A strong majority of Democrats would cancel the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump if it meant President Obama could serve another term, a new poll found.
Data provided to The Hill by the conservative polling outlet WPA Research found that 67 percent of Democrats would take a third term for Obama over a potential Clinton administration.
Only 28 percent said they’re ready to move on from the Obama White House, while 6 percent are undecided.
I’m not sure exactly how it was worded. The way that article describes it, it does not sound good.
Now, it’s possible the poll was garbage… although it also looks like the WSJ poll about the GOP suspending the election also has some questionable methodology.
Yeah, I saw that article, though I couldn’t find the actual question text quoted anywhere. The way I read the article, “would cancel the election if…” is editorial embellishment, and “would take a third term for Obama over a potential Clinton administration.” is some approximation of the question that was asked. No way to be sure about that though.
It just isn’t the kind of question that gets at anyone’s hard-core views (and neither is the more recent one). I’d answer ‘hell yes’ - not because I really want to suspend the Constitution or anything, but I’d happily express in a poll the idea that the country would be waaay better of with 4 more years of Obama than with either a Trump or Clinton presidency.
If the question was 'would you favor suspending the laws of the universe to bring Bobby Kennedy back from the dead and make him president", I’d say yes to that, too - but I wouldn’t seriously expect it to happen.
Can anybody fucking see beyond team membership anymore? Also, are these repubs who would let Trump postpone the 2020 election the same ones who were wearing 18th century hats and ranting about the overweening power of the Federal Government when it rolled up under Obama?
2016 vs 2016 is a harder call. I can’t imagine either of them making any headway against a Republican Congress (Obama’s too focused on playing by the rules to defeat obvious cheaters, while Hillary could suggest a law banning child rape and Congressional Republicans would vote against it. I mean, presumably not all of them are into that, but still. Killary etc), but goddamn if I don’t kinda love listening to the big BO talk even to this day.
State and local Republicans have expanded early voting in GOP-dominated areas and restricted it in Democratic areas, an IndyStar investigation has found, prompting a significant change in Central Indiana voting patterns.
From 2008 to 2016, GOP officials expanded early voting stations in Republican dominated Hamilton County, IndyStar’s analysis found, and decreased them in the state’s biggest Democratic hotbed, Marion County.
That made voting more convenient in GOP areas for people with transportation issues or busy schedules. And the results were immediate.
Most telling, Hamilton County saw a 63 percent increase in absentee voting from 2008 to 2016, while Marion County saw a 26 percent decline. Absentee ballots are used at early voting stations.
Population growth and other factors may have played a role, but Hamilton County Clerk Kathy Richardson, a Republican, told IndyStar the rise in absentee voting in Hamilton County was largely a result of the addition of two early voting stations, which brought the total to three.
“It was a great concept to open those (voting stations),” Richardson said, adding that the turnout might have increased with the addition of even more voting machines.
Other Central Indiana Republican strongholds, including Boone, Johnson and Hendricks counties, also have added early voting sites — and enjoyed corresponding increases in absentee voter turnout.
But not Marion County, which tends to vote Democratic, and has a large African-American population.
Republicans’ assault on Marion County voters was methodical and coordinated. First, in 2010 and 2012, the lone Republican on the county’s election board blocked efforts to maintain three voting sites for federal elections, reducing the number to one. Then, in 2013, the Republican-dominated state Legislature passed a law that effectively barred “counties with populations over 325,000” from opening more than one early voting site. The bill was obviously designed to target Marion County, in addition to Lake and Allen counties, which also have sizable minority populations. County election boards could only override the law with the unanimous consent of all members. The Republican member of the Marion County election board has consistently refused to allow the opening of more than one early voting site.
A lawsuit filed by Common Cause Indiana and the NAACP’s Indianapolis branch alleges that Marion County’s early voting rollback disproportionately burdens black citizens’ right to vote in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection and Due Process clauses, as well as the Voting Rights Act. Similar suits have succeeded before: In July 2016, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down North Carolina’s “monster” suppression law, which, among other things, slashed early voting in predominantly black areas. The court wrote that North Carolina’s law, which was passed by a Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, seemed to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”
The unfortunate reality is that Republicans are suppressing minority voting rights with such speed and expertise that the occasional legal victory cannot reverse the broader trend. After the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees gutted the VRA in 2013, many jurisdictions newly freed from federal oversight promptly cut early voting and reduced the number of polling places in minority areas. It is extremely difficult to challenge these closures in the absence of a robust VRA.
Not on the evil side. Because they’ve honestly become so maleficent they can’t step back and look at issues or policy or the commonwealth anymore, because if they did they’d have to acknowledge their own guilt.
And yes, I fully understand that’s what they pretend is the case on the Democrat side, but the Democrats are merely stupid and venal, not outright full-bore evil.
This explains all the false equivalency bullshit over the last few years. It’s due to people being unwilling to accept culpability. This is also why there is no compromising anymore, because the so-called right no longer has any conservative ideology to contest policy; they have Big Lie tactics concealing what is otherwise naked self-aggrandizing powerlust.
Obviously no state attorney will prosecute the state government in this situation. Someone with a lot of money has to take the excruciating path through district, circuit and supreme courts to stop this kind of thing. Quite possibly there are lawsuits in train; and also quite possibly the various groups that would otherwise litigate are tapped out due to all the other fires they’re trying to put out at the same time. Of course the Democrats should be the ones in the vanguard here, but so far apart from a few speeches they haven’t done anything that I’m aware of.
The problem is it’s pretty much free and easy for state legislatures to do any goddamn thing they want, but the way to stop them is slow and expensive.
Were you to ask me, before the election, would you prefer another Obama term over a potential Clinton or Trump term? I would absolutely have answered yes.
Were you to ask me would I like to change the laws to allow Obama to have said third term? I would have in no uncertain terms said no.
There is a gulf of difference between preferring Obama over changing or ignoring the law to allow it. That is the Rubicon, and crossing it is a big deal.
Let me flip this, how would you respond if the question were ‘would you prefer to have Ronald Reagan as President over Clinton or Trump’? Now most of us would probably balk at the idea for a host of reasons. But to many conservatives? They probably would answer yes. This does not mean they wish to unleash the seventh seal and let the dead walk the earth to achieve that, though I’m sure a few are pawing the Necronomicon at the thought. Mostly it means that the hypothetical means they like that person more than either of the two presented options, and wish they could have someone like that instead.
So the exact question is dearly important to know how worried to be.
My point is that it does not matter how the question is phrased, because it is so obviously just hypothetical.
Of course, if something similar actually can up for a vote, I have no doubt that at least 25% of Americans would vote to suspend the Constitution if they saw it as furthering their own tribe. We’ve seen how many Americans can talk themselves into voting for something outlandish.
I ran into someone this weekend who claimed that antifa were just communist activists under a different name and they were every bit as dangerous and central to our politics as the white supremacists marching.
