Support NeoGAF

[HylianTom]

Exactly. Im a Bernie supporter. But the second he drops out Im on the Hillary bandwagon HARD. It amazes me that people will even threaten to pout and take their ball and go home if they dont get their first choice. How often in life do we not get our first choice and have to go with the next best alternative. Bday presents, college acceptance letters, bf/gfs, dinner for the night, clothing, jobs, etc. Its part of life. Take the best you can get at the moment and try to improve when the next opportunity comes, not go back to step 0 and struggle to even get back to where you were before.

One thing that sticks out in my mind: this is probably the last cycle where the Bernie wing of the party doesn't get who they want as the nominee. We can plainly see by the demographics of who's backing him that his way is the way of the future for the Democrats.

We're going to nominate and elect a Bernie 2.0, and there are people here (and elsewhere) who love Bernie 1.0's ideals - but who are completely comfortable with the idea of Bernie 2.0 being sabotaged by 2016's consequences.

And they have no answer for this, save for emotion and maybe a shrug.

 

[Random Painted HIghway]

Bush was a better president than Obama when it came to prosecutions like this.

Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia Communications. People went to jail. The savings and loans crisis in the 80's sent hundreds people to jail and it was nothing compared to the 2008 crash.

Justice is supposed to be blind. When Eric Holder and his Justice Dept. start worrying about prosecutions might affect the market and don't prosecute based on that, you're sending the wrong signals.

Who would you have had prosecuted for what specific criminal violations?

There is always a pointed lack of specificity when this topic comes up. Laymen really have no concept of how difficult white collar fraud cases are to put together and prosecute and what is requried for probable cause let alone establishing the evidence required for a conviction. Layers and layers of plausible deniablity and diffusion of responsibility makes it incredibly challenging to establish criminal culpability for individual actors in these mega corps. The laws in place are typically too weak to do anything more than fine without a whistleblower or smoking gun. That said, the sec does have a pretty wimpy reputation, from folks I deal with, thankfully I don't have dealings with them.

 

[jmdajr]

Trump has been quiet since winning.

 

[B-Dubs]

Trump has been quiet since winning.

All he's got to do at this point is just ride the momentum to the nomination. Jeb is gone, Rubio just died, despite his victory Kasich is dead, and Cruz is the walking dead. There's no one who can overtake him at this point. All he needs to do is make sure the GOP doesn't try to dick him over at the convention.

One thing that sticks out in my mind: this is probably the last cycle where the Bernie wing of the party doesn't get who they want as the nominee. We can plainly see by the demographics of who's backing him that his way is the way of the future for the Democrats.

We're going to nominate and elect a Bernie 2.0, and there are people here (and elsewhere) who love Bernie 1.0's ideals - but who are completely comfortable with the idea of Bernie 2.0 being sabotaged by 2016's consequences.

And they have no answer for this, save for emotion and maybe a shrug.

Whoever the next Bernie is needs to take the Obama coalition seriously.

 

[dave is ok]

Who would you have had prosecuted for what specific criminal violations?

There is always a pointed lack of specificity when this topic comes up. Laymen really have no concept of how difficult white collar fraud cases are to put together and prosecute and what is requried for probable cause let alone establishing the evidence required for a conviction. Layers and layers of plausible deniablity and diffusion of responsibility makes it incredibly challenging to establish criminal culpability for individual actors in these mega corps. The laws in place are typically too weak to do anything more than fine without a whistleblower or smoking gun. That said, the sec does have a pretty wimpy reputation, from folks I deal with, thankfully I don't have dealings with them.

It's not my job to decide who. I don't have the resources and tips that the SEC does. Over 10,000 tips were given to the SEC from 2010 to 2014 and of those Around 25 were investigated to the point where the whistleblower received a reward. It's just clearly not a priority for them. John Mack was let go for a solid case of insider trading, Dick Fuld made hundreds of millions disappear without ever being interviewed. Four Gen Re executives were just let go with no punishment after successful prosecutions complete with sentencing.

The Justice Dept. were actively keeping people from being investigated or sent to prison. Eric Holder was not shy about saying this.

 

[Geg]

All he's got to do at this point is just ride the momentum to the nomination. Jeb is gone, Rubio just died, despite his victory Kasich is dead, and Cruz is the walking dead. There's no one who can overtake him at this point. All he needs to do is make sure the GOP doesn't try to dick him over at the convention.

Is it still possible for him to get a majority of delegates before the convention despite losing Ohio?

 

[Aaron Strife]

Is it still possible for him to get a majority of delegates before the convention despite losing Ohio?

Yes. He needs to win about half of the remaining delegates.

 

[B-Dubs]

Is it still possible for him to get a majority of delegates before the convention despite losing Ohio?

He's just below his target and with a slightly smaller field still splitting the anti-Trump vote he should do better going forward.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/delegate-targets/

 

[shoplifter]

One thing that sticks out in my mind: this is probably the last cycle where the Bernie wing of the party doesn't get who they want as the nominee. We can plainly see by the demographics of who's backing him that his way is the way of the future for the Democrats.

iwanttobelieve.gif


I'm not so sure that it'll be 2020/2024. I'm just not. I can just as easily see the DNC staying as centrist as possible.

 

[Cerium]

I think this notion of a "Sanders wing" is overblown. I don't see the Bernie camp as ideologically driven. The vast majority of it is personality driven, which is why I've always been convinced that a good portion of them will ultimately turn to Trump. People don't like Hillary's personality, and I can empathize, I've been there in 2008. Ideology is not that important. Democrats will simply fall in love with the next charming liberal who comes along.

The thing about Obama was that he was able to unite all parts of the party and in fact reshape it in his own image. His genuine kindness and benevolence convinced progressives that he was one of them, at least at heart, and would have the right motivations and the right values. His mature and cerebral approach convinced moderates that he would be pragmatic in governance (and indeed he has been). He obviously had historic appeal to minorities. He was a young, exciting figure that energized young people in ways Sanders simply has not.

 

[Drek]

iwanttobelieve.gif


I'm not so sure that it'll be 2020/2024. I'm just not. I can just as easily see the DNC staying as centrist as possible.

The DNC is, not unlike the RNC, a product of it's constituency. The Democratic party is still too reliant on blue dogs to move that far to the left, but in eight years' time demographics will likely have shifted enough to make it viable.

Also, Obama is to the left of the DNC. Clinton is to the left of the DNC. All their Supreme Court picks are going to be to the left of the DNC. You can't have the key leaders working to the left of the party and not see the party follow (Supreme Court picks matter because many politicians first start out clerking for justices at various levels with the SCOTUS as the spot for best and brightest types).

What would really push it is a strong state and local surge the polar opposite of the Tea Party, shifting the term "moderate democrat" several notches to the left.

Honestly, I figure by about 2036 the Democratic Party will probably be too far left for me and either the Republican Party will have rebuilt itself in a substantially more moderate form or another party will have come along and claimed that ground. Hopefully by then major social issues (LGBT rights, gender and racial equality, healthcare) will have been resolved so the debate would then really settle on primarily economic and foreign policy.

 

[BlastProcessing]

As they they say, you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Convince with love instead of fear and treachery. Posts here sound more and more like the right's use of rhetoric.

Never liked that phrase to begin with because you can catch even more flies with a pile of shit.

 

[Quixzlizx]

I've done my legwork. Unlike many people here, I remember the politics of the 90's and all of the shameless pandering that the Clintons did to attract racist Republicans in Congress in order to build political capital for other endeavors. I remember the unequal treatment in criminal sentencing and I remember the extreme spike in minority imprisonment due to that unequal treatment. I remember welfare reform and the hugely destructive impact that it had on already-disadvantaged communities.

Since we're being frank, let me just say that your third paragraph has zero logical consistency. You acknowledge that black voters are just as susceptible to subversive tactics or misinformation yet continue on to say that anyone who questions their motivation for supporting a candidate is perpetuating a racist dog whistle. Claiming that something is a strawman, crafting one of your own, and then doing exactly what I claimed you would do isn't a good way of making your case. I never claimed that black voters were any more or less informed as other voting blocs: I merely asserted the reality that low-information black voters exist and that questioning the impact of that reality in the primary doesn't make you a closet racist. That said, I believe asserting that all of the voters who chose Clinton over Sanders due to being low-information can be reasonably classified as a dog whistle.

I'm perfectly aware that there are any number of reasons why black voters would support Hillary over Bernie even if they were aware of his record and most of them are largely pragmatic. I'm personally at a point at my life where I want to see a candidate fight for everything that progressives claim to want across the board: universal healthcare, universal education, mandatory living wages, an end to corporate welfare, an end to the private prison industry, an end to the Drug War, and so on. I'd rather someone go for the moonshot and lose than stand on a chair and remark at how far we'd come. There is never going to be a safe time to try it and I do not believe that the middle and lower-income demographics of this country can survive another three decades of what we've seen for the past three.

"I wonder what the effect was on the primary from low-information millennials who live with their parents and have never paid a dollar in taxes?"

Unless there's some objective definition of "low-information voter" that I'm unaware of, and scientific polling to measure its frequency in the population, the term isn't helpful other than to point out that they exist in the abstract. Once you start applying the label to particular voters, you're basically just implying that they are voters that you don't think are as informed as you are.

 

[Y2Kev]

Please make a new thread for the next primaries. This thread is all personal bickering now.