Aaaalrighty. A few days off for that guy.
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If voters are basing their representation upon “building a feeling”, then they are doing it wrong. The executive office is about making decisions, not cultivating sentiment. Just like with hiring employees, it would be to voter’s advantage to concentrate upon what skills they would bring to bear, rather than vague personal feelings.
FWIW I am not persuaded that HRC is a latecomer who was given “breaks”. She has been working in politics since forever. I am not much of a fan, but she is a powerful woman who accomplished a lot. The adversity and obstacles of haters IMO make her accomplishments even more remarkable.
Despite this, I would prefer not to vote for her presidency.
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Absolutely agreed. Ala Obama, the persons who state that either are unqualified and did not get where they are due to hard work are only illuminating their own personal flaws.
I don’t prefer or appreciate her particular brand of triangulation, however her ability and capability for office is undeniable.
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This thread just experienced what it’s like to be a neighbor of Russia.
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With what, exactly? You didn’t specify.
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So do you think that she only got the job after Bill was elected because she was an incompetent lawyer or because (especially in the south) there is entrenched sexism that many of us are STILL dealing with in our professions?
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Again… none of which would have happened or been deemed necessary without this guy…
Context matters. I don’t like these wars either (BTW, the Syrian issue went to shit in large part thanks to the retaliation against peaceful protesters by Assad, so he’s no innocent here, either).
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Do you HONESTLY believe that Trump will do anything different or less damaging to our world? Do you think he’s not going to align himself with experts who will call for more war? Do you think that his plans to ban any muslims from coming into the country and escalating with Daesh is going to help?
Don’t you get that there are literally NO GOOD CHOICES AND WE’RE ALL FUCKED BECAUSE OF ALL THESE MONEY-GRUBBING FUCKERS?
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Hey, vote for me!
I haven’t started any wars anywhere either (or have any dodgy organized criminal links). And I guarantee I’ll be better than Donald Trump.
Not sure that voting for people on the basis on what they haven’t done due to lack of opportunity is a particularly good idea.
Still, Herman Cain just looks better and better in hindsight, eh? And he (sort of) made (bad) pizza, too.
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So far the most intriguing post in the thread.
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A proportion of the voting age populating do deny it. On both the left and right. It’s possible that they are ideologically in their disapproval but they do dispute your qualification point. There was a recent Scott Adams post on his blog where he argued that the whole notion of being “qualified” for presidency was silly. There is no other job like it and the job is designed for people with no prior experience.
Pardon me, Scott Adams is a lunatic, I forgot the lunatic contingent but I felt that went without saying.
The persons on the left feel she is not a good choice for the role based on her rightward leanings, not her personal abilities.
The idea that a president should have “no experience” is something bizarre that you surely must have made up on the spot.
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As long as that doesn’t put us anywhere near to Sarah Palin, I’m fine with that.
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I hadn’t heard that Adams was a lunatic. I just thought he made a good point. After all does that mean that Obama was a bad president? What experience should someone have?
The “experience” meme just seems like a point made up by her campaign to counter anti-status quo sentiment. In the same way, Clinton has more “experience” than Sanders.
When you think about it, requiring “experience” definitively slows down change so it is inevitably reactionary.
You appear to be arguing something entirely different than what anyone was speaking about here.
Sanders has qualifications
Clinton has qualifications
Obama had qualifications
Anyone who says any of these persons has no qualifications to be president is speaking from their own personal racism (in Obama’s case) misogyny (in Clinton’s) I would say ideology in Sanders, but I’ve never actually heard anyone, Clinton fan or Republican who said that about him, because he’s an older white male. Usually they just call him a communist or discuss how Clinton has more experience, which is an arguable statement and not from inherent hatred of who he is.
You seem to be conflating level of experience with persons saying Obama etc were “unqualified” for the office.
Adams is fruit loops, I welcome you to google for of the batshit statements he’s made over the last ten years, Boongboing has plenty of them.
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This feels like a slightly too-all-caps response to my first post in the thread. I don’t think I’m avoiding any facts. The fact that the whole situation looks like the kind of stupid border redrawing that Europeans loved to do in the early 20th century is my point. I’ll continue below.
I know the referendum wasn’t fair. I know that we can’t trust the results or opinion polls conducted after to be accurate. I’m very wary of assuming that a fair referendum would have gone a different way. Brexit was legitimate, but all of that talk about what it would be like if Brexit happened apparently had little to no effect.
Russia was in the wrong, and it seems like the international community wants to take Crimea away from them as punishment, as if the people who live there were a chip in a game. It’s colonialist thinking. As if the government of Ukraine owns those people, rather than - as a democracy - representing those people. We’re mad at Russia instead of caring towards the people affected.
Crimea appears to be in bad shape right now, but it’s impossible to disentangle their economic problems and determine how much is from being governed by the Russian government and how much is western sanctions. We imposed sanctions because we were angry at Putin but we know that sanctions tend to hurt the worst off.
When I see borders being redrawn by separation referendums - Scotland, Brexit, Quebec - I see politicians acting like parents in an ugly divorce fighting over custody. They hurt their kids doing it, but they don’t care about their kids, they care about fighting (and part of this analogy is the fact that politicians think of people like children who can’t make their own decisions). No sitting down and saying, “What do people want and how can we achieve that?” Everything is about where a line is drawn on a map. I’d like to see something better than that from my own government, and I’m more concerned about my own government behaving in a way that shows empathy to people who are affected by this crisis than I am about trying to look big in front of Putin.
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I don’t think you are being fair in labeling me a racist or misogynist because I question whether anyone is “qualified” for president. I just don’t see your point.
Also you say Sanders et al are qualified. Can you be more specific? Obama was a first term senator with no executive experience. However you describe “experience” he must have had less of it than Hillary. So you must be saying he was a worse candidate than her? Is that what you think?
I will look at Adams blog more carefully, but his recent blog didn’t seem so odd to me.
That’s what Obama himself said.
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Quite so. So we preferred the candidate with less “experience” before. Apparently as a criteria experience is not “strictly dominating”. So why fetish-ize it? Doesn’t prove it’s irrelevant but it can’t be such a big deal.
Of course there are lots of reasons to prefer Hillary to Trump but “experience” is clearly just a taking point. I prefer to stick to policies. For what little my opinion is worth.
