U.S. politics isolation tank

Am I the only person still thinking the defeat was an economy thing? The supersucktastic economy + normal mid-term correction = election, 2010.

Nope, not the only person. I've been saying this for a while amongst the folks I know around here. To me, the fact that they didn't get both house and senate is actually a referendum. It shows that people aren't completely dissatisfied.
 
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Holy shit. I'm getting quite a whiff of paranoia about the paranoia from that piece.

Am I the only person still thinking the defeat was an economy thing? The supersucktastic economy + normal mid-term correction = election, 2010.

On a related note, Nate Silver's perspective.

I saw Silver's thoughts earlier today. Not hugely committal but interesting. I've been making the "it's mostly the fundamentals" argument for a while as well.
 
Nope, not the only person. I've been saying this for a while amongst the folks I know around here. To me, the fact that they didn't get both house and senate is actually a referendum. It shows that people aren't completely dissatisfied.

Only 1/3 of the senate is up at a time. Republicans got a nice chunk of what was out there. Only 10 republican seats to defend in 2012. A target rich environment for more republican pick ups. But with Obama on the ballot people under 30 might even bother to vote next time.
 
Only 1/3 of the senate is up at a time. Republicans got a nice chunk of what was out there. Only 10 republican seats to defend in 2012. A target rich environment for more republican pick ups. But with Obama on the ballot people under 30 might even bother to vote next time.

Yes, and a certain number of the folks over 65 at the moment who voted Repub earlier this month won't be making it back to the polls in two years. The long-term demographics of the country do not work out well for the Republicans. Not only is the country becoming more and more diverse but younger. For various reasons, non-white folks and those who are under 65 are trending Democratic.

I guess Mitch and his gang better get all they can get while the gettin's good.
 
Holy shit. I'm getting quite a whiff of paranoia about the paranoia from that piece.[/URL]

Yeah. He makes some good points, but he sees everything through that lens; I've been surrounded, off and on, by that parallel evangelical world he talks about, and the most vociferous teapartiers I know are evangelicals. I still think these hardcore people would've showed up had unemployment been 5 percent, but their arguments would have been more white noise, and not infected the frustrated independents.

I agree with this: Obama should've held their nuts to the fire when they were getting bailout money, as well as made them adjust loans of the unemployed, not "suggested" it. That would have been politically smart as well as helped the economy.

I was poking around alternet after rosco posted that and came across the excerpt from Rall's new book. Damn. Now that's relaxing reading. Anyone ready to hide in the mountains yet?
 
Yes, and a certain number of the folks over 65 at the moment who voted Repub earlier this month won't be making it back to the polls in two years. The long-term demographics of the country do not work out well for the Republicans. Not only is the country becoming more and more diverse but younger. For various reasons, non-white folks and those who are under 65 are trending Democratic.

I guess Mitch and his gang better get all they can get while the gettin's good.

This may be the future, although Cali has always been different. Still, it will be interesting to see what the GOP does in conservative Southern states when the Dem-leaning hispanic population becomes a big chunk of the electorate, as it eventually will. I saw someone say that Obama and the Dems should have pushed through immigration reform, thereby alienating white voters in the short term but sealing the deal with hispanics long term.
 
This may be the future, although Cali has always been different. Still, it will be interesting to see what the GOP does in conservative Southern states when the Dem-leaning hispanic population becomes a big chunk of the electorate, as it eventually will. I saw someone say that Obama and the Dems should have pushed through immigration reform, thereby alienating white voters in the short term but sealing the deal with hispanics long term.

Fuck man, democrats can't win in Texas or Florida. They can't even come in second in Florida. Until 50 years after those two turn solid blue, then we'll worry about other southern states. Those left alive anyway.

Put the bong down and don't forget to vote next Tuesday!
 
Fuck man, democrats can't win in Texas or Florida. They can't even come in second in Florida. Until 50 years after those two turn solid blue, then we'll worry about other southern states. Those left alive anyway.

Put the bong down and don't forget to vote next Tuesday!

Oh yes. Just stay the course. Lalalalalalala. Farther right and more immigrant-bashing, please.

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The first bit of that link sounds like a promotion for a fascinating action/apocolypse film.
That is all I have even vaguely useful or interesting to say about American politics, sorry.
 

Jesus, Fox News again. You think people woke up to the fact in 2010 that Obama is half black? Really? Are you that fucking dense?

My two bothers voted for Obama in 2008 and both voted straight republican and neither one of them ever watch Fox news. And it's really not that complicated.

Hope and change was promised. Hopelessness and Change for the worse was delivered. Like Clinton's baldheaded snakey friend said in 1992, "It's the economy stupid."
 
Jesus, Fox News again. You think people woke up to the fact in 2010 that Obama is half black? Really? Are you that fucking dense?

My two bothers voted for Obama in 2008 and both voted straight republican and neither one of them ever watch Fox news. And it's really not that complicated.

Hope and change was promised. Hopelessness and Change for the worse was delivered. Like Clinton's baldheaded snakey friend said in 1992, "It's the economy stupid."
The viewing habits of your brothers are irrelevant. Did you read the article or just scan it quickly looking to get your buttons pushed?
 
Democrats are spineless, often incompetent, and generally useless. Republicans strongly support class divisions, making the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer. The thing I like most about republicans is that they seem to be able to always make the poor think they're working in their favor, even though they support big corporations and the special interest far more than they do the working class. The democrats actually seem to try to help the working class more often, but are too incompetent to get that across to the working class. Republicans will always vie on the majority of the christian vote, because its a strong base for them, even if they don't support christian values nearly as much as they say they do. The democrats are useless, incompetent, morons (did I say that already?).

Bottom line: the U.S. political system needs revamped on a large-scale level. The problem is that the current system makes this kind of renovation impossible. Thus, the U.S. political system will stay in a state of purgatory and continue this ridiculously useless cycle. At least until something catastrophic happens. I have honestly come to believe that the only way the U.S. system will change is if an event so catastrophic happens that it would be forced to do so (i.e. WWIII, though that may not even be enough, Nuclear fallout, Global-scale natural disaster, etc.)

Had nothing to do with the current conversation, really, just ranting. :rolleyes:
 
More on the Tea Party and free trade.

But Tea Partyers will ask, what good does it do to reduce the role of our government if foreign governments are free to rig the rules, attack American industries and take American jobs? As a result, the otherwise pro-market Tea Party may find its economic program far more at home with a nationalist trade policy that confronts foreign abuses and fights for American companies.

That's one way to be pro-market and anti-free-trade at the same time. "We're for it in theory but it doesn't actually work"

Of course, that's what left-wing critics of NAFTA were saying twenty years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/opinion/13lighthizer.html?ref=opinion
 
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I just want to give David Frum the no shit sherlock award. Seriously, I'm slow to hand him the bravery in speaking out prize. You couldn't TELL this was going to happen, you hand fed Frankenstein right up to the point where he turns on you!

Good Frum article in the Times.

Every day, Beck offers alternative knowledge — an alternative history of the United States and the world, an alternative system of economics, an alternative reality. As corporate profits soar, the closed information system insists that the free-enterprise system is under assault. As prices slump, we are warned of imminent hyperinflation. As black Americans are crushed under Depression-level unemployment, the administration’s policies are condemned by some conservatives as an outburst of Kenyan racial revenge against the white overlord.

Lesson 4: Even from a conservative point of view, the welfare state is not all bad. G. K. Chesterton observed that you should never take a fence down until you understand why it had been put up. We should remember why the immediate post-Depression generations created so many social-welfare programs. They were not motivated only — or even primarily — by “compassion.” They were motivated as well by the desire for stability.
 
Democrats are spineless, often incompetent, and generally useless. Republicans strongly support class divisions, making the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer. The thing I like most about republicans is that they seem to be able to always make the poor think they're working in their favor, even though they support big corporations and the special interest far more than they do the working class. The democrats actually seem to try to help the working class more often, but are too incompetent to get that across to the working class. Republicans will always vie on the majority of the christian vote, because its a strong base for them, even if they don't support christian values nearly as much as they say they do. The democrats are useless, incompetent, morons (did I say that already?).

Bottom line: the U.S. political system needs revamped on a large-scale level. The problem is that the current system makes this kind of renovation impossible. Thus, the U.S. political system will stay in a state of purgatory and continue this ridiculously useless cycle. At least until something catastrophic happens. I have honestly come to believe that the only way the U.S. system will change is if an event so catastrophic happens that it would be forced to do so (i.e. WWIII, though that may not even be enough, Nuclear fallout, Global-scale natural disaster, etc.)

Had nothing to do with the current conversation, really, just ranting. :rolleyes:

On the contrary, I think it has everything to do with the current conversation. Maybe an alien invasion would work. Actually, that was one of the statements that Reagan made that I actually thought was thought-provoking.

You may be interested in the book I linked to earlier. Grim stuff, but in line with what you're discussing.
 
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