Who will be the next world power?

And your argument falls apart. Familiar with the false dichotomy, right? There are more than two reasons, some more or less valid than others.McCain's goal was obviously to win. So why did Palin become the VP nominee?Given that McCain's goal is to win, your first choice doesn't make any sense. If is his goal was to lose, you have to show that. People generally don't run for office with the goal of losing. They might run knowing they will never win but to try and make a point (see: Nader).Your second choice requires knowing what the republican party's thought process was about the Palin pick. Did they expect to pick up voters because Palin was a woman? Yes. Was that the only group they expected to pick up? No. They were gunning for the most important republican constituency--social conservatives. The moral majority was vocally unhappy with McCain. He just wasn't one of them like Bush was. Now then, McCain is aiming to win. He needs his bases covered, and a key base is slipping away. Mike Huckabee could have been a good choice to shore up social conservative support. Romney? Never. The moral majority is even more uncomfortable with him than with McCain (he's moderate and -gasp!- mormon). So why not Huckabee or some other popular social conservative? Well, the woman angle certainly makes sense in this narrative. Two for the price of one: pick off disgruntled Clinton supporters, get the social conservative vote.Of course, this article from Politico can help answer why Palin (though it doesn't actually say what her answers were):
McCain vetter: Palin nailed interview - POLITICOAnd it's not hard to see the response of the social conservatives to her: she's far more popular than Huckawho?So here we now have several possible answers as to why it was a McCain/Palin ticket:
1)to lose the race
2)to capture, or at least improve their standing in the "I want to vote for a woman" crowd
3)to shore up social conservative support
4)because McCain liked her over all the others that he could have had
5)some combination of the previous reasons
6)some reason I could be completely missingPersonally, I think electoral math played a large role in her selection. If it wasn't for the fact that she did so miserably in interviews, the one debate, or had various ethical problems, or if she hadn't manage to alienate so many more voters than she actually attracted, the race could have been closer. Why does it sound conspiratorial? Namely, because Kerry wasn't running to lose. What you're arguing is that politicians are purposefully, strategically losing now to build up for the future. How does that make any sense? What if Bush didn't fuck up Katrina? What if bin Laden was actually found? What if the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had actually turned out well? Then planning on losing is the losing proposition, because voters reward success. You don't really know what the future holds. You can try and predict it. Some things are actually relatively easy to predict (such as the Iraq war morass). But other things, like Katrina (did you know in 2004 that Katrina would hit New Orleans in 2005, much less that there would be a Katrina that year?), aren't.So you've laid out this brilliant strategy. We know that the republicans will screw it all up. So let's lose now. When they've taken their hits, we can pick up the whole game in one swoop. Except you can't actually know, and people generally, if ever run to lose on purpose. Heh. Well, the only way you'll get me drunk is to trick me. I don't drink. So no such luck trying to get me drunk and then cut my hair. But if I do go to London or Miami will certainly look you all up.Edited by kuresu, : I hate negatives.

See, this is the problem.This goes against everything in politics, and really, in power.You have to convincingly show us that the democrats picked Kerry to lose. That the republicans picked McCain to lose.There's the conspiracy. There's the puppetmasters that you need to show us.Who picks the nominees? Well, the voters. Which means all the voters have to be in on the game, or else it's not going to work.Ask the democrats from 2004. Ask them if they were purposefully trying to lose.Ask the republicans from 2008. Ask them if they were purposefully trying to lose.The answer is no. Why?The game, as you said, is power.In the game of power, you seek to maximize how much of it you have.Being locked out of the presidency minimizes your power, and there is no guarantee you can get the presidency next time anyhow. Politics is not like chess or war, where tactically losing (feinting) can lead to a big strategic win. In chess and war, you have greater control over the future events than you do in politics (particularly in chess, in which future moves are quite restricted).It's not just big business angling for power, but politicians. They're not simply tools of big business to carry out their agenda. The party in power basically always gets more donations, because that's where the political power to get stuff done lies. If you're not in charge, you don't have the political power necessary, and so the money won't be rolling in trying to convince you to enact legislation beneficial to big business. This would tie into your conspiracy theory, no? From the very mouths of social conservatives. Same for their opinion on Palin. Go read some right-wing blogs, like FreeRepublic, or PajamasTV. It may have been propaganda, but propaganda can work really well off of previous prejudices; Obama is different, and so all the propaganda about him (terrorist, muslim, etc) works really well because it plays into people's preconceived fears and ideas. Same thing about Romney; he supported the right to have an abortion (a litmus test for many a social conservative) and generally quite socially moderate, and he was -gasp!- mormon, a group viewed warily for some reason by a lot of social conservatives. A couple of problems. You focused on "the reason", not "reasons". Choices are rarely down to one specific thing. And second, it's a pretty safe bet to say they do think people are that stupid, as Palin did actually draw off some disgruntled voters because she was a woman; check out the exit polls and other polling on the issue. But it's not the only reason.Palin lit a spark in the social conservative crowd. Even today she's really quite popular with them, and again, the exit polls show that a lot of people voted for McCain/Palin simply because Palin was Bush--one of them. Not because she was a woman. Without Palin, but with Romney, they likely would have stayed home (as happened in some cases anyhow, such as in Ohio).Your conspiracy theory rests on people purposefully looking to minimize their power in order to maximize it later, but without any guarantees that they will be able to. Here's a test case for you.The republicans lost badly over 2006 and 2008. Why did they lose? Well, the voters were unhappy with them. But what if they were losing on purpose? What do they hope to gain? They've lost all their power. They no longer chair the important committees, soon they can't even filibuster (not that Specter will actually vote for the legislation, but if he doesn't vote to break the filibuster I can guarantee he'll be thrown out in the primary) to stop legislation. They don't have the ability to set the agenda. So why would they lose on purpose? Here's your chance to prove a conspiratorial theory in situ, without any monday morning quaterbacking.

A minor quibble for starters.It's a little difficult to call the federal aid given to the auto companies a bailout, because the money didn't bail them out of anything.If it did, they wouldn't be headed towards bankruptcy right now.Anyhow, that money has to be repaid to the federal government. Sure, get the money now, but how much fun can it be to have to pay it back? That's going to cut into any profits they do manage to make. The interest of a company is in making profits. Of course, they can only make profits if they survive, but the funds they got didn't manage that, so now not only do they have to pay back the money they borrowed, they have to go through bankruptcy. If there's a conspiracy there, somebody got it really wrong and has a very sour lemon right now.On another note, what, exactly, did the federal aid go to? Well, unlike AIG, it seems that the money (so far as we've heard) has actually gone to creditors and whoever else GM and Chrysler owed money to. It kept them from failing last december. Did you really want them to fail last december? At least now we can probably better absorb the shock that's coming. Last december, had they failed when everything else was definitely in the shitter, it would certainly be worse than now.Finally, auto company home Michigan voted for Romney in the republican primary. If there's going to be any place that the auto industry has undeniable influence, it's there. So if the auto industry wanted McCain over Romney, they failed big time in their backyard.

This is too funny. Do you know when McCain had the nomination wrapped up? March 08. That would be when both he and Romney were against auto bailouts. Indeed, that would be before the bailouts were even an issue.The date of the interview, if TP is any indication, is Oct. 31st. His previous stance was articulated in June. Why might McCain be switching position? Well, he kind of said that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" at the wrong time. People started buying into Obama's economic message more than into McCain's. McCain wants to win, so he begins (too, too late) to try and change his pitch.Your timing is all off.

Who are they giving to?They give their money to the House Armed Forces Committee and Senate Armed Forces Committee, mainly.They also give their money to proven protectors of their interest: defense contracts.The president isn't nearly as important, because the president doesn't control the purse strings. You saw what happened when Obama tried to reform the earmark process. Congress shot him down and we got a much weaker reform. It's mainly through earmarks and congressional control over the final budget that the defense contractors get their contracts.It's not that they care whether a democrat or republican wins. It's that they care that someone who protects their interests win.And here's the thing. They're not even the greatest contributors. Of course, they perhaps get the greatest bang for their buck, but in terms of donations last cycle, by sector, do you know who topped the list? Aside from the nebulous "other" (~168 million), it was the financial world, giving ~130.5 million to both Obama and McCain. So in terms of influence, defense (~2.9 million) gave about 6% of all the money donated by industry. The financial sector gave ~27% of that total. So if we're talking influence, we need to be looking at the undue influence of the financial sector and how it manipulates which candidate is favored. The defense sector is a bit-player (hell, retired people donated 44 million to Obama compared to the measly ~1.7 million he got from defense).Presidential Candidates: Contributions by Sector, 2008 Cycle | OpenSecretsFinally, there's another way of looking at this. Why do the donations favor the democrats this past cycle over all? Simply perhaps the industrial sector wants to have given money to those who will be in power and not be left out in the cold in the game of influence. Which suggests that far from actually determining who is favored, the sectors are reactive. Can you argue why the sectors are not reactive but instead proactive? Or is it likely a mix of both?

Or, you know, the blatantly obvious pandering to the electorate.McCain and Clinton backed the gas-tax holiday last summer in a purely political move to gain support against Obama. More appropriately, after he started badly losing to Obama. His entire economic message became slightly more leftist as his popularity declined in and after september. That's what I call a political calculation.So far, all you're showing is nebulous links. Shall we try an exercise of Occam's Razor?My proposition is that McCain flipped because he was losing support badly. I can show this with popularity polls (who are you going to vote for?). When McCain tacks rightward economically he loses support. When he tacks leftward he gains support.Your proposition is that McCain flipped because he was prodded by auto industry influence. Who convinced him to switch? When did they convince him? Why did they convince him?A fair question about my proposition would be why Obama switched. Well, let's do some reading. From your quote:

quote:

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saying more concessions were needed from unions, creditors and others before they could be approved.

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Ultimately, that's what happened. When all of these groups didn't, like in the case of Chrysler and very possibly soon Ford, they moved into bankruptcy proceedings instead of getting even more bailout funds. So did he really switch his position? Well, your source for his switch is from after he won. So political pandering wouldn't be able to explain it, since he has no need to. So perhaps auto influence could explain his switch. Of course, to answer that question you need to show that he actually switched. Your source doesn't really show this, since even in march Obama was open to more funds if certain conditions were met. The AP article does not mention such conditions, but it really doesn't say much of anything at all (not unusual for AP).

True, but the implication of what you were saying is that they don't and wouldn't support non-democrats/republicans. They support incumbents. Further, if an non-D/R would protect their interests better, they will support that candidate to a greater degree (Lieberman?). Finally, it would seem that part of the duality of their donations can be explained as hedging their bets. That wasn't my point at all. It doesn't matter if Bush felt restricted by lack of control over the purse strings. His lack of control means that he, or rather the presidency in general, just isn't that important a target for donations. They would like the president to be sympathetic, but it's more important to try and influence the HASC. Obama can try and veto a budget he doesn't like--but he will fail since congress would likely override the veto. He can try and suggest levels of spending, but he can't actually tell congress how much in the end (see: most recent appropriations bill, which grew by several billion dollars from his proposal to the one ultimately passed). HASC, on the other hand, has the very real power to approve or kill amendments and legislation benefiting the defense industry.

If anything, your statement just shows helps my point.Oni claims that the republicans chose McCain in order to lose. That the auto companies, among others, made this so through their influence. But their "favored" pick didn't win in areas where the auto industry has the most influence (outside of washington), which means that their influence really wasn't all that strong.What good is your influence if you can't convince people to vote against the favorite son? Should be easy enough when you control all the important levers.By the way Oni, do you care to take up my challenge? You know, telling us what the GOP stands to gain by losing tremendously over the last two cycles? You seem to have crystal clear vision for why it was such a good tactic for the dems to lose the presidency in '04, so I'd expect you could articulate such a vision for the GOP.

Um, no.I'm operating on the principle that people are interested in gaining power in the short and long term.If people are not interested in increasing their power, then my position falls apart. But I think it's pretty well established that people like power, or else we wouldn't have events like Blagojevich.What you suggest is that people in politics take a short term loss of power, doing it purposefully because they payoff will be even bigger than had they gained power in the short term. Case in point: the dems lose in '04, only to capture the house and senate in '06, expand their majorities to levels not seen since the 1970s and capture the white house in '08. In this case, taking the fall is a brilliant move.Your problem is two-fold. People are not just interested in increasing power in the long term but also the short term. Why put off winning a seat for next cycle when you can try and win this cycle? Second, the future just isn't that predictable. As I said earlier, did you know about Katrina in 2004? If you knew about it then, did you know it would hit New Orleans? If you knew it would, did you think that republican self-interest would lead them to botch the response?This is why people take short term gains first: because they do not know what the future holds, and power now is better than power four years later. What if bin Laden had been found? Do you not think that Bush's popularity would have soared (an easy task when it was so low to begin with)? What if Katrina had never happened (he never recovered to pre-Katrina approval ratings, Katrina, not Iraq or any other thing, is what sunk Bush; it was the wake-up call for a lot of people)?So in hindsight, it looks like a smart move to lose, since that way the republicans can lose any and all credibility and the dems can sweep. But only in hindsight. This is why I've asked you to explain why the GOP would purposefully lose this cycle by putting forward McCain. What do they hope to gain in 4 years? Second, why would they want to lose the power they had? There's no guarantee they will win back their power over the next few cycles. Indeed, it could well be a decade or more until the republicans fully recover. Why would you want to be out of power for so long? This is your chance to lay out an equivalent brilliant strategy for the republicans like you have for the democrats after '04. And, it won't even be in hindsight.Your logic falls apart if it can't satisfactorily answer those questions, because their actions, as you posit them, are seemingly in contradiction to the interest in gaining power. Not only is it bad logic, but it is conspiratorial because it suggests that someone/group is pulling the levers--but this group must inform the voters of the ultimate goal (the presidency in '08, not in '04) and convince them to pick the weaker candidate. Voters, however, typically vote in the hopes that their preferred candidate wins. You have no evidence of this, nor does logic support such a conclusion.

How integrated is it really, though?Blacks are generally only athletes. Very rarely are they actually in management, never mind ownership.Anyhow, with or without black athletes owners will make a lot of money. For example, how many black baseball players are there? Apparently only ~8.2 percent of all baseball players are black. The operating income for the Cleveland Indians (for 2005) was 34.6 million (the yankees were at -50 million; go figure). I can't find the income for their owner, but given that he bought the franchise for 323 million, I doubt he's poor.Anyhow, how is this even connected with the extension of the franchise (aka suffrage, aka the right to vote)? I fail to see how this properly counters straggler's claim that the extension of voting rights to the "poor unwashed masses" is something that the upper classes try to resist because it dilutes their power.Indeed, looking at the Reform Act of 1832 is a perfect example. This act extended the suffrage in Great Britain, increasing the total electorate by a minimum of 50% (though even after the reform act only roughly 20% of the population could vote). Prior to this reform act the House of Commons shot down every other attempt to expand the suffrage and make it far less corrupt and far more equitable. Those in power did not want to change the status quo, even a little bit. It was only when the demand for reform threatened to undermine their power that they actually consented.Now then, the great irony (for the working-class) was that the bourgeois, who had allied with them in order to extend the suffrage, turned around and tried to prevent the working class from gaining the right to vote. They did not want their new found power to be diluted by interests sure to antagonistic to their own.A similar story plays out in Sweden, though it has more to do with the organization of its parliament. Prior to 1865, the swedish riksdag had four houses (commons, burghers, priests, nobles). The constitutional reform that would lead to two houses was greatly resisted by the priests and nobles. It passed only because the priests resolved to vote in the same manner as the nobles, who ultimately voted for the new constitution (but just barely). Had it not passed, Sweden may very well have experienced the 1848 revolution in 1865.So, why do the upper classes extend power to the lower classes? Only when the lower classes can credibly threaten revolt against the system. The solution is to include them and thus undermine revolutionary fervor (a similar idea, by the way, seems to be the leading philosophy of Obama's foreign policy) and thereby preserve as much of their original power as possible. I can not think of a case where the upper class extends its power to lower classes in an effort to gain power, or perhaps, there exists no such successful case (Bismarck's creation of the first welfare state could be an example: increase conservative power by gaining the workers who would be grateful for their welfare state, but the workers kept on voting for the socialists anyhow. However, his move could simply be seen as an attempt to subvert socialist power by preserving conservative power).Okay, so maybe your point does have something to do with. Integration was simply carried out to preserve as much of management's power as possible.

Who sets the agenda in the capitol? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Not Joh Boehner and Mitch McConnel.There is absolutely a loss of power within the political class.You seem to view the political class as irrelevant to the larger picture. I am not sure why. They are as equally concerned about their own power as any business is. Indeed, we live in an era where politicians have greater power than big business (Rick Wagoner?). Some of it is certainly a show, but Wall Street for example is very concerned that if it doesn't press the buttons it controls the politicians will make the finance world a very boring place to be. And when you have company CEOs grovelling before a Senate Committee, I daresay you do actually have two separate groups. "Big Business" and "Politicians" are not one and the same, and to ignore the politician's self-interest is ridiculous. They are one of the "real powers that be", since they ultimately write the laws, not "big business". They are not pawns, but partners, if you will, in the game.If politicians are actually pawns, you haven't laid out the case for that. All you've said is that the voter is the pawn (through media manipulation). I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say here. Government never wins? Then why, pray tell, did "big business" overwhelmingly support republicans earlier? If good relations are the key to profit, then perhaps with their influence they could make the party in power improve global relations? If they have the power to swing elections to give us the illusion of change, if they have politicians in their pockets, then they also have the power to get politicians to improve relations with other countries without having to have a facelift.Actually, good relations with other countries really aren't that necessary for profits. I point you to the United Fruit Company. What's important is that the country the company is exploiting doesn't object to that company's exploitation. As well, the last eight years saw a period of record profits at the same time as relations with other countries soured. What benefit does this supply "big business"? Businesses in China seem to do just fine without party competition. Businesses in the US seemed to do just fine when the democrats controlled the House for 41 years straight (1954-1995). The democrats also controlled the senate for 31 out of the last 55 congresses, often for large chunks of time. It is really only the presidency that seems to swing every 8 or so years.So why is the illusion of change necessary? One party rule is not prohibitive when it comes to making a profit. Indeed, one-party rule in favor of "big business" would help stabilize the system in their favor. Why risk changing parties that do actually have some differences (republicans would probably never even consider the bare amount of regulation reworking Obama's administration is considering, and this regulation certainly seeks to at least try to contain and restrain finance's worst impulses)?