US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

but the problem is still them, not the basic outlines of how the federal government is supposed to work

the point is that the structure/outline/system has exploitable flaws and this minority factional party is exploiting them to wreck everything. so we can talk about punishing and destroying that faction, or we can talk about addressing the flaws; neither one is likely to happen in the near-term future but i feel like, in terms of dropping seeds into the conversation in the hopes of medium- and long-term payoffs, the latter might just be a little more lucrative. and in the meantime just try to boost turnout for the party not committed to exploiting and wrecking everything.

right. i am in favor of all of those reforms -- publicly funded elections, scrapping the electoral college, reforms to limit redrawing districts along partisan lies, all the other ones. however, i doubt there is a bulletproof system that could be constructed and new flaws could always be found.

I feel like the end of your post is kind of a key observation, Dr. C. This is a party that has remained in power largely by cheating like a motherfucker, and to some extent they realize that this is the case and express their illegitimacy by lashing out (see also: white dudes in general who maybe possibly didn't quite earn as much as they like to tell themselves they did).

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

yeah i read that. good article.

Apropos of little beyond my abject feelings of hopeless anxiety...I occasionally entertain a thought experiment which goes a little something like this: what if everyone who'd fought to preserve slavery had been deported (or removed from American society by whatever means you feel are the most just) once the Civil War was over rather than simply allowed to stew in and infect subsequent generations with their resentment? Can you even imagine how vastly different a country this would be?

@ Treesh: not saying a bulletproof system is possible but some of these reforms seem more likely than prosecuting and eliminating The Republican Party, if that's what you're gesturing towards. and fixing some of the holes is better than not fixing them. we'd be in a very different place right now if we'd fixed the electoral college problem after 2000, for example. unfortunately with all the other clear and present dangers in circulation it may seem hard to build a massive public movement behind something seemingly as dry as "the senate is broken and must be reformed." it's not unprecedented - see the progressive-era public obsession with municipal corruption, the 'boss' system and so on, which did lead to real change. or the 17th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th amendments.

there's a lot of inchoate frustration with "politics" and "the system" and trump was able to capitalize on a lot of that obviously. some of that is just language people use to express racism, sometimes layered with economic grievance. the part of it that's just about recognizing that politics is a broken system which doesn't seem to really respond to your life should be extricated from this, just as much as we can extricate some of the economic questions with a different progressive language going back at least to Occupy - "the 1%" and so on. but i think it's possible that someone finds a hooky language/narrative that resonates emotionally with the public as to why it's urgent that we pass the 21st Century Bill of Rights. it would be cool to at least have a passel of viable amendments that candidates are pressed to take positions on.

getting $$ out of politics would be nice too

but where would Dem-oriented orgs be w/out CAN YOU CHIP IN? emails

ppl wd hafta do stuff

that's not the scale oof $$ being discussed, surely?

Xpost Please rank your favorite Allan Dwan blu-rays. Make this your very next post. Thanks in advance.

the biggest frustration is only having two choices of candidates than can conceivably win - and they are both beholden to corporate interests , lobbyists, PACS etc

"money=speech now because of a very recent supreme court decision, but that (in theory) could either be overturned by a court decision or adjusted with a constitutional amendment. it's not inherent in the first amendment, which is a good amendment."

You refer to that blatantly corrupt bribery decision of Citizen's United?

Ya

Good interview with Michael Lewis on his new Trump book.

I think it’s been very interesting the last few days to see Trump let Kavanaugh get all the attention. And I’m asking myself, “Why isn’t he throwing the spotlight back on himself?” Which is what he often does. In a way, it’s been a relief to not be thinking about Trump. Two thoughts: One is he’s fiddling around with the Mueller investigation in some way, and the other is Stormy Daniels’s book comes out [this week]. And nobody’s talking about it because they have a good proxy here that’s not her. And I wonder if that’s in the back of his mind: Let’s let this run, because I want this to dominate the news cycle.

not a huge Dwan fan, Nerdz

(sit n' spin)

Murkowski told me she concurs with Susan Collins’ view that Kavanaugh probably wouldn’t overturn Roe.

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) October 4, 2018

so everyone can relax!!

wtf is this? a politician in a tough position doing the right thing? i don't understand, must be some sort of mistake

New: Dem Senator Heidi Heitkamp, facing a tough re-election fight, tells North Dakota station WDAY she will vote No on the Brett Kavanaugh nomination

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) October 4, 2018

She's right: he won't. The John Roberts Way is to gut precedent (e.g. Shelby).

yeah straight-up overturning roe would be a bad move politically and remove one of the best carrots they have for the base. there are better ways for them to chip away at abortion rights. giving collins that talking point was a mistake.

Legacy Jack doesn’t want his legacy to be Civil War II anyway.

For context, I interviewed 44 people for Amber Wyatt's story https://t.co/4tSITgxbnr

— pumpkin spice liz bruenig (@ebruenig) October 4, 2018

Kavvy will definitely be confirmed to the dismay of many , but they don't vote.

If there is enouh popular demand for abortion legality couldnt congress just pass a law taht abortion is legal?

yeah but the Roberts court is likely to start declaring most federal laws unconstitutional whenever it gets a chance

https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/wjxjbg7ea0euygict0g48a.png

He gets off on the Majesty of the Court. He wants no controversy. Why destroy when you can pull the string and watch it unravel? Let the Sanderses and McConnells of the world join in battle.

really want to hear more dem candidates scream "abortion on demand without apology" from the stump

She's right: he won't. The John Roberts Way is to gut precedent (e.g. Shelby).

Charles of Mic Dicta agrees.

The way this works is that Kavanaugh is going to do what Kennedy did: uphold the central premise of Roe while finding virtually every state statute short of an outright ban meets the standard in PP v Casey. The way the media talks about abortion jurisprudence is a failure. https://t.co/YB6yHhQEvs

— Charles, gHost of Mic Dicta (RIP) (@Ugarles) October 4, 2018

NB: Trump won by flipping MI, PA, and WI. All three have Dem senators up for re-election next month. All are "no" votes on Kav. All are leading by 10+ points.https://t.co/eak32MVySb

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) October 4, 2018

Hugh Hewitt is a moron

Dems should just start pushing for a federal law legalizing abortion instead of relying on this weakass Roe v. Wade precedent to hold shit together.

Seems to me the odds of that passing are better than a court-packing attempt (which has far more wide-ranging implications)

yeah I'm kinda surprised that I'm hearing serious-ppl talk about court-packing. if the dems also start abandoning political norms the end game isn't 'we win some battles' it's 'democracy actually collapses because we're playing a game w/ nihilists'

are we not also nihilists

I mean I am

on thursdays

xp to shakey

but couldn't the new conservative SC just strike down that law? along with any other progressive legislation they don't like?

They should try to pass a federal law legalizing abortion*.

*exclusions may apply for all pregnant women.

the Constitution doesn't say anything about abortion. If the feds passed a law legalizing it I'm sure there would be legal challenges, but it isn't clear at all to me what precedent or Constitutional statute it violates. Ruling against it would require the bench to actually legislate that life begins at conception, and good luck with that - that's not in the law anywhere.

the whole way abortion law works in this country is that the *states* passed a bunch of laws, and the SC upheld laws that legalized abortion using a pretty weak and odd reading of the right to privacy clause. We've been living under this framework ever since, and it's pretty weak. But if Congress passes a law, the SC would need to find some Constitutional rationale for why abortion *wasn't* legal and that is much tougher.

Bob Menendez knows a bullshit investigation when he sees one.

Just read the FBI report on Kavanaugh - if that’s an investigation, it’s a bullshit investigation. pic.twitter.com/9D8oeVMEoU

— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) October 4, 2018

current anti-abortion jurisprudence doesn't argue at all about whether or not abortion itself is legal, it all has to do with whether restrictions (which are usually passed by states, and sometimes by Congress) don't violate the Roe v. Wade precedent. And the conservative legal tactic has been to say that pretty much all restrictions are fine, which de facto makes abortion illegal without explicitly saying that "abortion is illegal because life begins at conception". A Congressional law would force the issue. And probably in the pro-abortion camp's favor.

xp

Thank you, Justice Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, for "strict scrutiny."

Don't get me wrong it would be a huuuuuuuge fight and incredibly costly politically, but with a Dem Congress and a woman in the White House... it's possible

otherwise what we're likely to be left with are a bunch of states where an abortion is basically impossible to obtain (all of the south, most of the midwest) and abortion on demand in the rest of the country. Which is crazy, since it clearly means the Constitutional right to abortion in those states is being unfairly curtailed, but that seems like the likeliest path for the Roberts court.

yeah I'm kinda surprised that I'm hearing serious-ppl talk about court-packing. if the dems also start abandoning political norms the end game isn't 'we win some battles' it's 'democracy actually collapses because we're playing a game w/ nihilists'

― iatee, Thursday, October 4, 2018 3:33 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree strongly

Norms haven’t saved anyone from the nihilists.

Holy shit! Y'all seen the protests?!

Manchin won't announce position until tomorrow, NBC reports.

protests?

xp

at Capitol Hill.

Is the american experiment over? The founding fathers dream of a democracy strong enough to protect all the money from being evenly distributed??