mahiwaga

Positive thinking has a downside.

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation and all that, but in a country where the idea of positive thinking is such a huge part of our culture and our myths and drives so much of our economy, and people’s misfortunes get frequently blamed on their own lack of positive thinking, it’s probably not a terrible idea to examine the dark side of positive thinking.¹

We’ve been influencing other democracies’ elections for a long time now (Yay, Monroe Doctrine!) through propaganda, espionage, material support to our preferred regimes, and even overt military intervention. I suppose it was only a matter of time until what went around came around.¹

I am surprised that trying to influence an election using black-hat tactics isn’t a crime.

There is definitely a contingent of Sanderistas who were never Democrats and who will never vote for Clinton, very similar to the PUMAs who refused to vote for Obama. Clinton will never win them over.

But there is also a contingent of Sanders supporters who have been Democrats all their (mostly young) lives and who see returning to the New Deal/Great Society roots of the party as the only path for the future of the party. They’re not going to vote for Trump, but the concern is that they might go Green or not vote at all.

In the end, Clinton’s biggest enemy is probably apathy and lack of enthusiasm. The number of people who might stay home will massively dwarf any defectors to the Green party or even the Sanders concern trolls who will vote for Trump. The key is to inspire the apathetic and unenthusiastic. And I’m not sure how she’s going to do that.¹

The margin between Obama and McCain was large enough that the PUMAs made no significant difference in 2008, but they definitely did exist and probably had an effect. And there are probably more hard core Sanderistas and the projected margin between Clinton and Trump is far slimmer.²

Pre-election polls from 2008 suggest that Obama might have done slightly worse (-1%) with Democrats than Kerry did in 2004 which might be the full extent of the PUMA effect.

Honestly, the ousting of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was long overdue, well before Sanders started his campaign. It would’ve been only a matter of time before she ran the Democratic Party into the ground with her inept ground game and her active alienation of significant portions of the party membership. I can’t help feel that if someone else more inspiring and diplomatic were at the helm, we might not have done as badly in 2012 and 2014.¹

Pet peeve: Whenever someone commits an act that is ethically/morally problematic and the first thing people say is “Well, it’s not like it was illegal….”

Hooray, we’re finally catching up with the rest of the Western world as well as a lot of developing countries!

Hillary Clinton Becomes First Female Nominee of Major U.S. Political Party • 2016 Jul 26 • Carrie Dann • NBC News

Any approach to convincing people to vote for your candidate of choice that does not include listening and empathy is doomed to failure and likely to strengthen their opposition (see also: argumentative theory of reasoning and the backfire effect.) Proceed with caution.¹

It’s human nature. If people are truly as pragmatic as they say they are and not merely ideological in the guise of pragmatism, I think it would be important to keep this in mind.²