You know, all I really want is single payer and I don't know why this is so complicated.
I wonder if it will be less complicated now that its recognized the Republican base doesn't really give a shit about small government conservationism.
2:
They're very selective when it comes to caring about small government conservatism. By that I mean they only care when they don't control the government.
Something something Major major's dad dad.
Ever wondered what the Presidential hopefuls would look like with beards? Wonder no more!
Bloomberg just announced he won't run.
I said to my wife that the only way the Democrats lose to Trump is if they somehow nominate someone with a more negative profile, such as Kanye. My wife said she thought that Kayne would win. So I'm taking the controversial position that in a head-to-head Donald Trump-Kanye West matchup, Trump wins.
The tiny but obsessive bridge-playing headline-writing community would lose their shit.
Too bad Omar Sharif didn't live to see that joke.
One of the few people really equipped to appreciate it.
The tiny but obsessive bridge-playing headline-writing community would lose their shit.
I keep trying to think of a good joke about just wanting to make one no-trump, but so far nothing clever has come to mind.
No more masturbating to Bloomberg's hat.
I'm really so cynical at this point that I'd happily take third term Obama simply for his seven years of experience not crashing the earth into the sun.
10: No freaking way.
Kanye for VP.
Kim for Prez!!!
"For our next debate, I am going to tweet a selfie of my amazing abs, and I challenge Trump to really prove "there are no problems there"
All my problems with American politics would like totally go away if the Convention drafted the entire Kardashian/Jenner crowd to occupy the White House.
We deserve this.
Everyone's down on reality TV in the political process this year (which, fair enough, because Trump), but it could lead to such a better system of campaigning than we have now. As I've said in the past the best thing would be a 72 hour crisis simulation, entirely filmed, in which you see the candidates (and maybe like 5 selected advisors) deal with multiple domestic and foreign policy issues and crises. Wouldn't this be amazing? First of all, it would be genuinely gripping television. Second, wouldn't it be a better indicator of how these people would actually govern than speeches and invocations of policies that have no chance of being implemented? I don't really have much faith in democracy left but I have to think that in a realistic simulation where he wasn't just allowed to be the "boss" and talk about "winning" but actually had to be on TV every night doing something other than firing people Trrump would come across terribly, as would Cruz. Wouldn't you rather see Hillary and Bernie deal with a simulated "Lehman Brothers is collapsing and the world is blowing up -- what do we do right now?" than just talk about it? I'm not saying this needs to replace speeches and platforms and the like entirely but why not have it be part of the mix.
That would be so much cooler than the debates.
15: Romney's No-Trump Bid Falls Short?
19: You got that idea from a Star Trek movie, nerd.
Wait, are you suggesting we put Trump through the Kobayashi Maru?
19
I was in some of those when I was in grad school! It was fun, though they didn't film them or anything; just nerds in conference rooms. Might have been more fun if the Kardashians were involved. Or not.
Maybe Trump and Clinton forced to be on the same Survivor team against Cruz and Sanders on another?
15: Romney's No-Trump Bid Falls Short?
That's good.
Romney's No-Trump bid depends on finesse: Does Kasich hold Ohio Key Card?
One suspects that Trump is putting us through the Kobayashi Maru.
That will fit even better when Mitt pulls off the Kirkian solution.
19: They actually aired that in the UK, only without the political candidates.
just nerds in conference rooms
[Jazz flute solo.]
28: Captain Russell A. Kirk of the USS Enterprise Institute.
9: But he had such strong prospects, and especially against Trump or Sanders!!
32: Even on its own dubious merits, the map is fucking weird. They show Vermont as "undecided:, while NY and PA are for Bernie? And Georgia and Tennessee go Bloomberg against Sanders (yet stay Trump against Clinton)?
If there's one thing I know, it's that Tennessee would have gone gaga for a gun-hating New York billionaire who wants to take away your Big Gulp and let cops frisk black people without justification.
The Jewish thing might have been a problem, admittedly.
That gives me an idea.
What odds would you guys give to Romney getting the nomination at the convention?
0%. Rule 40, bitches.
The RNC could, of course, just change the rules but if they think they have an insurrection on their hands now, well.
Oh, that's not the rule about fetishes, is it?
40 -- Well, that's really interesting, but I don't see why it necessarily kills a brokered convention. I hadn't seen that rule before. You need majorities (not pluralities) in at least 8 states to be nominated for President at the convention. So far Trump's done that in 5 states, Cruz in 2, and Rubio in 1, Kasich in zero. But there are 17 winner-take-all states and a bunch of proportional representation ones. So you could easily have both multiple candidates who pass the 8-state threshold and no candidate with anything more than a plurality of votes.
And, of course, the convention can just change the rules as it sees fit. So you could have multiple candidates, no one gets elected on the first ballot, rules are changed and then you get open nominations.
All this assumes chaos and a non-majority of pledged delegates for Trump and is really unlikely, but I don't see why that Rule 40 alone makes it impossible.
In the olden times the party's rules and credentialing committees at the convention were super important -- you could block delegates by imposing weird credentialing rules, and otherwise manipulate the rules in certain directions.
I'm increasingly coming to the view that primaries and caucuses are fucking stupid. Why is it better and more democratic to have these weird semi-elections of a party and bizarre caucuses than just have party leaders put up folks who you can then either vote for or not. Arguably it provides a check on party leaders. But it also creates room for people like Trump. And party leaders at least historically represented actual party constituencies, and the nomination process forced them to negotiate with each other and cut deals.
Instead now we have this bizarre sham pseudo-democratic system where some subset of the actual electors (not even necessarily party members) vote for party nominees for whatever reason they want. And the result is that you either have two results: (a) potemkin elevations of establishment candidates and boring conventions [this is by far the most common result] or (b) populist disasters like Trump (and McGovern, and arguably Carter).
Why is this so great? It actually seems less Democratic and less likely to produce good or effective leadership than having the party structure nominate party candidates. The only instance in which I think the Presidential primary system has worked even reasonably well was Obama winning in 2008.
It would be awesome if some Republican delegates weren't credentialed because they didn't bring proper photo ID (State of Ohio issued?) and proof of citizenship.
43: I've never been able to make sense of primaries. The only reason I can think of for having them is that they provide an electoral trial run for potential candidates and expose potential weaknesses. Whether that's worth the amount of atmo they suck up or the risks they introduce admittedly seems dubious.
On the other hand, sans the primary process there would never have been an Obama presidency.
43.3 was supposed to be small-d "democratic." And I guess the primary system appeals to party leaders precisely because it promotes certainty of leadership and boring conventions. except when it doesn't and the party gets hostile-takeovered by someone like Trump (which doesn't itself seem particularly small-d democratic either).
I bet Republicans are going to copy the Democrats rules about Super Delegates before 2020.
Donald Trump is the concentrated version of bizarro 1968.
Is 36 the evilest joke ever? Possibly!
Why is it better and more democratic to have these weird semi-elections of a party and bizarre caucuses than just have party leaders put up folks who you can then either vote for or not.
Because the US isn't a parliamentary democracy and the way we set it up means there are going to be two parties which actually play for power and then maybe a few parties which barely exist and have no real power at all. As a result when it comes to elections, and especially big ones, it's (almost) always going to be a choice between one of two people without any 'not these two' options like there are in some systems. Without a primary you would effectively just be having Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her friends (or whoever) picking one candidate, Reince Priebus the other one, and that being the entire range of possible choices to make. (Obama is a very good example of how a primary can stop this from happening.)
It's not a lot of democratic power given how strong the parties are in general and how political institutions work. But if Democratic party leaders just had a meeting and selected the presidential candidate do you really think Clinton would be running on the platform she's advocating right now, or feeling any push to work for some of those things?
But if the convention made the decision as a process of negotiation between party elites, it wouldn't be Wasserman Schultz picking people cause she'd get rolled and replaced by someone better or else steamrollered by someone's machine. It would mean candidates prioritised organising within the party to build strong machines they could either use to get themselves nominated or they could sell to someone else, and strong machines are a valuable resource for parties.
They do have advantages in building candidate profiles and testing them in a lower-stakes environment.
(Parliamentary democracies are paradigmatically two-party systems, it's one of the core traits of the Westminster system, so I'm not quite sure why that's an argument for primaries...)
Any process that led to Alton B. Parker's nomination for president couldn't be wrong.
Yeah, 51 is the right response. Though according to Facebook Debbie Wasserman Schultz is both literally the devil's spawn and the most powerful force in the universe, so presumably she could dominate any convention.
Come to think of it, primaries were more goo goo bullshit, like ballot initiatives and powerful city councils. Goo goos -- was there any aspect of American politics they couldn't unimtentionally fuck up?
Goo goos -- was there any aspect of American politics they couldn't unimtentionally fuck up?
Well, some of the fuckups were probably intentional.
The immediate impact Trump & Cruz have is that European idiots feel less and less shame to voice their medieval idiocies.
Bummer!
54 - what's wrong with powerful city councils?
57 - Good question, cities may be our best bet to get out of this downward spiral. Way better than nation states anyway.
The only instance in which I think the Presidential primary system has worked even reasonably well was Obama winning in 2008.
And, to be honest, if the party leadership had picked (presumably) Clinton back in 2008, would that have been so bad? Obama would now be the anointed successor. And at least Clinton wouldn't have wasted a second thinking "oh, maybe I can find common ground with the Republicans in Congress".
59: I honestly think there's an alternate history where we're sitting round going "primaries are a nice idea in principle, but how could a somewhat obscure black guy with the middle name Hussein like Obama beat a very famous and very well-resourced Clinton in a popularity contest among Democratic voters --- good thing smart party insiders can make judgement calls".
57. In France big city mayors have a status in national politics like state governors in the United States. Seems to work as well as anything else.
The immediate impact Trump & Cruz have is that European idiots feel less and less shame to voice their medieval idiocies.
I don't think the BNP/EDL, FN, Golden Dawn, FPO or PVV felt all that much shame before.
62: no, but Sarkozy, De Wever, Johnson and others are definitely feeling more and more liberated. The problem in Europe is not at the extreme right fringe but at the not-so-extreme right and not-at-all fringe voicing this stuff and giving credibility to it. Maybe in a similar way that the Tea Party prepared the ground for Trump?
61: Typically big city mayors, even on the right, are much milder in their opinions. Partly because at that level people care about a totally different type of thing, partly because they simply have no armies and stuff to wield.
There once was a saying that there is no conservative or liberal way to pick up the trash or deliver the water, but I guess Flint has put the lie to that truism.
Oh, but there are many obnoxious mayors, only the range for the expression of obnoxiousness is smaller.
Or at least that's my hope.
Back in the day, it was state parties, usually headed by the governor (if he was of their party) or some local eminence grise, that selected the convention delegates and controlled their votes. The candidates wooed the state parties and the wheeling and dealing was pretty rank, from what I've read. In many states the big city machines controlled the delegations.
1968 was really the dying gasp of that system, which had been declining since the 50's as the primary system spun up. (Kefauver versus Truman, McCarthy versus Johnson, etc.) Primaries are more TV-friendly than back rooms, too.
On the other hand, the party grandees gave us Lincoln and Roosevelt. They also gave us Hayes and Harding.
63.2 they simply have no armies and stuff to wield
"How many divisions has the mayor?" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
they simply have no armies and stuff to wield
Well, they often have tanks and grenade launchers and such these days.
We all have tanks and grenade launchers. We take the Second Amendment very seriously.
If I woke up tomorrow and found myself on the Supreme Court, I would interpret "keep and bear arms" as saying that you couldn't have anything you couldn't pick up. It would be a start, at least.
I'm hard pressed to think of a weapon that is legal (without a very hard to get permit) and beyond the capacity of the typical adult to lift. Maybe some kind of punt gun, but I've never seen one.
70: that was seriously funny, man*, made my day.
66: interesting, I didn't know.
* I mean this in a gender-neutral way, seriously.
I'm hard pressed to think of a weapon that is legal (without a very hard to get permit) and beyond the capacity of the typical adult to lift. Maybe some kind of punt gun, but I've never seen one.
A shotgun made of solid gold.
There's a song about a skeet shooting contest with the devil in that.
If anybody can lift a shotgun made of solid gold, it just has to be Putin.
I would interpret "keep and bear arms" as saying that you couldn't have anything you couldn't pick up.
I would interpret "well regulated militia" to mean that every gun owner better get their ass over to the town green for drills every third Saturday of the month.
In interpret "no Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house" to mean that that while it is still illegal to cut civilians into four parts, it isn't unconstitutional.
51: The parallel for the Prime Minister in the Westminster system, at least as far as how they come to power/what that looks like, would be something more like the Speaker of the House. And electing them after a primary would probably be pointless, since if one party didn't have a majority in the House they'd need to form a coalition with some other group to build up votes and so on. So if the green party has (I know, I know but it's possible) three representatives in the House and the Democrats need those votes for Pelosi then those representatives get power (and the people who voted for them get their preferences respected).
But the Presidency is a separate national election where the winner is by a plurality (like in '96 where no one won a majority but it was still a blowout) so the benefit you get from affiliation with one of the two parties is enormous rather than just useful. And in plenty of places that already means that barring really insane stuff happening there might as well be no election: Alabama; Mississippi; New York; Vermont; etc. aren't really in play. Having a candidate selected for the party behind closed doors would eliminate any say that people who don't vote for the dominant party there have as far as the executive branch goes at all.
79 5:00 AM sharp. Use it or lose it.
I would interpret "keep and bear arms" as saying that you couldn't have anything you couldn't pick up.
This is actually Scalia's interpretation, and it (unsurprisingly) doesn't work. If you are obligated to keep and bear arms, then presumably you can't keep a weapon at home - you have to carry at all times. The "and" pretty obviously refers to two separate rights.
But the modern reading of the Second Amendment has been a testament to the power of propaganda. The idea of a "well regulated militia" seems to have totally dropped out of the debate. How would we read the first amendment if it said, "A well regulated exchange of ideas being necessary to a free society, the right of the people to free speech shall not be infringed"?
That said, it would be pretty cool to carry around one of those 20mm shoulder-fired rifles. Especially for people who have noisy airliners overhead early in the morning.
I'm hard pressed to think of a weapon that is legal (without a very hard to get permit) and beyond the capacity of the typical adult to lift.
Trebuchet?
I'm pretty sure those are completely legal.
84: Right. Nobody on the "more gun control" side wants to raise the "militia" issue because that would be implicitly arguing for home-use automatic weapons.
Krugman offers a graphical representation of how progressives ought view a Trump nomination vs. the alternatives.
As Krugman points out, Trump is only worse than the opposition in some areas. He's a racist, but Rubio is a weaponized racist. And it doesn't even look like Rubio is the alternative to Trump, anyway.
87: No it wouldn't. "Well regulated" can mean quite a lot of things - including a ban on certain armaments. District of Columbia v. Heller was a 5-4 decision that broke new judicial ground in 2008. A sane Supreme Court will overturn that and eliminate the right to bear arms as an individual right.
I don't think most people want to eliminate the right to bear arms as an individual right. At least I don't. I just don't want it as beyond "regulation" as it currently is.
Apropos of nothing. Does anyone know where there is Data that is something like: bottom 20% of global income over time. I'm trying to actually decide if the free-trade makes global poor better off* actually involves an income trend increasing or not. Mostly online I can just find the dollar-a-day stuff which is worthless.
* I'm ignoring does forcing farmers off of their non-market producing income land into slums in cities with more market income make them better off.
Too be fair to the second amendment people until the 20th century it was normal for national guard artillery pieces just to be owned by wealthy individuals.
It sure beats putting your name on park benches.
I'm assuming. I've never donated a park bench. Maybe it feels great.
90, 92: But before 2008, the right for an individual to own such weapons wasn't in the Constitution.
90: if it's a right favored by the right it can't be regulated.
"Well regulated" means that you get to regulate what the weapons are. Under my regulations, the weapons are smooth-bore muskets. Maybe if you prove yourself responsible you get to use a flint-lock instead of a match-lock.
91: Not sure how specific it is to your request, but the underlying study which includes this chart (which I think is very telling), might provide some useful data (although I think they mention the sparsity of reliable data for the lowest income ranges).
The notion of an individual right to bear arms is in contrast to a state-level collective right to bear arms. I don't think you can say that an individual right didn't exist until 2008 so much as the states'-right interpretation was never significant enough to get explicitly rules out until then.
Does anyone know where there is Data that is something like: bottom 20% of global income over time.
Maybe not quite what you are asking for, but I believe this is the canonical graph on the subject.
Shouting "only in a state-militia" after 200+ years of generally allowing private gun ownership doesn't strike me as any more adhering to the Constitution than insisting it says you can't put reasonable restrictions on how guns can be sold so that you can enforce laws that exclude some people from owning guns.
98: The mark at the 80th percentile should be labeled "Trump voters."
I'll put my cards on the table, I actually think the individual rights people are more or less correct, otherwise who is the "right" vesting in? Not only that, but in my opinion, it's a right to militarily effective weapons. I just don't think any of it's important, we've whittled down all the other rights for various "compelling interest" reasons, we can just do the same here.
Now the actual legal decisions are stupid.
I can't think of a reason why we can't ban handguns for self-defense, if we can ban switch blades (as is so in my state), switchblades are no less an "arm" and are a hell of a lot less dangerous to their owners and bystanders than hand-guns.
We did used to mostly ban handguns for self-defense. Not very long ago.
"We" being limited to certain states, but still.
I'm hard pressed to think of a weapon that is legal (without a very hard to get permit) and beyond the capacity of the typical adult to lift.
Muzzle-loading smooth-bore black powder cannon of any size are considered to be "antiques" and are therefore not only legal to own, but are not covered by the Gun Control Act or the "destructive devices" provision of the National Firearms Act.
Basically you could have Mons Meg in your house and it would be entirely legal.
I'll read the study, the chart doesn't help because I wan't to see the change over time. Generally, we'd expect global incomes to be going up because of build up of capital, if the free trade people are right (and they may be) the rate of income increase (sans china) should start going up in the 80s, but I have no way to know if that's true or not.
Shouting "only in a state-militia" after 200+ years of generally allowing private gun ownership
Mostly I'm goofing with the "militia" bit, but I think the "well regulated" bit is important. Yes, we allow individual gun ownership, subject to regulation, as has also been the case for 200+ years.
102: I WASN'T SHOUTING.
In fact, there was a long history of banning particular types of weapons that militiamen might carry - even though before the weapons were banned, they weren't banned. (Asteele includes artillery in that category, which I didn't know.)
Anyway, just because something has taken place for 200 years doesn't mean it's written into the Constitution.
Wait! I thought 109 was my point.
I'll put my cards on the table, I actually think the individual rights people are more or less correct, otherwise who is the "right" vesting in? Not only that, but in my opinion, it's a right to militarily effective weapons.
I agree. The plain text seems pretty clear: we need a militia; so there are to be no limits on anyone keeping suitable militia-type arms (i.e. possessing and holding them in their house) or bearing them (i.e. undergoing military training). I think it still leaves the way open for banning people from carrying weapons around the place in the normal course of their lives, unless they're literally on their way to militia training right then, and it certainly allows things like registering firearms and imposing safe storage requirements, but you cannot put in place a law that stops anyone who wants to from owning (for example) an assault rifle, light machine-gun, anti-tank missile launcher or land mine, or that limits the right to join and train with the militia to (say) property-holders, or Protestants, or non-felons.
I'm not happy with the current state of gun laws, but I'm happier with it than I would be with gun laws as in the United Kingdom, for example.
I just early-voted in the Illinois primary. First time my ID was checked online--by a woman in a burka--as opposed to checked visually against a printout of my signature in a huge binder. I submitted my address and age and signature on a sheet that was hole-punched, so it will obviously be put in a binder. She looked at the screen and asked me a question about my middle initial. Essentially an online version of the same process, with paper record.
Voting itself was electronic this time, although when I approved my selections, a paper tape version scrolled up for my inspection, and will be a re-countable backup.
I've been a legal observer at polling places in three states, and I've seen this technology before, but this is the first time I've used it. On election day itself the sheer number of polling places may mean that the old pencil-connect-the-arrow sheets of cardboard, which are about two feet long, will still be in use.
114 is a clearer statement of why I think nobody makes the "militia" argument.
you cannot put in place a law that stops anyone who wants to from owning (for example) an assault rifle, light machine-gun, anti-tank missile launcher or land mine
What about a nuclear weapon. Is the second amendment protecting those?
Which is where "well-regulated" comes into the question of militia rights.
Only the Continental Army had nuclear weapons.
115: gun laws in the UK are not that bad. If you want a shotgun licence, you can pretty much have one, unless the police have a really good reason for not letting you have one. (e.g. history of violent crime) If you want a rifle licence, it's the other way round: you can't have one unless you can show what your really good reason is for having one. And you can't have handguns at all.
What about a nuclear weapon. Is the second amendment protecting those?
Yes. Which is why it's a silly amendment. It was written in a time when the most destructive and advanced weapon of war was the ship-borne great gun, and those were very often in private hands.
Nuclear weapons don't kill people! People kill people!
If you outlaw nukes, only outlaws will have nukes!
No one with a nuke can be an outlaw. Having a nuke grants you sovereign status. An outlaw with a nuke is just a very, very small country.
Which is where "well-regulated" comes into the question of militia rights.
OK, but how does that cover nuclear weapons but not landmines and anti-tank missiles?
Having a nuke grants you sovereign status.
hell no! printing your name in lowercase letters and affixing a fingerprint in red ink is what gives you sovereign status. nukes are just icing on the cake.
Not talking about the doctrine as it is now, which is a travesty. Just trying to read the original scheme.
I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to shoot into the air from my patio unless the Steelers win the Super Bowl.
That's not in the Constitution. I think it's federal case law.
This scheme doesn't stop you from banning stuff like switch blades or handguns, you'd be banning them because they were unsafe, not effective, not part of the militia scheme etc.
Muzzle-loading smooth-bore black powder cannon of any size are considered to be "antiques" and are therefore not only legal to own, but are not covered by the Gun Control Act or the "destructive devices" provision of the National Firearms Act.
This isn't as hypothetical as a lot of people think either, though the shipping charges are a bit high if you plan to buy them online. I know the mayor of Lancaster PA had a whole collection of old civil war/civil war style cannons when I lived there, and really huge ones to boot. (I'm pretty sure that at least some of them were larger than that one.) He used to drag them down to the park for the fourth of July fireworks show and they would play the 1812 Overture*.
It's not just cannons that aren't covered by that act either. Those aren't cute toys by any means: that second one was the most powerful revolver available until the 357 Magnum showed up, and depending on the barrel length of the gun (under about 4", say) is more powerful than some of them. Also they're way cooler than most handguns, and I think the world would be better off if people who carried guns regularly had to carry ones like that rather than boring semi-automatic junk. And they'll deliver them straight to your door without any pesky "background check" or "FFL guy" stuff. You can also buy replacement cylinders for them that will convert them straight into normal cartridge revolvers within minutes which also aren't regulated in the slightest, because this is America!
(Psst - gswift! There's one that's perfect for you! I guess there are fewer rounds in it than in a beretta or whatever, but that just means you'd have to carry two!)
*Celebrating the defeat of one of our allies by one of Russia. I thought it wasn't entirely thematically appropriate, but it was clear that the reason had nothing to do with American independence and everything to do with owning a lot of huge cannons. It turns out there's less bass in those things than you'd expect, too, and that it's really hard to balance the sound of a medium sized orchestra with, well, really artillery. So it mostly sounded like, at just below conversational volume**, "dah-dah-dahdah-dah-dah >POW. It turns out there's less bass in those things than you'd expect, too, and that it's really hard to balance the sound of a medium sized orchestra with, well, really artillery. So it mostly sounded like, at just below conversational volume**, "dah-dah-dahdah-dah-dah >POW. It turns out there's less bass in those things than you'd expect, too, and that it's really hard to balance the sound of a medium sized orchestra with, well, really artillery. So it mostly sounded like, at just below conversational volume**, "dah-dah-dahdah-dah-dah >POW. It turns out there's less bass in those things than you'd expect, too, and that it's really hard to balance the sound of a medium sized orchestra with, well, really artillery. So it mostly sounded like, at just below conversational volume**, "dah-dah-dahdah-dah-dah >POW **I mean, not actually broadcast at that volume they didn't exactly let random people wander up to sit next to the speakers/cannons.
Ok, I can honestly say I've never seen that posting glitch show up before and I have no idea how I managed it. But I guess that footnote is interesting enough to read it like three or four times?
Replica muskets are weird to shoot. The sound is different, I assume because the shot is so slow. When it hits something, it sounds like a cross between a bullet fired by a regular gun and a rock being thrown into water.
Celebrating the defeat of one of our allies by one of Russia.
France wasn't really a US ally in 1812; the two countries had been at war from 1798 to 1800 (the Quasi-War).
The key thing to remember is that yes, as of 1787, the Second Amendment was designed to protect a "collective" right -- that is, it was supposed to preserve the ability of citizens to organize in state militias to resist a hypothetical oppressive uniformed federal standing army (remember, Americans had done exactly that all of 12 years earlier). But with a few exceptions ALMOST ALL of the "Bill of Rights" was about protecting collective, not individual rights. The First Amendment's freedom of speech clause applied only to the federal government and most definitely did not prevent state censorship laws. The Establishment Clause allowed states to "establish" churches within their states but prevented the federal government from doing so.
This all changed in a huge way after the civil war and increasingly so in the 20th Century, when for the first time the bill of rights became "incorporated" against the states through the 14th Amendment. So whatever your theory of the Second Amendment is, it needs to contemplate the 14th amendment and that across-the-board change in the understanding of the bill of rights (not even called that until Reconstruction).
Personally I think that probably leads to a "right" (subject to very severe regulation) to have firearms or weapons sufficient to allow mild protection against an armed mob trying to deprive you of your civil rights, but not much more than that. That's all debatable and complex. But what's not OK is just staring at the text and making assertions about the 1780s without looking at the overall context and transformation of the bill of rights.
Sure, but he wasn't there setting off cannons in the park at that time either...
1812 Overture
You can't shout fire in a crowded theater otherwise.
136 s/b 1789-91, not 1787, but the general point is the same.
Whats madness is the assumption that the needs, constraints, and social contexts of 1789 or 1866 are analogous to the modern era. Clearly interpretations have changed over time, but lately they've all changed in one direction, and there is no reason to accept that as a permanent state of affairs.
136 is correct and the real answer is that the 2nd amendment should have been deleted in connection with the adoption of the civil war/reconstruction amendments, since it was based on a theory of government that at that point very clearly no longer applied. We absolutely do not believe that individual states have a right to militarily defend themselves against the federal government if they believe the government is acting tyrannically.* But it wasn't deleted because at that point, while it was clearly no longer "useful" in any meaningful sense, it wasn't yet a social problem like it is today (and really it wouldn't become a problem for over 100 more years), so no one even considered removing it.
* I almost said "unlawfully" instead of tyrannically, but on reflection I'm not actually sure that's right. If the federal government really did attempt to take unlawful action against a state, eg in direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling, would the state have a right to defend itself militarily against the federal government, in an effort to upload the law? Maybe so.
for the first time the bill of rights became "incorporated" against the states through the 14th Amendment.
The bit of the 14th Amendment that I could find that speaks to this says "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States".
I'm not sure how you get from "not abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens" into converting what had been a collective right into a citizen right.
It's a long and complicated story and one that wasn't completed until the 20th Century, but the Supreme Court has read most (though not all, the Seventh Amendment still applies only to the Federal Government) of the bill of rights as being incorporated against the states through the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th amendment, because a post-reconstruction Supreme Court largely read the privileges and immunities clause out of the 14th amendment.
I endorse 136 and 141, and note that most of the things wrong with this country go back to President Grant's inexplicable failure to call for a constitutional convention when we needed one.
That's why he's on the $20 instead of the $10.
President Grant's inexplicable failure to call for a constitutional convention
Dashing all hopes for a constitutional right to whiskey.
Whiskey, cigars, and good horses.
Would have no chance now as the Grant Amendment but you could probably pass a whiskey and horses amendment today if you called it the Toby Keith amendment.
I actually really like the second amendment.
I hadn't realized until playing it now just how political that whiskey for my men/beer for my horses song is. It's all about encouraging drunk vigilante mobs of rednecks.
"beer for my men/beer for my horses" is a small improvement.
I actually really like the second amendment.
Really? But its a grammatical train wreck!
Digby reports a CNN analyst's discussion of what will happen if Trump is deprived of the Republican nomination at the convention:
A brokered convention would be the equivalent of the political "Hunger Games". And I am not exaggerating. Take a look at what's going on at Donald Trump events. Take a look at what happens to protesters. They get basically assaulted. If you think people aren't going to get clubbed like baby seals on the floor of the convention you haven't been watching what's been happening.
If I don't stop reading political news, I may not survive to vote in November. Is it possible to die from an overdose of schadenfreude?
Probably. But are delegates to the Republican convention equivalent (in terms of selection) to the people who attend Trump events? I thought being a delegate was your reward for being a good party-whatever. I didn't think the winner gets to pick his or her supporters.
I think the riots will be outside in the streets of Cleveland.
156: Every state has its own rules, but I think the typical thing is that a candidate runs a slate of delegates which are, in turn, picked by the voters. So Trump delegates are Trump people. (Which complicates the talk of a brokered convention, since Trump voters ultimately would have to defect.)
Here's how Maryland describes the process for delegate candidates:
A filed candidate may have the name of a Presidential candidate placed adjacent to his/her name if the campaign grants their written permission. The campaigns will submit the names of their approved delegates and alternate delegates to the State Board of Elections for each Congressional District.
I might not know the typical thing since Pennsylvania and Nebraska are seemingly dedicated to doing it their own way on lots of political issues.
Anyhow, if you have any interest in this topic the Supreme Court case that found (in 2010!) that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment is really really good and very accessible to non-lawyers.
Alito's majority opinion starting on page 5 lays out the basic bill of rights doctrine, and how it has changed over the years, in very clear and simple language. He explains exactly how, in fact, the bill of rights has come to be incorporated against the states. In addition, he also explains (to my knowledge accurately) why in the period of reconstruction protecting an individual right to bear arms (for black people against white militias) was an important issue.
Thomas' concurrence explains why "incorporation" of the bill of rights against the states should have been done through the "privileges and immunities" part of the 14th Amendment in the 19th Century, and not the due process clause in the 20th Century (Thomas is absolutely right about that).
Stevens' dissent has an interesting but long argument about incorporation in general and why it shouldn't just track the language of the bill of rights. And Breyer's dissent argues why, even under standard incorporation doctrine, the Second Amendment shouldn't be incorporated because it's not "fundamental."
I probably come down personally closest to Breyer on this issue, surprise surprise, not that my view of the law matters for any particular reason. But it's a real live issue with interesting and good arguments on all sides. Unlike some legal questions covered by the Supreme Court this is something that's been treated with real seriousness by the current Supreme Court. I mean, gun control is a political issue and the votes ultimately depend on prior politics, but there's a really very real and debatable legal question here and the Court's opinion does a good job of setting out the issues. (Except for Scalia, who truly was a hack most of the time, whose opinion in Heller wasn't close to as careful as it should have been, and whose concurrence in the linked opinion is also hacktastic.)
We've moved on. Now we want to know exactly how crazy the modal person inside the convention will be.
155: If so, we'll both be dead by November. Maybe that's how Trump wins.
161: Related, thread-unifying question: Is the convention open-carry?
If you think people aren't going to get clubbed like baby seals on the floor of the convention you haven't been watching what's been happening.
Clubs are for wimps. Is it too late to make a rule mandating open carry inside the convention hall?
The Secret Service was too busy scouting for prostitutes to object.
A question I saw posed on Twitter: will the 2016 Republican national convention be open carry, or do Priebus and the RNC hate freedom? I'd genuinely like to know the answer.
I want Trump to pledge that *his* delegates will all be exercising their constitutional right to bear arms, RINO-convention rules be damned.
I've often felt uncomfortable at how close Cleveland is, but never specifically because of all the Republicans.
In the 7 years I lived there, I think my most quintessential Cleveland moment was walking past a park in which a polka band (complete with the silly outfits) was playing Stayin' Alive. I've always regretted that I didn't have a camera phone with me at the time.
If those guys are still around, they should definitely play the GOP convention.
That's mostly what I was afraid of before.
I wouldn't put a band in danger like that.
There are no guns allowed at the 2016 RNC. I remember the Republicans getting dinged for hypocrisy last year over this.
Jacobin with yet another analysis of the Sanders campaign, African-Americans, and economic issues. Not crazy about this one, but it also includes links to other analyses.
1) Umm, a lot of other possible vectors here, and the article mentions difference support for Sanders within the black community based on age and class
2) The South (and maybe not only) is different, and I was thinking there may be much less faith in universal federal programs (or abstract principles) actually helping say Alabamans, and more trust put into personal relationships, respect and recognition.
Jacobin with yet another analysis of the Sanders campaign, African-Americans, and economic issues.
I just saw this article about the contest for African American voters. The thing that jumps out to me is this tweet, in which Clinton comes across quite well, but the whole article is good.
For example, here is him talking about things from the way that Black Lives Matter has shaped the campaign
Part of me can't help being disconcerted, seeing the manner in which campaigns use the bereaved. They're surrogates now, carrying the campaign hopes of white Democratic candidates. Garner's mother has endorsed Clinton; his daughter cut a lengthy, heart-wrenching ad for Bernie Sanders. The five mothers have their own spot for Clinton. It's easy to see this as chasing votes on the backs of black death. But my concerns regarding the optics don't outweigh the greater benefits of these women being considered vital parts of this election cycle. As much as we are used to seeing black entertainers speak out for their chosen candidates, I love that these women are now taking center stage.
To the importance of the debates over how each candidate views Obama's policies.
... Sanders has countered that Clinton's Obama protectionism is pandering to black voters. Not only is that politically unwise, it's rather demeaning. In the emotional business that is voting, Sanders's best hope is to convince black voters that he cares more about the issues we prioritize; one of them is the Obama record, whether he likes it or not. But perhaps more significantly for the "political revolution" Sanders wants to lead, he has failed to effectively demonstrate that, as a white politician, it isn't so much about showing us that you're "woke" as it is waking up other people who share your privilege. (As Rembert Browne noted recently, we give "woke" white folks too much credit as it is.)
Clinton and Sanders are both running in a black-liberation moment, when white allyship is under particularly close scrutiny. Right now, Clinton's victories and rhetoric are demonstrating that even as she has yet to fully account for her checkered past, she is measuring up better with black voters. This race is hardly over, so she needs to keep it up. I'd love to see Sanders more effectively engage white audiences about these issues as well. It's vital that as the Democratic candidates discuss racial justice, they don't just talk in our direction as they try to secure our votes.
There are no guns allowed at the 2016 RNC.
But who exactly is going to stop Trump's delegates from bringing their guns?
The only way to stop a Trump delegate with a gun is a Cruz delegate with a gun.
The only way to stop a Christie delegate with a gun is a Trump delegate with a gun or at least a stern expression.
The RNC hired the New Black Panthers as security.
Damn, I didn't know there was another round tonight. Too soon!
Sanders has a small lead in Michigan but as usual Detroit isn't in yet.
Curbstomped in March.
I could get bitter, but when Clinton loses in November, I won't be the one to suffer the worst consequences.
Sanders returns so far in MI are pretty impressive. Even Detroit is close so far. Reports are saying record turnout. My district right now (with 58/108 precincts reporting) went 66% Sanders. Also encouraging was turnout. In Oakland County (a wealthy Detroit suburb, R territory), there were about as many Dem ballots cast as Repub (so far).
I think Sanders is going to hold in MI unless the counts are very disproportionate and I am not seeing that. Massive upset vis-a-vis poll expectations and will change Dem tone
184
Yeah, I was surprised when I checked in that Sanders was leading in MI, and he's only narrowly losing Detroit, so far. I do think that there might be something about the South that is not generalizable to the whole country.
Also, I'm shocked at how dead Rubio is. I figured he had a few more face-saving third place finishes in him. Now he's getting Jebbed.*
*To be jebbed, aka, to underperform miserably in the most humiliating way possible.
185
The worse part of me is in part happy if Sanders wins to see how 538 uncomfortably spins the fact they were so, so, wrong.
Also, the "TRUMP IS FAILING MISERABLY YES HE IS NO ONE LIKES HIM TRUMP IS DEAD" narrative coming from the MSM and the right wing media is also kind of funny in how wrong (again) it is.
187: A new chunk of Detroit just came in to take a lot of the lead away; but still there and a lot of offsetting areas not in such as most of Ann Arbor.
187.1 He's already on it, saying biggest upset versus polls ever in a primary.
*To be jebbed, aka, to underperform miserably in the most humiliating way possible.
So be it.
So, what are the odds that Rubio drops out after tonight?
I'm guessing relatively low. It seems to me that candidates tend to drop out after the (significant sorry guam) contest that follows the one where it was clear that it was over, especially if there's at least some comeback story that they can tell. And despite the awful polling I really do think Rubio is holding out some kind of hope that he could take Florida, if only because "Rubio stands a good chance of winning in Florida..." has been a bit of conventional wisdom that the press has been batting around and debating for weeks now all evidence that he's lost there to the contrary (and also because Rubio just isn't very bright).
March 16 might be the day that it becomes clear that Rubio isn't even performing well enough to act as a spoiler for Trump. It looks like Kasich and Cruz have already eaten most of his support between the two of them, and a humiliating third place in Florida (or, pleasepleaseplease, fourth) would almost certainly end his campaign and, possibly, political career entirely.
Hey, he's in second place in Idaho right now. Reason enough to stay in . . .
I do think that there might be something about the South that is not generalizable to the whole country.
Large rural population among the black population, for one.
Michigan is really a squeaker. The real interesting thing is how close Bernie's keeping it in Flint. Going on the Guardian, he's losing Genesee Co 48.8-49.5%, with 61% of the vote in. If that holds up, it will lend credence to the theory that name recognition is at least one reason Bernie's been performing poorly with African American voters.
Perhaps Rubio is sort of a "Good Soldier Sveijk" for early 21st century America. Or a tulpa.
193
Also possibly an older black population?
Looking at the map I'm not sure how close Michigan really is: the number of precincts in counties that are going for Clinton that are still outstanding is pretty low compared to the ones for Sanders. I wouldn't be surprised if it stops narrowing at some point and starts expanding again.
198
Though, Detroit is huge, so even with a little bit left it's still going to keep Hillary close.
Also, Flint has flipped back to Sanders, with 70% of the vote. That debate really appears to have done something.
(Though, you're right the lead is growing slightly again.)
Perhaps Rubio is sort of a "Good Soldier Sveijk" for early 21st century America.
I like this theory.
Nate Silver has just posted about Michigan to the effect of "I was way off". Includes the interesting point that pretty much all the states left to vote are non-Southern.
Could the CA election matter after all?
Congratulations to Sanders, that was an impressive win. This is by far the most dramatic primary season I can remember ( 2008 was fairly dramatic, but this seems even harder to read).
Wait, does that mean I should remember to update my registration address?
202.1: You mean this? It's not by Silver but it matches your description.
We passed same-day registration last year but I'm not sure if it'll be in place by the primary.
It looks like I have until May 23rd. The county I used to live in seems to have finally dropped me, probably because I told them I couldn't do jury duty because I moved. I was surprised they still had me down as a resident after I changed my car registration last year.
The full story of Trump Steaks is really something.
204: The answer to that is always yes. You're making me nervous, fake accent.
I wonder if the threat of a Bloomberg run being off the table is shifting any votes from Hillary to Sanders.
I thought Bloomberg announced yesterday that he wasn't going to run.
Pretty amazed at the MI result. This is the first time I've ever voted in a close race. 538 nodded at Sanders' opposition to trade agreeements as a factor, plus increased name recognition among African American voters.
Scott Lemieux, March 8: Regardless of what white college-educated leftists think about themselves, the actual base for the Democratic Party are black and brown people.
Fine. Just checked and Obama won 45% of white males in Ohio in 2008, who were 41% of his votes. Obama won 47% of white females.)
(Whites Obama 46 McCain 52, 83% of electorate
AAs Obama 97 McCain 2, 11% of electorate)
No further breakdown, but I would guess that both college-educated white males or union member white males each outnumbered blacks in Obama's winning total. The racial breakdown above just conveniently pretends blacks were the marginal voters.
I guess they all have permission to stay home in 2016 or vote Trump or Green, since Clinton's party doesn't need or want them.
I don't even mind a focus on minorities and women. I'm just getting tired of explicitly and overtly being shit on.
To put it another way, if Trump takes 1/4 of the white males in Ohio that voted for Obama in 2008, and keeps McCain's numbers of Republicans, Trump beats Clinton like a drum. Clinton will possibly do better with women than Obama, but more than a 5% is very far from a certainty.
Which is why Clinton after the nomination, or even in the primaries is looking for Republican voters to switch in November.
I don't think most college-educated or union-member white males are that prone to throwing a pout when somebody pays attention to somebody else.
if Trump takes 1/4 of the white males in Ohio that voted for Obama in 2008, and keeps McCain's numbers of Republicans, Trump beats Clinton like a drum.
Well, why stop there? If Trump takes all the white males across the country, then he wins every state! Great Scott! And if he invents a motor powered by static electricity, he might Go Trump and set up his own enclave in an incredibly classy valley somewhere in the desert.
Mormons got all the good desert valleys.
215: This is your first time in America, I take it?
Ok yeah the idea that Clinton would lose in Ohio that way is silly. She could easily lose it, but not like that. But seriously if there's one group known for pouting when they aren't being treated as more important than other groups...
They already left the Democratic party years ago.
I don't think most college-educated or union-member white males are that prone to throwing a pout when somebody pays attention to somebody else.
College-educated white male union-member here.... you have no idea.....
I'm mostly curious about how much of the Michigan win was due to espousing protectionist policies on Sanders's part. That's really an issue that separates the establishment from the rest of the country that crosses parties.
...that prone to throwing a pout when somebody pays attention to somebody else.
Just jobs and wages would be enough And also stop claiming white Democratic males don't exist..
when they aren't being treated as more important than other groups...
4 times as many white males voted for Obama in Ohio than black males and females combined. They are more important. They are more of the base, contrary to what Lemieux said.
Ok yeah the idea that Clinton would lose in Ohio that way is silly. She could easily lose it
Silly that Trump could take some of the Democratic white male base from Clinton? Have you been watching the primaries? What other demographic could she lose, and lose?
Interesting that the black vote at 11% in Ohio has to be earned, but the white male vote at 41% vote damn well just better shut up and do as they are told.
I'm not Lemieux. I barely know that you aren't talking about a hockey player. But the idea that the Republican party could become dominant with the white vote to the degree the Democratic party is dominant in the black vote is absurd. And that's difference is why people keep pointing out how important the black vote is to the Democratic party.
221: "No, no actually neoliberal globalism and 'free trade' agreements or whatever don't fucking help us out thank you very much" has probably been one of the bigger stories of the election despite the fact that you don't typically see the success of the Sanders/Trump candidacies described in those terms (due if nothing else to the extent that the press is still captured by the DC Consensus which takes it as an article of faith that it does and too obvious to dispute, or at least that's what I'd guess).
bob takes another step closer to voting Trump. I think my prediction that he will be a neoconservative by 2020, "cheering the B-2s as they begin their attack runs over Damascus", still holds good.
That's why I wonder about it. It really isn't in the news. The DC Consensus on that started with people who went through the Great Depression and the aftermath, but those people are all dead now so I wonder if it might shift.
I think a shift in the U.S.'s position on free trade would mark as big of a shift in international politics as Nixon going off gold.
But the idea that the Republican party could become dominant with the white vote to the degree the Democratic party is dominant in the black vote is absurd.
Are you even reading? Check out the numbers in 213 again.
I said Trump takes an additional 1/4 of the white male vote in Ohio. For example.
Since white males are a larger percentage of the Democratic base than African Americans, Repubs, or Trump this year, don't need it all or to become dominant to win the election.
Cruz Trump and Missing White Voters Real Clear Politics
My actual point here is that Clinton, if she gets the nomination, needs to seriously commit to Sanders left populism and economic program to gain the males and young people that Sanders is bringing to the polls and that are excited by Trump's protectionism.
Her plan of moving to her right will lose.
I'm skeptical that an anti-free-trade coalition is sustainable, though maybe this election will derail further movement in that direction in the short run. Free trade hurts lots of people, but it doesn't hurt everybody, and the people it helps are the only people Congress and the media cares about -- the rich and the upper middle class. You could build a coalition out of everyone else, but this is where the politics of racial division are so effective. It's hard to imagine a future candidate that Trump voters and Sanders voters would both vote for.
But what kind of person would vote for Obama in 2008 and 2012, and Trump in 2016? There's no way that 1/4 of white Obama voters switch to Trump.
232: An unemployed kind of person?
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence of people wanting either Trump or Sanders.
Linked article in 229, 231 makes a typical mistake, one that is making this primary season interesting
"...it was probably not, standing alone, enough to swing the election to Obama. After all, he won the election by almost exactly 5 million votes."
No, elections are not won by national vote totals, but in individual differing states. Trump does not need to switch 25% of all white males nationally, but only those in a few swing states like Ohio.
232: Certainly not on net there isn't. 15% of white males who voted for Obama in 2008 and who vote in 2016 could very well vote for Trump. Young white males getting old and turning Republican is a pretty steady process. But it's offset by old white males dying and being replaced by new young white males. It's the circle of suburban life. Also, by the general decline in the percentage of people who are white.
Plus, there's always a great deal of random movement among the portion of the voters who are least engaged. Obama probably got 5 to 10% of the votes of white supremacists. I looked it up once to amuse myself, but forgot the number.
232: you're arguing about the political predictions of a man who thought Obama was going to run for re-election as a Republican.
I think the narrative on Clinton-Sanders has been wrong up to this point. Turnout has been down, while Republican turnout has been up, which suggests that it's Republicans alone who are in an anti-establishment mood. More pro-establishment Democratic voters have just been apathetic and haven't been voting, leaving the ballot box to the more anti-establishment side.
But Michigan may indicate that's starting to change. Democratic turnout was high, which suggests that Sanders won because he turned out voters. Maybe it's something specific to Michigan (such as the Flint water scandal), but maybe he's finally beginning to catch the imagination of voters.
I've argued politics with a man who thought Obama was the anti-Christ.
234: Isn't that wrong? People don't switch parties as they age? I thought party identification was relatively stable.
I think the circumstantial evidence that Obama is the anti-Christ is pretty strong. The number of things that broke right for Obama when running for Senate and the Presidency is truly extraordinary, so extraordinary that occult forces is the most parsimonious explanation. The surprising thing is that the goals of the anti-Christ proved to be so modest.
That's what got the "unskewed" guy so messed up in 2012. It's stable in an election cycle and stable compared to specific policy views and the like, but not unchanging. That many of the voters are independent makes it even more likely they will switch between parties in presidential elections.
The surprising thing is that the goals of the anti-Christ proved to be so modest.
I don't know, Obama presided over what, economist, a permanent and irrevocable loss of 20-30% of US GDP capacity, potential? According to the secular stagnationists, and even Krugman is doubting we can get recover the output of 2007. DeLong is certain we can't.
That's amazing. Even Hoover didn't fuck over the economy forever.
So does the Michigan primary matter in the greater scheme of things?
I think 238 is right: for a while it looked like there was an effect like that (partially because of self serving dickery among conservatives as expressed by that infamous Churchill quote). But it was more that recently the generation of strong conservatives was aging and being replaced by less conservative people than that people were getting conservative as they aged. (And despite the reputation of the sixties, the baby boom generation on the whole wasn't that liberal either.)
242: It's very important. It's the first Sanders win in a state with a substantial black population and it casts into doubt the accuracy of the other polls that show Clinton leading.
and even Krugman is doubting we can get recover the output of 2007
Oh maybe this should be "output trend line" or something. Krugman shows the graph often enough.
Who knows how history will judge, history is partisan.
But it is an astonishing loss, entirely unprecedented.
(PS: There was discussion around 2005 that in order to survive the rise of China and keep a competitive economy for national security hegemony, real US wages (+ social wages) had to fall around 30%.
Just an amazing coincidence, huh)
Maybe it's something specific to Michigan (such as the Flint water scandal), but maybe he's finally beginning to catch the imagination of voters.
I wouldn't be entirely surprised if what we're seeing is a candidate who is exciting to a lot of voters in the Democratic party coalition (Sanders) and a candidate who isn't really that exciting to anyone but acceptable to most (Clinton*). But the exciting candidate is also marginal, opposed by the entire party establishment, and almost every bit of press he gets is negative stuff so people in general just plain know less about him. Winning in Michigan after the last few weeks of almost entirely Southern states (which he loses big) could actually be something that shakes up the race because it was clear early on that the South was his biggest weakness.
*I mean, she's running on small incremental changes that don't shake things up too much and criticizing her opponent for his position that we can and should make big beneficial changes on the grounds that we can't actually do that anyway. This isn't a recipe for enthusiasm in voters, even given the potentially historic first woman president thing.
I wouldn't be entirely surprised if what we're seeing isn't a candidate who started to late to win a race he could have won if he would have started soon enough.
Thomas Frank on trade and the appeal of Trump. I can't agree with his downplaying of the racism - hostility to free trade and racism are not in opposition to each other, and supporting Trump requires at least a depraved indifference to racism - but the article is otherwise useful.
So does the Michigan primary matter in the greater scheme of things?
Probably not for the nomination, Clinton has piled up too many delegates with her huge margins in deep deep Dixie.
Sanders needs a string of 60-70% wins to catch up. Unlikely, to say the least.
There are other narratives processes and forces that Sanders continuing progression could effect and enhance, anti-establishment ones.
And despite the reputation of the sixties, the baby boom generation on the whole wasn't that liberal either
Maybe not liberal enough for you, or liberal in your approved way, but the baby boomers were the most consistent Democratic generation, possibly til the current one)
For example, Ohio 2008 for Obama
40-49 48%
50-64 54%
65 or over 44%
The kids were higher, but we see what they do thru the decades
Clinton has 750 pledged delegates (1221 total) vs Sanders 546 (571). The winning mark is 2383, and the Democrats don't do winner-takes-all. Clinton is ahead in the polls in every single state except Wisconsin. But she could lose every single state from now on, as badly as she lost in Michigan (which was pretty narrow, though unexpectedly so), and still get a majority of pledged delegates, never mind the superdelegates.
Clinton is ahead in the polls in every single state except Wisconsin.
That was my second point. Clinton was ahead 20% in the polls for Michigan.
I suppose I could link to the Exit Polls Im Using CNN
California 2008
For Obama
40-49 55%
50-64 62% (25% of all voters = Boomers)
65 or over 48%
It has looked pretty much like that since 1980, when the Obama generation went partially Republican
Not exactly embarrassed to be a Boomer.
(18-24 80%. But a special election, and we will see)
I mean, she's running on small incremental changes that don't shake things up too much and criticizing her opponent for his position that we can and should make big beneficial changes on the grounds that we can't actually do that anyway. This isn't a recipe for enthusiasm in voters, even given the potentially historic first woman president thing.
As I have said on Facebook in multiple places, her campaign motto seems to be "lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate".
There was some argument that people were willing to vote for Sanders as long as it was clear Clinton would win- a protest vote to keep her honest. So Sanders' poor performance in the South could have brought people back to him, but now that he's on the upswing by that theory he'd start losing support again.
254: This is completely wrong. She's not saying to abandon hope -- she's saying things aren't that bad, and I'll make them better.
she's saying things aren't that bad
The popularity of that message depends quite a bit on who you're talking to.
257: Of course!
And for people who think the status quo is a disaster, I suppose her message of incremental positive change, can seem like she's saying there's no hope.
249/etc:
Baby-Boomer (50-68)
41 Republican
47 Democrat
Millennial (18-33)
35 Republican
51 Democrat
Not a directly Republican group, but certainly not what you'd call a comparatively strong liberal demographic either, even if you pick out a couple states from one specific presidential election.
258: It especially sounds that way because her argument against the bigger Sanders stuff really is "that would be nice but there's no hope of it happening let's do this other smaller stuff instead."
It might be a pity if this were a straw in the wind.
That's 2.5% of Dems switching. It's not very different from the 2.3% of Republicans (350/15,000) who did the opposite.
This is funny (from John Scalzi)
As a fellow named Max Berger archly noted on Twitter: "It's somewhat ironic that the GOP will be destroyed by a billionaire against whom they couldn't figure out how to collectively organize."
Oops!
(Scroll down for the correction.)
257: See Drum today. Just like everybody hates Congress while loving their personal Congressperson, Americans are happier about their personal prospects than they've been in a decade, but they simultaneously think that the country is fucked.
The Drum post articulates something that's puzzled me about this election: why the level of angst is so high. It's tempting to quickly jump to the conclusion that everyone is pissed about the exact things I'm pissed about -- income inequality, global warming, the fact that Chip Kelly completely dismantled the Eagles -- but it doesn't make any sense. For voters to suddenly care about income inequality would mean that voters are capable of noticing long-run trends, which violates everything I know about human nature. Drum's racial explanation doesn't completely make sense either. Annoying race traitors like Clinton and Sanders must annoy racists, but they can't be as annoying as an actual black guy.
Why not? Lots of people are more upset at traitors than outright opponents.
This is really the only article any of us needs to read about the current GOP Trump-or-Cruz conundrum.
I thought the vox article on the subject was fun in that it seems to take pleasure in describing how disliked Cruz is.
But more importantly, the establishment hates [Cruz], and he hates them right back.
This inability to back Cruz is, arguably, why the party is in this mess to begin with -- if the Republican establishment unambiguously feared Trump more than they hated Cruz, they would have lined up behind Cruz after Iowa.
Why is so much of the Republican establishment continuing to back Marco Rubio's doomed candidacy -- even as many of them acknowledge the campaign has been a wreck? . . .
. . . [most likely] because the Republican establishment appears to be totally, completely, 100 percent unwilling to line up behind Ted Cruz.
It's totally understandable that they hate the guy that made them sit through 19 hours of him reading fucking Atlas Shrugged to filibuster a simple budget bill.
Also, I'm starting to see speculation that the Senate might actually work with Obama on SCOTUS now that a Trump nomination is looking more and more likely.
266 -- I have two pet theories for "why are people so angry."
Theory one is that it's a result of the internet and social media. People take extreme positions and then get them reinforced by their friend groups (this is a well known phenomenon). Most political discussion that people encounter these days is mediated through the internet, in one way or another, even if it's just old people forwarding emails. Internet political discussion is basically trolling and counter-trolling from inside various hothouse bubbles. Then, when you vote, you're in a private, anonymous, unaccountable situation akin to leaving a comment on a YouTube page. Basically, we've become a nation of internet trolls, at least when it comes to politics; it's become a game and a social-media-style identity stamp and nothing more. Any policy a sitting President might implement feels abstract; a reaction from folks on my Facebook page who are WORKED UP is immediate. Trolll-voting and troll-politics satisfy people's need for instant gratification.
Theory two is that young people from 20-30 have obviously gotten fucked by the economy over the past 8 years in a way that's extreme and doesn't really seem fixable, even if on the whole neither unemployment nor wage stagnation is all that bad. It's not so much that everything sucks right now for everyone but that it feels obvious (whether or not its true) that the kids are fucked and will be for the rest of their lives and possibility for improvement is low. This eads immediately to an "everything is going to hell" mindset.
It is true that in the past presidential elections were pretty well correlated with the boom/bust cycle. I think wage stagnation and job discouragement might have finally changed that - more people's minds are on the system is set up to help some and hurt others, even if their answers are bad, and they're less apt to complacency in these relatively (very relatively) good times.
272: Takeaway: This is all Kim Kardashian's fault.
Young people have totally been screwed by the powers-than-be, and should be actively pulling leaders out of their cars and beating them in the streets. But the screwed-ness is a chronic condition, not an acute one. They were screwed in 2010, 2012, and 2014 (and in fact, even more screwed), so why now?
I'm also inclined to be skeptical of this explanation just because it would prove me right about everything, which seems a bit convenient. Though maybe I really am right about everything.
I'm actually a fan of theory 1. If you're comparing now and 2008, obvious differences are (a) the economy is better though not as good as people had gotten used to pre-2008 and (b) everyone has smartphones and even old people are all into social media.
Most political discussion that people encounter these days is mediated through the internet, in one way or another, even if it's just old people forwarding emails. Internet political discussion is basically trolling and counter-trolling from inside various hothouse bubbles.
I don't think this is a strong effect, but I do think there's something to it.
A couple weeks ago I was thinking about why the primaries were making me so cranky when, fundamentally, I have positive feelings about both Clinton and Sanders. I realized that following the race had meant breaking on of the cardinal internet rules -- "don't read the comments."
Reading something on unfogged which might, by itself, be slightly off-putting was much, much more annoying after, say, reading on of the Crooked Timber threads about politics and just wishing I could shake them.
I think there are a bunch of people who thought that electing Tea Party guys would really do something about Obama, and here the RW media they consume is still full of stories about how Obama is destroying the country. The old stab-in-the-back theory always finds an audience.
A subpart to theory 1 is that internet political discussion reinforces a general American tendency to look down on people with claims to professional knowledge and expertise. You can look up anything on Google, and if you're interested in politics you can immediately find some article to back up your pre-existing beliefs. This both leads to the radicalization and OUTRAGE chambers and builds on pre-existing narratives about the betrayal of the elites, that have both left and right-wing variants.
I think maybe the guy on the bus with the shaved head and the "100% White Boy" tattoo is interested in learning about the TPP.
This is pretty interesting - survey of supporters of different candidates on four dimensions: authoritarianism, anti-elitism, mistrust of experts, and American identity. Hillary and Kasich supporters are both middling on most of these dimensions. Cruz and Rubio supporters are both pro-elite (?), mistrustful of experts, and authoritarian. Trump supporters are the only ones high on all four; Sanders supporters share with them anti-elitism but come in extremely low on all the other dimensions.
I take from this that Sanders supporters are basically the Unfogged demographic.
It's strange because enough people here interact regularly with people who are experts (and/or are experts themselves) that you'd expect to see more mistrust of them.
even if on the whole neither unemployment nor wage stagnation is all that bad
Theory three is that this statement is complete bullshit. It may not be "all that bad" relative to recent trends, but recent trends have been decades of slow worsening. If we'd jumped immediately from where we were in 1979 to where we are today, everyone would agree that it was in fact "all that bad". But the downward trend has been a slow boil, which masked people's frustration. The financial crisis woke up a lot of people, and even though things have recovered (somewhat). More than anything, it seems like a hell of a lot of people have suddenly snapped to the realization that, if we just continue business as usual going forward, things are not ever going to get better again. The economy goes through booms and busts that create cyclical improvements, but for most people it's fundamentally an ebbing tide.
Yeah but that's exactly Walt's point. All of that has been true for a long time. And consumer confidence as measured is about where it was in 2004. So why are people mad now (but still "consumer confident") in a way that they weren't in 2004? Maybe it's a sudden realization that things won't ever improve, but the basic trends are now 40 years old (and also, for individuals, often heavily masked by idiosyncratic life cycle changes) so why did people suddenly come to this realization this year when in previous years voting was closely linked to immediate recent up and downswings in the economic cycle?
Seems like something else is going on.
285 - Maybe, but then how do you explain that general measures of individual economic well-being (consumer confidence, do you feel better than you did a year ago, how do you feel about your personal financial situation, how are things doing right around you) seem to be relatively high, or at least where they were 10 years ago, but people still believe that the overall future for the country is dim and is going to hell in a handbasket and they are enraged?
In 286, that should be "general measures of subjective assessments of individual economic well-being." The evidence suggests that on the whole the population feels OK about how they're doing personally, but terribly about how the country is doing.
Sure, it could be a tipping point, but that's an argument available for any theory that hasn't been true until now. Astrology has finally reached a tipping point.
I guess that my experience is that the American voter is a dumbshit who can't remember more than six months. Remember how unpopular the Republicans were when they shut down the government for stupid reasons? Not only did they not pay any price at the ballot box six months later, their ringleader is currently their #2 candidate for President. Remember how unpopular the Republicans were in 2008 after launching a bunch of wars and destroying the world economy? It only took the voters 2 years to put them back in power. These are the same people who are going to recognize a decades-long trend?
Well, you do now have a generation and a half of voters for whom it's pretty much always been sucky; could it just be that this is the first non-incumbent election where that's been the case?
288 To be fair, it's mostly different voters.
On the general point, I can imagine a bunch of people answering questions that things are going more or less ok, but if you ask about their retirements, or their kids' prospects, then the conversation turns decidedly dark.
People have been angry lots of times before. 1994 was a big election for anger. But instead of stoking it in 1996, Dole made a big show (eg at the convention) of telling bigots he didn't want their support. Get people who think amplifying anger is going to make them money, or get them votes, and what do you know, anger floweth over.
284: What makes you think this year is any different from other recent election cycles? I'm not sure Trump and Sanders wouldn't have gotten similar receptions in other recent elections, if they'd been running. Remember that the entire Tea Party movement was born from conservative frustration with 'politics as usual', even among mainstream Republicans. I know the Tea Party is now regarded as mainstream establishment Republicanism, but in 2010/2012 they were all the "outsider" candidates explicitly running against the Republican establishment. And of course in 2008, Obama himself was the candidate of "hope and change", in contrast to Clinton's establishmentarianism.
Meaning, lots of people in both parties have been aggressively electing the most non-establishment candidate on the ballot since 2008...
286: Dunno, but I wonder if our ever more relentless tradition of positive thinking (as detailed in Bright-sided) could be partly involved. People thinking "The world is going to hell and we need a major change, but when you adjust away for all the shit I can't change personally, I'm doing reasonably well."
291/292 are fair points, but this year feels like it's taken things to a next level of crazy, in both parties. That could be wrong. It also could just be a random draw of the candidates. But it sure does feel to me like people are substantially more ready to burn shit down. Compare people who seem similar in kind but not in degree -- Howard Dean vs. Bernie Sanders; Ross Perot vs. Donald Trump. There's been a longstanding attraction on the part of some people to the "outsider" candidate but both the level of support for the outsider candidate and the degree of outsider-ness seems to be on the rise.
282 "It's strange because enough people here interact regularly with people who are experts (and/or are experts themselves) that you'd expect to see more mistrust of them."
I guess it depends on what you mean by mistrust. I have known many "experts" (I have even been accused of being an expert on occasion) who have worked in international and U.S. organizations. They all are just people trying to do the right thing even though the results are not always what they hoped but their intentions are good. My sample may be skewed since I am not chummy with many conservative types.
We've had eight years of the worst presidency in living memory, followed by a term and a half of near complete federal dysfunction due to gridlock. Makes blowing it all up not seem so bad, as long as you don't think too hard about it.
urp and apo have got it here. Many of the "radicals" really aren't all that radical in comparison to the recent past, and the US government really has become ridiculously dysfunctional
The comparison with, say, 1992 doesn't really hold because the big watershed for the breakdown of American institutions was in the late 1990s, with impeachment.
One could argue that people didn't appreciate what a nut Bush was in 2000. But in 2004, the US had a really good idea what a lunatic he was, and actually voted for him that time.
Eight years ago, let us not forget, the US did something radical: elected a black man president. And he was running against an open warmonger who thought that we needed to be even stupider in Iraq.
Had Sarah Palin been a person of Trump's perspicacity and work ethic, she could have been formidable in the Republican primary four years ago.
And Bernie isn't really all that radical, nor is he doing all that well in the primary. Hillary cleared the field so that she was only facing him as a meaningful challenger, so it's not that weird that he consolidated the anti-Hillary vote.
I'm watching for now but I'm not sure my heart's in it tonight.
Hey Tigre, if you're listening, I'd like to say that I think you're right about the emails being a big old nothingburger.
I turned away for a minute. What was the question that Clinton refused to answer?
But then she did talk about that. Huh?
"Hisapndering"?!
303:
Oh wait, sorry. It was if she would drop out of the race if she got indicted.
I was expecting to be more mad about the Hillary loss in Michigan last night, because I'd been really looking forward to a big Clinton victory that would pretty much put an end to the Democratic primary as anything other than a purely symbolic protest vote and let everyone move on with their lives. But it turns out that outside of the internet I don't care all that much who the Dem nominee is -- I think Hillary is a substantially better candidate for a few different reasons, mostly electability, policy competence for the job of President, and effectiveness in office, even if Sanders' ultimate goals are in many ways closer to mine -- but it's just hard to get worked up about it either way, when you've got two very good liberal candidates and the Republicans are leaving such a big field for a Dem candidate to pick up votes in.
It's honestly only when I turn on Facebook and get the barrage of dumb Bernie stuff that I get all het up and start fantasizing about a White Terror that would shut these folks up for a bit. To be clear, if I hadn't already hidden any right wing political poster from view, I'd also be fantasizing about a Red Terror. And if there were a lot of dumb centrist posts maybe some other color terror. Basically politics on social media make me hope for a rainbow of terror to create maximum silence.
Raging controversy on Twitter about whether Sanders' suit is brown or blue. I vote blue.
It's honestly only when I turn on Facebook and get the barrage of dumb Bernie stuff that I get all het up and start fantasizing about a White Terror that would shut these folks up for a bit. To be clear, if I hadn't already hidden any right wing political poster from view, I'd also be fantasizing about a Red Terror. And if there were a lot of dumb centrist posts maybe some other color terror. Basically politics on social media make me hope for a rainbow of terror to create maximum silence.
I tried to have a political discussion on Facebook today. I then thought better of it and deleted every letter of "you don't know what the fuck you're talking about" and got back to work.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a42884/what-color-is-bernie-sanders-suit/
The suit is dark blue. It's bad lighting.
308: Ironically, I'm the opposite and would prefer to see Sanders win, but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the campaign and at this point wish he would drop out. He's not going to win, but he's doing well enough that if he persists he's going to make it a long and increasingly painful race. He's raised the issues he's going to raise, he's brought valuable and needed public attention, but he's not going to win and it's time to move on.
The AP photo on the front of the local paper's website looks brown, but then I've got Flux running, so....
With Flux off, it looks black more than anything. HRC's tunic or whatever looks navy blue all the way.
314: It is hard to see what he could do that would suddenly shift things enough to actually go ahead in delegate count. I mean, he basically needs big (10+ point) wins in a bunch of big states, and as exciting/unexpected as the MI outcome was, it was still a 3 point win, if that. With Obama, you had the dynamic whereby African-Americans suddenly believed he could win, and flipped almost completely. I see no reason to think that will happen this time around, even if he does better going forward than he has to date. I don't think the non-youth vote is likely to flip, and I'm not sure the Latin@ vote is a block in the primary in either direction.
There was a time when I found the "young people will vote for revolution idea" not exactly plausible, but at least intriguing, but it's pretty fucking obvious that they just aren't--there aren't another 10 points of electorate consisting of disaffected youth waiting to vote for a big MI win to turn out for him.
When will one of the moderators ask Berbiw what color his suit is??
To Tigre's 272, even though I find urple's 283 a bit hysterical, I do have an argument in its favor:
The 1970s were fucked, and everyone knew it at the time; hence Reagan.
The 1980s were only OK, but we convinced ourselves it was great, until 1992 when we realized it hadn't been all that great.
The 1990s were, legitimately, great, for everyone.
The 2000s were crappy, but it was easy to blame bin Laden and then GWB for it.
Then we elected Obama, and things have been meh every since, with things worse than meh for a good chunk of people (especially under-40s and minorities).
So there's basically no one alive who can tell themselves that what's happening is temporary. It's been almost 20 years since we had a booming economy that really felt like a boom, and the last one before that was arguably 30 years earlier. It doesn't require voters suddenly to take the long view for them to feel like things have almost never been, and may never again be, all that great. By contrast, in 2008, a big part of the hope and change was that Obama would undo the mistake of the Bush years, and we'd go back to the Clinton boom*.
*which, and this is really really important, we absolutely would have if not for insane GOP obstruction. We're still missing two million** government jobs. Imagine the current economy, but government employment had followed historical trends: there'd be a shit-ton more people employed, especially at median and below; things (schools, local public works, bureaucracy) in general would be better-run; and, yes, wages would be going up. The structural critique is real, but also completely pretends that this historic anomaly hasn't happened.
**context: private sector jobs have increased by about 7.5M net since Obama was inaugurated; we're talking 25% more jobs gained
318 conforms to my intuitive sense of experiential economic history. Definitely the post-2008 period feels to me like "well this is much better than that O SHIT NO MORE ECONOMY moment in September 2008 but still definitely meh and seems like it will be kinda meh forever."
Is Sanders getting significantly less speaking time in this debate or is that just my false impression? Seems like it should be evenly split in a 2 person debate...
318 gets it right.
I think the tipping point is thanks to Mitch McConnell. It is now obvious that people running for office are not able to accomplish any of the things they claim to want to do. The President cannot do anything except staff federal agencies - he can't create new federal agencies, decide to pour money into new programs, can't do anything. And Congress doesn't do anything except thwart the President. All the major decisions are made by the Supreme Court. This is getting to be true in most states as well. Governors aren't good presidential candidates anymore, because Republican governors' accomplishments amount to "destroy the state economy", and Democratic governors' accomplishments amount to "prevent the Republican legislature from destroying the state economy, and deal with budget crises created by failure to properly fund pension funds between 1970 and 2000".
All a candidate's policy "plans" only apply to a theoretical fantasyland. So the idea that the person with the best "plan" is best qualified for office is not even worth discussing. Voting based on competence is pointless. We should vote based on ideology.
Another element not directly mentioned was the credit burst in the recession. In the 80s and 90s and 00s, people's incomes weren't increasing in line with productivity, but cheap credit was increasingly available. It was easy to feel one was doing better than one actually was.
I also read a very interesting article a bazillion years ago in how people think of wealth, noting that people lower on the wealth spectrum tend to think of it in terms of material goods. As material goods have become extraordinarily cheap, it was easy to get distracted by how the ability to consume stuff no longer indexes wealth. Now with housing and healthcare and education all becoming national crises, people are beginning to realize how they've been getting screwed.
322.1 is a good point. The conservative talking point du jour in the mid-2000s was income inequality didn't matter, because consumption inequality wasn't increasing as much. I suspect this was driven by easy credit, because now that easy credit is gone you don't hear them talking about consumption inequality anymore.
322.1 is spot on. Incomes were basically static for almost everyone, but what made up for it was far more easily available borrowing, and also - I suspect - a significant fall in the real price, not so much of all material goods, but of a lot of things that were previously seen as luxury or near-luxury goods (TVs, electronics, air travel).
I got all kinds of raises in the 90s. Like 8% every year even at the same position.
Not for every year of the 90s, but like four of them or so.
People would say things like "5% because you've been here another year and are more experienced plus 4% for cost of living." Then we'd drive home while listening to Nirvana and change into flannel shirts to make dinner while waiting for "Friends" to come on the air.
Sometimes it was 3% cost of living, Pearl Jam, and "Home Improvement."
And that was when we were barely any good at SAS.
We used to complain if our apartments cost any more than 20% of our pre-tax income and movie tickets were like $3 at the crappy theaters.
Anyway, I object to conflating the 90s with the 00s. I want the 90s back, even if I have to use the AOL browser and vote in another Clinton.
But I'm still not willing to go back to graduate school.
I also didn't use the AOL browser to do anything but to download Netscape. That's all I'm willing to use it for if the 90s repeat.
312
To forestall questions about his suit, Bernie obviously should have worn The Dress.
272
I think RT's Theory 2 hasn't quite gotten enough attention. Millennials have gotten the shaft. They are underemployed (both literally and in terms of the jobs they have). They are pissed about it, their parents are pissed about it, etc. There's a lot of anger out there.
221, 228, et al.
ELI5 time. What is the proposed cure for the loss of jobs due to free trade? For example, I've heard people say, "make Apple build their iPhones in the US." Given that we don't do chip fabbing here any more (except some special purpose stuff) how does one go about that? Does the government pay companies to build new fabs? Or do we bring all the Foxconn style assembly work (the least value-added part of the equation) home? Similar consideration apply to other industries we have "lost."
If we erect trade barriers doesn't that pretty much screw the whole world, and ourselves, because everyone else would raise trade barriers against us in retaliation? Those cheap Chinese (Canadian, Mexican, ...) goods are purchased cheaply in the US and if their prices all doubled it would be like the 1930's again, wouldn't it?
Honestly looking for proposed trade policies here, not trolling.
314 looks almost painfully naive about how Hillary Clinton works, to me. If she has eight months between the disappearance of the person who forced her into talking about those issues, and taking left wing positions on them she'll have triangulated away fast enough that people won't even remember they were a thing when it comes time to vote in the general. Ideally Sanders should fight all the way through and make her earn every single delegate by asserting them and then spend the general election "supporting" her by going around giving stump speeches about those same issues to prevent her from ignoring them in the hopes of focusing entirely on attracting right wing but not insane voters.
Moving toward less emphasis on left wing positions after winning the primary isn't the way Clinton works so much as the way politics in the United States works. If Sanders does win, he'll do the exact same thing. It is completely self-defeating not to do that. Pulling relatively centrist votes (independents and moderate Republicans) is how you get a Congress that would actually allow anything useful to be done.
334: I'd settle for "don't shut out major constituencies when trade deals are being negotiated." Then the powers that be would be forced to say "yes, Labor, we understand you are getting screwed in this particular way, and to make it up to you we are going to do ________."
The way it works now labor just gets screwed, with nothing in return. Same with environmentalists, same with fair-use advocates.
Presumably they don't actually move the fabs, the government gets some revenue to offset the social losses caused by trade. Either people spend $50 more on their iPhones, they go with only the 16" screen in their pocket instead of the 20" screen, or APPL's profit drops to $60B/year instead of $75B. The government uses the tariff revenue to subsidize health care, education, housing, etc.
I think an extra $50 would be a huge tariff on an iPhone. How much does it cost to make one?
This time Trump really is doomed. Urban Meyer just endorsed Kasich.
I wish I were an Urban Meyer winner.
338.2 Yes, but why would the powers that be want to change that? Don't answer, lots of reasons, but as long as they're locked into a system which more or less precludes them from looking longer term than the next shareholders' meeting, those reasons might as well not exist.
337: No, that's how it works in the '90s. What you're talking about as plain/obvious conventional wisdom is talking more gently. What I said about Clinton was actually moving to the right in order to attract right-wing but not insane voters (like, let's say, Bill Clinton and Al Gore both did). Turnout means fifty times as much as the mythical centrist of sober reasonabilityland - the closest you get to that is low information voters who don't really have a preference but think (candidate's name here) sounds like a responsible leader who won't embarrass the country.
And even if that was a sensible strategy (it's not) I didn't say Clinton would do it then. She'll do that literally minutes after she stops having to face Sanders in races or debates - he's already forced her into running a campaign on issues that she never wanted to talk about, and it's hard to make sense of the idea that she would just go along with that when she didn't need to anymore given how she's kept trying to change the conversation to other things.
Also if Sanders drops out now he stops getting delegates. And those delegates do a lot more things at the national convention than just elect a presidential nominee. The more delegates Sanders shows up with the more influence his views have on the party platform, party rules, etc. Sanders dropping out right now means abandoning the Democrats to the same centrist-neoliberal-hawk stuff that would be absolute poison in this election if they weren't probably going to end up running against literal fascists (and even in that case it wouldn't help them out at all).
I wonder that China's response would be to an additional 25% tariff on electronics? That's got to be more than they can offset with a currency devaluation.
If we erect trade barriers doesn't that pretty much screw the whole world, and ourselves, because everyone else would raise trade barriers against us in retaliation? Those cheap Chinese (Canadian, Mexican, ...) goods are purchased cheaply in the US and if their prices all doubled it would be like the 1930's again, wouldn't it?
Krugman seems to think not, interestingly - he recently wrote that the idea that tariffs caused the Great Depression was a myth. (Though he acknowledges they still aren't great.)
After all, doesn't everyone know that protectionism causes recessions? Actually, no. There are reasons to be against protectionism, but that's not one of them.Think about the arithmetic (which has a well-known liberal bias). Total final spending on domestically produced goods and services is
Total domestic spending + Exports - Imports = GDP
Now suppose we have a trade war. This will cut exports, which other things equal depresses the economy. But it will also cut imports, which other things equal is expansionary. For the world as a whole, the cuts in exports and imports will by definition be equal, so as far as world demand is concerned, trade wars are a wash.
OK, I'm sure some people will start shouting "Krugman says protectionism does no harm." But no: protectionism in general should reduce efficiency, and hence the economy's potential output. But that's not at all the same as saying that it causes recessions.
But didn't the Smoot-Hawley tariff cause the Great Depression? No. There's no evidence at all that it did. Yes, trade fell a lot between 1929 and 1933, but that was almost entirely a consequence of the Depression, not a cause. (Trade actually fell faster during the early stages of the 2008 Great Recession than it did after 1929.) And while trade barriers were higher in the 1930s than before, this was partly a response to the Depression, partly a consequence of deflation, which made specific tariffs (i.e., tariffs that are stated in dollars per unit, not as a percentage of value) loom larger.
Turnout means fifty times as much as the mythical centrist of sober reasonabilityland
If that were the case, we'd be talking about how President Romney could be defeated. Obama lost his turnout boost in 2012 and still won.
331
What about if you had to have dial up internet at 50 kbs/s?
I have Verizon DSL. I don't know that I would notice.
349
Except, turnout has to be balanced. Pivoting sharply to the center would depress leftist/millennial vote, which would offset gains from any supposed centrists/non-insane Republicans.
I mean, look. Something like 50% of Republicans say they won't vote for Trump. He could win the nomination with an average of about 38% of the Republican primary vote, which equals something like 15% of the total electorate. The Republicans are going to be dealing with a turnout disaster of possibly unprecedented proportions. Hillary could pivot to Leninism and still probably beat Trump. There's no reason for her to move Right to attract more voters except that she really wants to govern from where the Right of her current positions.
A. Everybody has been wrong about Trump's amount of support.
B. Working toward a majority in Congress is just as important as beating Trump.
I really have absolutely no idea what the Presidential-level chaos for the Republicans will/could mean to down-ticket races. Anyone have any wild guesses/analysis on that front? (my own wild guess is: pretty much no effect, but I'm pessimistic that way.)
If that were the case, we'd be talking about how President Romney could be defeated. Obama lost his turnout boost in 2012 and still won.
And the theory is that Obama made up the difference and won because of his appeal to moderate Republican voters? Because that is what it would take for that argument to work.
(Also you have to ignore that the election where he did turn out the base was one where he won way, way bigger, and had much more useful coattails to boot.)
Something like 50% of Republicans say they won't vote for Trump.
When push comes to shove, I expect that number to be closer to 10% than 50%. Though that's still significant.
No. The Republicans tried to run on the idea that they didn't need to move to the center (unlike what W did) and they lost.
355.2: I don't think it is that big of a knock on Sanders to say that he isn't demonstrating the kind of talent Obama has.
354: If it depresses Republican turnout: awesome. If the Republican establishment/whatever manage to field a third party candidate and make it clear that that guy is the Republican conservative candidate (not the other, crazy one): disastrous. If the press spends every week after the convention/when Trump locks up the delegate vote saying that stuff about deporting and murdering people for the primary and doesn't really believe it: back where we started.
Why did Obama win in 2012? Any theory of voter behavior has to account for that. I'd assumed that it was because the economy had improved a little bit, and voters can't remember more than a year back, but I don't know if that's true with any certainty.
357: This is the election where they tried to run on the idea that they didn't need to move to the center where they talked about "etch-a-sketch", and where Romney didn't try to move to the center after the primary? What color is the sky in the world where that election happened?
And also, what, that political talent vanished in 2012? What is your point there anyway, if you even had one?
359: My personal view is because the winger wing of the Republican party assumed they were so likely to win that they made it impossible for Romney to run the kind of campaign that could have won.
Hillary could pivot to Leninism
She'd lose my vote in that case. It's Trotskyism or nothing.
360: Romney ran against a healthcare plan that was copied in its essentials from a plan he actually enacted and that was similar to the plan he was putting out when he came in second in the Republican primary four years prior.
The sky is grey, because the sun thankfully went away behind the nice clouds.
360, more: Also you're forgetting the fact that he tried, desperately to do this but had trouble in the face of Obama pushing back on him, and that he couldn't effectively respond because of the primary*. But he never just shrugged and adopted the right wing strategy. If Sanders took the nomination and then tried to run to the center-right I doubt he'd win the election either, enthusiasm or not. People don't respond well to that kind of nonsense, and even low information voters can figure it out quickly enough.
*See: why the Republican primary schedule looks like it does now, with hilarious consequences.
I'm not saying Romney could have run more to the center than he did. I know he couldn't. I'm saying that if he could have, he would have very likely won. That's why I don't want to see the Democrats trying to copy that idea.
And I'm not saying Sanders would turn and run center right. I'm saying that if he won, you could see a lot more emphasis on the parts of his program that are more popular with people in the middle or on the right. For example, being more acceptable to the NRA than most other currently in office Democrats.
I'm not saying Romney could have run more to the center than he did. I know he couldn't. I'm saying that if he could have, he would have very likely won.
This seems contradictory. What is it that kept Romney from running more to the center other than his desire to win the election?
The position against Obamacare was staked out too firmly before he even started the primary. It's true that you can't be too transparent about it if you want people to believe you.
The idea is supposed to be that Obama prevented him and therefore he had to run to the right with a base turnout strategy.
The problem is that Obama did prevent him from convincing people he was really a moderate on a lot of issues, but he didn't switch strategies. He just kept on trying to run to the center even though it was clear that people weren't really buying it. So he effectively did neither (see: Sanders analogy above). As a result it's really not good evidence of the idea that running as a centrist/center-righter will need to happen if a Democratic candidate wants to win.
Obama was able to prevent Romney from convincing people he was a moderate by being a moderate whose moderate policies any Republican had to viciously attack at all time points because the Republican party went nuts. It's really much easier that way.
I don't want Clinton to run to the right of Obama. And I don't think she is.
Why did Obama win in 2012?
The Electoral College map is simply better for Democrats. Supreme Court shenanigans aside, they have won 5 of the last 6 presidential elections and the one they lost legitimately was the smallest margin of victory for an incumbent president since 1828.
And the Republicans ran an awkward guy from Uncanny Valley.
Awkward compared to Rick Santorum?
What you're talking about as plain/obvious conventional wisdom is talking more gently. What I said about Clinton was actually moving to the right in order to attract right-wing but not insane voters . . . And even if that was a sensible strategy (it's not) I didn't say Clinton would do it then. She'll do that literally minutes after she stops having to face Sanders in races or debates
I think your wrong about this year. I can't prove it, you might be right, but I'm quoting that just to have your prediction on record so we can come back to it later.*
* And, if we ever do have to argue about it I'm sure we'll disagree about what "actually moving to the right" means in contrast to "talking more gently."
I mean, obviously Moby is right, but the real question is, why have people suddenly forgotten the basic math on Presidential elections this year and convinced themselves (of the totally false proposition*) that nothing but moving further to one extreme or another to increase "turnout" matters?
I think it's because the parties have gotten more extreme and people have gotten more encased in their internet bubbles, where even the idea of the moderate voter is foreign and distasteful. But people forget that even a tiny number of swing voters change an election -- peel off 5% of the white vote from the Democrats and the Rs take a massive electoral college win. That there don't seem to be a lot of these people, or that they're not people you encounter in daily life, doesn't matter that much.
*among other reasons, people who are heavily swayed by ideology on either the left or the right ALREADY turn out in large percentages. To the extent that there's turnout gain to be had, it's among apolitical "moderates" in the middle anyway.
Or, I guess Occam's razor is that it's just delusional wishful thinking from ideologues. "The American People are, in their heart, true conservatives/secret socialists! If we could just get the PEOPLE, who ultimately agree with me, to the polls, we win every time without having to compromise anything at all."
The "Etch-a-Sketch" comment came during the primaries; it doesn't shed any light on what actually happened. And what actually happened was that Romney selected a Randite hero of the hard right House as his running mate and attacked Obama for Benghazi which, as you may be aware, is not a centrist issue. Oh yeah, and he ran away from Romneycare, which of course was precisely the sort of centrist achievement upon which most plutocrats would love to be able to run a general campaign.
So please provide some actual examples of Romney repudiating the positions he took during the primary instead of baldly asserting that he did so (or that tricksy Obama prevented him from doing so*).
*which is apparently cheating or something? And not something that Trump would do against Hillary?
Also if you think that footnote about Trump and Hillary is a good one then obviously you agree that Sanders should stay in the race as long as possible in order to strengthen that and prevent her from shaking the etch-a-sketch effectively, right?
(And what the hell are you talking about with "apparently cheating"? The point I made was pretty damn clear: he tried to do it, but it didn't work. So he was stuck between the two strategies. How is that complicated?)
Oh also here are some more examples. They're pretty much the ones you'd expect from someone moving to the center too.
Just a note that 374.2 is semi-correct: a 5 point increase in GOP preference by white voters would, indeed, create an electoral landslide (325 to 213), but I'm not sure that counts as a 5% swing: it would mean taking college-educated whites from 56/44 to 61/39. The gap almost doubles, which doesn't seem the right way to define a swing. But I may be thinking fuzzily about head-to-head matchups, where a 5 point lead needs just a 2.500001 swing to be reversed.
Also, FWIW, the presumably matching increase* in Hispanic D%/turnout (from 71/48) could flip things back.
*because I don't actually think it's possible to get that many more white voters without a nakedly anti-Hispanic campaign
That's my point. "He tried to do it and it didn't work" is the set of conditions that you want Sanders to recreate for Clinton. I want whoever wins the Democratic primary left with the ability to run an effective general election campaign.
*among other reasons, people who are heavily swayed by ideology on either the left or the right ALREADY turn out in large percentages.
Not the young ones.
335: what you're saying is exactlY what I would have expected without Bernie's challenge, but at this point Clinton's more liberal positions have been staked out clearly enough and repeatedly enough that she couldn't just drop them or even back away from them without completely alienating the liberal base. (She may in fact do this anyway, but I don't think either her likelihood of doing so or the consequences of her doing so change much whether Sanders drops out now or at the convention in June.) Sanders has achieved his objective, or at least what I and a lot of others presume was his objective, which was to get Clinton to take firm and clear and public and repeated positions on a lot of liberal issues that she would have preferred to avoid entirely. He's forced her to make promises. No one can force her to keep them, but they've been made.
I agree she will of course still seek to de-emphasize some of this in the general election, but at this point it's out there, and certainly her opposition will be pushing her on it. She'll have to walk back her promises and alienate the base (who she'll hope will still turn out for her because she's the lesser evil), or stand by her promises. Honestly I'm very concerned that Clinton will make the wrong choice on that, but again I don't see how that calculus is affected much if at all by Sanders conceding now vs June.
378(): because you're suggesting that, normally, candidates are free to move to the center, but it was just some sort of Obama-fu that prevented Romney from fully doing so, when in fact that's always what happens.
377: Fair enough.
Is 378.1 supposed to be a gotcha? I have no problem with Bernie staying in or keeping HRC leaning left. I don't think he's pushed her into any positions that are especially damaging with the general electorate, and I also think your Bernie glasses have you convinced of things that are flatly incorrect about her positions in general. Other than hawkery, she's basically never been to the right of Obama, not in 2004, not in 2008, not in the 2016 campaign before Bernie got votes, and obviously not now. But to leftists, the Clintons are Bizarro-FDR, telling Newt Gingrich that he had to force them to do the things they really wanted to do. They wanted the '94 crime law for the punitive parts, not for the liberal bits. The liberal bits were snuck in by Dick Armey or something.
381: So basically what you're saying is that no matter what Clinton will immediately run to the right, intentionally alienating the people who voted for Sanders or were excited about her based on what she was saying beforehand, but that it won't work because of that stuff and so her campaign will fall apart? That's the argument? (And 383 is a pretty good reason to think that it would be a sketchy strategy even if she could get it to work. Not to mention that what you're saying is basically "she should run on worse policies than now".)
Also, 372, what in god's name are you going on about here:but I'm quoting that just to have your prediction on record so we can come back to it later? You do realize that quoting it makes no difference whatsoever as far as that goes, right? '
Well, I think Sanders should stay in the race. Who doesn't?
I also think Clinton would be a better President, and has a better chance of winning. I understand that both these conclusions are in dispute.
intentionally alienating the people who voted for Sanders or were excited about her based on what she was saying beforehand
Assuming that they're all children who've never witnessed a political campaign before, then yes.
If you feel alienated by a politician who says one thing to a friendly crowd and something else to a dubious one, then you don't deserve a vote. Christ. Go vote for the ice cream man, or maybe the Easter Bunny.
387: I don't think he should stay in. I think he has already exceeded beyond my expectations in forcing Clinton to make promises and stake out positions on a lot of progressive issues. And I worry that his continued presence and criticisms of her at this point are only likely to increase disillusionment among the base when she's the eventual nominee, especially among the 18-30 crowd. I'm worried about their turnout. I think that all or almost all of the positive effects that Bernie could hope to achieve have already been acheived (with wild success), and at this point his continued campaign is mostly potential negative effects.
385: "some sort of Obama-fu" s/b "repeatedly running ads about it and pointing out whenever he did it", but otherwise yes, yes that was part of his strategy (and not a particularly complicated one either).
I'm not sure it's hard to see why people would think the Clintons would push right, though. The '94 crime law had a lot of good bits in it, and they certainly supported those. But they were also supporting, very openly, the nasty punitive bits. There was no one forcing them into NAFTA, and plenty of places where things could have been vetoed. Bill Clinton/the DLC's entire, explicit selling point was "stealing the moderately right wing positions away from the Republicans so they can't use them in elections" - that's what the term "triangulation" means.
The value of having Sanders in locking her into the current left wing positions - and rhetoric - is important partially because it prevents it all from quietly going away*. But also if there's one thing that convinces people more effectively than anything else it's repeating it a claim and using a rhetorical framing for it, publicly, over and over again. The more she has to do that (even if she is being insincere - and who knows which ones she is being sincere about and which not right now) it still has that same effect, which is a very important one.
*The election in November is still, what, eight months away? That's an eternity in political terms. If he's doing it in May then it's going to be locking things in. Right now there's plenty of time for things to vanish from the public eye, especially since Sanders dropping out means "no one pays attention to the Democrats for the next three or four months".
I think the number of people actually alienated if she runs toward the center will be relatively small and that (with few exceptions) they'll vote for her anyway. It's not like this is a new thing as opposed to a general pattern in presidential elections. The vast majority of Democratic primary voters have said they would be satisfied with a Clinton win (also with a Sanders win). Compared to the 50% of the Republican primary voters that say they won't vote for Trump in general, 75% of Democrats are saying they'll vote for Sanders or Clinton in the general. And the 25% of Sanders voters who say they won't vote for Clinton are mostly lying. As are the 25% of Clinton voters who say they won't vote for Sanders.
Again, I'm actually a Sanders supporter, and I'd feel differently if I thought he had a legitimate shot at the nomination. But he's not going to win. I'm hoping the March 15 delegate math makes that clear enough that he can gracefully exit shortly thereafter.
Sanders dropping out means "no one pays attention to the Democrats for the next three or four months".
Yes. I'm not sure his dropping out now would be good. Besides, I think it is unreasonable to ask somebody to drop out when there's still a real chance they might win.
393 before seeing 392.
I just don't think you say he doesn't have a real (though small) shot after how far the polls were off in Michigan.
Well, right, obviously he can't quit just after the big win in Michigan. But I assume that was a fluke, which next week should make clear. If it wasn't a fluke, well, who knows.
Whether the continuing race is positive or negative depends on how the candidates and their supporters behave. The candidates have mostly been forces for good, but the supporters haven't always been. Both candidates should be periodically reminding their supporters that we're all going to be back together in November, come what may.
I didn't actually mean he should drop out immediately as in yesterday... just that I hope he's planning to exit gracefully as the math gets more and more unfavorable, and not actually drag this out all the way to the convention.
395 -- I don't think complacency on the part of HRC and her MI gotv team was a "fluke," and I hope they're doing something about it in OH, IL, and FL.
If it wasn't a fluke, it might have been a flounder.
It's also worth noting that MI hasn't had a serious primary contest there since, what, '92? In 2000 and 2004 the races were basically decided by that point (even though they were earlyish and multiple people were running). In '96 and '12 there were incumbents. And in '08 there was technically still a serious race going on but MI wasn't a part of it at all.
So it's not hard to see why the polling could have been so far off, and a state where you have a 20% lead in what seems like consistent and reliable polling is exactly the kind of place you should be complacent about, take for granted, or basically just ignore in favor of closer races. So I'm not sure Clinton was wrong to do that, though I'm guessing that there's a lot of second guessing and paranoia going on in her campaign at the moment, which will disappear after OH,IL, and FL.
I do think 396 is ignoring a bunch of the sketchy stuff that has been coming out of the Clinton campaign though. Neither one is going negative in a strong way, but Clinton's campaign, officially and through surrogates, has definitely gone negative in sort of dishonest ways more than a few times now. And my guess about her growing unfavorable numbers is that she's really pissing off a lot of people who were either Sanders supporters or on the fence a bit. (There's more than a little speculation that her attack line about the auto bailout in the Michigan debate actually ended up hurting her among union members there, who thought it was under the belt and dishonest.)
400.3 I think she can and should be doing better on this, yes.
It's not hard to see why the polling could have been off, but 20% is hard to explain. Not for a single poll, but for a series of polls, it's not something you should expect.
Maybe somebody has explained it in more detail, but I haven't read it yet.
Krugman: For the world as a whole, the cuts in exports and imports will by definition be equal, so as far as world demand is concerned, trade wars are a wash.
Uh-huh. That's of a piece with "in the long run, we are all dead," or noting that job losses and lost wages in the US through trade are probably balanced by new jobs and gained wages in China (or wherever else).
So, I see "let other stakeholders be at the table" and "impose tariffs on Apple." How many jobs in the US will that create? How many people's wages will rise as a result of those tactics? Not too many, right?
402
I read that they systematically underestimated the percentage of voters younger than 40 and independent voters, plus they assumed black voters would go for Hillary in Southern percentages.
Those are all relatively good signs for Sanders then. Nothing particularly Michigan-y about them. Except in states that don't let independents vote in primaries.
402/405 - I think it's probably not as interesting in the other states. They've done more polling (with results to confirm) in them in democratic races there in the past so calibrating their likely voter/etc. models is easier. My guess would be that this is probably more of a one-off, though I do suspect that some of those states will be closer than the polling indicates. But the sheer magnitude of the error with Michigan makes me think it was just a terrible model of the voting population, which can happen when you ignore a state for like twenty-five years.
Also, 372, what in god's name are you going on about here:
Yes, that was badly said. I should have said, "the bits quoted can be taken an an empirical prediction. I want to go on record as disagreeing with it, and depending on what happens we may want to refer back to this." (with the caveat that we probably don't agree on what would or would not count as validating that prediction.
I read that they systematically underestimated the percentage of voters younger than 40 and independent voters
I saw that this was directly related to the fact that MI hasn't had a presidential primary for several elections -- that normally the pollsters ask, "did you vote in the last presidential primary" but that wasn't a helpful question in MI.
I read that they systematically underestimated the percentage of voters younger than 40 and independent voters, plus they assumed black voters would go for Hillary in Southern percentages.
Wouldn't we expect differences between the black voters in the South (lot in small towns and farming areas) and the North (urban)?
I've been wondering if Clinton would play up her Chicago roots ahead of the March 15th Illinois contest. Doing so might backfire, since she not only had the bad judgment to support the Cubs (over the blue-collar favorites, the White Sox), but then made the even worse decision to become a Yankees fan:
"Once a Cubs fan, always a Cubs fan, but my personality was such that I couldn't stay hitched only to a losing team," said Clinton, who was born in this city and grew up in suburban Park Ridge.
"I had to search for a team that would counterbalance the experience of losing every single year, so -- I hate to say this, and I know you'll boo me -- I became a Yankees fan," she said. "I alternated my affections because it was just too hard being a Cubs fan, only being a Cubs fan."
408
Yes, but pollsters apparently didn't.
407
Apparently the most accurate poll was the one that accepted at face value that people who claimed they were going to vote were going to vote, rather than trying to game the percentages, and did less filtering out of "likely voters" in the first place. That poll had the Michigan race as pretty close, with Hillary up by a few percentage points.
Also, the article said a lot of polls still call landlines, which basically misses the whole millennial generation. This created a double polling problem of 1) underpolling young people, and 2) underweighting the youth vote in predicting voter make-up.
Unless Michigan is so backward that it just got cell phones, that shouldn't be a new problem.
409: I followed Stanley's link and found this quote
It is deeply distressing to me that we have people running for Congress -- both the House and the Senate -- who proudly go around their districts and their states proclaiming that you should send them to Washington because they will never compromise. I don't care whether you're a liberal Democrat or a really conservative Republican, do not vote for people who do not believe in compromise, because they do not believe in the legislative process of a democracy.
I wonder if she's tried this line against Sanders. I don't imagine it would go over well.
408: It seems like a pretty obvious point, but the press has been going with "black people hate Sanders" for long enough that maybe the pollsters forgot to adjust for the fact that white people in the South didn't really vote for him very much either? Who knows.
The landlines thing is kind of interesting though because I've definitely been hearing that for most of my adult life at this point and it hasn't seemed to make a big difference (unless back in the '90s polling was, like, within a tenth of a percent level accurate). Maybe it's about to now that the age groups who never really bothered getting them in the first place have gotten large enough that lower turnout among young people isn't compensating for the difference?
"Once a Cubs fan, always a Cubs fan, but my personality was such that I couldn't stay hitched only to a losing team,"
What? I...I can't even.
I care about baseball even less than I do about most professional sports, and even I know that staying hitched only to a losing team might as well be a synonym for "Cubs fan". The appeal of being hitched only to a losing team is why the Cubs have fans outside of Chicago (which they do, a bunch).
414: I think Hillary is giving us a clue about her first husband.
Of course Bernie should stay in. The mechanism by which he exerts pressure on Hillary is from having key constituencies vote for him.
Hillary is, I think, ready to backslide on warmongering and trademongering. The more pressure Bernie's voters put on her, the less likely she is to do that.
Yeah, the Yankee fandom is probably going to be my biggest reason for hesitating on pulling the lever for Hillary in November. I mean, war mongering and Wall Street shilling are bad and all. But putting a Yankee fan in the White House? I have a serious problem with that.
Really great article on the likely aftermath of Sanders' campaign: Stop laughing, Democrats! As the GOP goes down in flames, your post-Bernie civil war is almost here.
I stopped reading at:
Since the rich people who bought the Democratic Party from Hillary Clinton's husband have all but destroyed it, and long ago severed it from any semblance of class-based politics and any coherent ideology beyond "not as mean as the other guys," the field is wide open.
When did the Democratic Party have any semblance of class-based politics or coherent ideology? Coherence and class-based concerns have always been pretty peripheral to the Democratic Party and it's only erupted into civil war like once since the actual Civil War.
When did the Democratic Party have any semblance of class-based politics or coherent ideology?
Very roughly speaking, 1932-1992.
418- I also found it surprisingly uplifting. Lets hope he's right and the new Bernie voters don't give in to despair.
Hmm, I haven't gotten past the unflattering pictures of Clinton and Schultz. I probably agree with the content but I may never know.
419: I got further in:
For Hillary Clinton and the political faction she embodies or represents, America is pretty much OK, both in itself and in its relationship to the world, and American politics are mostly OK too.
Who has a better visceral understanding of the sickness at the heart of American politics than Hillary?
422: Are there that many flattering photos of Hillary Clinton?
She's always seemed to me to suffer from that weird curse of looking fine in person or on video but that like 2/3rds of photos of her make her look awful. Normally I think "unphotogenic" is just a polite way to say ugly, but there are definitely cases where for whatever reason they almost always look worse in still frames than they ever do in person or recordings where they're moving.
As far as Schultz though I have no idea. I don't know if that photo makes her look that much worse than she does on video though, except by virtue of being in higher definition than the videos I've seen.
It loaded really poorly also, but not as bad as Salon used to.
Yeah, I'm getting back to calling for the White Terror against Sanders internet supporters based on that one. No more reading stupid crap about the primary particularly from Salon. Presumably there are Hillary supporters who are out there misconstruing basic facts about the opposing candidate and blowing the primary up into a shit fit just as much as the Bernie people are, but for whatever reason people only seem interested in calling to my attention stupid Sanders stuff. Kill 'em all.
Very roughly speaking, 1932-1992.
Somehow Clinton made the Democratic party incoherent but 40 years of representing most northern blacks and southern racists didn't?
426: Highlights of the pro-Clinton awfulness involve pro-Contra Nicaragua posts and "Henry Kissinger, who whatever the Bernie Bros say HELPED END THE VIETNAM WAR"
I did, I guess. But while Clinton did shift to the right from the years immediately preceding him, it's not like he's the only one to do that. Kennedy ran to the right of Richard Nixon in the area of national security. Both the people protesting Vietnam and everybody mostly responsible for the main U.S. interventions in Vietnam were Democrats.
426: I don't think that can fairly be described as a pro-Bernie article.
424
No, it's a thing. I was reading an article on it, which claimed photography flattens out the features and makes them blend in, so to look good, you have to have more pronounced/exaggerated features. Lots of models look kinda weird in real life, but it translates well in print.* Conversely, if you have more delicate features, you can look fine IRL end up looking kind of terrible in print.** Also, being self conscious can make you look really stupid and unnatural.
*Also, I've watched an embarrassing amount of Top Model, and the prettiest girl is rarely the one who looks best in pictures. The show really did drive home that looking good in a picture is in large natural features but there's also skill there.
**I spent 2 years in China being photographed on a paparazzi level, and as an unphotogenic person, I did learn to look better in photos. Part of it involved learning to loosen up when being photographed.
I looked up election data from 1976 and 2012. Dividing the voters into categories of roughly 1/3 by income, the 1976 data shows a Carter/Ford split of 57/43 for the poorest, 50/50 for the middle, and 38/62 for the top third.
The 2012 Obama/Romney splits are 60/38 poorest third, 46/54 middle, 44/54 top third. So Democrats are even more the party of the poor now than they were in 1976. Though they do slightly better among the relatively rich than they did in 1976, they still lose those voters decisively. There's no dramatic change in class affiliation of the parties over time.
414
People outside Chicago are Cubs fans because WGN put their games on TV and it was one of the first superstations picked up on satellite/cable.
Same reason there's so many Braves fans outside Atlanta.
Sorry, that should be 46/52 in the middle third in 2012.
434: the change is not in the class affiliation of party voters, but in the affiliation of the class interests most effectively served by the party (and, not at all coincidentally, a change in the class affiliation of the party's donors (on the D side, shifting from unions to finance).
427: I dunno, class-based politics or coherent ideology can cover northern blacks and southern racists even though it can't cover coherent racial views. They were pretty consistent (not always, but..) when it came to the new deal stuff. And I think that's the kind of stuff that the guy in the article was going for. That said I don't see much incoherent about the worldview of the Clinton democrats that he's talking about, and it's not like the new deal democrats didn't have a right wing faction pushing back against them in the party either.
Presumably there are Hillary supporters who are out there misconstruing basic facts about the opposing candidate
in the affiliation of the class interests most effectively served by the party (and, not at all coincidentally, a change in the class affiliation of the party's donors (on the D side, shifting from unions to finance).
Two thoughts: (1) I don't think of either Kennedy or Carter as notably serving the working class specifically (beyond their general centrist-liberalism). I do think of Truman as being interested in class politics, and I don't know how I'd categorize LBJ. (2) If you're talking about the party as a whole over that period of time you need to decide how you feel about local machine politics. In some ways they did a good job of addressing the concerns of working class voters, in other ways they were very much directed towards consolidating power upwards.
Corey Robin is getting excited by the primaries.
Jacobin, and Robin has three posts on the front page.
This one is "All of Kissinger's Friends"
I don't watch debates, cause English and mu decision in this corrupt compromised...never mind...is easy, but Clinton really went after Sanders for supporting the Sandinistas? Has the Tigre faction of the Democratic Party become D'Aubuchon (D'Aubuisson, proud of getting close after 40 years) fans?
The only reason Clinton and her supporters on Twitter can so reflexively attack Sanders over this issue -- not his support for the Sandinistas or Castro, but his opposition to US intervention -- is that, thanks to two decades of liberal support for regime change and humanitarian intervention, the whole discourse of liberal anti-interventionism has practically disappeared from the scene.
I don't know if I can support a candidate that comfortable with death squads.
Presumably there are Hillary supporters who are out there misconstruing basic facts about the opposing candidate
I have to say, none of those stories make me feel particularly offended but this from the sidebar of the alternet article that you linked to is a fairly convincing example of the sorts of things that make Sanders supporters feel aggrieved.
Oh, that might have been a little misconstruin', but hey Libya Ukraine, Syria I ain't all that embarrassed bout predictin that the Clinton administration foreign policy will be at least cluck my tongue and mutter lesser evil lesser evil while averting my eyes to the beautiful identity pablum.
The first and third of them didn't really do much, I think, but the John Lewis really pissed me off because of how much bullshit it was, and how it was part of the initial "Sanders is the candidate for white men that's all" stuff that really bothers me a lot which is still going on. And it really was a nasty smear that kicked off a bunch more of them (the "this photograph is fake! Fake! [quietly later: oh never mind it's real sorry]). His quiet walking it back a few days later when no one was listening was disingenuous bullshit at a high enough level that he should probably receive some kind of award for it, too.*
*Roughly: "Oh I just meant that I hadn't met him then because we were in different states at the time so I didn't want to comment on it that's all. And I did meet the Clintons, but in a different place over a decade later in unrelated circumstances. I'm sorry I was misunderstood."
441
Right, it's different types of obnoxiousness. Bernie supporters write more of the "wake up sheeple!" type obvious and explicitly obnoxious stuff, which is mostly present in the youth-oriented or leftist media (reddit, salon, twitter, daily kos). The anti-Bernie stuff is far more pervasive and mostly more subtle, as it involves a persistent, systematic bias and incredible condescension in the MSM against Bernie as a serious candidate. It's harder to find one particularly egregious example (though there are a few, mainly to due some foot-in-mouth disease by some surrogates), but the overall effect is more pernicious.
the change is not in the class affiliation of party voters, but in the affiliation of the class interests most effectively served by the party
But to the extent this is true this is a general problem with America and American politics, not something that was caused by the eeevil Clintons and history's greatest monster, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. If anything, the Democrats are relative to the Republican party much more the party of working class interests right now than they were in 1948 or 1960 (in those years Republicans actively tried to woo union voters with economic measures, etc. etc.). The relative power of finance vs. unions in the Democratic party reflects the relative power of finance vs. unions in the country more generally (and unions are still far more powerful in the "establishment" Democratic party than they are in the country generally). To the extent that there's movement now in the other direction, great, but the notion that there was a historically class-based Democratic party that was trecherously blown up by the Clintons out of eviltude is just pure bullshit.
Loomis the lonely voice of sanity and decency at LGM, ok Campos has moments, almost almost makes me like Obama a little more. Foreign policy.
The Atlantic published this statement, and also published Clinton's assessment that "great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle," Obama became "rip-shit angry," according to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how "Don't do stupid shit" could be considered a controversial slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that "the questions we were asking in the White House were 'Who exactly is in the stupid-shit caucus? Who is pro-stupid shit?' " The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid shit.
Still won't forgive Obama for TARP, and seriously in a mood to stay home in November, single-handedly throwing Texas to Cruz.
Clinton does equal war and dead brown babies. That is what you know you are voting for.
413.2 is correct, and basing your whole argument on landlines is unskewing-level garbage*. If it were a systemic problem, then wouldn't Bernie have outperformed his polling by 20 points in every contest so far? Instead, he's done it once.
I'm not saying that there aren't people out there who need to do some soul searching over this, I'm just saying that those people aren't us, and people like us shouldn't waste our time pretending we know. If it were simple and obvious, it would be, well, simple and obvious.
*to be clear, I don't think anyone here has done this, but I have seen a lot of ostensibly smart and sophisticated people say some very dumb things about matters like polling this election (coin flips!!1!1!!)
Do people think Bill Clinton was the one thing that prevented Jessie Jackson from becoming the first black president?
No, they think he's the one who prevented Gingrich from establishing UBI.
If anything, the Democrats are relative to the Republican party much more the party of working class interests right now
I'm sure the term relative isn't carrying that much weight there. I mean, it's certainly nothing like saying "If anything, John Kasich is relative to Cruz and Rubio much more the party of supporting reproductive rights".
I think usually when people say that the Democrats aren't serving the interests of the working class well right now compared to the past, the word "past" means "the way they were before" not "the way a different group is right now". And that could very easily be the result of the Clinton-style shift of the Democratic party away from supporting those interests toward the interests of the wealthier groups, on the accurate theory that the Republicans weren't suddenly going to shift themselves over to a left wing party. That's pretty much how they described it at the time, too, and not some after the fact crazy-leftist analysis.
450: The era of big government is over, eh.
I suppose I am more sympathetic to Bill than a lot of other Bernie supporters. In advance of the election in 1992, liberalism of any stripe looked dead, dead, dead.
Bill politically rehabilitated the national Democratic Party in the face of insane opposition, and left the country with an excellent opportunity to avoid a lot of the grief that followed his presidency.
Yes. Clinton assembled a different coalition after the old one ceased to have a majority.
What a mystery! The Dems spent 12 years as the party of blacks and the part of the working class that didn't hate blacks so much that they'd vote for Republicans, and they got their asses kicked. So some Dems decided that maybe they could be the party of blacks and tpotwctdhbsmttvfR and also UMC people who didn't like bigotry* and win some elections. And it worked well enough that they've won the popular vote for president 5 of 6 elections running.
Stupid Clintons should have doubled down on the hackeysack vote, then they would have had filibuster-proof margins in the Senate.
*remember, until recently, it was obvious that any sort of professional or small business owner would vote R. Architects? Republicans. Doctors? Republicans. Scientists? Republicans.
And let me be more specific: Reagan declared war directly on the white working class, and they fucking loved him for it. Why this is Bill Clinton's fault, I'm not sure. Maybe if he'd campaigned with Chomsky, that would have fixed things.
445: i think you're reading that one line excerpt of the article way too literally. It was intended as hyperbole--the whole article is full of hyperbole. It's not all Clintons fault--I agree he generally played well with the weak hand the country was dealing Democrats at the time.
454: but at that point they were primed and ready for war.
454: I think one of the biggest principles of American politics is that you can absolutely declare war on the interests and basic livelihood of a group of people and still get their support as long as you have something to distract them with, and usually that thing is declaring bigger war on a group they don't like.
I think one of the biggest principles of American politics is that you can absolutely declare war on the interests and basic livelihood of a group of people and still get their support as long as you have something to distract them with, and usually that thing is declaring bigger war on a group they don't like.
The thing that bugs me about that statement* is that it seems like a strong thesis, but it also seems irrefutable -- it opens up plenty of space to perform the terrible two-step of triviality, if you wanted.
So I'll just say that, if you believe that, the problem then becomes explaining why a major party would be a class-based party in the first place (assuming that the Democrats were from 1932-92).
* I take this as a sign of my occasional grumpiness about the primaries. In most contexts the quoted statement would seem completely reasonable and I would nod my head to it. But, in this context, I feel the need to quibble. *shrug*
Clinton assembled a different coalition after the old one ceased to have a majority.
Was there actually a change in voting demographics under Clinton (other than the final disintegration of southern Democrats)? He might've helped make it respectable in some finance circles to give money to Democrats, and I certainly understand that at the time it was widely believed that liberalism was electoral poison, but I suspect that was just a massive overreaction to two elections and that his positive influence on long-term Democratic electability nonexistent.
451 is more or less my perspective; I'd disagree with the tone o 453 to the extent that it implies that doing anything other than what Bill Clinton did would have been stupid.
I think that in 1992 the Democrats did need to re-organize their coalition and that Clinton found a successful way to do that, but that it wasn't necessarily the only path and I'm happy that the party seems to be moving to the left post-Clinton.
Is there some large coalition of voters who are really excited by Clinton's rightward policy decisions?
as long as you have something to distract them with, and usually that thing is declaring bigger war on a group they don't like.
I agree with the sentiment in general, but I've always had trouble with this kind of "What's the matter with Kansas" framing.
As Trump is showing, from the point of view of many Republican voters, racism and sexism aren't distractions - they're the main event. These voters are happy to suffer in their material lives as long as they can be comfortable in their prejudices.
Similarly, Joe the Plumber was an American Patriot - entirely willing to forgo his own economic interests for the Greater Good.
his positive influence on long-term Democratic electability nonexistent.
I feel like the conventional wisdom is that he helped long-term Democratic electability by negating the effectiveness of the attacks that Democrats were fiscally irresponsible, soft on crime, and overly attached to welfare programs which were poorly run and havens of "waste, fraud, and abuse."
I think that's partially true, but it's also true that the crime bill and welfare reform were both terrible policies and that, if you believe the lead theory, neither may have been necessary -- those attacks might have lost potency on their own. But I do think that Clinton did make some important political wins.
463 written without seeing 461, but it does offer an answer.
the party seems to be moving to the left post-Clinton.
And pre-Clinton!
I do think that the Clintons made a cynical but not unreasonable decision about the Democratic coalition in the '90s though. The Republicans had pretty firmly captured the racist vote, which was* a pretty massive force in American politics, severely right wing people, and the less right wing professional classes who thought of themselves (rightly or wrongly) as moderate conservatives or people who don't just vote in partisan ways but are informed about candidates (but were uncomfortable about how.. unrespectable Democrats were).
But they were already running into the trouble that's hitting them really hard right now, which is that the former two groups look kind of unrespectable too if they're in front of the cameras too much, and you can't drop them once you've built something important on top of them. So they figured that you could move to the right to look more respectable/moderate/etc., disavow the radical change thing, and reassure everyone that you certainly don't intend to change anything in a way that would inconvenience them. And by doing that grab up big numbers of that last group, which they did, without losing any of the rest of their coalition because, well, where were they planning on going anyway?**
Minority voters certainly weren't about to jump ship to the openly racist party (and probably couldn't even if they'd tried), and the left couldn't either because of the hard right guys***. So you could just tell them to deal with it, and if they didn't want to come out to vote, well, there are those other guys over there and good luck with them. And that did some good but is exactly what led to the Republican party doubling down on the crazies and leaving us where we are now with an awkward/sort of uncomfortable coalition of everyone who isn't. (Which is starting a fight that has been brewing for a good long time and even if we don't have one now it isn't going away any time soon either.)
* "was"
** I think it was probably not a great choice here, partially because it meant that people with my views generally got the short end of the stick on it (and because there genuinely is a difference in turnout between "I'll get something" and "I won't get boned", at least for anyone who doesn't feel like they're literally in a lot of danger right now). But more because they deeply underestimated the ability of the Republican party to shape the press successfully enough to drive large chunks of their coalition completely and utterly out of their minds, which boosted their turnout a lot and undercut any attempts to steal people away from them. Of course that crazy is what's causing the freakout in the Republicans right now because once you spin up the crazy machine it's very hard to put the brakes on it because "no brakes" is pretty much what makes it go in the first place.
*** I mean, it's nice to pretend otherwise but I don't know how seriously that population would have felt uncomfortable about making a coalition with the racists. I'm pretty sure that's a coalition we've seen more than once in American history anyway.
But I do think that Clinton did make some important political wins.
Clinton left Al Gore in an excellent position to win the presidency. By itself, that would have solved a lot of problems.
So I'll just say that, if you believe that, the problem then becomes explaining why a major party would be a class-based party in the first place (assuming that the Democrats were from 1932-92).
The two parties had kind of split the racists between themselves for various historical reasons though, right? And it did turn out to eventually be unstable which is why the Southern Strategy worked the second the civil rights movement was able to push the Northern Democrats hard enough to get good legislation and enforcement out of them. (The Dixiecrats were a good sign that this had been in the works: they were kicking around back in the '40s already, due to civil rights conflicts.)
As Trump is showing, from the point of view of many Republican voters, racism and sexism aren't distractions - they're the main event. These voters are happy to suffer in their material lives as long as they can be comfortable in their prejudices.
Oh this is definitely true - I just meant that you can declare war on them generally (especially in class terms) as long as you give them something they want at least as much if not moreso. And racism and sexism are really easy to see and appealing even if you aren't paying too much attention to politics, but class based economic warfare or whatever can be easily described in opaque nice terms and it's harder to see through than "waste, fraud and abuse" means "helps black people" is.
and the left couldn't either because of the hard right guys***.
*** I mean, it's nice to pretend otherwise but I don't know how seriously that population would have felt uncomfortable about making a coalition with the racists. I'm pretty sure that's a coalition we've seen more than once in American history anyway.
Right the communists have always been right on the edge of lining up with the KKK, that's why DuBois was so leery of them.
Despicable. Contemptible. And just as monomanaically cray as the racists and repubs.
But more because they deeply underestimated the ability of the Republican party to shape the press
I was reading something last night which got me to re-think my theory of American politics slightly. One of the things that occasionally mystifies me is (1) how is it that the Republicans are so much more extreme than the Democrats, and both more ideologically united and more radical in their desired political program and (2) how and why have they had such success.
The article was Bill McKibbon's review of Jane Mayer's new book, and he says, "don't underestimate the impact of the Koch brothers and the network they created."
What makes this book more than a study in sociology and history is the effectiveness of these billionaires in dominating our political life. They merged three forms of political spending--campaign dollars, lobbying expenditures, and philanthropy at think tanks, universities, and media properties--into a juggernaut. Mayer highlights the strategic insight of the effort in several ways. She describes, for instance, how various think tanks had worked for years to lay the groundwork for the Citizens United and SpeechNow decisions, which made it far easier for big donors to influence elections.
...
Getting serious meant, among other things, funneling completely unprecedented amounts of money into the 2010 midterm elections--$200 million or more from "Republican-aligned independent groups." All over the country absurd attack ads were going after incumbents--Congressman Bruce Braley of Iowa and Bob Etheridge of North Carolina were each accused of wanting to build a "mosque at Ground Zero." Republicans gained sixty-three seats in the House, putting them firmly in control.
Even more importantly, they gained 675 seats in state houses across the country, giving the GOP control of the redistricting process as the new census was released. This was the careful culmination of a dream called REDMAP, funded by, among others, the North Carolina variety store magnate Art Pope, a kind of junior Koch, and it all but guaranteed that conservatives would dominate American political life at least through the next census in 2020. Mayer describes the endless fundraising for REDMAP, "especially at honeypots like the Koch summit."
I'm skeptical of any explanation that involves a small group of people bending american politics to their will (for good or evil), because I think, in general, too little attention is paid to bottom-up changes.
But, if that description is correct, it could explain a lot of the asymmetries between the two parties. If you believe the Koch brothers are, to some extent, personally responsible for the modern Republican party that would suggest that the Democratic party can't easily develop the same ideological ambition without something to provide a similar motivating force.
I can't read anyone's comments at the moment, but I'd bet if one could control for the Southern strategy, economic determinism, and changing demographics, the Clinton revolution would be negligible.
One of the reason I watch these political internets is to substantiate my opinion that it is the identity liberals that sidle into fascism
No, Mussolini and Hitler didn't make their coalitions with the fucking communists.
"Those Christian Democrats are rightwing antisemites"
"No, The social Democrats are turncoat traitors"
....
Putsch
...
"Well at least neither one of us were Communists
Sieg Heil!"
Thinking about the Koch brothers I should add that the other explanation which points towards the same conclusion but describes it as more of a structure shift is the story that Hacker and Pierson tell in Winner-Take-All Politics. In their story the business class was fairly apolitical during the time period from Roosevelt through the 70s and then, for various reasons, they started re-engaging as an organized political force and were almost surprised to find out how much political power their money could buy.
In that version the shift happened well before Clinton; the decline of the unions meant that there wasn't a strong counter-weight to organized business interests.
470: People keep pointing to Jeb and Rubio and saying "LOL, looks like Citizens United didn't lead to money buying elections after all". Citizens United led to money buying every election except the Presidential election, which is the one in the news.
The nice thing about wealthy business interests exercising power is that the more they do the more they can. Reagan+ republicans pushed wealth inequality as hard as they could and each time they succeeded the wealthy people backing them could back them just that bit harder until we got an entire political/media ecosystem built by and for them (for a while).
Give me a clue here, MPMH.
Was it maybe C.L.R. James that made overtures to the Nazis and KKK? Eugene Debs?
Which American economic far leftists...
"I don't know how seriously that population would have felt uncomfortable about making a coalition with the racists."
"I'm pretty sure that's a coalition we've seen more than once in American history anyway."
Help me out here? Is Jane Hamsher your fucking historical dispositive example, you psycho fuck.
I feel like the conventional wisdom is that he helped long-term Democratic electability by negating the effectiveness of the attacks that Democrats were fiscally irresponsible, soft on crime, and overly attached to welfare programs which were poorly run and havens of "waste, fraud, and abuse."
Like a lot of CW I think this is wrong; I don't think those arguments were negated (they're still widely used). Perhaps blunted enough to allow some small group voters to go for him, but it also meant leaving votes from the left on the table.
Wait, are you talking about FDR and JFK?
Is that your far economic left?
That's you and the liberals, not me.
Maybe Marx was secretly on the South's and was lying in his articles?
The Paris commune were just pretending to take in Algerians and North Africans?
Okay, this is how it happens.
Mussolini and Hitler, regardless of policy and racism, made their nations feel like they belonged, they were "one of us" "Like us" Same with Hirohito, maybe Papa Joe and the Chairman.
Identity politics will always end in fascism.
Now I'm trying to second guess the Clinton Democrats and think about what they could have done better and it's not obvious really (though what they did was pretty shitty in a lot of ways so I'm not praising it).
(1)
"Just obstruct as hard as you can to minimize the damage , yell about it a lot and blame the Republicans for every single thing wrong in the world while waiting for the Obama coalition to get big enough that you can punch with weight again" could actually be a good plan (it's not far from what the Republicans did). But without something along the lines of wingnut welfare you're just saying "Hey half the people in the party, find other jobs!" Even if you tried that all that would happen is that opportunists would notice how there were these big gaps opening up in the party and jump in there to fill them. And there's really no obvious way to know ahead of time how long it would take for that change to come around, and even if you had some idea about it there's still "in the long run everyone is dead".
(2)
"Try to pull people who jumped to the Republican party back by left-winging even harder". Ha ha ha no. The reasons they jumped ("race!") aren't going away if you do that, and you'll only confirm all the dumb-hippy crap that more established interests had been pushing for decades as well.
(3)
"Pretty much the same thing only way more cynically" is, no joke, the best one I can come up with as a replacement for something that I think was pretty cynical to begin with. Co-opting a lot of Republican rhetoric to snap up people who voted for Republicans because that rhetoric sounded respectable was something that did work (for some senses of "work")*, but it came along with co-opting the actual policies too. And they definitely shouldn't have done that because those policies were shitty and didn't reflect any of that rhetoric anyway since it was 90% code words. (Some people cared deeply about those policies, but I think the Democrats involved made a massive overestimation of how many people actually were in that group, because it was mostly exhausted by people they knew and people lobbying them for stuff.)
Doing that, plus minimizing the damage ("Oh sure! I think NAFTA is a great deal that is very economically reasonable and Bush was right to negotiate it. And I'm going to make it even more so by just tweaking this one bit here and [speaking very quietly]dropping this whole last third right out of the deal entirely") could probably have worked as much as directly taking on the policies. That plus an exit strategy once the voting coalition you had right then got big enough to work again so you didn't need to have an endless coalition fight out in public could have been nice. But then you're asking a huge number of people to not just be kinda/sorta dishonest ("savvy"! "in the know"! It could work, I mean.) but to say a lot of stuff you don't believe which, fancy sophomore cynicism aside, is actually super difficult for non-sociopathic human beings to do. So I don't know how workable it would be, or how effectively the rhetoric could have been stolen to get the respectable-not-that-racists without the racism sitting underneath it.
*I had a lot of fun in 2012 or so picking on friends-of-friends on facebook who were yelling about the ACA mandate by pointing out that the people who didn't need insurance right then would absolutely need it later and thought they shouldn't have to pay into the system before drawing out of it, which meant they were just freeloaders who needed to learn some personal responsibility. I should probably be embarrassed by how much joy I got out of it, but I'm not.
it also meant leaving votes from the left on the table
First, it really didn't. That might be a cold-hearted political calculus, but it was an accurate one. People who are on the "left" are almost by definition political. They tend to vote and vote for the left-most candidate, even if that person isn't very far left.
Second, look at the 1996 election. Self-identified "moderates" were 47% of the electorate; 57% of those went to Clinton and they were 55% of his support. By contrast Clinton got 31% of his support from self-identified liberals and 20% from self-identified conservatives.
If 57% of the self-identified "moderate" vote had gone to Bob Dole, universally seen as a weak candidate in a very strong Democratic year, that election would have flipped.
The Democratic party and the country have gotten a LOT more liberal since then, mostly because both are much less white than they were in 1996. But that was the reality Clinton was facing.
I agree with the sentiment in general, but I've always had trouble with this kind of "What's the matter with Kansas" framing.
Me too. There is more to life than homo economicus. "OMG, they didn't vote for someone who might possibly have given them a little more money? Because they hold some nebulous belief? Heretics!"
Also bob I said "left" not "super leftist utopian radicals" here. I was referring to a population with actual voting power that was part of the Democratic party coalition. And I think the New Deal northern-black/southern-dixiecrat coalition depends an awful lot on that comfort to stitch it together.
I don't know if anyone should really care about whether Leninists are voting for their party or not because, well, there just aren't enough of them to matter when it comes to elections for city council, let along national politics.
Forgot to link the tables for the 1996 election. About 20% of the electorate self-identified as "liberal"; it's hard to imagine a winning political strategy in the mid-1990s based unequivocally around classic liberalism, even if you make completely heroic and unrealistic assumptions about "turnout" (which you shouldn't.)
"classic" liberalism meaning FDR new deal liberalism, not that other kind of classic liberalism.
And the LGM Obama/Clinton foreign policy thread is descending into the pits of hell where it belongs.
Voting for the "lesser evil" may be necessary.
It is when you start saying "trains run on time" and "Autobahn!" when you start trying to forgive yourself by saying the lesser evil is actually pretty good that your
soul is lost and you become evil yourself.
Obama is not good. He is the lesser evil, and it is corrupting to say anything good about him.
People who are on the "left" are almost by definition political. They tend to vote and vote for the left-most candidate, even if that person isn't very far left.
Right, they vote. And sometimes they vote for Ralph Nader. Not to absolve them in any way for a prospectively stupid and retrospectively disastrous decision, but you can't sell yourself as Republican-lite and be completely surprised when some take you seriously.
In any given election almost no voters are going to be swayed by legislation signed into law, but blurring the party policy lines was dispiriting to the base and destructive for grassroots organizing. Almost zero votes were lost on the left during Clinton's elections as a direct result of his triangulation (about the same number of centrist votes that were gained), but maybe some people decided they had better things to do than to volunteer or canvas their family and friends.
it's hard to imagine a winning political strategy in the mid-1990s based unequivocally around classic liberalism, even if you make completely heroic and unrealistic assumptions about "turnout" (which you shouldn't.)
Whereas I'm having a hard time imaging a policy and rhetorical Clinton first term that could've flipped 20% of moderates to the Republicans.
487: "But how you could so utterly fail to see that voting for me was in your best interest just because I was aggressively insisting that it wouldn't be!?"
Ouch. I bet Cruz is really regretting spreading that rumor right now. This might actually hurt him.
Funny about neoliberal Clinton compared to neoliberal Obama.
The 1994 midterms were a catastrophe like the 2010 midterms.
Wiki: "The 1994 elections turned out to be an "epic slaughter" of the Democratic Party, with Republicans winning 54 House and 9 U.S. Senate seats, increasing the number of Republican governors from 20 to 30 (out of 50), and flipping many state legislatures from Democratic to Republican control."
Paranoiacs muse about such things. But just a wild coincidence, right? Outparty always wins, right? Scale doesn't tell us much.
And sometimes they vote for Ralph Nader.
Which mattered in a fantastically close election in a single state (and which would have been more easily won in about 10,000 other ways), but not otherwise. Losing Nader voters is (quite rightly) low on the concern list if you're purely concerned about electing Democrats.
Almost zero votes were lost on the left during Clinton's elections as a direct result of his triangulation (about the same number of centrist votes that were gained), but maybe some people decided they had better things to do than to volunteer or canvas their family and friends.
That might be true, but there was almost no party-based grassroots organizing that was ideologically driven before Clinton, either (when the parties were less ideological). Grassroots organizing doesn't have much to do with single elections, it has to do with long-term organizations, like unions or single causes or something else. If you're interested in long-term movement building you shouldn't look to Presidential candidates or Presidential elections at all.
Whereas I'm having a hard time imaging a policy and rhetorical Clinton first term that could've flipped 20% of moderates to the Republicans.
Start with "raising taxes" and go from there.
Now I'm trying to second guess the Clinton Democrats and think about what they could have done better and it's not obvious really (though what they did was pretty shitty in a lot of ways so I'm not praising it).
Comity. I agree with that almost entirely (I'd qualify it to say, "much of what they did was pretty shitty").
Whereas I'm having a hard time imaging a policy and rhetorical Clinton first term that could've flipped 20% of moderates to the Republicans.
Really? Literally you're correct, because almost nothing would flip 20% of large group of people, but there was a point in the campaign* when Clinton was third in the polls behind both Bush and Perot and people were seriously debating whether the Democratic party might fall apart.
If the 1992 Democratic candidate had flipped 20% of moderates to Perot voters that wouldn't be far from flipping them to Republicans.
* I want to say early summer, but I'd have to check.
Clinton got very lucky with the timing of the '92 election. After the Gulf War, Bush I was looking undefeatable until that came along. Clinton also benefited from Perot being a) in the mix, and b) completely nuts.
The specific make-up of Clinton's coalition was a small factor in comparison. He could have done it with a leftier group.
Ben Carson is endorsing Trump?! Wow. Just... wow.
Rhetorical overreach. Sure, he could've lost the '96 election by nationalizing the means of production and abolishing private property.
Carson and Rubio are the two candidates that for some reason the right wing evangelical community really respects and believes are authentic evangelicals. There was a lot of noise about them potentially partnering together on the same ticket. Hard to believe Carson would tilt to Trump. What's he getting out of it?
Is anyone watching the clown show tonight? Opening statements by RNC chair are... Quite Interesting.
Yes. Hilarious statement from Priebus.
I was watching a bunch of twelve-year olds sing "Blurry Face."
God damn, the whole Republican party has changed his mind very quickly on free trade.
I don't think I can watch this without drinking.
Carson and Rubio are the two candidates that for some reason the right wing evangelical community really respects and believes are authentic evangelicals. There was a lot of noise about them potentially partnering together on the same ticket. Hard to believe Carson would tilt to Trump. What's he getting out of it?
You mean Carson and Cruz?
He gave a little speech about how he, and all Republicans, would have to support the Republican nominee, whoever it might be. The hilarious part was that he had to say it.
504:
Dear god why would you even try?
Kasich and Rubio have now bragged about creating "hundreds of jobs" which seems really paltry. These guys are all pathetic. Is it any wonder Trump is dominating?
503: it's amazing. Marco rubio's website right now outlines his strong support for free trade. They might want to edit that soon, I guess.
505: no, Rubio. Cruz is making a play for the same voters.
503: it's amazing. Marco rubio's website right now outlines his strong support for free trade. They might want to edit that soon, I guess.
505: no, Rubio. Cruz is making a play for the same voters.
Oh my god it's so cute to see the moderator trying to explain that common core is completely unrelated to whatever the right wing attacks on it.
"GET THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OUT OF EDUCATION!"
"..uh, it's actually a state program run by the states.."
"AND WE NEED TO GET THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OUT OF IT!"
Cruz will tell the Department of Education that common core has to end that day.
Oh also Obama is abusing executive power by (mumblemumble) so I'm going to end the department of education that I said I would make do things just there!
Cruz is really on a roll.
Always infuriating to listen to a bunch of dudes who would never in a million years send their kids to a public school take strong stances on public education.
How nutty was Perot, really? I was young and naive enough that I uncritically accepted that characterization, but, on his two main issues, he was right on free trade and his debt concerns were validated by the Clinton administration (IIRC, DeLong has credited deficit reduction with reducing interest rates and contributing to the late '90s boom.
+)
Obviously, he talked funny and used pictures, so
Chinese goods don't even have curfews!
Cruz is trying hard but I'm not convinced that he's managing it as effectively this time. Trump just ignores him and starts delivering his normal speech lines.
I think he's getting a bit too college-debate-society right now, honestly. That works in competitions but in actual political debates I'm not convinced it really counts for anything.
And he's really trying hard to bait/attack Trump and Trump is apparently just deciding to ignore it, which is probably the best choice. But it's way less satisfying/fun to watch because it's just a bunch of people making up nonsense and saying it with as straight a face as they can manage.
I made this a few months ago:
http://markovchaintedcruz.tumblr.com/
Like a lot of CW I think this is wrong; I don't think those arguments were negated (they're still widely used). Perhaps blunted enough to allow some small group voters to go for him, but it also meant leaving votes from the left on the table.
Yeah, sorry, this is more or less nonsense. In 1992, these attacks reached deeply beyond the median voter. Someone like Paul E Tsongas ("gaseous plant") was taken very seriously as a candidate because the New Deal Democrat was completely dead, so a Democrat running on a fucking balanced budget was seen as a savior. Compared to Tsongas, Clinton was a goddamn lefty. Meanwhile, who buys those attacks now? Pretty much only committed Republicans. GOP candidates say it now as a shibboleth for the true believers, not because there are a meaningful number of Dem voters who might believe it.
I just think this objection is fantastically ahistorical. Who was the leftmost candidate in 2004? Dean? He was a DLC guy. Obviously not Kerry or Lieberman. Edwards, maybe, although even he was far to the right of his 2008 message. So a dozen years after Clinton was elected, the Democratic candidates were, as a group... pretty much exactly where Clinton had been. And that's after 12 years of the country getting younger, less white, and (somewhat) more liberal. But sure, if Clinton weren't such a corporate tool, he totally could have won on the Farmer-Labor Party platform.
I'm increasingly thinking that Bernie is winning under-40s because under-40s have no fucking recollection of the political world before 9/11.
"Democratic politicians are conservative" isn't evidence that "Democratic politicians are as liberal as allowed by the electorate".
"No recollection of the political world before 9/11" is short for "not confusing the political world before 9/11 with the one right now", right?
Or is the idea that otherwise they'd vote for Clinton out of gratitude for what her husband managed to salvage or whatever? I'm not seeing this, unless you think that by magic everything will turn back into 1995 if we make one wrong step.
The 1980, 1984, and 1988 elections that so traumatized the over-40s: was there a conservative-enough Democrat who could've won?
||
The FBI is openly threatening to make Apple turn over the source code for iOS.
|>
I certainly think that Democratic party going to far to the left will make the overall resulting policies more to the right as more Republicans will win. I'm not certain where the line is, but Clinton is quite a bit left of where Clinton (either of them) was in 1992.
And I'm certainly not about to hold 1992 against Clinton because her husband went to the center to win an election that almost nobody thought the Democrats could have won before the primaries.
"If only Mondale had embraced supply-side economics and racism he wouldn't have lost 49 states."
522: No, you moron, it's acting like the decisions that Clinton made in 1992 happened with the current electorate, and that he was clearly acting under a deeply felt desire to compromise Democratic principles when, obviously, McGovern would have done much better.
Every fucking comment about the Clintons in the '90s seems to be based on that assumption, so I assume most of the people making those comments were in diapers at the time. Or they're bob, who I assume was stoned out of his fucking mind.
Have I mentioned how good the mid-90s were for me, economy-wise. It was really great. If that comes back, I'll have land for a cob house before Clinton starts her second term.
Try this: "A centrist Democrat mostly won because a lunatic split the vote, even though a recession was happening."
Seriously, all you're doing is convincing me that you were paying no fucking attention at all in 1992.
Tell me about how the Dems would have beaten Ike, had they only run Henry Wallace.
Not just land with dirt, but land with dirt and scenery.
527: Yes, clearly "they were totally being dishonest for all of the 90's and large chunks of the '00s but now she's actually saying what she thought the whole time" is clearly a better explanation than the idea that they, you know, meant it. Good grief man. Are you seriously complaining that younger democrats are refusing to believe that Hillary Clinton spent twenty years of her life lying about her actual beliefs and intentions and doing things she secretly opposed out of a sense of political obligation or something?
You know what another, much simpler explanation is that in the '90s Democrats with the views that Hillary Clinton was expressing and preferences for policies she supported is that Democrats with those views and policies did well in the '90s for those exact same political reasons you just pointed out.
"If only Kerry had run on gay marriage, he totally would have won in 2004!"
"Why didn't Al Smith run on an open borders policy? What sellout!"
This is so great! Why didn't I realize that, if only the liberal party had run on a 2032 platform since 1800, they would have won every fucking election forever?
JRoth's claim seems to be "she was lying a lot at the time but now isn't and you ungrateful brats would understand that if you were paying attention at the time", and that only recently has she stopped lying. Because, you know, she was forced by the situation to pursue things she didn't want and also to say things she didn't think and to argue for policies on grounds she didn't agree with.
532, I think it's wrong to think of it as "Were you lying then, or are you lying now?" As a politician you respond to what the mainstream of people seem to expect (unless you're Bernie Sanders). Back then the mainstream of the Democratic party wanted to be harsher on crime than it does now. Back then the mainstream of the Democratic party wanted no openly gay people in the military. Et cetera.
Obama's claim seems to be "I was lying when I said gay people should have civil unions instead of marriages, and you ungrateful brats would understand that if you were paying attention at the time", and that only recently has he stopped lying. Or maybe not.
536: That's pretty questionable though, because even in politics people do have actual views and mean the things they say (and the ones who are most in the mainstream tend to do well - e.g., suddenly Bernie Sanders out of apparently nowhere). And if that's true (which, seriously, it's "people don't usually dedicate their lives to achieving things they object to") objecting to Hillary on grounds that her past is fairly conservative compared to what Democrats want now is a perfectly reasonable objection. And that it's reasonable to believe that the decisions Clinton made in 1992 reflected his own beliefs about what should be done. And JRoth was claiming that, at the very least, that second one was moronic and could only be believed by someone who hadn't been around to see him making those decisions and arguing in favor of them, for some reason.
Look, if you believe that Hillary's decisions and the views she claimed to have through a lot of the '00s were fundamentally dishonest then you can't object to her on grounds that she her past is too conservative. But I don't see why any sane person would think that, and if it's not true then that means that the objection works just fine and isn't based on being totally ignorant of history.
536 is correct. In addition to that, the thing that seems odd about 532 is that the reason we're talking about 1992 and Bill Clinton is because of the claim that prior to 92 the Democratic party was (roughly) a party of class-based ideology and (by implication) Bill Clinton spoiled it.
So it isn't that JRoth (or myself) are trying to claim that Clinton's policies were the best possible, just that they had positive value to the Democratic party at that time.
Yeah except then there was this bit:
I'm increasingly thinking that Bernie is winning under-40s because under-40s have no fucking recollection of the political world before 9/11.
At that point then it is claiming that animosity towards Clinton is based on silly ahistorical thinking because, well, there it is.
540 written without seeing 539 which does help clarify what we're arguing about. I still disagree, and find it not entirely helpful because I don't think the last sentence is a good summary of the disagreement.
I'll let JRoth follow up on that; both because he made the comment and because typing on my tablet is not a good way to argue this . . .
540.1: That was urple, not MHPH, I think. I also found that the oddest thing in the thread.
523 -- in 1980 and probably 1988, yes (though "more conservative" alone obviously wouldn't have been sufficient, and there was for sure an uphill battle both years.) 1984, no. But both 80 and 88 broke relatively late for the Republicans, and 80 had Anderson.
Honestly, the idea that every view I held in the 1990s must either be the same as I think now or I am I'm liar either now or then strikes me as the kind of comically naive thing only young people say. Like attaching philosophical weight to pop songs or something. I get that Clinton, being professional involved in holding policy ideas, gets held to a higher standard, but lots of things have changed over those years. For example, I don't think many people made it through the 2008 recession without altering a great many of their views.
The gripe with ahistorical Bernie fans, at least for me, isn't that they owe Clinton anything, but that the ones on the internet should tone down the way overblown sellout/purity rhetoric. Which they should probably do anyway.
"My name's Blurry Face and I care what you think."
What does that even mean?
This from Kevin Drum seems relevant to the "was Hillary lying" question. Maybe a bit overblown on the other side. But he's right that often the most honest thing a politician can say is "here's what we can actually expect, and get done" and conform their public statements to political reality.
A lot of what Sanders is saying right now are statements that are generally admirable but that he has absolutely no plan for or plausible way to accomplish. Free college tuition ... paid by ????? Single payer health care, with transition costs of basically nothing because ???? and political reality of ???? Massive government-spending economic boom based on ??????
These are claims with integrity, in the sense that he seriously wants these things. They also are admirable as policy goals. But they're not promises that are "honest." They're things he knows that he won't get and hasn't planned for and can't get for people,. But he's promising anyway. Does that make him more honest than Clinton?
To be clear, what Bernie is doing is arguably a very good political strategy and an admirable thing to do. But in a real sense it's not being particularly honest.
536- I feel like you are denying the agency of politicians to help create a mainstream of the party.
549- I feel like this answers some of your objections: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10205617504341238&set=gm.1089946617692530&type=3&theater
545: A shift rightward in rhetoric netting 8-10% (10 over an already conservative Carter) seems extremely implausible. Even more so a shift rightward in policy.
Politicians don't have beliefs in the way people do*,**. It's not like there's some "real" Clinton. They just do and say shit and get elected or not and then do or say other stuff to get elected again. Which isn't to say you should punish politicians for past bad things they did, you should! But not because there's any real core belief there, just because it's a good thing to do to prompt others to behave better in future for fear of retribution.
* or at least, the way people think people do.
** I mean, think about how many policy positions Clinton has had over the years - the actual physical Clinton probably wouldn't even know what half of those positions were.
Or, 536 is right.
If Johnson had fucked over black America and not lost the racists for a generation (an underestimate; they are long on memory and short on comprehension) perhaps those elections might've been different. But short of that, no.
552- So Bernie Sanders isn't a politician? I'd bet that would be news to him. I'd be a little surprised if he were the only one with a record of consistency.
544: what? I am not any part of this discussion. I think Clinton on the whole did a good job. Or Did you mean that it was a claim made in the article I linked? Because again, the line quoted above that everyone was reacting to was (I think) intended to be humorous hyperbole, and I would agree that thinking of it as literally historically true would be incorrect and wrong.
554 is right - the 'basically just opportunists' thing is one of those weird things that get passed around as worldliness or cynicism but which actually make no sense if you poke at them. They definitely have core beliefs the same as everyone else. There are compromises they make which could obscure them, and even more importantly they don't have strong beliefs about everything anymore than anyone else does which means that, given the scope of what politics covers, there are going to be things where they just sort of shrug and nod along with what people they like who do care say. But in general if you listen to what they say they'll tell you what they think.
I mean, you actually see people who have this picture that Hillary Clinton is some devious mastermind lying her way into power or something. But she's still someone who repeatedly boasted, publicly, about her close relationship with Kissinger and talked about how much he approved of her foreign policy. And even if I think the 'feminism for UMC ladies' jab at her sense of women's issues has something behind it she's been as committed to that over her life as anything I can think of. And while she has jumped sharply left on some specific issues recently (and claimed that she was firmly on the left for her entire life, which was nauseous), I'm not certain that means much more than that those issues just aren't ones she has strong views on. But if you think those issues are actually genuinely pretty important, then it matters that she doesn't have those because the strong views people have are the ones they fight for, and don't compromise away when it's convenient. (Sanders, by comparison, also has things he has strong beliefs about and not, but does a lot better on that particular profile as far as, from what I can tell, the political views of basically everyone who comments here.)
The comparison in 549 between the two is at best an awkward one, though, because despite using the 'here's what we can do' rhetoric we get from Clinton she doesn't actually give any reason to take seriously the idea that the opposition that would show up against Sanders' proposals wouldn't also show up against her own ones. I mean, right here in the first twenty seconds she makes that argument, but her direct lead in to it, where she talks about how she was do what she says we should do, is:
I believe I can get the money that I need by taxing the wealthy; by closing loopholes - things that we are way overdue for doing. And, I think, once I'm in the White House we will have enough political capital to be able to do that
Right--Clinton's claim that her proposals are "realistic"/achievable in contrast to sanders' pipe dreams is based entirely on the (unstated) idea that because her proposals are only moderately/incrementally progressive, she'll get cooperation from Republicans in getting things done. Which is laughable. Anyone who has been paying any attention to politics over the past decade should realize this is actually a much less "realistic" vision than anything Sanders has been proposing. This is one of the things that has been infuriating me the most in this campaign.
It's not that she'll get cooperation from Republicans, which is now laughable (in a way it wasn't in 1992, BTW). It's that if the Democratic Party tries for too much, more people will vote Republican and she won't have a Congress with Democrats to back her.
I started a new party at the top of the front page.
And I've been hearing claims about Hillary Clinton's character for 24 years now. Several years ago, they all mushed up in my brain and I just stopped paying the slightest attention.
561: Right, but nobody has denounced Henry Kissinger in that one yet so I'm afraid to comment there.
But she's still someone who repeatedly boasted, publicly, about her close relationship with Kissinger and talked about how much he approved of her foreign policy.
And what does this reflect about her core beliefs? I think it reflects her belief that it's a politically useful thing to say, and very little else. I think she's probably right about that.
But I wish she weren't. So I'll vote for Bernie.
Meanwhile, Bernie strikes me as considerably less anti-Hillary than a lot of his supporters. A lot of Bernie's appeal - and a lot of Trump's appeal, for that matter - is that they understand that they are opposed to a system, to a way of getting things done. Bernie says he's looking to foment "revolution." Trump says: Sure, I outsource to China, but that's because under current conditions, I have to.
Bernie and Trump say: Don't hate the player, hate the game. They have a point.
JRoth says something interesting here:
I'm increasingly thinking that Bernie is winning under-40s because under-40s have no fucking recollection of the political world before 9/11.
I think that's exactly right. Why are we in a place where Hillary is the left-most person possible for the Democratic nomination? Because Democrats are old enough to remember the '90s, when Hillary really did approximate the left-most person possible.
That lesson was useful in its time, but I'll be happy if the Kids Nowadays refuse to learn it. The game is changing.
I think 560 is very clearly not the argument Clinton is making. Although it is ironically the inverse of the argument Bernie is making: he thinks his proposals are more realistic only because they have a shot of actually firing up enough enthusiasms among the electorate to vote in a wave of candidates to help him get things done. Which I don't actually buy, at least not as a short term strategy. But I think it's a winning long term strategy. Regardless, Clinton is not saying anything like this.
Let me soften 565: when I said I think Clinton is very clearly not making that argument, what I meant was that I haven't heard anything to that effect. Has she said anything along those lines? Because that would actually make me feel a lot better. Whether right or wrong, It's a lot more sensible than what I thought she's been saying, which was that republicans would work with her in a way they wouldn't work with sanders.
Didn't we have these same exact arguments back in 2008? Obama then picked Clinton to be his Secretary of State and picked a bunch of Clinton people to be in his inner circle and didn't actually revolutionize politics. Because reality.
You don't need to remember back 25 years, 8 years would do just fine.
It's certainly possible that the Dems take the Senate, in which case appropriations bills have to (a) be compromises and (b) get to the president's desk. Actually, even without taking the Senate, it's a fact that we'll have bills that get passed and signed. They'll be a lot more like the status quo than anything particularly revolutionary.
In 2009-10, the more significant problem wasn't how far left the President was or wasn't, but how far left the 60th, or even 51st, senator was. Obama didn't have much leverage with Nelson, and, if you'll recall, used what he had to get a vote on the ACA.
In my mind, this is why Sanders' proposals are arguably less realistic than Clinton's. Sanders needs, as urple mentions, an actual sea change nearly party-wide. Clinton only needs existing Dems to win some more seats. If Sanders is actually building the movement that changes the nature of the party, great. I suppose we'll know in the primary season of 2018?
I remember 25 years ago better than 8 years ago.
The argument implied in 567 is "Hey, you dumb kids, accept reality: vote for Clinton." Which has been sort of a theme from a lot of Clinton supporters,* and it's basically a terrible campaign theme. (Although, honestly, it would actually make a good bumper sticker.)
* and possibly also from the Clinton campaign? I'm not really sure, honestly. I hope it's not coming from the campaign, because it's really a terrible message.
I don't see any kind of sea change in congressional or statewide races in 2016. Do you, urple, pf, or MHPH?
I think it reflects her belief that it's a politically useful thing to say, and very little else. I think she's probably right about that.
See, this seems wrong to me because when she says she has a close relationship with Kissinger, that she consults with him, and so on she's not joking around - not one bit. It's sort of tempting to say otherwise. The idea that she was just making a political play and burnishing her credibility as a foreign policy person and so on is appealing because otherwise it means that she sincerely thinks that Kissinger was good.
But the obvious and simple reasoning is that she really does, deep down, think Kissinger was pretty great and this is why she said that she thinks that (even if it does look simplistic and naive to say it in response to the more worldly 'cynical calculation' view). Thinking that politicians mostly say things for political advantage seems to me to largely be false: it's like the idea that politicians make promises on the campaign trail that they have no intention of keeping. Sure they do it sometimes but not normally and whatever they mean they do reliably seem to try to accomplish the stuff they said they would, even if they don't succeed.
I think I already answered: no, I don't. I'm not even optimistic about the Dems taking the Senate. I'm only very mildly optimistic about the Dems keeping the presidency.
570 ISTM that folks who believe that Sanders is more likely to lose to a Republican than Clinton are animated, nearly entirely, by that fear. You can think they (we) are wrong, and we (they) may be.
567: As I recall among the cynical lefties the extent to which that was true was mostly "he's not surrounded by all those Clinton-people shits", and when he doubled around and picked them up there was definitely some anger about that choice. It wasn't necessary.
The "political revolution" stuff from Obama though was transparently nonsense to non-beltway-convention-wisdom folks, since Obama's entire idea was that he himself would transcend partisanship and the Republicans would work with him. The argument in favor of Clinton from the left was basically "she's been attacked viciously long enough that she won't be dumb enough to believe that nonsense".
Also I'm willing to believe what Sanders' is saying about a revolution (translation: "sea change" - at no point is he talking about pitchforks or anything, just a substantial change in the dynamic). It's not because I think he has magical powers, but if you think that Sanders getting elected president wouldn't cause a pretty jarring shift in the way the Democratic party legislators/functionaries/etc. think about the world then I think that's insane. Like Tigre pointed out earlier, they're already a bit freaked out/confused by how he's holding big rallies and so on. Getting elected would be a huge neon "things have fucking changed since the '90s" sign that would be impossible to ignore. (Also his claims about downticket changes are, explicitly, based on a strategy including conservative opposition so whether or not it works it's certainly not based on pretending that isn't there: his claim is that the leftier stuff they're opposing is actually, right now, pretty popular and that means it's time to move the party in their direction rather than staying fixed in '90s neoliberal centrism.)
In my mind, this is why Sanders' proposals are arguably less realistic than Clinton's. Sanders needs, as urple mentions, an actual sea change nearly party-wide.
I see the Sanders-Clinton debate as being about intentions: Here's what I will do, the candidates say, if I get a chance.
Hillary says Bernie won't get the chance, so it's silly to talk about it. This overlooks the fact that in the current political environment, Hillary's program is also aspirational and not realistic - merely less ambitious.
So the answer to 571 is: I have no idea what's going to happen, but in most conceivable scenarios, I'd like to see Bernie be president, in part because I'd like to see voters with Bernie's policy preferences be best represented by the president.
583.3 -- Ok, but I think this will depend a lot on the perception about why Clinton lost. If it's because of attributes personal to her, that's one thing. If it's because the folks attending rallies swamped the polls in a greater than 2008 movement-like way, then it's something entirely different.
You want the beltway Dem consensus to believe that the best way to get/keep power is to embrace sea change.
583.last also represents my view.
The most discouraging fact about the dem primaries and the biggest blow to Sanders theory of change (and, honestly, also his theory of electability) is that democratic primary turnout is down.
But the interesting bit is that it's not spread out evenly across the states. Michigan, for example, set a new record for turnout in a primary. In fact in general the states Sanders has won have had the highest turnout, and it was the Southern states where the turnout was lowest. So if you assume that people have bought into the (more or less accurate) belief that the South was never going to go for Sanders no-how and the excitement is on his side of the race that's exactly what you'd expect to see.
Did somebody above say that Michigan has had too few primaries to know much about patterns?
589 is true, plus the record turnout was on the republican side, not the democratic side. (It was up for Dems too, but see 589.) republican turnout has been breaking records across the country.
589 is true, plus the record turnout was on the republican side, not the democratic side. (It was up for Dems too, but see 589.) republican turnout has been breaking records across the country.
The thing is that there are lots of things a President can do even in domestic policy that aren't dependent on Congress -- they are just modest and incremental things, many of which Obama has done, but there's a lot more to do. Much of Hillary's policy proposals are based on administrative action (or on things that might be possible with a D controlled Senate). Lots of these things are really really important -- eg, having the EPA regulate carbon. Or how to classify various kinds of workers for different purposes. Etc etc etc. And this stuff gets way easier with a less conservative judiciary. So I don't find the argument "it doesn't matter that Bernie's proposals are totally unrealistic and not actually grounded in policy reality because Hillary can't get anything more realistic done either" remotely persuaisive. It's just not true.
Now, there's still the argument "I want my politicians to lie expansively about attaining unlikely goals with not-thought-through policy proposals, because it moves the political debate in a direction I like." That's not a bad argument! But maybe better for a protest candidate than a sitting President.
The best anti-Hillary argument I know of is to recognize that Presidents can do things, especially in foreign policy, but to affirmatively dislike Hillary's potential foreign policy. That's a totally plausible argument! On net I'm not persuaded but that's definitely a zone for debate.
591: The Republicans were at around 1.3 Million and the Democrats at 1.1. So the Republican turnout was higher, but not enough o say that the record was due solely to the Republicans.
And this really is a genuine pattern:In Colorado, Kansas and Maine, Democrats have actually surpassed the turnout of the 2008 primary contests, while the caucuses in Minnesota and Nebraska only narrowly missed.
(And as far as too few primaries the record it broke was in something like '72. So "haven't had much in the way of contested primaries since '92" doesn't actually cut that hard against it.)
592: But what is it that Hillary plans to accomplish that Bernie wouldn't do, given the political constraints? Probably some wars. Beyond that, I'm not aware of anything.
And one thing that Trump demonstrates - and that Bernie would demonstrate, were he elected president - is that politics isn't nearly as predictable as people think it is.
In '92, nobody thought that a Democrat like Mario Cuomo stood a chance - certainly Cuomo thought this. In retrospect, I wish he'd tried. I'm glad Bernie is trying.
592.1: That's just equivocation though: you're switching from legislation to Presidential powers right in the middle of the argument and ignoring the fact that Sanders could, with executive powers, do all the exact same stuff that Hillary could, because, well, that's what executive powers means. If the argument in favor of Hillary is that her legislative proposals are comparatively realistic and her only plan for achieving them that she's willing to say in public is "they'll happen" then that's absolutely bullshit and pointing it out is fair game. Changing the subject to "well but Hillary could use the exact same powers that Sanders would have as president to do things" doesn't fix anything.
594.1-- there's tons of stuff, most of which is boring and detailed and technical but matters. Running a government is hard! It's perfectly possible that Sanders would do just fine, but I'd much rather trust someone who demonstrably knows how to get things done, over someone who's m.o.is "I literally don't care at all how to get things done other than constituent services for Vermont, here are some nice ideas." First-term Obama (or Bill Clinton for that matter) have only solidified my views in this area.
In '92, nobody thought that a Democrat like Mario Cuomo stood a chance - certainly Cuomo thought this
This is irrelevant to the argument, but if Mario Cuomo had really wanted to be President, he would have run for President.
595 -- Sanders theoretically has the abstract capacity to do exactly the same administrative stuff, but that stuff is not easy and different leaders can be differently effective at achieving it. Sanders is a guy whose entire career (and current campaign) has been minimally interested in policy detail or process, so there's no reason that I could see that he'd be a good bet for coming in and running the boring but important stuff effectively and well from day one.
Sanders is a guy whose entire career (and current campaign) has been minimally interested in policy detail or process,
This is not my understanding. I thought his career was supposed to have been characterized by surprisingly effective horsetrading on amendments and so on, affecting policy details of legislation. Because I'm vague about everything, I'd have to spend some time googling to back this up, but isn't that familiar sounding to anyone else?
Sanders is a guy whose entire career (and current campaign) has been minimally interested in policy detail or process
How many times does this bullshit need to get fucking knocked down before you stop saying it?
Oh and the argument that goes "Well Sanders won't know how to get things done using the executive branch" is obvious bullshit too since, you know, a huge part of the problem with Obama that you're pointing out was that he was trying not to do things that way and only started when he finally came to terms with the fact that that was literally his only lever of power in terms of policy as long as the Republicans had the legislature. If I had to guess which of the two would go into office with less illusions about that I think that it's pretty reasonable to say that the answer there is Sanders* since "I can get things done legislatively despite the total lack of plan or evidence for that" line is Hillary's argument in favor of her weaker policies.
*Both a lot less than Obama, or I certainly hope so because otherwise that's mental illness level delusion.
Presidents making administrative changes are reliant on appointees who can effectively maneuver within and between government bureaucracies. These people don't come out of nowhere, they're basically the existing establishment by definition.
The article in 600 is transparent propaganda. Adding uncontroversial amendments to existing legislation to mildly improve it is fine, but it's what legislators do and tells you little to nothing about effectiveness at horse trading and getting more difficult things done. He wasn't a particularly effective Senator (I mean, unless you want to spot him points for being an independent, which, fair enough, he was highly effective for a lone independent, but that misses the point) and he has zero executive experience outside of Burlington Vermont. No experience at all with administrative agencies. And no inside the government or Congress base of support. It's certainly possible that he would do an OK (or great!) job at running the government but there's not much evidence of that being the case. And his campaign's lack of interest in policy detail as opposed to goals isn't reassuring on this point -- eg free college through a Tobin tax that couldn't possibly pay for it and which would have to be administered through the states anyway.
"He wasn't effective except that he was and with the notable exception of his successful executive experience he has no executive experience."
Good grief man. There are ways to object to him that don't end up having to take back all your points within the same damn sentence.
So you're rolling with both being a disingenuous asshole who spouts propaganda pieces AND with "being the mayor of a very small city in Vermont is meaningful executive experience for becoming President of the United States." Why am I wasting my time talking to transparent bullshitters who are convinced they know more than they do?
Because you're too full of your own shit to know the difference between a good argument and your own sense of self importance? Either grow a pair and learn to make better arguments or stop whining like a petulant child every time someone refuses to bow before your radiant genius.
Does Burlington still have that coat factory thing?
608: That's Burlington Township in New Jersey.
Doesn't Sanders unambiguously have more relevant experience than Obama did in 2008?
Anyhow, in the current system, being an "effective" member of Congress means two things -- getting legislation that matters passed, and running a committee with oversight for the Executive Branch. Sanders got little to nothing of significance passed, though in fairness for most of his tenure it was very hard to do this. But he certainly wasn't a leader in terms of building coalitions for legislation. And his main oversight work -- which is the place that Congress actually interacts with the Federal government -- was running the Veterans Affairs committee, and by all accounts he fucked up oversight there completely and missed the major VA schedule.
None of which is necessarily a decisive reason not to vote for him! For example, if you think that articulating broad goals is more important than achievable goals. Or if you're freaked out about Hillary's foreign policy. But on the narrow question of "who is more likely to achieve small-bore administrative goals through knowledgeable workimg of the system" it's not too surprising that the "establishment" candidate wins on that count.
Anyhow, in the current system, being an "effective" member of Congress means two things -- getting legislation that matters passed, and running a committee with oversight for the Executive Branch. Sanders got little to nothing of significance passed, though in fairness for most of his tenure it was very hard to do this. But he certainly wasn't a leader in terms of building coalitions for legislation. And his main oversight work -- which is the place that Congress actually interacts with the Federal government -- was running the Veterans Affairs committee, and by all accounts he fucked up oversight there completely and missed the major VA schedule.
None of which is necessarily a decisive reason not to vote for him! For example, if you think that articulating broad goals is more important than achievable goals. Or if you're freaked out about Hillary's foreign policy. But on the narrow question of "who is more likely to achieve small-bore administrative goals through knowledgeable workimg of the system" it's not too surprising that the "establishment" candidate wins on that count.
I won't believe it unless I see it posted a third time.
Let us dispel with the notion that Sanders doesn't know what he's doing.
610 -- yes, for sure. Though, Obama had a lot more intra-party support. And the lack of experience meant that a lot of Obama's presidency was wasted.
617: he had more intra-party support before he became the nominee? Or after? I would expect plenty of party support for Sanders if he became the nominee. (Which, to emphasize again: he won't. This is all moot at this point.)
Doesn't Sanders unambiguously have more relevant experience than Obama did in 2008?
Obama had been a Democratic Senator for a lot longer than Sanders.
This article from waaaay back in 2005 is literally a sequence of stories about Sanders building coalitions for legislation (and then, which is basically the point of the story) having someone else step in at the last minute and quash whatever it was. And this one from July literally includes the phrase "He's good at building coalitions" (coming from Sherrod Brown). Dismissive "oh it's just propaganda" stuff gets a bit empty after a while given the amount of this stuff out there, including things from before he was even thinking about running. (Heck the first one there is before he ran for the Senate.)
Oh, and if you're going to say things like "all accounts" you should probably avoid saying them about things where a bunch of organizations aren't saying different things, no matter what your relative in Washington says.
619 -- before. Obviously if Sanders were the nominee (unlikely but possible) the party would back him, and if he were President people would work with him. But would he be as effective as Hillary at eg getting carbon regs implemented when he has such tenuous intra-party support? Maybe! We don't actually know the answer and it's unanswerable at some level. But Obama was pretty ineffective in these kinds of areas for a long time and there are good reasons to think thay Sanders wod be significantly worse. Again, just judged from a what are you getting done metric.
621 -- sorry, but you've moved strictly into the "person to ignore" category, so no more responses from me to you, probably on any topic. Just don't talk to me and I'll do the same. Nice link though!
If anyone else is interested in the narrow question of the VA oversight, there's a lot out there. Basically, there was no oversight, the scandal broke, and then Beenie negotiated a bill as part of a fix that everyone wanted anyway and that he didn't take the lead on.
620: I think you're confused - maybe because Obama did some time as an Illinois state senator.
Obama was elected to the US Senate in 2004; Bernie in 2006. So that's four years for Obama vs. 10 for Bernie.
And, of course, Bernie was in Congress for 16 years before that.
620: I think you're confused - maybe because Obama did some time as an Illinois state senator.
Ajay is referring to Sanders' party affiliation.
I think he was joking, with the word Democratic playing the key role in the sentence.
625-626: I figured I had to be misreading that, but I couldn't work it out.
Also, 623, when you respond to someone by insisting that you're not going to respond to them that's not the kind of dismissiveness that makes you look dominant or impressive. That's just flouncing off, like a four year old trying to play at being mature. Only in a four year old it's adorable and you're, supposedly, a fully grown man.
And this one from July literally includes the phrase "He's good at building coalitions" (coming from Sherrod Brown).
Tigre's being obnoxious but, FWIW, I agree with him that the sorts of accomplishments you're describing are very different than what's required of the president and that it's disingenuous to imply that there isn't a difference.
Among other things it is very different to build coalitions when you're in a position where you don't represent an institutional base of power than when you do. The latter gives you more authority but also creates different constraints.
I don't think it makes sense to be dismissive in either direction. I'd be interested in a conversation about, "what do we know about Sanders's leadership style" because I honestly don't have a good sense, but I also don't find those links more persuasive than Tigre's example of, " First-term Obama (or Bill Clinton for that matter)." I think it's worth taking seriously the sorts of difficulties that they both ran into.
That's Burlington Township in New Jersey.
I'll be damned. All of my life, I have assumed it was Burlington, NC, which is known primarily for factory outlet stores.
I'd assumed it was VT because, you know, its cold up there. Got to have a warm coat.
