American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

He had a much bigger lead before iirc. It could continue to close and a strong turnout in FL (which you know team Hill is going to invest heavily in) could = squeaker upset.

eh I wouldn't hold my breath

We're stuck rooting for bland, centrist senatorial candidates in Florida and Ohio and elsewhere

This hasn't helped Strickland in Ohio:

Early money, amplified by the support from outside groups, allowed for shock and awe. Through the end of this June, as an illustration, Portman and his allies spent $31.7 million compared to $11.4 million from Strickland and his supporters.
Strickland spokesman David Bergstein noted that more money has been spent against Strickland than any Democrat in the country – and, through the summer, that included Clinton. This drove up his negatives. “Senator Portman has spent his career in Washington pushing the agenda of the rich and the powerful at the expense of Ohio’s working families, and these shadowy special interests are trying to buy this Senate seat for their lap dog,” Bergstein said.

from Washington Post

https://politicalwire.com/2016/10/06/bonus-quote-of-the-day-922

now I'm imagining Christie singing Beyonce's "Don't Hurt Yourself"

I'm not.

you're imagining him twerking to "Sorry"?

I pictured him licking K-Lo's hair to "All Night."

If Donald Trump is elected president and Republicans hold onto Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan is bluntly promising to ram a partisan agenda through Capitol Hill next year, with Obamacare repeal and trillion-dollar tax cuts likely at the top of the list. And Democrats would be utterly defenseless to stop them.

Typically, party leaders offer at least the pretense of seeking bipartisanship when discussing their policy plans. But Ryan is saying frankly that Republicans would use budget reconciliation — a powerful procedural tool — to bypass Democrats entirely. It’s the same tool Republicans slammed Democrats for using to pass the 2010 health care law over their objections.

...Both parties have used budget reconciliation in the past. George W. Bush’s trillion-dollar tax cuts were passed under the procedure in 2001 and 2003; Democrats used it in 2010 to finish passing Obamacare, with Republicans rebuking Democrats for running roughshod over the GOP.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/paul-ryan-budget-congress-229216

I find this feed kind of fascinating.

https://twitter.com/rockerthompson

The guy calls himself a progressive in his bio and he has moveon.org as his profile pic. He hates Trump. He thinks Clinton is corrupt. He loves pot. He's pro-choice. He thinks it's "racist" that Luke Cage has an all-black cast and that Kim Kardashian dates more black men than white men. He says things like "nothing says joy quite like being naked on a Sunday smoking while playing a video game" and "An interesting moment when I realized watching two billionaires by both of them needs it its a crime its happening while americans strave" and "call me crazy it makes me uneasy when I post about Hillary. I mean many people are dead connected to them" and "Hillary needa my help after the entire rigging and screwing bernie yeah how About no." He links to news stories about cops trying to run over civilians but also says things like "if black privilege doesn't exist how did Cosby get away with his crimes .."

This is a politics that literally makes no sense to me, I have no idea how to interpret it. What is this guy like in real life? Who is he voting for? What does he really want?

he sounds pretty dumb + confused tbph

Gaze not into the abyss

But Mordy, lots of dumb and confused people, maybe even MOST dumb and confused people, fit neatly into a political slot that I understand; after all, that's the simplest thing to do if you're dumb and confused! Not this guy. But what I'm asking is, maybe there's a political slot I DON'T understand, maybe one I don't even know about, and maybe lots and lots of dumb, confused people are slotted into it!

alt-left

maybe not dumb, just someone you disagree with?

An interesting moment when I realized watching two billionaires by both of them needs it its a crime its happening while americans strave

I've seen people call it the 'harassment left'.

Have you never seen a socially-liberal racist before?

Plenty, of the upscale "I didn't send my child to that public school because, um, TEST SCORES" variety, but this seems novel to me. Like I didn't know there were a lot of Bernie Sanders voters who think "black privilege" is a thing. Maybe I am naive.

maybe not dumb, just someone you disagree with?

― Van Horn Street, Thursday, October 6, 2016 11:16 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel like this needs to be a pop-up post that flashes every time someone decides somebody else is dumb bc they have a different viewpoint

strave it off 1-2-3 and now you can count to 3.

yessssss

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/10/our-future-paul-ryans-hands

Seems a bit too kind to Ryan, despite his protests...Plus he phrases things as an either/or-- when Ryan likes to muddy things and have it both ways(ie., He wants to address poverty and suggests earned income tax credit be increased, BUT paid for by cutting other aid for poor)

Meanwhile a brief filed before Kansas Supreme Court approvingly cites Dred Scott: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/10/19/kansas_cites_dred_scott_to_explain_why_it_can_ban_abortion.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top

Ouch

odd that they'd cite it, but the part they quote is still the standard legal interpretation.

Dred Scott has been a rightwing/pro-life totem for at least 12 years. Dubya mentioned it in one of the 04 debates.

Dred Scott has been a rightwing/pro-life totem for at least 12 140 years. Dubya mentioned it in one of the 04 debates.

Is Dicks Out for Bad Hombre a meme/tshirt yet?

idk where else to put this:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-philippines-idUSKCN12K0AS

The guy is crazy

they don't call him the trump of the philippines for nothing

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/

Long but interesting article that argues that young post-watergate Dems were socially liberal but abandoned economic populism and anti-monopoly, anti-trust views and policies, and that such ideas are only coming back now via Elizabeth Warren...

the Watergate Babies were weaned on campus politics, television, and affluence.

What’s more, the new members were antiwar, not necessarily anti-bank. “Our generation did not know the Depression,” then-Representative Paul Tsongas said. “The populism of the 1930s doesn’t really apply to the 1970s,” argued Pete Stark, a new California member who launched his political career by affixing a giant peace sign onto the roof of the bank he owned...Over the next 40 years, this Democratic generation fundamentally altered American politics. They restructured “campaign finance, party nominations, government transparency, and congressional organization.” They took on domestic violence, homophobia, discrimination against the disabled, and sexual harassment. They jettisoned many racially and culturally authoritarian traditions. They produced Bill Clinton’s presidency directly, and in many ways, they shaped President Barack Obama’s.

The result today is a paradox. At the same time that the nation has achieved perhaps the most tolerant culture in U.S. history, the destruction of the anti-monopoly and anti-bank tradition in the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in a century. This is not what the Watergate Babies intended when they dethroned Patman as chairman of the Banking Committee. But it helped lead them down that path. ...Democrats and Republicans still fought. Neoliberals, while agreeing with Reagan Republicans on a basic view that the structure of corporate America should be as depoliticized and as shielded from voters as possible, still vehemently opposed Ronald Reagan on environmental policy, foreign policy, and taxes. But the very idea of competition policy, of inserting democracy into the economy, made no sense to them. Previously, voters had expected politicians to do something about everything from the price of milk to mortgage rates. Now, neoliberals expressed public power through financial markets. As libertarian and future Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had written a decade before, “The ultimate regulator of competition in a free economy is the capital market.”

I think it goes too easy on Reagan and Bork and Bush, but it's still an interesting read

I think it's a top-down vs bottom-up approach to progressive economic reform. What used to be led by unions now has to be led by federal regulators driven by elected officials and their appointees. The goals haven't changed and the goalposts haven't really moved much - where they have moved, it's because of what the federal executive and judicial branches are capable of, versus what could be done state by state or county by county. There's still a shitload of progressive economic changes that are happening at the local level, in places where that's achievable, but the focus of the Caucus is on national level, federal rules that help us get to egalitarian, gender parity wages and such. When local efforts succeed, they become case studies for "Why not everywhere?" nationwide initiatives.

It's a good article, though I'd say it doesn't just 'go easy' on the right, it almost seems to think they've had no influence at all. The entire political story of the US is told as internal discussions among democrats, that Bill Clinton might have triangulated due to the public or his GOP congress doesn't really factor into it. But it was well researched, fair and interesting.

It gets the New Deal very wrong though. That's why I can't take it seriously.

Plus, the Dems aren't where they were in 1988 or 1978.

Re the New Deal: the South was not a bastion of economic liberals, despite congressional support for the Tennessee Valley Authority. We had something called Jim Crow.

I think he briefly acknowledged the situation in the South but then glossed over it. I think his hero Patman went along with Jim Crow in Texas order to provide economic populism for his white constituents. As Patman's Wikileaks bio and the article noted: [he] was a U.S. Congressman from Texas in Texas's 1st congressional district and chair of the United States House Committee on Banking and Currency (1965–75). A self-styled "populist" he energetically attacked the banks, the banking system, and the Federal Reserve system. He sponsored the Robinson-Patman Act of 1935. It was designed to protect small retail shops against competition from chain stores by fixing a minimum price for retail products

His simplistic take here ignores the Republican Goldwater Southern strategy to get the votes of those white Southern Dems who were leaving the Democratic party because of civil rights. It also omits the role of Republicans and big business in lessening the strength of unions:

When RFK died, Democrats nominated New Deal populist and Vietnam War supporter Humphrey, which split the party between the new-left youth activists and the labor-influenced party regulars—leading to the turbulent 1968 national convention. After Humphrey’s loss to Nixon, Democrats formed the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, also known as the McGovern-Fraser Commission, which sought to heal and restructure the party. With the help of strategist Fred Dutton, Democrats forged a new coalition. By quietly cutting back the influence of unions, Dutton sought to eject the white working class from the Democratic Party, which he saw as “a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote.” The future, he argued, lay in a coalition of African Americans, feminists, and affluent, young, college-educated whites. In 1972, George McGovern would win the Democratic nomination with this very coalition, and many of the Watergate Babies entering office just three years later gleaned their first experiences in politics on his campaign.

Here's where I recommend Ira Katznelson's Fear Itself, a history of Southern support for the New Deal and how the poorest region in the country accepted the ND's more redistributive programs while denying those services to blacks.

On Tuesday night I happened to read the part in Joseph Lelyveld's His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt were 'assistant president' Jimmy Byrnes, future segregationalist governor of South Carolina, bases his case on joining the ticket as FDR's running mate on the argument that only a Southerner could fight the poll tax.

*sigh*

http://cookpolitical.com/house/charts/race-ratings

i'm reading Fear Itself right now (well i put it down for a bit cos it's a slog), i'd say his point about the southern political class was that they *were* very left economically! but they were at the same time passionately anticommunist, generally anti-union and of course totally committed to white supremacy. a weird blend but yes there were very anti-bank, pro-redistribution

the crazy opening detail about the italian fascist air force pilot leading a squadron across the atlantic to rapturous applause everywhere was fucking mindbending btw. amazing book.

Saw this take by a Ohio State prof Kevin Boyle in his NY Times review of Fear Itself

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/books/review/fear-itself-by-ira-katznelson.html?_r=0

It’s a powerful argument, swept along by Katznelson’s robust prose and the imposing scholarship that lies behind it. Only at the very end of the book, though, does he acknowledge another side of the story. For all its compromises, the New Deal gave millions of Americans a sense of belonging — a sense of rights — they’d never had before. That sense swept through the industrial working class, where union buttons suddenly became badges of honor. It swept through all those ethnic communities that until the 1930s had been treated as not quite American. And despite the racial dynamics Katznelson so ably describes, it swept through African-­American communities too.

No doubt that’s why Bubbeh Frima saw Roosevelt as such a towering figure, because where she lived up in Washington Heights, America seemed a better place than it had been before he took office. That’s also why, just a few years after Roosevelt’s death, Jim Crow began to come tumbling down, shattered by a social movement that had been invigorated by the promise, if not necessarily the practice, of the New Deal era. Roosevelt can’t be given credit for that extraordinary triumph, of course; that belongs to the men, women and children who risked their lives on the streets of the South. But he played a role, however indirect. And any assessment of his legacy has to set that fact alongside the concessions that marred his administration and blighted our less than perfect union.

i'm reading Fear Itself right now (well i put it down for a bit cos it's a slog),

aw man I raced through it – it would have taken a Theodore Bilbo for me to put it down

holy shit @ kirk/duckworth debate. wtf is wrong with him