Biden/Pete is my choice right now, followed closely by Warren and then some distance until my 3rd choice.
I know I'm trying to avoid punditing, but:
So Ninjeff is someone who wants a more moderate candidate as someone from farm country. Yet you've named the second most liberal candidate as just behind Biden and Pete.
My main punditing (PUNDITRY IS BAD, DON'T DO IT) this cycle is this:
Elizabeth Warren would kick ass in the Midwest. Though I'd like to find an appealing VP from the area (or Castro cause I like Castro a lot). If we could trust Wisconsin to replace her with a Democrat, Tammy Baldwin would be great.
Warren gets me interested because -for YEARS- i have been saying we (as a country) need to frame Green Energy as a "race" and an economic boost. We need to research and give patents for free like we did with space race and then keep the jobs here.
Which....i mean is like literally what Warren said last week. lol.
So yea, she made me go "yea ok, i'll pull that level if you're a choice"
You should look into Inslee, btw. Inslee's climate plan is ridiculously good. And focused on restoring union jobs at the same time.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Also, the end-run around having to cater around low-information voters is to get people who normally don't vote to go out and vote for you.
This is a large part of how Obama won - by getting blacks to turn out and vote. Nobody was complaining about "low information" voters when it suited them, but these can roughly be classified as the same types of people who voted for Trump, just of a different stripe - those without the time, energy, or interest to vote unless something special motivates them to do so. Like, does anyone really think that all those Obama voters who went to the polls took the time to understand his policy positions?
I posted the numbers about this last page (95). Voters switching from one party to the other matter. Quite a bit. Not the exclusion of getting out new voters, but they were just as important as new voters in 2018 and likely the same in 2020.
I mean theyre not super wrong. They face a series of problems that no one is really fixing or making much noise about fixing so why have much loyalty?
You can take issue with how they go about it but yeah
“Well, we’ve tried giving Republicans control of the federal government for all but two of the last 19 years, and now we’re all out of ideas”
I think the people we're talking about are so low-information that they likely are completely unaware of this being the case.
I think most people (most of whom dont vote) don't see a significant difference between the parties and this is reinforced by basically all milquetoast play it safe media ever
Someone like Trump would seem appealing if you think both sides are equally bad and all politicians are corrupt and hey he's not a politician and both sides hate him
That all makes sense and I’m liking it, except for Castro going down. Not sure what’s causing that, other than maybe anyone who noticed him still considers him a second choice or VP pick.
I think going from 2% to 1% in one poll is basically statistical noise.
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Also, the end-run around having to cater around low-information voters is to get people who normally don't vote to go out and vote for you.
This is a large part of how Obama won - by getting blacks to turn out and vote. Nobody was complaining about "low information" voters when it suited them, but these can roughly be classified as the same types of people who voted for Trump, just of a different stripe - those without the time, energy, or interest to vote unless something special motivates them to do so. Like, does anyone really think that all those Obama voters who went to the polls took the time to understand his policy positions?
Did you establish that these voters were low information and voted for ???? reasons?
Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud on
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
edited July 2019
Also with respect to some earlier bewilderment on why Gabbard even exists: for what it's worth, I get why a person could like Gabbard. She's the sort of candidate where if you knew only a couple things about them, you might like them. As she emphasizes, she's a vet. Also, she was an elected official who was a prominent, early Sanders backer in 2016, which plays very well with a select group. She's criticized US militarism in harsh terms. This gets glossed as being "pro-Assad," but again, there is a way to hear what she's said where (if you put together the right parts in the right way) she comes off as being genuinely counter-cultural to mainstream foreign policy and speaking the unspeakable, which, again, if you're pre-disposed to read her support of Sanders in the same way... --I'm not saying that's the right way to read it, but only that it's obvious how she might have been exposed to a select group in just the right way.
Plus, she's pretty (which people read as charismatic); she's racially and religiously diverse (mayor Pete is gay and Kamala/Booker are black, but does she get any credit for being a Hindu of Samoan descent? The way we pick up on some of these and not others is fraught); she's popular in Hawaii; and did I mention she's a vet? Anyway, I was Gabbard-curious for a hot second, but I agree that once I actually paid more attention to her she came out as more sizzle than substance--her actual performance history isn't compelling and on image terms she doesn't really seem ready for the big leagues anyway. To be clear, this is not a pean to or endorsement of Gabbard. Rather, it's just to say that it's very unsurprisingly to me that she gets some fringe interest, hanging in there along with the other C tier candidates.
Also with respect to some earlier bewilderment on why Gabbard even exists: for what it's worth, I get why a person could like Gabbard. She's the sort of candidate where if you knew only a couple things about them, you might like them. As she emphasizes, she's a vet. Also, she was an elected official who was a prominent, early Sanders backer in 2016, which plays very well with a select group. She's criticized US militarism in harsh terms. This gets glossed as being "pro-Assad," but again, there is a way to hear what she's said where (if you put together the right parts in the right way) she comes off as being genuinely counter-cultural to mainstream foreign policy and speaking the unspeakable, which, again, if you're pre-disposed to read her support of Sanders in the same way... --I'm not saying that's the right way to read it, but only that it's obvious how she might have been exposed to a select group in just the right way.
Plus, she's pretty (which people read as charismatic); she's racially and religiously diverse (mayor Pete is gay and Kamala/Booker are black, but does she get any credit for being a Hindu of Samoan descent? The way we pick up on some of these and not others is fraught); she's popular in Hawaii; and did I mention she's a vet? Anyway, I was Gabbard-curious for a hot second, but I agree that once I actually paid more attention to her she came out as more sizzle than substance--her actual performance history isn't compelling and on image terms she doesn't really seem ready for the big leagues anyway. To be clear, this is not a pean to or endorsement of Gabbard. Rather, it's just to say that it's very unsurprisingly to me that she's gets some fringe interest, hanging in there along with the other C tier candidates.
Her Hinduism is of some dispute. That story (which on the whole I thought is pretty sympathetic to her) portrays it as much more like a cult led by a white guy who read Bhagavad Gita once.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
The problem with Biden is I really like him when I see him speak, but I really dislike him when I listen to what he says. If that makes sense. It makes me wonder how many folks actually listen to him (and still support him) as opposed to just falling for that loveable old grandpa vibe he's got going on.
The problem with Biden is I really like him when I see him speak, but I really dislike him when I listen to what he says. If that makes sense. It makes me wonder how many folks actually listen to him (and still support him) as opposed to just falling for that loveable old grandpa vibe he's got going on.
I feel this way about Bill Clinton (seriously read what he says, it's inane), so yeah I get you.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
When expectations start getting out of control: "I mean, she doubled her support in a month, but I was really hoping for more."
Hoping she'd have been ahead of Harris does not strike me as especially unreasonable.
I imagine they're both tapping into the Please God Not Another Old White Guy crowd, so they're going to be stepping on each other's toes for the time being. Once the 1%-ers start dropping out, I'll be curious to see where they land.
Superficially, I think Harris is coming off as tough and kinda leftist, while Warren is smart and super leftist. (Obviously, they're both smart and both capable of being tough, but i'm talking first-glance impressions from the kind of people who didn't know who they were a week ago.) I guess we'll soon what the voters like soon enough.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Also, Harris had probably the best night of any debate in recent memory.
When expectations start getting out of control: "I mean, she doubled her support in a month, but I was really hoping for more."
Hoping she'd have been ahead of Harris does not strike me as especially unreasonable.
I imagine they're both tapping into the Please God Not Another Old White Guy crowd, so they're going to be stepping on each other's toes for the time being. Once the 1%-ers start dropping out, I'll be curious to see where they land.
Superficially, I think Harris is coming off as tough and kinda leftist, while Warren is smart and super leftist. (Obviously, they're both smart and both capable of being tough, but i'm talking first-glance impressions from the kind of people who didn't know who they were a week ago.) I guess we'll soon what the voters like soon enough.
Harris got a lot of news coverage for calling out Biden too which was admittedly excellent.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Also, I'm going back and watching the first democratic debate (which I missed, because it was 9-11pm EST on a worknight!)
I just got to Beto's opening speech, ¡en Español!, and yikes yikes yikes. I am also upset about Booker talking about how we need to check corporate power and how he comes from a black and brown community when--but wait, do I not remember Booker taking on Obama for being too left wing when Obama, running against Romney, criticized Bain as a vulture capital firm? :?
When expectations start getting out of control: "I mean, she doubled her support in a month, but I was really hoping for more."
Hoping she'd have been ahead of Harris does not strike me as especially unreasonable.
I imagine they're both tapping into the Please God Not Another Old White Guy crowd, so they're going to be stepping on each other's toes for the time being. Once the 1%-ers start dropping out, I'll be curious to see where they land.
Superficially, I think Harris is coming off as tough and kinda leftist, while Warren is smart and super leftist. (Obviously, they're both smart and both capable of being tough, but i'm talking first-glance impressions from the kind of people who didn't know who they were a week ago.) I guess we'll soon what the voters like soon enough.
Also this poll was taken in the middle of a "HARRIS TAKES DOWN BIDEN" media cycle. We'll see if her gains and his drops are actually sticky or not.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
The problem with Biden is I really like him when I see him speak, but I really dislike him when I listen to what he says. If that makes sense. It makes me wonder how many folks actually listen to him (and still support him) as opposed to just falling for that loveable old grandpa vibe he's got going on.
He's got some absolutely amazing looking teeth, for one. And his grin is absolutely disarming and infectious. And he is a genuinely nice guy and has been for most of his career, at least on an interpersonal interactions level.
If this were all about that though, and name recognition, he's be a sure win. But... It's not and he keeps opening his mouth and just, goddammit Joe.
My first real exposure to Biden was when he was running in 2008. On C-SPAN I saw him speak in front of an LGBT crowd talking about how important LGBT rights were to him. As far as I know no other candidate back then was willing to stick their neck out for LGBT folks like that. So his other faults aside, that earned him some brownie points from me. And then of course a bit later he forced Obama's hand on gay marriage
ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
I would love to have Biden as my grandpa*.
I do not want Biden as my president.
(*Okay, let's be honest, age-wise, he would be my dad.)
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I mean theyre not super wrong. They face a series of problems that no one is really fixing or making much noise about fixing so why have much loyalty?
You can take issue with how they go about it but yeah
“Well, we’ve tried giving Republicans control of the federal government for all but two of the last 19 years, and now we’re all out of ideas
People have shit to do, busy lives, they're not all going to be plugged in constantly and you cant have a party image that requires politics as hobby to be able to decifer
I fully understand that plenty of people are low-info voters who make kind of random choices because they don’t have the time or energy to follow politics
That’s very different from what you said, which is that this group’s vague sense that both sides are bad is accurate
I said neither side has solved their problems. If you want to boil that down to "both are bad" then yeah I guess so.
Both sides are bad, just not equally so. The animus towards expression of this idea is probably due to its use by cynical NYT columnists to promote Republican views, but it is a mistake to ignore the truth of it because I think it is a core motivating belief among citizens. I don't think it is right to call is a "vague sense" either. The average person may have difficulty elaborating on their reasons, call them "low-info" if you like, but that's a pretty normal thing if you're not frequently thinking about a belief. E.g. I may hold the belief that some person I know is an asshole, and I can be fully justified in that belief even though I can't at the moment remember any particular action they took that showed they are an asshole.
The truth is that both parties are bad and that many people know this without having a ready detailed justification for it. But if it is a motivating belief it can be enough reason to have no party loyalty or simply not vote. People might even acknowledge that the Democrats are less worse, but "less worse" is not a way to motivate people.
"You're poor because of immigrants taking jobs and resources" is a compelling message because it offers an explanation for why you are poor, and democrats telling you that you're a dumbass hick who should just do better is a bad counter
A good counter would be to identify the ways that neoliberal capitalism keeps you poor
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
Ninjeff, Sanders backed all those things in 2016 when you supported him, what changed?
Short answer put as delicately as i can (because we simply cannot have full conversation about this online, and because how you read it will inevitably be tainted by the fact that you dont know me. So you'll read it in the least altruistic way possible. That isnt a slight on you or anyone else, its just the nature of online discussion)
But the answer is I no longer trust the leftward movement to stop at -what i feel- is a reasonable outcome. Instead, i feel like they are just as caught up in "winning" as the right and far to addicted to the fight. I no longer trust many people on the left to be the party of logic and reason the way i did 4 years ago.
I was 100% totally and amazingly on board with Obama. He was exactly the type of Democrat I support. I thought Bernie might only pull slightly more to the left at the time, but now i see that -for me- he is too interested in smashing the system than making it better.
Personal opinion with grace, of course.
Hi yes hello have you considered my good friend and self-described capitalist Elizabeth Warren
'Cause like I don't at all think you're wrong about Bernie, but Warren has some very specific goals she'd like to achieve and has cleanly and clearly laid out the methods she'd use to get there
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I can vouch for Ninjeff, as he's a former coworker and current friend of mine - he's being genuine in his arguments.
I should mention I'm wholly on the Warren train, personally, not because she has plans, but because she has emotional and logical reasons behind them, and is an amazing storyteller. She's basically the perfect professor, from what I can tell, and has evidence to back up her claims.
Ninjeff I was mostly with you until this paragraph
I only type those things as an example. And -of course- everyone is different. For me its the virtue signal race that smells like flip side McCarthyism. Identity politics bother me as well. (in so far as they become the sole metric for movement)
For most of the stuff i think I'm still in the "progressive camp" (fix health care industry, pro choice, help the poor rise up to be independent, dont fight fucking wars, and let anyone love any other consenting adult however they want) but a large portion of the "far left" is trying to achieve some utopia that -in my opinion- not only doesnt exist, but will crash the middle class even further than it is if implemented.
“Virtue signaling” and “identity politics” are rightwing buzzwords and have no place in a Democratic primary
And I’m not sure you realize this, but your little aside about “transgender competition in female sports” is either parroting TERF rhetoric or simple right wing scaremongering
It is our responsibility to educate Midwestern voters about these issues, not pander to bigotry.
Which works better if you're slightly less condescending about it.
I'm not sure there's a better way. It's like saying you used to take vaccines but now you think they are very dumb. It means you didn't understand what vaccines were for in the first place so any post-hoc analysis is still like ???? re: what actual politics are. Voted for Bernie but doesn't want a virtue signal race with McCarthyism? That's major low information voting.
I'll actually cop to that a bit. Though not "major"
In lIllinois it was a promised fact Hillary would win the Primaries. Sure as the sun will come up tomorrow. My vote for Bernie -at the time- was that i felt he was a bit rock and roll. He was mixing it up. Making some waves and i thought i'd sort of cast my vote into that void of Illinois as if to say "hey more of this please"
But, in the intervening years i havent seen him take a more "careful" approach to things like i thought we might, AND in addition i feel like the car zipped right past me and kept on driving to the left, and in a more erratic manner. So where as my positions havent changed as much (Medicare for all is an exception, however. I was with that but have since changed my mind and agree that Public Option is the better way to go) i feel like some parts of the party are starting to leave me behind. And i'm known as "pretty liberal" around my social circles. So all the farmers i talk to, small town workers, and the amazing and diverse clientele I am lucky to be friends with at the Paintball Field will vary form one side to another, but -in the Venn diagram of voters around here- i'm just saying what i hear around the fire. The sense. The under current of what people say as the election draws closer.
Biden/Pete is my choice right now, followed closely by Warren and then some distance until my 3rd choice.
Around here? Biden is a win. For sure. 100%. Warren can be with a small messaging change on her Green Energy policy. Pete gets a lot of "huh, that guy is interesting" comments. Whats awesome is that zero people around here, spanning 3 generations, have mentioned the fact that Pete is gay. The flat dont care and its largely irrelevant to them.
As someone who has grown up literally in a town of ten, I have never seen so many folksy terms used in a sentence. I am still not convinced that you aren't doing a "all the liberals in the coffee shop love Trump" stick. In the .... 3 intervening years somehow the Bernie left changed to what exactly? The rest of the party caught UP to Bernie in the past three years. I do respect what you are saying and empathize with it. I just it wish it was a bit more substantial in reporting what the people around you feel at the "Paintball Field". Like, are you in a blue county, are you in a red county, who did they vote for in the last election, et cetera.
NinJeff literally runs a paintball field. That's not a colloquialism.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Paintball field in a town with a major state university, a fortune 100 company, and a massive hunting and gun culture area around it.
Also with respect to some earlier bewilderment on why Gabbard even exists: for what it's worth, I get why a person could like Gabbard. She's the sort of candidate where if you knew only a couple things about them, you might like them. As she emphasizes, she's a vet. Also, she was an elected official who was a prominent, early Sanders backer in 2016, which plays very well with a select group. She's criticized US militarism in harsh terms. This gets glossed as being "pro-Assad," but again, there is a way to hear what she's said where (if you put together the right parts in the right way) she comes off as being genuinely counter-cultural to mainstream foreign policy and speaking the unspeakable, which, again, if you're pre-disposed to read her support of Sanders in the same way... --I'm not saying that's the right way to read it, but only that it's obvious how she might have been exposed to a select group in just the right way.
Plus, she's pretty (which people read as charismatic); she's racially and religiously diverse (mayor Pete is gay and Kamala/Booker are black, but does she get any credit for being a Hindu of Samoan descent? The way we pick up on some of these and not others is fraught); she's popular in Hawaii; and did I mention she's a vet? Anyway, I was Gabbard-curious for a hot second, but I agree that once I actually paid more attention to her she came out as more sizzle than substance--her actual performance history isn't compelling and on image terms she doesn't really seem ready for the big leagues anyway. To be clear, this is not a pean to or endorsement of Gabbard. Rather, it's just to say that it's very unsurprisingly to me that she's gets some fringe interest, hanging in there along with the other C tier candidates.
Her Hinduism is of some dispute. That story (which on the whole I thought is pretty sympathetic to her) portrays it as much more like a cult led by a white guy who read Bhagavad Gita once.
I don't think you intended it to be but what you say sounds pretty Eurocentric and dismissive, and that article at points even more so. Hinduism is not a Western religion and is not considered "organized". It is incredibly diverse and has no unquestionable authorities, prophets or binding holy book. It very much doesn't fit our western concept of religion and doesn't need to. Her Hinduism is not in dispute because you think she is actually part of a cult or whatever. Loads of Christians in similar places are not questioned on their Christianity even though Christianity is much more defined.
It is perfectly fine to question her beliefs or the actions of her group, but implying that she is not really a Hindu is pretty fucked.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
You can't even get agreement within the same general religious umbrellas. Protestants/Catholics/Mormons/Eastern Orthodox/Anglicans/etc. all argue about who is a "real" Christian. They even go to war over it.
I'm very glad that Bernie is putting his neck out on the issue of the occupation of Palestine. I hope it pushes Warren (who has made some problematic statements on the issue in the past) further in that direction. Don't have much hope that it will do the same for any of the other candidates. Bernie continues to have my favorite foreign policy perspective.
I do think/hope that Netanyahu's government becoming increasingly unhinged and far right over the years it might be easier for US politicians on the left to oppose the current US-Israel relationship, though as we saw with Ihlan Omar, it's still an uphill struggle even within the Democratic Party. edit- Likud's pro-GOP/pro-Trump politics also help us in this regard, as do generally changing attitudes on Israel among younger Americans
Honest question: how would you define or explain Bernie’s foreign policy? And what makes his approach different from, say, Obama’s (beyond rhetoric)?
It's a tough comparison to make, because Obama spent eight years in the role of deciding the US's foreign policy and being its chief architect. My view of Bernie's policy is largely based on his rhetoric, but also on some of his actions on the Senate.
Based on that admittedly limited data set, I think Bernie is much more willing to call out the bad actors among US allies - Israel and Saudi Arabia being the major examples - and more willing to oppose the more odious elements of the US's relationship with them. One point of stark contrast is that Bernie has been among the leading voices in the Senate opposing continued US aid to the Saudis in their brutal war on Yemen. While the issue has gotten more press in recent years than it did during the Obama era, the war started in 2015, and the previous administration quietly armed and assisted the Saudis in the first devastating year and a half of their bombing campaign. Bernie has also spoken out against longrunning aspects of the Global War on Terror, including the "drone war" strategy which Obama largely put into place (and which had brutal results in places like Pakistan's FATA region).
I have a somewhat nuanced view of Obama's foreign policy, but I would not call it positive. The JCPOA was a great accomplishment (even though our current administration has ruined it) and it honestly changed my opinion of the Obama administration as a whole. But Obama's policies toward Libya and Syria in particular were disastrous and greatly contributed to destabilizing that region and even the world, in my opinion. And his/their approach to Afghanistan was incoherent and damaging as well.
While I disagree with characterizations of Bernie as an isolationist, and I don't see him as a pacifist either, I think he is more skeptical of US militarism abroad than Obama was, and less afraid of opposing our frenemies and their lobbies and influencers here at home. The "Jews against the occupation" photo that spurred this conversation is a powerful symbol of what I'm talking about here. He recently called the Netanyahu administration racist! One could never imagine Obama making a similar statement, either as candidate or as president.
I would also expect Bernie to value international institutions, especially the UN and to be disinclined toward unilateralism if he was president (this part isn't necessarily meant as a contrast between him and Obama). I'd expect Bernie to be skeptical of deals like the TPP which arguably concentrate more power in the hands of multinational corporations, though I would hope that he wouldn't be clumsily throwing tariffs around like the Trump admin.
Lastly, I think he's talking about foreign policy more than any of the other candidates, which I respect greatly. The President has only limited ability to set domestic policy, as their powers are offset by those of Congress and SCOTUS, and the division between federal and state power. But presidential authority on foreign policy issues is far greater relative to the other branches of US government. For this reason I am endlessly frustrated by candidates giving short shrift to issues outside of our borders, and angry at Americans for not caring that they do so. It should be a major focus given the amount of power they have over the US's actions on the world stage, and given the amount of power and influence the US still has globally. So the fact that Bernie is making a point of discussing these things more frequently than any of his competitors pleases me almost as much as the actual positions he's been taking.
Kaputa on
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
I mean theyre not super wrong. They face a series of problems that no one is really fixing or making much noise about fixing so why have much loyalty?
You can take issue with how they go about it but yeah
“Well, we’ve tried giving Republicans control of the federal government for all but two of the last 19 years, and now we’re all out of ideas
People have shit to do, busy lives, they're not all going to be plugged in constantly and you cant have a party image that requires politics as hobby to be able to decifer
I fully understand that plenty of people are low-info voters who make kind of random choices because they don’t have the time or energy to follow politics
That’s very different from what you said, which is that this group’s vague sense that both sides are bad is accurate
I said neither side has solved their problems. If you want to boil that down to "both are bad" then yeah I guess so.
Both sides are bad, just not equally so. The animus towards expression of this idea is probably due to its use by cynical NYT columnists to promote Republican views, but it is a mistake to ignore the truth of it because I think it is a core motivating belief among citizens. I don't think it is right to call is a "vague sense" either. The average person may have difficulty elaborating on their reasons, call them "low-info" if you like, but that's a pretty normal thing if you're not frequently thinking about a belief. E.g. I may hold the belief that some person I know is an asshole, and I can be fully justified in that belief even though I can't at the moment remember any particular action they took that showed they are an asshole.
The truth is that both parties are bad and that many people know this without having a ready detailed justification for it. But if it is a motivating belief it can be enough reason to have no party loyalty or simply not vote. People might even acknowledge that the Democrats are less worse, but "less worse" is not a way to motivate people.
"Both sides are bad" is a coherent opinion, as far as it goes, but it's usually shorthand for "both sides are the same," which is only true if your ideology is so far outside the mainstream that you're probably not going to be content with any western nation's dominant political parties.
While it may be the case that the outcomes of, say, electing a mainstream Republican president versus a mainstream Democrat are similar, that's not because the parties are the same, but rather because our government is such that you need one party control of all branches of government before you can really go hog wild on enacting your policies.
And it's pretty safe to say that 90% of the people who say "both parties are bad" or "both parties are the same" are just low information voters.
(It's also worth pointing out that, to the extent both parties are "bad," it's not really for the same reason. The Democrats tend to be ineffectual. The Republicans straight up support positions that are actively vile.)
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
A good article highlighting the many positive things Harris has done in her career. My favorite may be the surprising stat that during Harris’ tenure as AG the number of people sent to prison went down every year.
I mean theyre not super wrong. They face a series of problems that no one is really fixing or making much noise about fixing so why have much loyalty?
You can take issue with how they go about it but yeah
“Well, we’ve tried giving Republicans control of the federal government for all but two of the last 19 years, and now we’re all out of ideas
People have shit to do, busy lives, they're not all going to be plugged in constantly and you cant have a party image that requires politics as hobby to be able to decifer
I fully understand that plenty of people are low-info voters who make kind of random choices because they don’t have the time or energy to follow politics
That’s very different from what you said, which is that this group’s vague sense that both sides are bad is accurate
I said neither side has solved their problems. If you want to boil that down to "both are bad" then yeah I guess so.
Both sides are bad, just not equally so. The animus towards expression of this idea is probably due to its use by cynical NYT columnists to promote Republican views, but it is a mistake to ignore the truth of it because I think it is a core motivating belief among citizens. I don't think it is right to call is a "vague sense" either. The average person may have difficulty elaborating on their reasons, call them "low-info" if you like, but that's a pretty normal thing if you're not frequently thinking about a belief. E.g. I may hold the belief that some person I know is an asshole, and I can be fully justified in that belief even though I can't at the moment remember any particular action they took that showed they are an asshole.
The truth is that both parties are bad and that many people know this without having a ready detailed justification for it. But if it is a motivating belief it can be enough reason to have no party loyalty or simply not vote. People might even acknowledge that the Democrats are less worse, but "less worse" is not a way to motivate people.
"Both sides are bad" is a coherent opinion, as far as it goes, but it's usually shorthand for "both sides are the same," which is only true if your ideology is so far outside the mainstream that you're probably not going to be content with any western nation's dominant political parties.
While it may be the case that the outcomes of, say, electing a mainstream Republican president versus a mainstream Democrat are similar, that's not because the parties are the same, but rather because our government is such that you need one party control of all branches of government before you can really go hog wild on enacting your policies.
And it's pretty safe to say that 90% of the people who say "both parties are bad" or "both parties are the same" are just low information voters.
(It's also worth pointing out that, to the extent both parties are "bad," it's not really for the same reason. The Democrats tend to be ineffectual. The Republicans straight up support positions that are actively vile.)
And/or are part of the propagandist punditry class that is largely insulated from any real differences. And/or is at least paid to propagate it
Ninjeff I was mostly with you until this paragraph
I only type those things as an example. And -of course- everyone is different. For me its the virtue signal race that smells like flip side McCarthyism. Identity politics bother me as well. (in so far as they become the sole metric for movement)
For most of the stuff i think I'm still in the "progressive camp" (fix health care industry, pro choice, help the poor rise up to be independent, dont fight fucking wars, and let anyone love any other consenting adult however they want) but a large portion of the "far left" is trying to achieve some utopia that -in my opinion- not only doesnt exist, but will crash the middle class even further than it is if implemented.
“Virtue signaling” and “identity politics” are rightwing buzzwords and have no place in a Democratic primary
And I’m not sure you realize this, but your little aside about “transgender competition in female sports” is either parroting TERF rhetoric or simple right wing scaremongering
It is our responsibility to educate Midwestern voters about these issues, not pander to bigotry.
Which works better if you're slightly less condescending about it.
I'm not sure there's a better way. It's like saying you used to take vaccines but now you think they are very dumb. It means you didn't understand what vaccines were for in the first place so any post-hoc analysis is still like ???? re: what actual politics are. Voted for Bernie but doesn't want a virtue signal race with McCarthyism? That's major low information voting.
I'll actually cop to that a bit. Though not "major"
In lIllinois it was a promised fact Hillary would win the Primaries. Sure as the sun will come up tomorrow. My vote for Bernie -at the time- was that i felt he was a bit rock and roll. He was mixing it up. Making some waves and i thought i'd sort of cast my vote into that void of Illinois as if to say "hey more of this please"
But, in the intervening years i havent seen him take a more "careful" approach to things like i thought we might, AND in addition i feel like the car zipped right past me and kept on driving to the left, and in a more erratic manner. So where as my positions havent changed as much (Medicare for all is an exception, however. I was with that but have since changed my mind and agree that Public Option is the better way to go) i feel like some parts of the party are starting to leave me behind. And i'm known as "pretty liberal" around my social circles. So all the farmers i talk to, small town workers, and the amazing and diverse clientele I am lucky to be friends with at the Paintball Field will vary form one side to another, but -in the Venn diagram of voters around here- i'm just saying what i hear around the fire. The sense. The under current of what people say as the election draws closer.
Biden/Pete is my choice right now, followed closely by Warren and then some distance until my 3rd choice.
Around here? Biden is a win. For sure. 100%. Warren can be with a small messaging change on her Green Energy policy. Pete gets a lot of "huh, that guy is interesting" comments. Whats awesome is that zero people around here, spanning 3 generations, have mentioned the fact that Pete is gay. The flat dont care and its largely irrelevant to them.
As someone who has grown up literally in a town of ten, I have never seen so many folksy terms used in a sentence. I am still not convinced that you aren't doing a "all the liberals in the coffee shop love Trump" stick. In the .... 3 intervening years somehow the Bernie left changed to what exactly? The rest of the party caught UP to Bernie in the past three years. I do respect what you are saying and empathize with it. I just it wish it was a bit more substantial in reporting what the people around you feel at the "Paintball Field". Like, are you in a blue county, are you in a red county, who did they vote for in the last election, et cetera.
NinJeff literally runs a paintball field. That's not a colloquialism.
I very clearly wrote this before he disclosed that he literally owns a paintball field. I am not personal friends with him and this is a debate forum.
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"You're poor because of immigrants taking jobs and resources" is a compelling message because it offers an explanation for why you are poor, and democrats telling you that you're a dumbass hick who should just do better is a bad counter
A good counter would be to identify the ways that neoliberal capitalism keeps you poor
Yup, and this is why Bernie and Warren resonate well with the iron belt Labor class
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
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You should look into Inslee, btw. Inslee's climate plan is ridiculously good. And focused on restoring union jobs at the same time.
I posted the numbers about this last page (95). Voters switching from one party to the other matter. Quite a bit. Not the exclusion of getting out new voters, but they were just as important as new voters in 2018 and likely the same in 2020.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I think most people (most of whom dont vote) don't see a significant difference between the parties and this is reinforced by basically all milquetoast play it safe media ever
Someone like Trump would seem appealing if you think both sides are equally bad and all politicians are corrupt and hey he's not a politician and both sides hate him
Zero is still surprising.
I think going from 2% to 1% in one poll is basically statistical noise.
I'm sad Warren hasn't increased more, but Biden losing roughly a third of his support already is gratifying.
Plus, she's pretty (which people read as charismatic); she's racially and religiously diverse (mayor Pete is gay and Kamala/Booker are black, but does she get any credit for being a Hindu of Samoan descent? The way we pick up on some of these and not others is fraught); she's popular in Hawaii; and did I mention she's a vet? Anyway, I was Gabbard-curious for a hot second, but I agree that once I actually paid more attention to her she came out as more sizzle than substance--her actual performance history isn't compelling and on image terms she doesn't really seem ready for the big leagues anyway. To be clear, this is not a pean to or endorsement of Gabbard. Rather, it's just to say that it's very unsurprisingly to me that she gets some fringe interest, hanging in there along with the other C tier candidates.
Hoping she'd have been ahead of Harris does not strike me as especially unreasonable.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/tulsi-gabbard-2020-presidential-campaign.html
Her Hinduism is of some dispute. That story (which on the whole I thought is pretty sympathetic to her) portrays it as much more like a cult led by a white guy who read Bhagavad Gita once.
I feel this way about Bill Clinton (seriously read what he says, it's inane), so yeah I get you.
I imagine they're both tapping into the Please God Not Another Old White Guy crowd, so they're going to be stepping on each other's toes for the time being. Once the 1%-ers start dropping out, I'll be curious to see where they land.
Superficially, I think Harris is coming off as tough and kinda leftist, while Warren is smart and super leftist. (Obviously, they're both smart and both capable of being tough, but i'm talking first-glance impressions from the kind of people who didn't know who they were a week ago.) I guess we'll soon what the voters like soon enough.
Harris got a lot of news coverage for calling out Biden too which was admittedly excellent.
I just got to Beto's opening speech, ¡en Español!, and yikes yikes yikes. I am also upset about Booker talking about how we need to check corporate power and how he comes from a black and brown community when--but wait, do I not remember Booker taking on Obama for being too left wing when Obama, running against Romney, criticized Bain as a vulture capital firm? :?
Also this poll was taken in the middle of a "HARRIS TAKES DOWN BIDEN" media cycle. We'll see if her gains and his drops are actually sticky or not.
He's got some absolutely amazing looking teeth, for one. And his grin is absolutely disarming and infectious. And he is a genuinely nice guy and has been for most of his career, at least on an interpersonal interactions level.
If this were all about that though, and name recognition, he's be a sure win. But... It's not and he keeps opening his mouth and just, goddammit Joe.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
I do not want Biden as my president.
(*Okay, let's be honest, age-wise, he would be my dad.)
And the moderators for Warren's night pretended she left halfway through.
Both sides are bad, just not equally so. The animus towards expression of this idea is probably due to its use by cynical NYT columnists to promote Republican views, but it is a mistake to ignore the truth of it because I think it is a core motivating belief among citizens. I don't think it is right to call is a "vague sense" either. The average person may have difficulty elaborating on their reasons, call them "low-info" if you like, but that's a pretty normal thing if you're not frequently thinking about a belief. E.g. I may hold the belief that some person I know is an asshole, and I can be fully justified in that belief even though I can't at the moment remember any particular action they took that showed they are an asshole.
The truth is that both parties are bad and that many people know this without having a ready detailed justification for it. But if it is a motivating belief it can be enough reason to have no party loyalty or simply not vote. People might even acknowledge that the Democrats are less worse, but "less worse" is not a way to motivate people.
A good counter would be to identify the ways that neoliberal capitalism keeps you poor
Hi yes hello have you considered my good friend and self-described capitalist Elizabeth Warren
'Cause like I don't at all think you're wrong about Bernie, but Warren has some very specific goals she'd like to achieve and has cleanly and clearly laid out the methods she'd use to get there
I should mention I'm wholly on the Warren train, personally, not because she has plans, but because she has emotional and logical reasons behind them, and is an amazing storyteller. She's basically the perfect professor, from what I can tell, and has evidence to back up her claims.
NinJeff literally runs a paintball field. That's not a colloquialism.
Location, Location, Location
I don't think you intended it to be but what you say sounds pretty Eurocentric and dismissive, and that article at points even more so. Hinduism is not a Western religion and is not considered "organized". It is incredibly diverse and has no unquestionable authorities, prophets or binding holy book. It very much doesn't fit our western concept of religion and doesn't need to. Her Hinduism is not in dispute because you think she is actually part of a cult or whatever. Loads of Christians in similar places are not questioned on their Christianity even though Christianity is much more defined.
It is perfectly fine to question her beliefs or the actions of her group, but implying that she is not really a Hindu is pretty fucked.
Based on that admittedly limited data set, I think Bernie is much more willing to call out the bad actors among US allies - Israel and Saudi Arabia being the major examples - and more willing to oppose the more odious elements of the US's relationship with them. One point of stark contrast is that Bernie has been among the leading voices in the Senate opposing continued US aid to the Saudis in their brutal war on Yemen. While the issue has gotten more press in recent years than it did during the Obama era, the war started in 2015, and the previous administration quietly armed and assisted the Saudis in the first devastating year and a half of their bombing campaign. Bernie has also spoken out against longrunning aspects of the Global War on Terror, including the "drone war" strategy which Obama largely put into place (and which had brutal results in places like Pakistan's FATA region).
I have a somewhat nuanced view of Obama's foreign policy, but I would not call it positive. The JCPOA was a great accomplishment (even though our current administration has ruined it) and it honestly changed my opinion of the Obama administration as a whole. But Obama's policies toward Libya and Syria in particular were disastrous and greatly contributed to destabilizing that region and even the world, in my opinion. And his/their approach to Afghanistan was incoherent and damaging as well.
While I disagree with characterizations of Bernie as an isolationist, and I don't see him as a pacifist either, I think he is more skeptical of US militarism abroad than Obama was, and less afraid of opposing our frenemies and their lobbies and influencers here at home. The "Jews against the occupation" photo that spurred this conversation is a powerful symbol of what I'm talking about here. He recently called the Netanyahu administration racist! One could never imagine Obama making a similar statement, either as candidate or as president.
I would also expect Bernie to value international institutions, especially the UN and to be disinclined toward unilateralism if he was president (this part isn't necessarily meant as a contrast between him and Obama). I'd expect Bernie to be skeptical of deals like the TPP which arguably concentrate more power in the hands of multinational corporations, though I would hope that he wouldn't be clumsily throwing tariffs around like the Trump admin.
Lastly, I think he's talking about foreign policy more than any of the other candidates, which I respect greatly. The President has only limited ability to set domestic policy, as their powers are offset by those of Congress and SCOTUS, and the division between federal and state power. But presidential authority on foreign policy issues is far greater relative to the other branches of US government. For this reason I am endlessly frustrated by candidates giving short shrift to issues outside of our borders, and angry at Americans for not caring that they do so. It should be a major focus given the amount of power they have over the US's actions on the world stage, and given the amount of power and influence the US still has globally. So the fact that Bernie is making a point of discussing these things more frequently than any of his competitors pleases me almost as much as the actual positions he's been taking.
"Both sides are bad" is a coherent opinion, as far as it goes, but it's usually shorthand for "both sides are the same," which is only true if your ideology is so far outside the mainstream that you're probably not going to be content with any western nation's dominant political parties.
While it may be the case that the outcomes of, say, electing a mainstream Republican president versus a mainstream Democrat are similar, that's not because the parties are the same, but rather because our government is such that you need one party control of all branches of government before you can really go hog wild on enacting your policies.
And it's pretty safe to say that 90% of the people who say "both parties are bad" or "both parties are the same" are just low information voters.
(It's also worth pointing out that, to the extent both parties are "bad," it's not really for the same reason. The Democrats tend to be ineffectual. The Republicans straight up support positions that are actively vile.)
A good article highlighting the many positive things Harris has done in her career. My favorite may be the surprising stat that during Harris’ tenure as AG the number of people sent to prison went down every year.
And/or are part of the propagandist punditry class that is largely insulated from any real differences. And/or is at least paid to propagate it
Yup, and this is why Bernie and Warren resonate well with the iron belt Labor class
I bet a not insignificant amount of people simply watched her take on Biden and eagerly want to see her destroy Trump on the debate stage
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