All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Tami]

Republicans are, like, 60% sure that Trump didn't just tweet a death thread against Congressman Schiff.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1...644683776?s=20

It may not be that they believe he didn't actually threaten anyone, it's that they don't believe Trump is psychologically able to express himself in any way other than this.

Republicans dismiss his aggressive behavior as what is normal for Trump, just as White Evangelicals dismiss Trump's anti-Christian behavior as Trump being Trump.

Both groups know the truth, but can't own up to it for various reasons.

[Michael Watkins]

By agreeing that none of us should accept racists and homophobes into the party and certainly shouldn't let them guide policy (like Stephen Miller).

You can win elections without sacrificing your core values: Obama never would have embraced someone like Rogan -- at the very least he would have strongly and openly criticized his comments and behavior, just as he did with Wright. You can even make the argument that maybe he shouldn't have renounced Wright's comments but that's just the nature of running for political office when dealing with scandal -- even Trump finally renounced the KKK once he was pressed enough on the matter.

I was even going to criticize him on his relationship with Jay Z and Common, until I saw that even they openly rejected their older, more problematic views.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/c...yrical-regrets
https://www.politico.com/states/new-...arriage-000000

Of course there are going to be racists and homophobes in both parties, but their ideologies should not be promoted.

What are the core values of moderate Democrats? More to the point, how are you different from a moderate republican?

[PaulBullion]

What are the core values of moderate Democrats? More to the point, how are you different from a moderate republican?

Narrator's voice:
There is no such thing as a moderate Republican and he knew that.

[Tami]

Narrator's voice:
There is no such thing as a moderate Republican and he knew that.

Pretty much anyone who is a Never-Trumper is probably a Moderate Republican. Either that, or a Libertarian.

[Michael Watkins]

Wright's comments were neither homophobic nor racist, they just addressed the nature of injustice in America.

Regardless, Obama stepped up and made a public statement regarding the situation, and released a series of videos that directly renounced those views.

Sanders still has time to do the same, so let's see what happens.

I hope that Sanders isn’t dumb enough to follow your advice. He has an existing record on these issues. He should just make sure that voters are familiar with it. No point in caving to the filthy pressure campaign of bitter Clinton and Biden supporters.

[Michael Watkins]

I've never heard of Joe Rogan until this recent news. The guy sounds like slime. How can anyone call themselves a progressive and be ok with this? All these Bernie Bros defending Rogan make him come off like the Alex Jones for Bernie supporters.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nyt...-2020.amp.html

https://berniesanders.com/issues/lgbtq-equality/

[aja_christopher]

What are the core values of moderate Democrats? More to the point, how are you different from a moderate republican?

First of all, I'm not a Democrat.

Second of all, I wouldn't support any political group that openly accepts racists and homophobes -- or their ideologies -- into it's organization.

Which also tells you why I'm not a Republican.

That you are actually arguing in support of this speaks volumes.

[Mister Mets]

Republicans are, like, 60% sure that Trump didn't just tweet a death thread against Congressman Schiff.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1...644683776?s=20

Do you legitimately think it's a death threat?

First of all, I'm not a Democrat.

Second of all, I wouldn't support any political group that openly accepts racists and homophobes -- or their ideologies -- into it's organization.

Which also tells you why I'm not a Republican.

Do you vote in any primaries?

[Tendrin]

Do you legitimately think it's a death threat?



Do you vote in any primaries?

Do you think, after guys like Sayoc, that Trump is unaware of what saying something like this is heard like?

He knows.

[aja_christopher]

Do you vote in any primaries?

No, I just tend to live in areas that already reflect my political values and vote as I would -- saves me a lot of work.

I vote when I see something I don't like (Trump or Bush) -- but otherwise I haven't had problems with the Democrats that have been nominated for office.

It's the Republicans that tend to be problematic.

[Tendrin]

This thread from Gwen Snyder on the Rogan issue is, I think, broadly correct.

https://twitter.com/gwensnyderphl/st...158198784?s=21

[TheDarman]

Posting in bold italic words doesn't make what you say true -- moderates win the majority of elections.

Feel free to show data that backs up your assertion -- one can only ask that so many times before they have to think that you can't provide any.

------
"Many progressives have what they believe to be a knock-down answer to nervous Nellies who fret that talking about desegregation busing, decriminalizing illegal entry into the United States, banning assault weapons, and replacing private health insurance will kill them at the polls in 2020: Donald Trump is president.

If Trump is president, the thinking goes, it’s the ultimate proof of “lol nothing matters” politics. And if anything does matter, it’s riling up your base to go to war, not trimming and tucking to persuade precious swing voters. The old rules no longer apply, or perhaps they were never true at all. Activists are pressing candidates to take aggressively progressive stands on broad issues like Medicare-for-all but also narrower ones like including undocumented immigrants in health care plans and providing relief from graduate school debt.

This is, however, precisely the wrong lesson to learn from the Trump era.

It’s true that Trump is president, but it’s not true that Trump ran and won as an ideological extremist. He paired extremely offensive rhetoric on racial issues with positioning on key economic policy topics that led him to be perceived by the electorate as a whole as the most moderate GOP nominee in generations. His campaign was almost paint-by-numbers pragmatic moderation. He ditched a couple of unpopular GOP positions that were much cherished by party elites, like cutting Medicare benefits, delivered victory, and is beloved by the rank and file for it.

The research case that moderation matters for electoral wins, meanwhile, remains pretty solid. Lots of other things matter too, and it would be foolish to label any particular position or candidate as categorically “unelectable.” But overall, moderate candidates are more likely to win; more precisely, candidates who take popular positions on the issues are more likely to win than candidates who take unpopular ones. Of course, politics matters because policy matters, so taking a calculated risk on an unpopular position for the sake of getting something important does make sense.

But adopting an unpopular position that you won’t be able to deliver on even if you win the election is not just costly, it’s reckless — jeopardizing the interests of the people you’re supposed to be helping.

Andrew Hall in 2015 looked at very close congressional primaries and found that moderate candidates who narrowly win the nomination do better in the general election than extreme candidates who narrowly win the nomination. A follow-up paper he wrote with Daniel Thompson suggests this is because certain folk theories about base mobilization are mistaken, and extreme nominees “fire up” the other side’s base and increase opposition turnout.

A new paper by Devin Caughey and Christopher Warshaw extends this literature by looking at races for state legislature and governor as well as Congress and finds, again, that ideology matters. Quantitatively measuring ideology is, of course, complicated. Consequently, Caughey and Warshaw look at a number of popular methodologies and find that you get the same result no matter which one you use.

They also find that the extent to which moderation helps varies according to which office you’re talking about. It’s only very slightly helpful in state legislative elections, perhaps because normal people don’t pay any attention to state legislative elections (as David Schleicher has argued, this is a significant problem for federalism) and have no idea what’s really going on in them. But it’s very helpful in gubernatorial elections, which helps explain why there are popular Republicans running Vermont and Massachusetts while Democratic governors hold down the fort in Louisiana and Montana."

https://www.vox.com/2019/7/2/2067765...remism-penalty

[There are links to the studies -- and relevant data -- in the article.]

Frankly, this whole conversation fundamentally misunderstands part of the reason Hillary lost in 2016. She was seen by a lot of voters as too partisan. Donald Trump, meanwhile, defused the Republican Party’s most treacherous landmines by openly saying he would keep Social Security and Medicare intact and promised to stop trade deals like the TPP. The things that traditional Democrats could hit traditional Republicans with policy-wise could be easily defused by Trump in 2016. (This, of course, isn’t a strategy that can work again for Trump, as he is made a mess of trade relations AND promised to look at Social Security and Medicare cuts.) Clinton lost because a good deal of the base electorate thought she was too partisan and liberal, not that she wasn’t liberal enough.

Now, Sanders is a lot like 2016 Trump in that he is a contradiction. Sanders has a record of being more moderate on gun control measures, which seems to bode well with particular voters who were perturbed by Clinton’s support of overturning D.C. v. Heller. He, also, can promise to be against trade deals like the TPP, but promise to “be better about it than Trump” (whatever that really means—Trump has a four-year long record of bad to terrible foreign policy decisions and Sanders has a record of being fairly reticent to discuss what his approach to foreign policy would be other than a more reserved United States involvement in virtually everything, which does have its own political land mines and makes it a little more difficult to differentiate oneself from Trump). Sanders also can defuse a lot of Democrats’ more controversial policies on social issues. Despite what he is saying now in a Democratic primary, Sanders has been a lot more willing to campaign for people who would be anti-abortion Democrats as long as they support his economic agenda. With this, he can be a more Unitarian candidate than even Obama and Clinton, both of whom rested a good deal of their progressive credibility on the work they did for social justice and their support for moderation on economic policies while remaining steadfast on social issues.

Truly, the most progressive person in the primary is Warren, who seems to be more steadfast in her convictions to all progressive issues, economic and social. However, her approach seems to allow for more flexibility, because promising the world and coming up short could alienate voters in 2024, when she comes up for re-election. And for politicians like her that seem less dependent on a “cult of personality” that frankly helped folks like Obama, Trump, and Sanders, those decisions to promise too much as merely the president, especially concerning domestic policy, can be deadly and counter-productive. Leaving room for compromise and moderation is what most smart politicians start out with and virtually all (see Obama with the ACA) at least open themselves up to upon getting into office.

[Tami]

This thread from Gwen Snyder on the Rogan issue is, I think, broadly correct.

https://twitter.com/gwensnyderphl/st...158198784?s=21

Correct? She's basically saying the ends justify the means. That never goes well.

Also there is the 'he's learned his lesson from 2016', which is subjective at best.

[SquirrelMan]

1994 Video of Bernie Sanders saying country needed more jails and 'tougher' penalties in certain cases in remarks backing crime bill

The oppo research is kicking into overdrive now that his opponents smelled blood in the water after the Rogan missteps.

"On the other hand, do I think we need some more jails? Yup. Do I think we have to get tougher in certain instances? Yes, I do," Sanders said. "So what you have is a balance here. You have more money going to law enforcement, more money going into jails. You have, on the other hand, significant sums of money going into prevention, beginning to allow us to deal with violence against women, child abuse and other very serious problems," Sanders said.

[SquirrelMan]

Do you legitimately think it's a death threat?

He absolutely knows that people will kill for him, so he thinks it's an effective threat. So that's a yes from me.