I hate elections!!!

[rivendellrose]

All right, I give up. A while ago lovelies requested that I post about politics, and I kept putting it off in hopes of having something genuinely intelligent to say about the American political system and this year's unending election season, but you know what? I give up.

I fricking hate this whole process. I hate it. I hate the Republicans and their fear-mongering, Religious-Right fueled bullshit, and I'm seriously at the point of hating the Democrats, too, with their stupid in-fighting and asinine sound-byte publicity games. I hate how Obama keeps piling stupid cricism on Hillary, and I hate how Hillary comes off like a whiney little kid running to teacher shouting "DID YOU HEAR WHAT HE SAID???" every time Obama says something stupid. They're both morons, okay? I'm done. They're both equally stupid and annoying, and we will be the luckiest people in the world if they both don't collectively ruin the Democratic chance this year, in a year when it ought to be a total breeze for the Democrats to win over the Republicans. I wish I could think it's some kind of "vast right-wing conspiracy," but it's not - it's just sheer idiocy, and exactly the pathetic, annoying kind of tripe that our system lends itself to.

It wouldn't be so bad if our election season weren't effectively eternal, but it is. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that, and at this point? I have absolutely nothing but contempt for all the candidates and for the system in general. No, I don't know how they can make it better - except to limit the frigging campaign season so that at the very least I'm not this frustrated by more than six months before the actual election. But they never will, because (like everything) it's all about who can raise the most money, and who can then spend the most money. Screw that. This system sucks.

Sorry I can't come up with anything more useful, but I am seriously sick of this crap.

Comments

[windrose.livejournal.com]

Word.

And people wonder why I'm an anarchist.

[caeline.livejournal.com]

The in-fighting with the Dems is driving me crazy too!!!! AH, I want to slap them both. Two strong candidates weakening themselves with inane bickering and trying to one-up each other. And so.much.yes. I agree with everything. I can't even pay attention to the election this year without getting annoyed. It should have been easy breezy this year for the Dems but the two candidates are really pushing it. I kind of want Kerry/Edwards back, and then I wasn't too thrilled with them either.

Ugh. Does not compute. I want to move to a remote island and bring my friends and set up my own government that consists of: do what you want as long as you don't bother anyone else. :S

[babel.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with you. The Democratic party is seriously injecting me with some good, old fashioned voter apathy. It makes me think of the book I read for class, Politics By Other Means. The point of the book is basically that our politics are killing our government and that votes don't count for anything anymore. I don't want to be so cynical as to agree? But I'm getting to that point where I can't even pretend that isn't exactly how this shit makes me feel. I feel like a commoner in an oligarchy, watching my betters fight it out without any say in who the winner is.

... Sorry, that was like, really emo. I will go back to not thinking about politics now.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Considering my emo-tastic original post, your comment is more than justified. ;)

I'll have to take a look at the book you mentioned - that sounds like something I'd be really interested in. I know exactly what you mean about not having a say in anything, because it really is like... like there's nothing we can do, as individuals. For one thing, the "superdelegates" are going to be making the decision on the Democratic side, now, and whether or not they'll actually base their decision on anything to do with what the actual electorate are saying is totally up in the air. And then, for me personally, whoever they actually (finally!) pick for the Democrats is what I have to vote for, because damned if I'll vote for McCain. So it's really frustrating.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I honestly really liked both Hillary and Obama, at the beginning. I wanted to like them. Especially Hillary, I admit that I was really excited at the idea of electing a female president, and because I really liked the Bill Clinton administration I had high hopes that Hillary would do similar things. And I was thrilled with Obama because he seemed to have such charisma, such a potential for people getting excited about the Democratic party. Now... Hell, I don't know anymore. I'm pretty much just sitting back and waiting to see which of two boring and annoying candidates I'll have to sign my name to. :P

[babel.livejournal.com]

It's not a bad book, and a very easy read. I got irritated at it sometimes, especially for use of the phrase "liberal media" as if that exists. But for the most part, it's even handed.

Yeah, I just. Don't have any interest in voting. Even if I did vote, I live in Texas, so what does one vote for a Democrat matter here? I really hate the first past the post system.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Actually, the Democrats have a shot at Texas this year. It's a bit of a long shot, but the primary turnout makes it seem like a possibility.

I will note (as a reply to Jen) that the superdelegates know damn well that going against the majority decision of the electorate is the surest way to sunder the party and cause the nominee to lose in the fall. I honestly don't know why Clinton hasn't dropped out yet - it's obvious that the only way she's going to win involves severe damage to the entire party's chances. I think it's her own ego getting in the way, ultimately - her campaign approached the primary with a sense of "We're going to win, and we're entitled to win, and that's that", and now that it's not happening they're flailing around at everything in sight.

I was excited about the primary until about mid-March or so, when it became obvious it was going to drag on and Clinton wasn't going to concede for the good of the party like I was hoping. And now the whole thing's a goddamned mudfest, and every day the primary goes on is another lost opportunity to actually address some of the issues facing the country.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I don't know a lot about anarchism (...that must be right, right? Because "anarchy" as a noun just means chaos... drat it, anyway, I mean the political stance, not the general all-purpose noun). My gut inclination is against it on the principle that I don't trust the vast majority of people as far as I could throw them, but I'm guessing there's complexity in the theory to combat that?

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't know why Clinton hasn't dropped out yet - it's obvious that the only way she's going to win involves severe damage to the entire party's chances.

Um, I actually have a rather bitchy response to this meme, but I want to make sure you actually want to hear it before unloading my frustrations at you. ;) It's not that I don't think you're right about the damage to the party, I just understand why she isn't dropping out and I think from that perspective it makes sense.

[windrose.livejournal.com]

Anarchy is about freedom, not chaos. People (including many so-called anarchists) tend to get the two confused. But it is also about personal responsibility. That's another thing people (including many so-called anarchists) forget.

ETA: But yeah, the vast majority of humans on this planet are simply not self-aware enough to take on that kind of responsibility. It's a concept that works well for individuals, but not so much for large groups.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'd like to hear it. Thanks for asking.

For what it's worth, my approach is mostly based on the actual delegate math. Given Obama's present lead, and the number of elected delegates left to be decided, the only way the elected-delegate count is even going to be close to tied is if Clinton blows him out in every single primary left - and that's just not going to happen. More likely is that they'll roughly split the remaining delegates. She'll end up needing to come from behind at the convention by taking a large majority of the superdelegates and reversing the lead Obama earned during the campaign. To see the race basically overturned by the party leadership will turn many of the activists that have powered the primary campaign off of the general election, and the most important thing after the primary is to re-unite the party behind its nominee so we can effectively campaign in the general.

I just don't see Clinton winning the nomination in a way that allows the party to unite behind her. And this isn't even considering the fact that current polling indicates she'll do worse than Obama against McCain nearly everywhere, and she's going to have a hard time driving down her unfavorables.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I was thinking... It reminds me of communism, in a strange way - in the sense that it sounds really, really good, but would probably only work in small groups of hand-picked people.

So, how does anarchy inform your political choices in our system? (Or, I guess I should say, does it?)

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

I think that voting apathy is becoming more and more common, especially in our generation. The percentage of the population actively participating in elections has been dropping steadily, at least in most Western countries. It's worrisome, but also sometimes has me wondering if this sort of parliamentarism or indirect democracy just doesn't work for us anymore.

Do you know how much of the two-party system in the US is actually based on the Roman senate? I often find myself drawing parallels.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I'm not apathetic about issues. I'm apathetic about the candidates because either they're so busy trying to appeal to everyone that they don't have a discernible opinion on anything, I just plain disagree with them. I think you're right about the systems not working, but I don't know what would work.

Oh yeah. And it just keeps getting more and more appropriate. I think people are starting to catch onto that, even, but they don't want to admit it. The idea that all big, bloated empires eventually fall just isn't something that most people want to deal with.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

"I kept putting it off hoping to have something genuinely intelligent to say"
Really, and you always say I look at the world through rose colored glasses! ;D

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I was thinking more that I might be able to come up with something coherent and well-thought-out, rather than just spewing my hatred for the whole process... obviously that didn't happen.

I never expected to get stars and rainbows "I love all the options and the system and everything!" ...I think I'd be forced to worry about my sanity if I felt that way about politics. ;)

Looooooooong! Ranty! (A bit.)

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

Okay. The first thing that you have to do is get rid of those warm and fuzzy feelings you have about Obama--the vision, the message, the swell in your heart when he's hitting all the high notes in his speeches and framing the campaign and all that stuff.

See, I am totally tone deaf to all that. I don't really understand the hearts-and-minds warfare, the thing that Republicans have been so good at these last eight years. They frame the debate such that Democrats keep looking like bad guys, and they elide facts with emotions. It's black magic, and it's why I instinctively don't trust it. I have a good friend who only talks about the nomination in terms of narrative logic, and it scares the heck out of me because I can follow his logic but I can't see why it would connect to reality.

Anyway. That's step one. Because I think that Clinton has the same tone-deafness.

Clinton is a qualified candidate; she's a policy wonk, she has good people on her side, she has the old-boy network, and she knows how to get things done. And she knows this. So from her perspective, it's just a numbers race, and the truth is that neither Clinton nor Obama has the ability to win the nomination on normal delegates alone. And this has not changed for months. They passed the point where neither of them could win on delegates alone even if they swept the remaining states a long time ago. (Comparatively, I mean.)

So the meme that's going around now, the "Why doesn't Clinton just pull out" isn't supported by the math, because she has just under half the vote. Okay, she's not ahead, but she's by no means trailing. This isn't the McCain-Huckabee divide. It's in no way unconquerable. All she has to do is convince the superdelegates that she can win, and if they throw their weight behind her she's got it. And Obama has to do the same thing.

Anyway, the reason that I agree it would be nice if she pulled out and I think Obama would do a better job as sole candidate focusing on McCain than she would has nothing to do with the numbers. The actual numbers, the actual votes aren't that much difference. They're neck-and-neck, and they're going to stay that way until the convention, and there has been nothing over the past month or so when this meme has been gaining prevalence that has actually changed that. There is no new data on the polls or on the delegates that has changed Clinton's position.

What has changed is the tenor of the campaign, and the series of hearts-and-minds miscalculations that Clinton's team has been making. I think that's an utterly valid point. But to state that the superdelegates are going to "overturn" a 51-to-49 lead is disingenuous and misses the real challenge that Clinton's campaign has, which is to stop behaving like idiots.

(And it makes me angry to suggest that Clinton give up based on the numbers, because based on the numbers she's doing basically as well as Obama is, and that puts me back in the same mood where I start blaming Obama's campaign for its followers, which is also stupid. Grr.)

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

I think that's exactly it. I know people, a few years younger than me, who are very much interested in issus. They're environmentally conscious, they're politically-minded, but they don't vote. I suppose they feel like their voice isn't being heard, and after a few elections where you go out and vote, and as a result absolutely nothing changes, I get that.

I mean, I'm member to a party. I'm politically active and I come from a family that always encouraged that. I've been asked to run for municipal elections. My parents always voted. And lately, I've been rethinking it. But you're absolutely right that it's difficult to think of anything better, either. One thing to do, though, I think is to admit that we have a more global community than any generation before us.

Re: Looooooooong! Ranty! (A bit.)

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

I do definitely understand your point. I'm not going to start an argument over your assumption that those warm fuzzy feelings are the basis upon which I decided to support Obama; suffice it to say that I object to that characterization. I've looked at his policies and I really like them, and based on a number of things I think he's both the candidate more capable of getting elected, and the candidate more capable of actually getting things done in office.

As far as the numbers go - yes, it's close. It's always been close. But Obama's had the lead for the nomination the entire time, and the fact that they're separated by 4% of the decided delegates doesn't change the fact that Clinton would need unrealistic margins in the remaining contests in order to take the lead. The way the remaining states and polls are falling out, Obama will be leading going into the convention, probably by over a hundred delegates. (To say nothing of the less meaningful numbers, like popular vote, states carried, etc.)

Now, I'm not stating that the superdelegates deciding to go overwhelmingly for Clinton when Obama is leading in pledged delegates is somehow a violation of the rules or even the spirit of the primaries. But numbers aren't the only thing that matter, even if they've been the basis of my argument. If the public perception is that Obama won the primaries, and then the superdelegates decide to hand the nomination to Clinton, she'll have an extremely hard time gaining the support of the army of volunteers and other supporters that Obama's had working for him. Her nomination will be viewed by a lot of people as "illegitimate" despite the fact that it was conducted according to party rules, and the media will use that as one more excuse to smear Clinton and give McCain the free pass he's enjoyed so far.

I guess that's the thing. The numbers aren't the sole argument - but the state of the race being what it is, Clinton's only realistic path to the nomination would result in a likely loss in the general election. Given how universally reviled among Republicans she is, she'd need to win over huge numbers of Democrats and independents to win - and if her perceived-as-illegitimate nomination turns off even a fraction of Democrats, and her campaign thus far has turned off a bunch of independents, she's basically screwed.

So my conclusion is that the longer she stays in the race, the more damage she does to our chances of getting a Democrat in the White House this fall. I think that's a situation under which she should drop out as soon as possible, and I'd say that if the candidates' situations were reversed, too.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

they don't have a discernible opinion on anything

Out of curiosity, what are you basing this on? If it's just the speeches, debates, and soundbites derived therefrom, I recommend you take a look at the policy details the candidates have on their websites. There's a lot of good information there about what they actually intend to do, and it's really a pity that the television media discourse so thoroughly prevents in-depth discussion of actual issues.

Re: Looooooooong! Ranty! (A bit.)

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I don't have time to respond to this all,(EDIT: Or not. Eeesh.) I just wanted to say that I didn't mean to imply that "warm fuzzy feelings" are the sole or even overriding reason for voting for Obama, and I'm sorry my comments came across that way. I should say that I've glanced over both candidates' positions and they're not substantially different--they're both aiming at the same people, after all--and I don't think the differences in positions or policies is enough to explain the major difference in the way people view the candidates. There are legitimate differences but they don't explain the huge difference in public perception.

My argument isn't against Clinton dropping out--I think that you're right, at this point the way she's conducted her campaign has basically turned me off as a supporter, which is a clear enough indicator to me. What I get angry against is the meme that "She doesn't have the votes to win, so now she should drop out" as if this is a new phenomenon. Some people have been saying it for a while, but the sheer swell of that argument makes me... well, pissy.

It's the same reason I get unreasonably mad at people (for an example in a completely different realm) for criticizing Colin Baker's Doctor (the sixth Doctor Who) for being too violent. Too violent? For every example that people cite for that, I can pull up at least two examples of other Doctors doing similar or more violent things. And it doesn't work, because it's not the hitting people or shooting Cybermen that people dislike about Six, it's a combination of bad writing and bad visual design that make the serials actively uncomfortable to watch. And it's like, I can't attack that argument because it isn't the one people are making, and when I refute the violence one point-by-point it doesn't actually help because people are making an emotional argument couched in a completely different logical shroud.

So that got long, sorry. ;P My problem is I agree with you, I agree with you a lot, I just hate that particular argument.

Re: Looooooooong! Ranty! (A bit.)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I'm going to pop into this wonderful, intellectual, political discussion to... talk about Doctor Who! ♥

Have you seen "The Two Doctors" yet? It's Six and Two, and although so far it's the only Sixth Doctor serial I've seen, I think it could be used to refute the whole argument you're talking about, potentially. Because, the funny thing about this serial is that Six doesn't do a single morally wrong thing that I can think of in the whole serial... but Two gets... umm.... kind of screwed up by something that's a huge spoiler, so I won't tell you unless you want me to? But it's bizarre. And kind of really really weirdly creepy at a few points.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that if a candidate can't make an actual opinion in a debate that's a pretty serious sign that our system is broken. That's the whole point of a debate. I've been getting my news from NPR, not Fox News, so I kind of figure that if they're saying anything useful, I'm hearing it... and I'm not hearing much to differentiate them, except that whenever one of them says something that indicates a real opinion on something (as when Obama stated that when people are fearful they cling to religion, which, honestly, I really liked because, hello, yeah that's pretty much what religion is), the other one starts screeching it to high heaven as a bad thing. It makes me hate both of them, and given that I'll be voting for one or the other no matter what happens, I've decided to just quit listening so that I don't start thinking "hey, at least McCain isn't annoying the living hell out of me at the moment..." or something stupid like that.

At this point, though, I'm less interested in which of the Democratic candidates is the "best" - I'm interested in them getting the mud-flinging done and picking a candidate already. I, personally, am a great deal more interested in not getting McCain than I am in making an arbitrary and entirely pointless choice between Obama and Clinton. Whichever Democrat gets chosen by the party has my vote, because they have to be at least a little bit better, in general, than McCain. At least in theory.

Re: Looooooooong! Ranty! (A bit.)

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

I get what you're saying, and I agree. The numbers argument is something of a diversion from the actual issues, I suppose.

Thanks for the rational discussion. (That can be so hard to do, sometimes - especially when it comes to politics.)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I'm not naturally a politically active person, despite having strong convictions... I guess I never got into the habit of it, and I generally am pretty uncertain about the actual efficacy of things that politically active students and young people do in this country. Canvassing door to door? Annoys me. So does telephoning, and so does standing on streetcorners with petitions. I hate when people corner me with that crap, because I never know enough about it - I always just tell them no. And picketing or protests just seem like a good idea to get the people who already agree with you to agree with you, and the people who already don't agree with you to honk and shout nasty things out of windows. Has anybody ever had their mind changed by one of those protests? Aside from headlines saying "x number of students protested x today" I've never seen a single result from those things.

So... screw it. I'll give money to causes I agree with, and I'll volunteer for good organizations if I ever manage to get my butt in gear to do it, but actual political involvement... probably isn't for me, I guess, at the moment.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Sounds reasonable. I think one of the big causes of the problem you describe is that their policy proposals are actually very similar - so whenever they argue on policy points, it comes across as nitpicking and pedantry. So to really try to separate themselves from each other, they end up with this stupid back-and-forth over "character issues" and even more ridiculous nitpicking over single words in a stump speech, or Obama's bowling score (what???) or other meaningless crap.

I'm really looking forward to actual, substantial debate in the general election. I hope the media doesn't fuck it up like they have in the past, but I'm not confident.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

That was more or less what I meant by saying that they don't have discernible opinions - I meant "distinct from each other." Should've made that more clear.

Pleeeeeease, you're expecting substantial debate between Democrats and Republicans? As if.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Sigh. I dunno. I want the Democrat to win, but I'd rather it be because the country recognizes that Republican methods and philosophies of governance have thoroughly failed for the past several decades than because Obama looks like a nice guy or McCain got caught on camera saying "gooks" again or something.

Mass media has ruined democracy.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

But they won't. People don't judge politicians like that, and most of them haven't even got the intellectual capacity to figure out that Republican policies don't work, or won't think about it, because the Republican way of running the country benefits them. Or, most commonly, they think it does.

I'm just pleased that Huckabee and Romney are out of the running. Those guys scared the living daylights out of me. Religious wackos do bad things.

Not really. If it makes you feel any better, there's been mudslinging stupidity of this variety in elections for most of the history of the U.S.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I guess we've made do for most of history without fucking things up too badly. It feels to me like this is one of the biggest crisis points in the history of the country, but then, I'm sure every generation goes through moments like that.

It's easy to get pessimistic. Maybe I should follow your lead and just stop paying attention to politics for a while.