This is a rough season for Democratic voters like me. Most of us feel that the time is past due for a woman President, but Hillary has her own problems, including an unconscionable love of money and a record of osculating Wall Street banks, a lack of transparency, a discomfiting tendency to change her mind based not on principle but on political expediency, a disturbingly hawkish side, and so on. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, is at least honest, doesn’t take big money, but has little experience.
Before the political season began in earnest, I was in favor of Elizabeth Warren, who combines the best qualities of Sanders and Clinton, but of course she didn’t run. I would also have supported John Kerry over either Clinton or Sanders. These are not possibilities, so the most likely election will involve Clinton versus Trump. And I’m not voting for Trump—or any other Republican.
My worries about Hillary Clinton, the most viable Democrat, are tempered by the likelihood that she may well prove even less effective than Obama, what with the probability that Congress will remain Republican. But the worries about her character remain. And I’m ticked off that Clinton makes speeches at $200,000+ per talk to places like Goldman Sachs (she once did this twice in a day), and refuses to reveal their contents. While that’s certainly legal, and her call, it’s not a tactic designed to give voters confidence in her.
For once I found a decent substantive article on PuffHo, and it’s about Clinton’s distressing love of Wall Street: “Release of Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches Could End Her Candidacy for President,” by Seth Abramson, a polymath who is a poet, a lawyer, and a professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. He doesn’t seem to have a dog in this fight, so you can’t dismiss what he says on grounds of bias (you shouldn’t do that anyway).
What Abramson does is simply collect a lot of recollections of people who went to Clinton’s talks to financial institutions. The upshot: there’s no support at all for her claim that she “stood up to Wall Street.” He concludes this:
Release of the transcripts would therefore, it appears, have three immediate — and possibly fatal — consequences for Clinton’s presidential campaign:
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It would reveal that Clinton lied about the content of the speeches at a time when she suspected she would never have to release them, nor that their content would ever be known to voters.
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It would reveal that the massive campaign and super-PAC contributions Clinton has received from Wall Street did indeed, as Sanders has alleged, influence her ability to get tough on Wall Street malfeasance either in Congress or behind closed doors.
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It would reveal that Clinton’s policy positions on — for instance — breaking up “too-big-to-fail” banks are almost certainly insincere, as they have been trotted out merely for the purposes of a presidential campaign.
So I’m even more worried. If you want to worry even more, read these two pieces:
“Clinton and Goldman: Why It Matters” in The New York Review of Books
and
“Hillary Clinton Told Wall Street to ‘Cut it Out’—Not So Much, the Record Shows”, in Politico.
I suspect many liberal readers, like me, will be voting this fall while holding our noses.
I suppose if you live in a contested state, then you must vote for Hillary while holding your nose and covering your eyes, with a bag from the seatback of an airplane nearby.
But if you are not in such a state, how about voting Jill Stein? Real progressive values and no ties to the deep state. If we could get the Green Party over 5% the true progressive agenda could be advanced.
If it really is Donald vs Hillary, I expect to see him pivot to be “left” of HIllary on deep state issues such as trade deals, bank breakups, energy sector support, U.S. imperialism, and perhaps even climate change.
You give him far more credit than he’s worth. Trump doesn’t have positions, he has applause lines. And he screws them up all the time, because he literally hasn’t thought anything through.
To treat him like a politician is a mistake.
I’d say lowen’s comment is less about treating him as a politician and more about treating him like a salesman (and a good one). I think it’s reasonable to assume he will pivot into any position necessary to chip away at his opponent’s support.
Trump “pivots” every time the wind blows. To assume he has a game plan at all, much less a strategy, is absurd.
Fortunately, I don’t think he’ll get the nod, because he has really screwed up already with the ground game. Manafort was supposed to be fixing this, but I suspect he’s only in it for the paycheck. When you don’t even bother to get someone working the party until three days out (as happened in Colorado), then you deserve what happens.
In the long run, I’m not so sure it would be fortunate if Trump didn’t get the Republican nomination. Because that would mean it went to Cruz, who’s arguably worse than Trump, and with a better chance of beating Clinton in the general election.
I think it’s more than arguable–Cruz is far worse than Trump. Trump is an opportunist and megalomaniac who doesn’t think things through and will change his policies at the drop of a hat if public opinion went against him. Cruz, on the other hand, is a delusional fundamentalist who thinks carpet bombing the hell out of the Middle East is good foreign policy. After all, it’ll get us closer to Armageddon in his worldview.
That is the conundrum. I don’t think either can win, though.
Donald Trump is a public policy imbecile. He wouldn’t know Shin Bet from Shinola. If he pivots during the general election, it will be with the grace of a Cape Buffalo looking for water during the drought season.
Trump rejects anthropic climate change; he says, according to Bernie, it is an invention of the Chinese. Trump is also an antivaxer.
The Green Party in Florida gave us Bush over Gore. That’s the fault of a plurality election with no run-offs when nobody gets a majority, not of the Green Party itself. But still, no thank you.
It had at least as much to do with the cockeyed butterfly ballot that got Pat Buchanan all those votes in Palm Beach County.
And it had even more to do with the absolutely lame general-election campaign Gore ran in 2000. He should’ve beat Dubya like a red-headed stepchild, no questions asked.
Doesn’t change the fact that if all those snowflakes hadn’t voted for Nader, we wouldn’t have been cursed with W.
Progressives always worry about the wrong things at the wrong time. No matter who runs from either party money and financial power will heavily influence the government.
For me, the deciding factor is Hilary ahs a strong history of supporting progressive ideas.
After such a long run of conservative and ultra-conservative fools I think the best we can hope for is strong progressive. The other option is to fragment our loyalties and end up with nothing.
Which “progressive ideas” does Hillary have a strong history of supporting? She’s always gone hand-in-glove with her husband’s third-way, Democratic Leadership Conference-style, centrist “triangulation” strategy. I don’t recall her ever self-identifying as “a proud progressive” until challenged from the left in this election cycle.
If she’s the Democratic nominee, as it seems all but certain she will be, come election day I’ll smear some Vick’s Vapo on my upper lip (the way the forensic teams do to kill the smell at a crime scene), climb into the booth, and pull the lever for her against any Republican candidate. And I’ll be thrilled to see a woman elected president. But let’s not fool ourselves that she’s a bona fide progressive.
Um. Well, women’s rights, racial equality, equal justice, LBGT rights (she came late to marriage equality), and that’s just the start. A far more liberal record than, say, Senator Obama, whose Senate record was a virtual shill for big industry. He talked a good fight, though.
Um, well, you mean racial equality like that found in the disparate minimum-mandatory sentences in the Crime Control Act of 1994? Equal justice like making a big show of executing a poor, black retard named Ricky Ray Rector to show how tough you are on crime? LBGT rights like those found in DOMA?
Bill and Hillary have been on the right side of some issues. But neither one of ’em ever saw a “principle” that they weren’t prepared to sacrifice on the alter of personal political ambition. They’ll be no profile-in-courage awards for them.
I’m still holding out for Sanders!
I’m whole hog for Sanders. He has a better chance in NY now that it seems Francis has given his blessing. NY is about 39% Catholic. On “berniepb.com” this afternoon I counted Sanders campaign calls to NY voters running about 100/min (they have a graphic showing the real time virtual phone ‘bombardment’ of NY.)
There is much current Sanders campaign news, much of it from activists, on reddit: subreddits ‘Bernie Sanders 2016’ and ‘Kossacks for Sanders’. Seth Abramson`s article is one of many posted there. I read it earlier today.
What Sanders lacks in experience is more than compensated by good judgement. Hillary, I think history shows, has little or no vision or judgement.
By all means, root for the guy who got the Pope’s blessing. We know that God is on his side now!
John Kennedy also had the Pope’s blessing. Clearly disqualified him.
I find strong agreement with Sanders, but I don’t want to waste my vote on someone who may not pull off a victory against Trump. In the general election, his negatives will be hoisted like a skull and crossbones higher than the orbit of the space station. As a Jewish socialist, he is severely damaged going in. Hillary, for all her faults, is a reasonable compromise and should win rather easily against Trump. (Think of the Supreme Court nominations, hold your nose if you must).
What are these negatives of which you speak?
It’s time the nation elected someone other that a Protestant or someone who pretends to be a one. (Who here buys that Hillary is sincere when discussing the importance her Methodist faith plays in her personal and public life?)
It’s also time for the nation to step out of the long, ugly shadow of the McCarthy-era Red Scare and get over its phobia over the word “socialism.” The rightwing has gotten away for far too long with using “creeping socialism” as its all-purpose slur du jour to oppose every progressive proposal to come down the pike from women’s suffrage, to child-labor laws, to a minimum wage, to social security, to Medicare, to campaign-finance reform. Bernie’s nomination would provide an excellent opportunity to educate the American polity on the meaning of terms like “social democracy” and “democratic socialism.”
Plus, Bernie would slaughter Trump in the general election. (He would also bring out enough voters to return the House, and possibly even the Senate, to Democratic control — something Hillary is unlikely to do.) If the GOP nominates Trump, it’s in for an epic defeat, as most Republican regulars recognize.
I have friends who have known Hillary for a very, very long time. They believe her to be, based on their knowledge of her, an extremely compassionate and warm person, and quite honest.
Bernie has no experience in getting things done. You can’t spend your career as a gadfly and expect to suddenly become effective. Doesn’t work like that. And no, Bernie will not have the slightest chance of flipping the House. He has done nothing for down-ticket Dems, and they have zero loyalty to him. The Senate may flip, but that is because of factors having nothing to do with Bernie. If Bernie gets elected you can count on four years of nothing getting accomplished, and then he will be unceremoniously booted out. He has no clout to get any of his programs passed.
All the Republicans have to do is run ads of Bernie saying how much we should be like Denmark, and then tell everyone what Denmark’s income tax rate is. And that will be that.
I have spent years listening to Bernie every Friday. The message has always been the same: Bernie is right about everything, everyone else is wrong, and we’re all fools for not listening to him. If you listen to those who have served with him, they will tell you that he’s a nice guy that no one listens to, because he has no interest in getting anything passed. His record in the House and the Senate is lousy, and he has no natural allies in either place. Politics is the art of the possible. Bernie doesn’t care about that. Nor does he care about Democrats, who have never been pure enough for him. Hillary raised $18 million for down-ticket Democrats in 2015. Bernie? Big fat zero.
Bernie has brought vast numbers of young and independent voters into the Democratic fold. Democratic primaries are drawing crowds comparable to Obama in 2008. Hillary gets donations from the wealthy and uses them to back (so I believe) candidates beholding to Clintonism.
Sure, Hillary cares about down-ticket Democrats, and raises money for them. But she’s unlikely to generate sufficient enthusiasm at the polls to get enough of them elected to flip either house of congress. And with a same-old obstructionist Republican congress, no Democratic president is going to get his or her legislative agenda enacted.
…and Sander can? Down ticket socialists are rare as hens teeth. I agree with Sanders on many issues, but it’s clear that U.S. politics is quite conservative and will take another generation to catch up with Europe in terms of progressive values. We are too steeped in the revolution and the concerns of the founders that liberty was hanging on a thread to look for efficient and rational ways of organizing society. Give us another 75 years.
Bernie has been in politics pretty much his whole life, and has a good record of getting things done. I don’t know why people keep saying he is inexperienced. He has more than Hillary in elected positions. He’s smart and understands how Washington works.
Being an ineffective congressman for a long time and then an ineffective senator doesn’t make him qualified. Or smart.
Sanders brought home the bacon for Vermont, like some juicy defense contracts. He specialized on attaching riders to big bills when the Democrats needed his vote. But he must be good, look at all his fellow Senator backing him!
So Kennedy was a closet Protestant? Who knew?
If it’s “high time” for anything it’s for sententious commenters to get their facts straight.
Kennedy was the one — and so far, onliest — Catholic ever elected president (that’s one out of 44, if you’re counting). And JFK had to kiss a whole bunch of Baptist ass in Houston in 1960 to get there. (His only predecessor as a Catholic major-party nominee was Al Smith, who lost the 1928 election to Hoover precisely because of the Protestant backlash against his candidacy.)
Aside from this one Catholic, the only other non-Prods to occupy the White House were a couple of closeted non-believers named Jefferson and Lincoln (and even they had to pay occasional lip-service to the Protestant almighty). You got a problem with giving a Jew a shot at the Oval Office?
How’s that for sententious, Craw?
I catch you in a flagrant error and you accuse me of bias against Jews. Sententious is not the word for that.
You keep using that word “sententious.” I don’t think it and “flagrant error” mean what you think they mean.
I have no issue with it (Jewish President); but many Americans would. (Ugh, I can see the ads now!)
I think there could have been a more reasonable reason to question the motivations and obligations that a Catholic president might have felt a few generations ago (not so much now).
The problem Sanders would face in the general would be that they would run this clip, again and again and again and again.
It’s simply true that calling yourself a socialist is poison in national politics in the US now.
I prefer Bernie’s policies to Hillary’s (and fugettabout Drumpf or Craze). But I well remember 1972.
The problem is everyone seems to be discussing two different definitions of Socialist.
Alas, you’re right. Just smearing him with this clip would be more than enough to pummel him. That’s before they trot out adds with Sanders running alongside Putin and Stalin. You know those would be close behind the clip of Sanders saying “I am a Socialist.”
The “Jewish” thing is a nonstarter in isolation. Or has everyone forgotten what a HUGE issue it was when Joe Lieberman ran for VP (and later pres)? Joe Who? I rest my case.
As I’ve said all along, they’ll use the socialist thing (though even Sanders gets that wrong), then run clips of him saying how we need to be like Denmark, then they’ll run what the personal income tax rate is in Denmark, and that will be that.
Everyone seems to forget that college kids by and large don’t pay income taxes, at least not like everyone else does. They may file, but only to get a refund, which is “found money” to them. Being a college kid means usually never having to pay the bill. Yet, anyway.
The rest of the working stiffs, though, will recoil in horror, and that will be the end of it. (And people think Reince Priebus is serious when he says he’d rather run against Hillary. Hah!)
Count me as a working stiff who already recoils in horror. I like Bernie’s ideals more than I like Hillary’s, but Bernie simply doesn’t want to do the math on his proposals (which puts him in the same camp as every Republican running). A 2.2% tax increase across every bracket? Even if all the magic numbers baked into his proposals ultimately pan out, there’s always a ramp up time for any effective social program to work. Everyone’s going to be paying these new taxes before the benefits of the plans kick in. (That’s without even calculating what the 6.2% tax on employers will do to wages).
My ideal tax plan oddly enough combines some of Ted Cruz’s proposals with some of Bernie Sanders’ proposals. The first $36,000 in income exempt from tax with progressive brackets on top of that (including passive income) may actually go a long way toward tipping the scales the way Sanders wants them to go, and he’s right that we need to keep increasing those brackets well beyond where we currently cut them off. Full disclosure as far as my personal benefit from all of this: I’m upper middle class in a high cost of living area and my effective tax rate sits pretty close to the highest of anyone’s (certainly well above the millionaires who make 10x and more what I do).
This is really a huge media failing: The cost of each candidate’s policies. We get about one piece per campaign examining such policies in a usually shallow manner, and then we have to wait until the general.
But that’s after we’ve chosen the candidates. And this year (unremarkably), the Republican candidates’ numbers don’t add up at all, and Bernie has gotten a free ride. I doubt Bernie’s rally numbers would shrink if the costs of his programs were known. But that’s a function of his supporters being at a point in life where reality has yet to show its face.
My first presidential vote was in 1972. I think the East Coast polls had been closed about 10 minutes before they called the whole country for Nixon. And I was shocked! Not that McGovern lost – I wasn’t that foolish. But that they knew so quickly.
Bernie will do fine as long as the right people put the “paper in front of him” so he can remember what he believes.
While it’s true that unregulated capitalism got us into this mess, it is regulated capitalism that will get us out of it. Capitalism is what provides jobs. Capitalism is what pays for all the social programs we like. Hillary knows this, and she was no doubt enlisting the aid of Wall Street to help us get out of the recession (as some of the comments seem to indicate). But she also knows that this would get twisted against her. I’m not saying she’s perfect, but she has the nuanced understanding of the economy and what’s possible for us to continue the Obama recovery.
Yes. The left wants to tax wall street and the 1 percent more, but they complain when Clinton uses wall streets and the 1 percents money to fight Republican’s policies.
Seems a little strange to me.
It was a demand for purity that turned the Republican party into the mess it is today.
Someone above asked what progressive policies she’s pushed. I seem to recall she had something to do with pushing for universal healthcare. Of course, now she says it’s pretty much a non starter in this political climate. I’d say that’s spot on.
It’s nice to see someone with realistic goals.
The reality is until the left get their ‘stuff’ together and starts showing up to vote at every election and start fighting gerrymandering through referendums (and any other way they can), they are never going to be able to get the policies they want.
Many on the left seem to think that they should be wined and dined and catered to in order for them to show up. They seem to not realize it’s an obligation of being in a democratic country. They don’t have to vote, but they can expect more of the same if they don’t.
“I suspect many liberal readers, like me, will be voting this fall while holding our noses.”
Yes, and to be fair, that’s the way that many conservative voters will be voting for Trump.
The main benefit of Sander’s success will be to shift the Overton Window a bit back to the left.
+1
This kind of thing is part of why many have argued that, contrary to the argument Clinton supporters have long been making, Bernie is the more electable candidate in a national election. That the polls keep saying the same thing doesn’t hurt.
Bernie has not been attacked by Republicans yet. All they have to do is paint him as an extreme tax-and-spend liberal and he would lose in a landslide. People vote their pocketbooks and will vote for the reality of hanging on to more take-home pay rather than the nebulous promise of a glorious future that higher taxes will produce. People will not believe that only the rich will pay more because that’s not how it is in the European models he compares his plan to.
“that’s not how it is in the European models he compares his plan to.”
That is what I hear, making me wonder why people think Sanders is honest. Earnest, perhaps.
With respect, but yes he has been attacked by them (admittedly not to anywhere close to the extent that Hillary has), and the complete loss of image you claim he would suffer in the next few months is pure speculation. Do you really think that in a few months of negative coverage the right can create as bad an image of Sanders as they’ve already created of Hillary over the last couple decades? People actively despise her and call for her imprisonment. Those same people tend to disagree with Bernie, but they also respect his honesty.
Half a year age I might have agreed that nobody really knew enough about Sanders, that a Fox-led media campaign to denigrate him might have destroyed his chances, but at this point he’s becoming a household name. He’s already getting known by the country, and so far, the country likes him a lot more than they like Hillary. Note that Bernie is the only candidate in the race with a positive approval rating.
Now, you’re right that some people will never vote for a candidate who is saying he will raise taxes. Those people will probably not be voting for Hillary either, so I don’t see them as much of a loss.
Bernie hasn’t become familiar to Americans the way Hillary (falsely) has. He hasn’t been vetted by the voters yet, and when he is, it won’t be pretty.
Really all one has to do is read what happened when he was questioned by the New York Daily News in order to see how shallow and ineffective Bernie is. Serious politicians can tell you to the smallest detail how they would accomplish their goals. They may be wrong, or overly optimistic, but they understand the nuts and bolts. Sanders clearly has no plans for how to accomplish his goals.
It is amazing to me that someone who has never really been effective in politics is suddenly being taken seriously. In that sense he is little different from Trump. Both think they will get into the Oval Office and order the world to run the way they want and it will happen. Good luck with that.
“Serious politicians can tell you to the smallest detail how they would accomplish their goals.”
Sorry. You need to start with the topic and follow the thread. We were talking about the United States.
Glad you’re here. Where are you from?
I’m talking about the U.S. too. Do you think that if you asked Bill Clinton or Barack Obama how they would do something that they would respond with vague generalities?
No. They would just respond with generalities. They’re pretty good.
I’m just being flip because the idea of being an “informed voter” is increasingly lost on me.
The media has taught the beltway it is prudent to say nothing of substance. But by all means, they should double down on the hand waving, finger pointing and shouting.
A circus that only has clowns is an asylum.
Bill Clinton would tell you every statute and procedural step he would need to get something done, and how he’d use them, and probably what he would have for lunch that day while he was doing it. It doesn’t sound like you know much about him. Staff members used to try to get out of the office early because they knew he would buttonhole them and talk their ears off about policy and planning.
Obama likewise, though not as wonkish as Bill. But he never says anything he hasn’t considered from every angle, as well as knowing what the arguments against his ideas will be. Both of them are pros. Neither of them would have been caught responding to the NYDN as amateurishly as Bernie did.
Bernie has Stephnie Kelton and Bill Black working for him, so he knows (whether he will discuss it openly or not) that taxes do not pay for government programs. The Republicans may paint him as a “tax and spend” Democrat, and they may be successful against him for doing so, as you say. Or he may, at some point, begin to educate the voters about how Federal spending and taxes really work… in which case, even if he fails to win either nomination or election, he will have opened the door to an entirely new conversation about the responsibilities of government. That possibility is what most excites me about the current campaign (though I admit I am not holding my breath).
Why don’t you enlighten us how Federal spending and taxes really work.
In a nut shell, federal spending precedes tax collection. Dollars are created by federal spending and dollars collected through federal taxes are removed from the economy (destroyed). Federal taxes do not produce necessary “revenue” for the federal government. The monetarily sovereign federal government can pay any bill of any size. We do not need to collect taxes in order to “pay for” social programs.
If you want a deeper understanding, look at the output of the economics department of the University of Missouri-Kansas, or Google “Modern Money Theory” or “monetary sovereignty”, or for that matter, the names, “Stephnie Kelton”, “Bill Black”, “Randal Wrey”, “Joe Firestone”… You might also visit the website “New Economic Perspectives”. Look there for the “MMT primer” or the book by J.D. Alt “Millennials’ Money”. You can also find cogent discussion of the matter on the website “NakedCapitalism”, but that’s a little more hit or mis. Explanations of the basic theory of money and criticism of MMT are easy to find. The subject matter is not very difficult, but it is counter-intuitive. I cannot “enlighten” you about it, but if you are honestly interested, you can study the matter and come to your own conclusions.
Hmm. We don’t have to collect taxes to pay for government. That is, well, interesting. I guess money really does grow on trees?
Oh wait. It doesn’t.
Every dollar in existence was created out of thin air by the federal government. If you read what I wrote closely, I was very careful to specify federal spending and federal taxes. The states do not have the authority to issue dollars, and so the states do indeed need to tax their citizens to raise revenue. The federal government is different. If you think the federal government gets it dollars from taxing the people, then I ask you, where to the people get the dollars in the first place?
This description sounds very much like how Zimbabwean economy is working.
Was just wondering if maybe Trump University also had classes in finance and economics. I know it was mainly getting rich in real estate and went bankrupt several years ago.
I dunno, monetary policy is beyond my pay-grade. Daddy don’t wrestle the creature from Jekyll Island.
I don’t know her, but it sounds like she is given to realpolitik under a party line.
My kind of politician, those who go on to do stuff! (Obama is another one, unfortunately too militaristic and sleazy in his tactics to suit me. Intelligent and gives nice talks though, so he has a carrier in show biz.)
Show Biz = American Politics? viz. D. Trump.
If you dislike militarism, you will hate Hillary.
For me it comes down to the climate issue. Bernie is clear this is an emergency and that no even natural gas should be tolerated. Clinton has repeated many times that she would support natural gas (and fracking) as a bridge fuel.
This is the climate portion of the last dem debate:
https://youtu.be/EyQce4m6VQA?t=49m50s
Yes, the climate question is paramount. Yet exactly because of that I prefer Clinton, who endorses nuclear power, while Sanders wants to get rid of it totally. The climate fight ends today if Sanders gets elected and it’ll end in game over.
There are strong arguments on why top researchers like James Hansen consider nuclear essential. Sanders’ climate stance is unscientific and dangerous, as we can see from Germany’s failed Energiewende policies.
The problem with fracking and natural gas (NG) is that leakage and loss between the well and gas combustion by the final user is on the order of 10%-20% (in the US). Methane, the main component of NG has a greenhouse effect 30 (or more) times stronger than CO2 produced by its burning. Every 3% methane leakage adds 100% over methane’s nominal greenhouse effect from combustion. Hillary defends fracking, calls NG clean, and hides (or is ignorant of) the downside.
I too support nuclear energy and would go so far as say it is better “ecology-wise” than solar or aeolic, but that is another story.
Nuclear better than solar? How so?
A large fraction of all electrical energy can be provided by a relatively few highly secure, widely scattered, next-generation nuclear facilities. All vitrified reactor waste can be stored in one or two geologically safe stadium-sized underground caves. Nuclear works day and night, wind or no wind, and does not require battery backups.
Aeolic and solar parks have conservation and pollution issues that have not been adequately addressed. Both invade wild lands (reducing the potential for reserves and recreation areas) and produce visual and noise (wind) pollution. Solar panels (like asphalt) produce (unknown levels of) waste heat. Almost every photo of installed commercial green power I’ve seen suggests extensive industrial-grade environmental degradation. I have no problem with personal and community solar and aeolic power systems. The problem is when the moral equivalent of Exxon steps in.
However, if solar panels replace coal burning facilities, refineries, and oil rigs, it seems to me anyways, that solar panel farms would be benign. Wind turbines can be located in areas that lessen their noise pollution effects. Problem with nuclear is not only the waste but potential catastrophes and how to deal with the hot water to cool the reactors.
Are you referring to the German solar energy program?
Nuclear is unable to compete and unnecessary with renewables.
http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473379564/unable-to-compete-on-price-nuclear-power-on-the-decline-in-the-u-s
Seems to me it’s a matter of timing. If renewables come on line very rapidly, which there is evidence is happening, nuclear plants, with their low carbon footprint, can be phased out. What you wouldn’t want is to phase out nuclear when there is not enough supply. At that point you’d need to replace the loss with coal. Once renewables have been adequately implemented, nuclear can be decommissioned.
The US still gets 67% of our energy from carbon-emitting fossil fuels (coal, methane, and oil), and 69% if you add biomass (which is counted as a renewable even though it may spew even more CO2 than coal). 20% is from nuclear, and only 11% is from non-CO2 emitting renewables. Solar itself is less than 1%.
We shouldn’t even be talking about phasing out nuclear until every last fossil fuel plant is permanently shut down and we have a surplus of true-green renewables.
Re: “Abramson’s article”: you might look at the rest of his articles. He hasn’t been very accurate, to say the least. And he has made some howlers (e. g. used an outlier poll to establish a baseline for HRC’s support in order to make it look like Sanders is catching up more rapidly than he is)
As far as the GS speeches: I agree with her delaying the release until the Republican candidate releases his speeches; that can be a useful “ace in the hole” for the general election.
The problem with Hillary is that she has been preparing for her run since Jan 2013, when she left as Secretary of State. The multi-million $$ sequence of paid speeches during 2013-15 conceivably served to build up a war chest.
None of the Republican candidates seem have made paid speeches to anyone since 2013. John Kasich (Ohio Governor since 2011) and Ted Cruz (US Senator since 2013) are barred from making paid speeches as public office holders. Trump gave some speeches around 2007, long before there was any thought of his becoming a candidate. Besides, he is a populist and is largely financing his own campaign. He asks no favors from establishment moneybags.
Hillary, it seems, dipped into her own pocket (containing the Goldman Sachs fees) for seed money to launch in early 2014(?) her own bid for president.
Democratic voters know that the Republican candidates are clients of big bank interests; they say this in public, so there is no need for transcripts to prove this. Progressives are asking whether the Democratic front-runner is equally compromised through declarations of allegiance in speeches made behind closed doors.
I don’t know the details, but I think that at least some of her speech money went to the Clinton Foundation.
I could be wrong about that though.
The Clinton Foundation is a separate entity. Clinton speaking fees go into Bill’s and Hillary’s bank accounts. They have made some $250M in personal income since Bill left office, according to an analysis I’ve read. The fate of about $200M can be traced from Clinton tax returns.
The Clinton Foundation had assets os $226M in 2012, according to “Foundation Watch”. There are many big (six and seven digit)individual, institutional and foreign government donors, including oil states. The list of donors is online.
There are two different, albeit similarly named, foundations. So you have to differentiate between them.
Between 2007-2014, the Clintons gave about $15 million to the Clinton Family Foundation, which then makes its own charitable disbursements. The Family Foundation is not the same thing as the Clinton Foundation.
And in order to claim charitable donations, the money has to go to the Clintons’ bank accounts first. Otherwise, they aren’t credited as charitable donations. This isn’t really very complicated.
One thing that should be kept in mind is that the Clintons never made much money until after he was president. They never even owned their own home. So I, for one, certainly understand why they started making money when they could. They never really had much of anything until after the White House and paying off all the legal bills.
Hillary was born into a family of wealthy Chicago-area Republicans. She graduated from Yale Law School apparently using family funds. Poor my ass.
Um, no. She was raised in Park Ridge, Illinois. Have you ever been to Park Ridge? It’s no slum, but it is by no means a wealthy town. Middle income, and trust me there are some very, very rich towns near Chicago. Park Ridge ain’t even close to being one of them. Her father was a small businessman. They weren’t starving, but they were not what anyone would call wealthy. Hillary went to Maine East High School, and later Maine South, both of which are public schools.
I doubt her parents were supporting her once she got married. She certainly made more than Bill after she started working at the Rose Law Firm, but they rented their housing until he became governor, and they moved to the governor’s mansion.
The Clintons were comfortable by Little Rock standards, but by no means rich. And they owed a fortune in legal fees when they left the White House.
And yet, no one seems able to point to any quid pro quo. It’s just “She took money, so she HAS to be corrupt.”
Me, I like a little evidence with my smears. Call me crazy.
Not a smear. The politician who holds the reigns of America for the next 4-8 years must be transparent and squeaky clean, if possible.
Ha! Good luck with that!
So, Obama’s dirty? Because he took plenty of Wall Street money too.
I want whoever takes the REINS to be smart and capable. I’m not hiring them for nun in chief. I’m hiring them to lead the nation in a very complicated, very messy world.
I also want someone whose phone calls will be returned. If you think the world’s leadership takes Bernie seriously, you’re wrong. Obama they trust. Bernie? Nowhere near as much. More than Trump, sure. But that’s setting the bar pretty low.
Obama has recently talked about the insidious corrupting influence of big money. He is honest where others are not.
So did he give the money back?
I do not think they trust Obama.
“They”?
I meant leaders of other countries. I replied to a comment that they allegedly trust Obama.
Yes, I should have reviewed the thread, because you were in fact clear in what you meant.
But why wouldn’t they trust him?
“Countries… are understandably reluctant to commit themselves to a man who has himself not kept a single commitment to any of America’s allies. From Ukraine, to Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Turkey and the Gulf, America’s friends and opponents have noted what little value the Obama administration’s “commitments” are actually worth.
After six years of weaseling out of “red lines”, throwing Lebanese and Ukrainian allies under the bus, treating Turkey and Israel with open disdain, and going behind the Gulf’s back to sign an appeasement with the Iranian Ayatollocracy, the scale of which outdid even Chamberlain’s Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler, Obama comes as a supplicant to the Middle East; a supplicant with not even the credibility of a used-car salesman. Join an Obama-led “anti-terror” coalition? Speaking as a Syrian refugee, I tend to regard Barack Obama as one would regard a neighbor who never lent much more than a glass of water while my house burned, but now expects me to join his vigilante neighborhood gang because someone broke his windows.”
http://adandachi.com/istanbul/obama-isis-coalition-credibility/
I hardly think the musings of one Syrian refugee equates to reading the minds of national leaders.
To take just one pathetic example: The Iran deal was heartily backed by the world’s leaders. Of whom this guy is most definitely not one. He’s welcome to his opinion, but I think the issue was whether the leaders of other nations trust Obama, not whether this guy trusts him.
And you can always tell when an argument on the Right is weak, because they invariably trot out the Neville Chamberlain trope. When the details of the agreement were released, just about every arms expert consulted said it was an extremely strong agreement, and that they were amazed Obama and Kerry (and Clinton) had gotten what they had. The agreement’s provisions were immediately misrepresented by the Right, but that doesn’t seem to have made the dent the Right wishes it had. (Among the falsehoods purveyed is a favorite of Trump’s: “We gave Iran $150 billion!” Now, with Trump, it is hard to discern at times whether he is lying, or just so stupid he is unaware of the truth. But we didn’t “give” Iran that money. The money always belonged to Iran. We just released it. It didn’t come from our treasury – it was money we had frozen as sanctions. But it makes a nice outrage point when the Right needs to rouse the punters and doesn’t care about lying to do it.)
So I would ask again, why wouldn’t world leaders trust Obama?
Of course, foreign leaders will smile and talk diplomatically, with the possible exception of Netanyahu. However, what happened in Syria? Did the US-led anti-ISIS coalition win? No, it is Putin who decides the fate of Syria, because Assad is his ally. I reluctantly admit that today, even Russia is a more reliable ally than the USA.
Putin is in charge of a third world country, and not worth taking too seriously. Meanwhile, the attacks on ISIL have been more and more effective, the gang is going broke, and they are losing territory on a massive scale. Some speculate that ISIL may fold pretty much completely this summer.
The grownups continue to do the hard work, so Putin can ride around shirtless on his horse. Not something I lose sleep over.
Putin is not worth taking too seriously? Tell this to the Ukrainians, the Georgians, the Moldovans, the Syrians and whatever nation he decides to attack next, as the world stands by.
ISIL may indeed fold completely… if Putin decides so. However, trading ISIL for Assad does not seem a big deal.
I am seeing a recent cultural barrier between liberal Americans and other people. I would not blame Obama for erecting it – he is more likely to be a symptom. A very good indication of the barrier is your conviction that the world leaders should trust a US president under whom…
“The United States recognized Tibet as part of China…”
“After Russia began to occupy the Crimean peninsula Obama warned Russia of “severe consequences” if Russia annexes the region and attempted to negotiate a withdraw of Russian troops. To date, all negotiations have been unsuccessful…”
“Relations between the U.S. and Israel have strongly deteriorated…”
“In 2012, Obama said that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government would be crossing a red line and would entail U.S. military action.[130] After reports on 21 August 2013 about the usage of chemical weapons in Syria, the Obama administration formally blamed the incident on the Syrian government and sought Congress approval for military action in Syria… On 11 September 2013, Obama put a military strike or combat operations on hold…”
(Quotes from Wikipedia)
No, Putin is not worth getting too exercised over. Any more than other third world leaders are, barring something extraordinary.
I will tell you something for free: It is not the job of the U.S. to run around putting out every fire in countries that can’t get their acts together. There is also something known as a “sphere of influence”. And many of the countries you talk about are outside the U.S. sphere of influence, and should be for now.
Many of the problems in the world are the long-term results of American, French and British mischief in the last century. ISIL is the direct result of the disastrous policies of the George W. Bush administration in Iraq. Compounding those mistakes is not a recipe for success, nor will most Americans stand for it.
You have repeatedly changed the subject from whether world leaders trust Obama to a rant against U.S. policy decisions you don’t like. You have never answered my original question, instead posting a blog entry of a Syrian refugee with a clear axe to grind. When asked again to address my point, you have veered off the track again and again.
Whether ISIL folds or not, Putin will have had little to do with it. He is not part of the main force attacking them, nor was he ever invited to be. You may also want the U.S. to hit Ukraine and Georgia with guns blazing, but good luck with that. Such intervention would be foolhardy and trigger-happy and doomed to fail in any event.
You started this dialog with a provocative statement about Obama. When tested on this, you have chased after completely irrelevant matters, all the while avoiding my questions completely. Fine. You are under no obligation to say anything. And I am under no obligation to waste another minute listening to your political posturing.
“It is not the job of the U.S. to run around putting out every fire in countries that can’t get their acts together.”
Yes, this is exactly what I was trying to say. Thank you.
You seem to have skipped the mention of Ukraine. After a previous US president signed the 1994 Budapest memorandum and so lured the Ukrainians to give up their nuclear arsenal, many are not happy that the current US administration only stands by and watches as Putin is destroying Ukraine. Obama didn’t even want to sell arms to the Ukrainians. I estimate this as a grave betrayal. And I suspect that in the future, it will be impossible to deceive another country this way.
Here in Europe, my impression is that in recent years statesmen talk and act as if the New World has never been discovered. Whatever happens, America will not act. I only hope that there will be no major economic/financial crisis in the USA, because such crises tend to drag the entire global economy under water.
Yeah, and W didn’t do anything when Russia invaded Georgia.
There is little the U.S. can, or should, do in Ukraine. If the U.S. had trouble on its northern border, do you think Putin would be intervening and sending troops to Canada?
There is no upside to visible involvement in Ukraine, and the world knows it. Meanwhile, Russia continues to deteriorate economically. Of more concern is the effect on Germany from dropping prices for Russian oil. In the end, that will have a far greater impact than whatever Putin does in Ukraine.
Are you basically saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum was viewed by the USA as a hoax right from the beginning?
The US has an obligation to defend any NATO member from Russian aggression, and to date Russia has only attacked bordering nations who never joined NATO. Clearly then, America’s contracts do still mean something. Ukraine never entered into NATO or any other mutual defense agreement with the US.
In the Budapest Agreement (per Wikipedia), the US and Russia both promised that we would not attack Ukraine ourselves, and that we would support them via the UN if anyone ever uses nukes on them. It’s Russia who obviously broke that agreement, not America.
I think you are wasting your breath.
If there were evidence of a quid pro quo, it would be an indictable offense.
You have to be naïve to believe that big bucks don’t buy influence (and access is a form of influence). It doesn’t have to be anything as bold as an out-and-out quid pro quo. Some wording in a bill here, not opposing a legislative amendment there, getting a corporate lackey appointed to a regulatory board someplace else — big campaign contributions have their corrupting influence. You think corporations are laying out that kind of dough just because they like the cut of her jib?
I think they spend that money for the same reason they spend it on everyone, from both parties. They hope it’ll get their calls returned.
These people donate to everyone. Hillary has pressed Bernie over and over to name one thing she did that was a quid pro quo. He can’t.
Professor Coyne’s analysis of how troubling it is that Hillary refuses to release the transcripts is right on the mark. She must be hiding something in regard to her cozying up to the corporate interests. What other reason can there be? As an astute politician with astute advisors, she certainly must know that her refusal is hurting her election chances. Yet, she must have concluded that their release would be more harmful than the damage already done by not releasing them. I would not be surprised if the transcripts are leaked in October, possibly jeopardizing her election.
Despite my considerable reservations about her (the transcript issue is only one of them), assuming she is nominated, I will beyond any doubt be voting for her. She will clearly be the lesser evil compared to whatever lunatic the Republicans nominate. Such is the sad state of American politics.
I think that she is saving the release for the general election in order to make the R’s release their private speeches.
She doesn’t need this card for the primary.
If the transcripts cast Hillary in a good light, she’d have released them in a hot second. That she didn’t means they would be embarrassing to her, at least.
Even if not, she doesn’t need to save the release for a card to play in the general election. She could say to the Republican nominee, Hey I released mine from the get-go, as soon as I was asked; now show me yours.
Anyway, if the GOP nominee is Trump, anything he’s said in a speech would be as a drop in the stream of outrageous bullshit he’s said elsewhere. Getting him to release some transcripts would hardly be a card worth playing.
Mostly agreed, but it’s gotta be anyone but Trump or Cruise!!
The Democratic establishment and the GOP establishment started to look almost the same in the 80s and 90s. They were both catering to the one percent. What is happening now is that this greed politics is coming back to bite both parties. Hilary is too entrenched in Bill Clinton’s ways and in Obama’s ways. And she is too old to change. She will probably get the nomination because she has the backing of the establishment and of the one percent. All of the super delegates may save her. She will then only beat Trump or Cruz because, as Jerry says, a Democrat cannot vote for those guys.
The other question will be, can Bernie do a one-eighty and support and push for Clinton. If they don’t make up and do this, the next 4 to 8 years will not amount to much. Without control of congress nothing gets done.
Goldman Sachs speech: what about this?
The video you post is not one of Hillary’s paid speeches, although her campaign would like you to believe it is. The paid speeches, for which videos and recording were prohibited per contract, occurred on June 4, 2013 (South Carolina), October 24, 2013 (New York), and October 29, 2013 (Arizona). The speech you post is free and, so it seems, for the Clinton Institute.
Just remembered Hitchens did not like the Clintons either one. Suppose i’ll vote for Sanders. My daughter loves his health care plan.
I hope you don’t take the decision too casually. While I too prefer Sanders on many issues, I don’t think he can be sure to beat Trump in the general election, while Hillary should be an easy win. A vote for Sanders could turn out to be letting the red haired fox into the hen house.
Please see polls of matchups comparing Bernie with Hillary. Bernie does better in (practically) all, generally with much larger margins over all the Republican candidates. Google ‘Real Clear Politics Polls’ for daily poll summaries since the race begin.
I don’t think you can go by those polls. Once the republicans foist their billions of advertising dollars (Koch brothers? Trump billions?) against Sanders (crazy tax-and-spend Jewish socialist), his poll numbers against any clown you can name will sink like…
With the Supremos riding on this one.
In the GE the Dems will also foist THEIR billions against Trump, Cruz, or Kasich. There will be no less GE funds for Sanders than there will be for Hillary.
The general election polls still mean basically nothing going this far out: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-year-out-ignore-general-election-polls/
Note how Bush had a huge positive favorability rating in 1999 and a huge lead over Gore. Yes, he won but we all remember how he won.
The Democrats may be in trouble if the economy goes south before November and they’ll certainly be in trouble if Sanders is the candidate and the economy is down.
Wrote a book about it, No One Left to Lie To.
Oh, well, if Hitchens hated her, then I guess…what?
Hitchens hated all things Clinton, without much of the way in reasons to. Hitchens was great about many things, but he was also a total ass about many things as well.
Oh, I think Hitchens’ enmity for the Clintons was disproportionate to the case he laid out against them. (Hitch tended to adopt his moral stances not rationally, but with an almost childlike instinct; it was part of his charm, but could also lead him astray.)
But I believe he was telling the unalloyed truth when he stated (as Sidney Blumenthal related to him) that the Clintons were planning to destroy Monica Lewinski as a crazed, lying stalker until Bill’s splooge showed up on the blue dress.
Do you doubt it?
Yes, I do doubt it. For one thing, I know people who know Blumenthal and knew Hitchens at the time that was going on. And the consensus was the Hitchens would have been well-advised to stop speaking through a bottle and start listening to facts. Blumenthal is a lightning-rod, for sure, but Hitchens was, by many accounts, completely off base and getting incoherent.
The Clintons became an irrational obsession for Hitchens, and I don’t think he covered himself in glory during the entire episode. Frankly, I think he had been losing it before it, and it only got worse later. And the alcohol didn’t help. (And I say that as a Scotch partisan myself.)
So what’s the theory, Jeff, that Hitchens made it all up of whole cloth, or that he was tipsy and misheard Blumenthal?
For all his legendary imbibing, Hitchens never missed a lecture, a debate, a media appearance, or a book-signing due to being drunk or having a hangover. And there isn’t an extant video of him ever appearing at such a function under the influence, to the best of my knowledge.
But it’s easy enough for unnamed people to criticize a dead man his dipsomania, I suppose. (And I say that as a beer-and-occasional-bourbon man myself.)
I seem to remember seeing Hitchens on TV a couple of times when he was in his cups. More to the point, more than one person familiar with him at that time said he was getting a little out there regarding the Clintons. I’m talking DC press types, and people who saw him fairly often.
And I remember what was going on at the time he had his blowup about Blumenthal. So yes, I doubted Hitchens on that score then, and I still do.
So Bubba had denied that he ever had sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinski, but he was gonna say what — that she’s innocently mistaken as to whether she blew me? He wasn’t going to malign her character and reputation for candor? He was gonna say she was a liar, but not a stalker? That she was a stalker, but that doesn’t make her a bad person?
I’d be wary of Clinton-hater Abramson’s cherry-picking and editing of the remarks of shadowy witnesses of these speeches, considering how misleading his use of polling numbers was in his recent howler: “Hillary Clinton’s Support Among Nonwhite Voters Has Collapsed”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/hillary-clintons-support-_b_9579544.html
Actually, I treat anything on HuffPo and Salon as presumptively crap. It’s not an unrebuttable presumption, but it’s a fairly reliable rule of thumb.
I mean, both publish HA! Goodman’s tripe, which is pretty damning right there.
I will vote for whichever Democrat wins the nomination in the hopes that my vote will matter somewhat in keeping a Republican from becoming president.
Same here.
+1
The reason that I no longer discuss this issue or try to reason with Sanders supporters is best represented by this statement and the fact that you believe it to be an honest assessment.
“My worries about Hillary Clinton, the most viable Democrat, are tempered by the likelihood that she may well prove even less effective than Obama…”
If our next president is another Democrat and is even half as effective as Obama has been (something that I don’t believe Sanders is capable of) I think that we can guarantee the destruction of many of the right’s myths and expect a restructuring of sorts from conservatives. Potentially a more reasonable conservative party.
I personally think that Bernie is a cranky old fart. I first voted in 1960 and will be 79 in a few days. I definitely qualify as a cranky old fart. If it takes one to know one – I know one. What sort of contacts does Sanders have with the rest of the world? Oh, yes – he’s visiting the pope today. How do Berniphiles think Senator Sanders will get along with and deal with the Putins, assorted Middles Easterners and even Latin Americans. So, you wouldn’t vote for FDR – damned patrician. Think real. Think 21st century. Hold your noses? Sanders has almost zero cosmopolitan moxie. And yes, he was in congress for a long time, but you could write his actual accomplishments on a 3×5 card (and have room for some telephone numbers or a grocery list).
As a fellow old fart, I would remind everyone of two names: Gene McCarthy and George McGovern.
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and it fell apart in the wash first time.
You mean, as opposed to President Hubert Horatio Humphrey?
Yeah, because Nixon was SO much better…
No, but as between going down in flames with either Humphrey or McCarthy, I’d take Clean Gene any day of the week.
The campaign might have at least scooched the Overton window a smidge to the left (as I believe you’ve said elsewhere in this thread).
Actually, I didn’t say that, but someone did.
Bernie, when in the House of Representatives, earned the title of “roll-call amendment king.” He passed important legislation, as indicated by the Rolling Stone article from 2005 (long before you or I knew his name), more in fact on than any other of the 435 members of the House. The Rolling Stone piece gives a good perfile of Sanders, his limitations as an Independent, and what made him effective as lawmaker and defender of progressive causes. As one old fart to another, read it and learn something.
rollingstone(dot)com/politics/news/inside-the-horror-show-that-is-congress-20050825
At least Clinton has a somewhat realistic energy policy, unlike Sanders. Leaving nuclear power totally out pf picture is extremely stupid right now, so that alone makes Clinton better.
1. Not even Sanders can turn off the nuclear switch when there is nothing to replace it.
2. Yesterday news reported that despite not being half way through spring, this week in a single day 1 mm of ice melted from 12% of the Greenland ice sheet. January and February were the world’s two warmest months since the 1880s when accurate records began to be kept. NASA & NOAA have not yet posted March temperature data. Where I live (Brazil) temperatures have averaged 8oF. above average since the beginning of April.
But … but … hockey-stick graph and Climategate emails!!1!11!
Do not underestimate the ability of Republicans to turn elections around with negative advertising. In July 1988, Michael Dukakis led George H.W. Bush by 17 points. Then came the tank ads. We all know who ended up winning.
So, yes, Bernie currently does better in matches against Republicans than Hillary does. But they have not even begun to attack him. Tax-and-spend-liberal ads against Bernie, comparing what he wants to how much people pay in taxes in Europe for the same thing, will doom his campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_U.S._Presidential_elections#United_States_presidential_election.2C_1988
It is definitely important to keep in mind that the various candidates poll numbers are not comparable. You can’t compare a known candidate vs a comparatively unknown candidate.
Clinton is as known as anyone who has probably run in fifty years. She has endured decades of public attacks. Her unfavorables are fully baked into her poll numbers. Clinton’s numbers are probably unmovable now, short of her getting caught in bed with a young boy or some other such unforseen.
Bernie, on the other hand, is barely recognized among the public as a whole. Who knows what his poll numbers will be after he is beat up by a determined opponent with gloves off and after the public as a whole tunes in?
I have said the same thing to republican friends who think Cruz would do better than Trump in the general election. They base this on polls, but that’s foolish. How many Americans could even pick Ted Cruz out of a line up right now? How many fewer have any idea what he stands for? Trump, on the other hand, has been well known among the general public for a long time. His (dismal) poll numbers bake in actual knowledge of who he is and what he is like. Cruz’s poll numbers are the numbers of someone the public does not yet know. Everything we know about Cruz suggests that he doesn’t grow on people.
Cruz in a lineup, now that I’d pay to see. Hell, throw Trump in there, too.
“Number Three is just as greasy as the guy I saw, but then Number Five is scary, just like the guy, too. Can you ask each of them to step forward and say a few words from Mein Kampf?”
“In the original German, please, mine gruppenführers.”
How many times will anyone be able to stand watching this clip in the fall (if Bernie were to be nominated)?
It would be on an endless loop with Koch money paying for it …
“a discomfiting tendency to change her mind based not on principle but on political expediency,”
I have mixed feelings about this. While it’s useful to have some clear principles to give you direction, some destination towards which to lead people, nothing scares me more in a leader than for them to be a True Believer. Even when I am sympathetic to the outlook of a True Believer, I find that I often prefer the opportunist because the opportunist will never burn the place down “to save it”.
Still, as opportunists go, and Clinton definitely qualifies, I do find it a bit hard to see what her vision is. Even pragmatists can have a vision, but she seems to lack one, or the ability to articulate it. She’s not even a good opportunist.
Given what he’s written thus far, I’m not sure how you can say Abramson doesn’t have a dog in this fight. He’s not H.A. Goodman, but it’s not for a lack of trying.
A Republican expat co-worker of mine believes that the Clintons are murderers! I thought she was just joking but she was serious. Turns out this is an actual conspiracy theory called “The Clinton Body Count”
Look it up on snopes.com. It’s been around forever. We foot soldiers in the Clinton Wars know it by heart. It’s a scream.
Many leftists think Bush was a murderer.
Some think Clinton was too btw.
Closed minded team players are all around.
As Vince Bugliosi proved, Bush WAS murderer. But he did it out in the open. Called it “war”.
As for Clinton, I thought that’s the claim my post addressed?
That the Clintons offed Vince Foster is gospel in the rightwing paranoid-style playbook of the freepers and creepers and World Net Daily crowd. They’re out there on the lunatic fringes, with the birthers and truthers.
The best work on Vince Foster’s death was Dan Moldea’s “A Washington Tragedy”. Which debunked all the rightwing crap. And it was published by Regnery! (Moldea said Regnery never tried to influence his writing in any way, so at least there’s that.)
Even a blind bird finds a worm sometimes, I suppose. Publishing Moldea’s book sounds like the first round of penance Regnery can do to atone for dumping so much suck on the world of politico-lit.
I posted something on Facebook a few weeks ago based on all the stupid conspiracy theories I’ve seen (often from my own family) posted online or forwarded in email (and had a little fun at the same time just to see if people were paying attention)
***BEGIN ELECTION SEASON PSA***
Insults don’t validate your points.
People making $52,000 don’t pay 31% income tax.
Bernie Sanders isn’t trying to give minimum wage earners’ salaries to welfare queens.
Bill Clinton is not secretly assassinating people.
Hillary Clinton does not follow Saul Alinsky’s Communist Rules for Revolution.
Donald Trump never said Republicans are the dumbest people.
Ted Cruz isn’t trying to ban gays and atheists from America.
The Flintstones isn’t a documentary.
Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.
Vaccines work.
The earth is round, your soda is flat.
The moon landing was real.
Your bananas don’t contain HIV.
Insults don’t validate your points, even when you repeat them.
Abraham Lincoln said 86% percent of what you read on the Internet is false.
Chuck Norris killed 2 birds with 1 stone.
I just. Want. To. Fit. In.
***END ELECTION SEASON PSA***
Bernie has held public office since 1981, been in Congress since 1991, and in the Senate since 2007. Of the last six Democrats elected president, he’d have more experience going in than all but Lyndon Johnson (that includes Obama, Clinton, Carter, Kennedy, and Truman, for those of you keeping score at home).
Yeah, Ken, but all those other guys got something done. Bernie’s managed to accomplish fuck-all.
Which is a distinction in itself, really.
Jeff, I think you are incorrect. Please see my comment and the link at #18 above.
Amendments aren’t bills. Clinton has a far better record than Sanders in actually passing legislation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/04/07/hillary-clinton-was-a-more-effective-lawmaker-than-bernie-sanders/
They are both more experienced than Obama was, or than half the GOP field.
Truman was a Pendergast-machine hack whose only Senatorial claim to fame was a plumb appointment heading up a committee investigating war profiteering. JFK won a Pulitzer prize (for a book that Teddy Sorensen probably wrote) but his congressional accomplishments were negligible. Carter was “Jimmy who?”, an unremarkable one-term governor of Georgia. Clinton was a middle-of-the-road governor who was temporarily turned out of office by the Arkansas electorate after his first term in the governor’s manse. Barack didn’t exactly tear up the legislative pea patch during his term-and-a-half in the Senate.
So, no, none of ’em really outshone Bernie in the accomplishment department. The Bern might just surprise us all once he gets checked in at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.
That’s Barack’s two-thirds of a term in the Senate. (I musta been thinking of Hillary’s term-and-a-third in the upper-chamber when I wrote that.)
Obama built a lot of bridges both in the Illinois legislature and in the Senate. And Hillary was quite admired by both sides when she was in the Senate.
If you’re going to be president, you have to play well with others. One reason Carter failed was that he never made the right friends in the national government. So there was no one to cover his butt. Bernie doesn’t play well with others. Hell, he’s proud of that. But if you get the presidency, and no one in Congress likes you, you are going to have a hard time. Smartest thing Reagan did was become buddies with Tip O’Neill.
Can you name a single member of Congress who’s going to sit by the fire drinking single malt with Bernie? Does Bernie even drink single malt?
So building bridges and playing well with others is what won Barry all those GOP votes in support of his legislative agenda? How many Republicans voted for Obamacare again? And how’s that working out for his new Supreme Court nominee?
Unfortunately, the current breed of Repubs in congress takes that kinda thing as a sign of weakness.
Well then, I guess Bernie can’t really do any harm, can he? Being a totally ineffective politician has been his career, so I guess we might as well reward him with the White House. Because no one will be able to do anything as president anyway, right?
Who’s going to break it to the bros? They seem to think he’ll get free ice cream and tuition for everyone. Boy, are they gonna be disappointed.
I believe the majority of the stink heaped on both the Clintons was not earned. There are too many conspiracy theories to count. As for the issue with Wall Street, which I agree is a huge problem, why is it such a big deal for this Presidential election when it has gone on for decades? It seems to me it is because it is an Achilles heal for HRC. But she is clearly the most qualified.
I hear you on this! I like Sanders a lot. I just wish he would tell us his plan. It’s not enough to know what’s wrong if you’re running for president. You have to have a plan. Doesn’t mean you have to stick to it. As Eisenhower is supposed to have said, before going into battle, planning is essential. When in battle, plans are worthless.
What interests me is that Paul Krugman, whom I have usually thought very astute, is very down on Sanders, and has been taken to task for that by a number of intelligent commentators. So I don’t really know what to think at this point.
I think you just hit on the main problem with Sanders. IIke him too but he hasn’t given us the implementation details for most of his ideas (I suspect he doesn’t really have any).
I think he really did himself some harm in the debate the other night when he said we can’t get where we want to be with incremental change. Actually, we can. Usually that’s the way it happens, especially with economic changes.
It doesn’t matter what his implementation details are unless he can sweep in a Democratic house and Senate too. Without those, he mainly matters in terms of SCOTUS nominations and foreign policy. I guess from his principles we can guess what kinds of things he’d veto. But you can’t veto-in a new entitlement program.
Just scanning the comments for Karl Rove, ratfucking, bread lines, and Willie Horton, I’m surprised to come up empty on all accounts.
Damn, Hempenstein, that’s kinda like David Allen Coe throwing down the gauntlet when Stevie Goodman and John Prine said they had written the perfect country & western song (telling them “that cain’t be the perfect country & western song ’cause it don’t say nothin’ about mothers, and prison, or rain, or pick-up trucks, or gettin’ drunk”).
Well, let me add a lyric to this thread, to meet your requirements: “Karl Rove and Lee Atwater ratfucked Micheal Dukakis with the Willie Horton ad and sent the whole damn Democrat [sic] party to the political breadlines for another four years.”
The Perfect Country & Western Song (aka “You Never Even Call Me By My Name”)
Thx, I’m honored for the comparison to DAC.
But if Bernie becomes the nominee, when the Karl Rove runs the video of Bernie extolling the virtues of bread lines to John Stossel, maybe a few more will realize he’s been ratfucking Bernie (or Hillary – it’s not completely clear to me who the object is with this). In any event, that interview will make Willie Horton look like a Boy Scout.
Yes, Bernie will have no chance once the hounds are unleashed. There are any number of videos and statements he’s made that will sink him when turned into non-stop TV ads. Socialism and communism are still indistinguishable from each other, and from Satanism and atheism for that matter, to the biggest chunk of voting Americans. Perhaps the young do not carry the baggage of their elders, but people who grew up looking for communists behind every door still dominate the voting booths.
“I suspect many liberal readers, like me, will be voting this fall while holding our noses.”
I’ve heard the same thing from Republicans, though, the difference is that the Republican nose-holders will likely also vote for Hillary.
I donated to her campaign many months ago, long before I knew of her infelicities regarding money. But what choice do we have? She’s not heinous. She’s not as likable as Obama, not by a long shot. I’m already mourning his absence from the Office and hope his family remains in the public arena.
Personally, I like Sanders more, but I also distrust the perception of likability, and there is something to the more centric experience Hillary has. . .
If the speeches contained any bombshells they would have come out by now. I’m sure the audiences included enough Republicans that at least one would have spilled the beans.
I’m not sure. I think both the GOP are keeping their powder dry (vs. Clinton and Sanders); and also the Dems vs. Trump.
I think the Dems are busy making medleys of Trump videos, with him saying ridiculous things.
What no one seems to get is that after 20+ years of brutal and unfair press coverage, why would she want to release anything? It’s not like it will be reported accurately.
She has released tens of thousands of emails, and despite a dearth of anything embarrassing in them, the press still talks “FBI”, “indictment”, “top secret”,…in other words, they’ll just make shit up. WaPo and the NYT have already been caught just this year printing fake stories about the “investigation”, so we know they have no integrity when it comes to Hillary.
When “Filegate” happened, and then the files were found, and released, and they corroborated EVERYTHING Hillary had said, did the accusations stop? Did the sun stop rising in the east?
No matter what she said in those speeches, the Republicans, the Sandersites and the press are going to act like they caught her passing the nuclear launch codes to the ghost of Osama bin Laden. NO MATTER WHAT. That is just the Clinton Rules: If a Republican, or any other Dem does something, no big whoop. If a Clinton does, it’s a scandal and a felony.
Clinton Rules.
I’m with you (if perhaps a bit less enthusiastic for Hilary). I will certainly vote for her.
Both Trump and Clinton tell people they are Christians. This is sadness that needs to end.
“My worries about Hillary Clinton, the most viable Democrat, are tempered by the likelihood that she may well prove even less effective than Obama, what with the probability that Congress will remain Republican.”
I have the opposite opinion. Obama ran on a platform of compromise and reconciliation, and Republicans in Congress took quick advantage. They forced him to compromise on nearly every issue, even when Democrats were nominally in control and all Republicans had was the threat of a filibuster. Obama even went with the Republican plan for health care (free market and the individual mandate) over the socialized Medicare-For-All plan Hillary was promoting in the 90s, hoping it would get more Republican support. Obama didn’t start getting really tough in his negotiations until his second term.
Bill Clinton was tough, negotiated hard, called the GOP’s bluffs, and accomplished a lot. After watching the past eight years, I think some more hawkishness on domestic matters may be exactly what we need.
I still like and support Obama. I also thought we needed more compromise and reconciliation when I voted for him. But seeing how Congressional Republicans responded has been eye-opening.
Bernie has just killed it again in Colorado. In the March 1 caucus he won a 59% preference. At the state convention today preference shifts took him to a 63% majority. This translates into 2 more convention delegates.
Day by day, Bernie is chipping away on Hillary’s slim lead. Bernie is going to win because increasingly progressive DEMOCRATS think he is best.
Bernie make take NY, or come within a few percentage points of Hillary, on Tuesday.
Also, none of those quotes from people who saw her speeches seem at all problematic to me.
First, they’re anonymous and some are both anonymous and paraphrased, so we just have to trust this reporter. And second, they say nothing about the content of the speeches — only that she delivered that content in a nice tone. That’s pure tone trolling. So she didn’t come in screaming at the assembled crowd or calling them dickheads to their faces, so what?
And third, she did say she’d release her speeches if their opponents on the Republican side did the same. The Presidential Election isn’t going to be between Clinton and Sanders, you know. It’s going to be one of them against Trump, Cruz, or Kasich.
I don’t know that I’d call 35ish years in government “little experience”. That seems a little disingenuous.
It may be misguided, but it’s not disingenuous. This comment is offensive.
Sorry, I probably should have included a trigger warning.
No nose-holding here. Clinton is a strong candidate with a more enthusiastic following than Sanders. Rather than echo innuendo (seriously, Politico?) go with the facts of her legislative record.
Sanders had 25-40K people on Manhattan’s Washington Square Park rally this week. Where has Hillary gathered more than 4K anywhere? Some 7000 Sanders phone bankers made 1.3 million calls to New Yorkers Saturday (yesterday). State convention delegates supporting Sanders upped the national delegate count by two through their unbridled enthusiasm, capturing 63% support for Sanders at the Colorado State Democratic convention yesterday. Last month Sanders collected $20M more in donations than the other campaign. Hillary and her followers seem to be running out of steam and, if Bernie picks up few hundred more delegates, can only win the nomination with the help of unelected delegates Clinton and her allies had appointed last year as a firewall to thwart democracy.
If Bernie is such a “democratic” choice, why has Hillary won 16 of 21 primaries, while Bernie seems to need caucuses (which are hardly democratic) to get anywhere?
This is all rather silly, because Bernie isn’t going to get the nod anyway. (Oh, and Bernie himself is a super-delegate and Hillary isn’t. Which is rather rich, considering he isn’t even a Democrat. Except when he wants the party’s money.)
“Washington Square Park”
Used to be, you could hit town, head to Washington Square Park, stroll through the arch and around the fountain, mingle with the buskers and hustlers, the junkies and pimps, get a feel for the rhythm and mood of the City — or at least the City below 14th Street.
Then, by-and-by, the lumpenproles around the fountain were replaced by liveried nannies pushing their charges in thousand dollar Neiman-Marcus baby buggies. That’s when I knew that gentrification had turned the old Village neighborhood to shit.
Guess maybe that’s not ‘zactly on topic here. Sorry.
“I suspect many liberal readers, like me, will be voting this fall while holding our noses”
This statement expresses exactly how I feel.
Have to say I’m a little disappointed in this post. I for one will not be holding my nose. While I’m not thrilled about Hillary’s having spoken at GS, the article (and especially the links it cites) seem to me anything but neutral on Clinton. And where in her *policy* has she “osculated the banks”? (714 bills in the Senate.) After delving pretty deep at one point into the email kerfuffle I’m convinced it’s nothing. During the ’08 election some friends complained that she was getting unfair press vs. Obama, and I dismissed it then. Not anymore. While she’s not my ideal, and I do see her as politically expedient at times, I’ll gladly vote for her. I do not find insincerity in her positions on social issues and income inequality (and I think these are more realistic, and in most cases, just better, than Sanders’). While she’s a step too hawkish for me on foreign policy, I think she’ll generally do the right thing and keep us out of the worst messes. The idea that she’d have a harder time working with Congress than Obama..?? ..Did you maybe have some bad noms today?
You know what? You could have expressed your opinion without saying how “disappointed” you were with the post. Please think about how your words come across to the author.
I supported Kerry the last time, too. But I wouldn’t want to see him run again. Not after the dumb campaign he ran in 2004 — turning his nominating convention into a paean to militarism, and running away from the most honorable thing he ever did in life: protesting the war after his return from Vietnam. Left himself wide-open for the Swiftboating, there.
I hate to say it, but I am a bit worried that the only thing which would make me vote Donald is … Hilary. Here is Ralph Nader’s opinion:
“Veteran journalist Diana Johnstone captures the imperial worldview of Hillary Clinton in memorable detail. Hillary the Hawk, as U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, never saw a weapons system she did not support, nor a U.S. war practice she did not endorse.”
Read any recent article by Andrew Levine — a fellow atheist — on Counterpunch. Especially, http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/05/smash-clintonism-why-democrats-not-republicans-are-the-problem/ (if that link is accepted).
No, Hilary is awful. Donald is awful. Bernie is acceptable. I find it difficult to imagine war-prone Hilary as POTUS. Quel horreur!
In fact, I will vote for whatever independent is on the NY ballot. Unless I can vote for Bernie. He is not perfect, but he is a vast improvement over the others or over any recent president we have had.
Nader is a fool, and has been forever.
“Forever” encompasses a lotta time, Jeff. How many lives did he save with Unsafe at Any Speed?
I’ve never voted for him. But give the man his due.
I’m voting for Gary Johnson, or whoever the LP eventually nominates. There is no way I can vote for any of the Republicans, Clinton, or Sanders.
I wish we at the other side of the Atlantic could just pull out a bag of chips and have fun watching your politicians battle it out.
Unfortunately, the choices of the American people always ends up affecting the entire world so we’re sitting here with our hearts in our throats and our fingers crossed.
We write just as much about your elections as we do our own. Not a day goes by without being forced to see a picture of trump while reading the newspaper.
Please remember, your vote doesn’t only affect your country, it affects us all.
If I was an American, I would vote for Bernie, but I understand the dilemma you’re describing.
Maybe if we here in the U.S, spent half as much time paying attention to your side of the Atlantic, we wouldn’t be in such a mess.
I strongly suspect that Hilary would be the preferred president for governments around the world since she is a well known quantity – as SoS she would have dealt with most of them in person and relationships built up. But hey, I am a Brit without a say at the ballot box 🙂
My exact suspicions, too. Hillary talks with people. Bernie talks at them.
For the most part, we’re just afraid that you’ll vote Trump or, far worse, Cruz.
Voting for Hillary would make most of us happy over here.
I’m going to vote for Hilary with only a minor qualm. For these reasons:
1. Anyone but Drumpf or Craze
2. The SCOTUS
3. First woman President (about time)
4. More or less any policy question vs. the GOP
5. Bernie can’t win nationally
I hope she will over-perform.
I would feel significant embarrassment if the US ever has Drumpf or Craze as its helm. Hilary will be presidential.