US politics - sometimes political jokes get elected

[Fez]

In other news,

Hopefully just a bit of post-impeachment bounce and it'll fade. But all in all, not a good morning for people hoping to see Democrats win in November.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Fez said:

In other news,

Hopefully just a bit of post-impeachment bounce and it'll fade. But all in all, not a good morning for people hoping to see Democrats win in November.

What... the... hell?

[Ormond]

This is all very sad, but it seems to be an example of general human nature to me.

Evidently people knew a while ago that there were problems with the app. And anyone who's worked for any organization which changes to a new computer system or program knows that there are going to be glitches with it, and not all of them can be anticipated even if you do some testing on it beforehand.

A lot of the negative fallout could have been lessened if whoever is in charge of the caucuses at the Iowa Democratic Party had just repeated to the media several times during the previous week that they were using a new app and that there could be glitches that would delay the results. Unfortunately I have seen many times in organizations I am part of a pattern of experts who know the details of something new warning higher ups that there could be problems, and the higher ups blithely ignoring it and telling people outside the organization there would be no problems, and then having egg on their faces when things did go wrong. 

Hopefully this will blow over because of voters' short attention spans, the probability that many other things will happen before November that will be more prominent in everyone's minds, and the fact that you can't attribute this problem to any of the candidates themselves. But it's still sad that the way this was handled makes the Democrats seem even more incompetent than they probably really are.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Darryk said:

So after this debacle, people still think it's weird that supporters of anti-establishment candidates like Bernie and Tulsi always suspect foul play on the part of the DNC?

Yeah, this is the most absurd blowback from the problems.  Expected, but still pathetic.  If the DNC was going to "rig" the results, this is, like, literally the worst way to do so conceptually.  If you're going to be corrupt, you don't give political media an entire night when they're expecting results to instead get entirely pissed off at you, scrutinize your organization and how you fucked up it is, may be corrupt, etc.  That's just the dumbest method ever.  It'd be like the criminal equivalent of planting a car bomb, and then getting into the passengers seat of that car when the bomb was about to be activated.

15 minutes ago, Ormond said:

A lot of the negative fallout could have been lessened if whoever is in charge of the caucuses at the Iowa Democratic Party had just repeated to the media several times during the previous week that they were using a new app and that there could be glitches that would delay the results. Unfortunately I have seen many times in organizations I am part of a pattern of experts who know the details of something new warning higher ups that there could be problems, and the higher ups blithely ignoring it and telling people outside the organization there would be no problems, and then having egg on their faces when things did go wrong. 

Just curious, how familiar are you with studying groupthink?  This graph reminds me a lot on the classic example of the examining how the Challenger explosion happened, and a large part of it was the staffers delegated to oversee it's safety felt any raising of alarms would be unwelcome.

[Kalbear]

 

[sologdin]

Quote

"While we weren't sure who would win in November, our party really thought we had this one in the bag," McAuliffe said. "But we're not a group that puts its tail between its legs and runs. There's still time to get the message out there: Vote Democrat for Democrat."

the sanders campaign should take notice of this principle before it gets too exercised.

[IheartIheartTesla]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

Just curious, how familiar are you with studying groupthink?  This graph reminds me a lot on the classic example of the examining how the Challenger explosion happened, and a large part of it was the staffers delegated to oversee it's safety felt any raising of alarms would be unwelcome.

The second half of Feynman's book "What do you care what people think?" talks about his investigation into the Challenger disaster in great detail, including how the engineers raised questions about the risks and how the managers ignored them. 

Regarding the Gallup poll, it could be impeachment related or economy related. Note that even Clinton's impeachment bounce dissipated in two weeks, so we should watch out for that.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

The second half of Feynman's book "What do you care what people think?" talks about his investigation into the Challenger disaster in great detail, including how the engineers raised questions about the risks and how the managers ignored them. 

Yeah that might be what I'm referring to, probably is.  It's been a long time, thanks.

[Darryk]

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah, this is the most absurd blowback from the problems.  Expected, but still pathetic.  If the DNC was going to "rig" the results, this is, like, literally the worst way to do so conceptually.  If you're going to be corrupt, you don't give political media an entire night when they're expecting results to instead get entirely pissed off at you, scrutinize your organization and how you fucked up it is, may be corrupt, etc.  That's just the dumbest method ever.  It'd be like the criminal equivalent of planting a car bomb, and then getting into the passengers seat of that car when the bomb was about to be activated.

Just curious, how familiar are you with studying groupthink?  This graph reminds me a lot on the classic example of the examining how the Challenger explosion happened, and a large part of it was the staffers delegated to oversee it's safety felt any raising of alarms would be unwelcome.

Well, no one said the DNC was smart. Contrary to the ultra-devious villains you see in James Bond films, in the real world, the corrupt are often bad at hiding their corruption, hence Bloomberg being able to participate in the next debate after donating 300k to the DNC.

For the record I don't think this debacle is a result of DNC corruption, but it's yet another example why being suspicious of the DNC and how they operate is hardly tin foil hat territory.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Darryk said:

 

For the record I don't think this debacle is a result of DNC corruption, but it's yet another example why being suspicious of the DNC and how they operate is hardly tin foil hat territory.

Yes , when another group does something wrong it is entirely fair to use them as an example of how the dnc is bad. 

[Week]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Yes , when another group does something wrong it is entirely fair to use them as an example of how the dnc is bad. 

Incompetence and competence (of the DNC and any group that we can shake a stick at) and a Sanders second-place finish (or below) are all CLEAR signs of corruption and rigging. Definitely not entering tinfoil hat territory at all.

[DMC]

15 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Well, no one said the DNC was smart.

That's a fair point.  Criminals are often very stupid.  Reminds me of a West Wing quote, don't remember it exactly, but something like, "well some of the dumbest criminals in the world are right here in America.  We're very proud of that."  Still, if this is what "corruption" looks like, one would think it'd be a lot less to worry about considering how blatant it is.  There's an analogy there to Trump and Ukraine, interestingly, in terms of incompetence.

[sologdin]

corruption is kinda metaphorical in political discussion and accordingly imprecise.  do we mean bribery, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, extortion, contraband offenses, other things that are plainly defined in a discernible criminal code somewhere?

[Darryk]

14 minutes ago, Week said:

Incompetence and competence (of the DNC and any group that we can shake a stick at) and a Sanders second-place finish (or below) are all CLEAR signs of corruption and rigging. Definitely not entering tinfoil hat territory at all.

We all know those aren't the factors that contributed to the DNC's current reputation.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Darryk said:

We all know those aren't the factors that contributed to the DNC's current reputation.

Remember - it is NOT OKAY to associate bad Sanders supporters behavior with Sanders, but it is TOTALLY REASONABLE to associate the Iowa party system which has no specific connection to the DNC with the DNC. 

[KingintheNorth4]

I can't shake the feeling. This whole thing feels shady as hell to me.

[DMC]

49 minutes ago, sologdin said:

corruption is kinda metaphorical in political discussion and accordingly imprecise.

It's a catch-all term, which means it's inherently gonna be amorphous/nebulous. 

49 minutes ago, Darryk said:

We all know those aren't the factors that contributed to the DNC's current reputation.

That's true.  The factors contributing to your perception of the DNC's "reputation" are entirely derived from from an intuitive urge to find conspiracy in institutional malfunctions that is nursed and reinforced by a joke of a candidate that's seen Christina Aguilera monsters since the last millennium.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, KingintheNorth4 said:

I can't shake the feeling. This whole thing feels shady as hell to me.

Just treat it as a free excuse to be done with Iowa going first.

[sologdin]

sanders supporters should recall comrade guevara's injunction in the guerrilla warfare: 

Quote

People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate. When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.  In these conditions popular discontent expresses itself in more active forms. An attitude of resistance finally crystallizes in an outbreak of fighting, provoked initially by the conduct of the authorities. Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.

emphasis added.

[Darryk]

46 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Remember - it is NOT OKAY to associate bad Sanders supporters behavior with Sanders, but it is TOTALLY REASONABLE to associate the Iowa party system which has no specific connection to the DNC with the DNC. 

Whether it's a faulty app or too much hay fever or whatever that's the real issue, of course the DNC is going to be in the firing line when something goes wrong at a Democratic primary event. Look on Twitter and you'll see the Democrats as a whole are taking a lot of heat for this. It's kind of inevitable.

Maybe it's unfair, but people are gonna do it because it's kind of hard to separate the DNC from the Democratic primary. Maybe it's hard to separate a candidate from the actions of their supporters as well, although it should be easier to do so when the candidate's rhetoric is so far removed from the actions of their supporters.