mahiwaga

The caveat is, even if Sanders drops out and dedicates his fundraising efforts to Clinton’s campaign, that’s probably not enough to placate his most ardent supporters.

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Is Sanders Hurting Clinton By Staying In The Race? • 2016 May 17 • FiveThirtyEight

Yikes to that survey Harry just noted, by YouGov, which found that one-third of Democratic voters have an unfavorable view of Clinton, and her unfavorables have jumped of late.

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Most people… thought Sanders would win some votes but that Clinton would ultimately crush him. And while she holds a significant lead, Sanders won more than 40 percent of the Democratic primary vote.

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…the polls right now are sort of a test of what might happen if the Sanders voters don’t rally behind Clinton. And the answer is that it makes it a closer election — Clinton’s still ahead, but it’s close enough that if something goes wrong (a recession, for instance), you could have President Trump.

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[Sanders] has a lot of power, though. He’s the third-most-influential Democrat/liberal in the country, following President Obama and Clinton. And you have a big vacuum between the top 3 and everyone else.

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I think one of the main lessons of the Sanders campaign is that the Democratic elite have an outsider/insider problem too. Maybe it’s not as dire as the GOP’s, but it’s there.

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…is there a sizable bloc of Democratic voters, young voters in particular, who are sick of standard Democratic politics — who feel the system is rigged…[?] …I think that potentially poses long-term problems for the Democratic Party. It increases the chances that the Democrats, at some point, get a nominee unacceptable to the party elites, like the GOP got this year.

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The [non-cynical] interpretation is that the Democratic consensus/coalition associated with the Clintons and Obama is fraying. In particular, the consensus around neo-liberal economic policies. A lot of the differences between Clinton and Sanders are over the efficacy of free markets.

It never really occurred to me until now (since Trump = Hitler comparisons are rife) that there is some debate about whether or not Hitler was ever democratically elected.

There is some merit to the idea that Hitler was never really elected to office. The only vote he won directly was a plesbicite that combined the office of Chancellor and President.

Still, the Reichstag was a Parliament and voters chose parties not specific candidates. In 1932, the Nazis won a plurality of seats in both the July and November elections and Hitler eventually formed a coalition government with the conservatives, whereupon he was appointed Chancellor.

Voter intimidation and suppression aside, this does not seem significantly different than how David Cameron was appointed Prime Minister.

While the Chancellor is not directly elected, it was still the result of democratic elections. And while the systems are dramatically different, the POTUS isn’t directly elected either.

There may have be political fuckery, but that does not negate the fact that there was a vote and that significant segments of the population actually supported the outcome of that vote.

Hitler did run for office and acquired political power because of elections. Sure, he lost the presidency, but by virtue of being the leader of the NSDAP, he was granted de facto power in the government. It is not unlike the position of House Speaker¹ or Senate Majority Leader², really. They are clearly not directly elected by voters, yet their positions and their power are nevertheless the result of elections.

More broadly, the idea that democracy never leads to dictatorship is hilariously laughable. There are plenty of ex-colonies all over the world to disprove that point.

Historically, the Speaker of the House has always been an elected representative, but there’s nothing in the Constitution that species the Speaker must be a member of Congress.

Can Anyone Be Speaker of the House? • 1998 Nov 9 • Slate

Prior to the ratification of the 17th Amendment, Senators were chosen by state legislatures, not directly elected by voters.

17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Direct Election of U.S. Senators • National Archives

After the ratification of the 17th Amendment, the Senate Majority Leader has always been an elected Senator, but this need not be the case, since (at least in some states), the state’s governor can appoint a Senator whenever there is a vacancy.

Apponted Senators • United States Senate

I’m not really saying anything about the morality of someone subverting the law and seizing power undemocratically in the guise of abiding by democratic processes. I’m just saying the notion that democracy can never directly lead to dictatorship because of ochlocracy is an insane idea.

Hitler was the end result of a breakdown of a constitutional republican regime that was at least partly the result of populist politics.

If the NSDAP wasn’t as popular as it was and didn’t get as many votes as it did, it seems pretty unlikely that Hitler would’ve had any leverage to pull the fuckery that he pulled.

When AI is more advanced and the next level of automation comes to eliminate service jobs, it’s possible that programmers that aren’t working on extending/maintaining AI will be among the first to be eliminated.

Soon We Won’t Program Computers. We’ll Train Them Like Dogs • 2016 May 17 • Jason Tanz • Wired