Isn't a Trump presidency, with Stein getting greater than 5%, and Democrats taking Congress the best possible long-term outcome for progressives?

No. There are too many dangers with a Trump Presidency that are not checked by the Congress.

And what the hell does Stein getting 5% mean? That is meaningless and will continue to be meaningless until the Greens get past their sense of entitlement that they don’t have to do the ground work to build a meaningful party.

Clinton will govern just fine. She will blast the repubs’ bastions one after the other. Trump would be a total disaster for the US.

Don’t play with fire, and don’t pay attention to last-minute distractions. This election shouldn’t be about something as trivial as emails.

@zenvelo If Clinton wins, what do you see happening in the mid-term? what about in 2020?

@zenvelo “And what the hell does Stein getting 5% mean? That is meaningless and will continue to be meaningless until the Greens get past their sense of entitlement that they don’t have to do the ground work to build a meaningful party.”

Getting to 5% will help get the ground work done.

@olivier5 The emails are hardly trivial. They prove that she doesn’t give a shit about the people, only her donors.

@gorillapaws: There have been no emails released that are significant, and are from or to Clinton.

@gorillapaws The mid terms depend on what happens next week and on what happens in 2017/2018. Trying to sort out the tea leaves of a midterm election as a decision point for a Presidential election two years prior is mental masturbation. It is as pointless as Trump saying Paul Ryan doesn’t want Trump to win so Ryan can run in 2020.

Stein’s little thing about 5% is as ridiculous as trickle down economics. There are only 36 Greens running for any office in California, most of them with no chance of winning even in non partisan elections. No one is running for a legislative office, why not?

@gorillapaws – she’s a politician, not an angel. Get real. The executive has far too much power after the patriot act and co. to entrust these powers to a criminal like Trump. You might as well vote for Putin…

Presidential power has increased considerably over the years, particularly given how unproductive Congress has become. Giving Trump that kind of power is very scary. I would not count on an impeachment, particularly when considering how difficult it is to get guilty verdict in a rape case. Even four years of Trump would be a nightmare.

Jill Stein basically runs for office professionally these days. I doubt she even thinks she’ll win. She probably counts on not winning – she gets more donations that way.

I haven’t seen a single Green Party candidate other than Jill “President Is An Entry-Level Job” Stein in all my years of voting. Not for so much as school board member. The Greens need to put down the bong and come out of the purple haze for a little while before they’re going to see any serious support.

All the rest of it, bollocks. Trump + Executive Orders = Probable mushroom clouds. I want my grandchildren to know what a blue sky looks like.

- It’s not about what’s best for progressives, it’s about what’s best for this country. Donal Trump sitting in the White House would be a goddamn disaster for this country and it’s time for some “progressives” to get over their sense of righteous indignation and realize that.

- Stein getting anywhere near 5% is a deluded fantasy. She couldn’t even break one half of 1% last time and she’s ran even less of a campaign this time around. @zenvelo is absolutely right. In the four years since 2012 the Greens have done nothing whatsoever to grow their party, and their campaign is built on a sense of entitlement. Stein feels entitled to the votes of Bernie Sanders’ supporters and does nothing to try to win voters over. Her choice of running mate certainly does not help her chances ether (a near militant black activist who calls Barack Obama an “Uncle Tom”, who supports a convicted murderer who fled to Cuba and is on the FBI’s “most wanted” list, who frequently appears on a radio talk show hosted by a Holocaust denier, and who calls support for Bernie Sanders “white supremacy” isn’t going to endear many non-fringe people to your cause). Stein is a joke of a candidate.

How about clinton winning the Presidency with Trump sucking GOP House and Senate candidates down with him when he sinks, leaving the Dems in control of both houses of Congress. This is the scenario I would prefer, because it would put the Democrats squarely on the spot. Without the excuse of knucklehead GOP obstinance, the donkeys would have a much tougher time pandering to plutocratic agendas, and would be compelled to focus on the interests they now pretend to represent. If this scenario in fact came to pass, failure of the Democrats to take up the mantle of the middle class would most assuredly result in a trainwreck mirroring the disaster currently afflicting the GOP. The spectre of Bernie Sanders looms menacingly over Clinton, and “business as usual” will have consequences far beyond a mere single term for our first woman President.

@Seek “I haven’t seen a single Green Party candidate other than Jill “President Is An Entry-Level Job” Stein in all my years of voting. Not for so much as school board member. The Greens need to put down the bong and come out of the purple haze for a little while before they’re going to see any serious support.”

In 2006 Rich Whitney ran for governor of Illinois on the Green Party ticket and finished with a respectable 10% of the vote. But did the Greens do anything to sustain and build on this momentum? Nope. And in the following Illinois gubernatorial election Whitney finished with a lower percentage of the vote than a sleazy pawnbroker who’s campaign basically consisted of “no, I did not hold a knife to that women’s throat” and “no, I did not attempt to rape my ex-wife in a fit of roid-rage”.

Jill Science panders to anti-science wackos. I have zero respect for her. No way she would get 5% of the vote anyway. Any progressive who thinks that Trump would be good for them is delusional.

What @Rarebear said.

I’m genuinely surprised that anyone is still backing Stein now that we know a little more about her. As John Oliver put it, she and Gary Johnson benefited greatly from their lack of media coverage.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/dont-gamble-on-trump/506207/

“Democratic party will entirely cease to represent working class Americans” Believing this has not happened yet is a failure to realize the reality we live in.

Elections have consequences.
Trump will get his Supreme Court nominees through. At risk is a woman’s right to choose, and any chance at common sense gun regulation. That isn’t progressive.

I’ve had a very busy day and haven’t had a chance to respond, so please forgive the delay.

First I want to address @jca that there’s nothing to see in the e-mails. On the contrary they show that Clinton is corrupt to the core, that she is basically taking “pay-to-play” bribes to do favors for companies and foreign nations via intermediaries (see Teneo as explained in this video ). The emails show that there was knowledge that there were classified emails. They show direct coordination between her campaign and her super pacs which is a violation of federal election law. They show a widespread corruption on the part of the corporate-owned media, with many examples of “journalists” acting more like a PR arm of the Clinton Campaign than professionals with a duty to inform the public and to act as a check against the powerful and the corrupt. They show collusion between the DNC leadership and the Clinton campaign to help game the primaries. They show how Clinton and her team are like a cancer within the DNC, marginalizing and conspiring against those who are trying to make the system better. The emails show that Clinton is for the TPP, that she is for the private prison industry, that she promotes fracking and pipelines, that she told the shitheads on Wall Street who crashed our economy that they were misunderstood, and that Wall Street should regulate itself. They show that she’s completely untrustworthy with a “public” and a “private” position on issues.

Additionally there is strong evidence that someone committed election fraud in the primaries to help get Clinton win. Either that or somehow the law of large numbers was violated multiple times in a way that consistently favored Clinton, but only in locations that didn’t have paper ballots—those areas did follow the law of large numbers. It’s not all that far fetched since Clinton apparently expressed regret in 2006 for not rigging the Palestinian election. I personally think that particular revelation might dampen her ability to heal the wounds in the Middle East, don’t you?

@filmfann The emails show that Clinton was considering nominating a Republican to the Supreme Court
…So that kind of kills your argument there.

One of the most disturbing things about the email leaks is what they don’t show. With 10’s of thousands of emails released, not a single one that I’m aware of talks about taking some action because it’s the right thing to do, or that it would help the American people. On the contrary, they show a willingness to exploit the suffering of others for political gain.

Let me address the Stein criticisms raised here. First is that she feels she’s somehow entitled to office, and that the Green Party needs to run massive campaigns for local sheriffs, school boards, city council and dogcatchers in order to be considered legitimate. That argument is bullshit. Our system is designed to exclude 3rd parties. The debates require 15% polls to participate in, but of course the Commission on Presidential Debates is run by the Democrats and the Republicans who have no desire to see other parties enter their debates (also the polls are regularly adjusted to reduce 3rd parties). The way the Green Party is legitimized is by getting 5% in the General election—I would argue that’s a prerequisite for any sort of Green Party grassroots campaign to have even a remote hope of success. When people argue that local grassroots are a prerequisite to a presidential campaign, they’re not proposing an actual alternate pathway for success, they’re deflecting/dismissing a competitor to their candidate without providing any actual argument.

Another common objection is that Stein is anti-science (there was a huge wave of misleading articles that conveniently got pushed out around the time of Clinton’s nomination by the same authors who were trashing Sanders). Of course she’s a Harvard-educated Physician. She’s pro-vaccine. Her concern with Vaccines is that there is a revolving door between big Pharma and government regulators. Here is her official position from her website:

“Vaccines are a critical part of our public health system. Vaccines prevent serious epidemics that would cause harm to many people and that is why they are a foundation to a strong public health system. Polio is an important example. So is H Flu—a bacteria that caused serious illness, including meningitis, in 20,000 children a year in the US, before development of the H flu vaccine. We need universal health care as a right to ensure that everyone has access to critical vaccines.”

“Experts like Douglas Diekema, MD MPH say that the best way to overcome resistance to vaccination is to acknowledge and address concerns and build trust with hesitant parents. To reverse the problem of declining vaccination rates, we need to increase trust in our public health authorities and all scientific agencies. We can do that by removing corporate influence from our regulatory agencies to eliminate apparent conflicts of interest and show skeptics, in this case vaccine-resistant parents, that the motive behind vaccination is protecting their children’s health, not increasing profits for pharmaceutical companies.”

Also don’t forget that in 2008 Clinton was “committed” to finding the causes of autism, including “possible environmental causes like vaccines.” (Source).

@Rarebear I seem to recall you claiming that Clinton would be a much stronger candidate in the general election than Bernie Sanders. Still feel that way now?

@dappled_leaves With regards to the John Oliver hit piece, it’s been debunked as false. I think she does a good job responding to him in her TYT Townhall. It’s a rare opportunity to hear her policies. I can see why the DNC/RNC wanted to keep her out of the debates.

I certainly don’t agree with Stein 100%, and I do think she made a bad choice in her running mate. I’m actually a pretty moderate progressive—I eat meat, wear leather, my car runs on gas, I don’t compost my trash and I’m sure that I accidentally recycle something that’s supposed to be trash from time-to-time. Having said that, Trump is a monster and Clinton is basically like voting for Jeb Bush on the vast majority of policy positions. Stein is bright, articulate, and free from corruption. I do believe that she would fight her heart out to do what she thinks right for the people, and I agree with her on most of her policies. I think most Democrats would probably agree with her about most of her policies. She is the only candidate without a Super Pac and her fiscal policy seems like the only one that has any chance of avoiding another Wall Street collapse.

@LostInParadise I completely agree that 4 years of Trump would be a nightmare, but it’s a nightmare that can be fought using the separation of powers that the Democrats would be in a position to control. There’s a much more terrifying nightmare to consider:

Since you guys seem to excel at playing the fear card, let me paint a really disturbing picture for you. Close your eyes and imagine you’re in 2020, 4 years after a narrow Clinton victory. For the past 4 years, Clinton has been fighting off multiple rounds of impeachment proceedings (some related to mishandling classified emails, others about election law violations, and still others about violations of federal corruption laws), she hasn’t been able to get a Supreme Court nominee through because Republicans have locked down everything she tries to get done. Her disapproval rating is one of the highest in American history, and the Republicans hold a supermajority in the House and Senate after crushing the Dems in the mid-terms with record low Democratic turnout. Now it’s election season and the Republican Party has someone that should wake you up in the middle of the night with a panic attack, a candidate who is so terrifying that they makes Trump look like a puppy dog (or at least Alf). What pray-tell makes this person so menacing? It’s because he/she is a conservative who happens to actually be charismatic (a modern day Ronald Regan), who doesn’t say crazy shit in public/on camera. That candidate with a Republican supermajority in the legislature will do 10x the harm that Trump could. So if you want to talk about real fear mongering, think about Clinton after 4 years of accomplishing nothing, with scandals and hearings ongoing for years running against a Republican with monstrous policies but a warm smile and a charismatic presence. I want you to picture that moment in your head.

Now you can think back to this moment in time when your actions set in motion the chain events that lead us to that outcome. By backing the worst presidential candidate in the Democratic party’s history, with historically low approval ratings and (private) views that are “nearly 100% in-line with the Republican positions”:http://i.imgur.com/XAlNj6y.jpg, you are helping to make it happen. You can call me crazy, or dismiss what I write as trying to “read the tea leaves.” It’s certainly not mental masturbation. The reality is that if Clinton wins, the Republican Party is going to unite against her, and the leadership of that party will be sure that in 2020 they have a small field of candidates for their primary. They won’t make the mistake of allowing another Trump via having a too many primary candidates. My guess is the RNC will look for a “maverick” Governor from outside the DC Beltway, without skeletons in the closet, and do for him/her what the DNC did for Hillary. It’s not hard to imagine, because it’s the OBVIOUS move for the Republican Party.

The e-mails prove that Clinton is a politician. Nothing more, nothing less.

And yes, the Green Party do need to run candidates up and down the ballot. That’s what makes a political party viable. That is how you build a party. Until you do that getting 5% in the general election is unrealistic. Notice how much more successful, organized and visible the Libertarian Party is? That’s because they do more than just trying to field a presidential candidate every four years while sleepwalking through the intervening years. The GP would do well to take a lesson or two from them.

@Darth_Algar “The e-mails prove that Clinton is a politician. Nothing more, nothing less.”

I think that attitude is pathetic. These emails show that Clinton is the fountainhead of corruption in the Democratic Party. They’re actively marginalizing those who aren’t corrupt or are trying to fix things. She a huge part of the reason why the political system is the way it is in the Democratic Party. Look at how her campaign treated Tulci Gabbard and Zephyr Teachout—both perfect examples of how Clinton is the fucking wellspring for all that is wrong with the modern Democratic Party.

…And no, politics wasn’t always completely corrupt the way it is today. It gets that way when the top political figures are corrupt and they push out those who don’t join them. It gets that way when voters are shown thousands of emails proving the corruption, and they don’t care. Voters who apologize for massive systemic corruption are part of the problem.

I really don’t see how a massive dogcatcher campaign legitimizes the Green Party? They need a leader to anchor the party in the national spotlight, to get federal funding to help run those hundreds of local campaigns. All of the other parties are taking corporate money (including the Libertarian party). It’s a catch-22 if they can’t get to 5%. Oh and the reason the Libertarians get so much more positive press is because they aren’t challenging the corporate media in the ways progressives are. CNN’s parent company is Clinton’s 9th largest donor (behind banks). Citizen’s United has allowed billions of dollars to pour into the elections, a large chunk of that is being spent on advertising with the same media outlets that are cheering on Clinton, leaking articles to her, sharing the debate questions with her, and trashing 3rd party candidates/progressives in coordinated hit pieces. They have a huge incentive to fight any candidate that could overturn that revenue faucet for them.

@gorillapaws Wow, you have gone completely off the rails on this issue.

Sounds like typical green party paranoia. “If I’m not winning it’s a conspiracy because they’re afraid of me!” They should switch to indica once in a while.

Slamdunk

@gorillapaws yes

I love how Stein supporter pull the fact that she has an MD from Harvard out of their ass as if it’s something special. Logical fallacy—argument from authority.

From Stein’s site:
http://www.jill2016.com/jill_stein_answers_science_questions

On vaccines, she may say she is personally pro-vaccine, but she has pandered to her anti-vaccine wackos. Watch the John Oliver bit on her if you don’t believe me.

Wireless internet: She’s opposed to wireless internet in schools because of the fantasy that wireless internet causes harm

GMO: She’s want a moratorium on GMOs despite the evidence.

I don’t expect to change your mind. You will respond to this post in one of three ways. The first way is to too me I’m right (not holding my breath). The second is to start arguing each point with me saying why she is right, or to demand specific quote and data which I will not provide because it’s not worth the effort. The third is to attack me personally.

I can’t wait to see which way you pick.

“Wireless internet: She’s opposed to wireless internet in schools because of the fantasy that wireless internet causes harm”

Generally there is zero risk but an improperly installed hotspot can easily put someone in an exposure range that is harmful. There is not enough oversight on this and people are clueless to what the real dangers are. We have done RF studies in office environments where transmitters are installed just a few feet away from where people are working stationary most of the day and oblivious to the fact that they are several times over FCC exposure limits.

Steins objections though are baseless from the angle she is approaching this from.

@gorillapaws

You seem to think I’m implying that the Green Party shouldn’t run presidential candidates until they get that dog catcher into office. I’m not. (Why the hang up on dogcatcher anyway? Is that even an elected office anywhere?) What I’m saying is that they should be fielding candidates up and down the ballot, not just for executive offices. They don’t however. Not to any significant degree. Their party is never going to grow until they do. Unless they grow their party then they’re always going to be on the fringe with no power or influence or affect the changes they call for.

But honestly, I don’t think they’re actually interested in growing and becoming a significant force in American politics. As long as they remain an impotent fringe party they can sit perched up on their pedestal whining about “the establishment”. That’s what GP’ers seem to love.

I’d love to see a green party candidate to Mosquito Control officer. Maybe they’ll actually research alternatives to carpet-bombing our beehives with airborne poison.

Actually, I’m seeing a lot of parallels between Trump and Stein:

Both complain about nonexistent “rigging”
Both complain about media bias
Both believe in conspiracy theories
Both are blatantly anti-science
Both have never held political office and have zero political experience (would you want a surgeon who has never held a knife?)
Both appeal to the radical fringe.

So yeah, if you’re a Stein supporter, go ahead and vote for Trump. Let’s see where that gets you in terms of protecting the environment, which, unless I’m mistaken, is the primary platform point for the entire Green movement.

Stein is there, because until Bernie those on the left who are hep to the realities of democratic party politics had nowhere to go. I can’t tell you the number of avid Bernie supporters who told me that if Bernie were “robbed” of the nomination, Stein would receive their nod. To which my reply was always “what do you REALLY know about Stein?” As stated above, the difference in the constituencies of Trump & Stein is in the fact that in Stein’s case, it is her obscurity that draws in desperate lefties who simply haven’t had a close look at their hoped for “miracle” weapon.

I’d have happily hopped from Bernie to Warren. But that didn’t happen.

@stanleybmanly “Stein is there, because until Bernie those on the left who are hep to the realities of democratic party politics had nowhere to go.”

They do have somewhere to go. They can go where Bernie went. Why do people act as if everything is set in stone the night of election day? The Democratic platform can still be changed by political efforts after they are elected. That is how Sanders and Warren will remain involved and continue to work. But are their efforts more likely to be successful under a Trump presidency or a Clinton presidency? This is not a tough question.

Well stated. There is hope in Bernie as well as Warren holding Hillary’s feet to the fire. But I think it’s a stretch to imagine the democratic party capable of quickly embracing Sanders’ agenda, let alone really diverting the flow of wealth and treasure from its current direction.

I am not a big fan of Warren for other reasons but I completely agree with @seek.

@Seek & @dappled_leaves Did either of you have specific criticisms about the points I’ve raised or the sources I’ve cited to support my arguments? Outright dismissing my arguments as conspiracy without providing any evidence or counter-arguments isn’t actually saying anything meaningful. People throw that out at Bernie supporters when we claimed that the DNC and the media were in bed with Clinton and out to get Berine. Then of course the Wikileaks come out proving the “conspiracy theory” and now the same people who were mocking Bernie Supporters for being conspiracy theorists are now using the: “That’s how politics works, duh, welcome to planet Earth” line.

So what part of my argument is a conspiracy theory? That the corporate-owned media has a lot to gain from protecting pro-corporate interest via policy/legislation? That there is widespread collusion between the Clinton campaign and journalists? That the primary was rigged? That the Clintons were shaking down companies/foreign countries in pay-to-play schemes? On one hand, all of that seems obvious to me (especially given the leaked emails), but on the other I can see how someone else might think those are tinfoil hat positions (especially if they haven’t looked too deeply into it). I’ll happily provide evidence to support any claims you think are false.

@Rarebear Bernie would be 20 points up on Trump right now. If Trump wins, it won’t be because of progressives like me who are so disgusted by Clinton that we went Green. It will be because Clinton’s supporters helped jam through a presidential candidate with the lowest approval ratings in the history of the Democratic Party, instead of electing a guy who has an 87% approval rating in his home state—The highest in the Senate and 18 points higher then the next closest senator. Sanders is the guy who killed it in the rust belt, with independents and brought out young voters in droves and was consistently beating Trump by much wider margins than Clinton. If Trump wins we have neoliberal Dems to blame, not progressives.

To your other points: First of all an MD from Harvard is something special. That’s a pretty big accomplishment, and not many people on this planet can say they have what it takes to pull that off. Secondly, it’s not an argument from authority. You questioned her qualification to be President because you claim she’s anti-science and I provided a counterargument that she is in fact qualified by listing qualifications that support her competence in both education and understanding of science. That’s not an argument from authority. A genuine example of the argument from authority fallacy would be along the lines of: X (who has some impressive credentials) states that A is true, therefore A must be true (that’s very different that the point I was making). Furthermore I provided an example of Clinton pandering to anti-vaxers with the debunked autism link, but I guess that doesn’t disqualify Clinton in your eyes as anti-science? Double standard?

You’re distorting Stein’s position on wireless internet. It is my understanding that Stein’s concern with WiFi is limited to children, not to the entire public (which she has acknowledged is safe) and she’s advocating more research to be done on the subject. Apparently there was an article in the Journal of Microscopy and Ultrastructure that found that children (especially fetuses) absorb more microwave radiation than adults. Maybe there’s pandering there on Stein’s part; I’m certainly not as worried about it as she is. Her position is kind of fringe—I agree, but her actual position is not nearly as wacko as it’s made to look by guys like Oliver. I do think it’s not a totally crazy hypothesis that thinner/developing skulls provide less protection to RF-EMF waves than a mature skull, just like a thicker lead vest shields you better against x-rays. As with all radiation exposure, it’s all about the levels, and perhaps even with the increased absorption, the levels are still so low that it’s much ado about nothing. I fully acknowledge that may be the case.

You’re also distorting her position on GMO’s. She wants labeling on existing GMO’s and wants a moratorium on NEW GMOs until they’re proven safe. While I think the safety of existing GMO’s is established, that doesn’t guarantee future GMO’s may not have safety concerns. And while I don’t worry about eating GMO food, I do have very serious concerns about the impact of GMO crops have on biodiversity and the risks to our food supply by having such homogenized crops. There are reasons why we see a broad genetic diversity of flora/fauna with regards to fitness in nature. Limiting huge percentages of our food supply to a handful of genetic strains of crops could be devastating if the wrong plant disease were to strike.

Stein has a pretty reasonable response to the claims that she’s anti-science. A lot of the smear jobs against her don’t capture the nuances of her positions and use straw-man arguments as you have done here. I don’t agree 100% with Stein on all of her positions, but she’s lightyears away from wackos like Jenny McCarthy despite what the press has led many to believe.

As far as election rigging goes, this paper is pretty damning. I’d love to hear an explanation of how—after controlling for demographics—the hand-counted paper ballots consistently followed the expected statistical patterns, but the electronically counted ballots consistently violated the Law of Large Numbers, and always in a manner that favored Clinton. With trillions on the line over the next 4–8 years, a lot of incompetence among local election officials, the fact that voting machines are easily hackable, and that the companies who make them keep the code proprietary, means it’s not that big of a leap to think that its possible election fraud took place (perhaps completely unbeknownst to Clinton). I mean it was just revealed that Wells Fargo was committing fraud on a massive scale, do you really think a company like that wouldn’t be willing to mess with an election if they saw Sanders as an existential threat to their business? From the paper:

”We found suspect statistical patterns suggesting that the reported totals are not correct in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. These irregularities were significant, as we demonstrate in Louisiana, sometimes as large as 36% and could change the outcome of the election.”

I certainly won’t be voting for Trump. I think he’s a monster. I’m voting for the only candidate on the ballot who I like.

@Darth_Algar Apologies for misunderstanding your argument. Many people have made the case that the Green Party shouldn’t run a presidential candidate until they have a massive number of local officials so I was responding to the commonly raised objections. The Green Party has 294 Green Candidates running for office in 2016. I think that’s significant, perhaps you disagree.

@gorilla I certainly won’t be voting for Trump. I think he’s a monster. I’m voting for the only candidate on the ballot who I like.

It’s of course perfectly fine to vote for the candidate you prefer. I agree with much of your points including the potential rigging in southern states during the primaries. Where i think you are wrong is in assuming that a Trump presidency could be a good thing. It would be a disaster for the US. That’s I assume why Bernie is swallowing his pride and campains for Hillary. He can see the threat. The guy has a strong political culture and I bet he is thinking Reichstag 1933, the communists refusing to vote for a social democrat and getting Hitler elected by default… i bet they thought that they could make a great come back in the next elections.

No, for much the same reason I don’t bother proving the curvature of the horizon to flat-earth theorists.

@olivier5 “Where i think you are wrong is in assuming that a Trump presidency could be a good thing. It would be a disaster for the US.”

Whoah, whoah, whoah…. I am NOT saying a Trump presidency could be a good thing. I completely agree that it will be a disaster. I personally don’t think it will be a literal world-ending mushroom cloud disaster—there are checks and balances in place for that kind of thing, and if he really went off the rails, they could declare him unfit mentally via the 25th amendment. I really don’t think he’s going to want to do the hard work of the day-to-day tasks that a President has to do, and that he’ll puff himself up, abuse women, push horrible policy, smear bronzer on himself and feel important all day, while letting his staff run things.

I do agree he will be a disaster and he will unquestionably make America worse in the short run and the long run. What I’m arguing is that there is an EVEN BIGGER threat that comes in 4 years after a Clinton presidency. It’s lining up the dominoes for a filibuster-proof, full Republican takeover of the Legislative and Executive and Judicial branches. If the Republicans can come up with a single 2020 candidate that can put a sentence together, not molest kids, not assault women, not say completely crazy shit, that person will be in a position to send this country back to the Gilded Age. That person (whether a business person, actor, or “outsider” politician) will very likely put us on the path to a permanent financial collapse of the USA by completely wiping out our middle class—we’re already on that trajectory. I believe that’s a more dangerous threat than all of the horrible things Trump will do.

Make no mistake, there are no good outcomes here, I’m just trying to make the case that many people are being myopic in their risk analysis. As a species we tend to put too much emphasis on the immediate threat, often at the expense of exposing ourselves to a more distant but even greater one.

You may be onto something with the Nazi reference. Sanders is Jewish and that may be coloring his risk assessment.

@Seek Whatever. I think any reader can assess for themselves which one of us is making rational arguments and supporting their claims with evidence and which one is being vague and vapid.

Okay, I’ll bite.

“Bernie would be 20 points up on Trump right now.”

Bullshit. The only reason why Bernie was favorable was that nobody ran any negative ads on him. Once opposition research came out he would have been crushed like a bug.

” First of all an MD from Harvard is something special. That’s a pretty big accomplishment, and not many people on this planet can say they have what it takes to pull that off. ”

Please. Remember who you are writing to. I have an MD from an equally prestigious medical school and I’m telling you that this is also bullshit. Medical training does not give anybody any particular political experience. Rand Paul went to Duke Medical school—a fabulous school. Are you going to tell me that he is therefore suited to be President?

Re: wireless internet:
”“We should not be subjecting kids’ brains especially to that… We don’t follow that issue in this country, but in Europe, where they do, they have good precautions around wireless, maybe not good enough.”

This is argument ad populum. Just because “Europe does it” does not mean that it is true. And it is not. You can choose to keep your kids in a wireless-free internet school. I prefer to have my daughter educated.

Regarding GMO: You are wrong. She doesn’t want to just label. She writes: “We would enact a moratorium on new genetically modified organisms being introduced into our ecosystems, including our agricultural system and our food supply, until independent research free from industry influence shows decisively that GMOs are not harmful to human health or to the health of our ecosystems. This is called the Precautionary Principle, and it is used in countries in the European Union, but not in the United States.”

She wants to BAN new GMO.

It’s funny that you say “She has a pretty reasonable response” when you link to the EXACT SAME LINK that I did. Her “reasonable response” is filled with logical fallacies, bullshit arguments and weasel words.

Bottom line is that you are a True Believer and a member of the Stein Cult. There is nothing I can do to change your mind. But let me clue into a reality. She is going to lose. And when Donald Trump wins he will reverse all the environmental protections the Obama administration has done. He will increase drilling for oil and natural gas. He will ignore climate change because it’s a hoax.

Apparently Stein supporters want Stein to further their own political agenda and they could give a rats ass about the environment.

And to wit:

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-zero-out-federal-clean-energy-56cca794790#.5d8u8b3ca

@Rarebear We warned Clinton supporters that she was a disaster for the party and you guys wouldn’t listen. Clinton is in a statistical tie with an orange reality tv star that is likely guilty of raping a child and has published audio clips of him joking about how he sexually assaults women. You’re telling me that Hillary, with an ongoing federal investigation (which will almost certainly prove that she knew she had classified material on her unencrypted private server), a litany of emails showing her corruption, and her abysmal record as far as consistently going against progressive values, is a better candidate than Sanders would be right now, all because you claim he hasn’t had negative ads run against him? A claim, by the way, that’s demonstrably false. You could stick any other natural born Democrat other than Clinton as long as they were at least 35 and had a pulse, and they would be doing better than her. Christ, even Martin O’Malley could crush Trump at this point.

”Medical training does not give anybody any particular political experience.”

I never claimed that it did. I did however say it showed that she had “qualifications that support her competence in both education and understanding of science.” People try to make Stien out to be some out-to-lunch, window-licking kook. I do think that an MD from Harvard is sufficient to refute that characterization of her. An MD from Harvard is not sufficient to guarantee that person would be a good president (I never stated that position). Harvard (or Duke) MDs are certainly capable of being wrong (you’ve clearly proven that premise) and having bad ideas. But I don’t think it’s possible to be completely out of touch with reality on the level attackers like Oliver insinuate and pull off that kind of degree from such a prestigious institution.

As far as WiFi goes, I agree that’s a fallacious argument she’s making. I won’t defend the logic there, but I am right that her position is more nuanced than you and Oliver portrayed in your strawman. Her concerns are limited to children and newborns. I linked a paper that shows that children and fetuses do absorb more RF energy than adults. I’m not familiar with the research on the topic, I do concede it’s possible that it’s a lousy study. It’s not my area of expertise.

Regarding GMO’s: The direct quote of your initial objection was:

”She’s want a moratorium on GMOs despite the evidence.”

I corrected that by pointing out that you’re misrepresenting her position and that it was NEW GMO’s that she’s objecting to. Now you’re claiming I”m wrong but saying the same thing as I just wrote. I give up…

The bottom line is that the anti-Science smear is largely founded on distorting her positions (which you have done) and then ridiculing her for being a wack job. I agree with you that she does have some fallacies and weasel words, having said that, it’s clear she’s not trying to ban WiFi, and Vaccines and that her positions are much more nuanced than the anti-science articles about her portray. It’s also clear that Clinton has done the exact same thing on Vaccines—you’re still voting for her though. The whole anti-Science argument is really just a minor wedge-issue distraction to misdirect from more important policy conversations (regime change in the Middle East, carbon tax, breaking up banks, making college affordable, raising minimum wage).

I am certainly NOT a true believer. I am pro-Science, pro-vaccine, I eat GMO stuff, and if I had a child they would use WiFi (though I might not set the base station next to my infant’s crib). You can try to poison the well by labeling Stein supporters as “Cultists,” but you and I both know it’s the tactic of someone who is loosing the argument.

To wrap up, I agree we should talk about the environment. Say there are 2 people in a cars driving towards a cliff. The first says the cliff isn’t real and hits the gas; the second says the cliff is real and also hits the gas. Which is worse? Neither are slowing down, let alone changing directions away from the cliff. Wikileaks proves that Clinton is pro-fracking, pro-pipelines. Who cares if she acknowledges that climate change is real if she’s going to help it accelerate by expanding our fossil fuel extraction? In a way that actually makes her the worse person. The climate denier is just a total fucking idiot, but the one who acknowledges climate change and still wants to expand fossil fuel production, who fights against a carbon tax—the one thing that could make a massive difference—is a monster. What’s even worse still about this is that even after 4 years of Clinton expanding fossil fuel use, we’re very likely going to have that filibuster-proof Republican sweep of the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches in 2020. How will that work out for the environment?

Remember that our government has checks and balances. Trump won’t be king and Dems can obstruct a lot of what he’ll want to do (Republicans have done plenty of that to Obama).

Logically, it’s better to take the 4-year hit to the environment under Trump, If that sets up the cards for a 2020 progressive candidate who can actually steer the car away from the cliff.

Going to bed and will respond tomorrow, but just to correct your spelling, it’s “losing” not “loosing”. Pet peeve with me.

@Rarebear I do apologize and regret the error. Thanks for the correction.

@Gorilla Whoah, whoah, whoah…. I am NOT saying a Trump presidency could be a good thing. I completely agree that it will be a disaster. I personally don’t think it will be a literal world-ending mushroom cloud disaster—there are checks and balances in place for that kind of thing, and if he really went off the rails, they could declare him unfit mentally…

Nobody knows how the present US governance system (or lack thereoff) will behave under a president with fascist tendencies. All he needs to do to control congress and the supreme court is access to their NSA files. Like Hoover did, but with massively enhanced electronic spying means. And what check and balance is going to stop him doing that?

Besides, and irrespective of what he does himself, he could also EMPOWER others. You have a killing cop epidemic on your hand already. It could get much worse under an enabling president à la Duterte. All he needs to say is “I got your back”. And he said so once already…

You are very good at science fiction, at lining up the mental dominoes and all that. But you know squat about real politics and I suspect your reluctance re. Clinton has a lot to do with her being a woman. If it was her husband Bill Clinton running against Donald Trump right now, who would you vote for?

Let’s bear in mind we currently have a hobbled Supreme Court.

Checks and balances is already broken.

Hokay, I’m back. Sorry for the spelling correction last night, I was tired. Going to have to annotate your response again, sorry.

“You’re telling me that Hillary… is a better candidate than Sanders…?”

No I am not. I’m saying Hillary won, Sanders lost so she is what we have, foibles and all. I oppose many things Sanders and the leftists stndd for. But because the future of my country and the future of the world is more important than politics, I would have happily voted for him over Trump.

“I did however say it showed that she had “qualifications that support her competence in both education and understanding of science.’”

Oh god oh god oh god I wish this were true, I really do. You know me as a physician, but what you don’t know is that I am a medical educator. I teach freshly minted medical students (some from Harvard even), and young attending physicians. It is mind boggling to me how ignorant most of them are in statistical methodology and how they do not know how to properly read a medical article. That is not taught in any medical school now or in the past and is a skill like any other skill. I can go into specific examples, but this post will get way too long. You’re just going to have to take me at my word that a medical degree does not equal scientific competence. Far from it, actually.

” MDs are certainly capable of being wrong (you’ve clearly proven that premise)”
Nice one! :-)

” I linked a paper that shows that children and fetuses do absorb more RF energy than adults.”

It’s a shitty paper. Happy to dissect it for you if you want. It’s the medical paper equivalent of saying, “Let’s see how much garbage I can find and put it in one place and let’s spray some baby fresh scent on it and see if anybody notices.”

“I corrected that by pointing out that you’re misrepresenting her position and that it was NEW GMO’s”

I missed that. I apologize.

”(regime change in the Middle East, carbon tax, breaking up banks, making college affordable, raising minimum wage).”

This is a laundry list of liberal wish lists and have nothing to do with the environment (except, perhaps the carbon tax which is somewhat debatable in its effect). You’re making my point. You are more interested in the liberal wish list than you are the environment. Also in our system of government the President does not make laws, Congress does.

” You can try to poison the well by labeling Stein supporters as “Cultists,”
Fair enough, you’re right about that, I regret that remark and I apologize.

“Logically, it’s better to take the 4-year hit to the environment under Trump, If that sets up the cards for a 2020 progressive candidate who can actually steer the car away from the cliff.”

Fantasy. If Trump gets elected, he’s such a demagogue that he will be reelected in 2024. By that time, the Republican establishment will have locked into line with him and in 2020 the Congress is going to flip to Republican, and they won’t be reasonable Republicans either. Then he’ll really get going in destroying the environment.

@Rarebear

Respect meter up a notch. GA, very much on the same page.

Thanks.

Correction to my post above. When I said trump would he reelected in 2024 I meant, of course 2020.

One of the points above needs to be highlighted. There are a lot of garbage papers floating around. To the uninitiated (read liberal arts major) it would seem that a peer reviewed paper would be where the buck stops but it’s not always. Bullshit gets through all the time.

@ARE_you_kidding_me You have no idea. There are a bunch of Pay to Play medical journals. I don’t know if the wifi article above is one of them, but I have my suspicious based upon what I write a couple of paragraphs below. Anyway, here is an extreme example of a paper that made it past peer review.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/25/journal-accepts-paper-requesting-removal-from-mailing-list

In terms of the paper that was linked to above, it’s the Journal of Microscopy and Ultrastructure. This is a journal that is the official journal of the Saudi Association of Microscopes—hardly the New England Journal of Medicine. Could it be a Pay to Play? My guess is yes.

It is extremely difficult to tell good science from bad science—and much harder in medicine when you’re dealing with real patients with heterogeneous complex problems. Beginning physicians, when looking at papers, look at hypotheses and conclusion. I glance at the conclusion, and then go straight to the methodology and then analyze the statistics in the results. I start with the supposition that the conclusion is bullshit and try to let the paper convince me otherwise.

Just to geek out a second, there is a famous trial in my field called the Moppet Trial. In short, if you have a severe pulmonary embolism that is putting you near death because of obstruction, there is evidence to give clot busters. This trial says that if you have a significant pulmonary embolism, but you don’t have hemodynamic compromise, then there is evidence to show that giving half dose clot busters decreases your risk of secondary pulmonary hypertension (don’t worry about what that is right now—not important).

But look at the methods. It was a single center study of only 112 patients and has not been repeated. The results are compelling, but let’s say it’s you—are you willing to undergo the risk of death from brain hemorrhage for the chance that you might not get pulmonary hypertension? Of course not. So I don’t use this protocol and won’t until it’s repeated with a much larger multi-center randomized controlled trial.

This is my point. Reading medical data is HARD. And it’s even harder when asininely stupid articles like the wifi one get published and then hysterical news stories about it on Huffington Post get widely circulated.

Bad science leads to bad public policy and when I see someone like Stein who as @gorillapaws rightly points out should know better perpetrate that my blood pressure just goes up.

@Rarebear – I love you.

@Seek Love you too! :-)

Haha, now that I was not prepared for. I just laughed scotch through my nose and now it burns.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I love good scotch. What kind?

Nothing special, Glen Moray

@ARE_you_kidding_me I don’t know that one. I’m more of an Islay guy myself, although I do like many of the Speysides. I’ll start a separate question

I was curious and I had a moment so I read through that wifi article carefully. It’s even worse than I thought. It’s a systematic review of terrible studies mixed with scary sounding language. The lead author is a guy who runs a fringe anti EMF website that is so wacky that it has to have a disclaimer on it. The senior author seems reasonable at first blush as she has a lot of creds, but in digging deeper she has been criticized repeatedly for publicising junk science. The second author seems to be a reasonable neuroscientist, and I wonder what he was thinking when he put his name on this.

It’s important to understand that this article is NOT a research paper, but a review article that highlights other (bad) research papers and makes unsubstantiated conclusions.

I just wanted to apologize for not responding sooner. I’ve been very busy with work all weekend (we had to rebuild our server) and haven’t had a chance to really respond like your thoughtful answers deserve. At this point It’s pretty clear that Clinton has a strong chance of winning. Much of what I say will be moot by the time your read it, but you guys wrote thoughtful answers and I feel I owe you a response.

@olivier5 ”…All he needs to do to control congress and the supreme court is access to their NSA files. Like Hoover did, but with massively enhanced electronic spying means. And what check and balance is going to stop him doing that?”

In that scenario, it would probably be a whistle blower like Snowden. Trump is hated by more than half the country, I’m certain that at least some of them work for the NSA.

Regarding “science fiction.” that’s called an “Argumentum ad lapidem fallacy”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_lapidem

If there are specific predictions I’ve made that you think are unrealistic or incorrect, I’d be happy to discuss them with you.

@Seek Remember that Clinton’s team was considering a Republican to fill the slots, so…

@Rarebear You being willing to vote for Sanders isn’t symmetrical with Bernie supporters voting for Clinton for several reasons. The main one is that there was a good chance that the policies you disagree with Sanders on would likely not get passed (if he were President), conversely the issues that I object to with Clinton almost certainly WILL get passed (if she wins). So it’s not really a balanced comparison. Furthermore I think it’s very likely that there was massive election fraud in the primaries that consistently favored Clinton in a way that’s basically impossible without fraud. It’s hard to accept the “vote for her, because she won” argument because if she had a fair fight she would have lost the primary. People can try to wave that off as a conspiracy without addressing the actual evidence, but I for one am very concerned about the election fraud. “Hey pal, we cheated you fair and square, now fall in line and support us” is a tough sell.

Re: Med students not knowing science. All I can say is that’s sad and terrifying.

Re: Wifi paper. It’s also disturbing how easily bad science can slip through the peer review process. I do know that survey papers can be subject to several problems: namely cherry-picking and the file-drawer effect. You are correct that it’s hard for someone who is neither a physicist nor a medical doctor to assess the methodology or statistical analytic techniques involved in a paper like that. From what I can tell, our academic research system is badly broken. It’s starved of funding and private interests control too much of the information. I think the scientific community needs something like a “stackoverflow.com” equivalent. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

Re: laundry list. I think this is where we’re very far apart. I view that list as part of the core ideology of what the Democratic Party is supposed to represent/fight for. Much of that has been formally adopted by the party, though I have zero expectation that Clinton will do a thing to move towards those goals. Also I think progressives are delusional if they think they can try to pressure her to do the right thing once she has the office. Clinton’s going to push out all players who don’t bend to her will—watch.

”You’re making my point. You are more interested in the liberal wish list than you are the environment. Also in our system of government the President does not make laws, Congress does.”

First I would say that these items have a big effect on the environment. Our middle class is rapidly evaporating. As the wealth is sucked out of the middle class and funneled to Clinton’s donors, the people are going to have less and less power. This situation favors the powerful private interests who are the ones building the pipelines, offshore drills, fracking sites, etc. To your second point, the President introduces legislation to congress all of the time…

At the end of the day, I think both candidates would do severe damage to this country. I heard a quote a few weeks that I’ll badly paraphrase: the Democratic Party has become the Republican Party, and the Republicans have become Pro Wrestling. I don’t think it’s that far off the mark. If the Green Party can hit 5% that will be a serious wake-up call to the Democratic Party that they can’t continue to march further to the right without consequences. I think at the end of the day that’s the only good I can possibly hope may come out of this complete shitshow of an election.

Is Stein worse than Sanders? absolutely (she offered him the top slot on the Green Party ticket for a reason). Her VP choice was bad and I do think she does pander to some of the more fringe on the left who get sucked into naturalistic fallacies (It’s not like Clinton and Trump don’t pander). I don’t think she’s bonkers, like the media has portrayed her to be, and if you’ve been following the coverage like I have, you’d see that there is widespread coordination on the part of the media to ignore her and when they do cover her, it’s always framed in a way designed to keep her on the defensive and not get the word out to the American people about her platform.The 1% is very happy with the status quo at the moment.

@gorillapaws “Argumentum ad lapidem”

That’s using the “pull-out-a-falacy-with-a-fancy-latin-name” fallacy, routinely used by posters who cannot argue their case in common English. Let me ‘splain the point like I would to a child: You make political predictions over 4 years… That in itself is so unrealistic that it’s laughable. If one week is famously a long time in politics, one year is an eternity. Nobody knows what the US will look like one single year from now under a Trump presidency, not even you, let alone in four years.

The way the US treated Snowden and Maning under Obama should tell you something about how Trump will handle future whistle blowers. Don’t count on them to save the republic. Just count on YOU, and on YOUR VOTE. TODAY, not in four years. Don’t invest in sci-fi.

Exactly. The Green Party might think that American Politics takes place only during election season, but the rest of us have to deal with the fallout in between the roadshows.

@Rarebear while I completely agree that the anti-EMF crowd is off their rocker there are legitimate RF-EME safety concerns and precautions that are not commonly followed and poorly understood by most people. I think people may confuse that with what these nutjobs preach and this is unfortunate.

@olivier5 I’m not saying I have 100% confidence that certain things will come to pass. I“m pretty fucking sure that in 4 years the Republicans will still hate Clinton. I’m also pretty fucking sure that Bernie fans will still hate her—likely more so with 4 years of her doing things that really piss us off. That makes me reasonably-fucking confident that the midterms will be brutal for the Dems and 2020 will line the party up for an awful Clinton re-eleciton campaign. Other things I am reasonably confident about 4 years from now: the Earth will still revolve around the Sun, it will still be hot in the summer and cold in the winter (although less so in 4 years), the 1% will still pull the strings of our government, and you’ll still be wrong about how difficult it is to make an educated guess about our political situation 4-years out. It doesn’t take a crystal ball…

The good news for you is we’re very likely going to get to see how this all plays out.

You do not speak for all Bernie fans.

@Seek I never claimed to.

As the election is now going on I am going to say “peace.”

”.

@gorillapaws
I“m pretty fucking sure that in 4 years the Republicans will still hate Clinton. I’m also pretty fucking sure that Bernie fans will still hate her—likely more so with 4 years of her doing things that really piss us off. That makes me reasonably-fucking confident that the midterms will be brutal for the Dems and 2020 will line the party up for an awful Clinton re-eleciton campaign.

That means you’re pretty fucking sure she won’t be dead by then. You should write to her about that. I’m sure she’d appreciate your divination powers.

Even if your guesses come to pass, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The alternative to Clinton is the cliff. Until you can provide a better option, 4 yrs of Clinton looks pretty good to me.

And then, other scenarii than yours are possible. The left could field ‘Sandersist’ candidates and put back the reformist fire under the dems’ feet in the mid-term elections. The repubs won’t have had time to recover from this year’s debacle at tbe primaries. If Clinton beats Trump soundly today, the RP will be severely damaged. So the field will be wide open to independents in 2018.

And Clinton could still prove a decent president. Obama was decent. Not terribly effective but decent. She could pull that out, and more.

We have a saying in French: don’t insult the future. I think that’s what you are doing.

In 2004 there were a lot of people that were pretty fucking sure that a black man would never be elected president in their lifetime. It didn’t take a crystal ball to figure out that the country just wouldn’t be ready for that for decades.

As of right now trump has won. I hope you’re right.

Great times for progressives, no doubt.

What’s sad is that Bernie would have killed it tonight. Bernie did amazing with independents, and in the rust belt where Trump broke through tonight.

Something I said back in July in an earlier thread:
“The people who have lost the ability to reason are the ones who think Clinton can win over the Rust Belt. Between the South and the Rust Belt, Trump will win—a mathematical certainty. They blame NAFTA for so many of the good working class, blue collar jobs being outsourced to Mexico. You can sprinkle all of the sugar you want on a shit sandwich, but you’re not going to make it appetizing.”

I’m not happy. I wouldn’t have been happy with a Clinton victory either. I hope people are willing to get off their asses and start fighting for change in the party, or abandon it altogether and regroup stronger than before. The risks are high and the threats are real. They need to eject the Debbie Wasserman Shultzes, the Donna Braziles, and all of the other fucking idiots who rammed this awful, detested candidate down everyone’s throats, and rigged the primaries to game the election for the weaker candidate, while disenfranchising independents and young people.

Nothing brings people together like fighting a common enemy. We all agree that Trump is a monster.

Bernie would not necessarily have “killed it”. Yes, he did great with independents, but he didn’t do as hot with Democrats. Nor would he have won over the great multitude of voters who don’t particularly care for anyone to the left of George H.W. Bush. Don’t forget that Sanders is a self-styled socialist and there’s a very significant portion of the voting public who have a complete aversion to anything “socialist”.

@Darth_Algar “Nor would he have won over the great multitude of voters who don’t particularly care for anyone to the left of George H.W. Bush”

You’re right. He would have lost many of the southern states that Clinton crushed him in the primaries e.g. Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, etc. How’d those delegates work out for Clinton in the General? The reality is that he was strong in the places that would have mattered the most tonight.

And had he been the nominee maybe a lot of Blue Dogs would have swung Republican or Libertarian, thus negating any advantage Sanders may have had with independents.

I think the biggest danger to be had here is to take away the wrong lessons from this defeat. Watch Trump’s Final Campaign Video. If it wasn’t being pitched by a sociopath rapist who offshore his worker’s jobs, and scapegoats the poor and powerless, I’d say it shows a compelling message that captures the frustration with this country. It explains why the map looks the way it does, and why the states flipped the way they did.

If the DNC comes away tomorrow worried about disappointing blue-dog Democrats, they should resign for gross incompetence.

The point wasn’t about the DNC worrying about “blue dogs”, it’s that you grossly overestimate the appeal of Bernie Sanders to the broader American populace. Yes, Bernie’s popular with independents and first-timers. He’s especially popular with millennials. But there’s more to the American voters than those folks. A lot more. Most Americans, frankly put, are turned off by anything “socialist”. Especially Americans over the age of 40 who grew up during the Cold War with the specter of the Soviet Union looming over them.

Yes, the USSR hasn’t existed in more than two decades. Yes, what Bernie sells is not what the USSR had, but these folks ether don’t understand that or don’t care. To them socialism is socialism and they want no part of it, even if some of them do depend on socialistic programs. And they certainly want no part of a self-styled socialist.

Look, I like Bernie. I voted for Bernie in the primary. I think Bernie would be fine VP material. But when it comes to the general election, when you have to appeal to Americans in general and not just certain key demographics, Bernie just would not be able to carry the ticket as the headliner. Hillary Clinton was the best shot the Democrats had this year. And she may well have done it against Cruz, or Rubio or someone else. But Trump’s something different. The man makes my skin crawl, but for better or worse he’s tapped into something primal with people.

Did you watch that clip? What did you think?

@Darth_Algar ” you grossly overestimate the appeal of Bernie Sanders to the broader American populace”

I think this election proves the opposite. Apparently voter turnout was UP 4.7% this year. There is a MASSIVE chunk of people in this country who don’t bother to vote. The American middle class is slipping into poverty. The American dream is dying for many of them. Americans are sick of the status quo and of corruption, and of Bank CEO’s getting away with stealing millions of dollars while they’re working 2 part-time jobs and trying to decide if they should buy their medicine or pay for their utility bill.

The game is rigged. Corporate American plays by different rules and they have no consequences for failure (see golden parachutes) or for breaking the laws (see too big to jail, and Clinton herself). Politicians listen to donors, not to their constituents. People are totally fucking sick of it, and they showed up to vote against it. The TYT did a good job of breaking it down here.

I also think you, the press, and many other Dems are horribly miscalculating on the “socialism” message. Bernie handled the socialism thing well. He owned it and made it an opportunity to push his platform. He compared the social safety net here vs. around the world. Medicare and Social Security are both hugely popular “socialist” programs. If you tell people you want to expand medicare most are for it regardless of what scary label you put on it. There was one candidate who was filling stadiums, while the other could barely fill a gymnasium. The writing was on the wall, and the DNC leadership pushed for the wrong candidate anyways.

The Republicans will be in complete control. I am hoping there will be a rebellion in the ranks of the Democrats, with Elizabeth Warren rather than Bernie Sanders leading the charge. Nothing against Sanders, but Warren is a much more dynamic speaker and has been active in rooting out corruption.

@LostInParadise I think Warren will run/win in 2020. I wish she would have listened to those who begged her to run this term. Whatever inner voice (or exterior force) compelled her not to run this term will be shattered by a Trump presidency. I think Bernie will still have a big role to play in the party (obviously he’s too old to run in 2020).

I agree with Harambe that Sanders would have given Trump a tough challenge. Of course nobody can know for certain that he would have won.

Below is a well-laid out argument that Bernie could have won. No crying over spilled milk, but there is a need to draw the right lesson from this debacle. One is that establishment candidates can manipulate the political machine alright, but that’s precisely why everybody hates their guts.

[...] In an election of immense importance, Democratic leadership and voters rejected a hugely popular candidate in favor of a deeply unpopular one and are now paying the price.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/10/hillary-clinton-lost-bernie-sanders-could-have-won/