I was a precinct captain for Martin O’Malley. I still think wistfully of that merry Marylander, but his leaving has given this primary season an unusual measure of neutrality for me. I can’t vote again so there is no strong reason for me to pick between Sanders and Clinton. I will vote for whoever gets the nomination. In the meantime people-watching around this place has been, well, interesting, too often in the Midwestern sense. I’d like to point out a few home truths that some folks are overlooking from time to time.
Hillary Clinton is a politician. Bernie Sanders is a politician.
This is not a bad thing.
This is a good thing.
Governing is a complex process that demands a wide range of knowledge and subtle and diverse skills. By the time a person gets close to the level of governing the United States, they have those skills and that knowledge to a degree that they are called politicians.
We don’t want a surgeon who has walked in off the street. We want someone who has experience at what they are doing and the knowledge of when and how to act. One of the (many) profound defects of Donald Trump is that he is not a politician. He is a businessman and entertainer, two occupations with little overlap with governance. One of Romney’s drawbacks was that he tried to govern his state as if it were a business. Be grateful that both Hillary and Bernie are politicians.
Bernie has strengths. Hillary has strengths. Bernie has weaknesses. Hillary has weaknesses.
I am not nearly so great a fool as to undertake to list the specifics of this. I do encourage the reader to take their hand at it, particularly if you are strongly supportive of one candidate. What are your candidate’s weaknesses? (You already know their strengths.) What are the other candidate’s strengths? A thorough list for both will reveal that actually there is considerable overlap between the two, though obviously there are also differences.
None of us is a mind reader.
In meat space we can use words and body language to try to divine what someone else means. Here we are limited to the words. As none of us can read minds, it is rarely civil or productive to write, “You said X but you meant Y.” No one likes to have words put into their mouths, and the inferences drawn are often not correct. If you really think that someone meant something different than what they said, crosscheck by framing it as a question: “You said X — did you mean to imply Y?”
Clinton is not a Republican.
This should not need saying, but there you go.
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The political compass is only one way to compare politicians’ positions. Here are several more methods that also show that Clinton is not a Republican:
I could go on at length (and I’ll post my policy graphics if people want) but the two candidates voted together 93% of the time. To pick only the positions on which they differ as the ground for definitions is to commit what Fischer called “the fallacy of difference”:
Equally obviously, Sanders is not a communist. I don’t see that around here, but I am happy to document it if people want.
Symmetry is respectful.
Bernie/Hillary. Sanders/Clinton. Senator Sanders/Secretary Clinton.
Other combinations, whether intentionally or inadvertently, imply disrespect for the person called by the less formal name or create distance for the more formal one.
Anger can distort our thoughts and evaluations.
When we feel angry, that emotion can distort how we make judgements. If we get into a habit of feeling angry, a variety of cognitive strategies tend to keep us angry. In general, words written in a hot fury rarely look as accurate by the cool light of dawn.
If something someone has written or done makes you furious, it is worthwhile to write out a response and then sit on it. How long you need to cool off enough to reconsider it fairly will vary with your temperament and with the occasion for the anger. Whether you publish the response, edit it, or file it depend on what you want to accomplish.
Down ballot races are as important as the presidential race.
Hyperbole? Consider these two scenarios: a Democratic president with Republican House, Senate and all the state houses versus a Republican president with Democratic House, Senate and state houses. Find local candidates worth supporting and do your darnedest!
Quantification is your friend.
Human beings are complex and various. For these reasons and others it is very rarely the case that a sentence of the form “X are Y” is true. Not even “Living humans have beating hearts” is always true; ask anyone who had open heart surgery.
For this reason it is rarely useful to make statements like “Sanders/Clinton supporters do X.” Without modification the implied quantifier is “all.” So stop and think; do almost all, most, many, some, a few do this? It improves the accuracy of the statement, and it gives you a moment to reflect.
Hillary is not an egregious liar.
Judging by the various fact checkers, she is either the most honest or among the most honest people running on either side. This is one of several, but it is consistent with other sites that have less convenient displays. Bear in mind that fact-checking sites don’t check all statements — they generally focus on ones which are controversial. The graph is an lower bound on their honesty, but does allow cross-comparisons. Politifact tends to go easier on Republicans, also. My hunch for why Kasich comes off well is that he is so anodyne that it is hard to find controversial statements to check, and he is running to draw the “sane” Republican vote.
Look, I don’t like the “running on the tarmac” story even one whit more than you do. But one swallow does not a summer make. If you don’t like Politifact, check out Factcheck, The Washington Post, or The New York Times ($)
I have voted for my preference for our candidate, but he is out of the race. Engaged, factual discussions of policies can only strengthen our position in the fall, when I will vote for the Democratic nominee. In the meanwhile let us, as O’Malley put it, “respect the dignity of every human being,” including our candidates and each other.