gbaji wrote:
When their base starting point is an assumption that those other things are being handled. In much the same way you might care about tonight's cable TV line up, but only after you've eaten dinner.
No, there is no such assumption. These are actually the issues that are cared about, and thus, shockingly, people vote based on those issues. Those other issues are largely the concern of elites, as they care about them and sometimes understand them.
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People broadly don't care about the petty wars the US is fighting. There is no existential threat...
Gah! Pet peeve time. Do you mean to say
exigent threat? Because anyone arguing for action in response to an existential threat is being nonsensical.
No. I said what I mean and meant what I said. The US is not fighting an existential threat. I did not mean an exigent threat or I would have said so. Examples of Existential threats the US has faced: The British Empire, the Confederacy, and the Soviet Union.
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...there are just a lot of annoyance level groups that we'd like to die in a hole somewhere, but what we'd like more is to spend that money on ourselves rather than random acts of violence.
I disagree. 3000 people on 9/11 presumably would disagree as well, if they weren't dead now. Pretending these problems will just go away if we ignore them is insanely stupid. And Sanders doesn't really have any plan or answer to this. I think that's a problem. He can talk all he wants about income distribution, and food programs, and health programs, and education programs, but I promise you people care about those thing *after* they believe that their commander in chief is doing a sufficient job making sure someone isn't going to blow them up while walking down the street.
It's actually the job of the president to do things like foreign policy. It's not his job to provide food and shelter to Americans. Sander's focus on such things may be appropriate for a Senator, or a Mayor, or a state assemblyman. It's not really appropriate for a president. I get that this resonates, but then by all means, Sanders can go seek a job in HHS, or some other part of the government that deals with such things. That's not really what the president should be focused on though.
These problems don't go away, these groups generally go bother whoever is their current enemy at the time. Terrorism isn't perpetrated without reason, it's a response to a set of actions or policies. Regardless, terrorism, despite all the coverage it receives, kills a very small percentage of Americans. There are roughly 200-250 terrorism related deaths per year in the US. Gun suicides, which make up less than 1% of all deaths in the US per year, claim ~20000. As frustrating, upsetting, and generally shi
tty terrorism related deaths are, it
is annoyance level threat. If it is the President's job to protect Americans from dying, HHS does far more than random bombings of people we don't like.
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The average voter neither understands trade deals, nor really thinks much of them other than the nagging sensation that they are getting screwed over somehow.
Sure. But they assume that the person in charge *does* and is handling such things. When they realize that he doesn't and isn't and wont, that's a problem for his electability.
Usually it isn't. the public can generally be mugged a few times without it impacting electability (a definite feature of a choice limiting FPTP voting system) as there are a lot of other issues they care about.
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The reason he is doing well is he is focusing on issue that people care about, instead of sweeping them under the rug and focusing on (and this is a direct quote) "boring **** that no-one cares about".
I disagree. His unwillingness to address such things is going to hurt him. Once people start looking at him as a potential candidate to vote for and not just a name to repeat in a poll that they heard about on TV maybe, they'll see that he's not a great choice.[/quote]
He has a platform for all these issue. He doesn't campaign on them because that's not what people care about, and shockingly during a campaign you give speeches about things people care about. I, for example, disagree with his trade policy. I will still be voting for him in the primary.