Posted by dahsdebater on 5/16/2016 2:47:00 PM (view original):
Posted by Bernie10025 on 5/15/2016 8:53:00 PM (view original):
Many of the cheerleaders in that picture with Bush 41 look kind of unpleasant, but I'd really enjoy meeting the one directly to his right.
Hillary supporters have a very good reason to feel insecure. Maybe they were already insecure people, which is why/how they empathize with her (I don't know how else one could). She stands for nothing. Everybody feels it. She just spent $1 million to hire online trolls to fight against Sanders supporters on chatboards.
I feel the exact opposite. I know exactly what Hillary stands for. I don't agree with a lot of it. But at least I know what her policy preferences are, what she would work for as POTUS, what her vision for America is.
I have no idea what the hell Trump stands for. Trump doesn't know what Trump stands for. He changes his mind about that several times a week.
Yes, there's no doubt that a large block of people will vote for Hillary because no matter what she says, they presume (probably with some accuracy) that if elected, she'll uphold the Democratic platform/represent Obama's 3rd term.
This is why I like the analogy to the 1968 election. Hillary Clinton is Hubert Humprhey and Sanders is Eugene McCarthy. My grandparents supported McCarthy and were so upset that Humphrey was nominated that they voted for Eldridge Cleaver!
But even if we view Hillary cynically and assume she'll uphold the rank-and-file Democratic/Obama policies, there are major problems. Vital policy issues are changing too much to really estimate how she'll handle things.
For example, what about trade? It's suddenly in vogue for Democrats to backtrack on all their trade policies from the Clinton administration -- NAFTA, etc. Hillary's history in politics and voting record strongly support these trade policies, now attacked by Trump and Sanders. Ok, so she has flipped her position (e.g., TPP) to agree with them. I don't think that even if you view Hillary Clinton as described above, you can be certain (even vaguely) of her policy position on trade. Too many twists and votes in the opposite direction. Is her new position the main "Democratic" stance now? Also, she and BIll work as a team, and he obviously has a very strong record which comports with hers, until she changed her position during this campaign.
What about national security policy? Firstly, as a purely political/electoral consideration, she has said almost nothing about the War on Terrorism, etc. Secondly, I think everybody agrees that Obama's policy (insofar as the public discourse on terrorism, refusing to talk about Islam) is wrong. Every leader in the Western world has been more direct about this, and also many in the non-Western world. So how could one predict where Hillary stands? What is the conventional Democratic position now?
In fact, the only thing I've ever heard Hillary say (other than condemning the latest attacks) about what she wants to do with national security policy is that she wants to focus R/D on encryption. That's about as notable as saying that she's against al Qaeda or ISIS. We've already been spending enormous sums on encryption. So really I think the only "meat" in this statement is that she's signaling to people (who don't know anything about encryption) that she's actually tech savvy.
So my main point is that even if you're convinced that she'll assume the conventional Democratic or Obama stances on many issues, there are centrally vital policy areas which are changing too much (including with respect to politics -- the proper "Democratic" and "Republican" approaches) to project how she'll act.
5/16/2016 5:31 PM (edited)