US Election 2016: the fall of the American republic

[Ariadne23]

If the United States does elect a demagogue President now or in the near future, we're surely going to regret the expansion of executive power in recent years and putting Alito on the SCOTUS bench.

I think originally, the idea wasn't to prevent demagogues, but just to limit their power enough to weather it, like we did with Andrew Jackson.

But now, executive power has increased with America's increased role on the global stage post-WW II and the increase in federal government power needed to maintain our position and competitive adge globally. So, the more I think about it, the more I agree that there's really no preventing a demagogue from coming to power in a truly catastrophic way unless whoever has the power to stop it does, and the only entity with the power to stop it is the party. 

It's not going to work to rely on democracy for forever when this is the known flaw in the system.

Because we've failed, I'm guessing the rest of the world isn't going to trust us to have the position we've occupied for so long now. I wouldn't if I were them.

ETA: FYI, the wiki section on methods of demagogues is downright creepy. I'd put money on Trump having read it.

 

[Castel]

5 minutes ago, Altherion said:

They also predicted in no uncertain terms what would happen when the parties become too partisan and too powerful:

To be fair, our parties are not quite like that -- not yet, anyway.

If Clinton wins, and the GOP blocks her moves and her SCOTUS noms for 4 years and then she's unseated and they stack the court...I imagine you'll see a "spirit of revenge". 

 

[Ariadne23]

10 minutes ago, Altherion said:

They also predicted in no uncertain terms what would happen when the parties become too partisan and too powerful:

To be fair, our parties are not quite like that -- not yet, anyway.

Absolutely. But short of the creation of an international institution that creates and enforces a rule of law, and would thereby maybe allow us to strip the power of our executive back to pre-WW II or maybe even pre-Civil War levels, what else can you do? Who or what else will prevent the demagogue besides the parties?

Granted, I'd feel better if there were three.

 

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, Castel said:

Well, it doesn't matter if you're either the exact sort of established candidate who should win or Trump and getting millions in free advertising. Let's posit a sane Trump, an actual outsider without the sort of attention he actually grabs. Would that guy really have a chance? 

I think he would, absolutely. Depends on how popular he is. A person like Trump running on an anti-elite background who is an outsider and is genuinely self-funding? I think they have a shot, especially in such an open race as the primary was. Ben Carson was ahead for a while. BEN FUCKING CARSON. 

And on the flip side, almost no one had heard about Sanders before this election, and he got a ton of free info and movement from both media and social presence. Not quite enough - but again, a lot of that was because the DNC is set up to support the party a bit more strongly and Clinton is, honestly, a very good candidate. 

[Castel]

29 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

I didn't say democratic party elections were a "right," but I would argue that in a two party system, it's pretty integral to a representative democracy otherwise you're stuck with two elite-sponsored candidates -- which is usually what happens (2016 aside)  given the way our campaign finance system works. But at least with with popular votes in party primaries, the onus is ultimately on the voters even if they tend to be heavily influenced by who has the most money to drop on campaign ads (or in the case of the 2016 GOP nominee -- the most free media coverage). 

And I obviously wasn't arguing that somehow the GOP elites forced Trump on an unwilling electorate -- that's obviously false (quite the opposite of course). I was taking umbridge with the contention that the elites should act as political gatekeepers. As Rosseau said "the will of the people is not always correct." Duh. But that doesn't make the will of a handful elites any more correct or any more/less likely to do stupid stuff. Look at Dubya. He lost the popular vote and was a product of the electoral college, designed specifically to give the elites a final say in the election, and still fucked up royally -- as did most of the DC foreign policy elites when they shilled for the Iraq war. 

Sanders got a lot of support as a non-elite, I will note. 

 

Beyond that:elites aren't perfect and there's a reason so many have disdain for this idea. So  it should tell you something that people are seriously considering that there's some sort of need for party insider control.

I too feel an instinctive sort of distrust of the very idea that you need some Good Men running around but surely something has to give here, and over time I've become less and less convinced by the sole point of bipartisan agreement in the US of A: that it's all the "establishment's" fault, that just washing it away with your preferred candidate (assuming they can do that) is the solution.

Frankly, I've come to view it as a comforting article of faith. It's strangely probably more optimistic than the alternative: the political extremes of the US are hurtling away from each other and the other side has plenty of people willing to vote in a manner so far removed from your beliefs that respect and compromise are getting harder and harder and the elites reflect that.

EDIT: Having just cited Sanders, I guess I can't deny him for @Kalbear's argument 

[DunderMifflin]

27 minutes ago, Castel said:

 

Well, it doesn't matter if you're either the exact sort of established candidate who should win or Trump and getting millions in free advertising. Let's posit a sane Trump, an actual outsider without the sort of attention he actually grabs. Would that guy really have a chance? 

I dont think so.

His outlandish Trumpness is what's kept him in it this long and why he gets the free advertising, imo

Where as a guy like Ben Carson and others are rather humble whenever they are challenged on their flaws and/or seemingly eccentric views.

While Trump turns into a 2am Walmart shopper at the slightest criticism. THAT'S the show, that's what you get in return for the supposedly "free" advertising.

[Ariadne23]

9 minutes ago, Castel said:

...elites aren't perfect and there's a reason so many have disdain for this idea. So  it should tell you something that people are seriously considering that there's some sort of need for party insider control.

Right. And there's some conflated meaning of "elite," I think. Basically, somewhere there has to be a gatekeeper institution that actually knows the candidate well enough to say if that person is a reasonably sane adult. 

Maybe instead we should beef up the requirements to be certified as a candidate.

[All-for-Joffrey]

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Sanders got a lot of support as a non-elite, I will note.

Sure, but with the caveat that institutionally the Democratic party had been running Clinton in the primaries for years in advance and he ultimately lost anyway. (Of course it wasn't all the fact that Clinton was the DNC favorite -- he also made several campaign strategy stumbles himself -- but it was still a significant factor.) The DNC emails showed that Wasserman Schutlz et al also had some pretty nasty attacks on him they were thinking about pulling out -- but at that point it was already kinda moot since he was already losing to Clinton. Had he started to beat her, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened with regards to the DNC actively waging a shadow campaign against him. And speaking of party insiders calling the shots and Wasserman Schultz -- she's pretty much living proof that the party elites don't always know best. She was equally reviled among the Clinton camp for her general incompetency and ineptitude. That said, yes Sanders showed it is possible for a non-party establishment candidate to be competitive even though the fact remains that he lost. And that gives me a degree of optimism, to the point where I think the positives of the general public curbing the influence of the elites is worth the risk of the Trumps of the world. Otherwise you're essentially stuck with the status quo, which doesn't do much to advance the interests of society's most marginalized. 

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"Frankly, I've come to view it as a comforting article of faith. It's strangely probably more optimistic than the alternative: the political extremes of the US are hurtling away from each other and the other side has plenty of people willing to vote in a manner so far removed from your beliefs that respect and compromise are getting harder and harder and the elites reflect that "

This sentiment is echoed all the time amongst the political media and political operatives. It completely and utterly fails to take into account A) how much more conservative the US is than most of the rest of the developed world and B ) how much more gerrymandering favors Republicans than Democrats, meaning that it's primarily extreme conservatives rather than extreme liberals calling the shots on the whole "compromise" thing. The closet leftist equivalent to the Tea Party would be someone like Jill Stein. There's no caucus in Congress for people similar to Stein. And you can't honestly in good faith argue that the Progressive caucus (IE: the likes of Keith Ellison, Mark Pocan, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin etc) are as ideologically extreme or as unreasonable as the Tea Party caucus -- especially when you put US politics in a global context. The fact of the matter is we have a problem with the far right in the US -- not the far left. 

[Jasta11]

26 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

Right but most people wouldn't be howling for blood in Iraq -- much less even know where the fuck Iraq is -- had Bush and his neocon parties not beat the war drums and disseminate their "arguments" for war to the public and down through (a largely uncritical and placid) media establishment. This was a war engineered by the elites and then sold the plebs. No one would be clamoring for war with Iraq had it not been engineered by the Bush administration.

So at the end of the day, most Americans supported the Iraq war because the elites TOLD them they should support it. I'm not saying that more direct representation isn't dangerous, I'm just arguing that it's (at the very least) no more dangerous than having a small handful of uber-priviliged people call the shots. 

I'm really not sure at all. I was young at the time, but I remember a fairly spontaneous movement of patriotism in the US (the most amusing anocdote of which, here in Canada, was some people renaming ''french fries'' into ''freedom fries'' after Chirac said no to Bush regarding Irak) and people really wanting to ''get back'' at the perpetrators of 9/11. Would they have targeted Irak, specifically? No. Would they have agreed to almost any invasion of a Muslim country based on their religion alone? I'm ventured to say yes. They didn't need to be told they would support a war. They just needing someone to designate a target.

Anyway, about the current election. In my absolutely not professional opinion, Cliton wins, but by a fairly small margin. I see her winning Florida but losing one or a couple of other contested States, and not being that far ahead in terms of popular vote, with the House staying Republican and the GoP retaining a small majority in the Senate. The Democrats breathe a sigh of relief yet brace for 4 solid years of constant obstruction, Trump rages about how it's the fault of literally everyone but himself as his rhetoric spreads to the Republican party, and the toxic atmosphere of US politics inches ever closer to reaching War of the Five Kings level.

The above makes me look like a pessimist, doesn't it?

[All-for-Joffrey]

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I'm really not sure at all. I was young at the time, but I remember a fairly spontaneous movement of patriotism in the US (the most amusing anocdote of which, here in Canada, was some people renaming ''french fries'' into ''freedom fries'' after Chirac said no to Bush regarding Irak) and people really wanting to ''get back'' at the perpetrators of 9/11. Would they have targeted Irak, specifically? No. Would they have agreed to almost any invasion of a Muslim country based on their religion alone? I'm ventured to say yes. They didn't need to be told they would support a war. They just needing someone to designate a target.

We already had a war. It was Afghanistan. It's not like the  masses were crying out for another war and Bush said "ok, I'll oblige" and chose Iraq. He chose it simply to suit the agenda of the likes of Cheney, Haliburton, Rumsfeld, etc. They decided they want to go war with Iraq -- they used flimsy intelligence (that they likely fabricated) and the media elites actively acted as White House cheerleaders and didn't do any serious investigating or inquiries into the intelligence leading up to the war or the war itself to the point where the Times and the Post wouldn't even take Chelsea Manning's Iraq war logs, prompting her to go to Wikileaks instead. Actually the more I think about it, the more the Iraq war is the perfect example of both why having elites govern isn't any better than more direct democratic governance and why people have started to lose faith in the elites over the 21st century. 

[Castel]

6 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

This sentiment is echoed all the time amongst the political media and political operatives. It completely and utterly fails to take into account A) how much more conservative the US is than most of the rest of the developed world and B ) how much more gerrymandering favors Republicans than Democrats, meaning that it's primarily extreme conservatives rather than extreme liberals calling the shots on the whole "compromise" thing. The closet leftist equivalent to the Tea Party would be someone like Jill Stein. There's no caucus in Congress for people similar to Stein. And you can't honestly in good faith argue that the Progressive caucus (IE: the likes of Keith Ellison, Mark Pocan, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin etc) are as ideologically extreme or as unreasonable as the Tea Party caucus -- especially when you put US politics in a global context. The fact of the matter is we have a problem with the far right in the US -- not the far left. 

No, I don't consider progressives (in power) to be like the Tea Party at all. The TP has succeeded far past the dreams of any equivalent progressive group. That wasn't my point. My point is that people boil down their frustration with the inability to gallop forward with their policies to the disposition of "the establishment" candidates because it's less annoying than the alternative.

Just cause the driving force is on one side doesn't change the fact that attributing the solution to dispositional factors is still a problem.

[Kalbear]

21 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

 Otherwise you're essentially stuck with the status quo, which doesn't do much to advance the interests of society's most marginalized.

What would you characterize Obama as, then?

Or Clinton in 1992? 

Personally, I'd say Obama was largely an outsider who succeeded because he was able to convince elites that he was also sane and a good choice while maintaining his outsider ability. Bill Clinton was very similar too - his motto at the time was to change Washington and bring in something to break the status quo, and things did change quite a bit - though certainly not for the better in all ways.

21 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

This sentiment is echoed all the time amongst the political media and political operatives. It completely and utterly fails to take into account A) how much more conservative the US is than most of the rest of the developed world and B ) how much more gerrymandering favors Republicans than Democrats, meaning that it's primarily extreme conservatives rather than extreme liberals calling the shots on the whole "compromise" thing. The closet leftist equivalent to the Tea Party would be someone like Jill Stein. There's no caucus in Congress for people similar to Stein. And you can't honestly in good faith argue that the Progressive caucus (IE: the likes of Keith Ellison, Mark Pocan, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin etc) are as ideologically extreme or as unreasonable as the Tea Party caucus -- especially when you put US politics in a global context. The fact of the matter is we have a problem with the far right in the US -- not the far left. 

I think this is fair - so far. I think this election has shown that there is basically zero reason for Democrats to compromise any more. That was the hope from 2008 on - that Obama could unify the country, that we would all come together in shared hopes and dreams - and the most jaded person out of everyone is Obama from that. He learned the lesson Clinton did in 1994 with healthcare, and it cost the Democrats the House and Senate. 

You've already seen that quite a lot in Clinton's message for this year after the primary. For the first time that I can remember the Democratic candidate didn't soften their progressive promises as they got to the convention - they actually went the other way. Clinton's policies were already pretty progressive, but they adopted most everything from Sanders. And they didn't get hurt for this at all. There was no moderate pivot to pick up undecideds or moderate people; even Obama did that. No, they went even harder into the progressive paint. 

Because the lesson they learned was that they weren't going to win over Republicans. There was no compromise that would be palatable to them. But they could win over much of the Sanders democrats, and they could just go all out.

And yeah, it's true that the US is still significantly more conservative than most of the developed world (though oddly, not on things like gay marriage), but the Democratic party definitely has a more progressive element than they have, and it would not shock me in the least if Sanders afterwards became something of a Tea Party-ish person that primaried out moderate dems for not being ideologically pure enough. 

[Ariadne23]

7 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

Actually the more I think about it, the more the Iraq war is the perfect example of both why having elites govern isn't any better than more direct democratic governance and why people have started to lose faith in the elites over the 21st century. 

The Iraq war was not a good idea or noble thing to do, but we're talking about avoiding WWII-level global catastrophe here. Nobody's suggesting that as long as there's some gatekeeping function on who runs for office deeply stupid and immoral shit won't happen.

In the specific case of the Iraq War, Congress really fucked up. In a Trump scenario, there wouldn't be a vote.

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

I think the campaign financing may matter a lot in downballot races going forward, but I don't think it matters much any more for the presidential races. 

Maybe if you have enormous name recognition like Trump. But if Trump had been some one-term senator I still think he'd have crashed and burned.

Yeah, I know, Sanders. But Sanders had some name recognition (even I, a non-USian, was vaguely aware that he was an independent lefty of some sort, even if I couldn't have picked him in a police lineup). And more powerfully, Sanders had the same thing Trump has had in the general, ie he was the beneficiary of the 'I can't believe they're foisting Clinton on us' vote. Plus, he had the grassroots campaign in which people who wanted to, saw an echo of Obama. Really, Sanders had a few things on his side.

I do agree money isn't everything, and that it's decreasing in importance. But if you don't have money, you'd better have something else, and just being an arrogant loudmouth won't do. For one thing, it's not going to make you stand out from the pack in the next Republican primary, I guarantee.

[Castel]

10 minutes ago, mormont said:

Maybe if you have enormous name recognition like Trump. But if Trump had been some one-term senator I still think he'd have crashed and burned.

Yeah, I know, Sanders. But Sanders had some name recognition (even I, a non-USian, was vaguely aware that he was an independent lefty of some sort, even if I couldn't have picked him in a police lineup). And more powerfully, Sanders had the same thing Trump has had in the general, ie he was the beneficiary of the 'I can't believe they're foisting Clinton on us' vote. Plus, he had the grassroots campaign in which people who wanted to, saw an echo of Obama. Really, Sanders had a few things on his side.

I do agree money isn't everything, and that it's decreasing in importance. But if you don't have money, you'd better have something else, and just being an arrogant loudmouth won't do. For one thing, it's not going to make you stand out from the pack in the next Republican primary, I guarantee.

The counter argument would be that, if you're running to be President you have to expect some amount of that grassroots support. If you don't have it, or can't quickly get it no one can help you.

Like, I can see the argument for less inertia with a state legislature or even a US House race but the presidency is an altogether different beast.

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, mormont said:

Maybe if you have enormous name recognition like Trump. But if Trump had been some one-term senator I still think he'd have crashed and burned.

Like Cruz? He's precisely in the same boat.

Or like Obama? 

9 minutes ago, mormont said:

Yeah, I know, Sanders. But Sanders had some name recognition (even I, a non-USian, was vaguely aware that he was an independent lefty of some sort, even if I couldn't have picked him in a police lineup). And more powerfully, Sanders had the same thing Trump has had in the general, ie he was the beneficiary of the 'I can't believe they're foisting Clinton on us' vote. Plus, he had the grassroots campaign in which people who wanted to, saw an echo of Obama. Really, Sanders had a few things on his side.

Sure, but what he didn't have starting out was money, and despite outraising Clinton he didn't end up winning. 

9 minutes ago, mormont said:

I do agree money isn't everything, and that it's decreasing in importance. But if you don't have money, you'd better have something else, and just being an arrogant loudmouth won't do. For one thing, it's not going to make you stand out from the pack in the next Republican primary, I guarantee.

Name recognition helps tremendously, as does Trump's goal of branding as his main thing. Someone like Kanye has been mentioned on the Democratic side, and that's a good example of someone who could jump right in and get actual people voting for him right away. Or, say, imagine Jon Stewart jumping in. 

The point is that massive financing isn't nearly as important as it once was, and there are a lot more ways to practically get the money that was so crucial in the 90s and early 2000s. More importantly, polarization means that in the general it is FAR less important. Especially ads, which as far as I can tell make almost no goddamn difference whatsoever.

[Ariadne23]

Yeah, it seems like the parties actually abdicated their gatekeeping function to the big donors, and big money alone doesn't actually have the power to carry out that role.

And you'd think that'd be a good thing, but here we are.

[DunderMifflin]

15 minutes ago, mormont said:

Maybe if you have enormous name recognition like Trump. But if Trump had been some one-term senator I still think he'd have crashed and burned.

Yeah, I know, Sanders. But Sanders had some name recognition (even I, a non-USian, was vaguely aware that he was an independent lefty of some sort, even if I couldn't have picked him in a police lineup). And more powerfully, Sanders had the same thing Trump has had in the general, ie he was the beneficiary of the 'I can't believe they're foisting Clinton on us' vote. Plus, he had the grassroots campaign in which people who wanted to, saw an echo of Obama. Really, Sanders had a few things on his side.

I do agree money isn't everything, and that it's decreasing in importance. But if you don't have money, you'd better have something else, and just being an arrogant loudmouth won't do. For one thing, it's not going to make you stand out from the pack in the next Republican primary, I guarantee.

Democrats still have room for excitement though. Kanye 2020

[Castel]

Just now, DunderMifflin said:

Democrats still have room for excitement though. Kanye 2020

If there was another candidate that'd drown us beneath the endless apologia of "he tells it like it is!", it's Kanye. 

[All-for-Joffrey]

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Personally, I'd say Obama was largely an outsider who succeeded because he was able to convince elites that he was also sane and a good choice while maintaining his outsider ability. Bill Clinton was very similar too - his motto at the time was to change Washington and bring in something to break the status quo, and things did change quite a bit - though certainly not for the better in all ways.

I won't get into Clinton because I was three at the time, but as someone who casted my first-ever vote for Obama partially on the basis that he was an breath of fish air outsider, I don't think this is true. (In retrospect I think I was a relatively low-information voter in 2008 and pretty much my key metric was simply that he was one of the few senators to vote against the Iraq war.) He wasn't the presumptive favorite and initially the DNC establishment did indeed favor Clinton but he was clearly being groomed for a potential run down the line after Clinton. (He got a prime speaking slot at the 2004 DNC, was funded by a lot Democratic establishment PACs, employed standard Democratic establishment operatives to run his campaign, took a shitload of money from Wall Street while his opponent relied on a publicly funded campaign, etc.) The only way the Obama anti-establishment holds up is if you use endorsements as the sole metric of determining whether or not a candidate is establishment -- which is a silly metric.  I think a comparable analogy would be the 2016 GOP -- Jeb! was clearly the establishment favorite but Rubio or even Kasich would have been acceptable alternatives -- just preferably later down the line. 

Obama certainly ran as the outsider candidate -- and I certainly fell for it -- but that didn't make him any less of an establishment favorite. 

I actually started to sour on him a mere few months after voting for him -- starting with reports that he was still ok with renditioning prisoners to Bagram prison where the Afghan military tortured them and then gradually bleeding into other foreign policy issues like his implementation of the drone program and ultimately domestic issues.) Also, as he moved up the political food chain throughout his career, he calibrated some of his views to make himself more conservative. (IE: gay marriage). 

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And yeah, it's true that the US is still significantly more conservative than most of the developed world (though oddly, not on things like gay marriage), but the Democratic party definitely has a more progressive element than they have, and it would not shock me in the least if Sanders afterwards became something of a Tea Party-ish person that primaried out moderate dems for not being ideologically pure enough.

Please. You'll never see Sanders threatening to shut down the government unless Republicans agree to pass a single payer healthcare system anymore than you see Liz Warren threatening a government shut down every year when the GOP weakens the Wall Street regulatory agenda in the budget. Also unlike the Tea Party and Clinton's efforts to paint him as uncompromising, Sanders is actually willing to compromise. (IE: He trashed the 90s crime bill but voted for it to pass the Violence Against Women Act -- certainly a bad compromise but it's a good counterpoint to that dumb narrative.) As for primary challengers, the only way to push the Democrats to be a more effective bulwark against right-wing extremism is to get rid of representatives who thrive off of the same campaign contributors (Wall Street, big oil, etc.) "Ideological purity" is certainly a stupid reason to fund a primary challenger but frankly there are some pretty Democrats still in office and there's nothing wrong with pushing them left.  There's a difference between waging a primary challenge against someone like Bayh or Manchin or Mendenez Wasserman Schultz who are willing to let their campaign donors call the shots (or push conservative foreign policy agendas) vs. someone like Lamar Alexander who is already way further right than the aforementioned group of congressional critters is left. 

It's funny how the same people who defend the two-party system on the grounds that they're big tent parties where the coalition building takes place in the primaries are also the same people who are so resistant to running primary challengers in safe districts/states.