US Politics: Reaching the Tipping Point

[DMC]

What Pelosi Learned From the Clinton Impeachment

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Frank echoed that thought. “What Pelosi starts with,” he said, “is, We’re not getting rid of Donald Trump, so what is the effect of a very partisan impeachment? The outcome would be as partisan as it was in the Clinton case, and I think that motivates Nancy … I think Pelosi realizes there are better issues that can dominate” Democrats’ offensive against Trump, such as the economy and health care. She also likely realizes, Frank told me, “that impeachment will be a problem for Democratic candidates—not everywhere, but in districts that are in the middle.”

 

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

What Pelosi Learned From the Clinton Impeachment

 

I'm with Nance on this one.

[Zorral]

19 hours ago, DMC said:

So, this debate lottery seems to be more suspect than the NBA draft lottery.  The lineups:

So you got 4 of the clear top 5 in one debate.  That...does not seem like a fair split.  Anyway, I agree with the link's "winners and losers" - Warren is both a loser cuz she doesn't get to confront Biden and a winner cuz she should get the most attention in her debate; Sanders is a winner cuz he won't have to share the "progressive" angle with Warren; and Beto, Booker, and Klobuchar are winners because their status should be elevated with that weaker lineup.  I think Harris can also potentially be a winner because she has the opportunity to go after Biden aggressively without sharing that role with Warren.

The pathetic Dem party committee runners, who insisted they didn't want a children's table situation, made one.  They cannot do frackin' anything.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/elizabeth-warren-first-democratic-presidential-debate-lineups.html

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More broadly from a viewer’s perspective, though, the way this worked out just seems unnecessarily odd. It’s very Democratic Party, in the sense of a well-meaning idea borne out of fairness concerns turning flat-out weird upon execution. Following vocal complaints against the DNC by supporters of Sanders—including by the candidate himself—that the process had been unfair to the Vermont senator in 2016, the DNC wanted to have each candidate be able to debate on equal footing this time around to avoid the impression that they were “rigging” the contest. But now there’s a situation where a top-tier candidate with the most momentum in the field will be debating John Delaney instead of the candidates who matter. Perhaps they could have done a poll-based seeding, where the No. 1 and No. 4 candidates participated in one debate and the No. 2 and No. 3 were in another, with random draws for the rest. Or something. Another idea: They could have just put all of the top contenders in the same debate.

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Twenty people who've lost their sanity.

[Jace, Extat]

13 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Twenty people who've lost their sanity.

No, they see this as their shot to launch the national brand. Like Bernie did in '16. Probably just Gabbard and Swalwell are actively delusional.

[Varysblackfyre321]

https://www.bing.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/trump-backs-ban-flag-burning-no-brainer.amp

Well perfect time to dredge up this issue with war-hawks looking to go to war with another middle-eastern country. 

So, do you guys think it’ll pass? 

[DMC]

18 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

https://www.bing.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/trump-backs-ban-flag-burning-no-brainer.amp

Well perfect time to dredge up this issue with war-hawks looking to go to war with another middle-eastern country. 

So, do you guys think it’ll pass? 

From 1995 to 2006, the GOP tried to pass a flag burning amendment 6 times - the last time they came within one vote in the Senate of passage (of course then it'd have to ratified).  That's never going to happen again, or at least it's not as long as polarization remains this high.  Democrats will galvanize against it if Trump brings up this stupid issue again, much more so than they did back then when the party was all into triangulation.  Hard to find recent polling on the issue with a quick search, best I could find is a November 2016 (Trump brought it up then as well) HuffPost/You Gov poll that has it at 48 in favor of an amendment and 37 opposing.  You need favor to be around the 60s to make an amendment politically viable, and I don't that happening.

[Martell Spy]

California goes even bigger on Obamacare
The state is advancing a sweeping health care package that could shape Democrats' debate over universal coverage.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/16/california-obamacare-health-care-1530461

Quote

 

California is beefing up Obamacare, restoring an individual mandate, expanding health insurance subsidies well into the middle class and covering some undocumented adults through Medicaid. It’s an incremental step toward universal coverage that can animate the Democrats’ party-defining debate over how best to cover everyone — through a mixed public-private system or through “Medicare for All."

The Democratic-controlled state legislature on Thursday approved a budget, clearing the path for a statewide penalty for failing to purchase health insurance, which will help subsidize coverage for middle-income people earning too much to receive federal financial help from Obamacare. California will also become the first state to extend Medicaid coverage to low-income undocumented adults up to age 26, defying the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink government benefits to immigrants.

 

 

[Ormond]

8 minutes ago, Triskele said:

A  Not going Trumplike with the demonization of immigrants but policy-wise more like "our hearts go out to these people, but the US needs to take care of the people already here" type of message.  

 

That's way too vague for me to answer. I would need to know the specific policies that went along with that soundbite. I can imagine possible small changes I would support, but I can also imagine lots of changes to immigration policy I would NOT support.

[Zorral]

4 minutes ago, Ormond said:

That's way too vague for me to answer. I would need to know the specific policies that went along with that soundbite. I can imagine possible small changes I would support, but I can also imagine lots of changes to immigration policy I would NOT support.

Probably this is why Warren is slowly building some momentum.  She's not vague, but rather:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/14/18678099/elizabeth-warren-2020-capitalism-plans-primary

Quote

 

My old American Prospect editor Mark Schmitt had a maxim I always liked: “It’s not what you say about the issues; it’s what the issues say about you.”

Mark’s line came to mind while I was interviewing Elizabeth Warren (you can listen to our conversation on my podcast, or read it here). I’ve seen a lot of nervous Democrats compare Warren to Hillary Clinton. After all, Clinton had plans too. Clinton was the most prepared candidate on the stage, too. And look how that ended.

I think the analogy is flawed. Clinton had a lot of plans but no clear message. Warren’s genius has been to turn a lot of plans into a clear message. Clinton’s plans couldn’t dispel the sense that she was complicit in the status quo. Warren’s plans underscore her longstanding loathing of what American capitalism has curdled into.

 

This scares all the status quo types from the DNCC to the organized crime types squatting in D.C.

Still, one wonders why there aren't millions of us out there protesting the criminals in D.C. every day, demanding their removal, as they're doing in Hong Kong and Haiti. What is wrong with us? that we just sit here, meekly taking their public, well-documented criminality and destruction, while fingers fly on our fones?

 

[Ormond]

20 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Then I'm not asking the question in the right way.  It's a more overall messaging question policies be damned asked in a way to ponder "would you track hard right in this one area to better achieve victories on several other important fronts?"  

I think if I was presented with just the sound bite and no policies at all I would not trust it and therefore could not support it, thinking that the "take care of people already here line" is just a subtle way to prevent people being admitted as refugees. I don't see what sort of "taking care of" people already here would need that could be more important than people getting out of the immediately life threatening situations many refugees are fleeing.

[Ormond]

1 minute ago, Triskele said:

The question is if you had to be way more like the Republicans on one issue in order to maximize the chance of victories on several other fronts, getting rid of Trump, healthcare gains, fighting climate change, consumer protections, etc...is that trade off worth it?  

Obviously that depends on one's ranking of the issues. Immigration, especially helping refugees, is for me personally a lot more important than consumer protection and "healthcare gains" (as long as present Obamacare is maintained). I suppose the only things that might be ahead of it on my personal issues list are GLBT issues and "getting rid of Trump." If I were persuaded this was the only way to "get rid of Trump", maybe I could support it, but it would take a lot of persuading. 

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

The question is if you had to be way more like the Republicans on one issue in order to maximize the chance of victories on several other fronts, getting rid of Trump, healthcare gains, fighting climate change, consumer protections, etc...is that trade off worth it?  

Aye, that trade off is definitely worth it.  Especially cuz you can just lie in a campaign and then do something entirely different on immigration policy once in office.  But I think this is a silly question because it's not a tradeoff.  Those Obama-Trump voters, and even probably most of the large percentage of 3rd party voters in 2016, voted against Hillary because of racial resentment.  It's the "they took our jobs" effect:

I don't think these people are coming back to the Democratic nominee - at least in 2020 - no matter how ridiculous he gets.  Which means the emphasis should be on minority turnout and making sure those anti-Trumpers that voted 3rd party last time vote for the Dem nominee this time.  Just make sure someone with 46% of the popular vote doesn't win the electoral college, basically.  This shouldn't be so hard.

[Raja]

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

But I would go so far as to say that if I was persuaded that this was the calculus then to me it would be a no-brainer however distasteful the compromise on the immigration front.  

Discounting a bunch of social science research, policy research and facts to cater to an electorate is *not* what people should be doing, in my opinion. I know you're talking about hypotheticals here and basing this on the fact that you can't change the minds of voters, but as DMC said above, this line of thinking to me is a little disappointing. 

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, Triskele said:

Yeah, and there's a part of me that's still hopeful that 2016 was a weird fluke and that Trump is an aberration and that it wasn't so much problems with the platform but the messenger and a few other factors. 

But nothing would be more disappointing than Trump winning re-election.  

Why do all you believe VOTING matters?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/16/trump-says-supporters-could-demand-he-not-leave-after-two-terms/1471915001/

[Raja]

15 minutes ago, Triskele said:

But nothing would be more disappointing than Trump winning re-election.  

The hypothetical feels a little reductive to me, to be honest. It also feeds the notion of immigrants being lesser than citizens and the 'othering' of immigrants( and I know in many ways, such as federal programs and employment, they basically are). Denying facts to cater to the electorate is exactly what people are already doing and is something that shouldn't be advocated, imo. 

[DMC]

43 minutes ago, Triskele said:

there's a part of me that's still hopeful that 2016 was a weird fluke

It was a fluke.  I had a whole post composed about why but it was mostly just me showing off, so I deleted it.  Point is, at least if the election was held today, it's very unlikely he'd thread that MI, PA, WI, needle.  We'll see.

[Zorral]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

It was a fluke.  I had a whole post composed about why but it was mostly just me showing off, so I deleted it.  Point is, at least if the election was held today, it's very unlikely he'd thread that MI, PA, WI, needle.  We'll see.

A fluke, enabled by a global movement, funded and pushed aggressively by authoratarian, tyrannical, dictatorial corporate criminals.

Yah, that's going away in 2020 . . . .

Dream on Denial.

 

 

[DMC]

15 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Dream on Denial.

LOL.  I dream on empirics, unlike your ludicrous method that ultimately is just whining.  Get off my ass.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

In my first post I pointed out that the point wouldn't be to act just like Trump and demonize immigrants but just to have a more hawkish stance in general.  I realize as Ormond pointed out that this is vague.  I'd be curious what the Denmark example that Sullivan had referenced really had going in terms of that the how of the more anti-immigrant stance that the center left party used was.  

But generally speaking, any stance about what's right and wrong in the face of Trump is quaint to me at this point.  This is an unprecedented threat to the entire system.

This would be enough to make me not vote.  I will absolutely not vote for anyone saying this shit, even if I suspected it was tongue in cheek.  Fuck this picking up the veil of white supremacy and bigoted BS to maybe win a couple of votes.

 

*For any candidate on board.  Would still vote but it might be a pretty meagre ballot.  What do you gain by putting out some mealy mouthed bullshit to appeal to racists and xenophobes?  Do you realize this would cripple millennial turnout?