The Many Faces of US Politics...

[J70]

I was getting flashbacks from 2016 when I looked at 538 around 8pm ET and the odds of the Dems taking the House had dropped from 85% the last few days and up to 6pm, down to 53%!

Then it went up to 65% and back down to mid-50s over the next 90 minutes as more data came in, before finally shooting back up to the high 80s/low 90s around 10pm.

I wasn't expecting anything but a GOP gain in the Senate, but losing the House would have been pretty sickening.

May not have been a "blue wave", but that is partly down to the playing field. Some of those seats the Dems were defending would have been like the GOP defending a NY Senate seat, while the GOP simply has an inbuilt advantage with the nature of the Senate representation and the redistricting they did after 2010.

Despite the Dems winning the House though, I just can't get optimistic. The next two years is just going to be a sickening, partisan storm with Trump right in the centre. I would like to see him and the GOP work together with the Dems on stuff like infrastructure, healthcare and immigration, but it is probably not going to happen. Instead, there will be no compromising, the Muller report will come out, the Dems will start issuing subpoenas and there will be complete legislative gridlock and nastiness. The only thing that will happen is that Mitch McConnell will sit there lining up and rubber stamping ridiculously partisan, right wing judges at all levels of the Federal judiciary and Trump will double down on bigotry and demonization as the next presidential election cycle gets going and struggles with the House committees start making news.

[J70]

Kavanaugh carry on just cost the Democrats about 5 senate seats.....delighted at last nights result

Keep her lit

You not giving Trump credit for his fear and loathing tour the past few weeks?

[seafoid]

Kavanaugh carry on just cost the Democrats about 5 senate seats.....delighted at last nights result

Keep her lit

The Republicans fell hard in conservative-leaning metro areas and big cities, the New York Time's Jonathan Martin points out.

The underlying question being whether Trump's 2016 coalition holds for 2020. Will places like this return to the Republican fold in 2020? Or will Trump's (presumed) presence in that race set up an even sharper repudiation of Trump Republicanism?

Jonathan Martin
(@jmartNYT)
Charleston
Salt Lake
Okla City
KC
Atlanta
Richmond
Va Beach
Houston
Dallas
Des Moines
The OC

The House GOP majority collapsed Tues bc even conservative-leaving metros can't abide Trump Republicanism https://t.co/M4hcudQpCH

[whitey]

Kavanaugh carry on just cost the Democrats about 5 senate seats.....delighted at last nights result

Keep her lit

You not giving Trump credit for his fear and loathing tour the past few weeks?

That may have got a couple of them over the line, but the tide turned in the Republicans favor right after the Kavanaugh battle

[easytiger95]

I was getting flashbacks from 2016 when I looked at 538 around 8pm ET and the odds of the Dems taking the House had dropped from 85% the last few days and up to 6pm, down to 53%!

Then it went up to 65% and back down to mid-50s over the next 90 minutes as more data came in, before finally shooting back up to the high 80s/low 90s around 10pm.

I wasn't expecting anything but a GOP gain in the Senate, but losing the House would have been pretty sickening.

May not have been a "blue wave", but that is partly down to the playing field. Some of those seats the Dems were defending would have been like the GOP defending a NY Senate seat, while the GOP simply has an inbuilt advantage with the nature of the Senate representation and the redistricting they did after 2010.

Despite the Dems winning the House though, I just can't get optimistic. The next two years is just going to be a sickening, partisan storm with Trump right in the centre. I would like to see him and the GOP work together with the Dems on stuff like infrastructure, healthcare and immigration, but it is probably not going to happen. Instead, there will be no compromising, the Muller report will come out, the Dems will start issuing subpoenas and there will be complete legislative gridlock and nastiness. The only thing that will happen is that Mitch McConnell will sit there lining up and rubber stamping ridiculously partisan, right wing judges at all levels of the Federal judiciary and Trump will double down on bigotry and demonization as the next presidential election cycle gets going and struggles with the House committees start making news.

Yep, there is a real roller coaster sense to election watching, ever since the Brexit result.

I would say, though, that you need to embrace the gridlock.

The chief failing of the Obama administration was that they didn't know their enemy. Obama himself used to say that after Obamacare was passed the "fever would break" on the Republican side. Far from it. The Republicans have long since departed from being a party that respects democratic institutions and were on that road a long time before Trump arrived - as per Benghazi, Merrick Garland, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. They are, as it stands, a quasi-fascist party, whose only real path to long term survival is to subvert the electoral system to allow for minority rule.

Noam Chomsky had already identified them as an existential threat, not just to America, but to humanity. He did so again this week.

The upshot of their losses in the House and the gains they have made in the Senate is that any last remaining moderates, a la Corker and Flake (although they were both less than useless and cowardly in their "resistance" to Trump) are gone from Capitol Hill. You now only have Kool Aid drinkers and bitter enders like Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert and the openly fascist Steve king, backed up by swivel eyed loons like Marsha Blackburn et al in the Senate. This is the Gotterdamerung - these guys are dug into the bunker and they will take the Republic down before they go. With Trump gormlessly facilitating them, they have no incentive to change, so even if Dems are foolish enough to offer them any bipartisan deals, you can be guaranteed they will demand poison pill entitlement reform with each one - to clear up a deficit they have created with their tax cut giveaway. They are not interested in governing for anyone outside their own constituency - indeed, a lot of the Evangelicals may not be interested in governing at all, given their lust for the Rapture.

The Republican party as it stands must be utterly defeated. Their numbers must be reduced to such an extent that the process of self analysis that began but was aborted in 2012, will be returned to. That should hopefully lead to a party that can start making a case for conservatism whilst appealing the electorate economically, but also accepting some core truths - diversity is inevitable and should be welcomed, climate change is being exacerbated by man's actions and is an existential threat to our survival, and that unlimited corporate influence in politics is damaging to democracy.

But until then, do not even think about bipartisanship. Remember Garland, the fiscal cliff, their deficit hawkishness, and their subsequent running up of the deficit to transfer wealth to the one percent. They cannot be trusted and should only be defeated.

[seafoid]

I was getting flashbacks from 2016 when I looked at 538 around 8pm ET and the odds of the Dems taking the House had dropped from 85% the last few days and up to 6pm, down to 53%!

Then it went up to 65% and back down to mid-50s over the next 90 minutes as more data came in, before finally shooting back up to the high 80s/low 90s around 10pm.

I wasn't expecting anything but a GOP gain in the Senate, but losing the House would have been pretty sickening.

May not have been a "blue wave", but that is partly down to the playing field. Some of those seats the Dems were defending would have been like the GOP defending a NY Senate seat, while the GOP simply has an inbuilt advantage with the nature of the Senate representation and the redistricting they did after 2010.

Despite the Dems winning the House though, I just can't get optimistic. The next two years is just going to be a sickening, partisan storm with Trump right in the centre. I would like to see him and the GOP work together with the Dems on stuff like infrastructure, healthcare and immigration, but it is probably not going to happen. Instead, there will be no compromising, the Muller report will come out, the Dems will start issuing subpoenas and there will be complete legislative gridlock and nastiness. The only thing that will happen is that Mitch McConnell will sit there lining up and rubber stamping ridiculously partisan, right wing judges at all levels of the Federal judiciary and Trump will double down on bigotry and demonization as the next presidential election cycle gets going and struggles with the House committees start making news.

Yep, there is a real roller coaster sense to election watching, ever since the Brexit result.

I would say, though, that you need to embrace the gridlock.

The chief failing of the Obama administration was that they didn't know their enemy. Obama himself used to say that after Obamacare was passed the "fever would break" on the Republican side. Far from it. The Republicans have long since departed from being a party that respects democratic institutions and were on that road a long time before Trump arrived - as per Benghazi, Merrick Garland, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. They are, as it stands, a quasi-fascist party, whose only real path to long term survival is to subvert the electoral system to allow for minority rule.

Noam Chomsky had already identified them as an existential threat, not just to America, but to humanity. He did so again this week.

The upshot of their losses in the House and the gains they have made in the Senate is that any last remaining moderates, a la Corker and Flake (although they were both less than useless and cowardly in their "resistance" to Trump) are gone from Capitol Hill. You now only have Kool Aid drinkers and bitter enders like Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert and the openly fascist Steve king, backed up by swivel eyed loons like Marsha Blackburn et al in the Senate. This is the Gotterdamerung - these guys are dug into the bunker and they will take the Republic down before they go. With Trump gormlessly facilitating them, they have no incentive to change, so even if Dems are foolish enough to offer them any bipartisan deals, you can be guaranteed they will demand poison pill entitlement reform with each one - to clear up a deficit they have created with their tax cut giveaway. They are not interested in governing for anyone outside their own constituency - indeed, a lot of the Evangelicals may not be interested in governing at all, given their lust for the Rapture.

The Republican party as it stands must be utterly defeated. Their numbers must be reduced to such an extent that the process of self analysis that began but was aborted in 2012, will be returned to. That should hopefully lead to a party that can start making a case for conservatism whilst appealing the electorate economically, but also accepting some core truths - diversity is inevitable and should be welcomed, climate change is being exacerbated by man's actions and is an existential threat to our survival, and that unlimited corporate influence in politics is damaging to democracy.

But until then, do not even think about bipartisanship. Remember Garland, the fiscal cliff, their deficit hawkishness, and their subsequent running up of the deficit to transfer wealth to the one percent. They cannot be trusted and should only be defeated.

I agree.

Given their attitude to climate change the Trumpy GOP are like the Nazis. They have to be removed from the system. As Tammany Hall was.
Maybe change can come from inside because I think trumpism is for losers.
The only way forward is to unite people. Division and polarisation are designed by the 1%.
And we need a new economic system .

[seafoid]

One of the things about now is the return of concepts from the 30s. Deflation. Antisemitism. White nationalism. The Lügenpresse/Fake News/believe what you want.

Yesterday Jim Crow came back. Jim Crow was the systemic disenfranchisement of African Americans in Dixie that only ended in the 1960s.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/575095/

[J70]

Perhaps this should be in the WTF thread, but a dead, pro-Trump, pimp/brothel operator won a state assembly ticket in Nevada as a Republican. 

[sid waddell]

Do all journalists at Trump's rare press conferences have to take a doormat test before being allowed in?

They're pathetic in what they let him away with.

[seafoid]

Do all journalists at Trump's rare press conferences have to take a doormat test before being allowed in?

They're pathetic in what they let him away with.

Why do they even  bother going? All they do is feed him attention.
And he is so mendacious. They should ignore him and focus on what the swine does.


Dan Rather

@DanRather

Any media operation that acts as a stenographer for this president, in headlines or tweets, is at risk for sending false information into the world. There is no joy in saying this, but he lies. And it is the job for all of us not to serve as a megaphone for those lies.

Laurence Tribe

@tribelaw
·
2h

If only press outlets had the guts to go dark on Trump when he's just doing his BS shtick and not making real news, he'd wilt like the wicked witch — like a hologram that comes to life only with the floodlights on. But if wishes were horses . . .

@ezraklein

When Obama gave a careful speech about manufacturing policy, it didn't get live coverage. If Trump promises he's going make good TV by lying about the caravan and slandering immigrants, CNN goes live. "Newsworthy" has to mean more than this.

[Gabriel_Hurl]

Sessions fired as AG

[Oraisteach]

Matthew Whitake is replacing Sessions.  He is on record saying that the Mueller probe has gone too far.

[sid waddell]

Sessions fired as AG

Key word.

Not "has resigned as".

American fascism is mobilising for the putsch.

[dec]

Matthew Whitake is replacing Sessions.  He is on record saying that the Mueller probe has gone too far.

Here is an article Whitaker wrote in 2017

https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/06/opinions/rosenstein-should-curb-mueller-whittaker-opinion/index.html

I can see why Trump wants him in the AG role.

[dec]

Sessions fired as AG

I liked that Session put this as the first sentence of his "resignation" letter..

"At your request, I am submitting my resignation."