Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Category: Voting (Page 3 of 5)

These are posts on voting from the blog Base and Superstructure. These posts concern issues about who to vote for, particularly from a left-wing perspective.

A One-Liner Against Each Candidate

Let’s say you put together a team and you’re running for president. You generally don’t make it that far in politics without some bad stuff happening. Taking some corporate donations here. Maintaining the status quo there. You know, politics.

So, what’s each candidate afraid of? For each candidate, there’s got to be a downside. Something about their politics that doesn’t line up with the image they’re presenting to you. After three debates, maybe it’s worth asking.

Eh, or maybe I’m just being dramatic.

But, really though, here’s a post about each candidate’s dark side. If you’re looking for a close and careful reading of the candidates, try some of my other posts. This one’s more in the spirit of fun. Read on for some (probably only mildly) exaggerated takes on what’s wrong with the candidates. A one-line objection to each.

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Which Democratic Candidate is the Worst?

It’s the summer, and fewer people read blogs over the summer. It’s true, and that means my traffic is down a bit. Fine. It happens. I promise I won’t pander or write fluff, but maybe things will get a bit more casual between now and August.

Truth be told, I’ve been thinking about which Democratic candidate is the worst. For awhile, it seemed to me it’s obviously Joe Biden. But let’s try to be more systematic about this.

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How to Evaluate the Presidential Candidates

20 or so Democrats are headed to the debates. Is it more? Maybe, but I’m not counting. I’m sure we’re all plenty confused. How should we evaluate all these presidential candidates? In some sense, you can evaluate the presidential candidates however you want. I’m not your boss. But here are the key questions I ask when I’m evaluating presidential candidates.

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Julián Castro: The Forgotten Progressive?

Julian Castro

Source: Lorie Shaull (https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/32568282327)

Julián Castro’s campaign isn’t getting a lot of attention. Admittedly, I’d have probably forgotten about him as well, if not for the fact that I know people caucusing for him in Iowa or thinking about doing so. He’s polling very badly.

But Castro’s worth a look. He seems to be running the leftmost campaign other than Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And, on closer inspection, I think that assessment holds up well enough. I’ve written a couple of posts on Sanders and one on Warren. Castro merits one, too.

Here’s what’s going on with his campaign, as I see it.

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Elizabeth Warren: Capitalism’s Heart Surgeon

Elizabeth Warren

Source: Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_Warren_speaks,_May_19,_2014.jpg)

2004 was the first year I was old enough to vote in presidential elections, and I quickly found it’s a depressing experience. But it’s easy to do. I’ll start thinking about voting for someone once I’m convinced they’ll work hard to leave the world a better place than they found it. Democratic presidential candidates never met that standard, so I never seriously considered voting for one. Depressing, but easy. Bernie Sanders complicated that in 2016. He met the standard, but he lost to Hillary Clinton. But what if there were a candidate clearly to Hillary Clinton’s left, and still to the right of Bernie Sanders? Did someone say ‘Elizabeth Warren’?

What’s going on with the Warren campaign? That’s my topic here.

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