U.S. Election - Because we know better than you do

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

They may reject it, but I would say a good proportion of them are being less than forthcoming with the full truth behind their motivations. It may not be the main factor for some people who are voting for Clinton, but I think it is beyond doubt that Clinton has a fair bit of support because she's a woman. And I say there's nothing wrong with that so long as people also broadly support her on actual policy. If someone feels like they would have to hold their nose to vote for Clinton so that a woman could be president then I don't think they are balancing political priorities right. It's not a case of any woman is better than no woman. But if Clinton reasonably fits with your ideological views then the fact of her being a woman is a legitimate reason to flip for her instead of Bernie.

It's certainly possible that people are not telling the truth behind their motivations, but if you start considering such things, it's not clear where to stop. For example, it's also possible that a non-trivial number of those questioned will actually vote for Donald Trump, but saying so in a college like Wellesley would alienate them from the majority of the population so they don't go advertising this fact. It's really difficult to estimate the probability of people not telling you the truth so we usually take the polls at face value.

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The way the debate has been framed has been detrimental as it has basically lead to entrenchment of people's positions rather than open discussion about the positive effect of having a woman president vs. the negative effect of that woman being Hillary Clinton. If on balance the positives outweigh the negatives then its legitimate to advocate for Clinton's sex to be part of the determining influences in a progressive's voting decision.

Same with Obama. It's important that the presidency stops being seen as a white man's domain. So it was important that an African American eventually got elected. It's also important that eventually a Latino be president, and someone of Asian descent as well (important enough for a progressive to vote for, say, Bobby Jindal? An interesting point of discussion and not totally black and white); it's probably too big of a dream to hope for a native American any time in the foreseeable future, but it would be good if it happened. It didn't have to be Obama, but for a progressive in 2008 it was legit to look at the field of candidates and decide, OK having an African American man is more socially important than having a white woman, and more socially important for sure than having another white man. But another progressive might have prioritised a woman, since women are 50% of the population.

 

We shall see. My impression is that this anti-white, anti-male attitude is going out of style, even among the so-called "progressives". It certainly served Obama well in 2008, but Obama himself served as a great illustration of the limitations of this approach. Let's say we elect a woman or an African-American or a Native American or whatever to the office of President. Beyond giving the relevant identity group a feeling of satisfaction and, to a much greater extent, making the so-called "progressives" give each other pats on the back for making "progress", what does that accomplish? Did having Obama as President rather than Clinton make a tangible, quantifiable difference to a random inner city African-American? I rather doubt it. Did it stop the US from bombing North Africa? Certainly not. Did it at least reduce racial animosity? Quite the opposite: the numbers of both white and black hate groups have increased considerably:

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Black separatist groups also multiplied, rising from 113 in 2014 to 180 last year, “pretty much as a direct result of the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement,” Potok said. But unlike the members of that movement, the separatist groups represented an extreme position that “demonized” whites, gays and Jews. The number of black separatist groups was the highest of any year since at least 2000, according to SPLC data.

Regardless of who becomes President, they will have much more in common with the elites they interact with (in fact, as a general rule, they already do even while a candidate) than with the median member of their race, gender, etc. I think many people are coming around to the fact that we should simply elect the candidate who at least promises the best policies rather than making decisions based on identity politics.

[Stan the Man Baratheon]

Trump praising Sanders at the msnbc townhall, smashing Hillary Clinton. Trump/Sanders 2016.

[Kalbear]

So we've mentioned a bit before about how the Sanders Healthcare plan is a bit math-light, but one part I hadn't seen is how the taxes will work - and they're based on really sketchy math.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2016/02/17/what-has-the-wonks-worried/?_r=0&referer=https://t.co/DWuhLcGSIa

Seriously, they're assuming an annual rate of growth of 5.3%, when the current rate of growth is 2% and the best we've had in like 20 years is 4%. They're also assuming an unemployment rate of a staggering 3.8%.

Why doesn't this bother Sanders supporters more? If a republican had proposed this it would have been derided instantly as a fantasy worthy of grrm.

[Altherion]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Why doesn't this bother Sanders supporters more? If a republican had proposed this it would have been derided instantly as a fantasy worthy of grrm.

Same basic idea as with Trump: since the policies are impossible, you are buying a pig in a poke, but your choice is either that or buying something known to be thoroughly rotten. In the case of Sanders, there is at least some possibility of him seriously cracking down on Wall Street whereas with the alternative, it's practically guaranteed that the latter won't happen.

[The Marquis de Leech]

4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

it's probably too big of a dream to hope for a native American any time in the foreseeable future,

From the useless trivia file:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Curtis

(Who is also the last Vice-President with facial hair).

[Ordos]

Why should the folks of Alaska and Hawaii vote for Marco Rubio? Their states are not in his campaign logo!

[mormont]

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

My impression is that this anti-white, anti-male attitude is going out of style

Your impression starts from a false premise. That attitude has never been in style. Being supportive of women and minorities is not being either anti-white or anti-male.

[CryptofCthulhu]

You learn that rhetoric doesn't mean anything if the candidate has no actual plans in regards to how they are going to "fix" things.

I try to avoid politics as much as possible. It's tedious and predictable.

[Altherion]

44 minutes ago, mormont said:

Your impression starts from a false premise. That attitude has never been in style. Being supportive of women and minorities is not being either anti-white or anti-male.

There's a difference between being supportive of women and minorities and advocating that an important and/or advantageous position which can only be filled by one person be filled by a person of a certain race or gender because of that person's race or gender (or at least using the identity as a weight in addition to the qualifications). This attitude has been in style for a long time in the more despicable sectors of American academia, but I don't want to discuss it in this thread -- suffice it to say that the Clinton camp is rather surprised by its absence among young people.

[mormont]

21 minutes ago, Altherion said:

There's a difference between being supportive of women and minorities and advocating that an important and/or advantageous position which can only be filled by one person be filled by a person of a certain race or gender because of that person's race or gender

The motivation to see a suitably qualified person who happens to be of a race or gender that has never held a particular position before elected to that position is very much about being supportive of women and minorities. It's wanting to see something historic and important happen, and that's not about being anti-anything, it's about being pro-something. Nobody has seriously ever said that a white man should be automatically disqualified or should never be President again.

With respect to the current election, Clinton's problem is specifically about voters not being convinced that she fits that definition of suitably qualified. It seems to me that there likely isn't a single Sanders backer who'd be less than delighted to support a woman who had the equivalent of Sanders' background and policies. If such a woman were running, I think Sanders would have been totally eclipsed by her (if he hadn't decided to stand aside for her first, which is highly likely). So I don't think the claim that young voters aren't supportive of female and minority candidates stands up at all: that strikes me as wishful thinking.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

So we've mentioned a bit before about how the Sanders Healthcare plan is a bit math-light, but one part I hadn't seen is how the taxes will work - and they're based on really sketchy math.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2016/02/17/what-has-the-wonks-worried/?_r=0&referer=https://t.co/DWuhLcGSIa

Seriously, they're assuming an annual rate of growth of 5.3%, when the current rate of growth is 2% and the best we've had in like 20 years is 4%. They're also assuming an unemployment rate of a staggering 3.8%.

Why doesn't this bother Sanders supporters more? If a republican had proposed this it would have been derided instantly as a fantasy worthy of grrm.

That is not the math of the Sanders healthcare plan- Krugman doesn't even say it is, so I don't know where you pulled that from. Those numbers are projections from a pro-Sanders economist on the effect Sanders' entire program would have on the economy. They do not come from the Sanders campaign. Naturally the Sanders campaign was pleased with them, but it did not produce them.

So I'm not bothered by this because I've actually looked at his single-payer proposal, and the taxes he proposes to fund it, and, most importantly, I know that similar systems achieve yuge cost savings and work quite well in other countries.

[Fez]

Sanders health care plan would be truly terrible for an awful lot of the country; namely everyone who has coverage they are already happy with. Medicare as is is not nearly as good as most employer-sponsored coverage, that's why people on it buy Medigap plans if they can afford it, and the premiums can be relatively high. Now there's been talk that when Sanders says 'Medicare-for-All' he actually means an improved version of Medicare; with no coverage gaps like it currently has, no waiting lists, and no sky-high premiums.

Problem is, no country on earth has a system like that. Its a fantasy, and one that would require enormous tax increases on everyone to try to fund anyway. Regardless of whether he means current Medicare or this improved one, it would be a disaster if it actually was implemented. And that's before getting into how he has zero plan on how to manage the massive disruptions it would cause in services. Even relatively minor changes in payer systems, like when state Medicaid programs move from state-managed plans to managed care organization-managed plans, are implemented over the course of years and years; because people have seen how much work it requires and how bad things get when its rushed. Something like Sanders plan, if it even was workable, would need like 30 years to be implemented properly.

And its the same with all his other major proposals. They're all soundbites designed to appeal to liberals, with no thought or planning put into what it would take to actually implement them, what the potential negative side effects would be, or how to mitigate those effects.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

The motivation to see a suitably qualified person who happens to be of a race or gender that has never held a particular position before elected to that position is very much about being supportive of women and minorities. It's wanting to see something historic and important happen, and that's not about being anti-anything, it's about being pro-something. Nobody has seriously ever said that a white man should be automatically disqualified or should never be President again.

If people of identity qualities (i.e. immutable qualities unrelated to their qualifications) A and not-A are competing for the same position and the game is zero-sum (i.e. there is only one position), then being "pro A" (i.e tilting the selection in A's favor) is necessarily being "anti not-A" -- it's cold, mathematical logic. And yes, nobody has ever gone as far as automatic disqualification, but that is only because going to such an extreme would clearly expose just how immoral this approach is. Instead, the usual proposal is to give the identity quality some weight. This exactly as vile in principle, but much less objectionable in practice (especially since the weighting procedure is usually very vague).

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With respect to the current election, Clinton's problem is specifically about voters not being convinced that she fits that definition of suitably qualified. It seems to me that there likely isn't a single Sanders backer who'd be less than delighted to support a woman who had the equivalent of Sanders' background and policies. If such a woman were running, I think Sanders would have been totally eclipsed by her (if he hadn't decided to stand aside for her first, which is highly likely). So I don't think the claim that young voters aren't supportive of female and minority candidates stands up at all: that strikes me as wishful thinking.

There is never anybody with the equivalent of another person's background and policies. That said, if somebody even vaguely like Sanders, but younger and female (or, heck, just plain younger) was running, I'm sure that they'd have more success. I was really surprised that Senator Elizabeth Warren decided not to run. Sanders is a really weird choice for a candidate of the youth, not so much because he is white and male, but because he is so old -- if he were to be elected he'd be the oldest of all Presidents by far -- but hey, beggars can't be choosers. And I never claimed that young voters aren't supportive of female and minority candidates, I'm just saying that they're not discriminating based on gender as much as many people expected them to.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

The motivation to see a suitably qualified person who happens to be of a race or gender that has never held a particular position before elected to that position is very much about being supportive of women and minorities. It's wanting to see something historic and important happen, and that's not about being anti-anything, it's about being pro-something. Nobody has seriously ever said that a white man should be automatically disqualified or should never be President again.

With respect to the current election, Clinton's problem is specifically about voters not being convinced that she fits that definition of suitably qualified. It seems to me that there likely isn't a single Sanders backer who'd be less than delighted to support a woman who had the equivalent of Sanders' background and policies. If such a woman were running, I think Sanders would have been totally eclipsed by her (if he hadn't decided to stand aside for her first, which is highly likely). So I don't think the claim that young voters aren't supportive of female and minority candidates stands up at all: that strikes me as wishful thinking.

Except that the poster you are defending just lifted the suggestion that progressives should consider voting for Bobby Jindal, a hard right, bible thumping Republican, purely because he isn't white. So I'm pretty sure that there is someone arguing from a false premise here. But it isn't Altherion. 

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Bernie Sanders versus the Pentagon

In 1995, he introduced a bill to terminate America’s nuclear weapons program. As late as 2002, he supported a 50 percent cut for the Pentagon. And he says corrupt defense contractors are to blame for “massive fraud” and a “bloated military budget.”

Since he arrived in Congress, Bernie Sanders has been a fierce crusader against Pentagon spending, calling for defense cuts that few Democrats have been willing to support. Should he defeat Hillary Clinton, analysts say, he will likely be the biggest critic of the Pentagon to win a major party nomination since World War II.

It's yugely disappointing to me that Sanders has not made this central to his campaign, because I think it's a viewpoint that we desperately need to have represented in our politics and Clinton is atrocious in this area.

[Kalbear]

Sorry, you're right, OAR. The Medicare plan assumes part of that as its funding but it isn't perfectly reliant on that.

That said, that's some pretty insane thinking right there.

[aceluby]

Anyone go to jebbush.com recently.

If not, you should.... 

[Commodore]

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In 1995, he introduced a bill to terminate America’s nuclear weapons program.

This is weapons-grade stupid.

Nuclear weapons are literally used every day to keep the peace. They are why we never have to fear invasion. 

 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Except that the poster you are defending just lifted the suggestion that progressives should consider voting for Bobby Jindal, a hard right, bible thumping Republican, purely because he isn't white. So I'm pretty sure that there is someone arguing from a false premise here. But it isn't Altherion. 

First off, I'm not defending any poster, largely because none have been attacked. I'm discussing an opinion.

Second, that post also said this:

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 It may not be the main factor for some people who are voting for Clinton, but I think it is beyond doubt that Clinton has a fair bit of support because she's a woman. And I say there's nothing wrong with that so long as people also broadly support her on actual policy. If someone feels like they would have to hold their nose to vote for Clinton so that a woman could be president then I don't think they are balancing political priorities right. It's not a case of any woman is better than no woman. But if Clinton reasonably fits with your ideological views then the fact of her being a woman is a legitimate reason to flip for her instead of Bernie.

And this:

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It didn't have to be Obama, but for a progressive in 2008 it was legit to look at the field of candidates and decide, OK having an African American man is more socially important than having a white woman, and more socially important for sure than having another white man. But another progressive might have prioritised a woman, since women are 50% of the population.

In other words, the discussion is mainly about why someone in broad agreement with a candidate might consider race or gender (in a positive way) as a further reason to vote for them. Even the Jindal remark - not something the poster actually advocated, but something he raised as an interesting question - is in line with this. Nothing in that post, and nothing in the whole discussion, is justifying the characterisation of any of this as 'this anti-white, anti-male attitude'.

The blather above about A and not-A misses the point: it's possible to make the same choice for two different reasons, and it is the reason for the choice of A over not-A, not the choice in and of itself, that reflects an 'attitude'.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Anyone go to jebbush.com recently.

If not, you should.... 

Did Trump buy the domain or is this a hack?