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U.S. Politics: Next-ennials vs stamps


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3 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I am still kind of at a loss as to how guys like Baker and Hogan can be not just ahead but almost untouchably ahead in MA and MD.  Maybe people don't know that voting for them is like voting for Republicans to control the House?

Yeah I was just thinking that myself - considering those are the most extremely gerrymandered Democratic states, I suppose that is a concern (ironically).

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Just now, DMC said:

Yeah I was just thinking that myself - considering those are the most extremely gerrymandered Democratic states, I suppose that is a concern (ironically).

I would be thrilled if we could get rid of Gerrymandering alltogether.  But failing that, it would be nice if there were a few states with Democrats drawing the lines to counterbalance the states that Democrats are shut out of power like TX, TN, UT, AL, etc.  Democrats aren't going to have a lot of trifectas and a lot of the ones they do have are useless in redistricting (like CA and WA).  With MA and MD lost causes, it looks like it's just IL and NY. 

It's sad that I'm hoping that the Democrats can make big wins in 2018 such that for 2022-2030, they'll only need D+3 in order to take the House, rather than D+7 we have now.  This is what our democracy has been reduced to.

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16 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm not as bullish as you on Ohio (it is in play, but it looks like DeWine is clearly ahead).

Considering how many times he's been on the ballot and the partisan split of the state (especially in midterms), DeWine should not be polling under 45% at this juncture, which he's been at or below in every poll I've seen since March.

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Just a word about Michigan - the Rs currently hold the trifecta at the state level (state house is 63-47 and state senate is 27-11 ish). But both Whitmer and Stabenow are holding pretty steady leads and I imagine there will be some gains in the state legislatures. May not be enough to flip either of them, but two people I personally know are running in strong Republican seats and some polling has moved them from "likely" to "leans" Republican. So all told, I think Michigan will deliver strong gains (caveat - Michigan is hard to poll and this always worries me even with a healthy lead present)

Equally important, there are 3 ballot initiatives (https://ballotpedia.org/Michigan_2018_ballot_measures), one to do with marijuana legalization, one for an independent committee to redistrict, and one for voting practices. I'll vote yes on all 3...but not sure how it will go. Mary Jane will probably be legal come November.

 

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3 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

One of the most interesting things to watch for if more states go Dem is what happens with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If enough new states enact it, that can change the ballgame for 2020.

While I'm a big proponent of it, problem is that'd take a trifecta - and the political will - in the states they need, which isn't realistic.

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16 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah I was just thinking that myself - considering those are the most extremely gerrymandered Democratic states, I suppose that is a concern (ironically).

What is your definition of gerrymandering? I thought, and every place I've looked, suggests that it's based on how far you strain geography to achieve the desired mix of voters. Massachusetts has pretty compact districts. There are no "Donald Duck kicking Goofy" or tortured snake districts. I'm a resident of the original gerrymandered map, so you can spare me the citation, I know the history.

Yes, there are no Republicans in the MA congressional delegation. Not one Massachusetts county went for Trump in 2016, and registered Democratic voters have outnumbered registered Republicans by 3:1 for decades (granted, "unenrolled" voters outnumber both). Democratic demographic dominance seems to be spread out well enough that it'd almost take some gerrymandering just to carve out a Republican seat.

Does Congressional representation have to match state demographics? Should districts be redrawn to make sure the Republican Party gets a couple of consolation seats?

As Charlie Baker, Scott Brown, Mitt Romney, and Bill Weld have shown, Massachusetts voters don't have any problem voting for Republicans. They just don't seem to think any Republicans are worth sending to Congress at this time.

To be clear, I am not making an argument for the moral purity or sense of fairness of Massachusetts Democrats. There are a lot of problems when one party gets fat and lazy off its electoral imbalance (but it's not as bad as Rhode Island, where I lived for almost a decade). I just don't think the Congressional districts needed to be warped unnaturally in order to get here.

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Investigate Kavanaugh

Christine Blasey Ford wants full scrutiny of her claims against the Supreme Court nominee. The GOP should support that.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/kavanaugh-accusation-fbi-senate-committee-investigation.html

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But even if the two alleged witnesses don’t remember that, there’s a second reason: Hatch’s communications director says that in a conversation on Monday, Kavanaugh told Hatch that he “was not at any party like the one she describes.” Furthermore, the Post reports that Kavanaugh, “through a White House spokesman … did not respond to questions about whether he knew her [Ford] during high school.” If either of the putative witnesses recalls Kavanaugh being at a small party with Ford, that raises questions about Kavanaugh’s memory or veracity.

 

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After they graduated, Kavanaugh went to Yale, where, according to the Yale Daily News and the Hartford Courant, he joined a “party-hearty” fraternity that “reviv[ed] a beer-drinking competition that college officials had banned from campus.” Kavanaugh also drank at Yale Law School. In a speech four years ago, he recalledorganizing “a night of Boston bar-hopping,” with students “doing group chugs from a keg” and “falling out of the bus.” “We had a motto, what happens on the bus stays on the bus,” said Kavanaugh. He went on to describe a banquet at which a friend broke a table:After they graduated, Kavanaugh went to Yale, where, according to the Yale Daily News and the Hartford Courant, he joined a “party-hearty” fraternity that “reviv[ed] a beer-drinking competition that college officials had banned from campus.” Kavanaugh also drank at Yale Law School. In a speech four years ago, he recalledorganizing “a night of Boston bar-hopping,” with students “doing group chugs from a keg” and “falling out of the bus.” “We had a motto, what happens on the bus stays on the bus,” said Kavanaugh. He went on to describe a banquet at which a friend broke a table:

 

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40 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

What is your definition of gerrymandering? I thought, and every place I've looked, suggests that it's based on how far you strain geography to achieve the desired mix of voters. Massachusetts has pretty compact districts. There are no "Donald Duck kicking Goofy" or tortured snake districts.

Sure, (lack of) compact districts are one way to define it.  But that's not the basis of the gripe against gerrymandering, is it?  Please tell me the last time someone complained about the compactness of a district.  It's the lack of proportionality of the seats allocated in the House that does not reflect the partisanship of the state.  So if that's our standard - and in fact exactly the goal of what the actual litigation that is trying to change, I think we should keep that as the standard for all states.  This difference is exactly what 538's gerrymandering project was trying to demonstrate. 

And, once again, that means even pointing out that California has a substantial disproportionate Democratic bias in spite of being one of the handful of states with a "nonpartisan" setup - precisely because this aim for compact districts can counteract the (I think) more important aim of partisan proportionality in a polarized era.

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@Altherion

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The notion is not the problem; it's the implementation that can't be trusted. For example, I completely agree that there is such a thing as public interest for, say, New York City, but I have absolutely no faith in the current government of said city to do anything close to this theoretical interest (it collects a truly amazing amount of money and gets amazingly little for the things it spends it on...). This is what I meant when I said the ship has already sailed: with some exceptions, government at all levels has already been captured by private interests.

It's a common complaint, but one that I believe is misguided. I don't know much about NYC specifically but I can say with confidence that people seriously underestimate the cost of quality public services.

But again, I think this is a consequence of neo-liberalism, not a cause. It is neo-liberalism that has thrown mistrust on public services and taxation by claiming that taxes are "too high" and that people "don't get enough" in return for them. Philosophically speaking it is claiming that "economic freedom" is more important than socialized services and that taxation is illegitimate ("theft").
The strategy here has been well described: attack public services, cut the budgets (supposedly to cut taxes), lower quality, claim the quality no longer warrants the levels of taxation, cut the budgets again... repeat.

And this is a wonderful example of you regurgitating neo-liberal propaganda despite claiming to hate it. You mistake consequences for causes because of your lack of historical perspective: you have completely internalized the assault on the legitimacy and cost-efficiency of public services without seriously stopping to think about where it comes from. At this point you have become an efficient foot soldier for neo-liberalism, all the more so because you pretend to oppose it.

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I have opposed neo-liberalism from the point where I first understood what it was (I think it's been nearly a decade now) and I don't see how I can be closer to neo-liberal doctrine than the clear majority on these forums who supported Hillary Clinton (an archetypal neo-liberal if ever there was one) in 2016.

As @OldGimletEye said, I am not sure you truly understand what neo-liberalism is. The twin pillars of neo-liberalism are less regulation and less taxation (or at least less progressive taxation), resulting in unbridled free market capitalism and increased inequality (/inequalities).

Many people on the right confuse neo-liberalism with globalism/internationalism. Nationalists who oppose open borders and the rise of a globalized economy see these as consequences of neo-liberalism.
However, while it is true that neo-liberalism has been a driving force behind globalism in the past decades, it is a mistake to believe that it is dependent on it. On the contrary, neo-liberalism merges very well with all forms of nationalism.

A prime example of that is the way Salvini in Italy pushed for a "flat tax" as low as 15%. The idea of a flat tax comes directly from neo-liberalism and the philosophical attacks on social solidarity and the very concept of a society/public interest. And yet it was proposed by the supposed Italian "anti-globalists/xenophobes."
Of course, Trump is the other great example of that: his ethno-nationalism blends well with a strong belief in free market capitalism and lower taxation.

The point here is, neo-liberalism is primarily an economic ideology. Bourdieu was very clear about that in his criticism. We all know of the "neo-liberal school" in economics. And wikipedia defines it as such:

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Neoliberalism or neo-liberalism[1] refers primarily to the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.[2]:7 Those ideas include economic liberalization policies such as privatization, austerity, deregulation, free trade[3] and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.[11] These market-based ideas and the policies they inspired constitute a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus which lasted from 1945 to 1980.

Starting from there, the only way in which Clinton was "neo-liberal" was her support of free trade. In pretty much any other way she was an opponent of neo-liberalism. She campaigned against austerity and deregulation among other things.
Trump, of course, is the very reverse. That much should be more than obvious by now.

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Regarding identity politics... sometimes the only way to fight fire is with fire, even if this carries a small risk of burning everything down. I would be pleased never to use the rhetoric of identity politics again if only everyone else would do the same, but as long as there are groups using such rhetoric, everyone must use it or be at a disadvantage (look at the various "diversity initiatives" and similar vileness).

Again, neo-liberalist pilosophy at its finest (or worst).

By that reasoning, no disadvantaged groups can ever fight to redress inequality or unfairness because the advantaged groups will fight back to defend their interests.
What you call "fighting fire with fire" is what used to be called being reactionary.

And of course, in your case, you deny the hardships of minorities to begin with. You oppose social progress by saying that there is no need for it. It helps atomize society into individuals who have to compete with each other.

It's fascinating that you can be such a neo-liberal while actively pretending to hate it. Such cognitive dissonance...

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I do not see slow evolution and gradual awakening accomplishing much. Nearly every incremental change can be twisted until it serves the purposes of the people in power -- and if it can't, they'll circle back to it a few years and have it rolled back.

As I said, I'm an optimist - in some ways at least.

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I am not sure that what Sanders represents is ultimately stronger than what Trump represents: after all, Sanders didn't even make it to the general election whereas Trump is President despite the many, many personal flaws which are unique to him. Ocasio-Cortez is not in the same league and despite the best efforts of the media to promote her,

I said "in the long-run."

Trump is the embodiment of ethno-nationalist neo-liberalism, with a large spoonful of authoritarianism in the mix*.  Which, from an economic standpoint, is just more of the same.
OTOH Ocasio-Cortez represents universalist-nationalism and democratic-socialism. Demographics alone makes her victory inevitable sometime around 2050. Maybe even 2030 if the nazi fearmongers are to be believed. ^^

*And let's not forget that neo-liberalism really started to draw attention when it was implemented in Chile under Pinochet. Authoritarianism works very well for neo-liberalism.

 

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12 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

I know Trumpkins are thrilled to have an "outsider" running things, but couldn't you have found one that knows how the government works?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-on-comey-i-should-have-fired-him-when-i-won-primary

He still doesn’t understand how much Comey revealing the new email investigation while not making public the Russia investigation helped him win.

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9 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

He still doesn’t understand how much Comey revealing the new email investigation while not making public the Russia investigation helped him win.

Alternatively, he does understand it and that's why he so much wants to bury Comey's name (not successfully, granted).

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What women can't figure out is how the orange nazi finds it so hard to believe that Kavanaugh could do such a thing(s), when he himself has committed repeatedly such things himself. 

Vomit time, folks. Vomit time.

And! additionally! this racist hater of everyone, particularly immigrants, managed to po the -- Poles!

An administration entirely filled with the unfit, incompetent, unskilled, non-experienced and incapable from top to bottom.  And they are crooks and criminals and thugs, cruel, mean and nasty.  Nobody's hears a word of any act of civil engagement performed by a single one of them.

It's not the same with those who oppose them.

In previous eras anyone who even dreamed of being appointed to a judgeship had to be proven a person of probity, gravitas and much more highly competent and skilled with the law than the average judge and attorney.  It wouldn't have occurred to anyone to nominate someone proven to lie under oath and who has bragged about being so drunk in public -- much less anyone even suspected of having committed sexual assault.

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In the past two days, Ipsos and Quinnipiac (both good firms) have come out with polls showing O'Rourke +2 and Cruz +9.  Most likely the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but that Ipsos result is the first time Cruz has actually been behind in a credible poll. 

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/trump-mental-health-bandy-lee-psychiatrist.html

Violence is feared for themselves by those around him.  Everything else is getting worse too.  Interview with the woman who convened the psychiatric conference concerning mental health professionals speaking publicly about the mental health of political power figures.

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. . . we know that it’s not just an isolated sign [orange nazi's lying]. And we can look at the patterns and figure out whether it’s strategy or whether it’s symptoms. We by now have a lot of high-quality data, in terms of his reactions to situations in real-time, over considerable periods of time. So through the patterns, and also through the collection of symptoms, if you will, we can easily figure out that a large part of this is not strategy, and we would have been able to tell you so a year and a half before most people realized.

Interviewer: What sorts of things are you talking about, besides lying?

The increasing frequency in lying, the increasingly belligerent tweets, his inability to vary his responses to situations. For example, he cannot let a criticism go. He has to fabricate reality to situations that are distressing to him. And the thing about pathology, as opposed to normal reaction, is pathology actually becomes more rigid and more predictable. A healthy individual might be able to vary their response, especially if it’s strategy. They can choose to act differently if something is not working. Whereas pathology tends to become more and more rigid as it worsens. And what we’re seeing is simple repetition now, and worsening, greater frequency of his poor coping mechanisms....

 

 

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Just now, Maithanet said:

In the past two days, Ipsos and Quinnipiac (both good firms) have come out with polls showing O'Rourke +2 and Cruz +9.  Most likely the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but that Ipsos result is the first time Cruz has actually been behind in a credible poll.  

I'll only start to believe it, when Cruz is really out.  We are still talking about Texas.

 

35 minutes ago, Zorral said:

In previous eras anyone who even dreamed of being appointed to a judgeship had to be proven a person of probity, gravitas and much more highly competent and skilled with the law than the average judge and attorney.  It wouldn't have occurred to anyone to nominate someone proven to lie under oath and who has bragged about being so drunk in public -- much less anyone even suspected of having committed sexual assault.

In all seriousness, I doubt that is true. It wasn't true for Clarence Thomas, and it most likely wasn't true in previous eras (depending on how you define eras), It's just worth remembering, that women did not have a right to vote for that many "eras". So, do you think it would've been a huge issue of a supreme court nominee in the 19th century? I am pretty sure even first half 20th century, you'd see that Mad Men old boys club at work, too. Just more blatanly.

You can reasonably make a case of the sad fact, that the old boys club is still alive and kicking these days.

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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

@Altherion

It's a common complaint, but one that I believe is misguided. I don't know much about NYC specifically but I can say with confidence that people seriously underestimate the cost of quality public services.

But again, I think this is a consequence of neo-liberalism, not a cause. It is neo-liberalism that has thrown mistrust on public services and taxation by claiming that taxes are "too high" and that people "don't get enough" in return for them. Philosophically speaking it is claiming that "economic freedom" is more important than socialized services and that taxation is illegitimate ("theft").
The strategy here has been well described: attack public services, cut the budgets (supposedly to cut taxes), lower quality, claim the quality no longer warrants the levels of taxation, cut the budgets again... repeat.

And this is a wonderful example of you regurgitating neo-liberal propaganda despite claiming to hate it. You mistake consequences for causes because of your lack of historical perspective: you have completely internalized the assault on the legitimacy and cost-efficiency of public services without seriously stopping to think about where it comes from. At this point you have become an efficient foot soldier for neo-liberalism, all the more so because you pretend to oppose it.

As @OldGimletEye said, I am not sure you truly understand what neo-liberalism is. The twin pillars of neo-liberalism are less regulation and less taxation (or at least less progressive taxation), resulting in unbridled free market capitalism and increased inequality (/inequalities).

Many people on the right confuse neo-liberalism with globalism/internationalism. Nationalists who oppose open borders and the rise of a globalized economy see these as consequences of neo-liberalism.
However, while it is true that neo-liberalism has been a driving force behind globalism in the past decades, it is a mistake to believe that it is dependent on it. On the contrary, neo-liberalism merges very well with all forms of nationalism.

A prime example of that is the way Salvini in Italy pushed for a "flat tax" as low as 15%. The idea of a flat tax comes directly from neo-liberalism and the philosophical attacks on social solidarity and the very concept of a society/public interest. And yet it was proposed by the supposed Italian "anti-globalists/xenophobes."
Of course, Trump is the other great example of that: his ethno-nationalism blends well with a strong belief in free market capitalism and lower taxation.

The point here is, neo-liberalism is primarily an economic ideology. Bourdieu was very clear about that in his criticism. We all know of the "neo-liberal school" in economics. And wikipedia defines it as such:

Starting from there, the only way in which Clinton was "neo-liberal" was her support of free trade. In pretty much any other way she was an opponent of neo-liberalism. She campaigned against austerity and deregulation among other things.
Trump, of course, is the very reverse. That much should be more than obvious by now.

Again, neo-liberalist pilosophy at its finest (or worst).

By that reasoning, no disadvantaged groups can ever fight to redress inequality or unfairness because the advantaged groups will fight back to defend their interests.
What you call "fighting fire with fire" is what used to be called being reactionary.

And of course, in your case, you deny the hardships of minorities to begin with. You oppose social progress by saying that there is no need for it. It helps atomize society into individuals who have to compete with each other.

It's fascinating that you can be such a neo-liberal while actively pretending to hate it. Such cognitive dissonance...

As I said, I'm an optimist - in some ways at least.

I said "in the long-run."

Trump is the embodiment of ethno-nationalist neo-liberalism, with a large spoonful of authoritarianism in the mix*.  Which, from an economic standpoint, is just more of the same.
OTOH Ocasio-Cortez represents universalist-nationalism and democratic-socialism. Demographics alone makes her victory inevitable sometime around 2050. Maybe even 2030 if the nazi fearmongers are to be believed. ^^

*And let's not forget that neo-liberalism really started to draw attention when it was implemented in Chile under Pinochet. Authoritarianism works very well for neo-liberalism.

 

Claiming corruption in government services is a central tactic of a local conservative talk-show host here in the Seattle area. And yes, his goal is to cut government services. (Even while complaining about the homelessness crisis)

The ambiguousness of the term neo-liberal let's conservatives attempt to skate away from blame for the austerity hellhole we live in. It was a decades long conservative effort to destroy American workers. They succeeded.

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Trump: ‘Very Hard for Me to Imagine Anything Happened’ Between Kavanaugh and Ford

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-very-hard-for-me-to-imagine-anything-happened-between-kavanaugh-and-ford?ref=home

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President Trump criticized Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault against Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh once again on Wednesday, telling reporters outside the White House that it’s “very hard for me to imagine anything happened” between the pair. If Ford does make a “credible” showing in front of the Senate, he said, according to CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller, “that’ll be very interesting.” But he also expressed his doubt and frustration toward the senators debating Kavanaugh’s nomination: “Really, they’re hurting somebody’s life,” he said, according to the New York Times. “I think it’s a very unfair thing what’s going on.”

 

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