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LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#159601: Nov 30th 2016 at 1:17:23 PM

Again, the problem with the Rust Belt is that we've been doing that and they refuse to listen.

Oh really when?
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#159602: Nov 30th 2016 at 1:20:41 PM

The deprecation of social science is much to be regretted in the USA. What is Economics after all but social science, or demography and history for that matter?

The demographer Emmanuel Todd predicted the collapse of the USSR as the global power a decade before it happened, citing a drop in birth rate and increased military spending. He made similar predictions about USA and he anticipated a Trump victory. The historian Allan Lichtman also predicted Trump's victory based on his study of the deep structures of America's electorate. He made a mistake in predicting Trump a popular vote victory...and God am I glad that hasn't happened (yet) because that would literally be telling the Abrahamic God...this is Sodom, come do your thing.

I personally greatly feared a Trump victory mostly based on the guy's luck. He was on a real hot streak. I was disappointed it happened but not really surprised.

As for rust belt voters...the fact is no one can help them now. Trump won't, the Republicans won't and the Democrats have no powers and ground to help them even if they want to. The only thing they have is the base of Hillary voters and the undecided, which is a bigger number than anything Trump can muster. Work with what you have, and use that to bolster that advantage next time. Start laying the groundwork for Election Reform, to end the EC, end gerrymandering and restore the Voting Rights Act, end Citizens United, build NG Os to get everyone voter-ID. Ending the EC is a 10-12 year commitment realistically speaking. Think of it as analogous to the 10 year period before the passing of the 13th Amendment, the mainstream movement of abolition didn't happen overnight but it built momentum.

Anti-Gerrymandering won a victory recently with a Federal Court judge declaring the Republican redistricting in Wisconsin illegal. Who knows what will happen at the SC but it's a step forward. Other than that, focus on strengthening Liberal Blue States and other private civil liberty organizations. Starting thinking in terms of protest that can have wide impact.

That's why I recommend tax protests because that will have a bigger consensus than Calexit. Trump has left a wide open invitation for citizens to not pay taxes to the government. You cannot trust that your money is not going to go into his pocket. That is a legitimate fear. Start thinking in terms of tax write-off and tax deductible donations...and think of a boycott in terms of the 21st Century.

Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#159603: Nov 30th 2016 at 1:20:48 PM

If that's the case, it might not necessarily be a matter of convincing tepid Trump supporters to turn on him, so much as getting more democrats to turn out there. If I'm not mistaken, democratic turnout in those states fell a lot shorter than expected this election.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#159604: Nov 30th 2016 at 1:37:56 PM

@JulainLapostat: The social sciences run into a fundamental problem in that knowledge of their findings feeds back into the system they are studying. That's a blockage that isn't present in the hard sciences. Beyond that, many of the claims made by the social sciences are non-falsifiable or non-repeatable, in contrast to the physical sciences, which heavily emphasize the ability for independent investigators to reproduce a set of resulted claimed by a researcher. Those disciplines that have overcome these limitations (ie economics and psychology, and history to a certain extent) and produced reasonably effective predictive frameworks are the ones that have broken out of the social science ghetto and into the mainstream. In the case of economics, being a quantitative field certainly helps.

edited 30th Nov '16 1:49:34 PM by CaptainCapsase

MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#159605: Nov 30th 2016 at 1:53:21 PM

California is now the capital of liberal America. Along with its neighbors Oregon and Washington, it will be a nation within the nation starting in January when the federal government goes dark.

In sharp contrast to much of the rest of the nation, Californians preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a 2-to-1 margin. They also voted to extend a state tax surcharge on the wealthy, and adopt local housing and transportation measures along with a slew of local tax increases and bond proposals.

In other words, California is the opposite of Trumpland.

The differences go even deeper. For years, conservatives have been saying that a healthy economy depends on low taxes, few regulations, and low wages.

Are conservatives right? At the one end of the scale are Kansas and Texas, with among the nation’s lowest taxes, least regulations, and lowest wages.

At the other end is California, with among the nation’s highest taxes, especially on the wealthy; toughest regulations, particularly when it comes to the environment; most ambitious healthcare system, that insures more than 12 million poor Californians, in partnership with Medicaid; and high wages.

So according to conservative doctrine, Kansas and Texas ought to be booming, and California ought to be in the pits.

Actually, it’s just the opposite.

For several years, Kansas’s rate of economic growth has been the worst in the nation. Last year its economy actually shrank.

Texas hasn’t been doing all that much better. Its rate of job growth has been below the national average. Retail sales are way down. The value of Texas exports has been dropping.

But what about so-called over-taxed, over-regulated, high-wage California?

California leads the nation in the rate of economic growth — more than twice the national average. If it were a separate nation it would now be the sixth largest economy in the world. Its population has surged to 39 million (up 5 percent since 2010).

California is home to the nation’s fastest-growing and most innovative industries – entertainment and high tech. It incubates more startups than anywhere else in the world.

In other words, conservatives have it exactly backwards.

Why are Kansas and Texas doing so badly, and California so well?

For one thing, taxes enable states to invest their people. The University of California is the best system of public higher education in America. Add in the state’s network of community colleges, state colleges, research institutions, and you have an unparalleled source of research, and powerful engine of upward mobility.

Kansas and Texas haven’t been investing nearly to the same extent.

California also provides services to a diverse population, including a large percentage of immigrants. Donald Trump to the contrary, such diversity is a huge plus. Both Hollywood and Silicon Valley have thrived on the ideas and energies of new immigrants.

Meanwhile, California’s regulations protect the public health and the state’s natural beauty, which also draws people to the state – including talented people who could settle anywhere.

Wages are high in California because the economy is growing so fast employers have to pay more for workers. That’s not a bad thing. After all, the goal isn’t just growth. It’s a high standard of living.

In fairness, Texas’s problems are also linked to the oil bust. But that’s really no excuse because Texas has failed to diversify its economy. Here again, it hasn’t made adequate investments.

California is far from perfect. A housing shortage has driven rents and home prices into the stratosphere. Roads are clogged. Its public schools used to be the best in the nation but are now among the worst – largely because of a proposition approved by voters in 1978 that’s strangled local school financing. Much more needs to be done.

But overall, the contrast is clear. Economic success depends on tax revenues that go into public investments, and regulations that protect the environment and public health. And true economic success results in high wages.

I’m not sure how Trumpland and California will coexist in coming years. I’m already hearing murmurs of secession by Golden Staters, and of federal intrusions by the incipient Trump administration.

But so far, California gives lie to the conservative dictum that low taxes, few regulations, and low wages are the keys economic success. Trumpland should take note.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#159606: Nov 30th 2016 at 1:54:00 PM

Where does that leave New York?

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#159607: Nov 30th 2016 at 1:55:48 PM

Massachusetts voted more than 2 to 1 for Hillary and it's California that's the liberal capital, <grumbles>.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#159608: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:02:28 PM

[up] Also, Massachusetts was the only state where every district voted for Hillary. Sounds to me Boston is more of the Liberal Capital of the USA then San Francisco, Los Angeles or Sacramento.

IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#159609: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:04:44 PM

According to Wiki's data, the only place that went bluer than California was DC itself, which went 90.5 (D) - 4 (R) - 1.6 (L) - 1.4 (G), and normally I wouldn't mention the Greens and Libs, but since Cheeto Benito barely beat them, they deserve to be mentioned.

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
PotatoesRock Since: Oct, 2012
#159610: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:06:48 PM

To something that'll probably annoy people:

(Vox) Yglesias: The case for normalizing Trump: Foreign populists have been beaten by talking issues, not personality.

While Italy is suffering its own series of problems coming up, the likely point of value here still should be kept in mind:

You defeat a Trump (i.e. a crooked oligarch/billionaire) by turning him into a regular opponent. Refuse to get dragged into his bluster. Refuse to make it a direct charisma battle.

Stick every last failure to him, and talk policy and issues.

(And Advertise on those policies and issues, not "Trump Bad, Ooga Booga", it needs to be "Trump Bad, because X Y and Z".)

Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#159611: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:07:10 PM

It's gotta say something that DC is the bluest part of the country.

PotatoesRock Since: Oct, 2012
#159612: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:09:07 PM

Not terribly. It's a very poor city with a high minority population and a ton of Government bureaucrats.

Poverty + Minorities + Government Day-to-Day Workers who don't want their jobs screwed = Democratic turnout.

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#159613: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:11:53 PM

And unless I missed something, California still has that cost of living problem.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#159614: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:14:05 PM

@Julain Lapostat: The social sciences run into a fundamental problem in that knowledge of their findings feeds back into the system they are studying. That's a blockage that isn't present in the hard sciences. Beyond that, many of the claims made by the social sciences are non-falsifiable or non-repeatable, in contrast to the physical sciences, which heavily emphasize the ability for independent investigators to reproduce a set of resulted claimed by a researcher. Those disciplines that have overcome these limitations (ie economics and psychology, and history to a certain extent) and produced reasonably effective predictive frameworks are the ones that have broken out of the social science ghetto and into the mainstream. In the case of economics, being a quantitative field certainly helps.

Firstly the idea of "falsifiability" is a joke among hard scientists today. It was defined by Karl Popper and its distinctively harebrained and poorly thought out concept. Even anti-postmodern folks like Alan Sokal mocked that idea since it doesn't accurate describe how science works. Secondly, social science is not intended to be definite or permanent, its grounded in reasoning and strong empirical data. And even then social science's influence extends outside its field. Like Darwin was greatly inspired by economics and Adam Smith and all that, and that particular grand system way of linking society and systems allowed him to formulate his theory on evolution.

These days Freud is big among neuroscientists like Erich Kandel (a nobel prize winner): "Flawed as it may be, Freud’s is still a coherent and intellectually satisfying view of the mind. You can’t have a meaningful science of the brain without having a meaningful science of the mind." People are realizing that Freud started as a pioneering neuroscientist first and that he only turned to talking cure when he realized the technology and other Required Secondary Powers were not there for psychology to make it into a hard science, so he decided to Take a Third Option rather than be satisfied with mere incremental progress.

The kind of fashionable psychology in American mainstream is kind of a joke, based on faulty principles, that underpin why Freud mockingly stated that psychology would never work in the USA. He noted that America's yearning for "happiness", success, material wealth and for nice things and so on, would prevent them from coming to terms with its flaws and living and accepting reality. He was right of course.

SeptimusHeap MOD from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#159615: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:16:31 PM

This is a politics thread, not sociology or philosophy.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#159616: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:23:27 PM

It's gotta say something that DC is the bluest part of the country.

Historically the capitals of a hegemon tend to have opinions and views contrary to the government that surrounded it. The Roman Republic was bad and oligarchical but the residents of Rome hated the Senate and generally supported the Populares. This also applies to London, which as Brexit showed, was quite pro-EU and nowadays are thinking of becoming a city-state.

And Paris of course was famously unruly and defiant...being pro-English and pro-burgundian during The Hundred Years War to the point of legitimizing an assassination against a corrupt duke as a legal tyrannicide and it was so dangerous that the Sun King built a capital in Versailles to get away from the Parisians. During the Revolution, the women of Paris marched to Versailles and dragged the King and Queen kicking and screaming to the city, shifting the capital overnight. Victor Hugo famously described the French Revolution as a war of "France versus Europe and Paris versus France". This also applies to Berlin and Germany and I bet some other places.

In USA, Washington was a big part in the Civil Rights Movement and all those protests. There's no hard study on this but I would gather that being at the center of power makes a national identity stronger, and unite the people more firmly and bring closer to view the problems of state at hand.

JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#159617: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:24:20 PM

[up][up]Agreed...I thought that was under the rubric of American intellectual tensions and its ties to policy imagination but I apologize.

edited 30th Nov '16 2:24:47 PM by JulianLapostat

MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#159618: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:27:00 PM

To put this back on politics, I'd like verifications of the claims made in this article about this election's security, which I shall be included below in a folder for convenience's sake. I'll be emphasized certain parts in boldface because they piqued my interest the most.

    Election Security is a Matter of National Security 
It is not good enough to say, “We can’t prove fraud.” In every election, we need evidence that vote counts are accurate.

State-sponsored cyber-attacks seemingly intended to influence the 2016 Presidential election have raised a question: Is the vulnerability of computerized voting systems to hacking a critical threat to our national security? Can an adversary use methods of cyber-warfare to select our commander-in-chief?

A dedicated group of technically sophisticated individuals could steal an election by hacking voting machines key counties in just a few states. Indeed, University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex Halderman says that he and his students could have changed the result of the presidential election. Halderman et al. have hacked a lot of voting machines, and there are videos to prove it. I believe him.

Halderman isn’t going to steal an election, but a foreign power might be tempted to do so. The military expenditures of a medium-size country dwarf the cost of a multi-pronged attack, which could include using the internet, bribing employees of election offices and voting machine vendors, or just buying voting machine companies. It is likely that such an attack would not be detected, given our current election security practices.

What would alert us to such an attack? What should we do about it? If there is reason to suspect an election result (perhaps because it’s an upset victory that defies the vast majority of pre-election polls), common sense says we should double-check the results of the election as best we can. But this is hard to do in America. Recount laws vary with each state. In states where it is possible to get a recount, it often has to be requested by one of the candidates, often at considerable expense.

In the recent election, it is fortunate that Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein, citing potential security breaches, recently requested a recount of the 2016 presidential vote in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and plans to do so in Michigan. Donald Trump unexpectedly won these three states by very narrow margins, and their recount laws are favorably compared with some of the other swing states.

With the limited information we have so far, there is no convincing evidence in the reported results that the election was stolen electronically. However, there is heightened public concern because of alleged Russian hacking of campaign emails and voter registration systems. Also, Mr. Trump and his advisors broadcast repeated claims that the election would be rigged by means including fraudulent voting machines.

Now that the election is over, we must defend our voting system more effectively. It is clearly vulnerable to attack not only by foreign powers, but by criminal groups, campaigns, and motivated amateurs. If elections lose their credibility, democracy can quickly disintegrate. After every election, it is not good enough to say, “We can’t prove fraud.” In every election, we need evidence that vote counts are accurate.

The good news is that we know how to solve this problem. We need to audit computers by manually examining randomly selected paper ballots and comparing the results to machine results. Audits require a voter-verified paper ballot, which the voter inspects to confirm that his or her selections have been correctly and indelibly recorded. Since 2003, an active community of academics, lawyers, election officials and activists has urged states to adopt paper ballots and robust audit procedures. This campaign has had significant, but slow, success. As of now, about three quarters of U.S. voters vote on paper ballots. Twenty-six states do some type of manual audit, but none of their procedures are adequate. Auditing methods have recently been devised that are much more efficient than those used in any state. It is important that audits be performed on every contest in every election, so that citizens do not have to request manual recounts to feel confident about election results. With high-quality audits, it is very unlikely that election fraud will go undetected whether perpetrated by another country or a political party.

There is no reason we can’t implement these measures before the 2020 elections. As a nation, we need to recognize the urgency of the task, to overcome the political and organizational obstacles that have impeded progress. Otherwise, we risk losing our country to hackers armed with keyboards, without a shot being fired.

edited 30th Nov '16 2:27:34 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#159619: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:55:38 PM

Interesting article on the history of the word "politically correct" and its unique American shifts:

Ruth Perry, a literature professor at MIT who was active in the feminist and civil rights movements, says that many radicals were reading the Little Red Book in the late 1960s and 1970s, and surmises that her friends may have picked up the adjective “correct” there. But they didn’t use it in the way Mao did. “Politically correct” became a kind of in-joke among American leftists – something you called a fellow leftist when you thought he or she was being self-righteous. “The term was always used ironically,” Perry says, “always calling attention to possible dogmatism.”

In 1970, the African-American author and activist Toni Cade Bambara, used the phrase in an essay about strains on gender relations within her community. No matter how “politically correct” her male friends thought they were being, she wrote many of them were failing to recognise the plight of black women.

Until the late 1980s, “political correctness” was used exclusively within the left, and almost always ironically as a critique of excessive orthodoxy. In fact, some of the first people to organise against “political correctness” were a group of feminists who called themselves the Lesbian Sex Mafia. In 1982, they held a “Speakout on Politically Incorrect Sex” at a theatre in New York’s East Village – a rally against fellow feminists who had condemned pornography and BDSM. Over 400 women attended, many of them wearing leather and collars, brandishing nipple clamps and dildos. The writer and activist Mirtha Quintanales summed up the mood when she told the audience, “We need to have dialogues about S&M issues, not about what is ‘politically correct, politically incorrect’.”

By the end of the 1980s, Jeff Chang, the journalist and hip-hop critic, who has written extensively on race and social justice, recalls that the activists he knew then in the Bay Area used the phrase “in a jokey way – a way for one sectarian to dismiss another sectarian’s line”.

But soon enough, the term was rebranded by the right, who turned its meaning inside out. All of a sudden, instead of being a phrase that leftists used to check dogmatic tendencies within their movement, “political correctness” became a talking point for neoconservatives. They said that PC constituted a leftwing political programme that was seizing control of American universities and cultural institutions – and they were determined to stop it.

Proves what I always believed. American Rightwingers have no sense of humor, are incredibly dumb and don't get that they are the punchline to a joke they are repeating without understanding it.

Miserable troglodytes they are.

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#159620: Nov 30th 2016 at 2:59:42 PM

Election Security is a Matter of National Security

Well, duh? If everybody can simply walk in and rig your elections, you aren't a country. You are someone else's puppet government.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#159621: Nov 30th 2016 at 3:04:25 PM

Continued:

The right had been waging a campaign against liberal academics for more than a decade. Starting in the mid-1970s, a handful of conservative donors had funded the creation of dozens of new thinktanks and “training institutes” offering programmes in everything from “leadership” to broadcast journalism to direct-mail fundraising. They had endowed fellowships for conservative graduate students, postdoctoral positions and professorships at prestigious universities. Their stated goal was to challenge what they saw as the dominance of liberalism and attack left-leaning tendencies within the academy. ... The responses that the conservative bestsellers offered to the changes they described were disproportionate and often misleading. For instance, Bloom complained at length about the “militancy” of African American students at Cornell University, where he had taught in the 1960s. He never mentioned what students demanding the creation of African American studies were responding to: the biggest protest at Cornell took place in 1969 after a cross burning on campus, an open KKK threat. (An arsonist burned down the Africana Studies Center, founded in response to these protests, in 1970.)

More than any particular obfuscation or omission, the most misleading aspect of these books was the way they claimed that only their adversaries were “political”. ... In truth, these crusaders against political correctness were every bit as political as their opponents. As Jane Mayer documents in her book, Dark Money: the Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Bloom and D’Souza were funded by networks of conservative donors – particularly the Koch, Olin and Scaife families – who had spent the 1980s building programmes that they hoped would create a new “counter-intelligentsia”. (The New Criterion, where Kimball worked, was also funded by the Olin and Scaife Foundations.) In his 1978 book A Time for Truth, William Simon, the president of the Olin Foundation, had called on conservatives to fund intellectuals who shared their views: “They must be given grants, grants, and more grants in exchange for books, books, and more books.”

These skirmishes over syllabuses were part of a broader political programme – and they became instrumental to forging a new alliance for conservative politics in America, between white working-class voters and small business owners, and politicians with corporate agendas that held very little benefit for those people.

By making fun of professors who spoke in language that most people considered incomprehensible (“The Lesbian Phallus”), wealthy Ivy League graduates could pose as anti-elite. By mocking courses on writers such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, they made a racial appeal to white people who felt as if they were losing their country. As the 1990s wore on, because multiculturalism was associated with globalisation – the force that was taking away so many jobs traditionally held by white working-class people – attacking it allowed conservatives to displace responsibility for the hardship that many of their constituents were facing. It was not the slashing of social services, lowered taxes, union busting or outsourcing that was the cause of their problems. It was those foreign “others”.

PC was a useful invention for the Republican right because it helped the movement to drive a wedge between working-class people and the Democrats who claimed to speak for them. “Political correctness” became a term used to drum into the public imagination the idea that there was a deep divide between the “ordinary people” and the “liberal elite”, who sought to control the speech and thoughts of regular folk. Opposition to political correctness also became a way to rebrand racism in ways that were politically acceptable in the post-civil-rights era.

Soon, Republican politicians were echoing on the national stage the message that had been product-tested in the academy. In May 1991, President George HW Bush gave a commencement speech at the University of Michigan. In it, he identified political correctness as a major danger to America. “Ironically, on the 200th anniversary of our Bill of Rights, we find free speech under assault throughout the United States,” Bush said. “The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land,” but, he warned, “In their own Orwellian way, crusades that demand correct behaviour crush diversity in the name of diversity.”

Always knew George Orwell was the real useful idiot...

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#159622: Nov 30th 2016 at 3:12:18 PM

A few countries in Europe - such as Switzerland - have laws against racist expression. I can't help but notice that much of the anti-PC movement resembles the opposition to such laws. Perhaps PC is an American counterpart to such anti-bigotry statutes in Europe?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Lanceleoghauni Cyborg Helmsman from Z or R Twice Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: In my bunk
#159623: Nov 30th 2016 at 3:13:48 PM

I feel like there may have at one point been a use for the right wing of politics, but these days I can't seem to find a moral justification for is existence.

"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#159624: Nov 30th 2016 at 3:16:21 PM

Interestingly enough, not focusing into Sander's populist campaign promises was a smart move from the Democrats but with Trump's victory this could be reversed.

The Economist: Democrats on the brink

The American left is in danger of learning precisely the wrong lesson from defeat

AGHAST at the defection of millions who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 but for Donald Trump in 2016—notably working-class whites in the Midwest—the left wants the Democratic Party to snatch up the banner of economic populism and declare war on Wall Street, big business and other global elites. At post-election gatherings like the Democracy Alliance conference in Washington, DC, it is an article of faith that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the snowy-haired, finger-jabbing scold who lost the Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton, would have trounced Mr Trump in the general election.

Such Democrats are making a mistake. It is as if America’s political classes are bent on copying every part of Britain’s current flirtation with who-needs-experts populism. Not content with holding an election that saw voters sharply divided by education, age, geography and attitudes to social change—as happened with the Brexit referendum—American leftists seem ready to follow Britain’s Labour Party down the path of self-righteous irrelevance. On November 14th protesters were arrested after a sit-in in the office of the Democratic leader in the Senate, Charles Schumer of New York, blaming him and other “Wall Street Democrats” for Mr Trump’s victory and demanding that he step aside in favour of Mr Sanders or another leftist icon, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Sanders-boosters point to polls, taken months ago, that showed him beating Mr Trump in a head-to-head contest. His “the system is rigged” rhetoric made him the Republican’s equal when it came to indignation, supporters note, while his rumpled asceticism (he is one of the poorest members of the Senate) and plain-spoken integrity made him a more convincing anti-establishment champion than Mrs Clinton. Because the election was so close, decided in just a few battleground states, Mr Sanders could have won by convincing a few hundred thousand workers angry about globalisation and free trade.

The Democratic left is missing a crucial detail: those surveys were taken when most Americans knew little about Mr Sanders. When Lexington conducted an unscientific straw poll of prominent Democrats in Washington this week, they were strikingly cautious about declaring the Vermont senator a national champion. For every Trump vote that Bernie Sanders would have won, his positions could have cost Democrats support from other voter blocs, suggests Representative Steve Israel, a centrist from Long Island who is retiring this year. Mr Sanders never faced the “scouring light” of media scrutiny, notes Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, delicately: “we don’t know” how he would have done.

Had Democrats owned a crystal ball and known in advance that Mr Trump would be their opponent they might have beaten him by picking a different mainstream candidate, for instance Vice-President Joe Biden. But Mr Sanders would have faced months of attack ads, running something like this. “Radical Bernie Sanders doesn’t like America. That’s why he backs tyrants who hate our freedoms [the screen shows old quotes from Mr Sanders praising Fidel Castro of Cuba]. It’s why he wants to make us like bankrupt, failed Europe, with open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens [images of refugees in the Mediterranean, terror attacks in Belgium and France, then Sanders quotes comparing America unfavourably with Denmark]. He wants government-run health care [viewers see a shabby hospital], abortion on demand and welfare for all. Who’d pay for this? You would, with some of the biggest tax hikes in our history. Bernie Sanders, a danger to America.” A third senior Democrat succinctly calls talk of Mr Sanders winning a general election “insane”.

Populist politicians are gaining ground across the democratic West. But in Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary and the Nordic countries so admired by Mr Sanders, the most successful anti-elite movements are broadly of the right, not the left. Even in Greece, where radical leftists hold power, soak-the-rich populism is allied to nationalist resentment at foreigners causing austerity.

This is no accident. To simplify, populists of the left talk about fairness: an abstract idea. They call for government to break up big banks, make sure the rich pay taxes or erect tariff or regulatory barriers to keep globalisation at bay. Populists of the right happily borrow leftish lines about putting domestic workers first, and curbing the might of international finance. But then instead of talking about fairness, they talk of safety and control, of defending precious values that are under assault, and of keeping The Other at bay. Rather than fixing the system, they talk of taking their country back. If it suits their needs, populists of the right will present government itself as an agent of tyranny. Those are potent slogans that appeal to the gut, not the head—and in America just helped Republicans to elect a billionaire who calls tax-avoidance “smart”. They are reasons why the centre-left should beware of choosing to fight the right on populist ground.

If you can’t beat ’em, don’t join ’em

The hard lesson of 2016 is that mainstream politicians do not yet have a perfect answer to the demagogues sweeping the West. Mrs Clinton was a clunking candidate who—disastrously—took the Midwest for granted. But her larger problem was that she could not match Mr Trump’s willingness to tell angry workers whatever they wanted to hear, as when he promised to bring back coal-mining jobs, or manufacturing from Asia. Every rich-world politician knows what voters want: to be shielded from competition that they feel is unfair or unbearable, whether from machines or foreigners. But no responsible leader knows how to do that without harming the economy. As Mr Booker says: “You can’t create policy against a microchip.” As they enter a spell in the wilderness, Democrats cannot out-promise Mr Trump. They need to out-think him, by finding policies that work in the real world, in ways that voters can touch and feel. They have four years.

Inter arma enim silent leges
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#159625: Nov 30th 2016 at 3:19:51 PM

[up] So trying their damnedest to be a Doomed Moral Victor is "smart"?


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