US "Mid-term" Elections 2018

[a completely inoffensive name]

So you've got the worst of both worlds - a rigid basic structure that in essence can't be altered and all the "fixes" not which can be bulldozed. I don't think that suddenly changing things is a good idea or even possible given the existing frameworks.

In times where things are homogeneous this can be easily overlooked, but now when the need for strong processes is more clear than ever (with the popular vote and the elected officials diverging ever wider) the ability to change the core appears to be absent.

So, given all that is in place, the only realistic solution would be for the Federal government to try to do better on less tasks and leave the states themselves to focus on aspects that are not agreed on - the 2nd amendment (and Supreme Court interpretation aside), it might well be that some states would ban guns and others would not. Clearly pretending everyone is exactly the same is working less and less well.

Has the British model shown any better promise? Brexit is jeopardizing everything to the point where an independent Scotland and a unified Ireland is not out of the question if May ends up delivering a hard Brexit with hard borders.
Where is this flexibility on the part of Parliament to adapt to the country as it lives today?

ACIN, about California's turnout: if you include all eligible voters, turnout wasn't even 30% turnout. Going by 7.3 million votes so far in the governor's race (7.2 million for House), 25.6 million eligible voters, and 18 to 19 million registered (where you got 37% I gather). Even less turnout in the Senate race (25% turnout of eligible). Is this what happens when you're known as the state of surplus voters? It's crazy that Florida could cast more votes (8.2 million) than California with hardly half the population. I raise an eyebrow at the people who are confident a meta-gerrymandered sexpartite California could reliably deliver 12 Dem Senators.



In updates on the election, votes are still being counted in several congressional districts.

Arizona Senate race still tallying, but it looks like the Democrat will win this one after all. If so, only a 2-seat gain by Republicans.

Dem Stacey Abrams in Georgia governor race refuses to concede the election and is demanding a recount. ACIN, seriously, do a review of the shadiness in the Georgia election, up to and including the hundreds of missing (hidden) voting machines and the apparent thousands of early votes that were not tallied for some reason.

Florida counts/recounts are ongoing and the gap in the Senate race is just 0.2% (0.4% in the governor race).

The skin-of-the-teeth nearness of a real national Dem sweep should only galvanize us all to try harder. Remember that the overall popular vote surge for Dems is at least that of the historic Republican surges of 1994 and 2010.

I agree with everything you are saying here. Hope I haven't given the opposite impression.

6 California's would give 9 Dems and 3 Reps just FYI.

[Pannonian]

Has the British model shown any better promise? Brexit is jeopardizing everything to the point where an independent Scotland and a unified Ireland is not out of the question if May ends up delivering a hard Brexit with hard borders.
Where is this flexibility on the part of Parliament to adapt to the country as it lives today?

The institutions exist that can provide flexibility: an elected House that legislates, and an appointed House that scrutinises. The problem is the fanatical belief in the infallibility of the elected House, and the idiots currently ruling the roost in the elected House (of all parties). The Lords have repeatedly pointed out the holes in the Brexit arguments provided by the Commons. Unfortunately both main p;arties in the Commons want Brexit.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The institutions exist that can provide flexibility: an elected House that legislates, and an appointed House that scrutinises. The problem is the fanatical belief in the infallibility of the elected House, and the idiots currently ruling the roost in the elected House (of all parties). The Lords have repeatedly pointed out the holes in the Brexit arguments provided by the Commons. Unfortunately both main p;arties in the Commons want Brexit.

So it sounds like your unwritten Constitution has failed as well.

[Pannonian]

So it sounds like your unwritten Constitution has failed as well.

It takes less work to put it right. The Common actually listening to the Lords would be something that is doable in the immediate future. The Commons not threatening the Lords with dissolution whenever the latter disagreed with the former would be another step immediately doable. Just replace the idiots heading the Labour party with someone marginally effective in opposition (hello Stella Creasy, Yvette Cooper, etc.), and most of the current worst abuses of the British system would work itself out. It's taking the active collaboration of both main parties, in a system where there's supposed to be a permanent opposition, to override existing checks and balances. An equivalent in US terms would be Republicans and Democrats actively collaborating to bring something about which every scientist in the land says is a catastrophically bad idea. If you live in a democracy, and the largest parties work together to be stupid, there's not much you can do.

[rory_20_uk]

Has the British model shown any better promise? Brexit is jeopardizing everything to the point where an independent Scotland and a unified Ireland is not out of the question if May ends up delivering a hard Brexit with hard borders.
Where is this flexibility on the part of Parliament to adapt to the country as it lives today?

This was a plebiscite. So this is one time that Brexit has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. It was a decision by the PM to hold it and not one that the country expected to get since the EU seems to get on best when the people are sidelined.

I personally prefer the German model to what we have in the UK - I think that the UK model is better than that in the USA - but you set thebar very low.

[Montmorency]

I agree with everything you are saying here. Hope I haven't given the opposite impression.

6 California's would give 9 Dems and 3 Reps just FYI.

I was speaking more to the thread than you, except where I named you.

Bro, how do California place fewer votes than Florida with twice the population size? That's shameful my dude.

[Beskar]

American attack ads are hilarious...


"Oh no, they are going to treat me for free! I wanted to get charged $200,000 in live in crippling debt for the rest of my life" cue Student Debt, cue Employment issues in repaying.

[Husar]

American attack ads are hilarious...
[...]

"Oh no, they are going to treat me for free! I wanted to get charged $200,000 in live in crippling debt for the rest of my life" cue Student Debt, cue Employment issues in repaying.

To answer the ad:
It looks very sexy (in both ways), so sit back and relax?!

The only odd thing is the universal job guarantee, but I guess it riles up the working class who prefer to work in a coal mine for themselves rather than let a robot do it and enjoy socialist paradise.

[Askthepizzaguy]

American attack ads are hilarious...

"Oh no, they are going to treat me for free! I wanted to get charged $200,000 in live in crippling debt for the rest of my life" cue Student Debt, cue Employment issues in repaying.

The future of America might be Norway, which leads the world in countless categories.

Oh noes, how dreadful.

[Viking]

"Oh no, they are going to treat me for free!

Of course you are not treated for free, you pay for the healthcare in forms of taxes and other fees. Publicly funded health care is a mandatory insurance with the state as the insurance company. If you want to be treated for free with public healthcare, you'll have to be on welfare so that you don't pay anything to the state; but that's for the few.

[Fragony]

Hillary is there, can someone feed her som crickets that is what I do with my reptiles.

[Beskar]

Of course you are not treated for free, you pay for the healthcare in forms of taxes and other fees. Publicly funded health care is a mandatory insurance with the state as the insurance company. If you want to be treated for free with public healthcare, you'll have to be on welfare so that you don't pay anything to the state; but that's for the few.

"Free at point of access with no significant unavoidable charges which will put me in crippling debt" *

I was going for simple as we all know what it means, but there is the expanded version if you desire that.

[Husar]

Publicly funded health care is a mandatory insurance with the state as the insurance company.

Of course that is not correct since Germany has several public insurance companies that are not directly run by the government.
They're technically (partially) government entities, but work independently, similar to a self-governing province one could say. If the government were the insurance company, there would be only one, but we have quite a few of them: https://www.krankenkassen.de/gesetzl...nkassen-liste/

[Viking]

Of course that is not correct since Germany has several public insurance companies that are not directly run by the government.
They're technically (partially) government entities, but work independently, similar to a self-governing province one could say. If the government were the insurance company, there would be only one, but we have quite a few of them: https://www.krankenkassen.de/gesetzl...nkassen-liste/

So, very broadly speaking, you currently have the same health care system in Germany as the US has, aka Obamacare.

If you actually pay for your health care directly through bills (or can see the amount deducted from the salary for this purpose), it should be even more obvious that it is not free; and that over a lifetime, it should amount to quite a sum. A sum that you could use to pay for the treatment of a disease that the public health care system is unwilling to cash out for, either because the treatment is too expensive or experimental. Different health care systems have different benefits and drawbacks, and you can expect that some individuals will fall through the cracks with any system.

In other words, health care "free at point of access" - if you actually get access to it, which in practice is not always.

[rory_20_uk]

FFS, there are many different models of healthcare in the world. And almost all scale on approximately a line where extra money leads to extra improvements. The main outlier is the USA with their extremely inefficient system.

[Husar]

So, very broadly speaking, you currently have the same health care system in Germany as the US has, aka Obamacare.

If you actually pay for your health care directly through bills (or can see the amount deducted from the salary for this purpose), it should be even more obvious that it is not free; and that over a lifetime, it should amount to quite a sum. A sum that you could use to pay for the treatment of a disease that the public health care system is unwilling to cash out for, either because the treatment is too expensive or experimental. Different health care systems have different benefits and drawbacks, and you can expect that some individuals will fall through the cracks with any system.

In other words, health care "free at point of access" - if you actually get access to it, which in practice is not always.

No, we don't. Only some people pay a bill and there is also a parallel private insurance system, where people also pay a monthly bill.
What you can access is defined by the state as a minimum level of care and it covers pretty much everything essential that is not a very experimental treatment abroad or whatever. For medications you usually have to pay a little.

What you're really wrong about though, is that I was arguing about it being free or not. I don't know why you bring up that strawman argument when I didn't even touch the subject of cost.

That no system is perfect is a terrible argument if many of them are vastly superior over the crappy one you're defending.

[CrossLOPER]

American attack ads are hilarious...

I don't think you understand the state that many Americans are in. Many have been conditioned, since youth, that they are merely temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and that Democrats are standing in their way to prosperity with over-taxation and over-regulation. They can do it all by themselves, and that welfare is only for those who are lazy.

Polarization hasn't helped.

[Montmorency]

Nation's first use of ranked-choice in a congressional race delivers House seat in Maine to Dem candidate.
(For the ranked-choice fans out there)

I said at the top of the thread the final result for the House would be something like 229-206. I was too pessimistic. Now it looks like 234-201, an almost 40-seat pickup. I was wrong that there would end up being 10 Republican House victories within 1%, but there are at least 10 such within a margin of 2%. For anyone wondering whither the top-end estimate of a 50+-seat Democratic gain, maybe attribute to the aforementioned Trump wave.

It'll be a while before we get a conclusion to the Senate/Governor races in Georgia and Florida. ANTICS. Hashtag Florida, man.




Held that there is no actual leadership challenge to coming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, because there aren't even any challengers willing to stand against her; the right-wing Democrats are just agitating performatively toward their inane campaign promises.

The left wing of the Democratic Party is dissatisfied with her just like the right wing, but not as vocally (it's the converse when it comes to Internet intellectuals, but those don't matter in Congress). Nancy Pelosi took the realist measure of co-opting the left wing of the party, mollifying them with grants of Land and Title while basically ignoring the right wing.

"Progressives back Pelosi for speaker — in return for more power"

In a sign of the rising influence of the Progressive Caucus leaders, outside groups specifically held off on endorsing Pelosi until she committed to these asks.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Pelosi's overtures also speak to progressives’ growing influence in the Democratic Caucus. The Progressive Caucus will increase its membership by at least 20 members next year, and comprise about two-fifths of the caucus. Its leaders intend to use those numbers to boost their power and agenda — starting first with committee assignments and leadership positions, then expanding into legislation.

Adding to that heft is their relationship with powerful groups on the outside — organizations that Jayapal argues are the main reason Democrats retook the majority.

“We coordinated very closely with them, and they actually told Pelosi that they won’t come out for her until [after] our meeting,” Jayapal said. “So we are leveraging our power in different ways within the caucus but also with our allies on the outside.”

Thursday's meeting with Pelosi included Jayapal and current Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Mark Pocan (D-Wis.). One request to which Pelosi agreed was to give the Progressive Caucus proportional representation on what lawmakers call the “A committees”: the Appropriations, Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, Financial Services and Intelligence committees.

Given that there's no credible alternative to Pelosi for years to come, we should focus on replacing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. That guy has assisted Republican aims so far he's practically Mitch McConnell's deputy. (Also, he's totally compromised with respect to Facebook, for whom his daughter works.)

[Montmorency]

Someone else should take up posting midterm updates, of which there have been a few. Instead:

1. If this table is correct...




2. Wrong thread, but the latest on Trump's authoritarian escalations is that he is more directly trying to authorize military orders bound to violate federal law on the domestic conduct of the Army. Remember when the French Foreign Legion was legally prohibited from operating on French soil, but the French government deployed them anyway to massacre thousands of Parisian communards while France was under German occupation in 1871? It's the kind of thing that makes the Posse Comitatus Act (1878) a good idea in theory, though at the time it was intended as one of the Reconstruction-killing acts.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2...on-expendables

Between 1870 and 1871, more than 900 legionnaires died while reinforcing the French Army in the Franco-Prussian War. This was their first fight on French soil. After the war ended, the Legion stayed on and helped with the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune—a civilian revolt during which legionnaires dutifully killed French citizens on French streets, often by summary execution. After order was restored, the legionnaires were quickly returned to their bases in Algeria, but they had earned the special loathing reserved for foreign mercenaries, and a visceral distrust of the Legion still felt by French leftists today.

Also, he repeatedly tried to get Justice to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey for being political enemies of his. Depending on the extent of Trump's official instructions, this alone could be a more severe abuse of power/obstruction than Nixon was impeached over. Add to the tally. And the ouster of Sessions with Whitaker? Forget about it.

Whar 2nd Amendment militias? Whar?

[rory_20_uk]

To paraphrase Stalin - one death is a disaster, one million is a statistic.

Previous politicians were brought down by one or at most a few related disasters and the learn here is to continue to create new ones so no one focuses on any one long enough. Rather than ever accept reality, continue to brazenly lie and just like in the Soviet Union, people start to believe it due to repetition (e.g. many in Russia view Stalin as a hero rather than a greater Xenophobe and genocidal maniac than anyone except Mao). His base likes his equivalent of a 5 Year Plan and choose the bubble. The odd voting system the USA is rather similar to the "rotten boroughs" in Britain c. 200 years ago where a few hicks hold a disproportionately large amount of power.

[a completely inoffensive name]

This was a plebiscite. So this is one time that Brexit has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. It was a decision by the PM to hold it and not one that the country expected to get since the EU seems to get on best when the people are sidelined.

I personally prefer the German model to what we have in the UK - I think that the UK model is better than that in the USA - but you set thebar very low.

Our written Constitution doesn't allow the President or Congress to pose questions directly to the people. Sounds like your unwritten Constitution allowed British politicians to dump their responsibility on charged political questions in a very divisive way...
What difference does it make if the result was unexpected?

I was speaking more to the thread than you, except where I named you.

Bro, how do California place fewer votes than Florida with twice the population size? That's shameful my dude.

Many Californian Republicans don't show up in California because they feel the state is lost to the Democrats already. Never mind the fact the CALGOP lost the state when they went full Nazi in asking for complete removal of the brown people in the state.

Also, this might be alien to people who live outside of California, but since California is solidly blue and has a solidly blue government, we have been generally content with the current state of California politics.
Governor Moonbeam has been an amazing governor and is the reason I hate term limits.

[Montmorency]

Many Californian Republicans don't show up in California because they feel the state is lost to the Democrats already. Never mind the fact the CALGOP lost the state when they went full Nazi in asking for complete removal of the brown people in the state.

Also, this might be alien to people who live outside of California, but since California is solidly blue and has a solidly blue government, we have been generally content with the current state of California politics.
Governor Moonbeam has been an amazing governor and is the reason I hate term limits.

Prop 187?

What's Brown like on immigration? I heard he hated it back in the 1970s. Then again, many labor Democrats did yet.

Our written Constitution doesn't allow the President or Congress to pose questions directly to the people. Sounds like your unwritten Constitution allowed British politicians to dump their responsibility on charged political questions in a very divisive way...
What difference does it make if the result was unexpected?

That's actually a very interesting question. Does Congress lack the authority to pass enabling legislation allowing the invocation of national referenda that would have the force of federal law/policy, or require the implementation of corresponding law/policy? Maybe such a thing already exists, idk.

###

Rory, on the subject of discourse and governance, I came upon this quote from Aneurin Bevan, godfather of British socialism in the 20th century and architect of the NHS:

"The eyes of the world are turning to Great Britain. We now have the moral leadership of the world, and before many years are over we shall have people coming here as to a modern Mecca, learning from us in the twentieth century as they learned from us in the seventeenth," said Mr Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health, at a Labour rally in Manchester yesterday.
The meeting was called to celebrate the anniversary of Labour's accession to power. The Labour party, he said, would win the 1950 election because successful Toryism and an intelligent electorate were a contradiction in terms. His own experiences ensured that no amount of cajolery could eradicate from his heart a deep burning hatred of the Tory party. "So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin," he went on. "They condemned millions of people to semi-starvation. I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying, do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. They have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse."

The Government decided the issues in accordance with the best principles, he said: "The weak first; and the strong next." Mr. Churchill preferred a free-for-all, but what was Toryism except organised Spivvery?

As a result of controls, the well-to-do had not been able to build houses, but ordinary men and women were moving into their own homes. Progress could not be made without pain. People who campaigned against controls were conducting an immoral campaign. There was a kind of schizophrenia in the country, so that people reading newspapers and hearing talk in luxury hotels got an entirely different conception of what was happening, which did not square with the statistics. The bodies and spirits of the people were being built up - but the Government's efforts could not be sustained except by the energies and labour of the people. Production must be raised to make the new legislative reforms a living reality.

The Government never promised in 1945 that everybody was going to be better off. It knew some were worse off to-day, but it always intended they should be.

[Bevan's "vermin" remark - one of the most famous jibes in politics - was adroitly turned against the Attlee government by Tory speakers, who pretended it insulted their voters rather than policy makers. However, Bevan merely retorted that men of Celtic fire were needed to bring about great reforms like the new NHS. That was why, he explained, Welshmen were put in charge instead of "the bovine and phlegmatic Anglo-Saxons."

On one hand, uhhh....

On the other hand, the Republicans like to say that the people want someone who "tells it like it is".

[Strike For The South]

I find all this talk about stratagem to be misplaced. One of two things will eventually happen to kill the GOP. The old people who vote for them will pass or younger people will reach a critical mass of participation and cause a tipping point.

That is the reason for the obsession with the supreme court and voter suppression tactics, the GOP knows the math.

Now obviously that is something to fight because of everything that has happened. However Democratic leadership either seems oblivious or willing to wait them out. That is the totally wrong way to deal with a group who knows their collective fate is sealed.

Beto lost , Frustrating with someone as unlikeable as Cruz. Even more frustrating, half of Texans didn't vote.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Prop 187?

What's Brown like on immigration? I heard he hated it back in the 1970s. Then again, many labor Democrats did yet.

Prop 187 was one part. Keep in mind that some really disgusting Propositions get passed and then California goes ape-shit and flips the opposite way.
This is the same state that passed Prop 8 as well...

Brown isn't as loose on immigration as many San Fransisco liberals want, but to the overwhelming majority of liberals in here it fits right in. Welcome to come here and participate under no discrimination, but there is a legal difference between being a citizen and a non-citizen and we should keep a difference if we want immigrants to assimilate and become citizens. His first term was before my time, but my understanding is that he has mellowed out since the 1970s.

His admin has been the gold standard (among US governors) for encouraging Climate Change driven policies towards cap and trade and renewable energy. Debt as GDP for California has also decreased since 2010/2011.

That's actually a very interesting question. Does Congress lack the authority to pass enabling legislation allowing the invocation of national referenda that would have the force of federal law/policy, or require the implementation of corresponding law/policy? Maybe such a thing already exists, idk.

I think the Constitution makes it clear about a "republican" form of government. Idk how the courts would interpret that in the context of the representatives choosing to provide public referenda though.

[Crandar]

Apparently, maintaining a small majority in the Senate and losing it in the House counts as a great victory. Did a portion of the electorate always suffer from such a severe lack of touch with reality or has it recently become worse, due to polarization?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Apparently, maintaining a small majority in the Senate and losing it in the House counts as a great victory.

History is not exactly replete with pols who, following poor election results, openly declare 'we got our asses handed to us by the voters. We clearly need to rethink things.' In the USA's current delirium of narcissistic polarization, no admission of weakness can be made lest the other side use it against you. So "we've always been at war with Eastasia."

Did a portion of the electorate always suffer from such a severe lack of touch with reality or has it recently become worse, due to polarization?

Of course a portion of the electorate suffers from being haphazardly indexed with reality. Rabid single issue voters who would vote for to adopt a dictatorship as long as abortion was outlawed; people whose nativism is driven more by a desire to retain the advantages they enjoyed from the lottery of birth without an appreciation for the value of change; people like my mother in law who voted straight democrat in every election for nearly 40 years (despite being pro death penalty, anti-amnesty for illegals, convinced that the welfare system was a hammock and not a safety net, and a believer in lower taxes) -- we have always had our voters who were out of touch.

But it is the self-chosen ignorance of our electorate that allows for and encourages the polarization. The loudest voices from the political extremes scream for their agendas, the media gleefully exacerbates on and focuses upon "the race" or the conflict or who is "on top" because THAT is good for revenues, and the ignorant mass -- a goodly portion of whom vote despite their ignorance of the particulars -- fall in line with the loud voices as feels most emotionally rewarding to themselves.