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Politics Discussion; What / who do we support and why?
Topic Started: Jan 7 2015, 05:12 AM (255 Views)
Snardbafulator
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Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
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This thread is not an attempt to start polemical arguments among members of the forum, so my intent here is only to disagree respectfully and state my own opinion, just for the sake of sharing and having an interesting discussion. Your Own Mileage May Vary, but hopefully this won't become the forum flamewar thread ...

Kellezi 04-18-2011
08:08 PM
ace
 
"Kellezi" who did you vote for?

I didn't vote. Both Obama and McCain were poor candidates. The last time the US had a truly progressive President was with Abe Lincoln. Besides that FDR wasn't too bad considering the circumstances.

Aww, Kell ... seriously? That really sort of breaks my heart, especially coming from somebody so well-versed in history (note the cleverly cajoling positive ad-hominem argument).

Personally I've just never been able to understand this. Especially in '12, when there were three fairly decent protest candidates running for president, including a Green. Why didn't you at least vote third party? I'd still debate you about it but I wouldn't feel so disappointed that you appear to be giving up on the process entirely.

I'm a strong left liberal in my personal beliefs but my voting behavior is solidly left Democrat and I see no contradictions in this, despite the sometimes glaring ideological and policy discrepancies between what would be my ideal candidate and what the political system offers. So in primaries, I'm always balancing my preferences against a hardheaded calculation of who'd be best to beat the Republican. People love to sneer at voting for the evil of two lessers but for me, that would just be arguing with the terms of the universe. We live in a broad society. People are going to disagree with us, so we have to build bridges with what we can agree on. I just don't get this notion of existential disagreement with everything. To me, it smacks of nihilism -- or, more likely, consumerism run amok. Idealism run amok is just too naïve IMHO to even sympathize with.

The duopoly analysis beloved by Occupy, third party advocates and people of an anarchist bent is not an argument dismissible out of hand, but I don't think it wins the day, either. Somebody is going to win the election and take power and I'd rather that person be as close as possible to my ideals, even if they're off by a long shot, which will always be the case, unfortunately. Politics simply doesn't exist in a vacuum. I support a very limited military role, international coalition-building, single-payer healthcare, freedom to marry, marijuana legalization, environmental protection with teeth not merely incentives, alternate energy subsidies to nurture technology and development, nuclear power (a much more mature industry) only if it can be profitable and if we finally figure out what to do with the waste (and not at all with the generation of plants currently in the pipelines) and unmanned space exploration. I also support a strong social safety net, a Tobin tax on the market and reasonable fair-trade tariffs to protect strategically important and developing industries. (The glancing similarities to some of the things LaRouche has advocated over the years are entirely coincidental -- I loathe LaRouche's ideology.)

That makes me a flippin' radical pinko in terms of national politics. Yet I'm a yellow-dog Democrat.

I was a Howard Dean boots-on-the-ground activist in '04 (I thought he had the best shot against Bush of the four other antiwar candidates, Kucinich, Mosley Braun, Sharpton and Graham) and my experience with the orange-hatted Perfect Storm (which in Iowa was pretty much a disaster thanks to campaign manager Joe Trippi) made me very alert to the quasi-cultishness of the Obama movement four years later. Yes, yes, I was a happy Dean cultist and make no bones about it; the guy's awesome and he was a great DNC chair, too. If only we had followed his 50-state strategy. YEEEEE-HAAAAAA, babycakes :D

My sis was enchanted by Obama's DNC speech and gave me The Audacity of Hope for Christmas well before the '08 season. I thought it was awful. I'd catch his speeches on C-SPAN and I thought they were awful. I fully saw what people saw in him -- the Rorschach test effect Obama himself noted -- but I went eww ... this guy has no spine. He's a centrist technocrat who probably never met a compromise he couldn't swallow, which made me giggle mercilessly when the right wing tried to paint him as some sort of a socialist. I especially didn't like his tough talkin' foreign policy speeches. So I wound up supporting Hillary. She was marginally more realistic on healthcare (she admitted we'd need a mandate while Obama kept pandering about it; he reversed his course in the ACA, natch) but it wasn't like I saw a whole lot of daylight between them. It's just that I thought Hil had been tested under fire and goddamn well knew a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy when she saw one.

But I was never bitter when Hil lost. And I was thrilled when Obama became president.

The thrill didn't last long, of course, but I never became bitterly disillusioned with Obama as so many of my like-minded friends did, either, no doubt because I never had any illusions about Obama to begin with. Adjust for historical context, especially in foreign policy, and I see a dead-Clintonian presidency. Neither Clinton nor Obama will make it into the rank of the greats -- hell, neither of 'em can hold a candle to Harry Truman -- but they're both a patch above Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes (some might rank Reagan much higher but that'd never be me because I loathe his ideology so fiercely). Yes, the drone strikes trouble me very much and yes, we don't know what we're doing in Syria. But gods forbid that either McCain or Romney (with the Tea Party GOP behind them) had the chance.

That's the only thing that matters in the final analysis.

Now for the folks who relentlessly argue that both parties are bought and paid for, that there's too much money in politics, that the voice of the people has been manipulated if not silenced altogether I'd first say that I'm not a conspiracy theorist. All of these things are inevitable in a complex society which values the profit motive and assertive individuals. Can we enact reforms? Of course. I'm a strong supporter of overturning both Citizens United and Buckley v Valeo and breaking the equation of money with political speech. And corporations aren't freakin' people, either. (Soyulent green is people, everybody knows that.) I also support IRV (instant runoff voting), which would make a heartfelt third-party vote more than just a vote for the other side. But to throw in your towel is no answer. The answer on the left is to do precisely what the Tea Party has done on the right, which is to capture the Democrats through the primary process. Howard Dean's 50-state strategy is a blueprint for the Tea Partying of the left. It didn't happen because we dropped the goddamn ball.

You know when Obama sez that we're the change we've been waiting for? Yeah, well damn right. Only we never arrived. And we have only ourselves to blame.

Finally I'll say a word about third party voting (absent rank-preference voting at the present time). I see it as the result of being microtargeted by marketers for all these postwar years (read Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders which LaRouche apparently did; it's about motivation research in advertising and it's a very eye-opening book) and convinced we can buy products so perfectly tailored to our exquisitely personal preferences that we begin to strongly identify with them. So wahhh, we want a politician who we can relate as strongly to as the cola we drink that matches our lifestyle. I think this is silly and a bit culturally narcissistic.

I am, however, very glad that third party voters are still at least voting.

But if we really want to make genuinely progressive change, we have to seize a major party and take it over from within.

Bob
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borisbad
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Planck
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Snardbafulator,Jan 7 2015
10:12 AM
This thread is not an attempt to start polemical arguments among members of the forum, so my intent here is only to disagree respectfully and state my own opinion, just for the sake of sharing and having an interesting discussion. Your Own Mileage May Vary, but hopefully this won't become the forum flamewar thread ...

Kellezi 04-18-2011
08:08 PM
ace
 
"Kellezi" who did you vote for?

I didn't vote. Both Obama and McCain were poor candidates. The last time the US had a truly progressive President was with Abe Lincoln. Besides that FDR wasn't too bad considering the circumstances.


Not to proselytize, but I would definitely take Elizabeth Warren in a heart beat. The only anti-Wall Street candidate in the legitimate sense.
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Snardbafulator
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Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
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borisbad
 
Not to proselytize, but I would definitely take Elizabeth Warren in a heart beat. The only anti-Wall Street candidate in the legitimate sense.

Amen to that, brother.

Bob
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El Ron
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Snardbafulator,Jan 9 2015
10:38 PM
borisbad
 
Not to proselytize, but I would definitely take Elizabeth Warren in a heart beat. The only anti-Wall Street candidate in the legitimate sense.

Amen to that, brother.

Bob

I agree in support of Warren, because while she may not be considered as"electable" nationally, she could at the very least push a bigger Dem candidate into taking on the issue of Wall-Street rhetorically.

Of course, none of that would obligate said Dem candidate into actually doing anything about it once he or she took office. I guess I am a cynic, huh?

Also, Warren seems to be emphatic that she's NOT running for President. Not that those things don't change. Romney comes to mind. Can't believe he's popped up again.
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Snardbafulator
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Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
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I plead alignment to the flakes
Of the untitled snakes of a merry cow
And to the Republicans, for which they scam
One nacho, underpants
Wth licorice and jugs of wine for owls

--Matt Groening
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