![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogWell, we’re down to the final two for POTUS 2016, and the election so far has gone exactly as I predicted … except that Donald Trump actually won the GOP nomination and Bernie Sanders made Hillary break a sweat.
Apart from that, I totally nailed it.
It’s amusing to think many of us thought this election would be predictable, and that we had another Bush/Clinton fight to look forward to, and how boring is that, it’s the same old thing, would it kill them to mix it up a little or find someone who isn’t a member of a political family dynasty to run, etc.
Like the man said: be careful what you wish for.
Anyway. Here we are.
And now everyone wants to know who I’ll be voting for because almost everyone I know is unhappy with either choice and seems convinced that no matter who wins America is doomed doomed doomed because their guy didn’t survive the primaries.
As usual, I’m incapable of giving a straight answer without overexplaining my viewpoint, so I’m going to write this in a tl;dr Q&A format. Sorry.
Q1: Are either of the general election candidates the people you wanted to win their respective party nominations?
Answer: yeah, sorta, I guess.
Actually I wasn’t crazy about any of the choices on offer this season. And yes, that includes Bernie Sanders.
Sorry.
He meant well, I’m sure, but too much of his campaign involved throwing heaps of ideological meat at the Democratic liberal base that sounded great until you started paying attention to the actual details. I’d have taken him seriously if he could have shown that his plans could actually work in the real world. He didn’t. (Sorry, “Tax the rich bastards enough until it’s paid for! It works in Sweden!” is a catch-phrase, not a plan.) Even if the numbers added up, he’d be bringing his plans to a Congress at least half-controlled by a virulently hostile GOP-led Congress who would refuse to consider any of his proposals on general principle. Look at how well they’ve cooperated with Obama, who isn’t even a real socialist.
Granted, this would be true of a HRC presidency – they've hated Hillary since she was the First Lady of Arkansas with the kind of pure venomous self-righteous hate that people usually reserve for, say, Nickelback or the Kardashians. I’ll bet good money they will spend every waking hour voting down every proposal she comes up with while they investigate Benghazi over and over until they find something to impeach her with, even if they have to resort to catching her getting a blowjob from an intern.
I will say that Sanders did far better than anyone thought he would. By all traditional political barometers, the very fact that he openly defined himself as a socialist should have sunk his campaign – especially after eight years of Republican dithering over Obama’s alleged socialist tendencies. Turns out more people understand the difference between Democratic socialism and Castro-style socialism than I thought. And that’s mostly from the younger generation, so an argument could be made that the 2020 or 2024 elections will see the Democratic Party pulled more in Bernie’s direction (and by some accounts it already has).
But ultimately, out of the Demo field, Hillary Clinton always came across to me as the most qualified and realistic option of the choices available.
As for the GOP field, well, no. Just … no.
The only candidate worth considering there was John Kasich, who was the only grown-up in the GOP race and really had no chance of winning unless he was running for President of Ohio (and he’s already had that job). And okay, Rand Paul occasionally said something I agreed with when it came to civil liberties, but he also displayed a tendency to jettison his more sensible ideas in favor of the same dumb angry male fear-and-loathing rhetoric that his biggest competitors were trading in, because that’s what plays within the GOP base these days.
So yeah, against that field, the Demos could have nominated HRC, Bernie or Martin Whatsisname and I’d be okay with it.
Q2: Who do you want to win?
Well, yeah, it’s a no-brainer at this stage. WaPo has a very good detailed list of reasons why D. Trump should not be POTUS, and I can’t improve on it.
That said, I’m comfortable with Hillary Clinton as POTUS. Whatever you think about her finances and her emails, she’s got tons of relevant experience and she’s a reasonably smart person. She’s not perfect, but no candidate in my lifetime has ever ticked all my political boxes, and even the ones I’ve voted for went on to do things I didn’t like. I’m sure HRC will do them too. That’s real life, son. In any case, she’s not going to be the right-wing fascist Wall Street puppet Bernie fans seem to think.
(And if you’re going to respond with “But she stole the election!”, ha ha, well, no.)
And anyway, IMO ideological purity has no business being in the White House. I don’t want a POTUS who is unwilling to compromise and work with the other side to get things done. I want a dealmaker, not a dictator with a bully pulpit – I don’t care if he/she uses it in favor of my political beliefs or not.
Also, as someone who lives outside of America, I want someone who can fulfill that same dealmaker role with the rest of the world. I want a POTUS that commands respect, not fear. Hillary already gets a lot of respect out this way. Trump only gets respect as far as his business books and TV shows go. Few people out here savor the prospect of a Trump presidency. And by “few people” I mean these ones here.
So yeah, I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton for POTUS, and not entirely because the alternative is even worse. I think she’ll do alright.
Q3: But what about third-party candidates? Gary Johnson! Jill Stein! Deez Nuts! Why not vote your conscience?
Uh huh. Two points here:
1. My conscience is fine with the idea of a President Hillary because my expectations are grounded in cynical reality, not ideological fantasy.
2. Apart from the fact that I’m not impressed with either Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, I did the third-party thing for a few election cycles and I’ve decided there’s no point to it. Whether you call it a protest vote or voting yr conscience, it’s a wasted vote in the current two-party system we have.
Clay Shirky gives a far better argument for this than I could ever type here.
Q4: O rly? Have you seen this article that shows how Gary Johnson could still win by denying Trump and HRC enough electoral votes to give Congress the power to choose the next POTUS? HA!
I have seen it. But that’s a different scenario from people voting their conscience to elevate Johnson enough to win. That’s a scenario where Congress overrides the will of voters and appoint a POTUS most of the country didn’t vote for. I don’t see that going over well.
Q5: Okay fine, so who do you think will win?
Honestly I have no idea. The smart money is on Hillary, but the wild card is the fact that Trump simply should not have made it as far as he has by conventional election standards.
So I really can’t rule out a Trump victory – not with American society fracturing into xenophobic tribes over Islam, LGBTs, immigration and #BLM, all of which plays in his favor. And of course there’s always the possibility that Reince Preibus and/or Julian Assange will whip out a smoking gun on Hillary in late October.
In which case … I’d probably still vote for her, because have you seen who she’s running against? Okay, it does depend what they come up with, but at this stage you’d have to produce irrefutable evidence that Hillary eats children, dropkicks puppies, sets fire to black homeless people and/or gives away state secrets to Vlad Putin during pillow-talk for me to consider switching my vote.
Anyway, I’ll revisit this question in a few months. In the meantime …
I’m with her,
This is dF
Apart from that, I totally nailed it.
It’s amusing to think many of us thought this election would be predictable, and that we had another Bush/Clinton fight to look forward to, and how boring is that, it’s the same old thing, would it kill them to mix it up a little or find someone who isn’t a member of a political family dynasty to run, etc.
Like the man said: be careful what you wish for.
Anyway. Here we are.
And now everyone wants to know who I’ll be voting for because almost everyone I know is unhappy with either choice and seems convinced that no matter who wins America is doomed doomed doomed because their guy didn’t survive the primaries.
As usual, I’m incapable of giving a straight answer without overexplaining my viewpoint, so I’m going to write this in a tl;dr Q&A format. Sorry.
Q1: Are either of the general election candidates the people you wanted to win their respective party nominations?
Answer: yeah, sorta, I guess.
Actually I wasn’t crazy about any of the choices on offer this season. And yes, that includes Bernie Sanders.
Sorry.
He meant well, I’m sure, but too much of his campaign involved throwing heaps of ideological meat at the Democratic liberal base that sounded great until you started paying attention to the actual details. I’d have taken him seriously if he could have shown that his plans could actually work in the real world. He didn’t. (Sorry, “Tax the rich bastards enough until it’s paid for! It works in Sweden!” is a catch-phrase, not a plan.) Even if the numbers added up, he’d be bringing his plans to a Congress at least half-controlled by a virulently hostile GOP-led Congress who would refuse to consider any of his proposals on general principle. Look at how well they’ve cooperated with Obama, who isn’t even a real socialist.
Granted, this would be true of a HRC presidency – they've hated Hillary since she was the First Lady of Arkansas with the kind of pure venomous self-righteous hate that people usually reserve for, say, Nickelback or the Kardashians. I’ll bet good money they will spend every waking hour voting down every proposal she comes up with while they investigate Benghazi over and over until they find something to impeach her with, even if they have to resort to catching her getting a blowjob from an intern.
I will say that Sanders did far better than anyone thought he would. By all traditional political barometers, the very fact that he openly defined himself as a socialist should have sunk his campaign – especially after eight years of Republican dithering over Obama’s alleged socialist tendencies. Turns out more people understand the difference between Democratic socialism and Castro-style socialism than I thought. And that’s mostly from the younger generation, so an argument could be made that the 2020 or 2024 elections will see the Democratic Party pulled more in Bernie’s direction (and by some accounts it already has).
But ultimately, out of the Demo field, Hillary Clinton always came across to me as the most qualified and realistic option of the choices available.
As for the GOP field, well, no. Just … no.
The only candidate worth considering there was John Kasich, who was the only grown-up in the GOP race and really had no chance of winning unless he was running for President of Ohio (and he’s already had that job). And okay, Rand Paul occasionally said something I agreed with when it came to civil liberties, but he also displayed a tendency to jettison his more sensible ideas in favor of the same dumb angry male fear-and-loathing rhetoric that his biggest competitors were trading in, because that’s what plays within the GOP base these days.
So yeah, against that field, the Demos could have nominated HRC, Bernie or Martin Whatsisname and I’d be okay with it.
Q2: Who do you want to win?
Well, yeah, it’s a no-brainer at this stage. WaPo has a very good detailed list of reasons why D. Trump should not be POTUS, and I can’t improve on it.
That said, I’m comfortable with Hillary Clinton as POTUS. Whatever you think about her finances and her emails, she’s got tons of relevant experience and she’s a reasonably smart person. She’s not perfect, but no candidate in my lifetime has ever ticked all my political boxes, and even the ones I’ve voted for went on to do things I didn’t like. I’m sure HRC will do them too. That’s real life, son. In any case, she’s not going to be the right-wing fascist Wall Street puppet Bernie fans seem to think.
(And if you’re going to respond with “But she stole the election!”, ha ha, well, no.)
And anyway, IMO ideological purity has no business being in the White House. I don’t want a POTUS who is unwilling to compromise and work with the other side to get things done. I want a dealmaker, not a dictator with a bully pulpit – I don’t care if he/she uses it in favor of my political beliefs or not.
Also, as someone who lives outside of America, I want someone who can fulfill that same dealmaker role with the rest of the world. I want a POTUS that commands respect, not fear. Hillary already gets a lot of respect out this way. Trump only gets respect as far as his business books and TV shows go. Few people out here savor the prospect of a Trump presidency. And by “few people” I mean these ones here.
So yeah, I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton for POTUS, and not entirely because the alternative is even worse. I think she’ll do alright.
Q3: But what about third-party candidates? Gary Johnson! Jill Stein! Deez Nuts! Why not vote your conscience?
Uh huh. Two points here:
1. My conscience is fine with the idea of a President Hillary because my expectations are grounded in cynical reality, not ideological fantasy.
2. Apart from the fact that I’m not impressed with either Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, I did the third-party thing for a few election cycles and I’ve decided there’s no point to it. Whether you call it a protest vote or voting yr conscience, it’s a wasted vote in the current two-party system we have.
Clay Shirky gives a far better argument for this than I could ever type here.
Q4: O rly? Have you seen this article that shows how Gary Johnson could still win by denying Trump and HRC enough electoral votes to give Congress the power to choose the next POTUS? HA!
I have seen it. But that’s a different scenario from people voting their conscience to elevate Johnson enough to win. That’s a scenario where Congress overrides the will of voters and appoint a POTUS most of the country didn’t vote for. I don’t see that going over well.
Q5: Okay fine, so who do you think will win?
Honestly I have no idea. The smart money is on Hillary, but the wild card is the fact that Trump simply should not have made it as far as he has by conventional election standards.
So I really can’t rule out a Trump victory – not with American society fracturing into xenophobic tribes over Islam, LGBTs, immigration and #BLM, all of which plays in his favor. And of course there’s always the possibility that Reince Preibus and/or Julian Assange will whip out a smoking gun on Hillary in late October.
In which case … I’d probably still vote for her, because have you seen who she’s running against? Okay, it does depend what they come up with, but at this stage you’d have to produce irrefutable evidence that Hillary eats children, dropkicks puppies, sets fire to black homeless people and/or gives away state secrets to Vlad Putin during pillow-talk for me to consider switching my vote.
Anyway, I’ll revisit this question in a few months. In the meantime …
I’m with her,
This is dF
