On Losing Our Democracy, Cont.

I am not happy that Trump is President.  At the same time, I don't necessarily feel that Hillary's loss is a sign that democracy is a loss.

I already discussed how rigged the system was in the first place.  That social contract is fraying.  We're losing our democracy.

Although there are academic studies that explore this, I think there's an even better example.  Just consider marijuana.  61% of Americans think it should be legal.  To give you some perspective, about 59% think abortion should be legal.  62% think the government should ensure access to healthcare.

Marijuana legalization has more support than healthcare and abortion.  When we had a townhall meeting on the topic, people came out in droves.

And in this last election?

...

...

Crickets.

What we, the average American, care about is not reflected by our politics.

Too much of this, and whoever gets elected to office will lack legitimacy.  After all, they'll be elected by the wealthy.   Not us.

I get why Trump appealed to so many Americans.  I mean, I think he's a con artist who couldn't possibly deliver on what he promised.  He's an arrogant blowhard who can't control his emotions, has no class, is crass and rude and loves being so.

But Americans were so starved that they went for him anyway.  I know conservatives have made a thing about the 'out of touch, arrogant liberal elite'...I think Trump's win shows the same accusations can be applied to themselves. 

Hillary, btw, played into that narrative all too well.  I'm not sure how much room she had to gain new supporters, as I said before she has a long political history and most people already have an opinion about her.  What I do know, though, is that Madeline Albright's comments seemed remarkably tone deaf and alienating for someone who wasn't already a Clinton supporter.  My instinctive reaction is "Yes, mother.  Whatever you say, mother.  I will support her just because her genitals happen to be shaped like mine. Even though I don't think she has the character I hope for in a president, and I think she showed poor judgment - most recently for how she handled the e-mail scandal - but sure, I'll vote for her because she's a woman like me." *sarcasm*  *eye-roll*. 

That might not have been Hillary saying that, btw, but far too many of her supporters failed to see the problem.

Most Americans might not know what the 'right' answer is to the complex problems of today.  They don't necessarily know what tax policy or federal reserve rate we need, or what sort of regulations should be placed on banks.  Don't necessarily know whether charter schools are the way to go or not.

We just know that we've been screaming "Fix it!" for at least a decade.  And nobody is fixing a damn thing.

On Losing Our Democracy

I want to talk a bit about the Electoral College, and why our Founding Fathers created it in the first place.  The wikipedia page has a great breakdown on some of the topics/issues/questions, to include

...fears of "intrigue" if the president were chosen by a small group of men who met together regularly, as well as concerns for the independence of the president if he were elected by the Congress.

Alexander Hamilton argued that - 

The electors come directly from the people and them alone for that purpose only, and for that time only. This avoided a party-run legislature, or a permanent body that could be influenced by foreign interests before each election. Hamilton explained the election was to take place among all the states, so no corruption in any state could taint "the great body of the people" in their selection. 

 And James Madison argued -

against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." What was then called republican government (i.e., federalism, as opposed to direct democracy), with its varied distribution of voter rights and powers, would countervail against factions.

The comments about fears of 'intrigue' if the president was chosen by a small group of men, the worries about a party-run legislature, or influence by foreign interests...they're all rather interesting given where we are today.  How  justified were those fears, in hindsight?

But the one I wanted to dwell most on today was James Madison, who worried that citizens could be united by some "common impulse of passion" that was adverse to the rights of other citizens.

Mostly because he captured the tension and dissonance in our Founding Fathers towards creating a democracy.  On the one hand, there's the entire concept of a social contract and the belief that people should have a say in their government.  On the other hand, there's this fear that democracy could degenerate into a "tyranny of the masses".  This, honestly, is what I think about whenever I see some internet mob raised in anger.  Most of the time I sympathize.  I understand why everyone is so upset.  But there is something disturbing, almost chilling, about seeing a mass of people decide to take justice into their own hands and punish someone else.  Who decides when someone has been punished enough?  How do you even know how much punishment the recipient has received?  Where was the trial, the evidence?  There's a reason why cases are tried in court...and not the court of public opinion.

It's easy to talk about protecting minority rights when it means protecting the ones we now accept as deserving.  People who have been persecuted for the color of their skin, or religion, or sexuality.  It's not so easy to talk about it when it's most important, i.e. when the group needing protection is unpopular and disliked.  Back before it became acceptable to speak out on behalf of minorities.  You don't get to pick and choose who you decide is worthy of free speech, because then it's no longer about the principle of the thing...it's now about who you agree with and who you don't.  (That said, there are ways to allow people to speak their mind...and make it clear that you disagree with them.  And I personally do hope the voices of disagreement are louder on certain topics.  I think the real question is "what's the difference between honestly voicing your opinion, vs bullying someone into submission for holding a different one?")

Anyways.  Our Founders wanted democracy.  But not too much democracy.

And that dissonance is still here today.  Heck, that dissonance is true for me, as an individual, aside from the larger public.

Frame the issue this way: There is a social contract between government and the governed,  and that the consent of the governed is critical for having a legitimate government (and stable society.)  Democracy makes that consent legible, and renews it on a regular basis.  The ability to have your say, to tell your government what issues you care about (and have those issues addressed) helps prevent the government from becoming unresponsive to the will of the people.  It prevents that government from turning away from their duty as stewards to the public, prevents that government from deciding that their interests are more important...and backing that up with force.  Democracy means that government cannot grow brittle and inflexible, since any such government will be voted out of office and a more responsive person will be placed in charge.  It helps prevent stagnation and decay, and reduces the rot that seems almost inevitable.

As such, democracy is important.  Giving the people a say is important.  And all the problems I touched on previously - gerrymandering, voter registration, money, etc, are serious problems.  Too many people no longer feel like their say matters, the government no longer represents our interests.  And, as such, it risks losing it's legitimacy.

Frame it another way, though, and you will question all of that.  After all, how many people still believe Elvis is alive?  Or that 9/11 was an inside job?

People are crazy, man!  You'd have to be nuts to leave something as important as governing up to them.

Especially if you're educated, and you follow the issues, and you know what's what...and then you see people voting for things that are just so...so...*sputter in incoherent rage*.  (You know that's what happens.  You've seen it on social media, if you haven't felt it yourself.  Remember these thoughts.  We'll come back to it later.)

And yet even though there are a LOT of people who can't tell you the difference between Sikh and Muslim - or accurately place Syria on a map - we do tend to act wiser than the sum of our parts.

I think Malcolm Gladwell explained the dynamics rather well in his book The Tipping Point.  You've got your political junkies, your news junkies, the people who pay attention to this stuff.  And they have friends and family.  You have those Thanksgiving dinner discussions (*groan* I have to talk to them?!?  They're so ______!   Liberal, conservative, take your pick.)  You have Christmas.  You get in an argument over the phone.  Maybe you see an argument on the internet that actually persuades you.  Not the flame wars and trolls, of course.  *eye roll*.  But something thoughtful, well thought out, and it makes you see things in a new light.

Picture a 'typical' person with a full time job and a family.  Wake up, and they have to make breakfast and get the kids to school.  Then it's off to work.  Work, work work.  Time to pick up the kids from school.  Make dinner.  Get the kids ready for bed.  And maybe you have to set aside time to help your kid with homework, or run out to the store to get poster board for some project they forgot about until the last minute.  Or they participate in a sport, or band, and you have to get them to practice or a concert or a play.

That's your typical day.  It's hectic and rushed, and when you get a few minutes to spare you're scrolling through facebook or checking your e-mail.  You might sit down to watch the evening news, and then relax with Game of Thrones (or the television show of your choice).   Or read a book, or play cards.  Whatever.

Point is, that day you might have spent a half hour or less following politics.  And some of it will come from the facebook posts of your more political friends.  You don't have time to go cross checking and digging deeper into the issues - that's what reporters are for.  So you go to the news source of your choice (CNN, Fox News, whatever)...and you see what your more political friends post.  You may not do all the fact checking yourself, but if your friend is doing that (or is friends with someone else who is doing that) then the result may not be too far off.

So now I've come full circle around to trusting democracy again.  There are concerns about how effective this is (especially in the age of fake news), but again you need 'experts' who help sort out what's real and what it isn't...and over time the more credible ones gain sway.

Ideally.  It's not as perfect as I make it sound, and it can take time for the facts to catch up with the story. 

Now is where I want you to recall the thoughts/feelings I mentioned above.  The frustration of seeing  masses of people support or agree with things that just plain wrong.

Because the natural urge, if you don't watch out, is to start thinking you know better than everyone else.  And that you're justified in doing what's best for them.  Even if it means fudging the appearance of a rally so that it looks like someone has more support than they really do.

Or clearing the path for a candidate of your choice, even if they are disliked by a large portion of Americans.  (And if that candidate loses, it just reinforces the idea that the masses are too stupid - or sexist, or racist - for democracy.  After all, if they had any brains your candidate would have won.)

Fits in with the previous posts...

I hadn't thought about it this way, but this article makes a lot of sense.

I think it fits with my previous post, since these ideologues are the politically active people voting in primaries.

And, as the article puts it, that makes them weird.

On American Elections - So What Now?

We are losing our democracy.

I know this is somewhat ironic, since recent elections have excited Democrats and seem to prove once again that voting matters.  And it does.  I will circle back to this...

In my discussion on election rigging, I stuck with some of the very basics of our political system.  I didn't bring up concerns about purging voter registration lists, or details on primary debates that may or may not have had an impact.  It's very hard to say what impact those things had, and whether it was deliberately done to have the alleged impact in the first place.

I also didn't get into the role of money, or lobbyists.  Nor did I discuss the re-election rates for incumbents.

Instead, I want to emphasize that every presidential election our candidates are decided by a very small portion of our population.  See, since we have this duopoly, most of our candidates are decided on by the primaries...

Except most of the population doesn't actually vote in the primaries.  If you aren't the party base, if you don't consider yourself Democrat or Republican, or if you only sort of consider yourself one but don't really get involved enough to know the candidates and vote in the primaries...

Then you don't really get a say in who our president will be.  By the time the general elections come around, it's too late.  You're left choosing between whoever the Democrats and Republicans nominated.

The New York Times broke it down rather well in August over a year ago.  In a nation of 300 million, only 14% of the eligible voting population (and 9% of the entire population) voted for Trump or Clinton.

The vast majority of Americans no longer feel as though we have much say in our system.  The irony is that we could change that. 

If...

If we were engaged.  If we voted, especially in the primaries.  In 2016 only 28.5% of eligible voters participated in the primaries.  As I keep saying...if you wait for the general election it's too late.

In political science, it's well known that candidates have to cater to their base to win the nomination...then pivot more towards the center to win the general election.

In the past decade, as politics have become more divisive and compromise is seen as betrayal, it's gotten harder and harder to do that.  The influence of money (and party control) on politics hasn't helped.  There was intense pressure to get rid of the RINOs and DINOs, with the end result that too many politicians seem concerned with toeing the party line and catering to their base...

as opposed to representing their constituents as a whole.

This lack of voter engagement means we generally provide corrective action well after the fact.  Late, and it's not always clear what the correction is for in the first place.  Republicans and Democrats have this tendency to think they were given a green light for whatever, they take things too far, and voters get energized and punish them at the next election.

It's part of why midterms are notorious for strengthening the party not currently holding the presidency.

The problem is that the people who accept this system are the engaged political types...the ones who actually vote in the primaries. The 9% who voted for Trump or Clinton.

They've accepted the system as is, so they don't really see the need to change it.  After all, why make it easier for a third party to run?   So the ones best suited to changing things have no incentive to do so.  (Not saying that the general public can't, if enough were engaged in the first place.  Which is part of the problem, since none of this would really be an issue if they were.)

That 9% generally is more concerned with helping their party win elections.  With exploring why Hillary Clinton lost, and how they can do better next time.  With figuring out what Trump's success means for the Republican Party, and what that means.  With deciding whether Democratic donors should select Kamala Harris as the next 'serious' contender three years before the next presidential election.  (Not to pick on Kamala Harris, so much as the donors and political influencers who are essentially picking the candidate years before the rest of the population has a chance to even vote in the primaries.)

It will only change if one of two things happens - the general population becomes more engaged and votes for something different (and there are various suggestions on how to do that) or the powers-that-be realize that this is not acceptable and work to change it.

On Rigging Elections, American Style III

Campaigning is a funny thing.  I mentioned the media before, and now's the time to talk about them.

The media have a way of influencing our political choices...not control, necessarily.  But influence.

See, they tend to decide which candidates are 'serious', even ahead of time...and they decide who to write stories about and who to cover.  Every presidential election has candidates who we never, ever hear about.  Like Rocky de la Fuente, Mike Smith, Richard Duncan, or Laurence Kotlikoff.  Candidates we never hear about, don't even know are running. 

Some of it is because they don't have that (D) or (R) by their name.  Some are jokes, like Vermin Supreme.  Some of them are probably not deserving of much media attention.  Who knows?  We never saw enough of them to decide for ourselves.

In politics, name recognition is huuuuuge.  A third party candidate with name recognition and significant resources (i.e. is independently wealthy) might have a chance.  Anyone else?  Good luck.

So campaigns...well, this gets highly speculative in that there are many people out there who build careers off of trying to run a successful campaign.  Their tactics and techniques vary, and after the results are in there can still be tremendous debate over what worked and what didn't.  And why it worked (or didn't).  It also doesn't help that we are adaptive.  That things that worked one year may fail the next, especially as people become used to it. 

All of which is a way of saying this is not a hard science, and there's a lot of room for speculation.

That out of the way -

Campaigns have a certain...hmmm...lifecycle?  At the beginning there's the well-known names, and they tend to soak up all the media attention.  Then there's the campaign process, where a relatively-unknown candidate may get surprising support.  Or not.  If they get that surprising level of support, they may start getting more media attention...and more people take notice of them...and that leads to more media attention...and more people take notice of them.

They build momentum.  They build support.  Everything kind of feeds off of and reinforces everything else. 

This, btw, is part of why I don't really support having all the primaries at the same time.  That seems to favor the well-known candidates and doesn't give time for a relatively unknown candidate to build support.  Politicos may know all about the Dennis Kucinich's and Evah Bayh's of the political world, but unless the candidate has a history in that state most voters don't.  Honestly, most voters don't even know who Nancy Pelosi is, or Kevin McCarthy (I had to look that one up.)  They don't know what a Majority Whip and Minority Whip does (Steve Scalise and Steny Hoyer).  You're lucky if they know who their own representatives are, much less any of the other state representatives.  Or state governors, for that matter.  So watching who outperforms expectations in a primary is part of what starts the momentum.

And voters...well, voters can be funny.  They don't always vote just off the issues, or which candidate is best for them.  It's well known that superficial things like appearance and height play a role.  This article, for example, explores whether polls create self-fulfilling prophecies.  People like to think they voted for a winner...so much so that they will even forget and lie about who they voted for after an election. 

So what's the point of all this?  Mainly that in 2016 we had Hillary Clinton as the clear front runner, from the get-go.  Campaigning on her inevitability.  Trying to convince people she was the clear winner, to create a self-fulfilling prophecy where people would vote for her and make her the winner.  (And boy, were people angry when Bernie Sanders interfered with building that momentum!). 

Some of which is...well, pretty much what every campaign does, right?  It's not necessarily nefarious or illegal. 

Yet it also means that we are left with all sorts of questions, all sorts of "what if's" that can never be truly answered. 

The push to make her appear 'inevitable' was, to my mind, pretty heavy-handed.  How many people voted for Clinton because they didn't see an alternative, and assumed she'd be the winner all along?  Bowed to the inevitable and voted for the presumed winner?  How many people would have voted for Joe Biden or some other candidate if they'd had the chance? 

And how much did her relationship with the media matter.  That...well, I could write a long bit about that by  itself.  Mostly because people have such varied impressions of her relationship with the media - her supporters claim she had little support, negative news cycles, and blame the media in part for her loss.  Others talk about the 'Clinton News Network' and see a lot of puff pieces and media support that (from their perspective) gave her an unfair advantage.

Snopes has a good article breaking down who does and doesn't have ties to the Obama administration - and presumably wanted ties with a future Hillary administration.  The article notes that a relationship does not necessarily mean biased reporting, and discusses which relationships were outdated by that time.  Still, it's interesting that the very last sentence was "...the ban on politics isn’t total; in April, Shipman filed a report on the “buzz” about former secretary of state Clinton’s 2016 presidential ambitions."

I don't know about all that, but I do know that something funny appeared to be going on with my newsfeed in 2016.  That is, I've monitored a news aggregator site for the last decade.  It allows me to keep tabs on the headlines of the day, dig deeper on the topics I'm interested in, and I don't have to waste my time sitting through crap I'm not interested like you do if you watch the news on a TV.  Since I check it periodically throughout the day, I see which articles seem to blow up, which disappear, etc.  There's kind of a lifecycle to it, depending on what other news is going on at the moment.

In 2016 I noticed something funny, though I've got no solid data to illustrate with.  Basically any time an article critical of Hillary came out, almost immediately there were two or three articles refuting it...and then the whole thing seemed to get buried remarkably quickly.  I do believe the e-mails found from the DNC hacks (as reported by the Intercept.  The e-mails of which have not been refuted as false yet) explain some of it.  Particularly the way her campaign planted stories and controlled reporting about Hillary.  All of which means I think there's quite the Clinton media machine.

Which is funny, given the complaints about hostile reporting...from my perspective they made things a lot easier for her than they should have.

Anyways...to bring this back to rigging the system, it's hard to say just how much media influence and the constant refrain of 'inevitable' boosted Hillary's chances beyond what they otherwise would have been.  From certain perspectives, you could even argue that everything was what any good campaign would do - if they had the connections and pull to do so.

And yet that level of control, that sense of a political machine pushing a candidate (despite her high unfavorability ratings) also contributed to the sense that the system was rigged. 

Or rather, that it was her connections and party support that made her the lead candidate even though she was always one of the most unfavorable candidates.

On Rigging Elections, American Style II

The design of our political system favors two parties, and most of my previous post can be applied to both parties.  The media also plays a role in this, though I'll get to that a little bit later.

This next bit gets into speculation and reading between the lines.  I am not, by any means, saying my opinion is an accurate reflection of the situation. 

In 2008, the Democratic Party had Obama and Hillary...those are the two main candidates everyone remembers.   You might remember Joe Biden (selected for VP), and maybe even John Edwards. Not sure how many people remember Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, Evan Bayh, Chris Dodd, Tom Vilsack or Mike Gravel.  

I think everyone remembers how upset Hillary supporters were when Obama, then a rather new and unknown candidate, ended up defeating Hillary.

In 2016, the Democratic Party had Hillary and Bernie Sanders (who some argued wasn't truly a Democrat, and who clearly resented him for running in their party).  You probably don't remember Jim Webb, Lawrence Lessig, Martin O'Malley, or Lincoln Chafee.  It's not just that they didn't get enough support to win.  None of these four candidates was on the same level as Joe Biden or John Edwards in 2008.  There was practically no competition from them.  (Somewhat related to the media.  It's coming, I promise.)

Now, part of what I want to speculate on has to do with RUMINT (for rumor intelligence, like HUMINT for human intelligence.)  You have to be careful with rumors, since there are people who deliberately spread lies.  Sometimes knowingly, sometimes not.  At the same time, you sometimes can important info from it.  Sort of like how 'everyone knew' about Harvey Weinstein.

When I first started hearing jokes calling Dick Cheney a vampire, for example, I pretty much dismissed it.  While reading about the Bush presidency, though, I came to think that those jokes were speaking a truth of sorts.  That Dick Cheney held a level of control as VP that was not typical for the position, and that he used that power in ways that were ultimately detrimental. 

In a similar fashion, people were joking about Hillary's 2016 run as a 'coronation'...and comparing the candidate list of 2008 to 2016, I can see why.  Add in reports that Obama discouraged Joe Biden from running, and it seems clear the Democratic Party was clearing the way for Hillary.  Now, not all elections are competitive, of course.  It's sort of accepted that the vice president of a sitting president is the lead contender for the next election (when said president's two terms are over).  That's part of why Al Gore didn't have much competition in 2000.  But 2016 was an election year where Obama was not eligible, and the vice president would have been - Joe Biden.

Clearing the path for Hillary is not the typical move.  I have to wonder how much of it was done out of fear that a more competitive primary would lead to a repeat of 2008.  That is, some unknown candidate would take the nomination and yet again Hillary would be passed over.  (Never mind that if you have to clear the race for a candidate, they probably aren't that competitive to begin with.)  Or maybe it was some sort of agreement between Obama and Hillary, especially after her loss to him in 2008.  Who knows? 

Still, limiting the 'serious' candidates so that Hillary is pretty much the only candidate is Hobson's choice. 

What's funny is that even with those limited choices, even with a remarkably un-competitive primary, Hillary Clinton still struggled to defeat the one lone candidate that refused to play along - Bernie Sanders.  The nomination was practically handed to Hilary, the path cleared, and then an outsider came in and almost defeated her.  Again.  (No wonder the true believers resent Bernie so much!).


That's still not all...

On Rigging Elections, American Style

The latest news has brought this topic up again, with the usual "it was rigged"-"no it wasn't" debate. 

I want to put on my old poli-sci hat for a bit and go over some things about our political system.

First.  We have what's called a 'first past the post' system.  The candidate with the most votes wins.  End of story. 

This may seem commonsensical on the face of it, until you learn more about what some of our fellow democracies have done.  (This, btw, is not meant to criticize our Founding Fathers for what they came up with.  It was a grand experiment, very different from the world of kings and queens they lived in, and some of the things I'm pointing out only developed later.)

France, for example, is on it's Fifth Republic.  They experimented with quite a few different governments after the French Revolution (which was in 1789, so we're talking about a little over 200 years to go through Napoleon, restoration of the monarchy, and on to this fifth republic.)  Their elections have a two-round runoff voting process.  What this means is the winner has to get a certain number of votes.  If you got 40% of the vote, the second candidate got 30%, and the remaining candidates split 30% of the vote you DO NOT WIN!  Instead, the bottom candidates are eliminated (precisely what percentage counts as a win, and which candidates are eliminated can vary from country to country) and a second round of voting occurs. 

If we had a system like that, you could vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein free and clear...knowing that you aren't going to split the votes for your second-best choice (thus making your least favorite candidate the winner).

Unfortunately, a third party, even if it got 30% of the vote, would have absolutely no representation in our system.  Not unless their support was concentrated in a small enough area to win an election (like the libertarian plan to move to New Hampshire). 

That's part of why I like mixed member proportional representation.  You get to vote for a party, you vote for a specific candidate, and you get a legislature that represents the political platforms in proportion to the voting population's desires.  I don't think our Founding Fathers came up with it because a) there were no political parties in America at the time and b) they had major concerns about the dangers of partisanship (see Federalist Paper No. 10 and the debates with the Anti-Federalists).

Our first-past-the-post process, in and of itself, shapes our political system and pushes us towards a two-party duopoly.

On top of which, the current parties have taken steps to strengthen their hold on the system.  States, for example, have different requirements for an independent who wants to get on a ballot than they do for people with a (D) or (R) next to their name.  Plus there are all the arcane rules about when you must register to the vote, whether you have to declare a party before voting in a primary or not, and so on and so forth.  All of which gives candidates from the two established parties significant advantages.  And I haven't even touched on gerrymandering, and it's pernicious effects.  (I'm throwing out the big words in this one.)

Those systemic advantages for a duopoly are further exacerbated by our history with candidates like Ralph Nader and Ross Perot.  Too many people feel as though voting for the candidate they truly desire would make things worse, since it would split the vote.

Which is part of why every time I hear a Democrat all offended that Bernie came and ran in their primary, I think they have a very limited understanding of the role their parties play in our political system.   And that they're putting their party above the good of the nation.

The Democratic and Republican primaries are not just their own internal selection process.  Given the built in advantages to their party, those primaries determine which two candidates everyone else will have to choose between. 

All of which means our elections start out 'rigged'.  You can vote for anyone you want, sure.  But the only 'serious' contenders come from the two major parties.

It isn't quite as bad as all that, of course.  Our two parties end up being more like umbrellas than a true party...in part because of all I listed above.  Plus the success of a third party can encourage the two primary parties to appropriate the issue.

Umbrella parties just makes things more confusing, though, since it's hard to say which faction of the party is going to win the most votes.  There's something to be said for coalition governments - at least it's clear how much the voters support the various platforms.  (Not like the bickering we see within both parties as they try to figure out why they lost key elections and how to win the next one.  Cater to fiscal conservatives?  Or evangelicals?  Or identity politics?  Or economic issues?   If each was it's own party, we'd know the level of voter support for their ideas.  And if none has an outright winning majority, they can do some horsetrading to build the winning coalition.)

But that's not all...

Odd Jump in Thought

I was reading an article about the Amazon Echo, and saw a link to the article below.  I was curious about it, mostly because Windows is still the primary desktop /business /office /school platform.  That is, much though I love my mobile if I'm going to do any serious typing I want a mouse and a keyboard.  (Maybe someday they'll create little portable computer modules that you can plug and play in phones, tablets and desktops.  Or virtually project a mouse and keyboard so you really can work off your phone.  Or, heck, maybe we'll all be cyborgs in the future, with implanted computers that can project displays on our eyeballs and read our intention to type.  I started to envision verbally talking to a voice assistant to write emails and papers, but honestly I type faster than I speak and I don't think that's realistic.  Unless everyone forgets how to type, which I suppose can happen.)

Anyways, although I was skeptical about the article I was struck by the notion that his criticism here could apply to our political parties.  Okay, first the article:

http://adamhartung.com/why-microsoft-windows-10-really-doesnt-matter/

In our political system, the parties cater to their base (and the wealthy donors and lobbyists that fund them).  The perception is that they do this at the expense of the whole, which I generally agree with. 

Used to be, politicians knew they had to cater to the base in primary elections, then shift to a more general appeal for the election itself.  Getting those independents and swing voters was key to winning.

I'm not sure I believe that happens any more.  That is, both parties seem to have given up on swing voters and instead focus on a) energizing their base and b) discouraging turnout from the other side's supporters.

Some of that is our own fault, of course.  Too few Americans don't even bother to vote (much less vote in the primaries, which you pretty much have to if you don't want to get stuck yet again choosing between the lesser of two evils with whatever horrible candidates the hardcore party bases pick).

Still, the parties, whenever they suffer a defeat and claim to be determined to figure out what went wrong (which has happened with both parties in my lifetime.  Yet somehow they always recover, and the other party never maintains dominance), seem to do exactly what this article criticizes Microsoft for.

That is, in trying to figure out what to do better, they generally go to the base.  Their loyalists.  The ones that weren't going to defect in the first place.  And annoying though it is for those party loyalists who feel taken for granted, they aren't the ones the party needs to appeal to in order to do better next election.

Baltimore, Counterinsurgency, and Why I am an Independent, Part I

I would post about Baltimore, but I already put something up on Facebook and I don't feel like repeating myself.  I will say, however, that this article nails what I think pretty well.

I am blogging instead, because something I want to dig a little deeper into a passing thought.  My experiences in Iraq have turned me off the political parties (and the echo chamber of television news) pretty bad.

I like to call myself an independent. I believe I'm focused more on solutions...in public affairs we discussed evidence-based public policy, and I'm all for that.  I turned away from the political parties because I think they are so caught up in their rhetoric, their worldview, and promoting certain ideologies that they've lost touch with the real world and no longer represent the average American.

I can go into long explanations on the reasons why, but that would take too long and I don't have any good solutions to offer.

I could discuss this with almost any topic, but this is about my experiences in Iraq, so I'll stick with that.

It felt like both parties were trying to make Iraq a Vietnam II.  The same rhetoric, the same competing world views.  "Stay the course".  "Why keep losing American lives needlessly?"  "Violence begets violence, you can never win if you resort to violence" "We have to fight terrorists with overwhelming force"

Each statement is packed with all sorts of assumptions and beliefs.  Again, it would take too long to address them all.  Let me start with a few:

"Stay the course" - this goes back to the belief that we won every single battle in Vietnam but lost the war.  Why?  Because the American people lost the will to keep fighting.  If we had just stuck with it, we could have won.

From what I've read, there is *some* evidence for this.  The North Vietnamese lost a lot of people in the Tet Offensive.  But I don't think we lost because we 'were betrayed at home'.  We lost because of bad leadership.  We lost because our leaders lost credibility.  The American people did not believe there was a viable plan, they felt we were stuck in a quagmire, and there was no real counterargument.  To bring this back to Iraq - "Stay the course" was a stupid leadership strategy.  Especially when any soldier over there could see that we were playing 'whack a  mole', losing areas as soon as we left.  The Iraq forces were a joke, and the great plan involved ignoring their weaknesses in order to prop them up and get the hell out.  The surge, as well as the changes in strategy, all constituted changes that should have been done even earlier.  And I think could have, if leadership wasn't stuck in a bubble and unwilling to consider alternatives.

"Violence begets violence, and never wins" - this was something I used to agree with, actually.  It made sense - you hit me, I get angry and hit you back.  We wind up starting a personal feud.  Heck, maybe it even grows to be a family feud.  Or a tribal one.  Or even national.  But I heard so many people use that argument to claim that the situation in Iraq was hopeless.  That there was nothing we could do.  That we should just cut our losses and leave.  Now, this may be hard to convince people of when we're back in Iraq again...but that is BS.  Let's start at a macro level.  If violence didn't appear to work, people would have stopped fighting millenia ago.  Don't get me wrong - I think it's sad to lose any culture, I think every different culture offers new insights into what it means to be human.  New ideas to play with.  I think it's sad for any culture to really die out.  But the modern world was created, in part, by the violence of the past.  Tribal migrations that displaced others.  These things are so far in the past, now, that it's hard to relate to the losses involved...but do you think the Duke of Normandy, if he knew what the history of England would be, would think invading England was a bad idea? This world view is the kind of thing that appeals to people who already believe, and will be completely ignored by the ones who don't.

I think what sticks in my craw, here, is the belief that violence never wins. On a personal level, I still kind of agree...but I didn't think the situation in Iraq was hopeless.  I do think there are situations where an army, with good strategy and good leadership, can make a difference.  I feel like pretending that isn't so actually makes it harder to be effective, because your refusal to understand and learn about warfare leaves you vulnerable to the ones who don't.  The issue, to me, was not that we were doomed to failure.  It was that the horrible decisions made by people who were supposed to know better had very real, and deadly, consequences.

Even worse...we had invaded a country, disrupted the established order, let loose chaos and violence...and then the people who believed this felt that the only answer was to abandon everything.  I find myself struggling to explain why this was so horrifying to me, so here's another way of putting it -

One of the articles I read discussed the viewpoints of Iraqis in a town that US forces repeatedly had cleared.  To them, the real crime was when we came in, cleared out the bad guys and then left.  Why?  Because the bad guys came back, and they killed anyone they thought collaborated with us.  And the next time we came around, there was no reason to believe we were there to stay, or that they wouldn't face threats from the bad guys as soon as we left again.

And these were bad guys.  This wasn't some nice little insurgency where the Iraqis were all working together to oust the evil imperialists.  The Iraqis were not rejoicing when we left, and welcoming back the insurgents with open arms.  (Or not everywhere, at least.  Obviously they had supporters and bases.)  This was Iraqis who were terrified of what the insurgents would do to them if they didn't go along.

I don't know if I could have morally supported us in Iraq, if we had been facing the Iraqi equivalent of a George Washington.  But all too often the ones we were fighting acted more like gangs.

Which brings me to Baltimore.  Since this has gotten long, I'll go into that in Part II.