chilling in my fridge. And if she somehow did get elected, she really wouldn’t have any idea what to do anyway. She’s just a protest vote. I think protest votes have their place. But this is not the time. For the reasons I’ve just laid out, a protest vote really is a vote that increases the likelihood of a Trump presidency.
I was a Hillary voter who became a full-throated Obama voter. Most Hillary voters I know were very respectful of Obama, the evidence being that he actually did get elected and would not have if a significant percentage of the 18 million people who voted for Hillary voted for McCain or libertarian out of spite. Maybe it’s because we remember what happened how that “The system sucks” protest thingy worked out in 2000 – and in the 8 years that followed.
Sure, they’re more responsible, but those who knowingly don’t vote are still responsible. Slightly less responsible isn’t really achieving moral high ground here.
I suspect that this is where you’re getting your feelings hurt. You assert that Hillary Clinton is the worst possible choice. I’m assuming you feel that she’s worse than Bernie Sanders. But how so? How would Bernie Sanders be a better president than Hillary Clinton? I know you think this is probably obvious, but explain it in your own words.
They didn’t rig the primaries at all. That is how you see it, but that’s not what happened. There were elections. There was no ballot stuffing. Bernie Sanders was on the ballot in all 50 states. He won a lot of elections. In many of the states he lost, he lost by fucking landslides. And he failed to garner support across demographic lines in the same way that Hillary Clinton did. African American voters never, ever supported Bernie Sanders the way that they did Hillary Clinton. Do their votes not count or something?! In California, Hillary Clinton won in heavily Hispanic districts. Hillary won with older voters. With a few exceptions here and there, Bernie mopped the floor with mostly pasty white voters in rural areas – but that’s about as far as his appeal got. That has nothing to do with rigging a system.
If Hillary Clinton loses, it won’t be my fault because I will have voted for her. On the other hand, if Donald Trump becomes president, if he weakens our relationships with strategic allies and encourages Vladimir Putin to retake its former possessions; if he fully ignites a culture war that pits white Christian America against the world’s Muslims and touches off a disastrous and out of control clash of civilizations; if implements policies that crash our economy…that won’t be my fault…that will be yours. And if you think that people like my are giving you hell for your political opinions now, holy fuck, come back here and post a few years from now when all of this goes down, 'cause you haven’t seen shit yet.
She wasn’t shoved down anyone’s throat. She was favored by many in the party because she had credentials. It’s really no different than being promoted in a company because people have known you for years and are impressed with the work you’ve done.
Here’s the deal: nobody - I mean nobody - has any idea how someone is going to function as president. You learn that job on the job. You fuck up along the way. And unlike working as a barista, or a graphic designer, or IT guy, when you fuck up as president, people die, people lose money, there’s a price. But you live with the reality and try to learn with it, or you can freak out and demand unrealistically someone who doesn’t have a track record to criticize.
Right, but these other great democrats either didn’t run, or they ran and lost.
You’re writing as if Debbie Wasserman Schultz cancelled elections and just nominated her. Seriously, your logic is like that of a child. Oh sorry, I offended you – I shouldn’t do that or you’ll pull the pin on that grenade and vote for Trump. And then, like, the country will, like, get fucked up and stuff and then, like, people are gonna like fucking demand that Jill Stein is president. FUCK YAH BRO!
To add to this thought, yes, as I said, you don’t know how someone’s going to function on the job, but you look at the qualities of the person’s character and their track record. I’m not going to go into all of the reasons why Hillary is better than Donald – you don’t for a moment disagree with me or any other Hillary Clinton supporter and you and the rest of us know it.
And we’ve already had the debate about why Hillary is more qualified than Bernie. And you know what, millions of other voters have as well. You need to get over it. If you want to teach America a lesson by voting for a human disaster, you can, but like I told SenorBeef, I won’t be to blame for the disaster that would ensue – you would. You can hold a grudge or do your civic duty. Your choice.
I’ve been over this before in another thread. Let me make this PERFECTLY clear (god, I sound like a politician…): I don’t give a fat flying fuck who you vote for. I am not suggesting you vote for Hillary, Trump, Johnson, Stein, or Vermin Supreme.
What I am saying, and have consistently said, is that there are two and only two viable options barring acts of gods: Trump or Hillary. One is objectively a shitshow waiting to happen in office, and that is the former. The latter is not. If you vote for Trump, you are effectively giving him a full vote. If you vote for Johnson, Stein, or a write-in, or don’t vote at all, you are effectively giving Trump half a vote. In any of those cases other than voting for Hillary, you are effectively voting for Trump, and you cannot evade the responsibility for that. That’s it, and that’s all.
I am not badgering you. I am stating the consequences. Plain and simple.
I can’t believe you all think “let’s tell them what bad people they are for having any misgivings about our Perfect Candidate, ridicule them, and then tell them they’re responsible for anything that goes wrong because we forced such a shitty candidate in an election that would’ve otherwise been a landslide” is a good recruitment tactic towards people who are trying to stomach your candidate but can’t quite do it.
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Just look at how people in this thread react to people who have said they’re voting for Clinton but don’t actually think she’s a good candidate and disagree with the ‘voting for third parties is EVIL’ rhetoric.
Kaine is in favor of passing laws to force a child to act as a human incubator, and signed and enforced such laws while governor. That’s not actually pro-choice, that’s ‘as anti-abortion as I can get away with’. He’s Clinton’s chosen running mate, so by picking him she’s making it clear that she thinks his policy of forcing a woman to be merely a human incubator is OK. That’s a distinct difference from Sanders.
Right, exactly - Clinton is fundamentally opposed to gay marriage, but in 2013 flip-flopped her public position because at that point it helped her get elected. It’s blatantly obvious that she doesn’t have have actual support for it beyond ‘does it help me get elected’, which is quite distinct from Sanders, who’s been a gay rights advocate for a long time.
It’s also really weird that you think that Clinton’s choice of running mate is irrelevant in discussing her position on issues, but bring up the prejudices of your family members as though that’s relevant.
You can dismiss Clinton’s obvious and deep ties to big money if you want to, but claiming that she and Sanders are remotely similar on that point is just absurd.
The platforms and actions just don’t support the contention that Clinton and Sanders are almost the same and that anyone who would vote for one but not the other is nitpicking.
I’m not sure what you consider a hard time, but putting no effort into a task is not a hard time, much less a hell of a hard time for me, it’s actually quite easy. It’s amusing that you engage in emotional bluster in the same post where you claim that I’m the only one doing it too. BTW, every ‘if you don’t vote for Hillary you’re voting for Trump’ post is emotional bluster, and I’m not the one making them, but apparently you want to ignore most of this thread.
He also gets a 100 rating from Planned Parenthood – is Planned Parenthood rigged too? People are allowed to have nuanced opinions, and they can even change them from time to time. It’s called ‘life experience’. Bernie Sanders voters whined about having Hillary Clinton shoved down their throats. That’s a huge problem I have with Bernie or Bust or #neverClinton voters. A vote or two and whatever else you’ve voted for or said over the span of a long political career doesn’t matter. It’s the chase for the pure candidate, but I’m sorry to say, that doesn’t exist. Some are more satisfactory than others. You could probably argue that Obama has fought harder for progressive values than the Clintons – that’s fair and probably somewhat accurate. But I disagree with using a handful of votes and then saying “There’s no difference between Clinton and Donald Trump - they’re equally bad.” No, they are not. And you know that, which is the sad part.
Obama flipped, too. Does that negate his support of a HARP? Does that nullify the stimulus, which put people back to work? Does that erase the rescue of the auto industry, attempts to reform healthcare (however flawed they might be), and fighting against the extremism of the Tea Party? Really? One vote, and he loses his liberal card? It’s the same standard you’re applying to Clinton. And what if Bernie or someone who promises to lead like him gets into a nasty stalemate with Republicans and agrees to accept legislation without a $15 minimum wage increase because if he doesn’t millions of people won’t get unemployment benefits? Would that disqualify him? Would he need to resign?
I dismiss the big ties in terms of their importance. I accept that big money will always be a part of the system. I agree that we don’t have to accept the lunacy of equating unlimited money with free speech, but guess what: you’ll need a more favorable supreme court to agree with you, and you’ll need a congress that agrees with you. And right now, I don’t see the #neverclinton movement even attempting to achieve either of these. They’re not starting a grassroots movement. They’re not trying to get mayors elected. They’re not trying to get representatives elected. They’re just complaining that apparently many in the Democratic Party favored a lifelong democrat as their choice of a nominee over someone who wasn’t even a member of the party a year ago and said he had no plans to remain one after the race. Bernie Sanders and their supporters just want instant results, instant gratification. They can get out and sweat and do the work that is required to actually build a movement. They show up once every four years and say “Okay, like where’s my magic candidate and stuff.”
As has already been said, we’re not really begging for your vote since your mind seems pretty much made up already. This election is not about you or your precious little vote. Voting is not just your right; it’s your civic responsibility. If Donald Trump were merely a poor candidate rather than an abjectly awful one, I probably wouldn’t care as much, but he really is that bad, and Hillary really isn’t that bad. And as much as you’re angry at the process by which you think Hillary won and as discouraged by her occasional drift to the center-right on key issues, you absolutely know that they’re not the same. The choice is, do you vote out of spite, or do you live up to your civic responsibility of using your vote to produce the better outcome?
No, I’m under 45 and I voted for Gore: eight years as Vice-President instead of four as Cabinet Secretary – after eight years in the Senate, sure, but in his case that was after eight years in the House of Representatives.
(Who else served in the Senate for eight years after serving for eight years in the House of Representatives? Dole; but instead of moving on to the Vice-Presidency or a Cabinet post, he then served another eight years in the Senate, and then another eight years in the Senate; and after more time in the Senate, as Minority Leader and Majority Leader, he ran for President, and I voted in that one too.)
He passed a law requiring parental consent for minors. In Virginia, you can’t get a tattoo or piercing without parental consent. For children under 18, there’s a LOT you can’t do without parental consent. He’s been endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice and Planned Parenthood. Forcing children to act as a human incubator seems like a bit of a misrepresentation. Saying Clinton endorses those views (ignoring his more recent votes in the Senate) is ridiculous. Also, 45% of people believe abortion is wrong but should not be illegal.
The prejudices of my family members are simply to highlight the dichotomy in American culture. Those supporting same-sex marriage are not some overwhelming majority that has existed forever. The majority hasn’t even existed for five years yet, and people ARE changing their minds over it.
Who cares about Sanders? He wasn’t in the post I replied to, and I never mentioned him. This had nothing to do with Sanders. Why is he in the conversation now?
In a remarkably short number of words you have presented two rather significant misrepresentations of the truth.
Your representation of the nature of Virginia law is simply wrong. The Commonwealth of Virginia does not make abortion illegal for women under the age of 18; it requires parental consent. Those aren’t the same thing.
Your claim that Clinton must necessarily agree with Kaine’s position on this, or even necessarily think it “okay,” because she chose him as a running mate is, frankly, absurd.
At the risk of pointing out something that is kind of obvious, of all the Vice Presidential choices Clinton has, the number of them who are in agreement with Clinton on every significant issue is exactly zero. There is no politician in America, not a one, whose personal beliefs and voting record precisely align with Clinton’s, or with Tim Kaine’s, or Bernie Sanders’s, or any other prominent and experienced politician. Any Presidential candidate selecting a running mate will be selecting one who can be easily demonstrated to hold several positions significantly different from the candidate’s. If your expectation was that Clinton was going to pick someone whose opinions were totally aligned with hers, you were expecting the impossible.
I would further add (and while the above is unquestionably true, the following is my humble opinion) that if a Presidential candidate were to, miraculously, find a potential running mate who agreed with them on absolutely everything, it would be immensely stupid to choose them. Hillary Clinton does not need, as a Vice President, someone who thinks exactly like Hillary Clinton. She already has someone like that herself. What she needs is a smart, capable person who is generally on her side but has different experiences, strengths, and weaknesses, is willing to work hard for her but has a different viewpoint, and as running mate helps to win the election. Joe Biden, George H.W. Bush and LBJ were all excellent Vice Presidents. Richard Nixon was a good Vice President for Eisenhower. Not one of them believed all the same things their Presidents did.
Unless you can see into her heart, you don’t know this to be true.
Frankly, if we could, I’d bet you a thousand dollars you’re wrong. Sanders has a track record on this issue of taking a stand of moral bravery most politicians do not; that is unquestionably true. But your statement is unsupportable and doubtful.
The statement that not voting for Clinton helps Trump is, mathematically speaking, an indisputable fact Actually, simply NOT voting for Clinton is not literally the same as voting for Trump; it has half the effect of voting for Trump, since it subtracts one marginal vote from Clinton and does not affect Trump’s count. It is euphemistically true, though; a person denying their vote to Clinton (or Trump) is passively assisting Trump (or Clinton.)