US Politics : And the Finer Art of Grumbling

[Guest]

If I had my druthers, I'd hope for Dems to take control of the Senate before anything else in the upcoming midterms. That way they're able to control appointments, which is where Trump is doing by far the most damage right now.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

I can buy that story.  It is becoming clear which districts are going to be really in trouble if the Democrats are ~+6 on the generic ballot.  Without a doubt, if the Democrats were still at +12, the list would be longer, but it's diffuclt to make that list back in 2017 with so many unknowns for each race.

Yeah this is the natural progression of these rankings - fundraising and candidate quality become more clear they can more confidently identify incumbent seats in peril and move them into the danger zone accordingly.  From the write-up:

Quote

If there's a silver lining for Republicans in the latest data, it's that Democrats haven't yet taken maximum advantage of the climate and there are still a few holes on their recruitment board. Of the 95 districts Trump either won by less than 15 points or lost in 2016, there were 34 where no Democrat had at least $100,000 in the bank and 48 where no Democrat had more than $250,000 at the end of 2017. [...]

However, credible new Democrats are filling those gaps every day and several newly announced contenders didn't begin raising money until after the start of 2018. These include state Rep. Clarke Tucker (AR-02), Sen. Jeff Van Drew (NJ-02), Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval (OH-01) and Navy veteran Elaine Luria (VA-02). And filing deadlines have only passed in a handful of states.

In spite of Wasserman's framing, this is actually really encouraging for the Dems.  As long as they can maintain fundraising momentum, there should be quite a few more pickup opportunities that have yet to materialize - even before the (distinct) possibility of further GOP retirements.

[Rippounet]

4 hours ago, Horza said:

He's probably referring to Russia in that quote. North Korea's heading in the other direction from tac nukes.

Indications are that the US defence establishment has convinced itself that Russia has a policy of using tac nukes in a conventional war to destroy enemy forces without going over the nuclear retaliation threshold, so-called "escalate to de-escalate". There's no evidence for this being Russian policy and the idea is really dumb for the reason you lay out, but the US nuclear caste is obsessed with these sterile thought experiments about baroque nuclear weapons use cases.

Fascinating stuff. So basically we're back to the debates about Russian nuclear capabilities that have come all the way from the Cold War.

Thing is, given the US's considerable military superiority over any possible competitor today, such debates say less about Russia than they do about the US. The message here is twofold: not only will the US maintain absolute military superiority over all its potential rivals, but it will do what's necessary to leave the option of nuclear blackmail open.

And nuclear blackmail isn't theoretical. Eisenhower was very good at it (among others). But to have the Trump administration be interested in it is a very scary proposition.

[Kalbear]

11 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Sure.  But I don't know how this is particularly relevant to the 15 percent I'm referring to.  I suspect this may be another case of you misunderstanding then conflating the measurement of racial resentment/implicit racism with casting all of such respondents as coopting Trump's most racist policies and statements.

I'm saying that the most likely thought is that they knew Trump was racist and supported those views (quite happily) or they knew he was racist and were okay with voting for him in spite of it. The notion that they're totally like 'whaaaat? nah' is not something I think is supportable any more. 

Again, Cinemax theory of racism. 

11 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Ok.  Frankly I don't see how this contradicts my point that 15% of the electorate is malleable.  In fact it supports the argument.

It doesn't, because that 15% already defected. You're saying that a bunch of those Republicans who are supporting Trump can be swayed. I think that what republicans could be swayed already happened; they were going to give Trump a chance, and then they gave up after a month. What we have left is 40% of the US and 82% of Republicans who like him, and like him for being who he is. 

11 hours ago, dmc515 said:

I'm saying that your top graph here is a perfectly valid argument, and is indeed one factor I agree with.  Hillary did not get out the voters she needed in urban areas, particularly urban areas in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and even Pennsylvania.  But, there's also plenty of voters that flipped, and after a year of Trump plenty of these guys are ripe for the picking - and these are the people that don't stick to their guns.  Except if you tell them that they were racist for voting for Trump in the first place.  How is refraining from saying that alienating the Dems' base?  Is there seriously anyone out there that won't vote Democrat if they don't say all Trump voters are racist or complicit in racism?  If there is, then yeah, I'm fine alienating them.

To be clear, I'm not saying they were racist for voting for Trump. I'm saying that they voted for racism. Whether that makes them racist or not really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, because they're not the ones who are going to get hurt by it. 

If you refrain from saying that and you work hard to give them what they want - things like no black lives matter, no DACA, no #metoo, no women's rights - that alienates your base. And that's what we've seen. Because it's not just about saying that they're not racist (which will still piss off your allies), it's also about giving them something else. 

11 hours ago, dmc515 said:

No.  There is plenty of research that does demonstrate such swing voters will change their minds if you don't activate their racial resentment.  It's why the biggest campaign mistake Hillary will admit to is "basket of deplorables."

Such as? Heck, can you even point out these swing voters and where they made a difference? Because again, the primary factor in the outcome was that typically democratic voters stayed home, and typically Republican voters (especially white males) showed up more. There's no swing outcome there. We saw this in the tightening of the polls too, where almost no one was undecided at the end. Republicans came home to roost. As they almost always reliably do.

[Kalbear]

11 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

@Kalbear

"They, they, they."

You know man, this is the same thing Bush said after 9/11. Remember the speeches about how we'd make no distinction between countries that harbored terrorists, and terrorists? It was real hardass shit, made us all feel so righteous. People ate it right up, and he had historically record setting approval ratings.

The thing is, by classifying anyone with extremist sympathies as extremists, we essentially made more extremists.

Again, if you voted for someone who supports racism you voted to support racism. This isn't that hard, shouldn't be that hard. This isn't extremism. 

The alternative - one you suggest - is that apparently you shouldn't tell people that they supported someone who is doing racist, sexist, horrible things. 

11 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

I'm not saying compromise our values. Not for a second, and not by one fucking inch. But there is a difference between defending your own values, and dehumanizing your enemy for their opposition.

Telling them that they supported a racist isn't dehumanizing them. If anything, it's humanizing them. It's assuming that they can actually think about their actions and make corrections. What you're suggesting is that people can't do this, and doing this will always fail. You're probably right, but in that case it doesn't matter and the only way you're going to win them over is by giving them more shitty things than Trump did. 

Which  is totally compromising our values.

11 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

You're conflating partisan values with loyalty to the country. I disagree with the tax cuts and with the GOP pillaging so many of the gains that progressivism made under Obama. But let's not pretend that the tax cuts in the same league as defending neo-nazis, calling Kim Jong Un "Rocket Man," colluding with Russian spies, calling for political opponents to be jailed, etc.

I think they're absolutely in the same league. They show the same willingness to lie to get what they want. They show the same complicity in allowing Trump to exist in exchange for getting their silver. 

11 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

What organization, Fox News or Congress? The Freedom Caucus guys or all the ones about to lose their seats? The GOP is a chaotic cluster fuck right now and you know it. There is no "organization."

There's quite a bit of organization. Perhaps not all republicans, but certainly the Republican party, and they are aligned with Trump right now. The notion that they are not or could change belies the actual facts on the ground. 

[DMC]

15 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The notion that they're totally like 'whaaaat? nah' is not something I think is supportable any more. 

Well, I never said that, and don't believe it.  I do think they have a different interpretation of if Trump's policies and statements necessarily make him "racist" than you or I do though - less Republicans and independents think Trump is racist than disapprove of him.

23 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It doesn't, because that 15% already defected.

If that were the case his approval would be at 33, not 40.

23 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think that what republicans could be swayed already happened; they were going to give Trump a chance, and then they gave up after a month. What we have left is 40% of the US and 82% of Republicans who like him, and like him for being who he is. 

First, except two months ago we had 35%, and in a few months we'll have a different percentage in all likelihood - which is incredibly convincing and consistent evidence that there is a percentage out there (maybe it's 10 instead of 15) that they can be swayed.

23 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

To be clear, I'm not saying they were racist for voting for Trump. I'm saying that they voted for racism. Whether that makes them racist or not really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, because they're not the ones who are going to get hurt by it. 

It does really matter when you claim all of them support racist policies, or outright call all Trump supporters racist.  This is my original (and only real) objection.

25 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

If you refrain from saying that and you work hard to give them what they want - things like no black lives matter, no DACA, no #metoo, no women's rights - that alienates your base. And that's what we've seen. Because it's not just about saying that they're not racist (which will still piss off your allies), it's also about giving them something else. 

No, you just have to refrain from calling them racist or assume they think BLM is a terrorist group or oppose DACA etc. based solely on the fact they voted for/supported Trump.  Obviously the Democrats aren't going to support any if the things you're referring to.

28 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Heck, can you even point out these swing voters and where they made a difference? Because again, the primary factor in the outcome was that typically democratic voters stayed home, and typically Republican voters (especially white males) showed up more.

I'm gonna get try to get in before the thread lock, but seriously?  You need me to link you to Obama-Trump/"reluctant" Trump voters?  Turnout was the primary factor says you.  Again, it was so close I could write up three different arguments with three different factors and they'd all be equally valid.

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Well, I never said that, and don't believe it.  I do think they have a different interpretation of if Trump's policies and statements necessarily make him "racist" than you or I do though - less Republicans and independents think Trump is racist than disapprove of him.

Sure, which kind of points out the notion that maybe you should tell them, no?

4 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

If that were the case his approval would be at 33, not 40.

No; we've already gone through that. His disapproval is at 55 or so; it was at 40. There's your 15% right there. 

4 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

First, except two months ago we had 35%, and in a few months we'll have a different percentage in all likelihood - which is incredibly convincing and consistent evidence that there is a percentage out there (maybe it's 10 instead of 15) that they can be swayed.

Alternately, you have a percentage that isn't getting swayed by anything - they're just subject to the latest good news/bad news cycle, but they'll vote for him regardless. 

4 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

It does really matter when you claim all of them support racist policies, or outright call all Trump supporters racist.  This is my original (and only real) objection.

But...they do. By definition, they supported someone who campaigned on racist policies, and voted for him. 

4 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

No, you just have to refrain from calling them racist or assume they think BLM is a terrorist group or oppose DACA etc. based solely on the fact they voted for/supported Trump.  Obviously the Democrats aren't going to support any if the things you're referring to.

So what do you give them instead? When the economy is humming and things are doing vaguely okay, what are you offering?

4 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

I'm gonna get try to get in before the thread lock, but seriously?  You need me to link you to Obama-Trump/"reluctant" Trump voters?  Turnout was the primary factor says you.  Again, it was so close I could write up three different arguments with three different factors and they'd all be equally valid.

I need you to link me to the notion that people can be swayed if they're not called on their racist voting patterns, yes. That's your take; go ahead and give some examples to it.

[James Arryn]

I voted for Hitler because I liked the uniforms!

#notalllnazis

[DanteGabriel]

It's amazing how much of electoral politics apparently turns on white people's fragility about their own racism.

[James Arryn]

3 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

It's amazing how much of electoral politics apparently turns on white people's fragility about their own racism.

NO DOGS OR RACISTS ALLOWED

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Sure, which kind of points out the notion that maybe you should tell them, no?

Tell them Trump and his policies are racist?  Of course, do so early and often.  My problem is attacking the voters.  Not doing so is kind of politics 101.

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

No; we've already gone through that. His disapproval is at 55 or so; it was at 40. There's your 15% right there.

So now disapproval is important than approval?  And his disapproval was at 40 for like two weeks.  It was at 50 and has stayed there or above since mid-February last year.  That reflects the honeymoon period and people being nice - his original spread was about 45-40 which suggests about half the 15 that expressed no opinion for a little while because, I dunno, they're nice.

16 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Alternately, you have a percentage that isn't getting swayed by anything - they're just subject to the latest good news/bad news cycle, but they'll vote for him regardless.

Except we know these voters have supported Democrats in the past and the election results since Trump took office suggest they can and will again.

18 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

But...they do. By definition, they supported someone who campaigned on racist policies, and voted for him.

Oye.  Supporting Trump does not necessarily mean you support those policies.  I'm not doing this whole argument over again.

20 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

So what do you give them instead? When the economy is humming and things are doing vaguely okay, what are you offering?

That's a question for Democratic strategists.  They're not paying me.  What I do know is calling them racist is no way to win their votes. 

[lokisnow]

Re Obama - Trump voters.

i think a statistical averaging of white voters is erasing an important anecdotal actuality.

This is leading us to the mistaken generalization that there were obama to trump white voters in 2016

some trump voters, voted in 2016, but they did not vote in 2012 because they did not like obama nor Romney.

some obama voters, voted in 2012, but they did not vote in 2016 because they did not like clinton nor trump.

these populations offset, so it looks like there were obama to trump white voters but there was not actual en masse vote switching occurring. 

Averaging out these two large populations leads to missing the crucial details and making the wrong generalization and conclusion.

When combined with the across the board black voter turnout decline, the flip flop in which white voters turned out flipped most of the marginal states whose demographics had that unfortunate combination of no Romney republican voters and no clinton democrat voters.

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

some trump voters, voted in 2016, but they did not vote in 2012 because they did not like obama nor Romney.

some obama voters, voted in 2012, but they did not vote in 2016 because they did not like clinton nor trump.

these populations offset, so it looks like there were obama to trump white voters but there was not actual en masse vote switching occurring. 

This is incredibly unlikely to be the case, and in some instances, impossible:  

Quote

If turnout played only a modest role in Mr. Trump’s victory, then the big driver of his gains was persuasion: He flipped millions of white working-class Obama supporters to his side.

The voter file data makes it impossible to avoid this conclusion. It’s not just that the electorate looks far too Democratic. In many cases, turnout cannot explain Mrs. Clinton’s losses.

Take Schuylkill County, Pa., the county where Mr. Trump made his biggest gains in Pennsylvania. He won, 69 percent to 26 percent, compared with Mitt Romney’s 56-42 victory. Mrs. Clinton’s vote tally fell by 7,776 compared with Mr. Obama’s 2012 result, even though the overall turnout was up.

Did 8,000 of Mr. Obama’s supporters stay home? No. There were 5,995 registered voters who voted in 2012, remain registered in Schuylkill County, and stayed home in 2016.

And there’s no way these 2016 drop-off voters were all Obama supporters. There were 2,680 registered Democrats, 2,629 registered Republicans and 686 who were unaffiliated or registered with a different party. This is a place where registered Democrats often vote Republican in presidential elections, so Mr. Obama’s standing among these voters was most likely even lower.

 

[aceluby]

12 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

I also think I made it abundantly clear that liberals are NOT responsible for the reactionary backlash to our ideals, so the next person who wants to bark at me about this can go ahead and shove it up their ass, because that's not what I'm saying.

 

Quote

And btw, if we keep chewing up Republicans like Flake and Spicer who do turn on Trump, and write them all off as nazis, then it's just going to drive them further into the far right.

Our definitions of 'abundantly clear' are different I think.

[James Arryn]

5 minutes ago, aceluby said:

 

Our definitions of 'abundantly clear' are different I think.

Yeah. Again, i’ll repeat, ‘I was fundamentally opposed to racism and neo-fascism until people called the people I voted for fascists and said I supported fascism, at which point I of course became a fascist’...seems a tenuous argument to me. 

Those people must at least have been bigotry-tolerant. Bumping them into the bigotry-participant pool by criticizing their political choices seems to me an awfully cosmetic excercise. 

[aceluby]

10 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

So you thought I was blaming Trump's rise to power on actions Democrats have taken since he's come to power? That doesn't make sense.

I've explicitly stated in other posts that liberals ARE NOT to blame for the reactionary backlash, that it's on Conservative media for mischaracterizing our push for civil rights, among other things.

No, I thought you were saying exactly what you said in regards to Republicans that shouldn't be painted with this so called 'Putin Brush'.  At this point, I have no idea what you're trying to say.  You think you're being abundantly clear, but you're not.

Quote

And btw, if we keep chewing up Republicans like Flake and Spicer who do turn on Trump, and write them all off as nazis, then it's just going to drive them further into the far right.

 

[TrueMetis]

Good to know if I sell a gun to a guy after him telling me he's going to use it to hunt deer and kill someone that I'm in no way responsible for the death of a person as long as I can say "I was only supporting part of his plans."

[Paladin of Ice]

Maybe not gleeful scorn, but I think a lesson from the Obama and Trump years, (and even drawing on the Clinton and Bush years, for that matter) is that if Democrats ever get power again, especially the sort of power like Republicans have now, we shouldn't give a single damn about any objections that Republicans raise to our agenda or make compromises for the sake of "appearing reasonable", or fostering national unity or any such crap. 

Obama tried to bend over backwards to make bargains with Congressional Republicans and win the people by appearing reasonable, and he got shat on for it, including by the supposedly "liberal media" and the general public. Republicans were completely opposed to him before he ever got into office, worked to undermine him from day one, slapped away his and whenever he tried to deal with them, and in the end they got rewarded for it all.

So Democrats shouldn't scorn Republican voters or ignore their real needs, but they should also realize that no matter what they do, many Republican voters will never embrace them or approve of them, regardless of how much we might help them. So don't worry about what the hell they think and just carry on doing what we believe is right. When bullshit right wing media tries to stir people up about it, just shrug, give them finger, on go on about what we were going to do in the first place.

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, dmc515 said:

So now disapproval is important than approval? 

When voting against someone, yes. 

3 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Except we know these voters have supported Democrats in the past and the election results since Trump took office suggest they can and will again.

Sorry; what evidence do you have that the 40% of the overall population and 82% of the Republicans are voting for Democrats in the past? 

3 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Oye.  Supporting Trump does not necessarily mean you support those policies.  I'm not doing this whole argument over again.

They do; there's literally nothing else it could mean. If you voted for Trump, you supported his racist policies. That doesn't mean you are in favor of them, but there aren't many more concrete things one can do to support someone other than actually vote for those people.

3 hours ago, dmc515 said:

That's a question for Democratic strategists.  They're not paying me.  What I do know is calling them racist is no way to win their votes. 

You say you know this; again, I ask for evidence.

2 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

I say we "need" them not because I think they should be running the country, but because, as I have repeated several times now, their voters are not going away. There are tens of millions of very politically active people on this country that will go to their graves thinking that Democrats are the devil and that they will bring our country to ruin. I would rather have these people vote in sane people who are wrong about some things than neo nazis.

Alternately 40% of the entire US population - more than voted for either candidate last cycle - chose not to vote. I think it's FAR more likely to find more people to vote in that group than there is to turn people who have already voted for Trump away from him. And I suspect this is the right strategy because the Republicans are heavily pursuing the opposite agenda - trying to get as few people to vote as possible. 

[Kalbear]

59 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

I'll just end this with what I began it on. The Russians' goal in the election hacking was to divide us. It's something they've been doing for years before Trump even announced his official candidacy. I think you're absolutely right, the GOP created the swamp that Trump rose from, and they have nobody to blame but themselves for our current situation. We have every right to be angry, to want them gone, to want their supporters gone.

 

59 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

But the levels of polarization in this country make me very uneasy, and I don't know that "fire and fury and force" is going to make things better. If Democrats take control in the midterms and then in 2020, we cannot treat the opposition with the same gleeful scorn that they have shown us over the past year. It might feel good, but it's just going to turn Washington into a pendulum.

The Russian's goal in hacking wasn't just to divide us; it was to make Clinton toxic and make Trump loud. A Trump POTUS was a secondary, possibly better goal - but that wasn't the goal. 

That said, Russians didn't exactly invent partisanship in the US. It has been here since Gingrich, and it continues unabated. 

As to treating them with any kind of respect, well, the problem there is that there is really zero sign of legislative cooperation that will do a damn thing, and even less of a sign that this is the right strategy with a historically unpopular POTUS in office. This assumes that the dems can take control, which thanks to gerrymandering and the current polling (only +5 now) appears to be a pipe dream anyway. Democrats can't be the ones who always suck it up and act like adults when the other side is not. What that entails is a pendulum where the Republicans get in and fuck everything up, the Democrats fix things a bit and then get completely hosed on things like SCOTUS appointments, and Republicans get it back again.