U.S. Politics / bounced checks and negative balances

[Larry of the Lawn]

Cassandra always gets all the credit for being able to see the future, but nobody ever talks about Laocoon, slain for putting forth the very practical suggestion of simply torching the damn horse.

 

[ThinkerX]

Thing is, there is a 'both sides' issue here that can't be dodged even in a 'trifecta' type situation.  Like it or not, a solid third of the US is of a conservative bent, while most of another third, is at best only tad left of center. Progressives, actual leftists, are maybe a tenth of the populace. 

Way I see it, the way the math works out, both th republicans and the democrats could win or maintain another 'clean sweep.'  However, push a given agenda too hard, be it conservative or liberal, and there WILL be major grassroots blowback.  Imagine some sort of twisted repeat of 1/6 with eight or ten congress people dead, or repeats of the demonstrations/riots that rocked US cities last year, only spreading to conservative areas.

[DMC]

5 hours ago, Kalsandra said:

Because after the election we are fighting to do very basic things despite the winning party winning by 8% more votes.

I know this doesn't have to do with your point but nobody won by 8 percent in 2020 - Biden won by four and a half and the House Dems won by 3.

11 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Like it or not, a solid third of the US is of a conservative bent, while most of another third, is at best only tad left of center. Progressives, actual leftists, are maybe a tenth of the populace. 

This simply isn't true.  The ideology breakdown is about 35/35/25 between conservative, moderate, liberal.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 hours ago, 1066 Larry said:

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?

I think both Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020 were pulled further to the left than they'd otherwise have liked, and that in turn led to them make campaign promises they probably didn't actually support that strongly in private. And I think some of the people who pulled them to the left did so by also making promises they knew they would never be able to deliver on if they actually won.

[ThinkerX]

17 minutes ago, DMC said:

I know this doesn't have to do with your point but nobody won by 8 percent in 2020 - Biden won by four and a half and the House Dems won by 3.

This simply isn't true.  The ideology breakdown is about 35/35/25 between conservative, moderate, liberal.

I said about a third counted as conservative.  We seem to agree there.  I said another third, were at best a tad left of center -  moderates and some progressives.  We seem to agree on that, though some in this group are 'weak leftists' - at least so it seems to me.  I do see 'solid' leftists as being much smaller than the other two groups, which you appear to agree with to a point, though you put those numbers higher.

My concern is the 'perils of the political clean sweep,' - the party that takes that as a mandate for radical change automatically generates blowback on a massive scale, enough to destroy the country.  So either limit the change, acknowledge that a major slice of the populace views the world very differentlty, or get st for a half assed civil. War with no winners

[DMC]

1 minute ago, ThinkerX said:

I do see 'solid' leftists as being much smaller than the other two groups, which you appear to agree with to a point, though you put those numbers higher.

Yes my objection was with you saying "progressives" or "actual leftists" were only about a tenth.  They're about a quarter, which is a pretty significant difference.  Moreover, the trends over the past twenty years are less moderates and more liberals with conservatives remaining constant.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yes my objection was with you saying "progressives" or "actual leftists" were only about a tenth.  They're about a quarter, which is a pretty significant difference.  Moreover, the trends over the past twenty years are less moderates and more liberals with conservatives remaining constant.

I haven't checked in a while and I'm sure you know the numbers. What does it look like when you look at engagement instead of identification? 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

What does it look like when you look at engagement instead of identification? 

Not sure what you mean by this?

[Durckad]

5 hours 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.

Trump can run on whatever agenda or platform he wants and his cult would eat it up regardless of what it stood for. And his detractors would likely see it for the snake oil that it is.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

Not sure what you mean by this?

I'm not going to dispute the 35/35/25 split, but we also know a large percentage of those folks who self-identified don't actually give a shit. Sometimes it feels like that crowd is actually the plurality. Perhaps it would be better to track behavior than how individuals identify, especially when those labels can mean different things to different people.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sometimes it feels like that crowd is actually the plurality. Perhaps it would be better to track behavior than how individuals identify, especially when those labels can mean different things to different people.

Ah.  Well, it's true, Gallup - rather famously (or infamously) within the industry - often tracks just "adults" rather than "likely voters" or even "registered voters."  However, when it comes to ideological breakdown, the difference between adults and the other two checks has consistently been found to be negligible.  To be clear, that's certainly not the case on everything, but I'll take Gallup's numbers on this over anyone else's to give you the best portrait of the electorate.

[DMC]

Also, in terms of the ideology labels meaning "different things to different people," I think it should be noted that only 4 percent of self-identified Republicans identify as liberal and only 12 percent of self-identified Democrats identify as conservative.  I'd say the respondents are doing a pretty damn good job properly placing themselves.

[Starkess]

14 hours ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

First, I'd ask what of substance are they going to accomplish with him? An extra 1.5 trillion, and I say "extra" assuming the bipartisan bill goes through. But that will be stripped of the meaningful climate provisions and include heavier restrictions on the child tax credit than what Republicans were calling for. 

I'd argue nothing of significance is happening at this point. No matter what is in the 1.5 trillion "compromise" will be drowned out by what was removed from the 3.5 trillion bill. Dems need to play the long game with some strategy. Democratic voters seem demoralized a year out from primaries, and if you want something like Georgia to happen again, you can't be demoralized. The Dems, if they can't pass anything, if it looks like they control the Senate, then that is worse, in my opinion, than the narrative of betrayal. 

In what world is 1.5 trillion of spending insignificant? There are some really good programs in that bill! Is it everything one might want? No, of course not. I'm especially disappointed about the gutting of the clean power initiatives. But holy fucking hell, it's not nothing and I sure as shit want it to pass!

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

I know this doesn't have to do with your point but nobody won by 8 percent in 2020 - Biden won by four and a half and the House Dems won by 3.

81 million vs 75 million. Difference is 6 million more votes. 6m/75m is about 8% more votes. 

I chose the words for a reason. 

 

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Kalsandra said:

81 million vs 75 million. Difference is 6 million more votes. 6m/75m is about 8% more votes. 

I chose the words for a reason. 

 

First, Biden won by a little over 7 million votes not 6 - around 81.2 to 74.2.  Regardless, that's a terribly misleading statement.

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, DMC said:

First, Biden won by a little over 7 million votes not 6 - around 81.2 to 74.2.  Regardless, that's a terribly misleading statement.

Even better then - close to 9%  

And I think its misleading only if you're talking about voter share. When you start talking about the absolute values - and the magnitude - talking about it as a percentage greater is more meaningful of an indicator of how much more it is.

 

Another way to say it is that Biden won a game 100 to 91 ( or really 81 to 74) Normally you wouldn't say he got 54% of the points scored - you would say he won by 7. Or you'd say he did 9% better than the other guy. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Kalsandra said:

And I think its misleading only if you're talking about voter share. When you start talking about the absolute values - and the magnitude - talking about it as a percentage greater is more meaningful of an indicator of how much more it is.

When you say "the winning party won by 8% more votes," the overwhelming majority of people are going to take that to mean the winning party won by 8 points.  Not the difference between the winning and losing parties' votes was 8 percent of the losing party's share of the votes.  It's not a big deal or anything, but I think that's pretty obvious.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

2 hours ago, Starkess said:

In what world is 1.5 trillion of spending insignificant? There are some really good programs in that bill! Is it everything one might want? No, of course not. I'm especially disappointed about the gutting of the clean power initiatives. But holy fucking hell, it's not nothing and I sure as shit want it to pass!

Depends on how you look at it.

The bill in its original form was very ambitious. Then it got cut in half, and now that's been cut in half again. If you compare the original bill, to what it's now it feels insignificant, even more so, when you look what parts have died. The clean power initiatives being effectively gone, is particularly hard kick in the teeth. So yeah, when you look at what was promised and what is left, this bill feels pretty toothless on some significant policy promises.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

10 hours ago, DMC said:

This simply isn't true.  The ideology breakdown is about 35/35/25 between conservative, moderate, liberal.

5% are completely non-ideological?

[OnionAhaiReborn]

19 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

5% are completely non-ideological?

5% don't know their ass from their elbow.