Our Next President?

[Slimprofits]

Re: Our Next President?

Asking if it's possible for a presidential candidate to win who takes such a strong anti-finance and insurance industry position. Brown ran a shabby, lazy campaign. Warren ran circles around him.

If charismatic and persuasive, then yes.

[vt]

Re: The Real Problem

I disagree. An excellent third party candidate can win. Perot showed the possibilities.

The problem is money. It's hard to campaign across the nation without funding, though a viral campaign
might have a very slim chance to get lots of small to medium contributions.

You can win with 34% of the vote, assuming the other two split the other 66%. Heck Clinton only got
43%. The polls definitely support it in that 60% of the people hate both parties. They would love the choice in voting against the devil on the right and the devil on the left.

It would be a huge task for a third party candidate to articulate the minefield of creating the right message to attract enough moderates to pull it off. However he or she might attract a good portion of the 35% plus of eligible voters that just don't vote. They could show up for excellent and rare electable third party wonder.

I don't understand why the media and pundits missed the 2016 election. There were all sorts of indications like Trump's crowds and energy vs. Clinton. I felt two weeks before the election that Trump was going to win. Frankly I didn't want either candidate. Woodsman was also writing that Trump had the momentum.

[dcarrigg]

Re: warreb's economic thinking

I was impressed by the depth and nuance of Warren's thinking on economic issues.
.


I Have to agree with your post, Thrifty!

I still think she has a better chance in the primaries than other folks do.
Reasons?

1. I'd be surprised if she didn't finish in the top 3 in NH (out of a field of maybe 2 dozen). She has a chance to be 1st. She has proven she can organize and fundraise in New England.
2. In the last 100 years there have been 18 Dem nominees. Half of them came from just 3 states: Massachusetts, New York, and Illinois. Of the half that came from other states, half again were VPs. I'd argue that the primary system (delegate allocation and media markets) are designed such that folks from these states have an edge, and the party designed it that way.
3. Even though Massachusetts is her home base, she's obviously not from there, and has more midwestern/southern Sooner mannerisms and turns of phrase. This can be a weakness if people see it as fake or carpetbagging or whatever. And she will get attacked for it. But it can also be a strength.
4. This is more speculative. But I think she's in an intellectual sweet spot within the party. Still a capitalist so moderates on the right of the party can stomach her, but mindful enough of existing problems that the left wing of the party can still trust her. Combined with #3, I think that means she can play in the south in a way Sanders could not.

Who knows what happens in a general. It's all going to be one thing at a time. But unless she flubs up and gets knocked out early (screws up bad and takes a bath in NH or something), I'd be surprised if she weren't one of the final contenders. Certainly I think she has a better shot than the other 5 who've announced campaigns so far (Gabbard, Castro, Delaney, Ojeda & Yang).

[Polish_Silver]

The charisma Gap

BK, you are totally right about that. The Book "no sense of place" explains how this is the result of TV ,
and more recently , the internet. Deep thinking people like James Madison or Lincoln would not have a chance
now. And that is scarry, really scarry !
But: acting is a skill that can be learned, right?
Perhaps Warren could take some "Trump lessons" .

[Polish_Silver]

warreb's economic thinking

Senator Warren would be a great president, whip smart and hard working.
But it seems the victory of FIRE is essentially complete now.
The Citizens United environment allows unlimited amounts of untraceable money to be spent on elections, and FIRE has more money than can be imagined.
Senator Warren has been fully vilified by right wing media since 2011, and would seem to stand no realistic chance of being elected to national office.

I would be delighted to find myself wrong on this one.

I was impressed by the depth and nuance of Warren's thinking on economic issues.
.


I Have to agree with your post, Thrifty!

[Polish_Silver]

The Real Problem

Can an anti-FIRE Economy candidate possibly win?

Good candidates cannot win in the US because of the electoral system.
Political scientists call it "first past the post" . I call it
"winner take all". In any voting district, the candidate with the largest number of votes gets the office, even if it is a margin
of 1 vote out of 10 million. The other voters get no representation.

Nearly every other democracy has some form of "proportional representation". This creates a multi party system where every vote does count,
as nearly as possible in a mass society.

How to save the country:

The senate has 100 seats. Make each seat represent 1% of the vote nationwide.
If 5% of voters vote for the slate of libertarians, than the top 5 of those candidates will be senators.

People will vote for libertarian, socialist, and peace candidates if they can win seats in the senate.

That will have impacts on the congressional, state and presidential elections.

A multi-party system is not dysfunctional. A two party system is what is dysfunctional.

Right now, if you wanted a candidate that would oppose wars, you could not vote
in any major party. Outliers, like Paul and Sanders, opposed some of the wars. But the parties overwhelmingly supported
the wars. Of parties above, all three of them would likely oppose any war that did not threaten US territory, which I believe was the intention
of the founding fathers. These disparate parties would agree on many profound issues and create better policy outcomes.

Other areas where these "wingnut" parties might agree is reforming the financial and health care systems.


Problems with the current system:

0) Most Votes do not count.
Unless your district is 50/50, your vote will not make a difference.
Voting for a democrat in South Carolina is as futile as voting for a republican in Connecticut.

1) The president is the only office that represents the entire country. Everyone else in Washington represents (at best) a majority of a small region.
In fact, many states are dominated by one party or the other, which means that the primary election of the dominant party controls the general election outcome. But primary voters are "core loyalists" --often a small minority of total voters and with fringe views. So a small minority
gets to elect the representative.

2) Strategic Voting: Most voters do not really like the candidates they vote for. They are just less unacceptable than others.
Even in a swing state, only two candidates have a realistic chance to win. So you identify the one most unacceptable, and vote for the other.
In a multi-party system with "instant run off" you could really vote your heart, and not waste your vote.

3) Party loyalty: Since the parties are bankrupt intellectually and morally, voters are motivated more by loyalty and demonizing the opposition
than by thought and alignment of values. The two party system feeds a dualistic good/bad mentality in which issues are subordinated to
fear mongering.

4) The influence of Money.
Since the elections are based on personality and party loyalty, campaign money has a big effect on outcome. A multi party campaign would be
more issues focused, reducing the effect of money.


This change would require a constitutional convention--(why isn't there a mandatory one every 10 years?) or the state level amendment process.

If we do not change the electoral process, we will not solve the problems in health care, wars to win elections, etc.

[gugion]

Re: Our Next President?

I'm in! Who's your candidate?

I've got one...Michael Hudson!

[jk]

Re: Our Next President?

Here is what I see. The FIRE economy is happy to elect any president that focuses on issues other than FIRE after they are elected. They will gladly let Warren talk about these issues but privately negotiate with her and give her wins on what to me the media/social justice warriors see as the most important and easiest issues to make people happy/get them to vote for you: race, patriarchy, intersectionality, LGBT.... and gender.

IMO those issues will be the rallying cry of the election. Anything that destroys the so called white male patriarchy is fair game and they expect laws to be enacted to counter "it."

Canada is already moving in this direction.

In a time when there is no national crisis economically or militarily, these issues will be the driver of the election.

Austin Allred is on top of it: "Americans are so bored and so far removed form any struggle of mortal urgency that their feigned outrage over petty offenses has become an embarrassing theater of the absurd, with social media encouraging ever-more ridiculous displays."

it is possible you are right in these predictions, poz, but i sincerely hope you're wrong. both sanders and warren, neither of whom are likely to get the nomination imo, are very focused on the banking system and shadow banking system. it is my hope that their efforts will help the democrats keep economic realities as a focus, albeit certainly not their only focus.

[seobook]

Re: Our Next President?

Anything that destroys the so called white male patriarchy is fair game and they expect laws to be enacted to counter "it."

said crusaders should move to Saudi Arabia to better enjoy the fruits of their labor
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...818#post313818

[jk]

Re: Our Next President?

i doubt eliz warren is a viable candidate, but if so she won't buy substituting identity politics for an attack on the finance industry.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Our Next President?

Can an anti-FIRE Economy candidate possibly win?

Here is what I see. The FIRE economy is happy to elect any president that focuses on issues other than FIRE after they are elected. They will gladly let Warren talk about these issues but privately negotiate with her and give her wins on what to me the media/social justice warriors see as the most important and easiest issues to make people happy/get them to vote for you: race, patriarchy, intersectionality, LGBT.... and gender.

IMO those issues will be the rallying cry of the election. Anything that destroys the so called white male patriarchy is fair game and they expect laws to be enacted to counter "it."

Canada is already moving in this direction.

In a time when there is no national crisis economically or militarily, these issues will be the driver of the election.

Austin Allred is on top of it: "Americans are so bored and so far removed form any struggle of mortal urgency that their feigned outrage over petty offenses has become an embarrassing theater of the absurd, with social media encouraging ever-more ridiculous displays."

[Chris Coles]

Re: Our Next President?

A thank you to seobook for the link to this by Chateaubriand here http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...772#post313772

The New York Times "accidentally" forgot to link to Frédéric Bastiat in their job engine story.
http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

"In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause — it is seen. The others unfold in succession — they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference — the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, — at the risk of a small present evil

I might subject a host of other questions to the same test; but I shrink from the monotony of a constantly uniform demonstration, and I conclude by applying to political economy what Chateaubriand says of history:-

"There are," he says, "two consequences in history; an immediate one, which is instantly recognized, and one in the distance, which is not at first perceived. These consequences often contradict each other; the former are the results of our own limited wisdom, the latter, those of that wisdom which endures. The providential event appears after the human event. God rises up behind men. Deny, if you will, the supreme counsel; disown its action; dispute about words; designate, by the term, force of circumstances, or reason, what the vulgar call Providence; but look to the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected from it, if it was not established at first upon morality and justice."

(Chateaubriand. Posthumous Memoirs.)

The tragedy today is that no one within the executive, seems to have given any thought to the long term consequences of changing the rules for the use of the savings of the citizens of the nations, (previously used firstly by the people themselves to capitalise new start-ups in their local communities and thereafter, by the savings institutions of the nation to re-invest back into productive industry); which savings were instead then taken by the executive, to pay to cover up their ongoing failures. Those savings are the capital base for the entire nation; it is just like taking the food from the mouth of a child, the child inevitably has less to eat and grows at a reduced rate; so too does a nation's economy.

"Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgement, with which labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number of those who are annually employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. The number of useful and productive labourers, it will hereinafter appear, is everywhere in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work, and to the particular way in which it is so employed." Taken from; Introduction and Plan of the Work, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith.

To finish, first, I want to say how much I do care about the plight of those US government employees that have been refused income by the decision to shut down the government as a ploy to try and force through funding for a Mexico wall. There will be, in any nation's executive, a majority of very hard working people. My debate is all about the leadership within an executive and their ongoing failure to recognise the consequences of past decisions.

Secondly, bankruptcy is a very brutal process, it forces change. But that has always been its merit and why we retain the process; it brings forward new thinking by forcing a change in direction at the top of any organisation so involved. Its strength is speed; bankruptcy creates an immediate change and thus opens the door to new thinking that speeds renewal. The faster we set bankruptcy into motion; the sooner we will renew and move forward. The longer we wait, the harder it will become.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Our Next President?

I do agree with this assertion, but to whom is this debt owed?

It seems that major eastern economies face the same head winds.




I think the world could carry considerable more debt than it has now, looking at the case of Japan the US should be able to triple it's debt burden.

As for the UK too many policy mistakes, like the privatisation madness of the eighties & Gordon Brown selling Gold, and now Brexit we will have no claim on EU's gold hoard.

On the one hand you are correct, "the world could carry considerable more debt than it has now", except that it is not the lender that faces bankruptcy, but the borrower. Again, if one has maintained a stable and positive income over outgoings position, then additional debt is always a normal economic condition. What we all face today is the consequence of a historical considerable greater portion of the additional debt being sourced from the savings of the nation, rather than from external markets. That has, in turn, depleted the ability of the nation to invest into new industry. Ergo, why that inability to so invest created the recent trend to source almost all manufactured goods from the likes of China.

Again, your point about UK policy mistakes is central to the ongoing dilemma facing the UK. On the other hand, as I understand it, China is massively increasing their gold holdings, purchased by, one must assume, selling their US dollars for the Gold. In which case they face much less difficulty in maintaining economic stability over the next stage of the ongoing collapse. Then add their recognition of the power of their massive internal market for their own manufacturing capacity; the exact opposite of the Western economic condition; they did not seek to source their manufactured goods from the West.

The East is thus in a much better place than the West.

[Techdread]

Re: Our Next President?

The Western economies are essentially bankrupt. Period! That cannot continue without a collapse back to sanity.

I do agree with this assertion, but to whom is this debt owed?

It seems that major eastern economies face the same head winds.




I think the world could carry considerable more debt than it has now, looking at the case of Japan the US should be able to triple it's debt burden.

As for the UK too many policy mistakes, like the privatisation madness of the eighties & Gordon Brown selling Gold, and now Brexit we will have no claim on EU's gold hoard.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Our Next President?

I'm in! Who's your candidate?

In the past, certainly here in the UK, the very best candidates were from the business community that had then recognised their commitment to a greater good, by taking public office; thus an EJ would have seen that moment and moved forward to address that challenge. While you EJ, may well not believe that is your destiny, then who other has a long, very successful, track record of regard for the need for such a debate that could also follow through?