The Many Faces of US Politics...

[Oraisteach]

Stew, your question "What does a vote for Hillary mean, then?" is spot on.  On the one hand, it's not a vote for bigotry and bankrolling the wealthy as represented by that GOP motley crew.  It's a pathetic day when John Kasich seems vaguely appealing.  On the other hand, laying aside Hillary's baggage, it's a vote for the worker and the outsider.  Sanders has been saying something that has been my own moral compass for years: "You judge the greatness of a society not by its wealth but by how it treats its most marginalized." The Democrats, whatever you think of them, will try to do a better job of taking care of the average Joe.  And along those lines, a vote for Hillary may make for a more empathetic Supreme Court, a court with only one remaining originalist, Clarence Thomas. Stew, despite being a Harps man, I know you've got a good heart.  You've flipped your position on the death penalty, and you espoused some views that are more in line with Democratic thinking.

[FL/MAYO]

The lesser of two evils that's what we have to decide on in November. I'm not a fan of Hillary but Trump is scum. Elizabeth Warren would have won this easily, what a pity she didn't run against Clinton in the primaries.

[Oraisteach]

My sentiments too, FL/MAYO.

[Oraisteach]

You should check out John Oliver's 20 min. roasting of Trump.

[seafoid]

The memo that kicked off neoliberalism

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

[bennydorano]

I would consider myself fairly well read on US politics but I dont get why there is so much venom for Obama? Obamacare aside, why is he so loathed? I've a few things in my head that i know are issues but it still doesn't add up for me, as a Republican Pres would have done little different.

A bullet point list preferable to a narrative if anybody can be arsed!

[FL/MAYO]

I would consider myself fairly well read on US politics but I dont get why there is so much venom for Obama? Obamacare aside, why is he so loathed? I've a few things in my head that i know are issues but it still doesn't add up for me, as a Republican Pres would have done little different.

A bullet point list preferable to a narrative if anybody can be arsed!

1. Racism
2. See #1

[FL/MAYO]

You should check out John Oliver's 20 min. roasting of Trump.

Yes, it's very good, had a good laugh at that this morning.

[stew]

GOP establishment getting VERY worried...

Stuart Stevens, Romney's campaign manager, on Trump, in the aftermath of the David Duke issue:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/29/a-vote-for-donald-trump-is-a-vote-for-bigotry.html

A Vote for Donald Trump Is a Vote for Bigotry

There's winning. And then there's supporting a bigot. If the GOP lines up behind Trump, it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously anymore.
Political consulting and morality go together about as well as that famous fish and bicycle. Lawyers have constructed a neat paradigm obligating them to handle any and all clients, a very convenient way to maintain pretext of high road while taking any road possible. So it is with political consultants. For years when asked my positions on issues, my standard response has been, "I don't have positions, I have clients."
Along the way I've been accused of not believing in anything but winning, which I always took as a compliment. The only reason I or any political consultant should be hired is to help a client win. We're not there to remind a candidate of his deeply held positions or to solve the problems of the world. We are there for one purpose: to do everything possible to win an election. We're the hammer, votes are the nail.
But to my annoyance, I can't take that position in the 2016 election. I'd like to blame it on Donald Trump, but that would be like be blaming a dog for barking. No, honesty demands the admission that Trump would not be important if he were not winning. And he's winning.

For months when pressed on Trump and what he meant for the Republican Party, I've been giving a stock answer that struck me as both true and easy: If we agree that Trump winning the Republican nomination means something, we have to agree that his not winning means something. That worked well enough and had the added bonus of being a setup—I hoped—for an "I told you so moment" when Trump didn't win.
After Iowa, that answer was looking pretty good, and it seemed easy enough to defeat Trump when his image of "winner" had been damaged. But to my utter astonishment, none of the Republican campaigns focused on what was the screamingly obvious mandate of the moment: defeat Trump. Instead there was this mass hysteria of candidates fighting fiercely to determine what order the losers could finish behind Trump.

Jeb Bush took on Trump more than any candidate but he was, bizarrely, not backed with sufficient force by the huge weaponry of his Right to Rise super PAC. Instead of scrambling to put the best tanks into the field to face the enemy's armor, Right to Rise spent more than $100 million in the care and feeding of cavalry horses. Predictably, once the shooting started, they were slaughtered.
So now Trump has won three of the four latest contests and is poised to keep winning until he has enough delegates to secure the Republican nomination. There is still some hope that he can be stopped short of the 1,236 delegates needed to win on the first ballot, but realistically this requires the three major candidates facing Trump—Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich—to win their home states between now and March 16. It looks like Cruz will do so on Tuesday, but at the moment Rubio is considerably behind Trump in Florida, and Kasich and Trump are basically tied in Ohio.
Can it happen? Sure. Will it? Well, I hope so. (And anytime political consultants use phrases like "I hope so," it is like a doctor looking at an x-ray and saying, "That shadow might be an imaging error." Don't count on it.)

On Sunday, Feb. 28, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination was unable to answer a question about renouncing David Duke and white supremacists. "I don't know anything about David Duke," Trump said, which places the candidate in the unenviable position that his defenders could claim he wasn't a bigot but merely the dumbest man in America. Jake Tapper of CNN continued to push Trump, and he continued to refuse to denounce Duke and white supremacists. Only later in the day did Trump tweet out that, gee, he didn't really like Duke.
This latest is more than utterly disgusting. It really makes it impossible to pretend that Trump is not only an idiot but also a racist idiot. Yes, there were plenty of reasons to believe this before, with his rants about Mexican "rapists" and his prideful embrace of running for president in the Key of Hate. This is a man who attacked the pope. But even if Trump says he has never asked God for forgiveness—for his sake, let's hope that's another Trump lie—Americans are forgiving and there is always the tendency to give people another chance to correct mistakes.

But we shouldn't be giving Trump any more room for doubt. He's proven he's a uniquely ugly figure to emerge in American political history. He's threatened citizens who oppose him, like his outburst against the Ricketts family, who have contributed to a super PAC opposing him. He ended the week ranting about rewriting libel laws and threatening Amazon because founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post and it is covering Trump. Fortunately Bezos is vastly wealthier than Trump and can buy and sell him a dozen times over. In Trump's value system, Bezos is much the better man. Actually that's one thing Trump probably has right.

Across the spectrum, smart and troubled voices on the center-right spectrum are articulating why they will not support Trump and why Republicans must reject the menace. Former George W. Bush speechwriter Pete Wehner, one of the most eloquent voices, wrote in The New York Times: "Mr. Trump's virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe."
He's right, of course. Every Republican, from elected officials to super volunteers to leaders of the party, must ask themselves what it will mean for the GOP and, vastly more important, the country to play a role enabling this hateful man. Hillary Clinton will likely crush him, but that's really not the point. There is something at stake here larger than one election. To support Trump is to support the hate and racism he embodies. That is simply an intolerable moral position for any political party.

If Trump wins the nomination, politicians who support him will be acquiescing to, if not actively aiding, his hate. Donors, including the corporate donors, whom every convention depends on for support, cannot support a man with Trump's unbalanced, bigoted views. How can any corporation justify to its board that it donated funds to support a bigot?
If the Republican Party stands for nothing but winning elections, it deserves to lose. It will with Trump. But on the day after the election, the pain will not be just that the White House, the Senate, and possibly the House of Representatives are now in Democratic hands.
No, the greatest pain will be from the shame of pretending that an evil man was not evil and a hater really didn't mean what he said. We hold elections every two years, and there is always the chance to regain lost offices. But there is no mechanism to regain one's dignity and sense of decency once squandered.
That defeat is permanent. To support Trump is to support a bigot. It's really that simple.

What dignity could Clinton possibly have?

To support Clinton means to condone a murderer, it's really that simple.

[seafoid]

I would consider myself fairly well read on US politics but I dont get why there is so much venom for Obama? Obamacare aside, why is he so loathed? I've a few things in my head that i know are issues but it still doesn't add up for me, as a Republican Pres would have done little different.

A bullet point list preferable to a narrative if anybody can be arsed!

1. Racism
2. See #1

Also the GOP echo chamber. Dems and GOPpers get different news

[seafoid]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-nix/an-open-letter-to-my-frie_2_b_9293694.html

[jimmyd41]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-nix/an-open-letter-to-my-frie_2_b_9293694.html

what a steaming pile of shit. Liberals are so f**king clueless. They don't understand a protest vote unless it is comes in the form of some hippie wannabees with a big sign saying "we have decided we don't like the establishment position". Nothing else can be seen as legit.

How do you support him so blindly? Ask yourself, are you a racist, sexist, hateful and ignorant person as well?

The default liberal position. You disagree with my position. I will ignore any nuance and subtlety in your position and just brand you.

His virulent ideas are seeping into the brains of his supporters.

The most virulent idea in America is the idea that white liberals can assuage their guilt about putting as much distance between themselves and black people as possible by eviscerating working class whites and cops. That is is THE most virulent idea in America. It wont work. Everybody can see the truth.

Trump's supporters are angry, and anger is infectious. I can tell you as a non-supporter of Trump I am just as angry. We need the kind of leader that seeks to bring us together, not tear us apart.#

"Together" meaning "not-within-15-miles-of-where-I-live"

To all the people, of all the races and religions that Donald Trump stands against, to all the women that don't meet his standards of beauty, to all the good Muslims, and Christians, Mormons and Catholics and Jewish, Italians, Irish and Asians, to the African-Americans and Native Americans, to anyone who has ever been persecuted, belittled, made to feel inferior or bullied based on ignorance like the kind that Trump is spewing, please, I implore you to get out and vote against him. Don't let the progress of this great nation be halted. We've come too far.

Mormons ? interesting, I recall a concerted campaign of ridicule against Mormons during the last election. As a agnostic I find them to be bat shit crazy like all religions , however, having lived amongst them in the American west I have grown to appreciate the way they live out the meaning of their creed,  as Martin Luther King would have said. I noticed precious little respect for this in the last election which is why this risible liberal appeal fills me with disgust.

In this country we FIGHT and DIE for freedom, for Truth and Justice. We fight for what's right.

Really, have you actually fought for anything ? It is typically the southern, white working class that do your fighting for you. People like you typically spit on them for their efforts.

Some have attributed the following statement to Abraham Lincoln*:
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed."

Yes indeed, the same corporations that import the labour that economically disenfranchises the white and black middle/working class. The same labour that works in cahoots with the white liberal elites like you to increase their wealth and establish the "gilded ghettos" of the likes of palo alto and Menlo park while the lesser tribes fight it out over resources leading to the inevitable clashes that the liberal elites can tut-tut over and chastise the "rasist" underclass. google loves liberals,liberals love google apple loves liberals, liberals love apple, facebook loves liberals, liberals love facebook ...you both want to take over the world. A match made in hell.  Everybody knows this

How very convenient. 

[heganboy]

Quote
His virulent ideas are seeping into the brains of his supporters.
The most virulent idea in America is the idea that white liberals can assuage their guilt about putting as much distance between themselves and black people as possible by eviscerating working class whites and cops. That is is THE most virulent idea in America. It wont work. Everybody can see the truth.

[Declan]

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

This is what's leading the GOP race

[muppet]

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

This is what's leading the GOP race

That is brilliant.