Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[Gurn Blanston]

I would go with Sanders. Trump is the most personally rigid, and the most stubborn, but his ideology changes daily, sometimes hourly. Trump arguably has no ideology whatsoever except the accumulation of more power for himself.

That is the same answer I would have given...

[Florestan]

I would go with Sanders. Trump is the most personally rigid, and the most stubborn, but his ideology changes daily, sometimes hourly. Trump arguably has no ideology whatsoever except the accumulation of more power for himself.

I agree with this. 

That is the same answer I would have given...

Then I infer that in case of Trump vs Sanders you guys would either vote Trump (which is the pragmatic way to deal with the situation) or write-in another candidate (which is perhaps more moral a way to deal with the situation, but wouldn´t change the reality or the net result). Is that correct?

[Todd]

Then I infer that in case of Trump vs Sanders you guys would either vote Trump (which is the pragmatic way to deal with the situation) or write-in another candidate (which is perhaps more moral a way to deal with the situation, but wouldn´t change the reality or the net result). Is that correct?

I'm at the write-in/not voting for President stage already.

[Gurn Blanston]

Then I infer that in case of Trump vs Sanders you guys would either vote Trump (which is the pragmatic way to deal with the situation) or write-in another candidate (which is perhaps more moral a way to deal with the situation, but wouldn't change the reality or the net result). Is that correct?

Long time between now and election. Unlike others, I want someone who will reach detente with the opposition and get some issues resolved. We are arguing about the same shit now we were arguing about at the end of the Vietnam War, in one guise or another. I want to settle most of it and start arguing about new shit, like adopting Romania... 

[Gurn Blanston]

I'm at the write-in/not voting for President stage already.

Me too. Vote for me, Todd. I'll put a chicken in every damned pot!   0:)

[Todd]

Me too. Vote for me, Todd. I'll put a chicken in every damned pot!   0:)

I do like chicken.

[Florestan]

Long time between now and election. Unlike others, I want someone who will reach detente with the opposition and get some issues resolved. We are arguing about the same shit now we were arguing about at the end of the Vietnam War, in one guise or another. I want to settle most of it and start arguing about new shit, like adopting Romania... 

Aren´t things in the US bad enough? Do you really want us to worsen the mess? 

[Pat B]

I agree (nor do I much mind) that he was against the war essentially on principle;  I disagree that this negates his claim to have been against it because it was a bad war.  I watched Colin Powell's presentation, and I do not think it is revisionist of me to remember a visceral feeling that the "evidence" was being sexed up (in Tony Blair's apt phrase . . . at least, I think it was his phrase).  Maybe I was fixated upon viewing the venture as Dubya playing out a revenge fantasy on behalf of his Pa.  Subsequent facts bore that fixation out 

It was obvious at the time that the "evidence" had been cooked. Also, the notion that not invading Iraq would cause Saddam Hussein to give chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaeda was patently ridiculous to anyone who had a wikipedia-or-better understanding of the Middle East and who spent 30 seconds thinking it through. Clinton should have known better.

8 years later she, as Secretary of State, advocated supporting the Libyan Revolution which has also been a disaster. (The R criticism, fixated on her handling of the aftermath of the embassy attack, has missed the point to a comical extent.)

All that said, if the Rs nominate Trump, Cruz, or Rubio, I will vote for her (then rush home to take a shower).

[Florestan]

I'm at the write-in/not voting for President stage already.

I can perfectly understand that. I voted in all Romanian presidential elections since 1990 until 2014 with one single exception: 2000, when the choice was really between plague (a former President who was also a former Communist, the one single man directly and principally responsible for the severe delay in economic, political and social reforms in 1990s Romania, not to mention several hundreds or even thosuands of deaths during Revolution and later) and cholera (a poet and journalist, former but unrepentant big-time adulator of Ceausescu and his wife, turned rabid foul-mouthed nationalist after 1989). The fact that (almost) all liberals and democrats rallied behind the former, presenting him as a saviour of democracy despite all his sins and shortcomings did not make things easier for me --- a vote for him would have really meant my renouncing my most cherished principles and ideas about politics, economics and society. So I did not vote. The former Communist won (as I expected all along) and things began to improve slowly not because, but in spite of him.

So I do understand your position.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

It was obvious at the time that the "evidence" had been cooked. Also, the notion that not invading Iraq would cause Saddam Hussein to give chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaeda was patently ridiculous to anyone who had a wikipedia-or-better understanding of the Middle East and who spent 30 seconds thinking it through. Clinton should have known better.

Indeed. Also, if a country actually has large stocks of weapons of mass destruction that it can use, nobody seriously considers invading it. This suggests that they didn't believe their own BS. (My favorite ridiculous argument was that Saddam had actually moved his weapons to Syria.)

[Pat B]

I would go with Sanders.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/how-bernie-sanders-fought-for-our-veterans-119708

[Karl Henning]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/how-bernie-sanders-fought-for-our-veterans-119708

Yes.

For myself, the operable distinction between Sanders and El Tupé is, the Senator from Vermont has made a career of actually working in the interests of others, i.e. the voters, where the other guy works only in his own interests.

[Brian]

Yeah, in Trump v. Sanders, I would vote for Sanders, no doubt about it.

[Florestan]

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/03/03/libya-how-hillary-clinton-destroyed-a-country/

Very good article. Antiwar.com used to be one of my favorite websites and Justin Raimondo one of my favorite columnists. I have lost interest in them long time ago, though --- after all, reading all day long about wars and their effects is depressing --- but every time I revisit their website I still feel the thrill.

Related but on a more general and intellectual vein:

The Truth About Our Libertarian Age. Why the dogma of democracy doesn't always make the world better

[Florestan]

Yeah, in Trump v. Sanders, I would vote for Sanders, no doubt about it.

I can only hope the reason is not your sharing in his ideological intransigence. 

[Pat B]

I can only hope the reason is not your sharing in his ideological intransigence. 

What ideological intransigence?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Yeah, in Trump v. Sanders, I would vote for Sanders, no doubt about it.

I would as well, though I fear Sanders would have the same issues facing a recalcitrant Congress that Obama has had. But though I live in a heavily Democratic state (home to Niagara Falls, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Donald Trump) where my personal vote makes absolutely no difference (and not in one of the small number of states where my state's electors will actually determine the election), the real issue for me will be whether to vote for Clinton or Sanders in my state's Democratic primary where my vote might actually matter. And here my dilemma would be to support a candidate whose unrealistic positions I like, versus one I believe would have a greater chance of being elected and governing effectively.

Ironically considering the resentment much of the country feels towards New York, Trump vs. Clinton would pit the businessman from NY against the senator from same.

[Karl Henning]

I won't hold El Tupé against New York State, we all make the odd mistake . . . .

[Brian]

But though I live in a heavily Democratic state (home to Niagara Falls, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Donald Trump) where my personal vote makes absolutely no difference ... the real issue for me will be whether to vote for Clinton or Sanders in my state's Democratic primary where my vote might actually matter.

I faced this same thought in my heavily Republican state. I crossed party lines and voted for John Kasich.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I faced this same thought in my heavily Republican state. I crossed party lines and voted for John Kasich.

New York, however, only lets me vote in the primary for which I am registered.