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U.S. Politics / bounced checks and negative balances


DireWolfSpirit

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1 hour ago, argonak said:

So yeah, vote for me and I'll at least keep them from completly destroying our democracy

Most people I know describe voting in the U.S. as picking the least between two evils.

Been like this since the Republican occupation after stealing the 2000 election and we first discovered our system of checks and balances were smoke and fu@kn mirrors.

I think a NYT reporter actually went into the archives and hand counted the ballots and it was discovered Gore actually had won based on the count. The count that our kangaroo courts stopped.

It's hard to come back from such depths. So vast swaths of Americans stick to turning a blind eye, guzzling their 12 packs and voting for whichever hillbill candidate serves up the South with the best coded racist slogans.

Occasionally a gifted orator can breakthrough the cycle (Obama)  but Trump was the reversion to the new mean. In 2024 we can enjoy the next version of this because Biden is flailing like a pinata and it's hard to see him turning around the voter anger that is redlining right now.

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All fiction, i.e. not history.

also, to describe them at an intermediate level of generality: convict, monarchist, vigilante, and terrorists. 

 

a NYT reporter actually went into the archives and hand counted the ballots and it was discovered Gore actually had won based on the count. The count that our kangaroo courts stopped.

i wouldn't give dispositive weight to this set of allegations. it's unlikely that the purported fraud would've made much difference--9/11 would've still happened, and the national security apparatus was likely unaffected by the election.  more importantly, it's best not to focus on close defeats such as this solely through the lens of fraud--it distorts the overall picture, the minutiae of alleged wrongdoing by party opponents.  in the end, we still must follow comrade guevara's advice: 

Quote

Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.

guerrilla warfare, I.1 (emphasis added). we have a process, and that process can be made to work.

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4 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I think a NYT reporter actually went into the archives and hand counted the ballots and it was discovered Gore actually had won based on the count. The count that our kangaroo courts stopped.

One reporter counted six million Florida ballots accurately, by hand?  That is quite the undertaking. 

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6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

All fiction, i.e. not history.

I was mostly being a smartass but in relation to the discussion "hope" clearly has broad public appeal and is incredibly well-founded as the basis for a political campaign.

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19 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

One reporter counted six million Florida ballots accurately, by hand?  That is quite the undertaking. 

https://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/

Bush also probably would have won had the state conducted the limited recount of only four heavily Democratic counties that Al Gore asked for, the study found.

On the other hand, 

the study also found that Gore probably would have won, by a range of 42 to 171 votes out of 6 million cast, had there been a broad recount of all disputed ballots statewide.

However, Gore never asked for such a recount. The Florida Supreme Court ordered only a recount of so-called "undervotes," about 62,000 ballots where voting machines didn’t detect any vote for a presidential candidate.

I understated the participants the above article talks about the study I think 8 news organizations undertook.

 

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1 hour ago, argonak said:

No one would vote for someone whose campaign was "look, I won't be able to accomplish anything because the system is so broken if my party doesn't get a 2/3 majority we can't accomplish anything.  Oh and by the way half the states are so gerrymandered that the minority party has a DOMINANT majority in their legislatures.  So yeah, vote for me and I'll at least keep them from completly destroying our democracy for a couple years before you all get complacent and your moron neighbors vote for an actually intelligent authoritarian (probably by accident.)"

All the democrats have to sell is "hope" at this point because things are so freaking boned at the congressional level.  We've all let the GOP do this to us over the years through our inattention, and at this rate we'll see the end of any real democracy in 2024.  With the court in their pocket all they have to do is get the executive office back and any reasonably intelligent authoritarian will just do whatever the hell he wants until the whole system falls apart, while the media "discusses both sides of the issue" or gets off on filming the fire.

Caveat:  I may be a bit bitter and hopeless today.

Perhaps it’s past time someone leveled with the people. Our functioning democracy is splitting at the seams, and like with the climate crisis it’s happening a lot faster than many could have foreseen. Ignoring this sad reality will do nothing to prevent it from happening.

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3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Perhaps it’s past time someone leveled with the people. Our functioning democracy is splitting at the seams, and like with the climate crisis it’s happening a lot faster than many could have foreseen. Ignoring this sad reality will do nothing to prevent it from happening.

Perhaps Biden should emulate Carter's malaise speech.  Worked out great for him.

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splitting at the seams,

is it though? the US just had the largest election in its history, which went forward during a pandemic, with engagement from the far left to the far right.  certainly the losers complained loudly about their fantasies, but that's not new. the far right will always have a persecution fantasy--recall how this DIY political pornography proceeded unabated even when trump won. they need their dolchstoßlegende and their lugenpresse and their blutfahne like i need historical materialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat--it's what makes them what they are.

 

Trump's Truth Social app has already been hacked within hours of its launch, and his account is posting some weird sh*t already

less a hack than amateurism.  they left their registration page unsecured before it launched, so people obtained early access and snagged  all the predictable screen names: trump, pence, et al. the various trump accounts went hog wild.

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1 hour ago, DMC said:

Perhaps Biden should emulate Carter's malaise speech.  Worked out great for him.

It's kind of funny trying to picture optimistic Joe Biden going full Howard Beale from the Oval Office. 

1 hour ago, sologdin said:

splitting at the seams,

is it though? the US just had the largest election in its history, which went forward during a pandemic, with engagement from the far left to the far right.  certainly the losers complained loudly about their fantasies, but that's not new. the far right will always have a persecution fantasy--recall how this DIY political pornography proceeded unabated even when trump won. they need their dolchstoßlegende and their lugenpresse and their blutfahne like i need historical materialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat--it's what makes them what they are.

But it's more than just complaining loudly. The response to losing is to undermine elections nationwide going forward, and worse, we can't say with confidence we know what will happen if Biden is reelected and Republicans control both chambers of Congress in 2024. Not sure anyone could have said they saw that coming ten years ago.

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3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yes, it’s absolutely true that Biden campaigned on promises he probably wasn’t going to be able to keep. He likely wouldn’t have been able to deliver on 10% of his agenda if Democrats didn’t get lucky in GA. We also have to acknowledge that many of these promises were made because candidates to the left of him were promising even more unlikely to pass policies. And frankly part of the reason the Republican party has gone completely insane is because the establishment has been promising their base policies they never had any intent of pursuing, and now Frankenstein’s monster is running amuck.

There are a few campaign promises that don't require congressional action.  

Student loan debt relief, vaccine IP waivers, etc.  

Re: bolded- Out of curiosity, are you saying that Biden made promises he never intended to keep, and that other candidates made him do that?

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, sologdin said:

splitting at the seams,

is it though? the US just had the largest election in its history, which went forward during a pandemic, with engagement from the far left to the far right.  certainly the losers complained loudly about their fantasies, but that's not new. the far right will always have a persecution fantasy--recall how this DIY political pornography proceeded unabated even when trump won. they need their dolchstoßlegende and their lugenpresse and their blutfahne like i need historical materialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat--it's what makes them what they are.

Yes, it is. Because after the election we are fighting to do very basic things despite the winning party winning by 8% more votes. And after an actual coup attempt to stop the results of that election occurred, with the people responsible for said coup successfully blocking actual prosecution of the responsible. 

And the end result of all that was states actively cracking down even further on things. 

I mean, Russia has elections too. I'm not sure that a successful running of an election is quite the win you think it is. 

 

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30 minutes ago, Kalsandra said:

Yes, it is. Because after the election we are fighting to do very basic things despite the winning party winning by 8% more votes. And after an actual coup attempt to stop the results of that election occurred, with the people responsible for said coup successfully blocking actual prosecution of the responsible. 

And the end result of all that was states actively cracking down even further on things. 

I mean, Russia has elections too. I'm not sure that a successful running of an election is quite the win you think it is. 

 

We are pretty far from Russia yet. Also, we were even further from that in the 1990's, when the Democratic party achieved very little progress and in some cases actively unwound progress.

It is concerning though that Trump might run to the left of Biden economically though if they slice up Biden's agenda too much.

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8 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

We are pretty far from Russia yet. Also, we were even further from that in the 1990's, when the Democratic party achieved very little progress and in some cases actively unwound progress.

It is concerning though that Trump might run to the left of Biden economically though if they slice up Biden's agenda too much.

I'm not saying we're at Russia levels of autocratic rule yet. But the notion that we ran an election in a pandemic should not be the salve that I think @sologdinintended it to be.

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do very basic things despite the winning party winning by 8% more votes

should i be more impressed by this than i am?  it's kinda a soporific factoid, isn't it? it's similar to the lament that occurs when the winner of the national popular vote is nevertheless not sworn as president--the aggregate popular total doesn't determine the winner of state contests. it's anti-majoritarian in effect, but it is consistent with the rules that we have in a federalist system. those rules could be changed, and that'd be fine. but is it coming apart at the seams? it appears by contrast to be operating exactly according to specification. that's frustrating from a policy perspective--but there's a value, i think, in de-escalating apocalyptic talk to the extent that people who think the world is ending are vulnerable to lumpenization which means a) more violence and b) less voting. we saw both with trump's cultists.  this sort of apocalyptic lumpenization is obvious on the right--but lefties who think the sky is falling contribute in their own way.

 

 response to losing is to undermine elections nationwide

they prefer policies that have a tendency to suppress turnout, sure.  do those polices, which don't quite turn the clock back to 1960, much less 1860, therefore undermine the election process or damage an abstractly conceived democracy? that is, it was democratic at its foundation, despite the three-fifths compromise and coverture and property requirements for voting.

i ask because these complaints are made routinely--that the institutions are in crisis, that the country itself may be endangered--but four years of the trump regime didn't amount to much difference from what went before him--i awaited his gotterdammerung but missed it if it arrived. his supreme court blitzkrieg resulted in a pro-choice ruling, a pro-LGBTQ ruling, a pro-native ruling. his exercise of the fuhrer prinzip failed almost at every critical moment when persons below him resigned or disobeyed rather than act contrary to law. the attempt to overturn the election, however unprecedented, was a 61-1 rout in the courts--it was not ever close or ever in doubt; the only victory was a consent judgment. as outlandish as the substance of the fascist allegations were, the formal process was without error--and that's what matters, isn't it? if we care about elections, then all that matters is that they have a set of formal rules and that those rules are followed, irrespective of which policy preferences prevail?

regarding those policy preferences, however--the trump cultists said that biden is a apocalyptic socialist, but that's been just more variance around the historical mean.  am accordingly not seeing much qualitative distinction before or after the trump regime, aside from notable aesthetic differences as well as well known positions on a handful of glib cultural issues. trump's major legislative change was literally a quantitative amendment to the tax code, of course in a pro-capitalist direction, along with the CARES act's liberality to large concerns, again a quantitative matter.

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1 minute ago, sologdin said:

do very basic things despite the winning party winning by 8% more votes

should i be more impressed by this than i am?  it's kinda a soporific factoid, isn't it? it's similar to the lament that occurs when the winner of the national popular vote is nevertheless not sworn as president--the aggregate popular total doesn't determine the winner of state contests. it's anti-majoritarian in effect, but it is consistent with the rules that we have in a federalist system.

Yeah, I think that you should be more impressed by that as far as a leading indication things are falling apart.

1 minute ago, sologdin said:

 response to losing is to undermine elections nationwide

they prefer policies that have a tendency to suppress turnout, sure.  do those polices, which don't quite turn the clock back to 1960, much less 1860, therefore undermine the election process or damage an abstractly conceived democracy? that is, it was democratic at its foundation, despite the three-fifths compromise and coverture and property requirements for voting.

i ask because these complaints are made routinely--that the institutions are in crisis, that the country itself may be endangered--but four years of the trump regime didn't amount to much difference from what went before him--i awaited his gotterdammerung but was missed it if it arrived. 

I think you very much missed it. We got very different behavior on nominating justices, we got absurd foreign policy, rampant corruption and covering up of crimes at a far higher level than before, and we got an actual insurrection attempt after the election. I'm not sure what you're looking for more than that, but I think those are kind of big deals!

1 minute ago, sologdin said:

his supreme court blitzkrieg resulted in a pro-choice ruling, a pro-LGBTQ ruling, a pro-native ruling. his exercise of the fuhrer prinzip failed almost at every critical moment when persons below him resigned or disobeyed rather than act contrary to law. the attempt to overturn the election, however unprecedented, was a 61-1 route in the courts--it was not ever close or ever in doubt; the only victory was a consent judgment. as outlandish as the substance of the fascist allegations were, the formal process was without error--and that's what matters, isn't it? if we care about elections, then all that matters is that they have a set of formal rules and that those rules are followed, irrespective of which policy preferences prevail? 

Don't mistake outcome for process. 

1 minute ago, sologdin said:

regarding those policy preferences, however--the trump cultists said that biden is a apocalyptic socialist, but that's been just more variance around the historical mean.  am accordingly not seeing much qualitative distinction before or after the trump regime, aside from notable aesthetic differences as well as well known positions on a handful of glib cultural issues. trump's major legislative change was literally a quantitative amendment to the tax code, of course in a pro-capitalist direction, along with the CARES act's liberality to large concerns, again a quantitative matter.

If all you care about is legislative changes, sure! I think there were a whole lot more things that changed, and I think that this is both an indicator of myopic thinking and an indicator of things being very fucked - namely, laws are just not the way that the US is routinely governed any more.

And if we are not a nation of laws, that seems like a problem!

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