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There's a dependency tree required to get to the point of "vote", and you have to pass thru "respect" first. I disagree with, but respect, Sanders, Stein, Warr

by VLM 10y ago

There's a dependency tree required to get to the point of "vote", and you have to pass thru "respect" first. I disagree with, but respect, Sanders, Stein, Warren, Feingold (and some other lefties). Hillary equals revulsion, repulsion. I can't be talked from "respect" to "vote" with someone I can't even respect first. The D party worked very hard on converting "respect" people to "vote" people. I think they achieved 100% success. The problem is most of the country can never respect her, and there was zero effort put into making her respectable (perhaps it was recognized as impossible?) There's something fundamentally wrong internally with the D party when the ground seems to be crawling with respectable (possibly votable!) candidates but instead we get a movie caricature of Lex Luther combined with a slightly more chicken hawk bloodthirsty Joker from a sequel rejected in the 90s. There's something just horribly fundamentally wrong with how people gain political power inside the D party, resulting in the wrong leaders at the wrong times.

tdb7893 10y ago
She'll be within one percentage point of Trump in the end in overall votes (and it looks like she'll beat him actually). All of these commentators seem to be making broad generalizations about the state of politics and how the strategy is obviously going to fail but the reality is that if the election was very slightly different in ways that neither campaign could really control it would've gone the other way. Maybe I'm wrong but all this just reminds me of all of the BS narratives that ESPN concocts to fill air time after football games.
- eru 10y ago
  Or just watch market commentators talk about stock price movements. Only after they happened, of course.
  - jeffdavis 10y ago
    That's not quite fair. This election was an upset. I think it's quite reasonable to look for an explanation beyond random noise.
- VLM 10y ago
  That seems very "ends justify the means". Aren't you concerned that pragmatically the Democratic party is objectively unable to effectively govern itself? Given a choice of respectable statesmen something necrotic is instead selecting failure-prone sociopaths instead? Do you have a theoretical model where competent leadership somehow would result in worse end results? Wouldn't competent leadership, for a change, result in a permanent Democratic majority which theoretically would be a good "ends"?
  - tdb7893 10y ago
    Most of her troubles were difficult to predict ahead of time, especially the email server and the leaks. Besides those she's actually a pretty good candidate for the party. The DNC pushed against Bernie the same way that the RNC pushed against Trump (and in previous election people like Ron Paul) and the difference was at the end of the day Bernie just didn't have the support. I'm not the biggest fan of the DNC but I'm not seeing how the leadership did anything this election different than any other election.
- vkou 10y ago
  The popular vote is irrelevant for actually winning - what matters is how states at the margins vote. Look at Michigan. Look at Ohio. Look at Pennsylvania. For the Democrats, Hillary was an unmitigated disaster in all of those areas. Also, keep in mind that most of the electorate votes against party lines, even if the party were to nominate Satan. She completely failed the margins.
  - tdb7893 10y ago
    I agree with you but a lot of the troubles that she had were difficult to see ahead of time, especially the email server and the leaks. It's easy to slap on a narrative after the fact but at the time Hillary really was the choice most likely to win the the election. I'm not saying that she didn't do an exceptionally poor job in certain areas but all she needed to do was one or two percent better and there would be the narrative of it being a landslide the other way.
    - ad-hominem 10y ago
      > a lot of the troubles that she had were difficult to see ahead of time, especially the email server Sorry, this is a totally facetious argument. She should have known before that server went up that using a personal email address to circumvent FOIA (not to even get into classified info mishandling) was "wrong". She knew this years ago. She didn't care. She didn't think she'd get caught, and now that she has, she might even get away with it. That people found out about it before the election is the silver lining here. The stormcloud is, every even remotely well-armed government hacked her server at some point during her tenure as SoS and has everything on it.
- aridiculous 10y ago
  Normally, I'd agree. But to not put a polarizing, inexperienced politician like Trump away easily is what makes the commentators (and me) think there are larger trends at work. She had all the cards.
  - tdb7893 10y ago
    I agree that there are trends at work but many of the criticisms of her were only apparent in the last few months so saying that the DNC and democrats in general should've known somehow that she wasn't a good candidate and that their picking of leadership was fundamentally flawed seems odd to me.
    - VLM 10y ago
      Maybe if she had divorced and denounced Bill before the campaign run... They were not exactly free of scandal when Bill was in office. Her secretary of state term was... memorable. The situation was only unpredictable to maybe the youngest Millennials.
      - tdb7893 10y ago
        She was pretty unfazed by most of those scandals in the end, though. I think part of the reason they liked her is because she has been through so many scandals and was still the political force that she was. In the end they were wrong but a year ago it wasn't that unreasonable.
slg 10y ago
The reason you don't respect her is not from her doing or the doing of the DNC. It is because there has been a plurality of the political community that has been working for literal decades to destroy her reputation. If you repeat a lie loud enough and long enough it becomes true. In reality she is in the normal range of candidate. I grant you she is closer to the bad side than the good (at least in most people's mind), but she is no more corrupt or politically calculating than your average member of Congress.
- neaanopri 10y ago
  But that's not what people believe! The Democratic party could have accepted that the right wing press had done a character assassination, and nominated somebody else, but they didn't see how they could lose.
  - slg 10y ago
    I can't really disagree with you, but it is a sad state of affairs that we are asking one of this country's political parties to bow to the propaganda of the other.
    - jbattle 10y ago
      Only if they want to win elections
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      To win a battle, you need to choose the right tactics for the battlefield you are actually fighting on, not the ideal battlefield you think you are entitled to fight on. Or, to adapt from Donald Rumsfeld, you go into an election with the electorate you have, not the electorate you wish you had.
    - neaanopri 10y ago
      I know it's sad and upsetting. But propaganda these days is extremely powerful and I don't know how to counter it. If I oppose this kind of propaganda, do I try to counter it with my own propaganda? What are the other choices?
rdtsc 10y ago
People did not think she was genuine. They disliked her so much, that they picked a TV personality, said stupid stuff and off-color remarks. That says a lot about the level of disconnectedness between what she/her team/media thought of her and what a lot of people, even traditionally voting Democrats thought of her. I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"...
- rudolf0 10y ago
  >I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"... Check out of some of the leaked emails. I'm not sure if they said it to her directly, but they regularly remarked on how insincere and artificial she came across as.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    Ah, interesting. So people were warning her, she just didn't listen. It was probably like large ship at that point, it was full of steam (donations and promises), moving ahead and there was just no stopping or turning it around easily.
    - rudolf0 10y ago
      Actually, my impression is she tried to listen... she just didn't have it in her. There were many moments through the campaign where she tried to come across as organic and authentic, but even that seemed awkward and forced. She just has almost no charisma or jovial presence, unlike Trump.

by VLM 10y ago

tdb7893 10y ago

She'll be within one percentage point of Trump in the end in overall votes (and it looks like she'll beat him actually). All of these commentators seem to be making broad generalizations about the state of politics and how the strategy is obviously going to fail but the reality is that if the election was very slightly different in ways that neither campaign could really control it would've gone the other way. Maybe I'm wrong but all this just reminds me of all of the BS narratives that ESPN concocts to fill air time after football games.

eru 10y ago
Or just watch market commentators talk about stock price movements. Only after they happened, of course.
- jeffdavis 10y ago
  That's not quite fair. This election was an upset. I think it's quite reasonable to look for an explanation beyond random noise.
VLM 10y ago
That seems very "ends justify the means". Aren't you concerned that pragmatically the Democratic party is objectively unable to effectively govern itself? Given a choice of respectable statesmen something necrotic is instead selecting failure-prone sociopaths instead? Do you have a theoretical model where competent leadership somehow would result in worse end results? Wouldn't competent leadership, for a change, result in a permanent Democratic majority which theoretically would be a good "ends"?
- tdb7893 10y ago
  Most of her troubles were difficult to predict ahead of time, especially the email server and the leaks. Besides those she's actually a pretty good candidate for the party. The DNC pushed against Bernie the same way that the RNC pushed against Trump (and in previous election people like Ron Paul) and the difference was at the end of the day Bernie just didn't have the support. I'm not the biggest fan of the DNC but I'm not seeing how the leadership did anything this election different than any other election.
vkou 10y ago
The popular vote is irrelevant for actually winning - what matters is how states at the margins vote. Look at Michigan. Look at Ohio. Look at Pennsylvania. For the Democrats, Hillary was an unmitigated disaster in all of those areas. Also, keep in mind that most of the electorate votes against party lines, even if the party were to nominate Satan. She completely failed the margins.
- tdb7893 10y ago
  I agree with you but a lot of the troubles that she had were difficult to see ahead of time, especially the email server and the leaks. It's easy to slap on a narrative after the fact but at the time Hillary really was the choice most likely to win the the election. I'm not saying that she didn't do an exceptionally poor job in certain areas but all she needed to do was one or two percent better and there would be the narrative of it being a landslide the other way.
  - ad-hominem 10y ago
    > a lot of the troubles that she had were difficult to see ahead of time, especially the email server Sorry, this is a totally facetious argument. She should have known before that server went up that using a personal email address to circumvent FOIA (not to even get into classified info mishandling) was "wrong". She knew this years ago. She didn't care. She didn't think she'd get caught, and now that she has, she might even get away with it. That people found out about it before the election is the silver lining here. The stormcloud is, every even remotely well-armed government hacked her server at some point during her tenure as SoS and has everything on it.
aridiculous 10y ago
Normally, I'd agree. But to not put a polarizing, inexperienced politician like Trump away easily is what makes the commentators (and me) think there are larger trends at work. She had all the cards.
- tdb7893 10y ago
  I agree that there are trends at work but many of the criticisms of her were only apparent in the last few months so saying that the DNC and democrats in general should've known somehow that she wasn't a good candidate and that their picking of leadership was fundamentally flawed seems odd to me.
  - VLM 10y ago
    Maybe if she had divorced and denounced Bill before the campaign run... They were not exactly free of scandal when Bill was in office. Her secretary of state term was... memorable. The situation was only unpredictable to maybe the youngest Millennials.
    - tdb7893 10y ago
      She was pretty unfazed by most of those scandals in the end, though. I think part of the reason they liked her is because she has been through so many scandals and was still the political force that she was. In the end they were wrong but a year ago it wasn't that unreasonable.

slg 10y ago

The reason you don't respect her is not from her doing or the doing of the DNC. It is because there has been a plurality of the political community that has been working for literal decades to destroy her reputation. If you repeat a lie loud enough and long enough it becomes true. In reality she is in the normal range of candidate. I grant you she is closer to the bad side than the good (at least in most people's mind), but she is no more corrupt or politically calculating than your average member of Congress.

neaanopri 10y ago
But that's not what people believe! The Democratic party could have accepted that the right wing press had done a character assassination, and nominated somebody else, but they didn't see how they could lose.
- slg 10y ago
  I can't really disagree with you, but it is a sad state of affairs that we are asking one of this country's political parties to bow to the propaganda of the other.
  - jbattle 10y ago
    Only if they want to win elections
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    To win a battle, you need to choose the right tactics for the battlefield you are actually fighting on, not the ideal battlefield you think you are entitled to fight on. Or, to adapt from Donald Rumsfeld, you go into an election with the electorate you have, not the electorate you wish you had.
  - neaanopri 10y ago
    I know it's sad and upsetting. But propaganda these days is extremely powerful and I don't know how to counter it. If I oppose this kind of propaganda, do I try to counter it with my own propaganda? What are the other choices?

rdtsc 10y ago

People did not think she was genuine. They disliked her so much, that they picked a TV personality, said stupid stuff and off-color remarks. That says a lot about the level of disconnectedness between what she/her team/media thought of her and what a lot of people, even traditionally voting Democrats thought of her. I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"...

rudolf0 10y ago
>I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"... Check out of some of the leaked emails. I'm not sure if they said it to her directly, but they regularly remarked on how insincere and artificial she came across as.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  Ah, interesting. So people were warning her, she just didn't listen. It was probably like large ship at that point, it was full of steam (donations and promises), moving ahead and there was just no stopping or turning it around easily.
  - rudolf0 10y ago
    Actually, my impression is she tried to listen... she just didn't have it in her. There were many moments through the campaign where she tried to come across as organic and authentic, but even that seemed awkward and forced. She just has almost no charisma or jovial presence, unlike Trump.