US Politics: Out in the Cold

[OldGimletEye]

28 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

snip

Man, the level of sophistication and insight in this post just blows me away.

Makes me rethink my whole approach.

NOT.

At this juncture, I'm proud to say, I'm a one party voter. All I really need to know at this point is whether a candidate has D or R in front of their name. Think that lacks insight? Try me.

[OldGimletEye]

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

 So, "we" have shunned the "capable" of Howard Schultz, who has never held political office.  

Yeah  the reason I've shunned Schultz is because while he maybe an utter genius at selling cups of coffee at 20 bucks a pop, I really don't think he knows what he is talking about.

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

 Your wannabe cutting edge political criticism is a crock of shit.

That sums it up.

[The Anti-Targ]

13 minutes ago, DMC said:

I'll leave the rest of this "I so want to sound cooler and smarter than everybody" post to who you addressed, but the juxtaposition of this segment is just the best.  So, "we" have shunned the "capable" of Howard Schultz, who has never held political office.  Meanwhile, Harris' experience is to be sarcastically undermined - the woman with 7 years experience as DA of SF, 8 years as AG of the biggest state in the country, and the last two years as US Senator for that state.  Your wannabe cutting edge political criticism is a crock of shit.

Obviously capability in one area always translates into other totally unrelated areas. If I'm a competent accountant, surely that means I'd make a good plumber.

[Kalbear]

Article about schultz's plan here. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/2019/01/31/howard-schultzs-own-advisers-just-unmasked-his-cynical-game-trump-will-cheer/?utm_term=.532f60fd0c07&__twitter_impression=true

[Varysblackfyre321]

22 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

You know what I've never once heard in all this time, though?  Example one.   Evidence of some sort.   Racism related.   

He's retweeted white nationalists and their propaganda multiple times. I don't think non-racists would do that sort of thing. He  gave a white-nationalist radio host press credentials during his campaign.  And,no they can't be said to not know the guy was a white nationalist given Don Jr went on the guy's radios show  representing the campaign a couple weeks prior.

[williamjm]

21 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Good grief.

God wanted Trump to be president, says Sarah Sanders.

Not my God...

If any god was responsible for Trump's election, I'd think Loki would be the most likely candidate.

[Gertrude]

1 hour ago, The Mother of The Others said:

You know what I've never once heard in all this time, though?  Example one.   Evidence of some sort.   Racism related. 

You're being willfully blind, then.

Quote

Also, on the pages of this topic I looked at, only vote-getting tactics were being discussed.  No focus on having elected officials of substance who might accomplish something worthwhile for the nation after being elected, or getting elected based on some substantive reason to begin with. 

Do you have any actual beliefs on what policies would be worthwhile? Or is flipping the parties in control every few years enough for you?

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, The Mother of The Others said:

 

Anyway, i hope this helps and that i've pointed out some 'opportunities' to work on.  Also, on the pages of this topic I looked at, only vote-getting tactics were being discussed.  No focus on having elected officials of substance who might accomplish something worthwhile for the nation after being elected, or getting elected based on some substantive reason to begin with.  That's fitting with how pelosi seems made of anti-matter, adding nothing because she/they have nothing to add, only serving as an albatross of dead weight, not just for Trump but the nation overall.  To the objective observer, that's not a reason to cheer. It's a reason NOT to vote for more of that.   It's only grrreat if you still believe they're "fighting for you."   Over time people are seeing through to how they're just fighting.

 

O my goodness you sure are smart, so smart, so very smart.  Thank you so much for filling in all of us not smart and informed jist folk yukyukyuk what's what!

[DMC]

1 hour ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Also, on the pages of this topic I looked at, only vote-getting tactics were being discussed.  No focus on having elected officials of substance who might accomplish something worthwhile for the nation after being elected, or getting elected based on some substantive reason to begin with.

Will respond to this because it appears to be addressed generally, and because it is the most horseshit-centristy canard ever.  I'm not going to apologize for focusing on the politics in a thread titled US politics.  You want to have a policy debate, feel free to initiate a policy debate.  I tend to focus on politics because that's what I'm an expert in.  But let's look at that "capable" Howard Schultz on policy details - when asked if he would advocate raising the corporate rates cut in the 2017 GOP bill, Schultz said:

Quote

“I don’t want to talk in the hypothetical about what I would do if I was president,”

Yeah, who doesn't wanna talk about policy?  You don't want to talk about hypothetically being president during your opening interview running for president?  How very, very capable.

[HoodedCrow]

Sigh. The left need to join forces. Use Pelosi power.

[DanteGabriel]

23 minutes ago, williamjm said:

If any god was responsible for Trump's election, I'd think Loki would be the most likely candidate.

 

[Fez]

Reminder of the 2020 stakes; there's a non-zero chance Trump is literally going to kill us all:

 

[Zorral]

Third Party Candidates -- history:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/opinion/columnists/howard-schultz-third-party-candidates.html
.

Quote

 

. . . Formed in early 1892 in an effort to make the farmer’s cooperative movement a national political crusade, the Populist Party hoped to, in the words of one leader, “march to the ballot box and take possession of the government, restore it to the principles of our fathers, and run it in the interest of the people.” That summer, delegates at a nominating convention in Omaha chose James Weaver, a former Union Army general, for president and a Confederate veteran, James Field, for vice president, a bisectional ticket meant to unify farmers in the North and South.

Weaver’s campaign pamphlet, “A Call to Arms,” provides a taste of the candidate’s rhetoric in the presidential campaign. “Capitalists have entrenched themselves within the governments of the world and wield the machinery of state as the policeman does the baton and the revolver — to inspire fear, control the refractory and suppress revolt,” Weaver wrote. He called on the nation’s farmers and laborers to “make the year 1892 memorable for all time to come as the period when the great battle for industrial emancipation was fought and won in the United States.” This was the language of division and conflict, of class warfare and unambiguous opposition to a well-defined political enemy. And it helped the Populist Party win 8.5 percent of ballots cast, four Western states and 22 electoral votes overall — an unusually strong showing for a third party in American presidential politics.....

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

22 electoral college votes! That's impressive. That could easily be enough votes to be the king maker and your 22 votes is what will determine who will be president.

My impression is that in living memory no 3rd party has got more than a handful of ECVs from those few states that allocate ECVs proportionally rather than winner takes all. But most of the time they get nada.

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

22 electoral college votes! That's impressive. That could easily be enough votes to be the king maker and your 22 votes is what will determine who will be president.

My impression is that in living memory no 3rd party has got more than a handful of ECVs from those few states that allocate ECVs proportionally rather than winner takes all. But most of the time they get nada.

The last one to get any EVs was Wallace in 1968. The last one to place anything other than 3rd or worse was...Theodore Roosevelt. 

[Lollygag]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Surely, the only logic to being an independent POTUS candidate it to act as a spoiler to prevent either the Democrat or the Republican from winning. Schultz must realise he has no chance of winning, so what is his purpose for running as an independant. It must be to bleed votes away from someone so that the other one will win. Technically, if he's a centrist he can campaign so as to appeal to the moderates of either side, it just depends on the emphasis of his campaign. If he goes all business friendly and low taxes, then he bleeds off moderate republicans. If he goes all universal health care and reducing student loan debt then he bleeds off Democrats.

Then again, billionaires are often narcissists with some sociopathic tendencies, so a lot of them might actually believe they could be the one who wins as an independent. But even Trump came to the realisation that he couldn't win without a party affiliation.  

The R's went hard right (genocide-lite!) and now the D's look to hopefully go hard left. People in the middle do exist and now they've no place to go. What could be expected? The extremes are allowed their extremist candidates (they really are), but moderates/centrists/independents are supposed to sit in the corner and shut up? Neither wants moderates/centrists/independents/swing voters, whatever. Base only. Message is crystal clear. 

Add to that, the number of people id-ing as independent/non-affiliated has been growing for some time. 40%ish now, I believe. There's an increasing number of fiscal conservatives/social liberals and they've been increasingly uncomfortable in their respective lesser evil for a long time as the Rs have moved socially whatever's to the right of conservative, fiscally astronomically hypocritical, and now the Ds are going hard left and toting things like the deficit is a-ok and it's totally ok even if it hits the Moon. Criticizing them or not liking them really, really hard won't make them go away and stop being inconvenient.

If the Ds keep going left, he won't be the only independent unless they organize. And they might. The more crazy the Rs look, the farther left the Ds go only makes it more certain. A socially liberal person won't go Trump and a fiscally conservative person won't go far left, at least in this current environment. So...what? As for throwing the vote, to a centrist, the hard left move of the Ds looks just as dangerous to getting Trump elected. The throwing the vote accusation goes both ways. We'll see who's right in time. 

As for Schultz, it's the Trump model all over again. Identify a disenfranchised part of the electorate which is large enough in size, tell them what they want to hear, have the resources to make it happen, and then move in with your own agenda. D's are leaving the door wide open for any opportunist to come in and preach fiscal conservatism and social liberalism and they're opening it wider all of the time. After Trump got elected, how could they resist? 

If the D's think they can get more votes by moving left and picking up people who typically don't vote at the cost of alienating the middle, that's a choice. A risky one. But it still has consequences like Schultz coming in as an independent when the movement has been growing quietly for some time, and more loudly since Trump. The Rs hard right move combined with a simultaneous hard left move may have just lit a fire under a third party/independent movement - if D's keep this hard left preference. 

And after saying Trump can't get elected almost daily during the last election and getting it shoved down our throats as to just how very wrong we were every time we said that, I'm not saying Schultz can or can't get elected. But stuff has changed. A lot. 

 

[DMC]

46 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

22 electoral college votes! That's impressive. That could easily be enough votes to be the king maker and your 22 votes is what will determine who will be president.

There have been 4 third party candidates that have received electoral votes in the 38 elections since the Civil War - other than Teddy.  They were all regional candidates, at best.  In 1892 Weaver got 22 votes in the still-developing West.  In 1924 Robert La Follette won his home state of Wisconsin for 13 votes and nothing else.  In 1948 Strom Thurmond won 39 votes and in 1968 George Wallace won 46 votes, all from the South. 

Howard Schultz does not have a region.  He barely has an identifiable constituency beyond rich white men that like to know other rich white men will make sure their bank accounts won't be affected by that rabble going in DC.

[Rippounet]

13 minutes ago, Fez said:

Reminder of the 2020 stakes; there's a non-zero chance Trump is literally going to kill us all:

This is a tricky issue. I'll try to give my two cents on this, though my knowledge of nuclear weapons is slightly outdated tbh.

Even back in the 1980s it wasn't that easy to define what an "Intermediate nuclear weapon" was. Many short-range systems could have their range extended, and the cruise missile was always an issue in itself, because of how easily it can be moved around and hidden, not to mention the fact that it doesn't have to be ground-based.
In a nutshell, the treaty was always in jeopardy. From the start everyone knew that technological progress would eventually make it moot, unless everyone pretended that a number of "short-range" systems magically failed as soon as they reached 499km, or unless everyone stopped developing new weapons period. And the US always had sea- and air-born systems that were not covered by the treaty.
But it was symbolic. The US and the Soviet Union agreed not just to limit, but to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. On both sides this was an amazing gesture of good will, one that effectively ended the Cold War.
Today everyone knows that the INF Treaty has been violated in spirit at least by technological progress alone, because there aren't that many modern systems that could be described as being "short-range" only. Russia may have recently crossed a line, but I'm not enough of an expert to ascertain how important that is. As a European, I'm keenly aware that they have long-range missiles anyway.
It's a sad day for humanity because back in the 1980s Reagan and Gorbachev shared, albeit for a brief period of time, the vision of a world rid of nuclear weapons altogether, and the INF Treaty was the main fruit of that vision. But what killed this vision wasn't Trump, because the technological arms race was ongoing long before he became president. As usual, the buffoon is just using an issue he probably knows nothing about to speak loudly and look tough. What this really means is anyone's guess, but I highly doubt that he's seriously trying to antagonize Russia. Quite the contrary in fact, for refusing to inspect the new Russian missiles while possibly admitting that the US has also developed new weaponry may be said to play right into Putin's hands.
All this to say that with my fragmentary knowledge of this issue, I'd be cautious about drawing conclusions about this one way or the other.

Two articles I found that together provide some interesting food for thought:
https://breakingdefense.com/2018/10/what-weapons-will-the-us-build-after-the-inf/
https://www.cfr.org/article/ailing-inf-treaty-what-know

[Kalbear]

8 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

The R's went hard right (genocide-lite!) and now the D's look to hopefully go hard left. People in the middle do exist and now they've no place to go. What could be expected? The extremes are allowed their extremist candidates (they really are), but moderates/centrists/independents are supposed to sit in the corner and shut up? Neither wants moderates/centrists/independents/swing voters, whatever. Base only. Message is crystal clear. 

I keep seeing this as an argument being made, but as far as I can tell it is entirely bullshit. The most 'hard' left choice so far has been various flavors of medicare for all, which has been a Dem platform idea in some form since 1992. Taxing the rich has been a Democrat platform choice since the 1930s or earlier. What exactly is the platform that you feel is so incredibly 'hard left'? And who is being left in the cold by this?

8 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

 

Add to that, the number of people id-ing as independent/non-affiliated has been growing for some time. 40%ish now, I believe.

You're correct, but the number is not what you think it is. Most of the people who identify as independent vote along a party line, and 'true' independents are about 10%. 

8 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

There's an increasing number of fiscal conservatives/social liberals and they've been increasingly uncomfortable in their respective lesser evil for a long time as the Rs have moved socially whatever's to the right of conservative, fiscally astronomically hypocritical, and now the Ds are going hard left and toting things like the deficit is a-ok and it's totally ok even if it hits the Moon. Criticizing them or not liking them really, really hard won't make them go away and stop being inconvenient. 

It will continue to make them irrelevant, as there just aren't that many of them. Even if their numbers are increasing, they still represent a pretty small minority, especially a minority whose first goal is not anything like deficit spending or social liberty. 

8 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

As for Schultz, it's the Trump model all over again. Identify a disenfranchised part of the electorate which is large enough in size, tell them what they want to hear, have the resources to make it happen, and then move in with your own agenda. D's are leaving the door wide open for any opportunist to come in and preach fiscal conservatism and social liberalism and they're opening it wider all of the time. After Trump got elected, how could they resist? 

This is pure projection. He hasn't preached fiscal conservatism; he's preached no new taxes on the rich. He's mentioned he's against the deficit, but when pressed said he is not willing to commit to any plans. And on the social liberal side, he has absolutely ZERO comments on this. Not one! 

He's running as a cipher. 

8 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

And after saying Trump can't get elected almost daily during the last election and getting it shoved down our throats as to just how very wrong we were every time we said that, I'm not saying Schultz can or can't get elected. But stuff has changed. A lot. 

  

Here's the problem. Let's assume that there are, bizarrely, a perfect number of independents of 40% or so that will literally change their vote most of the time. And let's say that all of them - again, totally bizarrely - prefer fiscal conservatism and social liberal policies like this mythical version of Schultz happens to promote. (he doesn't, but again, we'll assume this). The problem is that even WITH that, he still loses.

Because states aren't 30/30/40. They are very different, and for the most part those differences heavily favor the parties. 

Take, for example, California. Right now, California is arguably heavily blue. Even if you take 20% out of each side, you end up with something like a 50/40/10 split. Independents aren't going to win that. That goes for most of the heavy blue states. 

Same is true for the red states. You might get Texas - but that's it. If you simply take every state that is not heavy blue, or heavy red, you are left with 212 Dem, 199 independent, and 127 red. 

Remember, this is the BEST outcome you've got - that somehow you come in second, and you get the House to choose who wins. 

[DanteGabriel]

29 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

The R's went hard right (genocide-lite!) and now the D's look to hopefully go hard left. People in the middle do exist and now they've no place to go. What could be expected? The extremes are allowed their extremist candidates (they really are), but moderates/centrists/independents are supposed to sit in the corner and shut up? Neither wants moderates/centrists/independents/swing voters, whatever. Base only. Message is crystal clear. 

 

It's awesome that the Democrats' desire to reinstate higher taxes on the wealthy, which still come nowhere near Eisenhower tax levels, and expand public health care and education are somehow "hard left" and comparable to the "genocide lite" agenda of the Republican Party.