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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28003 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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shes a politician not a philosopher, its not her job to seek truth but to win votes and serve the people

you try to make it seem like because shes a woman she is less objective but trying to give voters what they want is the objectively right move in her position

Yes, just about every successful politician is like that. Ideally, you pick out your policies well in advance so that you don't have to do a 180 in public, but sometimes it can't be avoided. Often, you can just get by with deemphasizing something you used to talk a lot about instead of actively coming out in support of the other side.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, you still might want to change your opinions because the ones which allow you to rise in a party are different from the ones which win elections.

Having a leader who has principles and is willing to sacrifice their reelection to follow their principles is better than having an opportunistic leader who will do whatever the public wants only if their principles are good principles, followed sensibly.

I think that misunderstands a Republican democracy. The theory isn’t to have a leader that simply does what the public wants. The idea is for a leader who the public can believe in to make the right decisions. Simply delegating those decisions to consensus seems to my mind to be an abandonment of leadership but the question really is what is the better style of leadership.

I’m suggesting Harris has a different leadership style. Maybe some people prefer it. My point is that the difference is in part gendered.

The idea is for a leader who the public can believe in to make the right decisions.

Well, that's just it. The "right decision" is often a subject to with the people believe it is.

As Edmund Burke famously put it —

His unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. ... Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

I like this quote. I'm a (very minor) elected official myself, and I treated the campaign almost like a job interview. I was entirely honest about my opinions under the theory that I was going to be elected to lead and make decisions and the public should know what decisions I was likely to make. If I won the election, that meant that the public wanted people with my specific ideas in the office.

I am intensely frustrated by my fellow representatives who constantly want to circle back to public opinion when deciding issues -- they elected YOU, right? So what the public WANTS is you to make a decision in accordance with the values you ran on. If we're just going to punt on decisions every time then we're just stuffed shirts; there's no need for elected representatives at all, we'll just run Twitter polls every week and we can stay home.

I’ve often thought on areas where the representative does not have strong convictions or recognizes there is significant uncertainty, it makes sense to side with consensus.

But it makes zero sense to do so on important issues wherein the rep does have strong convictions.

You'd be a fool to think she cares about any of these issues and won't immediately make a hard left turn on guns and the border once she is elected.

Right now she needs consensus from the people.

Once in office, she will only need consensus from powerful people within her own party.

Do you honestly believe that Kamala will start mass deporting illegals because that's what the majority of people in the US want according to polls?

I think that many politicians rarely genuinely hold any position. They research and float various positions, hoping to find ones that resound with voters and then lean into those positions. Previously in her career, Harris did well with some of these more progressive positions, partly because she began in Cali, partly because Obama/Biden were claiming the middle, partly because of her starting diversity hand and partly because progressives were an ascendant influence. Now, she needs to move to the middle and is. Not every Dem national candidate is going to be a southern governor like Clinton, but probably all candidates are going to adapt like Clinton.

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