I’m not sure whether it’s more accurate to call it clickbait or troll bait, but there’s a genre of political writing that’s good at getting everyone’s blood pressure up despite being almost completely worthless. Basically, these pieces are debates on take-my-ball-and-go-homism. The latest is by Ben Spielberg and can be read at the Huffington Post.
Mr. Spielberg assures us that he is well aware that any Democratic president would be preferable to any Republican president, but he wants us to know that he will not be voting for Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee. If you care, you can go check out his reasoning, but I’m not interested in his reasoning.
I’m only interested in the timing.
In every election cycle, there are people who will tell you during the primaries that they won’t vote for anyone but their preferred candidate. It’s almost never true.
It’s probably a sincere belief in many cases. Folks think that they’ll feel the same way in November. They really do. But most of them won’t.
So, let’s say that you’re a Democrat who really wants to see a Democrat win the 2016 presidential election. You get annoyed, upset, and maybe even a little afraid when you see someone arguing that they won’t support the ticket unless their candidate is on the top of it. You don’t like seeing people making rationalizations for apathy or non-participation because you worry that they might be convincing. You think the logic is flawed and the argument is dangerous.
So, out comes your pen and you start furiously writing hostile comments or blog posts that invoke the names of Ralph Nader and Dick Cheney.
You ought to save your energy because these arguments don’t need rebuttal eleven months before the election. Almost everyone who is claiming to support the purity stance is actually going to hold their nose and vote against the Republicans. This is always true, but probably more than usual this time because the likely Republican nominees are really far out there.
I’ll give you just one clue from Spielberg’s piece that explains what’s really motivating him:
Because politicians and Democratic party officials know that many voters think [they have to support the eventual nominee], they have little incentive to listen to our concerns. Instead, they can pay lip service to progressive values while crafting a policy agenda and decision-making process more responsive to wealthy donors than to their constituents…
…those who disagree can continue to accuse people like me of “helping the GOP” in the 2016 election by pointing out that the Democrats have extreme flaws and don’t always deserve our support. But it would be a lot fairer of them to acknowledge that millions upon millions of people have suffered at the hands of lesser-of-two-evils candidates over the years, that an open commitment to support a lesser-of-two-evils candidate robs voters of bargaining power, and that the Democratic Party has brought voter discontent upon itself.
In his mind, at least, Mr. Spielberg’s solitary vote is something candidates will bargain for. If he threatens to withhold his vote, it will increase his influence.
This is absurd, of course. Literally no one gives a crap whether Ben Spielberg votes or doesn’t vote. For his decision to have any meaning at all, he must persuade people of the merits of his case. He must universalize it. If everyone used his logic, then progressives would have more leverage over the Democratic nominees. In this way, he can satisfy himself that his threat of non-participation satisfies the Golden Rule.
But, here’s the key, only if he’s being dishonest about not voting. If everyone threatens to not vote, they increase their power and can get some positive change (maybe), but if people actually follow through, stay home, and enable the Republicans to win, they’ll have done real damage to their cause.
That’s why Spielberg pays lip service to the idea that losing in 2016 is worth it so that the left doesn’t lose in 2020. But that’s a throw-away line. No one intelligent actually believes that you can do better by losing the presidency than by winning it. That may sometimes be the result, but it’s too speculative and low-percentage to ever be a rational strategy.
So, when you read these take-my-ball-and-go-homism pieces, remember, they’re so stupid and dishonest that you don’t need to respond to them.
If this were October 2016, that kind of rhetoric might merit a rebuttal. In December of 2015, it’s not worth worrying about.
Well argued. Merry Christmas and thanks for keeping your brand of sanity burning bright this past year.
At this point, I’m less worried with Democratic voters not voting than with failure to put up progressive challengers against Republicans just to take advantage of a wave election (and to extend progressive arguments deeper into currently Republican-dominated areas that get by on a caricature of Democrats and progressives). One candidate who is making the case that conservatism has in fact failed is not enough.
The other non-voters, dismissive of duopoly or claiming that voting in a corrupt system is a moral failing are equally irrelevant to the outcome in fact.
The fact is that the only way a candidate listens to you is when you put $10K into the campaign kitty. And the only way the candidate pays attention is when you get other people to put $10K into the campaign kitty. Important donors and bundlers. $10K unless someone has a better calculus of how much the candidate’s time and attention are worth. And likely even Bernie although it might be numbers of voters persuaded instead of a dollar figure. Number of voters persuaded is what it should be but the presence of large amounts of money diverts the dynamic. Candidates so much like free money.
I’m not smelling a “wave election” in 2016. Although my biases may be precluding me from seeing a potential GOP wave election.
Had no difficulty projecting the GOP 2002 and 2004 gains, the DEM 2006 and 2007 gains, the 2010 GOP gains and the no change 2012 election. Did underestimate the GOP strength going into 2014 and have yet to figure out why I erred by so much which may be making me a cautious 2016 observer.
The future is unwritten. Whether or not it’s going to be a wave election is not currently set in stone, and we aren’t just spectators.
The future is always less unwritten than those that promulgate simple aphorisms claim.
As part of my professional job, I always had to project out in time. One year was clear enough, two, a bit fuzzy, three fuzzier still. The fuzzier the future, required more solid current variables on which the decision was based as we didn’t get “do-overs” after the initial decision point. One of my earliest assignments was modeling a decision with a five to ten year commitment. Couldn’t be done not as the specificity we needed because far too many potential, known and unknown, variables were outside our control. However, the exercise did highlight tools one could use in one’s analytical process to make the unavoidable decisions that had a five year tail. And why the Clock of the Long Now intrigues me more than most.
In 2000 I frequently pointed out that if elected (not prescient enough to consider selected) GWB would have us back in a war in Iraq. Others considered me delusional as they also did when I pointed out that Saddam didn’t have any WMD.
You don’t need to smell a wave election to have the candidates in place to take advantage of one if it happens.
Imagine unforeseen total disgust with the GOP and all of the red state GOP candidates re-elected because they were unopposed.
One can be too calculating for one’s party’s own good. Or one can want to preserve one’s flexibility to bargain for one’s post-political future. It’s often hard to tell.
Is that any more than saying that one can’t win if one doesn’t compete?
Here’s the thing, the DEM Party, when it does choose to compete, has been claiming for near three decades that wave or no wave, only GOP-lite can win. When they lose, that’s evidence of no wave or the GOP-lite candidate was too liberal. When they win with GOP-lite candidates in what looked like a wave election, they say, “See — told ya that GOP-lite wins in wave elections.”
Sanders’ supporters have to accept that it’s a multi-election cycle effort. Securing the nomination in 2016 would be the first large piece in that effort. If Clinton gets the nomination, the project will be more difficult and much take longer, but we can be much smarter about it than we’ve been in the past.
If the Democrats lose the Presidency in 2016 they may never win an election again for generations.
I actually read where some moron was positing that the SCOTUS probably wouldn’t have any new justices in the next 4 years. Someone needs to give that idiot a lesson in actuarial statistics. One is 82 (a liberal), two are 79 (including the “swing vote”), and one 77 (another liberal). If the GOP gets the presidency they’ll almost certainly get 6 or 7 hard right Scalito types on the court.
This is the same group that 5-4 … with the so-called moderate Kennedy … threw out part of the Voting Rights act that had passed SCOTUS approve numerous times before (including most of the 5 voting for it in previous years) on the grounds that the Constitution didn’t allow Congress to regulate local voting to address concerns of racial discrimination – a ruling that never mentioned the 15th amendment for the obvious reason that it gave Congress that exact, very explicit, right.
Give them a bigger majority and there is no way in hell they allow enough Democrats to vote in future elections to get the GOP out of power. These dishonest assholes would have no trouble (for example) approving a poll tax, if necessary, in a ruling that didn’t mention the 24th amendment.
OTOH, if the GOP retains the Senate majority or even if it’s a near 50/50%, Democrats may be wildly overestimating that Clinton nominees that would be acceptable to a majority of Democrats would have a good chance to be confirmed. Many factors will determine if Senate Republicans remain on a war footing when a SCOTUS opening happens under a Clinton administration.
Agree. It may be that no Democratic nominee can get through the Senate as currently constructed. But past performance does tell us that if somehow, magically, the GOP won the presidency but the Dems took the Senate, the Dems would cave and approve another Scalito because reasons.
I personally think that the point would be moot with regards to Dems and spinelessness if the Repubs keep the majority in the Senate and get the Presidency, as the Repubs would kill the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees faster than you can blink. I believe they have already threatened to do so, actually.
Simple majority votes for SCOTUS in that case, and the ‘game’ would be absolutely over for a liberal agenda for at least a generation.
Don’t worry. Any Clinton nominee would acceptable to a majority of Democrats…
The 2015, never mind the 2017, Democratic Senate caucus isn’t the 2009 Senate Democratic caucus.
This is the most liberal Senate Democratic caucus of my lifetime, and I’m pushing 60
If the Democrats lose the presidency in 2016 there may not be another election for generations. The Supreme Court is just one reason.
(Not a real election anyway. We’d go through the motions, of course.)
(OK, that’s what you said. Never mind.)
Agree.
Threats if one doesn’t get X should only be made if one is willing to follow-through on them and accept all the consequences. When the real life decision point is sometime in the future, better to say this is my preference and decline to respond what one will do later if one’s preference is denied. Thus, any Sanders’ supporter that says, “Of course I’ll vote for or won’t vote for Clinton in the general election” is giving up what little power they have. Obnoxious to me are the Clinton, and Sanders, supporters that demand acceptance of their candidate by the opponents during the primary contest. As if nothing can happen between now and then and options will be limited to Clinton or the election of a Republican president.
There are times to keep one’s powder dry.
I once did say to a boss that I either get X within 24 hours or I leave and won’t come back. In that situation, X was a more than reasonable demand, but it was outside company SOP. Did I think through what I would have done if he’d said, “Bye.” Not really, but I was prepared for that response and being unemployed. Being the great boss that he was, he suggested we negotiate. After a couple of weeks, I ended up with some of X now and a promise of more of it later which I accepted. He did follow through and ultimately delivered X-plus.
I would also call it not-understanding-the-difference-between-primaries-and-general-electionsism. You do in fact get to vote against Clinton in the primaries, and you might even have some minimal influence in the process of picking a candidate. Not if you’re just going to sit on the sidelines and whine, though.
I will never change my opinion of Hillary Clinton. It’s not just policy. I believe she is a deeply flawed human being and an incompetent administrator.
That’s not really the point. The question, if she’s the eventual nominee, is whether your opinion of her is so low that you’re willing to let a conservative Republican appoint the next however many Supreme Court justices.
Even if your opinion wrt Clinton isn’t wrong, doesn’t whatever you end up doing come 11/16 have to be weighed at that time in light of the actual opponent? Difficult for me to see that any of the GOP candidates aren’t deeply flawed human beings and have any competency bragging rights. The one thing we know now with 99+% certainty is that either a Democrat or Republican will win the 2016 election. Each of us will have to imagine what it will be like for the country as a whole under the administration of the D and R candidates and then choosing one or the other or none and acting accordingly.
If Bernie Sanders isn’t the Democratic party nominee, vote for who Bernie votes for.
It’s not rocket science.
No one intelligent actually believes that you can do better by losing the presidency than by winning it.
Is it an age thing? There were people making the same argument/rationalization that Spielberg is making back in 2000. The results speak for themselves.
Those who have lived for a while know that this argument wasn’t new in 2000, limited to Democratic Party fissures, or even advanced solely by the progressive and conservative wings of the respective parties.
The only difference that I can see is that partisan Dems have elevated the 2000 liberal “refusniks” to some power that they didn’t have and have made use of this as a fear factor in the past four Presidential election cycles.
As someone that didn’t for a moment consider voting for Nader (even if I didn’t reject his critique) and was satisfied to vote for Gore (would have been less satisfied if I’d done my homework on Lieberman), I’ve found blaming 2000 Nader voters for the installation of GWB tiresome, destructive, and simply wrong since the decision in Bush v. Gore was released. STFU already.
Chill, I’m not blaming Nader voters. I know they didn’t turn the tide. I’m just saying what you’re saying, that the argument that maybe things have to get worse before they get better isn’t new. Maximizing the contradictions and all that. Obviously the results don’t speak for themselves, but my point was just that I don’t think the country is in any way better off for having endured eight years of Bush/Cheney. Nothing to do with Nader.
I guess I’m just showing my own age by citing 2000 as a benchmark.
Alternative fantasy histories always look rosier than the real one people have no choice but to live through. And a majority of the electorate confirmed satisfaction with Bush/Cheney in ’04. The losers can point out how the winners screwed up, but only the winners are entitled to regret their decision and make an effort not to err like that in the future.
The damn racist confederates are still working on their fantasy alternative history 150 years on and where the South. All they’re accomplishing with their efforts is turning themselves into delusional nutters incapable of accepting not just a loss but change.
As TarheelDem mentioned in another comment, those of us that lived through the assassinations of JFK/MLK, Jr/RFK, Chicago 1968, Kent State and Jackson State and the Vietnam War know what it’s like to be handed an historical pile of offal. Know the real fear of a potential nuclear exchange. And ever so much more. We can’t transmute our feelings from then to those younger than us as cautionary tales. Can’t even communicate well enough with fellow liberals to reject destroying Iraq, Libya, and Syria. We do know what it would have taken for an better alternative history over the past fifty years, but a significant portion, if not a majority, of Democrats still don’t want what it takes. Maybe someday that will change.
Who will get more young voters to vote next year? Sanders or Clinton? That’s what these stories are about. Younger voters, “millenials” I guess they’re called now, have a harder time voting as a rule. It’s not become a lifelong habit and there’s little in our culture at large that encourages them to start. Between the ages of 18 and 34, young voters are busy doing a lot of other things that are much more interesting to them, IIRC. Getting an eduction, paying their own bills for many for the first time, getting laid, etc. Voting falls lower on the list of priorities for them. So, the question / concern in these stories isn’t that some authors are expressing their intent or pledging not to vote, or not to vote if Clinton is the nominee. (And for the record, I’ve read a few of them and whether anyone agrees with or finds faulty the reasoning of them, they’re not stupid. They have theories of consequence of outcomes that are valid and worth considering seriously.)
Readership here is mostly older than young voters. I’d guess the median age here is about 43 or 44 years old. So a fair amount of what we get here is dismissive and, frankly, condescending to those that threaten to be non-voters for Clinton (the presumed Democratic nominee here and most everywhere). Trouble is, these young voters, just because they’re young aren’t likely to vote at all. They’ll vote for an Obama because he’s new and different, just like them. Hillary already lost this fight once with their older siblings and friends, so she’s old news and just not as interesting as Obama was. That’s the problem, getting them to vote at all, but Hillary isn’t just not capturing their imagination, she’s causing a lot of them (I always want to say “us” but I’m 25-40 years older than young voters now) to stand up and pro-actively volunteer their rejection of her and most of what she stands for (not least of all of course her vote for the Iraq War and her support of economic policies that have pretty much screwed their prospects for the rest of their lives). It’s a serious problem and attention should be paid. Calling authors that threaten not to vote for Clinton dishonest and stupid is missing the point entirely.
If he’d written that Sanders will get a lot more turnout from millennials, then I’d have missed his point.
He didn’t write anything of the sort.
I think you got caught up in the idea that it’s just clickbait. It works on that level, but it’s not why.
There’s no question that Sanders will turn out a lot more millenials, is there? We all know that they’ll turn out for Sanders across the board. You know that, too. It’s an unstated premise of these articles, and you know it.
Democrats have been dismissing young voters since 1968. What they continue to miss is that voting is a habit — don’t get them when they’re young with an exciting, forward thinking candidate, you’ve lost most of them forever. They may show up when the “shit hits the fan,” but that’s about all. Then when youth voter participation rates drop, they say that’s proof that the young don’t vote and double-down on offering mushy conservatism to the olds.
When the young turn out and the DEM wins, that has to be followed up by delivering on what was promised, either specifically or generally as a new, and seemingly more positive, direction for the country. And not backtracking and offering up something not so different from what the loser represented. For example, if I’d wanted NAFTA and a reduction in the capital gains tax, I could have gotten an advocate for that with GHWB. And maybe if he’d won a second term the DEM Congress would have gone along with both or he would have presided over huge GOP congressional gains in 1994 (unprecedented for a president in his sixth year in office).
The claim that the Democratic Party has been dismissing young voters since 1968 is belied by the fact that the Democratic Party has been winning the majority/plurality of young voters throughout these years. A full consideration of the Clinton Administration would not stop at NAFTA and the capital gain tax rate and would take in the additional revenue gained through the increases in income tax rates which helped finance passages of policies which did help young people.
This claim also ignores the fact that the Obama Administration’s accomplishments and the policies the President has advocated for which have failed to gain Congressional approval have often spoken to issues that affect young people.
This claim also ignores the many campaign planks by all the current Democratic POTUS candidates which target young people.
I agree that there could be an even better effort to engage younger voters. But I dislike absolutist statements like “Democrats have dismissed younger voters” which are not backed up by the record.
This is a good example of why I find discussions with you tiresome or exhausting.
I make a statement that historically is generally accurate. You come back with that’s not true and either offer no data to refute what I’ve said or with spurious or IMO irrelevant or weak information. Then I can either let you have the last word, or I can do the freaking research to demonstrated that you’re incorrect. And often not just to the data but the analysis of it as well.
A majority/plurality of young voters isn’t good enough for a DEM to win. It has to be a strong majority and young voter participation rate is the other important variable.
No — the Democratic nominee hasn’t won the majority/plurality of young voters since 1968. GWB won the 18-24 year old vote in 2004 and broke even with Gore in 2000!
1972 – Gallup
?% (of young voters) (<30 years old) 48/52 (D/R)
1976 – Roper
9% (18-21) 49/51
23% (22-29) 56/44
(total percentage of voters <30 years old – 32%; first time voters born 1955-58 and note they went for Ford)
1980 – Roper
6% (18-21) 45/44
17% (22-29) 44/44
(total 23% — almost all Boomers eligible to vote)
1984 – Roper
11% (18-24) 39/61
12% (25-29) 43/57
(total 23% of voters; 18-24 late Boomers and post-boomers – IOW missed the ’60s and early ’70s and gave Reagan and landslide win in their age group)
1988 – Roper
20% (18-29) 47/53
1992 – Roper
11% (18-24) 46/33
10% (25-29) 41/36
(total 21%)
1996 – Roper
9% (18-24) 55/35
8% (25-29) 54/36
(total 17%)
2000 – Roper
9% (18-24) 47/47
8% (25-29) 49/46
(total 17%)
2004 – Roper
9% (18-24) 56/43
8% (25-29) 51/48
(total 17%)
2008 – Roper
18% (18-29) 66/32
2012 – Roper
19% (18-29) 60/37
US census historical voting rates by age
Age 18-29 — percentage of eligible voting population v. percentage of voters. (percentages differ from Roper reports which is to be expected because precise demographic and voting data isn’t easy to collect, but the different data sets are in general agreement.)
Apologies for the aggravation, but the point you’re wanting to make in this post is a little opaque.
The trend in the collection of electoral data you’re showing here is a growing dominance by Democratic POTUS candidates in gaining the youth vote. And you made an error in your assertion on the 2004 vote; Kerry took it big time.
If you were to make the more specific assertion that the current Democratic President or POTUS candidates have failed to respond to issues which are meaningful to young people, it would be worthwhile to hear from you what issues they should be addressing more aggressively. This lack of specificity teams with the data to make it difficult to support the “Dems are ignoring young adults” claim here.
Consider one example which runs counter to your claim: the ACA enrollment rate during this most recent open window period has been higher than 2014 both in overall numbers and in the percentage of new enrollees who are younger adults. The ability for parents to place their adult children younger than 26 on their family plans has taken a financial and health access stressor off of the backs of these young Americans. And the Medicaid program, expanded under the ACA, highly disproportionately benefits children, children who should now have no doubt which Party is responsible for the health insurance they have benefitted from.
I don’t think your statement is true either. The Democrats have never dismissed the youth vote. They have not always won it, but that is not the same thing as dismissing it. Their policies are designed to generally appeal to young voters.
Unless you think choosing Hillary instead of Bernie is the same thing as dismissing the youth vote, then I don’t think you have made a case. The young voter is almost always to the left of the party as a whole so it is not surprising that the candidate is often not the first choice of the young voter.
What’s the case in support of Hillary doing anything that will specifically benefit the younger voter now or in the future. There isn’t one, except for the very few that are or might rise to be a member of the elite that she represents.
Most of them are not nor will ever be part of that elite. They keep their heads down, do the best they can against almost unbearable daily obstacles and try to survive. Hillary says nothing to address them. Nothing.
Hillary’s campaign announcement summed it up. She’s in it because she’s gonna do “something new.” A lie, of course since she did this eight years ago and lost. But also sick in a way because she puts it so blithely in that video, like it’s no big deal. Just like all of you every day, she says, I’m doing something new, like any of us really have the chance. The arrogance, the disconnect, in a woman otherwise not ridiculous, is astounding.
Hillary has no clue what young people in our country are going through. Her concerns are with maintaining the system she and her husband created to exalt themselves.
I don’t think your characterization of Hillary Clinton is fair, but I don’t want to argue about it. Let us suppose I accept Bernie’s premise – that the wealthy and the corporations have rigged the system and the oligarchs rule. I don’t need to strain all that hard to accept it.
The reason I deliberately do not strain to accept it is because it is an argument to give up on the political system. I do not vote for Hillary. I do not vote for Bernie. I do not vote. Why? Because I think the idea that Bernie’s political revolution will actually happen is ludicrous. What can Bernie do about any of the things he rails against? Zip. Nada. Nothing. Not one single thing.
If the system is rigged like Bernie says it is rigged, we’ve already lost. Wake me when the election is over.
I got a nifty new Xbox for Christmas.
It’s already happening…Only 36.4% of eligible voters voted in this year’s midterm elections
Yes. Over the years the Republicans have done very well at suppressing the vote with the constant drumbeat “The government is the problem”, and “Government is incompetent”.
At the heart, Bernie is also delivering an anti-government message that hides a huge contradiction. He wants to make government bigger and more powerful to take on the corporations who are exploiting us. Why would I want to make a rigged system bigger and more powerful? Big insurance owns Congress yet Bernie will get us single payer health care? Huh?
Shouldn’t I maybe be a libertarian and do everything I can to starve a rigged system? Or do nothing at all? What’s the point? That’s going to be the end result of Bernie’s “political revolution” after it peters out – the rigged system is confirmed. The oligarchs rule. More people quit on the system.
If it wasn’t for the TeeVee, I’d care.
Republicans don’t want to elect them, either. Who is more despised than Congress? They are lucky to be in double digits approval. Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer will be a sort of climactic if they ever manage it.
You lost me.
I don’t think it is very complicated. When I listen to Bernie’s diagnosis of the problem, it is easy to convince me he is correct.
Except when I’m then asked to believe that Bernie can take on the oligarchs and win, I roll on the floor laughing. All I have to do is believe the credible part of his message and dismiss the incredible part as Fantasy Island… What am I left with if I don’t feel like tilting at windmills with Don Quixote?
The sensible thing for me to do is give up on politics. Bernie has convinced me Hillary Clinton and everybody else in politics is corrupt and the system is rigged. He hasn’t convinced me he is the answer. There is no answer. I quit on politics.
The good news is that the plutocrats are smart enough to leave most of us enough crumbs to amuse ourselves to death.
I’d prefer to be optimistic. The system may be rigged but it is not so rigged that we cannot make a difference here and there. In some cases, a huge difference. See the past seven years. It took 40 years of Reaganism, a steady transfer of power from government to corporations, to get to 2008. Let’s see if 40 years of Obamaism claws most of it back. That’s enough to get me off the couch and vote.
Not good enough for you? Too bad. See the Constitution of the United States. This is as good as it gets.
There are portions of the Obama Coalition who will not turn out to vote for the next Democratic candidate, whether it ends up Bernie or Hillary, no matter how well run their campaigns are. There are other portions of the electorate who have not voted for Obama who will be more willing to vote for Hillary or Bernie, whether those people did not vote in ’08 and ’12 or they voted for another candidate. This includes young people, but there are other portions of the vote which will be equally important for the candidates to turn out.
I believe the Republican candidate will have established such a reprehensible record of statements and policy positions by the time they gain the GOP nomination that they will be defeated by a well-run campaigns of Bernie or Hillary. I feel that both of their campaigns have met the standards of well run campaigns so far, but the Democratic Primaries will confirm or reject my view on this. The only thing likely to jeopardize a Democratic win would be a massive voter suppression of minorities, single women and younger voters which does not appear to be in the cards in 2016.
I’m learning to let go of confronting Frog Pond commenters and liberals I encounter personally who threaten to withhold their vote if their preferred candidate does not win. I’m even letting go of responding to most people who attack Hiilary’s character, since her character is the only one subject to these attacks for some reason; people will feel what they feel. Where I enter into quarrels is in response to claims which are not supported by the record of the candidates. An unfortunate percentage of these claims have been counterfactual.
Really.
My point is that we’ve got a number of authors, young and likely some not so young, already threatening to throw the election because they (we) see Clinton as not an authentic, traditional Democrat. You respond that it doesn’t matter because the Republicans are so bad this year (of course true) that it won’t matter, and a bunch of other bullshit. Like dear old boo, missing the bigger picture entirely.
Given the opportunity, why fail to do the best we could possibly do? That is, elect an authentic Democrat under the banner of his preferred label “democratic socialism.”
Equivocation. Obfuscation. Distraction. Anything but upset the status quo where the rich get richer and the rest of us are forced to fail and suffer.
The lie of these criticisms is hidden in plain sight. You get your paycheck, your status, your place in a pecking order that you find comfortable from the system as it is. And I’d like to grant that you just don’t get it, but it looks to me more like you like it just he way it is, damn those that come after you. Bully.
What we’ve got now sucks. Hillary will continue what we’ve got now, but probably slightly worse. And slightly worse gets a lot worse in just no time at all. So if some writers dare to say they’re not going to fall for the trap any more, give them credit. Don’t try to prove it doesn’t make any difference.
Here’s the difference. We could be a country that if it doesn’t do much better, at the very least, could do a lot less bad. Hillary isn’t anywhere near suggesting that. She says we’re doing well enough and if you don’t like it, fuck you. Sanders says let’s stop purposely causing so much suffering. He says he’s got a way to do that. A way to do that. That’s what I want to vote for. That’s what we all want to vote for. Life. Generosity. Honesty. Creativity. Inspiration.
BooMan’s inferred point is that a couple of young writers are incapable of throwing the election eleven months from Election Day. They don’t speak for millions of young voters.
To your points: I’m a Bernie supporter, and I believe there would be a meaningful difference between the two in the way they would run their Adminstrations, but I don’t share your opinions of Hillary. Reading through those opinions, we see that they are heavy on the personal loathing and light on the factual record.
The biggest problem with the personal loathing argument from Bernie supporters is that we have to convert a ton of Hillary supporters in a couple of months or Bernie loses the nomination. I just don’t think we can do that by calling Hillary a duplicitous, scheming, equivicating, obfuscating, inauthentic Democrat. That persuasion strategy would not only suggest to these current Hillary supporters that they are stupid and perhaps inauthentic Democrats themselves, the claims also rely on a firm rejection of the full record Clinton put up as a Senator and Secretary of State.
Ok. Well, thanks for clarifying. And please excuse if I was a little strident in my reply to you. But, just to clarify, however they sound / read, my comments, I don’t “personally” anything Hillary Clinton. Don’t know her. The closest I got was in 1992 when she came to town with Bill and All and she got to do their standard ‘four more years headline’ spiel. I kind of liked it and their prospects that late summer afternoon in 1992 were looking pretty good, so she was having a good time with it. The several thousand that attended that rally at the Auditorium downtown here in Milwaukee loved it as well. So, when I say she now “disgusts” me or any other terms you’ve read that sound personal, it’s not that. My current distaste for her, as a politician, really boils down to her vote for the Iraq War on the one hand, and her bad economic policies on the other. I think these categorical flaws are irredeemable. She’s had her chance to prove herself a profile in courage and failed disastrously. Can’t forgive those failings, so I don’t mince words describing her, but it’s political, not personal.
Amongst the reasons I’m suggesting that we need to come up with some specific and persuasive things about Hillary’s record is that recent polls of Democrats show a plurality think Hillary would do a better job than Bernie on the economy. Attacking Hillary on her husband’s economic record, and laying general claims that her relationships with the Clinton Foundation and Wall Street make her untrustworthy, do not appear to be making her unelectable.
These so-passionate-that-I’ll-stay-home arguments are so stupid that they barely need rebutting.
There is no danger of a significant number of ‘purists’ refusing to vote for a flawed Democrat over a catastrophic Republican.
However, is there a danger of a very significant number of less-passionate potential-Dem-voters staying home because they aren’t motivated to vote for a candidate who strikes them as part of the ‘status quo?’
I think the classic case here is the Republican primary of 76 – Ford vs. Reagan. There was a real ideological difference, and some of the Reagan voters no doubt did stay home. Ford lost very narrowly, which left the Party establishment weakened and fractured for 1980, with no clear candidate initially, though it coalesced behind Bush. The result was that Reagan got the nom and Presidency, which proved vastly more consequential than a Ford victory would have. So take your ball and go home worked, and the willingness of the GOP base to defy their party leaders today reflects this.
That said, I think it is too high-risk a strategy at this juncture and at most junctures. Sanders will not be running again, and I don’t see another Sanders on the horizon for 2020. Warren doesn’t seem to want it and may be temperamentally unsuited. And the Court is too closely divided. I’d rather have Sanders, but I will accept Clinton if she gets the nom. That said, I think it false that undermining the party never works. It depends on the circumstances.
Doubt the Reagan voters sat out the ’76 election. While Ford was the GOP incumbent, he hadn’t been elected to any office higher than a House seat and from that position wouldn’t have been a viable POTUS candidate. That was a legitimate critique by the Reagan folks during the primary. TPTB differed and a majority of GOP primary voters agreed with them. Difficult to say that they were wrong considering the election results. Take a DEM administration wiped out due to corruption with a lame appointed incumbent running for election, an it’s difficult not to project that she/he would lose by a large margin.
There was enough loyalty to Reagan that one Ford delegate actually defected and gave him a delegate. The race was extremely close in some states, like Ohio, so it wouldn’t have taken many sit-outs. And the GOP takeover of the South was just starting – Carter carried pretty much the entire South. It doesn’t seem far-fetched to me that there would be a few conservatives in the South uninterested in either Carter or Ford who would’ve come out for Reagan. Only 4 years later, they would do so in droves.
Note: Ford had no difficulty in the GE carrying states that went with Reagan for the nomination. The Ohio delegation went for Ford.
The GOP took over the south in 1964. However, (and this is the Blue Dog DEMs argument), a southerner is competitive in traditionally strong, southern DEM states. IOW, tribalism (anti-Yankee) trumps racism in the south. That’s a simplistic interpretation because it leaves out militarism that is strong in the south and New Deal economic policies that were popular in the south because the white folks in that region were beneficiaries of those policies. What’s seemingly on offer with the candidates with those issue factors plays a large role.
Combine the 1968 HHH and Wallace votes and the electoral map doesn’t look all that different from the 1976 map. Neither racism nor militarism were highlighted features in the ’76 election. Lefties, such as myself, would like to claim that Ford lost because of the Nixon corruption hangover. At the macro-electoral map level, the evidence for that interpretation doesn’t exist. (IIRC, it did surface in the ’74 midterms.) However, tribalism isn’t limited to the south. At a most superficial level, Carter’s southern accent was a negative outside the south. (Not inadvertent that the Clintons put on and take off a southern drawl depending on the location of the audience.)
In 1980, Reagan had to be less squishy on race than Carter (carefully made clear in the south and mostly hidden from voters outside the south) and not cede any fundie religiousity to Carter.
The Southern Strategy isn’t quite dead but it’s getting stale. We got a hint of that in 2008. An economic meltdown under a GOP administration and a non-southern GOP ticket was just enough to flip IN and NC from red to blue. Didn’t hold four years later because traditions don’t give up easily.
I don’t think the southern tribalism argument holds up because just 4 years later, Carter was just as Southern, Reagan was just as clearly not, and Reagan cleaned up in the South. Militarism, of course, loomed huge because of the Iran hostage situation, and I think that was decisive, though Volcker was no help. However, Reagan was also running against the New Deal.
Further, Reagan was always running against the headwind of a strong electability argument because he was seen as an extremist in 1976. Supporting Reagan even in the primaries, then, was something like supporting Sanders now. It required one to either believe the party and pundit elite were wrong about who was more electable – and prior to Iran, Volcker, prop 13 etc., I think the elites had a very strong case – or a willingness to risk losing the election in a bid to change the direction of the party and the parameters of the political conversation.
Reagan’s extremism, militarism, religiousity, and racism trumped the tribalism that worked for Carter in ’76.
Multivariate. It’s rarely one thing operating in presidential elections. It’s why all those naysayers about Obama in ’08 were wrong in claiming that an AA man couldn’t win. And why DEMs that have pointed to Obama’s race as the explanation for whatever difficulties he has encounter have remained wrong.
Bernie just nailed it in a speech where he said the Fed was controlled by the very banks they were supposed to regulate. “The Fed doesn’t regulate Wall Street, Wall Street regulates the Fed.”
It has now been widely exposed that Hillary has managed to get her 2008 campaign co-chair installed as Chair of the DNC. Sort of like “the DNC doesn’t regulate Hillary, Hillary regulates the DNC.” What made this a problem was just last week a DNC crapware voter database security problem caused Hillary’s DNC operative to decide to take that opportunity to ratfuck Bernie by going on CNN and MSNBC to declare that Bernie was no better than a common house thief who used an unlocked door to `take things’. This made me very angry so I signed a MoveOn.org petition calling for Debbie Wasserman-Shultz to be fired.
Now I became one of those stupid ones, grabbing my pen, writing here, contacting the DNC, contacting every Democrat running from my district in Colorado that I would not be voting for Hillary or any other DNC sponsored Democrat while Debbie Wasserman-Shultz remained in office as Chair of the DNC. I assumed from the start that all of those I contacted could probably care less about my stupid little vote but I wanted to get their attention.
In 2008 my three millennial kids worked door to door for Obama because they believed in hope and change (ok, maybe legalized pot as well). The 2012 election comes along and they’re completely unplugged from politics and it looked as though they might not bother to vote at all. I asked, why? They turned to me to simply say, “There’s nothing to vote for.”
Hillary certainly has her problem of nothing to vote for but there is something far more dangerous in play. Josh Marshal has warned that if the Bernie supporters feel they’ve been treated unfairly it introduces a toxic chemical into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party that could have unpredictable consequences for both Hillary and downstream Democratic candidates. Hillary can certainly keep her advantage by having her operative in control of the DNC but she just might lose a winnable election if her base thinks the primary was rigged and goes back to sleep, way more than the loss of my stupid little vote.
Technically, the FED wasn’t designed to directly regulate Wall St. It’s domain was regulating banks, but not alone in that because there was also the Treasury, FDIC, and FSLIC. The SEC had primary responsibility for regulating Wall St. and CFTC did the same for commodities trading. That’s one major reason why tearing down the Glass-Steagall wall has been so devastating. Compounded by the “modernization” of commodities futures trading and reducing the numbers and role of regulators in all federal regulatory agencies (aka “streamlining” federal agencies — thanks Bill and Al.) But we have to recognize that Wall St. had long been chipping away at all the regulatory oversight put in place during the New Deal that made them so robust.
Bit remember, originally he Fed did not include the bankers it was regulating.
The structure hasn’t changed over the decades. Members of the Federal Reserve Banks choose 2/3rds of the Board of Directors. Half may be officers, directors, employees of the member banks and half may not be officers, directors, or employees of any bank. The Fed Board selects the other third who may not be officers, directors, employees, or stockholders of any bank.
It was a robust system for a long time and for the most part national bank members were more stable than state banks (although states that properly regulated their state banks probably did as well). One important component for a long time was that interstate banking was illegal. (First Interstate was grandfathered in). States could choose to allow intrastate branch banking. California was one that did. Texas and MO were two that didn’t. Didn’t have nearly enough smart/competent people in charge when the interstate banking ban was lifted.
I think the ire of the Progressives is misdirected. The problem is not the Democratic party. The problem is the Constitution of the United States. We can enact a progressive (or a conservative) agenda in Canada because we elect a government with the power to enact their agenda. We can hold then that government accountable.
The Americans do not elect a government. There is no one to hold accountable for anything. The system clearly favours the political party who does not want to enact anything because very little can get accomplished without massive majorities or bipartisan support. They are enough choke-points built into the system to ensure any sweeping agenda will fail.
I think Bernie’s agenda has zero chance. None. Not now. Not ever. That would take a real revolution and that too is impossible in a Brave New World. As long as the plutocrats let us have hamburgers, Ipads and NFL football we’ll submit. This, of course, is an argument against participating in the political process at all. Spielberg should pack it in and get a life. There are lots of better things to do with his time than tilt at windmills.
I don’t have to be happy choosing between a party that includes Blue Dogs and progressives or a party that includes RINOs and fascists, but that is the choice. As long as I see a big enough difference between the two its worth my time to pay attention and go to the polls. If I don’t see a difference, I settle back onto my couch. Barack Obama or George Bush? Yeah, I see a difference.
I’m for Hillary because I think she is much more likely to win than Sanders. Why? Because if Bernie is the nominee Democratic fund raising will dry up and Koch money will buy Congress. If Bernie is the nominee his political revolution and “Is a conscientious objector qualified to be Commander in Chief?” will be the issues. If he is not, Republicans will be running against the Obama record again. I think Bernie will lose his revolution and I think Hillary will win a third Obama term.
Convince me that Hillary is really no different than the Republicans? Then I quit. Life is too short to bet on Fantasy Island.
The Seahawks are rolling. Bernie who?
Im not to write a bunch of thinkpieces about it, but I wont be voting for Clinton. It is what it is.