Tuesday, July 12, 2016

So, let’s take a look at the political landscape so far (6/1/16)

I discussed in previous posts how I feel about most of the remaining candidates that are left in the race. The only one I didn’t cover extensively in my favorite one, Bernie Sanders, and even then I did explain a bit about why I like him. At this point, let’s bring all of that information together and look seriously about what my options are and who I should seriously vote for. Here is a general political compass map of where I estimate the candidates are, relative to me.

I can’t get the image to upload to this post directly so I posted an imgur of a political compass chart here.
For reference, my methodology here involves trying to take the political compass while replicating the perceived positions of the candidates and posting them on a map. This is somewhat difficult to do, as it is impossible to know the candidates’ positions on every issue. However, I did take the test several times, and with the exception of Clinton, got a pretty reliable cluster of results similar to one another. As such, let’s analyze.

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders is the clear choice for me, as he’s the only one who overlaps with my results. He’s only slightly to the left of me, and slightly more authoritarian, and even then, that could be in part due to tone on specific questions, whereas with my own responses I had more nuanced answers. Still, I think it’s accurate. Sanders is by far the best candidate in my opinion and aligns with me fairly closely. Many of the differences between us are in tone and maybe slight policy differences (for example, he might be a little more hardcore on single payer, whereas I’m for basic income, etc.). My only real beefs with Sanders, all things considered, is I’m not sure his healthcare/education plans are feasible from a funding perspective. He tries to pay for them in ways that may not be reliable, and simplifies his math a lot. Real life is messier and his plans may be more difficult to fund. Still, he’s the only serious guy in the race trying, and I believe he can be worked with. The only other thing I don’t like are his anti nuclear and anti GMO position. I think nuclear is a good form of energy that is relatively safe, and I think that GMOs are largely not harmful and that labelling would appeal to anti scientific paranoia. Other than that, he’s a very solid candidate I throw my full support behind.

Jill Stein

Jill Stein is the second closest candidate to me, and as I’ve stated previously, she’s pretty much an extremist with a lot of nice sounding ideas ideologically, but at the same time, not being a serious candidate, ideology and sending a message to the democrats matters more than policy as far as she is concerned.

Hillary Clinton

Clinton is hard to nail down, because, as we know, she changes his tones and positions all the time. She sounds progressive when talking to liberals (although even then still fairly centrist) while sounding conservative when talking to the right. She’ll sound authoritarian one minute and libertarian the next. She seems to hug the center pretty closely as is standard procedure for the modern democratic party, which talks from the left and governs from the center right, and in the more extreme cases, the soft right. Still, as we can see, she’s fairly distant from both me and Sanders. For all this talk of how there is little difference between the candidates, there seems to be a HUGE difference here, at least in tone, which political compass measures. It’s really no wonder I’m unhappy with her. She really is a wishy washy centrist.

Donald Trump

Trump seems to score mildly conservative. I think he breaks from his party, which is more to the upper right than he is, primarily because he doesn’t have the religious positions on social issues, and because he is somewhat economically moderate compared to the likes of Cruz, Rubio and Kasich. Still. He’s pretty distant from me, and is unlikely to get my support. Hillary will get my support before Trump.

Gary Johnson

Johnson may be similar to me on social issues all things considered, but economically he’s hard right. He is totally polar opposite to me and what I stand for, and is very unlikely to get my support as a joke. I’m tempted to say he may be a better candidate than Trump, but he’s far more distant from me ideologically than even Hillary.

So, who should I vote for?

Well, it’s clear I’m going to support Sanders to the end. Despite some imperfections (no one’s perfect), he’s pretty much what I believe this country needs. I align with him closely and think he’s objectively the best candidate in the race hands down. Beyond that, it’s a choice of Hillary or Stein. Hillary is pragmatic, but wishy washy on policy, and very difficult to nail down. Still, she appears to hug the center of the spectrum in general. I also can’t stand her and the democratic party’s attitude of support her or else. Seriously, if Clinton ran a cleaner campaign and didn’t treat Sanders supporters with such contempt, clearly trying to force us out of the spectrum and shut down a burgeoning progressive movement, I’d be inclined to give her a vote as a second choice. She’s a solid candidate. She’s just very unlikeable and also very unlikely to actually bring the kind of change we need. She’s actually playing an active role in trying to prevent it. Stein, on the other hand, might appeal to me in terms of rhetoric, but policy wise, she’s just off the wall. Her ideas just don’t work. She might end up with my vote just because though. If Sanders drops out of the race, I’ll have to choose between her and Hillary, and considering my dislike of Hillary, she might end up getting the vote. We’ll have to see. Beyond that, I don’t even consider Trump and Johnson to be options
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Asking isidewith.com

I took the isidewith.com quiz and the results are the following:

95% Bernie Sanders

92% Jill Stein

88% Hillary Clinton

64% Gary Johnson

56% Donald Trump

This seems to coincide with my own analysis fairly closely. I agree with the general rankings of the candidates based on my analysis above.

Bonus: A throwback to the party realignment article!

I also included the where the GOP and democratic establishments are. As we can see, the republican party these days is far to the top right. Cruz probably represents the top right of the block there, whereas Trump and even Reagan/Bush Sr. might represent the other end. As we can see, the party is definitely authoritarian right. Meanwhile, the democrats are to the center. Some govern center right, like Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats”, whereas others are a bit more left wing. Regardless, the party is very much to the center overall, considering all elements, with my and Sanders’ policies being considered “too extreme”.
It’s worth looking at where the country was back in the past, pre Reagan. FDR was about as hardcore as Sanders is on economics, maybe even more so. But the democrats of the 30s were fairly authoritarian. They were racist, they were socially conservative, and the democrats largely supported a lot of national security programs in general. The republicans were even more socially authoritarian due to McCarthyism, the war on drugs, and the beginning of a mixture of religion and state. However, they were economically moderate, occupying similar space that the democrats do today. As Reagan moved the country to the right and made it more socially conservative in some ways, the democrats moved to the center economically, but have been consistently becoming far more socially liberal. Whereas McGovern was considered too extreme in 1972 due to his social positions, many of his ideas are pretty acceptable and mainstream in the current democratic party. The democrats are also far more mixed on national security programs, with some establishment types quietly supporting them (while blasting republicans when they do so) with others voicing opposition to them.

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