What political ideology are you?

[PyramidHead]

The idea that Clinton lost the because of extremist liberals not turning out to vote her in the Rust belt is prima facie absurd, and doesn't stand up to much scrutiny when you dig into the numbers, as far as I can tell.

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan aren't Rust Belt. That'd be Ohio and West Virginia.

Either way, there's no link between "Clinton lost in states X, Y, and Z" and "the only thing that prevented a Clinton victory is lack of support from voters far to the left of all her positions".

 

[ZiprHead]

The idea that Clinton lost the because of extremist liberals not turning out to vote her in the Rust belt is prima facie absurd, and doesn't stand up to much scrutiny when you dig into the numbers, as far as I can tell.

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan aren't Rust Belt. That'd be Ohio and West Virginia.

The Rust Belt begins in central New York and traverses west through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, ending in northern Illinois, eastern Iowa, and southeastern Wisconsin.

 Rust Belt

 

[Harry Bosch]

The idea that Clinton lost the because of extremist liberals not turning out to vote her in the Rust belt is prima facie absurd, and doesn't stand up to much scrutiny when you dig into the numbers, as far as I can tell.

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan aren't Rust Belt. That'd be Ohio and West Virginia.

Either way, there's no link between "Clinton lost in states X, Y, and Z" and "the only thing that prevented a Clinton victory is lack of support from voters far to the left of all her positions".

There were many factors that hurt Clinton. But third parties didn't help. In every election third parties help the republicans. Anyway, Clinton lost Wisconsin by 23,000 votes. Crystal lady Stein won 31,000 votes there.

https://www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clinton-pennsylvania-michigan-wisconsin-what-happened-2017-9

 

[southernhybrid]

The idea that Clinton lost the because of extremist liberals not turning out to vote her in the Rust belt is prima facie absurd, and doesn't stand up to much scrutiny when you dig into the numbers, as far as I can tell.

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan aren't Rust Belt. That'd be Ohio and West Virginia.

Either way, there's no link between "Clinton lost in states X, Y, and Z" and "the only thing that prevented a Clinton victory is lack of support from voters far to the left of all her positions".

That may have been true for a small minority, but the Democrats that I know who didn't vote for Clinton, told me they just didn't like her.

Another thing that nobody has mentioned is that black voter turnout had dropped quite a bit in 2016. I've know some younger black voters who only voted when Obama was running, while my older black friends all voted in 2016. Black folks are one of the biggest supporters of Democrats, as you probably know.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-turnout-fell-in-2016-even-as-a-record-number-of-americans-cast-ballots/

The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks. (It’s also the largest percentage-point decline among any racial or ethnic group since white voter turnout dropped from 70.2% in 1992 to 60.7% in 1996.) The number of black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012. With Barack Obama on the ballot that year, the black voter turnout rate surpassed that of whites for the first time. Among whites, the 65.3% turnout rate in 2016 represented a slight increase from 64.1% in 2012.

 

[ronburgundy]

A study by the Fed Reserve Bank of NY found that years after graduation (see Table 1 on p. 28), Business majors were more than twice as likely to be registered Republicans than Democrats, in contrast to what is true of college grads more generally. Note that this is not b/c learning about economics favors conservatism. Among those who have learned the most about economics, those with graduate degrees in it, they are about 2/3 Democrat.

The control group is people who have no degrees. The fact that business majors are more conservative doesn't disprove that any education increases progressiveness and leftism.

The control group did not "have no degrees". They were college grads with the same level of education but who were "general" majors, meaning they took a wide breadth of courses across STEM fields and the humanities. Also, years after graduation, there were twice as many business majors who were Republicans than Business majors who were Democrat. Given that in the general population, Democrats outnumber Repblicans by 1.3 to 1, that clearly means two things: 1) Ideology impacts choice of major, with a conservative ideology driving people to attend college to get a Business degree, and 2) Any influence of getting a college education on making people more liberal, is either minimal, non-existent for Business majors who mostly enter and leave college being conservative.

 

[ronburgundy]

Either way, there's no link between "Clinton lost in states X, Y, and Z" and "the only thing that prevented a Clinton victory is lack of support from voters far to the left of all her positions".

That may have been true for a small minority, but the Democrats that I know who didn't vote for Clinton, told me they just didn't like her.

Another thing that nobody has mentioned is that black voter turnout had dropped quite a bit in 2016. I've know some younger black voters who only voted when Obama was running, while my older black friends all voted in 2016. Black folks are one of the biggest supporters of Democrats, as you probably know.

Correct. About 10% fewer blacks voted in 2016 than 2012, and 2012 was a midterm which generally have lower turnout. And black voters tend to be on the left-end of the spectrum among traditional Dem supporters, many black activists and public figures (such as BLM, Kaepernick, etc.) told people on the left not to vote, because Hillary and the Dems were not left wing enough in their positions.

In addition, polls showed that the Millennials identifying as "liberal" increase from 32% in 2008 to 37% in 2016, while the % identifying as conservative remained largely the same (25%-26%). However, the % identifying as Democrat declined from 45% to 37%, despite identification as Republican remaining the same at aroung 26%. IOW, the Dems lost support from the youth, but not among moderates who left for the GOP, but among liberals for whom the Dems were not left enough.

Given that Trump only got 25% of the vote and only won the 4 key states by about 200,000 votes, even a modest % of the blacks and young whites liberals who didn't vote was more than enough to determine the outcome.

 

[Emily Lake]

A study by the Fed Reserve Bank of NY found that years after graduation (see Table 1 on p. 28), Business majors were more than twice as likely to be registered Republicans than Democrats, in contrast to what is true of college grads more generally. Note that this is not b/c learning about economics favors conservatism. Among those who have learned the most about economics, those with graduate degrees in it, they are about 2/3 Democrat.

The control group is people who have no degrees. The fact that business majors are more conservative doesn't disprove that any education increases progressiveness and leftism.

The control group did not "have no degrees". They were college grads with the same level of education but who were "general" majors, meaning they took a wide breadth of courses across STEM fields and the humanities. Also, years after graduation, there were twice as many business majors who were Republicans than Business majors who were Democrat. Given that in the general population, Democrats outnumber Repblicans by 1.3 to 1, that clearly means two things: 1) Ideology impacts choice of major, with a conservative ideology driving people to attend college to get a Business degree, and 2) Any influence of getting a college education on making people more liberal, is either minimal, non-existent for Business majors who mostly enter and leave college being conservative.

I would guess it’s a correlation effect. My guess (wholly subjective) is that it’s more a case of the divide between the practical and the academic, the pragmatic and the idealistic views of the world.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Bomb#20]

The majority coerce the minority, the same way the boss coerces the employees in a traditional work place: via their needs.

I describe coercion as one person having the power to command another.

You describe it as "not getting your way every time".

Quote me.

Coercion is where one person has more power than another.

It is not a situation where all people have the same power but some have the skills to form a majority.

Suppose the owner of a company asks his secretary to have sex with him, and she declines, so he asks her to think about where her kid's meals are coming from. According to libertarian theories, that doesn't count as coercion, because he isn't raping her and she can walk away. And then she'll put out, or he'll fire her and her kid will go hungry. Most native English speakers would call that coercion. Libertarians didn't acquire their belief about what "coercion" means by observing native English speakers using "coerce" to mean "stopped from leaving by force". They acquired it from their political theories.

Suppose the elected manager of a workers' co-op asks his secretary to have sex with him, and she declines, so he asks her to think about where her kid's meals are coming from. According to your theories, that doesn't count as coercion, because he isn't raping her and she can ask the other workers to vote him out and vote in a different manager who won't sexually harass her. And then the manager will point out to the other workers that the reorganized production system he put in place is improving quality, which means they'll be able to raise prices and sales at the same time, which means he's going to get the entire workforce a 20% raise. And then the other workers will reelect him. And then she'll put out, or he'll fire her and her kid will go hungry. Most native English speakers would call that coercion. You didn't acquire your belief about what "coercion" means by observing native English speakers using "coerce" to mean "one person has more power than another, not just the skills to form a majority". You acquired it from your political theories.

So, in your view, exactly what is it that makes your idiosyncratic redefinition of "coerce" more deserving of being taken seriously by the rest of us native English speakers than libertarians' idiosyncratic redefinition of "coerce"? Because it's yours? Because libertarians' theories are an ideology and your theories aren't an ideology because you say so? Because getting screwed by the manager is the secretary's own fault for not having the skills to form a majority? Because the secretary not getting both a vagina that doesn't contain her boss's penis AND a secretarial job is what you'd call "not getting her way every time"? She does get a vagina that doesn't contain her boss's penis OR a secretarial job. So hey, at least she's getting her way half the time.

And thus the truth comes out. Not just "power", "more power".

Power. That is what Anarchists look at. Human power relationships.

And they conclude that power relationships where one person has more power than another have to defend themselves and prove they are necessary.

So why the bejesus don't you also conclude that power relationships where each person has exactly as much power as all the others and consequently no way to protect himself from being ganged up on also have to defend themselves and prove they are necessary? Being overwhelmed by force of numbers is a human power relationship too. What makes your preferred human power relationship exempt from critical examination?

"Anarchist" is a misnomer. You so-called "Anarchists" aren't actually in favor of Anarchy. No, what you guys are for is An-(whichever specific arch you disapprove of)-y.

Just like practically every other self-described "anarchist", in the final analysis you aren't really interested in doing away with "arch" -- with power, with rule, with coercion. What you're interested in doing away with is inequality. As long as each individual coercer has no more power than each individual coercee -- as long as he gets his way by power of numbers rather than by power of an individual -- you're fine with coercion.

This is incoherent romantic nonsense.

What exactly are you against?

Equal power?

What exactly I am against is injustice. Injustice against many by few, and also injustice against few by many.

What exactly I am against is a secretary having to put up with her boss shafting her, irrespective of whether it's one God or ten board members or a hundred shareholders or a thousand co-workers or a million voters who decide she gets the shaft. Of course that seems like incoherent romantic nonsense to you. It seems like nonsense to anyone who believes in Divine Command Theory. And Divine Command Theory is only trivially different from your moral theory -- because it's only trivially different from any species of Supreme Wisher Command Theory.

So why is counting more important to you than noncoercion?

Why is democracy preferable to dictatorship?

Because democracy is the worst of all forms of government, except for all the others that have ever been tried, and dictatorship is one of the others that have been tried. Duh. Democracy is preferable to dictatorship because it makes better decisions. Usually. Not always. It took an RPF dictatorship to end the genocide perpetrated by Rwanda's democratically elected government.

 

[ronburgundy]

The control group did not "have no degrees". They were college grads with the same level of education but who were "general" majors, meaning they took a wide breadth of courses across STEM fields and the humanities. Also, years after graduation, there were twice as many business majors who were Republicans than Business majors who were Democrat. Given that in the general population, Democrats outnumber Repblicans by 1.3 to 1, that clearly means two things: 1) Ideology impacts choice of major, with a conservative ideology driving people to attend college to get a Business degree, and 2) Any influence of getting a college education on making people more liberal, is either minimal, non-existent for Business majors who mostly enter and leave college being conservative.

I would guess it’s a correlation effect. My guess (wholly subjective) is that it’s more a case of the divide between the practical and the academic, the pragmatic and the idealistic views of the world.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What you call "idealistic" is knowledge neccessary for decisions and actions that are not harmful and lead to improvements in most areas of life.

There is plenty of pragmatic utility to people being knowledgeable of and having reasoning skills related to history, biology, physics, chemistry, politics, human nature (psychology and sociology). Society and all its members are seriously harmed the less it's members know of and can think rationally about these things, especially in a relatively free society and Democracy where each member acts upon their assumptions related to all these areas and is given equal input into how formal institutions act on everyone's behalf. In most areas of life and decision making such knowledge has far more practical utility than what is taught to MBAs. The only is benefit that is greater for MBAs is the benefit to personal wealth. So, what the data support is that conservatives place much higher value on personal wealth, but lower value on the kinds of knowledge and thinking skills that are essential for all other aspects of life, including making effective choices for health, safety, social progress, justice, and ethical behavior, both for oneself personally and at the group level.

 

[DBT]

Whatever happens to provide a fair and equatable living standard for all citizens....such a system or way of organizing society is probably an impossibility.

 

[untermensche]

I describe coercion as one person having the power to command another.

You describe it as "not getting your way every time".

Quote me.

Your criticism of democratic rule is that it means some people won't get their way. The idea not able to gain a majority vote will not be implemented.

You have no other criticism.

Coercion is where one person has more power than another.

It is not a situation where all people have the same power but some have the skills to form a majority.

Suppose the owner of a company asks his secretary to have sex with him, and she declines, so he asks her to think about where her kid's meals are coming from. According to libertarian theories, that doesn't count as coercion, because he isn't raping her and she can walk away. And then she'll put out, or he'll fire her and her kid will go hungry. Most native English speakers would call that coercion. Libertarians didn't acquire their belief about what "coercion" means by observing native English speakers using "coerce" to mean "stopped from leaving by force". They acquired it from their political theories.

A coercive system is one where an individual or small group has all real power. They have the ultimate final say on anything.

It is not what people do with that power.

There were very charming Kings and many people loved them.

But it doesn't make monarchy less than a dictatorship.

Why is democracy preferable to dictatorship?

Because democracy is the worst of all forms of government, except for all the others that have ever been tried, and dictatorship is one of the others that have been tried. Duh. Democracy is preferable to dictatorship because it makes better decisions. Usually. Not always. It took an RPF dictatorship to end the genocide perpetrated by Rwanda's democratically elected government.

Another utter failure of the education system.

Democracy is better because those wielding power have legitimacy.

They have the power because a majority thought they would be best.

Of course in the US the idea of the majority picking the president is not the case.

So we end up with scum like Trump and GW.

Two times the failure to recognize the majority has been disastrous.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Given that Trump only got 25% of the vote and only won the 4 key states by about 200,000 votes, even a modest % of the blacks and young whites liberals who didn't vote was more than enough to determine the outcome.

[nitpick]
PA - 44k
WI - 23k
MI - 11k

~78,000 votes decided the 46 electoral votes that gave the White House to Trump.

Trump received fewer votes than Mitt Romney in Wisconsin, Mitt Romney lost Wisconsin. Trump was short over 200k votes on Obama.

Neither Trump nor Clinton reached Obama's PA tally in 2012, though they were just short about 20k and 70k.

Trump received nearly 300,000 fewer votes in Michigan than Obama.

However, it does get interesting as the trend isn't necessarily as you'd think.

Michigan 2012 -> 2016 (-200,000 fewer votes for top two candidates)
Pennsylvania 2012 -> 2016 (300,000 more votes for top two candidates)
Wisconsin 2012 -> 2016 (-200,000 fewer votes for top two candidates)

So a lack of turnout hurts MI and WI. The funny thing is when you plot the 2012 to 2016 election differentials by county (plotted against county population) it isn't even that straight forward:



Trump (orange) generally gained in almost every county and Clinton lost in many many counties, mostly rural (the Alabama portion of PA). BUT Trump somehow lost Chester County... which Mitt Romney had actually won, which was a decent sized county. When you look at counties with the largest populations, Clinton did typically increase what Obama received... and Trump lost votes. That is... every big county but Philadelphia County where we see Trump making about 1/3'd of his states victory.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Whig.
It's under-reported, but we're resurgent.

 

[Bomb#20]

I describe coercion as one person having the power to command another.

You describe it as "not getting your way every time".

Quote me.

Your criticism of democratic rule is that it means some people won't get their way. The idea not able to gain a majority vote will not be implemented.

You have no other criticism.

Do you not understand the words "Quote me" or are you refusing to back up your claims about what I say? You seem determined to be the one to supply both sides of the debate. If you want to talk to yourself, why are you replying to me?

A coercive system is one where an individual or small group has all real power. They have the ultimate final say on anything.

It is not what people do with that power.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coerce

Definition of coerce
transitive verb

1 : to compel to an act or choice

2 : to achieve by force or threat

3 : to restrain or dominate by force​

Yes, it absolutely is what people do with that power. You have every right to speak your own private Humpty Dumpty language if that's what floats your boat, but that doesn't put the rest of us under any obligation to go along with your pretense that what you're speaking is English.

There were very charming Kings and many people loved them.

But it doesn't make monarchy less than a dictatorship.

And that doesn't make them the same either. Some monarchies have been dictatorships and some have not. For instance, France under Louis "L'etat c'est moi" XIV was a dictatorship. But England was never a dictatorship, except for a few years when Parliament abolished the monarchy and appointed Cromwell dictator. The times an English King thought he was dictator, he got Magna Carta forced down his throat, or got his illegal commands overturned by Chief Justice Coke's legal writs, or got overthrown and beheaded, or got fired by Parliament. Democracy is not the opposite of dictatorship. The opposite of dictatorship is rule of law.

I notice you simply snipped my example of a workers' co-op's elected manager coercing a secretary for sex. I take it you have no interest in thinking about that scenario. Like you said, ideology is the death of thinking.

Why is democracy preferable to dictatorship?

Because democracy is the worst of all forms of government, except for all the others that have ever been tried, and dictatorship is one of the others that have been tried. Duh. Democracy is preferable to dictatorship because it makes better decisions. Usually. Not always. It took an RPF dictatorship to end the genocide perpetrated by Rwanda's democratically elected government.

Another utter failure of the education system.

Because the job of the education system is to indoctrinate students to believe in whatever principles untermensche agrees with, rather than to think for ourselves?

Democracy is better because those wielding power have legitimacy.

They have the power because a majority thought they would be best.

So it would have been better if the elected leaders of Rwanda who the Hutu majority thought would be best had successfully wielded their power and murdered the entire Tutsi minority? Because they had legitimacy? And the Tutsis fighting for their lives did not have legitimacy, because only a minority thought Tutsis getting to go on living would be best? What, did the Tutsis have a moral obligation to just roll over and die? In order to "not get their way every time"? Are you even listening to yourself?

Why do you claim a majority thinking they would be best supplies legitimacy? The notion that legitimacy comes from how you gain power is a fixture of Supreme Wisher Command Theory. Some monarchists said the King was the legitimate ruler by Right of Conquest; others said it was because he was chosen by God; Hobbes said it was because our long-ago predecessors agreed to obey the King's long-ago predecessor. How is your theory any different from theirs, other than that you yanked out all their respective favorite Supreme Wishers and plugged your own favorite Supreme Wisher into the empty socket? If somebody tells me "Obey!", and I ask "Why?", and his mouthpieces come back at me with some historical story about how once he had no power and then he acquired power, how the heck does that even address my question? How is that any more of an answer than "The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur."? How do you get from "This is how he got the boss job." to "You ought to obey him."?

In my view, legitimacy comes not from how you got power but from how you use it. If you're using governmental power to secure people's unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness then it's legitimate. If you're using it in a way that's destructive of these ends then it isn't legitimate and it's the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.

So why is your theory of legitimacy more reasonable than mine? Because you intone the word "majority" over and over like a religious mantra? Because you think the education system should have told me to shut up and believe whatever I'm told by my betters, such as untermensche? Because if a factory has 500 white workers and 301 of them vote to pay each of the 100 black workers three fifths of a white man's wage, then the black workers should just suck it up? Because the black workers' only criticism is that it means those 100 people won't get their way? The black workers put their idea of equal pay for equal work to a vote, but the idea was not able to gain a majority vote and will not be implemented? They have no other criticism?

In any event, how can you even talk about the wielders of power having "legitimacy" and call yourself an Anarchist? What, "No masters, no bosses except for legitimate ones."? That's got to be the greatest flip-flop since "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".