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Baron Porkface posted:Is it or is it not evil to provide Obamacare benefits to the people who need them to live?  Congratulations 08 Dems! We won! Now you can save tens of millions of lives and there's nothing Republicans can do to stop you! Nah, we're gonna let a third of you die anyway that'd be rad. Maybe half, but at least a third. Buh--wha--but why? Uh cuz we like money? And rich people who profit from your deaths will give us lots of it to let them keep killing? That's monstrous, what an evil thing to do! How DARE you?! We're saving millions and millions of lives, that's evil now? You should be on your knees thanking us for not being greedy enough to kill you all like Republicans would, don't we deserve to wet our beaks a littleetc etc etc * and on and on forever as Americans keep dying needlessly*
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Feb 15, 2018 16:53
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Doesn't the DCCC deliberately increase the amount of money candidates need by requiring candidates to spend a ton of it on TV ads created by their worthless consultant buddies instead of getting out the vote. Hey wait didn't the Democratic Party grift itself into bankruptcy going into one of the most historically important elections in American history up against a fascist cheeto because they just kept funneling money to consultants at Presidential-election-year levels for four straight years? Once again vastly increasing the amount of money Democratic politicians were expected to raise from big donors with absolutely zero electoral effect to show for it?
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Feb 15, 2018 17:05
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:And in the exact same time the candidate that actually aligns with your values better failed to win elections or get votes or maybe even failed to exist on this corporeal plane. And generally put a worse showing on fixing any issue than even the worst democrat. The question was whether killing millions of people for money is evil if you also save half of them (it is). The question wasn't "did someone who wouldn't do that win" obviously they didn't win or they would have won. Saying "well they won" seems like it could be used to defend anything a politician does. It could be used to defend Trump!
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Feb 15, 2018 17:14
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Hillary Clinton is owned by Wall Street tho, the reason that critique was so devastating is because it's 100% true. It allowed Trump to deflect from literally being a New York .01%er who is friends with the worst people on Wall Street. But now I guess we're getting into "a Republican said the sky is blue so I must believe the opposite" territory.
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Feb 15, 2018 17:19
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Elizabeth Warren and Donna Brazile are now Fox News mouthpieces. How do I know that? They said Clinton soft-rigged the primary so obviously they work for Emmanuel Goldstein now.
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Feb 15, 2018 17:22
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Nah, as I said "the republicans say a lot of true stuff and I agree with them a lot" is always a huge element of whiney faux leftist internet culture. If Republicans are successfully flanking Democrats from the left by pointing out Democrat corruption, bad Democratic policy (based on right-wing ideas), Democrats selling out, etc then maybe what the Democrats are doing is bad strategy and not actually pragmatic in the winning-elections sense? Republicans lie all the time and even when they tell the truth they're usually doing so in bad faith, that's not an excuse for giving them ammunition though!
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Feb 15, 2018 17:36
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Radish posted:Like when she's getting stupid questions early in the primary debates that ultimately didn't help her at all and was pretty pointless but it allowed the idea that the primary was rigged to gain traction. Republican messaging works best when there's a tiny grain of truth to it that they can then use in bad faith. To bring this back around to the topic of the thread, turns out "yea our candidate is a cheater but you just have to take it because Republicans are bad" is a much much worse vote-getting argument than "our candidate is an honest moral person worth electing on their own merits". Which really gets to the heart of the problem with Lesser Evilism. Even from a completely hideous amoral framework where the only criteria for good politics is how much evil you can get away with doing and still win, Lesser Evilism doesn't work, it might be able to win by default when the Greater Evil fucks up enough, but after a few years sooner or later people get tired of voting for bad things just to stop worse things and they forget how much worse it could be, and the Greater Evil gets in anyway.
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Feb 15, 2018 17:53
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It's the way the targets are never different and it's so clear the republican narrative takes the lead. If it was so called "true leftists" that were attacking one group of democrats and then republicans attacking another and the democrats the republicans hated were the ones the "leftists" loved or something that would be one thing, but it's the super obvious way that if a republican hates a democrat that by the end of the week the official newsletter has gone out that they are also target #1 centerist. Newsflash: if a Democrat does something bad, Republicans will rush to slam them even if it is something Republicans themselves are secretly doing or something Republicans themselves actually openly believe in. The fact that Republicans will make bad faith arguments does not magically mean that other people making those arguments must be incorrect just because a Republican agrees.
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Feb 15, 2018 17:59
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Republicans even attacked ACA from the left despite the fact that the mandate was their idea and that their plan for Medicare is to turn it into the ACA model. This doesn't mean that anyone else attacking ACA from the left is a secret Republican or mean that their criticisms are wrong because a Republican made them, because get this Republicans are lying about their intentions.
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Feb 15, 2018 18:05
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If you find yourself agreeing with republicans now and then then sure, that is no big deal, if you find yourself agreeing with republicans often enough you might just be a republican as their party best represents your values. This is a "but Hitler says he's a National Socialist" quality argument. E: Oh you want a Democratic Republic, hmm sounds like something Kim Jong Un would say.
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Feb 15, 2018 18:07
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Lesser of Two Evils voting theory is a modified asymmetrical version of Iterated Prisoners Dilemma but if Prisoner B (the voting public) defects the worst possible thing happens so Prisoner A (the Dem political class) conclude they are assured of Cooperation no matter what they do, and we're all trapped in the game until the end of time. Cue Democratic politicians mashing on the Defect button over and over forever yelling "Why aren't you always Cooperating, don't you morons know Cooperation is your rational subgame perfect Nash equilibrium? Gah we both defected again this is all your fault!"
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Feb 15, 2018 18:19
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The thing is, there is no virtue signalling happening, it seems like people you'd never even guess they had any leftward tendency at all if they didn't inform you that they totally do, somewhere, way in the back, that they will totally advocate for once they finish attacking the true enemy. Even if this were true, it seems like the best way to put one over on these people is to start passing the progressive leftist policy that they secretly hate, thereby making their hidden strategy to boost conservatives using reverse psychology backfire horribly.
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Feb 15, 2018 18:31
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I've posted about it before, but the Ultimatum Game is a good example of how human behavior differs from the assumptions inherent in game theory rationality, and as a result why Lesser Evilism, which shares those same theoretical assumptions, is such a failure in reality. In the Ultimatum Game one player (the proposer) gets to decide how to split a pot of money with the second player (the responder). The responder can only accept or reject the split, if he rejects it both get nothing. According to game theory getting something is always better than nothing so a rational responder should accept any offer except $0. Therefore assuming the respondent will always accept something, a rational proposer would offer $1 and keep the rest of the pot. This is the Nash Equilibrium, neither player can change strategies unilaterally and do better, if the proposer offers $0 it will be rejected, if the responder rejects $1 he gets nothing. And so game theory predicts the responder will get a pittance and the proposer will walk away with almost all the money. Of course, if you do this experiment with real human beings, that prediction turns out to be a wildly inaccurate model. In reality, the splits are almost always fairly close to even and offers that diverge from that are nearly always rejected. Although some responders individually do worse than game theory predicts because they choose to forego some money in order to punish unfair offers, on average responders do much much better than game theory predicts. Instead of getting almost nothing, they get almost half the money. And that's because real human beings have a limit to how lovely they can be treated before they are willing to inflict punishment for antisocial behavior even at a cost to themselves, and other humans (having interacted with real human beings before) know this and act more socially-inclined as a result. Dem politicos (and people who cosplay as them online like OoCC and Baron Porkface) would see a group of humans happily playing the Ultimatum Game and dividing the pots fairly among themselves and shriek "this is so inefficient! Why are you offering so much when game theory says you don't have to? Let me show you how to play, idiots  "..."Oh my god, why are all my offers being rejected, don't you stupid proles understand that letting yourself get hosed over is your rational subgame perfect strategy? GAH YOU DID IT AGAIN! YOU COULD HAVE HAD A DOLLAR, NOW WE'RE BOTH BROKE AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Feb 15, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 18:56
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Ytlaya posted:As I think I've said before, I actually personally disagree with not voting, but I can understand why people do it. I hate the Republicans enough that I spite-vote straight-ticket D. But I still have limits for how lovely a Dem could be and still get my vote, if the 2020 election were between Donald Trump (R) and Paul Ryan (D) I would have to vote third party even though Paul Ryan is "not as bad" as Trump by some microscopic amount because he would still be a disaster. Everyone has that limit somewhere on some issues. Which is why Lesser Evilism is such a terrible strategy from a pragmatic standpoint. Even though if you browbeat someone enough in the Ultimatum Game, you might be able to get them to modify their personal threshold for how much they are personally willing to suffer to punish some level of antisocial behavior. But you will almost never be able to convince them to passively accept any amount of lovely treatment in exchange for a pat on the head. At the end of the day, if Dem politicians want to convince millions of people not to hit the Punish button, the only way to do that is to improve their offers instead of pounding on the Defect button like it stole something.
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Feb 15, 2018 19:21
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Because I have no actual belief that many of the people actually hold any particularly left wing beliefs and instead just discovered that if they call hillary a "neoliberal" every place their dad said "liberal" they can just regurgitate his worldview without being ostracized by their liberal friends, to the point they might not even realize when they are making legitimate concerns and when they are buying into republican narratives. Ah the "drive around Occupy Wall Street until you find an idiot to interview, then conclude 'obviously everyone here is just like that so bailing out and protecting white collar criminals must be fine' " argument.
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Feb 15, 2018 20:50
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So is this just a tone argument OoCC? You don't actually have any ideological disagreement with something like single-payer health care, but because some people out there don't really care about it beyond using it as a club against Hillary and also those people are stupid and annoying and their butts smell, we need to oppose it in order to spite some dumb internet people? Is it really wise to let the Democratic Party be worse than it needs to be and keep the American health care system worse than it needs to be out of spite? That doesn't seem wise at all, like at least Obama's excuse for doing it was getting boatloads of cash, which was morally wrong but at least it was in his self-interest which is more than I can say for the argument you seem to be making.
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Feb 15, 2018 22:10
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No progress will be made in getting money out of politics until the left takes over the Democratic Party. The Party deliberately exacerbates the problem by forcing its candidates to be more dependent on and therefore sycophantic to big donors so all that donor money can be poured down a rathole of endless grift for themselves and their consultant friends.
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Feb 15, 2018 23:36
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If you have opinions like "oh you know, hillary's plan for a public option and expanded medicare isn't going as far as I want, and her support of gay rights is mostly correct now but was late coming and felt bare minimum and her views on abortion generally seem correct but she seems to be giving some amount of concessions that I prefer she not" or something then fine, go for it, you are with me. To someone who is going to die or whose family member is going to die because they can't afford medicine under the ACA and/or will still die under Hillary's plan the parties may as well be the same. Either one is going to let them die for money. Now try to control the knee-jerk sociopathic retort "well we don't need their votes anyway  " and think: why not try to get their votes by offering not to murder them for money? Recent history has shown that sometimes we really need every last vote!
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Feb 16, 2018 00:40
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:So your standard of a politician you'd support is only one where literally no one dies? Because boy, I would really like all those people to have gotten expanded medicare instead of waiting. I said try to restrain yourself from kneejerking to the sociopath's retort. Like try? E: Even if I follow you down the rabbit-hole of amorality where it's okay to kill sick people for money as long as you kill fewer than the other guys, and you can use the ones you're saving as hostages to get elected forever this strategy is not actually effective at winning elections. It fails by its own standards. You can make all the game theory arguments you want, real human beings don't follow game-theory 'rationality' and there's a limit to how much poo poo they will take. You're just the guy playing the Ultimatum Game yelling "arrghh stop rejecting the dollar just because I'm taking the rest of the pot, now we're both broke and it's all your fault!" VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 02:28
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I'm sorry that you consider more people getting medicare to be "poo poo". I don't, obviously. I consider people still going bankrupt and dying without healthcare to be "poo poo" and what's more important so do their friends and families. Even if you don't care what happens to those people as long as Democrats get elected, you should care whether they think it's worth it to vote Democrat because although "well we don't need their votes " was the hot take among sociopathic D&D wanna-be-political-wonks in 2016, it turned out that Dems needed those votes after all!
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Feb 16, 2018 03:36
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It's kind of depressing that I can't actually count on liberals understanding that killing people for money is wrong to do, and in order to even have a chance at making them understand that it's bad I have to couch dying people in terms of threatened electoral votes.
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Feb 16, 2018 03:48
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But what about all the people Martin Shkrelli didn't kill for cash, what a hero
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Feb 16, 2018 04:05
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It’s depressing that anyone would be fine killing people because they are fussy a candidate that didn’t run that they made up in their head would have been better Idk how many other ways I can explain this to you, but to a person dying because Democrats sold them out to corporations in the ACA it is poo poo even if the overall number of dying people goes down. To their friends and family it is poo poo. If appealing to human empathy doesn't work, how about this: in our political system whoever gets more votes wins. Killing people means they can't vote for you and making their families hate you makes them less likely to vote for you. E: I know I know "it's not their rational perfect subgame strategy!" Human beings don't reason that way, sorry. Also, game theory rationality changes when the game is repeated, which politics is. Mashing the defect button over and over is a poor strategy even in game theory in a repetitive Prisoner's Dilemma or Ultimatum Game, let alone in real politics with real human beings who don't apply game theory rationality to the question "should I vote for someone who stabs me in the back every round" Also dead poor people can't vote and which party wins the poor people demographic overwhelmingly? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 04:14
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I wonder if we could get liberals on board with M4A if we just started referring to people as "potential raw voting material", perhaps always in context with say the 2016 vote margin in Michigan. "This year, another 45000 units of American potential raw voting material died today from lack of access to health care, about 4.5 times the benchmark unit known as the Trump-Michigan. Another 4.5 Trump-Michigan's worth are expected to die next year for the same reason, although a recent CBO report has said the repeal of the mandate could increase that by as much as 2.3 Trump-Michigans."
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Feb 16, 2018 04:31
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:You know who has presented medicare for all plans universal healthcare? Literally politicians who are democrats. Maybe it would be smart to run one of them for president instead of someone who opposes that next time? Maybe we should run people who agree with that for all offices?
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Feb 16, 2018 04:38
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Maybe it would be smart know or care or learn anything about democrats beyond hillary clinton before trying to mouth off on what "democrats" collectively do or think or say. lolwhat Are you taking "hey Democrats should help more people not less" as some kind of personal insult to a sports team rather than as a recommendation for what Democratic politicians ought to do if they want to win elections?
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Feb 16, 2018 04:50
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The current Democratic Party will not give us a public option unless they're willing to go nuclear on the filibuster. If they're not willing to commit to doing that, it won't happen because a 60-vote supermajority is a 5-times-in-a-century deal and even when one comes around there will always be a convenient Lieberman to vote with Republicans. You think that's good enough, and that saying "oh it was all that dastardly Lieberman, not our fault *sounds of glasses clinking with Aetna lobbyists*" will be enough to win the next election. It won't. And then once again Republicans will get in and you'll be squealing "why did those stupid voters stay home game theory says they should Cooperate even if we Defect!". Now you're going to misunderstand this post and accuse me of trying to keep the Democrats from winning, when I'm explaining to you what they must do if they want to get reelected after Republicans inevitably gently caress up and horrify enough Americans to let the Dems win by default. But honestly just the fact that you have to say "OK the Democratic Party doesn't support the literal best health care system for Americans, in defiance of all reason, logic, and human empathy, because they're too beholden to donors to ever do it" should be a clue that as long as they hold sway the donors are not going to let a public option happen because that's almost as deadly to private industry profits as the NHS.
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Feb 16, 2018 05:23
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Uh you told me, when you offhand mentioned that the Democratic Party doesn't support the literal best version of universal health care for Americans, an illogical, evil, and insane position for them to have? How do you not see that as the biggest red flag ever?
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Feb 16, 2018 05:40
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The donor class would be. And since they're the reason Democrats would never support an NHS, it's doubtful Democrats would cross them to pass a public option just as we saw in 2009 when Democrats took industry bribes not to pass a public option. Anyway even if their intentions are pure, the filibuster guarantees it won't happen. The last time Dems had 60 votes was the 1970s, it took 30 years to get 60 Senators again, and even if they somehow got it right away you only have to bribe a couple senators to keep a public option from happening. You think that "well they tried" will be good enough for the public: it wasn't and it won't be.
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Feb 16, 2018 06:06
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My superpower: remembering what happened 9 years ago, understanding how our political system makes that outcome a near certainty
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Feb 16, 2018 06:18
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:This is what I mean about people that just absorb fox news narrative. This weird alternate history of the democrats playing a trick instead of the actual thing that happened. Dude when the DREAM Act was introduced in March 2009, Democrats had 60 votes in the senate and could have passed it on party lines. When they finally did get around to voting on it they had 59 votes plus 3 Republicans voting for it, why did it fail? Because 5 Democrats voted against it, 2 of whom are still in the Senate. Oh and none of them were Lieberman, he cosponsored it, it was all party members who conspired to kill it. The 2013 bill was loving political theatre from the party that shot down their own bipartisan bill in 2010 to appeal to racists. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 16:33
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Yeah, the first part is true, the second is a lie. Do you have anything to say besides Orwellian arguments that the sky must be green because Emmanuel Goldstein said it is blue?
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Feb 16, 2018 16:53
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Partisanship is a hell of a drug. 1. Five Democrats racistly vote to deport a million people who came here as children and America is all they've ever known, to break up families and destroy a million lives for the crime of being Hispanic. Somehow they don't lose their plum committee assignments or lose support from the party because apparently being a racist rear end in a top hat is still okay as long as you wear the team colors. 2. A Republican points out that this happened. 3. In the minds of partisans, it now did not happen because a Republican said it did, and anyone who says that what happened happened must be a secret Republican because truth is the enemy of Team Blue and must be destroyed.
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Feb 16, 2018 17:06
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Main Paineframe posted:As for the importance of that spending? Well, according to that link you posted, the Dems outspent outspent the GOP in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016. And so far, all they have to show for it is a pile of debt, reluctant donors not interested in contributing any more, and an absolutely furious base. *And lucrative six-figure speaking gigs and sinecures from the white-collar criminals they coddled while in office
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Feb 16, 2018 18:02
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Nevvy Z posted:It sounds like you should be mad at the three people that voted against it and working to primary them instead of just constantly being mad on the internet at a lot of people who supported it. Hall Pass Not being a racist should be a litmus test to be a Democrat. If the Party isn't whipping all its members to pass a DACA bill that Republicans are crossing the aisle to support, then I'm sorry you had to find out this way but the Party will never ever do anything for DREAMers until it is taken over and changed, that is just a fact. The party is already supporting one of those racists (Manchin) against a primary challenge. Even if we capture 67 Senate seats next November it still won't be enough to pass DREAM over Trump's veto because Manchin and Tester won't ever support it.
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Feb 16, 2018 18:27
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Also, ironically, the 60s Democratic Party created the filibuster in its modern form by introducing the double-track system which removed any political cost for filibustering by no longer making the filibuster stop all Senate business. They did this because they were tired of their own members derailing the agenda by filibustering every piece of Civil Rights legislation so rather than outlasting the filibusters and forcing through the legislation like they had been doing, they would now allow filibusters to quietly kill all civil rights bills while the Senate moved on to other stuff. And it was so successful* that they continue to let the filibuster be their excuse to not pass crucial legislation to this day *At disillusioning their supporters and making all of America hate congress
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Feb 16, 2018 18:42
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Like, this is what an actual criticism of a democratic policy looks like. It has specific complaints, actionable issues. It lists out what is between the ACA and an actually good plan. It is something other than "I read single payer is the most left so because I'm most left that is the only thing I could ever support despite other countries having a variety of enviable models" Your argument is disingenuous from the start because what the Democrats proposed is not anything like the enviable models of those other countries you're touting. Also if you've reached the point where you're alleging that support for a superior system that saves lives can only be Virtue Signalling, then you have some sort of severe mental or moral deficiency.
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Feb 16, 2018 19:25
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If your support includes helping republicans win then yes, your claims to be on the left was only skin deep and any claims you made about being the real left was false. (even if you whine the whole time that it's not fair that what you are doing is helping the republicans win as you help them) Look man I get where you're coming from: you're afraid that criticizing the Democrats will hurt their chances in the election and then Republicans will win and be terrible. And there's some argument for that, after primaries are over, the week before the election with no other context we should push for a Democrat even if they are terrible. And I did. But that is not the case now. Consider: refusing to hold Democrats accountable, refusing to honestly evaluate their failures, and defending them no matter what they do means they have no incentive not to sell you out for money. And we know from social experiments that real people react badly to being sold out and almost everyone has a threshold beyond which they will punish anti-social behavior even at a cost to themselves. This hurts Democratic electoral chances in the long run, and therefore hurts real people. Take DREAM, Dems said they had to sell out DREAMers in 2010 in order to keep the Senate (it was the Lame Duck so they had already lost the House and knew this was their last chance to pass DREAM), but they eventually lost the Senate anyway and now because of their treachery Republicans will deport a million people.
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Feb 16, 2018 19:40
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Gay rights is one of the reasons I'm in favor of holding Democrats accountable for their betrayals, because when we do not, voters see that there is no accountability in the party and no political will to follow through on campaign promises or even basic human morality like "don't break up families and deport a million people" and become discouraged, therefore putting me at a greater risk of being electrocuted into hating dick by Republican-controlled governments.
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Feb 16, 2018 19:48
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Vote Dems for abortion rights *Dems cross the aisle to vote against abortion rights*
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Feb 16, 2018 19:57
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