US Politics : And the Finer Art of Grumbling

[mormont]

16 hours ago, Ormond said:

They can't expel him because being a "member" of a party in the USA is not something one can be expelled from. In states that have voter registration by party, all you have to do is go to the government registrar and say you are a member of that party and that means you ARE for purposes of voting and running in primaries. The party apparatus, no matter which party you are talking about, has no way to prevent someone from running.

They can and should pass resolutions condemning him, saying he is not "really" a Republican, and saying people should vote for his Democratic opponent. But they simply cannot do anything else to stop him from running. 

OK, I think I follow: this is a guy who got onto the ballot and says his affiliation is 'Republican', rather than being the 'official' Republican candidate?

If so, then the Republicans should be running their own 'official' candidate against him. Or if they can't do that, endorsing the Democrat. Or if they can't do that, campaigning against him. Or if they can't do that, doing anything more than washing their hands, which is what the statement ants quotes amounts to. if you have an actual Nazi claiming to represent you, it's incumbent on your party to take action top stop him being elected, not just to say 'nothing to do with us'. 

[Shryke]

3 minutes ago, mormont said:

OK, I think I follow: this is a guy who got onto the ballot and says his affiliation is 'Republican', rather than being the 'official' Republican candidate?

If so, then the Republicans should be running their own 'official' candidate against him. Or if they can't do that, endorsing the Democrat. Or if they can't do that, campaigning against him. Or if they can't do that, doing anything more than washing their hands, which is what the statement ants quotes amounts to. if you have an actual Nazi claiming to represent you, it's incumbent on your party to take action top stop him being elected, not just to say 'nothing to do with us'. 

What happens is there is a primary. A literal election where the people get to vote who represents the Republicans in that district/state/whatever. And whoever wins it is that party's nominee, end of story. The party has no direct control over the selection process and the winner is that party's nominee in the general election. The party can run a third party candidate for the seat and endorse that guy instead, but the actual winner of the primary gets to be the Republican Party Nominee on the ballot.

This may sound insane if you are from other political systems, but that's the way it works.

So if your primary voters nominate someone who is, say, a nazi or a pedophile, you (as the party) can't stop them from doing that. All you can do is condemn the guy and refuse to help him in any way via withholding funding, support and endorsements. But you can't like remove him from the ballot, or not generally anyway.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

He said the goal of the new weapon would be deterrence. “We believe that some nations could miscalculate — one in particular,” Mattis said, seeming to refer to North Korea. “That nation could assume that if they used, in a conventional fight, a small-yield bomb, we would not respond with a very large-yield bomb.”

Mattis: The U.S. Needs a Smaller Nuke to Prevent Nuclear War

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/mattis-the-u-s-needs-a-smaller-nuke-to-prevent-nuclear-war.html

[Martell Spy]

Quote

Johnson concluded that this message raised troubling questions about “the type and extent of President Obama’s personal involvement” in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server. (Ostensibly, a president asking the FBI director point-blank to drop an investigation into his friends, while saying publicly, over and over, that he expects the Justice Department to put loyalty to him over the letter of the law is fine, in Johnson’s book — but a president asking to be briefed on an ongoing investigation involving a political ally is a threat to the rule of law.)

Ron Johnson Is Very Bad at McCarthyism

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/ron-johnson-is-very-bad-at-mccarthyism.html

[Martell Spy]

I'd add, this is the Secretary of Defense and a U.S. Senator. The whole "grownups in the room" theory is falling fast. Mattis was one of the 3 grownups, I recall. Now he is just someone that is willing to put easier to use nukes into the hands of a racist and petulant child man. And  Kelly of course discredited himself a while ago.

[DMC]

54 minutes ago, mormont said:

Or if they can't do that, endorsing the Democrat. Or if they can't do that, campaigning against him. Or if they can't do that, doing anything more than washing their hands, which is what the statement ants quotes amounts to. if you have an actual Nazi claiming to represent you, it's incumbent on your party to take action top stop him being elected, not just to say 'nothing to do with us'.

Should the Illinois GOP endorse Lipinski (the Democrat)?  Yes.  Will they?  No.  Why?  Because there's only downside in doing so.  Lipinski is going to win regardless, and endorsing him would only draw further attention to the Nazi on the ballot with an "R" next to his name.

That's just politics.  Now, what's also just politics is leftist outlets should make as huge of a deal out of this as possible.  Because you know if the Dems were in an equivalent situation, FNC would get at least a week's worth of news cycles out of whining about it non-stop.  Let alone Breitbart, the radio fucks, the other idiot Jones, etc.

[Rippounet]

7 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Mattis: The U.S. Needs a Smaller Nuke to Prevent Nuclear War

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/mattis-the-u-s-needs-a-smaller-nuke-to-prevent-nuclear-war.html

Oh, FFS, Mattis knows better than to spout such bullshit.
He knows that the US already has tons of tactical nukes, and that it won't change anything as regards the North Korean situation because North Korea seeks to deter the US from attacking it, not the other way around.
It's slightly better if you consider that such programs are really meant to deter Russia and check Russian ambitions in Eurasia. But even then it remains ridiculous because Russia is far behind the US militarily speaking.
In truth it's just a way for the military-industrial complex to make millions very easily. But when a moron like Trump is CiC these toys can quickly become deadly.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

John Kelly, the four-star general brought in to be father to a bumptious son who happened to be president of the United State, was not supposed to turn out like his charge.

But with Kelly’s remark that a lot of Dreamers were “too lazy to get off their asses” and his knee-jerk defense of White House staff secretary and alleged wife-beater Rob Porter, Kelly has come to resemble the man he was supposed to uplift instead of the other way around. 

 

Looks Like Trump’s Reined in Kelly, Not the Other Way Around
The general was supposed to be the grown-up in the room. Instead, he’s just the latest person to sacrifice his own reputation to protect the president’s ‘good name.’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/looks-like-trumps-reined-in-kelly-not-the-other-way-around?ref=home

[Horza]

30 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Oh, FFS, Mattis knows better than to spout such bullshit.
He knows that the US already has tons of tactical nukes, and that it won't change anything as regards the North Korean situation because North Korea seeks to deter the US from attacking it, not the other way around.
It's slightly better if you consider that such programs are really meant to deter Russia and check Russian ambitions in Eurasia. But even then it remains ridiculous because Russia is far behind the US militarily speaking.
In truth it's just a way for the military-industrial complex to make millions very easily. But when a moron like Trump is CiC these toys can quickly become deadly.

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.

[mormont]

2 hours ago, Shryke said:

What happens is there is a primary. A literal election where the people get to vote who represents the Republicans in that district/state/whatever. And whoever wins it is that party's nominee, end of story. The party has no direct control over the selection process and the winner is that party's nominee in the general election. The party can run a third party candidate for the seat and endorse that guy instead, but the actual winner of the primary gets to be the Republican Party Nominee on the ballot.

This may sound insane if you are from other political systems, but that's the way it works.

So if your primary voters nominate someone who is, say, a nazi or a pedophile, you (as the party) can't stop them from doing that. All you can do is condemn the guy and refuse to help him in any way via withholding funding, support and endorsements. But you can't like remove him from the ballot, or not generally anyway.

That's a strange definition of 'all you can do', because it doesn't include everything that the Illinois Republican party could, well, do. 

As I said, they can run a candidate that they do endorse. They can endorse another candidate. They can campaign against him. They can do all these things. Sure, they won't. But going back to the original point, it's a valid criticism to say that they should, and that they are not doing enough, and that by not doing enough they are in effect tolerating this situation, and that therefore this is not about a lone Nazi. It can't be ignored or waved away. You can fight Nazis, support them, or tolerate them. The Republican party might not be supporting this guy, but they aren't fighting him. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 hours ago, Inigima said:

This can't be real, can it?

I heard that on a NPR podcast a few months before the election that went through the pros and cons of his business career. I couldn’t find a second source to confirm the claim that the planes were twice as heavy as what could fly, but it does appear that he wanted to put a bunch of extra weight on the planes with marble sinks and brass railings. Regardless though, he ran the airline into the ground. Here’s a good summary of what happened:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-crash-of-trump-air

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

48 minutes ago, mormont said:

That's a strange definition of 'all you can do', because it doesn't include everything that the Illinois Republican party could, well, do. 

As I said, they can run a candidate that they do endorse. They can endorse another candidate. They can campaign against him. They can do all these things. Sure, they won't. But going back to the original point, it's a valid criticism to say that they should, and that they are not doing enough, and that by not doing enough they are in effect tolerating this situation, and that therefore this is not about a lone Nazi. It can't be ignored or waved away. You can fight Nazis, support them, or tolerate them. The Republican party might not be supporting this guy, but they aren't fighting him. 

Mormont,

They have to find someone willing to run in a district they are sure to lose in the general election and for which the GOP is unwilling to give resources to because they know it is a lock for the Democratic candidate.  Not as easy as it sounds.

[Mexal]

Here is the timeline for the WH's handling of Rob Porter. It drives me nuts that scandal after scandal, there is never any real serious consequences other than one person resigning. These fuckers knew since the fall that he beat his two ex-wives, that he was unable to get a full security clearance yet they stood by him and allowed him to handle classified information on a daily basis. The new normal blows.

 

[Ormond]

14 hours ago, Inigima said:

The idea that Trump is a product of low-edication working-class whites has been repeatedly debunked, but the myth won't die. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/white-working-class-trump-cultural-anxiety/525771/

You seem to be contradicting yourself. The article you link to does not "debunk" the idea that low-education working class Whites support Trump more than other demographics. It just says that they are motivated more by "cultural anxieties" than economic ones. 

To me one of the most interesting paragraphs in the article you link to is the following:

Quote

Finally, 54 percent of white working-class Americans said investing in college education is a risky gamble, including 61 percent of white working-class men. White working-class voters who held this belief were almost twice as likely as their peers to support Trump. “The enduring narrative of the American dream is that if you study and get a college education and work hard, you can get ahead,” said Robert P. Jones, the CEO of PRRI. “The survey shows that many white working-class Americans, especially men, no longer see that path available to them. … It is this sense of economic fatalism, more than just economic hardship, that was the decisive factor in support for Trump among white working-class voters.”

I have thought for a long while that statistics which show that those who are really poor or economically stressed among Whites are actually less likely to support Trump miss the point -- as the above points out, "economic fatalism" is the issue more than real "hardship". But that attitude is definitely one that is most prevalent among low-education working class White men.

[mormont]

38 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Mormont,

They have to find someone willing to run in a district they are sure to lose in the general election and for which the GOP is unwilling to give resources to because they know it is a lock for the Democratic candidate.  Not as easy as it sounds.

No, it's much easier, in fact. I don't know how it is in the US, but in any political party I ever heard of, campaigning for an unwinnable seat is seen as an opportunity to prove your mettle without having the pressure of having to win. It gets your name out there and helps you get on the list for winnable seats. I refuse to believe for one second that the Illinois Republican party would have any trouble finding someone to do this. That's not a credible excuse. 

[Guy Kilmore]

12 minutes ago, mormont said:

No, it's much easier, in fact. I don't know how it is in the US, but in any political party I ever heard of, campaigning for an unwinnable seat is seen as an opportunity to prove your mettle without having the pressure of having to win. It gets your name out there and helps you get on the list for winnable seats. I refuse to believe for one second that the Illinois Republican party would have any trouble finding someone to do this. That's not a credible excuse. 

Yeah.  That isn't true here.  The resources to run are too steep to put in an unwinnable race.

[Ormond]

7 minutes ago, mormont said:

No, it's much easier, in fact. I don't know how it is in the US, but in any political party I ever heard of, campaigning for an unwinnable seat is seen as an opportunity to prove your mettle without having the pressure of having to win. It gets your name out there and helps you get on the list for winnable seats. I refuse to believe for one second that the Illinois Republican party would have any trouble finding someone to do this. That's not a credible excuse. 

As you say, you don't know how it is the U.S. Americans who desire to run for office don't have this attitude because the "help you get on the list for winnable seats" is absolutely not a part of how American politics works. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think in the UK one has to live in the district one represents. In the USA, that is almost always a requirement. Only the most prominent nationally known politicians like Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney can get away with moving from one state or district to another without being penalized by the voters as an opportunistic carpetbagger. A budding politician in the USA does not get any consideration from the party for moving to and running in a "safer" district if they first run in an "impossible" one. 

It is possible the Republican party in Illinois could find somebody to run if they tried a bit harder and put money behind it. But it would be a lot more difficult for them to do that in Illinois than it would be for the Conservative party in Scotland to do that in a similar situation.

[aceluby]

9 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

It's Putin's brush, not yours. And "divine ruler" is an extreme over exaggeration. My impression is more that they consider him a convenient rube who will sign whatever they put in front of him as long as they pay him a certain degree of lip service.

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. And we need these people. Because if every Republican who doesn't like Trump either resigns, or publicly calls him out and loses their seat (because let's be honest, Democrats will never embrace people like Jeff Flake), then we really will see a Republican party made up entirely of the alt-right and southern evangelicals.

You shouldn't have to support someone or their stance just because they aren't a fucking nazi.  We actually don't need these people.  These are people that want to cut taxes for the rich and screw over the poor.  These are people that want to limit what women can do with their own bodies.  These are people who want to treat many groups of people as second class citizens.  These people helped crash the economy and will do so again.  These are people that despite the lip service, still vote lock-step with the alt-right.

Fuck those guys, and fuck anyone who wants to blame democrats for the shittiness of the GOP.  The only difference between what it is now and what it was 35 years ago is that now the racism, sexism, and misogyny are campaign promises instead of dog whistles.

[Maithanet]

Cook has their latest House ratings changes: 21 movements, all in favor of the Democrats. 

Quote

 

The first two months of 2018 have given both parties reasons for optimism. Republicans have cut Democrats' lead in the FiveThirtyEight average  of generic congressional ballot polls in half, from roughly 12 points in December to about six points today...

However, most new district-by-district fundraising and polling numbers are downright terrible for Republicans, even in seats previously thought to be safe. In the fourth quarter of 2017, 39 Republican House incumbents were outraised by at least one Democratic challenger, and private polls and special election results suggest Democrats are highly competitive even in some districts President Trump won by wide margins.

At first glance, these two data trends might seem at odds with each other. How could Democrats' lead in national polls be shrinking while their odds in individual districts improve? The answer: the "macro" outlook for the House (national polls) and the "micro" view (district-by-district) aren't diverging; they're coming into alignment.

Democrats probably need at least a six or seven point lead on the generic ballot to win the majority, thanks to the GOP's redistricting edge and Democratic voters' tendency to cluster and waste votes in safe districts. Democrats have been above that threshold most of the past year. However, only gradually have the GOP's district-level problems come into view, as more Democrats announce candidacies and fundraising totals.

 

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.

The is the first time that there are 24 Republican seats in the Lean Dem (6) and Toss Up (18).  Obviously Democrats won't win all of those seats, but it's a good sign that the House majority is in reach. 

[aceluby]

37 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Cook has their latest House ratings changes: 21 movements, all in favor of the Democrats. 

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.

The is the first time that there are 24 Republican seats in the Lean Dem (6) and Toss Up (18).  Obviously Democrats won't win all of those seats, but it's a good sign that the House majority is in reach. 

I really don't care about these TBH.  The governors seats and state seats are where democrats should put their money.  Win majorities in state legislations and governorships and they can finally do something about the gerrymandering that leaves them at a perennial disadvantage.  Otherwise they'll just lose these seats again in a few years and be right back where we are.