Your “mandate” is what you can get away with after you win an election. That’s simply reality unless you want to introduce Presidential recall referendums. So in America’s democracy, my answer is nope it’s not important.
I reserve most of my scorn FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY for nominating such a shitty baggage-laden candidate.
Honestly?
[ul]
[li]Don’t act like the Bush/Cheney government was more normal & respectable than Occupy & Black Lives Matter.[/li][li]Repudiate the wars in Asia.[/li][li]Take a stand for expanding pensions and the welfare state instead of slowing their contraction.[/li][/ul]
I’d also like some full-throated environmentalism, but at the very least those three things would make the Democrats a credible challenge and a choice rather than an echo.
[quote=“foolsguinea, post:123, topic:813279”]
[li]Don’t act like the Bush/Cheney government was more normal & respectable than Occupy & Black Lives Matter.[/li][/quote]
Got an example?
[quote]
[li]Repudiate the wars in Asia.[/li][/quote]
Obama pulled us out of Afghanistan. What else are you thinking of - the war in Korea Hillary would have started?
[quote]
[li]Take a stand for expanding pensions and the welfare state instead of slowing their contraction.[/li][/quote]
What the hell do you think ACA is?
You can’t win everybody over, and it’s futile to try.
Say wha? Trump ran as a Republican.
90% of which was made up by Karl Rove and the Kremlin.
And any Dem candidate would be so attacked. Have you forgotten the attacks on Obama? The attacks on Pelosi?
Umm, sorry lad, no. The US is still in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban as well as Daesh. Obama pulled the US out of Iraq, and thus gets blamed for the Daesh that W created by overthrowing that country. Honestly, I think I would rather see Saddam al Tikrit still in charge there, oppressing the assholes.
A mess of a healthcare plan designed in 1993 by the Heritage Foundation.
While I agree with the OP that Jill Stein threw the election to Donald Trump–which isn’t to say that HRC couldn’t have run a better campaign–but if Stein took contributions from Russian, wouldn’t that be her ***accepting ***aid and comfort from the enemy, depending on one’s definition of ‘enemy’?
Most folks love “the will of the people”, as long as it produces a result they like. When “the will of the people” produces results like:
- Ban abortions after the 1st trimester
- Put prayer back in schools and the Ten Commandments on courthouses
- “Teach the controversy” about evolution in public schools.
then suddenly “the will of the people” goes out the window.
And I say in all seriousness that we’d likely trigger Civil War II if we tried to force an abandonment of the EC. So, yeah, I like federalism. Otherwise, we have an amendment process-- knock yourself out getting it changed legally.
From the link in the OP (also from skimming Stein’s own hyperverbose statement), it appears that the GP is claiming their internal campaign deliberations about Russia policy are protected from discovery by the 1st Amendment. IANAL but seems like a sketchy argument legally and a very bad look politically from an organization that claims to stand for democracy and transparency in government. The assertion that the Senators are making an overbroad demand for any communications with “anyone of Russian descent” looks like just BS handwaving not supported by any reasonable reading of the committee’s request.
I agree that Stein’s presence at that Moscow dinner looks extremely suspicious. I don’t see a smoking gun here, but further investigation certainly seems warranted, and Stein’s stonewalling on this just makes her look worse.
Everyone knew from day one that either Clinton or Trump was going to win this election; of those who voted for either of the two, a slim majority (51%) voted for Clinton.
Ah! My afternoon dose of despair marketed as realism.
Just to be clear, if we changed the system to a popular vote for president, I’d be OK with that. I prefer a federal system, but not because I think the popular vote is evil. And if we did switch, and my preferred candidate lost the popular vote (but won the so-called Electoral College), I wouldn’t whine about it. I’d hope that next time, my preferred candidate understood the system and put 110% of his or her effort into winning under the rules that exist, spending 0% of his or her time trying to win under a system that doesn’t exist.
Change the system legally, and I’ll support it. But let’s do be realists: The system isn’t going to change in our lifetimes. Best to nominate candidates who don’t get complacent about winning the EC and feel like putting the icing on the cake with a plurality of the total vote. And just to be doubly clear, I don’t know that whatever effort HRC put into winning the total vote made a difference. We’ll never know. Maybe it didn’t matter one bit. But I don’t want to try and find out again next time. YMMV.
Utter bullshit. There were only 2 states where the Green vote was more than the MoV. In Wisconsin, if every green vote had gone blue, it would have been just enough to swing the result; in Michigan, a bit over a fifth of Stein votes would have been barely enough. In both of those cases, there would have been that same recount fiasco as in 2000, assuming that every Green vote would have gone to Ms. Clinton (which is absolutely not guaranteed).
That would amount to a big shift, changing the EC total to 279-259 – still in favor of the CFSG.
So no, Fuck That Noise. Jill Stein did not hand the WH to the Idiot. If anyone, blame Comey for dropping the turd in the punchbowl.
Its a weakness in character, John, I tried giving up but I just don’t have the gumption to make it stick.
That’s an interesting point. But just checking, wouldn’t it have been 227 + 10 + 16 = 253 for Clinton? Same result as to who wins, but the math is little different.
I was looking at a raw tally that did not account for “faithless” electors, which showed her at 233.
You guys do know that the Russians poured a lot of effort into infuriating Bernie people against Hillary, right? Anybody got numbers on how many Bernie Democrats stayed home because they were so pissed? If that number exceeded…what was it, 180,000?..in the crucial states, then the Russians decided our election. Certainly they tried!
Compared to that shit, Jill Stein is a fart compared to a hand grenade.
Are you seriously arguing that Trump wasn’t infinitely worse? Sorry, if you didn’t vote for Hillary AND didn’t want Trump you have no one but yourself to blame.
The term “US person” is defined in law as being US citizens, permanent residents, and corporations. I think it is very reasonable to interpret “Russian persons” to include the same, but not refer to people of Russian lineage.