I see, so you’re nothing but a partisan hack, and therefor not worth wasting time on. Thanks for clarifying.
Guilty, I guess. I’ll feel it’s safe to get out of the tank for the Democratic Party when the Republican Party stops existing.
Trump eclipses this, which is awkward. But the GOP has some serious structural problems, worse than what the Democrats faced during the late 1980s when they retooled following their 1984 defeat. One problem is a tolerant of ignorance and hate which set up a demagogue like Trump who dispensed with the dog whistles.
But Mitch McConnellism is also an issue. We’re talking about a Republican Majority Leader who once filibustered a bill that he himself co-sponsored. This wasn’t a minor bill: it the result of an 18 member deficit reduction task force.
You see Mitch McConnell believed that bipartisanship would disproportionately help the party that controlled the Presidency. So when Obama had kind words for the measure in 2010, that scotched the bill’s chances. To this day, McConnell has never veered away from his policy of obstructionism. That’s a serious institutional problem with the GOP.
So yes, they need to suffer electoral devastation in the general election. That’s really the only way forward. Because Republican congressmen fear the primary more than the general. That needs to reverse. The group of GOP reformers -reformicons they call themselves- appear to have no serious constituency. I don’t see an alternative. It would be great to be proven wrong on this.
The economist Brad DeLong came to Washington during the 1980s hoping to work with a sensible bipartisan center. Paul Krugman actually joined the Reagan administration and worked as an aide. They have long since given up on the GOP. So calling for the GOP’s demise isn’t pure hackery. It’s something else.
As for myself, I believe that reasonable people can differ on the appropriate generosity of the safety net. But public policy, somewhere, should be have a factual grounding even if the discussion never happens on television. It’s unfortunate, one party has taken leave of this philosophy. Not two. One. So while Americans deserve better, I say fact based conservatives (they exist and post on this message board) do too. Even more so.
Book on the topic, written by Mann of Brookings and Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank:
I’m an independent and I voted in the primaries. Are you in a closed primary state?
@ Measure for Measure, Thank you very much for your posts in this thread.
If you can spend the effort to do the good deed of typing it, the least I can do is to quote it. 
I really do NOT understand where the Hatred of Hillary comes from. People made up reasons for hating Obama, but when you listened carefully you discern it came down to skin color. Is Hillary hated ultimately because she’s a woman? Because she has rich friends? Her laugh is unattractive? Do people too smart to fall for Limbaugh and Coulter nevertheless get some “contact hate” subconsciously from that Kool-Aid?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Some in the thread brag that they won’t vote for Hillary and she (or we) is to blame. That’s like being in a burning house where your brawn is needed to save your entire family and petulantly saying “No, you didn’t say ‘Please.’ You’ll regret it when we’re all dead.”
In another thread, SenorIdiot didn’t answer when I asked him to guesstimate the goodness of a Clinton Administration vs a Trump Administration. If anyone really believes that Trump would be, say 3, on a scale of 1 to 10 and Hillary only a 3.5 then I can vaguely understand being willing to sacrifice the extra 0.5 points out of some irrational petulance.
But to rank the two contenders as (3, 3.5) shows huge stupidity. I’d expect Hillary to be at least as good a President as her husband or Bush-41. A Trump Presidency would present huge dangers and probably lead to colossal tragedies that would make Bush-43 seem, in contrast, like a cross between Abe Lincoln and George Washington.
It’s not enough to say “Well, my vote probably won’t be the deciding vote anyway.” (What’s the name of the relevant moral principle? Categorical imperative?)
As far as I can tell, one of the main reasons for the hate is the same as the one for the Obama hate-she doesn’t "know her place ". Frankly, I think the extent of sexism affecting people’s opinions is grossly understated. She’s been getting crap since the "I could have stayed home and baked cookies " debacle, and if you need proof just look at how much her campaign has to stress how much she’s done for women and children and what a great grandmother she is. I haven’t seen anybody comment on how great a grandfather Trump is and the only comments on how he is as a father is to comment on how well his older children turned out while not even contradicting his comments that he essentially had little to nothing to do with raising them.
Even longer. Back in Arkansas she wasn’t even allowed to have the name of her choice:
Some of the detestation (I hesitate to call it hate, but then to you guys any disapproval or dislike is hate) for Hillary comes from the baking cookies crack (just another of the many examples of her poor judgement).
Quite a bit of it comes from her and her husband’s attempt to install her as unelected Co-President, and her gall in presuming to take over and construct a government health program while having no bona fides other than being married to the president from which to do so.
Quite a bit of it comes from her attempt to convince the nation that Bill’s Monica problem was the result of a “vast, right-wing, conspiracy”.
Some of it comes from the fact that many of us believe she knew perfectly well about Bill’s many dalliances over the years and couldn’t have cared less until it became a public issue. We also believe she had and has no sympathy whatever for the many women Bill pursued against their wishes and went along willingly (or perhaps even engineered) the Clinton administration’s policy of character assassination toward these women and the characterization of their attempts to come forward about his assaults as “bimbo eruptions”.
Some of it comes from her smug, superior and condescending demeanor.
Some of it comes from her long history of lying and dishonesty in general. She routinely lies about her lies even, when caught out on them.
Some of it comes from the perception that she and her husband rely on lawyerly tricks to thwart investigations into what is perceived as their many wrongdoings.
Some of it is caused by the fact that she appears overly ambitious and willing to say and do anything if it will help her get to the presidency. (A poster here once offered the belief that if a new poll showed the people wanted Cap’n Crunch for president she’d be out the next day in a pirate’s hat.)
The above leads to another of the reasons many people don’t like her, which is that she appears to appears to believe that letting people get to know the real her would be such a turnoff that she must constantly pretend to be something she’s not in hopes of getting votes and support. This of course also creates the impression that no one knows what she’s really like and/or what she’d really do once in office.
And some of it comes from the widespread belief that unless you’re on her team she’s an utter bitch. This is how she was characterized in 1994 by Newt Gingrich (said to his mother and revealed in the now infamous interview where Connie Chung conned her into revealing what he said by claiming it would be kept confidential), and how she’s been characterized by at least one former Secret Service agent in a book in which he names names as to who she was a bitch to and what actions if any proceeded it.
Put all this together and you get a candidate that a lot of people can’t stand because she comes across as a thoroughly reprehensible person.
Just the one. Nice try.
If we want to speak about how presidential Hillary is, we should note that she is 0-1 in getting Congress to pass legislation she wrote as Madame President.
Why does it have to be racism/sexism. Can’t we just believe that they wouldn’t make good Presidents?
Do you hate Trump? Oh you do? Well it must be because you hate gingers because you think they have no soul.
You may not be sexist, but Trump is supported by a constituency that approves of his dog whistling over Muslims, immigrants, and African-Americans. It is perfectly reasonable to assume those who approve of these messages are also sexist and hate Clinton for the active political role she played starting with her time as First Lady. In fact, this sort of anger at Clinton or any other person for not properly fulfilling their presumed societal role is a classic observation in group prejudice.
I like both Bill and Hillary. I’m voting for Hillary, and happy to do it.
But this argument doesn’t hold much water. It’s not obvious that money is better than political power, for the people with the skills to obtain either. And in fact there’s plenty of evidence it’s less important. You regularly see very wealthy people spend quite a lot of their own money in the pursuit of political power. Which kind of implies that it’s those smart lawyers in private practice who made the sucker’s choice.
Or, to paraphrase: Do you know how much power a smart lawyer can wield in politics?
She needs to work on that shape-shifting part.
This is a valid point. Ambitious people can choose from different directions (business, politics, science) and get fulfillment from wealth, or power, or fame.
However, I have more respect for people who pursue public policy rather than personal greed. Especially someone like Hillary who has focused her political work especially on improving the lot of less fortunate American women and children.
Emphasis added. Especially when you don’t have to choose one over the other. Let’s keep in mind we’re talking about a couple with a net worth estimated to be $110M. What percent of lawyers in private practice match that? And let’s also keep ni mind that Hilary did choose private practice for years at the Rose Law Firm (before which, she was a law professor). Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
From Bret Stephens’ op-ed in today’s Wall St. Journal:
*"Mrs. Clinton is not the apotheosis of evil. She may be a corner-cutter and a liar, and she’ll almost surely appoint liberals to the Supreme Court. But at least she’s not a sociopath.
(Trump) has, as Humayun’s father Khizr put it, a “black soul.” His problem isn’t a lack of normal propriety but the absence of basic human decency. He is morally unfit for any office, high or low."*
I like the way P.J. O’Rourke summed it up when he revealed that, for the first time in 40 years, he’s voting for a Democrat:
“Hillary Clinton may be wrong, but at least she’s wrong within normal human parameters.”
P.J. can be brought around. He’s smart and has a sense of humor, sooner or later, he’s ours. At least he stopped telling us how he used to be a weed smoking hippy, but wised up and became an alcoholic.
…Running against a bad caricature of a Smirking Dr Suess drawing done in orange crayon.
I’m just not sure which book he’s from though:
“One Fish, Two Fish, Fuck Fish, You Fish”
“If I Ran the Zoo”
“Mr Clown Can Poo, Can You…?”
“Wharton Jeers At Who…?”
“There’s A Big PAC In My Backpack!”
“Crocks in Hock”
“The 500 Hats of Bigotry-U”
“I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!”
“In The Peoples House”
“Hop On Flop”
“The Poot in the Suit”
“And To Think That I Rigged It All From Wall Street”
and the classic
“Mean Dregs and Spam”