US Politics: Winning is Easy, Governing is Harder

[ThinkerX]

Far right fruitcakes infesting my Facebook are doubling down on the Capital Riot being a 'false flag' event.  To them, Trump's speech was not inflammatory at all, and the destruction and murders were directly attributable to 'Antifa' and 'BLM.'   Judging from other articles and posts, this seems to be a growing POV.

 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

9 hours ago, SFDanny said:

I absolutely agree with the bolded. I need to see a good breakdown of where the split ticket voters came from. How many were Republican registered voters and how many were registered Democrats? I can't make an informed opinion without more information to make a judgement on what exactly would have been the impact of the Lincoln Project on down ballot races.

I do know that those races were in many states rigged in favor of GOP candidates by absurdly partisan gerrymanders. I can see how 74 million plus votes for Trump would to work well in tandem in highly gerrymandered Republican districts, and could well have meant the difference in close races down ballot.

I have a hard time imagining that there were many Trump voters who crossed over and voted for Democrats down ballot, but of the 81 million plus Biden voters there must have been some who were Republicans who just couldn't vote for Trump, but did so in down ballot races. How many I don't know. It is kind of hard to criticize the Biden campaign for Lincoln Project's focus on those latter type of voters. Just how many were move by the Lincoln project's ads is an open question for me. Perhaps I missed time or coverage the Biden campaign gave to the Lincoln project. You'll have to inform me of your sources on that topic.

To me, the lesson for Democratic strategists is that one can't run traditional type campaigns and expect overall voter turnout to mean victory in close districts. Most of the time that may be true especially in "wave" elections, but in an election were the Republican base is highly motivated to turnout it is not. Democrats should be building the voting rolls seven days a week, year in and year out. They should be about focusing on registering people in communities of color throughout all 50 states and DC. Come to think of it is should include all of the territories as well. And the Democrats need to pass the John Lewis voting rights Act.

Despite the issues/questions surrounding all of this, Biden and Dems have control of Congress and the Presidency--they have so much more power than they are pretending to have right now, and that's what this all stems from in my opinion. Quit trying to work with the party who is not in power and who took a shit on bipartisan politics leading to a conservative supreme court who, I'm purely speculating, probably has members that believe in Q.

Biden says 1400, and the Repubs come back with 1000 for people making under 40,000. That was a misstep by the Dems (lowballing your offer in the first place). So you come back and say, "Look, how about 1400 without means testing. No? Well, we're pushing 2500 through budget reconciliation." But what will happen instead, I worry, is that for a difference of 400 bucks and means testing (which, to be fair, is a lot in the current situation) they use budget reconciliation. Put some lofty ass shit in there and show the Repubs what happens if they want to insult you with a counter offer that they won't vote for anyway. 

 

[Ran]

In what universe is Porter a political rival to Maxine Waters?

[Week]

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I think the anger is predicated on the fact that Waters is playing stupid, petty politics to knife a political rival when the house is burning down around us.

Democrats have been engaged in doing that for decades and it doesn’t seem to have worked out to well for them.

Seems quite overwrought to be using such incendiary language "knife a political rival" while - yes - the house is burning down around us. Minority party members collaborated in putting MoCs in physical danger ... and they have not been held to account. Not one.

Is Katie Porter's presence on the Financial Servicew board in the HoR something that significant to the "house burning down around us".

Your posts on this topic absolutely BEG for perspective. Most people here, myself included, that the FinSvc board would be better off with Porter. I would have liked Porter to have prioritized that and I would have liked the Democrats to encourage her to do so. She didn't and they didn't. It sucks and it's dumb. However, this crusade of crying over the unfairness of a stubbed toe does not help credibility in the future, leads to no action, and actively frays coalitional building.

[Xray the Enforcer]

10 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

AOC just wraped up talking about her experience on January 6th on a live stream right now. Sounds super fucking traumatizing, and you know that some right wing dipshits are going to try and downplay it.

Not just right-wing dipshits, unfortunately. I am seeing people -- mostly cisgender men -- from across the political spectrum downplaying the whole thing because to them, women's pain and suffering and fear is fake or "overemotional." So I'm going to need all of the cisgender men in here to commit to challenging their friends elsewhere on social media if you see anyone pulling that bullshit. It is textbook misogyny, and it is pervasive in our society no matter what your politics happen to be. 

 

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

Despite the issues/questions surrounding all of this, Biden and Dems have control of Congress and the Presidency--they have so much more power than they are pretending to have right now, and that's what this all stems from in my opinion. Quit trying to work with the party who is not in power and who took a shit on bipartisan politics leading to a conservative supreme court who, I'm purely speculating, probably has members that believe in Q.

That's not entirely true. Democrats have a lot more power than they would've if they didn't win both Georgia senate races; but Senate Republicans still have quite a lot of power. And it's not just from the filibuster either; though that's certainly an important tool. For instance, Republicans could force quorum calls constantly, which means that all 50 Democrats and Harris would need to be on the senate floor at literally all times or else the senate would be forced to adjourn. And since that only requires 1 Republican, they could alternate in very manageable shifts while the other 49 Republicans go off and do whatever they want. On top of that, whichever Republican is on the floor could deny unanimous consent to whatever Democrats want to do; which would add anywhere from 8 to 72 hours before every single vote, not matter how minor.

The only way out of that for Democrats would be to go so far beyond "the nuclear option" that I guess we can call it "the planetary destruction option;" which would be to change all the senate rules so that it functions exactly like the House does. And almost no one wants to do that because that would mean we'd have an almost purely majoritarian form of government; with only the judicial system left to protect minority rights. And thanks to the Trump appointees, right now it seems only inclined to protect a conservative minority; Democrats would be totally fucked if they lost in 2024.

Point is, there's a reason this song and dance always gets played in DC. It doesn't mean Democrats are powerless, and it doesn't mean they won't do anything; but it does mean that things will always go slower than activists would like, and that there will always be limits to what gets accomplished. And all signs do point to Democrats using reconciliation to push through a huge COVID relief bill; that's no small thing!

[Week]

33 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

It’s possible to be pissed off about two different things simultaneously. Just because I don’t happen to be talking about one thing I’m also pissed off about at any particular time doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off about it.

Now, I know that may be difficult for you to understand (or more likely, it makes it more difficult for you to score rhetorical points against me), but there it is.

Obviously - I'm not sure how you manage when every reaction starts at 10. You're expending a lot of oxygen and aggressive rhetoric "knifing a political rival" for a minor, in the grand scheme of things, spat. The ability to modulate emotions and convey nuance is completely lost here. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

13 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Curious what you mean by this.  

Simon did (of course) not qualify which Bernie voters went for Trump.

So I assumed he was talking about the blue collar rust belt voters, that went for Bernie in the primaries in 2016, but did not support Hillary in the GE. And there the idea that those could be convinced by politic platforms is not really grounded in reality imo.

In 2016 Sanders had a big influence on Clinton's platform. It was rather ambitious and more left leaning, than what Obama ran on. We all know how this one worked out. We saw something similar in the UK during their last GE. Labour ran with Corbyn on the top of the ticket, who is as left leaning as you can get. The voters in the Labour heartland ran from the party, and he delivered the worst election result since WWII. Why is that?

Those groups do not vote primarily based on their own economic self-interest. If that were so, Reagan would've never ever won two terms as President. And in terms of identity politics (or values) they are far more conservative. That's basically the group of voters, Hillary (stupidly) called deplorables, which xray described as cisgender men, or what in the UK were refered to as gammons. With a bit hyperbole, they don't care for civil rights and that other gay shit that much, as long as they can wave a flag and scream USA. So you can see appeal of the orange fascist for them. Medicaid for all, wouldn't sway them. American Greatness, America First etc. that's another story.

If given a choice, I'd rather spent my time talking to a Pelosi Democrat from the Bay Area.

The Latino voters that went Trump, those need to be looked at more carefully. How and why did that happen. I am pretty sure, that's also where the DNC and Biden campaign are spending a lot of time on in their post-mortem. Like I said, in Florida the Trump campaign went hard for the Biden = socialism angle. If that was effective messaging, then I fail to see how a supposedly more socialist platform would've won the day.

[Liffguard]

6 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

We saw something similar in the UK during their last GE. Labour ran with Corbyn on the top of the ticket, who is as left leaning as you can get. The voters in the Labour heartland ran from the party, and he delivered the worst election result since WWII. Why is that?

Going off-topic a little, but I'd be wary of drawing the immediate and obvious conclusion from this. A very similar platform in 2017 saw much greater success, so there had to be other factors at play in the 2019 result than just how left-leaning either the leader or the manifesto was. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Brexit warps everything around it.

[Xray the Enforcer]

19 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

That's basically the group of voters, Hillary (stupidly) called deplorables, which xray described as cisgender men

I can't speak to the UK situation because I'm only passingly familiar with the term "gammon." But I do not think that one can accurately describe the cohort who really likes Trumpism as "cisgender men." It misses two nuances: 1) this cohort is overwhelmingly white and 2) this cohort also had a lot of white cisgender women. In terms of identity, then, the dominant (but not universal) two criteria are 1) white and 2) cisgender. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

21 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

Going off-topic a little, but I'd be wary of drawing the immediate and obvious conclusion from this. A very similar platform in 2017 saw much greater success, so there had to be other factors at play in the 2019 result than just how left-leaning either the leader or the manifesto was. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Brexit warps everything around it.

Which is kinda the point. Brexit was/is (white) British identity politics on steroids. Basically Make Britan Great Again. Corbyn had the additional baggage of not being seen as patriotic enough (Falkland, IRA and so on and so forth), and not trustworthy. Corbyn's popularity in the former Labour strongholds was horrible.

[Fragile Bird]

The GameStop story seems to be grinding through it’s inevitable conclusion. Trading in the shares is halted right now for volatility, it was down 50% most of the morning.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

21 minutes ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

I can't speak to the UK situation because I'm only passingly familiar with the term "gammon." But I do not think that one can accurately describe the cohort who really likes Trumpism as "cisgender men." It misses two nuances: 1) this cohort is overwhelmingly white and 2) this cohort also had a lot of white cisgender women. In terms of identity, then, the dominant (but not universal) two criteria are 1) white and 2) cisgender. 

Yes, the whiteness is a factor. But correct me if I am wrong, the Trump campaign did rather well with young man in general.

[Liffguard]

7 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Corbyn had the additional baggage of not being seen as patriotic enough (Falkland, IRA and so on and so forth), and not trustworthy. Corbyn's popularity in the former Labour strongholds was horrible.

And yet Labour still did much better in 2017 than 2019, despite having the same leader and a very similar platform.

[Fez]

The board crossover event we've all been waiting for...

ETA:  

Quote

The investigation describes a senior official saying of the agency’s top official, then acting Inspector General John V. Kelly, in an email: “Perhaps Arya would consider taking care of some business here? The DHS OIG throne isn’t as glam but we do have a night king that just. won’t. die.”

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

That's not entirely true. Democrats have a lot more power than they would've if they didn't win both Georgia senate races; but Senate Republicans still have quite a lot of power. And it's not just from the filibuster either; though that's certainly an important tool. For instance, Republicans could force quorum calls constantly, which means that all 50 Democrats and Harris would need to be on the senate floor at literally all times or else the senate would be forced to adjourn. And since that only requires 1 Republican, they could alternate in very manageable shifts while the other 49 Republicans go off and do whatever they want. On top of that, whichever Republican is on the floor could deny unanimous consent to whatever Democrats want to do; which would add anywhere from 8 to 72 hours before every single vote, not matter how minor.

The only way out of that for Democrats would be to go so far beyond "the nuclear option" that I guess we can call it "the planetary destruction option;" which would be to change all the senate rules so that it functions exactly like the House does. And almost no one wants to do that because that would mean we'd have an almost purely majoritarian form of government; with only the judicial system left to protect minority rights. And thanks to the Trump appointees, right now it seems only inclined to protect a conservative minority; Democrats would be totally fucked if they lost in 2024.

Point is, there's a reason this song and dance always gets played in DC. It doesn't mean Democrats are powerless, and it doesn't mean they won't do anything; but it does mean that things will always go slower than activists would like, and that there will always be limits to what gets accomplished. And all signs do point to Democrats using reconciliation to push through a huge COVID relief bill; that's no small thing!

Thanks Fez.  Very grounded analysis.  I think it is worth remembering as well that because we only have two parties (yeah yeah yeah, insert same fantasy debate about how to have a multi party system here, not my point) the parties we have are, to use a shopworn metaphor, really big tents.  The Board tent called Democrat skews way farther left than the US as a whole.  There are A LOT of Americans that appear to want to be in the other tent for some reason.  I don’t, but the question is what priorities should the party pursue in order to maintain and expand the current coalition. There’s a lot of “if you build it they will come” dream-posting here, but realistically, for the reasons Fez mentions, choices will have to be made, and those choices should be calculated to get the best “bang for the buck.”  E.g., stimulus checks seem like a better bet than free college to me (dumb example but hopefully the point comes through).  I also personally would want to focus some on the morally repugnant oppressive rules and decisions made by the last administration.  I hope Schumer and Biden push through as many judges as they can.  It won’t fix things, but will help.  They have only two years....

[mormont]

23 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

And yet Labour still did much better in 2017 than 2019, despite having the same leader and a very similar platform.

But against very different opposition. The Johnson/Trump similarities are often overblown IMHO, but there's no doubt that Johnson's appeal was and is based on his rhetoric about the good old days when Great Britain was truly great and how we can rule the waves again, and so on. The general policy direction of the Tory party in these two elections wasn't vastly different, but there's no doubt that in 2019 Corbyn faced opposition that had that exact emotional appeal that AHNS is talking about, whereas in 2017, he really didn't.

[Liffguard]

5 minutes ago, mormont said:

But against very different opposition. The Johnson/Trump similarities are often overblown IMHO, but there's no doubt that Johnson's appeal was and is based on his rhetoric about the good old days when Great Britain was truly great and how we can rule the waves again, and so on. The general policy direction of the Tory party in these two elections wasn't vastly different, but there's no doubt that in 2019 Corbyn faced opposition that had that exact emotional appeal that AHNS is talking about, whereas in 2017, he really didn't.

That's a fair point, and I agree about Johnson and Trump tapping into a similar appeal, despite their substantive differences (between them as individuals and between the Tory and Republican parties).

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

Not just right-wing dipshits, unfortunately. I am seeing people -- mostly cisgender men -- from across the political spectrum downplaying the whole thing because to them, women's pain and suffering and fear is fake or "overemotional." So I'm going to need all of the cisgender men in here to commit to challenging their friends elsewhere on social media if you see anyone pulling that bullshit. It is textbook misogyny, and it is pervasive in our society no matter what your politics happen to be. 

 

Not to mention the many white women who dislike *rump because of what he did to the economy, and being such a killer with the pandemic, which latter meant shutting down the educational / therapy programs depended upon by their kids, for their autistic and other learning disabilities kids, i.e. their grandchildren.  The racial stuff, who cares?  Sexism? who cares? I'm fine, particularly as I've never had to work a day in my for a paying job, because we've always inherited money and we married men who did also and worked in finance.  I am not joking about this.  Their hatred of AOC is particularly virulent.

There's one in particular comes to mind right now who, while not exactly a handmaid of the sad puppies, blames minority writers, particularly African American women writers, for destroying not only SFWA as she'd always liked it, but the entire field. "Victims!  All they do is yell about being victims!  Victims of what?"  -- that's a direct quote, son.

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Which is kinda the point. Brexit was/is (white) British identity politics on steroids. Basically Make Britan Great Again. Corbyn had the additional baggage of not being seen as patriotic enough (Falkland, IRA and so on and so forth), and not trustworthy. Corbyn's popularity in the former Labour strongholds was horrible.

 

1 hour ago, mormont said:

But against very different opposition. The Johnson/Trump similarities are often overblown IMHO, but there's no doubt that Johnson's appeal was and is based on his rhetoric about the good old days when Great Britain was truly great and how we can rule the waves again, and so on. The general policy direction of the Tory party in these two elections wasn't vastly different, but there's no doubt that in 2019 Corbyn faced opposition that had that exact emotional appeal that AHNS is talking about, whereas in 2017, he really didn't.

You also can't forget the anti-semitism, which I don't think had really become an issue in 2017.