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Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

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Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

Handyman said:
In about 6 months I bet Kep starts hitting the panic button Scooby style. He will start buying what the media is saying and how a new Republican Revolution is coming. ;)
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He's already doing that! I always enjoy Keps posts but he's the same guy who thought 1 out of every 5 Obama voters in Mass was going to turn around and vote FOR Scott Brown over Lizzy Warren in that 2012 Senate race. :eek: Lets just call him a bit pessimistic...

To that end Kep, cry me a river in your last response to my post. The people roughly 50 and younger aren't nearly as bitter as that sweet spot of people in their late 50's to early 70's - the bulk of GOP voters. These are the whiniest people who've ever lived and its reflected in their politics. While my big bucks and fancy lifestyle may fool you, but my family upbringing and most current family members are solidly in the working class. I see these things regularly, and the children of boomers aren't nearly as bitter as their parents, and they're a lot better at sorting through idiocy. Tax cuts for the rich has zero resonance with them for example. I'll also note the parents of the boomers aren't bitter whiners either, despite the fact they've seen the worst the world has to give (Depression, World War) and have experienced a lot more change in their lives.

Are people caught in a cycle of losing in places like WVA or Kentucky as bad as their parents? Sure, but that's a dwindling portion of the electorate. There's only one demographic expected to shrink by next year's election - whites without a college degree.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

Kepler said:
Based on how my conservative coworkers talk, I disagree strongly. These are lower middle class to middle class guys, the ones who Reagan et al. screwed without lube, and to a man they dutifully recite Republican economic platitudes. They're thinking about their shiftless brother in law, or those shadowy figures in the city on the evening news, and they're thinking "I get up and work every day. My salary is a measure of that work. That money *is* moral." And they're right. They don't know that past a certain point money doesn't work that way anymore -- it's just a mathematical value for keeping score in a huge casino, where the bettors own the House and don't bet their own money, pay themselves first when they win and make sure everyone else's investment is exhausted when they lose. And should the losses ever be so great that they might have to dip into their own pocket, they cry that this will Destroy The World, and bribe the government to take out public debt to cover their losses. When their debts finally bankrupt the state, they impose austerity as "stern medicine" and so complete the hat trick of fuuucking the middle class: the opportunity cost of the original tax revenue losses, the debt payments, and then the austerity cuts.

This is NOT about being stupid or smart, it's about being aware of how the rules change for the rich. Plutosymps falsely analogize international financial and sovereign debt to kitchen microeconomics. Who can blame them? That's how they think money works, and the 1% flood local libraries with Atlas Shrugged and pundit panels with David Brooks to brainwash them to maintain that fiction. You can even hear it repeated here, where people really ought to know better.
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Nailed it. You're 100% right.

Kepler said:
No. I hear it from their kids, too. I think you ignore that narrative at your peril, because it really speaks to middle income people. Ironically, the recession, which should have taught the exact opposite lesson, only reinforced it, because they knew so many people who were out of work and thus, in their blinders, "parasitic." Of course, the moment they lose their own job the scales fall from their eyes, but by then it's too late.

But the Boomers, Xs, and Millenials are essentially the same old Model T that's always been. The superficiality of change comes from the ground conditions when they grow up: so we have seen first racists, then sexists, and now homophobes slide down the razor blade into the tub of death based strictly on the bigotries that were hip when they were young. But it's not as if any given person in any generational cohort was any more enlightened than their parents. They just breathed different poisons as children.

If anything I think young people have been exposed to a colder, more atomized and less socially cohesive environment growing up, as the great tearing of social fabric that capitalism imposes just gets worse and worse with each decade. With that loss of cohesion comes a loss in the willingness to fight for communal values that transcend individual self-interest. In that regard, the Reaganites did win a permanent victory: they destroyed the community, left the broken pieces as prey to the commercial monsters who have swooped in since, and ironically then blamed the anomie that followed on the liberals who had tried to stop them. I do not see any way to ever repair that. Peoples do not become more communal unless they face an existential crisis, and we are insulated from anything approaching the level of self-reflection required by our technological and entertainment pacifiers.
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Together, the most insightful essay I've seen here. The only thing to be aware of is that the people you're talking about (or the like ones that I know well) didn't immediately classify their laid-off cohort as "parasitic" in 2009/2010. It was simply "See? Obama is destroying America already!"
 
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Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

geezer said:
The only thing to be aware of is that the people you're talking about (or the like ones that I know well) didn't immediately classify their laid-off cohort as "parasitic" in 2009/2010. It was simply "See? Obama is destroying America already!"
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Yes, that is a good point.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

This will play well on the campaign trail.

After months of debate and a last-minute flurry of "backroom talks," the Wisconsin Senate has passed a bill to give $250 million in public subsidies to get the Milwaukee Bucks a new arena—at an eventual public cost of $400 million, thanks to interest.

...

Just a few days ago, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a state budget that includes cuts of $250 million to the University of Wisconsin system, among other cuts to public education funding. Marc Lasry, a Bucks co-owner, is estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.87 billion, while co-owner Wesley Edens was worth $2.5 billion in 2007 before suffering a downturn (though not so big of one to prevent him from owning an NBA team) in the Great Recession. Together, they will pay just $150 million towards the arena.
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Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

Kepler said:
This will play well on the campaign trail.
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Smart man, Mr. Walker. No one cares about schools. They do care about their Sports teams. Especially when they leave because they don't get the hand out they wanted.

Now Wisconsin will have it's cherished Milwaukee Bucks for decades to come.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

I wouldn't nuance it quite that much. IMHO the GOP is either Social Cons or Economic Cons. The Military wing is gone, destroyed by a lack of people who've served and the Iraq debacle. All you have is a few hold-over dinosaurs (McCain, Graham) with little influence over events.

So, there's little daylight on the issues of tax cuts for the rich, abortion, foreign policy, gay marriage, Common Core, etc of ALL the GOP candidates. To that end, you're really making a choice between 1) who am I in love with (Nate Silver's point) and 2) Who do I think has the best chance of winning. If Social Cons win out, it'll be because they backed someone they fell in love with. If Economic Cons win, the "most likely to win" candidate gets the nomination. That breaks down to Cruz-Walker on one side, and Bush on the other for the so-called top tier. Of the next grouping people like Paul-Perry-Jindal-Huckleberry are on one side and Rubio-Christie are on the other.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

Rover said:
IMHO the GOP is either Social Cons or Economic Cons. The Military wing is gone, destroyed by a lack of people who've served and the Iraq debacle. All you have is a few hold-over dinosaurs (McCain, Graham) with little influence over events.
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Your thinking is wishful. Their nominee is going to be one. Jeb! (TM) is an original signator of the PNAC charter and a Neocon through and through. Not to mention his family and class allegiance is to the profiteering the Forever War and oil tanker diplomacy enable.

But even if a Neocon didn't win, the GOP is an abusive husband who needs America to think that it's ever scarier out there so she has to stay and be beaten rather than risk freedom. They need their belligerence, not just to feed their base's id, but to disrupt international diplomacy and keep the likelihood of war high. They win with fear.
 
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Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

Kepler said:
Your thinking is wishful. Their nominee is going to be one. Jeb! (TM) is an original signator of the PNAC charter and a Neocon through and through. Not to mention his family and class allegiance is to the profiteering the Forever War and oil tanker diplomacy enable.

But even if a Neocon didn't win, the GOP is an abusive husband who needs America to think that it's ever scarier out there so she has to stay and be beaten rather than risk freedom. They need their belligerence, not just to feed their base's id, but to disrupt international diplomacy and keep the likelihood of war high. They win with fear.
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Hillary vs Jeb will be just like Caitlyn Jenner vs Bruce Jenner.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

Kepler said:
Your thinking is wishful. Their nominee is going to be one. Jeb! (TM) is an original signator of the PNAC charter and a Neocon through and through. Not to mention his family and class allegiance is to the profiteering the Forever War and oil tanker diplomacy enable.

But even if a Neocon didn't win, the GOP is an abusive husband who needs America to think that it's ever scarier out there so she has to stay and be beaten rather than risk freedom. They need their belligerence, not just to feed their base's id, but to disrupt international diplomacy and keep the likelihood of war high. They win with fear.
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Meh...while I agree they all have neo-con lunacy in them, the public has no appetite for another Bush led war in the Middle East as in troops fighting someone else's war. Do that and its a Dem sweep of Congress in the mid-terms, just like 2006. What I do agree with is any GOP candidate, even Rand Paul, will start jacking up defense spending for no reason, but a resolution to send troops to Syria, etc will never make it through Congress and if US soldiers are dying while the troops of the nation we're defending are running away, its electoral doom. And you can't pass tax cuts for the Rich as a minority party which is the primary reason why the GOP exists. :eek:
 
Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

Rover said:
Meh...while I agree they all have neo-con lunacy in them, the public has no appetite for another Bush led war in the Middle East as in troops fighting someone else's war. Do that and its a Dem sweep of Congress in the mid-terms, just like 2006. What I do agree with is any GOP candidate, even Rand Paul, will start jacking up defense spending for no reason, but a resolution to send troops to Syria, etc will never make it through Congress and if US soldiers are dying while the troops of the nation we're defending are running away, its electoral doom. And you can't pass tax cuts for the Rich as a minority party which is the primary reason why the GOP exists. :eek:
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They will always find a "reason" for defense spending. Just look at the war the Neocons tried to gin up with Iran. Combine that with Russia and China as evergreen boogeymen, and the militarists can always scare enough people, now that Americans have been trained to live in a permanent fear fugue state since the 1950s. This has become a nation of busybody cowards -- hiding behind guns within our borders and (expensive, obsolete) battleships and (expensive, non-functional) fighters without. There's a ton of money in it so this will continue as long as one last penny can be stolen from all of our legitimate needs.

I would like to think our fellow citizens learned from Dubya never to turn the keys over to those idiots again, but that is wishful thinking.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

Citizens United giveth, Citizens United taketh away.

Concerns are mounting among top donors and party elites that an influx of huge checks into the GOP primary will hurt the party’s chances of retaking the White House. Long-shot candidates propped up by super PACs and other big-money groups will be able to linger for months throwing damaging barbs at establishment favorites who offer a better chance of victory, the thinking goes.
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Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

ScoobyDoo said:
Establishment Favorites do not have the street cred the other candidates do. It's time for the GOP to nominate a true believer instead of another McCain or Mittens.
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Maybe, but the moment they do that candidate becomes Establishment. The anti-establishment right may have Woody Allen's problem of never wanting to belong to a club that would have him as a member.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 -- Don't Let the Perfect Become the Enemy of the Good

joecct said:
AuH2O. That's why.
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Nicely done.

Remember, though, in many (East Coast) GOP circles in the mid 70s Reagan was feared as Barry 2.0, and that turned out OK.
 
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