POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[spmetla]

The events today have been absolutely sickening. As a patriotic American I'd saddened, angered, and have a simmering rage against the President and his crew for inciting these actions today. It is terrible that a life was lost by a undoubtedly deluded woman following the lies of narcissist wannabe dictator. Her blood and the fact that the Capitol was stormed at all at the incitement of the sitting President seems to thankfully have led to a further disgust of Trump's actions by many of the fence sitting pro Trump folks I know. Thankfully many of these are citizens first and republicans second. The feelings seem similar to post 9/11 but nowhere near as strong or unifying.

Sadly the fringe excuse making is already happening, claiming that black-flag ANTIFA and BLM members were responsible for any vandalism. Though many Republican congressmembers have switched to not opposing the count of the electoral votes most that signed on originally remain un-swayed.

In a perfect world the House could draft articles of impeachment tomorrow and the senate could vote on it the following day. This together with any 25th Amendment expulsion are just pipe-dreams for those of us that cannot stand Trump. Sadly after today I imagine all these politicians will go home and then go back to shrewd calculations of what is favorable for their political fortunes though the speeches of many today show some sort of reconciliation.

I expected political theater and nonsense today and have been deeply disappointed though I still think the institutions remain overall strong. I also think that today's actions have demonstrated to the old guard political class that Trump's violations of norms and traditions can only be prevented for future presidents through clear legislation and possible constitutional amendments limited some of the POTUS powers, only the future will show though.

I think the only other silver lining to today is this will likely have significantly sunk Trump's post presidency power. How he acts in the next few days and his remaining few weeks will determine whether he has Republicans that will protect him from serious investigation and prosecution.

[Montmorency]

Briefly returning to the interrupted topic of the Georgia runoffs.

538's polling aggregate was incidentally excellent on this one, less than a point off on Ossoff and less than a half-point off Warnock.

In a state Stacey Abrams lost by 60K votes IIRC, Ossoff won by close to 50K and Warnock by close to 100K, in part due to her nonstop fieldwork from shortly after she lost in 2018. Georgia is officially purple, like Virginia (now solid-Dem) was 10-15 years ago.

I'd like to bring to everyone's attention the intense, suprahistorical, partisanship of the runoffs (ignoring the state Public Service Commission election that was low-key on the same ballot Tuesday). In something of a surprise to me, both elections saw very approximately the same number of votes recorded (there's a gap of ~53 votes between Ossoff-Perdue and Warnock-Loeffler, or ~0.00001% of the total). Therefore, we can make comparisons along the Newtonian assumption that both races had the same number of votes by all the same voters. The gap between Warnock's net vote and Ossoff's net vote is 79300 - 41300 = 38000.

That is to say, in an election where split ticket voters (who split votes between parties on various available races) were established ahead of time as potentially wielding immense influence over the course of American governance, not even 1% of voters split their tickets. Just what one would expect from an era of partisan hyperpolarization; and the 2020 (November) election continued the trend of historically-low rates of ticket splitting.

Some exit polling.
https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/ex...runoff/georgia
https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/ex...runoff/georgia
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/ele...ether-n1252851

As expected, white people vote overwhelmingly for Republicans, and white evangelicals vote for Republicans at the same rates as black people for Democrats. Black voters make up the majority of the Democratic electorate in Georgia. Still, without a grindingly-slow shift against Republicans among white voters, these victories would not have been possible.




"Well that escalated steadily for four years."

Short thread by some British centrist.

OK, this has blown up. I hope nothing else does.

Before I hand the mic to people who have actual wisdom to impart, let me say this. Obviously, this sorry idiocy didn't begin four years ago, or forty, or even four hundred.

All those "it couldn't happen here", "let's hear from both sides" or "this isn't who we are" takes are, at best, ahistorical bullshit. This is precisely what the USA (a nation I love, but am not of) is and has been, for most of its history.

Go read @thenewjimcrow, go read @sarahkendzior, go read Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Case for Reparations https://theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ations/361631/ which barely TOUCHES on slavery.

Go read about Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining,
Reconstruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era
Dred Scott v. Sandford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

I'm a wishy washy centrist Brit. I didn't know ANY of this stuff ten years ago. I'd read Coates and see him refer to the orchestration of White Flight by white banks or the deliberation creation of the African-American Ghetto and think "well, hmm, maybe. Sounds a stretch."

And then you read about white real estate agents paying African-American women to wheel prams around white areas to panic white owners into fleeing for the suburbs, and then installing African-American tenants on bullshit mortgages they could never pay off.

And how much work, how much deliberate effort went into the preventing the creation of an African-American middle class. Good enough to pay taxes, good enough to be drafted, fight and die in wars, not quite equal access to life, liberty or happiness.

But I hadn't seen a movie about it, so it all felt less real than the movies and TV shows I had seen. Those were fictions, and deliberately or otherwise they served a purpose.

I expected political theater and nonsense today and have been deeply disappointed though I still think the institutions remain overall strong. I also think that today's actions have demonstrated to the old guard political class that Trump's violations of norms and traditions can only be prevented for future presidents through clear legislation and possible constitutional amendments limited some of the POTUS powers, only the future will show though.

One way to look at it is, American institutions are like a submarine superstructure that is steadily buckling under pressure. If you want to live, you need to escape fast, or remove the ship from its environment. Sure, it's resisted the worst of the strain surprisingly-well in a life-or-death situation and most of the compartments remain uncompromised, so far. But the ordeal, crucially, that has not concluded. Those worrisome leaks and dents can't hold the water back forever, and voyage repair won't sustain the mission. It's no longer fit for purpose if that purpose is prolonged survival.

We can take the luxury of giving the old beast a forlorn pat once we're no longer inside it...

And kicking out seems to be becoming the hallmark of democracy both here and in the US.

I wish you would have pause when conceiving lines like this one, which is not only indefensible, but inexplicable.

I hope that this might be a deathblow to "Trumpism" even though this might be wishful thinking.

The answer came quickly.

The gulf between Republican leaders and their grass-roots activists has never been wider since the start of the Trump era. And, as when the divisions first emerged after Mr. Trump denigrated Mexicans, Muslims and women, the party is not feuding over any sort of grand policy agenda. It’s simply a personal loyalty test.
[...]
While veteran lawmakers were flatly urging a separation, more than 100 House Republicans, unpersuaded by the chaos in the Capitol, continued with their effort to block Congress from certifying President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Some adopted conspiracy theories from right-wing news outlets and social media that it was left-wing saboteurs carrying out a false flag operation who ravaged the halls of Congress.

By Thursday morning, Mr. Trump was greeted with applause when he dialed into a breakfast at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee, most of whose members have become a reflection of the party’s pro-Trump activist wing. On Friday, the committee was set to re-elect Mr. Trump’s handpicked committee chair with no opposition.

Representative Tom Reed of New York, who has emerged as a leader of more moderate Republicans in the House, said Thursday that the party needed to begin “not worrying about base politics as much, and standing up to that base.” He argued that Republicans should pursue compromise legislation with Mr. Biden on issues like climate change, and forecast that a sizable number of Republicans would take that path.

“If that means standing up to the base in order to achieve something, they’ll do it,” Mr. Reed predicted.

Action. We need action.

Perhaps as we remaining "cold warriors" die off (not you younglings but my generation) a newer and better definition of that "shining city upon a hill" can be brought to be.

We'll need your help.

Quick, commence the Long March through the institutions while the Black Brigades of the Anarkitty Syndicate buy us time against the ecopilled post-Groypers in the digital skreets. Service guarantees comradeship.

No, but seriously.

YouGov poll. Vast majority of the Republicans doesn't consider the storming of the Capitol as a threat to democracy. Now, I don't find this very worrying, but the fact that 45% support the storming, while only 43% oppose it is a tad ridiculous. Overall, I'd rate it as a very amateurish coup attempt, near our Pyjama coup.

Not that bad, but you get the gist.

Nincomcoup. But what's worse, the knowledge that a quarter of the military wants to install a favored general, or that a quarter of the population wants to install an ethnic dictatorship? (Figures used for rhetorical effect.)

I think for most sane people in the US, that belief went away in November 2016.

My impression is that most DC pols and professionals believe especially strongly in the doctrine of American exceptionalism. Many of the tweets and statements in the aftermath of Wednesday's events confirmed it, with talk of the "greatest democracy in the world" and whatnot.