(7th November 2020, 9:22 PM)Weltall Wrote: [ -> ]I legitimately thought Joe Biden's victory speech was close to perfect. Not an ounce of spite or rubbing it in.
Now trumps speech on the other hand...
He was golfing instead of working there was no speech. Just a middle finger.
Speeches were night and day. Biden was on point in discussing everything awful about Trump.
ABF, the democratic party are of course better than republicans on progressive issues, but they are STILL actively fighting against progressive policy. Neither the D or the R actually care abotu the working class, with SOME exceptions. AOC gets it right pointing out all the failings of Democratic leadership.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvZzhTcbQW0 (Looks like the video embed is missing?)
I just spent a few hours reviewing this thread, and what a ride. It wasn't until now that I felt like it was okay to do so.
And I propose we re-name this thread to "Weltall is always right" because this thread is a four and a half year saga of me totally being right at almost every turn. (I did say that Biden would not beat Trump, but this was before COVID-19 came along, and I feel that the numbers from this election make it very clear that Donald Trump would have won if China hadn't forced him to fuck up literally everything about pandemic management and crater the economy.) This election makes me breathe a sigh of relief, and I do feel that Joe Biden will definitely be a better president, I think the Democratic Party got a gift from god and the left have earned their place at the table, because we are absolutely necessary to your future success and there's no denying it now. But, if we are into more lying to ourselves, we will look at this as a rejection of Trumpism and the alt-right. Clearly, the Democrats' strategy of "hoping good republicans will change parties" did not work at all. Trump earned almost 8 million more votes than he did four years ago, and his popular vote total is second-best of all time. If the Democrats move to the left with vigor, running aggressively on progressive policies while framing them to appeal to moderates, they will grow and win. If they do anything else, they will be lucky to survive another loss.
I also think that winning the two runoff elections in Georgia would make Kamala Harris, the effective tie-breaking senator in a 50-50 party split, the most powerful vice-president in American history, as well as (perhaps) the most powerful woman on earth. It would not be wise for the party to emphasize this fact in Georgia.
We'll need a new politics thread soon, but I say keep this one until Trump is actually gone.
Quote:I did say that Biden would not beat Trump, but this was before COVID-19 came along, and I feel that the numbers from this election make it very clear that Donald Trump would have won if China hadn't forced him to fuck up literally everything about pandemic management and crater the economy.) This election makes me breathe a sigh of relief, and I do feel that Joe Biden will definitely be a better president, I think the Democratic Party got a gift from god and the left have earned their place at the table, because we are absolutely necessary to your future success and there's no denying it now. But, if we are into more lying to ourselves, we will look at this as a rejection of Trumpism and the alt-right. Clearly, the Democrats' strategy of "hoping good republicans will change parties" did not work at all. Trump earned almost 8 million more votes than he did four years ago, and his popular vote total is second-best of all time. If the Democrats move to the left with vigor, running aggressively on progressive policies while framing them to appeal to moderates, they will grow and win. If they do anything else, they will be lucky to survive another loss.
On this issue, here's the big question: there are two forces at work here, which is stronger?
On the one hand, the ongoing COVID-19 tragedy boosted turnout among Democrats and turned more moderates against Trump. It helped us defeat him for sure, and seeing how close the election was in the states that matter the most, we needed all the help we can get.
On the other hand, due to COVID, Democrats did almost no door-to-door campaiging and GOTV (get out the vote) operations; instead, GOTV was mostly phone and internet-based, which are much less effective. It is hard to get many more Dem-leaning constituencies to vote, such as minorities, immigrants, etc; without GOTV efforts, even with how horrible Trump is some probably did not vote who would have in a normal year. I really do think that the lack of GOTV hurt Democrats nationwide.
The question is, which of these forces is the stronger one? Did we only win because of COVID, did it help us, or was is kind of a wash in the end as the loss of GOTV hurt us as much as the Trump administration's disastrous pandemic response hurt? I suspect the answer is that it helped more than it hurt, but I'm sure there will be analysies of this question in the future.
Quote:I also think that winning the two runoff elections in Georgia would make Kamala Harris, the effective tie-breaking senator in a 50-50 party split, the most powerful vice-president in American history, as well as (perhaps) the most powerful woman on earth. It would not be wise for the party to emphasize this fact in Georgia.
Heh, maybe not. I think we go into these runoffs probably more likely to lose than to win, but if we do win it will lead to a dramatically different next two years, so whatever we think will help should be done...
Quote:On this issue, here's the big question: there are two forces at work here, which is stronger?On the one hand, the ongoing COVID-19 tragedy boosted turnout among Democrats and turned more moderates against Trump. It helped us defeat him for sure, and seeing how close the election was in the states that matter the most, we needed all the help we can get.On the other hand, due to COVID, Democrats did almost no door-to-door campaiging and GOTV (get out the vote) operations; instead, GOTV was mostly phone and internet-based, which are much less effective. It is hard to get many more Dem-leaning constituencies to vote, such as minorities, immigrants, etc; without GOTV efforts, even with how horrible Trump is some probably did not vote who would have in a normal year. I really do think that the lack of GOTV hurt Democrats nationwide.The question is, which of these forces is the stronger one? Did we only win because of COVID, did it help us, or was is kind of a wash in the end as the loss of GOTV hurt us as much as the Trump administration's disastrous pandemic response hurt? I suspect the answer is that it helped more than it hurt, but I'm sure there will be analysies of this question in the future.
If a pandemic results in greater turnout than any GOTV efforts have ever managed, maybe the Democrats' GOTV efforts weren't really very good to start with. I believe AOC is spot on, Democrats have a tendency to treat internet outreach in particular as unimportant, but the GOP does not, and it's key to their high turnout. It's way cheaper and easier to saturate. Republicans don't send outreachers to pound the pavement. They stage big rallies and flood the internet with ads and disinformation.
I feel 100% confident Joe Biden won because of COVID. Donald Trump with his roaring economy and stock market would have easily won re-election, had COVID not been a major disruptive factor. It was a referendum on Donald Trump in particular, not about Republicans in general. Hence, the downballot results. Anyone who chooses to interpret this as Americans wanting to go back to centrist Democrat politics, rather than Americans being tired of a particular incompetent moron, are setting us all up for more heartbreak. We need not replicate the specific tactics of the Republican Party, but they are wizards at playing the long game and finding ways (ethical or not) of overcoming a natural electoral disadvantage. Democrats need to study how they do this and adapt their methods in such a way that is not destructive and stupid.
There's also one simple fact. Every single progressive candidate kept their seat.
Once again they're trying to "reach across the aisle". With liars and fascists ABF. There can be no compromise between truth and lies. There can be no compromise between democracy and fascism. Any attempt to do so will erode the former and strengthen the latter. Don't ask me to compromise any more. I'm done with that. If the democratic party "compromises" their ideals with the CURRENT version of the republican party, they will become republicans in everything but name. You will lose every value you claim to have in the name of a donkey. Don't do it. Push them. Push FORWARD. Push Biden! Go further left. It's the only way.
Republicans gained in the House -- our margin there is thin now -- and may hold the Senate. As much as I'd like to ignore all of those fascist enablers, you can't govern properly if you do that. The key is to not surrender our principles while we do so.
It will be really fantastic if we do win both Georgia runoffs, but even then a lot of dealmaking will be required to get anything passed, given that that'd leave us 50-50 with several red-state Dems who may not exactly be thrilled to pass some stuff. But that's what y9ou get when you have a rigged system that gives small red states an unfair advantage (in the Senate and Electoral College)...
Anyway though, Biden's a dealmaker legislator type who WILL try to deal with the other side. He always has and always will. I was frustrated by that kind of thing often during the Obama-Biden administration, since Obama constantly did that stuff and often got creamed by the Republicans when he did so, and I'm sure I will be again, but he is not the type to completely ignore the other party. I do think Biden's not going to be pushed around as easily as inexperienced Obama was sometimes, though... like, he's not trying the "how about we start with something close to the Republican position and then be surprised when they say that no that's not good enough, go farther right" like Obama was; Biden knows that game, I I think, and is starting with much more liberal policies. We'll see how it goes though, Mitch McConnell is dedicated to destroying our system in the name of power and I don't think he will stop now just because this Democrat is white instead of black. (I'm sure racism was a factor in why Republicans hated Obama so much after all...)
So yeah, I am not too hopeful for major legislation now, unfortunately, since we didn't win those Senate seats we needed, but if Biden ignores all Republicans entirely then even LESS happens, so we have no choice really unfortunately.
Weltall Wrote:If a pandemic results in greater turnout than any GOTV efforts have ever managed, maybe the Democrats' GOTV efforts weren't really very good to start with. I believe AOC is spot on, Democrats have a tendency to treat internet outreach in particular as unimportant, but the GOP does not, and it's key to their high turnout. It's way cheaper and easier to saturate. Republicans don't send outreachers to pound the pavement. They stage big rallies and flood the internet with ads and disinformation.
What you are forgetting here, again, is that the groups that more often vote Democratic are less frequent voters, while groups that more often vote Republican are more frequent voters. Republicans do not have to try very hard to get middle-age and older whte people to vote; they are voting anyway. But young people and minorities? It's always a struggle to get those peopel to the polls, they wrongly do not consider voting to be as important as it is and don't vote in high numbers compared to older age groups that we mostly lose. So Democrats outnumber Republicans, but struggle to win partially because of geographic sorting and partially because of how much harder it is to get our people to actually vote.
So with this election, we saw what happens if you can't do the normal outreach and just rely on peoples' outrage towards the current government to get people to the polls. And we saw a lot of enthusiasm on our side due to all of the horrible thing Trump has done, and Biden did great gaining ground in white suburbs and such; this is what flipped Pennsylvania for instance. However, there also were some weaknesses with some areas that I think the absence of door-to-door campaiging goes a long way towards explaining -- Biden probably did worse than Hillary in big cities like Philadelphia, for instance, despite it being his campaign headquarters. Do you really think that Trump's minority outreach explains that, or is it because we couldn't go door to door to convince lower-frequency voters to brave the cold and COVID and vote? Yes, COVID was a big thing causing people to vote against Trump, but some people who are much more likely to support Dems than Republicans need encouragement to vote.
Quote: I feel 100% confident Joe Biden won because of COVID. Donald Trump with his roaring economy and stock market would have easily won re-election, had COVID not been a major disruptive factor. It was a referendum on Donald Trump in particular, not about Republicans in general. Hence, the downballot results. Anyone who chooses to interpret this as Americans wanting to go back to centrist Democrat politics, rather than Americans being tired of a particular incompetent moron, are setting us all up for more heartbreak. We need not replicate the specific tactics of the Republican Party, but they are wizards at playing the long game and finding ways (ethical or not) of overcoming a natural electoral disadvantage. Democrats need to study how they do this and adapt their methods in such a way that is not destructive and stupid.
We will never know if Biden would have won otherwise or not, but Trump could have pulled it off maybe, sure. It'd have been even closer than it was most likely. I do think that we had a good chance to win either way due to revulsion against Trump though, it wasn't some certain Trump win, for sure. It's actually possible that due to the anti-fact world many Republicans live in now that COVID didn't have as much of an impact as it should have, electorally... I mean, there are literally people on ventilators in the hospital, dying, who refuse to believe that COVID is a real thing and not a hoax! They do not believe in reality anymore. The question would be how many people who were going to vote soft Trump turned against him because of COVID. I'm sure some did, but looking at polling Biden's lead was pretty stable throughout the year... and yes I know the polling was off in Trump's favor again, due to his hard-to-poll wave of cultists who showed up to vote, but still the numbers are useful.
At this point we know Biden will become president, the only question is how much damage to our democracy will be done before that finally happens.
And the sad thing is, many of Trump's cult may think he actually won the election and was cheated, but Trump himself isn't that stupid; he knows he lost. This entire excercize in trying to overturn democracy is just a "make me feel good" effort, as he tries to use the power of lies to turn his loss into a win and get rid of those bad "I know I lost" feelings. I don't think he actually cares at all about the long-term damage this is doing to our democracy, he only cares about trying to assuage his narcissism and feel better.
But until Biden is actually in office the effort will continue. So, tomorrow the Electoral College meet in state capitols around the country, and vote as they are required to. And then we'll probably have some drama January 6th when Congress has to confirm the result, but the drama won't change anything, Biden will end up confirmed. And then Biden will go into office and Trump can decide whether he actually wants to run in 2024 or not while the nation tries to recover.
But yes, seeing the Supreme Court throw out both of the pro-Trump election lawsuits 9-0 was quite satisfying. We are still a nation of laws, and Trump may hate that he isn't a dictator but he is not and most people in this nation want us to remain a democracy. A good analysis of why our democracy was saved shows that it wasn't the constitution that saved us, but the peoples' belieef in democracy. The key things that kept the election result in place were the actions of judges, state election officials, and state legislators of both parties. And in every close state, the key people chose to defend democracy and not side with Trump's attempted coup. Thank goodness. The threat of a legislature overturning the popular vote because they don't like the result isn't impossible in the future though, that is something to be concerned about... but it did not happen THIS Time.
We can't pretend that we can ever "put all this behind us". These people that enabled Trump are still in office. There can be no cooperating with them.
Half the nation still supports fascism and we very nearly became a dictatorship. Make no mistake, THAT is what Trump was attempting to do here. When Biden is in office, even assuming every last thing Trump did is undone, we will be the same nation we were in 2016. We can STILL elect another Trump, or even Trump himself, four years from now. This isn't over. It's only just starting, and please oh please if you claim we have to concede and reach across the aisle to "heal", I'm not listening. I'm done hearing that, for the rest of my life. "Reaching across the aisle" is what got us to this place.
Trump is, however briefly, actually right for once. Yes, it's entirely self serving and yes he had the entirely opposite few earlier this year, but his dumb revenge ploy against McConnel by going against him and saying everyone deserves $2000 and not a piddly unhelpful $600 is ENTIRELY RIGHT and if the democrats know what's good for them they will capitalize on that message and USE Trump's support to rework the entire bill now that Trump has veto'd it. Of course, don't give Trump what he wants, but do alter it. It's now up for negotiation again, so do it! Strike while the iron is hot people. This is what it means to care more about policy than politicians. I don't care WHO does it, I just care that it gets done!
Meanwhile, watch all of this:
On the one hand, Trump is "supporting" the $2000 amount because he's mad at McConnell and other top Republicans for saying that Biden won the election and that they will not support his coup. He's not doing this for any positive reason,but because he's an angry would-be fascist who doesn't care about the American people or his party, but only himself.
On the other hand, like a stopped clock Trump has managed to support a good policy, so ultimately the fact that his reaosns are horrible isn't as important as that it is a good policy and also helps tear Trump and the Republicans apart, because the yare very much not in support of this.
So yeah, Trump, keep going at the Republicans, heh... :)
As for that video, that's exactly the kind of reason why nobody other than Bernie diehards like Bernie diehards, they can be incredibly annoying. I watched part of that video but had to drop it before the end, his bitter dead-ender support for Bernie and constant (if typical for the left) focus on hating Democrats more than Republicans is awful and wrong. He makes some good points, sure, but also some bad ones, and the tone is way off from where it should be.
Like, are there issues with a few of Biden's Cabinet appointees? Sure. But he wildly exaggerates all of the issues, and it is far, far more important that we do exactly what Biden is doing: appoint knowledgeable people who know everything about the departments they are about to lead, so that we can start rebuilding our shredded civil service immediately and get right on repairing Trump's damage and overturning all of their horrible regulation changes.
Because of we did what Bernie dead-enders want and appointed a bunch of far-left extremists who have a lot of ideas (some good, sure) buit little knowledge of the departments they were about to lead, it would be a disaster! Nothing would get done, you need to know how the bueaucracy works in order to work in it. You and I don't know how it works, btu Biden's appointees do.
As for a few of the specific issues with nominees. That thing Neera Tanden said about Libya is definitely wrong, but the department she's going to lead, the Office of Management and Budget, has little to do with foreign policy so it's not really related. As for Tom Vilsack though, the fact that minorities are apparently deeply unhappy with the pick because of some things he did during the Obama administration is an issue and maybe Biden should reconsider his appointment. For climate Kerry is not my first thought, but it's apparently an issue hehas done work on so it's not some random choice. Cody's "Kerry is old so that's a bad nomination" "attack" is absolutely insanely dumb, that is not how anything works.
The ACTUAL criticisms of the nominees are mostly quite minor. Cody is justal, as usual, doing the typical leftist thing of histrionically exaggerting how bad the left is in order to yell and scream at how bad Democrats are, while mostly not really caring all that much about how much worse the right is. You see that in this video, he only VERY grudingly says anything at all about Trump; you can tell he just wanted to scream at the Democrats for the whole video but someone convinced him otherwise, soe he put in some perfunctory "yeah Trump is worse" bits before going right back to repeating variants on his usual lies about how tBiden is basically a Repubilcan and such.
Yes, Joe Biden is not a leftiist. But he is a Democrabelieves in making the world better. Also -- if you wanted leftist policy, well, your popportunity was to get it by electing a more liberal congress in the recent election. If we'd won some big victory in November, we'd be sure to pass some of the kinds of policies leftists want, and Biden would probably have some bolder nominees for some departments as well. But we didn't get it; instead, the Republicans gained in the House and didn't lose nearly as much in the Senate than they expected. We could still manage a knife's-edge 50-50 Senate if we win both Georgia seats, but that is hardly the kind of Senate that pasts leftist policy. And you can only do so much with only the executive branch.
Anyway, my opinion of Biden's cabinet choices is that he is doing exactly what America, and the world, needs, and is appointing what should be mostly a fantastic team! For the most part Biden is picking exactly the right people for what America needs desperately at exactly this moment. Doing the typical Joe Biden thing of supporting the establishment and experienced professionals is the best possible response for Trump's effort to destroy our government and its departments. Ignoring that in favor of "but I want mooooorerre" griping, while not talking enough about the utter destruction of our government Trump led over is foolish.
Like, yes, I agree that Biden's attempts to appease Republicans will probably fail as badly as Obama's appeals to Republicans did. Still, we need to try. Our system has critical problems and moderate change isn't enough, particularly on climate, but with this electoral result it'll have to do, sadly. And again we very badly need to rebuild the government and immediately get to repealing Trump's many awful policies, and radicals can't do that nearly as quickly. We need this to start now, not in several years.
Oh, and this idea that "the Democarats are right wing by international standards" is not true. Yes, the Dems are not far left, but they are definitely a liberal party by any standard. Biden is dramtatically different from Trump and we will see that in the policies they pass.
Also Nancy Pelosi is an amazing Speaker of the House and definitely should stay.
In conclusion, any video about the current state of our polititics which ignores the fact that TRUMP JUST TRIED TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT WITH A COUP should be ignored. And that is what Cody just did here. (Because Democrats and Republicans are the same, and every bad thing is always the Democrats' fault!) Thank goodness that our judges and state legislatures, both Republican and Democratic, rejected Trump's attempt to overthrow the government, and he will indeed be leaving on January 20th, because otherwise we would have very dramatically worse things to talk about than mostly-minor gripes about a mostly fantastic slate of cabinet secretary nominees.
But, we did win a more liberal congress. If Dems can flip the Georgia seats, we will have the most openly and unapologetically progressive congress in living memory. It's our messages which are driving the narrative. Centrists proved four years ago (and six years ago and ten years ago) that they aren't enough to win on their own. We are in the door and vital to any Democratic future, even if we are not directly operating the levers of control. Joe Biden would not be president-elect without us. The Senate runoff in Georgia would be an irrelvant footnote, if not for our participation. We are growing. The future is ours, and the Democratic Party will be our inheritance. We can take all the good parts of your platform and add it to ours, you will never be able to do the same.
Centrist Democrats won't disappear, but they will cease to be the leadership and take on a supporting role, operating the machinery instead of plotting its course. The right wing has run rampant for 50 years, and liberal leadership has only ever slowed the process. Centrist liberals are not leadership material. If they were, they would have understood, by now, that the republicans are going to call you marxists and socialists no matter how much you bend over backwards to appease them.
We lost seats in the House, that's not a more liberal Congress. However, you are quite right -- if we manage to win both of the Georgia seats the Congress will be more liberal for sure. Winning those seats is a big, big deal; yes this will not be a leftist congress since both House and Senate are very close and the moderates will control what we get done, but it'd be a dramatically better outcome than Mitch McConnell continuing to control our legislative destiny!
I don't know if I quite believe that we will win either seat, but here's hoping. And yes certainly everyone's support is required, left to center. All votes are very important, and absolutely Democrats won't win without the left. I hope the Dems keep moving left on many issues as well. But hating anyone who is insufficiently left is annoying, often counter-productive, and does not ingratiate the too-online left to the rest of the party.
Quote:The right wing has run rampant for 50 years, and liberal leadership has only ever slowed the process.
These things happen in cycles. To simplify, the left was dominant from the '30s to the mid '60s, then the right from the mid '60s to mid '90s, but throughout the two parties were big tents including both left and right. However, the parties started becoming more ideologically unfied and started hating the other side more. This led to a period where it is very close and very bitterly divided. Saying that "the right ran rampant for 50 years" is not true at all; they did have an advantage for some decades, but for the last 25 years we have a clear majority of the country population-wise but they keep winning because of geographical sorting.
Anyway, regardless of that, Democrats have had some major victories for the left here and there. Don't try to pretend that nothing good has happened in 50 years, that's absurd.
Quote:Centrist liberals are not leadership material.
It is critically important to remember that Biden is not a centrist in the "center of the American political spectrum" sense. He's no Joe Manchin. He is a centrist in the "center of the Democratic Party" sense, which is a very different thing that the far left sure does not want to acknowledge. The center of a party is the place which often gets the most done since they can draw from both wings to get things passed. Like, yes, it'd be nice if we had a farther left president, but Biden is a liberal Democrat. The center of our party is liberal.
Quote:If they were, they would have understood, by now, that the republicans are going to call you marxists and socialists no matter how much you bend over backwards to appease them.
I certainly agree that, just like Obama, Biden is hopelessly annoying in his willingness to give the Republicans pretty much infinite chances to not be horrible authoritarians. I just hope that if they start doing the kinds of things to him that they did to Obama that he'll respond much more strongly, which I think he will -- he may be saying conciliatory words, but he knows what Obama's constant attempts at reaching out led to, he just got used. Biden is never going to be the one trashing Republicans like the left wishes, but will he take action against them legislatively if they try to block everything he wants to do? Yes, I think he will.
Dear Biden,
We as a nation are unable to "move on" unless justice is done. Go after Trump! That is how you move on. Letting him get away with all the harm he's done without consequence means we haven't learned a thing. If law and order mean anything to you, you'll go after Trump for all he's done.
Dark Jaguar, I share your spirit; I want to see Trump tarred and feathered, and castrated, and locked in an oubliette full of horse feces, BUT at the same time, I think that doing any of those things would only exacerbate the fever-pitch partisanship going on. I feel that the BEST thing for Biden to do would be to be civil, be an adult (since Trump cannot do so)... Trump's reach is long and extensive, and even after he dies (hopefully sooner rather than later), Trumpism will continue... Trumpian deciphals will be in Washington for years to come.
(3rd January 2021, 10:30 PM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: [ -> ]Dear Biden,
We as a nation are unable to "move on" unless justice is done. Go after Trump! That is how you move on. Letting him get away with all the harm he's done without consequence means we haven't learned a thing. If law and order mean anything to you, you'll go after Trump for all he's done.
THIS, right here. Him pressuring state officials to change the election results is inexcusable. He must be punished. This creep towards fascism has gone far enough; we MUST contain it.
Quote:I think that doing any of those things would only exacerbate the fever-pitch partisanship going on.
Not prosecuting Nixon empowered Republicans to turn into what they are now.
So, Wednesday, Trump's House and Senate cronies will do their best to destroy our democracy and hand it all over to Trump. Fortunately, shockingly the whole Republican Party is NOT lined up behind this effort; while a whole lot of House members are saying they will support it, maybe as many as 140 or more, "only" 14 Senators are supporting the effort so it's not going to work. McConnell has turned on Trump, in one of his very few " good" moves. Even DICK CHENEY of all people has now openly opposed Trumpo's attempted coup! I know he's no diehard Trumper, but he is one our worst past leaders and seeing him writing a pretty good and true op-ed about how tion of law and the military cannot and will not support a coup against it is noteworthy and I guess that I'm thankful that he did it. I think that's probably the first time I've ever said THAT about Dick Cheney. (Well, he did also wear face maks from early on in 2020, so ther is that.)
Now, many of the people supporting the revolt in Congress against certifying Biden's election win probably would say in private, off the record, that they don't actually support the Trump-fascist takeover of our government, and are only supporting it as a piece of performance art to try to stay in the good graces of Trump's delusional base with something they know would fail. But you know? Regardless of your reason, supporting the overthrow of our government and its replacement with one where only Trump can win is inexcusable and borderline treasonous. We can't throw all of them in prison for it, but people who have committed proven crimes must be investigated for them and prosecuted.
And with how Trump basically runs the nation like the mafia and acts like a mafia boss, there is both a massive amount of material on him to arrest him based on, and also a lot of things that you can interpret multiple ways based on interpretation. I'm sure there are many many things he can be prosecuted for and we need to do it. Even someone as blatantly corrupt and who has committed as many crimes as Trump has might be hard to actually put behind bars though, particularly as an ex-President, but yeah if we once again say "no, we won't prosecute the former administration" like Obama did, or yes happened with Nixon in the '70s, it would be a major major mistake.
Of course, that is the problem -- on the one hand, in order to continue having a nation of law we must prosecute these people who have violated innumeraable laws and want to get rid of democracy because votes don't always go the way they want them to. However, there is a LARGE base of Americans who believe insane conspiracy theories and will never believe that Trump did anything illegal. I would assume that the case for not prosecuting would be based on "well maybe if we just ignore him and wait for him to go away we can put this country back together and those peoele will just stop believing that stuff after Trump's gone", but yeah, that is hopelessly naive.
Instead, what is gone is the concept of America as a place where people care about fact or truth. Because the conspiracy thoerists of the right do not anymore and will be a huge problem going forward regardless of what happens to Trump after he is pushed out of office. So yeah, proscute them all for their very public and blatant crimes! The right will be half controlled by insane conspiracy theories either way, going easy on Trump won't help I do not think. At least we can try to maintain a nation of law while we still can.
So:
1) Prosecute Trump's cronies and put them behind bars for any crimes that can be prosecuted.
2) Also go after Trump if you think you would win the case in court.
I would add if there are NO consequences to what Trump did, at all, what's to stop the next tyrant wannabe from doing the exact same thing without any fear of reprecussions? If Trump gets away with it, why not do it too?
We're getting the situation before Trump, which also means we are getting the situation that LED to Trump. If we don't do anything about it, we're getting a smarter Trump next time.
That a mob of psychotic cultist insurrectionists attacked the capitol and the police just ... stood by, got out of the way, and let them do whatever they wanted... is something that SHOULD change how potentially violent right wing protesters are treated by police.
Should.
But probably won't.
Meanwhile, despite that, thankfully the insurrectionists have been stopped and we are now one day closer to Biden becoming president on the 20th. I hope that before then the cabinet invokes article 25 to temporarily remove Trump from power; he can say 'no I'm fine' but that process will take longer than the two weeks he has remaining. There must be consequences for supporting isurrection against the government, even if you are leading said government, and the President is the primary person responsible for inciting the cultists to action.
Donald Trump needs to be arrested. Josh Hawley needs to be arrested. Ted Cruz needs to be arrested. If what happened yesterday is not the biggest line crossed in American history since Fort Sumter, there is no such thing as a line at this point.
Maybe you really were playing the long game with this thread title, ABF.
1) With Pence apparently refusing to enact the 25th Amendment on our dangrous, lunatic, coup-wanting President, impeachment must begin immediately. I hope that we can get more Republicans in the Senate this time than we did last time. The House and Senate will act quickly on this, expect a lot more news about this soon I think.
2) All members of the House and Senate that voted for the coup by voting to refuse certification of Arizona and Pennsylvania's votes -- and this is 7 Senators and a full ~120 members of the House, over half of the Republican delegation -- should be immediately expelled from Congress and potentially charged as well if what they did qualifies as sedition. I watched almost eight hours of the count yesterday; I usually don't watch that kind of thing, but couldn't stop myself and watched most of the time from 8pm to the final finish nat like 3:45am. The House Republicans tried to couch their voite as being "about just making sure the vote is accurate" and about how much thhey disliked Pennsylvania's election laws (because see laws enacted by a Secretary of State or a court should not count, the Constitution says that only a legislature may make election laws!), but that they only object to one race on that ballot makes it clear that that was a blatant pack of lies, as one of the best speeches of the night, Conor Lamb's, made clear. No, no matter what lies they had in their words, their votes were more telling. They voted as they did to show their support for Donald Trump and his mob of MAGA insurrectionists above all and they should not stay in the Congress. They probably WILL stay in congress to be clear, I can't see them actually being thrown out, but they shouldn't.
3) If those efforts fail, let's just hope Trump is blocked from doing anything significant in the two weeks he has left.
On that note, we now know that the Capitol Hill Police only had about a quarter of their 2,000 officers on duty during the protest, first. When the protest started to get out of control there was no communication from their leadership and no backup. So, the attack swept the Capitol while the police kept the protesters from hurting anyone inside.
Then, House and Senate leaders were trying to get the DC National Guard to save them. However, the national National Guard head refused, saying that theyr didn't have clearance to request that. Trump refused to support intervention since he was obviously hoping that his people would stop the count much more permanently than they did. Finally, Mike Pence apparently intervened, and got the head of the Army to send the guard directly. He then counted the votes properly as he was supposed to according to law. Good on him, it was extremely important that he refused to support Trump's coup.
But to return to the top, this moment ofdecenty from Pence sure didn't last long, because now he is apparently refusing to declare Trump unfit to stay in the office of President and enact the 25th Amendment as is needed, because he wants to play both sides and not anger either side too much or something and keep open his delusional hopes of being President himself someday. Awful behavior there. Impeachment will clearly be necessary. But hey, at least he did the right things yesterday.
Lastly, it is good to see many people, including Joe Biden and Michelle Obama, pointing out the same thing my first post above did, that this police responce was, even with the qualifications above of how Trump wanted the protesters to get in, a very VERY different response than those same police officers would have havd to a black crowd.
the 25th amendment was not designed for this situation, its intended purpose was to give the veep the ability to takeover should a sitting president become to sick or disabled to perform their duties. Trump is to healthy for it to work, he could file an appeal that would stop the whole process for 21 days.
True, he would. But with only 13 days left in his term that'd be enough to get us through to the Biden administration. Sadly Pence and the cabinet seem to be too cowardly to follow through, though.
I think he may get impeached, but not removed from office... though he certainly should be.
Trump just denounced the insurrection and the violence and his fans are utterly confused and betrayed. I love it. Make no mistake, this is Trump's attempt to distance himself from impending legal consequences for his actions and nothing more, but in saying what he's said, he's managed to damage his own base in a way none of us ever could.
Like Tolkein said, good may not always defeat evil, but evil will always defeat itself. However, in our fervor to point out just how horrible this attempted coup was, we have to remember that what happened here was entirely different from what happened with Black Lives Matter. The means may have been similar, but the context around it was entirely different. One group wanted to stop violence against minorities and the abuses of power police have been guilty of for far too long. The other wanted to install their candidate as dictator for life against the will of the people. That is the key difference and it changes absolutely everything about the case.
I disagree with you, that BLM is very different from this coup. They are different in many ways, of course, both both are mobs of Americans, with different ideas of what America should be, fighting for control of the Republic. Each represents a different society---the BLM crowd is part of a new society that is taking shape, and in the future will control the US. The right, represented by Trump et autres, is the fading struggle of the old White society that created and governed the US since its inception. The left pardons and white-washes the BLM matter, which was crazy and out of hand this summer. The right pardons and forgives the coup of the 6th. Neither one is fully wrong, or right. There are just two different perspectives. It's sad, that America is trying to divorce itself, as both parties will be much weaker for the squabbling.
All human societies have a natural right for self-preservation. Neither one is "evil." Depending on your perspective, the other side in a two-sided conflict will always be "the bad guy," but that is a question of perspective.
The decline of the old White society may seem a beautiful, well-deserved comeuppance, but be careful before you pop open the champagne. This old, fading White society is the same society that won WWII, and oversaw and dominated the world stage since WWI anyway. They have legitimate grievances; they are fighting for the country that they used to know, and which their fathers and grandfathers knew. The US' best days are behind it; American democracy will never fully recover; the West in general is swiftly declining into decadence and irrelevance; our global enemies are the true winners in this debacle. These two opposed societies in the US will never be fully spliced together. it's sunset in America. These are not things to be cheering or gloating over unless you are Vladimir Putin.
None of these people fought in WW2 Darunia. None of them had anythign to do with that. These are the spoiled generation. Their values are ridiculous warped impressions of what they THINK the US is. They have no real grievances at all. Don't give me that. Don't "both sides" this argument. They're objectively in the wrong here and it's easy to tell the difference. Seriously, they aren't losing anything. There's nothing they cared about that's under threat except racism. They don't have a right to "preserve" that, period.
And Darunia, Hitler was still an incompetent and evil moron. He doesn't deserve any respect whatsoever and never accomplished anything, well, I mean Hitler DID kill Hitler. I'll give him that.
Quote:The left pardons and white-washes the BLM matter, which was crazy and out of hand this summer. The right pardons and forgives the coup of the 6th. Neither one is fully wrong, or right. There are just two different perspectives.
Black Lives Matter was a response to decades of police brutality and wanton killing of black people, of being treated worse because of their skin color (and one only needs to see how differently the treason crowd was treated to see how right they are). The trumpy traitors are mad because they lost an election that they had no business winning in the first place. They've been lied to and manipulated by bad actors to the point where they don't live in objective reality anymore. The latter group does not have a legitimate greivance. They aren't even honestly the vanguard of 'white civilization', they are the loser children of better men and women, who themselves have accomplished nothing. No BLM protest, even though there were a lot more than just one, saw a cop be beaten to death with a fire extinguisher
even though cops were the primary target of their anger.
These are the same only in the most superficial sense.
Wise words here, and also hilarious. Listen well and ignore whatever outrage Trump cooks up in the coming week. He tried to ferment rebellion against the US capital. That's the lasting memory we need to focus on.
Mostly a good video, but what he misses is that apparently Alamo, TX is right on the border; Trump's probably going there because of his precious wall. That the name is "Alamo" may also be part of it though yes.
Anyway, isn't Trump-without-twitter pretty great? There's no need to worry about what insane things he is saying on Twitter, or how people are reacting to them. He isn't ON twitter anymore. It feels pretty good! Of course Twitter should have done this years ago and not now, but still, we should take what we can get. And with their leader shut down and the now violently extreme Parler also being driven offline (and I am fine with that because of the calls for violence that now fill it by all accounts; the first amendment does not protect violence), it's going to be a lot harder for Trump's cult to organize their next attack as well as they did this one.
Becuase the more we learn about what happened on the 6th, the clearer it is that we were very lucky that Trump messed it up as usual and no lawmakers were killed, because they very much could have been. The coup failed at its goals and we should be incredibly thankful that it did. And again, while the Trump cult probably will try something again, with a lot more troopps in Washington now and their primary organizing methods shut down, it will be a whole lot harder going forward. Of course a significant percentage of Republicans are fine with what Trump said, but hopefully over time they will realize just how wrong they are...
14th Amendment. Trump should never be allowed to take office again not just as a result of impeachment, but because the constitution requires it.
@weltall
A BLM extremist did gun down five police officers at a protest in Dallas Texas
<url href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html</url><br />
Chop/Chaz in seattle was tied to the BLM, they caused multiple deaths by blocking emergency first responders from entering the capital hill district, infact the chop citizen patrols organized by rapper Raz Simone, killed more black teenagers this summer then the seattle PD they were protesting.
None of those actions were sanctioned, either by other people who associate with BLM, or by high-ranking political figures.
welp, they got what they deserved after all.
We... won. We actually won! I know that we won in November, but it didn't really feel real because Trump was still there and we didn't win the Senate. But then... we won the Senate on the 5th. And then Trump's insurrection the next day failed and he decided to slink away with his tail in between his legs instead of trying to overthrow the government again. And then... Biden was actually made President without incident. I know this should not be surprising but somehow it is... I thought that at least there would be some right-wing violence in Washington, but they seem to have given up, huh. Well that sure is nice, and amazing.
Meanwhile, as for the thread title, right now I think that the Republican Party has not, yet, "gotten what it deserves" for its longterm support for racism and authoritarianim. After all, in November they won most of the close races that we were hoping to win. Trump got a wave of people to come to the polls and vote for him. 74 MILLION Americans voted for Trump despite knowing exactly who he was. And while Trump lost by a very narrow margin in the states that decided the election, Repubilcans in the House and Senate won those races. We did manage to win, just barely, thanks to our spectacular successes in Georgia more so than anything but it was way too close; Trump's appeal among his massive cult was pretty terrifying.
But despite all that we won, and I think that next we'll see the Democrats in the Senate finally throw out the filibuster, since otherwise we get nothing passed. I know some Senate Dems don't want to do this, but while there are definite downsides, if we fail to get the filibuster removed we pass nothing of note in these next two years. And if that happens, even though the 2022 election has 20 Republicans up for re-election, some vulnerable, and only 14 Democrats, most likely we won't hold the Senate and we wouldn't deserve to; you need to get things done to get re-elected.
So, has the Republican Party "gotten what it deserves"? Partially, I guess, but not to the extent the nation needs. They have lost their Senate majority and they sure richly deserved that, but they still have the loyalty of almost half of the voters in this nation. May their intraparty war be fierce over the next two years as the Trumpist and not-Trump factions battle it out... hopefully they can help the Dems go against the usual midterm results and hold power by defeating themselve with some nominees too crazy to win and without Trump's inexplicable charisma.
Oh, and in the end, may the not-fascist wing win, because America needs two parties and not one who both believe in democracy. We survived four years of Trump with democracy intact, but how many shocks like this can we weather...
But even so, I am very happy about things right now because we WON and have the government now and kicked the fascists out! And they left! Democracy survived and decency returns, at least for the next few years. It will be on our government now to try to put the pieces of our system back together and strengthen things so next time someone tries they will find destroying our democracy even harder. And yes, this definitely includes making Donald Trump suffer in court for his actions is essential; we can't do like Obama did with Bush administration move on and not try anyone for anything. It shouldn't have been done then, but now it's even more essential because of how seriously destructive the Trump administration as to the rule of law.
So far, as far as laws go Biden's off to a very fast start; he's already issued dozens of major, far-reaching executive orders that should rapidly undo most of Trump's accomplishments apart from all the people he put on courts. That stuff is all awesome and I'm thrilled to see it; once again, choosing someone as experienced as Joe Biden was the perfect choice for this time since he can go right out there and get to work from day one undoing Trump's actions as fast as possible. He knows the system better than just about anyone, after all. It remains to be seen if there will be legal repurcussions for Trump peoples' support for fascism and sedition, though. We'll see.
Regardless Trump will suffer since Twitter banning him pretty much shuts off his megaphone that he pushed himself to the presidency with. In the last week of the administration it was pretty shocking to see how much better the world felt without that constant drip of stupidity and evil from Trump's twitter feed!
In conclusion we probably need a new politics thread since this thread title is now a bit dated, but I don't know what a good new thread name should be...
I'm liking a lot of what Biden did on day one. It was mostly a reversion of everything Trump did. Incomplete so far, but a big step in the right direction. The only criticism I have so far of his actions is announcing that kids will be back in school in 100 days. That needs to be rethought. It's a bad idea to set that as an absolute time table this far out. Instead, set the goal to something like a certain number of people immunized, and then if that goal is reached THEN we can talk about reopening schools.
More positives: Biden appears to be framing climate change as a national security issue. Good! Do that! Pull out a bunch of generals and have them speak about the danger, about new battlefields flaming up as a result of changing coastlines, about shortages, burnt out land. Do that!
Also, rumor has it that they will be banning private prisons at the federal level. This is good, and I will give credit the moment that comes to pass.
Now do health care.
So far, so so.
The time has finally come. A new thread for our new American politics has been made. And, tbh, looking back at 2016, it really does feel like a whole different political universe, doesn't it?
Whoops, they lost all their witnesses.
I just have to ask... shouldn't they be... concerned about that? They really should be launching an FBI nationwide search, shouldn't they?
"Have you seen me?" pictures in the news?