I'm rooting for the Panthers because I think their odds are very similar to those of the Democratic nominee.
Also: "Peyton Manning has donated $2,700 to the presidential campaign of Republican Jeb Bush. [...] Manning's political giving date backs almost a decade. His donations uniformly support Republicans. Manning gave most of his money to politicians from the state where he played college football. Fred Thompson, Sen. Lamar Alexander, and Sen. Bob Corker all received individual contributions of more than $2,000 from Manning. Corker received five four-figure donations from Manning over the years. Manning poured $10,000 into the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney during the 2012 election cycle."
I'm going to bet republican as a hedge against my sadness if they win.
I demand to know why I just read that terrible link about Ted Cruz. I kept waiting for it to get funny, and it never did. I feel ill.
I can't get to that site at work, but I'll also place a bet this evening.
I used Bovada. Seemed like it had been around for a long time and had plenty of users vouching for its security, and had a decent welcome bonus for your first deposit.
That's good. Nut up or shut up is such a useful way to cut through the bs and figure out what people really think.
I seem to remember writing a good rant about a previous challenge to bet on something and how it seems more like bragging about having a big dick than any kind of an argument anyone else has any reason to take seriously.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure I ever actually posted it, and if I did I can't look for it now due to what I hope are network problems. (The alternative would be a change in the office policy about reading blogs at work, which, stupid as it sounds, could get me in trouble.) So please take the rant as written.
3: Peyton Manning is a jerk. Tom Brady, on the other hand, is a Trump supporter on account of 100% of his Latino colleagues having turned out to be violent psychopaths.
9: I really don't have a big dick.
11: I suspect that's true for a lot of the people bragging on the internet about having a big dick.
I might bet on the Republicans just as a hedging strategy to ease the pain...
Seriously, someone explain what's up with the Cruz link? I don't get it.
I didn't read it. I figure reading a couple of the bitcoin links and looking at the parrot-fucking picture was enough links for the week.
I'm trying to mentally estimate how much money I'd need to win in order for a bet to serve as a meaningful hedge against a Ted Cruz presidency. (It doesn't have to be a perfect/complete hedge, but it has to meaningfully offset the psychic loss.) I really don't know the answer, but I'd say it's at least in the low five figures. Which is way more than I can bet while expecting and hoping for a loss.
9:
About a month after I got my first big-boy job I saw someone talking shit on one of my friends' Facebook posts about how BlackLivesMatter was fomenting racial tensions where none existed and my friends' activism was worse than useless.
I donated $50 to the SPLC and took a screenshot of the thank you page (properly scrubbed) and left it as a comment. He kind of shut the fuck up after that.
Also the Ted Cruz article is really not that great, but does (rightly, I think) paint him as a much more mainline conservative than he likes to present himself.
I mean, I've used that strategy (successfully) for sports gambling, but I don't tick it works when the stakes are so high. It's like describing a child life insurance policy as a hedge against your sadness if your kid dies.
You could maybe hedge that way against an uncle you kind of like seeing at Thanksgiving.
Although I just realized that I could probably meaningfully hedge the primary that way, depending on how the Bernie/Hillary odds are trading.
14. I suspect that if you were a certain type of Texas Republican it might be very convincing. The entries are either explaining away his alleged faults (somehow skipping "everyone who knows him hates him") or promoting his alleged virtues: intelligence, religious faith, love of the Constitution.
I may have missed a nuance here or there.
The thing is that if you really think the Democrats are a sure thing you should 100% bet now on them heavily even if you're pretty risk averse and can't afford to lose the capital. If you're right, the payout on a Republican win will increase a lot as you get closer to the election and you will be able to hedge completely and have only upside. Eg a $1000 bet on the Democrats will now pay you about $1660; as you get closer to the election, the payout on a Republican win will absolutely go to 3-1 (or higher) and with a roughly $333 bet on the Republicans later you can absolutely guarantee that you will either lose nothing at all or take a $266 profit. If you have some spare cash, even if you can't really afford to lose it, and you're genuinely convinced that the Democrats are a sure thing, you'd be insane not to bet heavily now while holding a little back for the hedge later. It's free money and you can't lose.
My law firm really should use political betting markets as a hedge since we will make less money if a Republican President is appointing the judges. We also have some business with state and local governments that we lose if various elected officials lose. I wonder if any businesses actually do this.
I seem to remember writing a good rant about a previous challenge to bet on something and how it seems more like bragging about having a big dick than any kind of an argument anyone else has any reason to take seriously.
I remember that, and it was well said. But I also think there is value in "bet as thought experiment." There are all sorts of reasons not to actually place a bet, but I think Tigre is right to ask, "if you mean what your're saying that implies that this bet would be free money."
Eg a $1000 bet on the Democrats will now pay you about $1660;
Today it was more like $1100.
If you're right, the payout on a Republican win will increase a lot as you get closer to the election and you will be able to hedge completely and have only upside.
But the payout on a Republican only goes up if it looks increasingly likely that a Democrat will win. Which is obviously how someone placing the bet is expecting things to play out, but the whole point is that's not guaranteed, so this isn't a smart thing to do with money you can't afford to lose. (Put another way: If there were really no chance of a Republican loss, you wouldn't need the subsequent hedge. You could just ride your winning bet through the election.)
A Democrat winning is a certainty - the only reason why not to bet everything is that if Bernie Sanders becomes President, you wouldn't want to have won so much money that you wind up against the wall during the Revolution.
Bravo ajay, very well done. Just a bit sad it' the last bit.
My itch for more framework of the alternate history in question: it is scratched.
the whole point is that's not guaranteed, so this isn't a smart thing to do with money you can't afford to lose.
Yes of course. But I was anticipating the argument that "I am 99.9999% certain that the Democrats will win, but I can't afford to take any risk whatsoever that they won't because losing money is so much scarier to me than winning it, even if I'm sure I would win." Even if that's true, if you genuinely think that the odds of Democratic victory are way way too low right now, then you should bet everything now because you can get guaranteed free money. Or, put differently, as long as you can afford to park any money at all between now and November 2016, being poor or risk-averse is no excuse for not betting everything you can on the Democrats if you sincerely believe it's a sure or near-sure thing, so nut up or shut up.
I don't disagree with 21, but I'm completely failing to see why it is being linked here as recommended reading. Is it just supposed to give us liberals some better sense of how people on the other side of the political chasm might view him?
Tigre, I know you think a Republican Presidency would be practically apocalyptic, but just how bad are we talking? What do you expect to happen under, say, President Cruz with a Republican congress?
Is it just supposed to give us liberals some better sense of how people on the other side of the political chasm might view him?
That's why I sent it along to Heebie, though Heebie's reasons for sharing it might be different.
Personally, I think it's a pretty limited and willfully ignorant view of the guy, but I think it's a good preview of how they'll try to sell him if he ends up in the general.
35 - I think realistically we could expect:
Dismantling much of the New Deal possibly including privatizing social security, scuttling any progress, domestic or global, on global warming for at least a generation and thus condemning the world to hell, judicial rulings holding much of what remains of the New Deal unconstitutional (e.g., securities law violates the First Amendment, Federal environmental regulations violate the commerce clause and need to go back to the states), repeal or effective dismantling of Obamacare, repeal or effective scuttling of Dodd-Frank, drilling for oil in the arctic, an end to the estate tax,no more antitrust enforcement at all, and probably 1-200 more bad things I haven't thought of. Plus at least one totally unnecessary war somewhere in which lots of people will die.
What do you expect to happen under, say, President Cruz with a Republican congress?
Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore.
A friend of mine just announced that she couldn't support Sanders because he's not a vegan, to which I... I... I'm done. Let me know how it turns out come November.
Oh, also, within 4 years both the SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade and a federal anti-abortion bill. And also also, especially if the economy continues to stall, we'll have "Enforced Austerity: Extreme Government Makeover Edition."
Also, Supreme Court dominance for at least a couple of generations, unchecked vote suppression, a resumption of political prosecutions.
Ted Cruz is a candidate vegans can get behind. He eats meat, but he's equally casual about human life.
40
...??? And she's voting for whom? PETA write-in?
I saw Titus Andronicus last night and that made me gloomy, but Tigre is really nailing it down. Okay. Money to a GOTV.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Bill Clinton is vegan. Or, actually, I think he avoids the term and says he eats a plant-based diet, which everyone understands to mean veganism. So if you assume Bill Clinton will have some role in a Hillary Clinton White House, she's your vegan-friendly candidate.
By judicial rulings do you mean Supreme Court or lower courts? Because that does seem like a lot for four years worth of work if they can't start appointing judges until January. It also seems somewhat likely that the liberal justices hold out from retiring for at least four years.
I eat a plant-based diet, sometimes via an intermediary.
48 - Both. There are lower-court judges inclined to these positions already and there will be a lot more of them, appointed for life. Kennedy is 80 and will absolutely retire in the next Republican administration, so there's your ultraconservative majority automatically right there. Ginsburg is 83 and Breyer is 78 so, though they'll try to hold on, it's very likely that one of them goes too and President Cruz gets to put at least 2-3 41 year old lunatics on the Court who will be there for the next 40 years, probably more since Scalia would likely retire under President Cruz as well.
That reminds me. I think 55 should be a minimum age for a Supreme Court guy. Probably a federal judge guy also.
I eat a plant-based diet, sometimes via an intermediary.
Good point. In Mobyland alone, you can visit the Herr's potato chip plant and a salaciously named plant: the Intercourse Pretzel Factory.
52 - if we're changing the rules for them, might as well just have them (esp. supreme court) serve a specific term - 18 years or whatever.
I mean, you know those favorable-for-Democrats demographic trends we're always going on about? The Republicans know about them too, and if they get control over all three branches starting in 1/17 I believe they will absolutely implement the "kill all the Jews before the Russians come" strategy of getting as much radical stuff passed as quickly as they can, regardless of popularity or craziness, together with appointing as many young cadres to lifetime judicial office as quickly as they can. They're going to be operating under the (probably correct) assumption that this is their last, best opportunity to implement the conservative revolution.
44: Clinton, I think? The fact that Sanders isn't a vegan proves he's a hypocrite, since veganism would solve all of the world's problems. Clinton at least isn't a hypocrite because she's not promising to fix anything.
47: I learned on that very same person's comment thread that Bill has apparently gone paleo.
I think the the randomness of death is a nice touch for important positions.
Let's make some conflict of interest rules too please.
Can't. Everybody deals with death eventually.
That reminds me that I have to fill out a COI form. Thanks.
Or COIF, as no one calls it. Probably because everybody who runs HR is balding.
You've listed a lot of negative policy outcomes from a liberal point of view but I'm looking for more personal effects on you. Your old relatives have to move in with you? Your city becomes a violent hellhole? Your bank fails and you lose all your money? Neb gives you a strip tease but Chief Justice Thomas won't let you consummate your passion?
OT: I just got an unsolicited email from a headhunter. I feel like a programmer.
Anyway, it was a health insurance company so now I have another reason to like Obamacare over single-payor.
I used to sling code for a health insurance company. Aside from the aiding-and-abetting-evil aspect, you could do worse.
Left-wingin' code-slingin' PROUD-clingers of our disappointing health care reform law!
Fantastic, except IMO too complex a noun phrase at the end.
I don't understand the point of 62. Not to mention the fact that a lot of the things in 37 seem like they could easily affect Tigre personally.
I think I could handle any of the republican candidates winning the presidency, except Cruz. Things would be terrible for the country/world, but my life would probably go on with minimal or no obvious short term impact. But I really don't think I could stomach Cruz. I might honestly have a violent psychotic break. I mean that seriously although I hope it's not true (and hope even more that I don't have to find out whether it's true).
His face and expression really do annoy me in some unique way.
70- UMC liberals are often accused of worrying about political losses for aesthetic or moral reasons- not that those are reasons are bad, we really should be concerned about people drinking poisonous water/dying in mines/dying in war/having their city drowned/being forced to give birth. But most are insulated from the effects of R victories at a personal level, or may even benefit in terms of tax rates etc. So thinking selfishly, what does RT think is going to happen to him specifically?
If R wins, my SAS skills become less valuable.
UMC liberals are often accused of worrying about political losses for aesthetic or moral reasons
I'm not sure I've even heard this accusation, and I'm not even sure what about it makes it an "accusation".
Are we supposed to be worrying about political losses because of how they would affect our bank accounts?
73: So you're asking what a Cruz victory will mean for copyright law?
UMC liberals are often accused of worrying about political losses for aesthetic or moral reasons
One of these things is not like the other.
73. Dude, you're trolling right? You have kids. President Cruz will plausibly bring much of the US into living conditions like, I don't know, Colombia or provincial Romania within your kids lifetimes.
Living in a large, smoothly functioning city isolates you from how rough things are now in much of the US, before the schools get further defunded and environmental restrictions at the paint factory that pays minimum wage get cut back.
I was trolling Tigres response but now I feel like actually arguing with urple.
The neb striptease was the tell, he only performs professionally.
72: He's a smarmy motherfucker.
Behold the smarm up close.
75- John Kerry, or I don't know, Hillary? (who are admittedly beyond UMC but same idea) They're accused- obviously not in good faith, it's a Fox News kind of story- of not really being able to represent working class voters because they're personally rich so vote for the real champions of working class values, Donald Trump.
74:
It's ok, I'm sure you'll get hired for your sass when the Revolution is over.
Is there anything Democrats can do in the event that we lose the Presidency to make the onslaught of counter-revolutionary action as bearable as possible?
73 -- I'll probably be personally fine in the short term, unless I lose my job, in which case I'll be fucked like everyone else, especially on health care. In the long term, I'm not super into having my city, country, and planet go to shit, all kinds of social and environmental catastrophes for my kids. I suppose if tort reform or class action reform or some other business-friendly stuff actually leads to less business litigation that would directly impact me as well, though I don't do a ton of work that's directly impacted by that these days and there will probably always be some work.
Buy as many AR-15s as possible and stock up on ammunition?
For some reason I thought both Cruz and Rubio were evangelicals. But no, Rubio would be the second-ever Catholic president.
71-72: He is not a guy with whom I'd want to have a beer.
Why did I click on 83? It was predictably awful.
For Cruz, I do also have the additional feeling that he's kind of a monster created by taking the most asshole-y parts of various assholes I've personally known and stiching them together into the ultimate super-dick, so there would be a particular level of personal unbearableness just caused by having his presence around. I mean, I was in a federal courthouse today, and like every other federal building, they have a picture of the President and Vice President hanging there when you walk in. It would be absolutely unbearable to have to walk underneath President Cruz's picture. I mean, when George W was President that sucked too, and I hated seeing those pictures, and seeing the Rubio picture would also suck, but Cruz somehow just would take it up a few visceral notches to the point where it would be insanity-making. I expect that drives some of Urple's response, too.
I'm not Mexican-American, but I grew up almost entirely around Mexican-Americans and my parents are both remarried to Mexican-Americans, and for a lot of reasons identify more with Mexican-American culture than with "white" (whatever that is, anyway) culture. And boy is it gonna suck if my kids ever have to bring home standardized test worksheets where they explain the cultural heroism of our first Latino President, Ted Cruz/Marco Rubio.
Republicans have declared war on my profession in general and my discipline in particular, and actively cost me a major grant. As in, the granting agency emailed that they would have given me the grant, except their budget was slashed by congress. I also have Obamacare, and am poor, so life would suck more.
OTOH, I have degrees from elite universities in subjects that do have appeal to certain professions and I speak Mandarin, so there are some dark sides I could go to.
Worst case scenario I move back to China and become the trophy mistress of some aging Chinese billionaire.
That worst case doesn't sound so bad. But if you're really going full worst case scenario, won't you get disfigured or something so that you can't be a trophy mistress, except maybe to a Chinese thousandaire, which would suck? And, also if things really turn to shit won't the trophy-mistress-to-Chinese-billionaire competition become insanely intense? Though I guess maybe it's arguably better to get a smaller salary as one of 100 mistresses to a Chinese billionaire than a larger salary as the sole mistress. So many questions.
I remember when I aspired to be an Asian drug lord's trophy. At the time, I would not have predicted that I'd age out of that dream.
Why did they have to be both Asian and a drug lord?
So I could meet Jacky Chan when he infiltrated the drug ring and then help him.
Of course. We still watch his cartoon around our house.
98
I met Jackie Chan at an art auction in Beijing. I sat at the table right next to his.
And, also if things really turn to shit won't the trophy-mistress-to-Chinese-billionaire competition become insanely intense?
Yes, though I have a unique combination of assets that sets me ahead of the competition as of now.
Though I guess maybe it's arguably better to get a smaller salary as one of 100 mistresses to a Chinese billionaire than a larger salary as the sole mistress.
Definitely. I am willing to settle for fewer apartments and an Audi instead of a Maserati if I only have to see my sugar daddy a couple times a year.
96. I remember a friend who had that dream and was told, "You're 25, you're way too old."
96
Aging out is a big concern. Luckily Chinese people are bad at guessing white people's ages, and I plan to lie heavily. Also, if I go old enough, I can probably fool a 70 year old into thinking I'm in my early 30s through my mid 40s, if I keep healthy and maybe get strategic plastic surgery.
95
Disfigurement would be a problem. If it wasn't easily disguisable, I'd have to settle for a county official in rural China.
I wouldn't mind a rural official at all. You wouldn't have to deal with Chinese urban nonsense and he'd probably be nicer. Maybe there'd be some architecture. I'd be mostly concerned about the availability of milk tea.
I would probably vote for Martin Shkreli over Ted Cruz, although that would at least be a tough decision. I'm not sure any other matchup would even be a close call.
Luckily Chinese people are bad at guessing white people's ages....
AIPMASPBT, so are black people. When I was maybe 27 or so, my sisters came to my office to see me and a co-worker asked if they were my daughters. One was 2.5 years younger than me and the other just under six years younger.
107
That or you need a new skincare routine.
But yeah, I've found Chinese people also tend to overestimate white men's ages and underestimate white women's ages. I think it's because the stereotype is that white women age so badly that we must be complete crones by 25, so they assume anyone not totally haggard is like, 18. Also, Chinese women my age are culturally "middle aged," whereas I am a childless woman goofing around with my life, so clearly I can't be that old.
My manic friend is also rich. His dad made a lot of money using junk mail to find marks for the sub-prime industry, back in the day.
Although, now that I think about it, this isn't a story about my manic friend. Its a story about his little brother and sister. They were in their early 20s at the time. The brother is almost as nuts as my friend is, though his sister is relatively level-headed. So I'd guess that this particular episode happened at the brother's instigation, and the sister went along to keep an eye on him.
Anyway, one day, sister and brother are sitting around, smoking the dope, and they get it in their head that they want to meet Jackie Chan. So they buy themselves some plane tickets from DC to Hong Kong, leaving that day.
Once arrived in Hong Kong, they manage to get themselves to the bar that Jackie Chan owns. Jackie Chan happens to be there at the time, and is so impressed that these kids have come all the way from DC that he sits down to chill with them for an hour.
Mission accomplished, they head on back home.
I'm sure it's a non-zero number, they appear to have a live audience.
I am very unhappy about how feisty it's getting, not just tonight but recently in general. I really don't want anything that's going to damage either candidate (much) in the general election. Sanders for a long time had been running an unusually positive campaign, but Clinton started slinging mud when he became a real threat and now he's slinging back. Ugh.
Yeah, I really didn't like her answer in the contribution/establishment argument. First of all it was so obviously planned that as soon as Bernie mentioned contributions she would have her moment of faux-outrage how could you smear me. But the answer itself just sidestepped the whole issue by setting up a straw man. She acted like he accused her of bribery while the real argument is that the big donors keep the establishment running and defining what's within the bounds of reasonable or achievable positions. That's her whole campaign argument- I'll only promise what I can get done. Bernie is saying the reason that's all that can get done is because of the money controlling what's allowed, and she has no response to that because there isn't really one in the current system.
114
I agree. It's uncomfortable to watch.
115
Yeah.
Anyone watching the Dem debate?
I just turned it on, thanks for the reminder.
I am impressed by Sanders ability as a politician.
He just suggested viewers watch a clip of him on youtube ("search for Sanders/Greenspan") and he's the first politician that I've heard do that and not sound uncomfortable, self-serving, or just trite saying it. He made it sound natural, and that takes real skill.
117:
He sounds genuine because people were passing that around the internet long before he asked them to.
I didn't like the answer from Clinton, "how dare you call a woman part of the establishment?" It seems like such a cheap use of gender. It's annoying because she is an inspirational figure as the first serious female presidential contender, but somehow she can't really capitalize on that in this debate.
I also think the "I'm Hillary Clinton, and I don't believe we can do big things" isn't a winning slogan in this campaign.
Is it just me, or did Hillary just talk about herself, how great she is, and how much stuff she will get done at the expense of talking about the actual stuff that needs to get done?
119:
"For two decades, Democrats have tried to bring about single payer. Now it's time to GIVE UP!" just doesn't resonate with me for some reason. Don't know why.
She also won't explain how it is that when she does it, it's "building on the ACA" but when he does anything it's "ripping the whole thing apart".
He sounds genuine because people were passing that around the internet long before he asked them to.
It's one thing to be genuine, it's another thing to sound genuine. I'm just giving him credit for that.
As someone who doesn't dislike Hillary herself,* I think she could be doing this so much better: "A journey of ten thousand steps starts with a single step" type campaign. Like, agree with the lofty goals of Bernie, and then say she has a practical plan to start implementing them, one step at a time. Instead, she's running on a "give up all hope now, the best we can do is a long slog to keep the gains Obama made" which feels defeatist and worst-case scenario. It's crazy she's framing her campaign this way.
Another easy thing would be to frame her record as an evolution over time. She could acknowledge she used to be more Conservative and she supported things she no longer supports. Americans love conversion narratives, and they love redemption or "I've seen the light" type stuff. Instead, she's simply trying to argue she's always been a Leftist, which just doesn't totally fit with her record, and it makes people distrust her.
*I disliked Clinton I, and think she'd do better distancing herself from his administration, rather than saying Bill will be part of her administration. That makes me nervous. I really do think she's to the left of him, but it's hard to be sure when she's unwilling to criticize anything that he did.
I sound genuine. It's easy for white guys past 30.
I feel like Clinton is being slightly disingenuous (for example when she implied that she would break up big banks), but so far I haven't heard Sanders say anything that doesn't seem like a basic part of his talking points. That is the nature of the questions they're answering right now, but so far none of them have challenged Sanders to go outside of his core message.
Or past sixty, if a Chinese guy is guessing.
Like, agree with the lofty goals of Bernie, and then say she has a practical plan to start implementing them, one step at a time.
In the most recent exchange she was agreeing with Sanders and saying she wanted to have an even broader agenda.
All her efforts to criticize Sanders from the left seem totally disingenuous.
It's crazy she's framing her campaign this way.
Ugh, that gave me flashbacks to the MA governor campaigns where the establishment lined up against progressive outsiders (Robert Reich, Don Berwick) with the "realistic, competent" narrative and the establishment Dems proceeded to hand one of the most liberal states over to Republican governors.
The recent reference to "my website BernieSanders.com" was much less fluid and convincing. So 118 is probably correct.
129- Well, except gun control.
And she's correct to say that people have said her proposal for regulating the financial industry would be more effective than Sanders. I don't think she can position herself to his left because it is clear that he just has more personal animosity towards the big banks, but it also makes sense that she wouldn't just concede the point to Sanders.
Also his tic of saying "I think" when discussing foreign policy facts doesn't give him a lot of gravitas.
OTOH why the hell does she have to take up the Commander in Chief frame the Republicans love.
She also just used the "job interview" line. Ugh, I hate the Republican meme that we're some sort of moneyed person "hiring" a President.
129:
Eh, even the gun control thing is pretty disingenuous. The guy has a D- NRA record. His line on guns is what I'd expect from a sort of sane rural gun-owner.
Since she pulled out the "How can I be establishment, I'm a woman" he should counter with "How can you say I'm not tough on Iran, I'm a Jew."
I'm out for a while, but I continue to like both of them.
137: I kind of like that frame. We're trying to decide if a person can do a service for us, and we have (collectively, especially) basically no ability to determine how well they can do it, like most interviewers. Maybe someone should ask them to write FizzBuzz.
Clinton sounds like she has a cold.
The tone has gotten much more light. Neither are willing to take the low road on attacks, which makes me happy.
The question form "what is Obama not doing that you think should be done?" is one that should be extended to every subject.
"I worry very much about an isolated, paranoid country with atomic bombs."
He's never going to win if he badmouths America like that.
That line from Hillary "I've been thinking about these issues since I was a very young woman -- about the age of a lot of Senator Sanders' supporters" just came off as really condescending.
¿She didn't mention their fresh faces and supple skin?
I am very unhappy about how feisty it's getting, not just tonight but recently in general. I really don't want anything that's going to damage either candidate (much) in the general election. Sanders for a long time had been running an unusually positive campaign, but Clinton started slinging mud when he became a real threat and now he's slinging back. Ugh.
IF YOU CAN'T SLING MUD AT MEMBERS OF YOUR OWN PARTY HOW ARE YOU GOING TO HANDLE THE REPUBLICANS
Ugh..
Even if I hated Sanders, this would make me a Sanders supporter simply so Jonathan Ch ait could be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
153 Yeah I clicked but I'm not gonna read. Would almost rather look at the close up face of smarm again.
The sidebar of that article reminds me that God exists and, whatever his other failings, can be relied on to entertain: Pro-Rape Meet-Up Canceled After Women's Boxing Club Threatens to Show Up.
Jeb! just gets more and more pathetic. I remember when my mom said she thought I'd make a great president too.
I remember people saying he would make a better president than W. They were probably right, but still.
I was hearing it before W was actually president.
156: Yeah, your mom said that to me too.
155: That guy lives in his mom's basement.
For real, per the sidebar of the link at 155.
153: Red-baiting! In 2016!
A Democratic Party as monolithically statist as the modern Republican Party is anti-government -- one in which any defense of free markets or business is dismissed -- would look very different than anything within American historical experience.
What does Chait offer as evidence that Bernie's vision is "monolithically statist" and that he would dismiss "any defense of free markets or business"? Look here:
Sanders ... frames Wall Street as a problem of political economy, not economy. Wall Street is so big and rich that it is inherently dangerous, and will by its nature corrupt the political system.
But isn't Sanders obviously right about this?
Part of me really does suspect that Chait's view is essentially the same as Hillary's - that the centrism of her husband's administration requires no explanation or apology; that it wasn't a product of a time or place, but was instead a set of policy preferences that continues today.
As Chait puts it:
After decades of this being taken for granted, it has finally become necessary to defend moderation as a governing creed.
I really hope this isn't Hillary's view - that we need to preserve the view of government that has been "taken for granted" in recent decades. I'd even go so far as to say that I honestly believe that this isn't Hillary's view.
But yeah, as Buttercup says, Chait isn't doing Hillary any favors here.
Moderation in defense of moderation is no vice.
155: it bothers me that everyone has started referring to that organization as "pro-rape". I feel like it shouldn't bother me, because this is a trivial injustice in the grand scheme and certainly that group doesn't deserve any defense, but it bothers me anyway. They're not "pro" rape.
166: Pro-rape legalization? Is that accurate?
153: Friends don't let friends read Chait when he's writing on any subject other than how the Republicans suck.
167: Yeah, that's accurate. (Only on private property.)
167: Yeah pretty much. They don't like it when people point it out publicly or say it bluntly but they're basically a lobbying and support group for domestic abusers and rapists.
The Chait article is sort of fascinating for what I assume are a bunch of weird blind spots. He's trying to present Sanders in a way that comes off as bad, but as far as I can tell is failing because when you simplify down what Sanders is saying that way, with even the slightest attempt at honesty, it becomes really clear that, whether or not you think he's right, he's absolutely catching the general feelings among a lot of the people Chait is trying to argue shouldn't like him at all.
The other bit about it is that it makes almost as explicit as possible the basic fact about the Democratic party that I think a lot of people have gotten very tired of: the idea that it's a coalition between, generally, center-left-keep-things-mostly-the-same people and progressive/left/new-deal-democrats, and that the way that coalition works is that the former group picks the candidates and the latter group has to suck it up and vote for them. The idea that the second group might insist that this time they get the candidate they want and the first group will have to be the mature one who votes tactically even though the candidate doesn't represent their interests looks entirely alien to him. And because he doesn't have to do that practically each election the idea seems appalling and unreasonable to him.
I could have lived a perfectly happy life and not known that such a group existed. Ugh.
We're all leaving the other threat without comments because it is locked up alone.
171: except their stated rationale for wanting to legalize rape (on private property) is to reduce the incidence of rape (because women will better protect themselves). (Their additional stated rationale is to reduce false accusations of rape where no rape occurred, but in their view that is reducing false accusations, not increasing the incidence of rape.) I think their logic is stupid and wrong, but of course, but they are at least theoretically aligned in the overarching goal of reducing rape--they aren't claiming that rape is okay or that there should be more of it. So calling them "pro-rape" just confuses the issue.
Polling in South Carolina hasn't moved much for Sanders. I will be curious whether any prominent black leaders come over to him and actively campaign. Killer Mike, Michelle Alexander, and Cornel West really don't have the ability to get out a message to move masses.
I guess Ben Jealous could:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/04/former-naacp-leader-ben-jealous-to-endorse-bernie-sanders/
174: I understand the point. I think it is too stupid to credit and that "pro-rape" is a perfectly accurate summation of "want to make rape legal".
I've figured out the ideal presidential outcome: Hillary wins the primary but Bernie stays on as VP Anti-Cheney, an eminence tres grise.
174: Also: Racism deniers aren't pro-racism. Because they say they aren't.
175: the Holy Grail here for Sanders is Jesse Jackson returning the favor for '84 and '88. Jackson has specifically said he's not going to endorse anyone, though.
179 is right about 174: even the slightest most glancing encounter with what these people write or how they behave makes it clear that, in fact, "we want to reduce the amount of rape!" is a bald faced, completely absurd lie. I mean, we're talking about the guy who wrote a charming book about how to pick up women (get them drunk; ignore when they say "no").
Eh, to me it mostly just seems like less helpful framing, but like I said they don't really warrant anything resembling defense, so whatever.
One poll possible outlier wait for confirmation blah blah
Yeah, I'm not sure how seriously to take that poll given how much of an outlier it is, and also how it's coming from Quinnipac which (as I vaguely recall is probably true) doesn't have the greatest record sometimes.
On the other hand it's clear that Clinton is taking some hard hits right now. (The 'what to do!?' dismay among the bankers is hilarious to me: one side wants to keep me from destroying the economy again and also they said something that hurt me feelings; the other side is a bunch of raving sociopathic lunatics who want to destroy the earth. It's a terrifying dilemma!)
I watched the debate this morning. I think Hillary didn't do herself any favors last night. I was struck by how much she seemed to be bending the truth on a pretty consistent basis.
There have been a couple articles this week taking on the question that RT raised, "how can we meaningfully talk about the way that sexism affects the reactions to Hillary Clinton." Most of them have been lousy, but I thought this one was fairly good.
I am here to tell them that they can stand down: There's no need to defend Sanders's campaign against such charges or to attack Clinton's for secretly fomenting them. This isn't going to hurt Sanders, because that was never what this was about in the first place.
The kerfuffle over harassment by Sanders supporters isn't about Bernie. Nor is it about who gets to be president or whose supporters are better. Rather, it's about the way the Democratic primary -- from TV media coverage to online debates that are only tangentially related -- is just one more thing that tells American women the depressing truth about what's it's like to be a woman trying to do things in America today.
That's what the earnest debunkers, whether they happen to support Bernie Sanders or not, are missing. When women talk about so-called "Bernie Bro" harassment on Twitter, just as when we talk about the sexism Clinton faces on the campaign trail and the not-so-subtle misogyny with which she's discussed in TV news studios, we're not really talking about who should be president. We're talking about ourselves. About our own lives, our own frustrations, and the unfair barriers between us and the fulfillment of our own ambitions.
And so, when men inevitably show up to explain that we don't know what we're talking about, and to insist that it doesn't matter anyway even if we're right because we must have some ulterior motive for even mentioning this in the first place, and that Not All Men, and that perhaps it would be more constructive if we could just stop mentioning this, please and thank you, it doesn't convince us that we were wrong.
Disclaimer: I watched only the last half or so of the debate, so may not have a full picture of the affair. However, much as I like Sanders, Clinton came off as much better prepared to be president (and you all know that I'm not an HRC fan). The foreign policy parts were a little embarrassing to watch, to be honest. Sanders seemed very much out of his depth.
People who used to study IR have such high standards.
Apo's just mad that they didn't discuss the implications of internal divisions within the Warsaw Pact.
The foreign policy parts were a little embarrassing to watch, to be honest. Sanders seemed very much out of his depth.
That was Kevin Drum's reaction as well.
Bernie does himself no favors on national security. I'm closer to his position than Hillary's, but Bernie honestly sounds like he's never given this stuff a moment's thought. At least Hillary has some views and sounds confident in her abilities.
I think he should pledge to shell Quemoy and Matsu.
I'm sure Hillary knows a lot more than Bernie on national security, but Hillary's instinct was "invade Iraq" and Bernie's was "don't." That goes a long way.
Dick Cheney also has a lot of experience in foreign policy. (Wasn't that Bernie's response at some point?)
I agree that Sanders needs to do more prep on FP. But FP is one of the major reasons I'm leery of HRC. I think normalizing relations with Iran is a good direction, and I don't think we need unproductive tough talk in that direction. I think Sanders's message that experience doesn't equal judgment, and Hillary has made some pretty bad judgment calls could be more of a hit if he did a little more work. I feel like his weakness on FP at this point is mostly optics, rather than a substantive problem.
"Mostly optics" is a problem in a general election.
Believe me, I agree that Clinton's FP instincts are horrible. But at this point in the campaign, Sanders should have his legs under him on this stuff, and he just doesn't seem to.
Also, I didn't think he was as awful as he has been made out to be. I'd pick Russia over N Korea as the bigger threat, but N Korea isn't an obviously "wrong" answer, as some pundits were trying to spin it. He also first answered "ISIS," which I agree with, and that was framed as him "bumbling and not understanding the question." It was clearly a case of rejecting the premises of the question.
I feel like his weakness on FP at this point is mostly optics, rather than a substantive problem.
I thought Max Fisher was good this morning
On Wednesday, I wrote a contrarian piece on Bernie Sanders, who has a reputation as perilously weak on foreign policy, arguing that he has legitimate political reasons for ignoring the topic and that it's not as big of a deal as it might seem. Lots of presidents come into office inexperienced on foreign policy, many do just fine by taking steps such as hiring a smart and experienced team, and there is no reason to think Sanders can't do this, too.
...
On Thursday, in his MSNBC debate with Hillary Clinton, Sanders went ahead and put my theory to the ultimate make-or-break test, giving a cringe-a-minute performance on foreign policy that was near-universally panned. I mean, it was bad.
But the operative question here is whether it was bad in ways that suggest Sanders was merely unstudied -- in which case, it is at least possible he's still intellectually capable of getting sufficiently smart on these issues before January 2017 -- or if it showed that he is inherently incapable of meeting bare minimum standards of foreign policy competence.
I think we're still on the safe side of that line; I'm still not willing to write Sanders off. But I also can't completely dismiss the opposite position out of hand. Perhaps you'll see what I mean, on both points, if we go through some of his more heavily discussed moments.
I really do think "Don't do stupid shit" goes a long way in foreign policy. Too bad Obama didn't listen to his own advice on Libya.
But FP is one of the major reasons I'm leery of HRC. I think normalizing relations with Iran is a good direction, and I don't think we need unproductive tough talk in that direction.
This has been my reaction (generally) to a bunch of domestic policy stuff too. Clinton does ok when she can talk generally about experience, but as soon as it comes down to actual specifics from the '90s she's in an awfully weak position, especially since they're arguing back and forth about healthcare, and if there's one person who shouldn't be talking uncritically about how their pragmatism or whatever gives them the ability to get healthcare legislation through a hostile legislature...
Larison: "Sanders has been faulted recently for not having an established team of foreign policy advisers, and his critics inside the Democratic Party see him as simply not knowing and/or caring enough about foreign policy to be a plausible nominee. These complaints have some merit, but they miss that Clinton remains significantly out of step with most people in her party on these issues and that Sanders is much closer to them. Her instinct to side with her party's hawks in almost every debate is a serious flaw that has led her to take one bad position after another, and the fact that she seems incapable of learning from those previous mistakes is a major problem. Clinton can speak more fluently about foreign policy details, but it's not at all obvious that she ever thinks through the consequences of the hawkish policies she reliably supports. Insofar as Sanders is inclined to be more cautious and less eager to entangle the U.S. in foreign conflicts, he is not only more representative of most Democrats' views, but he is also less likely to make costly errors of commission. Clinton may be able to give a more fleshed-out debate answer, but we also know that she is more likely to get the U.S. involved in unnecessary wars than her rival."
Yeah her reckless belligerence is not really a selling point as far as I'm concerned.
internal divisions within the Warsaw Pact.
a) "Visegrad group" is what the kids say now
b) These divisions are getting noticeable. Poland's just veered both right and crazy, had been reasonable. CZ and SK have a drunken scamer and a scammy sleaze in nominal charge, respectively. HU is going full-blown Mussolini.
c) Saudi contributions to the Clinton foundation, binders full of mioney, are IMO pretty disturbing. Basically any discussion o foreign influence on US elections in print is either dismissive because democracy is superior and will win or hysterical because appalling foreigners are subverting America via nonpatriotic! Americans!!.
Actual discussion of favors and rewards is hard to find. House of Cards US edition was actually a more nuanced exploration than nominally serious news, at least as far as I know. As the US becomes less dominant economically, this is going to be an issue more and more often.
I pretty much agree with 205, but didn't I see yesterday that she really definitively ruled out ground troops in Syria and someplace else? I mean, that's not saying much, but my point is that we should be clear that there's a gap between the hawkish wing of the Dem party and basically everyone on the other side. It's almost certainly true that the median Dem primary voter is closer to Bernie than to HRC on nat'l security, but that voter is something like 20th percentile on the national spectrum. I'd peg Clinton somewhere in the middle quintile of the electorate*.
*partly because a lot of the traditional isolationism of conservatives seems to be swamped by Islamophobia that basically says "stay out of wars unless they involve killing Muslims."
On a slightly related topic, for the past few weeks I've been checking out prominent third wave feminist blogs to get a sense of how they're covering the Democratic primaries. Interestingly, all the ones I've seen are pro Hillary, except for Jessica Val enti's old blog, which is 110% Sanders. It used to be very much a feminism 101 blog aimed at college student age women, so perhaps it's squarely millennial focus is why it's so pro Sanders. Given Valenti's own vocal support of Clinton and her blog's reputation for being very basic, mainstream third wave feminism, I'm surprised that it's shaken out that way.
Sanders (and the left more generally) appear to be in a bit of a bind w.r.t foreign policy. American political discourse tends to equate good foreign policy with skilled imperialism. So I'm not actually sure what it would look like for someone to be leftist with good foreign policy because most "serious thinkers" seem to me to regard leftism and foreign policy expertise as fundamentally incompatible.
I mean, how fucking telling is it that when the moderators say "Now we turn the discussion to foreign policy", the questions are all about who we're going to bomb? But really, trade is probably a more important piece of foreign policy than who we're going to bomb. And it's practically never argued that the Iran deal should be regarded as a net positive for national security because the United States is desirable enough as a trade partner to neutralize any lingering resentment that might exist over there. We just don't talk about trade this way because this doesn't conform to the parameters of the discussion.
209:
Have you seen Roqayah Chamseddine?
Wait, what? Most foreign policy experts think of trade exactly that way. I have enough books on that stuff to fill a box in my garage.
Unfortunately, my garage is full of other stuff so those books are piled along the wall of the stairwell.
very basic, mainstream third wave feminism
They all wear Uggs?
And it's practically never argued that the Iran deal should be regarded as a net positive for national security because the United States is desirable enough as a trade partner to neutralize any lingering resentment that might exist over there. We just don't talk about trade this way because this doesn't conform to the parameters of the discussion.
Then maybe Sanders should make this argument powerfully, instead of making sympathetic watchers like Max Fisher in 200, or watchers ears like Drum, say things like, "I was still a little surprised at just how poorly prepared he was to say much of anything or to draw much of a contrast with Hillary's views." I mean, I get that the game is rigged, and I don't think that Sanders can countervail all by his lonesome, but he seems to be dropping the ball on this entirely.
I mean, how fucking telling is it that when the moderators say "Now we turn the discussion to foreign policy", the questions are all about who we're going to bomb? But really, trade is probably a more important piece of foreign policy than who we're going to bomb. And it's practically never argued that the Iran deal should be regarded as a net positive for national security because the United States is desirable enough as a trade partner to neutralize any lingering resentment that might exist over there. We just don't talk about trade this way because this doesn't conform to the parameters of the discussion.
Reading that, I'm torn between desperately wanting more questions on trade in the debates and thinking that 90 seconds just isn't enough time to say much about international trade.
I remember when there were a bunch of questions during the presidential campaign about China having Most Favored Nation status (92?) and in retrospect I don't know that it gave any useful information about either candidate's China policies or (the more important and more complicated question) how should people in the US respond to China's rise as an economic power.
But, isn't the answer to your question that presidents have much more power when it comes to deciding who to bomb than shaping international trade?
214
The site is pumpkin spice scented.
I have to provide proof of this year's income for my medicaid renewal + proof of last 30 day's income, which is kind of a nightmare as someone who is sporadically employed on an academic year system. I have a job which pays me X amount over the 9 month academic year, for which I never received formal documentation stating my salary, and for which I can't find anything even remotely official looking online for my generic job position. I can submit last year's W-2 and argue and show that for the first quarter I made X/3, therefore in 2016 I will make 2X/3 but I don't know how persuasive that is. I can also submit an email for the job application with the compensation listed.
I bet the IRS is really good at multiplying fractions.
218: Have you tried asking someone in human resources? I have to assume they've dealt with something like this before.
220
Yeah, I should probably do that and just get some sort of official looking letter.
218: When President Cruz abolishes the IRS, you wont' have to worry about this issue anymore. Of course, you won't have healthcare anymore either. Pluses and minuses.
212:
Experts certainly do, but the public discussions seems to me to be moving away from thinking of trade in these terms.
215:
I totally agree that Sanders has totally bumbled the opportunity to do this. It's starting to make me really uncomfortable.
216:
But, isn't the answer to your question that presidents have much more power when it comes to deciding who to bomb than shaping international trade?
I have two things to say in response to this. First, the President still does have plenty of power on international trade. Second, the fact that the President doesn't have the power to act unilaterally on legislation would never be used to justify skipping questions about what legislation we should and should not pass.
I have two things to say in response to this. First, the President still does have plenty of power on international trade. Second, the fact that the President doesn't have the power to act unilaterally on legislation would never be used to justify skipping questions about what legislation we should and should not pass.
If you read the first part of my comment, I don't think we're actually in disagreement. My concern is just that if they asked about the TPP, say, (which they should) I'm not sure that's a very good way to get at an understanding of the US role in international trade more broadly, and I'm not sure what they should ask which wouldn't be far too complicated to answer in 90 seconds.
Maybe the Clinton campaign should put out a message to hack journalists not to write so many godawful articles. These people are the pundit-class equivalent of "Bernie Bros."
I have no doubt that some Sanders supporters legitimately favor his policies over Clinton's, and that they might vote for a woman with Sanders' ideology.
Translation: I don't believe anyone could actually like the dirty hippie.
And the key question for Democratic voters, post-Iowa, is whether they will allow themselves to be so wooed by Sanders' gendered appeal that they abandon the woman who seemed poised to make history.
That reminds me to check out the misogyny section of Sanders's platform.
Sen. Barack Obama framed himself as Clinton's emotional antipode: an idealistic, optimistic, ebullient dreamer. The subtext of his message was that there will be time to elect a female president later; now is the time to elect me.
Ah yes, I remember Obama running on the "reinforce white male patriarchy" platform. Oh! er..
The "some Sanders supporters" is particularly gross there. It's practically quoting Trump's infamous 'Mexicans are rapists' thing.
225:
Oh, it almost certainly would be. But it's already that way with questions about what our military should do. I just worry about the way these debates seem to reinforce the idea in peoples' heads that foreign policy is synonymous with military policy, and that any candidate that doesn't have an answer to "who should we bomb?" is not a serious thinker about foreign policy.
225:
Sorry, that first sentence doesn't make any sense. I meant to say that 90 seconds certainly wouldn't be enough time to deliver any sort of understanding of America's position in international trade.
228: Stipulating that I really agree that it would be awesome for a more sophisticated understanding of trade's role in the international system of power relations to be a part of presidential politics, it still makes sense for questions to lean more heavily on military stuff. Even if trade and military action were equally salient, since the President basically does whatever they want on the latter, and is much more constrained on the former, asking about the latter is more informative. It's "I'd like to push in the direction of doing X" vs. "I will most certainly do Y, and once elected, no force on earth can stop me." I really want to know what Y is!
I'd add that if presidents of either party ever fought "free trade" agreements, then it would also have more salience. But we all know damn well that every Republican and every mainstream Dem will push maximum "free trade", and as noted above, even Sanders isn't making opposition to it a major talking point. Which is weird, frankly. I mean, IMO, opposing trade agreements that everybody but economists and the elite favor is at least as populist a position as opposing Wall Street, but I hear 100X more about the latter than the former (even though the difference between Sanders and Clinton is probably greater on the former; despite all the Goldman Sachs gotcha, her substantive policy positions on Wall Street are to the left of Obama's).
That's a pretty stupid article. But it's also pretty crazy how a political campaign immediately changes your priors to want to be on team your own candidate. Ever since I got vocal about my (pretty damn limited! my plan had been to vote for Sanders if the election doesn't look close, although I very much do not want him to win the nomination and affirmatively like Hillary) Hillary support I've been getting more and more briefly persuaded by things like 226, and am now starting to affirmatively dislike Sanders and his supporters (if you decide you don't like him, his rhetorical vigor or whatever just comes across as being an unrealistic, grandstanding, self-righteous old man, his idealistic, enthusiastic supporters come across as naive, annoying morons).
I mean I don't really affirmatively dislike him or his supporters at all after even a moment of reflection, but it's worth keeping in mind that elections make people insane even when you're trying to be self-conscious about it not making you insane.
And 232 just convinced me to send off a check to team Hillary. Fuck this nonsense.
But it's also pretty crazy how a political campaign immediately changes your priors to want to be on team your own candidate.
Watching this phenomenon play out in real time, transfiguring otherwise smart people into blithering idiots, has been the most and least interesting thing about this campaign, which has already dragged on for way too long.
233: it seems like you keep finding things that convince you to support Clinton. Perhaps you just support Clinton, full stop, broseph?
I decided over a year ago to vote Clinton. It's been very nice you have that out of the way.
I guess! I mean, I'd much rather that she be the Democratic nominee than Sanders, and think that the odds of actually progressive results (as opposed to goals) are much greater with her as both candidate and President though I appreciate the existence of a vocal presence to her left.
Tigre, what do you make of her refusal to promise not to cut social security?
I think it means she is a SELLOUT like Obama who will definitely SELL YOU OUT TO WALL STREET.
I mean I don't really affirmatively dislike him or his supporters at all after even a moment of reflection, but it's worth keeping in mind that elections make people insane even when you're trying to be self-conscious about it not making you insane.
That is totally on point.
I'm so fucking sick of old people. Cut it just to piss them off.
239:
I'm really not trying to be snarky here. I just can't think of any realistic progressive goal that it's worth trading social security for.
What are you even talking about. She has said over and over that she will not privatize social security, she just hasn't affirmatively agreed with a plan to expand it massively (which would have to come at the expense of a lot of other things). There is no chance of Bernie achieving that regardless, and no chance of Hillary privatizing social security, so it will just keep chugging along under any administration.
I think 237 is a totally defensible position. For my part, I don't think Sanders is running to win, though he's maybe beginning to move in that direction. Regardless, I still think it's vanishingly unlikely that he'll be the Democratic nominee, so I'm not worrying too much about that possibility. I am, though, beginning to think it's maybe plausible that Clinton won't be the nominee either, which, if there were a better alternative, would be just fine with me.* As it is, though, I don't know. Like I said, I can't imagine Sanders winning the nomination. And if he somehow managed to bely my expectations, it's hard to see how he'd win the general (unless he were matched up again Trump or Cruz, and maybe not even then).
* Nevertheless, if Clinton can't clean Sanders's clock -- which cleaning, let't be real, should have happened already -- she obviously doesn't deserve the nomination, and it's very good that we're learning how weak she is now rather than next fall.
FWIW, you've actually managed to get about halfway to convincing me to vote for Hillary instead -- mostly because I think that the broad base of support for Sanders indicates to me that significantly more liberal policy is, in fact, on its way and so we may as well play it safe on the Presidency for now.
In some ways, he might be more of a boon for the progressive movement if he ends up not getting the nomination. Supporters are less likely to become complacent that way.
But, you know, the left wing of the possible! I still have the t-shirt and everything! So I've sent Sanders a bunch (a small bunch, but still) of money and will vote for him in the primary with a huge smile on my face.
I have to say, it makes me pretty sad that my dad died right before he would have had the chance to watch a Democratic Socialist mount a (semi-)serious run for the White House. He would have been pretty tickled by Sanders's success.
In some ways, he might be more of a boon for the progressive movement if he ends up not getting the nomination. Supporters are less likely to become complacent that way.
Yes, I think this is probably right (though see above about potential for campaign season self-delusion!). A sitting mainstream Democratic President whose coalition includes an aggressive left wing movement seems way more likely to produce a vigorous left wing and get left wing results than does electing a far-left standard bearer to the Presidency who will almost certainly be a disappointment and unable to achieve what's been promised.
236
I made up my mind to vote for Sanders 17 years ago, when I joined YPSL. I just didn't assume I would ever actually get the chance to do so.
Actually, like everyone else I figured I would vote Sanders as a protest vote to push Hillary to the left for the general. If he can beat Hillary, it makes me both very excited and very very nervous. If he were to be the nominee, I would probably volunteer for the campaign because I figure the Sanders campaign would need all the help it could get in the general.
If Sanders won the presidency, it would make me seriously rethink the potential for rapid cultural change in US politics.
My mother has been donating to Clinton's campaign because she's still scarred by McGovern. She told me that I should think long and hard about a President Cruz before voting for Sanders. I reminded her about my YPSL and DSA activism, and then she reminded me the socialist candidate in 2000 got 5,000 votes.
So, my mother may be right. Still, idealists gotta idealize.
A sitting mainstream Democratic President whose coalition includes an aggressive left wing movement seems way more likely to produce a vigorous left wing and get left wing results than does electing a far-left standard bearer to the Presidency who will almost certainly be a disappointment and unable to achieve what's been promised.
My issue with this is that the Clintons have demonstrated zero interest in fostering a vigorous left wing within the Democratic Party. Quite the opposite, actually, through the years. This is one of the biggest reasons that I prefer Sanders to Clinton (though my preference, even in light of these new polls, still feels mostly pie-in-the-sky to me). And of course if Clinton is nominated, I'll vote for her in the general election and heave a huge sigh of relief if she wins.
If it's Trump vs. Sanders, what I really want would be a time machine, so I could go back in time to June and see the look on Nate Silver's face when I told him the outcome.
248:
What I'm hoping for right now is for you to be right about Hillary being the safe bet in the general (because I'll grant Sanders isn't exactly safe even if I do think that Hillary's safety is overstated) and that she comes out of the primaries as the nominee by the skin of her teeth and coasts through the general with relatively little drama and we inaugurate her in 2016.
This is the best case scenario after that:
For the next eight years, Bernie gets a bit more of a public platform in the Senate. Younger Democratic legislators (and maybe some libertarian-leaning Republicans) begin to see him as an elder statesman that they can build coalitions around now that he's demonstrated that his approach and his ideas are credible enough to nearly unseat a Clinton for the nomination. They get to build coalitions and pass legislation and exert their pull over it without the intense pressure that comes with the Presidency. More moderate and more corporatist Democrats start having to worry about getting sniped from the left. Congress begins to realize that you can't appear to be too soft on white collar crime without parts of the electorate taking note. Clinton has to work with these people and ends up under pressure to pass more liberal legislation that she otherwise might have.
The worst-case scenario if Bernie gets the nomination is that he either becomes an ineffective President or loses in a landslide and we have to deal with decades more of moderate dems using him as an example of why we can't have an actual leftist political coalition or run lefts candidates.
If he were to be the nominee, I would probably volunteer for the campaign
Me too. Oh wait, I live in Texas.
NM might be in play. Or Colorado. Jeez I can't imagine the unspeakable tortures required to make me live in Col for a few months.
I was happy to read the primary as a lock for Clinton with Sanders hopefully pushing her to focus hard on issues that I cared about, or at least moving her substantially leftward of where she would have started from (when moving to the right for the general election) otherwise, and to resign myself to voting for her in the general. But the fact that they're actually running so close to each other despite Clinton starting the primary with every single advantage I can think of (money; endorsements; political power players; 'inevitability' and a general 'ok this is her time now'; etc.) is starting to make me nervous about the idea of Clinton as a general election candidate.
Before the last few months I thought of 2008 in what I suspect was the normal interpretation, namely that Clinton came in as a power player and a strong candidate and then had the bad luck to face off against a once-in-a-generation political talent. But this time she's up against an angry old man who calls himself a democratic socialist and has practically nothing in the way of endorsements, or party support, or wealthy backers, or anything and she's still holding on for dear life. Now part of that is certainly right-place-right-time for Sanders, sure. But the idea that Clinton is substantially electable or would be a really good candidate is looking weaker and weaker to me. At this point the best arguments I can see for it are that Sanders is willing to use the word "socialist" in public*, and that he's exciting to people who could become disillusioned and cause trouble later on. But the latter just looks like the same insult that gets thrown at anyone who gets youth support (and doesn't have much backing it up that I can see). And the former doesn't look like it's scaring people off in the primary that effectively, so unless the idea is that he'd never be able to get support from Republican voters in the general election it's hard to see how much weight it carries. The idea that elections are about assuming your base will come out to vote for you and then trying to sell yourself really hard to people who like your opponent as well seems to me like something that may have been true at one point but is less and less true each year (and not very true at this point).
*You have to be several years older than me to have been old enough to be paying serious attention to politics before/when the USSR stopped existing. I do actually doubt that red baiting has anywhere near the clout that people substantially older than me think it does. You see those polls where like half the people say they would refuse to vote for a socialist, but to be honest they just make me wonder what percentage of Republicans are saying they'd be ok with voting for a socialist. I'm guessing it's extremely low, and that you'd also see the willingness of people to vote for one changing in a positive direction if they actually were the nominee, if only for basic tribal reasons.
If Sanders won the presidency, it would make me seriously rethink the potential for rapid cultural change in US politics.
That's probably right. Maybe the best argument for his election is that if he won it would be so fucking insane and unusual that all bets are off about everything else and who fucking knows what would happen, so why even think about it. But you still have to get over the "can he actually beat a Republican" and "how is Congress going to be transformed so as to support the policy agenda of its current leftmost member" hurdles.
the Clintons have demonstrated zero interest in fostering a vigorous left wing within the Democratic Party
Put that way, that's certainly absolutely true. But what they have done over the years is shown a lot of interest, including right now, in building up a functioning broad-based center-left Democratic party that can win elections at a lot of levels. More so than Obama, for sure. Certainly more so than Sanders, who obviously hasn't been interested in Democratic party-building at all. I mean I get that many of Bill Clinton's legislative "achievements" with a Republican Congress in the mid-90s were terrible and way to the right of what anyone sane would ever accept from a Democratic candidate now. But I think people forget just how fucked the left or center-left was in the 80s and 90s and how much work it took just to build a party that could survive and thrive and build the coalition which it has now and hold off the worst of the Reagan era. The party needs to have a vigorous left, but it also needs just good old-fashioned party building to win elections.
Something along the lines of 253.2, where you have both a vigorous mainstream conventional Democratic party that can win elections and an organized movement pushing that party to the left seems like the best of all (realistically possible) worlds.
...building up a functioning broad-based center-left Democratic party that can win elections at a lot of levels.
Say what? Do I have to link to the latest "Thanks Obama!" I forget, 30 D governors to 19 in seven years.
I do think Repubs would vote for a socialist, and not just a national socialist. Though we aren't that far from that, are we?
This country hates Wall Street and rentiers.
Clinton sticks with "Well, $675k was what was offered he ha ha" and I think Cruz can beat her.
One reason political commentary on this primary feels so inane this year is Marx already said what's to be said in the Eighteenth Brumaire.
"Hold on to the Night. Hold on to the memories."
I was too young to really be paying attention, but 253.2 is the argument people made against Dukakis, IIRC. Also with Mondale, or so I've been told.*
*Let's give a moment's silence for the first Norwegian-American candidate. It looks there there some prejudices America is still not ready to face, but we will one day break the rosemaled ceiling.
But I think people forget just how fucked the left or center-left was in the 80s and 90s and how much work it took just to build a party that could survive and thrive and build the coalition which it has now and hold off the worst of the Reagan era.
For what it's worth, despite absolutely loathing Bill Clinton, I don't forget the history at all. My issue is that neither does he or Hillary. I actually think they're caught in that historical frame, which now leaves her fighting from a defensive crouch (and I do mean fighting, because I think it's not accurate that she's preemptively capitulating on every issue; I just think, because of her history and Bill's history, specifically because of where the party was and where they took it over time, that she's going to choose her battles very carefully, -- actually, almost certainly too carefully for my tastes).
Isn't the phrase you're looking for "fighting the last war"? But I'm not convinced it is the last war.
260: Fritz is still alive, you know.
I know, I was referring to his dead presidential campaign. Which perhaps set back the cause of Norwegian-American presidents by a whole generation.
I believe Sanders can in theory win a general election against any of the republican candidates if the media treats his campaign fairly. My concern is my certainty that the media won't treat his campaign fairly, and my uncertainty over exactly how unfairly it will be treated. The treatment it's receiving in the primary thus far is not a good omen. I think he's got a lot better shot at getting something resembling fair coverage if he's matched against Trump, or Carson if he still mattered (he doesn't), or to a lesser extent Cruz. Anyone else and it will be overwhelmingly aggressively lopsided, in a way that probably leads to Sanders losing the election.
266 despite the fact that e.g. Rubio is much more radical than Sanders, if anyone took his proposals seriously (which the media for some reason doesn't but an all-republican government might!).
A lot of the conversation about Sanders as a general election candidate involves banned analogies. The current political climate is sui generis.
Sanders is not McGovern in '72 and Clinton is not Humphrey in '68. Sanders and Clinton are very deliberately not tearing the party apart, and their constituencies have a great deal in common. Each candidate has a legitimate claim on committed support from the other's loyalists.
There is no issue that is as divisive as the Vietnam War. The AFL-CIO is not going to sit on its hands if Sanders is the nominee, even if a "moderate" like Marco Rubio is nominated. (Not that the AFL-CIO matters - but see, that's why analogies are banned.)
As best as I can tell, there are two big reasons for this: There is nothing going on in the Democratic Party as divisive as Vietnam - but there might be on the Republican side. And the Republicans are both politically dominant and genuinely nuts in a way that Nixon and his Republicans were not. Marco Rubio: The moderate who opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest.
There is no evidence that the Democratic nominee is going to run into the political juggernauts that McGovern and Goldwater faced in their Novembers.
That said, I'm not denying the essential thesis of the Sanders skeptics - that Bernie is inherently less electable than Hillary. But there was a strong case that Obama was less electable than Hillary, too. Predictions of that sort are best approached with a certain amount of humility.
And Sanders has had the opportunity to learn from McGovern's mistakes. If Sanders picks Zombie Thomas Eagleton as his vice presidential candidate, then we'll know we're in trouble.
Anyway, there's no way Sanders can win the nomination, right? Why are we even talking about this?
I think it's late in the game to say that he definitely can't win the nomination. He has a clear and substantial support base, and the race is getting closer and closer. I suspect that he's going to win in NH (just like everyone else who has seen the polls does), and I think "Oh he's not real"/"He can't win"/"Who?" really has been depressing his numbers among some groups. The more he can undercut that factor the more dangerous he gets to Clinton. (I think on balance the whole "literally the entire Democratic party establishment and almost all allied groups support his opponent" thing is likely to make it at best an uphill battle, but he's genuinely competitive looking right now despite that.)
267
Yeah. Articles like this don't really help. My biggest fear is the media too. I'm hoping this is primary craziness where these supposedly "progressive" sites are pulling out the stops for Clinton, but if it's actually Sanders vs. Rubio they'll be more honest. I suppose they're framing a New Deal Democrat as a crazy extremist and a Tea Party candidate as a "moderate" in order to scare people into voting for Clinton, but I'm not really convinced these journalists would prefer a Sanders presidency to a Rubio one.
268
I would give Sanders a 5-10% chance of winning, up from
267
Yeah. Articles like this don't really help. My biggest fear is the media too. I'm hoping this is primary craziness where these supposedly "progressive" sites are pulling out the stops for Clinton, but if it's actually Sanders vs. Rubio they'll be more honest. I suppose they're framing a New Deal Democrat as a crazy extremist and a Tea Party candidate as a "moderate" in order to scare people into voting for Clinton, but I'm not really convinced these journalists would prefer a Sanders presidency to a Rubio one.
268
I would give Sanders a 5-10% chance of winning, up from
268
I would give Sanders a 5-10% chance of winning, up from less than 1% a month ago. A lot of Clinton's lead hinges on her electability, which like Trump's "winning-ness," is persuasive until it's not. That Sanders is in any way a threat makes me a lot more nervous of Clinton's skills as a campaigner than I was a few months ago. There has been a change in political attitudes in the past 8 years which make things more hospitable to Sanders, but Clinton is running possibly the worst campaign possible against him, demonstrating she has absolutely no instincts for this. She's not a populist or anti-establishment and pretending to be so is/would be disingenuous, but she could position herself as a modern female FDR--someone from the elite classes whose own privilege gave her insight into how the system was gamed against ordinary people. Instead, she's pushing herself as endorsed by every single elite person out there, from CEOs to celebrities to politicians. Switching between flaunting her elite status and denying it is making it seem like she fundamentally doesn't understand what people are angry or upset about.
Curious if anyone here is actually in a state with an influential primary before Super Tuesday.
Matt Bruenig is writing some good stuff about BernieBros. http://mattbruenig.com/2016/02/05/in-reality-the-bernie-bro-argument-shifts-endlessly/
That Sanders is in any way a threat makes me a lot more nervous of Clinton's skills as a campaigner than I was a few months ago.
I don't think it really has anything to do with her campaigning. She's been a central, powerful figure in a political and economic system that doesn't work for most people. She can't really campaign herself out of that fact.
Hypothesis: the big difference between today and the 90s politically is that people 40+ have gotten wise through living through multiple "booms" which didn't help them much personally, or only helped them tread water, followed by the big bust; and younger people have been dunked headfirst into the job-light economy. In the 1980's and 1990's, the labor market was still healthy enough during booms, and there were enough decent legacy blue-collar jobs remaining, that a lot more of the voting public, both old and young, could afford to be complacent and/or triumphalist about free markets.
I haven't followed the Bernie bros thing closely, but the link in 274 is really quite something.
Meh. The "Berniebro" is obviously thematically connected to the relatively recent "brosocialist" and the enduring arguments over the relative weighting of class and gender (race, nationalism) that go back through the 70s all the way to the Russian Revolution and the Paris Commune. Marx and "The Jewish Question" Hell, maybe the war in the Vendee.
CB your 275 is a very good point.
I trace it farther back, to the Physibrocrats promoting small-town conservative values and ignoring the benefits of the freedom and self-expression available to marginalized communities in cities.
275: I don't think it really has anything to do with her campaigning. She's been a central, powerful figure in a political and economic system that doesn't work for most people. She can't really campaign herself out of that fact.
Thanks for this. Sentiments like that voiced -- that Clinton is running a horrid campaign -- and like that voiced in 244 (if Clinton can't clean Sanders's clock -- which cleaning, let't be real, should have happened already -- she obviously doesn't deserve the nomination, and it's very good that we're learning how weak she is now rather than next fall), have struck me as very strange. (a) I don't think of candidates as deserving or undeserving of a nomination, and (b) it's not clear to me how cleaning Bernie's clock would render Hillary deserving.
Is anyone else bothered, or at least thinking about, the extent to which the Democratic primary is beginning to look, in some ways, like Republican primaries of the last several cycles? The "who's a progressive? Who, who? You? Nah, you're not. Yes I am too! No, no, I'm the most progressive!" crap in the latest debate was ... discomfiting.
Jonathan Bernstein has been going on about this - he's not alone - and I confess I'm given pause. From his take on the first hour of the most recent Dem debate:
Instead, the candidates debated ideology, party loyalty, the nature of power in a capitalist system, and other generalizations. They spent an inordinate time (egged on by the MSNBC moderators) discussing what counts toward being a "progressive" (the Democrats, unfortunately in my view, having settled exclusively on that word rather than good old-fashioned "liberal").
In other words, they sounded a lot like Republicans. I mean, without the sideshow.
This is to say that purity tests in the Democratic party do make me uncomfortable. I haven't decided yet what I think about it, but when moderation -- in the form of pragmatic thinking -- becomes an entirely dirty thing on the part of both parties, I am, as I say, given pause.
Except, as I said in 268, this:
She's not a populist or anti-establishment and pretending to be so is/would be disingenuous, but she could position herself as a modern female FDR--someone from the elite classes whose own privilege gave her insight into how the system was gamed against ordinary people. Instead, she's pushing herself as endorsed by every single elite person out there, from CEOs to celebrities to politicians. Switching between flaunting her elite status and denying it is making it seem like she fundamentally doesn't understand what people are angry or upset about.
She's running a centrist technocratic campaign in a climate where people are beginning to realize how bankrupt neoliberalism is. Either she doesn't notice (my hypothesis above), or she doesn't care, in which case if she doesn't represent a majority of Democratic party members, she won't win. My guess is it's a little of both.
Also, this made me laugh:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/02/yglesiastical-contrarianism#comments
279 is well played. The Eighteenth Bromaire of Bernie's Boner Parts?
285
Except it's not about purity, really. Sanders isn't a purist, which is why he is able to hold elected office as a self-identified socialist. I used to be active in the socialist party, and I left because people were so caught up in factions and calling other people Trotskyites or Stalinists or corporate sell-outs that nothing got done, because no compromise was possible, ever. Sanders, despite calling himself a socialist, is a New Deal Democrat who seems to have the political skills to be a viable contestant, despite 95% of the media treating him as a joke or worse. He's not a perfect candidate, but he best represents a large chunk of the Democratic party. What's exciting about him is that he's actually a leftist pragmatist who has principles without making it into a purity contest, something we've been told is impossible/unattainable in mainstream politics for a long time.
I haven't decided yet what I think about it, but when moderation -- in the form of pragmatic thinking -- becomes an entirely dirty thing on the part of both parties, I am, as I say, given pause.
I agree that from 88-2008, the general fights in the Democratic primaries were about who would be the more competent technocratic leader (remember when everybody was talking about "theories of change") and this year feels more ideological.
I think, as buttercup has said, that is a reaction to some of the disappointment with Obama -- he's seen as somebody who has been competent, but disinclined to pick fights on ideological ground.
It's completely fair for the liberal base to say, at that point, "remind me what we're fighting for, and convince me that you believe in that as a goal."
The "Berniebro" is obviously thematically connected to the relatively recent "brosocialist" . . .
Thanks for that. It's obviously true, and it brought something to mind that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise, which is that the gender dynamics involved aren't just about how women are treated.
If you think Corey Robin is correct that, "socialism is about converting hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness."
Socialism won't eliminate the sorrows of the human condition. Loss, death, betrayal, disappointment, hurt: none of these would disappear or even be mitigated in a socialist society. . . .
But what socialism can do is to arrange things so that you can deal with and confront these unhappinesses of the human condition. Not flee from or avoid them because you're so consumed by the material constraints and hassles of everyday life.
To the extent that women are disproportionately involved in caring for other (parents, children, etc . . . ) that goal is going to have more value for women.
That isn't something that's come up in this election at all, because that isn't how Hillary Clinton is selling her policies (though I'm sure it will be part of the general election campaign).
Not an original idea, but something I hadn't thought about for a while.
Sentiments like that voiced -- that Clinton is running a horrid campaign -- and like that voiced in 244 . . . have struck me as very strange.
I do agree with that. I think the dynamics of the primary campaign are not a reaction to the Clinton campaign, per se. I think Bernie's success is more attributable to some combination of (a) his own personal abilities as a politician, (b) that people are receptive to his platform and (c) that people are happy to express a protest vote. Rather than a narrative in which voters began the primary wanting to vote for Clinton and have been turned off by her campaign. I still think she's doing fine.
288: Sanders, despite calling himself a socialist, is a New Deal Democrat who seems to have the political skills to be a viable contestant, despite 95% of the media treating him as a joke or worse. He's not a perfect candidate, but he best represents a large chunk of the Democratic party.
Agreed that Sanders is more a social democrat than a democratic socialist. On whether he represents a large chunk of the Dem party, I don't know: a notable number of African-American women support Clinton, including Bertha Lewis.
If people were supporting him out of a desire for a protest vote wouldn't you see pretty much the exact opposite kind of movement in the polls though?
I mean, there are people here on this thread talking about how they were hoping to do that but now that he's a genuine threat for the nomination that's not an option anymore (or at least not if he still is when he hits whatever state they're in). And he didn't just gain support in the polls - he pulled it directly from Clinton's support (there wasn't a large group of people saying they didn't support anyone who are now supporting Sanders). Whatever she's doing it's either not working for her or Sanders is a brilliant enough campaigner that he's the most electable candidate in the general by a massive margin.
I've said all along, if Clinton loses the nomination that would, and should reflect badly on her -- I would assume that, at that point, she would not be a credible presidential candidate again.
I just think we're a long ways from that. If Sanders wins NH, Clinton wins South Carolina, the Sanders momentum stops at some point and this turns out to be an accurate description of the race, then I don't think we need to search for explanations. In that case it would be sufficient to say that Sanders ran a good campaign challenging Clinton from the left and lost.
We've said for months that Iowa and New Hampshire are two of the best states for Sanders demographically. You can see why in the entrance poll taken in Iowa. Sanders won very liberal voters over Clinton by 19 percentage points, but he lost self-identified somewhat liberals and moderates to Clinton by 6 percentage points and 23 percentage points, respectively. That's bad for Sanders because even though 68 percent of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers identified as liberal this year, only 47 percent of Democratic primary voters nationwide did so in 2008. We'll need to see if Sanders can do better in a state that is more moderate than Iowa before thinking he can win the nomination.
I do think Sanders has been very effective at exploiting a key weakness of hers, which is that lots of people including Democrats don't trust her. As I said 18,000 comments ago, I think there are both totally legitimate and gendered/results of 25 years of Republican propaganda reasons for that lack of trust. I do think that a difference between me and people I see on social media going hardcore for Bernie is that I have no personal dislike of her. I'm more skeptical that this has revealed a core weakness for Hillary in a general election, but it's definitely a weakness.
I also think a lot of what's going on is people in their 20s, especially college students or grads, saying "you need to recognize just how fucked we've been since 2008, which no one older and in power really has done." That's great and important. I do think she needs to do something about that and her messaging to people under 35 needs to change. But again that doesn't convince me at all that he's an actually preferrable Democratic party nominee.
295 is helpful, poll-wise. Thanks.
I continue to worry about fivethirtyeight's analysis this year, because so often it feels like it's just a group of very clever people scrambling around to find a complicated statistical way to explain why what conventional wisdom pundits are saying will happen will happen. I assume this is largely because (1) they need to be putting out information now and (2) even with as much primary polling there is (and there's less) actually making good predictions is a lot harder and depends on stuff that you can't get from basic polling data. But it's hard for me not to notice that in the 295 link they're comparing some very different statistics (nationwide in 2008; iowa specifically in 2016), which is always a warning sign. It's still higher in Iowa 2008 than what he says about the general numbers, but in 2008 the Iowa Democrats who identified as Liberal/Very-liberal was 54% and while that still puts it higher than the country-wide numbers a 14% jump is noticeable. (And that's not a hard number to find.) So whatever is going on there's a bunch of demographic shifting around happening.
But yeah, the race is likely to drag on fairly long just because of proportional allotment, and I don't think that's necessarily bad either. And right now Sanders is picking up steam based on what looks like the fact that Clinton doesn't seem as inevitable as she did two months ago, which automatically (maybe accurately maybe not) makes him look substantially more electable too. But a substantial set of losses in March would (probably? certainly?) reset that dynamic right back to Protest/ideological-pull Candidate V. Person we all know will win. And that makes Clinton the nominee.
I support Sanders and plan on voting for him, but I am somewhat afraid that if Sanders is the nominee against Trump or Cruz, Bloomberg will enter the race a la Anderson, and "even Massachusetts" will go for Trump/Cruz. But I think that Bloomberg, and not Sanders, is the one we should blame there.
Some woman wrote a Bridget Jones style novel about working in Mortgage-Backed Securities at Bear Stearns, and Bloomberg is her guy. There's just enough of those people that they could tip the election.
"you need to recognize just how fucked we've been since 2008, which no one older and in power really has done."
This is huge and real, across the political spectrum.
295
Yeah, I think Clinton is still the overwhelming favorite, and the race will be over if he can't keep it pretty close in SC or NV. I did read that one way Iowa isn't as friendly to Sanders as the pundits say is that it skews old, and the caucuses in particular over-weight the old vote. Sanders is doing really well with people under 40, and losing very badly with people over 65. It's very probable Sanders won a majority of the raw vote, but not the delegates given how the Iowa caucuses apportion them.
The minority vote is a big question, but I'm not sure it's as solidly for Clinton in the way it's been portrayed. Again, my feeling is they both have positives and negatives on race, so it's not like Clinton's support is inherent to her positions. I live in a politically aware African-American plurality neighborhood, and from what I've heard people actually like Sanders, but are not sure he's electable. I think that's Clinton's enormous (and possibly warranted) advantage, but if the mood shifts drastically on this, it's possible the minority vote could too. Sanders picked up an endorsement from the former president of the NAACP, which may or may not change things. How age and race intersect will also be interesting to see. Google isn't giving me an age and race breakdown of Sanders vs. Clinton support.
The minority vote really is interesting and from what I can find that's more detailed than "it goes for Clinton" it's a lot trickier than that. My impression is that, more than anything, it's that the African-American group is massively polling for Clinton - like, "people in their 20s for Sanders" size majorities. This article goes into some detail and makes it look at least like Sanders is at a disadvantage with Hispanic and Other-non-white groups (compared to national average) but nothing resembling the difference with African-Americans. So depending on turnout we could really see a difference between Nevada and South Carolina show up.
300: This is huge and real, across the political spectrum
Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but I wonder whether this isn't a function of white people (youths) finding themselves fucked. I'm pretty sure people of color have been fucked for a long time.
I'm not sure of my point. It's worth noting, though: politics in this country will be changing as whites find themselves in equally somewhat dire straits. I welcome this change, but it's important that white people realize that the answer isn't to circle the white wagons, to demonize the colored people, and this is an important distinction between Democratic and Republican parties.
If Sanders does win I think it would take doing a lot better among African-Americans though. That could happen - it's not like Clinton has a shining record of awesomeness when it comes to race, after all. My read on the African-American vote at least as far as primaries is that it tends to be more cautious than other groups*: right up until the votes actually started in 2008 Clinton did better there than Obama did, though not by anything resembling the margins you see now. Once it became clear that white people actually would be willing to vote for him that started shifting. If the current situation is a result of a similar phenomenon (if) then the minority advantage Clinton has could be a lot less substantial/reliable than it looks right now.
*Not unreasonably given the history of what happens when the Southern party gets power.
295: I think it's the 45 and under category that Sanders is doing well with. Not just young Millenials.
302: The DKos link is good, thanks. Dunno why Buttercup eschews that site as insufferable or whatever it is; she (?) is wrong, but hey, whatever.
I don't generally read stuff there either, for whatever reason. I just never got into it I guess. But it was one of the first things I found that had the polling data split up into different minority groupings as opposed to just saying "the minority vote" so I went with it.
Gaius Publius ...on pressure on Elizabeth Warren to endorse Clinton (from other women Senators) Naked Capitalism, if y'all hate that place.
"Women named in the article as lobbying Warren to support Clinton include Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Barbara Mikulski (Md.). Others named in the article as campaigning actively for Clinton, though not named as lobbying Warren, include Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii)."
502 is good, the way I understand the race, and why I can't get excited about Sanders. The institutional and identity support for Clinton is overwhelming, and will not shift in time. South Carolina will be a firewall, the Super Tuesday will all but end the race.
(Clinton endorsed Cuomo over Teachout? Jeez)
303. it's important that white people realize that the answer isn't to circle the white wagons
Isn't Trump the candidate of white people who realize they are fucked and think that is the answer? Probably Cruz too.
A few random thoughts.
I continue to worry about fivethirtyeight's analysis this year, because so often it feels like it's just a group of very clever people scrambling around to find a complicated statistical way to explain why what conventional wisdom
I agree that fivethirtyeight feels like it's following the conventional wisdom. I also haven't followed polls at all closely. My claim is just that nothing that's happened so far would disprove the conventional wisdom.
It's still higher in Iowa 2008 than what he says about the general numbers, but in 2008 the Iowa Democrats who identified as Liberal/Very-liberal was 54%
I posted something which mentioned that Iowa turnout in 2016 was ~30% lower than in 2008. Which would intuitively make you expect the 2016 voters to be older and more liberal.
FWIW, part of why I'm still inclined to believe the conventional wisdom is that for all of the bad opinion pieces that this race has produced, it still feels less acrimonious than 2008 (and that may just be that 2008 was more divisive on unfogged -- this place is my primary reference point), which makes me think that both campaigns still believe that Sanders is the underdog, and are playing it that way.
My read on the African-American vote at least as far as primaries is that it tends to be more cautious than other groups*: right up until the votes actually started in 2008 Clinton did better there than Obama did, though not by anything resembling the margins you see now.
I thought this article (which is a couple of months old) gave a reasonable explanation for why the African American community might be cautious.
Van Jones said of Sanders, "He's shown tremendous character in his willingness to engage and grow and change." But Vermont is ninety-five per cent white, and Sanders needed to establish stronger bonds with black voters. No African-American leader, Jones observed, would be surprised to get a call from the Clintons. Sanders was "a reliable civil-rights vote, but not somebody who has been connected to these communities, to these kids and their neighborhoods. He's not showing up to the funerals."
That matches the argument that everybody has made -- there's nothing that guarantees that they will support Clinton, but Clinton starts out as the familiar choice.
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OT: The new beyonce video is fascinating. It's clearly political, but I don't feel like I know how to read the politics of it.
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Oh I like Sam Kriss
Bernie Bros How the Powerful Use Internet Trolls to Play the Victim
"He is a young male whose chief interests are partying, knocking back some brews, hating women, and, for some reason, tepid socialist politics."
"Clinton has pulled a brilliant Daou-like move in debates, touting her experience in foreign policy - in particular her role as Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013, and her decisive role shaping US policy in Libya and Syria. In other words, she destroyed those places; she is responsible for turning secular middle-income republics into failed states, hollowed-out scenes of eternal war.
With a stinking trail of corpses behind her and the detritus of misery on all sides, it's far better to pretend that people only oppose her candidacy because she's a woman."
a) Can't bring myself to hate Clinton; like women more than men, though, you know, misanthrope
b) Gonna be lots and lots of war and rich fucks eating the poor til the revolution. Part of Marxist equanimity is to hate the system ten thousand suns while not doing the bourgeois morality thing of finely ranking according to complicity or victimhood. I generally get pissed off when people start admiring or praising or excusing the scumbags, or one sb over another.
Curious if anyone here is actually in a state with an influential primary before Super Tuesday.
Not that I live there for more than a few weeks in the summer, but I vote in New Hampshire, baby. Dropped my absentee ballot in the mail this morning. I voted for Vermin Supreme.
No, actually I voted for Sanders.
But I think people forget just how fucked the left or center-left was in the 80s and 90s and how much work it took just to build a party that could survive and thrive and build the coalition which it has now and hold off the worst of the Reagan era.
I don't doubt that this is their self-conception but I'm skeptical that their program of coopting conservative legislation, pissing on liberal interest groups, and signing on to trade policies that gutted the middle class were a net political positive. HRC's Iraq vote and her hawkish rhetoric follow exactly this old DLC pattern
I'm going to vote Democratic regardless, but why shouldn't we distrust her?
This is a good article, which articulates many of my issues with Hillary.
It surprised me because I thought Loomis was pretty squarely rooting for Hillary. Don't know if that's changed or he's simply calling out something that disappointed him.
314 - Well, it wasn't just the Clintons for one thing. Basically everyone in the Democratic party (including people who are now Sanders supporters, like Robert Reich) agreed you had to do those things to win elections in the 80s and 90s and most Democrats thought much of that stuff was affirmatively desirable on policy grounds. Neither Clinton was anywhere even near the rightmost part of the party at the time -- especially before 1994 when you had a large wing if actually for real conservative Democrats (Sam Nunn was supposedly the only viable Presidential candidate, Jim Wright and Tom Foley were the speakers of the house, Richard Shelby was still a Democrat, etc.). Even after 1994 when a lot of the true Democratic conservatives left or switched parties the median Democratic Senator was someone like eg Tom Daschle. Relative to his Congresses and party (by DW-Nominate scores) Bill Clinton was about the same or slightly to the left if Obama.
I think that the Clinton's relative position in the Democratic party -- about at its center -- is a better guide to how Hillary might actually govern than speculation about whether legislation her husband signed in 1996 or her time as a Marxist lawyer with Jessica Mitford's husband represents the "real" Hillary.
You make a compelling argument for the gutlessness of the Democratic party.
I mean really it was only sometime between 2006 and 2014 (with 2010 the key year) that even the slimmest majority of Democratic politicians could be described as genuinely "liberal" (in the Obama/current-Hillary policy proposal sense, not the left Bernie Sanders sense). That Sanders' campaign has done so well is a consequence of that change, not a cause of it (which is a very good thing). But people forget just how different politics in the 80s and 90s were.
Put differently: the solidly Obama/2016 Hillary Clinton "liberal" Democratic party is younger than this blog. And when this blog began pro-Iraq war and libertatianish economic ideas were respectable even here, with only Bob's (not that Bob) love of Vietnamese hoagies pointing the way towards the more-lefty future.
What we really need is a Baseball Reference-like politics site that uses DW-Nominate scores translated into something more simple, like ERA+ or OPS+, so you can quickly look up how left or right an individual politician was realtive to his/her era.
And some kind of score for Liberalism Over Replacement Democrat ("LORD"), again adjusted by era. I'll shut up now.
Roberto Tigre is right about all this. The president is not going to lead the party in strange new directions, he/she is going to do what most people in the party think is the normal thing to do. People are always castigating politicians for changing their policies, which almost never makes sense. The politician does what will keep him/her in power. If the people voting, or the people providing bribes, want different things from what the people wanted 30 years ago, the politician decides to do different things.
The recent success of Republican politicians who never compromise and insist on doing impossible things is a historical abnormality rooted in the unusual situation we find ourselves in, where the Republicans are guaranteed political success by blocking the government from doing anything or forcing the government to do stupid things that ruin people's lives.
When will people learn? Democracy doesn't work.
I've got my liquor and I'm ready to watch the Republican debate.
Is anyone watching the Republican debate?
I tuned in just in time to see Christie humiliate Rubio, and it was great. Rubio made some vague talk about how Obama is weak and threatening, and he yelled at him for repeating little memorized speeches in response to questions, and then turned on a dime and baited him into repeating - word for word - the first sentence or so of what he'd just said. It was magical.
Is anyone watching the debate?
Great headline: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/neurologist-explains-why-its-hard-to-look-at-ted-cruzs-creepy-unsettling-face/
Jesus, Ted Cruz just proposed a 1984-style surveillance infrastructure to enforce immigration law, complete with fucking biometrics taken from everyone who comes in.
Rubio shilling for the same sort of entry-exit surveillance now.
I liked the biometric visas that would keep people from staying in the country after their visa expires by [ding ding] oh sorry I guess that's time I'll finish some other time.
Also Trump went kind of hard core on how everyone deserves health care no matter what. I...really didn't see that one coming. I assumed it was going to be one of those random things thrown out there at random a while back, but apparently he wanted to make it clear (while carefully avoiding any actual specifics about how that would happen because of course then he'd be a democrat).
And now a full throated defense of.. eminent domain?
This debate is kind of crazy.
I feel like every one of these debates is somehow even more surreal than those that came before it.
Trump openly attacking the entire audience for the debate was impressive.
This is the first one I have watched. Wowzers. Now we have some color commentary between ads. WTF?
This one is less openly surreal so far from what I've seen when it comes to pure "living in a fictional reality" stuff. But then again it's pretty impressively random this time.
This one so far features more interpersonal attacks and fewer insane policy proposals than most of the prior debates.
330:
It seems relatively uncontroversial that eminent domain is necessary for public use at times. Most of what Trump was saying was obviously true. But of course, Trump attempted to use eminent domain for private use. And then he got attacked by Jeb! for using it for private use, even though Jeb! is in favor of using it on behalf of oil companies for Keystone. And then Trump pointed out that Keystone is, in fact, a private project.
So it's two guys who are in favor or ED for the use of eminent domain for private interests knock each other for using it for private uses.
What a mess.
Ted Cruz did his best to bring back the insane proposals with his idea that we need a functioning Star Wars plan to protect us against high altitude EMP weapons from North Korea. But still it was mostly war-war-war-tough-tough-tough-etc., but without open lying about things that are happening right now.
On the OP, I wanted to see what the current Bovada odds were for HRC to win the general election, and I can no longer find that bet anywhere on their site. Am I missing something? Anyone have more experience with online betting than I do?
I love that they asked Trump a question and he responded with something like "Before I answer that I need to say..." and then actually answered the question, directly.* I think he actually forgot that he wasn't dodging the question.
*No, I mean, with a detailed description aside from "stop outsourcing" or anything, though apparently he's opposed to international free trade agreements which I guess is nice.
Ted Cruz talks about the military like a US military fanboy who learned everything he knows from Call of Duty.
We have Call of Duty. It came free with the X-Box. I've never used it and the boy is too young for it.
Fun fact: there is no age at which Call of Duty is appropriate. If age
Funner fact: The father of one of the owners of the game studio that created Call of Duty is a physicist for the military that studies what they call complex systems.
You could actually watch Cruz realize that saying he didn't want to use waterboarding much was a mistake and thinking of a different tack to take on the issue in real time. It was actually kind of neat to watch him try to divert to saying something that was a version of "yes" that wouldn't look like it was different from what he'd said first.
Trump promises to bring back the iron maiden and thumb screws. Interesting times
I really wanted a follow up on exactly which instruments of torture he wants to bring back. (And trump said it, sure whatever, but what really made me cringe was the audience applause....)
"How do you feel about cruxifiction, mr trump?"
348:
He's gonna make people sit in a room while Ted Cruz reads passages from his autobiography.
I don't know if it's the New Hampshire setting that's causing them to target things differently, but they really do seem a lot less crazy-person-psychopath style, and the more moderate they seem. (Yes, I know. In the debate where Trump said we should torture people with more than silly little things like waterboarding. But...)
Bush and Kasich at least seem to be getting a lot more time to air out their views.
Less crazy libertarian and more crazy neocon.
Especially from Cruz. The guy can flip personalities on a dime.
"...yes, yes that was very meaningful. Governor Christie, would you be willing to invade Mexico to help deal with the heroin crisis in New Hampshire?"
I'm not watching but from descriptions on twitter the audience sounds terrifying and repulsive.
This is the bit mentioned in 325, although really I wish they'd put more context in there so you could see Christie baiting him into it.
Marco Rubio comes off as a kid who's angry that Barack Obama stole his juice box.
Huh. And everyone is cool with requiring women to sign up for selective service as well. Go figure.
As long as the names are kept in binders.
And Christie adds in that he has two daughters and how important it is to raise them to know that "Anything they can dream, anything they want to aspire to, they can do."
It's kind of an amazing answer, really. I'm not entirely sure he was clear on what selective service registration is.
I started too late to see this in real time, but wow.
I'm so glad that someone posted that clip so quickly. It's amazing.
That's amazing. Seriously, though, Carson is stoned all the time, right?
As far as anyone can tell, yes. And moreso the longer the primary goes on.
This seems like a debate that's going to really screw over the Republican hopes right now though. Kasich, Christie and Bush seem to be coming out strong. No one is really hitting Trump or Cruz effectively. And Rubio just got humiliated, viciously, about half way through and never fully recovered. Splitting up the mod/establishment vote right when they thought it was consolidating, in a state where anyone below 10% disappears and their delegates go to the frontrunner could be a hilarious disaster.
Iowa doesn't like stoners, but New Hampshire does, right? Or maybe I'm thinking of Vermont.
"It was great to have [my kids] along with me on the campaign trail.."[Camera cuts to shot of Rubio's painfully bored looking kids].
And this is the full version of the bit I mentioned in 355. I can't recommend it enough. The more times I watch it the more I think that Christie knew exactly what he was doing, and was actively baiting Rubio with lines just close enough to what he was prepared for that Rubio just snapped back into memorized-response mode over and over.
What's really incredible about it is that the things he was criticizing Christie for are very real problems, but Rubio's robotic manner in bringing them up totally blunted any effect and allowed Christie to turn the whole exchange to his advantage.
Is it over? Is Rubio toast? Who's still standing?
I think my favorite moment in the debate was when Christie talked about building bridges, and I could just picture a room full of his advisers cringing at the word "bridge."
RT, I didn't mean to troll you (just to needle you a bit), but thank you for the polling and betting numbers. As I am unemployed and have only $2 to my name until I finish another medical study or make a visit to the plasma center, I will not be putting money I don't have where you think my mouth was.
But that's beside the point, because I stand by the spirit that motivated my earlier comments: not that the Democrats are 100% favored, but that their being 65-70% favored should be enough to warrant the (expected, by me, at least) puffed up, chauvinistic, swaggerin' RT whom we all love; rather than the demure, risk-averse, giving-money-to-the-Clinton-campaign weasel who slithers before us all now. What an unmanly sight! Don't forget to eat your broccoli too, nerd. ;)
(Basically, I expected to see your exaggerated persona foretelling the victory of the Ds and laughing about the inevitable lamentation of the Rs, but got a reasonable human being with reasonable political worries instead. Don't taze me, bro.)
Changing gears for a sec, just how awful was it to be a Leftist (socialist, feminist, anti-racist, enviro, whatever the reason) living in America during the '80s through, say, the mid '90s? I can't imagine having the heart or will (or grit!) to stay politically involved or conscious for those 15 years, but I'm very thankful to those who did.
Is this still the politics thread? Fred Kaplan on Clinton's Iraq vote.
MC- I actually spent a few seconds looking at that, but Fred Kaplan? Really? Is anyone still taking slate seriously at this late date?
I only got a little way in, but he seemed to be trying to excuse HRC's Iraq war vote by saying it was to give inspections force. I always thought that excuse would have made HRC incredibly stupid. Is incredibly stupid really the image she wants to go for here?
Slate as a whole, no, but Kaplan has always seemed solid to me. (Though admittedly shrill of late; but then the entire American internet has gone mad, so.)
If the explanation in 372 held any water, Clinton herself would have been ringing that bell loudly for years.
360: tThe only ones who look bad there are the moderators. They obviously didn't have speaker in the entrance hallway, and Carson didn't hear his name over the applause. Neither did trump. That's on the moderators, who also somehow totally inexplicably just plain forgot about kasich.
Changing gears for a sec, just how awful was it to be a Leftist (socialist, feminist, anti-racist, enviro, whatever the reason) living in America during the '80s through, say, the mid '90s?
On the plus side, the were a lot of good Fugazi concerts to go to.
I'm no political consultant, but in my view if Rubio wants to have any hope of recovering from this, for the next debate he should shave his head and literally wear boxing gloves. Traditional red gloves, not any of those black or yellow ones.
360 is amazing. I'd have figured that Trump would have been TV savvy enough not to get confused by Carson's bungled entry.
Is it really easier to be a Leftist now? I find the idea of progress... disturbing. It's never happened before, so why now?
381- I thought there was a well known pendulum thing going on. During the Bush era conservatives were riding high, then because Bush discredited conservatism, leftists gained credibility.
When your side is on top it starts acting more and more crazy. The fall of empires in microcosm. I'm not old enough to know personally but weren't liberals on top and acting crazy in the late 60s.
366. Wow, just wow. Rubio isn't even as good as the old Eliza program. You could go a long time with that before you realized it was a fake.
The best part about the Rubio humiliation is that I'm guessing that now that Christie has brought it out like that we're going to see it again, even if not from him. Rubio got a lot of benefit from memorizing those things (and the inevitable crush that the press has had on him for a really long time). But I seriously doubt he has the ability to respond off the cuff and it's not going to be hard to shake him up by forcing him to respond to the same thing repeatedly in a debate.
I'm also pretty certain I've seen that same mini-speech more than once in a debate before this recent one too. I really hope he memorized it hard enough that he accidentally ends up repeating it again at another debate.
Rubio has now proven twice, both times beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he's not ready for prime time. And yet, the press, needing a horse race, and establishment Republicans, needing a Manchurian candidate, will prop him up for as long as they can.
Can somebody who thinks Rubio has blown it explain to me why VW is wrong? What I saw in that clip was: i. Rubio repeated some predictable talking points instead of answering. ii. Christie tore him a new one for doing it. iii. Rubio did not back down one inch.
Surely by ow the big money players have decided what outcome they want from this farce, and if that is Rubio, why should this make a ha'p;orth of difference to it? Christie is not regarded as a contender, but Rubio is.
Of course if he had just had the mental whateverness to vary the phrasing and syntax of the same substantive material on the fly enough to not sound the same each time, he would be ready for prime time (or at least, doing exactly what everyone else on debate stage does).
388- I think you are probably right on this. It seems like it should cost him a lot but I think it won't cost him much.
Which tradition, incidentally - everything a potential opening for a canned talking point - is why I have trouble even watching Democratic debates.
I suppose the GOP have set themselves up for something like this by making their base so convinced Obama is reliant on teleprompters.
It's not the repetition that hurts him - that's a good thing. It's that it was verbatim, and that Christie came as close as you possibly can to repeating the "there you go again" line that still makes them feel all tingly to remember.
And "he's an empty suit who isn't remotely prepared for this" has been the main attack line against him - and fairly aggressively from multiple candidates in the early primary states too. This makes donors wince and feel uncomfortable because it made brutally obvious to everyone exactly what they were worried about with him.
The press is caught in a bind because (1) many of them do desperately adore Rubio as the next coming of W Bush (2000 edition) and they really want someone like that to be president, and (2) the whole sequence is amazing television-bait so it's going to keep getting repeated over and over. My guess is that - even by now - the television commentators are savaging him for it and playing it over and over and the on-paper commentators are underplaying it substantially and trying to turn it into an excuse to talk about his supposed virtues (which are the opposite of what we just saw). The question is which one will win out, and given how perfect it is for viral video and the fact that the primaries are weighted in favor of people who watch television news that Rubio is going to take a serious hit.
MHPH- I hope you are right. I want Trump to be the Republican nominee. This might be a step in that direction.
I think it will soon be Kasich's turn as the establishment candidate. Cleveland had its turn with serials killers and people locked in basements. Now it's Columbus's time to scare people away.
392
I was watching FOX commentary on the debate (don't judge, we get two news channels and the other one wasn't showing anything debate related), and they were going pretty hard after Rubio. I was surprised, because I figured they'd be trying to downplay it. Thinking through process of elimination, they might actually be going for Jeb! through attrition. Trump, Cruz, and Carson are unacceptable, Kasich is hated because of the medicaid expansion, and Christie is hated because he hugged Obama a few days before the 2012 election. Carly Fiorina has gotten even less traction, so that leaves Jeb! as the only man standing.*
*Or JIM GILMORE!!!!
For a long time NH has looked like Trump coasting along in the low 30s while everyone else bounces around the 10% line. After Iowa both Cruz and Rubio seem to have gained a boost - especially Cruz. But I'm guessing Kasich at the least, and possibly Christie as well are stronger than their poll numbers suggest. I don't know how Cruz's numbers are going to be affected by the debate - I don't think he got much attention afterwards due to Rubio's hilarity, but I'm not convinced he did himself any favors with people watching either.
The ideal result for oh-god-not-a-Republican-president purposes would be a dangerously even split among the establishment candidates where almost all of them sit just below 10% (which could happen) and one or maybe two sit just above it (somewhere over 10 but under 15). That's nowhere near an impossible result, but I think at this point it looks (unfortunately) unlikely. (Maybe not very unlikely, but I wouldn't necessarily bet on it.) If that happened Trump would win a truly massive number of delegates compared to everyone else in NH (and a tiny number compared to the race as a whole). But it would absolutely boost his position as frontrunner and make Iowa look like a boring outlier.
395: I think that's been Jeb!'s strategy for a long time - basically after he got knocked into the minor leagues by Trump and Rubio got promoted by, well, being there, he was hoping to take Rubio down hard and then turn to the donors and say "Look, what is your theory here? I'm what you've got now pony up so we can fight back hard." It's basically his only selling point right now, but if Rubio takes a big hit it's a good enough one. And I thought he looked a lot better at the debate last night than he has in the past, so he might even see a little bump in his polling numbers.
397
Yeah. And FOX spent a lot of time with Jeb! in the spin room, asking him softballs which he handled well. He came off as knowledgeable and grounded. In contrast they spent 5 seconds with Carson, basically asking, "you're still in the race? ok thx bye." They spent more time with Trump, but tried to needle him some more on eminent domain.
BRIT HUME: Trying to assess how much harm has been done to Marco Rubio tonight, his performance reminded me of nothing so much as Dan Quayle in the 1988 [vice] presidential debate
I don't even want to know what Cincinnati is thinking of to top that.
Changing gears for a sec, just how awful was it to be a Leftist (socialist, feminist, anti-racist, enviro, whatever the reason) living in America during the '80s through, say, the mid '90s?
But that was the golden age of zines, alternative weeklies and college radio!
And Ronald Reagan, and nuclear annihilation was a real possibility. Yes, it sucked. But at least the music was great.
I think the characteristic experience of being a liberal then was when Bush Sr. won in 1988. We all told ourselves Reagan had some magical charisma, and that's why everybody fell for his bullshit. But then a dull, charismaless noodle like Bush won. It just ripped the heart out of any hopes to make the US a better place. And then when Clinton won by being "a new kind of Democrat," it was hard not to experience it as total repudiation.
I believe it was someone on this very blog who, years ago, linked the crazification of the GOP to the collapse of liberalism in the 80s.
The theory, as I recall it, was that grifters used to be more or less evenly distributed between right and left. But the defeat of liberalism during the Reagan/Bush years seemed so total and irreversible that most of the career political scam artists decided that there was no future on the left, and so switched sides.
Yes, it sucked. But at least the music was great.
And some of us were leftists in the South in the 80s and 90s. Which, y'know. The music scene really was stellar though.
I think it is less the grifters,and more the crazies.
403: I think Walt experienced it the same way I did, up until Bill Clinton.
Bill didn't see himself as repudiating liberalism - the country did that the previous 12 years. Bill was trying to rehabilitate liberalism in a hostile environment. I am at least middlin' sympathetic to this view. The country was becoming Arkansas, and just as Bill was as good a governor as that benighted state could have gotten, Bill may may have been the best president that could have been elected.*
I do wish Cuomo hadn't chickened out.
Bill did avert a second GHWB term, and he did leave the country solidly positioned to avoid the disaster of GWB. I think that counts for something. And I'm prepared to give Hillary some credit to go along with the blame that also accrues to her.
*I know, I know, the term "Panglossian" was invented to describe arguments that take form.
If you want to get full flavor in a dish, you deglaze to loosen the pangloss.
So, I just heard Sanders speak for the first time. He sounds really New York Jewish. I was expecting more Vermont-ness.
So, I just heard Sanders speak for the first time.
!!?
I don't even own a TV. I hadn't heard Cruz speak until a couple of weeks ago. I don't know that I've heard Rubio speak yet.
The place I went for lunch had CNN on.
I do that too. I get nearly all my news from text and can go for years without knowing what people look or sound like.
But . . . you have a computer, yes? With access to that Internet thing, and the YouTube? And maybe a radio?
I too have a computer and YouTube and even a radio. But who wants to watch videos of politicians? Not me! I do wind up seeing photos of people, generally.
I only recently hooked up speakers to my computer at home (stupid creepers). At work, I have only a headset and I don't keep it on unless I'm on a call. I refuse to listen to anything but tornado warning and stupid pop music on the radio.
And, because there seems to be some confusion on the matter, I don't even own a television except for the 60" one in the living room.
But who wants to watch videos of politicians?
[looks around, cautiously raises hand]
415 gets it right. I never, ever watch TV news. It makes me angry within 10 seconds if it is talking about anything related to politics. And political ads don't have the candidate talking anymore, they have the movie-trailer-voice guy or the stern-mom-lady telling you that the opponent is an abhorrent hypocrite.
415 gets it right. I never, ever watch TV news. It makes me angry within 10 seconds if it is talking about anything related to politics. And political ads don't have the candidate talking anymore, they have the movie-trailer-voice guy or the stern-mom-lady telling you that the opponent is an abhorrent hypocrite.
The worst is when you're at an airport with "Airport CNN". You can't get away and you can't shut it off.
I still haven't heard Cruz talk, or any of the other candidates in their capacity as such, except for Sanders on the Larry David thing. Why would you subject yourself to that?
FBI Arrests Nearly Every Single Elected Official In A Texas Town
And you all laughed at people claiming Obama was plotting a federal takeover.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/07/3746990/texas-officials-indictment/
422: There's a price we pay for living in a pseudo-democracy.
Aristotle defined "Sussudio Democracy" as rule by Phil Collins.
425: Even worse than tyranny, but not quite as bad as punocracy.
418: But who wants to watch videos of politicians?
[looks around, cautiously raises hand]
Yeah, while I can't say I eagerly tune in to watch politicians speak, large numbers of the electorate do see them in action, and I figure I can't possibly grok what voters are registering unless I see what they're seeing.
Sometimes it's really priceless. Rubio looking like a deer in the headlights, say, when faced with video of himself taking a stance entirely opposed to that he embraces today.
What the press later reports is frequently suspect, and I'd rather work with the primary material myself.
