I guess Assange would like to see Trump win - quickest way to bring about the downfall of the US
I hate to be the check your privileged type, but I can't imagine hearing that from any type of minority person. Sure, if you are an upper middle class white guy, like most of us here, the idea of sending a lesson might be attractive. But that lesson isn't worth sacrifices to the rights of women, LGBT people, Muslims, African Americans, and everyone else that would be hurt be a Trump presidency.
We've seen an ostensibly moderate president (Obama) uphold and extend the Bush Doctrine on foreign policy, killing, mutilating, and devastating all sorts of innocent people throughout the middle east.
The lesson we'd learn from a Trump presidence is that we need to be more picky about the sort of people we vote into office. The first step in this is not holding our nose and voting for the major party candidate who offends us slightly less.
This election, we get to choose between a democrat who is actually a moderate conservative (and could easily run the same platform as a republican) and a populist Republican, who has borrowed Democratic Party rhetoric on rust belt issues and combined it with some elements of paleo-conservatism. They are both hybrids that defy the party conventions.
If a sufficient electoral base exists to elect Trump, a sufficient electoral base exists to get him sufficient legislative support (sooner than new people are elected, perhaps, simply by raising the prospect of electoral danger to present incumbents) to implement his policies.
Edit: Also, to be clear, if he does have legislative support because enough people support him to elect representatives with similar agendas, that's not really something for me to be worried about, as that would be no different than any other candidate. If it's the will of the people, so be it (as much as I dislike it).
The interest groups that care generally want the status quo preserved.
If Trump is not destined to do this, then I think there is little danger he'll be elected.
Note, the same applies to HRC.
That the US would go to war over the hacking of a non-governmental institution is ridiculous, and whoever is spouting stuff like that should immediately lose quite a bit of credibility with whoever is listening. Only congress can officially start a war, and if the president started getting aggressive with a country such as powerful as Russa over something so small, well, there would be some interesting ramifications to presidential power. Remember, congress has the ability to amend the constitution.
I think you are being naive if that is your logic. Why care about the president at all if they can't pass laws? The truth is that they do have a large amount of influence on the laws of this country. There is a reason people call it Obamacare and not Pelosicare. You are also not factoring in executive orders which can be used to do a lot of damage. I imagine Trump's immigration ban will attempt to be issued with an executive order for example.
Put another way, they are allowed to act unchecked by Congress much of the time.
Why is this?
I think the president and congress play a coordination game through which corrupt legislation is passed.
Take Obamacare. Its passage was a massive success to rent-seeking firms and interest groups. All the interest groups and most of the members of congress who were instrumental in getting it passed were happy to have it called "Obamacare" and not "PhizerCare" or "AbbotCare" or "HalliburtonCare".
Correspondingly, both parties benefit from the notion that Obamacare is somehow leftist or constitutes a big defeat for "greedy firms" and "selfish doctors".
In reality, the program simply modernizes many of the existing flows of rents from the public to firms, and reflects some of the changes in magnitude of influence of some industry subgroups.
This is one reason why the GOP didn't come up with a serious market-based counter-proposal: The spoils of Obamacare were just too appealing to pass up, at least for enough of the GOP's constituents to get the bill passed. The loud crowing about wanting to repeal it is no more meaningful than anything else politicians say to seem principled or to seem consistent.
From the beginning, Obama was far more pragmatic than HRC about pleasing healthcare industry incumbents, which is one reason for his surprising performance in the 2008 Democratic primary.
I strongly agree that executive orders and extralegal actions (which Bush honed and Obama perfected) are quite worrisome... But the core issue is that congress largely agrees with the actions that are undertaken. As a case in point, there was a lot of outrage from Democrats about GWB's extralegal shenanigans during the Iraq war, but then once Obama took office we got the chance to observe that in fact he (and his party) strongly support drone warfare, happily exploit the idea of enemy combatants not having rights, enjoy every clause of the Patriot Act, and utilize every extrajudicial rendition option just as GWB did.
We have one party, and it goes through a little ceremony every few years to see which corporatist warmonger gets the chance to be our figurehead.
If you have conservative leaning ideals I would suggest abandoning ship and starting something new. Nobody with a functioning brain is voting that way any more. It is a horrible clown show what has happened, unprecedented.
If you have liberal leaning ideals I would suggest abandoning ship and starting something new. Nobody with a functioning brain is voting that way any more. It is a horrible clown show what has happened, unprecedented.
You very much have an opposite side of the aisle wether you want to admit it or not.
Citation needed.
> with no political experience
That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Duverger's law suggests that our form of elections results in a two party system. Opponents of the duopoly should advocate for an alternative. Such as Approval Voting.
The GOP REDMAP 2001 redistricting (gerrymandering) effort (and the Kochs Bros) created the Tea Party and the extreme obstructionism and partisanship we see today. Even the GOP regrets how successful that effort was (eg #NeverTrump), so expect a walkback on that.
Having run for office, I never mock candidates. Not even Sarah Palin. People not involved in campaigns just don't know how rough it is.
Once that seed has been planted, confirmation bias does the rest.
It's widely understood internationally that this is not normative US election wank.
I assure you, I'm not a Democrat either. I would probably be a Rockefeller Republican... if such a thing existed today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-italy-s-economy-is-a...
So no, not so much with the survival.
Clinton defenders's arguments are getting stranger by the day.