The 2016 US Election (Part III)

[Flagg]

Claims that Obama endorsed Sec. Clinton after Thursday's meeting as a condemnation or response to something Sen. Sanders said appear to be overblown, since he filmed his endorsement Tuesday, before the California, New Jersey, etc., primaries were even over. In other words, it was probably filmed in response to the AP's publishing of superdelegate polling and subsequent clinching of the nomination by Sec. Clinton. Since that's more or less exactly when and how then-Senator Obama clinched the nomination, it makes sense.

Well, that puts a damper on it, although they could've held the video. I will concede the point, though.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Contempt for democracy? Petty grudge? Lies!

I don't hold a grudge against dog shit I wipe off my boot, and you take up less thought. Frankly, unless I'm responding to, or reading your sad nonsense, I don't even think of you. How's that for a grudge? Arrogant pissant.

And how can I have contempt for democracy when party nominations are as democratic as the old Soviet Politburo? Do you think Caucuses are "democratic", snowflake? Hate to burst your delusio-bubble but if the DNC wanted to they could choose the nominee based on a witches examining of squirrel innards. So to take a page from your sad, one line playbook: LIE!

Honestly, I don't get how a Sanders supporter (and a fervent one at that) could have the balls to accuse someone else of disrespecting democracy. 1. Sanders supporters consistently throw around accusations of voter suppression/fraud whenever they lose. 2. Many of Bernie's delegates come from caucuses (which are crappy and bad), and two of his caucus wins were later tainted by Clinton victories in both state beauty contest primaries. 3. Bernie's been trying to make the case that the Soups should explicitly overrule the popular vote. Because reasons, I guess?

Again, not throwing shade at a campaign tactic. But let us not pretend that he's doing any/all of the above out of the goodness of his heart and commitment to "democracy."

I'm personally offended as someone who had their vote stolen from them by Jeb Bush and Kathrine Harris in FL in 2000 to be told I hate democracy when primaries are not and have never been real democratic processes. So pistols at dawn, blah blah fuck yourself TRR you child.

You being offended does not make him wrong. You could throw in a #NotAllBernieSupporters if it makes you feel better, but that is what the campaign and its supporters have done on record. So either it is hypocrisy as a campaign tactic, or...a fantastic lack of self-awareness.

Also, that person is not TRR, so you are directing the Fuck Yourself at the wrong person, which is bad form.

[Terralthra]

As an aside, the constant back-and-forth shitposting has gotten two different election threads locked. Please, start a separate TRR vs. Flagg feud thread in the Flavian Amphitheatre, or rent a hotel room and hatefuck, or something. Anything but fill yet another thread with 40% shitposts.

[Alyrium Denryle]

As an aside, the constant back-and-forth shitposting has gotten two different election threads locked. Please, start a separate TRR vs. Flagg feud thread in the Flavian Amphitheatre, or rent a hotel room and hatefuck, or something. Anything but fill yet another thread with 40% shitposts.

I concur with this sentiment.

Make that concurrence official.

[The Romulan Republic]

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol- ... story.html

As the week ends, 2.4 million uncounted ballots from California's primary
(Al Behrman / Associated Press)
(Al Behrman / Associated Press)
For the politically curious, it's the best guessing game around: What's in the uncounted ballots from election day, and how many of them will change closely watched races across the state?

On Friday afternoon, Secretary of State Alex Padilla reported that there were 2,423,607 uncounted ballots statewide . About two-thirds of those are vote-by-mail ballots, with three Southern California counties leading the way: Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange.

Reports from a number of the state's 58 counties haven't changed for a few days, so expect the figures to shift pretty noticeably by early next week.

And one other part of the process: This is the first year in which ballots that arrive up to three days late -- Friday would be the deadline -- can be counted. So the number of ballots on hand could also change.

Still waiting on final tally from California, amusingly enough. Though given the scope of Clinton's lead, its really just academic now.

This is amusing in light of all the attacks on Sanders for staying in:

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11902144/p ... nders-race

Loads of commentators have recently argued that Bernie Sanders needs to drop out of the presidential primary for the good of the Democratic Party, to help Hillary Clinton, or to teach his followers a valuable lesson of political engagement.

The voters themselves, however, don't seem to care much if Sanders stays in.

Only 36 percent of Americans think Sanders should throw in the towel — compared with 48 percent who want him to keep fighting, according to a new poll conducted by Vox and Morning Consult.


Zachary Crockett / Vox
That's true even among Democrats, who have rejected Sanders’s candidacy and increasingly soured on him as their party’s nominee.

According to the poll, 47 percent of party members want Sanders to stay in — compared with just 42 percent who want him out (11 percent have no opinion). If these numbers are right, more Democrats want Sanders to stay in than want him to be the nominee:


Now, the poll was conducted from Wednesday to Thursday — so it’s unlikely to capture any effect we’ll see from the endorsements of President Barack Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who both threw their weight behind Clinton on Thursday.

But it does come after Clinton won sweeping victories on Tuesday and eliminated any lingering hope for a Sanders nomination. That suggests many Democrats see no harm in Sanders continuing to fight — even if all of his options for actually winning have been erased.

Women of both parties are more likely to want Bernie Sanders to drop out

While only 36 percent of Americans overall think Sanders should drop out, the polling shows a gender divide on the question across both parties.

More than 50 percent of Democratic men think Sanders needs to stay in the race. Just 41 percent of Democratic women agree.

Perhaps more surprisingly, Republican women are also far more likely to want Sanders to get out of the race. Republican men are 18 points more likely to want Sanders to stay in than Republican women, the poll shows.

The reason for the split isn’t hard to guess. Clinton will soon become the first female major party nominee in history, and some have questioned whether Sanders’s decision to stay in is somehow connected to her gender. (Sanders, naturally, has vehemently dismissed this suggestion as offensive on its face.)

Most polling about presidential candidates narrowly reflects voters’ ideological affiliation. And so it’s interesting to see, on this question at least, that the power of gender can still transcend the typical partisan divide.

Does the poll tell us anything about Bernie Sanders’s great numbers against Donald Trump?

One of the most interesting debates throughout the primary has been over Sanders’s general election polling numbers against Donald Trump, which consistently show Sanders outperforming Clinton against the presumptive Republican nominee.

To Sanders’s allies, this strength supports the idea that he’s a populist candidate who has successfully defined himself against unpopular elites. As Jacobin’s Matt Karp has argued, this insider/outsider explanation suggests that Sanders "has a powerful means to appeal to … independents," while Clinton, "despite her more 'moderate' positions on a number of issues, has virtually none."

But to others, Sanders’s general election polling strength against Trump is the result of something else altogether — the fact that he hasn’t really been attacked by either his own party or the other side. Under this interpretation, Sanders’s popularity with moderates and independents would sink once they really get to know what he stands for.

The Morning Consult/Vox data gives both camps support for their interpretation. It does shows that both poor voters and independents are indeed among the most likely to want Sanders to stay in the race — backing the populist interpretation of his appeal.

On the other hand, voters who support the Tea Party favor Sanders staying in by 10 points more than those who don't. It's hard to imagine that these hardcore small government conservatives are expressing support for Sanders because they want to implement his Scandinavian-style government programs, rather than out of contempt for Hillary Clinton.

So we’re left with the same question: Are conservatives and independents saying they like Sanders because of his populist streak? Or do they do so primarily because he’s thumbing his nose at the Democratic establishment?

Obama meets with Sanders, endorses Clinton on Thursday

What I hope, and expect, we'll see going forward is a focus on attacking Trump and pushing for a progressive platform, rather than going after Clinton. There seems to be some movement in that direction of late. But the last thing anyone should want is for Bernie Sanders to disappear from the spotlight, because he brings out the progressive and youth vote.

Also, the Libertarians are going to be an endless source of amusement this election (as long as they don't take a lot of votes from the Democrats or keep anyone from getting an electoral college majority, though they'd have to do really well for the last one to be a concern). If nothing else, their candidate is proving to be an endless source of dick jokes. I've already seen "Feel the Johnson", "Keep it up Johnson", and "The Johnson is rising"

[maraxus2]

Still waiting on final tally from California, amusingly enough. Though given the scope of Clinton's lead, its really just academic now.

Eh, California usually reports late. We're a big state with lots of absentees. Something like half our total vote was Vote By Mail, and we're trying to become all Vote By Mail by 2018. Also people are automatically registered whenever they go to the DMV for anything. Also we're implementing same-day voter registration. Also also an old college friend of mine is pushing an automatic student registration through the state legislature. These are good things. But they do mean that counting the vote will take some time to report fully complete. The results though aren't in doubt any longer.

[Civil War Man]

Saw a Rolling Stone article recently that sums up the fears of a lot of Bernie supporters now that Clinton is going to win the nomination.

The fear is that the Democratic Party will learn the wrong lessons from this primary.

Years ago, over many beers in a D.C. bar, a congressional aide colorfully described the House of Representatives, where he worked.

It's "435 heads up 435 asses," he said.

I thought of that person yesterday, while reading the analyses of Hillary Clinton's victories Tuesday night. The arrival of the first female presidential nominee was undoubtedly a huge moment in American history and something even the supporters of Bernie Sanders should recognize as significant and to be celebrated. But the Washington media's assessment of how we got there was convoluted and self-deceiving.

This was no ordinary primary race, not a contest between warring factions within the party establishment, á la Obama-Clinton in '08 or even Gore-Bradley in '00. This was a barely quelled revolt that ought to have sent shock waves up and down the party, especially since the Vote of No Confidence overwhelmingly came from the next generation of voters. Yet editorialists mostly drew the opposite conclusion.

The classic example was James Hohmann's piece in the Washington Post, titled, "Primary wins show Hillary Clinton needs the left less than pro-Sanders liberals think."

Hohmann's thesis was that the "scope and scale" of Clinton's wins Tuesday night meant mainstream Democrats could now safely return to their traditional We won, screw you posture of "minor concessions" toward the "liberal base."

Hohmann focused on the fact that with Bernie out of the way, Hillary now had a path to victory that would involve focusing on Trump's negatives. Such a strategy won't require much if any acquiescence toward the huge masses of Democratic voters who just tried to derail her candidacy. And not only is the primary scare over, but Clinton and the centrist Democrats in general are in better shape than ever.

"Big picture," Hohmann wrote, "Clinton is running a much better and more organized campaign than she did in 2008."

Then there was Jonathan Capehart, also of the Post, whose "This is how Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are the same person" piece describes Sanders as a "stubborn outsider" who "shares the same DNA" as Donald Trump. Capeheart snootily seethes that both men will ultimately pay a karmic price for not knowing their places.

"In the battle of the outsider egos storming the political establishment, Trump succeeded where Sanders failed," he wrote. "But the chaos unleashed by Trump's victory could spell doom for the GOP all over the ballot in November. Pardon me while I dab that single tear trickling down my cheek."

If they had any brains, Beltway Dems and their clucky sycophants like Capeheart would not be celebrating this week. They ought to be horrified to their marrow that the all-powerful Democratic Party ended up having to dig in for a furious rally to stave off a quirky Vermont socialist almost completely lacking big-dollar donors or institutional support.

They should be freaked out, cowed and relieved, like the Golden State Warriors would be if they needed a big fourth quarter to pull out a win against Valdosta State.

But to read the papers in the last two days is to imagine that we didn't just spend a year witnessing the growth of a massive grassroots movement fueled by loathing of the party establishment, with some correspondingly severe numerical contractions in the turnout department (though she won, for instance, Clinton received 30 percent fewer votes in California this year versus 2008, and 13 percent fewer in New Jersey).

The twin insurgencies of Trump and Sanders this year were equally a blistering referendum on Beltway politics. But the major-party leaders and the media mouthpieces they hang out with can't see this, because of what that friend of mine talked about over a decade ago: Washington culture is too far up its own backside to see much of anything at all.

In D.C., a kind of incestuous myopia very quickly becomes part of many political jobs. Congressional aides in particular work ridiculous hours for terrible pay and hang out almost exclusively with each other. About the only recreations they can afford are booze, shop-talk, and complaining about constituents, who in many offices are considered earth's lowest form of life, somewhere between lichens and nematodes.

It's somewhat understandable. In congressional offices in particular, people universally dread picking up the phone, because it's mostly only a certain kind of cable-addicted person with too much spare time who calls a politician's office.

"Have you ever called your congressman? No, because you have a job!" laughs Paul Thacker, a former Senate aide currently working on a book about life on the Hill. Thacker recounts tales of staffers rushing to turn on Fox News once the phones start ringing, because "the people" are usually only triggered to call Washington by some moronic TV news scare campaign.

In another case, Thacker remembers being in the office of the senator of a far-Northern state, watching an aide impatiently conduct half of a constituent phone call. "He was like, 'Uh huh, yes, I understand.' Then he'd pause and say, 'Yes, sir,' again. This went on for like five minutes," recounts Thacker.

Finally, the aide firmly hung up the phone, reared back and pointed accusingly at the receiver. "And you are from fucking Missouri!" he shouted. "Why are you calling me?"

These stories are funny, but they also point to a problem. Since The People is an annoying beast, young pols quickly learn to be focused entirely on each other and on their careers. They get turned on by the narrative of Beltway politics as a cool power game, and before long are way too often reaching for Game of Thrones metaphors to describe their jobs. Eventually, the only action that matters is inside the palace.

Voter concerns rapidly take a back seat to the daily grind of the job. The ideal piece of legislation in almost every case is a Frankensteinian policy concoction that allows the sponsoring pol to keep as many big-money donors in the fold as possible without offending actual human voters to the point of a ballot revolt.

This dynamic is rarely explained to the public, but voters on both sides of the aisle have lately begun guessing at the truth, and spent most of the last year letting the parties know it in the primaries. People are sick of being thought of as faraway annoyances who only get whatever policy scraps are left over after pols have finished servicing the donors they hang out with at Redskins games.

Democratic voters tried to express these frustrations through the Sanders campaign, but the party leaders have been and probably will continue to be too dense to listen. Instead, they'll convince themselves that, as Hohmann's Post article put it, Hillary's latest victories mean any "pressure" they might have felt to change has now been "ameliorated."

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.

But they won't do that, because they don't see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters.

Politicians are so used to viewing the electorate as a giant thing to be manipulated that no matter what happens at the ballot, they usually can only focus on the Washington-based characters they perceive to be pulling the strings. Through this lens, the uprising among Democratic voters this year wasn't an organic expression of mass disgust, but wholly the fault of Bernie Sanders, who within the Beltway is viewed as an oddball amateur and radical who jumped the line.

Nobody saw his campaign as an honest effort to restore power to voters, because nobody in the capital even knows what that is. In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power. And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem.

This inability to grasp that the problem is bigger than Bernie Sanders is a huge red flag. As Thacker puts it, the theme of this election year was widespread anger toward both parties, and both the Trump craziness and the near-miss with Sanders should have served as a warning. "The Democrats should be worried they're next," he says.

But they're not worried. Behind the palace walls, nobody ever is.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... z4BHVT9U73
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

[Flagg]

The lesson that should be learned is twofold.
1) a woman had to essentially act like a man does to, get where she is but it was commented on and criticized. She had to be an unrelenting cunt. Just for the goddamned nomination. If she had a dick shed be called the greatest political genius of the 21sr century.

2) My uttrer distain for Sanders aside, there is clear need for a liberal party in this country.

[Gaidin]

Saw a Rolling Stone article recently that sums up the fears of a lot of Bernie supporters now that Clinton is going to win the nomination.

The fear is that the Democratic Party will learn the wrong lessons from this primary.

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.

But they won't do that, because they don't see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters.

I read that article. Here's the funny thing. Trump's collapsing because he's an amateur politician who can't professionally pivot and campaign for the center. The article is literally suggesting that the Democrats do the same from the other side. Especially when it was literally demonstrated that the Democratic Party is a politically broad enough party that Bernie legitimately lost.

The idea that Hillary should leave those ideas alone and in the past is a bad one, mind you. But the idea that this is literally all she needs after watching Trump have literally the worst week of his campaign after trying to play Primary strategy in General Election? Who came up with this?

[Mr Bean]

I read that article. Here's the funny thing. Trump's collapsing because he's an amateur politician who can't professionally pivot and campaign for the center. The article is literally suggesting that the Democrats do the same from the other side. Especially when it was literally demonstrated that the Democratic Party is a politically broad enough party that Bernie legitimately lost.

Wait Trump collapsing?
*Checks polls*
Okay Clinton was +6 a month ago, and after "the worst week ever" Clinton is +3, so after a terrible week Hillary Clinton lost three points in the Polls to Trump.

So Trump had a shitty week and it affected the polls not at all, almost if anyone who's not already made up their mind about Trump is already made up, and the 30% of the electorate who's not paying attention yet does not care beyond maybe hearing "Trump said something offensive again".

Listen your falling into the same trap the Republicans did. You can't take Trump down because Trump works like an entertainer, he's a showman. Almost anything said (I guess he could go full Fuehrer and start using Jewish racial slurs) until about October won't matter, in fact the worse of Trump does now the better for him later on as he has a chance to inoculate himself before the contest gets serious. The Media hates running the same story twice so every line of act against Trump is a limited use item. Coming out strong now with months left to go will be regarded as a severe mistake.

Not only because Trump by slathering himself in so much raw sewage who's going to notice a few new mud-stains but also because when it comes to putting someone down... Trump will always win that game because he's got next to no lines he won't cross and lets be blunt Secretary Clinton has a lot of skeletons in that closet.

Had this week happen October 17th yes it might spell trouble... but now with months to go? It means nothing for he is Donald Trump and this is not even his final form of depravity.

[Gaidin]

I read that article. Here's the funny thing. Trump's collapsing because he's an amateur politician who can't professionally pivot and campaign for the center. The article is literally suggesting that the Democrats do the same from the other side. Especially when it was literally demonstrated that the Democratic Party is a politically broad enough party that Bernie legitimately lost.

Wait Trump collapsing?
*Checks polls*
Okay Clinton was +6 a month ago, and after "the worst week ever" Clinton is +3, so after a terrible week Hillary Clinton lost three points in the Polls to Trump.

So Trump had a shitty week and it affected the polls not at all, almost if anyone who's not already made up their mind about Trump is already made up, and the 30% of the electorate who's not paying attention yet does not care beyond maybe hearing "Trump said something offensive again".

Listen your falling into the same trap the Republicans did. You can't take Trump down because Trump works like an entertainer, he's a showman. Almost anything said (I guess he could go full Fuehrer and start using Jewish racial slurs) until about October won't matter, in fact the worse of Trump does now the better for him later on as he has a chance to inoculate himself before the contest gets serious. The Media hates running the same story twice so every line of act against Trump is a limited use item. Coming out strong now with months left to go will be regarded as a severe mistake.

Not only because Trump by slathering himself in so much raw sewage who's going to notice a few new mud-stains but also because when it comes to putting someone down... Trump will always win that game because he's got next to no lines he won't cross and lets be blunt Secretary Clinton has a lot of skeletons in that closet.

Had this week happen October 17th yes it might spell trouble... but now with months to go? It means nothing for he is Donald Trump and this is not even his final form of depravity.

Trump literally campaigned on his id. Fine when the only people really paying attention to you is your own damn party and nobody in your party is yet tying their reputation to you. But he's 200 million behind Clinton in money. Big money donors are downright wary of him. And players of the Party that have now endorsed him are outright coming out and rebuking him, saying what he has said is racist. Some are even rescinding their endorsements. A low level state politician wants nothing to do with this and has up and left the party.

He thinks the next team is beaten the same way you beat the last team. Nevermind that it's no longer the semi-finals but the finals so the next team is just better. So he keeps campaigning on his id. That results in hammering the latino judge born in Indiana for being Mexican for at least a week maybe more. Says Muslim judges shouldn't be on his cases either. Also, female judges as well. Meanwhile his lawyers are making no moves to force the judge off the case. That's largely what results in the situation above.

Yea Trump. Keep campaigning on your id please. He's just not the kind of person that can be advised and you god damn well know it. He'll do what he wants. And he wants to campaign on his id.

[Mr Bean]

Trump literally campaigned on his id. Fine when the only people really paying attention to you is your own damn party and nobody in your party is yet tying their reputation to you. But he's 200 million behind Clinton in money. Big money donors are downright wary of him. And players of the Party that have now endorsed him are outright coming out and rebuking him, saying what he has said is racist. Some are even rescinding their endorsements. A low level state politician wants nothing to do with this and has up and left the party.

You are literally ignoring all of his strengths with your argument. If you accept what you said then how the hell did he become the Republican nomine in the first place?

Let me remind you of this fact Trump get's billions that's billions with a B in free air time

He secured the Republican nomination spending under thirty million dollars, he will continue to get millions and billions of dollars in free air time. He's does not have the money to compete? Who cares! He's got his free airtime and he's got enough billionaries to provide him with the seed money to employ the Republican ground game he will need.

Trump has been omnipresent on the news for over a year now, he will continue to be for the next five months because if he was interesting before as a Republican hopeful, he's far more interesting as a Republican standard bearer.

Your ignoring all of his strengths, this man is not a Romney, he's not McCain, and he's not Bob Dole. Trump is literally creating hate and anger so his supports will be attacked, that violence will inspire them to rally around him all the more, that ralling will inspire more violence which inspires more blind devotion or are you not aware that Donald Trump is running as a Demagogue?

[Gaidin]

Shit dude, if he wants that free airtime to have coverage of people calling him a racist, a bigot, and a sexist, by god be my god damn guest.

[Mr Bean]

Shit dude, if he wants that free airtime to have coverage of people calling him a racist, a bigot, and a sexist, by god be my god damn guest.

And he's within three points of Hillary Clinton what does that tell you?

[Tanasinn]

The Onion's gag headline -"This will be the end of Trump's campaign," says increasing nervous man for tenth time this year - comes to mind. Unless polls actually start moving against him, don't count your chickens before they've hatched.

[maraxus2]

Shit dude, if he wants that free airtime to have coverage of people calling him a racist, a bigot, and a sexist, by god be my god damn guest.

And he's within three points of Hillary Clinton what does that tell you?

Next to nothing because national tracking polls are nearly worthless at this stage. At no point in the campaign has he come close to leading in 270 electoral votes worth of polling. You know this.

[Channel72]

Shit dude, if he wants that free airtime to have coverage of people calling him a racist, a bigot, and a sexist, by god be my god damn guest.

And he's within three points of Hillary Clinton what does that tell you?

It probably doesn't matter much. Just about every electoral forecast predicts something like a +270 win for Hillary.

http://www.270towin.com/2016-election-f ... edictions/

A lot of Trump's bluster depends on him doing some totally game-changing like flipping New York to a red state. (Not going to happen.)

It's funny really, because the 2016 election has been so historically unique in so many ways, but it's likely that at the end of the day, come November, the Electoral Map is going to be a repeat of Obama/Romney in 2012.

[maraxus2]

Let me remind you of this fact Trump get's billions that's billions with a B in free air time

He secured the Republican nomination spending under thirty million dollars, he will continue to get millions and billions of dollars in free air time. He's does not have the money to compete? Who cares! He's got his free airtime and he's got enough billionaries to provide him with the seed money to employ the Republican ground game he will need.

Trump has been omnipresent on the news for over a year now, he will continue to be for the next five months because if he was interesting before as a Republican hopeful, he's far more interesting as a Republican standard bearer.

Your ignoring all of his strengths, this man is not a Romney, he's not McCain, and he's not Bob Dole. Trump is literally creating hate and anger so his supports will be attacked, that violence will inspire them to rally around him all the more, that ralling will inspire more violence which inspires more blind devotion or are you not aware that Donald Trump is running as a Demagogue?

You're also ignoring his critical weaknesses. Trump doesn't have a traditional campaign. He doesn't have an in-house pollster. He doesn't believe in data-based voter targeting. His outreach to non-white candidates has been counter-productive. His campaign is in such disarray that the RNC is building an entire national field operation on his behalf.

And whatever emotions Trump inspires in his followers, the simple fact is that his strategy at present relies on getting huge numbers of white voters to turn out for him. He is not doing any better than Mitt Romney was in 2012. If there are shy Trump voters out there, it's hard to see how he's reaching them. Also he is extremely likely to lose voters of color by an even larger margin than Romney did.

But, y'know, keep fucking that chicken. I'm sure those Clinton indictments will come down any day now!

For all the election nerds out there, the LA Times just put up a precinct-by-precinct map of LA County. I've been hanging out with this thing all day.

[Flagg]

But, y'know, keep fucking that chicken. I'm sure those Clinton indictments will come down any day now!

They're coming right after Seymore Hersh's war in Iran and the 6th 'Song of Ice and Fire' Novel!

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Regarding the whole Bernie a-blu-blu thing, which policies of Bernie's do his supporters demand Hillary take on that she hasn't already? I don't see a whole lot of difference between them policy-wise, except that Clinton has a slightly more realistic or pessimistic idea of what is possible.

[The Romulan Republic]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd like to see her adopt the following, for a start:

15 an hour minimum wage. She's already gone most of the way to Sanders' position on this (12 an hour and claiming she supports 15 in theory), so it would be a small concession, but one that would benefit a lot of people.

Complete fracking ban (as opposed to simply more heavily regulating it). A small concession, it seems to me, but one that would probably piss off some of her big donors, so less likely to be adopted.

I'd also like Sanders to push for Tuition Free College and for Clinton to drop the no-fly zone over Syria, though I don't expect Clinton to agree to either. Still, part of haggling is asking for more than you expect to get.

I recognize that universal Medicare, Israel/Palestine, and possibly dropping Garland as Supreme Court nominee would probably be more than she'd be willing to give, and probably not worth wasting capital on at this point.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Regarding the whole Bernie a-blu-blu thing, which policies of Bernie's do his supporters demand Hillary take on that she hasn't already? I don't see a whole lot of difference between them policy-wise, except that Clinton has a slightly more realistic or pessimistic idea of what is possible.

Well, ignoring the more extreme and/or crazy Bernie supporters for a moment, many of us more pragmatic liberals acknowledge that there are many issues on which Clinton and Bernie at least broadly agree, but are concerned that she will essentially flip-flop on some of these issues as a "pivot to the center" campaign strategy now that the real campaign is about to begin in earnest. It seems likely that her public comments on many issues are likely to change flavor over the next several months (which is, of course, inevitable ... and I'm not saying it's the wrong strategy, because it's likely the right thing to do), and there is a general concern that she is more liberal in bark than in bite, to to speak.

[Rhadamantus]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd like to see her adopt the following, for a start:

15 an hour minimum wage. She's already gone most of the way to Sanders' position on this (12 an hour and claiming she supports 15 in theory), so it would be a small concession, but one that would benefit a lot of people.

Complete fracking ban (as opposed to simply more heavily regulating it). A small concession, it seems to me, but one that would probably piss off some of her big donors, so less likely to be adopted.

I'd also like Sanders to push for Tuition Free College and for Clinton to drop the no-fly zone over Syria, though I don't expect Clinton to agree to either. Still, part of haggling is asking for more than you expect to get.

I recognize that universal Medicare, Israel/Palestine, and possibly dropping Garland as Supreme Court nominee would probably be more than she'd be willing to give, and probably not worth wasting capital on at this point.

15 a hour is way too high in some places. Honestly, it should be calibrated to living costs.
Fracking is not an clear issue. On the one hand, it has problems with drinking water, and emits Co2. On the other hand, it has allowed us to become a net exporter of energy, which is important, and has replaced coal, which is far worse for the environment. There are legitimate reasons to want to keep it as a stopgap, because we need energy need.

[The Romulan Republic]

Honestly, I'd like to see us invest more in nuclear power if renewables alone aren't sufficient (though this is actually one of the points I disagree with Sanders on- his anti-nuke stance is one of my main disagreements with him on policy).

[Rhadamantus]

Yeah. Nuclear power is needed to make the gap for the next couple decades.