US Presidential Race

@CBarca

Could you please explain to me why the terms "occupying the center left to center right" and "being progressive" are so mutually exclusive that you consider using both for one person would be considered "a lie"?

At least from my perspective (I'm used to German politics and politicians, mind you) this wouldn't be a contradiction at all as IMO the term "being progressive" doesn't really belong to the left-to-right spectrum, but is a separate idea that shows an intent to consider new ideas, too. After all, even conservatives can have progressive ideas, while more progressive people can have conservative ideas, too. There is no real black and white after all IMO.

Or does "progressive" have some other meaning when applied to US politics?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETVcsPRTSHM

Bill Clinton - Obamcare craziest thing in the world, getting worse, zooming premiums. Bill slams Obamacare with few other comments.

How many people from the GOP supported this in the Senate or the House? After so much negotiation, allowing private players, no big government intervention, No single payer, so much sucking upto GOP what did we get - 0 Republicans!!

This ACA was a brainchild of the Heritage foundation & conservative foundation but the GOP would never support any healthcare proposal at this point. How many times did they vote to repeal Obamacare?

How many times did they appeal in Court? Hell these guys shut the whole effing Government down to repeal ACA? What worse can they do with Single Payer - Shoot someone in the Senate? The only problem was the Democrats had little guts, compromise too early with GOP & there is a large moderate Dem bloc who don't support Public Option & a Govt. role!

The passing of Single Payer depends on how progressive the Democrats are, how hard they push to get moderate Dems on board & if there are leaders with guts to pass this damn thing

Insurance companies completely control everything, premiums are zooming up & coverage is getting affected. I mean the Premium things have become a joke. Companies are asking for 50-75% increase & are getting huge YUGE hikes finally.

Democrats are incredibly dumb - Based on a macro-economic perspective, Single Payer is no brainer as it sharply decreased costs due to enormous economies of scale, some economies of scope & eliminate private profits, decreases drug prices & also gives huge bargaining power to negotiate prices.

It is also crazy that there could be a deficit with every country in the world dealing with complex things n technical verification but something as easy as branded drugs from Canada or European countries can't be imported - It is crazy!

Dems has to switch to Single Payer in 3-4 years & a public option & through their weight behind Coloradocare atleast. In every poll, Single Payer will win - If the Dems would campaign on Single Payer, they would win every time. Coloradocare & Singlecare is also winning among GOP voters which is crazy to be honest.

The way Obamacare is going in 3-4 years the premiums will go so high that you will have strikes, protests & ultimately the scheme will be abandoned. Bill Clinton is 100% right but timing of speech is probably wrong!

rwo power wrote:@CBarca

Could you please explain to me why the terms "occupying the center left to center right" and "being progressive" are so mutually exclusive that you consider using both for one person would be considered "a lie"?

At least from my perspective (I'm used to German politics and politicians, mind you) this wouldn't be a contradiction at all as IMO the term "being progressive" doesn't really belong to the left-to-right spectrum, but is a separate idea that shows an intent to consider new ideas, too. After all, even conservatives can have progressive ideas, while more progressive people can have conservative ideas, too. There is no real black and white after all IMO.

Or does "progressive" have some other meaning when applied to US politics?

I'll reply to this when I have some more time to write out an appropriate response in a couple days

@CBarca: Ok. thx! Frankly, from what I can read of the US election stuff, I have the impression it is far more alien to everything I know from our side of the pond than I ever thought.

Wiki leaks has released hacked emails of Clinton -

Following are the main points -

Clinton admits that she is dependent on running election with Wall Street Money

She praises them profusely & says it is a good idea to have Wall Street people regulate themselves

She says people won't vote for her if they knew her real position on the issues

She advocates having a separate PRIVATE & PUBLIC positions on many issues inorder to get votes

She says she wants global free trade without any tariffs anywhere while campaigning against TPP so far

She admits to supporting the incredibly polluting & dangerous Keystone Pipeline while campaigning as a Climate Change Fighter

She admits she wants to raise the Retirement age of Social Security (A Republican extreme position) while fighting to raise Social Security in her campaign

She admits she is living an incredibly luxurious life (full of Millions of Dollars of Close Door Speeches) & she is completely detached from Middle Class values, struggles & how to work for the Middle Class!

Ironically she says she supports Universal Free Healthcare , Single Payer program present in every major country from Japan to UK ro France to Germany to Canada to Netherlands which Bernie Sanders championed & based her campaign on. She admits that she likes Single Payer more than Obama's ACA!

Thank you Betty n others for helping to elect a self-admitted n official fraud

N Speaking of Trump - Leaked video of 2005 has him saying this -

Some comments are so bad you have to put a *

"I moved on her and I failed. I'll admit it," Trump is heard saying. "She was married. And I moved on her very heavily."
"I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony t**s and everything. She's totally changed her look."
Later in the conversation, he told Bush he is "automatically attracted to beautiful" women and often tries to kiss them.
"I just start kissing them," he said. "I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."
"Grab them by the p***y," Mr Trump says. "You can do anything."
Video Surfaces of Trump's comments about women 10 years ago - Some stuff are so obscene I have to put *. Many Republicans Senators have asked Trump to drop out of the race!

Well, looks like you really have a fine pair of candidates there! *smh*

Good luck attacking Hilary with Bill's infidelity, Donald.

Trump is such a savage. He says what comes to his mind.

However, taking into account the fact that controversial statements got him this far, I can't really decide whether he is really intelligent and does all of this on purpose with the certainty that the way he acts will gain him enough popularity, or if he's just plain stupid and barbarous... but then so would be a large percentage of American citizens for endorsing him.

Myesyats wrote:Trump is such a savage. He says what comes to his mind.

However, taking into account the fact that controversial statements got him this far, I can't really decide whether he is really intelligent and does all of this on purpose with the certainty that the way he acts will gain him enough popularity, or if he's just plain stupid and barbarous... but then so would be a large percentage of American citizens for endorsing him.

Got him as far as what? The nomination for a party which is on its way out?

He's done, and was done before even these new statements.

Hillary is the 45th president of the United States this morning.

I don't think these recorded comments of Trump's are going to change the balance too much. Hillary just divides opinion so much. I don't think there are many people at all who at this point who have previously said they'll vote Trump, will now switch to Hillary. If the Democratic candidate was someone more neutral than Hillary, they would gain a lot from stuff like this from Trump. But Hillary, she's such a divisive character that the gains she can make at this point are very limited.

I do think and hope she'll win, but she's not going to win a lot of people over any time soon, no matter what Trump does.

John McCain, who somehow thinks he is still relevant in 2016, has withdrawn his support for Trump.

McCain is borderline nuts himself. He recently wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal where he called for greater attacks against Assad's regime, even if that meant shooting down Russian aircraft that support Assad's troops. Basically no McCain supporter is ever going to vote Hillary anyway.

Honestly this election has brought the worst of everyone involved in either politics on media. Forget USA, this godforsaken elections have dominated every single country's media for the last 6 months.

I don't think anyone ever believed trump would be winning it. But everyone makes money by bashing him and putting on those headlines.

Trump is a scum and most including his own party members know it. But he is marketable and they are trying to cash that ability against Hillary who divides opinions as well.

Can't wait till all of this is over

RealGunner wrote:Honestly this election has brought the worst of everyone involved in either politics on media. Forget USA, this godforsaken elections have dominated every single country's media for the last 6 months.

I don't think anyone ever believed trump would be winning it. But everyone makes money by bashing him and putting on those headlines.

Trump is a scum and most including his own party members know it. But he is marketable and they are trying to cash that ability against Hillary who divides opinions as well.

Can't wait till all of this is over

Yery important point.

The only reason Trump is even the candidate is because he's a gold mine for the media and, most of all, makes their job easy.
It's a lazy journalist's (and everyone is lazy rather than not) wet dream.

Trump is never going to win this. It's demographically impossible.
Never mind the reports that it's close or whatever.
Yes, it's more close than it should be given that fact that Hillary is practically running without an opponent.
But it's still not a real race.

What's left after this is the graveyard full of stories we used to tell ourselves about civics and democracy.

^^^Blaming the media is simply an easy way out.

The media didnt vote for him. The people did.

He is the candidate because one party has, for decades, used dog whistles to promote intolerance. finally a candidate came who just flat out said what they implied, and this is the result.

Look at the map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016

He is who they wanted, not the media. In fact, the traditional conservative press HATE him. He has been, throughout life, a living representation of everything conservatives hate. A business man in a huge liberal city living in, by christian standards, in debauchery bragging about how avoiding stds was his war after skipping out on the draft. The national review would never support that.

Then you have Magazines like the Atlantic, which has existed since the 1850s, directly endorsing other candidates. A magazine which has only endorsed 3 presidents in its history(Abraham Lincoln, LBJ, and now Hillary) just showing how big of an issue it is that NOBODY outside of his group of racist deplorables want him anywhere near the office. The media isnt at fault. Its his followers. Don't take the light off them because these are the people you have to live with.

I'm already focusing my voting energy on local candidates here in my state, county and city.

From a national perspective, it's a rock, a hard place and an impossible void of darwinian absurdity that we're stuck in.

But we deserve these candidates. This is what we, as a country, asked for. So now we have to lie in this bed we made. What happens as a result in on everyone who supported either of them.

I truly believe there are those in the media who are absolutely as disgusted as the general electorate with what they are seeing and have to report on. The problem is, there's not enough of them.

You live in Michigan, a place where the government was giving poor people poisoned water through simple incompetence.

Is your choice on the local level, honestly, any worse than the choice we have in Hillary on the national scale?

To be fair, I don't live in or near enough to Flint for my vote to carry the weight it needs to carry to affect what's going on there. Unfortunate, but true.

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose you're right, but with that said, real change starts from the ground up so rather than focusing on voting for a 3rd party candidate at the top of the ticket, that has no hope in winning anything. I'm looking at 3rd party candidates elsewhere who have better chances in more competitive races.

I'm mainly focusing on State legislature, board of education, county executive etc. We unfortunately have to put up with Snyder and his incompetent administration for another year and some change.

Ah I see.

To be honest I understand the helplessness of it.

No matter my vote local or national Georgia is solidly red outside of Atlanta.

Yeah just finished having a really good conversation with my brother and mom, who both live in different states. My brother won't vote since he doesn't see much reason to given that nothing will change. It's that type of mindset that doesn't really enact change and I told him that. My mom will vote, but she's in the Deep South (not too far from you) so the reality there is already pretty clear.

What I know is I'm done voting straight ticket for any party.

Did Trump really bring all the women sexually abused by Bill Clinton?


Drama is coming

Absolutely hilarious

This is better than any Jeremy Kyle episode I have seen

This is a roast session