U.S. Politics: Only Death Can Pay For Growth

[Rippounet]

44 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

There is no rational argument out there that could convince me that the actions of the moderate candidates in the immediate aftermath of Biden's South Carolina win were anything other than an orchestrated effort by moderates to coalesce behind a single candidate solely for the purpose of blocking Sanders from winning.

I wondered whether this was correct or not and found a WPost article on this:

Quote

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/03/what-happens-candidates-delegates-when-they-drop-out/

Josh Putnam is a political scientist who focuses on delegate rules. He both considered the question on his website, Frontloading HQ, and spoke with The Washington Post about what happens.

One distinction Putnam draws is that while we generally talk about who won how many delegates in the contests so far, for the most part no one actually has any delegates at this point. Those delegates will be assigned at party conventions later in the year. Instead, candidates have mostly won “delegate slots” — placeholders for delegates to be assigned later. (The “mostly” qualifiers there are a carve-out for some district delegates in New Hampshire who’ve already been selected.)

This is important because those slots will be filled with delegates for only those candidates who are still in the race. In New Hampshire, for example, if Buttigieg is no longer a candidate by the time of the state convention, the three delegates he won by virtue of his statewide vote total would be redistributed among the other candidates still in the race who’d crossed the 15 percent statewide threshold. Since the other two candidates earning statewide delegates in New Hampshire were Klobuchar and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the effect would be that Sanders gets all of those delegates.

Putnam’s interpretation of the rules is that by suspending their campaigns, as opposed to dropping out, Buttigieg and Klobuchar can protect their delegates from being reallocated. The Democratic National Committee, however, disagrees: They’re out of the race. In June, Iowa’s delegates will be resorted to those candidates who are still in — Sanders, if he is.

What happens at the convention

Once the convention rolls around, the party will hold a vote among the delegates in attendance to determine the party’s nominee. On the first ballot, pledged delegates are expected to vote for the candidates they are there to represent. If there’s no majority on the first ballot, another round of voting is held in which unpledged superdelegates (mostly party leaders and elected officials) have a say and in which delegate pledges are set aside.

Since Biden was performing pretty badly at the start of the campaign, the nomination remained undecided as long as other moderates also stayed in the race: any delegates they won could have later gone to Sanders.

Therefore, I would say that you are correct: by choosing a single candidate before Super Tuesday the moderates were making sure that Sanders could no longer win.

One could say it was done in the interest of quickly ending the nomination campaign and increase the chances of defeating Trump, of course. It is very difficult for us (regular joes) to know what was the main purpose. Nor is it even certain that all the moderates had the same.

However, based on other things we know...
Yeah, they really didn't want Sanders to even have a chance. Not that Sanders was necessarily going to win, but he had a chance and moderates could absolutely not allow that to happen.
So they chose Biden (not the voters).
A moderate would probably have won in the end mind you, but we don't know that it was going to be Biden.

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Another way to say all of this is that your argument makes sense when talking about Sanders. If this was a normal field with normal results, Biden would have cleared out the field much earlier, most candidates would have bowed out much much earlier, and it would have been Biden in a landslide earlier. The only reason that Sanders was able to stay competitive for as long as he did was because the field was hugely divided and Biden wasn't super popular - and that was his strategy, per reports - to enforce his base, get 20-30% everywhere, and hope for a contested convention. That could have worked, mind you, but that doesn't really say a whole lot about the power of the progressive wing. 

How do you manage to essentially restate my entire argument while telling me I'm wrong? I said from the very first that the way things played out were specific to this primary and current circumstances on the ground, including both Biden's massive Super Tuesday bounce and Sanders' initial popularity and subsequent collapse. 

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Asking honestly, but isn't it pretty well established that gerrymanders, while not being the primary cause of polarization, at least helps contribute to it?

No.  David Rohde made this contention 30 years in an otherwise really great work.  He's since not only backed off from that, but explicitly emphasized he was wrong.  Even conceptually, you're taking something that has existed since Elbridge Gerry was alive and applying it to the polarized shift in the electorate that's happened in the last 40 years.  That don't follow.  It exacerbates the partisan makeup of the House to one part or another, sure.  But that is a very marginal effect.

25 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

As to staying in the race to get bargaining power - that's really not how it's worked for anyone other than, well, Sanders. Most of the time you get far more bargaining power if you play ball and work with the party.

Yeah once a candidate realizes she is going to lose, it's actually much more useful from a bargaining position to get out as soon as possible.  Let's not take Sanders' obstinance, which is reminiscent of countless perpetual candidates throughout history, as strategically valid.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

How do you manage to essentially restate my entire argument while telling me I'm wrong. I said from the very first that the way things played out were specific to this primary and current circumstances on the ground, including both Biden's massive Super Tuesday bounce and Sanders' initial popularity and subsequent collapse. 

Yes, but you used this as a way to say that the lesson should be that progressive positions should be given more weight, not less. I don't understand that at all. You were claiming that it was the wrong lesson to take that progressives lose compared to going to the center, and I still fail to see how that's the wrong lesson here. 

So I'll ask again - you said:"I'm extremely concerned that the power brokers in the party will learn the wrong lessons from Biden's election, thinking that the answer to winning elections is tacking to the right, instead of the lesson that Biden's win was at least partially due to the specific circumstances on the ground, and the unique terrible nature of the Trump administration. "

What is the wrong lessons that are being learned here? 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

No.  David Rohde made this contention 30 years in an otherwise really great work.  He's since not only backed off from that, but explicitly emphasized he was wrong.  Even conceptually, you're taking something that has existed since Elbridge Gerry was alive and applying it to the polarized shift in the electorate that's happened in the last 40 years.  That don't follow.  It exacerbates the partisan makeup of the House to one part or another, sure.  But that is a very marginal effect.

Yeah once a candidate realizes she is going to lose, it's actually much more useful from a bargaining position to get out as soon as possible.  Let's not take Sanders' obstinance, which is reminiscent of countless perpetual candidates throughout history, as strategically valid.

This is literally what I am saying. Not that gerrymandering is the primary driver of polarization, but that it has an effect at the margins, and that in such an already-polarized environment, margins matter.

From that, I'm arguing that progressives should take advantage of those changes at the margins to carve out a greater share of power, much like Tea Party Republicans did.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

This is literally what I am saying. Not that gerrymandering is the primary driver of polarization, but that it has an effect at the margins, and that in such an already-polarized environment, margins matter.

By margins I mean ~10 seats.  That very rarely will change which party controls the House.  It doesn't right now and didn't after the 2016 elections.  It was important to the GOP sustaining their majority in the 90s, I guess, but major shifts are always going to override such a tiny effect. 

Could it have an impact on passing legislation?  Possibly, although good luck demonstrating that.  Even then, my main point was eliminating gerrymandering doesn't help leftists.  At all.  The more equitable you make districts, the more "moderate" they get.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yes, but you used this as a way to say that the lesson should be that progressive positions should be given more weight, not less. I don't understand that at all. You were claiming that it was the wrong lesson to take that progressives lose compared to going to the center, and I still fail to see how that's the wrong lesson here. 

So I'll ask again - you said:"I'm extremely concerned that the power brokers in the party will learn the wrong lessons from Biden's election, thinking that the answer to winning elections is tacking to the right, instead of the lesson that Biden's win was at least partially due to the specific circumstances on the ground, and the unique terrible nature of the Trump administration. "

What is the wrong lessons that are being learned here? 

The wrong lesson is thinking that Biden and/or moderate positions are more popular than they actually are. This election was almost entirely based on the perception of who can beat Trump, more than any other factor. That is not normally the number 1 policy consideration among primary voters, and Biden was very few people's first pick, until they came to the conclusion that Biden was more electable than Sanders or Warren.

The youth vote, which will grow into a larger share of the electorate, is firmly in the progressive camp, among all demographics. That is indisputable. Then considering that progressive policies like Fight For $15 is essentially uncontested by any candidate in the primary, and that Medicare For All policies have grown much more popular in recent years, despite not having a majority of support, suggests that moderates will need to focus on moderating leftist policies going forward, rather than trying to moderate the entire party by tacking to the right.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

By margins I mean ~10 seats.  That very rarely will change which party controls the House.  It doesn't right now and didn't after the 2016 elections.  It was important to the GOP sustaining their majority in the 90s, I guess, but major shifts are always going to override such a tiny effect. 

Could it have an impact on passing legislation?  Possibly, although good luck demonstrating that.  Even then, my main point was eliminating gerrymandering doesn't help leftists.  At all.  The more equitable you make districts, the more "moderate" they get.

I'm not talking about moderating districts, I'm talking about doing to Republicans what they did to Democrats, as much as possible.

[DMC]

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

I'm not talking about moderating districts, I'm talking about doing to Republicans what they did to Democrats, as much as possible.

Democrats gerrymander too.  Acting like "it's payback" is kinda juvenile.  And won't have the impact you're expecting.

[Kalbear]

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

The wrong lesson is thinking that Biden and/or moderate positions are more popular than they actually are.

What evidence do you have for this? You mentioned how Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropping out helped Biden, but you also said how that in a normal election this wouldn't have been an issue. 

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

This election was almost entirely based on the perception of who can beat Trump, more than any other factor. That is not normally the number 1 policy consideration among primary voters, and Biden was very few people's first pick, until they came to the conclusion that Biden was more electable than Sanders or Warren. 

Electabillity has always been a primary concern in voters' minds. 

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

The youth vote, which will grow into a larger share of the electorate

Citation very much needed. It was actually reduced as a share of the electorate in this primary. 

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

, is firmly in the progressive camp, among all demographics. That is indisputable.

That's true, but their actual voting pattern is pretty bad, and got actually worse with a more popular progressive candidate. And furthermore this has been the pattern for the last always. 

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

Then considering that progressive policies like Fight For $15 is essentially uncontested by any candidate in the primary, and that Medicare For All policies have grown much more popular in recent years, despite not having a majority of support,

universal healthcare has a majority of support. The specific M4A plan of Sanders does not. 

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

suggests that moderates will need to focus on moderating leftist policies going forward, rather than trying to moderate the entire party by tacking to the right.

So...exactly like what Biden has been doing? And what Clinton did in 2016? 

[Guest]

Just now, DMC said:

Democrats gerrymander too.  Acting like "it's payback" is kinda juvenile.  And won't have the impact you're expecting.

Then I'm not sure what you're implying. Progressives should fuck off and like it or lump it? Or that they should fight for any possible advantage?

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Then I'm not sure what you're implying. Progressives should fuck off and like it or lump it? Or that they should fight for any possible advantage?

I'm saying gerrymandering isn't the solution to anyone's problems, be it Democrats, "moderate" Democrats, or progressives.  I don't know how you interpret that as me telling progressives to fuck off.

[Guest]

Just now, Kalbear said:

What evidence do you have for this? You mentioned how Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropping out helped Biden, but you also said how that in a normal election this wouldn't have been an issue. 

Electabillity has always been a primary concern in voters' minds. 

Citation very much needed. It was actually reduced as a share of the electorate in this primary. 

That's true, but their actual voting pattern is pretty bad, and got actually worse with a more popular progressive candidate. And furthermore this has been the pattern for the last always. 

universal healthcare has a majority of support. The specific M4A plan of Sanders does not. 

So...exactly like what Biden has been doing? And what Clinton did in 2016? 

Jesus fucking Christ Kal, quit pissing on me and telling me it's raining. You know goddamn well that the number one concern among voters in the Democratic primary was perception of the ability to beat Trump. The vast majority of Democratic voters were not basing their choice on policy concerns, identification with a particular candidate, or any of the other usual reasons why primary voters pick a certain candidate.

If Klobuchar and Buttigieg stay in and don't endorse Biden, then Klobuchar wins Minnesota, Sanders comes in 2nd, and Biden may not even break the 15% threshold. And that's just in one state.

If Biden has a less-spectacular Super Tuesday, that blunts both the momentum he got from South Carolina and his ability to cut into Sanders' lead, meaning that he's not considered to be as inevitable against Trump, and prolonging the primary further. Then the pandemic hits, which scrambles the primary much more if there are still one or two other candidates considered viable.

Yes, it's arguing a counterfactual, but it's not like I'm just pulling this out of my ass either. 

[Kalbear]

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

Jesus fucking Christ Kal, quit pissing on me and telling me it's raining. You know goddamn well that the number one concern among voters in the Democratic primary was perception of the ability to beat Trump. The vast majority of Democratic voters were not basing their choice on policy concerns, identification with a particular candidate, or any of the other usual reasons why primary voters pick a certain candidate. 

The vast majority of voters in a primary also don't vote on policy choices. I wish they did. They were not going to vote for Obama until he proved that he was reasonably electable. This is the thing that you seem to be mistaking - electability is a HUGE decider in primaries. Not for most white people, but it has basically been the #1 factor in voting for the AA population since the 60s. 

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

If Klobuchar and Buttigieg stay in and don't endorse Biden, then Klobuchar wins Minnesota, Sanders comes in 2nd, and Biden may not even break the 15% threshold. And that's just in one state. 

Again, so? That doesn't say that progressive ideas are particularly more palatable to the general population. Furthermore, in a normal race Buttigieg and Klobuchar would have been out long before Minnesota. 

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

If Biden has a less-spectacular Super Tuesday, that blunts both the momentum he got from South Carolina and his ability to cut into Sanders' lead, meaning that he's not considered to be as inevitable against Trump, and prolonging the primary further. Then the pandemic hits, which scrambles the primary much more if there are still one or two other candidates considered viable. 

Yes, it's arguing a counterfactual, but it's not like I'm just pulling this out of my ass either. 

I'm not arguing any of this - I agree. If Buttigieg and Klobuchar stay in longer (along with Bloomberg, because hey why not) Biden doesn't get a major boost and Sanders is probably still in the lead. But this doesn't change how palatable progressive policies are. It doesn't change how electable people view Sanders as. It doesn't change the actual power progressives have. If anything, it indicates the opposite - that in order for a progressive to even get close to the candidacy they have to be running against a very hated woman, or they have to be running against a 7-person divided field where most of the division is non-progressive. Neither of those things say 'yes, give more credence to progressive policy'. It says that you probably can largely ignore it. 

[Gaston de Foix]

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

I'm saying gerrymandering isn't the solution to anyone's problems, be it Democrats, "moderate" Democrats, or progressives.  I don't know how you interpret that as me telling progressives to fuck off.

It may not be a solution to any particular political problems.  It is still an abhorrent and anti-democratic practice.  The SC's decision in Rucho has foreclosed any federal constitutional remedy.  Congress should legislate to prevent it (already included in H.R.1).  The Elections Clause expressly vests Congress with that power. 

That there is a long political history of gerrymandering doesn't justify it, and the modern gerrymanders are much more pernicious because of technological advancements. 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, DMC said:

I'm saying gerrymandering isn't the solution to anyone's problems, be it Democrats, "moderate" Democrats, or progressives.  I don't know how you interpret that as me telling progressives to fuck off.

Because I'm not arguing anything controversial. You even agreed that there is a small effect. I'm not arguing that gerrymandering is going to usher in the golden age of progressivism, just that progressives should vote strategically, get as many Democrats elected across the board as possible, and then exploit that opportunity to get as many progressives elected as possible, and to push as many districts further to the left as they can get away with.

This is literally what everyone keeps saying here that this is how Sanders supporters should act, by consolidating as much power within the party as possible, except when I come out and agree with that very strategy, and suggest a way that could help lead to that goal, and suddenly the goalposts get shifted, and agreeing with the strategy that keeps getting trotted out to Sanders supporters is somehow not a viable strategy anymore. That just suggests to me no one is particularly concerned with bargaining fairly with progressives, and instead are negotiating in bad faith.

I mean it's pretty telling when @Simon Steele says Biden is a terrible candidate, and gets jumped on, and then I come out and say "progressives should act like Biden is the best of all possible candidates", and then I also get told I'm wrong.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

strategic purposes.

Good boy. You're finally learning. 

I hate the Democratic party (not the DFL though). I view myself as to the left of communism. But being pragmatic is what wins the day, and that's all that matters, because nothing matters without the power to change things, and sometimes that means you pick the lesser of two evils and accept it. And that's okay.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Good boy. You're finally learning. 

I hate the Democratic party (not the DFL though). I view myself as to the left of communism. But being pragmatic is what wins the day, and that's all that matters, because nothing matters without the power to change things, and sometimes that means you pick the lesser of two evils and accept it. And that's okay.

I don't consider myself to be utilitarian, but I do recognize that some decisions do require them to at least be considered from a utilitarian perspective. I happen to believe that this is one of them, and that the utilitarian considerations in this instance far outweigh any other moral considerations. I also recognize that progressives can exploit the necessity of having to make a utilitarian decision by attempting to reform the party from the inside by, among other methods, trying to get as many progressives elected as Democrats as possible.

Where the consternation comes in is when the same people (not you) who have advocated adopting that very tactic suddenly decide that it isn't applicable anymore. Why? What changed? 

[Week]

19 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I mean it's pretty telling when @Simon Steele says Biden is a terrible candidate, and gets jumped on, and then I come out and say "progressives should act like Biden is the best of all possible candidates", and then I also get told I'm wrong.

He gets jumped on for the same bullshit that you are continuing here. Anyone who disagrees with a specific argument* about Biden is automagically a Biden-stan to be attacked -- whether they were a supporter of Warren, Bernie, etc. or even a cop in the UK. It's disrespectful to fellow boarders and completely obnoxious. I cannot count on my hands the number of times that Dante, Tywin, DMC etc. etc. repeat that Biden our preference only above Bloomberg, Gabbard, and any other unserious candidate.

*typically because it is breathless, baseless bullshit - which is why a contra response is elicited

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Week said:

He gets jumped on for the same bullshit that you are continuing here. Anyone who disagrees with a specific argument* about Biden is automagically a Biden-stan to be attacked -- whether they were a supporter of Warren, Bernie, etc. or even a cop in the UK. It's disrespectful to fellow boarders and completely obnoxious. I cannot count on my hands the number of times that Dante, Tywin, DMC etc. etc. repeat that Biden our preference only above Bloomberg, Gabbard, and any other unserious candidate.

*typically because it is breathless, baseless bullshit - which is why a contra response is elicited

When the fuck have I attacked anyone in this argument? I specifically said "hey, I agree with you all", and then use that agreement to push for progressive reform from inside the party and now I'm the one attacking people? Bullshit.