American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

its true, for evidence see the multiple looming government shut downs

what you have now is an ideologically principled congress, just what we always wanted, and its still pretty horrible, lol

why not have a real liberal in charge of an entire branch of government?

because I'd rather finish a full Senate term first, although if it came down to it Anything But HRC.

morbs, you ought to know that much power in DC flows in back channels and a familiarity with them gives you many more ways to get from here to there.

tell that to Biden and Mitch McConnell!

Jonathan Rauch on why backroom deals are exactly what repel tea partiers:

I have interviewed many Tea Party supporters and leaders in the last few years. What comes across when they discuss their concerns is not just fiscal libertarianism and hostility to big government, though those are certainly defining strains. Nor, importantly, did I find extremism or radicalism as conventionally thought of; these are smart, successful people who have no interest in upending the social order as we know it. (In fact, they tend to think of themselves as seeking to protect the social order from government's efforts to usurp it.) They are not temperamentally opposed to compromise; in their daily lives, they do it all the time. Rather, they are ideologically opposed to compromise. They have made a reasoned judgment that compromise has served the country and the Constitution poorly.

It has served the country poorly, they say, by corrupting politicians who promise one thing and then go to Washington and do the opposite after being absorbed by the deal-making, log-rolling culture of politics as usual. Leaders who showed up swearing to master big government wind up serving it instead. Pushed to defend themselves, such craven politicians say "we didn't have the votes" or "at the end of the day, we had to get something done." This kind of Realpolitik, whatever its tactical merits, is a one-way ratchet toward ever bigger government. And it can hardly be rational to continue to support a counterproductive strategy, the very strategy that got us into the present mess. When you are in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. So compromisers should just stop. That is the only way to restrain the growth of government

many more ways to get from here to EVEN MORE FUCT

(close, WmC)

Dems & Repugs still agree on 98% of shit, esp since Our Freedom Was Hated (TM Crying Eagle)

imho back channel familiarity had more to do w favors owed than expertise, and favors have been highly devalued in todays congressional economy, always prob overrated tho

also warren was a pretty awful candidate out on the stump and managed to make a gimme race way more competitive than it should've been. her running would only go to 'prove' how unelectable her liberalism (as opposed to her persona) is, at a time when the party is slowly moving slightly left. any 'not so fast on the hillary inevitability' pieces are just filling space and fishing for hits. wake me when someone writes a credible piece taking cuomo or o'malley seriously.

morbs you really think the dems and republicans are more coaligned now than they were when they were reforming welfare, defending marriage, and repealing glass-steagall? show me the bills of comparable impact from this session that had bipartisan support.

smart, successful people

who apply only one litmus test to the usefulness of any idea, based on whether it makes government any larger than it already is? that is extremely simple in the older sense of: stupid (see simple Simon).

back favors vs some conception of purity in democracy/legislatin' is hamilton vs madison again right? in which case i'm siding w/ hamilton.

the problem with any Dem candidate in 2016 is how sequester, chained CPI, Simpson-Bowles, etc have inched the country towards accepting these conservative/DLC positions as normal even as the party itself moves left and socially the electorate does; a Dem candidate would have to first undo this thinking. That's how much ground libs hae lost.

also warren was a pretty awful candidate out on the stump and managed to make a gimme race way more competitive than it should've been.

― balls, Sunday, September 29, 2013 3:02 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure where youre getting this, brown was was popular in mass and warren won handily, she raised more money than anyone ever has in a statewide race there and developed a big national profile based largely on her stump speeches going hella viral on the nets

yeah that was not my recollection either

country was way more deficit hawkish in 92 when it gave nearly 20% of the popular vote to a lunatic munchkin whose platform and campaign was focused almost solely on deficit reduction. perot (and eventually clinton) hitting bush and by implication reagan over deficit was a factor in the race, though probably not nearly as much a factor as greenspan not lowering interest rates due to the deficit and obviously not nearly as much as bush agreeing to raise taxes to reduce the deficit after the dems shut down the govt over it in 1990.

fair question to be raised however is how well those speeches would have played on a national level vs in new england xp

the thing about a possible warren candidacy isnt that the democratic party has shifted left its that the values of the entire country have changed on some big issues (see frank richs rand paul piece http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/rand-paul-2013-9) particularly wealth inequality/the finance industry and forign interventionism, hillary represents the old outdated consensus on both of those

if warren is a credible national candidate then watch out cuz ted cruz is a juggernaut then.

ballsy:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/25/democratic-establishment-nsa

fair question to be raised however is how well those speeches would have played on a national level vs in new england xp

― druhilla (k3vin k.), Sunday, September 29, 2013 3:18 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i mean no one is tested for presidential politics until they run, but id like to see her give it a shot

if warren is a credible national candidate then watch out cuz ted cruz is a juggernaut then.

― balls, Sunday, September 29, 2013 3:23 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol terrible comparison

you think there's more of a bipartisan national security consensus now than in 1996? were you asleep the past two months? we've established you slept thru the 90s.

you're right cruz has a much larger national base of support

i mean you guys can pretend the tea party is an ineffective joke that will be the downfall of the gop just you wait and that ows was an effective movement that made good points and stated their demands clearly and managed to get a broad cross section of american to stroke their chins and think 'hmm, these guys might be on to something' but i predict that winning races and continuing to win races and nearly and possibly eventually seizing control of one of two major political parties will count for more in the long run than a jeff mangum sighting.

at some point a presidential candidate is going to take advantage of the fact that the whole country feels ripped off by the rich, it would be cool if it was a democrat, if you want to compare that wildly popular position to a con man pandering to tea party wingnuts you are certainly welcome

you could go ahead and look at polling on these issues if you want, or just pretend that only stinky hippies care that their moneys getting tooken my people who dont need it

if you want to keep greeting every cortes that washes ashore hoping that maybe this time it's quetzalcoatl feel free. warren's no more the lib messiah than obama was and she's also not half the politician.

lol @ ameritocracy

also might want to look into how the tea party has already affected the gops electoral results

lagoon i could also show you polling supporting single payer national health care for over fifty years now. prediction: nobody will run and win on this issue in 2016 either.

cf gun control

if you want to keep greeting every cortes that washes ashore hoping that maybe this time it's quetzalcoatl feel free. warren's no more the lib messiah than obama was and she's also not half the politician.

― balls, Sunday, September 29, 2013 3:35 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im just daydreaming back to these threads in 07 when everyone was telling me hillary was a lock and obama had no chance

lol at liberal messiah tho, youre v smart and tough and realistic minded congratualtions

lagoon i could also show you polling supporting single payer national health care for over fifty years now. prediction: nobody will run and win on this issue in 2016 either.

― balls, Sunday, September 29, 2013 3:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea please go right ahead

this is all the tea party's fault. buncha rubes! this has nothing to do with academia / the media / music / etc fucking up. maybe we should start a kickstarter?

were you asleep the past two months?

"optics" don't fool me and I'm fucking off to baseball now

(does balls work for the Dem Party just like ethan?)

lol does ethan work for the dem party? yeesh we are fucked.

media critics of the world, unite

you guys can pretend the tea party is an ineffective joke that will be the downfall of the gop just you wait

The tea party is not ineffective, nor a joke. Where the tea party has proved quite effective is capturing state legislatures and congressional districts, largely due to their control of legislatures. It has created electoral problems for the GOP at the level of the Senate and presidency, because these elections cannot be conducted purely outside of major metro areas.

and that ows was an effective movement that made good points and stated their demands clearly

OWS had very little impact on electoral politics, but it did do some good on issue-oriented politics, by temporarily disentangling populist economic issues of who wins and loses under the present regime from other, less broad-based, social justice issues. Then it got bogged back down in those other social justice issues and lost its edge.

obama spending $0 explaining the ACA is biting america's uninsured in the ass

or not! i'm sure it's all planned. go media strategies

there are tv ads running all over the country explaining the aca rn fwiw

ACA passed how long ago?

well its just being implemented now

which was def a mistake!

maybe there's a song about obamacare on the new arcade fire album

general praktitioner

yeah the snl cold open was attacking obama for not explaining aca well enough and attacking aca in general for being a handout to lazy ppl who are just gonna get deliberately sick so they can get some free healthcare now you watch. it was pretty abysmal, shades of snl blaming the financial meltdown in 08 on pelosi and frank and lazy poor ppl buying mansions cuz the govt let them.

single payer

i wonder what the numbers are on people who'd want single payer instead of R0mneycare. go team blue