U.S. Politics 2016: The Mayans Were Only Off By 1418 Days

[aceluby]

10 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

I've heard good things about General Mattis. He's too hawkish for my taste, but it's what you get with a Republican Administration. At least  he knows what he's doing (Unlike just about everyone except possibly Romney/Petraeus) and isn't batshit crazy and effectively on the payroll of a foreign government (Flynn).

Two concerns though:

1. Aren't there restrictions on retired generals serving as Secretary of Defense? Civilian control of the military and all that

2. Wasn't one of the major appeals of Trump that he would be less Hawkish and more Isolationist than typical Republicans and Hillary Clinton? I imagine most Trump supporters won't mind because he's macho and manly and anti-establishment.

This whole thing is a lesson in hypocrisy.  His entire campaign platform runs contrary to everything he has done so far.  He's drained the swamp and filled it with shit, with a high likelihood of taking the people who used to live in that shit filled land to war and raising their taxes for the pleasure of it.

But Republicans will find a way to blame Democrats.  They always do.

[Rippounet]

17 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

1. Aren't there restrictions on retired generals serving as Secretary of Defense? Civilian control of the military and all that

It's at the very beginning (and at the conclusion) of the article.

Quote

To take the job, Mattis will need Congress to pass new legislation to bypass a federal law stating that defense secretaries must not have been on active duty in the previous seven years. Congress has granted a similar exception just once, when Gen. George C. Marshall was appointed to the job in 1950.

 

17 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

2. Wasn't one of the major appeals of Trump that he would be less Hawkish and more Isolationist than typical Republicans and Hillary Clinton? I imagine most Trump supporters won't mind because he's macho and manly and anti-establishment.

Yes. And Mattis's saber-ratling on Iran isn't exactly reassuring. It could be the usual posturing of a newly appointed SoD, but with Trump at the wheel, any hint of warmongering worries me.

I really wonder if Trump's cabinet will bring some of his voters to realize they've been had. Surely not all people who voted for him were from the alt-right?

[Little Scribe of Naath]

Trump talked out of his ass during the campaign, and fools fell for it. All he wanted was the title, it's Pence and the rest of the Repubs who are doing the work behind the scenes. 

I have no doubt that if elections were based on the popular vote, Trump would have run as a Democrat, on an extremely liberal platform, in NY and CA. The one thing he's an expert at, is playing to his audience, as a good conman does.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

Yeah, I saw that but it's not really anything dramatic when compared with the overall trend of the US dollar gaining in strength against the Mexican peso since 2013 or 2014.  See the 5 year chart.  If 12% is enough to cause the dramatic offshoring of jobs to Mexico, we would have seen that already years ago. 

That chart kind of proves the guy's point though. The trajectory is really bad, has gotten even worse recently, and is expected to keep getting worse for the foreseeable future.

Also, there's already been a ton of offshoring occurring over that 5 year period. 

[Mudguard]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That chart kind of proves the guy's point though. The trajectory is really bad, has gotten even worse recently, and is expected to keep getting worse for the foreseeable future.

Also, there's already been a ton of offshoring occurring over that 5 year period. 

The trend has been going on for years before Trump won the election, as has been the offshoring of jobs.  These things have been happening for years independent of Trump, and based on that chart, there's no evidence yet of any dramatic deviation from the current trend that's been going on for years.  I expect that we will continue to lose jobs offshore as we have been for years, but I don't see some unexpected massive increase of job loss to Mexico due to devaluation of the peso.

[Castel]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

It's at the very beginning (and at the conclusion) of the article.

 

Yes. And Mattis's saber-ratling on Iran isn't exactly reassuring. It could be the usual posturing of a newly appointed SoD, but with Trump at the wheel, any hint of warmongering worries me.

I really wonder if Trump's cabinet will bring some of his voters to realize they've been had. Surely not all people who voted for him were from the alt-right?

I doubt most people give a shit about the cabinet tbh.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Mudguard said:

I hate relying on twitter posts as a source of facts.  Can you find a link that corroborates the information from DecisionDeskHQ?

I believe the Cook report is now up to date as well.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Yes. And Mattis's saber-ratling on Iran isn't exactly reassuring. It could be the usual posturing of a newly appointed SoD, but with Trump at the wheel, any hint of warmongering worries me.

I really wonder if Trump's cabinet will bring some of his voters to realize they've been had. Surely not all people who voted for him were from the alt-right?

His saber rattling against Iran isn't recent; he's been doing it for years. Report was that he got kicked out because he was very hardline on Iran and other civilians were getting tired of his (entirely fair) second and third order questioning - as an example, he would ask after they put restrictions on nuclear stuff - "What about their ballistic missiles"? And they'd make a response, and then he'd say 'what about their cyber capabilities'? And so on, and so on. This is, IMO, precisely the sort of thing people should be asking in order to do policy that is beyond mere responding to emergencies, but it is also super super annoying. 

[Mudguard]

25 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I believe the Cook report is now up to date as well.

It's still not clear where they are getting these numbers, since none of these sites are providing citations to officially reported results from PA.  If DecisionDeskHQ is to be believed, then not all counties have officially reported in, and the numbers are still changing as counties continue to report in.  A later tweet from DecisionDeskHQ states:

Quote

Updated York, Northampton and Greene this afternoon. Pennsylvania: Clinton 2,916,909 Trump 2,963,857

It's not clear how many more counties are outstanding, and whether these counties are in rural areas where Trump would be expected to pick up additional votes.  I think it's premature to state that Trump won by less than 50,000 until all the counties finish updating their numbers.

[Kalbear]

It is premature. It is still well within the ballpark, however.

[Mudguard]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

It is premature. It is still well within the ballpark, however.

It might be within the ballpark, but it's also possible that the number increases back up to around 70K if a bunch of rural counties haven't yet updated their results.  I have no idea what counties are left and what the voting was like in those counties.  I do know that Philly has already updated their numbers.

[Gertrude]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

That Carrier thing -- I'm confused.  How can he make a deal now?  He's not yet the POTUS, but he's governing anyway? How is this possible?

 

The plant in question is in Indiana. Hmmm, who's the current governor in Indiana? It's on the tip of my tongue ...

[LongRider]

Candidate Trump threatened companies with (paraphrase) 'You leave and consequences for you!'  So what were the consequences for the Carrier announcement of leaving for Mexico?  Incentives to stay from Indiana, promises from PEOTUS for tax breaks and reduction of regulations.  And yet, Carrier will shed half the jobs and only approx 850ish will remain*, still they get all that! (who's the great negotiator now?) 

Sweet! 

 

*for how long I gotta wonder, but I'm cynical like that

 

[Martell Spy]

What Bernie Sanders Gets Right About Identity Politics

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/what-bernie-sanders-gets-right-about-identity-politics.html

[Martell Spy]

Quote

To have an orderly transition, I think Republicans need to reimplement the risk corridors by February or March. That is the only chance they have. I don’t think there is a single Republican member of Congress who has thought about this. I’m reading all these quotes and they’re completely blind to the fiasco on the individual market that they’re about to create.

“Republicans are being awfully naive”: an expert explains why Obamacare repeal and delay won’t work

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/1/13807028/obamacare-repeal-delay-republicans

[Gorn]

Here is proof that economic policies lost this election for the Democrats:

Source for the image: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/the_myth_of_the_rust_belt_revolt.html (good article overall, I recommend it).

Democrats lost more than a million poor voters in Rust Belt states, and more than 300 000 middle-class voters, while growing their numbers among rich voters. Trump did not flip them (or at least, flipped only a small percentage), they simply stayed at home or voted third party.

ETA: Turns out I cannot paste image into a post, it's the second image in the linked article.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

Raskin had a bit more to say about Bannon. “We’re not letting any prepped-out Harvard Business School neo-Nazi strategize us into becoming Germany 1933,” he vowed, “and we will not let a cabinet of robber barons and white nationalists destroy everything the civilizing movements of the last century created.”

Jamie Raskin Has a Fierce, Funny Message for Dispirited Democrats
At a rally on Wednesday night, the incoming House member stole the show from Elizabeth Warren.

https://newrepublic.com/article/139092/jamie-raskin-fierce-funny-message-dispirited-democrats

 

[mormont]

10 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Here is proof that economic policies lost this election for the Democrats:

Did you read the article?

Quote

In short, the story of a white working-class revolt in the Rust Belt just doesn't hold up, according to the numbers. In the Rust Belt, Democrats lost 1.35 million voters. Trump picked up less than half, at 590,000. The rest stayed home or voted for someone other than the major party candidates.
This data suggests that if the Democratic Party wants to win the Rust Belt, it should not go chasing after the white working-class men who voted for Trump. The party should spend its energy figuring out why Democrats lost millions of voters to some other candidate or to abstention. Exit polls do not collect information about why voters stay home. Perhaps it’s time someone asked them.

The author specifically says that his article does not explain the reasons why these voters stayed home. Altherion asked in the last thread how one would go about showing whether economic policies played a role: the answer is above. Ask these voters. Don't look at their income level and assume.

ETA - it's also worth reminding people that this election was extremely close in the marginal states that Trump needed to win. It's almost impossible to conceive of a flukier win, in fact. As a result, lots of things can be said to have 'lost the election for the Democrats': if any of a number of things had fallen out slightly differently, Clinton would have won. People have a habit of picking their favourite and making it The One True Reason. But that's not how it was.

[Cubarey]

2 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

“Republicans are being awfully naive”: an expert explains why Obamacare repeal and delay won’t work

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/1/13807028/obamacare-repeal-delay-republicans

Except of course that Trump has no interest in allowing Obamacare to survive for three years while Congress dithers on a replacement. He will tell the Republicans that they have 60 days to come up with a repalcement and another 40 days to ram it through Congress.

 

Further, if indeed the citsed strategy is correct then the Republicans would also succeed in their main aim of destroying Obamacare. It will be in shambles and no plan of socialized medicne would be able to replace it.

[Cubarey]

" ETA - it's also worth reminding people that this election was extremely close in the marginal states that Trump needed to win. It's almost impossible to conceive of a flukier win, in fact. As a result, lots of things can be said to have 'lost the election for the Democrats': if any of a number of things had fallen out slightly differently, Clinton would have won. People have a habit of picking their favourite and making it The One True Reason. But that's not how it was. "

 

Really, the Bush victory in 2000 is not "Fluckier".  In the 1960 election a flip of less then 60,000 votes in Texas and Illionois would have given the election to Nixon. Actually except for the Republican wipe outs of the Democrats in 1980-1988 and the Obama victories most American elections since 1948 have been rather close with a couple of percentage points worth of votes in a few states making all the difference between victory and defeat.

 

Yes there is never a definitive reason why someone won or lost a close election. That does not mean that you cannot focus on the core reasons especially if they are interrelated. So the working class white vote either staying home or voting for Trump should be studied. It is partially that they saw the economy as the most important issue. That they viewed immigration and trade deals in economic terms and not in terms of social justice. The fact that they felt not only abandoned by the elites of the democratic party but that such elites called them racist, sexiest anti-islamic homophobes because they wanted their issues addressed.  It's a confluence of factors but at the core is the fact that blue color America felt it had been given the finger for 30 years and they decided to give it back.