poco_vino

This one should get interesting.....

What is your opinion regarding the political theory of "Party Trumps Person" (i.e. voting along party lines).

I have found that most people that claim to vote the person not the party, still vote along party lines, they just won't admit it.

And, as polarized as things are today, this is probably gaining ground.

i.e. Seems the biggest reason to vote for Kerry is to get Bush out of office. This is an example of party trumping person.

Oh yeah, I am going to tell you where I sit on this issue so you know where I am coming from (hard to make a case if the reader doesn't now your ideology)--I vote party lines and I have no problem admitting it.

I will give my side of the argument later in the thread, I am more curious for your HONEST opinion. Please be sure to check your facts, if you state any.

Here is an article on the subject:

http://www.850koa.com/shows/shows_rosen_32.html#Party

Oh yeah....lastly....I am looking for your reasoning behind your argument, not a personal attack. I was honest enough to tell you where I stand in regards to the idea, please do the same. We can get a lot further in this discussion if we stay on topic, keep it civil and back up our claims.

Also, I wanted to add a poll to this. Can someone be nice enough to tell me how...thanks.

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

SinisterMotives

As previously stated elsewhere, I have never been an affiliate of any political party and don't generally agree point-for-point with any particular ideology. Some may say that I lack the conviction of a set of core values or whatever, but I simply don't buy the logic that says (for example) that if you agree with me on abortion, then you must also agree with me on gun control.

poco_vino

O.k., but do you find that you vote for one party more than the other?

Affliation aside, my theory is that people still vote the "party" without really meaning to.

Does that make sense?

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

wonderwench

I have gone through a personal evolution in this area.

At the age of 18, I registered as a Democrat (still am, btw), and voted a straight party line. Over the years, I have become fiscally conservative, and generally vote the GOP or Libertarian line on financial issues. Given the state of politics in CA, these votes are usually of the protest variety.

poco_vino

Wonderwrench,

How do you split the issue on a person, though? I can see how this is done in regards to bills, amendments, etc.--but I don't see how, when voting for a candidate, you can vote fiscally conservative and/or socially liberal.

Have you been able to do this? From what I have seen the cadidates themselves, are either liberal or conservative on more than one issue. I really can't remember a candidate (GOP or DNC - I don't really follow Liberatarians, sorry) that was, say, socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

SinisterMotives

I've never compared the number of "Party X" candidates I've voted for to the number of "Party Y" candidates I've voted for, so I really couldn't tell you that. I do sometimes vote for Republicans despite being somewhat left of center on many issues.

wonderwench

No candidate is going to successfully punch all of my issue buttons. I decide on a hierarchy and also look at the political environment. For example, I am pro-choice and pro-partnership contract (marriage is a religious thing - the only role for the government is contract enforcement). A candidate may oppose me on these two issues but still get my vote because: a) he is fiscally conservative; and b) he has no ability to rollback abortion rights or forbid partnership contracts.

For the 2004 election, I have one issue that eclipses all: winning the War Against Terrorism. The competency and will to win of the candidates will be my filter.

cthulu23

I would say that a vote for Kerry to oust Bush is not a definite vote for the Democratic party. I have never been a Democrat, nor do I ever plan on being one. Hell, I organized for Nader four years ago. Unfortunately, 9-11 gave Bush carte blanche on foreign policy and what he is doing genuinely frightens me. Kerry doesn't offend or appeal to me very much, but I'm voting for the guy, not the party, that doesn't scare me.

poco_vino

Why not vote for Nader this time?

It comes across that you are voting party lines, maybe not your own party though (my impression, just reading between the lines).

Reading into this, I would assume that you are not voting for Nader out of concern for a split of the liberal vote (i.e. 2000 election, Ross Perot, tec.). You are voting against Bush rather than for a particular candidate, correct?

From other threads, I understand your ideology and that closely matches the Democratic party. Is there an occasion where you voted for seombody that was a Republican?

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

cthulu23

Ummm, I think that I've voted for a few local Republicans, but probably not in a national election.

How can I vote party lines for a party that I don't belong to? I'm voting against the man with the best chance to unseat Bush because Dubya's foreign policy scares the shit out of me and I disagree with him on the rest. I respect Nader's right to run, but now is not the time for me to take that stand.

As for my ideology, it is not really represented by either party. It's my opinion that both parties are so beholden to big donations to run their elections that any noise that they make for the common man mainly amounts to window dressing.

poco_vino

Just trying to understand where you were coming from.

Personally, I don't really understand the idea of voting "against" someone. What if the cure is worse than the illness? (I am not saying this is the case). Whole different topic, however.

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

poco_vino

cthulu23:

Along what you were saying, I thought this was funny...

Quote from Pat LaMarche (Green Party V.P. candidate):

"She is, in fact, so determined to see Bush lose that she would not commit to voting for herself and her running mate, Texas lawyer David Cobb."

"said she'll vote for whoever has the best chance of beating Bush."

followed by:

A spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign said the vice president is certain to vote for his and Bush's re-election.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/ne...lamarche.shtml

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

cthulu23

I would say that almost every vote involves a measure of voting against the other guy. It's not as if our milquetoast, focus-grouped, caked-with-makeup leaders really inspire great levels of passion or admiration.

Regardless of that, it's quite common to be tepid on your own candidate for any number of reasons, but to completely dislike the opponent. It's just human nature...we like some people and despise others (usually the one we disagree with, another indicator of human nature).

poco_vino

That was funny, I couldn't agree more. I desperately waiting for a candidate I can "get excited" about.

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

roachboy

voting instrumentally--e.g. for kerry to get rid of bush--is not a matter of "party trumping person" at all--if anything it is quite the opposite--it demonstrates a kind of distance from the existing ideologies. this should be obvious.

many of my friends have been talking about nader of late--most of us supported him either in principle or in fact last time out, but that support weakened in the final weeks of the election once the spectre of a bush presidency became plausible. if the party logic that your theorem (not a theory) held, you would have no way of explaining that.
the same arguments resurfaced earlier in the spring---in this case, despite the fact that nader is much closer to the views of this particular collective, all but one of us not only will not vote for nader, but actively hopes he pulls out the the race--getting rid of bush is far too important.

there was a book mentioned in another thread--something on the order of how the democrats lost "the heartland"--that argues the emergence of issues that appeal to cultural conservatives have functioned to mobilize people to the right even while the effect of that move is to rally people to support a party whose policies in no way are structured around any coherent defense of their economic or social interests--i want to read the book (i have to remember the whole title when it counts, when i am actually in a bookstore [i like touching the books i buy--i cant help it] to pull this off, you see--otherwise i buy other books) to see how the argument works, but it seems quite plausible--in which case the argument would follow that party and discourse are not identical, and that many people--not just this abstraction i mentioned above in thinking while writing about this book---vote following discourse. ideology, in an alternative parlance.

--an aside: please dont argue back that supply side actually works in the interests of the lower middle class and poor---you wont persuade me, the evidence is simply not there to support you if you want to argue it, and i will either not be able to respond from laughing or end up becoming snarky because i get impatient with this kind of fatuousness, even if it does operate in some alternate world as a coherent discourse. for an explanation, see below.

as for my political position, it is curious--in general i am well to the left of any position that operates in the american political spectrum, which i regard as laughably narrow. in general, i think that social democracy is about the best that capitalism can hope for in terms of things like equity. but it is a strange system (and is **not** the same as central planning, just to head off an objection i sense is coming)....my economic and political views are shaped in many ways by a long engagement with marxism---but my actual work is about the collapse of marxism as a political formation and as a counter-discourse--it is not possible at any level to actually be a marxist in 2004---you would have to be a fool or a trotskyite (or maybe a "radical" in a univeristy english department...) one continuity from this engagment is that i tend to reject out of hand any attempt to separate economic ideology from social factors, for example (which is why the supply side thing is to my mind a joke conceptually and a fiasco in practice, and also why i am often dismissive to the point of impatience with neoclassical economic theory, with illusions about the free market, and so forth)

this is probably going to get me redbaited on this forum from this point on. maybe no-one will read the thread. maybe i should delete this.

o what the hell.

i think the space on the left remains to be re-articulated and any look around you should demonstrate that there is a crying need for that process to be under way. for this to happen, there has to be a square confrontation with the history of the left, one that takes full account of the disasters that have befallen it.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

poco_vino

Let me explain, as it appears I am being misunderstood.

Voting along party lines is only an example of "Party Trumps Person", not the entire idea. My example refers to the idea that people are voting Democrat, not really voting for Kerry. I get the impression that who the Democrat candidate is doesn't matter. The person, in this instance, is going to vote the party over the person.

For example: Let's say by some weird turn of events, Kerry doesn't get the DNC nod and it goes to someone else. That occurrence doesn't sway the person in any way because the were going to vote for a Democrat regardless.

Does that make more sense, maybe I didn't explain myself well?

And roachboy, I didn't plan on discussin g supply-side economics, it is way off topic.

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

poco_vino

FYI

Theorem = an idea that is assumed to factual (i.e. a mathematical theorem); one that can be proven as true.

Theory = An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

I am not stating my idea as fact, I am merely testing the idea, therefore, a theory. Honestly, I just enjoy the dialogue as long as it remains professional. You have your ideas and I have mine, it makes it interesting to bounce ideas back and forth, but only in a courteous way.

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

cthulu23

If the Democrats nominated Michael Savage or perhaps Vladimir Zhirinovsky then I would consider voting for Bush.

Seriously, I'll vote for ALMOST any Democrat over Bush because his platform is more abhorrent to me (and lots of other folks).

roachboy

poco:
this snippet by you comes from the thread that spawned this one:

"There is validity behind the theory of party trumping person (a school of thought I belong to, I must admit)"

that was why i change the word theory to theorem.
didnt want you to think the switch was a function of my not knowing the definition.
but no matter.

since we are all being honest here, and in the interest of opening up a real dialogue----why are you being coy about your own position?

i also wonder what exactly prompted you to choose the particular example the opened the thread?

cards on the table, please, sir.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

analog

I have that issue. My personal beliefs are almost 50/50 conservative/liberal... and people will say "well how can you say _______ if you say _______"

I have no problem saying i'll cast my vote to get the shrub out of office. As has been said, Bush just scares me.

poco_vino

I have been bouncing the idea around in my head for some time now. I used to say that I voted the person, not the party. I thought that I was above the idea of party politics and that I was an "informed voter" (i.e. deciding each case on its individual issues).

Recently, I read the article mentioned in my original post and kind of made me examine my position; how I really vote.

Regardless of what I said or the pedestal I put myself on, my track record showed that I pretty much (about 90% of the time) voted party lines. Just so you know, I was a Democrat until 1998, when I changed my voter registration.

The background to the question is:

1) Do other people think the way I do?

2) Can I back up my voting record. Did I really have a reason to vote the way I did?

3) Curiousity. To see how people respond, to elicit dialogue.

As to the example, it was the first one that popped in my head, nothing deeper than that.

Anyway, the idea of the bigger picture made sense. I am never going to agree 100% with any candidate. However, historically, a Democrat politician will mostly vote to the left and a Republican politician will mostly vote to the right. My ideology is more in tune, now, with the right, so by voting party lines, I run a greater chance of getting my "side" advanced.

It was not an attempt at coyness; I didn't want my beliefs to be the subject. I knew my beliefs would come out at some time (like right now), but I didn't want a bunch of inane comments about me. I honestly wanted to know if there are other people that believe in the ideology of "Party Trumping Person".

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

roachboy

hmm...well, first thing is thanks for posting that.

with a political spectrum as narrow as that of the states, the lack of fit between individual voter positions on issues and those of the organizations that "represent" them is bound to be greater than they might be in a more diversified pool of parties/organizations/ideologies. given that folk who think within the american frame of reference generally think that the two-party system serves some greater function--i do not agree with that, but tant pis, there we are---it seems that if you think about how people interact with the actors within this narrow band of options, you'd probably find a lot more instrumental uses of votes than in the past--people figure out any number of ways to split their support between different candidates.

however, even if you found more people voting straight tickets now than say in the 1930s, during which point there was a real difference between republicans and democrats, you still could not make the argument that the way in which people understand what it means to vote straight ticket in 2004 indicates that they are simply voting party first. it is entirely possible that a whole range of caculations (based on increasingly superficial information, but such is the way modern poltics goes) would sit behind such decisions, and it is somewhere between naieve and patronizing of you to assume that the situation is otherwise.

i find it curious that you directed your premise toward people who oppose bush, as if opposition to bush could be linked to some kind of group think, that there are not many many reasons why many many reasonable, thoughtful people would oppose this guy.

i mean it is not as though the american political spectrum suddenly reduced itself to such a narrow charade, like it was wine being boiled off in a frying pan, or like for years we had been watching one tv channel only to find that one night while we were asleep someone changed it to another featuring programming that looks like the first but with arguments between two almost identical characters as opposed to two different characters--this has been a process going on for at least 20 years, and i think people have adapted to that. if they didnt adapt, there would be real legitimacy problems for the system as a whole.

the only thing that surprises me is that the framework itself is not more often and more seriously called into question--if you relativize the american situation, the competition between the parties looks less like a democratic process and more like a rotation of factions within an oligarchy that uses the rhetoric of democracy to keep itself legitimate.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

poco_vino

You would have a point if the following statement was made, "I am voting for Kerry because of X, Y and Z." not "I am voting for any Democrat hoping he beats Bush." (i.e. the Green Party V.P. candidate)

I am just not seeing these calculations that you refer to. I am only seeing emotion. Instead of telling me how bad Bush is, tell me why Kerry would make a better president. (that statement is not made to anyone in particular, it is just a blanket statement). Regardless, that is way off the topic of my original post.

Not a group think, but everybody is saying the same thing. Sure, there are reasons to vote for Kerry, but it really isn't being heralded from the rooftops. The trumpets I hear all toot the same song.

Who would the "controlling few" be in your equation?

If you remove spending from the equation, I don't see your point. Both sides spend to almost a criminal level, but other than that, they really don't have commonalities.

If you watch politicians, how they vote, etc., it isn't very hard to tell which side of the fence they are on. Yes, it is a two-party system and it will probably stay that way for a long time. There are dozens of different parties in the U.S., but they don't have enough of a following to be effective on election day. Personally, I support the two-party system (which we have but then again we don't). If we only had two options on election day, we would be able to clearly see who had a simple majority. Now we just get to deal with a plurality, which just divides the base even further. Actually, let me rephrase. I support the two-party system but in no way would I mandate it.

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

cthulu23

The two party system will only last as long as we believe the self-fulfilling prophecy that third parties can't win. Isn't a plurality of voices crucial to the functioning of a democracy?

roachboy

poco-let me sum things up for you.

if you read the answers from other folk to the thread--if you read almost anyone talking about their "party afiiliation", you'll see something on the order of what i had said.

my argument is that the electorate seems to have worked out ways to split their votes across party lines, to distribute them variously---and i offered a hypothesis to explain it--that the splittining up of votes--some rep. some dem, some independent, some green, etc.---the disintegration of strict party allegiance is a mode of adapting to the increasing ocnvergence of the parties.

i also made a further hypothesis: that this adaptation can be seen as something on the order of a practical mode of denial of the convergence of the parties in the context of an increasingly reactionary and uniform ideological climate---that the splitting of votes can be understood as a way for folk to create the illusion of diversity of choice in a situation that offers then little. you could see the increasing reliance on cutlural conservative issues to polarize the electorate as a symptom of this.

to say anything about the situation, a individual perspective on this would not only be arbitrary, but would serve to legitimate the impression that busy work of voting across party lines etc. really does demonstrate a meaningful level of choice/autonomy. in other words, it would repeat the adapative mode by trying repeating it at a slightly higher level of abstraction.
i think that illusion of choice is nothing more than that.
i think that the illusion of choice repeated as pseudo-analysis is an ideological move, not an analytic one.

the focus on the individual in right ideology more generally has had the interesting effect (among oothers) of allowing systematic shifts to go unnoticed while the politics debate collapses down onto irrelevant "common-sense" level discourse about any number of issues---the focus on the individual at the expense of the social is a form of political self-immolation, it is auto-disempowerment disguised in the language of freedom.

what i am saying is that your theorem appears to be wrong.
do you have any aggregated data, to shape your collection of the anecdotal? cards on the table, sir....

as for who i would define as the ruling elite---well lets see, poco--take a look at how i talked about where i am coming from above, and see if you can derive what you think i will say. you set up a guessing game about you at the core of this thread--so now you get to play one. reciprocity is implicit in the notion of game. your turn.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

poco_vino

I got to about the second paragraph and had to stop.

1) Too busy today to read your threads, perhaps be a little more concise? Sorry, just the next few days are very busy.

2) I followed you, but we are so off topic. Why don't you start this on your own thread and, if I can, I will join you.

Other than that, I would like to hear from somebody that has an opinion on the topic of the post. We, my friend, are just going in circles.

__________________
"Life is a jest and all things show it
I thought so once, but now I know it"

John Gay

roachboy

well, whatever poco--i'm quite busy as well the next couple of days. let's see how things clear over the weekend.
i would rather you read the post and react to that. it is a basic critique of your argument and its assumptions.
sometimes you have to explain things.
there is not always a value in brevity.
and this is not off topic--not at all--but check in on the weekend.
hopefully the thread will mutate in the meantime.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite