2017 American Political Scene

[astralis]

usually not a fan of ginned up Congressional drama, but this was a fun body language watch.

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-...eakdown-2017-7

[tbm3fan]

I'm wondering if things will start getting better at some point or if this is the new normal. I'm going for the first, with a dash of the second.

I'm heavy on the sauce...

[Bigfella]

'The Mooch' is having a spectacular start. On the day his wife files for divorce he claims his first scalp. Bye bye Reince. Bannon next? There is a danger here that they might sack themselves into a competent Administration....or not.

Been a busy 6 months:

* Mike Flynn, National Security Adviser - fired after 23 days.
* Craig Deare, National Security Council Senior Director for Western Hemisphere affairs - fired after 27 days.
* James Comey, Director, FBI - fired after 110 days.
* Mike Dubke, Director of Communications - "resigned" after 86 days.
* Sean Spicer, WH Press Secretary - "resigned" after 183 days.
* Michael Short, Assistant Press Secretary - "resigned" after 187 days.
* Reince Priebus, WH Chief of Staff - "resigned" after 189 days.

Keep drinking folks. Might be all there is to do for now.

[DOR]

Why wouldn't Bill Clinton be the relevant yardstick? He was the last (D) President. The last (D) President before Clinton was Jimmy Carter, a Southern Democrat who spent most of his Presidency deregulating.

The last President as liberal as Obama was LBJ. You have to go back literally decades to find such a left-wing President.

This is what Jimmy Carter ran on:






The modern D party is vastly to the left of any Democratic party since the 1960s...and it's only going to get worse as Generation Socialist rises in power.


Given the nature of Big Tent parties, (R) will also shift left. That there are more fire-brand R senators ignores the left-ward shift of other (R) senators which is depriving the (R) leadership of the majorities they need to actually do anything.


Going to be in a huge shock when 2018 rolls around and they have nothing to hang their hat on. They really don't have a lot of time to pass something, either. Can't just dilly-dally all day long.

Oh, how soon we forget ...

Michael Stanley Dukakis, 1988 Democratic Party presidential nominee, and easily the most left-wing candidate since McGovern (hint: you don't have to actually win the presidency to be that beacon that signals where your party sits at the moment). That was the campaign in which Lee Atwater spread rumors about Dukakis' mental health, the first of many smear campaigns launched against Democrats.
Anyone remember who Gov. Dukakis' Lt Gov was during his second term? Mr John Forbes Kerry.

[tbm3fan]

Keep drinking folks. Might be all there is to do for now.

Then I am afraid AR is going to become an alcoholic as The Mooch is more the son The Donald never had than Donald Jr. is.

[astralis]

^man, i dunno about that...i swear, there must be a factory in mid-town manhattan that pumps out these caricatures of Gordon Gekko. i mean, they even -LOOK- like what you'd think a Wall St villain would be, except that the Mooch doesn't go for the 1980s power suit.

[tbm3fan]

Senate rules:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/29/politi...eet/index.html

First thing I thought of...

All right," Curtin shouted back. "If you are the police, where are your badges? Let's see them."

"Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don't need badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges, you "censored"....

[tbm3fan]

I'm just drinking.

Hope it isn't beer or bourbon

Boy you can't even do an original smile with the keys either?!?

Wait a second it just dawned on me I drink both. I might have to go to red wine and tequila if there are retaliatory tariffs on bourbon and increased costs in can/bottled beer...Grrr

[GVChamp]

GVChamp,



well, don't think you need to go quite that far...I'd say Nixon. :-)



different paradigm, though. this was the era of Nixonian price controls, and Carter himself was looking at a healthcare platform to the left of the ACA.



nah, the Dems were still this left in the 1980s prior to the rise of the New Democrats. actually more so. the legacy of the Third Way hasn't -completely- disappeared.

although i agree that they are and will continue to move left over time given the polarization of politics, and not just the generational issue. the polarization on the left was actually -slowed down- by Obama, because he was actually closer to a Third Way Dem in terms of temperament and policy. HRC would have played the same role, had she won. the rise of Trump has vastly sped up polarization on the left, much in the way Dubya did for the 2003-2008 period.



i don't see it, unless the nature of the Republican base starts also shifting left.

Obama is temperamentally a middle of the road Democrat. He's a pragmatist. More correctly, he's a standard Davos-class technocrat. That is not a compliment, as that is not democratic.

He is not ideologically moderate. His sole major contribution to the Illinois state was pushing videotaping of police interrogations, when even Blagojevich (the sitting governor) was against it, when the national mood was still "tough on crime." This is also why he felt the need to run his mouth about every local policing issue, despite knowing nothing about the cases in questions. That's not moderate, that's extreme liberal, presented in a way that's within the Overton Window.

I hope you don't seriously believe he was against gay marriage, either.

If you're going to make comparisons, the best comparisons are to the parties that actually won, and the candidates who actually ran. The major Democratic candidates this century have been:
-Al Gore
-Joe Lieberman
-John Kerry
-John Edwards
-Maybe you can say Howard Dean
-Barrack Obama
-Hillary Clinton
-Bernie Sanders

I would put Obama near the bottom of the list in terms of bipartisanship and ideological moderateness. Yes, he totally looks like an awesome, exceptional moderate, if you compare him to Bernie Sanders, who is an absolute idiot. In the same vain, Trump looks like a raging moderate compared to Rand Paul and Ted Cruz (which is why I didn't vote for Rand Paul or Ted Cruz, who are also batshit crazy).


I also don't see how anyone can say the last 8 years have resulted in any sort of moderation of America's left-ward drift. Mainstream policies have become increasingly left. Yeah, they didn't vote in card check for labor unions, but that wasn't realistically going to happen for the same reason ACA repeal was an uphill climb.

Like, the only thing Dubya vetoed with his Dem Congress was CHIP and stem cell research. Dems didn't even pass a universal health bill and put it on the President's desk symbolically.

I will definitely agree that the anti-war left died down significantly, but that's the only sense in which the Left chilled out. But that's not an upgrade. I'll take Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink before I listen to this BLM nonsense, though.

[astralis]

GVChamp,

Obama is temperamentally a middle of the road Democrat. He's a pragmatist. More correctly, he's a standard Davos-class technocrat. That is not a compliment, as that is not democratic.

He is not ideologically moderate

these are two fundamentally different descriptions. a "standard Davos-class technocrat" essentially means you buy into the Washington Consensus. from a left standpoint, that makes you a neoliberal/Third Wayer (which they do not consider a compliment, either).

if i understand you correctly, though, your assessment is that Obama was not ideologically moderate but that he would take PRAGMATIC steps to get to his end-goal. i'd cast doubt on that too, given his eagerness to treat with John Boehner and Obama's willingness to essentially cut into several Democratic golden calves in the Grand Bargain negotiations.

-Al Gore
-Joe Lieberman
-John Kerry
-John Edwards
-Maybe you can say Howard Dean
-Barrack Obama
-Hillary Clinton
-Bernie Sanders

I would put Obama near the bottom of the list in terms of bipartisanship and ideological moderateness. Yes, he totally looks like an awesome, exceptional moderate, if you compare him to Bernie Sanders,

not to Bernie Sanders alone. Obama was to the economic right of John Edwards, he of the Two Americas.

on foreign policy, I'd say he was also to the right of Howard Dean, especially as Obama very explictly told the anti-war left that "I supported this [the Bush] administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars."

HRC, of course, was to Obama's right in 2008 but that wasn't the case anymore in 2016.

I also don't see how anyone can say the last 8 years have resulted in any sort of moderation of America's left-ward drift.

i think the comparison should be simple enough. what would a HRC Administration have pursued, vs what are Dems asking for now/likely going to ask for in 2020? that is what happens without the moderating influence of Obama/HRC as the main drivers of the party.

I'll take Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink before I listen to this BLM nonsense, though.

hell no, i wouldn't take that deal. Sheehan and those Code Pink harpies are essentially a modern-day version of Jane Fonda with no upside whatsoever to their kumbaya foreign policy, while at least the BLM types have the upside of shining a needed flashlight onto the sorry state of American policing (even if I disagree with the stuff about reparations, etc).

[Bigfella]

^man, i dunno about that...i swear, there must be a factory in mid-town manhattan that pumps out these caricatures of Gordon Gekko. i mean, they even -LOOK- like what you'd think a Wall St villain would be, except that the Mooch doesn't go for the 1980s power suit.

I'm sure he has some power suits at the back of the wardrobe, along with suspenders & those striped shirts with white collars. The Mooch is going to be every bit as much fun as Spicey. I can see SNL having a ball with him.

[TopHatter]

'The Mooch' is having a spectacular start. On the day his wife files for divorce he claims his first scalp. Bye bye Reince. Bannon next? There is a danger here that they might sack themselves into a competent Administration....or not.

Been a busy 6 months:

* Mike Flynn, National Security Adviser - fired after 23 days.
* Craig Deare, National Security Council Senior Director for Western Hemisphere affairs - fired after 27 days.
* James Comey, Director, FBI - fired after 110 days.
* Mike Dubke, Director of Communications - "resigned" after 86 days.
* Sean Spicer, WH Press Secretary - "resigned" after 183 days.
* Michael Short, Assistant Press Secretary - "resigned" after 187 days.
* Reince Priebus, WH Chief of Staff - "resigned" after 189 days.

Keep drinking folks. Might be all there is to do for now.

John Kelly has been brought in as Chief of Staff to establish some discipline to the White House.

Trump can (and has) appointed as his advisers some of the finest people this country has to offer (Mattis and McMaster). But none of that changes this simple thing:

By any reasonable measure, Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath prone to spur-of-the-moment bizarre rants that verge on the insane, self-destructive decisions, outright lies and falsehoods, and an unabashed contempt for any sort of decorum worthy of the name (and that list is just getting warmed up), and no adviser will ever be able to change that.

In short, he's acting like the trust fund baby/sole proprietor of a family-owned and -run business that has no brakes on his behavior.

The conclusion is inevitable: Complete and utter political destruction of his Administration, whether due to Mueller's investigation or other revelations about his kleptocratic and thoroughly corrupt actions and organizations.

[astralis]

yup, ya can't fix a sh*t sandwich by changing the bread.

given how many times DT has blue falcon'd his own people, the truly remarkable thing is that there are still folks whom -want- to work in this administration. Priebus. Spicer. Sessions. all of them humiliated on a -personal- level.

that's just the top layer, there's the second layer of deputies also re-assigned or forced out.

and this is during a time when unemployment is at a 16-year low and we have no major foreign policy crisis.

[snapper]

John Kelly has been brought in as Chief of Staff to establish some discipline to the White House.

Trump can (and has) appointed as his advisers some of the finest people this country has to offer (Mattis and McMaster). But none of that changes this simple thing:

By any reasonable measure, Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath prone to spur-of-the-moment bizarre rants that verge on the insane, self-destructive decisions, outright lies and falsehoods, and an unabashed contempt for any sort of decorum worthy of the name (and that list is just getting warmed up), and no adviser will ever be able to change that.

In short, he's acting like the trust fund baby/sole proprietor of a family-owned and -run business that has no brakes on his behavior.

The conclusion is inevitable: Complete and utter political destruction of his Administration, whether due to Mueller's investigation or other revelations about his kleptocratic and thoroughly corrupt actions and organizations.

So if you are in Moscow thinking who would be your preferred candidate? Make no mistake they compromised him already. Even accepting the meeting by small Trump was kompromat. You think he wanted that made public? This is how they work and if you do not understand it - it's very simple really - then in my view you are not willing to but there is far worse to come. I hope Mueller is "following the money" primarily.

[antimony]

He is not ideologically moderate. His sole major contribution to the Illinois state was pushing videotaping of police interrogations, when even Blagojevich (the sitting governor) was against it, when the national mood was still "tough on crime." This is also why he felt the need to run his mouth about every local policing issue, despite knowing nothing about the cases in questions. That's not moderate, that's extreme liberal, presented in a way that's within the Overton Window.

Why are videotaping police interrogations "extreme liberal" ? Are they not supposed to be accountable?