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The Two Kinds of Moderate

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#201

Post by cs02rm0 »

robbrown451 wrote: post #146
CameronNemo wrote: post #99

Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system. Change the electoral system and you will see much more diverse and meaningful party affiliation. >The effect of a system based on plurality voting is that the larger parties, and parties with more geographically concentrated support, gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties with more evenly distri…

Very true. In the absence of first past the post voting (and its tendency to force people into parties to avoid losing to people who do [1], and for those parties to coalesce into two dominant, equally balance parties), there is still a polarity of, say, liberal and conservative. At least in the original meanings of the terms, which has to do with whether you go toward new things or prefer traditions. But under FPTP,…

And more importantly, FPTP doesn't allow for middle ground. If you are in the middle, you can't get elected, because neither party would nominate you.

I'm not sure that's true, at least in the UK, when one of the established two parties moves to the centre ground they tend to win. Moving away from the centre ground is how they lose.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#202

Post by username90 »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #119
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only so much time, attention, and energy. If your focus is on, say, trans rights, you're not spending that time focusing on working-class economics. And even if you can do it all, there's only so much attention the voters have. If all they hear about you is on trans rights, they don't perceive you doing anything about their economic problems. The Democrats' central message used to be "we care about the workin…

Are you saying that as the Democrats became distanced from working-class issues, the republicans got closer to working-class issues? Could you explain that in terms of the policy that they adopted or is it a response to Dems adopting minority rights issues? What I mean to say is that if they are both bad in the same way on working class issues, what is it about minority rights that would make you vote R? Genuinely tr…

R said that they will bring back working class jobs and give them something to be proud of. R also said that they will limit low skill immigration which will help reduce competition for working class jobs. R said that they will reduce taxes for working class people (and they even increased taxes for better paid workers, so it is not like they just reduced it overall).

All of these are typical leftist talking points, Democrats just left those votes on the table and R just swooped in and took them.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#203

Post by [deleted] »

slashdev wrote: post #195
asdfman123 wrote: post #109

Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. > openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any signifi…

As an accidental moderate myself, it does take courage. You don't belong on the right or the left. I'm too liberal for conservatives, and too conservative for liberals. I'm not even part of my parent's political or religious tribe. An accidental moderate means being tribeless. It doesn't surprise me that those kinds of people would be more impressive, since anyone who describes themselves as right or left, democrat o…

[deleted]

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#204

Post by AnimalMuppet »

morelisp wrote: post #164
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think something changed in the past 10-15, you're falling for GOP propaganda. You think that Democrats have not moved in the past 10-15 years? You think that the idea that they have is merely Republican propaganda? I think you haven't been paying attention. Or maybe you were paying too much attention. 15 years ago, AOC wasn't even old enough to vote. Were there Democrats in the House who held the same positi…

Your entire post is about AOC, who has spent less than two years in office. My statement was about the (non-)events in the democratic party 25-30 and 10-15 years ago. The "AOC as a bogeyman" talking points are a transparent attempt to derail the discussion along the lines the GOP wants. I agree we've seen a shift in the democratic party - not yet in its leadership - in the past 2-4 years (beginning with Sanders, its…

True, the topic of AOC runs through my post, but that's not what it's about. It's about the change in the position of the average/median Democratic politician.

And I'd say the change has happened at least somewhat in the Democratic leadership - in many of the presidential candidates, even if not in the House and Senate leadership.

And I'd argue that this change was going on before, but you didn't see it, because of Obama. He, in one person, was the face of the Democratic party, and that hid what was going on underneath. As you say, Obama was not on the left, and because he was the public symbol of the party, it was easy to not see the left growing.

Was Obama to the left of Clinton? I could accept "no" as the answer. But was the median Democratic politician during Obama to the left of the median Democratic politician during Clinton? To me, it appears that the answer is "yes".

I don't think that abandoning the working class is something that just happened in the last 2-4 years. I could even argue that it happened under Clinton, but he had the political savvy to hide it. It was probably there, and growing, under Obama. It became glaringly apparent under Hillary, when she had no interest in even talking about the working class, and Trump did. That's what changed in the last 2-4 (let's call it 3) years - Trump stole what the Democrats thought was "their" issue, so solidly "theirs" that it didn't even need to be mentioned.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#205

Post by SkyBelow »

grawprog wrote: post #117
asdfman123 wrote: post #109

Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. > openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any signifi…

I always assume most people hold moderate viewpoints and the people with extreme viewpoints just tend to be the loudest. At least that seems to be the case with most people I meet anyway.

I've generally found most people don't generally care at all until they or someone they care about is impacted, then their care is largely dictated by the nature of the impact with existing political views only being partially factored in. One reason why getting to know members of a minority group can stop a person from being inherently biased against that group.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#206

Post by tptacek »

It just can't be the case that this kind of content, which would never ordinarily survive on the front page if written by someone else, has a place here simply because Paul Graham wrote it. I say this as a moderate, of the accidental variety, myself! But if this would get shot down if it appeared in The Atlantic or The New Republic --- and it would, and should --- it shouldn't get a pass just because Harj Taggar and Patrick Collison reviewed it.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#207

Post by [deleted] »

asdfman123 wrote: post #109

Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. > openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any signifi…

[deleted]

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#208

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #123
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the conservatives want to conserve, not the current status quo, but the status quo of, say, 1950. To get there from here, we'd need to make some drastic changes to the current status quo. And that's not inherently an insane approach. If we've been going in the wrong direction for the last 70 years, the most useful move is to go back to where we were. Now, in practice, it's not that simple. You can't just go bac…

”Well, the conservatives want to conserve, not the current status quo, but the status quo of, say, 1950. To get there from here, we'd need to make some drastic changes to the current status quo.” They don’t want that. Otherwise they would support tax increases and lower salaries for CEOs. They want to go back to a mythical past that never existed the same way they are Reaganites that would call the real Reagan a RINO…

Of course. They want the 1950s, not as they were, but as they imagine them. In the same way, the liberals want, say, Sweden, not as it is, but as they imagine it.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#209

Post by TOGoS »

wbronitsky wrote: post #143
hindsightbias wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

In what way is Hillary Clinton a Marxist? That seems like a pretty outlandish statement directed towards someone with so much money and power

Hillary Clinton is a Marxist in the "I never read Marx and have no idea what Marxism is, but I'll slap the label on everything I don't like" sense.

See also: The GOP is apparently communist, now.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#210

Post by shkkmo »

hindsightbias wrote: post #175
aspaceman wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet Hillary and Bernie are Marxists today. Huh? Not even a little bit. Neither one has quoted a single like of Marx, ever. Bernie identifies as a democratic socialist, which aint Marxist. The conflation is misinformed as hell.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_senior_thesis What more does a moderate need to know?

Perhaps they might want to know what argument you are trying to make? It is not immediately clear from the link you posted. In what way does that thesis have anything to do with Marxism. If anything, it shows Hillary as a "work within the system" standard centrist liberal. Perhaps I am missing something?
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