1 year anniversary of the Republican beta for 2024.
The cartoonist Garrison is widely appreciated among the Left for his pure uncut doublethink and surrealism.
https://i.imgur.com/Ew281a5.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/amTXMHl.jpg
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1 year anniversary of the Republican beta for 2024.
The cartoonist Garrison is widely appreciated among the Left for his pure uncut doublethink and surrealism.
https://i.imgur.com/Ew281a5.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/amTXMHl.jpg
Like Illinois and Oregon's, the New York Democrats appear to be stepping up gerrymanders. Fair enough.
https://i.imgur.com/tk6m46X.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/iwwWWVS.png
In 2019, the Supreme Court was asked to disallow extreme partisan and racial gerrymandering on constitutional and legal grounds. John Roberts replied ":daisy: you."*
For at least the past 4 years - most recently last December - Congressional Democratic leadership has been asking Republicans to join them in passing federal prohibition of gerrymandering. Mitch McConnell replied ":daisy: you."
When Democrats turn and respond, "No, :daisy: YOU," they can at least impose some little measure of consequence.
As the redistricting process comes closer to a conclusion, it turns out that the imbalance is less severe than once feared. With Republican states having mostly maximized gerrymandering back in 2011-2, and many GOP incumbents now prioritizing the reinforcement of their safer districts over the dilution of liberal ones, increased gerrymandering in some Democratic states leaves the national Republican advantage only somewhat more than it previously was. That's appallingly bad, but not as bad as it could have been. Republicans are likelier to take only a modest majority in the House.
*Some on the Org heartily approved.
what a mess.
the UK doesn't do too badly with its Boundary Commission by comparison.
Indeed. Given in the UK both parties tend to be upset at both a party level (they might loose seats) and at an individual level (an individual might have more chance of loosing their cushy job).Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
Although not ideal, using a mathematical formulae to delineate boundaries (divide the numbers of voters in half by the shortest line possible; repeat until the desired number of areas created) is extremely difficult to fix and is easy to double check.
~:smoking:
Electionpolling.co.uk SwingometerQuote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
2019 result
Conservatives: 44.72%
Labour: 32.9%
Result: Conservative 80 seat majority
Switch Conservative and Labour numbers
Conservatives: 32.9%
Labour : 44.72%
Result: Hung Parliament, Labour short by 3
that sounds like a problem of the electoral system, i.e. FPTP where the party has an inefficiently spread voteQuote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
rather than a problem of the electoral wards, n.b. which is the responsibility of the Boundary Commission.
Well yes, I reminded you of this just recently in our discussion of structural barriers to Labour politics in the UK.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
FPTP is inherently likely to disadvantage certain constituencies or factions. This applies more or less also to those fixed geographic jurisdictions, in the US the "several states." After the Civil War, Republicans had enormous advantages in the Senate and Electoral College almost all the time until the New Deal (in part by using federal power to establish many small new Republican-dominated states in the West), then the Solid South gave Democrats the slant most of the time, but by the 21st century as the South finished turning deep Republican this advantage swung back to the Republican Party.
But for the most part, in both the UK and US, the jurisdictions composing the representation of the House of Commons/Representatives are not fixed. These are maps that must be drafted semi-regularly for the sole purpose of running elections. The exceptions are the single-district states in the US and national (Scotland, Wales) malapportionment in the UK (and, like, islands or whatever).
I haven't done a lot of reading on the districting process in the UK, but it seems a commonly-held observation that districting tended to be biased toward Labour in the late 20th century until rather recently - not because the districting commissions are necessarily biased, but because the rubrics they hew to had been biased toward the political geographies of Labour support. You can't claim a neutral process if the whole system is built to make one party's votes much more "inefficient" across constituencies. This is why the FPTP reform wave in the US over the past 20 years has focused on creating mathematical measures of fairness and competitiveness, such as the "efficiency gap," producing highly-competitive maps in deep-blue states such as California and Colorado, whereas as I understand it the UK districting framework largely deprecates explicit consideration of political bias and relies more on 19th-century modes of building credibility; compact borders, natural communities, and similarly-populated districts (at least compared to the US) are not enough.
From this 2001 analysis:
Quote:
There is general agreement that first-past-the-post in single-member constituencies is
one of the most disproportional of electoral systems. The reasons for this are well
understood. Much less discussed and understood, however, is the degree to which that
system treats political parties differentially, creating bias.
Such bias is well-illustrated by recent UK general elections. In 1979, the Conservative
party won 43.9 per cent of the votes cast and 53.4 per cent of the seats. Four years
later, it won 42.4 per cent of the votes but 61.1 per cent of the seats. In 1987, its
shares of the votes and seats were 43.4 and 57.8 per cent respectively, and then in
1992 its vote share fell slightly, to 42.3 per cent, but its share of the seats fell more
sharply – to 51.6 per cent. Labour won in 1997, with 43.3 per cent of the votes and
63.6 per cent of the seats. Thus over five elections, whereas the leading party’s share
of the votes only ranged between 42.3 and 43.9 per cent its share of the seats varied
more, from 51.6 to 63.6 per cent. With virtually the same share of the votes at four
successive elections the Conservatives won very different shares of the seats, and then
when Labour won with the same vote percentage its share of the seats was larger than
the Conservatives ever achieved.
The reasons for this differential treatment are found in the ‘classic’ abuses of
constituency-definition – malapportionment and gerrymandering. These – as Gudgin
and Taylor (1979) conclusively demonstrated – operate even when the redistribution
process (the UK term for redistricting) is undertaken by non-partisan, independent
bodies (in the UK, the Boundary Commissions, which operate under an Act of
Parliament with specified rules – albeit ambiguous and contradictory, as shown in a
recent detailed study: Rossiter, Johnston and Pattie, 1999)
Quote:
Thus in 1997 Labour got 43.3 per cent of the votes cast and the
Conservatives 30.7. Reducing the Labour share by 6.3 percentage points in every
constituency and increasing the Conservative share by the same amount makes them
equal, with 37.0 per cent each. But with those equal shares, Labour would have won
82 more seats than the Conservatives – a very clear bias in its favor (the total number
of seats was 659).
But of course political geographies can change, coming from above (e.g. change in districting authorities, or contraction/expansion of the legislature), or below (e.g. the rise of new parties or coalitions). I can't say how the maps are being changed by the long-term shift of college-educated voters into center-left parties as that continues. And one might also argue that it is not a desirable principle for elections to be more competitive, though I don't know why low competitiveness would be preferable in any healthy electoral democracy.Quote:
Why has Labour increasingly benefited? In the 1960s and 1970s this was largely
because of the malapportionment components plus abstentions. In the 1990s
gerrymandering, abstentions and minor party influences all played a part.
Three reasons generated this change in Labour’s fortunes – given that its geography
of support remained very much the same across the 14 elections and the Boundary
Commission procedures did not change markedly.
1. The negative impact of the cracked gerrymander. A cracked gerrymander is risky
for the benefiting party: constituencies with small majorities are vulnerable if its
opponent performs well at an election. Labour benefited from its large vote share
increase in 1997 (allied with the Conservatives’ lowest share), winning many
constituencies in the usually pro-Conservative cracked gerrymander areas. The
gerrymander bias component was worth 48 seats to Labour as a consequence.
2. Labour’s focused campaigns in 1992 and 1997. Labour paid relatively little
attention to its safe seats at these two contests, knowing it would almost certainly
win them all – especially in 1997. In the absence of intensive local campaigns,
turnout was generally low, increasing Labour’s advantage from the abstentions
component (from 10 seats in 1987 to 20 in 1992 and 33 in 1997) without it losing
any seats.
3. Tactical voting (the British term for strategic voting). In 1992 and, especially
1997, the volume of tactical voting in Conservative-held seats increased
substantially, as an increasingly sophisticated electorate (many of them
determined to unseat the Conservative candidates) responded to cues provided by
the parties and other interest groups to support the opposition party best-placed to
achieve that. In general, the second-placed party in Conservative-held seats
increased its vote share by more than the average amount whereas the third-placed
party’s share fell (often absolutely). As a result, many of the second-placed parties
won – increasing the number of minor party victories – whereas the number of
wasted votes per seat lost by third-placed parties fell. (On tactical voting see
Johnston et al, 1997, and Evans et al 1999.)
Together, all three strategies meant that Labour substantially reduced both its number
of surplus votes per seats won and number of wasted votes per seat lost (which for the
first time fell below the Conservative level). Not only did it increase its vote share
substantially between 1992 and 1997, therefore, it also increased the efficiency of its
vote share: it got a much better return on its votes (a higher seats:votes ratio) than ever
before.
But, so anyway, with the past 6 UK elections having been conducted using districts based on data from 2000 or older, and that map becoming biased against Labour representation since the end of the Blair era, I can only hope new boundaries in the 2024 election wind up helping Labour. I'm sure someone has done low-maths analysis of the possibilities.
the general expectation is that the redrawn boundaries will get the tories another 5-10 seats in England:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-the-impact-be
Any studies of how requiring voter ID will help the Tories? Since it's a tried and tested way of excluding poorer and less privileged voters whilst dressing it up as a way of preventing voter fraud which all studies indicate is close to non-existent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
Not that i know of...Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
I remember someone saying that it was a way of combating fraud, and me pointing out that electoral fraud in the UK is near non-existent. It was especially notable because the requirement is a tried and tested way in the US of stopping poor people from voting Democrat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
Edit: It was in response to a prob-Trumpian who was sceptical that Biden had won the election legitimately, alleging fraud because there isn't 100% reliability.
Someone noted earlier in this thread that they couldn't be 100% certain there wasn't fraud in the 2020 election, and thus doubted if Biden had won fairly. It turns out that there was indeed electoral fraud in Colorado, just as that poster had feared. Except it was by a Republican election official.
Given how much cheating the Republicans did, how much did Biden really win by? How much cheating will the Republicans do in the future, given that we know that they are determined to break all rules?
Quote:
Colorado's top elections official said Thursday that she is investigating a "potential breach" in voting security by a local Republican county clerk.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said that in late January her office learned of a social media post, "attributed to Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Merlin Klotz," in which the official appears to boast that he made a copy of the hard drives used by local election systems.
Yes, the Republican axiom, nowadays stated openly, is that a Democrat is of itself not a legitimate voter, so elections won by Democrats are a definitional matter of fraud.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
In your country this really depends on UK particulars that other people sort out and which I prefer you to search out for posting, but based on what we know of the effects of voter ID laws in the US, I would expect limited effects on turnout and Labour vote share from any similar rules if:
1. People without ID are much less likely to be politically active or informed.
2. Affected prospective voters would be disproportionately concentrated in party-locked constituencies.
3. People falling into the target demographic are more politically mixed - when they do try to participate - than those targeting them may assume.
4. Some effects of voter suppression laws can be conditionally compensated for by increased investment in voter outreach and civil-societal or party activism (n.b. this costs money and time).
Sample overview of the American case.
But it's a troubling sign of the Conservative Party's trajectory. I've read that the UK system provides ample time to cast a vote before election deadlines, and that traditional polling places are plentiful with no or minimal wait times. If that's currently the case, worry more if and when the government moves to change it.
I was a little confused to hear this news, because I thought the the UK was counted in the ranks of countries with mandatory universal ID. It turns out Cameron's government reversed the mandate by repealing the Identity Cards Act of 2006 as one of its early actions. Hmmmm...
(If the British government can strictly regulate butter knives, it can hand its citizens ID cards.)
Some tangential data on historical UK election turnout.
I've never carried mandatory ID in the UK. nor have I ever needed ID to vote. These two things were things that happened abroad, not in the UK. A photo ID was only needed for certain functions, and it was easy to go through years without needing one. Voting was a matter of turning up to a polling station and confirming identity by saying "I am so and so at this address", when you're given a ballot paper.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
we refused to go along with the notion that ID cards were for our own convenience and security, after that the argument to create another mega database and compel people to present ID on request died an ignominious death.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
The usefulness of a universal ID is manifest even without requiring it for such daily activities as walking down the street. I wish we had one here (in the meantime, I make do with my Social and a REAL-ID-compliant NY state ID).
More to the point, politicians who reject universal IDs while demanding photo ID at the ballot never have security or convenience as their objects. Never.
I'm not sure where to post this, as it's a British action, but it relates to US government. Are trade deals a federal thing governed by the national government, or is it actionable by individual states? Is it possible to bypass the executive (President)? Presumably the President has to sign it off at some point, but does it have to go through the Houses of Congress as well?
I'm asking this because, according to one of our papers, the UK government is planning to bypass Biden by signing trade deals with individual US states.
there was a solid argument from Sam Lowe (trade expert) a few years back that it was perfectly possible for EU nations to individually make sub-trade-deals with third parties, to negotiate useful business facilitation (a.k.a. a trade 'agreement') with third countries as long as it did not impinge on competences granted to the EU.
this could be very similar.
What does the UK government say they want to negotiate state-by-state? I doubt it would be constitutional to any meaningful extent though:
I believe a foreign company can come and negotiate various arrangements with states or localities, such as tax abatements and other incentives, but if it's a government entity, not even that much may be permitted.Quote:
Originally Posted by USC, Art. I, Sec. 8
Seems like a subject for the blogs and Twitter experts.
Here you go, from The Times.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Quote:
Britain pursues US trade deals state by state after Biden snub
Ministers have begun a move to strike “mini” trade deals with individual American states after President Biden made clear he had little interest in pursuing a trade agreement with Britain.
Under a new strategy by the Department for International Trade, ministers have led a charm offensive in state capitals to take advantage of America’s federal structure of government.
I mean the specific objects the UK hopes to align on. Like if California is one of the UK's top partners in trade and FDI, what does the UK wish to propose to California (ignoring concerns of facial legality)?Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
indeed, i have one such linked below:Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
the quoted tweets ae interesting in providing further detail to the main thread:
https://twitter.com/AnnaJerzewska/st...33599789895695
MOU's and trade promotion pehaps.
An example of a US-UK Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) is the FDA-VMD Sectoral Annex for Pharmaceutical Good Manufacturing Practices.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
An example of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is the FTC-Information Commissioner-Privacy Commissioner (of Canada) MOU on Mutual Assistance in the Enforcement of Laws Protecting Personal Information in the Private Sector.
Is there any information on what the UK government seeks to accomplish at the state level, and why? FYI I see that an MOU means something more forceful in the UK than it does in the US, which is more often tantamount to a statement of intent or aspiration.
This question is easy enough to answer. Johnson is tainted by hypocrisy, so he needs to regain political capital. A reliable way of doing so is to continue having done Brexit, as that's the slogan he was elected on. Since Biden won't countenance a trade deal that compromises the Northern Ireland agreements, the Tory government wants to find a way of getting those Brexit headlines. The UK government has done a number of agreements that it's subsequently tried to go back on (and been caught on camera stating that they'd intended to go back on). As long as those agreements are initially made, they can get their headlines and their political capital. The details don't really matter (Johnson has admitted that he doesn't follow the details).Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Some polling, albeit pre-war, around the Ukraine crisis and gas prices.
https://i.imgur.com/L0HEUxf.png
https://i.imgur.com/z0KAKuk.png
https://i.imgur.com/HJXIsQj.png
Since the end of the year Biden's approval has been firmly in Trump territory. (Approval on Ukraine in particular in aggregate tracks with general approval, since voters tend to transfer their general impression to specific issues.) There's just too many voters who judge neither process nor results and prioritize indignation about rising prices, in particular gas prices, a subject which the vast majority understand nothing about. So we see a distillation down to core partisanship. Unfortunately, gas prices are going to rise no matter what else Biden does, even if he outright apologizes to Putin and works to reverse all sanctions. In the plausible scenarios of the West leaning on sanctions but not escalating further, price rises are likely going to prove persistent to some degree through the end of the year. If only there were a comprehensive investment package on offer that would put us on the path to energy independence and sustainability...
Anyway, average gas prices in America will assuredly reach all-time highs sometime in 2022. This is, of course, a disastrous portent for Democrats in the November midterms and beyond, since in the nationalized political environment an individual politician of the president's party has their marginal approval rating determined by constituent attitudes toward the president.
(Tangentially, it does lend some credence to pessimistic predictions that the West will quietly roll back almost all the new sanctions by the end of the year in order to make nice with a triumphant Russia for the sake of domestic economic recovery.)
Dear Euros, you will lead very troubled lives if both Russia and America come under the grip of mystical fascist delusion. Throw in China and India TBD and it's a definite Game Over for the human experiment.
A shocker for once. If Florida's new district map contains no surprises, and all currently-approved maps remain approved, then
The Republicans have indeed reached the limits of gerrymandering as of last cycle, and New York, New Jersey, and Illinois picked up the slack this time with countergerrymandering. As far as New York's map is concerned, it might even be unconstitutional but courts seem inclined to let that be remedied next year with primary elections just a few months away.Quote:
In a departure from a decades-long pattern in American politics, this year’s national congressional map is poised to be balanced between the two parties, with a nearly equal number of districts that are expected to lean Democratic and Republican for the first time in more than 50 years.
Despite the persistence of partisan gerrymandering, between 216 and 219 congressional districts, out of the 435 nationwide, appear likely to tilt toward the Democrats, according to a New York Times analysis based on recent presidential election results. An identical 216 to 219 districts appear likely to tilt toward Republicans, if the maps enacted so far withstand legal challenges. To reach a majority, a party needs to secure 218 districts.
To be clear, this isn't a "fair" set of maps outside a select set of states, it's just that Democrats acting more unfair than usual negated much (but not all) of the advantage Republicans gained by being unfair.
If by the summer Joe Biden can put an American boot up Putin's ass while living to tell the tale, and secure a deal with Venezuela and the Gulf states to produce more oil, then Democrats have a shot at keeping the House majority. If the Democratic West gave up neutral redistricting,
I don't recall if I posted this, but for the one-year anniversary of its publication I'll quote from the essential distillation of all right-wing politics in America, fundamentally present down to the Founding.
Quote:
“Conservatism” is no Longer Enough
Let’s be blunt. The United States has become two nations occupying the same country. When pressed, or in private, many would now agree. Fewer are willing to take the next step and accept that most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.
I don’t just mean the millions of illegal immigrants. Obviously, those foreigners who have bypassed the regular process for entering our country, and probably will never assimilate to our language and culture, are—politically as well as legally—aliens. I’m really referring to the many native-born people—some of whose families have been here since the Mayflower—who may technically be citizens of the United States but are no longer (if they ever were) Americans. They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.
What about those who do consider themselves Americans? By and large, I am referring to the 75 million people who voted in the last election against the senile figurehead of a party that stands for mob violence, ruthless censorship, and racial grievances, not to mention bureaucratic despotism. Regardless of Trump’s obvious flaws, preferring his re-election was not a difficult choice for these voters. In fact—leaving aside the Republican never-Trumpers and some squeamish centrists—it was not a difficult choice for either side. Both Right and Left know where they stand today… and it is not together. Not anymore.
Quote:
Practically speaking, there is almost nothing left to conserve. What is actually required now is a recovery, or even a refounding, of America as it was long and originally understood but which now exists only in the hearts and minds of a minority of citizens.
This recognition that the original America is more or less gone sets the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy apart from almost everyone else on the Right.
Quote:
Conservatism, Inc. is worse than useless in this regard because it does not understand through perpetual study what Trump grasped by instinct. As if coming upon a man convulsing from an obvious poison, Trump at least attempted in his own inelegant way to expel the toxin. By contrast, the conservative establishment, or much of it, has been unwilling to recognize that our body politic is dying from these noxious “norms.” Keep taking the poison! it advises. A cynic might suppose that many elements on the right have made their peace with (and found a way to profit from) the progressive project of narcotizing the American people and turning us into a nation of slaves.
What is needed, of course, is a statesman who understands both the disease afflicting the nation, and the revolutionary medicine required for the cure. But no such figure has emerged, and it is unreasonable to pin our hopes on such a savior simply turning up.
What, then, are Americans to do?
For fascism, only one dessert. What else?Quote:
In the meantime, give up on the idea that “conservatives” have anything useful to say. Accept the fact that what we need is a counter-revolution. Learn some useful skills, stay healthy, and get strong.
I can't count how many pieces using this language I've read from the Right's 'intellectual' wing since 2016, growing in vehemence and urgency, but today it's more than ever necessary to frame this ratchet's context widely. It's the same ratchet that returned great power war to Europe, making a sham of that rickety so-called Long Peace, the necessity that drove Final Solutions in Rwanda, Myanmar, and many others. For "them", there is no choice but to act before it's too late. Ukraine took that penny's flight, its due course, to secure themselves; in America we still haven't used our time wisely. This struggle will never be won by force of arms unless we allow it to be.
I'm sure there are other countries, but I am always taken aback that people seem to think that the USA was perfected upon creation and nothing good ever happened since then and everyone should return to these mythical days. Most other countries accept that things have changed and perhaps for better or for worse but few want a wholesale return to the past. I think it starts with the USA teaching such a biased version of its own history which divorces people from reality.
Mind you, if the outlook of the early settlers had a summary "xenophobic extremists" would be pretty close.
~:smoking:
Almost all countries teach heavily biased national histories. It's a hard thing to overlook. The effects are just more salient when it comes to large and powerful countries, see: Russia.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
Important detail: White Protestant xenophobic extremists.Quote:
Mind you, if the outlook of the early settlers had a summary "xenophobic extremists" would be pretty close.
Select manifest top policy priorities of the Republican mainstream since 2020:
Criminalize abortion
Criminalize birth control
Criminalize the upbringing of trans children
Criminalize "racially uncomfortable" pedagogy
Criminalize gay marriage
Next: Revoke judicial protections on interracial marriage?
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has promoted the full merging of Russian and American far-right propaganda by linking his accusation about Ukrainian evil biolabs with Q-Anon archvillain Hunter Biden. Here he is all but declaring the new Fascist International. Where else will he find allies but the Western fifth column?
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1507333553448800309 [VIDEO]
Mythical indeed. Our founding covenant of governance was so incomplete that we drew up a new one less then 7 years after the revolution. And THAT one had to be immediately amended to garner enough support to pass. Please remember that I am a fan of harkening back when it comes to the Constitution.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
I also suspect that a fair number of our founders would thump the Trumpers upside the head with a stick for an utter lack of common sense in waddling after an obvious demagogue who is using them for his own power. Even Huey Long was more genuinely supportive of his followers.
A leak from CBS recapitulates longstanding narratives about mainstream media bias in the US. CBS hired Mick Mulvaney, a Republican Congressional firebrand-cum-Trump White House Chief of Staff because they want "access" to Republicans, whom the CBS leadership are sure will win the midterms. Previously the former CEO of CBS, notorious sexual predator Les Moonves, was caught in 2016 advocating that his network promote Donald Trump in order to gain ratings.
Know-Nothing political correctness.Quote:
In a bitterly divided Congress, it was a rare measure that had been expected to sail through without a fight.
A bill to name a federal courthouse in Tallahassee after Justice Joseph W. Hatchett, the first Black man to serve on the Florida Supreme Court — sponsored by the state’s two Republican senators and backed unanimously by its 27 House members — was set to pass the House last month and become law with broad bipartisan support.
But in a last-minute flurry, Republicans abruptly pulled their backing with no explanation and ultimately killed the measure, leaving its fate unclear, many of its champions livid and some of its newfound opponents professing ignorance about what had happened.
Asked what made him vote against a measure that he had co-sponsored, Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida, was brief and blunt: “I don’t know,” he said.
The real answer is as much an allegory about the state of House Republicans in 2022 as it is about a federal building in Florida. With little notice and nothing more than a 23-year-old news clipping, a right-wing, first-term congressman mounted an 11th-hour effort on the House floor to persuade his colleagues that Judge Hatchett, a trailblazing judge who broke barriers as the first Black State Supreme Court justice south of the Mason-Dixon line, was undeserving of being honored.
The objector was Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia. Shortly before the House vote, he began circulating an Associated Press article from 1999 about an appeals court decision that Judge Hatchett wrote that year that struck down a public school policy allowing student-approved prayers at graduation ceremonies in Florida. The decision, which overruled a lower court, held that the policy violated constitutional protections of freedom of religion.
“He voted against student-led school prayer in Duval County in 1999,” Mr. Clyde, a deacon at his Baptist church in Bogart, Ga., said in an interview. “I don’t agree with that. That’s it. I just let the Republicans know that information on the House floor. I have no idea if they knew that or not.”
Since being sworn in last year, Mr. Clyde has drawn attention for comparing the deadly Capitol attack to a “normal tourist visit” and voting against a resolution to give the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who responded that day. He also opposed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime and explicitly outlawed an act that was symbolic of the country’s history of racial violence. Mr. Clyde also voted against recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
The naming of federal buildings is among the more mundane tasks that Congress undertakes, and it is usually a consensus matter. In the Senate, it is often accomplished without debate or even a recorded vote, which is how that chamber passed the measure to honor Judge Hatchett in December. In the House, it is typically considered under a fast-track process reserved for uncontroversial matters that limits debate and requires a two-thirds majority for passage.
But Mr. Clyde’s late objection turned the routine ritual into a conservative litmus test for Republicans, who quickly joined him in turning against Judge Hatchett.
The bill failed on a vote of 238 to 187, falling short of the two-thirds threshold, with 89 percent of Republicans opposed.
https://twitter.com/MalloryMcMorrow/...53738403143681 [VIDEO]
Hear hear.
In response to the intense Republican campaign to vilify and criminalize the LGBTQ spectrum and allies as pedophiles. They may have to make up for long time, the Russian right was on this beat 15 years ago already.
What can one do against such reckless hate?
https://i.imgur.com/BKNSedh.png
On Republican preparations to ban abortion nationally by 2025, with the status of contraception in question as well.
Yet, I didn't even realize things had gotten to be this bad already (I mean before Texas). We're facing down prospectively the most extreme and repressive reproductive control regime in the world, much worse than anything we had in the past, imposed by the most radical tenth of the population.
Quote:
Conservative lawmakers who view abortion as homicide do not want it to be legal anywhere in America, and they are already trying to stop blue states, as well as the federal government, from facilitating it. Although the FDA has approved medication abortion, some states are seeking to outlaw abortion pills—deeming them a dangerous substance akin to narcotics and imposing yearslong prison sentences on anyone who distributes or possesses them. These drug-trafficking laws are bound to ensnare people who order the pills online, or transport them home from nearby blue states. The growing number of criminal charges against women who obtained an illegal medication abortion demonstrates that it is impossible to criminalize abortion pills without also criminalizing patients themselves. (There were nearly 1,300 criminal investigations of pregnancy outcomes between 2006 and 2020, when Roe was still on the books; that number will spike after it falls.)
Today’s anti-abortion movement has even proposed new laws that prevent people from crossing state lines to terminate a pregnancy. Republicans in Missouri are considering such legislation right now. Under the statute, Missouri’s citizens could sue doctors who perform an abortion on a Missouri resident in a different state—like neighboring Illinois, whose clinics serve countless Missourians. Missouri’s citizens could also sue anyone who facilitated the abortion, including the friend or family member who transported the patient across state lines. Similarly, in 2019, Georgia Republicans passed a sweeping law that appeared to impose criminal penalties on patients who traveled out of state for an abortion. The courts have put that law on hold, but the state may commence enforcement after Roe is overturned.
Fugitive Uterus Act indeed.Quote:
Here’s where the new goals of the anti-abortion movement matter most. If fetuses are legal “citizens,” then states could argue that they must be protected from out-of-state abortion providers. A red state might order a blue state to extradite an abortion provider (or patient) within its borders, dragging the judiciary into “complex, uncharted territory.” Or a red state could threaten to prosecute any provider who stepped inside its borders. Hill also pointed out that the Constitution also requires states to give “full faith and credit” to the judgments of other states’ courts. So if a Missouri court orders an Illinois doctor to pay damages for terminating a fetus from Missouri, the Illinois courts are, in theory, obligated to make him pay up.
EDIT: lolololololol the Republican SCOTUS already drafted the decision on abortion a while ago it seems (it's due at the end of spring), but someone has leaked it. Very hostile to all precedents on privacy rights (e.g. contraception, gay marriage, interracial marriage), not just abortion.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...inion-00029473
Yeah, it is a pretty sad state to see the SCOTUS in to plan to do this. Make me wonder if we'll need to see Conception Certificates in addition to Birth Certificates and potential manslaughter investigations for every natural miscarriage in some of these states.
Perhaps this will help Democrats get the vote out more, youths that are disillusioned by Biden should surely see the danger that current brand of Republicans are to basic human rights and get out and vote.
It may galvanise some potential supporters, but I don't think it will have a significant impact, as it will mostly affect the counties already voting for Democrats. That being said, if the protests are dynamic enough, the Supreme Court may chicken out and water down the final text. Out if curiousity, is it explicitly forbidden to leak the document? As far as I know, there's no similar precedent, but quite a few Republicans are pretty vocal about the nasty punishment they would to impose on the "mole".
Interesting note: this draft appears to have been prepared starting in January, around the same time that Justice Breyer, the oldest liberal justice, announced his retirement after a year of adamantly refusing to retire (he was finally replaced last month). I wonder if these developments are related.
This leak isn't unprecedented - one similar one was in the 1850s (not an auspicious timeline comparison!), and generally justices used to be much more loose-lipped about internal affairs - but in the modern age it is rare. It might be the most ostentatious leak in the court's history. From what I can tell this might be the first time an actual draft, as opposed to the decision or reasoning, has been leaked, but it's not like the contents of this document are particularly novel or notable for scintillating intellectual or rhetorical expression. In any case the outcome of this case was foreordained in most court reporting and analysis for the past year, since the specific case was first granted cert last summer, because Trump appointed the guaranteed 5th vote for overturning Roe v. Wade just prior to the 2020 election.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crandar
https://twitter.com/jonathanwpeters/...09806430236672
https://theconstitutionalist.org/202...century-style/
You'd be surprised at how many conservative Evangelical and Catholic women - Republic, anti-abortion - get abortions. For example, by most exit polling of 2020, half of Catholics and 75% of Evangelicals voted Republican. In this older data,
You'll notice that it is not the case that 38% of Americans were irreligious or unaffiliated in 2014. All told, and considering that the CDC reported 630000 legal abortions alone in 2019, it's clear that even beyond all the anecdotal evidence there must be a large cohort of women who have had abortions in their lives who uphold anti-abortion politics. Such hypocrisies and/or coalitional compromises are probably common - just think of some of the patrons here - when it's hard to survey more than 20% national support for criminalizing abortion, going back decades.Quote:
• Many abortion patients reported a religious affiliation—24% were Catholic, 17% were mainline Protestant, 13% were evangelical Protestant and 8% identified with some other religion. Thirty-eight percent of patients had no religious affiliation.
It's remarkable that countries like Ireland, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico have all moved toward legalization of abortion in the past few years, but the US is following Poland's track and getting more and more restrictive. And the anti-abortion wing of American politics is proposing far more extreme and punitive policies than exist in Poland currently, though TBF decommunization almost completely killed legal abortion in Poland in practice long ago (one thousand legal abortion procedures per year or fewer for 30 years).
Even the Taliban reportedly allow some abortions on the grounds of threat to the mother's life or household poverty.
It remains completely unclear what sort of effect these disruptions will have on the American electorate. There are cases for both pessimism and optimism. But tens of millions did protest against police violence and impunity recently, with the 2017 and 2018 Women's Marches being two of the largest mass demonstrations in American history prior to those, and not much changed after all, so both optimistic and pessimistic accounts might hold truth.
The SCOTUS majority itself will not choke on the home stretch. Roberts, the Chief Justice, likely already had before the leak, because he is an institutionalist who believes in doing this work slowly and quietly (he condemned Roe before being elevated to SCOTUS, supported all anti-abortion jurisprudence before Trump, and most after). But the rest are very vocal about their beliefs and know well what they were installed to do.
One of the more vexing issues.
If you believe that life begins at conception then you are concerned with the right to life of the unborn. If you believe in individual choice and freedom to the greatest extent possible without harming others then you may opt to curtail a woman's right to determine all things for her own body SOLELY because of the rights of that unborn standing equal to those of the mother. Those who believe abortion should not happen tend to view the only exception as being those rare instances where only one of the two beings (again accepting the unborn as an equal being which many do not) could possibly survive. Our system of rights, including the right to life, was labeled as something that exists for each individual ab initio. When life begins is the crucial question in this position.
Of course, a large percentage of those who would ban abortion would also ban contraception, pre-marital sex, non-monogamous and/or non-standard marriages, sexual education other than the reliance on abstinence; they would vehemently support the use of the death penalty for many violent crimes; and yet they would still vehemently assert their pro-freedom and pro-individual rights stance. These restricted thinkers would enact a series of restrictions that are impractical in many cases, immoral in some, often inherently self-contradictory, and arbitrarily restrictive of the rights they claim to be championing.
The whole thing is depressing.
The USA acts like an Imperialist Theocracy and the vast majority of the people living in it don't want it to be this way. Well, the Theocracy bit. It seems they're more laid back about the whole warfare abroad bit.
But the country was founded in a manner that would allow a small number at the top to keep all the power, and hence it is running as designed with an increasingly large disenfranchised and pseudo-disenfranchised mass having close to no say in the process whatsoever. Not quite slaves per se, but a lot closer to indentured serfs than most Western countries have their populace.
~:smoking:
Saying it acts like an imperial theocracy is a bit over the top. Not imperial nor theocracy. It certainly tries to act like the global hegemon but imperial theocracy is certainly not accurate. That there is a fifth of the country that want it to be a theocracy is a different thing entirely though and they are very much isolationists so not imperial there either.
As for how it was founded, you're for the most part correct there. Only caveat really would be that the ruling class at the top 200 years ago was much closer to the indentured servants and even slaves than the ruling class at the top now. The idea of suing someone into bankruptcy for libel and other frivolous things would be a shock to the founding fathers. Back then you would still see your elected representatives in everyday life as they weren't sheltered in a life of private mansion/gated community to office with security guard and vacations in the cayman islands. The disconnect from reality that the current ruling class have isn't just a US phenomenon, I think Europe and East Asia sees the same divide hence the PM's scandal of his covid parties while the rest of the country was locked down.
As for the masses not having a say, well a lot of that is unfortunately designed apathy. They absolutely could have a say but enough of the country thinks their votes don't matter or that nothing will change so they don't vote for candidates that could represent them. This allows our political class to cater toward each fringe and only try and draw enough votes from the undecided/apathetic when needed.
There is a time and place for philosophical debate, but in our tangible world of power politics abortion law is not a philosophical debate and never has been here. I don't mean that it isn't up for philosophical debate, just that it isn't and hasn't been philosophically debated. "Force shits on Reason's back" goes the saying.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
1. There is no justification for persecuting women over abortion if one believes that a woman is a person equal to a fetus, just as we neither perform forcible transfers of blood, organs, or personal property between persons on the basis of need nor fine or imprison people for declining 'voluntary' donation of the aforementioned.
2. Abortion rates have been in continuous decline across America since the early days of Roe v Wade according to many sources, and not especially in states that have moved to quasi-ban it over time. Key factors in this trend in the US and probably in other countries are better access to education, healthcare (e.g. contraceptives), and increasing social equality of women - all of which the anti-abortion lobby of American politics vehemently opposes in practice.
3. On the more (vocally) radical end of anti-abortion politics, when faced by the question of what protections fetuses deserve given that higher quality of life for gestating women translates to higher quality of life for fetuses, will propose that women be prohibited from participating in most occupations or the public domain generally on account of the elimination of stress and danger that such measures will engender.
4. The restriction of women's personal and property rights writ broadly also conveniently hinders women from obtaining illegal abortions, which tend to almost-completely fill the gap created by criminalization regimes, as is well-known.
5. Republicans before Roe v Wade were overwhelmingly pro-abortion or laissez faire. It is well-documented that Richard Nixon and other leading Republicans, starting principally in 1972, took up the anti-abortion cause in order to foster support among traditionally-Democratic conservative Catholics as well as the growing far-right Evangelical caucus, complementing the Southern Strategy among racially-anxious Whites. Recall that it was also in the 1972 election that the famous anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly launched her celebrity by (successfully) opposing the ratification of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights to women (her slogan: "Stop Taking Our Privileges").
There are very very few opponents of abortion, strict or lax, who endorse the adoption of universal childhood subsidies, education, healthcare, parental leave, etc. Rather more, still the mild sort, are just Comstocks.
To repeat as always: They don't care about fetuses.
In the wake of the upcoming decision striking down abortion rights on the basis of, among other things, 17th-century anti-witch and pro-marital rape juristry
Quote:
Hale's defense of marital rape, as expressed in his Historia, continued in English law until 1991 and was cited in court as recently as 2009.[4] Modern scholars also offer criticism of Hale for his execution of at least two women for witchcraft in the Bury St Edmunds witch trials and his belief that capital punishment should extend to those as young as fourteen.[5]
the most extreme Republicans are pursuing their goal of outlawing birth control.Quote:
The view that a husband cannot be charged with the rape of his wife was described by Sir Matthew Hale (1609–1676) in History of the Pleas of the Crown, published posthumously in 1736, where he wrote that "The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract".
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/...261207007.html
Almost all Americans who are sexually active rely on contraceptive technologies, from condoms up, at some point. Even in the most Republican states it will take some time to get there (we can only hope for internicine strife with injuries within movement conservatism). But they will, as the timeframe for the Republican fringe to make its agenda the party line has become very compressed. Republicans, like climate change, come for us all in the end, as the scholars keep predicting.
We just got our new US ambassador, Mr. Tsounis. Not exactly the American Talleyrand, but he pays well:
Quote:
A lawyer, developer and philanthropist, Tsunis has donated to both Democrats and Republicans, including more than $1.3m to Obama in 2012.
Crandar, if you wanted more about the internal dealings of the court, here is some. And on Chief Justice Roberts, who as I said prefers to make politics with finesse and subtlety compared to his copartisans, is as I suggested being shut out by the Radical Right majority.
Context: A decade ago Roberts was going to overrule Obamacare/ACA in its entirety, but was persuaded that doing so would damage the court's legitimacy, so he negotiated with the liberals and satisfied himself with a pound (or two) of flesh from the program.Quote:
Of those rulings, the Obamacare one ruffled the most feathers because Roberts reportedly reversed his position days before the decision was announced, ultimately voting to find the law constitutional.
“There is a price to be paid for what he did. Everybody remembers it,” said an attorney close to several conservative justices, who was granted anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the court’s arguments.
The Supreme Court as a concept has always been abstractly indefensible in its traditional form, but moreover it's been one of the single most important factors in the totalitarian radicalization of the American Right, since those who control the courts control the laws, and those who control the laws control the future, so you might as well try to seize all power in the name of the movement.Quote:
In 2019 it was reported that Roberts had originally voted to invalidate the individual mandate and uphold the Medicaid expansion requirement. He believed that the Constitution's commerce clause never was intended to cover inactivity, such as the refusal to buy insurance. But he was uneasy with the political division in the vote tally and also did not want to invalidate the entire law because he thought the individual mandate was only inseverable from "community rating" and "guarantee issue" provisions of the law. Due to this impasse he explored the argument that the individual mandate could be upheld as a tax and invalidating the Medicaid expansion. Breyer and Kagan had previously voted to uphold the Medicaid expansion, but decided to switch and join Roberts's opinion on that section.[64]
Meanwhile, Spain's government, which previously made it illegal to harass or intimidate women in interference with their right to abortion, is increasing access to abortion in public healthcare, increasing the rights of teenagers to abortion, increasing access to feminine hygiene products (such as in schools), and mandating up to three days' leave for menstrual pains - per month.
America goddam.
At first I misread the tweet as "my father was a prominent abortionst. Clarence Thomas was a close family friend" and was confused. Anyway, yes, I'm surprised if any veterans of 2000s Internet discussion boards could be unaware of this theme. But the naivety of the general population of passive liberals or apoliticals no longer surprises me, since 2016.Quote:
my father was a prominent anti abortion activist. clarence thomas was a close family friend growing up. i literally cannot tell you how many times i EXPLICITLY heard from these people, EXPLICITLY, smug glee over the idea of women dying from unsafe abortions. they see it as appropriate punishment and they say so, outright. i was told as a child, over and over again, that women who sought abortions deserved to die. you can't appeal to the morality of these people because they have none.
Here with Alabama, not to be confused for Mississippi. So it's already as bad there as it was in Ireland for the Duration, and abortion isn't even technically banned. What's horrific to me is that even if criminal(ized) syndicates can supply a steady stream of chemical abortifacients to red-state women (these already account for perhaps a majority of typical abortions), and none of these DIY procedures become medically complicated, all healthcare for women will come to suffer in quality and responsiveness.
Quote:
If you want to understand the future of medical care for pregnant women in a post-Roe world, look no further than what is happening in Alabama. As others have pointed out for Slate, the leaked draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization paves the way for criminalizing many aspects of pregnancy. While Texas’ abortion ban, S.B. 8, has essentially halted all abortions in the state, Alabama offers a glimpse of a troubling future in which the provision of medical care for pregnant people is deeply intertwined with the cultural attitudes that seek to criminalize “undesirable” pregnancy outcomes.
In the summer of 2020, I got a firsthand experience of these attitudes in action. Three weeks after starting to practice at West Alabama Women’s Center, my application for a medical license was denied and my temporary medical license revoked for what we can’t help but question may have been political reasons. Although I had been hired to offer general gynecological care, the Women’s Center has historically been known as an abortion clinic, and I am open on social media about my views that abortion should be on demand. Because of the eight-month-long process to reverse and reinstate my license, I did not begin to understand how dire health care access was in Alabama until I was able to practice medicine in March 2021.
I was astounded by how often patients were turned away from emergency rooms and their doctor’s offices in the middle of their miscarriages. No wonder Alabama has the third-highest maternal mortality rate in the nation, I initially thought. People are denied urgent medical attention outright, which left me wondering at first if health care providers were simply negligent and not keeping up with their medical education. Or was this lack of care a reflection of discrimination? Eventually, I landed on discrimination as the cause.
But I was wrong. The reality is much worse. Instead, these medical professionals seem to know what they are supposed to do, but choose not to.
I came to this realization when I saw a patient in active miscarriage (bleeding, passing clots, cramping) who had just had an office visit with her primary physician. She was forced to wait more than 48 hours in order to get the results of her bloodwork. Doctors will sometimes check a patient’s levels of HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin, to help distinguish miscarriages from ongoing pregnancies or ectopic pregnancies. I could not understand why someone with all of the clinical signs of a miscarriage in progress was required to wait for much-needed intervention, all the while bleeding and cramping and suffering.
I was angry that the patient’s doctor did not just provide the standard medical treatment for a miscarriage: surgically removing the contents of her uterus, which would stop her pain and bleeding. Then I saw a different patient who was actively miscarrying, and a lightbulb clicked on: The doctors were afraid of being attacked by the state of Alabama.
Medical providers who treat pregnancy-related issues in red states exist in a constant state of fear of performing any procedure that can be classified as an abortion—even while the procedures remain legal. We know that we face the risk of being prosecuted, having our licenses revoked, or even being thrown in jail if we fail to precisely follow every regulation, no matter how arcane or medically unnecessary it is. (We can be cited if the clinic’s janitor’s closet isn’t the size deemed appropriate by the state, for example.)
Quote:
As an OB-GYN, I work in active fear of being arrested for providing evidence-based health care in this state. I am certain that I am not alone. Intervening in an ongoing pregnancy would be examined as an “abortion” by the medical board and subject to the same scrutiny as any procedure I perform in my clinic. Doctors know that if you perform anything that could even be suspected of an abortion, you had better have all of your regulations followed to the letter. No wonder, even though we are directed under federal law to provide appropriate medical care to any pregnant person who shows up in the ER with a medical emergency, few in Alabama are willing to risk their careers and liberty to provide that care.
Too often, I see and hear about examples of this stigma and fear at work when women come to me after being refused treatment in the local ER. For example, one patient started bleeding heavily at home. When she got out of bed in the morning, she said blood and clots ran down her legs and onto the floor. She rushed to the ER, where she told the nurse practitioner that she had taken mifepristone and misoprostol for a medication abortion 10 days earlier. The nurse practitioner knew the patient was experiencing an incomplete abortion, which happens when the body is not able to completely pass the pregnancy on its own. (Miscarriage and abortion are often indistinguishable clinically, and that’s a huge problem because people miscarrying will be denied care because of abortion suspicion.)
As is protocol, the nurse practitioner called the OB-GYN on call. He said he would not see the patient. No further explanation was given. The nurse practitioner then tried involving the ER physician; however, he was “in a meeting” and unavailable. Ultimately, she was told by hospital administrators to send the patient more than 2.5 hours away for care, back to the clinic that gave her the medication to end her pregnancy.
Desperate for help, the nurse practitioner called me. I, of course, said that if the patient was safe to drive (ride with a friend) all that way, I would certainly provide the needed care. Sarah had an aspiration procedure with me that took less than seven minutes from start to finish. It was uncomplicated and safe. She later told me that she slept in the car during the 2.5-hour ride back home. Seven minutes could not be spared by the doctors at her local emergency room where she was bleeding on their floor. Instead, she was told to go away.
Quote:
Many of the medical professionals in Alabama who refuse to treat women who are miscarrying are not incompetent or hateful—they are scared.
The Talibangelicals in Georgia this week bombed and destroyed a non-Christian monument (associated with right-wing conspiracism) known as Georgia's Guidestones after radical Republican politicians declaimed the site as a font of Satanic influence which needed to be smote.
It is the culmination of a grassroots Evangelical campaign designating the site as Satanic since it was first established over 40 years ago.Quote:
God is God all by Himself. He can do ANYTHING He wants to do. That includes striking down Satanic Guidestones.
ICYMI a few weeks ago the Supreme Court declared almost all gun control facially unconstitutional.
On the other hand, California has implemented its latest budget, including provisions for state-sponsored manufacturing of insulin.
During the public hearings of the January 6 Commission into Trump and stuff, the Republican Speaker of the Arizona House, Rusty Bowers, testified that he refused encouragement from Trump and Giuliani to overturn the result of the election in Arizona, and reaffirmed that the Bie Lie of the stolen election is indeed a lie.
Strong words!Quote:
Originally Posted by Bowers
A great display of principled fortitude against attempts to morally compel him to vote for people who intend to do things he believes to be wrong and bad. One must certainly respect the man's commitment to his ethos!Quote:
Originally Posted by Bowers
Still can't believe the entire center-to-right spectrum united for a week in lying about the non-reality of the easily-provable account of a 9-year-old who was raped pregnant and struggled to secure an abortion following the termination of constitutional privacy rights. Hundreds of pubescent children receive clinical abortions every year! It's not even rare.
But more important than even this are the millions of women who will now (already are) be withheld routine or acute medical care because of the actuarial fear that any tangential medical intervention upon females or their reproductive systems could potentially be considered abortion by zealous state prosecutors. Even the Taliban would be confused.
Such a great evil stalks this country. In every facet of our lives fascists and theocrats seek to impose slavery and death on our people.
@rory_20_uk
Arguably not even the worst five stories I've seen yet about denial of medical care to ambulatory uteri.
Early-onset puberty in females is now considered to be earlier than age 8. Substandard medical care across the spectrum is probably a greater ongoing public health hazard to women and girls in America than Covid at its height.Quote:
Six days after the Supreme Court struck down the right to abortion, lupus patient Becky Schwarz got an unexpected message from her rheumatologist.
“This is a notice to let you know that we are pausing all prescriptions and subsequent refills of methotrexate,” the message read. “This decision has been made in response to the reversal of Roe vs. Wade.”
Schwarz was stunned. Methotrexate is a cheap, common drug prescribed to millions of Americans. Like her, many have rheumatic illnesses. Others take it to treat inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis or cancer.
Yet few are aware that it is used off-label to end ectopic pregnancies, or that it could be restricted by doctors or pharmacists even in states like Virginia that do not ban abortion.
The reasons are numerous, and muddy.
In Texas, dispensing methotrexate to someone who uses it to induce a miscarriage after 49 days of gestation is a felony; that makes pharmacists hesitant to fill such prescriptions for almost anyone with a uterus. A new total ban on abortion in Tennessee will effectively criminalize any medication that could disrupt pregnancy past the point of fertilization, with strict exceptions for a patient who will otherwise die. And in Virginia, confusion over rules about who is permitted to prescribe drugs “qualified as abortifacients” may be blocking access to the medication.
“That’s what was shocking to me,” said Schwarz, a 27-year-old who lives in Tysons Corner, Va. “In a state where I thought I was relatively protected regardless of what the Supreme Court decided, I found out I wasn’t.”
Methotrexate was originally developed as a chemotherapy agent more than 60 years ago. But in low doses, it has proved to be one of the safest, least expensive and most effective treatments for roughly a dozen autoimmune conditions, from juvenile idiopathic arthritis to Crohn’s disease.
“It’s one of the most common medications that I prescribe,” said Dr. Grant Schulert, a pediatric rheumatology specialist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. “It’s really a mainstay of our practice.”
Indeed, methotrexate was first approved to treat rheumatic illnesses in 1959, before Schulert was born and almost 15 years before Roe vs. Wade was decided.
Since its reversal, many patients have been delayed or denied this “gold-standard” treatment for conditions that have nothing to do with pregnancy.
“I have gotten some reports where children have been denied methotrexate for their juvenile arthritis until they’ve proven they’re not pregnant,” said Dr. Cuoghi Edens, an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at University of Chicago Medicine and a rheumatology expert who treats adults and children.
In one case, a pharmacist initially refused to dispense methotrexate to an 8-year-old girl in Texas. In a note the child’s doctor shared with Edens, the pharmacist wrote, “Females of possible child bearing potential have to have diagnosis on hard copy with state abortion laws.”
Methotrexate is a folate antagonist, which can cause miscarriage at high doses. Although it is not used in medication abortion, it is the preferred treatment for ectopic pregnancy, a rapidly fatal complication that affects about 100,000 patients per year in the U.S.
In an ectopic pregnancy, the fertilized egg never reaches the uterus and instead implants, for example, in the fallopian tube. Such pregnancies are always fatal for the fetus and can also kill the mother.
Those patients represent about 2% of the 5 million Americans who take methotrexate. Yet this uncommon, off-label use is the basis for tight new restrictions on a medication that is disproportionately prescribed to women and girls of reproductive age.
“The majority of rheumatic diseases affect females at substantially higher rates than males,” Edens explained. “The prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis in women to men is 3 to 1. For lupus it’s 10 to 1. And so rheumatology is a very female-predominate patient population.”
Such patients take a far lower dose of methotrexate than is used to treat ectopic pregnancy or breast cancer. Most are counseled to use contraceptives, and to switch to alternative treatments if they seek to get pregnant.
Nevertheless, some doctors have already stopped prescribing methotrexate rather than risk falling afoul of antiabortion laws.
Many pharmacists have likewise refused to fill methotrexate prescriptions, or have demanded additional proof before dispensing the medication to patients they believe could get pregnant.
Experts say it’s not clear yet how many patients will lose access to their medication in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, or even which states might try to limit it.
That’s led to panic for many patients who rely on the drug.
“The biggest thing that right now I’m hearing is just a lot of fear of what is going to happen next,” said Schulert. “Even in patients who are doing well who stop a medication, about half will flare their disease in six to 12 months.”
Without methotrexate, many of Schulert’s juvenile idiopathic arthritis patients could no longer hold a pencil or type on a computer. Others face irreversible damage to organs and joints.
“Patients are saying, ‘I’ve been on this medication for years, I’m finally feeling like myself again, I don’t want to have to switch,’” said Zoe Rothblatt, a community outreach manager at the Global Healthy Living Foundation, a patient advocacy organization. “It’s the gold standard, and we need to get the word out so people aren’t scared and they’re able to get their medication.”
Most healthcare professionals aren't going to put their career / lives / family on the line to fight against State laws so I'm not surprised that they're playing it safe and covering their own backs rather than risk being dragged through the courts for years. And of course, unlike prescribing vast amounts of opiates, there's no money in Methotrexate.
Most of the world looks at this (and many other things in the USA) with disbelief.
~:smoking:
Upon further reading, what should have been obvious is becoming apparent to me: In states with a presumption of wrongdoing with respect to any medical procedure or medication administered on a pregnant or potentially-pregnant woman with effects or potential effects on reproductive capacity or fetal development (let alone actual abortions within legal exception where such exists), providers are basically required in practice to proactively justify individual care decisions to state prosecutors and regulators.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
What should have been obvious is that even when care does not violate the law, even when providers have full expectation that they will be found to be above board, this bureaucracy noticeably increases the costs and decreases the alacrity of care, in the worst case restraining the appetite of providers to even offer such care in the first place. Remember, we're not even talking about abortions here, just anything that may have "effects or potential effects on reproductive capacity or fetal development," which for women and uterus-havers is kind of inclusive of much or most of modern medicine, broadly speaking.
In more developments that leave me tittering at the British version of institutional scandals, more information has emerged on Trumpworld's protocols for implementing their long-advertised purge of disloyalty in the federal government.
In electoral news, a combination of factors has made it possible to entertain the hope that the Democratic Party might just be able to tread water in the November elections, viz. simmering discontent with exuberant Republican excesses at state and national levels*, a string of poor-quality Republican candidates, the 2020 redistricting cycle being a wash for both parties, legislative movement this year, the easing of inflation and gas prices at the pump, and the grinding effect of the January 6 investigative commision's work against Trump's standing on the Right (for mixed reasons).
*Polling indicates that public belief in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court has never been lower in our history. It is telling when even a genuine throne-and-altar reactionary like Adrian Vermeule (right-wing Harvard constitutional scholar) can admit what the left has been saying for decades:
For an insight into who Vermeule is, if you don't recall earlier discussions here:Quote:
In reality, as this case makes clear, there is no conservative legal movement, at least if legal conservatism is defined by jurisprudential methods rather than a collection of results. West Virginia v. EPA illustrates that every last methodological tenet professed by the movement will be downplayed, qualified or abandoned when the chance arises to limit the regulatory authority of the federal agencies, especially in environmental matters.
Quote:
I want to suggest a principle of immigration priority that should, I hope, be broadly acceptable or at least intriguing for all right-thinking persons concerned that current American immigration policy is racist and classist, explicitly or implicitly, de jure or de facto. The principle is to give lexical priority to confirmed Catholics, all of whom will jump immediately to the head of the queue. Yes, some will convert in order to gain admission; this is a feature, not a bug.
[...]
Catholics need to rethink the nation-state. We have come a long way, but we still have far to go — towards the eventual formation of the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and ultimately the world government required by natural law. [Ed. See also...]
So basically will of the people, as represented by the judges appointed by the democratically elected government, overrides legal principles. If you're appointed by the democratic government, you have carte blanche (in this case, for the rest of their lives).
Isn't this basically an ultra-powerful extremely select House of Lords? We have several hundred of them to water their biases down.
Among the complaints you'll see is that judges appointed at least by Trump and Bush Jr. (first term if not both) lack democratic legitimacy. But judicial review artisans in general haven't really been assessed in terms of legitimacy until now. The American concept of the judiciary, traditionally at least, is that judges - where not directly elected, as they are in some states - are meant to be insulated from democratic pressure, being rather impelled to a positivistic outcome by their assuredly-apolitical legal philosophies. But whereas the jurist as a character anywhere is indeed influenced by political context and personal preference to work backward to desired outcomes, the Republican legal world has cultivated the judge-as-political operative who consults party advantage first, reactionary ideology second, and legal text, precedent, intent, and principle somewhere distantly after. In the case of American movement conservatism, the 50-year project, well-executed, was to seize the iudiciary as a vanguardist institution by which to promote the movement and the party's preferences, which to be clear are anti-democratic in nature. Explicitly so, as when many Republicans, whether politicians, religious leaders, academics, or business elites tell us that democracy is "incompatible" with liberty and sound living.
Judges - like many other people - can be impeached. I think that this should happen more often - if for no other reason than so they realise it isn't a lifetime power trip - they're actually supposed to be enforcing the rule of law.
~:smoking:
Yup, also if impeachment was used more often and for simple things like incompetence or loss of confidence instead of requiring 'caught red handed and then admitting it' levels of guilt to move forward. Would nice if impeachment trials had some formal structure instead of making it up each time as politics requires/allows.
Republicans do try sometimes, but there's a reason impeachments are rare in the US - the threshold for removal in the US Constitution and most (all?) state constitutions is a supermajority.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
One of the many structural problems with the judicial branch in the US - though in current events far from a decisive one - is that, as in ye olde times, judges serve for life (unless they sit in elected positions, which is its own can of worms). There is no non-perverse reason in modern government for any position to be a guaranteed lifetime sinecure. Magistrates are not royalty (nor should royalty be magistrates, or, er, anything).
Edit: Jon Stewart at his best (burn pits). [VIDEO]
What does a wholesale revision of the constitution involve, and are there any limits? If the Republicans get their super-majority, can they reinstate slavery, for example?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
Republicans can't even claim to formally or quasi-formally begin the process to amend the Constitution unless they, like, liquidate their opposition in Congress and install "alternative" replacements. I'd be more alert about Republican courts rubber-stamping unlawful state and federal actions according to their partisan impact, or increasingly-unchecked political repression in the red states.Quote:
Originally Posted by Article. V.
For a fun excursion away from the big picture:
The real crime is, you know, all the crime, but it's also a crime what's legal.Quote:
As a tax researcher, I was skeptical of rumors Trump buried his ex-wife in that sad little plot of dirt on his Bedminster, NJ golf course just for tax breaks.
So I checked the NJ tax code & folks...it's a trifecta of tax avoidance. Property, income & sales tax, all eliminated.
Full text of NJ tax code for land used for human burial.
No stipulation regarding a minimum # of human remains necessary for the tax breaks to kick in--looks like one corpse will suffice to make at least 3 forms of tax vanish.
Wouldnt there be a zoning issue around that? Surely one small part of the property being used for a cemetery cant change the status for the entire golf course?Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
This follow-up by the OP was even more revealing:
Yeesh.Quote:
Yes, but this could not have been Trump's decision: he had not been her next of kin for decades & had no right to decide her burial place.
Ivana's *actual* next of kin--her still-living mom & 3 kids--or the executor of her estate, had to agree to this. THAT's the shocker.
I'm sure there must be some complexity involved, but Trump has for years got over a hundred acres of the property zoned as farmland, allowing him to pay like 1% of the usual property tax. This was documented early in the Trump era.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
He's very well known to always be on the prowl for methods by which to nickel and dime the state, some of lesser, some greater magnitude, some of lesser or greater legality.
It's also possible Ivana stipulated the burial place in her will, right? These are all screwy people.Quote:
Kansas has since 2019 enjoyed a judicially-enforced right to abortion access.
The Kansas government, controlled by Republican supermajorities except for another key 2018 Democratic governor win, had timely decided to put forth a referendum:
The date was set to the day of the primary elections, rather than the general election, to minimize turnout. There wasn't much polling done, but what was indicated the sides were evenly-balanced.Quote:
A vote for the Value Them Both
Amendment would affirm there
is no Kansas constitutional right
to abortion or to require the
government funding of abortion,
and would reserve to the people of
Kansas, through their elected state
legislators, the right to pass laws to
regulate abortion.
60% of voters came out for abortion rights yesterday in Kansas.
Be scared you fundagelical fucks.Quote:
If they can get an “abortion-minded” woman to have a conversation, Pinson feels confident that the center’s staff can change her mind. In their counseling sessions, Pinson says, they “pour into girls,” persuading them that, no matter the obstacles in their lives, they can become successful mothers.
Pinson welcomes even the most devastating cases.
“I’ve seen a lot of 13-year-olds do phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a negative thing.”
She closely followed the case of the 10-year-old rape victim who was denied an abortion in Ohio last month. If that girl came into her center, Pinson would suggest she consider adoption, she said, adding that abortion would not fix the girl’s problems.
“That life is still a life and, even at 10, she knows a life is inside her.”
I doubt there are many if any limits in theoryQuote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
- The USA already has few international laws it adheres to and could leave any others
- No other country has done more than a verbal criticism of such things as children in cages / Federal troops arresting people
- Abroad, other countries have in many cases joined in with breaking international laws in attacking other countries
Even if they'd just baldly overturn the 14th Amendment there'd be some murmours from Europe and that's about it; elsewhere would probably be happy as the last vestiges of pretence of ethics falls away and they can get back to the ethnic cleansing etc with gusto.
The USA has already a long history of both discriminating against non-whites and non-rich and usually does this indirectly rather than overtly - let us not forget our dear Austrian leader was so keen to see how the USA did things before he copied for his own purposes.
~:smoking:
As before, if the US goes, say so long to Blighty.
The Republicans don't want to overturn the 14th Amendment however, they just want to reinstate the 19th century jurisprudence that corporations can't be subjected to the same level of regulation as women.
Trump's record with the success of his endorsements has been unflattering, so he's trying a weird new trick.
Attachment 25956
No, it's not an oversight.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trump
"Mr. President, do you support Eric Greitens or Eric Schmitt?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
"Yes."
It's been a miserable slog, but Sinema, Manchin, Gottheimer, et al. may have finally agreed on everything they want to cut from Biden's agenda that climate/energy investment and Medicare reform - assigned the quasi-Orwellian epithet "Inflation Reduction Act" by Manchin - is heading to the House for likely final confirmation. It's more than I predicted at least, namely nothing.
Paul Krugman: "On infrastructure, Obama wanted to invest but couldn't; Trump promised to invest but didn't; Biden actually got it done. What got lost were the extensive social programs. That's a tragedy; we could have virtually eliminated child poverty, among other things. Even there, this bill expanded the enhanced subsidies that have helped bring uninsurance to a record low. But overall, it's a remarkable record for a party with 50 senators and a relentlessly obstructionist opposition."
If by some miracle we keep the House and net a Senator in November it would be a truly self-righteous suicide to continue ignoring the urgency of structural political reform in the US, including court reform, state accession, reaffirming anti-gerrymandering and the constitutional protection of republican government, etc.
Promising midterm news: in a special election for NY-19, Democrat Pat Ryan defeated his GOP challenger by a bit over 2 points last night. Biden won this district by just a point in 2020, and many thought it would flip. This doesnt bode well for expectations of a red wave in November.
Currently 538 projects 47-53 Democratic Senators, with a likely scenario being all hold plus exchange in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Their House projection is 230/435 Republican seats on average. There are only two competitive governor's races, those in Kansas and Arizona.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
Of course, what matters is how the model is shaping up in 2 months. The latest polling is always more applicable than a historical trend. Retail gasoline prices have been falling continuously for more than a month. Hopefully the global food, water, and energy crises don't reach another acute stage in the fall.
In policy news, Biden has fulfilled his campaign quasi-promise on student loan forgiveness. It's a fairly moderate change whose comparative virtue is that it provides ongoing relief to future students. Biden has actually aggressively pursued existing debt-relief and repayment programs, such as through the following: Borower Defense To Repayment; Total and Permanent Disability; ITT Tech Students; Public Service Loan Forgiveness. His administration's outreach around these obscure and traditionally uncooperative programs has already assisted potentially hundreds of thousands above baseline in clearing their debt. Recent polling suggests that half of Millenials and Gen Z endorse the more expansive versions of student debt relief. Biden's policy seems calculated to garner the support of at least half of Americans overall.
Hopefully the prosecution of Republicans follows a similar workmanlike trajectory.
Quick reference: The federal government owns most student debt (university, technical/trade school, etc.) in the country. This amounts to several trillion dollars of ballooning debt, much of it chronically non-performing (i.e. it never gets repaid and the government loses money holding it), held by some 40 million Americans.
Fun fact: From the 1950s to the 1970s the typical 4-year degree in America, even from private universities, cost about what one would expect from a similar current European education, though I see European universities are increasingly 'rising to American standards.' This is amusing to contemplate considering that debt relief is least popular among Baby Boomers (for whom college debt effectively did not exist).
Basic features: $10000 of debt forgiven for those with incomes under $125K, or couples with incomes under $250K. Rises to $20000 for Pell Grant recipients (available to low-to-mid income students). About half of all student debt holders should be released from their full obligations with these caps. The Sanders/Warren proposals to forgive $50000 in debt would have absolved almost all debt holders.
Long-term improvements: For those who still have to manage student debt, doing so will become almost easy.
Note the distinction between gross and discretionary income (the first is pre-tax).Quote:
The Department of Education has the authority to create income-driven repayment plans, which cap what borrowers pay each month based on a percentage of their discretionary income. Most of these plans cancel a borrower’s remaining debt once they make 20 years of monthly payments. But the existing versions of these plans are too complex and too limited. As a result, millions of borrowers who might benefit from them do not sign up, and the millions who do sign up are still often left with unmanageable monthly payments.
To address these concerns and follow through on Congress’ original vision for income-driven repayment, the Department of Education is proposing a rule to do the following:
For undergraduate loans, cut in half the amount that borrowers have to pay each month from 10% to 5% of discretionary income.
Raise the amount of income that is considered non-discretionary income and therefore is protected from repayment, guaranteeing that no borrower earning under 225% of the federal poverty level—about the annual equivalent of a $15 minimum wage for a single borrower—will have to make a monthly payment. [Ed. This currently designates around the first $30000 in income secure from debt repayment calculations for an individual, or the first $60000 for a family of four.]
Forgive loan balances after 10 years of payments, instead of 20 years, for borrowers with original loan balances of $12,000 or less. The Department of Education estimates that this reform will allow nearly all community college borrowers to be debt-free within 10 years.
Cover the borrower’s unpaid monthly interest, so that unlike other existing income-driven repayment plans, no borrower’s loan balance will grow as long as they make their monthly payments—even when that monthly payment is $0 because their income is low.
These reforms would simplify loan repayment and deliver significant savings to low- and middle-income borrowers. For example:
A typical single construction worker (making $38,000 a year) with a construction management credential would pay only $31 a month, compared to the $147 they pay now under the most recent income-driven repayment plan, for annual savings of nearly $1,400.
A typical single public school teacher with an undergraduate degree (making $44,000 a year) would pay only $56 a month on their loans, compared to the $197 they pay now under the most recent income-driven repayment plan, for annual savings of nearly $1,700.
A typical nurse (making $77,000 a year) who is married with two kids would pay only $61 a month on their undergraduate loans, compared to the $295 they pay now under the most recent income-driven repayment plan, for annual savings of more than $2,800.
EDIT: A low-salience provision of the ARRA stimulus Democrats passed in March last year is that all forgiven student loan debt is non-taxable at the federal level through 2025 (by default, the government treats forgiven debts as taxable income). Nice setup.
An important aspect of the current student loan system I forgot to mention is that during the process of nationalizing student debt 15 years ago, student debt was made less dischargable in bakruptcy than most (all?) other forms of personal debt for the lifetime of the debtor. Relevant to this example of the takedown in its finest form.
A Republican Congressman criticized student debt forgiveness on the grounds that doing so weakens military recruitment incentives, thus harming national security. There are programs that make shaking off student debt easier for military or other service members (N.B. Until the Biden presidency only perhaps a single-digit percentage of eligible debtors were able to take advantage of their entitlement.)
Leaving aside scrutiny of the ethical and factual dimensions of such a claim, it is absolutely delicious that this very Congressman has submitted legislation this very month that would eliminate the "costly and regressive" Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, the result of which would be to make almost all military service members ineligible for debt relief.
"Heads we win, tails you lose" as they say. These are ruthlessly-malicious cads who want to destroy the country they hate.
Of course, it's possible to use one's position toward a measure of public service rather than carnage. Talk about blue blood, but John Kerry makes a mockery of European claims to antique political dynasties. Well, not a mockery, but a stiff rebuke.
But what does this mean for America? After all, almost all our presidents can claim descent from royalty, particularly the Anglo-Saxon-Norman aristocracy, even Obama.Quote:
After months of research into Kerry’s ancestry, Burke’s Peerage, experts on British aristocracy, reported on Monday that the Vietnam War veteran is related to all the royal houses of Europe and can claim kinship with Russian czar Ivan the Terrible, a previous emperor of Byzantium and the shahs of Persia.
Burke’s director Harold Brooks-Baker said Kerry had his mother, Rosemary Forbes, to thank for most of his royal connections.
“Every maternal blood line of Kerry makes him more royal than any previous American president,” Brooks-Baker said. “
The Bush political family as political family, in American context, only dates to the early 20th century, the interwar years. John Kerry on the other hand is a direct descendant of John Winthrop, first among the founding Puritan elite of Massachussetts colony 400 years ago. Not only that, but his Boston Brahmin ancestors - besides OG John ofc - almost continuously found themselves in powerful and prominent political roles until the Civil War era (that I can identify).Quote:
Similar research carried out on Bush ahead of the 2000 presidential race showed that he beat Al Gore in the royal stakes, claiming kinship with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth as well as with Kings Henry III and Charles II of England.
To follow up on even more good news, the special election for Alaska's single House district went blue- for the first time in almost 50 years!
Definitely doesnt bode well for the red wave.
Also a credit I think to the value of ranked ballot voting. Tends to leave the fringe on the fringe where they should be, I hope it's adopted in more states.
The winner would have won on the first ballot in FPTP in this spread as well, though there might be tactical voter adjustments in that circumstance. Score/STAR voting arguably delivers a more representative outcome as a preferential or approval-type system, grading candidates by cumulative points rather than a series of virtual runoffs.Quote:
Originally Posted by spmetla
Not that I would condone the specific outcome, but polling and other indicators strongly suggest that the Republican candidate Begich III* was slightly preferred to the Democratic winner (Mary Peltola) and overwhelmingly preferred to the other Republican loser (Sarah Palin). A score-voting or STAR system would have reflected that sentiment by electing Begich.
But while there are mathematically more representative systems than instant-runoff or ranked-choice, and ranked choice wasn't really utilized in the Alaska special election, it's still a better baseline than FPTP.
*His grandfather was the Democratic Representative At-Large of Alaska in the early 1970s until he died in a plane crash and was replaced with Republican Rep. Don Young, who remained in office for exactly 49 years until he died this March.
Brandon taking off the gloves lately?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC-k-lhml4o
It was a great speech by Biden- calling a spade a spade was inevitably going to ruffle feathers among the GOP, though the outcry has been particularly hilarious since they went from "Sleepy Joe" to "Biden is Palpatine/Hitler." As Truman said, “I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.”
Also applicable- "a hit dog will holler."
Now the Dems need to follow up on this with more forceful campaigning. Biden got us off to a great start, now time to bring it home. Call the MAGA GOP a threat to democracy, show voters concrete examples of how the GOP are going to end free and fair elections. Show the rhetoric and votes that the GOP deny the election results. Dont rely on the media for this job, we know they are more invested in the horse race.
I thought that Tyler Bowyer on Twitter said it best - "This is what we will have if you let Ranked Choice Voting and Independent Redistricting Commissions into your state."
Yes. a country governed mainly by moderates who lean more towards where the Democrats now are / where Republicans were c. 20 years ago.
Attachment 25984
I'd love such a system to come to the UK where candidates are chosen more on who they are than purely have them picked by the local and central party machinery.
~:smoking:
https://i.imgur.com/WBVihZk.png
You can see my edits clearly; they represent 2019 figures. I believe I also read recently that mortality among young adults has risen to levels not seen since the mid-20th century.
When the New Deal coalition still reigned, American and Western European aggregate life expectancies were roughly equal. Now American life expectancy is probably 3 or 5 years lower.
For reference on Amerindian (the ethnic demographic hit hardest by the pandemic) life expectancy figures, the last time US overall life expectancy was 65 was during WW2.
I wouldn't expect factual rigor from whatever third-echelon TPUSA hack Tyler Bowen is, but I'm genuinely curious how one could construct a scenario in which Idaho, Utah, and Tennessee - three of the most Republican states in the country - go Democratic in presidential elections (RCV or no) while near-balanced purple states like Florida and North Carolina don't. Bifurcating Texas and Florida here definitely deserves explanation. I don't know enough to analogize this to UK constituencies.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
I would guess that chart is based on what might have occurred in 2020 if RCV had been in place. I would therefore be leery of it, since knowing that RCV instead of fptp is in place will change voter decisions. Using older data to predict would run into some validity error.
GREAT POWER SOMETHING OR OTHERQuote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
One of many reasons the American state has been losing legitimacy for a generation.
https://i.imgur.com/nHQ1Cp7.jpg
Yeah, that's what I was saying, in that I was skeptical of what underlying data could have been used to generate a result like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
Confirmation that the majority of Republican electeds have become 2020 Truthers.
It's just been the same shit for the past decade but Dem electeds are still basically devoted to the politics of normalcy and civility, which in the long-term has had an incredibly corrosive effect on the readiness and mobilization of both the liberal coalition and the party infrastructure.
We can finally comment on the closing stretch to the midterms, two weeks out. There has been, as predicted, a reversion to the mean in public sentiment, though some still maintain the existence of a reproductive-rights swing vote. The reversion doesn't seem to be related to the modest recent reversal (0.15-20c) in gas prices, as the trends preceded it and were smooth during it. The summary from 2 months ago fundamentally still applies:
47-53 Dem Senators, though now 49-51 is the likeliest range. I suspect they maintain the 50-50 split with a one-for-one exchange, but if either of the races in Georgia and Pennsylvania turn out to be flubs as well the Republicans have the majority.
House majority of around 15 seats for Republicans (~230).
The most disturbing development is that Dem gubernatorial candidates have lately slid in the polls in many states, to the point that 5 races are competitive rather than just 2. These are Arizona and Kansas plus Wisconsin, Oregon, and Nevada, with all but Arizona staking Dem incumbency. Losing the governor's office in Wisconsin and falling short of it in Arizona guarantees that those states will declare for the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 if the Democrat carries the vote. (Oregon is at risk today because of the combination of an unpopular incumbent governor and an unusually-strong third-party entrant.)
So how about that midterm huh lol.
I think we are looking at a 51-49 Democrat Senate, plus a narrow GOP House. Honestly if the NY Dem party didnt flub so badly on everything from redistricting to GOTV, we might have kept the House and Senate. Bummer. But on the plus side, the various NY republicans who won in purple districts might not touch impeachment because of how badly it would be used against them in 2024. Also I dont think McCarthy is Speaker in any case, nobody likes him lol
But hey, at least Boebert might lose her seat? Suuuper close race. (as of writing this, the Dem challenger is up 50.01% to 49.99%)
https://i.imgur.com/GCXeT3z.jpg
Long story short, the midterms actually tracked the polling fairly closely (not Trafalgar or Rasmussen, better luck next time), although a large number of close contests have broken favorably for Dems. Undecideds seem to have broken Democratic for once. If anything polling was slightly too unfavorable to Democrats. Overall you could call it a mediocre night for both parties in terms of normal electoral politics, historically above-average for incumbent parties in midterm elections, and in the process of American degeneration into civil strife another brief respite.
It's plain that the abortion crisis counteracted perceptions of inflation, though stable gas prices and Q3 GDP growth might also have helped.Quote:
Originally Posted by FiveThirtyEight
We easily gained two governorships as the "moderate" Republican incumbents of blue states vacated their positions. Keeping the governorships in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and plausibly taking it in Arizona is legitimate security for the 2024 presidential race. Some unusual results include the first Democratic trifecta in Michigan in 40 years, and a potential flip in the Pennsylvania state House on the wire. Altogether it may be enough to foreclose Republican plans to nullify presidential election results.
At first glance voter turnout is probably below 2018, but if so I'm not sure if either party was hurt more than the other.
Control of the Senate will be decided by a runoff election in Georgia yet again, because although Fetterman pulled through in Pennsylvania despite his stroke and everywhere else is a hold, Nevada's Democratic Senator appears to be suffering a predicted narrow defeat.
Trump is widely expected to announce his candidacy for 2024 within a week, and there may be more news on his legal troubles in that time as well.
@Seamus
Bill Nelson won re-election to the Senate with 55% and 4.5 million votes in 2012 in Florida, and Rubio has won now with 58% and 4.5 million votes (after winning with 52%/4.8 million votes in his last election, 2016). Miami is GONE. Every single Florida county swung right compared to 2020, which was already rightward from the 2010s average. Compare with Pennsylvania, where every county swung left or stable this cycle, or Kansas, where a similar statewide blue shift occurred in the governor's race. The notorious Orbanist De Santis performed even better than Rubio and has accumulated enough clout in one term to run a Sanders-scale campaign against Trump in 2024 if he wishes. The state legislature has gone over to a Republican supermajority. This can't be accounted for just by the pandemic influx of conservative retirees, or the tiny Cuban minority.
Is it finally time for
Attachment 26074
From what I'm seeing Cortez-Masto probably loses, but it's possible I guess. How many key elections have we won by 3 or 4 digits in the past few years?Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
NY Dems didn't cause non-partisan redistricting, that was by popular referendum/constitutional reform. Technically it was state lege Dems being so dedicated to trying to gerrymander this cycle that an independent drafter had to be assigned, leaving the state with a more balanced map than we might have gotten away with.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-wo...-redistricting
But it's not that important, since Dems were compensated with a number of seats in other states as a result of anti-gerrymandering actions and some additional gerrymandering of their own; some NY seats would have flipped anyway for the following, more troubling, reason that overall sentiment toward the party here is the lowest since the Pataki era. The long-coveted two-chamber supermajority we gained in the state legislature during the Blue Wave has been lost in both chambers by a seat or two. Schumer had his worst result since his first Senate election in 1998 against New York giant D'Amato. Uber-centrist Max Rose rode the Blue Wave into the Staten Island House district (NY-11) in 2018, then lost it in 2020 53-47. His reaction was to abandon and condemn the Democratic Party, seeking a rematch with Malliotakis as an independent. This time he lost 62-38. While it is pleasing to scornfully regard his comeuppance, we can only hope this broad downturn in the state reverts to the mean.
From what I see of the current returns the GOP winds up with 220-225 seats, I'll guess 222 (the current Democratic majority). Certainly an underperformance but enough to roast up some red meat with vexatious Congressional investigations.