It looks like Crooked Hillary and Rapist Bill are not returning to the White House. Just look at the RCP average, Trump is leading now!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

Bernie thinks Crooked Hillary is unfit to be president. I agree!

Hmmm, I'd still bet my chips on Hillary. But it is true now that Trump has a good shot at winning, it will depend on how well he manages to make his shift to the center, but also on how Bernie support Hillary for the general (just endorsement? active campaigning? no endorsement at all?).

I doubt Bernie will do much more than a half-hearted endorsement. The whole system is rigged against him, and Crooked Hillary hasn't played fair. In Nevada, the Democratic convention prevented 50 Sanders delegates from entering the convention. Sanders supporters rioted in response, and Bernie gave them his support. He also said the DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schulz would not be reelected to her position if Bernie were president.

Hillary already stated that she will be the party nominee, that it's already decided. How can she say that if she hasn't won the majority of the pledged delegates, unless the system is rigged big time? Just look how condescending she is towards Sanders:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/22/clinton_polls_showing_sanders_could_beat_trump_mean_nothing_to_me.html

Yeah in May 2012 and May 2008, Obama was also trading a narrow lead with his opponent (and favorables have been getting more polarized every election, so Trump and Clinton being the two most unfavorable nominees ever hardly comes as a surprise- or holds any meaning). It's a good 5+ months 'til the election- the general's not even started yet.

System's far from rigged against Bernie. This guy's:

- literally claimed to be a "socialist"

- totally in favor of raising taxes

- not yet released his tax returns in full

- illegally accepting donations from people outside the country

- had a Soviet flag right next to the American flag in his office during the Cold War

- run against Obama in the 2012 primary and yet tries to claim his legacy

- calling for finance CEOs to be arrested for extremely vague charges

- flip-flopped on gay marriage and lied about it (opposed it in 2006)

- proposed an economic plan that even liberal economists say doesn't make sense

- proposed a $15 trillion deficit over 10 years, which is yuuuuuge even for Democrats

- managed to pass a whopping 3 bills in the Senate

- never had a real, salaried job until he hit the age of 40

- married to a woman who ran Burlington College into the ground using variations on his economic ideology

- now paying his wife Jane and his family using campaign donations

- openly proposing we tax 401k's as part of his economic platform

- paying Revolution Messaging more than Hillary's "Correct the Record" to do the same thing

- blamed Trump for the violence of Trump supporters but fails to condemn the behavior of his own supporters

- flip-flopped on superdelegates; first he tells them to go with the popular vote, and now that he's losing, well...

He would get utterly crushed in a serious attack ad campaign.

And yet he's faced barely any attack ads compared to Hillary, who's been in the limelight for a good three decades and has had vague accusations of corruption hurled at her the whole time (makes sense- the Clintons rescued the Democratic party from over two decades of weak results and became Public Enemy Number One for the Republicans). We're talking Benghazi (the committee for which now admits that it's got nothing), the e-mail thing (and nope- we're not going to have an indictment under the Espionage Act- one of the most criticized American laws of all time- unless somehow someone's able to prove that Hillary intended to give the Russians/etc. some sort of advantage over America), and a million conspiracy theories ranging from Arkancide to Zionism. She's endured attack ad after attack ad; Bernie's got hit with barely anything, and the Dems have gone out of their way to be fair to this guy (that Campaign Committee in Nevada that Sanders says stacked the game against him? Half of it was actually Sanders delegates).

This guy's got it good, and he's still behind by an insurmountable margin far bigger than Hillary's 2008 deficit against Obama- and Hillary's yet to even call for him to drop out.

Sanders wasn't even a Democrat- he's still running for his Vermont Senate seat as an independent and doesn't even raise money for the DNC- and now he's mad at the party for not bending over backwards for him.

Clinton's really had much more of a challenge and has come out of it with much more grace. I genuinely look forward to her presidency.

In Nevada, the Democratic convention prevented 50 Sanders delegates from entering the convention.

Most of Sanders' delegates didn't even show up- he had more allotted than Clinton and <80% of them even showed up.

Beyond that: http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff-weaver/allegations-fraud-and-misconduct-nevada-democratic/

There was no fraud or misconduct in the Nevada Democratic caucus.

He also said the DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schulz would not be reelected to her position if Bernie were president.

That's just about as consequential as Vermin Supreme promising free floss- Sanders isn't going to be president.

Hillary already stated that she will be the party nominee, that it's already decided. How can she say that if she hasn't won the majority of the pledged delegates, unless the system is rigged big time?

Hillary is about a 100 delegates shy of getting the nomination, and Sanders would have to win by historic (80%+) margins to take a lead in pledged delegates. Odds are supers aren't going to flip to him either- he's pissed off the South, lost the primary in just about every swing state, and is currently on the bad side of Harry Reid, Joe Biden, and probably even the Big O.

Hillary's got an insurmountable lead; as far as she's concerned, the race with Sanders is over.

Now Sanders is trying to get a debate in California going- that's like asking the Warriors to play the Blazers again after winning their 4 games. Sanders is out. GG

Edited 5/23/2016 07:12:51

@knyte I applaud your zeal for Crooked Hillary. But I don't understand how Bernie wanting to raise taxes means that the game isn't rigged against him? It almost sounds as if you were part of the "Correct the Record" (read: "Say Nasty Things About Bernie") campaign.

- not yet released his tax returns in full

You don't learn much from tax returns. You learn much more from a person's financials. However, I wonder why Crooked Hillary doens't want to publish her Wall Street transcripts. What does she want to hide?

- flip-flopped on gay marriage and lied about it (opposed it in 2006)

Agree. It shows Bernie is just a flip-flopping politician like Crooked Hillary who also flip-flopped on the issue.

- blamed Trump for the violence of Trump supporters but fails to condemn the behavior of his own supporters

Again, agree. Bernie supporters are perhaps the most violent in history, maiming peaceful Trump rally attendees and blocking ambulances, yet Bernie fails to condemn. On the other hand, he condemns it when a handful of Trump supporters finally decide to defend themselves against Bernie supporter violence. What a hypocrite!

She's endured attack ad after attack ad

Endured? Crooked Hillary has been destroyed by those attacks. Bill Clinton is a rapist who got impeached and lost his law license, and Crooked Hillary is an enabler who grandstands as a defender of women's rights. It's about time those raped women get their say without Hillary silencing them. Hillary, of course, tries to keep quiet and hopes Trump would stop talking about it, but Americans deserve better!

But I don't understand how Bernie wanting to raise taxes means that the game isn't rigged against him? It almost sounds as if you were part of the "Correct the Record" (read: "Say Nasty Things About Bernie") campaign.

My point is that the DNC + Hillary have been playing nice with Bernie, and it's incredibly whiny of him to claim they're rigging the system against him when he's getting off so easy.

As far as CtR goes, Bernie's paying even more to Revolution Messaging for the exact same stuff. But if Hillary's somehow managing to buy out the DNC, rig an entire election, control social media, and generally turn the cogs of every political machine with the budget she has, then she's got to be some sort of economic genius to pull something like that off. Conspiracy theories like that never quite add up. :P

You don't learn much from tax returns. You learn much more from a person's financials. However, I wonder why Crooked Hillary doens't want to publish her Wall Street transcripts. What does she want to hide?

From full tax returns you find out:

- the actual net worth of a person (given the money he makes from real estate/rentals, there's a solid chance that Bernie's one of the "millionaihs and billionaihs" he complains about- and Trump? No way to tell he's even a billionaire, and it's quite possible his assets are outweighed by his massive debts)

- what charities they donate to (valuable for Bernie, especially, since he keeps trying to claim the moral high ground)

- how much they pay in taxes

You can look at someone's tax returns and find out their actual financial status and what they do with their money. The American people have a right to know whether their options evade taxes, at the very least.

As for Hillary's Wall Street transcripts- she's offered to release her transcripts when everyone else releases their for privately-funded speeches. That hasn't happened yet. Right now Sanders is just asking Clinton for ammo in a campaign he's already lost. And of course her financials are already out.

Agree. It shows Bernie is just a flip-flopping politician like Crooked Hillary who also flip-flopped on the issue.

Bernie's a hypocrite too- he's trying to claim it as an advantage and appeal to some purists. Just 10 years ago, even the LGBT movement wasn't sure whether it wanted gay marriage- and now Bernie's saying he's supported it since forever when that's not the case.

Again, agree. Bernie supporters are perhaps the most violent in history, maiming peaceful Trump rally attendees and blocking ambulances, yet Bernie fails to condemn. On the other hand, he condemns it when a handful of Trump supporters finally decide to defend themselves against Bernie supporter violence. What a hypocrite!

I don't know if you've been to a Trump rally, but Bernie- to his credit- has yet to openly tell his supporters to beat up someone at his rallies. Trump's still a hell of a lot worse when it comes to promoting violence.

Crooked Hillary has been destroyed by those attacks.

Last I checked, she's still got the support of millions of people.

Bill Clinton is a rapist

An interesting thing to follow up with- a series of discredited claims? That's exactly what Hillary's been dealing with for the past three decades- and the kind of attacks Bernie's got yet to endure. In light of that, her favorables and support are pretty damn extraordinary.

Edited 5/23/2016 08:01:27

Historically candidates usually get a boost after being confirmed as the nominee.

Clinton still the easy favourite, not even close. Unexpectedly the Republican party is much more unified atm, especially with the recent NRA endorsement and the NeverTrump movement pretty much dead. Once Bernie is out, Clinton can easily pivot center, the Bernie or Bust movement will quickly forget about Hillary's and the DNC establishment's corruption and scandals (e.g. Nevada) and unite against Trump.

I'll put Clinton 70%, Trump 30%.

Although surprisingly Trump's getting around ~87% support in the GOP right now, which is a lot higher than his previous "ceiling" of 40%. There's probably a good few surprises left in the next 5 months- populism and polarization are really high this cycle, so we can't really judge it entirely based on past trends (for which we have pretty sparse data anyway, given that this event happens only once every four years).

Great video by John Oliver about the primary process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S2G8jhhUHg
(the video is very neutral, if you guys are wondering)


I didn't read all of what you guys writed, but I saw a comment on homosexual marriage. Bernie was for it for decades, he backed the gay pride in Vermont in the 80s already. So far as gay rights go, he's light years ahead of clinton, she was against gay marriage in 2008 for example.

http://media2.fdncms.com/sevendaysvt/imager/u/original/2698302/pridemarch1983.jpg


Thing is, Hillary is more of a republican than a democrat really. It is true that bernie pushed her to the left, but she is already moving back to the center right and going after moderate republican voters. Little she knows that progressives won't vote for her if she starts going conservative just to avoid a Trump presidency. If she keeps doing that, progressives will just stay at home.


A pro-bernie pamphlet:



Edited 5/23/2016 08:41:47

Thing is, Hillary is more of a republican than a democrat really.

Not according to her Senate voting record. 93% match with Sanders, and to the left of Obama. :P Another careless caricature thrown around by the Sanders campaign/Revolution Messaging and gobbled up easily.

In 2008, Sanders wasn't opposed to gay marriage- but as recently as 2006, he was. He's also voted for the bill that broke down Glass-Steagall regulation of the "big banks"- the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Dude's "evolved" a ton, too, but he's still posturing as some sort of ideologically pure liberal.

And let's not forget that time he tried to play the HIV/AIDS card after Clinton's Nancy Reagan slip-up, scheduled a conference for the media attention, and then canceled it after the HIV/AIDS organization he was meeting with already booked everything. He's just a narcissistic demagogue, plain and simple, and hope he loses his Senate committee assignments for all the shit he's been trying to pull this primary season.

Edited 5/23/2016 08:45:47

Well, again we need to ask ourselves if democrats are so different than republicans. But her actual speech is very close to Bush's ones when it comes to position in the political spectrum.

But her actual speech is very close to Bush's ones when it comes to position in the political spectrum.

It's not too hard to splice together political speakers and make them sound alike. Remember Nader's "Bush and Gore are the same person" strategy of 2000?

Last time we got duped this way by a leftist demagogue, we got ourselves into the whole Iraq War + the economic mess Sanders is now raving about.

Clinton is a world apart from Trump and the GOP- she's certainly not going to appoint the same justices to the Supreme Court, make the same moves on health care or in foreign policy, carpet-bomb the Middle East/commit war crimes, etc. I mean, we're talking about a candidate who supports debt-free college and a public option in healthcare- who's got wide-ranging support among liberal causes and the strong support of the outgoing liberal president that Sanders keeps trying to appeal to. Both Sanders and Clinton are certified liberals, even by Liz Warren's standard.

Besides, if someone who voted the same way as Sanders 93% of the time isn't liberal enough for you, I fail to see how 7% is enough of a difference to make Sanders super-liberal if Hillary's a complete conservative.

Edited 5/23/2016 08:51:49

Last I checked, she's still got the support of millions of people.

Her support is dwindling below 50%. That's what matters. I'm not saying there are no gullible people who are "Ready for Hillary" and think she's a women's rights advocate.

An interesting thing to follow up with- a series of discredited claims? That's exactly what Hillary's been dealing with for the past three decades-

If your husband rapes lots of women and you silence those women so that the Clinton name doesn't get dirty, then you very well deserve do "deal with it" for the rest of your life. And that claim is not discredited except in the minds of Shills for Hillary, those women who were silenced 30 years ago are still dealing with getting raped and then silenced. I'm sure they would like to forget what Bill did to them but they cannot. They need justice.

You think she's not going to commit war crimes in the Middle East? I know I can be a bit out there sometimes but that's a real conspiracy theory.

Note that the Rasmussen Reports has a strong pro-Republican house effect (2.3 R+). The other recent polls seem more correct (Fox 0.4 R+, ABC 0.6 D+, NBC 0.5 D+, CBS 0.7 D+) If you correct for that, you actually get exactly a tie.

After Clinton leading for months, I wouldn't say she's "losing bad". Of course, you are a pretty strong pro-Republican (or pro-Trump), so I'm not expecting you to look at this in an unbiased way.

Besides, polls at this point, with Trump consolidating support from the Republicans, while Clinton has not consolidated support from Democrats (supposedly yet), are not all that informative and have a margin of error of over 5% away.
At this moment, with elections months away, it should be more or less 50/50 if it were generic candidates. Of course, Clinton and Trump aren't all that generic, I'd say.

So, a neutral/outsider (check country: I'm not biased against either because not my circus, not my monkeys) conclusion to this: much ado about nothing for now, wait until after the conventions to get a better view.

Still willing to bet on Hillary becoming the new president. Trump has surprised me in how well he has done; as has Bernie, but I'm still fairly positive another Clinton will take office.

After Clinton leading for months, I wouldn't say she's "losing bad". Of course, you are a pretty strong pro-Republican (or pro-Trump), so I'm not expecting you to look at this in an unbiased way.

The point is that Trump started as an outsider and Clinton as the clear favorite. For a long time, polls showed Hillary beating Trump by 10'ish percentage points. Most pundits said that Trump cannot win with his unfavorability ratings.

It turns out that they were wrong! After being in primary mode for a year, Trump switched to general election mode just a few weeks ago, and he has already caught up to Crooked Hillary, a feat claimed impossible by most so-called "experts".

The more time goes by, the more Hillary's weaknesses get exposed alongside her shady past, and she will lose support. In fact, she already has higher unfavorables than Trump.

You are such a Trump fanboy, aren't you?

Vote Trump if you want your freedoms lessened and more folk dead, but to make America great.

Edited 5/23/2016 14:46:50

You're such a Bernie minion, aren't you?

He will Message in a Revolutionary fashion and bring back the Hammer and Sickle. Oh boy, your mouth is getting wet already in anticipation!

I don't believe Sanders is perfect and have commented several times on his flaws, and I don't get in a zeal whenever anyone else calls him out.

You think that Trump is perfect, and always get in a zeal whenever Trump is called out.