US Politics: Borrow And Spend Conservatism Marches On

[Fez]

51 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

But what's the solution?  Republicans are setting the agenda and playing offense.  When they were attacking health care and giving away money to corporations, democrats were really good at amping up public opposition for it.  But on immigration that is harder because it doesn't effect most people directly, even if you want to protect DACA recipients in the abstract.  So Democrats can either fight for DACA and risk turning off independent voters or accept that DACA recipients are going to be deported and that Latino groups will be outraged that Democrats are so wimpy. 

Democrats are currently trying to split the difference - protect immigrants if possible but rejecting the outrageous Trump demands.  I suspect no deal will happen and DACA recipients will get deported.  Then Democrats can move on to the next issue and hope that Latino voters will (correctly) blame Republicans for being terrible, rather than Democrats for failing to stop the Republicans. 

Republicans set the congressional agenda, but they don't have to be the ones setting the political agenda. In the lead-up to 2010, Democrats wanted to talk about the stimulus and all the positive social bills they'd passed; but Republicans just hammered them on health care, even though there weren't anymore health care votes after the ACA was finalized. Right now, Democrats need to be debating immigration on the congressional floor, because that's what the senate agenda currently is. But they have money, they have media platforms, they need to be hammering Republicans on trying to slash health care and letting the rich rob the country blind; because those are the issues they can win.

Every recent serious analysis of the electorate has shown that there are far more white non-college voters than polls and exit polls have suggested. The 2016 exit polls said they were 34% of the electorate, but turns out they were 44%; and the same holds true for previous elections. Democrats need those voters; not all of them, not even a majority, but they can't give up on them the way they did in 2014 and 2016. And that means focusing on issues that matter to them, like I dunno, making addressing the opioid crisis a key messaging issue. That ties right back to health care and focusing on an issue deeply affecting those communities.

[Shryke]

35 minutes ago, S John said:

I do believe that they need to stay in this realm as much as possible.  I'm not sure if maybe the argument is too complex to be boiled down into a sound-byte or slogan, or whatever - but Dems need to be hammering Republicans on the deficit. 

Republicans have finally given up the sham of being fiscally conservative. For years now Republicans have used fiscal conservatism as an excuse not to support numerous programs that might benefit the public (healthcare, education, etc) citing budget and deficit concerns. Now that we all know that running up a huge deficit for future generations to bear doesn't matter to them they are going to have to explain to the public what the real reason is that they don't support these things.

Seems to me if politicians are going to go hog wild on running up a deficit, it shouldn't be much of a choice for the average voter between whether or not they'd like to see that money spent in areas that will benefit the general public, or if they'd like to see it spent giving tax breaks to the donor class.

Republicans gave that shit up years ago. No one cared. Republicans will run on this tax cut and deficit increase the same way they ran on the last one. It won't work as well but neither will it force some sort of fundamental eye-opening moment for the cultural zeitgeist.

Boomers gonna borrow from the future, just like always.

[Fez]

2 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Are you? That's not necessarily true at all. Maybe the other side is just getting over their demotivation. Look at Alabama. It's as much a story of Republicans not showing up as Democrats showing up. Which often has nothing to do with anything the Democrats do.

Demotivating the other side is a key job of political parties, so yes, this is on Democrats. They could've focused on the disparity between what many Republican voters actually want (health care benefits for themselves) and what Republican leaders are trying to do; instead of leaning in on the issues where Republicans are more united (brown people are bad).

[Shryke]

1 minute ago, Fez said:

Demotivating the other side is a key job of political parties, so yes, this is on Democrats. They could've focused on the disparity between what many Republican voters actually want (health care benefits for themselves) and what Republican leaders are trying to do; instead of leaning in on the issues where Republicans are more united (brown people are bad).

Except your contention was that the issue was that the issue was a focus on immigration. Even ignoring the assumption that this is what they are actually doing (the Democratic base actually motivated by immigration sure as fuck thinks they aren't), what you are even describing is not necessarily a result of that supposed focus. We may just be seeing exactly what we've seen before, which is a return towards less extreme outcomes because Republicans, as they've done before, are just admitting to themselves that they are just gonna go back to their standard behaviour. Saying it must be about Democratic actions is just wrong. It's just standard Murc's law bullshit, where we assume on Democrats can have agency in politics.

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

Every recent serious analysis of the electorate has shown that there are far more white non-college voters than polls and exit polls have suggested. The 2016 exit polls said they were 34% of the electorate, but turns out they were 44%; and the same holds true for previous elections. Democrats need those voters; not all of them, not even a majority, but they can't give up on them the way they did in 2014 and 2016. And that means focusing on issues that matter to them, like I dunno, making addressing the opioid crisis a key messaging issue. That ties right back to health care and focusing on an issue deeply affecting those communities.

Whenever I see discussions of this issue I wonder just how carefully pollsters are asking their questions about education and how they are dividing up the electorate.

Most of the discussions I see of this assume that "college voters" are those who have attained a bachelor's degree or higher. But according to the latest census bureau figures, there are 22,310,000 people in the USA age 25 or older whose highest educational attainment is an associate's degree. That's over 10% of the entire population of people over age 24. If some pollsters are just asking people "do you have a college degree?" while others are careful to ask about bachelors' degrees, that could be most of the difference between 34% and 44% right there. 

By the way, there are another 35, 455,000 people over age 24 in the USA who the census bureau says have "some college" without ever getting a degree. I wish political scientists would spend more time researching what the difference is between these "intermediate educated" persons vs. those with only high school diplomas or less on the one hand and those with bachelor's degrees or higher on the other. 

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/education-attainment/cps-detailed-tables.html

[Zorral]

10 hours ago, Yukle said:

 

But the Trumps are not the Kims. They are bad, but not even comparable to what goes on in North Korea.

Give it time and it won't take much time either.  They get closer, and their enablers with them including the so-called republicans, every single hour of every single day.  They are causing, literally, death and destruction everywhere right now.

[lokisnow]

Another day, another republican approved batch of dead children via another republican approved school shooting.

when will politicians stop being held hostage by the terrorists of the NRA? When will politicians put all members and donors of the NRA on the terrorist watch list? These people enthusiastically want dead children to further their ideological beliefs, they’re terrorists and need to be treated as such. Certainly more dangerous than domestic communists in days of yore, but we certainly had effective methods then which we could revive now to suppress today such hostile anti American groups like the NRA.

[Martell Spy]

You know it is Valentine's in the Trump era because Trump is assuring us he thinks domestic violence is bad. He is also for puppies and against cancer.

[SerHaHa]

You know what's really been angering me today - Bernie Sanders was vilified, even by many in the Democratic party, for his "insane" ideas of funding post secondary education for the young people in America.  Even the highest figures they came up with, fall FAR short of the Defense spending in the new budget, by half or more.  We have enough money to buy even more weapons and ammunition to kill people who do NOT need to be our enemies, but not enough to educate our kids, or take care of the health of all citizens, rich or poor. 

Also, another school shooting, likely a big one.  Same bat time, same bat channel.  This is NEVER going to end without drastic changes to the second amendment and the widespread distribution of arms and ammunition among the people of America.  And yes, as in past posts, I'm referring to complete disarmament.  Half measures will never work.

[KiDisaster]

The shooting today is in my town. My coworkers kids go to that school. I feel sick. This is never ending. Nothing ever fucking changes. 

[Mexal]

2 minutes ago, KiDisaster said:

The shooting today is in my town. My coworkers kids go to that school. I feel sick. This is never ending. Nothing ever fucking changes. 

I'm sorry man. You're right, it will not end. We have done absolutely nothing to stop this. Not a single thing. We are sad for 5 minutes then move on to the next thing.

[Yukle]

2 hours ago, Ormond said:

Whenever I see discussions of this issue I wonder just how carefully pollsters are asking their questions about education and how they are dividing up the electorate.

It's hard to add too much nuance and get accuracy.

538.com has noticed that robo-polls seem to be getting more accurate figures than live-person polls. Certainly, their model was pretty much spot on for the popular vote in the presidential and then later special elections (it might be worth reiterating here how bad it is that the US can have a party win a vote by 6% and still not get a majority).

Robo-polls seem to make people more likely to admit views they are ashamed about. The prevalence of Trump voters, those who discriminate against ethnic groups and whatnot all increase a little when the polls aren't conducted by real people. That's just the theory the website has, they said it's also possible that robo-polls are just selecting a more accurate cross-section of society for a reason not yet figured out.

[Maithanet]

3 minutes ago, KiDisaster said:

The shooting today is in my town. My coworkers kids go to that school. I feel sick. This is never ending. Nothing ever fucking changes. 

I am very sorry to hear that.  I hope that it turns out to be less terrible than it sounds like it's going to. 

[Yukle]

3 minutes ago, KiDisaster said:

The shooting today is in my town. My coworkers kids go to that school. I feel sick. This is never ending. Nothing ever fucking changes. 

Oh goodness, that is horrible.

[lokisnow]

Until the democrat party or a grassroots me too esque movement takes leadership on the issue and declares the NRA a terrorist organization needing to be stopped and stomped out, these NRA shootings are going to keep happening over and over again.

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Ormond said:

Whenever I see discussions of this issue I wonder just how carefully pollsters are asking their questions about education and how they are dividing up the electorate.

The standard options are:

• Postgraduate 
• Bachelor's
• Some college
• High School graduate
• Less than high school

The last two are combined to operationalize "low educated" voters.  The wording of the item is going to change by firm, but ANES' is:  "What is the highest level of school you have completed or highest degree you have received?"  Of course, theirs is open-ended since they have time to code the responses into the above categories, but it's usually going to be at least one of those two (highest level of school or highest degree).

3 hours ago, Ormond said:

I wish political scientists would spend more time researching what the difference is between these "intermediate educated" persons vs. those with only high school diplomas or less on the one hand and those with bachelor's degrees or higher on the other. 

We have, "some college" are very similar to "Bachelor's" in demographics and political knowledge.  Same goes for high school graduate or less, which some surveys will combine as a "high school or less" option.  Seldom is there any explanatory power to be gained by keeping these groups separate.

[Darth Richard II]

[The Anti-Targ]

8 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

And nothing will stop it either. It’s why people like NASCAR crashes and slow moving train wrecks. We feed into it. What exacerbates it is these people live for it. Otherwise they wouldn’t have made their names as reality TV stars (and that’s what Trump is. We need to stop calling him a business man. He hasn’t been that since the early 90’s when his company collapsed.).

One thing I noticed from the winter Olympics when there was a bad crash in the women's luge and a bad fall in the men's snowboarding halfpipe, both leading to hsopitalisation is that, whereas in the past there would have been endless slow motion replays of the incidents while the injured person was being dealt with (i.,e. to fill in the "dead air" while the event is put on hold for a bit), there was no turning these incidents into audience spectacle. There was no replay of the halfpipe fall, and there was one replay of the luge crash, mostly to see what the nature of the injury might be. So I guess some media organisations are trying to steer away form turning tragedy into entertainment.

[Bonnot OG]

6 hours ago, Fez said:

Demotivating the other side is a key job of political parties, so yes, this is on Democrats. They could've focused on the disparity between what many Republican voters actually want (health care benefits for themselves) and what Republican leaders are trying to do; instead of leaning in on the issues where Republicans are more united (brown people are bad).

LMAO won't matter since Republicans are fucking racist and just bigots and vote party over everything and have no issue fucking themselves if it means people of color, the lgbt community, women and the disabled get fucked worse.

[Jace, Extat]

Everyone needs to calm down!

It was a white male.

Everything is fine.