Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Electoral Politics Page 12 of 30

Scenarios for America’s Political Future

By

On July 16, 2019

55 Comments

Big Brother Award

Let’s run through the most likely possible victories in the upcoming federal election and consider what they mean for the US’s future.

Put them in four baskets:

Trump wins. He does more bad stuff, the situation continues to get worse, American post-WWII-style multilateral hegemony and trade order takes huge hits.

Biden or Harris win. Harris will be a more effective President, but both will be neoliberals. More Obama/Clinton style politics. I very much doubt that Harris, who was a brutal prosecutor, will turn out to keep many progressive promises if elected. Both of these people perpetuate the conditions which created the possibility of a Trump worse.

Sanders wins. An actual left-wing President. He may have issues with Congress, but there is a lot that can be done by the aggressive use of executive power. Sanders is who says he is, he’s been that guy, with some updating for modern identity politics since the 60s and 70. He hasn’t changed, he can be trusted.

Warren wins. Don’t expect to get real universal healthcare, she’s talked out of both sides of her mouth on the issue too much. But she’ll be good on a lot of other issues.

Both Sanders and Warren will probably be good on the environment. None of the others who are likely win will be (and if you think they will…)

There are two important, longer-term issues at play here: (1) A real, right-wing totalitarian who seeks to end American democracy is the first (I maintain that Trump is not this man, largely because he is not organized enough), and;

(2) The environment. With permafrost melts happening 70 years ahead of schedule, we are out of time. Steps–aggressive steps–need to be taken now, and they aren’t being taken.

So let’s play this out a bit longer. Say Harris or Biden wins. The next chance to get a good President then becomes 2028 because there will be no primary challenge in 2024. So domestically, the situation will get worse (and better for a right-wing, totalitarian demagogue). Nothing of significance will be done about the environment.

Potentially catastrophic on both fronts.

What if Trump wins? Well, there’s another chance to have a decent president in 2024. That’s not good, and he’ll do damage in the meantime, but there is a schedule here with regards to climate change. As for a totalitarian demagogue (someone who sees what Trump did, combines it with Bannon’s politics, and is disciplined and charismatic), well, the risk is there, but odds are the next President will be a Democrat.

As for Sanders or Warren, well, they’ll be reelected if they deliver and won’t if they don’t. So it’ll be war, because Republicans will know that. But it’s always war with Republicans, so whatever.

I am not arguing, “Don’t vote for Harris or Biden.” I am pointing out the foreseeable consequences of certain electoral outcomes.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Polling at this Time in 2015

By

On June 28, 2019

26 Comments

Found this tweet, thought it was important enough to share:


Now I wouldn’t go as far as DeRosa: There probably were a few people who got it right, but the larger point is that polls have a good chance of changing a lot over time.

In the 2008 Democratic primary, things went back and forth a lot. Even once the field had been thinned, it wasn’t obviously Obama for a while.

None of this is to say that Biden doesn’t have the best odds, just that he’s by no means a sure thing.

Another Biden Problem

By

On June 20, 2019

23 Comments

Matt Stoller, who was a Congressional aide, wrote an important article on Biden back in April.

… Biden is a bad candidate. Obama was exceptionally disciplined, and Biden is not…

…Basically, Biden combined two traits that work against each other. He’s lazy. Staffers can deal with that, if the lazy person is willing to delegate. But Biden doesn’t delegate important decision-making authority. He won’t write a speech beforehand to clear it with political allies, and he also won’t just read the damn talking points.

This means important things don’t get done, because he won’t do them, and he won’t let others do them. It is a nightmare to work for someone like this, because the staff never knows if there’s going to be a scandal. They never know if the boss is going to straight out lie to their own staff about it and have them ruin their own reputations and connections with political allies. They will not be able to defend Biden because it’s impossible to defend someone who isn’t trustworthy, unless people go full Trump and deny reality openly.

Given that Biden has a decent shot at being the President of the United States, I’d suggest reading the whole article.

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)

The obvious similarity is, actually, Trump. The same type of mismanagement and laziness. Biden’s politics are different, and essentially the same as Obama’s, but a bit more retrograde: Biden is a neoliberal corporatist.

He’s less retrograde on social issues than many people think, mind you. Obama was against gay marriage until gay activists and donors took him out to the curb (something people forget). But Obama would bow to pressure on things that didn’t matter to him, like social issues.

He wouldn’t bow on key items, like making sure bankers were made whole, though, and Biden will be similar.

But Biden will also be, effectively, incompetent, even though Stoller notes he’s talented. All the talent in the world means little when he won’t do the work and won’t let anyone else do it.

So, not that anyone who reads me was likely to do so, I’d suggest not supporting Biden in the Democratic primaries.

DONATE OR SUBSCRIBE

Bernie Sanders vs. Elizabeth Warren

By

On June 17, 2019

44 Comments

Bernie Sanders

Many supporters of either Sanders or Warren have become rather vicious to each other. The claim from the Warren supporters is that their candidate is the candidate of ideas, having put out tons of policy proposals. (Sanders has 25 last time I looked, so he’s not shy on this.) She’s younger, and it’s important to some people that she’s a woman.

But the basic thing is that Warren feels like a technocrat, and people who want a competent technocrat as President are drawn to her.

Sanders has ideas as well, and plans, but he’s different from Warren. Warren has said that she’s “capitalist to the bones” and that the problem isn’t capitalism, it is that capitalism needs rules (enforced rules.)

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)

Sanders is a democratic socialist. He believes that capitalism has its place, but he believes it is fundamentally flawed. He has harked back to FDR’s second bill of rights, which include rights to health, education, a home, and a good income, among others.

Matt Taibbi’s interview with Sanders makes this clear:

He goes on to elucidate probably the biggest difference between himself and Warren.

“In the words of Roosevelt,” he says, “the Republic at the beginning was built around the guarantee of political rights. But he came to believe that true individual freedom can’t exist without economic security.

Elizabeth Warren

To Sanders, capitalism isn’t a good system that we’ve managed badly, it’s a flawed system which needs to be heavily controlled. Nor does he believe that the problem with the left is a lack of ideas. It is a lack of power. The left has ideas, the left has not been able to implement those ideas for decades because the left was out of power.

So, what is required is not to just get good rules back in place. It is to completely subordinate markets to democratic control, and when they are not the best way to do something, remove them.

Leaving these domestic issues aside, Sanders is clearly superior to Warren on foreign affairs, though certainly nowhere near ideal. (Tulsi Gabbard is the only candidate who actually has good, clear, foreign policies, which oppose the US killing foreigners simply because it thinks it has the right to.)

I favor Sanders, overall. Warren or Gabbard would be fine. Foreign affairs do matter, because non-American lives matter. Even if you think they don’t, constant interference in other nations’ affairs costs the US far more than it’s worth, both politically and economically. A straight pragmatist would decide that the advantages of American hegemony, to Americans, are not worth the cost. (This is a longer article, and I’ll write it another day, as the end of hegemony does also have some costs.)

Probably an ideal ticket to me would be either Sanders/Warren, or Sanders/Gabbard. Sanders is old, and he needs a younger VP, not as a balance, but as someone who can be counted on to do much of what he would have done.

I hope, in particular, that neither Trump nor Biden becomes President.

As for the fights between Warren and Sanders followers: The differences are real, yes, but they are minor compared to the differences between either candidate and Biden. It would be good for people to remember that. It’s in the interest of no actual supporter of Sanders or Warren to make attacks on either candidate so damaging that it hurts them in the general.

I hope everyone will bear that in mind going forward.

DONATE OR SUBSCRIBE

The Curse of Knowledge and Predicting Electoral Results

By

On June 6, 2019

22 Comments

I’m good at predicting some thing. Economic events, longer term political and social trends, and so on.

When I was younger, I was also good at predicting elections.

Then I started getting election results wrong.

It took me a while to figure out why.

I knew too much.

When I was young, I didn’t follow politics much, I just read the newspaper and maybe saw the occasional newscast.

So I knew what ordinary voters knew.

Later I studied economics and politics and so on. I started knowing the actual consequences of elections, and I knew what governments had actually done, not just what was reported enough to sink into someone who wasn’t paying much attention, like most of the population.

In other words, I was no longer a proxy for the population.

Nor does analysis which tries to model “what does the ordinary person know” really help.

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)

The reason is simple enough: we don’t make most decisions, including voting decisions, rationally. We make them based on our feelings. The strongest feeling determines our vote.

Since my feelings, as someone who followed politics closely, were no longer in sync with those of the majority of the population, I could no longer use my feelings to judge. Even if I were to try and feel like someone different from me (not impossible) I still knew too much. My empathic sense of what they would want was based on more knowledge than they had.

And boom, lousy electoral predictions.

Talking with other close observers of politics and economics and so on I’ve noticed that this curse of knowledge is not mine alone. Most political experts predict elections badly.

So I’d keep thinking “wow, if you elect this dude it’ll be disastrous,” because I knew the consequences of what they were actually likely to do, and primary and general election voters would keep picking awful people.

The problem, of course, is that the consequences of actual government policies don’t go away. But the other problem is figuring out how to avoid the curse of knowledge: one needs it to make important predictions other than electorally, but if you don’t understand the electorate, that cripples any chance of good candidates being elected.

So far, I don’t know how to avoid this and if anybody else on the more left wing side does, I’m not seeing it.

A problem.

 

Biden Will Run on Fear, Trump Will Run on Hope

By

On June 1, 2019

49 Comments

The reason one should run for office is to act on one’s beliefs about what a good society is.

When people, or a party (Democrats), run on whether they are electable, they aren’t actually running on anything but hatred for an incumbent.

That means that the incumbent controls, even more than normal, whether you win or lose. You can only back into power.

Right now we have the spectacle of Democrats running against their own base (as is very common, Clinton certainly did, so did Obama, but with more concealment). Obama won because Bush was really unpopular, and Clinton lost because Obama had fucked up the economy.

But if Clinton hadn’t run against her base, she probably would have won.

People are reluctant to vote for candidates with whom they disagree. Is this surprising? Is this new?

Is it, instead, crazy to think otherwise?

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)

Unless Biden’s support among likely Democratic voters crashes out, this is the de-facto Democratic plan. Biden voted for Iraq and is unapologetic about it, and Trump will kill him on it. He was for NAFTA and Trump will kill him on it. He was for a bunch of other policies that Trump can’t attack him on, but left-wingers won’t forget he’s been for basically ever regressive policy possible for his entire career.

Making bankruptcy impossible for students, by the way, is also one of those policies.

So Biden will probably win the nomination, thanks to The Onion making him into “Uncle Joe,” (an act for which they should be ashamed) and Democratic party members actually being centrists, but the left-wing voters needed to, like, actually win an election are likely to not come out. The only thing motivating them will be fear of Trump.

That means that Biden will run on fear, and Trump will (again) run on hope.

That’s not a good campaign to run, and it means that Trump determines Biden’s fate; Trump is in the driver’s seat. He has to fuck up for Biden to win.

He might, for sure. But perhaps hoping for our enemies to fuck up and having no positive plan beyond “I’m not my enemy” isn’t a good way to campaign, or govern.

(And Biden will be a disaster as President. Terrible economic policies and terrible foreign policy. A complete clusterfuck.)

Oh well.

Why Uncle Joe Biden Is Leading Polls

By

On May 3, 2019

25 Comments

I’m finding the Biden run amusing, after a fashion, because of Joe’s absolute refusal to pander. He was right on NAFTA, doesn’t regret three strike laws, thinks the bankruptcy bill was great, is taking money from lobbyists (and started his campaign at a lobbyist run party), and so on.

And he’s way ahead in the polls. Oh, his lead is exaggerated because the polls are under-representing younger voters, who will actually come out for Sanders in higher than normal percentages. They’re also not including Independents who will vote in Democratic primaries and who broke for Sanders last time.

But they’re still accurate in the sense that a plurality of Democrats (and in a 1 v. 1 scenario, surely a majority) approve of Joe.

When Biden declared, most pundits were whinging on and about his record, which is terrible.

I wrote about the persona of “Uncle Joe” because that’s what matters to his electability. Joe is a meme, and in the meme he looks great. Your friendly, wonderful Uncle who’s maybe a bit handsy, but doesn’t mean anything by it. That’s Joe.

Moreover, most Democrats thought that the Obama/Biden administration did a good job. They’re, in my opinion, delusional (unless they’re in the top four percent or so), but that doesn’t matter, it’s what they believe. To them Obama was a good–even great–President.

And Joe was part of that. In fact, the most common Biden meme is some version of him and Obama having a great time (the Onion bears a huge responsibility for this, and if he wins they will have a great deal of responsibility for the disastrous policies which ensue (or his loss to Trump.)

So people think “Joe is a great guy” AND “Joe was integral to Obama’s Presidency, which I loved.”

Yeah…

Joe isn’t unbeatable, I suspect, but he starts out with some massive advantages. Sanders (or perhaps Warren, if she genuinely moves ahead of Sanders, which she has not yet, for the same reasons the polls overstate Biden’s support), will outperform the polls significantly.

But he’s still the odds-on favorite.

Because he’s “Uncle Joe” and because too many Democrats think Obama was the next coming of FDR, rather than the bought-and-paid-for servant of the banker class, and merciless murderer (he massively ramped up drone attacks, chose to destroy Libya, and supported the Saudi’s genocidal war on Yemen).

This is definitely the stupidest timeline: Trump and now a candidate who may be elected based on a persona created by memes, while his actual record is largely ignored.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Biden Declares: He’s Not Your Uncle Joe

By

On April 26, 2019

34 Comments

So, Biden’s in the primary. Plenty of other people are chewing up his record, which is terrible, so I’ll pass on that. Just remember that he’s the representative for fucking over poor people and minorities.

I want to address something else: Uncle Joe.

See, the thing is that Joe seems like a great friend, and an even better family guy. I believe that’s true, I’ve seen Biden and this comes across as genuine. Minus being overly handsy, Biden just has a really friendly vibe to him.

He’d be a great friend, and a better father or uncle.

But he’s not your father or uncle (well, unless he is, which is not my expected blog demo) and he never will be.

People have weird relationships with politicians. I remember back in 2000, the poll that showed people wanted to have a drink with Bush, and not with Gore.

Great, except “drinking buddy” isn’t your relationship with the President or anyone important enough to be nominee for president.

Don’t have fantasy relationships with politicians.

A politician is someone with power, and your relationship with one is as someone they can either help or fuck up, whom they don’t care about personally.

What matters is not how they act towards friends and family, but how they act towards people they don’t care about.

How they’re going to act towards you.

Biden has a clear record. If he doesn’t know you, and you aren’t rich, he doesn’t care about you. If you’re poor, owe money, or a cop ever thinks you might have done something wrong, he wants you hurt, badly.

That’s his record.

If you’re rich, of course, Biden’s a good candidate if the only people you care about are you and your rich friends.

But Biden capability of being a great friend and family member doesn’t apply to you unless you are actually his friend or family member.

What’s his (or any other politician’s) record toward people like you?

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Page 12 of 30

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén