The world of Politics thread

#1

With the next US presidential election drawing near, I thought we should have a general politics thread to discuss it in.

I watched the first Republican debate. It wasn’t the laughingstock that I thought it was going to be. I think one or more of the candidates may stand a chance against the Democrats. I don’t believe that Hillary has this in the bag. In the eyes of some people, she has an image of being untrustworthy and corrupt. I would rather see Bernie Sanders become the Democrat nominee.

Going strictly by this debate, I liked Rubio the most. He was sharp and energetic. Trump was a nuisance, of course. I thought it was amusing when he brought up donating to Hillary Clinton, so she would attend his wedding. That put a limelight on Super PACs. I don’t think he’s a stupid man. He’s being intentionally outrageous to be marketable in the voters’ eyes.

#2

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I filled in all the optional questions. Interesting that NeoGAF shows up there to the right. I guess the accusations of a hive mind mentality is true.

#3

Feel that Bern

#4

I sided with Bernie too.

Trump will win though.

#5

I honestly lose sleep at night thinking about it, man

#6

You? Really?

#7

Was up late watching some of the live stream of his packed speech like an hour away from me.

People cheered for him, man.

cheered

#8

It’s still too early to tell who will make it out of the primary, let alone win the presidential election. We still haven’t gotten into the phase of candidates dropping out of the race, and consequently, the other candidates grabbing those dropped candidates’ supporters, but one thing is certain: it’s clear who are the frontrunners in the Democratic primary. Hillary and Bernie. I expect the first Democratic debate to be dominated by those two. Anyone else is merely there for the ride. That’s depressing. As terrible as many of the options are for this election’s Republican candidates, at least we have many options. I suppose when you have a political force like Hillary, most of the Democratic politicians decided not to waste their time and money in fighting an uphill battle.

#9

Dude It’s not like no one else is allowed to run for the nom, but most people support one or the other, if not both with a mild preference. A vote for Hillary is a vote for more of the last 8 years, which is a good thing. A vote for Bernie is a vote for a further shift left, doubling down on public programs, ending the out of control prison cycle, economic and political reforms to reign in corporations, and uh, what was the point I was making? I started thinking about President Bernie and was dreaming of what that would be like. Please god let this man win.

But like I was saying, if you’re a democrat you probably side with one of these candidates without issue. There are plenty of other eligible candidates who could run, and some still may, but there really isn’t anyone else who can bring something new to the table in terms of policy. I’d love to see Elizabeth Warren take a swing at it, but at this point I’m hoping for the dream team alley-oop VP position.

Aaaaaaand then you have the Republic Party. Having no real values to speak of aside from “kill things and break stuff”, they’ve had to cater to every crazy fucking demographic and every down home 'murica movement that there’s been for the past few decades. So you have a baker’s dozen of lunatics up there, with the only thing in common being they love america, and fuck whoever wants to take my guns away. And so far they’ve all got an equal shot at it.

I watched the whole debate recently, and the only person on that stage who actually had a grip on what was going on was Kasich, whom I had never heard of before that night. But every time he drifted too far into reality and the realm of facts, they were just like “yeah we’re not here to talk about that”, and went back to asking them if they got instructions from god. not a joke.

But the fucking idiots of this country eat it up like cake. There’s a lot of them, and statistically they vote more reliably that we do. But regardless, it’s gonna be an exciting year for politics.

#10

I can’t bring myself to vote for Hillary, though. I don’t trust her. Sure, “more of the same” is swell, but why settle for that when you could possibly make a substantial change in the US government system, shaking it up to its core? If we keep choosing the safe bets, insuring that the system continues to go on its stabilized path, then we can’t expect big changes to occur in our government.

Bernie is our answer for a fundamental and significant change. Hillary as president would result in minor changes, but not enough to where she would go against the wishes of all these big banks which she has close ties to. I also hate that the Democrats always follow the logic of “if we don’t rally behind , then we risk giving away the presidency to the Republicans!” That’s such a defeatist sort of attitude, in the sense that they don’t want to fight to elect a different type of politician.

By the way, there’s a rumor that Al Gore is considering joining the race, and also a confirmation that Joe Biden is also considering running. He said that he’d give his decision before the September deadline. I hope both Al and Joe join, as that’ll place more pressure on Hillary’s chance of winning the primary. Unfortunately, that would also apply to hurting Bernie’s chance as well.

#11

Yeah, I really like the Bernie v Hillary balance right now. I’d really rather Gore didn’t run.

I really get the feeling Biden wouldn’t want to run for the presidency, nor would he succeed. Would be an amazing campaign, though.

#12

Hillary needs to be challenged. As it stands, this election will be handed to her. She needs to be kept on her toes.

#13

A year is a long time

#14

The second Republican debate was last night. All of the candidates didn’t impress me, overall. If I had to choose one candidate on the Republican side, I would reluctantly choose Trump. The debate itself was quite long. Longer than it should have been, I feel. Because most of what all these candidates were saying was largely a whole lot of nothing.

Trump didn’t sound like a total tool on stage like the others. Jeb was the worst offender of this. His eyes looked dead and lifeless, like fish eyes. He was too rigid. As if he was precisely reciting what his SuperPAC donors wanted him to say in the worst appealing way. His bouts with Trump were pretty funny. Trump called him out on a lot of shit, exposing him as a lifeless hack, and no better than his brother.

The heated exchange between Trump and Fiorina was also amusing. When Trump called her ugly before the debate, that was uncalled for and had no place in politics, but him rephrasing his comment to mean that her persona was ugly, I could agree with. I still doubt he originally meant ugly persona, but who knows. She’s a shifty former Hewlett-Packard CEO, and was rightfully fired because she was terrible at her job.

It also came to light after the debate that she had sent Iran hundreds of millions of dollars in computer parts through the company, but publicly it was by a foreign subsidiary of HP, when at the time, it was illegal because of the strict US export sanctions. Looking at how she carried her throughout the debate, she appeared cold and calculated. Really unappealing aura radiating from her. I would say that she’s an extreme version of Hillary in that respect. We definitely don’t need someone with her credentials and track record as president.

I’m looking forward to the Democratic debate next month. It’s going to be a stark contrast in the number of candidates. We’ll get to hear from Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee. My vote is going for Sanders at this point and time. Unless O’Malley, Webb, or Chafee can impress me by a huge margin. Voting for Hillary is out of the question. I completely dislike her.

#15

Respect -100

Speaking of Fiorina’s surge after the debate, give it a week. After the last two elections, I can tell you that each and every one of these clowns will get their shot at the high end of the polls. And then the people will see a shiny object and another person will jump ahead for a minute. I will be surprised, however, if Jindal or Huckabee get to the top 2 spots before they drop out. I’d like to throw walker in that bunch, but for some reason people like him. Beats me.

Real talk though I watched the debate for like the first hour and I didn’t even know Jindal was there. Kasich was the only sane person on that stage, and even he had to dumb it down and placate the plebs when talking about Planned Parenthood. What a shitshow. And hats off to Rand for actually having the common sense to say “Maybe we don’t need to bomb everybody?” Too bad he’s crazy.

Democratic debate will be very interesting, and for the opposite reasons.

#16

I should have watched more of it and given it a more concise writeup, but then again I should not have watched it at all because I respect myself.

#17

Don’t get me wrong, if it comes down to Trump against Sanders, Trump can hit the road. If he runs against Hillary? Sorry man, I detest the Clintons. Not as much as the Bush family, but still enough to not want them to be president anymore. I may regret that decision (actually, let’s be real, the Illinois electorates will unanimously vote for Hillary, so me voting for Trump wouldn’t affect her), but I’m going by my gut feeling there. It could go either Hillary or Sanders, but Sanders ain’t no slouch in debates, so her carefully-designed campaign may unravel against Bernie.

#18

To me that just says, I don’t want to really think about it, I don’t have the time to research them, so I’m just going to regurgitate what I hear from those around me and what I’m told on TV.

I consider myself a pretty cynical person, nowadays. Especially when it comes to the general public. But when Trump was talking about running, and same story when he talked about it 4 & 8 years ago, I was basically begging god “Please! Let this man run! It’ll be hilarious!!”

Oh, how I rue my hubris of yesteryear. For now my prayers have been answered, and I see the folly of my desires. Never in my imagination did I think people would actually support him. Although if I dug deep and really analyzed it, I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s like the tea party all over again, but distilled into a single, repulsive representative of the worst America has to offer. We’ll just have to see how truly stupid this country is as we inch closer and closer to choosing the next most powerful person in the free world.

I honestly think that as we get close to decision time, people will start to wake up. The one-note, overwhelming flavor that is Trump will start to turn off even his most centered demographic. People will get bored of the spectacle, realize what a Trump presidency would actually be like, and they’ll probably all default to Jeb. Which is fine. Even if he’s elected it’ll just mean a slight nudge to the right, although the big corps behind Jeb will be rolling in the power. More of the same. (Dude was falling a part last night, though. Looked so weak, lol)

You wanna know the saddest part? Trump isn’t even the bottom of the barrel. You’ve still got Huckabee and Cruz hanging out below him. I shudder to think about what kind of white christian hellscape either of those two would usher in.

#19

I think what’s actually happening is people are sick of the typical crop of politicians that run for president every 4 years. They’ve reached a point of giving our election system the treatment it deserves: Supporting the most outlandish, most unpredictable, and most crude presidential candidate of them all, Donald Trump. You know what? I can’t necessarily blame them. The electoral college is completely ridiculous, and it should be abolished, in favor of a system where votes are tallied for each individual voter in each of the 50 states. I don’t even want to take part in a voting process where your vote hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. The electoral college isn’t a democratic process. It’s like a vote by a different committee per state.

In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, for example, more Americans voted for Gore, but Bush actually won the presidency because he was awarded the majority of Electoral College votes. It’s a political upset that’s occurred several times since the first U.S. presidential election; four presidents have been elected by the Electoral College after losing the popular vote.

Thanks to our wonderful system of the electoral college, they gave us Bush.

#20

I can. Very easily.

WOOOOOO ETHNIC CLEANSING FUCK YEAH 'MURICA