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The General 'Murican Politics Thread


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Meanwhile, in some good news, a federal judge has ruled that the US Army Corps of Engineers did not adequately consider the possible impacts of an oil spill where the Dakota Access Pipeline passes under the Missouri river, handing a crucial victory to the tribe who was objecting to the pipeline.

As people might remember, the Army Corps rushed through the approval when Trump was elected despite previously intending to perform a full environmental analysis, probably because Trump would've forced the issue anyway. Unfortunately, the pipeline has already been constructed, but the fact that it already sprung leaks before it was even operational probably doesn't help the Army Corps' case.

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Looking over the decision, one downside of it is that traditional Native belief systems are being met with huge skepticism. The judge rejected the cultural arguments against the pipeline.

On the other hand, that can't really be helped. Native beliefs generally place a high priority on the ecosystem and are better for a preservationist framework than a conservationist one. Our culture ultimately values economic production despite the desire to make it sustainable and avoid excessive damage. At some point, one culture had to give, and it seems logical it's going to be the minority one.

In the end, tribes will need to take a genuine ecological stance (indigenous Americans' religious beliefs that value the environment and traditional knowledge of how to work the environment are often conflated with modern ecology, but there are differences) if they wish to win over federal power brokers, it looks like.

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http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/27/politics/jason-chaffetz-congress-housing-stipend-utah-governor/index.html

Rep. Jason Chaffetz has proposed members of Congress receive a $2,500 housing stipend to account for how expensive living in Washington, D.C. is, abhorring that so many members of Congress use their offices as living quarters.

You might remember Chaffetz as the GOP representative who said poor people could afford healthcare if they only didn't buy iPhones. And thus his proposal is weakened by the fact it comes from someone who doesn't understand costs to begin with.

Chaffetz is selling the proposal as a populist measure, saying it would help poorer citizens run for office as they could now afford to live in D.C. This is ignoring that 1) it is possible to live out of one's office and 2) poor people often won't have the time to run a Congressional campaign. On top of struggling to make ends meet, they're expected to pour in months of time soliciting donations for a chance they might win? What if they end up losing?

A guaranteed minimum income would do more to increase representation of the poor in Congress than this dumb proposal ever would.

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On 27. 6. 2017 at 4:29 AM, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

Tourists and visitors are more muddy, but it looks like those with friends and family will be allowed in.

This was just released today. The definition of "family" was changed by the Trump administration:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/29/grandparents-fiancees-close-family-trump-travel-ban-rules

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Visas that have already been approved will not be revoked, but instructions issued by the state department say new applicants from Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Iran and Yemen must prove a relationship with a parent, spouse, child, adult son or daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law or sibling already in the United States to be eligible.

The same requirement, with some exceptions, holds for would-be refugees from all nations who are still awaiting approval for admission to the US.

Grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers- and sisters-in-law, fiancées/fiancés or other extended family members are not considered to be close relationships, according to the guidelines that were issued in a cable sent to all US embassies and consulates late on Wednesday.

The new rules take effect on Thursday, according to the cable, which was obtained by he Associated Press.

Nor are all visas counted equally:

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Would-be immigrants from the six counties who won a coveted visa in the government’s diversity lottery – a program that randomly awards 50,000 green cards annually to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the US – will have to prove they have a “bona fide relationship” within the US or are eligible for another waiver or face being banned for at least 90 days. That hurdle may be a difficult one for those immigrants to overcome, as many visa lottery winners do not have relatives in the US, or jobs in advance of arriving in the country.

It's really infuriating how arbitrary this ban is. It's clear that this was enacted entirely for populist and xenophobic reasons, yet thousands of innocent people are right now being punished for no reason at all.

There's no doubt that Trump will be extending this "temporary ban" again and again.

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22 minutes ago, Volphied said:

This was just released today. The definition of "family" was changed by the Trump administration:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/29/grandparents-fiancees-close-family-trump-travel-ban-rules

Nor are all visas counted equally:

It's really infuriating how arbitrary this ban is. It's clear that this was enacted entirely for populist and xenophobic reasons, yet thousands of innocent people are right now being punished for no reason at all.

There's no doubt that Trump will be extending this "temporary ban" again and again.

I'm having a hard time seeing the current administration and anyone who supports it as anything except monsters in human skin right now.

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Speaking as a person who moved to the US to get married to his fiancee, and who hopes to see his parents when they visit this fall, fuck that nasty, c**tish behavior.

All this will do is further alienate an already alienated community, increasing the risk of domestic terrorist incidents. We all know it only takes a truck being driven into a crowd to do real harm - no need for explosive vests and trips to rural Libya.

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1 hour ago, Patticus said:

All this will do is further alienate an already alienated community

Friendly communities are also increasingly alienated. Here's the latest example:

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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was supposed to attend this week’s Economic Council of the Christian Democratic Union meeting in Berlin, but suddenly canceled his travel plans on Tuesday. Ross was scheduled to give an address at the conference immediately before German Chancellor Angela Merkel, so he instead gave his remarks by teleconference from Washington.

Ross was allotted 10 minutes to speak. After he spoke for more than 20, the conference organizers cut his feed mid-sentence. The audience “laughed and clapped” in response, according to Bloomberg News. Merkel then rose and, during her remarks, disagreed with one of Ross’s points.

The relationship between President Trump and Merkel has been strained since his inauguration. His repeated insistence that Germany owes money to NATO and his unusual reticence to embrace that alliance has been one point of friction. His disparagement of Germany as “very bad” in a closed-door meeting was another. That claim centered on what Trump (and Ross) viewed as a trade disparity between the two countries and was the point with which Merkel took issue.

[...]

On Tuesday, The Post highlighted new survey data from the Pew Research Center showing that perceptions of America and our president have decreased substantially in most parts of the world following Trump’s election. That includes Germany — a country to which Trump was pointedly referring in his Paris remarks and where Trump’s commerce secretary was laughed at literally.

Views of the American people have held fairly constant over the years among Germans, Pew’s polling revealed. But views of our government and president slipped during the George W. Bush administration, rose under Obama — and then collapsed this year.

Germany_US.jpg

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http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/28/politics/senate-health-care-bill-whats-next/index.html

A look inside the massive headache McConnell has to deal with if he plans to ever bring healthcare to a vote.

RepublicanSpectrum_Healthcare2b.jpg

...or, why Ogilvie casts his vote for the women on the ballot when he doesn't know anything about the candidates.

The odds of hitting the sanity jackpot are scarily higher.

Moderates are always in a dangerous position because they tend to come from swingier areas and they run the risk of being a deciding vote, which can be used against them in primaries. This is precisely why moderate GOP members folded in the House; it is easier to pander to the party extreme than the center.

However, Murkowski has survived being primaried, while Collins is enormously popular and is likely going to end up resigning to serve as Governor of Maine. If they don't like the bill, they're likely sticking to it. They've already achieved fame as being the primary opposition to Trump's Cabinet picks, having voted against De Vos. They will most likely end up going "no" unless the Planned Parenthood provision is struck out.

McConnell is likely to pander to the far right elements first, so it boils down to which GOP Senators decide to dig their heels in. If the moderates speak as one voice and say they're going against the hard Medicaid cuts, this bill is dead.

And that's not even considering it still needs to pass the scrutiny of the further right House.

3 hours ago, Volphied said:

It's really infuriating how arbitrary this ban is. It's clear that this was enacted entirely for populist and xenophobic reasons, yet thousands of innocent people are right now being punished for no reason at all.

There's no doubt that Trump will be extending this "temporary ban" again and again.

And it's probably going to end up challenged in court on both counts. He's trying to be as restrictive as possible within the rules, and a court might just rule against him for it.

If anything, the case to overturn it wholesale is just getting stronger. He keeps acting in bad faith with his directives.

10 minutes ago, Volphied said:

Friendly communities are also increasingly alienated. Here's the latest example:

Germany_US.jpg\

Good to see favorable view of Americans has gone up under Trump. They realize we don't like him either.

If Democrats manage to take a lot of state legislatures and Governorships next year, the Electoral College's odds of surviving another race are not looking good. The Popular Vote Compact might just end up going into effect.

And that means no more Bushes and Trumps.

Thank you Jesus Christ.

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Feel free to prove me wrong on this but, I feel Republican voters and their ignorance decide our elections.

they constantly vote republican in spite of all the horrible things the party done to the middle class, voted for this fascist orange in spite of his views on gays/women/minorities, not seeing his tax returns, the rape allegations, and "Trump university".

With these voters making up the majority of South, Midwest and Northwest, and with gerrymandering getting worse, I have no hope for Dems taking 2018 and beyond  

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1 hour ago, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

Good to see favorable view of Americans has gone up under Trump. They realize we don't like him either.
 

Up? Seems more stagnant to me (and there's no data at all between 2013 and 2017). It's also the only line that only slightly changes between presidents.

Meanwhile, here's the latest official statement from the President of the United States of America.

Mark Kornblau is the head of NBC News PR

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1 hour ago, Volphied said:

Up? Seems more stagnant to me (and there's no data at all between 2013 and 2017). It's also the only line that only slightly changes between presidents.

Technically stagnant but overall stable. The one third of Germans who can't distinguish between the people and the politicians probably aren't too reasonable anyway.

1 hour ago, CD Sanic said:

Feel free to prove me wrong on this but, I feel Republican voters and their ignorance decide our elections.

In many cases yes. The way Congress and the Electoral College (and to some extent federalism) are constructed, the GOP has a built in structural advantage.

For starters, seniors are both the most likely to vote in any race, and also have a conservative lean. This lets them swamp primaries and push conservative candidates to victory on both sides of the aisle, making the general election lean conservative. I'm hopeful one lasting plus of Bernie Sanders' campaign is younger people will make a point to hit primaries in the future. The Democrats aren't going full speed ahead socialism any time soon, but there's really no reason the Party should be so right wing all things considered.

Then the GOP has an advantage in the general races. With single member, FPTP districts, gerrymandering is easy and readily done; the 2010 gerrymandering is especially horrible given it's the first time redistricting was done primarily with computers. It's built to establish a near-permanent GOP majority short of an absurd level of Democratic turnout. That same turnout is nicely diminished by felon voting and voter ID laws.

Finally, government itself is built to give the small states extra clout. This allows the GOP to pick up a bunch of smaller state seats and give  themselves enormous power in the US Senate. Even if Democrats come from these same states, they're often DINOs. The House of Representatives guarantees each state at least one member regardless of size, which gives even the populism-based House a small state advantage, however slight. What is most damning is the Electoral College, however: even if each state split its Electoral votes proportionally, Trump would have won 2016 by 2 votes, as those small states' extra amount of power would prove decisive in a tight race. So while in every race it is the swing states that are key, the theoretical expansion of small state power can't be understated.

1 hour ago, CD Sanic said:

they constantly vote republican in spite of all the horrible things the party done to the middle class, voted for this fascist orange in spite of his views on gays/women/minorities, not seeing his tax returns, the rape allegations, and "Trump university".

With these voters making up the majority of South, Midwest and Northwest, and with gerrymandering getting worse, I have no hope for Dems taking 2018 and beyond  

It's worth noting Presidential and Congressional election dynamics are different. Even when Presidential candidates lose, members of the same Party tend to win.

A lot of Trump's victory really comes down to Clinton's image. While only 4% of Trump voters say they regret their vote, 25% say they wouldn't vote for him again. A lot of that 25% is going to be the much coveted swing vote, which aren't hardline Trump backers or even GOP ideologues, but people who for some reason or another chose him over Clinton. They are people that a good Democratic pick in 2020 could hope to rally, to say nothing of a good Democratic pick in 2018.

I say 2018 because in midterms, party leaders get a taste of what it's like to be a party leader in another country. Nancy Pelosi, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, etc. all made a name for themselves running contrary to the President in midterms. Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi isn't going anywhere and is frustratingly moderate, though the GOP is planning to use her as a lightning rod in 2018 anyway.

As bad as the gerrymandering is, we don't want to buy into defeatism too quickly. Dems have already managed to flip some state seats in historically red districts this year. It's small, but the average swing towards Democrats has been 10% this year. That's even in high turnout races like the Georgia 6th and Montana At Large. This is the kind of margin that, if it holds true in 2018 (if it doesn't improve further), the Democrats have a good shot of retaking House seats. Even if Democrats fail to claim either chamber of Congress, they're likely going to see some increase in seats from this midterm boost, though the real prize will be the state legislatures and Governorships that go up for grabs. If the Democrats make significant headway in these, they can give Trump a serious headache: they can refuse to enforce his draconian laws, give mass amnesties to prisoners so they can vote in future elections (and likely help the Democrats), redistrict to make more districts competitive, work towards rollback of voter ID laws, expand Medicaid, and push the country closer to a nationwide popular vote.

It's not going to be a given, but nothing ever is in politics. It was Hillary Clinton's mistake to think otherwise. And what will likely be Trump's mistake going forward.

A lot really depends on circumstances, as well, particularly with regards to the judicial branch. We have several older justices who are all classed as liberal, and a swing vote who might be considering retirement. At the same time, we also have several old Republican Senators in vulnerable seats who aren't guaranteed to serve until the end of their terms. Depending on which seats go vacant first in the next 2-4 years, a lot can change.

Meanwhile, as scary as Trump getting a lot of appointments is, the size of courts is dependent on Congress. If Trump and co. go too far, or the Supreme Court goes too conservative, expect to see Democrats low key pushing a court packing plan in 2020. When FDR pushed for it, he was sunk by his own Party, and that's in large part due to the fact the Supreme Court started making liberal decisions, likely to reduce support for packing the court. If Trump and McConnell aren't careful, they might end up with a second court packing supported by almost all Democrats.

tl;dr. Things look tough, but it's not hopeless. Democrats focus should be Governorships, then state governments, then Congress, then the Presidency. The GOP's own formula for success can be used against them.

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1 hour ago, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

The one third of Germans who can't distinguish between the people and the politicians probably aren't too reasonable anyway.

Painting an entire nation with the same brush is unfair. That I agree. But I don't entirely agree with the "distinguish between the people and the politicians". The US is a democracy, not a dictatorship. Yes, there's voter suppression, and gerrymandering. But the sad fact is that almost 63 million Americans saw what Trump represented and still pulled the lever for him. Whether they did it because they identified with him, or because they just wanted to send a "fuck you" to Washington DC, is irrelevant.

Americans already once before re-elected Dubya, leading to newspapers in Europe outright calling them stupid. Now there's a million times worse person in the White House. Is it really that surprising that some might have lost faith in American people? I don't agree with them, but then, I also don't believe that they're "unreasonable". They're still much more reasonable than the more than third of Americans that still support Trump. They're definitely more reasonable than the 83% of white evangelicals who today support a President that is guilty of all seven deadly sins (seriously, try to think of one that doesn't fit Trump entirely).

You know what I find unreasonable about America? That there is absolutely no way to announce snap elections for the highest office in the land. The impeachment process is useless if the congress is held by his party, and even if it were triggered, the succession order right now is depressing.

From Europe to Asia, snap elections are considered an important part of the democratic process. South Korean held snap presidential elections just this May, after removing a corrupt president from office. But in the US, you're stuck with Trump for 4 years, and even if he were miraculously removed, the presidency would just go to his lackey. In Europe, if politicians tried to take healthcare from an entire nation, millions would stream into the streets and the government would lose a vote of confidence and dissolve, triggering snap elections. There's no such system in the US.

Americans are often proud of how their country was the first modern democracy. But that also means you're now stuck with the beta version of democracy, while the late-comers had the chance to fix or discard what didn't work. And the way the US system is constructed makes any change extremely difficult, if not outright impossible. This means that America is sleepwalking into another bloody civil war; the only way out of this increasingly unbearable gridlock. The latest NRA ads are outright calling for it.

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30 minutes ago, Volphied said:

But the sad fact is that almost 63 million Americans saw what Trump represented and still pulled the lever for him. Whether they did it because they identified with him, or because they just wanted to send a "fuck you" to Washington DC, is irrelevant.

Americans already once before re-elected Dubya, leading to newspapers in Europe outright calling them stupid. Now there's a million times worse person in the White House. Is it really that surprising that some might have lost hope in American people? I don't agree with them, but then, I also don't believe that they're "unreasonable". They're still much more reasonable than the more than third of Americans that still support Trump.

And even more Americans did not want Trump, and the same goes for Bush.

The people who are "eww Americans" are unreasonable. Yes, the number of Americans so firmly behind the likes of Bush, Trump, etc. is concerning but it's not the majority. The question is judging us as a whole. Republicans, Democrats, independents, people who don't vote. You can see why I'm just a mighty bit irritated that I and so many others are being lumped together with a minority that knows how to work the system.

This is to say nothing of the fact it's Germany passing the judgment. Weimar Germany wasn't anything to be proud of. What's more, the American system has survived both a Civil War and a severe economic depression without collapsing. Germany can't say the same.

Fortunately, the vast majority of Germans are more rational about all this and separate the population from the politicos.

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You know what I find unreasonable about America? That there is absolutely no way to announce snap elections for the highest office in the land. The impeachment process is useless if the congress is held by his party, and even if it were triggered, the succession order right now is depressing.

That would defeat the point of the Presidency, which is to be an independent source of leadership.

The idea of going all Parliamentary sounds fine and dandy until we consider the GOP has controlled the House for most of the past 30 years.

So no, no snap elections, please. We are nowhere near competitive enough to have such a thing. Hell, the UK is more competitive than us, and they have a situation where they need to let terrorist-enabling parties into power to get things done. No thanks, please.

The damage Trump is doing now would have been eclipsed by what a perpetual GOP majority and premiership could accomplish. At least this way, we have regular injections of Democratic Presidentialism to limit their excesses.

Snap elections for Congress would make more sense, but even then I'd question the point thereof. The House already is up for grabs every two years, while the Senate is designed to be less prone to demagoguery. And indeed, up until recent years, it has been. Hopefully #Resist and Tea Party types won't be able to influence Senators for too long, because they're actively destroying the system from the inside.

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From Europe to Asia, snap elections are considered an important part of the democratic process. 

Most of those states also have a vibrant multi-party structure that encourages people to give a damn about the snap elections.

We do not. All snap elections will do is waste money for a change of a few seats. I'd rather avoid more Georgia 6 situations.

Our problem is ultimately not in the lack of snap elections.

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In Europe, if politicians tried to take healthcare from an entire nation, millions would stream into the streets and the government would lose a vote of confidence and dissolve, triggering snap elections. There's no such system in the US.

Oh there is. At any time the House GOP can choose to simply abandon healthcare and move on. The House GOP could easily choose to defund all of Trump's pet programs if he misbehaves. Don't let the fact he can't be tossed out of office fool you; if Congress so chooses, they can basically reduce the President to little more than a figurehead.

But they're not doing so. It really isn't because of Presidentialism, but the fact the two party system produces poor results. The two parties are too interested in fighting each other to achieve the supermajorities necessary to leave Trump near-powerless.

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Americans are often proud of how their country was the first modern democracy. But that also means you're now stuck with the beta version of democracy, while the late-comers had the chance to fix or discard what didn't work.

We erm... we've kind of done that too. We have the amendment process, which has been used numerous times to expand the franchise and democratize the country. And the Presidency, while powerful, has been limited to such an extent we don't need to worry about Putin types. We've tackled problems as they've arisen.

It's less our structure and more our history. Slavery and Jim Crow were so polarizing that they basically made two party politics hard to get rid of. The polarization of America after the fall of the New Deal Coalition has just made it worse.

Again though. This "beta" democracy sure seems to have been a hell of a lot more stable than most of its counterparts around the world. The system's far from perfect but I can say it's definitely worked. We're just in such a relatively stable time that everyone can look at the American system and push for broader changes. That's always a privilege from peaceful times.

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And the way the US system is constructed makes any change extremely difficult, if not outright impossible. This means that America is sleepwalking into another bloody civil war; the only way out of this increasingly unbearable gridlock. The latest NRA ads are outright calling for it.

And yet we've done it over and over and over again anyway. This was the Framers' intent: change can happen, but it will be gradual.

The Supreme Court is reviewing gerrymandering. Congress can change the size of the federal courts. The National Popular Vote is picking up steam even in red state legislatures. The next census is right around the corner and Dems have good odds at taking plenty of key Governorships next year.

Times are tough and the system is under a lot of stress, but I don't think it's an inevitability it will all go down in flames.

Let's recall here. Just 8 years ago, the Democrats had one of their largest majorities in decades, and looked near unstoppable. Rather like how the GOP looks now.

Except the Democrats were able to eventually pull together a compromise to go forward, while the GOP are all screaming at each other "which way do we go, Trump, which way do we go?!" and then blame the lack of Democratic outreach for worsening the problem.

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1 hour ago, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

This is to say nothing of the fact it's Germany passing the judgment. Weimar Germany wasn't anything to be proud of. What's more, the American system has survived both a Civil War and a severe economic depression without collapsing. Germany can't say the same.

No offense, but Germany has done much, much more to atone for their past crimes than the US. The US is yet to pay reparations to the many millions it abused just inside of US borders. Instead, it wallows in its delusions of "American exceptionalism" which strangles any possibility of introspection or humility.

Yes, the American system survived the Civil war,....... by denying minorities voting rights until the latter half of the 20th century. And some would say they're still being denied in many US states. But it's not just voting right. You mention the economic depression. Did you know that the only reason Americans accepted the New Deal was because FDR made it clear that it would only help white people? Please, read this article, before you continue to argue that Germany should shut the fuck up

1 hour ago, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

Again though. This "beta" democracy sure seems to have been a hell of a lot more stable than most of its counterparts around the world. The system's far from perfect but I can say it's definitely worked. We're just in such a relatively stable time that everyone can look at the American system and push for broader changes. That's always a privilege from peaceful times.

You're mistaking "stable" with "healthy". Stability can be achieved by repression and indoctrinating the population that they're living in the best possible system, and that change is harmful, if not outright impossible.

From the outside, nothing about the US appears stable. Your system elected a loathed, corrupt and crazy president by a minority of votes who's supported (or at least tolerated) by a congress of likewise loathed people elected thanks to gerrymander and voter suppression. Political extremism is on the rise, and Trump was a "whitelash" against the first black president.

1 hour ago, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

And yet we've done it over and over and over again anyway.

You only have to fail at it once. I don't believe that Trump, McConnell and other GOP sycophants will allow to lose their power without breaking more "traditions". They will certainly pull every trick they can think of. And I know for sure that Trump will refuse to accept his loss in 2020. What will happen then?

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Times are tough and the system is under a lot of stress, but I don't think it's an inevitability it will all go down in flames.

I don't think it's inevitable for it to crash and burn. I do however think that the possibility for this to get worse still exists.

Just like you mentioned Democrats in 2008, I could mention Republicans in 2004. Many people thought that was the worst that could happen. But instead we're seeing the GOP nominating increasingly horrible people.... and still getting them into the Congress and the White House. I worry there's no bottom to it.

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10 hours ago, Volphied said:

No offense, but Germany has done much, much more to atone for their past crimes than the US. The US is yet to pay reparations to the many millions it abused just inside of US borders. Instead, it wallows in its delusions of "American exceptionalism" which strangles any possibility of introspection or humility.

That's shifting the goal posts.

I'm not talking Nazi Germany specifically. That was just the end product of a garbage political order. The reason Nazism ultimately took off is Weimar was just a poorly put together system that didn't leave many people wanting its continued existence.

Weimar's courts turned a blind eye to left wing politicians being murdered. Elected officials argued the best way to solve inflation was to print even more money. The system only held together barely because the military was called in to massacre socialist forces, then that same military had to be forced to give up power by a mass strike. It was a mess, and continued to be a mess all the way until the Enabling Act, barring a few years of relative peace and order.

Of course Germany is more humble. Germany has lost both the wars it's participated in since its inception. The USA has only lost one (and even then, that's because the public lost the will to fight rather than the military being routed) and forced a stalemate in another. There's a reason Dante Aleghieri made the punishment for Pride having a giant stone forced upon oneself.

10 hours ago, Volphied said:

Yes, the American system survived the Civil war,....... by denying minorities voting rights until the latter half of the 20th century.

I'm not talking Andrew Johnson's politics.

I'm talking the fact civil wars often lead to the collapse of the political order. Lincoln's often demonized for his very limited work to restrict habeas corpus, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to what often happens in crises like these.

10 hours ago, Volphied said:

You mention the economic depression. Did you know that the only reason Americans accepted the New Deal was because FDR made it clear that it would only help white people? Please, read this article, before you continue to argue that Germany should shut the fuck up

I've mentioned it time and time again in this very thread. I've written research papers on this same topic.

And I'd say that's an oversimplification. Blacks were being drawn into the New Deal coalition long before the Civil Rights era. While FDR made great concessions to segregationists, blacks in parts of the country besides the South ultimately had cause to still back FDR and his policies. After all, non-Southern Americans have no need for government discrimination. They were masters of doing it via the private sector.

10 hours ago, Volphied said:

From the outside, nothing about the US appears stable. Your system elected a loathed, corrupt and crazy president by a minority of votes who's supported (or at least tolerated) by a congress of likewise loathed people elected thanks to gerrymander and voter suppression. Political extremism is on the rise, and Trump was a "whitelash" against the first black president.

...and the fact Clinton was just a candidate with absolutely terrible perception. She had decades of experience, but also a reputation of being a shady neoliberal that won her no favors in the Rust Belt. Painting the 2016 election as the work of racists is just one reason why the Democratic Party is going to have trouble moving forward. They're a Bizarro Trump, feeling they have done nothing wrong and the evil opposition are just out to get them.

The Electoral College has not been a problem in American history because for the most part there was never any conflict between the electoral vote and popular vote. We've had five elections decided by it. The first one was because of a multi-party race, thus sending the race to the House. The second was a race where the Democrats gave the race to the GOP in exchange for an end to Reconstruction. 1888 is the first time there's no muddy reason why the popular vote winner loses the electoral vote; Grover Cleveland just didn't win the support where he needed it. This in mind, it makes sense why the Progressives didn't make a point to reform the Electoral college; it just didn't happen often enough to expend political capital. Reforming the Senate was far more important because it was regularly chaotic under the old system.

Here we are 130 years later, however, and we've had 2 races out of the last 5 decided this way. Sentiment is turning against the Electoral College. For most of our history it was basically a rubber stamp of the popular vote, and now we're interested in making it actually be such. The popular vote margin is growing, and there's legitimate concern that it will get worse as time goes on. We were willing to tolerate Bush due to his relatively lower margin and the presumption it was just a fluke.

10 hours ago, Volphied said:

You only have to fail at it once. I don't believe that Trump, McConnell and other GOP sycophants will allow to lose their power without breaking more "traditions". They will certainly pull every trick they can think of.

Sure, and liberals can do the same.

Liberal state governments can push for more balanced districts, while the Supreme Court may just end up ruling against gerrymandering later this year. They can also push for the NPVIC to end the chance of another Bush or Trump victory in the future.

A Democratic Congress can vote to expand the House of Representatives and the judiciary, effectively denying the GOP any advantage they have in the Electoral College and Supreme Court.

Even voting suppression isn't that powerful of a tool if Democrats get their hands on the Governorships. With those, they can begin mass pardoning people and expanding the odds of continued Democratic success.

The GOP has already lost seats this year. What seats it has gained were due to Democratic incompetence.

Going forward, the wind is in Democrats' sails, but they have to actually deploy the sail. It's not going to be Trump that ruins this country. It's going to be the DNC. If they want to crush the GOP, they need to build a grand coalition to do so. Not get up like Tom Perez and wag their fingers at those folks who don't agree with their agenda.

The GOP controls every branch of the federal government and most state governments. They're still having trouble coming up with coherent policy. To assume they will somehow create a dictatorship in the next 4 years is to give them too much credit.

10 hours ago, Volphied said:

And I know for sure that Trump will refuse to accept his loss in 2020. What will happen then?

Depends how the military and courts feel.

But he's in for a surprise if he thinks he can just stack the deck with cronies. It did no favors for Nixon when his time came.

Plus that may just be what makes a vote for impeachment happen. GOP members of Congress will be here for decades. Trump will only be here for 8 years at most. They have no reason to be personally loyal.

10 hours ago, Volphied said:

Just like you mentioned Democrats in 2008, I could mention Republicans in 2004. Many people thought that was the worst that could happen. But instead we're seeing the GOP nominating increasingly horrible people.... and still getting them into the Congress and the White House. I worry there's no bottom to it.

There is. GOP voters were very disinterested in Trump, backing him out of protest to Clinton.

It's why the "lol Trump carried this district by only a few points" is a stupid strategy. Trump was Trump. He was awful to many conservatives, who would back their conservative member of Congress but not him. Democrats can possibly pick up some of those narrowly-carried seats, but ultimately they need a message that brings swing voters into their fold. And it's likely going to be something besides "we must stop Trump."

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1 hour ago, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

That's shifting the goal posts.

I'm not talking Nazi Germany specifically. That was just the end product of a garbage political order. The reason Nazism ultimately took off is Weimar was just a poorly put together system that didn't leave many people wanting its continued existence.

And isn't a similar thing happening right now in the US? I mean, the one thing both Republicans and Democrats agree on is that the current system is causing horrible gridlock which is why they're pushing to lock out the other side from any political power. The NRA is now outright calling for a civil war and the extermination of political opponents. The GOP sees half the country as enemies, and the Democrats gave up on the other half. Both sides are now removing things like filibusters and both sides are implying that judges should be picked on the basis of which political party's policies they support.

The main cause behind this might be the fact that the American system didn't count with the existence of political parties (IIRC, the founding fathers don't mention them at all). The much maligned Germans have today a parliamentary system that locks out extremism (both left and right) out of power. And in France a new centrist political party swept into power displacing other more traditional parties. Neither of this can ever happen in the US, you're stuck with Dems and Repubs until this system crashes down.

Right now the US system is a horrible mishmash; a system that was clumsily designed for apolitical compromise has now two political parties that hate each other.

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Weimar's courts turned a blind eye to left wing politicians being murdered.

I wouldn't use this argument considering the fact that America's courts are turning a blind eye to black people being murdered.

And I don't mean just the murders of the last couple of years. That's just the rise of the internet making this injustice more visible. The history of the US in the 20th century is filled with black activists being violently beaten and murdered. Lynchings were even advertised on postcards with the perpetrators easily identified, yet they all got away with it. And the courts, especially in the South, were always more preoccupied with sentencing black people to death while giving whites a slap on the wrist.

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I'm not talking Andrew Johnson's politics.

I'm talking the fact civil wars often lead to the collapse of the political order.

I think we just see "collapse of political order" differently. I definitely think it describes perfectly what happened in the South after Reconstruction ended, with all black politicians removed from offices by violence and intimidation, and a Jim Crow society established. Anywhere else this process would be called a counter-revolution.

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...and the fact Clinton was just a candidate with absolutely terrible perception. She had decades of experience, but also a reputation of being a shady neoliberal that won her no favors in the Rust Belt. Painting the 2016 election as the work of racists is just one reason why the Democratic Party is going to have trouble moving forward. They're a Bizarro Trump, feeling they have done nothing wrong and the evil opposition are just out to get them.

"Economic anxiety" is a myth.

In the wake of Trump’s surprise win, some journalists, scholars, and political strategists argued that economic anxiety drove these Americans to Trump. But new analysis of post-election survey data conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic found something different: Evidence suggests financially troubled voters in the white working class were more likely to prefer Clinton over Trump. Besides partisan affiliation, it was cultural anxiety—feeling like a stranger in America, supporting the deportation of immigrants, and hesitating about educational investment—that best predicted support for Trump.

While the analysis pointed to some interesting patterns around economic status, more research is needed to confirm them. The findings contrast with much of the coverage of the election: People who said their finances are only in fair or poor shape were nearly twice as likely to support Clinton compared to those who feel more economically secure.

Quote

The GOP controls every branch of the federal government and most state governments. They're still having trouble coming up with coherent policy. To assume they will somehow create a dictatorship in the next 4 years is to give them too much credit.

No, but after Dems win the GOP will be screaming that Democrats are trying to create dictatorship in the next 4 years. Then the pendulum swings AGAIN towards GOP dominance.

The end result is that voters are motivated purely by promises to undo every policy that their political opponents enacted. This is the primary cause of the rapidly increasing political polarization in the country.

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Depends how the military and courts feel.

But he's in for a surprise if he thinks he can just stack the deck with cronies. It did no favors for Nixon when his time came.

I'm not sure. It's really scary that the ICE was already willing to go against the courts back in January. America is MUCH closer to a constitutional crisis than you imagine.

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http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/30/politics/why-obamacare-is-here-to-stay/index.html

GOP Senators are expressing concerns about even the Obamacare taxes being repealed now, in addition to the rollback of the Medicaid expansion.

GOP members of Congress not wanting to give tax breaks to the wealthy so long as the poor aren't taken care of? It's truly the end of times. The GOP may get a populist makeover yet. Who knows, maybe Protestant politics will start to resemble Catholic politics.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/29/politics/lawmakers-react-trump-tweet-joe-scarborough-mika-brzezinski-morning-joe/index.html

Trump has been swiftly condemned by large numbers of his own Party after his remarks about Mika Brzezinski, where he attacked her appearance. Unsurprisingly, many of the Republicans to speak out against him were also women. Their patience may be slowly running out, and I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with a bipartisan bill to try and restrain Trump's private messaging. Of course, if the GOP is trying to restrain Trump, Democrats may find reason to do their best to prevent it, as it indicates he's likely become damaging to the brand.

5 hours ago, Volphied said:

And isn't a similar thing happening right now in the US? I mean, the one thing both Republicans and Democrats agree on is that the current system is causing horrible gridlock which is why they're pushing to lock out the other side from any political power. The NRA is now outright calling for a civil war and the extermination of political opponents. The GOP sees half the country as enemies, and the Democrats gave up on the other half. Both sides are now removing things like filibusters and both sides are implying that judges should be picked on the basis of which political party's policies they support.

Not quite. Weimar was done in by two economic crises in the span of a decade and a crisis of confidence in foreign policy. To say nothing of a weak democratic tradition.

Sanders and Trump might be compared to the rise of the KPD and NSDAP, but it's really not comparable, as both ultimately wanted to work within the system. The Democrats and GOP also continue to insist on working with the system, even if tweaking it, rather than saying they will tear it down. This is understandable: they are almost all monied elites and hardly want things to go down in flames.

Where the federal government has buckled, the state governments are picking up the slack. This is also a difference between Weimar and the USA.

The filibuster has been curtailed, but the GOP has not been as terrible as one would think. For the most part they've left committee procedures and the legislative filibuster in place, things that affect the day to day functioning of Congress. Presidential appointments do not affect the day to day business of Congress. They understand the wind will blow the Democrats' way eventually, and they'd rather just get the appointments out of the way, something a Dem majority can't dismiss.

On the other hand, there's nothing stopping a Democratic Senate majority from going nuclear and destroying the filibuster completely barring fear of reprisal.

The system is under a lot of stress, but I don't think we're quite at Weimar levels. We don't have government agents mass imprisoning and murdering opponents. We don't have street fights in the papers every week. We don't have long lines of poor citizens eager to listen to whichever lunatic pops up next.

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The main cause behind this might be the fact that the American system didn't count with the existence of political parties (IIRC, the founding fathers don't mention them at all).

Yes, they did not, which is one reason the Electoral College ran into early problems that had to be quickly fixed.

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The much maligned Germans have today a parliamentary system that locks out extremism (both left and right) out of power. And in France a new centrist political party swept into power displacing other more traditional parties. Neither of this can ever happen in the US, you're stuck with Dems and Repubs until this system crashes down.

I wouldn't say extremism gets locked out of power, so much as extremism doesn't get far without broad support. This is a main perk of proportional voting systems, as opposed to first past the post districts.

To say the USA has no such system is to treat the USA as a single entity rather than 50 states with wildly different politics. States like Georgia, for example, have passed laws that any race without a majority winner must go to a runoff (hence why we have Representative Handel and not Representative Ossoff). Other states can pass similar legislation if they so wish, which would serve to limit the power of anyone who can't reach 50% of the electorate.

Ultimately though, this is not the product of parliaments and Presidentialism, but first past the post. With only a plurality of the vote needed, there's incentive to stick with the two parties, which in turn leaves many moderates (and extremists) disenchanted.

But the good news is, not even that is set in stone. States are free to adopt instant runoff ballots if they so wish, and most states have a nonpartisan ballot initiative system that can pass it. This is what was used to pass ranked choice voting in Maine, even if that will get struck down due to being contrary to Maine's constitution.

The GOP and Democrats have a built in structural advantage, but it's not invulnerable. It's worth remembering two US Senators are independents.

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Right now the US system is a horrible mishmash; a system that was clumsily designed for apolitical compromise has now two political parties that hate each other.

Actually, the system was built for gridlock. The President's independent power and the easy reshuffling of the House are a testament to that. The GOP being unable to agree on anything in each of the three legislative bodies is very consistent with the Framers' intent.

This is, of course, why the US states have so much power as well. When the federal government grinds to a halt, the states can take the wheel.

The partisanship, meanwhile, is exaggerated. There are moderates in both parties who have crossed over despite the angry demands of "Resist!" and the like. Partisanship in America is more severe than it usually is right now, yes, but it's yet to completely break the system.

Quote

I wouldn't use this argument considering the fact that America's courts are turning a blind eye to black people being murdered.

I'd continue to use it because as tragic as that is, it's not comparable to hundreds of political leaders being killed, leaving the left with weak leadership. Even in the case of political leaders like Dr. King and Malcolm X being murdered, it wasn't enough to cripple the movement. In fact, there's a morbid case to be made that with King's death, the argument for Civil Rights actually just became even stronger, as he was now a martyr. He'd be more comparable to the German Foreign Minister Rathenau, whose murder saw a decline in political violence in Germany afterward.

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I think we just see "collapse of political order" differently. I definitely think it describes perfectly what happened in the South after Reconstruction ended, with all black politicians removed from offices by violence and intimidation, and a Jim Crow society established. Anywhere else this process would be called a counter-revolution.

But that's not what's being talked about here. I'm talking the United States as a whole. Yes, the postbellum South fell apart. But the rest of America did not. Lincoln, Johnson, et. al. did not use the political capital from the Civil War to suspend elections and impose a Principate over the whole of the United States.

Quote

"Economic anxiety" is a myth.

In the wake of Trump’s surprise win, some journalists, scholars, and political strategists argued that economic anxiety drove these Americans to Trump. But new analysis of post-election survey data conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic found something different: Evidence suggests financially troubled voters in the white working class were more likely to prefer Clinton over Trump. Besides partisan affiliation, it was cultural anxiety—feeling like a stranger in America, supporting the deportation of immigrants, and hesitating about educational investment—that best predicted support for Trump.

While the analysis pointed to some interesting patterns around economic status, more research is needed to confirm them. The findings contrast with much of the coverage of the election: People who said their finances are only in fair or poor shape were nearly twice as likely to support Clinton compared to those who feel more economically secure.

 

This doesn't indicate a "myth." That indicates it's not the only factor alone.

They're also conflating working class with poor. Historically, working class meant getting your hands dirty and very often having no education or a technical one. People who are in this historical working class - "hesitating about educational investment" as the article puts it - were easily won by Trump. Trump is promising an America where you don't need a college education to have a great job, as it was back in the day, but anyone who does the research knows that America just isn't going to happen. The highly paid, non-college educated jobs have dried up, and they're probably not coming back any time soon. Of course race will play a factor, but it's just as (if not more) likely a misconception that affirmative action and the like are helping minorities while leaving whites in the dust as it is overt racism. This is a common misunderstanding of nearly any social justice measure, rather than damning evidence America is this hopeless society and so a moral victory can at least be claimed by deriding the "deplorables."

Anyway. Urban poor trend Democrat and the rural poor trend Republican as always, though Trump swung those urban poor without an education in key areas like the Rust Belt, which historically had many well-paying jobs that didn't need a formal education to do. This isn't that dramatic a claim.

Exit polls, meanwhile, indicate almost half of Trump's voters support amnesty for undocumented people. 19% were opposed to the border wall. Trying to paint racism as the sole plank of Trump's appeal will always be disingenuous, and a great way for the Democrats to see a retreat to coastal urban centers in a way not seen since the Vietnam War.

Quote

No, but after Dems win the GOP will be screaming that Democrats are trying to create dictatorship in the next 4 years. Then the pendulum swings AGAIN towards GOP dominance.

The end result is that voters are motivated purely by promises to undo every policy that their political opponents enacted. This is the primary cause of the rapidly increasing political polarization in the country.

You would think this would happen, but Obamacare is still largely intact.

The GOP might keep clawing its way back to power with reactive politics, but it's going to discover each time that repeal is a lot easier as a talking point than policy. They might get rid of outlying Democratic policies, as Trump is currently doing, but the core is likely to remain in place if it is popular.

Honestly, the best thing Democrats could do with their next majority is put policies in place that make the GOP do serious soul searching. Expand Congress and the judiciary to weaken the GOP's structural advantages. Require federal ID for just about everything (and pay for it) so there's maximum incentive to have one; this isn't that difficult, as the Secretary of Homeland Security can do this already. Push instant runoff ballots nationwide to increase voter turnout. As Australia can tell us, the two party system probably won't go anywhere with runoff ballots (the two major parties there still dominate most single member districts), but it will almost certainly increase turnout now that protest votes aren't worthless.

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I'm not sure. It's really scary that the ICE was already willing to go against the courts back in January. America is MUCH closer to a constitutional crisis than you imagine.

Certainly, but ICE agents can also be ordered by a court to comply or go to jail (the implied threat). This is what happened with Kim Davis and turned her into a darling of the right.

Same thing can happen to these people.

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20 hours ago, Volphied said:

No offense, but Germany has done much, much more to atone for their past crimes than the US. The US is yet to pay reparations to the many millions it abused just inside of US borders. Instead, it wallows in its delusions of "American exceptionalism" which strangles any possibility of introspection or humility.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/26/politics/american-indian-settlment/index.html

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/27/495627997/u-s-government-to-pay-492-million-to-17-american-indian-tribes

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/09/210138278/japanese-internment-redress

Notably, the US didn't get more "American exceptionalism" than Reagan-era America. NeoCons dream of Reagan America precisely because that was when they could get away with the stuff they want now and hide it behind "Why we're so great" without much in the way of actual blowback or cynicism; even if the public didn't believe it.

 

 

Unless you're insinuating that because the United States hasn't given every African American whatever absurd figure is claimed to be owed to them by some university professor that nothing has been done whatsoever for anyone the US has wronged at any point in its history.
 

7 hours ago, Volphied said:

Right now the US system is a horrible mishmash; a system that was clumsily designed for apolitical compromise has now two political parties that hate each other.

I think you'll find that the two political parties never didn't hate each other over some sticking point. In one famous instance, half of the country was so disillusioned with theoretical boogeyman of the opposite party that they attempted to leave the country altogether before a single policy was even attempted.

 

22 hours ago, Volphied said:

You know what I find unreasonable about America? That there is absolutely no way to announce snap elections for the highest office in the land. The impeachment process is useless if the congress is held by his party, and even if it were triggered, the succession order right now is depressing.

Nixon wasn't impeached because he was a Republican. GOP congressmen have no reason to support a president their party actively campaigned against before the election and has spent most of his 5 month presidency with approval ratings in the thirties if he performs an impeachable act.

 

22 hours ago, Volphied said:

Americans are often proud of how their country was the first modern democracy. But that also means you're now stuck with the beta version of democracy, while the late-comers had the chance to fix or discard what didn't work.

20 hours ago, Volphied said:

Britain is in the process of leaving the EU due to a rapid rise in nationalism, xenophobia and essentially just plain old Euroscepticism even though the UK could basically already choose what parts of the EU it actually wanted to bother with and dictate a large amount of its policy. The success of Brexit is justifiably associated with the large rise of the influence of UKIP party in the past decade, a common whipping boy for fascism, racism and xenophobia; up to and including winning 163 new parliamentary seats in the election in 2014. Depending on how well the UK handles Brexit, the damage caused could be decades in the making even though the fact that Brexit passed because of the UKIP has decimated the party almost immediately.

 

 

 

France is a country with a nice modern history of meddling in the Middle East and selling weapons to questionable parts of the world that has managed to pass some anti-Muslim laws that GOP leaders in the United States could only dream of scaring people into publicly supporting. One of those laws has even been in effect for nearly 7 years longer than it took for federal courts in the US to strike down Trump's travel ban; and was amusingly defended by the European Court of Human Rights, even though one of the potential consequences of breaking it is something unironically called "citizenship education".

Well, they recently had an election that was a triumph over Fascism... because the far-right, obviously-xenophobic-under-the-surface allegedly-extremely-corrupt Front National party had 22% of eligible voters pull the handle for them in the second round of voting, and only 2% less voters in the first round than the leading non-fascist candidate. And guess what? Lots of Euroscepticism in France too! Frexit is even a thing!

And those are two countries with a lot more first hand history with, you know, far right ultranationalism and fascism, than the US does.

 

 

 

 

Let's look at another modern Democracy. Italy, EU member. Surely things are fine in one of the most modern Republics in the world, and a founding EU member at that. Surely the country whose fascism Hitler himself adored so much is beyond these things due to the flow of the democr-

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Angelo Tofalo, the honorable pentastellato in his speech to the House, refers to the motto that has become famous during the fascist twenty years. Then on Twitter explains "It's not fascist, it was used already in 1799"

Oh dear. Well, it's not like the Movimento 5 Stelle he is a part of makes up a significant part of the govern-

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In one of the best debut performances by any party in Western Europe since World War Two, 5-Star took 26 percent of the vote, outstripping the PD and Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom.

 

Oh dear. Well, I suppose maybe it is a fringe part of the party, then, like when the GOP was invaded by those Tea Part idio-

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Beppe Grillo, the leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), on Friday called for all migrants who are not legally in Italy to be deported, in the wake of this week's attack in Berlin and the killing of the suspected terrorist near Milan. "The migratory situation is out of control," Grillo wrote on his blog. "Our country is becoming a place where terrorists come and go and we are not able to recognise and report them and they can wander all over Europe undisturbed thanks to Schengen.

Oh, dear. Well, I'm sure he's got some political experience under his bel-

Quote

The M5S was formed in 2009 by Beppe Grillo, a popular comedian and blogger, and Gianroberto Casaleggio, a web strategist.

Okay, um... Well, I'm sure he's still better than Tru-

Quote

Grillo compared migrants to rats in a tweet in 2015, suggesting that Rome could be “swamped by rats, rubbish and illegal immigrants.” Recently, members of the M5S have started spreading a conspiracy theory about aid workers colluding with human traffickers to make money and destabilize Europe.

Shortly after Sadiq Khan became London’s first Muslim mayor in 2016, Grillo drew criticism for asking when he would blow up Westminster.

Wow. Such enlightenment by the leader of the current most popular party in a country that was once the inspiration for Hitler's Germany. But yeah, US democracy is just a beta.

 

 

 

 

 

One more thing:

Quote

When did Olgilvie say anything like this?

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http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/30/us/travel-ban-reaction/index.html

The travel ban has rolled out, but it is far less chaotic than prior iterations. Small groups of lawyers and protesters have held gatherings, but it's very minimal compared to the first protests, likely due to the narrower scope of the ban.

A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department by Monday to clarify the scope of relatives being affected, that is grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins of people currently living in the United States.

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4 hours ago, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

Not quite. Weimar was done in by two economic crises in the span of a decade and a crisis of confidence in foreign policy. To say nothing of a weak democratic tradition.

The US has only barely recovered from the 2008 economic downturn, and now Trump threatens to start another one. How long do you think will the US system survive increasing inequality?

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Sanders and Trump might be compared to the rise of the KPD and NSDAP, but it's really not comparable, as both ultimately wanted to work within the system. The Democrats and GOP also continue to insist on working with the system, even if tweaking it, rather than saying they will tear it down. This is understandable: they are almost all monied elites and hardly want things to go down in flames.

Work within the system? Yes, they adopted the Republican and Democrat label, but that's only because they realized that the US system makes it outright impossible to win under a third party banner. But saying that they "work with the system" is a stretch. Both Trump and Sanders are infamous for attacking their party colleagues; the primaries were especially vicious. They both see themselves as anti-establishment and so do their supporters who loath almost all other Republican/Democratic politicians.

Quote

Actually, the system was built for gridlock. The President's independent power and the easy reshuffling of the House are a testament to that. The GOP being unable to agree on anything in each of the three legislative bodies is very consistent with the Framers' intent.

This is, of course, why the US states have so much power as well. When the federal government grinds to a halt, the states can take the wheel.

Which is why it's worrying that partisanship is now spreading to state levels too. In the last decade there's been a dramatic increase in states where only ONE party dominates. Republicans are very close to being able to call a constitutional convention.

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The partisanship, meanwhile, is exaggerated. There are moderates in both parties who have crossed over despite the angry demands of "Resist!" and the like. Partisanship in America is more severe than it usually is right now, yes, but it's yet to completely break the system.

We'll see who's correct once the vote on AHCA actually happens.

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I'd continue to use it because as tragic as that is, it's not comparable to hundreds of political leaders being killed, leaving the left with weak leadership. Even in the case of political leaders like Dr. King and Malcolm X being murdered, it wasn't enough to cripple the movement. In fact, there's a morbid case to be made that with King's death, the argument for Civil Rights actually just became even stronger, as he was now a martyr. He'd be more comparable to the German Foreign Minister Rathenau, whose murder saw a decline in political violence in Germany afterward.

May I ask you why you even brought up Weimar the first time I mentioned Germany? When I posted that poll I was detailing the view of current living Germans in current modern Germany on current modern USA. Why was you first reaction to criticize them for a system almost none of the polled people experienced?

It almost seems to me that you know that if the US system was compared to Germany's, the US would lose. So you had to travel in past to refute parliamentarism. So alright, I'll agree with you that Weimar in the 1920's was a worse system that the US in 2010's.

Yet, I have to say that the Germans managed to overcome their crisis years better. You don't see many German politicians claiming that the swastika is "heritage, not hate".

I also find it interesting how you repeatedly mentioned the fact that Weimar jailed opposition politicians. Didn't the US also jail socialists and anarchists from the beginning of the 20th century? Eugene V. Debs even ran for US president from his jail cell.

Quote

This doesn't indicate a "myth." That indicates it's not the only factor alone.

They're also conflating working class with poor. Historically, working class meant getting your hands dirty and very often having no education or a technical one. People who are in this historical working class - "hesitating about educational investment" as the article puts it - were easily won by Trump. Trump is promising an America where you don't need a college education to have a great job, as it was back in the day, but anyone who does the research knows that America just isn't going to happen. The highly paid, non-college educated jobs have dried up, and they're probably not coming back any time soon. Of course race will play a factor, but it's just as (if not more) likely a misconception that affirmative action and the like are helping minorities while leaving whites in the dust as it is overt racism. This is a common misunderstanding of nearly any social justice measure, rather than damning evidence America is this hopeless society and so a moral victory can at least be claimed by deriding the "deplorables."

Anyway. Urban poor trend Democrat and the rural poor trend Republican as always, though Trump swung those urban poor without an education in key areas like the Rust Belt, which historically had many well-paying jobs that didn't need a formal education to do. This isn't that dramatic a claim.

Exit polls, meanwhile, indicate almost half of Trump's voters support amnesty for undocumented people. 19% were opposed to the border wall. Trying to paint racism as the sole plank of Trump's appeal will always be disingenuous, and a great way for the Democrats to see a retreat to coastal urban centers in a way not seen since the Vietnam War.

I can't answer this as good as the people who actually work with data and polls, so I'll just leave this link and a very small excerpt:

https://www.thenation.com/article/economic-anxiety-didnt-make-people-vote-trump-racism-did/

HigherEconAnxiety.jpg

What was the relative importance of economic peril to voting in 2016 compared to several different types of racism and racial animus exhibited by voters?

The answers can be found in the comprehensive American National Election Studies pre- and post-election survey of over 4,000 respondents, which we analyzed to explore the impact of racism and economic peril on 2016 voting behavior. The results are clear, and move a long way towards settling this debate.

Our analysis shows Trump accelerated a realignment in the electorate around racism, across several different measures of racial animus—and that it helped him win. By contrast, we found little evidence to suggest individual economic distress benefited Trump. The American political system is sorting so that racial progressivism and economic progressivism are aligned in the Democratic Party and racial conservatism and economic conservatism are aligned in the Republican Party.

[...]

Our final set of results put an even finer point on the dubious nature of 2016 analyses that emphasize white economic anxiety. For one, as shown above, Latinos and African-Americans scored higher on our economic peril scale than did whites. Any analysis of the role of economic anxiety during the 2016 election that fails to consider the experience of Latinos and black people can only be called misleading.

When we model the factors that predict whether someone expresses economic anxiety, we find that Republicans have significantly lower levels of economic anxiety compared to Democrats and Independents, and that there is no significant difference in economic peril between Clinton and Trump voters. Most importantly, as shown in the chart below, the two strongest predictors of white economic anxiety are attitudes towards immigration and black-influence animosity. Among a typical white person, anti-black and anti-immigrant attitudes feed negative perceptions of personal economic hardship. Not only is there no effect of income or economic anxiety for white people on Trump support once racial attitudes are taken into account, there is strong evidence that these racial attitudes cause economic anxiety rather than the other way around. A result that is consistent with earlier research by Michael Tesler, the influential scholar of race and politics.

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The GOP might keep clawing its way back to power with reactive politics, but it's going to discover each time that repeal is a lot easier as a talking point than policy. They might get rid of outlying Democratic policies, as Trump is currently doing, but the core is likely to remain in place if it is popular.

We'll see what the final score is after Trump's first term is over.

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37 minutes ago, Volphied said:

The US has only barely recovered from the 2008 economic downturn, and now Trump threatens to start another one.

Get back to us when people in the US find more value in burning money than they do using it for goods and services, so the comparison can be more apt.

 

37 minutes ago, Volphied said:

Yet, I have to say that the Germans managed to overcome their crisis years better. You don't see many German politicians claiming that the swastika is "heritage, not hate".

I just posted an example of an Italian government official who is part of the largest Italian government party doing something very similar just a few years ago and surviving unscathed. The German government's extreme overreaction to any and all things visually related to the Nazi party likely also have something to do with why it wouldn't be survivable for a politician to outright endorse Nazi emblems, but that doesn't mean that the sentiments that fascist candidates in surrounding European countries have exploited to great success in the past decade just don't exist in Germany.

 

37 minutes ago, Volphied said:

It almost seems to me that you know that if the US system was compared to Germany's, the US would lose. So you had to travel in past to refute parliamentarism. So alright, I'll agree with you that Weimar in the 1920's was a worse system that the US in 2010's.

My question is why you are using a discussion about modern Germany, and modern Germany alone, as a jumping off point of how the US government is uniquely and fatally flawed among modern democracies.

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1 hour ago, CD Sanic said:

The House is ultimately not the prize in 2018.

The many Governorships are. Those are the key to ensuring Dems have a seat at every redistricting table post-2020, as well as providing state executive power that can be used to greatly limit Trump's power.

If Dems can hold onto their current seats in the House and Senate and increase them a little, that is of course fantastic, but the Governorships of key states like Florida are much more appetizing.

All that said, Democrats do indeed need to alter their message and tailor it to each area. There needs to be one or two central issues that unify all Democrats, but otherwise allow for variety. Full speed ahead social democracy and full speed ahead social justice are not going to be election winners in the long run. A party leader like Perez continuing the usual disingenuous tactic of boiling the abortion debate down to sexism will do the Party no favors in the long run either. Nor will someone like Sanders boiling down all race issues as economic issues. There needs to be a balance.

Economic populism is what ultimately made the Democrats powerful, and it's what they need if they're going to steal votes away from Trump. Promise jobs retraining and subsidies for relocating to where the work is as much as free healthcare or tuition. Very few people want to be a burden, and so contrary to the conservative myth, promising handouts is more likely to hurt you than help you in polls. Democrats need to be able to promise jobs and reformed government programs while at the same time not promising too high of a tax raise on anyone but the wealthy.

Unfortunately, Democratic elites are just as much beholden to the wealthy as their Republican counterparts. The Party leadership needs to largely be replaced and the Party rebuilt from the ground up.

20 hours ago, Volphied said:

Work within the system? Yes, they adopted the Republican and Democrat label, but that's only because they realized that the US system makes it outright impossible to win under a third party banner. But saying that they "work with the system" is a stretch. Both Trump and Sanders are infamous for attacking their party colleagues; the primaries were especially vicious. They both see themselves as anti-establishment and so do their supporters who loath almost all other Republican/Democratic politicians.

And yet at the end of the day, they both fell in line behind the Party establishment.

"Well they have to because that's the system"

Sounds like it's a damned good system if radicals are forced to well, not be radical. They have to play ball or be marginalized.

Weimar didn't have that protection.

20 hours ago, Volphied said:

Which is why it's worrying that partisanship is now spreading to state levels too. In the last decade there's been a dramatic increase in states where only ONE party dominates. Republicans are very close to being able to call a constitutional convention.

Gerrymandering and low attention to state races will do that.

We can't blame the DNC for everything. At the end of the day, Democrats just have a poor base. A lot of GOP dominance can be attributed to Democrats being too inconvenienced to vote.

20 hours ago, Volphied said:

May I ask you why you even brought up Weimar the first time I mentioned Germany? When I posted that poll I was detailing the view of current living Germans in current modern Germany on current modern USA. Why was you first reaction to criticize them for a system almost none of the polled people experienced?

Because it is remarkably arrogant to act as if Germany has always been some beacon of democracy and liberty on the world stage, when the chaos of the Weimar era indicates that no, they had serious growing pains. So they have a more vibrant democracy today... getting crushed in a war (two wars, rather) and having your system rebuilt from the ground up can speed up the process.

I must reiterate my issue was with those one-third of Germans who have a low opinion of the American people, not the Germans as a whole, nor the Germans who take issues with the American government.

They are personally attacking me, so of course I'm a wee bit pissed off.

20 hours ago, Volphied said:

It almost seems to me that you know that if the US system was compared to Germany's, the US would lose.

Well... of course I know that. I've routinely argued in favor of proportional representation in this thread.

20 hours ago, Volphied said:

So you had to travel in past to refute parliamentarism. So alright, I'll agree with you that Weimar in the 1920's was a worse system that the US in 2010's.

Not refuting Parliamentarian systems, so much as saying they aren't the panacea you are proposing them as. Every system has pros and cons. The US system has worked fairly well for itself, but I don't think it would work well elsewhere.

Plus, such a thing would be rather pointless in US society given the House's rapid elections basically already fill the function of snap elections. And during that chaotic shift in power, the Presidency serves as a source of stability.

Just think, without the Presidency, Obamacare would already be gone. We don't have that protection under a Parliamentary framework.

So you can see why I'm okay with keeping the President around and thinking there are better reform options than scrapping the Presidency and fixed terms.

20 hours ago, Volphied said:

I also find it interesting how you repeatedly mentioned the fact that Weimar jailed opposition politicians. Didn't the US also jail socialists and anarchists from the beginning of the 20th century? Eugene V. Debs even ran for US president from his jail cell.

Of course. But they hardly reached the same sort of mainstream appeal the KPD and SPD had. Debs did relatively well at his zenith (6% of the vote), but that doesn't come close to the broad support the SPD and KPD could claim. It's still nowhere comparable to what the NSDAP ended up doing, given people like FDR were able to come to power and make broad changes anyway. The SPD and KPD were legitimate opposition to the NSDAP at one point. The CPUSA never held a candle to the GOP or Democrats.

20 hours ago, Volphied said:

I can't answer this as good as the people who actually work with data and polls, so I'll just leave this link and a very small excerpt:

 The American political system is sorting so that racial progressivism and economic progressivism are aligned in the Democratic Party and racial conservatism and economic conservatism are aligned in the Republican Party.

White people find it easier to stomach a man who will be bad for minorities than actual minorities.

Is this supposed to be a breakthrough? It's the whole concept of privilege.

A transwoman like Caitlyn Jenner can gush about how great Trump is because she's in such a good position she can consider attacks on LGBT rights a minor disagreement. Poorer LGBT people are not so fortunate.

Either way, this is all well and good, but it ignores the fact political campaigns are built around coalitions. Sure, plenty of Trump backers are racist. Feel vindicated.

But to imply that it's the crux of the Trump base is why the Democrats will keep on losing races. Unless we have a tracking bracelet on every single voter, it is hard to know exactly how much of 2016's results were swing voters and increased white turnout/decreased non-white turnout. The narrow nature of Trump's win, however, means that swing votes are going to be crucial no matter one slices it. A lot of these voters stood behind Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Could they still be racist? Absolutely. But the fact any racism isn't manifesting in a KKK fashion indicates they are relatively reasonable and still potential Democratic voters in the future. It also indicates Democrats would do well to avoid attacking people as "deplorables" in the future. People have shitty opinions, that's a part of being human. But in a democracy with free speech, we can take steps to try and mitigate those shitty opinions.

When presented with a disagreement, you have three options. Separation, violence, or reaching some sort of consensus. Political separation short of emigration isn't happening. Violence is not going to end well for the left. The only thing left is consensus. Racist or not, we live together in this society. It's on us to work something out, or just dig in our heels throwing titles like "racist" and "radical" at each other as we struggle to monopolize politics, with each swing growing increasingly more devastating for the opposition.

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1 hour ago, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

Just think, without the Presidency, Obamacare would already be gone. We don't have that protection under a Parliamentary framework.

See: UKIP gets national power for all of 2 years. Takes advantage of the disproportionate power it now holds in the UK's parliament due to overwhelming desire for majority coalition by major parties. Able to force through Brexit through a direct referendum. UKIP almost completely ousted from power immediately. UK still isn't automatically back in the EU.

 

 

Or California's infamous Proposition 8, which was forced through in response to fears that California's infamous Proposition 22 would be ruled Unconstitutional (which it was).

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On 1. 7. 2017 at 5:43 PM, Lord Liquiir (Ogilvie) said:

And yet at the end of the day, they both fell in line behind the Party establishment.

"Well they have to because that's the system"

Sounds like it's a damned good system if radicals are forced to well, not be radical. They have to play ball or be marginalized.

Uh, No? Trump has not become an establishment Republican, nor has Bernie become an estabilishement Democrat. They can't since their supporters would have eaten them alive if they did it.

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Weimar didn't have that protection.

Modern Germany has. Why do you continue to compare Modern USA to Weimar Germany? Do I compare Modern Germany to Robber Baron era America?

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Because it is remarkably arrogant to act as if Germany has always been some beacon of democracy and liberty on the world stage, when the chaos of the Weimar era indicates that no, they had serious growing pains. So they have a more vibrant democracy today... getting crushed in a war (two wars, rather) and having your system rebuilt from the ground up can speed up the process.

But those Germans never said that Germany was always a beacon of Democracy. Where are you coming up with this?

Honestly, maybe instead of getting, as you said, pissed at some Germans for not liking Americans, you should try to understand why they might dislike Americans. My theory: to them, Trump represents the quintessential "ugly American".

Germans have a good reason to be right now proud of what society they built. After the wall fell, other countries outright lobbied against uniting the two halves of Germany, citing Prussia, Weimar and nazis as reason. They were proven wrong. Even Bill Clinton is saying the same.

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Just think, without the Presidency, Obamacare would already be gone. We don't have that protection under a Parliamentary framework.

So you can see why I'm okay with keeping the President around and thinking there are better reform options than scrapping the Presidency and fixed terms.

But the Presidential system is much worse when it gives one party full power from the Congress to the Presidency.

After the US was established, it went on to export its political system to South America. Almost all South American countries mimic not the parliamentary systems of post 1945 Europe, but the Presidential system of Modern USA.

And the 20th century in South America was marked by these presidential systems imploding into dictatorship.

And no, they didn't all fall to tanks and coups.... there were dictatorships created by free elections that put into the Presidential palace a populist who hated the press and judges.

It's called democratic backsliding. And the US is experiencing it right now. Please watch this video that explains it better than I can in this post

Also, this video came up before The President of the United States of America made this tweet

 

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