No, for the love of God, No!
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Scepticalscribe
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Rather than "likeability" (which is a something that is used, used against, and horribly weaponised, against women, people of colour, and, above all, women who are people of colourl), for my part, I'd far prefer to see competence, compassion, basic decency, an ability to delegate, intelligence and integrity, an ethical existence, and the capacity to make good decisons (good judgment) under pressure as criteria to be considered when choosing a ruler.
Likeability - like charisma, or charm - while attractive, is over-rated in humans; in a political leader, there are other quaities I prefer to see, (good grief - was Donald Trump ever deemed likeable? Even by a dog?) and - while I have enjoyed a glass of beer or wine with individuals who have held political office - it is not something I consider to be remotely necessary.
Empathy, yes, "Likeability", no.
The thing is - and here, I have actually met Bill Clinton - and his "likeability" (William Jefferson Clinton, that is, who - as it happens - has it in spades - he is one of the most awesome and impressively charismatic individuals - and yes, positively oozes sex appeal - I have met in my life, the kind of individual whose megawatt charisma, and sheer intelligence, and capacity to make it seem (for the few short minutes he meets with you) - by giving you his full focus and undivided attention - that you are the most interesting and compelling person he has met) - is off the scale.
And yes, when I met him, the sleaze factor (not least as it applied to his treatment of Monica Lewinsky) was well known, - and while a voice in the back of my head did offer hissed reminders about feminism, ethics, and sleaze, - I will not deny that I was grinning like an idiot when I met him.
As was everyone else, male and female alike.
But, does that - or, should that - determine his electability to office?
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Thomas Veil
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For many people there's something to that. Almost from the moment Bill got into office we saw a concerted effort to cast Hillary as someone who carves up Dalmatians to make fur coats, and possibly slices up children to use as pepperoni on her pizza. She's hardly the best candidate around, but the vitriol aimed at her was just ridiculous.
I have a hard time arguing with this. However, I would point out that this was the period in which the country fell in love with Ronald Reagan's corporatist philosophy and the Democrats felt that, to have any chance at winning, they had to play the "me too" game. (Doesn't mean I like it; I'm just saying.)
And in the end that's all that needs to be said.
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And they've kept inching and now sprinting towards the right ever since. Now everything that is a traditional left value is advertised as extreme socialism and establishment Democrats response to that accusation is to stare blinking like deer in the headlights. Republicans have a long history of being beholden to corporate America, and on some level there is a place in Democracy for that, but now Democrats brains are just scrambled by being beholden to the same task masters. Their response to everything should just be "I don't know if I can answer that honestly. I'll have to check."
Obama was a massive gift to Republicans. First they got Clinton to pass their agenda with a smile, but now a black man? Holy shit, will Democrats ever question the actions or motivations of our first black president? Fuck no. So let's just plow ahead with bailing out the rich, expanding our wars, and giving a guaranteed big payday for the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Here's the kicker, we'll still get to be mad at him and they'll just call us racists. We got our agenda done, so we'll take that hit.
Joe
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There are racists on both sides. Trump supporters are just more open about it.
Austin, Texas is the most racist place I’ve ever been to and it votes overwhelmingly blue. Austin has a majority white population. Houston, on the other hand, is diverse as fuck. Houston gets a bad rep in TX because people here think diversity is "ghetto" I remember I ran a half marathon in Austin one year and afterwards I went out to brunch with some friends that I knew in Austin. I was surprised at the # of people I met that day that said things like "There are a lot of black people in Houston" with like a face of disgust when they found out I was visiting from Houston. When I was a college student in San Antonio back in the early 2000s we would sometimes go out for the weekend in Austin to party. It never failed. We would always meet someone that was like "there are a lot of Mexicans in SA" not even realizing that I am hispanic LOL All my friends know I DO NOT LIKE AUSTIN. It's the most fake liberal city ever. They marched for George Floyd and they pretend to care about minorities, but they don't want them in their city. Keep them in Houston or San Antonio.
yaxomoxay
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I say it here, if either Mrs Clinton or Mr Trump are nominated by the respective parties, I will try to find the most isolated spot in America and just go live there as an ascetic.
Now that I think of how the world is going, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump and Clinton would just join forces and run in the same ticket just in order to be resurrected somehow. What a nightmare scenario.
Now that I think of how the world is going, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump and Clinton would just join forces and run in the same ticket just in order to be resurrected somehow. What a nightmare scenario.
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I’ll amend your statement:
Hillary 2024? Given the competition, she may be the Dems’ best hope
Hillary is 74 years old, which is like being bathed in the fountain of youth compared to Biden.thehill.com
Her and Trump and Biden need to call it a day and go TF away!
Her, Biden, Trump and most of todays crop of loser Republican Congress need to call it a day and go TF away for the good of the Nation.
There is zero reason to hate Hillary or Biden other than partisanship and over focus on meaningless, but caustic wedge issues. With the crop of wild eye, hair on fire Republican misfits in the process of engineering their takeover of Congress you’d better hope the masses get off their lazy asses (when it comes to our political future) or there will be no more United States of America, or no such thing as Democracy and a good chance of a civil war. That is just how bad it is Imo.
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Bill Clinton? Tell me about his other offenses.
rdrr
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I am not discounting that there are racists who are left leaning, but I got to ask... Does it make it right or less tolerable to be a "open" racist rather than a closeted one? Also I hope we are talking about true racism and not just the knee jerk reaction of calling people racist that seems to happen in everyday "wokeness". I guarantee that the racists numbers are heavily on the right rather than those the left.
Joe
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There are more on the right, but the left isn't innocent. There are plenty on the left.
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DT
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I'm about ready for that age limit requirement. Bernie? He's 80, he'd be pushing 90 at the end of his first term.
I think in addition to cognitive issues, there's just a general health concern for a person who has to be firing on all cylinders, 24/7, who is required to be pretty physical, travel, move quickly from place to place, deal with 16 hour days, it's a strain that's going have far more impact on someone who's 75 vs. someone who's 60.
Just standardize it at the same age as retirement, then there's kind of an established reference age for "Ready to no longer work".
I think in addition to cognitive issues, there's just a general health concern for a person who has to be firing on all cylinders, 24/7, who is required to be pretty physical, travel, move quickly from place to place, deal with 16 hour days, it's a strain that's going have far more impact on someone who's 75 vs. someone who's 60.
Just standardize it at the same age as retirement, then there's kind of an established reference age for "Ready to no longer work".
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Also....
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?: Frank, Thomas: 9781250118134: Amazon.com: Books
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? [Frank, Thomas] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
www.amazon.com
Great eye opening read, and written by a liberal.
"Hailed as “the most prescient book” of the year, Listen, Liberal accurately described what ailed the Democratic Party even before the election of 2016 made their weaknesses obvious. It is the story of how the “Party of the People” detached itself from its historic constituency among average Americans and chose instead to line up with the winners of our new economic order.
Now with a new afterword, Thomas Frank’s powerful analysis offers the best diagnosis to date of the liberal malady. Drawing on years of research and firsthand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have over the last decades increasingly abandoned their traditional goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. With sardonic wit and lacerating logic, he uncovers the corporate and cultural elitism that have largely eclipsed the party’s old working- and middle-class commitment. And he warns that the Democrats’ only chance of regaining their health and averting a future of ever-increasing inequality is a return to their historic faith."
Fantastic book, really makes you understand how much damage the Democratic Party has done to working people while still messaging like they’re the party of Labor.
Clinton’s administration was a list of Republican initiatives getting signed into law under a Democratic president. It used to be a point of pride that he and I share a birthday….until I actually started paying attention to politics and policies instead of watching corporate media.
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I highly recommend the book to anybody who is also on the left and really doesn't know or understand the history of why Democrats aren't knocking it out of the park winning in recent history, especially helpful if you are on the left and not all that affected heavily by political and economic conditions and you are more of a political armchair quarterback - maybe passionate about social issues but not treated like a ragdoll in economic uncertainty.
Thomas Veil
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Don’t you remember when he pushed those teenage boys in front of a train?
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You keep saying shit like this. The actual Left does not like Ms. Clinton and never did, which is probably one reason she lost in '16. She is an arrogant elitist corporatist, and I voted for her only because the alternative was unimaginably bad. The Left does not like Joe the President much either, for many of 5he same reasons, but at least he lacks her shrill.
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Imagine her saying "just grab 'em by the cock". Yeah man, just like Trump!
Renzatic
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A nightmare scenario? I'd pay good money to see that come to pass, for the reactions alone.
lizkat
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I've always liked the idea of having senior former government officials serving a later President as counselors, ambassadors, members of advisory boards or special commissions. But yes, 75 is likely too old for even a pretty healthy human nowadays to be serving as the US President. It's not like he or she is a figurehead. Even if having chosen competent help. knowing how to delegate tasks and having a protective personal staff and family, any occupant of our presidency in the 21st century holds a 24/7 job way too often on extremely short notice.
It's not just that at age 75 the potential for lack of enough energy or competence can become an issue, but also by that age there can be a certain inevitable fondness or even reliance on "how things were" that may not be what is now called for.
One should not have to reach deep into a major party's bench to find younger proponents of newer and good ideas whose time for fuller advocacy may have arrived.
Sure, we should take care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. But I was truly disappointed when it became clear in 2016 that regardless of which party won the White House, the two major parties had settled on a couple of septuagenarians after the voters had twice voted to put the baton in hands of a younger President.
I say all this as a member of the so-called "Silent Generation". We're not silent, those of us remaining, but we don't carry much weight any more. The millennials and Gen Z are going to have to resolve the situations their parents are still hellbent on fighting over on mostly manufactured partisan lines.
Helluva wrap for the boomers, a generation that was once castigated for being either hippie commune occupiers or killers of babies in Southeast Asia. The kids were neither of those on a wholesale basis, of course. But their elders --my generation-- messed up somewhere along the line, because our now aging adult children have come to think it's patriotic to hew to hyperpartisan re-framings of how "the other side" thinks about everything. And both sides are prone to overgeneralizing each other's faults and their own most "American" attributes.
So meanwhile my generation can't figure out whether to get out on the barricades again or give up and buy a gun and start reading survivalist websites. But we're mostly just kibitzers now. Don't elect any more of us!
