Election 2016

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 7:47 am

Tim Kaine is basically the polar opposite of Sanders on the issues which were divisive during the Democratic primary. As a VP pick, he is more than disappointing - he's straight up insulting. I don't know if Hillary Clinton misunderstands her position (you were the moderate in your primary, Clinton - you lost the youth vote, whose unusually high turnout handed Obama a bunch of swing states, and if you want to follow his winning formula that is the part of his coalition you are currently on shaky ground with) or if this is part of some deliberate strategy to swing right on economics for the general to... pick up all those #NeverTrumps who are totally still going to vote for Trump?

FrankTrollman wrote:This is Clinton playing it safe. She responded to Trump picking pro-tobacco hate lizard Pence by nominating an unexciting pol who doesn't have any extreme positions that Hillary doesn't already have and thus won't produce any new lines of attack in the media. Disappointing, but unsurprising.

Honestly, financial deregulation is an extreme position. It is opposed by a significant majority of Republican voters and an overwhelming majority of Democratic voters. Tim Kaine is a... weird choice. He is not a concession to the factions of the Democratic party which opposed Clinton. In the context of the Democratic primary, he's not even an inoffensive blank slate. It's really hard to interpret Tim Kaine as anything but a swing right for the sake of swinging right. I already know I'm going to be stuck reading a lot of bullshit about Tim Kaine from the annoying fucking Sanders supporters I know, and for once there really seems to be no better response than... "well, yeah, but what are you gonna do, vote for Trump?"

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 7:56 am

So what will Trump do after he loses the election? Just go "Oh well, I still have my TV shows. I can still start something up, get some loans, funnel the money into my own pockets, bankrupt the companies and walk away with all the money while other people have to deal with the fallout."? Go "Awesome, now I finally get to take all that superPAC money that this was all about"? Throw a massive tantrum on TV and/or twitter and then give eight more years of complaining that the election was rigged?

Overall, are we likely to see more or less of him after this?

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 1:01 pm

There will be some death throes but then Trump should fall to the background. The media will quickly focus on the new president.

Assuming the optimistic scenario where he loses. Until Hillary is officcially elected anything can happen.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 1:53 pm

Koumei wrote:Throw a massive tantrum on TV and/or twitter and then give eight more years of complaining that the election was rigged?

Something like this, but hopefully not for four or eight years. Remember what a staunch birther he was when Obama won. I'm sure he'll have some super "legitimate" gripe on why Clinton can't legally be president, and he'll tell twitter and anyone with a microphone all about it.

icyshadowlord · Post by **icyshadowlord** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 2:44 pm

So, how long till the actual elections start? I ain't American so I ain't exactly on track with all the hijinks over there.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 2:59 pm

The US presidential elections are held on the Tuesday which follows the first Monday in November of years evenly divisible by 4. The only variability in date is the range from November 2nd to November 8th. This year, it is the 8th, due to the way weekdays fall on the calendar.

However, the rules about whether and why a voter can early vote or cast an absentee ballot by mail vary between the individual States - if it actually matters for somebody casting a vote I will happily look up the rules for any particular State.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 4:50 pm

I'm still wondering if Trump is going to quit at some point before the election. I figure if his campaign ever runs out of money (a distinct possibility), he might claim he isn't getting enough support from the GOP and ditch.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 6:30 pm

Ancient History wrote:I'm still wondering if Trump is going to quit at some point before the election. I figure if his campaign ever runs out of money (a distinct possibility), he might claim he isn't getting enough support from the GOP and ditch.

After going through the convention and getting everyone (minus Ted Cruz) to go on TV and act like the guy they preached was a joke will now save the country? I think we're past the period where he is on his own. Now the GOP is stuck with him for keeps.

As for Hill's VP pick no one I know seems to even care. People I see are either already extremely anti Hillary and anti Trump or they are anti one or the other. The prevailing consensus among the people I know is to either go 3rd party or write in the name of their preferred candidate (usually Bernie or Cruz). A conservative fellow from Canada who is running a Shadowrun PbP group I'm in is really pushing Gary Johnson and I've been seeing his face more and more on my feed with his biggest qualifier being 'I'm not Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump'.

This has, more than anything, convinced me to actually go out and vote for Hillary more than anything else because people are being so stupid about Hillary that it is actually pissing me off. It's Obama all over again where there are really legitimate things to shake an angry fist at him over but everyone seems so stuck on non issues and lies that I find myself defending him (and now Clinton) more than I've ever really wanted to if only just to tell people to stop buying into bullshit.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 6:51 pm

I love that the VP announcement for Hillary involved her and Kaine fist bumping.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 9:33 pm

DSM wrote:Tim Kaine is basically the polar opposite of Sanders on the issues which were divisive during the Democratic primary. As a VP pick, he is more than disappointing - he's straight up insulting.

That's a really surreal way to look at it. People voted between Sanders running on overturning the status quo and Hillary running on being Obama's third term. As you may recall, Hillary fucking won. By a lot. Having her choose a Biden Democrat to play the Biden role is not weird. It's not an insult. It's an extremely expected and normal choice. Biden Democrats are very popular with Democrats when they are playing the Biden role, as evidenced by the fact that the actual Joe Biden is popular with Democrats whilst being a literally perfect example of a Biden Democrat and also serving in the Joe Biden role.

As far as Kaine's positions being the opposite of Sanders, that's not actually true. And it doesn't all go in Sanders' favor either - Tim Kaine is getting high marks for fighting the NRA and fighting for immigrants, which were both weak spots for Sanders. He is from the moderate wing of the Democratic party, but there's no reason or excuse to claim that his existence is some sort of affront to Sanders or that it would be bad for that to be the case.

Tim Kaine is a senator from a purple state that is turning blue but still has a Republican legislature thanks to gerrymandering. And looked at in that light, I'm warming to him. Like, when I heard that he "supported right to work legislation" I grit my teeth because right to work laws are extremely odious. But he got 100% from the AFL-CIO, which seemed impossible to square in my mind with supporting right to work legislation. From what I can tell, Tim Kaine did really complicated tap dances involving not supporting a repeal of Virginia's right to work laws (which wouldn't have passed anyway thanks to a Republican majority legislature), but did support the interpretation of Department of Labor regulations that made Boeing plant closings forbidden as a punitive measure rather than.... and I am already bored. The point is that Tim Kaine worked with the hand he was dealt and did things for actual workers in the real world even within the context of a state with a very anti-worker set of laws.

The framing that the Clinton campaign is using is:

Kaine SUCCESSFULLY took on NRA in a gun state, smoking in a tobacco state, climate change in a coal state.

And that's not unfair. Tim Kaine is from a very purple state that was painted bright red in the very recent past. Virginia voted for Bob Dole over Bill Clinton and George W Bush over Al Gore. And of course it was the capital of the Confederacy. And within that context, Tim Kaine has advanced positions that have moved that state to the Left almost across the board. While his stated positions sound pretty tepid and uninspiring to me, and he earns himself the rank of "40th most liberal senator," he still maintains really stellar legislative scorecards from the pressure groups I care about.

So he says that he thinks abortion is wrong and yadda yadda yadda, but he maintains a 100% rating from both NARAL and Planned Parenthood. This is basically the Biden thing again.

Tim Kaine score pretty bad for ideological purity. But he scores pretty high for getting things done that move things in the correct direction. I can live with it.

But I would have rather had Xavier Becerra.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 10:38 pm

As a lead off: Tim Kaine is a perfect microcosm of the Hillary Clinton as President Macrocosm. He's a competent useful guy who did good work as governor of Virginia. He's a VP, so really, him being more to the right than Clinton isn't even a problem, because his sole actual job is to get her elected, give speeches, and occasionally make decisions when she's incapacitated if that happens.

But on the other hand, the entire problem with Hillary Clinton is that she randomly wishes she could just be a Republican in some alternative universe were the Republicans didn't decide that fucking minorities was their one and only goal, and being insane on every issue and never compromising is a worthy goal, and Tim Kaine is basically a promise to triple down on being a Republican in an alternate universe. It's just another promise that under absolutely no circumstances will any meaningful corporate regulation of any kind will ever come out of the Clinton whitehouse. Which is just really weird because:

FrankTrollman wrote:but there's no reason or excuse to claim that his existence is some sort of affront to Sanders or that it would be bad for that to be the case.

Yeah no. If your official position is FUCK EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE PARTY WHO DIDN'T VOTE FOR ME, you really shouldn't be surprised when they don't like you.

And every time you post, you keep claiming that The Only Right Thing To Do! is for Clinton to rape the left more gently than Trump, and if she ever stops raping the left, that would be bad, because she has to rape the left, because all the people who voted for her and not Sanders only did so because they wanted to see everything Sanders ever said burned to the ground.

And this is basically the highest grade of nonsense, because even though it's definitely true that the vast majority of people who voted for Clinton did not do so because they oppose Sander's policies, more importantly, the people who voted for Clinton did so when she was literally saying the same things he was! You can't say that Clinton getting more votes means she has to abandon her own promises and claims because a vote for Clinton was an explicit vote to kill all Sanders voters in gulags.

And I'm mostly joking about gulags and rapes, but only because I know Clinton doesn't support those things, not because Frank "Fuck All Sanders Voters" Trollman wouldn't actually advocate those things.

TL;DR: That thing where you disagree with one person about one thing and then immediately decide they are wrong about everything, and then decide they are literally Hitler and the worst enemy that has ever existed. You should probably stop doing that to Democrats. I mean, don't get me wrong, the time to stop was a long time ago, at the very latest, when Sanders officially endorsed Clinton (although probably way before then when Clinton stopped doing it), but we are definitely way past the point when you should advocate that pissing of democrats to the Left is a moral good in and of itself that should be Clinton's only goal in life.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 11:31 pm

Even the TL;DR was too long. TL;DR - Kaelik has a Hard On for hating Frank and for straw as a construction material. Dude, whatever point you want to make is lost in a morass of hyperbole and vitriole.

Do VP choices since 1988 tend to be more or less moderate than their Prez running mate or is it across the board? Seems like across the board. Biden supposedly was used to balance the Foreign experience with Obama's lack thereof rather than ideological balance.

I'm not exactly certain what balancing factors to the ticket Kaine brings but I'm also not certain that ticket balance isn't a silly political hypothesis with no real gain. I guess he brings a penis to the ticket but those are pretty common. I suppose he brings Virginia further blue which is nice, and seems a safe and reliable choice.

While I'm disappointed the Veep isn't everything I want in a prez candidate, I can understand wanting a safe option when the alternative is a survival bunker builder's wet dream.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jul 23, 2016 11:39 pm

erik wrote:Even the TL;DR was too long. TL;DR - Kaelik has a Hard On for hating Frank and for straw as a construction material. Dude, whatever point you want to make is lost in a morass of hyperbole and vitriole.

My points are and remain:

1) People voting for Clinton does not mean that they reject Sander's policies.
2) People voting for Clinton definitely doesn't mean rejecting the positions that Clinton specifically advocated in the debates and in her messages, even if Sanders also advocated them.
3) Deciding that it is your moral duty to fuck the people who didn't vote for you in your own party is a bad idea.
4) Frank has definitely said 3 multiple times, and if you don't believe that it is because you want to live in a world where he doesn't say it, and delude yourself, because he regularly says that all the time.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 12:15 am

Sanders won 43.1% of the vote. That is not a negligible number of people who do not deserve representation from the party leadership. They are a large number of people who are going to receive very little representation from the party leadership because "LOL WHERE ELSE YOU GONNA GO BITCH?", and having Hillary Clinton choose Tim Kaine instead of a more progressive (or even more average Democrat) VP is acknowledgement that she would rather court centrists and possibly mythical moderate Republicans than court progressives. It's probably the most genuinely insulting thing Clinton has done to progressives thus far, because the entire fucking race she drifted leftward to match Sanders (exactly as we wanted) and now that the primary is over it is immediately back to business as usual with a turn-to-the-right. I mean, we're talking about someone who waged a Kasich-style attack on abortion when he was governor (he's been better in the Senate, admittedly, but even the asshole Democrats usually try not to rock the party's boat) and just wants to hand as much money to billionaires as possible while not being a total asshole to minorities. Tim Kaine is literally the Republican that the Republican establishment wishes they could be (or at least brand themself as). That is what he is.

Erik wrote:Even the TL;DR was too long. TL;DR - Kaelik has a Hard On for hating Frank and for straw as a construction material. Dude, whatever point you want to make is lost in a morass of hyperbole and vitriole.

No, he's pretty much fucking right. Frank is getting kicked in the face and not only saying "well, shit, it beats the alternative," but "she doesn't mean it!"

Obama won the youth and progressive votes in 2008. It made sense for him to pick a moderate VP, because it complemented what he already brought to the table and despite the race being much closer it was far less ideologically divisive. But Clinton wasn't the progressive candidate this time around, either; she was the moderate, and she lost the youth and progressive votes hard. She lost them harder this time than she did in 2008. Either she is predicting that those people will vote for her anyway and therefore do not need the concession OR that she would rather win without them by drifting to the right - and in both cases that is a giant middle finger to Sanders supporters. It's a message that the Democratic party will continue to stand for economic centrism until they stop being able to win elections with it - even if a self-described democratic socialist pulled in more than 2/5ths of the party's primary voters.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 12:36 am

DSMatticus wrote:Obama won the youth and progressive votes in 2008. It made sense for him to pick a moderate VP, because it complemented what he already brought to the table and despite the race being much closer it was far less ideologically divisive. But Clinton wasn't the progressive candidate this time around, either; she was the moderate, and she lost the youth and progressive votes hard. She lost them harder this time than she did in 2008. Either she is predicting that those people will vote for her anyway and therefore do not need the concession OR that she would rather win without them by drifting to the right - and in both cases that is a giant middle finger to Sanders supporters. It's a message that the Democratic party will continue to stand for economic centrism until they stop being able to win elections with it - even if a self-described democratic socialist pulled in more than 2/5ths of the party's primary voters.

Just once I'd like to see the Democrats try to energize their base instead of telling us how deeply ashamed of us they are and how much they really wish we'd stop making them say things about regulations and taxes.

Tim Kaine actually is not as bad as you are making him out to be, as Governor he was pro tax increase and while what he did as Governor was really bad (as regards abortion) calling it Kaisch style is a bit too much, and he sounds like he legitimately changed his position, and as a general rule, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt on that sort of thing.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 1:20 am

This did me a little good to read: https://gregfallis.com/2016/07/17/yeah- ... ifference/

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 2:36 am

Kaine proposed $4 billion in tax increases which he failed to get through the state legislature and so instead ended up cutting about $4 billion worth of public spending, and you could have a legitimate argument about how much that was forced on him by circumstance and how much he was secretly jumping for joy inside. Even if he is exactly the sort of crook I think he is, I am perfectly willing to admit he is at least somewhat more moderate on fiscal issues (and even abortion) than so-called "moderate" Republicans like Kasich, but he is still fundamentally an ideological enemy of the vast majority of the Democratic party - not even Hillary Clinton's supporters want deregulation and abortion restrictions. He represents a very narrow set of very corrupt interests, and is from the wing of the party where those interests have made inroads.

And in truth, the media is massively understating the real difference between Biden and Kaine. Here are 538's numbers, because even if I fucking hate their writing they still do math gud. You'll note that the two have a very close average, but you should also note that Kaine's average is being pulled way to the fucking left by his fundraising - so far left that his average score is no longer even between the score given to him for his public statements and his voting record! That's not true of Biden, whose fundraising is a mild leftward tug that leaves him pretty much still in the middle of the two. That really just tells us that Kaine ran in a lot of competitive races with a bunch of Republicans who were even bigger assholes - and that's pretty much it. If you measure the two by word and deed, then Biden is the most progressive VP of my lifetime and Kaine is somewhere between Edwards and Lieberman - clearly the signs of a successful Democratic ticket, especially in 2016.

No, Kaine is definitely us getting fucked in the ass. He's not just a bigger asshole than everyone says he is, having him on the ticket is a step backwards for the party from Biden.

Kaelik wrote:he sounds like he legitimately changed his position, and as a general rule, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt on that sort of thing.

Honestly, I don't think he changed position at all. I think he went from a state office to a federal office, and as such had to start saying and doing different things in order to keep the support of the national party. I mean, that's a good thing - "I'm moderately pro-choice because I need the DNC more than they need me" is better than "I'm moderately pro-life because I'm an asshole."

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 4:02 am

So Hillary will be dragging Kaine to the left then I'm hearing? I seriously doubt he will remain unmoved on abortion, let alone that he could drag her to the right there. They're both corporate democrats, but I think I can at least survive that breed of stupid holding office until demographic shifts cause the GOP to crumble to pieces. They're not on the left everywhere I want, but at least they're on the left everywhere I need right now.

Honestly all I can hope for is for us to hang in there for 10-20 years while the federal courts get enough liberals to stem the tide of arguments in opposition to facts and logic that has gripped the Republican party and a disturbing plurality of our nation. That should let us hold on and prevent voter disenfranchisement, the last dark hope for the GOP, until demographics snuff out the push for policies of fear and hate that ignore facts and logic. If we make more in-roads forward in the mean time that's gravy, just keep us from backsliding so my kids can live as happily as I have.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 4:09 am

I'm curious as to what Denizens' opinions are on the DNC's apparent orchestration of Hillary's nomination. Also what we could practically do to tell the DNC that that shit doesn't fly other than shooting ourselves in the heads with a big golden pea-shooter that says TRUMP on the side.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 4:43 am

I'm waiting to see what wrongdoing they actually did besides grousing that some independent was screwing up their primary largely on the power of shitty caucuses. I'm not saying I agree, but I understand their frustration. I haven't heard of any wrongdoing yet, just them bitching and spitballing ideas to work against Bernie... not that they actually acted on these ideas, or if any were acted on at what level. So far it is just gossip.

Trump has already tried to say that if Sanders supports Clinton then he is a fraud, which I think is a misstep since trying to defame Sanders doesn't draw him Sander's supporters. But Trump gonna Trump.

In the ticket balance issue for Kaine. What I'm reading on first reactions to him via various editorials is that his balance seems to be that he's so fucking personable and clean that even Trump cannot think of a stupid nickname for him. I'm sure he'll come up with something eventually, but so far no dice.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 4:48 am

erik wrote:I'm not exactly certain what balancing factors to the ticket Kaine brings but I'm also not certain that ticket balance isn't a silly political hypothesis with no real gain. I guess he brings a penis to the ticket but those are pretty common. I suppose he brings Virginia further blue which is nice, and seems a safe and reliable choice.

As far as I can tell, Hillary is appealing to the people who don't want to vote for Trump but are on the fence about her. She picked a religious gun-owner who talks fiscally conservative because those are the things he has in common with the stereotypical Republican voter. I think she's probably afraid that if she moves any more left, she'll alienate the moderate independents and Republicans who don't want Trump.

But it's really uninspiring. I'll vote for Clinton come the election, but I feel like I'm voting for things to not get more shitty as opposed to things getting better.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 4:56 am

erik wrote:Honestly all I can hope for is for us to hang in there for 10-20 years while the federal courts get enough liberals to stem the tide of arguments in opposition to facts and logic that has gripped the Republican party and a disturbing plurality of our nation. That should let us hold on and prevent voter disenfranchisement, the last dark hope for the GOP, until demographics snuff out the push for policies of fear and hate that ignore facts and logic. If we make more in-roads forward in the mean time that's gravy, just keep us from backsliding so my kids can live as happily as I have.

If you believe that after 10-20 more years of everyone saying every day for all eternity that socialism is evil and we must bow to our corporate overlords, that there being a bunch of black people, hispanics, and young white voters who grew up being socially liberal but still being told every day by the democrats and republicans that the only economic path forward is to lower taxes even more and make sure people can spend their money to buy politicians, that somehow we will end up with actual leftists ever, then you are deluded.

I mean, if you are actually a socially liberal technocrat, sure, no reason for you to care that the socially liberal technocrats will hold the democratic party and all the actual leftists hostage for the rest of your life by saying "Either give us all the power, or you get facism." Because you are the ones benefiting from shitting all over the left.

But if you are an actual leftist, it should probably bother you that there is no path forward to actual leftism ever as long as you live, because demographics is never going to produce leftists as long as leftism is taboo, which it always will be until the democratic party ever stops trying to paint themselves as "We promise to uphold the Reagan Status Quo on the Economy Forever."

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 4:57 am

erik wrote:So Hillary will be dragging Kaine to the left then I'm hearing? I seriously doubt he will remain unmoved on abortion, let alone that he could drag her to the right there. They're both corporate democrats, but I think I can at least survive that breed of stupid holding office until demographic shifts cause the GOP to crumble to pieces. They're not on the left everywhere I want, but at least they're on the left everywhere I need right now.

Honestly all I can hope for is for us to hang in there for 10-20 years while the federal courts get enough liberals to stem the tide of arguments in opposition to facts and logic that has gripped the Republican party and a disturbing plurality of our nation. That should let us hold on and prevent voter disenfranchisement, the last dark hope for the GOP, until demographics snuff out the push for policies of fear and hate that ignore facts and logic. If we make more in-roads forward in the mean time that's gravy, just keep us from backsliding so my kids can live as happily as I have.

Well, nobody actually gives a shit about the vice president. Vice presidents don't really do anything except dress nice and give speeches and kind-of-sort-of help the president be in two places at once. Kaine isn't going to get to call any shots about anything unless Clinton croaks unexpectedly, and while that is a mildly horrifying thought it's wildly unlikely and still better than the alternative. The scary thing about Kaine is that it could be a portent of things to come - an attempted rightward shift in the Democratic party to fill the gap left by the Republican party's spiral into madness.

It's likely that we'll end up redrawing the political landscape over the next decade, and Sanders' strong showing made me think that progressives would come out in a better position than before; Tim Kaine as VP is something of an unpleasant wakeup call. If the Democratic party really does decide to treat Republican weakness as a chance to drift further right economically, that'd be... really fucking bad.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 5:21 am

DSM wrote:Even if he is exactly the sort of crook I think he is, I am perfectly willing to admit he is at least somewhat more moderate on fiscal issues (and even abortion) than so-called "moderate" Republicans like Kasich, but he is still fundamentally an ideological enemy of the vast majority of the Democratic party - not even Hillary Clinton's supporters want deregulation and abortion restrictions.

Tim Kaine gets 100% from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, the people who actually scrutinize peoples' legislative records for real effect on abortion. Whatever the fuck Tim Kaine publicly says about Abortion, the actual effect he has had has been pro-choice. Note that Biden hems and haws about how as a Catholic he doesn't believe in abortion and yadda yadda yadda as well. And yet he still miraculously comes down on the right side when it comes to actual policy making.

Prak wrote:I'm curious as to what Denizens' opinions are on the DNC's apparent orchestration of Hillary's nomination. Also what we could practically do to tell the DNC that that shit doesn't fly other than shooting ourselves in the heads with a big golden pea-shooter that says TRUMP on the side.

The fact that Democrats had positions on the Democratic primary is not remotely surprising. The fact that many members of the DNC supported the candidate who has strongly supported the DNC for 48 years over the candidate who has tepidly supported the DNC for 2 years while still publicly attacking it repeatedly and calling it a corrupt institution is also not remotely surprising.

The emails also don't show members of the DNC actually doing anything to ratfuck the primary. There are no dirty tricks performed. There are certainly discussions about what they could do to try to sink the Sanders candidacy, but the actions discussed were never taken. We know this because the primaries are over and it's historical reality that those things did not happen. Since we're looking at a selective release by what are probably pro-Putin hackers (who favor Trump), there's no particular reason to believe the DNC didn't wargame scenarios where they would try to sink the candidacy of Hillary Clinton that we simply aren't seeing. Given the multi-million dollar Clinton investigation industry, the DNC had to allow for the possibility that the constant investigations would find something that would actually make her unelectable in the general. If those emails exist - and they should - we will probably never see them because the wikileaks dump is a selection of emails cherry-picked to make Team Clinton look as bad as possible.

The DNC's job is to help Democrats win elections. Part of that job would be to make sure extremely damaging candidates like Trump don't win primaries. That strategists discussed scenarios where they made a big deal of Bernie Sanders being a non-Christian in areas where non-Christians would have a severe uphill battle to get elected and then didn't do that means that they were doing their fucking job. If Bernie Sanders looked like he was going to win the nomination and something had happened where it looked like he couldn't win the general election and Hillary could, then absolutely the DNC should have put their thumb on the scales in any way they could think of. That wasn't the situation and their contingency plans were unused - which is also proper of them.

The Wikileaks thing is very strange. Russian hackers released selective documents proving that the DNC definitely was doing its job and acted appropriately during the campaign despite many members having a personal dislike of Bernie Sanders. How this is supposed to be a scandal is beyond me.

erik wrote:I'm not exactly certain what balancing factors to the ticket Kaine brings but I'm also not certain that ticket balance isn't a silly political hypothesis with no real gain. I guess he brings a penis to the ticket but those are pretty common. I suppose he brings Virginia further blue which is nice, and seems a safe and reliable choice.

From a pure 2016 electoral strategy standpoint, Hillary is ahead in every state that Obama won and some others. Obama is currently president because he won enough states to win the general election. So for Hillary to lose, Trump has to win every Romney state and flip some non-zero number of Obama states. Tim Kaine is popular among white people in purple and light blue Eastern and Southern states. If the Vice President can bring any electoral wins at all, and he delivers Pennsylvania and Virginia, the election is over and Hillary Clinton will be the next president.

From a long term electoral politics standpoint, the future of the Democratic Party looks rosier the more the growing Hispanic population are encouraged to vote and to vote Blue. Donald Trump is a trufula tree whose only fruit is hatred, and that certainly acts as a motivator to get Mexican Americans to the polls. But Tim Kaine also delivered a pro-immigration speech in Spanish on the floor of the Senate in 2013. I don't know how much hispandering is going to help, but it certainly can't hurt. I think Xavier Becerra would have been better hispandering, but having the white guy who speaks Spanish and tells immigrants "Thanks for choosing us." ain't bad.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Jul 24, 2016 5:30 am

Frank wrote:The Wikileaks thing is very strange. Russian hackers released selective documents proving that the DNC definitely was doing its job and acted appropriately during the campaign despite many members having a personal dislike of Bernie Sanders. How this is supposed to be a scandal is beyond me.

[unnecessary disclaimer about my not being even a political junkie]

Assuming you're correct about the source and motive behind the leak, I would guess optics. Whether true or no, there have been a number of incidents that look to the average (not particularly politically savvy) voter like the DNC was taking sides and suppressing Bernie voters and sabotaging Bernie's campaign.

True or no, that's what the events look like to "the man on the street." So I would imagine the "scandal" is being put forth to make the average Dem voter think that the DNC did ratfuck Sanders and motivate them to vote Trump, or at least split the Dem vote, in "protest."