This November and implications

Started by Jason Harvestdancer, February 15, 2022, 09:48:37 PM

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Jason Harvestdancer

The upcoming midterms should scare everyone.  Even Republicans.

It is safe to say that barring a miracle, the midterms are going to go very well for Republicans and very poorly for Democrats.  The party in power generally loses during the midterms, and the situation in the US is even worse than normal right now.  Biden's one accomplishment has been an infrastructure bill.  He does have the chance to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and has signaled intent to base his appointment on race and gender, and then qualifications.  If the Republicans fail to give sufficient opposition, the Democrats won't be able to say "you only opposed her because she's black and a woman, you racists and sexists."  Since this appointment does little to the balance of the court, the Republicans have little to gain by a fight.

Now that the stage is set, here's the implications.

Right now, 30 state legislatures are Republican, 17 are Democrat, and 3 are split.  If Republicans do well, the splits can go Republican.  If just one more legislature flips, that makes 34 states Republican.  That is the magic number to call a constitutional convention.
White privilege is being a lifelong racist, then being sent to the White House twice because your running mate is a minority.<br /><br />No Biden, no KKK, no Fascist USA!

Mr.Obvious

Well, I have some hope.
I thought Trump would be kept on for a second term. Because that is also what ´usually´ happens. But I got proven wrong there.

Of course, i´m nog knowledgeable in american politics and economics. I will say that biden´s low approval rates baffle me somewhat. I know some promises aren´t being kept, or kept yet. And that don´t deserve a free pass. But he seems to have inherited potentially more problems than any president in recent history, with an International reputation as low as anyone can really in living memory, and he is handeling it not perfectly, but as competently as one might reasonably expect.
Again  in my limited humble opinion

For as far as my foreigner´s view goes, I think for most nationale, by and large,  biden is seen as doing a good job and helping sanity return to the global stage. But I could be dead wrong. Have  not looked up International polls or anything.

What I hope for is Strong campaigning targeted at the need for a workable majority to get the promises through the house and the senate. And even more: targeted at the voter supression laws that republicans seem to be imposing.

If it is the will of the people to go republican, then go republican it should be. But it should be the will of the people, not the will of those selected beforehand.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

Shiranu

#2
QuoteI will say that biden´s low approval rates baffle me somewhat. I know some promises aren´t being kept, or kept yet.

-He hasn't kept most of his promises; he said he had a plan to contain Covid, that Trump was the problem and he had the solution? It got worse
-He said he would restore our reputation on the international scale? He's failed.
-He said he would protect the environment; instead he has issued more drilling permits then we've seen in almost 2 decades.
-He said he would provide a public health insurance option; none yet.
-He said he would codify Roe v. Wade, which is in practice not actually an established law; nope.
-He (and his party) said we had to vote for him to replace RBG, and yet they just bent over and let the GOP ram their appointee through when they could have done the exact same thing the GOP did to them with Merrick Garland (put off appointing him for 260-some days until they took control of the Senate, whereas the Dems put up no fight in letting Amy Coney Barrett be appointed in just 16 days).
-Promised he would address the border crisis; instead he sent Kamala down there who fucked it up even worse and now we are detaining more people in these "concentration camps" then we did under Trump (but now they are "resettlement facilities", even though they are literally the same facilities with the same ICE/BP thugs).
-He said he would ban "assault-style weapons", which either means rifles that are not in any real circulation within the general population or it means essentially all guns based on legal definitions... I'll give him credit for this one, since that is a fucking garbage idea either way and anti-thesis to the Constitution.
-He said he would make 2 years of community college tuition free; hasn't happened, nothing in the works either.
-He said he would forgive $10,000 in student debts, which would get 15 million people out of debt; nope.
-No police reform and oversight, a big promise of him/dems during the George Floyd protests.
-He said he would release and expunge people with criminal records for non-violent cannabis possession + decriminalize; instead last year there were 8.2 million Americans arrested for possession and the trend continues, and he hasn't decriminalized or released inmates for this.
-He said they would provide paid maternity leave; we still remain the only developed country in the world without it.


All of these are massively important pieces of legislation we needed to get passed about 60 years ago, and that he promised, and yet we have seen little or no progress on; at worst, some of them we've taken a step back.

So I don't really think it's that surprising to see his approval so low, because he made so many promises to so many different groups... and then just went back to "business as usual", exactly what he was telling wealthy donors and billionaires he was going to do. People are sick of "business as usual" and it's particularly jarring when the creepy old dude who's been in politics for like... 100 years...and was a key figure in proposing and passing laws that have hurt minority communities on a scale we've not seen since Segregation.

I don't mean this confrontationally, just observationally... I really don't think Europeans realize just how bad it is over here for the majority of Americans; yall see New York, yall see California and think that everyone is living that life (although scratch beneath the tiniest surface and you'll see that's only a very few elite people that live comfortably in those states) when the reality is that a large part of America is super rural and super poor. If we didn't have Post-War infrastructure (which is now crumbling) and the massive GDP it + our natural resources create, it would be much more obvious that America is on par with countries like Mexico, Colombia, North Africa, a lot of Asia... our ultra-mega-super wealthy just screw it to look more equal than it is.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

SGOS

Of all the potential nominees for the presidential race, Biden was my very last choice, at least among those that I had a little familiarity with, and I wasn't enamored by any of those either.  However, he has done better than I thought he would.

What surprises me about his low ratings among Democrats is that I sensed a heady enthusiasm for him just after his nomination, as if he was enormously more important than Obama or Clinton, when all I saw was a conservative and last favorite son of the soon to be dead geriatrics of a past America.  It's not all Biden's fault.  The Democratic Party as a whole has lost it's way and lost touch with it's liberal base.  Maybe it has no liberal base.  It just provides an alternative to the lunatic fringe.

GSOgymrat

Quote from: Jason Harvestdancer on February 15, 2022, 09:48:37 PM
The upcoming midterms should scare everyone.  Even Republicans.

It is safe to say that barring a miracle, the midterms are going to go very well for Republicans and very poorly for Democrats. 

Why should Republicans be scared?

Shiranu

#5
Edit: was trying to type this on phone, didn't realize it had posted... new phone is actual garbage.


QuoteIt's not all Biden's fault.  The Democratic Party as a whole has lost it's way and lost touch with it's liberal base.


I'll agree with this; I think in "normal times" his approval would have been a lot higher even with all the empty promises; the average person just wasn't as politically minded 10, 20, 30 years ago... but people are waking up and starting to see that the DNC is just GOP-lite, and when they promise the moon and give you a nickel people are more aware to it now.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

GSOgymrat

Quote from: SGOS on February 16, 2022, 07:03:17 AM
The Democratic Party as a whole has lost it's way and lost touch with it's liberal base.  Maybe it has no liberal base.  It just provides an alternative to the lunatic fringe.

Opinion: I reject both parties’ ideas of Americanism. And I’m not the only one.

... Lately, however, I find myself feeling not so much ambivalent about the parties as alienated. I’m confronted with two extreme interpretations of what it means to be American, and I emphatically reject them both. It seems self-evident that the Republican Party â€" more a celebrity fan club than a political organization at this point â€" would, if left to its own devices, destroy the foundation of the republic. I never thought I’d write those words about any U.S. political party, but here we are.

It’s not just that Donald Trump and his imitators would blow up the integrity of our elections, or that they have expressly countenanced a violent insurrection against the federal government, or that they basically admit to having no governing agenda beyond the reclamation of some mythical White heritage.

It’s also that the Trumpist GOP advances the notion, in all kinds of ways, that citizenship alone doesn’t mean you belong here â€" that your race or ethnicity, the language that you speak, or the identity you choose can somehow make you less American than your neighbor. ...

You might think, given this Republican calamity, that any political alternative would be sufficient. And, yes, a party that doesn’t seek to limit ballot access and install an autocrat is definitely a step up.

But that doesn’t mean a lot of us who consider ourselves liberal feel kinship with today’s Democratic Party â€" or that we’d even be welcome if we did.

Rather than focus on traditional American ideals of citizenship over race or origin, the left is in thrall to its own misguided cultural revolution (yes, I use the term deliberately), embracing a vision of the United States that lays waste to the 20th-century liberalism of its greatest icons.


I’ve always liked and respected President Biden, and in most ways he has governed well. His $1.2 trillion infrastructure package was a major achievement. His efforts to counter the pandemic have been steady. He seems poised to make a historic addition to the Supreme Court.

For all of his successes, though, there’s a fire raging in his party that Biden hasn’t even tried to control â€" and probably couldn’t extinguish if he did. For me (and probably a lot of suburbanites voting this fall), this is more than a backdrop to his presidency. It’s a dealbreaker.

In their zeal to beat back Trumpism, the loudest Democratic groups have transformed into its Bizarro World imitators. Tossing aside ideals of equal opportunity and free expression, the new leftists obsess on identity as much as their adversaries do â€" but instead of trying to restore some obsolete notion of a White-dominated society, they seek vengeance under the guise of virtue.

One of the bibles of this movement is a book called “How to Be an Antiracist,” in which Ibram X. Kendi declares: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

This is not â€" as the celebrated author claims â€" an expression of support for Lyndon B. Johnson-style affirmative action, which still makes sense to me. It is a case for the kind of social upheaval that occurred when foreign empires relinquished their colonies. It does not end well.

Liberals used to believe in civil debate about such ideas. But now, the arbiters of language are constantly issuing Soviet-style edicts about which terms are acceptable and which aren’t (“woke” was okay, now it’s not) â€" a tactic used for controlling the debate and delegitimizing critics.

We can disagree about whether this radical uprising is necessary or politically self-destructive. But it’s clearly not in keeping with the principles that are supposed to unite the country.

I was taught â€" and still believe â€" that in the United States, we are bound not by common origin, language or culture but by a series of laws and values that make us who we are.

As long as you swear allegiance to those laws and values â€" racial equality, free speech, unfettered worship â€" then you’re no more or less American than anyone else, and no less deserving of respect, protection and opportunity.


That we’ve failed to honor that promise over the life of the country, and are failing still, doesn’t mean you throw up your hands and abandon the project. It means you rededicate yourself to the ideal of true equality, rather than reducing individuals to a box on a census form.

This is the ideology that both parties used to call liberalism. There is no longer room for it in today’s stark political dichotomy. ...

Shiranu

#7
QuoteBut that doesn’t mean a lot of us who consider ourselves liberal feel kinship with today’s Democratic Party â€" or that we’d even be welcome if we did.

I actually didn't think about this, but I think that could be a large part of his approval tanking as well; I've talked with a good 50 or more (online and in person too) "dyed-in-the-wool" Democrats and all of them, without fail, have made me dislike the party a little bit more each time I interact with them.

The gun-ho Dems also seem to be the most pretentious and judgmental Dems that vote for them so they can be part of the younger, hipper, woke image (as opposed to the GOP's old, rich, racist image) not because they really care about equality or liberty. After the 10th or 15th time of being talking down to by Dems for being "too progressive/left-wing", it kinda ruins my mental image of all Dems.


Only real criticism I have of that post was calling the new Dems "leftist", but I get that word has changed meaning over the last 20 years or so (like how "libertarian" and "anarchist" in the 1800-early 1900's meant in practice essentially the same thing). Otherwise really good post.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Cassia

Well, there was a time not that long ago when I would not think about Left vs Right politics for weeks. I would vote for candidates R or D who simply represented what I considered to be the greater good. Infrequent political discussion was light and civil. I would run across people from time to time who went bat-shit crazy on conservative talk radio, and they made me wonder WTF happened to them. That was pretty seldom.

Will we ever get back to civil discourse? This is all so self-destructive.


Shiranu

#9
Quote from: Cassia on February 16, 2022, 10:30:35 PM


Will we ever get back to civil discourse? This is all so self-destructive.


Honest answer? I don't think so any time soon.

It's not just politics; people are just getting progressively more and more irrationally confrontational, even on non-hot topic buttons; perhaps it's only here in Texas, but even non-verbally the amount of road rage seems to be dramatically getting worse to the point that road rage shootings are relatively common nowadays on the news.

Everyone talks past one another to score points for their team, whatever that team might be; R vs D, "left" vs "right" but even, "You like that artist? I'm gonna post your personal information online and harass you because I hate you for that."

Society seems to be getting more and more confrontational across the board; I don't know how much of that's social media and how much of that is standards of living dropping noticeably by the year. People are stressed and angry about a rapidly changing world (unjustly) leaving them behind, and social media gives them all sorts of crazy ideas on who exactly is to blame for that (and I am not excluding myself from that either).
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

GSOgymrat

Quote from: Shiranu on February 16, 2022, 11:00:18 PM
Everyone talks past one another to score points for their team, whatever that team might be; R vs D, "left" vs "right" but even, "You like that artist? I'm gonna post your personal information online and harass you because I hate you for that."

Conservatives won't allow their children to read Harry Potter because it promotes witchcraft while progressives won't allow their children to read Harry Potter because JK Rowling is a transphobe. Be sure to let everyone on social media know that you're a good parent with good values because these aren't just children's books, they are political statements.

SGOS

Quote from: Shiranu on February 16, 2022, 11:00:18 PM
It's not just politics; people are just getting progressively more and more irrationally confrontational, even on non-hot topic buttons
I believe this has been fueled by the media, but mostly by politicians who view anger as a motivator. I don't know if they planned for it to get this out of hand, but I think so, because they obviously thrive on it.

SGOS

I think there is a very large segment of the population that wants to get rid of democracy.  I think they like the sound of "democracy," and they would deny that they oppose it, but they don't like it, and the only way to get what they want is through autocratic rule, or by silencing large segments of the population through changes in the law.

aitm

Once a running and then President is allowed with relative impunity to bully, insult, belittle other people, hell, the gloves came off from all the ass-hole red necks and “offended” white folks that this type of behavior is now the standard, and shit has blown up all over…downward we spiral.  They have taken all these years of supposed attacks on their personal opinions that facts be damned, “we gonna get murica back and be allowed to shove jesus right down everyone’s throat.
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

SGOS

This morning, I saw a campaign sign, an actual Commercially  printed sign, not something a guy did with a magic marker on cardboard that said:

TRUMP
NO BULLSHIT!

Sadly, a lot of people won't see the irony in that.