Conventional Mealy Mouths: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 5

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http://i.imgur.com/1aFhK41.jpg
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http://i.imgur.com/rJHrz2p.jpg
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relive the hits:

Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

terrifying mouths

if you look really closely, there's a secret hidden in one of them

which holds the secret to liberal victories in down ticket races?

Oh come on!

Also Trumps' scalp flashing on screen for a second as the thread loads (for me). Cue next thread's 2nd post being a close up of his word hole...

xp

― Evan, Wednesday, April 6, 2016 2:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cruz mouth pic doesn't really look like him. found a higher-res shot, maybe a mod can swap it in.

https://zuts.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/mouth-of-sauron.jpg

this is stuff that's really easy for me to say in the abstract - go left, be bold, don't look back - but not so easy for me to impose on people living in pennyslvania.

DC, this is the same stuff that I worry about. I like Fetterman - I like the way he speaks, I think he connects to his audience, I think his heart is in the right place, I think he's right on most of his policy prescriptions, I think he comes off well (i also think but am not sure that he will be a better fit for black voters bc of his political background than bernie has been). But PA is a pretty conservative state. on one hand maybe that means that a bernie/fetterman outside the mainstream type could get crossover vote from independents + maybe PA republicans (though doubtful imo) but it also means that most PA Dems are also pretty moderate. now luckily i think McGinty is not a bad choice and if she beats Fetterman in the primary I'll feel sad but not heartbroken (sestak otoh is a total disaster). but i think fetterman's campaign, with real attention + enthusiasm (which i think he can generate but it requires voters/supporters are also enthusiastic about a non-POTUS race) + most importantly money could do more things. i wish bernie would work more closely with him - maybe you're right that it'll turn out his a porn fiend or whatever (i don't think he is) but surely the democratic party figures out a way to endorse/support candidates at a huge rate and generally do okay. so what's he waiting for? bc if he waits for after the PA primary it'll be too late - McGinty has been endorsed by Obama and is getting all that DNC cash. there won't be an opportunity after the primary to decide campaigning for fetterman is a good idea. so it needs to happen now.

lol, sorry evan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM-XhQeFzW4

cruz's tongue looks like an infant's hand

looks like i was wrong and bernie is campaigning for him :p

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/p720x720/12967426_1701766740091278_1484359542403773817_o.jpg

would be cool if another, radically different candidate reached out of cruz's face and ripped his skin off to reveal him/herself, like pras in the "ghetto supastar" video.

that would be cool

Cruzmouth reminds me of the Devo album.
http://imgur.com/faoPw75

http://i.imgur.com/faoPw75.jpg

Trump's mouth looks like someone is pointing a leaf blower at it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/PR.jpg

Pierce:

HRC is proving to be, at best, a slightly less uninspiring candidate than she was in 2008. And the campaign's latest line of attack—that Bernie Sanders is not a real Democrat—is an amateur-night concoction that beggars belief. Is there a single progressive Democratic policy initiative that would cross the desk of President Sanders that he would refuse to sign, whereas President HRC would? (And, yes, I include gun safety laws in this.) As far as helping with down-ticket Democratic races goes, the record of both Clintons on this is spotty at best. (For that matter, so is the record of the current president, a fellow of considerable charisma, which means that the Democratic Party has a systemic problem in getting people to turn out in local elections, particularly in the off-years, that no president can solve. This is one of the many reasons why Debbie Wasserman Schultz has to go.) The Sanders campaign, and liberal voters in general, seem to be getting on the candidate's last nerve, and I'm not sure I understand why.

HRC is the 2016 choice of the Democratic Party establishment.

That's been clear for about five years now.

She seems caught between embracing that identity and trying to break off enough of the Sanders electorate to put a populist sheen on a powerful, but very conventional, campaign. That's a task for a more nimble politician than HRC even has been. She'd be better off just letting the machine run of itself and explaining to Sanders voters that she shares their concerns and that those concerns will be a priority in an HRC administration. "I can get things done" assumes facts not in evidence, especially given the nature of congressional Republicans these days....

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a43697/ted-cruz-bernie-sanders-win-wisconsin/

the campaign's latest line of attack—that Bernie Sanders is not a real Democrat—is an amateur-night concoction that beggars belief. Is there a single progressive Democratic policy initiative that would cross the desk of President Sanders that he would refuse to sign, whereas President HRC would? (And, yes, I include gun safety laws in this.)

this is the point i've made about 10x in these threads

She'd be better off just letting the machine run of itself and explaining to Sanders voters that she shares their concerns and that those concerns will be a priority in an HRC administration

I think this is pretty much what she's been doing. That line about wondering if Bernie's a Democrat seems to be more like a tossed-off aside rather than a talking point, but naturally that became the lead, because the media is desperate for some kind of conflict.

This bit is otm:

As far as helping with down-ticket Democratic races goes, the record of both Clintons on this is spotty at best. (For that matter, so is the record of the current president, a fellow of considerable charisma, which means that the Democratic Party has a systemic problem in getting people to turn out in local elections, particularly in the off-years, that no president can solve. This is one of the many reasons why Debbie Wasserman Schultz has to go.)

I think Obama was willing to campaign in down-ticket races in the midterms but candidates were often not sure how much they wanted to embrace him. Cf that Hacker op-ed posted above about how Republican state and congressional success has been mainly based on running against Obama in off-cycle years. I don't know that this problem can be laid at the feet of Wasserman Schultz.

seeing rumors that HRC is implicated in Panama Papers?

i feel like that's gotta just be wishful thinking

i feel like that's gotta just be wishful thinking

i read that a lot of americans don't need to go to panama due to lax restrictions in delware and wyoming and places like that

*through panama

Yeah the u.s. is better for that shir than panama

Shit

i read that a lot of americans don't need to go to panama due to lax restrictions in delware and wyoming and places like that

The Cuffing of the President 2016

i know it's probably pointless to ask, but where are the hillary/panama papers rumors coming from?

Daily Kos, so ymmv

I wasn't gonna click the link, was just curious if it was actually being reported

was Joe Biden the Noriega of Delaware?

anyone have the story on this?
https://twitter.com/HalpernAlex/status/717743018627870723

Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) are analysing the data

not sure who else has access to it right now

http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3c3495adf4/

it's 2.6tb though

if it's true i want to say that he can run for as long he wants but for all our sakes bernie should make sure to mention "it's important to vote down ticket" to his supporters xp

Sanders fundraising email quoting CNN blab from last night:

"The Clinton campaign has been watching these Wisconsin results come in, and the delegate race of course is tight there, but the reality is they're running out of patience. So they're going to begin deploying a new strategy, it’s going to be called disqualify him, defeat him and then they can unify the party later."

the daily kos thing just says that 1) she helped to push through the Panama-United States Trade Promotion Agreement, which apparently made money laundering easier (i don't know anything about this, so just leaving it there), 2) Deutsche Bank is heavily involved in the panama papers stuff, and 3) hillary clinton made $485,000 makes speeches to Deutsche Bank.

don't really see that going anywhere

they're trying a new strategy called defeat him? holy shit i think they probably should've been on that strategy from the get-go xp

apparently the 15% figure came from benchmark politics: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/5/1511160/-Exit-Poll-15-of-WI-Bernie-voters-didn-t-vote-for-Kloppenburg

"disqualify him" seems the hot-button phrase

youre going to remain dickish i see

disqualify him apparently means make a case to the voters that he isn't a viable candidate. HORROR.

New York (CNN)Hillary Clinton's campaign is taking new steps to try and disqualify Bernie Sanders in the eyes of Democratic voters, hoping to extinguish the argument that he is an electable alternative for the party's presidential nomination.

rmde @ that shit

I'm not asking Bernie to "fund" other candidates (as Morbz said) but there's so many other things that have real tangible results that he could be doing that, for some reason I can't really determine, he is not

xp

ya time warner (cnn owned) is a top 10 contributor of the hillary campaign

https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cid=N00000019&cycle=Career

so propaganda machine has been in full effect even before any leaks

An image taken from the benchmark twitter account:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfYfYGkWwAAjS19.jpg:large

Karl thank u for factchecking

just for the record, and no excusing these people for being lazy/assholes, but if sanders's voters had voted for the dem judge at the same rate clinton's had, she still would have lost

When Wisconsin Democrats gathered for their annual “Founder’s Day” dinner Saturday night, Clinton made a pitch for herself. But she took time to declare, “There is no place on any Supreme Court or any court in this country, no place at all for Rebecca Bradley’s decades-long track record of dangerous rhetoric against women, survivors of sexual assault and the LGBT community.”

“No to discrimination, no to hate speech and no to Bradley,” Clinton told the enthusiastic crowd.

The next night, at a rally in Madison, Bernie Sanders told thousands of cheering supporters, “I hope that a large voter turnout on Tuesday will help elect JoAnne Kloppenburg to the Supreme Court.”

Karl thank u for factchecking

oh, np. i'm surprised there aren't more rumors! it's funny, because i've seen several people reference a tweet by Süddeutsche Zeitung that said "Just wait for what is coming next" regarding potential American names, and speculating that prominent U.S. politicians will be implicated. but it turns out that there's a bit more to that:

In response to speculation about the dearth of American names, Stefan Plöchinger, an editor at Süddeutsche Zeitung, said in a tweet on Monday, “Just wait for what is coming next.” After other reporters picked up on this message, Plöchinger clarified that he wasn’t referring specifically to the United States. “No, it just means: relax,” he said. “What’s in the files will be published without fear or favor.”

lol
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/panama-papers-why-arent-there-more-american-names

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vFJwTBHvuU&feature=youtu.be

id vote for that guy!

Watching all the IRL Berniebros (and -gals) I know now turning on Elizabeth Warren is alternatingly hilarious, nauseating and sad. Apparently she's now a cowardly not-Progressive because she didn't endorse Sanders.

― a 47-year-old chainsaw artist from South Carolina (Phil D.), Friday, June 10, 2016 6:22 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thy would have turned on bernie too eventually. they aren't "progressives." they're poseurs.

the loudest/ most obnoxious ones in my rl are entitled brats who seem to want a Bernie coronation rather than an actual election. they are curiously indifferent to the minority and senior demos that turned out for HRC

(tbf it's basically like 3 Bernbros. most people that i'm willing to discus these things with aren't insane)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckmz3E5WUAEvxv7.jpg:large

is that surprising at all? trump has dropped six points in the last month. I don't see him rising above this. it's total GOP chaos and disarray. I'm ready to call this election now.

the fact that he's relying on a party infrastructure that he's antagonized, refused to cooperate with, and shown no interest in to basically run his campaign is a major tactical error, perhaps more damaging than any of the dumb shit he says or his general weakness as a candidate

Has net favorability just eroded with time? I wonder if it would be similarly low if it wasn't Trump & Clinton

it makes sense that net favorability for everyone would be going down these last few decades as partisanship's been going up

and for the Democrats in a lot of ways he's a totally ideal candidate to run against:
- he has no political base of power (he controls no political bodies, is not supported by any particular industry, isn't supported by his party, and the voters that are in his thrall are basically voters the Democrats don't need to win) so going after him poses no risks in terms of alienating people the Dems might need or share interests with
- he's devoid of any real virtues or accomplishments, literally everything the guy has done can be construed as fraudulent, exploitative, self-aggrandizing etc. He's all negatives.
- he's an idiot, prone to unforced errors, easily provoked, with no intelligent counter-arguments to make in the face of criticism
- he regularly espouses views that are widely unpopular with the broader electorate

This is just the kind of guy politicians dream about grandstanding against. There's no downside to calling him the worst names imaginable, there's no downside to attacking him, he's the perfect villain. And for people like Warren or Obama (and I imagine Hillary) he's an irresistable target for melodramatic rhetoric.

xp

No kidding. I remember the Dem debate where Clinton and Sanders were asked about running against Trump and they both had these shit-eating grins on their faces.

plus there's stuff like this hampering the RNC:

In June 2012, the RNC had 170 field staffers on the ground; now there are more than double that, with the largest contingents in Florida (59), Wisconsin (49), Pennsylvania (54) and Ohio (53). That remains short of what the RNC had promised state parties if a nominee had been selected back in March, worrying local officials who had hoped for a bigger ground force by now. National Republican officials said they are on track to hit their staffing goals by July 31.

To do so, the RNC needs the infusion of cash that usually comes with the selection of a presidential nominee. But fundraising has been slow to ramp up, in part because Trump largely self-financed his primary bid and had no structure to solicit donors.

like if Romney's "47%" comment was some kind of tipping point in '12, there's literally no end to the amount of shit you can pin on this guy. that ad where he's mocking the disabled reporter is a great example, that's something that most people probably forgot happened and it's totally indefensible, at least in Romney's case he's saying that a lot of Republicans actually believe, albeit something usually unspoken

like Trump tweeting out "Hillary making up more lies about me/things I never said" being immediately responded to with a list of citations, that's the sort of thing I expect a lot of in this election

btw what was this Biden speech ppl were talking about upthread? I didn't see that covered anywhere

it's here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF82N0B2VYE

ah thx

good speech, altho I did lol that he misattributes Stalin's line to Mussolini and misremembers that Life cereal commercial

Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff.

The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later.

Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political group Citizens United, which obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act after more the two years of litigation with the government.

A prolific fundraiser for Democratic candidates and contributor to the Clinton Foundation, who later traveled with Bill Clinton on a trip to Africa, Rajiv K. Fernando’s only known qualification for a seat on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) was his technological know-how. The Chicago securities trader, who specialized in electronic investing, sat alongside an august collection of nuclear scientists, former cabinet secretaries and members of Congress to advise Hillary Clinton on the use of tactical nuclear weapons and on other crucial arms control issues.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-donor-sensitive-intelligence-board/story?id=39710624

gonna have to do better than that

i thought the primaries were over. i'd die before voting for trump (or any republican, really)

So what is the GOP game plan here? Tolerate/endorse Trump just enough to keep the Trump voters from bolting, while essentially conceding the election?

― A nationally known air show announcer/personality (tipsy mothra)

eagleton

not saying I know much or agree with any of this but: "Rajiv K. Fernando’s only known qualification for a seat on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) was his technological know-how" . ... so, in what way was he not qualified?

who knows what terrible havoc he wreaked during the two days he was on the board

next you'll be telling me we have inexperienced cronies serving as US ambassadors

"Fernando's expertise appeared to be in the arena of high-frequency trading -- a form of computer-generated stock trading. At the time of his appointment, he headed a firm, Chopper Trading, that was a leader in that field."

One of my IRL Berniebros posted that article (as have dozens of others). It's like, congrats, you're officially useful idiots, doing the Trump team's oppo work for them!

when The Corner posted that Clinton story a couple hours ago I thought, "OK, well, when haven't inexperienced or incompetent hacks been placed in Cabinet/governmental positions?"

I'm sure the mathematics and strategy behind algorithmic stock trading have no bearing whatsoever on international security, which clearly has nothing to do with computers, infosec or data analysis.

thsi shit always happens and while it's NAGL it's also not illegal so who gives a fuck

trump trolling

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/741351028273086464

when The Corner posted that Clinton story a couple hours ago I thought, "OK, well, when haven't inexperienced or incompetent hacks been placed in Cabinet/governmental positions?"

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, June 10, 2016 3:21 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

President Trump says, "You ain't seen nothin' yet! I assure you I'll have the hackiest, croniest cabinet imaginable! Trace Adkins is already picking wallpaper!"

dunno how to judge that story, not knowing any of the particulars

there's plenty of examples in history of jumped-up loyalists being placed in seats they had have no business keeping warm

...but the national security establishment is rigid, clannish and self-dealing.

we keep hearing that finance and tech is another frontier in asymmetrical war/terrorism

...but installing some wall street HFT bod in a position of nuclear sensitivity doesn't look good to me either

kinda depends on your preexisting sense of hillary's trustworthiness or judgement doesn't it

this guy is such a gift:

“Well, I am not a racist, in fact, I am the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered. I’ll give you an example. It’s funny, I just got this, it was just sent to me by Don King. Now, Don knows more about race than anybody. He owns this newspaper, you know — Don’s made a lot of money. He just sent this to me, look at this.”

He handed me a copy of the latest edition of the Call & Post, a black weekly based in Cleveland that King owns. On the back of the paper was a full-page announcement endorsing Trump for president and Bernie Sanders for vice president.

“Isn’t that funny?” Trump continued. “You know, Don endorsed me. You wanna take that back with you? You know, this could be a story, it just came out. He just delivered it to my office. But isn’t that funny? This is Don King. Now, Don King knows racism probably better than anybody. He’s not endorsing a racist, okay? Do you want to use it? You can have the story, it just came out. I just got it 10 minutes ago, I don’t know. Whatever.”

I can't resist posting all these, so classic

"But Bill Clinton was called a racist by Obama. Okay? And I don’t believe he’s a racist, but he was called a racist by Obama, and very loudly and very strongly. And to this day, Clinton, he is haunted by that, he hated that. And I do too, but I don’t think people believe Clinton is a racist. I don’t think they believe that I’m a racist.”

In the controversy Trump was describing, then-Sen. Barack Obama did not call former president Bill Clinton a racist. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, aides to Obama, who was running against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, criticized Bill Clinton for dismissing Obama’s popularity as a “fairy tale.”

it's almost as if what one says or does have no bearing on whether you're a racist or not, it's what *other* people say about you that determines it

’ll give you an example. It’s funny, I just got this, it was just sent to me by Don King. Now, Don knows more about race than anybody. He owns this newspaper, you know — Don’s made a lot of money

a spectacular accruing of thoughts

"thoughts"

I just got it 10 minutes ago, I don’t know. Whatever.

trump could have written this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ECZnpVEaA

it's almost as if what one says or does has no bearing on whether you're making ends meet or not, so tilted is the *job market*

Suggesting part 6, in case anyone hasn't yet. Almost 6,000 posts, and you've more or less officially got your two nominees.

i tried

American Politics 2016: BLM intruders in Philly / Cleveland

I think there's already a general politics thread, and to extend this one, you've got to specify "________________________: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 6."

prob time for general election pt 1 tho

lessor of two weevils

I think here:

Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

?

I know a guy that's going to vote for Gary Johnson

i know several but they're all republicans.