Race for the Title of Stupidest: Part Two?

  
Yesterday, I wrote about the "Race for The a Title of Stupidest," which discussed the idiocy and ignorance of the Republican presidential candidates.  I had an anonymous commenter that wrote, “Too bad you can't see the idiocy within your own Democrat Party. The country would be a saner place if you learned to dissent within your own ranks. Remember--dissent is patriotic.” To which I replied, “I never said I was a Democrat. Furthermore, I think both parties are deeply flawed, but it's the Republicans who are rabidly anti-LGBT and can only come up with idiotic dribble to back up their claims. This is a gay blog and for the most part I stuck to the stupidity of their stances on LGBT issues.” But to be fair, I decided to give the Democrats their due and write a post on the stupidest things said by Democratic presidential candidates.  However, I could not limit it to LGBT issues because all of the Democrats seem to be for LGBT rights.

Several different websites have “The Five Worst Things Hillary Clinton Ever Said,” all of them pretty much have the same quotes, so here goes. Number five on the list is, “I have to confess that it’s crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian.” This one is not so bad because I do not believe that Jesus would recognize many Republicans as Christians, at least not the Christianity that Christ laid out in the Sermon on the Mount or in his parables. He would more likely see them in the same way he say the Pharisees, all show but no substance. The fourth worst is “We have a lot of kids who don’t know what works means. They think work is a four-letter word.” Have these people ever met any kids? They get lazier and lazier by the year. In the five years I taught at my former school, I can count on one hand the number of those kids who had a job. I agree with Clinton 100 percent. The third worst is more dumb than anything, because Hillary said, “I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.” Bill Clinton was president, Hillary was First Lady. She should have understood that one. The second worst was “The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something they’re not.” That might be a little of the pot calling the kettle black, but um…it's true, at least I am tired of it. And the number one worst thing was kind of bad. In response to who was responsible for Benghazi, Hillary said, “What difference does it make?” She was speaking of whether it was terrorists or protestors, but nearly everything about the Benghazi incident has been blown way out of proportion. Fox News uses the words “Benghazi” and “emails” to get conservatives foaming at the mouth and to boost ratings.

The next person to declare his candidacy was independent/socialist cum Democrat Bernie Sanders. The Libertarian Republic, a free market news magazine featuring the writing of prominent libertarians, conservatives, independents and sometimes democrats wrote about the top five dumbest quotes from Bernie Sanders, and here they are. Number five was “A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little…We need a tax system which asks the billionaire class to pay its fair share of taxes and which reduces the obscene degree of wealth inequality in America”. By honestly do believe that the graduated tax system in America right now is ridiculous. It puts the greatest burden on those who are the poorest, and it needs to be more equitable, so not such a dumb quote in my book. Let's look at number four, “Education should be a right, not a privilege. We need a revolution in the way that the United States funds higher education.” The current system in higher education with expenses going higher and higher will cause more students not to attend college or to be so heavily in debt when they leave that it will take years to pull out. The current system is designed for an educated elite, which many Republicans are all to happy to have because it keeps poor and middle class people dumb enough to vote Republican against their best interest. Number three quotes Sanders as saying, “Social Security is a promise that we cannot and must not break.” Why is this listed as a dumb quote, because they don't believe Social Security should have ever been established, and thus with all the money we've paid into it over the years, Libertarians and Republicans think it should be scrapped completely. The second dumbest thing was “Meanwhile, as the rich become much richer, the level of income and wealth inequality has reached obscene and unimaginable levels. In the United States, we have the most unequal level of wealth and income distribution of any major country on Earth, and it’s worse now then at any other time since the 1920s…”. Anyone who looks at world history should see a pattern here. When there is a great disparity of wealth in a nation, that nation either falls or goes through a massive political change, mostly not for the better and there needs to be some reforms. And the number one dumbest thing The Libertarian Republic quotes as the dumbest thing uttered by Sanders is “We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies.” We really do need to begin looking harder at more sustainable energy, because fossil fuels will not last forever, and we will have a major energy crisis unlike anything seen before.

When you google “dumb quote by Lincoln Chafee” the main thing that comes up is this quote, “How dumb can the Republicans be to be beating up on the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country? That's one we gotta grab! a path to citizenship is not only good policy, it's good politics.” A lot of people are also criticizing his belief in the metric system, but both his stance on immigration and the metric system sound pretty reasonable to me. I guess the main thing about Chafee is that he's not terribly well known, he was a reluctant politician, and he's switched from being a liberal Republican to an Independent and is now a Democrat.

Not many quotes by Martin O'Malley can be found either which is odd considering he was Mayor of a large American city (Baltimore) and Governor of Maryland. He has stressed that 2016 should be an election focusing on new perspectives and new leadership and that the Presidency "should not be a crown that is passed between two families.” He's kind of has a point there, with Clinton and Jeb Bush running. Really the only other quote I found by O’Malley was “Sometimes in campaigns you can drive yourself crazy with the micro-targeting and the pollsters and the tea leaves and the pixie dust trying to twist yourself into triple back-flips to appeal to the three percent that are the undecideds that live in suburbs and have lawns that are less than 20 feet long and all that bullshit. Just tell the base why you’re doing what you’re doing and why you’re better than the other guy.” I wouldn't exactly call that quote dumb, but pretty common sense. 

The difference in the “stupid things” said by Democratic candidates and Republican candidates is that Republicans are cruel, insensitive, and mean-spirited. All politicians will tell you what they hate instead of what they will do, but hate speech seems to be the Republican criteria for running. I'm sure people will say that I am being far too biased with this post, but I spent quite a while yesterday trying to find quotes by Democrats to post and I came up with very little. Clinton and Sanders have the most because they've been at the forefront the longest, and let's face it, Sanders is in this race to push the debate to the left and enjoys being controversial. Hillary has always been controversial as First Lady, Senator, and as Secretary of State. It comes with being a powerful woman in politics, but neither seem to be mean-spirited in their speech. Chafed and O’Malley just haven't been in the big race long enough nor have they been on the national stage. Most of the Republicans running are in the Senate and have a ready forum for their lunacy.

By the way, I did not include Joe Biden. There are two reasons: he hasn't officially announced that he's running and there would just be too many quotes. Biden is one of the most loquacious politicians in American history and he's talked enough and put his foot in his mouth so many times that he should have the permanent taste of shoe leather in his mouth. I want to close by going back to one of Hillary’s quotes: “I have to confess that it’s crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian.” The thing is, I find it hard to believe that any politician in America could or should be considered a Christian. They certainly don't act like what Jesus has told us to behave, and in my book that's just a Christian in name only.