White dudes and identity politics.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Isn't a more reasonable question why vote at all in the general election if you live in a solid blue or red state. I live in a solid blue state But I will vote for a candidate that can win or can't depending on how it all unfolds.

[ApatheticNoMore]

On the continuum from evil to awesome who gets to determine what’s midlevel evil and what’s merely slightly good but not awesome. Perhaps your lesser of two evils is another persons ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’

the voter, I mean these are U.S. presidential candidates we are talking about, none of them are completely pure, the evil or not dichotomy doesn't work here. The closest you'd get to doing no evil would be a peace candidate (Gabbard?) but the thing is people want good done as well (maybe given the urgency of so much we really actually need good done as well, we have so many critical problems, and not doing what should be done is a form of doing harm as well), and also choose a candidate on the basis of who will do the most good (so maybe a candidate with great policies, maybe a candidate that can inspire a movement to change things etc..).

But even if absolute good does not exist for Presidential candidates, saintly people may exist but folks they aren't in politics, there is that which you can stomach. There is a REAL difference between "I don't agree with that person on some things" and "I loath almost all of their positions and I think electing them would be fairly disastrous, but they are 5% or maybe 10% less evil than the other person who would be even more disastrous" The lesser evilist would force us to vote on the second.

And btw NONE of this discussion applies to Dem primary voting almost at all! If you don't want to vote for someone polling 1% or 2% don't, they may drop out anyway, if you are in love with one of them and do want to vote for them then I don't have an issue with it. But of the leading candidates people are mostly just spewing hot air, noone actually knows who is mostly likely to win against Trump, they all have plusses and minuses in electability, at best we have polls which lately have seemed to be real inaccurate (remember Trump was not predicted to win). But most people aren't even basing their opinions on polls which at least have a methodology, even though it's really state polls not national polls that matter, but on pure whim. They think this person is more likely to win or that, but they really don't know. Someone here argued Warren is likely to win against Trump, shrug and to me she seems more likely to be a case of: all the smart people voted for her, she lost the election But I don't claim to know. So really why wouldn't someone just vote for who they like rather than based on a broken crystal ball?

[LDAHL]

Interesting post. In your opinion, who would be worse than Trump?

I think Harris would be worse. I can remember her trying to force donor lists from organizations she didn’t like back when she was a State AG. Her Robespierre shtick always nettled me. Her pronouncements about not taking PAC money ring hollow when you look at her pursuit of large donors. Her constantly changing health care positions bespeak a certain ethical fluidity.

I think Sanders would be worse in terms of long term damage to the economy.

[catherine]

I think Sanders would be worse in terms of long term damage to the economy.

Whose economy? If we were to implement his policies, it seems the economies of the struggling middle class families, debt-ridden students, and people who can't afford healthcare would improve tremendously.

And if we were to adjust the vast inequalities by taxing the VERY wealthy at a reasonable rate, is the economy going to fold? I doubt it. We are living in two Americas. One America wants to ignore the plight of the other America. There are some very respectable billionaires feel that they SHOULD be taxed more.

[Ultralight]

Whose economy? If we were to implement his policies, it seems the economies of the struggling middle class families, debt-ridden students, and people who can't afford healthcare would improve tremendously.

And if we were to adjust the vast inequalities by taxing the VERY wealthy at a reasonable rate, is the economy going to fold? I doubt it. We are living in two Americas. One America wants to ignore the plight of the other America. There are some very respectable billionaires feel that they SHOULD be taxed more.

It is interesting how right-wingers think that a lefty like The Bern "rigging" the economy to help the working poor and to provide a universal healthcare system and affordable college education will destroy the economy. They call this social engineering and they act like rich people will be like: "Eff it all. With this tax rate I might as well go out of business and become homeless. It pays so much better with all the welfare!"

I mean: Crazy stuff. LOL

But they never talk about how rich people and Republican politicians rig the economy to benefit the wealthy and screw over working families. To them, that is not rigging. That is not social engineering to them. It is just "how things ought to be!" or "The only way to stop the economy from collapsing!" LOL

If rich people can rig and economy to benefit them, then working people can rig an economy to benefit them too.

[LDAHL]

The problem with Bernie’s (and his imitators) is that all his generous schemes tend to rely on the magic beans of “soak the rich”. Not decent, salt-of-the-earth millionaires like him, but those dastardly super-ultras that keep us all down. The problem is the inadequate supply of super-ultras for all his plans, and the likelihood that they and their financial and human capital will decamp to more welcoming climes.

If he wants a comprehensive Eurotopian welfare state, he should be honest about how comprehensively we all will need to be taxed and regulated; not just snarl about sticking it to the man.

[Ultralight]

The problem with Bernie’s (and his imitators) is that all his generous schemes tend to rely on the magic beans of “soak the rich”. Not decent, salt-of-the-earth millionaires like him, but those dastardly super-ultras that keep us all down. The problem is the inadequate supply of super-ultras for all his plans, and the likelihood that they and their financial and human capital will decamp to more welcoming climes.

I actually think Bernie would be happy to pay higher taxes as long as everyone else in his bracket paid them too.

Right wingers are often like: "Hey Bern, why don't you just donate all your millions back to the government!"

To that I laugh.

Do you think Bern would be like this? "Everyone else in my wealth bracket must pay higher taxes except me.This is my new policy!" Come on. LOL

I think we ought to really tax the "super ultras." And we need to tax run-of-the-mill millionaires more too.

If he wants a comprehensive Eurotopian welfare state, he should be honest about how comprehensively we all will need to be taxed and regulated; not just snarl about sticking it to the man.

This all is a very typical right wing response.

It makes no real notice of how working folks are exploited and taken advantage of my the economic policies (rigging of the economy) by wealthy people.

It takes no notice of how huge corporations exploit working folks.

It is like, to the right wing mind, these are not problems. Perhaps right wingers think that this is the natural order of things. If so, why not just be like? "Yeah, rich people exploit working families. Nature and normal. Nothing to see here, folks."


And the idea that rich people will just leave the whole US and go somewhere else and exploit those people is a little far fetched. They could do it now in droves. But they haven't. They have done it a bit.

But my suggestion is that we follow them where ever they go -- we impede their ability to do business, we unionize the workers there, we put sanctions on them. We should denounce them as UnAmerican. And so forth.

Also something that annoy me about the typical right wing response is how it uses such black and white thinking. Like it is either Ayn Randville or Bernie's utopia.

Other countries still have capitalism -- Look at Canada or Germany or Sweden.

They have universal healthcare, better schools, better quality of life and so on. They weather economic storms much better.

[Alan]

Other countries still have capitalism -- Look at Canada or Germany or Sweden.

They have universal healthcare, better schools, better quality of life and so on. They weather economic storms much better.

The thing is, they also soak the middle and lower classes extravagantly in order to have those things. To LDAHL's point, they don't do it by soaking the rich or the corporations, if anything, they place a lower burden on corporations realizing they are the source of wealth and should be encouraged, which is foreign to Bernie and his followers economic view.

JP Morgan did a rather comprehensive analysis recently of Nordic economies and came up with findings our Democratic Socialists might find surprising: https://www.jpmorgan.com/jpmpdf/1320747403290.pdf

Some point to Nordic countries as democratic socialism in action, but some Nordics object to this, such as DanishPrime Minister Rasmussen: "Some in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore,I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is amarket economy"1. Our models back him up: while Nordic countries have higher taxes and greaterredistribution of wealth, Nordics are just as business-friendly as the US if not more so. Examples include greaterbusiness freedoms, freer trade, more oligopolies and less of an impact on competition from state control overthe economy. And as explained on page 6, while Nordics raise more taxes than the US, the gap usually resultsfrom regressive VAT/consumption taxes and Social Security taxes rather than from progressive income taxes.The bottom line: copy the Nordic model if you like, but understand that it entails a lot of capitalismand pro-business policies, a lot of taxation on middle class spending and wages, minimal reliance oncorporate taxation and plenty of co-pays and deductibles in its healthcare system.

With Nordic countries firmly rooted in capitalism and free markets, if I wanted to find examples of democraticsocialism in practice, I’d have to look elsewhere. I broadened my search and looked for countries that, relativeto the US, are characterized by2:• Higher personal and corporate tax rates, and higher government spending• More worker protections restricting the ability of companies to hire and fire, and less flexibility for companiesto set wages based on worker productivity and/or to hire foreign labor• More reliance on regulation, more constraints on real estate development, more anti-trust enforcement andmore state intervention in product markets; and a shift away from a shareholder-centric business model• More protections for workers and domestic industries through tariff and non-tariff barriers, and moreconstraints on capital inflows and outflowsI couldn’t find any country that ticked all these democratic socialist boxes, but I did find one that came close:Argentina, which has defaulted 7 times since its independence in 1816, which has seen the largest relativestandard of living decline in the world since 1900, and which is on the brink of political and economic chaosagain in 2019. Here my journey ended, halfway around the world from Scandinavia where it began. A real-lifeproof of concept for a successful democratic socialist society, like the Lost City of Atlantis, has yet to be found.

[LDAHL]

Some men look at things as they are, and ask “why?” I look at things as they could be and ask “how much?”

We could go the Euro route by doing as the Euros do: tax corporations a bit more lightly, tax the general citizenry a great deal more heavily and regulate, regulate, regulate. An honest Democratic Socialist who offered that proposition to the voters would have my respect if not my vote. Railing at riggers and praising beautiful breadlines won’t.

Punishing capital with the temerity to go where it’s appreciated hasn’t proven to be all that effective in the past.

[catherine]

Some men look at things as they are, and ask “why?” I look at things as they could be and ask “how much?”

Haha... I appreciate that, LDAHL. There is always a tension between idealism and realism, so I'll always be the yin to your yang. But I feel that we need to determine what's in the best interest of everyone and then figure out how to get it done. My mother's saying was always "God will handle the details." God... and people like you.