I do in fact think that we need to point out the evil effect that corporations and the wealthy are having for average folks, and that this will be an effective way to attract avarage voters, much more effective than a more measured approach. You know how corporations and the extremely wealthy could prevent that? By not doing evil shit any more … and we all know THAT’S not gonna happen.
BTW, I am making a distinction here between the ultra-wealthy … the top one tenth or one hundredth of the One Percent, and ordinary wealthy heads of corporation. The survey I quote above shows that many corporate heads at the state level at the Chambers of Commerce have empathy for their workers. But they are not the ones calling the tune at ALEC or the national Chamber of Commerce. The evil scumbags have the power.
Even among the uber wealthy, there are variations in good and evil. Buffet isn’t evil - he does make business based decisions, pay market wages, and lay people off when necessary - those things aren’t evil - they are necessary if you are going to keep companies profitable, and companies need to remain profitable if they are going to stick around to provide jobs. But he runs ethical companies.
Right, and really, there’s not all that much today to be really angry about (at a Federal level). Unemployment is down, the economy is pretty good, the only significant politcal issues facing us at a Federal level are those caused by angry voters.
First that “success” is a term that may not really apply. Neither has the majority of the support of the parties in which they are running. Calling 42% of the popular vote and being very solidly behind in pledged delegates this late in the game (Sanders) a “success” is only that which applies relative to very low expectations at the start. Trump is now a longstanding frontrunner who so far cannot close the deal.
There are of course significant differences between what drives support for one and what drives support for the other. Still there are commonalities and I can focus on those for this post.
As stated, a sizable minority of voters are not so much angry as dissatisfied. “Change” was not a theme new to the Obama campaign; there was just a particularly bad administration to want change from. Trump and Sanders are both running the “change” play. Both are not quite of the parties in which they are running. Both are running against a perceived establishment. Both are running as “try something completely different” campaigns. Trump against a very disliked GOP “elite” and Sanders against the epitome of Democratic establishment candidate.
The seriously angry voters are the loudest but not the most numerous.
That’s right, and I’m genuinely puzzled by the concept that calling them “greedy” or telling them they need to be Moral will do anything positive for the USA.
People who run businesses successfully want to be able to compete within the rules. If the rules (or the level of enforcement of the rules) allow things like failing to pay workers for all the hours they work, skimping on expensive safety features for workers, and sending jobs overseas—then to keep up with competitors, even business-owners who are not monsters of greed will have to do those things. If they don’t, they will go out of business, and less-scrupulous business owners will prosper.
Calling those who run businesses nasty names is an ineffective strategy. Better: make–and enforce–rules and regulations that mandate fair and safe treatment of workers.
My beef with Sanders is that he seems to be all about the name-calling, and not at all interested in the more wonky tasks: making the case for specific types of legislation that will mandate fair treatment of workers, protecting the regulatory system from the corrupting influence of regulatory capture, protecting whistle-blowers, etc. Sanders seems to genuinely believe that shaming business owners by means of name-calling is the best way to effect change.
Trump and Sanders are really different in my view. One guy has never held elective office and is astonishingly ignorant about public affairs. The other guy is an experienced legislator from the extreme wing of the Democratic Party, who has positions that are mainstream by Skandinavian standards, but haven’t been taken seriously in the US political mainstream. So this campaign has been healthy for US democracy. Unfortunately, aspects of Sanders’ plan have only been partially vetted. As for Trump, here’s Kevin Drum’s take:[INDENT] [indent] We hear that every four years. It’s not that they’re angrier than usual. The evidence just doesn’t support that. It’s not gridlock, it’s not wage stagnation, it’s not gay marriage, and it’s not ISIS. The difference is simple: Donald Trump. If you base your campaign on demagoguery—and you’re good at it—you’ll always find a receptive audience. [/INDENT][/INDENT]
Mr. Captor. You will find an audience if you attack corporations. But your support will be necessarily capped. Because many people deal with large corporations in their place of work. And psychologically, most people don’t want to believe that their leader -whom they’ve never met- is a rat-bastard. Not all. But most. Resignation to corporate bullshit? That’s something else.
Well the government (federal, state and local) could easily double in size. “Providing jobs” isn’t the problem. The problem is growing the economy and raising the general standard of living. For that you need a mixed economy.
To me the perfect example is the internet. It’s the result of big business, big finance, big government and volunteerism among computer enthusiasts and university professors. Take away any one of these 4 and you have no internet or world wide web. Remove either of the last two and you get AOL, Compushare and the telephone company all offering bulletin boards in their own private networks. Remove the first two and Moore’s Law collapses and the PC is for hobbyists only.
Teddy Roosevelt had the right intuition. Welcome strong corporations. But make sure they are competitive and keep them leashed. We had a strong economy during the 1950s, 1960s and 1990s. We can have it again. We would have it now if it wasn’t for austerity policies and Republican obstructionism. Or of course the sorts of kneejerk anti-regulation policies that got us into these problems during the GWBush admin. It matters when you simply ignore a housing bubble grounded on liar loans and other failures of due diligence.
As others have pointed out the “success” of either candidate is very relative and frankly, something of an illusion.
In the case of Sanders, I* predicted back in December that even if he won both Iowa and New Hampshire, he’d get creamed in South Carolina and Super Tuesday and never come back from that and that seems to have been true.
Basically ever since Super Tuesday, he’s been way behind and done nothing to really change how the endgame is going to play out. Yes, he’s won a bunch of states, but he’s mostly depended on caucuses which benefit voters who have lots of time on their hands and tend to be more politically engaged and smaller, whiter states. He’s done terribly among African-Americans and Latinos and not much better among working class whites.
If I can make a nerd reference. He’s like the guy playing Magic the Gathering who’s opponent has him Stasis locked and who’s refusing to concede, as is his right, because he can still theoretically win if his opponent makes a huge gaffe but he can’t really do anything to change the situation.
As for Trump, yes, he is the front runner, but that’s more a testament as to how weak his opponents are. His disapproval rating among the public in general is at around 65% even before he started tweeting nasty pictures of Heidi Cruz and that kind of disapproval rating for a major party Presidential candidate in an election year is simply unheard of. Yes, Hillary Clinton also has high unfavorables, but not as bad and her favorables are much higher.
Moreover, even within the Republican party, you’ll notice that Trump can’t seem to appeal to anyone beyond his base. As people drop out, you’ll notice how his support isn’t going up and it seems increasingly unlikely he’ll get enough delegates to win on the first ballot at the convention and while he is the only guy who can win the first ballot, he also ironically enough, is the only guy who can’t possibly win not the second or later ballots.
Kevin Drum notes that we see a Bernie style candidate every 4 years. [INDENT][INDENT]Since 1968, we’ve seen at least one of these in every contested Democratic primary. Off the top of my head, the list includes Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Mo Udall, Gary Hart, Paul Simon, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, Howard Dean, and Dennis Kucinich. They all attracted a crowd of fans, some more than others, and generally speaking they were lionized by the press. None of them won except for McGovern, who went down to an epic defeat in the general election. (Probably any Democrat would have lost that year, but McGovern lost in a landslide.)
So this year I look at Bernie, and I see the same old thing: a bold truthteller who could afford not to play conventional politics because he was never really planning to win. He just wanted to get his issues on the table. The fact that he’s running so close is probably as much of a surprise to him as it is to everyone else.
But this is obviously something that’s far more salient to older voters than to younger ones. Bernie doesn’t seem fresh and courageous to us. He seems like the same guy we’ve seen every four years. They all have one or two issues they care about. They want those issues on the table, and running for president is a good way to do it. They usually drop out by spring. And generally speaking, most of them probably didn’t have the temperament to make good presidents. [/INDENT][/INDENT] Also John Anderson on the Republican side in 1980. What’s the Deal With Oldsters and Hillary, Anyway? – Mother Jones
Sanders is on the record with many statements about greed being a problem, and he does not always qualify those statements by restricting them solely to “Wall Street” or “billionaires,” as here:
If you have an incorporated business, then, yes, Bernie Sanders has stated that your greed (and your policies) are destroying the middle class of America. Shame on you! (Etc.)
This is not unusual verbiage from Sanders.
If you are demanding a quote including the specific phrase ‘average, law-abiding business owners,’ then you are missing the point that Sanders does not always restrict his contempt to those who literally work on Wall Street, or who are billionaires. He seems to be pretty skeptical of the activity of engaging in for-profit business, in general, and he’s not shy about ladling out his disdain.
Though you have to be careful with that if you want the jobs - its a balancing act. Apple couldn’t manufacture the IPhone in the U.S. for the same cost - its because they can hire Chinese labor with Chinese laws that makes your iPhone (or Android device) even possible at that price point. If we want those jobs here (we don’t - they suck) we’d have to be willing to have very lax labor laws and very low wages - or pay a lot for our phones. And that doesn’t address the issues of globalization - is everyone in the world willing to make that trade? Are we willing to put tariffs in place - and willing to take the retaliatory tariffs on our goods when we do so?
That’s one of the trades we make - want a higher minimum wage? - automation may become cost effective and you can expect some jobs to disappear. Or some tasks to be deemed not worth the cost of labor.
I agree with all of this. And that does bring it back to the “illusions of Sanders-supporters” thread theme: do those who cheer when Sanders says the minimum wage MUST be $15 everywhere, and that public college should be tuition-free, understand that these things can’t happen by magic, unintended-consequence-free?
And how split the vote was in the GOP early on. You had several establishment candidates splitting that vote. You had several conservative Christian candidates splitting that vote. And a Tea Partier or two.
Had you had Cruz or Carlson, Bush, Kasisch, Rubio or Christie - and not the whole pack of them, Trump wouldn’t have done nearly as well.
Its like the Academy Awards - sometimes the dark horse wins because there are two really strong candidates who split the ‘establishment’ vote.
One of my first jobs was a cost accounting job helping make the decisions that moved jobs overseas. Wakes you up really fast to those realities. And let me tell you, no one WANTED those jobs overseas, but you didn’t want your products to cost ten times more than the competition.
I run one of those incorporated small businesses. And lots and lots of Americans do. Many of them are S corps or Partnerships or some other sort of pass through onto your personal taxes, but many of them aren’t. And the people that own them aren’t taking off in their private jet while screwing their workers.
The business I run is a pass through consulting company - we find and place high end agile developers. All our “employees” are also a small business themselves. But if we are taxed more, we need to take a bigger cut of their placement to pay our own bills. Or we have to charge our clients more - which may cause them to say “well, we don’t really need someone that good.”
Both their approval and disapproval ratings are within about 10 points.
It’s crazy that both front runners this election have disapproval ratings higher than 50%. It really shows the power that elements of the media can have when they become obsessed with vilifying a politician a don’t like, who has the potential to be successful.
All candidates get more negative coverage than positive coverage. I don’t see this as a bad thing. (I do see a problem with lame coverage or lazy reporting, but that’s something else.)
Vox asked Crimson Hexagon to apply their social media software algorithms to campaign reporting to measure the amount of favorable and unfavorable coverage received by the various candidates. Trump didn’t fare worst. Clinton did. Which frankly is ridiculous given the Senator’s vastly superior command of the issues. Campaign Reporters Hate Everyone – Mother Jones
M4M, great Kevin Drum pieces. I don’t seek him out, but whenever others post his stuff, it’s really good.
Apropos of nothing, my conscience compels me to credit Bernie for coming out against Saudi Arabia today more strongly than I have heard a Democratic presidential candidate ever do before. If he made this a central focus of his campaign, I would probably be honor-bound to switch sides and throw my support to him.