I went to New Hampshire once. But I don't have that much to say about it.
It's probably the state I've gone to third most frequently. One time we were driving back from a hike and passed the rest area where you can see the Old Man in the Mountain. We debated stopping and said, eh, it's been there for centuries, it will be there, we can see it some other time. Oops. Never did see it in person.
Erosion will probably make another face there at some point.
Apparently, it may not have been there for centuries. According to Wikipedia, it was only documented for 198 years. And the last 80 featured lots of repair work to keep it from falling.
Growing up, our family had a collective disgust for New Hampshire on political grounds, and in our annual drive up 95 to Maine, we tried to arrange things so that we didn't have to step on its soil.
Hate that fucking state. Angry old stupid men in sweaters and thin-lipped women. Everyone conservative (even if not politically) and bitter. All the worst parts of New England and few if any of the good parts. "Mountains." Not the worst state in the union for politics, but still maybe the worst state.
As you can tell, I don't plan on being elected President.
10 Then what's your plan for implementing Halfordismo?
Via The Toast, classic New Hampshire hate from 1988 WaPo.
12 - I don't plan on being ELECTED President.
I don't think you can even walk across New Hampshire. At least not the long way, like Vermont.
13: This Emerson quote is pretty great: "The God who made New Hampshire taunted the lofty land with little men."
9: I'll have none of this Western mountain chauvinism.
5. You don't want to see me in person.
13: Wow. I have a bit of a knee-jerk impulse to defend NH, but not after that. It'd be interesting to see similar take-downs of other states.
One thing I'll say about New Hampshireites (sp): they're generous. Maybe not the newcomers, the transplants, but the natives. (While I'm sure you can find stories to the contrary, that's been my experience.) Some of that does have to do with its emphasis on self-reliance.
Last year, I had an interview in Concord*, NH, and the cheapest way to go was to fly into Hartford, CT, and drive a rental car through MA to NH. It made me think that New England states are suspiciously small if one can fly into an airport two states away from the destination and still get there in a reasonable time. On the other hand, most of those states elect Democrats to the Senate, so we should probably just leave them all individual states.
My other takeaway from the trip: New Hampshire is super fucking white.
*pronounced, for those unaware, CAHNK-id
17: No worries, your little hills are perfectly nice.
I went to New Hampshire once, but only because my mother got lost driving in Massachusetts.
I want to know what RT thinks of Oregon.
Surprisingly, I've only a little time in Oregon. I did spend 2 weeks in Portland once and loved it, though I was staying in this amazingly 70s hotel with a full jacuzzi in the bathroom and partially mirrored ceilings, so I got more of a sleazy-hippie than crunchy-hippie vibe and felt at home. The nature pictures that JMQ puts out on the Livre de Visages are super beautiful.
It might have been cheaper to fly into Manchester airport. Maybe there's no direct flight for you. But yeah, New England states are small; nothing suspicious about it.
Anyhow, it's too fucking hot here today, so Oregon sounds good. But that doesn't mean that I'd prefer to be in fucking Nashua or something.
16. There's a rich vein of people from MA dissing NH. Commonly referred to down here as "Cow Hampshire" or "New Hamster," and that's by people who actually like the place.
8. Would be interested to know one does that, unless you are influenced by the NH people (who have a rich vein of hatred for MA) pointing out that the NH shoreline is just an extension of MA. Many of them would rather saw off the southern ten miles or so so they could go back to being reliably Republican. "People from MA move up here because it's cheap and then they want all the stuff that makes MA expensive." (kindergartens, sewers, roads, ...)
9. "Mountains." I've known a fair number of western hikers who said they'd never encountered hikes as tough as the AT in the White Mountains.
15: I don't think you can even walk across New Hampshire. At least not the long way, like Vermont.
The AT is about 161 miles long in NH. The Long Trail is 272.
I've done a bit more than 20% of that 160 miles over the years, always in day hikes so I cannot say for sure, but I have heard that there is not any state in which the AT is more challenging than here, because of the repeated up and down, up and down.
If this is not good enough for you, if you really need to traverse the state lengthwise rather than crosswise, paddle the CT (and hike the 300 yards between its source and the Canadian border). At 255 miles, still shorter than the LT, but, eh, close enough for government work, no?
Nah. The state needs to make a trail. You can walk on the shoulder of the road in any state.
I became curious about the racial breakdown in various states.
It looks like New Hampshire is roughly matched by a dozen other states, and by a couple dozen before you get to percentages that approach the national average of roughly 12%. That's African-Americans/Blacks only.
Realistically, I'd have to be able to do 20 miles a day through very rough terrain before I would try the Long Trail. I don't see how I'd get more time than that free.
Let's rank the top five shit states. Here are mine:
Shit States
Oklahoma
New Hampshire
Delaware
South Dakota
Ohio (probably not fair, but this is for my Michigander wife, and I agree with her there is just some kind of ineffable flatness and grossness to Ohio)
Basically, to be on the shit state list, you need to have little going for you, no character, boring people, not much fun, and be a crappier version of a better place that's nearby. South Carolina or Alabama or Texas or Wyoming have worse politics, but I absolutely would rather live in Charleston or Birmingham or Austin/Houston/San Antonio or Cheyenne than Nashua, Oklahoma City, Dover, Pierre, or Columbus.
Columbus isn't bad. You just don't want affordable housing.
"Well, if I have to choose one or the other,
I choose to be a plain New Hampshire farmer
With an income in cash of, say, a thousand
(From, say, a publisher in New York City).
It's restful to arrive at a decision,
And restful just to think about New Hampshire.
At present I am living in Vermont."
- Robert Frost, 1923
I guess Kansas and Nebraska should be on there too, but I have some vague, knowledge-free sense that Wichita or Lawrence or Lincoln or Omaha would be OK.
Ohio (probably not fair, but this is for my Michigander wife, and I agree with her there is just some kind of ineffable flatness and grossness to Ohio)
Even so, you've gotta rank it better than Indiana. Ohio without the culture and history.
Yeah, Indiana probably has to replace Ohio. Fair is fair.
I guess West Virginia might actually be pretty unbearable, but at least you could pretend to be some kind of moonshiner or UMWA organizer or something, and it's pretty.
34: E.B. White didn't have to choose. E.B. White just did them both.
some kind of ineffable flatness and grossness to Ohio
What? I've always heard it's round on the ends and high in the middle.
Pierre is very hard to pronounce correctly. I think it is law French.
Living in the Dakotas or Wyoming would be like living on the moon. I can't even imagine it. Of the states that actually have a couple areas where a lot of people live, Oklahoma is clearly at the bottom, then Kansas.
After that, every state has at least SOMETHING to recommend it either culturally, politically, or with regard to having nice weather or interesting things to visit.
Preemptively pwned. I was just going to say Indiana. Moving to any bordering state would be a step up. I once ate dinner at an Arby's in Indiana, and it was the single most depressing moment of my life.
Portland used to be cooler before all the white hipsters and Marin County Californians ruined it.
My shit states would include:
Indiana
Oklahoma
Delaware
Nebraska
Arkansas
and be a crappier version of a better place that's nearby.
For NH I'd guess that's Vermont?
In any case, surely to be a shit state you have to have crappy social services, punitive eligibility requirements for food stamps, etc., mortifying poverty rates and high school graduation rates, appalling child health insurance coverage rates, and so on. I mean, I immediately look toward Mississippi -- though I'd have to review the exact figures on those things.
32.2 Nashua is hardly part of NH. The only reason for living there (or nearby), AFAICT, is to be within spitting distance of Boston but not have to pay sales or income taxes.*
If you're going to live in NH, for godsakes, don't live in one of the cities. Pick your preferred scenery and find a decent small town there. They do exist. Even some attractive college towns (though see 11 for a very contrary view).
*But you should see our property tax bills. So the flip, unstated, side of "low taxes" (i.e., sales and income taxes) is that the affluent are able to pay so that we have good services and don't have to share them with or pay for others'. The lack of a decent tax structure leads to all sorts of economic inefficiencies, because it is still necessary to pay for some services, but hard to do so without income & sales taxes. Pretty regularly, the legislators come up with some new, pretty ridiculous tax on businesses, which it seems to me would make the state pretty business unfriendly. I learned recently that (book) royalties are considered business, not personal, income; tax free up to $50K, then taxes something like 7.5% on everything: not everything above $50K, everything above $0 if you go above $50K.
32. Delaware has some nice beaches but runs out of charm the further you head north.
47: correction to the tax rate. Not 7.5% but %15.
No, I mean obviously in terms of its politics and ability to handle its poor citizens Mississippi is the worst. But still I'm pretty sure it would be a lot more fun in, and I'd rather live in, Jackson (communist mayor!) or Oxford than Nashua, Concord, or Manchester.
50: Yup. As a NH resident, I agree with you.
Arkansas feels like an obvious candidate but the area around Fayetteville is supposed to be super nice and pretty. But maybe it goes on the list.
Nebraska is nice, if you know people. Unless you like nice weather.
"Indiana: It's on the Way to Someplace Better"
47 reminds me that NH, bastion of libertarianism, has state-run liquor stores. The one saving grace of them is Really Cheap Liquor, so people cross the border from high-tax MA to buy it, in droves. Some years ago MA sent state troopers up in unmarked cars to park in the lots and radio back the license plate numbers of MA liquor customers, so they could be made to pay the use tax. NH sent their state troopers to arrest the MA ones.
Indiana is where Chicago keeps its nice beaches with sand dunes. Michigan has even nicer beaches than Indiana, but it's farther away.
55: Those troopers (from MA) were probably lucky that NH had not yet gotten the Bomb. Some of our past governors would likely have used it.
54 is basically their state motto already.
Apparently, the state motto here isn't "You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania."
52 - This is what I've heard too from people who have lived around the area. Based on their stories Arkansas in general has a weird gonzo charm to it, since it's apparently populated by a (varying by location) combination of middle-of-nowhere hillbillies and aging hippies who went back to the soil at some point. It's kind of invisible compared to its neighbors though, at least in terms of stuff that looks interesting or at least has some in its history or culture that's worth talking about. It doesn't have the endless bland desolation of Ohio or Indiana, at least.
Do cornfields count as "desolation" then?
47: If you're going to live in NH, for godsakes, don't live in one of the cities.
God yes, don't. Those dissing NH perhaps aren't familiar with its smaller places, a number of which are really quite decent. I guess it depends on what you consider fun.
Once the New Madrid fault goes gonzo, Arkansas will be the only one of those states left above water. At least, the Ozarks part of Arkansas.
Manchester seemed to have gorgeous, solid buildings, hydropower, and almost no people the one time I went through. Incomprehensible, from the PNW, not to see it buzzing with reuse.
The Buffalo National River is more than wonderful enough to single-handedly keep Arkansas off this list.
In terms, though, of which states should be nominated for first-in-the-nation status in primary campaigns, what should it be: states most representative of the demographic makeup of the US at large? Perhaps it should be a super-Tuesday sort of thing, a regional amalgamation of primary states all voting on the same day.
66: As with any city, there's upscale and downscale. There's a lot of very dreary Manchester. I'm sure there's a lot of very dreary Jackson, Mississippi as well.
I've lived in Ohio and Nebraska. Hopefully that fulfills my shit state quota.
Interestingly, I've heard people deny that either state counts as the Midwest. Apparently Nebraska is the Great Plains and Ohio is...something, I was never quite clear. I suppose there must be one corner of one specific corn field somewhere in Indiana that qualifies as the True Authentic Midwest.
68. Didn't a couple of "most representative" states try that a few decades ago, which prompted NH to pass a law that their primary would be set one week before the earliest other primary? (Iowa gets away with it because it's a "caucus," not a primary.)
Oh, I shouldn't break the sanctity of off-blog awesomeness, but a fellow commenter and his wife and I have been to the highest point in Indiana, which is the greatest thing ever and definitely one corner of one specific cornfield. I have no idea how it's noticeably higher than anything around it.
71: I don't know -- I'm not up to speed on the history here.
72: Wow! Did you all make the ascent without oxygen?
75: Oh! I guess some blows over from here.
Those dissing NH perhaps aren't familiar with its smaller places, a number of which are really quite decent.
There are those who love them.
75: Hey, you never know about some places....
I have no idea how it's noticeably higher than anything around it.
The pile of rocks.
There are, I think, 5 states with higher lowest points than Indiana's highest point. Without looking, which state has the highest low point (I had to look).
highest low point
Oregon and Washington tie. You can get super high right at sea level.
and Ohio is...something, I was never quite clear.
I have heard those Great Lake States called the "Old Northwest" with more connections to the Northeast than to the Great Plains.
Still trying to place Texas, or at least Dallas and the corridor, which to me doesn't quite fit in Dixie or the Colorado West. Dallasites say the West starts in Fort Worth, the South in Tyler, and the Midwest in Kansas.
Indiana is ok, but most of what I know is the Rustbelt, which is all the same from Milwaukee to Buffalo. I contend that most of spatial America is small factories and farms anyway.
Never been within three states of NH.
Setting aside highest low point, I would not have guessed the state with the lowest high point is Florida - assumed it was large enough to have at least some foothills somewhere.
Looking at the Peakbagger site's page for Florida is fun.
State with the highest low point is actually pretty easy to figure out if you think a bit, so I'll add a kicker -- what multiple is the highest low point of that state of the highest point in Florida (which is 345 feet).
Or, more clearly, what multiple of 345 feet is the highest low point?
the state with the lowest high point is Florida
Not according to Moxy Fruvous (though I see that somebody in comments notes that Florida does have the lowest highest point, but why ruin a good performance).
I went to summer camp in NH and have gone hiking there several times since, which is a roundabout way of saying that the best way to experience NH, or really any of the rural-poverty-stricken areas of New England is alone and far from gatherings of people who would, if offered, happily subscribe to those weird newspapers, which people sometimes leave on the seats of airplanes flying routes in the Rockies or the Southwest, that feature prominent headlines about the Bildbergers, colloidal silver and the Posse Comitatus Act ("It's like an even better, replacement Constitution!").
re 9: The Mississippi of the North.Though Meridian, MS has the Jimmie Rodgers museum and I ate maybe the best chops I've ever had in a restaurant there. Plus Gulf shrimp. The only pig worth broiling in NH would be John Sununu.
Fine, DON'T play my trivia game. You missed out on the fun of guessing Wyoming (NM is #2), and approximately 9x.
Without googling, the highest low point would probably be Wyoming, guessing about 5 times Florida's lowest high point.
89: Presumably Colorado, and the Nebraska border isn't going to be that much lower than mile-high Denver, so...13-14ish? (Not that this isn't trivially googlable.)
My lack of veracity proves my honesty.
pwned, and pretty far off on the multiplier.
The lowest point in Wyoming in around 3000 ft??
Oh, never mind, Wyoming, that makes sense. For a minute I had Wyoming confused with Montana.
Ok, let's guess how many votes Jim Gilmore will get in NH. The best guesser gets to bask in the smugness of being right. The worst guesser has to move to urban New Hampshire.
I'm gonna be bold, and guess he'll quadruple his Iowa support: 50 votes.
Jim Gilmore will receive zero votes, and in his press conference announcing his withdrawal from the race he will set himself on fire. We'll all briefly feel bad.
I'm going to actually estimate using some available information. If Gilmore gets the same percentage of total votes as he did in Iowa, and Republican turnout increases by as much over 2012 as it did in Iowa, he gets 25.
94: Fine, DON'T play my trivia game. You missed out on the fun of guessing Wyoming (NM is #2), and approximately 9x.
Umm... Colorado #1. NM #3.
It should be Price Is Right rules. If you go over, you bust, closest without going over wins. So I will say 51.
I've known a fair number of western hikers who said they'd never encountered hikes as tough as the AT in the White Mountains.
Yes. To be fair, the diminutive Mount Washington (which reaches barely half the height of mountains I see all the time) has a pretty impressive body count. Also, Bretton Woods.
106 to 102, to 105, what, you think you're smarter than Wikipedia?
105: Discussed here several times over the years.
Wikipedia: However, Colorado, with the highest mean elevation of any state as well as the highest low point, could also be considered a candidate for "highest state".
Assume the marijuana joke is implicit.
Oh god damn it, I misread feet and meters for Colorado. F you JP Stormcrow.
If only there was some kind of flamethrower that could destroy the past.
How do you misread the figures for just one state?
Fuck off Halford, New Hampshire is awesome. Manchester, Nashua, whatever... but Portsmouth has a nice location down by the water and is full of dirty hippies and great food.
It would be great if Trump wins NH and starts ragging on how stupid those Iowa losers are. Probably politically advantageous too since the rest of the country is sick of special snowflake Iowa.
Well, they have a low asshole tolerance. I can see how you may have had a bad time.
Oh god, if Bernie wins on the Dem side and Trump wins on the Republican side, the media is gonna have a fucking field week with chin-stroking editorials about how Bernie And Trump Are The Same Don't You See.
That's the actual result, isn't it?
121:
It appears so. Didn't realize the results would come in so quickly. Now to wait for the stupid think pieces...
If Kaisch really did come in second, I think that will be the story.
Or Bush. Rubio looks to finish fourth or fifth.
Is the full count already in?
This is what popped up first when I looked around, and they are calling it for Trump/Sanders which makes sense because they're basically matching their polling numbers so far. But I think the amount of votes that each candidate gets is going to matter a lot for the coverage that follows so I don't know how things are turning out.
I'm so happy to see Jeb! doing so well. I was worried he might actually drop out early. If Rubio drops below 10% I'm going to be so happy.
Not the full count. Only 10 percent. But Kaisch is pulling more securely into second place.
The more I think about it, the more I think the best thing that could happen in the Republican primary season is for no one to get enough delegates to secure the nomination so that the RNC gets to pick the nominee. I expect that having a nominee that is handpicked by a small group of party elites will be demoralizing to the Republican base and make them less likely to show up.
Kasich is a terrifying general election candidate.
Since it's relevant to a discussion we've been having for a while, I'll link this:
According to early exit polls in New Hampshire, most Democratic primary voters do not want to shift policies in a more liberal direction than those currently promoted by President Obama.
Two-fifths would be interested in a change to more liberal policies. But an equal number prefer continuing Mr. Obama's policies, and one in seven favor a change to less-liberal policies.
If that's right, something else besides a deep desire for increased liberalism is driving Sanders' 60% or more support among NH Democrats.
I wonder what would happen if you asked them about more "progressive" policies.
Gilmore's vote now rounds to zero.
130.1:
What's so terrifying about Kasich as a general election candidate?
130.2:
I just don't take the stuff seriously. Something like a small majority of the country is in favor of single payer even though they say they have a negative opinion of socialism. The majority of the country really has no theory of liberalism or conservatism, so I have a hard time putting much stock into these results.
He wins Ohio for sure, and is a very credible threat to win Florida+Virginia+one other state while holding all of Romney's states.
I can't speak for Tigre but the scary thing to me about Kasich is similar to the scary thing about Rubio. They're both crazy extremists who the press has somehow confused with moderates and who would be aggressively promoted that way in the general election. Kasich also has a talent for (falsely) projecting basic decency and care for people which could make him seem appealing.
On the plus side Kasich worked really really hard for this result and he's not likely to hit another state where moderation/etc. are winning traits for long enough that he'll probably be gone by the time that could work.
Kasich is a horrible candidate. As nominee, he would be the least charismatic candidate since Walter Mondale. But he won't be the nominee.
Anyway, Tigre, I thought Rubio was the guy we needed to fear. What ever became of him?
Also apparently directly pwned. But yes he's a threat in states which a bunch of people who aren't paying much attention but he really does seem like a nice man and heaven knows we wouldn't want Hitlery to be president.
This is not looking like a good night for Republicans looking for a clear alternative to Trump or Cruz.
If Rubio were even a little bit competent (and he still may be -- one gaffe does not necessarily mean everything) he is also a terrifying general election candidate. FL in the bag + will pick off some Latino voters + vague appeal to attention-free centrists is a pretty clear path to a plausible Republican win. So far, thank God, he's seemed too dumb to be able to pull it off, but he may yet regroup, which is bad news for everyone.
Ben Carson is still losing to "Other", which is really great.
139: That's some sharp political analysis, right there. Also, if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
Why not a hand truck. If she only had two wheels.
Glad you have your multi-dimensionsal chess and political personality crystal ball fully primed and ready to share with the rest of us.
139:
Also, if the RNC gets to pick a candidate he's still likely.
110: Good catch! So the actual answer is 9.6 times, so I wasn't too far off.
So is it that northeastern conservatives don't like Cruz, or will that be just an NH thing?
I'm really not sure it was a good idea to give white people the vote.
145: I've been trying to help you out. I haven't given up on you! You still might figure it out!
147: No, wrong. Rubio was never the Establishment choice. The Establishment could have reconciled itself to that loser, but only as a last resort.
And Kasich takes second! The comeback kid!
151:
who do you think was, then? Jeb!?
In absolute vote number, Gilmore is now at 29 with 28% reporting. So Tigre looks closer than I was.
Initially it was Jeb!, but then he flamed out so spectacularly that they got scared away from him. But they haven't found anyone to take his place which is why no one is endorsing anyone in the race or managing to come together to form a coherent strategy to take down Trump or Cruz. Rubio looked like he was starting to be that guy, but I doubt he'll be now.
The Establishment choice always already is whoever ends up winning.
152:Yep.
This is good news for Jeb! Hang on til the convention.
Jeb the compromise candidate, not virulently hated by anyone, no more contempt than for Romney, delivers swing state, Wall Street money, networks from twenty years back.
The ragers will get exhausted by and at the convention.
Meanwhile, Clinton released a memo to the press immediately NH was called, saying, whatever, are you bimbettes racist or what?, we are going to get all all all the minority vote in March and it was over two years ago.
a terrifying general election candidate
When did you, of all people, become such a colossal pussy?
157 - since I noticed that the Republicans control 2/3 branches of government right now, and by taking the third can (and will) do whatever they want, while appointing judges and passing legislation that will last for the next 20 years?
Clinton Memo via TPM
Can't cut-and-paste, but the strong call-outs to minorities, and the message to Sanders supporters about minorities preferring Clinton is meant to intimidate. It will.
"Hillary's high level of support in the African American and Hispanic communities..."
"explain his record...especially on issues where [Sanders] deviates from President Obama..."
All about race.
Eight more years, somewhat worse than the last eight, if we are very lucky. I am not hopeful.
If you are ever hopeful, I'm starting a bunker.
159: you are no longer my choice for god-king.
With 40% of precincts reporting, Gilman is still not different from zero at the level of a tenth of a percent.
Also, if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
When my grandmother (or I guess rather my great-grandmother) was hypothesized to have wheels, the conclusion was always that she'd be a trolley cart. You must have a fancy granny, I guess.
If I had to put odds, I still think the Democrats are about 70% likely to win the election, which is very good. But it's about the odds that the Panthers had going in of winning the Superbowl. And I am way more worried about a loss than I am excited about a win, and one thing I really do believe is that the same should be true for everyone else.
And if you think I am being ugly or worse, read the damn thing, and point out where Clinton mentions foreign policy, education, income inequality, anything else. You a racist? Is the whole thing.
She is taking the gloves off. Sanders voters will fold.
Dems kicked out the white working class in the 70s (read Jefferson Cowie), and how fucking ugly has it been? You want a more socialist democratic party, how ugly can you fucking get?
But it's about the odds that the Panthers had going in of winning the Superbowl.
Tell me more about the structural factors that favored the Panthers, Telly Savalas.
Seriously, I've been saying for a very long time that I think Clinton is a shitty campaigner and maybe a shitty candidate (I honestly don't know about that, as I'm clearly not part of her target demographic). But that doesn't mean I think any of the buffoons vying for the GOP nomination is terrifying. Really, they all pretty much suck! That's not to say they can't win the general, of course. So maybe it's fair to say, and maybe you mean, that the prospect of Clinton losing is terrifying. But that's largely independent of my thoughts about any of the clowns the Republicans might run.
Remember when the Democrats had a whole bunch of people running in the primary and everybody called them "The Seven Dwarfs". Or "Dwarves" in the militant Tolkien wing of the party.
If my grandmother had had treads, she would have been a Sherman tank. She was pretty scary even without them.
163: That's pretty impressive, given that I don't think he even campaigned outside of City Council District 8.
Such amazing name recognition. His staying in the race is so motivational--never give up, even if you're a national embarrassment.
Fuck it, Clinton loses the general kids hit the streets and make 1968 look like a love-in.
I ain't scared, cause I spit on Republican law.
167.2 - If nothing else this election is proving that 2008 wasn't the result of two strong campaigns where Obama won because of Iraq or something. Hillary Clinton really can't run an effect campaign: Sanders looks like he'll be outperforming his polling going in twice in a row, and at least in NH by a substantial margin too. (It's starting to make me think it would be nice to see the raw vote counts from Iowa - I would actually believe that he won the popular vote. They're certainly resisting it aggressively enough anyway.)
I'm surprised that none of your grandmothers turn into Optimus Prime.
130: A lot of the people who voted for Sanders were unenrolled/Independents. In other states more of the primaries are closed, so the opinions of registered Democrats are more important.
172: I don't think two early votes in really unrepresentative states, one of which borders Sanders' home state, prove anything. If he gets 40% in South Carolina, then I'll believe Clinton is in trouble.
Proves? God no. But I think it's worrying in the sense that it looks like Clinton's campaign is screwing something up more than anything else. (Sanders is running a good campaign, too. But I think it's mostly a reflection on what she's doing.)
It looks to me more like somebody relatively unknown getting a brief honeymoon period with the press and voters. It even happened to Rick Santorum once, kind of.
Sanders is getting a honeymoon with the press? I gotta say that is the single most ridiculous thing I've heard so far in this election season.
This speech from Kasich is kind of weird. "Let's slow down and cry together."
Speaking of second place finishers, does Kaisch have any money left or did he spent it all get 16%.
Bernie getting a honeymoon period with the press? What on earth are you reading?
177: I'm totally on board with the "wait until Super Tuesday before you start taking seriously the pipe dream that Sanders could win the nomination" argument. But the idea that he's having a honeymoon with the press seems wildly wrong to me. Then again, I don't watch cable news or read any papers, so maybe I'm missing something. Am I?
178: I don't actually watch TV news. The print media seems to not be very critical of him. Certainly nothing to compare with what Clinton has had over the past few years, let alone the past 20.
My honeymoon with Sanders's supporters is clearly over.
I mostly read get my news from The Atlantic and Slate, if you count Dear Prudence as news.
I guess if you count "He can't possible win" as a negative story, then I've seen lots of negative press about him. But some of those seem to me to have an undertone of "he's too good for the system."
I didn't read the Vox links that everyone put up.
I keep hoping Dear Prudence will tell somebody else it's O.K. to steal a dog. There's a Yorkie I've had my eye on down the street.
I wonder who the next Republican to drop out will be. I'm guessing Christie. I think he's the lowest finisher who currently has an actual job he should be doing.
Why would any of them drop out? I mean, other than Carson, I suppose. But even then, the race is completely up for grabs. So why not keep running and hope something breaks your way? All of them are lunatic megalomaniacs, right?
Isn't a 100% chance of being able to fuck with New Jersey a better outcome than a 2% chance (optimistically) of being able to fuck with the whole United States?
All of them are lunatic megalomaniacs, right?
Not Jim Gilmore. He was adamant about convincing at least 100 people in New Hampshire to vote for him. And goddammit, he's close.
178, 181, 182: I think that maybe somebody who watches TV would be better to answer that question. The voters likely to be swayed by the press are probably not looking at the websites I am.
190: that's where being a lunatic megalomaniac tips the balance toward staying the race. The odds are never long for lunatic megalomaniacs!
Which, if you want to watch TV, I'll defer to your judgement on that.
Isn't a 100% chance of being able to fuck with New Jersey a better outcome than a 2% chance (optimistically) of being able to fuck with the whole United States?
What I find maddening, as a resident of his state, is that Christie has made some really bad decisions for NJ, based on his lunatic megalomaniacal presidential aspirations. Oh, not that he would otherwise have generally made sound and sane policy choices, of course. But cancelling that desperately needed tunnel project (which he did initially support) was all about positioning himself as a budget-slashing tough guy for his presidential bid.
My guess is that Fiorina drops out before Christie does.
Yeah, Christie needed to beat Rubio which may have been what Saturday night was about. Christie looks like under 10%, zero delegates, he's toast.
Kasich will not get 5% in South Carolina, and Rubio is weak there, so SC is likely to go Trump-Cruz-Bush. And that is the race I expect to go to the convention, although Trump may look like he has the delegates before then. Cruz has enough organization perhaps to hold Trump under.
If so, then Cruz and Trump supporters will eat each other, and Bush will look like the voice of reason and reconcilaition.
G'night all, as we in NH, the Brigadoon of these Unitedy States, prepare to sink back into mists. See you again in 4 years, when NH gets its 1 week of fame.
Maybe Dartmouth will have a horrible hazing story to get you back in the news sooner.
Maybe Dartmouth will have a horrible hazing story to get you back in the news sooner.
192 et.al
We haven't seen a full bore "let's just make stuff up and repeat it over and over" set of attacks from the right wing, but aside from that I'm not seeing how he's in some kind of honeymoon period. What I've seen about him generally ranges between "Well obviously he's not a real candidate for reasons so clear that it would be a waste of space to mention them, but...", whatever nasty line the Clinton campaign has cooked up for that week, and a variety of articles that kind of vaguely mention that he exists but really are just taking the opportunity to insult or condescend to people who like him. So if there is a honeymoon phase here it has yet to show up. We might get one after tonight, or if he does well in Nevada. But there's nothing particularly encouraging about him in the press in general that I've seen.
To elaborate a little further Sanders has always had more supporters than Trump, higher positives and lower negatives. Trump has somehow gotten several hundred times more media coverage than Sanders. It was always very clear that the MSN was working very hard to starve the Sanders campaign of oxygen.
We haven't seen a full bore "let's just make stuff up and repeat it over and over" set of attacks from the right wing
That stuff doesn't work quite as well as it used to now that large swaths of the population have portable bullshit-checkers in their pockets.
I think it is also the case that more and more people every year realize that the professional press exists to lie to them.
I'm mostly indifferent on the Democratic side. I lean toward Sanders. But since VA is an open primary state I am thinking of voting for the worst Republican from the view of the general election. Trump seems like a good pick. The only problem is that I'd be voting for Trump.
Rubio has admitted that his performance in the debate Saturday was terrible:
Gilmore gets 125, with 88% reporting. RT wins the smug prize, walt someguy has to move to NH.
I'm already trapped in a New Hampshire of the mind.
If you think about it, Gilmore has managed to increase his vote totals by a factor of 10 in just one week. At this rate, he'll be world overlord by June.
What I find maddening, as a resident of his state, is that Christie has made some really bad decisions for NJ, based on his lunatic megalomaniacal presidential aspirations. Oh, not that he would otherwise have generally made sound and sane policy choices, of course. But cancelling that desperately needed tunnel project (which he did initially support) was all about positioning himself as a budget-slashing tough guy for his presidential bid.
God, yes. I hate him so much. The tunnel thing was just an unbelievably craven move to enhance his own national political stature by sacrificing the state's best interest for decades to come. His subsequent behavior has done nothing to mitigate that impression and a lot to reinforce it.
"Why would any of them drop out? I mean, other than Carson, I suppose. But even then, the race is completely up for grabs. So why not keep running and hope something breaks your way?"
This is basically the Yorkshire Ranter's model (which I can't find), isn't it?
The American election feels more and more like a European one: a right wing fool, a left wing Don Quijote and in the end a centrist who scrapes enough votes together to get to office with support of the fool. Ha, at least something Europe is leading in.
209
Christie was terrible for Jersey to look tough with conservatives.
Cuomo did everything in his power to block democrats from taking the NY senate--terrible for New York--and did it to look like a presidential guy who could work across the aisle.
Good visual presentation of delegate counts:
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-delegate-tracker/
||
Overslept by 45 minutes this morning. Got to the check-in counter at 5:30 for a 6:25 flight. They said "nope, flight's closed!" So I get to hang out at JFK until late afternoon.
|>
If that's right, something else besides a deep desire for increased liberalism is driving Sanders' 60% or more support among NH Democrats.
That would be ABHism?
The model: http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2015/12/20/why-so-many-republicans-are-still-running-for-president/
Meanwhile, just as helpful guidance, I much prefer Bob's prediction that Trump and Cruz supporters will eat each other to his earlier prediction of rioting. The first has real passion, gusto, and style. The second is mere cliché. You've got to want it! Throw yourself into it! You know that, Bob!
I mean, who wouldn't want the Republican convention to degenerate into actual cannibalism?
"And, well, Megyn, is that the Orange County delegate who went for Cruz earlier over there tearing at a human femur with his teeth?"
"It does seem to be. I think I see some cooking fires smouldering in the Trump camp. Truly astonishing scenes here. Look, he's got marrow on his pocket square!"
209: Yes, apt tweet my timeline: "So the ARC tunnel died for this"
215 -- I don't think it's exactly that, since many Sanders voters claimed that they'd be happy with Hillary as President. But I do think that's part of what's going on. Maybe a better way of putting it is that it is anti-current Democrats, but not necessarily a strong desire for redistributionist policies. That certainly fits with what I see from online Sanders people, who (in some not all) cases seem into the general notion that Clinton is "corrupt" but have never shown any broader interest in redistributionist-left politics.
Interestingly, among registered Democrats in NH, Clinton and Sanders tied. I think it's a fair assumption that most (not all, but most) strong New Deal pro-union economic liberals register and identify as Democrats. And it's a fair assumption that most of those people in NH voted for Sanders. But that doesn't come close to explaining his margin of victory. Maybe the independents are all young first-time voters who never registered as Democrats and have gotten pulled into the process by Bernie-ism. But I doubt that explains it either.
Anyhow, I don't claim to know what's going on. But I don't think that pure ideological preference for left-of-Obama social democracy explains the bulk of Sanders' support, though obviously it's a significant part of it.
"Well, Alex, you see, they believe that by devouring the heart of a defeated opponent, they will acquire his pledged delegates."
-- But is it true that Republicans are habitual cannibals?
"No, not in the least. It's true that they consume human flesh, but only on ceremonial occasions, or when desperate for airtime on Fox News. The idea that they're habitual cannibals is a widespread belief, but it's a slur put about by Democratic missionaries in their efforts to grab votes in the Midwest."
It's my understanding that a lot of the independent/undeclared voters in NH actually do have a pretty consistent party preference (i.e., every election they pretty reliably choose the same party ballot), but nonetheless choose to remain undeclared for a variety of reasons. In a closed primary system, most of those undeclared voters would presumably make their choice.
219: I was surprised by Sanders' margin of victory as well. I wonder whether some of it isn't hating on the financial industry by proxy. Everyone hates the banksters right now, and Clinton has pretty emphatically refused to distance herself from them.
That doesn't mean that Sanders would necessarily be successful reforming anything, but voting for him feels like saying "Fuck you, Wall Street", in a way that voting for Clinton doesn't.
Trump: "We're being ripped off, and he [Sanders] and I are the only two that really say that."
I do wonder if there is something to the theory that some part of why Trump "under-performed" in Iowa can be attributed to the privacy of marking the ballot versus taking a semi-public stance for him at a caucus.
Its funny that, to compare college towns, Dartmouth barely broke for Bernie, while Keene, home to Keene State, was a Bernie avalanche. I guess those Dartmouth kids are a bit more hesitant about taking on the establishment. Makes sense: they expect to be the establishment one day.
Trump's supporters would never survive since they only eat their meat dry and charred.
221: I think that's generally true of the label "independent" in America. The difference in Sanders/Clinton ratios between Democrats and Independents could come down to as little as the middle aged to young adult liberal/left being/having been annoyed enough by the current party (now; in the '90s; whatever) that they call themselves 'independent' instead of 'democrat', even though being basically responsible people they do generally come out and vote the lesser of two evils.
Also Trump in 223 is having one of his "bluntly says the truth about someone" moments, because I think that really is a big part of why both of them took off initially. They've both made it this far, I think, because of either appealing openly and directly to the most awful people in America or by whatever it is with Sanders, but the start really was exactly that.
I don't think the embarrassment of voting for Trump was what affected the Iowa caucus results, though. The Republican "caucus" is a private ballot but you have to listen to some speeches first. (Yes, I know. But apparently that's a caucus? They used to have something more ridiculously ornate, like the Democratic one, and then they got hilariously pantsed in 2012 when Ron Paul realized how easy it was to game and won a stupid amount of delegates despite getting very little support by clever after the fact shenanigans like having his supporters stay there and volunteer to be delegates.)
227: Yup. 221 was in part to 219.2's wondering why the vote between Sanders and Clinton was close among registered Democrats, such that Sander's large victory came almost entirely from undeclared voters. And it seems unsurprising that Hillary would have relatively more support among the NH registered democrats than the undeclared votes who lean liberal, since those who chose to register as Democrats would presumably be more "establishment."
"Why would any of them drop out? I mean, other than Carson, I suppose. But even then, the race is completely up for grabs. So why not keep running and hope something breaks your way?"
Carson seems to me to be the only one with any real reason to drop out at this point. Fiorina has never been a believable candidate to win it: she was always there to be the woman who attacks Hillary in nasty sexist ways so that the men don't have to, because somehow.. people won't notice it that way? (The firmly held belief among a surprising amount of Republicans that this works for the groups they want to shit on is kind of impressive since it rarely actually works and they've been trying it for ages now.) I'm guessing that there's some kind of general payoff happening at some point, and that she has been a candidate for hire for a while now. Christie might be thinking he has a shot to improve his ratings now that he's shown he can make waves in the race, but I'm guessing at this point that he's in it for the payout as well (though probably more in extorting it from the establishment rather than being paid to do something - though I wouldn't be surprised if he has a friendly behind the scenes agreement with Bush.)
Everyone else is just rolling the dice and figuring that eventually one of the not-Trumps is going to pop up and everyone will have to resign themselves to that person. As long as they can keep picking up delegates - no matter how few - they can stay in that position. I am hoping Carson drops out soon because honestly he looks like something is going terribly wrong with him right now, I mean, at a personal level like at the debates. He really does seem like the strain of campaigning is causing his strange affect to get worse and that makes me think it might legitimately be early signs of some kind of dementia kicking in.
All the independents I know are leftists who see third party member ship as a waste of time, and see the Republicans as a quasi-fascist party and the Democrats as a centrist party. They usually vote Green party in the presidential election, but they're willing to consider Bernie in this election.
231: The Green Party candidate got 0.36% of the popular vote in 2012. I don't think Green Party supporters can account for much of Sanders success.
Surely Fiorina is only still in the race because they're going to need someone to lay off 15,000 party employees at some point?
The Green Party candidate got 0.36% of the popular vote in 2012.
Only because I wasn't the candidate that year.
I thought that a lot of people who described themselves as "independent" tended in practice to vote for one or other of the major parties about 90% of the time. Given that there's 30% self-described "independents" and about 1.5% actually vote for anything other than the Big Two (including 0.36% Green), that would seem reasonable...
Are any right wing pundits still supporting or at least making excuses for Rubio?
They usually vote Green party in the presidential election, but they're willing to consider Bernie in this election.
I think we've finally found a less representative group of friends to use as a basis for generalizing about Democrats than the standard pundit "My millennial friends who went to Wesleyan".
He's a horrible, horrible person, but he is in contact with consensus reality, which is weird for a Republican.
Probably why he didn't have a shot.
He's a horrible, horrible person, but he is in contact with consensus reality
I love LB's determination to find that little bit of good in everyone.
The nice thing is that you can spin that positively either way. The ones who are in contact with reality? Kudos to them. The ones who aren't? Well, you can't blame them for their horrible politics like you would functioning people.
Or alternatively you can use the military meaning of "in contact with" as in "forward elements of 11th Armoured Division are in contact with dug-in enemy infantry in area of VILLERS-BOCAGE" where "in contact with" means "actively fighting against".
Long but interesting: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/sanders-v-clinton-democratic-debate-corruption-health-care-and-theories-of-change.html
One thing that some people don't get about Trump is that, while he routinely makes outrageously false statements, overall he is the most honest Republican in the race. Republicans have been misled by their leaders, and Trump calls them out on it.
Look at this very ordinary, establishment-oriented critique by the National Review:
He said that he was the only candidate on stage free to explore all the policy options because he is self-funded and therefore not beholden to special interests. Trump is in fact mainly funded by donors, like the other candidates, but he persists in this lie, brazenly. He also claimed that the insurance companies are "getting rich on Obamacare," which would be news to United, Cigna, Aetna, and others who have taken a bath on their ACA offerings. (They might have thought they were going to get rich -- it's nice to have a federal law mandating the purchase of your product -- but, having gone to bed with the devil, they are waking up with a burning sensation.) Trump also promises a system that would not leave Americans "dying on the street."
NR says Trump lies because he relies heavily on donations. And in a literal sense, that's a fact. But on a fundamental level, Trump isn't beholden to pharmaceutical interests the way other candidates are. Is he getting pharma money? I bet he's not, and the National Review doesn't say he is. So a lay audience is going to get a more accurate view of this from Trump than the National Review.
And the NR is simply lying about insurance companies, which are, in fact, doing quite nicely as a result of Obamacare. (To the extent that they are bitching, it's because they thought they might do even better.)
The last bit, about 'dying on the street,' the NR doesn't even deign to respond to. They just put that in there because they see it as being ridiculous on its face. I don't agree.
The piece goes on, again and again, to misrepresent the facts in areas where Trump is telling the truth - but also to correctly place Trump to the left of Obama on the subject of drug pricing.
Compare what Trump is saying about the Iraq War with what the other Republicans - and even Hillary - are saying. Sure, he's not accurately describing his own record in that regard, but he's telling it straight in a way that they are not.
All-in-all, I couldn't be happier with the New Hampshire results. The best Republican and the best Democrat won. Absent a functional political system, what more could you want?
(The firmly held belief among a surprising amount of Republicans that this works for the groups they want to shit on is kind of impressive since it rarely actually works and they've been trying it for ages now.)
This used to puzzle me, too, until it was pointed out that they aren't looking to convince other people; they are seeking to reassure themselves that they aren't racists/sexists. Carson and Fiorina work just fine for that purpose.
Trump's discovery is that you can circumvent people like Carson by just owning your racism. Trump has made it possible to skip the middleman/woman and just vote for the white guy. What is a vote for Fiorina, after all, except for a kind of political correctness?
I know most independents tend to vote with one party or another and are not genuinely independent, amd that some people stay independent in NH so as to be abLe to vote in another party's primary.
My theory is that most folks who are particulalry liberal on economic issues (aside from the small contingent of green party members or whatever) register Democratic.
That may or may not be true. But coupled with the following facts, I think we CAN safely say that most of Sanders' margin of victory derives from things other than a strong policy preference for increased social democracy:
(a) only 2/5 of the people who voted in the primary (registered Democrats and independents together) claimed to want policies "more liberal" than Obama's -- and Sanders didn't win all of those folks, but only about 60% of them; (b) Sanders won about 66% of folks who call themselves "very liberal," but those people were only about 26% of the total of Dem primary voters; (c) Sanders won 60% of seld-identified "moderates" who voted in the primary (again, about 26% of the electorate); (d) Sanders won the people who said that being "honest and trustworthy" was the most important quality in a candidate (about 35% of the primary voters said this, and it was the most popular single quality) 91%-8%. He also won people who said the most important candidate quality is "cares about people like me" (arguably a proxy for redistributionist views, but usually when asked in America is just a proxy for "do I personally like this person"), which was the most important quality for another 26% of voters) 82-17.
So I think we can very safely say that something other than a strong policy preference for redistribution among the overwhelming bulk of NH's democratic primary voters explains Sanders' win. Policy preferences might explain a very,very narrow win (but much more likely would get him to a loss but a good showing, like around 40-45%). But policy preferenced don't explain last night. Sanders as a dominant candidate in NH seems to be mostly about a collective judgment that he's authentic and that authenticity is important in this election.
Yeah, New Hampshire went the way of my wildest dreams. The only difference is I would have preferred Bush to pull ahead of Cruz, for maximum screwiness. As it is they're close enough it's a tie, so I'm relatively pleased. I SC, I want to see Trump win, Rubio to fall flat, Kasich to not even register, and Bush to do surprisingly well. If possible, I'd like a Trump - Bush -Cruz finish, with Rubio and Kasich both floundering. Best case scenario, Carson finishes ahead of Rubio and not terribly behind Kasich.
On the Dem side, in SC I think a Bernie loss of 10% or less would be a good outcome, at least enough to keep his campaign active as a viable threat. In Nevada, if he can keep his loss within 5% he'd be doing really well.
Nice interview with Coates, made nicer by the fact that there's a TRANSCRIPT.
I had basically written Kasich off, but he's clearly the biggest threat on the Republican side if he gets any traction, what with his ability to appear like a non-sociopathic live human being and the giant press crush on him. I want him to do well enough to fuck with Republicans in the NE, but not well enough that it ever looks like he even remotely has a chance for the nomination.
Interesting that Coates publicly announced he's voting for Bernie Sanders (Though, pointedly, not "endorsing" Sanders.) (Interesting mostly because he's been accused of being unfair to Sanders and a shill for Clinton.)
250: For fuller explication see interview/transcript linked to in 248.
Kasich is worrying because he's got that normal on the surface, crazy in the depths thing George Bush had in spades. That said, with Trump around he's got to compete with someone who offers the crazy right from the cask.
Sanders won the people who said that being "honest and trustworthy" was the most important quality in a candidate (about 35% of the primary voters said this, and it was the most popular single quality) 91%-8%.
That seems like a clear example of "working backwards from the desired results." -- people who wanted to vote for Sanders would also be likely to say that being "honest and trustworthy" was important.
246: I think the simplest explanation is that Sanders has clinched the identity of "anti-establishment" candidate on the D side, just as Trump has on the R side. And people are clearly in the mood for anti-establishment candidates these days. This mood is much more vague than something as specific as policy preferences.
To be sure. But what I think we do probably know ifor sure is that a strong policy prefence for economic social democracy doesn't come close to explaining Sanders' success. What does explain it (authenticity, love for New Englanders, hatred for "Wall Street" but not broader desire for liberal policies, a general spirit of anti-corruption, something else) is much harder to say.
256 to 254, and before seeing 255. I agree with 255.
normal on the surface, crazy in the depths
The Republican "personality mullet."
Is this what a media honeymoon looks like? Praising Bernie Sanders ability to shoot a basketball from eight feet?
Hey, it's pretty good for an old guy. (Old enough to remember the era when Jews were genetically superior at basketball, even.)
Did anyone link this: https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/674200932054355968 ?
259: Looks to me like he's relying on the BIG BANK shot.
Joan Didion on Dukakis.
About this baseball on the tarmac. On the day that Michael Dukakis appeared at the high school in Woodland Hills and at the rally in San Diego and in the school-yard in San Jose, there was, although it did not appear on the schedule, a fourth event, what was referred to among the television crews as a "tarmac arrival with ball tossing." This event had taken place in late morning, on the tarmac at the San Diego airport, just after the chartered 737 had rolled to a stop and the candidate had emerged. There had been a moment of hesitation. Then baseball mitts had been produced, and Jack Weeks, the traveling press secretary, had tossed a ball to the candidate. The candidate had tossed the ball back. The rest of us had stood in the sun and given this our full attention, undeflected even by the arrival of an Alaska 767: some forty adults standing on a tarmac watching a diminutive figure in shirtsleeves and a red tie toss a ball to his press secretary.
...
This sounded about right (the candidate might, after all, bean a citizen during the ball tossing, and CNN would need film), and not until I read Joe Klein's version of these days in California did it occur to me that this eerily contrived moment on the tarmac at San Diego could become, at least provisionally, history. "The Duke seemed downright jaunty," Joe Klein reported. "He tossed a baseball with aides. He was flagrantly multilingual. He danced Greek dances...." In the July 25 issue of U.S. News & World Report, Michael Kramer opened his cover story, "Is Dukakis Tough Enough?" with a more developed version of the ball tossing:
The thermometer read 101 degrees, but the locals guessed 115 on the broiling airport tarmac in Phoenix. After all, it was under a noonday sun in the desert that Michael Dukakis was indulging his truly favorite campaign ritual--a game of catch with his aide Jack Weeks. "These days," he has said, "throwing the ball around when we land somewhere is about the only exercise I get." For 16 minutes, Dukakis shagged flies and threw strikes. Halfway through, he rolled up his sleeves, but he never loosened his tie. Finally, mercifully, it was over and time to pitch the obvious tongue-in-cheek question: "Governor, what does throwing a ball around in this heat say about your mental stability?" Without missing a beat, and without a trace of a smile, Dukakis echoed a sentiment he has articulated repeatedly in recent months: "What it means is that I'm tough."
261: That was an understandable mistake. He tweeted this today
If Bernie defeats Hillary, and if Trump wins the GOP nomination, does anyone doubt Bill will support Donald?
236: Oh you better believe that there are.
And not just defending it, but defending it in a really hilarious way to boot!
And hey, say what you want about Sanders' skill at basketball, but it's a well known phenomenon that the Democratic presidential nomination goes to the candidate who is better at basketball than any of the other options.
What? It's just as good as all the other "there's a well known pattern that..." arguments.
but it's a well known phenomenon that the Democratic presidential nomination goes to the candidate who is better at basketball than any of the other options.
Gore v Bradley in 2000?
Just to take my own playing around with the exit polls further: if you assume that 100% of the people who identified as "strongly liberal," 50% of the people who identified as "somewhat liberal," and 20% of the people who identified as "moderate" in fact hold strongly pro-social democratic views (these seem like very generous assumption) then Bernie's support from social democrats would get him only to about 35% of the total Dem primary vote.
I think this matters because the "political revolution" thesis (vote Sanders and you by definition are advancing a broader movement towards social democracy) only works if people want to elect social democratic candidates in general, not if people are voting for him because of his (or Hillary's) personality or more vague notions about "the establishment." It might also matter for the general election (could Trump pick up some Bernie voters if it's Trump v Hillary? Could a Republican pick up Bernie voters assuming that Bernie's personal image takes a beating in a general election?).
255,256: But this "anti-establishment" groundswell doesn't seem particularly "anti-war" (or pro-war on Rep side).
I think it is pretty simple described as Populism in both parties.
Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell define populism as an ideology that "pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous 'others' who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity, and voice".[4]Rather than viewing populism in terms of specific social bases, economic programs, issues, or electorates -- as discussions of right-wing populism have tended to do[5] -- this type of definition is in line with the approaches of scholars such as Ernesto Laclau,[6] Pierre-Andre Taguieff,[7] Yves Meny and Yves Surel,[8] who have all sought to focus on populism per se, rather than treating it simply as an appendage of other ideologies.
As far as "virtuous and homogenous" you have to look at the subgroup affiliating itself, and defining itself against the Other. "like us in this respect" is the important part, and usually what gets populism in trouble and limits its expansion.
This may not explain enough but it is where you start.
Read the Coates, been reading too much Coates lately, well okay then I guess.
Well, of course there are to be exceptions. That's always going to be true. But in general...
The only free outlet I can find at this airport is unfortunately close to a TV blaring CNN. Why do airports insist on keeping CNN in business?
Anyway, I got to hear Reince Priebus tell Wolf Blitzer that Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy and Bernie Sanders is "a socialist from Vermont," and the inflection was such to make it clear that apparently Vermont is the new Chicago. That is, a part of America for which Real Americans have disdain.
That shows progress for Bernie, I think...
269: Coates simply isn't open to Sanders or socialism. At all
I think you probably convinced him to go public about voting for Sanders.
ability to appear like a non-sociopathic live human being
Fortunately, this appears to be a disqualifying trait for Republicans these days.
After reading 258, I suddenly thought that one instance of populism or social democracy is the opposition to or constraining of "technocratic elites" establishing fiefdoms whether in ancient Athens or the Cultural Revolution in Mao's China.
Old Political Science and p-Theory have long had problems with populism because it is by nature anti-systematic, ungoverning, chaotic. Net and cyber-theory is obviously having to confront it (who organizes the Webs?) and are adding to our knowledge.
Speaking of Christie, he's going to be Trump's running mate, right?
276: No, on geographical grounds
As I have said, Trump is not getting the nomination, but if so he will need a swing state. Rubio or Kasich. Or Nugent putting Michigan in play. Hell, who knows.
I have a strong suspicion that Christie is going to get something out of the election if the right person wins, I just don't know if it's Trump or Bush (my money would be on Bush though). I doubt he really thought that kneecapping Rubio would turn him into one of the front-of-the-pack candidates, but it definitely helped out a couple of other people in the race. It's a pity he won't be in the next debate, though. If his support keeps him out of them I don't know how much longer he'll be useful to anyone, and once that happens I'm guessing he's out.
Chris Christie will be Secretary of Transportation under a Trump administration, just to piss off liberals.
Have people read the memo that Clinton's campaign sent out to the press following NH?
A lot of it is standard stuff about minority voters, Clinton's experience and record (actual details of record rather than its existence left aside), and so on. That's not strange. But for once they're glancing briefly over the Nevada/South Carolina primaries and I'm having a tricky time seeing why. I mean, it could be "Oh shit we did an internal poll" but that seems less likely. Is it expectation gaming, on the assumption that the next two will be closer than people have been predicting? The polling data we have from there is pretty old at this point, though it might be true of Nevada since the last poll there seems to have been in December which is well before Sanders was being taken very seriously as a real candidate.
My real guess is that their internal polling had New Hampshire turning out to be less of a blowout than it actually was and now they're spooked about Nevada and worried that three solid performances, the recent speeches thing and the public attention Sanders is starting to get might give him a larger boost in that primary than they'd been planning for. But I'm really not certain. Playing expectation games for the first three or even four contests can't be good for the campaign given how much of it rests on inevitability or electability.
Re: "do voters voters feel the bern becuase they are social democrats":
Having people vote for you because they agree with your policy positions is overrated. Republicans do lots of unpopular shit and it doesn't cause much voter backlash or cause the laws to 'not count'.
Personality preceeds policies.
Right. But it's a pretty relevant question if your strategy for getting your policy agenda enacted is not only that you win, but that millions rise up in the future in political revolution because they agree with your policies, and you're a movement not a man.
Just in time, Kasich has an opportunity to prove his conservative bona fides.
The bill that would remove all state funding from women's health organization Planned Parenthood is expected to pass the Ohio House of Representatives today and be signed into law by Ohio Governor John Kasich.
Oh, joy.
At least Bernie HAS a plan to get his policy agenda enacted. HRC has nothing but wishful thinking as this for instance points out :http://mattbruenig.com/2016/02/03/hillary-clintons-wildly-unrealistic-puppies-and-rainbows-plan/.
I can still masturbate to Carly Fiorina's continued record of failure, though.
Please to not use the words "masturbate" and "Carly Fiorina" in the same sentence.
Gosh, peep, why do you like women so much? A little suspicious you think they should make their own decisions and stuff, don't you think?
284 - That piece is nonsense, and ignores the existence of the administrative state* and actions which are in the control of the President. See, for example, here. Now, one could argue that Sanders is as likely to enact small-bore liberal administrative measures that don't require a Congressional vote as Clinton is, but I think that's wrong -- actually knowing how the executive branch works is important there, and Sanders' commitment to statutory legislation is, if he takes it all seriously, a detriment.
In any event, the reality is that (a) there are domestic-policy things a President can do besides legislation, (b) that is the only kind of policy a Democrat is likely to be able to engage in (unless there's a slim Dem majority in both houses, in which case you'll need legislative compromise) and (c) since administrative, not legislative measures are likely to be the most important thing a Democrat can do in the next 4 years, one needs to think seriously about which President is more likely to be effective in that context.
*This assumes that the administrative state survives a conservative Supreme Court, which it may not; I expect the current EPA case to, if the current 5/4 majority stays or if (worse) we get a new Republican president appointing Kennedy's replacement, to hold that the Court has the right to trump Chevron deference in the case of major administrative actions. This means that a conservative Court can and will strike down economic and environmental administrative action it doesn't like. Fortunately there is zero chance of a Republican winning the general election so we don't have to worry about this at all.
Right. I would like to hear your/Clinton's theory of political change that involves having only people who agree with you already vote for you at the same rate as they already do.
but that millions rise up in the future in political revolution because they agree with your policies
Dude, I'm a Marxist revolutionary, and Bernie is a Democratic Socialist. The aspirational "policies" are simply to delimit who wants to be the relevant "people."
Shit gets decided by the people when they get power. All power to the Soviets!
Ain't as if in 2017 we will have trouble communicating. But no, old law-lovers and other servile obedient types, who disingenuously use adherence to rigid rules and processes to manipulate and legitimate their power (lawyers), this doesn't have to be referenda or plebiscites or polls or twitter.
Justice is emergent from democracy.
282: sanders is really not proposing that his election alone, if not backed by more sweeping political change, will accomplish anything at all. He isn't promising anything at all about what he's going to get done in his first 100 days in office. He *is* trying to prove that someone in 2016 can be a forceful advocate for progressive change and still win elections. He is also, and in some sense more fundamentally, trying to prove that someone can reject the broken campaign fiancé system and refuse to participate in that system, and can use that as a selling point to voters. His message is: if I can win doing this, so can others, and that's the only way we're going to get real change. So support me (to prove its possible), and then support others who run similar campaigns in the future (because they deserve support), and then we can begin to accomplish all these progressive goals. But someone has to be the trailblazer.
So support me (to prove its possible), and then support others who run similar campaigns in the future (because they deserve support), and then we can begin to accomplish all these progressive goals. But someone has to be the trailblazer.
OK, but this doesn't work at all if the bulk of support that actually gets you a win is personality driven/distrust for your opponent/non-specific distrust for the establishment. If that's why you're winning majorities, your vote will not actually turn into sweeping political change. And it definitely doesn't work if you get into office and then disappoint people.
I bet people will non-dissappointed by administrative actions that work for ~6 months to create minor improvements before they are defunded in the next year's budget or struck down by scotus
289: You're right, Thorn. I'm probably a pussy.
I would like to hear your/Clinton's theory of political change that involves having only people who agree with you already vote for you at the same rate as they already do.
Deal with the political reality you have to do the best job you can of moving things forward from office, while being increasingly pushed (here, we'd hope, to the left) by an organized popular movement not tied to an individual politician. That's pretty much the only way that political change has ever worked in American politics.
I think you might find that people are more reasonable in their expectations of Sanders than you expect.
If elected I am sure to disappoint, but it won't be as bad because your expectation will be lower.
That's pretty much the only way that political change has ever worked in American politics.
I am so glad we don't have any conservatives round here.
Meaningful political change is formal, structural change and in a democracy is absolutely unpredictable. Scary, and some people need the comfortable protection of that 250 year old slaver's protection proclamation. Because, fuck it, who wants the people in charge anyway. The law is in charge, and needed to keep the people in chains.
No, Sanders (I thought we decided this, Bernie vs Clinton adds gravitas to one, doesn't it) is not proclaiming revolution yet.
May he get a tiger to ride.
Just vote for Clinton, halford. Nobody gives a shit if you do. In fact, you have totally sound reasons for doing so, I suspect most people here would agree. But maybe shut up about Sanders or risk continuing to sound like a Clinton shill.* Worse still, given that Super Tuesday hasn't even happened yet, meaning that we have no idea if Sanders's candidacy is viable over the longterm, you risk sounding like a bedwetter -- especially when your anti-Sanders rhetoric is coupled with your sense that all of the Republican hopefuls are the love children of Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln.
Go to crossfit. Kill and eat an entire bison. But for the love all of that's holy, please stop tweaking.
* These are literally the worst people on the planet.
I mean, "All Power to the Soviets!" could effect radical political change, but it doesn't seem too likely in the American context.
Also, assuming that my local Soviet would be controlled by the insane busybodies on my neighborhood council, I can only hope that if the Soviets take over we quickly expel the SRs and Mensheviks and move straight to top-down Stalinism.
301 -- I frankly don't see why you get the right to control what I say or don't say. We're talking about reasons to vote for one candidate or another. There are plenty of reasons to vote for Sanders. The Sanders movement is an interesting phenomenon that's both hopeful and potentially (to the extent it puts the general election into play) frightening. I'm not a Clinton shill, and have been open about my preferences and why. If you want to argue, argue, I'd be happy to hear it. If you want to ignore, ignore, that's fine too. Otherwise, that intervention really pisses me off.
I don't buy that whether the single person at the top knows the working of the administrative state determines how well they will run it. Shit, if that's the case, Sanders could just appoint Hillary chief of staff and everything would be great, right? (Aside from the sexist glass-ceiling optics of such a move)
I am not a misanthrope because I believe Hobbes was right.
I am a misanthrope because everybody else apparently believes Hobbes was right.
trying to prove that someone can reject the broken campaign fiancé system and refuse to participate in that system
Under a Sanders administration, there will be government-funded campaign fiancé repair shops in every city across this great land.
300, 304: Is Bernie going to ride on Hobbes? Adorbs!
Hi all! I've spent the last half hour seeking understanding of the delegate counts from NH, and I find myself dispirited. It appears that Sanders is already behind Clinton by a whopping 42 (him) to 394 (her) superdelegates. See the AP story linked there for support for this.
I am not sure what's to be done about this. In any event, all the wrangling in the world over Clinton v. Sanders as the most preferable general nomination candidate and president isn't going to change this. I admit I'm ... kerfuffled.
I don't buy that whether the single person at the top knows the working of the administrative state determines how well they will run it.
That's certainly true. The question of who would do a better job with administrative regulations and the like is a real one (Witt and I were having that conversation a while back, and there are arguments on both sides). But there are IMO decent reasons to think Clinton would do a better job than Obama. It took the Obama administration almost 6 years to figure out how to get things done administratively. Sanders can do better, but to do so he'll either need to appoint people who are basically the same insiders that Clinton would appoint, or outsiders who are somehow able to move things along faster, which doesn't seem too likely (and probably wouldn't end up substantively very different from what Clinton would do).
I don't really understand this superdelegate thing: these are party leaders in each state, I gather. They get to vote however they'd like at the convention? Regardless of the vote outcome in their state primary? I need to learn more.
302: I have no right to tell you what you can and can't say, it's true. But given your online persona, and your glorious willingness to tell people that their political preferences are absolutely absurd and even embarrassing, it doesn't seem at all unreasonable for me to tell you that you sound like a fucking dickhead. That said, by all means feel free to ignore me. I truly don't give a shit. But really, your insistence that Sanders voters are credulous morons, feckless naifs whose feelings will be totally crushed when their guy doesn't welcome in the revolution, is idiotic. Leave aside the fact that people said exactly the same thing about Obama, and focus instead on something much more immediate: Super Tuesday hasn't happened yet. It's entirely possible, likely even, that Sanders will turn out to be a relatively effective protest candidate -- and that's it.
307- Obama was in the same situation in 2008, when it became apparent he would win the elected delegate count the superdelegates agreed not to overturn the elected result because they'd have had riots.
307: My instinct is to discount superdelegates here. If Clinton is ahead by the end of the count then she's ahead and superdelegates won't matter. If Sanders is way, way ahead they won't matter either. If Sanders manages to capture a majority of the (not super) delegates then I think the Clinton lead there will disappear, if only because I think the Democratic party establishment (which is exactly what "Superdelegate" means) is mostly smart enough to realize stepping in to correct the choices of the actual voters in the direction of the establishment candidate as opposed to the change-the-establishment one would be the sort of thing that results in an electoral apocalypse. (I'm not saying they are that smart, but I certainly hope that enough of them are to realize what that would do for their personal support base among voters in the election and step in to make sure that doesn't happen.)
They do help Clinton out at least a bit in press analyses, I think, but I'm not entirely certain. Reporting the delegate counts as something like "There was an infinitesimally small Clinton victory and the a complete rout in favor of Sanders and as a result Clinton is ahead by two hundred delegates" does kind of feed into Sanders' "The way things work right now is fucked up and bullshit" campaign.
Sanders will turn out to be a relatively effective protest candidate
That would be great, and is what I'm hoping for. Otherwise, I have to say I think it's you that sounds like a dickhead, or, rather, that you're pissed off because I'm effectively harshing a buzz that you don't want to be harshed right now, or at least until Super Tuesday. Regardless, I didn't make it personal. Anyhow, I don't think that Sanders supporters are credulous morons, but I do think that the arguments in support of him, especially since his candidacy has gone well, don't add up, and I haven't been shy about saying so.
It took the Obama administration almost 6 years to figure out how to get things done administratively
I'm not sure this is entirely accurate (though he did make a bunch of dumb mistakes early on). What it really took him till 2014* to do was to fully come to terms with the fact that the Republicans really really did really mean it when they said there was absolutely nothing he could do in negotiations with them (and then do enough catchup work to start doing anything). Since he'd tried to sell himself partly on doing just that negotiating, and had come out of Senate where that negotiating in committees and behind the scenes still happened I think it took a long time for him to give up on it.
Sanders is a Senator too, but he's basically running on "you can't work with these corrupt shits you just have to work to throw them out" I'm guessing he won't be falling prey to that effect, or at least nowhere near as much. (Clinton seems to still be running on the claim that she can do that, but as much as I distrust her judgment I really can't believe she thinks this for real.)
*I think you have to start the count in 2010 rather than 2008, because in 2008 he was still working with a powerful enough Democratic legislature to do some things with them.
311, 312: Thanks. I do just need to understand more about this. I hadn't even been aware of any superdelegate dynamic at play for Obama in '08. I'm gathering that superdelegates have a role only insofar as they may step in at the last moment -- at their peril -- but otherwise are negligible. Is that right?
I'll just look it up later, but I'm off in a minute or two. Really just wanted to register this question for any feedback from you all.
315 -- I dunno. In the few small corners I know something about in detail, the Obama administration's delay had more to do with just getting its act together than it did with a false hope of cutting a deal with Republicans. It's a close question though and I agree that Sanders definitely wouldn't fall victim to the trap you mention.
On superdelegates, agree that they only matter if the vote is extremely close. If there's a clear Sanders majority, everyone will step in line.
The more I think about superdelegates the more I wonder about what they really do at all. It's clear that acting as a power bloc and throwing an election a different way than it would have gone otherwise would be near suicidal for the party, so as far as that goes at least I don't see the value.
My best guess is that they're a good way for the party to signal support during a campaign, or (more importantly) to adjust news coverage through the process. If that's true though it means that a whole lot of them really fucked up this time around, because they all jumped straight to Clinton very early on and that means she doesn't have nearly as much of the ability to make news by having someone important suddenly come out in support of her candidacy*. Having them all just sitting there on her side before the race starts means that basically the only role they could play is to cause a really huge problem for her if some of them start thinking that they'll be left out in the cold if Sanders wins and jump ship. That's the sort of thing that can change 'narrow electoral victory' to 'blowout' with dangerous speed.
*(So, e.g., while trying to staunch the bleeding right now she could have had a couple big figures suddenly endorse her in an attempt to divert the press away from "OMG Sanders wins so much!". But she can't really do that effectively because, well, they're basically all there already.)
That's the sort of thing that can change 'narrow electoral victory' to 'blowout' with dangerous speed.
I think that's why they're there, precisely so that you have a clear winner well in advance of the convention.
The more I think about superdelegates the more I wonder about what they really do at all.
I would assume, from the name, that they are delegates to the national convention. So, perhaps, it's primarily a way to reward party leaders with a spot on the floor.
Also, FWIW, I thought the article linked in 284 was ridiculous and would have said something if RT hadn't.
Having them all just sitting there on her side before the race starts means that basically the only role they could play is to cause a really huge problem for her if some of them start thinking that they'll be left out in the cold if Sanders wins and jump ship
They already served their purpose by scaring the viable candidates away.
322 is probably right - and there was a kind of bandwagon effect where no one wanted to be left out in the cold when Clinton looked around and thought "who do I like/want to reward?"
320 - what I meant wasn't so much the committing to the candidate (though I do think that's what they're for effectively) but in this case jumping ship. If someone who is still refusing to give an endorsement opts for Sanders that (might) give him a minor boost. But if a couple people who had endorsed Clinton publicly change their mind in favor of Sanders that could really damage her a lot. And because it would it would be a huge political risk for any one of them to take so you'd probably see two or three do it (but only when it became clear that he was the odds-on favorite, even if it was small odds, and then a really large number following after as fast as possible if it boosted his numbers even more.
Regarding Coates, his argument makes a lot more sense in the context of Sanders, the nonserious candidate who's only running to make a point. If your aim is just to weigh on the agenda of whoever eventually wins, why not go through the whole card of possible demands?
If there's a significant chance of getting the nomination, though, all sorts of questions about how you go about winning the general election and what you do when you've won become relevant.
Arguably, that's the difference between Coates starting out on the reparations piece (which might have been quite a while ago depending on how long it took him and how painful their edit process is - I started out on my last Politico Europe piece in mid-August, it was in the can at the beginning of October, and it didn't print until two weeks before Christmas) and Coates now saying he'll vote for Sanders. Sanders isn't a thought experiment any more.
321: I believe superdelegates were added after 1972 to prevent another George McGovern. It worked. He was never nominated again.
I'm surprised Bernie gets to be a superdelegate since he's technically an independent. And Jimmy C. still gets a vote!
The story from almost exactly 8 years ago.
A more recent perspective making the same points as above.
A more recent perspective making the same points as above.
That supports my guess:
Superdelegates were added in the 1980s for two reasons. One was practical: It was the only way to ensure that those party leaders could get to the convention, at least as delegates. . . .
326: He enrolled in the Democratic Party last year and caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate, so.
This is only moderately funny and will disappear soon enough (probably already), but it's not good for her that she's ending up on the bad end of memes. I mean, yeah yeah youth vote/etc. But it can't be fun for her or her campaign workers and lots of this stuff is the perfect way to provoke more defensive reactions from her campaign. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of her trouble right now is those defensive reactions.
311: Different constituencies and situations. If the superdelegates are needed to put Clinton over the top, of course she will use them. And they will rescue her. As far as threats and promises, Clinton has the bigger checkbook. The kids will get in line.
Or burn the convention center down. Just kidding.
"But Mayor Daley, the kids are outside. They will get cynical and disillusioned."
"Okay, my delegation goes for George McGovern."
330: I think you're mashing up 1968 and 1972. On purpose? Or are the memories all blurring together?
But all this doesn't matter, we should have more fun. Sanders gets curbstomped in March.
Tigre will give a sigh of relief. I'll go all Mistah Kurtz.
And then Clinton will lose in November and Tigre and Lemieux will blame me, the Left, the dreamy kids.
We will try to protect and preserve and rebuild at the precinct level and the Lemieux types will say "Do we really want the people who gave us President Cruz round here? Let's get serious"
Not a mixup. McGovern was in the race in '68 after Bobby's assassination, as a kind of stand-in and would have been a reasonable choice for RJD to maneuver with.
This all rings a bell with me; I'm sure that's what Bob's referring to.
The 1972 Democratic Convention was lots of fun.
The Illinois primary required voters to select individual delegates, not presidential candidates. Most Illinois delegation members were uncommitted and were controlled or influenced by Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, the leader of the Chicago political machine. The delegation was challenged by McGovern supporters arguing that the results of the primary did not create a diverse enough delegation in terms of women and minorities. The credentials committee, headed by Patricia Roberts Harris, rejected the entire elected delegation, including elected women and minorities, and seated an unelected delegation led by Chicago Alderman William S. Singer, Jesse Jackson and pledged to George McGovern.
331: McGovern in 1968 represented the Bobby Kennedy slate.
I was there watched it on TV.
Reading Coates's original reparations piece and his followup made it pretty clear he would probably back Sanders over Clinton in a "lesser of two evils" type thing. He compared calling out Clinton on reparations to calling out Ted Cruz on women's reproductive rights. That is in no way even remotely flattering to her. I found the Sanders supporters' pushback against Coates a bit obnoxious, because Coates is allowed to have whatever beef he wants with Sanders, and if he wants to push Sanders more on racial justice, that's fine. Sanders's response to BLM shows that he's willing to confess to his mistakes and shortsightedness and work to be a better candidate on places he's not so strong.
All this talk of 1972...we need zombie Hunter S. Thompson to rise from the grave and cover the race.
Maybe Trump will flummox everyone by abruptly announcing that his campaign platform is Acid, Amnesty and Abortion.
Not quite as much fun as 1968 though.
Meanwhile, in the convention hall, Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff used his nominating speech for George McGovern to tell of the violence going on outside the convention hall, saying that "And, with George McGovern as President of the United States, we wouldn't have to have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago!"[27] Mayor Daley responded to his remark with something that the television sound was not able to pick up. Whatever Daley said, Ribicoff replied, "How hard it is to accept the truth!" That night, NBC News had been switching back and forth between the demonstrators being beaten by the police to the festivities over Humphrey's victory in the convention hall, making it clear to the nation that the Democratic party was sorely divided
337: For Coates, I'm pretty sure it was all about getting people to talk about reparations seriously -- so just using the Democratic primary as a way to draw attention.
I wonder if Steinem and Albright's remarks harmed Hillary with women. I saw a lot of intense pushback against them, not just from millennials but also from older women too. It put Hillary in a supremely awkward situation--publicly denouncing them would be bad optics, but not denouncing them makes women think she's ok with sexist attacks on women who don't support her. Feminist thinkpiece writers in the MSM also doubled down (see this article by Jill Filipovic), making the problem worse
As far as electability, check this out. You have a candidate that old people like, and a candidate that young people like. Old people traditionally vote and young people traditionally fail to vote. If you nominate the young people's candidate, are you taking a risk? Or are you improving your chances, because the old people will show up anyway, AND you get the young people?
I found the Sanders supporters' pushback against Coates a bit obnoxious
My own beef with Coates was specifically about his pushback on the Cedric Johnson Jacobin article and dissing of Marxists, in a context where I have been reading Adolph Reed contra Coates for years and some interest in comparable discussions in Europe, where intersectionality is more than just a weapon of divisive interest group politics. And is deeply informed by and committed to Marxian Theory.
And I won't commit to being a Sanders supporter until he lights the first torch.
341: They are called surrogates, and being able to distance the candidate from their remarks is the point.
Jezebel">http://theslot.jezebel.com/bye-chris-christie-you-tremendous-dick-1758263272">Jezebel celebrates the Christie withdrawal
scroll down thru comments and you get this:"what lost him the race before it started was this" embedded picture of Christie smiling laughing arm in arm with Obama. Bothered Republicans, huh
Obama smiling laughing arm in arm with that motherfucking dick Christie bothers the fuck outa me.
Last one. Play nice.
342 is where I've been trying to focus my thoughts. I think it might be the most important part of the electability argument.
Hey bob, sorry to interrupt while you're rolling, but I just saw that I missed the dog condolence thread. I've had 2 dogs who looked very like yours, one still with me, the other dying suddenly 10 years ago this coming Friday. Sorry you lost yours.
As far as electability, check this out. You have a candidate that old people like, and a candidate that young people like.
Or, to make it less schematic:
You have a candidate that old Democrats like and another candidate that old Democrats like slightly less well. There is a candidate that young Democrats like and a candidate that young Democrats like slightly less well.
That is, there are two things to add to what you've said (1) that the pool of voters in the primaries is not the same as in the general election, and doing well with old or young voters in the primaries doesn't guarantee doing well with those categories in the general and (2) as far as I can tell Democrats view both candidates favorably. Before the Iowa caucuses I saw that both Sanders and Clinton had favorability ratings in the 80s among Democrats (and presumably that would only go up in a general election). So voting for one isn't necessarily a sign of disliking the other.
The thing is, just to keep up my shillitude for Hillary, that you'd need the young person's candidate not only to capture the olds + additional youngs, but to not turn any of the olds into Republican voters. A swing voter costs you one vote and gives the other side one vote; turning out an additional voter gives you a vote but doesn't take one from the other side. How many Hillary voters would affirmatively swing to a Republican if the Democrats nominated Sanders? I don't know, and I expect the answer is "not a lot," but with equivalent turnout on both sides to 2012 it would only take 3-4% of the 2012 Obama vote to affirmatively swing in OH, FL, VA and one other state and you've lost the election right there.
I think unless the Republicans successfully manage to nominate Kasich or maybe Rubio-circa-January then some older voters might switch (though I'm not convinced that there's much out there to outweigh years of voting for one party's candidates, especially since the level of dislike seems really minor). But I doubt the numbers are that big, and frankly the Republican party doesn't look very likely to nominate anyone like that. Cruz and Trump are the sort of candidates who scare people into voting for other candidates they don't particularly like, and Bush still has his brother's stink all over him so I don't see that switching any voters over either.
The risk is that you'll get some 'well I'll just sit this one out then so there' reactions with Sanders, but I think 342 is right. The voters that might be trouble for Sanders are in the group that's least known for doing it and the ones that might be trouble for Clinton (and I suspect more trouble than the others would be for Sanders) are the demographic that's most likely to do that (for whatever reason).
342/350:
Also, I think high young person turnouts in the primaries/caucuses aren't going to just go away in the general.
349
But the question is, is that balanced by the 2-3% of voters Obama lost because of his race? Presumably white Democrat X picks up those voters again.
It's high young person turnout (so far) relative to other people who show up at Democratic primaries. But about 50,000 more people total voted in the 2008 NH Democratic primary, and (280k v. 230k, roughly).
Also, I think high young person turnouts in the primaries/caucuses aren't going to just go away in the general.
Wasn't youth turnout lower than in 2008? Just looking up Iowa, in 2008 17-29 year-olds were 22% of the pool, and in 2016 they were 18%.
I also agree with 351. No reason that young primary voters won't vote in the general election. Also, there's a generation vs. cohort conflation going on here. The apathetic young people in the 90s aren't the same young people now. There does seem to be a pretty perduring generational effect, but we also have a new generation of politicized young people realizing how much they've been screwed over structurally, so applying Gen X sociology to young Millennials seems inaccurate.
354
I don't think incumbent Obama after a meh first term vs. Romney is a good comparison. Sanders would be more like 2008 in terms of youth excitement, and his opposition would be orders of magnitude more repugnant than Romney. The threat of a president Cruz would get a lot of people out.
354
Oh oops, somehow I thought you were comparing 2008-2012. I do think that for the general election Sanders can get something approaching Obama 2008 levels of youth turnout, especially given the nutcases on the Republican side.
355: 2008 young voters were also Millennials. Gen Xers were in their 30s and up then.
I do think that nobody's talking about 352. Probably best not to--it's just too uncertain, and could be wishcasting--but there's a potentially huge, heretofore unrealized/hidden. advantage here.
358
Right, and Millennials came out higher than they have in decades in 2008. This graph shows that from 2004 onward (the first Millennial election), the youth vote is lower than older voters but much higher than the Gen X youth vote in the 90s, adjusting for charisma effects. (That is, if we compare charismatic candidates to each other and wet noodles to each other, Clinton I gets lower youth turnout than Obama, and wet noodles Bush I/Dukakis (you can throw in Gore too, though I think he's more charismatic than the others) get fewer votes than wet noodle Kerry. In fact, despite having the charisma of styrofoam, Kerry gets a youth turnout approaching Clinton I levels, probably because young people turned out to vote against GWB.*) Incumbents appear to depress youth turnout, though Obama in 2012 still got way more than Clinton in 1996. My guess is the line will tick back up again this year, and if the Republicans nominate Cruz or Trump, may equal or even surpass Obama-levels in 2008 (that might be wishful thinking).
*I did a little volunteering for the Kerry campaign in college for this exact reason.
Clinton I gets lower youth turnout than Obama, and wet noodles Bush I/Dukakis (you can throw in Gore too, though I think he's more charismatic than the others) get fewer votes than wet noodle Kerry. In fact, despite having the charisma of styrofoam, Kerry gets a youth turnout approaching Clinton I levels, probably because young people turned out to vote against GWB.*)
I don't know if I see a trend, except that youth turnout was really low in '88, '96' and '2000. Those look like outliers (I don't remember '88, but '96 was a boring presidential election, and 2000 was weird in that there were a lot of people pushing the "no major difference between the two parties" line -- an idea that was hopefully killed by that election). If you take those years out it looks like it's been steadily just above 40%, with bumps in 92 and 2008 (and 2008 looks barely higher than 92).
Right, and Millennials came out higher than they have in decades in 2008.
Even though he won, those entitled millennials really let us down by not showing up to vote for FDR.
Literally zero millennials turned out for the 1932 election
Anyhow, the real question is not just whether additional youth turn out for Sanders, but whether their turning out increases Dem turnout substantially beyond what it otherwise would be with Hillary (eg, you might see a tradeoff of youth for the minority vote, with who knows what effect). And, if there's a genuine swing voter effect, Sanders needs to turn out additional voters who are more than 2x the number of people he swings to the Republicans. This is what makes it so attractive for candidates to tack to the middle, generally.
363 not meant to imply that there are no minority youth. Except in New Hampshire, where there really aren't.
363
Right. If Sanders barely wins the primary by getting all the white Democrat vote and doing really poorly with minorities, then I would expect a depressed minority turnout to be a real possibility. If he wins the primary by attracting the minority vote away from Clinton, I think he'd have a much better chance in the general of getting out the Dem base to offset any conservative Dems who decide to switch.* I also think if Hillary wins she could energize the youth vote, but she really needs to switch her campaign tone towards youth. Asking people to write things "in emoji" and/or insulting young women isn't going to help rally the youth vote when it's important.
*It also depends on the Republican candidate. Kasich would pull more centrists than Cruz.
Anyhow, it looks like 18% of the voters in the NH Dem primary in 2008 were 18-29, and 19% in 2016 (in an overall turnout about 15% smaller than in 2008). So I dunno if the story is an increase in young people turning out for Sanders so much as a stunning, overwhelming preference of young people for one of the two candidates in the primary.
Why Hillary Clinton Does Not Deserve the Black Vote
...Nation, yesterday, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
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Via a friend monitoring the situation: it sounds as though the FBI has moved in to clear out the rest of the militants at Malheur. Live feed.
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This is so weird. If it turned out to be a War of the Worlds–type theater piece, I wouldn't be surprised. I never expected to encounter the postmodern condition out in southeast Oregon.
I feel like people are sleeping a bit on the impact of what is expected to be a greatly increased turnout among Hispanics in the general election for 2016 (both in absolute numbers and in percentage who vote), and I expect that the increase will not vary much depending who the Democratic nominee is.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-01-19/hispanic-voting-power-swells-to-record-for-2016-pew-study-says
That only makes the rise of Trump more wonderful.
368: Thank goodness Michele Fiore is there to negotiate reasonably.
"We told them we were recording this live stream! They didn't care!" The FBI is really scary and unreasonable.
"They aren't going to arrest me without my weapons!!"
I think there are a lot of concepts these people have trouble with.
Second Amendment, dude. They're real clear on that.
"We're being reasonable and they won't negotiate!" Little late for that, ma'am.
Sandy is insisting on a reasonable compromise where she walks out with her weapon and then she goes home and not to jail. She's tired of arguing with people who don't understand that she does not have to go into court.
"They're using sneaky tactics like getting up close to us!"
The FBI is so unfair.
That Franklin Graham is on the line with them is... weird.
Why are they camping in a parking lot? Don't they still have access to the refuge buildings?
I mean, I guess now they definitely don't, but I thought they still did before the FBI moved in tonight.
Did the FBI move into the buildings?
They're apparently saying to call the Grant County sheriff who will protect then. After all, since county sheriffs outrank the FBI on federal property, it stands to reason that the sheriff from the next county over must outrank the local sheriff.
Listening to the livestream. Scary/trippy. Nevada assemblymember and Franklin Graham on the phone as the final four demand their egos be stroked. From the political perspective the assemblymember is ridiculously egostroking and appeasing, but she's also talking like a suicide counselor - Paraphrase: "I'm going to want some coffee when I make it out there, you're going to have some coffee for me, right? I'm speeding, I'll need you to pay my tickets, ha-ha!"
Verbatim: "I just want you guys to stay calm and stay with me... we need you guys alive so we can continue to make sure this doesn't happen anymore, to take back our land."
Oh god, this one is referencing Braveheart.
Please please oh please god don't let them recreate the kilt scene.
Did I just hear one misapply, and possibly misname, Occam's Razor? Apparently the answer is always "government incompetence."
Someone did name Occam's Razor but in context it's not unreasonable - government incompetence, as opposed to malice, as the reason different people are hearing different things on what the FBI's stance.
Sure, it just seemed like a weirdly unnecessary and ironic argument by authority. Slowing down isn't a bad idea, but isn't going to help them get out of this alive and free.
I stopped listening because they're pissing me off and I don't want to hear them die.
When do they run out of slim kind and fruit roll ups?
When do they run out of meth is probably the real question here.
They don't need meth, they're high on Jesus life guns huffing 10W30 from a crumpled-up Wal-Mart bag.
Bern the beat around/socialist discussion
Bern it upside down/NoDak oil starts gushin'
395, 396: They actually seem to be potheads more than anything.
Dumbasses, only one of the four was facing charges as of last week, now they all are.
Apparently they're now saying they'll turn themselves in tomorrow morning. We'll see.
And so it ends, not with a whimper, but with something like a whimper, except less dignified and intelligent.
Well, it hasn't actually ended yet. They could still unexpectedly open fire while pretending to give themselves up.
Nah, we don't live in that just a world.
I don't want to hear them die
Maybe Franklin Graham, though.
Holy shit Cliven Bundy was en route and has been detained and arrested on charges related to the 2014 standoff if what I'm reading is true.
407: seems so, at least he's been arrested though the last I saw the FBI weren't disclosing the charges.
383: "FBI tactical teams infiltrated refuge buildings undetected overnight Tuesday and into Wednesday"
407: That's amazing. So why did they do that? Three ideas:
1. General policy change--anyone who was at the 2014 standoff is fair game.
2. They really didn't want him there complicating things and this was their best tool to keep him away.
3. A general warning that if anyone from 2014 tries to do this again, they can and will be stopped proactively.
Leaning towards some combination of 2 and 3.
I'm kind of delighted that Cliven Bundy is my new neighbor, at least for a while. As I mentioned at the other place, if he'd ridden a horse to Malheur like a real cowman, he wouldn't have been arrested at the Portland airport. Not the first country boy to be ruined by the temptations of the city, I guess.
410 Yeah, he definitely had to be detained to keep him away from Malheur and stirring up more trouble but I wouldn't be surprised if it's also the first time he's stepped foot off of his own property since the standoff.
409: Hahahaha.
Although that does seem risky, in the shootout-provoking sense. But given how careful the Feds have been, I'll assume they were really confident they could pull this off without a shootout.
Also perhaps they were pissed at him materially supporting the occupation from a distance - he may have been egging on the final four as well, I'm not sure.
413: Somehow I doubt they were that disciplined in making sure someone was on watch at all times.
414: Not, like, my upstairs neighbor, thank God. All that lumbering around and cussing about the gubmint would drive me nuts, not to mention the smell of the cattle.
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Can we have a thread in which our resident physicists can translate into English what the good folks from LIGO have to say, as it will no doubt be as incomprehensible to the laity as it is important.
|>
as it will no doubt be as incomprehensible to the laity as it is important.
Important? Gravitational waves? How will that change anything?
The sun will continue to revolve around the earth just it has for thousands and thousands of years.
Good evening, sir! Checking in?
-- Yup.
Can I have your name?
-- Cliven Bundy.
Occupation?
-- No, just visiting.
410: Getting off a plane is probably one of the (few) situations in which the FBI could be certain he wasn't carrying a gun or with someone (like his "bodyguard" or other hangers on) who was.
But also I'm guessing added attention meant they felt they had to do something and he was clearly trying to show up and make an already touchy situation into a really, really dangerous one so they weren't about to let him show up at the ranch.
See, they should be challenging the whole TSA can't bring a gun on a plane regime. What part of "shall not be infringed" does the Kenyan Islamosocialist not understand?
AISIMHATT, during the 2014 thing I had dinner with an old friend, whose husband had had dinner shortly before with the head of the BLM. The word them was the identities were being thoroughly established, and arrests would be made one by one. I've been supposing that political considerations had gotten in the way, but now that it's clear that failing to arrest people only lends credibility to their childish fantasies about ownership of the public domain, I'm hoping that it comes back around.
I would like to see charges under 18 USC 2384, though, because that's what the Malheur thing was.
I wonder if they're concerned about constitutionality? They needn't be, with this court, imo.
re: 418
Big stuff bashed into other big stuff. Ripples ensued?
[Written before reading the comic linked in 421, which is good.]
419: My parents drowned when a gravitational wave capsized their boat, you monster.
425: It's a good thing I forgot to sign 419.
Oops.
Re: LIGO, Sabine Hossenfelder has a slightly more technical discussion at her blog.
Hundreds of millions of years ago, a primitive form of life crawled out of the water on planet Earth and opened their eyes to see, for the first time, the light of the stars. Detecting gravitational waves is a momentous event just like this - it's the first time we can receive signals that were previously entirely hidden from us, revealing an entirely new layer of reality.
So -- almost as big a deal as Taco Bell' inventing the Quesalupa?
It's crazy all the sizes involved here. Two black holes each 30 times the mass of the sun and moving at half the speed of light 1.3 billion years ago over a thousand billion billion miles away made gravitational waves which we detected by shooting lazers down pipes 2.5 miles long to find that the distance changed by a thousandth of the width of a proton. This was all done at two different locations so you can check that the same signal appeared at both 7 milleseconds apart (matching the time it took for the gravitational wave to move between the two locations). I hate to get all IFLS here, but damn.
Taco Bell' inventing the Quesalupa
When I saw that commercial, I thought it was just a glorified empanada, which made me think "Huh, I'm surprised Taco Bell didn't make empanadas years ago." And then I realized that (1) the Quesalupa is not an empanada; and (2) if Taco Bell ever did empanadas, they'd have to give it some crazy name and cover it with Doritos powder or something.
From the other place: "The black hole collision that LIGO just detected lasted only 20 milliseconds. But during that time 3x the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational wave energy, and the collision briefly emitted 50x more power than all of the stars in the universe."
You guys have a nice sublime and ridiculous rhythm going here.
This was all done at two different locations so you can check that the same signal appeared at both 7 milleseconds apart (matching the time it took for the gravitational wave to move between the two locations).
This reminds me of the somewhat embarrassing incident in the early days of gravity wave detection research when a physicist claimed that a signal had been detected "simultaneously" at 2 detectors located in different parts of the country. It was later found that he had failed to correct for the difference across time zones, and the "simultaneous" signals were in fact hours apart.
Oops.
I saw a talk by a guy who did some of the original gravitational wave detection work on an instrument that had a big mass suspended in a vacuum chamber. They found that every morning around 8 AM they got a huge signal that was obviously noise. They had no idea what it was until they stationed somebody to watch the detector at the appropriate time. It turns out that the maintenance guy would hit the vacuum chamber with a wrench when he came in every morning because he liked the deep resonant "bonggg" sound it made. They asked him to stop and the detector went on to discover jack shit. The End.
Is it true that a spacecraft specifically designed to "surf" gravitational waves as they travel across the universe would facilitate intergalactic exploration?
There's nothing ridiculous about Taco Bell. Junk food is as much a product of science as gravitational waves.
440: Gravitational waves move at the speed of light, so not unless you're willing to spend millions of years on it.
The black hole collision that LIGO just detected lasted only 20 milliseconds. But during that time 3x the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational wave energy, and the collision briefly emitted 50x more power than all of the stars in the universe
My fart seems so insignificant now.
442 is disappointing, although even speed of light travel seems like it would be a big improvement from what we have now.
Junk food is as much a product of science as gravitational waves.
More so. Margaret Thatcher and her colleagues had to do science to make soft scoop ice cream feasible, but gravitational waves would be there whether any scientists looked for them or not.
I would clarify 447, but I think I'll just leave it there for now.
440 is, I think, thinking of the Alcubierre drive, q.v.
The speed of light is disappointing? Really? You know we're never going to even hit that, right?
I would definitely hit that if I could.
451: Yes, yes, and yes. Dreams die painfully.
It always seemed so effortless on Star Trek .
452: Everyone post your SAT scores and the physical constant you most fetishize.
453: New knowledge makes for different dreams.
455.2: Age diminishes. Now I dream I will sleep through the night without having to go to the bathroom. This dream doesn't come true either.
438 and 452 are wonderful.
On the Malheur front, it looks like they're finally walking out. I can't stop listening to the live feed, though, partly because the people involved are so spectacularly delusional, and partly because the alternative is the local public radio network's pledge drive.
Can't believe people in my FB feed are taking Bernie Sanders' promises about intergalactic spacecraft seriously. He's a good guy, but that's just unrealistic.
438 is the best thing I've seen so far this year. If I'd been that janitor I'd have done that too.
Oh that's a total straw man. Sanders has a lot of integrity but he also has a strong plan for pushing the Democratic coalition in a superluminal spacetravel direction, which would go a long way to making intergalactic travel possible even if all we get during his term is interplanetary travel.
On the Malheur front, it looks like they're finally walking out.
They were waiting for the official announcement that gravity waves have been detected.
Maybe we'll finally get universal healthcare for all Americans on Proxima Centauri.
459 - If I'd been that janitor I would have been too embarrassed to swing the wrench while observed. And so the phenomenon would have remained, like Schrodinger's cat, forever a mystery.
Lone, screaming, Bible- and Patrick Henry–quoting holdout remains! This ain't over, federal government! That said, declaring war against the United States was probably not the best idea.
Anyone listening to the live feed? This dude is seriously unhinged and unfortunately being talked to by amateurs who are half goading him.
Lone holdout: 'The Roman government paid for abortions.'
Negotiator person: 'But Jesus paid taxes to that government.'
I hear they're all a lot like Jesus. I bet he would have approved.
I really do wonder how long it's going to take for it to sink into them that they really will have to be arrested and they really do not have any basis to negotiate some kind of thing that will make them feel like they won this thing.
"No David - people in prison like patriots!"
I'm going to bookmark 460 as a sort of calming device for the next few months.
'I'm afraid of being abused in prison.'
Should have thought of that before you broke the law, yes?
465 ff: I can't stop listening. This is spectacular. The quote in 468 dropped my jaw.
Meanwhile, I imagine if I were one of the FBI agents, I'd be having my coffee, catching up on emails and waiting for this dude to pass out.
"I will personally deliver you the pizza of your choice!"
471 - 466.2 definitely real. 466.1 I'm pretty sure I heard, not 100% certain.
They're just making goofy promises to get him out. One of them said that after he comes out he will get a pizza.
And now that the FBI is clearly disinterested in a dramatic shootout he's threatening suicide.
471 Yup, I heard it myself.
He says he's pointing a gun at his head. Seriously considering turning this feed off.
471: Yes. And now the guy's saying he going to kill himself, because Christ.
'But David, that's not what Christ would do.'
"Jesus wasn't suicidal."
"Jesus *was* suicidal!"
Space travel works a lot better under socialism. Look what the Soviets were able to pull off. And the Great Society put a man on the moon.
I think we could really make progress resolving problems with income/wealth inequality by putting everyone with more than 100 million dollars to their name on a spacecraft and shooting it off towards, I dunno, Alpha Centauri. We could even let them take it with them in the form of, I dunno, cashiers checks.
"All I needed was my marijuana"
"You guys won't even let me have my marijuana." Dude, you're in fucking Oregon.
'All I needed was my marijuana.'
Unbelievable.
It looks like Cliven Bundy is getting the book thrown at him.
"All I needed was marijuana. You guys wouldn't even let me have my marijuana!"
I feel you, bro.
In good news Cliven Bundy is being being charged with assault, rather than a minor interfering with an agent of the federal government charge. So that's nice to hear at least.
Also, man, no one tell this guy you can't get marijuana in prison.
David: "I want to go home"
"David, that's in God's hands not yours"
Can they get a fucking professional negotiator in there. These people have no idea what the fuck they're doing.
'I think most of America needs to realize that they should have been here.'
Can someone just get this guy a joint? Maybe a couple joints? He needs to be talked down.
Dude just came out against watching football. Apo, are you going to stand for that?
"Why can [people concerned about Trayvon Martin] riot but we can't?" I...what.
Can they get a fucking professional negotiator in there. These people have no idea what the fuck they're doing.
So, what negotiator training have you been to?
492: He has made statements like that throughout this whole ridiculous affair. He's really, really pissed that black people can just riot with impunity.
492: That's why I've been calling the whole thing the Harney County White Privilege Festival.
Seriously, they need to get this guy a joint of the best the state has to offer, and get him to put down the gun.
I wonder if handing him very strong pot would dope him up enough that people could just walk in and take the guns away.
I'm imagining the negotiator's voice as Hal-9000. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave".
495: Not to take away from the general point, but this guy looks like he might sometimes be on the other side of white privilege.
493: Watched several Priceline Negotiator commercials many times.
(excerpt from my resume)
493 The Denzel movie was ok. But seriously, are you listening to this? "I want to go home" was a good opening to work with and that crazy constitutionalist has been calling the dude a coward numerous times when he's been talking about suicide.
498: Point taken, but I still don't believe that a bunch of guys his color would have been permitted to stay as long.
Somebody please explain the Hyde Amendment to this guy.
This whole situation could be defused with some marijuana and a pizza.
"Me surrendering is just you doing your job. I'm not going to let you walk away with clean hands. I'm going to give you dirty hands."
Apparently he's a Messianic Jew? It seems like the negotiator didn't do any research on him at all.
Really not helping the marijuana cause here, Dave.
All the Yaw talk reminds me of the Yahweh! guy.
A woman is walking up with a sign saying "I'M NOT ISIS I'M GRAMMA HONEY BUNNY", flanked by two men with upside-down flags.
Given the way he's talking I kind of suspect that legal marijuana might have helped this guy. I'm not remotely convinced they're going to get him out of there alive though.
So it's not the FBI talking with him right now, it's more that a couple of people vaguely on his side are trying to coax him out? That would explain the non-professional-negotiating bit.
He needs a mental health professional on the line and these clowns need to hang up.
But seriously, are you listening to this?
Yep. But I have no real basis for thinking it could be going better with a nutjob like Fry.
I kind of suspect that legal marijuana might have helped this guy.
I don't know that I'd assume that.
What the negotiator is saying: "We have entire states standing up. Arizona...Texas... People are rising up everywhere."
Something about it taking 15 years to rise up in the American Revolution, and "we're" going faster now.
Something about it taking 15 years to rise up in the American Revolution
15 years from 1775 takes us to 1760, which was the middle of the 7 Years War/French and Indian War. Say what?
"I should have called one of the Muslim clerics." What?
Dude thinks we destroyed "...Syria, that was a democracy, a pretty good country." Says we're complicit in paying to destroy it and other Middle East countries (fair point about the other countries bit).
So it's not the FBI talking with him right now
Now that I've been listening for a few, I don't think so. I've never seen a negotiation with multiple people on the line like that. They don't sound like law enforcement to me.
Every time KrissAnne Hall talks to him he gets riled up and when Graham talks to him he gets calmer (also when he talks to the FBI guy on the phone, it sounds like). She's making it a lot worse.
"Our government needs to stop chemically mutating people."
517: Yeah, not. I haven't been able to tell if he's got somebody on another line, though.
It's a bunch of right-wing internet radio types (Gavin something or other) and this KrissAnne Hall, another right-wing constitution fetishist and that right-wing Nevada assemblywoman.
He asked them all to say hallelujah, saying if they do, he'd come out. Numerous voices did.
I think there's an FBI negotiator on the cell phone they gave him.
521: What the shit Barry, you had me thinking they were talking to the FBI on this feed, not some other constitutionalist nuts.
It sounds like it's resolved now - the hallelujah stuff worked.
Honestly I thought that sounds like something someone might request before they pull the trigger, but glad it's apparently ended well.
524 Fuck no! Weren't you listening? There was an FBI guy on teh phone but you could barely hear even David when he was talking to him. Whenever he did talk to the guy on the cell he emerged calmer.
Phew. Of course these guys need mental health treatment which prison will probably not provide effectively or at all, but who knows if they'd be receptive even in a Norwegian jail.
the hallelujah stuff worked
I predict some Oregon MJ dispensary will start selling a "Hallelujah" strain.
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Kevin Drum tried to figure out why Millenials are breaking so strongly for Sanders. He looks at a couple hypotheses, doesn't find any of them completely convincing and ends up saying that he thinks the question is worth asking, but that he doesn't have a good answer.
Worth reading.
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529 To be clearer the FBI gave them a cell phone and whenever you heard David speaking on it the feed got muted but he always came back to the feed with a calmer and more rational. Then the crazy wingnuts on the feed would fuck it all up. Glad it's over and he's alive. I suspect some serious mental health issues going on there.
Given the way he's talking I kind of suspect that legal marijuana might have helped this guy.
And despite being in a legalization state, they went and did the one thing that could still get the feds there to charge them for recreational possession.
Agree with everything in 533.
"This is a testimony to God...because you know what Gavin we are not professionals."
532: Surely the answer is lead exposure.
533 Ok I can't type tonight. I need marijuana. And a pizza.
529: Actually it was others that called them negotiators, not you. You fuckers!
I predict some Oregon MJ dispensary will start selling a "Hallelujah" strain.
If they haven't already. You would not believe the growth of the pot business here in just a few months. Pot shops are popping up like Starbucks did at the height of their expansion.
they went and did the one thing that could still get the feds there to charge them for recreational possession
What? Using on federal property?
I never thought I'd be saying something like this but kudos to the FBI and other involved LEOs. That could have ended with a lot more bloodshed followed by another Oklahoma City or the like. Well done.
541: Yes, better than I expected, and now the judiciary can take it from here.
532: The kids lack experience and don't yet realize that the best they can hope for is to hang on to whatever gains we've made in the short-term while the world bakes in the long-term.
540: The occupation itself. Not "the one thing", I'm being dramatic, but if they find any on the campsite, I doubt they'll feel qualms about adding it to the charges.
Looks like it's time for the Clinton campaign surrogates to get really nasty with Sanders. They do need to keep the narrative about Sanders being unable to appeal to minorities alive, though, and there's no way that won't help them do it.
Also it seems to me that Drum is kind of missing an important possibility, maybe just due to trying to start this way: If you can avoid the condescension that typically poisons this topic...
The Clinton campaign has managed a really nasty own goal when it comes to millennial support by responding to questions about why they tended to break for Sanders (in smaller numbers than we're seeing now) by saying that they're naive and easily seduced by silly or fruitless pursuits which just happen to sound nice. Even leaving aside the obvious point where being really condescending and nasty towards a group is a poor way to convince them to support you, one of the biggest appeals of Sanders is that he was very explicitly talking about some of the biggest concerns of that age group when no one else was. So it's not just condescension in the sense of "you people are just frivolous ninnies" it's also "your issues don't matter" as well. And the graph that shows a general drift followed by an huge shift away from over like five days in early January makes total sense if it's a reaction to that message, and especially if it's a reaction to that mixed with the kind of shift you see when a lot of people really like a candidate but think he's unelectable seeing a rise in his support.
I'm having a hard time trying to get nasty toward the Clintons. There have always been plenty of people who are willing to go there though.
I can't believe it's not the Onion
545 is as disappointing as 548 is hilarious.
Pun unintended but not bad, really.
As an Oregonian, I say we should build a yuge wall on the Nevada border and make Nevada pay for it.
Speaking of grazing rights, I'm not sure if this impressively off-kilter example of a federal district judge has been linked.
Her next trick will be mailing every millennial a special Hillary-signature commemorative CD of the Coldplay appearance at SB50.
I get why 548 is supposed to be funny, but it just seems petty to me. So the Clinton campaign is advertising on AOL. So what? There's no evidence that they think that's the best way to reach younger voters, or that that's the cornerstone of their online media strategy. They bought an ad. Big deal.
554 was my reaction. Very possibly explicitly intended as older-voter outreach - or just online saturation.
548 is amazing. It's truly great.
Because I couldn't help but read some of the comments at that Drum article it's also worth pointing out that the phrases "young voters" and "millennial generation" (used together or as synonyms) are becoming increasingly awkward as the years go by. Half the articles you read about them seem to be working under the basic assumption that these are idealistic college kids, hey look at them go with their youthful enthusiasm*. And it's true! Many of them are! But the generation is typically taken to have started somewhere in, what, 1981? Some of those millennial voters are interested in more heavily subsidized college educations because they're worried about the expenses involved in helping their (right now) high school aged children pay for college.
I saw at least one person saying that college kids are still too naive to understand how post-Reagan politics works. I'm not sure it's the young people who are failing to understand things here...
*And going to college campuses and rallies to talk to his supporters feeds into that some more.
551: Yeah, but Idaho too, and some of Washington. Plus the coast, because of the tsunami.
554, 555 I can see that reaction but I was primed to think it was funny because I saw a millennial sarcastically tweet it and frame it as part of Hillary's millennial outreach.
"551: Yeah, but Idaho too, and some of Washington. Plus the coast, because of the tsunami."
At least we have the Snake and Columbia Rivers on part of those borders. Cowboys usually don't swim besides being weighed down with spurs, six shooters, and all.
Cowboys usually don't swim besides being weighed down with spurs, six shooters, and all.
Also, who wants to swim in a river full of snakes?
547 reminds me just how much terrible press the Clintons get.
In that case, I think it's a legitimate story, and that it makes sense why it's being reported and why people would have problems with it. But, given all of the discussion here about articles having subtle biases against Sander, the linked piece isn't at all subtle. It's a straight up attack against Clinton.
It's an attack piece, sure. It's also by Conor Fucking Friedersdorf. That's a little different from unfair attacks against Bernie by mainstream/liberal journalists, from whom we ought to be able to expect better.
Dude, the NYT straight-up invented an FBI investigation of Clinton, and it's now a GOP talking point until the end of time. Sanders supporters complaining about how the press has written* about Sanders are out of their fucking minds. Bob Somberly suffered and died in vain.
*how they've not written, especially in the early days, is a more legitimate complaint
556: Drum has a post up discussing millennial parents.
563- Except that when the press did mention him it was always in mockery. Look at this ridiculous old hippie who has no chance was typical of the tone.
Obviously I'm not claiming the Clintons don't get unreasonable bad press. Sanders also has gotten, and will continue to get unreasonable bad press, intensifying as he become a more likely nominee.
Of course some will cheer 'ding dong the wicked witch is dead.' Maybe Sanders will get a certain amount of honeymoon after all, but I have no illusions that any Democrat will get a fair deal from the press over the long haul.
I think roger is right here. Clinton gets plenty of bullshit from the press. And if she's the nominee we'll be seeing a new "DID CLINTON FAKE THE MOON LANDING!? ANONYMOUS SOURCES LINKED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR SAY YES" story every two days in the NYT. But the second they were forced to mention Sanders in any serious way the Clinton stuff dropped off a fair bit (still there, but...) and was replaced with "Pshaw, that fairy tale candidate of foolish children is no match for Wise Pragmatic Leader Clinton" stuff. Large parts of the press are longing for an exciting Republican president, as far as I can tell, but they still clearly would prefer a race where Clinton was the Democratic party nominee (if only as a fallback in case Trump is the Republican one, I suspect), rather than the demon Sanders.
I don't disagree that Clinton gets terrible press, and I don't have a view on which of the candidates gets or will get worse press. (Clinton certainly has endured more bad press over the long haul.) 562 was just noting that anyone expecting anything other than a dishonest attack piece from Conor Fucking Friedersdorf is out of their fucking mind.
I don't disagree with any of that. I'd just say three things
1) There's nothing new in Clinton getting bad press, but occasionally it's annoying.
2) To the extent I was saying anything about Sanders it would just be this. In a previous thread somebody said that they thought Sanders could win in the general campaign as long as he was treated fairly by the press. It's worth remembering that every single campaign can claim, with justification, that they have to deal with bullshit from the press.
3) WRT to urple's comment, the link wasn't identified as being Conor Friedersdorf and by the time I got to his byline (at the bottom of the article) I was already annoyed.
Now that I'm thinking about it though, I wonder what will happen if Sanders sticks around long enough to get past the "Homeric-epithet-and-sneering-dismissal*" phase. The Clinton-Rules are established to the point where they're practically just playing mad libs and filling in a new random accusation every few weeks. And I can see them trying that with Sanders, but you can only go on about how he's an unrealistic or unelectable idealist who couldn't get things done for so long. And if he keeps racking up decent numbers of votes and doesn't get blown out a few times in a row it's going to start feeling stale.
Clinton style cynical-underhanding-calculating-malfeasance-bitch stuff isn't going to translate well if they've been selling him as the exact opposite for a few months and "he's a socialist socialist that's for sure" has a lot of repeat value but you can't really get many scoops or new angles there. (Is it going to go to Obama-style secret communist infiltrator stuff? Probably. Is that going to work? Probably about as well as it did before.) "He isn't actually principled" is a hard line to sell if you've already committed to the exact opposite attack (not that that's stopping the Clinton campaign from trying both at once), but only because one or the other is going to stick in the electorate and the other will be mostly dismissed. This isn't really an argument about electability (though I still suspect Sanders is more electable than the conventional wisdom says, and Clinton less) because whatever shows up it's almost certainly going to be a completely invented fiction by the Republican party**. Mostly I'm just curious about how it'll turn out.
*"Well, purity-pony Sanders is obviously not electable, only naive children think he's saying anything worth listening to and we're all savvy professionals here. Now on to other news..."
**I found the "Kerry has a strong record and there's almost nothing in there that they can reasonably attack him for!" arguments completely infuriating because by then it was overwhelmingly obvious that the Republicans and most of the press had no intention of being constrained by things like "not just flat out making up stuff and yelling it over and over until people thought it made sense".
570-3 Sorry about that. I knew I was being a stinker but I didn't really think it through.
"Clinton has a cozy relationship with evil banks and that ain't cool" actually strikes me as fairly reasonable criticism.
573: Probably, but CFF has a track record such that I wouldn't trust him if he wrote a column about how Trump is a blowhard ignoramus who appeals to racism and xenophobia.
Probably worth noting that HRC's press in 1992 was of the same tone as Sanders' now: she was a shrill feminist liberal back when liberal was "the L-word". The American press has a long history of being dismissive towards anyone remotely left. And they have no problem pivoting to other, often flatly contradictory, lines of attack.
573 is true, but I can't actually vouch for the specifics of Conor's attack and I knew that when I posted it. I also didn't specifically endorse the link,
In her last debate with Sanders HRC said that she didn't change her vote based on campaign donations or speaking fees. I think she is telling the truth about that, and that seems to meet the current legal standard, but I don't think that standard is high enough. When she talks to them she knows what they want to hear. When she decides on a position she knows what big donors like. Obviously she likes money. I'm sure she is brilliant at staying on that line of what is both legal and generally accepted. I don't claim to be better than her or even to know many people better than her. If I think I see an opportunity to vote for someone who sets a higher standard, I may worry that I'm being tricked or unrealistic, but ultimately I feel like the chance is worth taking, Otherwise I'm afraid America is going to go down the tubes in pretty short order.
I can't actually vouch for the specifics of Conor's attack and I knew that when I posted it. I also didn't specifically endorse the link,
But he's citing the Wall Street Journal, it must be accurate . . .
Seriously, I don't mind you posting the article, I think it was a useful comparison to 545. For that matter it may well be correct, I fully believe that Clinton has done things that fall into the category of, "legal but doesn't look good"* -- I also think it's difficult to talk about, "how much of a problem is this" because there are so many more-or-less-true accusations against Clinton that it isn't practical to spend an hour or two on each one trying to figure out what actually happened, and what the real story is.
* I think somebody here speculated that the Clintons have so much experience being attacked regardless of whether or not they had done anything wrong that it makes them less likely to care about, "would this look good." If true, that's not a great defense, but also psychologically reasonable.
I'm afraid America is going to go down the tubes in pretty short order.
If only there were someone we could vote for who would Make America Great Again.
JRoth's 563 is a correct summary of the press coverage.
I'll add that the sorts of media coverage that are being criticized here are often quite reasonable. It's sensible to question Bernie's electability and Hillary's coziness with malefactors of great wealth.
I'm willing to believe that Clinton has never done anything as blatant as voting for something based on money someone gave her (in any form). But the obvious point about her "never changed a vote based on donations" line is that that's really not how corruption works, at all. I doubt most cases of influence peddling or corruption look especially like quid-pro-quo deals, or at least by the time they do the rot has set in a long, long time ago.
When powerful interests buy influence they don't usually just hand politicians bags with "$" printed on the side in exchange for a particular vote (or if there are any that are still stuck at that level.. call me because I can explain how to do it better in exchange for a huge consulting fee and also stop reading right now.) They just give people stuff (small or large) or regularly invite them to lunches or prestigious parties where other important people are or pay them lots of money to do something. Human psychology does the rest at that point, because when they do that they're (mostly respectively but all three for all three) making you feel subtly obligated to consider their interests as important because they're considering yours that way; surrounding you with a lot of people who think the same thing as they do so it feels like natural obvious stuff that all reasonable people believe rather than something that actually is pretty blatantly bullshit*; and making you feel like they're the kind of people who really respect you in a way that other people who aren't doing that don't and so when someone attacks them you feel like you should have their back.
And if they're paying you a huge amount to give a speech to them then, obviously, you're not going to deliver some speech telling them they're awful or need to be prosecuted you're going to say the opposite (unless you are Sanders, I guess). But it doesn't matter why you're saying (repeatedly, while being flattered a great deal) whatever it is, the more times you say it the more truthful or reasonable or obvious it feels to you - even if you are deliberately being insincere when you do it. That's why it's one of the most characteristic/easy/obvious examples of how this kind of stuff works.
*"Henry Kissinger said I was a great Secretary of State!"
577- Don't tempt me. I know he's a con artist. I know he doesn't care at all about the truth values of his statement. I know that he has no idea how to do what he says. I'd still be a little tempted to vote for him in a match up with HRC. Really tempted if she won via super delegates.
"If you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, fuck their whores, and still vote against their bill, then you don't belong in the California Legislature" said Jesse Unruh, noted tool of industry who never accomplished anything progressive.
Everything that Sanders claims to want to go back to in terms of American progressivism was, in practice, built on something like that principle (see e.g. LBJ) and there's a big difference between knowing how to work the system (which will always involve money) and being a craven tool of it.
I'm pretty sure which side of the line you're on as far as that distinction goes is how a whole lot of people distinguish between "establishment" and "not-establishment", due if nothing else to how America looks right now as far as income inequality (etc.) goes.
"If you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, fuck their whores, and still vote against their bill, then you don't belong in the California Legislature" said Jesse Unruh, noted tool of industry who never accomplished anything progressive.
I don't think it's stretching a point to claim that that isn't something that just everyone in the California or any other legislature can, in fact, do, though Unruh may have been correct in his own claim.
and there's a big difference between knowing how to work the system (which will always involve money) and being a craven tool of it.
Not so big from the perspective of someone outside of and opposed to the system.
I like Bernie so much better than Hillary, but she does look more prepared right now.
I'm watching the debate right now. Bernie's mentioned the British/American overthrow of the Iranian president and Kissinger's domino theory. Hillary Clinton is defending Kissinger.
Hillary still seems more prepared, of course, but I agree with Bernie on general foreign policy principles.
And, I meant to say, he's doing a better job articulating his larger principles than he did last time.
They're really debating Kissinger's domino theory?
There's just one generation for whom that would be a touchstone, right? And among Democratic party primary voters I'd be surprised if defending Kissinger like that would go over that well. Then again it'll go over gangbusters with the pundits in that general age group, I guess, so who knows.
587: I agree with you! I'm still voting for him, but I want him to look a little more focused.
579: or at least by the time they do the rot has set in a long, long time ago.
Like in Ur? Mohenjo Daro?
590
Yeah. His leaders were safe, decent choices, except his FDR got rambly and away from foreign policy. I know he has talking points, but not every single answer has to return to them, especially when it's not relevant.
Of course, now Hillary's going off on Bernie insulting Obama, so maybe going off question is fine.
Also, this is the most annoying line of debate. They are not debating who gets to be head librarian of the Obama presidential library. I'm not sure why we should know or care who loves Obama more.
"Protecting Obama's legacy" is, I'm guessing, a very strong selling point and one Clinton very much wants to keep to herself since Sanders has already gotten his hands fully around "we need to make big changes".
Why would anyone want Henry Kissinger's support in a Democratic primary? I know most people don't give a shit about Laotians' limbs, but what's the upside?
I checking around for an account of what was going on that could explain why he came up again and I ran across this from 2014. Apparently... Clinton just really likes Kissinger?
If anyone plausibly on the left wanted a reason to be really reluctant to support Clinton, or wanted to be really unnerved by the idea of her running foreign policy I guess there's that.
Well technically Kissinger is a monster and war criminal, but he is pretty much a cuddly teddy bear next to the neocons who still seem to have at least one hand on the sword of state.
I'm going with, defending Kissinger is an automatic fail. Bernie may be less informed and not have detailed or realistic plans, but he automatically wins on FP because he clears the low bar of not defending Kissinger.
Though, even though he was rambly and off topic at times, I think he won the FP debate aside from the Kissinger debacle. He made a fairly sophisticated argument that our actions have long term consequences that usually aren't considered in short term FP calculations, and we need people with good judgment and an awareness of history making FP decisions, not just people who can play real politik in the moment. He illustrated the point with Iran, linking our current hostilities with Iran back to our decision to topple their democratically elected government, which led to the Iranian revolution. I thought it was actually one of his more powerful attacks of the night, especially since the wall street stuff is not exactly new territory.
Also, I don't know what happened, but I find myself agreeing with both slate and vox. (They split the tie different ways, I say a tie's a tie and it doesn't have to produce a clear winner). If you liked Clinton going in, you'd find Bernie obnoxious and one-note. If you liked Bernie going in, you'd find Clinton slippery and evasive. They both got things out of it their campaigns can spin, and on the whole they both continue to look orders of magnitude better than the Republicans.
Besties with Kissinger, Iraq war, hawkish criticism of Obama. Sincere belief or political calculus, it doesn't really matter; the milieu that makes the latter seem reasonable will encourage the same policy.
[Standard disclaimer that any of the other party's offerings will be disastrous.]
Bernie's mentioned the British/American overthrow of the Iranian president and Kissinger's domino theory. Hillary Clinton is defending Kissinger.
I'm assuming that at some point they will get on to discussing things that have actually happened within the memory of more than 20% of Americans.
601 - soon they will be discussing Cordell Hull's conduct during the late '30s and early '40s, and whether he dealt appropriately with the Free French.
I'm not criticising. A large part of my own country's political discourse refers to events of 75years ago and a significant chunk of tthe rest to the events of the late 17th century.
A related thought: I watched The Big Lebowski the other night. We are about as far removed in time from 9/11 as Walter Sobchak was from Vietnam.
603 - Yes - like the argument Northern Ireland could really do with rather less historical literary...
I watched The Big Lebowski again the other night
FTFY.
Also, how many times is this?
like the argument Northern Ireland could really do with rather less historical literacy
There's a Greg Bear thriller, Quantico, about a conspiracy to bring about world peace by spreading an engineered bacterium that causes amnesia throughout the world's religious centres.
607 I think I'm past due for another re-watch myself.
Am I reading the transcript wrong? From what I can see, the entirety of Clinton's defense of Kissinger was in opening up China. Are we against opening up China now?
610: no, that's right. 586 etc are stretching the truth a bit by saying she was "defending Kissinger" and hoping that people will assume Clinton was up there saying "the Shah was a great guy and those Cambodian peasants had it coming".
I seem to be coming closer to Bernie supporter status from the debate, the first one I watched in any significant amount. He has a nice comedic timing that he uses to good effect, as below when he made a pro-social-welfare and a pro-choice point all wrapped up in one:
"I will not shock anybody to suggest that in politics there is occasionally a little bit of hypocrisy. Just a little bit. All over this country we have Republican candidates for president saying we hate the government. Government is the enemy. We're going to cut Social Security to help you. We're going to cut Medicare and Medicaid, federal aid to education to help you, because the government is so terrible. But, by the way, when it comes to a woman having to make a very personal choice, ah, in that case, my Republican colleagues love the government and want the government to make that choice for every woman in America."
There's a pause and flourish not reflected in the transcript. "We're going to cut Social Security... to help you!"
This seems valid to me: http://mattbruenig.com/2016/02/11/the-electability-contradiction/
Clinton tried to deflect the conversation to Kissinger's record on China specifically, and unfortunately Sanders went along with that deflection to some extent. But what he originally attacked her on was her more generally laudatory comments on Kissinger in her book, and describing him as a mentor.
This is the first Hillary vs Sanders Vox article that I completely agree with.
610
Um. The correct response to "he was a war criminal" is not "but, there were also some good things he did." That is indeed a defense of the person. Also, what 614 said. Kissinger came up because Hillary brought him up last debate, to vouch for her SoS tenure. It's such an own goal of foreign policy, it's weird that she would handicap herself this way. No one would have brought up her friendship with Kissinger if she hadn't announced it on the debate stage.
615
Yeah, I agree with that too. I like Bernie, but I feel like he's too one note a lot of the time. It's a good note, and one that needs to get played, but it would be helpful if he developed more talking points about what he would do on other issues.
I feel like Vox in general has gotten better. Maybe they read our comments? Maybe there's a set quantity of quality available to 538 and Vox, so as 538 has gotten noticeably worse in the past week, Vox has gotten better?
617 Some have even commented here in the old days. The before time.
I think if Hillary took the advice in that Vox article to heart she'd really start to erode Sanders' support.
This is amazing: http://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/02/10/why-bernie-sanders-is-more-electable-than-people-think/
Its kinda long though, I'll try to summarize. He argues at some length that neoliberalism has been fully discredited and that the party that nominates a neoliberal will lose the election. He claims that Trump and Cruz are both right nationalists and that if they win right nationalism will also capture the Democratic party. If Bernie Sanders wins social democracy will capture the Republican party. It is an interesting argument. I don't know that I'm totally convinced, but I like it.
If Bernie Sanders wins social democracy will capture the Republican party.
File under "thinking, wishful."
It bothers me that she doesn't recognize her connection with Kissinger is problematic.
I stood in an elevator with Kissinger once. I found it difficult to not kick him in the shins.
620- It worked for FDR and Reagan.
617: Honestly, I think Bernie fans around here just freaked out because Ezra and Yggles each posted a Sanders-skeptical article on the same day, following on a generally dismissive approach to Sanders' chances. But the very next day Matt posted a pro-Bernie piece, and it was never a unified front. The response was mystifying to me at the time.
They simply churn out a bunch of stuff. It may militate in certain directions, but that's overall.
619:Wishful thinking aside, I think there's a bit of pundit's fallacy going on here: "Everyone identifies the same problem I do (neoliberalism), and if things break right, everyone will agree with my solution."
Hoi polloi are not ideologues. They have affinities, and their enthusiasm is driven by an incoherent slate of factors. I mean, FFS, if you put a picture of 9/11 outside a polling place, you'll meaningfully shift the votes that happen inside. All this stuff ascribing complex motives and sophisticated analyses to the bulk of voters, let alone non-voters, is so much wankery.
I don't know if other electorates are closer to the democratic ideal--there are a lot of aspects of the American system that seem designed to foment an ignorant, emotionally-driven populace--but there is ample evidence that this is how Americans vote.
"Did you really think, Doctor, that TC2 had forgotten about you?
625: Yep. And hey, Ezra's previous spot was called Wonkblog. I never even heard the word "wonk" before I heard it applied to both Clintons. It's obvious and unremarkable that his sympathies would lie with her approach. Perhaps if you could find the author of Ideoloblog, you'd find a general direction more to your liking.
Kevin Drum has a pretty clear agenda. http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-economy-has-not-recovered-with-graphs/
629: Drum agrees with Sanders that U6 is higher than it ought to be. Drum objects that Sanders, by merely accurately defining the figure rather than also including historical context, makes it seem worse than it is.
Smear-wise, that seems like pretty thin gruel. (Though no doubt Hillary would find it artful.)
When you start going on about Kevin Drum's secret presumably-right-wing agenda, it's time to put down the Internet. Anyway, it's Walsh who's recycling a graph beloved of the right.
Walt- You infer more from my comment than I ever implied.
It is uncharacteristic/unbecoming of Drum to say "what's normal in an expanding economy is about 8.9%" when that data is drawn only from the 2000's expansion, which was not exactly a bonanza for workers. I can only find the measure going back to 1994, but its 1990's nadir was 6.8 (October 2000), and its 2000's nadir was 7.9 (December 2006), so I suspect it was even lower back in the Trente Glorieuse.
631-2: Drum himself acknowledges that U6 is too high. And while the first Ian Welsh graph is unhelpful, the second one offers some insight about a real problem with the current employment situation: Employment is slack enough that demand for labor isn't showing up in increased wages.
631: A little shading in elections is natural. When your shading reinforces rightwing bullshit, I get very angry. See my response to Obama's use of "crisis" to describe SSI in 2008.
I mean, you agree that Bernie was trying to get people to think that unemployment is "really" 2X what people consider to be an acceptable number, right? He himself (presumably) knows that 10% is not appreciably high for U6, but he knows damn well that the audience doesn't know that. The audience thinks "unemployment" should be at 5% or less, based on their lived histories with the numbers that are reported.
PS - Any Dem who thinks he can beat a Republican this fall by running against the Obama economy is delusional. You can run against the distribution, you can certainly run against the precipitous decline in public employment, but if you're running on "The economy has not recovered," you may as well run on "immigrants and gays are ruining this country."
635 should have referred to the second and third graphs, rather than first and second.
The data only exists back to 1994, and 8.9% is apparently the average over that period.
And I think Sanders is being a bit disingenuous simply by saying "the real figure is almost 10% and that is really bad" when a better description would be "it's slightly worse than average".
Saying that 40% of adults in America don't have jobs is perfectly accurate (employment to population ratio) but it is still deceptive to say "and this shows the real level of unemployment, and it is terrible" because, even at best, it's only going down to about 35% because a lot of people are in education, or retired.
Clinton tried to deflect the conversation to Kissinger's record on China specifically, and unfortunately Sanders went along with that deflection to some extent.
I think the idea was something like "Oh we committed horrible atrocities due to a(n openly bullshit) argument about how we had to stop China and then we turned around on a dime and immediately boosted their economy and world power by shipping jobs overseas the second there was any profit in it for wealthy interests - that reflects great on Kissinger." But I don't think he pulled it off as well as he should have for it to actually be the body blow that it could have been if he had managed to nail it. It could have been a really nice rhetorical trap though so it's a pity he didn't.
Also Clinton continues to baffle me with her campaigning decisions: I mean, I get that protect-Obama's-legacy and identifying herself with Obama is valuable - especially among the African American demographic that she's using as her base. But there are plenty of ways to do that. And if your central selling point is supposed to be "I'm a pragmatist who can get things done in politics!" why the hell would you bring up Hillarycare!? I think she's facing an awkward problem right now because she's trying to use experience as her main selling point and actually describing a lot of that experience in detail would probably have a bad effect rather than a good one. But come on! There are other ways to do this!
That might be true, if we don't enter a recession. If we do, I don't like HRC's chances.
From 629:
"But you can't just toss this out as a slippery way of making the economy seem like it's in horrible shape. If you're going to tout U6, you have to compare it to what's normal for U6. And what's normal in an expanding economy is about 8.9 percent. This means that even big, bad U6 is within a hair of its full-employment value."
Why are people surprised that a self-professed socialist might not be impressed by this? The mainstream economic definition of "full-employment" for the US is partly political, rather than a neutral law of economic organization. "What's normal for U6" in the US is normal partly because we have had a political system that doesn't particularly care about ensuring a right to work or have a job guarantee as a basic entitlement. Sanders hated on the growing 90s economy at the time. I don't see why he would use it as a baseline for defining health re: real unemployment now.
636
Or, you have a message that appeals to people who had to take a pay cut in 2009 to keep their jobs and their salaries haven't recovered. Or the people who work 19 hours a week of flexible scheduling so they don't get benefits, but then can't hold down a second job. Or the people who haven't gotten a raise in 8 years, while CEO compensation skyrockets. Or for the people who struggle to afford the bronze package through the exchange, and then still avoid the doctor because they don't have thousands for the deductible. It's not a right wing talking point to point out that for many, if not most Americans, the recession never ended. It's people's lived reality. There's a difference between saying that the economy is bad because of Obama (right wing point), and noting that Obama hasn't gone far enough in making economic recovery spread beyond the wealthiest 20% (left wing talking point).
634: None of the periods you describe followed financial recessions, and so aren't good points of comparison.
More important, I stand by my point in 636: Sanders wants his audience to compare 10% with 5%, not with 7.9% or 6.8%. That's why it's a crap number.
Anyway, nobody is arguing that the recovery has been A. awesome, or B. completed. There are bad things happening internationally, but at the moment the US economy continues to grow. What does U6 have to reach for it to stop being used as a talking point? It will always be higher than the common number. If it's 7% in October, and Trump uses it to attack Democrats, will you stand up for him and say it's still too high?
That might be true, if we don't enter a recession. If we do, I don't like HRC'sany Dem's chances.
Bernie can call himself a socialist all he wants, but if he's the Democratic nominee, he's saddled with the incumbent party, and if there's a recession between now and Election Day, the incumbent party loses, period.
639: I'm beginning to think there's something to the idea that Clinton isn't a good campaigner.
642: Wait, Sanders was critical of the economy in the 90s? How does he propose to do better? Magic? The Singularity?
639
Yeah, my frustration with Bernie on FP is that he is so clearly in the moral right, but isn't able to articulate it in a clear, non-rambly way. If you know the history, you can see what he's saying and it's intelligent. If you don't, it's just confusing, and allows the US establishment to get away with things like defending war criminals.
if there's a recession between now and Election Day, the incumbent party loses, period
Things are really not looking good on this count.
I mean, you agree that Bernie was trying to get people to think that unemployment is "really" 2X what people consider to be an acceptable number, right?
I disagree with "people" on the acceptable number, so I think the employment situation is worse than others do, and I am therefore less inclined to fault Bernie for a little loose (but accurate) talk.
Drum is himself engaging in a little loose talk by lumping Bernie's 10% with Trump's 40% and saying they are fundamentally the same thing. They aren't.
Minivet in 634 questions Drum's own figure. I don't have an opinion on that, but Drum's figure suggests that the U6 rate is significantly higher than it ought to be. Yes, Bernie's use of U6 exaggerates the problem that Drum identifies, but the use of the conventional unemployment rate understates it.
I also don't understand the effort you are making to discuss "the economy" as a separate issue from wealth distribution and the precipitous decline in public employment. But we don't know yet what the economy is going to look like in six months, and Hillary's decision to lash herself to Obama's economy could come back to haunt her.
643: If you can't get your leftwing version of that message out without reinforcing Republican talking points, then maybe you're not good at your job. "Obama [with his lackeys in the press] is lying about the real unemployment number" is a very specific rightwing argument. "Wages aren't rising because CEOs get paid too much and corporations are hoarding cash" is a leftwing argument. If you want to express the latter, why would you say the former?
If I'm defending evolution, do I start by saying, "It's just a theory"?
647- I don't think it is fair to blame Sanders for the fact that Americans are relentlessly propagandized and basically not in touch with reality on FP. I cannot imagine how you could get there (Americans in touch) from here: living in a fantasy world.
645 to 649.last. Is there an instance in American history of the incumbent party winning when there's a recession in the election year*? People are deluding themselves if they think that Bernie can win in the face of a recession. I'll grant that he has more of a shot than HRC, but it's 10% instead of 5%. "They screwed up the economy, vote for us" vs. "We screwed up the economy, but I have a structural critique that may interest you." Uh huh.
*there are specific definitions for this; obviously if there's a recession in the last quarter, it's unlikely to sharply impact the election
If a right wing argument is in touch with reality and the left-wing talking point is misrepresenting things I'm going to prefer the view based on facts.
I would like to see the Kissinger thing get repeated around a lot - it makes me happy that it came up in the debates a second time. I think there are plenty of people who would react to it with a shrug or (even moreso) with confusion. But the one group that I think could be reliably pissed off about Clinton talking cheerfully about her friendship with and admiration for Kissinger would be the 65+ voters, which isn't a group Clinton wants to start looking bad to if she isn't getting something substantial in return.
My guess is that she's been comfortably ensconced in the serious-people-DC-establishment community for long enough that it didn't occur to her that anyone serious person would react to the name "Henry Kissinger" with anything other than a sense of respect for a wise elder statesman. But there's a reason that the "very serious people" label took off as a term of abuse on the internet, and this is about as perfect an example as you can hope for.
Ironically I think that if anyone she trusts for guidance could have known about it well enough to have guided away from doing this it would actually be Henry Kissinger, who could point out that there are large sections of the world that he's afraid to get anywhere close to, and is almost certainly well aware that he is still very, very hated by a lot of people.
Drum's figure suggests that the U6 rate is significantly higher than it ought to be
I don't concede this. 1% is not "significantly higher", and we don't know the shape of the curve yet. If this is the lowest U6 ever gets, I'll agree wholeheartedly it's too high. But we simply can't know that.
I also think Minivet's 634 is flawed in citing October 2000 as a normal target, since we all know that unemployment at the end of the Clinton expansion was the lowest it had been since, what, Nixon? And Nixon only got it there by driving up inflation in a way that broke the economy*. Saying that anything short of the best number of the past 45 years is a failure is some impressive goalpost shifting.
*the Clinton economy was probably driven by a one-time tech investment/productivity boom, but that's irrelevant to the discussion, because A. it wasn't a creature of Fed policy (Nixon expressly interfered with the Fed), and B. we're not arguing about policy, we're arguing about raw numbers
Wait, Sanders was critical of the economy in the 90s? How does he propose to do better? Magic? The Singularity?
By caring about more dimensions than economic growth. And he's been pretty insistent on communicating his plan: spearheading a process of bringing more people into the political process who will vote for more progressive democrats AND organizing those people to agitate for more progressive policies once in office. You're obviously free with RT to disregard that as magic. I just ask that we also disregard the idea that establishment Democrats who cycle in and out of public office, corporate lobbying, consulting, and finance are ever going to be significant force for progressive change.
Meanwhile, if you want to know why unemployment isn't lower, we know exactly why: public employment has dropped over the course of the Obama policy, something that has never happened in 70 postwar years. Why did that happen? Republican policy that Obama fought.
But now the left wing is happy to hang that around Obama's neck, because hey, it might win in the short term. Why not?
I didn't watch this one, or any of them, to be honest, but I don't get why HRC isn't answering every question with some variation of 'with me in the White House and Sen Sanders leading the charge in Congress, there's nothing we can't accomplish.'
652: I don't disagree with any of that, though I think it's wise to approach prognostication with a bit of humility this year.
But an argument based on economic determinism cuts both ways. Bernie benefits from a good economy, too.
I think, also, that differentiating himself from Hillary is a different project than demonstrating his differences with (for example) Trump. I imagine that Bernie won't have any trouble drawing economic distinctions in his favor in a good economy.
I'll grant that he has more of a shot than HRC, but it's 10% instead of 5%.
I think this is overly pessimistic. I think its more like 50% vs 40%. Bear in mind that the opponent is likely to be a plutocrat buffoon with no political experience and a fractured party behind him.
If a right wing argument is in touch with reality and the left-wing talking point is misrepresenting things I'm going to prefer the view based on facts.
That sounds noble as hell, but is stupid. Both talking points in 643 are true. One benefits Republicans, the other benefits Democrats (electorally speaking). Why you, as someone who claims to support left goals, would prefer the former, is a mystery. Unless you're making a cynical calculation about victory in the primaries. But it can't be that, because you're a noble truth-preferrer.
661: In event of a recession, I'm not convinced it matters. I dunno, if it really is Trump, I don't understand what that looks like. He's already outperformed anything that normal models would predict, so I can't dismiss him in the general. That is, I think that under normal circumstances the Dem, maybe even Sanders, wipes the floor with him. But if there's a sharp recession starting about now, without a hint of recovery by October? I tend to think that people will vote for literally anyone with R next to their name.
657
Precisely. Sanders is campaigning to the people for whom the "economy" isn't some abstract set of numbers they can argue about while ensconced in their secure UMC job. The 90s sucked balls for the people caught up in accelerating job displacement overseas, and virulent anti-union busting, or for people who got dumped off of welfare with few prospects. By and large, life in general hasn't improved. Minimum wage is such that people can work full time and still be on foodstamps. Real wages have stagnated since the 70s. Productivity gains are really hollow when the extra earnings aren't redistributed to the people actually responsible for productivity gains.
660.last: Whether the nominee is him or HRC, I don't want more Americans believing that the Obama recovery has been a failure, nor that there are secret numbers proving that the regular numbers are a lie. The latter point is a bedrock Republican value. The former is not entirely false, but the Obama recovery has been better than that of any other nation on earth, and also withstood concerted efforts by a powerful and relentless opposition to halt it. Telling left-leaning voters that the past 8 years have been a failure is not, IMO, electorally advantageous. You can talk about the ways it has fallen short without declaring the whole thing a sham.
657: So Sanders was critical of the 90s economy by talking about... something other than the economy? We're going to do better than the best economy in 50 years because the right people will vote for it?
663
See, in a recession I think Sanders is a stronger candidate than HRC. If we have Trump v Clinton and a recession, she's stuck defending orthodox neoliberal talking points against a populist promising universal healthcare. If it's Sanders v. Trump, Sanders points out that he has radical ways to help the economy, AND he's not a racist buffoon who will piss off all other world leaders.
I actually mostly agree with 655, although I wonder if HK has enough self-awareness for 655.3. I tend to be of the mindset that bad guys don't recognize themselves as such, and sleep the sleep of the innocent every night. If some loser leftists in Chile prevent him from traveling there, well, who wants to go to Chile?
It would be wonderful if the lesson of this primary were "don't associate yourself with Kissinger"; alas, I don't think that's actually a plausible outcome, on a variety of axes.
But if there's a sharp recession starting about now, without a hint of recovery by October?
I guess I'm not envisioning a recession that's particularly sharp. A modest drift toward a shittier economy I could absolutely see, but I think a lot of the dead wood got burned off in the last, excruciatingly sharp recession, such that a new one would be comparatively mild in comparison. Except for some parts of the tech/venture capital ecosystem, there just hasn't really been the environment for the type of irrational exuberance that would cause a particularly bad economic hangover.
Plus, the worst of the economic downturn looks to be concentrated in oil and gas states, which are all voting Republican anyway.
665
Why so black and white? Why does the Obama recovery either have to be perfect and above criticism or an abject failure? It's possible to note that Obama is the best president we've had in a long time, and that there are still major structural issues with wealth distribution and finance's role in controlling politics & the economy that were not adequately addressed by him.
662- I don't really understand why this is controversial all of a sudden. I thought everyone here pretty much agreed that the stimulus was too small. And that this was one of the weakest recoveries in living memory. You can quibble about how to divide up the blame, certainly a lot of it goes to the Republicans. I wasn't specifically referring to 643 as defining the terms. I think you made the point that the graph Employment Ratio to Dec 2015 was a right wing talking point. I think that graph is a valid way to look at the economy. The Clinton boom was the best that the economy has done for working people in the last 40 years or so, but the last 40 years have been worse for most people in term of falling standards of living than any period in living memory.
667: I think so too, I just think "stronger" is like who can tread water longest after the Titanic goes down.
Meanwhile, if the economy continues along this track, I don't think 9 months of "don't let them lie to you, this economy is shitty" is helpful to Democrats.
I remember 2004; I will never trust the American people not to elect a monster.
the last 40 years have been worse for most people in term of falling standards of living than any period in living memory.
Given that "living memory" is really only 70-80 years at a stretch, this is not really that strong a claim. It is identical to "the last 40 years have been not as good for most people as the preceding 30, which were the single longest period of economic expansion that the US has ever seen".
I wonder if HK has enough self-awareness for 655.3. I tend to be of the mindset that bad guys don't recognize themselves as such, and sleep the sleep of the innocent every night.
Oh certainly - I can't imagine he thinks of himself as bad. He's clearly a savvy operator who understands the reality of how things work unlike those bleating waterheads who go on about "genocide" and "root cause of like half the catastrophic foreign policy problems we have right now in what were actually pretty predictable ways" and so on. And his policies may have looked brutal but they worked and those people are better off for his nobility and ruthless willingness to do monstrous things on their behalf.* But what I think he is perfectly aware of is that a lot of those people do actually exist, and that "people old enough to have really cared about Vietnam and who vote in Democratic party primaries" is a description that probably captures as many of them as anything else you could use.
*A novel I read a long time ago referred to this kind of view as "capturing the moral low-ground" and it's a good enough description of the self-congratulatory aspect of it that I've never been able to get it out of my mind.
664: Jesus Christ. Of course it's improved. What kind of buble do you live in that you're not aware of that? Do you remember 2009? Literally my entire family lost their jobs. I had to move to a foreign country to get a job.
And it's improved for everybody: Black unemployment in January 2010 was 17%. Now it's 9%. Unemployment for people without a high school diploma in January 2010 was also 17%, and it's now down to 9%. Unemployment for Hispanics was 14%, and now it's 7%.
The economy is not the best it could be, and it's quite possible that if Sanders had been President it would be better. But we had the largest worldwide recession in almost 100 years, and probably the second-largest in history. The US, despite, you know, causing the worldwide recession, has weathered it better than the rest of the developed world. And this is also despite the fact that the legislature has been taken over by a party that is actively trying to drive it into recession.
673- Well I was aware the claim wasn't that strong. The thing is the claim that falling standards of living for 40 years hasn't happened since the industrial revolutions may be true but its not very provable.
Except for some parts of the tech/venture capital ecosystem, there just hasn't really been the environment for the type of irrational exuberance that would cause a particularly bad economic hangover.
This sounds right to me. Most people have no idea that the stock market tripled between 2010 and 2015 or whatever it did. It wasn't accompanied by any normal people having more money or better jobs or anything.
671: The Employment-Population Ratio graph is bullshit because it includes everybody over the age of 16 (I think). The Boomers are retiring, so it would be lower even if everything was great. It is the number that makes Obama look the worst, so of course it's the one that right-wingers love the most.
If you look at "prime age" E/P (which is 25-54), then while it's lower than it was, it's clearly trending upwards: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LREM25TTUSM156S
Why so black and white?
There's no time like an election campaign for nuance?
670: It's the specific line of attack. I've never had a problem with Bernie or Warren or anyone else saying that the recovery has been incomplete, left too many people behind, etc. It's this specific thing, which I consider out of bounds, and that people are eager to defend because their guy said it.
The thing is, U6 doesn't actually capture any of the important things wrong with the economy. If it dropped 2 points, we wouldn't suddenly have a higher minimum wage, we wouldn't have a unionized workforce, we wouldn't have a significant jump in labor's share of the economy. We'd see a little wage growth, and obviously some people would see direct benefits from working. But the latter isn't structural, and the former is transitory.
So let's review:
1. It's dishonest, because it's meant to tell people that unemployment is double what they've been told, and what they would be OK with*.
2. It reinforces a very specific Republican attack on Democrats in general.
3. It doesn't express anything significant to Sanders' specific critique of the system. It would be entirely possible to have another 5% of GDP go to labor and still have a U6 of 10% during a recovery from 17%.
So why is everyone defending it? "Bernie said it, I believe it, that settles it"?
*to 649.1, it's irrelevant what the ideal number would be; the fact remains that a ±5% unemployment rate generally comports with most people who want work being able to find some. When the economy was genuinely hot and raising wages in the late '90s, it never dropped below 4%
I also think Minivet's 634 is flawed in citing October 2000 as a normal target, since we all know that unemployment at the end of the Clinton expansion was the lowest it had been since, what, Nixon?
I wasn't saying October 2000 should be a target, I was pointing out that the 90's nadir was lower than the 00's nadir, so a 90's average would therefore be lower than an 00's average which is what Drum had presented, and averages in previous more equitable times likely even lower than that. (I didn't have the time to average out the 90's, so I used nadirs as proxy for my point. It very much looks from Drum's chart that 8.9% is the 00's average.)
I'm willing to concede Sanders using U6 as a contrast to U3 is misleading to those who think in numbers and follow the unemployment rate in the news. I think most of the electorate thinks in terms of experiences, and that's what he was trying to key into in perhaps a faux-expert way.
669 is entirely plausible. Some of my concern is that it doesn't actually seem like there's any good reason at all for a recession to happen*, so if one happens, it would be down to unforeseen factors.
I do wonder if the low gas prices could actually mask a mild recession to most voters. The sort of thing where hiring stalls, and a few industries see cutbacks, but nothing catastrophic happens, while people still see that magical $1.xx on the sign, and don't feel personally beset.
*trade isn't big enough that what's happening overseas should directly cause trouble; the oil & gas boom/bust shouldn't be big enough to bring down the country, there doesn't seem to be a widespread real estate bubble, tech doesn't seem like it's in a stupid place, etc.
675
Huh? I wasn't talking about 2009 in that comment.
678- Walt I was familiar with that line of reasoning because Kevin Drum who I read every day made that argument.
The thing is the demographic argument only accounts for some of the fall in employment. IIRC not even most of it. And most people retiring are experiencing a fall in their standard of living too.
Semi-related, I received a letter in the mail yesterday from the Ted Cruz campaign. In big bold letters across the front it says "OPEN IMMEDIATELY--CHECK ENCLOSED!" Is Ted Cruz sending me money? (I haven't opened it. I have no reason not to believe that Ted was behind the anthrax attacks in 2001, so I'm afraid to open mail from him.)
Yeah, 682 is really all I was getting at.
681: As noted above, U6 only goes back so far, but just looking at U3, it never dropped below 5% between Nixon and Clinton, so I'd be surprised if the long run average of U6 were much lower than where Drum drew the line (what appears to happen is that the gap is biggest at peaks, smallest at troughs). Actually, U3 from Ford through Bush I averaged 7.15, so ISTM that there's no way the average U6 over that stretch was below 10 (lowest U6-U3 I can see is about 3%).
686: It's sleaze that's been reported on - a fake check symbolizing some donation-matching.
Nominate me for the "duh" prize, but Ted Cruz really is the most repulsive human around, isn't he.
Given that "living memory" is really only 70-80 years at a stretch,
I've heard that in your country it stretches back to the late 17th century.
I can't wait for this electoral season* to be over.
*Season?! American electoral campaigns seem to go on for years.
Ted Cruz is doing something sleazy? Republican voters will never stand for that!
690: Over? People are already arguing about the 2018 elections right now.
Ted Cruz really is the most repulsive human around, isn't he
I'm not dead yet.
Why can't we just compromise on the unemployment rate and agree that the correct figure to use is U4.5?
684: In a context of where we're talking about U6, either you're talking about 2009 or you're bullshitting. U6 is 10% now because it was 17% in 2009, not because of anything that happened in the 70s or 90s.
Some of my concern is that it doesn't actually seem like there's any good reason at all for a recession to happen
Baltic Dry Index! Renmimbi (Yuan?) devaluation! Deutchbank Stock Price! Saudi Rollover!
Maybe not a recession, but a freefall crash with panic!
Haven't completely worked it out, but the connections between finance and production have gone all chaotic and inexplicable, much like Trumpism and Sandernistas.
It's all non-ergodic anymore, everything.
Something something Baudrillard something. Black swans turning day into night.
695
I wasn't talking about U6, I was talking about economics more generally. And if you think that economic decisions in the 70s and 90s don't affect the current economy, that's totally insane. It's fact that real median wages have stagnated since the late 70s, roughly around the time we started dismantling the controls preventing accumulation of massive wealth at the top. This was masked by the credit boom through the 90s and early 2000s, which helped prevent people from noticing exactly what was happening. Of course the economy has improved since 2009 for lots (but not all!) people, but it hasn't improved enough, and this is directly tied to the issue productivity gains are being funneled to the top 1%. Were you asleep during Occupy Wall Street or something? That wasn't a 2009 movement. People were still pissed off in 2011 & 2012, and they're pissed off enough now to make Donald "universal healthcare" Trump and Bernie "socialist" Sanders plausible presidential candidates.
I think 697 might be missing the core of Trump's appeal. Or are the people getting roughed up and booted from his rallies mostly HMO execs?
Krugman ...2013, K has more recent numbers he follows it closely. If taken to 2015 state and local spending has picked up, but federal expenditures are still declining.
That's the graph that really pisses me off about Obama and the economy. As a Dem, a liberal, a socialist, someone who is interested in MMT, the decline in federal spending and federal employment is worse than a mistake, it's a fucking crime.
Reaganism. When the Obama administration is studied by historians, the net cuts ion taxes and spending will ber compared to Reagan, who didn't really do it. Bush II also increased spending over his term. And Clinton has also pledged to cut taxes and spending. They're all fucking Republicans anymore.
698
Trump is saying that Mexicans and Asians have stolen all the jobs, in the US and in Mexico/Asia. He is absolutely running and killing it on right wing populism. He rails against Wall Street all the time, and the large corporations that "took your jobs and gave them to the Mexicans." He torpedoed both Jeb's and Rubio's campaigns on this message. He declared he was in favor of universal healthcare so "no one would die on the streets" at the last Republican debate, and then wrote off the booing audience as "Jeb's wealthy backers."
The base has been tolerating free-market politics because they've been linked to the "red meat" issues. Trump is the only candidate willing to unlink them, and it is absolutely freaking out establishment Republicans and the MSM.
700 is key. Trump is the new George Wallace. Prosperity for all, take from the rich and give to the poor, except for the non-white poor.
The general media false equivalence between Sanders and Trump is driving me crazy.
U6 is 10% now because it was 17% in 2009, not because of anything that happened in the 70s or 90s.
The question in play here is whether we ought to consider the economy to be okay. Bernie says nope. Buttercup and I agree with him.
To take this from Buttercup ...
"By and large, life in general hasn't improved."
... and to suggest that Buttercup was contending that the economy hasn't improved since 2009 seems like an extraordinarily uncharitable reading.
This confirms some of my suspicions about the sudden "Let's all focus on March" sounds from the Clinton campaign following New Hampshire. I don't know how far to trust the pollster, but if that's at all accurate that's a really substantial shift from December and they'd be right to start playing the expectations game as hard as they could even if they do end up winning.
703
Thank you. Sometimes I wonder if people actually read what I write, or if they have a google "strawman" translator running or something.
It is, to be clear, a kind of a sketchy looking poll to me so I don't know how to read it.
Something like 25% of Democrats have strongly negative views on immigrants and immigration. OTOH Latinos are both over-represented among the dwindling numbers of swing voters and are the truly untapped turnout reservoir for the right candidate. My guess is that the latter effect would dwarf the former and that a Trump candidacy, combined with his high negatives among lots of Republicans, would be a disaster for the Republicans, with either Democrat running, but that's just a guess. A genuine right-populist candidate running with the backing of one of the two major parties* is pretty unknown territory no matter what.
*nb, I still don't think this is particularly likely to happen, but you obviously can't dismiss it as a possibility right now.
This thread got me to start looking at some economic series, and this is fascinating: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GINIALLRH
I've heard, over and over again, that inequality increased dramatically while Bill Clinton was president, but I hadn't realized the timing of that -- based on that graph the increase happened before his first budget took effect.
1980: .403
...
1992: .433
1993: .454
...
2000: .462
...
2014: .480
So, while inequality has steadily gotten worse since 1980, the jump from 1992 to 1993 was (a) more than twice as large as the change from 1993 to 2000 (b) about the same as the rise from 2000 to 2014, and (c) almost as much (65%) as the change from 1980 to 1992.
Either that's just a statistical artifact*, or it shows that the recovery was already starting in 1992 and the high beta rich recovered first. But it wasn't what I was expecting.
* For example, that measure is based on income, perhaps the real story is capital gains.
Lost the title. That link is to: Income Gini Ratio for Households
707
Who do you think is going to get the Republican nomination? It's a weird race where none of the people seem like plausible contenders. If Trump weren't Trump, I'd say it's pretty in the bag for him, except he is Trump, so I'm having a hard time seeing it happen. The only other plausible candidate polls-wise is Cruz, the second least likely candidate (or third maybe to Ben Carson). I would say Jeb! actually still has a chance, but it seems really bizarre to argue a guy struggling to get 10% of the vote anywhere and polling around 5% nationally is the likely nominee. Maybe I'm underestimating Rubio, but his meltdown seems pretty irreversible.
708
That's an interesting graph. I wouldn't be surprised if capital gains makes a difference in the picture. I would also be interested in looking at savings interest rates, though I don't know what sort of effect that might have.
It's fact that real median wages have stagnated since the late 70s, roughly around the time we started dismantling the controls preventing accumulation of massive wealth at the top.
I've seen that stat a lot, and I decided I wanted to look at the data. It's interesting. The Real Median Personal Income shows that the 90s really were a good time. The Median weekly earnings for full-time employees (separating out men and women) shows that men have never reached the level that they were at in 1979 since then, and that women have seen steady improvements.
I have no conclusions to draw, except that it is interesting to look at the FRED data.
710: It's been a Holmesian* race all along. The field is narrowing, though, and part of me thinks we'll have a pretty good idea before Super Tuesday.
All along I've been afraid of Rubio, because it's obvious the press will be in the bag for him no matter the Dem, but after the last week, I'm not sure of that anymore. He looks like damaged goods to me. I mean, so do they all, but I just mean that I don't think the Marco crush will arise the way I had been assuming.
*"When you've eliminated the impossible..."
The question in play here is whether we ought to consider the economy to be okay. Bernie says nope. Buttercup and I agree with him.
Is it not OK because we haven't recovered, or because the recovery was uneven/hijacked? Those are two different answers, as I've been hammering on ever since I linked to Drum. The former argument is the GOP claim.
713: I'm desperately hoping the same thing about Rubio. At the moment it looks like they've moved on to Kasich, though not very dramatically. But I really doubt that that's likely to stick given how the Republican voters seem to be treating him so far. He and Rubio were the only ones I can see as candidates for a successful "he's reasonable and moderate" push on their part though. Bush is too hampered by his family, and enough of a victim on stage that trying to sell him that way among Republicans would only damage him even further. Basically everyone else is a slavering lunatic screaming for blood.
I just checked the S & P 500, but it didn't go vertical until Sept 30 1994
I deny that Obama has zero responsibility for the shrinkage of the Fed Govt in that a) he has even in 2007 talked about fiscal responsibility and cutting govt and made a big point of it in the 2010 SOTU, b) he has a fucking veto, as Pres with an opposition House, how often has he used it, esp on budget bills, c) it is his skill, not unique to grab credit and deflect blame.
The Repubs obviously have much responsibility, but show me an Obama budget that increased overall Fed employment by say 10% which still would not get us back to Bush years. And of course he could have tried to double the Fed workforce in 2009-2010
No, you are not going to convince me this Reagan clone is really FDR or LBJ.
713
Exactly. Like, at this point I guess I'd say Trump if I had to pick one, which feels weird.
I wonder how much leverage Obama could get if he talked to Republicans in the quietest most behind-the-scenes way possible and just said basically: "Look, if there's a recession you're either getting a Trump v. Sanders race or, depending on the timing, President Sanders. So we need a stimulus set up right now to give us a boost to ride through the next year and I'm fine with pretending that your bill is a travesty and threatening to veto it only to fold when you attach it to [some important bill] as long as there aren't any genuinely freaky poison pills in there ok?"
I mean, I'm guessing "none because they are mostly nihilists living in a complete fantasyland" is the answer. But it would be pretty great all the same.
Oh right, I forgot Kasich. I'm hoping he's too toxic for the base, because he is the one who scares me the most for the general. My guess (wish?) is he'll fall flat on his face in SC and no one will talk about him again.
At this point, it sure looks like its going to come down to Trump and Cruz. I'm hoping for a long, protracted bloodbath between those two, although Trump may end up just running away with it.
Was Looking for This ...saw it at Welch's, NYT article
Scroll down to the chart "Gains Only at the Top"
Goes from 2016 to 2014, so recent as these things go
Everybody on average below the 90th percentile, everybody on average below $157,469. Whatever, certainly there were some lucky duckies
...saw their incomes seriously decline 2006-2014
That is a suck economy for 80% of Americans, a bad Obama economy
718: Too late.
Tax cuts have lost their efficiency, cause people save...and deficit spending takes time to implement and for the multipliers to kick in.
If having more cash mattered, the oil price crash should have created a boom.
The oil crash didn't put that much money in anyone's pocket. Cut everyone in the country a check for 5 grand and you'd see a boom.
We could toss a lot of money into a public works project. Paying a lot of people to work on building a giant wall between the US and Mexico would probably be a pretty good (temporary) economic stimulus. And Republicans could push that through without coming off looking like they're negotiating a secret deal with the hated Satanobama.
Having just done my regular runthrough of Mark Thoma's links, and with the caveat that the benfits of the economy are unevenly distributed, I do have to say that by the usual indicators Calculated Risk uses (housing starts, retail sales, etc) the current US economy is looking pretty damn good, and has been looking up for a while. Finally. I see no recession on the horizon.
Deutschbank and Europe are looking a little scary, but a financial crash might take a while to hit America's pocketbooks.
723: Check out the summer 2008 stimulus. Doesn't work as well anymore.
And of course I oppose all tax cuts and dislike deficit spending. Print for helicopters and platinum coins.
You can probably get tax cuts through the House, but they will insist on adding stuff you won't like and I will loathe
697: But the late 90s were great for everybody. Black unemployment was at its lowest since they started keeping the stat (in 1973). Hispanic unemployment and unemployment among people without a high school diploma were near the lows. (The actual lows were in 2006, which I find mildly surprising.) Unemployment among women single head-of-housholds was the lowest since 1970. Employment-to-population (both prime age and all) were at an all-time high. Real median household income climbed steadily through the 90s, and reached a peak that has not yet been matched.
703: You better hope the economy is okay. If the economy is not okay then say hello to President Trump.
712: The Gini coefficient will tend to understate the increase in inequality, which is only really pronounced at the top. The top 1% gained much more than the top 10%, but gained much less than the top 0.1%, etc.
That's an interesting graph. . . . I would also be interested in looking at savings interest rates
One thought. If income inequality grew in 1992 and then stayed at (more or less) that level for the next 8 years, you would intuitively* expect the high earners to be able to increase their savings and compound their advantage over the period of time (particularly with the stock market boom providing a tailwind).
But, looking at just that graph* you wouldn't say that Clinton-era policies increased inequality. You would say that they failed to undo the increase in inequality***.
* Intuition about time-series like that can be tricky, because the high-earners aren't necessarily the same people year-to-year. But it still seems reasonable as a first estimate.
** Of course, we shouldn't look at only one graph.
*** Though, one other factor. That graph presumably shows income pre tax-and-transfer. So Clinton raising tax rates on high-income people would mitigate that somewhat. This is probably a good point to also point to Kevin Drum talking about spending on social welfare (and, look, a follow-up today).
. . . [B]y 1996 the old AFDC program accounted for only about $20 billion in spending, a tiny fraction of the total welfare budget--and the difference in spending between AFDC and the TANF program that took its place is even more minuscule. The truth is that it's barely noticeable compared to increases in social welfare spending during the 90s from changes to CHIP, EITC, the minimum wage, and so forth./blockquote>. . . It's not money that prevents us from addressing deep poverty, it's political preference. Welfare reform was very deliberately crafted to reduce payments to people who don't work, and one of the effects of that is a small increase in extreme poverty.
If you want Bernie Sanders to publicly denounce this state of affairs, this is the issue you need to address. To what extent should our welfare system hand out cash to nonworking adults? For how long? With what strings attached? My guess is that Sanders doesn't really want to dive into this because he knows it's a big hot button and he doesn't want to get bogged down in something that takes the spotlight away from his larger economic message. But that's just my guess.
HTML fail, the first quoted paragraph is from Drum's first post; the last two are from his follow-up.
It kind of blows my mind that Central Banks are now letting interest rates go negative. Are they really suddenly incapable of causing inflation? Print some money already.
A recession now would be pretty surprising just because there's been very little Fed tightening. The Fed more-than doubled interest rates between 2003 and 2006, for example. They raised interest rates 1.5% in 1999 and 2000. This time there's only been a single rate hike.
727: If I remember right, the Bush I recession hit the upper class unusually hard (you can see a clear drop in the Gini coefficient). If you smooth it out it the jump doesn't look so dramatic.
731. This excellent jacket, modelled by Anderw Dice Clay dates from that very recession. How bad could things have been, really?
Vermin Supreme is in it to win it.
733: He hasn't officially dropped out yet! You can still finish!
727: If I remember right, the Bush I recession hit the upper class unusually hard (you can see a clear drop in the Gini coefficient).
That's what it looks like to me.
I just found the graph interesting because I do think it's become a talking point on the left that the Clinton economy wasn't as admirable as people remembered because it was the stage on which inequality began a dramatic increase.
There's plenty of room for criticism*, but that graph makes it look like more of stretch to blame Clinton the the increase in inequality.
* Halford is correct here, and that thread is interesting to read now, in the context of the current primary debates.
730- Technically they doubled or more-than-doubled interest rates with that single hike (depending on what you consider the starting point of "0-0.25%")
731 -- locally, I feel like the 91 rescession killed off a huge chunk of the UMC and MC, never to return. Mostly through collapse of the local aerospace industry, which wasn't much about the recession per se, but lots and lots of other business as well. It's sort of faded from memory because internet boom but the early 90s super sucked here, experientially more so than 2008-9, though 2008-9 had more of an OMG is the world ending everywhere feel.
737: If you think it's interesting for what Halford was saying you're missing out on the true, terrifying genius of the thread.
730 and predecessors: The slump in China is a big driver of lower growth worldwide. Worse, people are beginning to realize that they can no longer pretend Chinese statistics bear any relation to reality, which just increases the uncertainty. OPEC is supposedly going to truly cut production, which if it succeeds will be a push towards a recession (though it might help the stock market). Also, don't discount the nervousness over Syria, ISIS, Turkey and Russia.
Not every trigger of recession is tied directly to US economic policy.
729. Negative interest rates don't seem to be doing anything where they are being tried; Japan for example. The central banks have been unable to cause inflation really since the start of the Great Not-a-Depression-We-Promise. Loose money, lots of monetary and fiscal stimulus, inflation targets, etc. That should have caused all sorts of inflation but nope, nada, zip. Economists really don't know why, which is partly why they are all yelling at each other even more than usual.
If you think it's interesting for what Halford was saying you're missing out on the true, terrifying genius of the thread.
I was referring to the whole thread, not just Halford. But I'd skimmed over that comment, which is remarkably frightening -- good catch.
Watch Corporate America Turn 1,000 Workers into Trump and Sanders Supporters.
Video is brutal. Highly profitable company announces movement of jobs to Mexico.
I was actually trying to think how far back we'd have to go to get a president as good as Obama. Carter is before my time, but from what I understand Obama is probably better. LBJ? Like Obama, he had some real high points and some pretty strong negatives. Kennedy also seems overrated in retrospect, so I'd put Obama ahead of him. I don't know enough about Truman or Eisenhower to make a judgment either, since my general sense is they were both pretty decent. I would argue FDR was unquestionably better. Whether he's the best president in 50 or in 70 years, he's doing pretty well. We've also had truly terrible presidents for 28 of the past 48 years.
Obama's highs and lows don't really approach LBJ's, though. More Carter level variance.
The central banks have been unable to cause inflation really since the start of the Great Not-a-Depression-We-Promise.
Has the Fed caused inflation since Volker? You could kind of argue they did late in Clinton's term, but it looks like maybe it went from 2% to 3% in the face of a fair amount of tightening and in a super-hot job market.
It's entirely possible that, in a globalized, post-industrial economy, the Fed just doesn't have much power over inflation. I would also accept, a baseline inflation target of 2% doesn't give you enough maneuvering room, but I think there's more going on than that.
I've been saying "best president of my lifetime," (which starts with Truman) for some time already.
Keynes predicted back in the 30s that if interest rates were too low that central banks wouldn't be able to cause inflation. He called it "pushing on a string".
We've also had truly terrible presidents for 28 of the past 48 years.
I've been saying "best president of my lifetime," (which starts with Truman) for some time already.
Bush II seems like clearly the worst president over the same time-span. It makes me think we're seeing an effect of increased political polarization -- presidents are responding to a more ideologically coherent base, and that pushes the presidents to be more ambitious.
My favorite part of (the first part of) that thread is the almost throwaway line about how, if there's more coming like the executive action on carbon, then things could really change decisively in Obama's favor. It's interesting just how much much the last 18 months have changed the calculus on BHO.
OTOH, for all the complaints about what Clinton did to Democratic priorities, he didn't fuck over the Democratic Party the way Obama has...
I realized recently that it's hard to imagine what inflation would even be like. A savings account has more money at the end of the year than it did at the beginning of the year? People start worrying that they should buy things like furniture or appliances or cars now because they'll be noticeably more expensive soon? People can get a raise while keeping the same job? Weird concepts.
749: I almost used that phrase.
It was greatly to Greenspan's credit that he ignored conventional wisdom and let things ride with low interest rates in the '90s; I wonder what would have happened if he'd held the line all the way to the old inflation target of 4%. Forget the politics of it (people would have freaked out), just look at the economics: through the last couple years of the '90s, the Fed gradually raised rates all the way up to 6.5%; the quarter before they hit that level was the last 400k job month in US history. Core inflation at the end of his term was only ~2.5%, and even the headline number was under 4%. Point being, if Greenspan had targeted 4% core, instead of putting a ceiling at 4% headline, that's a very different path, with perhaps no job losses at all in 2000, and a new normal where we can live with a little more inflation (which allows for de facto negative interest rates).
I dunno, maybe it doesn't matter. But I feel as if there were some unforeseen consequences around there.
It was greatly to Greenspan's credit that he ignored conventional wisdom and let things ride with low interest rates in the '90s;
And Clinton (from The Clinton Tapes):
When I steered [Clinton] back to the calendar, with questions about the sixth hike in interest rates so far this year, the president said Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve adjusted rates to keep a "natural" unemployment rate of 6 percent. Clinton cited global price competition and the decline of unions to argue that unemployment could go lower without touching off inflation. He thought stale economic theory was punishing minimum wage workers, 40 percent of whom were the sole support for families, but he lobbied Greenspan carefully because of the Fed's insulated power.
747. "Has the Fed caused inflation since Volker?"
Until the Not-a-Depression (post-Volker) the Fed was mostly about keeping inflation low. Deliberately increasing inflation wasn't on the agenda and they haven't been very good at achieving it via monetary policy. (Not that fiscal policy has worked very well either.)
the Fed just doesn't have much power over inflation
Levers like the overnight rate and reserve requirements should be less effective after bank consolidation, right? The bigger the bank, the less variance in short term cash flow, especially with respect to small loans that, I'm guessing, are the strongest link to the real economy.
The slump in China is a big driver of lower growth worldwide.
China being a net exporter should mute this effect, right? I guess places like Australia that export raw materials to China will be hurt more, but otherwise how will that slump be transmitted to the rest of the world?
700: Is Trump really killing it? He's leading the pack, but there are so many people in the race right now. 2/3 of the electorate currently prefers one of the other candidates.
739: Massachusetts was hit hard in the 92 rcession - real estate tanked, and a couple banks went out of business. The early 80's recession wasn't all that bad here.
758: I assumed the reference to right-wing populism was part of that.
But he kinda is, yeah. I mean, sure he's only hitting around 1/3 of the (Republican, primary) electorate, but there are a bunch of other candidates and I think he's something like second in the ranking of "second choice would be" candidates. If Cruz and Carson were to drop out (either one alone would benefit Trump, but would benefit the other more) you could easily see most of those voters wander in a Trumpy direction. And the longer someone is the frontrunner across almost all the demographics the more attractive he is to the authoritarians in the party.
A serious attempt at increasing inflation would look like a helicopter drop. Or a least a nice fat check from the Fed to the treasury with "4 Stimulus Spending" written on the memo line. There has been nothing like that. The closest has been "quantitative easing" in which rich people get the price of their treasury bonds goosed.
but otherwise how will that slump be transmitted to the rest of the world?
For instance, Germany is a major exporter of machine tools to China (it's not just raw materials, and also China is an important intermediary in many global supply chains), and Deutschbank is on the hook for hundreds of billions in loans. Also, China has been experiencing capital outflows of like 50 billion dollar worths a month, something like 663 billion total, and is rapidly drawing down their Sovereign wealth fund, down 1.2 trillion from around 4 I think.
My history is vast and can't be bothered, but somewhere this week they showed the global construction of a wool suit with a eastern hemisphere map
designed and ordered in London, sent to Australia to get wool from sheep, wool sent to China to get just carded and spun, then thread sent to automated looms back in Europe.
I am not sure what "slump in China" would have to do with that, China is in part an assembler of pieces made elsewhere, and slump in China may mean demand is down elsewhere, like Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Do not underestimate global interconnectedness anymore.
Do not underestimate global interconnectedness anymore.
Geographical interconnectedness, true. Free trade and post-Bretton Woods have tightened that up. Wealth stratification on the other hand...
There's a steel plant down here that appears to be shutting down. 500 people lost their jobs last week.
741: Economists really don't know why. As Walt points out in 749, Keynes had a pretty good explanation decades ago. Krugman has been pointing out since forever that a basic Keynesian IS-LM model predicts pretty much exactly what we have seen so far at the zero lower bound, and that the economists who are mystified are the ones who had already decided that Keynes was outmoded and had nothing to teach them.
Doesn't the IS-LM model predict a deflationary spiral*?
*I've thought this through even less than my normal comments on economics. Right? Rihgt?
I think that's right, though I find the IS-LM model weirdly confusing.
764. Wealth stratification on the other hand...
Not sure what you mean here. Are you suggesting that the 1% are only reaping huge gains in the US, or the West? That doesn't seem correct. If anything the global 1% are spread worldwide. Thanks to the triumph of capitalism and free trade, a few people other than the dictator can become billionaires!
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Did everyone see the Erica Garner Sanders ad? Powerful.
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Bernie married her? He really is progressive.
Does that fall within the 1/2 + 7 range?
So this MSNBC piece is really damning about the Clinton campaign: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/warning-signs-hillary-clinton-south-carolina - outstaffed 10-to-1 in SC by the Sanders campaign? Before the start, the inside-politics story was that Clinton had learned the lessons of 2008, gotten rid of the dead weight, staffed up with former Obama people, et cetera. Turns out that Mark Penn worked for the Tsar after all.
If that's true that's got to be terrifying for the Clinton campaign. If Sanders eats into the minority vote that kills a lot of the Sanders-isn't-electable argument, and I think at this point Clinton does actually need that to win the primary.
I guess maybe the "It's really March that's important not these early states" press release from the campaign may have genuinely been trying to avoid taking too much of a hit from Nevada/South Carolina? I was uncertain about that at the time but it's looking like they may be more like Iowa than NH-but-for-Clinton, which is what everyone had been assuming.
771. Very funny. I thought about writing the "Erica Garner pro-Sanders ad" because I wasn't sure whether it was put out by the Sanders campaign or by her. Sanders' ad would suggest the former, Garner's the latter, and I wanted to leave it ambiguous.
773
I read something recently that said that Clinton really isn't prepared for a 50 state primary fight, because at first she didn't see Sanders as a real opponent, and then once he did start to pick up some steam, she expected to knock him out early. Her campaign devoted most of their money & resources to Iowa and NH, hoping that two solid wins would mean the race was over, so money spent elsewhere would have been wasted. The Sanders campaign did have to invest heavily in those states to stay in the race, but they also knew if they were going to keep it competitive they would need a 50 state ground game, so they've been better at planning ahead post IA and NH. Now that it's gotten competitive, contrary to assumptions Sanders actually has a better ground game in the upcoming states, and Clinton is scrambling to catch up.
I remembered reading that as well, but couldn't remember where it came from. I do remember that it was aggressively denied by the Clinton camp, but I'm not sure how far that goes. I can't remember what evidence the article had for the claim though. If it was true then she's really screwed right now.
777: My recollection is that that was more or less how she lost to Obama in '08. I remember getting the impression that her plan was to be so far ahead after super Tuesday that the primary would basically be over, and that when that didn't happen her campaign had no plan B.
Hi all! I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but as this is still the going politics thread, I'll throw this out there (and forgive me if this has been discussed).
I'm turning back around toward Clinton even for the primary because Sanders is beginning to annoy me in the number of his campaign promises that are simply not achievable. I don't mean unachievable because he'd be dealing with a Republican House and a far from filibuster-proof Dem Senate, but I mean they're not even within the power of the presidency to achieve.
Watching the latest Democratic debate last Thursday, I rolled my eyes over these thoughts from Sanders:
1. We will end the era of mass incarceration. Well, no, the federal government only has control over policies affecting 10% of people in prison/jail. 90% are incarcerated in state/municipal/local jails governed by state laws.
2. We will break up the big banks. I doubt it. I've talked about this before, and here's another piece noting that such a thing is under the control of the Fed and other regulatory agencies over which Sanders would be very unlikely to exercise significant control.
That's my preamble. I've begun to become irritated with Bernie for promising these things, thereby inspiring large numbers of young people to his cause, when the young people are ... I hesitate to say this, but, they are probably too young to realize that these things aren't remotely achievable.
Here's my question: are there other things Sanders is promising, or just calling for, that are simply unachievable? Again, I don't mean just because he'd be dealing with a recalcitrant Congress. I mean things that really aren't within the wherewithal of the president as our system currently stands.
777. If that is true after the experience of 2008, then she's too stupid to be trusted with the presidency.
I should add: I'm looking at it from this angle not because I love Clinton -- I don't -- but because Sanders is actually beginning to worry me. Why/how does he not know that he wouldn't be able to do these things?
Also looking at this because an older friend's adult children, ranging in age from 25-40, are absolutely gung-ho for Bernie to the point of passionately declaring that they'll sit out the general election if Clinton is the nominee, and it pisses me off if Bernie is inspiring that sort of thinking.
777, 779, 781 There goes the electability argument.
I don't mean just because he'd be dealing with a recalcitrant Congress. I mean things that really aren't within the wherewithal of the president as our system currently stands.
"As our system currently stands." You are vastly underestimating the scope of Sanders' ambition. He is explicitly calling for political revolution. If Congress or the states get in the way, I expect they will be dissolved.
As far as, say, (2) goes in 780 (and almost any promise Sanders makes) you could say the same exact thing about literally everything Clinton has said she would/wants to do.
The problem isn't ambition, it's that the Republicans will continue to obstruct literally anything that the president would want. So both are stuck with either "I will do nothing - nothing!" or saying what their aims are, and it's clear that they're both doing the second. I mean, as far as I can tell this is the only answer Clinton has as far as that goes, which really puts her at a disadvantage when it comes to the question of promising things they can't do.
And 784 is right: Sanders is recognizing this problem and his answer is that we need to push the Democratic party in the direction of an ideologically based party (like the Republicans) rather than a neoliberal consensus one built around balancing business/wealthier interests with the common good. Each step in that direction, and I think Sanders can manage at least somewhat of a shift, moves the party (and the country) in the direction of the things he says we should be doing.
Or, well, 784 is right about promising significant changes to the way the political power structure looks right now. He's not Robespierre or whatever nonsense the rest of it is suggesting.
The incarceration point is easy. If the states won't release their inmates voluntarily, just send in the national guard to break open the prisons by force. That's how the schools in the South were desegregated in the 1960s--it's the same principal.
Breaking up the banks may be more difficult, but do you really think Sanders would hesitate to call in airstrikes against Wall Street if necesssary? He's not joking around.
Sanders remembers the 1960s; he know how this is done.
785: As far as, say, (2) goes in 780 (and almost any promise Sanders makes) you could say the same exact thing about literally everything Clinton has said she would/wants to do.
I don't think so, but whatevs.
Sanders is recognizing this problem and his answer is that we need to push the Democratic party in the direction of an ideologically based party (like the Republicans)
I guess I may be finding myself more concerned about this than others are. Making wild promises doesn't seem like a good plan to me.
You've stopped ignoring him?
Next you fight him.
Next he wins.
I just don't see the means by which Clinton somehow proposes more progressive things than Obama has so far (if she does) and somehow the Republicans are cool with that in a way they weren't with Obama. I mean, how does this work? Do they suddenly get less insane somehow? Do they decide that, unlike Obama, Clinton is cool and they want her to succeed?
Triangulating worked in the '90s (by which I mean: they passed stuff, not that they passed stuff that wasn't horrible), but it's not like Obama hasn't tried that for the last six years or so to no avail. And Clinton's answer in that clip really did seem fundamentally divorced from any kind of reality at the moment, in a way that reflects some of the DC conventional wisdom. (I believe we'll have the political capital to [raise taxes a lot]? That's bonkers.) Working hard to add progressive legislators to congress, combined with dragging the current ones in a leftward direction* is just as much what Clinton would have to do as Sanders. The difference seems to me to be that Sanders recognizes that and seems way more likely to actually put a good faith effort into doing it than Clinton, whose power base in the party pretty much depends on not doing it.
*I also suspect that "Hi I'm President Sanders" would be a pretty good start to convincing a bunch of the more conservative legislators that now is a good time to move leftwards a bit, if only for these kinds of reasons.
Re: airstrikes against Wall Street:
The president has wide latitude regarding the disposition of the military. Bernie has repeatedly said he's going to break up the big banks and it's not his fault if people assume he's speaking figuratively.
783: But in the worst possible way. If Clinton runs a competent campaign and Sanders beats her, then that reflects well on Sanders. If she runs an incompetent campaign, then that gives us no reason to think he's more electable than before.
I wouldn't support bombing the banks, but if they just put tape down the middle of each bank headquarters, with armed guards patrolling the line, that would work for me.
792.1: Simple enough. She offers better deals, in other words, gives up more than Obama was willing or able to do, and is somewhat more capable of twisting Democratic arms in Congress. Remember, quite a bit of what did pass in the House and got to Obama's desk was with a majority of Democratic votes.
It's an argument. I am not necessarily saying it is right, or that Obama was unwilling to make Repubs adequate offers. But it is a way to get things passed, and likely the only way. For a ridiculous example, repeal the Voting Rights Act in return for single-payer. Repubs will deal.
I would rather nothing at all got passed until we have a Democratic Congress. Nothing. Including budgets. Veto everything.
Also, I am liking urples comments. Now we are talking.
I might also suggest that a political party, in firm control of the house, that knows (if it is true) that they will never again gold the White House or have majority status, because demographics are inexorably leading to the destruction in the form they know...
...might be willing to make great/EVIL deals on the way out.
I mention VRA vs single-payer. A Republican Party facing irrelevancy might be willing to withdraw to their old borders, and a Democratic Party increasingly resident in and emotionally attached to big coastal cities might throw up their hands and reverse the Civil War, de facto if not de jure.
Of course the relevant example is the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare not applying to Red or Dixie states.
Of course you can blame Roberts and SCOTUS all you want, but the fact remains that Obama and the Democratic apparently don't give a flying fuck about poor blacks etc in Dixie, and were willing to let the decision stand.
Had 100+ years of precedent for Northern liberals saying the South ain't their problem.
If Republicans offer to withdraw to below Mason-Dixon, and let Democrats control everything else, and the alternative being an endless grind of quasi-civil war...I think odds aren't bad the Dems will buy in.
The prospect of power brings out the Lenin around here, doesn't it?
796:
It's worth remembering that the Republicans had the votes in the Bush admin to really fuck up social security but they balked at it.
I wonder if they might get cold feet about truly destructive legislation if they become their party bears responsibility for it in the public eye.
The current system, where they hold a Democratic President's budgets hostage over Medicare, Medicaid, and SS cuts might be a bit more conducive to their keeping their jobs in the long run.
If Republicans offer to withdraw to below Mason-Dixon, and let Democrats control everything else
I'm sure they'd buy right into that since they only control a majority of state governorships, majority of state legislatures, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.
Vote Hillary, she'll only propose milquetoast things that won't happen so you won't be as disappointed as when Bernie fails.
and the Supreme Court.
Maybe not for long, possible NMM to Scalia.
Seems clear. Holy shit.
There goes my 802 as the GOP loses its majority on the SC.
(oops, pwned by Barry.)
Confirmed by gov. Abbott.
The Republicans can just delay confirming anyone until January, right? Does Obama have any leverage?
I'm wandering what their plans are too. I really don't see them being comfortable letting Obama nominate a justice to replace him.
I think this is a very good reason for people to put their support behind Sanders though, because even if he doesn't end up winning it will give Obama the ability to go to the senate, point at that seat and say "IT'S ME TRUMP OR SANDERS WHO DO YOU WANT CHOOSING?"
809.2: I had the exact same thought, especially if the Republicans lose seats in November. Obama's selection would get approved about five seconds into the lame-duck session.
780- Actually the President does have the power to end mass incarceration. S/he can pardon everyone there on a drug beef for instance.
