geekchick | (no subject)

Economic policies

Subprime/foreclosures: Clinton proposes a voluntary moratorium on foreclosures, a freeze on rising interest rates, and she has promised $30 billion in federal aid. Obama has not called for a freeze or moratorium, only a fairly minimal tax credit for homeowners. He is also supported heavily by financial institutions… see http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/fraser .

Clinton was the first to pledge to end tax breaks for outsourcing, although Obama has followed suit.

Arguing that borrowers, instead of predatory unregulated lenders, are responsible for the subprime crisis… I can’t agree with that Obama stance at all. Big edge to Clinton, unless you’re a bank.

LGBT
Clinton supports civil unions, same-sex adoption, expanded hate crime legislation and ending Bill’s DADT military policy. She says she voted for DOMA in order to derail FMA, and would support gay marriages if enacted. Point for gay marriages, minus a half for DOMA tactics.

Obama supports civil unions but opposes gay marriages. Minus a half-point. And then there was Donnie McClurkin… Overall, slight edge for Clinton.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071030/NEWS09/710300384/-1/caucus
For amusement, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19682#continueA
http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/hillary-on-gay-marriage-2/

Electability

Obama has more unknowns and more potential for uncovered skeletons in a general election, and has not fought close elections in his Illinois experience. But he is unquestionably an excellent speaker. Clinton is an average speaker, but any new scandals or mud are unlikely after 16 years of attacks and scrutiny. Both have now demonstrated an ability to raise funds online from small donors, even if Obama has an edge. If Clinton gets the nod, youth may stay home and the rabid right-wing could be energized. If Obama gets the nod, some moderate women and Latinos may drift to McCain, as well as blue-collar men. Point to Obama on presentation and general charisma, minus a half-point for unknowns. Half point to Clinton for durability and toughness. Draw overall on which constituencies would drift. Half point to Obama for better netroots support and outreach. Slight edge to Obama.
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Everyone weighs issues differently, granted. But it seems to me that Obama has an slight edge in two areas vs. five areas for Clinton, and she tends to be stronger in the issues where she leads….

Thank you. Mostly I've been seriously put off by your frothing about his oratory and references to people who support him as Kool-Aid-drinking cult members; I greatly appreciate you taking the time to elaborate on why you prefer one over the other. I disagree with you in a few places, obviously, but that's okay.

In the end, I think they're not really all that far apart from each other policy-wise (and c'mon, you know as well as I do that these campaign promises are little more than hot air and pandering to get votes) and both are by far better options than McCain. I think either of them would do an okay job as president, even though I don't like Clinton on several levels. This Newsweek article hits on something that I think definitely plays into decision-making; we've had too many years, in my opinion, of politicians playing to fears and anxiety, and I personally find myself responding much better to appeals to hope and inspiration.

Hmm. After a challenge like that, I wasn't going to *not* respond... although if the arguments are based on emotional response (as in the Newsweek article) for yourself and others, then lists of issues and policies aren't terribly relevant. Different playing field, so to speak. (Although I wish I'd known that before I stayed up for most of the night. ;)

I don't trust emotional appeals, myself, and look for candidates whose positions I most agree with. In that context, checklists and weighting makes sense, even recognizing that no candidate once elected ever manages to enact more than a fraction of their policy goals.

It appears to me that you've actually validated my original comment, and you've helped show how our motivations for supporting candidates are in fact worlds apart, despite being fairly close on the political spectrum otherwise. Rational vs. emotional...

Just remember how well faith/hope-based politics interacted with the cold, real world over the past few years, on the right.

"play into decision-making" != determine the decision.

i look closely at position statements and voting behaviour of candidates, and overall those are what determines who i vote for.

but how i feel about the person on a gut level does enter the equation. it doesn't drive the decision, but it affects it. and the gut level isn't even all emotional; what i call "intuition" seems more of an aggregate feeling about small incident data collection; hard to enumerate and explain, but not grabbed from thin air either.

when bill clinton got elected, there was something about him that felt shifty to me, lawyer-speaky, as if he talked out of one side of his mouth. i would have voted for him had i been eligible, but i didn't think he had as much integrity as i want in a country's leader. i thought he would probably be a good president, but i didn't trust him to keep all his promises, rather i expected him to weasel when pushed to the wall. i formed those impressions from watching him closely during the campaign and reading a lot about his prior actions.

and what happened seems to support that gut reaction. he was a good president, but he weaseled like there was no tomorrow, and he broke promises when it was inconvenient to keep them. i don't think he had the courage of his convictions; he was a weak man in many ways.

i think HRC is stronger than he, but she's got the weaseling down pat as well, and the manipulative tactics. consequently her campaign promises count a little less for me.

i weigh their positions slightly differently from you, except for the third and last one. i am unforgiving about the iraq war, i think the truth was available at the time to anyone who wanted it. but even more importantly i am 99% convinced clinton is unelectable in today's US of A. obama is black, yes, but he's not a scary black to white america, he's black like colin powell is black. he is electable (while somebody like jesse jackson isn't), though he'll have it harder than a white man in his position. i don't know that any woman could make it, except a quite conservative one maybe. but not HRC. we won't need new scandals about her; she carries so much baggage that it'll suffice, considering her opponent will be mccain (who has a better image than he deserves). she's hated by too many people. if even your own party can't get whole-heartedly behind you, you have no chance in a country in which the population is close to 50/50 split before taking their own gut level into account.

(nods) I have met a few people who have settled on Obama for position/policy reasons, and I respect that (even when we disagree on the specific issues). What worries me is that no politician is worth being trusted, IMO, and if trust and hopefulness is the basis of someone's decision, that's going to crash eventually when cold reality manifests itself. The Newsweek article did a good job of describing that phenomenon.

Hope/faith-based politics got us into Iraq in the first place... as well as Katrina... simply hoping or asserting that the natives will welcome you as liberators, or that the levees won't break, didn't work out for Bush. I doubt it would work any differently for Obama. Politics will be the same... just with another round of inevitable disillusionment, this time on the left.

I see both candidates as equally weaselly... if anything, Obama does better with false-fronts and forced smiles, he's a talented politician.

And, well, likewise Obama's disliked by lots of people within his own party, and the party isn't whole-heartedly behind him either. And his negatives will only increase over time, once the honeymoon wears off, while HRC's baggage is well-worn and a known quantity.

if anything, Obama does better with false-fronts and forced smiles, he's a talented politician.

And here's where the emotional element/gut feeling thing comes into play for you. ;)

Eh? Although I'm not claiming that HRC is nonweaselly, simply that they're both politicians and hence neither is trustworthy?

but how i feel about the person on a gut level does enter the equation. it doesn't drive the decision, but it affects it. and the gut level isn't even all emotional; what i call "intuition" seems more of an aggregate feeling about small incident data collection; hard to enumerate and explain, but not grabbed from thin air either.

Yes, that.

If incidental or anecdotal data aggregation can't be made to correlate with overt facts or data, I discard the former, myself. YMMV... we simply place credence in different things.

hm... i've yet to meet somebody who can always do that, and who makes 100% pure rational decisions; even the most rational people i know have "hunches" and "instincts" and "gut reactions".

Obama does better with false-fronts and forced smiles

what's this then, other than your own gut talking?

how do any of us know when somebody's front is false, when zir smiles are forced? (i presume obama didn't personally tell you.) and even if we're quite certain they must be because we think that politicians all lie, few of them always lie -- and do we know why any particular smile is forced? is it because the person is lying about the issue, because zie's thinking about skirting some other more iffy issue, because zie's eager to get outta there cause the kid is sick at home, or maybe because zie's got gas at this very moment?

It appears to me that you've actually validated my original comment, and you've helped show how our motivations for supporting candidates are in fact worlds apart, despite being fairly close on the political spectrum otherwise.

While I don't think I did. Your phrase was "Even if otherwise we're worlds apart, politically"; politically, there really isn't that big a difference between the two candidates.

Just remember how well faith/hope-based politics interacted with the cold, real world over the past few years, on the right.

I don't actually see much "hope-based politics" coming out of the right (or anywhere else, frankly). What I see is "ZOMG, the terrorists are gonna get us!" and "ZOMG, the gays are gonna destroy your marriage!" I see a whole honkin' lot more appeals to fear and confusion than I do to hope. I have yet to hear anything that sounds even remotely sincerely like "We can work together to make things better."

The way in which we come to the political process, and decision-making, seems to be very different. Even if our quiz scores place us on the same part of the political spectrum... you may see a video clip and see hope and inspiration, while I see naivety and incipient disillusionment and disaster from the same clip. That comes from our different approaches, which do seem to be worlds apart.

I see Bush and his followers as being motivated by their faith and hope that things will somehow turn out the way they envision. With good intentions, that has been repeatedly a disaster.

All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.

IMO, Obama's hope-based politics has enough similarities, from a distance, that it can be unsettling to watch. Remember "we create our own reality"?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html

(no subject)

Part 3 and wrap-up

Re: Part 3 and wrap-up

Re: Part 3 and wrap-up

rational vs emotional?

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Re: rational vs emotional?

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Remember "we create our own reality"?