More Election Fun

Having commented recently on the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, it makes sense to talk a little about the Democratic candidates as well, especially since they recently held their first debate. Actually, I made a few observations on them a few months back, and much of that still stands. Furthermore, it is still in my opinion a bit early to be obsessing to much about the US presidential race, as there are still several months until the primaries actually start. However, given the importance of the US president, it is worthwhile to start taking a look at some of the people vying for the position, particularly those who have reasonable positions on the important issues. I’m also going to comment briefly on the Taiwanese presidential race, where there have been some bizarre developments.

If I were to judge the Democratic candidates purely on their current stated positions, Martin O’Malley might have to be my first choice. His policy positions on important issues like climate change, economic inequality, gun control, and reining in Wall Street are as good as or better than those of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. However, some aspects of his record as mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland bother me, and in any case his current prospects are not that great. Sanders is the best prospect for radical, progressive change, which is something I think the United States needs. His positions on the majority of issues are excellent, and as I will discuss further in a moment, he does really seem to be different from your average politician, even on the left. His main weakness is on guns. Though this is perhaps quite as vital an issue as climate change, income inequality, or getting money out of politics, it is still something that is reaching a crisis point in the US, and as I have noted in the past, it is connected with other issues, such as the high numbers of people being shot and killed by the police (to reiterate, though as Black Lives Matter activists correctly state, there is a very clear racial disparity in such incidents, it is also obvious that if guns weren’t so pervasive in the society, police would be much less trigger happy, regardless of the race of the suspects). While Sanders has a far better stance on gun control than anyone on the Republican side, some of his past votes were poor judgment at best. In fact, guns are another of the many issues were there needs to be a radical change in direction, and unlike on other issues, Sanders seems unlikely to provide it. Nevertheless, his excellent views on so many other issues go a long way toward making up for his weakness in this area.

Of course, despite Sanders’ high poll numbers and the huge crowds he has been his drawing, the pundits still consider Hillary Rodham Clinton the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, especially given her strong performance in the debate. Though many progressives have decidedly mixed feelings about Clinton, her stated positions on the majority of issues are solidly progressive, and at least one article I read noted that her voting record as a US Senator was actually slightly more progressive than Barack Obama’s. Perhaps in part due to pressure from popular left-wing Democrats like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Clinton’s positions on many issues have moved noticeably further to the left in this campaign. However, she is still overly cautious on many issues, showing a reluctance to push for radical reform. If she is elected and manages to actually carry out everything that she says she want to do, it would certainly make things better in the US, but perhaps not as much as is really needed. Still, if she wins the Democratic nomination, I will support her. Even in the primaries, though I think Sanders and O’Malley have better positions overall, I am not necessarily rooting that strongly for them to beat her. I think she’s a stronger candidate than O’Malley, and her stance on guns is better than that of Sanders. Also, just the fact that if she won she would be the first woman to be US president is a point in her favor.

I should also note that one negative about Clinton in the eyes of most on the left is less of an issue for me, and that is her relatively hawkish stances on foreign policy. I think she may be a little more inclined to rely on military force than is wise, as I definitely think that military force should be an absolute last resort. That said, I don’t think it should be completely ruled out, especially in the face of major humanitarian crises like the war on Syria. I don’t mean that I think US ground troops should be put into Syria or Iraq, or even necessarily that a no fly zone in Syria is a good idea at this point. But if I were US president and I could be convinced, after hearing all the arguments on both sides, that a no fly zone would save civilian lives and was unlikely to make things worse in the long term (such as by exacerbating the already bad relations between the US and Russia or by creating even more chaos in Syria), I would certainly consider it. In other words, while I agree that in most cases US intervention doesn’t help and often even makes bad situations worse, I do think we shouldn’t completely rule anything out if it has the potential to save lives. So while I’m still undecided as to the best course of action in Syria, I tend to think of myself as falling somewhere between Sanders and O’Malley on the one hand and Clinton on the other hand.

But to go back to Sanders, I would like to mention one instance in which he demonstrated how he is different from your average politician. One of the most talked about moments in the debate was when Clinton was once more being grilled on the emails she sent as Secretary of State – the ones that the Republicans, abetted by many in the media, have been trying their best to turn into a scandal – and Sanders stepped in and defended Clinton, saying that people were tired of hearing about “your damn emails” when there were so many important issues facing the country. Not only was this part of Sanders’ narrative about keeping his campaign focused on substantive issues, rather than the meaningless trivial things the media loves to obsess about, it also demonstrated how uninterested he is in point scoring. The average politician would pile on when a rival is on the defensive, but Sanders seems to be genuinely determined to keep the focus on what can be done to solve the problems the US faces. This is definitely very refreshing, as is his call for a political revolution, rather than just incremental reform. Still, at this point I haven’t completely made up my mind between him and Clinton, or for that matter between the two of them and O’Malley.

I have not forgotten that there are other candidates running for the Democratic nomination. But Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee, aside from having no real chance at winning, are far less progressive than Clinton, the least progressive of the three top candidates, and don’t have anything in particular to recommend them. The most interesting candidate aside from the three discussed above in Lawrence Lessig, who as I have mentioned before I actually met and spoke to once around a decade ago when he was in Taiwan promoting Creative Commons. I agree wholeheartedly with his goal of dramatic campaign reform to get money out of politics, and I wouldn’t mind seeing him getting some traction in the race. He certainly should be allowed to join the next debate, as he probably has at least as much support as Webb and Chaffee, and he is a much better candidate. However, he is still a long shot, and I think it’s unlikely that he has a realistic chance. Finally, there’s Joe Biden, who people keep talking about as a potential candidate. While I like Biden well enough and would almost certainly vote for him if by some chance he won the nomination, he is also less progressive than Clinton (if to the left of Webb and Chafee), and I don’t see any point in him entering the race. If, rather than electing the first woman president of the US, we’re going to elect another white male, at least it should be someone really progressive like Sanders or O’Malley.

But while there are still many months to go before the nominees in the US presidential race will be decided and over a year until the general election, Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections will take place only three months from now, in mid January, so we’ll have a new Taiwanese president before the Democrats and Republicans have even officially nominated their candidates. But as close as the election is, there’s just been a major change in the race. The ruling KMT (Kuomintang/Guomindang/國民黨) several months ago went through its official process for choosing a candidate by means of a primary. Only one candidate, the right-wing legislator Hung Hsiu-chu, entered the race, so she won by default and was officially nominated by the KMT in July. However, she proved a terrible choice. Her campaigning skills left much to be desired, and more importantly, she showed herself to be even more pro-China than the mainstream of the KMT, which is already far to prepared to accommodate Taiwan’s bullying neighbor. Unsurprisingly, she fell well behind in polls against the candidate of the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party/民進黨), Tsai Ing-wen. A few weeks after Hung was nominated, former KMT official and past presidential candidate James Soong entered the race, making dubious attempts to position himself as a moderate. With a split in conservative support, Hung polled even worse, running far behind Tsai and not that far ahead of Soong, with even their combined support eventually dropping below that of Tsai. Finally, the KMT decided to replace Hung as their candidate, holding a party conference in which Hung was replaced by party chairman Eric Chu by acclamation – in other words, they didn’t even hold a vote.

If there is a recent example from anywhere in the world of a major political party changing their presidential candidate less than half a year before the election, particularly in such a clearly undemocratic manner, I’m not aware of it. What’s more, Chu’s decision to “accept the task” makes a mockery of his past assertions that he would serve out his current term as mayor of New Taipei City (not that he would be the first politician to violate such a pledge). While having Chu as president would not be quite as awful as having Hung, it wouldn’t be any improvement over the current president, Ma Ying-jeou, who’s been pretty bad (Chu has been fairly lousy as our mayor too), and I certainly wouldn’t want to see the KMT get rewarded for their dubious changing of horses in midstream by a victory. I hope Tsai (who is far from perfect, but would at least be a substantial improvement) wins by a substantial margin, even though it’s unlikely to be as much of a landslide as it would have been with Hung as her opponent. Somewhat comically, in the meeting at which Hung was replaced, Chu warned against the possibility that the DPP could win both the presidency and the legislature, claiming that would mean there would be no checks on the DPP’s power. This was rather ironic, since the KMT has held both the presidency and a large legislative majority over the past two terms (not to mention all the years it ruled Taiwan as a one party state before democratization in the 1990s), though it’s certainly true that Taiwanese have suffered due to the lack of checks on the KMT’s power. The best thing that could happen to Taiwan is if the KMT lost power permanently and the main opposition to the DPP came from new forces on the left. While this is unlikely in the immediate future, this election could be a start. As it happens, I am acquainted personally with at least three people running for legislative seats this time. All three are running as outsiders (two as members of small, new progressively-minded parties, and one as an independent), and while it’s far from certain that any of them will get elected, it would certainly be nice to see them and others like them in the legislature to keep the DPP and KMT honest, or at least as honest as they can be, which is not very in the KMT’s case, as its recent actions have once more shown.

Finally, there are actually some elections going on now - those for the Tibetan government in exile. The winners will certainly have a challenging job, not only trying to find a way to deal with China's unending malice, but also trying to fill the Dalai Lama's shoes as leader of the Tibetan people. It's interesting that one candidate for prime minister is openly suggesting that the Dalai Lama's moderate course be abandoned and full independence once again be declared the ultimate goal of the Tibetan people. As much as I respect the Dalai Lama, I think there is something to be said for aiming for independence, and I think it would be good if the Tibetans can have an open discussion about their options.