Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Dr. MID-Nite]

8 hours ago, Grailknight said:

 

 

Unfortunately, we are in the midst of one proven dumpster fire that keeps adding flammables by the hour. People wanted change from the "politics as usual" and Trump is the result.

 

Even if Biden can only do one thing like Obama, such as not having a single member of his administration or campaign  "sent to prison,  it would be a huge improvement. I refuse to settle for this current situation and give no respect or sympathy to those that cry "it Might be worse". Failing to take the least bad option is just plain failing whether by choice or abstention.

 

And again I ask why has our bar for governing has been set so low? Probably because the people have no real say in the process anymore. I want good governing not "well at least it's not bottom of the barrel" governing. We shouldn't be settling for that as a nation. Trump has actually worsened that issue by setting the bar so low that it basically touches the ground. Personally, I think our system has such endemic corruption that it is no longer even viewed as the evil it is. I want to wipe the slate clean, not "settle". Sadly, I'll probably pass away before any significant social/political change is made in this country and that makes me both profoundly sad and steaming mad at the same time.

[Ranxerox]

4 hours ago, GM Joe said:

<snip>

I Every time someone even mildly progressive starts to gain traction in the presidential race, the party elites and media unite to put and end to their campaign.

<snip>

 

And how exactly did that happen this time around?

 

It seemed to me that that it was the voters of South Carolina, not party elites or the media, that put an end to Bernie Sander's campaign.  Prior to the South Carolina primary, there were a lot of centrist running on the theory that Joe Biden was a weak candidate and that they could steal centrist vote from him.  After South Carolina, it became apparent that beating Joe Biden wasn't as easy as they thought and that none of them were really up to the challenge.  Maybe party elites encouraged them to leave the race, but they would not have done so if the voters of South Carolina  had not made it clear that there was not reason for them to stay.

 

After the hoard of centrist candidates left the race, their centrist supporters chose Biden and not Bernie.  Yes, the candidates endorsed Biden, but such endorsements aren't binding.  If they were, Bernie Sander's supporters wouldn't be wrestling on whether to vote for Joe Biden.  After all, Bernie has endorsed Joe so the matter would already be decided for them.  But no, voters decide for themselves. On a national level in head to head competitions, a majority of Democrat voters prefer Joe Biden to Bernie Sanders and always have.  It was only the split field with so many centrist vying for the moderate vote, that ever made it look like the American people might feel differently.

[Ragitsu]

17 minutes ago, Ranxerox said:

After the hoard of centrist candidates left the race, their centrist supporters chose Biden and not Bernie.  Yes, the candidates endorsed Biden, but such endorsements aren't binding.  If they were, Bernie Sander's supporters wouldn't be wrestling on whether to vote for Joe Biden.  After all, Bernie has endorsed Joe so the matter would already be decided for them.  But no, voters decide for themselves. On a national level in head to head competitions, a majority of Democrat voters prefer Joe Biden to Bernie Sanders and always have.  It was only the split field with so many centrist vying for the moderate vote, that ever made it look like the American people might feel differently.

 

I'd like to think Bernie Sanders' supporters favored him because of his policies (as well as his principles) and wouldn't unquestioningly obey him merely because he spoke.

[Joe Walsh]

24 minutes ago, Ranxerox said:

And how exactly did that happen this time around?

 

I appreciate your perspective, but I've had this conversation too many times already.

 

Besides: not the point.

[Ranxerox]

8 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

I'd like to think Bernie Sanders' supporters favored him because of his policies and wouldn't unquestioningly obey him merely because he spoke.

 

Yes, and that was my point about the followers of Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto O'Roarke, Steyers and all the other centrist candidates that left the ring.  With their first choice gone they could have turned to Sanders.  They knew who Sanders was. They had plenty of opportunity to see him in the debates. He had ran advertisements in both new and traditional media.  Still, despite know Sanders and his positions, they decided picked Biden over Sanders.  They looked at Biden's policies made a decision that  better or at least more realistic.

[Ranxerox]

6 minutes ago, GM Joe said:

 

I appreciate your perspective, but I've had this conversation too many times already.

 

Besides: not the point.

 

I appreciate the too many times already statement.  I think we all feel like we are stuck on wheels that we can't seem to get off of right now.

 

However, while it wasn't your main point, it was something that you threw into your post and a statement that I have heard of a lot.  Normally, when i hear statements about party elites and/or the media, I let them pass rather than wasting my breath refuting them.  This time I didn't.  

[Ragitsu]

5 hours ago, GM Joe said:

And I suppose I will reluctantly vote for Biden. But goddamn, I can't help but feel that's part of the problem. Every time we vote for the lesser of two evils, we move the center further right. Voting for the lesser of two evils made Trump's rise possible. What was crazy right-wing stuff when I was a kid is now mainstream. And it's partly my fault.

 

I used to joke about "Pepsi versus Coke"; now it seems "More grope versus Less grope" is topical.

[Joe Walsh]

49 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

I used to joke about "Pepsi versus Coke"; now it seems "More grope versus Less grope" is topical.

 

Sadly, yes. Ugh. So creepy.

[DShomshak]

Biden emerging as the presumptive nominee gives me a new perspective on a semi-joke I heard last year from, I think, a local pundit on the KUOW "Week in Review" program. He suggested that Americans' Presidential choices had entered a cycle of lurching replacements of each president with the candidate most unlike them. George W. Bush had a silver-spoon background but was good at playing "folksy" in his incoherent way. He was replaced by Obama, an erudite and eloquent self-made black man who promised a post-racial America. He was replaced by the word-salad crudeness, filthy lucre and race-baiting of Donald Trump. Next president, he suggested, would be a lesbian Latina.

 

Well, no -- but Joe Biden is indeed the Anti-Trump in many ways. A career politician with decades of experience. Not eloquent, and a bit handier than is comfortable for modern sensibilities, but a man who seems to like nearly everyone, including ideological and political opponents, and can work with them to get what he wants.

 

On a deeper level, he appears to be humble, or at least as humble as someone can be whose passion is office. Some months back, ATC aired an interview with Biden in which he talked about his crisis of faith when his wife died. How could God inflict such suffering on him? What brought him out, he said, was a Hagar the Horrible cartoon. Hagar is standing on a rock in a stormy sea with his longship sinking behind him, and he's crying out, "Why me, O Lord?" And in the next panel, the reply thunders down from the sky, "WHY NOT?" Biden said his thought was: Lots of people suffer. What makes me so special that God should look out for me and mine, more than anyone else?

 

This is about as far from Donald Trump's malignant, self-aggrandizing narcissism as I can imagine. And if there's one thing the presidency of Donald Trump should have taught us, it's that character matters.

 

Heck, even if Biden made the story up it makes him a better man than Trump: At least it shows Biden knows what a humble person looks like and cares enough to try impersonating one.

 

Yes, Biden has pushed policy positions that I've disagreed with, and I wish he had more verbal acuity -- it was dire, watching him on the debate stage, apparently baffled at the abrupt turns his own mouth made. But president who likes other people and wants to cajole rather than defeat and destroy is not nothing.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Ragitsu]

[DShomshak]

And as for the US being steadily pulled to the right: In some areas, yes. In other areas, we've shot left further than I would have imagined possible when I was younger. Thirty years ago, I would have told you a black president was impossible, but each generation is measurably less bigoted than the one before. (Viz. interracial unions, and people who consider themselves multiracial.) And same-sex-marriage? I'd have thought there'd be civil war before the American people would allow it, beyond a few ultra-liberal enclaves like San Francisco. But it's the law of the land, and a pretty solid majority accepts it. Large sections of corporate America have decided it's good business to back LGB rights (not sure how they feel about the T or further letters), to the point of strong-arming Governor Mike Pence on the issue... successfully.

 

One reason that many people on the far right are so loud, so angry and so energetic is that they see the grave of history opening at their feet, ready to swallow them and all they hold dear. That they work so hard, and fight so dirty to win politically, is that they know perfectly well that on many key issues they have lost the cultural struggle and will never live to see a majority once more agree with them. Persuasion having failed, they seek power to impose their views by force.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Ragitsu]

20 hours ago, DShomshak said:

And as for the US being steadily pulled to the right: In some areas, yes. In other areas, we've shot left further than I would have imagined possible when I was younger. Thirty years ago, I would have told you a black president was impossible, but each generation is measurably less bigoted than the one before. (Viz. interracial unions, and people who consider themselves multiracial.) And same-sex-marriage? I'd have thought there'd be civil war before the American people would allow it, beyond a few ultra-liberal enclaves like San Francisco. But it's the law of the land, and a pretty solid majority accepts it. Large sections of corporate America have decided it's good business to back LGB rights (not sure how they feel about the T or further letters), to the point of strong-arming Governor Mike Pence on the issue... successfully.

 

One reason that many people on the far right are so loud, so angry and so energetic is that they see the grave of history opening at their feet, ready to swallow them and all they hold dear. That they work so hard, and fight so dirty to win politically, is that they know perfectly well that on many key issues they have lost the cultural struggle and will never live to see a majority once more agree with them. Persuasion having failed, they seek power to impose their views by force.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

Oh, socially speaking? Yes, we've moved the needle left in a number of ways. I'm not ungrateful that people have put their reputations and lives on the line to ensure that the everyman isn't going to be discriminated against if they are gay or possess a skin tone darker than Morticia's Addam's...er...you know what.

 

The economic factor troubles me most. It is a trifling matter for a modern day politician or business to chant about diversity and "We're all in this together" and all that fuzzy-wuzzy kumbaya type pablum. No, what happens is that the social inequality which is invariably tied to dire economic straits gets focused on...but it's just the one angle: one facet. Minority populations (ethnic minorities, to be clear) that have been chronically disadvantaged for decades aren't necessarily going to get ahead if all you do is you tell people they're equal to everyone else. You can eradicate a good portion of this malignance if you address the underlying rot instead of dousing it with gallon upon gallon of perfume before declaring "Mission accomplished". "Socially liberal but economically conservative" (or any close enough description) quickly becomes a self-evident contradiction once you recognize that the latter attitude hinders or even outright reverses reconstructive attempts based around the former.

 

 

[megaplayboy]

The lesser of two evils is, by definition, less evil.  A conscientious voter/citizen's first duty is harm reduction, imo.  Biden will bring positive, constructive public change in many areas, perhaps not as sweeping as many would like, but absolutely the changes will be for the better.  A presidential incumbent whose own party refuses to hold him accountable or responsible for anything, or say no to his worst impulses, will be completely unrestrained should he win reelection, the very last line of accountability left.  As someone who is well left of center, this is an absolute no-brainer call for me.  

[Ragitsu]

Perplexing: those usual suspects that rail against "evil government" tend to favor state/local governments (frequently by touting the importance of "states' rights") while directing their ire against Washington D.C. but, in this particular situation, they're giving the federal government a pass while harrying state/local governments.

[Matt the Bruins]

Your mistake is looking for logic and consistency in a landscape where neither is native.

[megaplayboy]

45 keeps saying that we're fighting an "invisible enemy" and beating it.  But...if the enemy is invisible, how do we know we're beating it?  

[TrickstaPriest]

Politics isn't about ideals, but narrative.  That is to say, who is controlling the narrative, controls the ideals.

[Joe Walsh]

It's absolutely true that socially we have had real progress. Not uniformly across the country, and there is still resistance to all of it -- widespread resistance, even. But the support ratio has definitely flipped on a lot of things. And that is unqualifiedly good.

 

But on the issues that the wealthy care the most about, the movement is ever in their favor. Sure, after they get a large tax cut, the D's may come in there and give them a tiny tax increase, but then the next R will just give them another large cut. The D's may do a little regulation here and there to clean up the environment or some such, but the R's will just undo that and more. And so on.

 

And all the while things that would do the most to help people move up the ladder are off the table. At best, we get funhouse mirror versions of those things, like the Heritage Foundation inspired ACA. Or we fight like hell, finally get a small win on some issue legislatively, and then it's undone by the courts.

 

To be clear, I'm not saying everything is terrible and hopeless. I'm not saying Biden will be uniformly bad. He will probably do what he can, within the limits of what his campaign donors (insurance companies, banks, wall street, etc.) will allow.  Which is better than we're getting now, and will be critically important for some people. Which is why I always vote for the lesser evil...making me complicit in evil.

[Ragitsu]

49 minutes ago, megaplayboy said:

45 keeps saying that we're fighting an "invisible enemy" and beating it.  But...if the enemy is invisible, how do we know we're beating it?  

 

...that he continually chooses to frame our calamity in martial terms is in-freaking-furiating. I would not put it past him to keep this fire burning so that he can eventually direct the United States of America to actual war once he decides it is politically advantageous and financially realistic. Granted, we might not see an overt battle with China, but a cold war is certainly possible and a plain old hot war with another nation is never off the table.

[megaplayboy]

30 minutes ago, GM Joe said:

It's absolutely true that socially we have had real progress. Not uniformly across the country, and there is still resistance to all of it -- widespread resistance, even. But the support ratio has definitely flipped on a lot of things. And that is unqualifiedly good.

 

But on the issues that the wealthy care the most about, the movement is ever in their favor. Sure, after they get a large tax cut, the D's may come in there and give them a tiny tax increase, but then the next R will just give them another large cut. The D's may do a little regulation here and there to clean up the environment or some such, but the R's will just undo that and more. And so on.

 

And all the while things that would do the most to help people move up the ladder are off the table. At best, we get funhouse mirror versions of those things, like the Heritage Foundation inspired ACA. Or we fight like hell, finally get a small win on some issue legislatively, and then it's undone by the courts.

 

To be clear, I'm not saying everything is terrible and hopeless. I'm not saying Biden will be uniformly bad. He will probably do what he can, within the limits of what his campaign donors (insurance companies, banks, wall street, etc.) will allow.  Which is better than we're getting now, and will be critically important for some people. Which is why I always vote for the lesser evil...making me complicit in evil.

FYI the rest of the Heritage Foundation plan involved "phasing out" Medicare and Medicaid, so the ACA is actually a vast improvement over the plan. it's also why I can get health insurance now, for the record.  Millions are still not covered, but millions more have gotten coverage (affordable coverage) as a result of that compromise legislation.  Incremental change isn't worthless.  

[Lord Liaden]

I want to compliment my fellow forumites on holding a measured, respectful, intelligent debate on these issues, allowing contrary viewpoints to be expressed and countering them with reasonable arguments. This is as rare as hen's teeth on the Internet, and a testament to the quality of the community we've built here.

[Badger]

16 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

I, for one, am sick of choosing between the lesser of two evils and allowing politicians to have my vote by default.

 

Yeah, I will probably vote the same as 2016, nobody.

 

I have reached a point then where my vote has to be at least nominally earned.

[Badger]

14 hours ago, GM Joe said:

I'm struggling with this election as well

 

On the other hand, the evidence suggests Trump could be an existential threat to American democracy. One that our sociopolitical system seems unable to deal with. Do I want us to end up like Hungary or Russia? Absolutely not. Coming back from that costs blood, not votes...and may not be possible with today's surveillance technology.

 

 

MY biggest worry is that the Dems main only grip with that is the fact they aren't the ones in charge to do it.  The one common demonimator I seem to find with the 2 parties is that they both like authoritarianism (or at least with the seesaw of authoritarianism vs libertarianism-the much fatter kid is on the former side).  And seem to differ mostly on the issues they want to inflict with it.  One side may or may not have more benevolent intentions or at least their issues might be more benevolent for such a take.  But, past a certain line, I don't feel comfortable with such.

[Ranxerox]

5 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Oh, socially speaking? Yes, we've moved the needle left in a number of ways. I'm not ungrateful that people have put their reputations and lives on the line to ensure that the everyman isn't going to be discriminated against if they are gay or possess a skin tone darker than Morticia's Addam's...er...you know what.

 

The economic factor troubles me most. It is a trifling matter for a modern day politician or business to chant about diversity and "We're all in this together" and all that fuzzy-wuzzy kumbaya type pablum. No, what happens is that the social inequality which is invariably tied with dire economic straits gets focused on...but it's just the one angle: one facet. Minority populations (ethnic minorities, to be clear) that have been chronically disadvantaged for decades aren't necessarily going to get ahead if all you do is you tell people they're equal to everyone else. You can eradicate a good portion of this malignance if you address the underlying rot instead of dousing it with gallon upon gallon of perfume before declaring "Mission accomplished". "Socially liberal but economically conservative" (or any close enough description) quickly becomes a self-evident contradiction once you recognize that the latter attitude hinders or even outright reverses reconstructive attempts based around the former.

 

 

 

I agree.  For our corporate overlords, greater rights for LGBT and racial and ethnic minorities are cheap consolation prizes to hand out as they tighten their grip on our nation's money and power.  The ever growing income income divide that separates the rich from the rest of us has gone from being an disturbing and odious reality to an existential threat.  The climate scientist of the world have let us know that quick and drastic action is required to prevent the worst possible affects of climate change from coming to pass.  Yet, still the billionaire class and their political and media flunkies resist efforts to address climate change because to address it might in the short run make them a little bit less wealthy.

 

So we agree about the problem.  The question become how to solve it.  With the largely unfettered privilege of the rich, our current age if often likened to the Gilded Age of the late 1800s.  It was the 4 year depression known as the  Panic of 1893 that strengthened the Progressive Movement and allowed for the election of a Republican controlled House and Senate (back when Republicans were still kind of the good guys) and Teddy Roosevelt.  Although Teddy was born into wealth and supported corporations, he did believe that federal controls were needed to curb the excesses of corporations and extremely wealthy.  From this desire, Roosevelt's Square Deal was born.

 

I think that Biden might want to be Teddy Roosevelt (after all what US president doesn't want Teddy), but I don't really think he has the charisma to pull it off. He might surprise me though, or maybe in 2024 or 2028 we might get president that is up to the challenge.  It isn't enough though to get the right president. Republicans are no longer the good guys, and both houses of congress need to be flipped for any sort of progressive agenda to be passed.  Right now the electoral drubbing Democrats took in 2010 still weighs against that.  It gave Republicans control of state houses across the country in time to allow them to draw the electoral maps following the 2010 census and gerrymander the districts.  

 

With the 2020 census we have a chance to redraw the congressional maps, if we can win back the statehouses.  The current gerrymandered maps make that a tall order but not impossible.  The trick to gerrymandering is to win as many districts as possible with the fewest possible votes.  This is accomplished by creating a handful of districts which your opponent wins by landslide while creating bunch of districts that you have just enough voters to reliably win.  The downside to this is strategy is in sea change elections you can loose almost everything because you have created a large number of safe(ish) districts and no truly safe districts.  We need to make 2020 a sea change election, so that once we get our Teddy Roosevelt they have a congress willing to pass the Square/New/Green Deal.

 

tl;dr - If it bothers you, forget the White House. Just make sure that we win the state houses.  

[Lord Liaden]

The American federal government gets most of the public attention, but a great deal of the business of governance occurs at the state and municipal level, which rarely receives the same level of scrutiny. But the recent medical crisis has underscored how much constitutional power state governments actually have when they choose to exercise it. Looking at how states have been banding together to develop coping strategies, it's possible the crisis may prompt states to form broader alliances to fill the vacuum of leadership from the federal level.