Trump's Card

[Tubby Isaacs]

Al Franken has some questions for Jeff Sessions.

Though Not a moment too soon.

He doesn't fuck about, Franken.

I'm surprised he supported invading Iraq, given that most Democratic congressmen didn't.

[Satchmo Distel]

If the DOJ wants to attack the livelihood of civil rights attorneys, I would hope there are some deep pockets that will take the fight to the end. Note the hypocrisy of the federal government sticking its oar into state battles just because it's pro-life zealots lost.

[Hot Pepsi]

Be interested in US poster's views on this

As I said on FB

Too much of the candidates' time and energy is devoted to fundraising and most of this comes from a small group of rich people who expect something for their investment. That Clinton is better at fundraising isn't really a credit to her character, although its obviously a necessary evil right now.

Brazille's statements, to the Post at least, show that the DNC and, to a some extent, Clinton's campaign were/are poorly run and wasted a lot of money that could be better spent on local and state parties and grassroots operations. Brazille may not see that she's part of that problem too, but she is. The DNC needs to clean house, but it hasn't. DWS was fucking awful, but I don't see that the situation has improved.

Bernie ran because nobody else was talking about the things he was talking about. Nobody, including him, expected to do so well. He wasn't a great candidate, and I can see why women and POC are skeptical of him, but he at least forced Clinton to address important economic issues and he energized a lot of young people who are rightly sick of the old DNC power brokers telling them to accept half-ass centrist solutions to pressing problems.

Centrists and those in the tank for Hillary whine that he's not a real Democrat, ignoring the much bigger problem that our system only permits two parties and both of them are right wing.

But what is most upsetting about the primaries is how all the other more "establishment" Democrats and donors just cleared the field for Clinton instead of creating a more competitive primary and seeing if we could find somebody who could do a better job driving voter turnout and who could do better in Midwestern states. The Republicans did that and produced a new Mussolini. But he won. They found what their voters wanted by actually asking.

The Democrats just foisted Hillary on us and said take it or leave it, and a ton of people decided not to vote at all as a result.

Total lack of imagination and courage.

[San Bernardhinault]

Although Tubby and the media are all much more concerned with the (fairly close) Virginia governor's election, because the polls are a little variable and there's an outside chance of a Republican win, remember that the most important election this week is actually in New Jersey.

Fortunately, it's not close, but who gets to replace Chris Christie is critical.

Because New Jersey's senator Bob Menendez is on trial for corruption. The NJ governor gets to choose who replaces a senator if they're forced to resign, and it's absolutely essential that a Democrat makes that choice if Menendez has to step down. Although even a Democratic win might not save us - we have to wait until mid January before Christie's lame duck period ends: Menendez will still need to hold on for another 2 month.

[Tubby Isaacs]

There are some strong responses to that stuff about the campaign. I don't get it really.

Another thing I'll never get is how senators don't have to fight special elections immediately. We don't often have MPs for corruption- Patrick Mercer (Con, Newark) did a couple of years ago. It would be incredible for there not to have been a by-election, but rather a nomination by the Leader of Lincolnshire Council. Then again, the by-election was awful for Labour and the writing on the wall for Miliband.

[Lang Spoon]

A state governor is a wee bit more powerful than the leader of Lincolnshire County Council Tubbs. All them Madisonian Constitutinal checks and balances, between the Federal center and the States, innit? Which are now completely broken as the two party system got its culture war on.

[ursus arctos]

It's grounded in the fact that Senators have always been seen as representatives of their states, rather than participants in national government.

Recall that popular election of Senators didn't become the rule everywhere as a result of the 17th Amendment until 1913, and that there are contemporary Republicans who believe that we should go back to having them selected by governors or state legislatures .

[Tubby Isaacs]

I gather 2/3 of various things is the magic number for changing constitutions. 1913 is a long time ago. Has this ever got near being changed?

[ursus arctos]

Repeal of the 17th Amendment is on the agenda of some of those advocating a new Constitutional Convention.

I’m not aware of there ever having been a movement to compel immediate special elections for seats in Congress.

In a country where Confederate War Memorials are a major issue in the Virginia Gubernatorial Election, 1913 isn’t long ago at all.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That's true.

Latest poll has 63% non-college whites voting for the Republican in Virginia.

[Femme Folle]

MAGA

Many Are Getting Arrested

Next in the Mueller Boardroom on Presidential Apprentice: Mike Flynns Jr & Sr

[anton pulisov]

Pelosi this morning more or less took impeachment off the table, should the Dems take back Congress next year. Trump must have committed at least a dozen impeachable offenses by now.

This is what I mean about Democratic irrelevance in the face of an opposing party unwilling to police itself and set limits on acceptable behavior. She's probably right from a political standpoint; impeachment by a Democratic Congress (party line vote) wouldn't improve the landscape. Trump is a poster boy for why the impeachment clause exists, but the two-party setup isn't equipped to deal with it anymore.

They're banking on Trump being such a terrible presidential candidate, and people so pissed off at the Republicans for going along with him, that they'll win everything in 2020.

That was their tactic in 2016 as well, I wonder how that worked out.

[Tubby Isaacs]

From the Tax Policy Centre:

This paper updates an analysis of Hillary Clinton’s tax proposals, which would raise taxes on high-income taxpayers, increase the child tax credit, modify taxation of multinational corporations, reform capital gains taxes, and increase estate and gift taxes. Her proposals would increase revenue by $1.4 trillion over the next decade. Nearly all of the tax increases would fall on the highest-income 1 percent; on average, low- and middle-income households would see small increases in after-tax income. Marginal tax rates would increase for high-income filers, reducing incentives to work, save, and invest, and the tax code would become more complex.

That sounds pretty worthwhile to me, for just the Federal bit. That's not just banking on Trump being unpopular, that's making nearly everybody better off.

[Tubby Isaacs]

By contrast, cost of Bush tax cuts- $1.5 trillion.

If people vote for more of that, against their interests, it's not really anybody else's fault.

[anton pulisov]

By contrast, cost of Bush tax cuts- $1.5 trillion.

If people vote for more of that, against their interests, it's not really anybody else's fault.

Indeed, at the end of the day you get what you vote for.

However, the realist in me says that most people don't tend to vote based on statistical estimates of purchasing power changes caused by candidate policy as calculated by the tax policy centre. They tend to vote based on how connected they feel with the candidate. And, for the foreseeable future, that's unfortunately an element of democracy that we'll have to continue to deal with. The Democrats were positively giddy when Trump became the Republican candidate, they were convinced they would trounce him with their superstar Secretary of State candidate. Well, it turns out they were wrong. I guess one option is to just blame the voters and continue as normal.

The best solution would be to scrap politicians, campaign slogans and manifestos altogether, and just have people vote for rival Excel sheets. I'd be all for that, but I don't see politicians voting to scrap politicians any time soon.

[Hot Pepsi]

I'm willing to forgive the Democratic establishment for wanting Hillary. She was the most qualified candidate if not the most charismatic. She would've made a good president apart from being undermined by the Republicans, which would have applied equally to any Democratic president. Again, the only story worth focusing on in my opinion is the dance of death that Republicans have been locked in for years now, which makes efforts on the Democratic side practically irrelevant. We needed to face the reality that our voting public would elect someone as terrible as Trump, who's a gangster in all but name, over a vastly more qualified and plausible candidate. It's that public that is making the GOP stranglehold on Washington possible.

I'm not willing to credit Republican savvy for picking a viable candidate in Trump. Most if not all were at least privately against him. He's just the tiger that they created and are trying to ride. They didn't "find" what their voters wanted by asking; it found them. Reaping what they sowed and all that.

It's not savvy at all. It was the invisible hand of the lowest common denominator. The GOP establishment tried hard to stop Trump, but the overall mood of the electorate is to defy "elites," so now is not a good time for those elites to be handpicking the candidate. The party leaders may pick a less-terrible candidate, but they tend to pick candidates that the few people are enthusiastic about.

And that's the thing about US politics. Its not about poll numbers, its about turnout. And with all the GOP's voter suppression, its imperative that the Democrats run candidates that people will wait in line for.

I believe Martin OMalley could have beat Trump if given a chance. He's a boring kinda blue collar white guy. He wouldn't get women as excited as Hillary did, but then I think most of those "I'm with her" types would have voted for whomever the Democrat was. O'Malley wouldnt be a popular choice with BLM, but then Hillary didn't get great turnout from black voters anyway and he would have attracted a lot more low-information white working class people away from Trump.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Indeed, at the end of the day you get what you vote for.

However, the realist in me says that most people don't tend to vote based on statistical estimates of purchasing power changes caused by candidate policy as calculated by the tax policy centre. They tend to vote based on how connected they feel with the candidate. And, for the foreseeable future, that's unfortunately an element of democracy that we'll have to continue to deal with. The Democrats were positively giddy when Trump became the Republican candidate, they were convinced they would trounce him with their superstar Secretary of State candidate. Well, it turns out they were wrong. I guess one option is to just blame the voters and continue as normal.

The best solution would be to scrap politicians, campaign slogans and manifestos altogether, and just have people vote for rival Excel sheets. I'd be all for that, but I don't see politicians voting to scrap politicians any time soon.

Did you think people would feel "connected" to Trump? Honestly?

And obviously, I don't think people look at what the Tax Policy Center say. But the point I'm making was that it was pretty good in its own right. Maybe you can promise them extravagant growth rates and they connect with you, I don't know.

[Nefertiti2]

you can promise them racism and stop other people from voting.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I liked this.

It really is amazing to watch this chaotic horror show play out at the highest levels of a great nation’s government. But I guess this is what you have to expect when you hand over the reins of power to a con man, whose whole career has been based on convincing naïve marks that he’s a brilliant deal maker, but turns out to have no idea how to actually govern.

Oh, wait — did you think I was talking about Donald Trump? I’m talking about Paul Ryan

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/o...paul-ryan.html

[Tubby Isaacs]

We've got the same shit here with UKIP. Elites are people that read books, not people who inherit massive amounts of money.

[Gerontophile]

I know (or think I know) that there's no real evidence the election was stolen by vote tampering, but I still wouldn't be surprised if it was. It's the sort of crime that would only work if they could cover their tracks. People used to jump like the house was on fire about electronic voting machines, but then the issue went away.

Read about Mike Farb.

[ursus arctos]

It's harder to understand how he's seen as anything other than an elite. Talks stupidly and has shit taste in food, I guess.

He was also the "star" of a reality show for more than a decade.

[Nefertiti2]

Forget about voting machines- though I have my suspicions

There's quite a lot of evidence of algorithm driven gerrymandering

[Tubby Isaacs]

Is there any chance of a head of political steam getting behind releasing Trump's tax returns, now that they're doing tax reform? Or is that some sort of anorak argument?

[Femme Folle]

On his show, the celebrity version, at least, he would give money to charity. Intelligent people have known all along that it was NBC's money, not trump's personally, but I'm sure that made him seem like a great person who cares about people to a lot of the MAGA folks.