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Comment by Tainnor | Hacker News Reader

Not an American, but it's wild to me how anyone could describe Kamala as "0.1% less bad". She's an accomplished politician.

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Accomplished politician wouldnt be a compliment though would it. One of the recent issues is bureaucratic bloat caused by career politicians. In that sense she would be less appealing.

I understand that this appears to make sense for a lot of people but to me a president should... actually be qualified to be a president.

Otherwise, it's as if you had a string of bad CTOs and then decide to hire a gardener with no tech skills as your new CTO.

In a democratic system everyone should be fair game to hold office, that’s the whole point. What you’re advocating for is aristocracy and leading to phenomena such as career politicians existing, who are leeches to productive societies.

It would be aristocracy if you had to be born into it.

Now, I'll admit that the US system of mostly only very rich people getting access to top universities is not exactly fair - but you can in principle become a politician no matter your background.

I don't think it's crazy to assume that qualifications matter. And most of the US's best presidents (such as Lincoln, both Roosevelts etc.) were highly educated and had had political careers before.

Err no. Let me educate you a bit. The word aristocracy is an ancient Greek word that means “Rule of the most capable/best”.

I'm aware, having taken Ancient Greek in high school, thank you very much. Meanings shift. An aristocracy is not a meritocracy and is mostly distinguished by its reliance on social status instead of actual merit.

See e.g.: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/aristocr...

I’m Greek so I’m using the actual meaning of the word, not the one produced by Western hegemony.

We're speaking English here and not Greek.

I’m not asking you to speak Greek, just to respect it.

Aristocracy is not a Greek word. You're confusing it with the Greek word aristocracy. Hope that helps.

But we're speaking English.

I know what you mean, we've come a long way from "Honest Abe" to "Dishonest Don" :\

I don't see a connection between "career politicians" and non-"productive societies". Corrupt societies can be corrupted by career politicians or a revolving door of temporary politicians.

I never said that there is a link between career politicians and unproductive societies. I said that whenever there is a productive society, there will be career politicians leeching on it.

When you can't be productive yourself, you leech off the biggest thing you can, in the hope you can go un-noticed until the parasitism has been forgotten and you can convince people you are a symbiotic life form :)

There is a difference in qualifying for having prior experience and for being born into a certain family. Trump inheriting around half a billion dollars is Aristocratic, Kamala Harris having a successful career in politics is not.

Trump's success in only partly due to his inheritance though. I'd liked it more to a charismatic religious and authoritarian leader.

Everyone is fair game but most often experienced leadership is what is preferred and gets elected because overall, people who have a choice don't want "just anyone" to end up as president even if it is technically open to all.

One of the worst travesties in any organization is when there are non-leaders occupying leadership positions for any reason. And that is already too common in areas where people don't have a choice.

Experience as a politician is not a qualification for US President

Legally, no. But prior to Trump, every single US president had served either in a political office or in the military.

It just seems unreasonable to assume that knowing how to govern isn't an important qualification for the job of actually... governing.

How'd she do in the primaries?

What did she accomplish?

https://www.miamidadedems.org/what_has_kamala_harris_done

I honestly expected more, especially more specifics, but I recognize I'm biased. The reason I asked, is that nobody really knows when you ask them, which is what surprises me often. You needed to send me a link as well.

Of all those, I really like the insulin one.

I guess people in America have different priorities than the accomplishments on that list.

I sent you a link for your review and reference, not because I couldn't name accomplishments. I prefer to respect the intellectual honesty of the person I speak with by providing citations for information they are unaware of.

It says she “Led the push for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act, federal worker unionization”. Federal worker unionization is very undemocratic b/c federal employees essentially blackmail voters. They become untouchable.

In most countries in the world, unionization doesn't mean "get everything you want", it means collective bargaining. It's an approach that cuts both ways, creating stable employment terms, which benefits both employer and employee.

Indeed. It's crazy to me that unionizing is seen as a bad thing by exactly the people that would benefit from them, these days.

They're only bad for big companies that prey on and abuse their workers.

Government-employee unions are bad for their employer, the government.

They’re particularly bad when politicians can take money from taxpayers, give it to union members, who are then forced to give it to their unions, which then turn around and donate it to the politicians’ campaigns.

Again, this feels like multiple problems that are problems regardless of whether unions are in the picture. Most of the world doesn't work like that.

The accomplished politicians seem to struggle a bit because they have a history of being terrible. It isn't like Trump came out of nowhere - it has been most of a decade now and when he won in 2016 that was on the back of backlash that had obviously been brewing for a long time. It was notable in 2016 that he had to knock out Bushes and Clintons from the presidential race who visibly couldn't wring compelling support out of their insider status. The Bush family name was more of a serious liability because of the family history of, you know, the Bush years. Trump's most memorable line of attack on Jeb Bush was making callbacks to how bad George's tenure was (which isn't entirely fair, but it does go a long way to showcasing why being an "accomplished politician" is a handicap given how badly US policy has been playing out for the last few decades).

If the US political class had a history of success then being an accomplished politician might be a tick on the report card, but in practice it seems to mean that they have sympathies to the military-industrial complex and a number of extractive lobby groups.

The Republicans didn't have anybody in 2016 or Trump wouldn't have had a chance. He stepped up to the plate even though he is the complete opposite of a lifelong Republican.

So was Hillary, so the vision of lifelong Republicans has been completely out-of-reach for almost a decade now. They had no choice but to settle for less.

I think it's been well demonstrated currently with Trump's live appearances where he really thinks he's doing the right thing all the time whether he makes very much sense or not.

Just last week alone Trump made Ronald Reagan with Alzheimer's look like an absolute genius by comparison.

Constantly lying, grifting, and being a convicted felon somehow is only worth 0.1%...

Anything of the shit Trump has done would be an immediate disqualification for anyone else, yet everything constantly gets a shrug.

Imagine if a convicted woman were to be the democratic candidate

> She's an accomplished politician.

So accomplished she could not even win a primary against an old man and was the first one out.

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