Election 2016

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed May 11, 2016 1:25 am

I think they have till the 23rd to register as Dem or unaffiliated so they can vote in the Dem primary.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed May 11, 2016 3:29 am

It's one of the big problems with open primaries, yes. And one of the big reasons the Sanders wins in open primaries ate highly dubious and not an indication that he's more electable in the general.

Also today was Nebtaska's non-binding primary. Like Washington, Nebraska holds a caucus early in the year so the state gets paid attention to, even though there is a regular primary election later in the year that then doesn't count for delegates. Sanders won the Nebraska Caucus 58-42, and lost the nonbonding primary with nearly three times the votes in it 39-61.

-Username17

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed May 11, 2016 3:30 am

Isn't it great how our primary voting lasts half the goddamn year instead of being decided in a single fucking day? What could possibly go wrong? It's not like one race could finish before the other and leave an entire party's worth of voters to go deny democracy to people they don't like.

That said, there are ~830 pledged delegates left up for grabs and Bernie would need to win ~70% of them to flip the pledged delegate totals. That's a level of dedicated primary trolling that is pretty much unheard of. The impressive margins on his win in West Virgina win blew polls-based models out of water, but fit demographic-based models very well. And it still wasn't enough to meet his targets for turning the race around - and I believe that's the whitest state left in the race.

EDIT:

FrankTrollman wrote: It's one of the big problems with open primaries, yes. And one of the big reasons the Sanders wins in open primaries ate highly dubious and not an indication that he's more electable in the general.

I don't really think it's a problem with open primaries. It's a problem because the process is staged, and that means that a fuckton of voters who clearly would have voted in one primary can be freed up to trollvote in a different one because their primary happened to finish first.

If we got this shit over with all at once, that bullshit would only be an issue if one party had a noncompetitive primary - which honestly doesn't happen that often. Even incumbents tend to have semiserious contenders, if only because they want to establish that their ideological wing of the party deserves recognition and concessions.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed May 11, 2016 5:29 am

You don't understand DSM, it is important that Frank cast all past support of Sanders as imaginary lies caused by republicans, even when it doesn't apply because.... Because Sanders is the enemy? I mean, death to Sanders? I mean, okay there is no good reason, he just got lost in his side or the highway and in his mind declared the others his enemies regardless of how little sense that makes on so many levels, and he has basically slipped into the same flaw that pollutes the 8% of Sanders voters who would vote for Trump.

That's why we have to blame Sanders supporters for 2010 primaries, and call them racists and sexist whenever we can too. TO FIGHT THE ENEMY.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed May 11, 2016 6:28 am

There are good solid reasons for a country as large and media rich to have staged primary campaigns. Campaigns are expensive, and it is unreasonable to ask relative unknowns like Obama and Sanderd to compete in California, Texas, New York, and Florida at the same time. We start with one small state from each of four regions (east, west, midwest, and south) and then move up from there. And in abstract, that's right. A candidate should be able to show they can connect with voters from different parts of the country before they have to scrounge up the money to pay for adds in New York and Los Angeles. Campaigns in small and relatively inexpensive media markets are good bush leagues to show who has hame and who's a scrub without leaving the choice up to a shadowy cabal of billionaire mega donors.

That being said, it is dumb that we don't rotate which small state has the "honor" of being pushed off the ice flow first. We shouldn't do Iowa and New Hampshire first every time because those states are dumb. Some cycles it should be Delaware instead of New Hampshire and Oregon instead of Nevada - but it should still be one small state from each region each cycle. Just different ones.

Thereafter I don't much care whethet we do regional primaries or stages of increasingly large states. But it should all be compressed into a series of election weekends where start to finish is less than three months. Yes, that isn't a long time to get the funding to contest the big media markets off a good showing in Alabama or whatever the fuck, but a potential President of the United Fucking States should be able to upscale their operations quickly.

As for the Sanders campaign, his big wins outside of Vermont have come from open primaries and caucuses. Yesterday's results show both of those as being highly suspect. In Nebraska the results flipped when there was a higher turnout primary vs. a lower turnout caucus. And in West Virgina the winner got 52 percent of the vote while apparently having 39 percent of their votes be trollface votes from the other side. The narrative that these types of contests more accurately reflect the will of the people is clearly false.

-Username17

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Wed May 11, 2016 6:56 am

Kaelik wrote:You don't understand DSM, it is important that Frank cast all past support of Sanders as imaginary lies caused by republicans, even when it doesn't apply because.... Because Sanders is the enemy? I mean, death to Sanders? I mean, okay there is no good reason, he just got lost in his side or the highway and in his mind declared the others his enemies regardless of how little sense that makes on so many levels, and he has basically slipped into the same flaw that pollutes the 8% of Sanders voters who would vote for Trump.

Being fair, Sanders has burned through a lot of sympathy in the past few weeks as he has continued his effectively hopeless campaign and as he's made noise about the superdelegates, contesting the convention, and other such things.

From the moment Cruz and Kasich dropped out the number one global political priority of all reasonable people became stopping the election of Donald Trump. The current actions of the Sanders campaign have not indicated a clear understanding of that reality, and that's really freaking worrying since right now Sanders has more power than any other person on the planet to deliver the presidency into Trump's hands.

If it was clear that Sanders simply wanted to play out the string through California to make a point and would get serious about unity after that, that'd be great, but that is absolutely not clear. Probably, hopefully, Sanders will come around and after being offered a suitable inducement will campaign hard for Hillary (or just against Trump) in the general election, but until that happens there's some reasonable frustration. Admittedly, it's mostly not even Sanders' fault - Cruz should have stayed in and spared us this.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed May 11, 2016 7:17 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Yesterday's results show both of those as being highly suspect.

...

And in West Virgina the winner got 52 percent of the vote while apparently having 39 percent of their votes be trollface votes from the other side.

This is why Kaelik keeps making fun of you for squeeing like a Hillary fangirl at every opportunity. You are absolutely aware that the Republican primary just ended and freed up a bunch of voters who would have otherwise turned out to support their preferred candidate to go trollvoting instead, a significant change from past primaries when Trump was just barely on target to hit the required number of delegates and needed his supporters to show up and vote for him.

You may not be aware that West Virginia, despite being incredibly conservative, finds Democratic governors to have a certain je ne sais quoi (having stuck with them for the past fifteen years, even in low turnout special elections), and that the West Virginia Democratic primary had a competitive gubernatorial race - essentially a situation that asks a bunch of Trump supporters to come voice their opinion on who the Democratic presidential candidate should be, and it's a situation that hasn't been and won't be repeated in many other states. But that's very relevant to determining whether or not West Virgina is a sign of things to come, or even a sign of things that have already come to pass (probably not, even future open primaries are unlikely to have as many trollvotes as this).

It's just so obviously spin for spin's sake, and sometimes it's right, and sometimes it's obviously not. And I really don't fucking know why you're doing it. You are not talking to the stereotypical Berniebro (which exit polling now suggests is at most ~7% of Bernie voters if West Virginia is indicative of the rest of the country, which it probably isn't - it's very conservative, and conservatives hate Hillary because benghazi!!1!), and there's really nothing to be gained by making bad arguments in favor of Hillary Clinton here. It's just... puzzling.

Mechalich wrote:Being fair, Sanders has burned through a lot of sympathy in the past few weeks as he has continued his effectively hopeless campaign and as he's made noise about the superdelegates, contesting the convention, and other such things.

Nah, Frank's been like this since the start.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Wed May 11, 2016 7:50 am

There is very little actual evidence that civilly contested nominations actually hurt candidates in the general election and even less evidence that Sanders is going to suddenly start playing dirty. Sanders staying in or dropping out has basically no effect on the inevitable Clinton vs Trump fight. The only question is whether we're looking at a Clinton/Sanders ticket (unlikely), Sanders in a Cabinet position (my guess) or policy concessions to Sanders once Hillary wins. And lets not mince words about it: Hilary is going to win. Trump is widely hated, has a shitty ground game, holds only mixed support from the Republican Party and is generally just a bit of a fuck-up. Hillary will have to fight for the victory, but its not a fight reasonable people expect her to lose.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed May 11, 2016 8:17 am

Not to mention that some of Hillary's big primary wins are currently being investigated for voter fraud because of moderators wearing pro-Hillary shirts and doing lots of shit that looks quite shady.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed May 11, 2016 9:27 am

A lot of the voter fraud allegations are being made in Republican-controlled states (cough Arizona cough), so the response is 1) of course there's fucking institutional voter fraud, that's what Republican do, and 2) the particular kinds of institutional fuckery we're talking about are targeted specifically at poor minorities, so demographically speaking if anything it's costing Hillary delegates and not the other way around. The fact is that people who went into this with demographics-based models have done fairly well, which suggests that we're getting pretty much exactly what we asked for as an electorate. Delegates are assigned proportionally and while it is absolutely true that a delegate here and there has been flipped to a candidate that didn't deserve it (probably net in Hillary's favor), it simply doesn't add up to anything worth a damn given the gap in the race.

The real moral of Arizona is that the Republican party's refusal to fund and staff an adequate number of polling places in certain precincts cut turnout in those precincts by about 75%, and that's horrifying. It's "why aren't we putting heads on spikes?" horrifying. Aaand it still probably only flipped 2-3 delegates - to Bernie.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed May 11, 2016 11:08 am

Prak wrote:Not to mention that some of Hillary's big primary wins are currently being investigated for voter fraud because of moderators wearing pro-Hillary shirts and doing lots of shit that looks quite shady.

This is basically conspiracy theorist nonsense. Hillary Clinton is ahead by millions of votes in one of the cleanest and most issue focused campaigns that have ever happened in the US. The people spreading weird stories of shady vote suppression by the Clintonists are a mixture of hopeful leftists who are in denial and disingenuous rightwing rat fuckers trying to hammer a wedge between leftists and the Democratic nominee. There is genuine fraud and a lot more voter suppression and rat fucking, but it's targeted at Clinton, not at Sanders. Rove didn't spend millions of dollars of Superpac money to influence the election for Sanders because he loves democratic socialism, he did it because he fears Clinton.

If the last thirty years of American politics have taught you one thing it should have been that if someone says there is a scandal involving the Clintons that you first, second, and third assumption should be that it is bullshit. There is an industry worth tens of millions of dollars a year that just does opposition research and whisper campaigns against the Clintons. That sounds like an exaggeration, and in a sane world it would be, but it's not.

If the worst you've heard is that something sounds shady or there is some tennuous association between Hillary and someone who might have done something wrong, that is because tens of millions of dollars of investigation with the singular goal of turning up the worst things they could say about her could not come up with anything real.

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed May 11, 2016 11:21 am

Pffft. You guys aren't striking the right tone here. I consider the following post the equivalent of ringing a doorbell with a flaming bag of dogshit left as a present.

Prak wrote:Not to mention that some of Hillary's big primary wins are currently being investigated for voter fraud because of moderators wearing pro-Hillary shirts and doing lots of shit that looks quite shady.

T-shirt gate? Oh my fucking daisies! Impeach Hillary nooooooow! How could she do this in my Merica?!

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed May 11, 2016 12:46 pm

Mechalich wrote:Being fair, Sanders has burned through a lot of sympathy in the past few weeks as he has continued his effectively hopeless campaign and as he's made noise about the superdelegates, contesting the convention, and other such things.

From the moment Cruz and Kasich dropped out the number one global political priority of all reasonable people became stopping the election of Donald Trump. The current actions of the Sanders campaign have not indicated a clear understanding of that reality, and that's really freaking worrying since right now Sanders has more power than any other person on the planet to deliver the presidency into Trump's hands.

If it was clear that Sanders simply wanted to play out the string through California to make a point and would get serious about unity after that, that'd be great, but that is absolutely not clear. Probably, hopefully, Sanders will come around and after being offered a suitable inducement will campaign hard for Hillary (or just against Trump) in the general election, but until that happens there's some reasonable frustration. Admittedly, it's mostly not even Sanders' fault - Cruz should have stayed in and spared us this.

1) As DSM points out, Frank has been making absolutely awful arguments against Sanders since the beginning. Let's not forget, I have been a Clinton supporter literally this entire time, and yet the only thing I find worth saying in this thread is "Please stop being such colossally wrong assholes when you criticize Sanders" precisely because every argument against Sanders has been fucking godawful from the beginning.

2) Sanders has definitely gotten remarkably worse over the last three months. If someone had said 3 months ago that he would be half this bad, I would have genuinely not believed them. He's absolute in the wrong at this point, and he's not helping. Three months ago, some Clinton supporters and some Sanders supporters were part of the problem. Today, many Clinton supporters, most Sanders supporters, and Sanders himself are all part of the problem. But Frank has always been part of the problem.

On a "being right is all that is important, fuck practicality" level, Sanders supports are statistically much less racist and much less sexist than the general populace, and about the same as the total Democratic population, and Sanders support is clearly a real thing that exists in like 40% of the Democratic population, and support for Sanders policy ideas is something so prevalent that Clinton had to adopt as public policies many things that she has never publicly held before (some of which she undoubtedly privately held, and some of which she probably never held before when she was publicly against them but has changed her mind about, but also some of which she is probably still privately does not give two wet shits about). So basically every criticism Frank has made from "all Sanders supporters are racist douchenozzles" to "No one really likes Sanders anyway, they are all republican shills and they always have been even back when the Republican primaries were contested" is factually wrong.

On a practical level, if I was arguing in some hypothetical TTRPG group about what to play, and two people wanted to play 5e, and two people wanted to play 3e, and one person wanted to play Shadowrun, the absolute worst possible thing to do is spend all my time explaining to the Shadowrun player that he is a racist sexist fuckface, and that he never even really liked Shadowrun, he has just been secretly tricked into supporting Shadowrun by the 5uckers. This is guaranteed to piss him the fuck off, and make him less likely to take my side and more likely to walk away.

And yet, that is all Frank has ever done in this entire thread. Now a brief note on "The Hypocrisy of Kaelik" saying that people should not be fucking assholes for practical reasons: No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying, that just like I'm a flagrant asshole to everyone one the far other side of the debate from me on every discussion in order to convince moderates or bystanders, so too, should we be flagrant assholes to Trump and his supporters, and doing that is a much more productive use of our time than calling all Sanders supporters racist sexist Republicans until they get frustrated and start saying they will vote for Trump.

Just like right now, I'm not actually expecting Frank to stop waging his one man war on the concept that people to the left of Clinton exist, because that is the most lost of all possible causes. But hey if everyone else would agree that this is a bad idea, that would be some progress.

Prak wrote:Not to mention that some of Hillary's big primary wins are currently being investigated for voter fraud because of moderators wearing pro-Hillary shirts and doing lots of shit that looks quite shady.

You are part of the problem, you idiot. Why don't you go make a post about how Sanders should stay in the race to take over when Clinton is indicted for emails and Benghazi and goes to jail, because you aren't at all completely fucking lost in lala land.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Wed May 11, 2016 5:18 pm

I've heard that the Trump-vs-Sanders numbers come from long-registered conservative Democrats: www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/upshot/where ... rmont.html

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed May 11, 2016 5:37 pm

RadiantPhoenix wrote:I've heard that the Trump-vs-Sanders numbers come from long-registered conservative Democrats: www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/upshot/where ... rmont.html

Trump vs Sanders numbers come from a lot of places. In specifically West Virgina, 39% of them come from the fact that the Republican primary is fucking over.

But still that leaves maybe 7-8% that prefer Trump to Clinton who are not actually crazy Republicans trolling.

So far as I can tell, those do not come all from long established conservative democrats. Sure most of the fucknuts probably support Sanders, if you are actually a sexist democrat (although not a racist) it might make sense to support Sanders over Clinton, and really hate Clinton. And certainly anyone who has remained a democrat for the last 50 years but is a racist is not even remotely intelligent enough to be able to figure out which candidates are actually going to help their racist cause, and probably many threw in behind Sanders when they didn't know shit about him but knew Clinton wasn't going to support racist policies, and then cognitive dissonanced their support for him like they did the last 40 years of democratic candidates in general. But that's not to say that specifically insane people who are registered democrats despite supporting 100% of republican policies make up even 5% of the Democratic primary electorship.

Most of the Sanders > Trump > Clinton support pretty clearly comes from absolutely crazy people who are extremely upset with the system, and have exactly the faintest clue who is at fault. And that Faint Clue is just enough to realize that change is good, and that Sanders change is better than Trump change, and just misleading enough to lead them to think that Clinton change is bad. I don't know where those people fall on the greater scale of past elections, but for this elections, they are basically "independants" who have been tricked by the conservative lies about Clinton (Like Prak) and who fail to comprehend how incredibly disastrous Republicans are and have been.

Now, having those two particular informational failures indicates to me that they are more likely on the "moderate both sides have legitimate points" area of the spectrum, but certainly not exclusively.

TL;DR: You have that exactly backwards:

1) Most crazy people who vote in democratic primaries vote for Sanders.

2) Most of Sanders support comes from Crazy People.

Can you tell which of these is actually the appropriate conclusion, and which one is actually crazy?

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Wed May 11, 2016 6:55 pm

Kaelik wrote:
RadiantPhoenix wrote:I've heard that the Trump-vs-Sanders numbers come from long-registered conservative Democrats: www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/upshot/where ... rmont.html
Trump vs Sanders numbers come from a lot of places. In specifically West Virgina, 39% of them come from the fact that the Republican primary is fucking over.

But still that leaves maybe 7-8% that prefer Trump to Clinton who are not actually crazy Republicans trolling.

So far as I can tell, those do not come all from long established conservative democrats. Sure most of the fucknuts probably support Sanders, if you are actually a sexist democrat (although not a racist) it might make sense to support Sanders over Clinton, and really hate Clinton. And certainly anyone who has remained a democrat for the last 50 years but is a racist is not even remotely intelligent enough to be able to figure out which candidates are actually going to help their racist cause, and probably many threw in behind Sanders when they didn't know shit about him but knew Clinton wasn't going to support racist policies, and then cognitive dissonanced their support for him like they did the last 40 years of democratic candidates in general. But that's not to say that specifically insane people who are registered democrats despite supporting 100% of republican policies make up even 5% of the Democratic primary electorship.

Kim Davis was a Democrat until 2015.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed May 11, 2016 8:07 pm

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Kim Davis was a Democrat until 2015.

And what conclusion am I supposed to draw from this fact? 20% of all democrats are actually crazy Republicans and all voted for Sanders and zero for Clinton because some idiots exist?

Look, this is really simple:

Most RPGsite users who like 3e are fucking assholes, therefore most assholes who like 3e are RPGsite users?

Do you really no understand the difference between the statements:

Sanders wins most of the psychopath conservative republicans who are inexplicably registered as democrats despite not agreeing with a single part of their platform for the last 40 years.

And

Most of Sanders support comes from psychopath conservative republicans who are inexplicably registered as democrats despite not agreeing with a single part of their platform for the last 40 years.

????

Like, really, you quoted a post that explicitly describes why it is likely that stupid crazy democrats who should have been republicans for the last 40 years would vote for sanders, and as some sort of contradiction, you point out that some current republican used to be a crazy democrat?

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Wed May 11, 2016 8:57 pm

Kaelik wrote:Like, really, you quoted a post that explicitly describes why it is likely that stupid crazy democrats who should have been republicans for the last 40 years would vote for sanders, and as some sort of contradiction, you point out that some current republican used to be a crazy democrat?

I was responding to these parts of your post:

Kaelik wrote:Trump vs Sanders numbers come from a lot of places. In specifically West Virgina, 39% of them come from the fact that the Republican primary is fucking over.

Kaelik wrote:But that's not to say that specifically insane people who are registered democrats despite supporting 100% of republican policies make up even 5% of the Democratic primary electorship.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed May 11, 2016 10:08 pm

Like I mentioned, West Virginia is a conservative state which consistently elects Democratic governors. Their love of Democrats does not extend to their state legislature, however, and the Democratic governors they do elect are among the most conservative Democrats in the country. Take Joe Manchin, for example. He is a former governor of and current senator from West Virginia. He is probably the most conservative Democrat currently in the senate and he has a peculiar habit of endorsing Republicans. Basically, West Virginia has a bunch of people who genuinely are registered Democrats but will never ever ever ever ever vote for Democrats unless those Democrats are Republicans wearing blue. They vote in Democratic primaries, but are almost straight-ticket Republicans when the general rolls around, and the only thing that can make them break rank is a Republican winning a Democratic primary.

All of that said, Sanders' supporters consistently self-identify as more liberal than Clinton's supporters. Sanders has the support of conservative "Democrats" (many of whom won't vote for him in the general, and the vast majority of whom have been voting in the Republican primary until now, what with it being so close), but the average Clinton supporter is still to the right of the average Sanders supporter.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Wed May 11, 2016 11:19 pm

West Virginia is also a rural state and rural areas in the US are weird. There are actual conservative democrats in rural areas - many of them older folks who vote based on historical patterns and/or people who have some personal reason why they refuse to vote Republican (like being gay or having a gay child, or having had to get their daughter an abortion in the last decade, being on disability, etc.). A lot of these people are pro-gun - and since people who care about guns tend to care rather strongly about them, that explains why they vote Sanders over Clinton. Gun control is pretty much the only area where Clinton is solidly to Sanders' left and that switches a number of votes in rural areas.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed May 11, 2016 11:51 pm

It's not about t shirts, really, it's about electioneering. There have been reports of Hillary campaign material being handed around outside polls, Hillary supporters were counting votes, and Bill Fucking Clinton himself walked into a polling place and did his gladhanding and campaigning for his wife.

Unlike her emails, there's actually been shady shit going on. And I actually wouldn't be at all surprised if she herself has no hand in any of it, and it was just a bunch of people being idiots out of a desire to help. I don't give a shit about her emails, I do give a shit about supporters of a candidate breaking election laws. And if you can point to Bernie supporters electioneering, I'll condemn that too, but I haven't heard of any instances of it.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu May 12, 2016 1:15 am

Prak wrote:It's not about t shirts, really, it's about electioneering. There have been reports of Hillary campaign material being handed around outside polls, Hillary supporters were counting votes, and Bill Fucking Clinton himself walked into a polling place and did his gladhanding and campaigning for his wife.

Unlike her emails, there's actually been shady shit going on. And I actually wouldn't be at all surprised if she herself has no hand in any of it, and it was just a bunch of people being idiots out of a desire to help. I don't give a shit about her emails, I do give a shit about supporters of a candidate breaking election laws. And if you can point to Bernie supporters electioneering, I'll condemn that too, but I haven't heard of any instances of it.

1) Off the top of my head, I'm not sure that much of that breaks any laws. After citizen's united, I can't see why campaigning outside polls would be against the law. It definitely isn't illegal for the people counting the votes to have preferences themselves.

2) Stupid shit happens everywhere for and against everyone. Clinton supporters say racist things, and you mostly don't hear about it because the Bernie Bro meme is what gets media attention (Though you will hear about Clinton saying racist things 100% of the time it happens, because see 2b). Sanders supporters campaign in front of polls, but you don't hear about it because Clinton is corrupt is the meme.

More specifically, there are billionaires with a vested interest in fucking over the actual nominee who everyone has known would be the nominee since before the campaign actually started, who just don't care to devote millions of dollars to slandering the second place loser, even though they absolutely would if he actual won the nominee.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu May 12, 2016 1:50 am

Looks like it varies by state, and only a few have actual bans against it in any way. Given that I don't know what states that shit was happening in... yeah, ok.

I guess Bill's actions in MA warranted a caution, but the state officials didn't see it as actually illegal. Which... kind of makes me wonder if those officials back Hillary, but, ok, fine.

And, at the end of the day, even if Clinton takes multi-hundreds of dollars speaking fees to talk to Goldman Sachs, she's nowhere near as bad as any of the GOP, so I'll take what we can get.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Thu May 12, 2016 2:47 am

Prak please stop spewing manufactured anti-Clinton talking points. There are many good reasons to dislike her policies. The fact that she accepts speaking fees (of less than 1000$, even) is not one of them.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu May 12, 2016 2:58 am

Prak wrote:Looks like it varies by state, and only a few have actual bans against it in any way. Given that I don't know what states that shit was happening in... yeah, ok.

I guess Bill's actions in MA warranted a caution, but the state officials didn't see it as actually illegal. Which... kind of makes me wonder if those officials back Hillary, but, ok, fine.

And, at the end of the day, even if Clinton takes multi-hundreds of dollars speaking fees to talk to Goldman Sachs, she's nowhere near as bad as any of the GOP, so I'll take what we can get.

Do you know who accepts speaking fees? EVERYONE WHO IS OFFERED SPEAKING FEES!

If you are going to give a speech, and someone offers to pay you, you fucking take their money. If the content or context of any of Clinton's speeches is a problem, complain about that, but don't complain that she gets paid for it.

You might as well complain that Trump sells his books instead of giving them away, it is a stupid complaint.