c_man posted:i think aerdil brings up something important that ive thought a bit about myself, namely, what sort of agency does a president actually have? obviously they couldnt do much of anything that interferes in any substantial way with the functioning of capital in the country, but how much agency does a president have to promote extreme violence outside what capital would compel any head of the US to do? or, probably more productively, what avenues does a president have/use to pursue their personal agenda?
i think this is important because it's one thing to recognize that everything said by/about a presidential candidate, especially on national television, is Pure Ideology but that doesn't actually mean that they're all actually identical. maybe they are, but you'd need to actually do some research and material analysis to come to that conclusion. it seems to me that this would depend on the individual connections that the president has but at the same time those dramatically underdetermine the actual outcome. anyone know of any good writing in this vein?
actually a president could do a whole lto of stuff from that position, it's just that what they technically could do without getting assassinated by the cia and how far even the most well-meaning pres is actually willing to go in the face of every general, advisor, and media outlet's disagreement is probably quite a wide gap. wait i havent read this thread yet so just ignore this post
c_man posted:not about presidential politics specifically, but here's a thread from twitter talking about some of the ways things have changed significantly for the worse due to changes in conspiracy law
god twitter sucks that poor person responded to themself so many times trying to write an argument that their last couple tweets got folded up under a "View Other Replies" link
not much can be done about mass incarceration on a federal level besides commuting a small percentage of sentences
maybe sanders should just paint clinton as more of an anti-federalist and say that he is more of a federalist. obviously not using those words, but just saying things like "we need to have a national government that is strong enough to tackle the problems this country faces. we will not let obstinate governors stand in the way of progress"
state gov'ts have been subverting the national will ever since the reconstruction era. if you can't enact national policy with cooperation from the lower branches of gov't, it really does leave little in the field of "things a federal government can do". probably not a coincidence, then, that national debates are surrounding who to go to war with or who to block out with a giant wall, because those things actually fall exclusively under the purview of a national government.
edit: not that sanders would really do anything about mass incarceration, i just think that whoever did do something would need to have the support of a strong national government or the truth and light of marxism leninism.