I'm not sure if it's a major aspect of how you're feeling about it, but I think it's a good reminder that even though the internet might feel like "the world" to a lot of us, it's not necessarily...
I'm not sure if it's a major aspect of how you're feeling about it, but I think it's a good reminder that even though the internet might feel like "the world" to a lot of us, it's not necessarily representative at all.
I think you'd have trouble finding much excitement about Biden anywhere on the internet, but he's obviously still got a huge amount of support in reality.
I seriously can’t recommend this podcast episode enough. I’ve mentioned it here before, but it’s really eye opening to understand how large numbers of people engage with politics. Those of us who...
I seriously can’t recommend this podcast episode enough. I’ve mentioned it here before, but it’s really eye opening to understand how large numbers of people engage with politics.
Those of us who are highly plugged-in to political news vote in a certain way. We think in terms of individual choice and we treat our vote as an act of personal expression that has to reflect our personal priorities and values.
Lots of people don’t vote that way. They vote as an exercise in group identity and power. When they get word from a notable member of their community, like James Clyburn, that so-and-so is gonna be our guy they will show up for that guy. They don’t give a shit about the day-to-day news cycles, what their votes were on this or that, or what values they espouse. They’re in it to own a piece of a candidate and make sure they are owed a debt by showing up as a giant group.
And then still other people just mainline MSNBC and CNN all day every day. They are super fickle and will be easily swayed by whoever has a slick advertising campaign because TV news will turn your brain into mush. You can win them over by just being cool and putting out positive vibes all day every day.
The first model I talked about, where we have individuals making personal decisions, is probably the least effective at moving the party in any one direction or other. It’s too fickle. People are too prone to staying home or go third party and they don’t demand concessions because they’re too disorganized to demand anything.
Tbh, these results don't look too bad to me. From what we know so far, Bernie is within about 10 electoral votes of Biden, which is quite a close margin given the literal hundreds of them. Tons of...
Tbh, these results don't look too bad to me. From what we know so far, Bernie is within about 10 electoral votes of Biden, which is quite a close margin given the literal hundreds of them. Tons of states that were supposed to be strong for Biden are in this primary, and I would've really been more surprised if Bernie had won them. As the Midwest and Far West enter the game, Bernie is going to have more chances to do well - Biden's using up a lot of his easy votes now. He may still parlay that into momentum down the line, but it doesn't mean he will for sure.
Also worth noting the spoiling effect Warren is having, particularly in Massachusetts and Maine. If she had dropped out like Buttigieg and Klobuchar, I think Bernie would've gotten a lot of her support, since they're such similar candidates. That's not the establishment holding back Bernie, that's just other progressives tbh.
I was wondering about the same thing,but as it turns out, probably not. Tl;dr if you're less divisive then people who aren't really progressives will join you with no reservations, you just need...
I was wondering about the same thing,but as it turns out, probably not.
40% of her supporters gave bernie as a second choice, so her dropping out would boost Sanders the most.
That would mean 60% of her supporters would be splitting between Biden, Bloomberg, and Gabbard. Being as how the venn diagram of Warren/Bloomberg or Gabbard people is probably close to nil, I think it has an about even chance of throwing the race to Biden as it would to Bernie if she leaves now.
Tl;dr if you're less divisive then people who aren't really progressives will join you with no reservations, you just need to be nice. This therefore means that she's actually keeping more centrists off from voting Biden than bernie,despite all the differences.
Yeah. My twitter feed, which is mostly Bernie folks, is completely tearing into her in ways that just aren’t supported by the data. Much of the changeover seems to have been Warren -> Biden...
Yeah. My twitter feed, which is mostly Bernie folks, is completely tearing into her in ways that just aren’t supported by the data. Much of the changeover seems to have been Warren -> Biden voters. It’s possible that the hardest core of Warren’s rump support would have gone to Bernie, but at that point what are you getting? A 5% boost? That just tightens this from a landslide loss to a slight loss. And even if that was the case constantly screaming insinuations about how she’s a “FALSE PROGRESSIVE TRAITOR!” is probably not gonna help your chances.
It seems pretty clear that Sanders had a 30% ceiling that he was going to have a hard time clearing. His staying in the race and monopolizing the progressive lane cut the actually electable progressive off at the knees. It’a also looking like Warren might have single-handedly been a death blow to Bloomberg’s campaign. So who knows how the race would have shaped up had she not gone in on him.
Of course it wasn’t obvious that Sanders would, by definition, have a 30% ceiling going in. He probably could have had broader appeal if he hadn’t staffed his campaign full of twitter blowhards. But he did and we got what we got.
It’s not over yet though. Roughly 2/3 of delegates are still outstanding. If, after more scrutiny, Biden starts to wither again like he did last time he had his turn in the barrel we might see things chance.
And then there is the grim specter of the actuarial tables. I’ve brought it up before, but men in their late 70s have at least a 5% chance of dying within the year. For someone of Biden’s medical history that’s probably substantially higher. Any negative health event is going to upend everything.
These results are depressing. American democrats are somehow managing to select the least exciting, least electable candidate from what was a surpringly nice and diverse pool of candidates. If...
These results are depressing. American democrats are somehow managing to select the least exciting, least electable candidate from what was a surpringly nice and diverse pool of candidates. If Trump's election showed anything, it's that people want change. So why choose a borderline senile Washington politician to go against him?
We're still a long way to go until the nomination, but let's assume Biden is the nominee for a second. Will we have the same issues we did in 2016? Like Clinton, Biden is basically running as a...
We're still a long way to go until the nomination, but let's assume Biden is the nominee for a second. Will we have the same issues we did in 2016? Like Clinton, Biden is basically running as a continuation of the Obama presidency and has a ''scandal'' (Hunter Biden in Ukraine) that the Republicans will latch on to. Will that plague his campaign the way the email scandal sank Clinton? Will the Bernie or Bust movement stay home the way they did in 2016?
In regards to tonight's results, is this 'Joementum,' the Democratic establishment's recent agressive campaign against Sanders, the other moderates dropping out, or the work of a ''silent majority'' that wasn't reflected in the polls before last week?
Yes. Yes. And probably, but hopefully less so than in 2016. If Biden is smart he will publicly allow Sanders to hand pick his VP. And if Sanders is smart, that pick won’t be Sanders himself or...
Will we have the same issues we did in 2016? Like Clinton, Biden is basically running as a continuation of the Obama presidency and has a ''scandal'' (Hunter Biden in Ukraine) that the Republicans will latch on to. Will that plague his campaign the way the email scandal sank Clinton? Will the Bernie or Bust movement stay home the way they did in 2016?
Yes. Yes. And probably, but hopefully less so than in 2016.
If Biden is smart he will publicly allow Sanders to hand pick his VP. And if Sanders is smart, that pick won’t be Sanders himself or someone too closely aligned to him.
The modern primary system has never had seriously contested races like this before, so they’ve rarely had to work hard to bridge the party. Obama and Clinton hated each other but they were both out of the DLC faction of the party so the main difference was whether the Clinton machine or the Chicago machine would be on top. Not a big deal for any of the supporters. And in hindsight it’s pretty clear that part of the concession Obama made (in addition to making her Sec of State) was to not rock the boat too much in terms of replacing Clinton flacks across the party leadership.
But now we have actual ideological divisions of a kind we haven’t seen since the 60s and 70s. We’re gonna need to learn real quick how to reconcile those differences and work as a group instead of pretending you can get a majority at the convention and just feel entitled to have everything go hunky dory coming out of it. That means real concessions and public shows of reconciliation. Not “bending the knee” or grudging support, but drawing together an actual consensus position as a group, publicly.
As for the second part of your post about Joementum, I think Sanders had a ~30% ceiling and it was a matter of time before the other candidates coalesced into a viable “not-Sanders” coalition. Warren tried her best to stand in the middle and be a not-not-Sanders alternative, but it looks like a combination of media blackout and leftist character assassination undermined her ability to thread that needle.
Great comment, thank you for your thoughtful response. That doesn't make much sense when we look at 2016. Was Clinton that unpopular? Is there that big of a difference between Bernie the...
Great comment, thank you for your thoughtful response.
As for the second part of your post about Joementum, I think Sanders had a ~30% ceiling and it was a matter of time before the other candidates coalesced into a viable “not-Sanders” coalition
That doesn't make much sense when we look at 2016. Was Clinton that unpopular? Is there that big of a difference between Bernie the frontrunner and Bernie the outsider?
Oh yeah. She’s awful. Like a great statesman, a good boss, and all of that. But as a political candidate she’s always been terrible. 30 years of baggage from the right wing smear machine + a...
That doesn't make much sense when we look at 2016. Was Clinton that unpopular?
Oh yeah. She’s awful. Like a great statesman, a good boss, and all of that. But as a political candidate she’s always been terrible. 30 years of baggage from the right wing smear machine + a reflexive tendency to make enemies of anyone who gets in her way made her super unpopular.
It seems like if Obama had lost, that would have been quite a disappointment for black supporters? But not unexpected. I still can't quite believe lots of progressives would sit out rather than...
Not a big deal for any of the supporters.
It seems like if Obama had lost, that would have been quite a disappointment for black supporters? But not unexpected.
I still can't quite believe lots of progressives would sit out rather than vote against Trump in November, whatever they say now. How would that work? Immigrant kids getting separated from their parents somehow becomes okay? All those people who went to protests against Trump or considered moving to Canada somehow decide, nah, not that big a deal after all? Transgender issues - who cares? Climate change denialism - not that urgent?
I certainly know people with the accelerationist view that Trump is making things bad enough, and making problems so visible, that people will be more likely to recognize the problems. While I...
I still can't quite believe lots of progressives would sit out rather than vote against Trump in November, whatever they say now.
I certainly know people with the accelerationist view that Trump is making things bad enough, and making problems so visible, that people will be more likely to recognize the problems.
While I don't agree with this overall, I do think that there's the argument that Trump makes climate change matters more visible through his absurd denialism than they would be under Biden, who does not deny it but clearly does not see it as a significant issue warranting focus or serious responses, and thus Trump compels state and local governments to address climate change more strongly than they would with the complacency generated by Biden.
I get a certain sense that, in the US, the Republicans would like to loudly deny climate change, while the Democrats would like to quietly ignore it, or use it to support the policies they actually care about.
I've been accused of being an accelerationist, and I won't deny that I agree with many of the talking points they make. However, my stance is a bit more nuanced than the surface level. All of the...
I've been accused of being an accelerationist, and I won't deny that I agree with many of the talking points they make.
However, my stance is a bit more nuanced than the surface level.
All of the yelling and screaming about Trump seems to ignore the party that put him there. His enablers in the house and senate. Everyone is concerned about the next 4 years, but we also need to be looking to the next 20.
4 more years of Trump will be bad, undoubtedly so. But unless the Democrats have a solid strategy for undoing the damage and retaining the electorate for 8 years, plus another 8 after that, we'll be right back to Trump-level politics before we know it.
IMO this view really ignores the ramifications of the court stacking and the Supreme Court seats. 20 years from now, all of the judges Trump has put on the Supreme Court will still be there....
IMO this view really ignores the ramifications of the court stacking and the Supreme Court seats. 20 years from now, all of the judges Trump has put on the Supreme Court will still be there. Ginsberg will likely be replaced in the next 4 years. Breyer is likely not far behind.
Could you imagine a 7-2 Supreme Court filled with 4 Trump appointees? That's what you're going to get with another 4 years.
I don't know how far I buy this. It's pretty clear to me that Trumpian politics is, in large part, a reflexive fear response from a (literally) dying corner of the electorate. It's really just a...
But unless the Democrats have a solid strategy for undoing the damage and retaining the electorate for 8 years, plus another 8 after that, we'll be right back to Trump-level politics before we know it.
I don't know how far I buy this. It's pretty clear to me that Trumpian politics is, in large part, a reflexive fear response from a (literally) dying corner of the electorate. It's really just a matter of time before it starts to fade as a movement. The problem is that--due to climate change, an emerging Chinese Imperialism, and general growth in authoritarian and illiberal politics across the world--we don't have time.
But even then, an approach that lacks a "solid" strategy but still doesn't actively make things worse is preferable to an approach that actively suppresses the types of organizing and social developments we need. I don't think you can make long-term "strategies" in politics that play out more than a year or so. It's all too big and complicated. People are hard to pin down and you have to think of it more like forestry than machinery. There are conditions that encourage different types of plants to grow. The climate and conditions you create will encourage or discourage growth in the kinds of plants or animals you want in the forest, but you only have so much control over it. You have to focus more on being adaptable, taking lots of walks around and seeing the condition of the soil and what's going on, etc. I don't think you can just be Hari Seldon and run some complex equation to plot out how it all works ahead of time. It's too complicated for that.
I don't think there is much ignoring the party that put him there either. Both Sanders and Warren seem pretty explicit about putting blame on the GOP. Even most of the Senate and Congressional leaders call them out on this constantly. It's mostly just the oldest chunk of the party, represented by Biden and Pete and Klobuchar, who still talk about comity. And even they probably don't truly believe it, they're just saying it because it makes people feel warm and fuzzy on the campaign.
That's where we fundamentally disagree. The Republican party has been been moving continually to the right since Reagan, really amping up in the House/Senate in the Clinton years. If Trumpism was...
It's pretty clear to me that Trumpian politics is, in large part, a reflexive fear response from a (literally) dying corner of the electorate.
That's where we fundamentally disagree. The Republican party has been been moving continually to the right since Reagan, really amping up in the House/Senate in the Clinton years. If Trumpism was an isolated or even waning issue, I would not expect to see these things:
This is a small drop in the bucket. Trump is the symptom, not the disease. Maybe if more than a tiny handful of Republicans dared to stand their ground and didn't bow to the will of Trump/McConnell and company, perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation.
Yeah. It's a specific generational cohort of people who breathed in a lot of leaded gasoline emissions while there was a Cold War and a crime wave going on. That cohort had a Reagan revolution and...
The Republican party has been been moving continually to the right since Reagan, really amping up in the House/Senate in the Clinton years. If Trumpism was an isolated or even waning issue, I would not expect to see these things:
Yeah. It's a specific generational cohort of people who breathed in a lot of leaded gasoline emissions while there was a Cold War and a crime wave going on. That cohort had a Reagan revolution and is now proceeding to vote for Trumpism. And then, in 10-15 years, this cohort will mostly be dead.
I guess by voter base it does skew hard for a bit. But Fox News keeps drawing them in, I see it happening in my own social circles as well. Propaganda is a hell of a drug. Also, there is a...
I guess by voter base it does skew hard for a bit.
But Fox News keeps drawing them in, I see it happening in my own social circles as well. Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
TL;DR: The political values of some of the locations of the earliest settlers in the USA are still reflected to some degree by those living in those regions today.
There is some political science literature that suggests the community you live in can harden your political views. As younger people move to suburbs and exurbs I'd expect some proportion of them...
But Fox News keeps drawing them in, I see it happening in my own social circles as well. Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
There is some political science literature that suggests the community you live in can harden your political views. As younger people move to suburbs and exurbs I'd expect some proportion of them to get bought into it, albeit a smaller portion.
But this tendency is also why I happen to think that if the US ever did splinter into a multi-party system, the net result would be an even stronger resurgence of fascism. Every other time the US came close the only third party that ever got real traction was always virulently racist. See the Dixiecrats and even the Bull Moose party. The populists were the only ones who were only the baseline level of racism for the time and they got absorbed into the New Deal coalition.
As bad as all these things might be, they are mostly niche issues. The current administration does terrible things, but most people aren't actually affected directly. Until people's lives are...
As bad as all these things might be, they are mostly niche issues. The current administration does terrible things, but most people aren't actually affected directly. Until people's lives are clearly and directly affected, people have no incentive to get involved with politics. And even when they want to, they need to feel their vote actually makes a difference.
This feeling of indifference can lead to people not voting in the general election at all, which will hurt Democrats the most.
I agree that most people aren't directly affected. But people didn't seem to be indifferent about it when Trump won, though? It was all a pose? Nobody really cares about anything but themselves?...
I agree that most people aren't directly affected. But people didn't seem to be indifferent about it when Trump won, though? It was all a pose? Nobody really cares about anything but themselves?
If nothing else, it seems like voting him out would be worth it just so you don't have to read about him in the news anymore? Voting isn't that hard.
I feel like, on the one hand, yes, this can lead to confusion and inconvenience for people who often can't afford either. There's no justice. And on the other, it's nothing like what civil right...
I feel like, on the one hand, yes, this can lead to confusion and inconvenience for people who often can't afford either. There's no justice. And on the other, it's nothing like what civil right activists had to do to secure the vote for blacks.
The law and the courts don't stop everything, but they stop a lot of stuff. The Republicans can only put up relatively low hurdles and hope that will discourage enough people from voting. The journalists are doing their job by making sure we know (or can learn, if we pay attention) what tricks they're up to. Shouldn't an organized party be able to beat this, by working together?
For example, it seems like local party organizations should be figuring out who got mistakenly removed from the list, finding them, and getting them registered again. I wonder if anyone is doing that, and do they need help?
It seems like it would be a whole lot more effective than any of us chatting online or even going to protests. Anyone you get registered again in a swing state counts as much as your own vote and maybe more.
Every Bernie supporter I know has approximately this line of voting preference in the general: Sanders (happily) Warren (neutrally) Biden (begrudgingly) Third party (but D for any other nationals)...
Will the Bernie or Bust movement stay home the way they did in 2016?
Every Bernie supporter I know has approximately this line of voting preference in the general:
Sanders (happily)
Warren (neutrally)
Biden (begrudgingly)
Third party (but D for any other nationals)
Reasoning is that any actual Democrat is better than a Republican.
If Bloomberg is that person, democracy has already lost, as it will be a Republican vs Republican and things keep getting worse.
If Biden wins the primary, we have another 4+ years of Trump. I honestly don't see Trump leaving office after a second term, even. That's the sad fact of the matter. The US is still in a populist...
If Biden wins the primary, we have another 4+ years of Trump. I honestly don't see Trump leaving office after a second term, even.
That's the sad fact of the matter.
The US is still in a populist wave, and for some reason, the DNC doesn't get it. The only way to fight against a crazy populist is with a less crazy populist, and Biden is not that.
What is legal has gone out the window. Legally, he should have divested most of his assets, or at least put them in a blind trust. Legally, he shouldn't be using his office to intimidate political...
If they plan to do it legally, they would have to go through an amendment.
What is legal has gone out the window.
Legally, he should have divested most of his assets, or at least put them in a blind trust. Legally, he shouldn't be using his office to intimidate political opponents.
Legally, there are a lot of things he shouldn't be doing, but the senate has given him a pass.
That's hindsight bias. 2016 could have easily gone the other way if the timing of some news stories were slightly different. There is not a single big cause that explains a close election, but...
That's hindsight bias. 2016 could have easily gone the other way if the timing of some news stories were slightly different. There is not a single big cause that explains a close election, but rather lots of causes that all needed to happen together.
November could be a close election again and then we get another random number generator.
Yep, true. But even that might not have been enough for Trump, had events happened a bit differently. Trump also had big disadvantages. Understanding the causes in a close election is like adding...
Yep, true. But even that might not have been enough for Trump, had events happened a bit differently. Trump also had big disadvantages.
Understanding the causes in a close election is like adding big positive and big negative numbers, where they mostly cancel out, and deciding whether the result will be positive or negative. You need high precision measurements to get that right, which we don't have. And that's why serious prediction models use probabilities.
I think the issues will be worse than in 2016. We've spent 4 years making fun of Trump for being so inarticulate, and now our savior to beat Trump is someone with visible dementia. At least Trump...
I think the issues will be worse than in 2016. We've spent 4 years making fun of Trump for being so inarticulate, and now our savior to beat Trump is someone with visible dementia. At least Trump can usually string together long series of words that only don't make sense if you're paying attention. Biden's word salad sounds more obvious and unnatural.
This assumes that making a cogent point matters. Trump can rattle on endlessly and incoherently but sound smooth and confident. Nothing about this sounds smooth and confident.
This assumes that making a cogent point matters. Trump can rattle on endlessly and incoherently but sound smooth and confident. Nothing about this sounds smooth and confident.
At least from my outside (Canadian) perspective, like it or not, it really does seem as if all that a significant portion of Americans have cared about these past few decades when it comes to...
At least from my outside (Canadian) perspective, like it or not, it really does seem as if all that a significant portion of Americans have cared about these past few decades when it comes to picking a President to vote for is Charisma. And sadly Biden seems to me to be severely lacking in that department when compared to Trump (incoherent or not), and especially when compared to Sanders. And I genuinely fear for my American friends that if Biden is picked he will lose to Trump for precisely that reason, whereas at least Sanders might stand a chance on that front.
Trump vs. Biden feels like Bush vs. Gore all over again.
Political theorizing aside, the biggest issue I see is that there is absolutely nothing to be excited about with Biden, other than the fact that he is not Trump... and how well did that work out...
Political theorizing aside, the biggest issue I see is that there is absolutely nothing to be excited about with Biden, other than the fact that he is not Trump... and how well did that work out for John Kerry, despite him being the objectively better choice than Bush?
And regardless of whether you disagree with Sanders policies and think he will be ineffectual as President (which he very well might), one thing I don't think anyone can deny is that, much like Trump, he actually manages to get people excited/fired up, which is IMO what you ultimately need in order to get people to the polls to actually win an American Presidential race.
p.s. And primaries are mostly stuffed with the political savvy and party insiders with entrenched interests, so I think they are an absolutely terrible way to predict how things will turn out in the general election.
This exactly. Clinton didn't lose because she was a bad candidate, or bad policies. But because nothing was exciting about her. She said "We're going to keep doing the same thing we've always...
much like Trump, he actually manages to get people excited/fired up, which is IMO what you ultimately need in order to get people to the polls to actually win in America.
This exactly.
Clinton didn't lose because she was a bad candidate, or bad policies. But because nothing was exciting about her. She said "We're going to keep doing the same thing we've always done"
Meanwhile, Trump is getting people fired up to go an vote.
Now, fast forward to 2020: Which Democratic candidate is the most exciting? That's what is needed to win against Trump, regardless of policies. The only real answer (Now) is Sanders or Warren, and Warren has been smeared by the left so badly, it's muted. Yang could have been that person too, but he is too brown for the DNC.
Yeah, as much as I actually like Yang and the idea of UBI, I don't think his race had a whole lot to do with his poor performance. Being a Washington outsider and lacking absolutely any political...
Yeah, as much as I actually like Yang and the idea of UBI, I don't think his race had a whole lot to do with his poor performance. Being a Washington outsider and lacking absolutely any political experience whatsoever may appeal to a huge portion of Republican voters, hence Trump, but I don't think the same can be said for Democrats (at least the ones who vote in primaries, anyways). So I suspect even if Yang was white, he wouldn't have done any better.
I couldn't figure out what the "A.S." at the top of their results in the sidebar was, with 100% reported and 50% voting for Bloomberg. It's American Samoa, which has 6 delegates. Funny that the...
I couldn't figure out what the "A.S." at the top of their results in the sidebar was, with 100% reported and 50% voting for Bloomberg. It's American Samoa, which has 6 delegates.
Funny that the NYT doesn't even include it, but it is only 0.4% of the delegates from today.
A coworker and I where googling about that too, since as far as we knew the folks in the US territories can't vote. As it turns out, they can vote in the primary (and some other things); but they...
A coworker and I where googling about that too, since as far as we knew the folks in the US territories can't vote. As it turns out, they can vote in the primary (and some other things); but they can't vote in the actual presidential election, despite being American citizens. Which seems pretty fucked up.
I really am disappointed in these results. Who can go into the booth and fill in the bubble for Biden? He has no plans to make anything better. He's not even representative of the best of the...
I really am disappointed in these results. Who can go into the booth and fill in the bubble for Biden? He has no plans to make anything better. He's not even representative of the best of the Obama years. His election basically guarantees most of us reading this are going to die from climate change. He's the worst candidate to go against Trump, and Trump's team has been preparing to run against him for years. I just don't get it.
(Maximal rant, pessimism,nihilism and resignation engaged, also I honestly take politics on a nearly personal level. Either way I'm sorry.) This feels like hearing your friend died of a freak...
(Maximal rant, pessimism,nihilism and resignation engaged, also I honestly take politics on a nearly personal level. Either way I'm sorry.)
This feels like hearing your friend died of a freak accident, but it's more like going to the oncologist and getting confirmation that your tumour is advanced and your situation probably unrecoverable.
Biden is a joke against trump, since he is peak establishment and people don't want that, regardless of whatever he says, or tries to. Also the voter supression will show in the election results and arguably already has with his upswing on the primary. With the new census coming around, he would have the full power on redistricting and electoral college, so it will be even more unfair since Texas would get 3 more votes, many rust belt states lose one and more house seats can be gerrymandered.
George Orwell would probably wonder how we outdid him.
George Washington would probably realize that whatever he and the others built has failed spectacularly and realize Quincy's warning about bipartisanship was all but inevitable. (Why are the courts, which have nothing to do with the democratic process partisan again? Why is the senate democratically elected now despite making no effort to be apportioned properly?)
He would probably wonder how did the first amendment granting us free speech and free media get so laughably abused and realize the second amendment could not guard against the increasing price of technological innovation. He would also see that slavery and serfdom has never truly ended and the public isn't using his second amendment because unfortunately, indebted, rent paying day laborers don't really make good revolutionaries. He would also see that, given that this is the most powerful nation in the world now, this will (is) not be isolated to the US.
He would also realize that minority rule has serious drawbacks, especially if one of the parties ends up relying on it to win.
I feel like we're witnessing either the end of history into true Orwellian internet-enabled dystopia or a return to pre-WW1 monarchy politics (or now geopolitics) where people are but servants to an emperor, but now with the Internet available for incredible surveillance. Either way we won't have a say in which one will happen if things keep going the way they are, so unless a coup'd etat happens and goes swimmingly, we're likely already out of luck.
To be fair, the system Washington helped build is working just as designed, sadly. Wealthy, white land owners being the ruling class.
George Washington would probably realize that whatever he and the others built has failed spectacularly and realize Quincy's warning about bipartisanship was all but inevitable.
To be fair, the system Washington helped build is working just as designed, sadly.
Wealthy, white land owners being the ruling class.
The Alabama page has a lot more detail: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/03/us/elections/forecast-alabama-primary.html Overall they're just so confident that he'll win that they're...
Anyone know of any good information breaking down the African American (AA) support each candidate has, preferably broken down by age and state? I know Biden has good support among older...
Anyone know of any good information breaking down the African American (AA) support each candidate has, preferably broken down by age and state? I know Biden has good support among older conservative AA votes, but how big is this cohort and where is it situated geographically?
Bloomberg entered too late to make a difference and unlike Trump he used astroturfing tactics to give the impression he had a following. Trump's strategy on the other hand was three-fold: Draw...
Bloomberg entered too late to make a difference and unlike Trump he used astroturfing tactics to give the impression he had a following.
Trump's strategy on the other hand was three-fold:
Draw attention to himself in the primaries to get an early lead and start winning. This is why he said a lot of crazy stuff in the primaries, to lap up the attention of the press. He got over $2 billion of free publicity from this.
Eliminate his rivals one by one. He pulled this to great effect against Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz.
Be flexible. He shifted gears quite significantly after he won the Republican nomination.
Trump probably spent relatively little on his own campaign, and as far as I'm concerned he gamed the political system really well.
Trump was right to mock him. Bloomberg did it all wrong.
I'm not sure if it's a major aspect of how you're feeling about it, but I think it's a good reminder that even though the internet might feel like "the world" to a lot of us, it's not necessarily representative at all.
I think you'd have trouble finding much excitement about Biden anywhere on the internet, but he's obviously still got a huge amount of support in reality.
But from where? I'm not so ignorant as to believe the internet is all there is, but what else matches it in size and scope?
I seriously can’t recommend this podcast episode enough. I’ve mentioned it here before, but it’s really eye opening to understand how large numbers of people engage with politics.
Those of us who are highly plugged-in to political news vote in a certain way. We think in terms of individual choice and we treat our vote as an act of personal expression that has to reflect our personal priorities and values.
Lots of people don’t vote that way. They vote as an exercise in group identity and power. When they get word from a notable member of their community, like James Clyburn, that so-and-so is gonna be our guy they will show up for that guy. They don’t give a shit about the day-to-day news cycles, what their votes were on this or that, or what values they espouse. They’re in it to own a piece of a candidate and make sure they are owed a debt by showing up as a giant group.
And then still other people just mainline MSNBC and CNN all day every day. They are super fickle and will be easily swayed by whoever has a slick advertising campaign because TV news will turn your brain into mush. You can win them over by just being cool and putting out positive vibes all day every day.
The first model I talked about, where we have individuals making personal decisions, is probably the least effective at moving the party in any one direction or other. It’s too fickle. People are too prone to staying home or go third party and they don’t demand concessions because they’re too disorganized to demand anything.
These results are giving me the same sinking feeling I had in 2016 when I first started seeing Trump overperform in key VA districts.
Tbh, these results don't look too bad to me. From what we know so far, Bernie is within about 10 electoral votes of Biden, which is quite a close margin given the literal hundreds of them. Tons of states that were supposed to be strong for Biden are in this primary, and I would've really been more surprised if Bernie had won them. As the Midwest and Far West enter the game, Bernie is going to have more chances to do well - Biden's using up a lot of his easy votes now. He may still parlay that into momentum down the line, but it doesn't mean he will for sure.
Also worth noting the spoiling effect Warren is having, particularly in Massachusetts and Maine. If she had dropped out like Buttigieg and Klobuchar, I think Bernie would've gotten a lot of her support, since they're such similar candidates. That's not the establishment holding back Bernie, that's just other progressives tbh.
I was wondering about the same thing,but as it turns out, probably not.
Tl;dr if you're less divisive then people who aren't really progressives will join you with no reservations, you just need to be nice. This therefore means that she's actually keeping more centrists off from voting Biden than bernie,despite all the differences.
Yeah. My twitter feed, which is mostly Bernie folks, is completely tearing into her in ways that just aren’t supported by the data. Much of the changeover seems to have been Warren -> Biden voters. It’s possible that the hardest core of Warren’s rump support would have gone to Bernie, but at that point what are you getting? A 5% boost? That just tightens this from a landslide loss to a slight loss. And even if that was the case constantly screaming insinuations about how she’s a “FALSE PROGRESSIVE TRAITOR!” is probably not gonna help your chances.
It seems pretty clear that Sanders had a 30% ceiling that he was going to have a hard time clearing. His staying in the race and monopolizing the progressive lane cut the actually electable progressive off at the knees. It’a also looking like Warren might have single-handedly been a death blow to Bloomberg’s campaign. So who knows how the race would have shaped up had she not gone in on him.
Of course it wasn’t obvious that Sanders would, by definition, have a 30% ceiling going in. He probably could have had broader appeal if he hadn’t staffed his campaign full of twitter blowhards. But he did and we got what we got.
It’s not over yet though. Roughly 2/3 of delegates are still outstanding. If, after more scrutiny, Biden starts to wither again like he did last time he had his turn in the barrel we might see things chance.
And then there is the grim specter of the actuarial tables. I’ve brought it up before, but men in their late 70s have at least a 5% chance of dying within the year. For someone of Biden’s medical history that’s probably substantially higher. Any negative health event is going to upend everything.
You never want to follow these things minute by minute. California isn't in play yet, and following Texas is an anxiety attack waiting to happen.
Bloomberg is now out of the race
Unforunately, he endorsed Biden...
These results are depressing. American democrats are somehow managing to select the least exciting, least electable candidate from what was a surpringly nice and diverse pool of candidates. If Trump's election showed anything, it's that people want change. So why choose a borderline senile Washington politician to go against him?
We're still a long way to go until the nomination, but let's assume Biden is the nominee for a second. Will we have the same issues we did in 2016? Like Clinton, Biden is basically running as a continuation of the Obama presidency and has a ''scandal'' (Hunter Biden in Ukraine) that the Republicans will latch on to. Will that plague his campaign the way the email scandal sank Clinton? Will the Bernie or Bust movement stay home the way they did in 2016?
In regards to tonight's results, is this 'Joementum,' the Democratic establishment's recent agressive campaign against Sanders, the other moderates dropping out, or the work of a ''silent majority'' that wasn't reflected in the polls before last week?
Yes. Yes. And probably, but hopefully less so than in 2016.
If Biden is smart he will publicly allow Sanders to hand pick his VP. And if Sanders is smart, that pick won’t be Sanders himself or someone too closely aligned to him.
The modern primary system has never had seriously contested races like this before, so they’ve rarely had to work hard to bridge the party. Obama and Clinton hated each other but they were both out of the DLC faction of the party so the main difference was whether the Clinton machine or the Chicago machine would be on top. Not a big deal for any of the supporters. And in hindsight it’s pretty clear that part of the concession Obama made (in addition to making her Sec of State) was to not rock the boat too much in terms of replacing Clinton flacks across the party leadership.
But now we have actual ideological divisions of a kind we haven’t seen since the 60s and 70s. We’re gonna need to learn real quick how to reconcile those differences and work as a group instead of pretending you can get a majority at the convention and just feel entitled to have everything go hunky dory coming out of it. That means real concessions and public shows of reconciliation. Not “bending the knee” or grudging support, but drawing together an actual consensus position as a group, publicly.
As for the second part of your post about Joementum, I think Sanders had a ~30% ceiling and it was a matter of time before the other candidates coalesced into a viable “not-Sanders” coalition. Warren tried her best to stand in the middle and be a not-not-Sanders alternative, but it looks like a combination of media blackout and leftist character assassination undermined her ability to thread that needle.
Great comment, thank you for your thoughtful response.
That doesn't make much sense when we look at 2016. Was Clinton that unpopular? Is there that big of a difference between Bernie the frontrunner and Bernie the outsider?
Oh yeah. She’s awful. Like a great statesman, a good boss, and all of that. But as a political candidate she’s always been terrible. 30 years of baggage from the right wing smear machine + a reflexive tendency to make enemies of anyone who gets in her way made her super unpopular.
It seems like if Obama had lost, that would have been quite a disappointment for black supporters? But not unexpected.
I still can't quite believe lots of progressives would sit out rather than vote against Trump in November, whatever they say now. How would that work? Immigrant kids getting separated from their parents somehow becomes okay? All those people who went to protests against Trump or considered moving to Canada somehow decide, nah, not that big a deal after all? Transgender issues - who cares? Climate change denialism - not that urgent?
I certainly know people with the accelerationist view that Trump is making things bad enough, and making problems so visible, that people will be more likely to recognize the problems.
While I don't agree with this overall, I do think that there's the argument that Trump makes climate change matters more visible through his absurd denialism than they would be under Biden, who does not deny it but clearly does not see it as a significant issue warranting focus or serious responses, and thus Trump compels state and local governments to address climate change more strongly than they would with the complacency generated by Biden.
I get a certain sense that, in the US, the Republicans would like to loudly deny climate change, while the Democrats would like to quietly ignore it, or use it to support the policies they actually care about.
I've been accused of being an accelerationist, and I won't deny that I agree with many of the talking points they make.
However, my stance is a bit more nuanced than the surface level.
All of the yelling and screaming about Trump seems to ignore the party that put him there. His enablers in the house and senate. Everyone is concerned about the next 4 years, but we also need to be looking to the next 20.
4 more years of Trump will be bad, undoubtedly so. But unless the Democrats have a solid strategy for undoing the damage and retaining the electorate for 8 years, plus another 8 after that, we'll be right back to Trump-level politics before we know it.
IMO this view really ignores the ramifications of the court stacking and the Supreme Court seats. 20 years from now, all of the judges Trump has put on the Supreme Court will still be there. Ginsberg will likely be replaced in the next 4 years. Breyer is likely not far behind.
Could you imagine a 7-2 Supreme Court filled with 4 Trump appointees? That's what you're going to get with another 4 years.
On the plus side, by that point it'll probably just be mainstream opinion that the Supreme Court needs to be packed.
That's worse than expecting a grand slam to win a football game.
I don't know how far I buy this. It's pretty clear to me that Trumpian politics is, in large part, a reflexive fear response from a (literally) dying corner of the electorate. It's really just a matter of time before it starts to fade as a movement. The problem is that--due to climate change, an emerging Chinese Imperialism, and general growth in authoritarian and illiberal politics across the world--we don't have time.
But even then, an approach that lacks a "solid" strategy but still doesn't actively make things worse is preferable to an approach that actively suppresses the types of organizing and social developments we need. I don't think you can make long-term "strategies" in politics that play out more than a year or so. It's all too big and complicated. People are hard to pin down and you have to think of it more like forestry than machinery. There are conditions that encourage different types of plants to grow. The climate and conditions you create will encourage or discourage growth in the kinds of plants or animals you want in the forest, but you only have so much control over it. You have to focus more on being adaptable, taking lots of walks around and seeing the condition of the soil and what's going on, etc. I don't think you can just be Hari Seldon and run some complex equation to plot out how it all works ahead of time. It's too complicated for that.
I don't think there is much ignoring the party that put him there either. Both Sanders and Warren seem pretty explicit about putting blame on the GOP. Even most of the Senate and Congressional leaders call them out on this constantly. It's mostly just the oldest chunk of the party, represented by Biden and Pete and Klobuchar, who still talk about comity. And even they probably don't truly believe it, they're just saying it because it makes people feel warm and fuzzy on the campaign.
That's where we fundamentally disagree. The Republican party has been been moving continually to the right since Reagan, really amping up in the House/Senate in the Clinton years. If Trumpism was an isolated or even waning issue, I would not expect to see these things:
This is a small drop in the bucket. Trump is the symptom, not the disease. Maybe if more than a tiny handful of Republicans dared to stand their ground and didn't bow to the will of Trump/McConnell and company, perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation.
Yeah. It's a specific generational cohort of people who breathed in a lot of leaded gasoline emissions while there was a Cold War and a crime wave going on. That cohort had a Reagan revolution and is now proceeding to vote for Trumpism. And then, in 10-15 years, this cohort will mostly be dead.
I guess by voter base it does skew hard for a bit.
But Fox News keeps drawing them in, I see it happening in my own social circles as well. Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
Also, there is a generational aspect to politics as well. Here's an interesting read about it:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/
TL;DR: The political values of some of the locations of the earliest settlers in the USA are still reflected to some degree by those living in those regions today.
There is some political science literature that suggests the community you live in can harden your political views. As younger people move to suburbs and exurbs I'd expect some proportion of them to get bought into it, albeit a smaller portion.
But this tendency is also why I happen to think that if the US ever did splinter into a multi-party system, the net result would be an even stronger resurgence of fascism. Every other time the US came close the only third party that ever got real traction was always virulently racist. See the Dixiecrats and even the Bull Moose party. The populists were the only ones who were only the baseline level of racism for the time and they got absorbed into the New Deal coalition.
As bad as all these things might be, they are mostly niche issues. The current administration does terrible things, but most people aren't actually affected directly. Until people's lives are clearly and directly affected, people have no incentive to get involved with politics. And even when they want to, they need to feel their vote actually makes a difference.
This feeling of indifference can lead to people not voting in the general election at all, which will hurt Democrats the most.
I agree that most people aren't directly affected. But people didn't seem to be indifferent about it when Trump won, though? It was all a pose? Nobody really cares about anything but themselves?
If nothing else, it seems like voting him out would be worth it just so you don't have to read about him in the news anymore? Voting isn't that hard.
Voting is getting harder though.
I feel like, on the one hand, yes, this can lead to confusion and inconvenience for people who often can't afford either. There's no justice. And on the other, it's nothing like what civil right activists had to do to secure the vote for blacks.
The law and the courts don't stop everything, but they stop a lot of stuff. The Republicans can only put up relatively low hurdles and hope that will discourage enough people from voting. The journalists are doing their job by making sure we know (or can learn, if we pay attention) what tricks they're up to. Shouldn't an organized party be able to beat this, by working together?
For example, it seems like local party organizations should be figuring out who got mistakenly removed from the list, finding them, and getting them registered again. I wonder if anyone is doing that, and do they need help?
It seems like it would be a whole lot more effective than any of us chatting online or even going to protests. Anyone you get registered again in a swing state counts as much as your own vote and maybe more.
Every Bernie supporter I know has approximately this line of voting preference in the general:
Sanders (happily)
Warren (neutrally)
Biden (begrudgingly)
Third party (but D for any other nationals)
Reasoning is that any actual Democrat is better than a Republican.
If Bloomberg is that person, democracy has already lost, as it will be a Republican vs Republican and things keep getting worse.
If Biden wins the primary, we have another 4+ years of Trump. I honestly don't see Trump leaving office after a second term, even.
That's the sad fact of the matter.
The US is still in a populist wave, and for some reason, the DNC doesn't get it. The only way to fight against a crazy populist is with a less crazy populist, and Biden is not that.
What is legal has gone out the window.
Legally, he should have divested most of his assets, or at least put them in a blind trust. Legally, he shouldn't be using his office to intimidate political opponents.
Legally, there are a lot of things he shouldn't be doing, but the senate has given him a pass.
That's hindsight bias. 2016 could have easily gone the other way if the timing of some news stories were slightly different. There is not a single big cause that explains a close election, but rather lots of causes that all needed to happen together.
November could be a close election again and then we get another random number generator.
One big, single cause was Clinton failing to even attempt to connect with voters in the midwest.
Yep, true. But even that might not have been enough for Trump, had events happened a bit differently. Trump also had big disadvantages.
Understanding the causes in a close election is like adding big positive and big negative numbers, where they mostly cancel out, and deciding whether the result will be positive or negative. You need high precision measurements to get that right, which we don't have. And that's why serious prediction models use probabilities.
I think the issues will be worse than in 2016. We've spent 4 years making fun of Trump for being so inarticulate, and now our savior to beat Trump is someone with visible dementia. At least Trump can usually string together long series of words that only don't make sense if you're paying attention. Biden's word salad sounds more obvious and unnatural.
This assumes that making a cogent point matters. Trump can rattle on endlessly and incoherently but sound smooth and confident. Nothing about this sounds smooth and confident.
At least from my outside (Canadian) perspective, like it or not, it really does seem as if all that a significant portion of Americans have cared about these past few decades when it comes to picking a President to vote for is Charisma. And sadly Biden seems to me to be severely lacking in that department when compared to Trump (incoherent or not), and especially when compared to Sanders. And I genuinely fear for my American friends that if Biden is picked he will lose to Trump for precisely that reason, whereas at least Sanders might stand a chance on that front.
Trump vs. Biden feels like Bush vs. Gore all over again.
Political theorizing aside, the biggest issue I see is that there is absolutely nothing to be excited about with Biden, other than the fact that he is not Trump... and how well did that work out for John Kerry, despite him being the objectively better choice than Bush?
And regardless of whether you disagree with Sanders policies and think he will be ineffectual as President (which he very well might), one thing I don't think anyone can deny is that, much like Trump, he actually manages to get people excited/fired up, which is IMO what you ultimately need in order to get people to the polls to actually win an American Presidential race.
p.s. And primaries are mostly stuffed with the political savvy and party insiders with entrenched interests, so I think they are an absolutely terrible way to predict how things will turn out in the general election.
This exactly.
Clinton didn't lose because she was a bad candidate, or bad policies. But because nothing was exciting about her. She said "We're going to keep doing the same thing we've always done"
Meanwhile, Trump is getting people fired up to go an vote.
Now, fast forward to 2020: Which Democratic candidate is the most exciting? That's what is needed to win against Trump, regardless of policies. The only real answer (Now) is Sanders or Warren, and Warren has been smeared by the left so badly, it's muted. Yang could have been that person too, but he is too brown for the DNC.
Yeah, as much as I actually like Yang and the idea of UBI, I don't think his race had a whole lot to do with his poor performance. Being a Washington outsider and lacking absolutely any political experience whatsoever may appeal to a huge portion of Republican voters, hence Trump, but I don't think the same can be said for Democrats (at least the ones who vote in primaries, anyways). So I suspect even if Yang was white, he wouldn't have done any better.
I couldn't figure out what the "A.S." at the top of their results in the sidebar was, with 100% reported and 50% voting for Bloomberg. It's American Samoa, which has 6 delegates.
Funny that the NYT doesn't even include it, but it is only 0.4% of the delegates from today.
A coworker and I where googling about that too, since as far as we knew the folks in the US territories can't vote. As it turns out, they can vote in the primary (and some other things); but they can't vote in the actual presidential election, despite being American citizens. Which seems pretty fucked up.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-11-01/millions-americans-cant-vote-president-because-where-they-live
I really am disappointed in these results. Who can go into the booth and fill in the bubble for Biden? He has no plans to make anything better. He's not even representative of the best of the Obama years. His election basically guarantees most of us reading this are going to die from climate change. He's the worst candidate to go against Trump, and Trump's team has been preparing to run against him for years. I just don't get it.
(Maximal rant, pessimism,nihilism and resignation engaged, also I honestly take politics on a nearly personal level. Either way I'm sorry.)
This feels like hearing your friend died of a freak accident, but it's more like going to the oncologist and getting confirmation that your tumour is advanced and your situation probably unrecoverable.
Biden is a joke against trump, since he is peak establishment and people don't want that, regardless of whatever he says, or tries to. Also the voter supression will show in the election results and arguably already has with his upswing on the primary. With the new census coming around, he would have the full power on redistricting and electoral college, so it will be even more unfair since Texas would get 3 more votes, many rust belt states lose one and more house seats can be gerrymandered.
George Orwell would probably wonder how we outdid him.
George Washington would probably realize that whatever he and the others built has failed spectacularly and realize Quincy's warning about bipartisanship was all but inevitable. (Why are the courts, which have nothing to do with the democratic process partisan again? Why is the senate democratically elected now despite making no effort to be apportioned properly?)
He would probably wonder how did the first amendment granting us free speech and free media get so laughably abused and realize the second amendment could not guard against the increasing price of technological innovation. He would also see that slavery and serfdom has never truly ended and the public isn't using his second amendment because unfortunately, indebted, rent paying day laborers don't really make good revolutionaries. He would also see that, given that this is the most powerful nation in the world now, this will (is) not be isolated to the US.
He would also realize that minority rule has serious drawbacks, especially if one of the parties ends up relying on it to win.
I feel like we're witnessing either the end of history into true Orwellian internet-enabled dystopia or a return to pre-WW1 monarchy politics (or now geopolitics) where people are but servants to an emperor, but now with the Internet available for incredible surveillance. Either way we won't have a say in which one will happen if things keep going the way they are, so unless a coup'd etat happens and goes swimmingly, we're likely already out of luck.
To be fair, the system Washington helped build is working just as designed, sadly.
Wealthy, white land owners being the ruling class.
How has Biden won the Alabama nomination if only 1% of precincts are reporting?
The Alabama page has a lot more detail: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/03/us/elections/forecast-alabama-primary.html
Overall they're just so confident that he'll win that they're comfortable calling it already.
Anyone know of any good information breaking down the African American (AA) support each candidate has, preferably broken down by age and state? I know Biden has good support among older conservative AA votes, but how big is this cohort and where is it situated geographically?
Bloomberg's doing surprisingly well.
He hasn't even come close to winning a single state, despite spending $500m of his own cash. He's doing terribly.
I didn't even expect him to be viable though. So from my perspective he's done relatively well.
Bloomberg entered too late to make a difference and unlike Trump he used astroturfing tactics to give the impression he had a following.
Trump's strategy on the other hand was three-fold:
Draw attention to himself in the primaries to get an early lead and start winning. This is why he said a lot of crazy stuff in the primaries, to lap up the attention of the press. He got over $2 billion of free publicity from this.
Eliminate his rivals one by one. He pulled this to great effect against Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz.
Be flexible. He shifted gears quite significantly after he won the Republican nomination.
Trump probably spent relatively little on his own campaign, and as far as I'm concerned he gamed the political system really well.
Trump was right to mock him. Bloomberg did it all wrong.