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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It's stupid to just call everything that doesn't agree with you "evil" then pack up your brain and stop thinking. Some policies are evil, some are wrong. Just declaring it a war of good and evil and that everyone is evil is just a short cut to not thinking. What kind of dumb thing is this? Yes, you can call harmful ideology evil. It is entirely possible for both prominent political options to be actively evil. That isn't "turning off your mind." There is no universal law dictating that, for any choice of two political ideologies, one must be "not evil." My feeling is that while voting for the lesser evil (in a situation where it's essentially guaranteed one of the two evils in question will win) is the optimal choice, there's something wrong with the sort of person who becomes angry with people for not doing so. The ultimate source of these problems is the actions of people who have actual power. Yes, voters who don't vote for the lesser evil may be making the suboptimal choice, but people make wrong choices all the time that are a lot less reasonable that that. If you actually want change, it makes far more sense to target the actual political organization that is leading to a lack of enthusiasm among large portions of the base. I can't help but think that the sort of person who gets really upset and offended at people who choose not to vote cares more about feeling correct than they do actually changing anything. Because I can guarantee that "convincing millions of individuals to vote for a candidate they dislike" is one of the least pragmatic paths forward imaginable.
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Feb 14, 2018 01:11
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FilthyImp posted:Comfort and disillusionment. I think you're portraying the Obama status quo in neutral terms, when that isn't accurate. The status quo under Obama, while better than one under a Republican president, was still extremely bad. Our government continued to enable gross injustice; just to a lower degree than the Republican alternative. To put it another way, I (and presumably many others) firmly believe that Obama (and the mainsteam Democratic Party in general) would never do anything to even begin to alleviate the obscene inequality present in our society. Maintaining the status quo means allowing millions of people to continue to unnecessarily suffer and live under stressful circumstances. It isn't a neutral outcome. It's an evil one, even if it may be less evil than the Republican alternative. As mentioned in my other post, I still think you should vote Democratic in the general election, but that's only because I've never heard a good argument that not voting is actually effective at pushing Democrats to the left. But it's something I do out of grim necessity, and it isn't difficult for me to understand why others don't, especially if voting requires them to take time off of work and/or travel any significant distance. Baron Porkface posted:Why are you holing Obamacare Democrats responsible for the actions of Republicans who blocked any more robust healthcare reform and the future actions of republicans who will attempt to destroy Obamacare? Realistically speaking, there's a good chance Republicans + Lieberman are responsible for not getting a public option, but the Democrats would never have pushed for anything more than that, even if Republicans didn't exist. And even with the public option they didn't fight much at all; IIRC Obama put more pressure on Kucinich regarding voting for the bill than he did Lieberman. The Democrats have always been genuinely ideologically opposed to any significant move to the left, even including relatively milquetoast social democratic reforms. It isn't just a matter of Republicans stopping them. They genuinely don't want to do this stuff. Obama didn't crack down on the finance industry because he actually likes them and trusts them. You can choose to keep believing that Democrats secretly want to do a bunch of good things and are just prevented from doing so by the Republicans, but you'll find this situation repeating over and over again every single time Democrats get into power. edit: The anecdote of Obama giving Theresa May well wishes against Corbyn's labor is really all the evidence you need that Obama is not aligned with the left. He - and most other mainstream Democrats - genuinely prefer conservatives to the radical left. Baron Porkface posted:There are people on this Page who have said supporters of ACA are evil. I've started to think I'm getting punked by Trump supporters. After reading more of your posts in this thread, I have a question - are you even aware of the whole intra-Democratic debate between the left and center-left/center? I ask because your posts all seem to conflate condemnation of Democrats will being supportive of Republicans, which is something a lot of liberals who are confused by the recent opposition from the left tend to do. I've seen a number of discussions where a liberal person will be arguing with someone on the left and it'll later be revealed that they're genuinely completely unaware that radical left opposition to the Democratic Party is even a common thing. Because the vast majority of people who post in D&D are somewhere on the left politically, most of the arguments here tend to be between the left and center-left, and you can generally assume that criticism of the nature seen in this thread is from that angle. You can generally assume by default that the people posting here do not want Republicans to win and don't want to repeal the ACA (unless it's replaced with something better, like single-payer). People say negative things about the ACA because it's woefully insufficient to even begin to address the problems with our healthcare system, and there is nothing to be gained from focusing rhetoric on defending it (instead of pushing for something much better). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Feb 15, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 03:04
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Baron Porkface posted:This isn't a debate about Democratic positioning. This is a thread where Democrats are called evil by non-voters and that goes unchallenged. And allegedly that evil extends to the state and local offices that non-voters non-voted for; or maybe non-voters are too idiotic to know there are people running other than President and congress. What are you referring to in the bolded part? I think it is entirely reasonable for someone who is left-wing to think Democrats are evil (or at least harmful, if you'd prefer that word). If you believe that status quo is evil and inexcusable, it makes sense to think the same thing about a political party who would essentially maintain the status quo (with maybe a mix of minor improvements and extra harm). To a leftist, the Democratic Party is more or less equivalent to a pro-status quo party back when chattel slavery existed in the US; evil by virtue of not acting to truly change the status quo. As I think I've said before, I actually personally disagree with not voting, but I can understand why people do it. "If I don't vote for Democrats, they'll feel the need to change in order to get me to vote" is the sort of logic that seems to make sense, even if it ends up being false in reality. The main reason why I think people should always vote Democratic in general elections is because the evidence seems to indicate that the Democratic Party just ignores people who don't vote, so you may as well take action to prevent the GOP from winning. But I can easily understand someone not wanting to vote for a party they actively dislike, and it makes even more sense if they are in a position where voting would be a significant inconvenience. It also seems like a component of your argument is "why are people focusing on Democrats instead of the even worse Republicans?" The answer to this is pretty simple - liberals/leftists complaining about the GOP accomplishes literally nothing, and the GOP will never stop being bad. From a sheer pragmatic perspective, it makes more sense to focus your efforts on making the Democratic Party into something that is actually good (and this has the side benefit of also improving their chances in elections against the GOP). Owlofcreamcheese posted:On many issues they are the good guys and you should vote for them with no hesitation until whatever full communism now party you support actually succeeds at being a realistic contender in any race anywhere. The "lol I bet you want Full Communism Now" argument against people who dislike the Democrats is the dumbest poo poo and everyone who makes that argument is an idiot. Even someone like Bernie Sanders is an extremely milquetoast social democrat. Baron Porkface posted:I'm not convinced of that. This thread, for example. No, it's an actual fact that the radical left turns out for Democrats at least as much as pretty much any other sub-group on the left. Obviously you can find people who don't vote, but you can do the same for any other ideology, including centrists, etc (and there are almost certainly far more centrists who don't vote than leftists). Baron Porkface posted:But I thought Obama was the EEEEEvil centrist. How old were you in 2008? Because PUMAs were at least as common as anti-Clinton Sanders supporters. Also, there isn't really much difference between McCain and Trump in terms of actual policy. For people who actually care about the material effects of government (instead of how rude the politician is), it shouldn't make much of a difference whether the president is McCain or Trump. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Feb 15, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 19:09
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Cool, weird that that wasn't the issue that got brought up and instead the original go to attack was some incorrect lie about them not having a platform people want to vote form even though they have gotten the most votes in nearly every election in decades. Almost like people bringing it up are disingenuous or something! The Republicans are inherently less popular in terms of the actual number of people who support them, because the ideas they support are transparently bad and malicious (particularly to ethnic minorities, who are a growing part of the population). So the Democrats can enjoy a significant amount of support simply by being neutral, even though being neutral is evil in and of itself in the context of the grotesque state of our current society. This isn't something you should be satisfied with, because a hypothetical "current Democratic Party controls the entire government forever" situation would be terrible, even if it would be less terrible than the Republican alternative. Why is it that the left bothers you so much? What are you worried about? And I want specifics - what is the bad scenario you are imagining that will occur due to the radical left? "Letting Republicans win because they don't vote enough" isn't a reasonable answer, because there's zero evidence the left votes less than any other sub-group (like centrists/moderates). Why is it that the left bothers you so much while, say, the center doesn't? I think you should take some time to think about these questions, because from the outside the bizarre distaste people like yourself display towards the left just doesn't make sense. I could understand it if you actually explicitly disagreed with their ideology and policy goals (which is what motivates the radical left to dislike the center/center-left), but that stuff never comes up in these discussions. 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. The gently caress? But this isn't remotely the case? The people on the left in these discussions disagree with pretty much every Republican policy position. Owlofcreamcheese posted:I seriously believe that a group of people have declared themselves "leftist" while holding no significantly or particularly leftist ideas and doing nothing but amplifying a bunch of right wing narritives by believing everything they half heard from their conservative dad. Where are these leftists who don't hold leftist ideas? Can you name some of them who post on these forums? What are the non-leftist ideas they have? I'm sure there's a non-zero number of leftists somewhere on the internet who have bad views, but the overwhelming majority of leftists are considerably to the left of the mainstream Democratic Party (and the average Democratic voter) politically. Even the worst ones (who complain about identity politics and what have you) aren't any worse than the Democrats when it comes to actual policy related to those issues. Majorian posted:I'd still like to see evidence of them parroting Fox News talking points, besides Jimmy Dore, who is not really left wing - he's just a loving moron. There's a subset of people who identify as leftists (and it's not really fair to pull a "no true scotsman" here, since "leftist" as a term is somewhat vaguely defined) who seem to base their views mostly on a sort of anti-establishment sentiment and are composed of people similar to those who voted Ron Paul in previous elections. But there aren't that many of these people, and the real question is why people like the person I quoted above are specifically so annoyed at the left, despite there being dumb subsets of literally every major political ideology. Why is it that the radical left bothers them so much compared with the center? Heck, they sometimes seem to have more kind words for "moderate" Republicans like McCain than they do the radical left. There isn't really a good answer to this question, and I find it interesting to try and suss out the real source of their irritation/anger. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Feb 15, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 19:37
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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. It's impossible to really articulate how bizarre this is to me. There are a bunch of stereotypes I've seen of leftists, but "like your conservative baby boomer dad" certainly isn't one of them. It seems like you genuinely can't comprehend the idea of people disliking the Democratic Party from any perspective other than a right-wing/conservative one. Like, I could sort of understand if you had the typical "college communist wearing a Che shirt" stereotype in mind (and I think most of the leftist-hating liberals on these forums more or less have this sort of thing in mind), but "crypto-Republicans" is a new one for me. What you're saying here just isn't true, and you've reasoned yourself into a position where other people can't even disprove it. You seem to be saying that, no matter what a leftist claims to believe, you magically know that they secretly don't. How is someone even supposed to respond to that? As someone else said, you're literally making a "virtue signalling" argument. It would be one thing if you had some polls/data on hand showing that leftists (or some proxy for leftists, like Sanders primary supporters) were more right-wing than mainstream liberals, but I'm pretty sure actual data shows the complete opposite. Majorian posted:Mmmm yes indeed, the enduring popularity of Medicare for All (as well as Sanders even after the election) certainly isn't evidence of this or anything. Unfortunately, he isn't exactly wrong about that. See: Biden being at least as popular as Sanders, despite probably being even worse than Hillary ideologically. The best angle to take with this topic is "the American public, or at least potential Democratic voters, aren't opposed to more left-wing policy." Ultimately it's possible to find polls that seem to "prove" a variety of things about the political preferences of the American public, so I think the most important take-away is that left-wing policy doesn't drive voters away. And that's all you really need to prove (if you believe left-wing policy is good, at least). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Feb 15, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 22:46
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Neurolimal posted:To be fair, Biden sees bizarre popularity due to the personality he's groomed and his connection to Obama. We dont know how well he'd fare getting his politics cross-examined in a presidential primary, and he's too smart to walk into that. Yeah, the interesting thing about Bernie's popularity is that he has no "default" advantages. Little positive media coverage, no association with an existing political figure, etc. Obama is the main example of someone who succeeded in a somewhat similar position, though from what I understand Obama also had considerable institutional backing at the time (the establishment wasn't all for Hillary in the beginning like it was in 2016).
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Feb 15, 2018 23:33
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I just want you to ask yourself this - has there ever been a time historically when the people acting as apologists for the status quo political party (against the radical left) were on the right side? People like you have always been arguing that those demanding action against injustice are unrealistic, obsessed with purity, etc. If you believe that the obscene material inequality and bigotry in our society isn't a big deal, you should be making that argument instead, because your arguments simply aren't consistent with someone who actually recognizes the magnitude and severity of these problems. Someone whose primary concern is to address the variety of unacceptable issues plaguing our society would primarily be concerned with why those issues aren't being dealt with, even if they disagreed with others about the specific reasons. But people like you do nothing but insult and belittle those who are angry with the Democratic Party for making negligible progress towards addressing these issues. If you actually cared, you wouldn't dislike the radical left even if you happened to disagree with them. But instead your actions are far more consistent with someone who has a heavy emotional investment in the Democratic Party that takes precedence over actual material outcomes. One of the most telling things indicating this is the fact that folks like yourself seem to genuinely dislike the radical left more than you dislike the center or "moderate" conservatives. This attitude simply makes no sense for someone who purportedly cares about left-wing politics. It implies that the person cares more about tone than they care about outcomes.
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Feb 16, 2018 18:25
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Main Paineframe posted:The thing that first really soured me on the Democratic Party as a whole was their total inaction on gay rights during 2009-2010. They completely stonewalled gay activists for two whole years, doing everything they could to stall even on no-brainer issues...and then after they lost the election, they easily rushed DADT repeal through in just a week or two. It was almost like they'd been purposely sitting on it for some reason. And then of course Obama just so happened to "evolve" on gay marriage right in the middle of his reelection campaign. It certainly lent itself to a cynical view of the Dems' commitment to gay issues, that's for sure. Stuff like this is why I wonder if a lot of the people who argue against the left in these discussions aren't pretty young (or otherwise only recently started paying attention to politics). I can understand being confused and irritated with peoples' cynicism/pessimism if you haven't already lived to see how the Democrats usually behave. It probably seems like people are just arbitrarily assuming the worst for someone in that position. Owlofcreamcheese posted:I don't dislike the radical left, I dislike people that hate democrats more than they hate republicans or try to put on any sort of show of not being able to distinguish the two. Anyone who tries to pull any "I'm so far left I won't vote or help either of them" is not nearly as leftist as they tell themselves. A better leftist party is not going to come out of you supporting the republican party. A better leftist party is not going to come out of you retweeting the latest republican talking point about hillary clinton. Virtually everyone who posts here (and I'm saying "virtually" just on the off-chance there's some random exception, even though I can't think of one) knows the Republicans are worse than the Democrats. But the Democrats are the only realistic vector towards any sort of good future, so them being lovely is a very big problem. Liberals talking about how bad Republicans are accomplishes literally nothing at all. Republicans do not care what liberals think about them. This is why, even from a sheer pragmatic perspective, it makes more sense for people on the left to focus on the Democratic Party (at least within the constrains of our political system, where only two parties are viable). Also the majority of people arguing with you in these threads vote Democratic. This thread is specifically about the topic of lesser of two evils voting, so it's going to attract a somewhat disproportionate percent of people who prefer not to vote (though I think most people here vote themselves and are against lesser-evilism as a strategy). This whole "why focus on group X instead of group Y" logic can also be turned right back at you. Why in the world would someone focus on the radical left instead of the mainstream Democrats? The latter actually hold power and are considerably more dominant than the former. There are actual reasons why someone on the left would choose to focus more on Democrats than Republicans, but I can't think of a single one for focusing on the radical left more than the mainstream center-left. The fact that you can't actually pinpoint a single policy or ideological position expressed by the left that you disagree with should set of warning alarms in your head regarding how rational your feels about this issue are. The same isn't true for the inverse; the radical left has a long list of specific things they want the the Democratic Party either isn't accomplishing or doesn't even support in the first place. 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" This thread isn't a thread for discussing those specific issues, and people shouldn't feel a need to reiterate arguments that can easily be found in other threads (or elsewhere) constantly. And if your issue is a lack of knowledge about policy specifics, that applies at least as much to people who hold center-left/centrist ideology. But for some mysterious reason you only target the radical left. I wonder why that is! Instant Sunrise posted:The democrats were able to campaign on gay rights because groups like Code Pink held their feet to the fire on it. And in case you forgot, they were late as hell to the party on it. Obama didn't support gay marriage until 2012. In 2008 his campaign position was that marriage was between a man and a woman. In 2007 Barney Frank stabbed trans people in the back on ENDA and the democratic congress still wouldn't pass it when they had a majority. Yeah, this is the thing. I don't know how old Owlofcreamcheese is, and I could understand their perspective if they're ~18-22 and don't have much of a political memory, but positive change has never really occurred through being strongly supportive of the Democratic Party. It occurs because various groups pushed those issues themselves and expressed their dissatisfaction to the Democratic Party in various ways. Heck, we're even seeing this right now with the whole MfA issue. If everyone on the left were someone like Owlofcreamcheese, we would have never reached the point where some Democrats feel an obligation to at least vocally support MfA. Owlofcreamcheese posted:I literally said that is the good sort of criticism and the guy going single payer or nothing is the bad and dumb kind that hurts people. I don't think anyone really says this, at least not on these forums, and when/if they do it's because alternatives are usually brought up in a bad faith attempt to derail a more radical solution (see: that United States of Care thing). Single-payer is an easy to understand and relatively simple thing that would be a considerable improvement to the status quo. If you actually cared about these issues, instead of just wanting to use them as a bludgeon against the left, you would have responded to people with something like "yeah, single-payer is good, but something X might also work well." The only time it might be remotely consistent to take a negative tone against such a person is if we lived in a world where Democrats were actively supporting and promoting a good, non-single-payer solution. But they're not, so your actions do not make sense for a person who supposedly cares about the state of American healthcare. Ultimately, the vast majority of Americans are not particularly educated or informed about things like policy. Which, yet again, begs the question of why you get so irritated and upset with people on the left end of the spectrum who aren't much different from any other American in this regard (except with better ideology). I don't see this same attitude aimed at your average random mainstream liberal who also knows jack poo poo about anything beyond the latest Democratic talking points. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 02:20
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:A politician or ceo making a policy decision is literally the opposite of a technocrat. Honest answer - usually when people in discussions like this use technocrat as a pejorative, they're referring to people who try to talk about political issues as if they had empirically right/wrong answers and could be divorced from ideology (which obviously isn't true). Even for more specific areas, there's often a difficult balance between needing expertise while also wanting to avoid conflicts of interest. For an obvious example, many/most people with expertise in finance are likely to also have some sort of connection to to the finance industry and be potentially compromised as a result. This is a legitimately tough issue to navigate, and the best answer I can come up with is to institute rules that strongly limit the extent to which a person can be involved with (or benefit from) an industry after leaving the government. For example, someone who works in a finance-related position in the government could never work for the finance industry again (or otherwise benefit from the finance industry). I wouldn't mind paying a high life-long stipend or something in exchange for this, since I think it's a small cost to pay to avoid a big vector of potential corruption. (The situation with Obama's speeches is a good example of this. We don't have any evidence Obama was able to do those speeches (or receive as much money) due to his actions while in office, but if that was the case it would be virtually impossible to prove. As a result, I think it's best to not allow people in Obama's position to do that sort of thing in the first place, and I don't mind paying them $1M/year as a stipend if that's what's necessary. It's just a huge vector for indirect corruption that people can benefit from relevant industries after leaving office. Even if they don't receive the money/job in exchange for their actions, it still creates a strong perverse incentive for them to not upset the industry in question while in office.) Iron Twinkie posted:They are the types that love lists, power point presentations, and charts and file peoples lived experiences under a back page labeled "externalities". This is another aspect. People referred to as technocrats sometimes attempt to force data-based solutions for problems where either the data (or methodology) doesn't exist to give the solution needed or they lack the expertise to actually do the analysis correctly (which is something the vast majority of people won't be able to identify). In practice, many issues must be dealt with using "soft-skills," and overvaluing "data-based solutions" can result in bad decisions and bad policy. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 02:43
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Neurolimal posted:It would be interesting to see owl's solution to the ultimatum game that doesn't involve rejecting any offers. There are four main difference between the Ultimatum Game and this situation that come to mind: 1. Democratic politicians don't necessarily know why people didn't "take the deal" (that is, vote). Some people may have chosen to "reject the deal" because they weren't left enough, while others may have chosen to reject it because they're pro-choice or whatever. 2. Democratic politicians would quite literally rather lose in many cases than give the deal many voters want. 3. Individual Democrat politicians only care about whether enough people "take the deal" in their constituencies, and most have constituencies where the race isn't particularly close. So individuals "rejecting the deal" only matter to them if there are enough of them for them to potentially lose their specific race. 4. Individuals have options other than accepting/rejecting the deal for influencing the person offering the deal (equivalent to activism, etc in the real world). Owlofcreamcheese posted:Accelerationism is very dumb and you should vote for democrats in every election that they are even one centimeter better than the republicans. If you want them to be more than 1 centimeter there are primaries to vote in, there are candidates you can support or donate to, there are organizations you can work at, but when you go to vote if you ever think "maybe I should vote for the worse guy and hurt people to prove a point" it doesn't prove any point to anyone except that you are now a republican voter. I have a question related to this. Your argument in favor of lesser evil voting seems to be related to minimizing the chance of Republicans winning, but one could argue (and people have, many times) that giving support for another candidate in the primary (and thus criticizing/attacking the other candidate(s)) could have a negative impact on the candidate who goes on to win the primary (with this argument usually popping up in primaries where one candidate is very likely to win). Why do you draw the line in terms "optimizing the chance of Democrats winning" at voting in the general but are okay with action that could harm their chances in the primary? For the record, I think there's a good answer to this question (that is basically what I believe myself), but I'm curious to hear yours. My reason for advocating voting Democratic in the general election isn't because it maximizes the chance of the Democrat winning, but rather because there's no evidence not voting has any positive impact. If I felt like not voting had the potential to move the party to the left, that's the choice I would make instead.
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Feb 18, 2018 19:54
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:12 dollars would literally be the highest national minimum wage of any country on earth except australia or luxembourg. There are numbers higher than 12, and all of them would be even better, but I literally can not comprehend of voting republican or not voting based on using THIS as some hard line you won't budge on. This is so loving dishonest. It completely ignores the fact that most of these other countries* have ways to eliminate or lower the huge costs of living that Americans face (healthcare, housing, education, etc). Or they have some other circumstances that result in wages being higher than that (like a strong union presence, etc). I want you to sit down and think long and hard about why you're taking the position of defended a $12/hr minimum wage against people who want something higher. Because this is seriously disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself. *I should add that I'm only considering other wealthy, developed nations, because you're getting into "but poor people have refrigerators" territory if you start comparing the US with poor nations. Owlofcreamcheese posted:Okay, so why didn't you vote for the democrats in your own state that were pushing for that? Like you are claiming you were so angry that the national democrat policy was 12 that that made you not support your local democrats pushing 15? You would give up yourself and everyone in your state getting 15 because someone else might only get 12 (and instead of 12 you favored them getting minimum wage lowered?) You do realize that the only reason Democrats started supporting these wages in the first place is due to heavy pressure from people unhappy with their previous tepid efforts, right? If everyone Democrat was like you, we would have never gotten $15/hr anywhere. It's not like the Democrats suddenly came up with this on their own and were the ones who made it popular. While I disagree with BENGHAZI 2 about not voting helping to accomplish these goals, it's also nonsense that voting helps much to accomplish them. Non-voting-related activism (and voting in primaries) is what accomplishes these things, and at the end of the day people strongly dissatisfied with the status quo are the ones who make change happen, not the ones who defend it. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 00:50
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^^^ To be frank, I think we all know that none of this is actually motivated by any sort of coherent ideology on OOCC's part (or anyone else who makes these kinds of arguments). It's purely done out of a bizarre sort of distaste/irritation some liberals have towards the left. All of these arguments basically stem from the liberal in question feeling annoyed/irritated with the left and then conjuring up some sort of argument to justify their emotions.Owlofcreamcheese posted:I just don't buy your weird theory that progress is bad because it prevents progress. A 15 dollar minimum wage is better than a 12 dollar one but a 12 dollar one is better than a 7 dollar one and a 7 dollar one is better than a zero dollar one. Now you are going to cry "oh, those people in idaho should just WAIT for 15 dollars!??!?" like you are some saint by letting the side promising zero dollars win (because their side never has any hand wringing that they hate their agenda moving forward unless it's moving forward exactly the right amount) and they just need to hang on through trump for 4+ more years and you promise next time president perfect will get elected and rise up every issue simultaneously from broken to fixed in one step. You're ignoring the fact that there's a real cost to waiting longer for these things. Every year that passes is another year that people continue to go without reasonable wages (or having a variety of other needs fulfilled, like dealing with police brutality, etc). What in the world is gained by taking a position contrary to the people who want more? If you disagree with them and think $15 is too high, you should be making that argument instead, but if you agree that it would be good I can't see the purpose in defending an inferior option. I think that, whether you realize it or not, this comes down to what VitalSigns said (about liberals wanting to appear and feel "reasonable"). Because even from a pragmatic standpoint it doesn't make any sense to push back against people who desire more. Also, I would strongly encourage you to consider that your bizarre "but it's better than the Republicans making things worse!" argument could literally be used forever as an excuse for maintain the status quo. And that, ironically, your attitude actually helps Republicans in the end (through discouraging any Democrats that actually care about real positive change from voting). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 17:56
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Yeah okay? now trump is president and the whole country has moved to the right and odds are the next democratic platform is going to have to fight to get minimum wage back to 7.25. Instead of the next election being a minimum wage of 12 and someone being able to campaign in the primaries on 17. People don't just randomly change their political views; and there's no reason to think that the country (and non-Republicans in general) has moved in a direction where it would be less willing to entertain the idea of a $15+ minimum wage (given enthusiastic support from the Democratic Party/media). They change their views in response to what they see and hear from the politicians and media, which is why it's very important for Democratic politicians and pundits/media to vocally support this stuff. Both Democratic and Republican voters generally just support whatever ideas they feel "a Democrat/Republican is supposed to support." And that is why it's important to put as much pressure as possible on politicians and to show our displeasure towards attempts to support an inferior option (like $12/hr). I made this point before, but there hasn't ever been a time historically when the people pushing against the feasibility of positive change were in the right. Even if if weren't feasible in the near future (which definitely doesn't seem to be the case with respect to $15/hr minimum wage), it would still make sense for individual voters to actively push for it. I can't think of any reason that isn't malicious for trying to push a "it's just not possible" narrative. Owlofcreamcheese posted:And what have you gotten us exactly? Where is this savior that is supposed to show up if we just keep our hands pure and let conservatives win every election forever? Calm down. The leftists aren't making the Democrats lose elections. If you really cared about Democrats winning elections, you'd be aiming your displeasure at them, not the left. They're the ones who have control over how enthusiastic voters are for them. If they supported more directly helpful and populist policy and advertised that, it would improve their chances dramatically. Owlofcreamcheese posted:If you also vote in local elections and not just presidential elections (and primaries if that is feasible for you) then you are on my list of cool and good people that are doing it exactly right and if I have continued to argue with you it's only because I constantly forget who anyone is. The really important question you need to ask yourself is why random leftists not voting (which doesn't seem to be a bigger problem with leftists than any other political demographic) concerns you more than the actions of the Democratic Party that also reduce their chances of winning (and a hell of a lot more than the actions of leftists, I might add). From a sheer pragmatic perspective, it makes more sense to put pressure on the party to change its behavior in a way that encourages more people to vote. One might even think that a genuine concern for Democrats winning isn't what's motivating you! OwlFancier posted:Radicalism engages people, moderation does not. Even Obama ran on a platform of radical rhetoric even if his performance was shite. Since people often try to argue against the idea of Obama's rhetoric was radical, I think it's important to explain that from the perspective of a voter who isn't particularly engaged/experienced (in the sense of having paid attention to politics for a long time prior) he just strongly gave that impression. I was a relatively politically ignorant 22/23 year old when Obama first ran in 2008, and I remember strongly getting the general impression that he would do things differently. Sure, you can go back and find his speeches and they mostly don't sound particularly radical, but a combination of factors just gave that impression to voters (the fact he was running as a black man against Hillary, who was more or less the avatar of the mainstream, certainly helped him give this impression). In fact, my experience with Obama is a big reason why it can be a little frustrating seeing the reaction of (often younger) people on these forums to current politics. Their reactions are often completely reasonable for someone who doesn't have any political history to draw from; obviously people are going to find the immense distrust others have towards the Democrats strange if they don't have the same history of disappointment. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Feb 22, 2018 |
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Feb 22, 2018 01:13
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Potato Salad posted:Edit- following is aimed at the few who don't vote The issue with your framing is that you're treating not voting as equivalent to complete political disengagement. At the end of the day, voting is a form of engagement, but it's honestly probably one of the least important and influential forms. Almost any level of activism represents more engagement and political influence than voting. Which kind of begs the question of why people receive so much negative focus for not voting, yet don't receive that same negative attention for, say, just not being involved much politically in the first place. As far as I'm concerned, the only valid argument against non-voting is that not voting doesn't have any positive impact (i.e. it won't convince Democrats to change in a positive way), so it's the optimal option simply by virtue of slightly lowering the chances of Republicans winning. But this argument only applies if you're voting in an election with a non-negligible chance of the Democrat winning, and statistically it won't apply to most people when discussing the presidential election (since most people don't live in potential swing states). As a result, I can't help but think that the people who get angry at others for not voting don't have any sort of rational motivation, because they don't even bother to check if the person they're talking to even lives in an area where their vote had any reasonable chance of influencing the outcome. It casts doubt on the assumption that they're angry because they're concerned about Republicans winning. My feeling is that, if 1. the election in question has a non-negligible chance of being contested and 2. voting doesn't represent any sort of significant inconvenience for you, you should vote. But if either of those things aren't the case (which is going to apply to most people), it doesn't make sense to hold that against them. And even when those things are the case, it's still bizarre and pointless to focus on non-voters instead of the political leadership that results in such a high percentage of people not being politically engaged.
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Feb 27, 2018 22:03
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VitalSigns posted:All the more reason for the party to stop supporting the Diane Feinsteins and Joe Manchins of America in the primary then aint it. This is the thing - from a solely pragmatic perspective, someone concerned with beating Republicans should be focusing on changing the Democrats rather than condemning individual non-voters. The fact that they make this choice makes me extremely doubtful that they really care as much as they say they do. I highly suspect the topic of voting just makes for a convenient excuse for them to attack the left. edit: The one situation where I think it makes sense to argue with someone about this is if they're specifically arguing about why they think non-voting is a good strategy. In that case it makes sense to explain why non-voting is unlikely to help any. But otherwise it doesn't really make sense to bring it up, and a bunch of people (on these forums and elsewhere) tend to not only bring it up, but bring it up towards people who haven't even mentioned not voting (and in many cases did vote!).
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Feb 27, 2018 22:18
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Neurolimal posted:There has to be a point in the Ultimatum Game where you say "no, this deal is unacceptable, cut a better one next time, no money for either of us". As illogical as it seems in the short term, spite and a moral position of fairness are integral to maintaining an equal system. I think I replied with something similar to this before, but the really big and important differences here are that 1. the other player has goals other than winning and would possibly rather lose than fulfill your demands and 2. the other player doesn't necessarily know why you rejected the deal (and in the case of the Democratic Party, they're likely to interpret it as "because we weren't racist enough" or something). Your argument is valid as an explanation of why lesser evil-ism is a bad strategy for the Democratic Party if it wants to win, though (i.e. that people will disengage if they feel they aren't being treated fairly/adequately).
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Feb 27, 2018 22:44
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^^^ Your argument against 2 doesn't work, because the Democrats don't necessarily know if a vote for X candidate is a vote that would have otherwise been for them and what would be necessary to get those people to switch their votes (any more than someone who didn't vote at all, at least).VitalSigns posted:Counterpoint: prominent Dems cosponsoring M4A which they definitely loving wouldn't have if "better ideas will never ever happen" had won The longer-term results of Trump's election have the potential to change my opinion regarding whether it's always objectively best for the Democrat to win. It's still far too early to actually come to any conclusions, but if this somehow results in the next Democratic administration embracing ideas like M4A and Trump doesn't start a war with North Korea, one could actually argue that it worked out better in the long run than Hillary winning (I feel pretty confident saying that Sanders and his brand of politics wouldn't have nearly as much influence had Hillary won). But this involves a lot of ifs, and I'm not remotely confident that we'll actually see any genuine efforts to pass stuff like M4A once Democrats regain power. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Feb 27, 2018 |
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Feb 27, 2018 22:50
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Neurolimal posted:It's rather telling that there are posters who will enthusiastically throw poor americans under a bus, but squirm when a topic dear to their clique becomes the focus. In general it is transparently obvious that some liberals do not consider issues like poverty/material inequality to be as serious/important as certain social issues. I say "some" because a significant portion don't even take social issues seriously, but I think a bunch of the younger liberals on these forums at least seem to genuinely care about issues like racism or LGBT rights, but in doing so they reveal their much higher tolerance for other forms of injustice. The most obvious example is the way they treat politicians/individuals who are bad about the topic in question. They will (correctly) treat being against gay marriage or affirmative action as unacceptable, but they'll call you a purist if you apply the same standards to people who oppose universal healthcare or refuse to take non-trivial action to address wealth/income inequality. My personal theory is that this is usually because they might personally know some racial/gender minorities (or are one themselves) but don't know anyone who isn't relatively materially well-off.
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Mar 2, 2018 20:31
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The 2016 election is making me seriously doubt the conventional wisdom of "Democrats doing poorly never compels them to become better" (which is more or less the main logic behind lesser evil voting always being optimal). Even though the party itself is obviously resisting change, I feel like our society is having a bunch of discussions about certain topics that would have never occurred had Clinton won (or at least they wouldn't have been acknowledged as much by the media). Now, was it worth Trump becoming president? Probably not*, but it still means there's some consideration of pros and cons at play and it's not impossible that Democrats failing could prompt positive change. *If, by some miracle, Democrats end up passing universal healthcare or some similarly significant good legislation after regaining power (and Trump doesn't start a war) it might be possible to actually judge the 2016 outcome positively in hindsight, but I seriously doubt that's going to happen. At best we've probably just pushed up the schedule for any future adoption of more left-leaning policy.
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Mar 3, 2018 09:23
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Potato Salad posted:It isn't rediculous. He's got a perspective that an outsider to activism tends to have, at least at first. Nah, I get where you're coming from but it isn't the sort of final logical destination you seem to think it is. I went through the same process, though in my case with regards to finance instead of political institutions. Just like you, I saw the people I knew, who were totally normal and friendly people, and thought "these people saying terrible things about the finance industry obviously have no idea what they're talking about." But it turns out that the particular form of "evil" these institutions engage in is very banal and doesn't (usually) involve people going "mwahaha I am evil and corrupt!" Usually only a subset are involved in actually making the obviously-bad decisions, and even those decisions are often rationalized in some way that may sound reasonable. When the Sanders-associated individuals were removed from DNC leadership, for example, those responsible likely told themselves that they had some good reason for doing so unrelated to purging the far left. Also, referring to the DNC specifically, the issue is more related to leadership. I'm sure there are others involved with the organization who have good intentions, but the issue is that those at the top are generally either strongly ideologically opposed to the left or are indebted to the more mainstrean/centrist wing of the party (or otherwise benefit from supporting them). edit: Generally speaking, I would strongly recommend not falling into the pattern of reflexively defending those in power due to some of the people who criticize them being dumb or weird. When I was younger I used to reflexively defend powerful business interests solely because I saw some dumb/goofy people who were part of my college's socialist organization and thought "well these people must be wrong." Potato Salad posted:I'm afraid of what happened in France will happen here with respect to the crop of leftists who seemed to be out for their pound of flesh more than actually taking a channel to power. That's why I'm focused on pushing back against hopelessness narratives and conspiracy theories about the DNC literally discarding a popular Keith v Tom had Keith had just a few more votes or less-scared sympathizers. What happened in France could only happen due to their political system, which is different from ours. Also, you're the one who is supporting baseless conspiracy theories - there is no actual evidence that leftists not supporting Democrats is a problem (at least any more than any other subgroup not doing so). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Mar 4, 2018 |
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Mar 4, 2018 03:08
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Josef bugman posted:2) Why do you think people aren't allowed to be unhappy or despairing. Why can't people gesture at something and go "shits hosed" even as they try and fix it. "urgh, why can't you be more positive" is just demented. Let people do the work and complain whilst they do it. Or try and persuade others why they should bother being engaged. Don't just go "I am more positive about the future, therefore I am better than you at politics". This is probably one of the things that bothers me most in these discussions. There's a strong tendency of certain people to conflate a negative attitude and attacks/criticism aimed at Democrats with some sort of disengagement* and active desire for Democrats to lose. I would actually argue that attempts to stifle such attitudes are considerably more harmful than the attitudes themselves. It's not like those attitudes just popped up out of nowhere, and you can't silence them just by yelling at people that it's optimal to vote for Democrats or whatever. * This part is particularly bizarre, since if anything it represents the opposite of disengagement if someone is spending a lot of time complaining about politics.
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Mar 4, 2018 03:18
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Potato Salad posted:Complaining about politics isn't activism. There's nothing wrong with it, either. Some people have busy lives, or some other reason why they can't spend much time with political volunteering*. I just pointed out that those people are still considerably more engaged politically simply by virtue of paying attention to things enough to complain in the first place. The main point I'm trying to make is that your irritation here is completely irrational. There is no justifiable reason to believe that the thing you're describing is a problem. If anything, increased negative sentiment is the main reason the party has shifted somewhat to the left. A general perception that people are deeply dissatisfied and unhappy with the status quo is important and actually matters. At the very least it certainly doesn't hurt anything. *To be honest, if you gave peoples' political opinions more importance relative to how much activism they do, you'd find that the results would be extremely classist and disproportionately involve people who are at least comfortably middle class. It's also just plain absurd and elitist to say that peoples' feelings and opinions matter less if they don't spend time involved with political activism. Potato Salad posted:E I'm unpacking your post more. "Let us complain!" on the specific subject of 2evils voting? Silencing criticisms? Not sure what you mean here. My point is that the sort of push-back against negative sentiment (like what you're doing in this thread) is at least as likely to have a harmful impact as the negative sentiment itself, and at the very least it's definitely guaranteed to not accomplish anything. Josef bugman posted:2) Prove it. I mean, seriously you don't see how pointing at bad-dems and going "gently caress this person" may actually improve things? Would you vote for a dem even if they were basically blue republicans? Because that is how some people feel about some candidates and they have every right to. I think that a lot of liberals don't realize that an election like 2016's is similar to choosing between Trump and John McCain for someone on the far left. They have trouble perceiving the Democratic candidate as anything other than "not ideal, but still good." To be fair, I don't think this is true of Potato Salad. For reasons that are hard to explain, I don't consider them to be quite the same as a lot of the "anti-leftist" liberal posters on these forums. It seems like their irritation is more personal and isn't directed at "the radical left" as a whole so much as individual leftists. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Mar 4, 2018 |
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Mar 4, 2018 03:26
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Potato Salad posted:Let's get specific about that "negative sentiment" you're referring to. I don't think most leftists on these forums believe the primary was rigged in the sense of "literally changing votes" or something, but it's actually true that Clinton had a large and unethical advantage (both due to the DNC being in her debt and early reporting of superdelegates skewing perception of the race). While it's unlikely Sanders would have won even if this weren't the case, it's still an actual problem, and the fact that some people think vote tallies were changed to make Clinton win (or whatever) doesn't change that. Also, the issue isn't that the vote will be discarded, but more that the mainstream center/center-left has a lot of institutional advantages. I don't think it's impossible for better people to reach positions of power in the DNC, but we've already seen at least two things happen that support the more cynical view of people in this thread (namely the purging of Sanders supporting from DNC leadership and Perez's insertion as as a candidate in response to Ellison).
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Mar 4, 2018 03:37
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I think there's some confusion here on both sides. The first part of my post (talking about the primary rigging stuff) was because you mentioned the topic in a way that implied the people who thought that was the case were being dumb/ridiculous. I also think you might be mistaking cynicism/pessimism with a decision to disengage entirely with the process, but I think there have only been one or two people in this thread outright advocating abandoning the Democratic Party; others (like VitalSigns IIRC) have been talking specifically about not supporting or voting for bad Democrats, which isn't the same thing as giving up on the party as a whole (or at least the possibility of changing it into something better). This isn't to say you can't still disagree with that, but it's different than someone going "the situation is totally hopeless and there's no point in trying." From the other side, I think that some people might be confusing your attitude with that of people who are more ideologically opposed to the left, but I think there's a difference between the sort of thing you're doing and the people who seem to not even care about how fast/soon the Democrats move to the left. Also, perhaps more important than these things, even if someone does completely give up on the Democrats I don't think it makes sense to act irritated/annoyed with those people. You can argue it's sub-optimal or not useful or something, but it's an entirely reasonable emotional reaction to have, especially if you're a member of one of the groups Democrats have consistently abandoned. And even from a pragmatic perspective, getting angry/annoyed with such people definitely isn't going to get them to change their mind, while focusing on sharing their concerns might (if more people engaged with the Democrats start doing it, anyways).
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Mar 4, 2018 19:43
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The thing that stands out to me about the DREAMers situation is that I could have at least understood where people were coming from if their talking point from the beginning was "it's just not possible," even if I thought it would still be worth fighting for it in that case. But these folks were actually repeatedly saying that the Democrats' actions were smart and leading to some good outcome, which obviously ended up being totally false (unless you consider "making the Republicans look bad" a good outcome, which is ridiculous since anyone who would care already thinks they're bad). It's like their memories keep resetting and they approach every single political situation like it's the first one ever and there's no reason not to trust the Democrats.
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Mar 5, 2018 17:46
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You know, I can't help but wonder how many other Democratic Senators also support this deregulation bill but just don't have to vote for it because it already has enough votes. It's generally in their interest to only supply the minimum number of votes necessary in order to pass unpopular legislation. Part of the reason I think the party should be attacked regardless of the circumstances for either failing to pass good legislation or passing bad legislation (like this) is that it's more or less impossible to prove whether or not the kind of thing I just described actually happened.
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Mar 6, 2018 17:49
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zeroprime posted:Don't vote because things staying the same forever or actively getting much much worse is preferable to any level of incremental improvement. It's kinda hard to say whether the Democrats actually offer net incremental improvement. While you can point to things that incrementally improved things (like the ACA or whatever), you can also point to harmful things they've done (like Clinton's welfare reform or the current financial deregulation), so it's hard to say whether the net result is actually even positive. Spanish Matlock posted:Is it not? Have campaign donations to either party notably decreased? Is a third party creeping up on the Democrats? Are either of the main parties in danger of being replaced? He's talking about whether it's working for the people (like those in this thread) arguing about a lesser-evil approach to voting. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Mar 9, 2018 |
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Mar 9, 2018 20:57
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Spanish Matlock posted:Right my point is that as voters, you can choose to vote for the lesser evil for whatever harm reduction that offers, and yes, they will still do the bad things, so that sucks, or you can choose to let the greater evil win and they will do more of the bad things. Or you can vote third party (or not at all), and, this is absolutely key: Yeah, but I think his point is that the people arguing that non-voters (or third party voters or whatever) should vote for the lesser evil aren't accomplishing anything. IF those people really wanted to make Democrats win, they'd focus on changing the Democrats, because a significant percent of people disengaging from the party isn't going to just magically change unless the party itself changes.
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Mar 10, 2018 02:30
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I'm curious what that guy is going to tell himself when the economy inevitably crashes at some point before Trump's term ends. When it crashes it won't even be Trump's fault, but given that he's attributing the current inflated market to Trump he'll surely attribute the crash to him as well, right?
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Mar 11, 2018 01:32
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Radish posted:Look it makes much more sense for thousands of voters to suddenly understand and practice game theory than it does for individual politicians to not be self interested poo poo burgers. This is the thing that gets to me; the people complaining about others not voting basically have the very definition of "a political view/approach with no intent other than making the person feeling morally superior." There is zero chance that such arguments are going to have any impact on the trend of people choosing not to vote. The only thing that will do that is actual material change to peoples' circumstances. So it actually makes more sense to try to change the Democrats if your goal is to increase voting. Jaxyon posted:Being silent is the best way to send a message. Voting isn't the only way to be politically active. As I've said earlier in this thread, I personally still think it's optimal to vote for the Democrat in the general election, but I definitely think it's pointless to get upset with others for not making that choice.
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Apr 30, 2018 19:49
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a.p. dent posted:This is all that needs to be said. Blaming voters makes zero sense and will change nothing, but you get to feel superior, so wheeeeeeeeeeeee For me, it's not even just the pointlessness, but also the fact that not voting isn't an extremely stupid thing. Even though I don't think not voting accomplishes anything, some of the rationales for it aren't crazy and it's completely conceivable why someone would agree with them. Let's take, for example, the argument that "if enough people don't vote, the party will feel the need to change." This is almost certainly wrong, but it's not difficult to understand why someone would come to this conclusion. At the very least, it's certainly not worthy of mockery. An even better one is "I just don't want to give my support to the Democrats." This is just a moral thing, and also completely understandable. Even if I (or someone else) might think it's optimal to treat voting as a solely strategic thing, I can completely understand why someone would dislike the idea of even symbolically supporting a political party they think is strongly immoral. joepinetree posted:If the point if improving people's lives, volunteering in progressive organizations, mutual aid organizations, non-electoral political organizing or for campaigns of candidates trying to push democrats to the left are infinitely better than voting, donating, or campaigning for centrist democrats. Yeah, I've argued with people that the idea of voting as this uniquely important civic duty is kind of strange, in that there are other acts that have a much bigger impact. I think they have good intentions, and I'm not even arguing against voting or saying voting is worthless, but just that it's ridiculous to hold voting on some pedestal like it's the thing you absolutely gotta make sure you do, even if you don't do anything else. botany posted:lol it definitely isn't What are some of the benefits to getting angry at people not voting that you can think of? Do you think that it's going to lead to the percent of people voting increasing? I can sort of understand being upset on a personal level if the non-voter lives in a swing state and you're just venting, but people usually make these arguments without even knowing where the other person lives, and there is definitely nothing wrong with not voting if you live in one of the many states with a virtually-zero chance of being a swing state. edit: A good analogy is attacking someone for eating dinner at a nice restaurant instead of donating that money to charity. In both cases you're talking about an action with both a very small cost and a very small benefit (if anything, I'd say that charity has a bigger benefit, if you're giving it to a good organization). At best, attacking someone for such a thing is "understandable, but pointless." Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Apr 30, 2018 |
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Apr 30, 2018 21:04
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Jaxyon posted:Democrats have been winning special elections by getting Dems out to vote. They're not trying to appeal to Republicans, they're trying to appeal to idiot moderates, who actually do exist. They've been winning elections due to backlash against Trump. That is almost entirely the reason why; even if the Democrats did literally nothing (aside from put someone on the ballot) they'd be winning most of these elections.
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May 1, 2018 16:47
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TyroneGoldstein posted:I don't understand how people don't get this. There's a big misunderstanding here. The left views the Democratic Party not as "some," but as an actual negative, even if that negative is less than the Republicans'. They believe that, at best, the Democrats' do roughly an even amount of good and harm (and probably more harm if you actually look back over more than just the last few years). So the choice isn't between "being hurt" or "not being hurt," but rather between "being hurt" and "being hurt a little less." Even if the latter may be the optimal choice, I can understand why someone doesn't want to actively support it. Jaxyon posted:And because of how politics works, you may be effectively doing it anyway. This is definitely wrong, because you can use the same logic to claim that any absence of an action is in effect supporting the thing that action was meant to prevent. If you don't donate money to an organization dedicated to helping the homeless, are you being actively harmful to the homeless? People don't normally associate the absence of action with support for the thing the action is meant to address, because that is a crazy way to think. Also (and this is more directed at botany) it just doesn't make sense to get angry with non-voters, seeing as non-voting is pretty drat low on the list of bad things people do. Like, yeah, Republicans controlling government is super bad, but the chance that person's actions caused that result is minuscule. In the grand scheme of things it's like the "donating to homeless" thing I mentioned above, only in that case the person would be causing a "a definite chance of a small outcome" as opposed to "a minuscule chance at a large outcome." botany posted:politics has always been the history of reluctant assholes being pushed to support policies by a large enough mass of people I'm pretty sure that the people who successfully pushed politicians to support these policies weren't the ones who attacked people for being too angry at the lesser evil politicians and got more mad at non-voters than they seemingly do your average mainstream Democratic politician/liberal. OwlFancier posted:Also where's this weird loving idea that people can't vote against their immediate interest and that anyone who doesn't vote dem because they're poo poo is clearly some kind of champagne swilling ultrabooj in disguise? Is it so weird to think that maybe people who need real change in their lives rather than platitudes can look at the situation and think "well I'm never going to get it by voting for megabucks mc cuntface with the blue pin on, so I'm going to vote against them as well as the republicans" Projection. Most of the people accusing leftists of being a bunch of well-off tech bros or whatever are very privileged themselves, and I think that the only way they can maintain their particular worldview is to assume that the people who disagree with them are also really well-off (because otherwise it's hard for them to mentally picture themselves as the "good guys"). Jaxyon posted:Because 90% of the time when I'm arguing this on facebook it's a white upper middle class person saying "hillary and trump are functionally the same" and that's because to them, they are. By far, the majority of well-off non-conservative people I've seen discussing politics have been relatively standard liberals, and usually the sort who complains about the left a lot. I think you're confusing the sort of low information "moderate" voter (who also talks about "both sides being the same") with the radical left (either that, or you just happen to know a lot of exceptionally annoying leftists). To be clear, I think that it's only specifically "the sort of young liberal who complains about the left" who is generally really well-off, not all liberals in general. There's something about being the sort of person who complains about leftists that drat near always means the person is well off themselves. Also, this isn't Facebook. I would bet actual money that the people who complain about leftists on these forums are, on average, considerably more privileged than the leftists themselves. Condiv posted:i don't got mine dumbass. i make about 20k a year after taxes. i make so little i qualify for IBR and have no hope of paying off my loans at my current salary. but please tell me more about why i shouldn't be upset that i lost a raise i worked 4 years for cause of a lovely neoliberal The idea that leftists are all people making a bunch of money (or at least some "very comfortable" amount like $60k or whatever) is likely projection, given that I repeatedly see my "people who complain about leftists are almost all really well off themselves" hypothesis validated over and over again on these forums, to the point where it's downright uncanny. Ogmius815 posted:This is the right strategy, but the Condivs of the world can't adopt it because it would provide fewer opportunities for jacking off about how righteous they are. You're operating in this debate on totally false premises: you're opponents are genuine dead-enders. They don't care at all about consequences so making arguments about what actually happens in the world is pointless. It's all about feeling morally superior. holy crap there's a lot of projection going on in this post. Condiv can be pretty bad at making arguments, and I even disagree with the idea that non-voting has any utility, but he's still better than the vast majority of other liberals (as is drat near everyone on the radical left). There is no reason to get this irritated/angry with people for something like this except for your own desire to feel morally correct/superior. The radical left has real reasons to be upset with the mainstream center-left - there are important goals they want to achieve that the center-left isn't achieving (or shows no desire to achieve). The reverse usually has no such motivation; there is no sign that the radical left is actually having any negative impact to speak of, so your particular irritation literally has no purpose that I can think of. There is no evidence that the radical left is actually causing Republicans to win at a greater rate than your average liberal (many of whom also don't vote), so that doesn't really explain it. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:59 on May 1, 2018 |
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May 1, 2018 17:34
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Jaxyon posted:Yeah it's pretty dumb. I don't get what you're so opposed to here. There is nothing wrong with people expressing opinions on stuff like this, and nothing about doing so means they don't take other political action (and for all you know they have some personal reason they can't take much other political action, and people should still be free to express their opinions regardless of how much time they spend volunteering or whatever). There's also some benefit to people even talking about stuff like how the Democratic Party stacks the odds against the left in primaries; it's good for people to be aware of this stuff, and many people aren't. But even if there weren't any concrete benefit, it's still fine for people to talk about it. It doesn't hurt anyone. And it's just as useless when a bunch of liberals complain about the dumb things Trump says, but for some reason I don't see the same push-back against that (unless it happens to include an attack against the radical left or something else that is concretely bad, like complimenting anti-Trump Republicans).
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May 1, 2018 18:11
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An important thing to take into account is that, as the Democrats are now, electing them is almost a guarantee of a Republican president at the end of the current president's term (or at least Republican control over most of the government). So it's not a matter of if we have Republicans in charge, but just when. And at the end of the day, individuals choosing not to vote for the sort of reasons listed in this thread are not what's dictating this. You can talk about how bad Republicans are (and be correct about that) until you're blue in the face, but people randomly choosing not to vote for any blame-worthy reason isn't what causes them to get into office. Among the reasons for lower voter involvement, leftists who think "both sides are just as bad" are pretty much at the bottom of the list. As long as general sentiment among Americans is negative, you're likely to continue to see the federal government swing between Republican and Democratic control (with probably more time overall going to Republicans due to how they've gerrymandered). If you really cared about Republicans gaining power, you'd be far, far more angry with the Democratic Party (and other influential/powerful organizations), because it has considerably more control over how it performs in elections. As I said before, someone refusing to support the Democrats because the Democrats are quite literally a "lesser evil" is, at worst, "understandably wrong." I don't see what's so hard to understand about someone not wanting to give any sort of support to bad people*, and given this particular rationale isn't actually responsible for electoral results I don't see any point in being so irritated and angry with it (unless, of course, the person in question just has a bone to pick with the radical left). * Think of it this way; would you get mad at a minority who chose not to vote in an election where both candidates were openly racist? Maybe you would think it's still wrong for them to not vote for the lesser evil, but surely you wouldn't actually get angry with them? The exact same is true for "literally anyone who is disadvantaged in any way" and voting for the Democrats or Republicans, since both those groups are hostile to them to different degrees.
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May 1, 2018 21:53
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Jaxyon posted:You say your idea makes sense. Why does a major voting block of the party, that presumably the Dems do not care about, keep voting for them? This is the same argument people used to claim that Bernie Sanders would have been worse for black people than Hillary Clinton. Generally speaking, most people, regardless of demographic, are going to align with some sort of mainstream ideology, just because of the fact it's mainstream. Poor people usually align with mainstream Democrats, wealthier whites usually align with Republicans, etc. Having a viewpoint that isn't mainstream, by definition, kinda implies that you think you're right about something most other people are wrong about, and there's nothing wrong about that. It's usually not a matter of being smarter or dumber, but just the specific experiences a person has had and information they have been exposed to. edit: To be explicit, it's not like the majority of black women who vote Democratic have somehow happened upon the One True Perfect Ideology and that it's somehow racist to claim that there could be a flaw in the ideology of this specific demographic in 2018 (just like literally everyone's ideology probably has some flaws). Suggesting as such also implies some very problematic things, like any black leftists (or literally anyone who doesn't hold mainstream political views) being inherently wrong by virtue of not holding the majority view. Being wrong does not mean someone is "stupid" or "a sucker." I am wrong about many things. Everyone is wrong about things. Politics is a subject where most people are wrong about most things. This is basically the problem with your logic: Iron Twinkie posted:Do you consider black voters that voted in 2012 but stayed home in 2016 stupid or suckers? It implies that anyone who doesn't hold the opinions of the majority (of whatever demographic/group is being considered) by definition holds views that must be inferior, at least with respect to that particular demographic/group. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:52 on May 2, 2018 |
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May 2, 2018 21:42
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Jaxyon posted:That's a whole lot of words to say "yes I think I'm smarter and blaming the voters implicitly for not being as informed, but I'm not going to explicitly say other people are dumb because that would be gauche" Thinking other people are wrong about something does not in any way imply thinking they're "dumb." As I said, most people are always going to fall in line with some mainstream ideology - that is what makes said ideology mainstream in the first place. For most people, the only two "real" choices are mainstream Democrats and mainstream Republicans, because most people aren't "plugged into" politics enough to even be aware of much beyond that. Within this context, it makes perfect sense that most black Americans would go with the option that is less hostile towards them. The same thing is true for lower income Americans, who generally support mainstream Democrats (even though I'm sure you'd agree the radical left would be better for them). This is really not difficult to understand. As I mentioned before, your logic implies that Clinton would have been the best candidate for black Americans due to receiving more votes in the primary. It also implies a lot of other even more goofy things, like "the best ideology for X group" changing over time as public opinion changes. edit: Also, I don't even think voting Democratic in the general is wrong (it's still the strategy I think is best). I just think it's not obviously dumb or worthy of contempt when someone chooses not to vote. Oh Snapple! posted:This is some weird-rear end gaslighting you're doing. Yeah, you're being really weird Jaxyon. If you'd just take a step back for a second, the absurdly of your argument would become immediately obvious. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 18:46 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 18:32
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Condiv posted:they're thinking about boosting the number and making people unable to run in primaries without the blessing of the party elites To be fair, I'm pretty sure that article just involved that one person saying how her personal opinion is that they should increase the number, and the tweet linking the article was the only thing saying "the DNC is considering increasing superdelegates." So unless I missed something, increasing superdelegates isn't actually on the table; it's just a thing this one dumbass DNC lady thinks should happen (along with even worse stuff like creating literal smoky backrooms for vetting candidates).
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May 10, 2018 22:49
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gaj70 posted:I'll be somewhat contrarian. I'm sympathetic to superdelegates on the ground that a party should be able to control it's brand. Open primaries, in particular, seem ripe for abuse. Instead, the real problem here is how our election laws privilege the major parties. I feel like this logic would work in a system where third parties had a non-trivial chance of winning. But in our system, where a Democrat or Republican is almost always guaranteed to win, it is vitally important that the process of selecting the nominee be fully democratic. If you let the parties control that, it's basically the same as the public being forced to only choose between choices vetted by party leadership (who will almost always be a bunch of wealthy/powerful people). edit: Basically, letting the party control their brand, as you put it, might make sense if it were feasible for people to create their own parties and an election was a competition between many such parties. But, in practice, other parties aren't viable in our political system.
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May 17, 2018 19:49
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