All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Lindsey Graham saying that if they don't kill mail in voting that there will never be another Republican President again just killed me. I mean, if that's the will of the American populace what's the issue? Rather than make it harder for more people to vote why not adjust your values to appeal to more people?

Because the GOP doesn’t want to govern, they want to rule, and they can’t do that when the people refuse to go along with the program. Meanwhile, there’s nothing stopping Republicans from voting by mail, or perhaps they’re not smart enough to understand how to use it. Then again, maybe if Trump hadn’t fucked up the administration’s response to COVID-19, so many millions of people like me wouldn’t have been fearful about voting in person because of the threat of being exposed to the virus.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Lindsey Graham saying that if they don't kill mail in voting that there will never be another Republican President again just killed me. I mean, if that's the will of the American populace what's the issue? Rather than make it harder for more people to vote why not adjust your values to appeal to more people?

Because the GOP is not a normal political party.

[Tami]

Civil war brewing inside Proud Boys as top leader says he’s done pretending he isn’t a Nazi

The far-right Proud Boys gang has long denied that it is a white nationalist organization and has instead claimed that it only exists to defend “Western Civilization.”

However, Newsweek reports that some members of the group are ready to openly embrace being a racist organization and are dropping any pretenses of wanting support of non-white people.

Proud Boys Infighting Sees Leading Member Form Breakaway Group to Fight 'White Genocide'

Infighting has broken out between two leading members of the Proud Boys group, with one announcing he will be taking control of the far-right organisation to address "White Genocide" and the "failures of multiculturalism."

White nationalist Kyle Chapman—who set up the "tactical defense arm" of the Proud Boys, the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (FOAK)—has criticized the group's chairman Enrique Tarrio while announcing a so-called rebranding of the organization.

Writing on encrypted messaging app Telegram, Chapman used racial slurs against Tarrio and other neo-Nazi rhetoric while announcing that the "grifting leaders" had been deposed and the group would be renamed the Proud Goys. The term "goy"—a Hebrew word for a non-Jewish person—is sometimes used by white supremacists to signal their anti-Semitic beliefs, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

AOC is quite smart and savvy
https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-ao...her-fire-early

Her entire interview with NYT and CNN was a deliberate counter-attack against the early attempt at a postmortem narrative. The counter-attack was fast, hard, and loud, far moreso than the original report of Spanberger's rant, and AOC has made a more convincing and compelling case for Dem House Underperformance to a larger audience than Dem Moderates have.

It's been ages since we saw this kind of strategic oomph. Will it work, though, who knows? But scapegoating the Left isn't going to be an easy thing to get away with as it used to be before.

[Mister Mets]

Thank you, again, for advancing an argument against a point I wasn't making as some kind of 'gotcha'. It's not, you know, and everyone can it for the empty pedantry it is. I never said primaries *aren't* formal elections, they're just *not the election for the seat*, and you bloody well know it, no matter how 'assured' you think safe seats are.

The idea that 'party primaries are the REAL deciders and thus federal elections shouldn't be a holiday' is so completely ridiculous, it doesn't merit any further argument, because it's an argument largely designed to render making an easier expression of the franchise impossible by making it contingent on the likely impossibility of addressing changes to the primary system at the same time.

You specifically differentiated between primaries and formal elections before.

Oh, please. The formal election for the seat is what I'm talking about.

That was in response to a post in which you differentiated between primaries and actual elections.

I'd be all for having a 'national primary day' too, but if we can't even get the actual elections made into holidays, which decide who *actually* takes the seat

I'll repeat. Primaries are actual elections. Primaries are formal elections.

I do acknowledge that I'm only quoting portions of your posts here, but that's because you're making a claim about what you've argued before, and I'm focusing on that.

My argument is pretty simple. I said that the primary is "when the race is more likely to determine the individual who will represent a district or a state" than the general election.

To hint otherwise is either be dishonest, or ignorant about American politics.

It is defensible to want to make it easier to vote in the general election, but not in the primaries. If someone is doing that, they should admit that this is what they're trying to do.

Here's a thought experiment. There are 34 Senate seats in play in 2022. Someone offers you a choice: you can get either $18,000 two years from now, or $1,000 for every seat where you can guess the political party who holds the seat correctly. A reasonably informed person can probably come out ahead if they take the second offer. That is because the primary is when it's going to be determined who holds the seat.

Once the congressional districts are drawn, we can repeat this experiment with the US House. A reasonably informed person will be able to guess with more than fifty percent accuracy what party will hold each district come January 2023.

I'm not saying the general election never matters, just that the primaries are more likely to matter, so if you want more people choosing their next members of Congress, we should make it easier to vote in primaries. If your main concern is about making it easy to vote in November, it's probably more about perceived partisan advantage, and all other arguments are pretext.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

This examines Trump's wacky lawsuit in PA trying to toss the entire vote of that state out (it won't happen)...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...ection/617064/

[JackDaw]

You specifically differentiated between primaries and formal elections before.


That was in response to a post in which you differentiated between primaries and actual elections.
I'll repeat. Primaries are actual elections. Primaries are formal elections.



I do acknowledge that I'm only quoting portions of your posts here, but that's because you're making a claim about what you've argued before, and I'm focusing on that.

My argument is pretty simple. I said that the primary is "when the race is more likely to determine the individual who will represent a district or a state" than the general election.

To hint otherwise is either be dishonest, or ignorant about American politics.

It is defensible to want to make it easier to vote in the general election, but not in the primaries. If someone is doing that, they should admit that this is what they're trying to do.

Here's a thought experiment. There are 34 Senate seats in play in 2022. Someone offers you a choice: you can get either $18,000 two years from now, or $1,000 for every seat where you can guess the political party who holds the seat correctly. A reasonably informed person can probably come out ahead if they take the second offer. That is because the primary is when it's going to be determined who holds the seat.

Once the congressional districts are drawn, we can repeat this experiment with the US House. A reasonably informed person will be able to guess with more than fifty percent accuracy what party will hold each district come January 2023.

I'm not saying the general election never matters, just that the primaries are more likely to matter, so if you want more people choosing their next members of Congress, we should make it easier to vote in primaries. If your main concern is about making it easy to vote in November, it's probably more about perceived partisan advantage, and all other arguments are pretext.

I’d guess that large majority of people would like to make it easier to vote in both primaries and general.

However, probably some additional safeguards would be needed around voting in primaries...to stop people from opposing parties deliberately voting for unsuitable people.

(In UK when Labour Party made it easy to vote in our equivalent to primaries for Labour Party a significant number of Conservative Party members took advantage to vote for a candidate they thought would damage Labour Party.)

[Revolutionary_Jack]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/11/polit...ace/index.html

Georgia is going for a manual hand recount. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? GA GOP have asked for it too.

I’d guess that large majority of people would like to make it easier to vote in both primaries and general.

However, probably some additional safeguards would be needed around voting in primaries...to stop people from opposing parties deliberately voting for unsuitable people.

(In UK when Labour Party made it easy to vote in our equivalent to primaries for Labour Party a significant number of Conservative Party members took advantage to vote for a candidate they thought would damage Labour Party.)

You mean Corbyn?

[SUPERECWFAN1]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/11/polit...ace/index.html

Georgia is going for a manual hand recount. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? GA GOP have asked for it too.



You mean Corbyn?

Georgia hasn't been declared yet and it was going to recount anyhow. Him doing county by county recounts is a good deal to show how fair it is. Biden is last winning the state by 14,000+ votes.

[JackDaw]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/11/polit...ace/index.html

Georgia is going for a manual hand recount. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? GA GOP have asked for it too.



You mean Corbyn?

I do...

At one point Labour Party made it possible for anybody paying a fee of 2 quid (equivalent to cost of half a pint of beer) to vote in their leadership election...and a number of Conservative party supporters gleefully claimed to have paid that so they could vote for him.

I found it sad...one of those cases when “clever” people sabotage a potentially good idea. (The saving grace was on this occasion they wasted their money...Corbyn was always going to win election concerned.)

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This examines Trump's wacky lawsuit in PA trying to toss the entire vote of that state out (it won't happen)...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...ection/617064/

Another Hail Mary by Trump’s lawyers, and this one sounds like the craziest of them all. At this point, it could be argued that the only winner will be said lawyers racking up insane billable hours. But then, considering Trump’s well known penchant for stiffing people who work for him, it wouldn’t be a shock if they don’t get paid. Oh, well, them’s the breaks.

[JackDaw]

Another Hail Mary by Trump’s lawyers, and this one sounds like the craziest of them all. At this point, it could be argued that the only winner will be said lawyers racking up insane billable hours. But then, considering Trump’s well known penchant for stiffing people who work for him, it wouldn’t be a shock if they don’t get paid. Oh, well, them’s the breaks.

The cases are so weak that in UK he would end up paying both sets of fees...both his own and other sides.

Hope that also happens in US...don’t see why Democrats should pick up massive legal defence costs just because the Donald is a poor loser.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Good article at NYRB that shreds the Trump and white-working class narrative for good.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/1...ow-trump-lost/

In his campaign four years ago, Trump didn’t tell Americans that he had embraced Ryan’s take-from-the-poor-and-give-to-the-rich agenda. To the contrary, Trump vowed not to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. He said he’d raise the minimum wage. He pledged to end Wall Street’s beloved carried-interest deduction. In his election night victory speech, he promised to “rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals.” In part because of these claims, polls found that Americans viewed Trump as more ideologically moderate than any Republican presidential nominee since 1972.

What Trump promised was authoritarian nationalism plus economic populism. It’s a recipe that in other countries has proven strikingly popular. In 2019, Poland’s xenophobic and homophobic Law and Justice party won a dominant election victory in large measure because of its immensely popular payouts to Polish families, which, according to the World Bank, dramatically reduced child poverty. (Law and Justice’s popularity has fallen since then, as many Poles have revolted against its draconian efforts to outlaw abortion.) In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has launched a New Deal-style public works program that gives hundreds of thousands of Hungarians government jobs. In Brazil, another Trump ally, Jair Bolsonaro, has boosted his approval ratings—particularly with poor Brazilians—by buffering them during the pandemic with government checks. Obviously, these autocrats also use repression and propaganda to buttress their rule. But even commentators who acknowledge their authoritarianism admit that their economic policies enjoy substantial support.

By contrast, Trump has—in spite of his campaign promises—embraced a fiercely anti-populist economic agenda. A Gallup poll taken the month he was inaugurated found that Americans considered infrastructure his most important campaign promise. But a former Trump official told The Washington Post that the White House never seriously considered making infrastructure its top agenda item because “Paul Ryan and these guys had waited 30 years for this once-in-a-lifetime chance to cut taxes. They were not going to let that go.” In 2017, after Ryan and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell shepherded a tax cut through Congress, Trump signed it into law even though, according to the recent book Let Them Eat Tweets by political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, it constituted the second-least popular piece of major legislation of the last twenty-five years. When the Trump White House did finally propose an infrastructure bill, congressional Republicans reportedly balked at both its price tag and the prospect that it would increase the deficit. So the idea was shelved.

The other major congressional initiative of Trump’s first year was the effort to cancel Obamacare—a repeal effort that, according to Hacker and Pierson, constituted the least popular major legislation of the last quarter-century. According to one poll, the GOP’s bill enjoyed the support of just 17 percent of Americans. Yet Trump supported that, too.

...
This newfound perception of Trump as ideologically extreme likely stems in large measure from his embrace of an economic agenda that most poor and working-class Americans loathe. In 2016, according to exit polls, Trump lost voters who earned under $50,000 by roughly ten points; this year, he lost them by fifteen points. In 2016, voters earning between $50,000 and $100,000 favored him by four points; this year, that flipped to a thirteen-point deficit.

Among the richest Americans—those earning over $100,000—Trump substantially improved his margin of victory over 2016. But in blue-collar America, his support crumbled. Some of that shift may be because of Trump’s opponent, but much of it is because of Trump himself. Except perhaps on trade, he turned out not to be the economic populist he vowed to be in 2016.

[Tendrin]

You specifically differentiated between primaries and formal elections before.

I know you think this is a 'gotcha' from your absurd pedantry, but the only distinction I was making by calling it a 'formal election for the seat' was that it was the one for the seat. This is not saying primaries aren't also 'formal elections', but they're elections for the nomination of a party to the seat, not the seat itself. Christ. This is just weaponized, obtuse pedantry as a distraction.

I was not making any claim to the 'validity' of a primary election or not. Christ all mighty, dude,

[Mister Mets]

James Clyburn believes "defund the police" hurt the Democratic party.

hough a Democrat has won the presidency, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn warned his party is being destroyed by the "defund the police" movement that arose over the summer.

"'Defund the police' is killing our party, and we've got to stop it," the South Carolina kingmaker said in an interview with CBSN Monday. It was a topic he said he and the late civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis discussed.

"John Lewis and I were very concerned when these slogans came out about 'defund the police,'" he said. "We sat together on the House floor and talked about how that slogan... could undermine the BLM movement, just as 'burn, baby, burn' destroyed our movement back in the '60s."

"John would never yell, 'burn, baby, burn;" John would never say, 'defund the police,' as progressive as he was, and I'm just as progressive as anybody else," Clyburn said. He went on to say that "we just lost Joe Cunningham," a South Carolina Democratic House member who lost his reelection bid against Republican Nancy Mace. "And we lost him over 'defund the police.'"

"Burn, baby, burn" was a slogan that emerged during the 1965 Watts riots, chanted by Black people who set cars and buildings on fire. Clyburn said that John Lewis was removed as head of the civil rights group they had founded, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, by "burn, baby, burn" proponents.

He said they didn't want to see the same thing happen to Black Lives Matter, and he criticized the term "defund the police" for its lack of clarity.

"When I talked to my friends about this, and they say, 'that's not really what we mean,' and I say, 'Well, in this business, you've gotta say what you mean, and you gotta mean what you say, and if you have to explain what you mean, you are losing the argument."

Clyburn went on to say that the nation has always been racially divided. "What we need to do as a country is learn how to mitigate those factors," he told CBSN's Anne-Marie Greene and Vladimir Duthiers, adding that race will always be present. "Let's just embrace it and do what we can to get beyond it."

He specifically said the party keeps making the mistake of failing to discipline itself according to party sentiment, and that he wants everyone in his party to be as tactical as he is.

I think he's right about what would be better for the Democratic party.