Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

True factlet: I worked for the CIA in the 80s/90s (as a teenager, in the mailroom). I saw actual pallets of cash being sent to distant lands. I was encouraged to forget that I had seen them.

There was a subset of yr smarter Agency dudes who felt - then as now - that Saddam was the glue that held that sandhole together. It was lunacy to think that removing him would lead to a happy ending. However, there are a lot of reasons why "leave the dictators in place" isn't a popular strategy, and proponents will get shouted down.

One reason is action bias: people wanted to feel like we were Doing Something. Another is the legacy of Munich, Hitler, etc. We said "never again," so some people either see little hitlers everywhere, or are able to use the language of Holocaust prevention as convenient cover for stuff they already wanted to do. Fast forward to Assad in Syria, and no one has a solid answer as to whether we're doing not enough, rather too much, ,or just the right amount.

A healthy pessimism about our track record in intervening is understandable.

you guys know that teenagers committing petty crime have been offered enlistment in place of a sentence, right? xp

*commits petty crime*

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClA1bOZVYAIcq8_.jpg:large

I think a non-ideological bet that Clinton is likely to lose would be a bet on voter suppression by blackshirts or on RNC operatives running a successful ground game to get new-voter Trump-leaners to actually vote. The former seems way more likely than the latter.

Trump doesn't have enough blackshirts tbrr. The way his campaign is run, he'd probably take it upon himself to personally suppress votes, and he'd get tired and bored of it after a couple hours.

And with his complexion, black is not a flattering color.

He could pull it off.

http://blog.lsi.edu/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/pumpkin_head.jpg

Caek, that "probability of victory for Democratic candidate" chart is surely way too low for October 2012, no way did Obama have only 60-some percent chance of winning a week before the election

is that drop the "low energy" debates? i don't remember

Perhaps polling lag time - polls released in week X reflect questions asked in week X-1, while people were still processing the news events of week X-2?

bloomberg poll has Hillary up 12 now

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-14/bloomberg-politics-national-poll-june-2016

whoa

http://gawker.com/this-looks-like-the-dncs-hacked-trump-oppo-file-1782040426

I assume the massive 2008 dip in the late summer was the financial crisis (and mccain subsequently suspending his campaign to look like an asshole)

so the russians are interfering in a presidential election now. great.

what's good for the goose i guess

Lawyers Guns and Money goes ham on Freddie deBoer and other progressives with too high principles:

Three presidents can be plausibly said to have greater records of progressive accomplishment than Barack Obama: LBJ, FDR, and Lincoln. Were these men, as deBoer suggests they must be, consistent left-wing ideologues, men who were committed to consistent left principles who did not concern themselves with practical politics and never had to be “pushed” from the left? Er, no. Good God, no. They were practical men. They were not ideologically consistent. They had progressive records in large part because of the organized pressures from the left placed on them. Lyndon Johnson had a voting record in the Senate that makes Hillary Clinton look like a Wobbly. Did civil rights and labor groups follow deBoer’s advice, refuse to work with him and support him, and seek to throw the election to Goldwater in the hopes that a REAL ally could eventually control the White House? No, they did not, because they understand politics as deBoer does not. And the result was arguably the most progressive domestic policy presidency ever. The Emancipation Proclamation was a compromise motivated in large measure by political expediency. So what? Who wants political leaders who disdain politics, who aren’t responsive to their constituents?

And it’s amazing that deBoer would bring up same-sex marriage, which constitutes about ten own-goals for his worldview. The national right to same-sex marriage was created through a path that deBoer repeatedly assures us can never work. Did the LBGT community leave the Democratic Party because Democratic leaders continued to nominally oppose same-sex marriage? No, they did not. They recognized that politicians who can potentially be pressured to adopted your favored positions are better than those who cannot be. They also recognized that what presidents do is a lot more important than what they say. Bill Clinton nominally opposed same-sex marriage when he took office, and so did Barack Obama when he took office. And yet, the four Supreme Court justices they appointed were all in the Obergefell majority. And the four first choice Republican nominees all dissented. And it’s also worth noting that the swing vote that lead to victory, Anthony Kennedy, was on the Court because a lot of liberal voters held their noses and voted for Democratic senators like Howell Heflin and Richard Shelby and Sam Nunn, who were a good sight less than ideal but were still with the party on some key issues like “should Robert Bork be confirmed to the Supreme Court?” Same-sex marriage is a perfect illustration that the White House is generally where changes end, not where they begin. And it’s also an excellent illustration that you don’t walk away from the political coalition that’s closer to your interests because you don’t win immediately.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/06/the-party-left-me-and-other-complaints-of-the-voter-as-atomistic-consumer

"It appears that virtually all of the claims are derived from published sources, as opposed to independent investigations or mere rumor."

i like lemieux

It is also worth noting that this is not an ideological dispute; it is not about FAILING TO RECOGNIZE THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE TO YOUR LEFT. Noam Chomsky believes that swing-state voters should support the leftmost viable candidate in general elections; Tom Friedman, conversely, shares Freddie’s view that their really needs to be a third-party candidate that agrees with him in every detail because coalition-building should be obsolete for today’s consumer.

burning freddie w/ a friedman comparison <3

Today's Sanders email seems to point pretty clearly to a concession/pivot speech coming tomorrow night:

We are at a critical moment for the future of the Democratic Party and our country. Last night marked the last primary as part of the Democratic nomination process, and we know that our campaign will enter the convention in Philadelphia with more than 1800 delegates.

Our movement has fought against steep odds when so many people counted us out. Together we built a political revolution that fought in every one of more than 50 primaries and caucuses since February. Our delegates from this movement will be the people who vote on the platform of the Democratic Party, and who will have influence on not just who the nominee is this election, but how the next nominee will be elected, too.

The future of our political revolution depends on you. That's why Bernie Sanders will host a live, online video address this Thursday night at 8:30 p.m. EDT / 5:30 p.m. PDT.

omg the vitriol directed at Freddie in the comments is such a gift

i think there's a narrow space where de boer is very useful, or at least someone useful. that space would be certain of his critiques of campus political correctness, speech policing, etc. but once he moves to more ambitious territory he flounders.

somehow i feel like the whole self-regarding idiocy of his position on the general election is encapsulated by the furrowed-brow selfies he uses as his avatars.

er, someWHAT useful.

yeah I agree. His piece last September made a couple decent points about the irony of administrators complaining about student demands when the administrators themselves created the methods of redress.

how long do y'all think this filibuster is going to last?

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mr-smith.jpg

wrong thread for filibuster talk

These insinuations that Obama is sympathetic to ISIS are extraordinarily dangerous not to mention disgusting.

so in addition to being anti-iran deal apparently canova is also kinda a fed weirdo:
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/who-runs-federal-reserve-2008-crash

It would also be worthwhile to break the monopoly of central banks in the issuance of currency by funding some government operations with money created and issued by treasuries and finance ministries—money that would not add a penny to public debt. This is what President Abraham Lincoln did by issuing more than $400 million in U.S. notes, the so-called Greenback, to pay the huge costs of the American Civil War and national economic development programs. A century earlier, colonial Pennsylvania enjoyed fifty-two years of non-inflationary growth by issuing and lending its own currency into circulation, thereby financing major development of infrastructure without incurring debt or high tax burdens. Adam Smith, in his classic work Wealth of Nations (1776), praised Pennsylvania’s success with government-issued money. Such proposals have been introduced in Congress over the years, but Wall Street lobbying has prevented such legislation from passing.

Hate to give FdB any more attention but looolll: https://mobile.twittier.com/crulge/status/730530222274023424

twittier? dunno how i did that: https://mobile.twitter.com/crulge/status/730530222274023424

hahaha

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/donald-trump-republican-national-committee-224403

clown show

The Lewandowski-Manafort-Hicks dynamic is fascinating

The Trump campaign would not comment on the record about its relationship with the RNC. One Trump Tower official called it “a great relationship. I work well with everybody over there and I haven’t heard of anyone who doesn’t have a great relationship with them.”

tee hee

"It's a great relationship. The Greatest. Never has a relationship worked as great as ours. If the RNC was a hot Slavic model, our orgasms would be YUGE!"

next election thread really needs to be named HIRALLY CLIMPS FOR PRESIDETN

A lot being made of this Guccifer2 hack?

Jesus, whenever I think this stupid motherfucker can't get any stupider: Trump: DNC hacked itself

Stop hacking yourself! Stop hacking yourself!

This "I'm going to just constantly assert things that have no bearing whatsoever on reality" tendency that Trump shares with way to many people needs to be fucking wiped out asap.

kasich out http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-kasich-just-cant-vote-for-trump

Nor can Larry Hogan, who is otherwise execrable.

I'm a bit sad about the DNC hack because now Putin will know that Trump has absurdly tiny baby-hands, also that the DNC oppo researchers apparently didn't find anything that could not have been googled.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-calls-her-crooked-hillary-but-his-fans-just-say-b----/2016/06/15/b33e166c-330c-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_bword-615a-top%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Trump that B........

article about one of the two most seen anti-Hillary t-shirts seen at Trump rallies

I'm somewhat surprised at their restraint in not going to that next letter of the alphabet. Just give it time, I guess.

Nor can Larry Hogan, who is otherwise execrable.

hate having to grit my teeth and admit that Larry Hogan is doing the right thing and deserves some credit here

The tiny plurality that elected him (my in-laws included) are likely scratching him off their list of the righteous as we speak, and I am smiling a secret smile.

I'm somewhat surprised at their restraint in not going to that next letter of the alphabet. Just give it time, I guess.

I have a bet with a friend that he's gonna call her one of those words on TV before it's all said and done