Politics

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grovester
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Re: Politics

Post by grovester »

It's already flipped some senate polls.

While Democrats may have had 60 senators at various points, not sure there has ever been 60 votes to codify Roe.

Moderates used to be really moderate.
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Re: Politics

Post by phuqueue »

Don't know what to make of the idea that the Dems "raise too much money" off of abortion -- we got to this place in large part because Dems didn't give a shit about protecting abortion, through some combination of hubris (longstanding assumption that SCOTUS couldn't/wouldn't overturn) and it not personally mattering to most Dem politicians (mostly male, mostly old, mostly rich enough to go get an abortion somewhere else if it were ever really needed). They can barely even bring themselves to use the word "abortion" for fear of offending the ~30% of anti-Roe Americans whom they imagine to be a majority. It's the right that has been fundraising off of it forever while Dems continued to welcome anti-abortionists into the party (Nancy Pelosi just threw the Dem establishment's weight behind Henry Cuellar to fight off a primary challenge in this cycle despite also the FBI investigation of him).

While it would be nice to see the Dems get younger, it doesn't seem like it is going to matter who they run in 2024 with SCOTUS now poised to kill off the final remains of whatever once passed for "democracy" in America in their next term. Pretty soon we won't even need to ask questions like "what effect will ripping fundamental rights away from millions of people have on the horse race" since the outcome will be preordained.
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Re: Politics

Post by DColeKC »

^ My point is both parties use the topic to raise money but not actually do anything... Until now. Reagan obliged the evangelical christian community saying he would overturn Roe. They pushed that to raise money and when they got close, they accepted defeat. This happened despite Reagan not actually wanting to overturn Roe, mainly due to his wife's pro-life stance.

IF politicians actually make changes, the big ones that we all want, they don't have any crisis to dribble out there for fund raising.

Both parties could use some young blood and not the AOC type. She's ineffective but popular. Always talking about history while clearly not understanding the history.
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Re: Politics

Post by FangKC »

Biden says he supports an ‘exception’ to the Senate's rules to allow Democrats to pass abortion protections

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... -rcna36108
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Re: Politics

Post by ericwyner »

DColeKC wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:27 pm Will the abortion topic be a big mover of votes? I tend to think not.

Both parties are to blame for this but it's hard to not place blame of dems for failing to codify Roe. They just raise too much money off the topic.
Both raise money off the issue
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Anthony_Hugo98
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Re: Politics

Post by Anthony_Hugo98 »

FangKC wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:28 pm Biden says he supports an ‘exception’ to the Senate's rules to allow Democrats to pass abortion protections

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... -rcna36108
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Re: Politics

Post by ericwyner »

DColeKC wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:27 pm Will the abortion topic be a big mover of votes? I tend to think not.

Both parties are to blame for this but it's hard to not place blame of dems for failing to codify Roe. They just raise too much money off the topic.
it depends on what's in the headlines
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Re: Politics

Post by phuqueue »

DColeKC wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:21 pm ^ My point is both parties use the topic to raise money but not actually do anything... Until now. Reagan obliged the evangelical christian community saying he would overturn Roe. They pushed that to raise money and when they got close, they accepted defeat. This happened despite Reagan not actually wanting to overturn Roe, mainly due to his wife's pro-life stance.

IF politicians actually make changes, the big ones that we all want, they don't have any crisis to dribble out there for fund raising.

Both parties could use some young blood and not the AOC type. She's ineffective but popular. Always talking about history while clearly not understanding the history.
I understand what your point is but I don’t think it’s accurate on either count. On the Dem side, I can’t say nobody has ever donated to them over abortion, and I’m sure some candidates who were explicitly running on protecting abortion rights have raised money for their campaigns off of it, but the idea that the Dem party at large has been fundraising off of it in any deliberate or systematic way for any meaningful amount of time is silly. Most of them shy away from even using the word when they can avoid it. They have not prioritized it in their platform and have been happy to welcome in and fundraise for anti-choicers. They failed to codify Roe because they don’t care about abortion and are afraid of spotlighting it, not because it is their cash cow.

On the GOP side, the idea that they haven’t done anything to overturn Roe until now is totally baseless. Whether Reagan personally wanted it overturned or not, the party as a whole has been methodically working toward this point for decades. It took this long because it was a tremendously difficult fight, not because they were simply fundraising off of it with no intention of following through (though, again, this could have been true of some individuals). They’ve been throwing everything they could think of at the wall in the states to see what would stick, which is how they successfully chipped away at Roe for years and made getting an abortion incredibly difficult across broad swaths of the country long before the right itself was formally rescinded. For millions of people, the Dobbs decision is largely symbolic — they’d have had to travel hundreds of miles, potentially to another state, to secure an abortion long before this case came along. That’s not just how things have always been, that’s the result of relentless efforts on the GOP side to do what Republicans most love doing, subjugating people who are not white men.

I am plenty cynical about politicians, but the idea that they do what they do for fundraising purposes strikes me as less explanatory than that that are simply using their power to prioritize the things that matter to them personally, which are not necessarily the things that matter to the people who elected them (especially in the case of Dems). They can do this largely insulated from reprisal because we have an inherently, intentionally minoritarian system designed to protect the powerful and privileged. And it’s going to get much worse after SCOTUS issues their ruling in the Moore case. To describe the implications of Moore sounds like hysteria, but it really could be the end of competitive federal elections. I realize that’s a different tangent but I guess I’m going to keep beating that drum because it could be a monumentally consequential decision and much more important than speculating about the horse race (which it could render obsolete anyway).
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Re: Politics

Post by im2kull »

Goonies wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 11:09 pm
FangKC wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:57 pm Former Republican Senator John Danforth is actively seeking an independent to run in the Missouri Senate race.

https://missouriindependent.com/2022/06 ... -missouri/
85 years old. The GOP establishment keeps trying to run these fossils to derail the Trumplicans and they keep losing. It's rather humorous. That part of the GOP became out of touch nearly 2 decades ago.
It's not just a GOP thing. Have you seen the DEM president?
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Re: Politics

Post by DColeKC »

phuqueue wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 11:50 pm
DColeKC wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:21 pm ^ My point is both parties use the topic to raise money but not actually do anything... Until now. Reagan obliged the evangelical christian community saying he would overturn Roe. They pushed that to raise money and when they got close, they accepted defeat. This happened despite Reagan not actually wanting to overturn Roe, mainly due to his wife's pro-life stance.

IF politicians actually make changes, the big ones that we all want, they don't have any crisis to dribble out there for fund raising.

Both parties could use some young blood and not the AOC type. She's ineffective but popular. Always talking about history while clearly not understanding the history.
I understand what your point is but I don’t think it’s accurate on either count. On the Dem side, I can’t say nobody has ever donated to them over abortion, and I’m sure some candidates who were explicitly running on protecting abortion rights have raised money for their campaigns off of it, but the idea that the Dem party at large has been fundraising off of it in any deliberate or systematic way for any meaningful amount of time is silly. Most of them shy away from even using the word when they can avoid it. They have not prioritized it in their platform and have been happy to welcome in and fundraise for anti-choicers. They failed to codify Roe because they don’t care about abortion and are afraid of spotlighting it, not because it is their cash cow.

On the GOP side, the idea that they haven’t done anything to overturn Roe until now is totally baseless. Whether Reagan personally wanted it overturned or not, the party as a whole has been methodically working toward this point for decades. It took this long because it was a tremendously difficult fight, not because they were simply fundraising off of it with no intention of following through (though, again, this could have been true of some individuals). They’ve been throwing everything they could think of at the wall in the states to see what would stick, which is how they successfully chipped away at Roe for years and made getting an abortion incredibly difficult across broad swaths of the country long before the right itself was formally rescinded. For millions of people, the Dobbs decision is largely symbolic — they’d have had to travel hundreds of miles, potentially to another state, to secure an abortion long before this case came along. That’s not just how things have always been, that’s the result of relentless efforts on the GOP side to do what Republicans most love doing, subjugating people who are not white men.

I am plenty cynical about politicians, but the idea that they do what they do for fundraising purposes strikes me as less explanatory than that that are simply using their power to prioritize the things that matter to them personally, which are not necessarily the things that matter to the people who elected them (especially in the case of Dems). They can do this largely insulated from reprisal because we have an inherently, intentionally minoritarian system designed to protect the powerful and privileged. And it’s going to get much worse after SCOTUS issues their ruling in the Moore case. To describe the implications of Moore sounds like hysteria, but it really could be the end of competitive federal elections. I realize that’s a different tangent but I guess I’m going to keep beating that drum because it could be a monumentally consequential decision and much more important than speculating about the horse race (which it could render obsolete anyway).
And you honestly don't think the left subjugates entire populations of people? They literally want more government control vs a republican platform that while very flawed, has long been for smaller government and more states rights. Democrats often want to simply toss out the constitution and pretend we don't even have any basic founding principals.

I've got beef with both sides but the bottom line is Democrats have done just as much, if not more harm to this country than Republicans.
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Re: Politics

Post by DColeKC »

im2kull wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 1:57 am
Goonies wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 11:09 pm
FangKC wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:57 pm Former Republican Senator John Danforth is actively seeking an independent to run in the Missouri Senate race.

https://missouriindependent.com/2022/06 ... -missouri/
85 years old. The GOP establishment keeps trying to run these fossils to derail the Trumplicans and they keep losing. It's rather humorous. That part of the GOP became out of touch nearly 2 decades ago.
It's not just a GOP thing. Have you seen the DEM president?
The real question is how much longer can they wheel him out there? I simply can't imagine that man making it another 4 years in office.
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Re: Politics

Post by earthling »

Biden needs to step down for next election but GOP needs a serious overhaul from the extreme. Down here in Florida the GOP empowers those who believe it's a patriotic duty to strongly harass anyone who doesn't fit their identity. Both parties need to step back from the social wars and actually govern. Keep the playing field fair for all, not just those in power. That means candidates willing to compromise.
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Re: Politics

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earthling wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 12:15 pm Biden needs to step down for next election but GOP needs a serious overhaul from the extreme. Down here in Florida the GOP empowers those who believe it's a patriotic duty to strongly harass anyone who doesn't fit their identity. Both parties need to step back from the social wars and actually govern. Keep the playing field fair for all, not just those in power. That means candidates willing to compromise.
No way will Biden run again. He's accomplished the impossible in becoming as unpopular as his predecessor and has no chance of winning another election which should frighten everyone if Trump runs and gets the nomination. The democrats will find themselves in a tough spot coming into the 2024 election in what will most likely be a recession that many believe (rightly or wrongly) was caused by their policies. The dems will need to back off some of the more extreme progressive positions if they want to even have a chance and find a candidate that is dynamic and promising enough to beat Trump or DeSantis. I'm not sure that person is a known entity in the democratic party at this particular moment. Unfortunately, I do not see the political landscape becoming more civil any time in the future. I don't even try to engage in politics with my conservative friends anymore - it just doesn't ever go anywhere worth going.
Last edited by Highlander on Fri Jul 01, 2022 1:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Politics

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

Highlander wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 1:44 pm
No way will Biden run again. He's accomplished the impossible in becoming as unpopular as his predecessor and has no chance of winning another election which should frighten everyone if Trump runs and gets the nomination.
In 2020 after the first few Democrat primaries Biden was close to the rear of the pack. But look at what happened, got the nomination and beat Trump. Even just a few months is a long time in politics and a lot can happen. But should Biden run again? I would say no but the problem with the Democrats who could probably take his place. Yes someone like Obama in 2008 came along but that was definitely a rarity. None of the Dems who ran in 2020 I see no hope in any of them. So who is out there to give Democrats some hope?
At the same time Trump is damaged propertynow and for him likely to get worse. I see a bloodbath for the Republicans in the 2024 primary season.
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Re: Politics

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DColeKC wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 12:07 pm And you honestly don't think the left subjugates entire populations of people? They literally want more government control vs a republican platform that while very flawed, has long been for smaller government and more states rights. Democrats often want to simply toss out the constitution and pretend we don't even have any basic founding principals.

I've got beef with both sides but the bottom line is Democrats have done just as much, if not more harm to this country than Republicans.
This is mostly just meaningless gobbledygook. Neither party's goals are about "more" or "less" government control. Government is just a tool that people use to shape the society that they live in. It isn't the only way to create a society, but it's the one we're using. All of the (usually right-wing) rants about what specific policy areas are or are not properly within the scope of "the role of government" miss this point. So the tension between "big government" Democrats and "small government" Republicans is not actually about the size of the government at all, it's about how the government is used (or not) to create the society each side wants. The GOP establishment has long claimed that small government is necessary for "freedom" to flourish, but whose freedom? Our society is organized mainly along two axes: the political axis and the economic axis. Economically, your individual power in society directly correlates with the amount of economic resources you control. The more money and property you have, the more authority you have to dominate (or escape the domination of) others. Politically, your individual power is supposed to correlate with your vote, and everyone is allocated only one of those so that we are (on paper) equal. Democrats often (not always, it depends on what their specific interests are in the matter in question) seek to strengthen the political axis ("more government"), thereby enhancing democratic control of society. Republicans have historically often (again, not always) sought to weaken the political axis ("small government"/"states rights"), which has the effect of enhancing the economic axis and making people with economic power more powerful overall. But Republicans have not hesitated to toss out "states rights" or "small government" when it has suited them (most recently, Michael Steele just announced that Republicans would pursue a federal abortion ban, yanking this issue back away from the states again and meddling directly in the medical affairs of individuals, just as one particularly salient case; the Moore case that I keep harping on also represents a usurpation by the federal SCOTUS of the state government's role in running its own elections, though it will not be framed that way). Going forward, Trumpier Republicans also don't seem to be nearly as concerned with "small government" as their establishment predecessors, so even the vacuous "more government" vs "less government" imaginary dichotomy is probably going to break down (Dems might even become the "states rights" party once they're locked out of federal power).

I don't think "the left" is at all synonymous with "Democrats," so you should probably decouple those terms in your mind. Leftist politics are, definitionally, concerned with egalitarianism, so the actual left doesn't subjugate anybody (though, sure, lots of political movements have subjugated people under cover of claims to leftist ideals -- but just as nobody believes the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is actually democratic or a republic, what people do is more significant than what they call themselves). The US government, regardless of which party has controlled it (including Democrats), has done a lot of harm to a lot of people both within and without the country. So if your argument is "the Democrats have subjugated people," then sure, they have. But I think you would be hard pressed to name a population the Democrats (referring more generally to the political movement the modern Democrats represent, not "the people who at any given moment in history belonged to the Democratic Party") have sought to subjugate that the Republicans (again, referring to the political movement modern Republicans represent) didn't also want to subjugate (reducing the power of the wealthy is not "subjugation"). There has long been a bipartisan consensus in this country about subjugating lots of people. But again, "Democrats" are not "the left."

Nobody wants to "toss out" the constitution (well, I do, but within the mainstream political parties, nobody does, to our general misfortune). The right likes to claim that the constitution objectively says some specific thing, but it doesn't. It is the shortest national constitution in the world -- its provisions are generally somewhat vague and open-ended, and various parts of it arguably contradict each other (most significantly, clauses that support a strong federal government -- the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Supremacy Clause, etc -- vs. the Tenth Amendment). It is a document designed to allow people with very different views to project onto it what they want it to be, and that's how they were able to adopt it in the first place. "Originalism" is an intellectually bankrupt philosophy. The idea that "the framers" were some kind of hive mind who were of one opinion about the government they would design is ludicrous. The constitution we ended up with was the product of grueling negotiations among people representing conflicting interests. It's very easy to use Originalism to defend right wing ideology by absurdly projecting aspects of the modern world back into the past to draw conclusions about what "the framers" thought about things they clearly couldn't have even contemplated, which is why it is so popular with Republicans now. But Originalism isn't the only way to read the constitution, and Democrats are not "tossing out" the constitution when they toss out Originalism, they're just reading it differently, which the text itself is pretty amenable to. And in their defense, to the extent that the country had "basic founding principles," one of them -- right up there alongside "indigenous people should be exterminated" and "Africans and their descendents are property, not people" -- must have been the necessity of a strong federal government. After all, that's the reason that we're talking about the constituion right now instead of the Articles of Confederation.
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Re: Politics

Post by DColeKC »

Now I'm curious - If you had your way and the constitution was tossed out, what you you want?
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Re: Politics

Post by Anthony_Hugo98 »

Happy 4th everyone!
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Re: Politics

Post by DColeKC »

Anthony_Hugo98 wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:21 am Happy 4th everyone!
Omg. I can’t believe you’d celebrate 4th of July as we continue to rip freedom away from people. (Sarcasm)
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Re: Politics

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DColeKC wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 5:00 pm Now I'm curious - If you had your way and the constitution was tossed out, what you you want?
I don't really have a complete and cohesive vision for a replacement constitution in mind, I just have beef with a lot of provisions of the current constitution (I could start running through some of them -- and how I'd change them -- if you are genuinely interested, but I don't know if your intention was to be assaulted by a giant block of text). High level, the current constitution is antagonistic to small-d democratic control of society, so a replacement should correct that, because government can't be legitimate without the genuine consent of the governed. I think it is worthwhile to wholly replace (rather than just radically amend) the current constitution, even if you could in theory amend and amend and amend it to ultimately meet the same goal, because I think we are also doing ourselves a disservice to treat it like holy scripture handed down from on high, rather than as the blueprint around which our society is constructed. This constitution was drafted 235 years ago and the world has changed drastically since then. I don't think the framers intended to exert dead hand control over the country in perpetuity. It is a document that serves a practical purpose, and it should be updated or discarded as needed to meet that purpose. Jefferson himself wrote somewhat to the same effect in his letter to Samuel Kercheval (where, as early as 1816, he had already identified a lot of the same problems in the constitution that continue to affect us now and have only gotten worse with time).
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Re: Politics

Post by beautyfromashes »

phuqueue wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 2:42 pm I don't really have a complete and cohesive vision for a replacement constitution in mind, I just have beef with a lot of provisions of the current constitution (I could start running through some of them -- and how I'd change them -- if you are genuinely interested, but I don't know if your intention was to be assaulted by a giant block of text). High level, the current constitution is antagonistic to small-d democratic control of society, so a replacement should correct that, because government can't be legitimate without the genuine consent of the governed. I think it is worthwhile to wholly replace (rather than just radically amend) the current constitution, even if you could in theory amend and amend and amend it to ultimately meet the same goal, because I think we are also doing ourselves a disservice to treat it like holy scripture handed down from on high, rather than as the blueprint around which our society is constructed. This constitution was drafted 235 years ago and the world has changed drastically since then. I don't think the framers intended to exert dead hand control over the country in perpetuity. It is a document that serves a practical purpose, and it should be updated or discarded as needed to meet that purpose. Jefferson himself wrote somewhat to the same effect in his letter to Samuel Kercheval (where, as early as 1816, he had already identified a lot of the same problems in the constitution that continue to affect us now and have only gotten worse with time).
I have one major concern with wholesale rewriting of the Constitution---lawyers. They're scavengers. Upon completion and ratification, you would see a massive increase of litigation to challenge every aspect of the new document. It would be a giant "landgrab" for individuals and corporations to gain power and wealth, either through winning court cases or just the many stall techniques that they use in a jumbled system.
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