Democrat 2020

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Dyslexia.

Dyslexics of the world untie!

[Strike For The South]

Well, inasmuch as he is accumulating surplus wealth beyond that which he was accustomed to, by definition there is no reason for him to hang on to it. Substantively. Right?

I mean I suppose. I don't think that will resonate with people though. The idea that one mans relatively modest book earnings somehow negate his critique of the systemic issues of Capitalism would be.....incredibly on brand for the voters. I think this is what worries me about both Sanders and Warren. They should attack Tump but not allow Trumps attacks on them undermine their narrative.

Trump survives on the id. He taps into a base sense of fear and security which translates very well in the truncated and compressed way tv news and debates. The issue now is he has four years of baggage. His platitudes can be refuted by looking at the record. I don't think what was so powerful the first time around will be the second.

I don't think the Democratic party needs to overthink this. Since the election Tumps approval has fallen
-19 points in Michigan
-18 points in Wisconsin
-17 points in Pennsylvania

He will not win these states again barring catastrophe. This means the nominee needs to pick up one more. Florida and Ohio are considered much harder roads to hoe and his support his fallen even farther in those.

2020 will be an electoral landside for the Democratic candidate.

Since I don't know much about Booker besides derogatory industrial-lobby connections and that he may be more bullish on criminal justice reform than Harris - what is his value added in your opinion?

Booker has a strong reform bent (important to me) but also I think he would wipe the floor the Trump. He sort of sits in the middle of the likable/unflappable nexus. I think Buttigieg has the same quality, just less experience.

As far as the lobbying connections go, meh. Same thing with Beto's oil connections. These connections are important in their respective states and sometimes a certain compromise is necessary. The voters believe that too. 538 had a great piece the other day where they took out Sanders in one poll and Biden in the other. Support went to the former and latter candidate and not on a gradient as one would expect.

[Beskar]

Dyslexics of the world untie!

It is always awkward when Satan gets Christmas cards.

[Strike For The South]

https://thinkprogress.org/elizabeth-...-5eba8ea9645a/

Insert Mark Cuban writing down gif.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47601125

Biden 2020 moves a step closer.

[a completely inoffensive name]

But I don't think you can meet 21st century earth's power needs on renenwables alone. Haven't done the order of magnitude calculations on latest efficiencies in wind turbine and solar cell technologies though.

Efficiencies are not the point. There is enough land to theoretically provide solar for 100% baseline. Problem is that humans don't control the input of renewable energy. Having the baseline infrastructure to provide 100% demand at all times means that at times of greater input you are reaching over 100% and that extra energy needs a sink to go to either in the form of a chemical or hydro battery. It's feasible as long as you have the massive infrastructure for energy storage as well. But we likely won't.

2020 will be an electoral landside for the Democratic candidate.

Too optimistic. There is a lot of campaigning and a lot of information battles to play out which will either show a resentful and depressed progressive faction or an enthusiastic and participatory one.
The choices ahead of us still matter on a scale of winning or losing.

After what happened at Fukushima and Chernobyl I'm extremely skeptical of nuclear power. It may be safe 99% of the time but when something goes wrong the effects are too catastrophic for nuclear power to be worth the risk, in my opinion.

Your assignment of risk is misplaced. There is a catastrophic risk of continuing using fossil fuels every minute beyond...right now. That risk is already becoming realized as of this very moment. Localized contamination which may be rehabilitated in a superfund type manner is much more manageable than the upcoming climate wide crisis we face.

Also, if you have time this weekend, I would suggest reading up on the age and design of the relevant reactors at Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island and Fukushima and then look into how current reactor design (which is what we are looking to implement) has addressed those concerns with more passive safety systems.

If renewables aren't capable of meeting our current energy needs than I think that means we will have to cut back on consumption which will require a drastic reconfiguration of our economic system. I'm partial to the eco-socialist view that Capitalism is extremely wasteful and it's demand for never-ending economic growth isn't compatible with sound environmental practice.

Efficiencies are driven by scarcity and profit. Rather than abandoning the market system, we could implement policies to manipulate the market for pro-efficiency research and behavior.
I have always been curious on how much electricity is wasted through inefficiency in software calculations. If you could make a google search require 0.1% less energy to compute, how much would you save?

It's a generational moment with respect to the state of the world, not a political opportunity per se. Of course we don't know what superseding events may occur in the 2020s (I do expect escalating impact), but we can't be so airheaded as to neglect the present while 'waiting for things to happen'. That's my prerogative.




[Best I can do right now]

It's not about who's most likeable, but who's the best fit for administering the executive branch and maintaining relations with Congress (with the caveat that the Senate is almost certain to remain either Republican-majority or a thin Dem blocking majority). That's the bottom of the Maslow hierarchy for POTUS.

To summarize my impressions of the past two months: Sanders' main ideas are in the popular discourse, so to remain above replacement-level he needs to demonstrate new ones, or develop the old ones more granularly and force his competitors to endorse or decline concrete measures. Additionally he must demonstrate good organizational instincts or skills that he can use to permeate the bureaucracy with his ideology, and influence lawmakers at all levels. IMO he hasn't done enough to show competence or understanding of what his role would be. At times it looks like he's focused on stoking his core base, kind of like Trump in that way, and doesn't attribute enough importance to the general electoral and legislative process or to messaging outside his base. Mere conviction isn't sufficient to run things effectively, and doing a lot of rallies, podcast interviews, or chats with your fans isn't enough to build a lasting movement. To limit the scope of comparison to Trump capturing the GOP, recall that Trump represented 90% of traditional Republicans very well from the start, while Sanders represents a small subset of Democrats, plus some independents who have always hated the Democratic Party. There is potential to grow that, but it doesn't come automatically.

In essence, I got on board with the idea of a Sanders alternative in 2017, before the mainstream co-optation of his causes (to a degree) reduced his marginal utility. Maybe he's not the strongest leader, the most skillful manager, or the most insightful thinker, but the thinking went inasmuch as there is a dramatic ideological disparity between Sanders and other Democrats and a unique opportunity to promote it as a disruption of deepening kleptocracy, a Sanders administration is preferable. Therefore I was willing to give Sanders space to move into the race and prove his critics wrong. So far, he hasn't been adding much value or proving his chops, as I see it.

Due to his age, at first I envisioned Sanders as more of a symbolic caretaker President (now we get into the question of whether any candidate should be evaluated against two-term potential, but I intend this post to be expressive, not exhaustive), but unfortunately there is an increasing sense that he is acting in the way Clinton was accused of being, using the party as a vehicle for his own advancement rather than advancing progressive causes in government broadly. A leftist who considers themselves essential, indispensable, or "heroic", is at high risk of becoming a liability. There is a reason the contemporary Left is typically understood to look down on the Great Man theory of politics. One of the biggest criticisms of Sanders in 2016 was his inability to explain the implementation of his ideas, or how they fit into a practical bigger picture. He's been campaigning for 4 years and he still remains largely on the level of superficial rhetoric (even his Medicare for All bills haven't been much more than lists of benefits that must be provided), so criticism of Beto O'Rourke for his vapidity must reflect back on Sanders (who has been preparing for much longer). Sanders needs to expand and develop his economic ideas beyond 2016 if he doesn't want it perceived as an old man's fixation on his own rhetoric. I'm not asking for a Hundred-Year Plan for the endgame of humanity here...


On a tactical or personal level, just a few specific things that brought me down:

1. I was going to address Sanders flip-flopping on the filibuster, but given the complexifier he just introduced I will revise my judgement. For a moment there, I was afraid Sanders actually believed he could convince Republican Senators to vote his way, or even "replace" them as though they were mere hostile city councillors. That would have been delusional arrogance if it represented his view - though his alternative of having the VP ignore Senate rules seems similarly galaxy-brained. If you have votes to pass Medicare for All, you have votes to just abolish the damn filibuster.

2. Sanders' recalcitrance on releasing his tax returns has been puzzling. He's had 4 years to get ahead of the thing, and the evasiveness just doesn't look good under any reading. So two problems: lack of preparation and organization, and blockheaded messaging and communication. Especially given his platform. Fair speculation might be that he's just embarrassed to show that he has some money; if embarrassment leads to awkward and juvenile evasiveness that's a bad sign. No one is going to care that you have 3 houses Bernie, we already knew that. He's finally promised (I think? His wording isn't exactly committal) to release them by Tax Day (the coming Monday), so hopefully that gets resolved soon. Couldn't he have given that date weeks ago when the subject came up? Did he decide at the last minute? Either way, bad judgement or organization.

3. Possibly related to Sanders and tax returns is the fact that his 2016 run made him a lot of money. I don't begrudge him that, but if he can't reconcile it with his ego or rhetoric it becomes an issue. In an absolutely cringeworthy petulant response in an interview a few days ago, he had this to say about his wealth:



4. Development of Sanders' wife's possible corruption and evident mismanagement of a Vermont college. Sanders and his wife are different people, but Sanders has never bothered to respond in a serious and transparent way. He is earning a reputation for particular family nepotism. Remember that Sanders was never harshly vetted in the crucible of a presidential general election, and the above is reason to believe some unsavory practices might be exposed under scrutiny. The concern is less about it being potentially electorally damaging (unless very serious it's evident that voters' bar for giving a crap about misconduct has risen considerably - unless it's a woman), but I fear whether some of the matter rises to being substantively to his discredit given his brand (independent of the political quality).

5. Reagan, our oldest President so far, was notoriously infirm in his second term, already degrading under the effects of dementia. Whatever the hell is wrong with Trump (everything), he too has clearly only grown more defective over time. Sanders is 74 years old, and would be our oldest President ever (as would Biden). Demographically, a two-term Sanders would have better than coin-flip odds of dying or becoming disabled in office. Maybe not dispositive, especially if he makes decent VP/Cabinet picks, but this and the likelihood of gradual sub-clinical senescent cognitive decline has to be factored in when choosing candidates. I've come around to take this more seriously, along with the demographic representation aspect of officeholders, especially when I realized the average age of Dem candidates this run is ~50, and only half of the Dem contenders are white men.

The primary theoretical factor in favor of Sanders at this moment would then be his beginnings of a foreign policy, but campaign advisors aside there's not much evidence that Sanders himself prefers (or has preferred) to spend time thinking about international affairs compared to his diagnosis of the domestic American economy. Not since the 1980s at least. The primary recent data point is the Yemen resolution, but that's at least as much the work of Ro Khanna and Chris Murphy in the House and Senate respectively (another hint that having the right people in Congress is important). What foreign policy views Warren has provided are not greatly different in substance or priority, and ultimately neither rise to the level of aspirational transnational leftist and social solidarity.

All that said, most of the time remains on the clock. One example of a good marginal move by Sanders was to encourage unionization of his campaign crew. My above should not be taken as an adamant rejection of the Sanders candidacy, nor as a comprehensive description of all my relevant knowledge or impressions. Key weaknesses have been identified and now we have to be vigilant about them, to see whether they're exacerbated when Sanders should be nullifying them.

It's easy to feel Sanders appeal when Trump picks another unqualified hack nominee for the Federal Reserve, and when you read about the nominee saying things like



there is a certain desire to have Sanders rebuilt as RoboRobespierre (Robo-spierre), sent out to round up the reactionaries while quipping that "progress comes one funeral at a time..."

As for what I like about Warren, maybe it's because we're both Keynesians, old-school social democrats at heart. For the sake of moving the thread along, let's elide some things and move to discussion points. At a glance what I want the thread to keep in mind overall is that her main disadvantage is, of all the first-tier candidates she appears to hold the least broad appeal among the electorate (or at least the primary base), and has the weakest political skills (she's a professor who only got into politics directly around 2011). However, in terms of charisma she seems the most empathetic, which could compensate for other political deficits. Her proven technical skill and audacious policy proposals (see below for overview) are her main strength, allusive of a comprehensive approach to American socioeconomics. It is commonly acknowledged that the vast majority of Americans do not vote according to policy contrasts per se, but since her platform is increasingly comprehensive it could potentially be packaged as an overriding psychological plank, much the same way Sanders, Obama, or Trump did. I recommend the slogan "Hope and Change", but apparently it's been taken.

Beyond all that, in absolute probability Sanders is IMO going to remain stronger against Trump than Warren, but as highlighted earlier Trump's weakness opens the field for most Democratic challengers, and under such conditions Warren's strengths deserve to be publicized.


Warren major policy proposals off the top of my head (not full detail):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1. The latest one as of yesterday was an ~7% tax on global corporate profits above $100 million, in addition to existing taxes (I believe the 2017 Republican tax law largely eliminated our unique practice of taxing global corporate income). Alternative minimum?

2. Of course the 2% individual wealth tax on assets over $50 million, and 3% on assets over $1 billion. Netherlands have an effective wealth tax of ~1.4% for comparison.

3. Federally-supervised universal guarantee of childcare (like the Soviet Union! Not really!), though there is some means-testing around the median family income. Valid childcare jobs are required to have significantly elevated working standards and pay.

4. Something about worker co-determination on corporate boards; other corporate governance reform.

5. Government-led residential building spree of lower-income housing, 3 million units I believe. Don't remember timeframe, but there were a lot of other interesting details, including rent costs.

6. Abolish the Senate filibuster. Abolish the electoral college.

7. Aggressive enforcement of dormant anti-trust law, which has since Reagan seen its objectives recalibrated from preventing market consolidation to maintaining low prices for consumers (i.e. pro-consolidation tilt). Some of her suggested targets are the big tech monopolies like Amazon and Facebook.

8. Legal and carceral penalties for corporate leadership (compared to applying haphazard fines that fall below the threshold of profitability of wrongdoing). Stiffened IRS and white-collar crime enforcement in general.

9. Extensive federal anti-corruption/lobbying bill.

Phew, and I'm sure I missed a lot. She's also pro-universal healthcare, pro-Green New Deal, pro-reparations, similar stated foreign policy positions to Sanders, but AFAIK not concrete and detailed proposals on those yet. No one does, except Sanders and his M4A.


Self-criticism note of the day: I've bothered to read a little about O'Rourke and Buttigieg over the last month. However, early on I decided that I was going to avoid setting aside time to learn about lower-tier candidates like Castro, Gillibrand (and she's my Senator for god's sake), and Booker (<insert Jersey joke>) if I could get away with it, or unless they gained more traction. Yeah... better look up those two hot young white men who are long shots, but the white woman, black man, and Latino man - naaah.

RACISM/SEXISM DETECTED

In short, Sanders is too old and is at risk of becoming another cult of personality within the democratic party. His advancement of himself over what is prudent for his own ideas to succeed shows a more dangerous side of him.

I don't like some of the ideas from Warren. I think she belongs in the Cabinet watching wall street but not in the Oval Office.

I have a big chip on my shoulder when it comes to Senate reform. Just because rules have been abused by bad actors doesn't mean the rules themselves are bad.
As of this moment progressives seem to apply this logic on an inconsistent and erroneous behavior. McConnell abused the filibuster. so it must go. McConnell has deferred all policy to the discretion of the president, so we must drastically reform the Senate as an institution or abolish it completely. Paul Ryan and Boehner did the same in the house...oh but we have the House now, so let's not focus too much on that chamber.

I believe that the two chamber set up is still critical to maintaining a stable Union and I do not wish for us to go the path of the UK of having a sham chamber that rarely gets a say while the "commons" gets to decide everything.

[Husar]

Efficiencies are not the point. There is enough land to theoretically provide solar for 100% baseline. Problem is that humans don't control the input of renewable energy. Having the baseline infrastructure to provide 100% demand at all times means that at times of greater input you are reaching over 100% and that extra energy needs a sink to go to either in the form of a chemical or hydro battery. It's feasible as long as you have the massive infrastructure for energy storage as well. But we likely won't.

Can't you just sort of turn them off? Like literally put a blanket over a solar panel or a mirror? (on a larger scale you'd want something automated of course) Or in the case of a solar tower, stop focusing all the mirrors on the tower, etc. Solar thermals in the desert could be turned with their back towards the sun, shielding the fluid from the light. I'm pretty sure wind turbines can be turned off either by locking the blades in place and turning them into the wind (I think they do that during storms that are too strong) or by decoupling the blades from the generator.

It's not like we have to feed the renewables into the system until it explodes, maybe if there is zero control and anarchistic feeding, but that doesn't have to happen. I'd say humans can indeed control the output of renewables, at least in terms of reducing it. The storage is required for downtimes though.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Can't you just sort of turn them off? Like literally put a blanket over a solar panel or a mirror? (on a larger scale you'd want something automated of course) Or in the case of a solar tower, stop focusing all the mirrors on the tower, etc. Solar thermals in the desert could be turned with their back towards the sun, shielding the fluid from the light. I'm pretty sure wind turbines can be turned off either by locking the blades in place and turning them into the wind (I think they do that during storms that are too strong) or by decoupling the blades from the generator.

It's not like we have to feed the renewables into the system until it explodes, maybe if there is zero control and anarchistic feeding, but that doesn't have to happen. I'd say humans can indeed control the output of renewables, at least in terms of reducing it. The storage is required for downtimes though.

I will not pretend to be an expert. But let me go into more detail on what I remember from my engineering classes on this topic.
Everything can be "turned off" but the issue is how fast can you turn it off and on, and how can you turn it off and on without it impacting the grid.

The electric grid runs at a specific frequency. Changing inputs and outputs will effect the frequency of the grid and there is a tight tolerance on how far the grid can deviate from it's set point without running into issues (60 hz in US, 50 Hz in other countries). While we are trying to ramp generation down to prevent overloading the grid (in a scenario of 100% solar, with demand satisfied at sunrise, the higher the sun gets the more energy the panels put out which ends up being more than 100% of demand, let me know if this is not making sense), demand is going up (we are specifically talking about between sunrise and noonish when everything is going to work and running electronics/AC). Both of these will cause frequency to fluctuate.
It is doable as we already have measures in place to regulate frequency when generation is added/removed to the grid (otherwise it would be impossible to have a reliable grid!) and I am sure engineers are making more sophisticated algorithms to do just that with high degree of renewable input, but it is tricky.

Keep in mind also that not only is there impact to the grid frequency but the demand itself rises and falls on short time scales. Fossil fuels are great for responding to quick changes in demand, throttling coal/gas input into the furnace will rapidly change generation output. Nuclear not so much...you really don't want to be pushing or pulling nuclear fuel rods in and out too quickly for various reasons. Again, renewables even if we could rapidly turn off, (or more accurately throttle down since demand is continuous not discrete) can't do much for rapid increases of demand (think everyone getting home and turning on their AC) since we do not control their input. If the sun is only giving us so much and we need more power, that's it.

Think about the physical manner the electricity is generated. Wind turbines cant just put the brakes on at once or some part will snap from the inertia. It's gotta slow rotation down to a halt, but while it is turning, the coils are still generating electricity (I may be wrong here). Solar heat can point the mirrors away, but then there is still the residual heat (now cooling off) in the tower that is still boiling water which is turning the turbine. meanwhile at any given moment the total generation must exactly meet the total demand.

I feel for those engineers managing the UK grid, apparently the UK does not have too many AC units causing demand in the afternoon, BUT the mornings see a huge demand spike from all the electric kettles boiling water for tea.

[Montmorency]

Your assignment of risk is misplaced. There is a catastrophic risk of continuing using fossil fuels every minute beyond...right now. That risk is already becoming realized as of this very moment. Localized contamination which may be rehabilitated in a superfund type manner is much more manageable than the upcoming climate wide crisis we face.

Also, if you have time this weekend, I would suggest reading up on the age and design of the relevant reactors at Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island and Fukushima and then look into how current reactor design (which is what we are looking to implement) has addressed those concerns with more passive safety systems.

How do you address the long lead times for any new nuclear project, say entering pre-planning today? We're long past 2 *C when the first new plants come fully online. Even China, which has had a nuclear boom in the past 30 years, appears to be putting on the brakes (despite contemporaneously - IIRC cited years ago in a different thread here - also pulling back on coal). Is talking about nuclear helpful without long-term planning placing it as the centerpiece of a climate strategy, and can nuclear-first (or nuclear-anything) be advanced without a top-down, even authoritarian control?

Then again, the longer we put off any decisive action, history says the more drastic the ultimate response is going to be - so maybe we'll meet the authoritarian prerequisite for one.

While we're thinking, what's the word on restrictive scarcity of rare metals available on the planet for renewable?

In short, Sanders is too old and is at risk of becoming another cult of personality within the democratic party. His advancement of himself over what is prudent for his own ideas to succeed shows a more dangerous side of him.

That wasn't quite what I was saying, but it's a possible interpretation. Like I said, we'll see.

I don't like some of the ideas from Warren. I think she belongs in the Cabinet watching wall street but not in the Oval Office.

Such as? Anyway, voters don't care about policy minutiae. "I have a plan" could be a workable slogan.

For any substantive disagreements, remember that either none of her proposals will be on the agenda due to lack of Senate control, or the kinks will be hashed out in legislative process. The more relevant criteria for the election will be the candidate's character, executive managerial skill, and your affinity to the overall shape of their platform and ideology.

I have a big chip on my shoulder when it comes to Senate reform.

That's silly. What's good about a supermajority requirement for all regulatory changes? I've pointed out that this is very much against the Founders' intent, if one cares about that sort of thing. It's against the intent of Congress for most of the filibuster's history. More importantly there is literally no possibility of passing any meaningful legislation without removing it, which is not just bad for the Democratic Party's electoral prospects - it's bad for the country. No can has suicide pact, plz.

There is no good argument for defending the contemporary filibuster on the merits.

Funnily enough, the only major Dem candidate you align with on this issue is Sanders, though his alternative (having the Vice President ignore Senate rules unilaterally) is arguably far more extreme.

Just because rules have been abused by bad actors doesn't mean the rules themselves are bad.

Speaking as generally as possible, that is ABSOLUTELY what it means. Rules have no value in themselves, only in the outcomes they promote and the processes they scaffold.

Example: The rule is "don't do or generate muscular, mental, mechanical, or electrical work on Saturday." I don't follow the rule. ACIN does. I ask why.
"Just because you're violating the halacha doesn't mean I should give it up."
"But you're not Jewish, bro. What is this doing for you?"
"In-stitutions!"

As of this moment progressives seem to apply this logic on an inconsistent and erroneous behavior. McConnell abused the filibuster. so it must go. McConnell has deferred all policy to the discretion of the president, so we must drastically reform the Senate as an institution or abolish it completely. Paul Ryan and Boehner did the same in the house...oh but we have the House now, so let's not focus too much on that chamber.

The filibuster as Republicans have used it benefits Republicans more than it does Democrats. To pass progressive legislation the filibuster must be neutralized. What more do you need?

What do you have in mind for the House? The only thing I can think of is PAYGO, but this is underwritten by legislation, and is waive-as-you-go anyway.

I believe that the two chamber set up is still critical to maintaining a stable Union and I do not wish for us to go the path of the UK of having a sham chamber that rarely gets a say while the "commons" gets to decide everything.

Recently, 'liberal lion' and old-school New Dealer John Dingell (longest-serving Congressperson in history, died 3 months ago) published a piece on reforming Congress. One of his suggestions was the abolition of the Senate. Permanent minority rule is bad; whether the Senate is reformed or abolished constitutionally, permanent minority rule is bad. A framework that encourages permanent minority rule is a diseased one.

[a completely inoffensive name]

How do you address the long lead times for any new nuclear project, say entering pre-planning today? We're long past 2 *C when the first new plants come fully online. Even China, which has had a nuclear boom in the past 30 years, appears to be putting on the brakes (despite contemporaneously - IIRC cited years ago in a different thread here - also pulling back on coal). Is talking about nuclear helpful without long-term planning placing it as the centerpiece of a climate strategy, and can nuclear-first (or nuclear-anything) be advanced without a top-down, even authoritarian control?

Best time to plant a tree is yesterday, next best time is today. But it is a good point you bring up, I never really say this out loud but nuclear is not really for reducing emissions. Solar, wind, and other technologies that can be implemented faster will serve that role.

No, we have an issue even if we stopped all emissions today. When the Unites States was founded, our CO2 concentrations were 280ppb, now they are above 400 and climbing rapidly. Our coal and oil comes from millions of years of dead trees exposed to high pressure and heat in the crust breaking down complex structures into more basic elemental compounds. In order to replicate this through various means of carbon sequestration will take massive amounts of energy. Think of the energy released over 200 years of burning fossil fuels and now we must put it back in. The nuclear planets will be needed to support our ongoing efforts to actively scrub our atmosphere back down to pre-industrial levels, in a manner that is manageable on a large energy scale, over long time spans (most nuclear plants have been active for several decades and still running) and with a small footprint physically. Otherwise, we may need to cover all of Wyoming with solar panels to generate the extra energy needed to be re-directed sufficient for de-carbonization of the climate.

It's not first, it's actually nuclear last. But they would still need to be in the pipeline today to come online when needed.

While we're thinking, what's the word on restrictive scarcity of rare metals available on the planet for renewable?

Rare earth metals are badly named. They are not that rare in the crust, and we have sufficient supply. Only issues are the geopolitics where these elements are currently mined in.
https://earth.stanford.edu/news/crit...-energy-future
Funny enough, there was a worry about peak oil due regarding scarcity. But as it turns out, when an element becomes rarer and more expensive it becomes cost effective to exploit more difficult locations. The physical absence is not an issue, only the price at which it can be obtained.

Such as? Anyway, voters don't care about policy minutiae. "I have a plan" could be a workable slogan.

For any substantive disagreements, remember that either none of her proposals will be on the agenda due to lack of Senate control, or the kinks will be hashed out in legislative process. The more relevant criteria for the election will be the candidate's character, executive managerial skill, and your affinity to the overall shape of their platform and ideology.

That's silly. What's good about a supermajority requirement for all regulatory changes? I've pointed out that this is very much against the Founders' intent, if one cares about that sort of thing. It's against the intent of Congress for most of the filibuster's history. More importantly there is literally no possibility of passing any meaningful legislation without removing it, which is not just bad for the Democratic Party's electoral prospects - it's bad for the country. No can has suicide pact, plz.

There is no good argument for defending the contemporary filibuster on the merits.

Funnily enough, the only major Dem candidate you align with on this issue is Sanders, though his alternative (having the Vice President ignore Senate rules unilaterally) is arguably far more extreme.

Politically at heart I am a Federalist, although paradoxically in American terms I would say I am influenced by the Anti-Federalists. I think the United States has a better future with states that experiment under a Federal government that polices behavior and compliance with Constitutional values and clauses vs a unitary system that tries to apply policies that fit neither myself the Californian nor the Texan nor the Jerseyan. The latter I think just sows further discontent and dysfunction.

Note I am not necessarily saying keep the filibuster in its current form, only that the logic behind its removal goes no further than short term strategic thinking. If you wish to remove it, then leave aside "but removing it would help us win right now" and convince me that in the long-run this would be a valuable structural change that wouldn't cause further destabilization. I think we have had this conversation before on outcomes, stability and continuity.

Speaking as generally as possible, that is ABSOLUTELY what it means. Rules have no value in themselves, only in the outcomes they promote and the processes they scaffold.

Example: The rule is "don't do or generate muscular, mental, mechanical, or electrical work on Saturday." I don't follow the rule. ACIN does. I ask why.
"Just because you're violating the halacha doesn't mean I should give it up."
"But you're not Jewish, bro. What is this doing for you?"
"In-stitutions!"

If maintaining shomer shabbos reinforces the adherence of other rules that promote the public good, then there is a value in assessing whether the dissolution of this particular rule won't create backlash against other rules.
This isn't some hypothetical here Monty, and in practicality yes we could probably lose the filibuster and move on as usual. BUT, as with any politically polarized time, large public acts/reforms have repercussions which cannot be predicted.
The French revolution originally started over reforming the Ancien Regime financials, the Mexican revolution started over mismanagement of Porfirio Diaz succession. Both instances saw the focus go tangentially into reforms for anti-authoritarian, representative government. My worry is this isn't limited to just authoritarian -> enlightment, but is a reversible course.

Institutions quite frankly have a value in and of themselves. Radical reform spurs counter reform and escalation is quite frankly unmanageable unless you mean to tell me that we can safely ignore or even embrace the known unknowns in the hopes that whatever comes out in the end is statistically more likely to align with our political views. Again this may be true with removing the filibuster (an accidental rule to begin with) but eliminating the senate? Undoing one of the biggest compromises that allowed the US to form to begin with? I just don't know about that.

The filibuster as Republicans have used it benefits Republicans more than it does Democrats. To pass progressive legislation the filibuster must be neutralized. What more do you need?
What do you have in mind for the House? The only thing I can think of is PAYGO, but this is underwritten by legislation, and is waive-as-you-go anyway.

And when Democrats controlled the Senate there was plenty of conservative legislation denied then, which benefited us. As I said above, this is short term thinking. Even if we accept the Senate as forever off limits to Democrats because of population and demographic trends, then the argument comes back that the nature of the House means demographically it is increasingly off limits to Republicans. At this point we are admitting the removal of an entire institution for the goal of complete and permanent control of the Federal government. I am sure that will work itself out peacefully.

Recently, 'liberal lion' and old-school New Dealer John Dingell (longest-serving Congressperson in history, died 3 months ago) published a piece on reforming Congress. One of his suggestions was the abolition of the Senate. Permanent minority rule is bad; whether the Senate is reformed or abolished constitutionally, permanent minority rule is bad. A framework that encourages permanent minority rule is a diseased one.

And what is the cost in order to achieve such a large goal?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In this very intelligent reference, Thanos represents the left and child Gamora represents the Founding Fathers, the snap at the beginning is half of the United States killing the other half in order to determine the future structure of the Federal government. Obviously.

[Husar]

I will not pretend to be an expert. But let me go into more detail on what I remember from my engineering classes on this topic.
Everything can be "turned off" but the issue is how fast can you turn it off and on, and how can you turn it off and on without it impacting the grid.
[...]
I feel for those engineers managing the UK grid, apparently the UK does not have too many AC units causing demand in the afternoon, BUT the mornings see a huge demand spike from all the electric kettles boiling water for tea.

Just cutting the quote short to save space. I actually did half a university course on that (quit because I didn't feel like learning all the formulas ). I'm pretty sure that renewables make this easier than fossils. Fossils aren't always as quick as you may think. IIRC a nuclear power plant takes 3 to 5 days to power up or down, but for a big lignite plant it's still about a day, so it's relatively hard to make it react to changes that happen during the day. Gas power plants are among the faster ones. Some residual heat in the pipe of a solar plant will probably cool down faster than you can turn most big power plants off, and they have residual heat as well, that's one reason they take so long.

There is more to it though, becaus in every case, the heat is used to turn water into steam and drive a steam turbine to generate energy. In pretty much all of these scenarios it would be possible to simply divert the steam, stop the turbine and just let the steam from residual heat go to waste while energy generation is stopped completely. In a wind turbine, you could decouple the generator and/or install a gearbox in the first place to throttle generation better. One big difference in design there would be though, that you would want to build your solar thermal plant with a heat storage anyway because that's what would allow it to continue operating at night. So unlike the coal plant, you'd not have to turn it off but just divert the heat from the generator to heating up the heat storage (I think the idea was to use huge insulated tanks with some sand or salt fluid inside that can store a lot of heat for a long time).

Energy storage would also be required if the demand can't be met by sun and wind conditions (although at some point one could have enough distributed panels to be able to meet it anyway).

Regarding the frequency of your grid, I remember that there are a couple of measures taken to keep that fluctuation very low. They're about correctly partitioning the grid, demand forecasting and so on. There are also usually decoupler stations in every grid that can help with managaing the supply and demand (I don't know how exactly it works, but they could just not decouple the generator but "short" or ground it instead so it generates energy and it's just dissipated/wasted until it stops). With respect to renewables, decentralized grids need to be smart grids according to many, which means the grid needs to become more computerized and coordinated electronically to keep the frequencies stable.

And if you need really quick reaction devices, there are also battery parks, e.g. made up of old electric car batteries that still work but don't give the cars sufficient milage anymore. Another storage option, although currently with a big inefficiency, is hydrogen. With more engineering research, the inefficiencies can probably be reduced there, making it a good option to fuel cars as well (first cars already exist anyway).

So I'd say reaction time is not the big issue, especially not with a networked smart grid that handles supply automatically dependent on demand. Storage is currently a bigger issue, but not an unsolvable one. If overproduction were such a big issue, I would also wonder what one would do with all the excess energy from a partial dyson sphere.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I would also wonder what one would do with all the excess energy from a partial dyson sphere.

Good reply, there was a lot I must have forgotten over the last 5 years since my classes (this info is not relevant to my work). As far as dyson spheres, there is plenty of dangers we will need that energy for.

[Husar]

Good reply, there was a lot I must have forgotten over the last 5 years since my classes (this info is not relevant to my work). As far as dyson spheres, there is plenty of dangers we will need that energy for.

I see what you're saying there, what if that smart grid becomes a little too smart, eh?

[Montmorency]

It's not first, it's actually nuclear last. But they would still need to be in the pipeline today to come online when needed.

Nuclear as fuel of geoengineering - sounds plausible.

Politically at heart I am a Federalist, although paradoxically in American terms I would say I am influenced by the Anti-Federalists. I think the United States has a better future with states that experiment under a Federal government that polices behavior and compliance with Constitutional values and clauses vs a unitary system that tries to apply policies that fit neither myself the Californian nor the Texan nor the Jerseyan. The latter I think just sows further discontent and dysfunction.

Well - sure? We are currently about as close to a unitary union here as humans have gotten, a bar beneath the Soviet Union. Devolution is a strong current in leftist ideology; many would prefer it at a lower level than the states. But muscular (political) unionism is exactly what is necessary to begin addressing the complex political, technological, and ecological problems of our time. The whole point of unionism is that it creates value and capacity that could not exist otherwise, and the federal government of the United States is not an actor that can dissolve global problems. It is not big enough. It's too captured by ossified bureaucracies and special interests. Indeed, our very smallness, fractiousness, and risk-aversion is one more factor mitigating against governments having the will and orientation to face the epochal challenges. So what does this have to do with Warren? I'm not aware of any Dem candidate promoting communalism or local self-management. Or transnational union. Look, we're going to know a candidate is serious if they're running on full federalization of the US with Canada within 10 years, of the resultant (Canusa?) and Mexico within 25, and a bespoke Constitution for the new polity. That isn't on the table yet.

Note I am not necessarily saying keep the filibuster in its current form, only that the logic behind its removal goes no further than short term strategic thinking. If you wish to remove it, then leave aside "but removing it would help us win right now" and convince me that in the long-run this would be a valuable structural change that wouldn't cause further destabilization. I think we have had this conversation before on outcomes, stability and continuity.

Radical reform spurs counter reform and escalation is quite frankly unmanageable unless you mean to tell me that we can safely ignore or even embrace the known unknowns in the hopes that whatever comes out in the end is statistically more likely to align with our political views.

Think about what you're saying here: that instability and polarization impede action, which degrades stability further, but we can't advocate forceful action because it might provoke further destabilization. By your premises you are imposing a Catch-22 on us. But in reality, when has conservatism ever forestalled vicious civilizational trends? Small mammal freeze, but small mammal tend to die, filling the gap through fecundity. Not the paradigm humans can mirror any longer.

The Republican Party currently fits on the political spectrum somewhere between Pinochet and Franco, and it is rapidly sliding. The apocalyptic terms are the most accurate: the Republican Party is a criminal junta and a fascist conspiracy to seize power. Their survival in their degenerating form will be testament to the collapse of our civilization, and their extinction will reliably (though not assuredly) signal the opposite. The more votes they neutralize, the more communities they immiserate, the more wealth they transfer upwards, the crueler they bend the repressive instruments of the state - the nearer the doom of your "stability and continuity", if we've not in fact exhausted it already. To say nothing of the external disasters they have not directly caused but will do nothing (or worse) to avert.

Your reasoning, though perhaps you don't realize it, is on the level of outright acquiescing to an imposition of slavery throughout the territories and the right of Southern masters to maintain slaves in the North, in the hope of sustaining Southern tranquility. Spoiler: It's not enough, never enough appeasement. The simple fact of the matter is that escalation is guaranteed. Which is precisely how I came to understand why I was misguided in feeling trepidation about court packing, that the T-Rex still sees you even when you're not in motion.

The Democrats need to reverse this agenda and build a durable coalition that enables a minimum level of governance, which involves passing legislation. It is not sufficient alone, but there is no substitute.

So you've got it completely backwards. You think the core concept of the filibuster is good, and fret that abolishing the filibuster (which has not played a very significant role in American politics until our lifetimes) will contribute to even more upheaval than exists or otherwise will. In fact there has been no good argument presented for a simultaneous liberum/party veto in a legislature or ours, and the current trend of instability will deepen - it is before our very eyes - and we cannot hope to reverse it unless the filibuster is overcome. Throwing out the filibuster is a precondition to the long-term integrity of the country. Yes, there will be hard times. Hard times are the best-case scenario. That's why identifying the issues and taking the appropriate steps is especially important now, not a mere puzzle of utilitarian optimization.

Institutions quite frankly have a value in and of themselves.

I agree. That's why I'm saying we need to build them. The existing institutions are failures, they have already been swept away. Donald Trump is just America's portrait of Dorian Grey under the light. Don't lie there in the temple genuflecting before the Pharaoh's mummy, the people are in need. The people don't give a care for your Petersonian-pragmatist vision of keeping them in line by voiceless mouthing the catechism of the pharaoh's divinity, the storm will scatter them all the same.

Again this may be true with removing the filibuster (an accidental rule to begin with) but eliminating the senate? Undoing one of the biggest compromises that allowed the US to form to begin with? I just don't know about that.

Assuming the Constitutional mechanism for Constitutional amendment is triggered (itself an process difficult to justify in its complexity) then I think we're on the path to obviating some of your qualms. With a design such as this one, you would have a point (read the article, I like the concept but it will make you guffaw).

Something for others to worry about later, if us two are not up to the drafting. More important right now is to conceive of ways to diminish the effects of the malapportionment of the Senate, such as through statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. As long as we agree on the bottom line that up to half the people in the country having representation through a superminority (infra-minority?) of a quarter, fifth, or less of the Senate cannot stand, as pure a Hegelian contradiction as any.

And when Democrats controlled the Senate there was plenty of conservative legislation denied then, which benefited us. As I said above, this is short term thinking.

Do you mean when Republicans controlled the Senate? Assuming so, I'm glad you raised this point because giving it scrutiny further undermines your position, which as I'm trying to explain is exactly the aversion to accounting for any long-term view.

1. The filibuster has never prevented Republicans from doing something they both wanted and could do. The filibuster did not stop the Bush privatization of Social Security, lack of support in the House did. The filibuster did not stop the Obamacare repeal, John McCain did. The filibuster never stopped any Republican President from wielding executive power. It is not even apparent that the filibuster conditions the electoral choices of the parties in any way, except maybe enabling a Republican focus on culture-war signalling in the vacuum of legislative feasibility. EDIT: Need I mention the perverse effect of government ineptitude and paralysis on public confidence in government, which further only redounds to the benefit of reactionaries who want to destroy the state, loot the remnants, and hold the jagged steel refuse to the necks of the subaltern?
2. Republicans have no positive agenda other than tax cuts (and in the future more naked ethnonationalism probably). They can only destroy what Democrats build. There is little chance of Republicans developing any kind of plank that can benefit from simple-majority rules in the Senate, and they don't need 60 votes to cut taxes anyway (see: budget reconciliation, 2017 tax overhaul).
3. It's a fatal flaw in the Republican Party that they have to lie about what their platform on social spending is, namely its elimination; refer to them rallying voters in 2018 with the claim that they were going to save Medicare and the ACA from Democrats, lol. Tell many Republican voters what the Republican Party platform is as officially printed, and they will literally refuse to believe it. This Orwellian epistemology is how the Republicans maintain their vote share, and to the extent it can be broken it will be broken only by an extraordinary shock that reaches into the daily lives of the (white) electorate. If Republicans openly campaigned on abolishing Medicare in ideological terms, the Republican base would punish them for it. Let alone the cost off succeeding, to which I would apply your Thanos quote*. Bush was less extreme than this hypothetical with Social Security privatization, which was upholstered in velvet and counterbalanced by Medicare Part D, and even so the Republicans received a drubbing in 2006.

So what is the appropriate long-term view? That the possibility of Republicans gaining the Senate, the House, and the White House with sufficient numbers, resolve, and public apathy to dismantle the major Democratic accomplishments on the level of Social Security is NOT in excess of the probability and value of Democrats gaining the Senate, House, and White House with sufficient numbers, resolve, and public engagement to submit and entrench accomplishments on the level of Social Security (including reconstituting it in $6 million form, in the more absurdist hypothetical). And also all the other stuff about the country not dissolving into brutal anarchy or neofeudalism, and the world with it.

then the argument comes back that the nature of the House means demographically it is increasingly off limits to Republicans.

Sweet summer child...

I am sure that will work itself out peacefully.

Speaking more generally than weighing these, but peace is a luxury in the 21st century. "Triage" and "breakthrough" are the watchwords, or if you prefer, "synthesis."

What do you think of this post?


*I hope I'm deploying Thanos correctly, I only know Marvel stuff through Internet osmosis.

[Strike For The South]

Monty has a very "damn the torpedos" vibe right now. I like that.

I have drifted very leftward but could never quite put into words with same vim and vigor.

[Montmorency]

Monty has a very "damn the torpedos" vibe right now. I like that.

I have drifted very leftward but could never quite put into words with same vim and vigor.

You want to hear something funny? Everyone likes to call politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez "radical" - not least among those the selfsame and their supporters. Right? Well, yesterday AOC announced the following:

New policy proposal dropping tomorrow with a special Senate co-lead ��

It’s radical, which I always love, and we’re keeping more coins in your pocket, which I also love.

The proposal, announced today in conjunction with Bernie Sanders in the Senate, was to lower the federal cap on interest rates on consumer credit card debts and loans from 18% to 15%.

There is no reason a person should pay more than 15% interest in the United States.

It’s common sense - in fact, we had these Usury laws until the 70s.

(Max interest rates are record-high for ppl with excellent credit, too.)

It’s a debt trap for working people + it has to end.

Hmm. Sounds like 'technocratic incrementalism' to me!

This isn't a criticism of anyone in particular, it's just continually surreal to me how everyone's messaging about who is and isn't "radical" is so distorted in this country, in discourse and in substance.

When are Dem politicians going to call Republicans "lower than vermin" yet, as prominent Labour politicians referred to Conservatives in the mid-century? The populace certainly deserves to hear the worst about Republicans. Meanwhile, mainstream Republican pundits and politicians poke at the need for the abolition of our liberal order of living memory and the physical neutralization of the 'dangerous and un-American' Democratic party and its constituencies (the just-as-popular but less prestigious pundits, bloggers, and radio hosts say so outright and have been for decades).


*There was one recent incident of an Alabama Democratic state legislator calling Trump Jr. retarded, for which he was roundly condemned, which further goes to show the disparity in standards. This incident "hijacked" a "debate" in the Alabama state legislature where Republicans want to - as yet unconstitutionally - ban abortion outright, is the context. *sigh*

[Husar]

I would assume that changing such an interest cap from 18 to 15% is quite a radical step in your oligarchy. The Republicans may even want to increase the cap to 25% to promote personal responsibility and because the Bible is pro-interest or something.

[Strike For The South]

You want to hear something funny? Everyone likes to call politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez "radical" - not least among those the selfsame and their supporters. Right? Well, yesterday AOC announced the following:



The proposal, announced today in conjunction with Bernie Sanders in the Senate, was to lower the federal cap on interest rates on consumer credit card debts and loans from 18% to 15%.



Hmm. Sounds like 'technocratic incrementalism' to me!

Radical in the US is democratic socialism. This is a silly place.

It also shows how this country has slipped further rightward under the guise of defending the free market. 15% was the cap 40 years ago.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I would assume that changing such an interest cap from 18 to 15% is quite a radical step in your oligarchy. The Republicans may even want to increase the cap to 25% to promote personal responsibility and because the Bible is pro-interest or something.

The purist capitalist sort would want the regulation of interest abolished, so that the market could set the interest rate through competition in the market.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

You want to hear something funny? Everyone likes to call politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez "radical" - not least among those the selfsame and their supporters. Right? Well, yesterday AOC announced the following:



The proposal, announced today in conjunction with Bernie Sanders in the Senate, was to lower the federal cap on interest rates on consumer credit card debts and loans from 18% to 15%.



Hmm. Sounds like 'technocratic incrementalism' to me!

This isn't a criticism of anyone in particular, it's just continually surreal to me how everyone's messaging about who is and isn't "radical" is so distorted in this country, in discourse and in substance.

When are Dem politicians going to call Republicans "lower than vermin" yet, as prominent Labour politicians referred to Conservatives in the mid-century? The populace certainly deserves to hear the worst about Republicans. Meanwhile, mainstream Republican pundits and politicians poke at the need for the abolition of our liberal order of living memory and the physical neutralization of the 'dangerous and un-American' Democratic party and its constituencies (the just-as-popular but less prestigious pundits, bloggers, and radio hosts say so outright and have been for decades).


*There was one recent incident of an Alabama Democratic state legislator calling Trump Jr. retarded, for which he was roundly condemned, which further goes to show the disparity in standards. This incident "hijacked" a "debate" in the Alabama state legislature where Republicans want to - as yet unconstitutionally - ban abortion outright, is the context. *sigh*

I have always thought that the Euros on the thread chuckle whenever they hear folks labeling pols like Sanders or AOC 'radicals.' It is my understanding that they would all be in the "just a notch left of pure centrist" by Euro standards.

[Husar]

The purist capitalist sort would want the regulation of interest abolished, so that the market could set the interest rate through competition in the market.

You're right, I was too generous.

[Montmorency]

I have always thought that the Euros on the thread chuckle whenever they hear folks labeling pols like Sanders or AOC 'radicals.' It is my understanding that they would all be in the "just a notch left of pure centrist" by Euro standards.

Rhetorically they are more leftist because they talk of overturning, not accommodating or moderating, the establishment and the economic power of corporate elites. They criticize capitalism directly as a system. And of course they use the word "socialist" - but then again plenty of social-democratic mainstream parties in Europe use that word, such as the old and new-old UK Labour Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party that returned to power in the Spanish general election a few weeks ago.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Speaking of Spain, it's interesting the parallel to America in comparative extremism. This was the country of Franco of course, and their post-Franco centre-right Popular Party has actually always been a home to the hardliners and former Falangists integrated into the democratic system. The party suffered IIRC its worst-ever defeat in the recent election, losing half its seats and voters - but something like half the votes it lost just migrated to more hardline new neo-Francoist parties like Vox, which entered the lower chamber of Parliament with 24 seats on the back of 2.5 million more votes (the PP lost 69 seats and 3.5 million votes, and the other major center-right party gained 25 seats and 1 million votes for reference*). IOW the socialists are social democrats and the conservatives are crypto-fascists in Spain as well. When I said the Republican Party sits on the spectrum between Franco and Pinochet now, I was being perfectly serious.

*You might notice these numbers are not very proportional. This is because Spain uses a regional division of constituencies and the d'Hondt method of apportionment, as the European Parliament does (see Brexit thread)

I think the solid American lefties who actually enter politics are quite self-conscious and don't play all the cards they might like to. For example, when AOC was rolling out the Green New Deal resolution, she or the other people working on it improperly put out an internal FAQ that included extras over the official version such as welfare for people unwilling to work, which of course the right-wing media made hay out of and AOC awkwardly tried to deny and walk back - because "people unwilling to work" is a category most Americans hold on par with 'convicted of capital murder for braining my mother.' See also AOC taking questions from constituents (or whatever the context was, I can't find the clip) where one of them was a RWNJ ranting to her how our most sacred freedom is the "freedom to hate" and how criticizing Trump for encouraging racism and violence is "fascist" (i.e. not the man, the criticism of the man); in a soft voice she gave a very accommodating, lukewarm PC answer about how it's OK to have disagreements but we should be aware of the potential impact of our speech.

Then there's the Green New Deal resolution itself, which was an aspirational document designed to influence public discourse (it succeeded). It provided a diagnosis of a dire situation and further offered a few conditions that would likely have to be met to successfully treat it, of course modeled in line with left-wing ideals (in that it's obviously possible to respond to a climate crisis in an oppressive way or by abandoning swathes of the population to their own devices). But no one, not AOC or Sanders, when talking about "environmental justice" would address the practicalities directly. They like to keep it very positive, talking about "good green jobs" and technological progress, making all the favorable sounds about living standards and the values of the little guy. They wouldn't say out loud something heartwrenching like, 'We must immediately expropriate without compensation the capital of the extractive and energy industries, so that the government may directly operate the transition from fossil fuels on the appropriate timescale. If the people do not mandate our action promptly, even more drastic contingencies will need to be undertaken in the future as the crisis worsens, such as rationing of food and electricity and forced relocation from devastated areas.'

[a completely inoffensive name]

Monty has a very "damn the torpedos" vibe right now. I like that.

I have drifted very leftward but could never quite put into words with same vim and vigor.

It's very spirited, but at the same time in the back of my mind I believe the trend rightward in the US has been a deliberate slow burn. Jerking left suddenly wont likely return the same kind of returns that the right has gained from 30 years of drip irrigation style propaganda.

[Montmorency]

It's very spirited, but at the same time in the back of my mind I believe the trend rightward in the US has been a deliberate slow burn. Jerking left suddenly wont likely return the same kind of returns that the right has gained from 30 years of drip irrigation style propaganda.

Just a couple things to keep in mind parallel to the main discussion:

1. Right-wing propaganda has systematized and ordered the thinking of their base, but their ideas remain wildly unpopular if baldly stated. Ultimately it is still a corporatist (e.g. tax cuts)-theocrat (e.g. abortion) -fascist (e.g. Neoconfederatism) coalition; while each faction may tolerate the evils of the other in order to secure their own priorities, and the factions have bled into each other with the ordering of the Republican mind over 2 generations, there is such a thing as going too far. For example with the current abortion bans in some states, only a minority of the Republican core base supports total bans - despite the vanguardism of their elected politicians, which they'll probably continue to swallow... but the point I'm making is that even ruthless Orwellian brainwashing can't take you all the way to conscripting the minds of millions. Just most of the way.

2. Tactics that work for reactionaries probably won't also work for liberals/progressives/socialists. They can't be implemented properly by the politicians, media figures, and intellectuals who make up our side, strategically even if they could be implemented the Democratic base would react with virulent opposition, and morally it's just a bad idea.


On the tax rule in the other thread, I would disagree somewhat but I don't want to open another sub-thread where we're at.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Just a couple things to keep in mind parallel to the main discussion:

1. Right-wing propaganda has systematized and ordered the thinking of their base, but their ideas remain wildly unpopular if baldly stated. Ultimately it is still a corporatist (e.g. tax cuts)-theocrat (e.g. abortion) -fascist (e.g. Neoconfederatism) coalition; while each faction may tolerate the evils of the other in order to secure their own priorities, and the factions have bled into each other with the ordering of the Republican mind over 2 generations, there is such a thing as going too far. For example with the current abortion bans in some states, only a minority of the Republican core base supports total bans - despite the vanguardism of their elected politicians, which they'll probably continue to swallow... but the point I'm making is that even ruthless Orwellian brainwashing can't take you all the way to conscripting the minds of millions. Just most of the way.

2. Tactics that work for reactionaries probably won't also work for liberals/progressives/socialists. They can't be implemented properly by the politicians, media figures, and intellectuals who make up our side, strategically even if they could be implemented the Democratic base would react with virulent opposition, and morally it's just a bad idea.


On the tax rule in the other thread, I would disagree somewhat but I don't want to open another sub-thread where we're at.

1. Check the 2020 election results and tell me how many of those state legislature seats flip Dem because of distaste over total abortion bans. Just because a small minority of Republicans say they support them to pollsters means jack shit. This is the shy Tory phenomenon that leftists forget every damn election. For immediate evidence, see the recent results in Australia for Liberal coalition vs what the pollsters were projecting. These people are very much in favor of the bald statements and outright fascism, they just don't admit it to anyone other than other Republicans.

2. Democrats fall victim to propaganda just as much as Republicans. Don't fall into the trap that somehow we are naturally educated/resistant against such tactics. Liberals have been fed self-deprecating propaganda by the DNC for 20 years to great success. Gore wasn't a weak candidate, it's all Nader's fault. Hillary wasn't a weak candidate, Obama was a once in a lifetime candidate. Hillary wasn't a weak candidate, progressives betrayed the party, NO WAIT, Russians forced 40,000 people in swing states to vote for Trump. What's next, Joe Biden wasn't a weak candidate, progressives betrayed the party?

How long have the third wave neoliberals controlled the party for and mismanaged it with the sole exception of Obama? Even now when Dems are faced with the choice of picking a loser candidate and risk ending the era of New Deal Federal protections or supporting someone that wants free access to healthcare they ask the question, 'but how do we pay for it?' THAT right there is successful propaganda, and they ain't getting it from Fox News.

[Montmorency]

1. Check the 2020 election results and tell me how many of those state legislature seats flip Dem because of distaste over total abortion bans.

I didn't say that.

Just because a small minority of Republicans say they support them to pollsters means jack shit. This is the shy Tory phenomenon that leftists forget every damn election. For immediate evidence, see the recent results in Australia for Liberal coalition vs what the pollsters were projecting. These people are very much in favor of the bald statements and outright fascism, they just don't admit it to anyone other than other Republicans.

Besides overstating the effect of polling distortion, I agree. I think you're taking an orthogonal meaning from my point.

(Glancing at the polling aggregates for Australian election, just prior to the election polling for the Liberal coalition was rising, and for Labour falling. Final averages were ~40% for Liberal and ~35% for Labour. Final results on Wiki reported as 41% for Liberal and 35.7% for Labour. For Greens, polling tipped out to 10%. They got 10.2% in the election. Polling seems pretty damn accurate to me.)

2. Democrats fall victim to propaganda just as much as Republicans. Don't fall into the trap that somehow we are naturally educated/resistant against such tactics.

All of us are victim to propaganda in the sense of "manufactured consent". The establishment worldview that aggressive welfare or regulatory policy is dangerous, capitalism is indispensable to prosperity, the American foreign policy framework is rigid, the Supreme Court is an institution of apolitical integrity, Republicans are deficit hawks and Democrats are spendthrifts, etc. Reactionary propaganda piggybacks off this to some extent, but ultimately it is also opposed to any such liberal consensus, including that consensus' manifestation in the more moderate leadership of the Republican Party. The efforts of right-wing activists over decades have created not just a set of unchallenged assumptions about our -their - way of life, but an entire alternate worldview and empirical lens. This is proper doublethink that creates partisanship without ideology. See the Republican base embracing Donald Trump's policy orientations on a dime. To a large extent this is just because Trump is a much more natural representative of the Republican base than many national establishment figures, but the propaganda effect was evident in the capacity of the base (before and after Trump) to consciously uphold and defend party dogmas on economics, foreign policy, and other subjects that they would explicitly disavow if presented in a non-partisan context.

"War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength" applies eerily well to the closed epistemology of movement conservatism. The Democratic Party has not replicated anything like this, almost certainly can't, and definitely shouldn't try.

Liberals have been fed self-deprecating propaganda by the DNC for 20 years to great success. Gore wasn't a weak candidate, it's all Nader's fault. Hillary wasn't a weak candidate, Obama was a once in a lifetime candidate. Hillary wasn't a weak candidate, progressives betrayed the party, NO WAIT, Russians forced 40,000 people in swing states to vote for Trump. What's next, Joe Biden wasn't a weak candidate, progressives betrayed the party?

You're just listing factual electoral analyses. If the candidates really were properly perceived as weak, this would (or should) come from serious analysis that would also be subject to your glib dismissal as propaganda - unless you're simply operating off 'gut feel'? What made these candidates "weak"? They didn't perform weakly. (Funnily enough, Hillary Clinton performed better than any Democratic candidate of the past 50 years other than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.) Now, Carter was a weak candidate. Meanwhile, to the extent that I could follow your claim that either the DNC has much of a propaganda machine or that the Democratic base is there to hear it (in practice the Dems have much weaker intraparty messaging than the Repubs), what is the most influential strand of 'party line' on the 2016 election? That the Democratic Party needs to try extra-hard not to trigger conservative white men, in the hope of gaining their votes. Self-deprecating propaganda is right.

How long have the third wave neoliberals controlled the party for and mismanaged it with the sole exception of Obama? Even now when Dems are faced with the choice of picking a loser candidate and risk ending the era of New Deal Federal protections or supporting someone that wants free access to healthcare they ask the question, 'but how do we pay for it?' THAT right there is successful propaganda, and they ain't getting it from Fox News.

Yes, that's part of the transpartisan manufactured consent. Are you saying that unironically? I thought you believed in the normative and economic value of neoliberalism, and therefore favor Joe Biden?! Maybe we're not understanding each other.



To clarify what my asides in the other post were meant to contribute, there are differences between Republican and Democratic bases and political strategies that can't be captured in terms of "jerking suddenly" and "drip irrigation", or that change the context of those terms.

[Strike For The South]

These abortion laws are being passed in order to force a showdown on Roe. In a just world, the court of appeals overturns these transparent pieces of legislation, and Roberts denies certiorari by breaking the 4-4 tie.

At this point, Monty thinks I'm crazy, but I'm still clinging to hope Roberts cares about safeguarding the court.

[Montmorency]

These abortion laws are being passed in order to force a showdown on Roe. In a just world, the court of appeals overturns these transparent pieces of legislation, and Roberts denies certiorari by breaking the 4-4 tie.

At this point, Monty thinks I'm crazy, but I'm still clinging to hope Roberts cares about safeguarding the court.

@a completely inoffensive name

Your views of Roberts are becoming increasingly untenable. Let's remember too that the only basis for them ever has really just been the "horse-trading" on the ACA Medicaid expansion in Sebelius. But as I pointed out earlier, this flexibility can precisely be mustered to support the opposite interpretation that Roberts is a conscious partisan hack looking for any opening he can - albeit with more discreetness than his compatriots.

Here's (1) an article on how the Roberts Court and its conservative wing has been hyperactively overturning precedents while "in nearly 55 percent of these cases, the “Roberts Five” ignored precedent, congressional findings, and even their favored doctrines, such as originalism and textualism, to reach partisan and corporate-friendly outcomes. This pattern of outcomes speaks to a Roberts Court that, far from calling “balls and strikes,” appears intractably captured by powerful forces of special-interest influence."

Here's (2) a couple articles (3) on how there is no 5-dimensional anime mastermind Republican gambit to secretly defend Roe v Wade while pretending to dismantle it. If there ever was, the memory that the Kool-Aid is Kool-Aid was lost as the first generation aged away (though let's recall the Reagan admin officially wanted Roe overruled); the contemporary hard core are true believers. It's really tough at this point, IMO, to dispute that the far-right wants to enslave women. Expect efforts at a national abortion ban. Expect a growing movement for fetal protection laws restricting women's ability to work outside the home (Fugitive Fetus Act? ). Expect attacks on the formal legal equality of women. And why stop at women? Expect an attempt to overturn Brown v Board of Ed. Expect... the kitchen sink is not nailed down.

Second article arguing that Roe v Wade has not been preserved in the past 40 years as "the inevitable product of some master Republican plan, but a contingent series of flukes and historical accidents":

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Kennedy was confirmed to the Court only because a Democratic Senate rejected Reagan’s first choice, Robert Bork, an icon in conservative legal circles whom Republican elites certainly wanted to be confirmed. Bork, who labeled Roe an “unconstitutional decision” in congressional testimony in 1981, unquestionably would have voted to overrule it. Had Reagan nominated another orthodox conservative without Bork’s extensive history of inflammatory public comments in 1987, it is overwhelmingly likely Roe would have been dead in 1990.

Then:

In 1989, the Court issued a ruling in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, which considered a Missouri law that defined life as beginning at conception and declared that “unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and well-being.” But Roe survived the first major attempt to dismantle it. Chief Justice William Rehnquist (who dissented in Roe) tried to assemble a coalition for effectively ending Roe but fell one vote short. The result was an opinion that expressed hostility to Roe without changing the legal status quo. The roadblock was Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who in a concurrence insisted that the Missouri statute did not require the Court to consider whether Roe was correctly decided because the “fetal personhood” language did not have concrete legal meaning.

By the time of Planned Parenthood v Casey in 1992, the liberal justices Brennan and Marshall were gone, replaced by Bush appointees Souter and Thomas (alongside the four justices who had tried to overturn Roe in Webster above). 8 of 9 justices were Republican-appointed, and the one appointed by Kennedy (White) was hostile to Roe. Most expected an overturning.

But the expected ruling didn’t happen. After initially voting in conference to overrule Roe, Justice Anthony Kennedy ended up collaborating with fellow Republican nominees Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter to craft a compromise upholding Roe.

So in other words Kennedy pulled a Roberts. The center-right moderates formulated a compromise that weakened Roe by introducing the "undue burden" test (which I believe we first discussed in Fall of 2018 in another thread). Kennedy was a fluke, Souter was a closet pinko (not really), and O'Connor was always a centrist on abortion. Scalia, Bork, and Thomas all wanted to overrule when they were nominated. The Republican leadership did not desire a moderate outcome, as is evidenced by the nominations of Scalia, Bork, and Thomas, plus Souter (and later O'Connor, Kennedy, and some of Nixon's moderate selections like Blackmun, author of Roe and present for Casey) coming to be considered traitors by the mainstream Right. Souter was selected precisely because of his (flawed) reputation as a reliable conservative, after all. The existence of today's near-perfect Federalist Society yoke on the Republican bench is directly a response to events such as these.

One of the nuanced geneal points about the Republicans I have tried to advance is that they can be affected electorally, on the margins, by unpopularity - but they don't care if they're unpopular. Likewise:

Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and enact Trump’s tax cuts were enormously unpopular, but they did the latter and were one vote away from the former anyway.
[...]
In addition, the idea that Roe being overturned will mean that evangelicals will no longer have the issue to rally around is puzzling. If Roe is overruled, the result would be conflicts over abortion laws in most states as well as Congress. And preserving the movement’s legislative victories would still require maintaining control of the Supreme Court.

More on Roberts not caring about popularity or perceptions, plus already having acted in a way to set up the overruling of Roe (c.f. this):

NFIB v. Sebelius, the vote that saved Obamacare, was a rare exception in Roberts’s track record, and even in that case, he inflicted significant damage on the statute’s expansion of Medicaid. From eviscerating the Voting Rights Act to gutting campaign finance law, Roberts has generally sided with longstanding movement conservative priorities even when the results are unpopular. On abortion, he voted with the minority in the 2016 case to uphold the Texas anti-abortion law, which, if left in place, would in itself effectively render Roe a nullity by allowing states to stop abortion clinics from operating.

Third article argues that Roberts and Co. has already been preparing to overrule Roe in substance, and the recent round of extreme abortion bans (even miscarriage bans) are not ones they disagree with on a Constitutional basis, but have the inconvenient effect of making it harder to do what they want sub silentio. Maybe Roe still stands, but every abortion clinic closing down is not an "undue burden" because it is still theoretically possible to get an abortion somewhere else - or some such contrivance. The pretextuality is more apparent when the abortion banners are explicitly stating their goal is to overrule Roe v Wade, despite Republican jurists' preference for applying fig leaves. The only question is then if they will end Roe saying the loud part quiet or the quiet part loud.

Why, then, do I feel sorry for John Roberts? Because what keeps the Supreme Court in business is often the polite subterfuge of complex legal doctrine. We don’t so much suppress minority votes as protect the dignity of the states. We don’t so much enable dark money to corrupt elections as invite free speech. And we don’t so much punish women for bearing children as celebrate God and babies. This is all the kind of democracy-suppressive language the justices can get behind. It’s why Americans don’t riot on the streets.

And if Trump is re-elected there goes the neighborhood. Just remember guys, if tens of millions of women end up having no access to safe and legal abortion in their own states, under harsher surveillance and criminal penalties than ever existed pre-Roe, I hope you don't recommend they "move to another state." No one is safe. This is a people's war. A sacred war.



Off-topic: h/t to Husar, I tinkle at the center/far-right Austrian coalition government collapsing because the Vice-Chancellor was revealed to have engaged in conspiracy to commit bribery with Russians (or those he perceived to be Russians). Of course, such a thing would be unpossible in the United States.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

He probably shouldn’t have been surprised. The Freedom Party, known as FPÖ, has been in power four times since 1983, and during each instance, the government collapsed prematurely because of infighting or scandals. But what makes the recent crisis especially intriguing is that what ultimately triggered it was not the FPÖ’s anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and general xenophobic rhetoric, nor an alleged scandal involving Austria’s domestic intelligence agency, nor verbal attacks by the party against the Austrian Broadcasting Corp., but rather the party leader’s affinity to Russia, which was deliberately exploited by the actors behind the 2017 video. This is no coincidence: Austria is one of Russia’s closest friends in Europe.

The FPÖ may be more pro-Russian than other Austrian parties, but it’s not entirely unique. An exceptionally high number of Austrian politicians has gone on to work for Russian state-owned or privately owned enterprises with close ties to the Kremlin after the end of their political careers. For example, Former Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel (of ÖVP) is a member of the board of directors of MTS, Russia’s largest mobile operator; former Chancellor Christian Kern (of the Social Democratic Party, known as SPÖ) is slated to join the board of Russian Railways; former Minister of Finance Hans Jörg Schelling (of ÖVP) is an adviser to Gazprom.

Senior Austrian politicians also have repeatedly expressed their desire to see the EU sanctions enacted following Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 lifted. While there are some geostrategic reasons for that—85 percent of Austria’s natural gas demand is met by Russia—many of these politicians are also known to have private business interests in Russia. For example, the former president of the influential Austrian Economic Chamber, Christoph Leitl, is known to have at one time owned shares at two Russian companies worth more than $83 million. Austria was also the first EU country to welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin to an official state visit after the beginning of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, during which he was also warmly received by Leitl. Notably, Austria also did not join other Western countries in expelling Russian diplomats following Russia’s alleged poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in England last year. 2018 also saw Putin attend the wedding of Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl. During her own wedding, Kneissl kneeled in front of the Russian president—for many a symbol of Austria’s obsequious relationship with the Kremlin.

Still, the FPÖ’s support for Russia stands out, with Johann Gudenus, an aristocrat whose father was a FPÖ politician–turned–convicted Holocaust denier, acting as the Kremlin’s biggest cheerleader in Austrian politics—at least until last Friday. Gudenus has endorsed the Russian occupation of Crimea, praised the Russian-installed Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, railed against the EU (a “lobby for homosexuals,” according to a speech he gave in Moscow in 2014) and the United States, and condemned Western pluralism and liberalism, all of which brought him the attention of the Kremlin. Gudenus was also instrumental in the FPÖ concluding a “partnership treaty” with Putin’s United Russia party in December 2016.

Basically, most far-right parties like Putin because he can help remove kebab and remove leftism, and Putin likes most far-right parties because they are anti-NATO, anti-EU, anti-liberal, and anti-democratic, and they have aligned increasingly in the past 15 years. (It's May 23, 2019 and they're all still fascists.) Jetzt erst recht!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

These abortion laws are being passed in order to force a showdown on Roe. In a just world, the court of appeals overturns these transparent pieces of legislation, and Roberts denies certiorari by breaking the 4-4 tie.

At this point, Monty thinks I'm crazy, but I'm still clinging to hope Roberts cares about safeguarding the court.

To give them their due, the Alabamans have passed a relatively straightforward and reasonably uncomplicated law on the issue. Saves parsing the nuances a bit and lets the courts address the issue at the core of the dispute. Nor were its proponents shy about noting that it was so designed in order to force the courts to take up the Roe Wade issue.

Of course, SCOTUS could simply let a lower court's overturning of the law stand and refuse to take up the issue. Not all efforts to force the SCOTUS to address an issue have ended the way the persons bringing the issue up had hoped.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Monty:

There is almost certainly an element of the political right that would prefer to see women back in their 1890s roles and mostly out of public life. I do not think they constitute either a significant wedge of the American Political Right Wing nor its more common goals. I personally think such a view is idiotic, but there is no enforceable law against stupidity.

A goodly chunk of those opposing abortion (most) do so because they believe that life begins at conception and that that life therefore should be accorded the same chance at "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" as any other life. The goal of protecting the unborn is deemed worthy of itself and is not being used as a tool to worsen the lives of women. The thinking among them would freely acknowledge that such a restriction would be burdensome to some women and that some degree of harm would occur -- they simply view the value of human life in its totality as being of more importance than the deleterious impact on the woman who is bearing that child.

Obviously, those who do not believe that life begins at conception do not agree that the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness," standard obtains at all.

Its a pretty basic point of disconnect.