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Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

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Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Kepler said:
I never thought they'd sit on the nomination after the swearing in. I really didn't think they were that awful.

At least for once a solution is at hand: dump Garland, put up Sri Srinivasan. Wheel RBG out and replace her with Patricia Ann Millett.

After the GOP has gone on record saying it will freeze the Court, a simple vote will get rid of the 60 threshold for SCOTUS.

I would also propose an Amendment limiting all federal judicial appointments to 20 years. Grandfather in current members. That would be good for everyone.
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Awful is a relative term in politics. This does depend on the case of a politician doing in January what he/she says they'll do in October. Given how often that occurs, I wouldn't be completely certain of the outcome yet.

I don't doubt Dems will nuke the SCOTUS noms though, (Thanks Dick Nixon.) as they did it before, despite Obama having generally similar success on getting judicial noms through as Bush did. Personally I don't think they should because the effect of further politicizing and polarizing SCOTUS over the long term doesn't seem like a good idea, especially given the deep political divides that exist in the country. But I certainly see how whoever is in power at the time thinks it a good idea.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Regarding the GOP changing, that's going to depend directly on if they keep losing Presidential elections. Even though Dems held the House by significant margins all through Reagan's term, I don't recall too much celebrating as he rolled to big electoral victories both times.

If they lose 3 and even 4 terms in a row, and the court system is completely packed with liberals, eventually they're going to switch horses. I don't think this will happen by 2020. I think we'll get another Trump clone who will also start the race behind the 8 ball. But, with the rabid base continuing the dwindle as a result of their age, the GOP will eventually adapt. They'll have no choice. Every year there's less and less GOP leaners because their average age is 70.
 
5mn_Major said:
Voting GOP in the one vote that matters? I helped vote Paulsen in in 2008...thinking after W, it was my one big vote to give the new GOP a chance. Regret that. Per ontheissues, Paulsen strongly opposes abortion, supports lowering taxes on the rich and opposes environmental issues. Typical Republican.

And every D vote in the House helps slow down total obstructionism.
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Paulsen needs to go. Never voted for him. Never will.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Rover said:
Every year there's less and less GOP leaners because their average age is 70.
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There is a countervailing force: whenever one party controls the White House for too long, corruption begins to get out of control. Think of the Republicans after the Civil War and then again prior to the Depression. Think of any Democratic machine controlled city from 1850 to 1950, and any Dixiecrat state over the same period. Lack of opposition = lack of oversight.

One of the healthiest aspects of American politics is the transience of dominance. I'm not even that old and I have lived through three supposedly "permanent" Republican majorities. As you can see, they were right every time. :p

This is why I want the clocks mounted in the White House, SML and Speaker's offices. Change = power multiplied by time. Every second of a majority is an opportunity to undo the horrific damage of the last thirty years and restore the middle class and the American dream. Value every second, because power is fleeting.
 
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Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

ScoobyDoo said:
Paulsen needs to go. Never voted for him. Never will.
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I'm not a fan of Paulsen's politics and wouldn't vote for him if I lived in that district either, but I think the larger point is that the decision to vote for him is largely a political one, compared to some other races where it's more of a Good vs. Evil thing(Hi MN2!). I would disagree with someone voting for him, but it wouldn't necessarily lower my opinion of them as a human being.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

MaizeRage said:
I'm not a fan of Paulsen's politics and wouldn't vote for him if I lived in that district either, but I think the larger point is that the decision to vote for him is largely a political one, compared to some other races where it's more of a Good vs. Evil thing(Hi MN2!). I would disagree with someone voting for him, but it wouldn't necessarily lower my opinion of them as a human being.
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Sure. I wouldn't think that badly if someone voted for Paulsen either. Even so, you can bluster all you want against GOP party tactics and policies...but if you vote for the GOP, in the end you're for the GOP. For most people, voting is the one tangible way you have real impact.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Yikes. Had no idea about this trend.

In 1992, Republicans won among Asian-Americans by a 22-point margin in the presidential election, according to exit polls; in 2012, Asian-Americans voted Democratic by 47 points
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And as anyone who deals with small tradesmen in the northeast knows, fastest growing portion of the electorate -- even more than the cantaloupe thighs.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Kepler said:
There is a countervailing force: whenever one party controls the White House for too long, corruption begins to get out of control. Think of the Republicans after the Civil War and then again prior to the Depression. Think of any Democratic machine controlled city from 1850 to 1950, and any Dixiecrat state over the same period. Lack of opposition = lack of oversight.

One of the healthiest aspects of American politics is the transience of dominance. I'm not even that old and I have lived through three supposedly "permanent" Republican majorities. As you can see, they were right every time. :p

This is why I want the clocks mounted in the White House, SML and Speaker's offices. Change = power multiplied by time. Every second of a majority is an opportunity to undo the horrific damage of the last thirty years and restore the middle class and the American dream. Value every second, because power is fleeting.
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I'm not big on change for the sake of change after awhile. Its basically Trump's one argument designed to appeal to sane people. :eek: Its up to the GOP to make themselves worthy of consideration. Its up to us to keep the party honest. I view Hillary as sort of a transitional figure with the Dems. First and foremost I hope she's shown every future officeholder how to beat back the nonsense of a GOP smear campaign and not leave it up to the national media to sort out what's true and what isn't. I also believe she'll help brand the Dems as the party of Educated and Sane People. But, her generation of Dems including Sanders, Jerry Brown, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are all at or nearing the time to pass off leadership to Whoever Comes Next. My goal is to keep pushing them left. As long as that happens I'd be thrilled with an FDR type continuous run of power! :D
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Rover said:
I'm not big on change for the sake of change after awhile. Its basically Trump's one argument designed to appeal to sane people. :eek: Its up to the GOP to make themselves worthy of consideration. Its up to us to keep the party honest. I view Hillary as sort of a transitional figure with the Dems. First and foremost I hope she's shown every future officeholder how to beat back the nonsense of a GOP smear campaign and not leave it up to the national media to sort out what's true and what isn't. I also believe she'll help brand the Dems as the party of Educated and Sane People. But, her generation of Dems including Sanders, Jerry Brown, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are all at or nearing the time to pass off leadership to Whoever Comes Next. My goal is to keep pushing them left. As long as that happens I'd be thrilled with an FDR type continuous run of power! :D
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I can already see the rock that will cleave us in twain: meritocracy vs identity interest.

Life is beer and skittles right now because the right is such a ludicrous, self-parodic monster that we all range naturally against it. When a Trump or a Ryan tries hamfistedly to create cracks in our ranks it's easy just to look up, give them an absent-minded middle finger, and go back to work. Trump is the Mule -- he's just a passing mutant albeit one that only got this far because of the Weimar wreckage of the right. Ryan and his pack of slack-jawed Randians are the afterbirth of Reaganomics -- the third generation heirs who expect privilege and genuflection as a birthright. Different foes, but both weak and nauseating to most people.

But once we start to roll back the Plute Paradise we're going to run into opposition. Intellectual lefties via Harvard and Stanford aren't likely to wish to undercut, or even recognize, their class privileges. They'll aim for a meritocratic system that rewards the A plus students. They'll probably even pick up some libertarians in the process. For them the enemy is the idle rich -- the vacuous Trump billionaire class. They may have an inkling about the unfairness of Finance but their prep school friends are on Wall Street too, so it will hardly be a holy war.

Meanwhile... in this corner, still destitute and suffering, are the folks who always need help and never get it: the poor. The poor are not, as a rule, all that great on "objective" meritocratic scales. Having no tradition of schooling in your extended family robs you of mentors and models and most importantly the sheer unthinking momentum of being carried along the conveyor belt to your predestined graduate degree. The poor also tend to herd (or be herded) into racial, ethnic and religious subgroups, which immediately start to compete with one another because in America the key distinction is "deservingness."

What almost always happens in a "revolution" against the Plutes is the educated, upper middle class takes the Plutes' place and then gradually evolves first rationalizations for their privileged position and then mechanisms for pulling the ladders up behind them until, presto, they become the new Plutes. About the only people who ever figured out how to flip the script were the Maoists and Khymer, and their solution is, um, morally suboptimal.

In any case, a withering of the right will inevitably lead to a clash between the Rovers ("but behind the jewelry counter, not in front") and the Keplers ("from each to each").
 
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Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Kep, I'm going to attempt to cheer you up a bit.

If there's one positive thing the idiotic Trump candidacy has done, its obliterating Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand approach to the government and society. Not only have Dems rejected it as always, but 80% of the GOP has as well. This will now go to the ash heap of history. Its doubtful we'll see another country club Bush type winning the GOP nomination on unfettered free trade while cutting entitlements to pay for tax cuts for the rich. That's a big, BIG step in the right direction, as is Trump's insistence that the Iraq War from the outset was a failure (hence the need to lie about opposing it).

So, with "populism" the new norm, we can have that discussion amongst Dems about how to accommodate limousine liberals and legacies along with Bob Cratchet and his family from A Christmas Carol. We can do this without the obstruction of people who think Ebenezer Scrooge deserved a tax break (before he converted to Marxist-Leninist ideology) to stimulate the economy, with the common goal of helping out the less fortunate instead of screwing them.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Rover said:
Kep, I'm going to attempt to cheer you up a bit.

If there's one positive thing the idiotic Trump candidacy has done, its obliterating Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand approach to the government and society. Not only have Dems rejected it as always, but 80% of the GOP has as well. This will now go to the ash heap of history. Its doubtful we'll see another country club Bush type winning the GOP nomination on unfettered free trade while cutting entitlements to pay for tax cuts for the rich. That's a big, BIG step in the right direction, as is Trump's insistence that the Iraq War from the outset was a failure (hence the need to lie about opposing it).

So, with "populism" the new norm, we can have that discussion amongst Dems about how to accommodate limousine liberals and legacies along with Bob Cratchet and his family from A Christmas Carol. We can do this without the obstruction of people who think Ebenezer Scrooge deserved a tax break (before he converted to Marxist-Leninist ideology) to stimulate the economy, with the common goal of helping out the less fortunate instead of screwing them.
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Hey, if the US of the future is dominated by the struggle between limousine liberals and grubby anarcho-syndicalists, I'll be just fine. I'm not even sure which side I'm rooting for there. Maybe I'll just retire, buy a home near* William Graham Sumner's grave, and urinate on it every day.

* F-ck it, he's buried in New Jersey.
 
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Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

MaizeRage said:
I'm not a fan of Paulsen's politics and wouldn't vote for him if I lived in that district either, but I think the larger point is that the decision to vote for him is largely a political one, compared to some other races where it's more of a Good vs. Evil thing(Hi MN2!). I would disagree with someone voting for him, but it wouldn't necessarily lower my opinion of them as a human being.
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Here are what needs to stop on the GOP side before I even consider them.

1. Abortion is legal. Get over it. There are a million policy things you can do to lower that number. I'd like to see it as close to zero as possible myself.
2. Come up with something economically other than trickle down. Please. I'm sick of it. Kansas is sick of it. Maybe Wisconsin has finally gotten sick of it.
3. Give up on the gay marriage thing. I can't believe you came to power in Minnesota and you wasted ALL of your capital on that on the next line item.
4. Get over Voter ID. Just get over it. It's a solution looking for a problem.
5. Get over the damm wall. Let's do some comprehensive immigration reform. Sit down and negotiate and get something done for a change.

Paulsen is a negative on all of the above. He gets a no from me. Once they get over the above I'll consider their candidates again like I used to.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

1. This will soon be scientifically OBE. Not an important long-term issue.
2. They can't ever do this. It's their sole reason for existing.
3. They will. Gay marriage is like miscegenation: within a decade only incredible a-holes will whine about it.
4. Congress and SCOTUS will take care of this in the second wave of civil rights cases. Voter suppression will be unconstitutional.
5. This will die off with the old racists. The Mexicans are this century's Irish, except they're good workers and their men are better looking.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Kepler said:
1. This will soon be scientifically OBE. Not an important long-term issue.
2. They can't ever do this. It's their sole reason for existing.
3. They will. Gay marriage is like miscegenation: within a decade only incredible a-holes will whine about it.
4. Congress and SCOTUS will take care of this in the second wave of civil rights cases. Voter suppression will be unconstitutional.
5. This will die off with the old racists. The Mexicans are this century's Irish, except they're good workers and their men are better looking.
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If 1-5 are all accurate then I'm a Democrat for life.
 
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XXII: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Politicians!

Survey Monkey (C+ by Nate's standards) is hilarious. Among today's poll results:

FL, tie
NH, Clinton +13
NV, Trump +2
TX, tie
GA, Clinton +6

Yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess not all of those things can be true simultaneously. :)
 
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