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Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 9th, 2016, 8:29 pm
by David Greene
It just isn't logically consistent that someone can be for reforming campaign financing, yet not find heavy reliance on our current broken system to be problematic. If SuperPACS are bad, how is having one not bad? It's just not logically consistent.
One can in fact hold the ideal of campaign finance reform while not unilaterally disarming. Candidates operate in the world as it is, not the world we want.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 9th, 2016, 9:07 pm
by Nathan
Why Wealth Inequality would continue to grow under Hillary Clinton's type of Presidency and would get smaller under Bernie Sanders type of Ideology. If you're interested in growing the Middle Class and ending wealth inequality AND are a fan of Hillary this might be the piece that changes your mind.

http://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/02/0 ... ple-think/


It looks like Bernie has won in every demographic in NH, except for people over 65 and Households making over $200,000 a year. Interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/live/new-hampshi ... hic-group/


You didn't like 'Feel The Bern'?

How about 'Together'?

https://vimeo.com/153640576

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 9th, 2016, 11:58 pm
by PhilmerPhil

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 2:13 am
by Tiller
Another related subject:
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/ ... ectability
Todorov’s study indicated that election results might owe themselves somewhat to what the Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman called fast, unthinking judgment, or what the psychologist Nalini Ambady calls thin-slice judgment: the ability to make any number of social judgments from a seconds-long experience. Students can predict a professor’s end-of-semester ratings from a silent video that lasts no more than ten seconds; employers can predict interview outcomes and hiring decisions from a little more; and voters can predict the results of elections from a judgment that is made in less than a second.
Edit: ok just two more paragraphs, but you should read the whole thing.
The findings have held in races for governor, as well as for the House and Senate. They have translated well outside of the U.S. political scene: competence ratings have predicted the results of elections in countries from Denmark to Bulgaria, and international participants have proven just at effective at predicting results in U.S. elections as Americans themselves. Competence ratings that were gathered more than a year before the 2008 U.S. Presidential primaries predicted with great accuracy who out of eleven potential Democratic and thirteen Republican nominees for President would go on to secure the actual nomination—and that’s before many were even officially being considered. That may be, in large part, because non-appearance-related factors are far more controlled in the nomination process: potential nominees have similar platforms within their parties, are operating in similar climates, and so on. Facial competence may then become a more powerful differentiating factor.

In a followup to his initial research, Todorov, along with the psychologist Nikolaas Oosterfhof, examined what features translated to the character judgments that he had observed earlier. Using computer analysis, the two determined that our rankings of faces came down to two principal components: valence, or trustworthiness, and dominance. The first tells us whether to approach or avoid someone, while the latter indicates if that person is physically strong or weak—and it is also the trait most closely tied to the appearance of competence. While the overall shape of the face made the greatest impression, certain markers like the nose, forehead, chin, eyebrows, and lips also translated reliably to increases on either dimension: baby-faced portraits—with softer faces, rounder chins, and higher foreheads—seemed more trustworthy. More masculine faces that were narrower, with more prominent chins and wider noses, seemed more dominant.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 7:33 am
by mulad
FYI, I have hidden a few posts and merged some others, primarily for spamminess and wandering off-topic. The result is both more and less than I want to do. Please refrain from flooding topics with posts. When things get active, many people want to speak, and it's helpful to hold off on posting a bit to let other voices be heard.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 8:29 am
by Snelbian
There is an argument to be had on how distinct Hillary is/isn't from conservatism
How on earth is Clinton indistinct from a conservative? In what universe is having a more liberal record than 70% of Democratic senators (http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/hill ... s-liberal/) indistinguishable from conservatism? Is anyone even a millimeter to the right of Sanders now a conservative? What positions make her a conservative, exactly? Being more hawkish than Sanders? Hell, I'm more hawkish than Sanders because I'm a Trotskyite and don't believe in One Country Socialism. Being more liberal than Sanders on gun control? What does it? Because this is a meme that is certainly circulated enthusiastically in Sanders circles but seems to be 100% rhetoric and 0% political reality.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 9:26 am
by Nathan
I would say in the context of American Politics, Hillary is Left Center... In the Context of the Western World... Hillary is definitely no further left than Center, Maybe even Center Right.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 9:34 am
by mulad
Regarding results last night, this is the best page I've found for listing all of the candidates (turns out there are a lot!):

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-35532782

Kasich coming in 2nd on the Republican side is surprising to me, though he had often been in 3rd place in New Hampshire polling averages in recent months. Rubio was expected to come in 2nd, but he dropped to 5th place. I went through and collected polling averages and other predictions last night -- it seems that Rubio underperformed vs. expectations by 3.7 to 5.2 percent, which pretty closely matches the 4.0 to 8.4% overperformance of Trump compared to earlier predictions. Kasich gained 0.7 to 2.4 percent over earlier polls.

I saw some speculation last night that Christie may drop out. He also did better than the polling averages would predict, but only by 0.3 to 1.7% -- perhaps not terrible considering his 7.5% result, but a 7.5% result is pretty bad no matter how you look at it. Everyone else on the Republican side saw smaller swings, mostly negative compared to polling.

It seems like Rubio's tumble in recent days mostly benefited Trump, but there may also be some inherent biases in the polling.

Sanders beat polling estimates by 2.8 to 5.5%, while Clinton was 1.6 to 3.2 points below the polling averages.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 9:50 am
by mplsjaromir
I can say is that more lives will be destroyed and more innocent people will die from a warhawk American president than lives that would be saved from US gun control.

Things that make Hillary a conservative are:

cajoling for confrontation with Iran
implicit and explicit mutual support between her and Wall Street banks
supporting the drug war
anti-single payer healthcare
supports the death penalty
calling black urban youth "thugs" and "super predators," that - like dogs - needed to be "made to heel"

I can understand how the professional class of Democrats (lawyers, academics, accountants etc.) feel comfort in supporting Clinton because their comfort is essentially guaranteed. The bulk of the Democratic Party natural constituency are not finding comfort in life and there is someone for the first time in 35 years offering something more than macroeconomic growth and EITC. The polling from last night showed that Sanders won handily with those making less than six figures and those younger than sixty.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 10:02 am
by EOst
Jesus. Most of those statements are deeply misleading, if not outright false. Where do you get this crap?

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 10:06 am
by mattaudio
Just a guess here (and I'm writing this as a known Sanders supporter) but I think when people say Sanders is more "progressive" than Clinton, it's code for much more than just standard platform planks. It's more about establishment vs anti-establishment, and we see the establishment as corporatist and hawkish, things that seem to be conservative even if they are veiled in a layer of liberal planks or even a liberal track record. "Progressive" to me is not necessarily the same as "liberal" - progressive is more about methodology and the means of which we govern, than just measuring the outcomes compared to less-preferred alternative outcomes.

What's interesting is that there has been a large anti-establishment group on the right, that may have identified as Ron Paul supporters or libertarians in past cycles. I think many of the older libertarian types have moved to Trump (even though he's about as anti-libertarian as you can get) but I think many younger Ron Paul supporters were more "libertarian-federalist/local-socialist-idealists" in nature and now are supporting Sanders. There actually seems to be a fair amount of overlap in ideology, since both sides are sick of the corporatist warhawks that seem to dominate both parties.

Paul supporters in 08/12 saw "big government" as the problem. Sanders supporters today see "big business" as the problem. But they're the same problem, corporate control of government - corporatism, and there would be so much power if we could caucus on that front.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 10:10 am
by mplsjaromir
Jesus. Most of those statements are deeply misleading, if not outright false. Where do you get this crap?
What is false?

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 10:22 am
by twincitizen
I just want to hear one Sanders supporter say that they will not hold their nose and vote for Hillary in November. Please just come out and say it already.

(I'm not saying she's going to be the nominee...just saying IF. I will likely caucus for Sanders on March 1 but will HAPPILY AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY vote for Hillary in November, should it come to that)

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 10:31 am
by mplsjaromir
I will vote for Hillary if she is the nominee. If one remembers the PUMAs in 2008, I do not think that immediate reactions after a primary are indicative of behavior in November.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 10:38 am
by mulad
I'll probably vote for Jill Stein if Hillary is nominated.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 10:44 am
by EOst
What is false?
Well...
cajoling for confrontation with Iran
Actively misleading. Clinton supports the Iran nuclear deal, the continuation of which all but guarantees that there will be no military conflict with Iran. She has never endorsed any preemptive military strikes on the country, and has only spoken of direct military action if Iran were to attack Israel (which is a stance she shares not only with President Obama but also with Senator Sanders), or if they were to renege in a lasting way on the nuclear deal (same position as Pres. Obama).
implicit and explicit mutual support between her and Wall Street banks
Obviously, there is no way to disprove this one, because it basically relies on a conspiracy theory. But I would say that neither the rhetoric nor the substance of Sec. Clinton's plans are particularly friendly to Wall Street, and plenty of experts agree. Is Sanders' plan even less friendly? You betcha. But then, it's also a fantasy.
supporting the drug war
There is very little substantive difference between Sanders and Clinton on drugs. Both emphasize support for medical marijuana, caution on recreational legalization (Sanders offering personal support, but not committing to it politically), reduced sentences for low-level offenders, and a general shift in emphasis away from punishment and toward rehabilitation and treatment. Sanders has said repeatedly that "we need to end the War on Drugs," but it's very difficult from his stated positions to see what that means: he doesn't support legalizing all drugs or removing all (or even most) criminal penalties.
anti-single payer healthcare
This one is true!
supports the death penalty
She supports it "unenthusiastically" so long as it is "very limited and rare" (her words). No surprise: Americans as a whole support it by more than 60-40. But it's also transparently clear that anyone she nominated to the Supreme Court would join the rest of the liberal justices to overturn it. Even as a strong opponent of the death penalty, I'm comfortable with that, especially since she openly acknowledges that it is discriminatory and needs massive reform if it is to be continued at all: “We have a lot of evidence now that the death penalty has been too frequently applied, and too often in a discriminatory way. So I think we have to take a hard look at it.”

This is basically the equivalent of Obama saying, in 2008, that he didn't support gay marriage. No one believed it then, and it hardly matters now.
calling black urban youth "thugs" and "super predators," that - like dogs - needed to be "made to heel"
In 1996. Not only has she (repeatedly!) apologized for those words and rejected them, she has a robust stance on sentencing reform.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 10:49 am
by amiller92
Democrats (Hillary included) may well want to live in a world with publicly-funded elections and strict restrictions on political spending, and they may strive toward that world with all their might, but they must campaign in the world that is, not the one they wish to see. For Clinton or any other Democratic political candidate to foreswear PAC spending while her opponent does not is to operate at a significant material disadvantage.
I was going to say something similar, but so far it seems to be working for Bernie. I don't think it's a thing that can be generalized, though.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 11:06 am
by amiller92
I'll probably vote for Jill Stein if Hillary is nominated.
In Minnesota, it's unlikely to matter, but I don't get it. Not having a preference for Hillary over whoever the GOP nominee is something I just cannot understand.

Yes, she's too corporatist and too hawkish, but she is vastly less those things than we would get from the other party.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 11:13 am
by Nathan
I've actually Never voted for a Democrat in a presidential election. I've always voted for an independent. Partially because I favor a 3 or more party system, and I usually totally disagree with how our elections play out, so I'd like a 3rd party to get their 5 percent of the vote to become official. So I really would not have a hard time not voting for Hillary if she wins the nomination, and there is a good 3rd party candidate.

Re: Presidential Election 2016

Posted: February 10th, 2016, 11:27 am
by mulad
My main problem is that we're getting too close to having presidential dynasties. We're the third-most populous country on the planet, with 320 million people -- there's little excuse for having a son follow a father into the job (and we still have another brother running this year) or for spouses to follow each other in the position. Hillary could do pretty much anything she wants -- Go back to the Senate! Run for Governor! Head a business! -- but I find it really hard to tolerate the presidential bid.