Politics & the Presidency in the USA **Now With Fun Quiz!**

@arbitrarywater: Milquetoast... is that a Bloodborne reference?

Due to the nature of Super Pacs I can safely have little or no interest in who runs for president unless they seem inordinately superior to the other candidate and my state is close to not going one way or the other; which I don't think it has been for my entire life so far. The Foreign Policy debate would be interesting if the sides differed on that subject in any way shape or form, but generally they don't. If it was just by popular vote I would likely vote in most elections, but until I move to a borderline state I can't help not caring under the present system. Open Secrets is a cool website.

Honestly, as unfortunate as it is, if you want to see a difference made in American politics don't vote for a third party in a Presidential election. Vote for the least awful party because that's how the system works. A vote for a third party is as good as a vote for the party you like the least. Instead, make sure you vote in every election you can. Get involved with your local party, and try to establish them on the local level. Because a third party will do nothing until it has a base somewhere and some sort of proven record.

So yeah, it's shitty but vote for the party least likely to put an absolute nightmare in the Supreme Court for the next 3-4 decades. But voting for a third party is going to change nothing and you'd be as well drawing a penis on your ballot for all the good it will do. Few of the people who voted Green in Florida in 2000 felt good about it afterwards. Unless you're willing to start an armed uprising you can only work in the system that you have. (None of this applies if you don't live in a swing state. If you don't live in a swing state you can just do what you want, though you should still be working for the change you want on the local level, campaign for candidates you admire, and just vote at every election you get to vote in)

So by all means support Bernie Sanders in the Primary, because he is the best candidate and the least tainted by big business lobbying. But come the general, suck it up and pick the candidate who will replace Justice Ginsburg or any of the other 3 Supreme Court Justices who are over 75 years old and could theoretically die at any point in the 4 years between 2017 & 2021.

@fredchuckdave: Milquetoast is a fancy word for basically saying that someone is very easily dominated or weak.

I'm waiting for Dan Carlin to announce his candidacy.

@demoskinos: I'm aware, it just seems like an inordinately pretentious word to use unless you're using it as a reference; if a word isn't readily recognizable in the context that an educated viewer can understand it you should pretty much never use it no matter what. English has enough obscurity as is, no need to make it completely unintelligible. If I'm reading Cormac McCarthy and I see a word I don't recognize I enjoy looking it up, on a random internet forum not so much. Excessively erudite verbiage is not a thing worth pursuing.

Just because we're talking about politics doesn't mean we need to pretend that politics is the realm of Ivory Tower academics or anything, it's just the opposite actually (at least in America).

I don't think milquetoast is a particularly uncommon word. And speaking of context, Romney was often described as milquetoast by his detractors around the 2012 election. Googling the words "Mitt Romney milquetoast" reveals a plethora of links from 2012 about him.

http://www.politicaljack.com/threads/mitt-romney-spineless-milquetoast-two-examples.34984/

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/313674/milquetoast-mitt-mark-steyn

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/06/1071657/-Why-Mitt-Romney-s-Milquetoast-Response-has-NOTHING-to-Do-With-Fear-of-Limbaugh

http://www.redandblack.com/opinion/milquetoast-romney-fading-fast-in-key-battleground-states/article_625e8450-0b3a-11e2-83f2-001a4bcf6878.html

Also we are on a message board. If there is ever a word you don't understand Google is literally right at your fingertips.

So having read through this thread for the most part everyone here is in the fuck the man, the system is fucked anyway, corporations run the world camp right?

I don't think the Republican party have a single noteworthy candidate, although the lineup is much improved since the shit-show that was the last go-around. In fact, I'm not sure the Republicans even have a decent chance of winning the race since the states with the vast majority of electoral college votes are pretty firmly blue states at this point. The GOP has done a fine job of alienating wide swaths of people in this country with their ultra-conservatism, classism, sexism, cartoonish hatred of Obamacare, and immigration policies. Don't get me started on their shameless gridlocking of Congress and attempts to undermine the President on an international level.

As for me, I like Bernie Sanders for the job but we'll see if Hillary Clinton doesn't just steamroll the other candidates. It's certainly her race to lose, at least within the realm of public perception.

Do corporations run the world? No. Do they have an inordinate influence on the American political system? Well yeah, that's pretty obvious. It doesn't mean voting doesn't matter at all, but I do think that voting has less impact on the winner of an election than people think. The world just isn't as simple as all that. Everything is systemic. I feel like a lot of people in this thread have the somewhat naive notion that a candidate can win simply because he or she is the best person for the job. Me, I believe that elections are determined by economic, social, and technological factors far more than they're determined by the political will of the electorate.

The very notion that Bernie Sanders could ever win the nomination is flat-out preposterous to my ears. Corporate America will not support him, therefore the Democratic Party will not support him. It's really that simple. Even if the majority of Americans wanted him to be president, he still couldn't win this election because there are systemic forces at play that exist outside the electoral process that will prevent him from doing so.

Your current choice somehow contrived to un-win the Cold War from an absolutely unassailable position. Short of electing someone who un-lands on the moon or surrenders to the Confederates, you're probably not going to do worse than that any time soon.

@kevin_cogneto: I was just commenting on what the vibe from the rest of the people on here was, I do not necessarily agree with any of the points myself, we are in full agreement the world is not that simple.

The problem with that little 'pay attention to politics/the news' comic is that, the news is terrible, terrible. Especially the big names like Fox and CNN and MSNBC and continue to insert every other news source here.
They've all become entertainment and pandering to the masses, so it's hard to pay attention when the people who you would pay attention to, run their shit like a clown waving keys in babies face.

Christ, since when are tweets a valid thing to go to on the news? Sure, I would like to hear about what stance each party is taking, their politics, their runners, what solid plans they have, but instead lets hear from JoeBuck69 from his twitter with such intellectual talking points as "I like the party I will vote for." Well jeee golly, thanks a lot Joe Buck you fuck.

@carryboy: Ideologically I'm somewhat of an anarchist, but no, I try to stay away from "corporations run everything and the system is rigged beyond repair" thinking. I mean I think capitalism is a bad time that encourages some of the worse parts of human nature to come to the fore but ultimate you can always change things. People just need to be motivated enough, and accept that one person on their own will change nothing. If you think the electoral system is rigged then still vote for the least worst options, because accelerationism is awful and basically means that vulnerable people will get taken for a ride in a vague hope it'll finally "wake people up". And how often has that worked? War on the scale of a World War is a pretty good catalyst for social unrest but a) sometimes that change is worse than what you had before & b) to get there literally millions have to die. Best avoided if at all possible.

But there are still things you can do. Join a union. Get involved in local activism. Change has to start at the bottom.

Holy shit a black chap and a woman running for republican? That's crazy. Well done America, you're getting there.

Well im not American so im neither fully informed nor fully invested but Id take Sanders over Clinton anyday although I am not a fan of socialism.

On the republican side Id have to really look into all candidates as again im not fully informed but anyone who is against common core gets a thumbs up from me as I have got to see some of that shit and it is terrible.

I refuse to answer. I'm not informed enough to make a decision.

Bernie Sanders seems like a decent guy. I'm certain he won't the nomination though. If I could vote in the primaries, I'd consider voting for him. He's certainly better than Clinton. If he doesn't win the nomination then I don't plan on voting. I don't support Clinton and I certainly would never vote for a Republican.

@darthorange: Will I vote in my state primary? Probably not. It's late enough that the nominees have usually already been decided by the time it happens. If I lived in Iowa or New Hampshire? Absolutely I would. For as much as I go into full on "cynicism mode" when it comes to politics, there's still a part of me that considers it my civic duty to vote or something. Come November of next year, rain or shine, regardless of the nominees, I will go through the arduous process of acquiring an absentee ballot and sending it in.

@fredchuckdave: But... but... I like using fancy words! It's all I have left! I will admit that Bloodborne probably helped put "milquetoast" into the back of my mind or something, but I picked "troubled childhood" for my character anyways. Also I can't think of a better word to describe what I thought of Mitt Romney.

Get off your high horse, man.

the only political thing I care about is space exploration. but i'm a futurist and believe that the only path to salvation is the continued pursuit of more advanced technology. Most politicians seem to be technophobes and only care about an easy buck with oil or less taxes or whatever.

Ok so to follow up, I have educated myself a little.

If I was American I would not vote for either Clinton nor Sanders and would hope that the republican I have to vote for is not a authoritarian religious nut.

@fredchuckdave: Who made you the language police? Milquetoast isn't even that obscure of a word. And it just so happens to be a really great evocative word. The more words you know, the more concepts you can readily understand.

That's not uncommon. Neither one of them are going to make it to any ballot that matters.

This happened in both of the previous runnings, though!

Oh. I'll be honest I didn't pay much attention last time, and I probably wouldn't pay any attention this time if not for this thread. I would have to assume they're both fairly moderate - for a republican anyway?

@alexw00d: lol oh if only. I think the only one on the GOP side who could be considered moderate would be Jeb (who hasn't announced running yet) and maybe Marco Rubio

People care more about superficial identity politics than inequality, purchasing power and social mobility.

Assuming that a Republican would be more moderate or reasonable because they're black gets you Alan Keyes. And nobody wants Alan fucking Keyes. Republicans don't want Alan fucking Keyes.

@brodehouse: I've literally no idea who the Eff Alan keyes is, so that's not very helpful. But the point I was making is that the republican party, historically, comes across to a foreigner as one ran by rich old white men who dislike anything other than other rich old white men, and for there to be two candidates who aren't rich old white men means that either they've captured the ideals of people who don't usually vote republican, or they're so far republican that the usual voter can see past the obvious.

But then, again as a foreigner, the way American politics works seems so backwards and convuluted it could mean literally anything.

Hopefully people vote for the nice person who cares about people and furthering the country for the country, and not for themselves. Probably won't happen though.

There is no reason, whatsoever, to think that either of them is anything but a fiscally conservative statist. Plenty of human beings that aren't old, white men identify with the Republican party, just like how plenty of racists identify with the Democratic party. It is a largely irrelevant difference and comes down to whose words stoke peoples' fear reservoirs more severely.

To have any chance at winning a nomination, let alone a presidential election in the United States, you have got to be a fiscally conservative statist that's able to pretend you're a moderate.

You say that like you don't have to be a generic yes man to get anywhere in both partys? Ben Carson is nothing like you guys are suggesting he is, which seems to be you think he is black George W Bush. But he won't get the nomination either way no.

The presidential election is important no doubt as it always is, but as long as K Street more or less owns Congress and gerrymandered districts continue to exist guaranteeing a Congress with an 11% approval getting continuously re-elected, there are bigger more important problems to focus on.

Given the amount of money it takes to be president these days, no one gets there without being thoroughly comprised whatever their beliefs or morals are. Besides the President is just one person, the head of one branch, in a government that's designed specifically to have checks and balances. Even if you got the perfect President it won't matter much with a Congress like we have.

I certainly don't advocate apathy either, that's the worst thing you can do.

It's just these days, I prefer to focus my energy and time on a more local level. It's easier to move the needle there, and the system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up anyway. It's frighteningly simple to get heard at a city council meeting even in major US cities. Attendance is shockingly poor.

If you truly want a third party to be viable at all or even just better options for the Big 2, the infrastructure needs to be built State by State.

I saw her on Conan recently and she doesn't have a chance. Dull would be too exciting a description for her.

I'm probably voting for Paul. I'm heavily fiscally right wing but more socially left. I could never vote for Hillary as she's probably the most corrupt politician in the United States today. It's just too bad the she has the media in her pocket, otherwise they may actually report all of the crazy shit surrounding her.

Basically our system of government is done, it's ineffective and pathetic. We need a new system where all politicians are part time and two-terms only. For anyone who complains "they can't get anything done!" Is that really a bad thing? It's not like they are getting anything done now, and if something is super dire, shit will get done. Also, we need a better system to monitor government corruption. Severe corruption in politics should be life imprisonment.

This sentence is pretty ridiculous and partisan. The immigration policies of the Republican party are all over the place and the standard thought now of "secure borders and then deal with the current illegal immigration problem" isn't exactly some crazy idea; Besides, the overwhelming majority of Americans want to see a closed border. Democrats could really give two shits about immigrants, it just gives them votes. Classism among only the Republican party? Come on now. I'll give you the hatred of Obamacare but there are sane congressional leaders out there who have problems with it's poor implementation and overabundance of bullshit that's not just cartoonish hatred.

I'm with you. If you said the word "milquetoast" out loud in public, people would laugh at you like you just farted very loudly. What a pompous word.

@fredchuckdave: You're going to complain about verbage then use "erudite" your self? Lmao. Okay man.

Would you guys mind telling me where you are from? I am really curious about where in the world milquetoast can be misconstrued as someone being a pompous ivory tower academic.

I plan on writing in Dwayne Johnson on the ballot next year.

With politics, I passed apathy long ago and am now 100% jaded. My vote literally does not matter at all because my state votes the same way all the time. Even if that weren't the case, none of the candidates who have a chance are worthy of a vote anyway, because the system is now royally fucked to where candidates need partisan backing, and the only ones who get it are the ones who regurgitate partisan politics. As a result, we're going to be faced with increasingly polarized candidates each vote, who have already burned half the bridges in the election process that could allow them to work effectively with the other side in office. At this point, I just hope we alternate between Republican and Democrat presidents so some semblance of overall needs get addressed on average over time via two opposing tenures of one-sided bullshit. Even that's not happening these days, though, as we re-elect shitty presidents for reasons I'll never understand, unnecessarily extending the cycle to every sixteen years potentially averaging out to something decent.

It's Hillary's to lose, and that's terrifying. The (viable) alternatives are shit, but she seems like a special kind of terrible. She's incredibly entitled/out of touch, largely unqualified, and by all accounts seems to be a genuinely awful person who values her opinion above all. None of these qualities make for a remotely good leader. Not that Obama or Bush were good presidents, but I don't feel like either at heart were particularly bad people. I fear Hillary is. She seems to give zero shits about anyone else. People seem to have embraced this "empowered woman" narrative so much that she's continually excused for her seemingly nonexistent empathy, and that's all kinds of frightening. I feel like a bunch of people will vote for Hillary simply because she's a woman, which is equally as awful as NOT voting for her because she's a woman. I personally don't give a shit about her gender. What I do care about is her character, and she seems very lacking there, even moreso than the typically self-absorbed politician. Hillary would be the first president in my lifetime whose tenure would genuinely concern me.

Presidents (and politicians) these days are almost at their best when they're being ineffective. I believe in the ability of this country on the whole to take care of itself in most cases. Government meddling (from the left or right) rarely improves anything, and typically results in eroding away the rights of its citizens. That's what government wants, though. They want citizens who are dependent upon the government because it makes them necessary and powerful. The government doesn't represent our interests anymore, and that will be true regardless of who is elected President. The only way shit could change is if someone who's actually moderate and considerate managed to completely fake a partisan persona enough to fool everyone enough to get elected, and then once in office, completely changed their tune, started being reasonable, and actually got shit fixed. That would be incredible.

All hope is not lost, though. America is still a great country that can survive shitty presidents. The problems here are fairly inconsequential by comparison to most of the rest of the world. I'm not going to sit here and bemoan my plight, because I know I still have things pretty damn good overall. On this note, it comes off very poorly when foreigners criticize our issues and citizenry for not "fixing" them, as if mere activism would effect radical change against seriously entrenched systems. Our politics are indeed a bit fucked, but most of us know that already and just deal with it because things generally work out here anyway. Furthermore, I'd contend that the only reason outsiders care about American politics is precisely because things are pretty fucking awesome here and people want to point out chinks in the armor, but that's another topic entirely.

In short, we may have shitty politicians, but it doesn't make America shitty.

American here, who never pays attention to politics and has never voted. Not sure if I ever will. I don't do the research, because I don't want to. It's honestly hard for me to care because all I ever see are rich people who bought their way into their positions, using a chance at a title to make themselves more rich.

It's still a little early for me to start thinking about this stuff. I'll get more invested around the primaries, and definitely around the election. I haven't done much research yet but the current line up isn't something I'm terribly excited for. I find it hard to get behind any modern republican, I can't get behind Hillary either, and people are making her out to be a sure thing. I prefer not to have a fatalistic attitude about this stuff though so I'm not giving up yet. Even though I live in Arizona so my vote is irrelevant.

@darthorange said:

Like you, I believe that it's important to talk about politics to have a healthy exchange of ideas. You know that old adage about not talking politics or religion with people? I always joke that those are the two things I want to talk about first.

As of June 4, 2015, women have had the right to vote for 96 years. I love voting and couldn't imagine a world where I wasn't able to do it. I remember going to the polls with my parents and grandparents, watching them vote. And I also remember the first time I voted -- I was ridiculously excited (and a little disappointed that I missed the presidential election by only a year). When it comes time to vote on state or local stuff, I go nuts with the nonpartisan voting guide. I spend a few hours a day for about a week, reading the guide. Then if I'm still on the fence about something, I look for other voting guides online. I talk about the issues with my family and see what they think. I try to avoid political ads as much as possible but I love watching the debates when there's a presidential race. I try to watch them all.

I haven't decided who I'll be voting for yet. I usually wait until the last minute to make my decision. I want to have as much information as possible before I make my decision. Thank you for posting the links the candidates, by the way.

@kevin_cogneto said:

Thanks for mentioning the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. I hope more people contribute. Here's some information about it: http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers_public_funding.shtml.

@sterling: Perot's campaign was incredible in the sense that he was the most successful candidate since Roosevelt in the 1912 election. Perot garnered nearly 19% of the popular vote.

Updated the original post. Added Lindsey Graham, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry and Donald Trump under the Republicans. Added Lincoln Chafee under the Democrats.

In other news, my boy Bernie Sanders has been doing surprising well. He was only 8 points behind Hilary in a Wisconsin straw poll.

There was a pretty good blog post about him in the Huffington Post if you want to read a bit more about him. It is filled with a ton of other links as well.

Jeb Bush is going to get the nomination which is fucking sad. He's more moderate and definitely not like his brother, but he's still not a good candidate. I don't want another Bush or Clinton in office. He will also be DOA and will lose badly. Rand Paul is the only guy who can win. He just needs to get his voice out there.

Would never vote for a socialist. I don't believe in wealth redistribution. So I would not vote for Sanders.

The most frustrating part is, people see that on their tax form and think they're being asked to pay an extra $3.00, when all it's doing is asking you to allocate three tax dollars that you already paid to the fund. Not only do I think that $3 should be mandatory (you have no control over how all your other tax dollars are spent, why are those three dollars different?), I think they need to bump that up to somewhere around $20-30 in order to compete with the massive amount of private money that it has to contend against. It's no wonder that both candidates turned it down last year; what's a measly eighty-million dollars of clean, honest public money, when you've got a billion dollars' worth of undisclosed donors who can't wait to have an American president in their debt.

Honestly, I would gladly contribute additional money to the public election fund, if it were allowed. I genuinely don't understand why it isn't. If I'm allowed to donate thousands of dollars to one PAC or another, why can't I donate money to a government-run non-partisan election campaign fund? I don't support the Democrats, I don't support the Republicans, I support good government. Given the way elections are funded now, and especially given that both nominees turned down public funding in 2012 (and I fully expect the same in 2016), I don't believe any candidate who emerges from this broken process will be able to give me the functioning government I want.

If we could get money out of politics it wouldn't be so bad. We'd be able to choose between more than just republican or democrat. No one knows who Jill Stein is and Bernie Sanders doesn't stand much of a chance unfortunately.

And the republicans all seem far too crazy or far too stupid.

@horseman6: I've always struggled to understand why people say they don't believe in wealth redistribution. Any instance of taxation and government expenditure is wealth redistribution by definition.

And do you really look at this:

And think "yeah, things are actually fine the way they are"?

At the end of the day as long as you guys vote and take some kind of stand, that's really the most important part. I'm not an American myself, so I can't fully appreciate your situation, but hearing about the percentage of people not taking advantage of their civile rights never fail to chok me. Ryckert saying he didn't vote because he didn't give a toss about politics on Twitter legitemetly shocked me.

@pcorb: I'm talking about extreme wealth distribution. Taxes should be at a set rate for everyone. No deductions except for charity and then do 15 to 20% total. Drastically restrict lobbying, restrict donations, set two term limits for all government positions, ban all government unions, and implement 25 to life sentences for government corruption.

Also, that chart makes perfect sense and is totally fine as long as everyone is taxed fairly. It's no surprise that the top 10% has most of the wealth. The question is, how much of the total tax burden hits the top 10%? I'll tell you, its over 70%, up from 55% in 1986. Also, the top 20% paid 84% of all taxes, which looks very close to the distribution rate in your chart.

Also, mother jones . . . come on dude. Your bias is on your sleeve.