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U.S. Politics: 22 Trillion Problems But An Unsecured Border Ain’t One


Mr. Chatywin et al.

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6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That kiddo is the kind of liberal that wants liberals to lose so they can complain about liberals not being liberal enough. This is why there’s the adult’s table and a kid’s table. Go fetch him a sippy cup and move on.  

Tulsi Gabbard did actually get endorsed by David Duke. She decried it heavily of course, but it was pretty funny. 

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4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Because with the courts itll be in the news for a long while after this. Whereas if he just drops it now? People will move on in a month or two.

Courts generally move so slowly that I suspect the media will lose interest as well. Plus, even if Trump eventually wins on the declaration, there will be a further round of court cases from Texas landowners trying to prevent eminent domain from happening. The state of California will probably file its own lawsuits as well. By the time this all wraps up, even if Trump wins everything, there will probably be a new President in office, who could just cancel the project anyway.

The whole thing is just so fucking stupid.

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13 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Tulsi Gabbard did actually get endorsed by David Duke. She decried it heavily of course, but it was pretty funny. 

Gabbard in 2017 was a rising star. Gabbard in 2019 is an embarrassment. Hence why I’ve advocated that young/new politicians should be careful.

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I'll admit I didn't think Trump would go the emergency declaration route, I thought he would sign the compromise bill for $1.4 billion in fencing, use executive actions (themselves questionably legal) to reallocate another billion or two and then say "We're building the wall.  We gotta finish the wall.  Trump 2020!"  It's not a big win for him, but it's not really a big loss either - there is additional barrier spending, and he's still fighting to increase it.  It is far from the kind of "No New Taxes" moment that plagued GHWB. 

But, by all the "inside Washington" accounts, Trump was really worried that even that middling result would be too damaging with his base.  Which makes me wonder, am I misreading Trump's strength with his base?  Is it possible that merely fighting for the wall isn't enough, and Trump would be genuinely damaged by people like Hannity and Coulter complaining that Trump caved? 

Trump relies on his base for his political survival and any hope of reelection.  But there has never been any sign that Trump's "base" is getting tired of Trump's compromises.  Instead, there are several times (like after Charlottesville) where taking a more mainstream Republican approach to things would have clearly served Trump better than what he actually did. 

I guess I'm just curious what people think here.  Do you think if Trump went from doing what the base wants 99% of the time (like he has thus far) to only say, 90% of the time, would he really suffer from a drop in enthusiasm from his base?  Trump clearly thinks that he would, but I'm not sure why he thinks that. 

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29 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That kiddo is the kind of liberal that wants liberals to lose so they can complain about liberals not being liberal enough. This is why there’s the adult’s table and a kid’s table. Go fetch him a sippy cup and move on.  

I recently met one of these myself in my new extremely liberal institute of higher learning. A fantastic young woman took our first and introductory project of Speech class as an opportunity to explain how awful her previous all-women's college was because of the "fake liberals all wearing pussy hats who voted for Clinton" before stating (direct quote) "I don't consider myself a citizen of this country, even though I was born here". 

It was great. I rolled my eyes so hard I thought I might have detached the optical nerve. 

Bonnot OG doesn't seem quite so severe to me. A bit of a strong ideologue, sure. But comically naive and destructive as you imply doesn't quite fit from my perspective. 

Just my input of course. 

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35 minutes ago, Fez said:

Courts generally move so slowly that I suspect the media will lose interest as well. Plus, even if Trump eventually wins on the declaration, there will be a further round of court cases from Texas landowners trying to prevent eminent domain from happening. The state of California will probably file its own lawsuits as well. By the time this all wraps up, even if Trump wins everything, there will probably be a new President in office, who could just cancel the project anyway.

The whole thing is just so fucking stupid.

It's stupid if you view it in traditional political terms: accept a compromise to be able to claim a victory, ie progress on the wall. It's not so stupid if you view it in Trumpian terms, where the important thing is not whether there is actual progress on the wall, but a public test of strength over the wall.

24 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I guess I'm just curious what people think here.  Do you think if Trump went from doing what the base wants 99% of the time (like he has thus far) to only say, 90% of the time, would he really suffer from a drop in enthusiasm from his base?  Trump clearly thinks that he would, but I'm not sure why he thinks that. 

Because he's scared shitless of losing his base. Appealing to the base is the only thing he knows how to do and the only thing he's ever done that worked. If they desert him, he has nothing left in the tank. The reason Trump never pivoted to the centre, as people kept predicting, is that he has no idea how to do that. He's a one-trick pony, politically speaking. 

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36 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Gabbard in 2017 was a rising star. Gabbard in 2019 is an embarrassment. Hence why I’ve advocated that young/new politicians should be careful.

A rising star only with the uniquely stupid and uninformed who thought that anything Bernie Sanders touched was golden and sanctified.

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24 minutes ago, WinterFox said:

I recently met one of these myself in my new extremely liberal institute of higher learning. A fantastic young woman took our first and introductory project of Speech class as an opportunity to explain how awful her previous all-women's college was because of the "fake liberals all wearing pussy hats who voted for Clinton" before stating (direct quote) "I don't consider myself a citizen of this country, even though I was born here". 

It was great. I rolled my eyes so hard I thought I might have detached the optical nerve. 

Bonnot OG doesn't seem quite so severe to me. A bit of a strong ideologue, sure. But comically naive and destructive as you imply doesn't quite fit from my perspective. 

Just my input of course. 

You haven’t been paying attention then. He just compared a liberal black woman from San Fran to David Duke, and that doesn’t even break into his Top 10 Bats**t Crazy comments.

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39 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

It is far from the kind of "No New Taxes" moment that plagued GHWB. 

Er, the heart of his rallies were when the crowd shouted that Mexico was paying for the wall. By comparison, H.W.’s “no new taxes” comment was nothing.

Quote

But, by all the "inside Washington" accounts, Trump was really worried that even that middling result would be too damaging with his base. 

His base is the right wing media, and yes, he is terrified of them.  

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40 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'll admit I didn't think Trump would go the emergency declaration route, I thought he would sign the compromise bill for $1.4 billion in fencing, use executive actions (themselves questionably legal) to reallocate another billion or two and then say "We're building the wall.  We gotta finish the wall.  Trump 2020!"  It's not a big win for him, but it's not really a big loss either - there is additional barrier spending, and he's still fighting to increase it.  It is far from the kind of "No New Taxes" moment that plagued GHWB. 

But, by all the "inside Washington" accounts, Trump was really worried that even that middling result would be too damaging with his base.  Which makes me wonder, am I misreading Trump's strength with his base?  Is it possible that merely fighting for the wall isn't enough, and Trump would be genuinely damaged by people like Hannity and Coulter complaining that Trump caved? 

Trump relies on his base for his political survival and any hope of reelection.  But there has never been any sign that Trump's "base" is getting tired of Trump's compromises.  Instead, there are several times (like after Charlottesville) where taking a more mainstream Republican approach to things would have clearly served Trump better than what he actually did. 

I guess I'm just curious what people think here.  Do you think if Trump went from doing what the base wants 99% of the time (like he has thus far) to only say, 90% of the time, would he really suffer from a drop in enthusiasm from his base?  Trump clearly thinks that he would, but I'm not sure why he thinks that. 

I think you're reading too much into this.  He's nutty.  He has never compromised his entire life, when he loses, he always just sued someone or declared bankruptcy.  And since the people around him are almost as dumb as dirt, he has no one capable of explaining to him, apparently, that the easiest thing would have been to use EO to reshuffle existing money, instead of creating a fucking constitutional crisis and setting a dictatorial precedent by declaring a national emergency.  But, no, at least 75% of his base will never desert him because he's viewed as the last hope, despite that I believe, his base mostly knows he lies and is pretty unhinged.

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6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You haven’t been paying attention then. He just compared a liberal black woman from San Fran to David Duke, and that doesn’t even break into his Top 10 Bats**t Crazy comments.

Well, the question is, is he going to vote against Trump?  Or does his rhetoric push the party left?  Because if it does either of those things I really have no issue with it.  Personally I do find Harris's approach to crime as problematic, even if it's been better than the status quo (and I think that's questionable, especially banning the online sex worker ads.  

We're really just arguing over where you draw the line, and the primary is the time to debate this stuff.  

I mean, I'm voting for the Dem nominee regardless, but that doesn't mean we can't critique them as not being left enough.  And didn't he say he'd vote for anyone but Gabbard?  You're cherry picking the most sensational part (Duke/Harris), and he didn't even say Duke = Harris.  Probably a stretch but the rest of that post isn't so unreasonable.

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12 minutes ago, mormont said:

It's stupid if you view it in traditional political terms: accept a compromise to be able to claim a victory, ie progress on the wall. It's not so stupid if you view it in Trumpian terms, where the important thing is not whether there is actual progress on the wall, but a public test of strength over the wall.

Because he's scared shitless of losing his base. Appealing to the base is the only thing he knows how to do and the only thing he's ever done that worked. If they desert him, he has nothing left in the tank. The reason Trump never pivoted to the centre, as people kept predicting, is that he has no idea how to do that. He's a one-trick pony, politically speaking. 

This, and I don't think you can underestimate how motivated by fear Trump is. He's a scared little baby inside. Terrified of losing his buddy Hannity's approval. Terrified that the ten thousand voices shouting "Hail!" (that's a Good Omens quote by the way) at his rallies will vanish. This is why he's so easy to manipulate. He instinctively tries to say what his audience wants to hear.

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27 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

A rising star only with the uniquely stupid and uninformed who thought that anything Bernie Sanders touched was golden and sanctified.

Not really. I was a Clinton supporter and initially thought she was going to be a huge star. It’s not until you pealed back the layers that you could see she was a deeply flawed individual.  

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Ha! 

I just want to take a second to pat myself on the back for being right about my assertion yesterday that McConnell was forced to back Trump's declaration of emergency because Trump was threatening to veto the bill, 2nd shutdown be damned.

Quote

Over the course of three phone conversations on Thursday Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) cajoled an unpredictable President Trump into supporting the bipartisan border funding spending bill by promising he’d make his caucus stand behind a national emergency declaration, The Washington Post reported.

In a freakout that a Republican senior aide described as “off the rails” to the Post, Trump threatened on Thursday afternoon to blow up plans to avoid another government shutdown by not signing the spending deal.

Considering also that the vast majority of the funding for the emergency declaration is being diverted from military appropriations, I think that a joint resolution to rescind the declaration will almost definitely pass. In my mind, the only question now will be how many votes it passes by in each chamber, and whether there will be a realistic opportunity to whip enough votes for an override of Trump's veto.

I'm thinking probably not, but I can't imagine there are a lot of Republicans in either chamber who are happy about Trump painting them into this corner, and I know a lot of Republican Congresspersons representing districts with military bases who won't be too thrilled with this.  An example close to home is Tom Cole, representing Oklahoma's 4th Congressional District, which includes Tinker AFB, and that currently operates and services almost the entirety of the AWACS fleet. It was also recently announced as the base picked to service and maintenance the entire fleets of both the Air Force's next-gen F-21 Raider stealth bomber and its next-gen refueling tanker, the KC-46A Pegasus.  Both of these projects were strongly lobbied for by Sen. Inhofe and Rep. Cole, and have necessitated a spur of construction planning to build new facilities to accommodate the new fleets, along with the approximately 3,500 new jobs estimated to be created. 

This is significant, because it not only affects Washington politicians, but also affects Trump's base, who were counting on new jobs related to military spending.

Trump poured gasoline all over his Republican supporters in Washington and just lit a match.

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5 billion is such a cheap price to ensure that future Democratic Presidents can ram through Green Deals, Medicare-for-all and gun control. I almost hope the courts let him have his emergency. 

By the way, everyone should have their talking points ready for the inevitable right wing pushback of Obama declaring 13 national emergencies. You know they are laying the ground for that argument to be rolled out.

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32 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Well, the question is, is he going to vote against Trump?  Or does his rhetoric push the party left?  Because if it does either of those things I really have no issue with it.  Personally I do find Harris's approach to crime as problematic, even if it's been better than the status quo (and I think that's questionable, especially banning the online sex worker ads.  

We're really just arguing over where you draw the line, and the primary is the time to debate this stuff.  

I mean, I'm voting for the Dem nominee regardless, but that doesn't mean we can't critique them as not being left enough.  And didn't he say he'd vote for anyone but Gabbard?  You're cherry picking the most sensational part (Duke/Harris), and he didn't even say Duke = Harris.  Probably a stretch but the rest of that post isn't so unreasonable.

Sure, he pushes it to the left, but at the cost of losing the majority. Frankly this need to keep pushing left is a mistake. I’d suggest wanting a candidate to be liberal enough, not the furthest to left and loudest one in the room. This is about winning, not purity.

Also, you’ll be hard pressed to find a liberal prosecutor or AG without some skeletons in their closet. Same goes for judges that are elected.

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5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sure, he pushes it to the left, but at the cost of losing the majority. Frankly this need to keep pushing left is a mistake. I’d suggest wanting a candidate to be liberal enough, not the furthest to left and loudest one in the room. This is about winning, not purity.

Also, you’ll be hard pressed to find a liberal prosecutor or AG without some skeletons in their closet. Same goes for judges that are elected.

Well, I tend to think of it as a bonus. It's like with Warren on financial regulation. Harris knows the system better and thus is the perfect person to work at reforming it further. And I've seen nothing that says that she won't make an attempt at it. If I did, that would worry me. 

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1 hour ago, mormont said:

It's stupid if you view it in traditional political terms: accept a compromise to be able to claim a victory, ie progress on the wall. It's not so stupid if you view it in Trumpian terms, where the important thing is not whether there is actual progress on the wall, but a public test of strength over the wall.

Because he's scared shitless of losing his base. Appealing to the base is the only thing he knows how to do and the only thing he's ever done that worked. If they desert him, he has nothing left in the tank. The reason Trump never pivoted to the centre, as people kept predicting, is that he has no idea how to do that. He's a one-trick pony, politically speaking. 

If Trump is right about his base, that's certainly true. But I think it'd take a lot more than no-wall for Trump to lose his base. So long as he keeps his lib'-triggering tough guy persona, I think he can get most of them to support nearly any policy (at least, until it directly and negatively affects them too much). But Trump has no political skills for even testing what his base is or isn't comfortable with, he just makes evidence-less assumptions and acts accordingly.

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14 minutes ago, Fez said:

If Trump is right about his base, that's certainly true. But I think it'd take a lot more than no-wall for Trump to lose his base. So long as he keeps his lib'-triggering tough guy persona, I think he can get most of them to support nearly any policy (at least, until it directly and negatively affects them too much). But Trump has no political skills for even testing what his base is or isn't comfortable with, he just makes evidence-less assumptions and acts accordingly.

That's what I'm getting at.  Trump's base is going to be at intensity 100 in the 2020 elections.  If he "only" uses executive actions to get $3 billion for the wall, what is that intensity going to look like?  99.9?  Hard to believe that's what makes the difference.  In contrast, 70% of independents are opposed to declaring an emergency to build the wall.  Remembering that many independents are actually Republicans who just don't like labels, that is about as unpopular as things get these days.  

Trump won independents by 4 points in 2016, and he's governing like he doesn't need them anymore.  What I don't understand is why he thinks that.  If Trump loses independent voters by 4 or more points, he has essentially no chance at reelection. 

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