POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[Montmorency]

Article on what Democrats can accomplish through Congressional budget reconciliation with their 50 Senate votes.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...reconciliation

Joe Biden’s agenda is vast and impossible to summarize in a single article, even when confined to what’s possible under budget reconciliation. But to pick out some of its most important aspects, Biden could:

Approve $2,000 checks, state and local aid, and a boost to vaccine funding
Create a $3,000-per-year child allowance for parents
Make housing a human right funded through federal vouchers
Guarantee paid maternal/sick leave
Achieve universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds, and massively expand child care access
Spend $2 trillion investing in clean energy and climate R&D
Forgive the first $10,000 in student loans for all debtors
Make community college free for all
Reduce Medicare eligibility to age 60 and perhaps create a public option open for all
Raise taxes on the rich by $4 trillion
Effectively abolish the debt ceiling to prevent future GOP hostage-taking
To understand why this is possible, and much of the rest of his agenda is likely not, you have to know a bit about the filibuster.

I'm pretty sure reconciliation will not permit many of the regulatory changes implied here, and where stripped bare of regulatory complement to enable passage, some of these programs won't be as desirable. Particularly so in the areas of paid leave, childcare, and housing, to my mind. What made Warren's and Sanders' plans here worthier was, beside their greater generosity, their commitment to creating legal protections and raising industry standards. Also, just forgive more student debt, Congress isn't even implicated.



Trump's polling, even among Republicans, is really sliding now, and while it's recovered every time before, I suspect there just won't be time enough for him. RCP and 538 both have him at 40% currently. How low can he go? Separately, I predict that by the end of the month, or maybe just prior to Biden's inauguration, polling on Direction of the Country will hit an all-time low (<15%).


Internet comment:

I can tell you that the FBI is taking all this seriously. One of my best childhood friends, Air Force Academy grad (not a religious loony, not a gun nut, not a Trumper) spent 10 or 12 years active duty and then has flown for United since, called me yesterday pretty shaken.

He has six kids. About half are also in military. Youngest daughter is marine nurse married to a marine living in OK. The dumb son in law took part in some of right wing protests for 2nd Amendment months ago. The son-in-law also had some,as my friend described, associations with some less savory gun nuts in OK one of whom filmed himself discharging fully automatic weapon in a place where that is unlawful. Little more to it but that was the gist.

Apparently, the son-in-law was pulled over Monday by police, and when they ran his plate, the FBI had issued some sort of warning with an acronym I can't recall, informing law enforcement to contact FBI immediately, but not to detain. Said son-in-law was immediately contacted by FBI to report for interview or be arrested, had to lawyer up and spent 6 hours yesterday being interrogated by the FBI.

They released him, but I got the sense from what my friend described was the FBI are not fucking around and are turning over rocks and connections everywhere. Any known associates of anyone they've got their eyes on.

That's somewhat reassuring.

I think liberal to a lot of conservatives means any of the following topics: trans-gender/gender fluidity acceptance, anti-2nd amendment, teaching history of US as guilt with emphasis on white-male-christian guilt, reparations and social engineering to correct said guilt, socialism/communism despite no real understanding of what that is, and anti-christian somehow. That's including single issue people like the 'pro-life' crowd. In general I'd call the conservative movement of today more of a social-reactionary movement as it's really just opposition to times changing faster than they can accept them. Change for many people is difficult to accept and fear of change is definitely easy to exploit.

That's exactly it, when one asks "What do these people despite?" - or better yet, whom - there's an overwhelming pattern. We're talking not about people who hold a mix of liberal and moderate views, or even who are retrograde in a mild way, but who are uniformly enraged and disgusted by what is straightforwardly an increasing prominence of issues of people who don't share their demographics or affinities. It's not that they arbitrarily dislike talk of gender or oppression - many of them will go on about how masculine they are and lament the "assault" on masculinity. It's not that they inherently disagree with government safety regulations (although to be fair some segment do actually think this way), they may even support stringency when it comes to "those people" having guns; most of their reaction is against what they perceive as a hindrance, realized or not, on their personal affairs. It's not that they actually care about government tyranny, which they simply define as anything that offends their own sensibilities or doesn't support their tribe. It's not that they don't think anyone does wrong or has to change anything about them, as they'll be first to denigrate the supposedly-terroristic Muslim and ghetto Black for perceived collective flaws. It's not that they oppose any statist implication in cultural change, when they typically call for the government to prioritize and embody their own values. It's not that they think their religion is under threat, but that they identify a loss of what they see as an official Christian status of American society and government as ipso facto a threat.

Intermission: Holy shit did you see what Josh Hawley said about this early Christian sage?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelagius — a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago. In a 2019 commencement address at The King’s College, a small conservative Christian college devoted to “a biblical worldview,” Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.

The most eloquent summary of the Pelagian vision, Mr. Hawley went on to say, can be found in the Supreme Court’s 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Mr. Hawley specifically cited Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words reprovingly: “At the heart of liberty,” Kennedy wrote, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”The fifth century church fathers were right to condemn this terrifying variety of heresy, Mr. Hawley argued: “Replacing it and repairing the harm it has caused is one of the challenges of our day.”

In other words, Mr. Hawley’s idea of freedom is the freedom to conform to what he and his preferred religious authorities know to be right. Mr. Hawley is not shy about making the point explicit. In a 2017 speech to the American Renewal Project, he declared — paraphrasing the Dutch Reformed theologian and onetime prime minister Abraham Kuyper — “There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.” Mr. Kuyper is perhaps best known for his claim that Christianity has sole legitimate authority over all aspects of human life.

Reminder that up to a full half of the national Republican electorate is White Evangelical Christians, who incidentally have protruded their tentacles far into Latin America and Africa in recent years, converting tens of millions. What a blight, ever since they perverted their religion into an institutional defense of slavery and never reformed even after slavery did. They would never tolerate Catholics like Hawley in the ascendancy, despite the staggering overlap in their cherished doctrines.


If one looks for strict linguistic meaning in the far-right usage of words and terms, one will always be confused by the seeming incoherence and irrelevance of their grievances. Only the realization that the nature of the grievance is to do with status, hierarchy, and taste-based affinity can comprehensively explain what is observed. In all the named elements what comes to the surface is an ironclad belief that they are the rightful Masters of the Universe, a club that not everyone can be a part of (to paraphrase George Carlin again). Not so much "they hate liberals" as "they know that they win, we lose, and they hate liberals for upsetting the balance of the Great Chain of Being."

And sure, like any model this can't cover every single case. Maybe there are outright Communists out there voting straight ticket Republican because they're obsessed with the meme of "pro-life" anti-abortionism. Or more realistically someone like Ammon Bundy, a far-right militant who supports Trumpism in basically everything (despite his pretensions to fighting for liberty), yet nearly got cancelled in the far-right ecosystem for offering that maybe immigrants aren't vermin to be cleansed from the nation. But it's the decisive thread that characterizes almost everything of Reaction, in and beyond America.

Case in point:

A very talented friend of mine, who interned w/
@GOPLeader
, and at 20 was one of the highest ranked staffers in the Trump campaign, was just fired from his new job when client found out he worked for Trump. He now can’t afford rent. Still think cancel culture isn’t that serious?

I wonder what this fellow thinks of unions and mandatory drug-testing.

In article 2 section 2 of the Constitution, right after it says the president has the ability to pardon it says "except in cases of impeachment." Which most seem to interpret as that the president is unable to pardon from when the House passes the articles of impeachment until the Senate votes. Some also interpret it as him being unable to pardon with regards to the scope of the impeachment, so no pardons for anyone's role in last week's riot.

Also if you havent seen the pictures of national guardsmen napping in the Capitol, its truly something to see. For all the time I have spent in that historic building I never for a second thought it would come to this. Incredibly depressing.

Seems like a stretch; my intuition has always been that the clause renders a crime unpardonable if the President was herself impeached over it as a Congressionally-enumerated offense. Then again, push it to the SCOTUS for all I care, make them decide what to license in Trump's downfall. Or maybe he refuses to pardon anyone at all and it's moot.