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U.S. Politics: Attaquer son cul orange!


DireWolfSpirit

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6 hours ago, Triskele said:

We lost as far as judicial appointments go the moment Trump was elected. At least, if we continue to accept the rules of the game as they stand now.

Republicans announced among themselves that they were refusing to play by the rules of the game when they talked about how their number one priority was making Obama a one term president. They reinforced it by using the filibuster to death. They made their private announcement public and flipped the game board and the table when Scalia died and they spent a year refusing to sit a new justice. And when they threatened to never sit a Justice under a potential President Hillary Clinton, they took out a gun put it to the other player's head.

And they got rewarded for it all.

Now they're rigging the game so it's physically impossible for them to ever lose again. So if you're a leftist like me, or even just someone who doesn't want to go further to the right and the extreme path that McConnell and company want to go, the question now is do we sit back and accept that, maybe try again in 20-30 years, (if we get 20-30 years and they don't decide to just stomp us to death while we're underfoot in the meantime) or do we admit that the old rules have been wiped away and it's time to fight back? And I mean actually fight, no one hand tied behind the back bullshit.

When the fight's done and people are ready to live like we're an actual society again, we can make new rules. Until then... when we win in 2020, (or, God forbid, 2024) nuke the filibuster, and pass the legislation needed to create equality and start dealing with Climate Change. Pack the courts, and not just the Supreme Court, but the various federal courts, especially Appeals Courts. With the Supreme Court, put a new Justice on the bench every week if need be. Make one of them Barack Obama just to troll regressives along the way. When they escalate, then escalate back again, and do it harder. When everyone on both sides is sick of fighting and cries out for it to stop, we'll have detente and make new rules of the road.

But for as long as radical regressives believe they have have a path to total victory, even a slow one like they've been walking the last 40+ years, they will never ever stop, and our country is already coming down around our ears. One thing we absolutely cannot do is waste the little time we have playing the game the same way as it existed twenty or more years ago and hope that regressives and  hard right fundamentalists and white nationalists agree to do so too. Cause it ain't gonna happen, and wishing for life to be something it can't be will lose us a chance to set things right.

At least that's the way I see it. Maybe there are other ways it can turn out that won't end badly. Can't say that I see many alternatives.

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18 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

At least that's the way I see it. Maybe there are other ways it can turn out that won't end badly. Can't say that I see many alternatives.

You overlook the obvious one.  Most of the 'radical regressive's' are *old.*  Social Security age.  And as I get to see at work, they're literally dropping dead.  And no small percentage of the younger ones are basically criminals.

Judges?  Especially the sleazy sorts likely to be nominated by Team Trump?  expect lots of investigations and dismissals for corrupt activities.  

You seem to be confusing 'ascendancy' with 'desperation'  - even in the intermediate term, the GOP and conservative movement is in a major, inescapable demographic bind.  

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Blow to Amazon as Seattle socialist looks to have triumphed in key vote
Kshama Sawant seems to have beaten Amazon-backed Egan Orion in council race despite vast financial effort from tech giant

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/09/seattle-amazon-kshama-sawant-socialist-elections

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In a blow to Amazon, the socialist candidate Kshama Sawant appeared on Saturday to have beaten the business-backed Egan Orion for a seat on Seattle city council, despite an unprecedented financial effort from the tech giant.

Amazon is headquartered in the city. It ploughed $1.5m into the city council election through a political action committee sponsored by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

Civic Alliance For A Sound Economy dispensed about $440,000 in support of Orion and backed six other candidates considered business-friendly. In 2015, according to the New York Times, Amazon and its employees only contributed about $130,000 to city council candidates.

Sawant, a member of the Socialist Alternative party and a former tech worker, was elected six years ago as the first socialist on the Seattle council in almost 100 years. On election night she trailed Orion by 8%. But as more ballots were counted she closed the gap, and by Friday evening, with the vast majority of ballots counted, she was up by almost 4%, or about 1,500 votes.

“We were up against a Goliath, there is no question about that,” Sawant told the Guardian. “When the billionaires have all the money, the power, the political clout on their side, it’s quite an adversary to go up against.”

King County Elections, which facilitates the ballot counting, said on Friday night there were about 2,500 votes left to count across all Seattle. Given that there are seven districts with council races, that meant there were probably fewer than 1,000 ballots left to count in Sawant and Orion’s race.

 

 

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13 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

You overlook the obvious one.  Most of the 'radical regressive's' are *old.*  Social Security age.  And as I get to see at work, they're literally dropping dead.  And no small percentage of the younger ones are basically criminals.

Judges?  Especially the sleazy sorts likely to be nominated by Team Trump?  expect lots of investigations and dismissals for corrupt activities.  

You seem to be confusing 'ascendancy' with 'desperation'  - even in the intermediate term, the GOP and conservative movement is in a major, inescapable demographic bind.  

I think the "They're all going to die out within a few years" attitude is seriously (and perhaps dangerously) naive. Americans didn't age out of racism after the older and most vicious opponents of the Civil Rights movement got old and died off, for example. Racism and how it manifests in our system is different than it was but it's still very much around. It's going to be the same story here. There'll be a generational realignment that's different from the current status quo in some areas, (lots of polling shows that young Republicans are much more open about Climate Change, for example) but that takes time, and it'll take more time before they have their hands on the levers of power, especially as our primary system keeps rewarding the most extreme candidates because it's the more ideologically driven voters that tend to call the shots during primary season, especially on the Republican side. 

I know that most of the judges that Trump appointed are under 50. They're going to be around to "pwn the libs" for a long time yet, throwing plenty of sand in the gears of any progressive agenda, or even basic statecraft. And maybe Republicans will make their brand toxic enough to drive off some small percentage of voters, (the same way Goldwater, Nixon, Regan, and W. Bush supposedly would make the brand too toxic to attract people) but there's still plenty of kids wearing MAGA hats, who will spend every day while they're growing up hearing the Fox News or right wing radio/podcasts that their parents pay attention to, and/or getting caught up in outrageously false/racist internet sites. (Greater savvy in using technology does not equal greater savvy in telling fact from fiction, or being immune to things like falling for something because it tells you what you want to hear after all.)

Furthermore, I think that when it comes to national politics the American public is fickle, uneducated, and directionless in terms of who they give power. I think they will demand vague undefined changes from the current paradigm, then refuse to change themselves and throw a fit about how any change that was made was all wrong and is the worst thing ever. They'll then lead a backlash against the change by either refusing to vote or going over en masse to the other party, which will take the exact opposite course, which after a few years will become the new worst thing ever, and so on. In the meantime nothing can really get done because there's no sustained momentum for what direction to go, (imagine a big, slow to turn ocean liner that needs a lot of time and space to change course. Now imagine that people keep yanking the wheel one way and then the other every few seconds. That thing is not going to successfully make a course change under those conditions) and shit falls apart little by little while we're all waiting for a change in direction.

Lastly, I think that as long as the filibuster is in place in the Senate, Republicans and the various regressive forces have the edge. The much more divided Democrats are going to need to either get a super majority that actually agrees on a course of action and is willing to implement it, (good luck on that, and even if you get the super majority, it'll be fleeting because of the fickleness of the American I mentioned above and watered down by the need for compromise among the different Democratic factions) while Republicans just need to take the country hostage in budget and policy negotiations and let Democrats "talk them down" to only doing moderate damage each time instead of major damage.

The result is consistent small victories for the GOP (and sometimes large, sudden, ones) while only the occasional, watered down and tepid victories for Democrats. And if you need a lesson in how that's gone for the parties, feel free to take a look at the last forty years and tell me which side has been dominating the direction of how our politics go.

4 hours ago, sologdin said:

federal judges can be impeached.

Which alternate universe are we in again? The one where Democrats get a super majority and can get every one of their members on board with impeaching judges, or the one where Republicans will vote to remove numerous useful pawns from the bench? Sorry, but I'm having trouble keeping track.

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the judiciary act can be amended.

I'll believe that Democrats, liberals, and progressives are willing to make those sorts of changes and can either control the way the changes go or turn it to their advantage in a way that outfoxes Republicans when I see it and not one moment before.

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statutes that these dreadful jurists are interpreting poorly can be amended.

Because we all know they won't find excuses to pull new "interpretations" out of thin air. That's never happened before.

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constitutions can be changed.

... good luck with that one, buddy.

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always options in democratic society. y'all despair too easily.

Oh, I'm not despairing. I'm looking at all the evidence I've observed since the 80s, all the bit and pieces I've learned about how our politics were prior to that, and everything I laid out above in my response to ThinkerX, and trying say we need to have a game plan that can work despite the obstacles in our way instead of blindly rushing into the obstacle course and winging it.

Lots of people believe that the arc of history bends towards justice. I don't. A lot of the time people hear that and assume that means I think it bends towards injustice. I don't. I believe it only bends the way you goddamn make it, and successfully doing so is incredibly hard, complex, and time consuming.

So I want people who want the same changes I do to get their asses in gear and reconcile themselves to the fact that the work needs to be done instead of just assuming that because they really believe that they're in the right or because their opponents are super horrible it will all somehow work out in their favor. That process isn't going to be safe, comfortable, or easy. If you think it needs to be done, then accept all that and lets get to work already.

ETA: Apologies to everyone for the wall of text, this got a lot longer than intended as I went on. Thanks for reading it if you did, I understand if your eyes glazed over and you skipped it all if you did that, and in conclusion... I'm James and I approve this message? ;) :leaving:

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18 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

We lost as far as judicial appointments go the moment Trump was elected.

We lost the moment the Dems allowed the rethugs to refuse Obama's right to appoint Garland to the Supreme Court while he was in office because there was going to be an election next year.  Which also helped Hillary and the Dems to lose the 2016 election because why in hell would anybody be inspired to vote for such a goddamned spineless, selfish, smug pack of fools.  (Hillary helped with that perception also.)

 

 

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59 minutes ago, Zorral said:

We lost the moment the Dems allowed the rethugs to refuse Obama's right to appoint Garland to the Supreme Court while he was in office because there was going to be an election next year.  Which also helped Hillary and the Dems to lose the 2016 election because why in hell would anybody be inspired to vote for such a goddamned spineless, selfish, smug pack of fools.  (Hillary helped with that perception also.)

 

 

The Republicans had a majority in the Senate, what exactly could Obama have done? You can say they should have put more pressure on him and I would agree, but there were no legal remedies, Obama couldn't force him to hold a vote on the nomination.

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20 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

Poll on MSNBC site:

something on the order of 0.02%? of voters?

The % of the voters is not relevant to judging the predictive accuracy of the poll. That's determined by whether or not they have a scientific random sample.

Since you didn't link to the poll I don't know if this is a scientific random sample or if it is one of those "polls" where self-selected visitors to the site are asked to give their opinion. If it's the latter, then it's mostly worthless as an indication of national sentiment.

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56 minutes ago, dornishpen said:

The Republicans had a majority in the Senate, what exactly could Obama have done? You can say they should have put more pressure on him and I would agree, but there were no legal remedies, Obama couldn't force him to hold a vote on the nomination.

They refused to even do the procedual, which is to have interviews.  There was no vote. There was NOTHING, but a declaration that we won't allow it.  Fini.

 

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2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

They refused to even do the procedual, which is to have interviews.  There was no vote. There was NOTHING, but a declaration that we won't allow it.  Fini.

 

Yes and aside from the bully pulpit and public pressure there were no legal remedies for Obama to force McConnell to do any of that. I agree Obama and the Democrats should have used more pressure in the media etc, but legally and procedurally there was nothing they could do if McConnell wouldn't hold hearings or a vote.

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52 minutes ago, dornishpen said:

Yes and aside from the bully pulpit and public pressure there were no legal remedies for Obama to force McConnell to do any of that. I agree Obama and the Democrats should have used more pressure in the media etc, but legally and procedurally there was nothing they could do if McConnell wouldn't hold hearings or a vote.

This may be the sole instance where the question WWTD has some validity.  He would put a hold on releasing any appropriations destined for Kentucky transport/pork projects until Mitch called a vote and then litigate the issue in the courts to avoid having to release the funding.  You need to respond to norm violation by retaliation.  Obama's failure to exert any kind of retaliation or penalty earlier in his administration for other norm violations (Boehner inviting Netanyahu to speak to Congress for example) empowered Mitch to do what he did.  There's also the small matter of Obama starting out with 60 Senate seats and losing control of the Senate during his administration through ignoring/mismanaging the Democratic party throughout his administration. 

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It can be complicated to download, this public release of Fiona Hill's testimony, but it so worth it.  By the way, this is among what Lindsey Graham refuses to read.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jP62YpL8QPabAYnz4uokXmYO0MZAUbFX/view

Especially when one gets down to about page 396 of the pdf, where Giuliani begins to be mentioned.

I didn't see this until tonight.  Earlier today I was having brunch with a buncha NY attorneys who brought up why the mess that Giuliani became. They'd read this, as they have read everything that has been released, which again, Lindsey Graham et al. refuse to read. Because of this testimony they think that this guy who is credited with taking out the Italian mob, was doing so as an operative of the Russians, to make room for the Russians to operate.  Gotta say I sure did see the Russian gangsters moving in here in the 80's 90's, and thereafter (as they sure did in London -- ask John le Carré).  Because for them as well as everybody else, seeing this change is -- just plain frackin' weird, and looking at the connections here when one starts to think of Putin pulling string (former KBG) during Glasnost already, and Trump and all these Russian gangster moving here, and etc.) -- well hey, we can do conspiracy theories too, right!  It's our AMURIKAN RIGHT!.

 The first part is what most of us who follow this kind of thing saw much earlier about Schiff and Gaetz and his bs.  Scroll down, however, to about page 342, and there we get into the Giuliani stuff.

The attorneys at brunch did think that this is a kind of smoking gun that makes sense of a whole lot of stuff, especially why a guy who was supposed to be so anti organized crime is now working for  the biggest crime organizer in the history of the USA.  The guys in Boardwalk Empire are punks, barely registering, compared to what bedbug and his Russian cronies have accomplished. Recall, this was the same period, the Glasnost period, in which bedbug was spending big amounts of time in Russia (as well did all the Big Players in this impeachment investigation).

And, yah, what role was Epstein playing in all this?

Conspiracy 1.A.

 

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1 hour ago, dornishpen said:

Yes and aside from the bully pulpit and public pressure there were no legal remedies for Obama to force McConnell to do any of that. I agree Obama and the Democrats should have used more pressure in the media etc, but legally and procedurally there was nothing they could do if McConnell wouldn't hold hearings or a vote.

There were methods but Pelosi etc. DID NOT.  Hillary was gonna win and make it all betta.

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1 hour ago, Gaston de Foix said:

This may be the sole instance where the question WWTD has some validity.  He would put a hold on releasing any appropriations destined for Kentucky transport/pork projects until Mitch called a vote and then litigate the issue in the courts to avoid having to release the funding.  You need to respond to norm violation by retaliation.  Obama's failure to exert any kind of retaliation or penalty earlier in his administration for other norm violations (Boehner inviting Netanyahu to speak to Congress for example) empowered Mitch to do what he did.  There's also the small matter of Obama starting out with 60 Senate seats and losing control of the Senate during his administration through ignoring/mismanaging the Democratic party throughout his administration. 

The Republicans controlled the Senate and House, how exactly was Obama supposed to hold up appropriations? I guess he could have vetoed any funding bills and caused a shutdown, but that would have required one at the right time, I don't know if there was or not.

Obama made mistakes certainly, including with how he led the party, but I don't think failing to respond to norm violations with more norm violations is something we should blame him for. It looks that way retroactively to some people, but I don't think it was it was at all clear at the time even for most of those who make that argument now.

What do you think Obama should have done about the Boehner/Netanyahu situation? Presidents don't have power to do things like censure MCs. He could have deported Bibi and ok Bibi is pretty terrible, but Israel is an ally and Bibi was, well still is technically its prime minister, so that doesn't seem like a good idea either.

 

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So looks like Nikki Haley is off and running to be the standard-bearer for the post-Trump GOP:

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In “With All Due Respect,” Haley said then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and then-White House chief of staff John Kelly told her that they were trying to “save the country.” Haley writes that she was “shocked” by the request, made during a closed-door meeting, and thought they were only trying to put their own imprint on his policies.

“Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country,” Haley wrote. “It was their decisions, not the president’s, that were in the best interests of America, they said. The president didn’t know what he was doing. ... Tillerson went on to tell me the reason he resisted the president’s decisions was because, if he didn’t, people would die.”

Way to throw two people with no remaining political clout - and probably won't care to boot - under the bus to make you look like the good soldier when in actuality you kept your distance as much as possible.  That's just damn good politics.

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7 hours ago, dornishpen said:

The Republicans controlled the Senate and House, how exactly was Obama supposed to hold up appropriations? I guess he could have vetoed any funding bills and caused a shutdown, but that would have required one at the right time, I don't know if there was or not.

Obama made mistakes certainly, including with how he led the party, but I don't think failing to respond to norm violations with more norm violations is something we should blame him for. It looks that way retroactively to some people, but I don't think it was it was at all clear at the time even for most of those who make that argument now.

What do you think Obama should have done about the Boehner/Netanyahu situation? Presidents don't have power to do things like censure MCs. He could have deported Bibi and ok Bibi is pretty terrible, but Israel is an ally and Bibi was, well still is technically its prime minister, so that doesn't seem like a good idea either.

 

He could have held up funding through distribution through OMB, much as Trump did with the Ukraine aid, in addition of course to vetoing any appropriations bill if he wanted.  And the informal power of the presidency is such that he can effectively prohibit any individual appropriation. 

You are absolutely right that at the time it wasn't apparent that the right response to norm violations was more norm violations.  Obama hoped the fever would break after his re-election.  Biden hopes that it will break after Trump is defeated.  But we should be able to look at the recent past and learn from our mistakes. 

Obama's mistake was to rely on his popularity (which at the beginning of his presidency was immense) and his powers of persuasion (which he over-estimated).  But right from the beginning of presidency he was unable to keep his promises and people noticed.  He and Biden persuaded Arlen Specter to switch parties (thereby guaranteeing a filibuster proof majority in the Senate) but then were unable to help him win the Democratic primary.  He sold the House Dems short on climate change legislation and squandered his majority by making them take a controversial vote for nothing. He lost clout in his own party, and generally.  Presidents need to be able to govern, in part, by fear, at the very least to preserve the powers of the presidency in response to norm violations/unconstitutional acts.  

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we need to have a game plan that can work

PoI--

that's quite correct. the first part of a plan is a reasonable diagnosis--here, recognizing that the right will fuck up the judiciary for the present, with however an understanding that it can be unfucked, as described, supra.  because the parliamentary measures that i mentioned are the easiest fixes, i'm not sure why anyone would object to them--a politics of despair will be inappropriate for any response.

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3 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

He could have held up funding through distribution through OMB, much as Trump did with the Ukraine aid, in addition of course to vetoing any appropriations bill if he wanted.  And the informal power of the presidency is such that he can effectively prohibit any individual appropriation. 

No, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the OMB, which is not a distributive agency.  It's true that the OMB can "hold up" congressionally appropriated funds - and that's what happened with Trump and the Ukraine military funding - but they can only do so for so long before Congress begins to catch on.  Which is exactly what happened and why Trump's "threat," which was ultimately a bluff, was always going to come to light as legislators from his own party began wondering WTF was going on:

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There were two separate lines of money being held up. There was $250 million in military aid that was appropriated to come from the Department of Defense that had yet to be dispersed and another $140 million that was supposed to come from the State Department. A Democratic Senate aide told CNN last week that the Defense Committees had been alerted by the Department of Defense that they were prepared to send off $125 million in February and then another $125 million in May.

A top Pentagon official sent a letter to Congress in May certifying Ukraine was making progress in the fight against corruption justifying the US provide Ukraine with a $250 million military assistance.

On June 18, the Pentagon announced plans to provide $250 million to Ukraine in security cooperation funds for additional training, equipment and advisory efforts to build the capacity of Ukraine's armed forces.

Then, nothing, according to a congressional aide and a US official familiar with the correspondence.

"We'd been given signals twice by the administration that they were going to release the funds then nothing happened. In August we were told the OMB is holding it," Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said. "They were withholding these funds that had been appropriated and signed into law by the President until the last two weeks of the fiscal year. That's crazy. It hardly ever happens," [...]

In the meantime, more senators were catching on to the fact that the money was being held and they pointed their attention at Mulvaney. On September 3, Portman and Johnson along with Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Richard Blumenthal also of Connecticut -- members of the bipartisan Ukraine caucus -- sent a letter to Mulvaney demanding answers as to what was going on with the money.

"This body has long advocated for increasing the military capacity and capabilities of Ukraine — a fledgling democracy that is pro-West and pro-United States and since 2014 has been under increased military, political and economic pressure from Russia," the senators wrote.

In the House, the Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel of New York and the committee's top Republican, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, sent their own letter to Mulvaney two days later. [...]

On September 12, the Senate Appropriations Committee gaveled into their Defense Appropriations markup hearing. The routine session was mired with fireworks over the President's campaign promise of a border wall between the US and Mexico, but the meeting made news for another reason.

Graham announced the Trump administration had finally released the military aid for Ukraine. There was no longer any reason for Durbin to offer his amendment.

"Why was it released? Because of your amendment," Graham told the committee. "That is why it was released because I was going to vote for it ... If you are listening in Ukraine on C-SPAN, you are going to get the money."

So anyway, any tricks like this would have effectually been a retroactive veto on the appropriations bill in the first place, or in other words shutting down the government using highly (highly!) questionable tactics, constitutionally and legally.  Could Obama have shut down the government over the Garland nomination?  Of course he could have.  But there seems to be a lot of Captain Hindsights here when no one at the time thought this was a good idea, for a number of reasons:

First, it raises the salience of the nomination, which doesn't seem like a great idea considering GOP-leaning voters tend to care a lot more about SCOTUS nominations (all judicial nominations, really).  Second, even beyond raising the salience, it's highly questionable how the public would react to the administration grinding the government to a halt over one nomination when there was an election being held within a few months.  Third, the ethics of the Obama administration hijacking the campaign agenda of the 2016 election is highly questionable, and almost assuredly would have gotten vociferous pushback from the Clinton campaign as it appeared likely to everybody that Clinton was going to win anyway -- so why take such a potentially unnecessary and politically unknown risk? 

I don't recall any major voice in the party advocating undertaking such a full-blown effort to force a vote on Garland - probably because even if the Dems "won" that battle, the GOP Senate would just have voted Garland down anyway.

4 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

He and Biden persuaded Arlen Specter to switch parties (thereby guaranteeing a filibuster proof majority in the Senate) but then were unable to help him win the Democratic primary.  He sold the House Dems short on climate change legislation and squandered his majority by making them take a controversial vote for nothing. He lost clout in his own party, and generally.  Presidents need to be able to govern, in part, by fear, at the very least to preserve the powers of the presidency in response to norm violations/unconstitutional acts.  

This also smacks of revisionism.  First, blaming Obama for Sestak's primary victory over Specter is pretty damn rich.  The administration got basically the entire damn Pennsylvania Democratic Party to endorse Specter - not an easy thing considering most of them had spent the last thirty years opposing him.  Sestak won because the left felt emergent at the time and overestimated the gains they made in 2006 and 2008, leading to Sestak's loss in the general (an important and relevant lesson to remember in and of itself).

Second, he didn't "sell the Dems short" on climate change - I'd love to know what Obama was supposed to do to change the fact the cap-and-trade bill Pelosi passed in the House was DOA in the Senate.  Third, and most importantly, he did not squander the majority "for nothing."  He squandered it to get the most significant (and, yes, controversial) piece of social policy passed in 50 years. 

There are fair criticisms on Obama ignoring the party infrastructure throughout his tenure which left the party as an organization in such a weak spot come the 2016 election.  There's even - to get back close to the original topic - some reasonable Captain Hindsight complaints I myself have made:  paramount of which is Obama and Reid should have abolished the judicial filibuster virtually immediately after McConnell started inappropriately holding up nominees.  If they had acted much quicker, there would be many more Democratic-appointed judges on the bench right now.

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On 11/9/2019 at 11:23 PM, ThinkerX said:

You overlook the obvious one.  Most of the 'radical regressive's' are *old.*  Social Security age.  And as I get to see at work, they're literally dropping dead.  And no small percentage of the younger ones are basically criminals.

Judges?  Especially the sleazy sorts likely to be nominated by Team Trump?  expect lots of investigations and dismissals for corrupt activities.  

You seem to be confusing 'ascendancy' with 'desperation'  - even in the intermediate term, the GOP and conservative movement is in a major, inescapable demographic bind.  

 

21 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

I think the "They're all going to die out within a few years" attitude is seriously (and perhaps dangerously) naive. Americans didn't age out of racism after the older and most vicious opponents of the Civil Rights movement got old and died off, for example. Racism and how it manifests in our system is different than it was but it's still very much around. It's going to be the same story here. There'll be a generational realignment that's different from the current status quo in some areas, (lots of polling shows that young Republicans are much more open about Climate Change, for example) but that takes time, and it'll take more time before they have their hands on the levers of power, especially as our primary system keeps rewarding the most extreme candidates because it's the more ideologically driven voters that tend to call the shots during primary season, especially on the Republican side. 

And maybe Republicans will make their brand toxic enough to drive off some small percentage of voters, (the same way Goldwater, Nixon, Regan, and W. Bush supposedly would make the brand too toxic to attract people) but there's still plenty of kids wearing MAGA hats, who will spend every day while they're growing up hearing the Fox News or right wing radio/podcasts that their parents pay attention to, and/or getting caught up in outrageously false/racist internet sites. (Greater savvy in using technology does not equal greater savvy in telling fact from fiction, or being immune to things like falling for something because it tells you what you want to hear after all.)

Just to reiterate this point from the last page: Donald Trump Jr. got booed off the stage at a California University... by conservative activist students hopped up on conspiracy theories and who believe that the Trumps don't go nearly far enough.

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The audience was angry that Trump Jr and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, would not take questions. The loud shouts of “USA! USA!” that greeted Trump when he first appeared on the stage of a university lecture hall to promote his book Triggered: How The Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us quickly morphed into even louder, openly hostile chants of “Q and A! Q and A!”

The 450-strong audience had just been told they would not be allowed to ask questions, “due to time constraints”.

At first, Trump and Guilfoyle tried to ignore the discontent, which originated with a fringe group of America Firsters who believe the Trump administration has been taken captive by a cabal of internationalists, free-traders, and apologists for mass immigration.

When the shouting would not subside, Trump Jr tried – and failed – to argue that taking questions from the floor risked creating soundbites that leftwing social media posters would abuse and distort. Nobody was buying that.

In minutes, the entire argument put forward by the president’s son – that he was willing to engage in dialogue but that it was the left that refused to tolerate free speech – crumbled.

“I’m willing to listen…” Trump began.

“Q and A! Q and A!” the audience yelled back.

“We’ll go into the lion’s den and talk …” Trump tried again.

“Then open the Q and A!” came the immediate response.

Guilfoyle, forced to shout to make herself heard, told students in the crowd: “You’re not making your parents proud by being rude and disruptive.”

She and Trump Jr left the stage moments later.

The fiasco pointed to a factional rift on the Trump-supporting conservative right that has been growing rapidly in recent weeks, particularly among “zoomers” – student-age activists. On one side are one of the sponsors of Trump Jr’s book tour, Turning Point USA, a campus conservative group with a track record of bringing provocative rightwing speakers to liberal universities.

On the other side are far-right activists – often referred to as white supremacists and neo-Nazis, although many of them reject such labels – who believe in slamming the door on all immigrants, not just those who cross the border without documents, and who want an end to America’s military and diplomatic engagement with the wider world.

A number of the loudest voices at Sunday’s event were supporters of Nick Fuentes, a 21-year-old activist with a podcast called America First that has taken particular aim at Turning Point USA and its 25-year-old founder, Charlie Kirk. In a number of his own recent campus appearances, Kirk has faced questions accusing him of being more interested in supporting Israel than in putting America first. He has responded by calling his detractors conspiracists and racists.

On Sunday, Kirk appeared alongside Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle but said nothing.

Two Fuentes supporters, delighted with the outcome of Trump Jr’s appearance, later told the Guardian the pro-Trump movement was being infected with “fake conservatism” and that the president himself was at the mercy of a cabal of deep state operatives who wouldn’t let him do many of the things he campaigned on.

The pair, who called themselves Joe and Orion Miles, said: “It was an absolute disaster for them. We wanted to ask questions about immigration and about Christianity, but they didn’t want to face those questions.”

As delightful as it is that Trump Jr. got chased off stage by erstwhile supporters, and as delicious as it is seeing the Trump clan be on the wrong side of conspiracy theories, which they have thrived on and stoked non-stop, it points to the same problem I was getting at, which is that not every Trump supporter is an 80 year old holed up in a shack in the woods listening to AM talk radio and spending all day sending conspiracy theory chain emails to their grandkids.

They cannot just be waited out. They are not all going to die within the next 10 years. This is not going to be over in 2020 or 2024. There is no going back to complacent normalcy just because Agent Orange won't be in the White House forever. If we do get complacent like that, it will only bite us in the ass somewhere down the road.

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10 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

They cannot just be waited out. They are not all going to die within the next 10 years. This is not going to be over in 2020 or 2024. There is no going back to complacent normalcy just because Agent Orange won't be in the White House forever. If we do get complacent like that, it will only bite us in the ass somewhere down the road.

This is true, and as someone who's worked around college campuses his entire adult life, anecdotally I agree - in the strongest possible terms - that the "brah conservatives" are a hell of a lot scarier than your grandparents voting for Trump because he reminds them of their days in the John Birch society.  However, it should be noted that young voters right now lean much more Democratic than previous generations ever did, which is very encouraging empirical evidence for the future.

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