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Comment by crispyambulance | Hacker News Reader

    > I have enough faith in our system of government
    > to feel that its self regulating that we could
    > put pretty much anyone in the office of president
    > and they'd not be able to fuck it up too much.

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong other than....

Nomination of supreme court justices that take back decades of progress.

Starting new and unnecessary wars, making the geopolitical situation more dangerous and unstable : George W started 2 of them, didn't finish, and we're still dealing with the mess.

Have a leader who is a laughing stock, much like Berlusconi was in Italy.

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I think the strong principle of the court to hold to stare decisis precludes a dramatic shift one way or another no matter which ideology is nominated to the court. I personally would rather see an ideological centrist appointed.

Isn't people's fear that his admin would instead disengage from interventionism? Which is the opposite of getting into foreign wars.

Peoples' fear is that there is no way to tell what he would do since he contradicts himself every time he talks.. One minute he talks about bringing all the troops back to the US and letting the middle east work itself out, the next he's threatening to shoot down Russian war planes if they come near US assets or send 30,000 troops into Syria to fight ISIS. He's also come out in favor of stronger forms of torture than waterboarding and won't rule out nuking Syria..

In actuality I don't see much difference between his stance and Sanders's. They both want to retrench. As for going after Isis and or Russia, it seems that would be congruent with "defending the homeland" which isn't contradictory with respect to disengaging from foreign wars.

In other words keep the homeland safe without initiating unprovoked wars and demand allies pay their fair share of expenditures for keeping _their_ territorial integrity. So western Europe, Japan, S Korea, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, etc.

I'm not a Sanders supporter but I don't remember the good Senator promising to expand torture, threatening to kill innocent family members of terrorists, or threatening to nuke Syria -- all of which would be war crimes. If you don't think there's room between Trump and Sanders on foreign policy, you aren't paying attention.

You're right he does not say that. But realistically if he saw it fit to go to war (and unless he's a pacifist) any involvement in war would involve the above, whether intentionally or not. You cannot honestly go into a war and think you can avoid that.

Maybe Trump really is looking forward to a conflict to commit such things, or he's realistic in that if his admin did get onto one, he's willing to admit the consequences.

The one I'd fear would be Cruz who is/was or wanted to sound like a warmonger.

Hillary appears to be more of a hawk than Trump: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clint...

(I find her frightening, but Trump terrifying, for different reasons.)

Hillary's more consistent in her hawkishness than Trump, who talks even more extreme hawkishness on extreme non-intervention at alternating moments (and misrepresents his past support of failed adventures in hawkishness.)

Which would be more hawkish in practice is hard to guess.

How funny that Democrats are fine with electing another candidate who actively voted for one of those wars.

A lot of Democrats stopped liking HRC's actual politics in 2000 and have cognitive dissonance about the complexity and change of her whole career.

That's a good point with regard to some Democrats, but I'd imagine such things are why Bernie is as popular as he is.

One candidate or another is going to eke out a win requiring superdelegates to put them over the top, in the most divisive nominating race the party has seen since 1968.

A very significant fraction of Democrats aren't "fine" with the candidate you are referring to, even to the extent of seeing that candidate as a tolerable choice.

"progress"

You think progress should be achieved by changing the interpretation of existing law? Odd view.

No, I think progress is harmed when far-right administrations appoint too many supreme court justices. See for example "Citizens United v FEC"

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