U.S. Politics: A Democracy In Decay

[Isalie]

It's funny because it's true. 

Though I still don't see how anyone can look at Trump and not see a total clusterfuck of a man and an actual threat to democracy, whether by collusion with russians or the way he undermines any faith the different institutions in society. 

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, mcbigski said:

Can we update the thread title to "Democrats in Decay"?

 

Well we could I suppose.

But even if we did, it wouldn't change the fact that the Republican Party is an embarrassment to humanity.

[ding-fries-are-done]

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

Can we update the thread title to "Democrats in Decay"?

 

Good idea.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 hours ago, Zorral said:

Has anyone here read Sinclair Lewis's 1935 political warning novel, that begins with the Pres cons for the election of 1936?

It is filled with characters who keep saying, "It's not that bad, it's never been that bad, it won't be that bad and, of course the title line -- It Can't Happen Here.

All Lewis does is take what is there in the year he wrote the novel, including media and newspapers, and every thing else that we have, including the snake oil charlatans harnessing the religious, racist and sexist tendencies and give them the candidate they want who allows them to unleash their hate.

This novel, despite what some readers want, does not have a happy ending, including for the narrator, who was too smart and cynical to actually do more than write snarky editorials as the forces coalesced, while in spite of that, the forces of his local capitalist and elite groups, still realized he would go along to get along.  Until that wasn't allowed any longer.  And no those people who voted the fascists in actually didn't get their $4000 cash up front and good jobs, and the very wealthy were not limited to $500,000, etc.  But the educated people who knew stuff -- they went to concentration camps.

It Can't Happy Here is more informed by the fear of bolshevism than we are now.  Yet, somehow, Russia is still the player.

In the meantime we're now in hurricane and tropical storm season without a head of Fema or NOAA -- and no funding for FEMA either.

 

 

If only a poster had linked this book several times, named a thread after it and bought several copies of it for his friends during the holidays.

11 hours ago, dmc515 said:

I guess I'll pay for the food!

She should have stepped aside after 2010.  Hoyer too.  I'm not holding my breath.

Nah, she had earned the right to stay on after 2010. She should have stepped down after 2014 though.

11 hours ago, Inigima said:

That we haven't won any fucking elections.

I'm tired of Democrats claiming "victory" because they lost by less than usual. I'm not saying that what happens here is necessarily a preview of 2018 -- though, let's not kid ourselves, it is absolutely a preview of 2018 -- but to lose by less is functionally identical to losing by the same amount. The Democrats are pathetic. They are batting .000 in the friendliest political climate in a generation. In Republican-held areas, sure, but that's where gains come from by definition.

Personally I'm hoping that in 2020 we have free and fair elections and no death camps. That's where my level of optimism is right now.

Relax. Last night's outcome was the best scenario for Democrats. It may not seem like that now, but trust me. 

[ants]

On 20/06/2017 at 5:40 AM, Kalbear said:

That's fair. 

My counterargument is that when things become drastically unfair, violence is the only remaining solution people have left. This is entirely predictable and expected, and is even part of the system of the US (as stated so darkly by Rand Paul). When you have black people who do literally everything right, as they have been told again and again that they should do things, and they are killed AND their killer did not legally commit a crime - what does that tell the black community to do with respect to police? Why shouldn't they ignore police or shoot them? Why would they ever rely on police to deal with issues? Similarly, in Seattle, where you have a woman who called the police to report a burglary and then was killed - why would you ever rely on the police? 

Why would you ever tone it down? 

When congresspeople refuse to listen to their constituency and poll numbers and record calls and town halls, there is only so much people can do. When you tell them to trust the system or to calm down, it is simply not going to work. At that point you really have two options - you give in to at least some of their demands so that you can have some kind of pressure valve release, or things escalate. This is what happens with humans, period. 

......

Hope not too much has passed in the thread, but still catching up and wanted to reply to these.

For the above, this seems to ignore the power of protest, or the possibility that extreme video recording that is starting to occur won't have an effect  

 

On 20/06/2017 at 6:09 AM, Kalbear said:

One might argue that escalation of violence is the only way to save said democratic experiment; autocracies don't tend to just go away on their own. Point of fact, there are almost no examples of peaceable transition from autocracy to democracy compared to the opposite, and even fewer stable transitions (IE, lasting for more than the lifetime of one of the main Democratic leaders). 

Are there good examples of a budding autocracy being stopped by de-escalation of conflict and tension?

Oh, I don't know. Apart from India, Chile, and a good chunk of Eastern Europe post the Soviet Unions collapse. Iran has a partial democracy, Korea, Taiwan and Japan have democracies. 

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Nah, she had earned the right to stay on after 2010. She should have stepped down after 2014 though.

By 2010 she had done enough legislatively to secure a legacy as the first woman Speaker, was 70 years old, and had just presided over the worst defeat in 72 years.  It was time to step down.

[LongRider]

7 hours ago, The Fallen said:

I present to you Altherion.

Perfect!  Now, who will play him on SNL?

[Fez]

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Also, probably the single worst thing for Democrats is this: Ossoff did worse vs Handel than Clinton did against Trump.

 

I have seen the argument that the reason for the outlier there is that GA-6 had already had its shift in 2016, and the correct baseline for Ossoff is Obama 2012. That, for whatever reason (likely the high rates of educational attainment in the district), GA-6 was just ahead of the curve and has already moved to being as blue as it'll get for now.

Maybe that's true? Who knows.

I also think Ossoff did not run a great campaign. I'm not saying going moderate was wrong, I think that's the correct move for that district. But the AHCA is very unpopular, including there, and he should've made that more of a focus instead of being mostly about deficit reduction.

He also barely attacked Trump, all this talk about the election being a referendum on Trump are ignoring what the campaigns actually did. Maybe that was the right move for that district, I don't know. But I do know that there are other GOP-held districts where Trump is very unpopular and that will be a winning message. I don't know if there are 24 of them though. And if there aren't, Democrats do need a strong single message; probably on health care.

I reiterate, Pelosi absolutely needs to resign for the good of the party.

Finally, its worth noting that the economy is doing fine (by modern standards), there are no major crisis that are directly impacting large numbers of Americans (other than the opioid epidemic, which is not new), and Republicans have not yet actually implemented any major legislation that will harm lots of people. Trump is totally incompetent and likely obstructed justice, but those aren't issues that resonant with or directly impact a lot of voters yet (and probably never will unless he's impeached or causes one of the previous statements to no longer be true). Under these circumstances, its not exactly unexpected that Republicans would win. The fact that Democrats are (mostly) improving so much on 2016 is a testament to the party gaining strength simply on the grounds of how unpopular Trump personally is.

[mcbigski]

My thoughts on the Georgia election.  It's kind of the like Lucy with with football.  Where Lucy is the meeting point between national media cheerleading and actual reality based reality.  Having the national media and the Democrats joined at the hip is bad for democracy, and a huge structural advantage for the Ds, but when even that fusion isn't quite enough, the angst is glorious.

As I've said, the media's disintermediation, and their resulting tilt (in the poker/pinball sense, the bias was pre-existing) sure explains a lot about our present environment. 

[ding-fries-are-done]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

I have seen the argument that the reason for the outlier there is that GA-6 had already had its shift in 2016, and the correct baseline for Ossoff is Obama 2012. That, for whatever reason (likely the high rates of educational attainment in the district), GA-6 was just ahead of the curve and has already moved to being as blue as it'll get for now.

Maybe that's true? Who knows.

I also think Ossoff did not run a great campaign. I'm not saying going moderate was wrong, I think that's the correct move for that district. But the AHCA is very unpopular, including there, and he should've made that more of a focus instead of being mostly about deficit reduction.

He also barely attacked Trump, all this talk about the election being a referendum on Trump are ignoring what the campaigns actually did. Maybe that was the right move for that district, I don't know. But I do know that there are other GOP-held districts where Trump is very unpopular and that will be a winning message. I don't know if there are 24 of them though. And if there aren't, Democrats do need a strong single message; probably on health care.

I reiterate, Pelosi absolutely needs to resign for the good of the party.

Finally, its worth noting that the economy is doing fine (by modern standards), there are no major crisis that are directly impacting large numbers of Americans (other than the opioid epidemic, which is not new), and Republicans have not yet actually implemented any major legislation that will harm lots of people. Trump is totally incompetent and likely obstructed justice, but those aren't issues that resonant with or directly impact a lot of voters yet (and probably never will unless he's impeached or causes one of the previous statements to no longer be true). Under these circumstances, its not exactly unexpected that Republicans would win. The fact that Democrats are (mostly) improving so much on 2016 is a testament to the party gaining strength simply on the grounds of how unpopular Trump personally is.

I don't see the logic behind this statement when considering that the Democrats have lost just about all special elections since Trump won the Presidency.  The poster might be trying to justify this statement by claiming that the Democrats got more votes than the last elections but they still lost.  It's like claiming the Dallas Cowboys only lost to the Packers by 3 points instead of 10 points the last time the two teams played against each other but a loss is a loss.  In other words the poster is trying to claim a win when in reality there wasn't a win.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

By 2010 she had done enough legislatively to secure a legacy as the first woman Speaker, was 70 years old, and had just presided over the worst defeat in 72 years.  It was time to step down.

Her age shouldn't matter, and she had accomplished enough to earn the right to stay on. Plus, if the Democrats retook the House in 2012 she would have been a valuable asset. At this point she should step down, but she didn't need to in 2010. 

[Fez]

16 minutes ago, ding-fries-are-done said:

I don't see the logic behind this statement when considering that the Democrats have lost just about all special elections since Trump won the Presidency.  The poster might be trying to justify this statement by claiming that the Democrats got more votes than the last elections but they still lost.  It's like claiming the Dallas Cowboys only lost to the Packers by 3 points instead of 10 points the last time the two teams played against each other but a loss is a loss.  In other words the poster is trying to claim a win when in reality there wasn't a win.

You're not finishing the analogy. The conclusion is that if the Cowboys usually lose to the Packers by 10 but only lost by 3 this time, then when they play the Bears (who they usually lose to by 5 in this hypothetical) they're going to win. The trend is what is important. And while there won't be a uniform swing across all districts in 2018, the current evidence is that there will be a strong swing in many of them.

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

My thoughts on the Georgia election.  It's kind of the like Lucy with with football.  Where Lucy is the meeting point between national media cheerleading and actual reality based reality.  Having the national media and the Democrats joined at the hip is bad for democracy, and a huge structural advantage for the Ds, but when even that fusion isn't quite enough, the angst is glorious.

As I've said, the media's disintermediation, and their resulting tilt (in the poker/pinball sense, the bias was pre-existing) sure explains a lot about our present environment. 

Because conservatism is just awesome!! Right? Everyone would plainly see that, if not for the "liberal media!!!!".

Conservatives have no responsibility at all for the "present enviroment" do they? No siree. Nope. None.
Conservatism is so awesome it just hasta be something else. It just hasta!!!

Let's all throw a big old pity party for conservatives. Poor conservatives!! They have no money, they have no media representing their views, and they have no political power (well, except of course controlling most of the country).

I mean the media should help to create one giant "Conservative Safe Space" by reporting:

"The Bush and Brownback Boom! Triumphs of Conservatism!!!", you know rather than reality.

Anyway, conservatism have between making this tired old claim  about the media for ages, and I think the reality based community has been far too lenient in letting them get away with it. It's time to say, "enough!". If conservatives just want to sit there and cling to their "conservative values" rather than having to face reality once in awhile, I say tough shit. Enough with the "liberal media" bullshit. I think anyone that has any bit of attachment to the reality based community should say, "I have had it with this".

Nobody should accept the conservative intellectual "get of of jail free" card ie "the liberal media!!" when conservatives or conservatism fucks up, which it does quite often.

As for the reality of media coverage, it would seem that often it's a mixed bag. Just for instance:

https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election/

Quote

As Clinton was being attacked in the press, Donald Trump was attacking the press, claiming that it was trying to “rig” the election in her favor. If that’s true, journalists had a peculiar way of going about it. Trump’s coverage during the general election was more negative than Clinton’s, running 77 percent negative to 23 percent positive. But over the full course of the election, it was Clinton, not Trump, who was more often the target of negative coverage (see Figure 1). Overall, the coverage of her candidacy was 62 percent negative to 38 percent positive, while his coverage was 56 percent negative to 44 percent positive. 

 

Quote

As journalists would have it, the Trump and Clinton camps were the cause of all the negativity. And it was certainly true that the election was unusually nasty. But to attribute the tone entirely to the opposing camps is to ignore the pattern of presidential election coverage during the past few decades (see Figure 3). Not since 1984—eight elections ago—have the presidential nominees enjoyed positive press coverage. The 2016 campaign did not even top the record for negativity. That distinction belongs to the 2000 campaign when news reports questioned whether Al Gore was trustworthy enough and George W. Bush was smart enough to deserve the presidency.[1] 

 

Quote

The real bias of the press is not that it’s liberal. Its bias is a decided preference for the negative. As scholar Michael Robinson noted, the news media seem to have taken some motherly advice and turned it upside down. “If you don’t have anything bad to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.”[3] A New York Times columnist recently asserted that “the internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth.”[4]There’s a degree of accuracy in that claim but the problem goes beyond the internet and the talk shows. The mainstream press highlights what’s wrong with politics without also telling us what’s right. 

 

Quote

The general election period continued the pattern (see Figure 5). Week after week, Trump got more press attention than did Clinton. Overall, Trump received 15 percent more coverage than she did. Trump also had more opportunities to define Clinton than she had to define him. When a candidate was seen in the news talking about Clinton, the voice was typically Trump’s and not hers. Yet when the talk was about Trump, he was again more likely to be the voice behind the message. “Lock her up” and “make America great again” were heard more often in the news than “he’s unqualified” and “stronger together.”

 

Quote

Policy issues—what the nominees would do if elected—rarely attract a high level of press coverage, and the 2016 election was no exception. Although candidates in their stump speeches focus on the policies they would pursue as president, their stands do not receive close attention from journalists. In the 2016 general election, policy issues accounted for 10 percent of the news coverage—less than a fourth the space given to the horserace. Policies lack the novelty that journalists seek in their stories. A new development may thrust a new issue into the campaign, but policy problems are typically longstanding. If they came and went overnight, they would not be problems. Thus it is that when a candidate first announces a policy stand, it makes news. Later on, it’s old news and likely to make headlines only if it has a new wrinkle. 

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

If only a poster had linked this book several times, named a thread after it and bought several copies of it for his friends during the holidays.

 

Well, to be fair that was over a half year ago, and at a moment when I likely wasn't around?  I hadn't re-read It Can't Happen Here for quite some years -- this time around, in light of current events, I couldn't see even Sinclair's tendency to go upbeat be engaged.  Or perhaps it's because I'm imprisoned at home with the flu.
 

Quote

I have lived in South Carolina 21 years this August.  Unfortunately Jesus Christ himself could not win if he ran as a Democrat down here. 

Which is why House of Cards's Frank Underwood as a Dem from SC made / makes NO SENSE whatsoever.

[IheartIheartTesla]

56 minutes ago, ding-fries-are-done said:

I don't see the logic behind this statement when considering that the Democrats have lost just about all special elections since Trump won the Presidency.  The poster might be trying to justify this statement by claiming that the Democrats got more votes than the last elections but they still lost.  It's like claiming the Dallas Cowboys only lost to the Packers by 3 points instead of 10 points the last time the two teams played against each other but a loss is a loss.  In other words the poster is trying to claim a win when in reality there wasn't a win.

Actually, the Democrats won California's 34th. So to carry a crappy analogy further, the Dems are 1-4 down in a 146 game league. There's still a lot more of football left.

I have no doubt the Democrats will make gains in 2018. How much is still an open question, but these special elections,. even as losses give us a little bit more data about just how many seats are in play. 

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Well, to be fair that was over a half year ago, and at a moment when I likely wasn't around?  I hadn't re-read It Can't Happen Here for quite some years -- this time around, in light of current events, I couldn't see even Sinclair's tendency to go upbeat be engaged.  Or perhaps it's because I'm imprisoned at home with the flu.
 

Which is why House of Cards's Frank Underwood as a Dem from SC made / makes NO SENSE whatsoever.

Im starting to wonder if House of Cards is set in an alternate reality where the Civil war never happened. It's not just that Frank is a Dem from SC, but who would VOTE to make a dem from SC president? I know it went to congress, but he should not have even been able to do that.

[Fez]

1 minute ago, Red Tiger said:

Im starting to wonder if House of Cards is set in an alternate reality where the Civil war never happened. It's not just that Frank is a Dem from SC, but who would VOTE to make a dem from SC president? I know it went to congress, but he should not have even been able to do that.

Its easy to forget now, but John Edwards was a strong contender at the start of the 2008 Democratic primary and he could've won if things had gone a bit differently. If he had been the nominee (and if his scandal never came out over that summer) he probably would've won the general election handily.

He represented North Carolina, but was born in South Carolina.

 

[DMC]

59 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Her age shouldn't matter, and she had accomplished enough to earn the right to stay on. Plus, if the Democrats retook the House in 2012 she would have been a valuable asset. At this point she should step down, but she didn't need to in 2010. 

2010 made it crystal clear she had become the biggest electoral liability as a legislator since Gingrich.  Obama's minimal coattails in 2012 merely confirmed this (albeit there were certainly other factors at play there).  I mentioned her age to emphasize she already had had a long and fruitful career.

To be clear, I am not saying she didn't have the "right" to stay on.  Of course she has every right to run for whatever she desires.  By the same token, it is entirely expected that once attaining her position she was not going to give it up unless forced to.  Moreover, as intimated above, I would much rather have her as a leader over the past 7 years than Hoyer.  The point is it was apparent then a change in leadership would be best for the party.  This isn't post hoc either, many were saying this at the time including myself.

15 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Which is why House of Cards's Frank Underwood as a Dem from SC made / makes NO SENSE whatsoever.

John Hoynes as a popular Democratic Senator turned VP in West Wing didn't make much sense either - and neither did Matt Santos winning Texas in the last season either (or pretty much that entire electoral map - in fact I think Santos won SC).

1 minute ago, Fez said:

Its easy to forget now, but John Edwards was a strong contender at the start of the 2008 Democratic primary and he could've won if things had gone a bit differently.

I think we all try to make John Edwards as easy to forget as possible.

[The Brandon Stark]

3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Well we could I suppose.

But even if we did, it wouldn't change the fact that the Republican Party is an embarrassment to humanity.

It's so embarrassing that that we have all three branches of government and a super majority in the House come 2018. Sorry, its the Democrats that are an embarrassment. Nothing but identity politics, no message and no wins. But sure, the GOP is the embarrassment.

[denstorebog]

1 hour ago, ding-fries-are-done said:

I don't see the logic behind this statement when considering that the Democrats have lost just about all special elections since Trump won the Presidency.  The poster might be trying to justify this statement by claiming that the Democrats got more votes than the last elections but they still lost.  It's like claiming the Dallas Cowboys only lost to the Packers by 3 points instead of 10 points the last time the two teams played against each other but a loss is a loss.  In other words the poster is trying to claim a win when in reality there wasn't a win.

This is one of the worst uses of analogy I have seen. In fact, I have no idea why people (Inigima et al) are having such a hard time seeing the big picture. A need for instant gratification in a gloomy political environment, I guess.

But the fact remains, if you want to stick with sports: The Democratic Badgers just started their season. They're slated to play 10 matches and need to win 5 to advance. 2 of these are against world-class teams who vastly outrank them. As bad luck would have it, they're slated to play against those two teams early in the season. During both matches they give their world-class opponents a really close run for their money. All they have to do now is perform just as well during 5 of the remaining 8 matches against local hillbilly teams, and they're good to go.

But then their disgruntled, impatient fans burn the stadium and the club house down, stop buying match tickets and go home. Because they can't be arsed to wait for the rest of the season. And the mediocre Republican Sloths advance instead.

Seriously people. Calm down. Be rational about this. Dems are perfectly on course to make huge gains down the road.