It looks like the more moderate members of the Democratic Party are finally finding a voice, according to this NBC News article. I'll let the article speak for itself. If all Democrats pay attention this article, then they may stand a chance of winning the White House in 2020.
But there's still (unfortunately) a chance that the extreme left factions of the party may frustrate and destroy what should be an easy win.
Showing posts with label republicans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label republicans. Show all posts
Monday, February 11, 2019
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Hey Democrats! You're doing it all wrong!
As the Democratic Party starts spooling up for the 2020 presidential election, one thing is becoming frighteningly clear: they're doing it all wrong.
Come on, Democrats, 2020 should be an easy win for you. It should be like taking candy from a baby — a fat, overgrown, orange-haired baby. It's yours to lose. And from the look of things today, you're going to lose it.
Why? For four main reasons.
1. Too many unqualified candidates.
This is not secret code for "women." Voters in America will vote for a woman, if it's the right woman. We're looking for someone with demonstrated qualities of wisdom, integrity, leadership, political savvy, and so on, and we don't care if they're male or female. Personally, I'd love to see a presidential election that boiled down to Madeleine Albright vs. Condoleeza Rice. Either way, the American people would be the winners. (... as opposed to Clinton vs. Trump in 2016, when, either way, the American people were the losers.)
No, the candidates who have presented themselves so far are like the hundreds of job applicants that employers see, who have some of the qualifications for the job, but not enough of the critical qualifications and are, therefore, unhireable. I couldn't in good conscience vote forany most of the Democrats who have stepped forward so far. Come on, Democrats. You can give me somebody better than this.
But not Clinton again. Please. That will definitely make me go third-party.
2. Whackadoodle ideas.
You need a more moderate, centrist appeal if you want to take the White House. All of your traditionally Democratic ideas may be good ideas, but they won't get you elected. Some of them, you've been singing about for decades, and they still haven't gotten you elected. Set them aside for now and start concentrating on ideas that appeal to all Americans, not just your base.
3. Why? Because Independents.
Do the math, you idiots. You're pandering to your party's base and ignoring the independents, who make up one-third of the voters in this country. In 2016, Clinton got (almost) all of the Democrats, Trump got (almost) all of the Republicans, and they split the independent voters right down the middle. If you want to win decisively in 2020, you're going to need significantly more than half of the independent votes.
If you want the independents to vote for you, you'd better give them a really compelling reason to do so.
4. No unity or cohesion in the party.
I'm going to say something good about Hillary Clinton. I really don't want to do it. I don't have any more respect for Clinton than I do for Trump, and I don't want to ignore what Bernie Sanders achieved in 2016. But it's true that one of the things that made Clinton so successful in 2016 (she did win the popular vote, you know) was that the party was unified behind her.
The candidate pool in the Democratic Party is splintered and weak. There's not a strong front-runner today, someone with the power to unify the party. Maybe it's too early for that, but I don't even see anyone who looks promising. Yet.
If the Democrats want to win in 2020, they need to unite behind a strong candidate, or at least behind a strong platform. Right now, there's no unity, at least none that can be perceived from the outside.
Conclusion
Democrats, the 2020 election is yours to lose. You're being handed the presidency on a silver platter. You would have to screw up really, really badly in order to lose against Donald Trump. If he isn't thrown out before November 2020, then the American people will be so sick of him that they will be ready to vote him out — but you have to give us a worthwhile alternative. So far, we haven't seen anybody like that.
One final thought
If it comes down to Trump vs. one of the Democrats who have already declared, right now there's a fifty-fifty chance that I'll vote third party. The losing side will blame me for torpedoing their candidate's chances, but you know what? It will be your fault, not mine. Once again, as in 2016, you will have given me someone I couldn't vote for.
UPDATE, FEB 11, 2019:
It looks like moderate voices in the Democratic Party are starting to make themselves heard. This will solve some of the above problems. It's still the Democrat's election to lose.
Come on, Democrats, 2020 should be an easy win for you. It should be like taking candy from a baby — a fat, overgrown, orange-haired baby. It's yours to lose. And from the look of things today, you're going to lose it.
Why? For four main reasons.
1. Too many unqualified candidates.
This is not secret code for "women." Voters in America will vote for a woman, if it's the right woman. We're looking for someone with demonstrated qualities of wisdom, integrity, leadership, political savvy, and so on, and we don't care if they're male or female. Personally, I'd love to see a presidential election that boiled down to Madeleine Albright vs. Condoleeza Rice. Either way, the American people would be the winners. (... as opposed to Clinton vs. Trump in 2016, when, either way, the American people were the losers.)
No, the candidates who have presented themselves so far are like the hundreds of job applicants that employers see, who have some of the qualifications for the job, but not enough of the critical qualifications and are, therefore, unhireable. I couldn't in good conscience vote for
But not Clinton again. Please. That will definitely make me go third-party.
2. Whackadoodle ideas.
You need a more moderate, centrist appeal if you want to take the White House. All of your traditionally Democratic ideas may be good ideas, but they won't get you elected. Some of them, you've been singing about for decades, and they still haven't gotten you elected. Set them aside for now and start concentrating on ideas that appeal to all Americans, not just your base.
3. Why? Because Independents.
Do the math, you idiots. You're pandering to your party's base and ignoring the independents, who make up one-third of the voters in this country. In 2016, Clinton got (almost) all of the Democrats, Trump got (almost) all of the Republicans, and they split the independent voters right down the middle. If you want to win decisively in 2020, you're going to need significantly more than half of the independent votes.
If you want the independents to vote for you, you'd better give them a really compelling reason to do so.
4. No unity or cohesion in the party.
I'm going to say something good about Hillary Clinton. I really don't want to do it. I don't have any more respect for Clinton than I do for Trump, and I don't want to ignore what Bernie Sanders achieved in 2016. But it's true that one of the things that made Clinton so successful in 2016 (she did win the popular vote, you know) was that the party was unified behind her.
The candidate pool in the Democratic Party is splintered and weak. There's not a strong front-runner today, someone with the power to unify the party. Maybe it's too early for that, but I don't even see anyone who looks promising. Yet.
If the Democrats want to win in 2020, they need to unite behind a strong candidate, or at least behind a strong platform. Right now, there's no unity, at least none that can be perceived from the outside.
Conclusion
Democrats, the 2020 election is yours to lose. You're being handed the presidency on a silver platter. You would have to screw up really, really badly in order to lose against Donald Trump. If he isn't thrown out before November 2020, then the American people will be so sick of him that they will be ready to vote him out — but you have to give us a worthwhile alternative. So far, we haven't seen anybody like that.
One final thought
If it comes down to Trump vs. one of the Democrats who have already declared, right now there's a fifty-fifty chance that I'll vote third party. The losing side will blame me for torpedoing their candidate's chances, but you know what? It will be your fault, not mine. Once again, as in 2016, you will have given me someone I couldn't vote for.
UPDATE, FEB 11, 2019:
It looks like moderate voices in the Democratic Party are starting to make themselves heard. This will solve some of the above problems. It's still the Democrat's election to lose.
Friday, December 28, 2018
Election 2020: Advice for Third-Party Candidates
Traditionally, presidential elections in the United States have been binary contests: a choice between two major political parties. The names of the parties have changed over the years, but there have always been two major political parties.
The two-party system definitely has its strengths. Other nations, attempting to duplicate the 242-year success of the American political system, have failed because their political power has been divided among many political parties, leading to fragile alliances and coalitions that eventually fail, so their governments lurch from constitutional crisis to crisis, becoming easy victims of corruption and totalitarianism.
However, the two-party system has failed the American people at times. In 1992, candidates George Bush and Bill Clinton were not adequately addressing the concerns of the people, and so H. Ross Perot stepped in as an independent candidate. In June of 1992, he was leading in the polls. He finished the race with almost 19 percent of the popular vote and no electoral votes. In my opinion, part of why he lost the race is because his message became too strident. He started sounding whiny and alarmist.
In part, he had to sound this way to make himself heard, and that's one of the biggest obstacles that third-party candidates face: the two major parties get the lion's share of the attention.
The Third-Party Tautology
Why don't people vote for a third-party candidate? Because third-party candidates never win.
And why don't third-party candidates win? Because nobody will vote for them.
A third-party candidate will have to break this tautology in order to win. He or she will have to convince the voters that he or she has a real chance of winning, so that they will take a chance and vote for him or her.
What does a third-party candidate have to do to win?
In order to have a chance at winning an election, a third-party candidate needs to do all of these things:
1. Start early.
2. Raise a lot of money. Money fuels campaigns, and converts into votes. Unfortunate, but true.
3. Appeal to a wide range of voters, not a narrow "base".
3. Offer a well-rounded platform, one that avoids extremes or whininess, but addresses and corrects the deficiencies in the Democratic and Republican platforms.
4. Don't focus on a single issue or philosophical point. The USA is a complex nation, with complex needs and complex priorities. A candidate needs to address that complexity head-on.
The two-party system definitely has its strengths. Other nations, attempting to duplicate the 242-year success of the American political system, have failed because their political power has been divided among many political parties, leading to fragile alliances and coalitions that eventually fail, so their governments lurch from constitutional crisis to crisis, becoming easy victims of corruption and totalitarianism.
However, the two-party system has failed the American people at times. In 1992, candidates George Bush and Bill Clinton were not adequately addressing the concerns of the people, and so H. Ross Perot stepped in as an independent candidate. In June of 1992, he was leading in the polls. He finished the race with almost 19 percent of the popular vote and no electoral votes. In my opinion, part of why he lost the race is because his message became too strident. He started sounding whiny and alarmist.
In part, he had to sound this way to make himself heard, and that's one of the biggest obstacles that third-party candidates face: the two major parties get the lion's share of the attention.
The Third-Party Tautology
Why don't people vote for a third-party candidate? Because third-party candidates never win.
And why don't third-party candidates win? Because nobody will vote for them.
A third-party candidate will have to break this tautology in order to win. He or she will have to convince the voters that he or she has a real chance of winning, so that they will take a chance and vote for him or her.
What does a third-party candidate have to do to win?
In order to have a chance at winning an election, a third-party candidate needs to do all of these things:
1. Start early.
2. Raise a lot of money. Money fuels campaigns, and converts into votes. Unfortunate, but true.
3. Appeal to a wide range of voters, not a narrow "base".
3. Offer a well-rounded platform, one that avoids extremes or whininess, but addresses and corrects the deficiencies in the Democratic and Republican platforms.
4. Don't focus on a single issue or philosophical point. The USA is a complex nation, with complex needs and complex priorities. A candidate needs to address that complexity head-on.
Election 2020: Advice for Republicans
Here at the end of 2018, and the beginning of 2019, the whole nation is waiting to see whether Donald Trump serves his full four years in office, or whether he leaves office in disgrace, one way or another. Personally, I'm hoping for the latter.
If he leaves early, Mike Pence will be the new president, and he will serve until the 2020 election.
Donald Trump has left such a foul taste in the mouths of the American voters, that it is unlikely the Republican Party will win the presidency in 2020. By their actions, the leaders of the Republican Party have shown that they are easily bought off, bullied, fooled, and manipulated by people like Trump. To put it crudely, Americans are tired of this shit.
And they are going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Right now, a Republican candidate for president stands to lose the 2020 election simply because he's a Republican.
If the Republicans intend to win the 2020 presidential election, they need to give the American people a candidate who is electable.Here's my shopping list for the 2020 presidential candidate:
1. First, I don't care if the candidate is male or female, black or white or Hispanic or Asian. Race and gender do not qualify (or disqualify) someone for the office. But making a campaign issue of their race or gender will cost them a lot of points, in my book. So will any reference to their opponents' race or gender.
2. Second, they need to be knowledgeable. They need to know enough about the areas that matter, to be an effective chief executive. They need to be competent in talking and making decisions about:
3. Related to that, they need to be well-informed and open-minded. Presidents can't possibly know everything, and so they need to get good information from others. I need to know where they will go to get advice. If I suspect that they're going to rely on yes-men, self-serving cronies, party hacks, and Fox News, then they have lost my vote.
4. Speaking of which: they need to completely ignore Fox News, and whatever its left-leaning equivalent may be. For a U.S. President, Fox News should be totally irrelevant. Domestic and foreign policy should not be dictated by a television station, newspaper or website.
5. They need to have integrity. They need to someone of sound character and good moral judgment.
Integrity, character, and morals are timeless, universal concepts. They are independent of religion.
In fact, I don't care what religion they profess. I don't want to know about it. There are, or should be, no religious criteria in a presidential election. To me, religion should be no more a factor than race or gender.
6. They need to be savvy, not naïve, in the ways of the world. Past presidents (Carter, both Bushes, and Trump) have been easily manipulated by foreign leaders and domestic actors because of their naïveté. Other presidents (Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Reagan at the beginning) were so savvy that they had the world by the balls.
7. They need to have class. Class must not be equated with coolness, popularity, beauty, social or economic status, and so on. Class is difficult to define, but easy to recognize. Mr. and Mrs. Obama had class. Trump has absolutely zero class. Hillary Clinton has never had class, and doesn't seem to care.
8. They need to practice true statesmanship and true leadership. The last true statesman and leader we had was ... hmm ... Ronald Reagan, back when his mind was still intact. No, that's not true. Obama was both a statesman and a leader. That's still being debated, but I think that in 20 years, that will be the universal consensus.
9. They need to put the entire country's interests above their own interests, above their party's interests, above their friends' and cronies' interests, and especially above the interests of the rich and powerful and self-serving.
10. They need to have vision. They need to take a long-term view on everything they do: not to next year, not to the midterm elections, not to getting re-elected or to setting things up for their party after their eight years are expired. The United States will be around long after they have left office, and their vision needs to be one that will leave the nation better off for their having served.
11. They need to remember that they are public servants, not rulers.
If the Republicans don't put up someone who meets all of these criteria, then I won't vote for him or her.
If he leaves early, Mike Pence will be the new president, and he will serve until the 2020 election.
Donald Trump has left such a foul taste in the mouths of the American voters, that it is unlikely the Republican Party will win the presidency in 2020. By their actions, the leaders of the Republican Party have shown that they are easily bought off, bullied, fooled, and manipulated by people like Trump. To put it crudely, Americans are tired of this shit.
And they are going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Right now, a Republican candidate for president stands to lose the 2020 election simply because he's a Republican.
If the Republicans intend to win the 2020 presidential election, they need to give the American people a candidate who is electable.Here's my shopping list for the 2020 presidential candidate:
1. First, I don't care if the candidate is male or female, black or white or Hispanic or Asian. Race and gender do not qualify (or disqualify) someone for the office. But making a campaign issue of their race or gender will cost them a lot of points, in my book. So will any reference to their opponents' race or gender.
2. Second, they need to be knowledgeable. They need to know enough about the areas that matter, to be an effective chief executive. They need to be competent in talking and making decisions about:
- Domestic policy
- Foreign policy
- Waging wars and making peace
- Economic policy
- Science
- Environmental issues
- Contemporary urgent medical issues
- The law
- The Constitution
- The life of the average, working-class American
3. Related to that, they need to be well-informed and open-minded. Presidents can't possibly know everything, and so they need to get good information from others. I need to know where they will go to get advice. If I suspect that they're going to rely on yes-men, self-serving cronies, party hacks, and Fox News, then they have lost my vote.
4. Speaking of which: they need to completely ignore Fox News, and whatever its left-leaning equivalent may be. For a U.S. President, Fox News should be totally irrelevant. Domestic and foreign policy should not be dictated by a television station, newspaper or website.
5. They need to have integrity. They need to someone of sound character and good moral judgment.
Integrity, character, and morals are timeless, universal concepts. They are independent of religion.
In fact, I don't care what religion they profess. I don't want to know about it. There are, or should be, no religious criteria in a presidential election. To me, religion should be no more a factor than race or gender.
6. They need to be savvy, not naïve, in the ways of the world. Past presidents (Carter, both Bushes, and Trump) have been easily manipulated by foreign leaders and domestic actors because of their naïveté. Other presidents (Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Reagan at the beginning) were so savvy that they had the world by the balls.
7. They need to have class. Class must not be equated with coolness, popularity, beauty, social or economic status, and so on. Class is difficult to define, but easy to recognize. Mr. and Mrs. Obama had class. Trump has absolutely zero class. Hillary Clinton has never had class, and doesn't seem to care.
8. They need to practice true statesmanship and true leadership. The last true statesman and leader we had was ... hmm ... Ronald Reagan, back when his mind was still intact. No, that's not true. Obama was both a statesman and a leader. That's still being debated, but I think that in 20 years, that will be the universal consensus.
9. They need to put the entire country's interests above their own interests, above their party's interests, above their friends' and cronies' interests, and especially above the interests of the rich and powerful and self-serving.
10. They need to have vision. They need to take a long-term view on everything they do: not to next year, not to the midterm elections, not to getting re-elected or to setting things up for their party after their eight years are expired. The United States will be around long after they have left office, and their vision needs to be one that will leave the nation better off for their having served.
11. They need to remember that they are public servants, not rulers.
If the Republicans don't put up someone who meets all of these criteria, then I won't vote for him or her.
Sunday, January 28, 2018
The Wall is a Dumb Idea
Come on, somebody say it out loud: The Wall is, simply put, a dumb idea.
Physical barriers have been tried in the past, and people either go through them, under them, over them, or around them. Witness Hadrian's Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, the fortified border between West and East Germany, the Iron Curtain, and the Maginot Line.
The only counterexample I can think of might be the fortified border between North and South Korea. but even then, small numbers of people just go around the wall, traveling first to China and then to South Korea.
Walls eventually crumble, or become irrelevant - or they're preserved as tourist attractions. Trump's Wall will be symbolic, but not much else, because would-be immigrants will find ways to bypass it. . The attraction (and the desire) to live and work in the United States, legally or illegally, is simply too strong.
Physical barriers have been tried in the past, and people either go through them, under them, over them, or around them. Witness Hadrian's Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, the fortified border between West and East Germany, the Iron Curtain, and the Maginot Line.
The only counterexample I can think of might be the fortified border between North and South Korea. but even then, small numbers of people just go around the wall, traveling first to China and then to South Korea.
Walls eventually crumble, or become irrelevant - or they're preserved as tourist attractions. Trump's Wall will be symbolic, but not much else, because would-be immigrants will find ways to bypass it. . The attraction (and the desire) to live and work in the United States, legally or illegally, is simply too strong.
What is needed is not a $25 billion physical wall, but an immigration policy that is sound, enforceable, and humane. Both the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress can do better than they're currently doing. And the President is as dumb as his Wall.
p.s. Why not use the $25 to do something useful? Like give it as a grant to the states, specifying that it be used to increase K-12 teacher pay and to hire more teachers?
p.s. Why not use the $25 to do something useful? Like give it as a grant to the states, specifying that it be used to increase K-12 teacher pay and to hire more teachers?
Monday, October 9, 2017
Looking ahead to 2020
Every day with President Donald Trump is a new disaster. We try to distract ourselves with hurricanes, earthquakes, mass shootings, and a trust-fund baby juggling nuclear missiles, but Trump is like the guy at the party who manages to insert himself into every conversation in the room — and ruin it.
If the USA were a publicly traded company and he were the CEO, the shareholders would have kicked him out by now. Too bad it's not that easy to get rid of the Chief Executive of the United States.
It's clear now that electing him was a disaster. Don't worry, if Clinton had gotten elected, we would be saying the same things about her. The 2016 election was a lose-lose proposition.
What can we do to make sure the 2020 presidential campaign doesn't go the same way?
Well, this article on NBC News got me thinking about 2020. The second-to-last paragraph says:
I don't know, he's starting to sound downright presidential. He would be a better president than Trump.
DETOUR:
After Vice President Pence's little rehearsed stunt at the Colts-49ers game yesterday, I'm starting to believe Corker would be a better president than Pence, too.
If you want to read about Pence's stunt, Google "Pence walks out". Every link I found was biased one way or the other. Read multiple sources to get a balanced view. But it was rehearsed. It was a stunt — a rather expensive stunt.. And if his airfare and hotel were paid for by the U.S. taxpayers, then shame on him. I used to respect Mike Pence.
About Pence's stunt, the great Tom Peters tweeted:
BACK ON THE MAIN ROAD:
If Bob Corker is serious about running for president in 2020, then he needs to start now building a few things:
This year, the Mormons have proven to be faster and more effective than the federal government when it comes to disaster relief. Witness the responses to hurricane Harvey in Texas, Irma in Florida, and Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico (and the U.S. Virgin Islands), and the earthquakes in Central America. LDS Welfare Services started shipping supplies, in their own trucks, even before the hurricanes hit. Local and global LDS leadership was on the ground even before the rain stopped falling. Thousands of LDS volunteers were organized and working hard, in force, before the feds ever showed up. Maybe it's time we put a Mormon in the White House?
I don't know if Mitt Romney wants to give it another try, but I think it's pretty clear that he would have been a much better president than the current occupant. If not Mitt Romney, then how about Jon Huntsman Jr., the statesman, businessman, and diplomat?
But don't vote for Huntsman — or against him — just because he's a Mormon. Vote for him because he's a good man.
ON THE OTHER HAND:
I wouldn't mind if the 2020 election turned into a race between two great women — for example, Condoleeza Rice and Madeline Albright. Come on, people, this is the 21st Century. There must be some viable options besides white, allegedly Christian, males.
And there are definitely viable options besides Democrats and Republicans. If enough people opened their eyes and had the courage to vote third party, we would break the duopoly these parties have on the presidency, a duopoly which has proven to be unconstructive, easily corruptible, self-serving, and unfortunately, self-perpetuating.
I don't care if the next ideal candidate is Democratic, Republican, or Pirate Party, as long as it's a person of maturity, integrity, wisdom and vision. All of the above. In no particular order.
If the USA were a publicly traded company and he were the CEO, the shareholders would have kicked him out by now. Too bad it's not that easy to get rid of the Chief Executive of the United States.
It's clear now that electing him was a disaster. Don't worry, if Clinton had gotten elected, we would be saying the same things about her. The 2016 election was a lose-lose proposition.
What can we do to make sure the 2020 presidential campaign doesn't go the same way?
Well, this article on NBC News got me thinking about 2020. The second-to-last paragraph says:
Late last month, [retiring Tennessee Senator Bob] Corker announced that he would not see[k] re-election, fueling speculation that he might challenge the president in a GOP primary.Unencumbered by the need to watch his mouth and make sure he gets re-elected to the Senate, Corker has been speaking his mind. Speaking truth to power. Calling out, repeatedly, that the emperor has no clothes. Using his bully pulpit to stand up to Trump and Co.
I don't know, he's starting to sound downright presidential. He would be a better president than Trump.
DETOUR:
After Vice President Pence's little rehearsed stunt at the Colts-49ers game yesterday, I'm starting to believe Corker would be a better president than Pence, too.
If you want to read about Pence's stunt, Google "Pence walks out". Every link I found was biased one way or the other. Read multiple sources to get a balanced view. But it was rehearsed. It was a stunt — a rather expensive stunt.. And if his airfare and hotel were paid for by the U.S. taxpayers, then shame on him. I used to respect Mike Pence.
About Pence's stunt, the great Tom Peters tweeted:
Wonder if POTUS gave VPOTUS a "good puppy" dog buscuit after yesterday's scripted showboating episode?
BACK ON THE MAIN ROAD:
If Bob Corker is serious about running for president in 2020, then he needs to start now building a few things:
- A team - an organization.
- A "base". Trump and Clinton have made this a dirty word, but it's still necessary.
- A platform - a statement of what he believes in, what he's running for.
- Knowledge.
- More name recognition.
- Credibility.
- Likeability.
- Even more visibility.
- Popularity. It shouldn't matter, but every election in the past 100 years (longer?) has proven that it matters bigly.
This year, the Mormons have proven to be faster and more effective than the federal government when it comes to disaster relief. Witness the responses to hurricane Harvey in Texas, Irma in Florida, and Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico (and the U.S. Virgin Islands), and the earthquakes in Central America. LDS Welfare Services started shipping supplies, in their own trucks, even before the hurricanes hit. Local and global LDS leadership was on the ground even before the rain stopped falling. Thousands of LDS volunteers were organized and working hard, in force, before the feds ever showed up. Maybe it's time we put a Mormon in the White House?
I don't know if Mitt Romney wants to give it another try, but I think it's pretty clear that he would have been a much better president than the current occupant. If not Mitt Romney, then how about Jon Huntsman Jr., the statesman, businessman, and diplomat?
But don't vote for Huntsman — or against him — just because he's a Mormon. Vote for him because he's a good man.
ON THE OTHER HAND:
I wouldn't mind if the 2020 election turned into a race between two great women — for example, Condoleeza Rice and Madeline Albright. Come on, people, this is the 21st Century. There must be some viable options besides white, allegedly Christian, males.
And there are definitely viable options besides Democrats and Republicans. If enough people opened their eyes and had the courage to vote third party, we would break the duopoly these parties have on the presidency, a duopoly which has proven to be unconstructive, easily corruptible, self-serving, and unfortunately, self-perpetuating.
I don't care if the next ideal candidate is Democratic, Republican, or Pirate Party, as long as it's a person of maturity, integrity, wisdom and vision. All of the above. In no particular order.
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
What this country needs
What this country needs are more radical moderates. Alt-independents. Conservative liberals. Liberal conservatives. People who think with their whole brains, and love with their whole hearts.
And you can quote me on that.
And you can quote me on that.
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Five out of six Democrats and Republicans are stupid
Okay, I've seen two news articles lately with polls like this. These poll results are powerful indictments of the stupidity of the majority of Republicans, and the majority of Democrats.
Here's one example, but it's only an example. Don't get hung up on it. This is a poll that asks people "Whom do you trust more: Donald Trump, or CNN?"
I saw a very similar diagram last week, for a poll that asked people something like "Do you believe in the Trump-Russia collusion connection?" and I've seen similar diagrams for the health care bill, Supreme Court nominees, James Comey's firing, and so on. Let's paint a generic picture of the results of these polls:
Here's one example, but it's only an example. Don't get hung up on it. This is a poll that asks people "Whom do you trust more: Donald Trump, or CNN?"
I saw a very similar diagram last week, for a poll that asked people something like "Do you believe in the Trump-Russia collusion connection?" and I've seen similar diagrams for the health care bill, Supreme Court nominees, James Comey's firing, and so on. Let's paint a generic picture of the results of these polls:
Now, I'm going to use some math here. If you're not very good at math, that's okay. You may have a lot in common with the majority of the people I'm going to talk about here. And if you're offended by my condescending attitude, that's your problem, not mine. Don't look here for an apology.
Let's dissect that figure above. First of all, look at the line marked "Independents". These are people who vote, but who don't consider themselves Democrats or Republicans. Most of them don't identify with any political party - not because they're politically apathetic, but because they prefer to do their own research and weigh the pros and cons of an issue (or a candidate) before making their own decision. The party line does not exist for them.
So you can use the statistics on the Independents as a bellwether: politically, they're atheists, logical, dispassionate, and not swayed by labels like red/blue, liberal/conservative, or Democrat/Republican. In this example poll, you can see that 40 percent of the independents lean pro-Trump on the issue, and 55 percent lean anti-Trump. Let's round that 55 percent up to 60 percent, to make the math easier for this example.
(Those of you who don't understand math and statistics may cry "Not fair!" at my rounding. Relax. 40 vs 60 is being kind to Mr. Trump. I saw a poll in June, where 30 percent of independents leaned pro-Trump and fully 70 percent of independents leaned anti-Trump on the question being asked. How about I use 30 vs 70 instead? No? Then stop whining.)
Now, I'm going to propose a theory. I think that political parties are composed of two kinds of people. One kind actually thinks about an issue or a candidate before they make a decision or form an opinion. The other kind always toes the party line. They only need to know what the party line is - no thinking required.
I'm going to pose a second hypothesis. I have nothing to base this suggestion on, other than my belief in the basic goodness of people, and humanity's natural gifts of logic and reason. I'm going to suggest that, if only the thinking Democrats AND the thinking Republicans were polled, their split would be very similar to the Independent results, as shown above.
This means that it takes some independence of thought for a Republican to lean anti-Trump, or for a Democrat to lean pro-Trump.
So let's give those 9% of Republican respondents who leaned anti-Trump credit for thinking for themselves. Using the 40/60 ratio from the Independents, let's also give 6% of the Republicans credit for using their heads, thinking it out, and coming out pro-Trump.
What does that say about the other 83% of Republicans, the ones who voted the party line without bothering to think? It says that they're stupid.
Is stupid too strong a word? How about sheep? Blind followers? Willfully ignorant?
On the Democrat side, let's give those 5% who leaned pro-Trump credit for thinking for themselves. Again using the 40/60 ratio from the Independents, let's give 8% (I rounded up; so sue me) of the Democrats credit for using their heads, thinking it out, and coming out anti-Trump.
EDIT: The following two graphics have an error. The 8% should be labeled "anti-Trump (thinkers"). One day I may get around to fixing the graphics.
EDIT: The following two graphics have an error. The 8% should be labeled "anti-Trump (thinkers"). One day I may get around to fixing the graphics.
What does that say about the other 83% of Democrats, the ones who voted the party line without bothering to think? It says that they're stupid.
Is stupid too strong a word? How about sheep? Blind followers? Willfully ignorant?
Wow. According to this and other public opinion polls, 83% of Democrats and Republicans are mindless party loyalists. THEY ONLY THINK WHAT THE PARTY TELLS THEM TO THINK.
Democrats think that they are the party of "thinkers" and the Republicans are the party of "stupid". Republicans think that they are the party of "thinkers" and the Democrats are the party of "stupid". Both parties are wrong. As the results of this and many other polls show, they're both the party of "stupid".
If you are a Democrat or a Republican, and you think you're one of the thinking minority, there's an 83-percent probability that you're wrong, that you are one of the party loyalists. The sheep. The stupid ones.
If you disagree with me, there are a couple of articles on Wikipedia that you need to read. The first is about fundamental attribution error, and the second is about self-serving bias, both of which are logical mistakes to which we mortals fall victim, over and over again.
The acrimony, the political divisions in this country will continue to get worse until people stop blindly supporting their party and learn to think for themselves. The poll results will get more and more extreme, and the divide between the two major political parties will get wider and deeper. Polite
political discourse has already ceased; inflammatory rhetoric has taken over. Violence is stomping through the door, and oppression is not far behind.
If you are a Democrat or a Republican, you have to do something to fix this. You don't need to abandon your party affiliation. You do need to abandon your mindless loyalty to your party. Use your brain to figure things out. If your party, or your party's representative, is wrong about something, then separate yourself from the majority on that issue, and make it known.
I don't pledge allegiance to a political party. I pledge allegiance to a flag, the nation that it symbolizes, and the Constitution that it is built upon. I don't vote for party leaders, political appointees, or lobbyists and influence peddlers, and I don't want them running the country - I mean, dictating how people think. That happened in the Soviet Union, but it should not happen here.
Friday, October 7, 2016
PLEASE VOTE THIS YEAR - Even if You Don't Like The Choices
 |
| Just end it already. (This image carelessly copied from imgur.com) |
This year, more than ever, we need you to cast your ballot on November 8, and not for the Democratic candidate, nor for the Republican candidate.
In that previous post, I mentioned that Donald Trump got nominated because less than 7 percent of all registered Republicans voted for him. About 7.8 percent voted for all of the rest of the candidates, combined. That means that 85 percent of registered Republicans didn't vote at all. If you stop and think about it for a bit, those 85 percent are the real reason that Donald Trump won the nomination. They didn't vote for anybody, and their apathy let a [insert really nasty adjectives, invectives and epithets here] minority of Republicans give him the nomination.
I also mentioned that similar percentages voted for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders - and I also noted that the Democratic National Committee had the fix in for Clinton all along. There was no way they were going to let Sanders win the nomination. This has been revealed in leaked emails, which leaks resulted in the resignation of four top DNC executives shortly after the Democratic National Convention. But nobody apologized, nobody went to jail, and nobody offered to undo the damage that had been done. So in Clinton's case, it was a comparable minority of Democrats, plus a conspiracy among the party leadership (one in which Clinton was undoubtedly involved, or at least aware of), that elevated her to the candidacy.
Now, here's the thing. As this presidential race comes down to the wire, it has turned into a contest of not-Trump vs. not-Clinton. "Which one do you not want to win?" says the prevailing wisdom, "Then vote for the other one." THAT'S THE WRONG THING TO DO.
The choices are so unpleasant that many voters are going to stay home and not vote - again. THAT'S THE WRONG THING TO DO. Just as the 85% who didn't vote are responsible for Trump and Clinton getting this far, likewise the ones who do not vote, who do not exercise their Constitutional right and obligation, will be the ones responsible for the wrong person getting into the Oval Office. The majority cannot afford to be silent this time.
So who do you vote for? You vote not-Clinton and not-Trump. You vote for a third-party candidate - any third-party candidate. Let's be realistic: no third-party candidate is going to win the election. But all we want to do is deny both Clinton and Trump the majority of votes. We want to deny both of them the majority of all registered voters who voted in this election.
It would be really cool if the only majority on Election Day was "none of the above."
So on Election Day, go down to the polling place. If you cannot in good conscience vote for either Trump or Clinton, DO NOT leave your ballot empty. Let the silent majority become the Very Vocal Majority, which rejects both candidates. Stand up and make sure your rejection is counted. Vote for somebody else.
When the votes are counted, I expect that Clinton will win. Her one term as president will be full of greed and corruption, and she and her family will pillage the White House (again) on their way out the door in 2021. But I think (and I hope) that most Americans realize before it's too late what a disaster it would be to let someone like Donald Trump loose in the White House.
And after the election, when your friends point their fingers at you and say, "Your vote is the reason XYZ won!" you can tell them, "I didn't vote for XYZ! But I did vote. I did my civic duty, I joined my voice with thousands of others, and my conscience is clear. XYZ won because of everyone who didn't vote."
Don't be the reason that either one of them wins. Vote for someone else.
#votethirdparty #noneoftheabove
Monday, September 26, 2016
Seriously, America? Is this the best you have to offer?
Seriously, America? Is that the best you have to offer?
We're stuck with Donald Trump because less than 7 percent of registered Republicans voted for him in the primaries, but that was more than voted for any other Republican candidate.
We're stuck with Hillary Clinton because (1) a comparable percentage of Democrats voted for her, and (2) the DNC rigged things in her favor, as news reports and public resignations have made clear. Thanks to all the crooked backroom dealing, poor Bernie Sanders never had a chance.
There is no place for an honest politician in American politics.
If all of the registered independents go off and vote #noneoftheabove #votethirdparty, then the losing side will point a finger at the independents and say "You cost us the election. By voting third party, you took away the majority from our candidate." And the independents will point a finger right back at them, and say, "No, YOU cost yourselves the election - by YOUR lousy choice of a candidate. YOU picked someone I could not vote for."
And the winning side will look past all of those independents - right over their heads - and say to the losing side, "Thanks for picking such a LOSER! You GUARANTEED that we would win the election!"
You may tell me that my ravings are insane and illogical. I will counter that this entire presidential election has been insane and illogical.
We're stuck with Donald Trump because less than 7 percent of registered Republicans voted for him in the primaries, but that was more than voted for any other Republican candidate.
We're stuck with Hillary Clinton because (1) a comparable percentage of Democrats voted for her, and (2) the DNC rigged things in her favor, as news reports and public resignations have made clear. Thanks to all the crooked backroom dealing, poor Bernie Sanders never had a chance.
There is no place for an honest politician in American politics.
If all of the registered independents go off and vote #noneoftheabove #votethirdparty, then the losing side will point a finger at the independents and say "You cost us the election. By voting third party, you took away the majority from our candidate." And the independents will point a finger right back at them, and say, "No, YOU cost yourselves the election - by YOUR lousy choice of a candidate. YOU picked someone I could not vote for."
And the winning side will look past all of those independents - right over their heads - and say to the losing side, "Thanks for picking such a LOSER! You GUARANTEED that we would win the election!"
You may tell me that my ravings are insane and illogical. I will counter that this entire presidential election has been insane and illogical.
 |
| I want one of these signs. |
Seriously, America? Is this the best you have to offer?
Seriously, America? Is that the best you have to offer?
We're stuck with Donald Trump because less than 7 percent of registered Republicans voted for him in the primaries, but that was more than voted for any other Republican candidate. We're stuck with Hillary Clinton because (1) a comparable percentage of Democrats voted for her, and (2) the DNC rigged things in her favor, as news reports and public resignations have made clear.
If all of the registered independents go off and vote #noneoftheabove #votethirdparty, then the losing side will point a finger at the independents and say "You cost us the election. By voting third party, you took away the majority from our candidate." And the independents will point a finger right back at them, and say, "No, YOU cost yourselves the election - by YOUR lousy choice of a candidate. YOU picked someone I could not vote for."
And the winning side will look right over the heads of those independents, and say to the losing side, "Thanks for picking such a LOSER! You GUARANTEED that we would win the election!"
You may tell me that my ravings are insane and illogical. I will counter that this entire presidential election has been insane and illogical.
We're stuck with Donald Trump because less than 7 percent of registered Republicans voted for him in the primaries, but that was more than voted for any other Republican candidate. We're stuck with Hillary Clinton because (1) a comparable percentage of Democrats voted for her, and (2) the DNC rigged things in her favor, as news reports and public resignations have made clear.
If all of the registered independents go off and vote #noneoftheabove #votethirdparty, then the losing side will point a finger at the independents and say "You cost us the election. By voting third party, you took away the majority from our candidate." And the independents will point a finger right back at them, and say, "No, YOU cost yourselves the election - by YOUR lousy choice of a candidate. YOU picked someone I could not vote for."
And the winning side will look right over the heads of those independents, and say to the losing side, "Thanks for picking such a LOSER! You GUARANTEED that we would win the election!"
You may tell me that my ravings are insane and illogical. I will counter that this entire presidential election has been insane and illogical.
|
| I want one of these signs. |
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Oh, great. The idiot is running again.
While the spotlight has been shining on Hillary Rodham Clinton and her remarkable lack of Democratic contenders, Republicans have been quietly walking up to the Goblet of Fire and slipping their names into it.
The latest Republican to announce his candidacy for the presidency was our own Billionaire Clown, Donald Trump. He can't stand it when the news isn't about him. And he just can't stand to stay out of his own spotlight. I guess that's his right. He bought the spotlight, and paid for it, so he might as well shine it on himself. It's a pity he couldn't spend the money on a better hairpiece.
Clearly, he didn't learn his lesson from the "birther" beating he inflicted upon himself in 2011.
Anyway, in the latest installment in the comedy-cum-soap-opera that is his life, Trump invoked God Himself in promising:
Reuters reporter Alana Wise wasn't too impressed with his announcement, as she makes clear in this report of the press conference announcing his candidacy.
Everytime I read or hear about Donald Trump saying something, I get this mental image of a donkey in a pasture, braying loudly because he loves to hear the sound of his voice, while all of the other animals grazing in the field ignore him or silently wish he would be abducted by aliens.
UPDATE, JUNE 17: Most of the news media didn't take Trump's announcement very seriously. One of them even accused him of "throwing his rubber nose into the GOP ring." This jesting at his expense, and lack of respect, hasn't sat well with Trump, who fired back in a fit of petulance: "Well, I'm rich and you're not, so nyah. Jerks." Now we can really take him seriously.
The latest Republican to announce his candidacy for the presidency was our own Billionaire Clown, Donald Trump. He can't stand it when the news isn't about him. And he just can't stand to stay out of his own spotlight. I guess that's his right. He bought the spotlight, and paid for it, so he might as well shine it on himself. It's a pity he couldn't spend the money on a better hairpiece.
Clearly, he didn't learn his lesson from the "birther" beating he inflicted upon himself in 2011.
Anyway, in the latest installment in the comedy-cum-soap-opera that is his life, Trump invoked God Himself in promising:
I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.I remind you that in 2011, all of the Republican candidates, except for Mitt Romney, announced that God had told them to run for President. This statement sounds like Trump is telling God what to do, and not the other way around. Ladies and gentlemen, the Clown is back, and he's about to eat his clown shoes.
Reuters reporter Alana Wise wasn't too impressed with his announcement, as she makes clear in this report of the press conference announcing his candidacy.
Everytime I read or hear about Donald Trump saying something, I get this mental image of a donkey in a pasture, braying loudly because he loves to hear the sound of his voice, while all of the other animals grazing in the field ignore him or silently wish he would be abducted by aliens.
UPDATE, JUNE 17: Most of the news media didn't take Trump's announcement very seriously. One of them even accused him of "throwing his rubber nose into the GOP ring." This jesting at his expense, and lack of respect, hasn't sat well with Trump, who fired back in a fit of petulance: "Well, I'm rich and you're not, so nyah. Jerks." Now we can really take him seriously.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Manufacturing Outrage
Someone on Facebook pointed me to a political blog called IVN, written by a published author and retired professor named Michael Austin. His blog entries are balanced and well-written. If you perceive a bias in any of his articles, bear in mind that it's an opinion, and a logical and well-supported one at that. You may or may not agree with his opinion, but that is precisely why you need to read this article.
Manufacturing Outrage
Here’s an interesting little fact: to the best of my ability to recall, I have never seen one of my conservative friends post anything on their Facebook feed by Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Pat Robertson.
But my liberal friends post something outrageous by one of these commentators every day. When Ann Coulter wrote a column denouncing soccer as a symbol of America’s moral decline, I probably saw a hundred links to it. I forwarded it on myself.
But every single person who forwarded it did so with the intention of mocking it. A million people probably read Ann Coulter’s column that day just so they could laugh at what a Neanderthal she was. To my knowledge, nobody read it and agreed with her.
So Ann Coulter gets a million readers and makes a big pile of money so that liberals can smile smugly at their superiority, even as they drive another million readers to her site by forwarding her posts. Outrage, as it turns out, is kind of fun.
It’s fun for everyone, liberal and conservative alike. Though none of my conservative friends forward things by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, quite a few of them forward nearly everything that President Obama says or does or is rumored to have done—normally with a statement like “there he goes again.”
I read, dozens of times a day, descriptions of Obama as a “tyrant,” a “dictator,” a “communist,” a “traitor,” and, of course, “the worst president we have ever had.” I don’t think I have ever heard anyone say that he is merely a bad president, or even one in the bottom quartile. Come to think of it, I have never even heard him described as the “second worst president we have ever had.” Millard Fillmore and James Buchannan get a pass—outrage only works with superlatives.
And this pretty much sums up our political environment today: we are outraged. Everything is outrageous. Obama is outrageous. Benghazi is outrageous. The Tea Party is outrageous. Ann Coulter is outrageous. Immigration, health care, contraception, the Supreme Court, Russia, Israel, Egypt, and the World Cup—it’s all outrageous, and it all proves that things are worse than they have ever been.
I suspect that this narrative prevails on both sides of the aisle because we really do enjoy being outraged. It makes us feel smart and special, like we are actually doing something noble by reducing everything to the most vile proposition we can imagine and then getting outraged about it. If we feel especially noble, we will go out on the internet and call people stupid. That’ll show ‘em.
And, at the same time, the political parties know that outrage works. It gets people to the polls, and, more importantly, it convinces them to donate to politicians and their causes. Not many people will donate to defeat a “mediocre manager with left of center positions.” But make them believe that they are donating to defeat “the most liberal, tyrannical dictator in our nation’s history,” and they will take out a second mortgage to support you.
Actual political argument is hard, while recreational outrage is easy. As long as we can fool ourselves into thinking that we are participating meaningfully in the political process–when all we are really doing is stoking our own outrage and that of people who think exactly like we do–then we will be at the mercy of people who know how to use our outrage to their advantage and our intellectual sloth as a way to make sure that nothing significant ever changes.
The July 11 article, "Manufacturing Outrage," points out how the continuum between agreement and disagreement no longer exists. If you don't like someone's viewpoint or behavior, you slip past all the socially-accepted degrees of disagreement and go straight to outrage. This causes serious problems, as he explains.
I wish everyone who goes into spasms of outrage at the slightest provocation would read this article. Because blogs occasionally disappear or become unavailable, I am reposting it here in its entirety, with Mr. Austin's permission.
I wish everyone who goes into spasms of outrage at the slightest provocation would read this article. Because blogs occasionally disappear or become unavailable, I am reposting it here in its entirety, with Mr. Austin's permission.
Manufacturing Outrage
Friday, June 13, 2014
Why are college kids so intolerant? Part Two
I have noticed that stuff on the Internet doesn't really last forever. It lasts until the publisher, copyright holder, or server administrator decides it's time to get rid of it. The Wayback Machine helps, but I doubt it can capture everything. Therefore, I decided to copy Matt Bai's excellent column and paste it right here.
Don't blame college kids for intolerance. Blame us.
By Matt Bai
May 22, 2014 4:59 AM
Yahoo News
America's college kids are back and resting at home this week, which is a good thing, because during the long months away they seem to have gone completely out of their minds.
Last weekend, The New York Times' Jennifer Medina reported on the latest bizarre demand on campus: "trigger warnings" to let students know if the text they're about to study will expose them to some version of misogyny or homophobia, so they aren't unexpectedly traumatized by visions of things that can never be unseen – like, say, every novel written by a white man before 1960. That followed the public floggings of several commencement speakers whose invitations had to be rescinded, including such evildoers as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the International Monetary Fund's Christine Lagarde and Robert Birgeneau, the former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.
All of this has provoked a torrent of eloquent condemnation from pundits and academics, who worry that our elite universities, in the words of an editorial published in Monday’s Washington Post, are being "impoverished by intolerance." Which is a reasonable concern, except that it misses the point. It's not the students' fault that they expect to laze around in a world of ideological comfort. It's totally ours.
There's nothing new about the basic tension between speech and sensitivity on campus. When I was at Tufts in the late '80s, at the height of what we called political correctness, we argued fiercely about whether the military belonged on campus or whether certain faculty members were denied tenure because of their politics. But, by and large, we were primed to have the debate, not chill it.
We'd grown up with TV news that tried to get at complicated issues (Ted Koppel's "Nightline" was the single most influential news program of the era) and op-ed pages that crackled with competing arguments. I remember meeting William Colby, the former CIA director, at a symposium. A lot of us were disgusted by the role he had played in Vietnam, but it never occurred to us that he shouldn't speak or that his beliefs weren't at least defensible.
It was reasonable to hope, with the sudden explosion of what we called cyberspace a decade or so later, that this kind of exchange would become more commonplace and more enlightening, rather than less so. Only that's not what happened. Almost from the moment the first iteration of political blogs appeared, not long after the 2000 presidential election that exposed a deep cultural rift in America, like-minded activists began to wall themselves off from any version of reality they didn't like. They set about building ideological silos in the space where virtual town squares might have thrived.
Our political leaders and our media might have recognized the danger here and done their traditional duty, which was to ignore all the noise, and focus instead on explaining the complex realities of a country in social and technological transition. With some notable exceptions, that didn't happen, either. Instead, politics in the past 10 years has become a perennial contest of the already converted, a constant pursuit on either side of "base strategies" and data sets that tell you exactly which voters you need to turn out in order to get and hold power.
Those of us who cover and analyze the news – whose central purpose it is to challenge our own preconceptions about the world, and yours – haven't really performed much better, and I'm not just talking about the partisan rehashing on Fox News and MSNBC. Many of our most respected columnists and academics, too, occupy the predictable extremes, where they can always rely on the clicks of a comforted audience. They use a smokescreen of empiricism to prove to you, over and over again and without fail, that everything you already believe is borne out by some selective poll or study.
What's happened is that we've effectively left behind the Age of Persuasion and ushered in the Age of Confirmation. It sometimes seems the whole world exists to re-affirm our conceptions of it; you can get through days, even weeks, without being at all discomfited, if you know which sites to visit and which channels to watch.
This isn't confined to politics. We target self-help books and superhero movies at consumers whose habits we know, rather than do the hard work of trying to convince anyone to broaden their minds. (Did you like Sheryl Sandberg's book? Then you'll love Arianna Huffington's version, which is pretty much the same thing, right down to the catchphrase title and cover photo.) Log on to Amazon.com, the supermall of the confirmation culture, and you will instantly be introduced to all of the books, movies and songs that are exactly like all the others you've purchased recently.
We have more options and access to information than any society in human history, and less inclination to avail ourselves of it. Maybe we're just overwhelmed.
So tell me this: What exactly did we think the effect of all this was going to be on the generation after ours? Today's college senior was born around 1992 and developed a political awareness just as blogs and social media were bursting into the American consciousness. Did we really expect these kids to emerge from the moment with a sense of intellectual adventurism? Were they supposed to just know that the entire point of literature is to discomfort you with no warning at all?
Did we think the characteristic that F. Scott Fitzgerald cited as the hallmark of first-rate intelligence – "the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and retain the ability to function" – didn't have to be taught by example?
Here's the good news. First, while the loudest students have been grabbing the attention lately, anyone who spends any time on campus these days (or who reads some of the better polling of the so-called millennial generation) can tell you that a lot of younger Americans appreciate that something is wrong with the way we talk to each other, or don't. They're distrustful of old political and media institutions and eager to build a more tolerant, less fragmented society than their parents have to this point. That's to their credit.
Second, it's worth remembering that for all the missed opportunity around us, we're still in the infancy of the Internet culture, a moment roughly analogous to where television was in 1960. Our instinct has been to retreat into safe communities online that reinforce our convictions and banish all doubt. But media evolves, and political dialogue with it, and I'm betting we will figure out how to hear alternate (and even odious) worldviews without need for a trigger warning.
To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., the arc of technology is long, and it bends toward enlightenment.
I don't know if I can claim "fair use" for such a blatant copy. But I will include a link to the original: http://news.yahoo.com/don-t-blame-college-kids-for-intolerance--blame-us-085916423.html . And I will rewrite this posting to reduce Mr. Bai's essay to a bunch of acceptable excerpts, if he or the Yahoo lawyers ask me to.
Here, then, are Mr. Bai's words on the subject.
By Matt Bai
May 22, 2014 4:59 AM
Yahoo News
America's college kids are back and resting at home this week, which is a good thing, because during the long months away they seem to have gone completely out of their minds.
Last weekend, The New York Times' Jennifer Medina reported on the latest bizarre demand on campus: "trigger warnings" to let students know if the text they're about to study will expose them to some version of misogyny or homophobia, so they aren't unexpectedly traumatized by visions of things that can never be unseen – like, say, every novel written by a white man before 1960. That followed the public floggings of several commencement speakers whose invitations had to be rescinded, including such evildoers as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the International Monetary Fund's Christine Lagarde and Robert Birgeneau, the former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.
All of this has provoked a torrent of eloquent condemnation from pundits and academics, who worry that our elite universities, in the words of an editorial published in Monday’s Washington Post, are being "impoverished by intolerance." Which is a reasonable concern, except that it misses the point. It's not the students' fault that they expect to laze around in a world of ideological comfort. It's totally ours.
There's nothing new about the basic tension between speech and sensitivity on campus. When I was at Tufts in the late '80s, at the height of what we called political correctness, we argued fiercely about whether the military belonged on campus or whether certain faculty members were denied tenure because of their politics. But, by and large, we were primed to have the debate, not chill it.
We'd grown up with TV news that tried to get at complicated issues (Ted Koppel's "Nightline" was the single most influential news program of the era) and op-ed pages that crackled with competing arguments. I remember meeting William Colby, the former CIA director, at a symposium. A lot of us were disgusted by the role he had played in Vietnam, but it never occurred to us that he shouldn't speak or that his beliefs weren't at least defensible.
It was reasonable to hope, with the sudden explosion of what we called cyberspace a decade or so later, that this kind of exchange would become more commonplace and more enlightening, rather than less so. Only that's not what happened. Almost from the moment the first iteration of political blogs appeared, not long after the 2000 presidential election that exposed a deep cultural rift in America, like-minded activists began to wall themselves off from any version of reality they didn't like. They set about building ideological silos in the space where virtual town squares might have thrived.
Our political leaders and our media might have recognized the danger here and done their traditional duty, which was to ignore all the noise, and focus instead on explaining the complex realities of a country in social and technological transition. With some notable exceptions, that didn't happen, either. Instead, politics in the past 10 years has become a perennial contest of the already converted, a constant pursuit on either side of "base strategies" and data sets that tell you exactly which voters you need to turn out in order to get and hold power.
Those of us who cover and analyze the news – whose central purpose it is to challenge our own preconceptions about the world, and yours – haven't really performed much better, and I'm not just talking about the partisan rehashing on Fox News and MSNBC. Many of our most respected columnists and academics, too, occupy the predictable extremes, where they can always rely on the clicks of a comforted audience. They use a smokescreen of empiricism to prove to you, over and over again and without fail, that everything you already believe is borne out by some selective poll or study.
What's happened is that we've effectively left behind the Age of Persuasion and ushered in the Age of Confirmation. It sometimes seems the whole world exists to re-affirm our conceptions of it; you can get through days, even weeks, without being at all discomfited, if you know which sites to visit and which channels to watch.
This isn't confined to politics. We target self-help books and superhero movies at consumers whose habits we know, rather than do the hard work of trying to convince anyone to broaden their minds. (Did you like Sheryl Sandberg's book? Then you'll love Arianna Huffington's version, which is pretty much the same thing, right down to the catchphrase title and cover photo.) Log on to Amazon.com, the supermall of the confirmation culture, and you will instantly be introduced to all of the books, movies and songs that are exactly like all the others you've purchased recently.
We have more options and access to information than any society in human history, and less inclination to avail ourselves of it. Maybe we're just overwhelmed.
So tell me this: What exactly did we think the effect of all this was going to be on the generation after ours? Today's college senior was born around 1992 and developed a political awareness just as blogs and social media were bursting into the American consciousness. Did we really expect these kids to emerge from the moment with a sense of intellectual adventurism? Were they supposed to just know that the entire point of literature is to discomfort you with no warning at all?
Did we think the characteristic that F. Scott Fitzgerald cited as the hallmark of first-rate intelligence – "the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and retain the ability to function" – didn't have to be taught by example?
Here's the good news. First, while the loudest students have been grabbing the attention lately, anyone who spends any time on campus these days (or who reads some of the better polling of the so-called millennial generation) can tell you that a lot of younger Americans appreciate that something is wrong with the way we talk to each other, or don't. They're distrustful of old political and media institutions and eager to build a more tolerant, less fragmented society than their parents have to this point. That's to their credit.
Second, it's worth remembering that for all the missed opportunity around us, we're still in the infancy of the Internet culture, a moment roughly analogous to where television was in 1960. Our instinct has been to retreat into safe communities online that reinforce our convictions and banish all doubt. But media evolves, and political dialogue with it, and I'm betting we will figure out how to hear alternate (and even odious) worldviews without need for a trigger warning.
To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., the arc of technology is long, and it bends toward enlightenment.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Why are college students so intolerant? Why so closedminded?
It used to be that universities and colleges were intellectual greenhouses, where all sorts of ideas could be explored, and could grow and develop together - even opposing ideas. Now they seem instead to be intellectual concrete mills.
Normally, I don't find anything on Yahoo to be deep, well-written, or insightful. Also, normally, I find navel-gazing to be tedious and unproductive. Here's an opinion piece from Yahoo that is deep, well-written and insightful - also interesting and worthwhile.
It's a good read. It slaps down the narrowminded, shallow-thinking, intolerant individuals on both the extreme left and the extreme right. It frames the discussion by taking a look at the intolerance (what?!) manifested on college campuses today. It makes the intolerant students look like little kids with their fingers in their ears, chanting "Na na na na, I'm not listening, I'm not listening."
The scary part of the article is the thought that the closedminded individuals will grow up and run the country, and that they will marry and have children of their own. Let's hope that their children are more openminded than they are.
I'm not going to give Yahoo credit for this excellent piece of writing. Not yet. This is just one data point, and probably an aberration. I will, however, applaud the author, Matt Bai. I don't agree with everything he writes, but he's consistently thoughtful and well-written. Matt Bai is good; Yahoo is just lucky.
UPDATE: I was afraid of the article disappearing from Yahoo, so I reprinted it right here.
Normally, I don't find anything on Yahoo to be deep, well-written, or insightful. Also, normally, I find navel-gazing to be tedious and unproductive. Here's an opinion piece from Yahoo that is deep, well-written and insightful - also interesting and worthwhile.
It's a good read. It slaps down the narrowminded, shallow-thinking, intolerant individuals on both the extreme left and the extreme right. It frames the discussion by taking a look at the intolerance (what?!) manifested on college campuses today. It makes the intolerant students look like little kids with their fingers in their ears, chanting "Na na na na, I'm not listening, I'm not listening."
The scary part of the article is the thought that the closedminded individuals will grow up and run the country, and that they will marry and have children of their own. Let's hope that their children are more openminded than they are.
I'm not going to give Yahoo credit for this excellent piece of writing. Not yet. This is just one data point, and probably an aberration. I will, however, applaud the author, Matt Bai. I don't agree with everything he writes, but he's consistently thoughtful and well-written. Matt Bai is good; Yahoo is just lucky.
UPDATE: I was afraid of the article disappearing from Yahoo, so I reprinted it right here.
Monday, December 3, 2012
The fiscal cliff: a couple of ideas
Idea #1: Someone suggested that it would be very wise for the Republicans to acquiesce, and to accept Obama's (and the Democrats') proposal to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Warren Buffett and other wealthy people have pooh-poohed the Republicans' contention that when wealthy people are taxed more, they invest less; therefore, raising the taxes on the rich will not have the net negative effect the Republicans are predicting.
But the better reason to raise the taxes on the wealthy is that, four years from now, when we're in worse shape than we are today, the Republicans can point at President Obama and the Democrats in Congress and say, "See? We TOLD you it wouldn't work! But NOOOOO, you wouldn't listen!" It would give them a lot a lot of leverage for unseating all of those Democrats.
Idea #2: This idea has been floating through Facebook and email lore, and it's a perfectly sensible idea. The idea is that we take away all of the special privileges that Congresscriters enjoy, and make them live the same way the rest of us live: the same tax laws, Social Security payments, Medicare/Medicaid payments, health plans, and everything else. They have forgotten how normal people live, and they need to be made to remember.
And here's a third idea, tangentially related to the fiscal cliff and the financial mismanagement that brought us to this point in the first place:
Idea #3: It was indeed Warren Buffett who proposed a constitutional amendment that says, in essence, whenever Congress cannot balance the budget for a given year, all of the members of Congress automatically become ineligible for re-election.
But the better reason to raise the taxes on the wealthy is that, four years from now, when we're in worse shape than we are today, the Republicans can point at President Obama and the Democrats in Congress and say, "See? We TOLD you it wouldn't work! But NOOOOO, you wouldn't listen!" It would give them a lot a lot of leverage for unseating all of those Democrats.
Idea #2: This idea has been floating through Facebook and email lore, and it's a perfectly sensible idea. The idea is that we take away all of the special privileges that Congresscriters enjoy, and make them live the same way the rest of us live: the same tax laws, Social Security payments, Medicare/Medicaid payments, health plans, and everything else. They have forgotten how normal people live, and they need to be made to remember.
And here's a third idea, tangentially related to the fiscal cliff and the financial mismanagement that brought us to this point in the first place:
Idea #3: It was indeed Warren Buffett who proposed a constitutional amendment that says, in essence, whenever Congress cannot balance the budget for a given year, all of the members of Congress automatically become ineligible for re-election.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
I didn't vote for Grover Norquist
Here's a great illustration of why we should despise, and even get rid of, the unelected powermongers who prowl the streets of Washington, New York City, London, and other seats of power in the world.
Grover Norquist is the president of an organization called "Americans for Tax Reform." Twenty years ago, he started pushing newly elected Republican Congressmen (and women), or those who were running for election, to sign a pledge that they would never vote to raise taxes.
After 20 years of fiscal irresponsibility on the part of both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, our country finds itself in a difficult financial position. We need to implement our own "austerity measures" before they are dictated to us by someone else — like international banks and foreign governments. We are facing a fiscal crisis which can be resolved in several ways, most of them painful. One of the least painful ways is a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.
I didin't say it was "painless." I said it was "one of the least painful." Don't be stupid.
You will recall that, on August 2, 2011, the U.S. Congress set up a bipartisan "supercommittee" that was supposed to break through the Congressional gridlock and come up with a solution to this fiscal problem while there was still time to act. As an incentive to getting things done, Congress wrote a Plan B into the legislation, a bitter pill that the nation would have to swallow on January 2, 2013 if the supercommittee failed in their mission. This was no secret to anybody — nor was the timing of Plan B, two convenient months after a critical national election. Congress as a whole may be a pack of idiots, but they're clever idiots.
At any rate, the supercommittee proved to be as fractious and stubborn as the body which had created it, and they hit their deadline without completing their mission. So Plan B kicked in, and the automatic spending cuts and other measures that it specified will also kick in, on January 2, 2013. These automatic measures, if activated, will severely impact the still-fragile economy and could drive the country back into a recession. Some wag coined the term "fiscal cliff" to describe the country's situation, and now everybody is saying it. I'm so sick of hearing the term that I get the urge to chew my leg off every time someone says it.
Now that the election is over, the executive and legislative branches are scrambling to find a way to deactivate this time bomb before it goes off. As I said earlier, one solution involves raising taxes.
Enter Grover Norquist.
In general, Democrats have always been eager to raise taxes, and Republicans have been just as eager to cut taxes, or at least not to raise them. For the most part, every tax vote that has come up in Congress for the past 20 or so years has gone right down party lines. Now, for the sake of the country, some Republicans are warming up to the idea of raising taxes on some people. This includes some powerful Congressmen who signed Norquist's pledge 20 years ago, such as John McCain, R-Ariz, and Lindsay Graham, R-N.C.
Now, Norquist is holding their feet to the fire, insisting that the pledge lasts forever and that they can't back away from it just because it's no longer practical or convenient. He compares the power of the pledge to the power of a mortgage or a marriage vow. (It's ludicrous that he should pick these two analogies, when homeowners are walking away from underwater mortgages and the ratio of divorces to marriages in this country exceeds 50%.) But a pledge not to raise taxes is not as sacred as a marriage vow, nor as legally binding as a mortgage commitment. And it ignores the fact that, in politics, practicality has to win out over ideology. We've had four years — actually, we've had 20 years, but the last four years are a representative sample — of a Congress ruled by ideologues, and you can see what a mess it has gotten us into.
Norquist has been in the news a lot this week, sounding like someone who's in charge of Congress. He is attempting to enforce his will through threats, blackmail, and innuendo. His tax pledge is an ideology that has blinded him to the current reality. He cannot see past the tax pledge, to what is really important for the country. He is no better than the members of the supercommittee, who couldn't see past their own positions and party platforms to work out a compromise and act in the country's collective best interests. Actually, he's worse than they were, because we didn't elect him.
Our Congresspeople should be accountable to us, the voters, not to some unelected lobbyist or to the president of a lobbying organization like Americans for Tax Reform. I didn't vote for Grover Norquist. I don't want him running the country. To grant him any measure of power in Washington is just plain wrong. We as Americans should stand up and, in one loud voice, tell Grover Norquist to "SHUT UP!"
UPDATE:
John Cassidy, of the New Yorker, apparently beat me to the punch, publishing this analysis of Norquist two days ago.
POSTSCRIPT:
While we're at it, here are some other people who should shut up and keep their power-hungry paws and their fat, padded asses out of the halls of power in Washington, D.C.:
And here are some people that we should see and hear more of in Washington. Somehow, these people come across as wise, as speaking up in behalf of the American people instead of themselves. Both the legislative and executive branches would do well to heed their advice.
POST-POSTSCRIPT:
Some of those paws are money-grubbing paws, not power-hungry paws. But the first rule of power is "Power follows money," so in my mind there's not a lot of difference between them.
Grover Norquist is the president of an organization called "Americans for Tax Reform." Twenty years ago, he started pushing newly elected Republican Congressmen (and women), or those who were running for election, to sign a pledge that they would never vote to raise taxes.
After 20 years of fiscal irresponsibility on the part of both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, our country finds itself in a difficult financial position. We need to implement our own "austerity measures" before they are dictated to us by someone else — like international banks and foreign governments. We are facing a fiscal crisis which can be resolved in several ways, most of them painful. One of the least painful ways is a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.
I didin't say it was "painless." I said it was "one of the least painful." Don't be stupid.
You will recall that, on August 2, 2011, the U.S. Congress set up a bipartisan "supercommittee" that was supposed to break through the Congressional gridlock and come up with a solution to this fiscal problem while there was still time to act. As an incentive to getting things done, Congress wrote a Plan B into the legislation, a bitter pill that the nation would have to swallow on January 2, 2013 if the supercommittee failed in their mission. This was no secret to anybody — nor was the timing of Plan B, two convenient months after a critical national election. Congress as a whole may be a pack of idiots, but they're clever idiots.
At any rate, the supercommittee proved to be as fractious and stubborn as the body which had created it, and they hit their deadline without completing their mission. So Plan B kicked in, and the automatic spending cuts and other measures that it specified will also kick in, on January 2, 2013. These automatic measures, if activated, will severely impact the still-fragile economy and could drive the country back into a recession. Some wag coined the term "fiscal cliff" to describe the country's situation, and now everybody is saying it. I'm so sick of hearing the term that I get the urge to chew my leg off every time someone says it.
Now that the election is over, the executive and legislative branches are scrambling to find a way to deactivate this time bomb before it goes off. As I said earlier, one solution involves raising taxes.
Enter Grover Norquist.
In general, Democrats have always been eager to raise taxes, and Republicans have been just as eager to cut taxes, or at least not to raise them. For the most part, every tax vote that has come up in Congress for the past 20 or so years has gone right down party lines. Now, for the sake of the country, some Republicans are warming up to the idea of raising taxes on some people. This includes some powerful Congressmen who signed Norquist's pledge 20 years ago, such as John McCain, R-Ariz, and Lindsay Graham, R-N.C.
Now, Norquist is holding their feet to the fire, insisting that the pledge lasts forever and that they can't back away from it just because it's no longer practical or convenient. He compares the power of the pledge to the power of a mortgage or a marriage vow. (It's ludicrous that he should pick these two analogies, when homeowners are walking away from underwater mortgages and the ratio of divorces to marriages in this country exceeds 50%.) But a pledge not to raise taxes is not as sacred as a marriage vow, nor as legally binding as a mortgage commitment. And it ignores the fact that, in politics, practicality has to win out over ideology. We've had four years — actually, we've had 20 years, but the last four years are a representative sample — of a Congress ruled by ideologues, and you can see what a mess it has gotten us into.
Norquist has been in the news a lot this week, sounding like someone who's in charge of Congress. He is attempting to enforce his will through threats, blackmail, and innuendo. His tax pledge is an ideology that has blinded him to the current reality. He cannot see past the tax pledge, to what is really important for the country. He is no better than the members of the supercommittee, who couldn't see past their own positions and party platforms to work out a compromise and act in the country's collective best interests. Actually, he's worse than they were, because we didn't elect him.
Our Congresspeople should be accountable to us, the voters, not to some unelected lobbyist or to the president of a lobbying organization like Americans for Tax Reform. I didn't vote for Grover Norquist. I don't want him running the country. To grant him any measure of power in Washington is just plain wrong. We as Americans should stand up and, in one loud voice, tell Grover Norquist to "SHUT UP!"
UPDATE:
John Cassidy, of the New Yorker, apparently beat me to the punch, publishing this analysis of Norquist two days ago.
POSTSCRIPT:
While we're at it, here are some other people who should shut up and keep their power-hungry paws and their fat, padded asses out of the halls of power in Washington, D.C.:
- Donald Trump
- Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton
- Bank presidents, bank lawyers, banking organizations, and lobbyists acting on behalf of banks
- Uh, the same thing, this time substituting "auto company" for "bank" and "banking"
- The same thing again, this time substituting "insurance company"
- The same thing again, this time substituting "investment firm" or "finance company"
- Any special-interest group representing a privileged minority of Americans
- Actors, musicians, sports superstars and anyone else trying to parlay their fame into power - unless they run for office and get elected
And here are some people that we should see and hear more of in Washington. Somehow, these people come across as wise, as speaking up in behalf of the American people instead of themselves. Both the legislative and executive branches would do well to heed their advice.
- Warren Buffett
- Mitt Romney, the private citizen
- Meg Whitman
- Wow, this is a frightfully short list!
POST-POSTSCRIPT:
Some of those paws are money-grubbing paws, not power-hungry paws. But the first rule of power is "Power follows money," so in my mind there's not a lot of difference between them.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
He just opened his mouth, and something stupid fell out
Okay, first Democratic "strategist" Hilary Rosen said something stupid about Ann Romney. Then Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner said something stupid about Barack Obama. Now a Republican candidate for the Senate from Missouri, Todd Akin, said something stupid about women in general. He really put his foot in it good.
Basically, he was repeating some pseudo-legalistic pseudo-science invented (according to NPR) by a conservative southern politician some decades ago and repeated by a few (but fortunately, not very many) conservative southern politicians since then. It was offensive to all women who have been through the trauma of rape, and especially those who found themselves pregnant as a result. In fact, it devalues the women in Africa, India, Bangladesh, China and the Far East who have suffered rape and pregnancy as a consequence of war.
I think he was sincere in his apology today. But once again, as with Hilary Rosen, I don't think the apology went far enough. He apologized for "one word and one sentence" and then said that he didn't think those should negate all the good things he's said and done. And he's absolutely right. But if you looked behind the "one word and one sentence," you could see the core beliefs of a man who you may not want to entrust with the power to make laws. I'm not talking about being pro-abortion or anti-abortion, either.
For myself, I will decide who to vote for, based on what they have said and what they have done, and not what others have said about them. If Akin were from Colorado and not Missouri, he would have lost my vote yesterday.
Basically, he was repeating some pseudo-legalistic pseudo-science invented (according to NPR) by a conservative southern politician some decades ago and repeated by a few (but fortunately, not very many) conservative southern politicians since then. It was offensive to all women who have been through the trauma of rape, and especially those who found themselves pregnant as a result. In fact, it devalues the women in Africa, India, Bangladesh, China and the Far East who have suffered rape and pregnancy as a consequence of war.
I think he was sincere in his apology today. But once again, as with Hilary Rosen, I don't think the apology went far enough. He apologized for "one word and one sentence" and then said that he didn't think those should negate all the good things he's said and done. And he's absolutely right. But if you looked behind the "one word and one sentence," you could see the core beliefs of a man who you may not want to entrust with the power to make laws. I'm not talking about being pro-abortion or anti-abortion, either.
For myself, I will decide who to vote for, based on what they have said and what they have done, and not what others have said about them. If Akin were from Colorado and not Missouri, he would have lost my vote yesterday.
The Wrong Side Absolutely Must Not Win
One of my friends (a real one, not a FB one) saw an article on Reason.com and suggested that I read it. In today's political climate, which is at turns divisive, extremist, absolute and contrarian, the author of this article channels Jonathan Swift to warn us about something really important. The article is called The Wrong Side Absolutely Must Not Win . I'm not going to post the text of the entire article here, because I'm hoping that after November 2, nobody will need to read it again. But it's really important, right now.
Monday, August 13, 2012
A government that really works: is that too much to ask for?
Today I'm reprinting an article from ABC News. I was going to write a blog entry like this anyway, but I found this article by Amy Walter while I was doing research for my entry, and she says it so much better than I would have. Excerpting it wouldn't have done it justice.
If ABC or Ms. Walter asks me to take it down, I will, but I wanted to post a copy of it here because I've noticed that articles like this on the mainstream news outlets have a tendency to expire. They disappear after some length of time. This one deserves an extended life. It's something that all politicians need to keep in mind, both before and especially after an election. And as Ms. Walter points out, the rebuke applies to all political parties.
An Ideological Battle that Voters Don't Want
In picking Rep. Paul Ryan, whose eponymous budget plan has become synonymous with political polarization, Mitt Romney assured an ideological campaign where a debate over the role of government will be front and center. It is a debate the Obama campaign and partisans on both sides are also eager to have. But it’s not a debate that swing voters want.
They aren’t as interested in choosing whether government should be more active or less. They are more interested in simply having it work.
BLAME IT ON THE WAVE
This debate is the culmination of four consecutive wave elections — elections where each side (wrongly) assumed a mandate from the American public.
It started in 2006 when, fed up with one party control, voters tossed Congressional Republicans out of power. Once, the party of “outsider” Republicans had turned into creatures of Washington. Voters saw them as gluttonous, self-absorbed and more interested in retaining power than using their power to help the little guy.
Two years later, voters elected a president who promised to break the partisan gridlock and to focus on an agenda that transcended party and special interest groups.
Yet, elected as a counter-weight to previous GOP rule, Democrats turned out to act much like them. They passed legislation on party-line only votes. They pushed a health care law through Congress, but failed to make the case for how it was going to help people survive a flailing economy.
Fueled by this frustration, voters put Republicans back in control of the House in 2010. But like the Democrats before them, Republicans mistook the election as a mandate for their own ideology — an ideology that saw compromise as a dirty word. And, less than two years after providing the energy for the 2010 sweep of Congress, the tea party is an unpopular than ever.
Six years after voters sent a message to Republicans that they were sick and tired of a government that was polarized and self-absorbed, they find a political system that is as polarized and ineffective as ever.
Each wave election has ultimately produced a class of politicians who are convinced that their victory was about them rather than a repudiation of the tactics and behavior of the other party. They were convinced that voters were choosing an ideology, when in reality they were simply trying to punish the folks who put ideology over accomplishment and compromise.
PHILOSOPHY FOLLOWS FUNCTION
Which brings us to today. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney argue that this election provides voters with a very stark choice between two competing ideologies. One that says that government can be part of the solution (Obama) and one that says that government is getting in the way of the solution (Romney).
But there are plenty of voters out there who are more concerned about function than ideology. They aren’t spending their evenings debating the benefits of Hayek or Keynesian economic models. They are just trying to figure out which candidate is capable of getting something done. They will reward the politician who succeeds in getting things moving again. But that shouldn’t be taken as proof that voters are endorsing the philosophical underpinnings of that success.
In other words, voters are looking less at ideology and more at competency. And that’s not something that either side has been able to show that can deliver.
If ABC or Ms. Walter asks me to take it down, I will, but I wanted to post a copy of it here because I've noticed that articles like this on the mainstream news outlets have a tendency to expire. They disappear after some length of time. This one deserves an extended life. It's something that all politicians need to keep in mind, both before and especially after an election. And as Ms. Walter points out, the rebuke applies to all political parties.
An Ideological Battle that Voters Don't Want
In picking Rep. Paul Ryan, whose eponymous budget plan has become synonymous with political polarization, Mitt Romney assured an ideological campaign where a debate over the role of government will be front and center. It is a debate the Obama campaign and partisans on both sides are also eager to have. But it’s not a debate that swing voters want.
They aren’t as interested in choosing whether government should be more active or less. They are more interested in simply having it work.
BLAME IT ON THE WAVE
This debate is the culmination of four consecutive wave elections — elections where each side (wrongly) assumed a mandate from the American public.
It started in 2006 when, fed up with one party control, voters tossed Congressional Republicans out of power. Once, the party of “outsider” Republicans had turned into creatures of Washington. Voters saw them as gluttonous, self-absorbed and more interested in retaining power than using their power to help the little guy.
Two years later, voters elected a president who promised to break the partisan gridlock and to focus on an agenda that transcended party and special interest groups.
Yet, elected as a counter-weight to previous GOP rule, Democrats turned out to act much like them. They passed legislation on party-line only votes. They pushed a health care law through Congress, but failed to make the case for how it was going to help people survive a flailing economy.
Fueled by this frustration, voters put Republicans back in control of the House in 2010. But like the Democrats before them, Republicans mistook the election as a mandate for their own ideology — an ideology that saw compromise as a dirty word. And, less than two years after providing the energy for the 2010 sweep of Congress, the tea party is an unpopular than ever.
Six years after voters sent a message to Republicans that they were sick and tired of a government that was polarized and self-absorbed, they find a political system that is as polarized and ineffective as ever.
Each wave election has ultimately produced a class of politicians who are convinced that their victory was about them rather than a repudiation of the tactics and behavior of the other party. They were convinced that voters were choosing an ideology, when in reality they were simply trying to punish the folks who put ideology over accomplishment and compromise.
PHILOSOPHY FOLLOWS FUNCTION
Which brings us to today. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney argue that this election provides voters with a very stark choice between two competing ideologies. One that says that government can be part of the solution (Obama) and one that says that government is getting in the way of the solution (Romney).
But there are plenty of voters out there who are more concerned about function than ideology. They aren’t spending their evenings debating the benefits of Hayek or Keynesian economic models. They are just trying to figure out which candidate is capable of getting something done. They will reward the politician who succeeds in getting things moving again. But that shouldn’t be taken as proof that voters are endorsing the philosophical underpinnings of that success.
In other words, voters are looking less at ideology and more at competency. And that’s not something that either side has been able to show that can deliver.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
