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

Wow what an irritating twat this Michael Cohen is - his tweets reveal that he too has no idea what he's talking about. Who is he?

yeah i don't give a shit about michael cohen but the bernie interview /was/ pretty embarrassing and cohen's takeaways from it were mostly pretty valid

anyway back to the humor section:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/716222480738869248

i mean i don't think you can successfully explain away bernie's answers in that interview by reference to how irritating/lame michael cohen is

I'm a bernie supporter but I think his insistence on the moral culpability of the corporations and banks is misguided. The issue is coporations and private banks are existentially required to maximize profit by any legal means necessary. It's bleak but it's what they do, otherwise we wouldn't call them corporations. Politicians who don't reign them in, or are compromised by their lobbyist money or whatever, are far more culpable, because they are supposed to work in the public interest.

Basically you can't expect capital to work for the interests of labor-- that's why labor needed to get organized to improve their circumstances. That's why so many people in history have wanted to abolish capitalism.

cool shit twitter account speechboy71, one to watch in 2016

do you mean moral culpability of individual actors? or the institutions?

cool shit twitter account speechboy71, one to watch in 2016

― hunangarage, Wednesday, April 6, 2016 1:16 AM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man, every other post on ILX is such garbage these days

much like... a twitter feed, i suppose

As a rhetorical tactic the talk if jailing bankers is I guess effective, but that kind of thing wouldn't strike at the root of the global forces that are dispossessing and angering the working class. And I am skeptical that there is a lot that could be done on the trade agreement front without causing unexpected consequences.

is "moral culpability" really the center of sanders's attack on "big banks"? if it was, wouldn't he be aiming primarily and punishing the individuals responsible? (which is part of his "plan," such as it is, but not the one he insists upon most vocally)

i feel like sanders does diagnose the problems as structural ones to the extent that someone making a serious run for national political office in the USA can

a problem is that the diagnosis isn't very sophisticated

do you mean moral culpability of individual actors? or the institutions?

― wizzz! (amateurist),

Both. Capitalism is amoral. It's hard to reign in. It wreaks havoc. I don't know if things would be so different if it was only good people leading these profit maximizing organizations, who need to maintain their edge however they can or else become unprofitable and die.

right, of course -- i just can't imagine that line of argument getting a politician anywhere

it's just too dispassionate

rein, treezy!

(btw just to return to an earlier theme, i think many of michael cohen's critiques of sanders and his campaign are whiny and silly. i happen to think his pointing out how dumb sanders sounded in the NYDN interview was completely valid.)

Sanders sometimes offers a structural critique but then also sometimes sesms to point to "greed" as a problem, which seems sort of like it misses the point.

Lol sorry k3v

Both. Capitalism is amoral. It's hard to reign in. It wreaks havoc. I don't know if things would be so different if it was only good people leading these profit maximizing organizations, who need to maintain their edge however they can or else become unprofitable and die.

but don't both clinton and bernie's plans at least propose to resolve the structural problems that enable banks to engage in bad behaviors? doesn't that acknowledge that the problems aren't primarily about individual bad actors but about the about of leeway that we allow the financial sector?

xposts!

i mean they are basically making arguments for structural reforms but draping them in the language of moral culpability, which is basically a technique to win elections

The politician <---> lobbyist profession makes diagnosing capitalism/govt as two separate problems silly. (in our time and place.)

yeah i don't give a shit about michael cohen but the bernie interview /was/ pretty embarrassing and cohen's takeaways from it were mostly pretty valid

It was pretty disappointing to me, too, as a non-citizen who had felt excited enough by him to volunteer a bit. I think I still prefer him to the other options but that says as much about how I feel about the other options.

Also, I haven't seen much about this: has anyone talked or written about whether/how the welfare state Sanders is proposing would be affordable without drastic reductions in US military spending (or, if not, how much he'd be willing to cut the military)? This seems like the most obvious difference between the US and most other First World countries. I'm no economist but Canada is just managing to maintain a single-payer health care system that covers less than what he's suggesting while spending about 27% as much on the military relative to GDP (by Wikipedia numbers). Even our leftist parties don't talk about free tuition.

Even our leftist parties don't talk about free tuition.

(Actually, I think the Green Party does, tbf.)

That's one of the things I have with Bernie. He's very vague about his plans, like he goes from 1 to 5 and skips 2, 3, 4. Like, "well, we just need a revolution among the people!" and that's great and everything, but has he seen what things are like here lately? I like the spirit of what he talks about, but his moments of magical thinking make me cringe whenever I hear them.

OK, looking at World Bank numbers, Canadian health care spending relative to GDP is about 64% of the US's so maybe there's a case that health care expenditures could fall more generally under single-payer? Is that the expectation?

i'm fine with voting for virtue moving in the right direction that will never happen

bcz the Clintons have shit in their veins

the expectation is yes, that spending falls under single payer. but you know, if anyone can fuck that up, it's the US

daria-g:

all these "trump campaign losing momentum, in disarray" stories are just preparation for the "trump campaign amazing comeback, genius"

The Story Has To Change. Just as Clintonian inevitability was a story, which needed to change to Unexpected Surge of Populist Challenger. Which needed to change to WTF? A Socialist Has No Chance, which needed to change to OMG Can He Really Have a Chance? Which needed to change to Clinton Fights Sanders Insurgency, which needed to change to Sanders Closing The Gap, which needed to change to Clinton Roaring Back, which needed to change to ZOMG Sanders Scores Major Upset, which will change to But Clinton Still Leads in Delegates, and so on.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/hillary-clinton-has-had-enough-of-bernie-sanders-221495

“There is a persistent, organized effort to misrepresent my record, and I don’t appreciate that, and I feel sorry for a lot of the young people who are fed this list of misrepresentations,” Clinton said, a few minutes after talking herself hoarse at a rally here. “I know that Senator Sanders spends a lot of time attacking my husband, attacking President Obama. I rarely hear him say anything negative about George W. Bush, who I think wrecked our economy.”

the fuck outta here with this shit

"That ought'll hold the little SOBs"

* oughta

“Anybody help me out here, because I don’t remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?” he said first.

Told that the number was “probably high,” Sanders responded: “I don’t have it in my number… but I think it’s over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled,” he went on. “Hospitals, I think, were bombed. So yeah, I do believe and I don’t think I’m alone in believing that Israel’s force was more indiscriminate than it should have been.”

(according to hamas the figure was 1,462 civilians)

Clinton going negative is like a shotgun blasting in a million directions at once and hitting everyone. And Sanders on virtually anything but domestic policy is like watching him turn the shotgun on himself. I must admit, I've not heard him talk much about the world at large. He seems almost as incurious as Trump to the point of disinterest. "The rest of the world? Yes, there is a rest of the world but we'll deal with that later. First: the banks!"

Has he or anyone talked about the Panama Papers, or are they all waiting to see if/when their friends are revealed as complicit?

i havent finished the nydn transscript, but i havent found anything that is that damning compared to previous statements. he has very broad ideas about policy that he wants but he's not really good with specifics. am i missing anything?

there is a rest of the world but we'll deal with that later

if climate change is addressed meaningfully, rest of the world should take that.

clinton didn't "go negative" in that politico thing, at least not according to the write-up. (obv didn't listen to the 45 minute interview.) the media desperately wants a "negative campaign" narrative but it just aint happening (at least not from the candidates)

hey morbz you seem very concerned about climate change. how do you think the potus should best address it keeping in mind the growth of industry in non-first world countries that is generating huge amounts of carbon while bringing their ppl out of poverty? xp

Josh, yes, he addressed the Panama Papers from the stump last night in Wyoming. Obv. right up his alley and fortuitous timing....

http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/trump-no-tan.jpg

he looks like my grandmother

i havent finished the nydn transscript, but i havent found anything that is that damning compared to previous statements. he has very broad ideas about policy that he wants but he's not really good with specifics. am i missing anything?

That's basically it, just a lot of it in one place. I think I was sort of hoping he was keeping the message simple but had thought all of these things through.

I saw a pre-primary video of Trump yesterday and, true to the stories circulating, he did look and seem tired. To the extent that, for a change, he looked and sounded like a halfway reasonable person (except for that thing where he looked like he'd just gone face first into a bowl of butterscotch pudding).

I have a feeling the Republicans are headed for the point of maximum awkwardness re the delegate count. Somewhere over, I don't know, 1,100 for Trump make it very difficult for them to deny him (without incredible anger), and anywhere under 1,000 renders complaints from Trump less and less valid. I think Trump might end up somewhere in the middle.

xpost Are Bernie's policy ideas in fact so broad, or is he instead savvy about messaging? I say this as a supporter who is sometimes frustrated w/ his tendency to gloss over details. After all this is a ranking member of the Budget committee who also sits on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, etc. High Wonk stuff. I wonder if instead he knows how precious media attention is (esp. for a marginal candidate w/ an unconventional platform), and that a certain amount of cynicism from decades of witnessing the ascent of so many idiot colleagues—has him deliberately going big and simple and repetitive.

how do you think the potus should best address it keeping in mind the growth of industry in non-first world countries

how about sizable assistance to implement eonc growth via greenest possible methods? after we cut DoD budget in half.

(i know this won't happen and i recognize yr attempt at gotcha question)

it's not a "gotcha" question. you said that the foreign affairs stuff will work itself out once we handle climate change but from what i can tell the route to addressing climate change runs directly through foreign affairs.

re cutting the DoD budget, which parts do you recommend we cut? are you in favor of Trump's plan of shedding any countries under our defense umbrella? aka, pacific nations, europe / NATO, middle eastern countries? do you think there might be consequences to withdrawing from these agreements in terms of Russian or Chinese or Iranian reactions + potential aggression? i don't think these are side questions - these are v important questions and i don't know if Bernie has given them a ton of thought. nb i believe DoD can be cut too but i think some of this is what ppl are balking at - these broadsides that don't seem to address the specific conditions that are essential to work out.

i'm not running for office; i don't need a motherfucking plan.

i agree that politically apathetic ppl not running for office probably don't need to think about these things