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Civilized Fishbot posted:I would really love to see the development of "voter's unions" who don't run candidates but do make demands of candidates in exchange for guaranteeing to provide/withhold their votes. volts5000 posted:All social progress is slow and incremental.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:44
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World Famous W posted:the trolley problem falls apart when you add "derail this murderous train. my god why won't the engineer slow down?!" as a potential option It's a thought experiment as I said much like anything else when you are evaluating an action's morality it's not a trick question the whole point is to engage with the scenario. Derailing the train is not engaging in the question it is meant to illustrate so I am not sure what is being argued here. That you should not vote but instead "derail the train" aka overthrow the government? ( Not trying to strawman just trying to understand what you are saying.)
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Feb 14, 2024 20:47
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im saying that its worthless to drag out that loving powersliding train in a vacuum argument because we are not bound by it
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Feb 14, 2024 20:48
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Jethro posted:Not voting for people who will do monstrous things also will not get you closer to your goal. Voting for people who won't do monstrous things when those people are not likely to be among the top two vote getters in a FPTP election also will not get you closer to your goal. Civilized Fishbot posted:That is true - if your only moral barometer is "stop all monstrosities" then you have no power to make a morally meaningful choice, and no responsibility.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:50
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't think that this idea is bad per se, but it strikes me as a bizarre alternative to having real political parties where the voters are actually members and have a say in its internal organization and direction. Well, there's always a catalyst that starts a change, but it's usually after decades of hard work. Like, the Stonewall riot gave LGBT people more visibility in America, but you shouldn't forget the people who worked hard to get that visibility prior to the riot.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:54
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hooman posted:Does the Party you are voting for draw a distinction between a vote and an endorsement? If you are voting for the party is there any impetus for that party to change any of the behaviours or policies, or is voting for them giving the party the go ahead to continue to behave in ways you find personally abhorrent? We have plenty of historical examples of individual politicians changing their stances despite not losing elections. One well-known example is Obama publicly opposing gay marriage in 2008, winning the election, and then supporting gay marriage in 2012. While there's been tons of commentary on Obama's change of positions and how calculated or authentic it might have been, the important part here is that he didn't need to personally lose an election in order to "evolve" his position. And while Obama himself didn't directly do anything related to gay marriage, both his Supreme Court nominations and his DoJ appointees supported gay marriage, something that would be unlikely to be true with McCain or Romney. Voting isn't the only way to send a message to politicians. There've been plenty of times, historically, where a politician changed their mind about something without having to lose an election first. But the polling is consistently showing that the issues people care most about are "the economy" and "immigration", so the natural takeaway of a Dem loss would be that the next Dem candidate needs to do more about the southern border and pray that they'll inherit a recovery from Trump. Presidential votes are, by nature, incapable of amounting to specific policy feedback, so you'll just get lumped in with the majority. And while the results of an election can certainly have a lot of persuasive power, who loses isn't nearly as important as who wins. If Biden wins against an socialist but loses against a fascist, the obvious takeaway won't be "clearly we need more socialism". Parties change their behaviors and policies when the individual politicians who make up that party either change their minds about what they want or . Political parties don't have minds of their own, they're organizations made up of people. Focusing on what "the party" does is often a mistake, one which hides the individual agency of people and makes the parties seem like unaccountable and unchangeable monoliths - rather than organizations primarily composed of people who have been elected to their positions. There's a reason GJB tells people to show up to their local party conventions every single time this subject comes up. Squall posted:Biden could get 1 vote or 100 million votes and the takeaway will be "drat we need someone more centrist" because that's always the takeaway. "drat, we need someone more centrist" would probably actually be a reasonable takeaway from Biden losing, because Biden has been well to the left of every Dem president in the last four decades. Clinton and Obama governed as centrists and won their second terms without too much trouble; if Biden ends up being a one-term president hated by progressives despite being way to the left of both Clinton and Obama, it wouldn't make much sense for the takeaway would be "we need to move even further left". Especially when you consider that one of the persistent problems Biden faced was that he was noticeably to the left of Congress, which meant that many of his more ambitious progressive programs weren't able to gain or maintain sufficient support in Congress. If leftists had been consistently winning state and Congressional elections all over the US to the point where Congress was dominated by leftists trying to drag Biden right, then yeah, it'd be reasonable to conclude that the people want leftism and that Biden was simply not left enough for them. But there's a distinct lack of evidence that the people are willing to turn out for progressivism. is pepsi ok posted:I don't think this is correct based on the conclusions of Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page's famous study on policy preferences vs policy outcomes. No discussion of the Gilens and Page study is complete without mentioning that their definition of "economic elites" was "people with an income above $160k", and their definition of "average citizens" was "people with an income below $160k". The problems with the former should be pretty obvious (it tags the "economic elite" as primarily being doctors and engineers, not billionaires). They didn't have any actual data on the preferences of the true economic elites, so they substituted "affluent Americans" instead, with the assumption that the preferences of the merely affluent would reflect those of the true elite. But the problems with the latter are actually far more important. Rebuttal papers that broke the Gilen/Page study's data down further found that middle-income Americans agree with affluent Americans on most issues, and on the very few issues on which they disagree it's basically a coin-flip which way the result will go. Ultimately, what they found was that the really disadvantaged group was the poorest Americans who make well under the median income, who often faced middle-income and upper-income Americans teaming up against them. That's just one of the many criticisms that have been leveled against the Gilens and Page paper, too. Other issues include failing to measure the actual strength of each group's support for a policy and failing to account for the significant status-quo bias in US politics. Gilen and Page's claims have a lot of holes, which (as far as I can tell) they've failed to sufficiently fill in with their own responses and later work.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:55
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is pepsi ok posted:I don't think this is correct based on the conclusions of Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page's famous study on policy preferences vs policy outcomes. Oh I wholly agree we have no CONTROL, but we're still responsible for the government. None of the control, any benefits from the government are incidental at best, and yet we're still responsible for it.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:59
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theCalamity posted:Less monstrosities in a vacuum is good, but like I said, if the one who is doing less evil is still committed to doing evil, then it's not morally valuable. What's the difference between "good" and "morally valuable"? Bel Shazar posted:Oh I wholly agree we have no CONTROL, but we're still responsible for the government. People are only responsible for what they can control. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 20:59
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World Famous W posted:im saying that its worthless to drag out that loving powersliding train in a vacuum argument because we are not bound by it You are absolutely bound by it. The thought experiment isn't to find the least bad option that would be misusing it and I see it all the time where people will do their own edits to it with the two options. That is not the point. The point is to understand that inaction by not pulling the lever has consequences. I am not saying it is an objective truth. I am saying I have not heard a convincing argument to myself personally that inaction has no responsibility. You are welcome to make that argument and you might even change my mind but just saying it's worthless to drag out the topic is running away from the question. Do you think if you do nothing you have no moral copiability? If the answer is direct action can do it but electoralism can't then explain that and why it would be better than doing both since it is not an either-or thing.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:59
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ill respond later, getting busy with life, aint ignoring you
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Feb 14, 2024 21:31
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't think that this idea is bad per se, but it strikes me as a bizarre alternative to having real political parties where the voters are actually members and have a say in its internal organization and direction. We do have this. GJB has been beating this drum regarding the DNC for years.
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Feb 14, 2024 23:04
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Vire posted:I know the trolley problem is a meme but the reason people use it is that people don't seem to understand that inaction is also an action it has nothing to do about actually picking what's best its designed to show that if you do nothing you are still responsible. We can argue about how much responsibility that is like maybe its a very small amount barely anything even as you were not the person who tied them to the tracks etc but I would have to actually hear a convincing argument on why if you had the choice to do something that may kill less people its not your responsibility to engage in the question because people will still die. This isn't really correct. Specifically: "reason people use it is that people don't seem to understand that inaction is also an action". Well, maybe that's why people (who I suppose are only familiar with it from memes) use it, but the trolley problem isn't supposed to be a knock-down argument that inaction amounts to action. That you are responsible for a failure to act is the consequentialist position. (Edit: I should have said: That you have a responsibility to act is the consequentialist position, apologies, running on like 2 hours of sleep) A deontologist (or at least a Kantian, I don't know that much about non-Kantian forms of deontology) would say that without action there can't be a maxim (I guess "intent" is an OK gloss, what exactly a maxim is and how it figures in Kantian moral psychology is complicated), and without a maxim/intent there just isn't anything that can be evaluated morally, i.e. such that someone could bear responsibility for it. The trolley problem, in its original academic non-meme context, is supposed to be a starting point for discussion, not a refutation of deontology or utilitarianism or whatever. Honestly I think it's a mistake to understand the problem as primarily concerned with responsibility. Deontological accounts of moral responsibility almost always involve an aforementioned complex account of moral psychology. Consequentialist accounts of responsibility are... consequentialist - i.e. they tend to avoid thinking of responsibility as if it's some metaphysical fact that someone is responsible, and instead focus on the utility of ascribing blame. Or, put another way: Even if you failed to pull the lever, there are a bunch of ways for a consequentialist to coherently argue that you shouldn't be blamed or held responsible for it. For example: Most consequentalists are aware that, outside of contrived thought experiments, acting in accordance with a deontological moral stance tends to bring about good consequences, so severely blaming or punishing someone for making the wrong choice in a highly contrived situation is not likely to maximize overall positive outcomes. Though you're using "responsible/responsibility" in two different senses here, and perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point. In "if you do nothing you are still responsible" you mean, I take it, "if you do nothing you can still be blamed". But when you say "if you had the choice to do something that may kill less people its not your responsibility to engage", you're using "responsibility" in a way that's more-or-less synonymous with "obligation" or "duty". Gnumonic fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Feb 15, 2024 |
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Feb 15, 2024 03:21
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Civilized Fishbot posted:What's the difference between "good" and "morally valuable"? I respectfully disagree. In the end, it's a democracy, flawed and corrupted and forged on innumerable lies and depravations... but it's our democracy.
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Feb 15, 2024 03:39
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Bel Shazar posted:I respectfully disagree. In the end, it's a democracy, flawed and corrupted and forged on innumerable lies and depravations... but it's our democracy. Is it a democracy? You just said: Bel Shazar posted:Oh I wholly agree we have no CONTROL... That's not a democracy, right? Democracy means the people are in control. If it's only nominally a democracy, and people don't have any control over the government, then I don't see how it being a nominal democracy causes actual moral responsibility. If it's a real democracy, where an ordinary person can have some control over what the government does, they're obviously responsible for what's within their control. All of what's in their control, and nothing more.
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Feb 15, 2024 03:46
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Main Paineframe posted:We have plenty of historical examples of individual politicians changing their stances despite not losing elections. One well-known example is Obama publicly opposing gay marriage in 2008, winning the election, and then supporting gay marriage in 2012. While there's been tons of commentary on Obama's change of positions and how calculated or authentic it might have been, the important part here is that he didn't need to personally lose an election in order to "evolve" his position. And while Obama himself didn't directly do anything related to gay marriage, both his Supreme Court nominations and his DoJ appointees supported gay marriage, something that would be unlikely to be true with McCain or Romney. I don't diagree with anything you have said here. However this is another post responding to me with things that are likely correct in the context of the US presidential election that is walking around my point that withdrawing your vote will create change in the party as a whole by changing the views of the individuals within it. I agree that change can happen within a structure in other ways, however vote withdrawl does also create change. Whether that change is long term positive or negative, short term positive or negative is a judgement for an individual. Did Blair winning in 1992 and putting the UK on a path towards the multiple compounding failures we see today result in the lesser harm? If you held your nose and voted for third way neoliberal Blair actually help? I don't have an answer to these questions, but to only consider the immediate election and not the long term consequences of enabling these decisions seems to be motivated reasoning. Main Paineframe posted:Parties change their behaviors and policies when the individual politicians who make up that party either change their minds about what they want or . Political parties don't have minds of their own, they're organizations made up of people. Focusing on what "the party" does is often a mistake, one which hides the individual agency of people and makes the parties seem like unaccountable and unchangeable monoliths - rather than organizations primarily composed of people who have been elected to their positions. There's a reason GJB tells people to show up to their local party conventions every single time this subject comes up. Or the current individuals who control the party purge the members from the party who are trying to change them from within. See again: UK Labour, who had a successful insurgent left wing candidate, actively worked against him to lose the election, and then purged him and his supporters from the party.
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Feb 15, 2024 04:02
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Civilized Fishbot posted:Is it a democracy? You just said: They do have control. How do politicians get elected? Where do the votes come from? Or is there a random person somewhere picking winning candidates? Yes, the fact that we share this country with millions and millions of other people does blunt the impact of our single vote. That’s why voting itself isn’t enough. Organize, protest, what whatever form of direct action you want to take is what makes the difference.
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Feb 15, 2024 04:29
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Civilized Fishbot posted:Is it a democracy? You just said: We're honestly much more a gerontocracy than democracy, as a result of both major parties gaming the seniority rules in the Senate to exercise power when not in majority. People voting doesn't mean as much as you'd think when two centralized organizations and their donors essentially control who can mount a sufficient campaign to get ballot access.
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Feb 15, 2024 04:42
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hooman posted:I don't diagree with anything you have said here. However this is another post responding to me with things that are likely correct in the context of the US presidential election that is walking around my point that withdrawing your vote will create change in the party as a whole by changing the views of the individuals within it. I agree that change can happen within a structure in other ways, however vote withdrawl does also create change. Whether that change is long term positive or negative, short term positive or negative is a judgement for an individual. You are once again making the massive mistake of focusing exclusively on a single election, to the exclusion of all the rest. I'm not super duper familiar with the Corbyn drama as a whole, but I do know that talking about a successful insurgent left-wing candidate - in other words, one single successful left-wing candidate - is not impressive. You don't get leftism by electing one single leftist to the top slot. You get leftism by electing leftists to all the slots, or at least a comfortable majority of slots. This sounds like the same problem that happens in the US - people focus overwhelmingly on the one seat at the very top that gets all the media attention, while largely ignoring the hundreds of other party seats that hold significant power. A hundred Starmerites can purge twenty Corbynites, but twenty Starmerites can't purge a hundred Corbynites. By comparison, Tony Blair's power wasn't really established by winning the Labour leadership election in 1994. Instead, it was established by leading the party to an enormous victory in 1997. That not only proved the popularity of his stances and brought hope to a party that had been devastated by Thatcher's repeated landslide victories, but also filled the ranks of the party with more than a hundred freshly-elected Blairites, solidly cementing his dominance over Labour. Moreover, he was able to keep delivering those victories for the party in subsequent elections, making him one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers since the birth of Queen Victoria, almost equaling Thatcher's own successes. He was only ousted when he was no longer able to deliver those landslide victories.
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Feb 15, 2024 08:13
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My take on the 2024 Election is as follows: Biden has done a lot of really good poo poo. Economy policies, student loan debt forgiveness, environmental stuff, supporting the auto workers' union, actually following through with his promise to help out the locomotive workers after he broke their strike because the country would fall apart if he didn't, and a lot of other things that I can't think of off of the top of my head. Biden is also, at this very moment, enabling the genocide of Palestinians by sending arms shipments to Israel. In a sane world, this would disqualify him from my vote, because I don't give a gently caress about how many nice things he's given me, my closest friends' families have been slaughtered and he's actively supporting that. But this is not a sane world. I pulled the lever for the Green Party in 2020 because I couldn't bring myself to vote for a man that I believe to be a sexual predator. But January 6th was a wake-up call: the Alt-Right weren't shitposters on /pol/ or bellowing manchildren in yellow shirts anymore, they were a bloodthirsty crowd in our nation's capitol and they very nearly succeeded in getting the blood that they craved. A Trump presidency would instill in them a new boldness that we are not likely to survive, to say nothing of the policies he promises that would bring ruin to us and beyond. In the end, it's a modern spin on the classic Trolley Problem:
I do not like Biden. I hate him, in fact. However, I will vote for Biden because it's the only chance we have. I wish I had any other choice.
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Feb 15, 2024 09:09
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Main Paineframe posted:You are once again making the massive mistake of focusing exclusively on a single election, to the exclusion of all the rest. It's really interesting that you make this criticism (focusing on a single example) when you initially used Obama specifically as an example of change happening without election loss. In fact, if you look at my posts in this thread, this is literally the first post in which I have used any election specifics. So saying I am once again making the massive mistake is entirely mischaracterising my posts, please be more accurate. Main Paineframe posted:I'm not super duper familiar with the Corbyn drama as a whole, but I do know that talking about a successful insurgent left-wing candidate - in other words, one single successful left-wing candidate - is not impressive. You don't get leftism by electing one single leftist to the top slot. You get leftism by electing leftists to all the slots, or at least a comfortable majority of slots. This sounds like the same problem that happens in the US - people focus overwhelmingly on the one seat at the very top that gets all the media attention, while largely ignoring the hundreds of other party seats that hold significant power. A hundred Starmerites can purge twenty Corbynites, but twenty Starmerites can't purge a hundred Corbynites. As a little bit of recent history, Corbyn gained power in the Labour party precisely by energising and signing up new Labour members to support him, he was elected by large majorities of the Labour members (~60%). The existing MPs of the party then tanked the election to force him and the people they didn't like out. That isn't about a person this was about an establishment within a party recognising something that could cause change within it and reacting to remove it prior to any of that change being able to happen. The purge of the left wing within the membership was massive, it wasn't just Corbyn. Main Paineframe posted:By comparison, Tony Blair's power wasn't really established by winning the Labour leadership election in 1994. Instead, it was established by leading the party to an enormous victory in 1997. That not only proved the popularity of his stances and brought hope to a party that had been devastated by Thatcher's repeated landslide victories, but also filled the ranks of the party with more than a hundred freshly-elected Blairites, solidly cementing his dominance over Labour. Moreover, he was able to keep delivering those victories for the party in subsequent elections, making him one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers since the birth of Queen Victoria, almost equaling Thatcher's own successes. He was only ousted when he was no longer able to deliver those landslide victories. I'm aware of Blair's victories and his ability to remake the party in his image, and what that did was cement Thatcherite economics into the fundamentals of the British state because you had both Labour and the Tories running on who was going to Thatcher harder. Which speaking in a longer term sense has entirely hosed the country as a result. This is my point, Blair winning the 1997 election on third way-ism has been a long term very bad outcome.
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Feb 15, 2024 10:30
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hooman posted:It's really interesting that you make this criticism (focusing on a single example) when you initially used Obama specifically as an example of change happening without election loss. In fact, if you look at my posts in this thread, this is literally the first post in which I have used any election specifics. So saying I am once again making the massive mistake is entirely mischaracterising my posts, please be more accurate. Okay. Labor membership means the dues paying participants. Normally, most English voters aren't the type who are lockstep to a party so much they pay dues and go to local meetings. Labor, right before the left made their play for control, made membership dues 5 pounds a year. This, notably, made it extremely easy for small, highly engaged activist groups to take over local meetings because  can't keep the trolls of the forum, much less anything more important. It doesn't represent voting power at all. Notably, outside of Islington, very few of the leftists won in that election, leaving him vulnerable to an internal leadership challenge. On I/P pretext (he visited the grave of a no bones about it terrorist, but massively out of proportion because England loves  as a political cudgel) he was ousted from leadership and striped of party membership, the third way group moved membership requirements much higher. But fundamentally, the third way won elections and his group didn't.This is against the backdrop of the post brexit election, an election being run on populism, timed to strengthen the conservative majority. Just remember if you think anyone involved in Britpol doesn't suck massively you haven't been listening long enough. https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/26/labour-left-breaks-with-jeremy-corbyn-over-sending-weapons-to-ukraine
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Feb 15, 2024 14:25
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volts5000 posted:Well, there's always a catalyst that starts a change, but it's usually after decades of hard work. Like, the Stonewall riot gave LGBT people more visibility in America, but you shouldn't forget the people who worked hard to get that visibility prior to the riot. This is just working backwards from a conclusion, which is that we shouldn't expect the Party we vote for to accomplish anything in a reasonable timeframe.
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Feb 15, 2024 14:43
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Halloween Jack posted:So there are decades of "hard work" but the Hard Work is not the same thing as Change. Then an event happens, known as the Catalyst, which leads to Change, which happens slowly. Wow! So all the LGBTQ people who protested, did sit-ins, engaged in riots, organized political movements prior to Stonewall deserved to be erased from history and don't count because they weren't successful. Only winners matter here. Gotcha.
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Feb 15, 2024 15:14
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Yes, that's precisely the point I was making. Great job. You're the one who said that their "decades of hard work" didn't count as "change." (The actual point is that you're arguing from your unquestioned assumptions and rationalizing them as some sort of theory of change after the fact.)
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Feb 15, 2024 15:40
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Halloween Jack posted:Yes, that's precisely the point I was making. Great job. I'm not really sure I can argue this. I wouldn't know where to begin. The Homophile movement, Josie Carter, etc. don't deserve to be in the dustbin of history because they didn't spark a national movement. Your lesson here for everyone is "Unless you can 100% guarantee that your actions will be successful on a broad scale, don't bother. It's not worth it. Even if your failure could lead to future successes." With attitudes like that, I can see why people are bitchy about voting and organizing.
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Feb 15, 2024 16:03
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To be frank: What the gently caress are you talking about?
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Feb 15, 2024 16:11
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Halloween Jack posted:To be frank: What the gently caress are you talking about? I made the point that social changes are made incrementally through hard work (a series of minor successes and failures) that take decades. You refuted that by saying that social changes only happen when one big thing happens and that one big thing changes everything very quickly. I conceded that, yes, a lot of social movements do have one big success that has far reaching changes, but pointed out that the one big success is built on the smaller efforts made before it. Maybe I wasn't being clear, but with the LGBTQ rights example, you seemed pretty dismissive of the activism prior to Stonewall. Halloween Jack posted:So there are decades of "hard work" but the Hard Work is not the same thing as Change. When I pointed it out that you were being dismissive, you agreed. Halloween Jack posted:Yes, that's precisely the point I was making. Great job. Then, you accuse me of saying something I didn't say. I was saying that the hard work WAS the change. Halloween Jack posted:(The actual point is that you're arguing from your unquestioned assumptions and rationalizing them as some sort of theory of change after the fact.) What assumptions am I making? EDIT: I think we're getting way off the thread topic. volts5000 fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Feb 15, 2024 |
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Feb 15, 2024 16:37
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volts5000 posted:I made the point that social changes are made incrementally through hard work (a series of minor successes and failures) that take decades. The user didn't say all social change works this way, the user said some social change works that way - "There are many historical examples of the social environment changing rapidly or top-down changes in policy spurring social change to happen much faster than it would have otherwise." volts5000 posted:When I pointed it out that you were being dismissive, you agreed. Here the user was very obviously being sarcastic. You're misreading their posts in a bizarre and uncharitable way. Social change is sometimes very rapid and not gradual, even though decades or centuries of prior work enabled that rapid transition.
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Feb 15, 2024 16:43
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Civilized Fishbot posted:The user didn't say all social change works this way, the user said some social change works that way - "There are many historical examples of the social environment changing rapidly or top-down changes in policy spurring social change to happen much faster than it would have otherwise." Maybe you're right that I was being uncharitable. When you do academic research into the history of social movements, it can make you resentful of the reductive way history is taught to some people. "Slavery was a thing. Then Civil War. No more slavery." "Jim Crow racism was a thing. Then MLK. No more racism." "LGBTQ were hated. Then Stonewall. LGBTQ are ok now." I feel like I see that kind of attitude with the issues were facing now. "We just need that one big thing to fix Gaza" or "We just need that one big event to ensure trans rights" and everybody's waiting around for it to happen while being completely blind to all of the little victories that've happened in the meantime. I also feel like this goes back to the "no voting/voting third party" thing. It's either "Voting isn't going make the one big thing happen, so it's pointless!" or "The Democrats losing will be the one big thing. I just know it!" Also, my brain goes way faster than my fingers (thanks ADHD), so maybe some points did get lost. It's why I don't get involved in a lot of debates.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:16
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hooman posted:It's really interesting that you make this criticism (focusing on a single example) when you initially used Obama specifically as an example of change happening without election loss. In fact, if you look at my posts in this thread, this is literally the first post in which I have used any election specifics. So saying I am once again making the massive mistake is entirely mischaracterising my posts, please be more accurate. I used Obama (an individual politician) as an example of how individual politicians can change their stances based on factors besides their own personal electoral performance. It's completely consistent, because I'm talking about how political parties are groups of individuals, and the various ways in which those individuals can be influenced or replaced in large enough numbers to affect the course of the party as a whole. You've said it yourself - the existing MPs of the party didn't support Corbyn. Which indicates that even though Corbyn was able to muster enough votes to win the leadership election, he was not able to channel that into gains for leftist MPs in general. It's a lot like how a Bernie Sanders presidency would have been generally lovely, because there were hardly any leftists in the Senate and the Bernie movement wasn't really making any effort to change that, so Sanders wouldn't have been able to get his desired policies passed into law because the left hadn't built the groundwork before making a play for the top position. Corbyn was the Barry Goldwater to Blair's Ronald Reagan. Goldwater, like Corbyn, was personally popular with the base due to his charismatic radicalism, but was unable to channel that into broad electoral appeal or any immediate shift in the position of the party as a whole. On the other hand, Reagan, like Blair, was able to deliver massive electoral landslides for his party, allowing him to reshape the party as he liked while his foes didn't dare to oppose him. Whether the policies are good or bad is, for the purposes of this thread, besides the point. The fact of the matter is that Margaret Thatcher was the longest-serving Prime Minister since 1850, primarily due to her ability to deliver massive electoral landslides for her party, and that Blair was the second-longest-serving Prime Minister since 1850, once again due to his ability to deliver massive electoral landslides for his party. Thatcherite economics didn't become dominant because of Thatcher or Blair, they became dominant because Thatcherite economics and the politicians that supported them were popular with the electorate, which manifested itself in the form of massive electoral successes for politicians who adopted those policies. While Corbyn may have been personally popular, that did not translate into a massive wave of Corbynite MPs sweeping into power at the next election, and so his attempts to singlehandedly do a 180 on many party positions (such as trying to become a champion of Brexit) went poorly.
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Feb 15, 2024 20:05
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Thank you for being more careful with your language in this post. Sorry I'm going to split this up because I don't want to wall of text responding to multiple things.Main Paineframe posted:I used Obama (an individual politician) as an example of how individual politicians can change their stances based on factors besides their own personal electoral performance. It's completely consistent, because I'm talking about how political parties are groups of individuals, and the various ways in which those individuals can be influenced or replaced in large enough numbers to affect the course of the party as a whole. I agree that there can be changes that are not formed from vote withdrawl. I would also like to note regarding the bolded that it is usually difficult to replace incumbents in party until they are no longer incumbent. Vote withdrawl removes incumbency which would allow you the change the makeup of a party as a whole. Main Paineframe posted:You've said it yourself - the existing MPs of the party didn't support Corbyn. Which indicates that even though Corbyn was able to muster enough votes to win the leadership election, he was not able to channel that into gains for leftist MPs in general. It's a lot like how a Bernie Sanders presidency would have been generally lovely, because there were hardly any leftists in the Senate and the Bernie movement wasn't really making any effort to change that, so Sanders wouldn't have been able to get his desired policies passed into law because the left hadn't built the groundwork before making a play for the top position. Corbyn was the Barry Goldwater to Blair's Ronald Reagan. Goldwater, like Corbyn, was personally popular with the base due to his charismatic radicalism, but was unable to channel that into broad electoral appeal or any immediate shift in the position of the party as a whole. On the other hand, Reagan, like Blair, was able to deliver massive electoral landslides for his party, allowing him to reshape the party as he liked while his foes didn't dare to oppose him. The reason that Labour were not able to gain Corbyn supporting MPs is because the MPs already in place were acting to prevent Labour from winning any new seats and thus the election. The party acted to prevent any change to the makeup of the party in spite of the votes cast by their own members. In specifically the Corbyn case (in retrospect) if you wanted to change the Labour Party, members should have been practicing vote withdrawl to remove the incumbent MPs and only return those votes when the support would put people into power who supported the policies they wanted. This is an argument in favour of withdrawing your vote until the party you support is running on policies that you personally agree with, otherwise you are supporting the, lets call it "institutional momentum". This is what happened for Blair, vote withdrawl prior to him cleared enough space that when those votes returned he was able to come in with members who supported him and make changes (with support of his party) to get them all re-elected. Main Paineframe posted:Whether the policies are good or bad is, for the purposes of this thread, besides the point. The fact of the matter is that Margaret Thatcher was the longest-serving Prime Minister since 1850, primarily due to her ability to deliver massive electoral landslides for her party, and that Blair was the second-longest-serving Prime Minister since 1850, once again due to his ability to deliver massive electoral landslides for his party. Thatcherite economics didn't become dominant because of Thatcher or Blair, they became dominant because Thatcherite economics and the politicians that supported them were popular with the electorate, which manifested itself in the form of massive electoral successes for politicians who adopted those policies. While Corbyn may have been personally popular, that did not translate into a massive wave of Corbynite MPs sweeping into power at the next election, and so his attempts to singlehandedly do a 180 on many party positions (such as trying to become a champion of Brexit) went poorly. Actually I think whether the policies of politicians are good long term or not is a very compelling reason whether or not to vote and extremely relevant to the thread. I also think that there can be a great deal of external factors which change the popularity of politicians which are not related to their policies (for example massive rises in gas prices due to external influences makes people mad that they are paying more at the pump, or media presentation of policies and politicians).
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Feb 16, 2024 01:51
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Main Paineframe posted:You've said it yourself - the existing MPs of the party didn't support Corbyn. Which indicates that even though Corbyn was able to muster enough votes to win the leadership election, he was not able to channel that into gains for leftist MPs in general. It's a lot like how a Bernie Sanders presidency would have been generally lovely, because there were hardly any leftists in the Senate and the Bernie movement wasn't really making any effort to change that, so Sanders wouldn't have been able to get his desired policies passed into law because the left hadn't built the groundwork before making a play for the top position. Corbyn was the Barry Goldwater to Blair's Ronald Reagan. Goldwater, like Corbyn, was personally popular with the base due to his charismatic radicalism, but was unable to channel that into broad electoral appeal or any immediate shift in the position of the party as a whole. On the other hand, Reagan, like Blair, was able to deliver massive electoral landslides for his party, allowing him to reshape the party as he liked while his foes didn't dare to oppose him.
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Feb 21, 2024 15:51
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Is this the correct thread to complain about election discourse? Like specifically the only presidential election I was allowed to vote in was 2020, only presidential vote I've cast was Bernie in the primary and I'm not about to change it this year, please don't think I want to talk anyone into voting Joe Biden. I vote blue no matter who downhill to avoid the Bring Back Slavery And Legalize Hunting Trans People For Sport Party taking over the city council and school board and I'm proud of it. But back in 2020 it was already so obvious that Biden was a creepy rapist and segregationist, and now of course he's also Genocide Joe in addition to sleepy and creepy. But the thing is it's so loving frustrating just constantly hearing about how the imaginary massive youth turnout is not just abandoning the dems but going to show up and turn Trump "because oh my ggggoooooooodddd the kids hate genocidey Joe and read Marx every day and definitely agree with me" from some fifty year old twitter scientist
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Feb 24, 2024 23:38
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soviet elsa posted:Is this the correct thread to complain about election discourse? Like specifically the only presidential election I was allowed to vote in was 2020, only presidential vote I've cast was Bernie in the primary and I'm not about to change it this year, please don't think I want to talk anyone into voting Joe Biden. I vote blue no matter who downhill to avoid the Bring Back Slavery And Legalize Hunting Trans People For Sport Party taking over the city council and school board and I'm proud of it. If you're tired of seeing stupid hot takes from old Twitter dumbasses, stop reading Twitter. You're doing this to yourself!
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Feb 25, 2024 00:04
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Kith posted:My take on the 2024 Election is as follows: I agree with this. I did vote for Biden in 2020, but primarily because the thought of Trump getting a second term is repellent to me in the extreme. I wish there were more options, and I wish I had a good way to stop the ongoing genocide, but at the same time, there is no way that my vote can do so, and my mental health is strained enough that I cannot do much else besides vote.
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Feb 25, 2024 01:12
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Dirk the Average posted:I agree with this. I did vote for Biden in 2020, but primarily because the thought of Trump getting a second term is repellent to me in the extreme. I wish there were more options, and I wish I had a good way to stop the ongoing genocide, but at the same time, there is no way that my vote can do so, and my mental health is strained enough that I cannot do much else besides vote. Don't let the importance of a single vote get to you. You do not control the system, you are a part of it, so most importantly look after yourself and don't stress yourself out about the difference that your single vote makes because, fundamentally, it's none. If you want to look at systemic change, the democrats slide right to appeal to voters they think they can win over (theoretically) so voting for them when they support genocide is signalling that supporting genocide is not the line that will cost them. This allows them to slide further right to find new voters. They can't tell what is in your heart of hearts, they can't tell how reluctant you feel to vote for them, they see a vote and that vote is an approval of the policies and the person they have in place. No future Republican will be better than Trump, they will all be worse, because while Trump is truly horrible he is also wildly incompetent, dumb and self sabotaging. When you are trapped in a 2 party system and you want one of those parties to change, you have to withdraw your vote in order to force change. I agree with posts made previously that the change may not be for the better, but you want 0 genocides supported, you have to try and hope.
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Feb 25, 2024 01:22
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hooman posted:Don't let the importance of a single vote get to you. You do not control the system, you are a part of it, so most importantly look after yourself and don't stress yourself out about the difference that your single vote makes because, fundamentally, it's none. Am I misreading something or is your final paragraph saying, unironically, that Trump might be "change [...] for the better" on specifically the issue of the ongoing genocide?
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Feb 25, 2024 01:37
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hooman posted:When you are trapped in a 2 party system and you want one of those parties to change, you have to withdraw your vote in order to force change. Historical situations suggest this is incorrect though. When there is a reduction in the percentage of the voting population, that tends allow minority groups and extreme groups to win or gain control. When enough folks withdraw their votes it creates the potential for revolutionary (and counter revolutionary) conditions to occur. It reduces the stability of the system. I think you should give historical examples where withholding votes produced the outcome you are asserting.
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Feb 25, 2024 01:45
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Tatsuta Age posted:Am I misreading something or is your final paragraph saying, unironically, that Trump might be "change [...] for the better" on specifically the issue of the ongoing genocide? I am pretty sure you are misreading and the change they're describing is "Democratic party moves left on Palestine to attract voters who won't vote for a pro-IDF candidate."
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Feb 25, 2024 01:48
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Tatsuta Age posted:Am I misreading something or is your final paragraph saying, unironically, that Trump might be "change [...] for the better" on specifically the issue of the ongoing genocide? Oh gently caress no, absolutely not. The change I am hoping for in the future is in the policies of the Democratic Party. Bar Ran Dun posted:Historical situations suggest this is incorrect though. When there is a reduction in the percentage of the voting population, that tends allow minority groups and extreme groups to win or gain control. I am not talking about a permanent vote withholding, I am talking about tactical vote withholding. I don't want to repeat myself so have a look at the discussion I had earlier in the thread about incumbency and the large replacement of members in the UK that changed the Labour Party under Blair. Basically in order to replace poo poo representatives, they have to lose so they don't have the defense of incumbency, which opens opportunities for institutional change within a party. EDIT: To be clearer, my view is that you should withdraw your vote from any candidate (up and down ballot) who is bad and give your vote to any candidate who is good, with an eye to seeing the bad ones lose, and the good ones win to change the makeup of a party, in order to change the direction of the party. hooman fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 01:55
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