Idiocracy

[CarltonTheBear]

https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1326394667542441987
https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1326396394891079681

 

[CarltonTheBear]

There is always a lot of ?both sides .... blah, blah, blah?.  No. The Republican Party alone is bent on destroyzing American democracy. The situation is not symmetric.

Figured you'd enjoy this galaxy brain take:

https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/status/1326500040454656002

 

[L K]

So I believe the Trump=GOP party has filed 16 lawsuits so far.

They have lost/rejected 11 of those 16 so far.  They have 5 left outstanding and I'm sure will try and file more. 

This would really be funny seeing how brutally they are getting beaten down here but we are talking about a supposed world leader having this degree of incompetence not just with a single man, but an entire infrastructure afraid of his tantrum.

 

[princedpw]

There is always a lot of ?both sides .... blah, blah, blah?.  No. The Republican Party alone is bent on destroyzing American democracy. The situation is not symmetric.

Figured you'd enjoy this galaxy brain take:

https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/status/1326500040454656002

Right, skimming it for two seconds, this is another "both sides" article.  One side won the election.  The other side didn't.  In 2016, Hillary lost by a much, much slimmer margin in PA, Wisconsin and Michigan and conceded immediately.  Obama immediately had Trump in for a meeting and began the transition.  No leading democrats denied that Trump won.  Were democrats disappointed and bitter in 2016?  Of course they were.  No democrats used the machinery of the government to launch phony investigations.  There is no symmetry between the ways the two parties are behaving at this juncture in time. 

The election is just one symptom of the fact that Republican leaders can say *anything,* no matter how implausible, and provided they say it often and together, 70-90% of their base will believe it.  I would very much welcome examples of this sort of phenomenon on the US left (I really do ... I'd be happy to pop my own bubble if it is inflated in the wrong direction). 

The closest I can think of is the set of Bernie supporters who believe that if only Bernie is elected president then the US healthcare system will be transformed into Canada-style single payer.  (It won't.  Bernie's healthcare plan will never get through the senate, even if democrats miraculously won 60 senate seats.). But of course, the right president could change American healthcare for the better, as Obama did.  And there's something different about hoping for change in the future as opposed to denying established facts about the past.  Eg:

* lockdowns saved lives, though they are a blunt tool

* masks work

* climate change is real, human-made and a serious problem for future generations

* Biden won the election more convincingly than Trump did in 2016 and Bush did in 2000

* major Republican economic legislation has not be fiscally neutral; it has increased the deficit

* Republican economic legislation benefits the wealthy and is disadvantageous for the median voter relative to democratic economic legislation

* voter fraud doesn't happen often or in large numbers in the US, and there is no a priori reason to think it would favor democrats if it did happen

* Russia promoted Trump during the 2016 election

* Trump tried to trade US military support for dirt on the Bidens, in direct conflict with his constitutional duties and oath of office

* the NY Times and other "mainstream media" are relatively reliable when it comes to reporting facts and major news items, at least relative to many other widely disseminated sources of information.  Of course, like any source of news run by humans, it makes mistakes.  The NY Times Opinion pages are not news and are not usually backed by many facts.  They are propagandist opinions.

 

[Kin]

The closest I can think of is the set of Bernie supporters who believe that if only Bernie is elected president then the US healthcare system will be transformed into Canada-style single payer.  (It won't.  Bernie's healthcare plan will never get through the senate, even if democrats miraculously won 60 senate seats.). But of course, the right president could change American healthcare for the better, as Obama did.  And there's something different about hoping for change in the future as opposed to denying established facts about the past.

For what it's worth I think Sanders fans generally would also be in favour of abolishing the filibuster in the Senate so they wouldn't need 60 votes.

 

[L K]

News pushing a Bernie Sanders wants the Labour Secretary post in Biden's administration.  Vermont has a Republican governor.  Should the Democrats really be risking he appoints someone right wing for two years until a 2022 special election.  That's a pretty crucial senate seat they would lose.

 

[L K]

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/first-person-i-was-detroit-poll-challenger-gop-came-make-havoc?amp

 

[bustaheims]

News pushing a Bernie Sanders wants the Labour Secretary post in Biden's administration.  Vermont has a Republican governor.  Should the Democrats really be risking he appoints someone right wing for two years until a 2022 special election.  That's a pretty crucial senate seat they would lose.

Agreed. As much as Sanders could be an interesting cabinet member, his seat in the Senate is more important right now - especially if the Democrats pull off a miracle in the run offs in Georgia. Even if they lose those, they can't allow an extreme right winger to hold that gain that seat uncontested, and in the current political climate, it's unlikely the Republicans would put forth a moderate as a replacement.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

News pushing a Bernie Sanders wants the Labour Secretary post in Biden's administration.  Vermont has a Republican governor.  Should the Democrats really be risking he appoints someone right wing for two years until a 2022 special election.  That's a pretty crucial senate seat they would lose.

If I'm reading it right a special election would need to be called within 6 months to fill that seat, so the governors appointee would only be temporary.

But yeah I feel like Biden's role as a senator would be more important right now anway.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/805486509914779649

I know people joke about there always being a tweet but goddamn there really is always a tweet.

 

[L K]

Not surprising but Georgia is going ahead with a full hand-tally recount.  Biden is up by 14,112 votes +/- a handful of outstanding ballots to still be posted.  The Ossoff/Perdue senate race would need about a net 14,400 votes to go in his favour to void a runoff so that isn't going to change either.

 

[Joe S.]

I just deleted Twitter so i would stop being tempted to go check the ridiculous trump tweets.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/1326582905162838016

 

[Kin]

News pushing a Bernie Sanders wants the Labour Secretary post in Biden's administration.  Vermont has a Republican governor.  Should the Democrats really be risking he appoints someone right wing for two years until a 2022 special election.  That's a pretty crucial senate seat they would lose.

If I'm reading it right a special election would need to be called within 6 months to fill that seat, so the governors appointee would only be temporary.

But yeah I feel like Biden's role as a senator would be more important right now anway.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Republican party of the Northeast is quite a bit different than they are elsewhere in the country and sort of have to be if they want to be electorally viable. The Republican governor of Massachusetts, for instance, is one of the few Republican officials who refused to endorse Trump for the election and is loudly criticizing Trump now for not accepting the results and delaying the transition.

Would the Republican governor of Vermont appoint a Republican to a Senate  seat for six months that Sanders won by 40+ points and that the Democrats would almost certainly win in a special election? Seems like a low-reward, high-risk move to thumb your nose at your state's voters for the sake of a national party you're far too liberal to ever advance in?

So I doubt that would hold up Sanders as labour secretary.

 

[princedpw]

The closest I can think of is the set of Bernie supporters who believe that if only Bernie is elected president then the US healthcare system will be transformed into Canada-style single payer.  (It won't.  Bernie's healthcare plan will never get through the senate, even if democrats miraculously won 60 senate seats.). But of course, the right president could change American healthcare for the better, as Obama did.  And there's something different about hoping for change in the future as opposed to denying established facts about the past.

For what it's worth I think Sanders fans generally would also be in favour of abolishing the filibuster in the Senate so they wouldn't need 60 votes.

Oh, sure.  I would too.  Even if you abolished the filibuster and you had 60 democratic senators, I still don't think anything close to Bernie's plan would pass.  Bernie was boasting a while ago that he had 30 senators signed on to his plan.  While this was presented as a positive for Bernie, it's actually a negative:  70 senators didn't agree so he's so far from even a simple majority, there's no hope.

 

[Bullfrog]

... Bernie was boasting a while ago that he had 30 senators signed on to his plan.  While this was presented as a positive for Bernie, it's actually a negative:  70 senators didn't agree so he's so far from even a simple majority, there's no hope.

Just as a minor criticism, it doesn't mean that at all. Building support takes a lot of time and effort (I'm personally in the middle of a years-long campaign gaining support on an issue). Factual or not, 30 senators signed on (or supporting his plan) means just that. Extrapolating that 70 don't support is misleading.

 

[Kin]

Oh, sure.  I would too.  Even if you abolished the filibuster and you had 60 democratic senators, I still don't think anything close to Bernie's plan would pass.  Bernie was boasting a while ago that he had 30 senators signed on to his plan.  While this was presented as a positive for Bernie, it's actually a negative:  70 senators didn't agree so he's so far from even a simple majority, there's no hope.

But remember, in this hypothetical Sanders was elected President which means winning the party primary and the general. It's one thing for a moderate Democratic senator like Klobuchar or Schumer to not sign on to single-payer healthcare now, it'd be quite another to be seen as obstructionist towards the policy proposals of a sitting president who's head of your own party.

 

[Phileas Fogg]

... Bernie was boasting a while ago that he had 30 senators signed on to his plan.  While this was presented as a positive for Bernie, it's actually a negative:  70 senators didn't agree so he's so far from even a simple majority, there's no hope.

Just as a minor criticism, it doesn't mean that at all. Building support takes a lot of time and effort (I'm personally in the middle of a years-long campaign gaining support on an issue). Factual or not, 30 senators signed on (or supporting his plan) means just that. Extrapolating that 70 don't support is misleading.

It's hard to look at the US population in it's current form, particularly with an electoral college system, and ever conceive of a legitimate left wing agenda ever making it across the line. It would take generation after generation of a moderate democrat leadership to nudge them there, and only then if they could see things, ie -like climate change  -directly affecting their lives. I'm still a bit shaken by the results of the election and what is says about the country's future.

 

[Bender]

... Bernie was boasting a while ago that he had 30 senators signed on to his plan.  While this was presented as a positive for Bernie, it's actually a negative:  70 senators didn't agree so he's so far from even a simple majority, there's no hope.

Just as a minor criticism, it doesn't mean that at all. Building support takes a lot of time and effort (I'm personally in the middle of a years-long campaign gaining support on an issue). Factual or not, 30 senators signed on (or supporting his plan) means just that. Extrapolating that 70 don't support is misleading.

It's hard to look at the US population in it's current form, particularly with an electoral college system, and ever conceive of a legitimate left wing agenda ever making it across the line. It would take generation after generation of a moderate democrat leadership to nudge them there, and only then if they could see things, ie -like climate change  -directly affecting their lives. I'm still a bit shaken by the results of the election and what is says about the country's future.

Is it the population or the political system that's the problem? The fact that states only get 2 Senators makes it insanely hard for population centres to really get legislation through. If the senate was truly representative of the people Trump would've been thrown out of office during the impeachment trial.

Don't even get me started on how the US' current system leads to polarization. This is what you get in a two, highly diverged, party system.

 

[Kin]

If Democrats could ever get statehood for DC and Puerto Rico and the Popular Vote Compact gets enough states to join it then Republicans would need a big shift in electoral make-up to ever win another presidential election and would be in tough for the house and senate.