We've gone over this three separate times. You keep proclaiming a slow crawl of people accepting women without recognizing that there are underlying forces at work - the same kind of forces that want a woman VP on the ticket. That kind of social activism begets the change you're seeing. In a vacuum, if no one was arguing for gender equality, we would expect to see fewer female politicians (we know this because we have recorded history, when fewer people agitated for such things resulted in few female candidates.
No. I have given two examples of some of the underlining issues at work:
1) They need to run.
2) They need to be elected.
If your choice for congress seat is for two males, a male is going to win.
If it is perceived that the female candidate is less qualified, or doesn't align with your communities beliefs, you again are not going to vote for them and the male candidate is going to win.
Now feel free to question WHY there isn't a viable female candidate running and how, as a community, you can change that the next time around, which again, the democrats have seem to have done here, HOWEVER, do not announce that the primary reason they are being chosen is that they are female. It diminishes that gain.
You guys haven't offered any evidence of the prejudices at work. They are just perceived. So I will throw this out to you: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
I am not one to buy into the American public "isn't ready" for a female president or Vice President. Clinton's campaign clearly shows that they are even if she didn't win.
Once again, this entire debate started with Biden flatly saying he is going to have a woman VP candidate without naming any names. He is placing gender above everything else which diminishes the merits the VP candidate actually has.
But yes choose a woman VP. As I said, there are many strong candidates, probably stronger ones than any male candidate that can be put forward. Just don't announce that you are prior.
DinoDin has refuted this point not once but twice. You keep repeating your argument without even acknowledging his. This is the very definition of talking past someone.
In the USA - the VP selection is almost always a tactical selection. The VP isnt selected simply because they're the best for the job (Which is obviously almost entirely subjective). Tim Kaine wasnt suddenly the literal most qualified choice for a VP for Clinton in 2016. He was a sitting senator for a swing-ish state (VA having only recently gone blue), and was a very average inoffensive candidate (Code for: White and moderate).
He was selected in part because of his gender (Not a woman) and his ideological position with a group of voters that Clinton wanted to win
DinoDin also pointed out that Mike Pence was selected for that same reason (White. Man. Religious). Not because he was some ace super talented politician. The polls in Indiana suggested he was going to lose his reelection for governor.
It is already the norm in american electoral politics to choose your VP for tactical reasons. In a way, this whole argument absolutely emphasized my central thesis. Why is it perfectly fine for Clinton to pick Kaine and Trump to pick Pence as tactical choices (Apparently they earned it, and it wasnt "handed" to them) - but if Biden says he's going to pick a woman, suddenly it's identity politics (Used here as a pejorative)?
No, I honestly think it is you guys talking past me (as I also pointed out the Pence selection prior - why I ignored it). But let me say it one more time, this time bolding and putting the key part in italics. Ready?
Gender shouldn't be the primary reason why a candidate is chosen. It is too broad of a brush to actually use strategically. One of my posts I listed why someone like Kamala Harris would be a good VP pick for someone like Sanders. Gender and Race were at the bottom of her appeal, but do add to it. When you only look at gender, that is how you end up with a distraction like Sarah Palin.
jjstraka has listed who he thinks are viable female candidates for Biden in the past and all of them are strong candidates beyond their gender. The reason for this is due to the democratic party working with them, elevating their status for years and giving them opportunities to have their name known. A great example is The Response to the State of the Union which was given by Stacey Abrams in 2019 and Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 both of which are considered candidates for the VP position under Biden. Steps like these need to be taken, but they need to be taken tacticfully and not perceived as being given to people due to race or gender or you'll get push back. Read that paragraph as "slow crawl."
If your argument boils down to "Biden said it, Trump didnt" - that's just... Pointless? A distinction that is essentially meaningless next to the act of actually doing the thing?
No my argument, once again, is that Biden said it before he even secured the nomination. Trump was probably told that Pence was going to be his VP and had no say in it.
You do not announce the reason why you are picking a VP candidate because she is a woman is due to it diminishing all of her other qualities and merits. I find it actually very sexist to say "I am picking her because she is a woman."
You wouldn't say something like "I am picking this person because they are black." Hopefully you can see that as a racist comment. It's no different in what Biden did with stating his intentions of picking a female VP candidate.
But you are also right. It does feel like I am talking in circles here and unless something new is added to the conversation, I am dropping it here.
On tactical VP selection - Why is it too broad to select a woman but not too broad to select "Someone from the midwest" as an option? These two things are fundamentally the same, but you have an issue with one and not the other. That's why your argument doesnt answer the issue of tactical VP selection.
Biden had secured the nomination, he was so far ahead of Bernie that there was no chance of Bernie winning. It was fait accompli. The distinction has now moved from "One said it and the other didnt" to "One happened after the nominating convention and other didnt". Given the circumstances, these are meaningless determinations.
For the record - Another issue with Identity politic critics is a lack of recognition that demographics are already playing into elections. Trump lost the woman vote overwhelmingly. That block of voters is no less significant than midwestern or any other breakdown for any other reason.
It is a tactical choice to nominate a woman as VP. It would be a tactical choice to nominate a midwestern politician as VP. One is not different than the other.
Edit - you also keep returning to an argument that no one is making. No one wants a less capable person as VP. Since there are no objective qualities that define a more or less capable person for VP, it's not something we answer objectively.
Furthermore. No one is saying that it's bad when two men are competing against each other and a man is elected. That's not be anyone's argument at any point. However, when every presidential election in history has been between two men (except once - and usually there are a lot more than just 2 men running), it's fair to point out the societal imbalances that are actively pushing the country in that direction. It's also fair to want to push back.
Sorry, I was knocked out the entire day.
This is what I have a problem with. This line of thinking. Gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or anything else in between shouldn't play a role when selecting a candidate.
Anyone who puts gender as a primary factor as a person being chosen discredits everything else about them.
I genuinely understand the desire for people to want a meritocracy for their government. I actually want that too. I want the best candidate to be elected and do the best job possible. If absolutely no one is putting their finger on the scales in any way, then that's clearly the best scenario that can be envisioned.
The problem is: a finger is already on the scale. Constantly. When we accede to the idea that a candidate should be purely judged by his or her ability to govern - we should fundamentally expect the number of men and women in government to nearly exactly reflect the population out of which they are found(This requires only the the basic assumption that either gender is equally capable of being the best candidate at any give time). As it stands, that number a comfortable 50/50 (I hope I will be forgiven for not looking at non-binary options here, as it makes the point I'm trying to make a bit more complicated, but I understand it exists. Consider this argument akin to those in physics class when you're told to "Ignore friction").
If we see continual statistical evidence that this is not the case, we have no choice but to surmise that the system isnt a true meritocracy.
So flatly - candidates are already being judged with gender as one of the overriding primary factors. If they werent, and we look at government on a national level, we should expect to see close to 50% of all law makers and politicians as being women.
It's already playing a huge role in the selection of a candidate. By suggesting it's problematic for people to put a second finger on the scale in hopes of balancing the equation, you are tacitly endorsing that the system should remain as is, and be fundamentally biased against women and minority law makers.
No, we wouldn't see a perfect 50/50 balance. Men and women do not have the same interests or pursue the same activities, or jobs, at exactly the same rates. A perfect 50/50 balance would be the exception to the rule, an anomaly.
The discrimination in politics that does exist comes primarily from white progressives, essentially the opposite of what they claim, caught in a strange bout of racial insecurity that makes them more prejudiced against their own kind than any group in politics is of anyone else, by the numbers. This manifests in a number of different data points, but this one seems most relevant. The irony of young liberal whites being the ones most opposed to an older white candidate on principle, while most other folks generally don't care, is something they should reflect on.
The idea that conservatives are somehow totally indifferent to the ethnic and demographic breakdown of the political class can clearly and obviously be seen to be false based exactly upon who they elect. If they "dont care" about the makeup of their elected officials, there would be more than 7% of women representing them in the US house.
As to the argument about 50/50 splits. Men and women do have different interests in society, but this is of course as a result of the influence of society on them. Do you believe there is some gene in a woman's body that says to them "Maybe dont try for a career in the STEM fields"? Please, I'd love some research on that.
Far (far, far, far) more likely: Society has reinforced the notion that women shouldnt pursue interest in fields that are deemed more suitable for men. This includes politics, but also the aforementioned STEM fields. This is a societal bias, one of those "Fingers on the scale" I've mentioned a few times now.
If people can do so, try talking to a woman in your life who is older and ask them about what it was like in the "workforce" when they were in it. My great aunt is in her mid-90s, so, just about as old as you can get and still be around. About a month ago I had a long conversation with her on the phone, and a large part of it was about what women got paid at work for doing the same thing as men. Spoiler: they didn't get the same amount, not even close, and there was no expectation they ever would (even though in her case her and the other "girls" as she described them basically ran the place for decades).
My grandmother had a responsible job with a bank that she would have liked to keep. Unfortunately for her she wanted to get married and the bank had a policy that it would not employ married women (as they were expected to keep house for their husband). That was the norm rather than an exception for professional work in those days ...
Politicians hoping to jolt the economy back to life might be in for some disappointment when they discover governors can let businesses reopen but they can’t force people to patronize them.
The problem is a question of fear. Americans fear spreading or contracting infection, so much so that they’ve overwhelmingly participated in social distancing measures. They tell pollsters by wide margins that they fear lifting those restrictions too soon much more so than too late. They’re willing to stay put even if it harms the economy.
They also fear economic hardship. That’s led prudent people, even those left relatively unharmed by the downturn so far, to delay nonessential purchases, like new cars, appliances, clothes, and other goods.
Whatever choices state officials make about opening things up, there’s not going to be a vibrant economy until real steps are taken to address those dual sources of fear.
Unless you do massive South Korea-style testing and contact tracing, shit isn't coming back. SOME people will go back. But as the article states, even a 20-30% drop in patronage is going to sink most restaurants. Waving a magic wand at a press conference a declaring something really loudly isn't going to get the job done.
Restaurants are either going to have to rely on a skeleton crew to handle take-out and delivery orders on limited hours (which from my pouring over Doordash lately seems to be exactly what is happening) or they are just not going to be there at all anymore. You can open movie theaters, but NO studio is going to release anything they believe can make money right now. If anything, they'll make a deal to stream it before they drop it in theaters that are 95% empty. No one is going to buy a car, no one is going to buy a house, no one is going on vacation. Those are just 5 things that ON THEIR OWN, will crater the economy even further.
The idea that conservatives are somehow totally indifferent to the ethnic and demographic breakdown of the political class can clearly and obviously be seen to be false based exactly upon who they elect. If they "dont care" about the makeup of their elected officials, there would be more than 7% of women representing them in the US house.
Woah now, let's not put words in my mouth. I never said anyone was totally indifferent. No group of people is. I did say that the white progressive bias against whites is the strongest racial prejudice in modern politics, and this appears to be the case. Even the least favorable polls I can find on republicans comfort levels in voting for women have them as more comfortable than white progressives voting for old white men. It's bizarre, frankly, with them being the ones so quick to label everyone else as well as the entire social structure to be prejudiced.
As to the argument about 50/50 splits. Men and women do have different interests in society, but this is of course as a result of the influence of society on them. Do you believe there is some gene in a woman's body that says to them "Maybe dont try for a career in the STEM fields"? Please, I'd love some research on that.
Far (far, far, far) more likely: Society has reinforced the notion that women shouldnt pursue interest in fields that are deemed more suitable for men. This includes politics, but also the aforementioned STEM fields. This is a societal bias, one of those "Fingers on the scale" I've mentioned a few times now.
Obviously I do not believe there is an explicit gene that handles STEM interest. I do believe there is a significant possibility our interests are guided, in part, by our genetic makeup on an individual level as well as between genders. So yes, I believe on some level, there is a natural process going on, along with influence from the surrounding social structure.
People too often dismiss the influence of genetics on who we are nowadays. Ideology has made it taboo, but it's becoming undeniable. As an example, it's pretty well established at this point that at least half, and most studies say more, of your I.Q is a function of your genetic makeup. This influences behavioral patterns. We shouldn't dismiss genetics outright in my view.
Woah now, let's not put words in my mouth. I never said anyone was totally indifferent. No group of people is. I did say that the white progressive bias against whites is the strongest racial prejudice in modern politics, and this appears to be the case. Even the least favorable polls I can find on republicans comfort levels in voting for women have them as more comfortable than white progressives voting for old white men. It's bizarre, frankly, with them being the ones so quick to label everyone else as well as the entire social structure to be prejudiced.
Polls are an absolutely awful metric to use to determine something like how people feel about racism or other social taboos that society frowns upon. If you polled 1000 people with the simple question 'Are you racist?" - do you think anyone in that poll would answer yes? More to the point, would you trust in the sincerity of those answers? When the answer comes back zero, can we safely say that no one is racist?
It's much (much) more useful to evaluate a person's actions rather than what they say in public. The statistics speak for themselves: Conservatives elect white men more than any other demographic. As a complete counter to your other point: So do progressives/liberals - but it's far (far) less than conservatives do. (We're so prejudiced against them we vote for them literally ALL the time)
Also. It seems rather obvious you're just googling up articles. You might have noticed that the document you've linked is tied to a psychologist who writes for a blog called "The Conservative Social Psychologist".
Lastly - lets leave semantics alone, okay? Sorry if my use of the word "totally" was a bridge too far, but I think you are clearly arguing that progressives are more prejudiced than conservatives, sometimes by citing biased articles from sources that are clearly written by biased authors.
As to the argument about 50/50 splits. Men and women do have different interests in society, but this is of course as a result of the influence of society on them. Do you believe there is some gene in a woman's body that says to them "Maybe dont try for a career in the STEM fields"? Please, I'd love some research on that.
Far (far, far, far) more likely: Society has reinforced the notion that women shouldnt pursue interest in fields that are deemed more suitable for men. This includes politics, but also the aforementioned STEM fields. This is a societal bias, one of those "Fingers on the scale" I've mentioned a few times now.
Obviously I do not believe there is an explicit gene that handles STEM interest. I do believe there is a significant possibility our interests are guided, in part, by our genetic makeup on an individual level as well as between genders. So yes, I believe on some level, there is a natural process going on, along with influence from the surrounding social structure.
People too often dismiss the influence of genetics on who we are nowadays. Ideology has made it taboo, but it's becoming undeniable. As an example, it's pretty well established at this point that at least half, and most studies say more, of your I.Q is a function of your genetic makeup. This influences behavioral patterns. We shouldn't dismiss genetics outright in my view.
You're talking about qualities that are unverifiable scientifically. So I dont know how to take them other than as your subjective opinion.
On tactical VP selection - Why is it too broad to select a woman but not too broad to select "Someone from the midwest" as an option? These two things are fundamentally the same, but you have an issue with one and not the other. That's why your argument doesnt answer the issue of tactical VP selection.
Because Midwest is what, a quarter of the united states and women are half of it... The VP candidate, as you pointed out, needs to have qualities or merits that the President is lacking. For example, again Pence, having him as VP allowed Christian Conservatives to swallow their moral objection against Trump and cast a vote his way presumably. Being a woman is not a quality or merit. It's a gender.
But here is something I just thought of for this 'tactical' pick conversation. Which woman is on the fence between Trump and Biden that having a VP as a woman going to swing her over? I am pretty sure it is a miniscule number.
Now how many people from swing state Michigan are on the fence and will vote for Biden if Gretchen Witmer was appointed as VP? Probably enough to swing those E Votes to his favour.
Do you see how gender in this situation is lower in a tactical stand point when choosing the VP nomination. Biden doesn't need to win the women's vote. Trump has pretty much handed them to him. He does need to win swing states such as Michigan however and if he can get a viable candidate from that state, or any other swing state that's female, then that's icing. Or should he troll the conservatives and pick a person that Bernie supporters may get behind and choose Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she IMO doesn't have enough experience to be VP (although it'd be amazing to watch the right lose their mind over that pick... maybe in 2028).
Furthermore. No one is saying that it's bad when two men are competing against each other and a man is elected. That's not be anyone's argument at any point. However, when every presidential election in history has been between two men (except once - and usually there are a lot more than just 2 men running), it's fair to point out the societal imbalances that are actively pushing the country in that direction. It's also fair to want to push back.
It was your argument when you are claiming there needs to be a 50 50 split. If women aren't running, for any reasons, they are not going to be elected. WHY they are not running can be looked at and addressed however... which again, the democratic party has seemed to been doing for the last 2 decades.
And please go back and read where I addressed the history of American elections when it comes to women running. Looking at the entire history is unfair as those societal imbalances are not the same as they are now. There may still be an imbalance, but it isn't as drastic as you are making it out to be. If they did exist, Clinton wouldn't have done as well as she did.
Because Midwest is what, a quarter of the united states and women are half of it... The VP candidate, as you pointed out, needs to have qualities or merits that the President is lacking. For example, again Pence, having him as VP allowed Christian Conservatives to swallow their moral objection against Trump and cast a vote his way presumably. Being a woman is not a quality or merit. It's a gender.
It helps to coalesce progressive voters to his side. Trump is objectively terrible with women, but Biden isnt particularly good with them. So reaching out them as a tactical choice makes sense.
But here is something I just thought of for this 'tactical' pick conversation. Which woman is on the fence between Trump and Biden that having a VP as a woman going to swing her over? I am pretty sure it is a miniscule number.
Demography is a complicated issue - An evangelical conservative woman was probably more likely to vote for Trump than Clinton. The election was so razor thin in PA, WI and MI that had Clinton won even a few significant groups of people by a little bit more, she would have won the election.
Now how many people from swing state Michigan are on the fence and will vote for Biden if Gretchen Witmer was appointed as VP? Probably enough to swing those E Votes to his favour.
Sure. And reports are she's being considered. He may have said he was going to pick a woman, but that doesnt mean he will pick one at random.
Do you see how gender in this situation is lower in a tactical stand point when choosing the VP nomination. Biden doesn't need to win the women's vote. Trump has pretty much handed them to him. He does need to win swing states such as Michigan however and if he can get a viable candidate from that state, or any other swing state that's female, then that's icing. Or should he troll the conservatives and pick a person that Bernie supporters may get behind and choose Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she IMO doesn't have enough experience to be VP (although it'd be amazing to watch the right lose their mind over that pick... maybe in 2028).
You havent necessarily proved this. The counter argument exists that Trump picked a white evangelical which is significant because those people were almost certainly not going to vote for a Democrat in 2016. Really - your own argument almost works perfectly in reverse. Biden is not terribly well liked by women in general. More than Trump, sure. Just as Trump shored up his own based with his selection, Biden would be doing the same thing.
It was your argument when you are claiming there needs to be a 50 50 split. If women aren't running, for any reasons, they are not going to be elected. WHY they are not running can be looked at and addressed however... which again, the democratic party has seemed to been doing for the last 2 decades.
No. It wasnt my argument. That you think this was my argument shows you've fundamentally misunderstood me.
I'm not saying there needs to be a 50/50 split for the president in any given year, or in any one particular local election between a small group of people. We can draw no conclusions from that event because of a lack of sample size.
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office. That doesnt mean that there was a clear and specific bias in 2004 when George Bush beat John Kerry in the US presidential election. That was a singular event. It's a data point that needs to be folded into every single election before a conclusion can be drawn. When you realize that only 1 major ticket in US history has ever had a woman on it, you can draw conclusions from *that*. Even if we account and move up to when women obtained suffrage or any other date you want to select.
This is why I've been almost uniformly been diverting the conversion to one about lawmakers and congress. It's much easier to evaluate the trend and nature of voters when there are 435 different elections every 2 years. The fact that women are so incredibly unrepresented in this fact demonstrates a clear bias.
All of that said - Nominating a woman as your VP is historically significant because of the under-representation. It was significant when it was Palin too.
And please go back and read where I addressed the history of American elections when it comes to women running. Looking at the entire history is unfair as those societal imbalances are not the same as they are now. There may still be an imbalance, but it isn't as drastic as you are making it out to be. If they did exist, Clinton wouldn't have done as well as she did.
Things have improved - but there is still a clear imbalance. I dont know what else you want me to say here other than I dont think waiting 30+ years for a female president is reasonable, or wanting congress to have more than 25% of its population be women. I'm going to keep agitating for that - I dont care if it makes conservatives uncomfortable.
We should all attempt to consider any implicit biases in the data has before we draw conclusions from it.
Yep, this is a very important point. For example, polling has consistently shown that people report having voted higher than actual election turnout numbers show. So if people are going to lie, or misremember, on even a mundane fact like that...
Social scientists have known this for a long time, which is why when they want to measure racial resentment they don't ask straightforward questions like "Do you like black people?"
It's also, of course, flatly absurd to suggest that the *main* source of discrimination in American politics is progressive whites. The party with the multi-racial coalition of voters are the real racists? Not the party that is almost entirely of one race? No idea how people state that kind of analysis with a straight face.
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
Woah now, let's not put words in my mouth. I never said anyone was totally indifferent. No group of people is. I did say that the white progressive bias against whites is the strongest racial prejudice in modern politics, and this appears to be the case. Even the least favorable polls I can find on republicans comfort levels in voting for women have them as more comfortable than white progressives voting for old white men. It's bizarre, frankly, with them being the ones so quick to label everyone else as well as the entire social structure to be prejudiced.
Polls are an absolutely awful metric to use to determine something like how people feel about racism or other social taboos that society frowns upon. If you polled 1000 people with the simple question 'Are you racist?" - do you think anyone in that poll would answer yes? More to the point, would you trust in the sincerity of those answers? When the answer comes back zero, can we safely say that no one is racist?
It's much (much) more useful to evaluate a person's actions rather than what they say in public. The statistics speak for themselves: Conservatives elect white men more than any other demographic. As a complete counter to your other point: So do progressives/liberals - but it's far (far) less than conservatives do. (We're so prejudiced against them we vote for them literally ALL the time)
Also. It seems rather obvious you're just googling up articles. You might have noticed that the document you've linked is tied to a psychologist who writes for a blog called "The Conservative Social Psychologist".
Lastly - lets leave semantics alone, okay? Sorry if my use of the word "totally" was a bridge too far, but I think you are clearly arguing that progressives are more prejudiced than conservatives, sometimes by citing biased articles from sources that are clearly written by biased authors.
As to the argument about 50/50 splits. Men and women do have different interests in society, but this is of course as a result of the influence of society on them. Do you believe there is some gene in a woman's body that says to them "Maybe dont try for a career in the STEM fields"? Please, I'd love some research on that.
Far (far, far, far) more likely: Society has reinforced the notion that women shouldnt pursue interest in fields that are deemed more suitable for men. This includes politics, but also the aforementioned STEM fields. This is a societal bias, one of those "Fingers on the scale" I've mentioned a few times now.
Obviously I do not believe there is an explicit gene that handles STEM interest. I do believe there is a significant possibility our interests are guided, in part, by our genetic makeup on an individual level as well as between genders. So yes, I believe on some level, there is a natural process going on, along with influence from the surrounding social structure.
People too often dismiss the influence of genetics on who we are nowadays. Ideology has made it taboo, but it's becoming undeniable. As an example, it's pretty well established at this point that at least half, and most studies say more, of your I.Q is a function of your genetic makeup. This influences behavioral patterns. We shouldn't dismiss genetics outright in my view.
You're talking about qualities that are unverifiable scientifically. So I dont know how to take them other than as your subjective opinion.
You're also assuming that genetics don't have a bearing which is equally unverifiable. Anybody who has hung around both men and women enough know that there are differences in how they think. That is most likely not solely attributable to upbringing alone. Nothing about human nature is attributable to only one variable that I know of...
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
Warren has the charisma of a Brussels sprout. That hurt her far more than being female...
Woah now, let's not put words in my mouth. I never said anyone was totally indifferent. No group of people is. I did say that the white progressive bias against whites is the strongest racial prejudice in modern politics, and this appears to be the case. Even the least favorable polls I can find on republicans comfort levels in voting for women have them as more comfortable than white progressives voting for old white men. It's bizarre, frankly, with them being the ones so quick to label everyone else as well as the entire social structure to be prejudiced.
Polls are an absolutely awful metric to use to determine something like how people feel about racism or other social taboos that society frowns upon. If you polled 1000 people with the simple question 'Are you racist?" - do you think anyone in that poll would answer yes? More to the point, would you trust in the sincerity of those answers? When the answer comes back zero, can we safely say that no one is racist?
It's much (much) more useful to evaluate a person's actions rather than what they say in public. The statistics speak for themselves: Conservatives elect white men more than any other demographic. As a complete counter to your other point: So do progressives/liberals - but it's far (far) less than conservatives do. (We're so prejudiced against them we vote for them literally ALL the time)
Also. It seems rather obvious you're just googling up articles. You might have noticed that the document you've linked is tied to a psychologist who writes for a blog called "The Conservative Social Psychologist".
Lastly - lets leave semantics alone, okay? Sorry if my use of the word "totally" was a bridge too far, but I think you are clearly arguing that progressives are more prejudiced than conservatives, sometimes by citing biased articles from sources that are clearly written by biased authors.
As to the argument about 50/50 splits. Men and women do have different interests in society, but this is of course as a result of the influence of society on them. Do you believe there is some gene in a woman's body that says to them "Maybe dont try for a career in the STEM fields"? Please, I'd love some research on that.
Far (far, far, far) more likely: Society has reinforced the notion that women shouldnt pursue interest in fields that are deemed more suitable for men. This includes politics, but also the aforementioned STEM fields. This is a societal bias, one of those "Fingers on the scale" I've mentioned a few times now.
Obviously I do not believe there is an explicit gene that handles STEM interest. I do believe there is a significant possibility our interests are guided, in part, by our genetic makeup on an individual level as well as between genders. So yes, I believe on some level, there is a natural process going on, along with influence from the surrounding social structure.
People too often dismiss the influence of genetics on who we are nowadays. Ideology has made it taboo, but it's becoming undeniable. As an example, it's pretty well established at this point that at least half, and most studies say more, of your I.Q is a function of your genetic makeup. This influences behavioral patterns. We shouldn't dismiss genetics outright in my view.
You're talking about qualities that are unverifiable scientifically. So I dont know how to take them other than as your subjective opinion.
You're also assuming that genetics don't have a bearing which is equally unverifiable. Anybody who has hung around both men and women enough know that there are differences in how they think. That is most likely not solely attributable to upbringing alone. Nothing about human nature is attributable to only one variable that I know of...
This part is true enough. And frankly (from strictly my own perspective) it's why even if this was the ONLY metric we could use in a sort of a blind taste test of candidates, and all I knew about them was their gender, I would probably pick the woman. Aside from the people I grew up with in high school, you are quite literally probably my best male "friend" in the world. And that isn't by accident or happenstance. I feel significantly dumber every time I hang around a group of more than three guys. A psychiatrist would probably tell me this is about my parents, and that's probably fair enough considering. My mom is the only reason my dad didn't crash and burn 20 years earlier than he did. Eventually, she couldn't do that lifting anymore.
Woah now, let's not put words in my mouth. I never said anyone was totally indifferent. No group of people is. I did say that the white progressive bias against whites is the strongest racial prejudice in modern politics, and this appears to be the case. Even the least favorable polls I can find on republicans comfort levels in voting for women have them as more comfortable than white progressives voting for old white men. It's bizarre, frankly, with them being the ones so quick to label everyone else as well as the entire social structure to be prejudiced.
Polls are an absolutely awful metric to use to determine something like how people feel about racism or other social taboos that society frowns upon. If you polled 1000 people with the simple question 'Are you racist?" - do you think anyone in that poll would answer yes? More to the point, would you trust in the sincerity of those answers? When the answer comes back zero, can we safely say that no one is racist?
It's much (much) more useful to evaluate a person's actions rather than what they say in public. The statistics speak for themselves: Conservatives elect white men more than any other demographic. As a complete counter to your other point: So do progressives/liberals - but it's far (far) less than conservatives do. (We're so prejudiced against them we vote for them literally ALL the time)
Also. It seems rather obvious you're just googling up articles. You might have noticed that the document you've linked is tied to a psychologist who writes for a blog called "The Conservative Social Psychologist".
Lastly - lets leave semantics alone, okay? Sorry if my use of the word "totally" was a bridge too far, but I think you are clearly arguing that progressives are more prejudiced than conservatives, sometimes by citing biased articles from sources that are clearly written by biased authors.
As to the argument about 50/50 splits. Men and women do have different interests in society, but this is of course as a result of the influence of society on them. Do you believe there is some gene in a woman's body that says to them "Maybe dont try for a career in the STEM fields"? Please, I'd love some research on that.
Far (far, far, far) more likely: Society has reinforced the notion that women shouldnt pursue interest in fields that are deemed more suitable for men. This includes politics, but also the aforementioned STEM fields. This is a societal bias, one of those "Fingers on the scale" I've mentioned a few times now.
Obviously I do not believe there is an explicit gene that handles STEM interest. I do believe there is a significant possibility our interests are guided, in part, by our genetic makeup on an individual level as well as between genders. So yes, I believe on some level, there is a natural process going on, along with influence from the surrounding social structure.
People too often dismiss the influence of genetics on who we are nowadays. Ideology has made it taboo, but it's becoming undeniable. As an example, it's pretty well established at this point that at least half, and most studies say more, of your I.Q is a function of your genetic makeup. This influences behavioral patterns. We shouldn't dismiss genetics outright in my view.
You're talking about qualities that are unverifiable scientifically. So I dont know how to take them other than as your subjective opinion.
You're also assuming that genetics don't have a bearing which is equally unverifiable. Anybody who has hung around both men and women enough know that there are differences in how they think. That is most likely not solely attributable to upbringing alone. Nothing about human nature is attributable to only one variable that I know of...
This part is true enough. And frankly (from strictly my own perspective) it's why even if this was the ONLY metric we could use in a sort of a blind taste test of candidates, and all I knew about them was their gender, I would probably pick the woman. Aside from the people I grew up with in high school, you are quite literally probably my best male "friend" in the world. And that isn't by accident or happenstance. I feel significantly dumber every time I hang around a group of more than three guys. A psychiatrist would probably tell me this is about my parents, and that's probably fair enough considering. My mom is the only reason my dad didn't crash and burn 20 years earlier than he did. Eventually, she couldn't do that lifting anymore.
Honestly though, a group of bro's is a whole lot more fun to hang out with than a group of females (in my experience anyway). Who else can you get stupid drunk with, burp and fart at will around, talk about sports trivia, old movies, music and comic books for hours, and play stupid games with all night long. Yeah it's not intellectually stimulating but it's nice to put the real world on the back-burner once in a while and just cut loose...
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
Sanders wouldn't have "conceded to Warren". That's not how elections work, so it's a silly question.
Apparently Trump is now saying he privately told Brian Kemp he was opening Georgia too soon. #1.) I don't believe this for a second because it flies against everything he has been saying for the last two weeks and #2.) it's actually pretty crazy how quickly Trump will stab even his most staunch allies in the back the second he feels it's necessary to give himself some cover. Trump is now talking out of both sides of his mouth pretty much constantly. One day he is calling for the "liberation" of 3 states, 72 hours later he's throwing Kemp under the bus for "liberating" Georgia. There are no positions and no plans here. Everything is focused on a single goal, which is his personal political survival.
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
No. Absolutely not - but then this is a weird question and no one is arguing that on a micro level that we should defer to women. I think that's the argument you want to be arguing against, but it's not the argument anyone is putting forward.
And it obviously does. I dont know how else to explain a systemic bias in a system to someone. In the event that you expect something to happen approximately x number of times, and it doesnt happen anywhere near as many times over a sufficiently large number of cases, there is an influence acting upon your system. In this case, we would expect to see more than 7% of women representing conservative districts in the US house based on demography as well as based on the fact that they can and are elected both in other regions and other countries. Even looking at the shoddy polling in which conservatives claim to be equally predisposed to electing men and women, you'd think there would be more than 7%.
Because we do not see this, we can infer there is an influence. It's not perception - it's reality. Is it the only bias? Almost certainly not - but the argument that there is no bias is ludicrous.
For the record, I absolutely do believe Warren being a woman played into her not getting elected. There's a long history of studies that find that Women are treated very differently than men who are running - such as seeing ambition in a man as a positive thing and a negative thing in a woman (See: Clinton) or how women on average have to be far more qualified to get a look than men typically do.
You can think whatever you want of Rachel Maddow and MSNBC, but she is the ONLY person in the national media who is focusing (nightly) on two major, major issues. The first being the carnage happening at nursing homes who simply are NOT prepared or capable of taking care of this without an influx of actual medical professionals. The second is that meat packing plants in rural states are clearly huge vectors for the virus that are threatening their entire surrounding communities. It's not just South Dakota now, but also Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin.
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
No. Absolutely not - but then this is a weird question and no one is arguing that on a micro level that we should defer to women. I think that's the argument you want to be arguing against, but it's not the argument anyone is putting forward.
And it obviously does. I dont know how else to explain a systemic bias in a system to someone. In the event that you expect something to happen approximately x number of times, and it doesnt happen anywhere near as many times over a sufficiently large number of cases, there is an influence acting upon your system. In this case, we would expect to see more than 7% of women representing conservative districts in the US house based on demography as well as based on the fact that they can and are elected both in other regions and other countries. Even looking at the shoddy polling in which conservatives claim to be equally predisposed to electing men and women, you'd think there would be more than 7%.
Because we do not see this, we can infer there is an influence. It's not perception - it's reality. Is it the only bias? Almost certainly not - but the argument that there is no bias is ludicrous.
For the record, I absolutely do believe Warren being a woman played into her not getting elected. There's a long history of studies that find that Women are treated very differently than men who are running - such as seeing ambition in a man as a positive thing and a negative thing in a woman (See: Clinton) or how women on average have to be far more qualified to get a look than men typically do.
Or maybe a lot of them try so hard to not be 'feminine' that they come across as fake. Just an impression I get from a lot of the more prominent female politicians. The answer for female representation isn't trying to be more 'manly' it's embracing their feminineness. Honestly that's a lot of what I hated about Hillary. It was almost like she was deliberately trying to not be female. I'll admit that I'm probably more turned off by hypocrisy than most but I think I'm not the only one who can sense a fake...
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
No. Absolutely not - but then this is a weird question and no one is arguing that on a micro level that we should defer to women. I think that's the argument you want to be arguing against, but it's not the argument anyone is putting forward.
And it obviously does. I dont know how else to explain a systemic bias in a system to someone. In the event that you expect something to happen approximately x number of times, and it doesnt happen anywhere near as many times over a sufficiently large number of cases, there is an influence acting upon your system. In this case, we would expect to see more than 7% of women representing conservative districts in the US house based on demography as well as based on the fact that they can and are elected both in other regions and other countries. Even looking at the shoddy polling in which conservatives claim to be equally predisposed to electing men and women, you'd think there would be more than 7%.
Because we do not see this, we can infer there is an influence. It's not perception - it's reality. Is it the only bias? Almost certainly not - but the argument that there is no bias is ludicrous.
For the record, I absolutely do believe Warren being a woman played into her not getting elected. There's a long history of studies that find that Women are treated very differently than men who are running - such as seeing ambition in a man as a positive thing and a negative thing in a woman (See: Clinton) or how women on average have to be far more qualified to get a look than men typically do.
Or maybe a lot of them try so hard to not be 'feminine' that they come across as fake. Just an impression I get from a lot of the more prominent female politicians. The answer for female representation isn't trying to be more 'manly' it's embracing their feminineness. Honestly that's a lot of what I hated about Hillary. It was almost like she was deliberately trying to not be female. I'll admit that I'm probably more turned off by hypocrisy than most but I think I'm not the only one who can sense a fake...
Again, I think this is indicative of a personality-based approach to politics that is mistaken. As opposed to a policy-based approach. Continuing to to emphasize things that don't truly matter, and that you cannot truly know, is a recipe for continuing to worsen our politics and therefore governance. I really think people need to try and consciously turn away from this kind of thinking, or emphasis.
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
No. Absolutely not - but then this is a weird question and no one is arguing that on a micro level that we should defer to women. I think that's the argument you want to be arguing against, but it's not the argument anyone is putting forward.
And it obviously does. I dont know how else to explain a systemic bias in a system to someone. In the event that you expect something to happen approximately x number of times, and it doesnt happen anywhere near as many times over a sufficiently large number of cases, there is an influence acting upon your system. In this case, we would expect to see more than 7% of women representing conservative districts in the US house based on demography as well as based on the fact that they can and are elected both in other regions and other countries. Even looking at the shoddy polling in which conservatives claim to be equally predisposed to electing men and women, you'd think there would be more than 7%.
Because we do not see this, we can infer there is an influence. It's not perception - it's reality. Is it the only bias? Almost certainly not - but the argument that there is no bias is ludicrous.
For the record, I absolutely do believe Warren being a woman played into her not getting elected. There's a long history of studies that find that Women are treated very differently than men who are running - such as seeing ambition in a man as a positive thing and a negative thing in a woman (See: Clinton) or how women on average have to be far more qualified to get a look than men typically do.
Or maybe a lot of them try so hard to not be 'feminine' that they come across as fake. Just an impression I get from a lot of the more prominent female politicians. The answer for female representation isn't trying to be more 'manly' it's embracing their feminineness. Honestly that's a lot of what I hated about Hillary. It was almost like she was deliberately trying to not be female. I'll admit that I'm probably more turned off by hypocrisy than most but I think I'm not the only one who can sense a fake...
Again, I think this is indicative of a personality-based approach to politics that is mistaken. As opposed to a policy-based approach. Continuing to to emphasize things that don't truly matter, and that you cannot truly know, is a recipe for continuing to worsen our politics and therefore governance. I really think people need to try and consciously turn away from this kind of thinking, or emphasis.
Why?
Are your assumptions somehow more valid than mine? Yours are unprovable as well. I said a few comments ago that I couldn't care less what gender a candidate is. My problem was Biden stating he'd only pick a female for his VP without saying who that female is. I think that was a bad approach and that he should have already made his pick before saying that. Sorry, but I just think it's bad optics and diminishes his pick in my mind.
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
No. Absolutely not - but then this is a weird question and no one is arguing that on a micro level that we should defer to women. I think that's the argument you want to be arguing against, but it's not the argument anyone is putting forward.
And it obviously does. I dont know how else to explain a systemic bias in a system to someone. In the event that you expect something to happen approximately x number of times, and it doesnt happen anywhere near as many times over a sufficiently large number of cases, there is an influence acting upon your system. In this case, we would expect to see more than 7% of women representing conservative districts in the US house based on demography as well as based on the fact that they can and are elected both in other regions and other countries. Even looking at the shoddy polling in which conservatives claim to be equally predisposed to electing men and women, you'd think there would be more than 7%.
Because we do not see this, we can infer there is an influence. It's not perception - it's reality. Is it the only bias? Almost certainly not - but the argument that there is no bias is ludicrous.
For the record, I absolutely do believe Warren being a woman played into her not getting elected. There's a long history of studies that find that Women are treated very differently than men who are running - such as seeing ambition in a man as a positive thing and a negative thing in a woman (See: Clinton) or how women on average have to be far more qualified to get a look than men typically do.
Or maybe a lot of them try so hard to not be 'feminine' that they come across as fake. Just an impression I get from a lot of the more prominent female politicians. The answer for female representation isn't trying to be more 'manly' it's embracing their feminineness. Honestly that's a lot of what I hated about Hillary. It was almost like she was deliberately trying to not be female. I'll admit that I'm probably more turned off by hypocrisy than most but I think I'm not the only one who can sense a fake...
Again, I think this is indicative of a personality-based approach to politics that is mistaken. As opposed to a policy-based approach. Continuing to to emphasize things that don't truly matter, and that you cannot truly know, is a recipe for continuing to worsen our politics and therefore governance. I really think people need to try and consciously turn away from this kind of thinking, or emphasis.
Why?
Are your assumptions somehow more valid than mine? Yours are unprovable as well. I said a few comments ago that I couldn't care less what gender a candidate is. My problem was Biden stating he'd only pick a female for his VP without saying who that female is. I think that was a bad approach and that he should have already made his pick before saying that. Sorry, but I just think it's bad optics and diminishes his pick in my mind.
A policy-based approach to politics is not at all unprovable. As I've demonstrated above in comparing health outcomes in countries with greater government run healthcare than the USA.
It's important to be precise here. I'm not talking about dishonesty generally. You said "maybe a lot them try so hard to not be 'feminine' that they come across as fake." This is a focus on a politician lying or misrepresenting their personality. Something that is unknowable for you and for almost all voters. If instead you were objecting that maybe some politicians aren't forthcoming about their views on an issue or a factual accounting of their past that would be different. But you're arguing about personality here. This is an extremely wrongheaded approach to improving politics, and a significant bloc of voters taking this approach is a contributing factor to why we don't have a meritocratic political system.
To state in more simple fashion. You can never know if a politician is more authentically feminine or whatever than what they are presenting as. So why focus on it?
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
No. Absolutely not - but then this is a weird question and no one is arguing that on a micro level that we should defer to women. I think that's the argument you want to be arguing against, but it's not the argument anyone is putting forward.
And it obviously does. I dont know how else to explain a systemic bias in a system to someone. In the event that you expect something to happen approximately x number of times, and it doesnt happen anywhere near as many times over a sufficiently large number of cases, there is an influence acting upon your system. In this case, we would expect to see more than 7% of women representing conservative districts in the US house based on demography as well as based on the fact that they can and are elected both in other regions and other countries. Even looking at the shoddy polling in which conservatives claim to be equally predisposed to electing men and women, you'd think there would be more than 7%.
Because we do not see this, we can infer there is an influence. It's not perception - it's reality. Is it the only bias? Almost certainly not - but the argument that there is no bias is ludicrous.
For the record, I absolutely do believe Warren being a woman played into her not getting elected. There's a long history of studies that find that Women are treated very differently than men who are running - such as seeing ambition in a man as a positive thing and a negative thing in a woman (See: Clinton) or how women on average have to be far more qualified to get a look than men typically do.
Or maybe a lot of them try so hard to not be 'feminine' that they come across as fake. Just an impression I get from a lot of the more prominent female politicians. The answer for female representation isn't trying to be more 'manly' it's embracing their feminineness. Honestly that's a lot of what I hated about Hillary. It was almost like she was deliberately trying to not be female. I'll admit that I'm probably more turned off by hypocrisy than most but I think I'm not the only one who can sense a fake...
Again, I think this is indicative of a personality-based approach to politics that is mistaken. As opposed to a policy-based approach. Continuing to to emphasize things that don't truly matter, and that you cannot truly know, is a recipe for continuing to worsen our politics and therefore governance. I really think people need to try and consciously turn away from this kind of thinking, or emphasis.
Why?
Are your assumptions somehow more valid than mine? Yours are unprovable as well. I said a few comments ago that I couldn't care less what gender a candidate is. My problem was Biden stating he'd only pick a female for his VP without saying who that female is. I think that was a bad approach and that he should have already made his pick before saying that. Sorry, but I just think it's bad optics and diminishes his pick in my mind.
I'm quite happy to accept that there are biological differences between the sexes, which lead to personality differences on average. However, that argument only applies on the macro level. Just as with physical characteristics there is a very wide range of variation, so even if there are recognizably 'masculine' and 'feminine' personalities, there will be many women with 'masculine' type personalities and many men with 'feminine' type personalities. Suggesting that a particular individual is trying to project a fake personality because they are not typical of their gender doesn't make sense to me.
That doesn't mean that we should be equally comfortable with particular personality traits and it's of course reasonable for people's votes to be influenced by whether they find someone's personality compatible - apart from anything else this affects how effective a particular politician will be in translating policy into practice. However, if we're talking about giving power over our lives to others, it would seem reasonable that what would a politician would aim to do with that power should also be important in voting decisions.
I noted this story in the BBC a day or two ago. Autopsies have shown that Covid-19 was circulating, and killing, people in the US significantly earlier than previously believed.
The reason I post this here, rather than in the Covid-19 thread is because there seems to be continuing momentum behind the push from the US to blame China for not warning the world about the disease sufficiently early. It illustrates the difficulty of identifying a new disease, whose symptoms are all commonly caused by other existing diseases.
Do you see how gender in this situation is lower in a tactical stand point when choosing the VP nomination. Biden doesn't need to win the women's vote. Trump has pretty much handed them to him. He does need to win swing states such as Michigan however and if he can get a viable candidate from that state, or any other swing state that's female, then that's icing. Or should he troll the conservatives and pick a person that Bernie supporters may get behind and choose Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she IMO doesn't have enough experience to be VP (although it'd be amazing to watch the right lose their mind over that pick... maybe in 2028).
AOC can't be a VP candidate because the requirements for office are the same as the office of President, namely, being at least 35. She's 30.
It has happened in the past that people were elected/appointed to House/Senate seats while being underage, but not in modern times with accurate recordkeeping.
Is it too late for me to change party affiliations? I'm abhorred as a vegetarian and as someone who hates mayonnaise.
(It's Senator Mark Warner making the most disgusting looking Tuna melt in creation).
I didn't see a problem with it, but I am not a vegetarian. I have never had a tuna melt though, I prefer just tuna salad on bread. With mayo, sweet relish, and I prefer Starkist tuna. That WAS a godawful amount of mayo he slathered on there though.
So apparently the guy running the day to day operations of the US pandemic response is not a scientist. Instead everything goes through a 37 year old Australian Labradoodle breeder before it gets to Alex Azar.
Comments
On tactical VP selection - Why is it too broad to select a woman but not too broad to select "Someone from the midwest" as an option? These two things are fundamentally the same, but you have an issue with one and not the other. That's why your argument doesnt answer the issue of tactical VP selection.
Biden had secured the nomination, he was so far ahead of Bernie that there was no chance of Bernie winning. It was fait accompli. The distinction has now moved from "One said it and the other didnt" to "One happened after the nominating convention and other didnt". Given the circumstances, these are meaningless determinations.
For the record - Another issue with Identity politic critics is a lack of recognition that demographics are already playing into elections. Trump lost the woman vote overwhelmingly. That block of voters is no less significant than midwestern or any other breakdown for any other reason.
It is a tactical choice to nominate a woman as VP. It would be a tactical choice to nominate a midwestern politician as VP. One is not different than the other.
Edit - you also keep returning to an argument that no one is making. No one wants a less capable person as VP. Since there are no objective qualities that define a more or less capable person for VP, it's not something we answer objectively.
Furthermore. No one is saying that it's bad when two men are competing against each other and a man is elected. That's not be anyone's argument at any point. However, when every presidential election in history has been between two men (except once - and usually there are a lot more than just 2 men running), it's fair to point out the societal imbalances that are actively pushing the country in that direction. It's also fair to want to push back.
The idea that conservatives are somehow totally indifferent to the ethnic and demographic breakdown of the political class can clearly and obviously be seen to be false based exactly upon who they elect. If they "dont care" about the makeup of their elected officials, there would be more than 7% of women representing them in the US house.
As to the argument about 50/50 splits. Men and women do have different interests in society, but this is of course as a result of the influence of society on them. Do you believe there is some gene in a woman's body that says to them "Maybe dont try for a career in the STEM fields"? Please, I'd love some research on that.
Far (far, far, far) more likely: Society has reinforced the notion that women shouldnt pursue interest in fields that are deemed more suitable for men. This includes politics, but also the aforementioned STEM fields. This is a societal bias, one of those "Fingers on the scale" I've mentioned a few times now.
My grandmother had a responsible job with a bank that she would have liked to keep. Unfortunately for her she wanted to get married and the bank had a policy that it would not employ married women (as they were expected to keep house for their husband). That was the norm rather than an exception for professional work in those days ...
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/22/21228651/opening-up-save-economy-trump-coronavirus-pandemic-shutdown
Politicians hoping to jolt the economy back to life might be in for some disappointment when they discover governors can let businesses reopen but they can’t force people to patronize them.
The problem is a question of fear. Americans fear spreading or contracting infection, so much so that they’ve overwhelmingly participated in social distancing measures. They tell pollsters by wide margins that they fear lifting those restrictions too soon much more so than too late. They’re willing to stay put even if it harms the economy.
They also fear economic hardship. That’s led prudent people, even those left relatively unharmed by the downturn so far, to delay nonessential purchases, like new cars, appliances, clothes, and other goods.
Whatever choices state officials make about opening things up, there’s not going to be a vibrant economy until real steps are taken to address those dual sources of fear.
Unless you do massive South Korea-style testing and contact tracing, shit isn't coming back. SOME people will go back. But as the article states, even a 20-30% drop in patronage is going to sink most restaurants. Waving a magic wand at a press conference a declaring something really loudly isn't going to get the job done.
Restaurants are either going to have to rely on a skeleton crew to handle take-out and delivery orders on limited hours (which from my pouring over Doordash lately seems to be exactly what is happening) or they are just not going to be there at all anymore. You can open movie theaters, but NO studio is going to release anything they believe can make money right now. If anything, they'll make a deal to stream it before they drop it in theaters that are 95% empty. No one is going to buy a car, no one is going to buy a house, no one is going on vacation. Those are just 5 things that ON THEIR OWN, will crater the economy even further.
Woah now, let's not put words in my mouth. I never said anyone was totally indifferent. No group of people is. I did say that the white progressive bias against whites is the strongest racial prejudice in modern politics, and this appears to be the case. Even the least favorable polls I can find on republicans comfort levels in voting for women have them as more comfortable than white progressives voting for old white men. It's bizarre, frankly, with them being the ones so quick to label everyone else as well as the entire social structure to be prejudiced.
https://psyarxiv.com/s52qz/
Obviously I do not believe there is an explicit gene that handles STEM interest. I do believe there is a significant possibility our interests are guided, in part, by our genetic makeup on an individual level as well as between genders. So yes, I believe on some level, there is a natural process going on, along with influence from the surrounding social structure.
People too often dismiss the influence of genetics on who we are nowadays. Ideology has made it taboo, but it's becoming undeniable. As an example, it's pretty well established at this point that at least half, and most studies say more, of your I.Q is a function of your genetic makeup. This influences behavioral patterns. We shouldn't dismiss genetics outright in my view.
Polls are an absolutely awful metric to use to determine something like how people feel about racism or other social taboos that society frowns upon. If you polled 1000 people with the simple question 'Are you racist?" - do you think anyone in that poll would answer yes? More to the point, would you trust in the sincerity of those answers? When the answer comes back zero, can we safely say that no one is racist?
It's much (much) more useful to evaluate a person's actions rather than what they say in public. The statistics speak for themselves: Conservatives elect white men more than any other demographic. As a complete counter to your other point: So do progressives/liberals - but it's far (far) less than conservatives do. (We're so prejudiced against them we vote for them literally ALL the time)
Also. It seems rather obvious you're just googling up articles. You might have noticed that the document you've linked is tied to a psychologist who writes for a blog called "The Conservative Social Psychologist".
Lastly - lets leave semantics alone, okay? Sorry if my use of the word "totally" was a bridge too far, but I think you are clearly arguing that progressives are more prejudiced than conservatives, sometimes by citing biased articles from sources that are clearly written by biased authors.
You're talking about qualities that are unverifiable scientifically. So I dont know how to take them other than as your subjective opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias
We should all attempt to consider any implicit biases in the data has before we draw conclusions from it.
Because Midwest is what, a quarter of the united states and women are half of it... The VP candidate, as you pointed out, needs to have qualities or merits that the President is lacking. For example, again Pence, having him as VP allowed Christian Conservatives to swallow their moral objection against Trump and cast a vote his way presumably. Being a woman is not a quality or merit. It's a gender.
But here is something I just thought of for this 'tactical' pick conversation. Which woman is on the fence between Trump and Biden that having a VP as a woman going to swing her over? I am pretty sure it is a miniscule number.
Now how many people from swing state Michigan are on the fence and will vote for Biden if Gretchen Witmer was appointed as VP? Probably enough to swing those E Votes to his favour.
Do you see how gender in this situation is lower in a tactical stand point when choosing the VP nomination. Biden doesn't need to win the women's vote. Trump has pretty much handed them to him. He does need to win swing states such as Michigan however and if he can get a viable candidate from that state, or any other swing state that's female, then that's icing. Or should he troll the conservatives and pick a person that Bernie supporters may get behind and choose Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she IMO doesn't have enough experience to be VP (although it'd be amazing to watch the right lose their mind over that pick... maybe in 2028).
It was your argument when you are claiming there needs to be a 50 50 split. If women aren't running, for any reasons, they are not going to be elected. WHY they are not running can be looked at and addressed however... which again, the democratic party has seemed to been doing for the last 2 decades.
And please go back and read where I addressed the history of American elections when it comes to women running. Looking at the entire history is unfair as those societal imbalances are not the same as they are now. There may still be an imbalance, but it isn't as drastic as you are making it out to be. If they did exist, Clinton wouldn't have done as well as she did.
It helps to coalesce progressive voters to his side. Trump is objectively terrible with women, but Biden isnt particularly good with them. So reaching out them as a tactical choice makes sense.
Demography is a complicated issue - An evangelical conservative woman was probably more likely to vote for Trump than Clinton. The election was so razor thin in PA, WI and MI that had Clinton won even a few significant groups of people by a little bit more, she would have won the election.
Sure. And reports are she's being considered. He may have said he was going to pick a woman, but that doesnt mean he will pick one at random.
You havent necessarily proved this. The counter argument exists that Trump picked a white evangelical which is significant because those people were almost certainly not going to vote for a Democrat in 2016. Really - your own argument almost works perfectly in reverse. Biden is not terribly well liked by women in general. More than Trump, sure. Just as Trump shored up his own based with his selection, Biden would be doing the same thing.
No. It wasnt my argument. That you think this was my argument shows you've fundamentally misunderstood me.
I'm not saying there needs to be a 50/50 split for the president in any given year, or in any one particular local election between a small group of people. We can draw no conclusions from that event because of a lack of sample size.
I'm say that once you have a significant sample size, it's fair game to look at that sample and determine if there are outside biases on it. In this case, the utter lack of women candidates shows a clear societal bias against voting for women to higher office. That doesnt mean that there was a clear and specific bias in 2004 when George Bush beat John Kerry in the US presidential election. That was a singular event. It's a data point that needs to be folded into every single election before a conclusion can be drawn. When you realize that only 1 major ticket in US history has ever had a woman on it, you can draw conclusions from *that*. Even if we account and move up to when women obtained suffrage or any other date you want to select.
This is why I've been almost uniformly been diverting the conversion to one about lawmakers and congress. It's much easier to evaluate the trend and nature of voters when there are 435 different elections every 2 years. The fact that women are so incredibly unrepresented in this fact demonstrates a clear bias.
All of that said - Nominating a woman as your VP is historically significant because of the under-representation. It was significant when it was Palin too.
Things have improved - but there is still a clear imbalance. I dont know what else you want me to say here other than I dont think waiting 30+ years for a female president is reasonable, or wanting congress to have more than 25% of its population be women. I'm going to keep agitating for that - I dont care if it makes conservatives uncomfortable.
Yep, this is a very important point. For example, polling has consistently shown that people report having voted higher than actual election turnout numbers show. So if people are going to lie, or misremember, on even a mundane fact like that...
Social scientists have known this for a long time, which is why when they want to measure racial resentment they don't ask straightforward questions like "Do you like black people?"
It's also, of course, flatly absurd to suggest that the *main* source of discrimination in American politics is progressive whites. The party with the multi-racial coalition of voters are the real racists? Not the party that is almost entirely of one race? No idea how people state that kind of analysis with a straight face.
Is it too late for me to change party affiliations? I'm abhorred as a vegetarian and as someone who hates mayonnaise.
(It's Senator Mark Warner making the most disgusting looking Tuna melt in creation).
I'm too busy worrying about the Mayor of Las Vegas offering up every casino worker in town as a "control group" for the rest of the country.
No it doesn't. It only shows a perception of such. There is more to women not running or being elected for political office than societal gender roles, especially in today's society.
I'll bring up these questions once again: Should Sanders have conceded to Elizabeth Warren because she was female and their policies were aligned? Should people have voted for her over Sanders because of her gender? Or were there other reasons to choose Sanders over Warren? I do not think for a second the reason why Warren did so poorly was due to her gender.
You're also assuming that genetics don't have a bearing which is equally unverifiable. Anybody who has hung around both men and women enough know that there are differences in how they think. That is most likely not solely attributable to upbringing alone. Nothing about human nature is attributable to only one variable that I know of...
Warren has the charisma of a Brussels sprout. That hurt her far more than being female...
This part is true enough. And frankly (from strictly my own perspective) it's why even if this was the ONLY metric we could use in a sort of a blind taste test of candidates, and all I knew about them was their gender, I would probably pick the woman. Aside from the people I grew up with in high school, you are quite literally probably my best male "friend" in the world. And that isn't by accident or happenstance. I feel significantly dumber every time I hang around a group of more than three guys. A psychiatrist would probably tell me this is about my parents, and that's probably fair enough considering. My mom is the only reason my dad didn't crash and burn 20 years earlier than he did. Eventually, she couldn't do that lifting anymore.
'Behind every great Man is a great Woman'
Honestly though, a group of bro's is a whole lot more fun to hang out with than a group of females (in my experience anyway). Who else can you get stupid drunk with, burp and fart at will around, talk about sports trivia, old movies, music and comic books for hours, and play stupid games with all night long. Yeah it's not intellectually stimulating but it's nice to put the real world on the back-burner once in a while and just cut loose...
Sanders wouldn't have "conceded to Warren". That's not how elections work, so it's a silly question.
No. Absolutely not - but then this is a weird question and no one is arguing that on a micro level that we should defer to women. I think that's the argument you want to be arguing against, but it's not the argument anyone is putting forward.
And it obviously does. I dont know how else to explain a systemic bias in a system to someone. In the event that you expect something to happen approximately x number of times, and it doesnt happen anywhere near as many times over a sufficiently large number of cases, there is an influence acting upon your system. In this case, we would expect to see more than 7% of women representing conservative districts in the US house based on demography as well as based on the fact that they can and are elected both in other regions and other countries. Even looking at the shoddy polling in which conservatives claim to be equally predisposed to electing men and women, you'd think there would be more than 7%.
Because we do not see this, we can infer there is an influence. It's not perception - it's reality. Is it the only bias? Almost certainly not - but the argument that there is no bias is ludicrous.
For the record, I absolutely do believe Warren being a woman played into her not getting elected. There's a long history of studies that find that Women are treated very differently than men who are running - such as seeing ambition in a man as a positive thing and a negative thing in a woman (See: Clinton) or how women on average have to be far more qualified to get a look than men typically do.
Or maybe a lot of them try so hard to not be 'feminine' that they come across as fake. Just an impression I get from a lot of the more prominent female politicians. The answer for female representation isn't trying to be more 'manly' it's embracing their feminineness. Honestly that's a lot of what I hated about Hillary. It was almost like she was deliberately trying to not be female. I'll admit that I'm probably more turned off by hypocrisy than most but I think I'm not the only one who can sense a fake...
Again, I think this is indicative of a personality-based approach to politics that is mistaken. As opposed to a policy-based approach. Continuing to to emphasize things that don't truly matter, and that you cannot truly know, is a recipe for continuing to worsen our politics and therefore governance. I really think people need to try and consciously turn away from this kind of thinking, or emphasis.
Why?
Are your assumptions somehow more valid than mine? Yours are unprovable as well. I said a few comments ago that I couldn't care less what gender a candidate is. My problem was Biden stating he'd only pick a female for his VP without saying who that female is. I think that was a bad approach and that he should have already made his pick before saying that. Sorry, but I just think it's bad optics and diminishes his pick in my mind.
A policy-based approach to politics is not at all unprovable. As I've demonstrated above in comparing health outcomes in countries with greater government run healthcare than the USA.
It's important to be precise here. I'm not talking about dishonesty generally. You said "maybe a lot them try so hard to not be 'feminine' that they come across as fake." This is a focus on a politician lying or misrepresenting their personality. Something that is unknowable for you and for almost all voters. If instead you were objecting that maybe some politicians aren't forthcoming about their views on an issue or a factual accounting of their past that would be different. But you're arguing about personality here. This is an extremely wrongheaded approach to improving politics, and a significant bloc of voters taking this approach is a contributing factor to why we don't have a meritocratic political system.
To state in more simple fashion. You can never know if a politician is more authentically feminine or whatever than what they are presenting as. So why focus on it?
I'm quite happy to accept that there are biological differences between the sexes, which lead to personality differences on average. However, that argument only applies on the macro level. Just as with physical characteristics there is a very wide range of variation, so even if there are recognizably 'masculine' and 'feminine' personalities, there will be many women with 'masculine' type personalities and many men with 'feminine' type personalities. Suggesting that a particular individual is trying to project a fake personality because they are not typical of their gender doesn't make sense to me.
That doesn't mean that we should be equally comfortable with particular personality traits and it's of course reasonable for people's votes to be influenced by whether they find someone's personality compatible - apart from anything else this affects how effective a particular politician will be in translating policy into practice. However, if we're talking about giving power over our lives to others, it would seem reasonable that what would a politician would aim to do with that power should also be important in voting decisions.
The reason I post this here, rather than in the Covid-19 thread is because there seems to be continuing momentum behind the push from the US to blame China for not warning the world about the disease sufficiently early. It illustrates the difficulty of identifying a new disease, whose symptoms are all commonly caused by other existing diseases.
A video
AOC can't be a VP candidate because the requirements for office are the same as the office of President, namely, being at least 35. She's 30.
It has happened in the past that people were elected/appointed to House/Senate seats while being underage, but not in modern times with accurate recordkeeping.
I didn't see a problem with it, but I am not a vegetarian. I have never had a tuna melt though, I prefer just tuna salad on bread. With mayo, sweet relish, and I prefer Starkist tuna. That WAS a godawful amount of mayo he slathered on there though.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-hhschief-speci/special-report-former-labradoodle-breeder-tapped-to-lead-u-s-pandemic-task-force-idUSKCN2243CE