USCE Winter 2023: change thread titles constantly, almost on a daily basis

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Agents are GO!: Dec 29, 2004

BiggerBoat posted:

I can't gather why so many voters like this idea and it's a really stupid and elementary way of thinking about "fair".

Because, by and large, everyone [...] is [...] horrible [...] idiot voters

I dunno, seems like you've gathered it pretty well there.

Edit: this is a terrible snipe. Here's one of my cats:

# ? Jan 22, 2023 20:07

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 18:44

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

BiggerBoat posted:

I'm all in favor of simplifying the tax code somehow but this Fair Tax poo poo and, worse, the people in my income bracket who support it, infuriate me. I can't gather why so many voters like this idea and it's a really stupid and elementary way of thinking about "fair".

Because, by and large, everyone pays the same amount for food, gas, utilities and, even to some extent, cars, clothes, child care and what have you. Things you simply must buy to live. Cost of living expenses. Trouble is that for someone like me, the percentage of that might be, let's say, 65% of my income. For someone making six figures or more, that percentage would be much much lower.

It's a horrible idea that idiot voters think is logical because it seems fair if you only think about it for 10 seconds.

The idea isn't just "fair", but "simple". Fair Tax-style proposals point out legitimate issues that ordinary people have with the current tax system (the complexity, the perception that people need to hire tax preparers, the perception that the wealthy loophole their way into paying far less than they owe), and then lie and claim that their proposal will solve all those issues.

As for the fact that they're usually blatantly regressive, these kinds of proposals usually claim they'll come with a compensation program such as a universal basic income that'll cover much of the impact on low-income workers. On top of that, they usually deploy other common anti-tax rhetoric to sell the idea that the current tax system is less progressive than it seems. For example, FairTax proponents claim that even people who seem to pay no income tax are actually paying tons of "hidden taxes" in the form of having corporate taxes passed down to them in the form of higher prices. Here's some snippets from the FairTax website that show how it handles such arguments:

quote:

Will corporations get a windfall with the abolition of the corporate tax?

Corporations are legal fictions that have not, do not, and never will bear the burden of taxation. Only people pay taxes. Corporations pass on their tax burden in the form of higher prices to consumers, lower wages to workers, and/or lower returns to investors. The idea that taxing a corporation reduces taxes on, say the working poor, is a cruel hoax. A corporate tax only makes what the working poor buy more expensive, costs them jobs, lowers their lifestyle, or delays their retirement. Under the FairTax Plan, money retained in the business and reinvested to create jobs, build factories, or develop new technologies, pays no tax. This is the most honest, fair, productive tax system possible. Free market competition will do the rest.

quote:

Why is the FAIRtax better than our current system?

Our present tax system is one of the reasons that people are finding it so difficult to get ahead these days. It is one of the reasons the next generation may not have a standard of living as high as this generation. Cars replaced the horse and buggy, the telephone replaced the telegraph, and the FairTax replaces the income tax. The income tax is holding us back and making it more difficult than it needs to be to improve our families� standard of living. It makes it needlessly difficult for our businesses to compete in international markets. It wastes vast resources on complying with needless paperwork. We can do better and we must.

quote:

How does the FairTax affect wages and prices?

Americans who produce goods and earn wages must pay significant tax and compliance costs under the current federal income tax. These taxes and costs both reduce after-tax wages and profits and are then passed on to the consumers of those goods and services in the form of price increases. When the FairTax removes income, capital gains, payroll, and estate and gift taxes, the pre-FairTax prices of these goods and services will fall. The removal of these hidden taxes may also allow wages to rise. Exactly how much prices will fall and wages will rise depends on market forces. For example, in a profession with many jobs and too few to fill them, wages will likely increase more than in fields where there are too many employees and not enough jobs.

You can see that it relies heavily on trickle-down reasoning to insist that income taxes are inherently bad for workers and the economy, claiming that taking money from the rich only serves to hurt the job creators and pass down price increases to consumers. There's a lot of little contradictions in it, but people won't notice unless they're actively looking at it with a critical eye. And most FairTax believers are primed for it by conservative media, since the organization pushing FairTax has close ties to conservative interests (and also to Scientology).

# ? Jan 22, 2023 20:11

-Blackadder-: Jan 2, 2007; Game....Blouses.

On the Fair Tax topic this was a pretty interesting jaunt back through history (always like reading background stories like this) and it has some insight into the interplay between the political factions. (Also like the "we're all capitalists now" moment.)
https://twitter.com/TimothyNoah1/status/1616470992095789056

quote:

Go Ahead, Republicans, Pass a National Sales Tax
No wonder Joe Biden is licking his chops. We can only hope House Republicans are this stupid.

Consumption taxes are having a moment, as they do every 20 years or so. They are never a good idea, but the current iteration, which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has promised to bring to the floor, is a worse idea than usual.

Under the Fair Tax bill sponsored by Representative Buddy Carter, a Georgia Republican, all income, capital gains, estate, gift, corporate, and payroll taxes would be eliminated. They would be replaced by a flat 30 percent national sales tax on everything you buy. Even Grover Norquist, the hard-right president of Americans for Tax Reform and flat-tax advocate who famously said he wanted to shrink government �to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,� told Joseph Zeballos-Roig of Semafor this week that the Fair Tax bill was �a political gift to Biden and the Democrats.� Elsewhere Norquist has called it �one of the stupider ideas that have been put forward.� If the �fair tax� passed in the House it would still have no chance of becoming law, of course, because the Senate and the White House would stop it. That makes a purely symbolic House vote all upside for the Democrats.

Consumption taxes can be worthwhile if they�re targeted narrowly to specific things that we legitimately want people to buy less of. That�s the logic of the gasoline tax, which is 18.4 cents per gallon and ought to be at least twice that to curb carbon emissions, and of the cigarette tax, which is about $1 per pack. But you have to be careful with consumption taxes, because unless they target luxuries available only to the affluent, they�re going to be regressive. You also have to be careful because such taxes are wildly unpopular.

Broad-based consumption taxes like what Carter has proposed are always a dumb idea. Interestingly, liberals fancied such consumption taxes before conservatives did. The leading advocate four decades ago was Lester Thurow, a celebrity economist at MIT who in 1981 proposed curbing double-digit inflation with a consumption tax. This was, Thurow argued, preferable to then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker�s approach to curbing inflation, which was to slam the brakes on the money supply and bring on a severe recession (which of course is what happened in the end). Thurow may have been right that his dumb idea was better than Volcker�s cruel idea. He was certainly right that President Ronald Reagan�s idea, which was to slash away at the income tax, was terrible.

Thurow made large claims for the consumption tax. It would curb inflation, he said. It would boost the national savings rate. He even said it would pay for Reagan�s military buildup, which, at the time, Thurow feared would be paid for with horribly deep domestic spending cuts, which never materialized. (Instead, the military buildup was paid for with�well, it wasn�t: Reagan tripled the deficit.) Thurow said that his consumption tax (he proposed various kinds, including a European-style value-added tax) could be made progressive through rebates or other methods. But to the limited extent that consumption taxation has been tried (indirectly, through the creation of tax-free college savings and health savings accounts�shelters for savings rather than taxes for consumption), it has tended to redistribute wealth upward.

The consumption tax had appeal to liberals back in the 1980s because it was an assault on the materialism that many liberals had deplored since the 1950s, as advertisers created consumer desires supposedly out of thin air. Also, banks were handing out credit cards like penny candy, causing an alarming rise in consumer debt. The personal savings rate had been declining since the 1970s (and would continue to fall until 2005, when it started to climb again), and liberals worried that the ethos of thrift was vanishing (a virtue that conservatives, to whom thrift was previously sacred, stopped caring about as Reagan�s deficits piled up). It�s touching now to remember that in the 1980s, lefties deplored �yuppies� for consumer indulgences like Melitta coffeemakers and Sony Walkmen and Kaypro personal computers�all items whose successor technologies we now consider straightforward necessities.

The consumption tax was reborn in the early 2000s as a conservative idea when President George W. Bush�s Council of Economic Advisers suggested �a shift from taxing income to taxing consumption.� Writing about this at the time, I observed that, given Bush�s desire to eliminate permanently the inheritance tax, adding a consumption tax to the mix looked like �a deliberate scheme to make American society more aristocratic.�

Now another two decades have passed and the Republican dream to build a wealth aristocracy in America persists. Carter incorporates into his national sales tax elimination of the estate tax and also the capital gains, gift, and corporate taxes. These all fall most heavily on the rich. Plus Carter�s bill eliminates the income tax. Actually, it eliminates the IRS entirely, leaving administration of his �fair tax� to magic elves at the Treasury Department who work for free (just as they do for Santa Claus). Speaking of magical thinking, Carter maintains that this national sales tax would amount to 23 percent of every purchase, but that�s basing the calculation on the percentage you pay on the item with tax built into the price, a method that�s obviously and deliberately misleading. If you base the calculation on how much tax you pay on the item itself, it�s a 30 percent tax.

Eliminating all existing federal taxes is not something that Thurow or any other liberal advocate for the consumption tax ever contemplated. Like Thurow, Carter would rebate his consumption tax to low-income people, but Carter�s plan is appallingly stingy; the rebate brings families only up to the federal poverty threshold, which is currently $30,000 for a family of four. For comparison�s sake, a family of four is today eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit up to an income of $53,057 (single parent) or $55,529 (married, filing jointly). So essentially the �fair tax� increases the tax burden on low-income families above the poverty line and on middle-class taxpayers in order to provide huge tax cuts to the rich, for whom consumption is a much smaller proportion of their income.

It will be interesting to see how many House Republicans are suicidal enough to vote for the �fair tax.� Here�s Biden licking his chops last week:

"They want to raise taxes on the middle class by taxing thousands of everyday items from groceries, gasoline, clothing, and cutting taxes for the wealthiest, because they want to supplant the money lost from taxes on the millionaires and billionaires with a sales tax on virtually everything in the country.� They want working-class folks to be paying another 10, 20 percent on their taxes, depending on where they live and how they�re spending the money. And they�re going to reduce taxes for the super wealthy."

The most intriguing critic of the �fair tax� is Norquist, who usually favors schemes to flatten progressive taxation. Not this one, though. His objection appears to be less wonky than political. �Let�s say you�re 20 years old,� Norquist told Dave Weigel, then of Slate, about the �fair tax� idea in 2011 (yes, the proposal has been kicking around a long time):

"You don�t care what tax you pay�you haven�t paid any yet. But if I�m 65, I�ve spent my whole life paying income taxes. I�m about to stop paying them. What�s the benefit to me if you bring on a sales tax? Thanks�you�ve just made every retired person�s pension 33 percent less valuable."

A dozen years later, Norquist really is 65 (66, to be precise), and I imagine feels even more strongly about this than he did then.

The conservative movement is heavily dependent on the elderly. The Tea Party rebellion a decade ago was (to exaggerate only slightly) a bunch of white Social Security and Medicare recipients not wanting to share the federal teat with low-income Blacks and Latinos. Donald Trump appealed to these people in 2016 by promising not to cut Social Security and Medicare. Now we get to find out whether House Republicans want to kiss off that constituency�along with anybody else who�s offended�by shifting the tax burden away from the rich. This is going to be fun.

If anyone has any recommendations, I'd be interested in an article/book/podcast that goes back through the various issues we've played musical chairs with over the years (only really know about the all time classic Southern Strategy Realignment).

-Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jan 22, 2023

# ? Jan 22, 2023 20:42

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; This does not make sense when, again, aggregate indicia also indicate improvements. The belief that things are worse is false. It remains false.

There are few phrases I less wish to read than "Joe Biden is licking his chops."

I'm not sure how solid the comparison that the author's making is; we're in a pretty different place right now compared to the 1980s, and the argument he's making is based on one "celebrity economist" arguing for such a tax.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jan 22, 2023

# ? Jan 22, 2023 20:53

-Blackadder-: Jan 2, 2007; Game....Blouses.

Discendo Vox posted:

There are few phrases I less wish to read than "Joe Biden is licking his chops."

I'm not sure how solid the comparison that the author's making is; we're in a pretty different place right now compared to the 1980s, and the argument he's making is based on one "celebrity economist" arguing for such a tax.

I don't think it was written to be disparaging. The alternative Fed option was pretty brutal after all.

# ? Jan 22, 2023 21:01

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; This does not make sense when, again, aggregate indicia also indicate improvements. The belief that things are worse is false. It remains false.

-Blackadder- posted:

I don't think it was written to be disparaging. The alternative Fed option was pretty brutal after all.

Sure, but it's not clear that it was a widely held position at all, going from the article.

# ? Jan 22, 2023 21:26

Tnega: Oct 26, 2010; Pillbug

Of course, the FairTax wont do anything about use fees that affect *checks notes* the bottom 90% of the income distribution.

# ? Jan 22, 2023 21:35

Gerund: Sep 12, 2007; He push a man

-Blackadder- posted:

On the Fair Tax topic this was a pretty interesting jaunt back through history (always like reading background stories like this) and it has some insight into the interplay between the political factions. (Also like the "we're all capitalists now" moment.)
https://twitter.com/TimothyNoah1/status/1616470992095789056

If anyone has any recommendations, I'd be interested in an article/book/podcast that goes back through the various issues we've played musical chairs with over the years (only really know about the all time classic Southern Strategy Realignment).

I'd look into the Sagebrush rebellion, especially since its the movement that gave rise to Reagan in 1980. Compare to the creation of national parks by ancient Republicans.

# ? Jan 22, 2023 21:56

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

BiggerBoat posted:

I'm all in favor of simplifying the tax code somehow but this Fair Tax poo poo and, worse, the people in my income bracket who support it, infuriate me. I can't gather why so many voters like this idea and it's a really stupid and elementary way of thinking about "fair".

Complicated tax code is fine, taxes is a useful lever to affect behavior. I'm in favor of simplifying paying your taxes, which is mostly the fault of Intuit/H&R block lobbying to block the IRS from simplifying/doing the paperwork for you

# ? Jan 22, 2023 22:40

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

-Blackadder- posted:

On the Fair Tax topic this was a pretty interesting jaunt back through history (always like reading background stories like this) and it has some insight into the interplay between the political factions. (Also like the "we're all capitalists now" moment.)
https://twitter.com/TimothyNoah1/status/1616470992095789056

If anyone has any recommendations, I'd be interested in an article/book/podcast that goes back through the various issues we've played musical chairs with over the years (only really know about the all time classic Southern Strategy Realignment).

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a musical-chairs. Reducing consumption is generally accepted to be a way to counter inflation. Thurow's proposal was that instead of having the Federal Reserve intentionally force a recession, a VAT (he drew heavily from the example of European social democracies) would be able to reduce consumption in a less destructive manner while producing government revenue that could be put to some useful purpose.

It's also worth remembering that the income tax was much higher then. At the time, the tax rate on the top income bracket was 70%, and Thurow was concerned that the tax system wasn't progressive enough due to things like the capital gains tax being lower. That led to a bunch of other radical proposals from him, such as ending the corporate tax and instead directly taxing shareholders on the profits of companies they owned.

The entire 1981 article is available online for free, if you want to see some of the things he suggested and how he argued for them. I can't say all of it was good ideas, and a lot of it certainly looks out of place these days, but it's understandable when considering the context: that he was arguing against Reagan's economic policies and trying to provide alternatives that would accomplish the claimed goals better.

https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/taxes/thurowf.htm

# ? Jan 22, 2023 23:38

Mechafunkzilla: Sep 11, 2006; If you want a vision of the future...

Would a flat consumption tax not just allow people to dodge taxes by buying things overseas?

# ? Jan 23, 2023 00:17

Randalor: Sep 4, 2011

Mechafunkzilla posted:

Would a flat consumption tax not just allow people to dodge taxes by buying things overseas?

Which is an option only readily available to the rich as a permanent option, yes. Are you really surprised that the Republicans are proposing something that is even easier for the rich to skirt around?

# ? Jan 23, 2023 00:22

BIG FLUFFY DOG: Feb 16, 2011; On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

Mechafunkzilla posted:

Would a flat consumption tax not just allow people to dodge taxes by buying things overseas?

It�s common for wealthy people to do this in countries with prohibitive consumption taxes or middle class people that are close to the border so for example Brazilians flying to Florida to purchase electronics, Vancouver punjabis driving to the Costco in bellingham Washington to take advantage of American dairy subsidies, American diabetics traveling to Europe for insulin. Americas a big country and airline travel here�s expensive so normally you wouldn�t do it to buy groceries or freaky anything less expensive than our ludicrous medicine prices, but 30% is high enough that it would actually become a concern especially ]for big ticket items.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 00:25

Silly Burrito: Nov 27, 2007; SET A COURSE FOR
THE FLAVOR QUADRANT

I�m just picturing 30% more on a new car purchase going over really well with everyone.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 00:39

Timmy Age 6: Jul 23, 2011; Lobster says "mrow?"; Ramrod XTreme

A delightful headline for a brief bit in the Washington Post about Mike Pence's dismal favorable ratings:
Mike Pence sits alone in a corner of sadness

# ? Jan 23, 2023 00:43

-Blackadder-: Jan 2, 2007; Game....Blouses.

Main Paineframe posted:

The entire 1981 article is available online for free, if you want to see some of the things he suggested and how he argued for them. I can't say all of it was good ideas, and a lot of it certainly looks out of place these days, but it's understandable when considering the context: that he was arguing against Reagan's economic policies and trying to provide alternatives that would accomplish the claimed goals better.

https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/taxes/thurowf.htm

Thanks, I felt like the first article was nuanced by perhaps not the headline.

One thing I found interesting was the counter-culture movement backed Dems espousing thrift and anti-consumerism vs the 80's yuppie Patrick Bateman Republicans doing the opposite. You can really start to see how the cultural factions impacted the parties at the time.

Here's a few articles that seemed interesting I came across looking into Thurow (he was quite the character) that provide some more context.

Drafting a Democratic Industrial Plan - 1983
The Man with all the Answers - 1990
How Democrats killed their populist soul - 2016

-Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jan 23, 2023

# ? Jan 23, 2023 00:59

E. Revenant: Aug 26, 2002; If the abyss gazes long into you then stare right back;
make it blink.

During the 90's there was a short lived luxury tax on certain items bought in the US that rich people circumvented by just buying big ticket items out of country.

Under a 30% national sales tax the top end of the spenders would just do the same thing and effectively put more of the tax burden on those that don't have the option of just buying stuff out of country.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 01:36

Fart Amplifier: Apr 12, 2003

Timmy Age 6 posted:

A delightful headline for a brief bit in the Washington Post about Mike Pence's dismal favorable ratings:
Mike Pence sits alone in a corner of sadness

Desantis that far in the upper left is concerning

# ? Jan 23, 2023 01:42

Timeless Appeal: May 28, 2006

bird food bathtub posted:

One of the above is Trump, and one of the above is not.

I know this isn't a legal argument or anything, but Biden was legitimately also doing a lot of poo poo at the end of his VP term. Like he wasn't hoarding videos. He's just a messy old man who brought work home, and my honest guess is that his fuckup wasn't that unique. While Trump famously had a disdain for reading during his term and was just collecting trophies.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 02:06

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Discendo Vox posted:

There are few phrases I less wish to read than "Joe Biden is licking his chops."

What would you prefer he be licking instead?

# ? Jan 23, 2023 02:11

Rigel: Nov 11, 2016

This bill will probably be quickly forgotten soon after it loses, but I really, really hope the GOP campaigns on silly poo poo like this 30% sales tax

# ? Jan 23, 2023 02:27

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; This does not make sense when, again, aggregate indicia also indicate improvements. The belief that things are worse is false. It remains false.

Kith posted:

What would you prefer he be licking instead?

your chops or corn pop's

# ? Jan 23, 2023 02:32

Buckwheat Sings: Feb 9, 2005

Discendo Vox posted:

your chops or corn pop's

This has nothing to do with politics but I just realized corn pops have completely disappeared in all the supermarkets around me.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 02:39

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

Buckwheat Sings posted:

This has nothing to do with politics but I just realized corn pops have completely disappeared in all the supermarkets around me.

Thanks, ~~Obama~~Biden!

# ? Jan 23, 2023 02:41

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

bird food bathtub posted:

The part about classified documents that is being very purposefully misrepresented by assholes like Fox is that the actual fuckup isn't generally what gets you in trouble, because it's usually just a fuckup. It's the coverup, or lying afterwards, or pretending it didn't happen. There are entire offices dedicated to tracking down sources, locations, and potential end points of accidentally mishandled classified information. That is their entire job.

When these kinds of things happen, they are called in to find out where it came from, what it contains, and where it might have ended up. poo poo happens, and as long as you're up front about what happened and help them in that investigation the end result is probably an administrative note in your file, some re-training, and as long as you keep your poo poo together in the future and don't do it again everybody moves on. If you lie to them, cover up what happened, or demonstrate you're doing it on purpose then the shitwinds start blowing. You're stopping them from finding out what the scope of risk is so they can't accurately protect the information.

One of the above is Trump, and one of the above is not.

All true and fair enough but god help most of us if we punch in 7 minutes late or call out sick from our poo poo jobs without a doctor's note.

There's a lot of stuff at my job that requires me to take certain things rather seriously but I'm not the President of the loving United States either and this is starting to seem like The Secret Files are nothing more than post it notes and 16th generation typewritten Xerox copies of poo poo that people just toss in their "I'll get to it" pile next to the box of photo albums and unread Dean Koontz paperbacks in their garage that they'll get around to unpacking after a move.

How is all of this poo poo just laying around next to a plastic tub of cleaning supplies and copies of electric bills from 7 years ago where no one at all is tracking any of it? Jesus Christ I take better care of a 1099 I received for $1000 worth of side work last year.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 02:49

Silly Burrito: Nov 27, 2007; SET A COURSE FOR
THE FLAVOR QUADRANT

BiggerBoat posted:

How is all of this poo poo just laying around next to a plastic tub of cleaning supplies and copies of electric bills from 7 years ago where no one at all is tracking any of it? Jesus Christ I take better care of a 1099 I received for $1000 worth of side work last year.

Sad part is that you're more likely to get in trouble for misplacing that and not reporting it than they are.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 02:53

-Blackadder-: Jan 2, 2007; Game....Blouses.

Fart Amplifier posted:

Desantis that far in the upper left is concerning

DeSantis is like heroin for the Republican base.

Cherry on top: The Dem's Florida operation is a complete poo poo show.
https://twitter.com/MariannaReports/status/1617225149476147205

quote:

'There is no plan. There's nothing': Florida Democrats in despair over future.

More than two months after enduring humbling midterm losses, Democrats in Florida are in a state of disorder, with no clear leader, infrastructure, or consensus for rebuilding, according to interviews with more than a dozen organizers, former lawmakers, donors and other leaders.

These factors have compounded their worries about Democrats outside Florida all but writing off the nation�s third most populous state, which was once seen as a marquee battleground. Democrats have struggled there in recent elections, hitting a new low last fall when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won a second term by nearly 20 points and carried majority-Hispanic Miami-Dade County, which a GOP gubernatorial nominee hadn�t done in 20 years. Republicans also secured a supermajority in the state legislature.

Now, as Democrats look to 2024, there are few early signs that Florida will be a top priority for President Biden, who has said he intends to run for reelection. A Biden adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe strategy, said decisions about whether a reelection campaign would invest in Florida would be based in part on the Republican nominee. Some Democrats see little hope of contesting Florida�s 30 electoral votes � only Texas and California are allotted more � in 2024 if DeSantis is the nominee, while there�s a greater opportunity if former president Donald Trump wins the GOP nod.

�The thing about Florida Democrats is we keep learning with every passing year that just when you thought you had hit bottom, you discover that there are new abysses to fall deeper and deeper into,� said Fernand Amandi, a veteran Democratic operative in the state. �There is no plan. There�s nothing. It�s just a state of suspended animation and chaos � and, more than anything, it�s the mournful regret and acceptance that Florida has been cast aside for the long, foreseeable future.�

It is unclear to many Florida Democrats whether they will be able to field a competitive U.S. Senate nominee next year for the seat currently held by Sen. Rick Scott (R); the last time they won a Senate race in the state was 2012. There are currently no Democratic statewide officeholders � a first since Reconstruction.

More immediately, they face the question of who will helm the state party after the recent resignation of Manny Diaz, the embattled chairman who faced mounting calls for him to step down. There is no immediate front-runner for the position, Democrats said, and the Democratic National Committee has no preference for next chair yet, according to a person familiar with the deliberations, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private considerations.

�There are really no Democrats in Florida who have money or are motivated,� said John Morgan, a major Democratic donor and trial lawyer in central Florida, who bemoaned the lack of a bench of Democratic candidates.

One bright spot for Democrats was the 2022 victory of Rep. Maxwell Frost, who has attracted national attention for becoming the first Gen Z congressman. But on the whole, Democrats could point to few marquee recruits for future races.

Beyond worries about its candidates, Democrats in the state say there�s no unified plan for how the party is going to create a year-round operation that gets voters registered or helps them regain relevance with Floridians. Many are calling for greater investments from donors, a more robust field program and more aggressive counterarguments to GOP messaging.

National Democratic groups mostly looked past Florida in the 2022 midterms, with the governor�s race failing to become a priority for the Democratic Governors Association and the Senate race failing to attract much attention from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and its affiliated outside groups. The DNC also left the state off a list of likely 2024 battleground states that received extra investments for 2022. Some large Democratic-leaning donations did flow into the state through other outside groups, including nonprofits focused on voter registration, which do not disclose their donors.

The DNC said it is already making early 2024 investments in Florida. In November, the DNC announced it would hire full-time press staff in the state. But this came after the DNC decided against giving Florida the extra midterm election resources that it provided other states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to prepare the groundwork for the next presidential contest.

�Last cycle, the DNC doubled down on our 50-state strategy with historic midterm investments and we remain firmly committed to that approach � including in Florida,� said DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison in a statement. �We are already laying the groundwork for additional resources headed into 2024.�

Florida � which voted for Barack Obama twice and featured close gubernatorial and Senate elections in 2018 � has in many ways taken a back seat to other increasingly competitive states, such as Georgia and Arizona in recent elections, where demographic changes and political trends have made the terrain more favorable for the party. Some warned that setting Florida aside in the long run would be unwise.

�Florida reminds me of the Monty Python �Dead, Not Dead� skit. Yes, the state is expensive and complicated to campaign in, but with 30 electoral votes and a population that lines up well with the makeup of the Democratic coalition, Democrats can�t afford to bury it,� Juan Pe�alosa, former executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, said in a statement.

As they grapple with their political future, Democrats are also reckoning with policy costs their losses have exacted. DeSantis has made Florida a laboratory for conservative policies that have been lauded and adopted by Republicans elsewhere in the country, including banning certain textbooks in schools and barring transgender minors from receiving certain health-care treatments. He has positioned himself as a top potential presidential contender for 2024, and polls have shown that a majority of voters in the state support his handling of the pandemic and other challenges facing Floridians.

Former congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D) said a lack of investment from Democratic donors helped pave the way for DeSantis to achieve national prominence and has given him �a clear path � to be able to make a case for himself.� Mucarsel-Powell predicted a long road to recovery for Democrats: �There�s going to be a lot of difficult work to rebuild trust in the party.�

The GOP�s gains came even as the state�s electorate in recent elections has become younger and more diverse � trends that Democrats long felt were on their side. Republicans overtook Democrats in voter registration in 2021, figures that only widened in the lead-up to the midterm election. The state has more than 5.3 million registered Republicans and just under 5 million registered Democrats, according to state figures. And in the months since the election, pollsters and operatives have found that the state saw depressed turnout among Democrats.

Christian Ziegler, vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party, touted DeSantis�s victory as a product of him being a �relentless fighter� willing to take on tough issues and delivering wins for Floridians. �Under Governor DeSantis, freedom has overtaken sunshine as the No. 1 driver of tourism and relocation,� Ziegler said.

In his resignation letter, Diaz, former mayor of Miami, blamed the 2022 losses on a lack of funding, volunteers, effective messaging or programming to engage with voters. He said the party has a �long-standing, systemic and deeply entrenched culture resistant to change.�

�We cannot win elections if we continue to rely on voter registration to drive turnout, build field operations only around elections, and expect to get our vote out without engaging voters where they live,� Diaz wrote in his more than 2,300-word letter.

Diaz did not respond to request for comment.

Diaz�s resignation came amid growing calls for him to step down with two years left in his term. Even before the 2022 losses, some Florida Democrats had already raised alarms that Diaz was not an effective party leader. Some said that he was disengaged, wouldn�t listen to outside opinions and had failed to deliver on his promises to build the state party.

Several Democrats are vying for the job, including former state senator Annette Taddeo and Alex Berrios, co-founder of Mi Vecino, a year-round voter registration group in Florida. But conversations with more than a dozen Democratic operatives and leaders show there�s no clear successor. Democrats are expected to elect a new state chair in a meeting on February 25. The Florida Democratic Party did not respond to a request for comment.

Several Democrats voiced optimism that Diaz�s resignation could serve as a fresh opportunity for the party.

�A lot of leaders in the party and activists have been demanding for the necessary soul-searching to happen and I think now that Manny Diaz has stepped down, it forces Democrats to have those tough conversations about what�s needed to rebuild the party,� said Juan Cuba, former chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party.

In Miami-Dade, the state�s most populous county, where Hispanics make up almost 60 percent of the electorate, Democrats blame their losses on a lack of money, strong messaging and organizing to reach the community, as well as having few formidable candidates. Meanwhile, Republicans kept up an aggressive year-round ground operation in the county aimed at building on Trump�s gains with Hispanic voters there in 2020.

Republican gains with Hispanics across the state have come from an overperformance with conservative-leaning Cuban Americans and further inroads with the state�s growing Puerto Rican, Colombian, Venezuelan and other Hispanic populations. Republicans have aggressively sought to link Democrats to the party�s far-left flank in recent years, branding them as �socialists� even as they reject that label and philosophy. Some Democrats argue that Republican gains with Hispanics in Florida is less about their policies resonating and more about Democrats not showing up to counter GOP messaging.

There is widespread agreement that regardless of who leads the state party, any rebuilding effort will require buy-in from many people and organizations.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D) said the party needs to �go back to basics� and focus on building out its field operations with more people knocking on doors and trying to engage with communities across the state. She lamented how the party has lacked a robust infrastructure for several years, which ultimately led her to start her own voter registration and engagement operation.

�We�re very much at the bottom of the bottom,� she said. �It doesn�t have to be this large-scale sexy program. It just has to be a program. Nothing�s going to happen overnight or in one election cycle, but we need to start building now.�

Vanessa Rolon, a Democratic operative who worked for the Florida Democratic Party on a program meant to help municipal candidates, explained that the party�s problems stem from taking voters and donors for granted. Rolon recalled how 10 years ago she visited a field office in Hialeah, a heavily Cuban American city in South Florida, and picked up a packet to go door-knocking in that community.

�Fast forward to today, that is nonexistent,� she said. �That�s the embodiment of what has gone wrong, where that�s gone and then you have Republicans building these offices everywhere. They�ve been organizing and we�ve regressed.�

Gerund posted:

I'd look into the Sagebrush rebellion, especially since its the movement that gave rise to Reagan in 1980. Compare to the creation of national parks by ancient Republicans.

Missed this before, thanks, I'll take a look!

# ? Jan 23, 2023 03:31

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

-Blackadder- posted:

DeSantis is like heroin for the Republican base.

Cherry on top: The Dem's Florida operation is a complete poo poo show.
https://twitter.com/MariannaReports/status/1617225149476147205

Missed this before, thanks, I'll take a look!

To be fair, at this point "giving the gently caress up and ceding Florida to the oncoming ocean" is a winning strategy for the Dems :v:

# ? Jan 23, 2023 03:35

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

BiggerBoat posted:

There's a lot of stuff at my job that requires me to take certain things rather seriously but I'm not the President of the loving United States either and this is starting to seem like The Secret Files are nothing more than post it notes and 16th generation typewritten Xerox copies of poo poo that people just toss in their "I'll get to it" pile next to the box of photo albums and unread Dean Koontz paperbacks in their garage that they'll get around to unpacking after a move.

How is all of this poo poo just laying around next to a plastic tub of cleaning supplies and copies of electric bills from 7 years ago where no one at all is tracking any of it? Jesus Christ I take better care of a 1099 I received for $1000 worth of side work last year.

It wouldn't be surprising of some of them are literally post it notes. Any document you make that contains classified information is a classified document. Something like the notes you take during a daily security briefing count, or a sticky note like "Remember to follow up with X about Y" if the topic's specific enough. You're supposed to mark and date working papers, control them like other documents, then either destroy or do more marking if you keep them long enough, but it's not that surprising that after 4 years filled with daily meetings and presumably ungodly amounts of paper going across Biden's desk, some stuff is mismarked or misfiled.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 04:32

Rigel: Nov 11, 2016

The plan here is obvious. Just fuckin' fight. Yeah OK, maybe Florida is not federally competitive, maybe you are trapped deep within dark red chudlandia. OK, fine. loving fight, we assume every year that the Alabama state elections are going to be lost every year with about 30% voting for the not-crazy candidate. That sucks, but I still expect those voters to show up.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 04:48

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

As DNC chair, Howard Dean made Wyoming competitive and came within a fraction of one percent of turning it over to Democrats. It's not impossible.

A lot of this rode on the fact that Cubin was flakey as gently caress for even attending sessions and people just being tired of her.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 05:50

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Of course you still get problems with red state Democrats repeatedly going all in on demonstrably failed strategies when they DO try. Are they still trying to run that ex-Republican that everybody hates? And trying to get the 'Castro took grandma's slaves away' vote at the expense of all else?

# ? Jan 23, 2023 06:02

FlamingLiberal: Jan 18, 2009; Would you like to play a game?

Rigel posted:

The plan here is obvious. Just fuckin' fight. Yeah OK, maybe Florida is not federally competitive, maybe you are trapped deep within dark red chudlandia. OK, fine. loving fight, we assume every year that the Alabama state elections are going to be lost every year with about 30% voting for the not-crazy candidate. That sucks, but I still expect those voters to show up.

Speaking as a Florida Dem, the state party has been a joke my entire lifetime and I doubt that ever changes

The DNC has no interest in actually fixing the issue of leadership and instead we just get random grifters running the party into the ground. Then they consistently keep running ex-Republicans for office and then act surprised when the voters don't show up.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 06:02

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

Star Man posted:

As DNC chair, Howard Dean made Wyoming competitive and came within a fraction of one percent of turning it over to Democrats. It's not impossible.

A lot of this rode on the fact that Cubin was flakey as gently caress for even attending sessions and people just being tired of her.

Sadly Howard Dead as DNC chair and the 50 State Strategy was, like 2008-era Obama, a once in the lifetime of a country aberration that will never come again because the entire Democratic Party system will never again allow such a radical thinking maverick with ideas like "Actually loving run and invest everywhere like you can win there" come to power again.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 06:27

Fister Roboto: Feb 21, 2008

nine-gear crow posted:

To be fair, at this point "giving the gently caress up and ceding Florida to the oncoming ocean" is a winning strategy for the Dems

I know it's just a dumb joke but please keep in mind that the majority of people in Florida probably don't deserve to die.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 06:35

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

It's really hard to find non crazy people who are willing to drop whatever they've been doing and spend six months campaigning for state office (with all the schmoozing, cold call fundraising, and media digging through your life that involves) if the race is unlikely to be anywhere close to competitive.

Being a serious candidate is an large amount of work

# ? Jan 23, 2023 08:52

Somaen: Nov 19, 2007; by vyelkin

Fart Amplifier posted:

Desantis that far in the upper left is concerning

Is he the competent fascist that will come after Trump that people were warning about? Seems like that was a fairly accurate prediction

# ? Jan 23, 2023 09:04

Solkanar512: Dec 28, 2006; by the sex ghost

Why was Dean ignored by the Obama administration, anyway? That never made any sense to me, especially after his success actually making races competitive.

It was like he was just exiled or something.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 09:09

Killer robot: Sep 6, 2010; I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!; Pillbug

nine-gear crow posted:

Sadly Howard Dead as DNC chair and the 50 State Strategy was, like 2008-era Obama, a once in the lifetime of a country aberration that will never come again because the entire Democratic Party system will never again allow such a radical thinking maverick with ideas like "Actually loving run and invest everywhere like you can win there" come to power again.

Obligatory reminder that at least half of the reason why is that today's Democratic voters don't have as much taste for the Blue Dogs that strategy produced, and the ones it did produce got wiped out in midterms for daring to support Obama's far-left agenda.

As ever, discussing Democratic strategies while disregarding both Democratic (especially primary) voters and the people who actually want to put their own time and money into running for major office tends to make for really incomplete analysis.

Killer robot fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Jan 23, 2023

# ? Jan 23, 2023 09:12

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 18:44

Charliegrs: Aug 10, 2009

Solkanar512 posted:

Why was Dean ignored by the Obama administration, anyway? That never made any sense to me, especially after his success actually making races competitive.

It was like he was just exiled or something.

It's because he made that funny scream.

# ? Jan 23, 2023 09:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USCE Winter 2023: change thread titles constantly, almost on a daily basis

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