US Election Week 2020

[garbon]

Do you want to win or not? Presuming you do, you can't just write half the electorate off.

Yeah, that's actually what Trump and the Republicans have done.

[Razgovory]

Do you want to win or not? Presuming you do, you can't just write half the electorate off.

How do you reach out to people who think you are a child-molesting blood-eater? I'd really like to know.  I don't know a path forward anymore.  I do know that trying find common ground with people who live in an alternate reality is a fools errand.

[Sheilbh]

The other point in that statement from one of Trump's lawyers is: "we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom." That is the end-point from Palin's line about "real America".

The people who vote for Trump are legitimate, freedom-voting voters who must be counted. The people who voted against Trump did not vote for freedom are illegitimate. The only way that "freedom" can lose is by "stunning, heartbreaking, infuriating [...] most unpatriotic" acts of fraud. It's "corruption from the local level to the highest level of the government". If it wasn't for that fraud and corruption Trump won by a landslide, not least because his voters are voting for "freedom".

This is the delegitimising and othering in a way that is really extreme and dangerous.

I quite liked Romney's statement - but I'm starting to feel it's at the point where people probably need to consider resignations/breaking away from the GOP.

[DGuller]

Do you want to win or not? Presuming you do, you can't just write half the electorate off.

It seems to write itself off.  I have no idea how you're supposed to reach a death cult.

[Sheilbh]

What do people think Biden should do?

So far his approach has been to basically let Trump get on with this and sort of him the rope to hang himself. That it's better for him to let Trump flail publicly, while he acts Presidential-elect and there's no upside in getting into a fight with Trump about this.

I thought that was the right approach and I still basically think it holds. But I'm not sure if he does actually need to change his strategy now?

[FunkMonk]

I thought it was apparent that the election wasn't actually all that close, though. I mean, the guy won Georgia and Arizona, states that hadn't voted for the D in decades. Yes the margins were small in several states but it was a massive turnout election for both sides, which people seem to be forgetting already. And Joe looks like he'll be getting north of 50% of the national popular vote against an incumbent President, something only Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt have done in modern times. What Joe Biden just accomplished is pretty difficult.

I think it's a clear rejection of Donald Trump. Not quite the 400 electoral vote landslide people dreamt about, but the rejection of the President is there.

[Valmy]

This is just a bad faith argument.

It may be a bad argument but it is not a bad faith one.

No one has currently defunded the police on the basis of the protest slogans of last spring.

Well we defunded in Austin, you know where I live, as a reaction to that. But I like to think it is more complicated than that but naturally you get a radically different take wherever you look.

The threat posed by the Republicans does not lie in the future when police is defunded, but in the present when it is clearly not.

I KNOW THAT!! That is why I am pissed off. These guys need to pay for their extremism and it looks really bad that we will be able to do it. We had made encouraging progress in 2018, not nearly as much as I hoped but damn this election shows some pretty shitty trends. We are clearly not going to recover from the disaster of 2010 on a state level any time soon. We are looking to lose House Seats in fucking California and New York and somehow lost one in New Jersey during the term. A Democrat from New Jersey just figured the Democratic Brand was toxic to his election chances so he jumped ship to the fucking Republicans and won easily (or something like that). Damn they should be jumping ship to us. Fuck. Hardly any have. It is crazy. The GOP brand is so non-toxic that you can easily win Governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire and win a Senate seat in Maine in blue states and not feel the need to jump parties to save your ass.

(Not to mention that the currently funded police is liable, considering the sort of rhetoric that comes out of their unions, to actually volunteer to defend that fascist movement).

I have already addressed this point.

At the current time, the best way to fight the Republicans is 1) take the threat seriously. Which few people seem willing to do.

Ok so if we are taking this threat seriously we should talk about weakening the state's monopoly on force? And it is a real shit sandwich to because:

1. This is just bad politics. You couldn't pick a worse slogan.
2. It strikes me as really bad policy, especially under the circumstances.
3. This is not something Democrats can possibly disown or distance themselves from. These urban activists and their allies are the Democratic Party for the most part. We need them. There is no other option. Under current conditions if the Democrats are not getting big turnouts and winning by overwhelming margins in these urban areas they have no chance in most states.

2) Put pressure on Democrats to take the threat seriously and use the tools at their disposal within Congress to push back. Which few of them seem willing to do.

Well this is a two tier problem:

1. Hard to do that when we have a tiny majority. There are going to be a few members in difficult districts who need to be protected from anything even the least bit controversial.

2. The Democrats do not have the power to do that in the way Congress currently works. The Speaker introduces the legislation and it gets an up or down vote with no possibility for amendments. The members of the house get maybe three days if they are lucky to read the whole thousand page bill or whatever and then they just have to do a yes or no vote. Most of them do not even bother and just take their party leader's word for what the bill does. That is just the way things are once Paul Ryan changed things back in 2017 and Pelosi has kept it going. So the only person you need to put pressure on is Pelosi because only she matters. So who actually represents you does not matter nearly as much as it used to.

3) Engage in local politics: the case of Wayne County shows that wobbly fascists can be kept in check and are still susceptible to pressure.

That I have done. We kicked out our local nutball Sheriff and the first Democrat in decades in my county has won a countywide office. We booted a crazy right wing nut off the city council.  We have one more nutball left to go. But the news was not all good. We did not do as well in other areas as we did in 2018 which is kind of the story in suburbs throughout Texas. We did...ok. We held our own. We did not lose any House Seats (which might be more than I can say for fucking California and New York), we held on to our gains in the 2018 State House and flipped one State Senate Seat. But we lost every statewide race and are still the minority party everywhere. So a very expensive draw. Obviously disappointing only because we hoped for more. But considering how shittily bad this went for Democrats in other states I guess we should be rejoicing.

4) Contact local grassroots Democrats and volunteer time and effort. Keep an eye for local attempts at overturning results. Continuously demand to know where people stand on the matter and push back against attempts to equivocate.

I mean the Republicans like the results here but I will keep my eyes out.

Oh and here comes the GOP to save the day: https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/gov-greg-abbott-knocks-austin-for-defunding-police-says-state-may-take-over-policing-in-some-areas/

Fuck me.

[katmai]

What do people think Biden should do?

So far his approach has been to basically let Trump get on with this and sort of him the rope to hang himself. That it's better for him to let Trump flail publicly, while he acts Presidential-elect and there's no upside in getting into a fight with Trump about this.

I thought that was the right approach and I still basically think it holds. But I'm not sure if he does actually need to change his strategy now?

I agree with statements I've heard to just let the certifications by Georgia (today the 20th), and Michigan and Pennsylvania (on Monday iirc) play out, all this performance art by the hacks that are his legal team aren't doing anything besides playing to Trump and the deluded 45% who aren't going to be swayed by anything Biden could do at this point anyway. And each days seems to be more cracks and defections (Romney and Sasse and Ernst in last day)

[Valmy]

I thought it was apparent that the election wasn't actually all that close, though. I mean, the guy won Georgia and Arizona, states that hadn't voted for the D in decades. Yes the margins were small in several states but it was a massive turnout election for both sides, which people seem to be forgetting already. And Joe looks like he'll be getting north of 50% of the national popular vote against an incumbent President, something only Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt have done in modern times. What Joe Biden just accomplished is pretty difficult.

I think it's a clear rejection of Donald Trump. Not quite the 400 electoral vote landslide people dreamt about, but the rejection of the President is there.

Joe Biden did well. But so did the Republicans. That is the problem.

And past history suggests we are ripe to get trounced in the midterms. I find it hard to believe a 1994 or 2010 result in the cards considering how much more polarized the country is now and I just don't think the electorate is as likely to swing that far in one direction again but it is not like they need that kind of result. Just a modest win and they hold all the cards. But maybe it will be different this time. I mean surely there was some point in the distant past where the President's party came out ahead in the midterm.

And Nancy Pelosi, who captained this ship into this mini iceberg, is going to probably continue to be Speaker. I just feel like we need more radical action than that to get this thing turned around. Surely there is somebody out there who deserves a shot at being Speaker yes?

[frunk]

What I"m surprised by is how little the supposed "law and order" types care about either one.  I'm not surprised that they are happy to forget the law part as long as they get to keep order.  The willingness to suck up to the agent of chaos that is Trump though is really weird.  Maybe it ties into fantasies not about having order but getting to forcibly maintain order by making sure that there is a threat to order in the first place. 

[Valmy]

What I"m surprised by is how little the supposed "law and order" types care about either one.

You clearly think much more of them than I do.

[Tamas]

"the nation cannot be in opposition" was Orban's line to de facto declare his second consecutive election loss in 2006 illegitimate on the grounds that those who support the left were not part of the nation. We know where it went from there.

[Valmy]

The Left: Okay, we don't want to do anything with law enforcement.  Police can do whatever the fuck they want.

I mean we desperately need law enforcement reform and do things like end qualified immunity and we could have done those things, there is even public support for it. But somehow nothing ever gets done because...well nothing ever seems to ever get done on anything.

So many Democratic initiatives are popular with people willing to get behind them but we just don't do them and eventually they get hijacked and turn into mainstream issues. Florida voted for a $15 dollar minimum wage while voting Republican. When asked about this a voter responded that a $15 dollar minimum wage wasn't a progressive issue  which is kind of like saying improving shareholder value is not a corporate issue or overthrowing the Provisional Government is not a Bolshevik issue. Several red states passed drug legalization laws.

The Democrats haven't managed to touch either of those issues on a federal level. It's crazy. We have vote getting issues we just never do anything with any of them. We could have gotten some bipartisan support on some of it to.

The problem is, of course, that the President always ends up benefiting from anything anybody does in their term so even if the Democrats could have gotten a national increase the minimum wage or drug law reform or law enforcement reform the guy who would have signed them is Donald Trump and then he would have eagerly taken all the credit for it. Can't have that. And obviously the same problem would be there for popular Republican issues as they found out during the Clinton Administration.

[Solmyr]

I quite liked Romney's statement - but I'm starting to feel it's at the point where people probably need to consider resignations/breaking away from the GOP.

Here, when in 2017 The Finns Party elected an openly racist demagogue as its chairman, many of the party's non-ultra-right wing MPs and government ministers broke away and formed a new, non-radical party in order to continue working in the government (which the party was in from 2015).

That new party no longer exists because nobody voted for them in the 2019 elections.

[Valmy]

That new party no longer exists because nobody voted for them in the 2019 elections.

Well in this country the only real place to go is the other major party unless you just plan on ending your political career. I don't see Romney or Sasse joining team blue. They should but they won't.