I have some questions. The NYTimes shows Clinton with 699 SDEs, Sanders with 695 SDEs, and O'Malley with 8. Don't those O'Malley ones get reassigned? If so, do the individual delegates decide where to go, or does O'Malley tell them? If they went to Sanders, would he then have "won" the Iowa caucus? (I mean, as much as anyone wins what is a virtual tie). Also, IIRC Clinton has 6 super delegates. Are they included in the total right now? Or does Clinton have 6 more delegates on top of the 22-23 she has right now?
The link Trivers put up on the other thread includes the super delegates and gives the result as Clinton 28, Sanders 21 (with three still up in the air).
Also, this breakdown is interesting.
It appears that Sanders and Clinton basically exactly split higher & lower income voters and (IMO most interestingly), former Obama and former Clinton voters. Clinton had a slight edge with non-college educated and rural voters, and Sanders vice versa, but the split is not large. Contrary to the media narrative, it seems like Sanders is getting different voters than the Obama coalition, with the exception of young people. I would be interested to see more finely gradated breakdowns of age and gender.
2/3
Thanks. I've reposted Trivers's link.
Most of the O'Malley delegates did reassign themselves, during the traditional "walking from one part of the room to another" process. The remaining 8 must be his personal friends, or hate both Bernie and Hillary for some reason.
I liked that link because it was easy to read on my phone and I was too lazy to walk to the computer last night.
So on Clinton/Sanders, this is about the result that changes what we knew going on the least. If he'd won in a walk, he would have looked stronger. If he'd finished nowhere, he would probably have been done. A tie, in a state that probably favors him (rural and white, and the presumption is that she'll do better among African American voters) means he's still in it, but still very very very much the underdog.
For the Republicans, this is the scariest possible result, right? Cruz on top?
Do Republicans in fact find Cruz scary? For them, it may be a great result.
8
I think it would have been scarier had Cruz won, with Trump a strong second, and Rubio a distant third. Now, they can spin it as Rubio doing strongly in a state full of crazies, and pressure all the other establishment losers to drop out. NH will be the test. If Rubio fails and Kasich or Jeb to well, Cruz does middling, and Trump wins (what the polls are showing now), the race is still FUBAR.
Here's an age breakdown for the Democratic caucuses.
http://www.vox.com/2016/2/2/10893474/iowa-caucus-sanders-young-voters
Apparently Sanders did better with young people than even Obama did.
https://twitter.com/thesuperficial/status/694391966700711937
I think establishment republicans think this is the best possible Iowa result, because Trump not coming in first decreases his chances of running away with it, and Rubio's strong third place finish will allegedly make him the default establishment candidate and help him in NH.
I don't think this result is very scary for Republicans. Trump didn't win. Rubio close to tied Cruz/Trump. It's not enough to settle on Rubio as the winner of the not-obviously-a-terminal-asshole vote, but it goes a long way toward that.
Contrary to the media narrative, it seems like Sanders is getting different voters than the Obama coalition,
I thought the media narrative was "Ok with white guys I guess, but useless with minorities".
I'd have preferred Carson on top, followed by Cruz, with Rubio in the wasteland. Not that any of these clowns are exactly JFK, mind.
And I'm pwned by an emerging lurker. Hi.
Also Bush got a delegate!
I was worried he was going to get discouraged due to leaving Iowa with nothing, but now he's well set up to keep deluding himself.
15. If you want to discuss your tastes in porn, we need another thread,
(best Iowa result that was also relatively plausible - they'd obviously prefer both Cruz and Trump to lose, but that was very unlikely.)
I thought the media narrative was "Ok with white guys I guess, but useless with minorities".
You've confused that with the CPD's motto.
I think the link in 4 is referring to 2016 votes in counties won in 2008. Which is not the same thing.
Rubin's strong showing makes it less scary. The big question is whether the field gets winnowed down to Trump/Cruz/Rubio early enough for Rubio to be competitive and whether Trump or Cruz can build a big lead first. Rubio needs to stay in it early and then win the big winner-take-all states (starting in mid-March). Anything that's close and where Rubio has a strong showing (like this result) is evidence of an eventual Rubio victory.
Cruz is exactly who you'd expect to win Iowa. So I'm not scared. (See Santorum, Huckabee.)
And anybody who isn't Rubio or Cruz had better do something soon or drop out.
Rubin's strong showing makes it less scary.
If a Republican with an honest-to-god chance of winning the general is less scary to you than the pair of windmill-tilting clowns, I'm not sure your frightmeter is properly calibrated.
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LB, did you get mail from me? my pseud at yahoo dot com.
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25 - I believe the quality under discussion is "scary to the Republican elites"
Which of course is almost but not quite exactly the opposite of "scary to right-thinking people"
26: No, I haven't. I don't do any of the site maintenance, but I think the unfogged.com addresses are sometimes unreliable. Try me at elizardb at hot mail , com .
i think any major party candidate stands a solid chance in a presidential election. I'd rather have a 50% chance of Rubio than a 35% chance of Cruz. Who knows what the fuck Cruz might do.
Aside from Cruz being more personally repellant what's the big difference between the two that would make that choice hard?
They're both extremist/hard-right senators who are trying to appeal to serious theocrats and bigots in the party. Rubio isn't remotely moderate, or even pretending to be. I mean, he looks like he might be on camera, especially when the camera is on a network that's openly, aggressively in the bag for him. And the press needs someone on the Republican side who is a contender that they can pretend is not saying terrifyingly insane things. But the idea that somehow Rubio is relatively-safe-if-unfortunate and Cruz is a terrifyingly unpredictable hazard feels a bit exaggerated to me: Cruz might be a little worse, maybe? I don't think it could go much farther than that.
"scary to the Republican elites"
Oh, right. Sorry, carry on.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/479004002919919616
I live in NH and the most recent state-wide poll ballyhooed in the local paper - late last week some time -- had the GOP side as 1) Trump, 2) JEB! So, I don't imagine his leaving in the next week for make way for Rubio. This may be his last chance for respectability.
I find both a 35% chance of Cruz and a 50% chance of Rubio extremely terrifying.
I do think that probably the outcome is Rubio/Clinton with both parties revealing that their most polarized wings have gotten larger and more vocal, which is a "normal" result but takes into account that the parties are ever-increasingly diverging.
As I've said before and we don't need to rehash, I find the prospect of Sanders/Rubio very very dangerous but also (now) pretty unlikely. If the result of the primary run of Sanders is "lots of 20 yr olds get comfortable with nominal "socialism" but without actually having him be paricularly close to being the candidate in the general" then that seems like the best possible result, and also likely how things will shake out. I've had to hide a bunch of social media Sanders supporters for going full enthusiasm/Koch-conspiracy theory on Clinton though, I can't brook seeing that bullshit unnecessarily.
I wonder if Trump is going down the "sore losing => implosion" route some suggested. His recent tweets start as completely standard loss-spinning, but then go to unfair treatment by media and say he's not given credit for self-funding his campaign. Last sentence: "I will keep doing, but not worth it!"
he's not given credit for self-funding his campaign
What, does he want a fucking biscuit?
The best fucking biscuit you've ever seen.
Huge, classy, with gold where lesser biscuits have chocolate!
Also, mostly to provoke, can we have a serious and non-crazy discussion about sexism issues in the Democratic primary? This seems like just about the only place on the internet, maybe in the world, where it can be done seriously. Here is my take. The accusation from Clinton supporters that there are a non-trivial number of affirmatively sexist "Bernie Bros" or that a vote against Hillary is a vote against women is preposterous -- I mean, I'm sure there are a few, but this is a transparent and annoyng move to shut up people with legitimate questions about her by trying to play a lefty trump card and end discussion. It's wrong, ridiculous, and also obviously pretty ineffective, especially with young people.
With that said, can we talk abot what's actually going on? Part of the dislike of Hillary among liberals does seem to be a lingering element of resentment/dislike, especially from younger people, of successful first-generation baby boomer era career women. I can't put my finger on it exactly but there's some element of resentment, particularly from white liberal men but also including a lot of younger white liberal women, that has to do with some feeling of suppressed resentment or distaste at the kinds of sacrifices and compromises women of her generation had to make to succeed. It's like an assumption that she'll be especially trecherous because, stereotypically, to have been a successful woman of that generation you had to be simultaneously a heartless bitch and a relentless conformist. Sanders has a luxury of seeming more authentic because people know or assume he didn't have to sacrifice to be careerist.
41 And ten years younger than the biscuit he's got now.
And I should say it's an attitude particular to liberals and especially younger liberal men. "I know my female boss will sell me out because how else would she have gotten ahead, but crazy old Jewish grandpa is just gonna speak from the heart and stay true, because that's his thing."
And, to be clear, like a lot of stereotypes it does have some grounding in reality. Many first-generation professional career women really were/are ruthless sellouts.
42.2 would have never occurred to me...
I suppose you can argue that Sanders (like Corbyn) is not showing the typical career of someone who is relentlessly and heartlessly ambitious.
But then I used to be quite convinced by the argument that the Liberal Democrats must be on average more idealistic than either of the other parties, because surely no one who was motivated mainly by the lust for power would join the Liberal Democrats.
This argument did not survive testing in the crucible of 2010-15.
It's hard to isolate the sexism from the 30 year smear campaign background.
That is, there are lots of otherwise sensible liberals and Democrats who have absorbed it to some degree.
48,49: Is that how Clinton is being criticised from the left though? Benghazi, Whitewater, Vince Foster, et al? Honest question.
42.2 is really well-said.
I'd like to add to it that, from a small and biased sample of millennial women I know, the impression I get seems to be that the ambitious careerist boomer women they dealt with were really very unsympathetic to claims of sexism/discrimination. The standard response seems to have been something along the lines of "suck it up and just be so good they can't ignore you, like I did".
Tigre's right that this is, for many of them, what they had to do to succeed. But I think that younger people are rightly feeling pretty weary of the style of feminism that's created a world in which female authority figures tell their underlings in complete seriousness not to have kids if they care about their careers.
Hillary Clinton is a Boomer. She's part of the American generation most to blame for how the world is turning to crap. Bernie Sanders is not a Boomer and can correct things if only given a chance. How's that for a binary?
50: no, but the general impression of corruption, sleaziness, cruelty etc might affect them even if they don't actually believe she used to run coke into Mena Airport.
a non-trivial number of affirmatively sexist "Bernie Bros"
This argument drives me nuts. People are assholes on the internet? Well, I never. Other discussion topics that make people behave like assholes on the internet: every political issue ever, music, sports, television, movies, celebrity marriages, every parenting decision ever, diet preferences, clothing choices, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, word selection, circumcision, vaccinations, grammar, punctuation, okay I'm tired of typing these but I could type my fingers to Trumpy nubs.
There is a lot going on with the national reaction to Hillary Clinton, because she has been one of the most prominent figures in American politics for a quarter-century now.
E.g., note the different reactions to HRC and Elizabeth Warren, who are only two years apart in age.
I think that younger people are rightly feeling pretty weary of the style of feminism that's created a world in which female authority figures tell their underlings in complete seriousness not to have kids if they care about their careers.
Yes, if it's a popularity contest between your crazy uncle and your horrible female boss, it's not a good thing for Clinton.
Huh. I'm a soft Sanders voter: if he's still in it when it gets to NY, I'm voting for the leftmost candidate that's not a complete nutcase (and sometimes I'll stretch a point on that). But I won't mind voting for her in the general, which is what I assume is going to happen, more than I mind voting for any conservative Democrat (a lot, but she's not worse than the run of the mill). And I'm pretty sensitive on sexism.
On the kind of sexism you describe as something that's driving people to vote for Bernie? Mmmmmaybe, but I'm not really seeing it? Right or wrong about how things will turn out realistically, there's a pretty clear ideological distinction in voters' minds between the two, and I don't think he's getting voters that would actually be happier with her politics but don't like her out of sexism.
I mean, the kind of sexism you talk about is a real thing, but here I don't think it's doing more than possibly robbing her of some of the advantage of being the obvious establishment front-runner: some left-wing voters who would have dropped in line more easily behind a conservative Democrat if he were a man, are still kicking and struggling before they give up.
Probably at some point we could find some millennial, Bernie-supporting women and ask them if this is truly what's in their hearts.
Though who knows if they'll tell us the truth, if they even know it themselves!
Back in 2008 I was a big proponent of Obama over Hillary, largely due to her Iraq war vote and Mark Penn and the like and the fact that he genuinely seemed to promise a new sort of politics.
But it's hard for me to imagine that a Clinton Presidency would have been meaningfully different from the Obama Presidency. There are so many constraints on the President that I seriously doubt that most voters can tell where an individual President can have the most impact.
Or maybe I'm just a lot more bourgeois now (kids, etc.) than I was in 2008. Either way, I really don't get the Sanders enthusiasm.
I thought about Warren, but the reaction to her would have been very different if she hadn't been an outsider/professor before running (also, with a fortuitous take on the financial crisis that allowed for total distance from Wall Street). Not in the same stereotype zone at all that an ordinary successful professional woman, politician or not, would be in. And even there (a) there's a lot of scuttlebutt if you dig just a little about Warren's purported relentless ambition/careerism (I've seen gossip like this from law professors, where of course she had to be careerist) and (b) I think there will be more and more the longer she's in the Senate.
I'd like to add to it that, from a small and biased sample of millennial women I know, the impression I get seems to be that the ambitious careerist boomer women they dealt with were really very unsympathetic to claims of sexism/discrimination.
As an X-er, this is a real pattern, but it's certainly not all Boomer women, and it's a pretty tight generation where I expect to see it at all (like, not even really the younger Boomers). You get it with women who got explicitly mistreated by sexist management and co-workers long enough ago that the sexism wasn't even a little covert, and who succeeded anyway, and you sometimes get some eyerolling contempt from them at women who are expecting to be treated decently.
I wonder if it's a form of feeling unappreciated for the trailblazing they've done.
Daniel Boone blaze trails and all he got was a city in North Carolina named after him.
It's spelled "Carrboro" but pronounced "Daniel".
Well, it's certainly not all successful women even in that age bracket. What it looks like to me, when I've run into it, is just straightforward "Screw you, why should you have it any easier than I did."
But this is getting off Hillary, who I actually wouldn't, offhand, expect to be that particular kind of asshole to younger women. She's in the right age bracket for it, but just doesn't seem the type.
Can we talk about how young people today are just horrible? Because I have opinions.
Aside from all the other things, the thing the really extreme Republicans don't like about Rubio is that he supported comprehensive immigration reform (the "Gang of Eight" bill).
Immigration is really the only issue there's any disagreement on among the Republican candidates. Trump: agin it, Cruz: born-again agin' it, Rubio: tainted, the "mainstream" dwarves: for it.
I think millennials don't like Hillary because she is fundamentally unlikable, like Nixon.
if she hadn't been an outsider
Yeah, that's my point. I suspect it's less about intergenerational attitudes on feminism than it is general free-floating antipathy toward the grossly dysfunctional American government over the past two decades.
To 57, I think that the "sexism"' component (not really the right word or a useful one in this situation, I just mean a kind of particular gender stereotpimg) comes into the equation when people assume that Sanders has a big advantage in being more authentic/trustworthy than she is and that the big problem with Hillary is that she's a sellout. Obviously Hillary's gender is not the only thing that's going on with the feeling that she's a sellout -- she has a long record. BUT what's telling to me is that I think people have different senses of her as a sellout/trecherous non-lefty than they ever did for, say, Al Gore or John Kerry or Barack Obama or even Bill Clinton. There's no obvious reason why that should be the case. Hillary's actual political views aren't really meaningfully different (and in fact are, at least officially, now significantly to the left of any of those on most issues when they ran for office) but the space for attacking her from the left specifically as an untrustworthy, betrayal-likely candidate seems greater.
But this is getting off Hillary
Now that's my job. Mine or that rabbit thing in her nightstand that Huma got Hil for her birthday.
"I can't put my finger on it exactly but there's some element of resentment, particularly from white liberal men but also including a lot of younger white liberal women, that has to do with some feeling of suppressed resentment or distaste at the kinds of sacrifices and compromises women of her generation had to make to succeed."
It has to do with the sacrifices/compromises being at our expense, eg welfare reform, financial deregulation, Iraq, etc. There is something related to sexism in her being the second in the Clinton couple to run for office, but the issue you are seeing is young people not groking 90s 3rd wayism.
I wonder if it's a form of feeling unappreciated for the trailblazing they've done.
I don't think it would be entirely this, but I'm pretty sure I heard this almost word for word coming from Clinton flacks back in 2008, about the (larger number of young) women who supported Obama. And there have at least been a couple places this primary where it looks like there are stirrings of it showing up again.
Class issues just really stick out in college these days, especially as college gets more expensive. I saw a lot of people with access to opportunities that I wouldn't have dreamed of as the child of two public school teachers. But much more than that I saw lives basically ruined and talent wasted because the current system doesn't see a problem with expecting people to pull 40 hour weeks at McDonald's while in college. I think a lot of us young people were really sold on this idea of a meritocracy that is totally contrary to any but the most sheltered lived experience.
When it really hurts is when you see professors start to talk down to the kids that are working full-time while becoming obviously enamored of the ones with the luxury of having no responsibilities but their studies.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that young women might not like Hillary simply because class has subsumed gender as a medium of systemic oppression.
largely due to her Iraq war vote and Mark Penn and the like
This. Also neoliberalism. I'll still vote for her in the general, and I think her administration would be pretty similar to what we have now.
But Sanders has been amazing—the self-declared socialist Jewish dude comes in out of left field and runs a highly competitive campaign against the candidate who should have been a shoo-in? Are you kidding me? IME, the press has never known what to do with him since he became mayor of Burlington, so the media narrative underestimates him. I still don't expect him to win the nomination, but I bet that he does way better among non-whites and women than everyone's been predicting.
BUT what's telling to me is that I think people have different senses of her as a sellout/trecherous non-lefty than they ever did for, say, Al Gore or John Kerry or Barack Obama or even Bill Clinton.
This, yeah, maybe -- that's the sort of thing I was going for saying that lefty voters might have fallen into line behind a male frontrunner more compliantly. It's hard for me to see that as a problem, exactly, because I like lefty voters being non-compliant that way, but I'll buy that it's related to her gender.
74: I think that could just as easily be taken to mean that young people are groking it, and are very much not cool with it (especially since they're in the exact place where they'd get hit really hard by it right now).
I think with Clinton the animosity towards her from the left has basically nothing to do with sexism, but that how it gets expressed (at least by a small contingent of people) is very much in sexist terms. And if anything that's convenient for Clinton right now because it lets her campaign focus on those terms and use the obvious sexism involved to undercut the actual reasons that (even the sexist) people on the left have for disliking her. (I'm influenced here mainly by the fact that the one Sanders supporter I know well enough to read is clearly opposed to her for legitimate third-way-ism-is-from-Satan related reasons, but who absolutely says a bunch of stuff about her that is either very sexist or is uncritical towards attacks on her that are. But like a lot of the people like that he's a strong supporter of other female politicians/has no obvious trouble with the idea/etc. That could also be underlying sexism being expressed because Clinton's other crap gives cover to it, but I'd guess that it's the other way.)
I also seem to recall that Al Gore got an awful lot of fuck-that-sellout-democrat-traitor-bullshit back in 2000, so I don't know how far the comparison goes as far as that. The fact that Bill Clinton gets less of it than Hillary is kind of bizarre though.
This Vice piece has probably been linked here before, but the guy started a punk club. If that's not good government, I don't know what is.
83.last: He hasn't run for office in 20 years.
He's also personally charismatic/charming on a different level than she is, and had more time out front winning things: like, even if you hated a lot of his policies, it was hard to come out of the '90s without a lot of strong positive impressions of him.
Sanders has a big advantage in being more authentic/trustworthy than she is and that the big problem with Hillary is that she's a sellout.
Does Sanders have 100 million in the bank nobody told me about?
Okay, maybe the acquisition of great wealth is not always an indicator of moral corruption. Sometimes like Kristen Stewart you can just kinda fall into it.
But once you have it, or enough, which is a level I literally can't imagine, to continue making an serious effort to add to it is without dispute morally corrupt.
Nah, with tens of millions Clinton charges mid six figures for a day talking to Wall Streeters? I don't give Krugman a pass on that shit.
The Clintons in 1992 were ok, as were the Obama's in 2007. They got changed. (We'll see with Obama, but the library fund is looking sweet.)
A lot of people that love the idea of a first woman President, would prefer that the first woman President wasn't the wife of someone that was President.
I guess?
I'm not sure why that's as significant though: people are a lot less likely to have strong feelings based on the fact that it's been sixteen years and in the mean time he hasn't been involved in anything other than the one bit he had some credit for from the left (and made himself really well known for it too).
I don't disagree at all that resentment against third way politics and their consequences is the big part of what's going on, but I do want to push back on the idea that this resentment has nothing to do with her gender.
Put differently, my theory is that the fact that she invokes the sellout career-woman stereotype makes her more vulnerable to, and more of a lightening rod for, an emotive attack on third-way politics by (particularly young people) than would be the case for a man with identical policy positions to hers. The "class" issues (if you want to put it that way) seem more salient with a eoman candidate than they would if it were, say, Joe Biden running.
Or, I guess, what 80 says.
I meant "woman" candidate not "yeoman" candidate.
other than the one bit he had some credit for from the left
I don't think it's that well known that Bill Clinton is a vegan, but it could bolster the Clintons against Bernie's obvious punk rock cred (per 84). The real question: does Bill's veganism weaken him in R. Tigre's mind?
90:
I think you're onto something here, but I think that part of the reason that class issues have picked up political momentum is that it's basically been a two-person race, so there are no other major players to dilute Sanders's message, or to take a stance in between Hillary and Bernie that might placate some would-be supporters enough to defect.
For example, if someone had come along and said "Absolutely, we must push for single payer, but hey those tuition free public colleges really aren't realistic, buddy", we'd be looking at a different race, I think.
90:"With a net worth between $59,000 and $366,000, and almost no outside income or investment income, Biden was consistently ranked as one of the least wealthy members of the Senate" ...Wiki
Wanna know about rich men I really like? Can't think of any. I spent a while looking at Bowie, and I wondered how much Lemmy shared with his band.
About rich women I don't completely trust on economic policy? Pelosi.
90: That seems mostly right to me, but I think with Clinton there's a particular blend of thirty years of holy-cow-not-subtle extreme sexism, and the bizarre fact that a lot of her faults (in the eyes of the left) are hard to express without saying things that at least resemble the sexist shit that she's had thrown at her for years*. So it all adds up to a kind of a perfect storm of sexism where it's hard to even know how much of it is that and how much of it is basically a straightforward criticism of her policies/distrust of her commitment to what she's saying right now. I also think it's sort of hard to tell about comparable Democratic politicians mainly because the best examples of people who came up at the time have mostly vanished or changed views in ways I find more credible. (I think Clinton absolutely changed her view on same sex marriage and not out of some cynical political calculation, for example, but I'm not remotely confident that her economic views have moved even an inch no matter how left-populist she's willing to be in the primary.)
*I suspect that this fact actually is the cause of some of the things that leftists find objectionable, but in both the 'deep down attacks work no matter how unfair or how much we don't consciously believe them' sense and the fact that being viciously attacked in rampantly dishonest ways for years on end tends to make people immediately discount any negative response to something they've done or said whether or not it's dishonest or bullshit. And as a result right now and in the 2008 primary she's very aggressive about attacking anyone who criticizes her from the left as doing so from sketchy motives, even when that's less plausible. Or basically a (substantially)weaker version of the Richard Dawkins Syndrome because, holy hell did he ever go from a person who mostly said reasonable things (like, twenty years ago or so) and then got aggressively lied about and smeared by the right to an asshole who doubled down aggressively at even the gentlest that-may-not-have-been-put-well criticism (maybe ten years ago or a little more), and then to a real world class aggressively racist and misogynist asshole.
I decided overnight that Sanders should offer the vice-presidency to Lupita Nyong'o.
96: Not a U.S. citizen, not born in the U.S., no parents that are U.S. citizens, and not old enough.
Other than that a perfect choice.
97: Thanks, buzzkill. I was briefly excited.
Specifically with respect to Biden, there's a lot there that he would be getting attacked on if he was actually running for anything, but since he isn't people are fine with yucking it up about Onion Joe going out and scoring Scorpions tickets.
Did I tell you about my other favorite ticket?
After reading this conspiracy, in which Obama supports Biden's candidacy in exchange for a black VP, I came up with Biden/Kanye! So perfect! Neither has a mouth-filter.
This primary is definitely bringing out the crazy. A vociferous Hillary supporter I know has convinced himself that Bernie is "the liar" (for the record, I'm not saying he's perfect, but compared to whom?) and said that he'd rather vote for Jeb than for Bernie.
For the record, I don't like all the first name stuff. I'd be totally happy referring to Sanders as such if not for the fact that "Clinton" and "Bush" could be confused with the previous presidents by those names.
88: Look, man, I said from the start that Michelle should have gone first, but noooooooo.
For the record, I don't like all the first name stuff.
I just got a little uncomfortable with my own practice in this thread and recently. "Bernie" implies I''m more comfortable and casual with Sanders than Clinton, or something. Naming always has affective implications.
"Comrade Sanders" from now on. Just kidding.
I tend to refer to Clinton as HRC to avoid that very issue.
"BUT what's telling to me is that I think people have different senses of her as a sellout/trecherous non-lefty than they ever did for, say, Al Gore or John Kerry or Barack Obama or even Bill Clinton."
part of that is changing times. Obama proved that a liberal non-southerner could win the presidency. Until that then, the last time a non-southern democrat won the presidency was 1960 so dems were willing to put up with stuff to win elections.( I was for Edwards in 2008.) Now, there is a greater belief that demographic changes mean that more leftist dems are electable.
An economically populist, non-hawk dem can definitely win so it looks like Clinton is making unnecessary compromises.
I like it when the other Republicans on the debate stage refer to Rubio as "Marco," because it raises the possibility that a confused Ben Carson might, in a moment of perceived clarity and insight, blurt out, "Polo!"
Let's talk about something more important than sexism in the democratic primary: who is the creepier father: Trump or Cruz?
I vote Cruz, mostly because I don't think there's a category of "creepier-" anything that he can't win.
HRC got the HRC endorsement
http://www.hrc.org/blog/human-rights-campaign-endorses-hillary-clinton-for-president
108 It's Trump. How is this even a question? The Cruz thing was pretty ordinary Dad/daughter ugh, don't touch me in public kind of interaction, no? Trump wants to fuck his daughter. And isn't shy about saying so.
Hey, Durbin's current term ends in 2020, and he'll be 75. Maybe he'll usher Michelle Obama in and she can go the Clinton route to the presidency.
The way Cruz talks about spanking his daughters is already kind of awkward, and given what looks like visible discomfort on the part of his kids around him does look really creepy to me in a sort of 'tell all book later about domestic abuse' way. But it's hard to tell with Cruz given how creepy he is about every single other thing.
A bunch of the incesty stuff from Trump looks to me more like a massively sexist man trying to boast about how pretty his daughter is while simultaneously humblebragging about how he has lots of sex with young models, and ending up in a really bizarre place. I have no idea about that picture though.
Also, where can I sign up to register myself as officially baffled that Rubio is now considered a sane "establishment" candidate. He is a tea party candidate that rode in on the 2010 wave, and his views are pretty damn extreme. I get that he's probably more "electable" than Cruz or Trump, but come on. I guess he's considered more of a moderate mainly because of immigration?
113.2: Yeah, I think that's right -- that it's closer to being horrifyingly tacky than it is to genuine incest-fantasy. The picture? Eh, it's a professional photo shoot and a particular pose looks weird: I wouldn't read too much into it.
I thought it was because during the government shutdown, Cruz went out of his way to be as big of an asshole as possible to everybody, regardless of party.
114: He keeps the long march right at a more seemly, less obtrusive pace. Same pace as Gingrich to Boehner to Paul.
Better a monarch who has surpassed the sexual constraints of lesser men than a creepy, evil dweeb. That's my view. But I guess that's predictable.
A professional photoshoot in front of a statue of two parrots fucking.
You have a thing for Miami Dolphins cheer leaders?
Apparently Sanders did better with young people than even Obama did.
I chuckled at this line (which Brad DeLong quoted today).
It is perfectly plausible in 2016 for a 23 year old Democratic activist in Iowa to have the following preference order: Sanders > Clinton > Chlamydia > Republican Nominee.
Obama proved that a liberal non-southerner could win the presidency. Until that then, the last time a non-southern democrat won the presidency was 1960 so dems were willing to put up with stuff to win elections.( I was for Edwards in 2008.) Now, there is a greater belief that demographic changes mean that more leftist dems are electable.
I think that's broadly correct*. FWIW, MY agrees with you as well.
Most of all, uncomfortable though it may be, Democratic leaders are going to have to make more effort in the future to convince their supporters that they are genuinely trying as hard as they can to deliver the things they promise.
On the campaign trail, Clinton likes to emphasize her decades of experience fighting for children, health care, the environment, and other progressive causes.
It's a message that shows that she and her campaign understand what the voters they are trying to reach care about. They admire people who have dedicated their lives to fighting for those causes. Except it's not quite true that Clinton has dedicated her whole life to fighting for these causes.
Between serving as US secretary of state and hitting the campaign trail, she made millions of dollars delivering high-priced speeches -- often to for-profit companies or trade associations with interests at stake in political debates. She didn't do this to put food on the table for her family, as she and her husband were already rich thanks to Bill Clinton's own buckraking adventures.
And, of course, family connections had already set up Chelsea Clinton with an absurd six-figure salary at NBC News, while an array of Obama administration veterans have decamped for gigs at Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Warburg Pincus, Amazon, McDonald's, and other big companies.
There's nothing wrong with any of these individual choices or career trajectories. But taken as a whole, it paints a picture for the grassroots of a party whose elite cadres simply aren't as committed to fighting the good fight as they like to portray themselves.
* I think this is complicated slightly by the fact that, in addition to people who are attracted by Sanders specifically liberal campaign there are at least some people who are happy to vote for any alternate candidate just to fire a warning shot across the bow of both Clinton and the Democratic establishment.
Message: I care.
One piece of data that observations on the public perception of HRC should account for is the generally quite favorable ratings she has received during non-Presidential candidate periods like during her tenure as SoS*. (Also a multiple repeat as "Most Admired Woman" but the relatively low %s that it takes to top that means it is not really a measure of broad rather than specific appeal.)
My own take is that it is really the all-consuming sea of sexism that we all float in that poses a particular challenge to the public perception Of HRC's action and words. (For instance that leads to several top WaPo writers--Cilliza and I forget who the other guy was--to do a skit associating her with Mad Bitch Beer without apparently worrying too much about it. Cilliza, in particular remains free to opine with frequency on her "likability" and what not.
But taken as a whole, it paints a picture for the grassroots of a party whose elite cadres simply aren't as committed to fighting the good fight as they like to portray themselves.
I guess. But, again, Hillary's status as a woman (and, particularly, as a successful career woman of a particular generation) comes into this. Would Biden be subject to the same attacks in the same way? Would Gore, who has also been doing private sector stuff, if he ran? Martin O'Malley, head of DNC finance? Mark Warner? All would certainly get attacked for being part of the "establishment" but I do think there would be quite a different quality to the attack. And frankly the notion that Hillary's not as committed to fighting the good fight as ... almost any politician who has had any professional career outside of politics, because she's taken speaking fees, is nuts. I mean obviously she's not utterly indifferent to money but she's been a pretty goddamn dedicated public servant.
Wasn't Gore subject to the same attacks when he had been a career politician and hadn't yet done private sector stuff (i.e. Gush/Bore, they're all just corporate lackeys). Or maybe you consider that just a routine "Establishment" attack. I think Gore is viewed more favorably now than he was then.
BUT what's telling to me is that I think people have different senses of her as a sellout/trecherous non-lefty than they ever did for, say, Al Gore or John Kerry or Barack Obama or even Bill Clinton. There's no obvious reason why that should be the case. Hillary's actual political views aren't really meaningfully different (and in fact are, at least officially, now significantly to the left of any of those on most issues when they ran for office) but the space for attacking her from the left specifically as an untrustworthy, betrayal-likely candidate seems greater.
This is a narrative that is both extremely specific and ignores history:
1. Bill Clinton - Maybe in bourgeois LA, but in the People's Republic of Portland, I knew more people who hated him than loved him. Grudging defense against insane Republicans was what his "support" boiled to. Remember WTO protests? Hell, I co-founded a local chapter of YPSL because the thought being a "neoliberal" was so unappealing. (Remember all the mutual masturbation between Clinton and Blair about neoliberalism being the way of the future?) Add in that he's probably a creep who possibly raped someone (a lot of it was trumped up, but not all of it), I think Hillary is infinitely more sympathetic than Bill.
2. Gore - The presidency got stolen from him because of "too many Nader voters," remember? How is that an example of the left lining up to support him? Most people I knew voted for Nader, and only the more conservative ones reluctantly pulled the level for Gore.
3. No one was excited for Kerry, but the far left was berated into submission through "lesser of two evils-ism," and being blamed for GWB. People realized the "they're both the same" narrative no longer held true because the GOP was being run by zombie demonspawn.
4. Obama *was* a protest vote against the Dem establishment, who said that a black dude with Hussein in his name could never win. There has been grousing against Obama, but he at least didn't do his best to help dismantle the welfare state.
TL:DR The Sanders campaign is a *result* of people being disappointed with Obama. Not because "there's no difference," but because people are realizing that centrist Democratic solutions are inadequate to address growing and massive income inequality. We're supposedly out of a recession, but economic growth has gone solely to the top 1%. People are angry about this, and want something real done about it.
Gore got some of that from the left of the party (though not nearly as much, though also in fairness those were different times) but I think it has a viscerally different quality now w/r/t Hillary. The critique isn't just that she's boring or unexciting or establishment or that she's unlikely to do incredibly bold new things. There's also a strong current (so a lot of people seem to think) of viewing her as affirmatively deeply untrustworthy and possibly corrupt, which I think is linked to her gender.
People pointing out that H Clinton is just like any other politician are fundamentally missing the point: Sanders is not just like any other politician. Things that would be fine or unremarkable when running against a standard politician now appear sleazy and morally compromised in contrast. The narrative has been, "sure it's sleazy, but it's necessary if you want to play ball." Sanders doing well is radical because it's showing you can compete in the ballgame without using politics to massively enrich himself and his friends. If sexism were a giant issue, you'd expect Martin O'Malley to have done better, since he's a male alternative to Hillary. He didn't, because this primary isn't about two people who are fundamentally the same but one's a woman and one's an old Jewish man.
Sanders is not just like any other politician.
That's a very good image for a politician to put forth.
121. HRC's problem is just an instance of the fact that both party establishments are deeply involved with all the worst companies in America. When Republicans speak at Goldman Sachs and take home $600K, they at least are following their ideology.
When Democrats like HRC do it and then talk about all the wonderful progressive, populist things they are going to do when elected, it's obviously a lie. Sanders has the advantage that he hasn't done buckraking. (To be mean about it, maybe he has never had the opportunity.)
Gore got some of that from the left of the party (though not nearly as much, though also in fairness those were different times)
The internet didn't exist in the same way back then. I knew plenty of people who called Gore an empty suit and a corporate sell-out. You didn't know about them, however, because they weren't posting it on Reddit or Daily Kos or Facebook.
I don't disagree that there's an extra level of sexist vitriol that Hillary has to deal with. I do disagree that the left hasn't been vociferously criticizing centrist Democrats for decades. They have been, and the reason we hear it way more know is the internet has provided a platform for these voices in the way the MSM never has.
If the campaign were Sanders/O'Malley only, Sanders would not, I think, have had remotely as much success, including among young people. I'm not saying that he wouldn't have had any success, but not nearly to the same extent.
Sanders doing well is radical because it's showing you can compete in the ballgame without using politics to massively enrich himself and his friends.
Oh come on.
128 is exactly right.
It also seems to me that the same dynamic is hurting Clinton because the normal 'hey it was a different time she's changed her mind'* defense of things she pushed in the '90s really just doesn't work well against Sanders, because Sanders was one of the few politicians pushing back against the things people now object to. So it's too easy for people to look at that defense and go "well it wasn't a different time for your opponent now was it?", which makes the whole argument look empty.
*Which in some cases genuinely is a good defense, though not I think good enough to absolve Clinton for most of the attacks.
Here are two good paragraphs about "likability," since the word has come up several times in the discussion. The whole thing is worth your time, too.
I spent much of this year working on a long project on how women are demonized in the media. Hillary Clinton was a fairly large part of that story - she had to be; if you want to talk "women that people hate," she's kind of unavoidable - and I spent a while sorting through Clintoniana, dating back to the early '90s, to find nasty things people had said about her, or common narratives about her personality. It wasn't pretty - the worst stuff for Hillary was way worse than I'd expected, and there was way more of it than I expected to find - but it was also illuminating, in some key ways. I got a better sense of the pressures that she has to live with, and how they've informed her decisions.I also realized that, unless you really take a look at those pressures, the narrative around Hillary Clinton's "likability" is doomed to be inaccurate, in some way. She might even be very easy to dislike, if you weren't looking at those narratives, or if you underestimated their severity. But, in my experience, trying to parse Hillary Clinton without also parsing Hillary-Hate is like trying to drink water without touching the glass. As long as you refuse to deal with the container, the actual substance tends to stay permanently out of reach.
[A]gain, Hillary's status as a woman (and, particularly, as a successful career woman of a particular generation) comes into this. ... All would certainly get attacked for being part of the "establishment" but I do think there would be quite a different quality to the attack.
I think that's right. I think part of it is direct sexism and also that, in the context of sexist stereotypes and cultural tropes the feeling of, "I just hoped that you would be better than that." Is more damaging to a woman than a man.
I also think this is right:
TL:DR The Sanders campaign is a *result* of people being disappointed with Obama. Not because "there's no difference," but because people are realizing that centrist Democratic solutions are inadequate to address growing and massive income inequality.
Most specifically, I think that's an explanation for why Sanders would chose to run this year (both that, as an experienced politician he saw an opening in which his his appeal had a chance to fit the moment and that, even if his campaign ended up being a mostly symbolic primary fight this was a year in which that symbolism would be valuable).
I'm a feminist millennial (I think, I'm not sure what the cut-offs are. Maybe I'm generation Y), and a Sanders supporter. I think getting back to to 42, I have (surprise) a somewhat longwinded answer.
Feminism is both extremely simple and obvious, and also extremely complex. The basic premise is that women should be treated as equal to men. The issue is that men aren't treated all that equally, so arguing that women should be treated like men often requires arguing in favor of or at least celebrating the current class/race hierarchy. It would be a feminist achievement if 50% of corporate lawyers, or 50% of hedge fund managers were women. It's also a feminist achievement that is pretty hollow to most women.
2nd wave feminism made a lot of advances, many of which are respected, but it generally focused on the rights of UMC/UC women to be treated like UMC/UC men, and was extremely tone deaf to women outside the standard "Betty Friedan" narrative. Celebrating women in the workforce is a good example, because poor women have been in the workforce for a long time, and to celebrate the "right to work" requires completely erasing poor women's generally compulsory labor, and the issues they have dealt with. They also erased much of the work that working class women did in labor organizing, and have totally denied the history of working class women's feminism. Finally, there are ways it pits the interests of women against each other: UMC women in the workforce is made possible by the poorly paid labor of other women, who don't have a fraction of the resources to solve their own problems. In reaction to 2nd wave feminism, you have movements like "womanism," which was created by women of color. Mainstream white feminists have alienated working class women and women of color by ignoring or denying the ways in which they are reinforcing racial and class hierarchies.
Coming directly out of 2nd wave feminism, you have 3rd wave feminism. This is what my friend and I call "fat model feminism," and it's what you find on blogs like Jezebel. In this world, "I choose my choice!" means anything any woman does is feminist. So you get articles like, "my boob job empowered me," or "12 lipsticks to make you feel like an awesome feminist." Reading third wave media sites, you get the impression the most pressing issues for women are those ways in which UMC women are likely to experience overt sexism: body image representation (aka "why aren't there more fat models?") and campus rape. Those issues are important, but they're not the only or the most important ways women, especially working class women, feel sexism. Third wave feminism is equally as alienating as 2nd wave feminism.
Prominent 2nd and 3rd wave feminists have come out to support Hillary Clinton, without ever addressing the ways in which mainstream feminism has giant classism issues. When Bernie gets attacked for "reducing sexism to classism," I would argue it's backfiring, because it's calling attention to the ways in which mainstream feminism has ignored and belittled class issues.
I finally figured out what's bugging me so much about the dynamic here ("here" being the larger discussion on the Dem side, not this thread):
Take a standard lefty-liberal (e.g., most of the people here, or the rightward 2/3 of Bernie supporters). Ask them if they think that Obama has been disappointing, but ultimately successful. Then ask if they'd vote for Obama for a 3rd term if they could. Then ask if they think HRC would govern meaningfully to the right of Obama. Finally, ask if they affirmatively want her to win.
I think that for the vast majority of that group, you'll get Yes,Yes, No, and No. And that last No is a complete non sequitur, and it's really hard to see it coming from anything other than some combination of old grudges, sexism, and internalized anti-Clinton bullshit.
Sure, there's definitely leeriness about her hawkishness--I get that. But that doesn't hold up as a serious critique, because if you're OK with Obama, who literally chose her as his foreign policy person, and who has not meaningfully tacked leftward since she left, then you can't seriously claim that she'd be unacceptably to his right on foreign policy. Either he's unacceptable, or she's acceptable. And my point is that, ISTM, most of the people I'm talking about would judge him totes acceptable, and her marginally acceptable, through gritted teeth.
This thread is making me realize how much political prognostication is just tea-leaf-reading rather than anything more meaningful. I mean, 106 is based on a pretty small sample size, statistically speaking. "Hillary and Bernie are both outsiders!" "Hillary and Bernie are both in the establishment!" "But who is more likeable?"
I'm not trying to point fingers, I know there's a lot of stuff just like that and even airier out there. So I went to Five Thirty Eight just now to see what the more rigorous commentary is. They say it's hard to say. So much for that idea.
137
I think the problem with this is it assumes voters are operating with infinite choice. Obama ran against Hillary's war record as an anti-war candidate, and won. Obama then appointed Clinton, it wasn't a democratic vote, so people had no way to note their displeasure (except staying home in 2010, which lots of them did). Then, those same people voted again for Obama, because the alternative was Romney. Now, people have the choice between Hillary and a different antiwar candidate, and they're again picking the antiwar candidate. Democrats have a pretty consistent record here, when they actually have a choice.
Look, if Clinton were running against 70% of other Democrats, I would support her. Feinstein? Schumer? Clinton in a heartbeat. It so happens she's running against an actual social democrat, which is the only time ever that I have a chance to vote for someone who supports my actual politics. It doesn't have to be so complicated and overwrought.
I would argue it's backfiring, because it's calling attention to the ways in which mainstream feminism has ignored and belittled class issues.
I'm not convinced that the number of people for whom this resonates would fill a convention hall. I mean, here's your Venn diagram: A. committed to feminism as a project; B. critical of the privilege of old line white feminists; C. totally down with Sanders' downplaying of racial issues in favor of a class-driven critique.
millennial (I think, I'm not sure what the cut-offs are. Maybe I'm generation Y)
It's never been clear to me if there's a difference; Wikipedia says there isn't. I have read that there are basically two subgroups of millennials: those who came of age before 2000 (and therefore have firsthand experience with the pre-WWW world, with all that implies), and those who came after. Get X definitely ends by about 1980, so there's a good chunk of kids who graduated HS before 9/11 who aren't Gen X.
Obama then appointed Clinton, it wasn't a democratic vote, so people had no way to note their displeasure (except staying home in 2010, which lots of them did)
You have got to be kidding me.
I think what's irking me is it feels like there are people who can't conceive of people who would support Sanders's policies over Clinton's, so a vote for Sanders is necessarily an anti-Clinton vote. Instead of figuring that maybe a sizable chunk of Americans really do want single payer healthcare, the narrative has to be that a sizable chunk of Americans are actually just sexist. The people who control the MSM have a huge investment in this narrative, because they're absolutely against single-payer healthcare and actual redistribution of the wealth.
Either he's unacceptable, or she's acceptable. And my point is that, ISTM, most of the people I'm talking about would judge him totes acceptable, and her marginally acceptable, through gritted teeth.
Yes, that's very well said and it goes exactly to a lot of my frustration. I don't mind at all people who say "the Democratic party, led by Barack Obama is too far to the right, Obama has been a disappointment, we need radical change in the party establishment." I don't mind at all people who are voting for Sanders for those reasons (though I'm very skeptical that this will actually work, there's no harm in trying, at least as long as you're not substantially increasing the chances that a Republican wins, which is another question).
But there are a lot more people who seem to be, basically, of the view that Obama was a great, successful, if not perfect President, whom we all love, but Hillary is a dangerous suspicious sell-out conservative tool of Wall Street who can be voted for only with maximum reluctance if there's no better option. And it's the disconnect between the love of Obama and the distrust of Hillary Clinton that drives me nuts. On somewhere between 99 and 100% of the issues they are exactly the same! Either you're OK with mainstream Democrats or you're not, but the parsing between Clinton and Obama drives me nuts.
I guess I'm literally just repeating what 137 said, so take that as an endorsement.
2nd wave feminism made a lot of advances, many of which are respected, but it generally focused on the rights of UMC/UC women to be treated like UMC/UC men, and was extremely tone deaf to women outside the standard "Betty Friedan" narrative.
I understand what you're saying, but I want to push back on that slightly. I feel that something like Ms magazine is a fairly direct example of 2nd wave feminism and has also been ahead of the mainstream media in terms of being supportive of and covering concerns of working class women.
I think that one of the dynamics that has happened which makes 2nd and 3rd wave feminists look out of touch with working class women and women of color is that that standards of what it means to be "in touch" have changed over time (and for the better) as an increasing number of working class/women of color have spoken out the sense of what it means for them to be represented in a coalition expands.
I don't want to wade too far into this argument because it's (a) a tangent and (b) deeply complicated.
It doesn't have to be so complicated and overwrought
No, actually, around here, just about everything does.
It so happens she's running against an actual social democrat, which is the only time ever that I have a chance to vote for someone who supports my actual politics.
This is why I prefaced with the parenthetical in 137.2: honest-to-god social democrats of course exist in the Dem party, and of course would and should vote for Bernie. I don't think that this accounts for the majority of Sanders' support. If it did, then he wouldn't be the only goddamn social democrat in either house of congress. I mean, are there even 20 members of congress who would even make sense in the same category with Sanders (terminology aside)? Maybe I'm underestimating the House Progressive Caucus, but I don't think so.
141
I'm not arguing that's why people stayed home, I'm simply pointing out that people have no say in who's are SOC. Unless everyone else is has gotten their secret "vote for all my cabinet members" ballots except me.
But JFC people. It's like you're being purposely obtuse. If you want X, and your options are X -3 and X -10000000000, you're going to pick X-3, because it's closer to X than the alternative. Plenty of Americans were unhappy that Obama wasn't more to the Left, but they're not brain dead, so they recognize, in a two-way choice between Obama and Romney, Obama is the better choice. Now, people are getting a choice between X and X-3, and they're choosing X. It's not rocket science.
Obama, who literally chose her as his foreign policy person
The Cossacks work for the Czar. I think foreign policy would have been different if it had been president Clinton appointing SoS Obama because the president ultimately makes the policy decisions and the SoS executes them.
The fact the Sanders' support only emerged after it became clear that the very enthusiastic movement to draft Elizabeth Warren was going nowhere ought to make clear that "sexism" isn't the root issue here. I strongly suspect that Warren would be polling even better than Sanders is now, if she'd decided to run.
Posted before I saw this:
But there are a lot more people who seem to be, basically, of the view that Obama was a great, successful, if not perfect President, whom we all love, but Hillary is a dangerous suspicious sell-out conservative tool of Wall Street who can be voted for only with maximum reluctance if there's no better option. And it's the disconnect between the love of Obama and the distrust of Hillary Clinton that drives me nuts. On somewhere between 99 and 100% of the issues they are exactly the same! Either you're OK with mainstream Democrats or you're not, but the parsing between Clinton and Obama drives me nuts.
Yes, this is a weird and suspicious narrative. I've never met anyone who has said this, but I probably run in certain circles.
so a vote for Sanders is necessarily an anti-Clinton vote
I'm not reacting to anyone's vote; I'm reacting to the countless things I read that imply that Clinton is basically Rahm Emmanuel, if not Newt Gingrich, in a pantsuit. Somehow it's not possible to be pro-Sanders without crapping on Clinton. I mean, I get it, that's politics, but it also rings hollow when people (not you) say in one breath that she's totally acceptable, but in the next breath that she's the loathsome embodiment of plutocracy in America.
Now, people are getting a choice between X and X-3, and they're choosing X. It's not rocket science.
Thought experiment:
I agree with that, and if Sanders wins the nomination I am perfectly happy to agree that (a) people made a choice in favor of a more liberal policy and (b) that I'd be happy with that choice. But, turn it around, if Clinton wins the nomination would you (Sanders supporters) feel like that was a clear collective choice for X-3 as a policy goal?
I'm not sure that you would, and I'm not sure that you should either. Because there are people who might sincerely believe that X is good policy and that it's unachievable in the current political climate. Which is where all of the side arguments about electibility and capability to work the levers of power come in.
If you want X, and your options are X -3 and X -10000000000, you're going to pick X-3, because it's closer to X than the alternative. Plenty of Americans were unhappy that Obama wasn't more to the Left, but they're not brain dead, so they recognize, in a two-way choice between Obama and Romney, Obama is the better choice. Now, people are getting a choice between X and X-3, and they're choosing X.
Yes, but as JRoth says the portion reasoning that way seems very likely to be only a relatively small portion, maybe a third, of Bernie's votes. Not no one, of course, but it seems like Bernie's support is substantially broader. IIRC (I haven't checked these numbers, but I think that they are roughly right) only about 1/3 of Democrats identify themselves as "liberal" on economic issues (as opposed to conservative or moderate), and the number that goes beyond that to "very liberal" or "plausibly social democratic" is much smaller still. Maybe (hopefully!) it's increasing, but not enough to justify what seems like Bernie's support, especially in places like New Hampshire and Iowa. He's drawing from a lot of folks who are more-or-less OK with Obama, and are more or less mainstream liberals, but are suspicious of Hillary, not just the "Left," which is why his campaign has done well.
140
Oh, I'm not saying these people are Sanders supporters, I'm simply pointing out there are tons of people who've criticized mainstream feminism for ignoring intersectionality, to the point there's an alternate movement (womanism). My point is that a bunch of famous feminist figureheads lining up to say support Hillary isn't going to be persuasive to a decent chunk of women, for various and often legitimate reasons. These women might support Clinton for other reasons (e.g. electability).
147
Polls have shown that most Americans actually do support Bernie's policies.
I continue to think that Buttercup is basically right through this thread. Also I'm not fully convinced by the "Obama and Clinton both say (x), so someone who says they'd be ok with another Obama term but unhappy about the prospect of a Clinton presidency are being inconsistent"* argument. If it comes down to trusting a candidate's judgment or trusting that they'll pursue the question is always going to be about their personal history, because trust is based on how people have acted in the past. And the reason Obama beat out Clinton in 2008 was largely because people could put their respective histories up against each other and compare them to see which candidate they trusted to pursue whatever moderate center-left policy they were proposing and which one they thought was more likely to veer sharper to the right when put under pressure, or to be hawkish in foolish ways. And Clinton's history was really, really bad on that question.
Also Obama's current "yeah I'm ok with the idea of another term for him" status is probably tied (at least partially, emotionally) to the fact that the last year or two has seen him move sharply leftward, as a result of finally adjusting to the reality that there's no point in trying to move to the right in the hopes of getting a deal with the Republicans. So that's both made more popular among the people (still) to his left and increases the sense that he's more trustworthy (in the future).
*(Though, obviously, 'when given the option to support Sanders who says (y) which is what they actually want' undercuts the argument at least as much.)
Anyway, Krugman is pissing me off, in addition to his repeated references to "Bernie bros", because he keeps arguing about how constrained Bernie would be. So is Hillary! To use the algebra above but log transformed, if Bernie is X and Hillary is X-0.5 and Romney X-10, the current median legislative vote is probably X-11 (ie to the right of Romney). So both Hillary and Bernie are so far from having their agenda enacted that it's going to be the same as Obama now, appointments and executive orders. Who do I trust more to make appointments to the courts and enforcement agencies like EPA, SEC, NLRB? The person with fewer ties to corporations, if only because those ties give you connections to people you know or your corporate friends know (e.g. Antonio Weiss). These are so numerous that the left can't throw a shitstorm every time Hillary appoints some Wall St. person to a fourth tier position in Treasury, but that's where a lot of the decisions about policy enforcement priorities happen and they get filled via networks of insiders.
The only other arguments Krugman could be making are electability, which I don't buy that anyone can actually predict, and competence, which would have to be argued more explicitly for me to believe it.
The fact the Sanders' support only emerged after it became clear that the very enthusiastic movement to draft Elizabeth Warren was going nowhere ought to make clear that "sexism" isn't the root issue here.
I, at least, wasn't arguing that it was. I was making a different argument, which is that Hillary Clinton is particularly vulnerable from attacks from the left (including, potentially, from another woman) in a way that a male centrist-establishment Democrat candidate would not be, precisely because of a sense that career-striving baby boomer women are fundamentally untrustworthy. Or, in other words, that in the unlikely event that Sanders (or Warren) and Martin O'Malley were the only two candidates, the attacks on O'Malley would be different, both in tone, and, I think, in effectiveness.
only about 1/3 of Democrats identify themselves as "liberal" on economic issues (as opposed to conservative or moderate)
This is true but deceptive. People don't identify as liberal because for some reason it's become a bad word, but lots of people (including lots of self-identified conservatives!) support a lot of progressive policy goals.
only about 1/3 of Democrats identify themselves as "liberal" on economic issues (as opposed to conservative or moderate), and the number that goes beyond that to "very liberal" or "plausibly social democratic" is much smaller still.
Seconding 156.2. I don't think that self-identification counts for all that much since it often doesn't reflect the actual policies people favor. Besides, I think that because of the ongoing great recession a lot of formerly secure middle class folks who probably self-identify as "moderate" are now more animated about class issues than they used to be.
folks who are more-or-less OK with Obama, and are more or less mainstream liberals, but are suspicious of Hillary
Though, remember, Millennials Like Hillary Clinton.
My personal theory about the primaries (which I was thinking of in the footnote to 121) is that, the more it looks like Sanders didn't have a chance the easier it was for people to feel like voting for him was a chance to take a free shot -- to express a hope for something better, something more radical, or even just something more dramatic than the Clinton campaign.
If the race isn't close, there's no cost to being suspicious of Clinton, so it's an easy position to support.
So the question the becomes, if Sanders stays close to Clinton through a handful of primaries does that increase his support or not? If so, it suggests that there are people who like him who had stayed away out of concerns about electibility who come to support him when he looks like a serious candidate. If it doesn't then one explanation could be that people are using him as a protest vote.
The single-issue polls are also consistently extremely misleading, though. You can get basically everyone to agree that any single policy proposal is a good idea depending on how you frame the question.
The notion that there is a silent majority of Americans just sitting out there hoping for single payer health care and actually nationalized banks and free university tuition -- not in some abstract way, but when you actually have to pay the taxes and do the work and enact the policies for them -- is a complete pipe dream, and it would be better if everyone just put that myth to bed. That is of course especially true in the middle of any political fight on that issue, but e.g. Obamacare was extremely unpopular among voters (it is only barely popular now), and not (in any significant way) because people were disappointed that it hadn't provided full European free health care to all.
The notion that there is a silent majority of Americans just sitting out there hoping for single payer health care and actually nationalized banks and free university tuition -- not in some abstract way, but when you actually have to pay the taxes and do the work and enact the policies for them -- is a complete pipe dream
But they'd like it once it was here!
This is what my friend and I call "fat model feminism...."
[Collapses laughing, may need medical attention.]
That is of course especially true in the middle of any political fight on that issue, but e.g. Obamacare was extremely unpopular among voters (it is only barely popular now), and not (in any significant way) because people were disappointed that it hadn't provided full European free health care to all.
I can't disagree with this strongly enough. Basically, heebie is right in 164, and while the people who benefit from Obamamcare like it--it's genuinely helping a lot of people, and helping some subset of those people a great deal--the big problem is that it basically didn't fix much of what's wrong with our system, and most people still are dealing with a terrible system. If it had fixed more, it would be more popular.
I don't disagree that a single-payer system would ultimately have been extremely popular, as it is in most countries that have one. Heebie is right -- build it and people would like it. But that's not what I'm taking about. There is not Ia substantial portion of the American electorate (not no portion, but certainly less than 1/3 of even the Democratic party) who right now really truly are committed to single-payer health care as a strong policy priority, even if it meant higher taxes, uncertainty, losing your current insurance, having doctors lobby against it, etc. etc.
I don't think that's coherent -- you can't talk about who's committed to what right now if you're also talking about how it would be affected by possible future circumstances.
There aren't ever going to be all that many people committed to something that isn't an immediate political possibility, so less than a third of the Democratic part literally committed right now to single paper is fair. But if you're talking about who'd support it if it were a live possibility, being advocated with even reasonable political competence, there'd be a whole lot of support out there.
The trick to get to single payer is adding the public option in to Obamacare (and I guess making it available to employers as well). At that point you've set the tools in place to get to single payer with relatively small/incremental steps over time. If there's any chance of getting that I would absolutely trust Sanders over Clinton when it comes to doing what it took, and I think it would be something that could be sold to the general public (who are not conservative legislators or terrified insurance companies) without some kind of bizarre unforeseen changes to their views.
I still haven't forgiven Obama for conceding the public option before the negotiations ever started. I think that was one of his biggest blunders as president.
169 -- people might act differently in a hypothetically different political environment. But that wasn't the point I was responding to. The argument was that "Polls have shown that most Americans actually do support Bernie's policies," with the implication being that his support is driven primarily by a silent majority of people who are actually social democrats making a considered decision to vote for the more socially-democratic candidate. But that's almost certainly false. There aren't zero people like that, but there aren't a lot of them. People with a well-formed political desire for a substantial increase in social democracy, including single-payer health insurance -- and, crucially, who vote for candidates because of those issues -- aren't even close to a political majority of the Democratic party, much less a majority of voters in the United States.
169.last: I don't think the story of Obamacare supports this notion at all. The Senators who were being dicks weren't just being personally dicks: they were honest-to-god Democrats who got elected on Democrats' votes, and who felt that Obamacare was a very hard sell with their IRL Democratic constituents.
I mean, I'm on the record in favor of a public option*, and it still cheers me to see bumper stickers for single payer, but I'm not under any illusion that, had Obama, Pelosi, and Reid held a joint press conference saying that they had a workable plan for single payer, there'd have been a rush of grassroots support. As RT says, there's just no evidence that the Democratic Party has a majority of members who are social democrats at heart. I'd buy that there's a plurality, but that's it. Polls showing X% of Dems as "liberals" or whatever don't nec. distinguish between economic and social, and I think the former group is smaller (subset of) than the latter.
*including the idea that the admin and its allies dropped it too soon
Either RT or I should just go get some work done rather waste time duplicating each other.
Related: Anybody know who replaced Ben Nelson?
Honestly, I can't remember his actual name either.
I think it would be something that could be sold to the general public (who are not conservative legislators or terrified insurance companies) without some kind of bizarre unforeseen changes to their views.
But the general public is highly susceptible to propaganda from conservative legislators and terrified insurance companies.
And then there's the part where Congress is not a conduit for the will of the general public; see gun control.
it basically didn't fix much of what's wrong with our system, and most people still are dealing with a terrible system. If it had fixed more, it would be more popular.
Except that health care/insurance inflation over the past 5 years has been lower than it's been over any comparable period since the HMO transition*, and for 15 years before that.
It turns out people don't pay any fucking attention to this shit, and are absolutely terrible at assigning blame. I mean, "Thanks, Obama" is now mostly a joke, but it didn't start that way, and there's 40% of the country and a trillion dollars committed to telling everyone in earshot that, when their monopolistic local hospital tries to screw them over, just like they've been doing for 25 years, it's suddenly Obama's fault. And most of that everyone is stupid enough to believe it.
Short of a magic wand, health care reform was never going to change that. And single payer isn't, either, because, as I once read on the internet, CHANGEBAD. There is no IRL transition to single payer that doesn't involve unhappy, unpleasant change, and it turns out the people who face the bad change are better voters than the ones who finally get health care.
*which wasn't "savings", it was a loss of service that at least was matched by not charging more
If there's any chance of getting that I would absolutely trust Sanders over Clinton when it comes to doing what it took
Why? Serious question, needs to be put into words. Clinton obviously says the right things.
I think that to a large degree, you will turn into the kind of people you hang out with and try to communicate with especially if it is a choice. And I extend that way past billionaires and energy moguls.
Looked at Emma Watson's Goodreads Friday Feminist Bookclub this morning. Read nothing but feminist approved books with a sincere attempt to understand and you will become a feminist. I try to limit my overtly feminist reading to about 1 book in three*, to avoid epistemic closure. Hang around Republicans, you will go right. Unless you live in determined alienation.
*includes a lot of sociology, doesn't need to be explicit.
Except that health care/insurance inflation over the past 5 years has been lower than it's been over any comparable period
Umm, copays, out-of-pocket, deferred medical care and visits...never mind
I decided since this was so complicated and the fog so thick my metrics would be health results (life expectancy, infant mortality, etc) and inequality (Gini, top 10% wealth, etc) and I would get serious about assessing the success only after Repubs got their hands on it.
Healthier and wealthier was the promise.
Look, if Clinton were running against 70% of other Democrats, I would support her. Feinstein? Schumer? Clinton in a heartbeat. It so happens she's running against an actual social democrat, which is the only time ever that I have a chance to vote for someone who supports my actual politics. It doesn't have to be so complicated and overwrought.
I am just like Buttercup, but old. Having the chance to vote for an actual goddamn democratic socialist on a national ticket is enough to make me weep.
This is interesting.
In 2008, 239,000 Iowans participated in the Democratic caucuses compared with about 170,000 last night.
I hadn't realized there was that much of a drop-off.
Having the chance to vote for an actual goddamn democratic socialist on a national ticket is enough to make me weep.
Replace "democratic" with "national".
I think HRC faces a phenomenal amount of sexism, and most of the liberalish variety of it -- among journalists, pundits, and voters -- shows up in holding her to a higher standard (e.g. the speeches-for-hire thing mentioned above) or pointing to amorphous reasons for not liking her.
That said, I'm sure* my own personal opposition is based in her policy positions and not her gender.
*Not at all sure, actually. It's a continuous process, coming to grips with your own internalized sexism.
That said:
Anyway, Krugman ... keeps arguing about how constrained Bernie would be. So is Hillary! ...[B]oth Hillary and Bernie are so far from having their agenda enacted that it's going to be the same as Obama now, appointments and executive orders.
Exactly.
Who do I trust more to make appointments to the courts and enforcement agencies like EPA, SEC, NLRB? The person with fewer ties to corporations, if only because those ties give you connections to people you know or your corporate friends know (e.g. Antonio Weiss). These are so numerous that the left can't throw a shitstorm every time Hillary appoints some Wall St. person to a fourth tier position in Treasury, but that's where a lot of the decisions about policy enforcement priorities happen and they get filled via networks of insiders.
Sort of. For me, it's more that HRC, like most Washington types, sees herself as, above all, savvy. (Link goes to the very useful Jay Rosen definition of political reporters and the "Church of the Savvy.")
You can see this in HRC's response to the Black Lives Matter activists. I think she was telling the truth:
"Look, I don't believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You're not going to change every heart. You're not. But at the end of the day, we could do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them, to live up to their own God-given potential..."
I think she really, genuinely believes that. And I look at her comments there, and I don't know how she can have lived through the last 10 years of social policy changes and not see that policy change ISN'T always an incremental, step-by-step process. Sometimes you have a tidal wave of emotion that sweeps over the electorate, and people get brave enough to leapfrog over like 2,371 steps in the policymaking process. (And sometimes we lurch backward, too.)
HRC reminds me of nothing so much as an Olympic figure skater who has trained her entire life to be able to trace figures on ice. She dramatically overvalues the importance of being able to skate in precise circles and twirls, and she under-values the public appetite for being swept up in a heroic narrative. Or maybe the better analogy is someone who got rich by inventing a product. They think their experience is "how people get rich," and they fail to understand that their experience is actually "one path by which a person got rich".
I suspect that part of the root of HRC's beliefs is -- again -- sexism. Women get punished for coloring outside of the lines, and I'm sure she's learned the lesson ad infinitum that she is not free to improvise and riff and experiment with policy positions the way a male candidate could do and be forgiven.
But I think she's wrong, and importantly wrong, about the policy moment that we're in now. To the extent that the young immigrant Dreamers and the Black Lives Matter activists have succeeded in getting their issues into mainstream discussion, it has decidedly NOT been because they made savvy policy proposals. Rather, they made pleas to the humanity and emotions of their audience, and then filled in policy proposals much later, if at all.
On appointments specifically, I think Hillary has a strong advantage, or it's at most neutral. For a few reasons. First, the bench for senior jobs is pretty much the same -- there's no "Sanders wing" of the Democratic party that's sufficiently developed or distinguished to have people ready to go to fill appointments that require Senate confirmations, in either the executive branch or judiciary. So he and Hillary will be looking at basically exactly the same people for the same appointments -- from cabinet secretaries to EPA to Treasury to judges. They will be liberal establishment types across the board, because who else can you pick? Maybe he makes better judgments than she does (we don't know this), but she also has more experience picking people (and her underlings also have more experience picking people and can do so quickly). The danger isn't so much that you get someone who's a corporate sellout at an important Deputy Undersecretary role (anyone can be tempted by the move into a corporation, people coming out of corporations are sometimes the best at regulating them), as someone who sucks big time at their job and doesn't know how to move things forward.
Since Bernie has had literally no executive experience except running the City of Burlington, VT, there's no reason to think that he'd be good or efficient at this job. And that is a HUGE part of being President, in many ways the most important part. The Obama administration was good at this but got off to a very slow start, which cost it enormously, especially in the first term; the Sanders administration will either be terrible and fast at appointments or slow and OK at them, but that's a big built-in advantage for Hillary.
Second, and I've said this before, the appointments from either party will be constrained by the Senate, so even if there was far-left appointments bench for Sanders that differed fundamentally from the ordinary competent liberal Democrats whom Hillary will appoint to jobs (there's not) there's no reason to think that Bernie would get anyone through that Hillary wouldn't.
So, if appointments and the like and administrative policy stuff are your reasons for going Sanders over Hillary, I don't think that makes any sense. But since he's probably not going to win regardless, even talking about these kinds of practical considerations feels a little besides the point.
||
My father-in-law, who I know voted for a Conservative in the last election, i.e. in support of the Harper government, recently said that if he were down here in the States he would vote for Bernie. He has a real antipathy to Hillary and doesn't seem to like Obama much either (though Obama is preferable to Hillary), but he likes Sanders, because he's honest.
I don't know whether there are people like him in the U.S., but to me it's an interesting data point.
|>
Maybe he makes better judgments than she does (we don't know this), but she also has more experience picking people (and her underlings also have more experience picking people and can do so quickly).
Well, she's made bad decisions picking people to run her campaign, which isn't boding well for judgment. Someone linked here to the Atlantic postmortem of her 2008 campaign, and it was an internal nightmare, with people who shouldn't have been listened to (Mark Penn) having far too much influence. No record of judgment is better than a record of bad judgment.
I think part of the problem is what counts a qualified? We keep hearing we need Tim Geithners and Rahm Emmanuals because they're "experts" and "ready to go from day 1." At this point I would take well-meaning incompetence over evil. Plus, it seems like that since, experts set the terms of success, they always by definition succeed. The banking industry up to 2008 would have been better run by untrained monkeys, but somehow the people behind the 2008 collapse are still in power and still getting government positions.
That's a fundamentally stupid way to think about government, which fortunately I assume Bernie wouldn't share. In order to have any hope of getting anything actually progressive done in an administrative agency, you need people who are competent and well-qualified and know what they're doing. And they run too much stuff to just have blind faith in whatever.
189
But this fundamentally hinges on "qualified." Obviously there's a level of general and particular competence you need to run a bureaucracy, but no one thinks Sanders is going to pick burnt out hippies to run his cabinet. But, in elite circles, there's a self-reinforcing narrative that only a few people are qualified to do something, and it's usually unmitigated bullshit. Plus, at the top of a bureaucracy, decisions aren't about nitty gritty functioning--those get carried out by midlevel bureaucrats, but things like judgment and general policy vision become more important. Having technical competence is worthless if you're generally evil or unwilling commit to programs or policies that cross your entrenched interests.
OK, so who are your go-to vision candidates for, say, the EPA's Assistant Administrator for Water? It will either be some known and senior liberal bureaucrat, who are the exactly the kind of people Sanders and Clinton are picking from, or it will be someone with no fucking idea what they're doing who you have to hope and pray learns on the job. Or, say, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets? Same thing. Honestly the notion that you don't need skill or experience to run a federal bureaucracy kind pisses me off, you sound like a stupid undergrad.
It's more mansulting than mansplaining.
Dude, RT, I'm mildly sympathetic to your claims here, but this is overreaching. I've probably gone to a half-dozen talks by former early-era Obama department officials in the past few years. What they all have in common is an arc: hope, excitement, desire to make a difference, overwhelmedness at the scale and the volume of problems coming at them, and then either a pragmatic coming to grips (and staying in the role long enough to make change) or a flight back into the safe arms of academia, policy, or journalism.
I fully expect that if Sanders got elected, he'd inspire a lot of the same -- smart, talented, Elizabeth Warren-ish people who hadn't previously been thrilled at the prospect of working in Washington, but get swept up in the possibilities and decide to take a leap. Some will do a good job, some won't.
Would they be better or worse than HRC's establishment-in-waiting lineup? I honestly don't know. I know I feel more comfortable with those Sanders/Obama types of people when I meet them, and I believe their errors will come more from blundering and overstepping, rather than the lazy pre-emptive compromises I see from the HRC-ish Democratic establishment.
But that's a personal preference, not a referendum on what the country should have to live with.
(Note that I'm *not* talking about the list of potential judicial nominees, which i assume is 95% identical for HRC and Sanders, but about which I am utterly unqualified to have opinions.)
It's the same lineup! These are the same people! There's no "Obama" type that wouldn't be in a Clinton administration or (almost certainly) in a Sanders Administration. For sure, all of those people need commitment and vision and goals to push things forward, but ALSO competence, and you need to quickly find people with bith. The notion that there's some kind of slow-moving sellout Clinton establishment bench that would be different than the presumptive liberal visionaries around Obama (or Sanders) is just so dissociated from reality and so typical of the ways in which people mysteriously want to rate Obama over Clinton and dramatically understate her both her liberalism and her competence. It's this kind of thing that drives me insane. The mainstream Democratic party is the same mainstream Democratic party under both Clinton and Obama.
As long as they never heard or plead a case in a court room with a flag that hold gold fringe, I'm sure they'll be fine.
Yeah, 195 is right, obama drew a lot of new brogiorets our whale woodrosem, including Elizabeth warren herself , not in the infant cyber 2008 demogoges , more likely brochures.
If Clinton's elected, at least we won't have something like the immediate disappointment of hearing Rahm Emanuel would be Obama's Chief of Staff. Instead, we could have the relief of not hearing anything about Mark Penn.
See, that's where we disagree. Maybe we're thinking of different positions (I'm not talking cabinet secretaries, but pretty much every level below that), but the lineup I think Sanders would have to select from is meaningfully DIFFERENT than HRC's lineup. There isn't some monolithic "Democratic lineup." There are different pipelines of people, and elections can alter who is willing to enter into a pipeline for consideration.
Put plainly, I am sure there are people I know -- good, qualified people -- who would apply for jobs in a Sanders administration who would never, ever apply to work for HRC.
Maybe the screening that would occur in any administration is so stringent that they'd never get in -- I have no idea; that's not my world. Certainly they wouldn't necessarily have the same undergraduate/graduate Ivy League stamps (though some would) as HRC's applicants would.
I, for one, would welcome more whale woodrosem in the senior ranks of the EPA.
Twas brogiorets and the likely brochures
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
whale woodrosem were the demogoges
And the mome raths outgrabe.
WRT the judiciary, i'll say what I always say which is it would be nice to have someone with criminal defense experience on the Supreme Court.
Prosecuting bankers is totally sexist, pass it on.
Look, here's Hillary's sell-out corporate senior policy advisor. Guess where she just worked! Here, the place where a bunch of other people she would appoint would be coming from. Or, exactly the place where policy people in the Obama administration come from.
I fully expect that if Sanders got elected, he'd inspire a lot of the same -- smart, talented, Elizabeth Warren-ish people who hadn't previously been thrilled at the prospect of working in Washington, but get swept up in the possibilities and decide to take a leap. Some will do a good job, some won't.
Put plainly, I am sure there are people I know -- good, qualified people -- who would apply for jobs in a Sanders administration who would never, ever apply to work for HRC.
This. If you think there's only one unique person who can do any job, because it's so complicated, then you've drunk the B-school koolaid. The idea that the choice is either Clinton I-era retreads or someone picked up from a Grateful Dead concert is totally laughable. There are tons of smart and talented people capable of running large bureaucracies who aren't DC insiders.
So frinstance, here's my friend, with her Planned Parenthood FB icon and generally sane POV, liking a meme where Bill says to HRC, "So I can date while you're in prison, right?" That's straight-up bullshit, coming from someone who'd stab herself with a fork before voting GOP, but the primary apparently drives her to right wing memes. Maybe it doesn't mean anything, but it makes me awfully suspicious.
It is a grave temptation to align myself with the least douchey supporters. I may end up voting for Carson.
Ted Cruz said Carson was dropping out.
It is straight up bullshit in that context, but in general how long are you supposed to wait for somebody to get out of prison? Let's assume they aren't taking the fall for you or something.
But the bigger point is this. I don't know how many people actually exist who unmitigatedly support Obama and everything he's done but are not Hillary supporters. It sounds like you may know some people, and LA is a funny place, so I won't rule it out. As I understand it, the people commenting here who support Sanders are reasonably nonplussed that Hillary would appoint the same people as Obama, because we'd prefer people to the left.
Witt a few comments ago said that she thought that HRC would not appoint "Sanders/Obama" people, and so, perhaps, did Urple. It's not just a few bizarre people; there's a persistent, but AFAICT totally wrong, belief among educated liberals that she's to the right of Obama or the right of the current liberal-Democratic mainstream and would not hire basically similar people to Obama. Drives me nuts.
199 is absolutely the greatest thing ever.
I think the idea that Obama, Clinton, and Sanders would all be appointing the same basic people to run things is undercut a fair bit by things like the Summers/Yellen nomination fight. We've seen more than one case where Obama tried to nominate someone from the more establishment side of things only to have the left push back aggressively. Hell, we're literally seeing one of those fights right now between Obama and Sanders. So the idea that there aren't multiple available candidates, or that they'd all basically be appointing the same people doesn't really pass muster.
I think the Summers/Yellen thing was kind of dumb in the end (she wasn't that left) but certainly Summers brought it on himself. And the thing linked in 219, which to be clear I know zero about, certainly looks like stupid grandstanding without much there from Bernie. But the point isn't that there's only one person for any position, it's that the bench for any of these positions is fairly small, and there's not likely to be much difference in the end in who gets picked. OK, so you get some researcher with similar views but without the taint of drug money at the FDA. Or you get someone less tied to the old regime than Larry Summers. But the basic universe of people, especially for less senior jobs, is going to be about the same.
Actually, and clearly I'm getting sucked into the primary candidate stupidity zone here, reading about the FDA thing is the first thing I've read that actually made me dislike Bernie. What grandstanding stupid Senatorial BS. Maybe the guy nominated is truly corrupt but reading that article Sanders sure doesn't come across well.
I'm available and probably cheaper than most. I want to telecommute to D.C. from Pittsburgh though.
I don't know what the FDA says about drug money but the parts of the government that pay for research call it "leveraging" and encourage you to go get it so they don't need to spend as much.
AFAICT totally wrong, belief among educated liberals that she's to the right of Obama
One of the reasons I think that, to be clear, is that she is routinely saying to advocates, "Now, I know you want X, but X-y is what is politically possible."
This may be true, but it's horrible strategy. You don't start OUT by saying it's impossible to get something big, especially in a closed-door meeting with advocates on an issue you ostensibly support.
Obama went much farther left on immigration by 2012 and then 2014 than he was in 2008, and I frankly assume HRC is going to continue evolving leftward (in response to pressure) if she becomes President. But HRC has a ways to go -- she wouldn't even promise to stop deporting children at the last debate I watched. And it took a LOT of pushing to get her to promise to stop taking money from private prisons.
Sanders isn't particularly well-versed in immigration, but his priors are deeply humane, and he's evolved very quickly over the course of the campaign so far, especially when his policy people are able to connect the dots between his long-held human-rights values and how they play out in an immigration context.
221: They're all like that. It's just part of the job.
Immigration in particular seems like an odd place to hang your hat on Sanders (or on Obama, for that matter, who until fairly late in his second term was arguably the worst Presidentin terms of interpreting and enforcing the laws that we've ever seen, and is still engaging in mass deportations).
Nosflow! I thought someone was calling me; alas I was mistaken.
That would have been the best-fucking biscuit.
I'm not claiming Sanders is great on immigration. I'm claiming that HRC is to Obama's right on immigration.
And the claim about Obama having deported the most people in history is a) accurate and b) not true. It's only literally accurate because his administration successfully reframed all of the people who are caught at the border and immediately returned as "deportations." No prior administration had done that. If you did that with other presidents, their numbers would go up significantly.
Advocates -- including me -- have seized on this framing because it's an extremely effective tool for galvanizing their base, but in my view it's borderline dishonest, and I've stepped away from citing it. Especially since Obama actually largely did away with the Bush-era workplace raids (and substituted them with the I-9 audits, aka "silent raids," and the individual apprehensions).
So yes, people who are longtime residents of the US are still getting deported under Obama, and it's heartwrenching and awful for all the reasons we can all articulate. But most of the people getting deported continue to be recent border arrivals.
I am genuinely curious as to the Clinton/Sanders support breakdown of the unfoggetariat. My earlier hypothesis was that it leaned Clinton, with a smaller group of more vocal Sanders supporters, but thinking more about this I'm not so sure. I imagine that a decent amount of Sanders support would be soft, as LB describes herself, i.e. people who would vote Sanders as a protest vote but not as a real candidate. I'd also be curious to see how age and gender intersect with this. Someone should do a survey monkey survey.
There's a biscuit to be fucked if you want it.
199 is absolutely the greatest thing ever.
205 is pretty fantastic too.
Yes, 205 got under-appreciated. Sorry, Stormcrow!
And now, to bed. Where I will dream of a Supreme Court that matches RBG's dream.
I hope the Center for American Progress isn't the only place the Democrats can find appointees, and I seem to remember there being hope that Obama wouldn't pick as many people from their orbit as he ended up doing, but it sadly probably is. Vaguely liberal alternatives like New America are probably more centrist, too. But it's been a long time since I paid close attention to what the 501(c)s were up to.
I'm claiming that HRC is to Obama's right on immigration.
What possible evidence do you have of this? This is Clinton's director of Latino outreach. Here she is condemning the most recent Obama administration raids, and calling for paid counsel for unaccompanied minors. Here for what it is worth is her website on the issue. I could see an argument that it's all campaign-season nonsense, but Latinos are heavily supportive of Hillary and everything public indicates that she is preparing to take further steps on immigration reform that go beyond what Obama has done.
I think she really, genuinely believes that. And I look at her comments there, and I don't know how she can have lived through the last 10 years of social policy changes and not see that policy change ISN'T always an incremental, step-by-step process. Sometimes you have a tidal wave of emotion that sweeps over the electorate, and people get brave enough to leapfrog over like 2,371 steps in the policymaking process. (And sometimes we lurch backward, too.)
HRC reminds me of nothing so much as an Olympic figure skater who has trained her entire life to be able to trace figures on ice. She dramatically overvalues the importance of being able to skate in precise circles and twirls, and she under-values the public appetite for being swept up in a heroic narrative. Or maybe the better analogy is someone who got rich by inventing a product. They think their experience is "how people get rich," and they fail to understand that their experience is actually "one path by which a person got rich".
Serious question, what's your basis for that? I ask because my primary source of information about Hillary Clinton is based on coverage of her campaigns, but I also think most people (including Obama) have said, essentially that she has weaknesses that are somewhat specific to the process of campaigning which may not be reflective of her as a decision maker.
Second question, when you talk about public support leapfrogging the current situation, in how many of those instances do you think presidential leadership is an important component.
The three most visible recent changes, in terms of broad social issues, are the victories for same-sex marriage, marijuana legalization, and the fight for 15, and Obama wasn't in front of any of those and, honestly, I'm not sure that it would have helped if was.
I know, in terms of the immigration debate, there have been times when people have said that it is more helpful for Obama to stay out of it (and other times when people have asked for him to take action).
Separately, in my moments of feeling optimistic about Hillary Clinton, the two things that strike me are, (1) she has tremendous first-hand knowledge of how Washington works and I don't think that should just be reduced to claiming that she's "savvy." One of the things that I took away from reading The Clinton Tapes was truly what it means to say that governing is a process of controlled chaos -- just how much presidents have to be reactive, rather than being able to plan an agenda*, and I think Clinton's lived experience would be helpful at managing that. (2) At this point she's a remarkably cosmopolitan person -- in the sense that she's traveled widely and at least feigned interest in the day to day life of people in wide range of counties. Some of this is clearly superficial, but I do think it matters and it represents a way in which she is more prepared for the presidency than almost any other recent president.
That is an optimistic view, I can't say with certainty that either of those would have a major impact on how her (potential) presidency would operate, but I think they are both potential strengths.
* Side note, I claim that reading the book allowed me to (in broad strokes) predict several of the problems that happened in Obama's first term. I don't remember if I commented here, or just wrote it in an e-mail, but I could find my comments. And if some of his stumbles were foreseeable based on just reading the book, I would think that being Hillary Clinton would be even better preparation for knowing what to expect.
I am genuinely curious as to the Clinton/Sanders support breakdown of the unfoggetariat.
I'm interested in Sanders, but I was interested in Gus Hall in the 80s. I still voted Carter-Mondale-Dukakis...actually, I just walk in and fill the 'D" square.
Looked at the Texas polls today.
Not crazy for Clinton, but I actually do think she is better than Obama. Not good enough to invest any hope anymore. Just keep the barbarians away as the empire declines and the people grow worse off.
And, the fact is that Obama's immigration policy was pretty consistently abysmal through 2014 or so. It's since gotten better, I think, but every federal court appearance I have still seems to open with at least 1/2 the docket being AUSAs who could be doing something else prosecuting pointless reentry-following-removal cases for people who do things like try to visit their kids child support hearings after being removed. That's not to bash Obama on the issue (or to claim that immigration paradise on earth is likely to be there under Hillary, or for that matter Sanders) but the notion that Obama is notably better than Hillary on immigration issues has no actual support that I'm aware of, at all.
None of this matters.
Everything was lost 2008-2010 and Republicans in control of the budget for the rest of our lifetimes means it all will keep getting worse. In aggregate, maybe not for individuals.
Big difference with me is that I think this was Obama's plan. Or assignment.
And none of this matters. Been reading Guy McPherson, who thinks the most important thing is
"...also creates a cooling effect that may have partially counteracted the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming."
2-6 degrees of cooling by coal, diesel, wood that can go away quite fast, unexpectedly, and possibly mysteriously as we move to wind and solar.
IOW, expect a 2-4 degree spike in the next decade.
We're already dead.
Why do you think this was Obama's plan/assignment?
I meant "woman" candidate not "yeoman" candidate.
I'd like to take this opportunity to declare my support of the sturdy English yeoman candidate. Not Hillary, not Bernie, but...oh wait, I'm told Adam Bede is not eligible to run, on grounds of the 'natural-born citizen' clause of the US constitution.
So I guess we're stuck with Americans born and bred, and possibly also with Ted ("hello Calgary!") Cruz (and we are probably wasting valuable time and energy parsing the infinitesimal differences amongst Democratic candidates, when we should all be freaking out about the aggressive triumphalism of Cruz's "to God be the glory"...).
I love Bernie, but I just don't believe he's electable. And while I have no great enthusiasm for Clinton, the insanely irrational Hillary-hatred in my FB feed makes me want to send her a donation, or at least give her a hug and a cookie, or something.
Also, go RT and JRoth in this thread!
What if Ted Cruz wins the nomination, but then it's determined he's not eligible? Is this where Bob's scenario of Jeb! repels in at the convention to save the day kicks in? Does it go to WWW-style wrestling between all the remaining candidates?
I think there's really a major age (and probably class) component to where people are coming from on this, specifically regarding what conversations are happening where. I've never seen anything remotely like JRoth's 212 in my FB feed, and that sounds like the kind of thing RT is also talking about. I haven't seen much if any pro-Clinton stuff either; it's pretty much all-Bernie-all-the-time with my friends, regardless of gender or race. These are mostly very engaged and politically involved millennials, who don't necessarily seem to particularly dislike Clinton, but who definitely like Sanders much more. This matches the polling data NickS linked somewhere upthread showing that young voters actually like both candidates fine. It sounds like Buttercup is coming from a similar context, which is just totally different from what a lot of the older commenters seem to be seeing and reacting to. So the tone and even the content of the Bernie vs. Hillary shouting matches some of us are seeing are very different from the ones others are seeing, and it becomes difficult to discuss them with each other in a forum like this.
Does it go to WWW-style wrestling between all the remaining candidates?
In that case Trump, as the only candidate with actual pro wrestling experience, definitely wins.
Jeb! repels in
Without rapport, Jeb is more likely to repel than rappel.
My main feeling is that the next 4+ years are going to be more-or-less like the last 6: a Republican House and 40+ Republican Senators. So who are we fucking kidding talking about single payer? I respect Sanders for propping up the Overton window and keeping Clinton honest--I may even vote for him for all the good that will do come June--but of course I'm going to vote for Clinton in November. (I probably would literally vote for a yellow dog on the Democratic line for President. (If they ran a yellow dog, I might vote for Bloomberg.)) And of course given the object conditions there's not going to be a damn bit of difference between Clinton or Sanders or Obama. That's different from the situation in 2008, in which there were a number of issues (not least the war) where Obama showed more backbone than Clinton and where Democratic majorities in Congress held out the hope of really getting something done (and something did! And it was pretty good!). I don't see much hope for another surge of liberal policymaking until we've suffered through another Republican recession and/or disastrous war.
On the appointments issue, I've been going back and forth, although I think overall I'm still more on the Tigre side, at least for cabinet-level positions and judges. I think Sanders is likely to make unconventional choices for a few key positions related to his signature issues, especially Treasury and maybe a few others like Labor and Commerce. There are a lot more departments than that, though, and I just don't see Sanders or Clinton making choices for the other ones that are significantly different from what the other would choose, or what Obama would do. (It may be worth reiterating that Obama's cabinet choices have actually been quite good overall, and have improved over the course of his presidency.)
At the lower levels, which still involve a lot of political appointees, Witt is probably right that a lot of people who wouldn't have otherwise been interested were drawn into the Obama administration and that a Sanders administration is more likely than a Clinton one to have the same effect. I'm not sure that the net effect of that is positive for liberal policy goals, though. From my own limited experience with a couple Obama appointees at this level, results have been decidedly mixed, and it really seems to depend a lot on the specific people appointed. Being able to navigate the federal bureaucracy is an important skill for getting things done, and being part of the "establishment" isn't necessary to have that skill but it certainly helps. But again, Clinton and Sanders are going to be choosing from basically the same set of people for these positions too; Sanders may have a slightly wider variety of people interested, but that doesn't mean he's actually going to nominate them.
One department worth thinking seriously about in this context is the VA. It doesn't get much attention except when things go disastrously wrong, but it's the second-largest department in the government and it's becoming increasingly important as we continue to be involved in endless unwinnable wars that produce increasing numbers of veterans, many of whom have serious health issues that need a lot of VA attention. Obama's appointments for VA Secretary have both been very obviously driven by political optics rather than anything else; the first was a disaster that plunged the department into a massive scandal for which the Secretary himself deserves much of the blame, and the jury's still out on whether the second has been able to make significant progress on fixing the mess he was handed. Are Sanders and Clinton likely to differ greatly in who they appoint for this extremely difficult and unglamorous job? Are their choices likely to differ greatly in their effectiveness at it?
Permanent revolution against the banking class is the only way to provide true health for our veterans.
I would make an excellent Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets, if any Presidential candidates are looking.
Does it go to WWW-style wrestling between all the remaining candidates?
In that case Trump, as the only candidate with actual pro wrestling experience, definitely wins.
Teo thinks pro wrestling is real. Pass it on.
In that case Rubio, with his proven abilty to memorize set-pieces, will clearly prevail.
Also Trump is clearly the heel and Rubio the babyface.
re: 255
It is genuinely amazing to me that the VA could be the second largest department of government. I suppose that's an artefact of the federal system, where lots of other things that would be huge departments in a country like the UK are the function of the states, not the federal government? It's still amazing.
261: according to ONS, "The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) is the largest employer in the Civil Service, with nearly 105,000 staff, followed by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) - (72,740), Ministry of Defence (MoD) - (49,090) and the National Offender Management Service (42,680)."
The NHS is much bigger but isn't a department.
In the US the DoD is the biggest. DWP's rough equivalent is Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration which is a non-departmental agency. Prisons happen at state level as well, so that's that. HMRC is partly Homeland Security and partly the IRS, I suppose.
Partly it's an artefact of federalism, partly just a question of what you label as a department.
The real question is which combination has best rematch potential.
IIRC the biggest US budget items after defense are Medicare and Medicaid both of which are administered at state level.
You don't start OUT by saying it's impossible to get something big, especially in a closed-door meeting with advocates on an issue you ostensibly support.
The correct response in this situation is "You've convinced me. Now make me do it."
264: Not at all. Medicare is administered almost entirely at the national level. Medicaid is a partnership with the states, but the federal side can push what the states do in many ways - for example, monitoring access and rates and whether the program is actually working for people.
255, 256 - you do know that Sanders has actually made the VA/veterans issues one of his pet causes in the Senate, right?
266 - So is medicare actually run by federal employees top to bottom?
268: Not top to bottom. There are managed care plans (Medicare Advantage and prescription drug benefit) and plenty of contractors (fiscal intermediaries like Xerox for payment processing). But there is very little federalism.
And what may not have been clear in my to 68 above is that in Medicaid, federal power is not just bully pulpit. They have the formal ability to approve or reject most changes states make to their Medicaid programs. The limitation there is political: for example, if they decided that existing payment rates to providers were inadequate and needed to be sharply raised, formally, they could require states to do this at risk of their entire programs, but it would blow huge holes in many states budgets and prompt a firestorm.
I assume a main driver of the large relative size of the VA is that it directly employs care providers, rather than contracting out for services or merely regulating private industry.
I have no great enthusiasm for Clinton
You don't? What changed? Serious question, by the way, as I'm curious why you thought it was worth fighting for her candidacy eight years ago, but now you only want to give her cookies and hugs and maybe some of your money.
So very many hospitals and clinics.
I bet this would also be a great way to make off with other people's Amazon purchases if they ever start trying to deliver via drones.
|>
The war eagle program: another reason the VA is such a huge part of the federal apparatus.
Little-known fact: live vermin procurement accounts for nearly $3.7 trillion of the $3.9 trillion federal budget.
Their food courts are called The Patriot Cafe. The outdoor seating patios at some of those food courts are not called The Fair Weather Patriot because nobody listens to me.
Just like the Fourth Amendment, woo! (But, no, actually he came in fifth. Just like this fifth of weed I just bought, woo!)
Oh hey, I confused Paul Ryan and Rand Paul again upthread.
277
I'm surprised. He's worth almost two Jeb!s, and over 700 Gilmores.
The latest from my FB feed:
"[HRC] is the living corporealization of capital."
Uh huh. Sure.
My facebook feed is filled with people talking about Berniebros. Seriously, why would anyone think that the contents of their facebook feed/twitter feed/instagram feed/etc. is illustrative of anything other than their own bad life choices?
Curate thine own social media, blog commenter.
271: I guess I'm tired of the same old faces, and disappointed that we're still dealing with the same crop of candidates. Until very recently, for example, people were speaking of Biden as a serious contender: Biden! who's been running for President since the late 1980s.
Where is the new blood? (and no, Bernie, at age 74 and with decades of political experience under his under belt, is not exactly new blood).
"[HRC] is the living corporealization of capital."
She inherited her superpowers on the death of her predecessor, Gold-Man.
I guess I'm tired of the same old faces, and disappointed that we're still dealing with the same crop of candidates.
Sounds like you're warming to Trump.
Out of curiosity, I checked my FB feed for the first time in a few weeks. Most of it is not political, but for the politics, I found:
1) someone asking which Republican was least scary
2) someone who posted a chart of the age breakdown of Bernie vs. Clinton supporters, with the quote: "you don't need Medicare-for-all when you've already got Medicare."
3) Some people expressing concern over how heated the primary has gotten, saying they'd support either candidate in the general,
4) A person saying they thought the media was sexist and they'd met Clinton personally and liked her, and
5) Someone claiming that a tie in Iowa is not a "victory" for Clinton.
I think 250 is right. We're seeing such different campaign support on the ground, it's hard to have a meaningful conversation.
IRL, about 85% of people my age are Bernie supporters, and almost none of them hate Clinton. The most anti-Clinton people I know are women, some white and some of color (the WOC Bernie supporters I know are most angry at the "Bernie bro" narrative, because they feel doubly erased). I have a few female friends who lean Clinton, both because they'd like to see a woman elected and also because they're worried Bernie would get killed in the general. I have a male friend who supports Clinton because, as a Jew, he's worried that Bernie's nomination will lead to a giant anti-Semitic backlash and the revival of the "Jewish Bolsheviks taking over our country" narrative.
In real life, I don't know any obnoxious Sanders or Clinton supporters. I avoid Daily Kos and really obnoxious leftist sites, so I don't see the worst of Sanders supporters. I do read mainstream feminist sites, plus the left & centrish media (guardian, nytimes, slate, vox, etc), where I mostly see incredible condescension veering towards hack jobs on Sanders and his supporters (which at the worst are sexist attacks on millennial women), which makes me irritated.
Cruz and Rubio are squarely in Generation X, yes?
To be fair to the Democrats, the reason you're not seeing any fresh faces is that the fresh faces quite rightly saw that they had no shot at beating Clinton. (Though also their bench is pretty shallow right now.)
292
Yes:
Rubio - b. 1971
Cruz - b. 1970
On my way to work this morning I saw "Trump" lawn signs for the first time in my deep blue UMC town. MA doesn't have its primary for another month. I haven't seen lawn signs for any other candidates of either party yet. (I have seen some bumper stickers.)
Ages of all the candidates--highest to lowest:
Bernie Sanders 74
Donald Trump 69
Hillary Clinton 68
Jim Gilmore 66
Ben Carson 64
John Kasich 63
Jeb! Bush 62
Carly Fiorina 61
Rick Santorum 57
Chris Christie 53
Ted Cruz 45
Marco Rubio 44
Depending on the Baby boomer/gen X cut off (I'm going to say 1960), we have 1 silent generation candidate, 8 baby boomers, and 3 gen Xers.
Western MA I could see, but Trump support is not something I'd want to advertise in, say, Arlington.
Unrelated but serious question: would Jeb! be doing better if he hadn't added the ! to his campaign brand?
It certainly didn't make him less mockable.
273 Finally a use for my fledgling falconry skills.
I find myself agreeing with a lot of what Buttercup says in this thread (go Buttercup!).
Don't they start you with adult falcons regardless?
301 And soon someone will resurrect the monster New Zealand eagles, so you can expand your services to human nuisances.
When hunting actively, A. magnificens would probably have swooped from high above onto their prey, which they usually would have been able to grab, kill, and swallow without landing.
However, the New Zealand option allows Barry to launch his literary career with the acclaimed memoir, H is for Haas. Whereas, as I think you'll agree, A is for Argentavis doesn't exactly trip off the tongue.
304 includes the aggrieved sentence "The ability to fly is not a simple question of weight ratios" which is definitely a Holy Grail reference.
296 & 298. Boston suburbs, further out than Arlington. I used to live in Arlington, actually, back when traffic stops for "driving while black" were actually a policy of the town police force. My impression from people I know who live there is that it's come a long way since then.
The Trump signs I saw all had deniability; none were actually certifiably in someone's yard.
301
Thanks!
(And I'm thinking of rebranding myself to Buttercup!, since it appears to be such a winning! strategy).
286: In general my feed is well-curated. Come to think of it, that's probably part of why I'm finding this primary so annoying: with rare exceptions, my feed never contains annoying political content. Some eye-rolling stuff, sure, but nothing that gets under my skin. Ridiculous hyperbole like that quoted in 284 is almost never present.
It was, I should add, from a friend of a friend, "Like"d by a commenter who shall remain nameless. I don't know if it's possible to screen out that sort of thing, but I tend to find that sort of thing the most interesting part of the feed, so I wouldn't anyway.
Have a cheap giggle. Moer or less on topic, too.
312
Trump is a blowhard and its not voter fraud, but if Ted Cruz spread that rumor that is seriously dirty politics, and it's not totally ridiculous to for a campaign's agitprop to claim it affected outcomes. (Not there's real world evidence it did, but it's not totally specious spin.) If this gets traction on Right wing sites, it might help Trump.
Also, it's making the RNC strategy of going after Cruz look smarter. They figure he fights dirty enough to take out Trump, and if they can ding him, that plus Trump fighting dirtyish will knock him down below Rubio.
* Side note, I claim that reading the book allowed me to (in broad strokes) predict several of the problems that happened in Obama's first term. I don't remember if I commented here, or just wrote it in an e-mail, but I could find my comments.
I looked it up, out of curiosity. I couldn't find it on unfogged, but I found an e-mail exchange from October 2011 in which I wrote:
One thing that strikes me reading The Clinton Tapes, however, is that . . . we don't have a model of a successful technocratic president. Clinton is really the closest you can find. . . . Clinton seems genuine in his desire to understand the details of a wide range of the policy questions of the day and, while he may have inherently had difficulty prioritizing, the book makes that feel like a barrage of information and questions that would test anybody's ability to sort through the flow.
As someone who mostly tries to solve problems by being smart, it makes me suspect that isn't a very good problem solving method to bring to the presidency and, as I said, makes me worry about how Obama will have to adjust.
...
Again, I just had two thoughts reading the book that seemed to relate to Obama. The first is that there is a weakness that is characteristic of smart people, which is the unwillingness to do things they don't understand. Clinton really wanted to understand the implications of the various policy questions put before him and that was part of his tendency to seem unfocused. Obama's campaign was notable for the fact that it made major strategic decisions early, and stuck to them, and didn't get distracted by the news cycle. I'd be happy if he can do that as president I just think it is, yet again, more difficult.
Secondly, there's the worry that making good policy may depend upon having an executive who understands, on some level, the underlying policy challenges (see, for example, delong here), "My complaint is not that the Obama administration has not been liberal enough. My complaint is that the Obama administration, so far, has not been devoted enough to good policy--to the good technocratic policies of what I used to see as the bipartisan center"
Not a very specific set of predictions, but I stand by it as both a good lesson to take from the book (and a reason that I would recommend the book) and a fair description of problems that Obama had in his first term.
312
Also, damn you, you have made me click on Breitbart comments.
TRIGGER WARNING: makes the NRO look like the New Yorker
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/03/2931168/
A. magnificens probably couldn't take off in our modern world. It lived before the Andes mountains existed and used the strong trade winds to take off. You either get A magnificens or the Andes mountains, not both.
Now Quetzalcoatlus northropi, that's a scary flying creature.
There are lots and lots of other places in the current world without Andes Mountains.
TRIGGER WARNING: approaching black hole levels of stupidity
317: "Nullification" has always been big with that segment of the population.
His campaign is maybe the best cringe comedy I've ever seen, if only because of how satisfying it is to finally see a member of the Bush family get what they deserve.
I was thinking Monday night that if someone had told me a year ago that Rand Paul would outperform JEB! in Iowa and Bernie would tie Hillary I'd have been quite pleased.
As worrisome as Trump and Cruz are, it sure does feel good to watch the Bushes get dragged through the mud.
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I'm really enjoying this county cover of "Hello."
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Bush's campaign is now basically braindead, being kept alive by members of the family unwilling to admit it; occasional movements might seem to indicate signs of life but there's nothing there.
Wow, it's taking some time to catch up on this thread, but I'm appreciating the exchange from 188 to 209 so far. Oh, actually, 240. Whew. HRC's campaign staff don't look like Rahm Emmanuel types any more, do they?
We need more segmenting of these long politics threads, people. Spin off, spin off to separate threads!
I thought that this was good, and I am 100% in agreement with it.
328
Santorum doesn't pull out, it froths out.
Also, NMM to Santoru--never mind.
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Oooooh! Great fun! Front page stuff!
Henry Louis Gates in the New York Times talking about Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson (and DuBois, etc) The Two Black Americas Feb 1 2016
"In other words, there are really two nations within Black America. The problem of income inequality, Dr. Wilson concludes, is not between Black America and White America but between black haves and have-nots, something we don't often discuss in public in an era dominated by a narrative of fear and failure and the claim that racism impacts 42 million people in all the same ways."
I might not go that far, unless it is to say that the difference between what Coates wants from anti-racism (and what Coates is willing to protect because of his class position) and what a poor black might want skews and weakens the struggle in terminal ways. But that would be telling blacks what to do and I will let Gates and DuBois do the talking.
Terrific article
|>
Also, I feel like this is one thing China does get right
They also make very good dumplings.
True. They also have delicious hotpot.
Out of curiosity, who do people want to win the Republican NH primary?
I want Trump to win, with Jeb! making a strong second finish, followed by Kasich and/or Christie in 3rd and/or 4th. I want this race to stay as unstable as possible, and the establishment candidates to stay in for as long as possible.
I want Gawker to keep zooming in on pictures of JebB! and his mom kissing. I should be a better person, but I am totally not.
I want Cruz to win the nomination. I want the Tea Party to be eviscerated on a national stage and for him to slink away, tail between legs, whimpering pathetically when the smoke clears.
342 speaks for me, though I fear the possibility of Cruz winning (more than I fear the possibility of Trump winning).
My preferences match 338 for the most part. The harder it is for the Republican establishment to promote one candidate to True Sensible Not-Crazy-Person Conservative status for the press the better off things are. I'd like to see Trump finish strong, Jeb to finish second (but not too close of a second), and Rubio to get hit hard by Jeb's nasty attack campaign there and finish at or slightly below the polling at the moment. As long as he shows up relatively low in the rankings - ensuring a evangelicals-vs-everyone-else narrative - I don't particularly care where specifically Cruz shows up. But I hope he doesn't look like he was a serious contender in NH going into SC.
Sort of on-topic: There's this thing Cruz does where he talks in a perfectly normal voice and then drops into a sort of stage whisper to deliver the applause line or conclusion or whatever. I associate it with preachers and Sunday School teachers, which is sort of appropriate, I guess. It annoys the hell out of me to the point where I can't imagine anyone not being turned off by the condescension in his voice. There has to be a name for this manner of speaking, but I have no idea what it is so I'm asking the Mineshaft. Help me put a word to Ted's annoying speaking style.
for him to slink away, tail between legs, whimpering pathetically
He hasn't done it after any of the previous trick cigars blew up in his face. He just doubled down on the assholism. However, after several iterations of "we failed only because we didn't nominate a true conservative," it certainly would be delicious for the true believers to nominate him and watch him take a Mondale-level beating.
I just said that I wanted it to happen.
I don't know how I want the Republican primary to go, because I'm afraid that continued crazy rat fights will eventually forge something that the sane political process can't defeat.
My thoughts also. Except I'm not willing to assume the rest of the process is sane except in a relative sense.
Uh-oh, they've tumbled into the uranium mine!
Like, seriously, what happens if a Republican wins the general? It's not at all impossible or even that unlikely. I know we suffered through George W and are all still here but I think it's pretty hard to overestimate how bad things could get with any of these guys (including Rubio or Kasich) in office, plus Congress, plus the Courts. I just can't get down with the fun good times mocking the Republican primaries because I'm not at all confident (I mean, I think it's more likely than not, but that's cold comfort) that a Democrat will win. In some ways I think the circus/crazytown aspect of their primary is putting people to sleep about just how dangerous this thing is.
I want Trump to have a lead in conventional delegates and Bush to come from behind on account of superdelegates, with maybe some rules shenanigans thrown in. And then Trump to either run independently, or denounce Bush from the rooftops.
So long as we're revealing our desires.
I like 353. Except I want Gilmore instead of Bush. And I want a sandwich and a beer.
352: I think it's basically impossible. I am not genuinely worried at all.
Like, seriously, what happens if a Republican wins the general?
A lot of people will suffer and die? Let us live our lives in a terrified defensive crouch, without hopes or dreams, because monsters. Such is the Democratic Party.
I want Trump...and Bush to come from behind...So long as we're revealing our desires.
352
Well, this is why Rubio getting nominated would be the most terrifying. He's as crazy as Cruz, but somehow loved by the MSM. I don't think Cruz or Trump could win a general election, and I don't think any of the others have a chance of winning the primary.
I do think the longer and more bitter it is, the lower the chances of the eventual candidate consolidating support. The biggest worry is Rubio comes from behind (heh) and locks the primary up early.
I'm genuinely terrified that Clinton is likely to lose against Rubio, and that the only realistic path to her winning at this point relies on the Republican Party to nominate someone unelectable. She has a shitty team, giant unfavorables, and no charisma. This is disguised in the primary because she's famous, but fame and charisma are not the same thing.
361:
See, this is why I really do think Bernie is a safer run in the general. Pointing out how much money Rubio takes from big money donors is likely to be effective. This option will be largely closed off to Clinton, who won't look much better to most voters on this front.
(I do think that Clinton is orders of magnitude less corrupt than Rubio, but the median voter might not see it this way.)
There's no definition of "charisma" by which Clinton has less than Rubio.
Eh, I think Clinton is a much safer bet against Rubio. If it's Clinton vs. Rubio, Clinton gets the standard Dem coalition, picks up some moderate Republican women, and gets the general establishment behind her. If Sanders runs against Rubio, I predict the MSM will go full out with Red baiting. It will be "'moderate' Republican Latino Obama" vs. "senile hippie Bolshevik grandpa."
Trump & Cruz are also unacceptable to the MSM, and Kasich/Jeb!/Christie would depress the base enough Bernie would have a chance.
I hope I'm wrong but right now if I think if Rubio is the nominee he wins in nov against Clinton.
I don't think Cruz or Trump could win a general election
Not me. I mean, I don't think either is a strong general election candidate. But if Cruz picks off even a smallish chunk of the Latino vote, there's a relatively low turnout among liberals/minorities, and Cruz does better than you'd expect among independents, especially men, looking for radical change, then I could see him beating Hillary. I can see him beating Bernie quite easily with just a mild tack to the center in the general election.
Trump I still doubt will be the nominee, but if he is and he comes across as saner than expected in the general and picks up a huge chunk of the non-educated white vote and Hillary runs into some serious trouble, then he could beat Hillary. (I think he also beats Bernie extremely easily.) Way, way too risky given what happens with either one as President.
I really do think Bernie is a safer run in the general.
I mean, look, we've talked about this before, but you know it is actually insane, right?
"senile hippie Bolshevik grandpa."
You left out Jew. There's enough anti-semitism in the Dem coalition to suppress the vote a little. It's not huge, but there are certainly people who'll stay home rather than vote for the Jewish guy.
Charisma: "Whatever the person the press independently decides is charisma has".
They've been aggressively insisting that Rubio is bursting with the stuff since before the primary started, despite the absolute, obvious and complete lack of anything remotely like it on his part. But that means almost nothing in the election because they'll keep on saying it over and over and people who kind of want to support him will love him for it and people who don't watch debates obsessively or speeches won't realize exactly how insane it is.
I think the idea Trump easily beats Sanders is crazy shut whatcha gonna do.
any of these guys (including Rubio or Kasich) in office, plus Congress, plus the Courts
Plus a big majority of state governments.
I'm not saying Rubio has charisma, I'm saying Clinton doesn't.
For reasons unfair and fair (Christ, she is on regular Coumadin) Clinton is just a terrible candidate. Sanders at 74 is really not that much better.
The Party should be pushing and testing 30 and 40 somethings constantly.
I'm tested everyday by people who are probably Democrats.
The map is really not friendly for any GOP candidate. If you take the 2012 map (http://www.270towin.com/), and give Florida, Ohio, and Virginia back to the Republicans, that's still a Democratic win. Granted, those three plus any other state do add up to a GOP victory, but still.
369
Actually thinking about it, I wonder if that depressed his vote with the 65+ crowd in Iowa. There's a lot of latent anti-Semitism among olderish people in the Midwest. Seeing how he does with older people in NH will be suggestive, although not totally cross-comparable.
377 -- yeah, but those are the swing states, and if those states go, so would one of CO, NM, NH, or NV, for sure. And a lot of the upper midwest seems shaky to me. The real question is there were 10 states in 2012 with an under 7 point swing. That's not an incredibly close election but in a lot of states you're still within a pretty easy to swing margin and these are states that routinely elect ideological Republicans for statewide office. I think there are a bunch of reasons why the GOP is less likely than not to win, but conditions are nothing like they were in 2008 and I don't think even with Clinton you can say there's more than a 60% likelihood of a win right now against pretty much any Republican.
Pointing out how much money Rubio takes from big money donors is likely to be effective.
Hahahaha.
Seriously, no one cares. If they did, Sanders would be succeeding LaDuke who succeeded Nader.
In every race in every election since roughly forever, the Republican has taken more money from big donors, and it's resulted in a Republican Senate, House, and 25 or whatever statehouses. Hoi polloi don't give a shit.
But if Cruz picks off even a smallish chunk of the Latino vote, there's a relatively low turnout among liberals/minorities,
Except:
1) He's been running to the right of Trump on immigration.
2) If Cruz is the nominee, even leftists who hate Hillary can be motivated to vote against Cruz. He literally has no redeeming qualities on any level, as far as I can tell.
Both of these things happening are more implausible than Sanders beating Rubio in a landslide.
No. There are voters who will notice nothing but the name and, hopefully, party.
If it's Cruz vs. Hillary, expect to see Jeb! endorsing Hillary. Hillary will clean up with Romney Republicans. There is literally no way, in the current world we live in, that we can come up with a plausible scenario for Cruz beating Hillary. Barring zombie apocalypse or an actual ISIS land invasion from Mexico, Clinton would humiliate Cruz.
No. There are voters who will notice nothing but the name and, hopefully, party.
I think they've noticed being called rapists and murderers, and it if isn't exactly the same (R) name, Univision will be happy to point out that none of the (R)s spoke up against it.
Also, Cruz is a super white Cuban guy from Canada. That's not going to engender much pan-Latino solidarity.
365. Don't forget that the really rabid part of the Tea Party vote will stay home if Rubio is the GOP nominee is Rubio because of his former(?) support for immigration reform. In fact they'd maybe stay home for anyone but Trump or Cruz.
This will be interesting.
There are new debates scheduled between Clinton & Sanders including one in Flint. I'll be curious to see how that location shapes the debate.
I really do think Bernie is a safer run in the general.
?! Why would you think that?
If you put a question mark at the front, it should be upside down. ¿Why do the Cubans do this?
¿Why is Red Ranger always the head ranger?
¡I found the upside down exclamation point button!
.Now I found the upside down period button.
393: I have an android phone, which is just easier to use.
debates [...] including one in Flint
Good thing Rubio's not coming. That guy always hogs the bottled water.
Wait, RT isn't doing his schtick when he says he's afraid that the Republicans might actually win in 2016? Let me laugh harder.
If the Democrats lose this fall, I promise to never make another political prediction again, but the question that matters is: how severely should we mock the crybaby bedwetters who seriously fear that 2016 is going to be anything other than the Ds mopping the floor with the Rs? I vote for "not very severely", because mercy and magnanimity are virtues. But christ, man, get ahold of yourself.
Bush's campaign is now basically braindead, being kept alive by members of the family unwilling to admit it
In fairness, if you were a member of his family, would you admit it?
She has a shitty team, giant unfavorables, and no charisma.
The charisma thing is the opinion of everybody everywhere, so it has to be true -- more or less by definition. But in the presidential politics of the last 40 years, the only people who I can think of who clearly have more charisma than Hillary are her husband, Reagan, Obama and Ted Kennedy.
Here is a selection of prominent presidential candidates who I think plainly had less charisma: Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Kerry, George W. Bush, Bill Bradley, Al Gore, Bob Dole, George HW Bush, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter.
I'd put her a little ahead of Joe Biden. I might be willing to promote Mitt Romney from the ranks of the less charismatic. Bernie has his own weird appeal that might be characterized as charisma.
Gary Hart and John Edwards had some juice before they became ridiculous/appalling.
I understand how people oppose Hillary substantively. I'm a Sanders guy myself. But I don't get how she's not an at-least-somewhat-inspiring figure.
Alt + number prints a lot of characters, enough to draw with.
I have an entire Japanese, and maybe Chinese character set loaded to drop into text - MS Mincho
夂ヤピ
嫺妍靍薰
I never use it
Betting markets are currently roughly at 65% odds of Democratic victory; if you're convinced that a 35% chance of a Republican win is a ridiculously low and pure "bedwetting" estimate you can and should probably start betting heavily now on Democratic victory, because you can make some serious free cash. For me those odds (somewhere between 3/10 and 4/10 of a Republican winning in this particular political climate) are probably realistic, not particularly comforting, and very different than "no worry at all." Because if you roll the dice and hit one of those 4/10, the consequences of Republicans in all branches of government and most states are truly, incredibly horrendous.
Also, there are these polling numbers. I don't put stock in them this far out but they certainly don't suggest near-certain Democratic victory so we all might as well start jacking each other off now.
I see Walt in 364 got there before I did. I wasn't even talking about this year's Republicans, but the only arguably charismatic figures there are Trump and Christie.
I guess that s/b "ridiculously high" estimate. Whatever.
You can load Chinese characters into your keyboard pretty easily : 这是一个汉字：卐。
Here are some more odds. Again, if you really think nothing to worry about, Democrats cruise to victory for sure, that $100 (50 GBP) bet on a Democratic win at 4/6 is an incredible deal -- you're not going to find a savings account or almost anything else that's going to give you that kinda return by November 2016. Put your money where your mouth is, people.
267: I did not know that! Okay, maybe the VA isn't a great example but I think the general point stands.
(I also partly just wanted to stick in that factoid about it being the second-largest department.)
405: Well, did a doubletake in that I don't know what OS kids are using around here.
I suppose you could map the first 500 (2000?) kanji onto the keyboard, but I am pretty sure I couldn't remember any of them. The kana sets would be easier, but I don't find kana that useful.
The MS Mincho character map lets you search kanji by radical, and by kana-sound. I have no idea what order they are in, frequency? Drag-and-drop fits my level of fluency, like none.
Noticed MS Mincho also has the Greek βλπ and Cyrillic sets яю ...I think
"Staffers were dispatched to try to find the eagle to rent"
Stupid Rand Paul staffer tricks.
Christ, I take it back about the kana, I just remembered from all the movies that that is exactly how Japanese type by kana sound and the computer resolves them into kanji. I fucking presume with something that resolves homonyms or ambiguities, but watching Japanese type is kinda neat.
I don't know if that is available for download.
Nothing looks as rented as a rented bird.
Okay, found a virtual keyboard
"mono" gave me the two kana and three kanji so "mono 4"
"sho" gave me the two and then at least seven kanji so "sho 5"
I presume that is how they do it, just didn't notice the number choices.
402/etc. is right: "Ha ha nbd Democrats will win no matter what" is really, really not warranted here. There are plenty of states that could theoretically flip in the right circumstances and when there are only two candidates it only takes one mistake at the wrong time and the right press coverage and that's it.
And even ignoring that there are plenty of states where Republicans hold the levers of power in ways that they could easily use to shift things around in their favor. If nothing else I don't have too much difficulty imagining Floriday-in-2000 stuff spread out over a bunch more states - it's not like anyone paid literally any price for pulling that shit right out there in public. And it's pretty clear that for Republicans this election would be the magic one to win: it would put them in near complete control over the entire government, and at this point they've been able to push even their most moderate/recalcitrant legislators pretty far to the right.
400
GWB had charisma. It was of a sort that we mostly found repulsive, but as a WASPy blue blood you don't successfully pull off the "jest us folks" routine without charisma. For comparison, contrast him to his brother and father. Imagine if Jeb! tried to do any of the things George did on the campaign trail.
I would say Hillary has average charisma for a politician, and as a woman she gets extra points for being inspiring. My guess is that politician charisma is like actors' looks: you need extra of it to translate on camera/for large crowds, and even uncharismatic politicians are reasonably charismatic compared to non politicians. I think she fares poorly because she's running after a run of three above average charismatic politicians.
And even ignoring that there are plenty of states where Republicans hold the levers of power in ways that they could easily use to shift things around in their favor.
Diebold gives Cruz 47 states. Whatcha gonna do about it in December?
If 2000 is any sign, y'all salute your new commander-in-chief.
Bob, all you do is type the Japanese phonetically in romaji (or kana if you have a kana keyboard and have been taught to type that way - I've got hiragana as an option on my laptop but only ever use romaji) and the computer gives you all the different potential readings. You toggle through them by pressing the space bar, then hit return when the one you want is highlighted. If you type whole phrases at a time it's easier, as that reduces the number of possible homophones.
It's fascinating how the whole voting machines thing went away when the Democrats got a decent candidate and some policy positions anyone cared about.
It's fascinating how the whole voting machines thing went away when the Democrats got a candidate...who proved he would be very very compliant with Wall Street.
He really made fools out of all of us when he engineered that double dip recession in 2011 in order to run for re-election as a Republican in 2012. I admit I didn't see that coming.
Compared to John Kerry's 2004 run, Bob? Or Al Gore's 2000 campaign, which was all about reinstating Glass Steagall OH WAIT.
ajay: and you've got to admit, dropping the Bomb on Fukushima Daiichi turned out to be a masterstroke. A pity about the whole population of Barcelona starving due to peak oil, though.
October 2008 was probably the event of our lifetimes
with trillions to be given to banksters, the first bailout vote failing, Pelosi saying no Dems without equal Repubs, Repubs saying no way look torches, McCain spinning like the senile fool he was...
...and Obama stepping up with dudes I'm gonna be the Man for eight years y'all really want an enemy trust me we'll the bankers and me we will take care of you and your families and your dogs we are talking trillions Bush/Cheney were small grifters in Iraq compared to this...
...and now finance owns us all, and always will. Obama sold us upriver.
you've got to admit, dropping the Bomb on Fukushima Daiichi turned out to be a masterstroke
In his defence, I don't think bob predicted that, he just recommended it. That's probably another count against Obama.
You guys shouldn't be harsh. Ever since Obama traded away Social Security as part of the Grand Bargain with Boehner, Bob has been eating nothing but cat food. And as we all know, he's a dog person.
Speaking of dog food, I've been looking at long distance hiking and the limitation on time between resupply imposed by the weight of food. But, hiking with a dog could be a solution to that, depending on how smart the dog was.
428: you're planning to feed yourself to the dog? I appreciate your commitment.
Is a dog really going to make a profit in what it can carry over what it eats? I'd believe it could carry its own food, but a significant surplus over that?
(Unless you're expecting the dog to bring you back ducks or something.)
428: well, a team of huskies attached to a sledge is certainly a tried and tested option. I'm not sure how much payload a dog can carry on its back, though - and a lot of that would have to be dog food.
I think you should look into something in a nice donkey.
It has to be stupid enough to stick with me for a few hungry days.
If you're planning a polar expedition, though, ponies are right out.
I think dogs can cover terrain that donkeys can't. I don't know about llamas. But if you kill a llama or a donkey, that's way too much food for you to carry.
A 35kg dog needs 1.3kg of food per day (let's call it 1.5kg because this dog is going to be working hard). A dog can carry 25% of its body weight. So a 35kg dog can carry 8.75kg of weight. Allow a reasonable amount of that (1.25kg) for the pack and other dog equipment such as a shelter, and a dog can carry five days of its own food. Or if you're going out for a couple of days, the dog can carry everything it needs, plus a payload of 4.5 kg (about 10 lb). If you want more payload, you need more dogs; if you want to go out for longer than five days, then you will need to emulate Amundsen and others and gradually shoot your weaker dogs to feed to the stronger ones.
I'm pretty sure you're underrating donkeys. Anything you're likely to be hiking over, a donkey should manage fine.
(Admittedly, a dog is somewhat more inconspicuous to have around the house inbetween hikes.)
Does a dog need that much food? The usual number given for a person is 1.5 to 2 pounds.
A lama would be better as a pack animal, because he will be used to hard walking over mountains and won't need much food (just a bit of rice and maybe some tsampa).
438.2 is missing a key point of my plan, I think.
Ajay may be using figures for sled dogs, who are probably burning more calories than a dog on a leisurely hike in temperate weather.
439: my source is the government of British Columbia.
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wat/wq/reference/foodandwater.html#table2
And 35kg is quite a big dog. That's eighty pounds.
What kind of distances are we talking about here anyway? If you're willing to carry 30lbs of lard and maybe some beef jerky or something you could probably go for nearly a month without needing to resupply. If you're planning shorter trips you could just pack that and bring along a dog for company, even.
I mean, sure you could go fancy with more than one kind of food or something involving cooking or whatever, but if you're already committed to just walking around for a week or two why not do it in the traditional, old fashioned American way?
But I don't think that's specifically sled dogs because the other lines in the table are "cat", "hamster", "guinea pig" and "budgie" and I don't think the Canadians use sled budgies.
441: Ah. Planning to go out into the backcountry indefinitely? As long as you've got a cell signal and a solar charger for your phone, so you can keep on top of your commenting responsibilities, the blog has no objections.
443: But you carry food that is dehydrated or very high in fat or both. You can get that weight down pretty easily.
Who really knows what Canadians are likely to do?
After a decade y'all think this shit bothers me?
Doesn't matter...
10 of the last eleven years record setters, up 0.1 degree in 2014, up 0.2 degrees in 2015 projected that's 2.0 degrees in a decade in 2016 it will be up 0.3 or 0.5 and people will realize we are spiking and then the methane gets released from the Arctic.
I wrote elsewhere that I no longer care if the Sauds and Goldman-Sachs do the ark of refuge and watch the 7 billion die cause at least something will survive. They will need servants and all the liberals will be stepping on their children to put on studded collars and be slaves in the cool.
Don't quite know how it will play out. The rich fucks will need to escape the nukes. Maybe look like rapture.
This decade. We're watching it.
I assume that's why Moby's retreating into the mountains.
I was hoping he was going to occupy a wildlife reserve, but in a benevolent way. More sort of "hang around a wildlife reserve offering to get drinks for passing birdwatchers".
Also, I really doubt you're getting a donkey down the hiking trails of the type you see in the northeast. They go up and down slopes without switchbacks. Sometimes they go up actual ladders anchored to the rocks. They also pass through dense woods to the point where it is like being in a tunnel. A tunnel with trees that have fallen across the path. (It's nearly universally illegal to take a pack animal on them anyway.)
I've been looking at the Long Trail in Vermont. Probably never get the chance because it would take me about three weeks. I guess I wouldn't have to carry three weeks of food. They probably have stores in Vermont.
Speaking of wildlife, has everyone seen the bear attack in The Revenant? Jesus Christ, my Yellowstone fishing is going to be more paranoid than usual this year.
I'm waiting for it to be on Netflix.
It's hard to tell online, at least for me and especially because Moby hasn't said what size of dog he's talking about*, but I'm guessing most medium to largish dogs could do ok on a cup of lard a day or so. Weight is a confusing measure to use because even different dog foods can have different calorie counts (I'm fairly certain that when I've looked after 100lb-ish dogs I wasn't giving them 3+ pounds of dog food each every day).
*Chihuahuas can carry more than you'd think, by the way. And are great at alerting you to dangers along the trail, or, I suppose, anything else along the trail. Also if you get caught in really bad circumstances and have to eat the dog you won't feel bad about it.
Oh, and it's been a decade. Dogs are dead.
Money, if you want to cover any real distance without stopping to resupply, you should get a canoe.
I'm so money and I don't even know it.
You can buy small, inflatable kayaks. That seems a bit ambitious for me, but easier to portage than a canoe.
Yes, those are good too, although I don't think they generally will hold as much cargo as a canoe.
But you should definitely get one anyway.
The last time I looked, the good ones were like $700.
Also, fishing is a traditional way to supplement your food between resupply. A tenkara rod with a spool of line and a few flies weighs almost nothing and takes up almost no room in your pack.
I never catch fish. Except in a stocked pond or something.
470: I would try harder, but I wouldn't want to presume up them.
470: Done much fly fishing? Counting on it to supplement your diet if you're a novice might not be a good idea.
OK, I just checked. My 45 pound, lean and high energy, husky-like dog gets 7 ounces of high quality* dry food a day. That would increase on a long hike, but I doubt it would even double, based on my experiences of hiking with him.
Based on ajay's data, he'd be able to carry almost 10 pounds net (dog panniers are pretty lightweight), so even a generous week's worth of food would leave him able to carry another 3+ lbs.
Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure that shelters out in the country are a lot more don't ask/don't tell about your plans for the dog, and might even appreciate a lot of return custom.
*that is, it's calorie-intensive and results in a fairly modest output; cheaper dog food, for those who don't know, has more filler, resulting in more shitting
3lbs? You'd be better off looking for ways of stripping that much weight from the rest of the pack.
But then you wouldn't have a dog.
I already have a 2 pound tent and a 1 pound (summer) sleeping bag.
I've been looking at the Long Trail in Vermont
They make really good beers—I'm with you on that. But beer is too heavy for a multi-day hike.
Maybe a miniature horse is the perfect solution. Like the kind that people were trying to use as guide horses for the blind. They're hip high or lower at the shoulder, some less than 100 pounds. I don't know what they can carry for weight. The people breeding them don't seem to have tried to tap the pack animal market.
Because donkeys already fill the small equine pack animal niche?
You also have to think about safe drinking water. How much can you and your dog carry? And what will you do if/when your bottled water runs out? You might need a filter to purify water from a natural source.
I'm thinking like this, but without a shit-catcher bag or a handle, and not in an airport.
Not the Miniature Mediterranean Donkey, less than 36 inches high at the withers, wherever they may be.
I was unaware of miniature donkeys. That might work better.
I'm having a hard time picturing a Falabella scaling a ladder.
482: I have a filter. Water is heavy.
Yeah, you can't really plan a multi-day hike and carry all your water with you. That way madness lies.
Speaking of wildlife, has everyone seen the bear attack in The Revenant?
God, what a waste of time that film was.
Some guy wanted to cross Death Valley on foot without a support team. He had to pull a wagon with water.
488: That's why it has to be small. At 100 pounds, you could unload it and carry it up yourself.
Alpacas! They're smaller and more easily manageable than llamas. We used to do city park clean up with alpacas in elementary school. They're supposedly the ideal pack animals, at least according to some PNW hippies.
Also, I really doubt you're getting a donkey down the hiking trails of the type you see in the northeast. They go up and down slopes without switchbacks. Sometimes they go up actual ladders anchored to the rocks. They also pass through dense woods to the point where it is like being in a tunnel. A tunnel with trees that have fallen across the path. (It's nearly universally illegal to take a pack animal on them anyway.)
The solution is clear. The ideal pack animal is an elephant. Fallen tree across the trail? Let me just move that out of the way WITH MY ELEPHANT. Path narrow and overgrown? Not any more, not now I've been along it WITH MY ELEPHANT. Get to the campsite at the end of the day, "would anyone like a beer? I've got a couple of cases in the howdah somewhere."
I've carried five gallons of water on an overnight hike in the Grand Canyon. There were two non-consecutive nights out of five where we camped where there was no water source and none nearby. We all carried five gallons each. That much weight in water makes a good incentive to keep hydrated.
Also, according to the NYT, Myanmar is overrun with underemployed elephants now that the logging industry has shrunk.
Can anyone dig up that article from a few weeks ago saying "The first time Trump loses he's going to start imploding because his fans won't be as enthralled by the sight of him losing"? I thought it was more wishful thinking at the time.
I carried three on an overnight hike over a lava field in Samoa. The nitwits I was with brought about a liter each, and counted on getting drinking nuts from coconut palms along the way. They failed to remember that neither of them was remotely capable of climbing a coconut palm.
They failed to remember that neither of them was remotely capable of climbing a coconut palm.
Before smartphones, I used to have trouble remembering stuff too.
500 either to 499 or, preferably, 498. I picture LB setting them down at rest stops and giving them pep talks about their prospects for alternative employment. "Look, it's a tough market for everyone. You shouldn't feel it means you're worth less as an elephant."
Possibly they assumed you were capable of climbing a coconut palm.
Clearly the ideal Unfogged expedition shall be held using a massive ekranolan which debarks (deplans?) pack elephants. And for every mahout, a war owl on his or her gloved hand.
505: I would say "have you met me?" but of course you haven't. Suffice it to say that no one who has met me would think "There's a woman fully capable of shinning thirty feet up a coconut palm."
508: more kudos attaches to the woman who is sufficiently organised that she doesn't have to shin thirty feet up a coconut palm.
That's why you see so many dating profiles that don't mention tree climbing abilities, even among women who say they are looking only for marriage-minded men.
506
Why dream so small? Surely someone here has the scientific knowledge to resurrect the woolly mammoth using preserved DNA.
That ekranoplan is getting a tad crowded.
400: I've always liked the old RuneQuest definition of Charisma. Basically, "Charisma is the ability to say 'Follow me!' and find yourself leading a charge."
454: My old Long Trail guidebook, from the early 70s, had a list of post offices in towns that were sufficiently close to the trail that you could mail yourself a package of freeze-dried food there for resupply when preparing a solo end-to-end hike without a support team. Probably works better than the dog. General Delivery FTW.
Right, but I'm also practicing for more wilderness-y things.
In that case, some preliminary hikes to set up caches may be the way to go, depending on how far into the wilderness you plan to go. Beyond that, you have to be able to live off the land in some way if you're going to be far enough away from civilization for long enough.
That sounds harder than eating a dog after my non-self-moving food runs out.
OTOH, caches don't run off and/or defend themselves when the starving guy with the knife starts looking at them funny.
That's why I'm asking here. I've never tried to stab a dog so I don't know these things.
521: Moby is obliquely referencing local news. Jesus Christ if the reaction of the media, and perhaps the populace, isn't the most depressing thing ever.
Dogs are dead.
I'm sorry about your dogs, bob.
The first time Trump loses he's going to start imploding
I imagine him exploding, like a beached whale carcass filling up with methane.
Halfway decent jokes on dead threads should just go up on the other place, I guess, while I share the Nixoniad with a Shakespeare scholar of my acquaintance.
523 I had no idea about bob's dogs. Sorry bob.
---
525 What does he think?
Sorry Bob. I remember the pics. They were good dogs.
I too am sorry about your dogs, bob. You were a good dog-dad.
Wait, the dogs are dead? How did I miss this? My sympathies.
Sorry about those dogs. I liked my mental image of those dogs.
Thank you
Big dogs, 12 and 14, cancer getting too common, but can't be greedy
8th and 9th dogs, but best. Miss them. They probably helped keep my weight down, so maybe I even needed them. Unsure about the next, because it will likely outlive me. But I have been saying that for ten years now. Proof there is no God.
Good good fucking times in fields and woods.
Thanks for sharing a little more information about them.
I had also been meaning to express my sympathy. You wrote very well about them.
516. My understanding from through-hikers on the AT that I have known, is that the existence of cell-phones has changed everything. When you are close to a town you can get your support team to Fedex you the next load of food. No particular need to plan ahead.
Also, the Long Trail definitely has some ladders and such. Donkeys, llamas et al. are right out. Dogs can do ladders with a little help, at least from my experiences on the AT. In fact dogs can actually sometimes levitate, as far as I can figure it out.*
* Cats teleport in and out or bail on the hike in the first place: "I had to lick my ***, sorry. Ciao."
Bottom row type, a little big 60-70 pounds, female had 5 pounds on the male.
Lucky find, but 95% UKC standard
"I'm going to run off to the woods for three weeks leaving you all the work to do. But you can stay involved by sending me food when I ask for it."
Maybe just buying ramen noodles in convenience stores is better.
533.3 Sympathies again, bob, I think you should definitely get another dog or pair of dogs. As you said they gave you a good workout and since you're admittedly not the most social guy and have a tendency to hikikomori I have a feeling their company did you a world of good you may not even be fully aware of.
We should really have a New Hampshire thread.
Sorry to hear about the dogs, Bob.
536
I never saw your dogs, but those dogs are beautiful. I'm sorry to hear about them, I hope they didn't suffer. I also would second getting more dogs, if you're ready.
Carolina dogs are great, and the story behind the breed is really interesting. I'll bet they did keep you in shape.
I'm also belatedly sorry to hear about your dogs. They really did sound great and like they were a really large part of your life.
I've known people who probably could treat adopting a dog/dogs after losing one/some in a "honey could you pick up some more dog on your way home from work today we're running low" sort of way, but that always seemed weird to me.
