Hillary Clinton is Done

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DavidJames said:
Now she has to distinguish herself from Obama. Now they can't be basic liberal positions. Keep on digging and spinning. It's hilarious.
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Right? He doesn't even notice that he keeps moving the goalposts, a little bit at a time. No matter what is introduced here, sunmaster (like 16.5 in the email thread), will handwave it away because it won't fit his ever changing criteria. It's never ending. Entertaining, but never ending.

First it was she didn't have any policies, then something about her God awful juices, then she didn't have any "interesting" policies, etc. It just keeps going until finally the box is so small that nothing will work, and then he claims victory and the conversation is over.
 
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sunmaster14 said:
How does any of that distinguish her from Obama, or any other liberal who would be President? These are generic policies that every liberal has to adopt in order to get past the primaries. Fine, all policitians will tailor their platform to make themselves electable. But is there one single policy that distinguishes her? One single policy position that is even slightly innovative or controversial?
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Oh, so she doesn't actually intend to pursue these policies if elected? Where are getting that from? Even if she means it on just half this stuff, that's still 100% better than what the Republican/conservative position is, which is precisely opposite on everything. I don't support Clinton primarily because of who she is and what she's done. I support her because her public policy goals match mine. It doesn't hurt that she is reasonably competent too. Do I wish it were somebody else?
 
More shouting about guns

http://time.com/4101947/hillary-clinton-guns-democrats/

Seven years ago, when Hillary Clinton was fighting a grueling Democratic primary battle against then-Sen. Barack Obama, she boasted of duck hunting and championed the Second Amendment. Clinton’s campaign in Indiana sent around negative mailers pasted with rifles, accusing Obama of being weak on gun rights. She talked of learning to shoot a gun as a child.

“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl,” Clinton said in April 2008. “It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are.”

That year, she went on to overwhelmingly win states in the Democratic primary with rural whites, from Pennsylvania to Kentucky and West Virginia...
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Think those same people will support her next year?
 
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hgc said:
Oh, so she doesn't actually intend to pursue these policies if elected? Where are getting that from? Even if she means it on just half this stuff, that's still 100% better than what the Republican/conservative position is, which is precisely opposite on everything. I don't support Clinton primarily because of who she is and what she's done. I support her because her public policy goals match mine. It doesn't hurt that she is reasonably competent too. Do I wish it were somebody else?
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Problem isn't as much whether her policy goals match yours or her constituents; it's whether she can get it done feasibly or through the congressional opposition. Obama's policies tended to be a mixed bag, particularly when it came to the corporate and lobbyist promises. He is however slamming through to make good on his position with Gitmo, and made good on his healthcare goals... mostly, whether people agree with his methods is another matter.

Unlike Mr. "O" though she's not making skyhigh promises of excluding lobbyist or the like so while I expect myself to be pessimistic about her prospects to really get the higher aiming objectives in place, I'm not sure [yet] if my criticism of her policies will be at the same level as it was in 2008's round.
 
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Grizzly Bear said:
Problem isn't as much whether her policy goals match yours or her constituents; it's whether she can get it done feasibly or through the congressional opposition. Obama's policies tended to be a mixed bag, particularly when it came to the corporate and lobbyist promises. He is however slamming through to make good on his position with Gitmo, and made good on his healthcare goals... mostly, whether people agree with his methods is another matter.

Unlike Mr. "O" though she's not making skyhigh promises of excluding lobbyist or the like so while I expect myself to be pessimistic about her prospects to really get the higher aiming objectives in place, I'm not sure [yet] if my criticism of her policies will be at the same level as it was in 2008's round.
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Yeah, she may have problems in Congress, especially given that it's unlikely the Dems will control the House in her first term. But she can get some of it through with the rough and tumble of negotiation (from strength, unlike Obama so many times). Also, Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Supreme Court. The only hope of ever again regulating money in politics is to out-majority the Roberts court.
 
sunmaster14 said:
I don't know where these Democratic "strategists" get such ideas. Gun control is a completely losing issue politically. I can only hope they keep banging their heads against that smoking steel barrel.
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Gun control is going to be the gay marriage of the next decade.

It's a polarizing issue and maybe for some it's a wedge issue, but change is going to come.
 
hgc said:
Oh, so she doesn't actually intend to pursue these policies if elected? Where are getting that from? Even if she means it on just half this stuff, that's still 100% better than what the Republican/conservative position is, which is precisely opposite on everything. I don't support Clinton primarily because of who she is and what she's done. I support her because her public policy goals match mine. It doesn't hurt that she is reasonably competent too. Do I wish it were somebody else?
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From your perspective it makes perfect sense to support her over a Republican. And if you think she is the most electable Democrat, it makes sense for you to support her over any Democrat too. My point isn't so much that she isn't the optimal candidate for you (taking into account electoral prospects). My point is that I think she has extremely flexible principles, and that, as a consequence, you should expect to be disappointed when she abandons certain contested goals upon contact with the enemy.

To tell you the truth, I think Obama has the same problem, although probably to a lesser degree. If he had really cared about certain policies, he would have worked with Congress (which involves schmoozing and horse-trading) to facilitate enactment. Instead, he was more interested in having confrontations to whip up his base. Personally, I think Obama has been somewhat of a blessing for Republicans, at least on domestic issues. He's been completely incompetent at enacting a liberal agenda, even though a savvier politician could have gotten almost anything accomplished given his vast reservoir of political capital in 2009. On foreign policy issues, Obama's been a complete disaster of course. Far worse than I had thought possible actually. I expect Hillary would be a vast improvement. She at least knows the difference between friends and enemies.
 
sunmaster14 said:
To tell you the truth, I think Obama has the same problem, although probably to a lesser degree. If he had really cared about certain policies, he would have worked with Congress (which involves schmoozing and horse-trading) to facilitate enactment.
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Nonsense. It is the GOP that is unwilling to compromise. You may return to your echo chamber now.
 
Loss Leader said:
Gun control is going to be the gay marriage of the next decade.

It's a polarizing issue and maybe for some it's a wedge issue, but change is going to come.
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NFW. Personal experience trumps the abstract. Gay marriage was inevitable because the personal experience people had with gay people was that they were perfectly nice and normal people in every meaningful way, and there was no reason to deny them their rights or their happiness for abstract reasons. Gun rights work the same way. Personal experience shows that gun owners are perfectly nice and normal people in every meaningful way, and there is no reason to deny them their rights or their happiness for abstract reasons. Who the hell thinks, "Oh, some nutjob just killed 10 people in Oregon, so I'm now scared of my neighbor, and now I want his guns taken away?" Pretty much nobody, I bet.

Like I said, I hope the Democrats keep bashing their collective head against this issue. They keep deluding themselves into believing that if only they had enough money to match the "gun lobby" then everything will change. Nope. It has nothing to do with money or the NRA or the so-called gun lobby. As usual, they have causality reversed. Organizations like the NRA exist and are powerful because the political support is already there. Gun control will go nowhere because there's a critical mass of people in this country who consider the right to own a gun to be fundamental, and they will not allow it to be infringed.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Organizations like the NRA exist and are powerful because the political support is already there. Gun control will go nowhere because there's a critical mass of people in this country who consider the right to own a gun to be fundamental, and they will not allow it to be infringed.
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I think it's a chicken-and-egg thing, really. There's no question that the NRA is a powerful, driving force in American politics. But at the same time, support for gun rights goes way beyond the NRA and would continue to exist even if the NRA imploded.

A parallel could be made to AIPAC, another incredibly powerful lobby. While it's undeniable they drive a lot of US policy towards Israel, I think the US would be backing Israel even if they never existed.
 
sunmaster14 said:
From your perspective it makes perfect sense to support her over a Republican. And if you think she is the most electable Democrat, it makes sense for you to support her over any Democrat too. My point isn't so much that she isn't the optimal candidate for you (taking into account electoral prospects). My point is that I think she has extremely flexible principles, and that, as a consequence, you should expect to be disappointed when she abandons certain contested goals upon contact with the enemy.

To tell you the truth, I think Obama has the same problem, although probably to a lesser degree. If he had really cared about certain policies, he would have worked with Congress (which involves schmoozing and horse-trading) to facilitate enactment...
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Up to this point in your post, I largely, if not entirely, agree with you, after that the extremist partisan sneaks out and derails your considerations.
 
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sunmaster14 said:
From your perspective it makes perfect sense to support her over a Republican. And if you think she is the most electable Democrat, it makes sense for you to support her over any Democrat too. My point isn't so much that she isn't the optimal candidate for you (taking into account electoral prospects). My point is that I think she has extremely flexible principles, and that, as a consequence, you should expect to be disappointed when she abandons certain contested goals upon contact with the enemy.

To tell you the truth, I think Obama has the same problem, although probably to a lesser degree. If he had really cared about certain policies, he would have worked with Congress (which involves schmoozing and horse-trading) to facilitate enactment. Instead, he was more interested in having confrontations to whip up his base. Personally, I think Obama has been somewhat of a blessing for Republicans, at least on domestic issues. He's been completely incompetent at enacting a liberal agenda, even though a savvier politician could have gotten almost anything accomplished given his vast reservoir of political capital in 2009. On foreign policy issues, Obama's been a complete disaster of course. Far worse than I had thought possible actually. I expect Hillary would be a vast improvement. She at least knows the difference between friends and enemies.
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Funny enough, I have the complete opposite view of what happened with Obama and the Republican Congress. I think he missed the signs. He missed the signal when Republican leaders met on Jan 20 2009 with Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich and planned out the sabotage of the Obama presidency. Obama missed that GOP members voted in lockstep against every single proposal put forth or supported by him, even those that they would have supported in the past. He missed that certain members, posing as moderates (Snow, Collins), would draw him into a compromise position, and then abandon their own compromise after he had already given ground. No, I think Obama screwed the pooch in bending over backwards to try to find accommodation and compromise. He did not bargain from a position of strength. Over and over, he opened negotiations with an offer of compromise, rather than doling out compromise in likewise exchange.

Clinton has made it clear that she will not fall for the same trap. She has said forthrightly that the Republicans are the adversary, and I agree with her. Will she be limited in what she can achieve? Sure. Will she negotiate and compromise? Absolutely. But, I think she'll do a better job of it than Obama did.
 
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