Look, I know Bernie doesn’t have a great chance of winning his party’s nomination.
So you can give up and not vote for him and then we get Hillary Clinton — or you can vote for him and he loses, and then we get Hillary Clinton (who even Bernie says is “100% better than any Republican”).
And maybe, just maybe, he might win.
So what’s the harm in voting for him if you really support him? As long as you vow to support whichever Democrat gets the nomination, what exactly is the downside?
On the positive side, if Bernie goes into the convention with a lot of delegates, that gives him some power to make demands concerning the platform, nominees, and the direction of the general election campaign. And, more importantly, it shows everyone that it can be done — that it is possible to run for President without having to get money from the insiders, lobbyists, and PACs. It will set a great precedent for future elections.
On the negative side …. Sorry, I can’t think of anything. What, Hillary will be weaker in November? Not if Bernie encourages all his supporters to work for her election and not stay home. Getting people who normally don’t vote going to the polls is something Bernie has shown to be much better at than Hillary.
A stronger Bernie helps all Democrats. A grass roots movement that encourages voting will benefit us all.
Complaining that he should drop out now or just give up is the best way to alienate all those voters and keep them away from the polls in November. I’m sure it’s what President Trump will want.
Look, the primaries are not like the electoral college. Every vote counts, because they aren’t “winner take all” races. If Bernie gets 40% of the vote, he gets 40% of the delegates. It’s a loss but not a complete loss.
And don’t be discouraged by his poor showing in the south on Super Tuesday. So what if Hillary does better than him in Alabama? There’s no way Alabama is voting Democratic in November.
So keep voting your heart. There are no downsides.
The legal system makes a lot more sense when you realize that it’s all politics.
There are those who insist that the law is absolute; that there is only one interpretation of it; and that only crazy radical liberals engage in “judicial activism.”
But the bottom line is that the law is whatever judges say it is.
Every judge has their own opinion as to what the “original intent” of the law was. If everyone agreed on what the “original intent” was, we wouldn’t need judges.
Even the Founders disagreed over the wording. The 
Constitution was written to be specifically vague in parts because that was the only way they could get it passed.
You know — politics.
Within a few years of its passage, there were cases before the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution’s meaning. The very Founders who wrote the damn thing argued before the Court as to how it should be interpreted.
Whenever anyone says there is only one “original intent” they always amazingly also know exactly what it is and — even more amazingly — it always matches what they already believed. (Sort of like religious nuts who are convinced there is only one interpretation of the Bible and it’s always the same thing as their own.)
And the meanings of words change over time. “Cruel and unusual punishment” does not mean the same thing in the 21st Century as it did in the 18th. The 14th amendment gives rights to “people” but at the time it was written, it did not include women or gays (and barely included blacks). Meanings change. Society changes.
Conservative judges interpret the Constitution just as much as liberal judges do — the difference is that liberal judges tend to be more honest about it. Or maybe the conservatives ones are just deluded, like Scalia was, that he had some great “insight” into the Founders’ desires, like he was an avatar to the gods. It was the conservative justices who reinterpreted the 2nd amendment to turn it into a personal right after 200 years. It was the conservative judges who decided that corporations were “people” and money was “speech.” And a new Court could turn around and say “nope” and change it back, using the exact same words in the Constitution.
Politics.
I know some people want the law to be like a science, where you can do an experiment or do some research and know the answer, but it isn’t. It’s politics. It’s written by politicians. It’s judged by people who are elected (and are therefore politicians) or who have been appointed by politicians. The judges don’t all agree, just like politicians don’t agree.
And most of them (if they aren’t deluded) will admit that the Constitution is not a religious document written by gods; it’s a political document written by a bunch of politicians.
Republican Senators announced today that they would refuse to even consider anyone Obama nominates for the Supreme Court, despite the fact that the President has almost an entire year left in his term. (Apparently, in their minds, Obama only gets 3/5ths of a term).
This is completely unprecedented.
But hey, don’t let facts stand in your way, Republicans. You never have before.
I’ve certainly seen a lot of it recently.
First, they claimed that Senator Chuck Schumer had given a speech where he said that the Senate should not approve of a Bush nominee in his final year. Of course, all you have to do is read the transcript of that speech to see that the comment was followed by “except in extraordinary circumstances” — and then he explained that the Senate should not approve someone so far out of the mainstream as to be unacceptable.
In other words, the Senate should do its job, have hearings, but should exercise its Constitutional duty to deny a candidate they disagree with.
This is not the same thing as refusing to consider ANY candidate, no matter how qualified.
Then they pointed out how Obama had objected to Justice Alito when he was a Senator, and had threatened a filibuster over it. Yet the Senate still had hearings about the candidate and ultimately did approve him.
This is not the same thing as refusing to consider ANY candidate, no matter how qualified.
Then they found a quote from Joe Biden which basically said that the Senate should not be a rubber-stamp and should refuse to accept any candidate they don’t think would be a good choice.
This is not the same thing as refusing to consider ANY candidate, no matter how qualified.
And it goes on. The right wing blogs post articles about how the Democrats have stood up to Supreme Court nominees in the past, and then they feebly try to fool their gullible readers into thinking this is the same thing as refusing to even hold hearings on any candidate.
It’s sad that some of my more intelligent conservative friends fall for this bullshit, but that’s what it is. There is no way to compare the Senate’s legitimate function to “advise and consent” and even to reject nominees they don’t want with the current Republican policy of sticking their fingers in their ears and saying “Lalalalala I can’t hear you” concerning any candidate.
Sanders supporters: It is possible to make comparisons between your candidate and Hillary without making bad ones. There are issues that these two hold in opposition to each other. Talk about those.
But the meme going around that compares Sanders’ work for civil rights in the 60s to Hillary’s family’s support for Barry Goldwater is ridiculous.
Hillary was 15 years old during that campaign. She couldn’t even vote for another seven years. She was following her parents’ lead, which is what most kids do at that age.
To criticize her for positions her parents held 52 years ago is a ridiculous comparison. You just make yourself seem petty when you post that meme comparing what a college kid did as opposed to a freshman in high school at the exact same time.
Hillary wised up in college, and very publicly resigned from the Young Republicans group specifically due to their position on civil rights. Got that? When she got as old as Bernie was when he was fighting for civil rights, she too took the same position.
I am a Bernie supporter, and the fact that he fought for civil rights and was even arrested for protesting only makes me like him more. Comparing his actions to what a young girl did at the same time doesn’t change that — all it does is make me think less of you.
All the evidence is there, clearly. How can you sheeple not see it? It must be the chemtrails Obama is spraying into the air.
Look, Obama wanted him dead and we all know Obama runs the Illuminati (I mean, I don’t think I need to go into the obvious evidence for that). 
And Obama is clever — he has a lot of enemies, and he is throwing us off his track by having someone near the bottom of his enemies list killed instead of ones at the top! Further, instead of having Scalia killed near the start of Obama’s term in order to prevent Scalia from voting against Obama’s wishes (as he has done for seven years), he decided to wait until his term is almost up where the death does him the least amount of good!
What a distraction! Good thing we aren’t going to fall for that (mostly because our tinfoil hats prevent the chemtrails and hidden radio waves from brainwashing us).
Obama is even clever enough to plan this at a time when Scalia was surrounded by his friends instead of when he was alone in his home. Obviously, he used mind wave technology to make the friends hear Scalia say that he didn’t feel well just before he went to bed and then to have all of the friends not notice the ninja assassins creeping into Scalia’s bedroom. But we’re not fooled!
It’s perfect! It’s so perfect because absolutely no one, including his own family, thinks there was anything suspicious about an overweight 78-year old dying in his sleep, and so have they have not requested an autopsy.
Clearly Obama did this. Who else would want Scalia dead?
No. Wait. I just realized. Who would most want Scalia dead? Scalia, the “strict constructionalist” who could convince a majority of the court that someone born in Canada should not be considered a “natural born citizen” and thus ineligible to be President? Someone from Texas, maybe (where Scalia died)?
The plot thickens!
