5 ms·

I like liberals. I am a liberal. Even still, I voted Trump, because of how corrupt the Clintons are.

by zeroer 10y ago

jedberg 10y ago
You may want to reevaluate your stance after you look more closely at the evidence. For example, the supposed "smoking gun" emails about her rigging the primary. Do you know what everyone failed to report on those? The date the emails were sent. They were all sent after Sanders had already lost. Clinton was already the nominee. Of course they would talk about how they are going to help her in the general -- because she was already the candidate. It was important details like that that were intentionally left out of the reporting to make her look worse. Edit: Not that it should matter, but I voted for and contributed to the Sanders campaign. I wanted him to win, but I also believe in facts.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  Why then were some of them about targeting Bernie Sanders re: his Jewishness, for example? I downvoted you for a very good reason.
  - jedberg 10y ago
    Because he had already lost and they were trying to get him out of the race because at that point he was just dragging the party down. Using his Jewishness was wrong, but not corrupt.
    - ta_donk_gt 10y ago
      What about the one discussing getting the New York primary moved up if Clinton were to get a big challenger so that she could get an early victory and kill that momentum? What about the ones discussing moving the Illinois primary back so that moderate republicans could not get early victories (and further the narrative that the right is extremist)? And what about the ones where Donna Brazile fed debate questions? And what about the ones showing clear collusion across the board with the media to appease Clinton and push the preferred narrative against her competition? Were any of those indicative of corruption?
      - jedberg 10y ago
        As someone who works in IT, I know how easy it is to forge emails. So far all those emails have been denied by their senders. Using DKIM to "prove" they are real only works if you assume the attacker doesn't have access to the private key. If someone hacked the mail server, then they probably have the private key. I'm saying it didn't happen, but I'm saying that everyone needs to be a little more critical in their analysis of the "evidence" presented.
        zeroer 10y ago
        You're right that the emails could have been forged. I take this as a serious possibility. You say that "all those emails have been denied by their senders". I'm not sure what you're referring to. Would you mind linking it? I've been following the news rather closely, and I've never heard any sender of a leaked email say something to the effect of "I did not send this". The only thing they say is that they won't comment on veracity. Also, the Wikileaks organization has never leaked forged documents before and have never lied. The Clintons and their cronies are caught in lies repeatedly. While it's not proof, you have to take things like credibility into account when evaluating who's lying this time. However, for me, my mind was already made up before any emails were leaked based on the Clintons' previous scandals. If it were proven that the email leaks were entirely fabricated, I would definitely update my opinion of Wikileaks, but my opinion of the Clintons would remain unchanged.
- Kenji 10y ago
  This is complete nonsense. Sanders' campaign slowed down and came to a halt throughout June and July 2016. E-mails related to backstabbing Sanders were sent as much as a year before that. Sanders was clearly used as a means to haul in the far left vote and transfer it over to Hillary.
- zeroer 10y ago
  jedberg, I've looked quite closely at a lot of evidence surrounding the Clintons. Picking one aspect of one scandal and discrediting it is not going to change my mind. We'd have to have monstrous discussion of events going back to the 80s. Even if we did, it's far from certainty that it would change my mind. In any case, I don't think Hacker News is an appropriate venue for such a conversation. I wanted to limit the scope of my comment to contradicting guelo's specific assertion that "A lot of Trump voters did it just to spite liberals". It's important to me that you (the public) understand why your liberal candidate lost. And it's not to spite liberals; it's because the DNC chose to prop up a very seriously compromised candidate. My hope is that next time they can offer a better alternative, rather than blaming their loss on a how terrible American voters are. The DNC screwed this up, and I have not heard one word from the Democratic party establishment admitting it. Alternatively, if they refuse to accept responsibility, I'd also be happy with the death of the Democratic party, and maybe something less corrupt could be born in its place.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
Honest question: assuming that the Clintons are corrupt, do you believe that Trump and his cabinet would do a better job of being the President? Or is it more of a vote against Clinton than for Trump?
- tunap 10y ago
  As I see it, didn't vote for either, when the devil you know is bad you gotta give hope a chance. That was the mantra back at the start of the Great Recession, hope it takes hold this time or we're just pouring gas on the fire. I voted O in '08 and fully recognize he picked up a big bag of burning shit. Too bad he turned out to be the same as the old bosses and kept their cronies in key positions to wage war on the economy & invigorate armed conflicts around the world. edit: i predict Trump will have an ineffectual four years and the next group selected to be elected may pander to the common folk a bit better.
- zeroer 10y ago
  Honest answer: I don't know. Moreover, I'm quite skeptical with others who seem to have such certainty on this issue. I disliked and dislkike Trump. But my mind recoils at the thought that the Clintons' shenanigans will reap them the White House as a reward. The thought of that injustice makes my blood boil. My vote was a blocking move against Clinton.
yolesaber 10y ago
Way to put the corrupt racists in power. Steve Bannon is now on track to be one of the most powerful people in the country. Good job, liberal.
- ta_donk_gt 10y ago
  Do you have any evidence you can provide of concrete behavior showing Bannon as racist? I don't mean responses like "duh, CNN, Maher, Oliver, etc. say he is so duh", or "duh, he was the editor for Breitbart". I mean actual behavior that you can point to. These accusations come off as "He plays for the other team, and calling him racist will marginalize and demonize him, so that's what I'll do". Willing to be proven wrong though. Edit: curious, why downvote this instead of actually providing evidence?
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    > Edit: curious, why downvote this instead of actually providing evidence? Because this is not the place for this discussion. I downvoted the comment you replied to as well, for the same reason.
    - ta_donk_gt 10y ago
      That is fair..though it might be more beneficial to add a comment stating this at the first point in the tree where things go off topic. Once it gets down this far, everyone's mindset is already off topic.
  - guelo 10y ago
    Bannon's ex-wife swore in court that he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews...He said he doesn’t like Jews..." Also, he turned Breitbart into a white ethno-nationalism website.
    - ta_donk_gt 10y ago
      The quote from his ex-wife is a fair point and does support your case. In the interest of full disclosure, would that statement be equally bad if you replaced the word "Jews" with "rednecks", or "catholics"? Sometimes seems like some groups can be stereotyped and some can't. (OT but related, plenty of first-hand accounts of the Clintons regularly using racially derogatory terms in their Arkansas days, but that doesn't seem to bother people.) As for Breitbart, I think the "white ethno-" prefix may be unjustified, at least from what I have seen. It is, however, absolutely nationalist, as in anti-globalist, and pushes an agenda targeted at people who feel their standard of living has been reduced due to trade and immigration policies. The Guardian provided a fairly benign review at [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/19/reading-breitbart-news-steve-bannon-donald-trump https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/19/reading-breitb...
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
If you're any kind of liberal or leftist, you could have voted for the Green Party, written in Bernie Sanders, or left your Presidential ballot line blank. You didn't have to support fascism.
- zeroer 10y ago
  I'm very sympathetic to that viewpoint. I mulled over the idea of voting for a third party long and hard. I would have preferred Sanders, Stein, or Johnson over Trump. In the end, I decided it was worth more to me to block Clinton. But don't pretend that it's an easy clear-cut decision to make.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    I think that not voting for a fascist who staffs his administration with neo-Nazis is an easy, clear-cut decision for a leftist to take, even if you live in a swing state.
    - zeroer 10y ago
      I appreciate and respect your opinion on this matter, though I don't happen to agree with it. I hope that this can be a lesson for leftists to take - that if you put up a poor enough candidate, you'll lose the votes of people like me. There should be consequences for the anti-democratic tactics the DNC used against Bernie. P.S. The state I voted in was close.
      - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
        > I appreciate and respect your opinion on this matter, though I don't happen to agree with it. I hope that this can be a lesson for leftists to take - that if you put up a poor enough candidate, you'll lose the votes of people like me. There should be consequences for the anti-democratic tactics the DNC used against Bernie. Again: I'm not saying you should have voted for Clinton. I agree that the anti-democratic strategies of the "Democratic" Party deserve punishment. I'm saying you could have voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, who would have been, at least, not a fascist.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Trump is far more corrupt than Clinton, so that makes no sense. Heck, Trump bragged about his involvement in political corruption during the primary.
- zeroer 10y ago
  > Trump is far more corrupt than Clinton We disagree on this point. I believe that Clinton is the most corrupt politician the US has ever seen. I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to when you talk about Trump's corruption, but if you're referring to his buying and bribing of politicians, I don't consider that corruption. It's wrong and illegal, sure, but the private citizen bribing politicians is not betraying the trust of the electorate in the same way that the politician is. (Seemingly similarly, I go against the societal grain in that I don't think that people who sleep with married people are doing anything wrong; they're not the one who made the commitment.)

I like liberals. I am a liberal. Even still, I voted Trump, because of how corrupt the Clintons are.

by zeroer 10y ago

I like liberals. I am a liberal. Even still, I voted Trump, because of how corrupt the Clintons are.

You may want to reevaluate your stance after you look more closely at the evidence. For example, the supposed "smoking gun" emails about her rigging the primary. Do you know what everyone failed to report on those? The date the emails were sent. They were all sent after Sanders had already lost. Clinton was already the nominee. Of course they would talk about how they are going to help her in the general -- because she was already the candidate. It was important details like that that were intentionally left out of the reporting to make her look worse. Edit: Not that it should matter, but I voted for and contributed to the Sanders campaign. I wanted him to win, but I also believe in facts.

wavefunction 10y ago
Why then were some of them about targeting Bernie Sanders re: his Jewishness, for example? I downvoted you for a very good reason.
- jedberg 10y ago
  Because he had already lost and they were trying to get him out of the race because at that point he was just dragging the party down. Using his Jewishness was wrong, but not corrupt.
  - ta_donk_gt 10y ago
    What about the one discussing getting the New York primary moved up if Clinton were to get a big challenger so that she could get an early victory and kill that momentum? What about the ones discussing moving the Illinois primary back so that moderate republicans could not get early victories (and further the narrative that the right is extremist)? And what about the ones where Donna Brazile fed debate questions? And what about the ones showing clear collusion across the board with the media to appease Clinton and push the preferred narrative against her competition? Were any of those indicative of corruption?
    - jedberg 10y ago
      As someone who works in IT, I know how easy it is to forge emails. So far all those emails have been denied by their senders. Using DKIM to "prove" they are real only works if you assume the attacker doesn't have access to the private key. If someone hacked the mail server, then they probably have the private key. I'm saying it didn't happen, but I'm saying that everyone needs to be a little more critical in their analysis of the "evidence" presented.
      - zeroer 10y ago
        You're right that the emails could have been forged. I take this as a serious possibility. You say that "all those emails have been denied by their senders". I'm not sure what you're referring to. Would you mind linking it? I've been following the news rather closely, and I've never heard any sender of a leaked email say something to the effect of "I did not send this". The only thing they say is that they won't comment on veracity. Also, the Wikileaks organization has never leaked forged documents before and have never lied. The Clintons and their cronies are caught in lies repeatedly. While it's not proof, you have to take things like credibility into account when evaluating who's lying this time. However, for me, my mind was already made up before any emails were leaked based on the Clintons' previous scandals. If it were proven that the email leaks were entirely fabricated, I would definitely update my opinion of Wikileaks, but my opinion of the Clintons would remain unchanged.
Kenji 10y ago
This is complete nonsense. Sanders' campaign slowed down and came to a halt throughout June and July 2016. E-mails related to backstabbing Sanders were sent as much as a year before that. Sanders was clearly used as a means to haul in the far left vote and transfer it over to Hillary.
zeroer 10y ago
jedberg, I've looked quite closely at a lot of evidence surrounding the Clintons. Picking one aspect of one scandal and discrediting it is not going to change my mind. We'd have to have monstrous discussion of events going back to the 80s. Even if we did, it's far from certainty that it would change my mind. In any case, I don't think Hacker News is an appropriate venue for such a conversation. I wanted to limit the scope of my comment to contradicting guelo's specific assertion that "A lot of Trump voters did it just to spite liberals". It's important to me that you (the public) understand why your liberal candidate lost. And it's not to spite liberals; it's because the DNC chose to prop up a very seriously compromised candidate. My hope is that next time they can offer a better alternative, rather than blaming their loss on a how terrible American voters are. The DNC screwed this up, and I have not heard one word from the Democratic party establishment admitting it. Alternatively, if they refuse to accept responsibility, I'd also be happy with the death of the Democratic party, and maybe something less corrupt could be born in its place.

pavel_lishin 10y ago

Honest question: assuming that the Clintons are corrupt, do you believe that Trump and his cabinet would do a better job of being the President? Or is it more of a vote against Clinton than for Trump?

tunap 10y ago
As I see it, didn't vote for either, when the devil you know is bad you gotta give hope a chance. That was the mantra back at the start of the Great Recession, hope it takes hold this time or we're just pouring gas on the fire. I voted O in '08 and fully recognize he picked up a big bag of burning shit. Too bad he turned out to be the same as the old bosses and kept their cronies in key positions to wage war on the economy & invigorate armed conflicts around the world. edit: i predict Trump will have an ineffectual four years and the next group selected to be elected may pander to the common folk a bit better.
zeroer 10y ago
Honest answer: I don't know. Moreover, I'm quite skeptical with others who seem to have such certainty on this issue. I disliked and dislkike Trump. But my mind recoils at the thought that the Clintons' shenanigans will reap them the White House as a reward. The thought of that injustice makes my blood boil. My vote was a blocking move against Clinton.

yolesaber 10y ago

Way to put the corrupt racists in power. Steve Bannon is now on track to be one of the most powerful people in the country. Good job, liberal.

ta_donk_gt 10y ago
Do you have any evidence you can provide of concrete behavior showing Bannon as racist? I don't mean responses like "duh, CNN, Maher, Oliver, etc. say he is so duh", or "duh, he was the editor for Breitbart". I mean actual behavior that you can point to. These accusations come off as "He plays for the other team, and calling him racist will marginalize and demonize him, so that's what I'll do". Willing to be proven wrong though. Edit: curious, why downvote this instead of actually providing evidence?
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > Edit: curious, why downvote this instead of actually providing evidence? Because this is not the place for this discussion. I downvoted the comment you replied to as well, for the same reason.
  - ta_donk_gt 10y ago
    That is fair..though it might be more beneficial to add a comment stating this at the first point in the tree where things go off topic. Once it gets down this far, everyone's mindset is already off topic.
- guelo 10y ago
  Bannon's ex-wife swore in court that he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews...He said he doesn’t like Jews..." Also, he turned Breitbart into a white ethno-nationalism website.
  - ta_donk_gt 10y ago
    The quote from his ex-wife is a fair point and does support your case. In the interest of full disclosure, would that statement be equally bad if you replaced the word "Jews" with "rednecks", or "catholics"? Sometimes seems like some groups can be stereotyped and some can't. (OT but related, plenty of first-hand accounts of the Clintons regularly using racially derogatory terms in their Arkansas days, but that doesn't seem to bother people.) As for Breitbart, I think the "white ethno-" prefix may be unjustified, at least from what I have seen. It is, however, absolutely nationalist, as in anti-globalist, and pushes an agenda targeted at people who feel their standard of living has been reduced due to trade and immigration policies. The Guardian provided a fairly benign review at [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/19/reading-breitbart-news-steve-bannon-donald-trump https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/19/reading-breitb...

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

If you're any kind of liberal or leftist, you could have voted for the Green Party, written in Bernie Sanders, or left your Presidential ballot line blank. You didn't have to support fascism.

zeroer 10y ago
I'm very sympathetic to that viewpoint. I mulled over the idea of voting for a third party long and hard. I would have preferred Sanders, Stein, or Johnson over Trump. In the end, I decided it was worth more to me to block Clinton. But don't pretend that it's an easy clear-cut decision to make.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  I think that not voting for a fascist who staffs his administration with neo-Nazis is an easy, clear-cut decision for a leftist to take, even if you live in a swing state.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    I appreciate and respect your opinion on this matter, though I don't happen to agree with it. I hope that this can be a lesson for leftists to take - that if you put up a poor enough candidate, you'll lose the votes of people like me. There should be consequences for the anti-democratic tactics the DNC used against Bernie. P.S. The state I voted in was close.
    - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
      > I appreciate and respect your opinion on this matter, though I don't happen to agree with it. I hope that this can be a lesson for leftists to take - that if you put up a poor enough candidate, you'll lose the votes of people like me. There should be consequences for the anti-democratic tactics the DNC used against Bernie. Again: I'm not saying you should have voted for Clinton. I agree that the anti-democratic strategies of the "Democratic" Party deserve punishment. I'm saying you could have voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, who would have been, at least, not a fascist.

dragonwriter 10y ago

Trump is far more corrupt than Clinton, so that makes no sense. Heck, Trump bragged about his involvement in political corruption during the primary.

zeroer 10y ago
> Trump is far more corrupt than Clinton We disagree on this point. I believe that Clinton is the most corrupt politician the US has ever seen. I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to when you talk about Trump's corruption, but if you're referring to his buying and bribing of politicians, I don't consider that corruption. It's wrong and illegal, sure, but the private citizen bribing politicians is not betraying the trust of the electorate in the same way that the politician is. (Seemingly similarly, I go against the societal grain in that I don't think that people who sleep with married people are doing anything wrong; they're not the one who made the commitment.)