The 2016 United States Presidential Election

This is why the senate is more important than electing the first female president. The democrats need to up their game in house and state races if they hope to survive, and they need a major ground game to focus on 2018 ... because the next census is 2020 and results WILL be used to gerrymander districts.And that "ground game" does not include an favors for corporations, it must be focused on restoring the middle class and lower economic groups to restore the "American Dream" for the working people. And that's another problem that I cannot expect\trust the current DINO DNC and Hillary to do. She is much more likely to try packing the seats with pro-corporation pro big business types unless held to the fire by progressives in the Senate (With Bernie and Elizabeth leading the charge).We will likely see the GOP rush to approve Obama's last (corporatist) nomination so that she won't have a SCOTUS seat to fill.Enjoy

Well, as we can see from the picture below, Hillary certainly has "foreign experience" that Democrat voters are certainly proud of.However, I am curious . . .Do you think the viewpoints of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi mothers, who lost many of their children due to Hillary’s enthusiastic support of Bush Jr.s immoral and illegal Iraq invasion, would also consider Hillary to be a credible potential President?Or, because these Iraqi mothers are dark-skinned, and, well, you know, . . . just women, we should, naturally, disregard their first-hand opinions about Hillary Clinton?

Well noted. The time to start fixing this stuff is over this and the next couple of elections. And to emphasize the difficulty, it is necessary to start working on state races in states that are already gerrymandered. Forget the presidential race. And probably forget those states in the deep south as irrevocably lost. States like NC and others must begin taking back state houses and governor's races now.

My prediction is that they won't get a chance to do that. If Hilary wins, I expect her and Obama to agree to let Hilary make the pick. I know that Obama has said that he won't do that, but he must say that. I expect that Garland's name will be withdrawn.Beyond that, there is a 100 percent chance that Hillary, if elected, will have the opportunity to select at least one more Justice.

It's interesting that most Canadians probably couldn't name even one member of our Supreme Court. It seems to me that impartiality and anonymity go hand in hand.

In today's NYT Paul Krugman asks Is There Life After Trump? Some excerpts:

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The 2016 presidential campaign has revealed dark and disturbing things about not only Donald J. Trump but also the party that nominated him.
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But if these forces are not defeated...the Republican Party will continue to inflict great harm on our republic.
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[Sarah Palin] has become the proud personification of thoughtlessness...A party that produces Ms. Palin as its vice-presidential nominee and Mr. Trump as its nominee is at war with reason.
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Over the years a large number of Republicans...embraced a style of politics characterized by unceasing combativeness, intemperance and a deep hostility toward compromise and temperamental moderation.
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Particularly since the election of Barack Obama, we have witnessed on the Republican side the rise of fear, anger and apocalyptic rhetoric.
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Mr. Trump’s success has emboldened ugly forces within the Republican Party that had been confined to its fringes. Demonizing people of other races, cultures and faiths succeeded; demeaning women and war heroes succeeded. The fact that we’re now so familiar with his offenses shouldn’t inure us to how damning they are.
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But in the end, [Republicans] were all caught up in Mr. Trump’s ethical confusion and moral corruption. They didn’t pull him up; he pulled them down.
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When you are part of a political movement that chose Donald Trump as your nominee, some serious self-reflection is in order.
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Republicans need to wrestle with more fundamental questions first: Will their party choose as its leaders people who respect democratic institutions and traditions, or not; who conceive of America as a welcoming society or as one that is racially and religiously closed; who are committed to helping or exploiting the weak and vulnerable; who admire or oppose tyrants; who respect truth or view it in purely utilitarian ways; who abhor ignorance or embrace it? Will Republicans gravitate toward leaders who have authoritarian tendencies, who incite violence in their followers, and whose personalities are vindictive, cruel and disordered?
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Can it make its own inner peace with living in an increasingly diverse and nonwhite America? Does it conceive of its role as tamping down or inflaming ugly passions? Does it believe in a just social order or not?
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The next few months will tell us a lot about whether Mr. Trump and Trumpism were an anomaly or are now the new norm of the party that Lincoln helped create.
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The next few months will tell us a lot about whether Mr. Trump and Trumpism were an anomaly or are now the new norm of the party that Lincoln helped create.

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Even simple decency seems to be victim, as some posts in this thread reflect.--Percy

I suspect that a large percentage of Americans cannot name the Supreme Court justices. Not much of a thing to inspire pride.ABE:Here is a 2012 Survey:Most Americans Can't Name a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Survey Says - WSJMost Americans Can’t Name a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Survey SaysAll of that said, a quick google suggests that there is plenty of politics surrounding the voting of certain Canadian Justices. I don't know what to make of folks not knowing those Justices names. Apathy perhaps?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I hope you're right. An editorial in today's NYT (A Coup Against the Supreme Court) says that a sizeably worrisome portion of the Republican Party is determined to thwart any Supreme Court nominations by a Democratic president.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Yes. In fact the senator from North Carolina has made a campaign promise to not allow Hilary to fill the current vacancy.

interesting article!

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But Tuesday’s vote for president and for control of the Senate will determine whether the court remains short-handed for months or, as Republicans are now threatening if they hold the Senate, for years.

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We surely live in bizarre times. The two party system has evolved to the point that it splits us...divides us as a nation.Each election seemingly boils everything down to only two choices regarding our vote for every candidate, every position, and every amendment.Is this healthy for US Politics??Edited by Phat, : corrective action

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The next few months will tell us a lot about whether Mr. Trump and Trumpism were an anomaly or are now the new norm of the party that Lincoln helped create.

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Party of Lincoln...At one point in history, the Republican party dominated through a coalition that included blacks and whites in a way that allowed them to dominate the politics of even the Southern states. That entire dynamic was kicked to the curb in the early 1970s, and what's left is a party that may have some life left but is seemingly on its last legs.

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Republicans need to wrestle with more fundamental questions first: Will their party choose as its leaders people who respect democratic institutions and traditions, or not;

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In my opinion, the Republican party has already given up on the twenty first century and are pining away for early half of the 20th. That time period is not coming back. Coal mining and textile manufacturing isn't coming back. A lily white nation isn't coming back. Not sure what these guys can do other than make the rest of us miserable.

Bill Maher happened to make a really interesting observation. This is perhaps the first race in the modern era where neither candidate felt the need to tout their religious beliefs and affiliations. No debate question has asked how their religious faith will influence how they govern. No one has made the claim that God told them to run for office. There has hardly been a peep about the religious beliefs of either candidate.Are we moving away from religiously driven politics? Are evangelical voters making up a smaller and smaller percentage of the populace? Will the influx of Hispanic Catholics change historic US culture that has been dominated by Protestantism?Ultimately, isn't it strange that we will have had a women (probably) and black president in the modern era before we have a president who is a self professed atheist (although it could be argued that many presidents were not really believers)?But in the end, the WASP party is really ticked off that they are quickly becoming the minority. This is why you see them trying to delegitimize elections, because they simply can't win majorities in national elections anymore. If their redistricting advantage ends with the new census, what will happen then?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

I am going to timidly say yes. There is simply no current political tradition of coalition building in US politics. I don't think people would react well to their party compromising on certain issues in order to form a coalition with another party. People are also not used to a party who rules by plurality instead of by majority.The real problem appears to be a lack of civility and tribalism. I may have shared this before, but I often go back to an early Tea Party rally (the forerunner of Trump rallies) where someone got up in front of the crowd and asked how many people earned less than 150k per year. A lot of people raised their hand. He then asked if people making less than 150k a year should get a tax break. A lot of them cheered. The man then said, "Well, Obama is going to give you a tax break." They booed. They booed when a Democratic president wanted to do the very thing they wanted. You can't get more dysfunctional than that.

I watched that episode of the Bill Maher show, and what Bill stipulated is not necessarily that there is less religiously driven politics, its that religious fundies are gigantic hypocrites.What it ultimately comes down to is this: the far right religious fringe in the Republican party may tout their religious beliefs. But in the end, their 'beliefs' are just a cherry-picked subset of what is stated in the bible. These folks are actually GOP-zealots, not Christians, despite their attempt to label themselves otherwise.When you look at some of their core beliefs:- Being anti-tax
- Being pro death penalty
- Being pro-war
- Being anti-gay
- Being pro-gunHow precisely are these Christian values in any way? The answer is they are not. Most of these knuckle-draggers don't even understand their own bible or have read it. They are just Pavlovian dogs salivating when someone says something they like. The 'ditto-heads' that make up Rush Limbaugh's audience is a great example.None of these folks bother to research the facts. None will voice contrary opinions against what the Republican party is stating. In the end, they are just beholden to the rhetoric. That's it.Trump does not espouse any Christian values. Yet he has evangelicals flocking to him in droves. And why? Because it was NEVER about Christian values. That is a smoke screen. It was always about a bunch of angry, minimally educated, white (mostly men) who spend their day being pissed at something or someone. Republicans fueled these fires of discontent by spewing rhetoric. That rhetoric eventually manifested into the monster that is now Trump.

This is bullshit.Yes, Hillary was wrong to support the war. And she was far too slow to admit her mistake.However, Bush's military venture did not depend on her vote. If she had voted the other way, we would still have had the war.