Politics/Publics Affairs (The road goes ever on...) [OT]

[schillingfan]

I saw a couple of big Trump signs the past week. It hit me that this will be a third go round. I am not looking for to this election year. My sanity suffers. Trump still carried Lucerne County in 2020.

[Austinfan]

I think a Trump meltdown this summer is a real possibility, he doesn't look good, he's got awful health habits, and while he likes to bluster, those criminal trials have to be extremely stressful, especially b/c he knows he's guilty, especially the security breach litigation where the evidence seems to be overwhelming. He's already showing the early signs of dementia, and his lifestyle is correlated with early onset (bad food, no exercise, erratic sleep habits, etc.).

[bkox]

Trump legal news brief: Maine secretary of state rules Trump is ineligible for...

[bkox]

Wonder how the GOP will spin this

Detroit is on track to record the fewest murders since the 1960s. In Philadelphia, where there were more murders in 2021 than in any year on record, the number of homicides this year has fallen more than 20% from last year. And in Los Angeles, the number of shooting victims this year is down more than 200 from two years ago.

The rapid decline in homicides isn’t the only story. Among nine violent and property crime categories tracked by the FBI, the only figure that is up over the first three quarters of this year is motor vehicle theft. The data, which covers about 80% of the U.S. population, is the first quarterly report in three years from the FBI, which typically takes many months to release crime data.

After Rise in Murders During the Pandemic, a Sharp Decline in 2023

[julio]

They'll just lie about it, and trust that their voters won't actually look at data... because their voters generally don't.

[allentown]

They'll just lie about it, and trust that their voters won't actually look at data... because their voters generally don't.

They don't even have to lie. The right-wing media machine does it for them, with constant repetition to drive the point home. They have created an existential fear in their base and when you are afraid, it takes little to keep your anger burning at white heat.

[Austinfan]

I wonder if motor vehicle theft, once you subtract the Kia effect, has actually increased.

[Sabin]

I'm curious to know the thoughts of some here on this piece.

John Fetterman's shameful betrayal of the left

[allentown]

Utter nonsense. If being a progressive requires supporting a terrorist organization like Hamas, then I hope the number of progressive Democratic congresspersons falls towards zero. I voted for Fetterman, heck I contributed to his campaign. I don't feel at all cheated or betrayed. I still regard him as progressive: supports Obamacare and a move to universal healthcare, wants to reduce income inequality, wants to combat climate change but not in a turn the economy inside out trying to do what cannot be done today, supports the rights of women and minorities. The university 'progressive'' community comes up with too many litmus tests, far too many of which are beyond ridiculous.

[julio]

You nailed it, allentown.

[Austinfan]

He's an old fashioned populist, not a progressive.
Progressives believe in ideological purity, which is why they lose elections outside of a few "safe" districts.

And that ideological purity is suspect, the Israelis are "settler colonists" committing "genocide," Palestinians deserve self-determination, but when it comes to Kurds (far more deserving of self-determination), Darfur (real genocide conducted by Arab speaking Sudanese), Russian and Chinese imperialism, Arab slavery, Hindu caste system, and so forth, crickets. Capitalism is evil, Venezuela, Nicaragua, where left wing politicians have turned their countries into socialized kleptocracy, crickets. Islamophobia bad and Christian fundamentalism worse, but Islamic fundamentalist suppression of women and persecution of homosexuals, crickets.

Problem I have with most progressives is how ignorant they are, they seem to get their economics from Marxists, their American history from Howard Zinn and the 1619 project, etc. and don't read anything that contradicts their world view. They read the Atlantic and watch MSNBC and are a better educated mirror image of the hard right - same passion and willingness to ignore reality.

[julio]

Darn. Here I thought I was, more or less, progressive…but I don’t seem to be. Interestingly, I somehow don’t see that description quite characterizing Teddy Roosevelt, either!

[allentown]

Now I know how to evade that particular filter.

[Austinfan]

Teddy was a century ago, "progressive" for his era but only in some ways (Imperialist for one thing).

The Populists weren't as "progressive" as some later day authors (Kazin, et al) tried to pretend to co-opt them.

They were mostly rural farmers who were objecting to globalism and industrialization, they believed in direct democracy for themselves, were opposed to unwashed immigrants and urban power centers, blamed the corporations for all their economic ills. Once the panic of 1896 was over and agricultural markets rebounded, the better off farmers became conservative and left their poorer ilk in the ditch, supporting things like poll taxes and so forth to disenfranchise poor farmers and farm workers - populist voting was correlated with distance from railroads (i.e. poorer land and higher cost of getting crops to market). And once the two bad decades were over, white Populists abandoned efforts to create a multi-racial coalition.

The original Progressives were an elitist movement (similar to the current one) that took many of the Populist demands and universalized them - they were primarily urban based so they didn't have the xenophobia of rural America, though they did patronize the people they endeavored to help.

Real change is always incremental (because you have to build 60% support to avoid cycling when measures passed by narrow margins are easily reversed after the next election) - even the New Deal failed in many of its programs b/c they were top down (NIRA, etc.) and never developed the base of support that measures like Social Security did. And change often requires unpleasant compromises (Democrats had to deal with the South on its terms to accomplish anything until LBJ finally forced them to change).

The best hope for America is a collapse by the Republicans leading to the election of numerous moderate Democrats from flyover country who can steamroll the Progressives and pass programs that are sustainable and not subject to overreach - like an immigration reform that strengthens the border, limits asylum, speeds up deportration (not just border crossers but airplane visitors who overstay Visas) but grants citizenship to DACAs and any immigrant who serves in the armed forces.

[schillingfan]

I don’t agree with him on this issue. Israel makes me angry. But I don’t expect Democrats or progressives or liberals, etc., etc. to agree with me on every issue. The ant-Semitic massacre at the tree of Life in Pittsburgh, did occur while he was lieu governor. We all have our own reasons for our views. I still give him money every month

[Sabin]

Personally I'm not understanding some of the progressives' castigation of Fetterman's stance. I've been running into an increasing amount of hit pieces lately, and am puzzled that those considering themselves so enlightened and virtuous are presenting an entirely vapid line of reasoning in so doing (not you, SF).

There is an intellectual hubris here that is rather disturbing. I'm hoping this isn't a growing circle on the left.

[Sabin]

Darn. Here I thought I was, more or less, progressive…but I don’t seem to be.

No:

Problem I have with most progressives is how ignorant they are,

..you're good.

[julio]

The truth of the matter is, most Americans of pretty much any ideological persuasion are pretty ignorant of the kind of things that affect public policy and governance; whether the mechanisms of government (federal, state, local; executive or legislative), or the functioning of economies (particularly macroeconomics). Oh, and history, as well. We don’t teach these things particularly well, we don’t define them as important (as opposed to “business,” or even STEM, to which we give lip service, but aren’t very rigorous about).

[Austinfan]

The Far Right pride themselves on their ignorance, heck, they admit to creating their own "facts."
The Far Left pretend to claim intellectual sophistication, but they live in a similar echo chamber.

[schillingfan]

The truth of the matter is, most Americans of pretty much any ideological persuasion are pretty ignorant of the kind of things that affect public policy and governance; whether the mechanisms of government (federal, state, local; executive or legislative), or the functioning of economies (particularly macroeconomics). Oh, and history, as well. We don’t teach these things particularly well, we don’t define them as important (as opposed to “business,” or even STEM, to which we give lip service, but aren’t very rigorous about).

I was thinking today how interesting is the conflict between our federalist Republic envisioned in the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Our Presidents were originally selected by voters (white men of property) selecting delegates from each state who then voted at state meetings (the electoral college)There was no popular election in each state that bound the electors. That came later.

This conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirements for equal protection of the laws for citizens and extending the Bill of Rights to the states. Bush v. Gore he’d that Florida’s recount in 2000 violated one person one vote based on the substantive due process in the Fourteenth Amendment. They said it wasn’t precedent because the five majority hate the Fourteenth Amendment.

I mention this as background because under the Constitution as originally set up, the State Courts would have the right to decide who to put on the ballot and what would be the delegate’s votes. So t would not be incomprehensible to have Trump on some state ballots and not on others. It was the state’s prerogative to pick the delegates for the electoral college. Pennsylvania law (Constitution?) requires that all delegates vote for the candidate that won the state’s vote.

So an originalist would say that each state has the right to decide how the delegates must or mustn’t vote and by extension, who gets put on the ballot. That is fundamentally a matter of state laws and Constitutions. Does this conflict with the Fourteenth Amedment? Bush v. Gore never made sense to me because we don’t have one man one vote, as a person’s vote from Wyoming weighs more than mine, because of the electoral college.