I still believe that Hillary has the front running. There Is probably not much you can do right now to change my mind. You say that she has terrible policy but you don't really have any evidence to back that up. Admittedly her platform has been a little bit vague but thats common of all presidential candidates in the beginning. With all that being said it is still only 2015 and there's plenty of chance for her to completely reveal herself as a fool or a tool. In such a case then I probably wouldn't have any problems voting for Bernie Sanders. I definitely can't stand any of the Republicans
I have plenty of evidence to back up my concerns. I don't get this irritated at a politician unless they have really gone out of their way to piss me off. I don't complain about politicians whose politics I have not investigated.
Reading off a simple list of her political beliefs and history:
1. She supports the TPP, an awful amendment to already-bad copyright legislation that uses its status as a trade agreement to inflict bad law on other countries instead of just ours.
2. She supports a "tax cap" on social security that protects income in excess of $102,000. She said repealing this would be a "tax increase on the middle class." The day I make over $102,000 a year is the day I'm no longer middle class.
3. She voted in favor of a bill allowing construction of 700 miles of fence on the US-Mexico border, a ineffective and monumental waste of money.
4. She voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution in 2002. She has repeatedly refused to admit this was a mistake or that the Iraq war itself was a mistake.
5. When asked if national security is more important than human rights, her response was, and this is a direct quote, "I agree with that completely. The first obligation of the president of the United States is to protect and defend the United States of America." This statement coming from
anyone would immediately disqualify them as a viable candidate for me.
6. Clinton voted for the USA PATRIOT Act, one of the worst and most draconian pieces of Orwellian surveillance legislation that has ever had the misfortune of existing.
7. Clinton supports making desecration of the flag illegal. While I disagree with people who burn or desecrate flags, this is
obviously protected First Amendment speech and it is
shameful that she supports making this illegal. It's also absurd, as the courts have repeatedly clarified this as protected speech.
8. She introduced a bill to prohibit the sale of sexual or violent video games to anyone under the age of 18. I find the fact that she introduced this legislation
abhorrent. Furthermore, she has misrepresented the content and context of certain video games in order to further her own political agenda.
9. She does not support the legalization of recreational marijuana.
10. She has used her status as a woman as a political selling point. This reinforces the idea that there
are inherent and nontrivial differences between men and women. As an egalitarian, I simply don't believe this and I find her use of her gender as a selling point to be very distasteful.
Past that, it's really just a general sense of disdain for her as a politician. I don't trust her. I don't trust that she's trying to act in the best interest of the people. She's been surrounded by scandal and her political record suggests to me that she cares little for the democratic process or for human rights (the statement about valuing national security over human rights was especially damning). She strikes me as a true politician, willing to say whatever she thinks she needs to say to get votes, championing whatever cause happens to be popular at the time. I was pleased and extremely surprised to see that she was in favor of a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college in favor of a direct popular vote, but then I noticed
when this was: November 2000, right around when Bush won despite Gore winning the popular vote. It seems she only cares to support the democratic process when she sees it as beneficial.
In short, Clinton is an opportunist and a corporate sellout whose campaign is funded by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country. Countless dollars are funneled into the Clinton Foundation on a daily basis, dollars that buy her position on every sort of issue. She
claims she cares about the interests of ordinary people but the truth of the matter is that her platform is and always has been open to the highest bidder. She cares as much for ordinary people as she does for the ants she crushes beneath her feet, and at the end of the day, all that matters to her is that the money keeps coming in.
Nobody should be surprised that Hilary is "establishment" center-left and Bernie is left of center, lol.
I have yet to see something Bernie has said that is particularly radical. People seem to love to
say he's radical and yet whenever I ask which policies are radical, I just get something vague about "socialism." Socialism is also a good word to describe the public education system, emergency response services, transportation and roads services, etc. As someone who is more or less economically centrist, merely uttering the word "socialism" is not enough to make someone a radical. There are plenty of socialist concepts present in our system already even if the core of our system is capitalist.
