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Forum nameGeneral Discussion
Topic subjectJesus almighty.
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=13002275&mesg_id=13003670
13003670, Jesus almighty.
Posted by stravinskian, Wed Apr-13-16 07:14 AM
Hopefully this kind of thinking isn't common among the Bernie supporters come the fall. It's awfully reminiscent of the "Gore is no better than Bush" idea, which I hope we can all agree was thoroughly and disastrously wrong.

Kasich is not the aw-shucks, middle-of-the-road, friendly conservative that his campaign is trying to sell. He was a leader in the Gingrich revolution, including the government shutdown and the Clinton impeachment. He's a firm believer in austerity economics. He literally worked for Goldman Sachs (that's paychecks, not just donations!). He's severely restricted abortion access in Ohio. And as he told us forcefully in his reelection campaign, he was never 'soft' on Obamacare. He accepted the funds for Medicaid expansion, but he still strongly favors repeal, even including the Medicaid expansion. I could go on and on about Kasich.

And as much as you might not trust Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama clearly does trust her, at the very least to sustain his legacy. And that's not just a slogan: because of the lockstep Republican opposition that he's faced, everything the administration has accomplished for three quarters of his presidency has been through executive actions, not permanent laws. If a Republican, any Republican, wins in the fall then the last six years of the Obama presidency will have been for naught (arguably all eight, if they go ahead with Obamacare repeal, which again John Kasich is on record supporting whether or not there's a replacement, and he'll have the power to do thanks to the Republican control of Congress).

A long argument could be had both about Kasich and about Clinton, but it really shouldn't be necessary. There is one pressing issue that overrides all others: the Supreme Court is currently at a 4-4 ideological split. This is the one branch of government that actually still gets things done on domestic policy. Justices Ginsburg and Breyer are both near retirement (or worse, not to be morbid). So if the next president is a Republican, any Republican, the court will be 6-3 or even 7-2 conservative for an entire generation. If the next president is a Democrat, any Democrat, he or she will be able to solidify a 5-4 liberal majority at least until Justice Breyer retires (and maybe beyond that, if Breyer and/or Thomas has to step down during the term). You act like George W Bush didn't do anything on abortion, but there are at least two very profound things that he did that would actually contribute to the overturning of Roe v Wade if a Republican is elected this fall: John Roberts and Sam Alito.

There are plenty more reasons that a Clinton presidency would be a hell of a lot better than a Kasich presidency. But this alone is enough for me. I'm on record saying that I don't like Bernie Sanders, that I don't trust him, and that even if elected, I think he would be a bad president and would set back many of the issues he claims to care about. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court alone is enough to make it so that I would vehemently support him in the fall, if it came to that.