Is Hillary Toast?

[themuzicman]

My hope is that Trump knocks out Bush, Rubio, and Cruz, and then crashes himself.

I don't think that will happen, but... you never know.

[Mountain Man]

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...-batch4-213164

The State Department has deemed roughly 150 more of Hillary Clinton's email messages to be classified, a move certain to fuel the roiling controversy over her use of a private email server instead of an official government account when she served as secretary of state.

The new classifications will more than triple the previous total of 63 classified messages on Clinton's account, but State Department spokesman Mark Toner stressed that the information was not marked classified at the time it was sent several years ago. He also said the decisions to classify the information did not represent a determination that it should have been marked or handled that way back then.

"That certainly does not speak to whether it was classified at the time it was sent, or forwarded, or received," Toner said during the daily State Department briefing on Monday. "We stand by our contention that the information we’ve upgraded was not marked classified at the time it was sent."

Nearly all the information officially classified by the State Department in prior email releases involved diplomatic strategy or information provided by foreign governments. Toner batted away questions about whether State Department policy dictated that Clinton and other agency employees treat as classified information obtained in confidence from foreign officials or diplomats.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...#ixzz3kR4YyNmT

If Hillary had any affiliation other than Democrat then she would have been forced out of the race months ago.

[Mountain Man]

Plus W was a Governor and he was an atrocious president

He wasn't great, but atrocious? I think you're begging the question. He was arguably a better president than his predecessor and inarguably much better than his successor. Of course neither Clinton nor Obama set the bar very high, so this may be a case of daming with faint praise.

[Mountain Man]

Sam talks about Trump much like Republicans talked about Obama before he was president. We all know how that one turned out.

And how Republicans and Democrats talked about Reagan. If you believed the pundits, Reagan was "extreme", "simplistic", and "unelectable".

[Mountain Man]

Trump is tapping into America's frustration with politics as usual. I would really love to see Trump win just to be a pain in the butt to the Washington establishment. I have no idea if he can maintain his lead, but a lot of his appeal is his disdain for the political correctness crap.

That and the fact that Trump is the only one to release honest to goodness workable policy positions. He's a firebrand, certainly, but there's substance to it.

[Cow Poke]

If Hillary had any affiliation other than Democrat then she would have been forced out of the race months ago.

I think only dyed hard democrats would dispute that.

[Sparko]

The trouble with politicians who hold positions by opportunity and not nature is that they give up at the first sign of resistance.

Hillary's opportunistic social-liberalism seems best summarized to me by her announcement of support for same-sex marriage a few months ago... she can look like she's socially liberal (but still within the majority of Americans) and she doesn't have to do anything at all. Back when it was actually a contentious issue, was she pushing for equal rights? Absolutely not.

who are you and what did you do with Starlight?

I'm beginning to think my view that "war is evil" is some sort of heresy in America these days...
After 14 years of perpetual war, surprisingly few US politicians are anti-war...

Not just America. Australia is planning on invading New Zealand too.

[klaus54]

I prefer people who can win the general election. That's Biden or Clinton, by preference.

Rubio could win but in a personality election. He would do worse that Bush, Kaisch, and probably Walker in a policy election. And Trump is the millstone around the party's neck. Rubio can't win by being the Immigration Guy if he has to hew close to the Trump line to win the primary.

If Hillary is the candidate she will be skewered.

Any Republican who is willing to not kiss butt, will destroy B.S.'s nonsense. Socialism is JUST what we need with an 18 trillion buck debt. He know NOTHING of economics (I had a greater net worth after retiring from a college teaching job then he has after 12 years in the Senate at a $150 Grand salary.) A total idiot...

Biden would be tougher since he seems to be able to turn off his dopey switch when he debates.

OweMalley is a freakin' wuss. Key "Black Lies Matter".

Of course at least 50% of American voting public are morons who want the candy, so that's your liberals "trump" card, as it were.

[klaus54]

My hope is that Trump knocks out Bush, Rubio, and Cruz, and then crashes himself.

I don't think that will happen, but... you never know.

Why? Please explain.

[Starlight]

The trouble with politicians who hold positions by opportunity and not nature is that they give up at the first sign of resistance.

Hillary's opportunistic social-liberalism seems best summarized to me by her announcement of support for same-sex marriage a few months ago... she can look like she's socially liberal (but still within the majority of Americans) and she doesn't have to do anything at all. Back when it was actually a contentious issue, was she pushing for equal rights? Absolutely not.

who are you and what did you do with Starlight?

Eh? If you think that comment was out of character, then I guess you don't know me very well.

In your mind, what am I supposed to say? Should I be shilling for Hillary...? You've got to be kidding me.

Not just America. Australia is planning on invading New Zealand too.

LOL, sure.

[Starlight]

Socialism is JUST what we need with an 18 trillion buck debt.

Yeah, cos raising taxes never ever brought in a penny more to any government, and never ever allowed it to pay off its debts...?

Oh, wait, this is America, where insanely delusional republicans actually claim to believe that lowering taxes increases government revenue... After bankrupting Kansas with their current sociopathic fiscal policies, Republicans just plain should never be ever allowed near any budget, period. And remind me how much the debt increased under Bush? Oh that's right, Bush raised military spending to record levels of near $1 trillion per year, while giving out major tax cuts to the rich, and consequently more than doubling the national debt, not to mention letting the financial sector implode causing one of the greatest financial recessions in history. And you want to let those morons anywhere near a national budget again...?

Whereas the Clinton administration actually ran surpluses (yes, that mythical creature called a budget surplus has been known to exist... under a Democratic president). So if you go back to the pre-Bush W days, when the country ran surpluses, by undoing the Bush W tax-cuts-for-the-rich and undoing the Bush W "let's attack multiple countries and pay for it with the credit card"... both of which Sanders is vehemently in favor of undoing... then you might just find that the magical unicorn of surpluses can be yours once again. Since Sanders wants to raise taxes more than an other candidate (thus increasing revenue), and reduce military interventions more than any other candidate (thus decreasing expenses), Sanders appears to be the candidate most likely to actually run fiscal surpluses as President. He also wants to move healthcare to medicare-for-all, which would reduce total national healthcare expenditure by about 2.5 times, if the data from other OECD countries is anything to go by, which would trigger a massive federal surplus also.

He know NOTHING of economics

Dude, the Democrats appointed him their head member on the Senate Budget Committee. So the people who work with Sanders obviously believe he knows plenty about economics to the point where they put him in charge.

Sanders extensively critiqued Alan Greenspan's policies when Greenspan was running the Fed, and after the 2008 crisis Greenspan confessed that he had been wrong in his beliefs about how economics worked (video here).

(I had a greater net worth after retiring from a college teaching job then he has after 12 years in the Senate at a $150 Grand salary.)

He has a family. Expenses on college or medical bills might have been particularly high, who knows? Perhaps they like taking holidays? Perhaps he donates generously to charity? Who cares, it's his money he can spend it how he likes. It appears that he saves about one quarter of his yearly income... that seems a totally reasonable amount. If he was actually in debt you'd have a point, but he isn't, so you don't.

[Starlight]

Socialism is JUST what we need with an 18 trillion buck debt.

And let's look at historic US federal debt:
Federal_Debt_Held_by_the_Public_1790-2013.jpg
(Public debt as percentage of GDP)

Debt got to record levels at the end of WWII. Higher even than now, relative to GDP. And yet within a 20 year period the vast majority of that debt was gone. I wonder what the maximum federal tax rate during that period was...?

Answer: 91%

So, yes, 'socialism' like the 1950s is JUST what you need with an 18 trillion buck debt.

[Cow Poke]

Can we please get back to Hillary's chances of winning the nomination / primary / general election?

Thanks

[Starlight]

Can we please get back to Hillary's chances of winning the nomination / primary / general election?

Well there's only a limited amount to say on that topic...

1. The story that prompted this particular thread is a non-story: The State department has decided to classify some of the emails in the years subsequent to them being sent, and that has nothing to do with Hillary.

2. The FBI is still doing it's generalized trawl as to whether any of the emails were classified when sent. If it turns out some were, then that's basically a bureaucratic procedural bungle, and there will be talk of putting protocols in place so it doesn't happen in future, etc etc. The Republicans will shout scandal at the top of their voices, but no one will actually care because it won't be a real scandal (unless they could prove deliberate intent, which they won't, because no one actually believes that Hillary hates America and deliberately set out to harm America by leaking classified information to the enemies of the US)

3. The real story with the emails is the extent to which Hillary has deleted emails that could have been requested by the media that would have revealed her doing favors for donors. This is widely assumed to be the reason she had a private email server and the reason she has deleted emails, because it prevents discovery of the extent of her corruption. That's the actually legitimate concern here. Although to some extent everyone just assumes at this point that she is completely corrupt anyway, so proof is hardly necessary.

This is what the Republicans/media ought to be calling her out on and that is the real email scandal. But, ironically, the Republicans can't really call her out on that, because almost every single one of them is as corrupt as she is. Jeb Bush even has an identical issue to her, with discoverable emails showing his corruption that he has tried to cover up. His strategy has been to preemptively release as many of them as he feels he safely can and then claim it's 'all' of them, and pretend no others exist - much the same as Hillary's "deleted emails" strategy - both of them claim "I've totally released them all, honest. There are totally not incriminating ones in my trash can." Walker, meanwhile, is basically a puppet of the Koch brothers and is doing his best to cover up their donor networks in order to hide his corruption.

This is why Trump is having his field day with his claims of "all the others here are corrupt, and I've donated money for favors with all of them, but no one can corrupt me because I'm rich". And Sanders is doing equally well with "I don't take money from big donors, and I hate corruption and want to eradicate it". Trends at the moment suggest it might become a Trump vs Sanders election for that reason.

So, in short, the Republicans shouting "Classified Emails! Hillary! Scandal! Benghazi! ~handwave~" isn't going to have any effect. But "Hillary has deleted some of her emails because she doesn't want people to know what she's up to" is going to have an effect, giving the already existing climate of generalized distrust of Hillary. Especially because the man-on-the-street can relate to wanting to hide emails and think "well, I've sent emails I wouldn't want people seeing because I was up to something I shouldn't have been doing" and so can understand and visualize exactly what Hillary is being accused of and can imagine her doing it, whereas the average person can't relate to the intricacies of bureaucratic protocols for handling classified information. So if Hillary ends up being 'toast' because of these emails, as the thread title suggests, it will merely be because the emails are an extra straw on the camel's back of the generalized climate of distrust of Hillary that is so (justifiably) pervasive.

[One Bad Pig]

And let's look at historic US federal debt:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]9289[/ATTACH]
(Public debt as percentage of GDP)

Debt got to record levels at the end of WWII. Higher even than now, relative to GDP. And yet within a 20 year period the vast majority of that debt was gone. I wonder what the maximum federal tax rate during that period was...?

Answer: 91%

So, yes, 'socialism' like the 1950s is JUST what you need with an 18 trillion buck debt.

You're looking at Wikipedia for information on something as controversial as the US public debt? And you're looking at debt relative to GDP with this graph, not absolute debt. The reason that the ratio went down was generally because the economy grew, not because of any actual reduction in debt.

(Sorry, CP. I'll be good now.)