EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 2269
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Wegandi
United States2455 Posts
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12417 Posts
On April 17 2020 15:44 Wegandi wrote: I think some introspection is needed for Democrats if they lose to Trump 2x who is basically the third worst Presidential candidate in history Absolutely agree | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5763 Posts
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Nouar
France3270 Posts
On April 17 2020 03:44 Nyxisto wrote: Given the extreme backlash that Pete Buttigieg got, who is as morally decent and fairly left-wing as it got, from the more extreme elements of Sanders base I think this entire moral outrage about Biden is just nonsense anyway. There's a contingent of angry rose twitter people who wanted their saviour Bernie and they'd throw a tantrum regardless of who else was running. The stuff that Buttigieg had thrown at him from calling him a rat, a shill, or not gay enough was pretty disgusting. If I was some evil gazillionaire I'd just pay those people to post more on Twitter because it's making the entire left-wing seem nuts. I would have loved to see 1v1 debates Buttigieg vs Trump :-/ the guy can talk ! I never really understood the rage against him, compared to the other non-bernie candidates.... Biden vs Trump debates are going to be .... Ugh... Unwatchable if you want to keep your brain online. | ||
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Silvanel
Poland4742 Posts
An introspection was warranted after first lost. It doesnt look like it happened, it seems not much have changed since. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12417 Posts
On April 17 2020 18:25 Silvanel wrote: An introspection was warranted after first lost. It doesnt look like it happened, it seems not much have changed since. It requires overtaking a party that would 100% rather lose than be overtaken by your side. There were some advances between 2016 and now, not a lot but still; some good people got elected in congress. Some near misses as well, although the scope of the "near" is arguable; Keith Ellison almost got the DNC then he didn't, Sanders almost got the nomination then he didn't. It won't be easy, what else is new :/ | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45365 Posts
On April 17 2020 11:15 iamthedave wrote: You'd vote for him if you believed he was guilty? Assuming that it's still Biden vs. Trump, yeah. If one of them is removed and replaced, then I'd look at the updated match-up. My position is focused solely on the premise that one of those two will be president. Regardless of it being Biden and Trump or another two people, though, it's still always going to come down to the final two candidates. Even if we magically eliminated a two-party system and somehow had a Final Three or Final Four reasonably popular set of candidates who could realistically win the general election, I'm *always* going to vote for the candidate that I believe will do the most good for our country and world. And in most cases, the candidates will have done shitty things. It's certainly hard to quantify immoral deeds, but I'm playing the pragmatist and still voting for whoever has the best political platforms, and not playing the ideologue who thinks that staying home on Election Day because no candidate is an angel actually affects anything. I think, for a lot of people, perfect is the enemy of good, and perfect really doesn't exist. | ||
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
On April 17 2020 05:15 Velr wrote: Despite Bidens horribleness, I also feel like many people here and many other places on the internet are still just bitching that Bernie didn't take it. The "moderate" vote was in fact split between all the candidates, the timing for them dropping out right before super thuesday was just a smart move, too bad Bernie seems to have proven to be basically incapable of making any friends in Washington despite his long political career. As Hillary said: "Nobody likes him"... Well, seems like she was right. Stating it like this is claiming that there is no common front between leftists and moderates. You are painting an "us" vs "them" picture. You are reinforcing and validating everything the bitching Bernie people are saying. Don't be surprised when you create that environment that one team doesn't want to help out. In a hypothetical sane world "the moderates" would represent a diverse set of policies and ideals that we together as primary voters could pick from. In that world you never have an orchestrated drop-out to coronate a candidate by party leadership. In such a world you don't even really need a Bernie Sanders out on the left because the party would represent its entire coalition in all of its candidates. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
There won't be any introspection. There was supposed to be after 2016 and look at where we are now. | ||
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mierin
United States4943 Posts
On April 17 2020 20:44 Stratos_speAr wrote: There won't be any introspection. There was supposed to be after 2016 and look at where we are now. Yep. Literally the only qualification that matters to them is "I'm not Trump! Vote for me for the good of the country!" | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12417 Posts
On April 17 2020 20:44 Stratos_speAr wrote: There won't be any introspection. There was supposed to be after 2016 and look at where we are now. I'd be surprised as well. But these things are to be discussed when we get there. Corona is bad enough that Biden could win. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45365 Posts
On April 17 2020 20:53 mierin wrote: Yep. Literally the only qualification that matters to them is "I'm not Trump! Vote for me for the good of the country!" I feel like this obvious strawman really causes a miscommunication between various groups who would prefer a candidate other than Trump. This completely discounts the entire primary, all the other candidates, and all of the positions held by the opponents of Trump. It's not just about beating Trump, although of course that's a major goal. We've spent months (arguably years) speaking in favor of various ideas that we felt would be good for the country and the world. A whole bunch of candidates became champions of various subsets of those ideas, and we ended up selecting one representative out of those to be the major opponent against Trump in the general election. Biden happens to be who we selected overall, but let's not pretend that the only qualification and only position that mattered was "I'm not Trump". Sanders isn't Trump. Klobuchar isn't Trump. Biden isn't Trump. Clinton wasn't Trump. It's not hard to be informed of what the positions were of the various 2016 and 2020 candidates, and those were considered. That's how the primary winner is selected; otherwise, they may as well be selected at random, as all of them are "not Trump". Neither Clinton nor Biden were arbitrarily chosen simply because they weren't Trump. They had a lot of support for a bunch of reasons that voters considered to be legitimate. Let's at least acknowledge that. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45365 Posts
On April 17 2020 21:11 Nebuchad wrote: I'd be surprised as well. But these things are to be discussed when we get there. Corona is bad enough that Biden could win. I hear this a lot - that the global pandemic, our country shutting down, and Trump's inadequate planning and late response should really tank Trump's chances in November - but I'm pretty skeptical (perhaps cynical?) that this will significantly hurt Trump's chances for reelection. I think there is good reason to believe that progress will be made by the fall (i.e., recovery / "the worst is over" / rebuilding), but even if there wasn't, I don't see Trump's favorability among his constituents bombing. Nothing sticks to him... ever... and Republican voters are willing to either make excuses for him and/or will still vote for him in the general election, as they will still see Trump as the better choice of the two in November. I still think November will be a coin-flip, regardless of the state of the nation. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12417 Posts
On April 17 2020 22:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I hear this a lot - that the global pandemic, our country shutting down, and Trump's inadequate planning and late response should really tank Trump's chances in November - but I'm pretty skeptical (perhaps cynical?) that this will significantly hurt Trump's chances for reelection. I think there is good reason to believe that progress will be made by the fall (i.e., recovery / "the worst is over" / rebuilding), but even if there wasn't, I don't see Trump's favorability among his constituents bombing. Nothing sticks to him... ever... and Republican voters are willing to either make excuses for him and/or will still vote for him in the general election, as they will still see Trump as the better choice of the two in November. I still think November will be a coin-flip, regardless of the state of the nation. It wouldn't surprise me either if Trump won, especially if there are debates. But there is going to be a recession and one of Trump's main strengths was "the economy" for the people who don't pay a lot of attention outside of "line go up", so that's also something. Without Corona I would be about 90% sure that Trump would beat Biden, now I don't really know, probably more even. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26411 Posts
On April 17 2020 22:15 Nebuchad wrote: It wouldn't surprise me either if Trump won, especially if there are debates. But there is going to be a recession and one of Trump's main strengths was "the economy" for the people who don't pay a lot of attention outside of "line go up", so that's also something. Without Corona I would be about 90% sure that Trump would beat Biden, now I don't really know, probably more even. It has to have some impact, it really just has to. If it doesn’t well, you have a significant portion of the population who will excuse almost anything. Not to say that it will be sufficient for Biden to win but there has to be a cohort of Trump voters who were on the borderline last time and will be willing to drop him based on his performance in the role. His response to the Coronavirus has been absolutely risible and is going to look worse in retrospect, at present I suspect he’s somewhat insulated by it being an ongoing issue. There are myopic Trump supporters who are unable to process the concept of him doing anything wrong, just as there are Obama supporters who give him a pass on drone strikes. Yeah that particular cohort you can never shift for sure. The economy performing as it was was his trump card, or at least was frequently presented as such. He doesn’t have it anymore, even if he can’t be blamed for it particularly. I assume there are people who dislike a lot of Trump stuff but would have held their nose and voted for it the guy with the strong economy. A lot of supposition of course, it would be interesting to know about people’s rationales for voting and what they’re based on, although even if people are being honest there’s probably subconscious stuff they’re not aware of. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18239 Posts
On April 17 2020 19:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Assuming that it's still Biden vs. Trump, yeah. If one of them is removed and replaced, then I'd look at the updated match-up. My position is focused solely on the premise that one of those two will be president. Regardless of it being Biden and Trump or another two people, though, it's still always going to come down to the final two candidates. Even if we magically eliminated a two-party system and somehow had a Final Three or Final Four reasonably popular set of candidates who could realistically win the general election, I'm *always* going to vote for the candidate that I believe will do the most good for our country and world. And in most cases, the candidates will have done shitty things. It's certainly hard to quantify immoral deeds, but I'm playing the pragmatist and still voting for whoever has the best political platforms, and not playing the ideologue who thinks that staying home on Election Day because no candidate is an angel actually affects anything. I think, for a lot of people, perfect is the enemy of good, and perfect really doesn't exist. At what point is enough enough, though? You claim you look at political platforms. So presumably you would have no problems voting for Trump if the Democratic candidate was Hitler? What if it was Hitler running vs Ultron (or whatever supervillain you like that has plans even worse than HItler's)? At what point does your utilitarian argument break down and make you say "right, democracy is failing us, and the only way to prevent the apocalypse is to do something entirely different?" Now lets do that same argument but maintaining their political platforms. How many babies can Biden massacre on 5th avenue before you say "okay, even though I mostly agree with his politics, I can't stomach voting for a serial baby killer?" Now obviously the actual situation is that Biden is neither Hitler nor a serial baby killer. He is alleged to have sexually assaulted someone. Which is pretty bad if true, but even then is not anywhere near massacring babies on 5th avenue. But it could be enough to drive off plenty of voters for who sexual assault is already that step too far where utilitarianism doesn't outweigh their disgust. EDIT: for those who like the trolley problem. Just make it 1000 people tied to the tracks on the one side and 1005 tied to the tracks on the other. For the utilitarian argument it makes no difference: you can still save 5 lives by pulling the switch. If 1000 vs 1005 is still a significant enough difference for you, feel free to add orders of magnitude to reach the point where you say "you know what, fuck this switch, we should find a way to blow up the train instead". | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45365 Posts
On April 17 2020 23:17 Acrofales wrote: At what point is enough enough, though? You claim you look at political platforms. So presumably you would have no problems voting for Trump if the Democratic candidate was Hitler? What if it was Hitler running vs Ultron (or whatever supervillain you like that has plans even worse than HItler's)? At what point does your utilitarian argument break down and make you say "right, democracy is failing us, and the only way to prevent the apocalypse is to do something entirely different?" Now lets do that same argument but maintaining their political platforms. How many babies can Biden massacre on 5th avenue before you say "okay, even though I mostly agree with his politics, I can't stomach voting for a serial baby killer?" Now obviously the actual situation is that Biden is neither Hitler nor a serial baby killer. He is alleged to have sexually assaulted someone. Which is pretty bad if true, but even then is not anywhere near massacring babies on 5th avenue. But it could be enough to drive off plenty of voters for who sexual assault is already that step too far where utilitarianism doesn't outweigh their disgust. EDIT: for those who like the trolley problem. Just make it 1000 people tied to the tracks on the one side and 1005 tied to the tracks on the other. For the utilitarian argument it makes no difference: you can still save 5 lives by pulling the switch. If 1000 vs 1005 is still a significant enough difference for you, feel free to add orders of magnitude to reach the point where you say "you know what, fuck this switch, we should find a way to blow up the train instead". I have no idea at what point the utilitarian argument is no longer sufficient for me; all I know is that I'm not there yet with Biden vs. Trump. Also, I would caution against using the trolley problem as an analogy, as the "blowing up the train instead" doesn't really have a concrete parallel on Election Day. That sort of revolutionary overhaul of how things are done isn't likely to happen as some sort of surprise, third option competing with the Democratic and Republican votes on that exact date. If we're going to change how the election process works, it's likely to occur gradually, by choosing more and more political representatives whose platforms include election reform. And that's something that's pretty much independent from making a choice on Election Day, in that we can still support politicians who promote progressive election reform while still voting for our "better of the two choices" general election candidates. In other words, it's not the three choices of "Vote for the Dem vs. Vote for the Repub vs. Blow up the train", but rather two (connected) scenarios: We continue to vote for the Dem or Repub while potentially pushing for election reform (if we want it... I know I do, but I don't know what percentage of Americans do). That's simply the reality of the political process. | ||
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
US Leftists: * Don't build that trolley it will kill people * If you build that trolley you will break the lever so we can't stop it going down the bad path * We are screaming that your actions are building a trolley that will kill people in large numbers * We are outright telling you the trolley actions you are taking are dangerous and we want no part in this scenario. * We've dedicated massive resources to prevent you from building this trolley in order to advert a catastrophe. * We have actual evidence that you are intentionally building this death trolley to avoid a loss of power and money. Please stop. Moderate Response: Oops, well please buy a ticket for our trolley so maybe you can steer it down the correct path. If you do we'll just keep building the same trolley because it keeps selling out for some reason. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23732 Posts
On April 17 2020 23:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I have no idea at what point the utilitarian argument is no longer sufficient for me; all I know is that I'm not there yet with Biden vs. Trump. + Show Spoiler + Also, I would caution against using the trolley problem as an analogy, as the "blowing up the train instead" doesn't really have a concrete parallel on Election Day. That sort of revolutionary overhaul of how things are done isn't likely to happen as some sort of surprise, third option competing with the Democratic and Republican votes on that exact date. If we're going to change how the election process works, it's likely to occur gradually, by choosing more and more political representatives whose platforms include election reform. And that's something that's pretty much independent from making a choice on Election Day, in that we can still support politicians who promote progressive election reform while still voting for our "better of the two choices" general election candidates. In other words, it's not the three choices of "Vote for the Dem vs. Vote for the Repub vs. Blow up the train", but rather two (connected) scenarios: We continue to vote for the Dem or Repub while potentially pushing for election reform (if we want it... I know I do, but I don't know what percentage of Americans do). That's simply the reality of the political process. Probably when you or people you care deeply about are on both tracks. That's where it was for a lot of us it is already insufficient for. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On April 18 2020 03:20 Logo wrote: The trolly problem is incredibly dumb. But to entertain the analogy for a second here is the situation... US Leftists: * Don't build that trolley it will kill people * If you build that trolley you will break the lever so we can't stop it going down the bad path * We are screaming that your actions are building a trolley that will kill people in large numbers * We are outright telling you the trolley actions you are taking are dangerous and we want no part in this scenario. * We've dedicated massive resources to prevent you from building this trolley in order to advert a catastrophe. * We have actual evidence that you are intentionally building this death trolley to avoid a loss of power and money. Please stop. Moderate Response: Oops, well please buy a ticket for our trolley so maybe you can steer it down the correct path. If you do we'll just keep building the same trolley because it keeps selling out for some reason. Will you actually ever outgrow this childish worldview where you're the enlightened good guy who has all the answers, all your opponents just want to do evil things and harm people rather than accepting that simply not everyone is on board with your idea of what the good life looks like, and that in the real world there are multitudes of interests, many of which are legitimate and which need to be reconciled? Does the US left not even have an ounce for some sort of epistemic humility and can consider that they may not actually be right? Is that a notion that occasionally occurs to people who unironically believe this stuff and are older than 16? Just look at the UK if you want to know what happens if you actually run someone who believes this nonsense. They got the biggest Conservative landslide since Thatcher. | ||
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