Conventional Mealy Mouths: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 5

fred, please go away

It's kind of magical how any qualms I have about Sanders that come from a conservative "devil you know" place of interacting with American politics as an African-American melt like wax before a blowtorch almost every time Frederik posts.

omg fred has cracked the race wide open, my mind is just blown, how could i not have seen it

Putting Fred aside it does seem to me like sexism does play a role in a lot of the disgust I see directed at Hillary. Not in some kind of overt bigoted way but in terms of how we view women who are ambitious and ask for our votes and money. That it's somehow cruder and more vulgar coming from a woman which magnifies otherwise legitimate critiques. I don't know that this is true 100% but it does occur to me as an explanation for why the rhetoric is so over the top when it comes to her but not to male politicians with the exact same politics. Also I'm sure it doesn't help that she's bad at connecting to large audiences (though I keep hearing that she's extremely personable in person).

Yeah I mean of course it's probably amplified by sexism, certain Danes acting like that's a #truthbomb is not super insightful.

sexism for sure plays a very real albeit unquantifiable role in probably everyone's choice to vote against hillary, some clearly more than others. this has nothing to do with sanders, who as far as i can tell has never made a gendered critique of clinton's legitimacy as a candidate. unless you believe that any criticism he makes of clinton, when considered in the context of the partriachical society it was made, is de facto gendered. but that strikes me as a pretty unserious opinion

the rhetoric is so over the top when it comes to her but not to male politicians with the exact same politics

I'm not sure I agree that this is true, although I don't know if you're talking about the mainstream media, the Sanders campaign, Republican campaigns, random people on social media, ...

The more vile overt stuff comes from supporters which on one hand Bernie should not be forced to answer for otoh it's impossible to completely disambiguate a candidate and their campaign from their supporters.

Afaict: #1 seems pretty favourable to her, #2 has been exceptionally if not excessively civil imo, #3 were at least as nasty to Obama and her husband.
xp

She is mockable in many of the same ways that her husband is, on both the aesthetics and odious substance.

As my last two November prez ballots went to Jill Stein and Cynthia McKinney, my conscience is clear.

would love to have a peak in alt universe where warren was the leftist candidate and biden was the party establishment pick and see exactly how many berniebros would be backing warren (my guess is most?) and how many hillary backers would be giving their support to biden (i have no idea on that one?)

watching some recent Hillary ad w Bill - Bubba is starting to rather eerily remind me of Dick Van Dyke

She does carry herself in a particularly robotic, "I'm just saying things I'm advised to with a very fake smile" way. When she forces folksiness and relatability it comes off as really painful for her. And set against the super progressive angle coming from Sanders she looks especially like a "typical politician". Those two things combined inspire the more extreme rhetoric against her despite others I think.

Biden's record prob worse politically than Hillary's; he'd have to answer directly for all the shitty things that happened in the 90s instead of the highly spinnable vagueness of the first lady's status therein

However, you'd "rather have a beer with him" than Hillary

Bill looks and sounds so unwell, so frail--can't imagine him making it too long unless they give him what they give Cheney

Biden would also have to answer for the goddamn Clarence Thomas hearings.

I watched rachel maddow for the first time in a while last night. Was she always so weird? She worked herself into a pique about Ted Cruz winning a senatorial seat in a midterm when barely anyone voted, the was all aghast at Bernie's "hill's unqualified" statement. There wasn't really a sense of perspective; everything was un be liev able

i dunno if she's always been like that, but that's more or less always been my impression of her

above all i find that she treats her audience like eight-year-olds. all the heavy-handed sarcasm underlined eighteen times, the need to make everything seem Like Just An Incredible Development, etc. etc.

i find all the cable news networks completely unwatchable and MSNBC is no exception.

anyway, back to primary stuff i guess.

i also agree thaT DJP's caution w/r/t Sanders has been instructive. i was quite disappointed by his responses in that recent interview and it kind of struck me how little i'd been holding him to the standards i'd like to think i generally hold politicans to, in large part because the /idea/ of a credible progressive/left-wing challenge is so appealing. but sanders certainly has his weaknesses.

quite disappointed by /sanders's/ responses, not DJPs!! :)

memo:

Politicians suck shit.

thanks grandpa!

Morbs, I don't think ilxors are insufficiently cynical about politiicans, unless the only acceptable standard of cynicism is to conclude nothing connected to politics cannot possibly improve a single thing ever, but only make everything progressively worse and worse until we achieve a supernova of misery. Otherwise, I think we understand that politics is at best a corrupted and inefficient tool, but it is sometimes the only tool we have to address some kinds of problems -- and abandoning it completely to the rich and power hungry would be a huge mistake.

it's already been completely abandoned dontchaknow

(Morbz posts that write themselves)

lol I was planning to say something about my reaction to Sanders' NY Daily News interview; my first response was "are you fucking kidding me, dude?" and then I remembered that at a young age I decided to jettison the need to memorize details about things and instead focus my time/energy on learning how to navigate catalogs/resources so that I could drill down into whatever detail I needed and that Sanders' responses likely fit directly into that paradigm and I should probably stfu and read his website if I want a more detailed outline (note: I haven't yet done this but I intend to)

so yeah, it's kind of a "gotcha" moment but it's one that directly indicts how I interact with information, ergo I reject it

Clinton trying to smooth things over with Sanders:

Hillary Clinton expressed puzzlement Thursday in assessing why she thought Bernie Sanders attacked her Wednesday night by calling her unqualified to be president, remarking that she would rather have him as president than either of the top two Republicans running.

“I don’t know why he’s saying that, but I will take Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump or Ted Cruz anytime," the Democratic candidate told reporters outside Yankee Stadium in the Bronx at an impromptu news conference before riding the subway.

Clinton remarked, "So, let’s keep our eye on what’s really at stake in this election."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/clinton-sanders-qualified-response-trump-cruz-221674

I decided to jettison the need to memorize details about things and instead focus my time/energy on learning how to navigate catalogs/resources so that I could drill down into whatever detail I needed and that Sanders' responses likely fit directly into that paradigm

yeah, same here, i think a lot of people think of dealing with massive amounts of information in that way.

i kinda disagree. the ppl i appreciate most are those w/ expertise + knowledge. i don't expect everyone to know everything about everything but like when you're talking about the primary thrust of your campaign and ideology i'd hope for a little more fluency. it's not a dealbreaker (esp bc i'm not convinced that hillary is particularly more direct) but it is a little gmafb.

well the flipside is that you power through that research so that the high- and medium-level points are at the tip of your tongue when you are giving the presentation but I dunno, maybe he was tired *shrug*

"Clinton trying to smooth things over with Sanders:"

Hahaha that is so clearly not at all what is happening there. That's a very smart move, she nudges him, he takes the bait, she comes back with that and it looks like he is the instigator.

Also I was thinking about switching my username but nah I'll keep it going for a bit after today

did anyone from the hillary campaign actually use the disqualify language or did that come entirely from CNN?

New York (CNN)Hillary Clinton's campaign is taking new steps to try and disqualify Bernie Sanders in the eyes of Democratic voters, hoping to extinguish the argument that he is an electable alternative for the party's presidential nomination.

As Sanders took a victory lap following a 14-point triumph in Wisconsin, Clinton took fresh aim at the Vermont senator as part of a three-part strategy before the New York primary on April 19: Disqualify him, defeat him, and unify the party later.

"Some of his ideas just won't work because the numbers don't add up," Clinton told a labor union audience Wednesday in Philadelphia. "In a number of important areas, he doesn't have a plan at all."

it's hard to tell from the article what is just CNN being provocative and what is coming out of the campaign

hmmm the way you people with careers and whatnot think about politics

further down in the article

The campaign's deputy communications director, Christina Reynolds, argued that Sanders is unqualified, sending a full transcript of a New York Daily News editorial board interview of Sanders.

"We've said for a long time that this primary is about who's really going to be able to get things done. And from reading this interview, you get the impression Senator Sanders hasn't thought very much about that," Reynolds wrote. "In fact, even on his signature issue of breaking up the banks, he's unable to answer basic questions about how he'd go about doing it, and even seems uncertain whether a president does or doesn't already have that authority under existing law."

She added: "If you want to know why Hillary's experience and deep understanding of the issues facing American families matter so much, you should read this."

not direct quotes anywhere around the word "disqualify."

I agree about DJPs take on the information acquisition stuff, an engineer I know has always told me that most of them could fluidly move between specializations pretty easily because it's all about knowing who to ask how to do something instead of knowing the nuts and bolts of how to do it yourself.

but it's pretty obvious the difference between talking to someone with deep knowledge + expertise in an area and talking to an engineer who just swapped to a new specialization yesterday. like if you were interviewing an engineer for a job he's never done before, you might be lenient about the new area of expertise. but if you felt like he couldn't adequately explain the specialty he's already in you might be concerned.

As far as I can tell Clinton never said Sanders wasn't qualified to be president. After all, it would be kind of a silly thing to say. It looks like this started with a Joe Scarborough interview where he was pressing her to say Sanders wasn't qualified, and she did a typical playing it safe type response of not saying anything either way, which kind of backfired, because then the Post wrote an article spinning this as her implying he wasn't qualified. I bet she probably wishes she'd just come out and said of course he's qualified.

but in this metaphor, the president of the united states is not the engineer who needs to know absolutely everything about a particular subject. the POTUS is the executive who needs to be fluent in enough disciplines to understand and solve problems in every part of the organization.

also, it's possible to know how to easily navigate sources of information and at the same time have a few subjects where you can demonstrate your deep expertise, they're not mutually exclusive

but this is specifically bernie's area of expertise. i give him a much bigger pass for foreign affairs, or say energy policy or climate change. less of a pass for things that comprise the fundamental platforms of his campaign + career.

my mouth looks like this right now

http://i.imgur.com/GP4Hr0K.jpg

it seems obvious to me that they are both very qualified to be presidents.

"the POTUS is the executive who needs to be fluent in enough disciplines to understand and solve problems in every part of the organization."

bernie seems like the exact opposite of this

i prefer a third term of obama to both but yeah they're both fine - either will do a good job, neither set my world on fire

Whereas there are at least two Republicans who literally want to set the world on fire

same

xp

Clinton probably has a deeper understanding of the nuts and bolts of many issues than Sanders does, but her understanding derived from sources that are fully entangled in the status quo, so that she has a harder time seeing what ought to be true (the vision thing) as opposed to just tinkering with what is already there. Every strength has its complementary weakness.

the POTUS is the executive who needs to be fluent in enough disciplines to understand and solve problems in every part of the organization.

this sounds like the job description of every department head/CEO ever.

jeeezus pols know how to say things w/out saying them, give credit

First of all, there's no question that HRC was questioning in that interview whether Sanders was unqualified to be president. She just didn't want to use the word, because that would have been the day's headline. (As, indeed, was the case when the Post used it for her.) At the very least, she was trolling with live bait and Sanders gobbled it right down...

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a43735/bernie-hillary-narrative/

I actually don't give Clinton a lot of credit for being able to artfully imply things. She tends to be a bit clumsy with that sort of thing, as this episode demonstrates. I don't at all think this was some sort of higher-order chess type trolling. Read the interview. Scarborough was pushing the qualification angle hard, and Clinton was doing her usual neither confirm nor deny lawyerish thing.