US Politics: What Price Loyalty?

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

It is just you.  That policy will lead to WWIII between the US and a China/Russia alliance.  There'll be plenty of mass murder go around once that happens. 

Better than indulging tyranny.

[Shryke]

20 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

It's never a good idea to predict a party realignment.  There has never been a time in my adult life when there wasn't significant chatter of an eminent realignment.  Just the definition of the term is incredibly elusive both conceptually and operationally.  Coalition shifts are fluid and constant, it's most useful to just focus on identifying and describing that.

I mean, I think we've been seeing a fairly steady party realignment for most of anyone here's lives, so the chatter doesn't seem strange at all. Trump and the Tea Party are the result of a long-term gradual shift that still seems to be happening.

[Morpheus]

“I fight back”- No obstruction except for the all obstruction

[Shryke]

25 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

R's can no longer be the party of law and order, so that's now a Democrat issue as R's shift to focusing on merely preserving the right to murder minorities for cops .

R's can no longer be the party of fiscal responsibility.

R's can no longer be the party of moral values.

R's can no longer be the party of liberal trade.

R's can no longer be the party of limited government.

I don't know where you get these ideas from.

The GOP will always be the part of Law and Order because Law and Order politics are about harsh punishment against criminals, mostly violent or drug crime and mostly minorities or the poor. Their actual budgeting has never stopped them from being the party of supposed fiscal responsibility before. They blatant hypocrisy has never stopped them from being the party of supposed moral values before. And when it comes limited government it's just the same as always: it means less social safety net but more crackdown on individual liberties, especially that of minorities, like it always has.

I mean, mostly it's probably gonna be more and more protectionism out of them but they've been mouthing support for that for decades now anyway. Both parties do really. Maybe the GOP will actually mean it this time though.

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, Shryke said:

I don't know where you get these ideas from.

The GOP will always be the part of Law and Order because Law and Order politics are about harsh punishment against criminals, mostly violent or drug crime and mostly minorities or the poor. Their actual budgeting has never stopped them from being the party of supposed fiscal responsibility before. They blatant hypocrisy has never stopped them from being the party of supposed moral values before. And when it comes limited government it's just the same as always: it means less social safety net but more crackdown on individual liberties, especially that of minorities, like it always has.

I mean, mostly it's probably gonna be more and more protectionism out of them but they've been mouthing support for that for decades now anyway. Both parties do really. Maybe the GOP will actually mean it this time though.

Yeah, I know it seems like nothing's changed. But everything has changed.

It's not that they don't get to keep claiming those things. It's that nobody cares. Their fucking base doesn't care. So while they can claim those things all they want, the margins will revert to democrats because that party is actually good at those things.

This is good for us. The more openly racist and nationalist the Republicans get, the less of a pool of voters they have to draw from.

It's the Bad Guy Disease. Just look at the Nazi's for the perfect example. I mean, besides Trump's Whitehouse.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Donald just announced imminent missile strikes in Syria on Twitter.

Sweet Jesus this man is fucking incompetent.

[Fez]

45 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

From the looks of it, the Democratic party loses the white working class even further, while the Republicans lose educated suburban whites and pro-trade business types.  That shift was happening in 2016 and looks to be continuing. 

I'd be wary of predicting either of those things, the evidence has been quite mixed in the special elections since 2016 (and the November 2017 elections). There are some elections where Democrats have further lost WWC voters, but others where they have made substantial improvements; and some elections where Democrats have improved among educated suburban whites, and others where they've been at par compared to 2016.

I saw one analysis on Twitter a while back, I think it was either Nate Cohn or Sean Trende, that Democrats best gains since 2016 have actually been in regaining Obama-Trump WWCs and not flipping skeptical suburban Republicans. And I don't think we'll know for sure if a permanent shift has happened until several elections down-the-road.

 

In other, happier Speaker-related news, John Boehner is living his best life.

Acreage Holdings is a company that grows, processes, and sells cannabis products in the 11 states with legalized recreational use, and supports efforts in additional states to legalize.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

23 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Better than indulging tyranny.

A shooting war between the US and Russia/China would probably go nuclear.  Is the mass die off or potential extinction of the human species just a cost in a fight to end tyranny?

[DMC]

17 minutes ago, Shryke said:

I mean, I think we've been seeing a fairly steady party realignment for most of anyone here's lives, so the chatter doesn't seem strange at all. Trump and the Tea Party are the result of a long-term gradual shift that still seems to be happening.

Totally agree with the bolded, just disagree on the definitions.  Realignments are used to identify the onset of new party systems.  Even then, the starting point of the most recent party system is still debated, with dates ranging from 1964 (Goldwater and the CRA) to 1980.  This suggests that, again, it's more simply constant, fluid - and gradual - shifts these days than any type of "inflection point" realignment the way the term is usually understood as. 

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

A shooting war between the US and Russia/China would probably go nuclear.  Is the mass die off or potential extinction of the human species just a cost in a fight to end tyranny?

Yes

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Yes

Wow.  Every human dead is better than the existence of any tyranny?  Wow.

[Fez]

I just saw this, Erick Erickson has some amazing quotes from an interview with an anonymous GOP House member: https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/erick-erickson/a-congressman-s-profanity-laced-tirade-in-a-safeway-grocery-store-SeHI2l5bIECGQn4gmnzGaw/?full=1

The key bits:

Quote

 

"I read you writing about this, about wanting to say nice things when you can and criticize when you need to. He may be an idiot, but he's still the President and leader of my party and he is capable of doing some things right," he says before conceding it's usually other people doing the right things in the President's name. "But dammit he's taking us all down with him. We are well and truly f**ked in November. Kevin [McCarthy] is already circling like a green fly circling sh*t trying to take Paul's [Ryan] job because nobody thinks he's sticking around for Nancy [Pelosi]. She's going to f**k up the cafeteria again too. [Lord's name in vain], at least I'll probably lose too and won't have to put up with that sh*t." He won't lose. His district is very Republican.

What's the problem, though? Well, get ready…

"It's like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really f*cking stupid Forrest Gump. He can't help himself. He's just a f**king idiot who thinks he's winning when people are b*tching about him. He really does see the world as ratings and attention. I hate Forrest Gump. I listen to your podcast and heard you hate it too. What an overrated piece of sh*t movie. Can you believe it beat the Shawshank Redemption?"

We deviated to Stephen Speilberg for a moment and I had to remind him Robert Zemeckis, not Speilberg, directed it. Then I had to point out his taste in coffee sucks and suggested better. Moving right along…

"Judiciary is stacked with a bunch of people who can win re-election so long as they don't piss off Trump voters in the primary. But if we get to summer and most of the primaries are over, they just might pull the trigger if the President fires Mueller. The sh*t will hit the fan if that happens and I'd vote to impeach him myself. Most of us would, I think. Hell, all the Democrats would and you only need a majority in the House. If we're going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherf**ker. Take him out with us and let Mike [Pence] take over. At least then we could sleep well at night," he said before going off on a tangent about how the situations with Russia and China scare him. Then, "You know having Mike as President would really piss off all the right people, too. They think they hate Trump. Mike is competent," at which point he sighs and laments that there were, in his mind, more than a dozen competent choices in 2016.

So the implication is they wouldn't vote for impeachment if they might be opposed in primaries, I asked. He confirmed he does not think the votes are there to impeach the President if any of the Judiciary Committee members are facing primary opponents. But get through that and, if Mueller is fired, he thinks so and thinks a majority of the House would vote to impeach President Trump.

"I say a lot of shit on TV defending him, even over this. But honestly, I wish the motherf*cker would just go away. We're going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done, but he hasn't led. He wakes up in the morning, sh*ts all over Twitter, sh*ts all over us, sh*ts all over his staff, then hits golf balls. F*ck him. Of course, I can't say that in public or I'd get run out of town."

 

It's not news that some House Republicans truly hate Trump in private but refuse to do/say anything in public (and Erickson does note that this is one that wasn't a full-throated true believer from the beginning, so it's not a sign of his supporters abandoning him). The one big noteworthy thing here is that this member at least believes that the votes are actually there to impeach Trump if he fires Mueller, but only after the primaries are done.

[Maithanet]

10 minutes ago, Fez said:

I'd be wary of predicting either of those things, the evidence has been quite mixed in the special elections since 2016 (and the November 2017 elections). There are some elections where Democrats have further lost WWC voters, but others where they have made substantial improvements; and some elections where Democrats have improved among educated suburban whites, and others where they've been at par compared to 2016.

I saw one analysis on Twitter a while back, I think it was either Nate Cohn or Sean Trende, that Democrats best gains since 2016 have actually been in regaining Obama-Trump WWCs and not flipping skeptical suburban Republicans. And I don't think we'll know for sure if a permanent shift has happened until several elections down-the-road.

In the short term that's true.  But in the long term I think that the trend will be the white working class moving more and more Republican and white college educated suburbanites becoming more Democratic.  The only way to arrest this trend (that I see) is if the Trump administration crashes so hard that the post-Trump Republican party looks totally different that it does now. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 minutes ago, Fez said:

I'd be wary of predicting either of those things, the evidence has been quite mixed in the special elections since 2016 (and the November 2017 elections). There are some elections where Democrats have further lost WWC voters, but others where they have made substantial improvements; and some elections where Democrats have improved among educated suburban whites, and others where they've been at par compared to 2016.

I saw one analysis on Twitter a while back, I think it was either Nate Cohn or Sean Trende, that Democrats best gains since 2016 have actually been in regaining Obama-Trump WWCs and not flipping skeptical suburban Republicans. And I don't think we'll know for sure if a permanent shift has happened until several elections down-the-road.

 

In other, happier Speaker-related news, John Boehner is living his best life.

Acreage Holdings is a company that grows, processes, and sells cannabis products in the 11 states with legalized recreational use, and supports efforts in additional states to legalize.

ARG! at all these politicians being anti-herb in office then suddenly being cool with it afterwards. I fully expect pictures of Obama ripping a volcano to surface soon…

[Maithanet]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Wow.  Every human dead is better than the existence of any tyranny?  Wow.

I ducked out of this argument because I don't care if Jace gets the last word.  But I agree with you.  I don't think we need to discuss this further. 

[TheKitttenGuard]

Sadly this is off the record

Quote

By Erick Erickson

One of the President's congressional defenders has privately decided he hates Trump and wants to unload.

"If we're going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherf**ker," said the congressman as we roamed the aisles of a Safeway grocery store together.

...

"It's like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really f*cking stupid Forrest Gump. He can't help himself. He's just a f**king idiot who thinks he's winning when people are b*tching about him. He really does see the world as ratings and attention. I hate Forrest Gump. I listen to your podcast and heard you hate it too. What an overrated piece of sh*t movie. Can you believe it beat the Shawshank Redemption?"

https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/erick-erickson/a-congressman-s-profanity-laced-tirade-in-a-safeway-grocery-store-SeHI2l5bIECGQn4gmnzGaw/

Trump is not stupid is as stupid does, he is just stupid.

[Shryke]

16 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Totally agree with the bolded, just disagree on the definitions.  Realignments are used to identify the onset of new party systems.  Even then, the starting point of the most recent party system is still debated, with dates ranging from 1964 (Goldwater and the CRA) to 1980.  This suggests that, again, it's more simply constant, fluid - and gradual - shifts these days than any type of "inflection point" realignment the way the term is usually understood as. 

Ah, I see what you mean.

Yeah, I don't expect some sort of radical immediate shift.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

18 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Totally agree with the bolded, just disagree on the definitions.  Realignments are used to identify the onset of new party systems.  Even then, the starting point of the most recent party system is still debated, with dates ranging from 1964 (Goldwater and the CRA) to 1980.  This suggests that, again, it's more simply constant, fluid - and gradual - shifts these days than any type of "inflection point" realignment the way the term is usually understood as. 

Another complicating factor is that the bases genuinely hate one another. You’d know better than me, but I can’t recall reading about a time in which the hate was so toxic since the civil war. That makes a realignment in a two party system quite difficult.

[Jace, Extat]

9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Wow.  Every human dead is better than the existence of any tyranny?  Wow.

As long as any 'grouping' of individuals is oppressed the collective human spirit is devalued. If I wasn't worthless and a cripple I'd like to think I would have been able to do a little more to alleviate that devaluation. But I'm just a crazy person who also feels very strongly about Democracy. But don't worry, Jace isn't making decisions

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Another complicating factor is that the bases genuinely hate one another. You’d know better than me, but I can’t recall reading about a time in which the hate was so toxic since the civil war. That makes a realignment in a two party system quite difficult.

Yup.