The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) wrote about a Categorial Imperative that can be defined like this:
A command which expresses a general, unavoidable requirement of the moral law. Its three forms express the requirements of universalizability, respect and autonomy. Together they establish that an action is properly called ‘morally good’ only if (1) we can will all persons to do it, (2) it enables us to treat other persons as ends and not merely as the means to our own selfish ends, and (3) it allows us to see other persons as mutual law-makers in an ideal ‘realm of ends’.
Mr. Kant doesn’t have the final word on morality, but he has a point. You shouldn’t tell people how to vote unless you are prepared to live in a world in which everyone votes that way. Technically, you can tell people to vote Green because you’d be delighted if the Green Party candidate Jill Stein won the election with 100% of the vote. But I think we’re all a little more sophisticated than that, aren’t we? A vote for Jill Stein is a vote denied to Barack Obama. Voting for Jill Stein makes it more likely that Romney will be the next president of the United States. If enough people follow your advice, that is what will happen, and it’s morally indefensible to tell people to do something that will result in something you don’t support.
Some people, like Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, try to get around this by arguing that it is okay to vote against Obama if you live in a safely red or safely blue state, but not if you live in a state that might determine the outcome. This is strategic voting, aimed at getting the Green Party 5% of the national popular vote and allowing them to get more ballot access. The idea is that we can elect Obama and reprimand him at the same time. I think you can defend this argument morally, although one should consider the advantages and disadvantages of Obama being reelected with a minority of the popular vote.
What isn’t morally defensible is Matt Stoller’s case that progressives should simply throw the election to Romney by voting against Obama even in swing states. John Cole and Scott Lemieux have already responded to Stoller with appropriate disrespect. And I don’t think his argument is strong enough to warrant a detailed response. Once you get past his inflated autobiography and his deeply dishonest indictment of the Obama administration, you’re left with a crackpot who is ready to man the barricades with nothing more than a couple of Wesley Clark for President veterans who somehow morphed into Huey Long-populists. If Stoller wants Romney to win, he should make the case for Romney. If he wants Gary Johnson to win, he should go work with his old buddy Jerome Armstrong. Matt Stoller is no longer a Democrat and he shouldn’t presume to tell progressives who to vote for. And, if he is going to persist in yapping at us, he might want to come up with a better battle-cry than “vote third party because it’s practice for crisis moments.” That’s the stupidest thing I have ever read.
Matt Stoller is not a liberal, a leftist, or a progressive. He just has an irrational hatred of President Obama, and won’t admit it.
I can guarantee if John Edwards had won, and if he would have enacted the Obama agenda, we wouldn’t be seeing these articles from Stoller.
So you’re okay with PBO raising the eligibility age of Medicare, among possible other things? Answer me this: Why does Obama have an irrational need to get a “Grand Bargain” done that deals with “entitlements” when there isn’t a problem at this point?
Irrational? He wants to control the programs’ destinies in his own hands, and keep their fate out of the Republicans’. That’s about as rational as it gets, actually.
Imagine how the national political scene changes if he can convince the media to stop calling Medicare “bankrupt” all the damn time?
Clown, stop clowning. Pathetic.
Control their destines? Control it by raising the Medicare eligibility age? By gutting Medicaid? By reducing already meager Social Security benefits?
That President Obama signed the largest expansion in Medicaid history in order to gut it.
>facepalm<
What do you think is going to be cut in the name of “deficit reduction”? You can snicker all you want. If there ends up being a “Grand Bargain” and Medicaid is cut, just remember your words.
What do you think is going to be cut in the name of “deficit reduction”?
In Medicare? Provider payments. Dial up the means testing for Medicare premiums. Switch to outcome-based compensation instead of procedure-based. Crack down on fraud, waste, and abuse. Some technocrat stuff to tame medical inflation.
I’m spending today locking down things that could blow around and cause damage when the high winds start.
Golly, why would I do that, when there aren’t any strong winds “at this point?”
Why would it have been a good idea to start reducing carbon emissions in 1990 when there wasn’t a problem at that point?
Oh, wait, I know: because there is a very large problem bearing down on us in the near future.
Has nothing to do with what I said: if John Edwards enacted a similar agenda, and it’s likely he would have, Matt Stoller would not be doing what he is doing.
I don’t know why he wants a Grand Bargain. I don’t care why. If Stoller thinks electing a Republican to enact one on their terms is at all helpful, then I don’t see what point you’re making in terms of just allowing Romney to win. Which could be harmful in plenty of other ways, similar to how Reagan presided over “Morning in America” and his supply-side BS took the credit for it.
You miss the point. The “Grand Bargain” is one of those things Stoller doesn’t like. I guess you didn’t hear that now PBO says defense cuts in Bowles-Simpson went too far.
And electing Romney saves us from that…how? No, I heard. I guess Stoller hasn’t heard that Romney would increase the defense spending.
Of course Willard will. It’s what GOPers do. But if you want that, and the last parts of the New Deal destroyed, go ahead. I’m not saying to vote 3rd party. I, unlike Stoller, never advocated that. I’m just advocating that people should know what they’re voting for. That people know that PBO, for what ever reason, has a hard-on for Pete Peterson.
If you think Obama was the wrong candidate for the Democrats this time around, the time to make that case was during the primaries.
Once the parties choose their candidates, your choice is between and among the parties. Not between Obama and some mythical better Democrat, or between Romney and the 2nd coming of Ike.
I would have thought that people would have realized by now that by now. 🙁
If you don’t vote for Obama now, you’re voting for Boehner and Cantor and McConnell and DeMint and Scalia and Alito and their cohort. Rmoney will do what they want – “we just need a president to sign this stuff.” That’s the bottom line.
Hmm. I guess that’s why Simpson-Bowles failed, huh. Obama loved Pete too much. http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarro/2012/02/27/the-real-reason-obama-wouldnt-embrace-simpson-bowle
s/
Obama’s been in the White House for nearly 4 years. People know what they’re getting with him.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Also, too.
It’s fairly clear that Kent Conrad blackmailed the Bowles-Simpson commission in exchange for letting reconcilation of the ACA through. And that Obama was betting heavily on the GOP’s inability to say yes.
However, for a lot of folks still steamed by Max Baucus’s scuttling (articulated in some circles as “Obama’s sellout of”) the public option, the framing of Social Security as being “fixable with a few tweaks” and the constant buzz about a “grand bargain” on the deficit makes them jittery. And gives them the impression that the Democratic establishment is about to sell out Social Security and Medicare for phony concern about deficits.
In their minds, the President has keep Pete Peterson’s hopes alive even after the failure of Bowles-Simpson and the Supercommittee on the Deficit.
Thanks for that perspective.
I don’t remember enough about the battles back then, and too much of the stuff that did appear in the press was probably self-serving (e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/08/president-obama-bowles-simpson-_n_1410844.html ). But I think Obama has been pretty clear about his goals while confusing many with his tactics.
Cutting.pdf (24 page .PDF) lays thing out pretty clearly to these eyes.
I think he believes that once the Republicans are finally forced to accept tax increases on the rich, then they’ll snap out of their reflexive opposition to him and return to a more Eisenhower-like mindset. I think that’s optimistic at this point, but who knows.
But I think he really believes what’s in that PDF. Changes need to be made to make the long term fiscal path of the government sustainable. The ACA was a big part of that, too.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
And that Obama was betting heavily on the GOP’s inability to say yes.
Well, he did put his thumb on the scale to make sure they wouldn’t. “I want…uh…ONE TRILLION DOLLARS in tax cuts. No, wait did I say a trillion? I meant 1.4 trillion. Hey, where you going?”
You do not have to agree with everything a politician supports to conclude that you should vote for him.
In 2000 Nader people said that there was too much corporate influence in politics and that there was no difference between Gore and Bush on this.
Bush nominated two Supreme Court Justices – both voted to open the floodgates on corporate money in politics. Obama nominated two supreme court justices: both voted against opening the floodgates.
Good going Nader voters!
Here is what really pisses me off about the entire argument: if you wanted to oppose Obama there was a place you could do it without risking a GOP win: the primaries. I actually argued for a primary opponent for Obama. I DO have very real issues with Obama – most tellingly on globalization.
Why didn’t it happen: because the truth is Stoller and company don’t actually give a damn: they just want to feel morally superior. They couldn’t run a winning election to save their lives. And running a primary opponent would have actually meant doing something.
Obama derangement syndrome
Howie Long? I think you want to edit that.
might be the spawn of satin at it again, one never knows
I like it. He’s kind of an everyman/tough guy. I could see CNN trying a ‘Crossfire’ revamp with Terry Bradshaw in the Pat Buchanan role.
How Long is a Chinese name?
Who was, as we all know, the renowned President of Raider Nation.
ha ha ha.
There should be an award for people like Matt Stoller – maybe we call it the Alan Colmes award for people who think they are advocating for the left but in fact are undermining it.
We can save the Lanny Davis award for lifetime achievement in this category and the Pat Cadell award for those who just pretend to think they are advocating for the left.
Spent his last days sniping at FDR and the New Deal.
The idea is that we can elect Obama and reprimand him at the same time. I think you can defend this argument morally, although one should consider the advantages and disadvantages of Obama being reelected with a minority of the popular vote.
I wouldn’t be too worried about this. The GOP has proven that they’ll consider any election they lose to be illegitimate, any election the win to be their birthright, and the Millionaire Media class will back them up. If Obama loses the plurality of the national vote but wins the electoral they’ll make a fuss – but they also made a fuss when he got 53% of the vote in 2008, blaming the media, McCain, and of course those milllions of illegal aliens voting many times during the day with assistance from ACORN.
I have no idea why anyone takes Matt Stoller and his ilk seriously. Thy have this fantasy that’s similar to that of the Paultards, that if his candidate wins, everything will change for the better.
It is a fantasy that fails to take into account that we don’t elect all of our politicians at the same time, and that even a Nader/Paul/Stein/Sparklepony ticket, elected with 100% of the vote, would still have to contend with Democrats and Republicans in both houses, who would block their agenda faster than you can say “Stoller’s a twit”.
The most telling part of Stoller’s piece is where he blames Barack Obama for the consequences of the financial crisis and subsequent recession.
Under Bush, economic inequality was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1 percent. Under Obama, however, that number is 93 cents out of every dollar. That’s right, under Barack Obama there is more economic inequality than under George W. Bush. And if you look at the chart above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress.
Typically, when you see this sort of argument, the writer just skims right over that last bit. Not Stoller. Mr. Super Progressive explicitly absolves the Republicans of blame.
Kant’s categorical imperative is very famous, but I would not just assume it is correctly reasoned. Indeed, it’s possibly the only kind of formulation whereby Stoller’s argument makes sense. And Stoller’s argument doesn’t make sense, except to illustrate a fallacious argument.
The categorical imperative is (a) totally subjective and (b) totally abstract. Moral law has both objective and subjective aspects, and moral judgment ought to have both universal elements (moral principles) and contingent elements based on practical judgment (prudence or phronesis).
Stoller’s argument is essentially (a) Obama has violated fundamental moral laws; (b) therefore he, Stoller, cannot will it as a universal law that one should vote for Obama; therefore, vote for Mitt Romney.
Or, to boil it down still further: (a) Obama is not perfect (i.e. he is human); (b) one should only will it as a universal law that everyone should vote for someone who is perfect; (c) therefore vote for the lying plutocrat, that will teach Obama and all his supporters a lesson (touch of Leninism — things must get worse before they can get better).
Note the total abstraction in either the estimation of Obama, the situation of this country, the likely outcomes — total lack of context. There isn’t the tiniest trace of prudence, or as we might call it, ordinary common sense, in any of it. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, isn’t it?
Kant is right up there with Descartes, Hobbes, Hegel, as one of the most overrated philosophers in history. Forget the categorical imperative and read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
Agree with your critique of Kant and your recommendation of Nicomachean Ethics.
However, I’m not saying the only moral choice is to vote for Obama. I’m saying it is our best interests.
Also, you could try to argue that Stoller’s argument is supported by the first principle although it fails as I pointed out. But it is undermined by the second two principles. Stoller isn’t interested in how a Romney campaign will hurt people because he thinks it will serve his purpose, so he’s treating people as a means. And the people he would be empowering would not treat others as mutual law-makers who share their ends (or even Stoller’s).
It’s just logical gobbly-gook.
Actually, because you brought up Kant, I got a little carried away, and that’s how I framed my reply. I don’t really believe Stoller was thinking about the categorical imperative. His real problem is that he is totally full of shit.
Yes, he is attacking Obama because he thinks it will serve his purpose, and he is treating people as a means to accomplish that purpose. But what is his purpose? Nothing that makes the slightest sense in the real world.
I don’t know anything about Stoller and I know little about Salon, except that I read their articles sometimes. But I can’t understand why they considered this pseudo-revolutionary, pseudo-intellectual BS worth publishing.
A great piece on Stoller on the aptly-named “Zandar vs. the Stupid” —
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2012/10/prof-stoller-in-salon-with-self.html
I think that, at least until the election, you should probably go with two wankers of the day. Maybe AM and PM.
Yes perhaps Wanker of the Hour.
For next Wanker of the Hour I see McPain is out saying that Libya is the worst cover up he’s ever seen. Fucking Keating 5 asshole – we just lived through 12 years of bomb bomb bomb Iraq based on lies and war crimes, following up 9/11 and a massive cover-up, only this year coming out in full detail, of just how many people in the intelligence agencies were screaming about the threat from OBL and being ignored by the Cheney administration. Not to mention Iran-Contra, Watergate, the Pentagon Papers and Collusion I, II and III. And Mr Sarah-Palin-is-my-Soulmate (yes, he really did say that) thinks Libya is the worst.
At some point you have to come to the conclusion that this is not a disagreement between reasonable people. Some people are without conscience or scruples at all.
And for the hour after that we can bring up Gingrich, who is out there defending the pro-rape GOP senator candidates.
The whole framing of elections as moral choices is what is off base. The failing of the “lesser of two evils is still evil” argument is that people are neither totally good nor totally evil. Nor are they moral or immoral about the same things.
It is self-congratulatory to think you made the moral choice. But consequences matter, not just the formal adherence to philosophical principles.
The strategic error that folks like Stoller make is their assumption that withdrawal support from establishment politicians will make them less attached to the establishment. Any cursory view of recent electoral history shows the opposite.
And the practical error is thinking that social change can be as easy as voting–without the hard work of persuading folks in your personal networks to join you in changes in the fundamental political culture.
Conservatives started building their arguments through the 1960s and 1970s and worked deliberately to capture opinion-makers. And they did the very foolish thing, in Stoller’s view, of voting for the liberal Richard Nixon. And bunches of other liberal Republicans….And then they primaried them as they convinced local constituencies of conservative views.
The good news is that Republicans have their counterparts of the Green movement and Rocky Anderson’s candidacy in the Libertarian Party and Virgil Goode’s candidacy. (It will be very interesting to see how many votes Goode gets in VA-05.)
The fact remains that folks are in general frustrated by the choices of candidates that emerge from the major parties. And this has to do in large part because of the influence of corporate money in politics. Folks who would be acceptable choices in the 1970s can no longer be expected to vote their constituents’ interests because of the money chase. And the ones who don’t deal with the money chase are one-termers.
Given the geographical distribution of folks like Matt Stoller, I am hardpressed to think of any state in this election in which it matters.
Of course, the horse race narrative and the sample sizes of polls means that there has not been great attention paid to polling third and fourth and fifth and sixth parties.
On reflection, the appeal to morality in a campaign is an attempt to motivate through pride. That can easily become self-righteousness.
Pop management gurus claim there are only three motivators of personal choice: fear, greed, and pride.
All three are illusions. This is not the end of the Republic. None of the candidates will make any of the ordinary voters rich. And none has a lock on morality.
The argument is an escape from discussing policy. That is, it is not a political argument, it is marketing.
I didn’t read Stoller’s piece, nor will I.
There once was a time when Matt Stoller was a good little warrior against the Blue Dogs. He called them “Bush Dogs” and I liked that.
Then he became a nasty little warrior for anyone not named Barack Obama, putting forth doctored video and screeching that “Obama said something nice about Ronald Reagan! Run away from him, my precious snowflakes, because he is evil!” (I am obviously paraphrasing, but you get the point.) That’s where he lost my respect.
So who gives a fuck what that whiny little bitch Stoller has to say about anything anymore?
I hope he reads this. If so, here’s my message: “Fuck you, Matt.”
Good. That’s the impression I got of him from this article.
1) if obama wins EC and loses PV
and
2) if republicans repeal EC
consider the GOTV implications going forward. The red-blue split will be rural-urban instead of state by state.
Each democratic canvasser’s step will be equivalent in productivity about a mile and a half for each republican.
Democrats will be forced to do massive big city community organizing and make life drastically better in the cities in order to solidify and mobilize their base. It becomes the city dwellers versus the very superstitious, fat, ignorant, stupid, bigoted f****d up morons who hate us, vote against their own economic self-interest and generally turn this country into a sick joke.
Obviously it’s critical for Obama to maintain the presidency but if an EC/PV vote happens and we go to national PV system, it’s got one hell of a silver lining.
the EC is in the Constitution.
hey, lay off the rural bashing. Last I looked the plutocrats live in cities and suburbs
Stoller’s complaints are valid. His solution is not. Very much like Karl Marx.
I would vote third party only if I could live with the Republican, which I can’t.
Better that Jill Stein or someone else had opposed Obama in the Primary. That’s the place for ideological intra-party disputes.
I don’t think Stoller’s complaints are valid. Stoller speaks of the bailout policy Obama put in place. Obama is not the one who put that bailout in place. Obama did not have any enormous leverage over the Bush administration or the banks as Stoller claims. I’ll not going to go on, his arguments are so tendentious I’ve got better things to do.
I don’t understand how people with Stoller’s experience can apparently fail to grasp the futility of trying to build a viable third party from the top down.
A perfect Green candidate who actually won the presidency would be like the dog who catches the car. She or he would have no caucus to work with, and aside from a few policy decisions that the next President would immediately reverse, would get nothing done.
And it’s not even limited to third party candidates, either. A President Kucinich would have been pretty damned ineffective, too.
And the worst part is, a weak President undermines–discredits–the entire brand. Think how much Carter’s loss in 1980 set back solar power, for just one example.
I can forgive the average voter for not having thought all this through. Stoller has no excuse.
THink I’m voting for Johnson. I’m in a blue state. I like Stein better, but if the Libertarians start to catch on, it will be primarily at the expense of the Republicans, who have screwed over the Paul people badly enough that they may bolt if they have somewhere to go. Unlike the Republicans, the Libertarians are better than the democrats on some important issues. Their economics stinks, of course, but is Republican mainstream anyway (not their actual current platform – which is replacing income with consumption tax – but anything they would possibly enact), but on civil liberties, militarism, war on drugs, they are better than Obama.
1n 2000, the libertarian writer David Brin wrote a piece arguing that libertarians should vote for Al Gore, because the Democratic Party was the legitimate counterbalance to the Libertarians, but that damn elephant has got to go. I’ll make common cause with him on this. Major parties do die in the US. The Federalists did. The Whigs did. The Republicans could, but some major element of their coalition needs somewhere else to go.
Libertarians by and large are like me, but they’ll never ever admit it: I will vote for an authoritarian who will continue funding programs for the poor and the public before I vote for a libertarian. So I value social programs more than civil liberties. With the Dems and Republicans, that’s never my choice anyway. However, the libertarians would mock this choice, as they ALWAYS talk up “their issues.” Well, “their issues” are a crock of shit, and they value lower taxes on rich people far more than civil liberties. The evidence of that is Russ Feingold is no longer a Senator, and Reasanoids/CATO opposed him and favored Ron Johnson.
I’m amused at how stridently leftist Stoller has become. First time I encountered him online, I said something critical of globalization and he totally hippy-bashed me. He was a CLintonite centrist at the time, and arrogant about it. Now, his politics are very different, but his attitude is the same. Meanwhile, my politics are about the same.
I think Stoller has it right about Obama not really being a very liberal guy, and in a lot of ways he is just a nicer 1 percenter than Romney.
There is no Zealot like a convert, they say, and no elitist like a climber; and that boy Obama is certainly a climber, and has been all his life.
But I think the idea that electing Mitt is a reasonable way to punish Obama is nuts.
As Obama has noted a propos this very matter, he and Michelle and the girls will be just fine, to put it mildly, no matter how this plays out.
What matters is what happens to the 99%.
And, sure, it won’t be pretty in either case.
But it will be worse, quicker, with Romney in the White House.
On the other hand, Stoller’s notion that your vote doesn’t matter in solid states but does matter in swing states is an obfuscation.
The truth is that the vote could be close enough in a swing state for it to be true on the morning after that, had a thousand angry liberals stayed with Obama rather than going for minor party candidates, the state would have gone to Obama though in fact it went to Romney.
Or for it to be true on the morning after that, had a thousand angry liberals defected to minor party candidates Obama would have lost to Romney rather than beating him.
How can one not think of Florida in 2000?
In a swing state, in a tight race, it could happen that a relatively small number of votes together make the difference not only for how the electoral votes of the state are cast but for who wins the entire election.
So small that it could be made up of angry, disaffected liberals who defected to minor party candidates giving the state to Romney or of angry, disaffected liberals who stayed with Obama and gave him his victory.
But your vote?
Your one individual vote?
Pshaw.
Don’t ever premise your decision on the idea that your vote makes a significant difference.
That never happens, in any state.
Not only has no race been decided by one vote but a difference of one vote is well within the margin of error, anyway.
You are less than a number.
You are an accounting glitch.
You will never, on the morning after, face the amazing realization that, had you only done otherwise – voted, not voted, or voted differently, whatever – the outcome would have been the opposite and a different politician would be in the White House, the US Senate, the House, the governor’s mansion, the state senate, the state house of representatives, the county commission, the mayor’s office, the city council, the school board, or whatever.
It’s just not going to happen.
So when you think about what to do on Election Day put far from your mind the delusion that your vote will make a difference.
The rest of Stoller’s argument is just the sort of fantastic nonsense you would expect from the reality-based political community.
Not even worth a refutation.
But I will say this.
Stoller’s argument rests entirely on the idea that the Democratic candidate is not a fully satisfactory liberal, as these things are measured by the orthodox.
If it is good against voting for Obama will it not be good against voting for any Democrats, for the rest of your life?