[RD] Clinton vs. Trump - USA Presidential race.

[Bootstoots]

Dragging it out greatly helps a candidate like Sanders, though. His fundraising didn't really come online until he was able to establish viability in Iowa and New Hampshire. In a one-time national primary, he gets defeated straight away and goes home, to see no influence at all over the party platform, the convention, or any of the issues going forward. This way he was able to generate enough of a movement to have a tangible impact on the overall election.

I think it ought to be compressed - the 6 weeks between the Chesapeake primary and this last large bucket of states is not of any use under any scenario. Once the thing is about half over, I think the second half should come and go in the span of a few weeks rather than a couple of months. But I confess there is some charm to the idea of candidates trudging around Iowa and New Hampshire for weeks on end. I think my view on that comes from having read the book Primary Colors at an impressionable age.

Yeah, I do kind of like that. I also participated in the Iowa caucuses for Obama in 2008 - I was going to college there at the time. I was 19, so that caucus was the first real "election" I was eligible to participate in. It was a lot of fun, and we really did get to see all the candidates including Obama up close (although actually not Hillary Clinton; she sent Bill instead).

So yeah, maybe we should let Iowa be a special exception to the caucus ban just for tradition's sake, and leave the first four primaries where they are in February. Then all the other primaries can occur in stages between the first Tuesday in March and the last Tuesday in April.

 

[metalhead]

Except, they are winning by a healthy margin. If you want to see a party whose establishment did a terrible job of rigging the election, look at the Republicans.

I think the GOP primaries are pretty conclusive proof that parties can't actually rig anything

Sure, with practically every Demcoratic VIP campaigning for Hillary, with the arrangements between Hillary's campaign and the DNC, the debate schedule, the media coverage, you can totally tell how the process has helped Bernie every step of the way.

A few points about that.

The debate schedule is really a losing argument. For that to be "rigging," there would have to be some indication that a different debate schedule would have mattered. To prove that, you'd have to show that Bernie wins all of the debates. I don't see how one could reasonably conclude he has clearly won debates, or that somehow the time slots for debates favors an establishment candidate. It's impossible to know ahead of time who is going to win the debates, so I don't see how this can be called "rigging" in anyone's favor.

On the DNC agreements - Bernie has the same exact joint fundraising agreement in place that Hillary has taken advantage of. He just hasn't used it.

The media coverage of Hillary has been unrelentingly negative. I don't even know where to begin with this claim, honestly. Is it the media's fault that Bernie Sanders has done the same exact thing every day for the last 6 months? Give some policy speeches. Make the media pay attention. Trump figured this out almost a year ago.

Why didn't Bernie court some VIPs and superdelegates to his side? Are they supposed to just sit back and not participate?

Honestly, these complaints seem to me to be deficiencies of the Bernie campaign being packaged to look like some system that has been stacked against him.

Looking beyond the nuts and bolts of the Democratic primary, it's clear that the political system as a whole is hugely biased in favor of establishment candidates like Clinton, for a variety of reasons.

BTW, when I say the system was rigged in favor of Hillary I don't mean to suggest some kind of simplistic conspiracy where Bernie is actually winning the election but this is being concealed by the Nefarious Powers That Be - though you can be forgiven for thinking something like that given what many Bernie supporters have been saying for weeks.

No, the rigging goes much deeper than that. And it will take a great deal of work to overcome it - work that, sadly, most Bernie supporters seem to be neglecting in favor of the "Bernie should run as a third-party candidate" pipe dream.

Well, to reiterate - Donald Trump singlehandedly overcame all of these supposed powers working against an insurgent winning, and did so against an establishment that was much, much more vocally opposed to him than any Democrats were to Bernie. Officeholding Democrats publicly weren't really opposed to Bernie at all for the most part, they simply prefer Hillary.

 

[danjuno]

@Camikaze No, only people who vote for the candidate that gets elected are to blame for what that person does in office. In a FPTP system, blaming people who voted for X instead of Y when Z got elected is simply trying to blackmail X voters into voting Y in the future and maintaining a duopoly that is obviously bad. It hasn't been 16 years since the Nader mistake, it's been 16 years since the Gore mistake.

 

[onejayhawk]

I think the GOP primaries are pretty conclusive proof that parties can't actually rig anything A few points about that.

The debate schedule is really a losing argument. For that to be "rigging," there would have to be some indication that a different debate schedule would have mattered. To prove that, you'd have to show that Bernie wins all of the debates. I don't see how one could reasonably conclude he has clearly won debates, or that somehow the time slots for debates favors an establishment candidate. It's impossible to know ahead of time who is going to win the debates, so I don't see how this can be called "rigging" in anyone's favor.

On the DNC agreements - Bernie has the same exact joint fundraising agreement in place that Hillary has taken advantage of. He just hasn't used it.

The media coverage of Hillary has been unrelentingly negative. I don't even know where to begin with this claim, honestly. Is it the media's fault that Bernie Sanders has done the same exact thing every day for the last 6 months? Give some policy speeches. Make the media pay attention. Trump figured this out almost a year ago.

Why didn't Bernie court some VIPs and superdelegates to his side? Are they supposed to just sit back and not participate?

Honestly, these complaints seem to me to be deficiencies of the Bernie campaign being packaged to look like some system that has been stacked against him.

Well, to reiterate - Donald Trump singlehandedly overcame all of these supposed powers working against an insurgent winning, and did so against an establishment that was much, much more vocally opposed to him than any Democrats were to Bernie. Officeholding Democrats publicly weren't really opposed to Bernie at all for the most part, they simply prefer Hillary.

Something's wrong. I agree with MH. Civilization as we know it may end.

J

 

[Sommerswerd]

Well, to reiterate - Donald Trump singlehandedly overcame all of these supposed powers working against an insurgent winning, and did so against an establishment that was much, much more vocally opposed to him than any Democrats were to Bernie.

This. This is exactly where all the "Bernie lost cause the system was rigged against him" arguments crumble to dust like so many works of Ozymandias.

If Sanders had won the pledged delegates by some razor-thin margin, it seems fairly unlikely that enough of the ~85% of the superdelegates that have already announced support for Clinton would switch, particularly if they had a plausible reason to call Clinton the winner by some metric (e.g. popular vote*, which could be true in this scenario because caucus states have low turnout).

See I disagree with this. I am pretty confident that the majority of superdelegates would have backed Bernie if he had a pledged delegate lead. The superdelegates might step in to deny the election to someone like Trump, but Bernie, as I have repeatedly pointed out, is no Trump. Bernie is a perfectly acceptable member of the establishment. Bernie isn't even on the level of Ted Cruz, frankly he's not even on the level of Ron Paul.

There is no conspiracy against Bernie because there's no need. Bernie is just one of the guys. A typical Washington politician, playing the tried and true "change" angle for this campaign to Hillary's tried and true "don't change horses midstream" angle. But an old white-haired veteran Senator selling the "change" angle is literally a wolf-in-wolf's-clothing and most people just aren't buying it. Bernie just isn't the threat to the establishment that some people imagine him to be and/or wish that he was (which, is incidentally part of why all Hillary's supporters would have no problem backing Bernie.). He's just fine establishment-wise and the superdelegates would have supported him no problem if he was winning.

@Camikaze No, only people who vote for the candidate that gets elected are to blame for what that person does in office. In a FPTP system, blaming people who voted for X instead of Y when Z got elected is simply trying to blackmail X voters into voting Y in the future and maintaining a duopoly that is obviously bad. It hasn't been 16 years since the Nader mistake, it's been 16 years since the Gore mistake.

This. Let the church say Amen

 

[Lexicus]

I think the GOP primaries are pretty conclusive proof that parties can't actually rig anything

They are simply proof that that GOP establishment was arrogant to the point of delusion.

To prove that, you'd have to show that Bernie wins all of the debates. I don't see how one could reasonably conclude he has clearly won debates, or that somehow the time slots for debates favors an establishment candidate. It's impossible to know ahead of time who is going to win the debates, so I don't see how this can be called "rigging" in anyone's favor.

No, you don't need to show he "wins" all of the debates, which anyway is a subjective judgment that varies from individual to individual. The fact is that Bernie got more and more support the more people knew about him- and the debates were clearly scheduled in such a way as to minimize exposure to him. If you go on denying that you will forfeit whatever limited credibility you had in my eyes after the "Zelaya brought on his own ouster" nonsense - not that you care, of course.

The media coverage of Hillary has been unrelentingly negative. I don't even know where to begin with this claim, honestly. Is it the media's fault that Bernie Sanders has done the same exact thing every day for the last 6 months? Give some policy speeches. Make the media pay attention. Trump figured this out almost a year ago.

As Trump has demonstrated, no press is bad press. That Bernie has gotten dramatically less coverage than other candidates is not debatable.

Why didn't Bernie court some VIPs and superdelegates to his side? Are they supposed to just sit back and not participate?

This would almost certainly have been a foredoomed effort. Bernie has been railing against the very system that made most of these VIPs VI in the first place. Why would they back him?

Honestly, these complaints seem to me to be deficiencies of the Bernie campaign being packaged to look like some system that has been stacked against him.

I can list plenty of Bernie campaign deficiencies that have nothing whatever to do with any of this stuff. The deck has been stacked against him, and to deny that is just silly. But I agree, he ultimately lost, as a candidate he was not good enough to fight against the stacked deck. As I've been saying, Bernie supporters should stop harping on about this and start backing real progressives in Congressional and state-level elections.

Well, to reiterate - Donald Trump singlehandedly overcame all of these supposed powers working against an insurgent winning, and did so against an establishment that was much, much more vocally opposed to him than any Democrats were to Bernie.

So what does that prove? To you it seems to prove that the primary process and perhaps even the political system at large is beyond reproach! But that of course doesn't follow. What it really means - and I think this is reflected in larger terms than merely the election - is that the Democratic establishment is competent, and the Republican establishment is not. But we already largely knew that.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't think that that is a particularly widely held definition of "rigging", I think that the term "establishment" has been so badly misused by observers of all stripes this primary that it is an effectively meaningless term, and I'm confused by your apparent embrace of a public-choice criticism of American democracy given my understanding of your ideological inclination.

Fair enough on the rigging, as Bootstoots said "structural advantage" would have been better phrasing. My low opinion is of the American electoral system, which is about as reflective of"American democracy" as the Reichstag under the Kaiser.

Difference being that I have yet to be personally bullied by a Trump or Sanders supporter here on these forums or in real life.

Why would someone who hates Hillary as much as you be surprised by this? I, OTOH, have been vilified by both - by Trumpoids as a simpering leftist (one of them actually called me a transgender, it was an amusing moment) and by Sanders supporters as a paid shill of the Hillary campaign because I dared suggest they were being too hard on her. By comparison, all I've received from Hillary supporters is condescension.

 

[Rashiminos]

Donald Trump is an example of the rigging working all too well, if you're not lost by the assumption that the GOP did the rigging.

 

[metalhead]

No, you don't need to show he "wins" all of the debates, which anyway is a subjective judgment that varies from individual to individual. The fact is that Bernie got more and more support the more people knew about him- and the debates were clearly scheduled in such a way as to minimize exposure to him. If you go on denying that you will forfeit whatever limited credibility you had in my eyes after the "Zelaya brought on his own ouster" nonsense - not that you care, of course.

Surely if Obama came out and said, "Hey guys, let's run a referendum on whether people would be cool with me having a 3rd term," people would be rather justified in calling for some repercussions, no? I mean, that's a normal thing for any president to want to do. You know, because it's important for some . . . totally innocent purpose . . . that has yet to be explained. I don't know if court-ordered ouster is necessarily the appropriate response, but to act like he was tossed out for no reason is just flat out ignorant. Even if you think his government was the right one for Honduras. That's not how this whole democracy thing works. You leave when you're supposed to. It really stretches credulity to think they'd have ousted him if he didn't try to extend his term. He was due to leave office early the following year, so, come on. He got ousted because of what he did. There is no other legitimate reading of the situation.

Bernie raised what, $200 million? And he needed debates to get exposure? That's just silly on its face. You know how the DNC could have limited his exposure? By not letting him run as a Democrat. I'll buy that the debates were originally intended to minimize any potential damage to Hillary, but they relented on the damned debate schedule anyways! They had what, 3 or 4 more debates than originally scheduled? So even if the fix was in originally, they effed it up.

Sorry, but the debate complaint is really weak. It doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny.

This would almost certainly have been a foredoomed effort. Bernie has been railing against the very system that made most of these VIPs VI in the first place. Why would they back him?

Well, then whose fault is that? He wanted to run as a Democrat. He obviously has some disdain for the Democratic party, even though they've worked on his behalf to get him elected to the House and Senate. That isn't the fix being in, that's the party members acting like any human person would in that situation. Of course, it is made all the more curious for the fact that Bernie is now sort of hanging his hat on convincing them to back him now.

I can list plenty of Bernie campaign deficiencies that have nothing whatever to do with any of this stuff. The deck has been stacked against him, and to deny that is just silly. But I agree, he ultimately lost, as a candidate he was not good enough to fight against the stacked deck. As I've been saying, Bernie supporters should stop harping on about this and start backing real progressives in Congressional and state-level elections.

So what does that prove? To you it seems to prove that the primary process and perhaps even the political system at large is beyond reproach! But that of course doesn't follow. What it really means - and I think this is reflected in larger terms than merely the election - is that the Democratic establishment is competent, and the Republican establishment is not. But we already largely knew that.

Well, of course the deck is stacked against him. But the narrative around that tends to be of the "Democratic party made a concerted effort to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination," and I don't think that stands up at all. The Party Decides is crystal clear on how big of an advantage it is for a candidate to have the establishment lined up behind them. Being the "outsider" puts you at a pretty large disadvantage, because you lose out on so much from establishment pols, particularly at the local level - how to raise funds, getting briefed on local issues, assistance turning out voters.

In that way, yes, Bernie was at a structural disadvantage. However, this is not the product of a concerted effort to deny him the nomination. It's how the system works. And unless you want to deny politicians the ability to work on behalf of potential nominees, there isn't any way to change it. Maybe you do want them to do that, and perhaps such a thing would even be good, but I'm not sure that's realistic, or even feasible.

I don't think the system is beyond reproach, although I do believe that the problematic elements of the system in no way changed what would have been the ultimate outcome, on the Democratic side at least. On the Republican side, the outcome would still have involved taking the nomination away from the clear leader in votes and delegates under a more equal apportionment. But it just hasn't been close enough to reasonably conclude that the ultimate nominee isn't the one the majority of Dem primary voters wanted. In the end that's all that matters.

 

[Sommerswerd]

You know how the DNC could have limited his exposure? By not letting him run as a Democrat.

This is another thing that gets glossed over again and again. Sanders supporters act as if Sanders was a real Democrat who got hosed by his own party. Sanders is not a Democrat and really had no business in the Democratic primary or the Democratic debates in the first place. Sanders could have just forgone the farce of running as a Democrat entirely and run sans-party and not had to worry about the Democratic establishment oppressing him.

 

[Lexicus]

Surely if Obama came out and said, "Hey guys, let's run a referendum on whether people would be cool with me having a 3rd term," people would be rather justified in calling for some repercussions, no?

Depends. If Obama were wildly popular with 80% of the population and those calling for "repercussions" were largely representative of a tiny oligarchic landowning minority, I would probably say they were not justified, and I'd tell them what to do with their constitution (it would be obscene).

I don't know if court-ordered ouster is necessarily the appropriate response, but to act like he was tossed out for no reason is just flat out ignorant.

I never claimed it was for no reason. I claimed it was for a reason, a rather obvious reason, that had nothing whatever to do with the sanctity of the Constitution, which the right-wing elements which got rid of him have shown no scruples in violating.

Even if you think his government was the right one for Honduras. That's not how this whole democracy thing works. You leave when you're supposed to.

Ahhh, come now, you're forgetting your earliest history lessons! Constitutionally-limited government is not really about democracy, though ultimately it is necessary but not sufficient for democracy. Indeed, most of the Constitutional mechanisms in, say, the United States were explicitly designed to prevent the people from attaining too much power relative to the aristocracy.
The Honduran constitution was the same way (I say was because what's going on there now has nothing whatever to do with whatever liberal notions of constitutional sacrosanctness you hold), only rather more so.

It really stretches credulity to think they'd have ousted him if he didn't try to extend his term.

I think, if he had governed in a way friendly to the oligarchs, they'd likely have let him remain in power no matter how many terms he wanted. Perhaps they'd have had him step down if there was enough international pressure from governments like the US which wanted appearances to be maintained, but certainly it would have been nowhere near as...shall we say...urgent as what actually happened.

He was due to leave office early the following year, so, come on. He got ousted because of what he did. There is no other legitimate reading of the situation.

Indeed - but "what he did" was push policies to benefit the poor of Honduras at the expense of the oligarchs. Again, the post-coup regime is ample proof that constitutional niceties mattered not one bit to the people responsible for getting rid of him.

Bernie raised what, $200 million? And he needed debates to get exposure? That's just silly on its face. You know how the DNC could have limited his exposure? By not letting him run as a Democrat. I'll buy that the debates were originally intended to minimize any potential damage to Hillary, but they relented on the damned debate schedule anyways! They had what, 3 or 4 more debates than originally scheduled? So even if the fix was in originally, they effed it up.

I think so. Most of the $200 million was raised later in the election, not so? Debates were certainly an important vehicle for him to get his message out, as I think is demonstrated by (for example) the spikes in Googling of his name during and after them.

I agree they effed the fix up, probably because they realized it wasn't really necessary.

Well, of course the deck is stacked against him. But the narrative around that tends to be of the "Democratic party made a concerted effort to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination," and I don't think that stands up at all.

It depends how concerted you're talking. I think there was a bit of "concerted effort," but I agree that the concerted effort was ultimately not decisive.
Again, I am not talking conspiracy theory stuff here, but rather basic political theory that should be uncontroversial. Those politicians and parties which push narratives and policies beneficial to the ruling elites have a structural advantage. This is not due to special malevolence on anyone's part, but simply due to the way things work in a political system where policy is evolved the way it is in the US system at present.

This is why I think Bernie should have stuck with disagreeing with Hillary and other Democrats on policy, and continued to emphasize the problems with the system, rather than pretending there was any special malfeasance by the part

 

[danjuno]

This is another thing that gets glossed over again and again. Sanders supporters act as if Sanders was a real Democrat who got hosed by his own party. Sanders is not a Democrat and really had no business in the Democratic primary or the Democratic debates in the first place. Sanders could have just forgone the farce of running as a Democrat entirely and run sans-party and not had to worry about the Democratic establishment oppressing him.

I agree that Bernie should have run as an Independent. I will also add that as much as I admire his courage and have supported him in the primary, he does not seem to understand at this point that he has opened Pandora's box. He has wound up a large number of left-wing independents who (whether you agree with them or not) believe that the Democrats screwed them in some way and are serious about voting third party.

 

[metalhead]

I think, if he had governed in a way friendly to the oligarchs, they'd likely have let him remain in power no matter how many terms he wanted. Perhaps they'd have had him step down if there was enough international pressure from governments like the US which wanted appearances to be maintained, but certainly it would have been nowhere near as...shall we say...urgent as what actually happened.

Indeed - but "what he did" was push policies to benefit the poor of Honduras at the expense of the oligarchs. Again, the post-coup regime is ample proof that constitutional niceties mattered not one bit to the people responsible for getting rid of him.

Of course it didn't, but seriously - his term was up at the end of the year. He was constitutionally barred from another. The oligarchs had little to fear from him, he'd be gone unless he figured out a way to stay in power. Which is exactly what he was trying to do, illegally. Members of his own party were opposed to his actions.

I don't deny that they weren't ousting him from some duty to law and order. That doesn't mean he didn't precipitate the crisis through his own actions.

It depends how concerted you're talking. I think there was a bit of "concerted effort," but I agree that the concerted effort was ultimately not decisive.
Again, I am not talking conspiracy theory stuff here, but rather basic political theory that should be uncontroversial. Those politicians and parties which push narratives and policies beneficial to the ruling elites have a structural advantage. This is not due to special malevolence on anyone's part, but simply due to the way things work in a political system where policy is evolved the way it is in the US system at present.

Yes, exactly. I take no issue with the idea that Bernie was disadvantaged by this system, as it is structured. It is, as you say, uncontroversial. But that's not the narrative that Bernie himself or many of his supporters are pushing.

 

[Agent327]

Some insight into business according to Mr Trump:

A federal judge has given the world an unprecedented glimpse into the ruthless business practices Donald Trump used to build his business empire.

US district court judge Gonzalo Curiel on Tuesday made public more than 400 pages of Trump University “playbooks” describing how Trump staff should target prospective students’ weaknesses to encourage them to sign up for a $34,995 Gold Elite three-day package.

Trump University staff were instructed to get people to pile on credit card debt and to target their financial weaknesses in an attempt to sell them the high-priced real estate courses.

The documents contained an undated “personal message” from Trump to new enrollees at the school: “Only doers get rich. I know that in these three packed days, you will learn everything to make a million dollars within the next 12 months.”

The courses are now subject to legal proceedings from unhappy clients.

Mr Trump's typical reaction:

Trump went on to attack Curiel further on Twitter on Monday and at a press conference in New York on Monday.

Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump

I have a judge in the Trump University civil case, Gonzalo Curiel (San Diego), who is very unfair. An Obama pick. Totally biased-hates Trump

11:45 PM - 30 May 2016

3,585 3,585 Retweets 12,467 12,467 likes

Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump

I should have easily won the Trump University case on summary judgement but have a judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is totally biased against me.

11:55 PM - 30 May 2016

3,725 3,725 Retweets 13,520 13,520 likes

in short: bragging, insult, lie, insinuation - not a word on the matter itself.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/31/donald-trump-university-playbook-real-estate-courses

 

[Lexicus]

Yes, exactly. I take no issue with the idea that Bernie was disadvantaged by this system, as it is structured. It is, as you say, uncontroversial. But that's not the narrative that Bernie himself or many of his supporters are pushing.

*Shrugs* that is pretty often how politics works. Melodrama sells.

 

[metalhead]

By the way, on your buddy Zelaya, and my "credibility" - I'm wondering how you feel about his suppression of the free press including murdered and intimidated reporters, his alleged ties to narcotraffickers and organized crime, and the seemingly rampant corruption including large no-bid contracts to favored companies.

Seriously, this guy was pretty much your typical leftist autocratic thug. I am not clear how you question my "credibility" when you're standing up for this guy, like he's some innocent do-gooder that the evil Honduran aristocracy wanted to get rid of because he was doing too much for the little guy. Is this some kind of socialist solidarity on your part? I don't get it.

 

[Lexicus]

By the way, on your buddy Zelaya, and my "credibility" - I'm wondering how you feel about his suppression of the free press including murdered and intimidated reporters, his alleged ties to narcotraffickers and organized crime, and the seemingly rampant corruption including large no-bid contracts to favored companies.

Seriously, this guy was pretty much your typical leftist autocratic thug. I am not clear how you question my "credibility" when you're standing up for this guy, like he's some innocent do-gooder that the evil Honduran aristocracy wanted to get rid of because he was doing too much for the little guy. Is this some kind of socialist solidarity on your part? I don't get it.

He was hardly an innocent do-gooder; that isn't the point.
I "stand up for him" as a vastly superior alternative to the forces which conspired to throw him out of office, much as I believe Castro's regime in Cuba was better than Batista's, or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were far preferable to the right-wing elements there. It's a matter of choosing the lesser evil, which you should be familiar with because of your knowledge of American politics - no?

 

[Sommerswerd]

I agree that Bernie should have run as an Independent. I will also add that as much as I admire his courage and have supported him in the primary, he does not seem to understand at this point that he has opened Pandora's box. He has wound up a large number of left-wing independents who (whether you agree with them or not) believe that the Democrats screwed them in some way and are serious about voting third party.

Yeah the Democrats gambled on Sanders and they may have shot themselves in the foot. It seems like they thought that Sanders would serve as a handy foil in a bait-and-switch... draw some of the far-left progressives away from third parties and into the Democratic party... then Sanders bows out and you have a bunch of new voters who are "stuck with" Hillary. It was a good plan. But (I think) they underestimated the level of establishment fatigue, and what happened instead is you have faithful and typical Democratic voters preferring Sanders along with the 3rd party progressive types. And the latter are emboldened by the former because it enhances the "movement" narrative.

Now the Democrats have a mess, of their own making, that they may or may not be able to fix. Sanders was let into the Democratic race in order to deliver more voters to Hillary, but instead Hillary has ended up delivering voters to Sanders. I still think that overall it has increased enthusiasm for the Democrats, but it remains to be seen whether the Sanders gamble pays off. I think it will, especially if she taps Sanders for VP.

All Hillary needs to do is get Prez Obama's voters (which she has already) and plug/supplement any establishment-fatigue leakage with some enthusiasm voters courtesy of Bernie. She doesn't need any converts to crush Trump like a grape. Trump is the one who needs converts and he's not getting any. The folks claiming that they are lifelong Democrats but now they are with Trump are the same folks who were saying that same thing in 2008. They already "left" the Democrats.

 

[metalhead]

He was hardly an innocent do-gooder; that isn't the point.
I "stand up for him" as a vastly superior alternative to the forces which conspired to throw him out of office, much as I believe Castro's regime in Cuba was better than Batista's, or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were far preferable to the right-wing elements there. It's a matter of choosing the lesser evil, which you should be familiar with because of your knowledge of American politics - no?

Whether Hondurans are better off in the long run for the military and courts having resisted leftist autocratic rule is impossible to say. Even ceding that point to be true doesn't change the fact that if Zelaya had decided to abide by the constitution, rather than attempt to have it altered to extend his term in office, he would not have been ousted and the subsequent chaos would not have ensued.

The least of the evils would have been for him to finish his term and quietly leave office. The least of the evils would have been for him to not intimidate the press, and not funnel government dollars to fellow thugs and organized crime. So under the rubric of choosing the lesser evil as far as gauging what was or is the best course of action, that would have been it. You seem to be drawing a false dichotomy, where the only choices are Zelaya extending his term and chaos under right-wing thugs. But there was a third way, under which there would have been far less suffering and possibly legitimate constitutional reform. Having not chosen that path falls fully on the shoulders of Mr. Zelaya, so in my book he is in no way deserving of "lesser of evils" status.

In our terms, that would be like deciding that it's OK to vote for Trump simply because he's not as awful as Ted Cruz.

 

[Lexicus]

Whether Hondurans are better off in the long run for the military and courts having resisted leftist autocratic rule is impossible to say.

Ehh, not really at all. Most Hondurans are clearly worse off now than they were under Zelaya.

And the rest of your logic is entirely faulty. Had Zelaya left office at the end of his term, it doesn't follow that the "chaos" would not have occurred. It is not so much incidental "chaos" as a campaign of organized violence against the politically-active elements of the peasantry and Native population.

The least of the evils would have been for him to finish his term and quietly leave office. The least of the evils would have been for him to not intimidate the press, and not funnel government dollars to fellow thugs and organized crime.

But that isn't how the game of lesser evils works. You don't get to say that, for example, Hillary Clinton doesn't count as a lesser evil relative to Donald Trump because Hillary falls short of an imaginary perfect alternative.