US Politics February 2019: This is one of the great losers of all time.

THE END OF THE GOP WHOA NELLY

This rhetoric was not on my radar in 2008, but inferring from your dismissal: seems like it may have been the end, but instead in a "fuck it, mask off" fashion? Perhaps Cheney's presidency hollowed out the party for Tea Party destabilisation to fill the void more than Obama's election knocked the foundations away. And the core mission of the party had been Kill The Poor on the low for a long time, but more as a sock for lobbyists than an active belief of many individual reps and senators.

But the shamelessness of not even having fake positive policies reads new, and seeing the last year of bemused Jeff Flake standing around blinking and saying "guys... c'mon, this isn't us. surely this isn't us" so sincerely speaks to the Grand Old Party Of Civility veneer being dropped, with nothing to replace it.

Norm’s Superego (silby) at 1:36 23 Feb 19

A lot more than 2% of the electorate are self-described independents

I wonder how many are really independent vs how many like to gas themselves up about how independent minded they are then they generally vote one way 90% of the time

nah, every national pundit fell over themselves proclaiming a new era of liberalism regnant. That's when FDR books and the LBJ revival began, remember?

http://img.timeinc.net/time/images/covers/europe/2008/20081124_400.jpg

What matters is holding or not holding office.

Whether he wins or loses or serves out some variation of 3+ years, you think Trump is going to go off quietly to paint? Do you think after 24 hours of coverage for years on end that will be it? When he's out of office he's is for *sure* going to keep holding giant rallies and getting daily news coverage. And the same cycle we're in now will be repeated ad nauseam. He says something shitty, the media covers, mainstream politicians will be pressured into saying something, and by then he will move on to the next rally and it begins again. It will still be about him, he will still drive the debate, until he's dead or otherwise silenced.

BTW, is there any law that an impeached president can't run again?

back from dog training!

I'm not seriously trying to get anyone to quantify whether the basket is half-full or half-empty. Just reminded by Karl's post that Hillary was plainly OTM when she made the comment, that it was a symptom of a profoundly broken media that she was forced to apologise for it, and that polling has alarmingly suggested that she underestimated the proportions within the basket.[

oh, gotcha. when i left, i thought perhaps you were trying to say that a good portion of the trump voters are actually very kind and decent people and that i shouldn't just refer to them all as terrible fucking people. which would be fair - i don't actually think that 100% of trump voters are completely awful people. maybe just the vast majority? i have trouble imagining a scenario where it ever made sense to vote for trump, to anyone.

but of course i also recognize that somewhere there's a bizarro conservative mirror version of ilx, and john stockton is arguing that anyone who voted for hillary clinton is morally bankrupt, given her lack of attention to security protocols on her private server or whatever

remember?

I don't! While I have to work to ignore the American punditry class on the internet today, it made no impression at all from the other side of the globe and not obsessively following looking at ILX politics threads in 2008

My initial impression at the election was that it was, if nothing else, a massive symbolic step forward, 69 million people enacting the Shephard Fairey poster. That this was magnificently valuable and affirming in itself, but that as a solid machine politician, his actual achievements would probably be more limited and likely disappointing. (Obviously I earned my Nostradamus badge from the boy scouts within the year, but my god, it remained pleasurable to have an American president who spoke so well for the remaining eight years.)

Whether he wins or loses or serves out some variation of 3+ years, you think Trump is going to go off quietly to paint? Do you think after 24 hours of coverage for years on end that will be it? When he's out of office he's is for *sure* going to keep holding giant rallies and getting daily news coverage. And the same cycle we're in now will be repeated ad nauseam. He says something shitty, the media covers, mainstream politicians will be pressured into saying something, and by then he will move on to the next rally and it begins again. It will still be about him, he will still drive the debate, until he's dead or otherwise silenced.

yet he won't be president, which means he won't be taken seriously. The problem isn't Trump, necessarily -- it's ideas that have festered in the GOP swamp since January 1981 now bearing fruit in the judiciary, statehouses, and think tanks. I mean, fuck Trump -- I worry about that.

which means he won't be taken seriously.

No one took him seriously before and he was elected president. I'm not even sure how seriously people take him now, but he still sucks up all the air in the room. "Serious" has never been a standard for media saturation. He's not going anywhere, and whether he's taken "seriously" or not he's still going to be dangerous. And his impact on the courts will linger like a fart.

posting this here rather than the climate change thread because it deserves to be read slightly more widely, and david roberts is a good writer

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/2/23/18228142/green-new-deal-critics

i have trouble imagining a scenario where it ever made sense to vote for trump, to anyone.

There genuinely are low-information voters who don't understand anything about how politics or politicians affect their lives, and will not learn. Some of these are dumb or intractable or reprehensible in their ignorance, but some simply have more pressing concerns, or have accurately decided that thinking about politics is above their pay grade, and made an erroneous coin flip about which way they will vote, forever, in a two-horse race.

(They can be disregarded as recruitable just as well as deliberate or ideological Trump voters can, of course. I've always held that the primary benefit of Australia's compulsory voting is that it motivates the populace to inform themselves; since you have to go and write some sequential numbers on a piece of paper, you might as well get an impression of what order you want to put those numbers in. But still not everyone bothers. As I've written here before, the last time I tried to convince my mother not to vote for the party that was ideologically bound on gutting the public broadcaster I worked for and to which she listens exclusively, she declined, and then rang me up and cried asking what I'd done wrong to be made redundant when they were elected and cut $254 million from the operating budget.)

holy shit, your mom is cold blooded af

I mean, I think ppl like this are generally so stupid that they should have the right to vote taken away. But enforcing it would be so complicated that electoral reform should instead focus on making sure everybody else gets to vote too.

xpost nah, she just apparently made a decision not to take in any new information about anything, ever, circa 1983.

The thing about Trump that transcends that ignorance is bliss take is that he is a demonstrably terrible person. That is, you can claim ignorance about economics or politics but you cannot know who he is without knowing he is a terrible person. So even if you know nothing about politics and simply throw your hands up and vote for Trump, the baseline is that you are still voting for an objectively terrible person. And if you really are that ignorant, you knew absolutely nothing about the man besides the name before you voted, well ...

I'm saying ignorance is idiotic, not blissful! But there are still legit idiots in most populaces. And there's loads of American media still, every day, selling Trump's 40-year lies that he's a smart, successful businessman with large hands. His shamelessness provides evidence to idiots that anyone saying he's lying is just jealous.


xpost2: like, her voting is as far from ideological as its possible to be. she has no idea what any of the policies of that party are, but during the 1970s had a social circle of party members. she hasn't worked or spoken to anyone she doesn't know from church in 25 years, but keeps on voting for the Cage And Torture Brown People Party because they used to support small business and change would require thought.

I stayed registered to vote at her address for years after moving out because the local member was John Howard's immigration minister, so at least I could cancel out one vote.

The other thing I think about is, all these low-information voters, clearly millions upon millions of Americans don't vote at all. Why would someone bother voting without knowing anything about the person or issues they're voting on when it is just as easy to stay home and not vote?

Because America has made it comparatively easy for those people to vote, their lackadaisical votes are over-represented.

Also, remember (every day as you face the sun) that more people voted for Hillary Clinton to be president than voted for any white man to be president, ever.

uh can we stop with the weasel words? "low information voter"? You mean "stupid people," right?

if a 'low-information voter' picked bob dole over clinton, then whatever

trump is and always has been transparently unfit, alfred otm

Transparently unfit, and yet, supported by enough to squeak to a victory and get all his bullshit (laws, judges, other shit) subsequently OK'd by the GOP *despite* being under the cloud of numerous serious investigations and exhibiting gross incompetence. So who cares if he is transparently unfit, unless that can guarantee no re-election, which it cannot.

uh can we stop with the weasel words? "low information voter"? You mean "stupid people," right?

I mean, I think ppl like this are generally so stupid that they should have the right to vote taken away.

No, low information voters aren't necessarily stupid. A lot of them are just disinterested in political news and tune most of it out. That may sound stupid to you, but it's a defensible position, especially with so many adults under so many forms of stress so much of the time.

Aimless otm

I should probably add that if you were to ferret out all the reasons Trump voters used to justify their vote, I am guessing the list would mostly sort into these categories:

• ignorance that has been constantly reinforced with misinformation
• misogyny
• racism or xenophobia,
• belief that they'd have more money if Trump won
• voting exclusively on the issue of abortion
• blind party loyalty
• rationalizations that he must be smarter than he acted & would grow into the job

I think blind party loyalty is generally under discussed. Obama to Trump voters are an endless source of fascination for the media and partly for good reason because they theoretically represent a persuadable margin, but millions and millions of people are just always going to vote republican just like most of us are always going to vote Democrat

good: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-hard-lessons-of-dianne-feinsteins-encounter-with-the-young-green-new-deal-activists-video

(by bill mckibben)

say hi to Jon Favs for me

I just wish the teachers would have read the policy documents Feinstein gave instead of just claiming she does not care for the youth.

If her policy proposals were laughable, their criticism would have been exact. If her policy proposals were serious and well equipped to address the environmental situation, then the kids could have gotten something cool out of their journey. Now it just seems that the only policy they care about is Green New Deal or bust, which kinds of make her smug "my way or no way" ring true. But hey they got the gotcha moment!

i'd respond to that, van horn street, but bill mckibben already did:

Feinstein is, in fact, right: on most questions, a “my way or the highway” attitude doesn’t get you very far. If I’m a lawmaker and I think that the minimum wage should be thirty dollars an hour, and you’re one who thinks that eight dollars is generous, we’ll probably try to pass a law that sets the mark somewhere near fifteen dollars, and then argue about it again after the next election. There would be no point in holding out for what I can’t get. But, in the case of the environment, the opponent is not the Chamber of Commerce. The opponent is physics, and physics doesn’t negotiate. It’s not moved by appeals to centrist moderation, or explanations about the filibuster. And it has set a firm time limit. Scientists have told us what we must do and by when, and so legislators must do all they can to match those targets. The beauty of the Green New Deal legislation is not that it’s shiny or progressive or a poke in the eye to the oil companies. Its beauty is that it actually tries to meet the target that science has given us.

people like feinstein have been nominally supportive of "action" on climate change for a long time. but when it comes down to it, most of them aren't really prepared to support the kinds of action that would be proportionate to the threat of the problem. it's not a "gotcha" moment, it's wealthy politicians finally being forced to confront a glimpse of the truth for 15 minutes

"lead or get out of the way" applies here. people like feinstein should gtfo of the way

I would love to think the US can do something like the GND and maybe I am being overly pessimistic, but seeing how simpler carbon pricing policies are turning out in countries where there is historically larger support for taxes and social projects (Canada and France) I can understand why Feinstein sees a lame duck.

but...the thing that feinstein supports (us participation in the paris agreement, which of course trump unilaterally pulled us out of) isn't enough to adequately address climate change (by "adequately" i mean give us a 50/50 chance of something better than living hell by 2050).

so...?

Let's have sensible centrist armageddon

Carbon tax measures in Canada while we keep the oil sands humming along and displace first nations people to building more pipelines etc. is a lesson in the futility of liberal responses to the climate crisis

That is kind of my pessimistic point! I hope I am very wrong. If the US electorate is dumb enough to vote for a climate denier, respecting the Paris accord would already be some sort of miracle and I don't see a realistic roadmap for the GND to be accepted, lest implemented over several years, not in its current form.

that may well be true, but it will definitely be true if people like feinstein are allowed to hold prominent Democratic positions and hold these kinds of views without pushback

i realize i've said "people like feinstein" 3 times within 20 minutes, and i'm sorry lol

Well I am sorry Jim not everyone is as pre-occupied by the environment as you are, I wish they were, but sadly they vote too and politicians have to answer to them. So how do you plan to convince half the population to radically change say their personal finances when all you can muster is jokes about centrism. I am interested in answers. I suspect Karl, an user I have all the admiration in the world for to know this better than I do, but really I could do without your specific kind of sad snark.

I’ve been pro-Armageddon for some time, nobody has ever been “convinced” of anything

a realistic roadmap for the GND to be accepted, lest implemented over several years, not in its current form.

as far as this goes, it's tough to address with specifics because the GND itself is more of a roadmap or resolution, not a detailed bill with specific policy proposals. it's an outline and a marker of the kind of level of effort that needs to be taken, but it doesn't say "$20 billion in wind energy subsidies in 2020" or anything like that.

but keep in mind that there are a lot more jobs in wind and solar than there are in something like coal, and as a bonus, you don't have to risk getting black lung when you install solar panels, and wind turbines don't periodically spill billions of gallons of oil into vulnerable ecosystems. there would be a lot of benefits from a full-on plunge into a progressive environmental policy that would be very appealing to lots of people who don't give a shit about the environment. if it weren't for decades of straight up lies and misinformation and criminal malfeasance from the fossil fuel industry the energy industry would look quite different today.

but yeah, i suspect that there really are repercussions that most everyday people would absolutely hate. the smear campaign about the GND included stuff about how they want to take away hamburgers, which the left fought back against by (correctly) saying there's nothing of that sort outlined in the GND. but the uncomfortable truth is that yeah, actually agriculture and meat-heavy diets are HUGE contributors to climate change, and if we're serious about doing something about it, something's gotta change. so stuff like that, yeah, you're absolutely right there will be very difficult political headwinds to navigate and i suspect that even on the left there will be a big battle between people who are willing to confront those truths and others who keep thinking we can innovate our way out of it (i.e., the "Impossible" burger which is actually quite tasty, and on the less tasty side of the spectrum, a better version of Soylent)

*chanting* vat MEAT vat MEAT vat MEAT

MEATvat

MEATvat

MEATvat

yeah tbh I can’t wait to take away hamburgers. sorry cattlemen, learn to code!

wow, very helpful tweet marco, thanks so much

pic.twitter.com/ZwxbWyV1HF

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 24, 2019

wtf

My senator is dying for this to go down like Panama in '89.