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[Cheebo]

I think a lot have forgotten Obama was more moderate than Clinton on many issues (Health Care being a big one ) in 2008. It is just the Iraq War vote and him winning and all sort of made that fact get lost over time. Remember, one of his big selling points against her was "I can make deals and work with Republicans".

 

[Wall]

Yes, but her proposals are also easier to stomach to the more moderate right, and I trust her ability to navigate the political waters with more finesse than Bernie and not be an ideologue.

"Young people protesting" is like, the dumbest response when asked about facing a Republican congress and it scares me.

There are structural reasons right now that make it impossible for any Democratic president to get a bill passed the Republican congress. House republicans have zero incentive to cooperate with a democratic president and every reason not to. House Republicans are locked into gerrymandered districts that would probably be heavily Republican anyway in the current political alignment. All cooperating with a democratic President on something like financial reform would get a Republican is a likely heavily financed primary challenger.

Still, many people don't vote. Turnout in the last Presidential election was 58 percent. Turnout in the 14 midterms was 40 percent. Sander's argument is that an aggressive platform would increase turnout, which possibly could allow the Democrats to at least do better in the House if not take it. Further, he argues that the mobilization of a campaign should continue after the election to help a party pass its agenda and govern. I'm not completely convinced that will work, but dissmissing the argument as "kids protesting" is reductive and unfair. I actually think that that there might be an argument that such an approach is perhaps the only way to counteract a potentially fatal weakness in America democracy.

 

[AnotherDayAnotherDollar]

Must have missed something - why is GAF (majority of posts here) against Clinton? I thought she was the leader in presidental race (I'm from Europe BTW).

I'm fairly new here on GAF, but I see a decent number of Clinton and Sanders fan on GAF and other places around the net. I would venture out to say that it's about 50/50 in terms of fans between the two. So far I think both camps like attacking the weakness of the opposition, but most people are civil, especially here on GAF, I have seen and read some courteous discussions.

I do get annoyed by some fans from both sides though, especially when you read comments on facebook and news sites. Sanders fans tend to get defensive when there are good news from other candidates. They think their candidate will solve every problem on the 1st day of office. Some tend to not know how difficult it would be to pass some his proposals in congress. The latter two points are are true for Clinton fans as well. Clinton fans also tend to think and act like Clinton as a nomination, and president, is a done deal, which - to me - is a false assertion and just plain annoying and does nothing besides detract the flow of the conversation.

 

[Dogtooth]

I think a lot have forgotten Obama was more moderate than Clinton on many issues (Health Care being a big one ) in 2008. It is just the Iraq War vote and him winning and all sort of made that fact get lost over time. Remember, one of his big selling points against her was "I can make deals and work with Republicans".

It was a lot more than that, if you just go by his campaign rhetoric. He was directly taking on aspects of the Bush war/surveilance state that Clinton wouldn't touch. Of course Obama betrayed his supporters almost immediately. So in practice, I think the two are pretty similar.

Also, I disagree with you that Obama's health care plan was more "moderate" than Clinton's. They were largely the same, except Clinton favored the individual mandate, which is a radical pro-corporate measure. Not moderate. Of course the ACA has a mandate, so they come out the same in the end.

 

[Inuhanyou]

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[Inuhanyou]

It was imperative that money was released. The reasons for the bailouts are not "excuses," it's the field of macroeconomics.

The bailouts were fine only because they were directly impacting the civilian sector But the absolute failure of the government including the and SEC at regulating and providing strict rules of engagement for the Fed to loan money after the crash was a complete joke. THey just threw it out there at zero interest rate. Yeah thanks for crashing our economy guys, have all this money and no actual reforms

We already have a progressive tax system. Different levels of income are already taxed at different rates, that's nothing new.

Not a progressive tax system where the bush tax cuts were not allowed to expire, or where corps who have the lowest corporate tax rate for a long time go on without a single word.

We absolutely have a tax issue in this country, and lying about that isn't doing you a single favor.

As for health care, as long as the private insurance companies are in control, the base problems of skyrocketing costs(the entire point of Obamacare) remains. But Hillary would not want to talk about that.

 

[ivysaur12]

There are structural reasons right now that make it impossible for any Democratic president to get a bill passed the Republican congress. House republicans have zero incentive to cooperate with a democratic president and every reason not to. House Republicans are locked into gerrymandered districts that would probably be heavily Republican anyway in the current political alignment. All cooperating with a democratic President on something like financial reform would get a Republican is a likely heavily financed primary challenger.

Still, many people don't vote. Turnout in the last Presidential election was 58 percent. Turnout in the 14 midterms was 40 percent. Sander's argument is that an aggressive platform would increase turnout, which possibly could allow the Democrats to at least do better in the House if not take it. Further, he argues that the mobilization of a campaign should continue after the election to help a party pass its agenda and govern. I'm not completely convinced that will work, but dissmissing the argument as "kids protesting" is reductive and unfair. I actually think that that there might be an argument that such an approach is perhaps the only way to counteract a potentially fatal weakness in America democracy.

It might be reductive, but it's certainly fair because it's not an answer! "We'll just increase turn out!" okay, so, you do, and then Republicans still hold the House. Or let's say that we get a miraculous 65%-70% turnout in the next election, the Republicans implode, and Democratic leaning voters are able to overcome key gerrymanders and conservative voting efficiency in their districts. Now what? You have a slim Democratic-majority in the House and maybe 55-ish seats in the Senate.

Again, not a workable plan, because you'd still run into the same problems that Obama had during his first term, only with tenuous holds on a caucus in both the House and Senate. In order to win a majority, you'll need to elect more conservative Democrats, who absolutely won't go along with the majority of Bernie's proposals. My question for Bernie is -- okay, your president, but your plan didn't work. Republicans have the House and either have the Senate, or you have the Senate by 1 - 2 seats. Now what?

We went throw 2 years of wide-eyed-bushy-tailed Obama progressivism of holding hands and kumbayaing. I'll take actual pragmatism over that any day of the week if there's a greater chance for left-leaning policies to be enacted.

 

[Black Mamba]

The bailouts were fine only because they were directly impacting the civilian sector But the absolute failure of the government including the and SEC at regulating and providing strict rules of engagement for the Fed to loan money after the crash was a complete joke. THey just threw it out there at zero interest rate. Yeah thanks for crashing our economy guys, have all this money and no actual reforms

This is exactly what they should have done. Anything else would have made things worse.

Yeah, I know it sucks that the institutions get it, but they fucked us over and we had no other real option. This wasn't Bernanke's fault. This fault lies with Congress, past administrations, and sure the SEC on some levels.

Bernanke's job was to help the economy as much as possible. He did that. He had no authority to put in place reforms on those institutions. your criticisms here are unfounded.

Why would he even care about bailing out Wall Street other than its relationship to the general economy? He has zero Wall Street ties. He didn't ever work in the private sector. His entire life he was a professor and economic adviser to the President before joining the Fed. There's a real possibility he never met anyone in banking other than a bank teller until he joined the Fed!

If you're going to claim Bernanke helped out banks and Wall Street for reasons unrelated to the fact it was his only path to save the economy, you're going to have to at least establish a plausible motive...