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Brainiac Five posted:I enjoy how a right-wing imperialist nation like Russia is confused with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by morons who get their leftist theory from Glenn Greenwald articles. It was already a derail for this thread that JC asked to stop anyway.
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Mar 9, 2017 22:17
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Helsing posted:The Bretton-Woods system established by the Democrats (which is a much more precise label than just using FDR as a metonymy for everything the American government did in the 1940s) was very different from the much freer trading system of the late late 19th century or from the post 1970s world we live in today. Simplistically describing the post-war settlement as "free trade" without introducing some major qualifications to that statement is really inaccurate. I'm well aware that FDR died before a lot of his ideology came to fruition, but it's his ideology that i'm talking about. He believed that protectionism caused the depression, that trade liberalization would benefit both the US and its trading partners, and that trade was an important tool to bind free nations together in peace. You can follow that throughline from the Reciprocal Tariff Act that was part of the New deal to the TPP 80 years later. Democrats have always supported free trade, Bill clinton was not an outlier, and free trade ideology was obviously not an impediment to past Democrats winning big majorities. You can argue that the US electorate has changed and free trade can't win anymore, but you can't credibly suggest Bill clinton betrayed democratic principles by supporting trade liberalization. Fiction posted:It was already a derail for this thread that JC asked to stop anyway. I don't think the free trade/protectionism debate is derailing the thread. Trump wants protectionism. Are democrats going to work with him to institute tariffs? If not, how should they resist? I personally think protectionism is lovely policy, but I'm not sure democrats would benefit from giving a full-throated defense of trade liberalization. That's more relevant to the thread than having some argument steeped in economics, but the topic is fine.
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Mar 10, 2017 01:13
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Obamacare repeal is more immediately relevant, though, so let's talk about that. What do we think about democrats branding the GOP replacement as "Trumpcare"? Schumer's pushing that angle hard, as are a lot of other democrats, although I haven't heard bernie use that term. I think it's smart because Republicans will be on the record voting for Trumpcare, so we can keep sticking them with their support for Trump even if he's out of the picture somehow. I think we'll benefit from branding their policies with his name.
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Mar 10, 2017 01:15
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The problem is that what worked against the ACA may not work against the GOP replacement. The Republicans can run the line of calling the ACA absolutely terrible and associating it with an unpopular president because then people hate it and are okay with stripping it down or completely repealing it. The Democrats can't do that because in the highly-likely event that the GOP health care bill passes, they don't want to burn it all down and salt the earth, they'll want to expand it. Associating it with Trump is also a risky bet because Trump is going to do what Obama never did for some loving reason, which is make a massive PR push and take credit for it every step of the way. If people LIKE the GOP plan, which is much more a matter of how well it can be sold rather than how good it is, then calling it "Trumpcare" is just going to backfire.
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Mar 10, 2017 01:44
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OneEightHundred posted:The problem is that what worked against the ACA may not work against the GOP replacement. The Republicans can run the line of calling the ACA absolutely terrible and associating it with an unpopular president because then people hate it and are okay with stripping it down or completely repealing it. The Democrats can't do that because in the highly-likely event that the GOP health care bill passes, they don't want to burn it all down and salt the earth, they'll want to expand it. Oh, no, if the ACHA passes it will be a huge disaster and kill millions of people, destroying Medicaid in the process. You absolutely want to run against that. You want to tie that around your opponent's neck like a burning car tire. Medicaid is what pays for almost all nursing home care in this country. There is a reason the AARP is against this. Opposing this bill to the last absolute extremity is a good move. And when you lose, and it passes, and the health care industry collapses, you run on Medicare and Medicaid For All, and you march to glorious socialist utopia
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Mar 10, 2017 01:51
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OneEightHundred posted:The problem is that what worked against the ACA may not work against the GOP replacement. The Republicans can run the line of calling the ACA absolutely terrible and associating it with an unpopular president because then people hate it and are okay with stripping it down or completely repealing it. The Democrats can't do that because in the highly-likely event that the GOP health care bill passes, they don't want to burn it all down and salt the earth, they'll want to expand it. They're all going to vote against it (fingers crossed), and the only way for them to expand it is to win back the house, senate and presidency, which requires smashing the Republican party. At that point they can just repeal and start over. I guess from a leftist perspective, the democrats demonizing the bill and calling it Trumpcare is insurance that they won't just try to make incremental improvements to it. They'll have to start over, and that will make it easier to make the needed fundamental changes to the system. quote:Associating it with Trump is also a risky bet because Trump is going to do what Obama never did for some loving reason, which is make a massive PR push and take credit for it every step of the way. If people LIKE the GOP plan, which is much more a matter of how well it can be sold rather than how good it is, then calling it "Trumpcare" is just going to backfire. Yes, if people actually like the GOP plan, calling it Trumpcare will obviously backfire. But the plan is strictly worse than Obamacare, and Obamacare is not particularly popular. The GOP plan isn't even particularly popular among the GOP. If the downside risk is Democrats might be burning their opportunities to work with president trump in the future, I say that's a good thing. Democrats are hosed regardless in the world where Trump is able to salvage his popularity and start passing bills people like. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh, no, if the ACHA passes it will be a huge disaster and kill millions of people, destroying Medicaid in the process. Agreed. Do you think it's a better idea to call it "Trumpcare" or Republicare or something else? Should we be trying to tie it to trump or the Republicans generally? JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 01:55
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JeffersonClay posted:
Yeah. Even if "Trumpcare" has the best possible outcome, the only thing that will actually improve matters is single payer, and this isn't single payer, so the system's going to keep churning out horror stories and we might as well tie those horror stories to the Republicans. The biggest strategic failure of "Obamacare" was that it made the Democrats responsible for the situation normal all hosed up nature of the American health care system. Time to flip that. JeffersonClay posted:Agreed. Do you think it's a better idea to call it "Trumpcare" or Republicare or something else? Should we be trying to tie it to trump or the Republicans generally? I think it's going to be called Trumpcare inevitably because that's a more resonant name than "Republicare" so that's what folks are going to go with anyway. I think it'll be important to emphasize that it's "Trumpcare" in the same sense that hobo camps were called "Hoovervilles." It can't hurt to tie Trump and the Republicans together as much as possible, preferably with tarred twine and/or feathers.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:04
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So far it looks like it might be a total train wreck. They painted themselves into a corner where they have to change a now popular bill just enough that they'll own all its problems but they haven't actually fixed problems and all the good parts that they were forced to leave (now most people realize what they are) can continue to be claimed by the dems.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:04
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JeffersonClay posted:I'm well aware that FDR died before a lot of his ideology came to fruition, but it's his ideology that i'm talking about. He believed that protectionism caused the depression, that trade liberalization would benefit both the US and its trading partners, and that trade was an important tool to bind free nations together in peace. You can follow that throughline from the Reciprocal Tariff Act that was part of the New deal to the TPP 80 years later. Democrats have always supported free trade, Bill clinton was not an outlier, and free trade ideology was obviously not an impediment to past Democrats winning big majorities. You can argue that the US electorate has changed and free trade can't win anymore, but you can't credibly suggest Bill clinton betrayed democratic principles by supporting trade liberalization. You're correct that the Democrats were traditionally the party of "free" trade, especially the so called 'Bourbon Democrats', but this was directly linked to their role as the party of the South and as representatives of the planter oligarchy, which relied heavily on trade with Britain for its prosperity. In this context opposition to tariffs was directly linked with support for white supremacy and the subjugation of black labour. As for Roosevelt he was notorious for having a grab-bag of different and not always coherent ideas and was once famously described by Oliver Wendell Holmes as a man with a "second-class intellect but a first class temperament" whose greatest quality was steady leadership and the ability to surround himself with the right people. Citing him as an intellectual forebearer of Clintonian trade policies is strange because Roosevelts great contributions were matters of leadership or rhetoric rather than some kind of clearly articulated enduring ideology. And insofar as Roosevelt did articulate a clear ideology it was starkly different from Clintonism. Roosevelt and his allies were notoriously distrustful of financiers and Wall Street, their envisioned trade policies were starkly different than Clinton's and also because for Roosevelt and his contemporaries it was taken for granted that moving forward countries would be firmly committed to maintaining full employment of their populations through fiscal policy. Clinton, by contrast, is mostly noteworthy for actively participating in the demolition or attempted demolition of some of FDR's signature policies. The actual international system that was brought into existence following the Second World War was consciously designed to restrict international flows of capital. John Maynard Keynes was particularly explicit on this point and, if he'd had his way, would have imposed a stricter system than what was actually implemented. Nevertheless the key American players like Harry Dexter White and Henry Morgenthau also took for granted that the new global system would not allow the kind of free flows of capital that were seen as a contributor to the ruinous global instability of the 20th century. Keynes wrote - in the context of designing the post-war system - that "It is widely held that control of capital movements, both inward and outward, should be a permanent feature of the post war system" and White, though overall more conservative on this issue than Keynes, wrote that "the assumption that capital serves a country best by flowing to countries which offer most attractive terms is valid only under circumstances that are not always present... A good case could be made for the thesis that a government should have the power to control the influx and efflux of capital, just as it has the authority to control the inflow and outflow of goods and of gold." This all just speaks to my earlier point about how using terms like "free trade" or "protectionism" tends to obscure more than it illuminates unless you're very careful to specify exactly what policies you're describing. "Free trade" is more of a rhetorical device than a coherent description of any actual government policy.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh, no, if the ACHA passes it will be a huge disaster and kill millions of people, destroying Medicaid in the process. But things like the shift to age-based subsidies are aimed to appeal to old people (a.k.a. the people that vote), and people in states with lower cost of living (a.k.a. states where Democrats are more electorally vulnerable), so they can make this work at an electorally-calculated FYGM level if they do it right.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:43
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OneEightHundred posted:Well yeah, but repealing the ACA was always due to be an even bigger disaster and a slew of people only started giving a poo poo about that a month ago when they started having to think about what repealing the ACA actually meant. They think so, but they're wrong, deeply so. Something like two thirds of all nursing home beds in the nation are paid for by Medicaid. Start making cuts there and pretty soon it looks like Walking Dead because of all the Alzheimer's patients that have been kicked out into the streets.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:48
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JeffersonClay posted:Obamacare repeal is more immediately relevant, though, so let's talk about that. What do we think about democrats branding the GOP replacement as "Trumpcare"? Schumer's pushing that angle hard, as are a lot of other democrats, although I haven't heard bernie use that term. I think it's smart because Republicans will be on the record voting for Trumpcare, so we can keep sticking them with their support for Trump even if he's out of the picture somehow. I think we'll benefit from branding their policies with his name. Attempting to use Republican tactics is a bad idea in the long run. It legitimizes their stupid attempts to label any health care reform as [whoever's in charge]Care and, by framing it as a partisan issue, you're only guaranteeing that Republicans will slavishly defend it when it inevitably starts to fail (like establishment Democrats with Obamacare - the narrative has changed from 'we need to fight for universal healthcare' to 'we have to defend garbage ACA forever') The biggest problem with the Democratic Party is that they keep thinking they can shame people to their side. Shame didn't stop Reagan. Shame didn't stop the GOP from behaving the way they did while Bill Clinton/Obama was president. Shame didn't stop various tea-party governors from loving up their respective state. Shame didn't stop Trump from getting elected. Shame won't derail them whenever the GOP's health care fails (and it probably won't even effect his standing with the majority of Trump supporters that end up losing their health care) You can't shame the shameless. If you ever want the Democrats to recover, you have to present a clear alternative. Just having a (D) next to the name isn't good enough. Despite how vile their ideas are, the main reason Republicans have been able to gain as so much ground is because they propose radical policy and then follow through on it after getting elected. (And I think the reason this pisses me off so much is because I'm from a state where the democrats keep presenting these empty suit or basically republican candidates and the opposition becomes more and more radicalized in response while everybody pretends that the milquetoast corporatists are actually progressives. It's maddening.)
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Mar 10, 2017 02:57
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JeffersonClay posted:Agreed. Do you think it's a better idea to call it "Trumpcare" or Republicare or something else? Should we be trying to tie it to trump or the Republicans generally? Definitely Republicare. If, for example, the Russian scandal spirals into an untenable position for Trump and either causes him to leave office or get disowned by the Republican party, it's far too easy for them to pin the healthcare system on him when things go south. We have to expect Republicans to throw Trump under the bus at some point, and we should not be giving them options to wash their hands of him if that happens. Hieronymous Alloy posted:They think so, but they're wrong, deeply so. Something like two thirds of all nursing home beds in the nation are paid for by Medicaid. Start making cuts there and pretty soon it looks like Walking Dead because of all the Alzheimer's patients that have been kicked out into the streets. You say that, but Reagan did that exact thing when he shut down the entire state-sponsored mental health system. It really did look like the Walking Dead in a lot of places as a result, and it didn't matter, because homeless people don't vote. It actually helped the Republicans gut welfare later, since it shifted the public perception of homelessness from "down on your luck" to "literal poo poo slinging crazy people on the subway that someone needs to just get rid of somehow".
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Mar 10, 2017 03:06
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:
The difference is that the mentally ill are Other. Alzheimers patient's are You, in the Future.
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Mar 10, 2017 03:10
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Definitely Republicare. I'm more worried about trump getting kicked out and the Republicans saying Trump was a mistake because he wasn't a real conservative. In that case we're going to need to point to all the lovely things he did that they supported and facilitated. "You voted for Trumpcare" will do that. "You voted for Republicare" won't. Using Republicare makes shoving Trump down the memory hole easier for them.
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Mar 10, 2017 04:26
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JeffersonClay posted:I'm more worried about trump getting kicked out and the Republicans saying Trump was a mistake because he wasn't a real conservative. In that case we're going to need to point to all the lovely things he did that they supported and facilitated. "You voted for Trumpcare" will do that. "You voted for Republicare" won't. Using Republicare makes shoving Trump down the memory hole easier for them. I could be wrong, but I don't think Trump will be forgotten that easily.Besides, that's counting our chickens before they're slaughtered.
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Mar 10, 2017 04:30
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JeffersonClay posted:I'm more worried about trump getting kicked out and the Republicans saying Trump was a mistake because he wasn't a real conservative. In that case we're going to need to point to all the lovely things he did that they supported and facilitated. "You voted for Trumpcare" will do that. "You voted for Republicare" won't. Using Republicare makes shoving Trump down the memory hole easier for them. Sure, but if Trump goes away, the Republicans are still in power. In your narrative they still get another bite at the apple. "Trump was a RINO anyway, and Trumpcare was a bunch of leftist bullshit we voted for out of party unity. Here's the REAL CONSERVATIVE plan now that President Pence is in charge." Trump didn't write the healthcare plan, won't read it and doesn't really give a poo poo what's in it. The people responsible for it need to carry that weight, and besides there's more than enough other heinous Trump garbage to pin on the party if we want to.
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Mar 10, 2017 04:46
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Also, the fact that Trump doesn't want the label is reason enough to keep shoving it in his face.
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Mar 10, 2017 04:49
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Thing is, it's really not Trump's baby, he's just sitting there waiting to sign and then take credit for what's really the product of the Ayn Rand cultists in Congress. In practical terms, I don't know how much that matters since Congressional elections are mostly a referendum on the president anyway, but I really think that Congressional Republicans are the people that need to own this pile of poo poo and get voted out for it.
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Mar 10, 2017 04:59
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Helsing posted:This all just speaks to my earlier point about how using terms like "free trade" or "protectionism" tends to obscure more than it illuminates unless you're very careful to specify exactly what policies you're describing. "Free trade" is more of a rhetorical device than a coherent description of any actual government policy. And that's the discussion I want to be having in this thread. "End NAFTA and rebuild manufacturing" isn't a very coherent description of policy either, but Trump (and Bernie) still benefitted from advocating it. Should democrats oppose Trump's protectionist agenda? And if so, what rhetoric should they use to do so? Would it be feasible for Bernie to make a nuanced argument about capital controls to differentiate his position from Trump's? I think that's way too deep in the weeds for the US electorate. But I could be wrong. Call Me Charlie posted:Attempting to use Republican tactics is a bad idea in the long run. It legitimizes their stupid attempts to label any health care reform as [whoever's in charge]Care and, by framing it as a partisan issue, you're only guaranteeing that Republicans will slavishly defend it when it inevitably starts to fail (like establishment Democrats with Obamacare - the narrative has changed from 'we need to fight for universal healthcare' to 'we have to defend garbage ACA forever') I think Alinsky is useful here. quote:Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. I hope making everything about Trump leads them to irrationally defend Trump. That would be an excellent outcome. He's the anvil we need to smash them on. The only plausible way out for them is to throw him under the bus and wash their hands of him. We can't let that happen. Dr. Fishopolis posted:Sure, but if Trump goes away, the Republicans are still in power. In your narrative they still get another bite at the apple. "Trump was a RINO anyway, and Trumpcare was a bunch of leftist bullshit we voted for out of party unity. Here's the REAL CONSERVATIVE plan now that President Pence is in charge." Trump can't go away in the short term without Republican help, and if that happens their coalition shatters. The REAL CONSERVATIVE plan can't get through the senate right now, I don't see how it gets easier for them if they're embroiled in a civil war. JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 05:23
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JeffersonClay posted:And that's the discussion I want to be having in this thread. "End NAFTA and rebuild manufacturing" isn't a very coherent description of policy either, but Trump (and Bernie) still benefitted from advocating it. Should democrats oppose Trump's protectionist agenda? And if so, what rhetoric should they use to do so? Would it be feasible for Bernie to make a nuanced argument about capital controls to differentiate his position from Trump's? I think that's way too deep in the weeds for the US electorate. But I could be wrong.  Your anti-Trump strategy is making capital controls sexy? "End NAFTA and rebuild manufacturing" makes perfect sense to the ailing American worker. "Protect American jobs" makes perfect sense to the American worker. You can't beat populism with liberal wonkishness. But this whole thread is a sham and a fool's errand. We shouldn't be beating Trump. We should be beating voter apathy. We should be beating income inequality. We should be beating establishment gridlock and DC politicking. Trump didn't win because he bashed the Dems, he won because he had a strong populist message. "You're all getting screwed over, and I'm going to fix it." You can try beating Trump, but even if you shame him and dethrone him, you still have a huge mass of people who don't know what the party is about and will not vote for you if they're uninspired.
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Mar 10, 2017 05:37
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If I were proposing an anti-trump strategy in a nutshell it would be: Negatives: 1) "Trump is not on your team." 2) Total political opposition to every single thing Trump proposes or does. 3) We're on track for a lot of domestic and foreign policy disasters in the next few years. These are all Trump's fault. 4) Health care is now Trump's Problem. If the bill passes, every failure is his fault and the fault of the Republicans; if it doesn't, they're too incompetent to fix it. 5) Every other social ill: education costs, joblessness, everything -- "They Don't Care." To Them, Your Problems Aren't Their Problems, because (see #1) they aren't on Your Team. 6) Drop gun control. It's just not an issue that helps Democrats. Positives: 1) Medicare for All, Medicaid for All. Doesn't matter if it's not achievable, it's literally the only thing that has a chance of actually improving matters -- take literally any other position and you'll just get Democrats blamed for the ongoing collapse of the health care market an election cycle down the road. This is going to keep crucifying political movements until someone gets medicare for all passed, however long that takes. 2) Past that, just generally take Bernie's platform, it sells well, we just need a salesman. 3) Good Candidates. quote:“I’ve found that the most important thing for an actor is honesty,” he said. “And when you learn how to fake that, you’re in.” This is probably more important than a platform, really. We need either candidates who are transparently honest anti-establishment fighters (Bernie, arguably Obama) OR candidates who can fake it well enough that people don't care (Bill Clinton, arguably Obama). Candidates that when they say "I'm on your side", people believe them or at least want to believe them. Trump's main advantage is that he's a con artist selling a con that a lot of Americans *want* to believe in. In four years the con will be ooollld but that doesn't mean people won't still be searching for it. 4) Good Candidates at All Levels. We need to start taking back state legislatures. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 05:49
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Frijolero posted:
I agree with you it's infeasible to differentiate between what Bernie meant when he said End nafta rebuild manufacturing and what Trump meant when he said the same thing. That's a problem, because Bernie didn't mean the same thing that Trump did, and now we need to oppose trump's policies. Am I being too charitable by assuming there is a meaningful difference between Bernie and Trump IRT trade agreements? Maybe that difference has something to do with capital controls and bretton woods? He didn't think the problem was as simple as "End NAFTA=Manufacturing jobs," right? Because that's what Trump meant, he's wrong, and if he's able to follow through the poor are going to be harmed the most. We need to formulate some way to oppose Trump on trade agreements. We've already agreed that making a nuanced argument to differentiate between Bernie's position and Trump's isn't going to work for the large majority of the electorate. We could try defending free trade agreements the same way FDR did. I don't see a lot of good alternatives.
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Mar 10, 2017 06:14
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Jefferson Clay you didn't make capital controls sexy. You play on the voters spiteful nature to sell them. Don't give them sexy, give them angry. Also this may require making Alan Grayson look viable.
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Mar 10, 2017 06:35
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I don't think we can make capital controls sexy either are you dense? What's the alternative for opposing Trump on trade other than actually defending free trade?
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Mar 10, 2017 06:46
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:2) Total political opposition to every single thing Trump proposes or does. Don't do this. Just because Trump does something doesn't make it automatically bad. This attitude is now you end up opposing your own ideas and looking like complete hacks.
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Mar 10, 2017 13:47
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readingatwork posted:Don't do this. Just because Trump does something doesn't make it automatically bad. This attitude is now you end up opposing your own ideas and looking like complete hacks. That would be true for a normal politician, sure, but Trump isn't normal. He's poisons-all-he-touches bad. Like, seriously, can you think of a single positive thing he's done since taking office? You can't, and there are reasons for that: he's deliberately choosing bad personnel, chasing bad policy goals, and chasing them ineptly. Like, even on a miracle day where the clouds opened and the light of heaven shone forth and the dove of benevolence flew down and touched Donald Trump on his brow with the cleansing fire of compassion, and Trump decided to try to do One Good Thing that actually helped people -- let's say, more funding for public housing -- he'd still end up turning it into a tax-breaks-for-rich-developers program and he'd pick Ben Carson to implement it. So we can pretty safely oppose literally everything Trump tries to do, because even if his goals are good his implementation will be a horrorshow and vice-versa.
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Mar 10, 2017 14:05
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JeffersonClay posted:I don't think we can make capital controls sexy either are you dense? What's the alternative for opposing Trump on trade other than actually defending free trade? "Defending free trade" in this case has the same problem. When you say that, in people's minds you're defending outsourcing and loss of benefit and wage controls, and not much can be done to change that. You need a new message on trade.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Like, seriously, can you think of a single positive thing he's done since taking office? Yes, he killed TPP. I realize your opinion on that might be different but for me that's a solid point in his favor. Seriously man, don't do this poo poo. That attitude is how the right completely lost it's loving mind. We need an intelligent, principled opposition right now to deal with the mess we're in. Turning the Democrats into a mindless pack of reactionaries constantly screeching about whatever left wing Benghazi is popular this week won't fix anything. It's not complicated. If Trump proposes a big public housing deal then cautiously applaud the decision. When the details come out and they're terrible THEN you can go ahead and rip it to shreds. Doing anything else screams "I'm a hack. Don't take me seriously." to anyone not already on your team.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:42
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It's possible the Republicans in the house and senate will be so divided on trade that as long as democrats don't defect we'll be fine.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:42
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That would be true for a normal politician, sure, but Trump isn't normal. He's poisons-all-he-touches bad. The infrastructure plan is good. They want to save the import/export bank. The Supreme court pick is fine. There are a couple good things. However I think democrats need to be careful because eroding faith in government as an institution doesn't work for them. Ultimately they need people to trust it. So besides the fact that I don't think pure obstruction is right I also think it's a tactical risk to make government dysfunctional.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:46
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readingatwork posted:Don't do this. Just because Trump does something doesn't make it automatically bad. This attitude is now you end up opposing your own ideas and looking like complete hacks. Gotta agree with this. But there has to be a game plan. We've seen Dem leaders grandstand against Trump, then vote for all his garbage appointees. WTF is going on? There has to be a clear, concerted effort in the opposition, but it has to make sense to the public. If you oppose Trump willy-nilly on an infrastructure plan, people are going vote you out. Any and all non-austerity plans should actually be promoted by the Dems. Tea partiers love austerity and it's a good way to drive a wedge between populist Republicans and Tea Party Republicans.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:51
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asdf32 posted:The infrastructure plan is good. Isn't the "infrastructure plan" just "Give money to some contractor friends of mine"?
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Mar 10, 2017 17:09
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You haven't seen any democrats vote for all of Trump's appointments, even Manchin opposed DeVos. It's strange seeing the people who constantly post that democrats are uniformly terrible be concerned about giving trump the benefit of the doubt and not jumping to overly broad negative conclusions. And by strange I mean totally predictable. Democrats should not be working with Trump on any part of his agenda. We need to deny him victories and keep him on the ropes. Let him flail around trying to unify the republicans, don't make it easier for him or let him claim some mantle of bipartisanship.
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Mar 10, 2017 17:13
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JeffersonClay posted:You haven't seen any democrats vote for all of Trump's appointments, even Manchin opposed DeVos. Excellent, if terminally short-sighted proposition. I'm curious: what do you propose we do with the Dems who broke ranks to vote for Trump's appointees? Because, as you have been so eager to remind us, assisting Trump (whom Bad) is the worst thing to do right now.
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Mar 10, 2017 17:31
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Anybody else watching live feeds of the Standing Rock march on Washington?
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Mar 10, 2017 17:43
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JeffersonClay posted:And that's the discussion I want to be having in this thread. "End NAFTA and rebuild manufacturing" isn't a very coherent description of policy either, but Trump (and Bernie) still benefitted from advocating it. Should democrats oppose Trump's protectionist agenda? And if so, what rhetoric should they use to do so? Would it be feasible for Bernie to make a nuanced argument about capital controls to differentiate his position from Trump's? I think that's way too deep in the weeds for the US electorate. But I could be wrong. The Democrats need to formulate a better trade policy than what they were offering during the Obama years. Obama and his team recognized the huge liabilities of supporting some of these trade deals given that during his primary contests he also called for renegotiating NAFTA and was opposed to the free trade deal with South Korea (though he later used as a model for the TPP). It was extremely arrogant and foolhardy to push the Trans Pacific Partnership in an election year when the entire thing was clearly a vote killer and Clinton's late attempt to reverse herself on the issue came off as deeply implausible. Merely critiquing Trump isn't going to be effective unless those criticisms are linked to a clear and compelling alternative, and it's clear that this alternative can't just be a return to the pre-Trump status quo.
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Mar 10, 2017 17:59
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Ze Pollack posted:Excellent, if terminally short-sighted proposition. I'm curious: what do you propose we do with the Dems who broke ranks to vote for Trump's appointees? To be more specific, helping Trump pass policies that don't have enough republican support to succeed without democrats is the worst. Giving him bipartisan support on policies that would pass anyway is still bad but less so. Confirming nominees is a little different insofar as confirming a cabinet nominee is more a signal that the nominee isn't crazy and incompetent than a ringing endorsement, but democrats who voted for Pruitt or sessions are still terrible.
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Mar 10, 2017 18:04
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asdf32 posted:The infrastructure plan is good. They want to save the import/export bank. The Supreme court pick is fine. There are a couple good things. The infrastructure plan is going to be a giant corporate handout that sells off all our infrastructure to the highest bidder. A generation from now it will be vilified as much as his abolishment of the EPA. Supreme Court pick is "just" typically terrible Republican, admittedly. But that's still terrible enough for absolute uniform opposition. Don't let Trump move the overton window on you. If Jeb were president, would it be OK for Democrats to vote for Gorsuch? No! Here's the thing: the Trump presidency is *tainted.* It is going to be disastrous. Not rhetorical-emphasis disastrous but actual disaster disastrous. Think four years of ongoing Katrina Response Bush, except with more tax cuts for the rich. Collusion is not going to suddenly make Democrats look like reasonable adults. It's going to make Democrats look like Vichy French collaborators. Obama tried playing Reasonable Bipartisan Adult for eight years. How'd that work out? Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 18:17
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JeffersonClay posted:Confirming nominees is a little different insofar as confirming a cabinet nominee is more a signal that the nominee isn't crazy and incompetent than a ringing endorsement, but democrats who voted for Pruitt or sessions are still terrible. Not just Pruitt or Sessions. Sessions was probably one of Trump's better appointees, he at least has a law degree and has been a practicing attorney. Ben Carson for HUD? DeVos for education? Rick Perry for energy? But I'll admit a few of his appointments are not obviously horrible. Say, Acosta for Labor. Even there, though, a quick approval helps Trump in two ways: it helps him further his agenda at DoL (which will be horrible) and it helps him move the rest of his agenda through Congress. And that's critical. The only real tool we have right now is delay. Our only ally is the limited number of days in the legislative calendar. A nomination that takes two days instead of one is another day bought before Trump can do something else horrible. The whole reason they are rushing the health care bill through Congress is they know they don't have much time. Delay is valuable. Delay will save lives. Every day Obamacare remains in place is another day thousands of people still have health care. Rolling over and failing to delay is not forgivable.
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Mar 10, 2017 18:43
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