The General US Politics Thread

Politically engaged "left wing folks" will invariably vote Democrat since they understand the GOP is less aligned with their interests than the Democratic party, Consequently the base only matters electorally during primaries*, at all other times they can and should be ignored; swing voters and special interests are far more important because they hold actual power.

* Which is as good a reason as any for not having primary elections in the first place and just appointing candidates through internal negotiations.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:16:01 AM

Wow! That's both really cynical and how you get the issue of people voting Green.

...Aaaaaand you just edited it to make it worse.

Look, if you want your Tech-Libertarian centrist coalition, that's fine. You cannot, however, bank on the progressive crowd to help you. You make things less democratic and consistently ignore your base? They can just up and leave and find a new party. Because what you're proposing is a Not So Different party to the Republicans, or else becoming what so many anarchists/communists say the Democratic party is.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:18:25 AM

I'm proposing that pragmatism must always come first in politics; ideology, values, and conviction are completely irrelevant if you don't have power. The reality is that left-wing voters don't have a party that better suits their interests which can realistically win; people are more aware than ever that third parties are a dead end in US politics, which is why we're unlikely to see another Ross Perot.


I'm not proposing totally abandoning progressive values, but at the end of the day I don't care about ideology or rhetoric, I care about bottom line results, and adopting the trappings of centrism would seem to be the best long term strategy for accomplishing something rather than continuing to paralyze the federal government and congress.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:26:44 AM

Captain, those assertions are only correct if you assume that all eligible voters will vote, and everyone who votes will vote for either the Democrats or the Republicans. These are not true. People can and do stay home rather than vote, or vote for third parties instead of either mainstream party. Both of these things are illogical in a purely number-crunching sense, but people don't always vote on a purely logical basis.

If you take less-centrist positions because your base likes them, then more of your base are likely to show up and actually vote for you, even if you statistically appeal to a smaller portion of the electorate.

This means that a general election campaign is a tightrope walking act where you need to excite your base by taking less-centrist positions, while also trying to harvest as many swing votes as possible by remaining moderate. All with imperfect information about who's likely to vote, what positions they value, etc.

Edited by NativeJovian on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:29:35 AM

Adopt the trappings of centrism, and you find yourself adopting centrism. Then, oh look, the centre has moved right.

I don't think a good response to current US politics is "let's do what Tony Blair did in the UK!"

x3 But pragmatism with no checks makes you lose sight of your goal. Ideology, values, conviction, these are what gives character to your accomplishments and and defines them for others. If you ignore them out of hand, your ideology will become one of convenience. And the convenient option for those in power is to stay in power.

Democracy, rule by the people, is the best option not because it is convenient but because it means there is (supposed to be) a way for accountability to be had against those who misuse their power. If you, say, abolish primaries, that would only gatekeep what ideas are acceptable, and necessitate grassroots efforts to seek a new party. Additionally, corruption could and would become entrenched, and that corruption would inhibit your goals. Well, if you rely solely on pragmatism, your goals would vanish under the need to keep winning. And to keep winning, you would become reliant on the special interests and tech companies whose marriage of convenience started this scenario. And thus, their ideology would become yours.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:31:10 AM

Mandatory voting (or effectively mandatory voting where you aren't eligible for various services/tax exemptions/ect if you fail to vote) would significantly mitigate the problem of absenteeism; there'd still be ballot spoilage to deal with, but that's a smaller problem.

, Again, I'm not saying abandon the basic goals of progressiveness, but instead re-tool the rhetoric to appeal to median voters and be generally centrist rather than partisan, be open to any and all means of accomplishing those goals, and carefully consider the cost/benefit ratio of antagonizing special interests.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:37:09 AM

So, you're ideas for taking and maintaining power are to

-Force citizens to vote by law

-Select candidates not by election but by internal selection (amongst other things ripe for abuse)

-Pragmatism, which in this case means bowing to Corporations

Also, what do you even think our goals are? Because some of (at least my) goals absolutely contradict what those special interests (I presume you mean corporations) desire.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:38:32 AM

To improve the quality of life of the American population (and if you're like me, the global human population), with a special focus on the disadvantaged and minorities. That's actually not incompatible with the agenda of many special interest blocs if you abandon the notion that economic inequality is a solvable problem*, and instead focus on overall quality of life and encouraging positive-sum rather than rent-seeking economic growth.

* Or if the cost/benefit of solving it is unacceptable

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:42:49 AM

.....

Nope, I can’t. I’m out for the evening.

This sounds more and more like a textbook cyberpunk lolbertarian dystopia.

To improve the quality of life of the American population (and if you're like me, the global human population), with a special focus on the disadvantaged and minorities. That's actually not incompatible with the agenda of many special interest blocs if you abandon the notion that economic inequality is a solvable problem, and instead focus on quality of life and positive-sum rather than rent-seeking economic growth.

That's not something you're going to get when you posture in the centre. It's very much a slippery slope: you rely on those who don't actually share your goals to get into power, then... what? What happens with every situation where you're reliant on those ideologically opposed to you?

The obvious: either you lose power or you lose your goal to keep power. And experience teaches us that in the second case you only strengthen the exact opposite of your goals in the process.

Just look at the UK over the last thirty years ffs.

The downfall of the UK (at least when it comes to Brexit) came from an over-reliance on democratic referendums by UK politicians rather than doing their job as representatives and making decisions on behalf of their constituents that said constituents have little to no understanding of.

If a world where quality of life broadly improves across social strata but gains are concentrated towards the top is a Dystopia, than our modern world is Dystopian. It's certainly not a Utopia, but all Utopian projects have invariably ended in tears.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:47:57 AM

Because that's what it is.

...No. No its not. That's so staggeringly wrong I don't know where to start. Britain's problems started way before Brexit, if I had to choose a place to.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:48:37 AM

Brexit is one thing out of many things, and blaming the UK's problems solely on referendums is ridiculous.

Edited by TheRoguePenguin on Mar 24th 2019 at 7:48:04 AM

I admit I don't have a firm grasp of UK politics, but I do understand that Brexit was not a referendum that should have ever happened, it was a complete abdication on Cameron's part of his responsibility as the head of a representative democracy to call for a referendum on an issue that was way above the voters' heads.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:53:11 AM

I think for me values come first, then comes pragmatism. Pragmatism is a methodology applied to values. Pragmatism without values is doing whatever it takes to obtain power without any care about how that power is actually used. Which is dangerous I think (see either party for reasons; for this forum, the republicans).

Oh, I missed this.

And you'll find that part of the current issue was May's refusal to call another. Well, its too late now, but it was a goal for a time for Remain activists.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:54:26 AM

At this point another referendum is Britan's best hope (or was if that's no longer on the table), but if Parliament had a spine they could simply have ignored the "yes" vote given it was non-binding.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 24th 2019 at 11:07:56 AM

A subject for the British Politics thread, I would note.

To swing back to the topic:

Aside from the fact that it is a solvable problem, economic inequality directly lends itself to social inequality.

Uh, we had one referendum (as the UK as a whole) in 30 years. All that did was exploit existing problems.

The Republicans only wish they could have the control and influence the Tories have right now, even whilst they're stuck infighting and fallen apart. This, despite half of that time being with Labour in control.

That is how fundamentally screwed you're going to be by ceding ground to the other end of the spectrum to chase the mythical centrist.

It's a solvable problem in he long term if you're prepared to go back to a hunter gatherer lifestyle, and solvable in the short term if you're prepared to kill billions of people. Unfortunately, there's a pretty ironclad relationship between the degree of inequality and the extent of human development.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 24th 2019 at 11:11:39 AM

There was a poll a while back that more or less said "Everyone's extreme about something." Find something that large groups of people are extreme about that neither party is addressing and address it might be a valid way to get 'the middle'.

So we should just resign ourselves to be under the heel of men like Bezos then?

This whole thing is just a fancy way of trying to repackage trickle down economics and it's getting really tiresome to hear from you all the time, to be blunt.

I'd recommend reading down. Because he also says this: