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This "I'm a progressive but if Hillary is the nominee, I'm not voting" shit is stale

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HylianTom

Banned
Fuck right off with this nonsense. Many of us have been voting for Jill Stein for two election cycles now.
So let's say you get Jill in 2020, and a friendly Congress. But everything she does is thwarted by the newly-conservative judiciary.

How do we navigate this reality? It's a simple question.
 
Yunno that the "status quo" that would be maintained here would be, at its least, "things slowly progressing left despite obstructionist republican interference."

What is particularly negative/undesirable about progress (slow and frustrating as it can be, but progress nonetheless) being maintained in comparison to the alternative, which is very, very speedy regression?

Besides which, how much of said status quo comes from not turning out but once every four years and hoping to enact trickle-down political revolution via a single election? How much of this status quo is due to people shrugging off their civic duties at city/state levels?

Probably the best way to put it.

The status quo with mild progress vs. rapid regression. It doesn't take much to gut the public sector and get in the way of social progress.
 
What a convenient excuse for all the closet misogynists and racists perfectly fine with what Trump has been stirring up.

And I'll even be this guy for the first time: That kind of answer is just like the entitled apathetic generation that people talk about. You expect the first guy who comes along with a unpolished and incomplete vision of social democracy to sweep the nations hearts and minds the first time? In this country? How naive are you? Honestly?

I can absolutely see a future where someone younger and more prepared than Bernie comes along and actually generates the groundswell and moves the Democratic party in the US towards a more progressive platform. In fact I pray for this future. But what you are presenting is intellectual garbage under the guise of a moral high ground.

Its pathetic.
But that already happened. In 2008. Barack Obama was that guy, and Obama/Biden 2008 is what a true revolution really looks like. Despite gaining so much support and goodwill, he was only able to pass a modest insurance reform package, not because he wanted to but because he got fucked by members of his own party. That is what governing actually looks like and honestly, thats what progress looks like. The reform Obama passed was something that eluded every President since FDR.

Changes in America happen incrementally. We are a Titanic and turning this big boat on a dime is impossible. What we can do is course-correction over a long period of time and eventually we'll get there.
 

dk2399

Neo Member
I can't tolerate war hawks anymore. The amount of killing and instigating the US does overseas is unimaginable.

I will never vote for warmongers like Hilary Clinton.
 

shoplifter

Member
So let's say you get Jill in 2020, and a friendly Congress. But everything she does is thwarted by the newly-conservative judiciary.

How do we navigate this reality? It's a simple question.

Not relevant to the 'people that won't vote for Hillary are closet misogynists' argument. I'm sick of seeing it.
 

TaterTots

Banned
These are absolutely the same losers who voted for Ralph Nader and got us Bush. Think about the 100s of thousands dead in Iraq and think your piddly 3-5% doesn't matter.

I keep reading your posts and I'm noticing one thing. You keep name calling and belittling anyone who doesn't support Clinton. Sorry, but I'm not voting for Hillary because she is a pathological liar and the whole scandal with her email and Benghazi makes her untrustworthy to me. I'm guessing you're choosing to believe that everything in the media is fake and that she is a saint. Also, she was a terrible sos, so I am not comfortable placing her as the POTUS. If you choose to ignore that and call me a misogynist that's fine.

Now you're calling people "losers" for voting differently than you. Anyone's vote and voice matters just as much as yours. No reason to call them losers for choosing something they believed to be the best for their country. You're acting no better than a Trump supporter.
 
The two types I know:

1. Old misogynists

2. Young Bernie-ites who seriously don't understand what 8 years of Bush did to this country.

3. Those of us who remember her abhorrent campaign in 2008.

I'll vote for Hillary when the time comes, but I don't have to be happy about it.

After two cycles of actually being able to vote for a candidate as opposed to against the other candidate, I knew it wouldn't last forever. I'd just hoped it'd last a little longer.
 
I can't tolerate war hawks anymore. The amount of killing and instigating the US does overseas is unimaginable.

I will never vote for warmongers like Hilary Clinton.

so i suppose you'll at least vote for congressional candidates and local initiatives, right?

Because you can't vote for trump under that criteria.

So i imagine you'll either pass on voting or vote for a candidate who has zero chance in hell of stopping a war given they won't be elected.
 

Drek

Member
No one on the far left is calling for repeal of the ACA. That is a narrative she created. The idea you need to "start from scratch" and erase all of Obama's progress to try and improve our nation's deplorable healthcare system.



Pretty sure calling single payer something that will NEVER, EVER happen makes her an opponent of single payer.

If you think that she can work within the framework that Obama couldn't and get bi-partisan support, you are delusional. She's even more hated by them than he is.

OK, I'm done with you after this post because you just regurgitated the same vacuous accusations with no logical backing you initially replied with.

So before I ignore your shitposting, I'll swat it down one more time for you:

1. Sanders has actively demonized ACA as a flawed interim step. Par for the course with him since he's an ideological purist. Great, he can afford to be as a senator from a dominantly white state with a stable and strong economy, so one that provides it's own safety net to it's poorest citizens. But the POTUS needs to be more than that and needs to understand that the ACA has lives. A lot of lives. Attacking it because it isn't perfect is, to me, morally repugnant. He's described it as a "good republican program" and derided it enough on the campaign trail to have assisted in propping up the poisonous narrative seeking to dismantle it. He doesn't need to call for it's removal himself to assist in it's destruction, just like how Trump doesn't need to punch a protester himself to foment violent at his events.

2. She said that she wasn't going to wait around for something better that will never ever pass. Your continued attempt to paint this as a condemnation of the concept of single payer when it is clearly a direct attack on Sanders' plan is dishonest and toxic to real discourse.

3. Obama was a coalition builder with limited D.C. experience when he won. Clinton has been directly involved in whipping the party in-line on a wide variety of legislation. This isn't even a point of debate, she is leaps and bounds more prepared for this than Obama was or Sanders ever will be.

Try debating from a basis in fact and merit instead of ad hominem and twisted quotations. What you've been posting is childish and unbecoming of anyone who believes in true democracy because it's built upon misrepresentation of the facts. With that I'm done, have a nice life in that bubble.
 

HylianTom

Banned
Not relevant to the 'people that won't vote for Hillary are closet misogynists' argument. I'm sick of seeing it.
Care to answer the question? You've been dodging it like a champ for pages.

I read it as semi-desperate neoliberal coercion, but I can't fault really fault them, given how odious the alternative is. Can't support it either.
You say coercion, I say it's referring to the structure of our government. One side of this debate is clearly dodging answering questions about how our government works.

Care to take a crack at it?
 

- J - D -

Member
There's def an air of privilege coming from the Hillary coalition, strange regressive neoliberal authoritarianism

I read it as semi-desperate neoliberal coercion, but I can't fault really fault them, given how odious the alternative is. Can't support it either.
 

pigeon

Banned
You're going to have to elaborate on this. I've heard this sentiment before but I've never seen the explanation go deeper than that.

Not really how Tesseract works.

Generally it's best to assume that guy is always trolling because the alternative is worse.
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
What a convenient excuse for all the closet misogynists and racists perfectly fine with what Trump has been stirring up.

And I'll even be this guy for the first time: That kind of answer is just like the entitled apathetic generation that people talk about. You expect the first guy who comes along with a unpolished and incomplete vision of social democracy to sweep the nations hearts and minds the first time? In this country? How naive are you? Honestly?

I can absolutely see a future where someone younger and more prepared than Bernie comes along and actually generates the groundswell and moves the Democratic party in the US towards a more progressive platform. In fact I pray for this future. But what you are presenting is intellectual garbage under the guise of a moral high ground.

Its pathetic.

My post was not pro sanders.
Your criticisms Against his candidacy are fair, but you are notarguing against what i posted.
 

dave is ok

aztek is ok
He's described it as a "good republican program"
Probably because it is. It's modeled heavily after Romney's Massachusetts healthcare reform.

Obama was a coalition builder with limited D.C. experience when he won. Clinton has been directly involved in whipping the party in-line on a wide variety of legislation. This isn't even a point of debate, she is leaps and bounds more prepared for this than Obama was or Sanders ever will be.
Delusion. They will refuse to work with her. You are in for a rude awakening if you think Hillary Clinton of all people will be extended some olive branch by the GOP in the House and Senate.
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
Voters have been wanting radical change to the status quo since forever.

It is arguable that Obama was supposed to be a transformative candidate. It's clear he couldn't get it done. If you believe that he was just another status quo politician, that's fine, too. My point still works. At the end of the day, we have been so much better off under Obama compared to a McCain Presidency.

Under McCain, we would have:
-No ACA
-Tougher crime laws
-Higher military spending
-Engaged in more conflicts around the world
-No Marriage Equality
-Slower progress on fighting climate change and embracing green energy
-lower tax rates for the wealthy
-arguably higher deficits or even further neutered regulatory agencies
-Defunded PP

We can either have something similar to an Obama 3rd term, or we can let the ideological racist wingnut base have representation in the oval office.

The choice is so damn easy.

I dont personally disagree with anything here.
Obama better than mcain? Of course!
More obama better than trump? Of course!
 

pigeon

Banned
My post was not pro sanders.
Your criticisms Against his candidacy are fair, but you are notarguing against what i posted.

What you posted is not an argument. It's more of a generalized air of self-satisfaction. I'm not really sure what kind of responses you were expecting to get.
 

Drek

Member
It's dishonest to deny that the Clinton campaign has a major entitlement complex

You really think that a campaign who previously lost to an out of nowhere black senator named "Barack Obama" and now in a modestly competitive primary against a mid-70's non-Democrat from Vermont has a major entitlement complex?

Based on what exactly?
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
1. you don't get to draw the lines for conservative and progressive as you see fit. Hillary, in a progressive party primary, is beating Sanders by literally millions of votes. Progressives clearly prefer her.

2. Many of those people are old enough to remember what left leaning ideological purity begat for the country - 8 years of Reagan, 4 years of H.W. Bush, a dramatic push of the entire nation (including Dems) to the right so even a two term Dem POTUS was a centrist, and then another 8 years of W. Bush. We aren't false progressives, we just understand that it's better to take the modest social progress and continue to re-draw the lines of conversation bit by bit instead of pushing for radical change and getting slammed with a massive rebound.

It has nothing to do with the existing power structure and everything to do with understanding that human lives are at stake here and gambling for dramatic change and losing is a debt you pay with the suffering of the least fortunate.

What a silly substance devoid post.
You define progressiveness based on party affiliation.
I define progressivness based on policy.

Which method is less arbitrary?


It has nothing to do with "ideological purity^ but rather a fundamental understanding that the system is inherently broken. You just said the current power structure is fine! The current system is currently working ok for you.

There are no people more progressive than you. Hence you are a centrist. Im not saying it's an invalid stance, it's just a fact.
 

Barzul

Member
Yup. In my opinion and this might come as offensive to some and feel free to disagree: many Hillary supporters are people who like the label of liberal and progressive but have in reality become centrists themselves.

They are the new "conservatives" with the gop being right wing extremists.

They dont see the current political system as fundamentally broken. They are comfortable enough with the status quo. They want modest social progressive victories but not if it comes at the expense of upsetting the current power structure.

The thing is many of us accept that label. I know that I am a social liberal with some fiscal conservative/centrist views. I would love to see sweeping changes towards increased social equality and improved opportunities and security for the poor. My taxes would have gone up during a Sanders presidency and I would have still voted for him even when I didn't necessarily like some of his policies. I have family members that have incredible dislike for what Sanders is preaching (free college for example and increased taxes) and one of them even said they'd have voted Kasich over Sanders. But he and I aren't unreasonable, we know a Trump presidency would destroy all the foundations put in place by the Obama presidency to fix the Bush shit show and prepared to vote for Sanders when it came down it (well he can, I can't still a permanent resident for now). The political process is all about compromise, there will never be a perfect candidate for me, Obama has been the closest and I still don't share some of his views particularly when it comes to the encryption debate.
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
The thing is many of us accept that label. I know that I am a social liberal with some fiscal conservative/centrist views. I would love to see sweeping changes towards increased social equality and improved opportunities and security for the poor. My taxes would have gone up during a Sanders presidency and I would have still voted for him even when I didn't necessarily like some of his policies. I have family members that have incredible dislike for what Sanders is preaching (free college for example and increased taxes) and one of them even said they'd have voted Kasich over Sanders. But he and I aren't unreasonable, we know a Trump presidency would destroy all the foundations put in place by the Obama presidency to fix the Bush shit show and prepared to vote for Sanders when it came down it (well he can, I can't still a permanent resident for now). The political process is all about compromise, there will never be a perfect candidate for me, Obama has been the closest and I still don't share some of his views particularly when it comes to the encryption debate.

Cool. I appreciate the honesty!

What you posted is not an argument. It's more of a generalized air of self-satisfaction. I'm not really sure what kind of responses you were expecting to get.

The answer above was fair.
I just want an honest debate. I explain some of the problems with Hillary and the responses attack Sanders or defend Obama.
 

Future

Member
The right to not vote because you don't like any one is valid in my opinion. Voting just to say you voted with no thought behind your decision is worse in my opinion.

Hey I am hipster who went to the polls to cast a vote, don't know what I was voting for but I voted.

I don't particularly like anyone in this particular election.

Not voting for policy you don't understand or know about? Makes sense

Not voting when you have a candidate like trump who you think absolutely should not get anywhere near the presidency, but are butt hurt because sanders was your perfect candidate and are annoyed by Clinton....... Nonsense. Someone WILL get elected. Be a part of preventing the greater evil
 
I see the "if Hillary then no vote at all" people as incapable of compromise.

Which is kind of like the Tea Party. It's just extremism within your rights. But please, if you want to increase the chances of a president that gets into the office campaigning on inexperience and fascist rhetoric, then by all means please, exercise your rights.

Just don't bitch when sticking to your principles contributes pretty directly to Muslim ID bracelets and Geneva convention violations.
 

shoplifter

Member
Care to answer the question? You've been dodging it like a champ for pages.

I've only made two posts in the thread so I've dodged nothing, thank you.


Quite honestly, I'm not entirely positive that Secretary Clinton will select actual leftist justices or whether she will select more centrist justices like Pres. Obama has done with this most recent appointment. I have serious concerns about Garland's record on privacy.

I'll grant the president that he is trying to call the GOPs bluff here, but what will a President HRC do?
 
Of course they exist, because crazy idiots exist in all walks of life. But your post was nothing more than "well the other side does it too" which is just never a worthwhile point to be making, and if anything just plays into the stereotype that the OP is railing against.

Then you didn't understand my post. There's good reasons why you should vote for Bernie or Hilary but people are too stubborn to care. If you want to know why they're stubborn then you have to ask, "why not vote for the other person IE Bernie?" I'm answering the OP's question.
 

Doc Holliday

SPOILER: Columbus finds America
I can't tolerate war hawks anymore. The amount of killing and instigating the US does overseas is unimaginable.

I will never vote for warmongers like Hilary Clinton.

So you're basically helping an even bigger warmonger in trump, potentially. Thought I wonder I about his foreign policy...he's all over the place.

Yep that makes sense.
 
You're going to have to elaborate on this. I've heard this sentiment before but I've never seen the explanation go deeper than that.

Madeleine Albrite, Gloria Steinem. The former saying "there's a special place in hell" for women who dont vote for Hillary, the latter claiming young women only like Sanders because thats where the boys are.
Hillary believed that there was an implicit understanding with the sisters of the world that now was the time to come back home and vote for a woman. (The Clintons seem to have conveniently forgotten how outraged they were by identity politics when black leaders deserted them in 2008 to support Obama.).....

This attitude intensified the unappetizing solipsistic subtext of her campaign, which is “What is Hillary owed?” It turned out that female voters seem to be looking at Hillary as a candidate rather than as a historical imperative. And she’s coming up drastically short on trustworthiness.

The interesting thing about the spectacle of older women trying to shame younger ones on behalf of Hillary is that Hillary and Bill killed the integrity of institutional feminism back in the ’90s — with the help of Albright and Steinem.
When Hillary Clinton Killed Feminism
 

ApharmdX

Banned
I think the case that us in the pro-Hillary camp need to make is:

How do we pull the DNC to the left and hold Hillary accountable?

The ideal path now is that we pull Hillary to the left, she stays to the left in the general election, downticket races are affected by running a deeply-divisive GOP candidate, we take back the Senate, and she appoints a very liberal judge to the Supreme Court. As a Sanders supporter, this is the dream. Will we get that? I don't know. I'd love for you to convince me that this will happen.

When we are months out from the general, and Hillary is so eager to pivot to the center that she praises the Reagan presidency's response to the HIV/AIDS crisis, that appears unlikely.
 

Valhelm

contribute something
Yup. In my opinion and this might come as offensive to some and feel free to disagree: many Hillary supporters are people who like the label of liberal and progressive but have in reality become centrists themselves.

They are the new "conservatives" with the gop being right wing extremists.

They dont see the current political system as fundamentally broken. They are comfortable enough with the status quo. They want modest social progressive victories but not if it comes at the expense of upsetting the current power structure.

This is a good post that I agree with. I really do think that the United States ought to pivot to a multi-party system as soon as possible, because this would weaken the far-right by preventing them from accessing the resources of the GOP, while also empowering the left by freeing them from the constraints of the Democrats.

Nothing more than the sanders campaign has.

How so? A lot of Sanders supporters have been very crass in their belief that black voters were ignorant for preferring Clinton, but the campaign has worked pretty hard for every vote they've received. By contrast, Hillary Clinton and her staff really haven't made a serious effort to connect to most of their voters. She's relied primarily on name recognition and her ties to Washington and provincial party leaders, riding on the assumption that this is "her turn" or that she should be president only because she's currently more popular any opposition on the left.
 
It's dishonest to deny that the Clinton campaign has a major entitlement complex

Meh. She's been a party leader for quite some time now and easily has some of the strongest credentials for the job.

Several other politicians have had entitlement complexes without any reason to have them.
 

Mael

Member
I like the "I won't vote for Hillary she's a pathological liar".
It's like they've never ever seen a politician. They are pathological liars by definition, that's how they get elected.
Even Sanders, especially now he has no path to the nomination his campaign is lying to raise funds for the election.
 

shoplifter

Member
^^^ so centrists/center-left. great.

I think the case that us in the pro-Hillary camp need to make is:

How do we pull the DNC to the left and hold Hillary accountable?


Thank you. What I want to see from her are bold plans. I realize that incremental change may be required, but what we constantly see from the DNC is starting negotiations from a point at which we already give up too much. I have no confidence that she has a long term plan to get to where the left actually wants to go.
 

Barzul

Member
I must admit even though there are several opposing views being shared, I've enjoyed reading this thread. GAF is increasingly the only place I can have political discourse even though most the people here skew left like me. It's certainly better than r/politics.
 

dramatis

Member
Madeleine Albrite, Gloria Steinem. The former saying "there's a special place in hell" for women who dont vote for Hillary, the latter claiming young women only like Sanders because thats where the boys are.

When Hillary Clinton Killed Feminism
Oh yes, an opinion piece from Maureen Dowd.

From Media Matters:
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd suggested that Hillary Clinton "should have run as a man this time" and likened Clinton to a dog in in her latest negative assessment of the Democratic presidential candidate.

Dowd has a decades-long history of attacking Clinton, often invoking bizarre comparisons in her criticism. According to a recent Media Matters analysis of Dowd's columns on Clinton dating back to 1993, 75 percent of 212 columns that made significant mention of Clinton were negative. Since June 2014, all 17 of Dowd's columns that mention Clinton significantly were negative. Dowd's first 2016 column on Clinton compared her to Leonardo DiCaprio's character from the movie The Revenant, which is about a revenge-minded trapper making his way through the wilderness.

In a January 16 column for The New York Times, Dowd claimed that Clinton ran "as a man" in 2008 but "is now running as a woman."

Based on her apparent belief that Clinton's 2016 campaign is overly feminized, Dowd wrote, "she should have run as a man this time, when Americans feel beleaguered and scared and yearn for something 'big and masculine and strong.'"

Instead Dowd claimed that Clinton "has cast herself as Groundbreaking Granny."
Nice source you got there.
 

Renji_11

Member
Ok so we agree that these are her stances.

To be fair, on tough on crime i do think this is one issue where she has come around a bit.

Comparing to other Democrats isn't really doing it for me. I would like a progressive leader.

Has Hillary supported decriminalizing marijuana for recreational use at the federal level?

When it comes to these issues, i want someone transformative. Not someone who compared to other politicians looks fine. From my perspective, they are all working within a corrupt system flooded with donations from the prison industrial complex.

No I think those were her stances she like most have changed some what over the years. I think she supports medical marijuana but not for straight legalization yet (which sucks). I voted for Bernie in Virginia but she is going to be the nominee so it's no reason to not support her even if she is flawed. Since she's apparently the cold calculating person like so many think she is why wouldn't she push for half the stuff that Bernie has been talking about if that's clearly the path that most young people what to go in? Similar to Nixon you basically governed like almost a liberal.
 
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