How come Angela Merkel got elected, or Theresa May is PM, or Trudeau, etc?
Somehow universal suffrage works in, it seems, elsewhere.
I wouldn’t call it an uninformed choice, but it’s not sufficient to cast a truly informed vote. One of the positive things about the current race is that it’s really highlighted how much character matters. Some complain that this campaign has been free of policy debates, and that’s true, and regrettable, but I think the candidates are so odious and so unfit that making that the story is actually reporting things in proper perspective. What does policy matter when you can’t trust them? Neither of these candidates are actually likely to keep their promises.
If character mattered, Trump wouldn’t be in this election. He’d be where he was in previous humorous attempts at running, like when he was bloviating about how Obama was born in Kenya, in the manner of a street-corner lunatic which is basically what he is, except much wealthier.
What you seem to be claiming here is the false equivalency I mentioned before, though perhaps I’m misinterpreting. Hillary is a flawed candidate, sure, but one with an established track record in public service. Trump is a psychopathic lunatic with no platform at all. This is not an ideological prejudice – Trump is running as a Republican because that was the opportunistic path – he’d have been just as happy to run as a Democrat if the opportunity had presented itself, or independent if he thought that gave him a crack winning. He doesn’t care. He has no principles and no agenda except his own self-promotion.
I don’t remember where I posted the Bill Maher critique on false equivalency, but instead of looking for it and linking to it let me plunk it down right here. It’s from last Friday’s show:
[QUOTE=Bill Maher]
Republicans have one path to victory in this election and it’s called false equivalency. They can’t deny Trump is horrible – it’s on tape. So they want voters to believe Hillary is just as bad, and in pursuit of that goal, they have a very powerful ally: lazy people. People who like to say “they’re all bad”, because when you say that, you don’t have to do any homework. Say they’re all the same, and you can sound justifiably jaded by the entire process, when really, you just don’t know anything.
You say you’re cynical about politics? Don’t flatter yourself. Cynical comes when you know too much. You, on the other hand, haven’t bothered to learn anything. Which Americans, by the way, are capable of doing. Noam Chomsky once observed that when he listens to a sports call-in show, “it’s plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know all sorts of complicated details …”. “On the other hand,” he said, “when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it’s at a level of superficiality that’s beyond belief.”
In other words, we’re not clueless, we just apply our brain power to bullshit.
[/QUOTE]
Clinton is the better candidate, but even with Clinton her proposals don’t really matter all that much, since it’s all just campaign strategy. The stories about Clinton herself don’t just make for more interesting journalism, they actually are the most important thing about her.
This is actually good for Clinton, since as you point out, she is not equivalent to Trump in awfulness. However, if this was a straight-up policy election, Trump would probably win. Aside from his tax plan, he’s not really running as a Republican, and even on taxes, he’s got some populist measures ilke ending carried interest. He’s not vulnerable on entitlements like most Republicans. He’s less interested in foreign interventions.
Heck, if you put a decent guy behind that platform, and articulate it more consistently and clearly, Trump probably wins a lot of Democrats. so it’s actually a very good thing that this is a character election.
I actually agree about the character thing; this election feels like I’m choosing between taking hemlock or strychnine.
I was just saying that in general, there’s more to a vote than merely the personal qualifications of a candidate; their party affiliation counts, if only because of the appointments they may make.
Even there I care more about appointing qualified people than people who agree with me. That’s where looking at ex-governors can really be helpful, seeing the kind of people they appointed. Did they choose qualified people or cronies? When things went wrong did they take responsibility or pass the buck?
Is Clinton objectively better? She’s corrupt and not very bright. I suppose that’s better than The Donald’s intrinsic piggishness.
Doesn’t that seem unreasonable to you? If she’s a tenth as corrupt as what right wingers have been claiming for twenty-five years, then she’s a criminal genius on the level of Moriarty.
I’ve said before that even if you believe Trump and Clinton are equally evil, you should at least vote for the competent one.
Clinton isn’t corrupt, so much as she doesn’t mind skating really close to the edge of the law, and maybe even go over the line a little if she’s pretty sure that her position in society will shield her. She’s also obsessive about her secrets(as opposed to national secrets, which apparently are a lower priority).
The problem is that almost everything CLinton has done, Trump has done, it’s just been publicized less. We need change. This just isn’t the guy. I would have supported Carson if he’d won the nomination.
Delayed response because I didn’t see this earlier.
Why would one particular style of democracy (every adult gets one vote, say) be more “legitimate” than some other style, like a democracy of the vetted knowledgeable? Legitimacy is ultimately pretty arbitrary; at one time, the ultimate legitimacy was considered to be divine right by birth. This was abandoned because it was stupid, the proof of which was frequent bad outcomes and major injustices. If democratic self-rule by everyone indiscriminately can be shown to also have frequent bad outcomes and injustices (which it clearly does), and government of the knowledgeable could be shown to have statistically much better outcomes for everyone in society as a whole – say you could show that the economy is stronger, poverty is lower, there is less crime, people are financially better off and happier – then which system has a stronger claim to legitimacy?
ISTM that you either have to define legitimacy in terms of outcomes that can be judged according to universally-agreed criteria of success, or you have to stop using it as any kind of meaningful standard applied to governance. According to the “legitimacy” argument, the most “legitimate” kind of governance of all is the direct referendum, yet as I pointed out before, these decisions where voters rule on specific policy matters are often incredibly uninformed and have terrible consequences. One could argue that technology could create a more “pure” democracy where just about every major policy decision could go to the voters, and they could vote aye or nay over the Internet. Imagine that – every voter his own legislator! How much more democratic can you get? And it would be an absolute, utter disaster! Important legislation premised on long-term vision would be decimated by voters who couldn’t see past the ends of their own noses.