Team D love vote shaming , because Team D are the political manifestation of the PMC. For their part, because the PMC have cemented their class hegemony, they have become scolds so humorless, smug, condescending, self-important and priggish that they make The Church Lady look like Lenny Bruce by comparison.
At this point Pod Save America is like watching the latest new CBS prime time drama. You can feel them straining to hold together a disappearing coalition.
Broadly sympathetic to this argument but Point #1 is unconvincing. The argument that one should vote in solidarity with the broader coalition in a general election in a 2-party system--whether or not that convinces you--has nothing to do with one's skill at fortune telling when voting in the primary. Maybe Bernie would have lost, too, we'll never know. Certainly, if he had, PSA types would blame Bernie primary voters, which would be absurd. There are too many contingent factors--if you're trying to vote in the primary based on the complex and unknowable future about how things will shake out in November, you are probably too confident about your ability to predict the future! That has nothing to do with a consequentialist argument about a general election in a two-party system (again, not saying such arguments are convincing, but it's simply not analogous to one's choice in the primary).
Here on Earth Prime, we do know what happened, though. And Hillary lost. Maybe Bernie would have lost too, but we don't know that. The bottom line is that the voters, politicians, and institutions of the Democratic party made a choice, and the choice they made lost a very winnable election. And I think they could stand to take a little of the blame.
If the question is retrospective blame, I don't have strong feelings, but ok. If the question is prospective--how should one vote in a general election in a 2-party system if the choices are Trump and Biden--I just don't see how there's any analogy.
Predicting the future is so difficult that I'm skeptical of the blame argument you're making ("predicting" counterfactuals is likewise pretty hard, so totally impossible to know if it was the wrong choice in a consequential way!).
But the blame angle seems silly to me, and I just roundly reject any form of scolding for voting one's preference in a primary--that's what primaries are for! The general election argument is, in my view, different. Let's leave persuasion aside. If a consequential block of leftist voters asked my advice about the general election, I would say that for all of Biden's grotesque faults, the material differences that would occur if Trump was elected instead are very real and very bad, so vote for Biden. More or less Chomsky's position.
I view general elections in these terms of solidarity with a broad coalition as opposed to expressions of personal conscience. Some people think more in terms of the latter, so if that's how a voter feels, that's how a voter feels. But I don't think my advice on this matter, described above, has anything at all to do with whether or not people were good enough at prognosticating to back the "right horse" in a primary election.
Agree with this point. How does this apply to the current context - Biden didn't lose, and he's the incumbent president. All of his challengers to the left haven't even gotten ballot access in many states, so they can literally only be spoilers. RFK's campaign was explicit that the goal is to re-elect Trump. I'm also sympathetic to the overall sentiment, and I don't like the centrist scolding, but in this case I don't see any practical option.
To me this is the right way to look at it. I agree with Freddie that it's pretty silly to blame Jill Stein (or whoever) voters for Trump. That's especially the case with the electoral college, and where the vast majority of such votes were in states that were never in play. And anyway that defeat had so many fathers it's impossible to play that kind of 'but for' game.
However at the end of the day there's no getting around the fact that our system will produce only 2 viable candidates. Instead of giving leftists shit about past elections I'd rather make the case that we could use their help for what I would hope they could agree is a lesser evil. Even then it will probably matter less than something like what gas costs per gallon in the Pittsburgh area in late October.
Somebody else in this discussion claimed Bernie polled better against Trump. If that's the issue aren't the Dems guilty of choosing the less qualified candidate?
So on the spectrum it's Bernie > Clinton > Stein. If the argument is electability what's the justification for skipping over #1 to go with #2? Why not just fall all the way back to #3 in that case?
Dems got caught up in 'Her Turn' and all that crap and elected Clinton purely on the basis of her gender. Another old white guy just wasn't in the books. She wasn't unpopular because of her gender, she is just not that likable. Clinton's best chance was to run against Trump, and she blew it. Her hubris led to a weak campaign.
Or to look to the past: In the 2000 primary, I wrote in Paul Wellstone. I voted for Al Gore in the 2000 election even tho I agreed more on policy w/Nader because I thought the material differences between a Gore presidency & Bush presidency would be very real and very bad. Whether or not that would have persuaded anyone, I think that logic is perfectly rational. But such logic does not compel me to say that *Al Gore primary voters* were predominantly to blame for the sins of George W. Bush since Gore lost a winnable election? That just seems silly to me?
He's arguing that we know Hillary was the weaker candidate because she lost (tho he acknowledges we don't know whether Bernie would have done any better). Maybe Bradley would have won! Maybe not. But: "Here on Earth Prime, we do know what happened, though..."--> Gore lost.
According to M. Saner in this thread Bernie polled better. If that's the case aren't the D's guilty of choosing the weaker candidate, and if the argument is all about the numbers and who can win doesn't that mean that they're just hypocrites?
Just for amusement, Bradley was 48-40 over Bush in a national poll by LAT in June 1999 whereas Gore was down 49-44. Bradley would have won! Unfortunately for anyone who tried using that metric to pick a candidate, those numbers moved wildly and were all over the place for the duration of the Bradley/Gore race, without much of a consistent pattern. But who knows! If you truly think such numbers are predictive, Bradley did better, so maybe it's all the Dems fault for voting for Gore in the primary, lol. (Of course we actually have no idea about the counterfactual and I don't think anyone has seriously put forward that argument.)
The question is whether a busted and broken ruler is better than none whatsoever. Look, I'm not arguing that people shouldn't vote for whoever they want to vote for regardless of actual impact. What if Biden's already lost? Should his supporters just stay home or vote for Stein and West? Of course not. If they want to throw their votes away they should just do what they want.
Unlike what you seem to believe aggregated polling is in fact more accurate than an
individual poll. I have no idea what Bradley v Gore looked like but if the bulk of polling suggested Sanders was a better candidate than Clinton is that somehow worthless? I don't think so. Again, maybe it just means that Sanders loses by a smaller margin to Trump than Clinton but when the bulk of polling shows consistent movement in one direction I am inclined to view it as more trustworthy than a single poll.
Quite frankly, I'm just so, so over the likeability and winnability models we are all encouraged to run in out heads constantly. I don't want to vote against the opposite party and ask for nothing from my own, I want to vote for the person that I think will do the best job.
This is tangentially related, but I'm sort of kicking myself that I haven't implemented my own version of ranked choice voting. I vote democrat, and probably will for the foreseeable future, but I wish I had registered republican and voted for Haley in the primary. This isn't an attempt to ruin the republican party by getting them to nominate a crappy candidate so that my side wins. I genuinely prefer her over Trump by a mile. If she had been nominated, this would have created a more comfortable field of possible futures, and I would have been more at leisure to vote my conscience.
PSA sucks balls, but the idea of another Trump presidency does scare me. He's way too reactionary and immature for the volatility of the current world.
Yeah, my advice would be to vote for the primary candidate you prefer on the merits because (within reason) no one can really predict "electability" with enough confidence to move the needle among primary choices. Then in the general, if you believe the material harms of a Trump residency would be way worse, it's totally fine to vote in solidarity with the broad coalition and back Biden as an instrumental means to stop Trump.
"So here’s the question: once you’ve pledged your vote to a party in perpetuity without any qualifications and with zero expectation of getting anything in return… how do you make that party do what you want?"
You don't. "Vote Blue No Matter Who" is simply an expression of tribal loyalty. Nothing more, nothing less.
"You’ve already promised to give them the only thing they care about." Political cultists love to rationalize their choices by saying things like "I held my nose as I voted."
Thing is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether you voted as a Kool-Aid Chugging True Believer, whether you voted out of shame or because of a single issue or because the other guy was worse, or whatever.
Each vote counts exactly the same as every other vote.
I'd say rightwing voters have been very successful at reshaping the Republican party in their image by voting in highly ideological/anti-establishment ways in primaries and then showing up to vote pragmatically for the Republican candidate in general elections.
I am talking about a much longer history in Republican politics and the phenomenon you're pointing to is something altogether different: for cult of personality reasons, more or less, previous non-voters show up for Trump. These aren't people sitting out prior elections for ideological purity reasons, they just weren't all that political at all outside of the Trump phenomenon. What helps make this is clear is that you're totally wrong about "and Trumpists"--no candidate has been able to reproduce the Trump turnout effect when he's not on the ballot and indeed, Trump-endorsed candidates have consistently done worse than other candidates. Likewise, we see that Trump has a downballot impact on turnout and R votes, including for non-Trumpy candidates, not reproduced when he's not on the ballot--even if the person at the top of the ticket is as "trumpy" as possible. There is zero evidence that sitting out general elections or voting third party for ideological reasons has led to responsive ideological changes in the Republican Party. It's true that the dynamic of Trump-only voters has made everyone liable to suck up to Trump, but that has really had very little bearing on policy (or policy that isn't specifically about Trump or his legal situation, etc.). It's meantime quite clear that primary voting by the base has dramatically changed the Republican Party over the last 30 years--and these base voters dutifully turned out in general elections, a combo that among other things led to the overturning of Roe.
You're talking about a tiny sample size, 2018 and (sort of) 2022. And obviously in 2022 he wasn't even in office.
Plus there are alternative theories. It used to be that the D's thought higher turnout benefited them. It now appears that the two parties have traded places and higher turnout will benefit Trump.
They've reshaped the GOP by making it _less_ conservative. To take one example, trade tariffs were anathema to old school Republicans.
Trump isn't the product of a civil war in the GOP, he's the product of an invasion by blue collar workers transitioning over from the Democrats. What he represents is the inflection point for that process.
rather than get into a definition of "conservative" I would point, for example, to anti-abortion activists. or you could think of a slate of other issues, like immigration, on which activists absolutely represented a rebellion against "old school Republicans." the point is that such activists had their policy preferences benefit at the margins over time from having Republicans in office at the same time that they attempted to reshape the party via the primary process. these voters became the darlings of Republican politicians--who proved highly responsive--in a way that leftists declaring that they won't vote or will vote third party never have.
The percentage of college educated whites that vote for the GOP has been in decline since Eisenhower, from what I understand. Trump is probably the first Republican since Ike to lose that demographic. He is the culmination of a demographic shift that took 50 or more years.
We're talking about different things here. I consider demographics to be decisive and politics to be illusory.
Okay. I agree that we're talking about different things. The argument was made that people who consistently vote for Democrats in general elections will never get what they want. I disagree, and think the leverage point is in primary elections. They could be deluded, but I've talked to more Republican politicians than I can count, and they absolutely reposition themselves to try to attract "base" voters in the primary. They do not concern themselves with people who pledge not to vote for them in general elections (why would they). Maybe they're delusional, but I think you can see this play out practically pretty clearly. Anyway, that's what I was responding to, and stand by my argument. I think you're talking about something different and I'm not sure I have any strong opinion. Structural factors are a big deal, sure. But this whole conversation is about the instrumental effectiveness of voting choices. Close election results obviously make a material impact on things at the margins, so it's a question of interest even if you believe all politics to be an illusion.
I am responding to the "A vote for Clinton is a vote for Trump" argument. I think that by definition voting for the weaker candidate in a primary obviously benefits the opposition in the general election and if the polling indicated a better matchup for Sanders then Clinton was indeed the weaker candidate.
Why was she the weaker candidate? Because working class voters, who had previously made Obama their champion, were defecting to the GOP.
Choosing a lousy or out of touch primary candidate is a criticism commonly leveled by D's against R's. How does that not hold for both parties?
On the never Trump side it's often argued that letting voters decide the nominees, and campaign finance that made small donations more important, have been the ruin of the Grand Old Party. But both those things exist on the Dem side of the fence as well, and if they haven't reshaped the party yet it suggests that something more is needed.
I like the idea above that actually *asking voters what they want* could be the secret sauce. And it looks to me as if that is the left's weakest spot.
well, they’ve reshaped the GOP by getting rid of the “three legged stool” coalition conservatism. If that’s the definition of conservative, then sure, the GOP is less conservative, but I don’t think that IS the proper definition of conservative.
The process I am describing is the way in which primary voters over the last thirty years were successful in reshaping the Republican party while still showing up in general elections, a dynamic that, for example, led to Roe being repealed, one of the top goals of base voters for decades. If you want to look at the Trump administration, you could point to the Ryan tax cuts, which as Ryan himself said was a kind of extremist dream that would have been viewed as a political longshot 40 years ago.
LOL, as opposed to the way Team D rigs its primaries?
For that matter, a lot of American politics has shifted to a more openly oligarchical cast. Witness how Obama campaigned on the repeal of the Bush tax cuts, then, once he took office with a huge majority in both houses of Congress, Wall Street begging for rescue on any terms and a national MSM unironically comparing him to Neo from The Matrix and also Jesus Christ, decided to make those tax cuts permanent.
I'm not sure what we're arguing about a this point but if you think voting in primaries is useless and not voting in general elections is a good instrumentalist strategy to move politicians to the left, I disagree--but I hear you, and we all gotta just vote or not the way we think is best.
I am saying that the process is rigged, at least for Team D, and pointing to rightwing success in political accomplishments isn't necessarily a reliable indicator of whether rightwing strategy is effective.
Really? Because his policy record sure wasn't screaming "good guy" to me in any way. And the fact that affluent white liberals creamed their jeans in 2009 to tell literally anyone with ears that they voted for him didn't make him a "good guy" either, let alone a good, let alone progressive, president.
It was simply more of the same shit in a "FIRST X PRESIDENT!" package.
A Nobel Peace Prize winner who was more than happy to kill ambulance drivers and people digging their neighbors out from under rubble with "double tap" drone strikes. Cenk Uygur asked "Hey, isn't this the shit that terrorists do?"
All packaged with a cringey cult of personality that cynically appealed to the fact that white voters from the Professional Managerial Class would sooner eat an entire box of live mice than let their friends know they voted for someone else on policy grounds, let alone policy record.
As much as I love the schadenfreude aspects of weaponizing white guilt in the Acela Corridor, it was a bit much even for me. What voters actually got in Barack Obama were the same decisions George Bush mostly made, except mindblowingly often even worse, packaged in a kumbaya package that made the Acela Corridor PMC convulse in ecstasy.
It was ridiculous, but God help anyone who called it out as being stupid, because who wanted to get dragged by their peers on Facebook (LOL!) for that shit?
"What voters actually got in Barack Obama were the same decisions George Bush mostly made..."
This is absurd. The motivation for making this type of statement is the same motivation for people on Twitter and Facebook (LOL!!!) pretending to be holier than thou, and running every single statement through some perverse purity test. Just some really, really silly shit.
Barack Obama led the charge in expanding the surveillance state and eroding protections on privacy that would have even made George W. Bush blush. And he was an even bigger cheerleader for the doctrine of John Bolton style forever war than, possibly, even Bolton himself.
That this man is revered as some sort of progressive icon is proof that shitlibs really have no intellectual or even emotional connection to real politics. It is literally all the Mean Girls school of in group optics. It would not do to be seen sitting with the wrong people at the table.
The answer to the first question is that right now, it is clear that voting for a third party would enable Trump by making it less likely for Biden to win. In 2016, it was NOT clear that Hillary would lose to Trump, so supporting her was a reasonable move to enable the center-left over the far right.
It seems that this is an issue of epistemology, not logic.
The latest CNN poll has Trump leading Biden by six points. To flip your question around, what if the polling indicates that Trump has an insurmountable lead? Why not vote for a third party candidate in that case?
Absolutely! If the evidence shows that Biden has little or no chance, the goal is to elect the least damaging person. But the real issue is figuring out whether and/or when that point is reached. I don't think the general political community has a great track record of making that call.
That's not really my point however. I don't think that Jill Stein has any real hope of being elected in the immediate future. But if your personal beliefs are more sympatico with the Greens does it make sense that you would prefer to see Green candidates serving in the House and Senate as well as in local government? Working/volunteering for the Greens (or any third political party) moves that goal one step closer to reality. Incremental progress is still progress.
And if the question is electability in 44 out of 50 states the results of the election this November are basically foretold. There's no reason not to vote for whoever you want to if you don't live in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.
I agree that it would be great to see a functioning Green party contesting elections and electing candidates in local elections (as it would be great to see the same from the Libertarian, Working Families, and any others) where there is a one-party environment. It's probably more feasible to do that these days now that the national parties have become more politically homogeneous with major issues nationalized.
But I'm not as confident in the short list of swing states. Sure, vote whoever for president if you're in NY, Hawaii, MD, Alabama, TN, WV. But there are places like NC, VA, Maine, Michigan, etc where things are not forgone.
The commonly recognized swing states for November are WI, MI, AZ, GA, NV and PA. Unless the polling is really wrong I think it's safe to vote for whoever you want to if you live elsewhere in the country.
"If leftists voting third party amounts to support for Trump on consequentialist grounds, doesn’t voting and advocating for Hillary Clinton also amount to support for Trump on the exact same grounds? I made this point recently regarding Jon Chait and got a surprising amount of pushback. Surprising, that is, because the logic in unassailable."
Freddie once again falls into the trap of thinking an opinion of his is an "unassailable" fact. Freddie, here's the difference: if you vote third party, you are necessarily failing to vote for the candidate who clearly has the best chance of beating Trump (i.e. the Dem challenger); if you voted for Hillary Clinton, can we say the same thing? Was there *clearly* someone who had a better chance of beating Trump? Until you prove that there was, this mic drop isn't much of a mic drop, just like it wasn't in the Chait piece.
If you believe in polls - and the PSA folks absolutely do - Bernie's superiority was clear.
Though personally, I wouldn't use an American example for that point. I would instead look at the right wing of the Labour party in the UK, which quite literally lost an election on purpose when it was forced to follow Corbyn.
I'm not gonna disagree with you on Hillary at all; I bet we see eye-to-eye on how weak a candidate she was. Still, the fact remains: in November of 2016, the ballot pitted two candidates against each other: Trump and Hillary. If you didn't want one, you voted for the other. If you voted for neither, you were forfeiting your opportunity to reduce the chances that the one you liked less would get elected. If you voted third party instead of for Trump, that was one less anti-Hillary vote; if you voted third party instead of for Hillary, that was one less anti-Trump vote.
And if I think both Trump and Clinton, and now Trump and Biden, are both uaccaptable choices for president, why do I give a fuck about beating Trump more than I care about beating Biden or Clinton?
Your argument presupposes that I owe the Dems my vote. Maybe voters such as yourself should be more critical of Dems and willing to vote for someone worth a fuck. After all the only reason a third party cannot win an election is because a critical mass of voters like you cling to that fear. Maybe find your courage and take this election as an opportunity to say "Hell no!" Enought people do this and you will be pleasantly suprised.
I think his point is that “hey, of course we’re not going to make anything better…but it could be worse, and then it’ll be your fault” is neither viable nor worthy as a political stance. Even if both major parties seem to have settled on it as a platform.
The secret to Trump's victory is that he did something neither the Democrats nor Republicans have done in God only knows how long - he went out to purple voters (the biggest bloc) and asked, "what do you want me to do if I'm elected?"
That was it. He's not an ideologue, nor a "it's my turn" Republican. He ran for a president as a publicity stunt, and ironically, won because he did the one very simple thing Clinton, Obama, et al famously refused to do - ask the American voters what they actually want.
Not the donors. Not the party activists. The bulk of the voters.
Amazing.
And remember, this is being framed as dangerous populism representing a threat to Democracy itself. LOL.
I don't think that's true at all. Which policies do you have in mind here?
His signature issue was immigration, and that's a classic split issue where different people want different things and each party already represented a big a chunk of the voters.
North American trade continues to have enough support, but not the rest. No one votes for Trump because they don't like free trade with Canada. Southern states and the business lobby are too dependent upon free trade with Mexico to ever let it go. If anything, doubling down is underway, in part to reduce China's power.
And there was Trump's true innovation: not trade policy, but China policy. The Dems were quite split on TPP, but both parties were quite pro-China before Trump.
The NAFTA renegotiation didn't really change much, to my Canadian understanding. There was some concern about that when he promised it, but we all relaxed when it turned out that he was more interested in having a "different" deal than in having a deal with meaningful differences.
Trump sank the TPP, but it was already in trouble with the Dems and a Clinton presidency. Trump got out ahead of the trade parade, but he wasn't in on the ground the way he was with China.
FWIW, I find TPP fascinating from a history perspective. It has some similarities to when the provinces of former empire carry on the existing order after the centre has collapsed. Despite its surprising success and ongoing attraction to new entrants, America's allies have not yet drawn an obvious conclusion: the Americans aren't quite as necessary as everyone else assumes. The world just keeps getting more interesting.
I would disagree. His signature issue was blue collar economics. Immigration was sucked into that because illegals compete against low wage earners and drive down wages in that segment.
But was there a party representing the anti-immigration working-class vote? Dems were for immigration on humanitarian grounds, and Reps were for it on low-wage worker grounds. The same reasons both parties were for globalization before that. It's been a long time since either party has supported the welfare of american workers.
Perhaps you should have paid closer attention while it was happening. His entire platform was based on voter input since Trump, famously, has no really strong politics of his own. He was a typical Manhattan oligarch who supported anyone who asked for donations. Bill and Hillary came to one of his weddings, for God's sakes.
All of the pillars of Trump's agenda that the brainless Acela Corridor/PMC journo establishment labeled as insane, dangerous populism came from collecting feedback from purple voters.
Protectionist tariffs - conservatives hate this, Trump didn't care because the voters like it
No more pointless "forever wars" - remember when the left used to support this before Obama was president? Good times. Turns out, most voters are sick of expensive wars we wind up losing. Trump actually listened to them. Wild.
No more open borders - imagine if the United States paid the same attention to who we do and do not allow to enter our country as countries like Japan and Switzerland do?
Wild. I can just smell the racism there. And yet, this is an overwhelmingly popular opinion with a huge majority of American voters.
Trash-talking about immigration issue as "racism" is one of the most important reasons why so many Americans have become highly supportive of restricting immigration, including dramatic ones like mass deportations. If you don't like that, stop doing it.
Americans like governments that follow the law. This includes very large numbers of people with immigrant, and specifically Latino immigrant background. Immigration law represents a deal that has been struck. Follow it, or work with fellow citizens to change it, but don't ignore it. The leftist faction in the Democratic Party has associated itself with the latter, it is obvious, it is promotion of lawlessness, and this is not popular.
Ultimately, you have to recognize that immigration policy is a matter of values. Judging by what you're saying, I'd conclude that you have universalist values. A lot of people have nationalist values. Neither is "right" and your preferred values are not superior. The right policy is whatever we can all agree on (even grudgingly). So give up the fantasy that you stand on the moral high ground. There isn't one.
Im sorry for this silly narrative you are pushing, but some of us want literally open borders. Fuck both parties on this issue abolish borders flat out. Mainstream democrats are too restrictive on borders I want the abolitionists you guys claim the democrats are
There are many practical problems with this stance, but as I said it's fundamentally a conflict of values. If you want to try to persuade a majority to change their values and change the law, go right ahead. Meantime, the law is what it is. It never envisioned allowing millions of migrants into the country administratively through the back door, and it particularly never envisioned that the government would defy the intent of the law in this way (even if they're not breaking the law enough in your opinion). The consequence is that a shockingly high number of Americans are now in favor of ICE hunting down illegal immigrants on the streets. This is the outcome of imposing widely execrated minority values through administrative fiat. It doesn't help the immigrants at all, but maybe that's not the point: maybe it's just the satisfaction of making an ideological stance that pleases one's self-regard and preens for one's friends.
But for every anti-war statement Trump made, he made a pro-war one. He governed like that, too. And his immigration policy was never actually widely popular. Most Republican voters liked it, most Democratic voters didn't. Which is, well, normal.
It's true that he's got no real opinions beyond greed and maybe some bigotry, but most of his platform isn't actually particularly popular beyond the Republican base.
He was the first president since Jimmy Carter not to start a new war or "US police action" overseas. Why? Because mindblowingly, he actually made a lot of effort to adhere to the policy positions he promised. It made him popular with the people who voted for him, which is another thing the Acela Corridor journo establishment couldn't understand ("people don't hate someone they voted for who gave them what they want - must be a racist cult!")
And I'm an actual right wing Republican - Trump isn't popular with the "Republican base" for the same reasons the GOP isn't popular with the rest of America, either. It's because the bulk of America's actual voters aren't conservatives any more than they are Acela Corridor PMC shitlibs. Trump takes positions on abortion, hawkish foreign policy and free trade Republican voters didn't like, and still don't. But you would actually have to be a Republican to know that, right?
Trump broke the brains of the American NPR totebag left in a way that has made them double down on extraordinarily unpopular policy decisions and resort to things like blatant lawfare to try and retain power for power's sake at almost literally any cost.
This is key to one of the points Freddie made - if you are Blue No Matter Who, you are also, simultaneously, Blue No Matter What.
He declared war on Iran, even if Iran decided not to bite. And unlike Biden, he didn't leave Afghanistan.
And if you think Trump's not popular with the Republican base, I have to question your grasp on reality. Sure, he may be unpopular with logically consistent conservatives, but those aren't actually the Republican base.
Presidents can't declare war - have we forgotten that part? And unless I was asleep, we did not go to war with Iran, which is something I was assured was going to happen any second since George W. Bush (remember him? I do) was president.
The hilarious part that gets a lot, and I mean a lot, of Very Online American left wingers mad, from the DSA crowd to the Acela Corridor PMC shitlibs, is noticing that for all intents and purposes, Donald Trump was nothing more than a more vulgar version of Bernie Sanders.
The things that made him so unpalatable to people clutching their NPR totebags, ironically, is also a part of what made him far more popular than Bernie Sanders. In terms of policy? It's almost impossible to imagine how Bernie's actual policy agenda, left to his own devices, would have deviated in any major way from Donald Trump's.
Pretty sure I didn't do that. I have my issues with the EC, but it's like 40th on the list of things I would want to fix about our democracy. He won the contest the way it was set up, fair and square.
I'm only making the point that you have a heavy lift to argue that the key to Trump was that he was picking super-duper popular policies, but also that his super-duper popular policies didn't even win him the popular vote.
"Build the Wall" became one of his signature rallying cries because his audiences loved it. The idea was just a throwaway line initially. Trump is many awful things, but he is brilliant at recognizing and exploiting mass opinion.
The problem with Trump’s “purple policies” is that they were co-opted fairly quickly by far right Republicans once Trump got into office and found out he had no leverage.
I had a moment during the primaries where I found myself intrigued by some of the ideas. But the larger problem was that these weren’t very well developed ideas and not closely held by Trump, who was more than willing to sell them out to create a political alliance with far right Republicans.
Maybe some other kind of candidate who wasn’t a pathological liar and narcissist and who actually was invested in these policies could have hung onto them and brought enough folks from both sides together to push them through.
The problem with the ideas wasn’t the ideas it was Trump.
The answer to the second question is that while the vote in the general election is the most consequential act, there are tons of things before that. Organize, donate, and campaign for your values within the party. And most importantly, support and vote for the primary candidate that aligns with your values. But unless you genuinely believe that Biden, Obama, or any other Democrat would implement worse policies than the corresponding Republican, you still vote for the left. As bad as a Joe Manchin or Tester might be compared to your preferred Democrat, they are wildly better than a generic Republican.
For those who watched the hearings for Columbia's president, you can choose to vote for a centrist Democrat who will yell at the witness for not following their preferred policy, or you can have a Rep Richard Allen, whose questions literally revolved on the question of whether God would curse Columbia for allowing demonstrations. I don't care how much you disagree with the Democrat - they're not basing policy on what is least likely to call down the wrath of God.
If there's one thing the election of Trump taught us, it's that nothing moves the Overton Window like winning elections.
It's frustrating that Bernie came so close to getting over the hump, but candidates of the left are winning more than they have in decades, and that is the path to power. THAT'S leverage.
And that's the distinction with "withholding votes" or the current third party 2024 challenges. It's nothing personal against them or their ideological position, those are protest votes, they aren't meaningful attempts to win anything.
Does Cornel West getting 2% of the vote as Trump is reelected create more favorable conditions for expanding leftist Congressional representation from the safe blue urban districts where there are strong prospects? I don't personally think so, but I'm open to argument on it, and I think that's the question to be asking.
(FWIW I much more strongly think getting the left's electoral power cross-pollinated with RFK Jr's bullshit would be a big, big misstep that would hurt the movement. That doesn't seem to be happening at this moment but I'm on the lookout)
That was the case up through maybe 2006 or 2010, but I don't think that is true any more, at least for federal offices. Are there any republicans in congress more liberal than the most conservative democrat? I don't think you can reasonably argue that Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski are more liberal on substantive issues than Joe Manchin.
The nationalization of politics really cleared out the liberal republicans and conservative democrats. For all that liberals hate on Manchin, we had John Breaux, and Mary Landrieu not too long ago. And Republicans had Lincoln Chaffee and Olympia Snowe. The past was different...
The Senate is the wrong venue since polarization is most noticeable at the level of House districts. On the specific question of abortion Henry Cuellar is pro-life. There are plenty of Republican representatives that are pro-choice.
Both of those questioners suck. Functionally, there's not a dime's worth of difference between them. Execrating one does not imply supporting the other. Americans deserve better. That's the starting point.
I’m going to pile on with other commenters and agree that your logic is flawed with your point #1. Third parties will not win right now — voting third party is tossing a vote away. Hilary was the only person who could have beat Trump in 2016. Just because she lost in hindsight doesn’t chance the statistics pre-vote
Regarding point #2, I would agree in many years.. If Romney or McCain the price to pay for not voting blue? Or Nikki Haley? I can live with that and hold the Dems to do better. Now is not the time to play with fate. Trump is clearly more deranged and concerning as a leader than typical republicans
Perfect cannot be the enemy of the good during these times Freddie
I've long daydreamed about a 'No 'Count' party that actively courted voters whose vote didn't matter because it disagreed with their state's majority. The party's only platform would be to abolish the electoral college, and its only goal to expose how many citizens were effectively disenfranchised by it.
The EC (and the Senate) are the reasons that the USA exists in the first place. Why should RI or WY consent to a government where states like CA or TX dominate policy? I would be cautious about eliminating it.
An ecologist friend of mine points out that it also allows less-populated states to defend their natural resources from more-populated states. But it needs to be more democratic than it is, and if a third party running against it picked up 15% of the vote, that might scare whoever won into examining some tweaks.
Or I'm dreaming. Ross Perot didn't scare anyone away from globalization.
I think a lot of states like Utah would probably be more interested in being able to exploit their mineral resources and are somewhat unhappy that the federal government, which reflects the views of a state like CA, stands in the way. But the situation would certainly be even worse without institutions like the Senate and the EC.
Given that affairs were objectively better under Trump, not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good would amount to holding my nose and voting for Trump.
About a million Americans dead due to Trump's incompetence. The web of international alliances built over decades almost destroyed in a few short years. Political corruption worse than the worst Nixon could dream of. Financial corruption and self-dealing worse than Teapot Dome. The attempted termination of US democracy. Children in cages at the US border, some dying in custody, some separated forever from their parents by government thugs. Objectively better? Are you insane?
I think the answer to #2 is that by pledging blue no matter who (which is not something I say, but something I might do) I am applying pressure to the Republicans. I just want the Republicans to put up a “real” candidate, one I might agree with or disagree with but who could potentially earn my vote. I’d vote for a Republican! I like Ike! But for reasons I perhaps don’t have to spell out, I’m interested in “punishing” the Republican party for their current presumptive candidate, and voting for a Democrat is the biggest stick I have.
I think this is where I come down as well. I’m not an expert, but I don’t interpret “blue no matter who” as being a *perpetual* promise; I see it as an acknowledgment that given the alternative, let’s focus on stopping them, while the development of the Democratic Party’s platform can be a longer-term goal. Or, indeed, having a scenario where both parties are actually sane and one could contemplate voting for either.
I mean, people are talking about a nationwide abortion ban, overturning Obergefell…that’s worth categorically saying no to, IMO, even if the Democratic candidates we’re stuck with are misguided on some issues. I just worry that if enough people stay home or vote third-party as a protest, then in a few years we’re going to be facing down the prospect of rollbacks to various rights and protections, 9 Republicans on the Supreme Court, healthcare and environmental situations going further downhill…but gee, we sure showed Joe Biden! Was it worth it?
“Instead, people like me are constantly told to vote blue no matter who, to support Democrats in any election regardless of what those individual Democrats stand for.”
Indeed, this urging, from both ends of the spectrum, is instrumental in maintaining the Washington uniparty.
"It’s appropriate that the abbreviation for the podcast would be PSA, as they embody a kind of patronizing liberal messaging that treats everyone else as a child who needs to be patiently informed about How Things Work, and always, always told to slow down in the pursuit of progress."
What pisses me off about these types (we have similar in the UK), is that they may know a lot about the corridors of power, but they know absolutely nothing about people. I know the idea of them all being in 'echo chambers' is played out, but it's like they genuinely can't fathom how other people think. You don't need a Masters in Psychology to figure out that calling people stupid or telling them they're actually voting against their own interests doesn't work. They've gone through the school/college/thinktank pipeline absolutely convinced their way is the 'right' way and that everyone should trust them as the 'adults in the room'. They offer people nothing and then scold them for not taking it. And they don't have the ability for self reflection so they will never ask "What if we're wrong about this one?"
Insert Principal Skinner "No, it's the children who are wrong" gif.
Plus look at what's actually happened to the economy and foreign policy under the Biden administration. It's been disaster after disaster. Same thing with Covid. These are the "adults" in the room?
The Pod Save America crowd are less political leaders than preachers, and they are preaching the gospel that the system "works" with a fervor and faith that would put a fundamentalist to shame. Zizek had that whole thing about a "quilting point" he adapted from Lacan, but I think it's applicable here. It's that core idea that makes all the other contradictions and and inconsistencies go away. For Pod Save America and the Blue No Matter Who crowd, it's that if we play by the rules, keep voting Democrat, and don't rock the boat the system will fix itself.
Pointing out that in most circumstances this isn't the case is experienced by them as heresy. Saying Hilary was a bad candidate to them was about as worthwhile as telling them you don't like the current Pope. The cardinals in the Democratic party had gotten together, cast their ballots, and white smoke had emerged.
That said, there's an even uglier observation lurking behind all of this, one I will at least grant that crowd. Given everything that has occurred since 2016, couldn't one argue that Obama's brand of noeliberalism with a human face is the best thing our current system is capable of producing? This both admits that the political system is a sham (obviously) we have very little say in any important decisions, so we may as well angle to get the best bites of the scraps the oligarchy that actually runs this country is willing to throw off the table when they're done eating.
I say this without irony, Obama was the best sitting president of my lifetime. That's not a good thing per se, but to grimly say that perhaps that's as good as it gets. I was a strong supporter of Sanders, dirtbag leftist, whatever else you want to say. But it's clear to me now that even Sanders brand of microwave reheated new deal politics was a bridge too far for the real power in this country. They aren't going to let us have anything.
Team D love vote shaming , because Team D are the political manifestation of the PMC. For their part, because the PMC have cemented their class hegemony, they have become scolds so humorless, smug, condescending, self-important and priggish that they make The Church Lady look like Lenny Bruce by comparison.
Just pass the right laws, and you can make people think the right way. That universal human delusion.
At this point Pod Save America is like watching the latest new CBS prime time drama. You can feel them straining to hold together a disappearing coalition.
Broadly sympathetic to this argument but Point #1 is unconvincing. The argument that one should vote in solidarity with the broader coalition in a general election in a 2-party system--whether or not that convinces you--has nothing to do with one's skill at fortune telling when voting in the primary. Maybe Bernie would have lost, too, we'll never know. Certainly, if he had, PSA types would blame Bernie primary voters, which would be absurd. There are too many contingent factors--if you're trying to vote in the primary based on the complex and unknowable future about how things will shake out in November, you are probably too confident about your ability to predict the future! That has nothing to do with a consequentialist argument about a general election in a two-party system (again, not saying such arguments are convincing, but it's simply not analogous to one's choice in the primary).
Here on Earth Prime, we do know what happened, though. And Hillary lost. Maybe Bernie would have lost too, but we don't know that. The bottom line is that the voters, politicians, and institutions of the Democratic party made a choice, and the choice they made lost a very winnable election. And I think they could stand to take a little of the blame.
If the question is retrospective blame, I don't have strong feelings, but ok. If the question is prospective--how should one vote in a general election in a 2-party system if the choices are Trump and Biden--I just don't see how there's any analogy.
Predicting the future is so difficult that I'm skeptical of the blame argument you're making ("predicting" counterfactuals is likewise pretty hard, so totally impossible to know if it was the wrong choice in a consequential way!).
But the blame angle seems silly to me, and I just roundly reject any form of scolding for voting one's preference in a primary--that's what primaries are for! The general election argument is, in my view, different. Let's leave persuasion aside. If a consequential block of leftist voters asked my advice about the general election, I would say that for all of Biden's grotesque faults, the material differences that would occur if Trump was elected instead are very real and very bad, so vote for Biden. More or less Chomsky's position.
I view general elections in these terms of solidarity with a broad coalition as opposed to expressions of personal conscience. Some people think more in terms of the latter, so if that's how a voter feels, that's how a voter feels. But I don't think my advice on this matter, described above, has anything at all to do with whether or not people were good enough at prognosticating to back the "right horse" in a primary election.
Agree with this point. How does this apply to the current context - Biden didn't lose, and he's the incumbent president. All of his challengers to the left haven't even gotten ballot access in many states, so they can literally only be spoilers. RFK's campaign was explicit that the goal is to re-elect Trump. I'm also sympathetic to the overall sentiment, and I don't like the centrist scolding, but in this case I don't see any practical option.
To me this is the right way to look at it. I agree with Freddie that it's pretty silly to blame Jill Stein (or whoever) voters for Trump. That's especially the case with the electoral college, and where the vast majority of such votes were in states that were never in play. And anyway that defeat had so many fathers it's impossible to play that kind of 'but for' game.
However at the end of the day there's no getting around the fact that our system will produce only 2 viable candidates. Instead of giving leftists shit about past elections I'd rather make the case that we could use their help for what I would hope they could agree is a lesser evil. Even then it will probably matter less than something like what gas costs per gallon in the Pittsburgh area in late October.
Somebody else in this discussion claimed Bernie polled better against Trump. If that's the issue aren't the Dems guilty of choosing the less qualified candidate?
Yes. And?
So on the spectrum it's Bernie > Clinton > Stein. If the argument is electability what's the justification for skipping over #1 to go with #2? Why not just fall all the way back to #3 in that case?
I couldn't tell you. I was for Bernie at any point he was in the race - in part for his electability.
Dems got caught up in 'Her Turn' and all that crap and elected Clinton purely on the basis of her gender. Another old white guy just wasn't in the books. She wasn't unpopular because of her gender, she is just not that likable. Clinton's best chance was to run against Trump, and she blew it. Her hubris led to a weak campaign.
Or to look to the past: In the 2000 primary, I wrote in Paul Wellstone. I voted for Al Gore in the 2000 election even tho I agreed more on policy w/Nader because I thought the material differences between a Gore presidency & Bush presidency would be very real and very bad. Whether or not that would have persuaded anyone, I think that logic is perfectly rational. But such logic does not compel me to say that *Al Gore primary voters* were predominantly to blame for the sins of George W. Bush since Gore lost a winnable election? That just seems silly to me?
Was there a stronger candidate than Gore in the primary in 2000? Isn't DeBoer arguing that the D's chose the weaker candidate in 2016?
He's arguing that we know Hillary was the weaker candidate because she lost (tho he acknowledges we don't know whether Bernie would have done any better). Maybe Bradley would have won! Maybe not. But: "Here on Earth Prime, we do know what happened, though..."--> Gore lost.
According to M. Saner in this thread Bernie polled better. If that's the case aren't the D's guilty of choosing the weaker candidate, and if the argument is all about the numbers and who can win doesn't that mean that they're just hypocrites?
Just for amusement, Bradley was 48-40 over Bush in a national poll by LAT in June 1999 whereas Gore was down 49-44. Bradley would have won! Unfortunately for anyone who tried using that metric to pick a candidate, those numbers moved wildly and were all over the place for the duration of the Bradley/Gore race, without much of a consistent pattern. But who knows! If you truly think such numbers are predictive, Bradley did better, so maybe it's all the Dems fault for voting for Gore in the primary, lol. (Of course we actually have no idea about the counterfactual and I don't think anyone has seriously put forward that argument.)
The question is whether a busted and broken ruler is better than none whatsoever. Look, I'm not arguing that people shouldn't vote for whoever they want to vote for regardless of actual impact. What if Biden's already lost? Should his supporters just stay home or vote for Stein and West? Of course not. If they want to throw their votes away they should just do what they want.
Unlike what you seem to believe aggregated polling is in fact more accurate than an
individual poll. I have no idea what Bradley v Gore looked like but if the bulk of polling suggested Sanders was a better candidate than Clinton is that somehow worthless? I don't think so. Again, maybe it just means that Sanders loses by a smaller margin to Trump than Clinton but when the bulk of polling shows consistent movement in one direction I am inclined to view it as more trustworthy than a single poll.
Oh wow, I did this too—wrote Paul Wellstone in for the 2000 primary and voted for Gore in the general. It’s fun to hear that I wasn’t the only one!
Also worth nothing here on Earth Prime - Bernie and Trump's actual policy agendas shared roughly 85% of the same DNA, give or take mean Tweets.
This is the part that leads to a whole shitload of Blue No Matter Who coping and seething on Twitter and elsewhere.
But Bernie wasn't running in the general.
There's no "vote blue no matter who" in the primaries. Their all blue. There are electability arguments, but that's at least somewhat different thing.
Quite frankly, I'm just so, so over the likeability and winnability models we are all encouraged to run in out heads constantly. I don't want to vote against the opposite party and ask for nothing from my own, I want to vote for the person that I think will do the best job.
This is tangentially related, but I'm sort of kicking myself that I haven't implemented my own version of ranked choice voting. I vote democrat, and probably will for the foreseeable future, but I wish I had registered republican and voted for Haley in the primary. This isn't an attempt to ruin the republican party by getting them to nominate a crappy candidate so that my side wins. I genuinely prefer her over Trump by a mile. If she had been nominated, this would have created a more comfortable field of possible futures, and I would have been more at leisure to vote my conscience.
PSA sucks balls, but the idea of another Trump presidency does scare me. He's way too reactionary and immature for the volatility of the current world.
Yeah, my advice would be to vote for the primary candidate you prefer on the merits because (within reason) no one can really predict "electability" with enough confidence to move the needle among primary choices. Then in the general, if you believe the material harms of a Trump residency would be way worse, it's totally fine to vote in solidarity with the broad coalition and back Biden as an instrumental means to stop Trump.
"So here’s the question: once you’ve pledged your vote to a party in perpetuity without any qualifications and with zero expectation of getting anything in return… how do you make that party do what you want?"
You don't. "Vote Blue No Matter Who" is simply an expression of tribal loyalty. Nothing more, nothing less.
"You’ve already promised to give them the only thing they care about." Political cultists love to rationalize their choices by saying things like "I held my nose as I voted."
Thing is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether you voted as a Kool-Aid Chugging True Believer, whether you voted out of shame or because of a single issue or because the other guy was worse, or whatever.
Each vote counts exactly the same as every other vote.
I'd say rightwing voters have been very successful at reshaping the Republican party in their image by voting in highly ideological/anti-establishment ways in primaries and then showing up to vote pragmatically for the Republican candidate in general elections.
I am talking about a much longer history in Republican politics and the phenomenon you're pointing to is something altogether different: for cult of personality reasons, more or less, previous non-voters show up for Trump. These aren't people sitting out prior elections for ideological purity reasons, they just weren't all that political at all outside of the Trump phenomenon. What helps make this is clear is that you're totally wrong about "and Trumpists"--no candidate has been able to reproduce the Trump turnout effect when he's not on the ballot and indeed, Trump-endorsed candidates have consistently done worse than other candidates. Likewise, we see that Trump has a downballot impact on turnout and R votes, including for non-Trumpy candidates, not reproduced when he's not on the ballot--even if the person at the top of the ticket is as "trumpy" as possible. There is zero evidence that sitting out general elections or voting third party for ideological reasons has led to responsive ideological changes in the Republican Party. It's true that the dynamic of Trump-only voters has made everyone liable to suck up to Trump, but that has really had very little bearing on policy (or policy that isn't specifically about Trump or his legal situation, etc.). It's meantime quite clear that primary voting by the base has dramatically changed the Republican Party over the last 30 years--and these base voters dutifully turned out in general elections, a combo that among other things led to the overturning of Roe.
You're talking about a tiny sample size, 2018 and (sort of) 2022. And obviously in 2022 he wasn't even in office.
Plus there are alternative theories. It used to be that the D's thought higher turnout benefited them. It now appears that the two parties have traded places and higher turnout will benefit Trump.
Sure, there are alternative theories, could be.
I suggest looking at the polling.
They've reshaped the GOP by making it _less_ conservative. To take one example, trade tariffs were anathema to old school Republicans.
Trump isn't the product of a civil war in the GOP, he's the product of an invasion by blue collar workers transitioning over from the Democrats. What he represents is the inflection point for that process.
rather than get into a definition of "conservative" I would point, for example, to anti-abortion activists. or you could think of a slate of other issues, like immigration, on which activists absolutely represented a rebellion against "old school Republicans." the point is that such activists had their policy preferences benefit at the margins over time from having Republicans in office at the same time that they attempted to reshape the party via the primary process. these voters became the darlings of Republican politicians--who proved highly responsive--in a way that leftists declaring that they won't vote or will vote third party never have.
The percentage of college educated whites that vote for the GOP has been in decline since Eisenhower, from what I understand. Trump is probably the first Republican since Ike to lose that demographic. He is the culmination of a demographic shift that took 50 or more years.
We're talking about different things here. I consider demographics to be decisive and politics to be illusory.
Okay. I agree that we're talking about different things. The argument was made that people who consistently vote for Democrats in general elections will never get what they want. I disagree, and think the leverage point is in primary elections. They could be deluded, but I've talked to more Republican politicians than I can count, and they absolutely reposition themselves to try to attract "base" voters in the primary. They do not concern themselves with people who pledge not to vote for them in general elections (why would they). Maybe they're delusional, but I think you can see this play out practically pretty clearly. Anyway, that's what I was responding to, and stand by my argument. I think you're talking about something different and I'm not sure I have any strong opinion. Structural factors are a big deal, sure. But this whole conversation is about the instrumental effectiveness of voting choices. Close election results obviously make a material impact on things at the margins, so it's a question of interest even if you believe all politics to be an illusion.
I am responding to the "A vote for Clinton is a vote for Trump" argument. I think that by definition voting for the weaker candidate in a primary obviously benefits the opposition in the general election and if the polling indicated a better matchup for Sanders then Clinton was indeed the weaker candidate.
Why was she the weaker candidate? Because working class voters, who had previously made Obama their champion, were defecting to the GOP.
Choosing a lousy or out of touch primary candidate is a criticism commonly leveled by D's against R's. How does that not hold for both parties?
On the never Trump side it's often argued that letting voters decide the nominees, and campaign finance that made small donations more important, have been the ruin of the Grand Old Party. But both those things exist on the Dem side of the fence as well, and if they haven't reshaped the party yet it suggests that something more is needed.
I like the idea above that actually *asking voters what they want* could be the secret sauce. And it looks to me as if that is the left's weakest spot.
well, they’ve reshaped the GOP by getting rid of the “three legged stool” coalition conservatism. If that’s the definition of conservative, then sure, the GOP is less conservative, but I don’t think that IS the proper definition of conservative.
Either way the Republican party right now really isn't comparable to what it was just a few short years ago.
Have you seen the Team R civil wars?
Hell, last time they had Congress and the presidency, they couldn't even repeal Obamaccare.
The process I am describing is the way in which primary voters over the last thirty years were successful in reshaping the Republican party while still showing up in general elections, a dynamic that, for example, led to Roe being repealed, one of the top goals of base voters for decades. If you want to look at the Trump administration, you could point to the Ryan tax cuts, which as Ryan himself said was a kind of extremist dream that would have been viewed as a political longshot 40 years ago.
LOL, as opposed to the way Team D rigs its primaries?
For that matter, a lot of American politics has shifted to a more openly oligarchical cast. Witness how Obama campaigned on the repeal of the Bush tax cuts, then, once he took office with a huge majority in both houses of Congress, Wall Street begging for rescue on any terms and a national MSM unironically comparing him to Neo from The Matrix and also Jesus Christ, decided to make those tax cuts permanent.
I'm not sure what we're arguing about a this point but if you think voting in primaries is useless and not voting in general elections is a good instrumentalist strategy to move politicians to the left, I disagree--but I hear you, and we all gotta just vote or not the way we think is best.
I am saying that the process is rigged, at least for Team D, and pointing to rightwing success in political accomplishments isn't necessarily a reliable indicator of whether rightwing strategy is effective.
Barack Obama was "the good guy"?
Really? Because his policy record sure wasn't screaming "good guy" to me in any way. And the fact that affluent white liberals creamed their jeans in 2009 to tell literally anyone with ears that they voted for him didn't make him a "good guy" either, let alone a good, let alone progressive, president.
It was simply more of the same shit in a "FIRST X PRESIDENT!" package.
A Nobel Peace Prize winner who was more than happy to kill ambulance drivers and people digging their neighbors out from under rubble with "double tap" drone strikes. Cenk Uygur asked "Hey, isn't this the shit that terrorists do?"
All packaged with a cringey cult of personality that cynically appealed to the fact that white voters from the Professional Managerial Class would sooner eat an entire box of live mice than let their friends know they voted for someone else on policy grounds, let alone policy record.
As much as I love the schadenfreude aspects of weaponizing white guilt in the Acela Corridor, it was a bit much even for me. What voters actually got in Barack Obama were the same decisions George Bush mostly made, except mindblowingly often even worse, packaged in a kumbaya package that made the Acela Corridor PMC convulse in ecstasy.
It was ridiculous, but God help anyone who called it out as being stupid, because who wanted to get dragged by their peers on Facebook (LOL!) for that shit?
"What voters actually got in Barack Obama were the same decisions George Bush mostly made..."
This is absurd. The motivation for making this type of statement is the same motivation for people on Twitter and Facebook (LOL!!!) pretending to be holier than thou, and running every single statement through some perverse purity test. Just some really, really silly shit.
"Hey, isn't this the shit that terrorists do?"
Quoting Cenk Uygur doesn't make it any less silly, I promise.
But, to answer the stupid rhetorical question: no, it's not.
You do realize that detonating a second bomb to target police officers and paramedics is a common exercise?
I promise I won't tell your friends you're a racist if you acknowledge the obvious, dude.
Mice?
Yes, and the first thing he did as President was show his belly to his Wall Street-anointed advisors, and bail out the banks.
But he didn't merely stop there. Oh no!
Barack Obama led the charge in expanding the surveillance state and eroding protections on privacy that would have even made George W. Bush blush. And he was an even bigger cheerleader for the doctrine of John Bolton style forever war than, possibly, even Bolton himself.
That this man is revered as some sort of progressive icon is proof that shitlibs really have no intellectual or even emotional connection to real politics. It is literally all the Mean Girls school of in group optics. It would not do to be seen sitting with the wrong people at the table.
Indeed. Murdering American citizens with drones seems the opposite of a "good guy."
Maybe shed a tear for his minor son though.
The answer to the first question is that right now, it is clear that voting for a third party would enable Trump by making it less likely for Biden to win. In 2016, it was NOT clear that Hillary would lose to Trump, so supporting her was a reasonable move to enable the center-left over the far right.
It seems that this is an issue of epistemology, not logic.
An astonishing indictment indeed....
The latest CNN poll has Trump leading Biden by six points. To flip your question around, what if the polling indicates that Trump has an insurmountable lead? Why not vote for a third party candidate in that case?
Absolutely! If the evidence shows that Biden has little or no chance, the goal is to elect the least damaging person. But the real issue is figuring out whether and/or when that point is reached. I don't think the general political community has a great track record of making that call.
That's not really my point however. I don't think that Jill Stein has any real hope of being elected in the immediate future. But if your personal beliefs are more sympatico with the Greens does it make sense that you would prefer to see Green candidates serving in the House and Senate as well as in local government? Working/volunteering for the Greens (or any third political party) moves that goal one step closer to reality. Incremental progress is still progress.
And if the question is electability in 44 out of 50 states the results of the election this November are basically foretold. There's no reason not to vote for whoever you want to if you don't live in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.
I agree that it would be great to see a functioning Green party contesting elections and electing candidates in local elections (as it would be great to see the same from the Libertarian, Working Families, and any others) where there is a one-party environment. It's probably more feasible to do that these days now that the national parties have become more politically homogeneous with major issues nationalized.
But I'm not as confident in the short list of swing states. Sure, vote whoever for president if you're in NY, Hawaii, MD, Alabama, TN, WV. But there are places like NC, VA, Maine, Michigan, etc where things are not forgone.
The commonly recognized swing states for November are WI, MI, AZ, GA, NV and PA. Unless the polling is really wrong I think it's safe to vote for whoever you want to if you live elsewhere in the country.
No, then it's the voters fault for not doing enough.
The Party can never fail. The Party can only be failed!
"If leftists voting third party amounts to support for Trump on consequentialist grounds, doesn’t voting and advocating for Hillary Clinton also amount to support for Trump on the exact same grounds? I made this point recently regarding Jon Chait and got a surprising amount of pushback. Surprising, that is, because the logic in unassailable."
Freddie once again falls into the trap of thinking an opinion of his is an "unassailable" fact. Freddie, here's the difference: if you vote third party, you are necessarily failing to vote for the candidate who clearly has the best chance of beating Trump (i.e. the Dem challenger); if you voted for Hillary Clinton, can we say the same thing? Was there *clearly* someone who had a better chance of beating Trump? Until you prove that there was, this mic drop isn't much of a mic drop, just like it wasn't in the Chait piece.
Sorry Freddie...
If you believe in polls - and the PSA folks absolutely do - Bernie's superiority was clear.
Though personally, I wouldn't use an American example for that point. I would instead look at the right wing of the Labour party in the UK, which quite literally lost an election on purpose when it was forced to follow Corbyn.
I think this is *plausibly* true, but Freddie apparently sees it as holy writ, as he does with all of his opinions.
I'm not gonna disagree with you on Hillary at all; I bet we see eye-to-eye on how weak a candidate she was. Still, the fact remains: in November of 2016, the ballot pitted two candidates against each other: Trump and Hillary. If you didn't want one, you voted for the other. If you voted for neither, you were forfeiting your opportunity to reduce the chances that the one you liked less would get elected. If you voted third party instead of for Trump, that was one less anti-Hillary vote; if you voted third party instead of for Hillary, that was one less anti-Trump vote.
And if I think both Trump and Clinton, and now Trump and Biden, are both uaccaptable choices for president, why do I give a fuck about beating Trump more than I care about beating Biden or Clinton?
Your argument presupposes that I owe the Dems my vote. Maybe voters such as yourself should be more critical of Dems and willing to vote for someone worth a fuck. After all the only reason a third party cannot win an election is because a critical mass of voters like you cling to that fear. Maybe find your courage and take this election as an opportunity to say "Hell no!" Enought people do this and you will be pleasantly suprised.
I think his point is that “hey, of course we’re not going to make anything better…but it could be worse, and then it’ll be your fault” is neither viable nor worthy as a political stance. Even if both major parties seem to have settled on it as a platform.
The secret to Trump's victory is that he did something neither the Democrats nor Republicans have done in God only knows how long - he went out to purple voters (the biggest bloc) and asked, "what do you want me to do if I'm elected?"
That was it. He's not an ideologue, nor a "it's my turn" Republican. He ran for a president as a publicity stunt, and ironically, won because he did the one very simple thing Clinton, Obama, et al famously refused to do - ask the American voters what they actually want.
Not the donors. Not the party activists. The bulk of the voters.
Amazing.
And remember, this is being framed as dangerous populism representing a threat to Democracy itself. LOL.
And it's a global phenomenon.
I don't think that's true at all. Which policies do you have in mind here?
His signature issue was immigration, and that's a classic split issue where different people want different things and each party already represented a big a chunk of the voters.
North American trade continues to have enough support, but not the rest. No one votes for Trump because they don't like free trade with Canada. Southern states and the business lobby are too dependent upon free trade with Mexico to ever let it go. If anything, doubling down is underway, in part to reduce China's power.
And there was Trump's true innovation: not trade policy, but China policy. The Dems were quite split on TPP, but both parties were quite pro-China before Trump.
The NAFTA renegotiation didn't really change much, to my Canadian understanding. There was some concern about that when he promised it, but we all relaxed when it turned out that he was more interested in having a "different" deal than in having a deal with meaningful differences.
Canada lost a lot of favourable terms from NAFTA when Mexico and the US made their own deal and the US made it a fait accompli via ultimatum.
The difference between the deft skill of the original Canadian delegation in 1987-8 and shambolic team of 2017 could not have been greater.
It was a signal change in geopolitics for Canada, one its (same) government still ignores.
Trump sank the TPP, but it was already in trouble with the Dems and a Clinton presidency. Trump got out ahead of the trade parade, but he wasn't in on the ground the way he was with China.
FWIW, I find TPP fascinating from a history perspective. It has some similarities to when the provinces of former empire carry on the existing order after the centre has collapsed. Despite its surprising success and ongoing attraction to new entrants, America's allies have not yet drawn an obvious conclusion: the Americans aren't quite as necessary as everyone else assumes. The world just keeps getting more interesting.
I would disagree. His signature issue was blue collar economics. Immigration was sucked into that because illegals compete against low wage earners and drive down wages in that segment.
And he played immigration as blue collar economics which it is, more than anything else.
But was there a party representing the anti-immigration working-class vote? Dems were for immigration on humanitarian grounds, and Reps were for it on low-wage worker grounds. The same reasons both parties were for globalization before that. It's been a long time since either party has supported the welfare of american workers.
I mean, for fuck's sakes, Bernie Sanders had the exact same policy stance until the DNC PMC apparatus made him memory hole it.
Perhaps you should have paid closer attention while it was happening. His entire platform was based on voter input since Trump, famously, has no really strong politics of his own. He was a typical Manhattan oligarch who supported anyone who asked for donations. Bill and Hillary came to one of his weddings, for God's sakes.
All of the pillars of Trump's agenda that the brainless Acela Corridor/PMC journo establishment labeled as insane, dangerous populism came from collecting feedback from purple voters.
Protectionist tariffs - conservatives hate this, Trump didn't care because the voters like it
No more pointless "forever wars" - remember when the left used to support this before Obama was president? Good times. Turns out, most voters are sick of expensive wars we wind up losing. Trump actually listened to them. Wild.
No more open borders - imagine if the United States paid the same attention to who we do and do not allow to enter our country as countries like Japan and Switzerland do?
Wild. I can just smell the racism there. And yet, this is an overwhelmingly popular opinion with a huge majority of American voters.
Trash-talking about immigration issue as "racism" is one of the most important reasons why so many Americans have become highly supportive of restricting immigration, including dramatic ones like mass deportations. If you don't like that, stop doing it.
Americans like governments that follow the law. This includes very large numbers of people with immigrant, and specifically Latino immigrant background. Immigration law represents a deal that has been struck. Follow it, or work with fellow citizens to change it, but don't ignore it. The leftist faction in the Democratic Party has associated itself with the latter, it is obvious, it is promotion of lawlessness, and this is not popular.
Ultimately, you have to recognize that immigration policy is a matter of values. Judging by what you're saying, I'd conclude that you have universalist values. A lot of people have nationalist values. Neither is "right" and your preferred values are not superior. The right policy is whatever we can all agree on (even grudgingly). So give up the fantasy that you stand on the moral high ground. There isn't one.
Well stated, Rock.
Im sorry for this silly narrative you are pushing, but some of us want literally open borders. Fuck both parties on this issue abolish borders flat out. Mainstream democrats are too restrictive on borders I want the abolitionists you guys claim the democrats are
There are many practical problems with this stance, but as I said it's fundamentally a conflict of values. If you want to try to persuade a majority to change their values and change the law, go right ahead. Meantime, the law is what it is. It never envisioned allowing millions of migrants into the country administratively through the back door, and it particularly never envisioned that the government would defy the intent of the law in this way (even if they're not breaking the law enough in your opinion). The consequence is that a shockingly high number of Americans are now in favor of ICE hunting down illegal immigrants on the streets. This is the outcome of imposing widely execrated minority values through administrative fiat. It doesn't help the immigrants at all, but maybe that's not the point: maybe it's just the satisfaction of making an ideological stance that pleases one's self-regard and preens for one's friends.
I'll give you protectionist tariffs.
But for every anti-war statement Trump made, he made a pro-war one. He governed like that, too. And his immigration policy was never actually widely popular. Most Republican voters liked it, most Democratic voters didn't. Which is, well, normal.
It's true that he's got no real opinions beyond greed and maybe some bigotry, but most of his platform isn't actually particularly popular beyond the Republican base.
He was the first president since Jimmy Carter not to start a new war or "US police action" overseas. Why? Because mindblowingly, he actually made a lot of effort to adhere to the policy positions he promised. It made him popular with the people who voted for him, which is another thing the Acela Corridor journo establishment couldn't understand ("people don't hate someone they voted for who gave them what they want - must be a racist cult!")
And I'm an actual right wing Republican - Trump isn't popular with the "Republican base" for the same reasons the GOP isn't popular with the rest of America, either. It's because the bulk of America's actual voters aren't conservatives any more than they are Acela Corridor PMC shitlibs. Trump takes positions on abortion, hawkish foreign policy and free trade Republican voters didn't like, and still don't. But you would actually have to be a Republican to know that, right?
Trump broke the brains of the American NPR totebag left in a way that has made them double down on extraordinarily unpopular policy decisions and resort to things like blatant lawfare to try and retain power for power's sake at almost literally any cost.
This is key to one of the points Freddie made - if you are Blue No Matter Who, you are also, simultaneously, Blue No Matter What.
He declared war on Iran, even if Iran decided not to bite. And unlike Biden, he didn't leave Afghanistan.
And if you think Trump's not popular with the Republican base, I have to question your grasp on reality. Sure, he may be unpopular with logically consistent conservatives, but those aren't actually the Republican base.
Presidents can't declare war - have we forgotten that part? And unless I was asleep, we did not go to war with Iran, which is something I was assured was going to happen any second since George W. Bush (remember him? I do) was president.
The hilarious part that gets a lot, and I mean a lot, of Very Online American left wingers mad, from the DSA crowd to the Acela Corridor PMC shitlibs, is noticing that for all intents and purposes, Donald Trump was nothing more than a more vulgar version of Bernie Sanders.
The things that made him so unpalatable to people clutching their NPR totebags, ironically, is also a part of what made him far more popular than Bernie Sanders. In terms of policy? It's almost impossible to imagine how Bernie's actual policy agenda, left to his own devices, would have deviated in any major way from Donald Trump's.
So your argument is that a candidate who lost the popular vote twice is the one who is appealing to “the people”?
Are you sure he’s not “appealing to a very specific group that felt disenfranchised but was willing to turn out”?
Congratulations on arguing why the team who gets the most yards on offense should always win the Super Bowl.
Pretty sure I didn't do that. I have my issues with the EC, but it's like 40th on the list of things I would want to fix about our democracy. He won the contest the way it was set up, fair and square.
I'm only making the point that you have a heavy lift to argue that the key to Trump was that he was picking super-duper popular policies, but also that his super-duper popular policies didn't even win him the popular vote.
Goddammit, this is such a stupid and dishonest response.
"Build the Wall" became one of his signature rallying cries because his audiences loved it. The idea was just a throwaway line initially. Trump is many awful things, but he is brilliant at recognizing and exploiting mass opinion.
Trump is the symptom, not the cause. I think the inability of a lot of people in the halls of power to recognize this is pretty interesting.
I'm a big fan of Martin Gurri on topics like this.
God help the legacy parties if a competent populist, left or right, were to show up.
An incompetent populist has already remade one.
The US appears vulnerable to a competent authoritarian, populist or otherwise.
The public is seething mad with white hot incandescent rage.
And the managers of both legacy parties seem to think that they've got theirs, all is going well.
His audiences loved it, but the general public had very mixed feelings.
Except that the general public is very much in love with it now.
Ain't so.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4489492-majority-of-americans-for-first-time-support-building-border-wall/
The problem with Trump’s “purple policies” is that they were co-opted fairly quickly by far right Republicans once Trump got into office and found out he had no leverage.
I had a moment during the primaries where I found myself intrigued by some of the ideas. But the larger problem was that these weren’t very well developed ideas and not closely held by Trump, who was more than willing to sell them out to create a political alliance with far right Republicans.
Maybe some other kind of candidate who wasn’t a pathological liar and narcissist and who actually was invested in these policies could have hung onto them and brought enough folks from both sides together to push them through.
The problem with the ideas wasn’t the ideas it was Trump.
The answer to the second question is that while the vote in the general election is the most consequential act, there are tons of things before that. Organize, donate, and campaign for your values within the party. And most importantly, support and vote for the primary candidate that aligns with your values. But unless you genuinely believe that Biden, Obama, or any other Democrat would implement worse policies than the corresponding Republican, you still vote for the left. As bad as a Joe Manchin or Tester might be compared to your preferred Democrat, they are wildly better than a generic Republican.
For those who watched the hearings for Columbia's president, you can choose to vote for a centrist Democrat who will yell at the witness for not following their preferred policy, or you can have a Rep Richard Allen, whose questions literally revolved on the question of whether God would curse Columbia for allowing demonstrations. I don't care how much you disagree with the Democrat - they're not basing policy on what is least likely to call down the wrath of God.
If there's one thing the election of Trump taught us, it's that nothing moves the Overton Window like winning elections.
It's frustrating that Bernie came so close to getting over the hump, but candidates of the left are winning more than they have in decades, and that is the path to power. THAT'S leverage.
And that's the distinction with "withholding votes" or the current third party 2024 challenges. It's nothing personal against them or their ideological position, those are protest votes, they aren't meaningful attempts to win anything.
Does Cornel West getting 2% of the vote as Trump is reelected create more favorable conditions for expanding leftist Congressional representation from the safe blue urban districts where there are strong prospects? I don't personally think so, but I'm open to argument on it, and I think that's the question to be asking.
(FWIW I much more strongly think getting the left's electoral power cross-pollinated with RFK Jr's bullshit would be a big, big misstep that would hurt the movement. That doesn't seem to be happening at this moment but I'm on the lookout)
A California Republican is going to be more liberal than a Missouri Democrat.
That was the case up through maybe 2006 or 2010, but I don't think that is true any more, at least for federal offices. Are there any republicans in congress more liberal than the most conservative democrat? I don't think you can reasonably argue that Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski are more liberal on substantive issues than Joe Manchin.
The nationalization of politics really cleared out the liberal republicans and conservative democrats. For all that liberals hate on Manchin, we had John Breaux, and Mary Landrieu not too long ago. And Republicans had Lincoln Chaffee and Olympia Snowe. The past was different...
The Senate is the wrong venue since polarization is most noticeable at the level of House districts. On the specific question of abortion Henry Cuellar is pro-life. There are plenty of Republican representatives that are pro-choice.
Both of those questioners suck. Functionally, there's not a dime's worth of difference between them. Execrating one does not imply supporting the other. Americans deserve better. That's the starting point.
I’m going to pile on with other commenters and agree that your logic is flawed with your point #1. Third parties will not win right now — voting third party is tossing a vote away. Hilary was the only person who could have beat Trump in 2016. Just because she lost in hindsight doesn’t chance the statistics pre-vote
Regarding point #2, I would agree in many years.. If Romney or McCain the price to pay for not voting blue? Or Nikki Haley? I can live with that and hold the Dems to do better. Now is not the time to play with fate. Trump is clearly more deranged and concerning as a leader than typical republicans
Perfect cannot be the enemy of the good during these times Freddie
If the argument is purely based on practicality then the obvious question is if you live in California does it really matter who you vote for?
I've long daydreamed about a 'No 'Count' party that actively courted voters whose vote didn't matter because it disagreed with their state's majority. The party's only platform would be to abolish the electoral college, and its only goal to expose how many citizens were effectively disenfranchised by it.
The EC (and the Senate) are the reasons that the USA exists in the first place. Why should RI or WY consent to a government where states like CA or TX dominate policy? I would be cautious about eliminating it.
An ecologist friend of mine points out that it also allows less-populated states to defend their natural resources from more-populated states. But it needs to be more democratic than it is, and if a third party running against it picked up 15% of the vote, that might scare whoever won into examining some tweaks.
Or I'm dreaming. Ross Perot didn't scare anyone away from globalization.
I think a lot of states like Utah would probably be more interested in being able to exploit their mineral resources and are somewhat unhappy that the federal government, which reflects the views of a state like CA, stands in the way. But the situation would certainly be even worse without institutions like the Senate and the EC.
Given that affairs were objectively better under Trump, not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good would amount to holding my nose and voting for Trump.
About a million Americans dead due to Trump's incompetence. The web of international alliances built over decades almost destroyed in a few short years. Political corruption worse than the worst Nixon could dream of. Financial corruption and self-dealing worse than Teapot Dome. The attempted termination of US democracy. Children in cages at the US border, some dying in custody, some separated forever from their parents by government thugs. Objectively better? Are you insane?
W was much worse than Trump, and it was totally unclear how bad he would be until he got in.
It's a feeling of being entitled to those votes, pure and simple. See also all the blather about third party candidates being somehow "illegitimate".
That was certainly the feeling I got during the 2016 primaries. Total entitlement.
I think the answer to #2 is that by pledging blue no matter who (which is not something I say, but something I might do) I am applying pressure to the Republicans. I just want the Republicans to put up a “real” candidate, one I might agree with or disagree with but who could potentially earn my vote. I’d vote for a Republican! I like Ike! But for reasons I perhaps don’t have to spell out, I’m interested in “punishing” the Republican party for their current presumptive candidate, and voting for a Democrat is the biggest stick I have.
Woo me, GOP! I’m easy!
I think this is where I come down as well. I’m not an expert, but I don’t interpret “blue no matter who” as being a *perpetual* promise; I see it as an acknowledgment that given the alternative, let’s focus on stopping them, while the development of the Democratic Party’s platform can be a longer-term goal. Or, indeed, having a scenario where both parties are actually sane and one could contemplate voting for either.
I mean, people are talking about a nationwide abortion ban, overturning Obergefell…that’s worth categorically saying no to, IMO, even if the Democratic candidates we’re stuck with are misguided on some issues. I just worry that if enough people stay home or vote third-party as a protest, then in a few years we’re going to be facing down the prospect of rollbacks to various rights and protections, 9 Republicans on the Supreme Court, healthcare and environmental situations going further downhill…but gee, we sure showed Joe Biden! Was it worth it?
“Instead, people like me are constantly told to vote blue no matter who, to support Democrats in any election regardless of what those individual Democrats stand for.”
Indeed, this urging, from both ends of the spectrum, is instrumental in maintaining the Washington uniparty.
"It’s appropriate that the abbreviation for the podcast would be PSA, as they embody a kind of patronizing liberal messaging that treats everyone else as a child who needs to be patiently informed about How Things Work, and always, always told to slow down in the pursuit of progress."
What pisses me off about these types (we have similar in the UK), is that they may know a lot about the corridors of power, but they know absolutely nothing about people. I know the idea of them all being in 'echo chambers' is played out, but it's like they genuinely can't fathom how other people think. You don't need a Masters in Psychology to figure out that calling people stupid or telling them they're actually voting against their own interests doesn't work. They've gone through the school/college/thinktank pipeline absolutely convinced their way is the 'right' way and that everyone should trust them as the 'adults in the room'. They offer people nothing and then scold them for not taking it. And they don't have the ability for self reflection so they will never ask "What if we're wrong about this one?"
Insert Principal Skinner "No, it's the children who are wrong" gif.
Plus look at what's actually happened to the economy and foreign policy under the Biden administration. It's been disaster after disaster. Same thing with Covid. These are the "adults" in the room?
I was so happy when Joe Lieberman lost that primary in 2006. Still hurts to think about how it turned out.
The Pod Save America crowd are less political leaders than preachers, and they are preaching the gospel that the system "works" with a fervor and faith that would put a fundamentalist to shame. Zizek had that whole thing about a "quilting point" he adapted from Lacan, but I think it's applicable here. It's that core idea that makes all the other contradictions and and inconsistencies go away. For Pod Save America and the Blue No Matter Who crowd, it's that if we play by the rules, keep voting Democrat, and don't rock the boat the system will fix itself.
Pointing out that in most circumstances this isn't the case is experienced by them as heresy. Saying Hilary was a bad candidate to them was about as worthwhile as telling them you don't like the current Pope. The cardinals in the Democratic party had gotten together, cast their ballots, and white smoke had emerged.
That said, there's an even uglier observation lurking behind all of this, one I will at least grant that crowd. Given everything that has occurred since 2016, couldn't one argue that Obama's brand of noeliberalism with a human face is the best thing our current system is capable of producing? This both admits that the political system is a sham (obviously) we have very little say in any important decisions, so we may as well angle to get the best bites of the scraps the oligarchy that actually runs this country is willing to throw off the table when they're done eating.
I say this without irony, Obama was the best sitting president of my lifetime. That's not a good thing per se, but to grimly say that perhaps that's as good as it gets. I was a strong supporter of Sanders, dirtbag leftist, whatever else you want to say. But it's clear to me now that even Sanders brand of microwave reheated new deal politics was a bridge too far for the real power in this country. They aren't going to let us have anything.