Hillary Clinton

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Republicans proud of their dishonesty

It’s one thing to be a dishonest person; it’s quite another to be proud of that fact.

For many Republicans, they revel in their dishonesty, partially because they think they’re so clever for getting away with their evil schemes.dr-evil

I’m serious here. Forget about all the “death panel” lies and other crap they’ve said in the past about Obamacare — just look at a few examples from the last few months.

Take Kevin McCarthy, who admitted that the Benghazi hearings were indeed not meant to find out the truth, but were just partisan attacks on Hillary Clinton in an attempt to knock her approval ratings down. Oops! He lost his chance to be Speaker of the House not because Republicans were upset that he said this, but instead that he admitted that their stated reason for the hearings was a lie.

Then there’s all those movements to make it harder for Democrats to vote. “It’s to prevent fraud!’ they say, despite the fact that your chance of finding voter fraud is less than your chance of being hit by lightning. Every once in a while, a Republican will slip and admit the real reason. The Republicans don’t then come out and say, “Okay, you caught us, our bad, we really were lying all the time.” Nope, they double down and hope that everyone forgets the Man Behind the Curtain.

Even the Planned Parenthood attacks aren’t just about abortion — sometimes it’s just plain old Christian puritan ethics. There have been plenty of Republicans who blame the problem on “loose women” (it’s never the men’s fault in these situations; apparently the women are getting pregnant all by themselves). They lie by fabricating fake videos (and then double down and repeat the lie when the truth is exposed) and at a recent anti-abortion rally, the guest speaker admitted that they were fighting against sin: “The kind of sexual ethic that Planned Parenthood promotes is sex for recreation, sex for mere pleasure.”

And that’s what it’s about. At today’s Benghazi hearings — one of many that have produced absolutely nothing yet spent millions of taxpayer dollars — we’re seeing more of it.

The good news is that the public knows this. 75% of Americans know this is just a Republican witch hunt. People can see through the lies.

But the Republicans don’t care.

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It’s all over! Hillary is ahead in the polls!

Hillary currently has 48% nationally and Sanders has 25%! Might as well name her as the Democratic nominee now and save us all some time! Or so the articles on the major news sites seem to say.

This, of course, ignores a few major things:1841148_orig

First, according to most polls, Sanders is ahead in New Hampshire — a very important state since it holds the first primary. A win there can change the landscape tremendously, as we have seen in previous elections.

Second, it’s 2015! There’s not even a primary for months.

Let’s look back at the last time Hillary ran. On October 20, 2007, she was at 47.5% in the polls. Way, way behind was this upstart Barack Obama guy, with only 21.7%. What a loser! That’s even lower than where Bernie Sanders is now!

A month is a lifetime in politics. Polls can change and waver hugely within a week.

So maybe we should stop declaring winners and losers before a single vote has been cast.

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Nobody Won the Democratic Debate

The media loves a winner, and after the Democratic debate, pundits leaped over each other to declare their choices for who “won” the debate. Most, unsurprisingly, chose Clinton, because that’s what everyone expected.

But I say no one won.

Debates aren’t elections. They’re not sporting events. In some ways, the candidates aren’t competing against each other but instead are using the debate to promote themselves in a forum that allows voters to compare. democratic-candidates-debate-cnn

You “win” the debate by outperforming expectations. You “lose” by making mistakes or coming across as unlikable and untrustworthy.

I still remember Gerald Ford in a debate with Jimmy Carter claiming that there was no Soviet presence in Poland. (Hint: there was.) The press and the Democrats pounded on him for being ill-informed and he just sunk lower in the polls. George Bush looked at his watch during a debate with Bill Clinton, as if to say he was bored and this wasn’t really important to him, and that allowed the press to label him as aloof and uncaring. Al Gore’s sighs during his debate with George W. Bush made him look arrogant instead of making Bush look stupid and that didn’t help his campaign (even though he was right about Bush saying idiotic things that deserved sighs).

No one made those kinds of errors last night, although there were some comments that didn’t stand up to scrutiny when fact-checked (although nothing like the kind of lying and outright dishonesty we have seen during the Republican debates).

Hillary “won” yesterday’s debate in that she answered the questions, seemed knowledgeable, and didn’t make any mistakes. But the bar was low for her — she is a good debater, she’s been doing it for years, and she’s always well prepared. We knew what to expect from her, and she met expectations, so pundits claimed her the winner.

Bernie Sanders, however, had everything to gain. Most people knew very little about him. He didn’t make any mistakes, and he pounded his issue concerning income equality, which is a winning topic that any Democrat should push. At the same time, he gave the GOP a lot of clips they can use against him in a general election to portray him as a crazy socialist who hates capitalism, so that doesn’t really help (although in this election year, being “anti-capitalism” may help bring in more young voters).

Lincoln Chafee, Martin O’Malley, and Jim Webb merely had to show to their supporters that they were viable candidates, and of the three, O’Malley came out the best. Webb just seemed angry and many of his positions are just too moderate for the kind of Democratic activists who get involved in elections this early. Chafee had lame excuses for much of his previous votes, and really doesn’t have a chance. These three are probably just jockeying for a Vice Presidential nod.

Based on most unscientific polling, voters said Bernie Sanders won, and if you look at the fact that he took in another $2 million in donations within 24 hours of the debate, I’d say that makes it easier to say he “won” by the standards I set. He outperformed expectations. Again.

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Top Ten Surprises in the Democratic Debate

10. Sanders, confident of victory or wishing to appeal to the youth vote, lights up a blunt while Hillary is talking

9. Webb arrives wearing a Spider-Man costume, thinking it will help people remember his name

8. Hillary’s face falls off, revealing intricate clockwork mechanismDEBATE

7. Chafee admits that if this doesn’t work, he’ll see which other political parties might accept him

6. Biden strides on stage mid-debate carrying a beer, slaps everyone on the back, and screams “Where’s the party?”

5. Webb and Hillary go mano a mano after a particularly nasty discussion of trade agreements; Webb carried out by EMTs during commercial break

4. O’Malley pretends to be from Massachusetts, then Nevada; finally breaks down crying upon admitting he’s from Maryland

3. Bill Clinton kicked out of the audience when close-up camera reveals him giving Hillary secret messages via his phone; turns out he was playing ‘Angry Birds’

2. Sanders announces his running mates, Ben & Jerry

1. Trump, jealous of all the attention, storms the stage and calls everyone ‘losers’

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Presidential Polling This Early is Meaningless

We have 16 months until the Presidential election, but that won’t stop the pundits from making absolutely ridiculous predictions based on polling numbers.

“Donald Trump is ahead in the polls!” they say. Yeah, but to beat 14 other people in a poll, you only need to get what, 7% of the vote? Trump is ahead among Republicans only and even then in a small amount, and I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the support for Trump is because of name recognition. You think the average voter out there knows who Scott Walker is?

Remember 2012?  As the primary season approached, Romney was the clear front runner in the Republican polls. Then suddenly it was Gingrich, who famously declared that the race was over and he was the winner. That lasted about a week and then Herman Cain was the guy ahead. Then it was Santorum for a short period before moving back to Romney again. All that happened within a few months from November through February or so, and all of those polls only had meaning to people who needed something to talk about in order to fill the 24 hour news cycle.

So far, not one of the Republican candidates comes anywhere close to beating Hillary Clinton in the polls — in fact, Trump does the worst (out of the main candidates). There’s a reason Democrats are cheering on his campaign.

But even so, that polling is just as meaningless. Anything can happen between now and election day. At this point back in 2008, Hillary was way ahead in the polls against this new guy called Barack Obama …

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Will 2016 be a repeat of 2008?

In 2007, a year or so before the primaries of 2008 began, this was what people were saying:Bernie-Sanders-and-Obama

  • Hillary is unbeatable
  • America is not ready to elect a black man
  • Obama is too far to the left to ever win the nomination, much less the election
  • Hillary has too many endorsements and too much money for anyone to challenge her successfully

I kind of agreed, even though I supported Obama from the start. And I was pleased to have been proven wrong.

Now here it is, a year or so before the primaries of 2016, and this is what people are saying:

  • Hillary is unbeatable
  • America is not ready to elect a Jewish man
  • Sanders is too far to the left to ever win the nomination, much less the election
  • Hillary has too many endorsements and too much money for anyone to challenge her successfully

I kind of agree.

But boy, would it be great to be proven wrong again.

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Automatic Voter Registration makes conservative heads explode

Look, the government knows who you are, through your social security number, driver’s license, post office mailing address, and probably a hundred other ways of confirming your identity.

Why then do we need an extra requirement for voting registration?  Why should the most basic right of anyone in a democracy have such difficult stringent conditions?

Isn’t voting the basis of our system of government, the one we proudly hold up as an example to the rest of the world? Who wouldn’t want everyone to vote?

Well, the answer is simple: The rich and powerful. Since the founding of our country, the idea has been that the common rabble shouldn’t be deciding important matters that democracy’s elite nobility rightly should deal with.

We commoners have fought against this notion since then (when you had to be a white, male, property owner to vote). Little by little, with hard-fought battles, the barriers have fallen.

And the rich and powerful fought back, with poll taxes and literacy tests, and eventually those were eliminated as well.

Today, the rich and powerful are represented by the Republican party that knows perfectly well that the more people who vote, the worse the Republicans do — so they have tried over and over again to restrict voting and place as many barriers in the way of voters as they can. They scream about non-existent voter fraud but admit in private (when they don’t realize they are being recorded) that the whole point of it all is to keep us commoners from voting.

That’s why heads are exploding over Hillary Clinton’s proposal to make voting registration automatic. You turn 18, boom, you’re registered. Horrors!6-5-2015-1-10-50-PM

As you can expect, the smarter people on the right are discussing this as if it will lead to massive fraud and elections being stolen* while the rubes who follow them are more blatant, posting comments that reveal that the racist idea behind poll taxes and literacy tests hasn’t ever died.  (Note: Fox News has yet to remove all these racist comments from their web page. They know who their audience is.)

There’s more that can be done to encourage voting of course besides simply making registration easier — mail-in voting has been tremendously successful in the states that have tried it, increasing participation without a single incident of fraud. And “early voting,” which allows people a week or so to vote, also has proven to work.

But automatic registration? A good first step.

* yeah, I know — ironic, right?

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Conspiracies for nerds: Hillary’s email

There has been a huge cry from People Who Would Never Vote For Hillary In A Million Years over this new email scandal which involves … well, I’m not exactly sure. Apparently, Hillary Clinton used her own personal emails for her own personal business.

You can see why this makes her unqualified for the Presidency. That was sarcasm.clinton email

Seriously, this is the kind of “scandal” that appeals only to Republicans who are searching for anything they can be outraged about. You remember Republicans — they’re the ones who yawned when millions of legitimate governmental emails mysteriously disappeared in the Bush administration during an investigation, which seems clearly to be a violation of the law. Hillary’s email problem, according to these Republicans, is much different. Hillary violated an internal policy. Sure, it’s not the same thing as actually breaking the law, but it’s at least as serious as not abiding by the Employee’s Handbook.

This is the kind of thing that is really only understood by nerds anyway. I mean that with no disrespect, but not using the right email? There’s nothing sexy about that “scandal.” No one cares.

As Democratic consultant Paul Begala said, “Voters do not give a shit. They do not even give a fart … Find me one persuadable voter who agrees with HRC on the issues but will vote against her because she has a non-archival-compliant email system and I’ll kiss your ass in Macy’s window and say it smells like roses.”

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If not Hillary, then who? (a poll — give your opinion)

It’s being reported today that Hillary Clinton may announce her candidacy earlier than expected.  Or maybe not.  No one seems sure.

I’m hoping she decides not to run so that some other rising star in the party could step in.  While Hillary would certainly be the front-runner (especially against the current Republican field), she has a lot of baggage.  She’s said some pretty stupid things over the years, and despite the crazy conspiracy theories there are indeed legitimate concerns over some of her actions.<> on February 25, 2014 in Washington, DC.

Hillary also makes it very difficult for Democrats to attack Jeb Bush as being just another one of those insider families that run the country.  We won’t be able to attack political dynasties.

I’m sure she’s considering all this.  If she runs, she could lose.  She could even lose the Democratic primaries again.  Instead, if she doesn’t run, she can be a deal-breaker behind the scenes and be remembered in history as a good Secretary of State.  And she can avoid the huge attack machine the Republicans have ready for her.

But also, I don’t want her.  I think she’s a political animal who doesn’t really stand for that much.  Mind you, I’ll vote for her over any Republican, but I won’t be excited about it.  It will be like when I voted for Mondale and Dukakis (or for that matter, Bill Clinton).  Meh.  Better than the alternative.

The American people like being entranced by someone new.  It certainly worked to Obama’s advantage when he ran against her eight years ago.  He did not have a long record, and that allowed people to project what they want onto him while also making it harder for anyone to attack him on previous positions.

So who would I like? Ah well, if I’m dreaming, I’d chose Elizabeth Warren.  She’s still tie into the “let’s elect the first woman President” vote that Hillary appeals to, but dammit, she’s like the Teddy Roosevelt of our age.  We need someone like her.  (I like Bernie Sanders too for many of those same reasons but I don’t want him to get the nomination because I think he’d lose the general election.)  And there are some other good possibilities, too:  Jim Webb.  Howard Dean.  Tim Kaine. Amy Klobuchar.

Vote for your choice, and give an opinion in the comments!

 

 

 

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Either way, Hillary is unfit (says Fox)

That Hillary — she really knows how to manipulate us!  (Well, according to Fox News).   clinton-glasses-2

For instance, when she fell and hurt her head, Fox was absolutely convinced that it was faked.  Obviously it didn’t really happen;  she just lied in order to get out of testifying about Benghazi (in one of the many hearings the Republicans have wasted our taxpayer money on).

Well, that narrative has come and gone, because now the question from Fox is, “Does this minor concussion from a year and a half ago prevent her from being President?”  Karl Rove even accused her of having “brain damage.”

I am not making this up.

Hey, remember when Fox admitted it was wrong about the fake injury?  Ha ha!  Just kidding!  Maybe in an alternate universe.

The Fox version is this:  either she faked it and thus is unfit or she didn’t fake it and thus is unfit.  There is no winning scenario for them.

“What we clearly need,” they will say next, “is for Hillary to release her Health Certificate.  The long form.”

(Remember:  you read it here first.)