Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

this is a common trap with lefties, who like to frame issues as a simple matter of determining what policies produce the greatest common good based on the facts available - but that is actually pretty divorced from the reality of how people make decisions about who to vote for. It's not simply a matter of the opposing side not being exposed to the correct sources of information, and it never has been.

"A THIRD OF THE COUNTRY ARE ALWAYS MORONS" not considered smart political rhetoric

especially since it's more like 2/3rds

Still maybe a pretty conservative percentage there.

It is always good to remember that the peak of the IQ bell curve is presumed to be 100. The average person is somewhat mediocre at sorting out all the complexities and nuances of language and logic. Put them under a lot of emotional stress and they tend to respond to it on a very basic level. Doesn't help to call them morons.

no need to get defensive

it's not like geniuses have been shown to be immune to emotional appeals and pre-existing biases. often they're better at coming up w/ post-hoc justifications tho.

it's shorthand, dawg; we mean "politically"

and i include a lot of 'educated' Democrats in my sample so i'm more optimistic than most

outic otm, maybe sanders' estimate at 5-10% would look better if a similar (or not too far-off) exercise estimated the figure of core dem voters who were fully invested in each and every stated aim of "the left" as defined by its opponents.

I hadn't heard this before (from Krugman):

it’s time for Sanders to engage in some citizenship. The presidency isn’t the only office on the line; down-ballot races for the Senate and even the House are going to be crucial. Clinton has been raising money for other races; Sanders hasn’t, and is still being evasive on whether he will ever do so. Not acceptable.

this seems like a dumb thing for Sanders not to do, don't really get what his motive is there

Priestess Maddow asked him about it.

"We'll see," Sanders said. "Right now, our focus is on winning the nomination."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bernie-sanders-fundraise-down-ballot-democrats-maddow

why dont you ask goldman sachs for some cash to help flesh out your campaign staff, homey

odd that he wouldn't consider that a key part of his "revolution"

xp

yeah, the political system is rigged because none of the young democrats showed up for the 2010 and 2014 house elections, not the opposite he claims all the time.

the problem is that right now is when the primaries are happening so if leftists want to primary moderate dem representatives they need to be doing it now. once bernie wins he can campaign alongside candidates that won their primaries (assuming he isn't too busy trying to win the general election) but they won't necessarily be the ppl he will need to have a political revolution. it's like bad enough that the kids don't show up to the midterm elections but they're barely showing up to this election.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/feel-the-math/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body&_r=0

i love krugman (this election season aside), but i'm not gonna be too shocked if the sanders campaign decides not to take the advice of a guy who hasn't missed a chance to shit on them at every opportunity

That's why electoral politics should be abandoned entirely and replaced with a lottery system - people get randomly chosen for one year of unpaid service to the government. You open your mailbox one day and, "Aw, fuck - I'm a Senator!"

i love this idea. we should do the same for police too imo.

i smell a plan to funnel Sanders money to Planet Debbie.

i love this idea. we should do the same for police too imo.

I know this idea isn't entirely serious but the problem is that you would just end up with an extra-government professional class/apparatus running things - lobbying firms, ie the institutions that would persist from one term to the next, would basically be in charge, because every newbie thrown into a position would be reliant on them to understand their new job and the processes involved. (This is also one of the many problems with term limits ime)

This is such a beautiful Trump story. "I'm going to sue the RNC because I'm an ill-prepared, ignorant, and intellectually-incurious motherfucker who's totally out of his depth, which is apparently someone else's fault. They're treating me very unfairly, it's true.""

For such a tuff guy, he sure is a little pisspants baby about everything that doesn't go exactly his way.

Interestingly, ancient Athens filled many government positions by lottery, but even they elected the most crucial ones. Plus it had only 30,000 or so eligible citizens instead of hundreds of millions. Socially speaking, everyone was so closely linked by clan and patronage that pressure could be applied in very direct ways. For example, they used ostracism as a formal component of government.

haven't checked this thread in three days, but are we all agreed that trump has jumped the shark with this abortion stuff? or is this just a blip?

Trump is the shark

this is around the 20th shark he's jumped

last night i tried to find a list of the most prominent trump controversies since he announced his candidacy, expecting that there'd be a few dozen terrible things he's done, any single one of which would sink a traditional candidate, but i couldn't find one. anyone know of one?

Thread

there's basically one every couple of days, would be a p long list

About 15,900,000 results (0.74 seconds)

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=terrible%20things%20trump%20has%20done

something about the abortion one feels different

maybe we'll find out that evangelicals don't even care about abortion

even tho they quickly denounced it i'd be shocked if their opposition to punishing the woman for the abortion came more from fear of the optics than an intrinsic belief

i mean i'd be shocked if it wasn't more about the optics

Trump is all optics. He himself is created with mirrors iirc

right i guess i just don't buy that evangelicals are horrified by the notion that the woman should be punished for having an illegal abortion performed. they think abortion is murder - why is only one the parties to murder culpable?

it seems to me that the issue is more that it's obvious that trump is a big faker on abortion

today he wouldn't even say that abortion is murder, he had to be prodded to do it

Some evangelicals see the woman as being the victim of manipulation, ie the evil doctors who perform them, the guys who don't "man up" to take care of a child, forcing the woman into it...

All this condescending "we care about YOU too!" bullshit. It's like those billboards that say "every abortion has two victims"

The most stupid thing my youth group pastor ever played for us was a sad ballad sung from the perspective of a recently aborted fetus

i think evangelicals were taken aback because their agenda is that actually punishing women should sound like what's best for women, sort of like "enslaved black people were happier," and trump is not part of that idealogical club, his misogyny is a bit too depraved-european or something.

it's mostly that it was obvious that the town hall meeting was literally the 1st time trump ever had to think (or speak) about what abortion being illegal actually means

i just don't buy that evangelicals are horrified by the notion that the woman should be punished for having an illegal abortion performed

you underestimate the extent of their eagerness to rob women of any and all sexual agency, and be totally patronizing about it in the process:

“No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion,” responded Jeanne Mancini , president of the March for Life. “This is against the very nature of what we are about. We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths to healing, not punishment.”

The most stupid thing my youth group pastor ever played for us was a sad ballad sung from the perspective of a recently aborted fetus

― Neanderthal, Saturday, April 2, 2016 12:16 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You probably won't thank me for this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj1XVUsXnvI

i think evangelicals were taken aback because their agenda is that actually punishing women should sound like what's best for women, sort of like "enslaved black people were happier," and trump is not part of that idealogical club, his misogyny is a bit too depraved-european or something.

depraved-european? Is this the Drumpf thing again?

Not optimistic about Trump making it through this minefield:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-probably-first-ballot-or-bust-for-donald-trump-at-the-gop-convention/

Delegates are people!

Michael Cohen
‏@speechboy71
As Sanders has ramped up his attacks on Clinton, I've seen many more personal attacks from Clinton backers on Sanders ..

Michael Cohen ‏@speechboy71 1h1 hour ago
Something similar happened in 2008 between Obama & Clinton supporters ... but this year feels nastier and more personal than then

is this guy serious? 2008 was much more brutal iirc

NYT has an article about just how brutal the general election would be for trump. it's hopeless and then some. (barring some catastrophe of course.)

buried in the article is the observation that in polls sanders fares even better against trump (and cruz) than clinton. i assume this is partly simply because low name recognition equals low negatives. i wonder how good of a predictor those polls are in re. sanders. i'd like to think they are sound....

the NYT notes among other things that if trump amps up his politics-of-resentment stuff to consolidate his white, blue-collar male votes he'll probably lose as many votes (among better-educated suburbanites) as he would gain. and at this point there's pretty much no chance he'll make inroads among minorities and (probably) women. so he's fucked.

which to my mind means we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to elect a real progressive to the white house; we don't have to worry as much about that elusive and often dubious quality "electability". but i understand that other folks don't see it that way.

(the little devil in my head is telling me that should sanders become president, it would galvanize the Right like nothing else and not only would he be a one-term president, but the house/senate elections in 2018 would swing way to the GOP's favor. sort of like 2010 in overdrive. but who knows. i'm not good at playing chess, either.)

buried in the article is the observation that in polls sanders fares even better against trump (and cruz) than clinton.

This isn't really a secret, it's been that way for a while. The normal counterargument is that Clinton is at her floor, so can only go up; Sanders - and Trump - are at their ceilings, so can only go down.

which to my mind means we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to elect a real progressive to the white house; we don't have to worry as much about that elusive and often dubious quality "electability". but i understand that other folks don't see it that way.

Yes, it's "Look, the GOP is going to nominate a complete maniac! Time to capitalize on that and get who we really want" vs. "Look, the GOP is going to nominate a complete maniac! Now is not the time for a utopian experiment! The stakes are too high!"

The most stupid thing my youth group pastor ever played for us was a sad ballad sung from the perspective of a recently aborted fetus

That song is linked on an ILM thread somewhere, I should look for it because it was super lolsy and horrifying

Lol I should have just kept reading the thread