Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

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The weirdest thing about this is how surprising it was for most Germans, too.

In the last election, the "Green" political party gained quite a lot on a promise of "no nuclear power", "less military", and "more feminism" and guess what, now they are the ones extending nuclear power plants and investing heavily into military.

I predict that in 1-2 years, we'll have scientific studies about the disconnect between what voters wanted and what politicians delivered. Because in this case, it really seems like the communication broke down somewhere in between. The discrepancy is beyond obvious.

Quotes in German:

(We stand for a world without nuclear power) "Wir Grüne im Bundestag stehen für eine Welt ohne Atomkraft." https://www.gruene-bundestag.de/themen/atomausstieg

(We stand for peace, disarmament, cooperative security, and a culture of military restraint) "Wir Grüne im Bundestag stehen für Frieden, Abrüstung, kooperative Sicherheit und eine Kultur der militärischen Zurückhaltung" https://www.gruene-bundestag.de/themen/sicherheitspolitik

Isn't this expected due to recent events?

My govt spent a lot of resources battling covid. It wasnt the mandate they were voted in on. Covid meant their progress on campaign issues was sidelined a fair bit.

Situations change. I would be more worried to have a party in power that ignores the issue of the day. (which happens frequently, for example with climate change).

You don't have to wait 1-2 years, there are already studies for the US voting.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

Basically, the TL;DR version of this is that no, the average voter's decisions do not sway the decision of politicians, but the politicians decisions are heavily correlated with the preferences of the top 10% earners.

I've noticed this for many many years, and it's part of the reason why I changed to registering as an independent. Listen to the candidate's campaigns, their goals, their views...it all sounds great. Then they get voted in and don't do anything of what they said they would do. On one hand it's frustrating, but on the other hand it works the same when looking at the opposing candidate. So it's kind of like...things won't get better but they probably also won't get drastically worse if my chosen candidate doesn't win.

The US needs more than two parties. Unfortunately the system is rigged against that, and neither of the two ruling parties are eager to fix the system that keeps them in power.

It is odd, and yet it surprisingly makes sense too. But it's certainly weird to see German conservatives oppose military spending, while social democrats and greens embrace it. But that's also because just now, the threat of Russian aggression has become undeniable. Germany has for a long time pretended that Russia was just another peaceful country that they could trade with. And they were very reluctant to abandon that illusion because they depend so much on Russian gas.

I will say, as a Green opponent of nuclear power myself, I think Germany in general, and the Greens in particular, are wrong about banning nuclear power before they've banned coal power. Coal is by far the bigger evil. Ban coal first, then oil, and after that, we can worry about nuclear. I'm not a fan, but in the age of global warming, it's probably the lesser evil.

you can have "more feminism" along with nuclear power and military, I'm not sure what the issue is there. just require compulsory service for women if it's required for men. even if women aren't as able to do infantry because of strength requirements, there's a ton of roles in the armed forces (logistics, mechanics, etc.) that don't require lugging 200kg.

It's not a big surprise. Modern neo-left politicians have a long track record of this kind of policy inversion when they get into power. The same thing happened with the Lib Dems in the UK. They only really had two policies going into coalition with the Conservatives: a referendum on proportional representation, which got modified into something slightly different and then they lost, and eliminating student fees, a pledge which they immediately abandoned once they were in power and realized how expensive it would be. Then it happened again with Brexit: a whole lot of MPs promised to respect the vote and implement the referendum, then once they got into power immediately and publicly reversed this position, in some cases even crossing the floor to join different parties that had 180 degree different policies (this doesn't automatically trigger a by-election in the UK, though really it should).

The issue is not really communication breakdown. The problem is that politicians often don't really research their positions going in. Then once they are in government they get access to lots of briefings, 'secret' information, they have to start thinking about budgets and so on. Suddenly they realize their policies weren't quite as obvious as they thought they were. Getting rid of nuclear was flagged for many years as an obviously stupid move but the Greens could blow off such criticism as "right wing" and thus (to their supporters) not even worthy of consideration; suddenly they're in the hotseat and can't do it so easily anymore.

How about Obama promising to close Guantanamo and protect whistleblowers? I was really hoping he'd have all the torturers prosecuted. That will probably never happen.

> How about Obama promising to close Guantanamo

The US isn't and executive dictatorship and Congress refused to allow the use of funds for that purpose. As in most modern democracies, the main policy-setting body of government in the US is the legislative, not executive branch.

Maybe I am mistaken, but as the commander in chief he is allowed to send troops to a different base if he wanted?

> Maybe I am mistaken, but as the commander in chief he is allowed to send troops to a different base if he wanted?

He is not allowed to do anything that costs money if Congress has prohibited spending money for that purpose, as it did for closing the detention facility at Guatanamo (which, not Guatanamo itself, is what Obama had campaigned on closing.) It also prohibited transferring detainees to US bases.

The President could have reassigned the US troops assigned to the detention facility without closing it or transferring the detainees, but I can't imagine that would be regarded as a good thing.

I wasn't suggesting closing the base. It seems like he could have attempted to do a run around congress. Instead of closing the base or detention center or whatever he could have transferred the troops to different bases.

Several of the prisoners released (re)joined terrorist organizations when they got back to the Middle East. I am of course not suggesting he should have released more prisoners.

I was thinking more of transferring prisoners to a Middle East base. I think doing questionable things to enemy combatants in a war zone is generally considered more acceptable? I am not sure if he could have done that or not. I assume if he transferred the base personnel to a Middle Eastern base they could have taken the prisoners without extra cost. (There of course would be an extra cost, but no additional money would need to be spent)

If there is one thing politicians are known for it is wiggling their way out of stuff with slick maneuvers. I am sure Obama could have figured out a way.

Couldn't he just have released the detainees? There wasn't any legal basis for keeping them there, as far as I understand, and if there was, he can pardon.

> Couldn't he just have released the detainees?

Well, for the most part foreign countries weren't willing to take them and bringing them into the US (whether for release or prosecution or detention) was prohibited (whether for release, imprisonment, or trial) was prohibited by Congress, so, no.

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