Ack wrote:
JT, I'm surprised at you! Of course the Republicans are using an emotional hook to pull in voters. This happens all the time. Did you really not think that "hope and change," "breaking the glass ceiling," and "the vast right wing conspiracy" weren't supposed to bring about some kind of emotional response? Emotions play a huge part in any political campaign, regardless of facts backing them.
Republicans complain about crime. Democrats complain about guns. Violence via firearms has also been on a downward trend since the 1990s without further regulation of assault weapons and the like. Yet politicians who wish to regulate them will be more than happy to prey upon your emotions by playing up your fears and barraging you with victims despite the nation being statistically safer...which is never mentioned. No, you don't care that there may be other reasons beyond legislation which are reshaping these things, you want changes NOW, reasons and consequences be damned!
I don't think you should chide one party for this while accepting or allowing the other party to do it because you support them. Emotional response and manipulation of statistics are old tried and true methods to winning any sort of electoral campaign.
I hope you are just funning with me, because you just attacked a strawman JT and not the real guy. Of course I recognize that both political parties make emotional appeals to sway voters.
It seems like your criticism is that it's unfair that I just called out the republicans on this without calling out the democrats on some other example, which I don't think is necessary to do, but ok, I'll bite and offer up a major critique against the democrats. Student loan debt relief has been a carrot dangled before millenials to bring them out to the voting booths, when graduates aren't being as crushed by this debt as the dems would have you believe, and in fact are doing well and getting a good return on their investment in their own education. As someone with student debt myself, I know that student loan debt isn't fun to pay back. However, when you look at
the data on student loan debt, there are notable patterns. People that went to good colleges get good jobs and are able to pay back their debts and make good money. People that went to poor performing and predatory professional schools are less likely to get good jobs and more likely to be burdened with student loan debt. Also, many of the people who defaulted on student loan debts had smaller loans of a few thousands, suggesting that they dropped out and would likely have financial problems even with student debt relief (in other words, they are a poor ROI for debt relief).
When democrats talk about student loan debt relief as being an investment in America's future, this is only partially true because it would also be a huge expense in America's tax future. Since the majority of people in good schools are able to pay their debts without being unduely burdened, while the people in bad schools and who dropout are the ones who really need the debt relief, then this creates a big return on investment problem. You are already getting a strong return from the top performing students. With debt relief, these students will just later be paying the taxes to pay for the schooling of students who went to poor schools or dropped out early. While the promise of "you shouldn't have to pay for college!" sounds real nice when you are paying for college or your debt from college (which I am), it doesn't sound so nice when you realize that you will have a higher future tax burden to bail out the underperforming-now-debt-burdened students who are not particularly likely to be economically productive once that debt is relieved. Nevertheless, Bernie got a lot of young people real excited with a promise of no student loan debt despite how fiscally reckless it would be, and now Hillary is starting to make similar statements to pull in that younger demographic too (though she is has mostly talked about refinancing loans, I think she might be changing her plans to appease Bernie and his supporters). Obama has taken a more sane approach and he has put restrictions on student loans from going to underperforming schools and has implemented his PAYE program, which allows for smaller minimum payments for people who actually are overburdened with student loan debt by only requiring a certain percentage of discretionary funds.
So there. I can be critical of my own party too. Bernie was even my candidate of choice. Happy?
I'm also not lock-step with them on guns. I think the NRA is crazy, but the 2nd amendment has reason to be there. I liked what Hillary said in her DNC speech about guns though, which is that she doesn't want to repeal the 2nd amendment, nor does she want to take people's guns away, she merely wants to make it more difficult for people to get guns who have demonstrated that they really shouldn't have guns. That's a sane approach to gun sales.
I will say to your point, however, that I think there is a big difference in inspiring political action via emotional appeals to fear and hate rather than emotional appeals for hope and change. And if you're presented with clear facts, you shouldn't say feelings are more important, as Newt Gingrich did. That clip I posted of him is mind blowing.
