US Politics XXV: At Least We're Not Australia

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because Trump is both mendacious and stupid, this blew up in his face as i predicted and should damage him electorally. but it also goes to show that if someone who wasn't a complete idiot shared his goal of turning the US into an autocracy, there might not be all that much we could do about it:



WASHINGTON, DC — Postmaster General Louis DeJoy issued the following statement today:

“The United States Postal Service will play a critical role this year in delivering election mail for millions of voters across the country. There has been a lot of discussion recently about whether the Postal Service is ready, willing and able to meet this challenge.

I want to make a few things clear:

The Postal Service is ready today to handle whatever volume of election mail it receives this fall. Even with the challenges of keeping our employees and customers safe and healthy as they operate amid a pandemic, we will deliver the nation’s election mail on time and within our well-established service standards. The American public should know that this is our number one priority between now and election day. The 630,000 dedicated women and men of the Postal Service are committed, ready and proud to meet this sacred duty.

I am announcing today the expansion of our current leadership taskforce on election mail to enhance our ongoing work and partnership with state and local election officials in jurisdictions throughout the country. Leaders of our postal unions and management associations have committed to joining this taskforce to ensure strong coordination throughout our organization. Because of the unprecedented demands of the 2020 election, this taskforce will help ensure that election officials and voters are well informed and fully supported by the Postal Service.

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/nat...-postmaster-general-louis-dejoy-statement.htm
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Jerry Dunk said:
In what universe is John Kasich, Meg Whitman, or Susan Molinari convincing even one voter to cast a vote for Joe Biden?
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Yeah, honestly this myth of the independent voter who AT THIS POINT is just stumped and can't decide between Biden and Trump is going to be swayed by freaking John Kasich is something else.

They are doing this in the name of perception when nobody actually cares.
 
Golly gee might as well go and cancel the conventions and debates and just have the election now then.

You would certainly hope that everyone has chosen a side by now and that there's no one left to sway, but I'll let you in on a secret - this is a nation that elected Donald Trump president. We're not smart!
 
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It is true that winning elections usually involves getting people who disagree with you on some things to vote for you. It’s also true that Kasich is entirely consistent with the theory of the Biden campaign — that he can and will win over white suburban voters and much of the political middle and persuadable Tepublicans. And this is what he’s done since the primaries and has resulted in a 8-10 point polling lead over Trump. I suppose it’s possible that an 8-10 point polling lead could have been built in another fashion, but this is what we have: a candidate with a dominating lead over college educated voters. I can see many of them maybe not being persuaded but nodding along agreeing that it’s important to put certain disagreements aside — on taxes, or abortions — to stop a dangerous would be autocrat.

I will say, however, that at this point I don’t see Bill Clinton as much of a help.

He had an unquestionably successful presidency. He is a prodigiously gifted public speaker. We also live in a much different world. He should go away.
 
Jerry Dunk said:
I'm sure the Obama and Sanders speeches were fine and went over well. But I really don't understand the need to load up the lineup with Republicans. I mean, I do, because the Democratic Party finds more kinship with centrist Republicans than they do with leftists. But it's still fucking offensive. Anti-choice, anti-union, climate change deniers, etc. I don't give a flying fuck about John Kasich's opinion. The guy is a misogynistic, classist piece of shit. Having him on was as embarrassing as Michael Bloomberg in 2016.
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I wanted to write a reflexive response here, but as I said before, I do like to see your posts because you do make me pause and think a bit.
So I will try to make this as productive as possible.

First, I'm not sure from you post if you watched Michelle or Bernie's speeches, but if you didn't I think you should.
Second, the theme of last night was unity. So it makes sense that there were Reps in the mix. But to be clear, they did not load up the lineup with them. By my count, they gave 4 Republican women 10 seconds a piece, and Kasich about 1.5 or 2 minutes. So 2 and a half minutes out of 2 and a half hours.

Now it's important to remember why. What we have is a floating group of people that are moderate Repubs that have seen the destruction that Trump has brought. Unlike 2016 where many of these people voted for Trump, didn't vote, or did a write in or something. They now want to actively vote for Biden to remove Trump.
Having Kasich, and other Rep politicians, and I think more so, regular people that voted for Trump but now are voting for Biden given some time in the convention, helps to give hesitant voters "permission" to cross over.
The best part is that many of these people will remain. And when they do, they will also shed a lot of their shitty views when they see success of a more progressive agenda.

And isn't it what we want to bring people into the fold, not just blanket repudiate them because of their history?

Now granted many of those voters would probably return if there was a Romney or something at the top of the Rep ticket. But at this point, half of Republicans think that Romney is a communist traitor. So most likely we see a Cotton or Pompeo on the ticket which will keep these people right where they are.

I think we can agree that we don't just want the Democratic Party to continue to move to the left, but to bring as many people with us as we can. More people brings more progress.

That said, I don't think we can really say that Dems have more of a kinship with moderate Reps than the left.

Let's go down the list of just what Biden has in his platform (much of it improved by working with Sanders)

Pro-choice
Newly, greatly improved climate change plan and green jobs plan
Free public college
Free pre-k
15 dollar minimum wage
Capped child care cost
Prescription drug cost reduction plan
Gun control
Police reform with community program funding
Criminal justice and racial justice plans
Ending private prisons and cash bail
Raising taxes on the wealthy
Universal healthcare (yes, I know not M4A, but i think a definite move toward the Transition to the inevitable M4A) just lowering the age of Medicare to 60 alone, will add 20 million more people to medicare.
Regime change off the table in the Dem platform

The list goes on, but its what i can think of off the top of my head.

I see no crossover with Trump/solid Repubs. There is some limited crossover now with moderate Reps, but very little. What I do see is a candidate labeled a moderate, that has a platform that looks a bit like Sanders in 2016, except for Medicare for all, and the addition of police reform.

In the end, it's better to have the party grow larger, and then have progressive representatives and hopefully presidential candidates pull that larger group to a more progressive place. I know the process is too slow for some, but as long as it keeps moving in that direction, I'm happy. As Michael Moore said yesterday. Progressives have finally realized that it's much better to play offense along side someone like Biden, than to try and play defense against someone like Trump.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
Golly gee might as well go and cancel the conventions and debates and just have the election now then.

You would certainly hope that everyone has chosen a side by now and that there's no one left to sway, but I'll let you in on a secret - this is a nation that elected Donald Trump president. We're not smart!
Click to expand...

Exactly. I think there's more to the numbers than we think. Biden is up about 9 points because a lot of people have shifted from 2016. But the polling average right now shows there are about 6% undecided. That's about 8 million votes. Throw in a couple more percentage points for people that are choosing Biden but would slip back to Trump if the economy or Covid makes a rapid improvement. They are just looking for a justification.

This is a much smaller number than in 2016, which was in the double digits at this point. But still very significant.

I agree with Jerry that the Rep politicians will probably sway nobody. But the every day Trump 2016 voter that now has seen the light, those are the ones that make undecideds feel like they aren't alone, that it's ok to vote Democrat.
 
Jerry Dunk said:
In what universe is John Kasich, Meg Whitman, or Susan Molinari convincing even one voter to cast a vote for Joe Biden?
Click to expand...



In the american world bruh

Biden is posturing unity. That’s why Kasich and Sanders both had a role. You don’t have to like it to realize it’s effective. It’s less about the progressives getting unity, more about the “we all think this guy is stupid.”
 
womanfish said:
I wanted to write a reflexive response here, but as I said before, I do like to see your posts because you do make me pause and think a bit.
So I will try to make this as productive as possible.

First, I'm not sure from you post if you watched Michelle or Bernie's speeches, but if you didn't I think you should.
Second, the theme of last night was unity. So it makes sense that there were Reps in the mix. But to be clear, they did not load up the lineup with them. By my count, they gave 4 Republican women 10 seconds a piece, and Kasich about 1.5 or 2 minutes. So 2 and a half minutes out of 2 and a half hours.

Now it's important to remember why. What we have is a floating group of people that are moderate Repubs that have seen the destruction that Trump has brought. Unlike 2016 where many of these people voted for Trump, didn't vote, or did a write in or something. They now want to actively vote for Biden to remove Trump.
Having Kasich, and other Rep politicians, and I think more so, regular people that voted for Trump but now are voting for Biden given some time in the convention, helps to give hesitant voters "permission" to cross over.
The best part is that many of these people will remain. And when they do, they will also shed a lot of their shitty views when they see success of a more progressive agenda.

And isn't it what we want to bring people into the fold, not just blanket repudiate them because of their history?

Now granted many of those voters would probably return if there was a Romney or something at the top of the Rep ticket. But at this point, half of Republicans think that Romney is a communist traitor. So most likely we see a Cotton or Pompeo on the ticket which will keep these people right where they are.

I think we can agree that we don't just want the Democratic Party to continue to move to the left, but to bring as many people with us as we can. More people brings more progress.

That said, I don't think we can really say that Dems have more of a kinship with moderate Reps than the left.

Let's go down the list of just what Biden has in his platform (much of it improved by working with Sanders)

Pro-choice
Newly, greatly improved climate change plan and green jobs plan
Free public college
Free pre-k
15 dollar minimum wage
Capped child care cost
Prescription drug cost reduction plan
Gun control
Police reform with community program funding
Criminal justice and racial justice plans
Ending private prisons and cash bail
Raising taxes on the wealthy
Universal healthcare (yes, I know not M4A, but i think a definite move toward the Transition to the inevitable M4A) just lowering the age of Medicare to 60 alone, will add 20 million more people to medicare.
Regime change off the table in the Dem platform

The list goes on, but its what i can think of off the top of my head.

I see no crossover with Trump/solid Repubs. There is some limited crossover now with moderate Reps, but very little. What I do see is a candidate labeled a moderate, that has a platform that looks a bit like Sanders in 2016, except for Medicare for all, and the addition of police reform.

In the end, it's better to have the party grow larger, and then have progressive representatives and hopefully presidential candidates pull that larger group to a more progressive place. I know the process is too slow for some, but as long as it keeps moving in that direction, I'm happy. As Michael Moore said yesterday. Progressives have finally realized that it's much better to play offense along side someone like Biden, than to try and play defense against someone like Trump.
Click to expand...
I don't believe almost any of this. And I think anything they claim to have moved left on is just posturing. Let's see what's been uncovered just today on the climate change front:

[tweet]1295812448163962883[/tweet]

That is a major red flag! His climate change plan is going to be dogshit!

It certainly will be if he follows the playbook he and Obama ran between the 2008 campaign and taking power in 2009. They dropped plenty of critical issues, including ones that they made parts of their platform.

Sanders' power comes from being able to throw his weight behind candidates like Bush and Bowman. He cannot move a centrist presidential candidate to the left. Biden is beholden to his donors, and they don't want it. So it won't happen.
 
Irvine511 said:
I will say, however, that at this point I don’t see Bill Clinton as much of a help.

He had an unquestionably successful presidency. He is a prodigiously gifted public speaker. We also live in a much different world. He should go away.
Click to expand...
While I disagree that his presidency was "unquestionably successful," I do agree with the rest of this post.
 
Cindy McCain is a solid add to help build the case. There are a lot of middle income, middle aged white guys who loved McCain, or at least the McCain of 1999/2000, and may need the reassurance to vote for a party that sometimes seems too identity-obsessed for them to feel comfortable.

Flipping an R to a D is a +2.
 
Irvine511 said:
this continues to be a very, very important issue that still isn't getting enough attention:
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I have to read your article snip, but I DID hear about it on NPR news.

Headache in a Suitcase said:
Maybe, and hear me out here, but maybe it's because they want to chase independents and moderate Republicans who are sick of trump so that they can win the election in November.

I know - it's a crazy thought. But golly it might be worth a shot .
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On Brian Lerher's (WNYC) show this morning he had undecided voters call in. Yup, there were a bunch of them.
I think Irving's about "getting permission" is a salient one. Who knows - it just make a pivotol change in just the right preceints, in just the right counties a swing State.
 
Jerry Dunk said:
I don't believe almost any of this. And I think anything they claim to have moved left on is just posturing. Let's see what's been uncovered just today on the climate change front:

[tweet]1295812448163962883[/tweet]

That is a major red flag! His climate change plan is going to be dogshit!

It certainly will be if he follows the playbook he and Obama ran between the 2008 campaign and taking power in 2009. They dropped plenty of critical issues, including ones that they made parts of their platform.

Sanders' power comes from being able to throw his weight behind candidates like Bush and Bowman. He cannot move a centrist presidential candidate to the left. Biden is beholden to his donors, and they don't want it. So it won't happen.
Click to expand...

We can always start pushing more on Jan 21, 2021.
 
First 10 minutes: "let us assure you the Democrats do have elected officials under age 50."
 
We were on the cusp of victory until the birds formed an alliance with the drop bears.

It’s a shame we also got dragged into America’s failed wars overseas the past few decades, if we could have got the birds past basic training it might have turned the tide in Vietnam.
 
monkeyskin said:
We were on the cusp of victory until the birds formed an alliance with the drop bears.

It’s a shame we also got dragged into America’s failed wars overseas the past few decades, if we could have got the birds past basic training it might have turned the tide in Vietnam.
Click to expand...

On the plus side, any coronavirus vaccine will be administered free to every Australian by our conservative government :) wonder how much it will cost in the US!
 
cobl04 said:
On the plus side, any coronavirus vaccine will be administered free to every Australian by our conservative government :) wonder how much it will cost in the US!
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It depends. If Biden wins it will be free. If Trump wins, it will be $200 and you will need to pay with a check made out to Our Dear and Magnificent Leader.
 
monkeyskin said:
We were on the cusp of victory until the birds formed an alliance with the drop bears.

It’s a shame we also got dragged into America’s failed wars overseas the past few decades, if we could have got the birds past basic training it might have turned the tide in Vietnam.
Click to expand...



This silly little Aussie-American interférence war aside, I genuinely think it’s bullshit when any country party to a “coalition” says they were “dragged into” war.

Like please, the right thing to do is to oppose American aggression. You’re not a fucking victim. You’re party to it.
 
LuckyNumber7 said:
This silly little Aussie-American interférence war aside, I genuinely think it’s bullshit when any country party to a “coalition” says they were “dragged into” war.

Like please, the right thing to do is to oppose American aggression. You’re not a fucking victim. You’re party to it.
Click to expand...


The Australians shat the bed on this.

Chrétien was corrupt as fuck but even he could see that the Iraq adventure was going to be a gong show for Canada and politely declined.
 
Unquestioning deference to American foreign policy is a basic feature in Australian politics unfortunately. It's just something that's never seriously questioned.
 
Vlad n U 2 said:
Unquestioning deference to American foreign policy is a basic feature in Australian politics unfortunately. It's just something that's never seriously questioned.
Click to expand...

It's interesting to me because Australia seems to go lockstep with the UK when it comes to US foreign policy adventures while at the same time having the lowest support for the concept of a continued monarchy/Commonwealth of other major former colonies. If there was every a mass exit, Australia would lead the way, much ahead of Canada. And politically and regionally, Australia has little to gain from its relationship with the US either (at least when it comes to joining military action).
 
I could buy the argument that the centrist posture in the convention is designed purely as a tactical move, and does not compromise Biden's platform, which on paper is more liberal than any other recent years. I don't think it's a particularly good argument (have you seen the Democratic leadership's actions in recent years?), or that it's a particularly good tactic (we no longer live in an age where independents/undecideds are kingmakers because there are so few of these in the polarized politics era) but I'll grant that it's a possibility.

Optics aside, my sense - and the convention is just another data point - is that if Biden gets elected, Democrats will lead the revisionist process that will immediately point to the last four years as an aberration, and not as a natural consequence of various political and policy decisions they and the Republicans have taken over the years. In the name of bipartisanship and unity, they will offer Republicans a way to save face from their misguided choices these last four years - while not getting any meaningful conservative support for their actual policies. They will want to show that the US is back to normal, whereas the reasonable approach would be to question why they got to this place. For Christ's sake, they introduced John McCain as this honorable politician who could do bipartisan deals, forgetting that he chose Sarah Palin as his VP candidate, thereby introducing the contemporary template for Trumpism.
 
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