freeman3 wrote:You're catching on!

Unbelievable.

By that I mean I can't believe you are that gullible.

freeman3 wrote:Ricky's post is on point .

Reminds me of the old song, "It's my Party and I'll deny if I want to."

Gullible? No. Biased? Well....

I think I understand where Freeman is coming from here. It's a question of picking the least worst option. Over here in the UK we're currently witnessing what happens when leftist voters go with the heart rather than the head. They elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party because they couldn't abide the more centrist candidates whose politics they dislike (and some of whom were complicit in Iraq) and went enthusiastically with their hearts. The result has been a hopelessly unelectable leader who is currently driving Labour firmly into the buffers and most likely ensuring that they'll be out of power for at least another 10 years. The question is whether this was really the ethical thing to do. Do you vote for what you believe in and thereby ensure a Tory government or do you attempt to be pragmatic and elect a more flawed leader (from your perspective) who may stand a chance of winning an election ? If you take the view that a Tory government is always going to be much worse for the poor than a Labour government then isn't it more ethical to be pragmatic ?

I think this is why Freeman is willing to overlook Hillary's obvious faults. He doesn't believe that any of the alternatives (and at this point there's only one alternative) can win the election and he's more concerned with keeping the Republicans out than he is with voting for a flawed democrat. Arguably that's a principled position, it just depends on your point of view.

What he said. A very accurate summation of my position and better expressed.

Sassenach wrote:I think this is why Freeman is willing to overlook Hillary's obvious faults. He doesn't believe that any of the alternatives (and at this point there's only one alternative) can win the election and he's more concerned with keeping the Republicans out than he is with voting for a flawed democrat. Arguably that's a principled position, it just depends on your point of view.

I guess. But if there is one thing the election of 2000 taught me is that a single vote doesn't matter. Florida that year was a tie, but it was called for Bush by 537 votes. That's a lot of votes when compared to a single individual vote: One vote out of 537 wouldn't have mattered, and it was still essentially a tie, because it was within the margin of error. So why vote? I vote because it's my duty as an American citizen to vote, like it is my duty to pay my taxes every year. Of course there are fewer consequences if I don't vote, but it is no less my duty. If you consider it your duty to vote, and you know your individual vote does not matter, then why the heck would you compromise with a crappy presidential candidate?

Of course, if you think your vote matters I can understand making that political calculation, but that's wishful thinking.

Now if Howard Dean were running I'd drop Hillary in a second . But really smart people who would make great presidents can't seem to make it through the process. What can one do? You go with the best option available.

Yeah, your individual vote does not matter...but every one of us is part of a group ( young, old, black, white, rich, poor, liberal, conservative) and how members of those groups make voting choices as a group (or fail to vote as a group) then that group can have its preferences more or less expressed in politics. Old people vote at a much higher percentage rate and that fact has an impact on whether politicians listen to what they want. Democrats tend to make utilitarian calculations regarding voting power to their detriment.

freeman3 wrote:Now if Howard Dean were running I'd drop Hillary in a second . But really smart people who would make great presidents can't seem to make it through the process. What can one do? You go with the best option available.

She is so not Bernie Sanders. Even if we ignore the email situation, I can't get beyond the self-enrichment while pretending to represent the "common folk." I don't know if anyone in the history of the Republic has ever amassed so much money while in "public service."

She's incompetent and fraudulent. She may be a criminal.

Other than that, she's a great candidate. I hope freeman3 gets his candidate . . . and she gets indicted this summer. It would serve Democrats right.

What we're talking about here George is the primaries. It's an internal process to decide on a party's candidate, so I think it's reasonable for the supporters of that party to think about dirty pragmatic issues.

With that said, there's nothing wrong with your approach either. All I'm saying is that ethical debates like this are not necessarily clear cut. It's possible for both you and Freeman to vote in opposite directions and both to be acting 'ethically' by your own lights.

double post

Well, all this said, I do like the drama of both races. Very entertaining.

But I haven't voted in a primary in over 20 years. They're closed in NY and I'm not a party member.

geojanes wrote:Well, all this said, I do like the drama of both races. Very entertaining.

But I haven't voted in a primary in over 20 years. They're closed in NY and I'm not a party member.

Neither is Bernie! :)

The DNC really has all its eggs in the Hillary basket. They know this. I don't believe Hillary will be indicted--even if there's video of her maniacally laughing while she's deleting emails and saying, "they'lll never pin this on me!"

They will not let Bernie be the nominee.

Fate

ALL of her business email was supposed to be conducted on a government email address. If she had done that, we would not be having this discussion

You are an incredibly obtuse person. Perhaps purposefully obtuse? Or is it a requirement to ignore facts in order to hold your world view?

Was this the law or not?

Federal law allows government officials to use personal email so long as relevant documents are preserved for history."
The law was amended in late 2014 to require that personal emails be transferred to government servers within 20 days. But that was after Clinton left office

If all government business was supposed to be conducted on a government email address:
1) Why wasn't there a law or a regulation that made this clear? And why did the law actually say that personal servers were okay as long as emails were transferred within 20 days?
2) Why did Homeland security let her do what she did?
3) Why did Homeland Security let Colin Powell do much the same thing?

There should not be a $700 billion organization that fails to make politicians follow secure procedures. A $700 billion dollar organization should not relent to push back from a politician and her private contractor.
This is an institutional failure . Clinton screwed up, but there should never have been the opportunity for her to screw up.
That the American media have never approached the problem this way, is because - Hillary.
(The same reason she probably chose a private server in the first place. The political paparazzi that is cable and internet news. )

rickyp wrote:Was this the law or not?

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title18/html/USCODE-2011-title18-partI-chap93-sec1924.htm

(a) Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.

http://www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-bremmer-obama-administration-officials-2015-8

On Thursday, a federal judge opened the door for the FBI to try to recover any emails Clinton may have deleted from her private server, expanding the agency's investigation into whether sensitive information ever passed through her private inbox while she served as secretary of state.

The judge said that Clinton did not comply with government policies surrounding the use of a private email server, which require that "federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system," The New York Times reported.

Yes. It was wrong.