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Comment by joelrunyon | Hacker News Reader

Another unintended consequence of Google doing the things that Google recommends you don't do (in this case, scraping sites).

Can we talk about how terrible a piece of pro-hillary propaganda that was?

Namely this:

> America is ready for the leadership of a Hillary Clinton. A new history will be made when she becomes the leader of the free world. The world of women everywhere will change

Sure, this sounds very reminiscent of 8 years ago, but what's even scarier is the opening paragraph:

> She has paid her dues as a political candidate

Do people really think like this? All you have to do is "pay your dues" and you "deserve" it instead of voting on issues, track record & potential to make real change?

This is why we can't have nice things.

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I think "She has paid her dues" is meant to be justifying the claim that she's fit to be a candidate, not that she should win. Last time around there were suggestions that Clinton didn't have the political experience necessary to make a good president, and that's a harder argument to make now.

(I do think it's a pretty fatuous article, not that that's a huge surprise from the Huffington Post. But it's probably not far off the mark -- the factors it lists really are likely to make as much difference to whether anyone votes for Clinton as any details of her policies or past achievements.)

As opposed to Obama, who had absolutely zero track record?

No, as opposed to most political candidates who have historically been taken seriously as candidates for the presidency.

Obama was (and is) an outlier.

It's worth noting that Obama himself was not originally planning to run in 2008 due to lack of experience in public office. Tom Daschle is responsible for pushing him to run precisely because he had no track record on hot topic issues that weakened the competition.

Yeah, I totally agree that is worth noting -- I think until Obama beat Clinton in some of the early contests, the conventional wisdom from virtually everybody (who follows politics) was that it was just too early for him to go for the big prize.

But I am curious whether that will hold -- whether candidates like Obama will remain outliers -- or whether that kind of thing will become the new normal.

Our political system is somewhat sick; having any record is a political liability. That is why our politicians almost all speak in tongues incomprehensible to any normal human being.

But the people favoring the established/experienced candidates are mainly the ones engaged and participating in the system which (perhaps insanely) doesn't include 98% of voters.

So I wouldn't be that surprised if candidates with very limited experience in government become more common.

Joelrunyon's top comment was a straw-man -- nobody said "paying your dues" was a sufficient condition -- so it seems fitting that the next snarky post down the thread would sarcastically attack the idea that it's a necessary condition.

When gjm11 said "justifying" they obviously meant "supporting". And yeah, after Obama's train-wreck foreign policy and complete disconnect with legislators on both sides of the aisle, it's pretty reasonable to highlight your experience as a positive quality.

It wasn't a straw man. I have no public opinion on Hillary as a candidate. I have a problem with arguments being made about candidates in the manner that the article made them.

> Do people really think like this? All you have to do is "pay your dues" and you "deserve" it instead of voting on issues, track record & potential to make real change?

Yes. Source: Click around the Facebook comments of any substantially large digital publication. Tonnes of people don't even vote. Of those that do, most vote for the parties they're already loyal to. Of the few that are in the middle, most decide according to whatever is fashionable. It's a vanishingly small few that bother to evaluate issues, track records, etc.

I get voting on party - what scares me is voting on someone because they "paid their dues" - which is especially mind boggling when you look at people's approval ratings of those same candidates in their previous jobs (typically congress - which is hanging out at around 16%).

Voting on party scares me - especially in a system where there are only two.

Sorry - that also scares me. What is even worse (in my opinion) is people voting on candidates based on last names (which seems to be the trend lately) - especially when that's seen or used as a positive aspect.

Or voting against candidates based on their last names. Let's be intellectually consistent here..

You can be consistently against dynastic tendencies of an institution.

I think the "paid their dues" thing is meant to be necessary but not sufficient. That is, a lot of people would be cautious of voting for someone who had no significant political experience.

Except for our current president, when he ran in 2008?

He was a state senator for 7 years, and a US senator for 4.

why the downvotes? Most people wouldn't consider half a term in congress significant experience. I can't think of many presidents with less. That doesn't mean he did a terrible job or was completely unqualified or anything of the sort. It's just a statement of fact that he didn't have very much experience at the time. Frankly, even though I disagree with his views on most things, I don't think he's actually done that badly. He hasn't done great IMO mind you, but I'm mostly content with how things have gone the last 6 years.

Congress as an institution has an approval rating of 16%. The average Senator or Representative has a much higher approval rating.

Congress has a shitty approval rating, but the most representatives get voted into office by a decent margin. People hate everybody else's reps.

Yes, because their reps bring pork from D.C. back to their district. Who does not like a new school built/paid for by Fed money? Voters don't realize that the money is actually the tax money that they themselves paid into the system.

It is all very calculated, and in my opinion, is the epicenter of what's broken in the US political system.

I don't know how calculated it is, it seems it's one of those things that developed and people smart enough to realise what's happening decided it's a-ok with them.

But, yeah, the disconnect is huge. I've seen Americans on the internet brag about not taking advantage of unemployment benefits, completely ignoring that they spent years paying into them for that exact reason. And, to be honest, ever since I've started looking at the government as an entity that I've outsourced a lot of my needs/wants to (roads, physical safety, parks, etc), I've been a lot happier paying taxes.

People disapprove of Congress as a whole, but tend to like their individual Representatives and Senators. You don't vote your guy out of office just because the other 532 jerks in Congress you can't vote for or against don't let things run your way.

Wouldn't you like Alexis Tsipras a little better if he'd spent more time wearing out chairs in Brussels, eating canapés and learning what leads to results and what leads to nothing worthwhile? I mean, before he started attending really serious meetings where failure is serious?

Most people are becoming desensitized to the power of their vote to actually do the research as to who is the better candidate. Nobody seems to care as long as they are not directly affected in their day to day life. Reactions flare up for issues which become popular in the social domain, the issue settles and everybody forgets and moves on

We are all terrible at decision making especially on complex issues. I would guess that people doing deep 'research' are still making shortcuts as well (they just don't realize it). The key here is that the aggregate of terrible individual decisions should point to a better overall decision. Which is why increasing turnout is really important

Obligatory plug for "isidewith." It's the one thing I've seen make people actually vote for the candidate that represents their views:

http://www.isidewith.com/political-quiz

I agree. I believe this site is excellent.

It's very sad that people only vote their party. People need to learn to cross the line when it makes sense to. We are nearly perfectly split down the middle. This is a weak position to be in.

Well, it looks to me like people rarely vote for a candidate. More often, they're voting against a candidate because they believe that the other team is evil and must be stopped.

And it should be obvious that we're already in the end game for this strategy: if you vote against the other guy because he's evil, then your guy doesn't need to be good, he just needs to be perceived as slightly less evil. So it becomes a race to the bottom.

The cause of this seems to me to be the forced gerrymandering of voting districts so we don't get a meaningful voice in politics (other than as implied by the color of our skin, which is what the voting rights act requires).

But I think that, while getting rid of gerrymandering is a necessary part of any solution, the ultimate fix is to do away with the institutionalized two-party system. If today's problem is that the decision is binary (if I hate A then I must choose B), then offering three or more choices forces some thought and decision (at the very least: I know I hate A, but is B or C a better alternative?).

Politics is full of "this is why we can't have nice things." :)

Anyway, I don't think anyone really thinks like this, or at least a lot fewer than the people who talk like this. This is the kind of stuff that people come up with when they are already convinced and trying to make their case and not how they become convinced.

There is a common fallacy (or cognitive bias, I'm not sure what to call it) that affects almost everything we think but seems particularly pervasive in politics.

We use far more rational arguments to justify or argue for our positions and opinions than we do when adopting them. Adopting opinions is emotional (a bundle in itself), associative. Rational thought plays a part, but it's much smaller than we like to admit. We also see the logic in arguments with the logical conclusions we have already reached far more readily than the other way around.

"she has paid her dues" and "the world of women everywhere will change" seems convincing to someone who is already convinced. I doubt it convinces anyone (or many, anyway). In this case, it's almost testable. There are people on the other side of politics who are woman and have paid (or will have paid) their dues. If Hillary loses and one of them runs next time, do you think she'll switch?

Why not just flag the submission? Just like the hit piece we had last week on Rubio under the guise of prison reform.

Look, we likely will have to filter any story where a candidate is mentioned because its been obvious for far too long that their supporters who are in the press will slip in favorable or unfavorable stories as they are instructed to do so all under the guise of hard journalism. Best yet there are entire groups devoted to landing such stories onto as many sites as possible.

We have two years of war on women, etc, crap coming, because we live in an age where politics of identity are more important that what you stand for and when what you stand for isn't popular to throw out the race/sex/etc card.

Why flag the submission? The submission illustrates a real problem (maybe?) and people have a (potentially interesting) discussion about it. I don't see any reason to flag it.

Yes, of course people believe this sort of thing. And yes, this is indeed why we cannot have nice things.

Before you down vote because you think I'm anti-H.C., I'm not. Nor am I pro-H.C. I've not made up my mind yet.

It does read like an ode before a coronation. Though a poorly written one. Anything but Clinton/Bush. Sanders perhaps.

Sanders? An admitted Socialist? How about Rand Paul? Someone that has actually fought on the right side of issues important to the HN community. Sanders actually supports an 80% tax rate. If you want an economy that resembles Romania in the 1980s, vote for Sanders. If you want freedom, vote Rand Paul. Democrat values are inconsistent with entrepreneurial. They want to disincentivize success with higher taxes and they want to subsidize failure through increased government handouts. If you want less of something tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize it. under Obama, food stamps have quadrupled. Black unemployment is higher than it was under Bush and wage growth is non existent. Look at economic charts from 2002-2014 make note of what party was in control of Congress and thus the budget. Look at Clinton's economic performance during the 1990; correlate that to the party controlling Congress. It's fascinating.

Research Cheis Dodd's role in Congredd during 2006-2008. See what Bush was warning about in terms of the housing market and what the Democrat response was when Bush warned about Fannie/Freddie instability. He was essentially laughed at by Chris Dodd and friends.

This instinctive anti-Reublicann sentiment is depressing because it seems like the Democrat marketing machine has done a good job obfuscating the issues. Whenever someone gets close to real scrutiny of the issues, they conveniently pull 'racism' or 'war on women' out of a hat. Meanwhile, I bet a majority of Americans can tell you the name of the Charleston shooter but have no idea what percentage they paid in Federal income tax or payroll taxes last year. Rand Paul released his tax proposal and more people seem to be concerned about a stupid flag. These supposedly 'big' news stories aren't that important. They're distractions. Who gives a flying -- what race that white NAACP lady was? Who cares what comic book the Charleston shooter read when he was 15? Distractions. Give them bread and circuses..

Socialism doesn't mean what you think it means.

The highest tax rate in the US as recently as 1978 was 70% [1], and had been as 91% (!) from the forties through the sixties. So I don't know why you assume that a high tax rate on the very wealthiest leads to Romania, 1980.

America's incredible post-war boom and burgeoning strong middle-class all happened at a time when the very wealthiest had very high tax rates.

[1] http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/...

>This instinctive anti-Reublicann sentiment is depressing

Most people on HN are probably too young to remember a republican president before GW Bush.

Is that true? Is the HN demographic really that young. No wonder it seems like everyone here is more liberal than average.

Personally the deaths of multiple people at the hands of a domestic terrorist and the racist societies that support him matter more to me than how much I pay in taxes.

>This instinctive anti-Reublicann sentiment is depressing because it seems like the Democrat marketing machine has done a good job obfuscating the issues.

Actually it was the Republican marketing machine's "southern strategy" that started that. When you decide to explicitly become the-party-that-appeals-to-racists it takes a really really long time to dig yourself out of that hole. Especially because right now is when the people that grew up with those messages are in/coming-to power.

They also co-opt the previously fairly moderate evangelical crowd with red-scare tactics around the same time.

>Actually it was the Republican marketing machine's "southern strategy" that started that.

Or Reaganomics, or the wars they got us into, their rabid support for the military and uber-rich in our country, the list goes on.

Congratulations, you've turned this thread into a shit-show.

I agree with some of your points, but in some ways I think you are overly optimistic. I bet that the majority of the people not in Charleston couldn't name the Charleston shooter either (not that his name is particularly important). Your point about them not knowing tax rates is absolutely accurate, though.

Hillary will be president for one reason.

Do you really want a third Bush in the White House for a third Iraq war?

Alternatively, do you really want a Bush picking the next two or three Supreme Court judges? It would set back the country into the 1960s. Voting rights, equality, access to abortion. All rolled back to 1960s with an imbalance of power in the supreme court.

Really? Set the country back to the 1960s? You also actually think Bush is going to be the nominee? You don't seem to know much about Republicans if you think that. As far as the 1960s goes, the economic picture was much better then than it has been over the past 8 years. The JFK tax cuts caused a decade of prosperity; the middle class was much stronger, wage growth was steady. What we have now is a generalized malaise. If you're suggesting some kind of war on women malarcky, ask yourself why in Hilary's State Department and in Obama's White House do women still make 70% of what men make? These anti-republican memes are getting a bit stupid. Remember Hilary supported the Iraq War, the Libyan War (which did not even get Congressional approval as was required under the War Powers Act.) Hilary also strongly supports and supported the Patriot Act and warrantless NSA surveillance of Americans. Her only accomplishments as Secretary of State were aggrevation of Russian relations, the loss of American allies Libya and Egypt to Muslim extremists, more nonsense in Syria as well as facilitating the failure of Iran's Green Revoluion. She and Obama also a let the Pakistani doctor who provided the Bin Laden tip to be captured, imprissoned and tortured by the Pakistanis as a reward for his helping the U.S. She also racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles. The woman has zero accomplishments, either for woman or anyone else. She has never worked as a chief executive of anything, she has barely ever had a real job; she's a lifetime political hack and the U.S. is worse for having her in the national dialog. Remember it was Rand Paul that fought the NSA and Rand Paul that has promoted the end of civil asset forfeiture and he has also called for the ending of racist sentencing guidelines as wel as decriminalization of drugs. Hilary represents a totalitarian Democrat plantation owner. She's a horrible choice for the school board, let alone President of the United States. She's an evil snake and anyone who supports her is either mentally ill or profoundly ignorant or just brainwashed. If she cared about women she wouldn't have defended a child rapist. She also wouldn't have defended Bill Clinton amongst multiple credible allegations of rape, harassment and other misconduct. She also would have declared Boko Haram a terror group when she had the chance. I could go on for days; the point is that Hilary Clinton deserves to be in jail or scrubbing toilets in Siberia. I didn't even touch upon the Clinton Foundation "donations" from foreign governments while she was Secratary of State. Or the email servers. Or the utter lack of transparency she has demonstrated over her long illustrious career as a leech suckling upon the blood of the American people. I'd vote for Sheila Jackson Lee or even Michael Jackson before I'd vote for Hilary.

Too bad people in their 20/30s don't recall the Whitewater scandal. The Clintons ripped elderly people off on mortgages. How anyone could vote for that witch is beyond me.

At least all of the Clinton Foundation stuff is finally coming to light.

Wherever the Clintons have gone, scandals and coverups seem to follow them - which should be a clear red flag to anybody with a half a brain.

It will be amazing if Bush doesn't end up with the nomination. In past elections, his money advantage would be a lock. Even allowing for disruptive technological/cultural changes, his stance as the moderate nominee is a huge advantage in blue/purple states that tend to look for the candidate most likely to swing their state.

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