Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 ulgurstasta wrote:
Has he really started to attack Clinton? I have been out of the loop on this the last week but from what I have seen he has been very careful to NOT attack Clinton openly. Clintons staff have done their to best to paint him as the "white old mansplainer" (see the whole twitter thing about "berniesplaning") so I would be surprised if he went on the offensive, as that would open him up to that big time.

He's attacking her directly on receiving funds from the energy industry. Trying to paint her as bought and paid for by fossil fuels. Its a really silly line of attack, because less than half of 1% of her funds have come from the energy sector, and maybe two weeks ago people were trying to paint Clinton as bad because she was going to destroy coal mining.

But more than that, it's really silly because Sanders chances of winning are extremely slim. He's already established that his brand of populist left wing politics has a strong appeal, so from here he'd be much better off leaving this campaign with lots of goodwill, with a base from which he can play a role in reshaping the Democratic party. If instead he starts doing the Republican's work for them, he's going to burn a lot of bridges.

 sebster wrote:

 ulgurstasta wrote:
Has he really started to attack Clinton? I have been out of the loop on this the last week but from what I have seen he has been very careful to NOT attack Clinton openly. Clintons staff have done their to best to paint him as the "white old mansplainer" (see the whole twitter thing about "berniesplaning") so I would be surprised if he went on the offensive, as that would open him up to that big time.

He's attacking her directly on receiving funds from the energy industry. Trying to paint her as bought and paid for by fossil fuels. Its a really silly line of attack, because less than half of 1% of her funds have come from the energy sector, and maybe two weeks ago people were trying to paint Clinton as bad because she was going to destroy coal mining.

But more than that, it's really silly because Sanders chances of winning are extremely slim. He's already established that his brand of populist left wing politics has a strong appeal, so from here he'd be much better off leaving this campaign with lots of goodwill, with a base from which he can play a role in reshaping the Democratic party. If instead he starts doing the Republican's work for them, he's going to burn a lot of bridges.

The democratic party being bought by corporate interest is neither silly or a non-problem, it´s actually one of the problem Sanders wants to highlight with his campaign. With that in mind it makes entirely sense to attack Hillary over it.

 sebster wrote:

 ulgurstasta wrote:
Has he really started to attack Clinton? I have been out of the loop on this the last week but from what I have seen he has been very careful to NOT attack Clinton openly. Clintons staff have done their to best to paint him as the "white old mansplainer" (see the whole twitter thing about "berniesplaning") so I would be surprised if he went on the offensive, as that would open him up to that big time.

He's attacking her directly on receiving funds from the energy industry. Trying to paint her as bought and paid for by fossil fuels. Its a really silly line of attack, because less than half of 1% of her funds have come from the energy sector, and maybe two weeks ago people were trying to paint Clinton as bad because she was going to destroy coal mining.

But more than that, it's really silly because Sanders chances of winning are extremely slim. He's already established that his brand of populist left wing politics has a strong appeal, so from here he'd be much better off leaving this campaign with lots of goodwill, with a base from which he can play a role in reshaping the Democratic party. If instead he starts doing the Republican's work for them, he's going to burn a lot of bridges.

You say that, but Reddit is eating that stuff (the energy links) up. (not that they needed an excuse to dislike Hillary anyway)

 ulgurstasta wrote:
The democratic party being bought by corporate interest is neither silly or a non-problem, it´s actually one of the problem Sanders wants to highlight with his campaign. With that in mind it makes entirely sense to attack Hillary over it.

Sure, that's a perfectly good issue. And moving forward it'd make sense for Sanders to build an ethic, even a pledge within the party, that candidates will not take money from certain kinds of donors, or even from corporate interests at all. Wouldn't that be something.

But here, right now, attacking Clinton because half of 1% of her funds have come from the energy sector is beyond stupid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Goliath wrote:
You say that, but Reddit is eating that stuff (the energy links) up. (not that they needed an excuse to dislike Hillary anyway)

Reddit has been eating up anti-Clinton stuff since Sanders starting running. So has much of the rest of the leftwing internet. What's interesting is how much time they've spent bashing Clinton instead of supporting Sanders, even while Sanders was running a very positive campaign.

That's why Sanders has to be careful, and why it's so disappointing he's increasingly failing to do that. If he leads the far left well enough he can position it in a place where it might be mobilized and demanding of the Democrats, so the potential votes drag the party towards the left. Instead he's setting it up for them to simply wander back off in to political irrelevance once Sanders finishes his quixotic run, and that will the Democrats more or less back to where they started, a centrist party with a bunch of single issue special interests.

 sebster wrote:

 ulgurstasta wrote:
The democratic party being bought by corporate interest is neither silly or a non-problem, it´s actually one of the problem Sanders wants to highlight with his campaign. With that in mind it makes entirely sense to attack Hillary over it.

Sure, that's a perfectly good issue. And moving forward it'd make sense for Sanders to build an ethic, even a pledge within the party, that candidates will not take money from certain kinds of donors, or even from corporate interests at all. Wouldn't that be something.

But here, right now, attacking Clinton because half of 1% of her funds have come from the energy sector is beyond stupid.

I disagree. You have to remember it´s not just Clinton, many of the super-PACs that have pledged to her have also taken money from the energy sector(among other sectors). I wouldn´t also be surprised if the Clinton foundation has gotten some money from the energy sector also over the years. And even if it was just 1%, the energy sector didn´t give her that 1% out of the goodness of their hearts

 sebster wrote:

That's why Sanders has to be careful, and why it's so disappointing he's increasingly failing to do that. If he leads the far left well enough he can position it in a place where it might be mobilized and demanding of the Democrats, so the potential votes drag the party towards the left. Instead he's setting it up for them to simply wander back off in to political irrelevance once Sanders finishes his quixotic run, and that will the Democrats more or less back to where they started, a centrist party with a bunch of single issue special interests.

This is an excellent point, and I agree. However, it will be very hard when the media WANTS to make it a horse-race. That's where the ratings are at! Therefore, any step to differentiate yourself from Clinton will be spun as an "attack", especially when some of Sanders core beliefs are very different from Clinton's. If tries to highlight those, it will be seen as an attack and any praise/positives will be cut from the sound bites.

In order to maintain his movements momentum, he needs to keep them relevant. However, he also needs to pivot to creating an actual movement and ground game for post-election grass roots mobilization. I haven;t heard much about the second point. Since I want his ideas to stay in mainstream US politics after this election, I truly hope he can pivot and build that movement and not just be a Ron Paul of the left.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/inside-the-donald-trump-presidential-campaign.html#


worth a quick read...

note :

 sebster wrote:
That's why Sanders has to be careful, and why it's so disappointing he's increasingly failing to do that. If he leads the far left well enough he can position it in a place where it might be mobilized and demanding of the Democrats, so the potential votes drag the party towards the left. Instead he's setting it up for them to simply wander back off in to political irrelevance once Sanders finishes his quixotic run, and that will the Democrats more or less back to where they started, a centrist party with a bunch of single issue special interests.

The Democratic Party wants nothing at all to do with leftism, however. They do not want to give Sanders the nomination and have no interest in listening to him. In order for the Democratic Party to move leftwards, much of it would have to be ousted somehow.

The left is far better served as a replacement for the Democratic Party than as its flunky.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 sebster wrote:
That's why Sanders has to be careful, and why it's so disappointing he's increasingly failing to do that. If he leads the far left well enough he can position it in a place where it might be mobilized and demanding of the Democrats, so the potential votes drag the party towards the left. Instead he's setting it up for them to simply wander back off in to political irrelevance once Sanders finishes his quixotic run, and that will the Democrats more or less back to where they started, a centrist party with a bunch of single issue special interests.

The Democratic Party wants nothing at all to do with leftism, however. They do not want to give Sanders the nomination and have no interest in listening to him. In order for the Democratic Party to move leftwards, much of it would have to be ousted somehow.

The left is far better served as a replacement for the Democratic Party than as its flunky.

I disagree with this premise...

Both parties are being pulled by their extremes. The Democrats are becoming more leftist... and the Republicans are more conservative over the years.

Here's the House's divide 2-years ago:


Another interesting charts... "Feeling Thermometers on the 2015 'Cooperative Congressional Elections' Study":

2016 American Elections

I'm always amused when people complain about Democrats being super liberal...They don't realize that the Dems are moderates and makes me wonder how they would react to an actual Liberal.

 skyth wrote:
I'm always amused when people complain about Democrats being super liberal...They don't realize that the Dems are moderates and makes me wonder how they would react to an actual Liberal.

From a Certain Point of View™:

 skyth wrote:
I'm always amused when people complain about Democrats being super liberal...They don't realize that the Dems are moderates and makes me wonder how they would react to an actual Liberal.

Considering an "actual Liberal" is a Libertarian.... probably pretty favorably? It's one of the huge problem I have with US politics. People seem to think that terms can mean whatever they heck they want them to. The reality is far from that. Every term used in a political context has a specific meaning, but places such as the news media (Fox, MSNBC, etc) tend to try and dumb things down to a point where terms get taken out of context, or blatantly misused.

Libertarian is no Liberal.

 skyth wrote:
Libertarian is no Liberal.

Libertarians want little to no government oversight, little to no taxes, "private business" handles everything. That's pretty much John Locke in a nutshell. As in, John Locke's premise is that all men are entitled to 3 things, Life, Liberty, and Property (which he defined slightly broader than we do today).

In political science terms, that's about as close to a Classical Liberal as one can be.

What on Earth do all those charts mean? What are the axes, and what do they purport to measure?

And I don't care what the term used to mean. I care about what it means now. Language changes as do definitions. This is not a problem. It is simply how language evolves.

All Libertatian means is they want to be as selfish as possible and have the ability to screw over people they don't like. That is the anti-thesis of the current meaning of the word 'liberal'.

Libertarian belifs do tend to be socially liberal, but economically conservative. A libertarian doesn't really fit either the liberal or conservative moniker. At least actual libertarian, not the mainline R calling themselves libertarian, like you usually get.

Liberalism =\= Libertarian

Liberalism is very well defined, we don't have to reinvent the word to make it fit some agenda.

 sebster wrote:
He's attacking her directly on receiving funds from the energy industry. Trying to paint her as bought and paid for by fossil fuels. Its a really silly line of attack, because less than half of 1% of her funds have come from the energy sector, and maybe two weeks ago people were trying to paint Clinton as bad because she was going to destroy coal mining.

But more than that, it's really silly because Sanders chances of winning are extremely slim. He's already established that his brand of populist left wing politics has a strong appeal, so from here he'd be much better off leaving this campaign with lots of goodwill, with a base from which he can play a role in reshaping the Democratic party. If instead he starts doing the Republican's work for them, he's going to burn a lot of bridges.

No idea if it's intentional, but previewing this attack helps desensitize the voters to it when the Republicans try to pull it out in the general election.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What on Earth do all those charts mean? What are the axes, and what do they purport to measure?

The Liberal v. Conservative chart?

It's based on the DW-NOMINATE (<-- see wiki) dataset:

"NOMINATE (an acronym for Nominal Three-Step Estimation) is a multidimensional scaling application developed by political scientists Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal in the early 1980s to analyze preferential and choice data, such as legislative roll-call voting behavior.[1][2] As computing capabilities grew, Poole and Rosenthal developed multiple iterations of their NOMINATE procedure: the original D-NOMINATE method, W-NOMINATE, and most recently DW-NOMINATE (for dynamic, weighted NOMINATE)"

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
Liberalism =\= Libertarian

Liberalism is very well defined, we don't have to reinvent the word to make it fit some agenda.

I wonder if "liberalism" is being confused with "progressivism".

I wouldn't really call libertarianism progressive, although it does have some of the same rejection of existing power structures.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Liberalism =\= Libertarian

Liberalism is very well defined, we don't have to reinvent the word to make it fit some agenda.

I wonder if "liberalism" is being confused with "progressivism".

I'd guess it's more being confused with classical liberalism, as seen in phrases like "liberal democracy."

It's the idea that there are inherent laws and rights that are supreme against even the will of sovereign. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and so on.

Libertarianism adds the idea that the right to property should be inviolate, which is a problem because while life, liberty, and happiness exist outside of society, property is most definitely a social construct.

 whembly wrote:

I wonder if "liberalism" is being confused with "progressivism".

Usually when you see people saying things like "stoopid libtards" or "dumb-ass libs" and the like... yeah, they are.

@Polonius... I mentioned Locke's three inherent rights earlier, and based on his writings, "property" isn't just the socially constructed cabin with an acre of land to farm and the tables and chairs inside of it... For Locke, property also includes your work. Basically, if you were a rope maker (a fairly common profession during his day) but you didn't own Acme Rope Co. you were in essence selling the "property" of your labor and produced goods and being paid a wage.


Where things get muddied of course is that there are Classical Liberals (who think all people are equal, despite society's acting otherwise, and despise government intervention in that regard), and Progressive Liberals (who believe that people are inequal due to society's past, and think the playing field should be leveled some)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skyth wrote:
And I don't care what the term used to mean. I care about what it means now. Language changes as do definitions. This is not a problem. It is simply how language evolves.

This isn't a matter of language evolving... Political scientists still use these terms as defined and intended in their field. It's only out among the ill-informed that the definition gets perverted into something else.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 skyth wrote:
And I don't care what the term used to mean. I care about what it means now. Language changes as do definitions. This is not a problem. It is simply how language evolves.

This isn't a matter of language evolving... Political scientists still use these terms as defined and intended in their field. It's only out among the ill-informed that the definition gets perverted into something else.

eh... sort of. Political theorists might use the term in abstract works, or when looking at very high level theories, but political scientists that work in actual terms wouldn't outside of the stuffiest academic writings.

So while, yes, a tract on the progress of individual rights in Western history uses "liberal" in a specific way, the fact that in practice even the party that best exemplifies those ideals has a different term shows that the term has shifted in meaning.

Yeah, it seems pretty standard to differentiate classical liberalism from modern liberalism.

The whole libertarian thing is really interesting when viewed on spectrum as it seems to reach towards anarchism. But then you also have the left leaning anarchism, which doesn't get along well at all with right leaning anarchism. Just like left leaning statists and right leaning statists don't seem to get along so well.

Regardless, most people seem to have vague political notions related more to feelings and background than any coherent political philosophy. Often the more militant, the less rational. Rather than being a discussion of alternative solutions to problem identification and solving, political debate becomes and attack on identity and vilification of the others (stupid libruls v. heartless cons, for example). Which is great for the political class, as it makes manipulation easier and accountability harder. Just tell the fans why our team is better and blame everything on those other rascals.

 Polonius wrote:

eh... sort of. Political theorists might use the term in abstract works, or when looking at very high level theories, but political scientists that work in actual terms wouldn't outside of the stuffiest academic writings.

As a political scientist who does actual work in politics I can vouch for the truth of this statement.

 whembly wrote:

Both parties are being pulled by their extremes. The Democrats are becoming more leftist... and the Republicans are more conservative over the years.

Several of the charts from the website you linked to indicate that the GOP is being pulled to the right more quickly than the Democrats are being pulled to the left. Granted, all the graphs on that website are so poorly presented that little information can be gleaned from them.

I need to see a video of this:
Bernie Sanders meets with the Daily News Editorial Board

...
Daily News: I know you've got to go in a second. When was the last time you rode the subway? Are you gonna a campaign in the subway?

Sanders: Actually we rode the subway, Mike, when we were here? About a year ago? But I know how to ride the subways. I’ve been on them once or twice.

Daily News: Do you really? Do you really? How do you ride the subway today?

Sanders: What do you mean, "How do you ride the subway?"

Daily News: How do you get on the subway today?

Sanders: You get a token and you get in.

Daily News: Wrong.

Sanders: You jump over the turnstile.

Daily News: We would like our photographer to be there when you jump over the turnstile.
...

He's trying to be cute...

He should've said: "You locate the wealthiest 1% of people in the station and demand they buy everyone's subway pass."

 whembly wrote:

I need to see a video of this:
Bernie Sanders meets with the Daily News Editorial Board

...
Daily News: I know you've got to go in a second. When was the last time you rode the subway? Are you gonna a campaign in the subway?

Sanders: Actually we rode the subway, Mike, when we were here? About a year ago? But I know how to ride the subways. I’ve been on them once or twice.

Daily News: Do you really? Do you really? How do you ride the subway today?

Sanders: What do you mean, "How do you ride the subway?"

Daily News: How do you get on the subway today?

Sanders: You get a token and you get in.

Daily News: Wrong.

Sanders: You jump over the turnstile.

Daily News: We would like our photographer to be there when you jump over the turnstile.
...

He's trying to be cute...

He should've said: "You locate the wealthiest 1% of people in the station and demand they buy everyone's subway pass."

You're trying to be cute.

Getting the 1% to pay for everything is not really close to what Sanders is agitating for.

 feeder wrote:

You're trying to be cute.

Getting the 1% to pay for everything is not really close to what Sanders is agitating for.

Yeah... I flubbed that... he should've said:

"You locate the wealthiest top one-tenth of 1% of people in the station and demand they buy everyone's subway pass."

 whembly wrote:

 feeder wrote:

You're trying to be cute.

Getting the 1% to pay for everything is not really close to what Sanders is agitating for.

Yeah... I flubbed that... he should've said:

"You locate the wealthiest top one-tenth of 1% of people in the station and demand they buy everyone's subway pass."

Wow, wanna be my date for the prom?