posted
I've often thought it strange though unsurprising when folks criticize Obama for not having gone out of his way to work with Republicans. Few but the most ardent partisans suggest he could've effectively worked with Tea Party republicans.
But it's funny to me because it's not as though the wider GOP was dragged kicking and screaming into collusion with the Tea Party in all its factions. While I'll agree more moderate Republicans weren't exactly thrilled to be pressed by political necessity into gladhanding with people who seem to try so hard to be obnoxiously ignorant...moderate Republicans were happy, when not facing challenges from their right, to take advantage of such energetic opposition to Obama. It's wasn't just the lunatic fringe who said, very early in Obama's first term, that their primary political goal was a one-term presidency. So-called 'Responsible Republicans' weren't very loud when it was time to say 'hey, enough with this Birther shot'. Was it Obama who made McCain hitch his wagon to Palin's star?
At what point in the last five years should Obama have thought, unless we're assuming he's a remarkably trusting and idealistic politician, that these purported opportunities to work with Republicans would be much more than bracketing which ribs in his back he wanted a far-right knife between?
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Once you have, I would advise one takeaway in particular, which can be built upon by similar observations and neutral analysis.
It speaks to how one of the primary differences between the American right wing and the left wing is that where the left wing has a built-up culture and network of wonks, the right wing has slowly drifted away to having a culture and network of hacks.
This is the result of many, many years of nonarticulated strategy or even just natural response to short and medium term advantage and stimulus. The right wing gets a 'hack' network and this inspires plenty of gains for them — left wing comes out with a disadvantage based on their 'hack deficit,' in the sense that their researchers and statisticians and policy analysts and think tanks and legal scholars are, in a pattern fashion, disinclined from giving their own side's representatives, or even the president, a pass because he's/they're on the same team. They will criticize their own side as well.
Right-wing politicians in similar situations would not receive the same quantity (by far) of criticism from their 'own side' of wonks. A right-wing president would not deal with the same issue of internal 'dissent,' — they would present a united front. They have been trained by their own system to 'march in step,' whether by creed (Reagan's 11th amendment, as a specific example) and by now they have a system that goes out of the way to reframe poll data, assessment of system or popular support, legal, historical, or other matters — in order to provide a unified bastion of vindicating "data" for the team.
And, increasingly, it seems less and less a directed and intentional process, and more or less the self-powered, independently momentous result of previous policy.
When they do this, and the left-wing is instead prone to self-criticism or sticking to what was once derisively noted as a facts-based narrative, it makes it so that the left wing cannot compete when it comes to the matter of creating narratives and propaganda, which is an immense advantage in our current democratic system, as it provides incalculable advantages in terms of convincing the populous to vote for you. From the infamous quote told to Suskind of the New York Times by a member of George W. Bush's presidential staff, what became the issue of being a Reality-Based Community:
quote:The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out.
The right-wing can create whole cloth narratives at-will, but the left-wing is stuck with internal, factual, "reality based community" correction elements that make this far, far more complicated and ineffectual a process — even when they are actively attempting the ability to reframe facts and data to fit a narrative.
Cooper says: "when it comes to catchy slogans premised on their ideological assumptions (“job creators,” etc), lockstep message discipline, and mind-numbing repetition, liberals just can’t compete" — even when they are proud of self-criticism."
This gives the right wing great power when it comes to creating and selling a narrative to the masses. They have a huge benefit in our current climate, with our current primary voter bases, because they can (and did) use power they gained under this control of media and political narrative to wholly restructure the system wherever they could in their favor and lock down as much power as possible — proportionally representative or non.
But it has, apparently, come with long-term peril. That primarily targets themselves.
When they set themselves up in this tumbling, momentum-enhanced system of lockstep ideological support, they started to become as chronically misinformed and legitimately deluded as the voterbase.
They've created and nurtured a system that misinforms them as much as it misinforms their core demographics.
Conservatives, especially in the tea party, are now being fed hopelessly misinforming junk information by their own system. They're part of their own GIGO cycle. They're getting their information in the form of nonsense created by True Believers — which becomes the basis upon which they make "informed" decisions regarding policy and political strategy. The end result is a catastrophic disconnect from reality, which begins to implode their entire system.
Recall how Mitt Romney, with the "benefit" of his whole side's entire information gathering system, all the "specialists" and "wonks" and literally every resource they could mobilize for the benefit of the right's play for the most important, most central goal, the most powerful political post in America, went in on election night expecting to win. Their bubble of misinformation critically hamstrung their ability to realistically assess the actual circumstances of the progressing election, which drastically weakened their ability to process and react to conditions as they were, which further impeded their ability to attempt the Presidency, and which will progressively weaken their ability to manage regional races and governorships.
And this entire phenomenon is why the tea party just profoundly and profusely damaged the GOP as a whole, forced an almost unprecedented loss of face, popularity, and agenda-making power. The shutdown has been an unmitigated and complete disaster for conservatives, and they have suffered for nothing:
quote:Some day a Republican will occupy the White House again, and will thank Mr. Obama for saving the presidency from being turned into a perpetual hostage to Congressional extremists ... [The Tea Party], it observed, “picked a goal they couldn’t achieve in trying to defund Obamacare from one House of Congress, and then they picked a means they couldn’t sustain politically, by pursuing a long government shutdown and threatening to blow through the debt limit.”
quote:So what did Republicans get for shutting down the government for 17 days? Their poll numbers tanked. Their gubernatorial candidate in Virginia appears headed for defeat in next month's election. The business community is rethinking its support. Veterans and the elderly are ticked off. And any leverage they ever had to push their goals of reducing the size of government and chipping away at health-care reform is gone.
The very idea that they would have gone full ideologue in this case, that they would commit to something that would leave them known as the "suicide caucus" —
That they would commit to this, that Cruz is still talking about how he would do this debt crisis ploy again, today, in spite of everything that happened — this requires knowing the extent of their delusion in these affairs. When a Tea Party member says (and many did) something to the extent of stating that Obamacare is unconstitutional (when the challenge to the Supreme Court was cleared) — they believe this. When they say that Obamacare does not represent democracy (when it was passed in our democratic system and was the central pillar of Obama's presidency and subsequent re-election) — they believe this. Their think tanks and various foundations and policy and research systems are filling them with junk data and junk legal and sociopolitical interpretations which make this reality for them. They go into this absolutely really seriously expecting that this is something that will make them heroes in the public eye, that they will be celebrated for inflicting this debt crisis on the whole government in order to stop obamacare.
Krugman revisited the Wonk Gap in light of present effects and actions:
quote:On Saturday, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming delivered the weekly Republican address. He ignored Syria, presumably because his party is deeply conflicted on the issue. (For the record, so am I.) Instead, he demanded repeal of the Affordable Care Act. “The health care law,” he declared, “has proven to be unpopular, unworkable and unaffordable,” and he predicted “sticker shock” in the months ahead.
So, another week, another denunciation of Obamacare. Who cares? But Mr. Barrasso’s remarks were actually interesting, although not in the way he intended. You see, all the recent news on health costs has been good. So Mr. Barrasso is predicting sticker shock precisely when serious fears of such a shock are fading fast. Why would he do that?
Well, one likely answer is that he hasn’t heard any of the good news. Think about it: Who would tell him?
My guess, in other words, was that Mr. Barrasso was inadvertently illustrating the widening “wonk gap” — the G.O.P.’s near-complete lack of expertise on anything substantive. Health care is the most prominent example, but the dumbing down extends across the spectrum, from budget issues to national security to poll analysis. Remember, Mitt Romney and much of his party went into Election Day expecting victory.
About health reform: Mr. Barrasso was wrong about everything, even the “unpopular” bit, as I’ll explain in a minute. Mainly, however, he was completely missing the story on affordability.
For the truth is that the good news on costs just keeps coming in. There has been a striking slowdown in overall health costs since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, with many experts giving the law at least partial credit. And we now have a good idea what insurance premiums will be once the law goes fully into effect; a comprehensive survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that on average premiums will be significantly lower than those predicted by the Congressional Budget Office when the law was passed.
But do Republican politicians know any of this? Not if they’re listening to conservative “experts,” who have been offering a steady stream of misinformation. All those claims about sticker shock, for example, come from obviously misleading comparisons. For example, supposed experts compare average insurance rates under the new system, which will cover everyone, with the rates currently paid by a handful of young, healthy people for bare-bones insurance. And they conveniently ignore the subsidies many Americans will receive.
At the same time, in an echo of the Romney camp’s polling fantasies, other conservative “experts” are creating false impressions about public opinion. Just after Kaiser released a poll showing a strong majority — 57 percent — opposed to the idea of defunding health reform, the Heritage Foundation put out a poster claiming that 57 percent of Americans want reform defunded. Did the experts at Heritage simply read the numbers upside down? No, they claimed, they were referring to some other poll. Whatever really happened, the practical effect was to delude the right-wing faithful.
And the point is that episodes like this have become the rule, not the exception, on the right. How many Republicans know, for example, that government employment has declined, not risen, under President Obama? Certainly Senator Rand Paul was incredulous when I pointed this out to him on TV last fall. On the contrary, he insisted, “the size of growth of government is enormous under President Obama” — which was completely untrue but was presumably what his sources had told him, knowing that it was what he wanted to hear.
For that, surely, is what the wonk gap is all about. Political conservatism and serious policy analysis can coexist, and there was a time when they did. Back in the 1980s, after all, health experts at Heritage made a good-faith effort to devise a plan for universal health coverage — and what they came up with was the system now known as Obamacare.
But that was then. Modern conservatism has become a sort of cult, very much given to conspiracy theorizing when confronted with inconvenient facts. Liberal policies were supposed to cause hyperinflation, so low measured inflation must reflect statistical fraud; the threat of climate change implies the need for public action, so global warming must be a gigantic scientific hoax. Oh, and Mitt Romney would have won if only he had been a real conservative.
It’s all kind of funny, in a way. Unfortunately, however, this runaway cult controls the House, which gives it immense destructive power — the power, for example, to wreak havoc on the economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. And it’s disturbing to realize that this power rests in the hands of men who, thanks to the wonk gap, quite literally have no idea what they’re doing.
As if to dramatically emphasize the point that conservatives are increasingly becoming blinkered victims of their own cult of misinformation, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), in describing his reasons for joining 144 house conservatives ... in attempting to vote the United States into not honoring its own debt, made some statements that indicated that one of the reasons he voted against debt resolution was because he thought the debt deal literally provided funding to the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group known for the kidnapping of children and the sale of sex slaves.
It wasn't true, of course, but it's a perfect example of a statement which if it is not immediately politically injurious and made too embarrassing a piece of "reality" for the conservatives to stand behind, becomes the new conservative reality. About anything. Obamacare, or fundings appropriation, or literally even just a bill to have america not default on its debt obligations and experience profound economic loss and an erosion of our current position in the world economy.
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Do you think, based on the last several years of activity, that the Republican Party is on its way out?
The reason I ask this is because it seems more and more young people are either Democrat or fall somewhere in the middle (i.e. they opt for no party). In thirty years, will there even be a Republican Party anymore? After all, it seems like most of them are old white people (with exceptions, sure), and the country is filling up with minorities and liberal-minded people.
Do you think that this whole government shutdown has hurt their repuation in a major way?
It will be interesting to look back in 30-40 years and see how politics at that time evolved from today. Maybe the parties will be the same and maybe they won't, but I'm beginning to think that something is eventually going to change.
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posted
The GOP will likely lose the Moral Majority side of things, the younger generation from GenY/Millennials have a decent enough breeding ground for libertarian 'truth lies in the middle' sycophants since their parent's generation stole their future (they might not SEE their Social Security, so 'why should the older folks keep it?') but they also tend to be perfectly fine with gay loving muslim atheists being able to vote and marry so if the GOP goes Libertarian or Moral Right it loses the other.
Without that coalition they lose all national relevance but may keep regional governments under lock.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Our government has seen major parties die and swap places multiple times. It could go either way. Personally I think some people in the GOP will become the equivalent of blue dog Democrats again, and the Republican party will restructure.
I'm actually not sure what Big Business would do if the GOP collapsed, but I don't think it's going to. I know there are lots of people who *want* it to, and will seize on anything that supports that conclusion.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I remember after 2008, tons of progresses were braying (no pun intended) about the death of the GOP, who promptly took back both chambers of Congress in 2010.
There are at least 40% of voters who do not feel at home in the Democratic Party. They will go to the GOP barring anything like the government shutting down. It's a pretty low bar.
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quote:Do you think, based on the last several years of activity, that the Republican Party is on its way out?
It's not a matter of thinking its on its way out so much as that the data really seriously shows that its on its way out. The data is — and I'm serious, here — extremely nonambiguous about how the GOP is dead party walking, to the extent that demographers and social and statistical analysts have trouble coming up with plausible scenarios in which the Republican Party does not degrade into a regional power or otherwise essentially collapse entirely by the time I'm a senior citizen.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I remember after 2008, tons of progresses were braying (no pun intended) about the death of the GOP, who promptly took back both chambers of Congress in 2010.
There are at least 40% of voters who do not feel at home in the Democratic Party. They will go to the GOP barring anything like the government shutting down. It's a pretty low bar.
Yeah, and most of them were on to something until the GOP gerrymandered the hell out of the country in 2010 and 2012. They're only hanging on to power through incredibly dubious means. But as Sam says, the demographics really aren't on their side, and immigrants and young people are only making the country more liberal. In response, they are getting more conservative.
That's a recipe for planned obsolescence.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I remember after 2008, tons of progresses were braying (no pun intended) about the death of the GOP, who promptly took back both chambers of Congress in 2010.
This is a mean comparison but this is like saying "People were all freaking out about global warming, but this winter was really cold." — it's talking short-term variability versus an established and cumulative trend which is strongly supported.
I brayed about the death of the GOP and also noted that they were likely to have several upswings in the interim, one of which they turned into a massive redistricting push, even. I have previously talked at length about how the gains in legislature were not contrary to the observation that american conservatism is majorly demographically boned. It's not a hallucination of people just hoping for it and crafting data to fit a narrative.
Whether we continue with the same party names, or the Republican Party takes its name down with it to join the Whigs doesn't matter: in 20 years the american political landscape will be, relative to today's representation of the ideological divide, the "very liberal" party versus the "center-left liberal" party.
The GOP is already engaged in committed attempts to manage the issue of their oncoming demographic collapse, mainly through obvious attempts to disproportionally represent themselves, and to attempt to disenfranchise young and minority voters and keep them from voting as often as possible. They flirted with selling the 'terror babies' nonsense in the hopes it could let them take a pass at citizenship by birth. As is now usually the case, the terror baby scare was as much a simple cover as is "voter fraud."
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I remember after 2008, tons of progresses were braying (no pun intended) about the death of the GOP, who promptly took back both chambers of Congress in 2010.
This is a mean comparison but this is like saying "People were all freaking out about global warming, but this winter was really cold." — it's talking short-term variability versus an established and cumulative trend which is strongly supported.
I brayed about the death of the GOP and also noted that they were likely to have several upswings in the interim, one of which they turned into a massive redistricting push, even. I have previously talked at length about how the gains in legislature were not contrary to the observation that american conservatism is majorly demographically boned. It's not a hallucination of people just hoping for it and crafting data to fit a narrative.
Whether we continue with the same party names, or the Republican Party takes its name down with it to join the Whigs doesn't matter: in 20 years the american political landscape will be, relative to today's representation of the ideological divide, the "very liberal" party versus the "center-left liberal" party.
The GOP is already engaged in committed attempts to manage the issue of their oncoming demographic collapse, mainly through obvious attempts to disproportionally represent themselves, and to attempt to disenfranchise young and minority voters and keep them from voting as often as possible. They flirted with selling the 'terror babies' nonsense in the hopes it could let them take a pass at citizenship by birth. As is now usually the case, the terror baby scare was as much a simple cover as is "voter fraud."
Time will tell if you are right. But Republicans never had the majority in the House or Senate for 50 years between 1952 and 1992. They also didn't have the presidency for 20 years after Hoover. Didn't kill them then, I'm not so sure they are going to die now.
If no viable new party starts making noise, the strength of all the mechanisms that keep us a two party system will work towards creating bi-polarism again, and the GOP will be the only game in town other than the Democrats.
The American people have a bit of an aversion to keeping Congress and the Presidency in one party for a long time.
edit: I don't think we will ever have another Era of Good Feeling again.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Based on practically everything we know about how people vote there are no real scenarios which keep a conservative party as a major political party. The GOP in its present incarnation is doomed. Today's party platform is completely nonviable in a couple of decades at most.
Here's all you have to know.
1. The only demographic that floats conservatives to the point of having a viable first party in this country is the 65 and older age demographics. Anything younger is liberal. 40 and younger is greatly liberal. 25 and younger is even more greatly liberal. People who politically came of age during the clinton presidency are pretty liberal. People who politically came of age during the bush administration or after are really liberal and greatly dislike conservatives and conservatism on the whole.
2. Old people are the best voters. They vote the most reliably and the most regularly. Young people are generally terribly unreliable voters and they don't vote in great numbers. But they become old voters eventually, and perform near identically to the people who were old voters when they were young voters.
3. So all of the young voters now will eventually vote as regularly and reliably as today's old voters do.
4. And most all of today's old voters will have dwindled to a near absent voting bloc in general. Mostly on account of having been done off by old age, as is our unfortunate tendency.
5. The absolute most reliable indicator of how a person will vote for their entire lifetime is their party and ideological identity from when they first start voting. If you vote conservative at 20, you are most likely going to vote conservative for the rest of your life. If you vote liberal at 20, you are most likely going to vote liberal for the rest of your life. This is a VERY RELIABLE pattern.
6. The myth that people turn into conservative voters when they grow old is an absolute crap made-up nonfact that is completely untrue. We trend slightly, mildly, just a tiny bit more liberal as we age. It's not much, but it's not this scenario where people turn into conservative voters as they age.
7. And, again, young voters are overwhelmingly liberal. If only people 40 and under voted in the last presidential election, Obama wins in a huge landslide. If only people 30 and under voted in the last presidential election, it's a complete wash and Romney barely manages to take, like, Utah and a couple other states. It's seriously not even close. It was already pretty bad in the election before that (35 and under voters left McCain in the single EC digits) and before that, it's just that it keeps getting worse for conservatives as time goes on.
8. Part of this is that the GOP's push to keep their core demographic (of old people) out in the booths, inspired to go and be voting people from their party into office, involved using agendas which resonated with old people but generally alienated young people. It resulted in more and more strident pushes for things that appeal to old voters but made everyone else really dislike conservatism. Everyone here can name a few of these wedge issues, at least.
9. So Millenials are now something like 60% democratic, 20% republican. It's seriously that grim.
10. Put it all together. They vote the same or a little bit more liberal as they age. Today's conservative old voters disappear. Today's liberal young voters become tomorrow's reliable voters, and are much more liberal than today's old people are conservative. And they're also increasingly nonwhite and/or immigrant demographics that SERIOUSLY despise conservatives ...
are we getting it yet, cause
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Yeah, and most of them were on to something until the GOP gerrymandered the hell out of the country in 2010 and 2012. [/QB]
To be fair, where possible, the Democrats gerrymandered the hell out of things too. Maryland is an example and I'm sure there are a couple of other examples, too (and as a native and very liberal Marylander, even if I no longer live in the state, I'm pretty damn appalled by their gerrymandering).
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posted
Sam: None of that necessitates the GOP being destroyed, merely tacking left after having shifted right against the current for too long. Why should a shift left be impossible? The Democratic party can't cover every position people have. There's going to always be a second party. It's going to be the GOP unless something else manages to articulate itself.
People won't be comfortable with the Democratic party controlling everything if that indeed happens. People will start voting for the other party purely out of a sense of keeping things balanced. The Democratic party (at least in name) managed to survive the Civil War. Why should the Republican party be different?
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quote:Sam: None of that necessitates the GOP being destroyed, merely tacking left after having shifted right against the current for too long. Why should a shift left be impossible?
to quote myself, again: "Whether we continue with the same party names, or the Republican Party takes its name down with it to join the Whigs doesn't matter: in 20 years the american political landscape will be, relative to today's representation of the ideological divide, the "very liberal" party versus the "center-left liberal" party."
quote:There's going to always be a second party. It's going to be the GOP unless something else manages to articulate itself.
Such as the (very real) possibility that the GOP doesn't stay around through collapse reform, and degenerates to being a regional or extinct party. In which case you have the (also very real) opportunity for divide created from when centrist liberals and far-left types are made able to run against each other without a spoiler effect 'split vote' loss to republicans.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Yeah, and most of them were on to something until the GOP gerrymandered the hell out of the country in 2010 and 2012.
To be fair, where possible, the Democrats gerrymandered the hell out of things too. Maryland is an example and I'm sure there are a couple of other examples, too (and as a native and very liberal Marylander, even if I no longer live in the state, I'm pretty damn appalled by their gerrymandering). [/QB]
This is quite simply not true. It's false equivalence to compare what the Republicans are doing now to what Democrats are doing now or have done in the past. We can compare states with Democratic governments and Republican governments now, and we can compare them to trends over the last 30 years.
What the Republicans are doing right now is unprecedented in the modern era, and is utterly beyond compare to what Democrats have done or are currently doing.
Liberals in California, where Democrats probably could have squeezed out another dozen Democratic House seats if they'd wanted to, instead created a non-partisan commission to fairly divvy the state up.
Let's not pretend this is an issue where both sides are equally wrong.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
yeah, instead of "where possible" it's actually that democrats often did not take the route of gerrymandering, even though they did in a few places (that one MD district is a thing of wonder)
whereas the republicans gerrymandered so utterly as to have their current house majority in sum.
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Also Obama winning when the economy is doing poorly also was something significant.
quote:Originally posted by Risuena:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Yeah, and most of them were on to something until the GOP gerrymandered the hell out of the country in 2010 and 2012.
To be fair, where possible, the Democrats gerrymandered the hell out of things too. Maryland is an example and I'm sure there are a couple of other examples, too (and as a native and very liberal Marylander, even if I no longer live in the state, I'm pretty damn appalled by their gerrymandering). [/QB]
Democrats are also not really able to do this to anywhere the same degree as Republicans because Republican voters don't live voluntarily in ghettos.
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posted
It's patently absurd. The proof is in the pudding: if Democrats did it just as much, then the popular vote would be closer to the actual delegation numbers (meaning Democratic representation would be higher). It could easily be higher, as Sam points out above: we could take away up to 12 seats just in California, except the citizens of California wouldn't stand for such nonsense, and we voted in a Citizen Commission.
I think we need a constitutional amendment actually: the districting of the several States shall be undertaken by a commission of citizens appointed from the Jury rolls, its results subject to judicial oversite. Done and Done.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I'm not sure how to address this. It seems like you've already accepted that there are significant financial damages (both short and long term) associated with the loss of consumer confidence and international faith in the U.S. economy. If that is so, whether or not these are included in analyses like the S&P one* is pretty much beside the point.
* - They are. Of course they are. It would be insane to intentionally leave out known economic effects.
The question I raised is whether the long-term gain caused by Obama choosing to extend the shutdown rather than accept the moderate Republican compromise was worth the short-term pain Sam pointed to. The question of what the long-term gain (if any) was is, to me, quite uncertain, and unlikely to have justified the cost.
quote:I don't believe the Tea Party will start acting any more responsibly or intelligently. I don't think the core of the party has the capacity to and the people riding herd on them have committed to their approach. But I don't think that failing so spectacularly will cool their ardor for this particular tactic.
Think of like a dim, spoiled child. Things aren't going his way, so he throws a tantrum. If this tantrum works, he's going to do it again. If you don't give in, they're likely going to try some other tactic.
I don't find the analogy particularly apt; there were many more than two players in this game, and generalizing lessons learned from parenting to large-scale organizational conflicts seems dubious to me. I mean, I know we all use frames necessarily to understand situations, but I think in this case it elides too much to be useful.
quote:It's too early to see what the long term situation is going to be, but public opinion polling has shown the Tea Party at the highest unfavorable (and the large majority of that is strongly unfavorable) they've ever been. Also, several of the big money people who have been supporting the Tea Party have already publicly cut ties with them. Some of them are calling/laying the framework for campaigns to compete against Tea Party candidates in the coming elections.
If we're lucky, this will be the beginning of the end for the Tea Party. They'll stick around, but hopefully they'll fall to fairly insignificant. Even better would be if a more responsible, reasonable Republican party raises from this, one that relies more on principles instead of personal hatred, lies, and ignorance.
We can hope. That said, I don't believe anything the President did was meant to weaken the Tea Party.
At first, based on his own rhetoric, I believed Obama's logic in this situation was similar to what you wrote above, about not giving in to childish demands because it will only reinforce the bad behavior. As I said, though, it seems like flawed logic to me, and it didn't sit well. Having thought about this for a week I've come to a different conclusion: President Obama (or his strategists) knew this was a partisan battle they were positioned to win. They still want to pass a Democratic legislative agenda and this will be helped if they can capture more seats in the House. The only seats at risk are those of moderates. By engaging in, and winning, a partisan fight like this one, the President discourages moderates and emboldens hard-liners, resulting in more Tea Party primary challenges, which results in more flawed GOP candidates, either because moderates are forced to the right, or because they lose to the challengers. As a result, more Democrats get elected than otherwise would have, and the President's legislative agenda is strengthened.
The Tea Party is very useful to the President; it's almost too trite to say, but without them he'd have nothing to push against, no one to make him look like the reasonable adult. You saw this briefly in 2009 when he worked hard to elevate Rush Limbaugh in to an ideological foil for himself, and I think what we just saw was him doing it again, although now he has some people with actual power to prop up as his antagonists.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: It's patently absurd. The proof is in the pudding: if Democrats did it just as much, then the popular vote would be closer to the actual delegation numbers (meaning Democratic representation would be higher). It could easily be higher, as Sam points out above: we could take away up to 12 seats just in California, except the citizens of California wouldn't stand for such nonsense, and we voted in a Citizen Commission.
I think we need a constitutional amendment actually: the districting of the several States shall be undertaken by a commission of citizens appointed from the Jury rolls, its results subject to judicial oversite. Done and Done.
It's absolutely true there was much more Republican gerrymandering than Democratic in the last cycle. There are several reasons, only one of which is the technocratic strain in the Democratic party that prevented a gerrymander in California*. Republicans controlled many more state legislatures than Democrats, especially ones that had been held by Democrats during the previous redistricting cycle (like NC). As Risuena mentioned, by several measures MD is the most gerrymandered state in the country. Here's a top-ten list from Azavea, a non-partisan analysis firm: MD, NC, LA, WV, VA, HI, NH, IL, PA, RI. By my count, four democratic- and six republican-held state legislatures. At a superficial level, it seems like 'both parties do it' isn't that inaccurate. As a MA resident, I can add that our redistricting absolutely shored-up Democratic majorities in three districts where Scott Brown performed well.
In addition to the legislative advantage Republicans held, there's also the fact that having geographically contiguous districts inherently disadvantages Democrats, because Democrats tend to live in more ideologically homogenous areas. The Voting Rights Act exacerbates this problem by mandating a certain number of majority-minority districts. That's why non-partisan plans tend still to have a slight GOP-bias in seats held relative to popular vote. To get to proportional representation, we'd need to randomize the mapping of citizens to representatives, eliminating the geographic basis for legislative districts entirely.
None of this is to say gerrymandering isn't a problem, nor that it didn't primarily benefit Republicans in the most recent election. It's just that the effect can be easily overstated for various reasons. Personally, I like the idea of non-partisan redistricting commisions. I would certainly support one in my home state.
For further reading from some actual political scientists, see here and here. To read a different perspective (by a neuroscientist who dabbles in election prediction), see here.
*Arizona, which was controlled by Republicans, passed a similar bill, so non-partisan redistricting efforts didn't just cost Democrats gerrymandered seats.
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Really? My statement has absolutely nothing to do with "condition X having an affect on somebody being elected president."
But thanks for playing.
A heuristic truism of one sort is really no different from another sort of heuristic truism. They both operate on the assumption "This is how it's been." The notion that American's don't like one party in dominance for too long your basing on the notion that in previous elections when one side "wins" it may lose the next election cycle.
This really isn't different from saying "Well its always been the case you needed [x] to win."
The main incongruence in the analogy is that the historical evidence doesn't really support your notion.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I'm not sure how to address this. It seems like you've already accepted that there are significant financial damages (both short and long term) associated with the loss of consumer confidence and international faith in the U.S. economy. If that is so, whether or not these are included in analyses like the S&P one* is pretty much beside the point.
* - They are. Of course they are. It would be insane to intentionally leave out known economic effects.
The question I raised is whether the long-term gain caused by Obama choosing to extend the shutdown rather than accept the moderate Republican compromise was worth the short-term pain Sam pointed to. The question of what the long-term gain (if any) was is, to me, quite uncertain, and unlikely to have justified the cost.
quote:I don't believe the Tea Party will start acting any more responsibly or intelligently. I don't think the core of the party has the capacity to and the people riding herd on them have committed to their approach. But I don't think that failing so spectacularly will cool their ardor for this particular tactic.
Think of like a dim, spoiled child. Things aren't going his way, so he throws a tantrum. If this tantrum works, he's going to do it again. If you don't give in, they're likely going to try some other tactic.
I don't find the analogy particularly apt; there were many more than two players in this game, and generalizing lessons learned from parenting to large-scale organizational conflicts seems dubious to me. I mean, I know we all use frames necessarily to understand situations, but I think in this case it elides too much to be useful.
quote:It's too early to see what the long term situation is going to be, but public opinion polling has shown the Tea Party at the highest unfavorable (and the large majority of that is strongly unfavorable) they've ever been. Also, several of the big money people who have been supporting the Tea Party have already publicly cut ties with them. Some of them are calling/laying the framework for campaigns to compete against Tea Party candidates in the coming elections.
If we're lucky, this will be the beginning of the end for the Tea Party. They'll stick around, but hopefully they'll fall to fairly insignificant. Even better would be if a more responsible, reasonable Republican party raises from this, one that relies more on principles instead of personal hatred, lies, and ignorance.
We can hope. That said, I don't believe anything the President did was meant to weaken the Tea Party.
At first, based on his own rhetoric, I believed Obama's logic in this situation was similar to what you wrote above, about not giving in to childish demands because it will only reinforce the bad behavior. As I said, though, it seems like flawed logic to me, and it didn't sit well. Having thought about this for a week I've come to a different conclusion: President Obama (or his strategists) knew this was a partisan battle they were positioned to win. They still want to pass a Democratic legislative agenda and this will be helped if they can capture more seats in the House. The only seats at risk are those of moderates. By engaging in, and winning, a partisan fight like this one, the President discourages moderates and emboldens hard-liners, resulting in more Tea Party primary challenges, which results in more flawed GOP candidates, either because moderates are forced to the right, or because they lose to the challengers. As a result, more Democrats get elected than otherwise would have, and the President's legislative agenda is strengthened.
The Tea Party is very useful to the President; it's almost too trite to say, but without them he'd have nothing to push against, no one to make him look like the reasonable adult. You saw this briefly in 2009 when he worked hard to elevate Rush Limbaugh in to an ideological foil for himself, and I think what we just saw was him doing it again, although now he has some people with actual power to prop up as his antagonists.
Occam's Razor would like a word...
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I expect it is true that a lot of today's Republican positions are going to fade away as untenable. Their stance on gay marriage, abortion, health care, and a few other issues, are fights they have already lost. So there's reason for a liberal to feel optimistic, and perhaps even a bit smug.
But today's issues are not tomorrow's issues. I wouldn't be shocked if in 20 years, the big political issue is something completely outside the current political discussion. Perhaps something really far out there, like legal human cloning. Or perhaps its allowing people to genetically engineer traits into their offspring. Or for legal polygamous/polyandrous marriages. Or more realistically, for something like government funded free university education. Or for removing the tax avoidance from churches. Whatever.
The details aren't important, just that there are lots of political fights that haven't even started yet that are going to spring up. The nature of liberalism is that what is considered the "liberal" position is constantly changing. Progressing, if you will. And whatever the next liberal stance is that gets advanced, you can be damn sure that half the country (or more) is going to line up to oppose it. Those will be the next generation's "conservatives", of course. Whether they call themselves "Republicans" or not, I can't say. Though I expect they will.
Really? My statement has absolutely nothing to do with "condition X having an affect on somebody being elected president."
But thanks for playing.
A heuristic truism of one sort is really no different from another sort of heuristic truism. They both operate on the assumption "This is how it's been." The notion that American's don't like one party in dominance for too long your basing on the notion that in previous elections when one side "wins" it may lose the next election cycle.
This really isn't different from saying "Well its always been the case you needed [x] to win."
The main incongruence in the analogy is that the historical evidence doesn't really support your notion.
Actually, it does. There has never been a protracted period of time in American history where one party managed to hold on to both branches of government.
Presidents needing to carry Missouri has no actual cause and effect mechanic you could describe. People not wanting one party to have too much power makes a lot of intuitive sense. Whether it holds up in a study is something neither of us have done. But don't insult my intelligence by linking an XKCD comic and just standing behind it snickering.
I'm not arguing it's impossible that through a series of factors, one party could take and hole both branches of government. But I am arguing there is a significant force that works against that. It's real.
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quote:But today's issues are not tomorrow's issues.
Yes, but humans are dumb in a lot of really weirdly specific ways, and one is that today's political allegiances .. are tomorrow's political allegiances, without much tenable regard for how things have changed.
A 25 year old today who despises the republican party and conservative ideology, whatever his or her reasons, will rarely in the future 'go over' no matter how things change. No matter if the conservatives end up taking the position they had and the democrats leave their position behind and go hard left. We're stubborn and we stick. And many of the people coming of age today hate republicans for reasons that stick even harder than usual. Like "I'm hispanic and the GOP has been utter dickbags to us forever" — these things do not get forgiven easy.
Did conservatives switch over in large numbers when the GOP shifted hard-right and the democrats essentially adopted the heritage foundation's plan as the Affordable Care Act? Not really.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: It's patently absurd. The proof is in the pudding: if Democrats did it just as much, then the popular vote would be closer to the actual delegation numbers (meaning Democratic representation would be higher). It could easily be higher, as Sam points out above: we could take away up to 12 seats just in California, except the citizens of California wouldn't stand for such nonsense, and we voted in a Citizen Commission.
I think we need a constitutional amendment actually: the districting of the several States shall be undertaken by a commission of citizens appointed from the Jury rolls, its results subject to judicial oversite. Done and Done.
It's absolutely true there was much more Republican gerrymandering than Democratic in the last cycle. There are several reasons, only one of which is the technocratic strain in the Democratic party that prevented a gerrymander in California*. Republicans controlled many more state legislatures than Democrats, especially ones that had been held by Democrats during the previous redistricting cycle (like NC). As Risuena mentioned, by several measures MD is the most gerrymandered state in the country. Here's a top-ten list from Azavea, a non-partisan analysis firm: MD, NC, LA, WV, VA, HI, NH, IL, PA, RI. By my count, four democratic- and six republican-held state legislatures. At a superficial level, it seems like 'both parties do it' isn't that inaccurate. As a MA resident, I can add that our redistricting absolutely shored-up Democratic majorities in three districts where Scott Brown performed well.
In addition to the legislative advantage Republicans held, there's also the fact that having geographically contiguous districts inherently disadvantages Democrats, because Democrats tend to live in more ideologically homogenous areas. The Voting Rights Act exacerbates this problem by mandating a certain number of majority-minority districts. That's why non-partisan plans tend still to have a slight GOP-bias in seats held relative to popular vote. To get to proportional representation, we'd need to randomize the mapping of citizens to representatives, eliminating the geographic basis for legislative districts entirely.
None of this is to say gerrymandering isn't a problem, nor that it didn't primarily benefit Republicans in the most recent election. It's just that the effect can be easily overstated for various reasons. Personally, I like the idea of non-partisan redistricting commisions. I would certainly support one in my home state.
For further reading from some actual political scientists, see here and here. To read a different perspective (by a neuroscientist who dabbles in election prediction), see here.
*Arizona, which was controlled by Republicans, passed a similar bill, so non-partisan redistricting efforts didn't just cost Democrats gerrymandered seats.
You're ignoring the fact that there was a national, concerted effort by conservatives with a huge amount of funding specifically for the purpose of taking over state legislatures in order to gerrymander districts to make those states produce a disproportionate number of Republican House seats.
It didn't just happen to be that Republicans lucked into those positions and went about normal gerrymandering. There was a larger plan from the start to achieve that specific goal. And as soon as they finished gerrymandering, a lot of them tried to force through measures to change how electors are distributed to give Republicans an advantage there too.
No such plan existed on the Democratic side. The only plan I can think of is the project Democrats are trying to get together in Texas, but instead of dumping money into the state to buy legislature spots so they can redistrict, the plan is largely based around grass roots organizing and voter registration so the hundreds of thousands of minorities in the state who don't vote will vote. Hardly on the same level.
No objective viewer of the current state of the House of Representatives could honestly claim that body is really and truly representative of the nation.
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quote: but instead of dumping money into the state to buy legislature spots so they can redistrict, the plan is largely based around grass roots organizing and voter registration so the hundreds of thousands of minorities in the state who don't vote will vote. Hardly on the same level.
Its funny because Republicans think this actually is voter fraud.
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posted
Will the Republican party disappear? No. One of two things will happen. Either we will have a fiscal-conservative take over of the Republican party, or we will have a split in the party between pro-business groups and tea-party groups.
The Republican Party is in trouble. In a democratic republic they are trying to gain power through various non-democratic means. They are trying to game the system--through gerrymandering, voter suppression, fear mongering and propagandizing. They are building a power base that is based on lies, falsehoods, shrinking minorities, and threats. They are trying to bully their way into power. Each part of that base is flawed and will fail over time.
Lies, from death panels to the Muslim infiltration of the government to President Obama's birth location are believed firmly, but by fewer and fewer people.
Falsehoods, such as the danger of gay marriage to the institution of marriage, the denial of climate change, the laziness and overpayment of teachers, the idea that all the unemployed are drug using bums, all of these falsehoods drive away more voters daily as people recognize those falsehoods personally (they know a teacher, a gay couple, go on food stamps for a bit, etc).
Shrinking Minorities are older, white, and mostly male. These are the power folks of yesteryear, and they hold most of the power today. What power they don't hold is the power of the majority. Even Christianity is losing people. As this group gets smaller it reacts more and more conservatively to maintain that power. While this motivates itself to more and more action, it drives others further and further away.
Threats are the big gun in conservative politics today. Its become the party of bullies. Tea Party groups and conservative power players were bullying other Republicans to go along with the shut down or face challengers. They bullied Speaker Boehner to play along or lose his position. The Speaker then was told to Bully the Senate and the President into doing what they wanted.
American's as a group will do almost anything you ask them too, and almost nothing you tell them to. We are strange that way. Threats and bullying motivate people out of fear, but if they fear you they will only do what you demand until they find a way to remove you.
Bullies do not make friends. They make enemies.
As this base starts to crumble as it must, what is there to hold the group together, and elect more to the same?
Abortion. This has not been settled, and is probably the biggest thing holding the Republican's together.
Defeating Democrats. This is all they seem to talk about. Defeat is not in the election sense, since that takes to long. They want to defeat Democrats, and President Obama particularly, in every way possible--short of building a broad coalition and winning elections other than their own.
Lowering Taxes. Why? Its just what everyone wants.
So it looks really bad for Republicans, but they will not go away.
Because the same Democrats in their safe majority will soon be battling themselves. Pro-women democrats will be fighting pro-business democrats who will be fighting pro-marijuana democrats. Some will fall into scandal. Others into jail. Conservative Democrats will win elections, and become Republican.
Does this mean the two party system is here to stay? Not necessarily. The carefully gerrymandered districts in each state may allow the formation of a third party, a local and ultra-conservative party called the Tea Party. We may slowly evolve to a multi-party system not because the two Parties failed, but because they became too successful. They created a gerrymandering system that allows for strong minor views to elect folks to a national level, and they destroyed limits on funding politics so that the wealthiest and the corporate interests can buy their way into a national level.
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