Thank you for posting.
The formatting has been lost, but everything after the URL is a block quote from the essay.
To Heebie's comment, I agree that it is a strength of the article that it is about both the incidents, and about the way the incidents isolate her from or create friction with her non-Muslim friends and peers. That was part of what seemed recognisable* in her descriptions.
But it certainly does allow you to wonder if she is being difficult.
* I say as a white person.
I am actually conflicted on personal experience essays like this. On the one hand, they can be a powerful way to concretize what daily acts of racism/sexism/homophobia/etc look like. On the other hand, they're often framed as, "you don't experience X," where X is some microaggression/innocuous event that has more pernicious weight given the social context. First, it's often false, which then makes it about whether or not other people have experienced or dealt with X on the regular, rather than on the differing impact of what experiencing X means. E.g. People frequently assume I'm an immigrant, so I get asked where I'm really from or complimented on my English on the regular, and I have some pretty ridiculous stories about this. The difference from, say, Asians who get this is it's not linked to larger discourses of racism where people think blondes aren't "real" Americans, or Norwegians are the inscrutable exotic other, so I can just find it funny mostly rather than experiencing it as an act of Othering.
Wait, you grew up in the U.S. and people always think you must have grown up in Norway? Do you speak with an accent?
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Finally, these Jewish-Iranian L.A. clothing design brothers are seeing things go their way.
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4
I don't think so. I've been told I do, but I think it's people projecting. It's in large part how I look, because sometimes people ask me if I speak English or where I'm from before I've even opened my mouth.
On the OP, about 5 years ago my boyfriend was once told he could not get through security unless he had an arm cast x-rayed in a special room. He had a big argument with TSA and actually left the airport until I was able to talk him down over the phone. He had long hair and a long beard at that time, and I could never figure if it was standard policy or if it was the long dark hair and beard and vaguely Mediterranean features made him appear more suspicious than usual.
Barabas was a robber (John 18:40), so I suppose it's appropriate.
But it certainly does allow you to wonder if she is being difficult.
Only in a couple of cases among those examples, it seems to me, chief among them being the second example, the college course in which she was to learn how to administer an EEG and demurred, on account of her hijab. I suppose an accommodation could have been made -- she could do an EEG on another lab mate -- but I've had a general sense that doing procedures on yourself is the best way to learn some things, and also makes you more sensitive to what the prospective patient is experiencing.
The Vancouver police had an alert out two days ago, a public APB on two Middle Eastern-looking men seen taking photographs in a mall. They're not accused of a crime, there is no actual anticipated threat to public safety; Vancouver PD just wants to talk to them, just have a friendly chat about take photographs in a public place while being brown.
Not a joke. That is an actual thing that happened and they acted like it was a normal and acceptable thing to do.
The electrode one is the only one which struck me as unreasonable.
I'm a guy. I'm of Hindu extraction. I'm an atheist. I find the practices of arranged marriage and other means of keeping women down, in "traditional Indian culture" to be misogyny, plain and simple. Ain't no boy ever got burned to death for a dowry. Ain't no boy ever got raped by his wife and had no recourse. I have no problem finding these "cultural practices" as plain and simple misogyny, and when some other Indian argues that they're "cultural", and aren't "necessarily" connected to the misogyny of so much of Indian culture, I fart in his general direction.
WHY should I not fart in the general direction of this OP author? One of the things I remember (again: from "bride-burning (if you don't recognize the term, look it up)) from my college years is "the willing, even enthusiastic acquiescence of the oppressed in their oppression does not legitimize it". Just because this woman participates in this oppression
[C'mon, sister, you don't -really- think there's no continuum between your headscarf and the niqab? WTF!?!}
doesn't mean it isn't oppression.
The day I see Muslims putting out the eyes of boy-children, I'll buy theiir BULLSHIT about this headscarf BULLSHIT.
wow, that was intemperate. So let me temper it a little.
If you read about bride-burning, you'll find that it's embedded in an entire culture and economy of misogyny. And I claim that the same is true of the differential way that females and males are treated, in Islam. And just as the differences (in Hindu) culture start really small, end go all the way to bride-burning, the differences in Muslim culture(s) start small, and go all the way thru the hjiab, the niqab, purdah, and (in some cultures) FGM and the sort of treatment of women we see in ISIS.
I don't grant the small differences in Hindu culture the time of day -- I know that they're just the understructure of the larger oppression. So why should I grant the small differences in Muslim cultures -any- legitimacy at all?
It is unfortunate that wearing clothing explicitly intended to separate you from your non Muslim friends has the effect of separating you from your non Muslim friends.
9 is these guys http://globalnews.ca/news/2455654/vancouver-police-looking-for-individuals-who-took-video-of-pacific-centre/
They found them - turned out it was all innocent.
I once tried to get people at a wedding to burn the groom, but it was for personal reasons, not feminism.
12 - 13: The OP author isn't running around lighting herself on fucking fire, you worthless piece of sub-moronic ratshit. She's making a fucking choice in clothing. You're effectively arguing for the equivalent of the right to bully someone for wearing a yarmulke or a turban. Being an "atheist" doesn't have to mean being a stereotypical Dawkins knock-off; grow up.
Oh sorry, was that "intemperate"? It is unfortunate that spouting opinions intended to flirt with racism has the effect of looking just like racism.
(Saw 15, thanks. Not surprised...)
People have noted that experiencing racism/discrimination on a regular basis can make you thin skinned and difficult. Where members of the unmarked category assume that strangers treating us poorly is not personal, or at least anomalous, people who do experience racism then spend all their time analyzing difficult interactions for notes of racism. It can lead to a sort of paranoia that then seems OTT when looking at any one interaction.
(Though FWIW the EKG example did seem difficult to me, even taking into account the above. It seems like there could be some accommodation between her taking off her headscarf in public and not doing it, perhaps doing the assignment in private with a female classmate).
It can lead to a sort of paranoia that then seems OTT when looking at any one interaction.
Or more frequently -- though I've seen genuine paranoia happen -- it simply has the effect that simply describing your workaday reality freaks people out who have no concept of it.
The professor was an asshole in the electrode one. He could have thought through just how essential it was to do the thing on herself and - if it was really essential - talked with her in private. He could also have figured out an alternative assessment. For pete's sake, he's dealing with a freshman international student, not an EMT in training.
Also, I don't think she sounds difficult. IME, both middle class white people and midwesterners generally tend to experience any public form of boundary setting as being "difficult". This inbuilt tendency has gotten me, for instance, into a lot of bad and unfair situations because I didn't want to rock the boat. Standing up for yourself a bit is okay.
Okay, how about all the white USians get together and make a list of all the activities engaged in by people of color and how oppressive they are on a scale of 1 to 10, and everything 6 or higher public officials can give them shit for.
I apologize for calling Chet Murthy a "worthless" piece of sub-moronic "rat-shit" in 17. I was forgetting that rat feces have value to makes of counterfeit beauty products, so they are not technically "worthless" and I'm sure neither is Chet.
At any rate, I think "recto-cephalic shum-bubble" is closer to the sentiment I was trying to convey. We regret the error.
Note to self: Castock is really grumpy in the early morning.
Chet and Lord Castock - ain't being self righteous grand? Spoken as one who know the feeling only too well.
. . . it simply has the effect that simply describing your workaday reality freaks people out who have no concept of it.
Absolutely, and I think that is where part of the value of essays like this lies -- they they help make it easier for people who don't have that experience to have some idea of it.
27: OOTB, I don't think that's it. It's a legitimate argument, between those who think that some people participate in their own oppression, and those who believe that if you don't feel oppressed, you aren't. We've been around this block before, most obviously in the now decades old argument between second- and third-wave feminism. It's an unwinnable argument; both parties have a point.
That said, there are depths and depths here; I don't wave them aside. But this blog hasn't waded into the morass that is moral realism for some time, and I doubt it wants to now.
Expressivist moral debates are a lot more fun, it's true.
22: really? the way she told it, she didn't raise the issue with him at the start of the class, she just sat there for an hour or whatever not doing any work and then handed in a blank paper and said "no, I don't have to do this because hijab." which is about the most looking for a fight way possible to handle it.
she just sat there for an hour or whatever not doing any work and then handed in a blank paper and said "no, I don't have to do this because hijab."
Here's what she says (for anyone who hasn't read the article):
My freshman spring, I take a psychology class meant for juniors. I'm a good student . . . [The professor] knows me by name. I ask questions and score high on the tests, but I still get the feeling he doesn't like me.
This professor is supervising our lab one week. We've split up into groups of six and are doing electroencephalograms, attaching electrodes to each other's scalps and recording the data. The professor comes by to talk to my group, and as he's walking off he says, "I'll let you get back to your last reading."
"Oh, we're done," we say. "Just cleaning up here."
He stops, backtracks. "But there are only five readings?"
Everyone in my group looks at me.
"I didn't do one."
His mouth becomes noticeably small, stern. "You need a reading for your lab participation grade."
"I can't put the electrodes on my head because of my hijab. Religious reasons."
Reading it the first time I thought, "it's odd that she didn't talk to the professor first, rather than just not doing it. The things that strike me on a second read are (1) it wasn't a standard class session, it was lab work, and it sounds like she wasn't necessarily expecting the professor to be there. So that might be a reason why she thought it made sense to just do it her way and follow up later. (2) She did work, she was involved in attached electrodes to other people, she just didn't have electrodes attached to her head, (3) she was a Freshman taking a class intended for Juniors, which both could be a reason why the professor had less patience with her and might be a reason she didn't think to have the conversation beforehand -- that's the sort of mistake Freshmen make.
Oh sure. Christians get electrodes and a special tax. That's only tolerance by medieval standards.
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The next time we have a (US) politics thread around here, remind me to ask: have you decided between Bernie and Hillary yet? My own state's primary isn't until April, but I'm starting to ask myself what I intend to do.
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Ours is in June, so it'll be over. I'm voting Sanders, because I want HRC to feel herself at the right edge of acceptable opinion, not the left edge.
34: Undecided.
I suppose it's too late for Trump to switch party affiliation and run as a Democrat, just to fuck with everyone. Too bad.
Parsimon - I agree that there are real issues involved. I was referring to the overheated rhetoric which I've been prone to myself from time to time.
ermehgerd if you want proper racism I have just read for the first time in around fifty years "The Poison Belt", Conan Doyle's successor to "The Lost World".
It's the first cosy catastrophe novel I am aware of and the catastrophe is horribly cosy: everyone but a tiny remnant dies of some poison in the etheric belt, and there is the classic motor car journey up to London past all the unlucky stiffs, but after 27 hours it turns out they were just catatonic and the world resumes, more thoughtful and purified. Not much is said of the fate of the inhabitants of Brighton, which burned down.
But the racism!
"THe less develped races have been the first to respond to [the plague's] influence. There are deplorable accounts from Africa, and the Australian aborigines appear to have been already exterminated. The NOrthern races have as yet shown greater resisting power than the Southern ... all night delirious excitement throughout Provence Tumult of vine growner at Nimes. Socialistic upheaval at Toulon ... there is a similar telegram from Paris where the development is not yet as acute. India and Peria appear to be utterly wiped out. The Slavonic population of Austria* is down while the Teutonic has hardly been affected."
That last sentence is straight out of the handy guide to the artisans of Pittsburgh that made an FPP the other day.
.
Should have added that this was first published in 1913, so "Austria" is the whole Austro-hungarian empire
Doyle was less fond of the Irish than whoever hired artisans in Pittsburgh.
Not true: the narrator is Irish, a journalist, no less.
"Round-headed," he muttered. "Brachycephalic, grey-eyed, black-haired, with suggestion of the negroid. Celtic, I presume?"
"I am an Irishman, sir."
"Irish Irish?"
"Yes, sir."
"That explains it."
If that's referring to Professor Challenger, I guess that explains why I have trouble with research ethics.
I've only read Lost World, not The Poison Belt.
That quote is from The Lost World, Professor Challenger confronting the narrator (Malone).
The Poison Belt has some wonderful moments of scientific illiteracy, such as when their little group is sitting in a sealed room full of oxygen to protect themselves against the poisoned ether and they all (apart from Professor Challenger's dainty wife) light up their pipes.
26: Hi, by the way!
37: Yes, well, I profoundly repent "overreacting" to a fuckhead who compares wearing a headscarf to throwing a woman on a funeral pyre, but in all fairness I did apologize to the rat feces. I'm at peace.
It's the religion of peace and scarves.
Anyway, more support for the analogy ban. Maybe.
I don't grant the small differences in Hindu culture the time of day -- I know that they're just the understructure of the larger oppression. So why should I grant the small differences in Muslim cultures -any- legitimacy at all?
Serious question, Chet: Do you grant any "legitimacy" to Christian American women who change their names upon marriage? Amish men who wear beards? Mennonite women who wear hair coverings? How is that the same or different to you?
Amish men who wear beards have to put hair nets on them if they serve electrodes.
I thought the Amish weren't allowed to use electrodes at all.
It's ok if the power comes from lightning.
They can use them, but not own them.
All I know is the baseball caps are "embedded in an entire culture and economy" of imperialism. It's therefore our moral duty to single out and harass people who wear them, since this is literally tantamount to endorsing illegal drone strikes and carpet-bombing.
Nah, I think I'll start with women in baseball caps. Easier targets and fair game. (Right, Chet?)
56 could not be more wrong, witness the least imperialist baseball caps in the world:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/olympics_blog/2008/07/castro-talks-a.html
It's ok if the power comes from lightning.
Amish Frankenstein!
(Actually, Amish Dracula would be closer to the original text. Dracula is deeply suspicious and ignorant of all modern technology. Shorthand, for example, completely baffles him.)
(Obligatory nitpicking that, of course, Frankenstein did not - according to the original book - bring his monster to life using lightning. It's not clear how he did it, but there wasn't any lightning around on the night it happened; it was "a dreary night of November" with light rain.)
The Poison Belt has some wonderful moments of scientific illiteracy, such as when their little group is sitting in a sealed room full of oxygen to protect themselves against the poisoned ether and they all (apart from Professor Challenger's dainty wife) light up their pipes.
In their defence, they know (or rather think) they're going to die anyway. The point of the oxygen is to keep them alive just a little longer in order to observe the end of the world. They eat cold food rather than light an oil stove, in order to conserve air, so they're aware that combustion isn't a great idea; it's only when the end is apparently nigh that they light up a last cigarette.
Also, burning tobacco doesn't use up huge amounts of oxygen; it's about one to one, mass-wise. So rather than have a last pipe and choke to death, they could have had another eight minutes of breathing, and then choke to death. Woo hoo.
I was thinking more of what happens when you light up in an oxygen-enriched atmosphere. The story should really have ended with a bang right there.
There's nothing in the Koran that says women can't wear red plaid caps with ear flaps.
Probably because the angel Gabriel thought it was too obvious to need saying.
A hijab won't keep your ears warm when it's 10 degrees regular out.
And it will be 10 degrees here, after it warms up a bit.
I'd have thought this would be a very good choice for cold weather, regardless of your favoured superstition.
If it comes in blaze orange, it would work for deer season.
Isn't it velveteen? Should be thickish. The girls around here tend to favour heavy woolen knits in winter, but you see velvet occasionally. It gets bastard cold in Kashmir, you know.
Something with quilted insulation is going to be much lighter for the necessary warmth. I'm not sure I've ever seen velvet outer wear.
The wind chill right now is 15 below. Thankfully, among the positive changes Dr. King helped to bring about, me not working today was one.
We're out semi-camping, but I'll be able to post later today.
34
Definitely Bernie. Although in the weeks since I stopped paying attention to the Dem primary, the race tightened considerably, and the thought of Bernie as our nominee is both amazing but also a little scary. Talking to people, I'm hearing incredible enthusiasm for him from people who would not otherwise vote for Hillary, but it's hard to tell how widespread this is because I'm in a bubble. Trump vs. Sanders would be quite the election, and my guess is Sanders would have an edge. I would be much less sanguine about the chances in a Sanders vs. Rubio election.
You know where it's relatively warm? The Sonoran Desert.
I don't give Hillary the benefit of the doubt for electability. She'll need to prove she's electable by beating Bernie. If she can't run a campaign that can beat Bernie, then its wrong to assume that she could run a campaign that can beat whoever the Republicans settle on.
I always have to take my baseball cap off at airport security. I blame Canadians.
The way McGovern proved he was electable in 1972?
77 Well, yes and no. She should be able to beat him, and I really think she is going to. So if she doesn't, it's fair to draw an inference. On the other hand, as Walt points out, it's a very different race.
If somebody wanted to both learn SQL and be able to convince somebody they knew SQL, what would be the best way to do that for somebody who is lazy?
re: 81
Probably does an OK job. The list of topics is pretty extensive.
In my experience, I only ever use SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE queries, and it's pretty rare I use very complicated joins, although I do make use of COUNT, SUM, FIRST, LAST, etc.
I'd been planning on voting for Sanders for exactly the reasons given by Carp in 35. As he emerges as a more possibly viable candidate, though, I am getting more inclined to visibly support Hillary earlier.
As generously as possible to Sanders, here is how I'd rank percentage-wise the outcomes of an actual Sanders nomination:
1% -- Bernie wins and imposes Democratic Socialism in America on terms anything like his policy platform (because there is not actually majority support for those policies in any conceivable US Congress).
24% - Bernie wins and governs more or less like a mainstream Democrat, aka Hillary Clinton, though a much less skilled, experienced, and savvy one than Clinton.
75% -- Bernie both loses the Presidency and loses to a substantially more extreme Republican than would otherwise be electable.
The cost/benefit of his campaign (if it's serious and not just a "the left is here!" protest vote) is just atrocious. Also his supporters online are annoying, particularly people who were happily pro-Obama, but that's probably true for every candidate.
his supporters online are annoying
They really are, and I say that as someone who's much more ideologically aligned with Bernie than I am with Hillary. Still, his supporters: annoying and sanctimonious.
It's made me wonder if being called "swirly-eyed Obamabots" wasn't just The Olds being cranky, and Obama supporters were also this annoying to those who hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid. Another explanation is that I am now one of The Olds.
You need to know SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, ALTER, and GRANT, plus SHOW and DESC for debugging.
I think the best way would be to sit down at a MySQL command line and try to set up a few tables in a toy database. Once you can do that, and know the basic tools, maybe spend some time trying to figure out how to do a JOIN.
Just remember that a cross join is the Crossfit of the SQL world.
82, 85: Thanks. Having looked at that, I'm just going to play with Proc SQL in SAS and say I know it. That should work. I can just use SQL to rebuild the tables I already made the normal way.
87: Spend some time thinking about how to check your results in every exercise. IMX in SQL it's easy to get plausible answers that are wrong.
87: I think you'll find it pretty easy. The big conceptual difference with a SAS data statement is that SQL encourages you to think of it as happening all at once, while data statements encourage you to think of it as happening one line at a time. (There's an analogue for SQL databases -- a cursor -- but I'm not sure how standardized they are.) You'll find that for anything at all complicated, PROC SQL is the easiest way to merge two datasets. The one thing you'll miss is that there's no SQL analogue of RETAIN.
88: Redoing it in SAS makes it easy to check with PROC COMPARE.
The one thing you'll miss is that there's no SQL analogue of RETAIN.
I usually drop with an "if" statement. I never learned the right way if that's not the right way.
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The MLK day parade is going by just below my office window. It's nice to see that the high school baton twirlers/acrobats/cheerleaders/whatever they are are sensibly dressed this year. It wasn't quite this cold (20 degrees) last year, but it was still pretty darned cold, and they were all wearing leotards. They must have been freezing to death.
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re: 85
Yeah, I was assuming Moby would be getting data from a DB that uses SQL, not creating one. So yeah, create, alter, grant, etc.
The site in 82 is really helpful. Thanks. It looks like maybe a couple of hours a night for a week and I'll have what I need of it. It doesn't look very different. It even uses semicolons.
Going to the #ReclaimMLK (BLM) march from downtown, 11. Rain stopped!
So black lives matter to you, but not as much as staying dry?
You're a boy, moron. You're made of snips and snails and puppy-dog tails, not sugar and spice.
83 #2 is repeating this circulating idea that Hilary is somehow more qualified than Sanders to govern the country, but for which there isn't any actual proof, beyond the pundit class preferring Hillary's politics. Hillary was senator for 8 years and Sec of State for 4. Sanders has been a Senator for 10 years and in the House of Reps for 16, and before that served in local politics. In terms of general qualifications, they seem pretty comparable, and both well within the range of people who are considered serious presidential contenders. If Hillary would indeed be better than Sanders at politicking, it's a point that has to be argued for, not simply asserted.
Hillary has vastly more experience (a) running a major cabinet agency (b) running a whole host of programs in the White House (c) building up political capital and alliances over at least 25 years near the top of power. Sanders was a small-state Senator without much if any institutional power on the far left of his party. Hillary has vastly more experience in the kinds of things you need to do to be President, and to the extent that's relevant, it's obvious. There, argument done.
Hillary did apparently think for years on end that Mark Penn was smart, and may still.
Some kind of Native American inaugural ceremony going on. No helicopters, which I'm actually surprised at, but a quadcopter hovering.
Anyway, Jon Chait has decided that Bernie must be stopped, which really should be all anyone needs to know.
Still undecided. I guess the pro-Clinton argument is that even if Sanders gets elected, he won't be able to do much beyond govern as a maybe a little bit left of center democrat, due to the various constraints he'll be faced with. By that logic Clinton and Sanders won't end up being all that different, policy-wise, and Clinton is presumably better at dealing with scorched earth right wing lunatics.
I'm not sure how well the argument holds up. Clinton certainly seems to be more enthusiastic about foreign military misadventures than Sanders.
As for "better at dealing with scorched earth lunatics", maybe there's something to that. After all, we're talking about the woman who hired Al Qaeda to murder Vince Foster and then hid the evidence in Benghazi. Someone like that doesn't mess around.
I guess the pro-Clinton argument is that even if Sanders gets elected, he won't be able to do much beyond govern as a maybe a little bit left of center democrat, due to the various constraints he'll be faced with.
Yes, that is absolutely the case. And any potential benefit from having him in office needs to be weighed against the very substantially greater threat that Bernie poses of having a Republican -- and, not just any Republican, but a Cruz or a Trump, who would otherwise be pretty unelecatable -- take the White House. If Sanders and Clinton were both comparably electable candidates, marginal differences might be more important. They aren't. (They are not remotely comparably electable, despite what some idiots have been posting on Facebook).
p. Clinton certainly seems to be more enthusiastic about foreign military misadventures than Sanders.
I think this is way, way overstated by most people making the argument. Neither will be starting Iraq War II. Neither will not be doing things like Obama-level drone strikes. If Sanders says he won't, guess again. But regardless, the marginal potential improvement in Sanders in foreign policy, if there is any, isn't even in the neighborhood of being worth the increased risk of a far-right Republican in office. Not even close. And especially if your main concern is foreign policy. The cost/benefit of his candidacy just doesn't come close to netting out.
Again, this all assumes that he's an actual nominee. I have no problem voting for him as a warning shot/protest vote, so long as it's clear he won't win the nomination, and was planning to do that myself.
101
The argument that Sec of State has more of an overlapping skill set with Pres than Senator is a valid one. The argument that Hillary would be better than Sanders because she's one half of a DC power couple really depends on your attitude towards entrenched power. I prefer my presidents to be less dynastic and invested in preserving the status quo, so I consider (c) to not be a positive. I'm not sure if (b) refers to her Sec of State tenure, in which case, fine, or to her stint as First Lady, which I don't consider relevant to her run for president.
Either the President has enough power to deal with hostile forces w/in DC or she/he doesn't. We Dems keep insisting on sending new presidents in without that kind of power, and we keep getting burned.
Hot take! How do you propose sending in a "president with that kind of power" in 2016?
her stint as First Lady, which I don't consider relevant to her run for president.
Really? You think spending 8 years living in the White House, married to the President doesn't provide a person with some insight that would aid them in doing the job? I'm against dynasty, and I don't particularly care for Hillary, but even I'll grant her that.
On the other hand, I think he stint as Secretary of State has been overrated. Sure, it gave her experience, but it gave us experience of what she would be like, as well. The incoherence of first-term Obama foreign policy doesn't make me think "wow, the person who ran that would sure make a great President!"
I still think it's not a dynasty until it's been going for at least two generations. So Bush, Gore, Roosevelt, Romney are dynastic politicians. The Clintons are not.
Hot take! How do you propose sending in a "president with that kind of power" in 2016?
More Ameritude!
Not privileged purity over experience. It's all we've got.
My thinking is much like Tigre's here: Bernie is just too much of a risk. This is personal, as well: I cannot risk a Republican president (+ House and Senate) repealing Obamacare, which has been a godsend for me. Hillary is insanely popular nationally; I don't see her losing if she's the nominee.
We don't vote nationally. Elections are decided in Ohio. NC, NH, Florida, and a couple other places.
As a male under 40, I'll have to take everyone's word for it that Hillary is popular and exciting. I have never seen anyone on Facebook express enthusiasm for her. Day after day I see people, not idealists but people who read Politico, bemoaning how she is the worst possible candidate and she has a uniquely high number of people who are desperate to vote against her and she is uniquely (among Democrats) implicated in everything people are fed up with. Just need to remember that people who care enough to blather about politics on the internet are a small fraction of people.
I'm at least four years old then Ned. I understand everything.
Hi, I'm calling from 2004, how are things in your decade?
116: No, Hillary is boring. The electability argument is that with Clinton, the election is boring versus crazy, in which case boring wins. If Sanders is the nominee, then the media will paint it as crazy versus crazy.
Going home after the opening rally, which was cool but ran pretty long.
First part of my big-ass analysis of the marijuana legalization initiative for CA is now up on my blog, linked with pseud.
118 It was a lot closer than it might have been. I've not seen anything particularly convincing that one of the other Dem candidates would have won Ohio or Florida.
"We are the new Americana, getting high on legal marijuana."
118: Holy shit, you think that if it had been a different candidate the Democrats would have won? I'm sure Republicans tell themselves the same thing about 2012.
Does that mean they've stopped pointing about that Obama would have lost if only white people were allowed to vote?
113
In terms of electability, I'm also nervous about Bernie, and it depends on who the Republicans throw up. Bloomberg has thrown out that if it's Trump v Sanders he's considering a third party run, which would make things really interesting. I think the biggest nightmare scenario would be Sanders vs. Cruz, where Cruz manages to paint himself as the more "mainstream" candidate in the media. Sanders vs. Rubio worries me as well, although it depends on what sort of Republican base-depressing effect Rubio has.
OTOH, as someone mentioned above, Hillary is proving herself to be a shitty campaigner for the second time in a row, and it's not giving me confidence in her abilities in the general. If she can't beat a 74 year old socialist in the primaries, then why should it be obvious she'd be able to take on Marco Rubio?
I checked out of the Democratic primary since it seemed pretty settled, and during that time Bernie has gained massive amounts of support. As of now he and Hillary are splitting the Obama coalition, with Bernie getting young people (and also working class whites, which were not part of the original Obama coalition) and Hillary getting people of color (+ the Democratic establishment, which she had initially in 2008). That may change depending on what happens in New Hampshire and Iowa, if Bernie gains momentum he could easily pick up more constituents, or the reverse could also happen. Where I differ is I think Bernie would be a better president from Hillary, because I'd rather have a president try and fail with a grand leftist vision than 4-8 years of people like Timothy Geithner/Larry Summers in positions of power.
I'm sure being a first lady (and having her hand in the healthcare fiasco of 1993) did give her front line view of what being president was like. But I consider "vote for the close relatives of former presidents because they have insider knowledge" to not be a compelling argument if we're going to pretend that we're a functional democracy. But equally as importantly, if she wants to run on her tenure of first lady, she has to own the Clinton 1 presidency. I am under 40, but I remember the Clinton 1 presidency very vividly, as it compelled me to co-found local chapters of the Young People's Socialist League and Young Democratic Socialists. I absolutely remember NAFTA, welfare reform, banking deregulation, and Bill Clinton championing Tony Blair as his partner in neoliberalism. Maybe Hillary is to the Left of her husband, or maybe not, but there's a reason so many people voted for Nader in 2000, and that's because Clinton 1 really was Republicanism lite, if you compare him to GHWB (who would now probably have to run as a Democrat). The 90s were a period of economic stability and Clinton managed to not to fuck it up (though to be fair, he really did set up the 2008 financial crisis), but he wasn't a great or a leftist president. On top of that, the Clintons did have absolute foaming at the mouth crazies as opposition, but they gave them so much ammunition which squandered/muted the political capital that the Clintons did have. After office they've spent the past 15 years trying to make themselves as wealthy as possible and cozying up to Wall Street, which doesn't distinguish them from many politicians but inspires no confidence to their commitment to real Leftism.
I decided I was voting for Clinton back in 2014 or so. I also decided her win was inevitable. This works great for making me calm.
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I was set (resigned?) on voting for Clinton before Bernie got in the race, and I'll still vote for her in the general if she's the nominee, but it's hard to muster any enthusiasm for her when it appears there's an actual Democratic Socialist as a viable alternative.
I wouldn't call her a shitty campaigner. She's running like someone who actually expects to win and be held to campaign promises. He's running like someone who does not expect to win, but to move the Overton window.
Last serial comment, but I think one thing that changed how I viewed Bernie's candidacy was the fact he's matching or at least competing with Clinton on fundraising. If the man can get Obama levels of funding through the same methods, he has 1) way more popularity and 2) a much better campaign infrastructure than I had initially assumed.
no confidence to their commitment to real Leftism.
I have little confidence in that either, but President Hillary will be about at the center or maybe just slightly to the left of her party, which is, on the whole, much further to the left than it was in 1992 or 1998. My guess is that on domestic policy she'll govern slightly to the left of Obama, or at least Obama of Obama's first term. On foreign policy, likely slightly to the right of Obama. She definitely won't be bringing in the reign of democratic socialism. But neither will Bernie under any plausible scenario in which he wins the White House. The best you could hope for a for-real President Bernie would be policies very slightly to the left of Obama and Hillary on both domestic and foreign policy. And that's not even close to enough of a difference to take the gamble on him as a candidate in the general election.
Not having to think about that kind of stuff leaves me the mental energy to learn SQL and contemplate the wonders of the Sonoran Desert.
It's going to be 8 degrees tomorrow morning. I'm thinking that Clinton and Sanders would both put the trigger on a two hour school delay.
It's too cold to walk to the bar tonight.
It's too cold to walk to the bar tonight.
Come up with three or four lines that rhyme with "tonight," grow a beard, put on a cowboy hat and I'll make you a star, kid.
Me and Cinderella, put it all together.
We can drive it home with one headlight.
It's too cold to walk to the bar tonight
But my achin' heart just ain't right
Because my woman done left to chase those bright lights
So I'll take my chances with the frost bite.
Not hearing gold, but keep going. Rub some funk barbecue sauce on it.
I agree with almost everything Tigre has written in this thread. I think that Sanders is closer to my personal political beliefs, but, even though I don't totally trust her, I think Clinton would be the better general election candidate.
I think that Clinton is a significantly less exciting candidate than Obama was in 2008 but, as a reference point, I also think that whoever the Republicans nominate will have much less going for them, heading into the campaign, than McCain did in 2008.
I also agree that if Clinton can't beat Sanders than, obviously, she doesn't deserve to be president. But I think that she will end up winning easily and that she's mostly playing "prevent" defense at this point.
In terms of the question about the degree to which Sanders is running a symbolic campaign I thought this article was interesting.
Bernie Sanders's campaign and his most fervent supporters are going to read this article as harsh -- and in many ways it is. But the truth is, I think there's a lot to like about Bernie Sanders. I share Sanders's admiration for the Nordic social model, I agree with him in principle about single-payer health care, I appreciate that he has cosponsored sophisticated bank regulation bills like Sherrod Brown's collaboration with David Vitter, and his advocacy of a financial transactions tax is admirable. To the extent that Sanders is running a campaign that's about raising issues and securing national attention for some ideas that don't normally come up on Meet The Press, I applaud him.
But Bernie-mania's gotten a lot bigger than that. He's obviously still the underdog, but he's doing well -- he's rising in the polls and to my eye bested Clinton in a debate. It's possible to imagine him winning the nomination, which means it's possible to imagine him becoming president.
Which means that we in the media need to start taking his campaign seriously, but also that Sanders himself needs to take his campaign seriously. Build a real model of the higher education plan. Come up with some notion of what kind of health insurance the BernieCare single-payer plan is going to provide. Address the whole range of outstanding issues with Obama's Wall Street agenda. Maybe talk to some people about foreign policy. We appreciate that it's not his passion in life, but it's a crucial part of the job and he needs to be more comfortable talking about it.
I think one thing that changed how I viewed Bernie's candidacy was the fact he's matching or at least competing with Clinton on fundraising.
Searching for fundraising information, the first thing I found was this article which argues that Clinton fundraising isn't at maximum levels because many donors don't think Sanders is a serious challenge:
And many of the donors POLITICO has interviewed over the last few months say the widespread perception that's she's a shoo-in is prompting would-be donors to remain on the sidelines -- waiting to throw their financial support behind her for the only race they believe truly matters -- the general election.
"Let Bernie outraise her -- he's not going to be the nominee," a top donor said. "The idea that Donald Trump or Ted Cruz could actually be the president is going to be the greatest fundraising mechanism in the history of the world, and it's just too early for that."
A sign that Clinton's donors are more eager to donate to a general election campaign than a primary they see as already in the bag was the success of the high-dollar Victory Fund event last week. There, donors wrote $32,400 checks that are split between the national and state Democratic parties.
(The article also has some criticisms of Clinton's fundraising, but I do think there's validity to the point that Sanders supporters have way more reason to be motivated right now and that Clinton supporters will have plenty of reason to care in a general election campaign.
But I consider "vote for the close relatives of former presidents because they have insider knowledge" to not be a compelling argument if we're going to pretend that we're a functional democracy
She was Secretary of State, like George C. Marshall. I'm a little baffled that SECSTATE is suddenly a nonjob.
Also we're doing a real-time experiment with a knifecrimer model of Sanders and you should probably pay attention to the preliminary results.
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The test of this will see if her fundraising numbers skyrocket if Bernie wins Iowa & New Hampshire.
OTOH, the article also mentions that Hillary has tapped out lots of her donors, whereas in December Bernie had a record-breaking 2.3 million person fundraising base who have given nowhere near the limits. If he can keep getting $50 from people over and over again, he has to put in less work recruiting new donors.
143
That statement was a response to a specific comment about her tenure as First Lady. We've already discussed her tenure as Sec of State, if you actually bothered to read the thread.
145 came off harsher than intended, though I get annoyed when people pick things out of context.
Sanders is a much more competent politician than Corbyn.
It's American politics. It's either the low bar, or no bar at all. And if there were no bar, we could never get Moby to vote.
But Moby writes in Rusty Nail on the ballot, which is just throwing his vote away.
If [Sanders] can keep getting $50 from people over and over again, he has to put in less work recruiting new donors.
I feel like you're consistently interperting things in the most favorable way for Sanders. I agree, if he can keep getting $50 from people over and over again, that would make him look like a much stronger candidate (scratch "look like" that would make him a much stronger candidate) but that's also not an easy thing to do.
Also, I have to say this, part of what makes me uncomfortable with Sanders are these numbers:
% of people identifying as "White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent definition and source info White alone, not Hispanic or Latino"
Vermont: 93.5%
Iowa: 87.1%
New Hampshire: 91.3%
Nationally: 62.1%
It is entirely possible that Sanders is doing a good job of building connections to communities of color, but it does make me pause to know that his career and his current lead are both in states that are much whiter than the US as a whole (and much, much whiter than the US Democratic party).
Jeez, people
Frey hits me harder than Lemmy or Bowie. Gotta figure Motorhead fans didn't have girlfriends. You had to have some Eagles laying around in the early seventies.
Wasn't a huge fan, but ubiquitous is the word, and they were the commercial front for a whole mountain of Laurel Canyon artists types that are more dear to my heart, and that will hurt when they go. Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Judee Sill, Joe Walsh. Pure Prairie League. After a while, outlaw country.
Cause I'm more than a little bit country, and at 25 after 60 hours in the concrete canyon I didn't want to go bang my head on the concrete floor with 500 other freaks but just put my feet up on the porch rail with a mason jar and a pipe and listen to Townes or Rocky Mountain Way. City slickers so cray.
Unqualified Masterpiece After Desperado, I think tonight
Funny that 538 just published net favorability ratings that say that Sanders is the only candidate on either side with positive net favorability.
Sanders: 38 favorable, 35 unfavorable
Clinton: 42 favorable, 50 unfavorable
Both are more favorable than all republican candidates, but Clinton is more unfavorable than everyone but Bush and Trump.
I don't think Sanders is as unelectable as everyone thinks. Even my consistently liberal mother keeps saying stupid shit like "I might not vote for Clinton. There's just too much shady stuff there." It doesn't matter how many times I correct her; her mind is made up.
153 Give the Wurlitzer the incentive to focus on Sanders, and they can raise that number.
Is your mother really going to vote for Cruz or Trump? Talk, especially hypothetical talk, is pretty cheap.
I don't think Sanders is as unelectable as everyone thinks
So long as you limit the polling to a period in which he's basically been ignored by the media and the Republican party as someone without a chance of success and is totally unknown except by people who are into him, Sanders does well on "unfavorability" compared to someone whom people know and have strong opinions about. Surprise! Hey, polling magic! But that says literally nothing about what would happen in a general election. Don't be like one of those morons on social media.
Sanders is electable, if the Democratic party nominee, in the minimal sense that there's some real possibility in a two-party system that the candidate of either party can be elected. But it's literally insane to think that the furthest-left member of the Democratic party wouldn't lose tons of voters to any even semi-plausible Republican candidate. He could easily lose enough voters to lose even if the Republicans are dumb enough to nominate a Trump or Cruz.
151
Oh, I don't think it's at all likely Sanders will win. He's still very much an underdog, and my guess is even if he wins Iowa and New Hampshire he'll fade after South Carolina. Whether he can attract non-white voters is also an open question, and he'll lose the primaries if he can't. IF (huge if) he does win the primaries though, he'll have done so by attracting minority voters away from Clinton, which means he'll have basically recreated the Obama coalition (which he'll take into the general), though with less establishment support and more working class white support.*
In terms of broad fundraising support, that Sanders has attracted more individual donations than Obama did in 2008 or 2012 (the previous record), and enough to match Clinton's fundraising totals through small donations (avg $25) is eyebrow-raising, and to me at least somewhat of a game changer in his viability.
*Casual ethnography of Midwestern Republicans reveal they're far less turned off by the label socialist or socialist policies than, say, the writers at the NYTimes. I've had several Republicans tell me they'd vote for a Socialist long before they'd vote for a Democrat, and I've had a different set of Republicans tell me they'd vote for Sanders before they'd vote for Bush, Kasich, Christie, or even Rubio. I doubt this is actually true, but it does show something interesting about Bernie's appeal & the mood of the electorate. Other parts of the US are more Socialist-phobic, but I think that there's something going on that the MSM is just totally getting wrong.
Oh, of course things can change, but it's puzzling to call someone who is starting at 50% unfavorable the more-electable candidate.
Who knows, but if my mom is even considering it I assume that others are too, and some of them may pull that trigger. Or just stay home. Turnout played a big role in at least the 2008 election.
I sort of doubt that the net effect of a Clinton nomination will be a net decline in turnout among female Democrats.
If it was all about being unknown, wouldn't you expect more "don't know" votes? On the Republican side, the mainstream candidates all have ~25-30% DK, except Kasich (53%!) and Trump (9%). This correlates with what you'd expect about the relative knownness of these candidates. But Sanders has the same percentage of DK votes as the Republican field. The current numbers (taken with whatever size grain of salt you want) seem to think that Sanders is slightly more electable then Rubio and substantially more than Cruz or Bush.
I'd buy that, but I think he's also less electable than Clinton. Because I've long ago decided nobody else has a real shot.
I think a good definition of "moderate Republican" is "person whose masturbation fantasies are increasingly implausible scenarios in which Kasich can become known to that 53%."
I don't think those likeable/unlikeable numbers stay remotely close to where they are now in a world in which Rubio, Cruz, or Bush is the actually-existing Republican nominee and Sanders is the Democratic nominee (as opposed to being Nice Grandpa/avatar of discomfort with Hillary). I think that'd be so obvious at this point in time that we could all understand that using those kinds of numbers to actually gauge electability is silly.
Don't forget that it is all just a big popularity contest. Also, Sanders is more gun-friendly and there are a disturbingly large number of people who vote only on the basis of guns.
Anyway, I think Hillary stands a better chance than Sanders, but I don't think those numbers are silly.
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Yeah maybe, though Sanders leads Clinton for millennial women's votes, 50-31. I think it's really stupid too, but I know millennial women who say they'll vote for Hillary over Trump or Cruz, but if it's Rubio vs. Clinton they'll stay home.
Also, Sanders is more gun-friendly and there are a disturbingly large number of people who vote only on the basis of guns.
None of those people are going to start voting for Democrats now if they haven't been doing it recently.
One thing that shocked me last election cycle is that people seemed to assume punditry/political prognostication happen in a vacuum, rather than messages having actual uptake. Last election, Republicans went on an on about how black people were too lazy and stupid to vote like they had in 2008 and their evil plans to obstruct voting would be successful,* which in turn motivated an incredibly active and widespread GOTV campaign in African-American communities. This election, people are saying really loudly all over the news that Sanders can never win because his support comes from young people who won't vote, and it appears to be following a similar pattern.
*It was like the movie scene where the villain is about to kill the hero, but first he gives a long and detailed description of his dastardly plan, which gives the hero enough information to derail it.
That was a bigger difference that i was expecting, so I did a quick google. Apparently, that figure is among Democratic and Independent millennial women. I'm not exactly sure what to make of that and how it would effect things compared to just looking at Democrats, but I wouldn't compare it directly to the other "likely voter" figures.
166: Right, but they might answer a poll with "unfavorable" for Clinton and "favorable" or "DK" for Sanders.
Last election, Republicans went on an on about how black people were too lazy and stupid to vote like they had in 2008 and their evil plans to obstruct voting would be successful...
They were actually far, far, far, more stupid than that. They (or at least Rove and, most magnificently, that "unskewed" guy) weighted polling data to match the world they thought they were living in. I don't think anybody is doing that with the polls this time.
I'm not at all convinced that the GOP has become less stupid in the past four years.
I did a nine mile walk through Frick Park this morning, and it wasn't that bad except on some of the less protected hilltops. Very pretty in this weather.
Late on this and it's presumably only until midnight, but Audible.com has King's Stride Towards Freedom, his memoir of the Montgomery bus boycott, as the Daily Deal sale for only $3.
I'm not naive enough to believe that the numbers are absolute and won't change. I am surprised at how favorable they are. And isn't the demonization process largely independent of the candidate's actual policies? Is there any moderate (read: ignorant capricious voter) who would look at the media's portrayal of the policies of Clinton and Sanders and say "yep, I'll vote Clinton, but not Sanders"?
I am genuinely uncertain if, if the media did a full court press on "wait, communists are bad, everyone remembers that", it would resonate enough to make Sanders' name mud. Very possibly it could send him as far down as Hillary, since most of her disapproval comes from Republicans anyway. But at least I have to assume it would make a dent, given the average age of the voting public.
I've had several Republicans tell me they'd vote for a Socialist long before they'd vote for a Democrat, and I've had a different set of Republicans tell me they'd vote for Sanders before they'd vote for Bush, Kasich, Christie, or even Rubio.
Complete outsider speaking here, but it is difficult to believe there is really a significant demographic of habitual Republican voters who would pick the atheist east-coast socialist on the Democratic ticket over whoever was on the Republican ticket. People do seem to tell Buttercup the oddest things.
There are a non-trivial number of people here who view "Democrat" (and "liberal") as labels for evil or the other or whatever. These are usually low information voters, if you get what I mean. The idea of an ideological continuum on which Socialist is a point further from Republican than Democrat would be quite beyond them, especially if the Socialist hadn't had Paula Jones murdered by the White House travel office.
Not that I think they'd actual vote for Sanders in numbers that would make him more likely to win a general election than Clinton.
The idea of an ideological continuum on which Socialist is a point further from Republican than Democrat would be quite beyond them
But Sanders, if he runs, will be running as a Democrat. That's what I find really startling: the second part of Buttercup's description, that there is a group of self-identified Republicans who would rather vote for Sanders, the atheist east-coast socialist Democratic candidate, than "Bush, Kasich, Christie or Rubio".
The first group, who'd vote socialist before Democrat, could I suppose just be your low-info instinctively anti-Democrat voters who don't know what a socialist is.
People tend to be polite in person, and try to come across well to their audience. So I can imagine someone who knows Buttercup is a leftist who tries to thread the needle by saying they hate the Democrats for "corruption" or something similarly vague. Come election time they'll probably still end up voting for Cruz.
182: or they're just trying to wind her up and see how far they can go before she cottons on and goes "waiiiiit...." I am fairly sure that's what all those Chinese guys were doing with the whole "No, Zhang Ziyi's pretty unattractive by our standards, bit of a minger really" thing.
There is some number of Republicans who hate Wall Street, and perceive that Democrats are as much in bed with Wall Street as Republicans. I could see how they would support the Socialist as anti-Wall Street.
And Sanders, even as "Sanders (D)", would still be more acceptable to them than any Republican? I mean, I can see a preference ordering of Sanders --------- Clinton-Rubio, with a big gap between Sanders and Clinton and a small one between Clinton and Rubio. But if Sanders isn't running, they sit the election out or go to Clinton. That's not these guys. These guys are Republicans! So their ordering is, presumably, Sanders-----------Rubio---Clinton. Who walks into the polling booth and thinks "ooh, I'd really love to be able to vote for Bernie Sanders (or Liz Warren or someone) to stick it to Wall Street, but dammit, they aren't running, so I guess it's Rubio for me!" I mean, I get there are people with a visceral hatred of Clintons, but I can't see that many of them will be feeling the Bern given the opportunity.
There's an elephant in this room and it's not the Republican.
185: I don't think everybody has realized Sanders is running as a Democrat or even who he is.
185. I was talking to a retired officer USN, who told me that he had it from people he trusts and who are closer to the action ("former flag officers..."), as it were, that HRC is frequently abusive towards her security detail, even to the point of physically lashing out at them. If this is even partly true, then it goes far beyond the general assertions we all hear that she has "a bad relationship with the forces", and IMO it should disqualify her from the presidency (or from running a whelk stall). It means that she is probably unable to work constructively with any subordinate she hasn't appointed herself.
The guy who told me this regards himself as left of center by American standards ("If Trump is elected I'll go to Canada"), and would ordinarily vote straight D. He wouldn't make something like this up, and he clearly believes the people who tell him about it to be honest and truthful. I really want to know what the facts are, because if this became a general talking point I would have thought it would have the potential to sink her campaign.
If Sanders won the nomination, my TV would be full of nothing but ads pointing out things Sanders supported that were "too liberal even for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama." But until somebody runs those ads, the polls won't show the pattern you expect.
188: Those same stories have been circulating since 1992. I think they just copied them from what they said about Elanor Roosevelt. I wouldn't give them any credence.
I don't know Clinton first hand (though I did shake hands will Bill once). But that same type of story has circulated about every female Democrat I've ever heard of. And the stories are always at least second hand. Given how long the Clintons have been around, there are plenty of security people who worked for them who are now safely retired. They wouldn't need to fear being fired and could turn a fair profit for saying the "Hillary was mean to me" on the TV.
190 - in 24 years of Hillary Clinton beating up her security detail, you'd think someone would have gone on the record about it. That's impressive discretion.
And, let's face it, what could be more credible than the suggestion that a 68-year-old middle-class female lawyer is in the habit of punching armed (and, for that matter, armoured) US Secret Service agents?
Pwned by Moby because I was distracted by being kicked in the head by Aunt Dahlia.
I had to eat breakfast so there was a pause between 190 and 191.
A two hour school delay for cold means I can have some eggs instead of grabbing a bagel on the go.
I mean, honestly. 68 years old, female, no criminal record, no history of violence, no history of substance abuse or mental illness... if there's a demographic less likely to be physically violent, I don't know it. And assault is a serious crime!
Any rumors about her use of rum and sodomy?
I can totally buy conservative people saying they'd vote for Sanders over a bunch of GOP candidates, especially in the crazy political climate we have in the US right now. Whether it's hyperbole or they're serious is very much in doubt. The right likes to say crazy shit. There were conservatives threatening to move to Canada if Obama was elected, for example.
199 should have been from me.
198: Instead they stayed put and bought a fuckton of guns. Hooray.
There was some testiness between Clinton and her security detail back in 1992 when she still was adjusting to being followed around everywhere. One incident I involved her asking a member of her security detail to carry some bags, apparently not realizing that the security detail needs hands free, IIRC. Since then I haven't heard much of anything, and it's not like the Secret Service is completely buttoned up. If she was in the habit of behaving badly towards them I suspect it would be all over Fox News. Heck, I suspect it will be all over Fox News regardless of whether it's true or not.
190 et seq. I was kinda hoping that was not the case, because if so it seems to be getting traction among the sort of people who should be her core demographic.
and it's not like the Secret Service is completely buttoned up
They have had a little problem with remembering whether or not they are supposed to tell prostitutes about their jobs.
"I can totally buy conservative people saying they'd vote for Sanders over a bunch of GOP candidates, especially in the crazy political climate we have in the US right now."
Actually, thinking about it - there are people (mad people) out there saying that if Clinton is nominated, it would be better for her to lose, because that will really motivate the Democratic base next time around. So I suppose you might have the opposite: Republicans who despise Rubio (or whoever) so much that they would rather see him lose in order to get a proper candidate on the ballot in 2020.
And they might, hyperbolically, say that they would actually help make this happen? By voting for Sanders?
You're still overthinking this. Something like 30% of U.S. adults can't identify the Republican party as the more conservative. I don't run into these people often, but that doesn't mean they aren't around.
206: good grief. Still, low-information undecideds are really unlikely to vote, so can probably be ignored...
201: If they bought the guns and moved, it'd be Fenian Raid 2: Electric Boogaloo.
I want to see the fund raiser for that.
Paul Ryan showed up in my Facebook as "People you may know". Is that a thing now?
Y'all are missing some really important details. There are tons of conservatives who don't feel loyalty to the Republicans, and they HATE Jeb Bush, almost as much as they hate Hillary, whom they hate with black hole levels of hatred. They hate John Boehner and Mitch McConnell equally as much, and anyone who is in any way an "establishment" R candidate. They know Bernie is a straight talking outsider who is an anathema to the D establishment. There are people who are pissed off enough to at least toy with the idea of voting for the grumpy Jewish Atheist East Coast socialist over anyone who has any sort of establishment backing.
The Midwest has been within the far bounds of living memory pretty socialist. Socialists routinely won elections, the Farmer-Labor party was popular, and Socialist didn't map onto Democrat at all until FDR, but that wasn't always an easy mapping. Republican-Socialist has been as common a continuum in the upper Midwest as Democrat-Socialist. It's sort of like the phenomenon that made public attitudes on gay people switch--when you have socialists in the family, you're a lot less likely to totally demonize them. (This effect is starting to dissipate at the last major socialist generation is dying out, but it's still there, and it's at least somewhat present in some voters 30+). Again, this is a dynamic that is totally not understood by political pundits.
Anyways, I don't really think that lots of Republicans will vote for Bernie, but again, there is intense amounts of populist rage that isn't following the playbook of how elections "ought" to go.
TL:DR Right populism can run into left populism before it runs to center left/right establishment support.
And Zhang Ziyi not being hot by Chinese standards is a thing. The longer I lived there, the less attractive I started to find her, as I started getting acclimatized to Chinese beauty standards.
Anyways, I don't really think that lots of Republicans will vote for Bernie
Right, that's what I thought. Come the day, they'll troop off and vote for whoever's got an (R) after their name. All this populist rage Sanders-before-Rubio thing is just "oh-well-I'll-move-to-Canada" level posturing.
TBH, what I thought might harm Bernie more than his socialism is being Jewish, because in the past I've experienced a decent amount of latent anti-Semitism among Right-wing midwesterners. Though surprisingly, I haven't heard anyone bring that up as an issue. It could be people don't realize he is Jewish, or that his straight-talking anti-establishment persona trumps (ha) that.
This is pre sustained negative campaigning against him, so it could change. OTOH, people are pissed off enough that negative ads from super pacs may be dismissed as "the Establishment" trying to take down the everyman candidates, such as with Jeb's intensive ad campaign. (Everyman including an orange billionaire)
I didn't know he was Jewish until just now.
Anecdotally from working in Louisiana, people in the deep south are still pretty anti-semitic. Or at least, thoroughly under-exposed to people who happen to be Jewish.
Anecdote #1: I was talking to a (young, female, very liberal) colleague, and I commented that the person we had just met sorta looked like Seth Rogen. Her response: "Oh my god, I KNOW! Soooo Jew-y!!!"
Anecdote #2: [this actually happened more than once] Someone looks at my last name, squints, looks at me, looks at my name some more, and then says, "You Jewish?" When I explain that it's a Polish last name and that I grew up Catholic in Chicago, they say, "Well, I thought maybe with that nose..."
He wouldn't make something like this up, and he clearly believes the people who tell him about it to be honest and truthful.
He likely associates with a large number of people whose opinions of Hillary are the product of decades of Fox/Drudge/radio marination, but who may still be trustworthy in the day-to-day matters he can judge.
This is probably a good place to post the breaking new that Palin endorsed Trump.
That changes everything! I'll be dying my hair orange and buying an AR15 before the week is out.
Actually, she's probably got 150 Iowans in her rolodex for whom a call from her promoting him would make a real difference, and a difference in the caucuses.
I agree with everything that Buttercup has written here. All of it, and will take any bet that Tigre cares to make.
Come the day, they'll troop off and vote for whoever's got an (R) after their name.
No they won't. They aren't Republican anymore. They're Fox News voters and the two have diverged. They feel deeply, deeply betrayed by Republicans, and they aren't going to vote for the (R) just because. They also aren't self-disciplined enough to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Look, here is Devin Nunes (DEVIN NUNES of all people) saying that his constituency has gone nuts. FoxNews voters are unpredictable crazypeople right now, and they HATE Clinton. Information will not change their minds.
222.last: I saw that (Nunes wankfest) and laughed at the gall. Whocoodanode?!
I was just dying. Nunes is the voice of sense? Nunes?!? The situation is so bad that Nunes is complaining?
You know, his blog posts were always decently written and coherent (although not my viewpoint). I assumed he doesn't write them himself. But maybe he did and his thought is coherent enough that even he cannot fathom his crazyass constituents.
This is pre sustained negative campaigning against him, so it could change. OTOH, people are pissed off enough that negative ads from super pacs may be dismissed
Campaign attacks don't just come in the form of ads. I hadn't thought about it until now, but the most effective bit of negative information that I came across in the 2012 campaign was the story about Romney strapping his dog to the roof of his car. I have no idea who found that story, or if anyone from a campaign helped publicize it, but that was the point when I moved from hoping that Romney lost to hoping that Romney would be humiliated.
And I'm not even an animal person.
I agree with everything that Buttercup has written here. All of it, and will take any bet that Tigre cares to make.
Just to cherry-pick, do you agree that Bill Clinton "managed to not fuck [up]" the Reagan/Bush economy?
More seriously, from my point of view, I'm not sure there's a bet to be made because I think we all agree both that (a) Clinton will probably win the primary and (b) that if Clinton loses that would reflect badly on her and well on Sanders.
The main point of dispute is how much the primary to date changes one's pre-existing opinions of Clinton/Sanders. I understand Buttercup to be arguing that it hasn't changer her opinion of Clinton that much (since she was already disposed to dislike Clinton), but has changed her opinion of Sanders significantly. Whereas I'd say that so far I haven't changed my opinion of either of them that much.
You're suggesting that I go back and look at what BCup actually wrote?
When I call somebody B-cup, Human Resources gets involved.
Just to cherry-pick, do you agree that Bill Clinton "managed to not fuck [up]" the Reagan/Bush economy?
The main point of dispute is how much the primary to date changes one's pre-existing opinions of Clinton/Sanders. I understand Buttercup to be arguing that it hasn't changer her opinion of Clinton that much (since she was already disposed to dislike Clinton), but has changed her opinion of Sanders significantly. Whereas I'd say that so far I haven't changed my opinion of either of them that much.
It's funny that you've claimed to have read I'll I've written, because you've gotten all of it wrong.
222: Fox News viewers hate Clinton, so if Sanders is the nominee they're all going to vote for Sanders over the Republican nominee? What's the mechanism? If Sanders is the nominee, Fox News will have painted him as worse than Hitler by July.
They can't paint him as worse than Hitler because Hitler was in favor of gun control.
229
You're missing that Fox News viewers also hate Jeb, Kasich, Christie, and to a slightly lesser extent, Rubio, though now they know he wears girlie boots the disgust is rising. The establishment hates Trump and Cruz. What happens with the Republican nomination is going to be interesting, regardless of the direction. I've been reading NRO coverage of the Republican primaries + comments every day so I know what I'm talking about. The base hates the R establishment almost as much as they hate Hillary and more than they hate Obama, if you believe that possible.*
*They think he's a dictator, after all, and there is something manly about that. There's no manliness in "Mitch Rodham McConnell" or the "weeping orangutan" (Boehner).
Kasich is going to eat a puppy at the next debate.
It's funny that you've claimed to have read I'll I've written, because you've gotten all of it wrong.
By all means, please correct me. Other than the comment about Reagan/Bush which was clearly snark (indicated by the fact that it was preceded by "cherry-picking" and followed by "seriously"). I was trying to be accurate. Here's why I attributed each of those beliefs to you.
1) Clinton is likely to win the primary:
156: Oh, I don't think it's at all likely Sanders will win.
2) If Clinton loses that would reflect well on Sanders:
127: I checked out of the Democratic primary since it seemed pretty settled, and during that time Bernie has gained massive amounts of support. As of now he and Hillary are splitting the Obama coalition, with Bernie getting young people (and also working class whites, which were not part of the original Obama coalition) and Hillary getting people of color (+ the Democratic establishment, which she had initially in 2008).
[Upon re-reading I notice something that I missed before; the one place in which you clearly set your views in opposition to other people in the thread: Where I differ is I think Bernie would be a better president from Hillary, because I'd rather have a president try and fail with a grand leftist vision than 4-8 years of people but that didn't seem like the primary thread of the ongoing discussion. It didn't seem to me like you continued to argue that position (I don't doubt that you believe it, I just don't know that it ended up being the focus)].
The claim that your opinion of Sanders has shifted more than your opinion of Clinton and that you were predisposed to dislike Clinton:
Clinton: Hillary is proving herself to be a shitty campaigner for the second time in a row
I absolutely remember NAFTA, welfare reform, banking deregulation, and Bill Clinton championing Tony Blair as his partner in neoliberalism. Maybe Hillary is to the Left of her husband, or maybe not, but there's a reason so many people voted for Nader in 2000, and that's because Clinton 1 really was Republicanism lite
Sanders: I think one thing that changed how I viewed Bernie's candidacy was the fact he's matching or at least competing with Clinton on fundraising. If the man can get Obama levels of funding through the same methods, he has 1) way more popularity and 2) a much better campaign infrastructure than I had initially assumed.
One thing that shocked me last election cycle is that people seemed to assume punditry/political prognostication happen in a vacuum, rather than messages having actual uptake. Last election, Republicans went on an on about how black people were too lazy and stupid to vote like they had in 2008 and their evil plans to obstruct voting would be successful,* which in turn motivated an incredibly active and widespread GOTV campaign in African-American communities. This election, people are saying really loudly all over the news that Sanders can never win because his support comes from young people who won't vote, and it appears to be following a similar pattern.
So, that's what I was working off of. Let me know how I managed to get "all of it wrong."
I've been reading NRO coverage of the Republican primaries + comments every day
Dear god, why?
Side note, I think this is a fairly good article about the state of the primary which, it seems like, we could both agree with.
... liberal-leaning Iowans are seriously thinking about which candidate better represents their values and their ideals, and about which candidate has a better shot at bringing about the major change they feel is still necessary.
And many of them are concluding that Bernie Sanders is that candidate.
The pervading sense at Sanders events -- both from the candidate's speeches and from my interviews with attendees of all ages -- is that something is very wrong with America, and that serious change is required to fix it.
. . .
A key to Sanders in winning over these voters is that he has a very specific theory of what Obama did wrong: He played too much of an inside game focused on Washington wins rather than being an organizer in chief. "The major political, strategic difference I have with Obama," Sanders told me when I profiled him in 2014, "is it's too late to do anything inside the Beltway. You gotta take your case to the American people, mobilize them, and organize them at the grassroots level in a way that we have never done before."
. . .
In retrospect, the problem with [the Clinton campaign] is that it's not particularly inspiring. If you feel that something is badly wrong with our politics, the argument that Clinton will be an effective steward of a dysfunctional Washington doesn't particularly appeal to people's ideals or hopes.
I'm still suspicious that this is a "change election" and that Sanders' message would play as well in the general election as it does in the primary (because I think highly-engaged voters are more likely to have a specific sense of what they dislike about current American politics), but I do think that Clinton is obviously the "status quo" candidate and that there are a lot of people who would like big changes.
this is a "change election"
Incidentally, I am suspicious in part because this is the argument that I see Republican flacks making when they are trying to make an argument which doesn't require them to defend the current group of Republican candidates and want to attack Hillary -- for example. It just feels too convenient.
The base hates the R establishment almost as much as they hate Hillary and more than they hate Obama, if you believe that possible.
I don't think that's possible, no. Moreover, I don't believe you have any evidence to support such a contention. If you do, please share it. Regardless, I know some movement conservatives, including activists who are deeply hostile to the GOP establishment, and the idea that they hate Jeb Bush or John Kasich or Marco Rubio anywhere near as much as they hate either Clinton or President Obama beggars belief. That's anecdata, admittedly, but at least it's something.
They might say they do, but imo that's just signalling.
The point will be moot by this time on March 1. If Sanders can run the table on Super Tuesday, he'll have earned his shot. And let's just hope Tigre's 24% wasn't an overstatement. If not, well, if he can't beat HRC among Dems, then he's pretty unlikely to be beating a Republican. Especially if it's Trump, and I'm kind of thinking maybe it will be Trump.
I'll eat my hat if Sanders wins. Heck, Sanders will eat his hat if he wins. I suspect he doesn't even want to win, is the thing. And I say this as someone who has supported him from the get-go (though also someone who thinks he's not wearing especially well as a candidate). Regardless, it's good for Clinton to face a serious test during the primary. And if she can't knock him out in the South, the party needs to think about other alternatives. As you say, we'll see.
Sort-of on topic: You know you're getting old when your friends are running for office. And getting elected. Life is weird.
You know you're getting old when your friends are running for office.
35's not that old.
It's just really surreal. And these are activisty people. Who now have to spend inordinate amounts of time raising money, so they can continue to be activistish elected officials in low-level offices.
They don't even have to do TV ads and still they have to spend hours every day fundraising. Our system is so screwed up. No wonder Senate seats go to hereditary traditions or rich people or both.
(That was funny, Josh. I'm just not in a mood to appreciate it fully.)
238
Well, I have been reading NRO coverage of the primary plus all the comments on the NRO primary articles every day for the past 6 months, with occasional forays into other right wing sites (Althouse, Red State, Political, RCP, etc.). But please continue to mansplain to me how you know way more than someone whose been reading tens of thousands of words of primary source material on Conservative viewpoints on the candidates.
233
Ah, I didn't realize you meant your first statement as snark. Maybe I misread your statement, but my change in opinion is solely on the viability of their campaigns, rather than my opinion of Sanders & Clinton in terms of their policy positions. I have always liked Sanders more than Clinton, which makes sense, because I registered Social Democrat in 1998 and actively campaigned on behalf of the Socialist candidate in 2000. The only change that I've had is that I assumed, like everyone else, that Sanders wasn't running a real campaign, and basically zoned out from the Democratic primary. When I checked back in, Sanders had closed Clinton's national lead from 20 points to 8 (it's now gone back up to about 12-13, according to RCP), is neck and neck in Iowa and ahead in New Hampshire. He's also been matching or even exceeding Clinton's fundraising totals (mid 20 million per quarter) from a much wider donor base, and spending only a tiny fraction of what she has, so his cash on hand is much greater. I still think Clinton is the overwhelming favorite, but Bernie Sanders, who is as much a professional politician as Hillary, is a legitimate, viable, presidential candidate, and given the current data, I'm not sure how people can continue to treat him like a joke, beyond cognitive inability to wrap their minds around the fact the Americans will vote for a Socialist. I get suspicious of this sort of conventional wisdom(TM), because it always feels more like wish fulfillment on the part of those most invested in the status quo (i.e. the upper middle class and upper class pundits who write articles about how America hates socialists). Americans have proven that, 7 years after 9-11, they'd elect a black man with the middle name of Hussein, so I don't think we can a priori write off the chance they might vote for a grumpy gun rights-supporting Socialist.
I agree the proof is in the pudding, and we can't do much more than see how this plays out.
245: I'm torn between thinking I should be less dismissive about Sanders chances and thinking NH is really close to VT.
I have been reading NRO coverage of the primary plus all the comments on the NRO primary articles every day for the past 6 months
The sources that you're not linking are agitprop. You know that, right?
245, 247: it's an outlier poll for now, but he's been leading in New Hampshire for quite a while now, and the lead has been growing lately.
248
You...know what textual analysis is, right?
Never heard of it. I mostly work with R.
It's just really surreal. And these are activisty people. Who now have to spend inordinate amounts of time raising money, so they can continue to be activistish elected officials in low-level offices.
They don't even have to do TV ads and still they have to spend hours every day fundraising. Our system is so screwed up.
Word. I've recently seen a couple of local campaigns fairly up-close, and it's astonishing how unpleasant the life of a candidate looks. Definitely cured me of any desire to run for office myself.
The electability argument is that with Clinton, the election is boring versus crazy, in which case boring wins. If Sanders is the nominee, then the media will paint it as crazy versus crazy.
Agreed.
However, if it's Sanders versus Trump, then the NYC tabloid press will depict it as the Ultimate Outer Boroughs Matchup: The Boy from Brooklyn versus the Kid from Queens! Yes, Bernie carved out his political career representing the state of Vermont; and Trump became The Donald in Manhattan; ... but if it's Sanders versus Trump, it will be Brooklyn versus Queens in the NY Daily News, you mark my words.
Is 'mainstream,' 'heartland' America really ready for this NYC outer boroughs deathmatch? I tend to doubt it, but I'm ready to be surprised.
Hitler without the gun control would do quite well in the Republican primary.
Just to jocksplain for a bit: the matchup polls really don't suggest that there's a big bloc of voters who would back Sanders against an establishment Republican, but the establishment Republican against Clinton. Quite the opposite :Clinton does better against establishment candidates, Sanders does better against the freaks. What that suggests to me is that there are a lot of voters whose preferences go Clinton-Rubio-Sanders-Trump.
There are also a few stories about Republican organisations paying for ads that attack Clinton and support Sanders, which doesn't suggest that they see Sanders as the main threat.
The Brooklyn vs. Queens street corner throw down death match scenario appears to be eventuatin' - check out the Daily News headline:
https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/689646588382298113/photo/1
Something weird is going on with the Daily News -- I haven't read it in decades, but the headlines have been noticeably good, in a tabloid kind of way, lately.
It is really quite disturbing, from a UK perspective at least, to see something that looks and sounds like a tabloid but is actually saying things you agree with. It's like eating a steak that turns out to be chocolate-flavoured.
Now you've made me want to trying putting mole on my next steak.
The News has always (in my memory) been the less evil NY tab, but it's also usually been kind of dull. The string of interestingly political headlines seems new.
(In the late eighties, a local Long Island tab, Newsday, tried to move into the city, and I thought it was great, but it didn't make money and they gave up. I can't recall if they just retreated to LI, or if they went out of business entirely.)
260 They've been absolutely killing it on the guns issue for a number of years now.
Is there any functional difference between Long Island and death?
I've seen virtually all of the New York City area, as long as it's all basically the same as the part between Battery Park and that one art museum in Central Park.
Brief googling isn't turning it up, but around the time the US invaded Afghanistan the Daily News ran the headline "See ya later, Al Qaeda," which, say what you will about the complete lack of viable long-term strategy in Operation Enduring Freedom, I was glad to see that we as a nation were back to making bad jokes.
It's still no "Headless Body in Topless Bar."
Death doesn't have clams
If this is not yet a Boston-set noir thriller, it needs to be.
It is really quite disturbing, from a UK perspective at least, to see something that looks and sounds like a tabloid but is actually saying things you agree with.
You're too young to remember the Mirror before Maxwell?
Philly's tabloid, also called the "Daily News", used to be the left-wing paper in the city. (It's basically merged with its competitor, so I don't know if it's still true.)
You're too young to remember the Mirror before Maxwell?
Yes.
That sucks. My loyalty is with Queens. I guess I'll have to vote for Trump over Bernie.
257
Of course. Most of the center would prefer Clinton-Rubio/Kasich/Jeb/Christie - Cruz/Sanders/Trump. This is the general viewpoint the NY Times has been pushing, and in general people who are centrist elites consider a potential Sanders presidency the stuff of nightmares. TBH I am not sure they would prefer him to Trump, because Trump isn't as overtly hostile to the interests of money. Nor do I think there's all that much exciting going on with the Dems. Feelings are running higher than tepid, but in the end if Hillary is the nominee the majority of the party will gather around her, especially once the general election gets going. Obama/Hillary was far more contentious, but few Hillary voters sat home rather than vote for Obama. If Sanders DOES win the primary, then the Democratic party is less sanguine than I thought, and he'll have a better chance in the general than anyone would assume he does now, though how the Democratic establishment would react is anyone's guess (I noted that Bloomberg has floated a third party run if it's Trump v Sanders). The Republicans would absolutely prefer Rubio/Jeb vs. the grumpy socialist, because they also see Sanders as a terrifying joke. The question is what sort of influence the Republican establishment has over an increasingly restive base that is feeling less and less loyalty to the Party.
The real issue is that the Republican party is having a giant implosion in real time. Angry conservative mobs have deposed their own Speaker of the House, House Majority Leader, and are trying to take down their Senate Majority Leader. They've pretty profoundly rejected the establishment candidate, and they're threatening in unprecedented numbers to sit out the election if Trump or Cruz are not the nominee. Some of this is trash talk, sure, but let's compare it to the Romney election, where Romney lost in part because of a depressed white turnout. Romney came out dinged from a long and bitter primary where much of the base didn't really want him, but the levels of vitriol towards Romney and (more importantly towards the Republican Party) were a tiny fraction of what they are now. Right Wing "news" sites, blogs, and their discussion sections are partial data, and any one post taken in isolation doesn't mean much, but in aggregate over a sustained period of time, meaningful patterns are discernible. The absolute disgust for the Republican establishment and its apparatuses is one that is becoming very clear, visibly ramping up from 4 years ago, and its one which is backed up by concrete data like polls and of course, real world events (see Cantor getting successfully primaried; Boehner getting run out of office with a pitch fork, Cruz calling McConnell (his OWN superior) a liar on the senate floor, Fox News losing the fight with Trump, etc.)
Born to Brooklyn but lived in Queens gives me a choice. I'll have to go with my roots.
The real issue is that the Republican party is having a giant implosion in real time.
That's what I keep hoping.
It'd be really weird if NYC had both party's political candidates (and possibly a third party insurgency from Bloomberg) as well as 4/9 on the Supreme Court.
All the while not being part of Real America.
Well, you can't expect Real Americans to actually run anything.
I haven't seen a whole lot written on this, but I wonder if Sanders's surge in support is from people who thought nominating him would be suicide until they saw the Republicans are running out of plausible ways they can deny that Trump and Cruz are their front runners. If Trump is the GOP nominee, it might be the only chance in a very long time to get a socialist in the white house.
Well, you can't expect Real Americans to actually run anything.
In the criminal justice system of Argand America, the people are protected by two separate yet equally important groups. The Real Americans who investigate crime, and the Imaginary Americans who prosecute it. These are their stories.
I think 281 is a lot of what's happening. But as I said above, I don't think the risk is even close to being worth the potential reward. You're gambling with a very serious risk of President Cruz, and the upside is a guy who at best will govern very very slightly to the left of the competent mainstream Democrat candidate (who is almost sure to beat Cruz or Trump).
I think it's important to treat the implosion of the Republican Party as a hypothesis, not a certainty.
in the end if Hillary is the nominee the majority of the party will gather around her, especially once the general election gets going
I think this is obviously true. See, for example, Nate Silver, "it would be easy to forget that most Democrats really like both candidates. Ann Selzer's recent poll for the Des Moines Register had Clinton with an 86 percent favorable rating among Iowa caucus-goers, while Sanders was at 89 percent."
Looking that up, I see that Fivethirtyeight posted a conversation about the state of the Democratic primary today:
natesilver: FWIW, our FiveThirtyEight national polling average (which we're not publishing yet -- stay tuned) has Clinton up 22 percentage points. Although that was before the Monmouth poll released today, which might tighten things a bit. But somewhere in the high teens or perhaps low 20s nationally is where the race seems to be. By contrast, our averaging method would have had Clinton up by 25 points at the end of December.
So that suggests some tightening, but not as much as the media narrative -- which is pretty blatantly cherry-picking which polls it emphasizes -- seems to imply.
. . .
micah: All right, so let's posit that the tightening of the race in Iowa and (to a lesser extent) the nation is real and lasting. Sanders leads in New Hampshire. Is Sanders a real threat to win the nomination now?
natesilver: Define real.
clare.malone: I think that's definitely going to change over the next week or so. The New York Times had a big piece this morning about how the Clinton campaign is changing its strategy given the Bernie bump (which, incidentally, sounds like a really fun dance move, no?).
harry: My New York accent is real. My ability to drive is also real, but not really real.
micah: Real means >25 percent chance.
natesilver: Sell.
micah: 20 percent.
harry: Sell.
natesilver: Still selling.
micah: [let's give the #feeltheberners a moment to leave an angry comment]
15 percent.
natesilver: That's about where Betfair has it, for what it's worth.
harry: I'm sorry, but -- knowing I've been paid off by my corporate overlords -- here's what I see: There's just little-to-no sign that Clinton has lost any traction among black voters. The most recent YouGov poll has her up 75 percent to 18 percent among black Democrats. The most recent Morning Consult poll has her ahead 71 percent to 14 percent. The most recent Monmouth poll has her up 71 percent to 21 percent among non-white voters. Sanders would need to close that gap to have any chance in South Carolina. And remember, Clinton was only up by 7 percentage points at this point among non-white voters in the 2008 cycle.
natesilver: Indeed. That, along with her support from the party establishment, is why Clinton is the heavy favorite. But at what point does the price on Bernie become attractive to you?
If I could get him at 20-1 (implying about a 5 percent chance of winning), I'd take it.
harry: Yes. I think that's fair.
275: I don't see where they say that white turnout was depressed. I would have assumed it was demographics.
Just reading the NYT article linked in the excerpt in 286, it's oddly negative towards both campaigns. It implies that Clinton has been very lazy organizing for the primary, but the final comment about the Sanders campaign isn't very positive either.
Mr. Sanders's campaign has also been crunching the delegate math. It says he can outperform Mrs. Clinton with white voters and voters under 45, who favor Mr. Sanders two to one, and pick up delegates in states that have caucuses rather than primaries.
His campaign is optimistic in states like Colorado, Minnesota and Wyoming -- which hold caucuses, a system that favors the party's most liberal voters -- as well as in other states with relatively small and mostly white populations of Democrats.
"To be a Democrat in Oklahoma, you've got to be real liberal," said Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Mr. Sanders.
If that ends up being the way that things play out -- that Sanders ends up scraping out a victory based on white voters, young voters, and caucuses, I will, frankly, be pissed off at the Clinton campaign. I don't think it's likely, but I think that would be a worst case scenario for the primaries (in terms of what it would mean for the general election).
I don't see where they say that white turnout was depressed. I would have assumed it was demographics.
White turnout dropped from 2008 to 2012 - but then so did everyone else's turnout.
Turnout 2014 2012 2010 2008
White 40.8% 61.8% 45.0% 65.2%
Black 36.4% 67.4% 41.6% 69.1%
Hispanic 21.1% 43.1% 26.6% 46.5%
Other 24.5% 45.4% 30.7% 48.0%
Share 2014 2012 2010 2008
White 76.9% 74.1% 77.9% 76.6%
Black 11.9% 13.2% 11.4% 12.3%
Hispanic 7.0% 8.3% 6.8% 7.3%
Other 4.2% 4.4% 3.9% 3.8%
287
Ah, I meant to link to this article, which is linked to in the piece I linked to.
The total number of white voters actually decreased between 2008 and 2012, the first such drop by any group within the population since the bureau started to issue such statistics in 1996.
In terms of participation rates, the Census survey said that 66 percent of eligible black voters turned out last November, compared to 64 percent of eligible white voters. In the course of three presidential elections, from 2004 to 2012, black participation has gone from seven points lower than white participation to two points higher.
White turnout declined by about 2 million.
It would not surprise me to learn that the Palin endorsement was orchestrated by the Republicasn establishment in order to damage Trump.
165: Yeah maybe, though Sanders leads Clinton for millennial women's votes, 50-31. I think it's really stupid too, but I know millennial women who say they'll vote for Hillary over Trump or Cruz, but if it's Rubio vs. Clinton they'll stay home.
I'm ... having trouble parsing this. Why? Why would they stay home?
Um, Hillary is a lesser evil than Trump or Cruz.
At the same time, Hillary is .. what, an equal evil to Rubio? So just don't vote?
I must be missing something.
the upside is a guy who at best will govern very very slightly to the left of the competent mainstream Democrat candidate
I strongly disagree with this. I don't expect either of them to be able to get much through Congress, and which would be better on that front I think is a tough question but I would probably give a slight nod to Hillary. But I would expect the executive branch action in Sanders' administration to be MUCH better than what we'll get in Clinton's administration. And without much cooperation from Congres, executive branch activity is really most of the ballgame.
I'm more worried about which might help Democrats control state houses. If the 2020 redistricting in reasonable, Congress won't be so awful.
Or at least wouldn't have to be that awful.
If the 2020 redistricting in reasonable, Congress won't be so awful.
That may be reliant on Hillary's second term coat-tails, which I'm not super-optimistic about.
293 is ludicrous for at least two reasons. First, what, specifically, do you have in mind? Any executive branch action also takes agency action, and is limited in scope. There's basically no chance for any of Bernie's more radical plans to get pushed through by executive action alone, and the liberal nudges that are possible are precisely the kinds of things that Clinton (or Obama) are already doing. Foreign policy is actually the area where Sanders and Clinton are closest -- he isn't a pacifist, at all, and she's way less of a hawk than advertised.
Second, even if you're right, the benefit of marginal improvements over Clinton you could get through executive action alone in a Bernie presidency aren't even close to being worth the risk of a President Cruz.
297: I would expect a MUCH more progressively-aggressive SEC under Sanders than Clinton. And CFPB. And FTC. And Dept of Justice. And likely EPA. And possibly IRS.
Good luck. The SEC is a largely independent agency, and certainly won't turn on a dime. Even if it did, if the Obama administration has taught us anything, it's that the SEC runs by its own rules. DOJ is part of the cabinet, but if anything is even less subject to political change on a dime than the SEC. Prosecute more corporate crimes? That's not going to happen without a massive change in both the law and in attitudes of prosecutors, which won't happen with a one-term President. Antitrust enforcement through the FTC? Again, same problem. On the EPA, they are already moving forward about as fast as they can without Congress, and Clinton certainly won't stop that.
And, critically, to the extent that any of those administrative agencies actually tried radical change in any sense that would make a difference in a Sanders v. Clinton presidency, they would be shut down immediately by the Courts. You're stuck with the system that we have, which has some room (without a radical Congress) for liberal executive action, which any mainstream Democratic president would pursue, but not anything more than that.
And, all of that actually assumes that Sanders would know how to run agencies to be maximally effective. Which, unlike Clinton, he has no experience at all with. The fact that his campaign proposals all require massive acts of Congress that have zero chance of passing tell you how serious he is about actually governing.
I mean, I don't think Sanders actually has any shot at winning the nomination, so it's pretty theoretical and not worth arguing about. But I think 299 is way too pessimistic about what someone who wanted to push real progressive change could accomplish.
DOJ is part of the cabinet, but if anything is even less subject to political change
Something I'm curious about but have never seen covered: how much of a long term change did the Bush administration's attempt to create a one party state through DOJ appointments have? And how much, if any, of the personnel changes were undone by Obama?
Bush definitely tried to work a change, and Obama definitely tried to change it back, but the bigger long-term issue is just long-term biases of prosecutors, who have their own interests that aren't necessarily political, and the law itself. Don't get me wrong, there are changes that can and should be made (for one thing, the DOJ still spends an inordinate amount of time on counter-terrorism stuff that it could be spending on crime). But a President Sanders isn't really going to be able to work a major change along the lines of "put Wall Street in jail!" -- the things keeping Wall Street out of jail are, largely, the law itself, the courts, and the reluctance of prosecutors to get embarassed, none of which Sanders can change except marginally, and to the extent there is marginal change it's not much more than you'd see in a Clinton administration.
Also remember that both cabinet secretaries and US Attorneys are subject to Senate confirmation.
302: is your prediction that Congress would just flat out revolt against Sanders (to an extent that they would not revolt against Clinton/have not revolted against Obama)?
Not flat-out revolt, no, but Sanders couldn't get either radical measures or radical appointments through a Senate where (even if it stays in Democratic hands) the Democratic party is not at all radical. So he'll have to play by the same rules anyone else would, which means that he'll be highly constrained.
That may be reliant on Hillary's second term coat-tails, which I'm not super-optimistic about.
One thing I'm very curious about is how this will play out just as a historic dynamic. I'm strongly inclined to think that the old norms about the WH flipping every 8-12 years are broken, if not dead*, but projecting 16 straight years of Dems winning the WH seems improbable even if you buy demographic change as an overarching factor.
And yet, if the current market fluctuations don't sink HRC, she seems like a favorite to win this year. And if she does, ISTM that the mostly likely future is one where there's a mild recession between '17 and '19, the recovery from which would seem to prime her to win in '20, possibly winning big. After all, if we somehow don't have a recession until the tail end of her first term (when it would sink her in '20), that would be the longest-ever stretch without one by something like 5 years.
*because of polarization, because of the presidential year electorate, and because, frankly, the GOP is nutcases all the way down. At the moment, nobody who can win the Republican nomination can remotely fake being a sane grownup in the general, and so ISTM that you need a huge headwind to sink the Dems. That is, if the economy tanks over the next 9 months, even Trump can win, but short of that, I"m really not sure he can. And same deal with most of the rest of them (Rubio's the only one I fear, because I think the press will actively take his side, a la Bush/Gore).
FWIW, I think it's genuinely possible that Sanders will appoint some people who'd be significantly to the left of HRC's nominees yet still get through the Senate, but I'm not at all convinced that he'll be able to do a sufficiently effective job Branch-wide. I don't think we've had a new Dem President hit the ground running since, what, JFK? Carter's people were all ineffective outsider n00bs, same deal with Clinton (except for some Carter retreads), and while Obama used some Clinton people effectively, he also shit the bed on judicial nominees, plus of course the Clinton retreads were the first part of being disappointed by someone new. If Sanders reuses Obama people, that's not really change we can believe in. Oh yeah, and Obama also had Rahm fucking Emmanuel as CoS, which was a fucking joke, as well as simply a bad decision. I don't think Sanders has anything like the stable to run an effective Executive Branch that's meaningfully left of Clinton's. All that said, I do want to reiterate that I could see him making a couple kickass appointments. I'm just not sure it's a net gain, because I'm certain he'll fuck stuff up.
Incidentally, 263.() was something I was just wondering about this morning.
I would expect better from EPA and Interior under Sanders. Maybe Treasury too. In Education we'd expect a less compromised team. DOD and Intelligence will have voted for the Republican and will be just as insubordinate under Sanders as they are now. Energy too, I guess.
I don't think the folks all excited about Feeling the Bern are going to be satisfied with the kinds of marginal differences I'm thinking of. But then they're definitely fated to be Disappointed by Someone New.
(I probably didn't mention back then meeting a few times with soon-to-be-DOJ-types during the 2008-09 transition -- since we weren't supposed to talk about it. It was plenty seductive, I'll tell you what. And they were sincere, bless their hearts.)
If Bernie wouldn't be able to do anything more than a mainstream dem, why would Cruz be able to do anything more than a mainstream Republican?
312 -- because Cruz actually commands a substantial coalition that's close to the mainstream of his party. And, also, because fucking the government up is always way, way easier than enacting progressive change.
And because he's aligned with capital rather than (semi-)against it.
And, also, because fucking the government up is always way, way easier than enacting progressive change.
That is a cliche, but it's also very true. I remember hearing that a friend of a friend was a junior lawyer in the justice department under Carter and said that as soon as the Reagan people took over a bunch of long-running cases were dropped more or less immediately.
Also, Cruz is a mainstream Republican.
312, 313: The Republicans have been operating on majority-of-the-majority rules. Kind of. Or at least far more than any Democratic leader has ever tried.
I really doubt there would be much difference in executive branch appointees between Clinton and Sanders. Sanders might choose idiosyncratically for a handful of positions related to his high-priority issues (Treasury, Labor, maybe DOJ), but for the most part they're going to be drawing from the same pool, and for most positions they'll probably want to send similar signals with their choices.
This article, "Why Bernie Sanders is fighting with Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign" is long and very interesting.It talks about the background and significance of these remarks by Sanders:
We're taking on not only Wall Street and the economic establishment, we're taking on the political establishment. So, I have friends and supporters in the Human Rights Fund [sic], in Planned Parenthood. But you know what, Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time, and some of these groups are in fact part of the establishment. I will challenge anybody with regard to my record on LGBT issues. I was one of the few, relatively few, to oppose and vote against DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act], et cetera. In terms of women's rights, I believe we have a 100 percent lifetime pro-choice record.
Incidentally, I've been thinking about the bit that I quoted in 288 and it makes me think that Von Wafer is likely correct that Sanders doesn't expect to win. On one hand, that's reading too much into it -- it doesn't say anything that isn't obvious from the basic dynamics of the race. On the other hand, I can't be the only person who reads that and thinks that it sounds like a worst-case scenario. And, what's interesting, is that it's attributed to the Sanders campaign (though not to a specific person). All of the criticisms of Clinton in the article are unattributed, and it just says that Clinton spokespeople refused to comment.
I think Sanders would be happy to win, don't get me wrong, but I also think there's an interesting reward curve for him. Up to a certain point getting more delegates and finally losing just gets him more stature and more visibility. And winning would be it's own reward. But I do think there's a window where coming close and losing could result in burning some bridges (particularly if (a) he doesn't win any primaries in states with a significant percentage of people of color and (b) he keeps making comments like the Planned Parenthood remarks above) and it will be interesting to see how much appetite he has for that.
