US Politics - Term of surrender? Or is it wise to follow the Dumpty?

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think this all misses the point. We’re watching a political party die in real time and they’re doing everything they can to cling to power before it’s gone. That’s why they’re packing the courts and that’s why they’re saying Trump can do no wrong.

So with packed courts and running everything else, precisely how are they, um, dying?  This is what's known as consolidating power.

[Maithanet]

5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

So with packed courts and running everything else, precisely how are they, um, dying?  This is what's known as consolidating power.

Particularly when there's a real chance that the next Democratic president simply won't be able to make any court appointments at all, thanks to Mitch McConnell and whoever replaces him deciding that "we advise the president that we will not consent to any of his judges".  Then Republicans will have 1.5 of the 3 branches of govt. on lockdown. 

I agree consolidation sounds like a better word for it. 

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Point 4 is bipartisan the same way that the filibuster is bipartisan (and reconcilliation is bipartisan)

Is there a clarion call to change Article V I'm not aware of?  Amendments are hard to achieve, impossible in a polarized environment.  That's pretty much what the framers intended.  It's supposed to be hard, and only changed when there's broad consensus on the issue.  This construct goes back to Rousseau's Social Contract (see Book IV, Chapter II).  

As for abolishing the filibuster, I'm against that.  Said why many times, but simply put it makes the Senate exactly like the House, when that's entirely against Madison's reasoning for instituting a bicameral legislature.  The whole point is for the upper chamber to check the reactionary impulses of the lower chamber.  And reconciliation?  Obama used it, and was the first to use it in passing major policy in contemporary times.  I really fail to see how this advantages the GOP.

16 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I don't think that's accurate at all.

K.  Let's wait and see when a president wins the EC while losing the popular vote by 6 points.  Again, unless there's a strong third party candidate, I suspect we'll be waiting long after both of us are dead.

18 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It is rigged in favor of rural, lower-pop states exploiting the existing rules in perpetuity. And there is very little sign that it will be unrigged short of a disaster akin to the great depression or another world war.

Yes, again, the Senate sucks.

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

So with packed courts and running everything else, precisely how are they, um, dying?  This is what's known as consolidating power.

I mean, historically, the Federalist party died long before John Marshall continued to be Chief Justice - until 1835.  Not saying that type of thing is going to recur, but it's there.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

Is there a clarion call to change Article V I'm not aware of?  Amendments are hard to achieve, impossible in a polarized environment.  That's pretty much what the framers intended.  It's supposed to be hard, and only changed when there's broad consensus on the issue.  This construct goes back to Rousseau's Social Contract (see Book IV, Chapter II).  

I agree, but when we're saying that the system is broken and favors one party over another, that's a problem. It means that we have no real functional way of changing a broken system, even if the vast majority does approve of it. 

1 minute ago, DMC said:

As for abolishing the filibuster, I'm against that.  Said why many times, but simply put it makes the Senate exactly like the House, when that's entirely against Madison's reasoning for instituting a bicameral legislature.  The whole point is for the upper chamber to check the reactionary impulses of the lower chamber.  And reconciliation?  Obama used it, and was the first to use it in passing major policy in contemporary times.  I really fail to see how this advantages the GOP. 

Obama used it to fix a policy after it had been passed. And he could only do that with weird tax rules, and it was a small amount of policy. The reason that the filibuster is problematic is that much of what Dems want to propose is NOT revenue-neutral, and much is not affecting revenue at all. 

When your policy goals are basically keep the status quo or neuter existing public benefits, a system that lets you do that with only 50 votes is beneficial to the GOP and not beneficial to the Dems. IF the dems wanted to do that, it'd be beneficial to them. 

Also, 'keep the filibuster' and 'the senate sucks' are not particularly good ideas to hold simultaneously. 

 

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yes, again, the Senate sucks.

This isn't just the senate though. This is the senate, the EC, and the process to amend the constitution. All of these give smaller states significantly more power per capita. All of them work in a way to be undemocratic. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

when we're saying that the system is broken and favors one party over another, that's a problem.

I'm saying I don't see how amendments, the filibuster, or reconciliation favor either party.  They're just rules each party has to abide by.

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The reason that the filibuster is problematic is that much of what Dems want to propose is NOT revenue-neutral, and much is not affecting revenue at all. 

Well, we'll see about that.  In my experience doing a deep dive into CRS reports (which I had to do for one my papers), the majority can justify reconciliation for a lot of things - certainly most of the main policy agenda of basically every Democratic candidate.

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

When your policy goals are basically keep the status quo or neuter existing public benefits, a system that lets you do that with only 50 votes is beneficial to the GOP and not beneficial to the Dems.

The GOP failed at "neutering" existing public benefits even in the 50 vote framework.  Please point me to any example beyond Trump's tax cut (which every Republican president has passed a major tax cut because people like the sound of tax cuts) in which it benefits the GOP over the Dems.

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, 'keep the filibuster' and 'the senate sucks' are not particularly good ideas to hold simultaneously. 

Sure they are.  If I was US federal government god, I would reform the way in which the Senate is composed to make it more proportional by state.  But I would keep the filibuster.  The two are not mutually exclusive.

9 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

This is the senate, the EC, and the process to amend the constitution. All of these give smaller states significantly more power per capita. All of them work in a way to be undemocratic. 

Like I said, I agree with you on the Senate and the EC.  I suppose that means it advantages the amendment process too, but it's not like amendments are going to be realistic anytime soon anyway, seems a pretty worthless thing to whine about.

[Zorral]

It's simpler, and it's uglier than any of you are saying.

The trumpists are revved up like nobody else.  That means they're going win their objective, because they are utterly clear as what their objective is, and have been since at least the 1970's when they began playing this very long game, which isn't the game any of you have been, or are, playing, whatever your level of political expertise or smarts.

As some of us have been saying all along, they're not playing the same game we are.  It's about taking power (fait accompli) and maintaining it (fait être accompli) for long enough to consolidate a global system that will never return to liberalism but will fight apocalyptic wars for world domination in the name of race and religion. They're burning up with rage-fueled excitement at the prospect of kicking our asses to the curb, forever.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

As some of us have been saying all along, they're not playing the same game we are.  It's about taking power (fait accompli) and maintaining it (fait être accompli) for long enough to consolidate a global system that will never return to liberalism but will fight apocalyptic wars for world domination in the name of race and religion. They're burning up with rage-fueled excitement at the prospect of kicking our asses to the curb, forever.

I thought I told you already I don't have any change.

[The Anti-Targ]

Truth? Feels like it from where I sit.

It's been commonly stated in NZ in the past that most MPs from our mainstream centre-right party (National Party) would be Democrats in the USA. And most National MPs were predicting and hoping for a Hillary Clinton win in 2016. Even our 1 most far right (libertarian) MP from the Act Party was hoping that Hillary would win. So I think AOCs assertion that the Democratic party is centre / centre-right with left members seems to be correct.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Rather than respond to multiple comments, I'll just do this.

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

When I say you are watching the Republican party destroy itself, I don't mean the Republican party is going to disappear, I mean they are destroying what once was a respected party in America, turning it into something unrecognizable.

This is what I meant too. The Republican Party will still be there, but it will look nothing like it used to. The last stragglers of yesteryear are either leaving, going to lose a primary or bending the knee, and what we're seeing in the Senate right now indicates a lot of knees are being permanently bent.

Quote

But then again, a large part of the US population seems to have changed into something unrecognizable. They seem to fit each other like hand in glove. 

They didn't change. They just stopped hiding what this has always been about: race.

[DanteGabriel]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

They didn't change. They just stopped hiding what this has always been about: race.

When has it not been about race? Maybe after the Civil Rights Act passed it wasn't officially about race. But it's really always been about race.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

When has it not been about race? Maybe after the Civil Rights Act passed it wasn't officially about race. But it's really always been about race.

It's always been about race, but for a time they tried to hide it. I would again point to Lee Atwater's famous quote. However, Obama's election allowed it to start slipping out more blatantly and Trump's election was an invitation for all of them to take their hoods off. I literally just had an interaction with someone on FB an hour or so ago and his two arguments on everything that's going on were this: (i) it's okay for Republicans to look the other way because Democrats would too and (ii) it's really black people's fault that racism is still a thing. I kid you not. He said that out in the open for anyone to read.

[Kalbear]

32 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

When has it not been about race? Maybe after the Civil Rights Act passed it wasn't officially about race. But it's really always been about race.

Arguably, the primary concern in the 70s and 80s was not race for most US citizens - it was the cold war and the overall standing in the world. Conservatives at that time were largely fact-based and both parties were largely content with racism as the status quo. It wasn't about race because for the most part everyone agreed on the amount of racism in the US and as long as you didn't go too far across that line, you were fine (on both parties). Both parties were also largely content to work together for the most part, partially because they had a common enemy and common foreign policy goals, and partly because there were other incentives to make them want to work together (like pork barrel politics). 

And then the cold war ended, and we got Gingrich willing to push more and more racist things, and now we're here. 

[DanteGabriel]

13 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Arguably, the primary concern in the 70s and 80s was not race for most US citizens - it was the cold war and the overall standing in the world. Conservatives at that time were largely fact-based and both parties were largely content with racism as the status quo. It wasn't about race because for the most part everyone agreed on the amount of racism in the US and as long as you didn't go too far across that line, you were fine (on both parties). Both parties were also largely content to work together for the most part, partially because they had a common enemy and common foreign policy goals, and partly because there were other incentives to make them want to work together (like pork barrel politics). 

And then the cold war ended, and we got Gingrich willing to push more and more racist things, and now we're here. 

But the 70s saw the birth of the Southern Strategy and increased race-baiting from Nixon, and Reagan burying the racism in "welfare queens" and "young bucks" code words. Reagan built the current Republican coalition using racial resentment as his cement.

ETA: Okay I see you said "primary concern" which may be fair enough, I can't authoritatively parse the level of concern. But it seems like race was, if not number 1, at least 1b even then.

[A True Kaniggit]

2 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

But the 70s saw the birth of the Southern Strategy and increased race-baiting from Nixon, and Reagan burying the racism in "welfare queens" and "young bucks" code words. Reagan built the current Republican coalition using racial resentment as his cement.

Ugh. I was gonna bring up George Wallace too. But that was ‘68 apparently. 

[Fez]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

This sounds like Ezra Klein's new book, where he tries to be a scholar on polarization.  I'm sorry, acting like from FDR to Reagan was an "aberration" of any sort is absurd.  The current level of polarization is higher than ever.  That's measurable at the congressional level.  It's not returning to our "usual state" or whatever.  Moreover, acting like ~40-50 years in a state that's only existed for 230 years is an "aberration" is a misuse of the term aberration.  That's a significant period of your unit of analysis.

That's not what I'm talking about all. I'm referring to society in general, and the full scope of western civilization. Post-WWII was the first time we had anything approaching a wide-spread middle class, strong anti-corruption measures, a deliberate push-back against nationalism, a legitimate attempt at pursuing equal rights, and those closest we've gotten to full enfranchisement.

And now all those values are in retreat everywhere. It's not all at the same pace, and it didn't all start at the same time everywhere. But it's looking like a roughly 50 year period was a blip in a timeline of over 2,500 years, and not a permanent change in how humans organize their societies.

In the US specifically, the GOP has hastened this trend, but it can't only be placed on them since its an issue for pretty much all western countries. As someone posted earlier, even Denmark and New Zealand have declined on the anti-corruption scale. 

[DanteGabriel]

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

That's not what I'm talking about all. I'm referring to society in general, and the full scope of western civilization. Post-WWII was the first time we had anything approaching a wide-spread middle class, strong anti-corruption measures, a deliberate push-back against nationalism, a legitimate attempt at pursuing equal rights, and those closest we've gotten to full enfranchisement.

And now all those values are in retreat everywhere. It's not all at the same pace, and it didn't all start at the same time everywhere. But it's looking like a roughly 50 year period was a blip in a timeline of over 2,500 years, and not a permanent change in how humans organize their societies.

In the US specifically, the GOP has hastened this trend, but it can't only be placed on them since its an issue for pretty much all western countries. As someone posted earlier, even Denmark and New Zealand have declined on the anti-corruption scale. 

Yep, I've been saying something similar to this to my friends. I'm convinced that the relative progressivism of the second half of the 20th century was an outlier in world history, because of the unique circumstances: the Great Depression, World War 2, the end of colonial empires, FDR's unprecedented and not to be repeated tenure.

[Gertrude]

I am more depressed about the fight for witnesses that I thought I would be. I always expected Trump to be acquitted, but I wasn't expecting the absolute head-in-the-sand brick wall that we're seeing. I underestimated the amount of shame the Rs would be willing to shoulder on this. It's not like the stories aren't going to come out, but is it truly just the short term-gain of primaries? I'd vowed to Joni Ernst to change my registration and actively campaign against her in the primary if she votes to deny witnesses. Not that she cares because she's got her Trump base cheering her on too. But by god, I'm gonna make it my personal mission. I think Grassley has more integrity than her and I never thought I'd say that after he tag-teamed with Palin on lying about "death-panels".

A tangent - why does the right like memes so much? Not just the trolly younger generation, my dad sends them to me although I ask him not to. Not just the memes of 'ha-ha, Bernie's a communist!' but the chain-letters with stories of brave patriots who weep for our country and scary immigrants doing bad things, etc.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

I am more depressed about the fight for witnesses that I thought I would be. I always expected Trump to be acquitted, but I wasn't expecting the absolute head-in-the-sand brick wall that we're seeing. I underestimated the amount of shame the Rs would be willing to shoulder on this. It's not like the stories aren't going to come out, but is it truly just the short term-gain of primaries? I'd vowed to Joni Ernst to change my registration and actively campaign against her in the primary if she votes to deny witnesses. Not that she cares because she's got her Trump base cheering her on too. But by god, I'm gonna make it my personal mission. I think Grassley has more integrity than her and I never thought I'd say that after he tag-teamed with Palin on lying about "death-panels".

1, There's an apt quote for this: It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It.

2. Ernst literally had the temerity to go on live TV and admit it's all about politics and hurting Biden. They all know exactly what's going on and they support it. Every senator who votes against witnesses is complicit 100% in everything Trump does.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

So did I hear right? The defense lawyer has given up on arguing there was no quid pro quo but is now saying this sort of quid pro quo is right and proper?