US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7384

On April 24 2017 00:40 xDaunt wrote:

Do you think that the Republican Party (at a national level) is materially better on these points?

On April 23 2017 18:43 Grumbels wrote:

This seems like a fiction of your own making. It casts Clinton supporters (who are the most numerous and powerful faction within the party) as powerless, having to bring up Wikileaks only for self-defense against the constant assault by the Sanders faction. In reality Sanders supporters have nothing to do with the anti-Russia hysteria in vogue among liberals as an explanation for the election outcome, that's a purely organic creation fomented by lots of D. operatives.

On April 24 2017 01:20 Grumbels wrote:
@Liquid'Drone,

I won't dispute that chart, but I think it's misleading because it counts words in speeches nobody listens to. If I drone on about "we must do something about jobs, jobs jobs jobs" with wonk gibberish, it shouldn't count as having a message. Trump might not have had policy, but people don't care about policy, they care about narrative, and Trump's was perfectly clear: white nationalism and masculine dominance. That's also how economic anxiety and culture war intersect: voters tacitly understood that Trump was going to rig the system to benefit white men. It might be utterly disgusting, and he might not be competent at delivering on his promises, but at least he stands for something. Clinton might talk about policy, but people don't listen to policy speeches because they don't trust Clinton, don't think she will hold her promises, and don't know what she stands for.

The overwhelming message from liberal establishment types, all the outreach that was supposed to inspire and convince people to actually vote, was mainly 1. identity politics and 2. anti-Trump and in this election this turned out to have been a (likely( mistake because a more populist and anti-establishment stance would have arguably been better tactically (let alone in terms of policy).

On April 24 2017 01:20 Grumbels wrote:
@Liquid'Drone,

I won't dispute that chart, but I think it's misleading because it counts words in speeches nobody listens to. If I drone on about "we must do something about jobs, jobs jobs jobs" with wonk gibberish, it shouldn't count as having a message. Trump might not have had policy, but people don't care about policy, they care about narrative, and Trump's was perfectly clear: white nationalism and masculine dominance. That's also how economic anxiety and culture war intersect: voters tacitly understood that Trump was going to rig the system to benefit white men. It might be utterly disgusting, and he might not be competent at delivering on his promises, but at least he stands for something. Clinton might talk about policy, but people don't listen to policy speeches because they don't trust Clinton, don't think she will hold her promises, and don't know what she stands for.

The overwhelming message from liberal establishment types, all the outreach that was supposed to inspire and convince people to actually vote, was mainly 1. identity politics and 2. anti-Trump* and in this election this turned out to have been a (likely) mistake because a more populist and anti-establishment stance would have arguably been better tactically (let alone in terms of policy).

* and mind you, Clinton not being Trump should have been sufficient in a rational universe and it was my main reason for my strong support for Clinton. However, in a rational universe Trump would never have been a candidate to begin with, so it's a moot point.

On April 24 2017 01:29 Gorsameth wrote:

Policies tend to be complicated and boring. That's why no one listens to them and afterwords they go on the internet and complain that the candidate does not talk about policies enough.

People seem to only take in 5 second soundbites and then your going to have populist mumbojumpy win. That's how Trump won the 'worker' vote and 4 years from now when those people will still be out of job, will be in even greater poverty after their government support got cutback and after they lost their healthcare insurance they will vote for the next conman promising them them unicorns.

On April 24 2017 01:42 Grumbels wrote:

Policy doesn't have to be boring if you create a clear narrative. That's probably the reason for Sanders' popularity: he has simple policy proposals which resonate with people.

For instance, a liberal would say (this is a real example): "American children should have access to a good education in order to have access to well paying jobs". This is already boring and difficult to understand, furthermore it undermines the power of its message by affirming a capitalist world view. A more compelling alternative is simply: everyone should have a good education. That's a healthy marriage of expressing universal values and discussing policy.

You see this over and over, for instance with the liberal obsession with means testing as a way to design policy. Instead of just saying: free college, universal health care, it becomes some monstrosity where you have to participate in a badly regulated market place while having to beg for government subsidies. This sort of design undermines the entire system because rich people (who have more political influence) don't get any direct benefits, and will therefore work to neuter it, or create parallel tracks for private education, healthcare with vastly superior standards.

It is known that if you have something like Social Security and Medicare it's politically toxic to attempt to dismantle it, because these are beloved programs with dedicated revenue streams that benefit everyone. That should be the gold standard for policy, not some cobbled together system of optional subsidies which can easily be sabotaged by a hostile administration. If single payer were to pass, or even something like expanding medicare to cover people over 50, it would be very difficult to remove.

But none of this can happen because the Democrats are beholden to the Insurance Industry, so that's why they can't bother to express principled policy ideas.

On April 24 2017 00:59 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Hillary Clinton focused a lot more on economic policy than identity politics. It's just that this one time she claimed not to be establishment because she was a woman, which was stupid, and a couple other times she mentioned that she'd be the first ever female president. But it's a complete misrepresentation to claim that she focused more on identity politics than economic policy. Claiming that she focused more on identity politics than what you think she should have done, that's fair. But she clearly focused way more on economic policy.

source
(I'm not a fan of vox, and you can disregard their analysis completely if you want, but I have no reason to believe that these numbers are made up. And even if it's extremely cherrypicked, there's no way they're so cherrypicked that the statement 'focused more on identity politics than economic policy' ends up ringing true.)

At the end of Chapter One, which is entirely about that campaign's exhausting and fruitless search for a plausible explanation for why Hillary was running, writers Allen and Parnes talk about the infighting problem.

"All of the jockeying might have been all right, but for a root problem that confounded everyone on the campaign and outside it," they wrote. "Hillary had been running for president for almost a decade and still didn't really have a rationale."

Allen and Parnes here quoted a Clinton aide who jokingly summed up Clinton's real motivation:

"I would have had a reason for running," one of her top aides said, "or I wouldn't have run."

The beleaguered Clinton staff spent the better part of two years trying to roll this insane tautology – "I have a reason for running because no one runs without a reason" – into the White House. It was a Beltway take on the classic Descartes formulation: "I seek re-election, therefore I am... seeking re-election."

There may be some truth to the notion that Clinton de-emphasized her economic message in a damaging way. Although Clinton’s convention speech was heavily laden with a programmatic economic agenda, political scientist Lynn Vavreck conducted a post-election analysis of the TV advertising by both campaigns and concluded that more than three-quarters of the appeals in Clinton’s ads were about character traits. Only 9 percent were about jobs or the economy. In contrast, more than one-third of the appeals in Trump’s ads were focused on economic issues, such as jobs, taxes, and trade.

On April 24 2017 01:55 Gorsameth wrote:

Sanders sounds better because he has the same problem as Trump (but to a lesser extend). It sounds nice in a sound bite but as soon as a journalist digs a little deeper he gets into trouble.

This thread was pretty pro Bernie at the start of the primary, his message was very well received (by myself aswell). Until a big in depth interview came out where, on big campaign sound bites like his desire to limit big banks he was exposed as having no clue on the current rules or how he would tackle them. If you look back in the thread you would see a big change in tone afterwards.

People want simple answers to complex problems and when someone with an actual plan tries to explain this they tune out, instead listening to the guy with a good sound bite who has no actual clue what he wants to do.