You have ZERO proof she was hired quid pro quo. Absolutely zero. Do you honestly think Clinton would risk any bad optics whatsoever if she thought DWS wouldn't help her win? That was the Rodman analogy. Clinton hired her to help win the election, not to regulate elections to be fair.

And even Sanders supporters said the nomination wasn't stolen. He lost. He lost mainly because he didn't appeal enough to minority voters. You have to take a massive leap of cynicism to make that claim.

You're making it sound like Clinton hired Alan Grayson. That's my point.

Then you magically transfer DWS's guilt directly to Clinton. Did Clinton do that, or did DWS? I'm pretty sure it was DWS. I hated George W. Bush as president. That didn't make me magically transfer guilt about the Valerie Plame incident directly to him because there's no evidence he was responsible for outing her as a CIA operative.

And again, you're also talking about the leader of the Democratic Party favoring a lifelong Democrat over a dude who just decided to join for a Presidential run. When I think of a candidate who is personally corrupt, I think of Nixon. He broke a law. Clinton didn't break any laws whatsoever. NONE! She didn't even do anything. DWS didn't break any laws for that matter. She shouldn't have done what she did, but good lord, you're blowing this way out of proportion.

How exactly am I helping Trump win? Because I'm gonna vote for Clinton over Trump, Stein, and Johnson?! You're gonna have to explain to me how I should help Trump lose. Do I vote for Trump?! Do I vote for some other candidate who has absolutely zero chance of winning?

And all evidence does not argue against Clinton being the most qualified candidate out of the remaining candidates. She is BY FAR the most experienced candidate in government. You can sit there and rail about the hiring of DWS to help campaign all you want, but there is no possible way you can possibly make the claim that she isn't the most experienced out of the remaining candidates. She was the most experienced candidate among all primary candidates, too. That's an undeniable fact. All evidence at the very least doesn't say she isn't the most qualified. None of the 2016 primary candidates came remotely close to her experience in foreign policy. None of them came close to her experience in domestic policy.

This isn't to say experience is everything. But you're making a very flimsy argument about her being personally corrupt, and then claiming the ridiculous assertion that all evidence says she's not the most qualified candidate, even though she's clearly the most experienced.

And yes, we don't know how good or bad a President she would be. You also can't know if a specific Honda Accord will be more reliable than a specific Chevy Corvette either. That doesn't stop me from buying the Honda Accord without batting an eye if I want the most reliable car.

Only in this case, it's more like a Honda Accord vs. a lit on fire dumpster on wheels.

First up, bring back the old quoting system!

"I'm of the opinion that both Hillary and Trump would make bad presidents."

Agreed.

"That being said, I don't really believe the narrative that Trump would be the worse of the two; the "apocalyptic" one to elect. Trump is incompetent and chaotic. Hillary is greasy and corrupt."

Which one has campaigned for a law that flagrantly violates the first amendment? Which one has called an entire demographic of US citizens rapists and murderers?

" I think the system (which is actually pretty well designed at its core..."

The American political system is a complete clusterfuck. You have a two party monopoly, the electoral college is a disaster and then there's Citizens United.

"The DNC had a chance to put in another option that would have easily had as much support from core Democrats as Hillary, but also would have energized younger voters AND been a very attractive option for Republicans who don't buy in to Trump (of which there are many). But instead, they left their fingers on the scales and tipped things in favor of Hillary."

Completely agree. Instead of the excitement of a Bernie running, you have the "ugh, Hillary, I guess" attitude.

"So, I'll vote for one of the 3rd party candidates (I like Stein's stance on Snowden, so probably her) or write in the option that crooked DNC and Hillary denied us. Either of those actions is de-facto more likely to result in President Trump, and I acknowledge that. But like I said, I'm OK with that -- I honestly believe Hillary would be worse, and the main thing is that me and other people like me have to send a message to both parties that they need to present us with more reasonable candidates if they expect us to have any degree of the "party loyalty" that both sides expected / enjoyed in the past. This election cycle shows that they are taking that for granted -- so screw 'em."

And here we have the major issue. I have NO IDEA how people think electing Trump will somehow bring down the system. "Screw 'em"?? As in the dems and the gop? It won't bother them in the slightest.

But it will bother Mexicans, Muslims, LGBT people and em.... damnit, there was another demographic that the Republicans want to fuck over.... oh yeah... women.

Forget Trump. As much of an unconscionable arsehole as he is, look at the GOP platform for 2016:
- tax cuts for the rich
- repeal environmental protections
- an anti-abortion amendment
- oppose stem cell research
- prop up the electoral college
- ignore climate change agreements
- repeal obamacare
- abolish net neutrality
- oppose same-sex marriage
- abstinence-based sex education
- increase military spending
- the ridiculous and wasteful border wall

and finally, appoint a new Supreme Court Judge to push all this through. And THAT is the real reason Trump can't be allowed to be President. Say what you want about Hillary, but at least she won't choose a complete loon for the supreme court. Trump might pick David Duke, for all we know.

I'm of the opinion that both Hillary and Trump would make bad presidents.

That being said, I don't really believe the narrative that Trump would be the worse of the two; the "apocalyptic" one to elect. Trump is incompetent and chaotic. Hillary is greasy and corrupt.

I think the system (which is actually pretty well designed at its core; Washington has just had a lot of time with not enough scrutiny to find the loopholes to exploit) would be better at mitigating the damage of President Trump than President Hillary. She's too insidious of an evil -- covert and connected. Trump is the polar opposite of covert.

The DNC had a chance to put in another option that would have easily had as much support from core Democrats as Hillary, but also would have energized younger voters AND been a very attractive option for Republicans who don't buy in to Trump (of which there are many). But instead, they left their fingers on the scales and tipped things in favor of Hillary.

So, I'll vote for one of the 3rd party candidates (I like Stein's stance on Snowden, so probably her) or write in the option that crooked DNC and Hillary denied us. Either of those actions is de-facto more likely to result in President Trump, and I acknowledge that. But like I said, I'm OK with that -- I honestly believe Hillary would be worse, and the main thing is that me and other people like me have to send a message to both parties that they need to present us with more reasonable candidates if they expect us to have any degree of the "party loyalty" that both sides expected / enjoyed in the past. This election cycle shows that they are taking that for granted -- so screw 'em.

You know, politics happen even when the presidential election is not happening. Start small and make this much noise in your local government -- you can actually have a voice there.

And fuck Jill Stein for the same reason. Start small. Gain traction in the local governments. Don't just pop up your head every 4 years and say, "Hey! See! I'm a 3rd party candidate!"

Go to city council meetings. Find a candidate for governor or mayor that you like and help them out both financially and with your feet and mouth.

That's how we got here. We wait 4 years until we decide to get political, as though that's the only time to do so. Even if Trump gets elected (which is seeming more and more plausible every week) that doesn't mean you have to stop making noise.

Not only does it look like the DNC played foul, she picked Tim Kaine for her VP instead of a progressive candidate. It's like she and the whole party just said, fuck the progressives and all of Sander's supporters.

Unfortunately the media isn't paying attention to Jill Stein, and only noticing Gary Johnson, as she's the one who would most appeal to Sanders supporters and other progressives since the Democratic party seems to have moved to where Republicans were in the 80s while the Republicans make a huge shift even further and further to the right...

I'm starting to be genuinely afraid of America's future with Trump as President... hell, I'm worried for the world's future with Trump as President. I've got no skills that would allow me to move to Canada, the UK, New Zealand/Australia or any other place worth moving to.

@bobknight33

i wasn't making a claim that using labor and solidarity rhetoric has helped black or working poor communities.i was simply saying that was the tactic the democrats used to garner and solidify votes.

see:FDR

the current state of republican/democrat power structure is almost purely a machine to retain political power.it may go one way one election cycle and another the next,but BOTH parties attempt to crush any dissenting voice from the current narrative of power,and neither really offer any substantive change.

go ahead and ask your friends who gary johnson and jill stein are,chances are they never even heard of them.

because americans taken as a whole,are pretty fucking stupid.

As a Republican that switched to Democrat for Bernie, screw that!

First off, I'm not a Bernie Bro. That's a derogatory term coined by the Clinton campaign to marginalize the Sanders followers.

Secondly, I don't vote for corruption. There's far too much evidence that Hillary's done twisted stuff, and I'll not be party to it. The problem is that when corruption wins, it makes fighting future corruption all the more difficult. Hillary has enough political experience that she can put into place obstacles for future progressive movements like Bernie's, and that's a problem.

Trump may have his own issues, but at very least he won't make an already unfair system even worse, which would have a longer term impact on the democracy of this country.

Walls can be torn down, Muslim immigrants can start entering again after 4 years, and not all conservative Supreme Court Justices are terrible. (Scalia actually was a pretty bright guy that passed quite a number of laws that had positive effect, for example. And despite him, the more progressive laws were still passed.)

I'm not saying I'll vote Trump, as Stein and Johnson are still options, but I certainly won't help Hillary in any way.

A smart person can do more damage than an idiot.

OMFG! While I'm not a Libertarian, it's nice to see somebody who actually gets these sort of interviews and goes with it. Anytime I've seen interviews on Daily Show, Last Week Tonight or any of those shows, I'm always like, don't they know what sort of show they are being interviewed with/for? Now if only we can get the media to start giving Jill Stein some airtime too...

What does the President actually do? A few main things:

Chief Diplomat for foreign relations.
Commander in Chief of the military. (although legislature has some checks on that)
Appointing Supreme Court justices.
Presidential Pardons.
Veto power over Legislative bills.

Anything on any Presidential candidate's agenda that doesn't fall under one of those headings is hot air. Considering that, which of the candidates would actually be a better president?

Chief Diplomat role: Hillary wins here, pretty handily. Trump is generally hated by anyone outside of the US. Bernie isn't as smooth and well connected as Hillary. Interestingly enough, this is one area where I think Obama really shines. He's a good talker, and he increased the level of respect that other countries viewed the US with. Some of that was having a very easy act to follow -- Bush and the wars sent us pretty close to rock bottom in terms of how the rest of the world saw us, but Obama is legit as a diplomat even without the bonus of simply being an extremely welcome reprieve from Bush.

Commander in Chief: This one is more open to interpretation, but I think Bernie wins here. He had the right view on Iraq wars when most didn't, and a totally solid track record for a long time. Clinton acts like she was always on the correct side of that also, but she voted for Bush's war when she was in the Senate. Bernie didn't. Whatever she says to try to justify that doesn't change the simple facts of it. Trump could be pretty apocalyptically bad as Commander in Chief, but on the other hand he'd have the legislature and Joint Chiefs to keep him in check if he was doing anything truly insane. I think he's definitely the worst of the three, but I think saying a vote for him is a vote to "let the world burn" is a bit overly dramatic.

Supreme Court appointments: Sanders wins here by a LANDSLIDE. He's got the right idea on all of the judicial topics of the time, and knows exactly how important this is. Hillary is a massive corporate tool. She knows who pays her, and she'd definitely be looking out for their interests when it comes to stuff like Citizens United challenges, etc. I even think that Trump would be massively better than Clinton in this area.

Pardons: I'm specifically thinking of Ed Snowden here. Trump and Clinton both say he is a "traitor". Sanders at least acknowledges that Snowden's revelations did a lot of good, but still says that he should come home and face a trial. So that makes me think he's the best of the three -- but Jill Stein of the Green party says she would pardon Snowden, which makes her my favorite on this particular hot-button issue for me.

Veto powers: Opinions are going to vary on this one. I think Sanders wins considering that he simply stands by his record in the Legislature, which I think he deserves to be proud of. Clinton is a flip-flopping weasel of a politician, and she could easily swing things in favor of her corporate overlords with her veto power. Trump is a wildcard, but the inherent nature of veto power means that he can't do anything truly crazy with it unilaterally -- the worst he could do is get veto-happy and grind the legislature to a standstill (which they tend to do all on their own anyway) or pass something terrible (which would be more the fault of the legislature).


Depending on how any individual voter evaluates those topics, and how the prioritize them, I think it is perfectly reasonable for someone to think that any of the candidates would make a better president than any of the others. Personally, I think Sanders is the best of the three, but honestly I'd prefer incompetent President Trump to very dodgy President Clinton.

Jill Stein(Green) and Gary Johnson(Libertarian)
are both running.
...


Yes a third party will split the vote. That is the point. It gives people the power to choose the issues. It forces a realignment of the parties. If the effected party doesn't change or adopt the third parties views, they will consistently lose. If they do change, then the third party can die out having been successful.

Parties have failed before. The US wasn't started with Democrat vs Republican. As I see it it's past time for both the Democratic and Republican parties to die out. The long term benefits from a realignment of the parties platform is well worth the temporary disaster of a Trump presidency.

I sincerely don't think Trump would be worse than Clinton. He is a buffoon with little support in the government, and would be unable to accomplish anything as president. Hillary on the other hand has the ability and will to continue the transfer of control over our government away from its citizens.

Trump winning would be a true embarrassment and a great motivation to switch from "first past the post" to another voting system. Hillary winning... more of the same BS ad infinitum.

I'll be voting for Jill Stein if Bernie isn't the Democratic nomination. Regardless of the outcome I'll know my vote, no matter how insignificantly small, supported the end of the Republican/Democrat duopoly.

@bobknight33 --

I continue to agree with you on a lot of what you're saying (but not all).

Trump and Sanders are both riding a wave of frustration in the people, as you say. Their current popularity, even if both only go downhill from here, has already partially sent that message to both parties. I don't think Trump would make a good president, but if he wins the election I think that really hammering home that message of frustration could be a significant positive outcome. Same goes for some hypothetical scenario resulting in Sanders getting elected, although I personally feel quite positive about the other stuff that I think Sanders would bring to the table, unlike how I feel about Trump.

If there's one area where I think the government could stand to get *bigger*, it's in oversight, evaluation, and accountability. Being under the microscope and heavily scrutinized perhaps isn't a recipe for optimal efficiency, but I think we desperately need more of it in government AND the private sector.

Early in my lifetime, a large corporation that had a relatively benign monopoly by today's standards was considered a big enough deal for the government to step in and break it up. AT&T / Bell got split into the "Baby Bells". Corporations now are vast juggernauts compared to that, but since they make gigantic profits I guess we collectively see them as bastions of Capitalism. But I think that in reality they are doing much more harm to Capitalism with their monopolies, collusion, and corruption.

I think Sanders is the candidate most likely to even *try* to do something to roll back that shift, and bring back oversight and accountability to government. Hillary sure as hell wouldn't do it. And I don't think Trump would either -- he is the literal face of a gigantic Corporation himself, after all.

I had high hopes for Obama. He didn't live up to them, but to be fair I think the lion's share of that is on the Legislative branch. That taught me to be careful about putting much of any stock into Presidential campaign promises, particularly about things outside the scope of what the Executive branch can actually do.

I think Trump and Clinton both put *themselves* first, ahead of all else. I don't think Clinton gives a flying fuck about any of us plebs, beyond attempting to pander to large demographic blocks of us just enough to secure our votes. Maybe Trump cares more for Joe Average than Clinton, but only incidentally -- as a Capitalist he needs Joe Averages to buy his products, and buy into his image.

I don't get the same read from Sanders. I think he actually does give a shit. A lot of his agenda would require a cooperative Legislature, which he wouldn't get -- just like Obama. So in terms of changing the status quo, perhaps his biggest impact would simply be in sending the establishment a loud and clear message that we are no longer content with business as usual in Washington. A message very similar to what electing Trump would send.

It would/ will take me some soul searching, but assuming that Hillary gets the Democrat nomination over Sanders, a desire to send that message might be enough to get me to vote for Trump. But voting for a reasonably tolerable option from a minor party might serve that end just as well. Say Jesse Ventura running as a Libertarian, or Jill Stein from the Green Party. Stein has the very distinct advantage (from my perspective) of being the only current candidate who has said that she would grant a Presidential pardon to Ed Snowden (although Ventura would too, IF he runs). Pardons are one of the few things that a President can actually *do* unilaterally -- and that makes that a pretty damn good "single issue" prompt for my vote, in my opinion.

This guy's going to grow up to be a slightly fairly more sane Ben Stein.

My fee for escort would require costumes of my own design to be worn by participating family members, the Mad Tea-Cup Party ride at least 10 times during the course of the day, and a bottomless stein of Bärenjäger on ice.

Oh, and I'd have a reinforced electric wheelchair that would stand-astride two riders-

OMG! A vote for Jill Stein was a vote for Obama! It was a mis-calibrated touch screen. This was not nefarious.

I can't believe that Romney not only got the party nomination, but that it is still even considered that he may win.

It just goes to show that all you have to be is white, mid 50's, semi-attractive (with a dash of salt and pepper hair), be anti-gay rights, anti-Obama and anti-abortion and most Republicans will blindly support you no matter your name, stance on issues (other than the three above), economic plan (or even a vague one), and a consistent, verified, proven history of lies, flip-flopping and deception.

It is pathetic. It is like those Calvin peeing on Ford/Chevy stickers that everyone had on the car a few years back. Blind loyalty and devotion to anything is such a bad thing.

Next election, I sure hope that the third party candidates get the time in the spotlight. If the media actually showed more on Gary Johnson or Jill Stein Or Virgil Goode and the like, I promise you that there would be a lot more people willing to support them over Romney/Obama.