Election 2016

[Hiram McDaniels]

It doesn't have to play well. It has to stop the government from being all controlled by the party of wilful delusion and deliberately hurting everyone who isn't a ridiculously rich old white man at the country's expense.

It does, actually. Do you want a civil war? As it was the Trump crazies were threatening violence if he lost the election. Fuck, he WON and his cult is committing hate crimes to celebrate. Even if the dems find a way to legally prevent Trump from being inaugurated, the MAGATS will still riot, and then the police will have to shoot a lot of them, which will just feed their "Obama is a gay socialist muslim lesbian kenyan atheist dictator" narrative.

Unless they can prove that Russians hacked the election results or something, he's the turd we're stuck with for the next 4-8 years. All we can do is show up at the polls in the next midterm and general election, assuming we still have elections at that point, and not "elections".

Best case scenario is that congress finds a reason to impeach Trump by 2018, and we're left with boring old establishment republican and religious nutjob Mike Pence, which turns his diehard bootlickers completely against the republican party. Either way, gooodbye Roe v Wade. Arrivedeci Clean Air and Water Act. So long and thanks for all the fish Dodd-Frank.

[Omegonthesane]

It doesn't have to play well. It has to stop the government from being all controlled by the party of wilful delusion and deliberately hurting everyone who isn't a ridiculously rich old white man at the country's expense.

It does, actually. Do you want a civil war?

Compared to any one of

gooodbye Roe v Wade. Arrivedeci Clean Air and Water Act. So long and thanks for all the fish Dodd-Frank.

even before we get into a Republican SCOTUS? Frankly, yes. No insurgency they could pull could possibly do more damage than them getting in power for two years, because it won't be two years, they'll redistrict and rewrite the system to ensure that there is never a non-fanatic US government again.

[Hiram McDaniels]

It does have to play well because then you'll have the other half the country ready to tear shit down instead. It would affirm all of the fear mongering Trump put out there about rigging the election. I'd think the only way to get it to go over at all would be for him to lose his upcoming court cases which they could use as an excuse to vote Hillary and even then I don't know if it'd be enough.

I could see this if it were an actual criminal trial, but this is just a civil case. The plaintiff who alleged being raped by Trump when she was 13 has dropped the case due to receiving death threats from his supporters.

[sendaz]

Well, we do have roughly forty days before the electoral college actually votes. That's a good bit of time in which people can make their displeasure known and at least try to convince some Electors to turn faithless, or agree to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, by which states which are part of the compact would award their votes to the winner of the popular vote rather than the winner of their individual state.

Obviously that's all pretty much a long shot. The NPVIC is probably our most likely hope, and I don't think getting the remaining states that are considering it to agree to it would actually shift the needle enough. Another possibility might be to get states to agree to reward their EC votes proportionately, but given that an EC vote is worth more or less depending on state, I have no clue whether that'd actually help either.

Except even if the Faithless Electors vote their conscience and go with someone other than Trump, it is not quite so clean cut.

29 states have laws against voting against the way they were pledged, though honestly the fines and punishments are pretty minor.

But the first situation that could apply is if enough electors abstains or flips his vote in such a way that it results in an Electoral College tie. In such a case, then a little known provision buried in the Twelfth Amendment mandates that the House decides the president, while the Senate chooses the vice president. Each state delegation in the House casts one vote for president, and whichever candidates get the simple majority wins

But let's say in the unlikely event you got enough Electors to go full rogue and throw the thing over to Hillary, then it falls to the Congress to have a say. If both House and Senate were to agree, then the change is final. While this has happened before, it was usually just one or two votes that were swapped, not a large number at once.

However, if even one side protests, the electoral vote gets kicked back to that's individual State's Secretary of State to decide whether to let the Faithless' new vote stand or go with the original pledged way.

tldr; It's pretty unlikely because:
a) Needs about a bunch of electors to jump ship to flip it to a Hillary victory.
b) House and Senate have to both approve said flipped votes
c) if contested by even one side, said vote goes back to that State's Secretary of State to decide which way to apply that particular vote.

[hyzmarca]

Believe me, I sympathize, but reality must be given its due. Even if an insurance company were willing to make absolutely no profit, it still needs to take in more money than it pays out. And that means people have to pay in more then they take out, on average.

Somebody has to pay for everything. TANSAAFL.

The problem is that individuals can get a free lunch. What is smart for the individual isn't smart for society, but the individual needs to look out for himself.

As an individual. I'm better off not having insurance at all. As an individual, I could spend hundreds of dollars a month for insurance, then thousands of dollars on the deductible and copay before it kicks in, and lose a great deal of money, but ensure that my doctor gets paid. Or, I could just go without insurance, see a doctor, and then throw the bill in the trash and pretend that I never saw it. And this costs me nothing but a hit to my credit report that is honestly less important than paying my rent so that I'm not homeless and buying food so that I don't starve to death.

From a purely self-interested standpoint, not having any insurance at all is the better choice. If push came to shove, I could use the Emergency Room as a GP, which is absolutely not what they're for and is really damaging to the system, but it's common and it's inexpensive, because the ER has to treat you no matter how many of their bills you throw in the trash.

In order for insurance to make sense to the individual, it must be less of a burden than just throwing the doctor's bill in the trash would be. Obamacare really doesn't accomplish that for people who don't have chronic conditions. The individual mandate is a bit of a red herring, anyway, because the penalties are smaller than the cost of having insurance and are easy to waive, besides. It was just something stupid that Conservatives could use as a talking point to call Obamacare slavery.

[Occluded Sun]

As it was the Trump crazies were threatening violence if he lost the election.

I don't recall Trump supporters, even the ones arguably mad, threatening violence. In fact, the people blocking major thoroughfares and knocking down elderly ladies post-election are ostensibly Clinton supporters.

Projection much?

[deaddmwalking]

Then you and I know different Trump supporters. Anecdotes, amIrite?

[Kaelik]

I don't recall Trump supporters, even the ones arguably mad, threatening violence.?

Meanwhile, in reality http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10 ... ar-if-hil/

[hyzmarca]

I've met people who seriously believed that Hillary would have outlawed Christianity and forced everyone to convert to Islam. And in my experience, that's where much of the revolution rhetoric came from. Also some move to Canada rhetoric.

[Prak]

So, some small portion of the anti-Hillary (and even smaller portion of the anti-Jeb!) rhetoric was "we don't live in a monarchy! No political dynasties!" mostly from people who were educated enough to know the word "dynasty" and a significant portion of people would have voted for the democrat/a woman did not vote for Hillary because she just wasn't "exciting" enough (how the fuck is the first female candidate not exciting enough? Oh, right, sexist GOPropraganda).

If Michelle Obama ran in 2020, she'd excite a lot more people. Not only is she a woman, but she's also black, and she has Baracks approval so much he married her. Not to mention all her work as a first lady.

And then there's the fact that her speeches are so good, the wife of the republican nominee plagiarized them.

How likely are the republicans to try to make an amendment or law or something that prevents anyone married to/related to a former president from running for president?

[PhoneLobster]

If Michelle Obama ran in 2020

Fairly sure running Hillary and failing laughably has ruined that idea.

Pretty good chance that your interesting "strategic political realism" choice of running Hillary will go down in history as "the reason the USA didn't have a female president for an extra generation or more".

[hyzmarca]

The DNC should run Madea as the first woman president.

[Berkserker]

A woman president isn't exciting because I, and at least some nonzero percentage of Republicans I'm sure, don't care what gender, race, religion, etc. the president is. I definitely don't want a president who'll almost certainly be dogged by scandal for the entire length of her time in office. That sort of presidency is only exciting for tabloid writers. The office of the presidency, meanwhile, is not and should not be just a vehicle of social change, some sort of combo spectacle/checklist that lets us be proud of ourselves because we voted in a woman, or a mixed-race candidate.

[Prak]

I wasn't necessarily advocating voting for Hillary due to her female presentation, I don't particularly care about whether a presidential candidate is "exciting." Hell, Dorito Mussolini is probably the most "exciting" candidate we've ever had, that doesn't mean I voted for him.

But there are people, both those who voted for Hillary, and those who didn't vote at all, who wish she had been more exciting. While we shouldn't vote for presidents purely for diversity reasons, the fact remains that the amount to which a candidate excites people does motivate people to actually vote.

edit: oh, and also, just because we shouldn't vote purely on demographic categories of candidates, diversity in government is a very good thing.

[Pixels]

How likely are the republicans to try to make an amendment or law or something that prevents anyone married to/related to a former president from running for president?

Extremely unlikely. Two reasons:

1. Both sides have active, important political families. Neither wants to remove potential candidates from the pool.
2. It would take a Constitutional amendment, which requires a supermajority in both the House and Senate or a coalition of 3/4ths of the state legislatures. Neither party can currently muster the required votes and I cannot imagine them spending the political capital to make the attempt.

[hyzmarca]

A woman president isn't exciting because I, and at least some nonzero percentage of Republicans I'm sure, don't care what gender, race, religion, etc. the president is. I definitely don't want a president who'll almost certainly be dogged by scandal for the entire length of her time in office. That sort of presidency is only exciting for tabloid writers. The office of the presidency, meanwhile, is not and should not be just a vehicle of social change, some sort of combo spectacle/checklist that lets us be proud of ourselves because we voted in a woman, or a mixed-race candidate.

Which is why Madea Simmons is the perfect choice. She won't be plagued by scandal because she's totally up front and honest about her views, violently so at times, even more than Trump. And her gender doesn't matter so much because she's a fictional character played by Tyler Perry.

[Chamomile]

When people say they didn't find Hillary exciting, they are probably referring to her lack of charisma. I certainly didn't find Hillary exciting at all. That's not how I pick who to vote for, but it's still true.

[Kaelik]

"I don't want a candidate plagued by scandal, that's why I passed up the candidate that was thoroughly scrutinized, and had 'once decided to use a private server, that was totally allowed, for unclassified information' and voted for the guy who couldn't release his tax records to the public because it would have made it abundantly clear that he's multimillionaire claiming to be worth 8 billion while not being worth 1, who has strong ties to the Russian Government, also he was paying CNN's political analysts to say good things about him on air, and also he raped at least one person for sure, and probably more, also he runs a modelling agency as a Mail Order Bride ring without even bothering to get the visas, and also oh shit I'm running out of space from all this talking about how scandal ridden Clinton is that I don't even have time to talk about how great and completely scandal free Trump is."

[hyzmarca]

When people say they didn't find Hillary exciting, they are probably referring to her lack of charisma. I certainly didn't find Hillary exciting at all. That's not how I pick who to vote for, but it's still true.

What Hillary really needed was a realtity TV show where cameras just followed her around 24/7 while she got into wacky hijinks.

[Chamomile]

When people say they didn't find Hillary exciting, they are probably referring to her lack of charisma. I certainly didn't find Hillary exciting at all. That's not how I pick who to vote for, but it's still true.

What Hillary really needed was a realtity TV show where cameras just followed her around 24/7 while she got into wacky hijinks.

The terrible thing about this is that it might be true.

[Berkserker]

You're severely oversimplifying the emails concern, which is more problematic for national security than simply being a foul person and a criminal who didn't put secrets at risk, which all of Trump's listed faults represent. Anyone who wasn't Clinton would be staring down a double-digit jail sentence at this point.

She claimed to have sent zero emails with classified content when we know that number is indeed nonzero. Marking conventions muddy the waters a bit. Further muddying the waters, we also have a lot of deleted emails, so we have no way of knowing what that number actually is, beyond that it's nonzero. Comey's announcement that the FBI was not recommending prosecution sounded like it was going to be a recommendation for indictment right up until the last fifteen seconds.

[Kaelik]

You're severely oversimplifying the emails concern, which is more problematic for national security than simply being a foul person and a criminal who didn't put secrets at risk, which all of Trump's listed faults represent. Anyone who wasn't Clinton would be staring down a double-digit jail sentence at this point.

She claimed to have sent zero emails with classified content when we know that number is indeed nonzero. Marking conventions muddy the waters a bit. Further muddying the waters, we also have a lot of deleted emails, so we have no way of knowing what that number actually is, beyond that it's nonzero. Comey's announcement that the FBI was not recommending prosecution sounded like it was going to be a recommendation for indictment right up until the last fifteen seconds.

You are (still) an idiot. Aside from the fact that Trump has numerous ties to Russia is not at all about him being a terrible person, and entirely about national security, I'm really not underselling the emails thing at all.

The people is that so far as we know she sent and received zero emails marked as classified, which is what she actually said "I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified." So if you are going to accuse her of a lie, actually point to the statement. Now technically, Comey totally claimed that 3 emails were "marked classified" but not "marked classified" and you could totally argue about those, but spoiler alert, she didn't even send those three, so you are still totally wrong.

But spoiler alert, we know for a fact that tons of people have in fact, done basically comparable things to what Clinton did, and that none of them, including both of Bush's secretaries of state, faced any jail time, because in fact, it is not a crime to have someone else send classified information to your unclassified email account, since you in fact have no control over other people sending classified information on a system they explicitly aren't supposed to use for that?

Also, her evil bad "deleted emails" were judged to be not work related by high powered lawyers who had nothing to gain from breaking the law, and so probably didn't.

Also, of course his speech sounded like a call to indict to a layperson, that was the intent, as someone with actual legal knowledge, trust me, if anyone ever says something is "extremely careless" that's proof that they have no legal case at all, and are resulting in slander, which should surprise no one, since the FBI went hog fucking wild in the last week and half before the election promising a totally different reason they were totally going to indict Clinton every other day.

[tussock]

Republican supporters found to be factually incorrect, again. News at 11.

[Koumei]

Now technically, Comey totally claimed that 3 emails were "marked classified" but not "marked classified" and you could totally argue about those

Wait what? Can you explain that bit? I'm not accusing you of talking confusing shit there, I am 100% accusing Comey of it, maybe you're simplifying it with hyperbole but... what? Was that the one where something didn't actually contain the line-item classified bits but still kept the word "classified" in the title or something?

[Kaelik]

Now technically, Comey totally claimed that 3 emails were "marked classified" but not "marked classified" and you could totally argue about those

Wait what? Can you explain that bit? I'm not accusing you of talking confusing shit there, I am 100% accusing Comey of it, maybe you're simplifying it with hyperbole but... what? Was that the one where something didn't actually contain the line-item classified bits but still kept the word "classified" in the title or something?

So classified email is supposed is supposed to be marked at the beginning, and the end. None of the three emails Comey claims were "marked classified" had either of those. Allegedly they had line item marks that some specific lines in them were classified, but a) that's not an email marked classified, both according to actual rules for making things as classified, and also according to the relevant part, whether you can tell if it's classified without reading it. b) The one of those three we actually saw, the C was actually a paragraph marker according to the actual sender, not a classified marker.