EPT2020 Democratic Nominees - Page 48
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If this thread turns into a USPMT 2.0, we will not hesitate to shut it down. Do not even bother posting if all you're going to do is shit on the Democratic candidates while adding nothing of value. Rules: - Don't post meaningless one-liners. - Don't turn this into a X doesn't stand a chance against Trump debate. - Sources MUST have a supporting comment that summarizes the source beforehand. - Do NOT turn this thread into a Republicans vs. Democrats shit-storm. This thread will be heavily moderated. Expect the same kind of strictness as the USPMT. | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
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CorsairHero
Canada9491 Posts
announces retirement lmao | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28647 Posts
www.youtube.com | ||
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ggrrg
Bulgaria2716 Posts
On March 03 2020 08:43 Liquid`Drone wrote: I advice you to read the other post I wrote as an answer to what I felt was a genuine inquiry/contribution to the debate rather than strawmanning the hell out of my position. There is nothing to disagree on with your other post, but it is at best a tangential response to what I wrote. First of all, though, my post is targeting the consequences of your previous comment and not its content. I do not think that I exaggerate or misrepresent your argument - as a matter of fact I do not even comment on the validity of your argument - and thus I'd say that per definition it cannot be a strawman. I merely ask why you decide to insert a discussion about something that seems awfully off-topic in here. There may have been "the right female candidate (that) never had even close to the same opportunities as the equally right male candidate" but besides being purely hypothetical, it most certainly has nothing to do with the current set of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination (or at least you never related it to the race). There are only a few people left in the race and you inserting gender into the debate either implies that one of them is affected (postively or negatively) by their sex or you are simply going off-topic. On a side note, you mention that for you a candidate's position on climate change can be worth 0-100 points while their gender would award 0-3 points. I must admit that I may have missed some comments in the entire thread but at least in the last couple of days I do not recall any comments on environmental issues. You choosing to insert gender representation instead of climate positions implies that you either think that all remaining candidates have effectively the same climate positions, so it is not worth talking about, or the scales you give are not quite accurate (or climate issues have already been debated at some point earlier in the thread). There are regularly comments from different people in this thread that I personally do not agree with, but none of them seemed off-topic to me. Given the candidates left in the race and the amount of candidates, it appears quite misplaced to start writing about the general merits of having a female president. It starts a discussion that not only does not add anything to the topic of the Democratic nomiation race but also distracts from any issues relevant to the current presidential race. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On March 03 2020 07:37 Liquid`Drone wrote: I'm really not a fan of identity-based politics - class is my preferred metric, always. But when positions of power are so overwhelmingly taken by men (yet this not being a constant throughout all societies), it means there is a structural explanation for it. 'The right candidate just hasn't shown up yet' does not work as an explanation for me, it's overwhelmingly likely that 'the right female candidate never had even close to the same opportunities as the equally right male candidate', and I believe enacting this type of structural change to counterbalance the existing structures is something where having a female in charge will be useful. It might be more correct to state that for this reason, a female candidate would, from my point of view, where Enacting a Structural Change Benefiting Women at the Highest Level is a desirable political outcome, get a slight 'stat-boost' to the 'ESCBWHL' - statistic. It's not the point I care the most about, not even close, if position on climate change can award 100 points to the ideal candidate and 0 points to the worst one then the ESCBWHL-stat operates on an at most 0-3 point metric. So the 'if all else is equal' might not be completely true, technically, but gender (or other identity) would still only make up a tiny fraction of what makes me vote the way I vote. I would also prefer a teacher, doctor or scientist over a lawyer or businessman, but Steyer vs Ben Carson wouldn't be close - Steyer all the way. Like, hailing from Norway, we also didn't have any female prime ministers in the period 1814-1981. In the 40 years since 1981 however, we've had a female prime minister about 18 of those years. I see that the makeup of the house of representatives is 77-23, senate 75-25. In Norway, parliament has a 59-41 division. Cabinet positions during the Trump administration peaked at 26% female (I guess it's currently 13% (source), whereas in Norway the current government (with a female prime minister) has varied between 50-50 and 55-45. (source for every government since 1945) That is a Norwegian source, but it might just be comprehensible enough anyway, as it's mostly numbers in a table. The key is looking at what happens from 1981, where we get the first female prime minister, to how it looks from 1986 onward: Before 1981, % of female ministers is consistently below 25%. After 1986, it's consistently above 42%. There is a relation between these events. The role of the president itself is one where you can argue that even if women haven't been discriminated against since 1990 you've still only had 5 different presidents, so it might have been the case that the female candidates were just objectively worse (hell, maybe Clinton was objectively worse than some male democratic candidates but desire for a female president made her get the nomination which got us Trump), but that stat doesn't work to explain the cabinet position %ages or the gender imbalance of congress. (Even if, to be fair, Clinton hit 42% and Obama was at 30-35%. ) I don't really like the idea of quota schemes or stuff like that, and I don't think we should always strive for equal representation of all possible identity demarcations or whatever. But I definitely believe society benefits from a more equal representation than 75-25 when looking at congress, and I think there's truth to the idea that someone must break the glass ceiling before the existing structural barriers that maintain the 75-25 imbalance can dissipate. LL, hope I answered you as well here. I have the same major disagreement as before with your ceding of class before historical injustice. Let me briefly echo back some new ones that you've mentioned. You won't always find good structural explanations for current disparities. The nursing profession is dominated by women, but I think few here would say it's because of structural hurdles targeting men. Call it culture, call it historical inertia, add the spicy reason of bulk group differences in preferences, expand it to twenty reasons: but structural is no magic bullet, and sexism/racism is no useful corrective. In addition to that, structural discrimination has been on the wane for decades at this point, and shouldn't have a nice revival from people justifying sexism to push the needle the other way. That's a new structure that will spread radioactive contamination over political nominating processes, debating merit (such as it exists in politics), and class/class-based power. The response to a good candidate should not be to keep searching until you find good + minority/woman/XYZ, because they're going to be more preferable in the end. I don't want to come down too hard on the philosophical construct of some angel-like figure applying stat boosts so citizens only get a 1%-3% boost in final measure, and identity politics lite always gets pegged below stuff that matter more. Infallible judges, no temptation to slide further into identity > class > individual, everyone gets representation of some effect ... it's a desirable outcome. I want to live in a world where a small applied pressure gives a qualified female president in the next couple elections, but the risks are too great compared to the thing happening naturally as NEARLY happened with Clinton. I think the cause is hurt not helped by tipping the scales to achieve it. And as earlier mentioned, puts a whole lot of perverse incentives to triple down on identities to force everyone to have someone who looks like them as soon as possible. Did the first Norwegian prime minister need a leg up from men who would always increase their valuing of her simply for being a woman? That's kind of the crucial point. Would Norway would be much better if some internal affirmative action plan had elevated her or another woman 8 years earlier? I don't think so. I'm glad she probably inspired new women to run, to make her the role model, and use their office for good. But to start that sort of cascade, do you have to artificially raise women's platform to push the first one over the finish line, in order to jump-start the next generation of female politicians? I say absolutely not. In other countries with harsher cultural impediments, I would remain deeply skeptical. Thatcher did the same thing in much more of a "man's world" than what exists today, after all. Also, women don't need to be told the world is against their success and they need a leg up from the other sex to correct past wrongs. That's not helpful or encouraging. If we're talking about marginal pushes to make the first female president happen sooner, and an increased level of women in legislature, then I think it matters about the marginal discouragement offered for aspiring women and thoughts that victory wouldn't be due to hard work. But maybe I'm overstating the seriousness of my case, while trying to cover all the aspects of it that are going through my mind. On March 03 2020 09:39 IgnE wrote: It is a silly hypothetical but Drone’s inclination should just be read as an assertion that representation matters. And it does. No one “deserves” to be president and the essentially irrational, antagonistic core at the center of political elections (perhaps THE modern phenomenon of social representation par excellence) should cause us to dismiss Danglars’s protestations about “resentment” from the “passed over.” If I'm reading this right, the resentment and bad blood from not getting pity votes based on personal characteristics don't matter in an election environment filled with irrationality & antagonism? | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On March 03 2020 12:22 Danglars wrote: If I'm reading this right, the resentment and bad blood from not getting pity votes based on personal characteristics don't matter in an election environment filled with irrationality & antagonism? No, you are reading it incorrectly. I am saying that every election environment is filled with irrationality and antagonism. Disputes over values, disputes over representation, disputes over freedom and equality are all fundamentally irrational in that they cannot be subsumed under some scientific, instrumental logic of maximization. An election is fundamentally about persuading people that you should represent them. Within this context the idea of a "pity vote" becomes a meaningless notion. What makes voting for someone who shares some identifiable traits with you or some broad set of experiences a "pity vote?" How is voting for a cretin like Trump not a "pity vote" under the framework you propose? You know he's unqualified and downright loathsome, but you'll toss a vote his way because you identify with his brash attitude and simple sentence syntax? The point here is that there is no such thing as objective merit outside of a candidate's persuasive abilities to convince someone to vote for them. Your premise seems to be that "American" is the only identity that matters, an identity that is obviously complicated by your own peculiar, thorny conception of what "American" means. Many other people, who feel excluded from the term "American," or at least, for example, your version of "American," may feel that another shared identity is important to feeling represented by their elected officials. That inevitably is complicated by the fact that shared identity will also be bound up with a variety of shared histories, sensibilities, concerns, and outlooks that indirectly pertain to the more traditional "issues" that candidates run on. That's part of the reason why the hypothetical Drone entertained was silly. Even to say "all other things being equal" is to undercut the premise of the question, because the very concept of a social or group "identity" is then denuded of precisely the material differences that matter. If white = black, all other things being equal, then we already live in a society where there is no meaningful difference between white and black. There would only be some primitive difference, the haecceity of white and black, with no significance but the aesthetic. What matters for contemporary politics is that people feel that there are material differences in "identities," however small or large any person in particular makes them out to be. You saying that this is not a real dimension of competency or merit is to already import values that would pretend to be "objective" metrics subject to rational maximization criteria. I could just as equally claim that being an American should not be relevant to who we elect as President—all that should matter is whether the President can provide a loaf of bread on the doorstep of each American every day, or whether they can halt the global mean temperature rise, or any other number of arbitrary criteria. Of course there are laws about being an American. Those laws reflect a pre-existing consensus that representatives should represent their constituents. But just like any of the other issues that candidates discuss in elections, such agreement, or disagreement, occurs in a political context, where the social whole is already riven with antagonism. The only way out is persuasion, and to do that you have to make sense of other people's experiences. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On March 03 2020 12:55 IgnE wrote: No, you are reading it incorrectly. I am saying that every election environment is filled with irrationality and antagonism. Disputes over values, disputes over representation, disputes over freedom and equality are all fundamentally irrational in that they cannot be subsumed under some scientific, instrumental logic of maximization. An election is fundamentally about persuading people that you should represent them. Within this context the idea of a "pity vote" becomes a meaningless notion. What makes voting for someone who shares some identifiable traits with you or some broad set of experiences a "pity vote?" How is voting for a cretin like Trump not a "pity vote" under the framework you propose? You know he's unqualified and downright loathsome, but you'll toss a vote his way because you identify with his brash attitude and simple sentence syntax? The point here is that there is no such thing as objective merit outside of a candidate's persuasive abilities to convince someone to vote for them. Your premise seems to be that "American" is the only identity that matters, an identity that is obviously complicated by your own peculiar, thorny conception of what "American" means. Many other people, who feel excluded from the term "American," or at least, for example, your version of "American," may feel that another shared identity is important to feeling represented by their elected officials. That inevitably is complicated by the fact that shared identity will also be bound up with a variety of shared histories, sensibilities, concerns, and outlooks that indirectly pertain to the more traditional "issues" that candidates run on. That's part of the reason why the hypothetical Drone entertained was silly. Even to say "all other things being equal" is to undercut the premise of the question, because the very concept of a social or group "identity" is then denuded of precisely the material differences that matter. If white = black, all other things being equal, then we already live in a society where there is no meaningful difference between white and black. There would only be some primitive difference, the haecceity of white and black, with no significance but the aesthetic. What matters for contemporary politics is that people feel that there are material differences in "identities," however small or large any person in particular makes them out to be. You saying that this is not a real dimension of competency or merit is to already import values that would pretend to be "objective" metrics subject to rational maximization criteria. I could just as equally claim that being an American should not be relevant to who we elect as President—all that should matter is whether the President can provide a loaf of bread on the doorstep of each American every day, or whether they can halt the global mean temperature rise, or any other number of arbitrary criteria. Of course there are laws about being an American. Those laws reflect a pre-existing consensus that representatives should represent their constituents. But just like any of the other issues that candidates discuss in elections, such agreement, or disagreement, occurs in a political context, where the social whole is already riven with antagonism. The only way out is persuasion, and to do that you have to make sense of other people's experiences. Ahh so that's what you mean. I think our primary disagreement is philosophical. Does a candidate running in an election about "persuading people that you should represent them" any different from a voter in an election choosing his/her/(xe?) candidate based on some innate characteristic other than the words out of the candidate's mouth, their pamphlets, their surrogates, their movement's message? Did skin color or the status of existing as a member of a group actually do persuading for election, by which you could see a stranger disabled woman on the street and say, "They would make a great president," being persuaded that a disabled woman in that office is exactly what the country needs.+ Show Spoiler + If you see discover she's married to another woman, can you say you're doubly convinced she would make a great president? | ||
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Geo.Rion
7377 Posts
Since it's only 3 days since SC, and since then we got 1 withdrawal each day, I think polling data is close to irrelevant at this point. I mean we can trust things like Sanders gonna win his home state, and Biden gonna do well in the deep-red South, but aside from that it's really up for grabs. Sanders has like 90% to end up nr 1 in California, but the margin there is more significant than most primary states (415+79), a narrow victory could be bad for Bernie, and a landslide there would be worth more than winning, say, 100% of Arkansas delegates Few questions: Can Bloomberg get some pluralities, or some delegate-ties in any state? What he will do post ST if he doesnt? he can afford to stay in, but would he? How badly will Warren do? Will she withdraw immediately after ST, or she has some plan for sticking around? The most normal / expected outcome would be that Bloomberg and Warren bow out tomorrow, and then it's a clear cut 1:1, with Bernie in the lead, but Biden with realistic chance to turn it around. | ||
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ShambhalaWar
United States930 Posts
On March 03 2020 05:56 Liquid`Drone wrote: I'd like to see a female president myself tbh, if Bernie were two people and one was a woman I'd pick the woman as ideal president. (But maybe not ideal candidate, as I still think theres a bunch of americans who think 'the president should be a man'. At the same time, the existence of that mentality is exactly why having a female president should be an independent goal. ) Well that was basically Warren, or so the world thought... It's hard to put into words what a fucking disappointment she has been to progressives in America. I think a lot of people truly believed that she would side with Bernie to get both their agendas passed, depending on who was the most popular, they would take the lead... She's rat fucked that and her reputation completely by now... Her endorsing Biden would not at all be surprising to me anymore. | ||
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Anc13nt
1557 Posts
I'm not usually very keen on participating in politics threads but these polls are pretty depressing. | ||
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Geo.Rion
7377 Posts
On March 03 2020 18:12 Anc13nt wrote: https://www.dataforprogress.org/memos/super-tuesday-final-polling I'm not usually very keen on participating in politics threads but these polls are pretty depressing. It doesnt look that good for Bernie, then again, as i said above, it's nearly impossible to accurately poll this contest in the 3 days between SC and ST. Like on 28. we still didnt know the SC results and there were 3 more candidates in the race. I think the best we can do is wait and see how it pans out. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23188 Posts
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Geo.Rion
7377 Posts
On March 03 2020 19:03 GreenHorizons wrote: Good news is if they do really nominate Biden it will radicalize a lot of people and why is that good news | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23188 Posts
Each time less people are lulled into complacency we get a bit closer to the radical changes we need to bring the US into the 21st century. Losing to Trump (which Biden would do) would radicalize even more. I'm no accelerationist, but I can see the upside. | ||
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Elroi
Sweden5595 Posts
On March 03 2020 06:06 Liquid`Drone wrote: The US has had 44 presidents, 0 women. That, to me, seems like a problem. You can say 'okay but gender equality clearly wasn't a thing until the 70s so counting the ones before that isn't fair', but then it's still 0% in the past 50 years. This is of course an extremely difficult subject, but I want to point out that you can't simply assume equality of outcome. In many fields where men and women are supposedly equal men are dominating much more than they are in politics: chess, freediving, equestrian sports, even math (the Mathematical Olympiad recently introduced a segregated section for women which I find pretty ridiculous) etc. | ||
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Geo.Rion
7377 Posts
On March 03 2020 19:15 GreenHorizons wrote: Each time less people are lulled into complacency we get a bit closer to the radical changes we need to bring the US into the 21st century. Losing to Trump (which Biden would do) would radicalize even more. I'm no accelerationist, but I can see the upside. Hmm, maybe you're right, but i see it as this: the progressive / social-democrat wing of the party has this going for them in 2020: 1. Bernie Sanders - an authentic, well known and willing champion of the cause, with super-consistent track-record going back decades. 2. Compared to 2016 where he was up against a united front of the establishment, against a candidate who was riding the "first female president" wave, this year the establishment didnt unite until Super Tuesday, and even now there still is Bloomberg. 3. Biden is just as old as him, has no "historic" thing going for him like 1st female /1st gay / 1st whatever candidate. Just a run of the mill, well known, kinda likable old white christian guy, who's fumbling and gaffing constantly. 4. Bloomberg is in the race, call him whatever you want oligarch/ plutocrat / billionaire with a mind set on using money to win a nomination. Former republican, controversial racial policies etc. It would be really really hard to come up with someone better to run against as a social-democrat/ progressive. Bernie couldnt win in 2016. If he cannot win in 2020 against Biden and Bloomberg, then i really really dont see who could win against the establishment Dem candidate in 2024. It's not gonna be him, he'll be a 82 and a two time runner-up. Whoever would come up as the new Sanders would have a much more uphill battle for the nomination. I really think this is the single best chance to move the Democratic party towards social-democracy, if Bernie cant do it this year, then i dont think anyone would be able to do it in the next couple of elections. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12161 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23188 Posts
On March 03 2020 22:23 Geo.Rion wrote: Hmm, maybe you're right, but i see it as this: the progressive / social-democrat wing of the party has this going for them in 2020: 1. Bernie Sanders - an authentic, well known and willing champion of the cause, with super-consistent track-record going back decades. 2. Compared to 2016 where he was up against a united front of the establishment, against a candidate who was riding the "first female president" wave, this year the establishment didnt unite until Super Tuesday, and even now there still is Bloomberg. 3. Biden is just as old as him, has no "historic" thing going for him like 1st female /1st gay / 1st whatever candidate. Just a run of the mill, well known, kinda likable old white christian guy, who's fumbling and gaffing constantly. 4. Bloomberg is in the race, call him whatever you want oligarch/ plutocrat / billionaire with a mind set on using money to win a nomination. Former republican, controversial racial policies etc. It would be really really hard to come up with someone better to run against as a social-democrat/ progressive. Bernie couldnt win in 2016. If he cannot win in 2020 against Biden and Bloomberg, then i really really dont see who could win against the establishment Dem candidate in 2024. It's not gonna be him, he'll be a 82 and a two time runner-up. Whoever would come up as the new Sanders would have a much more uphill battle for the nomination. I really think this is the single best chance to move the Democratic party towards social-democracy, if Bernie cant do it this year, then i dont think anyone would be able to do it in the next couple of elections. I basically agree. I'm advocating for ML socialism though, not social democracy. | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On March 03 2020 15:50 Danglars wrote: Ahh so that's what you mean. I think our primary disagreement is philosophical. Does a candidate running in an election about "persuading people that you should represent them" any different from a voter in an election choosing his/her/(xe?) candidate based on some innate characteristic other than the words out of the candidate's mouth, their pamphlets, their surrogates, their movement's message? Did skin color or the status of existing as a member of a group actually do persuading for election, by which you could see a stranger disabled woman on the street and say, "They would make a great president," being persuaded that a disabled woman in that office is exactly what the country needs.+ Show Spoiler + If you see discover she's married to another woman, can you say you're doubly convinced she would make a great president? I don't know what your second sentence is asking. You are acting like "choosing [a] candidate based on […] the words out of the candidate's mouth, their pamphlets" etc. doesn't rely on appearance to some extent. Which words? How are they pronounced? What words are on the pamphlets? What rhetoric is being used? If we went back through all the comments you've made on this forum about candidates going back to 2012 how many would we find commenting on an implicit "essence" or vibe or appearance of a candidate? You think you got a sense of all those candidates just from their disembodied words? Maybe you think you can divorce form from content, but with a little reflection I think even you can grasp the point that the two exist in dialectical relationship with each other. Maybe you feel more affinity for imperial Rome than ancient Greece, but the pre-Socratics had already pointed this out. And while we're here maybe we should point out that Aristotle's rhetoric mentions ethos, pathos, and logos as rhetorical appeals. Logic happens to be pretty persuasive sometimes. | ||
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