2016 US Presidential Elections | Trump Wins

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InfiniteBoredom said:
I think there might be buyer remorse at play, currently, but even when it was blatantly obvious she was going to lose, there were still polls that have her above, when the stories about her campaign's infighting were plastered on the front pages every other day.

The only polls that matter now are states with primary still to be held.
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That's a good term to describe it. I'd agree I think that's what's happening, possibly because a lot of voters would like a lot of Sanders says but really can't stomach the rest/think he's unfit for the office.
 
Innnnnnnteresting. 5 minute meeting with the pope, but no photos. Is that enough to finagle an endorsement-by-proxy with a bit of spin?

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36061855

More details for the Guardian, they stayed in his residence on the same floor and "carried their own bags :D

Sanders and his wife, Jane, stayed overnight at the papal residence, in the Domus Santa Marta hotel in the Vatican gardens, on the same floor as the pope, and were spotted at the hotel reception carrying their own bags.
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/16/bernie-sanders-meets-pope-francis-at-the-vatican

Washington Post says it was a planned, private meeting.
 
unchanged_lineup said:
Innnnnnnteresting. 5 minute meeting with the pope, but no photos. Is that enough to finagle an endorsement-by-proxy with a bit of spin?

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36061855

More details for the Guardian, they stayed in his residence on the same floor and "carried their own bags :D



http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/16/bernie-sanders-meets-pope-francis-at-the-vatican

Washington Post says it was a planned, private meeting.
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I'm sure the Pope didn't want any part of being perceived as endorsing Sanders, but at the same time, wanted to quickly meet him. They seem like two peas from the same pod, both politically and morally.
 
Raoul said:
I'm sure the Pope didn't want any part of being perceived as endorsing Sanders, but at the same time, wanted to quickly meet him. They seem like two peas from the same pod, both politically and morally.
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I'd agree. And I do think it's as close to an endorsement as you can get. I have zero faith in Sander's people being able to spin it well though :D They've made a lot of gaffes lately.
 
Clooney's neighbour, the founder of the 99cents store, is holding his own party called the 99% party, $27 tickets to fundraise for Bernie. :lol:
 
This is becoming such a farce. It's really cringey as feck. I don't want people as presidents who can't debate with eachother without using insults.
 
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/trump-likely-to-win-west-virginia-but-lose-delegates-222036

This year, a new restriction that isn’t mentioned on the ballot could cause even greater turmoil for Trump. State Republicans decided to require geographic diversity among delegates — no more than seven statewide delegates may hail from a single Congressional district, and no more than two can come from a single county. Yet the first 22 names on Trump’s list include nine from populous Kanawha County. If voters follow traditional patterns, seven of them would be ineligible to go to the convention.
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And they said superdelegates are bad :lol:

The meltdown from the Don will be epic, first Colorado, now this.
 
Absolutely wonderful article by @Ubik 's favourite journalist
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/14...r-on-their-own-core-citizens-united-argument/

FOR YEARS, THE Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United was depicted by Democrats as the root of all political evil. But now, the core argument embraced by the Court’s conservatives to justify their ruling has taken center stage in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — because Clinton supporters, to defend the huge amount of corporate cash on which their candidate is relying, frequently invoke that very same reasoning.
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A primary argument of the Obama Justice Department and Democrats generally in order to uphold that campaign finance law was that corporate expenditures are so corrupting of the political process that limits are justified even if they infringe free speech. In rejecting that view, this was the key argument of Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the five-judge conservative majority (emphasis added):

For the reasons explained above, we now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

Does that sound familiar? It should. That key argument of the right-wing justices in Citizens United has now become the key argument of the Clinton campaign and its media supporters to justify her personal and political receipt of millions upon millions of dollars in corporate money: “Expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” — at least when the candidate in question is Hillary Clinton.
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Conversely, the once-beloved Citizens United dissent from the Court’s liberals, written by Justice Stevens, was emphatic in its key claim: that there are many other forms of corruption brought about by corporate campaign expenditures beyond such quid pro quo — i.e., bribery — transactions. Their argument was that large amounts of corporate cash are almost inevitably corrupting, and certainly undermine trust in the political system, because of the many different ways (well beyond overt quid pro quos) that corporations convert their expenditures into undue influence and access:
cudissent-300x296.png
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Bernie fans shower Hillary's motorcade with dollar bills en route to the George Clooney fundraiser....

 
This sounds like a topic Obama is going to have to seriously deal with, and the next president as well. Would like to hear what the candidates have to say. Seems like the Saudis are on the verge of full on blackmail.

. . . You have to admit, Osama a Saudi from one of their most powerful, well connected families, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, the outrageous amount of Saudi money and support for the exportation of this extremely conservative wahhabi version of Islam, and most suspicious of all, those 28 pages of unreleased material in the 9/11 report that most certainly must contain some damaging evidence against the Saudis.

Hmmm . . .

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/sa...-passes-911-bill-exposing-saudi-role-attacks/

Saudi Arabia Threatens to Crash the Dollar if Congress Exposes their Role in 9/11 Attacks

–A bombshell report by the New York Times has revealed that Saudi Arabia, the third largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills in the world behind China and Japan, has warned the Obama administration and Congress that they will begin liquidating their U.S. assets if Congress passes a bill allowing for the Saudi government to be held responsible for their role in the terror attacks of 9/11.

Make no mistake that this is blackmail, as the Saudis are estimated to hold three-quarters of a trillion dollars in T-bills and the sudden divestment would almost certainly crash the dollar as well as global markets along with it.

Perhaps this explains Obama’s unwavering support for the Wahhabi regime, as congressional aides and administration officials have confirmed that the President has been lobbying Congress to block passage of the bill. Administration officials have warned Senators that if the Saudis make good on their threat, there would be extreme economic and diplomatic fallout. (cont)
 
George Clooney, who hosted big-money fundraisers for Hillary Clinton in California this weekend, has called such fundraising “obscene”.

In response Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s opponent for the Democratic nomination, said he respected Clooney’s “integrity and honesty on this issue” and added: “One of the great tragedies is that big money is buying elections.”

Clinton leads Sanders by double digits in most polls regarding New York, which stages its primary on Tuesday.

The issue of fundraising has been a constant on the campaign trail, as Sanders heralds his reliance on small donors and lack of any fundraising Super Pac. Clooney’s events, however, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, attracted criticism from the Sanders campaign and, on Friday in San Francisco, protests outside the venue.

Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, the actor was asked by host Chuck Todd whether the sums involved in his events, such as $353,400 a couple to be a “co-chair”, were, as critics and protesters have said, obscene.

“Yes,” he said. “I think it’s an obscene amount of money. I think – you know that we had some protesters last night when we pulled up in San Francisco and they’re right to protest, they’re absolutely right, it is an obscene amount of money.

“The Sanders campaign when they talk about it is absolutely right. It’s ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree, completely.”

Sanders also appeared on Sunday morning shows, telling CNN’s State of the Union he had “a lot of respect for George Clooney’s honesty and integrity on this issue”.

“One of the great tragedies is that big money is buying elections,” he said, adding that party leaders should not be “responsive to the needs of Wall Street and wealthy campaign contributors”.

“There is something wrong when a few people, in this case wealthy individuals are able to contribute unbelievably large sums of money,” Sanders said. “That is not what democracy is about. That is a movement toward oligarchy.”

“This is the issue of American politics today. Do we have a government that represents all of us or represents the 1%?”

Sanders was asked, and declined, to name a piece of legislation or decision which Clinton had made when in office that might have been influenced by large donations to her campaigns.

In San Francisco on Friday, nearly 200 Sanders supporters protested outside a fundraiser staged by the tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar and hosted by Clooney and his wife, Amal. Tickets cost from $33,400 to $353,400.

Bill Sandberg, a 29-year-old protester, told the Guardian he had just been laid off from Zedo, an ad tech startup.

“Bernie’s actually for the people,” he said. “Hillary’s just bought and sold.”

n NBC, Clooney, who said he would fundraise for Sanders if he won the nomination, rejected accusations from some protesters that he was a “corporate shill”.

“That’s one of the funnier things you could say about me,” he said.

He said that most of the money he had helped raise for Clinton would actually go to down-ticket Democrats running for Congress. If a Democratic president could get the right justice appointed to the supreme court, he argued, then the US could again begin to separate money from politics.

“We need to take the Senate back because we need to confirm a supreme court justice, because that fifth vote on the supreme court can overturn Citizens United and get this obscene, ridiculous amount of money out so I never have to do a fundraiser again.”

The actor added that he does not enjoy the fundraisers, and linked the work of his foundation, which traces the wealth of corrupt politicians, to that of the Panama Papers and the supreme court case. “I think Citizens United is one of the worst laws passed since I’ve been around.”

Clooney also showed a willingness to meet pro-Sanders protesters in San Francisco halfway – or at least to indulge in some self-deprecation with them “Their T-shirts said, you know, ‘You sucked as Batman,’” he said.

“And I was like, ‘Well, you kind of got me on that one.’”
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...oney-hillary-clinton-fundraiser-obscene-money

I appreciate Clooney on saying this. He was getting a lot of criticism. People were saying that while Bernie went to meet Pope Francis, Hillary went to meet Pope George Clooney.
 
Citizen United inordinately hurts Dems in down-ballot races. This is a proven fact.

It's in the selfish interest of the Dems to get that law repealed. And in order to do that, they must win the presidency. You don't win the presidency without Super-PACs nowadays. Excluding yourself from using those is, as Colbert said, bringing a spoon to a knife fight.
 
InfiniteBoredom said:
Citizen United inordinately hurts Dems in down-ballot races. This is a proven fact.

It's in the selfish interest of the Dems to get that law repealed. And in order to do that, they must win the presidency. You don't win the presidency without Super-PACs nowadays. Excluding yourself from using those is, as Colbert said, bringing a spoon to a knife fight.
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This makes Sanders' campaign all the more impressive, given that he's managed to go from almost nothing to challenging for the Democratic nomination, and would have a very good chance of winning the Presidency if nominated.
 
Nikhil said:
How is NY looking now? Will this closed primary be a tight race? Bernie just had a rally of 28,000. Is he in with a chance?
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Don't think so, he's drawing in huge number but as it's a closed primary so he's at a disadvantage because he draws well with independents and dem leaning independents, but only registered democrats can vote.

Also the NY registration closed some time last year, so a lot of his new supporters couldn't register to vote. Bernie was virtually unknown and about 60 points down when the registration closed.

Not to mention, as with other primaries, there has been a large number of people finding there registration has been changed, and i believe someone is trying to raise an injunction over that.

I think he'll lose by double digits unfortunately. Anything less than that is a great result, anything close to an equal split is a miracle.
 
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