What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[DGuller]

Well, I disagree. Doing good things for the voters, actually governing is better than joining the culture war.

When you're being attacked in a war, the best thing that you can do for your citizens is to defend yourself.  In the short term it's not going to be pleasant directing your resources towards military defense rather than consumption, but there is going to be no long term if you don't defend yourself.

Doing good things for the voters may, but only may, be a smart thing if the voters were smart enough to reward that.  However, every single time, the reward for Democrats has been a crushing electoral defeat that just lets Republicans rig the system further in their favor.  Eventually Democrats won't have the ability to do good things for the voters if they don't defend against such rigging.

[garbon]

Well, I disagree. Doing good things for the voters, actually governing is better than joining the culture war.

[garbon]

It feels weird to blame the Dems when it is the Republicans and their voters destroying society.

[DGuller]

It feels weird to blame the Dems when it is the Republicans and their voters destroying society.

It is very unfair, I agree.  Humans tend to blame the person most likely to swing the result, not the person most responsible for the result. 

There is some logic to that, however; what's the point of harping on something which is just a given?  If you get wet in the rain because you didn't bring an umbrella, it's the rain that got you wet.  However, you're still going to blame yourself for not bringing an umbrella, because the rain is just a fact of life, there is no point blaming the rain.  GOP trying to destroy our democracy is unfortunately just a fact of life today.

[OttoVonBismarck]

You're not going to shame the GOP into behaving, so the only option is to push Democrats to find a way to fight. I don't think anyone believes there are easy or magical answers, but just running the same playbook for 25 years hasn't worked.

[garbon]

Because it leads to a narrative that the Dems are useless. Which in some cases is then taken to why bother voting or why not vote for fringe third party candidates. Attacking the people we need in part to save us seems self defeating.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's funny you perceive us saying "stop doing dumb shit that doesn't advance your partisan electoral prospects" with "attacking them", it's advocating for a strategy shift.

[crazy canuck]

If these treated like trash exploited workers exist, I cannot seem to actually find any outside the clickbait media.

how hard have you looked?

Nice cut job of my post.

I've looked hard enough that if it was as ubiquitous as you claim, I think I would have little trouble finding it.

But YOU are making the claim. Provide me data.

I suppose it all depends on what you consider to be poor working conditions.  Some of the examples I have in mind are the number of American workers who are not entitled to paid vacations, no paid maternity or paternity  leave and the need to remain employed with a terrible simply to maintain medical coverage.

Your believe in a free market might work if, and it is a big if, workers had bargaining power which comes close to that of employers.  However, the only way to really do that for large numbers of workers is collective bargaining - but the laws in the US are nti union. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Plenty of American workers are entitled to paid leave as a condition of their employment contract--I for example enjoy 26 days of paid vacation a year, 13 days of paid sick leave (that can accrue year to year), 11 Federal holidays.

The government does not need to "mandate" leave policies, that is something that can be determined between workers and employers.

[crazy canuck]

Plenty of American workers are entitled to paid leave as a condition of their employment contract--I for example enjoy 26 days of paid vacation a year, 13 days of paid sick leave (that can accrue year to year), 11 Federal holidays.

The government does not need to "mandate" leave policies, that is something that can be determined between workers and employers.

Yeah, I get that is the free market argument.  It also does not make sense.  Just because you are ok does not mean more vulnerable workers are ok.  According to a recent WOPO article 23% of Americans have no paid vacation.

We are talking about shit jobs and terrible employers.  The purpose of having strong labour laws is to protect those who do not have the bargaining power you might have, and especially absent strong unions.

Meanwhile, the United States, unlike other first-world economies, mandates no vacation days. Some 23 percent of American workers have no paid vacation and 22 percent lack paid holidays.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/02/another-way-think-about-worker-crisis-americans-work-conditions-are-terrible/

[Berkut]

I agree with Otto completely.  The inability of Democrats to get it has been infuriating.  It may have been slightly excusable in 2009, when it was still possible for a reasonable person to not realize that they were fighting a total war against Republicans, but in 2021?  What's the point of spending your resources on building infrastructure when your opponent is spending his resources on building bombs and bombers?

Dems like to win argument more then elections.

The people who actually care, the movers and shakers and voice of the left...they want to be "right" and be seen to be "right" (even more importantly) then they do actually winning and doing anything.

I absolutely despair for America. I have very little hope.

The people who actually care, the movers and shakers and voice of the right....they could not give a fuck about being right to anyone they have not already convinced, they just want to win. And they go out and do that.

[Admiral Yi]

A lot of this Manchin debacle largely highlights to my mind how Democrats are just structurally bad at politics. I don't fully understand why, but we have a two-party system, one party seems to understand the basics of what levers you need to pull and strategies you need to use to maximize your ability to win elections and undermine the other party. The other party appears to understand none of this.

The only reason the Democrats are still in the fight is the Republicans have a toxic political coalition that is outright offensive to a large portion of the country (i.e. a majority of people who are NOT conservative white Christians.)

What would this mean in practice?  More Democratic gerrymandering?  Suppression of rural voters?  Honest question.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The last time Democrats easily could have done much was when Obama had the 60 vote majority, and unfortunately I don't think things were so dire then that Obama would have gotten support for substantive reforms, but that being said part of convincing the public that "things are dire" is the job of politicians--and Democrats have that job.

Let's say some sort of Obama-esque Democrat materializes who wins a wave election. I would say things they should push for:

- Utilizing the constitutional clause that the Federal government can specify election regulations, I would mandate States draw districts via committees selected in a non-partisan fashion, and using geographic tools to create maps primarily around the concept of geographic compactness, consideration could be given to attempting to not break up municipalities and counties, but no other factors would be allowed

- I would expand the Supreme Court to some large number, like 90, and then stipulate a random selection of 9 justices would be apportioned for each case. Any justice over the age of 75 who chose to remain on the court, a new justice would be added for each justice over the age of 75.

- I would revise the 1920s era congressional apportionment act and remove the artificial 435 member cap on the House of Representatives, instead saying there will be as many members of the House as you can divide the whole census population by the lowest population state (i.e., however many times you can divide the U.S. population by the population of Wyoming, is how many House seats there are.)

- Would stipulate that State elections have to be overseen by non-partisan officials who cannot be removed by the legislature or elected executive branch officials, and whose ministerial functions will be tightly defined offering them little latitude in exercising their roles.

- Standardized national ballot

- Standardized process for registering to vote nationwide, standardized rules for purging voter registrations etc

- Standardized rule for felon voting

What you're talking about with more gerrymandering and suppression of rural votes are bad government things that would not alleviate any problems, just make them worse. The Democrats can actually improve their standing solely with good government reforms, one of the few benefits they have--the Republicans cannot do that because they actively need less people to vote and more votes to be spoiled by gerrymandering to remain relevant.

Note that the Federal election and gerrymandering laws would be unambiguously constitutional but would only apply to Federal elections. State legislatures would still be a problem.

[Oexmelin]

The people who actually care, the movers and shakers and voice of the left...they want to be "right" and be seen to be "right" (even more importantly) then they do actually winning and doing anything.

That is so, so removed from my experience with Democrats. The movers and shakers are actually terrified of doing a single thing that would cost them the elusive centrist vote. The actual movers and shakers of the Democrats aren't "the squad". They are the gerontocrats who approach politics as gentle deal-making. These people certainly don't want to be right - they want to win the election. It's just that they want to win the election while making the least possible noise about it, for fear of scaring away a few voters. Which means, as Otto correctly (IMO) diagnosed, their natural inclination is towards these highly technical policies that they never really bother to sell.

"The squad" have become a lot louder because they think this isn't the way to win anything. You may think they are wrong, but they certainly don't represent any of the movers and shakers.

[grumbler]

I just watched one of the Democratic "movers and shakers" manage to shed 900,000 votes in the recent Virginia gubernatorial race (his opponent only shed 300,000).  In spite of having been a highly successful governor two terms ago, he simply didn't try very hard to get the Democratic voters out and lost to a total clown who was spouting lies like lies were water and he was a broken fire hydrant.  I'm not sure that there are Democrats on the national stage who would behave differently.