BM said earlier that Hillary is running on Obama's legacy.
I'm not sure I ever actually voiced that, but I suppose I more or less agree with the notion, so it's pretty much a moot point. Much more importantly:
quash wrote:I've said before that I don't expect a Trump presidency to change everything, but it would at least get the government working towards a different set of goals than running the country into the ground.
Even ignoring the various parts of your summary of world affairs that I would strongly disagree with (I really don't get where this whole "if you criticize anything Russia does, you totally want to go to war against them" thing comes from), why do you think I bothered to mention that Trump is hiring on the same Wall Street types Hillary has been criticized for being too close to? Or the fact that he (tell me even
you didn't see this one coming) went back on his promise to self-fund his campaign, and is now courting the same big-money donors and special interests as everyone else? Or that, just as his formerly-opposed opponents are now endorsing him, he's now endorsing Ryan, McCain and others he's previously disparaged as unfit for office? Or, of especial note to a purported foreign policy buff like yourself, that he's also gathering huge chunks of Bush's foreign policy advisors that, in your own words, "set the stage for this mess"?
If you truly do believe that things are so bad that we need to basically burn the whole thing down (a view that I personally find both utterly devoid of any wider context and slathered in a nauseating amount of self-pity, but I digress), that we need someone to "take on the establishment" even if he has to break a whole bunch of eggs to make the proverbial omelet, and (correctly) believe that Clinton is not that person, why would you deign to pick someone who has profited so lavishly from this same much-maligned status quo for his entire life, circumvented it countless times to escape responsibility (let alone consequences) for so many actions, and even as he insists that he's finally ready to shake things up continues to wallow ever deeper in the very same institutions and individuals who have allowed him to be who he is? Oh, and intends to give them all an absolutely massive tax cut?
The only "difference" in this area that I've heard you - or anyone else - put forth when it comes to Hillary and the Establishment vs. Trump and the Establishment is that Trump "must not
mean it", and must intend to throw all of
his pals and backers under the bus as soon as the election's over. And the only "evidence" I've seen to "support" that notion is that he's less "politically correct" than she is - i.e. that somehow his more aggressive application of the Establishment's "southern strategy" to hoodwink people into voting against their own economic interests somehow means he's the one who will finally buck the decades-long trend. Sorry, but out here in the strange, scary realm of History And Factual Information Might Be Worth Taking Into Consideration that sort of feeble "reasoning" is the peak of willful self-delusion.
Then shrillary should have no problems with releasing those goldmansacks speech transcripts
If she's smart, she'll make Trump an offer: I'll release the transcripts if you release your tax returns (off to the side, if anyone's wondering where the latter tradition comes from,
here's some history - feel free to draw incredibly obvious parallels). There's no way in hell he'd have the balls to call her on it.
We keep getting these posts where people imply that Bernie Sanders was a business as usual politician as corrupt as any major party candidate, I keep asking for citations or arguments to back that up, and I keep getting nothing in reply.
"As corrupt as anyone else", no - heaven knows I agree with him on a bunch of things myself, if nothing else. But too many of his supporters, in my view, treated him much as Trump's supporters treat him, i.e. as The One And Only Acceptable Guy, which meant that any and all criticism of him (I'm still plenty sore at the ludicrously rosy economic numbers his campaign insisted on using - and I generally concur with him on economics...though others focused more on his gun control votes in particular) must be the result of a media conspiracy, that any polls and/or elections that don't go his way must have been fraudulent, and that voting for any "alternative" to him is the equivalent of selling your soul to the devil. I'm glad that he managed to pull Hillary to the left on several issues, and hope he and others continue to do so, but the notion that he would have been able to work all manner of magic, in terms of both electability and policy, that Hillary could only dream of, smacks just as much now of wishful thinking as it did in real time. Whichever side of the aisle you're talking about, whenever I hear cries of Finally, The One Who Will Change Everything I'm immediately skeptical, and as much common ground as I have with Bernie I still am.
