an open letter to non-Obama/Biden voters: thinking outside the echo chamber

[jrtom]

I'm looking to have some conversations about the upcoming elections. (The US Presidential elections, primarily, although if there's anyone that wants to talk about WA Congressional or state-level elections, that's fine too.)



Most of my friends are, if not stalwart Democrats, pretty much in the tank for Obama. This means that I don't have as good a handle as I'd like on the views and motivations of everyone else: people that haven't decided, or that intend to vote for McCain/Palin, or that intend to vote for a third-party candidate, or that don't plan to vote at all.

If you are such a person, I would like to have a respectful conversation with you: to find out where you're coming from, and what your reasons and motivations are (and your fears, if applicable). I'm a bit of a political news junkie, so I've read any number of essays dissecting the mood of the electorate in various ways, but I'm not convinced that the pundits' and analysts' condensations of people's opinions are anything like the whole (or true) story. Anyway, ultimately it all comes down to people. You. Me. Everyone else here, whether you show up to vote or not. One way or another, we're all going to be living together after the election, and I think it's past time for me to learn more about you and why you think and feel as you do. Even if Obama were to win in a huge popular landslide--say, 65-35, which is unprecedented in recent memory--that's still more than a third of voters (and probably quite a lot of non-voters) that will really disagree with the outcome.


I freely admit that I am also an Obama partisan, although I do not agree with him on every issue. If you would like to ask _me_ where _I'm_ coming from (either my political philosophy, my feelings on various issues, or my own reasons for having decided to vote for Obama), that's welcome. I'd also be more than happy to help you convince yourself to vote for him, too, if that's what you want. (You are welcome, in turn, to try to convince me to vote for some other candidate, although you're unlikely to succeed.) But my _primary_ purpose here is to learn from (and about) people that are _not_ Obama partisans, not to proselytize.


People who support Obama/Biden are welcome to join in these conversations, but I want one thing clear from the start--to everyone, but especially to Obama partisans, because of my intended audience: be respectful, or your comments will be deleted. There's a lot of free-flowing anger and resentment, from a variety of sources and for a number of reasons. I want to understand those reasons and the opinions that underlie them, so please be respectful of them so that they'll be expressed freely.


If you fit the bill, and are interested in such conversations, feel free to post a comment to get the ball rolling, or to contact me via email. If you know someone else who you think might be interested, please point them here.



Let's talk.

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I will be voting Obama, but I am not a huge fan of him. IMO he doesn't go far enough left. I would have preferred Edwards as the Democratic pick. My top issues are gay marriage, the environment, education, abortion/contraception, and universal healthcare.

I am voting Obama however (instead of third party or write-in), b/c I have heard enough mutterings from disaffected Hillary supporters in my state that I worry we could vote red for the first time in ages.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

In what respect(s) would you like Obama's positions to be more left than they are?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

If I'm incorrect about any of Obama's stances, please do correct me. Much of my info for this comment comes from votehelp.org

* Environment: Obama supports a trade of carbon credits. While that's a good start, I would like an even more aggressive approach, with absolute maximums also. And I think we should be investing US taxpayer money in getting China and India off on the right foot with their increasing industrialization.
* Abortion: While Obama supports abortion rights, he does not seem to do so strongly, and I worry that he might be convinceable, or allow the edges to erode (current examples such as the "partial birth" abortion ban, or redefining contraceptive pills to be abortion).
* Gay Marriage: Both Obama and Biden say they are against gay marriage, but are against a constitutional amendment banning it. I am for gay marriage and I'd be for a constitutional amendment legalizing it.
* Death Penalty: I'm against it, he's not. I feel that it should be a correctional system, and it's hard to correct someone who's dead. Not to mention all the money we spend trying to kill the guilty, and the fact that we do make mistakes. I'd rather we changed laws regarding paroles for people with life sentences.
* Civil Liberties / Defense / Foreign Policy: He reauthorized the PATRIOT Act; I'm against it. He wants to channel more money towards defense and Homeland Security; I think that money's better spent elsewhere. He thinks we should have an interventionist foreign policy to prevent hostile regimes from taking over; I think our meddling causes regimes to become hostile.
* Immigration: He thinks we should rigorously enforce current immigration laws by increasing border security and penalizing employers. I think illegal immigrants are hard working, useful members of society. Interestingly, he also supports amnesty for illegal immigrants currently here (which I support), so his stance on this is a complex one.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Taking these in order...

* Environment: I don't know as much as I should about his approach and how carbon credits, etc. work, so I'm withholding judgement on this. As for the latter...mixed feelings. What sort of investment are you talking about?
* Abortion: I read him as being in the 'safe, legal, and rare' crowd. This works for me, at least as a point of departure. I haven't seen anything that suggests he might flip on this point.
* Gay Marriage: I have a somewhat different take on this. My feeling is that it's not obvious why government should be involved in these things, for the most part. I'm for equality in whatever legal recognition of such relationships exists, however, and I grant that in the current political climate the most plausible path to this is legalization of same-sex marriages. However, I'd be for some kickass federal law specifying that civil unions must be granted the same status in all legal respects as marriage.
* Death Penalty: Mixed feelings. I acknowledge that it is often--perhaps even usually--misapplied. But I tend to believes that there are some rare individuals for which it's an option that we should consider.
* Civil Liberties: Agreed.
* Defense: I'd need specifics.
* Foreign Policy: I think that his approach is more nuanced than that. I also think that he's found it expedient to imply that he's willing to be interventionist if the circumstances require it. I'd like to know how he thinks that we should have addressed Afghanistan in the first place.
* Immigration: Seems to me that if illegal immigrants are generally useful, then the right answer is to figure out how to make them legal. Penalizing employers that use illegal immigrants could tend to reduce their exploitation, so I'm not convinced that's a bad idea.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

* Environment: The idea behind carbon credits (also known as "cap and trade") is to use capitalism to help regulate carbon emissions. The government sets a limit on how much carbon companies can emit, with stiff penalties. Some companies will naturally (or through effort) end up with lower emissions than their cap, and some will end up with more. Rather than facing the penalties, the companies with more go to the companies with less and say "hey, I'll pay you to claim that my excess emissions are actually yours." They agree, and instead of one company having too much and one having too little, we now have two companies at or just under the limit. It sounds really shady, and it took me a while to understand, but I think I get it now.

As for other countries, I think we should be helping developing nations such as China and India to build green infrastructure in their nations. By helping I mean give them money outright, and hire civil and other engineers and send them over there.

* Gay Marriage: Yeah, I'm kinda of the opinion that marriage should be taken out of the civil arena entirely (i.e., the goverment shouldn't have a stake or role in marriage at all), but that's not gonna happen.

* Death Penalty: I was disappointed to hear Obama last night say we have to find and kill Osama bin Laden. I was saddened when Saddam Hussein was put to death. *sigh* I'm a pacifist, what can I say?

* Foreign Policy: I'm glad Obama says we should talk before attacking nations. I'd rather we didn't attack them, but at least we should talk first.

* Immigration: Good point, that I'd rather they weren't exploited. It seems to me it's a fine line to tread though, between preventing them from being exploited, and preventing them from being hired at all - and therefore losing their livlihoods and having them then become a burden on the US instead of a boon. I wonder if we could come up with some sort of guest worker visa, where the formerly illegal immigrants will now be allowed in legally, and have some protections of the law, but maybe have a lower minimum wage limit for them.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Environment: I know how cap-and-trade works, but the devil is in the details and I don't know enough about them. (How do we decide how much of a cap to give out? Does it depend on the industry? How about the size of the company--and if so, measured in physical outputs, revenue, or people employed? Etc.)

I'm more in favor of pouring money into developing green technology and then providing incentives in the form of good licensing terms. I don't think that either country is short of civil engineers, and they'll go green if there's an economic benefit.

* Death Penalty: bin Laden is, I think, one of those edge cases. He's demonstrated both a desire and an ability to kill Americans because we're Americans. Should we undertake to support him the rest of his life if we could capture him? Life imprisonment strikes me as a weird sort of punishment: "we believe that you're unfit to be a member of our society, so we're going to...support you indefinitely in a way that we adamantly oppose doing for the poorest members of our society _unless_ they commit a pretty serious crime"--huh? I mean, prison as a context in which to rehabilitate, maybe (although it doesn't seem to work so well for most of those incarcerated) but the purpose of life imprisonment can't be rehabilitation, by definition. *shrug*

* Immigration: the reason why we get so many illegal immigrants is _because_ people will hire them: if they couldn't get jobs here, they wouldn't come here, so the "burden" argument doesn't seem to hold up very well. If the economy needs these workers, then we should employ them outright and legally.
This also could fork off into an entirely different discussion about under what circumstances anyone (including people who were born, and whose grandparents were born, in the US) should automagically be granted full citizenship...but that's probably best left to another thread.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Death Penalty:
Well, various studies have shown it costs more money to put a person to death than to have them live out their life in prison. (Primarily b/c of the legal process, AFAIK.) [source]

Of course when we're talking about cases like Saddam Hussein, he was tried overseas so their process was more ..."streamlined" and anyway the cost burden was not borne by our country. I expect if we ever do catch bin Laden either the same thing will happen, or else he'll be tried at Gitmo and the process would again be "streamlined" so although the US would bear the cost it would be less than a normal death penalty process.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Interesting figures. I do note, however, that those figures are all from California (one of the references mentions in passing that the cost difference exists elsewhere but does not cite anything to support it), so I have to wonder (a) whether this is true elsewhere (and if not, why not), and (b) the specific reasons why the costs are so high: does this point to procedural or other inefficiencies in our legal/justice system that we need to fix anyway?

I believe that these processes _should_ be efficient insofar as that is consistent with ensuring that justice is done and that the innocent are not condemned...but again, that sounds like a systemic problem rather than one with the death penalty per se.

FWIW, it's also cheaper to simply not imprison people or punish them at all, so the 'cost' argument is clearly not the only one we're concerned with...although I acknowledge that I brought it up. :)

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I noticed it was all California too, but in a quick search that's the first website I found.

Also these studies only looked at the cost through the courts, they didn't look at the cost of feeding a person for their lifetime, nor paying the guards, providing medical service, etc.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

My understanding is Obama's also in favour of spending some of the money we've been wasting on Iraq on R % D for green energy tech.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

I am a reluctant McCain supporter. I'm a lifelong moderate Republican with strong positions on foreign policy interventionism that are related in some ways to my position as a Jew and strong advocate of American support for Israel and otherwise stems from my judgment that it's not acceptable to have unpredictable dictators in charge of countries that threaten US strategic resources or allies.

In the New Jersey primary, I walked in planning to vote for McCain but couldn't bring myself to do it. I ended up voting for Giuliani, even though he'd dropped out the week before the primary. I deeply mistrust McCain, because while we seem to agree on a lot of foreign policy issues, his reason for a position rarely seems to be the same as mine. I mostly cannot figure out the logic behind his positions. He seems to be a maverick for the sake of rebelling. He doesn't seem to understand Iraq very well.

Still, my choice is between the candidate I mostly agree with but distrust and the candidate I disagree with. Obama's opposition to the War defines him, for me, in large part- I also disagree with many of his domestic positions, but this is less important to me than his foreign policy positions. I have the sense that Obama is an intelligent leader, a strong communicator, a thoughtful person. But this is not enough to bridge the fundamental gap on issues.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I have some questions about a couple of things you've said (mostly requests for clarification are what's occurring to me at the moment) but I'll have to get back to you on that later.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating. Until fairly recently, I'd heard McCain spoken of in the terms that you used to describe Obama--in essence, I've heard people say that they would consider voting for him on a basis of character and ability despite disagreement on issues--but not Obama.

One thing I want to sort out: what about Obama's foreign policy positions (not just his opposition to invading Iraq) do you object to?

How do you think that Obama's and McCain's approaches to current and anticipated foreign policy problems would differ?

Personally, I don't think that McCain has been a maverick for the sake of rebelling, as you put it, although I think he's grown very fond of that part of his image. I suspect that (a) he has no particular objection to voting his conscience regardless of his party's position (for which I commend him), (b) his notion of patriotism may actually impel him to disagree with his party occasionally so that people remember that the party isn't everything (again, if true, he gets points for this), and (c) he likes to trust his instincts, which are (in my opinion) somewhat erratic.

Thanks again.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

One of the most important foreign policy issues to a Jew with pro-Israel sympathies is the question, "If it became necessary, would the American President allow Israel to take out Iranian nuclear facilities?" This is not a question we have firm reassurances from on the part of Obama, whereas both McCain and Palin have been as firm as is politic. It's becoming frighteningly possible that this question may be more than academic in the next administration.

Likewise, Korea... There is no question in my mind that, claims of the EU be damned, one of the main reasons that countries like Korea and Libya have come to the bargaining table is because they don't want a repeat of Iraq in their backyard. McCain is willing to continue using that stick. Obama makes it clear, in his opposition to the War in Iraq, that he's not capable of effectively using that stick in negotiations with Korea. SNL parodied his commitment to non-preconditioned negotiations by suggesting that, if negotiations with Korea don't have any effect, he would "play the race card." I don't want to suggest that I think non-preconditioned negotiations are a bad idea, because I don't, and I think it's one of the silliest Republican smears on Obama, but I do think negotiating with a rogue nuclear state without a stick is a recipe for getting walked all over.

As to McCain, you're right. There is some degree to which principle is involved in his 'maverick' stances. I just usually can't tell what the principle is. Before he became the nominee, he was most famous for McCain-Feingold, yet he's been stomping all over that during this campaign.

See, I find principle comforting. I like knowing what a man stands for, and knowing that even if it'll be unpopular, he'll stick with it. John McCain seems like a man who'll stick with his unpopular principles. I just remain unsure what they are, and that's just as important as knowing he has convictions to me.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I'm curious to know if your Iran/Israel question has been resolved at all given the most recent debate (from this evening), in which this question came up.
As a side point, I'm not sure that there's any question of the US _allowing_ Israel to do anything. If Israel really, really wants to take out Iran's nuclear facilities, they'll nuke them themselves, and the US can't really stop that. Punish them after the fact, maybe (withdrawing aid, probably) but even that would be politically dicey.

Regarding Korea: I think that Korea has repeatedly come to the bargaining table in bad faith, and because they think there's something to gain (additional time for weapons development, perhaps). The evidence suggests that the best way to keep the US from kicking your ass even if it really doesn't like you is to get nuclear weapons. (To be fair, it's also worked pretty well for Israel and its own adversaries--and I say this as someone who has pro-Israel sympathies as well, if (probably) not as profound as yours.)
I don't claim to know the best answer for Korea. But we don't have a plausible "big stick" to shake at them, really. We can't successfully invade them (even if China weren't pretty much guaranteed to get involved) and we can't nuke them unless they nuke us first. I don't know how to make them negotiate in good faith, and the only reason I don't feel like a dumbass is that apparently no one else does, either.

I want to respect McCain more than I do, and to believe that he'll stick with his principles however unpopular, or at least openly acknowledge, in the case of a position change, his past error and the reason for his change. I am growing less and less convinced of this as time goes on, unfortunately. As I said in a recent LJ post, I wish that this were a harder choice for me.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

The problem with saying that Israel can just take out Iran's nuclear facilities without US support is that it's not true. Here's why: Russia and China need oil and they've been courting the Middle Eastern oil powers extremely heavily, and to some degree they've been supporting Iran's nuclear program. Israel can't afford to go up against Russia and China on the world stage, not for any military reason but because it would isolate them from the world community, unless the US backs them and keeps doors open for them. Israel might end up doing it anyway, but it'd have potentially disastrous consequences for Israel's economic, diplomatic, and political stability.

Actually, the odd thing about the debate was that, on places like Pakistan, Obama came out like the interventionist and McCain tried to stand on things like his refusal to enter Lebanon. It left me rather confused, because I've been following these campaigns for months and I've never seen Obama that aggressive on foreign policy. I mostly agreed with him, mind you, but seeing a shift like that makes me wary because when the candidates seem to shift this close to the election, it probably augurs them trying to win votes and not their actual position. (It's a big problem with trying to convince yourself to change your mind this late in the process. How do you know what they really mean?)

It didn't confuse me about McCain, though. Even though we agree on the War in Iraq, I've always known he's not a doctrinal interventionist. I'm not really clear on what his doctrine is about when military action is appropriate, but it's not the same as mine.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I think that if Israel perceived an imminent existential threat, they'd address it decisively and trust the US to back them up retroactively. I agree that the consequences might be disastrous, and I think that it would at best strain the heck out of the US/Israel relationship unless Israel could present hard evidence that they were about to be nuked themselves, but I suspect that Israel would rather deal with the consequences of an 'international incident' (so to speak) than be destroyed.

For the record, I don't know the right answer for how to cope with Iran, either. Stuffing the nuclear genie back in the bottle has never really struck me as a sustainable solution, and belligerent posturing in Iran's general direction seems to be counterproductive, but I don't think there's a magic bullet here. :P

(I'm still interested in your opinion on what each of them said on the subject of Israel, if you'd be willing to give it. As I said, I'm not as personally involved there so I'm not sure what precise statement you're looking for.)

For what it's worth, I believe that McCain's stance on Lebanon is somewhat of a red herring, sort of: we were already in Lebanon by the time that he entered Congress. I think he voted against an extension of our presence there. (For which I still give him credit, but I wish he'd stop framing it as he does.)

Obama basically quoted what he'd said a few months ago on Pakistan, so I didn't really see a shift there. I remember there being a big flap at the time about it.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

To directly respond to their answers, they were asked a different question than the one I was talking about.

If Iran bombed Israel, Israel would bomb back. We'd have a nuclear war and of course the United States would weigh in on Israel's side. Both McCain and Obama reassured on that grounds, but this is unsurprising. It would also be disastrous to the entire world.

The question I care about is Israeli preemption. Obama spoke to it more directly, but he responded by saying we should work to make sure it doesn't become an issue. He didn't say what he would do if Israel judged it necessary. McCain didn't respond to the issue at all, but we have Sarah Palin saying forthrightly that she'd support Israel through whatever they did, in the Charlie Gibson interview. And we've had other comparably strong assurances from McCain in the past.

By the by, what do you make of what Brokaw tried to frame as the "Obama Doctrine" (As I distilled it, "Humanitarian intervention is laudable but tactically foolish.")? Please let's ignore the garbled mess of the "McCain Doctrine".

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that there should be a single course of action that the US should take if _any_ nation is attacked, including the US. To me, the correct answer to the question of "what should the US do if Israel attacks Iran?" is, quite honestly, "It depends." Factors on which it would (or ought to, in my opinion) depend include:

* Were we notified ahead of time?
- No? Then that says something about the regard in which Israel holds the US, and perhaps what the nature of our response and support for Israel's actions ought to be.
- Yes?
- were we given the opportunity to suggest alternatives, or to offer assistance that might make such an attack unnecessary?
- were we presented with hard evidence that Iran was about to attack?
- was the force used reasonable and appropriately directed in our estimation?
* What were the reactions of other nations? Is Israel now in imminent danger of attack from Iran or from some other quarter?

I don't know what question you expect, or what complexity of answer, but the appropriate response depends so strongly on the conditions that unless you specify the conditions, I don't know how you might reasonably be satisfied.


Regarding the "Obama Doctrine": here's a link to the text of Obama's and McCain's answers to the "doctrine" question, for reference: http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/10/obama-doctrine.html

What that answer boils down to, it seems to me, is "We should do something, and we will if we can, but we can't address all such situations by ourselves; furthermore, our ability to materially affect the situation is much enhanced if we have allies and other countries that will aid if we ask for it, so we should cultivate such relationships."

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

You both by now know my ignorance, so I will show it again without shame in the hopes of becoming less ignorant. In what ways is McCain a maverick? The GOP is painting him as one, while the Dems are painting him as a Bush clone. So what's the truth?

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

He really earned his reputation with McCain-Feingold. Passing campaign finance reform is something where you kind of need to work against both parties- no incumbent likes campaign finance reform.

He reinforced the position a couple years back as part of the Gang of 14 that stopped a filibuster logjam on confirming judicial nominees.

And he's long been an opponent of earmarks, again a move where you kind of need to work against both parties.

These are places where his maverick reputation comes from backing legislation that is popular among voters but not in Congress. But there's the flip side to his maverick side, which is, as Jrtom noted, that "he likes to trust his instincts, which are (in my opinion) somewhat erratic."

This can be seen in moves like, recently, suspending his campaign for the economic crisis, or in a variety of other political moves he's made with seemingly little consideration of logic.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I think this might be illustrative:

My mom historically votes Republican. As of last spring she was going to vote for Obama, mostly because she wants health care reform. Though there's a variety of Mccain/Bush things she was against as well, that is the crucial issue for her and she was going to cross party lines, as she has now and then for more local races (Pennsylvania).

Obama lost her vote the day he picked Biden, who she doesn't trust one bit.

There is no way in hell she'll vote for McCain/Palin, especially given McCain's age and the fact that my mother and father were 1960's style new Republicans. The take over by religious right offends many of my mother's centrist sensibilities and she will not be a part of someone like Palin landing in the white house. She's going to write someone in instead.

I bet she's not the only moderate Republican out there who can't in good conscience vote for McCain/Palin, but who can't stomache Biden either.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

What about Biden doesn't she trust? Or, to put it another way, in what way would she expect him to betray her, or her interests? I don't know any particular evil of Biden, but I don't know a great deal about him, either.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I think it's two things: like McCain, he's an establishment politician who hasn't done much to improve things for the middle class. (One of the things she liked about Obama is his economic policy). Also, like Mccain, there are serious questions about his integrity. (Biden=Plagarism scandal; Mccain=Keating 5).

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

The Biden plagiarism thing strikes me as having been a specific instance of a general Biden phenomenon of occasionally letting his mouth run ahead of his brain. It bothers me that he does this, and I don't really want him as President, but I don't consider it a character issue in quite the same way that it sounds like your mom does. I respect her reason for making that call, though I think she's making a similar mistake that I did in voting against Gore. (In essence, I voted Nader for two major reasons: first, because I wanted to promote the emergence of a viable third party, and second, because I thought that Gore didn't deserve my vote after some policy positions he'd held in the past (e.g. abortion) even though he changed them later. I still think that the former is a good goal--although that was a stupid way to pursue it--but the latter was a really bad call.)

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I think she's making a mistake too, but I was unable to persuade her otherwise. In a very real sense, for her, Palin is a scary wing nut. McCain and Biden are untrustworthy career politicians with long legislative and public images she's old enough and involved enough to have taken issue with over the course of a long active political life. As a moderate, non-racist swing republican, she genuinely likes Obama, but not enough to vote for him with Biden as a running mate.

It sucks she's throwing away a swing state vote we rather need, but I am truly grateful that Palin's permanently scotched chances of her voting for McCain.

Did I mention she lives in PA?