We're all independent voters trying to make an informed choice, blah, blah ,blah...
I'm always curious how the left side of the debate over Obama and his policies always seems to believe it is inherently correct because it disregards or dismisses evidence it disagrees with while the right side is constantly playing defense trying to convince people that Obama actually said what the left dismisses.
I'm always curious how the left side of the debate dismisses the fact that at least 44 percent of the people who plan to vote (53 million by my count based on the numbers for 2004) disagree with quite a bit of what left side says for principled and informed reasons, yet their disagreement is cast as being "Dangerously Misinformed: McCain Isn't the Only One Who Doesn't Understand".
Now, to defeat my own argument to an extent, I agree that Obama's tax plan sounds great on paper, at least for people who don't make a lot of money. Unfortunately for Obama, he's not the Congress, which actually passes taxation legislation that the president merely vetoes or signs and enforces. It turns out that Bush was not Congress in 2001--a Democrat Congress--and 2002--a Republican Congress--when the tax cuts were put into effect.
There's the rub with Obama's tax policy: it has to get through a Democrat leadership who will likely have solid, veto-proof margins in Congress who want the Bush tax cuts to go away altogether. If Obama wants to get his $1.5 trillion in new spending through Pelosi and Reid, he's probably going to have to do it by raising taxes on every last one of us.
Hence the reason that voting for a president based on domestic policy issues, inherently the domain of Congress, is dangerously misinformed. If we would stick to voting for presidents on issues they are constitutionally tasked to perform, like international relations, national security, and domestic enforcement, we would not have this dangerous misinformation floating around, nor would we be surprised by the fact that most presidents prove they deluded their voters after about a hundred days.
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I'm curious how otherwise intelligent, thoughtful people start making broad generalizations that are inherently unsupportable every time their views are called into question. I'm also curious why some people get their panties in a bunch when one side uses words like "dangerous" to describe one person, but remains silent when another uses similar language to couch another person in a bad light.
Let's set the record straight. Nothing in my post suggested an "inherent" rightness. I didn't disregard anything out of hand; I tried to address what few factual points had been presented in the orginial post along with the logic of the argument itself. I did this by trying to support, with logic and evidence, my own points. Argue my facts and conclusions, but please don't accuse me of being dissmissive.
I also did not deny that Obama is raising taxes for some people. In fact, my post clearly confirmed just that point. I did argue that those increases were far from dramatic and unlikely to have the deleterious effects the original post claimed.
What I also did do was attempt to dismantle what I thought was a poor and inaccurate argument that Obama is somehow dangerous because of his tax plan. Further, I went to great lengths to keep my post impersonal so as not to dismiss the author along with his views. If I somehow failed in that, please point out those specifics and I will make ammends.
I certainly did not dismiss 53 million people nor did I call into question their principles or informed reasons. In fact, I believe I said that reasonable people could disagree about tax policy, and, in my opinion, I did a pretty good job of putting forth a reasonable argument for why I thought Cephas' post was off the mark. There's still plenty of room to debate the conclusions we draw from the facts about the proposed tax policies. There's still plenty of room for reasonable discussion and disagreement about what fiscal policy is best for this country.
My title, which was no more incendiary than the one for the post to which I was responding, was meant to peak interest (which it did in at least one case) and to reverse McCain's meme that "Obama just doesn't understand."
As to your own counterargument that it is Congress that passes tax law, not the President, I would agree. While the President offers a proposed budget to Congress, it is ultimately Congress that legislates. However, it is precisely that point that most deflates the original argument that Obama is dangerous for his tax plan. Based on your argument, neither Obama nor McCain are dangerous for their tax plans which makes me wonder why the thrust of your post is so anti what you perceive to be "left" and does nothing to address, head on, the original (in my view, spurious) argument.
If you want to debate tax policy or make an argument based on the actual Constitutional role of the Presidency, please proceed. But when you start personalizing the argument and throwing around unspecific charges and irrelevancies like "left" and "right", you lower the level of discourse. Not that I haven't gone there too. We all have. I'm just saying, let's try not to if we can help it. (And I suppose, while we're at it, it wouldn't be remiss for someone to remind me that lecturing your fellow bloggers is probably not so productive either -- *sheepish grin*).
I liked your title, by the way. Most factual statement in the whole post. ;)
David, I'm glad to see your comment mostly because I figured, after the fact, that my post would be taken as ad hominem, which it was not entirely intended to be. Unfortunately, your response got caught up in an entire wave of writing (not on this weblog) which I would categorize as being exactly how I described them. That's the problem when one writes late, tired, and grumpy...
First, to the point of left versus right. These distinctions are not, in some part, irrelevant. In the current national discourse, they have become battle lines. In great part, my use of those terms was directed at that fact.
Second, part of the war being fought between these two sides is a higher level of "You're stupid"/"No, you're stupid". Personally, I find the writing on many leftist leaning websites to be conceited and derogatory. I think what got me in your post was the tone, which in many ways echoes the tone elsewhere and grates on me in ways my post reveals. There are many ways to address the inaccuracies of someone's attacks without feeding the fire. As we see, three consecutive posts that follow the same incendiary line lead here.
My point is that, as you correctly identify, we need to rise above that incendiary line if we intend to have a reasoned debate. Frankly, Cephas' tone was wrong, your tone was wrong, and my tone was wrong. From my perspective, the problem here is that there is too much emotion wrapped up in the conversation because of the underlying frustrations that lead to it.
Third, my point about tax policy was to point out my ongoing belief that the president does not set it or most domestic policy. The fact that the entire presidential debate has been hijacked by subjects that have, in my opinion, very little to do with the presidency, is a great source of the negative tone I expressed.
Finally, I hope you note that I actually agreed with you in my original post, though it was after I threw the gasoline.
You guys are all a bunch of racists.
Thanks, Ninja. You're always helpful.
It occurs to me, to address David's original question, that the reason people make generalizations in cases like these is because they are trying to overcome their own misgivings about their support for a certain cause. As an example, my support for John McCain has always been based on my belief that he is the better candidate to carry out the national security policy I support. Frankly, I have never liked much else about McCain (I've called him "Crazy John" since 2000ish), but the problem is that I like Obama even less _and_ not as many people think national security is important as I do.
As a result, I find myself in the damn frustrating position of defending a cadidate I'm lukewarm about on issues I don't care about. I think a lot of other people are the same way, whether they support McCain or Obama.
I gave a quick re-read to both my and Cephas' posts. I don't think there is anything wrong with his tone at all. I think he drew some bad conclusions and his argument wasn't real tight, but his tone is just enthusiastic for his point without being angry or personal. My own post is pretty even-handed, though some of my attempts to match the enthusiasm and energy in Cephas' post lean into a more personal sounding attack. I don't think it ever gets there, but it leans more than I'd like. Even Denny's post isn't all that bad for tone -- certainly more restrained than we've been at times here.
I can certainly understand and, in fact, share Denny's frustration with the tone of arguments outside this space. I frequently fell into the same pattern he just did of being absorbed in a broader, frustrating discussion, and then beating this audience over the head with my frustrations and generalizations. I have nothing but forgiveness and empathy for Denny on that score.
Personally, I think the generalizations arise from a form of laziness on our parts. Like Denny, I'll be doing a lot of reading or discussing elsewhere, see a pattern of behavior that I might privately label as something, and then in the heat of a response here, I just neglect to go look up a relevant sampling of the things I'm talking about. Suddenly, anyone who has ever disagreed with me, no matter how reasonable or right they were, become crazed extremists who don't fight fair, never admit they're wrong, and mean our country ill.
Sometimes, for me, it comes out of frustration at the energy it takes to actually pick apart why an argument is bad. When someone argues "Terrorists are evil and dangerous and we need to kill them over there so they don't kill us here," it's a lot easier to say "You're stupid" than it is to start parsing the argument because while there's a lot wrong or unstated about the argument, there's a lot right about it. To fully address it, I suddenly find myself on page 8 of a 36 page thesis about the nature of evil and the vagaries of geography or what have you.
It's real easy to get worked up about the issues of the day. National security really is important. There really are people trying to kill us ("just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they really aren't out to get me.") There really are important choices to be made in the election. I got heated for a long time about how bad Bush was for this country. I still believe it, but at my worst you'd have thought we'd all be wiped out by four more years of Bush. Well, we're still here. Worse for the wear, arguably, but we're still here. We'll be hear four years from now whether Obama or McCain ends up in the White House. Even Palin, who isn't even qualified for a TOUR of the White House, let alone the Vice Presidency or Presidency, wouldn't cause us to cease to exist.
As a nation, we Must. Calm. Down. We have to send a message to the divisive voices who dominate the main stream press and establishment in Washington that we will not tolerate the incivility and personality assassinations any more. If they aren't capable of being civil with one another, then they aren't fit to hold office. Until we stop consuming that kind of mutual despising of "the other" we won't be able to accomplish much that is productive.
It's cliche, but true: there's a lot more that unites us than divides us. Democrats and Republicans need to stop treating each other as the enemy. The opposition, sure. But not enemies. Just like here at AHOC. We oppose one another constantly, but we are not one another's enemies. Not by a long shot.
I think we'll have to disagree about tone, mostly because this medium is so notoriously tone deaf. Because blog posts and comments rarely capture the things that set the tone in normal conversation, figuring out the tone is left up to the reader. For whatever reason, the past few posts conjure strident disagreement for me, whatever the intent might be.
Your point about enemies versus opponents is well taken simply because it has been my point for quite a while that the former has been true. Unfortunately, the tone of the general debate makes setting an even tone in more civil debates like this one that much harder, which is unfortunate because we all could learn from each other if it weren't for all the shouting.
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