Why Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders won't be president

[BooScout]

http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/08/why_donald_trump_and_bernie_sanders_wont_be_president_commentary.html

Why Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders won't be president (Commentary)

<snip>....Donald Trump is not going to be president. Bernie Sanders is also not going to be president. Their appeal to their supporters is precisely the reason they are not going to be president. Every few years, a large number of Americans need to learn the same lesson: The reason you don't hear the solutions that you want coming from the boring, scripted, mainstream politicians who get elected is that the solutions that you want do not appeal to the majority of your fellow countrymen.

You could think of an elected politician as a little bit like Applebee's, or Olive Garden, or TGI Fridays. The food at these places is not horrifying. It's fine: bland, familiar, and heavily reliant on fat, salt and sugar rather than innovative flavor combinations to tickle your tastebuds. Luckily, salt, fat, and sugar are tasty, so pretty much anyone in the country can walk into one of these restaurants and find something to eat. But no one in history has ever walked out of one saying "Finally, a real alternative to the same old sweet, fatty, salty sameness! Finally, a restaurateur who has the courage to offer us radical change in our menus, and flavors we've never tasted before!"

Now, there is a market for that kind of restaurant. It consists of a small number of educated people in urban areas. You can make a decent living catering to their tastes with your new jalapeno-marshmallow-crusted wallaby napoleon.
What you cannot do is get the majority of Americans to eat there. If you want a mass market -- and it's hard to get elected to national office with just the hipster vote, or even the "Celebrity Apprentice" vote -- then your menu options need to center on the conventional, the inoffensive and the bland. Because when you're dealing with a lot of people of varying tastes, you have to be at least as worried about driving people away as you do about pleasing them.

(more) http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/08/why_donald_trump_and_bernie_sanders_wont_be_president_commentary.html

[beam me up scottie]

1. Megan McArdle is a right wing conservative hack known for her hit pieces on liberals.

Here is another article of hers:

Free Contraception Can't End the Abortion Debate

Ross Douthat, the resident social conservative of the New York Times opinion page, doesn't usually get angry. But in a blog post Wednesday, he unloaded on liberal columnists who suggest that defunding Planned Parenthood is going to cause more abortions by depriving women of access to birth control. Such columns, he argues, rest on the assumption, stated or not, that America's abortion rate is driven by a lack of that access -- and that if only we made birth control more widely and cheaply available, we could resolve America's rancorous abortion dispute by rendering the issue moot.

I ended up in a long Facebook discussion with one of the columnists he attacked by name, Damon Linker. Before I go further, I should say that both Ross and Damon are former colleagues, and I think they're both brilliant columnists. But on this issue -- not whether abortion should be legal, but whether the main thing standing between America and fewer abortions is better government birth-control policy -- I think Douthat has the better argument.

...

For squishy pro-choicers -- a category I have spent many years in myself -- believing that free birth control can reduce abortion to negligible levels is very convenient. It is the "torture doesn't work" of the feminist movement. Instead of forcing a hard moral choice between the autonomy of the woman and the value of the potential life that is terminated, belief in the birth control fairy lets us off the hook. It would certainly be lovely if programs such as the Colorado Family Planning Initiative could make abortion so rare that it no longer required us to make those moral and political choices. But hoping for something to be right doesn't make it so -- and neither does bad data.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-07/free-contraception-can-t-end-the-abortion-debate

Do Hillary supporters even care what kind of filth you wallow in and drag back here when digging for dirt on Bernie?

[PowerToThePeople]

2. DUrec.

Good show bmus.

[beam me up scottie]

3. Ugh.

Between the anti-Semitic posts I just read in another thread and this op (someone actually praised Louis Farrakhan) I had to step outside and check the name on the door to make sure I was on the right discussion board.

I don't want Hillary to be our nominee but I would never stoop as low as the Bernie haters have.

You just know others will be along to rec the op because all that matters is bashing Bernie, who cares who the author is?

[JackInGreen]

6. That does seem to be a pattern

I havn't seen anyone hitting hillary for having issues with XX population cross section or being a woman or being old or...well.....there was some issue with her membership in 'the family' but that wasn't hitting her for being christian, just that bit of it, and all that was in response to everyone pitching a thrombo about Bernie going to Lib U...but I KEEP seeing bernie getting hit for being old, white, jewish, a socialist (said in parsel-tongue).

Does it remind anyone else of the background dirty tricks from '08?

[beam me up scottie]

7. It's EXACTLY like the dirty tricks from 2008.

And it's only going to get worse.

I suggest Bernie supporters familiarize themselves with anti-Semitic dog whistles because we're going to be hearing them a lot in the upcoming months.

The ones blowing them need to be called out.

[whatchamacallit]

13. Holy shite

[demwing]

4. What makes you think you know what the majority of Americans want?

When more than half of those eligible don't bother to vote?

Bernie appeals to those who have been left out tif the system. Your point is invalid.

[JackInGreen]

5. Given that in 2012 54% of the VAP turned out for the polls overall

We know that this bullshit MIGHT be true within that 54% of the population...cleanly divided into party lines....in retrospect of the election....yeah, this is crap.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. If its Trump v Sanders One of them is going to be president.

And yes, that could actually happen. So the thesis from your rightwing source is obviously false.

[sendero]

9. One paragraph in....

... and the verdict is "authored by a moron".

[retrowire]

10. LMAO

"The reason you don't hear the solutions that you want coming from the boring, scripted, mainstream politicians who get elected is that the solutions that you want do not appeal to the majority of your fellow countrymen."

because Bernie's record breaking attendance in rallies compared to EVERY other candidate isn't a reflection of majority right?! hahaha

b-but polls! predictions!!! XD

sorry, I'd rather accept the factual evidence of Bernie's campaign. this author is a bit wrapped up in the MSM if you catch my drift...

[ericson00]

11. Sanders won't be, but I'm very scared Trump could be

I mean he's gone thru more than 9 lives as a presidential candidate alone.

[whatchamacallit]

12. Down to posting crackpot opinions are we?

Do you actually agree with her "Because Americans like 2nd rate garbage" rationale?

[Fawke Em]

14. I feel more stupid for reading this.

Politicians are restaurants?



And, even is that is true, more Americans are beginning to shun the national chains for local fare. So, "insert buzzer noise here." Column fail.

[Armstead]

15. Yes, Boo Scout, once again I think you're secrretly working for Sanders

This is a wonderful satire.