***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[whywesteppin]

they're turning on him...

edit: @aepps20, a new contender steps forward:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-trump-calls-mr-elegant-its-a-debate-mystery/

 

[deuce king]

He really pardoned that piece of **** Arapaio..... Both candidates are the same huh?

@maximus meridius

 

[everysingletime]

'Never question Trump's stupidity'

I guess yall was right

 

[deleted]

"He's just in campaign mode...he'll tone it down when he's elected"

 

[deuce king]

This just makes me more irritated at Obama.
Dude they ain't playing fair
U had the ball in ur hands
All the stuff u coulda did for African Americans

Such as what champ??

 

[everysingletime]

If Obama governed in any way like Trump white america would riot.

 

[whywesteppin]

america should riot

 

[EddieDoyers]

they're turning on him...

edit: @aepps20, a new contender steps forward:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-trump-calls-mr-elegant-its-a-debate-mystery/

Those butt hurt responses in Mccains tweet make me laugh

 

[rexanglorum]

This just makes me more irritated at Obama.
Dude they ain't playing fair
U had the ball in ur hands
All the stuff u coulda did for African Americans
All the pardons u coulda did
Like bruh
They had 400 years
**** taking the high road
He should went as low as the Underground Railroad
After what's happening now
Ain't no way another black president ever getting elected again
Cause they know we gonna want payback

To be fair Obama was a liberal President and liberals see problems and ask how they can be solved through reform.

People like you and I are leftists and we see problem and are likely to see malice as the cause.

When it comes to the failed War on Drugs, liberals see it and ask "how did it get to the point that so many people are incarcerated?" Leftists answer is that the War on Drugs was designed to incarcerate large numbers of people.

So Obama, a liberal, used his executive powers to make the federal portion of the War on Drugs less evil, with shorter sentences, less emphasis on users and low level dealers and a few hundred pardons.

If Obama were a leftist, he would have pardoned almost everyone convicted of drug crimes and directed the Department of Justice to not even pursue drug cases.

 

[RustyShackleford]

You really think Barrack Obama wondered how so many people, especially black people, got locked up

I'm sorry, but c'mon, let us be serious

I am not even go into the political climate Obama had to work under either on this issue. The far left was complete **** when it came to giving him cover to push for anything.

 

[EddieDoyers]

Obama can never win lol
He got flack for pardoning and granting commutations to those low level non violent drug dealers serving harsh maximum sentences from conservatives and liberals felt he didn't do enough for the black community

 

[SneakerProSr.]

People expected Obama to be Jesus

Come in and change all the wrong of American politics in one fell swoop

 

[whywesteppin]

it's sad but the country wasn't ready for a black president or for a progressive agenda. i never expected we'd have a black president in 2008. maybe 2050 or something. but 2008?

also, as much as i talk about the shame of trump voters or those who didn't vote at all in 2016, i hold similar disdain for those who turned on Obama because he didn't deliver this magical revolution that they expected when they voted for him in 2008.

the "revolution" didn't happen not because of Obama. it didn't happen because that's not how **** works. maybe Obama oversold hope and change in his campaign, but trump has helped put everything in perspective. we didn't deserve Obama. we deserve trump.

("we" here is referring to Americans, not to liberals or Democrats in particular)

 

[deleted]

I'm sure Republicans would be downright giddy to see Dems using Arpaio's pardon as a catalyst for criticizing Obama

 

[RustyShackleford]

Nawgthy is just being Nawghty.

But the implication that Obama is that oblivious is ridiculous to me.

He knew, but he also knew any major moves would cause a massive backlash that his **** boy party would run away from him. Look at how they showed their *** when the Tea Party showed up calling him all kinds of n-words. Blue and Progressives alike were on some ********.

Like Coates says everything the man touch turned partisan, especially regarding race.

If anything, the establishment left is better on this issue than the progressive left.

And this is not directed at Rex a anyway but many far left commentators have a bad habit of excusing the far left's short comings by painting Obama as some sort of undercover racist that willingly sold out his people. From idiots like Jimmy Dore to the Jacobin.

The far left really have to do better.

 

[elpablo21]

 

[EddieDoyers]

Lol watch the wind turn a 180 and say DACA needed to be ended

 

[rexanglorum]

You really think Barrack Obama wondered how so many people, especially black people, got locked up

I'm sorry, but c'mon, let us be serious

I am not even go into the political climate Obama had to work under either on this issue. The far left was complete **** when it came to giving him cover to push for anything.

On the topic of the federal criminal justice system, GOP opposition is irrelevant. The President has limitless power of the pardon and the ability make the DOJ pursue the strategy that he wanted them to pursue.


Now, you're right that Obama knew that mass incarceration was a deliberate and malicious act. The fact that he has a leftist's perspective, on that issue, and he still pursued the liberal policy of gentle reforms makes it shameful.

There was no legal impediment and no political downside in pardoning every single person who was languishing in Federal prison for drug "crimes." A few hundred pardons was simply not enough, especially when his successor has shown a better appreciation for the power of the pardon.

There are instance where Democrats bring a knife to a gun fight and this particular issue is one of them. Trump pardons an avowed white supremacists who used his office to illegal arrest and incarcerate people. Barack Obama was timid on issue of clemency for a people who who were serving life sentences for drugs.


BTW, I do not think that Obama was an undercover racist. I think that matters related to Presidential discretion on law enforcement matters, he was just too much of an institutionalist and was not sufficiently cynical or willing to come to terms with the fact that Republicans had abandoned all previous governing norms.

When you are President, you can jail bad economic actors, you can blackmail wealth economic bad actors into surrender their ill gotten gains and you can pardon people.

The problem is that Barack Obama got no credit from the right for his limited drug pardons. So if the right grants you no political capital or gratitude for limiting your drug pardons, then the only good option, politically, is a mass pardoning. At least then you energize your base.

What is scary is that Donald Trump, a man of such puny intellect compared to Barack Obama, neverthless knows one really important thing. You keep your base happy above all else.

 

[RustyShackleford]

You really think mass pardoning would energize the base?

Maybe black folk, but not the whole base. Progressive seem to give few real ****s about his pardoning and it damn sure not because it didn't go far enough. I don't see these progressive darlings get pressed by white kids over their views on sentencing. The Dem voting white working class would be pissed off. They were pissed off when he said his comments about Trayvon Martin.

It would splinter his base.

And just like the apologizing for slavery argument, or the push reparations argument. I have to take umbrage (you like that Ninja) at Obama being criticized for not going that route. When every white progressive politican follows the center left on the issue. Like on every issue a progressive say they are better, but on issues like these their pitch is that they are just as good as the rest the "establishment". I wonder if that has to do with their courting of the "white working class". Hmm

You saying Obama should of persued a course of action that no other white politican in his position would. The you make it seem like he would have been rewarded politically all across the left wing spectrum. No he would not have. And right now people like Bernie Sanders and Warren, and leftist pundits would be using it to dog whistle his priorities where not in the right place.

You are pitching a half truth, Congress is relevant. Criminal Justice reform is not just sentencing. That is not they only way the system fails the black community. It civil forfeiture, municipal fines, the bail bonds system, public defenders ****** representation, the list goes on, and stretches far beyond the Federal system. And when he is out of office, new offenders get no help and the cycle continues. I want more than a short term political win anyway. And while it does give justice to many, it doesn't solve the systemic issue. So until we have the right supermajority, on issues of Criminal Justice reform, the opinion of the right sadly matters

Also the far leftist help construct the system that plunders minorities, so I will be damned if I will act like Obama is the one that whose acts need to be categorized as shameful. Not only that, he would not be able to pardoning those with state and local charges.

So nahhhhhh, this is some more magic negro **** that Barrack Obama would have been rewarded by the Dem base for mass pardoning. I don't have that much faith in the white community, even the left wing one.

-Plus the second one of those people commits another crime, even a violent one, it is Willy Horton 2.0 and the entire white far left will be no where to be found to give him cover.

Say he should have, fine, that is fair, but I am not gonna act like he would have been rewarded politically for it.

 

[AZwildcats]

I see why AZwildcats wants to escape his state

I used to defend this place all the time

 

[superblytrife]

Lol watch the wind turn a 180 and say DACA needed to be ended

Oh, it’s coming. Guarantee it. The tap shoes are tied up nice and tight.

 

[rexanglorum]

The issue is not all of the criminal justice system, it is about the power of the pardon at the executive level.

Barack didn't need any magic to liberate thousands upon thousands of political "drug" prisoners. All he needed was a signature.

Would conservatives have complained and called him soft on crime? you bet, they did so anyway. Would Republicans in Congress complain and grandstand, oh yeah but they do that any way. Would socially conservative whites have abandoned the Democratic coalition due to their racial anxiety? no doubt but they already have done so.

We have to ask, how do you engage and mobilize young people and people of color, especially men of color who currently have little or no attachment to the political process? How about sticking it to law enforcement, prosecutors and decades of "tough on crime" politics all in one fell swoop.

Yeah some progressives may not have cared but plenty of woke white folks and damn near every black and brown person would be energized and elated at the sight of Barack Obama playing the role of Moses and leading greatest mass liberation of enslaved people since the days of Lincoln.

And yes, I would demand the same from any white or Asian or Latino person who calls themselves a Democrat and ever happens to enjoy the immense power of the pardon, duly granted to every United States President, to liberate the thousands of human beings unjustly ensnared in the jaws of the Federal Leviathan.


Edit: I get worked up over this topic because criminal justice, especially as it relates to drug laws, is what got me started in my interest in social justice.

Drug Laws are an injustice so clear and so obvious for all to see that even most libertarians know about it (in fact it often times is the gateway that pulls people from libertarianism to leftism)


Seeing Donald Trump use his uncheckable, completely legal powers, to reward his base and to pardon one of the faces of our draconian criminal justice system reminded me of what a missed opportunity the left had. we had someone who was one of our own, holding that executive pen and he, for whatever reason, was unable to smash the "crown jewel" of "tough on crime" politics, the mandatory minimums that enslave thousands of people, for decades all because they sold some vegetable matter.

 

[gry60]

and damn near every black and brown person

Can't say that as some haven't received their sammy sosa treatment yet.

You do have a point as far as Obama's inability to recognize the depths of the animosity he engendered and him passing on the opportunity to give the "powers that be" a yyyuuge "**** you." He was probably convinced that Hillary would take his place and continue what he started, especially after Trump won the GOP nomination.

 

[cedric ceballos]

So the Trump supporters should support Mayweather tonight right?

An undefeated American legend who tells it how it is going against some overrated loud mouth classless foreigner who lacks respect. I'd be greatly disappointed if "Real America" isn't pulling for an undefeated American champ.

 

[Nike Jordan]

It's a fake fight.