So we're supposed to tolerate corruption simply to avoid Trump? Trump offers us a lesson that if we don't take democracy (and the underlying components/principles) seriously, it will decay.

Obligatory Gary Johnson reference...

I'm sorry, but you need to spell out clearly what you're saying for some of us.

I would really prefer to avoid a 4-year object lesson of that sort. Not saying Hillary will be a good president, but she won't be as bad as him. At least it buys us 4 more years of (roughly) status quo and maybe the disintegration of the Republican party. Which, IMO, would be an objective good thing (same with the Democratic party). Restructured, in 4-8 years with 2-3 viable future parties forming we may have some that exhibit saner political stances.

You're naive. There are rumours that Bill Clinton encouraged Trump to run, an attempt to scare people to vote for Hillary. If Hillary wins, she'll be president for 8 years. The DNC won't kick her out, and she's too well connected and smart to face accountability for her actions. The Clintons are above the law. If Trump wins, he'll do such a bad job as president that the Dems could win in 2020 with a better candidate. It's either 8 years of Clinton or 4 years of Trump: your choice.

just like Bush offered you a lesson?

Sadly Bush didn't offer a lesson. Obama took office and continued and expanded the Bush Doctrine on foreign policy, greatly increasing extrajudicial actions and drone stuff.

> Trump offers us a lesson...

I hate to be the check your privileged type, but I can't imagine hearing that from any type of minority person. Sure, if you are an upper middle class white guy, like most of us here, the idea of sending a lesson might be attractive. But that lesson isn't worth sacrifices to the rights of women, LGBT people, Muslims, African Americans, and everyone else that would be hurt be a Trump presidency.

If a Trump presidency resulted in any changes to the rights of any of the groups you mention, we'd also have congress to blame. The president does not have the power to make laws.

We've seen an ostensibly moderate president (Obama) uphold and extend the Bush Doctrine on foreign policy, killing, mutilating, and devastating all sorts of innocent people throughout the middle east.

The lesson we'd learn from a Trump presidence is that we need to be more picky about the sort of people we vote into office. The first step in this is not holding our nose and voting for the major party candidate who offends us slightly less.

This election, we get to choose between a democrat who is actually a moderate conservative (and could easily run the same platform as a republican) and a populist Republican, who has borrowed Democratic Party rhetoric on rust belt issues and combined it with some elements of paleo-conservatism. They are both hybrids that defy the party conventions.

>If a Trump presidency resulted in any changes to the rights of any of the groups you mention, we'd also have congress to blame. The president does not have the power to make laws.

I think you are being naive if that is your logic. Why care about the president at all if they can't pass laws? The truth is that they do have a large amount of influence on the laws of this country. There is a reason people call it Obamacare and not Pelosicare. You are also not factoring in executive orders which can be used to do a lot of damage. I imagine Trump's immigration ban will attempt to be issued with an executive order for example.

> they do have a large amount of influence

Put another way, they are allowed to act unchecked by Congress much of the time.

Why is this?

I think the president and congress play a coordination game through which corrupt legislation is passed.

Take Obamacare. Its passage was a massive success to rent-seeking firms and interest groups. All the interest groups and most of the members of congress who were instrumental in getting it passed were happy to have it called "Obamacare" and not "PhizerCare" or "AbbotCare" or "HalliburtonCare".

Correspondingly, both parties benefit from the notion that Obamacare is somehow leftist or constitutes a big defeat for "greedy firms" and "selfish doctors".

In reality, the program simply modernizes many of the existing flows of rents from the public to firms, and reflects some of the changes in magnitude of influence of some industry subgroups.

This is one reason why the GOP didn't come up with a serious market-based counter-proposal: The spoils of Obamacare were just too appealing to pass up, at least for enough of the GOP's constituents to get the bill passed. The loud crowing about wanting to repeal it is no more meaningful than anything else politicians say to seem principled or to seem consistent.

From the beginning, Obama was far more pragmatic than HRC about pleasing healthcare industry incumbents, which is one reason for his surprising performance in the 2008 Democratic primary.

I strongly agree that executive orders and extralegal actions (which Bush honed and Obama perfected) are quite worrisome... But the core issue is that congress largely agrees with the actions that are undertaken. As a case in point, there was a lot of outrage from Democrats about GWB's extralegal shenanigans during the Iraq war, but then once Obama took office we got the chance to observe that in fact he (and his party) strongly support drone warfare, happily exploit the idea of enemy combatants not having rights, enjoy every clause of the Patriot Act, and utilize every extrajudicial rendition option just as GWB did.

We have one party, and it goes through a little ceremony every few years to see which corporatist warmonger gets the chance to be our figurehead.

What worries me most about a Trump presidency is not local (US) policy, as you rightly point out that he needs legislative support that he doesn't have to make changes (although he can retard progress through veto power, depending on your definition of progress and his inclination), but the absolute murder he will do to the US reputation and standing in the international community (already a complex topic, and I imagine fairly mixed in most circles).

What worries me about a Clinton presidency is that she's a threat to world peace. Remember how "Bush lied to invade Iraq"? I see the same thing happening here with the Clinton camp blaming the Russians for the DNC e-mail leak. President Hillary is preparing the American people for a possible WW3 with Russia. She's clearly showing her intentions.

I don't think that's very plausible at all. You really think a career politician who knows that both countries routinely probe and hack each other is going to go to war over this? Anything she says will be to affect Russia's international standing and embarrass them for getting caught, and possibly to maneuver for a better deal somewhere else.

That the US would go to war over the hacking of a non-governmental institution is ridiculous, and whoever is spouting stuff like that should immediately lose quite a bit of credibility with whoever is listening. Only congress can officially start a war, and if the president started getting aggressive with a country such as powerful as Russa over something so small, well, there would be some interesting ramifications to presidential power. Remember, congress has the ability to amend the constitution.

It's only a start. She's preparing the people to be more hostile toward Russia with conspiracy theories such as this. It's not about the hacking; it's the more severe accusation of influencing the election and American politics. The FBI is already starting an investigation. She also wants a no-fly zone over Syria in direct confrontation with Russia, escalating the tensions. I can only see more hostility in the future.

> What worries me most about a Trump presidency is not local (US) policy, as you rightly point out that he needs legislative support that he doesn't have

If a sufficient electoral base exists to elect Trump, a sufficient electoral base exists to get him sufficient legislative support (sooner than new people are elected, perhaps, simply by raising the prospect of electoral danger to present incumbents) to implement his policies.

That assumes everyone actually knows what his objectives are before electing him, or that those objectives stay the same after election. Given how often his views have changed so far, I'm not sure that's a safe assumption to make.

Edit: Also, to be clear, if he does have legislative support because enough people support him to elect representatives with similar agendas, that's not really something for me to be worried about, as that would be no different than any other candidate. If it's the will of the people, so be it (as much as I dislike it).

I feel slightly better about this with the knowledge that the office of the president of the US is primarily a status-quo-preserving institution.

The interest groups that care generally want the status quo preserved.

If Trump is not destined to do this, then I think there is little danger he'll be elected.

Note, the same applies to HRC.

Mocking those on the opposite side of the aisle from you isn't going to help a damned thing. Maybe if everyone stopped shitting on the opposite party we'd see Congress get their shit together.

Just to help people manage expectations...

Duverger's law suggests that our form of elections results in a two party system. Opponents of the duopoly should advocate for an alternative. Such as Approval Voting.

The GOP REDMAP 2001 redistricting (gerrymandering) effort (and the Kochs Bros) created the Tea Party and the extreme obstructionism and partisanship we see today. Even the GOP regrets how successful that effort was (eg #NeverTrump), so expect a walkback on that.

Having run for office, I never mock candidates. Not even Sarah Palin. People not involved in campaigns just don't know how rough it is.

I don't have an aisle, so I can't mock the opposite side. But I can mock the republican aisle for having descending into complete buffoonery.

If you have conservative leaning ideals I would suggest abandoning ship and starting something new. Nobody with a functioning brain is voting that way any more. It is a horrible clown show what has happened, unprecedented.

I don't have an aisle, so I can't mock the opposite side. But I can mock the Democratic aisle for having descending into complete buffoonery.

If you have liberal leaning ideals I would suggest abandoning ship and starting something new. Nobody with a functioning brain is voting that way any more. It is a horrible clown show what has happened, unprecedented.

> If you have conservative leaning ideals

You very much have an opposite side of the aisle wether you want to admit it or not.

As someone with no stake in US politics (so no 'side of the aisle') both candidates are bad. Trump however is another level of bad. An openly sexist, potentially racist man with no political experience, running for the highest political office in your country is lunacy.

> An openly sexist, potentially racist man

Citation needed.

> with no political experience

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Come on, everyone is a potential racist.

>Openly racist sexist Calling names is not going to do anything

Instant polarization and the fallacy of the excluded middle are probably a huge part of why politics are shunned on HN.

Yea its sad to see such educated people become spewers of childish non-constructive rhetoric. Although it is very helpful in determining some people you would never want to work or associate with.

There's nothing wrong with criticism, but GP hasn't substantiated their opinion, so it isn't helpful.

Like I said, mocking the other side isn't helpful.

Trump isn't going to signal the downfall of the US no more than Obama has. Democrats have adopted the scare tactics and language of Republicans circa 2008

Have you seen Trump's twitter feed? I've rarely seen such spew outside 4chan. Your average software engineer is more qualified, just by the signal virtue of having self control in public.

It's widely understood internationally that this is not normative US election wank.

I assure you, I'm not a Democrat either. I would probably be a Rockefeller Republican... if such a thing existed today.

Berlusconi was worse. Italy somehow survived.

Italy is in a world of hurt with 12%+ unemployment, a 37% youth unemployment rate, actual problems at the government level with the actual mob, corruption that would make your head spin, and a desperately shrinking economy.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-italy-s-economy-is-a...

So no, not so much with the survival.

Both major parties denounce the other's candidates as "the most extreme ever" like clockwork.

Once that seed has been planted, confirmation bias does the rest.

So corruption shouldn't be exposed because someone else may gain political advantage from it?

Clinton defenders's arguments are getting stranger by the day.