Author Topic: Politics  (Read 511216 times)

The Deer Hunter

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6160 on: November 07, 2018, 02:11:50 AM »
What’s the point of the mid term election? Does it have any impact on the presidency?

jdc

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6161 on: November 07, 2018, 03:08:42 AM »
Just the funny rules the US has for elections:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_United_States

The House of Representatives has 435 members, elected for a two-year term in single-seat constituencies. House of Representatives elections are held every two years on the first Tuesday after November 1 in even years. Special House elections can occur between if a member dies or resigns during a term.


The Senate has 100 members, elected for a six-year term in dual-seat constituencies (2 from each state), with one-third being renewed every two years. The group of the Senate seats that is up for election during a given year is known as a "class"; the three classes are staggered so that only one of the three groups is renewed every two years. Until the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1913, States chose how to elect Senators, and they were often elected by state legislatures, not the electorate of states.


It has an impact as it can make it easier or harder for the sitting president to push through their agenda if they gain or lose seats in the Senate or House. For example, Obama had a majority of the House and Senate for the first 2 years in office but lost them in the 2010 election making it much more difficult for him to get anything passed. After that, I believe he did a lot of legislation by executive order, but those wouldn't be permanent.

But Bondo or others that stay in the US likely know more specific details on the workings.
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jdc

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6162 on: November 07, 2018, 03:13:54 AM »

My home town district just reelected white supremacist Steve King.

Never heard of him but did a quick check, seems even his fellow R's don't like him and he didn't have support from the RNCC.  You must really feel out of place in your district.

"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

philip918

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6163 on: November 07, 2018, 11:02:43 AM »

My home town district just reelected white supremacist Steve King.

Never heard of him but did a quick check, seems even his fellow R's don't like him and he didn't have support from the RNCC.  You must really feel out of place in your district.



I don't live there any more, but my mom does. I live in Hollywood so I feel very at home in one of the most liberal districts in the nation.

valmz

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6164 on: November 07, 2018, 12:47:32 PM »
Well, he said "think" and not have done. 

I am not sure either party is a great supporter of science though clearly if the topic is around Climate Change, then it will be mostly the Republicans in this camp.

I am hoping there is some decent opposition in 2020 from the Democrats as well as a good challenger from the Republican side, though you would have to want to put yourself in an ugly fight. I don't fit well with either side though Democrats have managed things better.
I think we're beyond the point of considering whether you "fit well with either side". Many, many long-time high-ranking Republicans are abandoning the party in droves. The Democrats are a reasonable party built on ideology and facts, and Republicans are a ridiculous party built on single-mindedly benefiting rich donors and lying. It's just crazy, and there is no equivalence.

I don't see either party being very pure, certainly, Hillary was as tied to corporate and banking interest as just about any politician. While I am not aligned with Sanders ideologically, he seemed one of the few that you could believe where he was coming from. But I am not sure they are similar when it comes to ideology. Any idea who the likely top Democrats that will run in 2020?
Bernie was the first serious Presidential candidate to refuse to take any money from corporate donors, so I wouldn't say that Hillary an aberration. Bernie would have attacked Obama with the same criticism - and he would have been right. But only because Bernie was the first of his kind. Bernie pushed her a bit to the left, but it was Hillary that was the mouthpiece for the original iteration of Obamacare back in Bill Clinton's day. Obamacare was always a compromise, and without that compromise Bernie's hope for Medicare-for-all was never going to happen. Since those are probably the two cornerstones of each individual's political career, I see no reason to say that they represent different ideologies. One is just more pragmatic. The one that combs her hair, if you couldn't guess.

As for Presidential candidates...

There's the "If you want to beat the racists, give them a handsome young charismatic white man" push to nominate Beto O'Rourke
There's the "Let's nominate a younger, but still old, female Bernie, who has recently added as much baggage as Hillary had and can't win" dream of Elizabeth Warren
There's the "Only possible person older than Donald Trump who wants to be President" Joe Biden
There's the "Intimidatingly sharp and yet alternately charismatic woman-and-black-and-Asian" Kamala Harris
There's the "Mistaken for a never-held-a-job-soccer-mom who will make you cry with a smile on her face" Kirsten Gillibrand
There's the "Probably going to be VP" Amy Klobuchar
...and some others I don't want to see and Governors I don't know enough about. I'm all about Kamala or a governor, myself. Maybe I gave it away above. I like Gillibrand, and she's popular, but I think Kamala is a better fit against a bully like Trump.

Junior

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6165 on: November 07, 2018, 01:25:56 PM »
A Harris/Booker ticket would get me very excited.
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6166 on: November 07, 2018, 02:20:59 PM »
Beto O'Rourke represents a lot of what I don't like about white, liberal Texans. He's was a big catalyst in the gentrification of El Paso and there's good signs that he likely personally profited from it. It's basically the same thing that people ended up doing in my city in the name of revitalization and it's absolutely squeezing poor people out of their communities while rich white progressives move into these neighborhoods and raise the property values of all the nearby houses.

Bondo

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6167 on: November 07, 2018, 06:44:57 PM »
Clintoncare in the 90s was much closer to Medicare-For-All than Obamacare IIRC. If I'm judging who I want as the 2020 nominee based on the "ideas primary" of proposed liberal legislation, I'm going with Elizabeth Warren. Sanders is of course the benchmark for completely dumb and counterproductive liberal policies but Harris and Booker in particular have released some very questionable policies. Granted, maybe I should learn my 2016 lesson and realize the smartest, most practical candidate isn't the one who will actually win and the current numbers on Warren are poor. Everybody loves Klobuchar though, and maybe her not having entries in the ideas primary is an asset.

Social media has created these bubbles of ideological rhetoric not based on facts but rather on lies, and since people decide what they want to allow into their media feeds they are giving themselves a feedback loop to support their own ideas.

Technically studies have shown people who are exposed to views from both sides end up being more extreme because they push away from the opposing idea.

What’s the point of the mid term election? Does it have any impact on the presidency?

This sounds like a question of someone who lives in a parliamentary system. In those systems, the head of government (generally a prime minister) is part of the legislature and it is the legislative majority (or coalition) that empowers him or her. So in this system it wouldn't make any sense to have a midterm. In the US, the President as head of government is an entirely separate institution. If you ignore the presidency for a second, the midterm election is no different than a "Presidential election." Congress works on a two year election cycle of 100% of the House and 33% of the Senate in rotation. Each of these elections marks the end of a full term for the seat being voted on (except for filling Senate vacancies).

What the midterm is in the middle of is the President's term, which is twice as long as the House members. The reason this language has been adopted to reference congressional elections is there are distinctive differences between congressional elections that coincide with Presidential elections and those that don't. Namely, more people vote when the Presidency is also being determined, and when the Presidency isn't being determined, the trend is for the opposition party to do better, both because people might want to check the power of the President's party and because if your President is in power you might be more satisfied with the government and not driven to participate in the election.

jdc

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6168 on: November 07, 2018, 07:04:24 PM »
Well, he said "think" and not have done. 

I am not sure either party is a great supporter of science though clearly if the topic is around Climate Change, then it will be mostly the Republicans in this camp.

I am hoping there is some decent opposition in 2020 from the Democrats as well as a good challenger from the Republican side, though you would have to want to put yourself in an ugly fight. I don't fit well with either side though Democrats have managed things better.
I think we're beyond the point of considering whether you "fit well with either side". Many, many long-time high-ranking Republicans are abandoning the party in droves. The Democrats are a reasonable party built on ideology and facts, and Republicans are a ridiculous party built on single-mindedly benefiting rich donors and lying. It's just crazy, and there is no equivalence.

I don't see either party being very pure, certainly, Hillary was as tied to corporate and banking interest as just about any politician. While I am not aligned with Sanders ideologically, he seemed one of the few that you could believe where he was coming from. But I am not sure they are similar when it comes to ideology. Any idea who the likely top Democrats that will run in 2020?
Bernie was the first serious Presidential candidate to refuse to take any money from corporate donors, so I wouldn't say that Hillary an aberration. Bernie would have attacked Obama with the same criticism - and he would have been right. But only because Bernie was the first of his kind. Bernie pushed her a bit to the left, but it was Hillary that was the mouthpiece for the original iteration of Obamacare back in Bill Clinton's day. Obamacare was always a compromise, and without that compromise Bernie's hope for Medicare-for-all was never going to happen. Since those are probably the two cornerstones of each individual's political career, I see no reason to say that they represent different ideologies. One is just more pragmatic. The one that combs her hair, if you couldn't guess.

As for Presidential candidates...

There's the "If you want to beat the racists, give them a handsome young charismatic white man" push to nominate Beto O'Rourke
There's the "Let's nominate a younger, but still old, female Bernie, who has recently added as much baggage as Hillary had and can't win" dream of Elizabeth Warren
There's the "Only possible person older than Donald Trump who wants to be President" Joe Biden
There's the "Intimidatingly sharp and yet alternately charismatic woman-and-black-and-Asian" Kamala Harris
There's the "Mistaken for a never-held-a-job-soccer-mom who will make you cry with a smile on her face" Kirsten Gillibrand
There's the "Probably going to be VP" Amy Klobuchar
...and some others I don't want to see and Governors I don't know enough about. I'm all about Kamala or a governor, myself. Maybe I gave it away above. I like Gillibrand, and she's popular, but I think Kamala is a better fit against a bully like Trump.

Thanks, gives me a few to look up. I don't follow all that closely the US political scene these days so don't know any up and comers, just those that have been around a long time like Warren or Biden in your above list.
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FLYmeatwad

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6169 on: November 07, 2018, 07:23:16 PM »
When I was younger I wanted to be in the HoR, seemed like a pretty good thing if you could make the couple terms it takes for them to owe you a pension.