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US Politics: Four Days and Counting


Fragile Bird

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22 minutes ago, DMC said:

All I get from this is you're jealous our democracy is older  :P

But thankfully old enough that no one alive can remember that at one point they were not allowed to vote because of race or sex.

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4 minutes ago, DMC said:

Well that doesn't help!

 

Lol, sorry, someone in another forum screencapoed, so I’d have to actually dig, and I’m way too hopeddoomhopedoom to concentrate. To be fair, it was presented as positive, in that ‘don’t agree’ was the biggest individual block (48%) but the other 2 combined for the majority.

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42 minutes ago, DMC said:

Ok, to explain what institutional constraint means:  no matter the president, she is likely to be confronted with more court challenges - and more EOs struck down - under divided government than under unified government.  What Trump does with that, I don't know.  Because again you're right, he is an outlier.  So, yeah, he may confront the judiciary as an endgame.  But that not related to the constancy of the institutional constraint.  I hope that made sense, but I felt like it didn't. 

I understand the concept just fine, and yes your explanation was clear. I'm just arguing that Trump has brought us into The Upside Down, politically speaking, and that it would be wise to view things from that perspective. I get that his EOs are more likely to be struck down under divided government. What I'm saying is that they might get more extreme and that he may be more likely to ignore the courts in the wake of losing the House since he knows he will not get removed by the Senate. And on that last note, there's been a lot of theorizing that all he cared about was keeping the Senate because it doesn't really matter if he gets impeached by the House. 

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Anyway, thus far he's shown no inclination to directly attack the courts, even though he had ample opportunity to with the travel ban.  Instead, he allowed the conservative justices to basically spell out how such an order would be palatable to them, and proceeded accordingly.  If you're not going to defy the courts when you're a president under unified government, it'd be very stupid to then try it under divided government.  At least with UG, you have the threat of congress.  Constitutionally, congress could make the entire federal judiciary one judge.  Granted, it'd be really hard to tie that to reconciliation, but these days who knows.

Well he has attacked the courts extensively. What he hasn't done is completely ignore them. And he's been packing them all the while. So yes I agree he's been letting the conservative courts guide him to the policies that can stand, but what if he gets fed up and says screw it. It's not unthinkable. 

Perhaps it would be stupid to prefer to do it under divided government rather than with a unified one, but when has stupid stopped Trump? Hell, sometimes he seems like he likes doing it just to spite conventional norms. My thought process is, assuming my concerns are correct, that he'll use the gridlocked divided government to justify his extreme EOs, and if and when they get knocked down, he'll ignore the courts and claim that he has no choice. Other politicians would never do this, but Trump is not like other politicians. He's an authoritarian who wants to have his cake and eat it too and it doesn't matter what he has to break to get there. Trump's political philosophy, or what little there is, is a zero sum game and damn near any means justify the ends he seeks. This is why I suggested earlier that he may at some point go full Jackson, and then where will that leave us? I hope we don't have to find out.

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25 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

52% of Americans either agree with Trump’s stance/actions on immigration, or feel he’s not being strong enough.

Actually the numbers are 48 too tough, 32 just right and 16 not tough enough. This is from 538 recapping the results of exit polls (around the 6:30 mark)

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Guthrie didn’t much like the place—he took to calling it “Bitch Havens” in his correspondence—and, in 1954, he wrote a delightfully scornful song about Trump’s discriminatory rental policies. Several handwritten drafts of the lyrics—sometimes titled “Beach Haven Race Hate,” “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home,” and “Old Man Trump”—are presently on display at the Woody Guthrie Center, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Will Kaufman, a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire, in Britain, was the first researcher to discover the lyrics in Guthrie’s considerable archive. (Guthrie never recorded or published the song.) Earlier this week, I went to see them in person. The first verse is explicit in its indictments:

I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
He stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line

 

A Story About Fred Trump and Woody Guthrie for the Midterm Elections

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-story-about-fred-trump-and-woody-guthrie-for-the-midterm-elections

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21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

What I'm saying is that they might get more extreme and that he may be more likely to ignore the courts in the wake of losing the House since he knows he will not get removed by the Senate. And on that last note, there's been a lot of theorizing that all he cared about was keeping the Senate because it doesn't really matter if he gets impeached by the House. 

I agree that Trump is unpredictable, especially if he gets desperate.  What I don't get is the end of this graph.  Why should Trump worry about the Senate?  They need 2/3s to convict.  That's not happening unless something drastically changes.  That's possible, particularly if the economy tanks, but it's not really expected at this juncture.

21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Well he has attacked the courts extensively. What he hasn't done is completely ignore them. And he's been packing them all the while. So yes I agree he's been letting the conservative courts guide him to the policies that can stand, but what if he gets fed up and says screw it. It's not unthinkable.

Certainly, it's not unthinkable.  My point was he was in a better position to confront the courts with unified government than he would be with divided government.  And he hasn't attacked the courts extensively.  Maybe rhetorically, but not substantively.

21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Perhaps it would be stupid to prefer to do it under divided government rather than with a unified one, but when has stupid stopped Trump?

Yep.  I'm not denying the possibility Trump battles the courts.  I just hope it was clear that the only relation that has to do with the institutional constraint is that it would force him to do so.  Anyway, if he tries to confront the courts, I don't think he'd win.

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9 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Actually the numbers are 48 too tough, 32 just right and 16 not tough enough. This is from 538 recapping the results of exit polls (around the 6:30 mark)

So that's basically a 48-48 split.  Interesting.

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Whoa, CNN has called the VA senate race for Kaine the moment the polls closed. The race was never in doubt, but the exit polls must've been absolutely brutal to Stewart for them to not wait for any votes to come in.

Really hoping Stewart was enough of an anchor on House Republicans in VA that we get the more unlikely flips in the state too.

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It's funny about VA. They called it for Kaine immediately, but early voting tally, with less than 1000 votes counted have Stewart at 74%. I imagine that is one extremely heavily R area reporting in. But still a funny look if you don't pay close attention to the numbers.

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5 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Small signs that the Indiana Senate race is going bad...

Hard to know yet, truly. Donnelly isn't hitting his rural benchmarks compared to his 2012 win, which is definitely bad. But there's no urban or suburban votes in yet, so no way to know if he's beating his benchmarks in those counties.

Its bad that Democrats remain so weak in rural areas, but Donnelly is doing better than Clinton did in 2016, just not as good as he did in 2012. Which suggests at least some of the Trump rural voters are still open to other Democrats and is definitely a good sign for other, less red states. Unfortunately, unlike the House, Democrats need to be winning these dark states too this year.

Hopefully turnout is crazy high in Marion and Gary.

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Do not what sign this point in the Govenor election but this is enjoyable:

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Georgia Secretary of State and Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp received a voter card that said “invalid” when he tried to vote on Election Day.

Kemp, who went to his home polling place in Winterville, Ga., on Tuesday afternoon, had to go back and get another card after unsuccessfully trying to vote, according to Atlanta's ABC affiliate, Channel 2 Action News.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/415346-kemps-voter-card-said-invalid-when-he-tried-to-vote

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