Donald Trump is the next president of the USA

[NodGuy]

I'm an Australian living in America, but I'm not a citizen of this country so I can not vote. I won't say that President Trump is the best man for the job, but I absolutely prefer him over Mrs Clinton. I want America to work with Russia, not against her and clearly this would never have happened under a Mrs Clinton administration. If I remember correctly, she was in favour of establishing a No Fly Zone over Syria, which would've resulted in the American military attempting to shoot down Russian aircraft, because I doubt Russia would abide by their No Fly Zone, they were invited into Syria by the legitimate government after all.

In the beginning I was behind Mr Sanders but I kept thinking to myself that he would always face opposition from the Republicans and most likely some Democrats due to his socialist views. I agree with Jeod when he said that Mr Sanders would be a 'lame duck'. And then there's this:

 

Lol.

[Einstein]

DERPolitics

[delta]

Okay so I can't prove this, but I seriously doubt that Clinton would have enacted the no-fly zone she talked about. Clinton may be more hawkish than Obama, but not by that much...and I doubt even someone like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush would have been nuts enough to get us into a shooting war with Russia over Syria. I'd also have to disagree with working with Russia over Syria. Assad started the war by turning his guns on peaceful protesters with the aim of provoking them to fight back and radicalizing the opposition, because he knew that a radicalized opposition would be a more viable alternative to his regime than a moderate opposition. Russia's also hopped on board by bombing all the less radical rebel groups to turn it into an Assad vs ISIS fight. So Russia is part of the problem, not the solution. Does this mean we should go to war against Russia? No. But sanctions I think are very much warranted, and I certainly don't think we should team up with them. The major risk of working with Russia and Assad is that they have so much blood on their hands...doing so will only make us look like monsters in the eyes of Muslims, which will increase recruitment for ISIS and make the terrorist problem even worse.

As for Sanders endorsing Clinton, well yeah. Clinton may not have gone as far as Sanders, but she would have been a step in the same direction. Look at Citizens United, it was 5 conservative justices against 4 liberal ones. A Clinton nominee to the court would almost certainly have ruled to overturn the decision should the opportunity have arisen. Campaign finance reform is also something that Democrats are broadly more favorably inclined towards, while Republicans are opposed to it. Dodd Frank, which was supposed to reign in the banks to a degree, is also something that Democrats support but is now facing repeal by Republicans.

Did the Democratic establishment oppose Sanders? Yes. But can you blame them? Look at how thoroughly they got slaughtered by Reagan and Bush in the 80's. Look at how much success the Republicans got out of attacking Obama as a "big government socialist". Given this, I think nominating Sanders would have been a horribly risky bet. If Democrats embraced Third Way centrism, it's because they thought that was the most they could hope for, not because the corporate wing of the party is all-powerful.

Edited March 7, 2017 by delta

[OrangeP47]

By and large a good comment. I work in politics, so I don't want to rerun the whole election debate again, when such debate is normally my job. The no fly zone absolutely wouldn't happen no matter who got elected President. As it stands, even without it, there was the Russia-Turkey incident which didn't blow up any larger, but also in effect killed off the idea entirely anyway even if it was feasible to begin with.

On the DNC front, everyone has to remember, Bernie was an independent for the longest time and pretty much did just register as a dem to co-opt the base. I don't have anything against that, but I also think it's pretty understandable that the people who had been putting in grunt work running a massive organization are a little miffed that someone wants to come and just take it over from them, and I say that as someone who thinks DWS did a terrible, terrible job. A lot of other mistakes were made on the part of the Clinton campaign and dem leadership, but it really rubs me the wrong way whenever the people who only got involved in politics this cycle pack up their bags right away after not getting 100% of what they want when there are some of us who have been out here pounding the pavement, mostly through our own volunteer effort, for decade(s) and never quit whenever we hit obstacles.

I'm overall disappointed in this cycle the most by the lack of policy substance. Granted, I always would be, as formulating policy specifics is something I'm specifically trained to do, but in the general there was no mention of Dodd-Frank, which Delta correctly identified as a very crucial piece of legislation. The Supreme Court issue played out very strangely, and is a tangled mess on so many levels... The whole 'well I didn't think he was actually going to do what he said he was' or 'I didn't think he meant ME' responses after the election.. I mean, on health care I have a vested interest too, because I was born disabled and for around 10 years after insurance dropped me back during the W era I couldn't get health coverage due to 'pre-existing conditions'. I'm currently in the position of having to rush through as much treatment before 2017 is up because there's a real chance the avenues the ACA opened to me are going to be slammed closed. I've had more than one friend have a meltdown after they expressed great joy that it's going to go away only for me to point out that it's pretty much the only way I'm going to retain my ability to walk

[Raptor29aa]

million dollar questions on my mind, is Trump pro Putin? Or is he just a rich guy who knows a lot of people (coincidental meetings)? and lastly does it matter?

Not sure (but I may be inviting yuri memes from AR2 to troll me)