Author Topic: The Politics Thread v3  (Read 95630 times)

Offline Raineh Daze

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The Politics Thread v3
« on: April 21, 2016, 07:27:36 PM »
Continue debating the merits of Kasich vs Clinton if you want. :p

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2016, 07:32:31 PM »
Clinton>Kasich, no functional difference in what happens with them in office, Clinton not exciting and dangerous to progressives and Democrats.  That is, the party itself, and the Progressive movement.
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Offline FireInTheSky

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #2 on: April 21, 2016, 08:34:21 PM »
HOWEVER.  And this is a huge issue, the down ticket will suffer BIG TIME for the Ds.

I'm also worried about this. With how bad the R prez choices are, the Ds have a yuuuge opportunity to pick up a bunch of seats and then actually maybe get some things done for once. But the fracturing / alienation are squandering that opportunity.

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #3 on: April 21, 2016, 08:37:02 PM »
Earlier I've seen a number of Clinton supporters and surrogates say things to the effect "We don't want Is voting, if you're anI wait until the GE" or "if you're an I you aren't a D and therefore are the enemy".  And then in the same breath accuse Sanders supporters of being "like the Tea Party" and intentionally splitting the Ds.
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Offline Unbeliever

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #4 on: April 21, 2016, 08:56:05 PM »
I don't think the executive action is as powerful as you think it is, although it is more powerful than people realize.  And less powerful.  It's weird.  People think Obama's using it to literally trample on their rights.  Like, manifest them as physical objects to trample on them.  And then they simultaneously think he can't do anything of note with them.  But mostly, it's a directorial thing.  Choose to spend the money that Congress has allocated for these things that Congress has enacted.  And choose how to spend that money.  There's a deceptive amount of stuff you can do with it, because it's all bureaucracy.

And all of that federal policy making?  I don't think there will be a functional difference between the two.  ...  She's slightly right of center, he's right of center, with a far right twinge at times as Bhu said.
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You say that Hillary Clinton is "right of center."  So, I was curious.  I did some googling and looked up her NOMINATE Score.  This post does a decent job explaining them and where they come from, as well as mentioning her score:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/3/31/1374629/-Hillary-Clinton-Was-the-11th-Most-Liberal-Member-of-the-Senate  Basically, they are based on a legislator's votes and tell you where they are relative to other legislators.  The only thing I'll add is that NOMINATE scores are very very good.  They are more or less the gold standard for ideological scoring in social science.

Now it's possible you think President HRC would be extremely different from Senator HRC, ideologically.  But, it'd take a huge swing to make her right of center.  Unless you believe the whole Democratic party is right of center ...

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #5 on: April 21, 2016, 09:08:29 PM »
Now it's possible you think President HRC would be extremely different from Senator HRC, ideologically.  But, it'd take a huge swing to make her right of center.  Unless you believe the whole Democratic party is right of center ...
In many ways... they are. If you compare us to most other democratic nations, we're way, way to the right. I think part of what's going on with the popularity of Bernie is that he represents a disenfranchised group of people who are sick of how right-ish the Dems have been (i.e. they've sold out to big business), and want to swing the pendulum back to the left.
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Offline dman11235

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #6 on: April 21, 2016, 09:37:43 PM »
There's a great article on Cracked by Pauli Pousso about how he views American politics.  Well, he and a Candian Cracked writer.  And there's....I'll see if I can find it, an article from somewhere....but it has the major candidates on a normalized spectrum.  Bernie on the far left, Clinton almost dead center but slightly right, and then the rest off to the far right.

EDIT: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-brasunas/there-is-a-moderate-republican-in-this-race_b_9704194.html

http://www.cracked.com/blog/how-us-elections-look-through-eyes-foreigners/
« Last Edit: April 21, 2016, 09:50:30 PM by dman11235 »
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Offline Unbeliever

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #7 on: April 21, 2016, 10:26:12 PM »
Now it's possible you think President HRC would be extremely different from Senator HRC, ideologically.  But, it'd take a huge swing to make her right of center.  Unless you believe the whole Democratic party is right of center ...
In many ways... they are. If you compare us to most other democratic nations, we're way, way to the right.
Oh yeah, definitely.  I was speaking relative to the United States.  The left/right continuum maps differently for other countries.

And there's....I'll see if I can find it, an article from somewhere....but it has the major candidates on a normalized spectrum.  Bernie on the far left, Clinton almost dead center but slightly right, and then the rest off to the far right.

EDIT: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-brasunas/there-is-a-moderate-republican-in-this-race_b_9704194.html
I don't know how to say this nicely, but the "normalized" scale is well ... bullshit.  Not that the author is wrong at the gross level of things, he's put people in the right order.  But, the space between them?  The idea that Neoliberal is exactly at the midpoint between Liberal and Conservative (whatever all those mean precisely) is just him making it up. 

That's exactly the reason why things like NOMINATE were developed, to offer a more precise, rigorous, and nuanced view of ideological scaling.  It's quite strong evidence that HRC isn't in the "middle." 

More than that, there is no middle.  If you look at Congress what you see is a big clump of Dems and a big clump of Reps and a lot of white space in between.  The parties have rarely been this polarized:  even the most conservative Democrat is substantially more liberal than the most liberal Republican.  So, even if we posit that HRC is the most conservative Democrat (and there's no evidence that's true), she's still quite a bit to the left of the most ardently liberal Republican (who isn't in the race due to a tough primary fight, but that's a discussion for a different post). 

Although whether that makes a candidate liberal in some objective sense is an entirely different matter.  This is all relative to other political actors in the US.
« Last Edit: April 21, 2016, 10:45:39 PM by Unbeliever »

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #8 on: April 21, 2016, 10:52:26 PM »
Plus putting neoliberalism in the middle is insane, because the instant you drag out a two-axis view of politics it's pretty clear that a pure free market doctrine can't GO more to the right.

EDIT: Well, if you pick market approaches as the horizontal approaches and go with putting communism on the left.
« Last Edit: April 21, 2016, 11:11:57 PM by Raineh Daze »

Offline PlzBreakMyCampaign

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #9 on: April 22, 2016, 11:40:06 PM »
Hillary on the right?  :lmao :lmao :lmao :lmao :lmao Only if you are somewhere between Stalin and Mussolini. Actually that would explain a lot of general seeming 'stupidity' from the boards about anything political\historical; it's not stupidity, its just crazy fascism.

Good luck trying to do some basic education Unbeliever. You have more patience than I.

how he views American politics.  Well, he and a Candian
Well if some guy got together with a Canadian on it....

Offline RedWarlock

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #10 on: April 22, 2016, 11:55:01 PM »
Tagging in because I respect the hell out of everyone's opinions here and I want to keep watch.

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Offline bhu

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #11 on: April 23, 2016, 01:38:33 AM »
Hillary on the right?  :lmao :lmao :lmao :lmao :lmao Only if you are somewhere between Stalin and Mussolini. Actually that would explain a lot of general seeming 'stupidity' from the boards about anything political\historical; it's not stupidity, its just crazy fascism.

Good luck trying to do some basic education Unbeliever. You have more patience than I.

how he views American politics.  Well, he and a Candian
Well if some guy got together with a Canadian on it....

Hillary is considered to the right for several reasons, of varying validity depending on your point of view.  Personally I think she's just a panderer who fits her message to whoever she wants to appeal to at the moment, but she's very much a neoliberal, depending on your definition of the word, there being three examples:

Originally Neoliberal defined a supposed third middle way between communism and capitalism. 

Then it became associated more with radical (for the time) free market capitalism in the tradition of Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

It's also sometimes used to refer to former conservatives who turned liberal, which would fit clinton as she went from campaigning for Goldwater (her current logo is virtually identical to his) to joining the Dems later in life. 

She's rather infamously flip-flopped on a number of issues depending on what she needed to portray at the time, and was well to the right of Sanders before this campaign began.  Both those things make Dems look at her the way Republicans looked at Romney last time:  "He/She may have some core beliefs, but we can be assured we will never know the truth of what those are."

Her attack lines on Sanders campaigns suggesting that he's more conservative than she because of 1 issue (guns), that his core audience is white (he's done well and even won well in mixed population states) implying he might be racist without stating it, and that he's somehow a puppet of the Republicans for pointing out her flaws turn off a lot of liberal voters.  Well that and the open cheating she's been doing to maintain her lead over Bernie.

Is she leftist?  Not by any means whatsoever.  Nor is she right.  She's an opportunist who will say anything or do anything necessary to get ahead.  She'd turn right in a moment if she thought it would benefit her in some instance, except for the fact that she's poisoned that well.  So now she has only one audience to pander to, and she has to move sharply to the left to do it, the way she moved left before when she ran for NY senator.  In appearance she's become more liberal, and even begun to vote more liberal.  But is that what she wants, or just what she sees herself needing to do to get what she wants?

tl;dr: Clinton is as much as socialist as Donald Trump is an Evangelical Christian.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2016, 02:14:06 AM by bhu »

Offline SolEiji

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #12 on: April 23, 2016, 01:51:14 AM »
Hillary is considered to the right for several reasons...

And being a bloody warhawk.  As far as I'm considered, if she wins I'll congratulate the Republicans on winning, because it'll apply regardless who actually wins the general.
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Offline Unbeliever

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #13 on: April 23, 2016, 12:24:48 PM »
Is she leftist?  Not by any means whatsoever.  Nor is she right.  She's an opportunist who will say anything or do anything necessary to get ahead.  She'd turn right in a moment if she thought it would benefit her in some instance, except for the fact that she's poisoned that well.  So now she has only one audience to pander to, and she has to move sharply to the left to do it, the way she moved left before when she ran for NY senator.  In appearance she's become more liberal, and even begun to vote more liberal.  But is that what she wants, or just what she sees herself needing to do to get what she wants?

tl;dr: Clinton is as much as socialist as Donald Trump is an Evangelical Christian.
I'm not as concerned about opportunism as many people seem to be.  If a candidate adopts a set of policy positions b/c their constituency wants it that doesn't necessarily bother me.  It's one view of representative politics, the Edmund Burke one where you pick the person and trust them to use their best judgment being the other one.  I'm not sure one has anything better to say than the other, and in the modern world of polling I think the Burkean vision, if it really worked, isn't practical.   

I am massively idiosyncratic in this regard, though, so this is a really fair criticism.  And, my above comments (Nominate scores, etc.) have had nothing much to do with my own personal preferences over candidates.  I think there's lots of valid criticisms of HRC.  I'm not intending to come off as a Clinton apologist.  I do however think HRC /= any of the current Republican candidates by quite a large margin.  At least, that's what the evidence shows. 

I also can't really use Right/Left in objective terms, which I get the sense that people are doing.  I can meaningfully think of to the Right of X, or the Left of Y, usually using the medians of the parties in there.  But, some objective scale, where Right or Left are a bundle of policy positions (and, note that we're constrained to two parties, so that bundle is bound to be haphazard as fuck) is hard for me, personally.

@SolEiji
Traditionally, there has been virtually no difference between the parties on foreign policy.  They might use different rhetoric, but that's kind of it.  That observation was pre-9/11, though, so it might have changed.  Obama has been extremely willing to use force in foreign policy, so I don't know if we have any candidates running who wouldn't qualify as hawkish under that definition.  I would wager that HRC would be among the most interventionist (as opposed to isolationist) candidates running, if only b/c that was her job for a while.  Although I think she at least acknowledges that the word diplomacy exists, which is more than Ted Cruz ...

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #14 on: April 23, 2016, 01:18:00 PM »
Bernie is definitely not hawkish.  So...yeah one candidate isn't hawkish.  He's been against interventionist wars since time immemorial.  He's consistently been on the "no war" platform his entire political career, and famously had his speech against the Iraq war to the empty house back in 2004.

And you're right, Clinton isn't like the current Republican nominees. She's way left of them.  But she's about as far right as past conservative presidents.  I think that's what most of our complaints and explanations of why she's a Republican are.  That's the problem with the comparative scale though, saying "I'm not far left but I'm left of this person" is how we got to the point of the Democrats representing the middle of the spectrum and the Republicans representing the extreme right.  A "moderate Republican today is a nut job 15 years ago.  Notably there are exceptions of course.

But again, the problem with comparisons is that you need an anchor value to make them meaningful.  A choice between two candidates who want to...I'll use something realish....two candidates on the subject of drug legislation.  One is to the right, more conservative than the other.  Say you're a liberal, so you're on board with the one to the left right?  Well, not so fast, the only difference between the two is one wants the death penalty for offenders and the other just wants life in prison.  You wouldn't call the life in prison a liberal, even if they were running on the liberal ticket.  A slightly less extreme version of that is what's happened here.
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Offline SolEiji

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Mudada.

Offline bhu

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #16 on: April 24, 2016, 05:02:06 PM »
Charles Koch implies possible support for hillary over GOP nominee

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/24/politics/charles-koch-hillary-clinton-2016/

Things like this are the other reason liberals see Hillary as Conservative.  Conservatives are willing to cross over to vote for her, because they say she's Bush-lite.


Offline Libertad

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #17 on: April 24, 2016, 10:54:22 PM »
Accusations of bribery and corruption are all over /r/the_donald!

So this one moderator, jcm267, deleted his 7-year-old account. As head moderator, his last action was to de-mod 3 of the remaining 4, leaving CisWhiteMalestrom as sole remaining leader over the subreddit.

People think that jcm267 "sold" the subreddit to CisWhiteMalestrom for this action.

Offline Unbeliever

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #18 on: April 25, 2016, 08:22:50 AM »
Charles Koch implies possible support for hillary over GOP nominee

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/24/politics/charles-koch-hillary-clinton-2016/

Things like this are the other reason liberals see Hillary as Conservative.  Conservatives are willing to cross over to vote for her, because they say she's Bush-lite.
Well, when the other option is a return to the gold standard ...

(That's Cruz, by the way.)

Offline Libertad

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Re: The Politics Thread v3
« Reply #19 on: April 25, 2016, 02:18:15 PM »
Things like this are the other reason liberals see Hillary as Conservative.  Conservatives are willing to cross over to vote for her, because they say she's Bush-lite.

Oh yay, a President who's either going to tank the economy or get us in another pointless war, but not both at the same time. Such a great deal.

Not exactly, but that's what Bush-lite brings to mind.

Anyway, I think that the Koch's change of heart might be due to the fact that nominally they're self-defined Libertarians. As in they love big business with no rules to hinder their practices and view taxation as theft, so traditionally they supported Republican candidates.

But the whole "maximum individual freedom" thing of Libertarianism doesn't hold up when you're donating enough money to fund the GDP of a third-world country to leaders who helped usher in:
  • warrantless wiretapping,
  • spearheaded efforts to demolish women's healthcare and make LGBT people's lives a living hell,
  • supported racial profiling and stop and frisk searches in black neighborhoods,
  • relegated Muslims and Latinos in the public perception as criminal fifth columnists only pretending to be normal citizens so they can suck the economy dry and build a theocratic dictatorship on the ruins of Middle America,
  • and much more.

As this stuff gets more and more in the news, you gotta think of your legacy and how future generations will view you. When you're giving money to guys like these, you really can't call yourself a flag-waving patriot who stands stalwart against tyranny without suffering massive cognitive dissonance or being a liar without principles. People forty or fifty years from now sure as hell won't remember you the way you want to be remembered.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2016, 02:23:29 PM by Libertad »