Hacker News Reader

Comment by doe88 | Hacker News Reader

Unlikely. I would be very surprised if president Obama granted this request. And that's just one of many reasons why democrats did not have a strong turn-out, they lost touch with their base. As corollary a very good article in WaPo by Glenn Greenwald https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/11/...

View on HN

I am not all following how you are connecting the Democrats losing touch with their base and the question of whether Obama is likely to pardon this individual.

Part of the reason I did not go out to vote for Clinton was because she was a continuation of Obama's policies; civilian collateral damage from extrajudicial drone strikes, no pardon for Edward Snowden, the possibility of a drawn out proxy war in Syria, as well as no stop to the NSA domestic surveillence program. (Neoliberalism = "Republican lite")

You might retort "But Trump! (and his threats of killing families of terrorists, etc)". If Clinton was elected it would've been business as usual, everyone would've gone back to their bread and circuses. Not now though.

I hope Obama has the fortitude to pardon Manning and Snowden if he's going to jump on the political grenade of pardoning Clinton. [1]

Sidenote: Trump has already swung moderate, deciding to stick with NATO [2] and keeping most of the ACA after speaking with Obama [3]. Maybe he doesn't stick to those ideals, but its clear Trump the president may not be as bad as Trump the person. I have hope, but I had hope for Sanders as well. (Excitingly enough, the /r/SandersForPresident subreddit was reactived today, with ~210k active subscribers).

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-10/giulia...

[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-14/obama-...

[3] http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-hedges-health-...

>>Part of the reason I did not go out to vote for Clinton was because she was a continuation of Obama's policies; civilian collateral damage from extrajudicial drone strikes, no pardon for Edward Snowden, the possibility of a drawn out proxy war in Syria, as well as no stop to the NSA domestic surveillence program. (Neoliberalism = "Republican lite") You might retort "But Trump! (and his threats of killing families of terrorists, etc)". If Clinton was elected it would've been business as usual, everyone would've gone back to their bread and circuses. Not now though.

Regardless of what you think of Clinton Trump was a far worse alternative on every measure. Trump will be able to dramatically change the supreme court and US federal legislation as well. Complaining about Clinton/Obama doesn't change the simple fact that he is far to the right on her on almost every issue.

>>Sidenote: Trump has already swung moderate, deciding to stick with NATO [2] and keeping most of the ACA after speaking with Obama [3]. Maybe he doesn't stick to those ideals, but its clear Trump the president may not be as bad as Trump the person. I have hope, but I had hope for Sanders as well. (Excitingly enough, the /r/SandersForPresident subreddit was reactived today, with ~210k active subscribers).

Trump CANT keep most of ACA even if he wanted to keep the good parts. The expansion of coverage is paid and supported by the entirety of the law, it doesn't work without all the provisions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com