Presidential Election Aftermath: What Now / What Next?

Agree 110%.

I think the world would be boring if everyone agreed on everything. I'm truly interested in everyone's opinion and more importantly, the "why?" I'm open to changing my opinion on things. That's how we grow.

 

I feel like a lot of us that were on CL for all those years, and now transferred to LB, some of us that were more liberal have become more conservative than before, and some of us that were more conservative have become more liberal than before. I love that we can talk and consider eachother's point of view.

 

He's been consistent

 

The owner of Hobby Lobby doesn't speak for or represent Conservatives.

 

I think Punks opinion is spot-on (business related / $$$). I couldn't tell you one other political opinion of the owner of Hobby Lobby.

 

Get off that meth




Seriously, the best reason someone can give for voting for Trump is that they don't think he really means everything he says. That's not a reason to vote for anyone.

You don't even really know what he's going to do once in office.... yeah, I know that applies to all politicians, but with Trump, you REALLY don't know what he's going to do

 

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Bernie Sanders is the Worst Presidential Candidate in History, and You and All Your Friends are Idiots
By Shane Ryan | February 23, 2016 | 1:15pm
Original photo by Matthew Cavanaugh/GettyPOLITICS | FEATURESShare Tweet Email

Dear Bernie Sanders supporters: Wake the f*** up.

Sorry to be so blunt, but like any reasonable American, I have been disgusted and appalled as America’s answer to V.I. Lenin continues to gain strength in the polls. Your so-called “populist” movement is a slap in the face to the Democratic establishment that has served us so well over the last few decades, and the idea of giving up on the theory of incremental progress for such a fundamental change makes me want to vomit in the street. (In a poor neighborhood, not my own.)

I don’t get it, guys. I’m really confused here. The mainstream media has done a wonderful job of showing exactly why and how Bernie’s candidacy is flawed, but for some reason, people won’t listen to common sense.

My intent is not to insult anyone, but I believe that Sanders’ constituency is made up entirely of aspirational nutjobs—mostly lazy, entitled, poor, indebted millennials—who don’t realize that our political choices should be based on fear and cynicism. They need to get with the program, and fast. Maybe the Washington Post and New York Times screwed up by pointing out the idiotic nature of Bernie’s candidacy one issue at a time, but I won’t make that mistake. I’m going to list them all, item by item, and lay waste to this annoying communist and his dense apparatchiks once and for all.

As the Marxist messiah himself would say, enough is enough.

1. Bernie is NOT electable.

Jesus, how many times do we have to repeat this before it sticks in your stupid heads? And spare me the counter-arguments, because I already know what you’re going to say: Hillary Clinton has a far worse approval rating, isloathed by Independents, couldn’t land a millennial voter if she turned into an anime version of Kanye West and Gangnam-styled across America, isn’t considered remotely trustworthy even by her own family, and is losing in every hypothetical match-up in the general election.

Let’s start with that last one. First off, you know Hillary is going to gain on the Republicans once she gets past Bernie the Bolshevik, even though her entire history in presidential elections is a steady narrative of dwindling support. Second, just imagine what’s going to happen to Bernie when the GOP attack machine starts pointing out to Americans that he’s probably a socialist. Once that happens, forget about it. There’s no way he’s ever going to beat the Oompa Loompa version of Hitler—who knows as much policy as the dead rodent he wears on his head—or the religious zealot who looks like a s***ty caricature of Bela Lugosi drawn on a deflated leather sack, or the actual malfunctioning robot posing as the GOP’s answer to Obama.

You can’t run a candidate with actual integrity against those guys. Are you nuts? You need a real nitty-gritty mud-slinging spitfire like Hillary, who is somehow considered even more dishonest. She understands the trench warfare that wins elections. Because if there’s one thing that drives progressives to the ballot box, it’s feeling disheartened by their own candidate.

And I wouldn’t worry about millennial voters either, even though they’re critical to the party’s general election success and are gleefully declaring that they won’t support anyone but Bernie in November. Don’t sweat it. Hillary’s this close to understanding what they’re all about. A few more Vines like this one, and she’ll have that coveted youth demographic all locked up:


Hip kids love pandering baby boomers! Those godawful 85-15 under-30 splits from Iowa and New Hampshire are a thing of the past, baby! Oppa Clinton style! Yasss kween!

2. Bernie’s promises are pie-in-the-sky.

Literally none of his so-called “democratic socialist” programs have ever been successfully implemented in any government in world history, except for all the other major nations in the modern world, and also America during our most prosperous period.

3. Even if he was elected, he couldn’t pass any of his legislation.

This is a really important one. If there’s one message that should sink through your thick heads, it’s this: Cast your vote for the candidate who understands Washington, D.C. as it actually is, and not as you’d like it to be. Real change happens for progressives when we elect a centrist candidate who doesn’t represent our values in the first place, in the hopes that she makes concession after brutal concession to Republicans in an effort to pass legislation that strengthens banks and pharmaceutical companies and other monolithic institutions that contribute to our horrific wealth inequality.

One thing you should never do is to vote for the candidate who represents what you want the country to become, in the hope that it’s the start of a process that leads to an America we can be proud of—one which protects and supports all its people. That would be exactly the kind of naive, starry-eyed mistake you and your stupid Sanders comrades are dumb enough to make. What you would do, if you had any brains, is to forget the big picture entirely, ask reductive questions like, “can Bernie Sanders immediately pass universal health care?” and, if the answer is no, throw your vote to whichever compromised puppet the establishment shoves down your throat.

In other words, rubes, concede. Concede pre-emptively. Concede now, tacitly admit that your country is f***ed beyond repair, and maybe even skip the middle man entirely by liquidating your assets, gathering the cash, and leaving it all on the doorstep of Goldman Sachs before you screw off and die in the streets.

4. After the Nevada win, Hillary has all the momentum.

I mean, just look at her insane momentum, as represented by this graph of national polls from the past year:



That should be plenty of evidence, but in case you need more, consider her resounding, emphatic win in Nevada, where she prevailed by five points in a state she led by 37 last July. I mean, can you get more decisive than that? I think not. And if you don’t believe me, just read any mainstream political site or watch cable TV. All of thoseoutlets correctly ignore the fact that the pledged delegate count is tied at 51—and that in the three primary states thus far, Sanders leads the popular vote count—and praise Hillary’s newfound momentum. I don’t know what America you live in, but my country is one where media narratives dictate election winners.

“But Shane,” you whine, in your pathetic Sanders-loving voice, “the more people learn about Bernie, the more support he gains, and Hillary’s trajectory looks exactly the same as in 2008, when her increased visibility led to a popularity plummet. Wouldn’t their respective patterns just become exaggerated in a general election, to the point that the only logical analysis gives Bernie a far better chance of winning?”

Nice try, but you forgot one thing.

5. Hillary has an unbreakable firewall of Latino voters

We’ve been hearing about the firewall for months, and in Nevada, sure enough, the prophecy came true.

Did Hillary win the Latino vote decisively? No. Did she win it at all? No. Nobody really knows who came out on top, except that entrance polls say Bernie won, and a lot of media outlets are now rushing to muddy the waters. Even if she managed a tie, it’s far less than her margin of victory against Obama in 2008, when she also claimed that Hispanic voters gave her a firewall.

THE POINT IS, the firewall did its job. Think about it, dopes. If the firewall is on fire, then guess what’s not on fire? That’s right: Everything beyond the firewall, whatever that might be. The firewall is on fire, but it’s protecting other stuff from being on fire. Why is this so hard for you to understand?

6. Hillary has an unbreakable firewall of black supporters

Because when you and your husband systematically sell out an entire group that counted on you as their only ally, the least they could do is reward you with their undying loyalty. All Sanders ever did was march with Martin Luther King Jr., lead protests against racial discrimination at the University of Chicago, and get dragged off by police for protesting segregation. But that all happened a long time ago, and for some reason the popular wisdom is that none of it matters anymore, so the logical reaction to this expired civil rights cred is to vote for Hillary, who spent her own youth working for Barry Goldwater, a segregationist, and has been a walking nightmare for America’s black population ever since. If you close your eyes, it almost makes sense.

7. She’s going to gain even more momentum by winning South Carolina

How can you ignore the singular importance of winning a liberal stronghold like South Carolina, where it only took them 150 years to realize that flying the Confederate flag at the State Capitol might be in poor taste? If that’s not a bellwether state, I don’t know what is!

8. Every single Bernie Sanders supporter is a sexist and racist

Bernie Bros are a real thing, guys. If you haven’t read the articles, get with it. There was this one person on Twitter who said something nice about Hillary, and then someone running a fake GOP House of Representatives accountsaid something sexist in response, and it spawned a chain of self-referential articles proving beyond a doubt that everyone who supports Sanders is a rampaging misogynist, including the vast majority of young women who choose him over Hillary—all of whom joined the Sanders camp because they want to hang out with boys, and are bound for a special place in hell when they die. (Thanks, Gloria and Madeleine!)

Also, some of the people who received negatives comments from anonymous Twitter accounts were not white, so his supporters are also racist.

One last important point: When his male supporters try to engage in political discussion with the goal of persuading others, it’s aggressive mansplaining. And when his female supporters do it, it’s aggressive womansplaining. Basically, it all falls under the umbrella of “explaining,” which is outrageously offensive to anyone exercising his or her god-given right to live in ignorance.

9. Bernie Sanders himself is a sexist and a racist

There was that month-long period in his campaign when he said that shouting about gun issues wouldn’t lead to actual progress, and then he said it in the debate, and Hillary and her supporters correctly surmised that he’s a sexist who thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to speak at high volumes. Also per Hillary: He doesn’t unilaterally support Barack Obama on every single policy like she’s decided to do in the last month, so he’s a racist.

10. There is an excuse for all 348 of Hillary Clinton’s scandals

I was infuriated at Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost, who had the audacity to joke about Clinton’s so-called “scandals” in a Weekend Update segment. You can watch at the 1:26 mark in the video below:


There are explanations for all of these, guys. All of them. That goes for all future scandals, too. And while I don’t have time to prove that these are all just a series of hilarious misunderstandings, and not indicative of a larger pattern of corruption and dishonesty, I’d ask you just to trust me that the Republicans will have enough class and restraint to let them all slide in the general election. Those guys wouldn’t stoop.

11. The way Sanders has run his campaign proves he’s going to be a bad president

Ezra Klein at Vox nailed this one: How can you trust a guy who has overcome a 60-point national deficit despite labeling himself a “democratic-socialist”—a term that carries a slightly lower favorability rating than “repeat sex offender” in American culture—while avoiding the stupid mistakes of his predecessors, raising unbelievable amounts of money, and finding himself on the verge of the biggest upset in American political history? How can you trust a guy like that to run a country?

No thanks. Give me the candidate who can’t even set up an email server without triggering an FBI investigation.

12. Bernie Sanders is a single issue candidate

Hillary has really backed him into a corner with this point. Hey Bernie, why don’t you try broadening your horizons? Seriously, the only thing this guy cares about is the stupid economy, and how it affects manufacturing, crime, drugs, health care, agriculture, climate change, trade, youth unemployment, immigration, energy, real estate, banking, civil rights, race relations, poverty, education, criminal justice, financial and corporate regulation, voting rights, equal pay for women, national infrastructure, social security, veterans’ rights, and, sure, foreign policy too.

Sorry Bernie fans, but your guy is a simplistic dip****.

13. Even his economic plans might not work

Just ask the “left-leaning economists” the New York Times dredged up in their righteous, ongoing anti-Sanders crusade, while ignoring an overwhelming tide of contrary views and sparing Clinton the same rigorous examination. The fact is, without absolute proof that Sanders’ policies can work—AND I DON’T JUST MEAN ALL THE SUCCESSFUL MODELS YOU BROUGHT UP BEFORE, INCLUDING THE AMERICAN ONE—we can’t know for sure that they’ll work, and if we don’t know for sure, the only smart move is to continue slogging ahead on our slow middle class death march.

14. Last but not least, a Sanders presidency could hurt the precious Democratic party

Please read the incredible insight from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post, who points out that Bernie Sandershasn’t raised any money for the Democratic Party, which might hurt progressives in smaller races. This would be a serious tragedy when you consider how successful the party has been since 2008 under DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, only losing, to quote Milbank, “69 House seats, 13 Senate seats, 910 state legislative seats, 30 state legislative chambers and 11 governorships.” I mean, why stop throwing money into their coffers now??!? Clearly, the DNC and the party elite have the pulse of the people, and there’s no need for an entire overhaul of a fundamentally failed system. You don’t change your horse midstream, especially when that horse is stubbornly intent on drowning itself.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the point. This is serious, and the very future of our country is at stake. Idealism is great, and on some level it’s adorable that you’re fighting for something more than the grim political realities that have choked the color out of America. But it’s time to get real. It’s time to understand where you live.

It’s time to give up.

It’s time to give up. It’s time to give up. It’s time to give up.

Repeat it 100 times. Find the rhythm in your heart. That’s the sound of our slow procession to national collapse, and the end of a great experiment. Join us, idiots. Join us and perish.
"

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articl...ders-is-the-worst-presidential-candidate.html

 

Interesting / strange: Trump got 50% of the Hispanic vote in Nevada last night.

 

That is the part that scared me the most. How is he doing this?

I legitimately believe we're about to pick between Trump and Clinton because the DNC is going to keep Sanders off the ballot and the Republicans are too weak to do away with Trump...

 

Oh, Trump is a lock right now for the Republicans IMO