2020 American Political Scene

[DOR]

DOR,



no point going that far back; the Dems had the racist southern Democrat faction then as well.

the Dems began purging their party of those racists in the 1960s, and to its credit did it knowing full well that they were going to be shooting themselves in the political foot to do so.

1948 was when the purge began.

Strom Thurmond and the segregationist Dixiecrats walked out of the Democratic convention over the pro-civil rights platform. Integrating the army. Creating the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Elimination state poll taxes. Drafting federal anti-lynching laws. Like the GOPers today who refuse to denounce The Trumpet, Strom Thurmond quietly went along with the Dixiecrats.

The Democratic Party did not.

So, Strom Thurmond endorsed Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, and the Democratic Party blocked his renomination for senator. He later fought, hard, against Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, and in 1964 resigned from the Democratic Party to join the racists in the GOP.

[astralis]

this is what I mean by Nancy Pelosi having all the leverage.

if this bill doesn't pass, chances are that Trump loses by 20 -- and the tsunami would be great enough where Dems would have a chance at supermajorities in the House and Senate.

the shocking thing is ...McConnell doesn't seem to -mind-. I say if he wants to wait a few weeks and see where things go...let him wait a few weeks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...s-coronavirus/

McConnell says stimulus deal could take ‘a few weeks,’ putting millions with expiring jobless aid in limbo

By
Jeff Stein and
Erica Werner
July 24, 2020 at 5:33 p.m. EDT
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With days to go before enhanced jobless benefits expire, the White House and Senate Republicans are struggling to design a way to scale back the program without overwhelming state unemployment agencies and imperiling aid to more than 20 million Americans.

The hang-up has led to an abrupt delay in the introduction of the GOP’s $1 trillion stimulus package. The White House and Democrats have said they want a deal by the end of the month, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested Friday that reaching an agreement could take several weeks, a timeline that could leave many unemployed Americans severely exposed.

“Hopefully we can come together behind some package we can agree on in the next few weeks,” McConnell said at an event in Ashland, Ky.

Part of the problem stems from a push by administration officials and GOP lawmakers to reduce a $600 weekly payment of enhanced federal unemployment benefits. The White House and the GOP disagree about how to do this, and talks remain highly contentious. They hope to release a proposal early next week.

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“We realize there are a lot of hard-working Americans because of covid [who] still won’t have jobs,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters Thursday.

Republicans to push for $1 trillion aid package
President Trump and congressional Republicans on July 20 said they were working on a $1 trillion coronavirus relief bill. (Reuters)
After convulsing in March and April when the coronavirus pandemic shut down large parts of the United States, the economy showed signs of regaining its footing before sliding again in recent weeks. The effects of numerous stimulus programs appear to be wearing off, and the pace of layoffs has picked up again. Layoffs that many Americans thought would be temporary have dragged on and become permanent, particularly as new cases of the novel coronavirus surge in parts of the country.

This has put enormous pressure on state unemployment programs, which typically pay out about 45 percent of a worker’s prior wages. In March, Congress approved the $600-per-week emergency bonus for every unemployed worker on top of that traditional payment, funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to newly jobless Americans as the pandemic hit the country.

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That federal benefit, being received by more than 20 million people, is to expire at the end of this month. And the expiry comes as a federal eviction moratorium also is ending, creating a dynamic that could greatly stress cash-strapped families.

In practice, the coming lapse in the jobless benefit means millions of workers are receiving their last enhanced benefit payment this week.

Stay safe and informed with our free Coronavirus Updates newsletter

In recent days, senior congressional Republicans and Mnuchin have discussed replacing this universal federal bonus with one tied to workers’ incomes before their jobs were lost. Instead of sending a $600-per-week bonus to every unemployed person, under this plan, the federal government would provide a bonus amounting to about half of the existing state support, according to three senior GOP officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe fast-moving and internal deliberations.

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Mnuchin and President Trump have said publicly that they want to have the new payments replace roughly “70 percent” of a worker’s prior income. This would represent a combination of the nearly 50 percent state contribution of a worker’s prior income plus 25 percent kicked in by the federal government. Republican lawmakers have discussed extending the flat payment at about $200-per-week instead of $600 to give the states time to adjust to the new formula and system.

“We are going to extend it on the basis of wage replacement; it’s approximately at 70 percent of wage replacement,” Mnuchin told reporters Thursday about the Republican proposal.

Other leading Republican lawmakers have argued for cutting the $600-per-week bonus down to $200-per-week, these people said, with one possibility being that this amount slowly phases out over time. These GOP officials have insisted that targeted wage replacement could prove too difficult for the states to implement.

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One Senate Republican aide close to the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said that a $200 flat payment represented the party’s “default” position, with additional funding included to help states upgrade their unemployment systems. The aide played down the odds of the GOP’s approving the more complicated replacement instead of the $200-per-week extension.

The issue has contributed to a delay in the introduction of the $1 trillion stimulus package McConnell had planned to release this week. Republicans debated last-minute changes to the unemployment insurance section of the proposal, according to the three people aware of the deliberations.

The proposed legislation could come on Monday, a lag that has prompted scorching criticism from congressional Democrats who have been demanding action for months. Congress has not passed any coronavirus relief legislation since approving four bipartisan bills in March and April that pumped around $3 trillion into the economy. McConnell wanted to wait to see how the unemployment benefits and other programs approved in that unprecedented stimulus effort played out before taking additional action.

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“This weekend, millions of Americans will lose their unemployment insurance, will be at risk of being evicted from their homes, and could be laid off by state and local government, and there is only one reason: Republicans have been dithering for months while America’s crisis deepens,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement Friday.

‘A very dark feeling’: Hundreds camp out in Oklahoma unemployment lines

Workers are pushed to the brink as they continue to wait for delayed unemployment payments

If adopted, the new unemployment plan could complicate negotiations with congressional Democrats, who favor extending the $600 weekly payment through January. And it’s unclear if balky state processing systems would have the capacity to implement a complicated new formula on such short notice.

“We’re dealing with the mechanical issues associated with that,” Mnuchin told reporters about the wage replacement plan.

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The proposal would, in key respects, meet the conflicting political and economic pressures bearing down on the GOP and White House as the unemployment deadline looms for millions of Americans months away from Election Day.

Senate Republicans and White House officials have been clear that they are not willing to extend the $600-per-week benefit, which conservatives and many business organizations say encourages people to stay home rather than work. Many economists dispute this notion. Senior Republicans have also said they do not want additional federal unemployment benefits to go away entirely, acknowledging that some additional federal help should still be provided to those made jobless during the pandemic. The benefits are politically popular, with a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll finding close to 60 percent of Americans supporting their extension.

“We need to make sure unemployment insurance is continued,” McConnell said Friday. “There is a controversy, however, over whether the provision in the previous measure that allowed people to make more money staying at home than going back to work was a good idea. That’s not going to be our recommendation. But I do think basic unemployment insurance — fundamentally handled by the states but backed up by us — will be a part of” the GOP package.

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Trump and Mnuchin have characterized their proposed solution, replacing “70 percent” of a worker’s prior income, as a reasonable middle ground. At his White House news briefing Tuesday, Trump expressed ambivalence about the benefit but said it would be partially extended.

“The employers are having a hard time getting [employees] back to work. ... I was against that original decision, but they did that. It still worked out well because it gave people a lifeline, a real lifeline. Now we’re doing it again,” the president said. “They’re thinking about doing 70 percent of the amount. The amount would be the same, but doing it in a little bit smaller initial amounts.”

Congressional Democrats and many economists say the current benefit should be extended in full to prevent a crucial stimulus from disappearing from an already wobbly economic recovery.

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Given the difficulty of reaching a deal with Democrats before the existing benefits expire, Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Thursday floated a stand-alone extension of unemployment provisions as part of a package with school funding and a type of lawsuit shield to make it harder for employees to sue their employers if they become sick with the novel coronavirus.

Senior lawmakers in both parties oppose this piecemeal approach, but if they are unable to reach a deal, they might be forced to pass some type of stand-alone benefit extension next week.

In March, lawmakers initially discussed increasing unemployment benefits so they would represent 100 percent of a worker’s prior income. Congress ultimately abandoned the idea in favor of the universal $600 bonus, in part because Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia warned that the nation’s unemployment systems could not handle the complexity of matching every individual’s unemployment benefits to the person’s prior income, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who led those negotiations.

“Scalia said, ‘It can’t be done,’ ” Wyden said in an interview. “We have not seen a single piece of paper describing how this would be administered without the downsides Scalia pointed out months ago.”

Mnuchin acknowledged the technical challenges posed by converting from one system to another when addressing reporters on Thursday. He said the matter was being discussed with state unemployment offices. “Let me just say, different states are in different places,” Mnuchin said. “Some states can implement this quickly. Some states will take time."

White House signals openness to unemployment compromise as crucial deadline looms for 30 million Americans

Some experts are skeptical. State unemployment offices have been badly overwhelmed by the unprecedented surge in claims, and there were another 1.4 million claims last week. Thousands of the newly jobless have struggled for months to obtain benefits and in some states have camped outside unemployment offices overnight to be ahead in line for help.

The $600-per-week bonus was chosen for its simplicity compared with targeted, individual wage replacement — but it has proved tremendously difficult for states to implement as the nation’s unemployment rate spiked to 15 percent before falling to 11 percent.

“You’re asking states to overhaul their insurance systems in the middle of a pandemic, when they’re already overloaded. What happens if states shift to a new system and they dump beneficiaries and miss payments because of an error?” said Ernie Tedeschi, who served as an economist in the Treasury Department under the Obama administration. “It’s too complicated.”

Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, said that states would do their best to deliver but that many would struggle to pull off the change. “The state [unemployment insurance] systems are like a house built on sticks and you’re throwing a match onto them,” he said. Stettner added that it could prove difficult for the Labor Department to figure out how to target payments for every state to reflect 70 percent of the wage of every person.

White House and GOP officials have discussed a transition period that would give states time to figure out how to implement the reduction in benefits. Under this scenario, Republicans could first extend the benefit at a lower amount of about $200 per week instead of $600, continuing the existing flat payment at a reduced level. Democrats would be sure to demand a higher figure.

The $200 bonus, combined with state benefits, would amount to close to 70 percent of a typical worker’s prior income, although under the flat-amount formula, there would be significant variation, as some would receive more than prior income and some would receive less.

“There’s a way to extend this so the majority of people will get paid the 70 percent immediately,” Mnuchin said. Meadows added that the $1,200 stimulus payments expected to be included in the package would help make up the difference for Americans for whom the extension does not amount to 70 percent of prior income.

At the end of a period that may last two months, one senior GOP congressional official said, the automatic payment would go away and be replaced by the more-targeted benefit.

“After two months, the states say — at least most states; I think pretty much all states — say they could convert to the feds doing a percentage of the state benefit,” said the GOP official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “Do your state calculation, and then the [federal government] will do 50 percent on top of that.”

Whether the states will be able to pull off the change in a way that protects beneficiaries remains to be seen. The National Association of State Workforce Agencies recently said that most states would need one to four weeks even to change the bonus amount from $600 to some other amount, according to Wyden’s office.

[Albany Rifles]

As had been surmised for quite some time the famed Umbrella Man in Minneapolis breaking windows had no part of the BLM Movement.

Minneapolis (CNN)Minneapolis police have identified a suspect whom they believe helped initiate the riots and destruction in the city following the killing of George Floyd.

According to a search warrant filed earlier this week, which was obtained by CNN affiliate WCCO, the man is associated with the "Aryan Cowboys," which the Anti-Defamation League lists as a White supremacist prison and street gang. The warrant does not label them as a White supremacist group, but describes them as a "known prison gang out of Minnesota and Kentucky." On its Facebook page, the group says it does not care, "about a person's color."
CNN is not naming the suspect, who was dubbed "Umbrella Man" following the demonstrations, as police said no charges had been filed as of Tuesday afternoon.
Minneapolis Police spokesman John Elder told CNN on Tuesday that the case "remains an open and active investigation." But said he could not comment any further.
George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died after pleading for help as a police officer pinned him to the ground with his knee on Floyd's neck. Hundreds took to the streets of Minneapolis to protest his death, and demonstrations -- which were initially peaceful -- turned into what Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz described at the time as "extremely dangerous."
Video of the "Umbrella Man" went viral after protesters in Minneapolis confronted and filmed him on May 27 while he was in the act of smashing several windows of an AutoZone store.
An arson investigator wrote in a search warrant affidavit that the man also spray painted the words "free sh*t for everyone zone" on the doors of the AutoZone. Not long after he smashed in the windows, looting began, and a bit later the AutoZone was set on fire, the affidavit said.
"This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city," Sgt. Erika Christensen, a Minneapolis police arson investigator, wrote in the affidavit, which was filed in court on Monday.
"Until the actions of the person your affiant has been calling 'Umbrella Man,' the protests had been relatively peaceful. The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension. Your affiant believes that this individual's sole aim was to incite violence."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/us/um...oyd/index.html

[tbm3fan]

On its Facebook page, the group says it does not care, "about a person's color."

Yeah, we beat the sh*! out of anybody. It's just that not many are white as luck would have it.

[Double Edge]

that's a truism for -any- political party. on the planet.

Could an adversary successfully deploy info warfare against a free country ?

Way i see it the opposition does the best job of it.

They never lack for competing narratives. White is turned to black and everything twisted about.

Rather it is the authoritarian state that is more vulnerable. Not thick skinned.

[Albany Rifles]

Could an adversary successfully deploy info warfare against a free country ?

Way i see it the opposition does the best job of it.

They never lack for competing narratives. White is turned to black and everything twisted about.

Rather it is the authoritarian state that is more vulnerable. Not thick skinned.

Have you not been paying attention?

That is EXACTLY what happened in 2016. And the lack of cooperation by Facebook exacerbated the problem.

31 US Federal Intelligence agencies all concurred with that assessment.

[TopHatter]

Have you not been paying attention?

He doesn't even read the posts here on the WAB, why would he pay attention elsewhere either?

[Albany Rifles]

He doesn't even read the posts here on the WAB, why would he pay attention elsewhere either?

*slaps forehead....of course. Forgot. Sorry!*

[Officer of Engineers]

Could an adversary successfully deploy info warfare against a free country ?

Successful?

"Vive la Quebec libre" - Charles DeGalle, 24 July 1967.

Everyone is so aware of what our enemies are doing that they ignore what our allies are doing. As bad as the Russians are, they ain't anywhere close to what the Israelies have done through the Jewish lobby.

[TopHatter]

*slaps forehead....of course. Forgot. Sorry!*

I have to keep reminding myself of that.

[GVChamp]

GVChamp,



that is the most likely scenario. of course, to take another black-swan scenario in a year full of shitty black-swan scenarios, if RBG doesn't make it until January 20, 2021...my god.



ironically I think the GOP is the best demonstration of this.

the GOP has been going downhill as a party since the 1990s, as the loudmouths and morons grew in power starting with Newt Gingrich. it's also the time they started to lose their popular political power. but that still didn't prevent them from leveraging their structural advantages to politically dominate throughout most of the last decade. in 2016, the Democratic Party was a pile of smoking rubble.

so much for "control of the press and social media".

let's put it in another way.

say Biden and the Democrats win -yuge- in November. a blue tsunami. in the House, they pick up another 20 seats (which would mean winning every single toss-up House seat plus another, oh, 12 or so Republican-leaning seats).

in the Senate, they pick up 8 seats, which means taking every single toss-up Senate seat, several lean-R seats, and defending Doug Jones in Alabama.

this would -still- mean, after two wave elections, that the Democrats are just shy of the majorities they had on January 20, 2009.

which means if the Democrats don't break the legislative filibuster, the GOP can easily do what it did to Obama after the Dems lost their 60th Senate seat with the death of Ted Kennedy.

if you want to talk about "control everything for decades" via control of the levers of power...well, there you have it.

Not really sure how you can say the GOP started tanking in the 90s when the GOP was a minority congressional party until the 90s. Reagan may have won big elections, but those never translated into the broad Congressional control that Democrats regularly enjoyed for entire generations. The 21st Century GOP is way more popular and successful than the Cold War era GOP, though it can only stay that way by NOT pursuing the kind of conservative policies that they might like to pursue: Medicare isn't going anywhere and getting Social Security to invest in anything other than Treasury Bonds is a non-starter. The GOP not only couldn't dump the Department of Education, it's vastly expanded and the one of the first things the GOP did with its first Trifecta was No Child Left Behind.

The Democrats used their trifecta to pass through ACA, which was politically unpopular and produced the 2010 wave election. That's given the GOP a structural advantage in some states. However, the GOP is still pretty popular and still would be winning House majorities and Senate races in a lot of these cycles. 2016 had an electoral advantage because Trump outperformed in WWC and underperformed in other White voters, but Hillary was going to fare poorly regardless because she was an unpopular candidate, and the absolute clown-show that was the 2020 Dem Primary is still indicative of overall disunity at the national level.

I'd add that the only majorities the Dems have won at the Presidential level since the 60s are against the unpopular "incumbent" who pardoned Nixon, and for the guy who had approval ratings only matched by the General who beat Hitler.

I have disagreements with the GOP, but largely the criticisms directed at them are people who are simply angry that the GOP does not serve the role of being dutifully defeated like the Washington Generals, which is basically most of its post-war existence with some exceptions. Any actual GOP achivements are equated to Nazism or summarized as being the death of the Republic, with its successes entirely attributed to political malpractice and the imagination that the 2010s GOP is somehow more racist than the 1970s and 1980s population that was regularly voting for Democratic candidates at all levels except maybe Presidential. Utter fantasies.

I would also add more broadly that while the GOP could likely pick up some seats with some different candidate choices throughout the 2010s, the larger changes are demographic and structural. I'll also add that Romney did not lose because the GOP was "Party of No," he lost because Obama was popular enough to drive out massive votes. The only possible way to beat Obama in 2012 was Romney being more like Trump than Romney being more like Obama. The GOP rolling over on ACA would have gotten the GOP absolutely nothing except applause from people who, again, just want the GOP to be the Washington Generals and don't think they should ever have anything other than nominal political opposition to their presumably superior Aaron Sorkin policy ideas....along with another giant entitlement program built on false promises.

[astralis]

GVChamp,

Not really sure how you can say the GOP started tanking in the 90s when the GOP was a minority congressional party until the 90s. Reagan may have won big elections, but those never translated into the broad Congressional control that Democrats regularly enjoyed for entire generations. The 21st Century GOP is way more popular and successful than the Cold War era GOP, though it can only stay that way by NOT pursuing the kind of conservative policies that they might like to pursue: Medicare isn't going anywhere and getting Social Security to invest in anything other than Treasury Bonds is a non-starter. The GOP not only couldn't dump the Department of Education, it's vastly expanded and the one of the first things the GOP did with its first Trifecta was No Child Left Behind.

you're talking about -Republicans-.

IE, the cold war era Republicans, the country-club, Club for Growth sort, disdained populism: "we're a republic, not a democracy", over and over again.

Nixon and then Reagan made the GOP bigger -- in no small part due to welcoming the old Southern Democratic racists with open arms and dog whistles up the yingyang.

the GOP remains popular only due to social conservatism, because fiscal conservatism has never been popular, and indeed, has only grown less and less popular over time.

I have disagreements with the GOP, but largely the criticisms directed at them are people who are simply angry that the GOP does not serve the role of being dutifully defeated like the Washington Generals, which is basically most of its post-war existence with some exceptions.

kinda-sorta, not really.

IE most Democrats, -particularly- the upper-middle class professionals that make up a major part of the Democratic coalition, have a huge fetish for this fantasy of West Wing-style bipartisanship, where Republicans are all like Larry Hogan and Jon Huntsman, reasonable, open to compromise, and fiscally conservative. it's taken years of the worst sort of GOP populist buffoonery to make most of those Dems finally realize that was all a fantasy.

so the funny thing is that Democrats hate and scorn Trump with a burning passion that they didn't for Mitt Romney, tho' a Romney administration would -certainly- have been more fiscally conservative and more competent in pushing for GOP legislative goals. past that, Trump has single-handedly revived the Democratic Party when a more competent individual could have -crushed- them post-2016.

I'll also add that Romney did not lose because the GOP was "Party of No," he lost because Obama was popular enough to drive out massive votes.

if it was just Romney losing, then I could see that.

but it was also Bush Sr, and Bob Dole, and Bush Jr came within a hair of losing the first time, then McCain, then Romney.

and obviously if we were on a straight popular vote election, then both Bush Jr and Trump would have lost as well.

the basic GOP platform is simply unpopular, and that's even -after- the GOP absorbed the votes of millions of racists, excuse me, I mean "culturally/economically anxious" voters.

and the GOP answer to this has been three-fold: to adopt economic populism, lean even harder into appealing to those "anxious" voters, and most of all, find ways to politically game the system to dilute the opposing voters.

I don't mind the first two; I think it's wrong-headed and stupid, but that's a -legitimate attempt- to change the unpopular Reaganism. it's the last that's dirty pool.

The GOP rolling over on ACA would have gotten the GOP absolutely nothing except applause from people who, again, just want the GOP to be the Washington Generals and don't think they should ever have anything other than nominal political opposition to their presumably superior Aaron Sorkin policy ideas....along with another giant entitlement program built on false promises.

different topic, but frankly the GOP rolling over on the ACA would have resulted in a more conservative plan being enacted. similarly, if the GOP had accepted Obama's Grand Bargain, the result would have been a major fiscal conservative victory.

so, the irony is that most Democrats, in hindsight, viewed GOP intransigence on both those points as a good thing after all.

[Double Edge]

Have you not been paying attention?

That is EXACTLY what happened in 2016. And the lack of cooperation by Facebook exacerbated the problem.

31 US Federal Intelligence agencies all concurred with that assessment.

Yeah that's what they say. I'm starting to question the assertion.

They can interfere but can they succeed at it ?

Russia tried in Europe and did not get very far. They're supposed to be good at it.

Our opposition parties are way better than any foreign adversary. Often i hear they are colluding with them.

The Anti-American rhetoric i've heard coming out of America in the last four years beats everything i've heard in the last twenty : D

[GVChamp]

GVChamp,



you're talking about -Republicans-.

IE, the cold war era Republicans, the country-club, Club for Growth sort, disdained populism: "we're a republic, not a democracy", over and over again.

Nixon and then Reagan made the GOP bigger -- in no small part due to welcoming the old Southern Democratic racists with open arms and dog whistles up the yingyang.

the GOP remains popular only due to social conservatism, because fiscal conservatism has never been popular, and indeed, has only grown less and less popular over time.



kinda-sorta, not really.

IE most Democrats, -particularly- the upper-middle class professionals that make up a major part of the Democratic coalition, have a huge fetish for this fantasy of West Wing-style bipartisanship, where Republicans are all like Larry Hogan and Jon Huntsman, reasonable, open to compromise, and fiscally conservative. it's taken years of the worst sort of GOP populist buffoonery to make most of those Dems finally realize that was all a fantasy.

so the funny thing is that Democrats hate and scorn Trump with a burning passion that they didn't for Mitt Romney, tho' a Romney administration would -certainly- have been more fiscally conservative and more competent in pushing for GOP legislative goals. past that, Trump has single-handedly revived the Democratic Party when a more competent individual could have -crushed- them post-2016.



if it was just Romney losing, then I could see that.

but it was also Bush Sr, and Bob Dole, and Bush Jr came within a hair of losing the first time, then McCain, then Romney.

and obviously if we were on a straight popular vote election, then both Bush Jr and Trump would have lost as well.

the basic GOP platform is simply unpopular, and that's even -after- the GOP absorbed the votes of millions of racists, excuse me, I mean "culturally/economically anxious" voters.

and the GOP answer to this has been three-fold: to adopt economic populism, lean even harder into appealing to those "anxious" voters, and most of all, find ways to politically game the system to dilute the opposing voters.

I don't mind the first two; I think it's wrong-headed and stupid, but that's a -legitimate attempt- to change the unpopular Reaganism. it's the last that's dirty pool.



different topic, but frankly the GOP rolling over on the ACA would have resulted in a more conservative plan being enacted. similarly, if the GOP had accepted Obama's Grand Bargain, the result would have been a major fiscal conservative victory.

so, the irony is that most Democrats, in hindsight, viewed GOP intransigence on both those points as a good thing after all.

2010s GOP voters are not as racist as 1980s Democrats voters, full stop. You really need to get over this delusion that the GOP is simply popular because it is racist. The GOP is popular because it is NOT properly fiscally conservative and does not try to push major reforms to enact its admittedly unpopular political platform. The Democrats lost because they DID use their temporary political majorities to try to push an unpopular healthcare bill, and as soon as they lost it were forced to pass something they could barely agree on lest they lose the opportunity to pass anything at all. Which really gets to the point, the Democratic political platform isn't any more popular except to the extent that it is fueled by fantasy-taxes on "the rich" and dishonesty by asserting things like depreciation are "corporate tax loopholes."

The GOP rolling over on the ACA would have been a disaster. It is ideologically unconservative. It is wonkily stupid and ineffective in its own goals. It was politically unpopular. The only thing GOP support for ACA would have done is attaching the GOP to a disaster bill, allowing the Democrats to take no political damage for its own stupid bill, while blaming the GOP for everything politically unpopular. "Medicare tax cuts? Taxes on employer health insurance? Employer insurance mandates? Don't blame us, that's all the GOP's idea!"
This then would have reduced the GOP legislative presence even further, allowing the Democrats larger majorities to immediately renege on every promise and pass an even more liberal bill (which was always the plan all along), along with OTHER major anti-conservative legislation, not the least of which would have been substantial tax increases.

The Grand Bargain wouldn't have even been on the table, because there would have been no GOP House Majority to exert any leverage. And Grand Bargain? What Grand Bargain? You cannot reasonably constrain a future Congress that wants to spend money. The same Congress that passed the Sequester immediately turned around to spend more money that the Sequester said it couldn't spend. They couldn't even fully constrain themselves, how do you intend to limit a future Congress that can simply vote out any restrictions you put on it, as soon as it is politically convenient, particularly when you have shot yourself in the foot politically and future Congresses will be made up of even more of your ideological opponents?

Again, I have problems with GOP, but the GOP failing to commit ritual seppuku before the glory of Obama so we can have shitty New Deal 2.0 and bake in massive future tax increases for the next 100 years and allowing yet-more-Progressives to dominate courts and political agencies is not a GOP failing. ACTUAL GOP major failings are the inability to control the 2016 clown car that resulted in Trump and refusing to sign on to necessary-but-unpopular programs like TARP and the stimulus. Smaller GOP failings are things like not getting the Gang of 8 bill through the House. Since I'm ideologically libertarian I'll add in the ever-growing police state and the bullshit TSA in with that. In the longer term the GOP will need to get on board with broader tax increases because there is utterly no way to get around that in the 21st Century, but the Progressives are simply going to do what they will do in 10 years and there's nothing that Pelosi and Schumer can do to meaningfully constrain them.


I will say that more broadly the failings are not primarily political but in our media, education, and other social systems. Democrats are obviously going to point at Fox News but are largely ignorant of their own shortcomings. The reason there are still centrist GOP-leaning types that do not like Trump isn't because we are all somehow one Aaron Sorkin speech short of becoming full Democrats, but because the platform strikes us as obvious nonsense. And even if we do not like certain aspects of the extreme end of the party, that doesn't mean we are going to sign on to declaring huge chunks of the country as the American Taliban. Also, none of us are Jets fans, because the New York Jets are an embarrassment.

[astralis]

2010s GOP voters are not as racist as 1980s Democrats voters, full stop. You really need to get over this delusion that the GOP is simply popular because it is racist. The GOP is popular because it is NOT properly fiscally conservative and does not try to push major reforms to enact its admittedly unpopular political platform.

no, -some- 2010s GOP voters are not as racist as 1980s Democratic voters.

the big but, though, is that the GOP base is racist as all get out. the anti-immigration types-- and that's the true base of the party-- aren't even -hiding- it anymore.

without the so-called "culturally anxious", the modern-day GOP would be where it was in the 1960s, as you said: a largely Northeastern fiscally conservative rump party that gets creamed in national elections every time.

WITH the culturally anxious, the modern-day GOP gets creamed what, on a popular vote margin 6 out of 7 times.

I do agree with you that it's popular precisely when it's not fiscally conservative.

The GOP rolling over on the ACA would have been a disaster. It is ideologically unconservative. It is wonkily stupid and ineffective in its own goals. It was politically unpopular. The only thing GOP support for ACA would have done is attaching the GOP to a disaster bill, allowing the Democrats to take no political damage for its own stupid bill, while blaming the GOP for everything politically unpopular. "Medicare tax cuts? Taxes on employer health insurance? Employer insurance mandates? Don't blame us, that's all the GOP's idea!"
This then would have reduced the GOP legislative presence even further, allowing the Democrats larger majorities to immediately renege on every promise and pass an even more liberal bill (which was always the plan all along), along with OTHER major anti-conservative legislation, not the least of which would have been substantial tax increases.

if the ACA was that unpopular -- and it would have been MORE unpopular with conservative asks baked in-- then one wonders how 2010/2014 midterm Democrats would have increased their legislative presence. how many times has that happened in US history?

I will say that more broadly the failings are not primarily political but in our media, education, and other social systems.

no, the failing is primarily due to the audiences each party seeks to attract.

Republicans have leaned in on becoming a white rural party.

Democrats have leaned in on becoming an diverse urban party with suburbia increasingly falling into their orbit.

that's why you mention that "the Progressives are simply going to do what they will do in 10 years and there's nothing that Pelosi and Schumer can do to meaningfully constrain them." in large part, it's because of this sorting. North Carolina is on the precipice of becoming a new Virginia; it's where Virginia was in 2008, more or less. Georgia is probably 4 years behind North Carolina. and Texas is 4 years behind Georgia.