US Politics: Ted Cruz - A Tale of two Snowflakes

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Fez said:

Sure. But that's not going to happen.

Although, we might see some crazy one-time stuff in 2022:

 

I would love to see at large elections for the HoR.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I would love to see at large elections for the HoR.

Then move to Wyoming.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

Then move to Wyoming.

I’d like to see them all over the US.  You can’t Gerrymander without districts to draw.

[Mindwalker]

 

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’d like to see them all over the US.

Me too.  I'm being a smartass cuz it's never gonna happen.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

Me too.  I'm being a smartass cuz it's never gonna happen.

Never... is a very long time.

[Mindwalker]

The latest buzz from FormerGuyWorld:

President Biden Manipulated The Weather To Cause Brutal TX Storm.

 

Speaking of... Where is our resident "conservative reddit" spy? Hope he hasn't been sucked down the rabbit hole!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

41 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Once again you miss my point. Did the Japanese government pay consumers who them paid the money to Tepco? And once again, different because the Japanese nuclear authorities approved the design of the plant. The issue is about FEMA support going to consumers in order to pay their bills to the power plants. It may very well be they completely skip the consumers and Texas just pays over money to the power authorities in various cities and counties who then pay the plants to cover the bills, but then who pays for the upgrades all the power plants need? More FEMA money? It will definitely be interesting.

Hum?

My argument that privatizing gains, while socilazing costs/losses is not a new/unique Texan idea of capitalism.

Your beef is, that the state is paying (tax payer) money, to the citizens, who then pay the companies. While you don'T object to the states cutting out the middle man (so to speak) and just hand over the money/cover the losses of business directly. Is that argument?

[Fez]

21 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’d like to see them all over the US.  You can’t Gerrymander without districts to draw.

OTOH, you also get no minority representation in deep red states, since there's no VRA (gutted as it currently is) to ensure minority majority districts. 

And in general actually, things would be ossified just like the electoral college is; a handful of states would flip around, and every other state would be entirely represented by one party or the other.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Can we just blame the right person for the Texas snow storm?

 

@Tywin et al. and his ice beam from space.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, Fez said:

OTOH, you also get no minority representation in deep red states, since there's no VRA (gutted as it currently is) to ensure minority majority districts. 

And in general actually, things would be ossified just like the electoral college is; a handful of states would flip around, and every other state would be entirely represented by one party or the other.

That’s why you dramatically increase the size of the House of Representatives.  It will give minorities a shot at seats.

[Fez]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That’s why you dramatically increase the size of the House of Representatives.  It will give minorities a shot at seats.

I don't see how. Ticket splitting is all but dead. If South Carolina had at-large voting, I don't see any difference between there being 7 representatives or 70; all of them are going to be Republican.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, Fez said:

I don't see how. Ticket splitting is all but dead. If South Carolina had at-large voting, I don't see any difference between there being 7 representatives or 70; all of them are going to be Republican.

That’s why it needs to be coupled with the adoption of proportional representation voting.  There are enough votes in SC for the Democratic Party to get a couple of seats with that methodology.

 

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

And in general actually, things would be ossified just like the electoral college is; a handful of states would flip around, and every other state would be entirely represented by one party or the other.

Yeah Scot's talking about an at-large multi-member district with PR.  Only the smallest states would be entirely blue or entirely red.

[Fez]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That’s why it needs to be coupled with the adoption of proportional representation voting.  There are enough votes in SC for the Democratic Party to get a couple of seats with that methodology.

 

And then you end up with a different problem, which is that the party becomes everything and any independence is immediately crushed. A representative votes against the whip, they can just be removed from the party list for proportional representation. Polarization gets even worse.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

And then you end up with a different problem, which is that the party becomes everything and any independence is immediately crushed. A representative votes against the whip, they can just be removed from the party list for proportional representation. Polarization gets even worse.

But we would have more than two parties. We would, hopefully, drop the “big tent” stuff and have issue oriented parties so indepence of elected officials would be less important than the parties doing what they claim they will do.

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

If the split in the Republican party is as bad as they think it could be if Trump forms a party, it seems like a good time for the left to form their own party too. Get rid of this two party stuff.

It really needs to wait until we are literally pissing on Donald Trump's grave.

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, Mindwalker said:

Little known is that a psychiatrist aided and abetted Donald Trump’s presidency by vigorously silencing the warnings of mental health professionals and boosting the president’s ability to remain without accountability. Jeffrey Lieberman is that psychiatrist, and he has been seeking an important mental health position in the Biden administration, which portends danger for our country.

https://hillreporter.com/commentary-trumpism-did-not-end-with-donald-trump-93641

Oh gosh, I'm sorry, but this is ridiculously overblown and alarmist. As an academic psychologist I personally do not agree with the American Psychiatric Association's so-called "Goldwater Rule" and wish they would revise it. But Lieberman was unfortunately absolutely correct that the authors of that book on Trump were technically violating official psychiatric ethics by writing it. And the idea that his pointing this out and the APA abiding by their own long-standing rule is the same thing as "crusading for Trump" or that their stating their position was a "decisive factor" in his not being convicted in his impeachment trials is ludicrous in my opinion. I would be much more concerned about Lieberman's close ties to the pharmaceutical industry in terms of whether or not he should get this job -- and the article linked to which says he's a candidate for the job gives five other possible candidates, and ends up strongly implying the end result will probably be none of those six people will be chosen. 

[SFDanny]

32 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

But we would have more than two parties. We would, hopefully, drop the “big tent” stuff and have issue oriented parties so indepence of elected officials would be less important than the parties doing what they claim they will do.

We have more than two parties, but when it comes to presidential politics, and most federal and state level politics, third parties are a disaster. All kinds of structural and historical reasons for this, but the reality is that the Democratic Party is the only realistic political organization for change in a nationwide context. A horrible reality, but a reality nonetheless.

If one is determined to create a new political party that can make a difference, then it seems to me the only real road to do that is through running third party candidates on the local level and building an organization through that experience. Want a real socialist party? Let's try to run a major US city and show people how we would be different. 

Otherwise, building a new party gets to be only an exercise in how to narrow one's influence in the political struggles that make a difference. I'd much rather see the left follow the example of AOC and DSA in running inside the Democratic Party and actually pushing political solutions from where people are.

There is an old story about Wille Sutton, the famous bank robber. Some reporter asked him why he always robbed banks, and supposedly Willie replied, "because that's where the money is." Willie was right. However, in politics it is not a question of where the money is, but rather, where the people are.

Since the New Deal, and especially since the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act victories in the 1960s the people of this country, in their glorious diversity, have more and more chosen the Democratic Party as the political organization of choice for progressive change. One can bemoan that choice and struggle to change it. Or one can participate in the movement through the choice people have made.

Self isolation, from where the people are in a quixotic party building endeavor is nothing short of political suicide. Even worse it is destructive in achieving  progressive gains. Ask the people who built Henry Wallace's Progressive Party about how that worked out. If you can find them.

Sorry, Ser Scot, but on this one we disagree.

[A True Kaniggit]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Pics or it didn’t happen.

On the next windy day.