US Politics Thread 2021-24

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Kptlt. Neuerburg

Democracy is on the ballot says Bill Mahar. In other words, to save democracy you can only really vote for one party. The other party is going to destroy democracy in America. How telling it is that the people who want to save democracy, don't really want to have democracy. They want a one party state. Their party. I'm beginning to think that some people don't know what the word actually means.

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

Originally Posted by u crank

Democracy is on the ballot says Bill Mahar. In other words, to save democracy you can only really vote for one party. The other party is going to destroy democracy in America. How telling it is that the people who want to save democracy, don't really want to have democracy. They want a one party state. Their party. I'm beginning to think that some people don't know what the word actually means.

And yet both parties claim the other one is the one which will destroy democracy and their party is the only one which can save it. While this is nothing exactly new in American politics the fact that both parties have gone into the political extremes does nothing for the "average" American (I'm using quotes for the word average since even this term has become hazy and vague and is more strongly defined by what ones political point of view is.), and will only benefit those on the extreme end of the spectrum. What is going on now isn't democracy it IS stupid childish finger-pointing fear mongering BS by officials who where elected by the people for the people who's job it is to get something done for the people.

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Kptlt. Neuerburg

And yet both parties claim the other one is the one which will destroy democracy and their party is the only one which can save it. While this is nothing exactly new in American politics the fact that both parties have gone into the political extremes does nothing for the "average" American (I'm using quotes for the word average since even this term has become hazy and vague and is more strongly defined by what ones political point of view is.), and will only benefit those on the extreme end of the spectrum. What is going on now isn't democracy it IS stupid childish finger-pointing fear mongering BS by officials who where elected by the people for the people who's job it is to get something done for the people.

There are flame throwers in both parties. But there are voices of reason who get drowned out by them.

Then there is the media. It is in the best interest for FOX and CNN to keep the political temperature hot. It is their money making business plan and they have no problem distorting the truth to fulfill their agenda. Trump said a lot of dumb things but he was right about the MSM. They are not your friend.

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

Originally Posted by u crank

There are flame throwers in both parties. But there are voices of reason who get drowned out by them.

Then there is the media. It is in the best interest for FOX and CNN to keep the political temperature hot. It is their money making business plan and they have no problem distorting the truth to fulfill their agenda. Trump said a lot of dumb things but he was right about the MSM. They are not your friend.

That's because who yells the loudest gets the most attention. As for the media it's been a political tool in America since the days of newspapers and broadsheets. Of course the rise in political bias in the media has been going on since the 1940's (probably even earlier then that) and has only gotten worse in recent decades in particular since the Vietnam War. It's also more notable that whenever a media outlet talks about a news story they will always have pundits or "political experts" who are asked to voice their opinion. It is these opinions and not the story itself that get people talking.

[Skybird]

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes on the elections:
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An unpopular president and oppressive inflation - the starting position before the U.S. congressional elections resembles that under Truman in 1946

Faced with a president with modest poll numbers and international crises, the Democrats under Harry Truman suffered a disastrous defeat in the 1946 midterms. But Republicans cheered only briefly at the time.

The U.S. president was aware of an almost ironclad political rule: in midterm congressional elections, it is never the party in power in the White House that celebrates on election night. When Harry Truman reflected on his Democrats' electoral prospects in the Oval Office in early November 1946, he was aware that only once had the presidential party emerged victorious from the midterms. It was not long ago: in 1934, the Democrats under Franklin D. Roosevelt had bucked every historical trend and won seats in both chambers of Congress. Voters had honored the fact that the 32nd president had taken energetic steps to overcome the Great Depression under the slogan "New Deal."

A success of historic dimensions

The shadow of his predecessor weighed heavily on Truman. The senator from Missouri had been elected Roosevelt's vice president in 1944 for his fourth term (which would no longer be possible today due to a constitutional amendment). After Roosevelt's death in April 1945, he succeeded him in the highest office. The wave of sympathy for his successor - shortly after taking office, Truman had an approval rating of 87 percent - had quickly subsided. Many commentators measured the unassuming bespectacled man, who had repeatedly failed in his professional career before entering politics, against his flamboyant predecessor and found him too uncharismatic.

Even worse for his party, however, was the fact that the mood in the country, which had still been euphoric after winning the world war, had deteriorated drastically. It was paralyzed by strikes, especially in the steel and auto industries and on the railroads. Moreover, after the lifting of price controls still dating from the war, inflation was oppressive; staple foods saw price increases like they had not seen in a generation - if they were available at all. There were supply problems as a result of rationing that had not yet been overcome. In Denver, for example, housewives hijacked the truck of a large bakery with its load of bread.

This created ideal conditions for the opposition party. The Republicans were campaigning against a president who had an approval rating of only 32 percent and who was complying with the request of many of his fellow candidates not to show up at their campaign events.

On election night, the Republicans' hopes were fulfilled: they reversed the balance of power in Congress. In the House of Representatives, they gained 55 seats, the highest victory since the midterm elections of 1894. In the Senate, the success was of historic dimensions. Only twice in American history has a party succeeded in wresting more than ten seats in the small chamber from its opponent. In 1946, the Republicans won twelve seats. Congress had thus become a potent corrective to Truman's policies.

A drastic warning from history

Republican strategists harbor a similar expectation in Tuesday's congressional elections. Even if the problems of the present are different from those of the first postwar year, the mood seems comparable to that of then - especially with regard to the president, who has struggled to climb out of a polling slump.

Since World War II, the incumbent president's party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate in midterms. It has made gains only twice: In addition to the Democrats under Roosevelt in 1934, the Republicans under George W. Bush managed to do so in 2002, when the nation largely rallied behind the incumbent as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In 1998, Democrats won seats in the House of Representatives but not the Senate in the wake of the mudslinging over Bill Clinton. Both chambers remained under Republican control.

In one respect, election night 2022 could resemble that of 1946: a victorious Republican Party would cast the result as the beginning of the end of the Democratic presidency. But here American history holds a drastic warning. Victories in midterm elections are fleeting and have little radiance on the presidential election that comes two years later. After the 1946 landslide, Republicans were so sure of success that they went for a loser. Once again they sent New York Governor Thomas Dewey, who had lost to Roosevelt in 1944, into the race.

The demoscopes cheered the certainty of victory not only until the vote was cast, but even beyond. A piece of 20th century iconography is the photo of a beaming and just re-elected President Truman holding up the newspaper with a premature headline: "Dewey defeats Truman!"

[mapuc]

How many of you Americans vote by tradition ? Here I'm thinking on family tradition.

Markus

[Ostfriese]

Originally Posted by mapuc

How many of you Americans vote by tradition ? Here I'm thinking on family tradition.

Markus

I'd say there are quite a lot of voters everywhere (not just in the US) who vote for* the same party in every election, no matter what. I'd even bet that a considerable amount of people know very little (if anything) about the candidate they vote for - again not limited to the US.




*on a side note: is it "to vote for somebody" or just "to vote somebody", without the preposition?

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Ostfriese

I'd say there are quite a lot of voters everywhere (not just in the US) who vote for* the same party in every election, no matter what. I'd even bet that a considerable amount of people know very little (if anything) about the candidate they vote for - again not limited to the US.




*on a side note: is it "to vote for somebody" or just "to vote somebody", without the preposition?

Ok I forgot once again to explain why I asked-The Danes have had their election on the 1st Nov. Where they should vote on who they want to be sitting in the Parliament and a percentage of these voters vote by tradition.

But as you said it's happening world wide. Where people can vote.

Markus

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Dowly

At the bare miminum, anyone who has voted does have something to do with the headlines. All of the representatives have been voted in by the american people.

Speaking for myself based on my own first hand observations, experience and communication with my neighbors, friends, people I never met before, those I talk to on the beach, at the store, happen upon elsewhere. I can absolutely say no, we don’t have jack squat to do with the headlines.

Where as the information you hear which forms your opinion of what all Americans are like or think is from what? Headlines.

That’s not to say we don’t receive information via media. But with regard to the sensational accusations and threats of nazisim, fascism rebellion, conspiracies theories, blue anon q anon nonsense. No, we don’t have anything to do with it. That nonsense is reserved for Europeans, party fanboys, a small percent of our population i.e. the nut cases, and trolls.

[Catfish]

"Let them argue their mindless politics. The more they disagree, the sooner they'll fall apart."
the collective 8

Richard Rorty Chillingly:

"[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words [slur for an African-American that begins with “n”] and [slur for a Jewish person that begins with “k”] will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet."

[les green01]

[mapuc]

Politicians lie to us because, deep down, we want them to.

It’s hard for them to get elected when they tell the truth.

https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status...72353200680961

Markus

[Skybird]

Very bullseyed opinion piece/comment by the Neuer Zürcher Zeitung. Think they nailed it (like often).
-------------------------------
The Disunited States of America: Experts Warn of Civil War - But More Likely the Country Will Continue to Drift Apart

The U.S. electoral system has driven polarization. It is now so strong that politically motivated violence has become common. Only far-reaching electoral reforms could help. But the will to do so is lacking.


The storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was unique in its scale and symbolic power. But politically motivated violence has become frighteningly commonplace in the United States. Only the most sensational cases make headlines, such as the attack on the husband of Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the current election campaign or the attack on the Republican candidate for governor in New York, Lee Zeldin, two months earlier. As if America were a country at war, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning of intimidation and violence against voters and poll workers for Tuesday's ballot.

In 2021 alone, Capitol Police in Washington recorded nearly 10,000 explicit threats against members of Congress - 10 times as many as in 2016, reflecting a brutalization of discourse under Donald Trump, who did not shy away even from glorifying physical violence. But the former president was only a symptom, not the cause, of the country's dangerous polarization, which is comparatively recent in this form.

The center has eroded

The United States, which once fought a bloody civil war over the conflict over slavery, has a long history of political discord, for example at the time of the civil rights movement or the Vietnam War. Violence is not an unknown problem either; four presidents have been assassinated.

One phenomenon of the last twenty years, however, is how clearly the divides are drawn along party lines. Once, Republicans and Democrats were so close in content that the American Political Science Association issued a report in 1950 calling for a clearer distinction to actually present voters with an alternative. The country's leading political scientists called for more polarization - today that seems unreal.

At the time, there was a wide overlap in Congress: a Democrat from the Southern states was possibly more conservative than a Republican from New England. In the early 1970s, one in three members of Congress could be classified as moderate, according to the Pew Research Center's analyses of voting patterns. Today, it's only one in 25. The center has eroded.

This is the aftermath of the programmatic realignment of both parties a good fifty years ago. It occurred primarily because of civil rights legislation and resulted in an ideological, ethnic, religious, and geographic "sorting" of the political landscape. Democrats and Republicans alike became more cohesive in terms of content, moving steadily further away from the center and also spatially apart. In the 1992 presidential election, for example, only 7 percent of the population lived in counties where one of the candidates won more than 70 percent of the vote, that is, in counties that were very politically lopsided. That percentage has multiplied; in 2020, 29 percent already voted in such "landslide" counties.

It's a new kind of segregation: most Americans today also live culturally, politically and even medially segregated from dissenters. There is hardly any exchange between these "bubbles," which reinforces the conviction of one's own position and thus the unwillingness to compromise. The resulting conflicts sometimes extend into families. In just over two weeks, before the Thanksgiving holiday travel season gets underway, various media outlets will once again publish their annual tips on how to have a good time with the family and on how to avoid a scandal at the feast.

Only 14 percent of seats are truly competitive

The American electoral system plays a key role in this development. At one time, the majority voting system was considered moderating, because in single-member constituencies, only those who also appealed to the middle could win. This has changed with the geographic "sorting" of recent decades. In addition, there is the drawing of electoral boundaries for their own political advantage (gerrymandering), which both parties practice to the limit of what is legally permissible in the constituent states they dominate.
Every ten years, this redistricting takes place based on the most recent census, including before the midterm elections. It has further reduced the already low number of competitive districts with open election outcomes to the lowest level in the last 52 years, as analyzed by the Brennan Center, which specializes in election law issues. According to the analysis, there is real competition for only 14 percent of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. 375 mandates are practically already assigned, before the polling stations open.

In the vast majority of cases, the real battle for a seat therefore takes place in the intra-party primaries. Until the 1970s, these nominations were made by officials who took into account the overall well-being of the party. Extreme candidates thus had little chance. Today, however, it is the committed and often activist party supporters who decide. This has made the system much more susceptible to ideologues and penalizes centrist, consensus-oriented politicians.

It is no coincidence that most staunch Trump critics in the Republican Party have now ended their careers. Otherwise, their lack of loyalty to the grassroots idol threatened the kind of ignominy Liz Cheney experienced this summer. The prominent congresswoman would have been assured re-election in conservative Wyoming if she had been nominated. But the Republican lost in the primaries to a loyalist of the ex-president.

By contrast, among Democrats, self-identified socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez need not fear for her seat in a very left-leaning New York district as long as she is not challenged by an even more progressive competitor - just as she herself chased a more moderate party colleague from office four years ago.

Breaking this vicious circle of polarization would require far-reaching electoral reforms, for which there is currently no apparent will. The consequences are dramatic. Proper legislation requires a qualified majority in the Senate, which would force bipartisan cooperation. However, such cooperation is not possible even in cases where the will of the people is clear according to polls - for example, for tightening gun laws. The deadlock has now spread to areas such as the budget and foreign policy, where agreement was previously possible. President Joe Biden is likely to feel the pinch next year if, as expected, Republicans win Tuesday's elections. His support for Ukraine will then undoubtedly face more opposition.

America's federalism has become unhealthy

The inability to reach consensus has poisoned the climate to such an extent that noted experts now warn of a slide into civil war. That sounds more far-fetched than it is: according to one poll, about 80 percent of Democrats and Republicans each see the opposing party as a serious threat to America. More than a quarter of the population believes it will soon be necessary to rise up armed against the government. A further increase in violence is therefore to be feared.

More likely than a total escalation, however, is a further drifting apart of "red" and "blue" constituent states - another designation that has only emerged in the last twenty years. Because of Washington's blockade, the states are increasingly taking over the regulation of such far-reaching issues as climate protection, gun control or voting rights themselves. This is certainly in keeping with the federalist principle of the USA. But in what was once a healthy federalism, some problematic excesses have occurred, writes conservative publicist David French in his book "Divided We Fall," published two years ago.

One example is the reaction to the Supreme Court's overturning of the nation's abortion law this summer. The progressive-dominated states of California and Connecticut have passed legal protections for people who are prosecuted in their home state for having an abortion. They will not comply with corresponding requests for legal assistance. Various conservative states, on the other hand, want to punish even those outside their borders who help their citizens obtain an abortion. This would restrict the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of movement within the USA - a taboo violation.

Such diametrically different regulations further deepen the divide. Is the country falling apart, as French fears in an extreme scenario? Perhaps it is precisely the compartmentalized "bubbles" that prevent this. But the United States is hardly united anymore.

--------------

[Rockstar]

More likely than a total escalation, however, is a further drifting apart of "red" and "blue" constituent states - another designation that has only emerged in the last twenty years. Because of Washington's blockade, the states are increasingly taking over the regulation of such far-reaching issues as climate protection, gun control or voting rights themselves. This is certainly in keeping with the federalist principle of the USA. But in what was once a healthy federalism, some problematic excesses have occurred, writes conservative publicist David French in his book "Divided We Fall," published two years ago.

I couldn’t help but laugh. States have ALWAYS had the RIGHT to regulate firearms and each one does. Each state has ALWAYS been responsible for running elections within its own borders and each one still does. As for the environment as well as most everything else, our system of dual sovereignty has ALWAYS put limits on federal power and recognized the autonomy of each state to develop and enforce laws.

The real problem is…