U.S. Politics Independance Day edition

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sure, but when was it last this kind of intense? During the Civil Rights Movement? The Civil War?

That's polarization.  Affective, issue, and institutional polarization has not been this high since the Civil War, aye (during the CRM there were still plenty of liberal Republicans and conservative - i.e. Southern - Democrats).  But in the history of measuring American political behavior - which of course didn't start systematically until after WWII - any consistent partisan will remain with their party after a certain age (I put it at 40, although we could quibble on that).

Again, that phenomenon is independent of polarization.  It's more akin to being a fan of a sports team.  Eventually when you've been rooting for the same team long enough you're unlikely to change preferences - even if that team has sucked ass for decades, or you loathe its management, or ownership, etc.

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sure, but when was it last this kind of intense? During the Civil Rights Movement? The Civil War? To admit you were wrong about Trump and/or the Republican party at this point is to basically admit you were wrong about most if not all of your beliefs. That's extra unlikely in this hyperpartisan age.

I think the lesson we should have learned is why politics hadn't been so intense in the US, because US politics has been pretty intense for a while with only a few periods of relative calm and chill. Maybe the 30s to the early 50s weren't so insane, and the 80s were weirdly not crazy intense despite (or possibly because of) us all thinking we'd die in nuclear armageddon. But before that we had routine assassination attempts of POTUS, political riots that caused a whole lot of deaths and property damage, actual brawls with congress, using government spying agencies to attempt to get public figures to kill themselves. Back in the day politicians simply bought or created their own media systems to spit out propaganda - they didn't bother with these middle men. 

I mean really, that's how much Carter fucked things up. After Nixon literally breaking many laws and being run out of office, Dems had all of 4 shitty years before everyone agreed democrats were a bad choice. And then the next one who actually wins throws out most everything about big government plans or new deals or anything of the sort - they curb welfare, go hard on crime, go into a few wars, espouse the 'liberating spirit' of working two or three jobs to make ends meet. I think that period is probably not so horrifying because largely the two parties weren't all that different in any major way from, like, 1978 to 2001 or so. Maybe 2004. 

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

I mean really, that's how much Carter fucked things up. After Nixon literally breaking many laws and being run out of office, Dems had all of 4 shitty years before everyone agreed democrats were a bad choice.

I'm hardly a Carter apologist but this is entirely unfair and wholly naive of underlying trends.  The New Deal coalition was cracking for quite awhile by the time Carter took office and the ideological realignment favored the GOP (i.e. there were far more Southern Democrats turning GOP than liberal Republicans turning Dem).  Reagan's realignment was inevitable after 50 years of Democratic dominance wherein Ike and Nixon largely acquiesced to the opposition party domestically as long as they could confront communism abroad.  Carter's missteps, arrogance, and even incompetence may have exacerbated the shift, but it would have happened anyway.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 minutes ago, DMC said:

Again, that phenomenon is independent of polarization.  It's more akin to being a fan of a sports team.  Eventually when you've been rooting for the same team long enough you're unlikely to change preferences - even if that team has sucked ass for decades, or you loathe its management, or ownership, etc.

But it's the degree to which you root for them, and how that too strengthens with time and is now in hyperdrive. Like if Astros fans supported their team even more after they got caught cheating. That's event based, not a cause of duration. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

But it's the degree to which you root for them

Yes, again, that would be polarization, not partisanship.  The point is many older GOP voters may well NOT be intense Trump supporters.  But they're still gonna vote for him because they're too old to start rooting for the other team.  When you combine those immutable partisanship people with the radically polarized people (albeit obviously there's plenty of overlap), that's how Donald Trump gets 74 million votes.

[TheLastWolf]

5 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

And the sad part is she'll probably not be able to admit she's been wrong for a very long time

Better than Columbus dying thinking he'd discovered India lol

[argonak]

10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

And the sad part is she'll probably not be able to admit she's been wrong for a very long time, if she ever does at all. This is true for basically all of the Trump diehards and many like Starkess' mom, who are loyal Republicans, but claim to not be loyal to him. They've bought in too deeply to a number of lies and it has to be too traumatic for most to admit they were wrong.

Especially when they've rationalized that the left is the true evil so no measure can be too extreme in defeating it. 

As far as I know, my grandmother went to her grave thinking Obama was going to send her to a death camp.  At some point it just becomes a core belief and getting someone to question this cult nonsense is just impossible.  

You can't logic someone out of something they didn't logic themselves into.

[Fez]

10 hours ago, DMC said:

Outside of leaners or independents, virtually nobody over the age of 40 ever changes partisanship and subsequent vote choice (at least at the top of the ballot).  This phenomenon loooong preceded Trump.

I don't think you can get swings as dramatic as West Virginia from 1996 to 2016 without a bunch of over-40 Democratic voters switching to Republicans.

Or the reverse in a state like Vermont, which went from a +10 Democratic state to a +30 state from 2000 to 2008 and never looked back.

I don't think changes that vast and large can just be chalked up just to changes in the electorate composition. Or just to changes among younger voters.

[Ormond]

23 minutes ago, Fez said:

I don't think you can get swings as dramatic as West Virginia from 1996 to 2016 without a bunch of over-40 Democratic voters switching to Republicans.

Or the reverse in a state like Vermont, which went from a +10 Democratic state to a +30 state from 2000 to 2008 and never looked back.

I don't think changes that vast and large can just be chalked up just to changes in the electorate composition. Or just to changes among younger voters.

I think that voting behavior often changes quite a while before party identification, and Presidential voting probably changes before local voting.

That certainly has been the trajectory of my life. I was a Republican as a teenager because my father was. My disillusionment with the Repbulicans began when I was 21 and an alternate delegate to the Virginia state Republican convention that nominated Mills Godwin to succeed Linwood Holton. Linwood Holton is still my favorite politician of all time, and I thought it was horrible the VIrginia Republicans would nominate the former Democrat Holton replaced as his successor.  I voted for Gerald Ford (who I still admire) in 1976, but in 1980 voted for John Anderson. I have voted for the Democratic nominee in every Presidential election since, though I sort of held my nose in voting for Bill Clinton, who I never liked. But I still voted for lots of Republicans on the state and local level throughout the 1980s -- I remember really liking Bill Milliken, who was the Republican governor of Michigan during most of the time I lived there. I still registered as a Republican when I moved to Nebraska in 1986. Some time in the next 10 years I switched my registration to Democrat, but I really don't remember excactly when. And I registered as a Democrat so that I could still vote in a primary; I still today have a hard time identifying as a "Democrat". If a pollster asks what party I am registered as I will answer truthfully, but they usually ask that question as "what do you CONSIDER yourself to be" and I still today will say "Independent" if the question is phrased that way. At this point I cannot see myself ever voting for a Republican for anything again (except in a "jungle primary" result where there are two Republicans running against each other in the general election), but in my heart of hearts I still have the fantasy of voting for a "centrist" party if one that looks like it could win elections is ever created. 

P.S. In terms of party registration, the Republicans didn't beat the Democrats in West Virginia until February of this year:

https://sos.wv.gov/elections/Pages/VoteRegTotals.aspx

[Zorral]

 

8 minutes ago, Ormond said:

. . . in my heart of hearts I still have the fantasy of voting for a "centrist" party if one that looks like it could win elections is ever created. 

For curiosity's sake, Ormond: what do you think centrist on racism and civil rights and voting rights would look like? What kind of platform would it have? When one side believes in having them for all people, and the other side doesn't want them for anybody except themselves, as long as they believe the right sort of religion?

This 'wait, wait, wait' until the right time advice always from the establishment in both parties was as close to centrist as we have gotten, it seems.  Which is no good at all for everyone whose dignity and humanity are overtly attacked in every way every single day by the systemic codes of the legal and criminal systems, and by individuals who do it for every reason from "They are not real people, americans, etc." and also just for cruel fun's sake,  because they can do with impunity. 

[Ormond]

3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

 

For curiosity's sake, Ormond: what do you think centrist on racism and civil rights and voting rights would look like? What kind of platform would it have? When one side believes in having them for all people, and the other side doesn't want them for anybody except themselves, as long as they believe the right sort of religion?

This 'wait, wait, wait' until the right time advice always from the establishment in both parties was as close to centrist as we have gotten, it seems.  Which is no good at all for everyone whose dignity and humanity are overtly attacked in every way every single day by the systemic codes of the legal and criminal systems, and by individuals who do it for every reason from "They are not real people, americans, etc." and also just for cruel fun's sake,  because they can do with impunity. 

I think when I mean a "Centrist" party I mean one that is "liberal" on the issues in your first paragraph but still concerned about limiting the size of the national debt. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

More on Sydney “the Kraken” Powell and Lin “I’m Jesus” Wood being slapped around by a Michigan Federal District Court Judge in a hearing considering sanctions for their horseshit election contest case back in 2020:

https://www.salon.com/2021/07/12/submitted-in-bad-faith-judge-smacks-down-sidney-powells-fantastical-election-lawsuit/

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Ormond said:

I think when I mean a "Centrist" party I mean one that is "liberal" on the issues in your first paragraph but still concerned about limiting the size of the national debt. 

Thank you.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, argonak said:

As far as I know, my grandmother went to her grave thinking Obama was going to send her to a death camp.  At some point it just becomes a core belief and getting someone to question this cult nonsense is just impossible.  

You can't logic someone out of something they didn't logic themselves into.

That was sort of my point though. We're not necessarily seeing normal political behavior. The Republican party has largely become a cult, and I have to assume it's much harder to get a person to quit a cult than a political party.

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Ormond said:

I think when I mean a "Centrist" party I mean one that is "liberal" on the issues in your first paragraph but still concerned about limiting the size of the national debt. 

That's not centrist, because it implies moderate people agree on those things, and I don't think that's remotely true. The notion that financial austerity is some kind of centrist view is pretty insane as well, especially given how unpopular it is across the spectrum of people. 

[Zorral]

It looks as though Adams won the Dem mayoral primary by 1 point.

https://gothamist.com/news/latest-vote-tally-shows-adams-won-less-percentage-point

Quote

 

Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams’ lead for the Democratic nomination for mayor shrunk on Tuesday after the New York City Board of Elections updated their primary tallies.

While the updated numbers don't change the outcome, they show Adams edged out second place finisher Kathryn Garcia, who conceded the race last week, by less than a percentage point. Election rules state a candidate must be within half a percentage point behind their opponent to challenge the results in court. Votes are still being counted this week. . . .

 

This is a profile of the guy who thinks he will be the Rethug candidate, repeating the strategy that Bloomberg used.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/who-is-curtis-sliwa-tabloid-cats.html

 

[Mindwalker]

Wow, the sentences for the jan 6 insurrectionists are shaping up to be... kinda mild, not just for the US. Geeze, they're not white college rapists... I mean, some of them probably are, but that's not what they were indicted for.

[Hereward]

21 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

That's not centrist, because it implies moderate people agree on those things, and I don't think that's remotely true. The notion that financial austerity is some kind of centrist view is pretty insane as well, especially given how unpopular it is across the spectrum of people. 

In that case, what, in your view, could be described as a centrist view, because if financial responsibility, even if you disagree with it, alongside social liberalism isn't potentially centrist, I'm struggling to think what might qualify for you? 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

10 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Wow, the sentences for the jan 6 insurrectionists are shaping up to be... kinda mild, not just for the US. Geeze, they're not white college rapists... I mean, some of them probably are, but that's not what they were indicted for.

I believe these are mostly guilty pleas so mild sentencing shouldn’t be particularly surprising. 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Hereward said:

In that case, what, in your view, could be described as a centrist view, because if financial responsibility, even if you disagree with it, alongside social liberalism isn't potentially centrist, I'm struggling to think what might qualify for you? 

In the US? I'm not sure there's a reasonable basic centrist viewpoint. Most people are partisan now, and the ones who aren't are all over the board as far as where they agree with each party. One could argue that financially liberal and socially conservative is equally centrist in the US, especially with minority groups (which often are significantly more religious as a group). Why would financially conservative and socially liberal specifically be centrist?

Especially since for the last, oh, 40 years we haven't had either party be particularly fiscally conservative?