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Summit posted:Trump was in a similar position last year. If he had actually taken COVID seriously he would have been unbeatable in the election. Throughout the whole Trump presidency, he had opportunity after opportunity to make himself unbeatable in 2020. It's actually loving amazing. In 2017 I was resigned to the fact that Trump would pass a massive bipartisan infrastructure bill that would be hugely popular and boost the economy, trade Democrats a handful of good things they wanted in exchange for awful lovely things he wanted (Wall, clamping down on immigration) and Republicans would coast in 2018 and 2020 on the backs of a booming economy and growing nationalist sentiments. And then, he just poo poo all over everything instead. He left all those opportunities on Biden's doorstep. An infrastructure bill is still just sitting there, the lowest hanging fruit in government. Don't sleep on infrastructure including lots of big things that nationalist Republicans want too, like bringing critical manufacturing (semiconductors in particular) back to the US. And of course Biden can be the guy who takes COVID seriously and beats it, and he will be as popular as a wartime president.
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Jan 22, 2021 15:13
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zoux posted:As far as economics, we're in a lot better shape politically than we were in 09 I think. Chris Dodd isn't in charge of Banking, Sherrod Brown is. Ron Wyden, the guy who snuck the superdole into the CARES act, is going to be Finance chair. And we all know who is running the Budget committee. No Rahm Emmanuel, no Timothy Geithner, pretty much every admin official, that I've seen at least, is rejecting austerity. Biggest one: no Larry Summers.
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Jan 22, 2021 15:28
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paternity suitor posted:Throughout the whole Trump presidency, he had opportunity after opportunity to make himself unbeatable in 2020. It's actually loving amazing. In 2017 I was resigned to the fact that Trump would pass a massive bipartisan infrastructure bill that would be hugely popular and boost the economy, trade Democrats a handful of good things they wanted in exchange for awful lovely things he wanted (Wall, clamping down on immigration) and Republicans would coast in 2018 and 2020 on the backs of a booming economy and growing nationalist sentiments. And then, he just poo poo all over everything instead. This is the conundrum for Republicans. They want a government that does nothing, so actually passing bills that has the government do things is against their philosophy, no matter how much of a no brainer it is.
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Jan 22, 2021 15:40
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They could *try* reducing the deficit to appease some of their voters but they will never cut military funding, stop bailing out wall street, and the last time a republican raised taxes he lost reelection by 380 evs, so it's not happening.
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Jan 22, 2021 16:23
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Quorum posted:Overton Window Yeah we got David Brooks out here calling for killing the filibuster https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1352634650578079744 I hope McConnell is overplaying his hand by threatening to filibuster the organizing resolution unless the Democrats agree to keep the filibuster, it's like the perfect object lesson in why it needs to go. e: well well https://twitter.com/Kate_Riga24/status/1352636499397849088 zoux fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jan 22, 2021 |
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Jan 22, 2021 16:25
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Are Democrats actually growing a spine?
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Jan 22, 2021 16:37
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Did the Baileys get COVID-19 or something? This is Angry Schumer. Where the gently caress has this guy been
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Jan 22, 2021 16:39
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Rust Martialis posted:Did the Baileys get COVID-19 or something? This is Angry Schumer. Where the gently caress has this guy been The man seems to have recalibrated his Bailey Family Predictive Model based on actual data from the last election, is my sense. Also we've never actually seen Majority Leader Schumer, so I'm sure some element of this is being more willing to just do stuff when you're in the majority.
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Jan 22, 2021 16:45
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Bird in a Blender posted:Are Democrats actually growing a spine? I think some peoples perspective is warped by Dem's being on the defence for the last 12 years, losing the house in I think it was 2010? And then the senate in 2014? Then you had 4 years of both houses of Congress controlled by R's and in 2016 losing the trifecta. Dems only regained the House in 2018 and the Senate now in 2020; we just needed to wait for Dems to regain control for them to have a taste for doing good things again.
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Jan 22, 2021 16:45
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My question, though, is Schumer just hoping McConnell backs down, or does he have/think he can get the votes to kill the filibuster? Showing a spine is good, a marked improvement on before, but it doesn't really mean much if we can't actually act on it.
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Jan 22, 2021 16:48
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Rea posted:My question, though, is Schumer just hoping McConnell backs down, or does he have/think he can get the votes to kill the filibuster? Showing a spine is good, a marked improvement on before, but it doesn't really mean much if we can't actually act on it. i think that he can easily get 50 votes for abolishing the filibuster for the organizing resolution if this continues (e.g. seek a ruling from the chair that for the organizing resolution alone, 50 votes are all thats needed, same way they lifted it solely for non-supreme court judicial vacancies) and that's much more likely than the resolution being abolishing the filibuster entirely at this point in time but i hope it's the latter!
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Jan 22, 2021 16:51
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Chuck's not playing. https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1352646729284415488
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Jan 22, 2021 17:08
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https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1352668464134152193 Wow. Good luck using the standard "what about our children" anti-debt argument on this one. Am I crazy or does Biden, or at least his policy team, seem way more progressive than you'd think
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Jan 22, 2021 18:27
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FMguru posted:Chuck's not playing. I'll believe it when I see it, but drat, 2021 being possibly the year that the filibuster died at the hands of a Democratic Congress is one hell of a way to start the Biden administration. zoux posted:Am I crazy or does Biden, or at least his policy team, seem way more progressive than you'd think I'm really hoping the Democrats go full gently caress YOU, YOLO now, because they HAVE to know the GOP will do the same if they get Congress back. They've got about 10 years of GOP Congressional stonewalling and 4 years of Trump bullshit to undo in roughly as many *months* to give themselves a fighting chance against a stacked Supreme Court and federal judiciary. ArmyGroup303 fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jan 22, 2021 |
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Jan 22, 2021 18:27
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ArmyGroup303 posted:I'll believe it when I see it, but drat, 2021 being possibly the year that the filibuster died at the hands of a Democratic Congress is one hell of a way to start the Biden administration. A 6-3 court controlled by nutters also removes a lot of the risk of losing the filibuster. The big fear among Dems was that removing the filibuster would mean a national right-to-work law the next time the GOP held the trifecta - but the 6-3 court is already on track to annihilate worker protections, so what then is the point of holding on to the filibuster?
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Jan 22, 2021 18:51
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https://twitter.com/HotlineJosh/status/1352679058853797893 Electorates have goldfish memory so this could move quite a bit - he's not up until '24 - but so far not looking like a good move from Josh Hawley here. Also could speak to a diminished backlash if Hawley gets censured/stripped of committees/expelled. Id love to see numbers on Cruz as well.
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Jan 22, 2021 19:09
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/HotlineJosh/status/1352679058853797893 It's cathartic, but senator approval numbers are worthless. McConnell's approval rating is in the loving pits, and yet he keeps getting re-elected.
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Jan 22, 2021 19:12
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1352668464134152193 Doesn’t hurt to be an old person in a hurry.
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Jan 22, 2021 20:23
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Potato Salad posted:Even if that gop number is off 20%, that's impressive given how horrifically polarized and extreme our right wing has become. It's always worth remembering that the percentage of voters who identify as "Republican" dropped under Trump, to somewhere around 35-40%. So in all the polls talking about what "Republicans" think, they're potentially only sampling one third of the country. In this poll about the speech, that's really good. In a lot of other polls, where "85% of Republicans" hold some awful opinion, you have to remember that's still only like 30% of the electorate. Bird in a Blender posted:This is the conundrum for Republicans. They want a government that does nothing, so actually passing bills that has the government do things is against their philosophy, no matter how much of a no brainer it is. Yeah it's an interesting conundrum. I really wonder what percentage of Trump and Republican voters actually want to drown the government in the bathtub, and what percentage would rather have their medicare, social security, highways, military, etc. (And what percentage haven't put two and two together on that.) But the Republican party being captured by extremists means that their representatives are absolutely pushing for getting rid of everything the federal government does.
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Jan 22, 2021 21:15
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1352668464134152193 Contrary to what contrarian leftists like to say, Biden's platform was the most progressive platform put forward by a mainstream US presidential candidate since at least FDR, and arguably on a level with FDR. It's fairly unsurprising that he's actually delivering on this, and quite aggravating when there are leftist voices yelling about how he isn't doing enough because it's not all happening on day one.
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Jan 22, 2021 21:18
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There's a slight strategy/image note, he held his grandson (also named Beau) not only right after acceptance speech, but also during the inauguration day late night events. Not a bad idea, get you some very appealing photos and removes the possibility of certain other bad photos (like it's relatively hard to look aloof while holding a baby). I'm sure he also loves the kid, but that was a pretty smart choice for how to present himself also.
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Jan 23, 2021 04:23
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Contrary to what contrarian leftists like to say, Biden's platform was the most progressive platform put forward by a mainstream US presidential candidate since at least FDR, and arguably on a level with FDR. It's fairly unsurprising that he's actually delivering on this, and quite aggravating when there are leftist voices yelling about how he isn't doing enough because it's not all happening on day one. I think it actually works to Biden's favor by making him look more moderate. It's important to remember that contrarian leftist approval doesn't actually mean anything. It's definitely aggravating though.
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Jan 23, 2021 17:27
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https://twitter.com/Timodc/status/1353114508697366528?s=20 The likelihood we see conviction is nil.
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Jan 24, 2021 03:08
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Pick posted:https://twitter.com/Timodc/status/1353114508697366528?s=20 Any chance the replacement of the remaining moderates with CHUDs dooms them in the generals? Cause that feels like the country's only medium/long-term hope right now.
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Jan 24, 2021 04:19
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paternity suitor posted:Throughout the whole Trump presidency, he had opportunity after opportunity to make himself unbeatable in 2020. It's actually loving amazing. In 2017 I was resigned to the fact that Trump would pass a massive bipartisan infrastructure bill that would be hugely popular and boost the economy, trade Democrats a handful of good things they wanted in exchange for awful lovely things he wanted (Wall, clamping down on immigration) and Republicans would coast in 2018 and 2020 on the backs of a booming economy and growing nationalist sentiments. And then, he just poo poo all over everything instead. Bird in a Blender posted:This is the conundrum for Republicans. They want a government that does nothing, so actually passing bills that has the government do things is against their philosophy, no matter how much of a no brainer it is. At the risk of  and smug 20/20 hindsight, saying that Trump could have sewn up his re-election and permanent Conservative power if he'd only done X is like saying Hitler could have won World War II if he'd just not invaded Russia or wasted manpower and resources on purging all things and people Jewish, including top scientists. Hitler's entire political movement and the entire apparatus of the Third Reich was built around an existential conflict with an endgame of extermination, where Germans were on one side and Communists (especially Russian Communists) and Jews were on the other side. It was LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for him to not do some version of those two things, ergo it was impossible for him to win the war and always was. Its easy to say that Trump could have done infrastructure and boomed the economy, but his movement and political ideology is rooted in zero-sum gamesmanship and an inherent belief in the illegitimacy of the Democratic Party as an institution (among other things). It was ALWAYS impossible for him to work with Democrats to do infrastructure, even when he had both houses of Congress and he only needed a token amount of their help, because he was always going to demand he get to tack on his wall, or his Muslim Ban, or killing DACA, or killing Obamacare, or some other insanity because he was incapable of even considering a deal where both sides came out with a mutual win. Infrastructure is just one example. You can plug almost every single aspect of the Trump presidency and its policy into that general framework and it'll come out "Trump COULDN'T have done the thing that would have let him win."
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Jan 24, 2021 04:38
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Essentially, https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1311116804773863426?s=20
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Jan 24, 2021 04:43
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paternity suitor posted:Throughout the whole Trump presidency, he had opportunity after opportunity to make himself unbeatable in 2020. It's actually loving amazing. In 2017 I was resigned to the fact that Trump would pass a massive bipartisan infrastructure bill that would be hugely popular and boost the economy, trade Democrats a handful of good things they wanted in exchange for awful lovely things he wanted (Wall, clamping down on immigration) and Republicans would coast in 2018 and 2020 on the backs of a booming economy and growing nationalist sentiments. And then, he just poo poo all over everything instead. I think this is the farce and the tragedy of the Trump presidency. He literally had an entire political party enmeshed to his cult of personality. If he wanted, if he really really wanted he could have pushed for actual reforms and spending platforms that americans by and large would have supported. And even could have done some good. Literally he could just tweet and threaten to primary people and they'd have to go along with whatever he wanted. But the presidency was more about destroying his enemies on twitter, and self-medication for his massive neurosis and insecurities. They had two years where they had all the power in the world. And they did nothing with it except install judges and lower taxes on the rich. And so many people kept pretending the things Trump would say is not -actually- what he would say. And it's crazy how many people went along with the big lie. I feel like America is still in this fugue state.
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Jan 24, 2021 10:21
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Pick posted:https://twitter.com/Timodc/status/1353114508697366528?s=20 They also censured Cindy McCain, Doug Ducey, and Jeff Flake. And apparently a bunch of MAGAs disrupted the meeting for...some reason. The AZGOP is death-spiraling. Good news for Democrats, considering where things stand now.
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Jan 24, 2021 13:23
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Roluth posted:Any chance the replacement of the remaining moderates with CHUDs dooms them in the generals? Cause that feels like the country's only medium/long-term hope right now. No one can say 100% for sure yet. For now it does look there is at least a small portion of ride or die Trump voters who are ready and willing to schism might do this but whether or not that changes for 2022 is again impossible at this point. I'm not expecting a large portion to break off BTW. The R's are far too willing to stick together for a large schism to happen I think. A small group feels believable to me though and that is all it'll take in some areas. I think its going to depend on if Trump still does his rally song and dance grifter hoe down to keep them riled up. There is some reason to believe he might: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-republican-split/2021/01/23/d7dc253e-5cbc-11eb-8bcf-3877871c819d_story.html I certainly don't see a real reason yet for him to stop doing it. It'll take a prison sentence, health problems, or no one showing up for him to stop I believe. Even if typical media outlets like Twitter, FB, Fox, etc keep him off the far right platforms like Gab appear to have grown enough to keep things going in their own echo chamber for a long while yet.
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Jan 24, 2021 14:59
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Sanguinia posted:Its easy to say that Trump could have done infrastructure and boomed the economy, but his movement and political ideology is rooted in zero-sum gamesmanship and an inherent belief in the illegitimacy of the Democratic Party as an institution (among other things). It was ALWAYS impossible for him to work with Democrats to do infrastructure, even when he had both houses of Congress and he only needed a token amount of their help, because he was always going to demand he get to tack on his wall, or his Muslim Ban, or killing DACA, or killing Obamacare, or some other insanity because he was incapable of even considering a deal where both sides came out with a mutual win. I actually agree with you 100%, because I know who Trump is today. I didn't really know who he was in 2016, in retrospect. I knew he was an authoritarian racist narcissist, but I didn't understand the pathology as we do today. He's incapable of compromise in any way, so of course he was doomed to be the worst president of all time, and accomplish nothing. Nelson Mandingo posted:I think this is the farce and the tragedy of the Trump presidency. He literally had an entire political party enmeshed to his cult of personality. If he wanted, if he really really wanted he could have pushed for actual reforms and spending platforms that americans by and large would have supported. And even could have done some good. Literally he could just tweet and threaten to primary people and they'd have to go along with whatever he wanted. On top of it all, the judges thing is so bizarre to me. It's the most pathetic thing to consider a major win. Look at what he ran on in 2016, and then look at him bragging about confirming judges in 2020...he really did drink his own bathwater, no one gives a gently caress about the judges. Dorks on Fox News who have nothing else to point to will bring up judges as if anyone cares. Mitch McConnell cares I guess. Dan the mechanic in Ohio does not give gently caress and really I don't either. And since this is the number thread, it's not like he overhauled the federal judiciary the way online people make it out. It's more than average for 4 years, but as an absolute number it's a normal number: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/13/how-trump-compares-with-other-recent-presidents-in-appointing-federal-judges/ Compared to other single term losers, he appointed 5 less federal judges than Carter, and 12 more than Pappy Bush. He appointed 1 less judge than Obama - yes he did it in 4 years, but he only got 4 years, so gently caress him and good for us. The average is something like 30-40 judges per term, and Trump appointed 54, so congrats Trump you appointed maybe 15 judges above average. WOW. Amazing accomplishment. Truly a legacy. And from that same link, he didn't appoint that many more district level judges than average.
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Jan 24, 2021 15:49
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The GOP's voters extremely give a poo poo about the judges because it's been a strategy for decades for them to try to take over the federal judiciary.
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Jan 24, 2021 15:51
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Night10194 posted:The GOP's voters extremely give a poo poo about the judges because it's been a strategy for decades for them to try to take over the federal judiciary. They care about it as a marketing pitch because people on Fox News say it, but they don't know or care what it means. I would bet a large amount of money the average GOP voter would get the order of magnitude wrong on how many federal judges Trump appointed.
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Jan 24, 2021 15:54
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https://twitter.com/parkermolloy/status/1353346484578746368?s=21 Thought there was a split going on in the GOP (as shown in GA/AZ). Or is this certain state GOPs going ax-crazy while others shift towards moderation?
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Jan 24, 2021 16:02
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DutchDupe posted:They also censured Cindy McCain, Doug Ducey, and Jeff Flake. And apparently a bunch of MAGAs disrupted the meeting for...some reason. It's not just Arizona, the GOP is making sure to punish anyone who stood up to Trump's coup demands after the election. To give just one more example, the Republican member of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers who broke the tie and voted to certify Biden's victory is losing his position for doing so. My very strong prediction for the future is that all the GOP leaders in Georgia lose their next primaries for refusing to steal the election for Trump. Not everyone in the GOP is pro-coup, but it seems pretty clear that across much of the country pro-coup Republicans are the majority within the GOP. It's not really surprising; there's always been a substantial part of the US that would rather give up democracy than give up power. The thing that's surprising about it isn't that these people exist or that they're in positions of power, what's new is just that they're so out in the open about their authoritarianism. Instead of trying to hide it behind gerrymandering and voter suppression and obstruction of Democratic leaders, they're now just outright declaring that if given the option, they would stage a coup to overthrow any form of democratic governance and embrace far-right dictatorship. Grouchio posted:https://twitter.com/parkermolloy/status/1353346484578746368?s=21 There is a split in the GOP, but it really seems to be the case that the Trump/QAnon faction is in the majority in much of the country, and majority rules means Trump/QAnon people are now running many of the party organs. vyelkin fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jan 24, 2021 |
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Jan 24, 2021 16:05
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Grouchio posted:https://twitter.com/parkermolloy/status/1353346484578746368?s=21 The future of the national GOP is the history of the California GOP, and we're seeing it play out in GA/AZ. As they lose power and see no future to regain power, they'll become more radical and insane, having no ideas other than trolling and not even pretending to care about winning. I've never even thought about the Hawaii GOP, which I'm sure is 8 insane white men in a shed listening to Alex Jones and making bombs.
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Jan 24, 2021 16:32
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paternity suitor posted:I've never even thought about the Hawaii GOP, which I'm sure is 8 insane white men in a shed listening to Alex Jones and making bombs. I was on vacation a few years ago on the Big Island. After driving around for a couple hours I stopped in a small rural town to go to the bathroom, and in the stall there were a bunch of swastikas and "white power" carved into the wall. Needless to say I noped out of there pretty quickly, but it reminded me that no matter how liberal a state is, you're always going to find regressive fucks out in the middle of nowhere.
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Jan 24, 2021 17:08
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I wouldn't want to make it sound like I'm providing excuses for anyone, because that's not the point/goal, but COVID has been a huge stressor for a lot of people and a time of national trauma, so it doesn't surprise me that people are especially crazy right now. And I think they'll lose some of it when they have other, better things to do like go shopping or whatever. However, if the GOP is committing now, and installing those people, will they fit the zeitgeist of Republican voters once they can go back to watching new Marvel movies in the theater and go to football games and whatever.
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Jan 24, 2021 19:03
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paternity suitor posted:The future of the national GOP is the history of the California GOP, and we're seeing it play out in GA/AZ. As they lose power and see no future to regain power, they'll become more radical and insane, having no ideas other than trolling and not even pretending to care about winning. I've never even thought about the Hawaii GOP, which I'm sure is 8 insane white men in a shed listening to Alex Jones and making bombs. The other fate is the New England GOP (outside of Maine and NH anyway) where they can only win anything by putting forward moderate as hell people, sometimes this works (Mass) but other times it just angers half their voters and they lose even absolute slam dunk races (CT).
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Jan 24, 2021 19:16
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vyelkin posted:It's not just Arizona, the GOP is making sure to punish anyone who stood up to Trump's coup demands after the election. To give just one more example, the Republican member of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers who broke the tie and voted to certify Biden's victory is losing his position for doing so. My very strong prediction for the future is that all the GOP leaders in Georgia lose their next primaries for refusing to steal the election for Trump. The Atlantic had an article about this recently, which pointed out that almost every Republican in a position to actual do something to aide the attempted election steal instead did their job. All the inflammatory rhetoric and delaying came from people with no actual ability to do anything. The question then is: is the problem not as bad as it seems, or did we just get lucky? And if we just got lucky, what are the chances we get unlucky in the near future? I've been trying to enumerate reasons why we won't get unlucky in the near future, mainly for my own mental health: 1) Trump was special. No one else will be both willing to go all the way with fake fraud accusations, while still able to exert such influence over other Republican politicians and voters. paternity suitor posted:The future of the national GOP is the history of the California GOP, and we're seeing it play out in GA/AZ. As they lose power and see no future to regain power, they'll become more radical and insane, having no ideas other than trolling and not even pretending to care about winning. I've never even thought about the Hawaii GOP, which I'm sure is 8 insane white men in a shed listening to Alex Jones and making bombs. 2) Maybe this crazy version of the GOP will lose enough that they won't be in a position to overturn a national election. Pick posted:I wouldn't want to make it sound like I'm providing excuses for anyone, because that's not the point/goal, but COVID has been a huge stressor for a lot of people and a time of national trauma, so it doesn't surprise me that people are especially crazy right now. And I think they'll lose some of it when they have other, better things to do like go shopping or whatever. 3) Mybe the pandemic has been special in that it resulted in people to cranking up the insanity beyond where it would normally go.
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Jan 24, 2021 22:12
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My Youtube feed is pretty heavy with “Why I’m leaving California!” videos and it did make me wonder how much migration from the “People’s Republic of CA” was affecting voting results in other states. Are there any worthwhile pieces you guys can share on this? I’d like to know if it’s been a mixed bag with various states getting more blue while Californians might be moving to places like Texas because they want to “go native” and more conservative.
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Jan 25, 2021 04:02
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