Andrew Yang and Pete Buttigieg Have Blown Up on Twitter, and in Betting Markets | Hacker News Reader

Andrew Yang and Pete Buttigieg Have Blown Up on Twitter, and in Betting Markets

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123 pointschadmhorner177 comments

I really like Buttigieg. He honestly seems to be doing this because he wants to serve America. I’m working my way through his book and I’m very impressed by his eloquence and clarity of thought. Also, I think as a mayor he embodies the entrepreneurial spirit. He was classmates with Mark Zuckerberg.

I submitted this interview the other day:

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/a-long-talk-with-demo...

I think it’s also worth listening to an interview he did with David Axelrod a couple years ago, and his recent interview on Pod Save America. Here also are a couple videos I’m recommending because they cover a variety of topics in the Q&A portion that I haven’t heard him speak about elsewhere:

- https://www.necn.com/news/new-england/Indiana-Mayor-Pete-But...

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nldx3r7h3Cg

I know this comment is obviously political but I think he deserves to be heard from.

How was he classmates with Zuckerberg? He’s 4ish years older than Zuck.

In college, there are plenty of classes open to students of all ages...

agree with your point, but "classmate" is often a reference to "a member of the class of [graduating year]", so it's ambiguous. even to my point, people can enter college almost anytime, not just right after high school.

It could mean same graduating class, or that they shared a class together. I probably should have written "overlapped at Harvard" as apparently they entered a year or two apart.

Jan '82, May '84 is 2.5ish years. Buttigieg entered Harvard Fall 2000. Not sure when Zuckerberg entered.

Some people go to university when they're older. Some take time off. Some can't decide on a major and are in school for a decade. Plenty of explanations.

I'm generally apolitical (read: cynical) but I really like Buttigieg.

He seems anomalous as a politician: smart along every dimension, incredibly well-rounded, and able to talk intelligently about policy (and philosophy and literature!) while avoiding the trap of talking down to people.

I don't know how he'll play nationally but I'm hopeful.

I was impressed with him on Vox's The Weeds: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/28/18283925/p...

I've been following how Buttigieg's rise has been manufactured by 1-2 insiders. Mainly David Axelrod.

He did a SXSW town hall. I watched Tulsi Gabbard (disclosure, I volunteer for her a bit) first and then tried to watch Mayor Pete, as he is called.

He basically bombed the first 20 min. The period that any viewers would try to give the candidate any chance to better understand them.

He was just a bit too nervous, he was talking fast. This was a big contrast to methodical way Tulsi was speaking just prior to him her ability to connect was in a different level.

So you thought that would be the end of it all....

Nope! I observed a beautiful spin of manufacturing narratives.

Axelrod tweeted about how great Mayor Pete's performance was [1]

Soon after there was a ton of articles talking about much lauded performance of Buttigieg. I even called out the journalist behind one of these articles on twitter and it was clear she had not watched the town hall nor had done her research [2] I just went to find that discussion on twitter and she seem to have deleted as I do not see it under my tweet and replies.

Essentially I asked her about the "much lauded performance" in her article. I asked her where she got that from. She replied with a link to a CNN article which was all based on Axelrod's tweet. This journalist based her article on that CNN article. So I pointed out, this "much lauded performance" is based on just one tweet. The journalist then replied to me, I should just google "town hall and Buttigieg". Meaning she had no done any research herself. Point is, Pete Buttigieg who started his promotion from a podcast on Axelrod. I think there is a strong chance Mayor Pete is backed by Axelrod and/or at some point he'll hire Axelrod. Mayor Pete's rise bubbling up based on the inside influence of one person.

That being said, he is intelligent and I'm sure there is probably great excitement supporting the first gay (at least openly) candidate. However, it became clear to me, how a few insiders can create hype around one candidate and manufacture "lauded performance".

[1] - https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1104922963386630144

[2] - the tweet thread I was going point to is removed now

So good example of Fake News then. It's not just one side that does this stuff.

You say he bombed the first 20 minutes...but how did he do the rest of the town hall?

Plenty of people into politics will give a candidate more than 20 minutes to make their case, especially now that they've seen what happens when you make emotional snap judgments about who you vote for.

Hm, if a journalist is going to describe something as a "much lauded performance," I'd expect her sources to be people lauding the performance, not her own judgment of the performance itself. It is weird if she hasn't seen it herself (so she can judge whether the lauds are sensible enough to pay attention to, to avoid manufactured lauding as you suggest) but it isn't that weird if her primary evidence for the claim that a thing is popular is media sources.

If it was based on one article, which in turn was based on one tweet, then no, I wouldn't expect her to report that it was a "much lauded performance." And ten articles also based on the same self-serving tweet wouldn't make it any better. At some point, she would need to talk to people that were actually there, whether she was or not.

The SXSW town hall is not the only thing Pete Buttigieg has done in the past month. He's been on three or four of the podcasts I listen to and his Twitter game (especially his husband's) is strong.

Axelrod may have sparked the media interest in Mayor Pete with a tweet, but Buttigieg has handled the attention and impressed people on his own.

How is this manufactured in any untoward way? Influential people (certainly more than Axelrod if we're being honest) like this guy, the press amplifies the viewpoints of influential people, and so he did better in the press than the candidate you volunteer for.

Have you considered that because of your affinity for Gabbard, you overestimated her ability to connect? Or that you are overconfident in your ability to estimate who had the objectively superior SXSW town hall performance?

Having just watched the SXSW town hall with no preconceived notion of Buttigieg, I completely disagree that he "basically bombed the first 20 minutes". I found him engaging and thoughtful.

I got a similar impression from his Pod Save America interview.

The issue he lead with in his first 15 minutes was how he would restructure the supreme court to be 10 judges or something. Not health care, climate change, or the economy. If the host hadn't introduced him as a presidential candidate I would have thought he was some professor that they brought on the podcast.

To even begin to be successful in 2020 he's going to have to focus his message and speak with conviction. He would get destroyed going up against Warren/Harris/Bernie/Trump.

That was a 1:1 interview, not him speaking to an audience. Here he is in S.C. in front of an audience:

https://youtu.be/_Q9-XiEbf90

Here’s a 2 minute clip of you just want the inspirational part:

https://youtu.be/ySiLKUqcztw

His standard speech starts with explaining why you should vote for a 37 y/o mayor, followed by his “freedom, democracy, security” bit. He almost always talks about the environment very early. I imagine on that podcast he only mentioned SCOTUS because he was specifically asked about it and it’s probably likely to be one of his most controversial proposals (the idea isn’t his though, he credits it properly but I don’t recall to whom).

How does his ride compare with yang’s? I am wondering how yang got the momentum that he did

Viral earworms such as this: https://youtu.be/MTkhrosH8xw

Do you have a link to that first 20 minutes of the town hall?

I've listened to or watched a bunch of his interviews now, both one on ones and in front of crowds, and he didn't seem nervous in a single one of those interviews, nor unable to connect to an audience. I've posted links to two of those above, but there are many more I could post in front of different sorts of audiences.

> Mayor Pete's rise bubbling up based on the inside influence of one person

He's been twice elected mayor and Axelrod didn't have anything to do with that, nor obviously anything to do with Buttigieg's background or education.

> he is intelligent and I'm sure there is probably great excitement supporting the first gay

That’s a pretty dismissive way of characterizing him. That he is gay doesn't factor into my excitement for him, and he would rather that not be the reason people vote for him either.

I think he’s the only democratic candidate who’s not divisive, business as usual, lacking political experience, full of hot air, without something in their past to apologize for, or some combination there of.

I don't know if this applies to BetChecker, but PredictIt is heavily handicapped by an $850 max bet.

Without the freedom for real amounts of money to come in and exploit mispriced bets, it's practically a straw poll of PredictIt users. The PredictIt user base has some obvious demographic biases that warp the odds.

There is a counter argument for this as people with a lot of money will drives the results one way which can actually impact elections. Nkt that I buy this argument but something to keep in mind.

I definitely don't believe that today and I doubt it will ever come to pass. There are more cash-efficient ways to influence elections than warping betting odds, and I think that will hold true no matter how large the betting market gets because the manipulation gets more expensive as the market gets more attention.

The weaker form of your argument "Without the caps it's biased toward people who can make big bets" is the entire point of a betting market.

Edit: The one edge case where it might happen is precisely this article. Buying your way to say 5% after some organic positive press might be an effective way to buy buzz at relatively low cost. It's a small one time boost for a campaign though.

I also doubt that it's happening deliberately, but FWIW this is precisely the time in a campaign when a "small one time boost" might be worth it, to pull you up above the noise floor.

But I get the feeling nobody really understands campaigns well enough (especially these long, grueling ones) to justify the time spent on these small-calibre issues.

As a method of prediction, this all depends on whether big bettors are justified in their confidence. What sort of private information would make it worth making a big bet?

Just gonna leave this here: https://app.veil.co/market/will-2020-presidential-candidate-...

Also interesting to mention the crossover between Yang supporters and the crypto community: https://breakermag.com/five-reasons-crypto-fans-are-joining-...

That market is now ambiguous because the reporting source is "compromised" in the sense that Andrew Yang's 2020 Twitter account is being redirected to a different handle.

Ambiguous markets are ... not good.

It's even worse than a straw poll. PredictIt's 5% withdrawal fee destroys any potential profit opportunity for new users betting against a candidate with low winning chances.

For example, if I were to sign up and bet against Yang at 5% odds, even if I won my bet, I'd make $0 profit because my entire withdrawal amount is taxed at 5%. If Yang's odds were set at less than 5%, I'd actually lose money even though I won my bet!

Given this, the market for low likelihood outcomes is extremely inefficient and it's very plausible that these odds are being gamed by candidates vying for attention.

Some of Bovada's odds are currently:

Trump: +175

Biden: +650

Beto: +900

Yang: +2200

Buttigieg: +2800

Warren: +3000

Klobuchar/Booker: +3300

Hillary: +10000

The Rock: +12500

Jeb: +15000

(payout for a $100 bet)

Re:Yang,

I'm vaguely sympathetic to the idea of "elect a business person so they can run government like a business", but any openness to the idea goes out the window when the candidate's business is venture capital.

Also, didn't we just elect another business person and see where we are.

Like it or not, we need politicians who can work across the aisle and actually get things done.

Trump isn’t really a business person, he just plays one on TV :P

A booming economy with low inflation and low unemployment?

It was booming in 2016 too.

The rewards of which largely go to executives and shareholders, not rank-and-file employees? Sure, sounds like a business.

Who are “shareholders?” Pretty much anyone with a retirement plan or a pension.

The majority of Americans own stock.

Not quite. 54% of the 135M American workers have a retirement plan.[1] That's 73M out of the ~250M American adults. Maybe you can call that the middle class. But point taken. To be less pithy, these individual shareholders have little power to sway governance, particularly if their stock is held in a managed fund. The rich, connected shareholders steer things, and it's not always in the interests of the company in the long term.

1. http://www.pensionrights.org/publications/statistic/how-many...

The vast majority of Americans derive the lion’s share of their income over most of their lifetime from selling their labor, not from capital returns, whether from stock alone or any other combination of capital.

That is such a joke. What does "booming economy" really mean? Mostly the stock market, I think. And "low unemployment"? It's low because people who have given up looking aren't counted. And because it includes lots of short-term and poorly compensated jobs.

"low inflation" ... not if you include assets (stocks, houses, education, health[care], etc.) that are not included in the "official" inflation calculations.

Unemployment, economy, stock market, GDP - all have been on the exact same trajectory post the 2009 recession. We would have been exactly here even if a tree was the President. The only thing that got worse economically was the Federal deficit, which is a trillion dollars now.

That's more thanks to the Fed than anything else, though their role is also pretty small. The truth is the president doesn't have the ability to affect the economy very much one way or the other.

Trump is a business person in the same way that the Kardashians are business people. They have businesses, but they are, first and foremost, celebrities.

Arguably, Donald Trump is more of a media celebrity through inherited wealth that was funneled through mock business transactions for tax evasion than an actual businessman the way Yang is, but I'm not sure people are prepared to make the distinction, so that might be an effective political line against Yang even if it's not all that true in any relevant sense.

> work across the aisle and actually get things done

If the proposed action is part of / agreeable with the $opposing_party platform, I don't think I _want_ it to get done; with extraordinarily few exceptions.

I'd prefer someone who can push forward without compromising the point of the platform.

The problem here comes when there's no possible state of compromise that would make even anyone at all happy. For example, on a border wall: you build it to be functional, or you don't. A non-functional border wall is essentially not a border wall.

There's no compromise state; instead, there's at best some kind of tit-for-tat, where you'll concede something else in exchange for your most important plans.

A non-functional border wall also pleases nobody. It’s not a great compromise at all.

That's because a border wall is too specific for a policy platform. The more general concept of border security provides plenty of room for compromise.

But even a wall provides room for compromise--physical barriers in some places but not others.

Also, didn't we just elect another business person

One with multiple bankruptcies too!

> Like it or not, we need politicians who can work across the aisle and actually get things done.

To work with someone across the aisle you have to have someone on the other side of the aisle who wants to work with you. The republicans have made it absolutely clear over the past decade that they will not work with Democrats. Centrist Democrats need work with their colleagues to their left if they want to accomplish anything.

I think you're referring to Venture for America, which despite the name is not a venture capital firm.

https://ventureforamerica.org

Why though? I would like my government to be open to at least listening to lots of different ideas and applying an investment mindset to them. You're right, there is little operational experience that comes with being a VC. But you dont need that to initiate groundbreaking projects. Hoover didn't pour concrete at the Hoover Dam. Kennedy didn't know the rocket equation.

> You're right, there is little operational experience that comes with being a VC.

Operational experience is not my concern.

> applying an investment mindset to them

This is my concern. I don't trust people in the VC industry to have a healthy concept of an investment mindset.

Understood. Would like to hear your thoughts on why VC does not have a healthy investment philosophy.

I'm taking a wait-and-see approach in general, but I do find Yang one of the most interesting candidates so far. Just to respond to this specific point, Yang wrote recently on Twitter [1]:

There are lessons and principles that government can take from business - like treating customers well and resource efficiency. But anyone who says they are going to “run government like a business” is dumb. They require very different forms of leadership.

As a CEO you can pretty much tell people what to do. You are their boss. You are paying them. If you say we are doing something then it generally happens. The downside is no one tells you unpleasant truths.

In government most all of the time you are building consensus. You provide a vision and try to rally people around it. You build relationships. You compromise. You appeal to common goals. Things often happen more gradually. But when big things happen they can improve many lives.

[1] https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1107126100163858432

> like treating customers well

This has come up with the current president's most-dimwitted son and it's so hysterical it bears repeating. US taxpayers and voters are not the customer. They're the board.

Don't take this as a tacit defense of whichever son it was by any means, but: There are plenty of situations where the interaction between the government <-> constituents is very much like a business <-> customer relationship, and it's not totally insane to think that it could be a better/friendlier/more efficient one.

Example: Interactions with TSA, IRS, DMVs (state government obviously but a government nonetheless), etc.

I get what you're saying, but I think you also have to understand what Andrew Yang is implying (not particularly interested in looking up the quote from whichever son).

>US taxpayers and voters are not the customer. They're the board.

I think you mean the shareholders. Who elect the board (Congress). And vote for the CEO (President) who is accountable to the board and shareholders.

> This has come up with the current president's most-dimwitted son and it's so hysterical it bears repeating. US taxpayers and voters are not the customer. They're the board.

A closer analogy would be that the US government is a non-exclusive consumer coop, and the citizens are the customer-owners, non-citizen residents, visitors, and other tax-or-fee payers a lotre non-owner customers, and Congress is the board.

I'm not so sympathetic to that idea in the first place. A business, particularly a corporation, is one of the most authoritarian structures ever devised. If the government were like a business, every citizen would be either an asset to be exploited or a liability to be eliminated.

Citizens would be the shareholders

Small shareholders (less than 0.01% holdings) have essentially no voice in a corporation's policy; nor are they a consideration for the board of directors. Sometimes they are the beneficiaries of policies that are satisfying major stockholders, but not in a big way.

No, this metaphor does not work.

In what way does that meaningfully differ from the way a democracy is supposed to be run? Shareholders are treated as "voters" in a democratic organization, where 1 share = 1 vote.

Despite the common wisdom governments tend to care a lot about citizens bitching. A friend used to work as a lawyer for a state utility board. They sit and listen to rants by 75 year old cat ladies and then consider how to mollify them.

So who gets the majority of shares in the country? Should it be the executives, or the funders? Maybe we should have a 1 vote per tax-dollar system.

Wait, I thought the way this whole "shares and CEO's" thing was supposed to work is that Moldbug would get to decide that, and everything would work just fine afterwards.

Being a small shareholder is even worse.

True, the shareholder role is certainly better than the "employee" role for example.

> shareholders

Shareholders have zero say in how modern corporations are run.

Why? Can't the vote? There is even such a thing as activist shareholders.

Andrew Yang has never worked for a VC as far as I can tell. What are you referring to?

> I'm vaguely sympathetic to the idea of "elect a business person so they can run government like a business"

I really don't want a government that ruthlessly cuts costs that don't drive revenue and uses all mechanisms within reach to maximize lock-in and extract monopoly rents from customers.

Wasn't that a Trump campaign theme?

But anyway, it's not new. That was a lot of that maybe a century ago in the US.

That was the words that came out of Trump's mouth, but not what his supporters heard

How about Real Estate?

His primary business was a test prep company he sold to Kaplan. As far as I know he did not own or work for a VC firm.

This comment doesn't make sense since Andrew Yang has no background in venture capital.

I don't think his business really is venture capital, though. What exactly are you referring to?

At least, if you're talking about Venture for America, it's more of a YC or TechStars. It's a non-profit designed to help entrepreneurs start companies.

Prior to that, I think he was the CEO of Manhattan Prep before it getting acquired by Kaplan.

I haven't seen this "run govt like a business" idea outside the U.S (or maybe I just missed it).

Biz and govt are two separate things, I don't understand how one can be run like the other. Sure, there are some overlaps, but thats about it. Can someone explain?

When invoked by laypersons, it usually means "don't run a deficit at all, and cut 'useless' (to me, so far as I know) programs". Arts funding and foreign aid are popular first candidates for the chopping block.

I don't know what it means when politicians say it, aside from being an appeal to the above. Possibly they mean the same thing.

[EDIT] incidentally, it's almost entirely associated with the Right. Unusual to see it brought up as a point in favor of a Democrat.

[EDIT EDIT] awinder probably nailed what it means when politicians say it, and/or why it's an idea some of them have promoted.

Capitalism is our religion. It’s so much a part of our culture (identity), people aren’t aware of it.

People that are heavily corrupted respond to criticism of neoliberalism/capitalism the same way fundamentalists respond to heresy.

One of the major political factions in the US has spent decades at this point deriding career politicians. It's been a decent strategy inside of that faction, but other factions point out that career politicians actually develop tools to get shit done (as any career-minded individual would). So at some point you have to combat the argument that you're running inexperienced individuals vs. experienced individuals, and advancing the argument that "business leadership actually exceeds govt leadership in getting stuff done" is an attempt to turn that weakness into a strength.

I'm being charitable that no one actually believes that garbage at it's heart, but the other explanation might be garden-variety insanity.

A reminder that the political faction spending decades deriding career politicians is mostly made up of career politicians

In addition to what's been mentioned already, another implication is that _politicians are just in it for themselves_, they just want power. They want to get a cushy government job, they want to give handouts to their friends, they want to give handouts to people to vote for them, by running deficits that a business never could get away with. Sometimes the more businesslike candidates sell themselves as outsiders who know how to get things done, and are already successful, so they're not vying for this job to just collect a paycheck.

In theory, at least some of this makes sense. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like businesspeople who have "made enough money" tend to show any desire to rest on their laurels and decide enough is enough. And a businessperson who runs for office is just as likely as anyone else to be running to get power and notoriety.

And of course, businesses do well by leveraging debt. And they have handouts and nepotism and corruption.

Governments can contain businesses, and those businesses should run sort-of like businesses. They should care about customers. Ideally, not at a huge deficit.

In Canada, this is called a "crown corporation".

Canadian examples include CATSA (like the TSA), CBC (TV network), VIA Rail (like Amtrak), LCBO and Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation (provincial monopolies on alcohol and marijuana sales, respectively).

>but any openness to the idea goes out the window when the candidate's business is venture capital.

Or being the activist investor that breaks up the business and sells what's profitable.

"Run the government like a business" was Ross Perot's mantra. Was quite popular for a while, but didn't work out so well in the end. That's probably more because he sort of went insane during the campaign rather than due to a a reasoned choice the voters made about that philosophy.

"elect a business person so they can run government like a business"

This is a terrible idea for a society. Typical businesses are internally dictatorships that are single-minded, intolerant of dissent, very controlling (my employer reads my E-mails and lately they are setting up a ton of cameras) and are designed to funnel rewards to only few people. That's not a good mindset to run a whole country. We can't just lay off people to cut costs.

I think that's why Trump seems to get better along with dictators like Erdogan, Putin or Kim Jong Un than with democratic leaders. their leadership is much closer to what he is used from his business.

Running government more efficiently would be nice but I don't see the ex-business people who got elected into government do better than other politicians.

He doesn't want to run the government like a business, and he's not a venture capitalist.

A government run like a business loses the most important and necessary quality of a government: it can takr actions that are economically harmful to itself but helpful to society. It should maintain all roads, not just the ones used to transport goods. It should investigate even small crimes. It steps in when the market would cause a catastrophe (e.g., tragedy of the commons). Of course, money still exists, so the government restricts its reach within a budget.

Besides, the president's only tasks should be international diplomacy, commander of the military, and doing what the Congress says. They can be "ideas gals/guys," but he/she shouldn't be independently making huge decisions outside of war scenarios. That doesn't sound like a CEO to me.

> elect a business person so they can run government like a business

I mean, didn't we try that already, and quite recently for that matter? It doesn't seem to be working very well. What makes you think that Yang can do better than that?

It would be wise to not trust any phenomenon which blows up online, given the ease of generating such a phenomenon artificially.

Yet the democratic candidates that have announced seem to be chasing online mindshare at this point, moving further and further left in order to attract vocal Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders fans, with unclear results.

If the interest is artificially generated or fake, it will fade quickly for sure.

But I wouldn't say we shouldn't trust online phenomenon. Online phenomenon is why Obama and Trump got elected. Trump has effectively bypassed the traditional media's stranglehold on the american mind via his use of twitter and social media. And online phenomenon is why we have occasio-cortez.

As the internet gains more mind share, we have to start taking the online space more seriously.

Why would artificial interest necessarily fade as long as whoever is generating it keeps generating it?

There’s no reason to believe any internet content amplifying the message of any candidate (or president) is genuine. In fact given the findings of the past several years it’s better to assume online content is in fact generated rather than genuine.

If there is no substance behind the enthusiasm, then it can't last because it has no legs to stand on. I agree that there are tons of fake nonsense on all media, not just social media. But that doesn't mean everything on media is fake.

Of course online content is generated. My point is whether that generated online content gains actual traction. Whether that generated online content has legs and real enthusiasm behind it.

An easy way to tell is if politicians can draw crowds to their speeches. You can measure online interactions between actual people and their enthusiasm. For example, if a politician has tons of online interest and he can draw big crowds, then we can assume that his online interest is real rather than fake. If a politician has tons of online interest but can't draw any people to his speeches, it's like his "enthusiasm" is bought for and has no traction.

Yes, artificial interest can generate real interest. Isn't this what advertising does? I don't see why online publicity is necessarily less effective than advertising.

Does anyone here have thoughts about the quality of candidates as it relates to their ages (i.e. comparing late 70's Bernie/Biden and these younger candidates)? While I like the policies of Bernie, for instance, I ideally would prefer someone who doesn't have a high % likelihood of serious medical issues in the next 4 years of their life.

Is there an age that is too old to be a CEO/President/Senator/leading figure? Are they necessarily out of touch, lacking in resiliency, not forward-looking, or any of the factors we look for in our leaders?

VP choice makes a bigger difference for an older candidate, which might be why rumors are that Biden will be choosing his running mate very early in the process.

Bernie/Buttigieg 2020?

This would be good - or Bernie/Beto for that Texas vote.

We need to take bets on when Texas turns blue in a Presidential election, I bet 30 years in the future, 2020 is too soon. Beto did great against the least popular Senator in the United States. The voter registration number among Latinos in Texas is abysmal, but they will be a bigger bloc than any other in Texas in the future, it's just that older, whites make up 2/3 of Texas voters now and that's a pretty reliable GOP vote source.

Every year for some time people have been saying Texas will turn and it has not happened.

A little analysis here: https://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/latinos-wont-turn-te...

For better or worse, it's highly unlikely that the choice for running mate will be a white male.

Unless the nominee is Harris or another woman. Then a white male would be a smart strategic move to play to middle of the country demographics, which cost the dems the 2016 election. Buttieg, as an Indianian, among other characteristics would be a perfect fit.

My hunch is part of his strategy is to make a strong showing in order to be the VP candidate for a non white male nominee.

> For better or worse, it's highly unlikely that the choice for running mate will be a white male.

It's maybe unlikely the whole ticket will be, but there's also a good chance that the top of the ticket will be either non-white, non-male, or both.

Almost nobody really makes their voting decision based on who the VP is. I'd even have to look up the name of Clinton's running mate from the last election.

glad to hear people who are voting in the country aren't even informed about their own choice..

McCain/Palin was notable. I believe Biden boosted the Obama ticket by quite a bit as well.

Tim Kaine, from memory. Palin sunk McCain. And Paul Ryan was no match for Joe Biden

> Is there an age that is too old to be a CEO/President/Senator/leading figure?

Not really.

> Are they necessarily out of touch, lacking in resiliency, not forward-looking, or any of the factors we look for in our leaders?

No; The statistical probability may be higher with age, but we don't elect an age and get a random person of that age as a leader, so that's not important. Filtering for that is what election campaigns, executive search processes, etc., are for.

A few thoughts

- President is unlike CEO/Senator/leading figure in that it has a fixed 4 year cycle (even Senator's can be democratically replaced in a few months with a by election).

- President is unlike the others in that it has a built in redundancy, the vice president. You should probably weight your opinion of the vice president candidate stronger when considering a president who is likely to become ill.

- Extremely old people seem to be as likely to be forward looking to me as middle aged people, perhaps more so. Many still care about their legacy, they probably have less concerns about personal wealth.

- Every presidential candidate is necessarily out of touch, you don't get to be in that position if you lead an even remotely normal life.

>Every presidential candidate is necessarily out of touch, you don't get to be in that position if you lead an even remotely normal life.

Lincoln wasn't wealthy until he married into money. Carter and Truman were upper middle class. Eisenhower and Grant were on boring career paths that usually end with one retiring as a Lt. Colonel or thereabouts before history got in their way.

There are ways to have an abnormal life other than being born into money.

Let's look at Lincoln, by the time he was a presidential candidate:

- He had been married into that money for 19 years

- He had been a lawyer for 21 years - I presume this was a reasonably high paying profession like it is today (or more, the early case wikipedia mentions is 1840)

- He had served 4 terms in the Illinois House of Representatives.

- He had served a term in the US House of Representatives.

There's another element in there - that older candidates simply have more history to contend with. That's not always a bad thing, like Bernie Sanders' presence in the anti-racism protests of the 60s. But it can be a bad thing, like Bernie Sanders having taken a trip to the USSR in 1988 (I won't disagree with anyone who says that isn't actually a thing to care about, but people do). Biden in particular is going to come up against a lot of issues for his previous zero-tolerance crime advocacy, and for the treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

Younger candidates simply don't have to contend with that reckoning. But they have a lot less experience. You could make the case that experience should be good for a candidate, but that it doesn't always work out that way.

I agree. I don't want to see people 70+ as president. Being in my 50s I already notice that my physical energy is less than it used to be and I am pretty sure it will be worse once you are 70.

Agree. I think 50s-60s age is ideal. Old enough to have seen some history and not be too swayed by idealism. Young enough to still be in touch with the mainstream "adult" generation and probably survive the term without any major health problems.

Reagan was beloved but probably starting to exhibit senility by the end of his 2nd term (he was 70 when first elected) if not even earlier. I'd worry about Bernie/Biden in that regard too.

Right track here.

Specific cutoff age? I'd say not. But I would think that we should require of candidates a full independent medical workup from an independent practice, such as [1]. The kind of nonsense reports we get from the doctor selected by the person currently occupying the PResident's chair are clearly farcical.

(Of course, also beyond the bare constitutional requirements and the independent med workup, should be added: 2) minimal prior service as an elected official, 3) pass a standard HS Science & Technology test, 4) pass the INS Citizenship exam, 5) release a decade of tax returns, and perhaps a few other requirements that inform the citizenry of who is seeking the job... but what do I know, I'm just one of 300MM on the hiring committee)

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/departments-centers/mayo-clinic-e...

I'm warming up to the idea of deep-diving into personal stuff for presidential candidates. The President is effectively above so many laws. It doesn't make sense to claim privacy like a normal citizen when choosing to run for the most powerful office in the land.

Indeed! Just a proper broad survey half-way deep would get us a lot further that we are now. My first impression is that a lot of personal relationships, kids, etc. can still remain private. But, yes, we really need to know about areas where a candidate could be compromised. E.g., the current occupant of the President's chair shows behaviors indicating that he's subject to significant kompromat.

Yang would like to be President, but his primary goal is to force a conversation amongst all the candidates on UBI and automation, which are important things that the next President should be talking about.

That's why I'm a little more optimistic about Yang 2024 than Yang 2020. I'm just worried that he's going to end up as the Ron Paul of the Democratic Party - highly appealing to a relatively small group of geeks, but considered a weird outsider candidate by the party mainstream.

His fundamental point is one that our society needs to contend with - "high tech" is the oil of the 21st century. Do we want that wealth to be concentrated into a few world-historical fortunes? Or do we want to use it to improve the lives of everyone?

As an Andrew Yang fan myself, I was shocked to see that PredictIt has him as the third most expensive (read likely) candidate after Bernie and Biden, at least when I checked. This is in stark contrast to his 0-1% polling rate in the most recent polls.

So, are they just very leading indicators? It got me thinking that it's a relatively cheap campaign strategy since people like to refer to those as some sort of "market based odds" thing. Is it legal and/or ethical for campaigns to buy themselves on the betting markets to drive up the appearance of demand?

We'll see come the Apr 1 FEC reporting deadline if it translates to campaign donations, which are on of the real signals of the seriousness of campaigns.

> So, are they just very leading indicators?

AFAIK, there is no evidence that early standing in prediction markets is any better a predictor than early polling; prediction markets tend to converge to the ultimate result close to the election, but so do polling numbers.

With PredictIt there's a max bet size, so the manipulation would have to be spread over many accounts. Seems like a very high risk/reward ratio considering how many people would have to be involved, and considering most people don't know or care much about PredictIt.

The major flaw in PredictIt is the low maximum cap and lack of interest paid. That makes it unprofitable to bet on small corrections even if you're right (e.g. 5% to 10%, or 5% to 1%). So PredictIt shouldn't be considered precise at small percentages.

I'm bullish on Yang's and Buttigieg's chances in general. I also think that their chances of winning the nomination (and election) are much lower than the odds indicated in betting markets.

There is a huge betting market selection bias in that the only people using these betting platforms are young and tech-savvy (i.e. the type of people who are in these candidates' base). Additionally, you can place nominally small bets, meaning there is no real skin in the game. Increase the minimum bet size to $10,000 or so and I think the odds will become much more realistic.

You'd then be biasing it towards the opinions of people who can afford a 10,000 dollar bet. I'm not sure that that's any better.

Fair point. I hoped that some arbitrarily large number would 1) cause people to actually consider their biases and bet accordingly and 2) allow for smart money to exploit any market mispricings. But I suppose a lot of rich dumb money could just flow in.

Yang's chances are small, Buttigieg's chances are about equal to Beto's, and better than any other candidate's outside of Biden. (And it's an open question as to whether Biden is actually serious.)

IMHO Yang has much better odds that Buttigieg. Mayor Pete is just blowing up right now because he had a CNN town hall, but he doesn't seem to have a lot of depth of policy and that's going to hurt him a lot as we get into the debates and then going forward. Whereas Yang hasn't yet had much mainstream media exposure, but has a lot of depth to his policies.

>but he doesn't seem to have a lot of depth of policy...

???

Are you saying that you believe people will be out there voting based on who has the best policies?

Serious question.

As a matter of full disclosure, I, personally, don't believe that's how elections work. I think people vote for the guy or gal they like who also has the ideas they feel most comfortable with. Not the guy or gal they like the best. (Although, at times, a candidate that they like better.) And not the guy or gal with the best ideas overall.

People are more than flexible in this regard. If a candidate out there has terrible ideas, but people like him or her better than the other candidates, that candidate will get the votes. Not because people think he or she's best for the job, but more because they want to keep the other candidates away from power. They don't even need to like the candidate, necessarily. They just need to DISlike the OTHER candidates.

In short, I believe there are lots or reasons people vote. (Or not.) But I don't believe that policy analysis is one of them.

I mean people vote based on brand, and having good policies is one way to build a brand. There are lots of other ways, E.g. Bernie and Trump both have good brands, but they are completely different.

But regardless, the debates are going to weed out the candidates who lack substantive policies unless they have a good brand built on something else.

This only shows why running we now have 20 candidates running for president. They get a huge platform to expand their reach (good for both the issues they care about and their personal brand) with almost no downside (even if not pilfering their campaign funds they will raise enough money to travel the country effectively promoting for future book sales or a tv show).

A low barrier to entry is arguably a good thing.

I agree in large part but I do think it is interesting. Running a campaign reminds me of The Producers - it is just as good to have a failure of a campaign as a winning one.

The whole political process is so tied up in entertainment now it's hard to see the lines between them anymore. It seems especially bad on the R side (surprise surprise) and I don't just mean the President, but it's affecting the entire institution of the Federal government.

Running for, and even attaining, office is a stepping stone to or enhancing move for an entertainment career, and vice-versa, in a way and to a degree I'm pretty sure it didn't used to be in the fairly recent past. And an entertainment career is even more of a feedback-loop into any other business ventures one might have than it used to be, and it already very much was. I mean, being a celebrity used to help with running for office for obvious reasons, but now running for office is a pretty good action to take if you want to become a celebrity.

"Enhance your personal brand today—run for office! Just remember, your number one goal isn't winning, it's raising your profile. If you happen to win that's great, but it's beside the point. Feel free to be crazy and weird. Worst case, run as an R and as long as your activities and personality are notorious enough you're guaranteed a steady income for the occasional appearance on Fox News as an expert in... well, doesn't matter really! Maybe they'll even give you your own show! Have a book ghostwritten—it's like free money!"

Is Andrew Yang a writer? I'd be interested in reading some of what he's written that's longer than a tweet.

I did find the weekly campaign updates, which are okay as far as they go.

Well he did publish a book: The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Univer...

His weekly emails often contain excerpts from his books.

The majority of Americans are not insane and both mainstream Democrats and the incumbent are mostly appealing to the insane. A moderate, any moderate, left or right, that speaks logically, does not indulge in identity bullshit and does not treat the other side as if they were stupid or evil or both, will have a great shot at capturing the exhausted middle.

While this is ideal, time and again it has been proved that an energized base and a demoralized opposition is the best chance at winning election. A passive middle will not win you anything.

This is entirely meaningless at this point in the race. There may be some enthusiasts paying attention right now, and they're prone to focusing on particular candidates, but a more likely bet is that most primary voters are waiting to see how candidates perform with a view to backing the best candidate who has the best chance of winning.

Not entirely meaningless. News outlets will need to select who gets coverage and invitations to debates. Absent many other objective rationales, they'll lean on poll numbers to make those decisions.

They'll lean on whatever kind of coverage gets them the most money

To get into the debates, candidates need to either raise a bunch of money across a bunch of states, or poll above 1%

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-how-were-defining...

Looking at that odds chart got me in a betting mood. I think those Yang odds in the article could be steep given the exuberance of some in his online following, however there could be interesting arb plays with an outsider like Yang like going long presidency+short nomination paired with going short presidency+long nomination with someone more establishment like Biden.

If prediction markets had more depth, I’m sure we would see politics hedge funds emerge.

PredictIt, at least, has fairly steep transaction fees to prevent arbitrage except in cases of very high mismatches.

Who is participating in the betting markets? Are these people perhaps more likely to personally like certain candidates more than others? When the market is relatively small, this question matters. I'm skeptical of the betting markets for this reason, as I think the participants skew heavily to a particular demographic.

If you need any indication of the irrationality of the betting markets, look for the Q conspiracy theorists betting on indictments on people like James Comey and Hillary Clinton.

weight of money has an effect on odds but the bookmakers are still the ones setting them.

I don't have strong opinions or awareness of Yang's platform, nor have I gone out of my way to learn much about him, other than seeing the random sensational stories that pop up on my feed (e.g. his thoughts about circumcisions, wrt health policy).

But knowing little of his background (e.g. career, wealth, any other attempts at politics), I think it's cool as hell he acted on what must have been a wild "what if" idea to join the race. I'd like to think that the more normal, non-political-machine-produced humans who go through this process, the more accessible and interesting that process will be to the average person.

It seems Yang afigured out how to "hack" the Democratic primary process to get on the national debate stage. I call it a "hack" because someone like me thinks the possibility of a no-namer like Yang on stage with Sanders and Warren is too absurd a reality to imagine. But Yang did his research and found he could target the minimum requirement of having 65,000 donors [0] -- a number that seems laughably low, because of how easy it is today for anyone with a phone/computer to make small donations, coupled with Internet platforms like Reddit that let Yang find voters/donors who aren't willing to provide the traditional value (e.g. large donations), but can make all the difference when the metric is number of people, not cash on hand.

Yang likely has no chance in the primary, so I won't have to wonder if my vote for/against him would have been even slightly biased by subconscious feelings about solidarity with other Asian-Americans. However, I like that I can just marvel at the sight of an Asian-American strolling on this rarefied political stage, like it's a normal thing. And yet, it isn't -- It's something I don't think I ever thought I'd see in my life. Not because I think there's a hard barrier of racial/social injustice. It's just something I had apparently had no reason to imagine or contemplate. Just like I don't ever normally contemplate the idea of 2 cats trying to steer a Tesla. There's nothing that logically blocks that concept in real life. But seeing it in real still feels like a small, happy surprise.

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/candidates-reach-for...

Not sure that's a goal of his, but in many countries a candidate will enter the primaries (or the general election, in a minor party) campaigning on a single issue, and then join the government later as a secretary (or minister) to either implement some version of the policy or prepare for its implementation in the future.

Check out the Joe Rogan Experience podcast episode #1245 with Andrew Yang, you won't be disappointed. Listen on your commute, your just driving anyway, might as well learn about one of the candidates.

There is no way that Yang is more likely to win the nomination than Warren. And I say that as a Yang fan. So there's a lot of money on the table, but I'm not willing to tie up a couple grand for a year for a website I know pretty much nothing about.

Warren isn't going to win. The party took notice of the DNA test thing, and is specifically trying to field someone who won't be baited into the mud with Trump.

White and male means Buttigieg is going to have a major problem in the primaries. Asian and male is almost as bad.

Unless the Democrats suddenly decide to stop playing identity politics they're going to choose someone based on gender/race (female/not white).

He's gay though so he checks the box.

Does he? Dunno, there seems to be enough gay white males in positions of authority in the US that I didn't think that would count towards his diversity status.

Biden and Sanders are currently leading in polls, so I’m not sure where you’re getting this from.

But neither is actually going to be chosen by the DNC (is Biden even running?). Just wait until the primaries start and the media attacks ramp up.

Anything could happen, but given that white males are currently getting a combined ~64% in polls, it's pretty silly to say that running as a white male is a 'major problem'.

Andrew Yang is an Accelerationist.

His Universal Basic Income proposal is the most interesting thing in politics in a long time. It is actually feasible and will get us on the track to post-capitalism.

You are an American? You are a citizen? You get a thousand bucks a month. Funded by 10% VAT.

The freedom dividend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTkhrosH8xw

I had been following Yang since a while and have been super pumped up about his ideas and focus on real underlying issues. But with Pete joining the race, I am somewhat torn between these two. Both of them are really smart people. Yang has great ideas and vision, but Pete has real experience running a city and seems to be very likable in general. On the other hand, I am sure conservative media will paint Yang as a socialist which would take away a lot of votes, and Pete being openly gay is also going to take away a lot of conservative voters.

I am sincerely hoping for Beto to blow up. We need someone like Beto because 1. He is young 2. He was a hacker [we need people in politics that understand the most important driver of commerce now] 3. He was in a punk band 4. He is from Texas [he will be forced to have a balanced approach] 5. He campaigns hard 6. He can inspire people positively [as opposed to the constant whining that politics have become]

2 point is overstated in media.

" there is “no indication” O’Rourke actually ever broke into computers or even possessed the skills to do so. Instead, O’Rourke’s membership is linked to his participation in online discussion forums ran by the group. Beto himself operated one such forum known as “TacoLand” to discuss mostly punk rock."

https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/beto-orourke-infamous-hacker...

Andrew Yang seems like a nice guy with a cool UBI proposal, but his blowing up on Twitter has a lot to do with 8chan forcing 'YangGang' memes which began about 6 weeks ago. It would be unwise to view this like a true market signal.

YangGang is his own PR. It's nothing to do with 8chan. UBI, of course, appeals to alt-right.

Who wouldn't want to get $1000 a month? Would you? of course you do...

There is a reason that Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America, and that is because his policy presents meaningful gains to the working class that perform all of society's labour, and without which everyone would immediately die. Working class people are, on the whole, shifting from supporting capitalism to supporting socialism.

Except for the part of the working class who voted for Trump mostly to oppose socialism.

how are they meaningful? Job "guarantee" is meaningful? Free college is meaningful?

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