The 2016 American Election - General Discussion Thread

A little devil's advocate here. Before that, though, I'd just like to say, great post! I wish I could rep it, love the long, thought out contributions. They make me all warm and tingly and I agree with the majority of it.

[B-o]

I think that "feeling the Bern" is something I've been told before way too often, usually when Bernie makes it close to Clinton in the early (and so far, only) the early voting states. Time and time again, though, he ends up falling off the new wave of support. I'm still betting on Clinton winning, and here's why.

Bernie is more than focused, he's single messaged

You're right, Bernie is focused on one topic and one topic only, but that's the problem. You can only dodge questions on other topics before you quickly find yourself being ignored. Bernie is asked about BLM; talks about wealth inequality. Bernie is asked about the Supreme Court decisions about gay rights; talks about wealth inequality. Bernie is asked about an ongoing crisis, like a shooting; claims we have more important things to talk about, points towards wealth inequality.

Eventually, that stops working.

Look at what happened when BLM took over his campaign events. It took them, what, six tries before Bernie finally began talking about minority issues as something other than "well if we fix the economy the way I plan to, then that will trickle down to the problem facing black people in America." He constantly cries he's never on the news, because he never actually engages with the news. I've seen his stump speeches, or rather his stump speech, which is a bad thing to say, because usually someone starts using a new stump speech after the fortieth or fiftieth time he uses it. I can only care so long about the same thing, and after that it's not "news."

Bernie needs to begin talking about something else other than the economy, because if he wants the nomination, I want to hear more. Quite frankly, if he continues to not talk about Russia, ISIS, or Israel, than I don't want to hear anything more from him. His current discussion on it has been paltry at best, and most of it I heard during a debate where he couldn't try and reframe the discussion into inequality. He's going to have his finger on some important buttons and be centre stage in an important era; if he isn't going to engage with questions about the military and foreign affairs, or won't take the time to lay out a larger strategy for that, then he isn't ready to be president.

Bernie's economic and wall street plans are poorly formed or are still bare bones

First off, for a guy running on inequality and taxation, he did a really bad job of getting the centre piece tax plan of his campaign out. How many months before we finally saw something pop up?

Second, his arguments about too big to fail make no sense. His solution seems to be to create a 1930's-esque "too many to fail" situation, where many small banks fail, since small banks will engage in the same kind of activities as large banks. He also largely fails to actually discuss shadow banking, while denouncing it all the same. I'd forgive him if he was talking about using macroprudential tools, but he's not. He's dog whistling, and a whole bunch of the left are jumping to attention.

Third, he talks about holding people accountable for their crimes. Now, how does he plan to do that? If we could have charged people with a crime, there was the political will to do it for the last 8 years. If we didn't have the evidence then, what do we have now? Who would he go after? What evidence does he have?

Eventually Bernie is going to actually have to field some tough questions. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of reducing inequality. I have a ton of posts on here about that. However, I don't feel like I've heard anything more than "the 1%" whenever I see something come out of Sanders' mouth, and that just isn't good enough for me. Especially when I'm sitting here, just a few months away from the end of Obama's presidency, and I remember the exact same promises. Exactly where does Bernie Sanders think he is going to find the political will here?

You might feel that the youth will lose faith in the system without Bernie, but my worry is that Bernie will be more like Obama 2.0. "Wait, I have to deal with a hostile house and potentially a hostile senate? B-but my agenda!" Before you know it, the youth become disenfranchised all the same.

Bernie shares the same kind of voter's as Trump; overwhelmingly white men

If you read a lot of the polls, you'll notice most specifically point out that two rather important groups continue to like Clinton; non-white voters and women. Do you know who gets the love of all the white dudes? That's right, Sanders.

It's been a kind of ugly truth that Bernie is kind of the neck-beard candidate. Since he doesn't engage on a lot of important topics, Bernie quickly finds that he doesn't have support from a lot of groups. For example, sure, Clinton evolved on gay rights, but by his own admission, he only really seemed to change his mind in 2009. Most of his votes were based on "state's rights," and not any sort of other right that most decisions on gay rights have been since. He has been a supporter of things like the right to choose, but only peripherally.

The reason why Bernie Sanders didn't have name recognition is because he wasn't a champion or a crusader for anything. Bernie Sanders was great at sitting aside while the civil rights fights of the last quarter century roared on by, and now he is charging up behind and trying to pretend he was on board all along.

I'm actually a little surprised I'm arguing along these lines, but it weirdly does feel like we are discussing the candidate of the entitled upper class here. At least, the entitled among the Democrats. Regardless, I think there is a ceiling to the support he will bring into the primaries, and if he wins them, to the general election, something that cannot be ignored.

Bernie dislikes the media because he doesn't know how to use it

Like I mentioned before, Bernie doesn't make news because there is rarely something "new" about him. What is the Wall Street Journal supposed to report? "Bernie Sanders talks about same thing using same speech for seventeenth time in Iowa?" Who the fuck gives a damn? The only reason he seems to be rising in the polls is because he's been beating on Trump, the first sign he has any clue how to use media and seemingly the first time he figured out he's in a race for the presidency and not just there to critique Hillary Clinton.

He claims the media is biased against him, and frankly, the media goes where the news is. Sanders rarely does or says anything. Like I said before, he wasn't a household name. No one knows much about him. He's done great in making sure he never had to make a political decision of consequence, and when he was called on to make decisions he made sure was as middle of the road as possible to avoid anything taking him to task on it in the future. Not exactly the honest and useful guy I've been hearing so much about.

The more you know of Bernie, the less you begin to like him

Like I said before, Bernie sounds great when you first hear his speech. But when you hear it for the tenth time, you begin to slow down a little bit and think "what about this, and what about that?" If you watch interviews with him, he does increasingly seem to be an old white guy trying to pretend to be a force for generationalism. For me, it feels like a guy who is trying to take me for a ride.

Maybe it's just because of how he is trying to pretend he was some icon of gay rights that is getting to me, because it rubs me the wrong way that someone so out of tune with that debate and who only came on board half a decade ago can say he ever once gave a shit when legislative power was in his own hands.

Then you begin looking at his record on other issues, guns and women's rights and such, and it feels like he has decided his grand vision is to be realized now, when he no longer has to worry about political suicide because he could keel over at any moment. If he had done this sixteen years ago it would have been courageous. Now it feels like he has leapt onto being the bandwagon of the left of the democratic party.

Ron Paul will win, v 2.0

A lot of your essay I read before, usually from supporters of Ron Paul. Just like now, Paul had a lot of supporters who were neck beards. His supporters were angry at a media who ignored him and claimed he was close to knocking Romney and Santorum for a spin. He only ever talked about a handful of things, was decidedly heterodox for the party he was running for, and brought together an awkward collection of mostly white dudes who spread his cult across the internet. His supporters seemed to be super jacked, but that never really seemed to translate during votes in his early states. Clinton is backed by a lot of people who have shown up to vote before; Sanders, as a "new wave," might attract new people into voting in the primaries but they'll actually have to show up. Remember, Clinton has literally hundreds of endorsements from party figures, and Sanders has 2. Democrats are decidedly a lot less "anti-Washington" as the Republicans are this time around.

The only remnants of Ron Paul's fame is his son's sputtering campaign.

I'm still not holding out hope for Sanders. He has focused a lot on the early states. He could win them. However, there's never really been momentum going forward from the early states. Indeed, if you look at Iowa, that state has, in the last few years, had a very bad record of voting for the guy who would become the candidate, let alone presidents.

I'd go on a long rant on statistics, but to keep it brief, let's just say my cynicism burns brightly. So does Nate Silver's at 538.

Sorry PD, I feel like I might have been a little rough on the old guy, but this is a debate I've been having for a while and I wanted to drag it on here, because I'm a sadist. It's like the only debate I've had all week. Well, other than arguing about bilingualism with Jared on Facebook.

If I had to place money on the elections this year I'd say the election will end up being Sanders vs. Trump with Trump being the winner as he'll simply turn out more energized voters than will Sanders.

Sanders winning would be great for the TeaBirchers in Congress. With him being open about socialism they could dig in their heels, refuse to co-operate on anything, and bring about the government shutdown (maybe even a permanent one) that they've wanted all along.