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US Politics: He's Trump, he's Trump, he's Trump, he's in my head


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Just now, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Because the parties themselves each have fractures currently, and if for long enough what you have is highly competitive primaries between two interparty factions, what you eventually get is two different parties.

The primaries aren't particularly competitive, at least right now. That might change with Democrats, but Republicans have shown themselves to be highly non-competitive in primaries, almost entirely aligning across ideological purity test lines.

I can see that happening with Democrats and dooming the US to one-party rule for the foreseeable future, but I don't see that happening with Republicans because at the end of the day being a Republican and voting for Republican is more identity than anything else.

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Also, justices after the filibuster and Garland see the writing on the wall and the conservatives know that they basically have a small window of opportunity to retire before being potentially blocked (likely every two years). Right now is one of those windows for conservatives.

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Just now, Kalbear said:

The primaries aren't particularly competitive, at least right now. That might change with Democrats, but Republicans have shown themselves to be highly non-competitive in primaries, almost entirely aligning across ideological purity test lines.

I can see that happening with Democrats and dooming the US to one-party rule for the foreseeable future, but I don't see that happening with Republicans because at the end of the day being a Republican and voting for Republican is more identity than anything else.

I don't know if I agree with that long term.  If you truly believe in the once and future Republican hegemony (I don't) I don't think the ideological purity stuff survives a decade in power.  

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3 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

justices announce they will retire at the end of the term, I believe. I seem to remember Souter announced his retirement around now, and Obama nominated Sotomayor three or four weeks later, and about three-four months later she was confirmed in August.

End of the term is late June; not next week. And I don't think Thomas is going anywhere; not without seeing Gorsch in action for at least a year.

 

1 minute ago, lokisnow said:

Well duh, Kennedy is a republican, was appointed by a republican and probably wants his replacement to be appointed by a republican.

If he retires after Thomas, that makes the SC appointment imbalance of our current political era 20-4

Kennedy is arguably the most powerful person in America, and has been for over a decade. He doesn't want a replacement, he wants to stay right where he is for as long as possible.

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9 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Doesn't that rather suggest that we are due for a massive realignment?  That is, at some point the remaining parties, such as they are, fracture.

I hope instead we just get a nation that splits up sort of like the future US envisioned in Richard Morgan's Black Man, wherein the freeloading red states (Jesus land) have seceded, the west coast is part of the Pacific Rim States with East Asia and Western South America, and the Northeast, Canada, etc, are part of the UN.  

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Just now, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I don't know if I agree with that long term.  If you truly believe in the once and future Republican hegemony (I don't) I don't think the ideological purity stuff survives a decade in power.  

Why not? It seems unpopular, but that unpopularity doesn't seem to translate well to congress - just POTUS. And Republicans appear to be perfectly fine with running the country as a series of unfortunate disaster relief funds and doing nothing else. And their voters appear to be fine with that as well.

Representatives do not appear to be particularly mobile. And the answer to unpopular Republicans appears to be to nominate EVEN MORE ideologically defined and rigid Republicans. 

We expected a fracturing of Republican party with Trump, and instead we got a united government. I don't see how that supports your notion that this will end in fracturing of Republicans, because the other options (weakening the party or switching parties) are worse.

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8 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I don't know if I agree with that long term.  If you truly believe in the once and future Republican hegemony (I don't) I don't think the ideological purity stuff survives a decade in power.  

White voters began voting like a minority race in 2016. this will only continue. Since whites have an incredible numeric advantage, republicans winning one percent more of the white vote every election is the equivalent to democrats winning 6 additional percentage points of the hispanic vote. and that's about what they are winning and increasing their margin every four years. it is more than enough to offset the demographic changes to the electorate that happen every four years (and the hispanic vote is relatively static, so democrats aren't making up lost ground there).

Additionally, Republicans plan to repeal or replace the big immigration act of the sixties. That law is what causes the electorate to become 2% less white every year. If they repeal it, we probably revert to Wilson era immigration law of "majority white countries only, no asians, no blacks, no spicks" are allowed to immigrate in.

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16 minutes ago, Fez said:

Doubtful. The one thing that unites pretty much every judge, at every level of the law, is that they have massive egos. And they almost never want to retire and lose the ego trip that is having control of a courtroom.

The Supreme Court is a little different; but they still almost all have huge egos.

I'll have to take your word on that, but just think about it. It would the biggest judicial coup in the history of the country. They could literally own the court for 30 years. 

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14 minutes ago, Fez said:

Kennedy is arguably the most powerful person in America, and has been for over a decade. He doesn't want a replacement, he wants to stay right where he is for as long as possible.

Yes to the first part, no to the second. Many people have speculated that one of the main reasons Gorsuch was the nominee was to encourage Kennedy to retire. 

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19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yes to the first part, no to the second. Many people have speculated that one of the main reasons Gorsuch was the nominee was to encourage Kennedy to retire. 

Yeah I saw that speculation. I also saw further speculation that in all likelihood it backfired pretty badly because it happened at the same time that Trump was tweeting various derogatory things about judges.

No one knows the truth of course, other than Kennedy, but I'd be shocked if he ever retires for any reason. He's not going out until they carry him out.

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10 minutes ago, Fez said:

Yeah I saw that speculation. I also saw further speculation that in all likelihood it backfired pretty badly because it happened at the same time that Trump was tweeting various derogatory things about judges.

No one knows the truth of course, other than Kennedy, but I'd be shocked if he ever retires for any reason. He's not going out until they carry him out.

Yes, but fundamentally what reason does Kennedy have to reward democrats by not retiring? why would he owe democrats that courtesy?

in less than three months he will have been on the court longer than scalia.

If Kennedy survives and stays on the court for all eight years of Trump's presidency, he will have been on the court for longer than William O. Douglas. That means he will be the longest serving justice ever.

by this time next year, Ginsburg will have been on the court longer than O'Connor. If she survives all eight years of Trump's presidency, she will only barely have cracked the top ten of longest serving justices.

Betting on people in their 80s to survive an additional 2800 days seems to be an astonishing wager.

 

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3 minutes ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

Not as astonishing as thinking the least popular president in modern history is going to get a second term.

Why wouldn't he? Especially - as it looks like right now - that we'll be heading in to at least one minor war and possibly one devastating one?

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

The reason it'll get removed, IMO, is that reconciliation shows how toothless it is, and once Republicans start passing giant sweeping things with it and ignoring the parliamentarian's view to do so Dems will simply not care about it. Dems are the party of actually wanting to provide entitlements, and the ACA has shown that even not perfect entitlements will get broad support once they've been around long enough. That should give enough ammo to say 'look, we've tried to compromise and give the other side anything but they won't budge, so we'll just go ahead and pass laws when we can'.

It's possible, but I think of it as protection from populists and you can usually find at least a few Senators who will oppose removing it. The Democrats are unlikely to have as large a margin as they had in 2009 anytime soon so they'd have to be pretty unified for it to happen. We'll see.

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Because the parties themselves each have fractures currently, and if for long enough what you have is highly competitive primaries between two interparty factions, what you eventually get is two different parties.

There's an interesting phenomenon at work here: the parties are fractured, but they must stick together because otherwise they won't have any power at all. At the root of it is that population is more and more concentrated in a few metropolitan areas (people go where the money is) which means that the easiest path to winning the House and the Presidency will eventually be winning a minority of states with these urban areas. On the other hand, the Senate is completely independent of the population is so one can win by appealing to the more rural states. It is much harder to win in both places at the same time (if you look at a country map, today's politicians split along this divide) so unified control of government will probably become increasingly rare and the parties won't split.

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Just now, Altherion said:

It's possible, but I think of it as protection from populists and you can usually find at least a few Senators who will oppose removing it. The Democrats are unlikely to have as large a margin as they had in 2009 anytime soon so they'd have to be pretty unified for it to happen. We'll see.

You can think about it however you like, but reconciliation shows how precisely uncaring the GOP is about actually getting good legislation through or even bothering with any kind of compromise, and all they have to show for it is the entire US government. And really, the reason that the ACA isn't repealed right now is simply because the House happened to be not quite extreme enough, yet. 

And while Senators talk about opposing things like the legislative filibuster, they also talk about opposing the SCOTUS one. McCain spoke many times about how stupid this is - and still voted for it. Graham, Collins - all voted for it. Because winning is more important than principles

You're starting to see that more and more with Democrats too. 

 

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2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Why wouldn't he? Especially - as it looks like right now - that we'll be heading in to at least one minor war and possibly one devastating one?

I don't think being in Syria is going to help Trump win votes.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Why not? It seems unpopular, but that unpopularity doesn't seem to translate well to congress - just POTUS. And Republicans appear to be perfectly fine with running the country as a series of unfortunate disaster relief funds and doing nothing else. And their voters appear to be fine with that as well.

Representatives do not appear to be particularly mobile. And the answer to unpopular Republicans appears to be to nominate EVEN MORE ideologically defined and rigid Republicans. 

We expected a fracturing of Republican party with Trump, and instead we got a united government. I don't see how that supports your notion that this will end in fracturing of Republicans, because the other options (weakening the party or switching parties) are worse.

I think united government is very loosely defined here as "Republican held" but as we've seen, this government is incapable of getting anything done precisely because it's not united. There are strong ideological differences between the HFC, moderates and the Ryans of the world and Trump, having no ideology at all, is willing to offer one side stuff to get them on board, the other side to get them on board and then have them realize that neither side agrees with what the other agreed with so nobody is on board. 

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Just now, Mexal said:

I don't think being in Syria is going to help Trump win votes.

Him bombing the shit out of ISIS and avenging dead gassed kids? Come on, man. That might not make him popular with you, but his base will eat that like an apple fritter.

Just now, Mexal said:

I think united government is very loosely defined here as "Republican held" but as we've seen, this government is incapable of getting anything done precisely because it's not united. There are strong ideological differences between the HFC, moderates and the Ryans of the world and Trump, having no ideology at all, is willing to offer one side stuff to get them on board, the other side to get them on board and then have them realize that neither side agrees with what the other agreed with so nobody is on board. 

This government hasn't done a ton of major things yet, but they've still managed to get Gorsuch and kill the filibuster, they've managed to repeal a whole host of Obama-era regulations, they've managed to strip the EPA of a ton of protections. The House is kind of dysfunctional on certain things - but don't expect that to last. Especially don't expect  that to last on horrible tax reform and deficit spending. 

They'll still fail quite a bit on things that aren't in their ideological boathouse, but going to war to kill Muslims? Hell, McCain wants that right now. Cutting benefits for minorities? It'll be shocking how fast they sign that into law.

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11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Why wouldn't he? Especially - as it looks like right now - that we'll be heading in to at least one minor war and possibly one devastating one?

Maybe read that statement about unpopularity again? And wars are not some blanket category that makes the president popular.  If they were George H. Bush would have gotten a second term.  If you think a war in Syrian is a popular position among the right you should probably read some Trump supporting sites.  The hardcore Trump supporters completely despise the idea of going to war in Syria.

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