I'm also in New York voting for Jill Stein. Basically, what you said.

I'm glad you put this up, I had (what felt like) an insight into the "is it moral to vote for Obama" question this weekend.

I think the real question is, "is the Democratic party sufficiently valuable, as an institution, that it makes sense to engage with it and to try to work for improvement, or should I wish for the Democratic party to fail and be replaced by something else?" I think framing the question in terms of Obama is a distraction (and, I think it's obvious that it makes more sense to work to improve the Democratic party than to give up on it).

American politics often errs in the direction of trying to personalize institutional dynamics. Obama is an individual person and makes meaningful choices about how to act, but I think it's more accurate to think of the presidency as an institution than to think about Obama personally.

I should add that I arrived at this thought because of parsimon's comment in a recent thread about the dispute boiling down to Kantian vs consequentialist ethics.

I realized that (a) if I thought about institutions rather than the moral choices of individual actors that pushed me towards consequentialist thinking and (b) that I think that's a more accurate view of the situation.

I wish the Democratic Party would fail and be replaced by a sexy French exchange student.

is the Democratic party sufficiently valuable, as an institution, that it makes sense to engage with it and to try to work for improvement, or should I wish for the Democratic party to fail and be replaced by something else?

The trouble with hoping for the Democratic party to collapse and be replaced by something else is that people have been hoping that for a long time.

I reread Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail a while back and in 1972 HST was already concluding that the best thing for America would be for the Democrats to implode an disappear.

...my vote in NY isn't going to change anything: Obama is as safe here as he is anywhere.

It seems to me there is a non-trivial chance that promoting Stein in safe states will boost her vote at Obama's expense in swing states. Or rather, having enough people say they will vote for her might give her enough publicity to start attracting votes in swing states. If she's on the ballot in swing states. If not, never mind.

Does this extend beyond the mere act of voting? Meaning, would you be willing to volunteer time for Stein? (Since you don't even know what all she stands for, I'm guessing not?) Would you be willing to donate money to her campaign?

Which do you view as more valuable: a monetary donation to Stein (to help "mak[e] it apparent that there's some (however small) population of voters that disapproves of [Obama]from the left"), or a donation to Obama (which will be used to help ensure swing states tilt his way, which you stipulate is important)?

6: That gets awfully close to saying one shouldn't criticize Obama because it might endanger his reelection.

That is an issue: when I feel bad about voting for Nader in 2000 that's why -- that I was on a bandwagon that supported people in Florida voting for him.

The Green Party is a dead end of vanity candidates and charlatans, and if they ever get any power it will only be to serve as a spoiler group and cause harm. I affirmatively hate the green party and frankly think anyone who votes green is a moron(no offense). If you care about civil liberties issues, get out and work and organize on those issues -- thats about 100x as effective as casting a vote for a worthless consortium of fools that sucks energy from the left. Can't you vote on the Working Families line in NY anymore? Do that in primaries, and suck it up in the general.

I'm toying with the idea of switching tactical focus also: suggesting, gently and respectfully, that people voting for Stein in a safe state sign up for their county Democratic committee. It only changes if you make it change.

Denying votes seems a hopelessly blunt instrument, especially over policies that seem to have widespread popular approval.

I was just going to say something along the lines of 6--if your post goes viral, what percentage of NY voters could defect to Stein before you'd switch your planned personal vote back to Obama?

8 -- Criticize away. Suggesting that a vote for him is so morally reprehensible you can't bring yourself to do it is something else.

8: It was more about not carrying the safe/swing state distinction too far.

Right. LB going to the upper Manhattan democratic club (or whatever) to organize around the issues she cares about Would be so much better than voting green.

Anyone in a swing state, vote Obama. Please. But where the outcome is settled, I don't see any reason to at all.

and that's the thing most 'protest' voters leave out: yes, cast your protest vote, if you can. but, also realize that it's a luxury that swing-state voters can't afford - not unless they truly want a Romney win, that is. and, maybe, don't try to talk swing state lefties out of voting for Obama. if they're going to have to do the hard work of voting for the lesser of two whatevahs, don't make the job harder than it needs to be.

unless you really are a one-issue voter, and drones are your issue. and in that case: your life is going to suck forever and ever.

unless you really are a one-issue voter, and drones are your issue.

If you're a one-issue voter and drones are your issue and you really love drones, you're set.

I wonder what the holier-than-though right-wing arguments are like. Assumedly there are people who refuse to vote for Romney because he is a Mormon and they are dipshits of the Walmart Jesus stripe, but is there a roiling underworld of people angrily fighting about somebody's "I refuse to vote for Romney because he didn't try hard enough to reinstitute capital punishment in Massachusetts [or whatnot]" column?

Probably.

What halford said.*

*But only about this. Leave those bison aloooooone.

You know, choosing a green candidate in the privacy of the voting booth, and announcing (in connection with others on a bandwagon) that you intend to do so are also different things.

21: Cough Welcome to the Epoch of Twitter cough.

Stein annoys me in the same way Nader did with his "gonad politics" snipes. And yes, I know what she means. But there has to be a better way to talk about basic fucking human rights than as distractions from the "real issues."

5.2 -- The Dem party of 1972 is already gone, a very significant faction having gone Republican.

Dammit, I hate typing on my phone. I just lost a brilliant and incisive comment, but was pretty much what oudemia said in 20. (Though my criticism of the Green Party is slightly less vehement than Halford's.)

In red non-swing states, I think voting and stumping for Dems can be meaningful; gotta keep moving momentum to the left by some of the means necessary.

24: You don't get to see Mark Critz's TV commercials.

There is no alternative to the Democractic party. We got married to it when we were young and naive, and live in a country where divorce is illegal and adultery is punished by stoning. I don't even think there's much hope of keeping the democratic party from beating us when he comes home drunk at night. But if we are very clever, we might be able to keep him from molesting the children.

It's not clear to me what is so especially objectionable about drones in the broader context of US military/foreign policy.

26: Yeah, I'd be voting Democratic in a red state.

On the 'show up at meetings of your local Democratic club' thing -- first, it's not an alternative to voting third party. You could do either or both. Second, I've made some very minimal efforts in the past to get involved in Democratic politics locally, and man does that not seems to be a practical venue for expressing disapproval of current Democratic foreign policy.

I get that the Green Party is a pointless dead end -- I wouldn't give them money, and I'd flip in a moment if anyone indicated a preferable left third-party to vote for (that didn't mean voting for cross-endorsed Democratic candidates).

To be clear in 23, it's all really objectionable, and has been for a long time, right. Is the outrage that Democrats aren't supposed to do this stuff?

I mean 29, not 23.

29: I agree with this: I don't like 'drones' as shorthand for 'killing civilians from the air in a country with which we are nominally at peace' because there's no particular moral weight to the technical means we use to do it.

Why is this a conversation we only have once every 4 years about the presidential race? An acquaintance of mine polled 21% in a city council election here against the most entrenched and establishment Democrat incumbent you could imagine. And that was with basically no money and mediocre organizing skills. City Council or state legislature elections in many areas are often determined by a handful of votes. Sometimes that even extends to statewide elections. A couple of afternoons door-knocking or delivering signs could actually mean the difference between a more progressive candidate getting some real power that would affect your daily life and the alternative.

If there were more progressive Democrats or 3rd-party people in positions of power, there'd be a lot more room to affect how the national party works.

Of course, the corporations control everything anyway, so you're still basically pissing into the wind, but if you really feel like electoral politics means something, at least do it right.

I can't help but think that there is an element of narcissistic posing in choosing not to vote against the guy who will get tens of thousands killed and cause enormous suffering by rolling back as much of the ACA as possible just because you might get drone cooties.

I'm sure more knowledgeable people have better answers, but my impression is that using drones is a recent, identifiable aspect of US military policy that encapsulates a bunch of the horrible stuff. I couldn't tell you why it is worse than an American soldier showing up at your door to shoot you, or being regular bombed by Americans, but since it is new, it stands out.

(Hmmm. Maybe because it is so damn unfair? Because we have technology far beyond what villagers in Pakistan can develop, and we aren't in any danger of reprisal when we use them.)

34: In my case, it's because I find the ideological issues absolutely opaque at the local level. Primaries for local races are, as far as I can tell, pretty much always about personal loyalties/alliances rather than ideological differences -- I have never been able to figure out, in a race smaller than city-wide, who the more leftist candidate was.

I was just going to say something like 26, that I want to vote for Obama even though he'll never take the state. Maybe that's futile, but I don't know what else there is. Ooh, maybe I should get a viewing party organized for the Democrats on our block so we can all drink and watch the numbers come in? That's about as far as my talents for organizing go.

Tonight I get to hear all the candidates for school board who care enough to come to the PTO meeting. I'm excited about that, because I'm pretty sure the "elect us for change!" crew are going to be creepy racists but it's possible they're creepy liberals or something. It's hard to tell what's going on sometimes. Other than that, I'm voting for the one county-level candidate who sent something addressed to Lee and me together if I can remember his name, since she threw the flier out with the rest of the junk mail.

I'd be voting Democratic in a red state.

That's very interesting. Serious question: is your voting heuristic "Always vote for the candidate that is just to the left of the left-most candidate that has a realistic shot at winning the state"? Because otherwise, I'm not sure I understand why you would vote Democratic in a red state but vote Green in a blue state?

It's not clear to me what is so especially objectionable about drones

PLEASE, TRY WORKING WITH ONE OF THE SARCASTIC LITTLE BASTARDS FOR THREE MONTHS.

35: I agree with you -- that's why I'm making it clear that I'm hoping fervently for Obama to win, which should get me covered with the drone cooties as much as voting for him would.

18: is there a roiling underworld of people angrily fighting about somebody's "I refuse to vote for Romney because he didn't try hard enough to reinstitute capital punishment in Massachusetts [or whatnot]" column?

Sure: libertarians who intend to vote for Gary Johnson.

There's also somebody named Virgil Goode, but he didn't get on the ballot here.

Maybe because it is so damn unfair? Because we have technology far beyond what villagers in Pakistan can develop, and we aren't in any danger of reprisal when we use them.

Well, there have been reprisal raids on US, Yemeni and Pakistani air bases that house drones:

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/09/taliban_launch_compl_1.php

http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2012/10/yemeni_troops_foil_attack_on_b.php

And a lot of attacks on other targets have been described as revenge for drone attacks.

39: Um, that might be it? I'd have to think about it to figure out what rule I'm using and why.

I think what I'm thinking is that there are two kinds of third party voters. The sincere 'pox on both your houses' believer, who wouldn't spit on a Democrat if they were on fire, and my kind, who, given that the only available choices who can actually win are a Democrat or a Republican, strongly prefers the Democrat. Where the Democrat is going to win, I don't mind being confused with the sincere Green voters. Where the Democrat is going to lose, though, I want to make it explicit that I'm on their side.

I also strongly agree with 35, but it's less likely to be persuasive to LB.

The problem with the logic in 45 is that you're helpin to bud the Green Party, which is a mistake. That's a much bigger result of your vote for Jill Stein than signaling any symbolic disapproval on civil liberties issues (particularly since its not as if the Green Party is a single-issue, or even predominantly, civil liberties party).

I see no reason to think Romney would be a worse president than GWB was. Or at least not substantially worse.

I think you might want to look at your gauges, wrt practicality.

Lot of drone activity in Yemen. With active involvement of, and support from, the government of Yemen. Including, apparently, the killing of an American teenager who does not seem to have been a member of the enemy force. I don't know how complicit the government of Pakistan is -- but I doubt it actively opposes the thing.

So, what you really have is US intervention on the side of a government in what is, more or less, an attempted rebellion. (Not really a civil war, although in Yemen the local AQ group did occupy some territory for a while.)

I think everyone should just vote Democrat and leave it at that for the time being.

I think everyone should just vote Democrat and leave it at that for the time being.

Especially those people who might be leaning Republican.

"is the Democratic party sufficiently valuable, as an institution, that it makes sense to engage with it and to try to work for improvement, or should I wish for the Democratic party to fail and be replaced by something else?"

The problem is not with the Democratic Party, but rather with our two-party system. Let's imagine that we wake up tomorrow and the Democratic Party has mysteriously vanished, and everyone who would otherwise have voted Democratic gets together to form a single new party to take its place. Would the coalition of interests that form that new party decide to take policy positions that are significantly different than those of the current Democratic Party platform? I don't think so, and even if they did, would they get enough votes to win a majority in either house of Congress, or to win the presidency?

I must say that though I deplore nearly everything about the Tea Party, I have to give them props for the way they've managed to commandeer the agenda of one of the two major parties. I'd often wondered whether something similar would be possible on the left, but if it were to be attempted I have no doubt that such a movement would be viewed by the center as a dangerous collection of radicals and/or nutjobs, even more than the degree to which the Tea Party is viewed as such.

If the Pirate Party were more popular in this country, I'd support them instead of the Green Party, but I suspect Halford doesn't think that would be an improvement.

What we need, see, is a goddamned parliamentary system.

3: parsimon's comment in a recent thread about the dispute boiling down to Kantian vs consequentialist ethics.

Just for the record, that's not remotely an original thought on my part. This Julian Sanchez post -- from two years ago -- was instructive to me a couple of weeks ago (I think someone at LGM linked to it).

And while I'm at it, why the hell do third parties in the U.S. even bother to field presidential candidates when they can't even manage to elect a single member to the House of Representatives? I mean, we've got 435 districts to choose from; can't you find even one where you could manage to get some poor schlub elected? No?

52: The problem is not with the Democratic Party, but rather with our two-party system.

52: What we need, see, is a goddamned parliamentary system.

Yes and yes, absoultely. But these would essentially require tearing up the constitution and starting anew. I wonder what it take for that to even occupy the fringe of possibilities in mainstream discourse.

47: Leaving tactics and rhetoric to one side for the moment, what's so bad about the Green Party? I don't mean to minimize the importance of tactics and rhetoric, but for a party that's small enough that it's really not affecting anything practically, I don't care so much -- I'm using them for ideological signaling. And if by 'helping to build' them, they got to a point where they were likely to have practical impact, couldn't we focus on their tactics then?

I mean, there are all sorts of horrifically objectionable things about the Democratic party as well, and I don't mind building them up as the lesser of two evils.

56: Because the point is either ego or publicity.

Assumedly there are people who refuse to vote for Romney because he is a Mormon and they are dipshits of the Walmart Jesus stripe,

Substantially many.

I wouldn't worry that you know nothing of Jill Stein. In 1992 I was one of 73,000 nationally who voted for Lenore Fulani, whose sole merit was that she wasn't Clinton, Bush or Perot.

A low probability consequence of voting for the Green candidate is that the Greens could qualify for matching funds in the next election, which requires 5% of the nationwide vote. Aside from matching funds, the consequence of Green votes is to strengthen the Green party for future elections.

In past cycles, some people seemed to think this was a reason to vote Geen. It's not. If the Greens have more power and money in 2016, they will still will not win, but they will drain a larger number of Democratic votes, making a Republican victory more likely. So a vote for the Greens is going to increase vote against the Democrats, and in favor of Republicans, which could matter a bit some day.

Also, while it's true that a vote in a safe state is useless, the arguments for contributing time and/or money to Obama, whichever you have to spare, are equally valid wherever you live.

59: Well they're deluded with regard to the first and failing miserably with regard to the second.

On the voting in a red state question:
In Texas, I'm much more interested in signaling "There are rising numbers of Democrats threatening your monopoly!" than I am in signaling "I'm a loony dingbat that is considered the liberal equivalent of speaking in tongues!"

62: The Greens ran a truther for president in 2008. That kind of rules them out for me.

59 to 58. And because even on the ultra charitable assumption that they could ever get a little power, their main role would be to serve as spoilers, which in the system we have would inevitably benefit Republicans. There's basically no justification for voting Green as opposed to just supporting the left wing of the Democratic party. Eg Barbara Lee probably agrees with you on just about everything.

52: Would the coalition of interests that form that new party decide to take policy positions that are significantly different than those of the current Democratic Party platform? I don't think so

I agree -- and it is worth recalling that major parties are, of necessity, biggish-tent coalitions. Those who consider voting third party, though, aren't necessarily declaring that they need a party that reflects their own preferences in every detail; they're attempting to move the major party in one direction or another.

It's been pointed out numerous times that considering your once-every-four-years vote the only way to attempt to move the major party is nuts: get down into local organizing, platform building, support of downticket candidates, and so on.

I think if you wanted to start a 3rd party, you'd start with state governors and the U.S. Senate. In the House party is so important that a member from a 3rd party would either have to caucus with one of the major parties (basically removing the 3rd party status) or be so uneffective at representation that nobody would vote for a 3rd party again.

The problem is not with the Democratic Party, but rather with our two-party system.

I would say the problem is that any party governing at a national level is going to reflect the interests of those sufficiently powerful to effect influence at that level.

63: Not that it has done him any good, but Ross Perot effectively got his name known to everybody in the U.S. Same and it didn't hurt Pat Paulsen's career.

62: A low probability consequence of voting for the Green candidate is that the Greens could qualify for matching funds in the next election, which requires 5% of the nationwide vote.

That's why I voted for Nader back in 2000 (in a safe state).

62: The Greens are a great example of what most U.S. third parties get wrong and what the Tea Party got right. The Tea Party are inside the Republican tent pissing out, and the Greens are outside the Democratic tent pissing in. So long as the U.S. has a two-party system and so long as the Greens insist on trying to be a viable third party, they are doomed to being either irrelevant or spoilers. Whereas if they were active within the Democratic Party, they might have a non-trivial chance of occasionally pulling the platform to the left.

I must say that though I deplore nearly everything about the Tea Party, I have to give them props for the way they've managed to commandeer the agenda of one of the two major parties.
Did they? It was more of a rebranding/co-opting effort. Also, bear in mind they had a great deal of institutional support, including their own news network, that is not matched on the left.

The general problem with strengthening the Greens is that if that they appeal to the leftmost Democratic voters. If the leftmost leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party will be farther to the right. But it will still be the leftest party capable fo winning an election.

72 and 74 are also correct.

Even if a magical 3rd party got elected, I see that person getting introduced to the military industrial complex and continuing drone strikes and everything else. Basically, virtually nobody in the US cares whatsoever, and that is why no one will ever tackle it.

(Until there were some sort of grassroots level movement suggesting otherwise.)

I would say the problem is that any party governing at a national level is going to reflect the interests of those sufficiently powerful to effect influence at that level.
This is even more of a problem at the state level, where you have less public oversight, more cheaply bought politicians, and a population too large for most individuals to significantly influence.

How has the Tea Party influenced the Republicans? What positions have changed?

My vision of the point of building up the Green Party is getting them to the point where the Democrats feel the need to crush them by moving left. All I want them to be is a visible reservoir of votes that the Democrats could get by not sucking so hard.

Haven't they voted much more hardline than the traditional Republicans that they unseated?

How has the Tea Party influenced the Republicans? What positions have changed?

Almost every position held by Mitt Romney today has shifted right from positions Mitt Romney held four years ago, largely in response to Tea Party pressure.

My vision of the point of building up the Green Party is getting them to the point where the Democrats feel the need to crush them by moving left.

This seems unlikely to happen until they've actually cost the party elections. (Plural. They already cost in 2000.) That's a pretty steep price to pay.

78: The "we won't cooperate with Democrats even when they introduce legislation that we wrote" position is fairly new.

Nothing that will ever make the American political landscape better seems likely to happen.

And note that "moving to the left" even for the median green party voter almost certainly isn't moving to the left on civil liberties type stuff.

Spell that out using more words? I'm not disagreeing, I just don't follow the specifics of what you're saying.

LB's approach strikes me as having one's cake and eating it, too. I won't be voting against Obama and then complaining if he loses.

No single vote ever decided an election with this many voters. Not even in Florida in 2000 - and it wasn't even close to happening. If it's okay to vote against Obama in safe states, then it's okay to do so in swing states.

In majoritarian situations, strategy has to be based around forming a coalition with a majority. Nutty conservatism has become ascendant in the Republican Party and the country because nutty conservatives understood correctly that the party was their best vehicle to gain a majority.

Nothing that will ever make the American political landscape better seems likely to happen.

Hey, whoa now. The stuff about The Gays isn't trivial. Why, we might even have a gay senator one day.

Also, the Tea Party is bringing the crazy candidates who oppose contraception, which I continue to think is a huge unforced error that will give Obama the election.

Green Party platform 2012. I actually haven't looked at it. Lemme dig in.

My vision of the point of building up the Green Party is getting them to the point where the Democrats feel the need to crush them by moving left.

It'd have to get awfully big before that happened. In the current political climate (which I realize you'd like to change), a candidate faced with defections by Greens would probably be smarter to move further right, where there are more votes.

Also, California is a strange case and all that, but it does show that consistently insulting the largest demographic group in the public will piss them off in ways that last for decades. More than ten years later, you can have a nearly super-majority Democratic state that elects a Democratic governor that promotes tax increases (to the best of his constrained ability) and signs bills to expand abortion access. Pissing off women and minorities will backfire, in the short-term even.

Also, the Tea Party is bringing the crazy candidates who oppose contraception, which I continue to think is a huge unforced error that will give Obama the election.

On the contrary, the Tea Party is bringing the crazy on contraception because they believe the crazy. They want it enacted into policy.

Similarly, in a primary election, you might vote for someone with a position on climate change that would be a political loser in a general election. I wouldn't call that an unforced error. I'd call it taking a shot at building a majority.

a candidate faced with defections by Greens would probably be smarter to move further right, where there are more votes.

Is that really true, though? There are the undecided/swing voters, who are largely better described as idiots than as ideological centrists: you don't pick them up by moving right, you pick them up by being more appealing on some irrational level. And then there are real Republican voters, and I'm not sure how many of those are available as a Democratic pickup at all.

No single vote ever decided an election with this many voters. Not even in Florida in 2000 - and it wasn't even close to happening. If it's okay to vote against Obama in safe states, then it's okay to do so in swing states.

But isn't this whole discussion predicated upon the idea that a non-trivial number of people will behave similarly? If we're really talking about just one single vote, then this whole discussion is pointless. I mean, it's not like the Green Party or whatever other third party you'd like to donate your vote to isn't going to say "We increased our vote total in the seventh district from 35 to 36! Feel the momentum!!!" Nor will the Democrats say, "Oh noes! We lost LB's vote! We'd better cut out this business about the drone strikes right away!"

Further to 89: Eh, I'm not finding anything quite relevant to drone strikes. Civil liberties in general is sprinkled throughout, everywhere. Pretty much everything I see there constitutes moving to the left on civil liberties type stuff, pace Halford.

But these would essentially require tearing up the constitution and starting anew.

I wonder if that's not unduly pessimistic. Maybe just a handful of carefully targetted amendments.

As I understand it, the framers conceived of the presidency as a highly constrained elective monarchy because i. it was an acceptable compromise (thank you Mr Hamilton) and ii. they didn't have any obvious republican alternatives to get ideas from. The powers available to President Washington were (at the federal level) not all that different from those available to George III. Legislative power was firmly lodged with Congress and still is.

Many of King George's powers have been eroded not by revolution but by carefully managed desuetude. For example, Elizabeth Windsor can legally veto any law she wants, but it would cause a major scandal, because no monarch has done such a thing since 1708.

There's nothing I can see in your constitution that prevents cabinet members being members of Congress and answerable to it. It would be an innovation, but it only needs the will power and support to set a precedent.

SCOTUS works not much differently to Supreme Courts in Westminster systems. The problem, again, is not constitutional, but the deep politicisation of your judiciary, and I have no idea how you get around that.

But in principle, I reckon you could move to a parliamentary system inside 50 years, if there was support for it. So go get the support and stop whining.

I've always pictured Halford as trotting.

On the contrary, the Tea Party is bringing the crazy on contraception because they believe the crazy. They want it enacted into policy.

Sure. But since the Republicans are the umbrella for the Tea Party, those sincere beliefs are going to cost the Republicans some women's votes for the rest of those women's lives. (As California's Prop 187 shows.) It isn't a small number, either. Obama leads Romney among women by something like 27%.

Is that really true, though?

My sense if that many Democratic politicians (including Obama) are happy to be attacked from the left because it allows them to indulge in hippie-punching which is always a hit (or rather it allows them to demonstrate their centrist credentials, "how can you call me a socialist when I'm currently fighting with [lefty X]."

On one hand this is a reason to support attacks on politicians from the left -- it gets publicity and isn't necessarily a bad thing for the politician in question. On the other hand it makes it unlikely that a Democratic politician would publicly court Green party voters.

85 --The Green Party voters represent a mishmash of people who (profess to, but don't really because they're idiots) care about a range of "left" issues; they're not a single issue party. Even on the extremely generous assumption that they could create a positively left constituency which would force the Democrats to move to the left to win their votes (I think this is extremely, dead wrong, by the way, for reasons others have explained and for other reasons) there is absolutely no guarantee, or even likelihood, that the relevant "signal" the Democrats would pick up would have anything at all to do with war or civil liberties. For example, a Democratic party platform of getting rid of genetically modified foods and legalizing marijuana would probably peel off at least 50% of Green Party voters. Or, if that's too stereotypical, pick another Dem policy position.

That assumes that leftier positions are uncorrelated. IME, the same people who care about any given left issue are largely the same people who care about the rest of them.

A Carefully Managed Desuetude wasn't the rollicking thriller its cover blurbs promised.

Well, but people vote on a range of issues, and the question is what it would take to bring them back into the fold. Assuming that moving towards the Green Party means signalling your views about civil liberties is not absolutely the worst reason to vote for the Green Party, but it's still a really terrible reason.

For example, a Democratic party platform of getting rid of genetically modified foods and legalizingdogs that crap marijuana would probably peel off at least 50% of Green Party voters.

96: I think it could be done with amendments, too, but that the political will required to get those amendments proposed and passed would not be much different than the political will required to have a constitutional convention.

96: So go get the support and stop whining.

This made me laugh.

Amending the constitution is damn difficult. I'm not sure you could pass an amendment supporting the troops, these days.

On the parliamentary form: If one party controls both Houses and the Presidency, and its Senators agree to abolish the filibuster on the first day of the session, it would be a parliamentary majority that could pass anythning all of its members agreed to. This could happen within three months. It could have happened in 2009 if Harry Reid had been so inclined, and he may be feeling feistier this time around.

103: For anyone who I have seduced away from the Democrats with this post, or anyone thinking along the same lines on their own, a Democrat making some statements about GMO food wouldn't have much effect. Believing that the core of the currently existing Green Party are silly people who only care about smoking dope doesn't mean that anyone else who votes Green will catch the silly from them.

I don't really have any idea what Halford is talking about in 100, which probably means I should be off.

109: But isn't the point of voting Green to express support for, and encourage further support for, Green ideas?

I'm just responding to LB's idea that somehow the Green Party will form a mass of left votes that will force the bulk of the Democratic party to the left, and that's why she should vote for them. In short: (a) No, that will not happen (this is the more important argument) and (b) even if it does, there's no guarantee, or even particular likelihood, that "moving to the left" will mean "moving to the left" on the issues that LB cares about. Voting Green is a very noisy signal.

The way to get politicians to care about civil liberties issues (if that's what you care about) in a non-parliamentary system is to organize around civil liberties issues. Full stop. And for reasons others have explained, voting for the Green Party is not only a waste of time but affirmatively counterproductive. Especially when there are actually productive things you can do -- organize in local races, work with advocacy groups, support left-wing Democrats who agree with you, etc.

Are the Greens really that bad, or is Halford just doing the blog version of hippie punching?

The European experience with Greens is generally, though not without exception, that once they find themselves on decision making bodies, they tend to grow up quite fast.

113: The latter.

We have one Green MP, who I'm slightly in love with on the basis of those of her speeches that get reported, and about 130 people in local government who are the same mix of worthy and incompetent as any other local representative, but broadly a force for good.

The Greens don't have to be "that bad" to mean that voting for them is a spectacularly stupid, and counter-productive idea. Which it is. That's only hippie punching if you're more concerned about the feelings of Green Party members than obtaining results that putative hippies claim to want.

Or, I guess, I should say it's "spectacularly stupid" only on a mass level. Your individual vote really doesn't matter, so why not throw it away. But the same logic would support voting for the NSAdid911 guy in New Jersey.

I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, in principle I agree with you on the acceptability of voting for third party candidates in deep, deep, Blue states. On the other hand I'm well to the right of Jill Stein on foreign policy, the use of US military power, and I also strongly disagree with her position that Obamacare was a negative. So voting for her would not just indicate my wish for Obama to move to the left on certain matters, but also support for stuff that in reality I don't support.

I also think that you greatly overestimate the signal power of increasing Stein's vote. From the point of view of a Dem candidate a vote lost on the left to Stein is half as important as a vote lost on the right to Romney. Furthermore, her supporters are made up of a mix of people like yourself who strongly support Obama over Romney and who would vote for him in a swing state, but also those who wouldn't vote for Obama or any other Democratic candidate under any circumstances so I think the possibility of moving Dems to the left through a Stein vote is remote.

The Greens don't have to be "that bad" to mean that voting for them is a spectacularly stupid, and counter-productive idea.

Yes. But that wasn't my question.

114: into what?

To those who say you must always and forever hold your nose and vote Democratic: would this be true no matter how evil the two major parties became? Or is there some level of evil that you're unwilling to affirmatively vote for, even stipulating that one party is always going to be marked less evil than the other? And if there is somebreaking point at which you'd say "to hell with it", are you arguing that the only respectable answer is to give up on politics entirely (rather than trying to help build a respectable third party alternative, since any respectable alternative is just going to make victory by the greater-evil party more likely)?

Or, do reject all that and just not think we're at anything like the point today where the D party could be considered unsupportably evil? Because, that certainly seems debatable, but it's not the debate that I ever hear in discussions like this.

There's nothing I can see in your constitution that prevents cabinet members being members of Congress and answerable to it. It would be an innovation, but it only needs the will power and support to set a precedent.

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

The last round of this discussion I participated in, I said that I pretty much don't have a breaking point: in any election where I can identify the lesser of two evils, and I don't have anything strategically preferable to do with my vote, I'll vote lesser of two evils. There might be strategic reasons not to, but there's no point at which I wouldn't vote for the less evil party purely because they were too evil for me.

I'm probably just going to leave the president line blank, but since I'm voting Democratic pretty much down the line for the other candidates, it's even more meaningless as a gesture than not voting usually is.

pwned by a couple people.

There's nothing I can see in your constitution that prevents cabinet members being members of Congress and answerable to it. It would be an innovation, but it only needs the will power and support to set a precedent.

How would will power and support deal with a president saying 'fuck you' and the Supreme Court laughing the parliamentary majority's objections out of court?

122: I think in a two party system I would vote for any evil party if the other party was measurably more evil. Maybe there would be a point where I couldn't vote for either - maybe - but it'd have to get pretty damn extreme.

I don't think voting is an act of self-expression, rather it's leveraging your power to influence outcomes. You don't have to love the Democratic party to think it's the best choice. You can even actively hate it.

One idea going around (at LGM, quoting hilzoy, I think, though there's been so much back and forth I'm not certain) was that the point at which voting for the lesser evil is unacceptable is the same as the point in which you actively participate in armed rebellion. I liked that formulation.

Having approvingly posted both Rebecca Solnit's criticism of moral positioning by voting and Rich Puchalsky's defense of making a statement by not voting, I have managed to earn the dislike of most of my FB feed.

My view: your vote really mostly doesn't matter, so do what you want. Acknowledge that
a) Obama is bad enough to reasonably not want to vote for him,
b) there is no movement or party prepared to make things better by you not voting for him, and
c) better to organize for change under a D presidency than not.

The question posed in 122.1 (which I've seen raised constantly in these conversations) is based on a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of how US political parties work. They're not particularly ideological (although they're much more ideological now than they have been in at least 150 years), and they are subject to capture from interest groups pushing agendas from below. There are also strong incentives to have two (and only two) big national parties which contain an ideological range within them. That's going to be how it works unless and until we have a parliamentary system.

The solution to the party "becoming evil" is to capture it, through building candidates up through the system. That's what has happened in places that can support very liberal candidates -- you have very liberal Democrats, not very liberal members of an alternate party. Those very liberal Democrats serve as a force (not a very strong one, but that's because there's not a very strong far-left-liberal constituency in the US) on the party as a whole. It's possible that you could have an issue that would cleave the Democratic party in two, but that would require a rejiggering of the entire system and the odds are that we'd then reemerge with two large national parties, just with different ideological coalitions inside of each party.

In a Presidential election, as long as you have two major parties you're probably going to have one that's less evil than the other. Vote for that guy, and then get to work pushing the party (and not just the party, but the country as a whole) in the direction you want.

probably peel off at least 50% of Green Party voters

Mmm, I'm not sure you could peel off many of those voters based on any given policy position. Based on the people I know, they are basically just crunchier versions of 90% of the people who vote for the Libertarian Party. That is, it isn't so much about honest-to-god policy differences as it is being able to say that they're unsullied by the two major parties and above all that and dammit at least they aren't sheeple voting for the lesser of two evils that's STILL EVIL so take that, sheeple-suckers.

Nothing that will ever make the American political landscape better seems likely to happen.

Occupy Wallstreet was unexpected. This is the first time in my lifetime that inequality has ever been a talking point.

131 might well be right.

130 gets it exactly right.

Nothing that will ever make the American political landscape better seems likely to happen.

Scalia could die while a Democrat is in the White House.

And if there is somebreaking point at which you'd say "to hell with it", are you arguing that the only respectable answer is to give up on politics entirely (rather than trying to help build a respectable third party alternative, since any respectable alternative is just going to make victory by the greater-evil party more likely)?

Give up on electoral politics altogether since your scenario assumes that the overwhelming majority of the US electorate supports those horrible positions.

Apo is correct on all counts.

131: Really, Greens are that bad? I didn't know.

Anyway, I'm not going to vote third party this election. I find it far too important to keep a happens-to-be-black, gay rights supporting President in office. I want a party in office that has a remote chance of passing legislation that's not completely gag-inducing.

Parsimon, it isn't that Greens are bad. Their hearts are basically in the right place. They're just hopelessly addicted to indignation and moral high grounds and opposing just one party doesn't keep the buzz going until the pipe comes back around the circle.

134 gets it exactly right.

139: That's not really something particular to Greens, though, that's more about the kind of person who's a member of a tiny political movement generally. The core of any non-mass political organization is going to be people who are more attached to being right than to being effective.

141: Agreed.

141 should include scare quotes around the word "right." Part of actually being right about politics is adopting methods that are effective.

For that reason, I think the Kantian/consequentialist dichotomy is (largely) an illusion. The categorical imperative doesn't have to mean that we all vote for the person we perceive as the best. It can be understood to mean that we all work together to elect the person most palatable to the majority.

And yet I was a registered member of the Green Party until just last year. I don't feel myself addicted to moral indignation. I voted Green once, but wanted my registration to be reflected in the national statistics, I suppose. I vote effective the vast majority of the time.

Oh well.

The thing I don't understand about the "it's immoral to vote for Obama" argument is that it's never attached to an analysis of the popularity of the position. If Dave Sim announced he couldn't vote for either candidate because neither of them would challenge the dominance of Marxism-Feminism, this is not going to do much combat the dominance of Marxism-Feminism in the US. If 1% hold a position, and 99% hold the opposite, then pretty much there's nothing the 1% can do at the ballot box to influence the outcome.

On the other hand, the American left has some sort of structural problem where everyone hates anybody even slightly to their left. When George H. W. Bush lost in '92, and the story was that his base stayed home because he broke his "Read my lips, no new taxes," pledge, the lesson that Republican opinion-makers pushed on the Republican politicians is "don't piss off the base." After Florida 2000, the only lesson anyone on the center-left is interested in pushing is "Don't vote for Nader. The Democrats must be able to take you for granted in every election until the end of time."

On the other hand, the American left has some sort of structural problem where everyone hates anybody even slightly to their left.

Yep. I don't know what to do about this, but it makes it really really hard for our extremists to exert pressure in the way their extremists do.

The solution to the party "becoming evil" is to capture it, through building candidates up through the system. That's what has happened in places that can support very liberal candidates -- you have very liberal Democrats, not very liberal members of an alternate party.

Worth mentioning, as an example of this being successfully carried out, is the movement of the Democratic party from being (gnerally) pro-segregation in the 40s to being (generally) pro-civil rights in the late 60s.

Brad DeLong frequently evokes the moment, under LBJ, when the Democratic party stopped courting segregationist votes (and the Republican party continued going after them) as a reason, to this day, to support the Democrats, and I think it's applicable to this conversation as well.

The pro-segregation Democratic party was taking a more evil position than the pro drone-warfare Democratic party is now, and it was able to change (at significant electoral cost) because in the 40s and 50s the Democratic party was still friendlier to civil rights activists than the Republican party was.

I've not been able to understand the hippie-punching impulse, no.

Their extremists are their party, and represent the views of around 25% of Americans, and have spent 50 years relentlessly capturing local Republican offices, while helping Republicans win at the national level. If the Democratic party left can do that, it will get more respect. And, to some extent, it already has -- the Democratic party as a party is way to the left* of where it was in 1992, let alone 1972.

Nader bashing is important because Nader (and the GP generally) is a disastrous dead end for the values his voters claimed to embrace. Want to know how not to get anything done as a liberal? There's your way to go.

*relative to the ideological spectrum of the day.

I don't know who I'm voting for (Stein, Johnson, or Obama), but I think it's at least worth considering that Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, has done a considerably better job of promoting an pro-civil-liberties, anti-war and anti-war-on-drugs message than the Green Party has. I disagree with him on a lot of social welfare issues, but he doesn't appear to be a total nutter (not particularly to the right of Paul Ryan).

Libertarians do seem to be able to bring up these issues and be heard by the public in a way that just isn't true for the Greens.

Just for an example, compare Jill Stein's website (which is all over the place and certainly doesn't seem to be doing much to get a civil liberties/anti-war message out there) to Gary Johnson's (which leads with hard-hitting anti-war and pro-civil-liberties ads that actually seem to have the potential to do some outreach). At the very least, a Gary Johnson vote seems to be more clearly a civil liberties protest vote than a Jill Stein one.

http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/
http://www.jillstein.org/

everyone hates anybody even slightly to their left.

I've heard the same thing about religion: that everybody considers anyone more religious than they are to be a nutty fruitcake. And I've heard that sentiment from many people, from all different intensities of faith.

There is something in common between the two directions, in that being lefty and being religious are both sort of exercises in being virtuous, and so you might want to dismiss people who are caring more than you do.

146: The Nader voters did something different from what the HW Bush nonvoters did. The Nader voters dragged their asses to the polls to make an affirmative anti-Gore statement.

The HW Bush nonvoters were unenthusiastic about voting for Bush, and some stayed home. Gore nonvoters also existed, but they don't run around bragging about how virtuous they are, so they tend to not attract attention.

Further, there's no particular reason to believe that Bush's tax heresy cost him the election. That's simply a convenient narrative that's especially convenient to the people who took over the Republican Party.

131 and 141 to 151.1.

that everybody considers anyone more religious than they are to be a nutty fruitcake

Really, adding knots to the cords is enough. There's not need for metal bits.

151: The problem with voting Libertarian to signal support for their civil liberties positions (which are often admirable) is that their economic policy positions are godawful, and equally important to me. While I don't have much of an opinion of the Greens as an organization and none at all of Stein as an individual, I did skim their platform, and there's not much in there that I'm unhappy about. Half of what the Libertarian party is advocating I'd be as or more horrified by as I am by our drone wars.

Is there polling data on what percentage of self-identified libertarians are dissaffected Republicans vs. disaffected Democrats?

I don't know, but I'd guess something like 85/15. I would say that Republican --> Libertarian --> Democrat is a transition I've seen a fair number of people take, and I've seen people start Republican and end up calling themselves Libertarians but mostly voting Democratic because they've decided they disagree with Republicans but still dislike Democrats too much to call themselves one.

156:

I think that's a totally reasonable position and one I may settle on myself. That said, Johnson does appear to explicitly be running on anti-war and civil liberties issues more than on economic ones. I think there's at least an argument to be made that, given that neither he nor Stein will be elected, what matters is what issues he is actually airing and not the rest of the platform. This is especially true if the point is to expand the national dialogue around these issues. Moreover, voting Libertarian would work around some of the issues around promoting a Green Party that will steal Democratic votes in swing states (see, e.g., 6).

Despite all this, I'm still not sure I have the stomach to vote Libertarian.

Cato says "libertarians" are about 70% Republican-voting vs. 30% Democratic-voting.

153: So why not push a convenient narrative that Gore lost Nader voters because of (your policy preferences here)? Because what's really important is not policy preferences, but lashing out at Nader voters.

Voting libertatian is despicable, because libertarians are despicable. Voting for the Greens is merely deeply stupid.

161-- there was a pretty strong post-2000 narrative that Gore lost in part by not being aggressive enough on leftish positions. See Kos, the Daily. That often but not always went hand in hand with Nader bashing.

I was going to vote for Ralph Nader, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Politics is just politics, but he just completely ruined the Corvair and I can't forgive that.

I'm not convinced that the Tea Party is all that effective except in the sense that Nader was. Substantively, they succeeded in getting the Republican Party ot adopt their positions, but they didn't succeed in getting any legislation enacted. Their main electoral accomplishment in 2010 was capturing three Republican primaries in winnable states (Delaware, Colorado, Nevada) and losing all three in the general elections, leaving the Senate in Democratic control. This year the same thing may happen in the Senate in Missouri and/or Indiana, and in several House races. Possibly the Tea Party will cause both House and Senate to be in Democratic control. Romney's accepting so many Tea Party positions will probably contribute to his loss also.

165 -- I tend to agree, but they do seem to have been more effective at the state level.

So why not push a convenient narrative that Gore lost Nader voters because of (your policy preferences here)?

Had the Nader voters been part of an ascendant political movement, that's exactly the narrative that would have emerged. As it is, Nader represented a political dead-end, but you can still hear that narrative from his fellow dead-enders.

Because what's really important is not policy preferences, but lashing out at Nader voters.

In fact, Nader's central political position - that the Gore vs. Bush race didn't present a meaningful choice - is a position that many people emphatically disagree with. The (hypothetical) Bush nonvoters didn't identify themselves with anything nearly as controversial among Republicans.

What unimaginative said in 165, with the added emphasis that the Tea Party people are pissing off large groups of voters who might not have noticed a blander Republican platform.

165: In this context, I tend to use the term "Tea Party" to describe a tendency in American politics, and not the specific political movement. George HW Bush was vilified by the Tea Partiers of his time, and Ronald Reagan was lionized by them - even though the literal "Tea Party" didn't exist.

Hitler was a Tea Party member.

but they didn't succeed in getting any legislation enacted.

But they did succeed in blocking a lot of legislation from getting enacted, which counts as success from their perspective. For them, a "Do-Nothing" Congress is pretty much the ideal.

168: I mean to say, "Tea Party" is just rebranding. The same folks used to operate under noms de guerre like "John Birch Society" or "Moral Majority."

171, 172: Right. And they have 4 of 9 sympathetic Supreme Court justices.

On the other hand, the American left has some sort of structural problem where everyone hates anybody even slightly to their left.

The slightly to the left people attract rage when that slight difference leads to taking the opposite position on something that both sides attach great weight to. It's infuriatingly exasperating when someone who almost entirely agrees with you does that. Then there are those who are significantly to the left, but putatively on the same team. I don't see any reason other than a dislike of personal conflict for a Lemieux or Farley to be nicer when writing about Chris Bertram's opinions than they are about Andrew Cuomo's or Emmanuel Rahm's.

173: They didn't accomplish that in any sense, though. They didn't exist before 2009.

Oh except the rebranding comment. Hitler, etc.

I think it's obvious that it makes more sense to work to improve the Democratic party than to give up on it

For example. I'm not a DKos fan, especially, but I like their motto "More and better Democrats". That's a theory of progressive political change right there.

Oh except the rebranding comment. Hitler, etc.

Do you think Ogilvy would take him?

152 is astute. It might explain why the left has been more effective pushing issues that broaden the notion of what's moral, such as gay rights, have been more successful than issues that narrow it, such as meat is murder.

179 The left has been more successful on pushing 'social' issues in general than economic issues, largely because there is a substantial part of the elite Dem donor base that cares deeply about them while the rest is indifferent to mildly sympathetic to left wing demands. It's the opposite of the situation for economic issues.

180 is correct. The left has succeeded in pushing issues that rich people aren't inherently opposed to.

180, 181: One could say the same thing (and this is what I was thinking of a ways back in the thread) about the Tea Party.

The left has been more successful on pushing 'social' issues in general than economic issues

Restricting the discussion to the United States: over the last 40 years , this seems clearly true. Over the 40 years prior to that, however, it seems like a tougher question. So, an important issue becomes: why? Why has the success of the left over the last 40 years become more closely aligned with what left-leaning rich people want than it was in the preceding 40 years?

It's obviously not impossible to make progressive gains on economic issues--we haven't always been moving backward.

183 Unions and urban political machines were at least as valuable as the support of the wealthy elites. The urban machines may have been highly corrupt, but it was more of the pay to play type corruption than the broad class warfare version of the past couple decades.

184: that was my point?

The last 40 years have seen a massive shift in the economic balance of power, thanks to offshoring. Why this translated into political power I'm not exactly sure, nor do I understand how the neoliberals completely took over the Democratic party on economic issues, resulting in a very narrow range of debate.

I mean, obviously the neoliberals were the ones who could bring in all the money, with their Wall Street friendly policies and the weakening of labor unions. I don't know how that made other points of view disappear from the party.

The last ten comments of so are finally approaching the possibility of a good question, and are a vast improvement on the bourgeois liberal decontextualized ahistorical voluntarism of most of the preceding thread.

Oh, yeah, it's my own personal fault we don't have a left equivalent of the Tea Party. If I would only go to council meetings we would be like all SWP in five years. The little leftist that could, I am, I think I can, I think I can.

If you're in a safe state, no one cares how you vote. If I vote Green Obama is not going to suddenly think that if only he'd been more left, he'd have a chance at Utah.

If you're in a swing state, voting Green is not going to make the Democrats rush to the left to capture your vote, because if they win the state, they don't need you, and if they lose the state, given the numbers, they'll just run more to the right. I also suspect apo is right and that most of the people voting Green aren't winnable.

So I don't think voting Green (or Libertarian; the Tea Party is an inside job and is basically all the same conservative clowns they've always been) does much as a protest vote. The Presidency is just a bad place to push for that. But I also don't think that anyone, swing state or not, is under any kind of obligation to vote strategically for the lesser of two evils.

I was so infuriated by the original Conor Fridersdorf column that I could barely finish it, and I stayed away from all of the follow-up on various blogs since then. But given this post I went back and re-read it, and it's just as obnoxious now as it was then.

This time I tried to think through why I found it so unpleasant, given that I agree with about 85% of his stated policy beliefs (and would bet that I have given more cash money to the Center for Constitutional Rights than he has).

I came up with two reasons: First, his hypotheticals are implausible. If Romney were caught on tape using an ethnic slur people would SAY they weren't going to vote for him, but I doubt very much that their actual behavior would shift. Ditto for Obama, although some people who were actually being *referred to* via the slur would turn away from him.

So from that perspective he comes across as out-of-touch at best.

But more substantively, in his entire original essay and entire rebuttal, the enormous daily subjective reality of 2/3 of Americans -- women, poor people, middle-class people, people of color, people with disabilities, people of minority religious faiths -- was simply erased.

Drone strikes are appalling. Murdering US citizens is appalling. But what about the mammoth human costs of daily life under austerity and fundamentalism?

In my adult life, I have rarely if ever cast a vote "for" in a national election. They have almost always been votes "against." I still regard myself as living in a swing state, which is why I will be voting early and then volunteering (as a nonpartisan volunteer on Voter ID issues) on Election Day. Meanwhile, I'll hope and expect that if my candidate wins, daily life will be better, safer, and more humane for a larger portion of humanity than if he loses.

Oh, and:

I'm not convinced that the Tea Party is all that effective except in the sense that Nader was. Substantively, they succeeded in getting the Republican Party to adopt their positions, but they didn't succeed in getting any legislation enacted.

Alabama, Arizona, and other anti-immigrant states beg to differ.

I've always seen the practical question of 'who will I vote for' as quite different from the intellectual assessment of how good a leader someone is. Both are important questions. Voting for Obama over Romney seems like an obvious choice for anyone in a swing state -- Obama will represent the domestic economic interests of the middle class better than Romney and is much more likely to manage the American empire in a sane and cautious manner.

But it's important not to conflate that with the question of whether Obama has been a good leader so far, because the internal dialogue over that question influences the future of the party. The left assessment of Clinton eventually played a significant role in getting Obama elected, as it played into the rejection of Hillary. I think from any left of center perspective Obama has been a mediocre President so far. This goes beyond his lousy record on civil liberties, drone strikes, etc. He's moderate, not liberal on economic issues. He's not a fighter in any case, he's a counterpuncher. He has so far refused to lead aggressively on increasing revenues and cutting defense spending, which is an absolute necessity for maintaining even our tattered welfare state. There is every chance that his appallling debate statement that there 'is not much difference between Governor Romney and myself on Social Security' shows the way he actually feels on entitlements. He sold out to the banks in numerous ways that even today might not be fully appreciated by those who didn't follow the debate closely. He has stuck closely to the 'responsible centrist' austerity script on deficits and spending cuts. etc. Overall, I think he's pulled the Democratic party to the right compared to what a skilled politician could have done while still maintaining a popular majority.

He has some real accomplishments, most notably the ACA. His general self-discipline and calm has let him run a scandal free, efficiently centrist administration. But essentially policywise he's been a more personally disciplined but also less politically gifted version of Clinton. And Clintonism is sadly out of date today.

He can still redeem himself somewhat in his second term. (If he doesn't win a second term his grade goes from mediocre to disastrous). Just solidifying some kind of moderate center and starting to marginalize the Republican radicals would be a step forward.

I agree completely with LB.

Should people who live in Maine vote for the Democrat or for Angus King? I'm not sure which vote is the best one to keep out the Republican?

BG, I sent you an email (not about Maine).

People who live in Maine should vote to secede from the US and join Canada. But the really tough choice: New New Brunswick or New Quebec?

New Brunswick makes people think of New Jersey. Go with Quebec.

I'm not convinced that the Tea Party is all that effective except in the sense that Nader was. Substantively, they succeeded in getting the Republican Party to adopt their positions, but they didn't succeed in getting any legislation enacted.

Are you kidding? They pretty much own the House of Representatives. That's huge. They almost bankrupted the US back in 2011.

The House of Representatives can't do anyting without the Senate, and they lost the Senate for the Republican Party. The House also backed down on the debt ceiling before actually causing any real world effect.

I think maybe if the Tea Party didn't happen, Obama would be losing by a rather large margin right now.

his appallling debate statement that there 'is not much difference between Governor Romney and myself on Social Security' shows the way he actually feels on entitlements

I heard this completely differently from everybody else, apparently. Here are the verbatim quotes:

"You know, I suspect that on Social Security, we've got a somewhat similar position. Social Security is structurally sound. It's going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker -- Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill. But it is -- the basic structure is sound. [... some talk about how the real issue is Medicare...] So the way for us to deal with Medicare in particular is to lower health care costs. But when it comes to Social Security, as I said, you don't need a major structural change in order to make sure that Social Security is there for the future."

That is, during the debate, it sounded to me like he was trying to draw Romney out into admitting that Social Security isn't a problem and that any potential shortfalls are easily addressed by raising the income cap slightly. Which isn't really controversial.

In real time, listening to the debate, I heard it the same way. But I'm notoriously bad about missing implications I disapprove of.

199: The House also backed down on the debt ceiling before actually causing any real world effect.

Apart from downgrade of the rating on US bonds, which certainly didn't help things.

201: you can drive a truck through the difference between 'a major structural change' and leaving benefits where they are. You can fit a whole bunch of benefit cuts (and possibly retirement age increases) in that gap. Note that the 1980s Reagan/O'Neill package that he praised included a retirement age increase.

When Romney rolls out his cuts he certainly won't call them 'a major structural change'. The only thing I want to hear a politician saying about SS is that in the long run the income cap for taxation should be raised.

202:Oh c'mon.

The Obama team is so obsessed with the phrasing "we are not going to slash SS benefits" that it is a certainty that they want to cut SS benefits.

Probably with an excellent political understanding that there is absolutely no way they can get a raise in the cap or withholding through Congress without some reduction in benefits. And they can't seem to leave it alone.

Someone did a comparison of raising full benefit age to 69 with black male mortality showing that for a lifetime of paying in, black males would receive on average one year of benefits.

I can remember, I think, my grandparents getting full SS plus a nice defined benefit pension at 62. They had ten terrific years, and 10 more good ones.

It's going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker -- Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill.

I have never heard the 1983 changes called 'tweaks'. They are generally considered the most major changes to the program since WWII (although there were some big benefit expansions early on). It is a very bad sign that Obama called them 'tweaks' in the context of assuring us he wouldn't do 'major structural change'.

The truth is small tweaks to SS happen often, every few years. But it's pretty clear that there is a bipartisan push to do something more major now. Obama's rhetoric fits perfectly into that.

The right way to talk about the '83 amendments:

"In the 1980s Ronald Reagan agreed to a bipartisan social security reform that raised the retirement age and increase SS taxes on ordinary Americans. Since that time, SS has reduced the overall deficit every year. We were promised that those changes would preserve full SS benefits for ordinary Americans for many decades to come. We have to live up that promise, and there is no reason we can't. Etc."

205-207: I'm not talking about Obama's total record on Social Security, which I agree has not been reassuring. Just that literally what he said in the debate didn't sound to me, as it didn't sound to Apo, like a signal that he had intentions to damage it.

The fact, if we're right about what he said in the debate, that he didn't during the debate announce an intention to damage Social Security, doesn't mean that he doesn't have such an intention. But hooking concerns about SS specifically to his debate statements seems a bit off to me.

The only thing I want to hear a politician saying about SS is that in the long run the income cap for taxation should be raised.

I can certainly see why Ron Paul appeals to you, then.

152

There is something in common between the two directions, in that being lefty and being religious are both sort of exercises in being virtuous, and so you might want to dismiss people who are caring more than you do.

This seems plausible to me.

192 is very good. I appreciate PGD's occasional insider (or at least attentive) breakdowns.

192: This goes beyond his lousy record on civil liberties

I need a clarification: by "civil liberties" are we referring only to, e.g., drone strikes, due process, policing tactics, and so on?

That is, I tend to put the defense of voting rights (the DOJ fighting voter-ID laws in various states), the Lily Ledbetter Act (equal pay for equal work), the insistence on expansion of contraceptive coverage under the ACA, renewal and expansion of the Violence against Women Act (to include, now, protection for same-sex couples and undocumented immigrants) ... and similar policies ... under "civil liberties".

Maybe they should be called something else, but if they are fairly called civil liberties protections, I'd like statements about Obama's "lousy" record on civil liberties to always carry a large asterisk.

While those are all good things, I'd tend to call them civil rights issues, rather than civil liberties issues. Civil liberties sounds to me as if it's limited to issues of justice in how the government interacts with citizens in its role as enforcer of the criminal law or quasi-criminal regulation.

Okay.

180, 181: One could say the same thing (and this is what I was thinking of a ways back in the thread) about the Tea Party.

But the Republican party has been getting more and more anti-immigrant, for example. Rich people and CEOs love immigration.

I've got a question for the audience, and a comment for LB and any others interested in the problem of figuring out which local candidates to support.

Question: Have there been studies on the effect of protest voting at the top on down-ticket participation? If so, what did they find?

Obviously we don't all that often have a case like the one where 10,000 more votes for Al Franken would have significantly changed the course of Senate affairs for a year. But the difference between a 40/60 outcome and a 49/51 one can often be just a few thousand votes at lower level, and matters a lot when larger-scale groups decide where to put their support. Deltas matter, too - "10,000 more people voted D this time than last, and same like that since the time before, there's a trend here, let's get on it".

But I can't begin to guess at any general pattern of how alienation with one slot may or may not affect activity elsewhere on the ballot, and I'm curious.

The observation, about local candidates: Start by contacting them. Ones that make it hard for you to reach them are usually not good choices anyway.

Once you have them, in person or via phone or e-mail or whatever, talk about practicalities. Things like...

"I know that at the district level you've got very little say over testing regimens now. How much of the curriculum do you see as under local control, and what are your priorities for it?"

"How well do you work with the teachers union? If I contacted them and asked their views on your strengths and weaknesses, what do you think they'd tell me, and how well do you think that would capture your sense of yourself?"

"Administrative blot seems like a huge problem at all levels of education these days, and a big money sink. How do you assess the administration of this district - what does it do well, what could it do better with less or different spending, and how hard would it be to make those changes?"

"When the water board issues development permits, how much are you allowed to consider parking and traffic issues? What other boards handle that, and how well do you coordinate with them?"

"How much control do you as a board have over your website and use of Twitter to notify the public about activities? Who do you have to coordinate with, and how well do you work with them?"

In my experience, asking about issues of competence and authority turns out to be a darned good filter against right-wing bullshit, too.

216: Evil CEOs love immiserated, precarious immigrants most.

"If you were a grinder pump, would you be SPD or centrifugal."

Hidden Heart, those all sound like excellent questions; I will say that in my own case, the lament about not knowing which local candidates to support has a great deal to do with a dearth of reporting on local issues. I mean: I wouldn't even know to ask the kinds of questions you describe. Perhaps they'd be on point for a given district; perhaps not.

I don't mean for that to sound like a "Yes, but", leading to a throwing up of hands. Rather, it's about time for me, at least, to seek out and investigate what local reporting there actually is out there.

Have there been studies on the effect of protest voting at the top on down-ticket participation? If so, what did they find?

I don't know, myself. I seem to recall that there are studies showing that something like 15% (?) of voters abandon the ballot after the top questions/candidates. There's a term for that, declining to fill out the rest of the ballot questions. I'd be surprised if a protest vote at the top of the ballot has much effect on that.

You're much more likely to see people showing up to vote on a down-ticket state referendum question (gay marriage, a state DREAM act), and voting for up-ticket candidates while they're there.

||

If this thread is still alive, can I ask if this is anything to worry about?

|>

It's too soon to know. I mean, yes, it's not a good thing. But it's entirely possible that the polls will settle, albeit with some tightening in top line, over the course of this week. That said, if Obama has another debate performance like the first, it will be time to panic. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton is speaking on the quad right now. I feel sex in the air!

Parsimon: yeah, it's hard. A surprising number of local candidates will actually do pretty well if you start off with something like 'You know, I don't really know what's in your power to do. Tell me about the office's responsibiities some."

... where Obama's contemptible ...

This seems unfair to Obama. Apparently you don't think Obama's voters are contemptible for lesser evil rationalizations so what basis do you have to deny Obama the same privilege? If a voter can decide Obamacare is more important than the lives of a few drone strike targets why can't Obama make the same calculation?

Because a voter's decision to vote for Obama or withhold their vote doesn't actually keep anyone from being killed by drones. First, it's not going to flip the election, and second, if it did, the other guy would almost certainly do the same thing. Obama has the option of not assassinating people in the service of his other political goals. The voters don't have that option.

This is not brain surgery, Shearer. And I've been told that brain surgery itself isn't rocket science.

Mark Engler reframes the lesser evil question nicely:

The real question is, under which administration will social justice activists do better?

When Republicans have taken office at the state level in recent years, eager to deliver on vows to decimate unions, slash the social safety net, or curtail reproductive freedoms, it has forced labour, feminist and community organizations into overwhelmingly reactive campaigns. Win or lose, these groups end up drained from having to defend basic rights and social benefits.

In contrast, when Democrats become the powerbrokers who need to be pressured, the imagination of social movements expands. It was under Obama, not Bush, that tents appeared on Wall Street and the itch to Occupy spread. The major Civil Rights battles of the 1960s were fought, and landmark gains won, when the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were targets of activist demands. Mass uprisings in Seattle and beyond took aim at Bill Clinton's affinity for corporate globalization.

Emphasis mine.

225

... Obama has the option of not assassinating people in the service of his other political goals. ...

Sure if he doesn't care about his other goals. Assassinating Bin Laden improved his political standing and hence his ability to fulfill his other goals. You think it is very important that he win the election but feel he is contemptible for doing what it takes to win. If assassinating people is out of bounds then voting for people who assassinate people should also be out of bounds.

You know, I think the notion that people hate those to their near left is a myth. Calling out magical thinking that could sink us all isn't based in hate, it comes from hoping to avoid disaster.

228:Well, my ass is probably flat enough at my age to get the entirety of "Property of Democratic Party Now and Forever" tattooed on one cheek.

What is your command for the other cheek, Charley?

Let me be the first to suggest "Fresh Salt."

228: Hate, whatever. Can we at least agree that the right wing admires and lionizes its extremists, even when their policy goals are never going to get enacted, and that moderate liberals don't treat people on their left in a similar fashion?

227: And it's the ticking time bomb hypo again. Sometimes, if doing something evil is the only way to accomplish something else more important, you can decide to do the evil thing, and it's worth it. But just because it's theoretically possible that it might be necessary doesn't give you license to do anything evil you want without demonstrating that it is actually necessary.

I don't agree with that. There's plenty of incredibly ferocious internecine struggle amongst the Republicans, which we tend to ignore because at bottom they're all assholes.

Also I'm only a "moderate" liberal (even by the standards of this blog) in some areas, but I'm happy to lionize some liberal extremists while despising others who, like the Green Party, are tragically deluded morons.

Have you been pleased with Jerry Brown?

Not in all areas by a long shot. But if Prop 30 passes, then overall yes. If not, not.

And you?

He does seem remarkably free of political bullshit.

Oh, 237 wasn't meant as an answer to 236.

Yes and no. He hasn't given my department guidance, which is a shame. I generally like what he's doing with the Office of Planning and Research. It was nice when he was signing bills, because my local paper reports on a lot of that and I liked the way he signed or vetoed bills most of the time.

He's working to manage our very peculiar budget and asking the public to raise taxes, which is bold. Overall, yes. I wish he had time to spare on issues besides the budget.

232: without demonstrating that it is actually necessary

Are we still talking about drone strikes here? (I have a wicked head cold, with sneezing and nose-blowing, so I'm a little bleary). If the evil thing in question is drone strikes, no, Obama hasn't demonstrated that it's actually necessary, but there's a trouble there, no? We are not going to be told about the detailed on-the-ground issues in Pakistan no matter what, not going to be told which targets are selected and why. We aren't going to be given the information needed to make an informed judgment as to the necessity of the strikes.

This doesn't mean we just have to trust that Obama's probably right, obviously, but it does mean, to my mind, that holding to him to a standard ('demonstrate the necessity') that is impossible for him to comply with faces a significant problem.

232

And it's the ticking time bomb hypo again. Sometimes, if doing something evil is the only way to accomplish something else more important, you can decide to do the evil thing, and it's worth it. But just because it's theoretically possible that it might be necessary doesn't give you license to do anything evil you want without demonstrating that it is actually necessary.

This isn't some wildly improbable hypothetical, Obama really was presented with a kill order on Bin Laden and he had to decide whether or not to sign it. You are saying (or appear to be) that it was contemptible for him to sign it (or however he actually gave the go ahead) even if there isn't much doubt (in my opinion) that refusing to sign it would have significantly damaged his re-election prospects. On the other hand you don't want people praising Jill Stein if there is even some slight hypothetical chance it will damage Obama's chances. The reasoning here seems unfair to people, like Obama, who are actually in positions of power and without your freedom to engage in moral posturing.

239

... We aren't going to be given the information needed to make an informed judgment as to the necessity of the strikes.

LB is assuming the drone strikes are evil in themselves but possibly justifiable as necessary to achieve a greater goal like electing a Democrat.

Wait, LB is saying that it was contemptible for Obama to sign the kill order on bin Laden? I didn't notice her saying that.

241: No, I don't think she's saying that.

242

Wait, LB is saying that it was contemptible for Obama to sign the kill order on bin Laden? I didn't notice her saying that.

In 225 LB says:

... Obama has the option of not assassinating people in the service of his other political goals. ...

which I took to mean that LB thought he shouldn't be assassinating people and that this was one of the issues where Obama actions are contemptible.

LB should speak for herself on this one.

I mean, clarify herself.

209: not worth a big discussion, but I think you're wrong. Right now is when Obama is under the most pressure to be liberal and accentuate differences with the Republicans, and he threw away the SS issue in the very first line of his response. Then stated his approval of a previous legislative initiative that raised the SS retirement age by two years. Granted, he was in a hurry to get to Medicare where he did try to differentiate. But if that SS response was considered and not simply incompetent it was a clear signal that he is prioritizing preserving his freedom of action to cut the program over the electoral benefits that would come with agreeing with the majority of voters on defending it. Maybe you need to have spent an unhealthy amount of time saturated in political strategy to see that clearly, as I agree with you the plain english statement can be read as somewhat ambiguous.

210: Ron Paul won't be elected, and he also is/was the only politician providing radical leadership on an issue I consider even more important than SS. So I don't see a contradiction. Hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of lives could be at stake over the next few decades in the maintenance of American imperialism. And our grotesquely swollen military budget is a major driver of the fiscal pressures to cut entitlements. Ron Paul has done a large and unique service trying to put that clearly on the agenda when no one else has. I value that even more then protecting my pension, and since he won't get elected I don't even have to face the practical contradiction.

The establishment right doesn't love its extremists either, especially when they are numerous enough to nominate candidates who can't win a general. They don't have to worry, though, about a small slice of the far right costing their medium right candidate a winnable race in hopes of creating something. The far right fights it out in the primaries, and then supports the team. The far right is also taking part in local politics with a vengeance: getting n school boards and the like.

Can we at least agree that the right wing admires and lionizes its extremists

Todd Akin.

249: indeed

250: Nonetheless, I don't think you can say Akin has been "lionized" by Republicans at large.

That said, in 249 I had originally written and deleted a more nuanced, more tedious comment that I will now inflict on you:

To say that the Republican Party "admires and lionizes" its extremists is only to say that the Republican Party is composed of extremists.

Dick Lugar lost to Richard Mourdock by 20 points in the Indiana Senate primary. That's not because Indiana Republicans admire people further to their right, it's because they are further to the right than most sensible people imagine.

There's a strong American tendency toward real, no-kidding, no-hyperbole fascism, and in fact, when right wing nuts like Orrin Hatch get elected to office, one reason is that Republicans have a history of tolerating people who are more liberal than they are.

If you've said to yourself at any time in the last 40 years that the Republican Party has hit bottom, you've been wrong. One reason for that is that the Republican Establishment has always been too liberal for a big part of its constituency, and the constituency has woken up, figured that out and decided to do something about it.

Oh wait PGD was a Ron Paul guy? Cool, now I can just ignore everything else he says on any topic.

Silbey has a map that shows Obama 276 Romney 262.

One state.

News today, Stan Greenberg I think says Obama is losing single women in droves. Most people vote their pocketbooks, and a solid base can be lost for decades if you forget that.

Obama is toast, and I am gonna laugh my ass off.

You are not invited to the new party or the rebuilding.
Losers.

You are not invited to the new party or the rebuilding.

If that means they won't ask me for money or call my 600 times in the month before an election, great.