Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Interesting, this... I recall seeing in the Wash Post's Saturday-morning editorial-cartoon section on the op-ed page -- pretty much the only part left that's worth a damn, imho -- a cartoon depicting your average middle-aged white type on the phone with a pollster and being asked "How willing would you be to pretend to support a black man for President?"

Also, I recall a kind of mini-movement attempted two or three election cycles ago -- 1996, I think -- having nothing to do with pretending to want to vote for a black person, when there was a fair amount of backlash building against the pervasiveness of relentless polling of voters and the heavy emphasis given polls by the media and how it was adversely affecting the elections. In reaction to this, a gaggle of pro-Democracy pwogwessive activist types hit on the idea of "sabotaging" the polls via the large-scale encouragement of people to lie to the pollsters with the idea that if enough people fed bum info to survey-takers and pollsters, the data would be so "poisoned" and inaccurate as to be rendered useless and irrelevant. They managed to get it to the point where this tactic was getting some notice in the media in the form of quotes from worried campaign maangers and party hacks about the integrity of their polling data.

(Iirc this may have also been about the time that press reports revealed what percentage of the sample refuses to participate in the polls vs. the percentage who actually respond and make up the results you see on TV. I never could see any validity in a poll where the size of your sample is...what, 1500 people, something ridiculous like that, out of how many million registered voters?)

Maybe the anti-black but ashamed of it thang is even larger than 5%.

You know that electorate is racist thang is all over the internets, but a very basic thing could be that he seems likable enough to a great many people, but they can't stomach his health care plan. On the other hand, the health care plan is just about the only thing likable about Hillary.

The polls do represent a fair sample of the people who have nothing better to do than offer responses to blatant false dichotomies and inane, multiple choice, received wisdom quizzes. Being able to find a thousand or more servile, bored, uncritical people, within a time frame that accommodates the media cycle, is a good measure of the health and effectiveness of the state, even if more people refuse to play than are willing to go along with it.

In an unfortunate way, polls are legitimately representative and have some utility. Scabs, bootlickers, snitches, gullible consumers and authoritarian followers have a throw weight out of proportion to their actual numbers. Our leaders need to know they're out there, eager to be harvested, anxious to drag everyone else down with them, determined to feel good about doing their civic duty.

to angryman:
You're right on about how people might not support a black man for President if his healthcare plank sucks -- or his foreign policy, or his support for USA PATRIOT -- but, still...you honestly think Hillary's looks better?

Putting myself in the place of one of the millions who earn their living temping, freelancing, working at low-wage jobs or who otherwise can't afford health insurance -- I think I'd rather take the chance on being fined for showing up at an ER without insurance after being hurt in an accident in my buddy's car (ObamaCare) than rip my hair out every month trying to figure out where I'm going to find the money to pay the rent and maybe put some Kraft Mac'n'Cheese on the table, after having my piddling-assed wages garnished to pay for my mandatory corporate health insurance (ClintonCare).

(No, I would not be willing to support a Black Man™ for President, because the one we've got running now wants to escalate the war in Iraq, and fine me for getting hurt in an accident and not having health insurance.)

Angryman, have you been dipping into the medical MJ? What's to like about Clinton's version of "health care?" Seriously, do tell.

While we're at it, why would you believe a word she says on this (or any) topic? This is the Tyson/Walmart/[fill in corp name] Mother Hen who formed a secret think tank to turn single-payer into "managed care."

Seriously, do tell

Meh. I can't get really all that serious about it.

We have three candidates; I hate their foreign policy so far (although I hate Obama's less -- he's been contaminated by living overseas, living among the third world, and listening to Rev. Wright at the pulpit -- those limited exposures scare the bejeebus out of the corporatists, so I'm thinking it's worth the entertainiment value). Would they each bomb Iran given enough pressure? Does the pope sh*t in the woods?

To be frank, the only thing I really want or care out of Hillary is a nationalized health care system, and the mandate part gets it partway there. People will bitch, and people will be paid to bitch, but eventually we'll get there if the black hole don't consume us this summer.

I read the original question as being about race. There probably is some race involved, but the people that go for Hillary -- the working class, middle aged folk -- I think they care about the universal health care. That healthcare costs are eating away at their lives, and they don't trust Barack's kumbaya with the insurance companies. It's just a shell game at this point, but I prefer Hillary's health pea because it tends to be a bit more social (in my view). For example:

Insurance and Drug Companies: insurance companies will end discrimination based on pre-existing conditions or expectations of illness and ensure high value for every premium dollar; while drug companies will offer fair prices and accurate information.

...

Government: will ensure that health insurance is always affordable and never a crushing burden on any family and will implement reforms to improve quality and lower cost.

I want government more involved and less hands off, and I think a lot of the at-risk working class does as well. Will they f*ck it up? Yup, but it's still a step in the right direction.

Raise that f*cking tax to 60-70% for all I care, as long as you do it to the rich as well and provide quality access to healthcare, education and infrastructure. It's money well spent.

Oh and one last thing:

...rip my hair out every month trying to figure out where I'm going to find the money to pay the rent and maybe put some Kraft Mac'n'Cheese on the table, after having my piddling-assed wages garnished to pay for my mandatory corporate health insurance (ClintonCare).

You write and bitch well enough that you can easily pass for an educated snarky person. If so, then having your wages garnished so that you don't suffer a health related catastrophic financial meltdown seems like a prudent course of action (eating that Mac'n'Cheese is guaran-teed to make you sick). Also, that mandatory garnishment ensures that no one gets turned away by insurance companies, including the very sick. It's fairly typical for educated GenX types to think they'll never get sick, that SS is a waste of their money, and that Mac'n'Cheese is gourmet health food.

Those Hillarycare promises have no proposed mechanisms for enforcement, except for the ones targeted at the luckless individuals looking forward to having their wages garnished. Nor are there any mechanisms for supplier side cost control. What's she going to do when nothing from the punitive demand side of magic neoliberalism puts a brake on the out of control increases? Her entire package could easily and truthfully be pitched as "The worse, the better! Clinton: now more than ever!"

Al's
a very much more complex
monadic mechanism then i am

i like his pan pan-o-ramic
of the agit-crop dusted
pliant majority ?? minority ???
...errr some-jority

job rotation -> crop rotation ???

hill's med sec
slippery slope-o-nomics

"worser slower less economical "

but above all much more
universaleristical

"no paycheck left un gouged "

"no free flying geefs left behind "

"... the people that go for Hillary -- the working class, middle aged folk -- I think they care about the universal health care.."

i find mind reading difficult

"healthcare costs are eating away at their lives"

true
so who's got a clear and present
cost containment plan ???

mother clinton ????

"Raise that f*cking tax to 60-70% for all I care, as long as you do it to the rich as well and provide quality access to healthcare, education and infrastructure. It's money well spent"

the above paragraph :

elitest
gibberish-tical
paved with fools gold
and piffle sticks

tax policy divide :

ever greater "access " to paychecks
vs
at long last
direct access to net worths

My view of human nature, Owen, is that for every response the pollsters get, a minimum of three people won't go along with the game. On sunny spring days, I'll insist there are ten refuseniks.

healthcare, education and infrastructure

we need cost controls here

education
free preschool from 2 0n

and
8 fucking mandated grades
of the great dewey archypeleego
---our dearest old
liberal secular school-lag----
is quite enough

that oughta serve us
as a working paradigm

and as to infrastructure

that is basically

no fly zoning
the entire pri sec corporate profit grove

non sense

to morph amerika inc
into "the green house of democracy "
will require
building the basis
for a self reliant fully automated
green clean and mean production

ie
necessitating uncle slam
to board and violate
every sailing along limited liability
unlimited profit opportunity
vessel of interest

like the pointy headed wanky fedskins
iz nothin
but a gang of barbary pirates

"On sunny spring days, I'll insist there are ten refuseniks."

al
make that an uneven 11
and u got a deal

i find mind reading difficult

I find it impossible, that's why I didn't assert that I know. However faulty my perspective may be, it does lead to thinking based on that, and only that, limited perspective. I grew up in the 70s a child of two union parents that willingly handed over "garnishments" to the union for expected solidarity and collective unity, allowing for a limited ability to strike. First the wedge went between the public and unions, then between unions themselves. But the need for a collective security blanket never went away, even among today's working class.

so who's got a clear and present cost containment plan ???

mother clinton ????

Of the three in question, hers is the clearest and presentest. Primary positions differ from general elections differ from actual legislation. We proceed on what we assume to be the path based on a reasonable criteria.

Cost containment of what? The current cleptonomy or health care? Because I think it's about 35% actual heathcare costs and 65% skimming off the top and calling it healthcare.

You don't think that she'd have the balls to carry out a cost containment plan that focused on the skim, but I think she would -- she carries baggage as a first woman president -- baggage to demonstrate on domestic issues that she could outdo hubby, that she can pave the way for other women, that she was burned in 93 and wants her revenge and place in the history books. She can sense that Bill went to the corporatists a bit too willingly at the expense of the working class. That he went right-wing a tad too much. And she'd overcompensate on foreign policy, but domestically, she's the closest we can come to socialist policy in the near future. Would it be limited? Yes, but the sooner that politicians stop running away from the socialist brand, the better.

elitest gibberish-tical paved with fools gold and piffle sticks

Yeah, probably -- but being elitist doesn't make it less genuine. I don't vote my self-interest.

ever greater "access " to paychecks vs at long last direct access to net worths

Not getting this one. I suspect that we'd differ on the place of property rights in the new post-Hillary-utopia.

necessitating uncle slam to board and violate every sailing along limited liability unlimited profit opportunity vessel of interest

Violate? I was thinking control and account. A crew of bloodthirsty barbary accountants perhaps?

Angry, you're talking about the plastichairshifting snakelady who just told her donors she hates the "activist wing" of her own party, the bigfaced megaharpy who told Billy Boy to go ahead and sign the damned "welfare reform" bill, the Nixon Youth ladderclimber who told Steffie Woolhandler to "tell me something interesting." Please allow me to introduce herself, she's a woe-man of wealth and taste...

Hey --

This is off-topic.

I just got here for the first time. I think the section in Michael Smith's book about the Problem with Liberals is the smartest thing I have ever read about this old topic.

I went looking for bio and also contact info but couldn't find it. I doubt if I am the only reader who would like to know more.

@Michael D:

the plastichairshifting snakelady who ... she's a woe-man of wealth and taste...

All true I suppose, it's just that I don't expect ideological purity from everyone (anyone). Everyone's compromised. Everyone's a hypocrite to some degree (particularly when scrutinized closely). I figure, even flawed folk can be useful if they set their mind to it.

Did you have anyone in mind among these three, or elsewhere? Who's the ideal?

That's really great, about not expecting "ideological purity". I don't expect a pony, a hail storm consisting of cupcakes or meditation lessons from talking pumpkins. No cupcakes yet, and I've given up hope on the pumpkin :'-( Alas, I get ideological purity all the time, exclusively from people who claim to eschew it.

A vote for any of the Big Three is a vote for the rigid, crackpot ideological purity of security theatre and misanthropic neoliberalism.

right on for the right-ons, Al. I'm tired as hell of the anti-purists puritans who drive "progressive"political discussion everywhere on the so-called left these days. The only thing more dogmatic than a party line stalinist is a partyline "Democratic" party supporter. Same clowns, different bloody circus.

"I went looking for bio and also contact info but couldn't find it. I doubt if I am the only reader who would like to know more"

indeed we all would ..."like to know more "
about this shadowy illiberal nite rider

alas

his most reverend father
monsignor smiff
suffers from
the pathological
diffidence of the born provincial

mm -- Thanks for the kind words. Alas, Owen has me dead to rights about the diffidence and provincialism. A contact address for the site sounds like a good idea, however, and so I've set up stopmebeforeivoteagain@yahoo.com for the purpose. I'll add a link to that on the main page one of these days.