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BarbarianElephant posted:He did a pretty good job. Didn't fix everything, but then again he is a mortal man, so you can't expect him to. Remember that the President is not a King. He has to work with the Republican congress. Don't they get any blame? What about the time he worked with a blue supermajority and still hosed everything up? Or the time he tried to cut social security as part of a grand bargain but the Republicans actually hosed that one up by sticking too hard to *their* no taxes principles? Or when he expanded drone programs and bombed tens of thousands of brown people for the crime of being brown? Or when he expanded the domestic spy networks (which didn't do poo poo to stop hackers using a loving fake gmail login)? Or any of the other failings that mark him out as 'good' only in comparison to Bush and Trump, and will likely see him remembered in history as a pretty mediocre president unable to translate his personal charisma into any kind of lasting accomplishments?
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Dec 29, 2016 23:10
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Not a Step posted:Or any of the other failings that mark him out as 'good' only in comparison to Bush and Trump I rest my case.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:11
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BarbarianElephant posted:I rest my case. (uh, thats why Hillary lost)
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Dec 29, 2016 23:13
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We are talking about 2008-2010 so most of that stuff wasn't really a thing yet.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:14
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jBrereton posted:OK just as two well known examples, KPMG was known to be involved in fraudulent accounting practices in the run up to the New Century collapse and nothing happened beyond a very small fine. HSBC was found actually guilty of laundering drug cartel money and was not prosecuted by the US attorney general to avoid "disturbing the markets". The problem with the big auditors goes beyond the Obama admin not prosecuting though which is the point. It all requires legislative action to actually accomplish. The HSBC action is also largely due to the UK telling the US to back off. Similarly the US backed off of Deutsche Bank earlier this year when Germany asked us to. And of course, those are proceedings for the corporation itself, not the corporate insiders. The discussion was about going after the actual executives, which is substantially harder to do.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:15
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I don't think it's a good idea to say "Trump voters are ____", since there are a wide variety of people who voted for Trump for various reasons. And I would say that the average Trump voter is definitely pretty fuckin racist, but this is just because the average Republican voter is also pretty racist. Those people don't really matter because they always vote Republican regardless. The people we need to look at are the small minority of working class 1. Trump voters who have voted Democratic in the past and 2. people who abstained from voting who voted Democratic in the past. These people are not the average Trump voter, but they're enough to flip the election and we know from history that they're at least capable of wanting to vote Democratic (unlike the openly racist average middle class Trump voter).
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Dec 29, 2016 23:15
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Not a Step posted:(uh, thats why Hillary lost) Assuming Trump does 8 years, you are claiming Obama to be the best president for nearly 25 *years*. Big claims, Obama fan!
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Dec 29, 2016 23:16
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Raldikuk posted:The problem with the big auditors goes beyond the Obama admin not prosecuting though which is the point. It all requires legislative action to actually accomplish. The HSBC action is also largely due to the UK telling the US to back off. Similarly the US backed off of Deutsche Bank earlier this year when Germany asked us to. And of course, those are proceedings for the corporation itself, not the corporate insiders. The discussion was about going after the actual executives, which is substantially harder to do.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:19
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There really are a variety of reasons the election went the way it did, but people in middle America "feeling like losers" definitely helped Trump win some critical rust belt and other swing states. A lot of coastal upper class liberals are out of touch with what's going on in a lot of the country. As an example, I watch Bill Maher's show a lot, and he always defends Obama when it comes to his record on the economy. He always throws out "the stock market is higher than ever" and "look at the low unemployment rate." There's no question that things have gotten better than when Obama took office in 2009 and we were in crisis, but these particular comments are out of touch. "The stock market is at all time highs" means literally nothing to 50% of the country, because roughly 50% of people in this country do not own stocks, either directly or through things like 401ks. We've created a bunch of jobs and got unemployment down, but a ton of those jobs are lovely low wage and part time jobs that aren't great when measured against the continually exploding cost of living. Donald Trump was better at reaching out to rust belt and rural Americans living in lovely economic situations. He told them he would fight these trade deals to bring these manufacturing and coal jobs back, which was bullshit, but he at least pretended to give a poo poo about them and they heard him. When Hillary Clinton says things like "America is already great", that doesn't really excite or motivate people whose particular situations aren't currently so great. Globalization has had a lot of benefits but there are winners and losers with every policy shift, and a lot of the losers feel left behind by the establishment. A coastal liberal telling a poor white unemployed coal miner or manufacturer to "just learn computer programming and move to the city" is a great trivialization of what a life shift like that would actually require, much like a wealthy libertarian telling a poor black person to get off the government tit and "just move out" of their ghetto. There are a lot of people in America of all colors and backgrounds that feel left behind and abandoned economically by the establishment. Some may ask how people could possibly vote for a sexist racist? Because that sexist racist at least pretended to give a poo poo about their economic situation, and poor people don't have the luxury that upper class liberals do of being able to vote for the candidate that gives you that warm fuzzy feeling of moral righteousness.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:20
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BarbarianElephant posted:Assuming Trump does 8 years, you are claiming Obama to be the best president for nearly 25 *years*. Big claims, Obama fan!  , but true
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Dec 29, 2016 23:20
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wow this thread turned into purge black president beep boop in record time (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 29, 2016 23:22
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stone cold posted:wow this thread turned into purge black president beep boop in record time Obama wasnt that good, sorry for your loss.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:24
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sd6 posted:There really are a variety of reasons the election went the way it did, but people in middle America "feeling like losers" definitely helped Trump win some critical rust belt and other swing states. A lot of coastal upper class liberals are out of touch with what's going on in a lot of the country. As an example, I watch Bill Maher's show a lot, and he always defends Obama when it comes to his record on the economy. He always throws out "the stock market is higher than ever" and "look at the low unemployment rate." There's no question that things have gotten better than when Obama took office in 2009 and we were in crisis, but these particular comments are out of touch. "The stock market is at all time highs" means literally nothing to 50% of the country, because roughly 50% of people in this country do not own stocks, either directly or through things like 401ks. We've created a bunch of jobs and got unemployment down, but a ton of those jobs are lovely low wage and part time jobs that aren't great when measured against the continually exploding cost of living. This is probably the most succinct summary of the election I've seen yet.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:24
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stone cold posted:wow this thread turned into purge black president beep boop in record time everyone that doesn't vocally support all democrats is a cisgendered racist sexist white male - "feminist" poster extraordinaire
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Dec 29, 2016 23:33
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NewForumSoftware posted:everyone that doesn't vocally support all democrats is a cisgendered racist sexist white male if all democrats were president obama, trump would've lost  hope this helps
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Dec 29, 2016 23:42
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BarbarianElephant posted:Assuming Trump does 8 years, you are claiming Obama to be the best president for nearly 25 *years*. Big claims, Obama fan! If Trump gets 8 years, the context that implies means the Democratic party will be almost entirely irrelevant from policy-making anywhere in this country, assuming it hasn't dissipated in its own sequential electoral failure like the Whigs. On top of which, that will probably also be in a context where the Republicans have gathered those five extra statehouses in 2018 and 2020 to effectively have full editorial power over the Constitution. Never mind that being the best of a historically horrible lot is not exactly something to be cheery about. No one really cares that Grover Cleveland was the best one of an era in which the presidency was historically useless. Being, as it were, King Fart of poo poo Mountain is not exactly a thing to sing praises over; there's more at stake here than posting bon mots, and the context in which you're correct is one of truly horrifying death and fascism.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:44
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stone cold posted:if all democrats were president obama, trump would've lost
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Dec 29, 2016 23:45
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stone cold posted:if all democrats were president obama, trump would've lost do we really want to live in a world where all democrats are willing to trade away medicare for a balanced budget?
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Dec 29, 2016 23:48
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NewForumSoftware posted:do we really want to live in a world where all democrats are willing to trade away medicare for a balanced budget? do you know what the words balanced budget mean
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Dec 29, 2016 23:49
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stone cold posted:do you know what the words balanced budget mean yes "i want to cut social services"
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Dec 29, 2016 23:50
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other words you might not know: trade, democrats, world
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Dec 29, 2016 23:50
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stone cold posted:other words you might not know: trade, democrats, world we're the silent majority
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Dec 29, 2016 23:51
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NewForumSoftware posted:yes "i want to cut social services" unsurprisingly, you have no inkling of what balanced budget means also, noted democrat, h. ross Perot
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Dec 29, 2016 23:52
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stone cold posted:if all democrats were president obama, trump would've lost That's actually one of the problems people have pointed out, really; Obama's electoral success was driven by his tremendous skill as an orator and own personal charisma, and was almost entirely non-transferable to other members of the party. Which is one of the reasons his time in office has coincided with such a colossal, era-setting loss of position for the party in statehouses. He had the personal attraction and excellence to draw votes even when the policies and contexts he espoused were a headwind against electoral success. No such luck for other people who were facing the same headwinds, but didn't have those personal qualities. It's true a party of people as charismatic and as excellent as individuals as Obama would have won handily everywhere. But we don't have that, we have what we have. And shifting those headwinds to tailwinds is necessary to avoid becoming a rump party.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:52
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stone cold posted:if all democrats were president obama, trump would've lost Yes, I agree if Hillary Clinton was Barack Obama he probably would have won. Obama was really good at campaigning, slightly less stellar at the whole 'governing' thing. Also we'd be looking at some serious gender imbalances if a bunch of Democrat women suddenly turned into Obama. Can they just turn into Michelle instead? And would they have to adopt a numbering system, like Obama #A3627, or would they get to pick new names? It would also have serious implications for the entire economy if one person suddenly became the single most dominant demographic. Every store would carry hundreds of clothes exclusively in Obama's size. Entire restaurants, run by Obamas, would cater exclusively to Obama's tastes. Whatever weird porn he secretly likes would instantly become the biggest fetish market in existence. Really 🤔 Makes 🤔 You 🤔 Think 🤔
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Dec 29, 2016 23:53
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Not a Step posted:That sounds real bad for them, but its not likely to change anytime this generation. How do you propose addressing the fact that every voter is ultimately only concerned with themselves and, at the outside, their immediate group identity? Education, a decent media, and a political system that isn't the equivalent of an open sewer.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:57
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stone cold posted:certainly none of this is a function of a hostile republican dominated congress This kind of thinking does nothing for us in 2018 and 2020. Yes Obama is well liked, yes the GOP hosed him, but blaming everything on GOP and bigotry isn't going to allow progressives to win. We have to begin acknowledging Liberal flaws and correcting them. Obama was a very flawed president, Clinton was a very flawed candidate.
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Dec 29, 2016 23:59
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stone cold posted:unsurprisingly, you have no inkling of what balanced budget means it's ok to criticize the leader of the Democratic party if you don't agree with his decisions
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Dec 30, 2016 00:00
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NewForumSoftware posted:it's ok to criticize the leader of the Democratic party if you don't agree with his decisions right but given that I don't think you know what his decisions even were or what words mean, wouldn't you be better off going back to watching your South Park marathon
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Dec 30, 2016 00:11
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stone cold posted:right but given that I don't think you know what his decisions even were or what words mean, wouldn't you be better off going back to watching your South Park marathon you're right, everyone that doesn't share your opinion is an uneducated moron. thankfully not enough of us vote to matter
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Dec 30, 2016 00:14
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Sappo posted:That's actually one of the problems people have pointed out, really; Obama's electoral success was driven by his tremendous skill as an orator and own personal charisma, and was almost entirely non-transferable to other members of the party. Which is one of the reasons his time in office has coincided with such a colossal, era-setting loss of position for the party in statehouses. He had the personal attraction and excellence to draw votes even when the policies and contexts he espoused were a headwind against electoral success. No such luck for other people who were facing the same headwinds, but didn't have those personal qualities. The start of his presidency involved things like the Russian Reset (remember Dmitry Medvedev?) and attempts to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Top notions. Minorities and poor whites love peace. Poor people know they're going to die in a war. It's part of why they showed up to vote for him in record numbers! And then it turned out that the situation in Afghanistan was more complex than finding Osama, at his own house and not for example in a cave, and killing him. And that Iraq was not an accomplished mission, in truth. And that the US military still has people in it that wanted Star Wars 2 in Eastern Europe for some reason.
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Dec 30, 2016 00:17
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NewForumSoftware posted:you're right, everyone that doesn't share your opinion is an uneducated moron. thankfully not enough of us vote to matter there are plenty of people i disagree with who are very very smart, but this is about you, specifically also i'm guessing you either voted third party or didn't vote at all how does your ideological purity feel i know it's a comfort to me
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Dec 30, 2016 00:19
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stone cold posted:also i'm guessing you either voted third party or didn't vote at all i wrote in Obama
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Dec 30, 2016 00:21
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NewForumSoftware posted:i wrote in Obama glad ur vote really mattered, ace
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Dec 30, 2016 00:21
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stone cold posted:glad ur vote really mattered, ace i live in california so i went in knowing my vote didn't matter voting is cool and fun for local and state issues if it makes you feel any better i wish our(you live in CA too, no?) votes mattered more and think the country would be a better place with Hillary as president than Trump
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Dec 30, 2016 00:24
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NewForumSoftware posted:i live in california so i went in knowing my vote didn't matter my vote didn't matter but I voted for Hillary and also tried to flip some seats by me shame about that death penalty thing
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Dec 30, 2016 00:25
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stone cold posted:my vote didn't matter but I voted for Hillary and also tried to flip some seats by me  see its more fun if we post like friends than pretending im some giant rear end in a top hat because i think obama wasnt perfect
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Dec 30, 2016 00:29
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Why Hillary Lost She was up in the polls. She won all three debates. She had crowned the Winner Of far more Weeks than her opponent. She had temporarily thrown the FBI off her tail, vexing their investigation into her email treason. And she had won the Meme Primary. So why did Hillary bite it, after running a literal perfect campaign? Despite the Herculean efforts of her celebrity supporters, the out-of-work coal miners and factory workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin (the “Meth Belt”) were unmoved to vote for the first woman President. While working class people abstained from voting more than they broke for Trump, their silence speaks volumes. The deadly chemicals that workers are exposed to can cause a variety of cancers, but more importantly, they just make you a bad person. What’s more, the white working class has actually been doing great under Obama. They’ve enjoyed unparalleled levels of prosperity thanks to Washington’s shameful failure to pass Simpson-Bowles-type entitlement reform. Rural whites have simply been living it up with their fat Social Security checks and gaudy public schools, while the deficit suffers. Without having any economic issues to vote for, this prosperity freed whites to drive their Cadillacs to the polls and vote solely based on their gut racism and misogyny. But most of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Bernie Sanders and his army of basement-dwelling dirtbag leftists. Before he officially campaigned against her, Sanders was already harming Clinton. Since his arrival in the U.S. Senate in 2007, Sanders had been regarded by some as an unapologetic harasser of women. Knowing this, Hillary Clinton decided that instead of using a federal email server that Sanders could cyberbully her, her staff, and children on, she would employ a private server far away from Senator Sanders’ uncouth web techniques. Unfortunately, the FBI repeatedly harangued Secretary Clinton as this violated federal protocol, and she could not explain herself as it would incur more death threats and Pepe frogs from Bernie Bros. After his violent and misogynistic campaign, Sanders enacted a devious plot to sink the Democratic ticket by pretending to campaign for Hillary. Bernie knew that he was so tragically unpopular that just by appearing on the same dais as Hillary to scream about the “corrupt bankuhs” and the price of soup, he would send the Hillary’s poll numbers crashing. Well, mission accomplished, Bernie. You have ruined the country, the Democratic Party, and my career. I ate my Election Cake off the gum-caked floor of a dangerous and unacceptable subway station in the Lower East Side thanks to you. Going forward, if they ever want to win another election, the Democratic Party needs to fix both its Appeal Problem and the Bernie Problem. They can do this by tacking to the Center and spending the next four years compromising with Trump and Paul Ryan on policies that will completely destroy the wellbeing of the white working class. Thus, these voters will no longer have the luxury of voting for their ingrained hatreds, and will instead gravitate towards respectable moderates. Then it’s President Jim Webb. Finally, the Democrats need to silence Bernie and his army of mom’s basement leftists. They should immediately kick Bernie out of the Democratic Caucus as punishment for embarrassing Hillary, then convince Vermonters to replace him with a sensible moderate, like a Jim Jeffords-type Republican. Surely voters will reward such brave bipartisanship. To end the plague of Bernie Bros, Democrats could even work together with Trump on some of his proposals aimed at silencing critics. Both parties could collaborate on using the NSA to force Twitter to turn over the personal details of everyone who has ever shared a Jacobin article. If Democrats gain a reputation as compromisers, triangulators, and defenders of the sensible discourse and the Twitter mentions of homeless pundits, voters will reward them with both houses of Congress in 2018. But that will only happen if they have the maturity to sideline the Bernie Sanderses and the Keith Ellisons and the Elizabeth Warrens of their caucus and elevate the voices of the Heidi Heitkamps and the Jon Testers and the Joe Manchins. It’s time for a new generation of leadership. As President Obama observed, the Sun will still rise — hopefully out of West Virginia.
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Dec 30, 2016 00:43
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BarbarianElephant posted:Assuming Trump does 8 years, you are claiming Obama to be the best president for nearly 25 *years*. Big claims, Obama fan! These technical wins dont endear democrats to voters tower time posted:Why Hillary Lost For all the ways dem supporters nitpick at even the slightest flaw or balloon the most minute achievement, it's telling that a commanding and almost-positive post (sarcastic/ironic or not) like this compiling recent D talking points and stances manages to be so revolting. It's no wonder that they tend to focus on anything bad about their opponents.
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Dec 30, 2016 00:58
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If you looked at Trump and Clinton's platform side-by-side you'd see they profess more or less the same level of concern over the economy. They had the same bullet points that every politician has when they're trying to win over the working and middle class. Jobs good. Wallstreet bad. Nothing about that is controversial. The reason Trump is known in retrospect for pretending to care is that he gave his base someone to blame for their economic woes - globalism, refugees, illegal immigrants, he gave them a point to focus on other than his mealy-mouthed lies. Clinton was too concerned with criticizing Trump as a person that she never took the golden opportunity to rightly place the blame for the problems effecting them at the feet of people like Trump. His buffoonery worked in his favor in this instance - he's so cartoonishly evil that that he deflects any criticism directed at his party and his enablers by taking it upon himself, and his ego is big enough to shoulder that weight. Trump's campaign baited the trap, if inadvertently, and the Democrats fell for it. I don't know if "Bernie would have won". I think given the reasons that led to Clinton's downfall, unexpectedly losing her rust belt buffer states, it's not unrealistic to imagine him focusing some of that working class rage up instead of down. What we do know is that he gave his base a target for their frustrations, the same as Trump, and Bernie's case was a hell of a lot more compelling to your average person than Trump's "brown people are going to rape you and steal your jobs". I don't think "who would have won" is a compelling question at the moment, but "who's philosophy will guide the party towards wins in 2018 and 2020" is a much more useful question to ask going forward. Do we keep apologizing for Clinton or accept that change is needed? Deified Data fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Dec 30, 2016 |
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Dec 30, 2016 01:02
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