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Honestly, you seem to be using "party line" in several different ways here, but mostly pretty idiosyncratically. I reject any definition that means a party apparatus enforces rigid ideological adherence if people recognize that voting for the party rather than voting to assuage their own ego. Bingo

If the democrats nominated donald trump, I would not be voting democrat. I'm sorry that your party hates America and everything it stands for, but it's not the democrats fault for electing a pretty milquetoast centrist with policy knowledge and experience.

Claire McCaskill did not go to the 2012 convention, she is still a democratic senator sitting on the armed services committee. Why didn't she fall in line and get punished?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 12, 2016 -> 02:14 PM) This is the evidence. Everyone is scared to step out of line, despite there being differences in philosophy. Even a guy like Bernie Sanders falls right back into line to his party bosses, despite his obvious divide. On the other side of the ledger there are all kinds of guys who are refusing to endorse Trump. One guy steps out of line on the Democratic side, and he is an "asshole" and pretty much taken out of an key positions by the party. What punishments is the non-Trump GOP facing? This is so patently absurd. You have one example, Joe Lieberman, who was actively campaigning for John McCain and openly seeking the VP endorsement for him. Please show me the Republican actively campaigning for Clinton right now, and lets see the wonderful treatment they get.

08-10 dems (mainly the house dems) whipped only the required dem members in order to pass a bill then largely would let vulnerable dems in conservative districts to vote against if desired. A lot of those dems lost to republicans, they were not primaried out. Dems also took in Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter. Seems dubious. While you could make the argument that sanders was just muscled in by threat of "punishment" (he of 74 years of age and a longtime senator rarely in positions of power), it is more likely that the dems worked in a lot of his ideas in the platform, he sees a clinton presidency a high likelihood of making the US more like he wanted, whereas a trump presidency clearly would move it backward. This is kind of the calculation that happens. Policies kind of matter a lot.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Jul 12, 2016 -> 11:33 AM) For real, as asinine as this primary got, the 2008 primaries were so much uglier. Clinton (as in, herself and her campaign directly, not others) did next to no negative campaigning this time. Bush-McCain / Brown/Clinton

QUOTE (shysocks @ Jul 12, 2016 -> 11:29 AM) I don't see the Semien/Micah/Sanchez pileup and Timmy as that closely related. Despite the plan clearly being to move Anderson along quickly, we still went and acquired a 2B who ultimately isn't as good as Semien. I think we'd be a better team with Semien instead of Lawrie, especially when you factor in years of control. We'll see if Ynoa and Burdi can bridge the gap. We also lost the possibility of trading semien for some other package.

QUOTE (Chi Town Sox @ Jul 12, 2016 -> 11:27 AM) I don't know who I am voting for or if I am voting for all but it wasn't going to be HRC or Bernie. But to see him roast her for as long as he has and then sit up there and talk about how fierce she is, wow. His facebook followers are absolutely roasting him. All those donations to help him fight to the convention and then to bow out and support everything that he had said was evil. That's pretty disappointing. I don't recall him ever saying Clinton was evil, but if you thought the HRC/Sanders primary was nasty, then I hope you enjoyed your first primary.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Jul 12, 2016 -> 11:16 AM) Do candidates usually announce their VP pick before the convention or after? I can't recall any convention that did not feature a speech by the VP nominee.

Just feel the need to say that I think RBG was out of bounds making comments on the election. Scalia started it, she is adding on to it. I hope it stops.

Your pick bud. I'm in night classes now and slowing down but I set a goal of 16 books in 16 and I'm only at 6.

It was always amazing to this point just how decent the sox record were considering the aesthetics last year. They were like the dementors of baseball, sucking the happiness out of everything. Trayce was the only bright spot last year. This year just feels more like normal baseball, but true to the last few years, Sox just never seem to get a positive career year. Seems like it's been ages since we had the surprise out of nowhere player.

I get that people don't want sox to be burned by trading away thompson/montas/m.johnson, but the constant effort to trash anyone as terrible as soon as they leave. The constant refrain of how Semein will never make it (newsflash, his defense has improved and he is a good hitter) and oh, how terrible Trayce is. Trayce is better than Austin Jackson. If you would have asked what TT was last year, everyone pretty much would have been happy if he was a .740 OPS CF with dope defense. But on the Dodgers he's awful, terrible. I hope Trayce is great. He deserves time to develop. He may end up as someone who just had three hot ML months, or those three hot ML months show that he can play at this level. Give him time.

I expect Levine to really add some insight here. "And I'm hearing White sox GM rick somebody has been fielding calls on Rod Frazierre".

Are they open to public? Just a small set of bleachers for scouts?

Glad I filled that quota.

Honestly kind of amazed that that's what the AZL stadiums look like.

QUOTE (Brian @ Jul 11, 2016 -> 11:59 AM) I wish I was more excited for Mr Robot, like you guys are. I liked Season 1 quite a bit when I just went with it, but I have very low confidence they can continue this story in a way that doesn't get extremely convoluted.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jul 11, 2016 -> 11:48 AM) I did. That was some amazingly well-done, nerve-racking entertainment. I was on the edge of my seat for much of the first episode. Once he got booked i got in, but he did so much dumb s*** and tried to escape that I was kind of annoyed the whole time. like "Should I be rooting that this guy just escape a murder scene where his new friend just died?"

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Jul 11, 2016 -> 11:43 AM) I'm not giving these people that much credit. They don't know the difference, they were still saying that s*** in 2013. Ha, well yes those are the same people who now check in on one playoff game and then say the NBA is just a bunch of iso hero ball and how great college is.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Jul 11, 2016 -> 11:38 AM) I'm bout to be "that guy" Probably a good 60% of people singing Tim Duncan's praises everywhere right now were people who spent 10+ years derisively talking about how "boring" the Spurs were, and only started giving the Spurs proper respect when they beat Miami that year (and had come close the year before). Those two teams though were quite different. They did speed up pace, they did amp up passing. They did just use to slow the game down to a crawl and use their fantastic defense to their advantage. It was boring. But also, it was insane to watch this 38 year old man go out and give you 16/10 every night, and still have playoffs where he dominated. More than that, to watch a guy that was absolutely the face of the franchise so gracefully bring in other teammates and stars without any drama.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Jul 11, 2016 -> 11:29 AM) Evan Bayh did as much to block his own party from doing certain things as anyone who wasn't a Republican, or Joe Lieberman. I remember when he retired, it was some sanctimonious bulls*** about how the "environment had deteriorated" or something, and he was otherwise pretending like he had nothing to do with that. He made a bunch of money doing that though and received fawning profiles. He's still better than nothing. I hated landreiu/nelson, but when they left you weren't getting a moderate republican you were getting a crazy tea partier.

Also posting this so that Greg can respond with "That's not a very good article, the author wasn't objective how come nobody is covering what a b**** she is?" http://www.vox.com/a/hillary-clinton-inter...dership-quality

Ron Fournier probably just sobbed himself to puking over Evan Bayh running for Senate. Though he is probably really confused why he has a label again

Did anyone watch the night of?