2020 American Political Scene

[tantalus]

I still find it disappointing that most of the centre right in the United States chose to cast its lot with Donald Trump rather than align with centre to centre left forces like in countries like France or Germany to keep out the far right. Granted, this is partly due to the hyper partisanship of the two party system that makes co-operation with members from the opposite party more difficult.

The policy wins mentioned in the post above while not insignificant, would have probably been accomplished by any Republican President. On the other Trump's erratic behavior, his disdain for rules, deliberate inciting of racial and religious tensions, weakening of the Western Alliance has caused lasting damage, even from a centre right perspective.

And as said by Astralis, it is likely going to lead to a backlash against Trump and the Republicans that might lead to unified control of the US Government by Democrats, with an agitated and emboldened far left exerting increasing influence over the party.

I still find it hard to believe that many on the 'centre-right' consider all this a better outcome than enduring most likely four or at the most eight years of a weakened Hillary Presidency.

"Part" perhaps try all. America has been designed to change very slowly and not be particurly democratic. Advantages and disadvantages to that no doubt. But the demographics underneath have been changing far more quickly than washington. There should always be a disparity, but this gap is too great and as society continues to shift socially and technologically at an accelerated pace expect the problems and frustrations to increase.

The incentives are all wrong. There is nothing to draw the republicans back to the centre as there is no short term pathway to political victory for them there, even if its the only long term redemption available for them.

In europe its seems to be centre right vs centre left means some totally different. Not as divided on ethnic and cultural issues, more economic. The same groups are present but the majority in the centre parties are pulled towards the middle and those who go further right or left just form a new parties and then attract those who have less moderate views. This makes it easier for the moderates to stay moderate and to avoid governements that shift too far away from the middle. Even when problems arise there are more and easier pathways back than the american system faciliatates. Its also bemusing to imagine there are only "2 ways" to advance society.

Iam curious what are the prospects of adding new states to the federation, the candidates and obstacles in the coming years?

And likewise how would american change the way senators are distributed?

And how would america go about installing preference voting/ranked voting?

[TopHatter]

Time to Rewrite the History Books

High school history books generally portray Warren Harding as the most corrupt president ever. That's probably unfair to Harding, since he was probably a more-or-less honest man (by politician standards) but he was in charge when his secretary of the interior, Albert Bacon Fall, pulled off the Teapot Dome caper, leasing some oil reserves to his cronies at bargain-basement prices after taking bribes from them. But a new story in The New York Times makes it clear that even Fall was a very small time operator compared to Donald Trump. The article documents dozens among the hundreds of times businessmen got big "favors" from the government after either making big donations to Donald Trump's campaign or spending mucho moola at one of his properties. No president in history has even come close to approaching this level of direct corruption. If Trump loses and the new attorney general hires to a special prosecutor to dig through the muck, it will take many years to uncover even a fraction of it.

Earlier stories in the Times show that most of Trump's properties are losing money big time and that he has a personal debt of $400 million coming due in the next 4 years, with almost no liquid assets to pay his creditors. If the debts are to Deutsche Bank, he can probably stiff the bank and get away with it. If the debts are to the Moscow-based Alfa Bank which is run by Vladimir Putin's cronies, that would not be a smart idea unless Trump likes tea that glows in the dark. In 2016, there were mysterious communications between Trump and the Alfa Bank, so that is a real possibility.

Although Trump promised to drain the swamp, he has done the opposite. He has monetized the presidency. If you want something from the government, you have to pay up, one way or another. The scale of the corruption is shocking. Over 200 companies, special-interest groups, and foreign governments decided they were willing to join the pay-to-play game, did so, and reaped government benefits.

Just 60 people with issues before the administration brought the Trump family business $12 million in the first two years of Trump's presidency. Almost all got what they wanted. The ones who didn't were likely victims of Trump's forgetfulness rather than his ire. The list of patrons at Trump's properties include foreign politicians, Florida sugar barons, a Chinese billionaire, a Serbian prince, clean-energy advocates and their adversaries in the oil industry, contractors seeking billions in government money, and much more. More than 70 groups threw lavish events at Trump's properties. Morgan Stanley spent over $156,000 at Trump's D.C. hotel for one event and Deloitte spent almost $350,000 there for another one. A lobbying group, the Food Marketing Institute, paid $1.2 million to Trump's Doral resort for some conferences there. Trump even had 34 fundraisers at his properties, which brought in $3 million to Trump himself as hotelier, in addition to what the campaign raised.

Anthony Pratt, known as the cardboard king, is the face of Australia's richest family, which makes packaging materials. He donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration and built a plant in Ohio. A provision in the 2017 tax cut increased his personal wealth by $2 billion. The GEO Group runs private prisons and wanted a bigger slice of the federal prison pie. It gave $250,000 to Trump's inauguration and held events at some of Trump's properties. It suddenly had its federal contracts go up from $500 million a year to $900 million a year, a pretty good return on investment. Franklin Haney needed some permits from the Dept. of Energy and a $5 billion loan. He contributed $1 million to the inauguration and hired Trump's fixer, Michael Cohen, for $150,000/month to help with Haney's projects. Cohen didn't deliver, so Haney found a new fixer. In the end, he got what he wanted. Evangelical leaders generally weren't after government contracts, but they all got VIP treatment at Trump's hotels. Is it surprising that they tell their flocks to vote for him?

The article is extremely long and very detailed. It goes on and on with details that might be of great interest to a special prosecutor working for a Biden Justice Dept. Will the disclosure of all this garden-variety corruption have any effect on the election? Probably not, because most of Trump's supporters will probably think it natural that if someone does you a favor (like donating $1 million to your inauguration), then it is only natural that you do him a favor (like awarding his company a billion-dollar government contract). People who don't like pay-to-play probably were not planning on voting for Trump anyway.
__________

It's been said that, should Biden win the presidency, he shouldn't go after Trump for such obvious corruption, as it would look like victor's justice or some such.

At one point I actually agreed with that. (The State of New York on the other hand....)

Now? Fuck it. Go after Trump with the full force and weight of the federal government. You know, that same force and weight that Trump used to both blatantly enrich himself and his Family, and also to shield himself from the legal consequences. Bury that fucker in the same grave that he tried buried things like the rule of law.

Of course, if Trump wins....we can pretty much bury the very idea of America in that grave. He'll have 4 years to run completely wild, unchecked, unhindered. The Trump kleptocracy will be encased in stone and burnished by so-called conservatives that couldn't stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

[DOR]

When just about everything else in life seems turned completely upside down – shortened baseball seasons, postponed NFL games, social distancing, masks, and just about everyone facing financial difficulties, it's interesting to note two things that haven't changed one single bit.

The Republican National Party platform, and the White House's rosy scenarios.


First, the platform. On the GOPer website, it says this was passed at the 2020 national convention:

“RESOLVED, That the Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention.”

and,

“RESOLVE, That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new platform, including any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.”

(https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/medi...323.1598219603)


Now, granted this should be held up as the only example of the GOPers actually deciding that COVID-19 might be a good reason for people not to gather in groups and yell in each other's faces, as happens in political conventions. Or, campaign rallies. Or, fund raisers…

For the record, the Democratic National Convention met virtually, and had no trouble producing and proclaiming a party platform.

For the record, as the New York Times reported, party platforms are actually important. In the 1856 GOPer platform, the party called for ending polygamy and slavery, and building a transcontinental railroad. This year, this party non-platform says, quite literally, what ever The Trumpet wants, that's what we support. No questions asked.

And, just for the record, the 2016 GOPer platform that is carried over unamended, is very adamant that any reference to “the President” refers to one Barack Hussein Obama II.


Moving right along, the surrealism continues.


If you wander into the Office of the Management of the Budget and have a look at the most prominent budget document on display, the first paragraph is standard “this is a budget, with lots of input from others, thanks.” The second paragraph starts off like this:

“The American economy continues the longest expansion in its recorded history. The unemployment rate reached its deepest level in half a century ...”

So, nothing's changed there, either.

The economy will grow by 2.84%, prices will rise 1.9%, corporate profits by 9.3%, wages by 5.2%, and unemployment will average 3.7%.


(https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-conten...tions_fy21.pdf)

[TopHatter]

RESOLVED, That the Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention because committing mass suicide at the command of a deranged lunatic is something that nobody could've ever seen coming, trust us on this one.

[TopHatter]

Trump's properties made $238,000 on Secret Service bills from Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr.'s visits

President Trump's travel has diverted a lot of money to his properties — and his children are partly responsible.

As of The Washington Post's most recent count, the U.S. government has spent $1.2 million at Trump's properties around the world throughout his presidency. At least $238,000 of that stemmed from Trump's adult children's visits as they requested Secret Service protection, the Post reports via Secret Service records.

When Eric Trump headed to Trump golf courses in Scotland; or when Donald Trump Jr. went on a hiking tip to Canada; or when Ivanka Trump stayed at their Bedminister, New Jersey, resort even when it was closed for the coronavirus pandemic; the Secret Service was billed. The Trump administration hasn't revealed just how much it pays to house Secret Service agents at Trump hotels, but Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization, has insisted they charge a minimal rate. On bills that do list a room rate, $175 a night was the cheapest price found, the Post reports.

"Government ethics experts say that nothing is wrong with Trump's children seeking protection from the Secret Service," the Post writes. But it's more dubious given that their family owns the businesses charging the Secret Service for rooms, "creat[ing] the appearance that Trump family members were exploiting their publicly funded protection for private financial gain," the Post continues.

The Secret Service, the White House, and Ivanka Trump all declined to comment to the Post. Eric, Donald Jr., and Tiffany Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
_________

Trump donates his presidential salary to charity!!

[GVChamp]

see, I think this is simply short-term thinking, even if you're taking a center-right perspective.

IE, if we look back to 2016, a Clinton Presidency would have almost certainly led to continued bleeding of Congressional Dems, not to mention state governors; the highest probability chance would have been absolute legislative gridlock, with the GOP holding the House and Senate for the entire Presidency.

on the state level, same thing.

with vacancies on the Supreme Court, Clinton by inclination and by political reality would have been forced to choose moderates like Garland.

there would certainly be no talk of blowing up the legislative filibuster, or packing the Supreme Court, etc.

Clinton would likely have been either a one-term President, or win a second term by the skin of her teeth, which would mean continued bleeding at the legislative levels...just in time for the 2020 census, which would have slaughtered Dems for another 10 years-- probably worse, because the GOP would control the levers of apportionment even more than previously. that would have probably offset Dem demographic gains. my God, the Dems would probably be at 160-170 House seats right now, and 40 Senate seats in this scenario.

instead, with Trump, -South Carolina- is in play at the Senate level; there's a Dem Senator from -Alabama-.

the way things are going, we're likely going to end up with Dems have 240-250 seats in the House, maybe even 260 if we get lucky; LIKELY 51 or 52 seats in the Senate, and 53-54 if we get lucky. at the Presidential level, Trump will likely be defeated as bad as Dole was in '96; with a bit of luck, as bad as Mike Dukakis in '88.

and, by God, I hope shortly thereafter we'll see the destruction of the legislative filibuster and at a minimum, DC and Puerto Rico as states.

plus, with the Trump family still kicking around, Dems will certainly not go back to sleep.

I don't think tax cuts and the judges are a good trade off.

I am having an extremely hard time figuring out how to use the multi-quote functions with the new format, so I am not sure I can easily link in TBM or TH. At the moment I only have time for a single post, so, meh, I'll respond later.

It is entirely possible that electing Trump was short-sighted thinking, but...that's not clear cut, it involves hindsight, and you're still trading away your shot at the highest office in the land for a gamble. You probably will retain the Senate and have a more favorable Senate map in 2018 (as evidenced by the GOP pickups despite a wave election otherwise), but you're surrendering the opportunity to appoint a LOT of Conservative Justices (basically guaranteed) to appoint a lot of moderate justices instead...and, plus, you already lose the one seat for Scalia, you lose any chance of Ginsburg/probably Breyer, and you run the chance of losing a Thomas as well, plus, god forbid Roberts gets by a car or something. You just don't gamble with that sort of thing.

There would absolutely be talk of abolishing the legislative filibuster because the legislative filibuster is on its last legs anyways. The filibuster has been eroding for quite some time and both parties are more concerned with naked power: that thing is not long for this world regardless.

You're also surrendering incumbency advantage, which means you are not only forfeiting 2016, you're likely forfeiting 2020 as well, which means you have set yourself up for 4 consecutive Democratic administrations, which is not something any GOP leadership would consider good. You are ASSUMING that 2020 will be a nail-biter, when incumbency and economic advantages are such that the GOP will be fighting from a 5+ point deficit, plus having to fight whatever coattails she might have.

You are also assuming a worst case scenario for the GOP where the Court gets packed, legislative filibuster gets eliminated AND a whole bunch of liberal legislation gets passed AND PR gets admitted as a state despite not having a referendum actually supporting that status. There's a favorable Senate Map in 2022, but 2024 is a different story. Biden is rapidly decaying, Kamala is no Biden, you might very well be running against Romney again, and then what?

The only obvious move in hindsight is to not let Donald Trump have the nomination, but that's on GOP primary voters. I'll gladly take my share of the blame, by the time of the IL primary it was down between Cruz and Trump, and Trump seemed less like a comic book supervillain than Cruz. Jeb! and Rubio and Kasich never stood a chance.

This is all besides the initial point, which is that Trump hasn't done anything. That's not true. Trump has been "meh" from a policy perspective. My biggest beef is a poor COVID response (with equal blame on governors and the people who think they are doing science), and pointless trade wars. I don't particularly like his tax evasion, but ultimately I trust the IRS on that.

And I absolutely 100% don't trust the Democrats. If ACB gets confirmed, the Dems commit to NOT packing the Court, and the ticket was Klobuchar/Pete, I could vote Dem, but not outside that scenario.

[astralis]

It is entirely possible that electing Trump was short-sighted thinking, but...that's not clear cut, it involves hindsight, and you're still trading away your shot at the highest office in the land for a gamble. You probably will retain the Senate and have a more favorable Senate map in 2018 (as evidenced by the GOP pickups despite a wave election otherwise), but you're surrendering the opportunity to appoint a LOT of Conservative Justices (basically guaranteed) to appoint a lot of moderate justices instead...and, plus, you already lose the one seat for Scalia, you lose any chance of Ginsburg/probably Breyer, and you run the chance of losing a Thomas as well, plus, god forbid Roberts gets by a car or something. You just don't gamble with that sort of thing.

I'd rather have legislative dominance compared to judicial dominance, because at fifth and last, the judicial branch is the weakest of the three branches. plus, you're talking about the difference between centrist judges and conservative ones here.

There would absolutely be talk of abolishing the legislative filibuster because the legislative filibuster is on its last legs anyways. The filibuster has been eroding for quite some time and both parties are more concerned with naked power: that thing is not long for this world regardless.

Democrats wouldn't be the ones doing it, though: under the likely scenario, they'd be so badly cut down that they'd be screeching about minority privileges. the -only- reason why getting rid of the legislative filibuster and packing the court is even a thing -- and it's not even a very high-probability thing, because as I've mentioned before most elected Dems are remarkably reticent about actually playing realpolitik, unlike the Republicans -- is because there's now the prospect of unified, but not overwhelming, Dem control, and the prospect of Mitch McConnell being Mitch McConnell.

the GOP wouldn't work the same way because McConnell instinctively knows that these veto points by definition assist the conservative party.

The only obvious move in hindsight is to not let Donald Trump have the nomination, but that's on GOP primary voters. I'll gladly take my share of the blame, by the time of the IL primary it was down between Cruz and Trump, and Trump seemed less like a comic book supervillain than Cruz. Jeb! and Rubio and Kasich never stood a chance.

yeah, the GOP as a party has let the inmates overrun the asylum. the same party which could dutifully trot out McCain and Romney couldn't do it again in 2016, and now they're going to pay the price for this inability, as Trump will now likely be beaten to the ground worse than either, and take the GOP Senate with him.

good.

because if the GOP was able to nominate people like Larry Hogan or Charlie Baker on the national level in 2016, we'd probably be headed for a generation worth of conservative dominance at this point.

[GVChamp]

I must correct myself and removed center from center right. The first clue was "so many of them are basically commies" There are very few commies in this country compared to fascists by a wide, wide margin. Now while there are some things about Millennials that bug me being commie is not one of them as I see very few through my glasses compared to what you see through your blinders. The next clue was everything else you said which looks like it was lifted off a FOX website therefore making it babble.

You should take a theatrical flourish with a grain of salt, but the Millennial generation is hyper-left compared to other generations, and irrationally skeptical of business.

If you think I sound like Fox News, you live in a bubble, which is probably why you think I'm arch-conservative. Fox News aficionados are off railing about mail-in voting and illegal immigrants voting and Russia-Gate and whatever else Tucker Carlson is on about right now. These are not my interests.

What center-right Twitter feed is complaining about today:
-Amazon taxes: if you reinvest your profits, you have no earnings and do not pay taxes
-Kamala Harris establishing who she is: a shameless careerist who believes nobody can stop her (which is a satirical play on the attack on ACB, which would be characterized as obviously sexist if aimed at a Democrat)
-Mocking Kamala for failing because she ran a Very Online campaign, basically code word for Kamala running as an extremist and that's why she lost (note, this is why I think most of the other people in my ideological sphere are fools: she is in position to be one-heartbeat-away and be the presumptive frontrunner if Biden loses or chooses not to run in 2024, precisely BECAUSE she ran the Very Online campaign. A vote for Biden is a vote for extremism, full stop).
-Mocking Al Franken trying to say "what I would ask if I were still in the Senate"
-Complaining about the general nastiness of US politics, specifically singling out the President, and specifically exempting Biden from criticism

I could go on, but none of it is Fox News Narrative, because none of these people are in the Fox News Demographic.

I'm going to guess that you didn't actually look at the links provided. You mentioned you're quite busy, so I'll spell things out right here:

Unnecessary tax cuts cause the deficit to balloon? No, I don't like the deficit to balloon. Not sure how liking that would make me center right. Also, my taxes apparently went up so I don't even have a few pennies to add to yours. You say they have a chance to become permanent. Well, give me a call when they do. Because right now it's only corporations and the wealthy that have permanent ones in the bag, not you or I.

The oil pipelines aren't safer than existing ones because I'm fairly certain that the Keystone 1 Pipeline that leaked about 383,040 gallons of oil wasn't exactly "safe". That's just one example but I don't know if you have time or the care to read any more. Not sure how liking a 383,000 gallon oil leak would make me center right.

No, ISIS is not defeated and they are in fact growing again. And, no, I don't like it when America's allies are thrown into the furnace. Not sure how liking that would make me center right.

No, thinking that gays should be allowed to get married if they want was not only an "extreme liberal" position. It's also a libertarian position. Also I've never once spoken even passionately about gay marriage until now, let alone "temper tantrums", but by all means, please provide WAB links to where I have.

No, "president above the law" is not a mischaracterization. It's literally what Trump and his lawyers have been arguing all the way up to the Supreme Court. This is not a liberal or media talking point, as surfgun likes to pretend. To repeat: It's literally what Trump and his lawyers have been arguing all the way up to the Supreme Court. This is part of the court record.

And, I'm not sure what SCOTUS decision that you're talking about because no liberal judge disagreed with me. They disagreed with what Trump and his lawyers have been arguing all along: That the President is immune from prosecution (to say nothing of "mere" investigation) up to and including the President shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. In other words, Trump and his lawyers argued that the President is above the law. I mean, what would you call it if someone was immune to everything from murder charges on down to a jaywalking citation?

Healthcare has to get passed through the Senate? True! But you're putting the cart before the horse here. You have to have a plan, even a basic framework of a plan, to put before the Senate and Trump has spent the last 4 years doing fuck all about presenting a plan....other than lying about it with every breath. He Has No Plan And He Never Did.

There are a few deficit hawks remaining but they are few and far between. Ultimately even the deficit hawks aren't as concerned about revenue decreases compared to the spending increases, because it is practically impossible to roll back spending increases: see the Biden campaign saying the only problem with Obamacare is that the subsidies just ain't high enough, so now we need to spend even MORE money to make health care equitable. Tax cuts are hard to roll back, but ultimately CAN be rolled back. Even the Trump tax cuts don't reduce the top rate down to Bush-era levels. Shifting the overall tax burden away from corporations is a GOOD thing. The corporate tax rate in the US is much too high and punishes companies that are not playing shell-games to move their income off-shore. Those types of movements should be closed, but that's not something you can just hand-wave. It's a long-term move that involves court battles, even in the EU where they actually have institutions that can handle this type of thing (Ireland is still a tax haven, and they've had decades to sort it out!)

Despite the overall debt increase, due to low interest rates, the actual burden of the debt is substantially lower than the 80s or 90s, though increasingly a cause for a concern, though adding an extra trillion dollars in annual expenses between 2014 and 2019 does not help.

The oil leak in Keystone 1 is not concerning. It's a few acres of impacted wetland. We have far worse environmental threats that we live with every day and should spend more money on mitigating. This project would be expected to deliver billions in value based on its initial investments.

ISIS is effectively gone. They hold no territory of note and have no integrity. A far cry from when they were terrorizing cities across Iraq. Our partners in Syria were ultimately geopolitical liabilities committing us to violent confrontations with EVERYONE in the Middle East, with no exit strategy. Yes, we all had a good chuckle when we wasted a few hundred Russian mercs, but that's just a preview of what you are effectively signing us up for by trying to form a permanent partnership with one of the few Middle Eastern groups hated more than Jews....most of which requires alienating actual key strategic allies or people we would rather not have hate us.

Libertarian is not center-right. If you want to be libertarian, be libertarian. The libertarians I know want a full repeal of the NFA and they don't seem too fond of the income taxes you are arguing for. The LP has a platform on gay marriage, obviously, but the actual libertarians I talk to (including my next-door neighbor and the host of the housewarming party I attended last weekend: these aren't guys I just casually know) think there shouldn't BE government marriage, or at least have marriage contracts agreed to by the actual consenting adults rather than a basket of rights/obligations set forth by the state government. Either way, again, this nation was majority against gay marriage until relatively recently. Judges are insulated from popular opinion, so while you and your elected representatives might change your mind on a whim, judges usually don't. I would like judges that respect prior opinions and be careful about changing them, but I don't want judges that are as fickle as the electorate or the House. That's why judges are appointed. So if they appoint a judge who thinks Obergfell was f'd up, I don't have a problem with that.

You're also confusing the President's arguments with the SC finding. You were suggesting the conservative judges were agreeing with the President that he is "above the law," and that's not what they found. These are not just stooges going along with whatever Trump says. Again, they are relatively insulated, so they don't really have to care about what Trump thinks.

[GVChamp]

I'd rather have legislative dominance compared to judicial dominance, because at fifth and last, the judicial branch is the weakest of the three branches. plus, you're talking about the difference between centrist judges and conservative ones here.



Democrats wouldn't be the ones doing it, though: under the likely scenario, they'd be so badly cut down that they'd be screeching about minority privileges. the -only- reason why getting rid of the legislative filibuster and packing the court is even a thing -- and it's not even a very high-probability thing, because as I've mentioned before most elected Dems are remarkably reticent about actually playing realpolitik, unlike the Republicans -- is because there's now the prospect of unified, but not overwhelming, Dem control, and the prospect of Mitch McConnell being Mitch McConnell.

the GOP wouldn't work the same way because McConnell instinctively knows that these veto points by definition assist the conservative party.



yeah, the GOP as a party has let the inmates overrun the asylum. the same party which could dutifully trot out McCain and Romney couldn't do it again in 2016, and now they're going to pay the price for this inability, as Trump will now likely be beaten to the ground worse than either, and take the GOP Senate with him.

good.

because if the GOP was able to nominate people like Larry Hogan or Charlie Baker on the national level in 2016, we'd probably be headed for a generation worth of conservative dominance at this point.

I'm not really sure that you have a consistent worldview if changing a candidate in one election is going to permanently cause a generation of change in one direction or the other. There are too many veto points in the system and Senators in particular are able to defy their own parties enough to defy these kinds of major changes. Interest groups don't mind playing strange bedfellows. Voters themselves are extremely fickle, both in terms of turnout and preference. Partisanship is high. Almost 10% of Obama voters ended up voting for Trump in 2016. We had several cycles where Ross Perot got a huge amount of the vote.

4 cycles from now is 16 years.
2000: Trump running for a Reform Party Nomination
1992:Obama just graduates Law School and becomes a Visiting Professor
1984: Dubya sells a failed oil company, 6 years after losing a House race
1976: Clinton elected state AG


So 4 cycles from now, you have a couple of possible candidates:
-Kanye West
-Lauren Beck
-Jeb Bush Jr
-Richard Finneran


Or maybe someone entirely different.

I have some suspicion of general TRENDS, but exacts, specifically with regards to candidates? No idea. Though it honestly would not surprise me to see Kanye West leading either ticket in 2036.

[DOR]

GVChamp,

There are a few deficit hawks remaining but they are few and far between. Ultimately even the deficit hawks aren't as concerned about revenue decreases compared to the spending increases, because it is practically impossible to roll back spending increases: ...

Do a 180 on that and you'd be much closer.

Spending is slow, and unless it gets put in the Mandatory category (very tough), it has to be renewed annually. Revenues are much quicker to change, but the deficit pseudo-hawks don't care because they and their buddies are the ones getting the totally useless massive tax breaks, GOPer administration after GOPer administration, massive economic crunch after massive economic crunch.

Rolling back a tax cut, in GOPer jargon, is “he'll raise your taxes on Day One!”

American corporate tax burden in 2019, according to Tax Foundation, was 25.89%, which is misleading because it doesn't include VAT and a host of other taxes typically applied to companies in other countries.

The World Bank Doing Business in series (v. 2020) builds a corporate tax model that weighs VAT quite heavily, so the US looks much better there than do other economies. They also point out the other taxes, such as city and state (an extra 20% in NY, for example), employment, and capital gains. The US ranks 11 / 175.

The Financial Freedom Index covers income, corporate, capital gains, VAT, duties, and inheritance taxes. The US is right in the middle, at 0.44 / 1.00.

If you want low taxes, try Macau. 10%, but someone else is in charge of your foreign affairs and defense and you don't get anything in the way of social services.

The oil leak in Keystone 1 is not concerning. It's a few acres of impacted wetland.

OK, so you're not a local resident and don't depend on wetlands for the survival of your species. Got it.

[astralis]

I'm not really sure that you have a consistent worldview if changing a candidate in one election is going to permanently cause a generation of change in one direction or the other. There are too many veto points in the system and Senators in particular are able to defy their own parties enough to defy these kinds of major changes. Interest groups don't mind playing strange bedfellows. Voters themselves are extremely fickle, both in terms of turnout and preference. Partisanship is high. Almost 10% of Obama voters ended up voting for Trump in 2016. We had several cycles where Ross Perot got a huge amount of the vote.

it's a completely consistent worldview.

given the respective coalitions, the Democrats are badly screwed by the very design of the US Senate, and to a lesser degree the House. the Dem base is essentially the cities, with ongoing electoral competition in the suburbs. political power is hugely concentrated in heavily-populated small areas, while the Senate represents territorial size.

now, the Dems have general demographics in their favor, but as the Republicans demonstrated in 2010 and 2014, this can be counteracted to some extent with gerrymandering.

so, given these two factors, we have the situation where one massive Dem wave in 2018 -still- led to the GOP picking up 2 Senate seats; with another expected Dem wave, a very slim Senate majority starting in 2021.

these inherent political advantages are such that it takes repeated landslide victories by the Dems to wrangle a moderate lead, whereas it would just take one large-but-not-landslide GOP victory to create a significant lead.

the biggest reason why Dems are so competitive now is because of the ridiculously incompetent administration response to COVID. even with Donald Trump insulting friend and foe, being an obvious danger to national security, being corrupt to the core, and having the discipline of a two-year old-- he was competitive all the way up until April of this year, and even now still has roughly a 15-20% chance of winning this.

absent this set of fairly unique circumstances, the Congressional GOP would likely be holding onto the reins of power for a good long time to come.

[tbm3fan]

You should take a theatrical flourish with a grain of salt, but the Millennial generation is hyper-left compared to other generations, and irrationally skeptical of business.

Riiight, whatever you think of yourself...

[TopHatter]

An explosive New York Post story that's sending Trumpworld into a frenzy is riddled with holes and red flags

• Trumpworld flew into a frenzy on Wednesday after the New York Post published a report purporting to show a "smoking-gun email" featuring Hunter Biden communicating with a Ukrainian official about meeting with his father, Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee.
• The Post's story had several red flags and holes that raise questions about its authenticity. The most glaring questions are whether the emails described in the story are legitimate, how they were uncovered, and how the Post obtained them.
• The Post's report said that an unidentified computer-repair-shop owner discovered the emails and other compromising material about Hunter Biden after an unidentified person dropped off a water-damaged laptop last year to be repaired but never picked it up.
• The repair shop owner was later identified as John Paul Mac Isaac, an avid Trump supporter who told several reporters who tracked him down that Trump's impeachment was a "sham." Isaac also did not have a clear grasp on the timeline of events that he initially described to the Post.
• The Post said it learned of the emails' existence last month through Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, and obtained them through Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer.
• Both men have routinely pushed conspiracy theories about the Biden campaign's ties to Ukraine, and Giuliani met last year with a Ukrainian official who was sanctioned in September and accused of acting as a Russian agent.
• In all, one expert said, the way the story was published appears to showcase "a standard tactic in disinformation operations."

Trumpworld flew into a frenzy on Wednesday morning after the New York Post published what it described as a "smoking-gun email" showing Hunter Biden communicating with a Ukrainian official about meeting with his father, Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee.

The Post said that in one email in May 2014, about a month after Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings, Vadym Pozharskyi, the third-ranking executive at Burisma, emailed him asking for "advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message" or "signal."

In another email on April 17, 2015, the Post said, Pozharskyi thanked Hunter Biden for "inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together," adding, "It's realty an honor and pleasure."

President Donald Trump's allies seized on the report as evidence that the Bidens were in bed with the Ukrainian government and that Hunter Biden took advantage of his position on Burisma's board to link his father with influential Ukrainian officials.

"NEWS: Biden lied when he denied speaking to his 'son [Hunter] about his overseas business dealings,'" tweeted Kellyanne Conway, the former White House counselor.

She said in another tweet that Hunter Biden joined the board "shortly after Obama put Joe Biden in charge of US relations with Ukraine." She added that the Post's report showed "Burisma's No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for 'advice on how you could use your INFLUENCE' on the company's behalf."

"Joe Biden is a stone cold corrupt liar," a tweet from the Trump War Room account said. In another tweet, it said that "Joe Biden thinks the American people are suckers."

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley latched onto the story as well, tweeting: "Joe Biden using his office to benefit a Ukrainian oligarch after he said he didn't. He is going to need to answer questions about this."

But a closer examination of the Post's story raises several red flags.

Are the emails authentic? How were they uncovered? And how did the Post obtain them?
The most glaring questions are whether the emails are authentic, how they were uncovered, and how the Post obtained them.

The report said that in April 2019, an unidentified person dropped off a water-damaged MacBook Pro with the emails and other compromising material about Hunter Biden at an unidentified repair shop in Delaware, the Biden family's home state. The report said the repair shop's owner provided that information, but it did not give details on his identity.

The owner of the repair shop said that he wasn't sure the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden but that the machine had a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation, the report said.

The Post's report said that the person who dropped off the water-damaged laptop "never paid for the service or retrieved it or a hard drive on which its contents were stored, according to the shop owner, who said he tried repeatedly to contact the client."

The shop's owner then contacted federal authorities about the laptop and the hard drive, the story said. The article also included a photo described as a federal court subpoena showing that the FBI seized the computer and the hard drive in December. But it's unclear why the bureau would need to subpoena or seize the hardware after the repair shop's owner alerted authorities to its existence on his own.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A reverse image search of one of the photos in the story indicated that the shop's owner is a man named John Paul Mac Isaac, who is an avid Trump supporter. His shop, called The Mac Shop, is located at 21a Trolley Square in Wilmington. The Post also did not strip the metadata from photos included in the article — a software engineer named Russel Neiss noted that the GPS information embedded in some of the images showed that the repair shop was in the same area.

Isaac did not respond to multiple phone calls and text messages seeking comment. But he later confirmed to several reporters who tracked him down at his shop that he was the source of the story. Isaac also said Trump's impeachment was a "sham" and at one point cited the debunked right-wing conspiracy theory about the murdered Democratic staffer Seth Rich.

The Daily Beast reported that "throughout the entire interview, Isaac switched back and forth from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation that reached out to him."

"At one point, Isaac claimed that he was emailing someone from the FBI about the laptop," the report said. "At another point he claimed a special agent from the Baltimore office had contacted him after he alerted the FBI to the device's existence. At another point, he said the FBI reached out to him for 'help accessing his drive.'"

Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies who recently published a book called "Active Measures" that focuses on the history of disinformation, said that the way the purported emails surfaced in the first place was dubious.

"This here is highly suspicious behavior," Rid tweeted after the Post's story was published. "Especially when viewed in the context of a political campaign. Creative, anonymous, credibility-generating, somewhat plausible. Exactly how a professional would surface disinformation and potentially forgeries."

Rid added that the emails featured in the Post's story were published as images rather than in a file format, which "makes it harder to analyze and verify the files."

"Note that photos, which appear to look genuine, could be there simply to add credibility to forged emails surfaced along with the photos. This would be a standard tactic in disinformation operations," he wrote.

"Bottom line: *every individual little fact*—every email, every detail mentioned in an email—must be verified when data is surfaced in such a suspicious way, not just one piece of information, say a photo. It appears that The New York Post did not do that here."

Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon resurface
More important, the report said, the repair shop's owner made a copy of the hard drive and turned it over to Robert Costello, a defense attorney who represents former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, before giving the computer and the hard drive to the feds.

Giuliani, Trump's personal defense lawyer, is the focus of a criminal investigation by the Manhattan US attorney's office into whether he violated foreign lobbying laws in Ukraine.

The same month that the repair shop's owner was said to have given Giuliani's lawyer a copy of the hard drive, Giuliani met with a Ukrainian national named Andrii Derkach to discuss efforts to obtain damaging information on Joe Biden before the 2020 election. At the time, the House of Representatives was also conducting an impeachment inquiry into Trump centered on his efforts to strongarm the Ukrainian government into launching politically motivated investigations targeting the Bidens.

The US Treasury last month sanctioned Derkach, saying he acted as a Russian agent and spread disinformation related to the election. Politico's Natasha Bertrand said on Wednesday that Derkach had been circulating misleading and deceptively edited material targeting Joe Biden for nearly a year.

Late last month, the Post's story said, Steve Bannon told the outlet about the existence of the hard drive. Bannon is the former White House chief strategist and previously served as the Trump campaign's CEO and the head of the far-right website Breitbart News.

The Post said Giuliani gave it a copy of the drive on Sunday, nearly a year after his lawyer was said to have been given a copy of it.

The Los Angeles Times reporter Chris Megerian tweeted that when he asked Giuliani on Wednesday morning how long he'd had a copy of the hard drive, Giuliani responded: "Your interested in the wrong thing. This time the truth will not be defeated by process. I've got a lot more to go. We just started. Print a headline saying Lyin' Joe and we can talk."

The content of the emails
Then there's the content of the emails themselves.

In the alleged April 2015 email to Hunter Biden, Pozharskyi thanks the vice president's son for inviting him to Washington, DC, to meet with the elder Biden. But there's no evidence Pozharskyi actually met Joe Biden.

The Post then laid out an apparently explosive timeline: Less than eight months after Pozharskyi thanked Hunter Biden for the introduction, Joe Biden pressed the Ukrainian government to oust the prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin by "threatening to withhold a $1 billion US loan guarantee during a December 2015 trip" to Kyiv.

"I looked at them and said: I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money," Joe Biden said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018. "Well, son of a bitch. He got fired."

The Post highlighted that when he was fired, Shokin had said that he had "specific plans" to investigate Burisma that "included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden."

The implication — which Trump, Giuliani, and their allies in the right-wing media have repeatedly floated — is that Joe Biden had Shokin fired to stymie an explosive criminal investigation into Burisma Holdings, whose board Hunter Biden was on at the time.

However, as Business Insider reported last year, there's a big issue with that theory.

Government officials and Ukrainian anticorruption advocates said Shokin had hampered the investigation into Burisma long before Joe Biden even stepped into the picture, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In other words, Biden was doing the opposite of what Trump and Giuliani have implied: He was trying to oust a prosecutor who was slow-walking the investigation into Burisma, rather than actively targeting the company.

Western diplomats have also said Shokin effectively shut down one such investigation into Burisma's founder in the UK by refusing to cooperate with authorities. And Bloomberg reported that the Burisma investigation was largely dormant when Biden called for Shokin to be fired.

Most important, Biden represented the US's official position on the matter, one that was shared by many other Western governments and anticorruption activists in Ukraine, The Associated Press reported.

The emails laid out in the Post's story also weren't included in a controversial report released last month by two Republican Senate chairmen about the details of Hunter Biden's work in Ukraine.

Regardless, the conservative media and political sphere touted the Post's story on Wednesday as incontrovertible evidence that the president was right when he accused Biden of catering to corrupt Ukrainian interests to protect his son.

The story gained little traction among more reputable sources, and Facebook said shortly after the article was published that it would slow its spread on the platform until third-party fact-checkers could verify its authenticity.

"While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners," tweeted Andy Stone, a Facebook representative. "In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform."

Later, Twitter also took action to limit the spread of the story on its platform by blocking users from linking to the Post's report, citing company rules against posting hacked material.
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I'm rather shocked and dismayed that surfgun didn't immediately jump on this one.

I guess the New York Post isn't sufficiently right-wing for him.

[tbm3fan]

and I bought a used cell phone, purported to have been used by a Trump family member, off of eBay and the memory wasn't erased. Whoa, baby, look out I'm going to become dangerous...laughing madly out loud!

[DOR]

Has anyone asked John Paul Mac Isaac why he was rummaging around in his client’s email? I don’t care if he got paid or not; that’s one hell of a problem right there.