Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

[NotMiki]

Honestly this whole convention has been confounding from the perspective of Trump's dominance politics.  Trump's media-hacking attention moves have always come from a position of power: I transgress and no one calls me on it, or if they do I stick around and they seem week, or if I have to change course I just lie and force them to react.  I do.  They react.  Doesn't matter what I do, as long as I'm the doer and they have to react.  They talk about me.  Cruz's speech doesn't fit into that.  Cruz did.  Trump had to sit there and take it, in real time.

[Grefter]

The Second Amendment is the most important part of the constitution and needs to be defended at all costs.  The actions of one lone gunman do not change the importance of this

Oh wait that was the wrong link, I meant to say this one.

[NotMiki]

I'm not disputing the anti-black history of gun control, but in this instance I think the claim is a little off base - a number of white protest groups had already announced their intentions to show up and open carry and make sure nothing goes wrong nudge nudge wink wink.  I think the article goes a little too far pointing to cause and effect here.

[NotMiki]

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/135216/cops-just-love-open-carry-clowns

A little anecdotal evidence.  Cops really don't like for ANYONE who is not a cop to be carrying.

[superaielman]

Good lord the leaked e-mails from the DNC embarrassing. This election is a race to the bottom.

[metroid composite]

Several news points--Vladmir Putin appears to be supporting Donald Trump in several ways:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing

So...last week there were stories about some of Trump's campaign aides having appearances on state sponsored TV. And Paul Manifort having connections to Viktor Yanukovych. Well, reporters have been doing some digging and found out that there were rather a lot of connections between Russian Oligarchs and the Trump family. (Most likely because of Trump's multiple bankruptcies, which mean that US banks are now unwilling to lend him money, so he's going overseas for money).

There's two points to make with this linking to recent campaign news.

1. Know how Trump has recently started indicated that he won't stand by NATO allies? Russia is already occupying the Ukraine, and is showing signs of being interested in taking over other eastern European countries that used to be part of the USSR and who are...currently NATO allies.

2. Know those leaked DNC emails? And how inconvenient it is that they leaked now, right before the Convention? Well...know who hacked the DNC a little over a month ago? Russian government hackers: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-opposition-research-on-trump/2016/06/14/cf006cb4-316e-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html

Putin does seem to be supporting Trump, and seems to be getting political favours in return.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Next up, Tim Kaine (Clinton's VP pick).  Strategicaly, his value is obvious--highly liked in a swing state, and speaks Spanish.  Probably delivers Virginia and Florida.  He gave his first speech, he's a great speaker.  He's in a seat where he'll be replaced by a democrat, unlike many other VP shortlist candidates. 

People call him a "centrist", but that could mean anything (people call Clinton a "centrist" too).  So...what are his positions?

Economically he's quite far right.  Like...this is a real headline Tim Kaine, Clinton’s VP pick, is a Democrat Wall Street can like.  The socialist end of the Bernie camp already flagged Tim Kaine as someone they didn't like when he was being discussed as a VP option weeks ago TYT report on that (note, TYT tends to be very Bernie slanted).  On the flip side, Republicans do like him--he's had a number of Republican senators speak up about what a great guy he is.  It pretty much cements Clinton/Kaine as an economically right-wing ticket.

On social issues, he hits some social issues out of the park, but misses on others.  Like...he worked for decades as a civil rights lawyer suing for housing discrimination, attends a predominantly African American church.  Endorsed Obama for president very early in the primary.  Good shit there.

His LGBT record is a bit shakier.  Openly opposed Gay Adoption while governor.  I mean he changed his position in 2011, so I guess we can let that slide, let's look at something more recent.  Here's a tweet I saw about how great he is right now on LGBT issues, notice anything strange?  "No American should risk being banned from a jury, evicted, fired, or denied public accomodations because of who they love."  Hm, the way he worded that seems to forget that there is a T in LGBT.  Well, minor slipup, not a big deal, I'm sure Clinton's people will bring him up to speed.  Oh wait no, he did it again in his first speech as VP.  I mean, to be clear, he IS co-sponsoring the Equality Act, and co-sponsored ENDA before that; so legislatively he seems...fine at the moment?

He focuses a lot on early childhood education--this is an area where relatively small investments can lead to big wins--scientifically early childhood education is found to have a bigger impact than any individual year later down the road; so sure, thumbs up.  Also lines up well with Clinton, here, whose advocacy focuses signficantly on kids.

He's good on guns (probably because the Virginia Tech massacre happened on his watch).

He says he opposes the death penalty, but as Governor he oversaw 11 executions, commuting only one (on the grounds of mental incompetence).  Like...near as I can tell his opponents ran an attack ad saying "he won't execute people", so he responded "no no, I will because it's the law of the land" and executed people.

I've seen him billed as only nominally against abortion the same way Joe Biden is nominally against abortion. Spiritually, but doesn't think the government should be involved. But...he actually does seem to want some government restrictions--he supports parental consent laws, a ban on "partial birth abortions" (which is not a medical term), and "informed concent provision".  The "partial birth abortion"--well here's some feminists expaining WTF that means.  It's pretty rare, and often done in response to a miscarriage, so the impact of banning it is kinda small.  Informed consent is also whatever; you have to hand people pamphlets on adoption, ok fine, NBD.  But the first one, parental consent laws, are incredibly shitty.  Kids under 18 who get abortions very frequently also face domestic abuse at home.  I've known some pro-life types who thought parental consent laws were a bad idea.  Literally the morning before Kaine got selected as VP, I saw a news article about the ACLU of Alaska winning a court case against parental consent laws, declaring them unconstitutional.  Tim Kaine Campaigned on these issues, and stuck with them throughout his Governorship.  (Also Abstinence Only education, but I won't hold that against him because he repealed it in 2007 when he found out it doesn't work).

Speaking of the ACLU, his score from them last year was 76%.  I mean, the ACLU is non-partisan, sometimes they side with democrats, sometimes they side with Republicans--TBH they are constitutional lawyers who side with the constitution.  But like...Bernie got 100% from them that year; Warren was also 100%.  Booker was 100%.  My local senator 84%.  (Highest republican I saw in the senate that year was 69%.  Cruz 38%.  Rubio 0%.)

Overall, strategically he's a smart pick.  But politically I like him quite a bit less than Hillary right now.

[superaielman]

Yeah, the Trump/Putin connection has drawn a lot of fire from the nevertrump portion of the right in the past several months. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Putin was playing those games, but it doesn't change just how dumb those emails were. Seriously guys, never put anything incriminating on record, didn't people learn anything from Nixon?

I don't mind Tim Kaine (I'm not taking his change of policy on TPP/free trade seriously at all) politically for the most part, but that is not going to be a comfort to the progressives.

[Cmdr_King]

As noted earlier, the lesson from all this is there's no room in the Democratic Party for progressives, and any motions towards them are a ruse.  While Trump is a sufficient threat to vote against my interests, it's pretty clearly time to make an alternative that'll be ready before 2020.

[NotMiki]

I suppose when Clinton changed the transgender passport rules to little or no fanfare, that was a ruse, too?  Back in the early nineties, when Clinton spearheaded healthcare reform, for which she was demonized as unrealistic, that was a ruse?  Dodd-Frank?  Ruse?  CFPB?  Ruse?  Sotomayor on the Supreme Court?  Ruse?  Obama's attempt (unjustly thwarted by the supreme court) to pass the strictest air regulations in history, and end coal power plants?  Ruse?  I'm not saying the Democratic party is unflinchingly liberal: TPP (kinda), drones, transparency, surveillance, all illiberal.  But it drives me nuts you have the gall to ignore all the genuine liberal accomplishments of the Democratic party.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I also don't buy this "Democratic party is biased against progressives" line of reasoning either, at least beyond the point where it would hurt their electoral self-interest (e.g. nomming the American equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn to the presidential race would be electoral suicide). I'll buy that the DNC is biased against Sanders, sure... but since Sanders isn't a Democrat and hasn't had a record of supporting them this doesn't really surprise me? This is pure speculation but I don't think they'd have tried as hard to keep, say, Elizabeth Warren from winning.

The simple truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the country, and more pertinently a majority of the left-leaning-half of the country (i.e. the Democratic party, roughly speaking), is to the right of you, so that's why they keep throwing their support behind candidates who don't meet your standards for progressiveness.

[Grefter]

Clinton is just economically liberal going in hand with a somewhat socially liberal bent as well.

I can understand not wanting to support people that think capitalism and "the free market" are great. 

That said Kaine sounds not so super great and kind of included to try and woo conservative leaning swing voters. 

Why you no Biden 8 more years ?

[Excal]

Because Biden is on record as not wanting the job.

[Cmdr_King]

Jim:

Trans Passport Rules- I dunno, metroid didn't seem aware of it, and stories about it didn't get published until... May, when Hillary was in a rough patch in the primary.  Seems to me it was snuck out there where nobody who would benefit from it would see it unless they were business folk.  It's possible her office put it on there and Clinton herself has some TERF-y tendencies and doesn't want to acknowledge it?  Equally possible, it was a hedge to give her some bonafides  later?  But sure, it helped some people, even if it seems calculated to help the minimum number of people required to get credit.

90s Health Care Reform- The democrats have gotten more conservative over time and refuse to go back.  That's the problem.  Nevermind that Clinton was there fighting for the ACA which threw most of the key reforms in the trash and actively harms about half the 30 million people it was targetted at.  Options for people in the Medicaid Gap: Pay 1% of your income in tax penalty or 5% of your income in insurance that doesn't do much unless you've spent 25% of your income on health costs.  Yeah that'll solve the pesky "medical debts have spiraled into inescapable poverty" problem.

Dodd-Frank/Consumer Finance Protection Bureau- The law whose recommendations can't be enforced and the new agency it created that hasn't been funded.  Yeah sounds like a ruse to me.

Satomayor/Supreme Court- Nom one fiscally liberal judge, then nom two fiscally conservative ones in Kagan and Garland.  Yeah sounds like a ruse to me.

Obama vs Big Coal- I never could find more info on that.  I'll take your word for it.

So... two partial credit, one win, two ruses by my count.  So... an average of... zero.
That's what I'm getting at here.  The Democrats are a centrist party.  Considering the republicans are a hard-right-come-outrightfuckingFascist party, center is a stop gap, not a path forward.  Yes the Democrats are better than the gaping abyss, but they're not a counterweight.  We need those voices out there, and the Democrats are not doing that job and don't seem to want to.  The Green Party is not capable of doing that job, and I'll vote Democrat over Green because of it (also the anti-vaxxer thing.  That is a fuckin' deal breaker for me).  And yeah, probably the office of president will have to be locked up for the Dems for the foreseeable future.  But we need a platform for new voices to actually break though because what we're doing now isn't cutting it.

Elf:

1. Sanders is a gadfly to be sure, but he also caucuses with and fundraises for Democrats.  His (I) is very much because that's how he ran originally because Vermont likes that sort of thing.  So they don't like him because he annoys them, not because he's some sort of perpetual political enemy.
As well, I think you (and many others) are dead wrong about Sanders' electability.  Yesss, up against, say, Mitt Romney, someone calling himself a socialist would be a liability.  Against the 17 yahoos this year?  He's not nearly as far left as they are right and the 'center' isn't going to run screaming to a fascist or someone calling for a 5th crusade to wipe the holy land clean of the Muslims because of that word.

2.  Dude I try and convince people we should have Basic Income.  I know how far left I am.  I'm not asking people I vote for to be that far left.
I'm asking for them to BE left, economically as well as socially.

[superaielman]

A: I'm no defender of Obama (Like seriously) but if you think Kagan is conservative on most anything I am going to have to roll my eyes. Come on now.

B: Basic Income has a lot of push from certain libertarian leaning right thinktanks of late. (Think AEI). That's a really weird issue though, it's as much about cutting down on overlapping government agenties and spending as it is about fixing our social safety net.

[Dark Holy Elf]

1. Sanders is a gadfly to be sure, but he also caucuses with and fundraises for Democrats.  His (I) is very much because that's how he ran originally because Vermont likes that sort of thing.  So they don't like him because he annoys them, not because he's some sort of perpetual political enemy.
As well, I think you (and many others) are dead wrong about Sanders' electability.  Yesss, up against, say, Mitt Romney, someone calling himself a socialist would be a liability.  Against the 17 yahoos this year?  He's not nearly as far left as they are right and the 'center' isn't going to run screaming to a fascist or someone calling for a 5th crusade to wipe the holy land clean of the Muslims because of that word.

Oh, for what it's worth I think that Sanders might have had a reasonable shot at this election? Hard to say. That said it isn't really your or my opinion that is relevant here. The DNC does have an interest in making sure candidates it deems unelectable don't win the nomination. (I wasn't referring to Sanders with the line about someone unelectable, but a hypothetical person even further left.)

[Cmdr_King]

Corbyn is frequently compared to Sanders so I read that in there without noticing you didn't actually name him is all.

e: Super- a lot of the silicon valley techie types are in love with it too.  It's just a potential solution to multiple problems from multiple angles.  "Y'know what, we can't get rid of these government programs, let's save money but just giving people the money."  "A lot of our products are putting people out of jobs and slowing down the economy, we need to make sure there are markets for us to sell to!"  "Why the fuck are we putting up with people living in poverty in 2016, let's solve the problem directly by giving people enough money to live on."  "Stagnant wages are killing economic growth and innovation, let's expand the safety net so people can move jobs without fear of falling into abject poverty."  So on.

[Cotigo]

I dunno, after watching the convention speeches this afternoon I was really shocked by a couple of the big progressive concessions the Sanders camp was able to get added onto the platform, particularly the anti-TPP and pro-Public Option stances adopted.

If the Democratic party has been previously anti-progressive (and I would agree that they have), it has been because before the Sanders' campaign there has been no vocal, grassroots push for a truly progressive agenda that would make the idea of fielding a progressive candidate seem tenable. The Sanders campaign is the first campaign in my adult lifetime that I've actually supported wholeheartedly, and I'm two steps away from being a fuckin' communist (admittedly, I did fully support Obama at the time though in hindsight he's been a lot more conservative than I'd like). I think if nothing else the visible support for progressive ideas just hasn't been there before in a form that could be taken seriously until now, so of course many of the progressive stances made by the Democratic party have been "ruses", in your words.

Hell, as I said before, supporting a public option is now part of the party's platform, because there was now concrete evidence that a large portion of Americans would support such a thing. And not just blog posts and circlejerks on the internet, hard-fought, hard-won, concrete vote totals that showed that supporting these policies would actually win votes from people who aren't green party nutjobs.

EDIT: And that just makes the whole "Bernie or Bust" crowd and the cult of personality that's grown up around him that much more infuriating. GUYS, we may not have gotten our candidate into the general election, but the concessions made in the DNC's platform is a goddamn victory. You cannot tell me that the Democratic party platform would be supporting the Public Option now without the Sanders' Campaign. Because they fucking didn't 6 years ago when they had the power to do so.

And you're gonna throw it all away by voting for Jill Stein because our guy didn't win, and we didn't get 100% of the policies we wanted officially supported.

[Cmdr_King]

They hadn't supported it as recently as three weeks ago. I do need to sit down and look at the final platform since pessimism was based on those earlier reports and the specific areas no movement was made in.

[Luther Lansfeld]

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/news-features/a-rape-victim-in-texas-was-jailed-after-breaking-down-midtestimony-against-her-rapist-20160724-gqcugg.html

Unrelated to the trainwreck that is the 2016 election, but this is just really terrible. I'm not sure how they can get away with something like this.

[metroid composite]

Passport Rules- I dunno, metroid didn't seem aware of it,

You do know that I'm Canadian, right?

TBH, with both Clinton and Kaine, my impression is that that they have social causes that they care about.  Kaine with African American housing discrimination, for instance.  Hell, Clinton did good stuff and solid positions as first lady, before she had to fundraise as a Senator.

The argument is that being forced to spend 20-30 hours a week personally fundraising corrupts you, makes you vote with the big banks, etc.  This tends to push people to the right for certain well-funded corporate interests; drug companies, wall-street, etc.  This doesn't stop them from caring about social issues.  Although they might pretend to be against social issues to appear more moderate (how many people really believe that both Obama and Hillary were against gay marriage in 2008?)

[superaielman]

Passport Rules- I dunno, metroid didn't seem aware of it,

You do know that I'm Canadian, right?

TBH, with both Clinton and Kaine, my impression is that that they have social causes that they care about.  Kaine with African American housing discrimination, for instance.  Hell, Clinton did good stuff and solid positions as first lady, before she had to fundraise as a Senator.

The argument is that being forced to spend 20-30 hours a week personally fundraising corrupts you, makes you vote with the big banks, etc.  This tends to push people to the right for certain well-funded corporate interests; drug companies, wall-street, etc.  This doesn't stop them from caring about social issues.  Although they might pretend to be against social issues to appear more moderate (how many people really believe that both Obama and Hillary were against gay marriage in 2008?)

*raises hand* Gay marriage is an issue where people changed because of massive, widespread social pressure. That doesn't bother me per say, homosexuality in general is one that has changed profoundly in a way that we haven't really seen in the US in... ever? E: If you you are going to tell me that Hillary 'DOMA' Clinton changed because of anything other than strongarming, we're just going to have to disagree. I think her own track record earlier there speaks for itself.

[Dark Holy Elf]

As usual, I will note that when it comes to things like stances on gay rights, it doesn't matter what a politician believes in private, and it certainly doesn't matter what they believed a decade or two ago. What matters is how they will act on the issue if elected (from the policies they enact to the justices they appoint to the speeches they may give on the subject, etc.).

I don't really know exactly what Obama and Clinton thought privately of gay marriage in the 90's/00's. It's difficult to tell because as politicians they would have been very cautious about what they said about the issue. I also don't really care. (And I don't know Hillary's specific connection to DOMA if one exists, but my understanding is that Bill signed it begrudingly after it had obtained a veto-proof majority from congress, so that seems an odd thing to hold against him.)

[metroid composite]

As usual, I will note that when it comes to things like stances on gay rights, it doesn't matter what a politician believes in private

Well, I would argue it does, since there's a lot of legal protections that LGBT people are missing which don't really make the news cycle.  Like...you can be evicted by your landlord for being Gay in many states.  You can be fired for being gay in roughly half the states.  If someone uses violence against you because you are gay, it's not considered a hate crime in many states.

For whatever reason these usually don't make the news cycle.  (The news cycle is like...DOMA, Marriage, and that one bakery that was forced to bake a cake).  If you are concerned about your image, want to help LGBT people but don't want to be seen as "pro-gay", you can still get a lot of good stuff done that won't reach the news cycle.  Conversely, if you are concerned about your image, and want to be seen as "pro-gay" but don't actually want most of these reforms, you can get away with opposing a lot of them.  LGBT groups will know, and might protest outside of your office (I have friends who protested outside the office of Nanci Pelosi) but this won't make the mainstream news.

[NotMiki]

The concrete acts Obama did when in office mostly consisted of using the Justice Department to advance the cause of gay rights (most flashily by refusing to defend DOMA).

Gay marriage and LGBT rights has had a number of real oddities in terms of perception and reality.  For example, when Arizona passed a mini-RFRA it was widely reported - even among news outlets that should know better - that it would allow businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.  Somehow the news cycle and the business community objecting to it and the proponents of the bill all missed that Arizona ALREADY had no protections for sexual orientation, so the immediate effect of the law on the legal rights of gays and lesbians would be...bupkis. (What it would mean is that in the future if, say, Phoenix passed anti-discrimination laws then they would be subordinate to the state religious freedom law.  But no such laws existed at the time, and that wasn't how it was being argued in the media.)

So you can and certainly should criticize Arizona and the rest of 'em for their intent, but actual effect?  Not so much.

[Cmdr_King]

So Rolling Stone  did an interview with Jane Sanders.  The interesting bit is her answer to the last question.

I was in Birmingham, Alabama, and Bernie and I had a closed-door meeting. We had a lot of those before rallies, where we had just people in the community and listened to them, not in front of the press because we wanted them to talk about things that affect their lives. And in Birmingham, a police officer can go up and give them a fine if one shade was high and one shade was low on the building. Oh, you're not taking care of your [property] — $75 fine. And these things would build up, and people would be arrested because they didn't have money to pay the fines, and they'd have a record. "Have you ever been arrested?" [on job applications]. All of these things — the new Jim Crow laws.

McDowell County, West Virginia: seeing that they had a life expectancy in the area 18 years lower than people two hours away in Fairfax, Virginia, because there are no jobs, there's a lot of stress. And these people are smart and interested in controlling their own lives, and nobody is doing anything. They knew 20 years ago that the coal would be depleted in 2017, and they didn't understand that the country would move away from coal [even sooner]. Where was the leadership? How is it that — forgetting the environmental insanity — they knew that coal was going to be depleted, and no one bothered to invest in a new economy in the area?

It's a good thing to keep in mind.  I mean... for me that's kinda... yeah, that's what local governance looks like, y'know?