The long con worked for marriage equality, and I think it's the right play for legalizing weed too.

Research HAS been done. Jesus...is everyone else remembering WHY she lost the nomination to Obama in 2008? Christ, when will her corporate centrist bullshit end?

Shillary. What a steaming pile of corporatist bullshit. What's frustrating is how she wears the Immutable Mantle of Inevitability. And so many dinkwads support her due to some idiotic brand loyalty. I will pinch my nose off voting for this nasty nightmare.

Cancer will overtake me before she pulls her head out of her ass, which will take years.

Sanders/Warren ftw!

Hillary helped to build the prison industrial complex. She helped create the climate of fear that led to mass incarceration. This is where she's coming from. It's what she always stood for.

To be fair, though, Hillary's proposal probably has a better shot at actually happening than Bernie's.

As long as Republicans control the House of Representatives, and they will control it for the duration of her presidency, should she win next year, the chances of either plan passing are identical: 0%.

@7 - Corporatist, as in the Police-Prison-Industrial Complex, the Alcohol/Beer lobby, and the Pharmaceutical industries, all of which demand weed remaining illegal. Not to mention all the sweeping problems with corporatism which you clearly recognize.

(Which, by the way, is why the Bernie-fans are so annoying. Yes, his policy proposals to the left of Clinton's are more attractive. But so what? Any actual compromise legislation will be well to Clinton's right. The difference between Sanders and Clinton won't actually matter, as long as the House is wired for Republican control.)

Sure, the American people like pot and say they want it. They continue to seek it and use it to remedy their problems. There are testimonials and documentaries and historical evidence. But do we really know if it's good unless we give billions of tax dollars to big pharma to "research" it? Hm.

Meanwhile Mexico made it completely legal, giving people a great reason to head south, repatriate themselves or set up trading partnerships between WA and CO.

@13: not yet they didn't.

When you're all done pissing on Hillary for not giving the GOP ammunition for the General, let me point out that THIS IS WHAT PRESIDENTS DO: lead from behind.

Obama has never advocated for Legalization, yet he's not stood in the way of it happening in WA and CO, and now its an avalanche that even the GOP isn't dumb enough to stand in the way of. He didn't advocate for Gay Marriage, but he didn't stand in the way of if, either, and now it's the law of the land.

Yes, America is beyond fucked up, but this is how progress happens. With Repukes in control of nearly everything but the Presidency, boring progress is the best you can hope for.

@10 Yes, the way to "compromise" with far right Republicans is to completely capitulate before the negotiations happen. This strategy has well for Obama.

We need more centrism! After all, there are still parts of the government and public trust that we haven't given away to our corporate overlords.

I'm going to go ahead and stay in Seattle so I don't have to give a shit what the national policy is.

I think Max Solomon at 14 has it right. And don't be surprised if she comes out against trans people choosing their public restrooms. She doesn't need to court the votes of liberals and progressives - alas.

It really doesn't matter what the President thinks about this stuff. Clinton is preferable to any Republican not because of her positions (which are boilerplate third way/moderate bullshit) but because she's a democrat and therefore subject to political pressure from the left.

Even if a Republican wanted to legalize the weed (or whatever groovy policy you wanted to name), he's not going to go to war with his own party's congressional delegation. Ever.

@15: do you think Hillary, who's already identified "Republicans" as her enemy, will negotiate with the same Naivete/Faith in Centrism as Obama?

I don't. Dems will scream that she's giving away the farm every time, but in the end she'll stop us from sliding into The Handmaid's Tale.

I don't know why Bernie's described as "awesome long shot" - alongside the question, "Are you willing to take chance" on this. You have absolutely nothing to lose by voting for him in the primary, no. one. No. two, polls show that nationally, he does BETTER than Clinton against the Republican candidates. Clinton has alienated not only people on the right, but people on the left, while Bernie has cross-appeal on both the left and more traditional veins in conservatism, i.e. what conservatives used to be before they became the group of fanatics you saw on the debate stage. He also has tremendous support among veterans. He has his head squarely on his shoulders, for goodness' sake. While Hillary is a hawk, hugely on the corporate take with every interest antithetical to ordinary Americans, and with her her own brand of wingnut-ism. Marijuana legalization is sweeping the nation; it is the future. (What happened in Ohio is more about monopolization) There is nothing unusual about Bernie's positions on the issues. And the Republicans have such a bunch of losers out there, there couldn't be a better time for the sane to step in and take over.

he's a long shot BECAUSE HE IS A SELF-DECLARED SOCIALIST. in the minds of most Murkins, that makes him inseparable from Stalin and Mao. you think the GOP and their minions won't make that link a million times a day? how hard is that to accept?

secondly, he'll be 73 in Nov 2016, which would be the oldest person ever elected Preznit, and make him 4 years older than Reagan at election. think the GOP won't point that out? I would.

@23: well, then, if youth is your only barometer, you suck. "is there a D after the name?" is mine.

69 is better for a woman than a man, but then again, my mom died at 69.

@15: You're an idiot. Do you think walking into an Audi dealership and opening with an offer of $500 dollars will reduce your eventual purchase price? I like Bernie a good deal; hell, I'll probably vote for him in the primary, but the difference between a Sanders presidency and a Clinton presidency, as measured by public policy, is very, very likely to be non-existent. You won't win any victories over "corporate centrists", let alone Republicans, by paying so little attention to where power actually lies in American politics.

Of course not

To win an election, you still need SOME republicans to vote for you.

@10- The difference between the Leftist Sanders and the moderate Right Hillary is the question of where does the compromise start. We watched Obama spend his first two years pissing away a majority because he (and the fuckwits in Congress) was started compromising in the middle and let himself get dragged rightwards. And when the midterms came up the Left stayed home because they were so disgusted. Choosing Hillary is choosing even more bullshit "compromise".

@27- To win a presidential election you only need the unaffiliated. Fewer and fewer people are party-identified now.

It's ludicrous to suggest that the Republicans will use Bernie's age against him, since the Republicans advanced John McCain. The ones attacking his age are more likely from the Clinton campaign with their usual tricks.

Besides that, Bernie is extraordinarily popular among the youngest voters! He's hardly "an out of touch oldster" which is exactly what Clinton has become. She is nothing what she was in 08 - when she had genuine "base" support against Obama's genuine "base" support - why that primary was so brutal. America has moved on and she has not caught up. She's certainly a significant figure in American history, but her time in the sun is over.

I agree that a big reason for that is, Democrats effed up. Health care was the major issue in 08 and they royally dropped the ball -- had single payer supporters representing 65 percent of the American people and 55 per cent of American physicians and hundreds of labor, business, and women's rights organizations - arrested and thrown out of the discussion altogether. After Obama's people -- and there is really no difference here, policy-wise, from Clinton's main squeezes - promised single payer action - that he would SIGN a single payer by the end of January!

And you wonder why they lost Congress to the Republicans? They know very well why they lost Congress. The mainstream corporate media just lies about it, making up their castles in the sky analyses when most people know it was their grand failure on healthcare. They didn't even produce a strong public option, and a corrupt USSC threw Medicaid recipients under the bus (those were women too who did to women!) --- so that millions of Americans don't even get that very poor plan. In addition, women's right to choose, as a result, became MORE scaled back! With the backing of Democratic Party ELITIST women!

Here, have some more classist division!

Meanwhile, democrats like Clinton (and Obama, FTM) have dropped the ball on social security, too! And have you noticed the minor differences of opinion on SYRIA? What about TRADE AGREEMENTS?

Think NAFTA and the next one they're serving up has anything at all to do with why more than 50 percent of American public school children are currently from homes in poverty?

Fully agree that choosing Hillary is choosing more bullshit "compromise." In addition to the big banks, the military industrial complex, the health insurance and pharmaceutical GHOALS, she's accepting huge donations from the PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRY - the same people locking everyone up for anything from smoking weed to talking back to principals in high schools! Did you hear that her husband put more people in prison than any other president in American history? And that the campaign we are now witnessing is nothing remotely resembling a democratic process - but more like a corronation?

Here, have some fascism or oligarchy with that hallucinogen YOU are taking in your Democratic Party Tea! You people have some nerve talking about drugs! As people sit in prison cells! While Hillary's all narced out and smiling glazzy-eyed away on her pharmaceutical products - producing the very same sociopathology one sees in the vast majority of Congress, whether they're Republicans OR Democrats.

Vote for more of that? No thank you. Your ageism argument is fully b.s. from the Clinton camp. And BTW, you may not have noticed, but the American demographic has also changed when it comes to your Clinton camp advanced red-baiting boogeyman called "socialism" Gee, aren't you all supposed to be the intelligent, Yale educated types who know the differences between socialism and democratic socialism?

Apparently not! Go back to your Clinton camp! Life in American has moved on past Madame Corronation! Women's rights? She's forgotten a whole helluva a lot of women out in America!

If Bernie doesn't get the nomination, I'm not voting for her. Love the man, but I don't agree with him on everything, and, I certainly didn't make the agreement he did. To hell with the DNC's corronation! Tell them to dump their Super Pacs and then maybe they'll grow a pair. They're a corrupt, disgusting lot destroying the country with this bogus "third way" liberalism. They need to GET REAL and stop blaming Americans for the actions of their own filthy politicians.

Are you willing to take a risk and aim high, knowing that there's a good chance it won't work out?

Are you willing to pick the establishment candidate knowing it'll depress voter turnout and guarantee that Republicans keep congress?

It's not realistic to compare the likelihood of candidates successfully passing policy when the political dynamics generated by the candidates are very different. Political revolution versus continued neoliberal skid imply very different popular participation to the political process.

@10- The difference between the Leftist Sanders and the moderate Right Hillary is the question of where does the compromise start.

What a brilliant strategic thinker you are. I encourage you to head down to the luxury car dealership and open up your negotiations with an offer of 500 dollars, I'm sure it'll work out great.

We watched Obama spend his first two years pissing away a majority because he (and the fuckwits in Congress) was started compromising in the middle and let himself get dragged rightwards.

Nonsense, of course. Obama wasn't really negotiating with Republicans on the major policy initiatives of his first two years, he was negotiating with the median voters in the house and senate--AKA the most right-leaning members of his own party. The deficiencies of those legislative efforts, such as they are, are the result of compromises made with the likes of Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, and Joe Lieberman. As always, has always been the case except a few years in the late 70's, the primary constraint on progressive legislation under Democratic presidents is exerted by the median vote in congress, not an insufficiently progressive president. (The most commonly cited 'betrayal of the left' on the part of Bill Clinton, welfare reform, had very little to do with him--had he vetoed it Congress would have overridden the veto,because there was a strong bipartisan majority that wanted the welfare reform passed.) For the next 4-8 years, the median vote in congress will be Republican, so we'll be just as fucked under Sanders or Clinton.

All the pro-pot & pro-Bernie folks on here, myself included, should remember something important. While we should push for the big change (full legalization, universal healthcare, Democratic Socialist president, etc) when it comes down to it, IF those options are off the table (Bernie loses the nomination) we shouldn't stay home on election day because that guarantees the big change in the opposite direction (more doors kicked down for weed, more war, more extremist conservative policies).

Hillary may not be ideal but she's a fuckload better than any of those psychopaths that are running for the R nomination. Staying home on election day because you're not getting exactly what you want guarantees you will get exactly what you don't want instead of getting a halfass version of what you want.

@30 - Isn't that still awfully high?

@30, @34 - Yes it still is awfully high, but the data @30 provides from 2013 is now considered inaccurate. From Jan 2015, Washington Post, "Majority of U.S. Public School Students Are In Poverty"

Quote:

"For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.

The Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade in the 2012-2013 school year were eligible for the federal program that provides free and reduced-price lunches. The lunch program is a rough proxy for poverty, but the explosion in the number of needy children in the nation’s public classrooms is a recent phenomenon that has been gaining attention among educators, public officials and researchers."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/edu…

Consider, too, that this data comes AFTER mostly Repubicans - but also many Democrats - voted to cut food aide, including in liberal Seattle - so that families saw reductions in assistance but also were simply thrown off the program altogether with RADICAL slashes in food aide.

In short, there would be many MORE people in poverty according to the lunch program data. Just because people aren't participants, doesn't mean they're aren't poor too. So that figure showing a bit higher than 50 percent is actually even higher than that!

It's like using the number of people receiving unemployment as the indicator for how many people are actually unemployed - or without sufficient income, period.

But yes, my figure is CORRECT and even probably conservative!