The latest Pew Research poll on women in politics and business has more than a few interesting findings, but this one shouldn’t surprise anyone:
Yep, only 16% of Republican men would hope to see a female president in the US in their lifetime, and only 20% of Republican women do.
Open thread, you betcha. Also, too.
schrodinger's cat
I fail to understand what this endless parade of nonsensical polls is supposed to show, anyway?
Bob In Portland
Because having a black President has worked out so well. Well, it has worked well in exposing the vastness of America’s racism. Of course, Obama himself is to the right of Richard Nixon, which is a sad commentary on the DLC-controlled national Dems and their owners. Perhaps a few years of Hillary will encourage the nativist stormtroopers to repeal the 19th Amendment.
BGinCHI
Perhaps the Repubs closed their eyes and saw Sarah Palin.
Hunter Gathers
Conservatives are just proving their manly street cred but not succumbing to the popular notion of letting bitches run shit. Hell, we let one of those people into office and now look at us, we’re weaker than the French! If only those stupid college educated morons would vote for their conservative betters, Everything Would Be Awesome!
beltane
If the Republicans’ presumptive nominee was a woman, the numbers would be quite a bit different.
Belafon
@Bob In Portland: I haven’t seen Obama’s “Northern Strategy”. Where can I get a reference?
I’d love to know how Obama is actually to the right of Nixon.
Belafon
@beltane: If she could make it through the primary.
Violet
@beltane: Was going to say the same thing. If their best candidate was a woman they’d be all excited about having a woman as president. And I’d expect Dems would be slightly less excited than they are in this poll.
Iowa Old Lady
As I watched The Imitation Game, I thought about how cultures handicap themselves by allowing only straight men of the right race to do things. They start with an arm and half tied behind their backs.
JPL
@BGinCHI: That’s what I think. First they want a republican candidate and they don’t see a vast field of female candidates who are qualified from their party. Most republicans probably don’t remember Margaret Chase Smith who had presidential aspirations.
Amir Khalid
@beltane:
This.
Hunter Gathers
@Bob In Portland:
Nothing says ‘flaming leftist’ like illegally bombing Cambodia into the Stone Age.
I await your reply that contains the word ‘Drone’.
beltane
@Hunter Gathers: Republicans are perfectly happy to elect female governors, Senators, and Representatives. If the American version of Marine Le Pen was heavily favored to win the nomination, the wingnuts, with the exception of the homeschooling Bible thumpers, would be excited to have a woman President. In fact, they would be accusing the rest of us for being sexists if we did not share this enthusiasm. Everything is about tribal loyalty with these people.
Frankensteinbeck
Never underestimate people’s ability to oppress themselves. In particular, our fucked up gender dynamic relies heavily on men oppressing men and women oppressing women, and so it always has been.
schrodinger's cat
What percentage of women self identify as Republicans?
shortstop
That under-50% showing from Democratic men is not too cool either.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: They keep the pollsters busy. Providing information that is of really very little use to most of us, but it provides the parasitical vermin of the Village with stuff to chew on.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hunter Gathers: This is why BiP is the classic example of a useful idiot.
gvg
In some ways I think we are late electing a woman. A lot of people are beyond the point of being excited by that first. If we had had the right woman come along a little sooner and she matched what we thought was needed for the job, she would have already been elected. Its a given that the more neanderthal part of the republican voters would have freaked but for most of us, its accepted that a woman can do the work.
I base this on observations of Obamas election where one of the reasons people who expressed some racism still voted for him is his temperment of calm fit what people wanted after the GOP hysteria decade+Afghanistan/Iraq going badly+financial crisis McCain headless chicken performance+threat of more wars wanted by war mongers=lots of Obama voters. He fit the need at the time. Another time period with different crisis and different rivals to choose from and he might not have been the perceived “best” choice quite fairly. A lot of us have already had several women bosses and know its the same as men bosses in that there are good ones and bad ones, it depends, and it doesn’t seem that unusual.
The polls shows partisanship. We all know it means are you going to vote for Hillary not generic woman who could be either Dem or Rep. The way its going, even if Hillary backed out due to health, the next serious woman candidate is going to be Dem in all likelihood.
shortstop
@beltane:
Well, but no, they’re not, or the numbers of Democratic women in these offices wouldn’t be kicking the GOP numbers across town as they always have. I agree with everyone that the lack of a viable female Republican presidential candidate is certainly depressing the positive GOP response in this and similar polls, but they’re always going to be less likely to elect women and brown people than we are.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: I question the ‘useful’.
schrodinger's cat
Also from observing other women leaders of the recent past, Thatcher and Indira Gandhi come to mind and Hillary’s own history. I predict that if Hillary becomes President she is going to be an uber hawk.
Laertes
@beltane:
This.
The poll may say “a woman president” but in the current political context, everyone reads it as “Hillary Clinton.” At which point the numbers look exactly like you’d expect.
Ernest Pikeman
Not holding my breath waiting for examples of Obama’s right-wingery from Bob in St. Petersburg (RU) (there is an office building full of infowarriors on Savushkin Street).
But in-before-EPA: EPA was formed as part of taking resources from existing departments and their power bases and concentrating power in the White House. Unitary executive was not a Bush-era invention. Read Nixonland.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hunter Gathers: Also, too the Limbaughesque “the Republicans have not nominated a ‘conservative-enough’ candidate and that’s why they keep losing!”.
Belafon
Another thought: That delta between Democratic women and men is probably comparable between non-white and white Democrats before Obama was elected. A part of that group will represent those men that just can’t vote for a woman even if they call themselves Democrats.
shortstop
@Villago Delenda Est: This one is my fave. When people say it, I always want to check the palms of their hands to see if they’ve got inches-deep scar tissue from touching the hot stove over and over and over and over again.
chopper
@shortstop:
their palms have scar tissue all right, but it’s not from a stove.
shortstop
@chopper: Hairy, hairy scar tissue.
NonyNony
@Bob In Portland:
Name three issues where Obama is to the right of where Nixon was in the 1970s.
Bonus points if your examples don’t hinge on Nixon having a Congress significantly to the left of the Congress that Obama has had to deal with. Nixon’s Congress essentially pulled Nixon to the left to get him to do what they wanted domestically.
BGinCHI
@beltane: Yep. All ideology all the time. Though ironically only 1 in a 1000 GOPers would know what that word means.
BGinCHI
@schrodinger’s cat: All of the really stupid ones and most of the rich ones. 100% of the overlap.
BGinCHI
Nixon bowled. Obama plays golf.
That’s all I can think of.
beltane
@Laertes: The fact that less than 50% of Democratic men say they would like to see a woman President is interesting in this context. If a woman other than Hillary were the heir apparent, I wonder if this number would be higher or lower.
Laertes
@shortstop:
I expect that 50% showing is equal parts people who read “a female president” as “Hillary Clinton” and prefer several other Democrats to her for whatever reason, and people who imagine themselves to be unconcerned with gender altogether. (That is, group B would also answer in the negative if asked if they “hope that the US does not elect a female president in their lifetime.)
Ask me if I hope that we elect another male president in my lifetime. I’ll answer “no” without feeling any animus toward men–I just don’t think it’s particularly significant that the president has a penis. There will be a lot of Democrats who do the same thing in reverse, failing to see the significance of barrier-breaking.
(For the record, I’d prefer some other Democrat to Clinton because I think she’s a hawk with no real commitment to fighting back in the class war. I don’t think a better Democrat is likely to emerge in this cycle, but I keep hoping. I expect to happily vote for her in the general. I would very much like to see some female presidents in my lifetime. That’s a barrier that’s long overdue for breaking, and it’s shameful that it’s taken us at least this long.)
Bob In Portland
@Belafon: You still don’t understand, Belafon. You never will. Obama doesn’t have a strategy, not one that matters. Obama is part of someone else’s strategy. Obama, like Bush, Clinton, Bush and Reagan, are the plastic grooms on the wedding cake. Part of the ceremony when the cake is divided, there to be blamed by the racists for anything that happens, giving slim hope for the ever-disappointed leftists that “at least he’s black.” For all intents and purposes Obama is a symbol decided upon by the deep state to be used for whatever they plan to use him for.
Once you realize that our system of democracy is not democratic at all, that no matter what you want and what you fight for you are not going to get it when all political candidates on the big stage are part of an acting troupe then maybe you can address the symptoms of the condition. But you won’t. You have demonstrated that you are incapable of it.
Scott S.
@shortstop: Yeah, that bit was depressing as hell. :(
Laertes
@Bob In Portland:
I hear this sort of thing from a dear friend of mine. He loves the Bill Hicks bit with the puppets. I think it’s just lazy cynicism–lazy because it assumes that any value of imperfect is equal.
My guy, for instance, is convinced that President Gore would have invaded Iraq in 2003. I find that to be so balls-out insane that it’s difficult to even respond.
Lavocat
And I’m betting that the results would be SUBSTANTIALLY different had the question pointedly asked “a woman OTHER THAN Hillary Clinton”. She’s the golden girl right now and the presumed heir apparent to BHO, so implicit in this question is whether or not one could stomach Hillary Clinton as president. I, for one, could not, and I will not be pulling the lever for her despite being the most leftist of my family and friends. I’m thrilled that she is a woman; I’m appalled that she is a neo-liberal DINO.
I know many people (men and women) of all stripes who would be fine w/ a woman president … so long as that woman president was NOT Hillary Clinton.
President Elizabeth Warren anyone?
Archon
I will say that I’m wary of those that think Hillary will be able to expand the electoral map. She might get a few more votes in Kentucky and Arkansas but what state can Hillary Clinton win that Obama didn’t?
shortstop
@Bob In Portland: This reads like pure satire. I doubt you meant it to.
trollhattan
This is all kinds of awesome.
If Tommy Caldwell sounds familiar, it’s because he has had more than a lifetime of adventures.
KG
@shortstop: I’m an independent, and I wouldn’t say I “hope” to see a woman elected president in my life time. I’m in my mid-30s and I suspect there will be a woman elected president in my lifetime, but I just want the best person for the job… and if that happens to be a biracial, transgender lesbian then I’m fine with that, and if it happens to be yet another straight white man, so be it.
Scott S.
@Bob In Portland: SHEEPLE!
Lavocat
@beltane: We have a winner!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@BGinCHI: Heh. Of course, Nixon played golf, also too. telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/celebritynews/8022683/Eddie-Fisher-a-life-in-pictures.html?ima…
Cheers,
Scott.
shortstop
@KG: white man, am I right?
Laertes
@KG:
Right. This is exactly who I’m describing in (moderated) #35.
Scott S.
@Bob In Portland: I think you forgot to call all of us “sheeple.”
Lavocat
@KG: Agreed: a woman president just for the sake of having a woman president – her values be damned – is about as insane as a black president for the sake of a .. oh, wait.
KG
@Lavocat:
I’ll also object to Sarah Palin, Nikki Haley, Jan Brewer, and DiFi. But otherwise, I might listen.
Xantar
@Lavocat:
Warren is not going to run. I am beyond tired of hearing people hoping for something that’s not going to happen (and that we don’t need in order to move our agenda).
KG
@shortstop: half Cuban, but yeah. your point being, what exactly?
Bob In Portland
@Hunter Gathers: Should we now take the time to list all the dead around the world as the result of US ambitions over the last fifty years? Do the things that the military, the CIA and the NSA do count against Obama? Or maybe it’s just coincidence that he’s in office.
Actually, you grab the least important thing I wrote. What Obama is supposed to stand for is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what President is in the White House. If Obama is a friend to unions, he’s failed. If he is a friend to civil rights, he’s failed. He did manage to create a system of healthcare that will continue to enrich insurance companies. After Nixon and to a lesser extent Carter we haven’t had a real President. We’ve had masters of ceremonies.
shortstop
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: when he wasn’t tripping over the clubs and getting his head stuck in the bag, sure.
Perhaps Bob’s point was this: Nixon wore wingtips on the beach and Obama has been seen in mom jeans around the White House on weekends. So drones.
Laertes
@KG:
I’m gonna put on my mind-reader hat and say that the point is that we (mostly) white males are less likely to see the value of breaking barriers because it’s not us that are on the other side of it.
It’s hard for us to see the difference between “I’d like to see a female president in my lifetime” and “I’d like to see a male president in my lifetime” because the injustice is just an abstraction to us, not a reality that we feel in our gut.
ET
The Republican women number being so low may be a generational thing. My baby-boomer mother said she wouldn’t want a woman – but then she always voted the same as my dad so as to not cancel out a vote. It had nothing to do with qualifications because in no way did she feel that women weren’t smart and could do/be what they wanted and they had a right to be paid equally. It had more to do with the idea the men were presidents not women. That men were leaders not women – women were followers.
Laertes
@Bob In Portland:
Q: Do you think a President Gore would have invaded Iraq in 2003? (This may sound like a ridiculous and insulting question, but the friend I’ve got who talks like you believes this to be nearly certain.)
If you’re thinking that that’s all it does, you’re really showing your ass.
SatanicPanic
@Bob In Portland: oh jeez
BGinCHI
If you lie down with BiP, you are going to get up with fleas.
SatanicPanic
I’m not looking forward to all you babies whining about Hillary for the next ten years. Just saying.
ETA- ten years= two years of campaigning and eight years of presidency. I’m annoyed at you already.
Betty Cracker
@Laertes: Your mind-reader hat works remarkably well and has a highly calibrated empathy setting, I see.
KG
@Laertes: I get the value of breaking barriers, and absolutely appreciate it. And while I’d like to see a woman elected president (slightly different from hoping to see one), that doesn’t mean if the choice was between, say Jerry Brown and Jan Brewer, that I’d be voting for Brewer.
Chris
Unfair! Republicans are probably just way more likely to be about eighty years old, so a “female president in their lifetime” just means Hillary to them.
Another Holocene Human
@Bob In Portland: Shorter BiP: I’ll vote for any candidate Russia Today tells me to vote for.
When have far left discontents with no qualms about taking money from totalitarian anti-democratic regimes ever steered me wrong?
daveNYC
Hoping is a strong word. I’d rather a president whose policies I support backed by a congress that can get them implemented. If that’s a woman, huzzah, but I wouldn’t be particularly excited about electing a US version of Margaret Thatcher.
Another Holocene Human
@BGinCHI: Shit, don’t we all have that annoying friend on facebook? Half the reason I avoid facebook, the other half is the conservatives and their endlessly reblogged lie-memes and racist memes.
Lefty activists schooling Venezuelans about how to feel about Venezuela was where I got the fuck off the trolley. Fucking kids and their fucking narcissistic phase.
Violet
This poll is all theory. I suspect that when it’s reality–let’s say Hillary is the Democratic nominee in 2016–that some of those women on the Republican side will vote for her. A theoretical discussion of an abstract female president, even if Hillary is looking like the presumptive nominee so this poll in some ways means her, is different from the reality of voting for the first woman president.
Bob In Portland
@NonyNony: Did you see what I wrote? Did you read it? Perhaps I should have said that Obama’s Presidency is to the right of Nixon’s. So I’ll withdraw my statement about Obama’s political position since several of you have bifurcated that one statement from the rest of what I wrote. I repeat, it doesn’t matter what Obama believes in private. The country is worse now than before he took office, and if you say that he has nothing to do with the trends then you’ve agreed with me.
More people are in poverty now than in Nixon’s time. More people are homeless. More mentally ill wander our streets. There is more, and more thorough, surveillance of citizens now than during Nixon’s time. There is less likelihood now that a liberal economic policy will prevail. The redistribution of wealth and power continues to tilt towards the rich, unabated. Are you satisfied with Obama’s work in any of those areas or are you making excuses? Then it should be no problem when Hillary bombs Iran. You can make excuses that McCain or Jeb or whoever would have been worse.
So, let me reiterate. It doesn’t matter what Obama’s positions are on anything. He has no authority to change anything significant. The policies and laws are written in places where he has no say. Not even sure if he’s invited to watch.
ranchandsyrup
Let’s promote Putin from CEO of a gigantic oil company masquerading as a country to Preznit of the US. What could go wrongerer?
shortstop
@Laertes: Nicely put. There is a persistent feeling among some (usually) white males that “identity politics” are practiced by other demographics, never by themselves, since they represent what they see as the default settings. Of course, did they but recognize it, identity politics also played a large role in getting us 44 XY-chromosomed presidents in a row, 43 of whom were white.
Like “not seeing color” (something only white people who resemble national comedic icons do), saying one only cares about the best candidate regardless of demographics is a statement almost exclusively used by people who’ve had plenty of electoral representation from people who look like themselves.
We heard this when Obama was first running. We hear it now. Hey, we all want the strongest candidate. We just think it’s an odd coincidence that for the people who say this stuff, the best candidate never seems to be the black guy or the white woman.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: This is very impressive, but to me, anyway, Alex Honnold is more impressive – free soloing Half Dome, for instance. Caldwell and Jorgeson can and do fall multiple times a day; their protection allows them to resume. If Honnold falls, he is dead.
Another Holocene Human
@ET:
Shades of the women who would refuse to be seen by a woman doctor back in the day, even for gynecological issues.
So counter intuitive … my great grandmother quit going to doctors in her middle age because her husband’s doctor had sexually harassed her. They lived in a rural area with likely few other options but it’s not like cars weren’t available after WWII.
Why not drive to Kansas City and see a woman doctor? But probably expecting too much out of pessimistic German folk. There was always being mean and judgmental to make up for all of life’s iniquities, right?
shortstop
Can we take it as a given that no one here thinks we should be voting for Republican women? The Thatcher, Brewer, Haley, Palin references are silly.
Another Holocene Human
@shortstop: Well said, but I quibble with the implication in the last paragraph. Hilary IS the best Dem candidate who’s shown an intention to enter the race, on paper and well … nobody wants to run against her. But she’s also proven to be quite the hawk and in a president, that shit matters. Her SoS turn kind of proved that, not so much when it was happening but what got revealed afterwards about her relationship with Obama. I don’t think I’d have too many problems with her domestically and at any rate you gotta work with the congress our gerrymandered districts dump on you.
I don’t trust Hilary not to ramp up that MIC bullshit again, not because of who her friends are (the bush family reason) but because she seems convinced that it’s the right thing to do. Ugh.
shortstop
@ET: damn, your Boomer mom thought that? “Greatest (eye roll) generation,” oh, yeah, but hate to hear about cases of this kind of thinking dribbling over into Boomerhood.
BGinCHI
@Another Holocene Human: I only use FB to announce/update my greatness.
Bonus that I don’t have any right wing friends on FB.
Bob In Portland
@Another Holocene Human: @Laertes: Did you think that the US would still be in Afghanistan six years after Obama was elected? Or back in Iraq? And in Syria? Do you think that we would bomb Libya into chaos? Did you think that young lads from Dagestan with connections to the CIA would bomb the Boston Marathon and get that most liberal of states to quietly observe martial law?
But, of course, that’s the military and its friends in the Deep State, that’s not Obama. Just like it was the military, not Bush. After all, Kerry lies and the NY Times regurgitates those lies, just like Judith Miller used to dutifully repeat Cheney’s lies.
As to “President Gore” perhaps you haven’t noticed. If he didn’t, then President Lieberman would have. Just like President Bentsen would have protected US oil interests in the Middle East if President Dukakis didn’t. Just like President Ford gave the Deep State what it wanted when Nixon went off the reservation. Just like the military industrial folks got Vietnam with President Johnson when JFK wouldn’t.
Betty Cracker
@shortstop: This. A thousand fucking times, this.
lonesomerobot
Yes, but just about any Republican right now thinks “woman president” = Hillary Clinton. If there were, ahem, a serious woman candidate the R’s could offer, I would think these numbers would be different.
As a matter of fact, most Dems and Inds probably think that also.
So, grain of salt.
KG
@shortstop: fair enough.
I’ve been way too interested in politics for too long (I intently followed the race in 1988 when I was 10), to give much personal consideration to identity politics. Issues are more important to me, if a candidate/nominee fits with a decent percentage of my beliefs on issues, that’s who I’m voting for (which is why, I think, I chaff at identity politics in general). As a result, I’ve voted for Obama, DiFi, and plenty of other not white men, and I’m on board with Kamala Harris for Senate in 2016.
Marc
@shortstop:
I thought the same thing too at first, but the post from Pew says that “doesn’t matter to them” was one of the other options (and by far the most popular one among Americans as a whole). That suggests indifference to the question, not opposition to the very idea of a female president.
(Which if you think about it, is the only way to explain the 31% of Democratic women who didn’t say they wanted to see a female president in their lifetime.)
Yatsuno
@Bob In Portland:
There are also 50+million more people in the country. Gonna aim for any more false equivalencies?
Bob In Portland
@Another Holocene Human: Can’t help with ad hominems, can you? Rather shallow, Human.
Take twenty minutes and listen to Fela’s “Sorrow, Tears and Blood.” If you understand the political situation that existed in Nigeria then you might be able to apply it to what’s happening all around you now.
Bob In Portland
@Yatsuno: @Yatsuno: Happy with the direction of the US over the last six years? More people in prison, but, hey, there are more people.
Are you happy with police killing black men in the streets?
What positive trends do you see in the US, you know, besides a playoff for college football?
shortstop
@Another Holocene Human: Well, I was speaking more generally about this phenomenon in general, not attempting to bolster Clinton’s foreign policy bona fides in particular. I have significant problems with them myself. However, as you say, she is the strongest candidate who is actually running, and I don’t have many problems with her domestic policy that I haven’t also had with every other not-far-left-enough-for-my-tastes candidate who has a chance of actually getting elected president in this country. That includes Obama, for whom I worked hard in 2008 and 2012.
catclub
@schrodinger’s cat: Much more recent past would be Angela Merkel and Dilma Rousseff and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Bob In Portland
@Yatsuno: In case you didn’t read what you responded to.
Bob In Portland
@Another Holocene Human: No.
Our government is run like a casino. And you’re not the house. Hillary will just be another greeter.
Helmut Monotreme
Hey BiP, What’s your angle? who do you think is out there waiting to be drafted to do a better job? The US is a nation built on genocide and slavery, from that standpoint we’ve behaved ourselves fairly well over the last century or so. We as a nation are exceptional only in our size, ambition and consistent failure to pay even lip service to running our nation in a manner consistent with our founding ideals.
But… Can you tell the audience at home, which other potential global power would have had a less bloody history and ongoing foreign policy? The British who made famines in India to feed the UK during WWII? France? Japan? Italy Russia? China? like their colonial histories are any less blood soaked than ours? So, yes the US is an empire that runs on blood and misery. Just like every fucking other global power in the world.
What is your plan on how to change that? How is it better than consistently voting for the ‘least horrible’ option in our local and national elections?
Because that’s what we get, the option to vote for people who are against corruption and the reckless expansion of empire. If that means we get milquetoast bureaucrats in thrall to ‘wall st business as usual’ at least it’s not another goddamn world war, like the Republicans keep wanting to start. So if we’re playing “choose your dystopia” I’ll take the “democrats in charge fighting the tea party for every inch” vs the “republican theocratic terrordrome”.
Southern Beale
Arkansas gun range owner wants to operate a “Muslim-free gun range,” is shocked to realize you can’t tell who’s a Muslim just by the color of their skin.
If only there were some special symbol we could get them to wear on their clothes, say a crescent moon and star or something … /snark
Bob In Portland
@ranchandsyrup: Six months ago John McCain was using that very same meme on his weekly tour of night time talk shows. Nice to see that you’ve absorbed it. It’s now part of you. See how easy propaganda works.
Scott S.
@Helmut Monotreme: I don’t think BiP really cares about that stuff. He wants to preen about his own purity and sneer about how no one else lives up to his glory.
cmorenc
@Lavocat:
Let’s stipulate that we both would prefer Elizabeth Warren to HRC. However, the vastly more likely realistic general election choice will be HRC vs (Jeb Bush, Christie, Paul…). Would you prefer to vote for Jeb Bush, who will be a slicker version of his brother George, but likely to pursue many goals not just deeply contrary to everything Warren stands for, but to undermine the possibility thereof for the next half-century (think what a couple, or even one SCOTUS appointment by Bush would do). HRC may not lead us enough in the direction we want, and even away from it in some respects, but she will successfully pursue many worthwhile progressive ends, and most importantly will at least reinforce the foundations necessary for future Presidents to build a progressive society from, rather than deliberately sabotage them the way Bush unquestionably will.
Also, the fundamental structure of our current electoral system tends to perversely punish those who would vote for third-party candidates, whether in pursuit of purity ponies, as protest votes, or from genuine admiration for the candidates’ unique personality. Regardless of the degree Gore was an imperfect candidate who ran a flawed campaign and thereby bore the majority of the responsibility for losing narrowly to Bush in 2000 – what was nevertheless the effect of Nader votes in Florida in 2000? What progressive goals were achieved by voting for Nader, or even voting for Bush because there was no difference between him and Gore and Bush would presumably only be a weak one-term President who we could replace by someone much better in 2004?!
BGinCHI
@Southern Beale: They aren’t even good at racism.
Lavocat
@Xantar: Did I SAY she was running? No. She’s but one example of the kind of woman who SHOULD be running. Calm down.
Bob In Portland
@Helmut Monotreme: My point is that I’m an American and in my life my country has changed for the worse. Our foreign policy kills and impoverishes people abroad for the same people who kill and impoverish Americans at home.
Since you seem to agree with me, then do you agree that our country is worse and that there’s no hope with the current rules and cast of characters?
Jewish Steel
@shortstop: Between many qualified candidates, why not take the least represented one? This was the rationale behind Sotomayor and Kagan and it suits me fine.
Gravenstone
@Bob In Portland: Glad to see you remain a moron in all things, not just your blind Putin fellation.
Lavocat
@cmorenc: Should Hillary run, I will be voting Green, as I did last time (Go Jill Stein!) I vote my conscience and my conscience will not allow me to vote for Hillary Clinton under any circumstances. And, yeah, I voted for Nader. Twice. And I’m still proud that I did regardless of what Democratic wankers might talk themselves into believing to be true.
You want my vote? Then walk the progressive walk, cuz talk is cheap.
mai naem mobile
I’m genuinely surprised at the results of this poll. I seriously can think of only one person I know who possibly wouldn’t vote for a woman and he’s a fundy. I’m guessing it has to do with not putting in “a qualified woman” in the question so they’re not thinking of Princess Snowbilly of the Northwoods or Hillary Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton. I wonder if they ran a poll on repubs asking if they would vote for Condi or Susan Collins for POTUS.
Yatsuno
@Bob In Portland: Wow…it’s like every single piece of Russ/Chinese propaganda you can find. Shoo. I can’t even take you seriously.
shortstop
@Jewish Steel: Zackly.
Bob In Portland
@ranchandsyrup: You see?
Simple minds are easily fooled.
Bob In Portland
@Yatsuno: And yet I have tried to avoid Russia in this thread. But thanks for including China. But the propaganda will only be successful when you can connect me to radical Muslims.
Mike J
@Jewish Steel:
If, on the other hand, a member of the overrepresented group more closely matches your policy preferences, there’s no reason to not vote for that person.
There’s a much larger pool to pick from for the supreme court, so it’s easier to pick someone who meets all the criteria and is underrepresented too. For president we’re limited to people who are actually running and survive the primaries that occur before our state’s.
shortstop
@Lavocat: I’ll let you in on a little secret. No one is remotely as interested in talking about the disposition of your vote as you are. If you want to give it to the Democratic candidate, we’ll be glad to have it. But gazing at your navel for hundreds or even dozens of comments is just not something most of us are going to do. You’ll get a few people telling you how selfish you are and how you’re sabotaging your own interests, but most of us are too busy getting out the votes of more outward-focused citizens to have any time to spend in your head.
Bob In Portland
@Scott S.: So you’re not too pure to accept things as they are? Or what? Is it just that it’s rude to point out fascism’s expansion? Well, go out and get your comic book mocking those people who are sitting on our oil over there.
japa21
@Bob In Portland: Look in mirror to see proof of that statement.
Scott S.
@Bob In Portland: “Your stupid minds!”
fladem
Gee, I wonder if the answer might depend on what they think about Hillary…
shortstop
@Mike J: Yes. Places in which JS’s formula is particularly effective are municipal and county elections, where there typically isn’t as much daylight between candidates of the same party. There’s a significant problem with not enough underrepresented talent being in the pipeline, which of course leads to a shortage of women and minorities in higher-level elections. When you’re voting for your school board or your city council and the Dem candidates seem evenly matched in desirability, go for the woman or the person of color. It makes a difference in statewide or national elections down the road.
Marc
@shortstop: This.
Jill Stein got about 469,000 votes nationwide in 2012, or less than a sixth of what Nader pulled in 2000. (And less than a tenth of the difference between Obama and Romney.) The Greens just aren’t a constituency anymore. You saw to that yourselves, in 2000.
You go right on preserving the purity of your conscience. We’ll go on electing candidates who can actually implement progressive policies, because they might actually win.
SatanicPanic
@Lavocat: I applaud your stance! the world would be a boring place if some of us didn’t do something dumb every now and then
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Helmut Monotreme: He’s been asked this before. Many times.
Crickets will be the only answer you get.
SatanicPanic
you know it’s a slow day on BJ when sandwich board guy gets this much action
ranchandsyrup
@Bob In Portland: yes I agree that you’re easily fooled.
Jewish Steel
@Mike J:
@shortstop:
Right. Electability vies with policy preferences at the primary level too.
Laertes
@Bob In Portland:
Okay, seriously? It’s great that you know some history. But you need to learn some more. Our foreign policy has been killing and impoverishing people abroad for far longer than your lifetime. I don’t know what year you were born, but I’d bet all the money in my pocket against all the money in your pocket that the US did something horrifying in Central America shortly before your birth. (That’s a sucker’s bet, by the way: The US is ALWAYS doing something horrifying in Central America.)
Were you born after the American army arrived in Vietnam? Because boy howdy.
Or reach back a little farther and take a look at the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century. Which followed from the Spanish-American war so, again, boy howdy.
Before that, the Sioux. Before that, Mexico. Before that…Christ. It’s depressing.
Russia Today is telling you true when they tell you that America gets up to horrifying shit these days. They’re blowing sunshine up your ass if they’re telling you that this is anything new. Read a goddamn book or something.
chopper
@Lavocat:
anybody who brags on the internet about how they voted for nader almost 15 years ago, and then says ‘talk is cheap’, is generally being a dumbass.
Bobby Thomson
@Another Holocene Human: unfollow is your friend.
Elmo
@Marc: Yeah. I get that I’m probably in a minority here with this, but I’m female and gay and almost 50 and really, really indifferent to the question.
Oddly, I wasn’t indifferent to the election of the first black president. Not at all. (I’m white.)
Make of that what you will.
Gin & Tonic
@Laertes: Man, you two should get a room.
Buddy H
Rand Paul has shared his thoughts on Social Security Disability:
The Kentucky senator asserted that the Social Security benefits program is riddled with fraud, with most people who draw benefits suffering from nothing more serious than anxiety or back pain.
“The thing is that all of these programs, there’s always somebody who’s deserving, everybody in this room knows somebody who’s gaming the system. I tell people that if you look like me and you hop out of your truck, you shouldn’t be getting a disability check,” Paul said. “Over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts. Join the club. Who doesn’t get up a little anxious for work every day and their back hurts? Everyone over 40 has a back pain.”
chopper
@Bob In Portland:
wow, ‘ad hominem’. throwing some latin at us! you sure are a smart guy. and it’s a noun now, too! amazing.
Bobby Thomson
@shortstop: I might tell him to go fuck himself, but that’s about the extent of it.
chopper
@Buddy H:
LOL. he’s veering from ‘strapping young bucks with their t-bones and cadillacs’ into ‘nebbish old shmucks with their fancy lox and buicks’ territory.
Calouste
@Buddy H:
Self-certified ophthalmologist Rand Paul sees one in the mirror every morning.
Gravenstone
@Bob In Portland: Idiotic AND sarcasm impaired. Why don’t you just crawl back into your hole and expire?
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: And the glorious lack of self awareness of Gospodin Romanov is again put on display for all to snicker at.
HODOR!
ranchandsyrup
@Bob In Portland: I thought I laid the sarcasm on thick enough but there’s no accounting for folks like you.
Villago Delenda Est
I wonder if Hodor thinks that the Charlie Hebdo attack was planned and executed by the CIA?
There is a lot of talk of this in the Russian media right now.
Bobby Thomson
@Villago Delenda Est: He went there a few days ago.
gwangung
@Bob In Portland: God, that’s stupid.
Do better. Even YOU can do better than this
Another Holocene Human
@Elmo: Barack Obama wasn’t ashamed of his single mom or afraid of his BAMF wife and has turned out to very good on women’s issues (including women’s poverty issues) anyway. A twofer.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: It was a command performance.
“It’s always projection, always always always, my friend…”
PhilbertDesanex
@Buddy H: Well maybe in Kentucky.
Bob In Portland
@Gravenstone: You must be a really good debater. Do you beat up gays?
Bob In Portland
@Scott S.: Syrup tried to insult me using John McCain’s punchline without a point from six months ago.
For you, I’d suggest reading “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor. You are the old woman in the story.
Bob In Portland
@Elmo: Identity politics alone will always let you down.
Bob In Portland
@ranchandsyrup: Nice to see you in solidarity with John McCain.
PhilbertDesanex
@NonyNony: Nixon, domestically was our most left-wing president. Overshadowed by his personality problems. War? Expansion is the nature of the US, else how did we get here from 1776? I didn’t like him either but still.
1. CETA – federal funding of local govt jobs to reduce unemployment in the recession of 1973. (I had one)
2. Revenue Sharing – Federal money to states for same; ended in 1987. Funded a battered women’s shelter my mother set up in 1973, before they were really called that.
3. Health care plan – a national plan, but the GOP hated it because it benefited the public, and the Dems hated it because it was Nixon. It did not even make it to Congress.
Also, he liked gin.
Honestly Obama this Obama that. It takes Congress to really do anything money-wise, and the Dems had only about 75 days of a useable majority.
Gravenstone
@Bob In Portland: Have you found all the listening devices in your cheese, yet?
Bob In Portland
@Gravenstone: Everyone else has left this thread, so just between me and you, homophobic insults aren’t cool anymore.
chopper
@Bob In Portland:
This aint Russia, cochise.
JR in WV
Bob is sure preaching today!
Thanks for the word, BoB! We need to know when to listen to Radio Moscow, and when we can just watch Network TV.
cmorenc
@Lavocat:
So what did you actually accomplish with any of your third-party Presidential votes, except to make yourself feel righteous while Bush and Cheney deceived this country into disastrous wars and filled government with people hell-bent on undermining, undoing, and salting the earth against progressive government and society. And you’re perfectly willing to see Jeb Bush win and pick up where his brother left off, because HRC is too impure for you. Some conscience you’ve got.
DTOzone
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m going to go out on a limb and say any woman, even Warren, is going to be at least somewhat of a hawk.
It’s the American way.
DTOzone
@Archon:
Missouri? Arizona?
DTOzone
@Bob In Portland:
Yes
Well, no, but I don’t see how the Syrian Civil War is Obama’s fault.
No, and since we didn’t, I’m not sure what you’re referencing here.
Are you watching Steven Segal movies and thinking they’re real?
Bob In Portland
@DTOzone: Let me ask you a followup. What geo-political reason are we in Afghanistan?
Syria/Iraq: Remember the moderate anti-Assad forces we were arming and training a couple years ago? Maybe you forgot about them. Who are they and where are they now? Do you need a hint? Since the US/Saudi Arabia have been trying to overthrow Assad for the last half decade, the only way Obama is not in some ways responsible is if he has no say in our foreign policy.
So because the MSM have stopped talking about Libya everything’s fine there? Do they even have a government? How was Libyan law enforcement when Benghazi went down? Is there Libyan law enforcement?
I don’t know that I’ve ever watched a Steven Segal movie all the way through. However the older Tsarnaev brother’s history is documented. Then there’s Uncle Ruslan. If you are willing to dig you can find out how Tsarni ran a “support group” for “Chechen terrorists/freedom fighters” out of his father-in-law’s address. His father-in-law was Graham Fuller, who’s been working for the CIA since the Iran-contra days. Then there’s the younger Tsarnaev’s guidance counselor at college who also worked for the CIA. Small world.
Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
Bob In Portland
@chopper: Because gays only get beat up in Russia, so that excuses homophobic comments here. Check.
Michael C
@Bob In Portland: In the country I wish I lived in, your comment would have been commonplace in the mainstream press for years now, but instead I get the (delayed) pleasure of reading it now on Balloon-Juice.
I am so tired of prole feed.