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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
IP provisions were my main problem with the practical details of the TPP, beyond the obvious failure of the gains of globalization to be redistributed properly. That and enforcement. That being said, the economic impact of deals like the TPP aren't nearly as massive as trade advocates like to claim, particularly for the United States. Geopolitics is the reason Obama was pushing so hard for the deal to go through, out of a somewhat misguided fear that China will take over the world.
If—and this is a pretty big if—China manages to overcome the numerous internal issues that plague it, and if it can successfully manage the transition to a technology driven economy, there's very little the United States can do to stop China from eclipsing them, given the demographic disparity. Since such an economy is much more dependent on the well being of its citizenry than China's current economy, major political reforms would be more or less mandatory to keep the country from falling apart.
edited 1st Dec '16 6:21:06 AM by CaptainCapsase
We let ourselves get outmessaged, basically. Nobody who looks closely can say the Republican party is a party of the working class, but that's what too many white folks believe.
We don't even have to resolve any of the old gaps between "class consciousness" vs "identity consciousness." We won the popular vote, we just need to pour all resources into the Rust Belt next time.
Glad i'm moving to Virginia, though, PA's new status as king battleground state would make it insufferable to live in for all elections for the foreseeable future.
North Carolina will have a Democrat governor now...not that the Republicans didn't fight tooth and nail to steal that seat...and that state had horrible Neo-Jim Crow laws.
So it's not "solidly red" at all. Florida will always be a swing state.
And as Obama said in that interview, being on the ground and speaking to people and getting them ahead of Fox News and other propaganda of the one-party GOP state will help.
As for the Rust Belt...focus on the Hillary voters and undecided there and find a way to get Voter IDS for the disenfranchised to circumvent the laws.
Even with the Electoral College, you have to campaign with the same attitude. I agree that demographics are not destiny...I don't believe in destiny for that matter...but that doesn't mean you can't try.
Otherwise the end result is you could chase all the votes you lost instead of the ones you have and next thing you know CA has gone Green Party since they don't see the Democrats as anymore electable than the Greens and they can't vote Trump.
edited 1st Dec '16 7:24:23 AM by JulianLapostat
On another NC flavored note, democratic governor candidate Cooper has a lead now exceeding 10,000 which should prevent resident crybaby Mc Crory from ordering a statewide manual recount (as he can only do so if the difference is under 10,000). However, the republican dominated state election board is circumventing this by ordering manual recounts in individual counties. They're still spewing the line of "ITS RIGGED I TELL YA" rather than admitting Mc Crory alienated even some of his republican followers with his idiotic policies.
edit-
NC won't have a democratic governor if the vote gets sent to the legislature, since it's dominated by Mc Crory supporters who'd vote for him, democracy be damned.
edited 1st Dec '16 7:26:08 AM by carbon-mantis
I know there are busing programs in some places to get people to the polls. Is it possible we could do something like that to get I Ds for people too?
Sanders would have made a decent VP pick for Hillary and that might have helped with the Democrat turnout but realistically Sanders has no real institutional clout the way Joe Biden had. Biden helped Obama by speaking to Republicans and getting some of them to side with him. He also oversaw the stimulus package installation that went through with no graft and corruption (Obama's presidency ranks among the least corrupt in terms of finances at least).
A VP has to be The Lancer for the President, and Sanders is not a team player.
And no, Sanders would not make a good President. Revolutionaries rarely do good as normal politicians (Nelson Mandela might be a key exception). That's why Gandhi didn't take political office. Not his style and not his metier. He had no hand in building any of India's institutions or write a word of its Constitutions.
To be a POTUS you have to, to say this bluntly, you have to be willing to kill people. If you can't, you shouldn't be President. You have to be willing to agree with Bertolt Brecht, "You can only help one of your luckless brothers/by trampling on a dozen others." With the end result being that you get lucky and the people you help outnumber the ones you trampled because someone is going to be killed by you.
Trump needless to say meets this basic requirement far more than Sanders, except the only one person he'll help is not only not luckless but it's him.
Presidents are not heroes, nor are they good people, I am not even sure a President can have the same moral code and worldview that ordinary people do.
Since I'm on a bit of a philosophy kick from watching Crash Course right now....
How strongly do people agree/disagree that the POTUS (or the ruler of any big enough nation) should be Utilitarian and not Kantian?
edited 1st Dec '16 7:49:04 AM by nightwyrm_zero
It helps when you explain (briefly) what you mean by those terms so we're all talking the same language.
... What's the difference? I particularly have no idea what "Kantian" means, except suspecting that it has to do with one "Immanuel Kant" (and no, I don't know what the exact significance of such a connection is).
edited 1st Dec '16 7:51:47 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.A handy list of Trump's conflicts of interests by the NYT
.
A President must be pragmatic at least to the degree that it allows them to get their policies enacted whilst remaining in power and avoiding such catastrophe that it discredits them or their office. A President must be ideological to the degree that it helps maintain enthusiasm among the members of their political party. The question does not have a single, correct answer.
edited 1st Dec '16 7:56:42 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"From what I remember of my high school philosophy class, Kant believed that you should always do the right thing regardless of context. There's an infamous example given by him where IIRC he imagines a situation where an Ax-Crazy person asks you where to find someone and you know that they plan to kill that person. Kan says that you should tell the murderer the truth because there's a categorical imperative against lying- it's always wrong and the specific situation doesn't matter (if it did, lying wouldn't always be wrong).
I believe the idea is that the wrongdoing of killing is on the murderer, not the person who tells the murderer the truth. That person is just demonstrating a commitment to doing the right thing.
Which is to say that Kant would probably be considered an awful example by nearly everyone.
Edit- By the way, I used the term Ax-Crazy deliberately because I believe that Kant actually mentions the murderer holding an ax in his example. He might be the Trope Codifier.
edited 1st Dec '16 8:00:07 AM by Hodor2
I think the important qualities a President should have is getting information from a variety of sources and being able to be his own fact-checker, that way he is far less dependent, and less susceptible to bad advice while at the same time being enabled to get the best advisors with the best advice. The other is he should show a capacity to grow in office. This was cited by Eric Foner as Lincoln's major quality.
Whether being a Kantian or utilitarian will help or hurt them isn't relevant I think, though it damn sure will make them unlectable if they saw those words on the campaign trail.
Ahh...sorry.
Wiki links for the two ethical philosophies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantianism
In more Tv Tropes terms, The Golden Rule vs The Needs of the Many.
Using a Trolley problem example where you have the option to push a fat man onto the train tracks to stop the train from killing 5 ppl, a utilitarian would do it since 5 people saved > 1 while a Kantian won't since "not killing" is a moral imperative and people should not be used as a means to an end.
edited 1st Dec '16 8:14:20 AM by nightwyrm_zero
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... If that's true, then Kant is a moron and probably would be a hypocrite if he was the one getting shafted by someone else following what he advocated.
edited 1st Dec '16 8:01:10 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

The man is an objectifying, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, sexual assaulting misogynist of the highest order.
edited 1st Dec '16 6:17:14 AM by Balmung