athena
athena's JournalThe problem with this chart
is that you're asking people to answer a hypothetical question. Many people will differ on which candidate is likely to win in the GE. We have seen that in the last election.
The right solution to this dilemma is to avoid attacking Democrats. Even if one disagrees with some or most of the positions or attitudes of one of the Democratic candidates and finds another one to their liking, one should refrain from attacking any Democrat. It's enough to vote in the primary for your favorite candidate. There is no reason to say anything against a Democrat that might hurt his/her chances in the GE, in case that person turns out to be the party's candidate.
We have to put an end to all this infighting. We have to understand that while we may disagree about specifics, in the grand scheme we are all on the same side. We can disagree without being disagreeable. We can argue our points. But we have to stop making sexist, racist, ageist, or otherwise discriminatory attacks against candidates we don't like. We have to stop accusing candidates of dishonesty or incompetence or other character flaws just because we don't like them. We have to stop coming up with attacks against Democrats that Republicans can later use to much better effect. As we have seen, the alternative to any Democrat is too horrible to contemplate, let alone live under. If we are smart, we will stop repeating the same mistake. If we had learned our lesson in 2008, we wouldn't have President Trump now. Let's learn our lesson this time.
If air traffic control gets privatized, I'm no longer flying.
I'm not someone who is afraid of flying, but privatizing air traffic control is a terrible idea. This is not an area where we should be cutting costs.
No one is perfect.
Hillary Rodham Clinton was as close to perfect as any human being can get as a woman in this society. She was able to walk the very fine line between likable-therefore-incompetent and competent-therefore-unlikable that is imposed on women in this society. She managed to be outspoken without being shrill, and strong without appearing angry. But since no human being is perfect, her haters were able to find miniature mistakes to blow out of proportion and criticize ad infinitum. The whole private-server controversy was a small misstep made among millions of non-mistakes over a long political career. If it hadn't been that, there would have been something else. No one manages to live for decades without making any mistakes.
As long as people like you insist on absolute perfection for the first female president, we will not have a female president, ever. And you know that.
Keep hating Hillary. I'm sure you don't realize it, but it's hurting you more than you think. Indeed, it's hurting you infinitely more than it's hurting Hillary, since Hillary, fortunately, is not within your reach.
I feel the same way.
An incredibly intelligent, experienced, caring, and competent woman -- a woman who had almost no flaws, made no major mistakes, and had an almost superhuman level of control over her emotions, her behavior, and her facial expressions -- lost to an obviously mentally unstable man with zero government experience and no policy. Any woman who thinks Hillary's loss was her own fault and that another woman would do better is in denial about what the last election revealed about the depth of sexism in American society.
The party of sociopaths.
Seriously, "Fuck your feelings"? Is that what the United States is now? The land of sociopaths?
We should have put a stop to this long ago, when the right wing first started attacking political correctness. Because in the end, being against political correctness means being in favor of offending people -- in other words, not giving a damn about others' feelings. Every liberal who jumped on the "politically incorrect" bandwagon is partly guilty for Trump's presidency. In a country where people respected others and cared about other people's feelings, Trump wouldn't have even gotten close to winning the presidency.
Love and compassion are the highest human feelings. They are the basis of our society -- the reason we live in communities rather than alone in the wild. Love and compassion will save the world, not sociopathy and egotism. We liberals have to stop stooping to the level of the deplorables and embrace love, compassion, and kindness, the way Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to do.
It's because they can't stand intelligent women.
A great number of men and women are deeply disturbed by the idea of a smart and competent woman. It threatens their view of the world.
The self-image of many men is based on the idea that they are intrinsically superior to half the population. Such men feel extremely uncomfortable when they meet a woman who is obviously smarter and more competent than they are. All high-achieving women over 35 have had to deal with this type of man at work: he will do everything within his power to destroy the career of the woman who threatens his sense of intrinsic superiority.
Many women, too, are disturbed by the idea of a woman being more intelligent and competent than a man. Such women are low-achievers, and they justify their own low achievement by their belief that women are intrinsically inferior to men. Such women are much happier with a male boss than with a female boss. When they are forced to work with a woman who is smart, competent, and strong, they will at best try to subtly undermine her and at worst gang up with the men who are trying to destroy her.
In short, people who can't stop criticizing Hillary reveal a lot more about themselves than about anything else. Fortunately, their hatred can no longer reach Hillary. She knows she's a brilliant woman. She knows that almost everyone in the U.S. knows, deep down, that she would have made an excellent president. And she's surrounded by a loving family and loyal, high-quality friends. She has done what she could for her country and will continue to do what she can while she is still alive. In the meantime, those who can't stop hating her have much bigger problems to deal with, a mentally unstable president being only one of them.
This culture of fear is what is destroying this country.
About ten years ago, when I was a grad student, I was on campus on a Sunday. Just as I was about to enter the building where I had my office, a woman came up to me and said she had seen a man drag a child into that building and was concerned that a kidnapping was taking place. I vaguely remembered that I had seen one of my colleagues enter the building ahead of me; he was divorced and spent the weekends with his daughter. I told her it was no problem, that I knew him, and that he had a daughter. If I hadn't been around, she would probably have called the campus police on him.
What the woman did was disgusting: she assumed that a man spending time with his daughter was a dangerous situation. If my colleague had been female, the woman would not have been concerned. This kind of behavior is sexist: it perpetuates gender-based roles. It discourages men from spending time with their kids. If it's a woman hanging out with a kid, dragging her, or playing with her, it's fine; but if it's a man, we have to make sure he's not a child molester! A man should be either at work or hanging out with his male buddies; children are women's business! 
As horrible a problem as child molestation is, it is not a problem you are going to solve by poking your nose into people's lives. Child molestation does not happen in broad daylight; it is not perpetrated by people who look strange or unusual. It happens in the dark, indoors, and is perpetrated by people -- usually men -- who are believed by everyone around them to be good Christian people, family men, and pillars of their society. Such men appear so virtuous that when a child tries to speak to an adult about what is happening, the adult assumes the child is lying. If you want to do something about child molestation, just be there for the children around you; your children, your relatives' children, and your friends' children; be someone they can trust. (See https://www.rainn.org/articles/how-can-i-protect-my-child-sexual-assault) All you're going to do by "speaking up" in public about people who look suspicious to you is annoy people and hurt them for looking different and defying gender roles.
It's not tragic. It's completely fair.
Americans asked for this. They knew exactly what they were getting into, and they got exactly what they voted for. Too many Americans couldn't stand the idea of being led by a woman, so they chose to be represented by a narcissistic fool. I don't feel sorry for the United States right now. People can repeat as many times as they like that Hillary won the popular vote and that too many minorities were disenfranchised, but it shouldn't have even been close. Trump, being who he is, shouldn't have gotten more than 5% of the vote. Americans made a clear statement when they went to the polls on November 7th, 2016: that they would rather be led by a mentally unstable male bully than by a stateswoman. My only hope is that Americans will learn something from this experience, and that the next time a woman is running against a narcissistic fool, people will be able to vote with something other than their penis or their penis envy.
What about the life of the woman?
Why does that always get forgotten? Why does everyone -- including liberals -- act as though abortion involved only a fetus? The sexism around this issue is disgusting, and I am sick of it. I am sick of the magic disappearing act in which a woman is omitted from the discussion of an issue that involves her life, health, and bodily integrity.
When abortion is banned, women die. Childbirth is much more dangerous than an abortion. If you force women to give birth against their will, you will end up killing women who would not have died otherwise. Banning abortion kills women. Unless you believe that women's lives don't count as human lives, being anti-choice is not "pro-life"; it is pro-death.
No one who is in favor of forcing women to undergo a dangerous medical procedure against their will is "pro-life". They are anti-woman and pro-death.
I used to love Kucinich
and Weiner, and all the liberals who were outspoken and seemed to possess the spine the Democratic Party seemed to lack.
As I have gotten older, I have realized that the true leaders are the boring ones who focus on getting stuff done -- people like Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. The ones who impressed me in my youth were more focused on looking and sounding good and making a splash than on doing the hard work of legislating and governing.
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