What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Valmy]

From the outside, the GOP looks completely dysfunctional as a political party. Surprising that they still have appeal for voters.

It is the politics of spite. They hate the Democrats and their supporters. They think we are evil and want to destroy America.

But I will say the GOP appears more dysfunctional than it is at the current time. It is still basically a strong and coherent political force. But you would never know that by how right wing media is.

McCarthy had support of something like 95% of the Caucus. Virtually the entire party is behind him. But the right wing media monster is split virtually 50/50 on him, with tons of very influential people just detesting him for no good reason I can see (I mean I have lots of reasons to detest him, but the reasons they do seem wacky and arbitrary. He agrees with them on basically everything.). That gives oxygen to a tiny cadre of unscrupulous clout chasers like Gaetz to wreck shit and have lots of fund raising and popular backing. The Republicans are being undermined by their own propaganda arm, which I have been saying for awhile. The tail wags the dog constantly. So even when party discipline and all is basically still functioning at a high level, the whole thing has a fatal weakness.

The Democrats' unscrupulous party operatives have been working to exploit this, and did things like fund the nutters in the last election, which seems like a very reckless and dangerous thing to do but it kind of seems like their efforts are paying off. The Republican Majority in the House can barely manage to get even symbolic things done and is much smaller than it was predicted to be thanks to the nonsense generated by the Republican media apparatus.

Right now the dysfunction is a tiny percentage of loose cannons being cheered on by influencers who are, I think, being swayed into more and more extreme positions to maintain their clout driven by the increasingly conspiracy minded detached from reality part of their base. Thus the tail is wagging the dog and the rot will likely spread like a cancer. But how bad can it get? How far down the rabbit hole can it go? I don't know.  The rot is coming from the grass roots not the party itself. That is also why it is still appealing to a large number of Americans: this is what they want.

[Sheilbh]

My general view is that no-one's ever really made money betting against the US - and I instinctively err to that.

It is true of the Democrats as well looking at the GOP - but with good reason. I think there are credible reasons to believe that the GOP in its current form is a threat to democracy. But I think on both sides loser's consent - which is the key of a democratic system - is going. With the Democrats for good reason, for the GOP not. And I don't know how a society recovers from that and I can't think of any that have.

Similarly I've seen American liberals sharing Milley's pointed recent remarks - and I think they mean it in a positive way. He is talking about the military's duty to the constitution, referring to a "wannabee dictator" etc. And on the one hand it is obviously comforting that those are still key values in the military and they are not on the same side as Trump. On the other hand, from the outside I can't help but look at them and feel like it's the sort of thing you'd be hearing generals say before a "guardian" coup.

Again my instinct is always don't count out the US. But I don't know how a country gets out of this sort of cycle and, as I say, I can't really think of an example of a country that entered it and was then able to correct course.

[Valmy]

Again my instinct is always don't count out the US. But I don't know how a country gets out of this sort of cycle and, as I say, I can't really think of an example of a country that entered it and was then able to correct course.

Yeah. I don't know.

[Josquius]

Good post by Sheilbh.

It is a really messed up situation. What gets me about it is the dissonance and projection of the anti democratic side in it all.

It's so obvious where the threat to democracy is coming from... Yet they insist this is just the other sides bias speaking and their side saying the same about the Democrats is equally valid.

I'd like to hope the demographic shift towards a more educated and media savvy generation will put an end to things. But I suspect the gop have more than a few tricks to play in the meanwhile and the next few years to come are a really critical make or break time for the world with the Russia situation, china's anniversary/Taiwan, the short term peak el nino and sun spot cycle potentially pushing climate change beyond a tipping point....
We can't have the world's top power asleep or worse in what is left of the 2020s.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Again my instinct is always don't count out the US. But I don't know how a country gets out of this sort of cycle and, as I say, I can't really think of an example of a country that entered it and was then able to correct course.

The U.S. did, in 1865.

[Josquius]

Sooooo I've had a glance at a US election predictions site.

And....is it just me or does 2024 look like its going to be an absolute horror show?
Not so much the presidential election (though yes, that will be horrid in its own way), but looking at the senate and house and which seats are up for election it does seem to lean very heavily republicanwards....

[Valmy]

Yes. Though this is not unusual.

Every election these days is a horror show. Especially in Texas 

An election year used to just be really annoying. Now it is a big source of stress. Which is stupid because really all I have to do takes about 10 minutes.

[Sophie Scholl]

As someone who is part of a group that is currently Public Enemy #1 for one party due to manufactured outrage, hate, and fear, every election has become a terrifying spike in the steadily escalating anxiety and stress of every day life. 

[Valmy]

As someone who is part of a group that is currently Public Enemy #1 for one party due to manufactured outrage, hate, and fear, every election has become a terrifying spike in the steadily escalating anxiety and stress of every day life. 

Well obviously for you the stakes are far higher.

But even so it is a lot of stress and unhappiness for something we have very little control.

It just sucks.

At least in the old days after a Presidential election year everybody would exhale and take a break for a year. The tension would go down a bit. Now the screws just keep getting tighter it feels like.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Who looks at this pit of dysfunction and thinks, "Yes, let's give these yahoos complete control of the country."
https://wapo.st/3Qg6B9U

[The Minsky Moment]

Last weekend, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said on Fox News that Hamas's attack on Israel was a "great opportunity" for Republicans

There is no bottom.

[jimmy olsen]

My impression is neither party votes in favor of a Speaker from the other party.  It's just the way things have always been done.

I did a google search on "has a house speaker ever been elected with bipartisan support" and I got some articles about state legislatures which had done it, and a lot of reasons why it's unlikely to happen at the federal level.

IIRC Trafficant voted for Hassert. He wasn't the clinching vote obviously and I believe he was expelled from the democratic caucus for that (then from congress for crimes).

[crazy canuck]

Good news for the Dems.

This likely tracks in Canada as well, but I'm not sure about the rest of the world.

From the New York Times

Overall, according to the General Social Survey, boomers, who came of age during the turmoil and transformation of the 1960s and 1970s, are still more liberal than not. Gen Xers, who came of age during the Reagan revolution, started off more conservative than their older counterparts and have become the most consistently conservative generation in the electorate.

The case of Millennial voters is where things start to get interesting. As children of 9/11, the War on Terror and the 2008 financial crisis, Millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — entered the electorate much more Democratic than their immediate predecessors. But while they have gotten a little more conservative in the years since, it has been at a much slower rate than you'd expect.

What's more, the gap in the number of Millennials who identify as Democrats rather than Republicans is huge, with more than twice as many self-identified Democrats as Republicans. The next cohort on the roster, Gen Z, is even more liberal and Democratic than Millennials, and shows no indication of becoming substantially more conservative as it ages.

Here is the full article gifted so you can get behind a pay wall.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/opinion/gen-z-millennials-republicans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5Ew.E2rR.7jAtKydhnkt6&smid=url-share

[Valmy]

Anxiety over global warming and the remarkable incompetence and blundering of conservatives around the world in even acknowledging, much less responding, to the crisis is also driving this. It is weird to see clips of people like Margaret Thatcher discussing how important it is to respond to the challenge from 40 years ago. What happened?

Anyway it is amazing what we have managed to accomplish with so much opposition from the biggest and most powerful economic and political forces on the planet but it is also amazing that this struggle has played out this way in countering an obvious and advancing existential threat.

Gen Z wants action. And frankly so should Gen X, I don't know what the hell is wrong with us. We are just slackers to the end.

[Josquius]

Increasingly its Doomerism which is the problem I notice.
People with the attitude of "Stopping petrol cars by 2030? LOL. Never gonna happen" and thats that.
They think we're fucked and there's nothing we can do so...why alter their life in anyway.
I can sort of get this with old people (the selfish cunts amongst them) but I even see it from young adults sometimes.