The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread

I respect you, @Snappo, and your right to hold a different opinion than mine. I'm sorry if I drove you to take offense. I worry, however, when people see what is happening and think that the republican party's problem is Donald Trump. He is certainly a problem for the party, but the solutions is NOT to try and emulate him to obscure the difference. His positions are unacceptable, and the more other republican cozy up to them the worse their chances are and the more they become a party of ugliness. That serves no one.

There are plenty of conservatives that are good people, and there are many I call friends. Most, however, have left the Republican party or refuse to support its ugliness. They don't see the current republican platform as something they can support. They are the real republicans, not Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

The nature of the American Democracy is to have two parties in opposition working out acceptable solutions through compromise and cooperation. The republican party as it exists today has rejected the very concept of compromise and would rather bring the country down than work out its future in a cooperative way. That doesn't make for good government or a useful player on the world stage. Their control of our government must be stopped at all cost. I AM a Democrat, but I am an American first, and I believe that ceding this country to the current Republican party is a form of suicide. And I will fight it however I can.

I vote the person, never the party. Today's polls are tomorrow's forgotten. Today's soapbox is tomorrow's toothpick. The far left will one day be the far right. The wind will always blow, but I will always go my way. These are my politics. They are simple and they work for me.

Bernie Sanders Hints Elizabeth Warren Could Be His Running Mate – Video


Bernie Sanders just may have hinted that Elizabeth Warren might serve as his running mate.

January 8, 2016

There has been a lot of speculation in recent months regarding who Sen. Elizabeth Warren might endorse for president.

Last July, Liberals Unite reported that Sen. Elizabeth Warren wasn’t ruling out the idea of joining Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail.

Fast-forwarding to this week, Sanders made an appearance on “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” and the subject of his potential running mate came up during the discussion.

JORDAN CARLOS, PANELIST AND REPORTER: “A lot of people would like to see you run with someone that rhymes with Elizabeth Schwarren “

LARRY WILMORE, HOST: “Have you put some thought in your running mate — Would you ever hint at something like that?”

BERNIE SANDERS: “Now the last time I was here you got me to say that I was thinking about running and now you want…”

LARRY WILMORE: “Something else is coming out!”
(CHEERS)

GRACE PARRA, CO-HOST: “Yeah! Let’s hear it!”

BERNIE SANDERS: “Elizabeth Warren is a very good friend of mine, I have known her for a long time, before she was in the Senate. She is a great US Senator. She has stood up to Wall Street. She has stood up to the Big Money interests. So, she uh, she and I will work together”

GRACE PARRA: “I love that!”

LARRY WILMORE: “Feel the Bern everyone!”

You can watch the clip, below:

He doesn't sound that old to me

In his dreams. Warren is very important to the Senate, and that is where she can do the most good. She knows that...

Snappo said:

I vote the person, never the party. Today's polls are tomorrow's forgotten. Today's soapbox is tomorrow's toothpick. The far left will one day be the far right. The wind will always blow, but I will always go my way. These are my politics. They are simple and they work for me.

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I'm an independent and I'm kind of in the same boat....my leanings are heavily to the democratic side in terms of fundamental beliefs. There are a few areas where I agree with republicans..... Still...it doesn't matter.....because the republican ideals have become so skewed to the far right that even when I see the merit in a republican stance they've taken the details so far right that I can't support it anymore.

This kind of sums it up for me as of late....I forget where I saw the quote but it went something like 'What do republicans call a moderate republican? A democrat....'

Neither party should live in glass houses. But if they did, right now...I would expect to see more broken windows in the republican house. That doesn't mean their aren't broken windows in both houses though.

Many of my die-hard republican friends are saying something I never thought I'd hear.....they are saying they are disgusted with BOTH parties. Close to blasphemy for some of these folks.

Some vote straight party line. They don't take the time to watch, read and listen and then....decide. That's not how I vote....

What bugs me is when someone classifies me as one party or another simply because I find fault with both...

I left this here for a long time hoping that someone else would reply to it so I could be comfortable that other people see the truth. So much for that idea....Maybe they just see it differently. My question is why do people assume they have all the truth all the time and anyone who disagrees is wrong.

I would love for Elizabeth Warren to be Bernie's running mate. I wanted her to run for prez. Maybe it wasn't here time yet?

Snappo said:

I vote the person, never the party. ... These are my politics. They are simple and they work for me.

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I recognize that the person who associates with the Republican party does not have the humanity, the understanding of reality nor the ethics that I believe are necessary for a functioning civilized society.

Therefore I never vote for the person who says that Republican philosophy is best.

gang said:

I recognize that the person who associates with the Republican party does not have the humanity, the understanding of reality nor the ethics that I believe are necessary for a functioning civilized society.

Therefore I never vote for the person who says that Republican philosophy is best.

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I presently recognize no one from any party yet proving suitable or worthy of serving in the highest office, whatever party affiliation they may claim to be at least for the moment.

gangababa said:

I recognize that the person who associates with the Republican party does not have the humanity, the understanding of reality nor the ethics that I believe are necessary for a functioning civilized society.

Therefore I never vote for the person who says that Republican philosophy is best.

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I don't believe this has always been true and in the past I would never have agreed with this. But sadly, today it is and I do. Hopefully that is not a permanent condition.

Really passing judgement on a persons humanity, wish I was moral enough to do that. Ok not really.

With at least a dozen replies in mind and 2 more posts on the subject in queue, I will instead remind you (and me) that we are way out of bounds of this thread and quietly retire...

howie105 said:

Really passing judgement on a persons humanity, wish I was moral enough to do that.

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I am..........

.....or should I say, moral enough to pass judgement on some peoples humanity and of course, there are some who are more moral than I that can pass judgment on my humanity as well.

.

lwien said:

I am..........

.....or should I say, moral enough to pass judgement on some peoples humanity and of course, there are some who are more moral than I that can pass judgment on my humanity as well.

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We all make judgements every day if we chose couch them in terms of moral terms that’s fine. At best I would hope that our judgements are considered and fair as possible. What I do object to however is judging a whole class of people all at once, as in the case of the republican party, which is like twenty to thirty percent of the population. Not being omnipotent I can't know all their harts so I can't judge their humanity. Bottom line I don't object to a person having a moral stance but when it leads to feelings of moral superiority over other citizens I object.

From ‘Where are the jobs?’ to ‘Where are Republicans on jobs?’
01/11/16 10:00 AM—Updated 01/11/16 10:03 AM
By Steve Benen

The economic news on Friday was even better than optimists expected: the United States added nearly 300,000 jobs in December, wrapping up the second best year for the American job market in over a decade. In fact, looking at the last two years combined, 2014 and 2015 were the best back-to-back years for job creation since 1998 and 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom.

While no mainstream American politicians publicly root against the U.S. economy, the fact remains that this strong job growth must be baffling to Republicans. GOP orthodoxy, repeated ad nauseam, is that President Obama’s domestic agenda – the Affordable Care Act, higher taxes on the wealthy, Wall Street regulations, environmental safeguards, et al – is crushing the economy and stifling the American job market.

The only way to put Americans back to work, Republicans insist, is to do the exact opposite of the policies that cut the unemployment rate from 10% to 5%.

Obviously, that’s a tough sell for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the facts, but it got me wondering: how exactly did Republican officials and candidates respond to Friday’s good news?

When I say they reacted to jobs report with silence, it’s important to stress that I’m being quite literal. For years, the Republicans’ economic line was, “Where are the jobs?” With over 14 million new private-sector jobs created in the last 70 months, the new, more salient question has become, “Where are the Republicans on jobs?”

Over the weekend, for example, I checked House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) official blog, which used to publish a statement with the release of every new jobs report. Friday, however, featured plenty of new content, none of which referenced the job numbers.

The Republican National Committee’s official blog also used to issue once-a-month press releases on unemployment, but on Friday it said nothing. The same is true of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus’ Twitter feed.

There was similar silence from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the Senate Republican leadership team.

How about the presidential candidates? Nothing from Donald Trump. Or Ted Cruz. Or Marco Rubio. Or Jeb Bush. Or Chris Christie.

Look, I don’t expect GOP presidential candidates to issue a statement celebrating President Obama’s successes in putting Americans back to work after the Great Recession. And I certainly don’t imagine Republicans are going to announce a plan to reevaluate all of their bogus assumptions about Obama’s agenda and the economy.

But we’ve reached the point at which Republicans no longer seem interested in talking about job creation at all. It’s as if they hope ignoring the issue altogether will keep people from noticing one of the most remarkable turnarounds in the job market in a generation – which might even work, since much of the political world barely stopped to notice Friday’s jobs report.

Republicans could say the good news will be even better if they’re elected. They could celebrate strong job growth and make the case that Obama deserves no credit. They could say something about the issue that, up until quite recently, dominated the political debate like no other.

But for now, it seems the GOP has decided the easiest course of action is to pretend the good news on jobs simply doesn’t exist. Up until fairly recently, such a scenario would have been hard to even imagine.

@cybrguy - Maybe they ran out of oxygen after Friday but one thing is for sure.....if they were forced to speak to the results from Friday....their standard refrain would be heard:

.....all those jobs are low level and low paying, people have to work more than one of these new jobs just to get by, this is the slowest recovery in history and finally....Obamacare is forcing businesses to stop hiring full time or not at all while forcing people and businesses to pay higher insurance costs with money they can't spare. They usually use the lack of wage inflation as proof.

Sanders, Clinton make the same pitch on electability
01/12/16 04:00 PM—Updated 01/12/16 04:25 PM

By Steve Benen

With everything that’s on the line in 2016, many voters are understandably interested in general-election “electability.” In a competitive primary, why vote for a candidate who’s all but certain to lose?

Among Democrats, the conventional wisdom says Hillary Clinton is her party’s strongest general-election candidate – a point she emphasizes regularly on the stump – though as the Washington Postreported the other day, Bernie Sanders is, oddly enough, making the exact same pitch.

The new ad from Hillary Clinton warns Iowa’s Democrats that only she can win a general election. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) begs to differ – and so does his math.

“My opponent says this is an important issue; she is the person who can win the general election,” Sanders said at an American Legion hall [in Iowa], at an event that largely focused on the city’s fast-growing Latino population. “I respectfully disagree. Look at which candidate is doing better against Donald Trump. Look at the last national poll and you find that Bernie Sanders is beating Donald Trump by 13 points, Hillary Clinton by seven points.”
Sanders isn’t just making these numbers up; there’s real data to back up the thesis.

Indeed, for months, the senator and his supporters have been able to point, accurately, to state and national polling that shows Sanders faring as well against Republican candidates – and in many instances, better – than Clinton.

In the latest NBC poll, Sanders did significantly better against the top GOP contenders in Iowa and New Hampshire.

For the Vermont Independent, who has traditionally downplayed the importance of polls, the data is important and compelling. The argument couldn’t be any more straightforward: if you’re concerned about winning in November, support the candidate in the primaries with the biggest general-election advantage.

There’s just one problem: the pitch doesn’t tell the whole story.

NBC News’ First Read published a timely reminder yesterday about putting the polls in context.

“There was fresh evidence on Sunday that confirms Bernie Sanders would be the most electable Democratic Party nominee for president because he performs much better than Hillary Clinton,” the [Sanders] campaign blasted out to reporters yesterday. But here is a legitimate question to ask: Outside of maybe New Hampshire (where Sanders enjoys a geographic advantage), are Sanders’ general-election numbers fool’s gold? When is the last time you’ve seen national Republicans issue even a press release on Sanders? […]

Bottom line: It’s always instructive to take general-election polling with a grain of salt, especially 300 days before the general election. And that’s particularly true for a candidate who hasn’t actually gone through the same wringer the other candidates have.

It’s not that the polls are wrong, so much as they’re incomplete. Hillary Clinton has been a high-profile national figure for many years, and her public reputation has been shaped in part by attacks from Republicans who’ve hated her, on a professional level, for the better part of a quarter-century.
Sanders, in contrast, has never sought national office and never been subjected to the full weight of the GOP Attack Machine. Indeed, much of the public, which is not yet engaged in the presidential campaign, probably has very little idea who the senator is and what he believes.

And so the question for Democrats is not just which candidate has a poll advantage now, but also which candidate seems likely to withstand the onslaught of attacks that would inevitably come in the fall.

Sanders, who’s been largely ignored by the right, obviously wants voters to believe he’s that candidate. It’s a speculative question; no one can say with certainty whether or not he’s correct. As long as we’re talking about polls, though, Gallup published a report over the summer that asked Americans, without mentioning any candidates’ names, whether voters would be comfortable with different kinds of presidential candidates. For example, 93% of Americans said they’re fine with voting for a Roman Catholic, and 92% of voters are on board with supporting a woman.

Further down the list, just 60% said they could vote for a Muslim, and atheists did a little worse, at 58%

Socialists, however, finished dead last at 47% – the only group that finished below 50%.

If you’re a Sanders backer, you might make the case that the senator’s message is so compelling, he could change voters’ minds about the dreaded “s” word. That may be true.

But if there’s a discussion underway about the general-election viability of national candidates, horse-race snapshots from early January only show us part of a bigger picture.

The economy though is far better now than when Obama went into office. The rate of pay is changing in WA. Eventually some areas will have to pay $15.00 an hour. That will be a gradual raise in pay. So folks at restaurants will make more. That has nothing to do with Obama. That's more local and state government.

We have some areas of the state, like in Seattle where it's just too expensive for a home. Homes in other areas are reasonable. The average person is being drivin out of the large cities.

House prices or rent combined with medical insurance makes it difficult for the average income.

Why is Hillary Clinton losing her lead?
Recent polls show Sanders ahead of Clinton in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Is it the fluctuating nature of this stage of the election, or is something deeper at work?



Less than three weeks shy of the first primary election, Hillary Clinton is losing her once-sizable lead on Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist senator from Vermont.

The latest smattering of polls have shown that Senator Sanders has the edge in Iowa and has widened his lead in New Hampshire. Nationally, Mrs. Clinton is still ahead, but the race is tightening. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, she’s now only seven points ahead of Sanders nationwide, 13 points down from her lead in December.

In Tuesday’s Quinnipiac University poll, 49 percent of the nearly 500 surveyed likely Democratic caucus participants in Iowa said they support Sanders, and 44 percent went with Clinton. That's a shift from December, when Clinton was at 51 percent and Sanders at 40 percent. Meanwhile in New Hampshire, likely Democratic primary voters put Sanders ahead of Clinton by 14 points, 53 percent to Clinton’s 39.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0113/Why-is-Hillary-Clinton-losing-her-lead

Had a off the cuff conversation with some of the younger folk recently. They told me they much preferred Sanders to Clinton because......they don't trust Hillary and they don't like 'the dynasty' like feeling behind the Clinton's anymore than they like it coming from the Bush side. When I mentioned that some have classified Sanders as a socialist of sorts it was a big yawn to them. Maybe these sentiments have something to do with it......

Personally...I wouldn't mind Sander's over Hillary.....

No disrespect to Bernie, but it is no wonder he is doing well when nobody is attacking him. And the republicans are probably not going to, because whey want to run against him in the general, and weakening him would be against their own interests. When Trump talks about how he would "LOVE" to run against Bernie, he isn't kidding.

In a moment of weakness Hillary may bring up that Bernie is a socialist, but generally I expect her to NOT attack him on that basis because Hillary know what it means. That is gonna be the Repubs favorite line of attack, however, and right or wrong it is gonna work because the public DOESNT understand it, and they equate it with Communism and Naziism..

Hillary will lose new hampshire, that's a given. But if she loses iowa as well, all bets are off.

It wouldn't surprise me very much if Bernie takes both Iowa and New Hampshire. He'll lose Nevada and South Carolina, and then Super Tuesday will likely finish him off...

Or so I predict, anyway.

from:
Bernie Sanders could do the impossible: Why Hillary Clinton’s “electability” argument has fallen apart

... In Sanders’s neighboring state of New Hampshire, he has exploded to a 14 point lead over Clinton in the latest Monmouth University poll. New Hampshire is a complicated state politically, a libertarian-leaning bastion in liberal New England, but Sanders fits the role of a rough, charismatic party outsider that New Hampshirites have a history of supporting, so it’s not such a surprise that Sanders is wooing them this time around.

(Sanders, by the way, leads every Republican he was matched up against in New Hampshire by double digits.)

What’s a bit more surprising is the ground Sanders is gaining in Iowa. The latest Quinnipac poll found that Sanders now leads Clinton by 5 percent in the earliest primary state, whose caucus is on February 1. If Sanders is able to beat Clinton there, it’ll give him a decisive victory in the two earliest states in the country (which also happen to be swing states.

And don’t underestimate the importance of Iowa: Barack Obama’s victory there in January 2008 solidified him as a serious threat to Clinton. (emphasis mine) ...


http://www.salon.com/2016/01/12/ber...illary_clinton_is_no_longer_an_inevitability/