Why Should I Vote For Hillary?

[Berzerker]

Hillary's got a hit list, a Hitlary

 

[Terxpahseyton]

She is hillaryious, isn't she.

 

[Berzerker]

she's and she voted to invade Iraq because of political aspirations and that backfired

 

[Light Cleric]

Unless doctors continue to increasingly stop taking new Medicaid patients because they just can't afford to do it after a point. Are those doctors operating on "ideological grounds" as well?

And I mean, if you're being forced to pay for a more expensive policy to get crap you don't and aren't getting subsidized as many of friends are and a heck of a lot of people are, why should they thank a President who said, in unequivocal terms, that would not happen? It was a total lie.

I wanted to not turn this into an Obamacare debate there's already a thread for that.

And I don't even know how to address the other claims beyond how I did above. He's biown up multiple instances where there actually was common ground by storming in and demanding it gets done his way or not at all. Just because he goes out and misrepresents the other side doean't make him a great compromiser. Like unemployment insurance, Republicans have said they would have plenty of votes to get to 60 if the extension is paid for. Obama decides it would be helpful to run around and complain Republicans want a million people to lose their unemployment insurance. This is the guy that ushered in a new era of "civility" and wants to lecture us? Whenever there's gridlock, it's usually caused by both parties being stubbon. If Republicans block all sorts of crap,Reid refuses to bring all sorts of crap to the floor for political purposes, and Obama has no leadership ability to even get his own party to listen to him(see:iran sanctions) then that's widespread dysfunction.

 

[Hygro]

she's and she voted to invade Iraq because of political aspirations and that backfired

Yeah that was pretty bad. I wonder what Obama would have voted had he been in Congress at the time.

 

[Light Cleric]

Hillary's got a hit list, a Hitlary

Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me. This feels like standard political machine procedure;

Speaking of identity politics:

“If a guy has a list of people he’s not too keen on, no big deal; if a women does, then that is a big deal and then it becomes juicy,” said DeFrancesco Soto, a University of Texas professor. “This just conjures up memories of the gendered element of when Hillary was running.”

“Because she’s a woman running for political office — a very powerful political office — we just don’t know how to deal with gender yet with her,” she later added.

Yeah, Richard Nixon had a hit list and did just fine because he's a man, right?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Can someone explain to me why, if I'm a blank slate, I should vote for Hillary in 2016?

I have two rather good reasons really. And for quips and shingles two why you shouldn't.

You should vote for Hillary:
1. to piss me off. No Sir, I don't like her.
2. after you've seen the candidate the republicans will go for. The last 2 times they went with what they call "moderate", distilled from a barrel of loony toons and lost spectacularly. I fear what they might go for after the pundits have hammered this into their base.

You shouldn't vote for Hillary:
1. since it'll reverse the roles in this forum. This setting is starting to bore me.
2. because this time, maybe the republicans will bring a good candidate against all expectations

 

[Hygro]

Unless doctors continue to increasingly stop taking new Medicaid patients because they just can't afford to do it after a point. Are those doctors operating on "ideological grounds" as well?

And I mean, if you're being forced to pay for a more expensive policy to get crap you don't and aren't getting subsidized as many of friends are and a heck of a lot of people are, why should they thank a President who said, in unequivocal terms, that would not happen? It was a total lie.

I wanted to not turn this into an Obamacare debate there's already a thread for that.

And I don't even know how to address the other claims beyond how I did above. He's biown up multiple instances where there actually was common ground by storming in and demanding it gets done his way or not at all. Just because he goes out and misrepresents the other side doean't make him a great compromiser. Like unemployment insurance, Republicans have said they would have plenty of votes to get to 60 if the extension is paid for. Obama decides it would be helpful to run around and complain Republicans want a million people to lose their unemployment insurance. This is the guy that ushered in a new era of "civility" and wants to lecture us? Whenever there's gridlock, it's usually caused by both parties being stubbon. If Republicans block all sorts of crap,Reid refuses to bring all sorts of crap to the floor for political purposes, and Obama has no leadership ability to even get his own party to listen to him(see:iran sanctions) then that's widespread dysfunction.

Unless you forgot that opposition to the ACA started astroturfed and corporate funded and that the Republican Congress has made it their mandate (stated, btw) to oppose Obama on everything, abandoning their own platform when the President supports it, all with the hopes of creating exactly the atmosphere that leads a select minority of Americans like yourself to see it as the President's fault, then I think we're going to have some trouble communicating.

 

[Antilogic]

I am strongly in favor of a governor, yes. I prefer someone who has previous experience with running and managing an executive branch, which is one reason I liked Romney more than McCain.

Most of them have had to deal with the realities of working with a legislative branch that isn't always a rubber stamp and having to build personal relationships with members of the legislature.

...

We've had many successful presidents who used to be governors, some who were VP, and some who were members of the House. I can't think of many Senators who were successful Presidents or even elected President at all(Warren G. Harding? lol).

This is a pretty interesting area for discussion. Using this list from wiki, only three immediately came from the Senate (Harding, Kennedy, and Obama) and one from the House (Garfield). Many were vice presidents, governors, or generals. 16 were senators at some point, but most of those were out-of-office before running for president. Out of the 17 governors, 9 were elected directly to the presidency (three times more).

I think going directly from the House to the Presidency is near-impossible, especially in the modern era of campaigning. House members are usually in pretty safe gerrymandered districts, and to have the required experience to run a presidential campaign much less actually govern the nation it helps to have experience running statewide in a decently-sized state. After all, you need to run statewide in 50 states nationwide and realistically in a dozen or so swing states to get elected. If you haven't done that even once, you aren't likely to win against someone who has.

This is something that the current President has unfortunately failed at even according to many Democrats. They feel like he doesn't even talk to them most of the time. ...

This is not to say there isn't obstructionism by Republicans on some things, of course. But the bottom line is while Obama enjoys campaigning, he fails utterly at the actual governing part of governance.

Please don't tell me you buy into that narrative. Plenty of Obama's initial positions have been far closer to the Republicans than the base or the Congressional Democrats would have liked, such as on healthcare, on the stimulus bill, and on the tax cut extension, to name a few. You can call that a failure of negotiation tactics, but it's not strawmanning the opposition or being an über-leftist.

And the obstruction has been extreme. Based on the number of filibusters of both legislation and appointees, it is unparalleled in the history of the country.

I can't vote in the Democratic primary, as I think you have to be a registered Democrat to do so in my state, but at least Schweitzer has some moderate positions and is willing to call out Obama on his corporatism. This is why I want to punch every talking head who asks why the stock market is doing so well and the job market is ass. People seem to think you can't favor the ultra-rich and demonize the "regular" rich(yes that sounds dumb but it's the best term I could think of ).

"B-Rye" Schweitzer is an oddball, and whether he will be perceived as a progressive or a blue dog is going to be dependent on the key campaign issues in 2016. If it's stuff like guns and coal, he's going to look like a fairly conservative/moderate Democrat. If it's stuff like economic populism, bank reform, and maybe even healthcare, he's going to appeal to the far left in the party more than someone like Clinton would.

I definitely agree that the Republican candidate is important in the outcome but as I mentioned above I wouldn't even know who to try and evaluate. Christie has issues that go far beyond the bridge scandal(which was a legitimate scandal but imo still peanuts compared to many Obama scandals for which no one has really been held accountable). Who the hell else is there? Honestly as much as people try to demonize Scott Walker he's managed to survive a recall election with a bigger margin of victory than his initial election and actually accomplished things that Democrats would traditionally dislike in a state that hasn't voted for a Republican president since Reagan.

The only major Obama-era scandal I can think of that involved use of government resources to target political opposition was the IRS thing, which turned out to not be much of a scandal at all since lefty groups were targeted as well and based on the actual wording of the statute none of the 501(c)(4) organizations should have been given tax-exempt status in the first place, but that mistake was made in the freakin' Eisenhower administration so it's not like that was Obama's fault.

Christie took a pretty high-risk approach to handling this scandal--if it comes out that he knew anything before his press conference, he's utterly screwed. The facts aren't really in question here as they were in the IRS situation because we do know from the emails the bridge was shut down intentionally as retaliation (for something) to Ft. Lee.

Walker has long been my bet for winning the GOP nomination since he was politically savvy (ran against the recall rather than on his positions) and can appeal to a broad Republican coalition (the establishment/business wing, the big donors, the tea guys, and the religious right). It's definitely looking like a better bet after last week, though he still has to win reelection in 2014.

 

[Berzerker]

This feels like standard political machine procedure

yup, politicians keeping track of favors and slights

And it sounds like Bill & Hillary were quite upset at Democrats they helped in the past endorsing Obama.. And one of the worst became Hillary's replacement for Sec of State

I can understand that, why reward ingrates over loyal friends?

Hillary's a disaster on foreign policy, so was her husband. Bush slept before 9/11 but Bill was Prez for 8 years before him. Obama's light years ahead of his 3 predecessors.

 

[Light Cleric]

The only major Obama-era scandal I can think of that involved use of government resources to target political opposition was the IRS thing, which turned out to not be much of a scandal at all since lefty groups were targeted as well and based on the actual wording of the statute none of the 501(c)(4) organizations should have been given tax-exempt status in the first place, but that mistake was made in the freakin' Eisenhower administration so it's not like that was Obama's fault.

I'm a bit pressed for time but I can say this; the extent to which progressive groups were "targeted" was exaggerated if it existed at all. Many of them were "Targeted" only in the sense that a cop targets a bank robber committing a robbery.

"While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria we described in our report, including employee interviews, e-mails, and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that 'Progressives' was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention."

"In comparison, our audit found that 100 percent of the tax-exempt applications with Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names were processed as potential political cases during the timeframe of our audit,"

Also there was a decent breakdown here.

Even Obama himself caved and and admitted it happened and the IRS screwed it up, I don't see why people continue to grasp at straws(I don't mean you, I mean people in media).

 

[Antilogic]

Odd that spreadsheet in your link does not mention the "Occupy" keyword, nor does it address the 501(c)(4) statutory language at all. In fact, several criticisms of that spreadsheet are included in the article itself.

 

[Light Cleric]

This is why I said "breakdown", not "spreadsheet".

If I wanted you to look at just the spreadsheet, wouldn't I have just linked to the spreadsheet?

It would help if the IRS had actually been cooperative in this from the beginning rather than trying to wash it away with a planted question at a conference and obstructing afterwards.

I should've thrown the USA Today article in too(my bad) in which it explains more, including that while there were 11 liberal groups caught, over 80% of the target groups were conservative and how the 501(c)(4) wasn't/clearly shouldn't have been an issue in some of them:

The IRS categorized the groups as engaging in several advocacy-related activities that could have barred them from tax-exempt status, such as lobbying and "propaganda."

But the word "propaganda" doesn't appear in section 501(c)(4), which governs the social welfare status that most Tea Party groups were applying for, said John Colombo, a law professor at the University of Illinois. Instead, it appears in section 501(c)(3), which governs public charities.

"There would be no reason I would think to flag them if it's for a 501(c)(4) status," Colombo said. "That's very odd to me."

 

[Formaldehyde]

You're defending Hillary by comparing her to other politicians that LC also does not like. That... doesn't really work.

I'm not "defending" anybody. I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy of trying to attack her credentials while basically ignoring presidential candidates who have far less basic experience with the federal government.

I very much appreciate the spirit of the OT - but you forgot the strongest factor which will determine the attractiveness of Hillary as President. Which will be the Republican candidate. In no other system of choice is the choice itself so irrelevant and the difference between choices so relevant as in a binary system.

Indeed. Given our hopelessly broken two-party system, we again get to decide whether or not we want vanilla or strawberry ice cream.

 

[Light Cleric]

I'm not "defending" anybody. I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy of trying to attack her credentials while basically ignoring presidential candidates who have far less basic experience with the federal government.

I've said before(though maybe not in this thread) the entire field sucks balls, that's not really "ignoring" them. If you can show me the chosen anointed Republican candidate whose credentials we're not supposed to question, I'll gladly take a swing at him/her.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Aren't you supposed to argue in favor of Hillary?

What possibly gives you the impression I support her? The only way she would likely be in any way attractive would be as the lesser of two evils.

I've said before(though maybe not in this thread) the entire field sucks balls, that's not really "ignoring" them. If you can show me the chosen anointed Republican candidate whose credentials we're not supposed to question, I'll gladly take a swing at him/her.

Try nearly all of them for decades. You can start with an ex-B-movie actor who is idolized by the right-wing authoritarians and work your way right up to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I'm a bit pressed for time but I can say this; the extent to which progressive groups were "targeted" was exaggerated if it existed at all. Many of them were "Targeted" only in the sense that a cop targets a bank robber committing a robbery.

This statement from the report was debunked long ago:

The inspector general also pushed back against allegations that he ignored documents showing that the agency also flagged liberal groups for extra review by explaining that the documents were not originally made available to his office when it was conducting its audit.

“I am disturbed that these documents were not provided to our auditors at the outset, and we are currently reviewing this issue,” George said.

The July 2010 document was only sent to the inspector general last week, he said.

And as far as his supposed impartiality is concerned:

George, a former Bob Dole staffer who contributed to GOP candidates before assuming his inspector general post nearly a decade ago, worked to recast the picture that Democrats have tried to paint of him as a Republican operative.

“They don’t know I was a page at the 1980 Democratic National Convention and that I was a founder of the Howard University College Democrats,” George told lawmakers. “Yes, I saw the light and joined Bob Dole’s staff … but anyone who has worked with me on either side of the spectrum will agree I call it as I see it.”

George’s approach did little to soothe Democratic suspicions.

“The more we look at him, the more we need to explain his professional credibility,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) told POLITICO. “I would start by getting a new inspector general. He has so compromised his credibility with at least half of us that it makes it almost impossible for him to go forward with his job.”

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Because you like fascism?

 

[Light Cleric]

What possibly gives you the impression I support her? The only way she would likely be in any way attractive would be as the lesser of two evils.

Try nearly all of them for decades. You can start with an ex-B-movie actor who is idolized by the right-wing authoritarians and work your way right up to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann.

It's amazing you can spit that kind of venom.

First off, unless Reagan comes back from the dead, he ain't running for office this time around.

Second, Reagan was a two-term Governor of California and all that being a governor entails(that is, being an executive) and managed to actually balance the budget and work with a Democratic legislature ("but he raised taxes!"; yes, he also cut spending and waste significantly in California and they ended up with a surplus because the taxes were too high and that's still beside the point). You want to talk up Hillary and yet you purposefully leave out a HUGE hole in the past of the person you're trying to attack. Seriously?

wrt Bachmann, I was pretty clear already I don't like her. I don't know if I wasn't vitrolic or what. I would be shocked if she's even polling and I seriously doubt Palin will run; she seems content working from the outside making Facebook posts and whatever. Neither of them are the presumptive party nominee as I laid out.

I don't know what else I can really say here, you seem to have some real genuine hatred for these people and are being intellectually dishonest in your attempt to tear down at least one of them. That does not foster a discussion.

 

[IglooDame]

What possibly gives you the impression I support her? The only way she would likely be in any way attractive would be as the lesser of two evils.

And she barely keeps her title as the lesser of two evils when compared against the likes of Cthulhu, Seth, or Michelle Bachmann.