US Politics: flaking out and coming uncorked

[ThinkerX]

As the saying goes, 'all politics is local.'  Today, I voted in a runoff election for 'Borough' Mayor ('County' to most of you.)

First, this is a heavily conservative area (semi-rural Alaska).  There was no doubt, period, that a conservative candidate of some stripe would get the job.  The only questions were 'how conservative?' and 'how corrupt?' (The oil industry pretty much owns most of the conservative type politicians in the state, and some are blatant toadies.)

Anyhow, it came to a choice between the republican party endorsed guy with extensive management experience at the natural gas company; and the slightly more liberal lady who is part owner of a local auto dealership with a less than ethical reputation.

I went with the natural gas guy because he was direct in his responses (getting a straight answer out of the car lady being almost impossible) and because the natural gas guy supported/opposed the same ballot initiatives I did during the first election a few weeks ago. 

One of these ballot measures called for a near ban on pot locally; I objected to this on the grounds the pot shops at least put people to work and generated some tax revenue, while the other two - which I opposed - were calls for bond measures for...'repair work'...that should have been taken care of 'in house.'

So, natural gas guy got my vote.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, TheKitttenGuard said:

There goes my hope, with no basis, of the Senatorial match-up between him and Eminem.

Throw out the Diebold machines and hanging chads, we're voting with the Applause-O-Meter next year!

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/on-safari-in-trumps-america/543288/

Yah, guys, you are a prime example of locking the barn door after the cows are gone. Listening tours and wonkery -- fail.

Fascinating read, thanks for sharing.

The article starts as I would have expected: showing that the opinions of the average people are not pretty, or subtle.
But then it actually shows another, much more insidious problem: the refusal of the establishment (for lack of a better word) to hear what people are saying. These guys were supposed to try to understand what is going on, and ended up blocking out everything they were uncomfortable with. Their blind faith in "progressive neoliberalism" (as the article describes it) is astounding. Even with all the clues right in front of them they still clung to their brand of centrism that just isn't working.
And what immediately came to my mind is how short their memory is. Less then a decade ago, Obama was elected. And despite what we now know about him, I don't think he campaigned as a centrist candidate. He was a black candidate, and that alone entailed radical promises for the masses -the promises of greater social justice, racial equality, and so on. And his slogan was in fact about change. And many people believed that he was talking about radical change, something closer to Johnson's Great Society than Clinton's moderate liberalism.
And yet he was elected. Which means that even if the people who ended up voting for Trump last year didn't necessarily vote for him, they weren't necessarily thrilled with McCain either. One or way or the other, the candidate who promised some form of radical change got elected.

From this article, from the facts, and from my personal experience, I'm tempted to draw the very opposite conclusion to the one they reached: that centrism will not energize voters. Because most people are moving toward a visceral rejection of the statu quo. Which means it isn't about which candidate can gather votes on both sides, but about which candidate can better motivate their base to keep them from abstaining. Obama did that with the Democrats in 2008, and like it or not, Trump did it in 2016.
Sanders being such a threat to Clinton in the primaries should have been enough of a clue. I don't know that he could have won the election. He may have lacked a number of qualities for that, and probably was too far on the left on some issues. But he showed that even the Democratic base wasn't all that interested in centrism. Meanwhile, Republicans have gone so far to the right that they even managed to get a guy like Trump elected.
It pains me to admit it, but it seems that a religious gun-loving socialist could actually be a decent pick for the Democratic Party. Radical enough to energize the liberals, without being scary for the conservatives. Not because the conservatives would vote for such a person (I don't think that's really going to happen, or at least not in significant numbers) ; just so they might abstain from voting for whoever else is in the race.
We live in interesting times indeed.

[Dr. Pepper]

9 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

As the saying goes, 'all politics is local.'  Today, I voted in a runoff election for 'Borough' Mayor ('County' to most of you.)

First, this is a heavily conservative area (semi-rural Alaska).  There was no doubt, period, that a conservative candidate of some stripe would get the job.  The only questions were 'how conservative?' and 'how corrupt?' (The oil industry pretty much owns most of the conservative type politicians in the state, and some are blatant toadies.)

Anyhow, it came to a choice between the republican party endorsed guy with extensive management experience at the natural gas company; and the slightly more liberal lady who is part owner of a local auto dealership with a less than ethical reputation.

I went with the natural gas guy because he was direct in his responses (getting a straight answer out of the car lady being almost impossible) and because the natural gas guy supported/opposed the same ballot initiatives I did during the first election a few weeks ago. 

One of these ballot measures called for a near ban on pot locally; I objected to this on the grounds the pot shops at least put people to work and generated some tax revenue, while the other two - which I opposed - were calls for bond measures for...'repair work'...that should have been taken care of 'in house.'

So, natural gas guy got my vote.

I've been struggling here with our local elections because I can't find any sort of common group with our candidates.  Some of them even weigh in on things they have no jurisdiction over.  Why is rural Southern town mayoral candidate commenting on equal marriage, ffs?  

I'm leaving this area anyway so it only matters in what I want to leave behind, but gotta say this area is total shit.

[ThinkerX]

And while the news has moved on, the disaster in Puerto Rico remains.  A tiny company - just TWO full time employees has been awarded the $300 million contract to rebuild PR's electrical grid.  Strangely, said company is based in the hometown of Energy Secretary Zinke. Claim is they have experience in difficult mountain areas and their business model is based on being able to hire large numbers of people swiftly.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/small-montana-firm-lands-puerto-ricos-biggest-contract-to-get-the-power-back-on/2017/10/23/31cccc3e-b4d6-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=nextdraft&utm_term=.1b82748edd80

A variant of the article with less detail is on MSNBC.

On a more positive note for PR, Elon Musk's solar panels and super batteries did restore electricity to a hospital:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/24/tesla-makes-quick-work-of-puerto-rico-hospital-solar-power-relief-project/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

It should be interesting to see how much of PR's electrical grid Musk can convert to solar.  As will the conservative reaction, should that percentage be in the middle to upper double digits. 

[Altherion]

12 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Yeah, or even the White House...

Oh, wait...

Trump may aspire to being an authoritarian, but from the past year or so, he appears to be an opportunist who is skilled enough to gain win the Presidency, but not to do anything extraordinary with it. The next one will almost certainly be worse...

19 hours ago, Kalbear said:

No, now he just cares more about Bannon, who aligns heavily with @Altherion on most things - wanting to bring the system down, destroying the 'elite' (where elite means anyone that doesn't share his worldview), combined with a nice dose of white nationalism and peaceful ethnic cleansing. It's got all the good things that Altherion hoped for with Trump with very few of the bad things. 

Come now, this is practically comical. Bannon provides a valuable service by pointing out problems which are ignored by mainstream media and politicians, but he has no plausible solutions and the things you list are just silly. The elites are a very small group (roughly 4 orders of magnitude smaller than people who don't share my worldview), Bannon is an economic nationalist and there can be no peaceful ethnic cleansing in a country with the Second Amendment.

[IamMe90]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

Trump may aspire to being an authoritarian, but from the past year or so, he appears to be an opportunist who is skilled enough to gain win the Presidency, but not to do anything extraordinary with it. The next one will almost certainly be worse...

Come now, this is practically comical. Bannon provides a valuable service by pointing out problems which are ignored by mainstream media and politicians, but he has no plausible solutions and the things you list are just silly. The elites are a very small group (roughly 4 orders of magnitude smaller than people who don't share my worldview), Bannon is an economic nationalist and there can be no peaceful ethnic cleansing in a country with the Second Amendment.

I like how instead of, say, repudiating the morality of "peaceful ethnic cleansing," or perhaps asserting that you do not wish for peaceful ethnic cleansing, you chose to point out that it simply isn't possible to ethnically cleanse the US peacefully. Hmmm. Lol. 

 

Anywho, in other news, if y'all want to kill some brain cells, check this shit out: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/23/16522456/trump-bartiromo-transcript

Or, maybe stick with the nitrous... 

[Lord of Rhinos]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Fascinating read, thanks for sharing.

This seems like an exercise in bringing out your hobby horse (appropriate considering the article in question).  Basically, every bit of data runs against you.  Trump lost the popular vote to Hilary Clinton (just about the most centralist candidate imaginable).  Bernie Sanders lost decisively to Clinton. Trump under performed substantially compared to the Republican house races and never even managed to get a majority of the Republican primary votes.  Trump didn't outperform McCain or Romney in any meaningful way. 

There's a substantial amount of people who want radical change but there is no evidence they're a majority.  Political races being about motivating your base to show up and demotivating the other side is basic political science.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, IamMe90 said:

I like how instead of, say, repudiating the morality of "peaceful ethnic cleansing," or perhaps asserting that you do not wish for peaceful ethnic cleansing, you chose to point out that it simply isn't possible to ethnically cleanse the US peacefully. Hmmm. Lol.

You'd think at the point we have people arguing these points like this in this thread, most reasonable people would be able to concede the fucking breadth of the problem. We don't need him to explicitly say it when his words make the subtext perfectly clear.

[Paladin of Ice]

7 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

A lot of it is from the same book though!

Thanks to such great scholars as former Judge and likely future Senator Roy Moore, we know that the name of the god worshipped by Muslims is Allah, and in his name they all want to subjugate everyone else and cannot be trusted to obey any law of the land in their quest to crush all others underfoot. Why, just read this article written by Moore himself about how Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, should not have been allowed to serve and it shall enlighten you!

Quote

Last month Keith (Hakim Mohammad) Ellison of Minnesota became the first Muslim elected to serve in the United States Congress and shocked many Americans by declaring that he would take his oath of office by placing his hand on the Quran rather than the Bible. Can a true believer in the Islamic doctrine found in the Quran swear allegiance to our Constitution? Those who profess a sincere belief in Allah say “no!”

In 1789, George Washington, our first president under the Constitution, took his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.” Placing his hand on the Holy Scriptures, Washington recognized the God who had led our Pilgrim fathers on their journey across the Atlantic in 1620 and who gave our Founding Fathers the impetus to begin a new nation in 1776. Soon after Washington’s oath, Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789, which required all judges of the federal courts to “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties” incumbent upon them “agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.” Placing their hand on the Bible, the members of Congress had already sworn to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States … So help me God.”

Thus began a long tradition that extended both to state and federal government of acknowledging the Judeo-Christian God as the source of our law and liberty. Today, some believe that it does not matter what we believe or before Whom we take our oath. But as Keith Ellison is demonstrating, it does matter.

To support the Constitution of the United States one must uphold an underlying principle of that document, liberty of conscience, which is the right of every person to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, without interference by the government. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, in his “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States” in 1833, observed concerning the First Amendment that “The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God and cannot be encroached upon by human authority without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural, as well as revealed religion.” Justice Story echoed the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson in his Bill for Religious Freedom in 1777 in which he stated that “Almighty God” (El Shaddai in Hebrew) “hath created the mind free and manifested His supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint.” It was a specific God who endowed us with a freedom of conscience with which government could not interfere.

The Islamic faith rejects our God and believes that the state must mandate the worship of its own god, Allah. Last week, the Associated Press reported that the Islamic Court in Bulo Burto, a small town in southern Somalia, had ordered that residents would be beheaded “according to Islamic law” if they failed to pray five times a day. Sheik Hussein Barre Rage, chairman of the Islamic court, stated, “As Muslims, we should practice Islam fully … and that is what our religion enjoins us to do.” In other regions of Somalia, Islamic courts have introduced flogging, public execution and other punishments for those who deny Quranic law or refuse to worship Allah.

Islamic law is simply incompatible with our law. Jaafar Sheikh Idris, founder and chairman of American Open University, a radical Islamic school that has received funding from suspected al-Qaida sources and which supports Islamic law, recently stated that “Islam cannot be separated from the state,” and that no Muslim elected to Congress or the White House can swear to uphold the United States Constitution and still be a Muslim, because the law of Allah as expressed in the Quran is supreme. Idris was recently deported for his illegal activities. While we certainly disagree with Idris’ radical extremism, he at least knows what Islam is all about!

Yeah, turns out that tribalism is a hell of a drug. Right up there with ignorance and xenophobia, so Moore is on the really good shit.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

I eagerly await the first Congressperson or POTUS who elects to be sworn into office by placing his or her hand on a stack of Swamp Thing comic books. (The Alan Moore/Bissette/Totleben run, thank you very much.)

[Darth Richard II]

Ugh.

[Rippounet]

5 hours ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

This seems like an exercise in bringing out your hobby horse (appropriate considering the article in question).  Basically, every bit of data runs against you.  Trump lost the popular vote to Hilary Clinton (just about the most centralist candidate imaginable).  Bernie Sanders lost decisively to Clinton. Trump under performed substantially compared to the Republican house races and never even managed to get a majority of the Republican primary votes.  Trump didn't outperform McCain or Romney in any meaningful way.

No doubt. A radical is always going to see signs of growing radicalism, at the risk of exaggerating it.

Yet, in spite of my own bias, I wouldn't quite dismiss the gist of my previous message. Clinton did underperform compared to Obama. Sanders lost but his showing was amazing for an avowed socialist who had to fight ingrained suspicion and media hostility. Trump underperformed compared to some establishment candidates but still won the primary and the election. Etc... I wouldn't quite say that "every bit of data" runs against me, I'd say it's more of a complicated picture with different messages.
Many elections, and American ones especially, are hard to read because we don't know how abstention factors in.
One little nugget of information though: in the primaries, Trump won about 14 million votes ; Sanders about 13 million. One way or the other, I think that's tens of million of people who are unlikely to be energized by centrist candidates. And even assuming that every one else is a centrist, that doesn't make it that easy for centrist candidates to win elections. In case you haven't notived, "establishment GOP" candidates are under serious attack from their right.

[mormont]

12 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I’m well aware of that. That’s why I tried to structure it the way I did. I attempted to make it look like a hierarchy that one progresses through on their way to becoming a Nazi (the trolls were hard to fit in it because they’re different).  Perhaps I failed to communicate that. And while you’re correct that a crafted message targeting members of subgroups wouldn’t be effective on every member, it’s still a lot better than a message geared towards all the sub groups.

You're overly focused on 'messaging' and persuading here: you're in danger of forgetting that every message has a wider audience and unintended effects. In this case, not calling Nazis what they are sends a dangerous message, one that makes things worse.

The alt-right are Nazis. The very term is explicitly an attempt to rebrand Nazi ideology, or ideology so close to Nazism as makes no practical or moral difference, while avoiding the negative connotations of the term 'Nazi'. All this messaging to subgroups stuff validates the idea that there is a difference, that alt-right ideology is somehow not just a rebranding exercise: in doing so it risks reinforcing the appeal of that ideology for many who can reassure themselves that they're not Nazis. Meantime, it also sends a message to those at risk from that ideology that others don't recognise how endangering this shit is for them or how critical this point in history is.

The alt-right are not a standard political movement: the tactics that would apply to a centrist movement don't work with them.

12 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Here’s the thing, my fear is that by lumping people who aren’t Nazis together with the actual Nazis, you might actually push them closer to them.

You might push some people closer by doing this, but you'll also push some people closer by reinforcing what they're hearing from the Nazis, which is 'we're not Nazis'. Hey, you agree with us, and you're not Nazis, so we're not Nazis, right? When they call us that, it's just a liberal lie! You can't trust them! You can take this stuff direct from Spencer speeches. And it's the same mechanism you describe: negative feedback about the in-group. But their in-group is actual Nazis. So unless you're unwilling to call anyone a Nazi, you're not going to win this one by 'messaging': you're only going to miss the wood for the trees.

[TrueMetis]

If you're "not a Nazi" but close enough to one that insults push you towards being a Nazi, then you were already a Nazi.

[Morpheus]

The new party line for praising Trump's "accomplishments" appears to be stressing his removal of regulations, "he has no legislative wins but he has removed so many regs!" It makes me want to bash my head against a wall. Destroying civil rights, preying on the disabled and the elderly, ignoring consumer safety, letting our education system fall into ruin, gutting the EPA...Good job! I guess corporations saving money by not complying with regulations is supposed to trickle down, much like the massive tax breaks.

[LongRider]

4 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

I guess corporations saving money by not complying with regulations is supposed to trickle down, much like the massive tax breaks.

Heh.  Something trickles down, that's for sure.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Not sure what you're basing the rest of your analysis on, but my point was right now each party would clearly split in two with all four factions obtaining substantial ( >15%) support.  The record polarization is why this would be exactly the worst time to (somehow) switch to a multiparty system because the increased ideological distance between factions will continue to aggravate centrifugal and ultimately destabilizing trends.  This is why I mentioned Sartori - he emphasized it was not just number of parties but ideological distance that generates unstable multiparty systems (this is actually his main contribution building off Duverger).  And while I'm not sure ideology is the best way to describe the current differences (and I'm not sure it ever was), there is measurable increasing distance both between and within each party right now. 

Mostly gut instinct. And I understand your argument, I’m just not sure if you’re right. Yes it is quite possible that both parties would split into two additional parties, with there being a left wing party, a center left party, a center right party and a right wing party. But I think that it’s also quite possible that the two centrists parties would join up and recruit independents because they’d be a lot smaller on their own than the left and right wing parties.

15 hours ago, dmc515 said:

I most certainly will not!  The use of social/racial issues to generate support is certainly much more low-class than the GOP establishment's emphasis on taxes and curtailing entitlements, but the latter is frankly just (or at least nearly) as odious to me.

Eat your vegetables! 

Also I have to disagree. The former preys on people's anger and fear while the latter preys on people's aspirations. More or less.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 hours ago, mormont said:

You're overly focused on 'messaging' and persuading here: you're in danger of forgetting that every message has a wider audience and unintended effects. In this case, not calling Nazis what they are sends a dangerous message, one that makes things worse.

But the messaging is incredibly important. I’m not saying don’t call the Nazis out, and I’m OK with lumping white nationalists and white supremacists in with them. My point is that you shouldn’t be including people who don’t fall into those groups with Nazis.

5 hours ago, mormont said:

The alt-right are Nazis. The very term is explicitly an attempt to rebrand Nazi ideology, or ideology so close to Nazism as makes no practical or moral difference, while avoiding the negative connotations of the term 'Nazi'. All this messaging to subgroups stuff validates the idea that there is a difference, that alt-right ideology is somehow not just a rebranding exercise: in doing so it risks reinforcing the appeal of that ideology for many who can reassure themselves that they're not Nazis. Meantime, it also sends a message to those at risk from that ideology that others don't recognise how endangering this shit is for them or how critical this point in history is.

The alt-right are not a standard political movement: the tactics that would apply to a centrist movement don't work with them.

The people who founded the alt-right are Nazis, and yes, the term alt-right is a rebranding effort. But that doesn’t mean everyone who is interested in things like Breitbart are Nazis. Those are the people I want to target. They’re probably not good people, but they also haven’t fully immersed themselves in the worst parts of the ideology. I want to find ways to pull them back, and I don’t believe calling them Nazis will achieve that end.

5 hours ago, mormont said:

You might push some people closer by doing this, but you'll also push some people closer by reinforcing what they're hearing from the Nazis, which is 'we're not Nazis'. Hey, you agree with us, and you're not Nazis, so we're not Nazis, right? When they call us that, it's just a liberal lie! You can't trust them! You can take this stuff direct from Spencer speeches. And it's the same mechanism you describe: negative feedback about the in-group. But their in-group is actual Nazis. So unless you're unwilling to call anyone a Nazi, you're not going to win this one by 'messaging': you're only going to miss the wood for the trees.

I see it a little differently. I think you should absolutely call the Nazis out, but when you over use the term you might create a boy cries wolf situation. And if that happens, then the Nazis will actually be able to do what you described above.

[aceluby]

17 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Kid Rock Drops Out of Senate Race

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/kid-rock-howard-stern-show-senate-race/2017/10/24/id/821738/

 

/Kid Scissors is visibly relieved

 

Says it was the most creative thing he's ever done.

I would actually have to agree with him there, because his music is some of the least creative stuff ever produced.