a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

lmao

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-gives-out-lindsey-grahams-cell-phone-number-televised-speech-355899

amazing

hahahahahaaaaaaaaa

I just remember Kasich as Ohio governor constantly being in the news cutting things and cancelling things like transit or intercity rail that had been burbling their way through the system under his Dem predecessor. Obviously this is really vague. He's probably not the most heinous in the field, yeah, but maybe one of the more heinous that has a shot at appearing "moderate."

luckily the GOP has no use for "moderates"

kasich was mentioned as a dream rightwing candidate once, there was a lot of hope and speculation in 2012. my understanding is he's just strong on paper, a really weak pol in person. i can remember byron york talking about him as a candidate that has more supporters in a room before he speaks than after. he might be running for veep. it's interesting cuz i've seen sherrod brown mentioned as a possible veep pick for hillary though supposedly that slot is practically castro's already.

it's interesting cuz i've seen sherrod brown mentioned as a possible veep pick for hillary though supposedly that slot is practically castro's already.

well, Raul's older than Fidel

More on Kasich: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/20/what-ohio-gov-john-kasich-is-doing-to-public-education-in-his-state/

still trying to figure out how someone like him measures his seemingly-genuine Christian compassion with obliterating public school finding so that private schools can get taxpayer funding through vouchers. i guess it's ok if they're religious schools, eh?

if you're poor, you're in public school, therefore you don't work hard enough

http://i.imgur.com/RO0h1RZ.jpg

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/19/ohios-school-choice-chief-resigns-after-giving-unfair-help-to-charter-schools/

http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Oivg20IQ27.hFhuzuEJkxg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTYzMTtpbD1wbGFuZTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/38b94d6b862ada207c0f6a7067001caf.jpg

Drawn, now as ever, by Dave Sim.

i was out this weekend so i may have missed discussion of this:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122329/bernie-sanders-and-martin-omalley-failed-their-blacklivesmatter-test

O’Malley had difficulty with the question of police abuse even before the protest. Vargas pressed O’Malley early in the town hall, calling him the “godfather of mass incarceration.” O’Malley gave a prepared response that included downplaying the protests against him during his presidential announcement—it was only three or four people and most of them were white, O’Malley said—and taking credit for civilian review boards and other reforms from his time as Baltimore mayor. The demonstrators did not agree. “Did you hear him talking about all the things that he did in Baltimore?” Oso asked when I spoke to her after the town hall. “When he said that, one of the girls I was with was, like, ‘Rush the stage.’ I said, ‘OK, wait!’”

O’Malley waited politely amid the disruption, which shut down the town hall for about 15 minutes. When he finally was able to respond, he went back to the few specific policies from his days as Baltimore’s mayor. “He was talking about past actions that he was taking a lot of credit for that actually he did not push for,” Yeats told me afterward. O’Malley closed with the tone-deaf comment, “Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter.” The activists wanting to center the black experience and focus on the state of emergency in their communities abhorred it, booing him loudly.

Sanders did even worse. Instead of expressing solidarity with the protesters, he talked about his pet issue—economics. He wasn’t “in the room,” and didn’t alter his pitch based on what was happening. “What Sanders should have done, when they said ‘Sandra Bland,’ you say ‘Sandra Bland!’” said political analyst and Blue Nation Review contributor Goldie Taylor, claiming that a simple show of empathy would have disarmed the protest. "He would have shut down the shutdown!"

Artist and activist Janna Zinzi, who was present in the crowd listening to Sanders, agreed. “Can you imagine how the conversation and energy in the room could have changed if he just stopped and said, ‘I'm listening?’ That would have given the other white people the message that maybe something legitimate is being communicated and that they should actually listen, too. That would have showed real leadership and basic humanity.”

But Sanders couldn’t get past his mindset: that if you fix economic inequality in America, social justice will naturally follow. Historical experience doesn’t show this; Bland was an educated black woman went to Texas for a job interview and three days later, was found dead in her jail cell. Countries in Europe with high degrees of state spending to reduce inequality continue to have racially motivated problems with immigrant communities. The critique doesn’t hold.

When he didn’t get the response he wanted, Sanders became frustrated. “I spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights and dignity,” he said, alluding to his time as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s and his marching with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Even so, he pivoted away from every criminal justice questions by returning to economics. The protesters were not appeased. “I said when he came out, he’s going to say I marched with your daddy and your mama, that’s what he wants to talk about,” said Oso. “But what are you going to do? You want to be the president right now. I don’t want to hear about what you did!”

and later:

The reaction of the candidates after the protest was varied and significant. O’Malley spent the entire day sitting with activists, publicly apologizing for his “white/all lives matter” remarks in an interview with This Week in Blackness and generally atoning for his performance. Sanders canceled all his events, including meetings with black and brown activists. At his evening speech before 11,000 in the same convention center, he did obliquely address the issue, using practiced lines he has said in the past but with a little more depth. “If any police officer breaks the law, that officer must be held accountable,” Sanders said. On Sunday, he uttered Bland's name at a rally in Dallas. But the no-shows earlier in the day just exacerbated the problem.

sorry for epic quotes

none of these candidates have specific policy recommendations to address the black experience and afaict none of the protestors are demanding any besides feeling listened to + being acknowledged. idk how valuable the request "say the words black lives matter" is from a policy pov.

it's not a policy move

whether it's the most effective poli theatre is up for debate

yeah this is theatre in the service of identifying which candidates will actually listen to the constituency in question (so far the answer is none)

if all ppl want is another president like obama who will 'understand,' and speak eloquently, but push no new legislation, or policy, idk. let's see one of these milquetoast white dudes promise to end incarceration for non-violent drug crimes. that's a policy whose time has come.

It's not an either / or - in fact it's one then the other - if they won't listen, who will believe that they'll act?

weird how that article purposefully ignores this part of Sanders' statements:

“Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African American kids are unemployed. It is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.”

tho admittedly that bumps up his response from like a 2/10 to a 3/10 at best. at least he didn't say "all lives matter" like O'Malley.

if all ppl want is another president like obama who will 'understand,' and speak eloquently, but push no new legislation, or policy, idk.

I'm confused, isn't your favorite candidate all the latter and none of the former

Well, Webb kinda has pushed for justice reforms - not necessarily ending incarceration for non-violent drug crimes, but def looking at ways to reduce such. Not an endorsement of his entire candidacy, just sayin it's not the same as utter silence on the topic.

http://www.newsweek.com/jim-webbs-criminal-justice-crusade-67347

i would get very excited if hillary said she'd end incarceration for non-violent drug crimes. xp

i guess where i'm coming from is that we are coming to the end of a two term administration that was better at the optics of race than any other administration in history in terms of listening and empathizing (the gates story, the trayvon story, etc etc obama has come through with great speeches etc many times) and yet i think many ppl are very frustrated w/ progress over the last 8 years. maybe having a sympathetic person in office is less important than someone whose policy goals align w/ your own. but these protestors seem more interested in hearing the right rhetoric than any substantial policy goals. which i don't get. instead of demanding that candidates say "black lives matter," why not demand that they push for legislation that might protect black lives?

Can I get a quick take on whether you all think Bernie has a realistic chance at the nom? I am a cable news junkie and it is amazing how there is a total blackout on even mentioning his name. I'm also a paranoid conspiracy theorist and can't help but wonder if Bubba and Sid Blumenthal were the invisible hand behind the BLM hijack? Seems like Bernie has captured the hearts of the hipsters and the Afr-Amer vote is the HRC firewall...without them, they got nothin'

no

Bernie has zero chance and is playing a time-honored role

instead of demanding that candidates say "black lives matter," why not demand that they push for legislation that might protect black lives?

also rmde at this, you realize these are not exclusive right

i wonder if bernie might have a shot at veep. this is probably not the place for me to disclose my tremendous anxiety at the idea of a jewish POTUS.

no he doesn't

i don't know shakey! i only hear about the first part and not the second! xp

so iatee, are you supporting hillary?

yes

HRC & the Braintrust wdnt pick Bern ahead of Trump

instead of demanding that candidates say "black lives matter," why not demand that they push for legislation that might protect black lives?

also rmde at this, you realize these are not exclusive right

i'm sure if the protesters managed to get o'malley or bernie to respond and demonstrate that they were listening, the legislation part of it would be the next order of business. if bernie answered them by saying "I agree, #blacklivesmatter! vote for me!", the next step would be "so what are you going to do about it?"

but politicians rarely display that level of empathy in a spontaneous fashion (which is why most people don't put much trust into politicians - if you take the talking points and cut off the speechwriter they'd be left dangling), and that was part of the point of the protest (imo)

but like the spontaneous empathy is barely associated w/ the policy stuff ime. the guy (or gal - i notice hillary navigated these protests perfectly) who doesn't get flummoxed at this kind of thing isn't necessarily the one who is going to make things better. just the one who is better at politicking. bernie is really bad at responding to crowd protests ime - there's that video where he starts yelling at israel critics at a townhall and completely loses control of the crowd. it doesn't mean he'd be worse for palestinians than hillary. it just means he's not as slick an operator.

like is anyone protesting hillary to give her proposals now or is everyone satisfied that she said "black lives matter" so convincingly?

That sounds right. I'd imagine Sanders hasn't had a skeptical audience in years.

thanks, iatee

sort of recoiling at this idea that black criminal justice activists just want to hear platitudes and don't have any policy prescriptions in mind or to hand, just wtf really dude

i'm not saying that they don't have any policy prescriptions in mind, i'm saying that maybe demanding platitudes is not the way to get those prescriptions taken seriously

here I googled something for you

http://blacklivesmatter.com/demands/

obviously the idea is that spreading the phrase "blacklivesmatter" leads to people investigating what it's about and what they're for - guess they failed on that count with you tho

ok shakey

sort of recoiling at this idea that black criminal justice activists just want to hear platitudes and don't have any policy prescriptions in mind or to hand, just wtf really dude

Then why are they choosing the most theatrical, least get-shit-done of all possible events to make their appearance? Come on; it's theater, and they know it. The candidates are there to make a sales pitch, the activists jumped onstage to hijack it, but there is literally nothing but sloganeering going on on all sides. The absolute best you're gonna get is someone saying, "If I'm elected, I will strive to accomplish x," but that assumes that a) the candidate will get elected; b) they won't encounter massive resistance from Congress. Even if you assume a), assuming b) at this point, given the history of the last seven years, is frankly idiotic.

Seems like Hillary has much more to answer for (via Bubba) than Bern. O'Malley was/is Gov of Maryland, right? That makes more sense re: recent events in Baltimore. How has Obama been on BLM demands? I don't know, just curious

iirc O passed something barring local PDs from getting military grade hardware iirc

Then why are they choosing the most theatrical, least get-shit-done of all possible events to make their appearance?

I'm not denying it's theater, it is very early in the campaign, there is nothing BUT theater at this point re: the candidates. But to argue that they are doing nothing but theatrically disrupting campaign events as a PR stunt (which it def is) and NOT anything else like working at the local level (where tbh this shit matters most) or doing grassroots organizing or lobbying congress is presumptuous and I suspect v innacurate.

moving on... I'm surprised GOP base is happy to give a pass to Trump re: McCain comments but I guess a) they really hate McCain and b) all that military/vets talk is mostly lip service that's subsumed by ideology (cf Swift Boating). I still think Trump's self-destruction is inevitable but I'm not sure what's going to drive it at this point.

americans don't hate anyone as much as they hate a loser