U.S. Politics: Attaquer son cul orange!

[DireWolfSpirit]

Impeach his orange @$$! 

Carry on.

[Gorn]

To continue discussion from the previous thread:

Quote

The reason we are where we are now is because the GOP generally owns the Dems when it comes to the "campaign in poetry, govern in prose" adage.  Grabbing a hold of a consistently unpopular position in the belief you can change voters' minds - on a very salient and entrenched issue to boot - within 12 months is simply naive.

GOP continuously wins elections by loudly and publicly promising to ban abortions, remove gun controls and lower taxes on the rich. All of these are incredibly unpopular positions among the general audience, but they win elections with them because they are super-popular with a significant minority.

"General audience" doesn't vote. In a country where only 50-60% of people vote in presidential elections (and much less than that in other elections), you win elections by making superfans of your political positions show up on election day. And for that to happen, you need to have:

1) actual positions

2) actual superfans

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Gorn said:

GOP continuously wins elections by loudly and publicly promising to ban abortions, remove gun controls and lower taxes on the rich. All of these are incredibly unpopular positions among the general audience, but they win elections with them because they are super-popular with a significant minority.

They win elections by emphasizing the things that are popular for that particular constituency.  Has a GOP presidential candidate ran on abortion or (lack of) gun control in any recent memory?  No of course not, because those are unpopular positions -- nationally.  But they are popular positions locally, even if the GOP candidate knows they're not gonna do much of a damn thing about it. 

That's exactly what "campaigning in poetry and governing in prose" means.  The poetry thing is not a compliment on their linguistic erudition.  The GOP's, and obviously Trump's in particular, "poetry" is some ugly shit.  But it's still bullshit that you can message and fit on yer pick-up's bumper.  What was Hillary's?  I'm with her?  What was Kerry's, or Gore's, or Dole's?  You can go through losing presidential candidates like this.

10 minutes ago, Gorn said:

"General audience" doesn't vote. In a country where only 50-60% of people vote in presidential elections (and much less than that in other elections), you win elections by making superfans of your political positions show up on election day. And for that to happen, you need to have:

1) actual positions

2) actual superfans

This isn't really accurate.  There's very little evidence that turnout increases due to specific issues - other than the economy going to shit.  They DO turnout based on candidate quality, I'll give you that.  But superfans aren't made by political positions, that's a fairly ridiculous premise.

[sologdin]

despite the numbnut claim in the prior thread that anyone with money is donating away from senator warren, we see that the dumbest money actually goes as always to trump, who is allegedly shaking down his most abjectly gullible supporters through the sale of $10,000 ejaculates from the purported heroic terminator dog--with the net return for his legal defense fund. this strikes me, if true, as a violation of the hatch act and a commingling of state and private accounts.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Two governor elections and 3 state legislature elections happening today! Kentucky is competitive, and Mississippi less so (the latter has some weird requirement of both popular vote + state representative thingie), but the former has some ambiguous polling. Eventually I think both may go GOP though.  The Virginia state legislature is a different matter. Lets see how that pans out,

 

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

1 hour ago, sologdin said:

despite the numbnut claim in the prior thread that anyone with money is donating away from senator warren, we see that the dumbest money actually goes as always to trump, who is allegedly shaking down his most abjectly gullible supporters through the sale of $10,000 ejaculates from the purported heroic terminator dog--with the net return for his legal defense fund. this strikes me, if true, as a violation of the hatch act and a commingling of state and private accounts.

$ 300, 000 for a "day's companion ship" in a private kennel.

Wtf... I must admit I'm impressed. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Two governor elections and 3 state legislature elections happening today! Kentucky is competitive, and Mississippi less so (the latter has some weird requirement of both popular vote + state representative thingie), but the former has some ambiguous polling. Eventually I think both may go GOP though.  The Virginia state legislature is a different matter. Lets see how that pans out,

 

 

The Equal Rights Amendment is on the line today. Do your job, Virginians!!!

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

The Equal Rights Amendment is on the line today. Do your job, Virginians!!!

That sure would be something. But, as important as our state legislative elections today are for other reasons, the odds are against the ERA coming into effect.

First, we've got some conservative Democrats in the state legislature, so it'll probably be a fight to get the votes there, and I suspect there will be other, more state specific priorities that Democrats would want to be getting done first. This would be the first time Democrats have unified control of the state since 1994, and the Democrats who ran the state back then were much more conservative than they are now. There's a lot of progressive priorities that have piled up over the years.

Second, if they do pass it, Congress will need to remove the sunset provision from the ERA. The House would do that in a second, would the Senate? Would McConnell even let a vote happen?

Probably not. Because the third issue is that'll there will absolutely be court cases about whether Congress has the power to remove that sunset provision. There's also the issue that four states that once approved the ERA, later revoked that approval. It's not clear there's actually a constitutional mechanism for states to revoke their approval of an amendment prior to the amendment becoming ratified, but there will definitely be a fight about it.  And with this Supreme Court, I don't care what law professors say the answer should be; because it's going to be a political decision by Roberts.

[Maithanet]

30 minutes ago, Fez said:

There's also the issue that four states that once approved the ERA, later revoked that approval. It's not clear there's actually a constitutional mechanism for states to revoke their approval of an amendment prior to the amendment becoming ratified, but there will definitely be a fight about it.  And with this Supreme Court, I don't care what law professors say the answer should be; because it's going to be a political decision by Roberts.

I honestly don't see how you can say that a state cannot withdraw its support for a constitutional amendment so long as they do so prior to the amendment being ratified.  Imagine a scenario where the Gay Marriage Ban amendment actually got off the ground and a bunch of states passed it.  Would a state like Virginia NOT have the right to rescind its support for a gay marriage ban, even if it passed one in the 90s?  That seems crazy to me. 

I support passing the ERA, but I think they're clearly four states short.  Changing the sunset provision doesn't bother me much. 

[Raja]

 

[Paladin of Ice]

Just posted about this on another board where I contribute to some political threads. As far as I’m concerned, all the higher ups in this administration should be hung from lampposts.

[Kalbear]

8 hours ago, Gorn said:

To continue discussion from the previous thread:

GOP continuously wins elections by loudly and publicly promising to ban abortions, remove gun controls and lower taxes on the rich. All of these are incredibly unpopular positions among the general audience, but they win elections with them because they are super-popular with a significant minority.

They also aren't that big a deal as far as issues for the majority of Americans. Healthcare, however, IS a big deal. 

8 hours ago, Gorn said:

"General audience" doesn't vote. In a country where only 50-60% of people vote in presidential elections (and much less than that in other elections), you win elections by making superfans of your political positions show up on election day. And for that to happen, you need to have:

 1) actual positions

 2) actual superfans

This is true for Dems, far less true for Republicans. GWB didn't have superfans, and GWHB didn't either. 

[The Anti-Targ]

I've come to the conclusion that a country, on average, evolves in a progressive / liberal direction at a pace that conservatives can tolerate. That seems to me to be why conservative governments tend to be the norm interspersed with periods of progressive / liberal change even though on most social and economic issues the gen pop appears to favour progressive / liberal positions.

IMO conservatives tend to win elections because they, much more than liberals, get to use fear as a campaign strategy. And there's nothing like fear to get people to retreat back into the comfort of the status quo. And too much change too quickly generates a great deal of potential for fear based campaigning to work.

How did Trump win? Fear of immigrants, fear of losing your job. Most people didn't buy what he was selling, but the right people in the right places did.

[argonak]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I've come to the conclusion that a country, on average, evolves in a progressive / liberal direction at a pace that conservatives can tolerate. That seems to me to be why conservative governments tend to be the norm interspersed with periods of progressive / liberal change even though on most social and economic issues the gen pop appears to favour progressive / liberal positions.

IMO conservatives tend to win elections because they, much more than liberals, get to use fear as a campaign strategy. And there's nothing like fear to get people to retreat back into the comfort of the status quo. And too much change too quickly generates a great deal of potential for fear based campaigning to work.

How did Trump win? Fear of immigrants, fear of losing your job. Most people didn't buy what he was selling, but the right people in the right places did.

Trump won because of electoral college shenanigans, the same way the Republicans hold the outdated institution of the Senate.  If we were a functioning democracy instead of dysfunctional one, the Republicans would be a minority party with no control of any part of the federal government.  They would also have far fewer states under their influence, because a number of them rely on obscene examples of gerrymandering and even voter suppression.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

3 minutes ago, argonak said:

Trump won because of electoral college shenanigans, the same way the Republicans hold the outdated institution of the Senate.  If we were a functioning democracy instead of dysfunctional one, the Republicans would be a minority party with no control of any part of the federal government.  They would also have far fewer states under their influence, because a number of them rely on obscene examples of gerrymandering and even voter suppression.

 

You make that argument, in the face of the general evidence in countries that have no electoral college and even have proportional representation and much higher voter turn outs and yet still return conservative governments more often (or at least as often) than progressive governments. Australia has a PR-lite electoral system as well as compulsory voting (which tends to get about 95% of people voting) and yet it has had a nearly equal number of conservative / right leaning govts as progressive / left.

The Republican party would probably move away from extreme religious conservatism under a different system, but it would still find itself in power a lot of the time.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Just posted about this on another board where I contribute to some political threads. As far as I’m concerned, all the higher ups in this administration should be hung from lampposts.

They're going to hang themselves. Today was just the beginning. Maybe Trump should have thought twice before surrounding himself with people who will jump ship on him once the water gets too high. Those rich pricks aren't going to be his fall guy.

[Zorral]

Following the WH bedbug infestation's lead, there are public libraries in Florida who are no longer allowed to subscribe to The NY Times etc. because, you know, 'fake noose.'

State rethugs in Wisconsin fired the state secretary of agricultural for talking about the growing number of  farmer suicides.

[James Arryn]

Another factor I would mention: studies show that conservatives are primarily motivated by fear, liberals by anger. Neither of these are sustainable at their extremes, but lower levels of fear are much more sustainable than lower levels of anger. Trump in particular emphasizes this distinction by virtue of exhausting liberal anger to the point where many kind of check out, while very few conservatives become distanced from their fears.

Fear also tends to engage coping mechanisms better than anger, meaning angry people are less likely to be cooperative with other angry people just because they're both angry at the same thing, but people sharing similar sources of fear will generally be more cooperative with one another below panic level states. 

And, lastly, fear translates to authoritarianism much much better than anger. Frightened people will follow someone who tells them where to go a lot more than angry people.

[Jace, Extat]

20 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Another factor I would mention: studies show that conservatives are primarily motivated by fear, liberals by anger. Neither of these are sustainable at their extremes, but lower levels of fear are much more sustainable than lower levels of anger. Trump in particular emphasizes this distinction by virtue of exhausting liberal anger to the point where many kind of check out, while very few conservatives become distanced from their fears.

Fear also tends to engage coping mechanisms better than anger, meaning angry people are less likely to be cooperative with other angry people just because they're both angry at the same thing, but people sharing similar sources of fear will generally be more cooperative with one another below panic level states. 

And, lastly, fear translates to authoritarianism much much better than anger. Frightened people will follow someone who tells them where to go a lot more than angry people.

I have to mildly push back against your edited material.

The Germans had nothing to be afraid of and a lot to be angry about in the 1930's.

[Maithanet]

Not over yet, but looking good for Democrats in KY governor race.  Up 32k votes with 90 percent precincts in.