a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

and if HRC self-destructs and bernie loses 49 states to whatever Republican, i dont give a fucking shit.

we deserve it.

Of course we don't think he's going to be nominated when all everyone seems to want to discuss is how he won't get the nomination!

I'll vote for him - that's the only prediction that I really care about.

Right now, based on policy positions, I would vote for Sanders over Clinton in a primary. However, I will take either of them over any of the Republicans running any day of the week; it almost doesn't matter to me who wins the primary. (Where it does matter is that I think a Sanders run would be a stronger litmus test for whether the country as a whole wants to support a candidate that espouses actual liberal policies rather than centrist ones.)

his speech at the convention will be interesting

How much African Americans' peaking voter turnout in 2008 and 2012 was due to the first black major-party nominee/president being on the ballot?

It's a shame she doesn't have that first minority wave behind her, all she's got is this darn female majori-wait a minute!

Hillary's not going to get 95% of the female vote

I do think this story (and the similar one at 538) are jumping the gun a little, or maybe following a kind of circular logic. Sanders has, as I understand things, been focusing his efforts so far in the early-primary states Iowa and New Hampshire, where his message plays well among people it plays well with elsewhere, who are white, left-leaning Democrats. Fine - but to then conclude that he won't ever win over non-white Democrats, or that because he is self-evidently further left of a presupposed normative party mainstream seems like a jump, especially in a party whose demographics are changing as fast as this one's are. This is not to say I think he has a snowball's chance of beating Hillary, but maybe the time to write the epitaph editorials would be after he makes a major speech on race, or campaigns in one of the places seen as a stronghold of the center-right, and it falls completely flat and everyone throws tomatoes. Like, it makes sense to point out that Trump's high-profile and (predictably) badly-received crazy racist uncle comments are Not Helping Him Much, because that's actually a thing that's happening. I dunno, just seems like it'd make sense to wait until the campaigns proper have started before penning the "...and to top it off, nobody even knows who he is!" stories. Well, of course they don't. Same goes for at least some of the second-tier Republicans, though others just have the stench of failure all over them. The first debates will start to sort that group out a bit, but let's face it, if 2012's Republican process taught us anything it's that you really can't rule anybody out entirely until we get at least a couple of primaries in.

Maybe this is just completely nuts of me but it's at least possible that there are more people to whom aspects of Sanders's message will appeal than who have already clicked 'share.' A lot of what he's talking about are actually bread-and-butter old-school Democrat issues, right? I think it's a fallacy to assume that distance from the corporate wing of the party is fundamentally alienating to those voters. Put another way, I think the metric of more/less "liberal" may not completely capture what motivates a "Reagan Democrat." Looking at Sanders's opening blurb on his website - Do we continue the 40-year decline of our middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, or do we fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all? - except for "protects the environment" which will get some pushback, a lot of that sounds like pretty comfortable territory to be on. But maybe I'm in a severe bubble.

protecting the environment is p popular actually, also you can argue it makes money/creates jobs etc.

same w/ infrastructure repair

i dunno, isn't protecting the environment kind of socialist? shouldn't we accelerate the privatization of the environment and let the free market decide which pieces of the environment are the best and which deserve to go obsolete?

hmmm now that you mention it

that's so crazy it just might work

yeah i just feel like there is a (Dem) constituency out there that might be more responsive to dubious hemming and hawing about a "balanced approach." for a lotta people, "environmental protection" still means "losing jobs to protect some dumb endangered owl." it would be great if, if nothing else, sanders's campaign can contribute a small bit to changing that perception. not sure he is the dream fanfic candidate to accomplish this realignment though. need a passionate minister talking about our sacred commitment to god's creation, who is simultaneously a successful ex-Business-Man who can fend off charges that he is just on some pie-in-the-sky tree-hugger tip with no traction "here in the real world." but maybe this is something else where the electorate is changing. surely versus 4, 8, 16 years ago, more people do believe that we are facing serious environmental crises.

yeah I think perception is shifting p noticeably

I mean when Shell Oil builds climate change forecasts into their budgets, investors notice

need a passionate minister talking about our sacred commitment to god's creation

http://www.scribd.com/doc/269022055/Laudato-Si-the-Pope-s-encyclical-on-the-environment-and-climate-change

i've been reading through this today and it's outstanding. unfortunately the pope isn't a successful ex-businessman so his opinion is largely irrelevant

xposts--

yeah, i would think lots of what sanders is saying would resonant with the traditional(?) democratic blocs

but then again i'm one of those folks who live in a liberal enclave (indeed, the very one that NYT article takes pains to mention over and over again) so i don't know how trustworthy my sense is for these things.

pardon -- resonate

Do we continue the 40-year decline of our middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, or do we fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all?

Does this differ in any way from what Clinton is saying? As you say, this is bread-and-butter Democratic stuff.

clinton isn't calling for single-payer health care...?

i meant to have a period, not a question mark, at the end of that sentence. :)

I'm not saying Sanders and Clinton don't differ, just saying that the opening blurb Dr. C quotes re "appeal of Sanders's message" could just as easily be Clinton.

devil's in the details

afaik there's no record of hil calling herself a socialist

which def plays differently in leftist enclaves than "middle America"

need a passionate minister talking about our sacred commitment to god's creation

http://www.scribd.com/doc/269022055/Laudato-Si-the-Pope-s-encyclical-on-the-environment-and-climate-change

i've been reading through this today and it's outstanding. unfortunately the pope isn't a successful ex-businessman so his opinion is largely irrelevant

its really a shame yet another mass shooting took all the headlines from this.. but I am excited about bush and rubio contorting themselves over it

everytime I start to worry about Rubio being a serious candidate I am reminded that he is, in fact, a fucking moron who says nothing of substance

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/07/marco-rubios-embarrassing-cuban-embargo-defense.html

in the first phases of the primaries at least, i think those are useful attributes

I want to take a fire hose to every outraged and frightened lib on my Facebook wall posting OMIGOD LOOK WHAT TRUMP SAID NOW.

like, Scott Walker is ten times the sleazeball and has a slightly better chance of getting the nomination, as in, slightly better than Nelson Rockefeller.

i just learned the other day that david rockefeller is still alive. he turned 100 last month. still a much more convincing plutocrat president than most of these jokers.

hey karl malone can you maybe tell us what you think is good about the pope's encyclical, maybe phrasing this in colourful or generously sized appropriate to those up until now unwilling to consider delving in themselves?

I was in Mexico this last week and our server at a place in the airport was like 'hey whats up with that donald trump do you agree with him' and he had this look on his face like he was testing us to see if we were dirty american shitbags. we weren't.

like, Scott Walker is ten times the sleazeball

I mean, can Donald Trump do this?

http://gawker.com/wisconsin-is-trying-to-take-away-the-right-to-a-weekend-1716293116

'hey whats up with that donald trump do you agree with him and how much mucus do you want in your food'

i'm sure server would never have done, but to be fair i support using this test at every restaurant in usa, too.

hey karl malone can you maybe tell us what you think is good about the pope's encyclical, maybe phrasing this in colourful or generously sized appropriate to those up until now unwilling to consider delving in themselves?

i thought about this for a while earlier this evening, and then drank too much, on a weeknight, sigh, so i'm sorry that it ended up like this. but i refuse to wait until tomorrow, as that contradicts my understanding of how to use the internet.

first of all he (i say he even though i'm sure this was largely written by underlings) does a good job of pithily summing up the problems (paragraphs 17-61). not strictly climate change but also other effects of humanity's cumulative interactions with the environment. he lays this out up front, and touches not only topics that are obviously"environmental" - pollution, water shortages, extinction - but also things that many people don't usually associate with it - income inequality, refugee crises.

here's an example of the kinds of things he briefly references in his argument:

The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned. In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future. The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership which is structurally perverse. The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programmes of sustainable development. The poorest areas and countries are less capable of adopting new models for reducing environmental impact because they lack the wherewithal to develop the necessary processes and to cover their costs. We must continue to be aware that, regarding climate change, there are differentiated responsibilities

he makes a powerful argument that the countries that historically contributed the most to greenhouse gas emissions (and built their economies on top of them) owe a debt to those that will suffer as a result, particularly the poorer countries who have the twin difficulties of being vulnerable geographically and also financially to rising sea levels and changing precipitation. that's a familiar argument (in intl climate negotiations this is pretty much the essential debate - how much the richer countries owe to the poorer countries), but he summarizes it so effectively and briefly, while contrasting it with the behavior of the developed world on other kinds of debt (greek/eurozone), which lends it ethical weight.

eh, i'm really making no point here, i'm sorry. i blame the beer - AND MY PARENTS. let me try another angle. he makes an interesting critique of technocracy while still clearly respecting the scientific method and trying to build bridges between christianity and science:

"The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm
. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object. This subject makes every effort to establish the scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation. It is as if the subject were to find itself in the presence of something formless, completely open to manipulation. Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us. Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational."

(if you think this post is terrible you would barf if you saw the paragraphs i just deleted. i'm sorry teachers that i have had, my family, america, the world, programmer gods if they exist. something went wrong)

the current politics of doing anything about climate change have all the worst incentives. warnings about problems that are decades away are near-meaningless to people only thinking about the next election. same deal with many companies/orgs, even if some of the sectors that have the closest connection to climate change (fossil fuel co's, insurance, military) are clearly starting to pay attention to it. yeah, we could just wait until the effects are so obvious and tangible to everyone that something finally gets done, but that point of obviousness is likely past the point of no return in terms of some of the worst-case scenarios coming to pass. in order to do something meaningful now, before it's too late, politicians have to be forced by widespread moral outrage. communicating the facts about climate change is an obvious way to convince a bunch of people, which is why there's an enormous and persistent and growing global environmental movement. even with disinformers and murdoch and inhofe and people like bjorn lomborg, the facts have clearly resonated with many people who really care. but other people respond more to moral and ethical arguments. those arguments have been made before, but most frequently in academic contexts, or in a way that's inevitably judgmental. but there's something about the way the pope approaches these issues and explores them that seems much warmer and plain and powerful, at least to me. this is gonna get a little 420, sorry, but maybe what makes his voice distinct is that he's coming from a place of recognizing and living with human fallibility, selfishness, greed, "sin", so that when he makes moral arguments for addressing climate change they end up feeling more like revolutionary calls to unite together and overcome our collective weakness - a positive appeal - rather than condemnations and preachiness (paradoxically)? it's hard to explain but it's a presence throughout the document.

i definitely don't agree with some of the things he talks about (he opposes the prioritization of overpopulation as an issue for some crazy reason, and i hate how he elevates work as "a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment." but in general he comes across like a really readable, persuasive, pop-philosopher. that description probably prompts derision from a lot of people, but ultimately i think it might be a good method for someone with moral authority to attempt to make a popular appeal? i will search for someone else who has written about this in a better way (shouldn't take tooooo long) and link to it.

i should have put that in the global warming is tearing our eyeballs out thread, sorry

wow good work there KM

esp for a non-papist

this isn't great http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/pope-francis-climate-change-encylical-leaked-version/395915/ but it does highlight something which is probably obvious but important nonetheless:

But, in fact, the topic of this encyclical is squarely in the pope’s wheelhouse. Francis links his call for environmental stewardship to the book of Genesis, and he repeatedly couches environmental degradation in theological language. “That human beings destroy the biological diversity in God's creation; that human beings compromise the integrity of the earth and contribute to climate change, stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; that human beings pollute the water, soil, air; all these are sins,” he writes.

for those that believe in sinning and punishment and life after death, maybe this makes a difference? i'd guess that most people who identify as religious, even those who regularly attend church, don't really spend that much time caring about sin, but for those that are pursuing infinite bliss and haven't been convinced before, maybe clearly categorizing it as a sin changes behavior.

#karl thanks so much for this. the extracts are denser than how i'd imagined this kind of tract but pop philosophy- pap' philosophy - is right, i think. i don't know. it's really hard to imagine reading this as a confrontational text - feeling resistant to accepting this as a problem & its force persuading you - but the idea that any change will be the result of it being pressed fervently by people who care seems right.

Also there is a point where economic ideas against environmentalism are presented with a moral aspect at the cutting edge - this will kill jobs and jobs are good is the message, but the implication is that jobs are a the moral good, that all good things flow from giving people more jobs. So having a moral retort (and a lot of people, even if they are not in a moral hierarchy, find "a man who thinks about moral issues says so") is at least a good way of starting a conversation.

lol

The head of the Republican National Committee, responding to demands from increasingly worried party leaders, spent nearly an hour Wednesday on the phone with Donald Trump, urging the presidential candidate to tone down his inflammatory comments about immigration that have infuriated a key election constituency.

The call from Chairman Reince Priebus, described by donors and consultants briefed on the conversation and confirmed by the RNC, underscores the extent to which Trump has gone from an embarrassment to a cause for serious alarm among top Republicans in Washington and nationwide.

But there is little they can do about the mogul and reality-television star, who draws sustenance from controversy and attention.

Woo! http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article26849269.html

Rather gross though:

Grayson has drawn negative attention for his messy divorce from Lolita, his wife of 24 years. A trial to determine whether she committed bigamy was delayed earlier this year when her breast implants leaked. The couple seemed close to an agreement until negotiations recently fell part. In an amended petition June 4, Lolita asked the court to prohibit Grayson from selling or transferring his assets.

“Gold diggers gotta dig. That's all I gotta say,” Grayson told the Tampa Bay Times in May. “We had an agreement. She's trying to renege.”

Grayson has faced criticism about his offshore investments in the Cayman Islands. He has fought with reporters who asked him questions about his hedge funds — and his investments raise questions about why a politician who has been critical about tax breaks for the rich would use a known tax haven for himself. This week The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust asked for a congressional investigation to determine if Grayson is violating a House rule by using his name on the hedge funds, while a Fort Pierce Democratic activist filed a similar request. Grayson has said he has done nothing wrong with respect to the funds.

the implication is that jobs are a the moral good, that all good things flow from giving people more jobs

The implication (for at least a thousand years now) has been that the natural resources claimed by the wealthy are rightfully theirs. It's morally wrong to hunt for food in the Lord's forest. Unfortunately there are few moral rights left for the non-wealthy.

Oligarchs and speculators have been fighting environmental concerns for a long time. Drilling for oil/coal now where a thousand years ago they were mining for iron ore. And back then public water supplies were polluted to the point uselessness by those with the funds/resources to use and abuse more than everyone else.

It is interesting the Pope is getting into it now, seemingly for the first time in history(?).

he's definitely addressing it more directly and giving it way more prominence than any other pope, but he's not the first. the encyclical starts off with a summary of what previous popes have said on the environment, actually. benedict seemed to have little to say about it, but that's probably because he was the antichrist, right? (there's more talk on all of this in the global warming thread btw)

in other news, a key piece of jeb's plan to boost the economy is to have us all work longer hours.

In an interview with the Manchester Union-Leader, the first-in-the-nation primary state's most-read paper, former Florida Gov Jeb Bush insisted “people should work longer hours", as a key part of his plan to drive higher economic growth.

The comment is already being treated as a gaffe. But it is actually an accurate if perhaps over-candid explanation of his economic plan, which seeks to combat stagnant or declining wages by getting people to work more hours.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bush-under-my-plan-people-should-work-longer-hours

In response to criticism from Democrats, Bush's spokesperson replied: "Only Washington Democrats could be out-of-touch enough to criticize giving more Americans the ability to work, earn a paycheck, and make ends meet."

man, that is some all-time spinning, there. must be tough working in that office, never know when the boss is going to say something just heinously unpopular and stupid-sounding.

one thing that gets me excited about the future is the prospect of spending even more time sitting at this fucking desk

work them at what