Comments

1
Hillary Clinton is a terrible candidate, and I really hope the Democrats come up with someone better. The only way they can lose the presidency is by trying to elect Hillary.
2
Any candidate for anything who expresses an opinion that is in any way critical of the cops in Ferguson is going to lose. America wants its young black boys to die in the street. Not all of them, but a steady trickle, one or two a day. It's what America uses to feel good about itself.
3
Also the National Review website will summarily ban you if you make any comments that are opposed to the views of their readers. No freedom of speech or intellectual debate allowed! They won't just ban individual comments that violate their comment policy (as does Slog), they will ban you and erase all your comments.
Quite amusing!
4
@1: Oh no, there are many other ways the Democrats could lose the presidency. Joe Biden, John Kerry and Al Gore come to mind.

In all serioiusness, who would you suggest they run instead?
5
@1 - I think Clinton can beat any GOP candidate you care to name. What state the Obama carried would Clinton lose?

But no dispute on the terrible thing.
6
Hillary Clinton was a volunteer for Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act, in 1964. She played on racist fears in the 2008 election to win votes in Appalachia. Her husband played race cynically for votes more than once, too. I have no doubt she's a middle-of-the-road Democrat these days and much better on issues of race than the Republicans, but is it really so hard to accept the possibility she might just be a little bit racist?

I still expect to vote for her, because what are the alternatives, really? But she's not a great progressive voice on any issue.
7
Hillary's opinion on this is not necessary nor would it be especially helpful since she isn't involved with it at all. Let's save the opportunities for the right to attack her for something until later shall we?
8
Hillary in 2008: "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/100763
9
@4: Someone young and progressive.
10
She could just say she sends her condolences. But I don't care either way. The alternative is a racist Republican that will deny he's racist, but do everything to pander to racists.
11
Ask her again at 3:00 am
12
@9, that is vague and completely unhelpful.

I'm somewhat indifferent to the prospect of a Hillary presidency. She would be neither the best president nor the worst we've had. She would likely be a lot like Obama with less charisma: a typical centrist business-leaning democrat.

But I'm a pragmatist. Although I'd love to see "someone young and progressive" win, that isn't going to happen. A young progressive won't win enough votes in enough states to become president. This country, right now, isn't all that progressive, and older voters are much more reliable than young fickle voters.

I'm a pragmatist. Alden @5 is right. Hillary, for all her faults, has a very good chance of beating nearly any republican currently being considered. Some nameless young progressive has no chance of doing so. If you can name a young progressive who can, not just a generic ideal but an actual name of a real viable candidate with national name recognition and fundraising ability, I will happily eat my words.
13
@9: Well, that narrows it down. Got even one name?
14
If Hillary is the nominee, the next president will be a Republican. Regardless of who wins.
15
What appears to be helping Hillary's chances is her cowardly triangulation to get right wing republican support--to freeze out a Jeb candidacy in 2016.

@6, even though it stands a snowball in hell's chance of winning, I'd vote the green party ticket since I'm so sick of Dems currying favor with Wall Street and the right wing, betraying the New Deal, as well as working and middle class people, civil rights and liberties to get money and votes. The green party candidate won't win, however, I'll feel better.

@9, Senator Gillibrand hints at progressive qualities, but I suspect the DNC won't support any candidate that doesn't follow the neo-liberal corporatist script.
16
Yeah, but she's a liberal Republican (like used to exist), which is still better than any of the people who actually call themselves Republican.
17
@12- "Some nameless young progressive has no chance of doing so."

Barack Obama was a nameless young progressive (one national speech of note to his name) when he started his presidential run.

You want me to name someone, I can't. Because there's no one in the forefront of the Democratic Party who excites anyone. Decades of bending over for the GOP even when they had the majority has made it the party of "not quite as bad". Which is why they can't keep people coming to the polls.
18
@14 - I know what you're getting at but the manner of a President's election matters a lot more than their personality. Clinton would be the source of endless heartbreak for liberal/progressive types but she would not actually ally with the GOP caucus in Congress in order to pass GOP legislation.

This is why any libertarian impulses in Rand Paul's heart are entirely irrelevant - his administration would be a Republican one.

So she's better than any Republican hands down.

I'd rate the chances of her getting us into a ridiculous war in the middle east north of 50%, though.
19
@ 17, you must have a funny definition for "nameless and young."
20
Alden, your last sentence is an admission that a Clinton administration would be functionally indistinguishable from a Republican one on foreign policy, which is both the most important thing a president does and on which he or she possesses nearly unlimited power to fuck up.
21
Clinton would not blunder like W, though. It's a low bar but foreign policy is unfortunately a lost cause. The differences on domestic policy are stark. Clinton is about where any center-right party would be in most developed countries, and the Republicans are insane. There is no progressive or even truly left-of-center domestic option. There's no way to build one in the time we have before 2016, and our country's electorate probably will never support one (even countries with a strong left-wing political culture like France are in the grips of center-right policies these days).
22
@20, no, the most important thing a president does is appoint hundreds of government officials, starting with SUPREME COURT JUSTICES. If you are under the impression that Hillary would appoint right-wing kooks to the Supreme Court, or to, say, the head of the EPA, you're not just wrong, you're dangerously wrong.

The second-most important thing a president does is blockade Republican legislation out of congress. Specifically, the next president is going to have to beat back several full-scale repeals of Obamacare. It's as simple as that, really: a Republican president in 2017 means the end of Obamacare, followed by a thousand other terrible things.

Wars are bad, but they aren't as bad as those things.
23
She's gonna be freaking 69 years old in 2016. GOP establishment is gonna invoke Reagan and talk about alzheimer's and how potentially irresponsible it'd be to risk giving a person of such relatively "advanced" age such tremendous authority. And they'll (at least attempt to) do so in such a manner that isn't disrespectful to Hillary and also acknowledges that, if we had the information and knowledge about early onset dementia and neurology that we do now back in 1984, Reagan probably wouldn't have been re-elected.

Heck, I can write this shit for them and I gotta admit that there's some legitimacy to it, at least as far as talking points go. Didn't Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley have some talk going on in his corner a few years back?
24
@23, I believe that even if the advanced information and diagnostic capacity were in place for dementia/Alzheimer's, I think the GOP would have covered up and lied and the Corporate media would have looked the other way to re-elect Mr. morning in America back in 84.

Re O'Malley, I think the DNC has told all possible candidates to stand back, unless Hillary drops dead or declines the nomination.
25
Fnarf @2 is certainly correct in terms of Clinton campaign strategy. The best way for Clinton to maximize her chances in a general election is not be seen as a tool of the Democrats' minority interest groups.

Fnarf @22 displays some very interesting priorities. Apparently being obstructive is not a sign of government dysfunction but is in fact highly desirable desirable as long as the people being obstructed are the other team. And apparently raining down war and destruction on some random foreigners is a reasonable price to pay as long as it gets Americans some sort of very expensive, sort-of universal, kind-of government sponsored/subsidized/controlled health care system. Doesn't sound very progressive, but there you are.
26
@2 , @22 you keep getting sharper and sharper, FNARF. Tough fucking times, this slow slide...
27
@24,

I agree with you they'd have still pushed for Reagan in '84, but they'll stubbornly claim otherwise. My concern is the age thing gives them a very rational and effective method by which to disparage her without attacking her personally. Which would seem a pretty sound strategy.
28
Clinton has no problem expressing her support for the slaughter of unarmed Palestinians. She's blood thirsty and power hungry. She is willing to say what ever her calculating mind deems will give advantage. She has no soul!
29
I'd vastly prefer a 3rd term Bill over this stone-cold sack of shit person.
30
@22 "Wars are bad, but they aren't as bad as those things. "

tell that to the dead soldiers families, you fucking piece of shit.

31
@30.

They volunteered. Sad, but that's what they signed up for (and since all of the wars we've fought in the last 60 years have been bullshit, I'm not gonna fake sappiness about how their sacrifice was for our freedom, because it wasn't).

Bush's war of choice against Iraq and every other one of his wrong-headed overreactions to 9/11 have done far more harm to America than Al Queda could ever have hoped. Republican candidates offer more of the same, and that's before we even get into the insane reactionary anti-women and human cultural warfare kick they're on.
32
@31

your right, we should just have nobody in the armed forces at all. So you apparently think little political BS battles between Ds and Rs is somehow more important than thousands of dead soldiers - you know, YOUR COUNTRYMEN- YOUR NEIGHBORS.

Why is it always little progressive twats like yourself have such disdain for people who serve in the military? Are you jealous in some way? Perhaps ashamed that your manhood doesnt quite stack up?

The volunteered over the last 60 years? You realize there was a draft in Vietnam, dont you? dipshit.

I give anybody in the military a hell of a lot more respect than a bunch of cross dressing freaks prancing around up on the 'hill any day of the week.

You can go fuck off to, you little limp wristed bitch.

People like you and fnarf need a serious ass kicking.
33
Fnarf, you've convinced me. What's a few hundred thousand dead civilians on the other side of the world as long as we get a good EPA Administrator and shitty quasi-universal health insurance at home?
34
The Stranger is getting so pro-GOP. Hope abstinent only doesn't come next.
35
@19- A first term senator who got some national notice from a speech at the previous convention, the youngest person ever elected president. Is that really odd in the context of presidential candidates?
36
Hillary will run in 2016 and she will win. What republican candidate can trump her experience? There aren't ANY republicans who can hold a candle to her integrity and her experience with world affairs and the fact that she has been in the White House for 8 years, I look forward to the republican circus once again where as many as 9 candidates were trying for the Presidency ( most of them clowns and idiots) republicans have already lost the 2016 elections because of their bigotry and ignorance of what Americans really want. Good health insurance (Obama care) which will work if the fucking republicans will quit trying to eliminate it.
37
@36 I can't say I disagree with you although one could say the same thing about Biden. Still I wish there was someone younger less entrenched in the existing power structure. I fully expect that when Hillary does announce she is running part of her campaign will be a replay of Bill's first "you get two for the price of one theme".

The sad fact of the matter is the USA is struggling to deal with damage Reagan did to the middle class. So we keep going back to the warriors and paradigm of that time.
38
I'm living a replay of her last run: I'm enthusiastic in the beginning, but the more she says, the more I'm confronted with the fact that she is ethically challenged. I question her values and wonder about the presence of a soul. God, I hope we have another choice!

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.