I've been generally on the side of those who think that what's been happening in Syria has wider importance, so that's going to be my contribution for this week. I have no idea whether or not the regime will fall, but it certainly seemed that the events in Damascus this week were a significant step.
As far as not mattering...that's easy; this week's big flap over Obama's "didn't built that" comment is a classic one.
So, what do you have? What do you think mattered this week?
Gotta mention Aurora.
ReplyDeleteCall me crazy, but the discussion surrounding this one seems more sober and clear-headed than in past shootings. I don't think any votes or policies will change because of this, but I think it might be contributing to the dialogue. And, of course, it matters immensely for those involved.
Aurora mattered for me personally. I wasn't involved or anything like that, but gun control jumped to the top of my personal list of political priorities, and I doubt I'm alone. I'm not willing to let more people die so that gun nuts can play with assault weapons. If you can shoot 71 people in a few minutes with a weapon, it should be banned. Enough is enough.
ReplyDeleteThe Plain Blog party line is that gun control is just a paranoid delusion stirred up by Republicans to get votes.
DeleteDoncha know that when everybody is armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, we'll all be so much safer? Nonpartisan legal scholar Eugene Volochh told me so.
DeleteAnd ensuring the profits of gun companies has nothing to do with this. You hear me? NOTHING!
purusha -- I find it hard to believe Volokh said that. For starters, very few civilians own automatic weapons. (Almost all "assault weapons" are semi-automatic.)
DeleteEugene Volokh has a great website on law from a libertarian perspective: http://www.volokh.com/
Eugene Volokh is a right-wing POS.
DeleteCouves,
DeleteI don't know about "party line." My observation is that there has not been and that there is not now any Democratic agenda on gun control. I think opinion in the party is about where it's always been -- net moderately pro- -- but that since 1993 the operative position has been not to do anything. Basically, there's always been a smallish group of Dems for whom it's a very important issue, a slim minority who actively oppose gun control, and the bulk of the party who are moderately pro-control...but since 1993, they've moved from "find something we can do that will be popular enough to be worth it" to "avoid this issue at all costs."
But of course that could conceivably change in the future. I don't anticipate that it will change soon, and I don't anticipate that this week will be the thing that does it, but I have no problem with speculation about the future. What I do have a problem with is theories that the Obama administration or the majority of Dems in Congress have been to now actively engaged in doing anything about it, including actively trying to set up a situation where they would then be able to do something about it.
Jonathan, I think it's unlikely that any gun control will actually be enacted anytime soon, but there's been enough talk that the concerns of gun owners don't seem so crazy after all. As you know, politics isn't just about the legislative process, but the public debate as well.
DeleteThe actual talk from the NRA and others is about how F&F was a scheme to get gun control enacted, and how the United Nations is about to force the US government to take guns away. Do you really want to defend those as not crazy?
DeleteOn top of which...even if the Dems reverted to their 1980s/early 1990s agenda (Brady Bill + some sort of restriction on automatic and semi-automatic weapons), that's still not even remotely close to the "taking away our guns" rhetoric that's out there.
Exactly. When did the Right to Bear Arms turn into the Right to Not Have to Reload This Week?
DeleteThere’s plenty of talk on the left about how “no one needs an assault rifle.” Well, the AR-15 assault rifle was the best-selling long arm in the country last year. You’re ignoring political reality if you don’t think that the right to own these firearms is being challenged by the left.
DeleteYou didn't answer my question, Couves.
DeleteAnon, your answer:
DeleteThe second amendment guarantees the right to own and use not only hunting rifles/shotguns and handguns, but also light infantry arms (ie, what the militiaman of the day might carry). I think you could justify making 100-round drum mags illegal, but not the standard 30-round mags carried by our National Guard.
Americans have a long tradition of enjoying the use of the same firearms they carry while serving the military. Indeed, it’s a sport that’s encouraged by the Congressionally-chartered Civilian Marksmanship Program, which sells Government surplus M1 semi-auto rifles (and carbines) and sponsors “High Power Rifle” training and matches, which use AR-15 clones of the M4 now carried by our men and women overseas.
The AR-15 category individually outsells every other category of long guns (shotguns and other rifles). Democrats know this, so new gun control is unlikely, but far from impossible.
Anon, made me think of you… during the Civil War, Confederates referred to the newly invented lever action rifle as "that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!"
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_rifle
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ReplyDeleteThe Philly Fed Survey was truly terrible, and very bad news for Obama's chances. I think we might hear more about rising unemployment in weeks to come.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if Obama's comment reveals his true feelings, but it does reveal the feelings of the Democratic base that he's trying to appeal to (taking his cue from Elizabeth Warren here). I'm not sure it's a smart move by the President -- because, as we've seen, it will rouse the GOP base as well.
ReplyDeleteYeah - who knows what might happen if the GOP base gets roused to anger over something Obama said or did!
DeleteAnon -- So you don't think getting out the base has an important role in winning elections?
DeleteI'd say that the base does matter, but that mini-gaffes like these have an insignificant or no influence mobilizing it. If this speech made you angry at Obama, then you were already angry at Obama.
Delete(Conversely, I don't think this had any positive effect on mobilizing Obama's base for the same reasons).
"If this speech made you angry at Obama, then you were already angry at Obama."
DeleteBut perhaps not angry enough to be all that interested in helping Mitt. Campaigns aren't just about convincing undecided voters, but also raising the interest level and passions of your own side so that the partisans actually donate, volunteer and vote. Turning out the base is especially important for these two candidates because they both have problems with their base.
Again, I dont disagree that getting your side to the polls is important. But I don't see this incident having any kind of counterfactual effect on stirring up the bases. I think the arrow of causation goes in the other direction. These sorts of gaffes gain traction precisely because of revved up bases that fan the flames over very minor things.
DeleteI also think the effect of angry base activists volunteering and donating is overstated because these acts dont have much influence over election results.
So all in all, its hard for me to see 'you didnt build it' mattering much.
Anon, it was a carefully crafted speech. So the Obama camp seemed to think it would help rally his base. He's also rallying his base against Romney, all the time. Romney, in turn, does the same. Maybe they're both just wasting their time, but I doubt it.
DeleteMy sense is it's a Nash equilibrium kind of thing. Neither side really gains much from campaigning, ads, having your surrogates on cable TV, etc. but if you stopped doing all of those entirely and the other side continued, they could probably take advantage of their monopoly and sway some voters. So it "matters" in the sense that totally abdicating from campaigning could harm a candidate, but rarely will the specific content of a campaign particle matter on its own.
DeleteI also wonder if campaign professionals behave the way they do due to peer effects and risk aversion. They basically see all their peers and mentors run campaigns a certain way and unconsciously mimic those things. And they also dont want to rock the boat with anything different. Even if traditional campaign stuff has little to no effect, plenty of people have gained livelihoods supplying it. So why be the one guy who says "the political science literature says X doesn't work and Y maybe sometimes moves the needle a few percentage points. Let's devote 100% of our money to Y and 0% to X instead of the previous 50/50 split." If things go wrong, your career arc becomes a lot flatter. But if you continue to go with what's traditional, whether it works or not, you're probably going to continue collecting paychecks for as long as there are elections.
(BTW Im not a political scientist, so feel free to correct/amend any of these points, qualified Plainblog commenters).
No, I pretty much agree down the line with Anon in this part of the thread.
DeleteJonathan, after your impressive defense of politics post-Aurora, I'm very surprised to hear you say that. Even if campaigns have only a marginal impact on the final outcome, that doesn't mean they don't matter. They're an essential part of the national political conversation that is essential to our democracy. (Even hopeless, losing campaigns have the potential for bringing about long-term change -- Ron Paul has awakened libertarians, for example.)
DeleteThe specific importance here isn't so much that Romney or Obama gain some slight advantage from this latest exchange, but that Obama has begun using Elizabeth Warren's rhetoric. This both reflects the popularity of Warren's (and maybe Occupy’s) Progressivism with the base, and also itself improves the chances that this strain of liberalism will prosper. From a poli-sci perspective, that’s the importance here -- the evolution of the Democratic party-- which will be missed by most people, who are only interested in the horserace aspect of the campaign.
Eh. Yes, campaign rhetoric can matter in all kinds of ways beyond electoral effects (which is not what the above discussion was about, anyway).
DeleteBut I really don't think that there was anything particularly new about Obama's rhetoric in the "build that" speech. He's been using it for a long while now.
Jonathan,
DeleteI was just circling back to elaborate on my initial comment -- Anon sidetracked me a bit.
As to there being "nothing new" about this rhetoric... that may be, but it's becoming part of our political conversation NOW -- that's what matters. It began with Elizabeth Warren (I think it was a Jon Stewart appearance that went viral), now that it's become part of the Presidential campaign back-and-forth, the public debate has intensified. This stuff really matters -- after reading your post-Aurora pean to democracy, I'm surprised that you don't see it.
What eventually is going to have really mattered this week was the growing chorus linking U.S. weather, drought, fires etc. to the climate crisis, as well as the latest melting reported in Greenland. Bill McKibben's Rolling Stone piece in particular, also Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker, state in stark terms the incredible denial in presidential politics as well as from the extreme right--even worse than gun control, if that's possible. But this week the drought in the U.S. in particular has shown it's going to have political impact pretty soon.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. This is going to matter more and more.
Deleteclimate is not weather, this is just the inverse of "it's snowing, therefore Al Gore is wrong".
DeleteSorry but that's a non sequiter. Climate is not weather is meaningless in this context: the climate is changing, reflected in more extreme weather events, as many climate scientists are saying. Besides, these weather-related events, the drought especially, are going to have economic and political effects--very soon.
DeleteThe problem is that many people don't care enough to take a step back and look how the climate is changing in the years and decades - or if they do they cherry-pick the data they want. Until they finally wake up when hit with extreme weather.
DeleteGoing from "everything's fine" to "how did this happen" like that is not the best course of action, but unfortunately it's very human...
Regarding gun control, I keep hearing lately that studies show there is no correlation between gun-control laws and the incidence of gun violence. Do any of you know anything about that? Are these studies valid? Any comparison of, say, New York and Virginia is going to be undermined by the fact that New York is flooded with guns from Virginia. And, by the way, who sponsors these studies? The NRA got Congress to cut off all federal funding for such studies back in the mid-90s. (As I recall, researchers were beginning to use epidemiological methodologies to study patterns of gun violence and that allegedly had to be stopped because they were treating gun ownership like a disease rather than a constitutional right.)
ReplyDeleteRichard Florida just wrote a piece arguing the opposite. New York has a low gun violence rate, by the way (a consequence of the sharp drop in crime in NYC?)
DeleteHow do you control for effects such as outside groups paying locals to purchase guns for them, a la Fast and Furious? If anyone can drive to Phoenix and pay a local $100 extra to buy them the gun of their dreams, then it doesn't matter what the laws in Florida say. Or Mexico, for that matter.
DeleteBy the way, just what constitutes a "gaffe"? According to my dictionary, a gaffe is the same as a blunder and a blunder is a stupid mistake. From what I can see, Obama's latest gaffe consists of a poorly worded extemporaneous remark taken out of context. Now, I'll admit that my tendency is to interpret his ambiguous remarks in a positive way whereas others, less sympathethic, will interpret them in a negative way, quite apart from any malicious "spin" (or even before you get to the malicious spin, as the case may be). That's part of human psychology. So, in my reading, all he's saying here is that successful people who don't think they ought to pay taxes because they don't owe their success to anyone but themselves are, as they say, full of it. If so, I don't see how that constitutes a stupid mistake.
ReplyDeleteIf the mistake is in not foreseeing that the other side is going to distort your remarks, then you shouldn't open your mouth in the first place.
DeleteEurocrisis + economic news showing slower growth state-side. Politics aside, I'm someone who works with families across the socio-economic spectrum and I have to say that all the statements people make about it being "tough out there" are completely 100 percent true. I've been with middle class families who have been gradually accepting a new reality of lower expectations, lower income, less (and often no) financial planning for the future, and deeper debt. And I've been with lower income families who have seen already meager sources of income dry up. When I read about those macro-economic shocks in Europe, Asia and our own disastrous financial sector, I can't just think about how it matters politically... I have to wonder and worry how it will matter practically for the people who I work with. What happens to these people if Romney is elected due to another economic collapse sinking Obama, and then implements the Ryan plan? The people I work with don't read the news like I do, they don't spend time thinking about policy and how big events translate into changes in daily life. They don't know what's coming.
ReplyDelete