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US Politics: Ruthless ambition


Kalbear

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2 hours ago, Kalibear said:

Conversely, those are people who are not particularly inclined to vote for a variety of reasons, and outreach won't matter. 

The notion that people are not spending crazy amounts of resources, time, and advertising to get people to vote is not in line with factual reality and appears to be wishful thinking.

Maybe give them a reason to be motivated. This is absolutely one of the reasons that these voters do not come out, because they are not brought into the process. You are so convinced that these people are completely unreachable that you are perpetuating the same issue.

Obviously there is money being spent, but that doesn't mean that money is being spent effectively. There are tons of stories from campaign workers, especially from left leaning candidates, of going into communities where a lot of people they were talking to hadn't been contacted by a political campaign in years.

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Do you know what their needs are? Sanders thought their needs were things like M4A, and as a result he got fewer people who generally don't vote to vote for him than he did previously. Whatever their needs are, it doesn't appear to be the case that it's addressed by super progressive viewpoints.

Now I find myself asking for a citation. Sure you can talk about raw vote total, but that is completely ignoring the many ways that this election is different that 2016. Also how the hell do you think that our supposed allies in the Democratic party using right wing talking points helps? Deficite hawking, attacking the government's ability to effectively administer programs, acting like the health care system is somehow salvagable and that private industry must play a role, these sorts of attacks are counter productive if Democrats actually want to achieve any leftward momentum like they claim to it is time to rethink how they interact with their left wing, because their actions right now are counterproductive.

 

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Citation REALLY needed. Populism was tried in the most recent election and it failed pretty spectacularly. Mass mobilization was tried as well, to similar failures.

You realize that these things take time, right? We have so much work to do in order to affect the change that needs to happen, and this sort of mindset is utterly detrimental to that. Things like encouraging youth involvement, not just at the high school and college level, but even younger. We need to draw clear distinctions between the two parties, make sure the whole both parties are the same shit goes away and we need to be ale to go to the voters and say hey, what do you want us to do, because right now, we have a bunch of folks who have decided what they think people want, but as this WAPo article illustrates, Democrats actually think their constituents are more conservative than they actually are.

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But chances are good that there's enough precedent of this happening in our history that there will not be enough to say no.

Precedent only matters when it agrees with the Republican position.

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2 hours ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

Hi Lollygag,

I'm not trying to convince you or any others not to vote and I've voted in every federal election since I was eligible.  I was disputing the accusation that non-voters are dumb.  I'm just shocked people don't seem to understand how voting in the USA works.  A tremendous amount of time and effort is put into brainwashing the populace to vote because individual votes don't matter.  That's why we have civics lessons, and Hollywood movies, and tell people the lie that their vote matters.

I think the idea of people voting together to make changes is romantic.  And the sheer irrationality of a bunch of people deciding to vote, even though it doesn't matter on an individual level, is what makes it romantic.  I like voting because of that romanticism, but I'm not going to pretend that anyone who doesn't get the same sense of satisfaction is dumb.

You can't say voting matters on an aggregate level but not the individual level.  The aggregate is composed of individual votes.  To say that because an individual's vote isn't the deciding vote that individual votes don't matter is totally misleading.  Especially if the people who believe this could skew the election.  

Your argument also ignores that the margin of victory/loss also sends a message.  If one side is only getting 25% of the votes versus 45% is going to affect their policy positions in 2/4 years time.  So even if your vote isn't the deciding vote, it can still matter.  

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1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Two polls from NBC/WaPo (LV) have Trump up by +4 and +1 in FL and AZ respectively, and they are pretty good pollsters. The RV has Biden up though.

Yeah, that is, without hyperbole, the best poll result Trump has gotten all year.  Hopefully it's just an outlier - the rv/lv split is strange to say the least.

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1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Two polls from NBC/WaPo (LV) have Trump up by +4 and +1 in FL and AZ respectively, and they are pretty good pollsters. The RV has Biden up though.

Considering the states, the numbers, and the quality of the pollster, they're arguably the worst polls all year. However, at this point, I simply don't believe them. I don't think things have changed so dramatically from the consensus of high quality (and lower quality) polls of a few days ago. And even this poll found no difference in their days in the field from before Ginsburg's death to afterwards.

If we start getting more polls like this, I'll start panicking I suspect. But at this point I'll just dismiss them as outliers.

ETA: St Pete also put out a Florida poll today, finding Biden +3. Not saying they're right, or a better pollster. But, considering how inelastic Florida is, they are seeing a very different electorate than WaPo is.

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7 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Hi there.

I don't see where anyone said non-voters are dumb but you said people who do vote are dumb.

Your statements contradict. Telling people that their votes don't matter is the same as telling them they shouldn't vote. Voter suppression 101.

Again - just being upset that you or those who are like-minded aren't the one(s) guaranteed to decide the outcome.

 

Go back a few pages and look at Tywin's words. He literally says American populace is dumb. 

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Oh and states better be fucking prepared to count votes fast. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/

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Trump may test this. According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.

 

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10 hours ago, DMC said:

So?  It still would be misleading to suggest there's a link between having more nonvoters than any and all political parties in a given country causes an unhealthy democracy, because it doesn't.

It can certainly lead to it. If the biggest bloc of eligible voters picks none of the above in a two party system, that creates an environment in which a slide to authoritarianism is more possible. Or to put it another way, >70% of Americans are at the very least indifferent to it. 

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So, what does this mean for your assertion?  That citizens in countries that include the occasional overthrow by authoritarian regimes are too stupid to be included?  That Americans are dumber than other countries with multi-generational democracies because they voted for Donald Trump (except they didn't)?  These seem to be self-fulfilling hypotheses.

No, it's that they're so different that you can't really draw great conclusions by comparing the two. And it's not because they voted for Trump, it's that they didn't stop an obvious threat. 

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6 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

Maybe give them a reason to be motivated. This is absolutely one of the reasons that these voters do not come out, because they are not brought into the process. You are so convinced that these people are completely unreachable that you are perpetuating the same issue.

Obviously there is money being spent, but that doesn't mean that money is being spent effectively. There are tons of stories from campaign workers, especially from left leaning candidates, of going into communities where a lot of people they were talking to hadn't been contacted by a political campaign in years.

Now I find myself asking for a citation. Sure you can talk about raw vote total, but that is completely ignoring the many ways that this election is different that 2016. Also how the hell do you think that our supposed allies in the Democratic party using right wing talking points helps? Deficite hawking, attacking the government's ability to effectively administer programs, acting like the health care system is somehow salvagable and that private industry must play a role, these sorts of attacks are counter productive if Democrats actually want to achieve any leftward momentum like they claim to it is time to rethink how they interact with their left wing, because their actions right now are counterproductive.

 

You realize that these things take time, right? We have so much work to do in order to affect the change that needs to happen, and this sort of mindset is utterly detrimental to that. Things like encouraging youth involvement, not just at the high school and college level, but even younger. We need to draw clear distinctions between the two parties, make sure the whole both parties are the same shit goes away and we need to be ale to go to the voters and say hey, what do you want us to do, because right now, we have a bunch of folks who have decided what they think people want, but as this WAPo article illustrates, Democrats actually think their constituents are more conservative than they actually are.

Precedent only matters when it agrees with the Republican position.

Wait, wait...I agree with you most of the time, but are you actually saying that decades of corrupt politics and a concerted effort to create a sense of helplessness in voters can't be undone in a few years? It just seems so contrary to what so many here (who I assume are experts) claim when laughing at Bernie and the importance of youth turnout.

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8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It can certainly lead to it. If the biggest bloc of eligible voters picks none of the above in a two party system, that creates an environment in which a slide to authoritarianism is more possible.

The problem is 45% of the populace doesn't vote, and that the Republican party is distinctly authoritarian.  The fact that both of those mean that only around 30% of the voting-age population votes for the Democrats is purely a symptom of those two things, making up this "plurality" standard like it's in any way a causal factor is entirely trivial, pointless and unfounded.

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

No, it's that they're so different that you can't really draw great conclusions by comparing the two. And it's not because they voted for Trump, it's that they didn't stop an obvious threat. 

If you're trying to compare the US to different countries to try to figure out how the electorate/citizenry may impact a descent into a more authoritarian or "dysfunctional" regime, and you intentionally omit countries that have descended into more authoritarian or dysfunctional regimes, I don't know what else to tell you except your comparisons are incredibly stupid.

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42 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Yeah, that is, without hyperbole, the best poll result Trump has gotten all year.  Hopefully it's just an outlier - the rv/lv split is strange to say the least.

Isn't that the way these polls 'normally' were? Republicans used to always do better in LV versus RV; however, there is some modest evidence to suggest that Biden was doing not-as-bad when RV was flipped to LV (in some cases better even, based on his strength with older people).

It could be that the WaPo poll has some weird demographic make-up that explains it (too few old people maybe)

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9 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Isn't that the way these polls 'normally' were? Republicans used to always do better in LV versus RV; however, there is some modest evidence to suggest that Biden was doing not-as-bad when RV was flipped to LV (in some cases better even, based on his strength with older people).

It could be that the WaPo poll has some weird demographic make-up that explains it (too few old people maybe)

Usually that's like 1-3 points though.  For Florida it's 5 points, which is definitely one of the highest I've seen.  Particularly when Biden's Florida coalition is definitely stronger with reliable voting groups than, say, Clinton's coalition. 

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14 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

And when the Lochner Court strikes all these laws down for reasons?

It is harder for the SC (even a right-wing court) to strike down laws than you might imagine.  And even then they would strike down a provision rather than all of the law.  The law has its own rules which can be bent but cannot easily be broken. 

To give you an example, the Court ruled 5-4 in Rucho gerrymandering poses political questions beyond the reach of the Courts. It's a terrible decision. 

But here's what the syllabus of the decision says: "The Framers also gave Congress the power to do something about partisan gerrymandering in the Elections Clause. That avenue for reform established by the Framers, and used by Congress in the past, remains open."  [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf]

You can agree or disagree that gerrymandering is a big political problem (or a big reason that Dems lose which is not exactly the same thing).  But the Court has given the green light for Congress to fix this problem.  

That's why I would readily trade a conservative SC for legislation that meaningfully fixes immigration, gun reform, climate change and broad political reform.  We will soon have a Dem president and Dem congress.  They need to act with dispatch to abolish the filibuster and fix problems this country has been grappling with for the last 30-40 years.  

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13 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

He should have done what Trump did with Kennedy.  Woo, back-channel and cajole through clerks and friends.  The Dems could easily have replaced RBG in 2012-4.   

Do we definitively know that this didn't happen? She clearly did not want to retire and forcing her out - after a lifetime of service - would not have been a good look (even if for the right reasons, hindsight being 20/20 in 2020).

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32 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

It is harder for the SC (even a right-wing court) to strike down laws than you might imagine.  And even then they would strike down a provision rather than all of the law.  The law has its own rules which can be bent but cannot easily be broken. 

To give you an example, the Court ruled 5-4 in Rucho gerrymandering poses political questions beyond the reach of the Courts. It's a terrible decision. 

But here's what the syllabus of the decision says: "The Framers also gave Congress the power to do something about partisan gerrymandering in the Elections Clause. That avenue for reform established by the Framers, and used by Congress in the past, remains open."  [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf]

You can agree or disagree that gerrymandering is a big political problem (or a big reason that Dems lose which is not exactly the same thing).  But the Court has given the green light for Congress to fix this problem.  

That's why I would readily trade a conservative SC for legislation that meaningfully fixes immigration, gun reform, climate change and broad political reform.  We will soon have a Dem president and Dem congress.  They need to act with dispatch to abolish the filibuster and fix problems this country has been grappling with for the last 30-40 years.  

Gerrymandering is a moderate problem, severe in a few state cases such as Wisconsin, but it works together with various other Republican methods of stamping down democracy. There's been suggestions that Congress could limit the jurisdiction of the SC on certain types of laws, so say for health-care law as an example. Like court packing it is certain to blow up things further. Not that I'm arguing against any of these methods. It feels like we have no choice, now, or will after the new justice is seated.

And if the filibuster is not removed that is exactly the scenario where McConnel has won. That is why John Roberts is so deferential to Congress by the way. It adds legitimacy to the court's rulings, yet constantly favors conservative outcomes. And note, he was not so deferential to Congress to put a large hole in the ACA.

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36 minutes ago, Week said:

Do we definitively know that this didn't happen? She clearly did not want to retire and forcing her out - after a lifetime of service - would not have been a good look (even if for the right reasons, hindsight being 20/20 in 2020).

Forcing is a strong word and not one I used.  He didn't have the power to force her - but encourage, yes.  I don't know that it didn't happen (as you rightly ask) although none of the public reports about RBG's decision to say on (including ones in which her family collaborated) make no mention of any WH contact or discussions.  That's their version.

We will have to wait for the second volume of Obama's memoirs to be know for certain.  But I doubt he did anything because I would expect some form of public report at least now.   

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24 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Gerrymandering is a moderate problem, severe in a few state cases such as Wisconsin, but it works together with various other Republican methods of stamping down democracy. There's been suggestions that Congress could limit the jurisdiction of the SC on certain types of laws, so say for health-care law as an example. Like court packing it is certain to blow up things further. Not that I'm arguing against any of these methods. It feels like we have no choice, now, or will after the new justice is seated.

And if the filibuster is not removed that is exactly the scenario where McConnel has won. That is why John Roberts is so deferential to Congress by the way. It adds legitimacy to the court's rulings, yet constantly favors conservative outcomes. And note, he was not so deferential to Congress to put a large hole in the ACA.

The best long-term mechanism to curb the SC is pro-democracy reforms and a mandatory retirement age for federal judges. 

The best weapon the conservative judges have to overturn national legislation is federalism.  But where Congress is granted power under the Constitution it is very hard to make a federalism argument.  

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2 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

He should have done what Trump did with Kennedy.  Woo, back-channel and cajole through clerks and friends.  

Like Week said, you have no way to know that he didn't try to encourage her privately.  Now, we all know he's not gonna be aggressive as Trump simply based on one has respect for the court and the constitution and the other does not.  And in Obama's case, he'd want to keep any efforts to influence Ginsburg private (as would she and her family, btw).  Permanently.  We're not finding out through his memoirs.

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