As one of those Europeans on the sidelines, what I have learned from watching this campaign is how truly awful district based first past the post systems are. Combine it with unlimited political spending and you get something really incomprehensible. A large part of this is the sheer difference between the systems, ours is complete proportional representation with severely restricted political spending and almost no political advertising.
My education continues, next week will be fascinating.
And again, voter suppression issues pre-date that, too. The largely white, upper class democratic leadership should have been on this a while ago. This is a real problem facing working class people of color.
Voter ID laws are one example:
And that doesnât even get into the 1990s, with the shift in policy regarding a stronger, pro-law enforcement stance, that was championed and supported by a democratic president⌠coupled with state laws that banned felons from voting (only some of which still exist), there were very real obstacles put into the paths of the working class of color.
None of this is made up, and the modern democratic party either sat by and let it happen or they actively participated in shaping this current landscape. Itâs little wonder why, despite having a recent black president, so many Americans of color of a particular class are demoralized and donât vote.
Not to mention a deliberately short campaign âseasonâ in many other countries. Itâs bloody endless in the U.S., with one beginning within weeks of the last one ending.
But if weâre going to change any of these things, we need to use the crappy system we have to get a duopoly party that will never consider that out of power in the federal government and the statehouses. Iâm under no illusions this will be an easy task, but itâs one we must undertake anyhow.
Iâm not sure itâs possible at all. First past the post almost inevitably results in an entrenched two party system. In such a system the party in power has no incentives to change anything and the one out of power has, well, no power to do anything. A depressing situation.
Indeed. Corporate teat is a helluva drug.
The loyal opposition: Nancy Pelosi reassured the Democratsâ corporate investors not to worry, after the elections on Tuesday âweâll tone down the rhetoric.â How many times will desperate Democratic voters fall for this bait-and-switch, even as they tell you exactly what theyâre going to do (i.e., nothing)âŚ
WSJ: âIf Democrats retake the House, donât expect a push to repeal and replace the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.â Did anyone really think they would?
Joe Biden: âFolks, there is a conservative columnist named David Brooks. Heâs bright as hell.â Please make him stop!
citations please
This is beyond thirsty, this quest to remove agency from everyone except those Nasty Establishment Dems, all the better before we send them into the desert. By 2000, a whopping 6 states had voter ID laws, with the exception of Hawaii, in exactly the Southern states that you would expect, the main thing preventing many other Southern states from enacting similar voter restrictions was the fact that most of them were subject to preclearance under the VRA. It is after Bush v Gore and the decision of GWBâs administration to validate the lie of voter fraud that signaled to state-level Republicans that the Justice Department would stop enforcing the VRA, which is why you see an explosion of Voter-ID laws and voter purges after 2002.
And all of it enabled by two types of people. Those who treat voting as an inalienable right that will be there âwhen itâs important / I am excitedâ (this typically does not include those regularly disfranchised. They know how much of a privilege a vote is) and those who do vote, but treat voting as the end point for their involvement in the political system.
This is not a strictly US problem, either. I could pick random people off the street, and most could not say who their MLA or MP are, or where said repâs office might be. Sure, they put an X on a piece of paper, but thatâs about it. They canât imagine contacting said rep with any concerns other than over an issue that causes major outrage â and most donât know enough of whatâs going on to know if they should be outraged.
Voting is not the last step, itâs the first. Get someone semi-decent (or, at least not horribly bad) in, then refuse to go away. I hate to say it, but a good part of the reason the hard right was able to take over so much is thay they kept (and keep) showing up. From city council meetings to town halls and political conventions â they showed up and made noise, not just at election time. They are loud in the donut shops and at family dinners, and the rest of us took our civility pills and tried not yo start a fuss or be âoffensiveâ. Again, I am not blaming those for whom it would literally be unsafe (this can include the fact that doing so could cost you your job) to speak up, but I do think those who didnât because it was merely âuncomfortableâ should bear some of the responsibility.
No, I am not saying we should have debated Nazis. But ignoring them did not make them â especially the less obvious ones â go away. The dogwhistles did not just turn into megaphones overnight.
TL/DR: if things are going to get better, November 6 must not be seen as finish line, only a starting one.
and thank goodness we may finally be past the point where even establishment democrats think thereâs anything to be gained by âworking with republicans.â with bill clinton i think we had a situation where it was one part trying to play nice and one part he was just a bog-standard center-right southern democrat. in the end it didnât work out for either his administration or our country.
we really are talking past each other here, i was agreeing with you in part and then elaborating on what i saw as the various factors that went into making it happen, none of which was meant to be condemnation of that part of what you said or even a major criticism of it.
clearly this is not the kind of person i was talking about in my original response but i feel as if i did not effectively communicate my thoughts which you are responding to in this bit. that statementâ
i was in agreement with that statementâwhat i said was âthere is a problem with this.â it seems to me that you interpreted that as saying there was a problem with your statement where i intended it to be understood as agreeing with your sentiment and then the rest was in the form of giving an example of behavior i have dealt with on enough occasions to make me violently ill which demonstrated the behavior of failing to engage the system as it is. i am sorry i didnât make that more clear but that is how i intended that to be read. if that part came across as critical of your previous comment, i really do regret the error because i truly was trying to agree with you.
as for our disagreement on possibilities for 2020, even in the midst of apocalyptic evil i remain an optimist.
Right. Why do that when youâre already basically a Republican yourself?
Yeah, about thatâŚ
Well, you can be bright and wrong at the same time; in my profession this is very nearly the norm. I no longer read the Brooks op-eds in the NYT because they irritate me, but I donât think they would irritate me as much if he were an idiot.
âŚwhile the left fringe would suggest that:
a) Those institutions are already rotting zombies. Saving them is a lost cause at this point.
b) They werenât that great to begin with. The USA was designed as a white supremacist conspiracy against the poor from day one.
Which is not to say that the situation is hopeless. But more radical solutions are required.
Yes, the columns (really the headlines and summary blurbs these days â I could write an imitation based on those alone) irritate me precisely because heâs a sneaky little weasel. Cardinal Douthat is laughable and pathetic and Bret Stephens is transparent and bumbling in his attempts to ride a fence. Bo-Bo, on the other hand, has had to be clever since his raison dâetre is to make the worst kind of selfish Boomers feel good about betraying the ideals of their youth while still claiming that they hold those ideals.
Biden needs to understand that Brooksie is not on the side of any liberal or progressive or Dem, including the Third Way establishment ones.
even with that, she still votes against the republicans more than she votes with them. if i recall correctly she is running for re-election in a state that went for 45 by about a 20 point margin. i have to deal with the political state of play that is, not the one i wished we had.
look back at the kavanaugh vote, yes there were a few democrats that voted for him but only after it was clear that the republican votes were there to put him in place without them. at one time there would have been a dozen or more democrats lining up to cast a vote for him under similar circumstances but now it has been reduced to just a few who are in tough re-elections. as in so many other things in life, context is important.
âŚwhile not presenting realistic alternatives that will instantly replace them when theyâre struck down nowNowNOW!, as rotting zombies should be.
That Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder and Alexander Hamilton a rapacious banker does not make the concepts of separation of church and state or a press free of state censorship or an independent judiciary bad ideas.
What radical alternatives to those core institutions of liberal democracy (the sort that Gessen discusses in this context) would the fringe left prefer come the (we know, we know) non-violent revolution against an autocratic regime and its gun-toting supporters?
In an election that close, any small influence can swing the result, yes.
But, as you observed, non-voting Democrats was only one of many small influences. If not for misogyny, if not for the electoral college, if not for media crappiness, if not for voter suppression, if not for Comey, if not for pneumonia, if not for etc. etc., Clinton would have won.
But by far the most common in the âif not forâ list are the actions of the Clinton campaign itself. If not for âdeplorablesâ. If not for Tim Kaine. If not for the extended weaseling on TPP and the minimum wage. If not for âmy good friend Henry Kissingerâ. If not for Debbie Wasserman Schultz. If not for hot sauce. If not for the Pied Piper strategy. If not for âpublic and private positionâ. If not for âNancy Reagan was a leader in the AIDS crisisâ. If not for superpredators.
The unfriendly conditions didnât help, but none of them should have been a surprise to either the DNC or Clinton herself. Clinton lost the election because of Clinton.
I am just saying that weâre not out of the woods yet. And as long as people donât call her out on that (can do so after the election, as I noted above), she will keep finding those compromises.
Saying to someone âHey, you got in because of X, Y, and Z, but we do not support policy E that you were blathering on about,â lets them know that you are watching. If enough people say it, then theyâll know where their support truly does and does not come from.
But people who just cast a vote and say nothing⌠they give the impression that all of it is acceptable. I am not saying nobody should vote for her or anyone else. I am saying that if you want change, you need to say why you cast that vote.
I think we can easily draw the line at not supporting supposed Dems who would vote for Kavanaugh under any circumstances or who support any aspect of the regimeâs immigration policy (if weâre to dignify empty fearmongering with that term).
At a certain point certain of the positions they choose to vote with the GOP on start alienating liberal and progressive voters even if the vote with their own party (usually the party establishment) the other 80% of the time.
In large part that is correct. She herself was way overconfident, assuming PA, WI, etc would go blue and never campaigning there. None of the other stuff would have mattered had she been half the politician her husband was, but no. She was a policy wonk, not a politician. But it is what it is. âI fall on my knees and pray/ we donât get fooled again!â We need to get out and vote any time the opportunity arises.
