Timex
5002
I’m not really sure where you are getting this information, but it’s kind of absurd. Rubio is a Catholic. He isn’t a young earth creationist. This came up once before back in 2012 and he had to actually go out and specifically state that he believes the earth to be 4.5 billion years old.
My impression from driving around the coastal towns last weekend was that Kasich and Bush were both very well supported on lawn signs but things may have shifted since Iowa. Also the coast may not be representative as it tends to be wealthier.
On the Dem side of things, I think Bernie will not do as well as some of the polls suggest, with Clinton probably closing the gap to something less than a 10% margin.
I actually volunteered making get out the vote calls for Bernie tonight and the word I got from campaign headquarters was that Clinton had dispatched her entire ground team to New Hampshire and they were being very aggressive going after Bernie supporters and trying to get them to switch. They say this is how she came back from behind against Obama in 2008 where she was trailing by ten a week before and ended up winning it. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh apparently came up with another 800 volunteers to press on her behalf as well.
Also, not that it matters but the Iowa Democrats have finally relented and are investigating irregularities from Tuesday’s primary. Not that it matters in terms of delegates but it seems like the Iowa Democratic Party was reported to have adjusted the math in several precincts according to precinct captains, all in favor of Clinton. Iowa Democrats are apparently pretty pissed off. It would help the narrative for Bernie if the adjusted total has him winning.
Hawaii has had public financing for election for decades, it has been little used, although it was last used by our current governor. But he didn’t really have a lot of competition since Hawaii is one party state.
I think public financing is an awful idea both in practice and in principle. In practice, even though dozens of state and score of cities have had them for decades they don’t make any difference. The work for a few years but never keep up with the cost of campaigning and are easily circumvented. The Presidential financing participation has dropped 29% in 1977 to 6% (the percentage of people who check the give $3 to presidential campaign funding, even though it doesn’t increase the amount of taxes you owe.) and worked longer than most.
As a matter of principle, I think it eliminates an important benchmark for judging the effectiveness of a political leader. The essence of leadership is getting people to things they don’t want to do in the short term for the benefit of the larger group in the long run (“men we need to take that hill and some of you are going to die”). If you can’t persuade people to give you money then I severely doubt that you’ll be effective in persuading people in going along with your calls for making short-term sacrifices. Now being a great fundraiser doesn’t translate into great political leader, but if you suck at it it’s a reasonable way of weeding out bad leaders ahead of time.
Basically the Federal government matches the first $250 of your campaign contributions in any form except for large bundles of cash. But you have to agree to spend less than the inflation adjusted campaign limit for spending. In 2008, McCain, the consistent advocate of campaign financing accept the limitation and got public funding, where as Obama didn’t so he was allowed to spend much more than McCain.
Based off his policy positions and statements. Didn’t realize he actually finally answered the evolution/age of the earth question (his first answer was “I’m not a scientist.”) I know he’s a Catholic. He advocates abortion without exception. That’s a Catholic position. Repeal court ruling on gay marriage. (That too a Catholic position although maybe that’s changed with Pope Francis.) But he is not substantively different from most Tea Party positions.
I could be wrong. He may in fact not have any substance. :P
How did that go? I’ve always been afraid to do that. People’s political positions scare me lol. But yeah the Clinton machine is out in full force. I’m disappointed with some of the establishment Democratic response to Bernie (in particular Howard Dean.) It’s possible to support one candidate without tearing down the other. (haha that sounds hopelessly naive.)
I still think Kasich and Bush end up doing well on Tuesday. Enough to eclipse Rubio? I don’t know, there are a lot of late breaking voters that probably aren’t showing up in the polling data, although I have read that it’s still seems to be a race for second as Trump’s position remain consistent according to internal polling numbers.
In the UK it can be illegal to make a hate speech:
(and all those other countries have some legal standard on it as well). Off course we all live under the iron-boot of the Queen, spending much of our time grovelling and begging for mercy, but we don’t kill one another as much as you do in usa, so maybe it can be an ok thing (to set standards on hate speech)?
“Bern your Enthusiasm” last night on SNL was pretty great.
Has Trump started spinning the debate as an attack on him by the media, and have plants in the audience to boo him?
Alstein
5011
Hate speech is something that can easily be used as a club, and might turn on the people who want it in the first place.
Imagine such a law in the US, and how religious fundie Republicans would use such a law. American ideals on speech is something Europe should emulate, not the other way around.
Cecily Strong killed it as Susie.
Tim_N
5013
That was so great to watch, I love curb your enthusiasm. Thanks for linking it.
The Funkhouser was pretty on the nose too.
I loved that it was a Complete Curb episode in like 5 minutes. How often does SNL have an actual ending to a sketch?
Alstein
5015
Saw this just now on my feed. Explains the anger of the younger crowd well.
The difference is that I am willing to punt on 2016 to maximize my chance of getting a real win in 2020. Hillary winning does nothing for me different than a Republican, and she has a high shot of screwing things up due to low competence.
Couple things here. A Republican win means any future or potential left/progressive/liberal legislation can be invalidated by a supermajority, very conservative Supreme Court as well as lower federal courts that also have enormous impact and power. And those Courts will remain that way for decades. Another thing, it’s a fallacy to think that a GOP President will do so awful they would automatically be a one term President. I mean, you’d be hard pressed to find a President who performed worse than Bush during his first term and he still won. It’s hard to unseat an incumbent President - you’d basically need a deep recession to vote a sitting President out of office (GDP for the often beafied Reagan grew by 3.5%. For the much maligned Jimmy Carter? 3.3. But the economy in that election year sucked.)
In the larger context, while I agree with Sanders on virtually every policy position, I really would hate to see the progressive/liberal movement turn into a mirror of the Tea Party. There should be room for debate and nuance and hell even compromise on different positions (i.e. there can be such things as moderate progressives.) Of course there can be too much compromise (Bill Clinton e.g. on welfare reform, criminal justice) or poor compromise (Obama’s first term), but compromise ought not to be axiomatically dismissed if for no other reason that our federal, bicameral political framework requires it. We are stuck with what we have, and that’s not going to change any time soon. (It’s for these reasons why I may still end up voting for Clinton on Tuesday.)
All that said, that column you linked is pretty good. :)
Alstein
5017
I view Hillary as too much compromise - she’s a limousine liberal who is only progressive on the issues that do me no good.
Sanders is actually quite willing to compromise- most of his congressional work is done through compromise, and his track record of getting things done and being pragmatic is superior to Hillary’s. I’m not opposed to compromise. I am opposed to a candidate who seems to support everything I oppose, and reinforce a status quo that is slowly making things worse for me year by year. Also, no matter what I think about Hillary- I will vote Democratic for those downballot offices, I’m not going to stay home or vote Republican for Congress. My opposition is to Hillary herself and the Dem leadership, not the party itself. If Hillary becomes president , I will hope she proves me wrong, I am not going to wish for Hillary’s failure.
There are some Republicans who would scare me into voting for Hillary, but not all Republicans.
Timex
5018
Honestly, their anger is not realy poorly placed.
The Baby-boomers often seem to get themselves confused with their parents, the greatest generation. The boomers basically screwed shit up for decades, repeatedly. They didn’t beat the Nazis, or the Soviets. They started a bunch of wars that didn’t really go anywhere. They took the infrastructure built by their parents, and basically ran it into the ground.
They don’t really have any credibility to try and tell anyone how things should work.
I wish people would stop using “-splaining” as a thing. It just makes me think of “mansplaining” and makes me want to ignore everything the person is saying. It says more to me about the person using the term than the person being accused of doing the act.
Scuzz
5021
Does that mean as a liberal you can’t really talk about the conservatives?
