2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Jacob]

I have to say I am pretty disappointed with her as a candidate. I thought the Clintons had more savvy than this. Obama and Bush controlled the message and were far more disciplined.

Quite frankly, I'm impressed with how she's managed this campaign, all things considered.

Her presidential candidacy has had to collectively run against:

1) her primaries opponent fighting all the way to the Convention, despite being soundly defeated in the party
2) the most unorthodox opponent our two-party system has ever had to deal with, contrary to all norms and practices
3) the global media machine that has spent an entire generation vilifying her and President Clinton
4) congressional opponents actively pursuing political hearings and investigations, from BenghaziGate to Servergate, despite being out of office for years
5) the combined intelligence services and quasi-state actors of the sovereign nation of Russia, working specifically to ensure an electoral outcome
6) the hacker army of a goofball pseudo-anarchist holed up in an embassy
7) the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Nixon and Kissinger wouldn't have been able to control the message, man. Lesser campaigns would've fallen apart months ago.

Yup, I agree. I started out fairly lukewarm on Clinton but the campaign has convinced me she is phenomenal.

[CountDeMoney]

Kurt Eichenwald's apparently pushing the last of the investigative journalism chips into the middle of the table:  tomorrow's Newsweek cover story is more of the Trump/Russian connection; and apparently, certain European governments are so completely distrustful of Trump and the Russian connection, they're feeling compelled to do their own intelligence work on the matter.  The possibility of a Russian-influenced US president is that horrifying to them.

[Jacob]

She is a cunt.

So she's able to take a pounding and keep going, she is a source of delight to many, and she brings forth new life?

That's a pretty positive opinion you have Ed

[OttoVonBismarck]

The spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension ... leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

While I've long disliked Clinton for a host of reasons, and I was never that warm on Bill ( I think he's overrated and given credit for much, undeservingly, but he was competent nonetheless), as a lifeitme conservative I find myself rooting hard against the Republican for the first time. The simple reality is that above all matters of partisanship and political ideology we have fundamental responsibilities of citizenship to not elect someone who is not only temperamentally unfit for the day to day demands of the Presidency, but enamored with no respect for our constitutional system and with significant support and potential abilities to erode its very foundations.

I think people should be very worried--in a world where a conservative FBI corps is running its own shop now, interfering in a Presidential election, what could happen with a man like Trump able to give them orders? If they are willing to do things like this when it breaks the rules, what will they do or rather, what won't they do if ordered by a conservative fascist? Our Congress has long since had any meaningful power to rein in the Presidency eroded by its own dysfunction, and in truth this has had us at risk from an overzealous President for some time--but we were protected by the filtering process of our primary system, so that while flawed candidates emerged they were serious men who were respectful of the importance of the office, and even the least of them had far more respect for the constitution than Trump has shown.

Aside from all the boondoggles and nonsense of the Clintons, some just stupid but not truly corrupt, some probably genuinely corrupt, and most manufactured, and aside from her many inconsistencies with the conservative position, I really don't understand how anyone who cares about their country plans to vote for Trump.

[Razgovory]

I have been told on many occasions that Fascism is not a right wing phenomenon.  So really, the Alt-right and Trump are actually closet liberals.

[Monoriu]

Maybe I am paranoid, but if I were a US citizen and Trump wins this election, I'd start looking at possibilities of getting a foreign passport and an offshore bank account.  I won't flee, but it is probably time to start building a backup plan.  The chance that the US constitution would cease to be effective would be higher than zero under President Trump.  A real survival plan involves foreign passports and offshore bank accounts, not guns and electricity generators 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Sadly due to the dates involved I have no easy foreign passport. My Mom is a German national but the last I looked into it she would've had to have filed some special paperwork like 5 years within my birth to get me citizenship. Since dad's career was US centric she never gave it a thought, as a woman who came of age right after the war she never saw a permanent attachment to the Fatherland as desirable for her children when she left.

[11B4V]

Maybe I am paranoid, but if I were a US citizen and Trump wins this election, I'd start looking at possibilities of getting a foreign passport and an offshore bank account.  I won't flee, but it is probably time to start building a backup plan.  The chance that the US constitution would cease to be effective would be higher than zero under President Trump.  A real survival plan involves foreign passports and offshore bank accounts, not guns and electricity generators 

Never and with all sincerity, fuck off.

[CountDeMoney]

It's not going to matter much during the limited nuclear exchange the thin-skinned sociopath Trump starts, known to history as World War Tweet.

[11B4V]

It's not going to matter much during the limited nuclear exchange the thin-skinned sociopath Trump starts, known to history as World War Tweet.

Never come to that.

[CountDeMoney]

It's not going to matter much during the limited nuclear exchange the thin-skinned sociopath Trump starts, known to history as World War Tweet.

Never come to that.

He's not doing the odds any favors, man.

[Berkut]

It's not going to matter much during the limited nuclear exchange the thin-skinned sociopath Trump starts, known to history as World War Tweet.

I've got to wonder, or hope, that the National Command Authority and Obama are feverishly revising our nuclear user procedures to include an ability, if it isn't already there, for someone other than the President to stop a launch order.

The current SOP, as I understand it, emphasizes ability to react quickly to a potential massive first strike over the need to counter a potentially unstable President issuing a launch order.

I hope that changes. Or has changed. Our vulnerability to a enemy first strike that could take out our ability to strike back is likely largely insiginficant anyway - we always have our subs after all, and we are not nearly as reliant on land based ICBMs. And the danger of a Trump is vastly greater than the danger of anyone launching a first strike that could be war winning.

Indeed, I don't even know that anyone is capable of that at all anymore. The only possible candidate is Russia, and I rather doubt they have the counter force capability anymore anyway...

[CountDeMoney]

Aside from all the boondoggles and nonsense of the Clintons, some just stupid but not truly corrupt, some probably genuinely corrupt, and most manufactured, and aside from her many inconsistencies with the conservative position, I really don't understand how anyone who cares about their country plans to vote for Trump.

It would be an incredibly uphill battle, and no guarantee to make inroads with the congressional Republicans, but I think a President Clinton would do herself and her new administration a substantial favor if she jettisoned the sycophants, protectors and handlers that always seem to make bad things worse for the Clintons.
Unfortunately, and especially after this campaign, I don't think that's going to happen. 

[CountDeMoney]

I've got to wonder, or hope, that the National Command Authority and Obama are feverishly revising our nuclear user procedures to include an ability, if it isn't already there, for someone other than the President to stop a launch order.

The current SOP, as I understand it, emphasizes ability to react quickly to a potential massive first strike over the need to counter a potentially unstable President issuing a launch order.

I hope that changes. Or has changed. Our vulnerability to a enemy first strike that could take out our ability to strike back is likely largely insiginficant anyway - we always have our subs after all, and we are not nearly as reliant on land based ICBMs. And the danger of a Trump is vastly greater than the danger of anyone launching a first strike that could be war winning.

Indeed, I don't even know that anyone is capable of that at all anymore. The only possible candidate is Russia, and I rather doubt they have the counter force capability anymore anyway...

I know that Clinton and Yeltsin managed to hammer out detargeting for ICBMs, and that Obama favored and pushed the Russians to get on board with an "open ocean" policy via bilateral agreement--that all nukes are aimed, not at one another, but at the open ocean, in the event of an accidental launch and to allow a measure of deescalation--but considering the Russian strategic reevaluation of their nuclear strategic thinking, I don't see that happening without substantial verification processes.

I don't think the Russians are a principal concern for a global birds-over-the-pole The Day After, either; at least, not at this point.  But I do worry about their regional fixations, and I can see in a Trumpian Universe, a Russia emboldened enough to move against NATO--and as the Russian-compromised US President sits it all out, the French go ball-so-hard, strap on the cuirassiers and remind Moscow what scorched earth really means.

[Admiral Yi]

Have you guys seen the Clinton ad featuring a retired silo jockey?