Political one liners

gcomeau wrote:While I don't particularly like the super delegate thing people keep blowing it up into more than it is.


In theory can they exert their influence to overturn a popular vote outcome at the end of a primary if the vote is close enough that they can make up the difference for the losing candidate? Sure.


Has that ever happened? No.


Will that ever happen? No. (Barring extraordinary circumstances in which said voters would basically thank them for doing it, like someone wins the pledged count then between then and the convention gets revealed to be a puppy torturing Hitler clone from an evil scientists lab or something )


And that is true for one simply reason, arbitrarily over-ruling the primary voters would be party suicide. Best case scenario is you only obliterate your chances for one election cycle.... more likely you destroy your support base for years and years to come.


Same thing happened in 2008. Everyone was wringing their hands over Hillary racking up super delegates early on.... then Obama won the pledged delegate race. What happened? All the super delegates required to affirm that outcome promptly switched sides and lined up behind the winner. Because anything else is cutting their own throats with the voters, which is one thing they won't do.


Same thing will happen this year. Supers can talk all they want at this point about who they say they will support, but no matter what they say they are UNpledged until the convention. Nobody "has" them. If Hillary wins the pledged count all those supers saying they'll support her will stick with it. If she loses the pledged count there'll be a mass migration to Sanders.

What's the rationale for having the super-delegates in the first place, though?

Eyal wrote:

What's the rationale for having the super-delegates in the first place, though?

Not much of one, they should just get rid of them for appearances alone.

They're:

1. That kind of "use in case of emergency" fallback given a candidate gets the pledged total then something comes out making them totally untenable between then and the convention but frankly they could easily figure out other ways to deal with that.

2. A reward to dedicated members of the party to make them feel all important.

gcomeau wrote:

Eyal wrote:

What's the rationale for having the super-delegates in the first place, though?

Not much of one, they should just get rid of them for appearances alone.

They're:

1. That kind of "use in case of emergency" fallback given a candidate gets the pledged total then something comes out making them totally untenable between then and the convention but frankly they could easily figure out other ways to deal with that.

2. A reward to dedicated members of the party to make them feel all important.

I agree with gcomeau, one man one vote.

Poker

pokermind wrote:
I agree with gcomeau, one man one vote.

Poker

Kind of scary but for once I agree with gcomeau as well.

The old quote (so old that it's highly disputed who said it first)

"Don't be so open minded that your brains fall out."

seems to apply to Europe a great deal these days.

pokermind wrote:I agree with gcomeau, one man one vote.

Poker

"The Patrician believed in One Man, One Vote.
He was The Man and he had The Vote."

Discworld (City of Ankh-Mopork) version of democracy.

I have often wondered why it is OK to be a racist if you are Black, Asian, Native American, but not if you are white. It smells of hypocrisy to me.

The Democrat party compromised on slavery, fostered Jim Crow, and promoted the KKK, later doing a 180 throwing the white people under the buss with quotas, reverse discrimination, promoting reparations for slavery where none who were slaves are still alive, etc.

How can two wrongs make a right?

Poker

pokermind wrote:I have often wondered why it is OK to be a racist if you are Black, Asian, Native American, but not if you are white. It smells of hypocrisy to me.

{sarcasm}It's called Political Correctness, but it is actually a way of proving white superiority by claiming that only whites are required to avoid racism. This is due to the need to maintain their inherent superiority. After all, being racist is the mark of one who is intellectually deficient and/or morally inferior, something that whites are nowadays almost forbidden from demonstrating. The lesser races, on the other hand, can prove their inferiority through their constant harping on about needing as many advantages as possible to give them even the faintest hope of matching the white people.{/sarcasm}

Okay, time to be serious.
I believe that the idea that only the whites are not allowed to be racist is due to historical guilt combining with the pendulum effect dating back to when the whites were in a superior technological and societal position (lack of civil wars, superior medicine etc), placing them in a position where it was easy to look down on those from less stable societies, especially those from feuding clan-based areas.
With the voluntary deconstruction of the British Empire, the concept of Imperial Guilt has taken root and now people are taught at school that the British Empire was a Very Bad Thing (even though it seems to have been the least worst Empire in history). This leads to the thought that The British Empire Oppressed All The Natives And Took Merciless Advantage Of Them (most African slaves were actually sold into slavery by fellow Africans from rival clans and although the UK profited from slavery, it led the charge against it on moral grounds), which then leads to The Natives Must Be Allowed To Do Whatever They Want As It's Cultural. Since this usually involves certain cultures believing that they are inherently superior to everyone else, this means that Minority Racism can flourish unopposed.
It also leads to Positive Discrimination which can have serious consequences. For quite a few years, Black Police Sergeants in American films were portrayed as either very competent and hard-working or as desk-bound incompetents. This was because in the real world, the Police Force promoted black officers in job-lots in an attempt to balance the ethnic ratios, but didn't check to see if the promotees could actually do their new jobs. Many knew they were being promoted due to their skin color and were incapable of fulfilling their new roles, so they didn't even try, while some decided to prove that they deserved the promotion and made certain that they could do the job.
It's also led to people from minorities having to fight against the assumption that the only reason that they were promoted was their skin color, a belief that is incredibly persistent due to how badly Positive Discrimination was implemented.

Michael Everett wrote:

pokermind wrote:I have often wondered why it is OK to be a racist if you are Black, Asian, Native American, but not if you are white. It smells of hypocrisy to me.

{sarcasm}It's called Political Correctness, but it is actually a way of proving white superiority by claiming that only whites are required to avoid racism. This is due to the need to maintain their inherent superiority. After all, being racist is the mark of one who is intellectually deficient and/or morally inferior, something that whites are nowadays almost forbidden from demonstrating. The lesser races, on the other hand, can prove their inferiority through their constant harping on about needing as many advantages as possible to give them even the faintest hope of matching the white people.{/sarcasm}

Okay, time to be serious.
I believe that the idea that only the whites are not allowed to be racist is due to historical guilt combining with the pendulum effect dating back to when the whites were in a superior technological and societal position (lack of civil wars, superior medicine etc), placing them in a position where it was easy to look down on those from less stable societies, especially those from feuding clan-based areas.
With the voluntary deconstruction of the British Empire, the concept of Imperial Guilt has taken root and now people are taught at school that the British Empire was a Very Bad Thing (even though it seems to have been the least worst Empire in history). This leads to the thought that The British Empire Oppressed All The Natives And Took Merciless Advantage Of Them (most African slaves were actually sold into slavery by fellow Africans from rival clans and although the UK profited from slavery, it led the charge against it on moral grounds), which then leads to The Natives Must Be Allowed To Do Whatever They Want As It's Cultural. Since this usually involves certain cultures believing that they are inherently superior to everyone else, this means that Minority Racism can flourish unopposed.
It also leads to Positive Discrimination which can have serious consequences. For quite a few years, Black Police Sergeants in American films were portrayed as either very competent and hard-working or as desk-bound incompetents. This was because in the real world, the Police Force promoted black officers in job-lots in an attempt to balance the ethnic ratios, but didn't check to see if the promotees could actually do their new jobs. Many knew they were being promoted due to their skin color and were incapable of fulfilling their new roles, so they didn't even try, while some decided to prove that they deserved the promotion and made certain that they could do the job.
It's also led to people from minorities having to fight against the assumption that the only reason that they were promoted was their skin color, a belief that is incredibly persistent due to how badly Positive Discrimination was implemented.

Michael, your sarcastic broadside does hold more than a little truth. Positive discrimination must hold that minorities are incapable of either competing with whites and so MUST always get a leg up by a paternalistic government or that minorities are deficient is some fundamental way that makes them inferior. Reagan called this the bigotry of low expectations.

As the Irish proved, despised minorities can rise up and carve their own place in American society without government help. The Catholic schools systems in the US was largely created by the Irish community. Please recall that for a significant time prior to independence the American colonies boasted more Irish indentured servants than blacks. That stigma remained as part of American prejudice during the later waves of Irish immigration.

So, if equality is the policy goal, political correctness and positive discrimination would be anathema. Since those two principles are front and center in modern social policy, equality is not even close to the goal. Such policies want to keep society as segregated as possible. Segregated by as many differences as may be supported by new societal sins such as racism, sexism, homophobia, micro aggression, cultural appropriation and white privilege. The characteristics of sex, race, sexual preference and culture become the defining attributes of an individual not that individual's beliefs and character.

Martin Luther King spoke with a clarity and insight that inspired generations when he said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Oh FFS, I can never quite wrap my mind around the fact that the right is this damn clueless on this subject.

pokermind wrote:I have often wondered why it is OK to be a racist if you are Black, Asian, Native American, but not if you are white. It smells of hypocrisy to me.

If that was actually true it would of course be the definition of hypocrisy. But it's not true, nobody says it's OK for anybody to be racist.

The Democrat party compromised on slavery, fostered Jim Crow, and promoted the KKK, later doing a 180 throwing the white people under the buss

"Throwing white people under the bus"

Interesting characterization of enforcing anti-discrimination policies. Paraphrasing a quote from someone I can't quite recall... "when you have always enjoyed a position of privilege, equality can feel like persecution."

Those quotas? The reason they were required is because with the absolutely cemented in place entrenched racism they were the only practical way to force a lot of people to give equal opportunity to minorities.

"Oh the people that were enslaved were all dead, so why reparations"? Because, OBVIOUSLY, enslaving an entire racial group's ancestors had no impact on the fortunes of their kids and grand kids right? Every new generation is born on a level playing field with every little baby having the same starting point as everyone else and everyone advances purely on merit? It's not like the amassed wealth of one generation gets largely passed on to their offspring giving them a massive advantage in life or anything right?


Is that the fantasy world conservatives live in? One day there was slavery and an entire racial group subjugated and impoverished..... then it was abolished and suddenly everyone was perfectly equal so why do we have to give them any special protections or assistance or compensation? And any talk of doing so why.... why.... why... THAT'S REVERSE RACISM AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE! WE'RE ALL SUPPOSED TO BE EQUAL NOW!


You can't possibly be this clueless... you just can't. My brain refuses to process it, I think out of self defense for the last vestiges of my positive impressions of humanity...