Biden's presidency

[Motown Bombers]

How come no one is talking about how the polls in California were off? Where are the coffee shop interviews with "shy" Newsom supporters? 

[romad1]

1 minute ago, Motown Bombers said:

How come no one is talking about how the polls in California were off? Where are the coffee shop interviews with "shy" Newsom supporters? 

Virginia is a bit scary.  Way too many Youngkin signs in houses who would never have had Trump signs.   I think the prospect of any pol who embraces Trump winning here is really frightening.  

[Motown Bombers]

15 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Virginia is a bit scary.  Way too many Youngkin signs in houses who would never have had Trump signs.   I think the prospect of any pol who embraces Trump winning here is really frightening.  

If Youngkin wins and rolls back all the progress Virginia has made, I'm sure the progressives will be out in pink hats ready to take down a statue. 

[mtutiger]

1 minute ago, romad1 said:

Virginia is a bit scary.  Way too many Youngkin signs in houses who would never have had Trump signs.   I think the prospect of any pol who embraces Trump winning here is really frightening.  

I do think there's a bit of a corollary between California and Virginia in that there are a lot of white college voters, and IIRC there was some discussion post-California that the polls didn't do a great job capturing likely voter preferences among that group (ie. underestimated "NO"). It's something to watch going into the next month.

My gut tells me TMac probably wins by 4-6.... it won't be as big as Biden's win, but one suspects there's just too much ground for Youngkin to make up in NoVa, Richmond and Hampton Roads to get all the way there.

[romad1]

42 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

I do think there's a bit of a corollary between California and Virginia in that there are a lot of white college voters, and IIRC there was some discussion post-California that the polls didn't do a great job capturing likely voter preferences among that group (ie. underestimated "NO"). It's something to watch going into the next month.

My gut tells me TMac probably wins by 4-6.... it won't be as big as Biden's win, but one suspects there's just too much ground for Youngkin to make up in NoVa, Richmond and Hampton Roads to get all the way there.

My gut tells me similar.   I'll be voting as if the country depends on it.  Hopefully the other college educated suburbanites who used to form the core of GOP vote feel the same.  

[Archie]

One thing I've noticed lately are the negative Biden pieces being run by some of the leftist media that normally go out of their way to support him. I believe it could be because they support the more extremes of the party like Cortez and her crew or the Biden blunders are so obvious they can't ignore it to pass off being a legitimate media source. Could be a little bit of both.

[mtutiger]

It'd help if you provided examples of outlets, but the big thing to remember is that Democratic Party is a big tent party that includes a number of different ideologies, much more so than the Republican Party currently. The tendency of some conservatives to just blanket call every Democrat things like "socialist" or "communist" or "leftists" kinda obscures that.... 

When you are the leader of a party like that, that means that these competing groups are jockeying for approval of their particular beliefs or policies or whatnot.... especially in a time where they are debating a big piece of legislation like BBB, or dealing with the border crisis, etc. Any decision you make is more likely to alienate at least some part of the party because there are competing ideologies under one tent.

My guess is that is where some of the criticism is coming from.... 

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, mtutiger said:

It'd help if you provided examples of outlets, but the big thing to remember is that Democratic Party is a big tent party that includes a number of different ideologies, much more so than the Republican Party currently. The tendency of some conservatives to just blanket call every Democrat things like "socialist" or "communist" or "leftists" kinda obscures that.... 

When you are the leader of a party like that, that means that these competing groups are jockeying for approval of their particular beliefs or policies or whatnot.... especially in a time where they are debating a big piece of legislation like BBB, or dealing with the border crisis, etc. Any decision you make is more likely to alienate at least some part of the party because there are competing ideologies under one tent.

My guess is that is where some of the criticism is coming from.... 

yup - the progressives carried the Dem narrative through most of the Trump years but they are getting serious pushback from the more "mainstream" side worried about building out the coalition enough to overcome the structural advantages the GOP enjoys. The Dems have to win several % more than 50% to hold power in Washington and the realization that all the "demographic inevitability' talk that the Dems thought meant life was going to get easier has turned out to be BS. The progs don't like the idea they have to trim their sails to bring in people they don't like anyway, but the other side risks becoming nothing more than a replay of Bill Clinton's "GOP Lite" if they can't do better than Manchin's and Sinema's bottom lines.

That push/pull is generating lots of heat currently. And since the Dems have lots of liberal arts majors in the tent on both sides, we get lots of words..

Edited October 13, 2021 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

On 10/13/2021 at 10:03 AM, Archie said:

One thing I've noticed lately are the negative Biden pieces being run by some of the leftist media that normally go out of their way to support him. I believe it could be because they support the more extremes of the party like Cortez and her crew or the Biden blunders are so obvious they can't ignore it to pass off being a legitimate media source. Could be a little bit of both.

I don't think Biden really ever had any strong support.  He only won because who he ran against.  Thank God.  

[romad1]

25 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I don't think Biden really ever had any strong support.  He only won because who he ran against.  Thank God.  

He wasn't Bernie.  Once the party decided he was the anti-Bernie, anti-Warren...he was the choice

[mtutiger]

TMac 53-41 RV, 51-46 LV

Past two public polls (CBS/YouGov) of Virginia paint a similar picture... a McAuliffe lead in RVs that narrows when the likely voter screen is applied.

It's sort of similar to California, although I have no reason not to believe that TMac needs to generate more enthusiasm on the D side.

[romad1]

17 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

TMac 53-41 RV, 51-46 LV

Past two public polls (CBS/YouGov) of Virginia paint a similar picture... a McAuliffe lead in RVs that narrows when the likely voter screen is applied.

It's sort of similar to California, although I have no reason not to believe that TMac needs to generate more enthusiasm on the D side.

Existential crisis for all non kooks

[mtutiger]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

Existential crisis for all non kooks

Yep.

People gotta vote!

[mtutiger]

Regarding Virginia, while I know the race is closer than Mac would like, the Hacks guys spent their episode talking about how Youngkin was gonna win.

Maybe he will, but haven't really seen data that would suggest he's favored at least

[CMRivdogs]

18 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Regarding Virginia, while I know the race is closer than Mac would like, the Hacks guys spent their episode talking about how Youngkin was gonna win.

Maybe he will, but haven't really seen data that would suggest he's favored at least

Youngkin has a narrow path. He’s trying to play footsie with the Trump contingent while distancing himself from TFG at the same time.

Example, he and the rest of the ticket avoided the Bannon/Trump rally the other night. Meanwhile Young-in privately thanked the organizers for holding a rally. Even to the point of giving them yard signs to litter the highways.

He tried to avoid the pledge of allegiance issue and later came out criticizing it (the flag was apparently used during the 1/6 protests).

He’s trying to avoid all the hot button issues to appease the Never never Trumpers while giving the far right base a wink and a nod.

 

 

Besides the nomination was rigged. Who knows who the base would have chosen in a fair contest.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Top State adviser leaves post, rips Biden’s use of Trump-era Title 42

Come on Biden Administration, do better. If we are supposed to be better than the last guy than the use Title 42 has to be stopped.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

On 10/13/2021 at 12:35 PM, gehringer_2 said:

yup - the progressives carried the Dem narrative through most of the Trump years but they are getting serious pushback from the more "mainstream" side worried about building out the coalition enough to overcome the structural advantages the GOP enjoys. The Dems have to win several % more than 50% to hold power in Washington and the realization that all the "demographic inevitability' talk that the Dems thought meant life was going to get easier has turned out to be BS. The progs don't like the idea they have to trim their sails to bring in people they don't like anyway, but the other side risks becoming nothing more than a replay of Bill Clinton's "GOP Lite" if they can't do better than Manchin's and Sinema's bottom lines.

That push/pull is generating lots of heat currently. And since the Dems have lots of liberal arts majors in the tent on both sides, we get lots of words..

I'm glad you brought up the key person in all of this, Bill Clinton. Lots of people like to pontificate why we ended up in the mess we did, how we ended up with Trump, etc. Bill Clinton and his Republican-lite and his anti-poor, race-baiting politics of the 1990s are really to blame for a big portion of this. For everyone that wants to blame the left for not having a bigger majority or losing seats in the house, these structural problems started long before AOC or Rashida Tlaib or Bernie Sanders came on the scene.

Policies and initiatives that Bubba supported like NAFTA, supporting GATT as apart of the WTO, normalized trade relations with China, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, repealing Glass-Steegal, welfare reform moving from AFDC to TANF, Commodity Futures Modernization Act, Riegel-Neal Interstate Banking Act, Telecommunications Act of 1996, 1994 Crime Bill, 3 strikes laws, all helped to give rise to the political climate we were in. Each had a devastating effect in a different way.

One-way trade agreements like NAFTA and other trade-related initiatives like GATT standards being absorbed into the WTO, PNTR with China gutted blue collar communities that depended on manufacturing jobs to support their middle class base. With it, the power of unions to collectively bargain and organize further eroded as its membership numbers dwindled. Deregulating Wall Street and speculative trading by repealing Glass-Steegal and enacting Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the CFMA led to the wild-west style lending and trading practices that we saw in a post-90's world. The out of control derivatives market, the speculative trading, credit default swaps, CDO's, synthetic CDO's, naked short selling, etc. all gave rise to the 2008 financial collapse and really picked up steam after the Clinton-era deregulation. Right wing talk radio exploded after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed. All the while, the social safety net that had been there for decades through FDR's Aid For Families With Dependent Children to protect working-class people and the very poor were gutted in the name of "work to welfare". With it, the social safety net was taken away and the extreme rate of poverty doubled in this country, leaving people helpless, jobless, and now permanently trapped in extreme poverty. And to top it all off, Clinton-era criminal justice policies were predicated on incarceration and not rehabilitation. Instead of second chances at life people were given mandatory minimum sentences and 3 strikes. The prison population continued to explode and black and brown communities were disproportionately effected.

And long before Donald Trump was out there race baiting from the White House, Clinton himself was doing it by literally using state-sanctioned murder and having his Sista Soulja moments. Clinton allowed the State of Arkansas to execute a self lobotomized black man, Ricky-Ray Rector, all so he could appear tough on crime to white people during a campaign. Then he picked a fight with Sista Soulja to again show white people what a tough guy he was.

And yet, through all of this, you have people like Josh Gottheimer, Kyrsten Sinema, and Joe Manchin holding up the Biden agenda and pining for this era of the Democratic Party and its third way politics. It isn't Bernie, AOC, Rashida, Primila Jayapal, and the progressive holding up the Biden agenda. Rather, they have been some of the most stalwart supporters of the President's agenda, most especially Sanders in his role as Budget Committee Chairman. The center-right of this party has hijacked it and stalled all progress. Moderates and center-right Democrats have a stranglehold on the Democratic party and they are going to cost us the election in 2022 by not allowing Democrats to have an agenda to run on. 

Edited October 15, 2021 by Mr.TaterSalad

[buddha]

On 10/13/2021 at 11:35 AM, gehringer_2 said:

yup - the progressives carried the Dem narrative through most of the Trump years but they are getting serious pushback from the more "mainstream" side worried about building out the coalition enough to overcome the structural advantages the GOP enjoys. The Dems have to win several % more than 50% to hold power in Washington and the realization that all the "demographic inevitability' talk that the Dems thought meant life was going to get easier has turned out to be BS. The progs don't like the idea they have to trim their sails to bring in people they don't like anyway, but the other side risks becoming nothing more than a replay of Bill Clinton's "GOP Lite" if they can't do better than Manchin's and Sinema's bottom lines.

That push/pull is generating lots of heat currently. And since the Dems have lots of liberal arts majors in the tent on both sides, we get lots of words..

one could argue that bill clinton's "gop lite" is what a majority of american voters actually wants.  america is a majority center-right(ish) country.

[buddha]

1 hour ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

I'm glad you brought up the key person in all of this, Bill Clinton. Lots of people like to pontificate why we ended up in the mess we did, how we ended up with Trump, etc. Bill Clinton and his Republican-lite and his anti-poor, race-baiting politics of the 1990s are really to blame for a big portion of this. For everyone that wants to blame the left for not having a bigger majority or losing seats in the house, these structural problems started long before AOC or Rashida Tlaib or Bernie Sanders came on the scene.

Policies and initiatives that Bubba supported like NAFTA, supporting GATT as apart of the WTO, normalized trade relations with China, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, repealing Glass-Steegal, welfare reform moving from AFDC to TANF, Commodity Futures Modernization Act, Riegel-Neal Interstate Banking Act, Telecommunications Act of 1996, 1994 Crime Bill, 3 strikes laws, all helped to give rise to the political climate we were in. Each had a devastating effect in a different way.

One-way trade agreements like NAFTA and other trade-related initiatives like GATT standards being absorbed into the WTO, PNTR with China gutted blue collar communities that depended on manufacturing jobs to support their middle class base. With it, the power of unions to collectively bargain and organize further eroded as its membership numbers dwindled. Deregulating Wall Street and speculative trading by repealing Glass-Steegal and enacting Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the CFMA led to the wild-west style lending and trading practices that we saw in a post-90's world. The out of control derivatives market, the speculative trading, credit default swaps, CDO's, synthetic CDO's, naked short selling, etc. all gave rise to the 2008 financial collapse and really picked up steam after the Clinton-era deregulation. Right wing talk radio exploded after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed. All the while, the social safety net that had been there for decades through FDR's Aid For Families With Dependent Children to protect working-class people and the very poor were gutted in the name of "work to welfare". With it, the social safety net was taken away and the extreme rate of poverty doubled in this country, leaving people helpless, jobless, and now permanently trapped in extreme poverty. And to top it all off, Clinton-era criminal justice policies were predicated on incarceration and not rehabilitation. Instead of second chances at life people were given mandatory minimum sentences and 3 strikes. The prison population continued to explode and black and brown communities were disproportionately effected.

And long before Donald Trump was out there race baiting from the White House, Clinton himself was doing it by literally using state-sanctioned murder and having his Sista Soulja moments. Clinton allowed the State of Arkansas to execute a self lobotomized black man, Ricky-Ray Rector, all so he could appear tough on crime to white people during a campaign. Then he picked a fight with Sista Soulja to again show white people what a tough guy he was.

And yet, through all of this, you have people like Josh Gottheimer, Kyrsten Sinema, and Joe Manchin holding up the Biden agenda and pining for this era of the Democratic Party and its third way politics. It isn't Bernie, AOC, Rashida, Primila Jayapal, and the progressive holding up the Biden agenda. Rather, they have been some of the most stalwart supporters of the President's agenda, most especially Sanders in his role as Budget Committee Chairman. The center-right of this party has hijacked it and stalled all progress. Moderates and center-right Democrats have a stranglehold on the Democratic party and they are going to cost us the election in 2022 by not allowing Democrats to have an agenda to run on. 

one question: do you think american business would not have moved their production to lower cost countries if clinton had not done what he did?

i think it was inevitable given the high labor costs here, the lowering of transportation costs worldwide, and america (and europe's) more stringent environmental regulations.

i mean, most industrial good used to be produced in britain.  what happened?  somewhere bigger and cheaper came along...

but your point(s) about the democratic party are well taken.  it has abandoned its role as protector of the working class in exchange for its neoliberal vision of world trade and affairs that made college educated americans rich.  only the bernie sanders wing of the party cares to change that, but they too have to tread lightly because their cultural sensibilities on immigration and race dont always jibe with that of their working class constituents.

[buddha]

where clinton and his people were wrong is in the idea that trade would change china.  

so far, theyve been wrong and china has changed us.  but its still early.  its only been 30 years, history is a lot longer than that 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

2 hours ago, buddha said:

one question: do you think american business would not have moved their production to lower cost countries if clinton had not done what he did?

American businesses or businesses in any country do what governments allow them to do. If the government sets up systems in place to allow them to offshore their workforce or dodge paying taxes, they will tax advantage of that system. In the United States we have setup a very business-friendly system with one-way trade agreements, limited tariffs, deregulatory policies sweeping across industries, low corporate taxes, and no VAT. So in the 1990s Clinton's economic ideas were to embrace deregulation, globalism, and the idea that opening up China would make it a more democratic and free society, when it should have been the opposite.

First, the premise has to be established and accepted that you cannot, unless doing so in the form of aid/assistance, trade with third world economies or you will lose your blue collar base and ultimately begin to shrink the middle class of your country. Yes, technology has played a bigger role than globalization and trade on manufacturing job loss, I get that. But there is no reason that the remaining manufacturing sector that does exist should be impacted by globalization and one-way trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, and PNTR.

Clinton should have rejected signing NAFTA and rejected giving China normalized trade-relation status. Instead, he should have pushed for more restrictions on imports with targeted tariffs and a VAT tax. If you want to manufacture something in China, India, Vietnam, or elsewhere that's fine, but you're getting slapped with a VAT tax equal to the price you believe it would cost you to make in the US, having to pay an American worker. Clinton should have made it unfavorable for goods to be manufactured and assembled overseas/in Mexico and then brought back to the US for sale. Those actions should have been coupled with an FDR-style American Works Program that included worker retraining for displaced manufacturing employees and educational assistance for those looking to go into higher ed or another skilled trade. The one thing Clinton did wisely do was raise the corporate tax rate, but he didn't raise it high enough and never had the proper enforcement mechanisms in place. He didn't end the tax loopholes corporations enjoy, nor did he higher enough auditors at the IRS to enforce the existing tax code.

If you want to stop outsourcing of jobs overseas then stop it. There needs to be the risk of financial loss and threat in place and enforced by the government as a mechanism to stop or curtail outsourcing of production. Take GM for example in the 1980s  and Michael Moore's famous documentary Roger & Me. If Roger Smith faced the prospect of having a 20% tariff or VAT slapped on every car he sent from Flint now down to Mexico to be manufactured, the businesses model of GM likely wouldn't have changed the way it did.

[buddha]

1 minute ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

American businesses or businesses in any country do what governments allow them to do. If the government sets up systems in place to allow them to offshore their workforce or dodge paying taxes, they will tax advantage of that system. In the United States we have setup a very business-friendly system with one-way trade agreements, limited tariffs, deregulatory policies sweeping across industries, low corporate taxes, and no VAT. So in the 1990s Clinton's economic ideas were to embrace deregulation, globalism, and the idea that opening up China would make it a more democratic and free society, when it should have been the opposite.

First, the premise has to be established and accepted that you cannot, unless doing so in the form of aid/assistance, trade with third world economies or you will lose your blue collar base and ultimately begin to shrink the middle class of your country. Yes, technology has played a bigger role than globalization and trade on manufacturing job loss, I get that. But there is no reason that the remaining manufacturing sector that does exist should be impacted by globalization and one-way trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, and PNTR.

Clinton should have rejected signing NAFTA and rejected giving China normalized trade-relation status. Instead, he should have pushed for more restrictions on imports with targeted tariffs and a VAT tax. If you want to manufacture something in China, India, Vietnam, or elsewhere that's fine, but you're getting slapped with a VAT tax equal to the price you believe it would cost you to make in the US, having to pay an American worker. Clinton should have made it unfavorable for goods to be manufactured and assembled overseas/in Mexico and then brought back to the US for sale. Those actions should have been coupled with an FDR-style American Works Program that included worker retraining for displaced manufacturing employees and educational assistance for those looking to go into higher ed or another skilled trade. The one thing Clinton did wisely do was raise the corporate tax rate, but he didn't raise it high enough and never had the proper enforcement mechanisms in place. He didn't end the tax loopholes corporations enjoy, nor did he higher enough auditors at the IRS to enforce the existing tax code.

If you want to stop outsourcing of jobs overseas then stop it. There needs to be the risk of financial loss and threat in place and enforced by the government as a mechanism to stop or curtail outsourcing of production. Take GM for example in the 1980s  and Michael Moore's famous documentary Roger & Me. If Roger Smith faced the prospect of having a 20% tariff or VAT slapped on every car he sent from Flint now down to Mexico to be manufactured, the businesses model of GM likely wouldn't have changed the way it did.

you sound just like donald trump.

[Motown Bombers]

My father worked at Ford and worked more overtime during the Clinton administration than at any other time during his career. His job was lost long after he retired because his job became automated and not lost to Mexico. 

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, buddha said:

where clinton and his people were wrong

Aside from their politics, as Tater says, they were (and a lot of people still are) fundamentally wrong about the nature of the future economy as well. You still have to have your people employed by direct wealth producing enterprises if you want to have a vibrant middle class. The 'information/service' age economy that they thought was Utopia in 1992 was a pipe dream. IT has turned out to be more easily outsourced than the businesses it was hoped it could replace. And the fact is that some primary wealth producing enterprise has to make enough ROI to pay for all those services and IT out of its excess profit margins. Taking stuff that is worth nothing and turning into stuff that is worth something remains, and will remain the ticket for middle class employment opportunity for as long as real people live in real physical space.

Edited October 15, 2021 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

5 hours ago, buddha said:

where clinton and his people were wrong is in the idea that trade would change china.  

so far, theyve been wrong and china has changed us.  but its still early.  its only been 30 years, history is a lot longer than that 

that was a very common view among Republicans in the aftermath of 1989.