Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

[Cmdr_King]

What was your source for those? I'm curious on the methodology they used.

Those are the charts Political Compass uses.  I couldn't tell you how they fill in the phantom surveys for candidates or whatever they do.  Just useful as a visual guide.

we are showing that like the 2016 ballot is LESS extreme than the 2008 ballot in general

Huh?  The 'moderate' Bush on the 2016 chart is at like (8, 8.5).  The closest to him on the 2008 chart is Newt Gingrich who's still at (8, 7).

[Grefter]

Yeah so that is saying that Hilary has swung as Right wing as like Rudy Juliani, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in 2008.

Fuck no.  She is right of center for certain and she is traditionally slow on progressive issues, but you know she still at least stays in lock step with social conscience.  It really feels like it's taking a thin slice on economic and foreign policy like just focusing on Tax and aggressive stance on hostile foreign interests.

She isn't holding steadfast on the DOMA any more or pushing against health care improvements.  She may not be in favour of a $15 minimum wage but she did support an increase.

[NotMiki]

For some reason the Democratic machine has decided that you're either sexist or racist if you're didn't get in line behind Clinton before.

Couldn't agree more.  I am sick to death of straw man attacks that say I support my candidate because of craven triangulation rather than for legitimate policy reasons.

[Cmdr_King]

Yeah so that is saying that Hilary has swung as Right wing as like Rudy Juliani, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in 2008.

Fuck no.  She is right of center for certain and she is traditionally slow on progressive issues, but you know she still at least stays in lock step with social conscience.  It really feels like it's taking a thin slice on economic and foreign policy like just focusing on Tax and aggressive stance on hostile foreign interests.

She isn't holding steadfast on the DOMA any more or pushing against health care improvements.  She may not be in favour of a $15 minimum wage but she did support an increase.

Ah.  A few things.

- Obama took a huge rightward turn on civil liberties during his first term, in particular the 2012 Defense funding bill which officially enshrined Gitmo-style detention without hearings into law.  To my knowledge Clinton hasn't said one way or the other about this in specific, but has been generally on board for Obama's current foreign policy outlines, drone raids, etc.

- This particular website considers free trade deals to be pretty right-wing economically, and Clinton's primary accomplishment as Secretary of State was orchestrating the TPP.

- Health Care reform is a bipartisan issue.  Medicare is poised to completely swallow the rest of the federal budget and then some within the next 10-15 years because costs are escalating just that damn much.  Forcing people to purchase private insurance (under penalty of tax) on the premise that reducing the number of uninsured will slow the growth of costs and offset the ongoing increases by reducing the number of people getting treatment then not paying for it is the right-wing approach to the problem.  Republicans just noticed it was unpopular across the board (it's a tax AND it completely fails to address the root problem AND it's a roadblock for implementing a single-payer system, something for every political ideology to dislike) and figured they could score cheap points by opposing it... and also mask that their solution would be very similar and hope to score points for passing almost the same bill but with their names on it just because hey WE GOT RID OF OBAMACARE OMG11?!?!one.

- Clinton's support of a minwage increase is one of the issues she's actually gone left on since the start of the campaign and I don't believe that chart accounts for it.

Although yes
- The website I was looking at is British (I think), so it doesn't actually ask about gay rights, civil rights in general (although it does ask about nationalism and immigration stuff), or guns, the areas Democrats can properly claim to be left wing about.  I'd have to look again to see if they talk about women's rights or abortion in particular, since being a stanch second-wave feminist is sorta at the core of Clinton's ideology and would distort the results if they don't.

[NotMiki]

One specific thing I would give Obama a break on is Gitmo.  He genuinely tried to close it just after he was elected, and was thoroughly rebuffed by craven Democratic legislators, who overwhelmingly sided with Republicans in not allowing Gitmo detainees to be transferred to US prisons.  You can certainly take him to task on drones, transparency, whistleblowers, and surveillance (although he was pro-surveillance as a senator, even during the 2008 election season) but Gitmo he really tried on.

In any case, as suggested, any political leaning chart that doesn't capture attitudes with respect to race is missing the major faultline of American politics.

[Hunter Sopko]

Hmm. They credit a few people I'm aware of, one I've actually read (Adorno), for their methodology. The problem is they're not quite transparent with their process.

Adorno is probably most famous in political science circles for his F-Scale. It's a measurement on how authoritarian a leader is based on a similar survey. His methodology evolved as a circular of questions (similar to the one on their site) sent to experts on famous leaders, who would fill out the questionnaire and their responses would be weighed. Said experts would also generally point out any of the many biases in the questions/answers that can arise from such a survey, and Adorno would fix it in the next round. It's become a pretty standard rubric for political science research since his time, and with content analytics people have been writing programs to cull results from leaders' own writing and speeches.

That said, even Adorno's, done in the 70's, were generally like three times longer than the one on the site, and the site itself doesn't quite say who is filling out the survey for the names. I'm sure they DO have their own internal process for doing those, but lack of transparency into that process is a big red-flag. Kneejerk reaction is it seems they sort of bias everything right-wards. I don't mean that as a pejorative though, it just seems most political behaviors they assign a right-ward slant.

[Cmdr_King]

One specific thing I would give Obama a break on is Gitmo.  He genuinely tried to close it just after he was elected, and was thoroughly rebuffed by craven Democratic legislators, who overwhelmingly sided with Republicans in not allowing Gitmo detainees to be transferred to US prisons.  You can certainly take him to task on drones, transparency, whistleblowers, and surveillance (although he was pro-surveillance as a senator, even during the 2008 election season) but Gitmo he really tried on.

Agreed, I wouldn't assign him blame for not closing the actual Gitmo.  But a bill formalizing its existence into US law is still Not A Good Thing, even if motivated by the reality of not being able to get rid of the one they had.  Civil liberties is an area where ideology needs to be given larger weight than political reality, because by nature it's the most fragile and easily abused area of governance.

In any case, as suggested, any political leaning chart that doesn't capture attitudes with respect to race is missing the major faultline of American politics.

I do think it's a useful bit of perspective though.  The increased partisanship and hyperfocus on race, sexuality, etc of rhetoric in both parties has covered up just how much they've come to agree on since the 90s.

And if you wanted an explanation for how both parties have a massive ideological rebellion going on simultaneously, it's important to keep this in mind too.
Undoubtedly racism and sexism motivate many.  It's the inescapable fact of America's foundation.  It underwrites all things.
But the degree to which both parties engage in the same behaviors and follow the same broad policy goals, while easy to miss between the megaphones and dogwhistles, is something people are intuitively aware of, and reaction against it is inevitable.
And, if we'd like to prevent predictable economic collapses and a version of Trump that WON'T faceplant in the general election, necessary.

[The Duck]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/728297587418247168

I take it back guys, Trump has already won over Hispanic voters.

[NotMiki]

This is almost as good as when he said Clinton's "off the reservation" comment was offensive to "the Indians."

[Grefter]

I like how it is in lock step with the way you see racist fucks on the internet go "white people white people white people" "the blacks" and don't even realize what they are doing.

[Cmdr_King]

So no less a Republican than Paul Ryan has held off on endorsing Donald Trump.

Is this a show to give him plausible deniability when Trump blows up in their face before he half-heartedly endorses him at the convention or the like?  Probably.

But this has to have set some less visible members of the party thinking.  So I wonder; think any of them will take the ballsy move and actually endorse Gary Johnson or (gasp) Hillary Clinton?  I mean, it wouldn't be that shocking relative to the rest of this campaign.

[AAA]

Endorsing Hillary would be pretty shocking, considering she's the Republican Anti-Christ. I..guess it's possible they endorse Gary Johnson but more likely they'll just sit it out and let Trump wither on the vine. I doubt their support would make a difference anyway.

[metroid composite]

There's no way any of them endorse Gary Johnson.  This would involve admitting that there is a right wing alternative to the Republican party.  A bad candidate this year will probably lose them some seats for one election.  But a strong Libertarian party would cause them serious long-term problems.

Endorsing Hillary Clinton is very possible, though.  The Koch brothers have gone on record as saying she's a better candidate than Trump, and they may be giving her money.  And the Koch brothers damn near dictate the positions of a good chunk of the republican party.

There's also already a decent number of moderately high profile republicans (like McCain campaign strategists) saying they will vote Hillary; that's different from an elected official, though:

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/05/03/3775104/never-trump-has-failed-republican-party/

[AAA]

The thing is I don't see how endorsing Hillary is a win for anybody. If Hillary wins it's not going to be because a GOP person endorsed her, and you've just given any would-be primary opponents a golden opportunity to paint you as an out of touch RINO. If Hillary loses then you've just pissed off the new leader of your party for no gain. Note your link has the only person with an elected position to defend declaring neutrality, which seems like the best of a bad set of choices.

I could see non-elected conservatives going for Hillary, I guess, but that could still come back to haunt them later.

[NotMiki]

Endorsing Hillary Clinton is very possible, though.  The Koch brothers have gone on record as saying she's a better candidate than Trump, and they may be giving her money.  And the Koch brothers damn near dictate the positions of a good chunk of the republican party.

The Koch Brothers thing is really pretty weird, because if you look at policy, Trump's unpredictable, but Clinton is predictably - consistently - far to the left of what they want.  (Their big issue is deregulation.  Clinton is nothing if not a believer in the power of government and the appropriateness of government using that power.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

I dunno, it makes sense to me. Clinton is to the left of what they want, sure, but Trump represents a clear danger to the American economy and therefore their interests as well. Supporting Clinton makes sense if in truth they hate both, and their real goal is to get a "true", Koch-friendly Republican in office in 2020. On paper it should be easier to defeat Clinton in 2020 (after all, no party has won the White House four times in a row since WW2) than to successfully take down a sitting president Trump in the primaries and hold off a Democratic challenger in the same year.

[Cmdr_King]

More than that Clinton hasn't shown much desire to increase regulation, so it may well be they think she'll be open to careful, measured reduction of regulations if they open a dialog.  And if not, she's unlikely to really undo any of the gains they have made until they can get a more suitable Republican candidate.

Granted they're... not going to get one in the foreseeable future.  We're just going to keep getting more fascistic demagogues until one wins or until we clean up the conditions that make people vote for them, and in all likelihood they're going to follow the path laid out by Trump.  Like, this time around, the Republicans probably could have stopped Trump, had they acted faster.  In four years?  I don't think that'll be true even though they'll be ready for one.

[NotMiki]

Even a measured approach from Clinton regarding regulation would result in a sea change in the Koch's power because she (or Sanders, obviously) would appoint a Supreme Court justice that would decisively swing the court liberal.  That is a huge, huge deal where regulations are concerned, and far more permanent than anything else a president can accomplish alone.

Or to put it another way: the difference between what regulations Obama wanted and what Obama got - entirely due to utter bullshit politically motivated 5-4 Supreme Court decisions - is huge.  Clinton, I think it is fair to say, is probably about even with Obama in terms of how aggressively we can expect her to push regulation.  That's what the Koch brothers are suggesting is preferable to Trump, and that's crazy.

[metroid composite]

Trump is on record saying something like he would have let AiG go under in 2008.  Which appeals to the Republican base, yes (and probably the democrat base as well TBH), but to people who actually understand economics (like the Koch brothers) that is terrifying.  AiG goes under, and then it's something like T-bills stop returning on investment, and when people can't buy US treasury bills at a stable interest rate, suddenly there is no safe haven in the stock market, and you get massive increased volatility.  Possibly massive inflation, and devaluation of the US currency.  (And when stocks are traded on the US dollar, that causes problems too).

Bear in mind, intelligent market analysts are predicting another stock market collapse (this time starting in Europe) and most of the banks that were "too big to fail" last time are larger now than they were back then (with something like four US banks having more leverage than the GDP of the entire world).  If there is another crash, then there needs to be another bailout for the same reason there needed to be a bailout in 2008--people with safe investments like US T-bills (which a lot of retirement accounts use worldwide) are relying on at least some modicum of market stability.

Trump saying "nah, fuck it, let the big banks go bankrupt.  I've gone bankrupt four times--it's fine! It's a legitimate business strategy." is...pretty terrifying to someone like the Koch brothers who have lots of money, and want that money to actually hold its value.


There's also just the factor for some right wingers I know where...they try to imagine Trump, for example, negotiating with Russia without starting war...and they can't.  Now, to be fair, the persona that Trump puts on for the election, and how he behaves behind closed doors is reportedly pretty different.  He's an actor, and he's good at reading an audience and figuring out how to act to appeal to them.  But on the flip side, his knowledge of general governing and politics has been shockingly thin.  And stuff that he's said in the primary would already affect foreign affairs--I can't imagine relationships with Mexico would be good under president Trump, even if he pulls a 180 on the building a Wall shit once he's in office.

[Cmdr_King]

Actually, out of interest, do you have any particular examples of that in mind?  A few minutes of searching turned up this one about setting new carbon emissions standards, which certainly unto itself would be a Big Fucking Deal for the Kochs, but I'm getting the impression there's a pattern of this sort of thing but I'm not sure where to look to find that.

But it's possible they might be doing the hard calculus the bulk of the Republican party is not.  The trumps of the future are likely to rise from the Republican party.  It may be they no longer think they can just write the party rules as they had done there, and instead will deal with seasoned politicians as a preferable alternative to a parade of demagogues. 

fake-edit: to build on metroid's point, the Bankruptcy thing is so bad it's possible that Trump looking good in polls, even if he ultimately loses, it may well cause massive market instability.  So a third possibility is that the Kochs back Clinton just to prevent massive blowups in the immediate future regardless of what it means for their future prospects.

[superaielman]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435418/koch-brothers-campaign-activity-slows?utm_source=NR&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=May16 Really good article talking about the how and why the Koch brothers are sitting out the federal elections. (Short version: some but not all of it can be blamed on Trump). The Republicans are so screwed.

[NotMiki]

Actually, out of interest, do you have any particular examples of that in mind?  A few minutes of searching turned up this one about setting new carbon emissions standards, which certainly unto itself would be a Big Fucking Deal for the Kochs, but I'm getting the impression there's a pattern of this sort of thing but I'm not sure where to look to find that.

That was the big one I had in mind.

Also: dammit super, I wanted to live my life without ever having to admit I learned something from NR.

[metroid composite]

I wrote a thing.  Not sure everything I wrote is as perfect as it could be, but I had been collecting thoughts on this for a while.

http://kaitlyn-burnell.tumblr.com/post/144793699593/politics

[Excal]

Interesting piece.  The two lenses you use feel, at times a touch too restrictive, but I suspect that's more places where their concerns dismiss things that I see as important (the military being the big one here.)

The one thing where I think I need to disagree is your description of Hillary as charismatic.  Granted, I haven't looked too closely at her, but what I've seen and heard generally agree around the idea that she's less charismatic and more simply adept at interpersonal skills.  To use a 3E analogy, her Cha modifier isn't terribly strong, but the Politician class allows access to the social skills, and she's maxed them all out.  And with all her experience over the decades, she's leveled up enough to make that formidable.

[Grefter]

I disagree completely with this.

Florida would be way better off underwater.

Also you missed to option of burning Wall Steet to the ground.