I’m going to do you the courtesy of taking you at your word wrt your actual newness on the Dope. In return, I’d appreciate you doing me the courtesy of honestly answering a simple question.
From the privileged position of seeing how the world is in 2020, do you believe that the nation and/or the world would be better off had HRC won the presidency in 2016? A “Yes” or a “No” will suffice.
I have no sympathy for the idea that you should not have to compromise in an election, because that’s just what elections are. No one ever gets to not compromise their values n a democracy! We all have to combine out values.
Have you not twigged on to the fact that I am also progressive–that my values align with progressivism and that my ideal world is the same as the progressives’? So why is it that I’m not whining about not getting things perfect? Because I know that life doesn’t work that way.
The world isn’t perfect, and the only thing we can do is try our best to make it a little better. You don’t get to sit back and complain the world isn’t the way you want it to be. You have to do what you can to make it that way.
And that is what happened. Progressive ideas became part of the Democratic Platform both in 2016 and in 2020, because progressives fought. But now we’re to the point where we have to come together to defeat the greater evil. That is, again, always the case.
I have no time for whining that progressives never get 100% of their way. Because, well, that’s how it works. No side ever does. Democracy means that your fellow citizens have a say, too.
And, again, while you can argue all you want that Bernie would have been better, I again implore you to stop the “Biden is senile” bullshit. Spreading rumors about candidates that have nothing to do with what they stand for only hurts them.
If you care about progressive ideas, vote for the guy who actually embraces some of them, goes part way on others. And stop trying to undermine him.
We either win together or lose separately. It’s your choice.
kaylasdad99
I believe you asked this question to RealFDRdem
However, I feel that I (as well as the entire SDMB membership) should feel entitled to answer that.
If Hillary Clinton had won, would the world be better off?
You are joking right? 
At least we’d have a president who spoke English!!
Nevertheless, I’d like to know how he would answer it.
Bernie Sanders plan was fatally flawed. If you need four candidates to compete for the same bloc of voters and split that vote in order for you to win, you were never strong. Trump flew away in the GOP primary race because some states held winner take all races. Trump getting 30% in a crowded field was enough for him to pile up the delegates. Democrats allocate delegates proportionally.
If you’ve been running for president for five years, but you lose support (2016: Sanders wins Michigan, 2020: Sanders loses every county in Michigan), some self-evaluation is needed. If your campaign gets excited by Joe Rogan saying nice things but you never once talked to Jim Clyburn that was a dumb mistake. If your campaign thinks peddling conspiracies and attacking other candidates personally is going to make their supporters bend the knee you had another thing coming.
Running Coach? Da fuq?
Primary voters braved a pandemic and constant voter interference by the GOP in Wisconsin to change Sanders from +13 in 2016 to -30 in 2020. A 43 point swing but, you know, Biden voters have no enthusiasm, only the bright-eyed Sanders youth vote can save us and Biden voters don’t matter because they’re all in deep red southern states.
Backroom deals get done all the time in politics. Nobody disputes that. But what all the adults in the room understand, and what you continue to fail to grasp as you bumble through your conspiracy theory universe, is that you don’t make deals with candidates who are about to lose the contest. This is why nobody made deals with Sanders. He wasn’t going to win. Everybody understood that and backed the winner. Not the other way around. You fucking child.
Maybe you could have punched that up a little, just to make it NOT look like a rebuttal. We tend to be pretty smart around here, but nuance can often be surprisingly easy to miss.
So, your third-party vote will make a difference.
You might be right. It made a difference in Michigan in 2016, in Florida in 2000, and Missouri and Illinois among others in 1968.
Are Democrats passing these laws? Elections have consequences. If you don’t like it then support the candidate that is more likely to not do this.
But yes I agree about right to work laws. I think most of the taft hartley act is an impermissible restriction of the right to free association and general freedom of contract principles.
Are Democrats the ones busting up unions? Elections have consequences. If you don’t like union-busting activity, then support the candidate that is less likely to do this.
You mean 1996? It seems to me that no law is perfect but I don’t know that we would have the internet and cell phones without that act or something like it. There may be aspects of the act that can be criticized (like the subsequent consolidation in some telecom industries), the benefits that it was supposed to create for small competitors never really materialized. But it seems to me that the widesrpread development of the internet and cell phone technology was good for a lot of people.
I think I can defend the telecom act of 1996 as a flawed but ultimately beneficial piece of legislation.
And you think Democrats were pushing this? Elections have consequences. Every Democratic president has increased the top marginal tax rate. If you think we have been taking it too easy on the rich at the expense of the nation, I agree with you. So do most Democrats.
We are effectively replacing dollars that we would collect in taxes from the rich with dollars that we are borrowing from the rich…
And you think Democrats are leading this charge? Elections have consequences. if we don’t support the folks on the left side of the argument because we don’t think they are left enough, then the right side of the argument wins and it keeps going in that direction.
Did this downward trend continue unabated under Obama and Clinton? Were our environmental regulations better or worse in 2016 than they were in 2008? Were they better of worse in 2000 than they were in 1992?
It sounds like you don’t like Republican policies and are somehow blaming Democrats for them. The best way to avoid Republican policies is to avoid the election of Republicans. Elections have consequences.
Not sure how that is economic but that war wasn’t started by a Democrat. Gore would probably still have invaded Afghanistan. Not sure about iraq.
I was also pretty bothered by the welfare reform act of 1996. And I thought the result would be widespread suffering. But the actual effect of the welfare reform act (particularly the effects of the Earned income tax Credit) are not as clearly negative as i once thought it would be.
I for one voted Obama to be our king but he only got enough votes to be president.
Sometimes things have to be done in stages.
A lot of economic things are complex and ideological goggles make them almost impossible to understand correctly.
I am seeing mostly criticism of the Democrats for not stopping Republicans from doing Republican things when Republicans win elections.
Do you think a Democratic president with a democratic senate and congress does
I don’t see the relevance of this question or what sort of gotcha ya you’re think you’re doing.
Of course the world would be a better place if Hillary had won. I don’t think he’s said anything that would even remotely contradict that. But Hillary win, because she was a bad candidate. Some of that wasn’t her fault. There’s been a right wing propaganda campaign against for her 30 years. But the reality is that she was among the most hated individuals on the planet by a significant fraction of Americans and that made her a terrible candidate.
Some of us are fucking pissed that the democrats chose to run a terrible candidate, one of the few people in the entire country that could actually lose to Donald Trump.
Some of us fucking watched with horror at that slow motion train wreck in action, and now we’re watching in horror while the democrats do it again.
Biden is probably more like Kerry than Clinton. He doesn’t have the built in insane hatred than Clinton does, he has the boring, inspires no one, why are they running this guy nature of Kerry. But he also doesn’t have the upsides of Clinton. She was sharp, super competant (even if I disagree with her agenda), and would’ve made a very good president on most issues not related to neoliberalism, economics, or money in politics. Joe brings nothing good to the position. He’s not sharp, he’s not inspiring, he’s not especially likeable, he doesn’t have any good policy positions. Literally the only thing he has is “I associate him with Obama and I miss Obama”
What an assassine question. What has FDRDem said that suggests he doesn’t think Clinton would’ve been better than Trump? Way to miss the point completely.
You do realize that Kerry was his secretary of state during his first term, right?
Was the deal that he would nominate Hillary IF he won a second term? Or did he need her endorsement in 2012.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22256192&postcount=247
Hillary was winning the primary race but Bernie might have been the better choice given how the polls were going. But that’s not what is going on this time. Bernie is losing in the polls AND the primary race.
It’s one thing to say there is a conspiracy when Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the rest of the “I’m with her” crowd tells you to shut up and sit down and implies that even if Bernie won the primaries, the superdelegates should be able to overrule the primary voters. But that’s not what is happening here. Bernie had a great start but Iowa and new hampshire are not the electorate. If bernie was losing in every state except the swing states, there would be an argument. Right now there simply isn’t an argument for reaching out so far towards bernie that you lose the middle.
I might not agree, but I won’t bother debating his intelligence, policies or inspiration. But I find it bizarre that people are trying to spin the guy as unlikable. His whole “Uncle Joe” image is that of a charismatic, straight-talking good guy who means what he says. His whole job of working with Congress as vice-president was because even GOP members of Congress knew him as a good guy who was sincere and honest. The whole reason why the “Diamond Joe” Onion articles took off was because satire works best when rooted in reality and people saw Joe Biden as a regular guy you’d want to crack a beer with and doubling down on that persona was funny.
I mean, I get that YOU might not like him but to say he’s unlikable as a blanket statement makes it sound like you’re not being serious. Biden’s likability is likely a large part of why he crushed it on Super Tuesday even in states where he spent almost no money and had no ground game – people know the guy, they like the guy and they were happy to go out and vote for him. That’s huge.
You’ve got that mixed up. Clinton was SoS from 2009 until she left to prepare the election machine in 2013. Kerry took over in 2013.
And some are still so fucking pissed that they’d rather see Trump win reelection than vote for Biden.
Cozy life you have.
Let’s clear up a little lexicographical deficiency that appears to be hampering your capacity to understand the subject.
The definition of “bad candidate” is “candidate who is unable to do the job.”
Go, my son, and fail to grasp the issue no more.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’d still like to know RealFDRdem’s answer to the question.
You wouldn’t consider the ability to get elected as part of the job for a candidate for president?