US Elections 2020

[KnightHawk 2.0]

I've seen two interviews with Stacey Abrams, who ran against the shmuck in Georgia who is trying to open all of the nail salons, and I liked her. About a month ago I saw a bunch of articles about how she would be a good vp candidate and I agree. I haven't heard anything since. I don't know whether she would be better than anyone who's previously been mentioned, but she's not in Congress and she is smart, which tends to help.

Completely agree that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is a schmuck for wanting to reopen barber shops,hair.&.nail salons,massage parlors,bars and gyms by Friday . This idiotic decision of his is a very bad idea and shows that he cares more about the economy than the health and safety of the people of the state he is in charge of running.

[fred41]

I prefer a fairly safe play for President - usually an establishment sort that can work with all parties to get things accomplished. It certainly helps to have reviewable record in the Senate or sometimes as a state Governor. Having said that, it should be no surprise that my favorite choice before the debates began, was Joe Biden. That changed as the debates wore on. It seems Joe’s age, as it does with many of us eventually, has clearly taken a toll. Watching him do interviews on CNN haven’t helped the way they should - easier to script and usually gentle - but still the long incoherent sentences continued. I’ve watched almost EVERY one of the party debates (I think I missed two)...and he had those babbling moments in almost all of those. I don’t think it would be that great a factor in running the country because I’m sure he’ll have a terrific staff, but it does make you put more thought into a Vice Presidential choice.

Getting back to the debates - there were too many and the choices should have been narrowed down sooner, to get more info out of nominees left on stage (Tom Steyer, who was there until almost the bitter end, served zero purpose up on that stage, except to take up valuable time and oxygen). Biden got worse, but for me, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar got better (Elizabeth Warren, after starting off strong, sputtered down the line, probably taking on too much and waffling about it later on). I feel Mayor Pete didn’t have enough high end, governmental experience for the job, but it’s hard to ignore someone with those quick oratorical skills. Amy Klobuchar clearly has the experience, but it took her a while to find her comfort zone in the spotlight. When she finally found it...and she definitely did, it was a bit too late. Bernie I wouldn’t have voted for, so I’m glad he’s out of it. In all fairness, I believe he probably should’ve be an Independant Candidate (as probably Michael Bloomberg should have been, had he entered earlier).

So anyhow, since ultimately I actually prefer Amy Klobuchar to Joe Biden, it seems almost natural to make her the choice for Vice President, although with all sincerity, that ticket would be better flipped.

[broncofan]

I liked Mayor Pete plenty. To some people he was invisible and to others he was cast as a villain which was bizarre to me. In the end he just didn't have enough appeal to progress very far. I wasn't concerned about his lack of high level experience because he seemed bright, capable, and intense enough to learn quickly.

I watched Joe debate Bernie and even though I trust Joe more to handle any tough situation I couldn't help but notice Bernie's answers were crisper, clearer, and more incisive. I have just never been a Bernie fan, even moreso when I heard he had wanted to primary Obama in 2012. I always thought he was a guy who liked to rant about what he wanted to see but never really had any coherent vision about how to get there. His fans, extremely online people, are among the least like-able, most unreasonable people I've ever come across. They don't want to improve lives as much as they like to vent and vilify and mostly call attention to themselves.

Joe has broad appeal, he is personable, his oration has gotten worse but I trust him to surround himself with professionals. Honestly, I liked Amy Klobuchar better personally than I did as a candidate. I only watched one debate but thought she stumbled a bit in some of her answers. I'm sure she would do well as VP and it would be interesting to see her debate Pence.

One thing we're seeing is that it matters who you staff our executive agencies with. It matters who is on the Court. I could go for lots of compromise right now either way. Give me someone competent and honest and my ideals can wait.

[Stavros]

It has been interesting to read the recent comments above, and it confirms my view that if the priority is to make the present incumbent a one-term President, it proves that 'Conservatives' have been setting the agenda now for the last 20 years- perhaps more. I say this because the Obama Presidency also proceeded with caution as far as policy goes, and that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the most radical of his policies, was opposed by the Republicans then and since, but exhibits the extent to which 'radical' policies seem to be feared, and the obstacles they encounter in a divided Congress. Whether or not one does regard the PPACA as radical is thus beside the point, that its intention was to force real change on health care and that it has either failed, or been allowed to fail raises the deeper question: can the US reform itself where reform is ugenty needed?

I would thus pose the question: can the US continue to maintain a health care business that denies health care to millions of Americans, or should it consider the creation of a public health service that guarantees access to health care when needed, for every American citizen, from the day that they are born, to the day that they die?
I do understand the way in which the US works, and that Federal programmes are resisted or re-interpreted by States, but as a basic moral question, do the weaknesses and failings in the US system -and the need for the Federal Govt to step in to the process with billions of dollars in aid -make this now an urgent question?

But, and this is the key question: what would be the reaction to such a proposal? Would it be seen as 'too radical' for the US to even consider? But is there not a bitter irony here, that the US can find trillions of dollars in emergency relief, but cannot spend one trillion dollars on the structural change that would unify health care and guarantee it to every American based on need not the ability to pay?

It is this need for structural change that I think rings alarm bells, but who is doing the ringing? If it is the case that since the end of the Reagan Era, the Democrats have had to shape their agenda to match what they inherited, it means the 'centre ground' of American politics was moved to 'the Right' by Reagan, but never moved back when Clinton was elected, indeed for all his successful policies, just to get elected he needed to persuade 'Reagan Democrats' he could be trusted, and he did just that. But as the agenda of politics was set by Reagan, when things went wrong, instead of the movement being toward the left, it appears that the existing Conservative bias enabled discontented Conservatives to make alliances with previously marginal figures on the 'Christian' or 'Moral Majorty' resulting in the election of a man who is not in the strict sense of the word a 'Conservative' but a maverick with a libertarian streak.

Thus the Obama Presidency, like Clinton's was terrified of upsetting those 'Reagan Democrats' with more radical policies, hence the continuing mess that is US Foreign Policy in the Middle East, but the sense among some that US policy since Reagan had not matured but reached a sell-by date with politicians reluctant to throw it away and do something new. There is another bitter irony here, because while 2008 rather than 9/11 may be seen as the watershed moment in American politics, it was the Obama Presidency that rescued the banking and financial system, that inherited job losses running at 800,000 a month, that produced annual declines in unemployment and annual rates of growth in the economy, but is now denounced as a failure.

It means that the radical policies are not emerging from the Democrats or even the so-called 'left' but from Billionaires, Religious Freaks and Libertarian Fantasists, that States Rights now trump Federal Law and the Constitution, that the US can step by step withdraw from the UN and its agencies disrupting, perhaps even demolishing the international order it helped to establish after the Second World War; that its President who once wondered why the US doesn't use the nuclear weapons it has, may decide the time has come to use them. It means the Environental Protection Agency should be re-named the Environmental Destruction Agency as it makes it easier for energy companies to pollute rivers, streams indeed, the water table, while restrictions on the emissions of motor vehcles are lifted to the detriment of clean air and public health.

The language has so changed that the Democrats that used to be dismissed as 'Liberals' are now 'radical left' and 'extremists' -but who are the extremists?

So I understand your caution when the question is 'do the Democrats want to win this election'? But at some point, the question must also be, in policy terms, 'what are we voting for'?

And at some point when the clearest statement is 'we can't go on like this', the policies must be at the core: education, health, transport, the environment, foreign policy -but who is setting the agenda, and if the US is technically bankupted by Covid 19, where will the money come from to change America, and do the Democrats have a leadership that wants real change, and can both propose it, and deliver it?

And, ultimately, the question is, can the Democrats re-unite the USA, or is the country now so polarized, so divided, and so bitterly divided that healing will not work, that as a union, the USA is in fact doomed to fail?

[trish]

I’m with Fred on the point that a lot of candidates should’ve been weeded out early on. Among those who were ‘really’ candidates Bernie was my last choice; Biden my second last choice.
I worry about Biden’s son and how the opposition can exploit him. I also know that Biden was always a gaff machine even before he got old. Besides that he’s always been way too touchy feelie, which especially doesn’t play well in this MeToo era. But those objections are all, cosmetic.
When Joe had the Senate Judiciary Chair during of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings I thought he was either ineffective or an utter patriarchal asshole - can’t decide which. Either way, Thomas got on the highest bench in the land largely thanks to Joe's handling of those hearing (in my opinion).
Nevertheless, Joe’s our candidate. We either turn out in droves and vote for Joe, or we put up with another four years of the self-serving, orange idiot who is now in office. I think I’m going to go inject myself with clorox now.

[broncofan]

So I understand your caution when the question is 'do the Democrats want to win this election'? But at some point, the question must also be, in policy terms, 'what are we voting for'?

There are a lot of ideas in your post but this is central in my view. The Republicans push very far right, on social issues, on financial issues, on social welfare issues, on foreign policy and then Democrats reclaim the center because we're so sensitive to the damage they've done. The various strategies to deal with this dynamic are finite, though in the details there can be a lot of variation.

As a party do we claim the center hoping to maximize our voter base and accept we won't get everything we want? If we move to the center, should the far left use leverage and threaten protest votes to provide an incentive not to compromise away values? Do we move further left to deter extremism from Republicans by showing that failure to compromise will lead to polarization? What percentage of votes in the center does this lose?

Every electorate is different but if you go back to Filghy's good synopsis of our political weaknesses, one that sticks out is that culturally, we do not believe we should sacrifice individual rights for a better collective outcome. We've enumerated rights to protect ourselves and in some cases we even make up phantom encroachments to avoid having to care for one another. Ultimately, we need our politicians to respond to the voters or we get nothing but setbacks. The far left is looked at with suspicion in this country, and we are aligned differently than Europe on this axis.

That said, I do think we should push forward and try to develop a Universal health care system. PPACA was a necessary stop along the way, creating employer coverage, minimum standards of coverage, and better subsidization of high risk people by low risk people using mandates. The federalism issues are resolvable in my view, and there is the possibility, with enough political will that we create an imperfect, mostly uniform system of care for everyone.

A last pedantic point: undoing harm imposed by Republicans is voting for something. If they erode gay rights for instance, and we protect them, it's not exciting but it's a tangible difference worth fighting for, even if it's an old battle.

[Stavros]

I hope my reply to the above is not going to be too theoretical; if it is that is because I 'don't get' a lot of American politics because I don't live there, thus respond with sadness to the gentle despair of Trish's post above. A cliche I know but can't you do better than what you have?

It seems to me that a fundamental problem the US shares with Europe, that is, in Liberal Democracies, is that our systems have evolved through the agency of political parties in broadly speaking a 'Parliamentary' system of representative democracy. And it appears to me that over the years, the relatively clear ideas that divided parties used to have, so that voters had a choice between them has become blurred to the extent that some voters dismiss, in a two-party system both parties for being 'the same'.

Without going back through the fault-lines of American politics represented by the New Deal Admistrations on the one hand, and 'Reaganomics' on the other, what we have seen is a process of 'accommodation' whereby parties have become so fixated on a 'risk free' centre ground, you can now in the UK refer to Labour and the Conservatives as 'Red Tories' and 'Blue Labour', just as in Germany Angela Merkel, after all a protégé of Helmut Kohl, could these days just as easily be the leader of the Social Democrats.

If we take 2008 as the most recent fault-line, we can see how extremist parties that once populated the fringe have appealed to a wider part of the population that feels let-down or even betrayed by their former representatives, and that what we have is a fragmentation at the level of ideas, but also in terms of polical geography: Scotand is now more 'independent' or 'autonomous' in the UK than was thought possible -or even necessary- when I was born; the core group of States that are 'opting out' of Federal Law just so happen to be those who formed the Confederacy once upon a time.

What puzzles me is why 'the left', by which I mean mostly the socialist/social democrat parties in Europe, but only in a limited sense of the word to the US Democrats, have not been able to defeat (indeed, have been defeated by) those parties and politicians emerging from a fringe which at least has some connection to the Libertarians opposed to Government and taxation -and wonder, is it because the one thing that the Democrats were and have been terrified of -RISK- has become attractive?
Look again a Trish's post -what she seems to want, and I hope I am not putting words into her mouth, is 'Safety' -Joe Biden the man might not be the best candidate, Uncle Joe is a safe pair of hands, he will be like Obama, a good manager in a crisis. Great, job done.

The problem is that the fragmentation of ideas that has led parties to steal each other's policies or to scramble to occupy the 'centre ground' has left that ground looking irrelevant to those who have rejected politics as it used to be, and in a sense, both parties have become casualties of the reality they shaped over many decades.
It is complicated by the oddest thing that has happened, not the Democrats embracing the legacy of Ronald Reagan, but the Republicans ceasing to be a Conservative party, because this divided party has in effect traded in its Conservative credentials to adopt Libertarian policies, and I don't see how the party can re-discover its own past without one side confronting the other and causing a split that would mean, in effect, the end of the party as a party of Federal Government, though it would probably continue to win in individual states. And yetk if the Republican Party in terms of its history and the ideas it was committed to is in a crisis why does the Democrat party not attack it where it is at its weakest, and focus on one man where the real business is taking place in the Judiciary, for example?

If you have the patience to listen to Alan Wolfe's lecture in the link below you will note that he says those States that contain politicians most committed to a Libertarian agenda correspond almost exactly to the Confederacy that broke away from (and then attacked) the US in 1861. Wolfe spends most his lecture dismissing the links between Liberal and Libertarian ideas (Ryan argues there are connections), and argues that it cannot be a Liberal or Conservative based ideology because it is inherently authoritarian, which underlines my point that those Republicans that are Libertarian have rejected a fundamental aspect of the American Conservative: conserving an estabished political system, and one that was in its origns, an expression of Liberal ideas, because the contemporary distinction between Liberal and Conservative did not exist before the Depression and only evolved to where they are today because of it.
In addition, and Wolfe also makes this point, Liberarians can never govern, because they don't believe in government, and can never realize a 'market led economy and society' because it is not something the people want -but they can create enough dysfunctional behaviour to make efficient government difficult -and it seems to me that what is happening with State's Rights is that anti-Federal States have found a way to effectively withdraw from the US without doing so in a formal way, and that as long as they can act to make a Federal Union impractical -because so many States opt out of Federal law with the blessing of the Supreme Court- then there is nothing short of war 'the Feds' can do about it.

It means that in the divided USA with a fragmented political system, the Democrats a) can only win an election in 'swing states', and b) can only win by offering a risk-free agenda, thus offering no hope of real change; and giving all the excitement to their opponents.

It means also that Democrats are relying on ideas about Rights which have been challenged by the 'alt-right' and which raise the prospect that the Democrats are going to rely on risk-free polcies derived from ideas about Rights that have been rejected by Libertarians of the kind that we assume have voted for the 45th President whether ror not he has any intellectual understanding of ideas that originate with Stephen Miller and people like him.

It comes down to a sense in which Rights are perceived as property rights, and only property rights, something that Alan Ryan talks about (around 37.29) in the same colloquium that Wolfe spoke at -but then Ryan drops the bombshell in answer to a question (56.57 "the crucial issue in American politics is race".
What then follows is the argumen that Libertarians and some Conservatives make whether it is explictly racial or not: that My Rights exist in what I own and have worked hard for- which the State takes/Steals from me in Taxes-and then gives to unemployed/lazy/Black people -and this is equivalent to slavery.
Even if you delete the remark on slavery, the concept of taxation as theft, governments spending 'other people's money' on projects they can do themselves, worse of all, through welfare taking money from people who work to give it to people who have no inention of doing so is, well, Krazy.

But what is the Democrats response? Do they extol the virtues of Taxation as they may have to/should do, or with Immigration when it becomes a Toxic issue in the forthcoming election? Somewhere in the last 12 years in particular, it seems to me that Democrats have failed in the US to command the agenda of what is important, and have become terrified of offering change that is positive but contains risks; whereas the Right is offering the opposite of 'conservatism=stability' and going for broke -change + risk, just as in the UK we have opted for Maximum Risk and Change with Brexit when the UK and the EU is in economic chaos.

Thus, the Democrats can win the Presidential election, even win a majority in both House and Senate but can they win America, so divided and so bitterly divided? The fragmentation of ideas and party loyalty means there is no centre ground, that extremes are to some -not a majority but enough- appealing and appealing because they disrupt and are dysfunctional, and because at the root in the US the argument that Rights are identified as Property means that Rights as Power can be set aside because it is too dangerous, yet if Rights are not Power, what are they? And because in some parts of the USA, Rights as Power=Equal Power, and the Black Man will never be an equal to a White man. Just ask the 45th President to make that call.

The National Crisis of 2021 has seen the Commander-in-Chief exposed as a coward, running away from his responsibilities. Is the Democrat Party about to reveal that it is the coward's party, too scared to tell the US it must pay higher taxes, share more of what it earns with each other, and make the Constitutional right to equality a reality for all Americans?

Alan Ryan's lecture is here-


Alan Wolfe's lecture is here-

[filghy2]

What puzzles me is why 'the left', by which I mean mostly the socialist/social democrat parties in Europe, but only in a limited sense of the word to the US Democrats, have not been able to defeat (indeed, have been defeated by) those parties and politicians emerging from a fringe which at least has some connection to the Libertarians opposed to Government and taxation -and wonder, is it because the one thing that the Democrats were and have been terrified of -RISK- has become attractive?

I think the simple answer is that the populist nationalists on the right are providing an answer that less-educated people find easier to grasp, especially as it appeals to underlying tendencies in human nature: the cause of your problems is some 'other' - elites, immigration, unfair foreign competition, unaccountable international bodies, etc. Also, the costs of pursuing this approach are not evident to unsophisticated people, who perceive incorrectly that all the costs are born by the 'other' rather than them.

The answer of the left is that we need more government to rein in the excesses of capitalism and distribute the benefits more fairly. That has an obvious cost in terms of higher taxation, and even if most of the burden is placed on the rich people still focus on their own taxes. Opponents on the right can also argue that people's freedoms will be restricted and their jobs will be threatened if more restrictions or burdens are imposed on their employers. There also seems to be antipathy toward welfare benefits that are perceived as going to undeserving 'others'. So there are many ways for the right to persuade the white working class to vote against redistributive policies that would appear to be in their interests.

Another key point in relation to the US is that the Republicans have actually been the minority party for a long time; eg they've won the popular vote in only one presidential election in the past 30 years. They have only gained a disproportionate share of power through the vagaries of an electoral system devised in very different circumstances, outright manipulation through voter suppression and gerrymandering and control of the courts. This is a self-perpetuating process where achieving power allows you to manipulate the system to entrench yourself in power.

[Stavros]

Although I agree with much of what you say, I think my main interest is in the way that in the US Conservatives have failed to prevent their most basic ideas being corrupted by political practice and expediency, that they have attempted to re-define it but ended up in effect turning it into a meaningless concept, and that the Democrats have failed to exploit this confusion by failing to re-define what it is that they believe in. It may indeed be simple in a country like the US to blame someone else for things that go wrong, but since 2008 it is the established parties that have been blamed, and surely the whole point of the Maverick candidate winning the Presidency is that it was on that level, a rejection of traditional politics, with the benefit for the Republicans that they won seats owing to a man who has no loyalty to them, but that as long as that accommodation delivered, then they just held their noses and looked the other way. Whether or not they can now maintain their electoral success with someone who has so manifestly failed in the Covid 19 crisis remains to be seen, but just as you are right to highlight the ways in which Republicans assert themselves through jerrymandering, rigged electoral practices and the Electoral College, so one wonders why the Democrats are not proposing a Federal plan to overhaul the way elections are managed all the way down to the smallest units. That the Supreme Court seems to duck out of this and leave it to the States may no longer be acceptable, but just as the Democrats are struggling to define who they are and what they want, can Americans be confident postive change is on the Democrts agenda?

There is a similar problem in the UK but for different reasons, where Brexit has given the one party that for more than 200 years refused to adopt an ideology precisely that. To the extent that when Boris Johnson became leader, MPs who did not proclaim their faith in Brexit were expelled from the party, as if on this one issue alone rested their commitment to a Conservative Britain, as if the Conservatve Party must now be defined by Brexit, rather than some wishy-washy appeal to pragmatism. It was followed by a budget which committed the Conservative Government to levels of spending that were not so different from what Labour had proposed, which were variously derided as bonkers, crazy, mad- until Boris Johnson proposed them. Add in the staggering sums we expect the Pandemic to cost, and one can see that the fundamentals of Conservatism that Thatcher did claim to represent: thift, sound money and balanced budgets, have been discarded as if it were she who as the fantasist.

The reason why this so-called, and incoherent populism has become so attractive, is due to the practical failures of left and right to manage capitalsm, and the loss of any clarity about the purpose of the parties concerned. Yet it is the lef that so far has suffered most, with socialist and social democrat parties that were influential in Europe for the best part of 100 years reduced to nothing in national legislatures, while angry birds like the 5 Star Movement or the League, or even the 'Brexit Party' can win seats which they then use for no purpose at all, other than to squabble with each other, or seek an exit from the Parliament they just entered -about the only successful outcome the Brexit Party can claim.

Lastly my point in the links was to highlight the contradictions in the ideas that form the Libertaran discourse as a means of explaining why I think its advocates in the US and the UK (hard to believe but this includes Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab and Priti Patel) have no long term future in central government, but I think will endure at some level in some US States.

[Stavros]

I worry about Biden’s son and how the opposition can exploit him.

This is going to be a theme, I expect, but a risky one for a man who has his own links to China, via the Bank of China and those permanently complex property deals in New York; not to mention his lovely daughter and the trade marks in China and other related issues. A blessed son, and a blessed daughter -who will take the Crown?

"Hello, is that the Bank of China? Can we do business together"-
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...na-debt-205475

"Hello, China -let's do some business. My Name is Ivanka. My blood is blue and my daddy is like, super-rich"
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/iv...ting-machines/