American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS (Archive)

[nik-]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

???? Do you have a point

never

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

This is the rule of law collapsing. If it continues, that's the end of the country, period.

I'm not sure what would be worse: fighting between different law enforcement agencies as to whether they obey the courts or the executive, or the idea that there might very well BE no fighting because there isn't anyone who's willing to enforce court orders. Suddenly you have yourself a dictatorship.

What is so ####ing bizarre about this is, don't these orgnizations have a hierarchy publicly available? Shouldn't you be able to bypass the rank and file completely and figure out what's going on by talking to their bosses?

I see senators and congressmen talking to border patrol at airports, as if joe blow border guard is going to know or be able to do anything. He's taking his orders just like everyone else there.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ote-for-trump/

How does that contradict anything I said.

That tells you that uneducated whites voted for Trump at higher rates than previously. I contend that the reason behind that isn't racism, it's that poorer uneducated whites (and uneducated people in general)have born the greater share of the economic affects of trade and automation and Hillary Clinton did not campaign to them.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Discrimination and bigotry based on skin colour is illogical and ####ing stupid.

I am glad my Grandmothers white privileged enabled her to survive not only Nazi occupied Poland but even worse Russian occupied Poland.

Right, which is what the lady in the video is talking about. What specific line did you take issue with in the video? The one single line where the only thing she said was that white Americans should acknowledge the existence of privilege? That doesn't mean saying "I have it better than others," it means "there are more doors open for me, than others." It has no judgement on one's ability to walk through that door, so your interpretation of "oppression" is nonsense.

I'm not sure how white Americans acknowledging privilege is related to your grandmother surviving nazi occupation, but it is funny you should mention nazi occupation, an event that had an overwhelmingly greater negative effect on people based on their ethnicity, specifically those who were identifiably "not white"

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

What is so ####ing bizarre about this is, don't these orgnizations have a hierarchy publicly available? Shouldn't you be able to bypass the rank and file completely and figure out what's going on by talking to their bosses?

Yes, but the rank and file are ignoring it. Read that twitter thread. The OGC instructed the U.S. Marshals - who are an arm of the judiciary, not the executive - to take instructions from the U.S. Attorney's office (representatives for the US Government).

So, despite that being fairly crazy, they went to the US Attorney, who initially was going to sign the court order so that they could take it back to the Marshals to be carried out. But then the US Attorney's Office switched positions and refused to sign.

There are rules, there's a system. But if everyone says "#### the rules, #### the system", that doesn't matter much, and that's how you pull off a coup.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Right but as someone already pointed out, it took the last 5 Presidents between 500 and 1500 days before they had a net negative approval in Gallup. Trump did it in 8.

Sure, but the fact that Trump even started his presidency without a negative approval rating is the real surprise in all that. The current trend is just his numbers shifting back to where they've been for the last year.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Sure, but the fact that Trump even started his presidency without a negative approval rating is the real surprise in all that. The current trend is just his numbers shifting back to where they've been for the last year.

It's not though. Every incoming President, regardless of party, has come in with very high approval. Americans want to give the new President a chance. Not this time though. That Trump had any positive approval was basically a given. That he was like 35 points behind George W Bush, who lest we forget was a very controversial winner, kind of says it all. He is historically unpopular. Just wait till some of his tariffs start sending everyone's expenses up.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Yes, but the rank and file are ignoring it. Read that twitter thread. The OGC instructed the U.S. Marshals - who are an arm of the judiciary, not the executive - to take instructions from the U.S. Attorney's office (representatives for the US Government).

So, despite that being fairly crazy, they went to the US Attorney, who initially was going to sign the court order so that they could take it back to the Marshals to be carried out. But then the US Attorney's Office switched positions and refused to sign.

There are rules, there's a system. But if everyone says "#### the rules, #### the system", that doesn't matter much, and that's how you pull off a coup.

I don't want to sound like a hysteric but as someone with a reasonable understanding of western history for the last 200 years this is so obviously the path towards authoritarian control. It's the playbook the US used in Latin America, what the soviets used in occupied eastern europe, Franco in Spain, the Nazis in Germany...

Spoiler!

[Azure]

Originally Posted by opendoor

What a load of crap. The only people responsible for Trump being in office are the people who voted for him.

That is a rather simplistic view to a very complicated issue.

The Democrats could have easily won with a better candidate but instead chose to try and shove a very unlikable, elitist candidate down everyone's throat.

Trump only got 46% of the vote. It is rather obvious that a lot of people who voted last election chose either to vote for him this time around, or did not vote at all.

[photon]

Originally Posted by opendoor

That's complete hyperbole. They won the Presidential vote by 3 million votes despite having a seriously flawed candidate. They reduced the vote spread in the House election from nearly 6 points in 2014 to just over 1 point which is their 4th best result in the last 10 elections. And they won the Senate vote by over 11 points, compared to losing it by 5 points when this same group of seats was last contested.

The reason if feels like Dems got destroyed was because shortly before the Comey email bomb there was talk of flipping the Senate and even an outside chance of the house. And the opponent was Trump so unless one was a Trump supporter it felt like he was self evidently disqualifying. Every election though most people fall back to their party and vote along party lines and the margin of victory or defeat is very small. So when things came back from unlikely landslide to a traditional level of victory/defeat, it felt worse than it was.

In the end Dems made gains, won the popular vote, lost the electoral college by one of the lowest margins ever due to a full football stadium's worth of votes, I really think the "destroyed" narrative is overstated.

Where they continued to be hemmed in was at the local levels.

So the plus side of that destroyed narrative is progressives seem to be taking local politics much more seriously, which hopefully will result in more competition at the state and lower level.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

I don't want to sound like a hysteric but as someone with a reasonable understanding of western history for the last 200 years this is so obviously the path towards authoritarian control.

I completely agree. And when you have the world's greatest superpower, by far, succumb to this - with no one else to provide any check on them - you get the potential for the world as we know it to end. This is what I was talking about when I was going on about perspective and the magnitude of the risk being existential. It's beginning to come to fruition, horrifyingly enough.

And this has taken less than two weeks to get us to this point. Does it stop here, and escalate no further? Maybe... but what reason could a person have to be optimistic about that given what's happened so far?

EDIT: Particularly so, I should mention, when there's no chance the public is going to pay attention to this. It's technical, it's squabbling between government agencies where no one in the general public is clear on who is who and who has authority to do what, or who's supposed to be giving orders. The courts are being reduced to a standing of total unimportance and no one is even going to notice.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by GGG

How does that contradict anything I said.

That tells you that uneducated whites voted for Trump at higher rates than previously. I contend that the reason behind that isn't racism, it's that poorer uneducated whites (and uneducated people in general)have born the greater share of the economic affects of trade and automation and Hillary Clinton did not campaign to them.

I think the term uneducated whites (or uneducated in general) has a different measurement now. Like the goalposts have been moved. If you were Joe white guy born in 1960 in a small factory town, you got a high school diploma and worked in the factory. Probably the same factory your father and his father worked in. So why would you (in 1978) have gotten a college degree when one was not necessary? You were educated enough to get a job in the town and the people who could not complete high school were the uneducated ones.

Fast forward 40 years and now your factory job is gone and you are suddenly in the uneducated category and deemed (by some) suddenly too stupid to understand the issues and too stupid to vote. That would probably piss you off.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

How does that contradict anything I said.

That tells you that uneducated whites voted for Trump at higher rates than previously. I contend that the reason behind that isn't racism, it's that poorer uneducated whites (and uneducated people in general)have born the greater share of the economic affects of trade and automation and Hillary Clinton did not campaign to them.

Because you're missing the point. Income isn't the reason they voted Trump. Many of the counties with the largest increase in income growth and lowest unemployment broke sharply Trump.

The narrative that these poor people were forgotten and that's why they voted Trump is simply a narrative without grounding in fact

[Sainters7]

Originally Posted by Azure

The Democrats could have easily won with a better candidate but instead chose to try and shove a very unlikable, elitist candidate down everyone's throat.

The craziest to me is hearing things on Twitter that Hillary's so resilient, and will be back in 2020 to take it back. Are you crazy?? She lost the Democratic lead to Barack in 08, then in '16 she loses the presidency to a reality TV star / quirky 80s business mogul. I don't doubt she's a strong, resilient personality with the ability to rebound and continue having a successful political career. But in terms of the presidency she is DONE. They'd be complete idiots to try to run with her a third time.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Sainters7

The craziest to me is hearing things on Twitter that Hillary's so resilient, and will be back in 2020 to take it back. Are you crazy?? She lost the Democratic lead to Barack in 08, then in '16 she loses the presidency to a reality TV star / quirky 80s business mogul. I don't doubt she's a strong, resilient personality with the ability to rebound and continue having a successful political career. But in terms of the presidency she is DONE. They'd be complete idiots to try to run with her a third time.

are the rumors of her running for NY mayor legit?

[DuffMan]

I don't think Comeys announcements and the timing and the effects on the swing voter can be ignored either.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Because you're missing the point. Income isn't the reason they voted Trump. Many of the counties with the largest increase in income growth and lowest unemployment broke sharply Trump.

The narrative that these poor people were forgotten and that's why they voted Trump is simply a narrative without grounding in fact

I honestly don't even believe the narrative of globalization and the loss of factory jobs as being a significant component of it.

The biggest impact on the middle class and blue collar workers has been 30 years of increasing austerity. That sacred cow cannot be attacked.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Sainters7

The craziest to me is hearing things on Twitter that Hillary's so resilient, and will be back in 2020 to take it back. Are you crazy?? She lost the Democratic lead to Barack in 08, then in '16 she loses the presidency to a reality TV star / quirky 80s business mogul. I don't doubt she's a strong, resilient personality with the ability to rebound and continue having a successful political career. But in terms of the presidency she is DONE. They'd be complete idiots to try to run with her a third time.

They would be crazy to run her again, twice she's been shown as an unlikeable candidate with serious trust issues.

On top of it she's 69 years old, in 4 years 73, I don't know if she'll be able to take a full year campaign.

The democrats to me have some serious problems, they're a party that started believing that their farts smelled like strawberry's and they lost the ability to actually listen, and because of that they were out of touch in this election and couldn't figure out what their message should be.

They need to go into a rebuilding mode, toss out the old guard and find a different candidate.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

They would be crazy to run her again, twice she's been shown as an unlikeable candidate with serious trust issues.

On top of it she's 69 years old, in 4 years 73, I don't know if she'll be able to take a full year campaign.

The democrats to me have some serious problems, they're a party that started believing that their farts smelled like strawberry's and they lost the ability to actually listen, and because of that they were out of touch in this election and couldn't figure out what their message should be.

They need to go into a rebuilding mode, toss out the old guard and find a different candidate.

The democrats abandoned their base in order to attract dollars to finance campaigns.

Campaign finance reform woould reestore the balance but that is basically impossible at this point.

It has nothing to do with thinking their #### smells like roses and has everything to do with trying to retain power in a system increasingly hostile to their existence.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Right but as someone already pointed out, it took the last 5 Presidents between 500 and 1500 days before they had a net negative approval in Gallup. Trump did it in 8.

It's the biggest collapse ever, everybody says so.