US Politics: Getting Rid of the Senate

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

But why is she holding the country hostage just to get her way on these issues? Does she not care what will happen when the government shuts down?

Haha, oh the hypocrisy!

[Lightysnake88]

Haha, oh the hypocrisy!

Do you understand nuance? At all?

[YoungGriff89]

No, you'll get your minimum wage raise or something similar rolled back.

This seems more likely than a republican candidate doing something just because the people are in favor of it. Donor money speaks louder than democracy.

I used a bad example with minimum wage, let me ask do we think anyone voted to turn the senate and house red because they wanted WIC gutted? Because they wanted to give more power to the banks? Because they wanted millions blown on more planes that can't be fielded?

[awesome possum]

Haha, oh the hypocrisy!

I know, right? That you guys actually pretend to give a shit about government shut downs now after doing it twice in the last several years is the height of hypocrisy aka business as usual for Republicans.

I used some big words there so let me translate for you: hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[YoungGriff89]

I think the Dems 'sell out' in a sense that they're typically forced to. The Democrats haven't really had total control of the government for any major length of time in a very long time. The Republicans have been able to hold things up in the House or filibuster in the senate, which is why 2010 was so devastating. The proper solution to the first two years of Obama's Presidency was the erasure of Republican power in the Senate by another 3-5 seats.

The same things both sides meme irritates me so much because it's not remotely true. Even if one isn't enthused on the Democrats or considers them only the lesser of two evils, voters are more influenced by positivity and giving them something to vote for. While Democrats are a minority and the progressive caucus a minority of a minority, attacking Democrats like Landrieu or Begich just never makes sense to me. Sure, they're more conservative, but they come from states where they're forced to be. If we want to get rid of bad Democrats, we need to prioritize that for after we get rid of right-wingers.

It's one thing Republicans can count on. For all the moaning about McCain, Romney and RINOs, you can bet their base will vote for whoever the guy with the R is en masse. when I refer to purity tests, it's largely towards voters who spend a lot of time obsessing over which Dems are insufficiently liberal.

The attacks on those candidates from democrats I think is rooted more in the appearance of there being no more left wing. Democrats take center right positions now, even if it seems like they're trying not to. Let's look at the banking situation, republicans want to give banks more and money and democrats want to stop that. But they just simply want to stop it, that position is the compromise.

Why start with a compromise? For democrats your compromise will be right of center and for republicans your compromise will be left of far right. End of the day there was never a left option. Same thing with the ACA, it was a compromise that didn't even have to be. The votes were there single payer, the democrats essentially ran on what sounded like single payer to the voters, and instead we got a giant hand out to private insurers. That's where I'm coming from when I say it seems like the parties are increasingly acting the same.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

The votes were never there for single payer. I think they could have and should have pushed through the public option, maybe the Medicare opt-in at age 55, with a little more of a fuck you attitude towards the Republicans (ie, go nuclear on the filibuster), but single payer was never going to happen.

[awesome possum]

Even the Teanuts aren't happy with the Republican's spending bill

Tea party activists are attacking a campaign finance rider in the $1.1 trillion spending bill that they view as a sneaky power grab by establishment Republicans designed to undermine outside conservative groups.

The provision would increase the amount of money a single donor could give to national party committees each year from $97,200 to as much as $777,600 by allowing them to set up different funds for certain expenses. The change would be a huge boost for party committees that have faced steep challenges in recent years from well-funded outside groups.

But not without their own brand of delicious hypocrisy:

The same conservative activists have long advocated for looser campaign finance laws, but they argue the language of the rider in the 1,600-page bill gives the establishment wing an unfair advantage by tweaking the law specifically for donations to party committees.

"We want looser campaign finance laws but only if they benefit us and not the people we want to get out of office!"

I think they could have and should have pushed through the public option, maybe the Medicare opt-in at age 55, with a little more of a fuck you attitude towards the Republicans

This could be said for almost any Democratic legislation/initiative. Every single hour of those, what, 2 months they actually had the Super Majority should have been spent pushing through their legislation with a big Fuck You to the Republicans. What were they going to do, go crying to the media when they had an entire "news" network dedicated to crying about what Democrats were doing?

[YoungGriff89]

The votes were never there for single payer. I think they could have and should have pushed through the public option, maybe the Medicare opt-in at age 55, with a little more of a fuck you attitude towards the Republicans (ie, go nuclear on the filibuster), but single payer was never going to happen.

According to the anti-Obama democrats the votes were in fact there for single payer. Do you have a source that says they weren't?

I can't really find anything that verifies this but I heard the health insurance Lobby demanded no public option or they'd spend millions to launch a campaign against it. That sounds legit but that's based on hearsay and not anything I've been able to find concrete evidence of. And besides it's not like the health insurance lobby didn't do that anyway since they continue to fund republicans who are still fighting affordable healthcare tooth and nail.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

According to the anti-Obama democrats the votes were in fact there for single payer. Do you have a source that says they weren't?

According to who were the votes there for single payer?

What I know is that some House Democrats proposed a single payer bill (have long proposed it), and couldn't get a majority of the House Democratic caucus in support. And the House was able to pass a much more robust progressive agenda than the Senate was.

I can't really find anything that verifies this but I heard the health insurance Lobby demanded no public option or they'd spend millions to launch a campaign against it. That sounds legit but that's based on hearsay and not anything I've been able to find concrete evidence of. And besides it's not like the health insurance lobby didn't do that anyway since they continue to fund republicans who are still fighting affordable healthcare tooth and nail.

Public option =/= single payer. I agree the Democrats could have gotten the public option with a little more gall.

[YoungGriff89]

The medicaid expansion is not bad but too many states didn't accept it, and I question why since it is federally funded (meaning to me, you pay whether the state gets it or not) the states even got an option.

Tom Harkin is the one I'm referring to. Maybe a little ambitious to call him anti-Obama. But there's a chance he was just misquoted too.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/03/harkin-we-should-have-done-single-payer-health-reform/

[Tywin Manderly]

We are past 400 posts. You can continue the discussion in the thread below.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/121795-us-politics-another-government-shutdown-looms/

[Inigima]

You're not my real dad.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

Geez, it's almost like you are being increadibly reductionist so you can sneer at the whole thread. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

Meanwhile, you might want to instead consider that there's an absolute mountain of polling data and research showing that people in large part support alot of economically progressive things when asked them absent party labels. And also reams of data showing people for the most part have no idea what the government does or how it spends most of it's money. Or yet more data showing things like federal level US politicians are more rightward then the people who vote for them and on and on and on.

There's no shortage of data showing that when people vote for candidates rather then specific issues, those votes are often completely at odds with what issues they will they support because of a combination of identity politics and simply not really bothering to know what they are voting for in a candidate.

See, this is what's hilarious. You have no idea what the fuck you're actually arguing about! Nobody does.

YoungGriff89 made this ambiguous post claiming that in the recent election an "Arkansas candidate who wanted to repeal the state minimum wage won popular vote while an initiative to raise the state minimum wage also won popular vote."

What candidate is he talking about? What position did they take? What office did they run for?

Without knowing any of these things, Commodore immediately jumped in to defend the idea that Arkansas voters actually voted for this mystery candidate in this way which was supposedly at odds with how they voted for the state referendum to increase the minimum wage.

YounGriff89 then jumped back in to clarify that Arkansas voters "voted to raise the minimum wage and voted for a governor who ran on repealing it completely."

Several other people then jumped in, expressing their opinion as to what this means for your average Arkansas voter, etc. and so on.

The problem is, although Asa Hutchinson, who was just elected to be Arkansas governor, once did oppose the specific minimum wage ballot initiative that was ultimately passed, changed his position and repeatedly stated his intention to support the initiative and raise the minimum wage in Arkansas.

Which is to say, there is no conflict for Arkansas voters between passing the minimum wage initiative and electing Asa Hutchinson to the governorship because the latter pledged to support the former.

Despite nobody bothering to investigate or point out this simple fact, we were subjected to two or three pages of people justifying alleged contradictions in voter positions that did not exist in the case under discussion.

And lo and behold, here you are, attempting to take the same position while being completely ignorant of the actual situation on the ground.

Color me surprised.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

And here you are, doing exactly what Shryke said you were doing, being incredibly reductionist so you can sneer at the whole thread. You offer no response to his claim of data on several issues showing voters support more progressive economic initiatives than the candidates they vote for, instead you pull out the single error on the position of the Arkansas candidate for Governor and make pronouncements about how 'everyone is doing it wrong!'

Never mind that there were a handful of states that passed minimum wage initiatives in 2014, among them South Dakota and Nebraska, where, in fact, the successful Republican candidates for Governor did oppose the minimum wage increase which voters passed while also electing them to office. A discussion of whether or not it is, in general, rational for voters to support initiatives and then vote for candidates who oppose them is perfectly valid. You have no apparent interest in that discussion, but apparently great interest in pulling on a single thread in order to sneer at everyone who did participate.

[Guy Kilmore]

You're not my real dad.

I'm an adult!