tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post6801787445348088744..comments2023-10-24T04:29:23.693-06:00Comments on Atheist Ethicist: Political RealityAlonzo Fyfehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-38412991785751185272008-07-11T10:10:00.000-06:002008-07-11T10:10:00.000-06:00Hume's GhostIt is nice to be hearing from you agai...<B>Hume's Ghost</B><BR/><BR/>It is nice to be hearing from you again.<BR/><BR/>Let me start with this comment of yours.<BR/><BR/><I>And when Democrats fail to challenge Republicans on these issues . . .</I><BR/><BR/>Well, there is a distinction between what 'Democrats' should do and what 'Obama' should do. I am comfortable with strategies where 'democrats' do one thing and 'Obama' does something else. What Obama should do is get elected - in this case.<BR/><BR/>More importantly, there is a difference between what 'Democrats' should do and what we should do.<BR/><BR/>As I have argued, it is up to us to raise a stink about this law. We should not be pushing this responsibility onto others, we should be taking the responsibility ourselves. We should be working to make it easy for a politician of either party to come out in defense of privacy, and politically costly for them not to.<BR/><BR/>We have more freedom than Obama does in these types of cases, because we have nothing to lose. (Well, in a sense.) Obama's job is to win the election, and that puts constraints on what he can say and do that you and I do not have, giving us freedom to say and do things that would cost Obama the election if he agrees with us.<BR/><BR/>Daschle lost his seat in the Senate. However, it is still an open question whether he would not have lost it if he had voted against AUMF - or if he would have lost it by a wider margin.<BR/><BR/>As I said, when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals releases its opinion that 'under God' is unconstitutional, Obama will (and must) say some stupid things to condemn the Court - or lose the election. I will condemn the stupid things that he will say. I will probably write several posts on how they make no sense. But I still understand why he has to say them - and I would not have him not say them.<BR/><BR/>I will, instead, condemn those who most responsible for creating a situation in which people have to say stupid things to get elected.Alonzo Fyfehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-41642917499385289562008-07-11T09:34:00.000-06:002008-07-11T09:34:00.000-06:00Oh, I realized the argument you were making, and a...Oh, I realized the argument you were making, and agree with it. This is such an issue that I feel so strongly about, though, that I wanted to go ahead and argue in the comments that the case against Obama can and should be made in this instance.<BR/><BR/>You are 100% correct that a No vote would mean Republicans would say Obama is weak on terror. Yet a Yes vote does not mean Republicans are not going to say Obama is weak on terror. Indeed, they and their surrogates in the media are already saying that we'll lose an American city if Obama becomes president.<BR/><BR/>That is irrespective of any given Democrats policies ... it is simply an axiomatic belief for movement conservatives that Democrats are weak on national defense.<BR/><BR/>And when Democrats fail to challenge Republicans on these issues, when they fail to develop a counter-narrative based in truth and reality, they cede the framing of the issue to Republicans and allow them to shape public pereption of what constitutes being "strong" on national defense.<BR/><BR/>In other words, this sort of behavior helps to create the conditions that allow Republican attacks of being "weak" on terror to work in the first place (Drew Westen wrote about this process of ceding the neural networks at book length in The Political Brain.)<BR/><BR/>I heard last night that one of Obama's advisers is Tom Daschle. Dashle was one of the leaders of the Dems 2002 decision to vote for an AUMF before the election in order to avoid being called weak on terror. Daschle lost his seat.<BR/><BR/>Obama's says that this is a good compromise because of the exclusivity clause in the bill. That's like having one steal 100 dollars, write new legislation saying that crime is granted immunity and that "stealing" now means stealing over 100000 dollars and then saying its a good compromise because it establishes that stealing is against the law.<BR/><BR/>The Inspector General bit of oversight still places the power of review of the program within the Executive. This administration has demonstrated how easily that power can be abused.Hume's Ghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13551684109760430351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-27142832482020594502008-07-10T14:28:00.000-06:002008-07-10T14:28:00.000-06:00I have agreed that a person can make a case agains...I have agreed that a person can make a case against Obama if one can show that a coalition of the 'best 51%' would have voted against this legislation.<BR/><BR/>Again, the objective is not to show that a coalition of the best 51% would have opposed certain provisions of the legislation, but that a coalition of the best 51% would have opposed voting for the legislation.<BR/><BR/>We have to keep in mind how political advertising works. The relevant question is: "Is there a way to give a no vote on this bill a spin that will turn 51% of the population against the person who cast the vote?"<BR/><BR/>If the answer is "yes", then it is politically unwise to cast a no vote.<BR/><BR/>In fact, this is how a politician has to measure every law. Not in terms of whether the law is a good idea, but in terms of, "What type of spin can my opponent give to my vote?"<BR/><BR/>The Republicans would have certainly used a 'no' vote to run a campaign that says, "Obama will not keep you safe from terrorists."<BR/><BR/>Now, conduct a poll. What percentage of the population will vote for a person who coddles terrorists?<BR/><BR/>You and I both know that this claim of coddling terrorists is false. But will the coalition of the Best 51% know this? Where we are talking about a coalition of the best 51%, we only need to have 2% persuaded by such a campaign, and a victory turns into a defeat.<BR/><BR/>These are political realities that it would not be wise to ignore.<BR/><BR/>Having said this, I am not saying that no argument can be made against Obama's vote. I am not defending his decision. I am pointing out some flaws in a commen set of arguments against his position. This does not imply that good arguments cannot be found.<BR/><BR/>Note: Obama's <A HREF="http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/rospars/gGxsZF" REL="nofollow">stated reasons for voting for the FISA Amendment</A> have been posted on hisAlonzo Fyfehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-33310729216076527182008-07-10T11:00:00.000-06:002008-07-10T11:00:00.000-06:00And this action makes Obama more likely to lose th...And this action makes Obama more likely to lose the votes of <A HREF="http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/07/09/making-gruel-out-of-liberty/" REL="nofollow">conservatives like this</A>.Hume's Ghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13551684109760430351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-2500813568316089722008-07-10T10:51:00.000-06:002008-07-10T10:51:00.000-06:00Voters oppose warrantless surveillance<A HREF="http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/32189leg20071016.html" REL="nofollow">Voters oppose warrantless surveillance</A>Hume's Ghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13551684109760430351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-48457340001105979892008-07-10T10:48:00.000-06:002008-07-10T10:48:00.000-06:00Majority polled opposes telecom immunity.<A HREF="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/strong-majority-voters-oppose-telecom-immunity" REL="nofollow">Majority polled opposes telecom immunity</A>.Hume's Ghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13551684109760430351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-43445565641545842942008-07-10T10:39:00.000-06:002008-07-10T10:39:00.000-06:00link<A HREF="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/02/obama_fisa/index.html" REL="nofollow">link</A>Hume's Ghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13551684109760430351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-19112084339491556892008-07-10T10:37:00.000-06:002008-07-10T10:37:00.000-06:00Regarding the "I'm voting for this because it's no...Regarding the "I'm voting for this because it's not perfect but there's no alternative"<BR/><BR/>The reasoning Obama has stated for supporting this bill is false. A campaign aid quoted in the New York Times said that Obama supports the bill because he doesn't want FISA to expire.<BR/><BR/>FISA is not going to expire (except for when this bill becomes law, then it will effectively be nonexistent.) So when Glenn Greenwald questioned the aid, he eventually was told that Obama doesn't want the Protect America Act spying authorizations to expire. That's interesting, given that Obama voted AGAINST those authorizations in the first place.Hume's Ghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13551684109760430351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-13591909093700725162008-07-10T10:31:00.000-06:002008-07-10T10:31:00.000-06:00"they have to recognize that it is senseless to de..."they have to recognize that it is senseless to demand that a politician take a position on that issue that will guarantee that he will lose the election to a worse candidate."<BR/><BR/>But what indication is there that protecting the Fourth Amendment would lose someone an election? Democrats thought like this before the 2002 election, and thus voted for the AUMF which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Max Cleland voted for it and still lost his seat.<BR/><BR/>Obama has made a central part of his campaign the assertion that he will challenge the conventional Beltway wisdom that being "strong" on national security means doing what ever Republicans want. He had previously promised to filibuster a bill with telecom immunity.<BR/><BR/>On both these issues he has betrayed his own stated values and promises, and has done so for the most base and cynical reasons possible (i.e. his campaign believes 'the left' will still have to vote for him over McCain). This makes Obama look like a flip-flopper, it angers civil libertarians, it betrays the values of Obama's base, and it cedes the framing of the issue to Republicans.<BR/><BR/>How can that do anything but weaken Obama?<BR/><BR/>And this isn't simply about what polls well and what not: it's about the power of money to get what it wants. Telecom lobbysts poured millions of dollars into buying themselves immunity and the Democrats closed ranks to take advantage of it. Which also contributes of the failure of Democrats to shape public opinion by actually taking a stand on the issue and developing a counter-narrative that is actually based in the truth. The conservative movement has come to power and that happened despite it having started as a fringe extremist movement ... if they thought like Democrats they'd still be the John Birch Society rather than the Republican Party <BR/><BR/>Of course I'll still vote for Obama, as I have to. But I want the Obama campaign and the Democratic party to know that I will be working towards removing them from office and replacing them with individuals who value American democracy and the institutions and laws that preserve and protect it.Hume's Ghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13551684109760430351noreply@blogger.com