While you are working out your contributions to the
discussion I proposed we have, I thought I would lay before you a little
arithmetic example that I worked out yesterday while taking my morning walk.
Since I am a philosopher by profession I am, of course, under no obligation to
pay any particular attention to the real world so these numbers are all quite
hypothetical. They have been chosen principally to make the arithmetic easy.
Let us suppose there is a state in which there are 1 million
eligible voters. Suppose as well that a series of polls have shown that 55% of
the eligible voters support Biden and 45% support Trump. I am ignoring support
for third-party candidates and I am ignoring as well those who respond “don’t
know” when asked by pollsters whom they support. This last assumption actually
has some grounding in reality. If you go to the website DailyKos you will find
at the top of the main page a number of little graphics showing the evolution
of various opinion polls over the course of the Trump presidency [it has now disappeared.] I mostly care
about how large the negative over positive gap is but if you look at the bottom
of the graphic you will find that for the last 3 ½ years almost no one has
answered “don’t know.”
Thus in our imaginary state, by hypothesis, 550,000 voters
support Biden and 450,000 support Trump. Over the last eight or 10 presidential election
cycles roughly 60% of the eligible voters have actually gone to the polls. If
that were to happen this year, it would mean that Biden would get 330,000 votes
and Trump would get 270,000, a quite comfortable margin for Biden. Assuming
that there are rational political operatives still associated with the Trump
campaign, how can they possibly hope to win in such a state?
Well, suppose that Trump succeeds by his ugly, divisive,
racist campaign in driving up the turnout of his supporters to 75%. Suppose as
well that white bread vanilla Biden merely draws the historically usual 60%. In
that case, Biden still gets 330,000 votes but Trump gets 337,500 votes and wins
a narrow victory. He does this without persuading a single Biden voter to
switch to his side.
Now the Biden campaign operatives may be working for a bland
unexciting candidate but they are not fools and they understand this
possibility quite well. So they work as hard as they can to get extra Biden
supporters to the polls. It is a hard slog because there is not much one can
say about Biden to excite a Biden supporter, but they work at it and manage to
bring Biden’s turnout up from 60% to 65%. In that case, while Trump has driven
his support at the polls up to 337,000, Biden’s vote is now 357,500, and Biden wins
by 20,000.
When political experts on cable news say that turnout is
everything, this is what they mean. In light of these numbers, why am I
confident that Biden will win? Well, elections are decided by emotion, not by
rational calculation, and there are two sorts of emotions that get people to
the polls – the positive and the negative. Voters are pulled to the polls by
hope, by desire, by love, by enthusiasm, even by exaltation. And they are
driven to the polls by anger, by disgust, by hatred, by fear, by despair, and
by loathing. There is a considerable amount of anecdotal and statistical
evidence to suggest that Biden voters are being driven to the polls by all of
these negative emotions, not by hope, by desire, by love, or by enthusiasm for
Biden and certainly not by exaltation. I prefer love to hate, hope to despair,
and enthusiasm to disgust, but in politics as in much of life you take what you
can get.
31 comments:
One of my neighbors has a bumper sticker that reads "ByeDon 2020", which pithily sums up the negative motivation side of the equation.
I think there are grounds not to get too confident about the outcome of a November election in early July, however. I would not place any bets on the outcome right now if I were a bettor (which I'm not).
It certainly does appear that Biden's lead in the polls isn't all pro-Biden, but in large part anti-Trump. Consider the great commercials by the Republicans of the Lincoln Project, and the recently formed group of Bush Jr. officials lobbying fellow-Republicans to vote for Biden. Turn-out is vital, but I worry more about voter suppression and the impact of the pandemic on turn-out than about lack of enthusiasm for Biden. To add to the problems, the Washington Post today has a story about an impending wave of evictions. Those evicted will be largely Democratic voters--and the red tape involved in changing their addresses and place of voting might be more than many of them can handle at the time. There are many factors that could diminish the Democratic vote besides Biden's lack of charisma.
All quite true, and worrying. We cannot let up.
"Since I am a philosopher by profession I am, of course, under no obligation to pay any particular attention to the real world so these numbers are all quite hypothetical."
"Conventional economist" can be substituted for "philosopher" in the above.
Now there is nothing wrong with exploring theory independent of fact, but going on to represent it as modeling the real world is a step too far without connecting the model with data. A result of this applied to policy is a factor is creating and sustaining the mess we are in, since both parties are listening to this policy advice.
Add to this the administrative state (similar to the siloviki and nomenclature of Soviet times) that functions to preserve existing policy across administrations.
The major opposition to Trump thus far has come from the administrative state in cooperation with the media. If anyone is going to take Trump & co. down it will be the administrative state.
Even it Trump goes won't fix all that much. The current policy is still transnational turbo-capitalism based on liberal internationalism (real liberal interventionism to preserve and extend neoliberalism, neo-imperialism, and neocolonialism in a unipolar world.
"Even if Trump goes it won't fix all that much."
It depends on what you consider "that much." Trump's going is likely to mean a return to the Paris climate agreement, to the WHO, and, to the extent possible, to the other international accords he's trashed. It's likely to mean something better in terms of income and wealth inequality, in healthcare, in rule of law rather than rule of Barr. Looking six months backwards, to January, had Trump not been in office, we would not have accounted, as we do, for 25% of the world's corona virus deaths; the number would be significantly closer to, if now lower than, the 5% share we have of the world's population. It is no exaggeration to suggest that 100,000 Americans, who were alive in January, are dead today because of Trump's incompetence. In my book, that's "much."
@ David Palmeter
The president's chief remit is foreign policy and as cinc he is the most powerful powerful person in the world, on whose decisions the fate of the world depends.
The US has had a new war under every president since, and including, Ronald Reagan. Jimmy Carter can be included if one counts arming the Afgan "freedom fighters" under Osama Bin Laden on the advice of Zbigniew Brzezinski, then National Security Advisor. HRC is on record saying that this lead to the formation of AQ and ISIS, but it was worth it.
Donald Trump has started no new wars and has resisted enormous pressure to do so in Iran (so far). He is now being demonized for attempting to withdraw from a quagmire in Afghanistan that has bogged the US down for 17 years with no end in sight without an exit strategy. Now Congress is attempting to prevent this by law, which can only be done in a bipartisan way to make it veto-proof.
Donald Trump is not against war, of course. He is just against wars of choice without a reasonable plan to win and an exit strategy rather than endless war. He is looking at the ledger in terms of blood and treasure, rather than a geostrategy based on the projection of military force that accepts endless war as a cost.
He is also being demonized for following Henry Kissinger's advice not to drive Russia and China together in the only military alliance that can destroy the US. It did not take HK to realize this, but HK did actually tell DJT this personally, from what I understand. The administrative state blew that up using a complicit media, with the unwitting assistance of the mindless Resistance. Biden has piled on rather than helping.
The world now faces three chief threats that are known — pandemics, climate change, and war involving WMD. US policy is toying with nuclear war. Do you really think that Biden as president/cinc is a safer bet regarding foreign and military policy? If so, why?
I have little doubt that the US would now be in a disastrous war with Iran, and possibly, WWIII, if HRC were elected instead of DJT. How is Joe Biden different in this regard from HRC.
One can object that the pandemic issue is as important as war using WMD. I would dispute that to a degree but only to a degree. However, I don't think that the response to this pandemic is as clear as some belief, on opposing sides. I have looked into this in some detail and the way forward is not clear, especially given the tradeoffs, that is to say, for example, the longer the lockdown the greater the probability of global depressions also involving mass deaths. But this is another topic.
I am not arguing here for or against a vote for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Personally, I approach this a matter of survival. Given the issues and the candidates' respective positions, background, and records, I will be voting for neither of them, especially if a there is a 3rd party candidate that reflects my values more closely. I don't believe in voting for the better of the worse. That is the death of democracy in my view. But that is just my considered view.
Regarding the arithmetic, total numbers by party candidate are only indicative and not decisive, since it is electoral votes that count. HRC won the popular vote handedly, as did Al Gore, although as I recall Gore's margin was smaller. Both were highly contentious elections, as the coming election is already.
Since Karl Rove entered the game with his previous experience in direct marketing, political strategy has been based on county by county within the states. The electoral college vote is tallied by state, and political analysis shows which counties within states are in play and by about how much. This serves to target campaign spending to secure the various states electoral votes.
The point is that some states and counties are play and other not so much. The arithmetic in those places determines the outcome. Both parties do extensive polling to determine this and use the result to shape campaign strategy. Of course, this is proprietary information that is not divulged.
I would be looking at any information that gives insight into these state and county numbers, which, of course, are in flux over the campaign as tactics are brought to bear in the battleground areas.
Savvy analysis looks at this instead of the popular vote, which is pretty much meaningless in comparison when it gets down the nitty-gritty numbers.
I live in a purple state (Iowa) in a safe Democratic county (Johnson), where the University of Iowa campus is located. Although I started out as a Republican (Republican family), I voted early on for JFK and ruled out the GOP since Nixon.
Since then I have also ruled out the Democratic Establishment after being betrayed by Bill Clinton, especially after he adopted Dick Morris's triangulation strategy, and then by Obama. The Democratic Establishment's strategy is based on capturing the center by attracting disaffected Republicans and placating conservative Democrats while dissing the progressive base, including even the faux-progressives.
I don't see how Democrats win without the progressive base being enthusiastic and therefore active. And if they do win, they will govern as GOP-lite, that is, neoliberal and neoconservative policy along with appointment of neoliberals and neoconservatives in the administration.
When Biden was vice president, he argued unsuccessfully within the Obama administration against the 2009 Afghanistan US troop 'surge'.
As for Iran, Trump's "maximum pressure campaign" was supposed to alter Iran's behavior in the region. All it really seems to have done is deepen the tensions and probably harm the Iranian population. Trump's withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal has not furthered the prospects of peace (to put it mildly). So I don't think Trump's policy toward Iran has been a success. Admittedly it's not an easy issue (no issues in that region are), but I don't see Biden as being significantly worse on most of these issues. Trump's policy toward Russia and China has not been consistent or coherent, so I don't give him a lot of credit for that either. He does get some credit for trying to get out of Afghanistan.
Btw 'the administrative state' has not prevented most of Trump's rollback of environmental regulations, which is likely to impact disproportionately the poorest communities and areas.
Let's assume that both Biden and Trump are going to equally bad on foreign and even domestic policy. By the way, Obama did some good things in foreign policy: reached out to Cuba, help broker a peace agreement in Colombia, accepted the Iran nuclear agreement, while Trump has done some horrendous stuff, 100% support of Israeli expansionism, pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement, undoing Obama's positive gestures towards Cuba and backing a coup against South America's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in Bolivia.
So both Trump and Biden are horrid as presidents in terms of long-term policies. Which of the two would you prefer to have as your boss in any normal company or university, which of the two would you prefer to head your building administration in the condominium where you live if you live in one, which of the two would you pick to take care of your small child for an hour or two? If it were Trump or Obama, I'd pick Obama without a moment's thought. I don't trust Biden, I don't like him, but still I'd end up picking him over Trump. How about a life-boat situation? Who would you rather have commanding the life-boat you're in? Sure, JFK. Again Obama without a doubt, but even though I'd keep my eye on Biden if he were in charge, I'd pick him over Trump.
@LFC
I give DJT four stars so far for avoiding another kinetic war when all his predecessors of late have succumbed. He doesn't get five since he is willing to continue kinetic war to secure the oil for the US. And that is just dumb in addition to being strategic blunder of appearing to steal the oil. "Everyone knows" that these are in great part oil wars, but Trump's sin was saying so publicly. Things like that are political red lines.
To his credit also, he tried to disengage from Syria, too, but the military and intelligence services torpedoed it, just as they did the arrangement that Obama and Kerry made with Putin. No one got fired in either case.
I do not support DJT's policy of hybrid warfare, or his preference for economic warfare. It is despicable in its attack on the nation as whole, including civilian populations. It is tantamount to a war crime.
But to my way of thinking, hybrid warfare is preferable to kinetic warfare. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that it risks use of WMD even if "only" accidentally.
Hybrid warfare aimed at regime change is considered more antiseptic than kinetic warfare, and it is probably less lethal. But it is still lethal and the civilian population bears the brunt.
From the strategic point of view hybrid is superior to kinetic warfare in theaters where the target is incapable of responding significantly in the face of US pressure, so I would tend to agree with the president if US policy is regime change the way to begin is with hybrid warfare, which includes everything but overt military action, although paramilitary action is included in hybrid warfare. Paramilitary action used to be carrie out exclusively through the operational arm of the CIA but now special forces are apparently being used.
But hybrid warfare appears not to be effective with respect to results. In fact, sanctions have arguably left Russia, China, and Iran stronger owing to import substitution leading to creation of few domestic capabilities. Russia, China and Iran have also developed alternative payment systems to avoid use of the USD in international settlement.
The military would prefer hybrid warfare if it proved to work, but that proof has been insufficient. So the hardliners press for overt action instead. DJT has so far resisted that pressure, and so far no commander has been willing to pull the trigger.
But there is a cost to hybrid warfare, too. A huge cost is loss of US soft power, which increases reliance on hard power, which in the end is military power. It has also resulted in part in diminished stature of the war and increased the perception that the US is a rogue state.
Another cost of economic warfare is the incentive to create systems to avoid it, such as alternative payments systems that circumvent the dollar. As a consequence dollar hegemony is under pressure.
I don't think that Biden would have a similar commitment preferring hybrid warfare, other than regime change as in Ukraine, which the US funded and nurtured, following which US officials effectively took over the Ukrainian government to the degree possible in an environment of corruption and extreme fanaticism bordering on neo-Nazism.
Consequently, a President Biden would be subject to great pressure to get involved kinetically, advised by the usual "experts" that is a matter of "national security." And what president (other than DJT of late) doesn't want his own war.
In fact, the only Democratic candidate to advocate for a measured foreign and military policy based on foreign policy realism. The rest of the Democrats, both establishment and progressive, embraced the traditional policy of liberal internationalism, which involves liberal interventionism, which is daft in a world in which most nations have traditional societies that view American liberalism as moral degeneracy.
s. wallerstein,
Amen.
First look at Mary Trump's forthcoming book, at Sputnik.
@ s. wallerstein
If you view it as a binary choice, yes. But I don't view it as a binary choice.
Disclosure: I voted for Jill Stein in the last election since on principle I could not vote for either DJT (torture advocate) or HRC (warmonger).
The other choices are 3rd party and not voting. These the alternatives that the Democratic Party establishment is contending with.
Biden is now trying to address this with his unity committees and selection of female person of color as VP. Wall Street has ruled out Elizabeth Warren and Wall Street is a key part of the party establishment's donor base.
The Democratic Party's success in the coming election depends on the progressive basis, which is incorrectly called "left." It is not really left for the most part. It is left of center with respect to the global political spectrum. The US is a solidly center right country.
That means it is committed to economic liberalism, whose economic manifestation is some form of capitalism.
However the problem with the system is largely economic liberalism and its attendant expression as capitalism in the sense of institutional favoring of capital accumulation over the other factors, labor and environment, because growth. This concept of growth includes the assumption that a rising tide lifts all boats aka trickle down. The reality of any form of capitalism, however, is hoover up.
No one is addressing this, and that includes Bernie with his tax the rich policy. The only way around this is to reduce and ideally eliminate economic rent, which leads to rent seeking and rent extraction as the basis of commerce and finance.
@ Tom Hickey
DJT certainly continued the policy of using air power vs ISIS in Iraq and Syria, actually loosening the Obama rules of engagement, resulting in more civilian casualties. And Trump has not really disengaged from Syria, just moved US soldiers away from the northern border where they were helping protect Syrian Kurds from Turkey. The US media appropriately made a fuss about this and then stopped headlining what's going on with the Syrian Kurds, forcing those who want to know to read the BBC, specialist blogs or other outlets, or the deep inside pp of NYT (or maybe WaPo).
"forcing those who want to know to read the BBC, specialist blogs or other outlets, or the deep inside pp of NYT (or maybe WaPo)"
These are under the influence of the people behind the scenes. I don't trust any of them.
Regarding specialist blogs that there are more or less objective blogs by international experts. But the US specialist blogs by US establishment connected figures are at the very least US status quo centric, if not propaganda mouthpieces.
Russian state sponsored RT and Sputnik International are actually more objective with respect to international news. Of course, they more or less give the Russian status quo spin to domestic news. But I have not caught them outright lying yet, as I have the "highly credible" US and UK sources.
BTW, I review over five hundred feeds daily and read what I think is most relevant. some of those sources are excellent in one area and not in others. Most are way off track with respect to economics, for example, although they may be good with respect to geopolitics. And very few are good on military matters.
Then there is fitting all into a conceptual model of the world system as one views it based on the most credible evidence that one can come up with. This is how intel analysis works, for example, but much of this analysis is in terms of a national status quo view of the world system, so it is limited.
Tom Hickey,
In some sense, it is a binary choice since Jill Stein or whoever the Greens nominate has about as much chance as being elected as you and I do.
Perhaps electoral politics is not the place for socialist organizing, which is a long-term project involving changing people's heads through education, while short politic campaigns work with slogans and catch-phrases.
I myself am not going to vote for Biden and probably couldn't even if I wanted to. I live in Chile and the U.S. embassy is basically shut due to the pandemic. The Chilean post office is barely functioning, again due to the pandemic. However, I haven't voted in a U.S. presidential election since 1972 when I voted for McGovern. I do vote in Chile.
I've previously stated in this blog that while I will not vote for Biden, I will not criticize those who do. I'm not going to criticize those who vote for a third party candidate either although I do not see Trump and Biden as "the same thing". Trump is a gangster, while Biden is a conventionally corrupt neoliberal Democrat.
In the 2000 election in Florida, Bush defeated Gore by fewer than 600 votes. Ralph Nader got more than 97,000 votes. Among the results of Nader's candidacy were (1) those who voted for Nader felt noble and pure; (2) the war in Iraq; (3) John Roberts on the Supreme Court; (4) Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court. It's worth keeping in mind that the much-criticized Bill Clinton nominated Steve Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Court. There's every reason to believe that had Gore the chance to fill those vacancies, they would have been far more like Breyer and Ginsburg than Roberts and Alito. And the lives of many Americans would have been better today and tomorrow. And a lot of people killed in Iraq would be alive, both Iraqis and Americans.
And as long as people vote for the better of the worse for pragmatic reasons instead of voting their principles, party politics will change little. This is one of the ways that meaningful change is prevented and the electorate is diverted from their real interests.
George Washington warned about the outcome of party factionalism back then.
Farewell Address
About half way through. The first paragraph begins "I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, "…
Tom Hickey writes that the president’s chief remit is foreign policy. Now maybe I’m naive and this is some conventional view of things, but seeing as how the president’s signature is required to make any bill into law, how s/he gets to appoint federal judges from the SC on down, how s/he has the power to hire or fire virtually any federal employee (from the cabinet on down), I’d say it’s rather foolish to simply shrug off the president’s role in domestic affairs.
I simply don’t buy that Biden would be worse than the current occupant of the WH. In fact, I think he’d be better in almost every conceivable respect. I don’t see a scenario in which Biden enters office with guns blazing for war — just as I didn’t see a scenario in which HRC did the same (certainly not in Iran). I am not a fan of either of them, but I believe that they and the Democratic Party have been chastened by the disastrous example of the major foreign policy event in my lifetime — the Iraq War, which of course Biden and HRC did support (as did DJT). In other words, there’s this tendency to essentialize political figures, to say “Oh, they represent the hawkish wing of the party, so of course they’re going to start some war somewhere.” But history is contingent; circumstances and positions change. As an example, as LFC pointed out, we recently learned that as V.P. Biden actually advocated for drawing down troops in Afghanistan.
Is the current occupant of the WH a dove? Well, let’s not forget that this is the man who proclaimed that the U.S. should take Iraq’s oil as the spoils of war, who announced that the U.S. would be keeping the oil in Northern Syria, who ordered the assassination of Suleimani in Iran (and the only reason that didn’t escalate into direct military conflict is that the Iranians’ response was deemed to be sufficiently anemic), who said we should “go after their [terrorist’s] families,” and who vetoed a bipartisan Congressional resolution to end U.S. involvement in Yemen. There are also reports that military intervention in Venezuela was being seriously considered, before T***p simply got bored. And as for Syria, for what it’s worth, I would just point out that Noam Chomsky of all people actually agreed with the U.S. foreign policy establishment on keeping troops there (and does this mean the U.S. military does sometimes perform legitimate policing functions, and all isn’t merely imperial conquest?).
Everyone sees the world from a different vantage based on their background, exposure to experience, persuasion. A foundational aspect of world views is the value structure, criteria, definition of key terminology, ability to reason and analytic ability, ability to synthesize, etc.
In my 80+ years my world view has been shaped by many inputs some or which were of major impact. For me, it was serving as a naval officer during the early years of the Vietnam War ("Conflict," actually). I was radicalized when I figured out what was really going on and why the US was involved in a geographically obscure place that the French colonialists had recently been driven out of. As that war unfolded, I watched as 50,000 American died and thousands more were wounded or maimed. I was quite horrified at what went down under the Whiz Kids, Robert McNamara in particular. This was war by the numbers. The military were no better, Gen. Westmoreland comes to mind. They just kept on throwing in troops with little concern for casualties.
There is false belief that the anti-war movement got Nixon but the reality is it had little actual effect. What got him was an intra-government soft coup that emerged based on the Watergate burglary of Democratic HQ orchestrated from the WH, the stupid coverup, and especially Deep Throat, who turned out to be associate director of the FBI Mark Felt who had a grudge against Nixon. But all this might have been unsuccessful in removing the president without the courageous action of John Sirica, United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Of course, the anti-war people were all delirious over Nixon's resignation. But we were also under no illusions about the system and where it was headed. I had already stuck my head pretty deeply into the workings of the system and it was clear to me that American democracy was a essentially fraud, that the political system was corrupt, and that the military was essentially for the protection of translational capital that was under the control of the US and UK — and that the special relationship between the US and UK was a lot more sinister than most were aware.
One may not agree with this world view, or even think it is basically conspiracy theory, but I have seen it up close and to me it is a matter of experience as much as opinion.
continued
continuation
I didn't connect this to economics at that time, since my understanding of economics was shaped by the conventional world view. The only course I took in econ (sophomore year 1957-58) used Paul Samuelson's text.
I read Marx in grad school, for example, but more for the philosophical aspect than the economic aspect and I considered Marx a philosopher rather than an economist I still do, since I have come to see economics as more in terms of philosophy than science. As Keynes said, it is a "moral science." It has a normative basis.
I got into systems theory in grad school and this really broadened my perspective since it provided a powerful lens through which to view the world and to view the different philosophers. I concluded that they were presenting a world view in terms of key fundamentals in the categories of ontology, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. These are different lens for viewing the world system.
Subsequently, I educated myself in economics, heterodox economics in particular, since it is clear that conventional economics is an apologia for economic liberalism. Economic liberalism and its offspring, the various forms of capitalism, are treated as fundamental to liberalism. Social and political liberalism are considered to be functions of economic liberalism in this scheme. Basic to this is an absolute right to private property and its disposition as not only as a "natural right of man" but also as basic as personal liberty. From this the rest follows as a natural progression.
As a result of this, I have come to several conclusions. First, the basis of the world system dynamics is power and power is mediated through class structure, which can be viewed as a system of interfacing social networks. Secondly, this results in asymmetry of power and wealth, which are joined at the hip in plutocracy. Thirdly, power enables the extraction of economic rent, which is the basis for the expropriation of workers through wage labor in imperfect markets. Fourthly, power is projected from the core to the periphery by those holding it though imperialism and colonialism, which have now morphed into neo-imperialism and neocolonialism. It is highly efficient and amoral system that favors haves over have-nots based on control instead of merit, as advertised.
The upshot is obscene inequality reminiscent of feudalism. exploitation of the planet to the degree of creating ecological disaster, and endless war directed at projecting power globally.
Friends, the present party system is designed to perpetuate this. I am not OK with that, and I think it is a moral matter. I am not going to vote not-Trump. I want to hear proposals for a solution in terms of a vision and how to actualize it. No politician in the US is addressing this yet to the degree necessary. So far, crickets.
If viewpoint is romantic idealism, so be it. And I get Greta's grit. I would be out there on the front lines again if I were starting out, too. Time to say, Enough already!
@ Ed Barreras
"Tom Hickey writes that the president’s chief remit is foreign policy. Now maybe I’m naive and this is some conventional view of things, but seeing as how the president’s signature is required to make any bill into law, how s/he gets to appoint federal judges from the SC on down, how s/he has the power to hire or fire virtually any federal employee (from the cabinet on down), I’d say it’s rather foolish to simply shrug off the president’s role in domestic affairs."
The president has control of foreign policy for the most part, since Congress has largely delegated what power it has over foreign policy to the president. (Big mistake.)
The rest of what the president does either concerns Congress, e.g., vetoing bills present to the president, appointing senior officials and judges that require senate confirmation, proposing policy to the legislature, etc. True the president has a lot of power with respect to issuing executive orders, appointing personnel that don't require the consent of the Senate, etc.
But I think that the domestic power of the office is dwarfed by the power of the president to set foreign and military policy and make military decisions as cinc. Generally, presidents have acted in a way that is consistent with existing policy. Trump was criticized for breaking with this policy, as though the president doesn't have the full remit to set policy. And the media picked up on this criticism loudly.
Similarly, with hiring and firing, both of which stirred up political storms.
"I simply don’t buy that Biden would be worse than the current occupant of the WH. In fact, I think he’d be better in almost every conceivable respect."
I am not asserting that Biden would be worse. He would likely be better in many respects and perhaps worse in some others. The distribution of importance is key here.
DJT got most things wrong perhaps, but he also got a few important things right depending on what lens one uses to look at it. And even if one admits this, his approach is arguable.
Biden is running as not-Trump. Not much by way of a vision for America and its place in the world other than reiterating commitment to neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Just a softer version than the GOP, although he is trying to outdo the GOP in beating up on Russia and China so as not to appear weak. Is this his real view that would guide the foreign and military policy of his administration?
Actually, he is running pretty much as as sequel to Clinton and Obama. More Ronald Reagan than FDR, while DJT is an outlier, which is a big reason he won as not-Clinton or Obama, and not-Bush either.
Actually, the Democrats should look at the 2016 election. It showed that an outlier running as a populist can win. But what it also showed is that without strong backing in Congress and by the administrative state, outliers can't accomplish all that much of their agenda.
I am looking for real change. DJT is proposing it, but I don't like the direction he is proposing. I think he is badly misguided, although some of his instincts are right in my view.
The Democratic Party is not only proposing real change but also opposing it. Were it not for the increasing influence of the progressive wing, it would be a disaster given the emerging challenges the country and world is facing.
"I want to hear proposals for a solution in terms of a vision and how to actualize it." A nice sentiment, but I doubt there even are such answers (nevermind anyone even having access to them).
""I want to hear proposals for a solution in terms of a vision and how to actualize it." A nice sentiment, but I doubt there even are such answers (nevermind anyone even having access to them)."
Actually, the literature is pretty extensive, written from different points of view, if one is interested in this subject. David C. Korten is a good place to start. See The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, for example. He analyzes what's wrong now and proposes a vision with the sketch of a plan for getting from here to there.
There is a lot of utopian thought out there but few have gotten into the nitty gritty of getting from where we are now to where we would like to be. Of course, this means getting agreement in a diverse society.
But there are such proposals. And there is example. Russia and China have had to rethink themselves out of necessity and they have both made a turn in a new direction, China under Deng and Russia under Putin. The result in both cases is arguably impressive given where they began. The US has yet to think seriously about doing the overhaul it needs to undertake.
Nothing from the establishment of either major US party on it. The Green Party is way ahead on this.
Here are some contributions on specific points, all recent excepting #6 which Albert Einstein wrote in 1949. AOC and the squad did put forward a GND from the Democratic side, but Biden has rejected it (so far).
1. Green New Deal
2. The Case for a Job Guarantee
3. Single Payer
4. hThe Deficit Myth
5. Foreign policy and international relations
6. Socialism
Sure those would probably be great, but the Greens have basically zero hope of ever attaining significant political power in the US. The way the US political system has developed makes it almost a certainty that they never will; or, at least, I see no viable path for that to happen.
@ TheDudeDiogenes
"The way the US political system has developed makes it almost a certainty that they never will; or, at least, I see no viable path for that to happen."
Check US history on that. The Whig Party collapsed and was replaced by the Republican Party. Lincoln was a candidate of the Republican Party.
And DJT pretty much restructured the GOP, mostly single-handedly and in spite of an entrenched establishment.
Interesting tidbit from Teddy Roosevelt when running as the candidate for the Progressive Party. (He lost that bid, but got 27% of the vote.)
To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. This country belongs to the people. Its resources, its business, its laws, its institutions, should be utilized, maintained, or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest. — Wikipedia
That's a lovely quotation. That said - and I'm not trying to be obnoxious or merely contrarian - but don't you think circumstances have greatly changed since the Whig party collapsed? Our country is 244 years old, and the Whigs dissolved 164 years ago (i.e. more than half our country's history ago.)
The two-party system we currently have has been in place more or less ever since. Is there any reason other than blind hope to think that we're in a similar era as to.whem the Whigs collapsed (or, later, when the Progressives were ascendant)? I'd be pleased to see that evidence, but to my eyes, at least, all evidence points to the contrary. (To be sure, I am definitely a pessimist and not an optimist.)
According to the US Elections Assistance Commission:
In 2016, no fewer than 5,872,857 ballots were cast and never counted.
In Detroit,75,000 ballots were never counted because 87 broken scanning machines. (And Trump supposedly won Michigan by 10,700 votes.) And no fewer than 1,982,071 legal voters were denied the right to vote because they were told to get out of the polling station.
That’s at least 7,854,928 legitimate votes and voters tossed out of the count. This is a partial tally of votes suppressed or lost or denied due to corruption - something one ought to take into consideration I would argue.
Gore instead of W could literally have changed the course of world history...and the US fucking blew it. (And I don't even really like Gore.)
@ TheDudeDiogenes
Just sayin' that history shows it to be possible.
Right now, both parties are fractured.
Who would have thought that the populist revolt in the GOP that became known as the Tea Party would eventually come to power, but DJT is an outcome of that fracture. The GOP has not yet created a new unified party.
The Democratic Party is in the midst of such a popular revolt with progressives challenging liberals for control of the party.
Things are in flux politically in the US right now. The game changed big time when the Democratic Party moved way from the New Deal party that FDR created. Now it is questioning the replacement fashioned by Bill Clinton.
I think it more probable than not that the Democratic Party will shift away from the Clinton "third-way toward a more populist progressive party that resembles the New Deal Democrats.
Speaking of quirks of history, the end of the FDR New Deal Democratic Party began when FDR replace Henry Wallace on the VP ticket with Harry Truman. Things could have been a lot different if that had not happened.
There have been other big transformations of the parties in US history. No reason not to expect that will continue as party establishments refuse to adapt to emergent conditions.
Post a Comment