Election 2016

[Kaelik]

What about the video of the young black woman being ushered away?

Look, I just look at the Dem side of this election, and I see one candidate who is basically popular with blacks because she's associated with men that black people like (Bill, Obama), and another who was on the civil rights front lines in the sixties when the first was a young republican. One tells the current "big" movement that concerns itself with black issues, amateur or not, to "learn about real politics" or whatever, and the other gives them podium time and listens to their concerns.

They listen to different black people, that shouldn't surprise you because one of them is a national politician with close ties to the whitehouse for 16 years, and the other is a basically local state senator who is just now trying to get the hang of national issues (well, just a year ago, whatever).

Clinton doesn't listen to random gatecrashers, and that's mostly fine, because she doesn't need to, because anyone with any real influence or authority on any subject has been asking to explain to her their issues for 24 years.

Yes, Hillary Clinton doesn't really care about black people any more than she really cares about bringing down wall street, or gay rights, but she's not an idiot, and she is a politician. She knows "what black people want" at least as well as Sanders, almost certainly better. She will undoubtedly slightly improve things in minor ways, and find good competent minorities who understand their issues and appoint them to positions where they can work towards addressing these problems. Probably.

She's almost certainly politically calculating in her support of black issues, but so what? I don't care if she's Hitler and this is all part of her secret plan for incremental improvement that eventually results in genocide a billion years from now, if she brings the slight improvements that she probably will bring, that's good.

Theoretically Sander's policies might be better in the long and/or short run for black people. Might. If he accomplishes them, which he won't.

At the point where you are reaching for "some black person was ushered away from something" it might be time to admit that this isn't a real issue.

[Prak]

That's all fair. It occurred to me that being a republican pre-68 wasn't a bad thing as I was typing up that last post.

I mean, there's a reason I try to stay away from political arguments (on here), and that's because I'm pretty ignorant about the fine details. Or really any details that are older than about 2008 (the first presidential election I could vote it).

[DSMatticus]

I will say that "your protest movement needs a plan" is a bullshit thing to be saying. That is what centrists and conservatives said about OWS because they had already decided they were never going to take OWS seriously in anyway whatsoever.

It's pretty fucking obvious that career politicians are better-equipped to come up with solutions to voters' concerns than the voters themselves. That is, after all, their goddamn job description. No, it is not the responsibility of OWS to write hundreds or thousands of pages of financial regulations. It is their responsibility to tell you they want that done, and it is your job to convince them you can fucking do it. No, it is not the responsibility of BLM protesters to tell you how to reform the country's police departments. It is their responsibility to tell you they want that done, and it is your job to convince them you can fucking do it. Once you've set the bar for being taken seriously above "voicing dissatisfaction," you're being dismissive.

Hillary Clinton not wanting to genuinely engage with BLM is understandable. It's a fucking hashtag. You cannot placate a hashtag. It doesn't have opinions. It doesn't have structure. The only thing you can do is take the stage and acknowledge that the issues under the BLM umbrella are important and then tell voters what you're going to do about them, at which point the people who care about those issues (for example, the BLM protesters) will either nod along or flip you off or whatever on a completely individual basis. Forcing you to do that is a success for BLM. But actually talking to individual BLM protesters is about as useful as talking to random people on the street. It's not that random people on the street don't have issues they care about, it's just that you're not tapping into a structured movement with a universal agenda that can endorse you. The common ground ends at "we want something done about this thing." And asking BLM to be anything more than a bunch of people who "want something done about this thing" is kind of assholish, because "we want something done about this thing" is a perfectly legitimate grievance to voice.

EDIT: Sometimes I feel like politicians are so used to dealing with political lobbies that they fundamentally just do not get that individuals can coalesce around an idea instead of a well-funded institution with its own team of lawyers whose sole job is to provide boilerplate legislation.

[Mask_De_H]

Also eat a dick for misrepresenting my position Kaelik. And choke on it for calling me a fascist when you bring out the long knives towards anyone who doesn't feel the Bern you tired fuckmothering windbag. Take your hyperbole and shove shove it so far up your ass you regurgitate it again like you have ever since you've been on this board. Maybe after the millionth time you excrete the same tired shtick something novel will get stuck in it?

I agree that one of is clearly a deluded asshole who attacks anyone who says anything bad about the candidate that we like. I just think you are wrong about which one.

For example, instead of "bringing out the long knives" against anyone who insulted Sanders, I have, repeatedly, on many occasions, including in the post you quoted, criticized Sanders. I am explicitly on record saying that if I get to pick the nominee I pick Clinton.

But yes, one of us is clearly responding irrationally to anyone criticizing our favorite candidate.

And Prak: RobbyPants was saying that voters who wouldn't vote for Sanders but voted for Hillary would vote for Trump, which is so myopic and marginalizing of minorities (especially black people) it's actually offensive.

As DSM has pointed out, that is not even remotely what RobbyPants said. You clearly have no idea what any conversation is actually about, because you are too busy complaining that Sanders winning a state is somehow a magic death knell for the Democratic party because we aren't sufficiently unified behind our GodKing.

And that is you being a fuckboi. And I'm going to keep calling out Hillary Clinton supporters acting like fuckbois until they stop disproportionately acting like fuckbois. Or more likely when Sanders drops out, and they start acting like fuckbois to Trump supporters, because Clinton fans will never stop being fuckbois about this.

Jesus Christ fuck off with this shit. I will admit that I misread and misrepresented his position, and I apologize for that. But because I misrepresented his position and called you out for being a smug piece of shit does not make me one of Hilary's lapdogs. And if fuccboi is the highest level of insult you can achieve, I've got a barrel of livestock you can buy, you toxic, outgassing mockery of man.

And I apologize: you don't bring out the long knives for anyone who doesn't feel the Bern. You're just an all-purpose asshole with a pathological paraphilia for being pompous and "winning" against the windmills you tilt at. I do a lot of misrepresenting when I'm drinking, silly me. This isn't even about candidates, since by your own admission, you would go Clinton (I would go Bernie since they're simply shades of blue and I agree with his military policy more than Clinton's). This is why I hate his supporters while supporting the man, because his supporters are fedora tipping white motherfuckers like you, but at least they have the integrity to stick with the man instead of solely flinging shit to fling shit.

Really, I just don't like you specifically and am using you as effigy for everything I hate about this election cycle. So congrats for that.

DSM: a solid plan is what keeps a protest group from being a bunch of rabble. Remember how quickly OWS fizzled out because they had no clear plan and a bunch of contradictory ideas? It is dismissive to believe they need to be able to come up with all the tools and legislation of governance, but there still needs to be some well drawn out, unified goals.

[Prak]

Well, and OWS was primarily built by the anti-capitalist fuckwits behind Adbusters who actually paid people to protest with the proceeds from their lazy-pretentious $55 subscription magazine.

[Kaelik]

Well, and OWS was primarily built by the anti-capitalist fuckwits behind Adbusters who actually paid people to protest with the proceeds from their lazy-pretentious $55 subscription magazine.

What the fuck are you smoking?

Jesus Christ fuck off with this shit. I will admit that I misread and misrepresented his position, and I apologize for that. But because I misrepresented his position and called you out for being a smug piece of shit does not make me one of Hilary's lapdogs.

No, but being completely wrong about everything while complaining that all Sanders supporters are racist bad white people who need to be destroyed before they can pollute the party by voting in primaries makes you indistinguishable from the dumbest and most aggressive Clinton Supporter that could possibly exist.

You're just an all-purpose asshole with a pathological paraphilia for being pompous and "winning" against the windmills you tilt at. . . Really, I just don't like you specifically and am using you as effigy for everything I hate about this election cycle. So congrats for that.

Maybe if you don't know anything about what anyone else in this thread said, and you don't know anything about me, maybe the problem is with you and you should not complain that a minority with a preference for Clinton is emblematic of the problem that all Sanders supporters are filthy white racists who are destroying the country.

And if fuccboi is the highest level of insult you can achieve

You do realize that there exist people who don't result to the highest level of insult for all occasions right? Well I mean, I guess you don't, since you resort to calling everyone who supports a candidate you apparently prefer a racist as the starting point of a conversation, but you know, whatever.

[Whipstitch]

I like how he pulled the ultimate hipster card of liking the same guy the plebs like, but for better and purer reasons.

[Kaelik]

I like how he pulled the ultimate hipster card of liking the same guy the plebs like, but for better and purer reasons.

It's especially funny that in election with Trump, apparently all the racists are busy flocking to Sanders. So much so that apparently 30-40% of the Democratic party has always been racist and was just waiting for the opportunity to support a good old white boy who wants to implement policies that would help black people and (almost) never says anything racist.

I'm honestly impressed they managed to stick it out through Obama.

Or perhaps he might be exaggerating both the number and degree of racism of Sanders supporters from "some guys I know" to "everyone" and "basically the same as most of the white people who support Clinton" to "fedora tipping" and "forgetting that minorities exist."

[MGuy]

Why does it matter if someone pulls votes Away from any particular republican candidate when earlier it was established that voting any republican into presidency should be considered a doomsday scenario?

[Ancient History]

To minimize the chances of a Republican presidency, and maximize the damage to the Republican party from this election, you want a brokered convention. So in that sense, you want none of the candidates to become the presumptive nominee, but to divide the delegates sufficiently to force a brokered convention (which, ironically, at least half the GOP already wants).

[MGuy]

Isn't that already a guarantee at this point?

[Ancient History]

Nah, Trump has a good chance of cinching the nomination. Winner-take-all states in the Republican primary favor the frontrunner, and Marco Rubio is falling apart.

[DSMatticus]

a solid plan is what keeps a protest group from being a bunch of rabble. Remember how quickly OWS fizzled out because they had no clear plan and a bunch of contradictory ideas?

I am always weirded out by what people have to say about OWS. Sanders is literally OWS: The Presidential Campaign, and while he's probably not going to win he is doing very well for someone whose platform was popularized by a protest movement that the media tore to fucking shreds and everyone thinks was a failure.

It's seriously so bizarre. Case and point - you think OWS "fizzled out." Meanwhile, in reality land, police tear gassed the shit out of everyone there and arrested nearly a thousand people - and that's all before the raid on Zuccotti Park that formally ended the occupation! Fun fact: before that raid, they rounded up all of the reporters in the park and told them to either get lost or get arrested. Completely unsurprising spoilers: reporters still got in, they saw exactly what you would expect, and police threatened to arrest the reporters for being there. And that's pretty much how it's been for every attempt at a major OWS event since; police in riot gear pepper spray/tear gas the shit out of people, arrest a bunch of them, all while making sure to tell reporters that they are absolutely not welcome. What the fuck did you expect? OWS to declare war on the U.S. government and start brawling openly with police officers in the streets?

No, OWS was shut down and the members moved on to different things. It's honestly kind of creepy. We now know (years later) that OWS basically got handed off to the same people who are supposed to investigate domestic terror cells. Given how fucking rare terrorist attacks are, odds are good the Joint Terrorism Task Force has spent more man-hours investigating the people involved in Occupy movements than it has actual "I want to blow shit up" terrorists. I wonder if the FBI slips people into Bernie protests to keep an eye out for any unsavory anti-capitalist tendencies?

[Kaelik]

Why does it matter if someone pulls votes Away from any particular republican candidate when earlier it was established that voting any republican into presidency should be considered a doomsday scenario?

Yeah, I don't truly believe that Trump is worse than any other candidate.

No republican has actual concrete proposals like Clinton or Sanders, the things he says are worse, but so what, that's only because all the other ones believe the same things and lie about it. Trump would probably be the least bad, since he would probably be lazy and not try to accomplish anything, unlike Rubio or Cruz, who would at least try to destroy the country as best they can.

I'm also don't see much evidence that a brokered convention makes Republicans more unelectable than just having one of them win.

[Ancient History]

A brokered convention removes the thin veneer of democracy from the choice of a Republican candidate, and the GOP has enough people pissed at the establishment that it will cost them votes...and there's even the slim chance that the Donald would do a third-party run.

[DSMatticus]

I'm also don't see much evidence that a brokered convention makes Republicans more unelectable than just having one of them win.

There haven't been a lot of brokered conventions in modern politics, but the party that has them has always lost. You can argue that that's chance, you can argue that a brokered convention is symptomatic of a field of weak candidates, you can argue that brokered conventions piss people the fuck off, you can argue that it's aliens, blah blah blah.

In this particular instance, though, it's specifically an establishment vs outsider race. Having the outsider win the most delegates and lose the nomination because of establishment backstabbing would be amazing, and could genuinely split the party for a couple elections if not completely redraw the entire political landscape. It's difficult to believe the party could rally Trump supporters after fucking them over like that. Trump might even run third party out of spite.

[Ancient History]

In this specific case, though, because of the GOP's wonky and arcane state-level rules, it's a case where a candidate can lose the popular vote at the primary level but still get the most delegates. So the establishment can truly say that Trump doesn't have the mandate, it's just wonky election math that got him that far, and the whole brokered convention thing is meant specifically for situations like that - which is true, but people are still going to call bullshit on it, because of course it is.

The real fun of a brokered convention is that you're not limited to the candidates that were actively running - pretty much anybody is fair game.

[Mask_De_H]

a solid plan is what keeps a protest group from being a bunch of rabble. Remember how quickly OWS fizzled out because they had no clear plan and a bunch of contradictory ideas?

I am always weirded out by what people have to say about OWS. Sanders is literally OWS: The Presidential Campaign, and while he's probably not going to win he is doing very well for someone whose platform was popularized by a protest movement that the media tore to fucking shreds and everyone thinks was a failure.

It's seriously so bizarre. Case and point - you think OWS "fizzled out." Meanwhile, in reality land, police tear gassed the shit out of everyone there and arrested nearly a thousand people - and that's all before the raid on Zuccotti Park that formally ended the occupation! Fun fact: before that raid, they rounded up all of the reporters in the park and told them to either get lost or get arrested. Completely unsurprising spoilers: reporters still got in, they saw exactly what you would expect, and police threatened to arrest the reporters for being there. And that's pretty much how it's been for every attempt at a major OWS event since; police in riot gear pepper spray/tear gas the shit out of people, arrest a bunch of them, all while making sure to tell reporters that they are absolutely not welcome. What the fuck did you expect? OWS to declare war on the U.S. government and start brawling openly with police officers in the streets?

No, OWS was shut down and the members moved on to different things. It's honestly kind of creepy. We now know (years later) that OWS basically got handed off to the same people who are supposed to investigate domestic terror cells. Given how fucking rare terrorist attacks are, odds are good the Joint Terrorism Task Force has spent more man-hours investigating the people involved in Occupy movements than it has actual "I want to blow shit up" terrorists. I wonder if the FBI slips people into Bernie protests to keep an eye out for any unsavory anti-capitalist tendencies?

I'm talking on first principles, even before the jackbooted thugs came out. They put the boots to the movement, but the movement never had a clear voice outside of remove the fucks playing dice with our livelihoods.

Bernie has taken the general idea of OWS and turned it into an actual platform with actual goals, which is why he's successful. He also serves as a proper figurehead to rally behind that can't as easily be co-opted or swept away.

[DSMatticus]

I'm talking on first principles, even before the jackbooted thugs came out. They put the boots to the movement, but the movement never had a clear voice outside of remove the fucks playing dice with our livelihoods.

Bernie has taken the general idea of OWS and turned it into an actual platform with actual goals, which is why he's successful. He also serves as a proper figurehead to rally behind that can't as easily be co-opted or swept away.

Again, this sort of shit is completely disconnected from reality. Do you think Bernie Sanders just magically happened? Do you think people are still talking about "the 99%" and "the 1%" because... reasons? Do you think the resurgence of the campaign for minimum wage hikes happened because fairies visited the Democratic party in their dreams?

When OWS first started getting media coverage, it was more popular in polls than the fucking Tea Party. It wasn't until the media seized on the narrative that you are now parroting - "disorganized hippie rabble, young naive idealists with too much time on their hands and no idea how to get anything done, waste of time really" - and hammered that into everyone for a month that those ratings started slipping. But the fact is that OWS was about as much a success as anyone could have ever reasonably dreamed. It proved that yes, progressive policy actually is wildly popular and Democratic voters don't have to settle for letting centrists whine about how "doing the right thing is hard and in the end it would be easier to just roll over and take it." It kick-started a bunch of concrete movements who are getting policy through state and local governments right now, some of which still have "Occupy" in the name. And if the media didn't automatically shit on leftist movements out of instinctual contempt (and the government didn't literally dust off their "how to oppress and intimidate political dissenters" playbook from the 60's), it probably would have been a much larger and much more popular thing.

I can tell you right now that people did not start giving a shit about income inequality because a rich old white guy who's spent half his life in politics made it a part of his presidential campaign platform. People are not excited about income inequality because Sanders is campaigning on it. People are excited about Sanders because he is campaigning on income equality. And to a very large extent you can thank OWS for that, because it really did sledgehammer those issues into the public's mind and mainstream political discourse.

[Username17]

The idea that OWS didn't have a list of demands or a coherent narrative or whatever is pretty much 100% bullshit. Occupy Wallstreet had a short and punchy list of complaints and a reasonably accurate narrative of how those things became problems and what should be done about them. The fact that they were against big corporations having lots of power over our economy and politics and the media is owned by big corporations that have a lot of power over our economy and politics is absolutely the reason that the narrative that the OWS movement lacked goals or strategies and wasn't worth listening to got spread - by the media.

As far as OWS getting representation in congress, the best example is Elizabeth Warren. She's a big noise among people who want to curb the power of financial companies and the number one name floated when OWS types discuss who they want to see as president. She is the leader and congressional representative that the media claimed OWS never had and would never get.

As far as how that ties into the current election: OWS people did try to convince Warren to run for president this cycle, but she declined. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have courted her endorsement, but she has remained neutral. She is frequently floated as a possible Vice President, especially for Bernie Sanders (even by Bernie Sanders). Honestly, I think it is most likely that she will remain a senator regardless of who wins the primary, and that her endorsement will come only after all the states have voted (and for whoever the nominee is established to be at that point). Her endorsement will be a pretty big deal because OWS positions are still quite popular among partisans of both Bernie and Hillary.

-Username17

[RobbyPants]

The real fun of a brokered convention is that you're not limited to the candidates that were actively running - pretty much anybody is fair game.

I heard once last week that Romney was considering running, and everyone asked how he'd be able to get the delegates, and this was the answer given. Now, I have only heard this one time, and the person who posted it wasn't sure if it's true. Has anyone heard anything else, or is this just some weird rumor?

[angelfromanotherpin]

It's a real thing, for a fairly low value of real. There's talk about it in various media outlets, he's commented on the possibility, etc. But consideration seems to be as far as it's gone, there's no visible action yet beyond his anti-Trump speech.

[RobbyPants]

After his "Trump's a failed businessman" speech, I was surprised that Trump didn't fire back with "Romney's a failed politician". Or maybe he did and I missed it.

[Leress]

What were the demands/goals of OWS? I've been looking around and have not found a concrete answer. I found couple of list that have some overlap but not a unified list or final draft of goals.

[Username17]

What were the demands/goals of OWS? I've been looking around and have not found a concrete answer. I found couple of list that have some overlap but not a unified list or final draft of goals.

Their #1 demand was simply to roll back changes to the tax code and regulations that give more wealth and political power to the largest corporations and wealthiest individuals.

Their #2 demand was to provide for aid programs such as student debt relief, healthcare subsidies, and unemployment insurance that would give a boost in standards of living for people below the top 1%.

These demands were so reasonable and so broadly popular that the media refused to accept that they had been made in the first place.

-Username17