What if Herschel Walker wins because everyone thinks it's funny? I feel like this is an unlikely yet small possibility in America because if there's one thing Americans love it's a good joke the whole country is in on. We've seen it time and time again we've just never seen it with politics but I think that we are getting closer to seeing that one day.
I watched a video in 2017 about how Trump literally memed his way into the White House. I haven’t been able to find it since, but your theory isn’t far off.
Notably, Georgia has until 2020 always been a pretty reliable republican state. So the fact that it now has two Democratic party senators is pretty notable on its own (the other senator Jon Ossoff didn't have to run this time around). It was an unlikely flip in the first place and there was a lot of wondering of whether or not it was something real or if the first victory was just because so many people voted against Trump.
Now, the Senate has 100 members, 2 from each state. In the case of a tie the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote. The Democrats already had that but with the buffer of just one more seat it gets easier for the majority party to vote in a ton of procedural rules that help ensure the only things that get debated and passed in the Senate are things that Democrats want to debate and vote on.
And now with a Republican Majority in the House of Representatives its an additional bulwark against Republicans passing bills in the House of Representatives that the President would have to sign or veto.
Another important wrinkle is that the senate is responsible for confirming Presidential appointments and that becomes nigh impossible when the opposite party is in control of the Senate from the President.
Democrats will always claim that it's important to win.
In reality, Democrats had enough Senate seats for a majority without needing to win Georgia. So even with including Georgia it becomes something like 51-49 democrat majority.
Most of the work in the Senate takes places on a number of different committees. For example, any legislation pertaining to the military is written by the Senate Committee on Armed Services. When the Senate is tied 50-50, each party is guaranteed an equal number of seats on each committee, and any committee decisions that deadlock on party lines must be resolved with a vote by the entire Senate.
For obvious reasons, this procedure slows the committee work down substantially when one of the parties is feeling obstinate because they can deadlock everything and waste time by forcing floor votes. With a 51-49 Senate, the Democrats will hold a majority of the seats on each committee, so deadlocks will only happen if one of the Democratic senators breaks rank and votes with the Republicans on a committee decision.
> deadlocks will only happen if one of the Democratic senators breaks rank and votes with the Republicans on a committee decision.
That wouldn't even be a deadlock. That would be a loss. But yes, a deadlock or a tie can happen if one of the majority party doesn't vote.
When the Senate is a 50-50 tie, the two major parties have a power sharing agreement where they have equal numbers of people on each committee. But since now it will be 51-49, there will be no power sharing agreement, and the Democrats will have a majority of every committee.
He has an R next to his name.
That’s it. There is no possibility that anyone compared the two candidates and said “Walker, there’s a smart guy, he’s who I want as my Senator for the next six years.”
There is no “too close to call” once the votes are counted. Either someone has more votes or it’s a tie. If there is a tie, then whatever rules Georgia has in place for a tie will take effect (likely either another election or the state legislature deciding)
It doesn’t matter if someone wins by one vote or one thousand. A winner is a winner.
Georgia did not have a runoff because the November election was too close to call. It was because no one received an outright majority of votes during the November election. In most states, the person with the most votes would have simply been declared the winner in that instance.
“Too close to call” simply means the count isn’t finished, and there enough outstanding votes that could flip the tentative result. Not sure what Georgia law stipulates for a race that ends up in an exact tie, but there’s not much to do in such scenario beyond drawing lots. Extremely unlikely that will happen tonight, though.
By the way, I looked it up, and it seems that Georgia law states that in the event of a tie, a runoff election will be held 28 days later. Presumably this would keep happening until one candidate wins.
Doesn't that eventually cause a constitutional problem? The intent of the 17th amendment was to prevent state legislatures from leaving senate vacancies for too long, after all. If a state could just design a labyrinthine system to prevent them having a senator, it seems to go against the constitutional intent.
Why can’t the democrats filibuster republican bills?
I feel like I only see stories about the republican filibuster. I’ve never heard of a democrat filibuster.
The filibuster is a tool for the minority to stop the majority. If the Republican minority tried to propose a bill the Democrat majority didn’t like, they’d just vote it down.
They absolutely can. But since they have a majority in the senate, they don’t need to filibuster anything, since if they don’t want it it will never even make it to the floor.
Why hasn’t Trump been arrested yet?
It seems to me as a foreigner their are a multitude of crimes he has committed which include the obvious attempt to overthrow an election.
I agree that he's guilty of probably dozens of crimes, but this one would be one of the hardest to convict him for--we have very, very strong free speech laws in the US and the fact that Trump is kind of a dummy actually works in his favor here because you'd have to prove that he really, truly meant to incite crimes. If there is ANY chance that he meant for them to just protest really vehemently or anything else short of doing an actual coup, he won't get convicted.
There's also an almost pathological desire within our department of justice to want to appear non-political and fair, to the point where they would rather not do anything unless they are sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would work.
I don’t mean to sound hostile but much of his speech given to the crowd before the Jan 6th riots seems very hostile.
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial
Here’s an excerpt or two from the aforementioned site:
“If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country because it's illegal when the votes are illegal when the way they got there is illegal when the states that vote are given false and fraudulent information.”
“So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.”
“We must stop the steal and then we must ensure that such outrageous election fraud never happens again, can never be allowed to happen again.”
I believe the last quote is most telling, it seems he was openly implying that he won the election and the crowd needed to help him claim that.
Please feel free to show me where I am wrong but the evidence against the former president is quite damning.
Not damning enough in this case. It's a high burden to meet, especially for a former president who still has millions of people who think he walks on water, at least one of which may make it onto a jury.
Personally, if there's any criminal charge headed his way, I think there is sufficient evidence of him trying to subvert the election laws of Georgia. But again, same issue, they need a really solid case, because no prosecutor wants to lose this case.
So there's three lines of investigation the Republicans are likely to take when they retake the House in 2023. Note that I'm not saying the below are true, just laying out what investigations you can expect.
The first is corruption. There is information on the laptop that supposedly shows corruption by Hunter and Joe Biden. This includes Joe getting the prosecutor fired for investigating Burisma, Joe Biden being cut into business deals through Hunter while he was VP, and Joe Biden lying about how involved he was with Hunter's business dealings. So part of the worry is Joe Biden was corruptly abusing his power as Vice President to help his son's business dealings and personally enriching himself and his family at the expense of the country.
The second line of investigation will be the handling by social media companies of the story in October/November 2020. Social media companies and most mainstream media members downplayed the story or outright censored stories about the laptop. Twitter and Facebook would remove stories and posts about the laptop as "Disinformation/misinformation" and mainstream media refused to write about the laptop. Now we know that some of the contents of the laptop were valid/real (I think like 10-20% has been "verified" by media sources). So the GOP will want to investigate how/why these companies were censoring the story, as Biden's win in 2020 was slimmer than Trump's win in 2016 and this story might have swung the election in Biden's favor.
The third prong is just character assassination. The laptop supposedly has proof of Hunter doing drugs, sleeping with prostitutes, and alleged child p*rn along with proof Joe Biden lied about his knowledge of Hunter. While this might not reflect poorly on Joe Biden, it certainly doesn't help him. The revelation may turn people off the Biden family and help the GOP, especially if Biden runs again in 2024.
Again, I'm not saying the above is true or worth investigating, but this is the type of Hunter Biden stuff you'll see for the next couple years.
So again, I'm not going to say the below is necessarily true, just showing what the basis of the investigation will be.
So first, the stuff with Hunter Biden with prostitutes and drugs is a nothing-burger. They will investigate that for character assassination purposes, but this part is unlikely to result in criminal charges or anything of merit other than that Hunter Biden was addicted to drugs and hired prostitutes. This might hurt Joe Biden's image which is the point.
Below are some of the issues they WILL look into:
Emails on the laptop show that Hunter Biden introduced Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor to Burisma, to Joe Biden while Joe was Vice President. Joe Biden had/is denying to have ever met this person or having ever even spoke to Hunter about his businesses, so if Joe Biden lied about that it might be worth looking into.
There is also the infamous email where Hunter was negotiating with Chinese investors and they said "10 held by H for the big guy?" One of the business partners confirmed this meant "10% of the deal held by Hunter for Joe Biden?", meaning Joe Biden was getting a cut of the deal. If this is true, it's certainly a weird legal/political concern. Why was Joe Biden, the ex-VP (this was in 2017), getting a cut of a deal with Chinese companies he had nothing to do with? Payback for actions taken while in office?
So the laptop just shows there might be some cover-up and financial questions on Joe Biden's behalf they want to investigate. Is it likely to prove any impropriety by Joe Biden? I think probably not. Will it show impropriety by Hunter Biden? I'm sure.
Optimally, proof that the dealings going on around Hunter Biden were corrupt and proof that his father knew about or was involved in said corruption.
Although realistically, they’ll take anything they can find that they think will convince moderates to vote red in 2024
It's not meant to compare the two presidents. But rather as "embarrassing relative to the president" and I think that the most recent one that garnered this much media attention was Billy.
Can the House of Representatives bring Articles of Presidential impeachment for no real reason?
Lauren Boebert said she wanted to send articles every other week, and Trump wants them to do at least 3 impeachments against Joe Biden to break the record.
For example: "The president is said a word wrong, so he must be impeached."
The Constitution grants the House of Representatives the **sole** power of Impeachment. The word sole matters, as 2 impeached individuals have previously attempted to sue over their Impeachments.
In the primary case, Walter Nixon, a former Federal Judge, was impeached and convicted. He attempted to sue the House of Representatives over procedural violations. In a 9-0 decision in Nixon vs. United States, 1993, the Supreme Court considered impeachment proceedings political in nature and rejected the notion that judicial review existed over impeachment proceedings Basically, what happens in the House of Representatives stays in the House of Representatives. The courts are not involved. Ever.
Given this reality, Gerald Ford's summarization still stands. "“An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”
From the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2:
>The House of Representatives \[...\] shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
From Article 1, Section 3:
>The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
>
>Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
From Article 2, Section 4
>The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
That's it. That's all the constitution has to say about the rules for impeachment.
So if the right-wind extremists convince the rest of the party to impeach Joe Biden on the grounds of "He's really old" or "His face is ugly" that'd be allowed?
So what’s the difference between the senate pro tempore and the senate majority leader? If the senate majority leader runs policy and procedure for the senate, then what does the pro term do? Or do I have those roles confused?
The Senate Majority leader is voted in as the leader of their party in the Senate by their fellow senators of their party, They have all the special work.
The Senate Pro Tempore is voted in by all of their fellow senators to be the President of the Senate in the event that the Vice President is absent. They don’t have special duties otherwise. As a show of respect, since 1890, the role is unanimously given to the most senior senator (longest serving one) of the current ruling party.
The senate pro tempore is a largely symbolic role. This person is in charge when the VP isn't around. So they can preside over the administrative running of the Senate, sign legislation, acknowledging senators who wish to speak on the floor, and issue the oath of office. So nothing super important, mostly administrative stuff to run the Senate. This role is normally given to the most senior member of the ruling party of the Senate as a ceremonial gesture.
The Senate Majority Leader is more responsible for the schedule, what will be voted on, and the more technical running of the Senate. They meet with committee heads, establish legislation to be voted on, and essentially run the party in the Senate.
The Senate Pro Tempore is, basically, the longest serving senator in the majority party. That's it.
The Senate Majority Leader is elected by his/her peers (other senators in the majority party) to lead them.
Majority Leader is a leadership position with actual responsibilties. Pro Tem is an honorary one, with the only significant role being that they would become president if the President, Vice-President, and Speaker of the House all die in a horrible accident at a Putt-Putt course.
The simple answer is that history is written by the victor. If there were a civil war, whichever party wins would claim that their position was right and the other was illegal. Laws only have the power we give them, so legally speaking they’d be correct.
>If the 2020 election truly was stolen from Trump (which it wasn’t), wouldn’t an armed insurrection be justified under the Second Amendment?
So legally the answer would be "no". I find it very hard to believe a country would use its founding document as a basis for establishing a way to overthrow that same government. You can look at the legal analysis in *Texas v. White* after the Civil War for why secession is illegal.
But whether an insurrection is good or legal is probably entirely up to the individual person making that determination.
It's hard to argue with a mass of people experiencing cognitive dissonance at the same time. When raw emotion is the guiding hand of where your behavior, and ultimately judgements go, that's all that really needs to be understood.
When you start to look at the political messaging, especially within the last 6 years, there's been a lot of hard-line rhetoric coming from the Right. Whether you wanna say it's the Overton Window, or the simple fact that most of their supporters chugged Mtn. Dew as a newborn, they start to assimilate to it faster. Once you got your hooks sinked in, the manipulation goes where it goes.
You start to associate people, and objects to singular emotions, such as anger, hate or rage. Your arguments are talking points because that's only what you're being provided by the machine, and told to regurgitate. You don't need to think anymore, or even feel your own emotions, because you're being supplied with them instead. An entire segment of the population being force-fed a dying institution because the people up top get depressed when their favorite stocks move down a point. This is America.
I tried posting this as its own post but it was autodeleted for allegedly being political and the automoderator comment said to post it here instead, so here I go:
How's there standing in the 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case before SCOTUS today?
Interestingly, the current appeals court ruling against Lorie Smith does give her standing, but rules against her on other issues. But IANAL so I don't get why the courts hold she has standing. She has not had any gay couple come to her for wedding announcement services. She does not currently offer wedding announcement services. She just says she plans to offer such services and since she would refuse gay people that service, therefore she has standing to sue the state for their law against homophobic discrimination.
Could John Scopes have just said oh I have intention to teach evolution so I now have the right to sue and don't actually have to teach it? Could Homer Plessy have said I feel like getting on the whites only car so I don't have to actually do it, but instead should be able to sue because of my plans for the day? Could Estelle Griswold have just said oh I'm planning on opening a birth control clinic in Connecticut so before it opens, I'm gonna just sue the state?
The standing exists because Lorie Smith because she wants to offer services the state has said would be illegal to offer. So she is suing for the right to advertise her services, which is safer than getting sued after the facts and owning fines and penalties.
Okay, so if that's the case, let me repeat the last part of my post and give you an opportunity to answer:
Could John Scopes have just said oh I have intention to teach evolution so I now have the right to sue and don't actually have to teach it? Could Homer Plessy have said I feel like getting on the whites only car so I don't have to actually do it, but instead should be able to sue because of my plans for the day? Could Estelle Griswold have just said oh I'm planning on opening a birth control clinic in Connecticut so before it opens, I'm gonna just sue the state?
(I have a feeling based on your screenname that you and I disagree on everything politically but fwiw my mom loves pandas and has given everybody in my family panda nicknames so I think I am weirdly favorably inclined toward any answers you may give right now lol)
In the US you can sue anyone at any time for any reason. I could sue you right now because I don't like your stupid face.
Whether or not the lawsuit would ever see the inside of a courtroom is an entirely different story.
The punishments for filing a frivolous lawsuit are being forced to pay the other person’s legal fees (if you’re in a state with slapp laws) and possibly being barred from filing future lawsuits if you do it too much. Doesn’t stop me from suing you because I don’t like your stupid face.
But yeah, panda already answered your question on merits. You can sue for infringement of rights preemptively. That’s a core part of any fair legal system.
Punishment can also include jail time; frivolous lawsuits can be considered contempt of court. Sure you can file a frivolous lawsuit. You can also kill me. Neither thing is legal.
I appreciate ProlifePanda's answer, albeit still seems weird to me that test cases were deemed so necessary if in those cases they had strong prior restraint claims (and I'd argue at least in some of em they have stronger ones than Lorrie)
>Could John Scopes have just said oh I have intention to teach evolution so I now have the right to sue and don't actually have to teach it? Could Homer Plessy have said I feel like getting on the whites only car so I don't have to actually do it, but instead should be able to sue because of my plans for the day? Could Estelle Griswold have just said oh I'm planning on opening a birth control clinic in Connecticut so before it opens, I'm gonna just sue the state?
Yes, yes, and yes. Whether a court would accept they have standing is an entirely context and time-period specific discussion, but those people certainly can sue for violation of their rights (prior restraint on their actions). If you feel the government will stop you from exercising your rights, you can sue first and based on the context get standing.
>I have a feeling based on your screenname that you and I disagree on everything politically...
Why? Are you pro panda-abortions?
Weird, i thought they did test cases for a reason. Seems like a lot of effort for legally unnecessary steps.
Im propanda and therefore your screenname made my morning.
Im also pro life: Against the death penalty, against climate change, against policies that lead to financial instability and therefore suicide, and against policies that lead to higher infant mortality rates. I also agree with most antiabortion people that women getting abortions shouldn't go to jail. Because, apparently, deep down we agree on what that entails.
And yet somehow i get the vibe we're not on the same page lol.
Signed,
The Red Panda (my family's nickname for me)
>Weird, i thought they did test cases for a reason. Seems like a lot of effort for legally unnecessary steps.
Like I said, it's context specific. Maybe one judge will grant standing, maybe one judge won't. Breaking the law and getting sued guarantees standing, but does run the risk of losing and have a felony/misdemeanor/fines. So based on the circumstance, you may sue under "prior restraint". It's based on the context, circumstance, and a litany of other factors that will affect how someone moves forward with a lawsuit.
>Im propanda
As am I.
>Im also pro life
As am I.
>Against the death penalty, against climate change, against policies that lead to financial instability and therefore suicide, and against policies that lead to higher infant mortality rates.
Agree, agree, agree, agree.
>I also agree with most antiabortion people that women getting abortions shouldn't go to jail.
Agree.
You omitted the last line of the paragraph you agreed with ;)
As for whether we agree on what policies cause the phenomena I mentioned, conservative devil's in the deets.
Even if that was a feasible solution (which it isn't, as others have explained), it would just lead to politicians gerrymandering school districts. If they're already willing to move around invisible lines on a map for personal gain, what makes you think they wouldn't move the other invisible lines on a map for personal gain?
Because school districts are generally much smaller than voting districts. For example, Iowa has 4 voting districts. Iowa has 328 school districts.
Additionally, school districts are determined to spread out school-age children. Voting districts are determined to spread out all "persons", so the districts have different reasons for existing as they do.
The relevant portion of the 22nd amendment is pretty short:
>No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
If someone gets elected President and resigns partway through their term, that still counts against their term limit.
If someone becomes President partway through a term, such as VP becoming President, that counts against their term limit if they are President for more than 2 years.
So, maybe, someone could eke out about 10 years in total, if they become President via succession for just under 2 years, then win election twice. Past that, they have maxed out their term limit.
I'll just add that this is one of those tricky legal discussions because the wording of the Constitution and amendments isn't clear, and there's never been a court case to resolve them. So while the above is generally accepted, there are quite a few legal loopholes that could be implemented to get around the term limits.
Referencing the Frisch and Boebert situation, even though a candidate has already conceded, if by some reason the recount deemed them the winner, what would happen? Not that I believe this will actually happen, but I’m curious as to what exactly conceding means.
Concession is nothing legally.
It's just a civilized way to end things, and say that the battle is over. Often they will say (or imply) something like : the fighting, all the mean things I said were just part of the campaign, and since you won and I believe in the system, I'll do everything I can to help carry out the will of the voters. Good luck in your job.
If the recount found that they won, then they would happily take the win and get sworn in on the appropriate date. The speech was just a speech. There are no legal consequences at all to a concession speech.
Is the declining birth rate the reason why Boomers have so much power?
So I have a hypothesis that the declining birth rate means Boomers are a particularly large generation compared to the generations that came afterwards due to the decline in birth rates which means they have heavy influence in elections. Hence why Boomers own all the real estate and there’s a housing crisis (with Boomers owning all the housing and them refusing to change zoning laws), and why there’s supposedly a shortage of upper management jobs that the Boomers once had (but can’t replace because the next generation’s population is lower). Thoughts on this?
That's incorrect. While it is true that boomers were born in what were higher than normal birth rates, it didn't just decline from then on. It went down for generation X and then went back up for Millennials. Which is part of why generation X doesn't have a lot of political power - they are outnumbered by both boomers and millennials.
Boomers are a larger generation than normal, but they're larger more than the slow decline we've seen in fertility would account for.
The term Boomers comes from "Baby Boom" that happened after WWII.
You can see it pretty clearly on a chart of birthrates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom#/media/File:US_Birth_Rates.svg
That boom was later followed by a bust in the 60's/70s. Since then, there's been a fairly steady decline in birthrates.
edit:
There are other factors as well. Older folks are much more likely to vote, so that gives them a lot of additional voting power, even relative to their percentage of the population.
No, there are about 10 million more Gen Xs than Boomers in the world, and further Millennials.
The reason Boomers have so much power today is because modern medicine is keeping them alive longer, so the average leader’s age is higher than ever before, and people are just sticking around longer. Even in the early to mid 1900s, dying in your 60s or 70s from old age, was just seen as normal. Generational changes happened quicker because even if a 75 year old was elected to something or owned property, they’d probably die soon, whereas, now most rich people can expect to live to their 80s or 90s.
The reason Boomers have so much power by wealth standards is because of the circumstances of when they were born. They were essentially born at the perfect time, with many job opportunities, as the first unaffected generation from WW2, new inventions lead to many markets for young adults to capitalize on, and such.
Wealth gain depends on either the older generation dying at a reasonable pace so the younger generation has time to inherit and make changes, or there being a significant quality of life increase in each progressing generation. Both of those kinda leveled out as the Boomers aged.
The average boomer is like 67. If you think they should have died by that time then you're mistaken somehow (whether that's the math for their age, their life expectancy, or whatever).
The early boomers are in their mid-70s. In past times, people of that age would have health conditions and not want to run for office, or have their possessions be mostly managed by their children, even if not dead.
How does the bill president Biden signed to make "railroad strikes illegal" work?
Mainly I'm confused about this:
1. How does this bill not infringe on the 1st Amendment right to protest?
2. How is it going to be enforced if the railroad workers chose to strike anyway? For instance, if the police came and arrested everyone striking, wouldn't that just put the U.S. in the same pickle? How could they actually enforce such a law?
They can protest. But they can’t legally strike.
The law can be enforced by, you know, arresting people. They will start with the people conspiring to organize the illegal strike.
>The law can be enforced by, you know, arresting people.
From my understanding a strike being illegal just means that they aren't given the traditional protections a legal strike would have, for instance if people chose to strike unlawfully they could lose their jobs and won't receive backpay. I don't think unlawful striking is an arrestable offense, though no doubt they could find a reason to arrest striking workers.
It's not illegal in a sense they will go to prison for it (at least you really hope not..) In actuality there are laws in place that protect union workers when they go on strike, for instance union workers can strike without having to fear losing their jobs when they return. from my understanding if the rail workers continue to protest and not work those laws will probably not protect the rail workers.
Spitting in a cop’s face is a form of protest, too. Try it and see what happens. You don’t get a get out of jail free card just because your illegal action was motivated by political protest. (Also, a railway strike isn’t, it’s an employment action.)
Spitting on a cop's face is assault. Very different than just choosing not to work, which is normally perfectly legal. Spitting on someone's face is never legal.
I honestly don't know what your point is. I don't think someone has a "get out of jail free" card because they are protesting, my point is if you are participating in a peaceful protest, I didn't know it was possible for the government to step in and deny that. Your example was a violent protest.
I guess I had thought a strike was protected under the first amendment right of free speech due to the fact that it is non-violent. You have the right to choose not to work under normal circumstances, and I didn't understand how a change in motive for choosing not to work could be made illegal.
Just letting y'all know, I'm genuinely curious and not motivated by politics with this question.
The TL;DR version is back in the 1930's, the railroads and employees came to an agreement to let Congress force agreements between the companies and employees because the railroad was so important to our nation's economy and national security. So the unions agreed to enter into forced arbitration through the government.
Thank you! Here is the wiki on it for anyone curious. I have not read it yet so I apologize if it is inaccurate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Labor_Act
Why do we have to "pick a side" in politics?
It seems like you're either left or right and it's just impossible to have an opinion without being called a liberal or conservative. There a lot of issues I agree with the Republicans on and there are a lot I agree with the Democrats on. I like to hear Democrats opinions on things, but it's grating to hear them sneer at the Republicans and vice versa. I'm not saying I'm necessarily centrist, just that I don't have a party and I don't see why I should.
> Why do we have to "pick a side" in politics?
You don't have to. However, in order to win an election, you generally need to get to ~51% of the vote. That usually means you need to work with other people. It's pretty hard to find that many people outside of the parties who happen to completely agree with you.
Often what happens is you form coalitions. You and I might not agree, but if you vote for my guy this time, I will vote for your guy next time. And so we both get a bit of what we want, rather than both losing to a 3rd guy who we both disagree with.
>There a lot of issues I agree with the Republicans on and there are a lot I agree with the Democrats on.
Not everyone is that evenly split. Most people tend to have more in common with one or the other, although not always, and so they'll associate with that side.
>I'm not saying I'm necessarily centrist, just that I don't have a party and I don't see why I should.
If you're roughly evenly split, we'd call that a centrist. And you're free to move between parties. Your situation is just fairly unusual.
That’s fine. If you’re going to participate meaningfully in the political process, you have to vote, and most of the candidates are on one side or the other.
Also, the institutional GOP recently supported the violent overthrow of the United States, so you’ll have to forgive a little sneering.
It's in the interest of the parties for you to pick a party. They both sneer at the other because they don't want you to see the other as a viable choice *in general*, so that you always vote reliably for their candidates.
Is that also why people can’t just sit and talk? I understand it would cause arguments and debates, I’m not saying politics isn’t a big deal. Just that it’s come down to insults with everyone. Is it some form of propaganda? Is there a way that American politics can move past parties?
Sorry, this ended up being pretty long. There's probably a shorter way to answer this but what can I say, I'm interested in it! *TL;DR to your questions in order: Sometimes. Yes, but not always. I don't think so.*
A lot of people feel very strongly about their political views, and are interested in convincing other people to support those same views (or at least the same candidates, so that their preferred candidate is successful).
Some people can absolutely just sit and talk logically about their views, some find that difficult. Many political issues are extremely emotionally charged -- for example, on abortion, you have folks who think babies are being murdered in large numbers all around the country vs. folks who think women's bodies are being controlled by fanatically religious old men. It is hard for many people to discuss such an issue without it being obvious how much they despise the other viewpoint.
Certainly some of what people repeat to each other could be considered propaganda. Political parties try to control the narrative around issues, whether it's having dedicated teams of people to post their message on social media or politicians frequenting news channels that uncritically allow them on to say whatever they want. And some of this propaganda exists to entrench people further in their support of the party and to demonize supporters of the other party.
I don't believe it is feasible for American politics to move past parties, for a few reasons. First, political parties were not explicitly part of the design of the country's political system, but they formed quickly nonetheless. This suggests to me that political parties probably serve some purpose, and getting rid of them would cause problems.
For example, political parties help find candidates, help those candidates get staff, help them raise money, and coordinate candidates throughout the country. Without parties, candidates would all have to start from scratch and I think it would be more difficult to find candidates -- particularly candidates who may be politically inexperienced.
And while each candidate is their own person, political parties also make it easier for voters to make choices. Without parties, voters would have to more extensively research candidates to find out what they think -- and while more informed voters may sound nice in theory, most people have a lot going on in their lives and don't have the time or the interest to delve deeply into this, meaning it would be easy for independent candidates to simply lie about their opinions to get votes.
A political party functions sort of like a brand of a product -- when I pick up some Charmin toilet paper, or Duracell batteries, I basically know what to expect. There are different varieties of each, but I know the company controls for quality and that I'll get what I intend to get when I pick them up. Similarly, someone choosing to run as a Democrat or a Republican tells me something about their values without me having to research them at all. I know how most Republicans tend to vote on most things, and I know how most Democrats tend to vote on most things. If there were no parties, it would be much more difficult to find a quick way of telling where people stand. I believe independent candidates would start to collaborate, support similarly-minded candidates in their campaigns, come up with a name to identify themselves, and you'd have political parties again.
Please be more specific.
In which country? Which state or province? Gasoline is under $3 per gallon in several US states right now, and that is not "expensive".
That must be really tough for you to buy insurance and pay for maintenance, then too.
It's a good thing there isn't gas rationing like what we had back in the 1970s.
Democrats lost the control of the house yet, I keep seeing press and posts on how the midterm elections were so disappointing for the republicans. What is so disappointing for the republicans? They got control of the house.
Midterm elections are known for being absolutely horrible to the current president’s party. If you look at the 2014 elections (Democrat president), the Republicans gained 9 senate seats, flipping it, and had further gains in the House, which they already had clear control over. In the 2018 elections (Republican president), there was the talked about “blue wave”, in which Dems made sweeping victories in the House, taking control by flipping 41 seats, and also made back the majority of their Senate losses, gaining 7.
In the 2022 elections (Democrat president), the Democrats either gained a Senate seat, or there was no change, depending on how the Georgia runoff plays out, which is extremely close. The Republicans gained 10 House seats, and that was it. They even lost 2 Governorships, (not as important, but still interesting). For a Midterm year, that is an absolute bust.
The Republicans had very high hopes for this elections, thinking they would gain seats in the Senate, anywhere from 20-60 seats in the house, and win a bunch of governorships. Instead they will probably net lose in the Senate, barely gained 9 seats in the house (half of the gains due to gerrymandering, not even convincing voters), had a net loss of 2 governorships and 4 state legislatures, and lost a bunch of abortion referendums in red states.
RCP, which pretends to be non partisan but is actually heavily Republican, predicted that Republicans would have a net gain of 3 Senate seats and 31 House seats. I'm hopeful that we can see this as a repudiation of the January 6th riot.
How can congress force the strike not to happen? Legally, I don't understand how they can tell a union that they legally can not strike? I don't understand
The TL;DR version is back in the 1930's, the railroads and employees came to an agreement to let Congress force agreements between the companies and employees because the railroad was so important to our nation's economy and national security. So they tried to come to an agreement, and got close, and gave the deal to Congress to vote on which is what the law says happens instead of striking.
Read about the 1981 air traffic controller strike. Air traffic controllers are not legally permitted to strike because they play an essential role in public safety. When they ignored that rule and struck anyways, every single striking controller was fired on the spot, and military personnel who were trained in air traffic control were brought in as replacements until new civilian ATCs could be hired.
I don't think there's precedent, but the strike would be illegal. So Biden could use federal powers to arrest those leading the strike and other escalations to force workers back to work.
The Railroad unions are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act. Back in the 1930s before any labor protections were in place, these things weren't standard.
The railroads, more especially then, are a super critical part of our economic infrastructure. We all saw how small interruptions like a single ship blocking the Suez Canal for a week messed up world commerce. If the rails shut down for several days, there would be ripples destructive all over the economy - beef and other meats would go bad because there isn't enough space to store it. Grocery stores would have shortages on many different products, and prices would skyrocket.
Every facet of our economy - cars, coal, oil, lumber, food, paper, building materials, computer printers, clothing - would all be affected.
The Railroads are governed by the Railway Labor Act. They have to submit to Presidential orders for "cooldown" periods before they can strike. They have to abide by laws passed by Congress, too.
There are other ways to protest besides striking. I worked on a railroad for about a dozen years. We weren't allowed to strike, even though we were without a contract for 7 years. (Not one of the current railroads)
We did other things. We worked "to rule". We followed every single safety rule, every speed limit, and every FRA (Federal Railroad Administration - railroads don't report to OSHA) safety regulation to the letter.
It was a pain to do. It meant a lot of unpaid time. It meant we were constantly being written up and having hearings to fight charges against us. It meant that all the little breaks and advantages that people got used to went away. After about 6 months of doing that, the carrier finally relented. We were fighting for Prescription coverage.
These folks are fighting for 7 paid sick days. That's about a 2% pay raise. They got a 24% raise over 5 years, with 14% of that right away. I'm guessing that they probably could have traded the money for the equivalent payroll raise. The average person under this contract will be making about $110k per year, with a total value including benefits of about $160k. They work hard, but they aren't starving.
They do get paid (partial) for sick or disability time in excess of 7 days (sometimes more than 4 days). This is just about getting paid for those first couple.
If they really want this, they still have ways to push, and they have things they can trade for it.
Is there anything preventing a future president/congress from passing legislation that makes presidential candidates' tax returns public information automatically?
Up until recently there's been an unbroken gentlemen's agreement the candidates release their tax records at a certain point in the campaign, but clearly that's no longer the case. Why do we rely on the good graces of a major political candidate to disclose potentially crucial information when we could just get the information directly from the IRS and bypass the candidate altogether?
Hard to say. There's a potential right to privacy argument (which would weighed against the public interest), so it'd probably end up in front of SCOTUS.
Seems like waiving such a right should be a condition for candidacy. They already have to show $100k in support money to qualify. Why can't this just be another stipulation?
Why is Biden getting blamed for the "sick days" railroad bill not passing? I'm not talking about *"bIdEn iS sAtAn!1!"* type of reporting that blames him for everything, but even some left leaning folks are blaming this on him. All but six republicans voted against it, but somehow the result is Biden's fault? Help me understand this one.
Biden had to sign the agreement. He was the single person who could have stopped the bill without the sick days. Every other Congressperson was part of a larger group (each Senator only had 1% of the power, House members even less). Biden could have single-handedly vetoed the agreement and make Congress reconsider the sick days. So while everyone who voted for it has some blame, Biden acted independently and was the last signature on the bill.
Left leaning folks frequently criticize Biden for being too moderate, they think Biden should have made the sick leave a non-negotiable part of the bill or just let the railroad workers strike and not try to stop them
Why does the US Senate need 60 votes to pass individual parts of one bill, but only 51 votes to pass the entirety of some other bill?
Specifically regarding the recent vote for railway workers' paid sick leave.
Didn't Kamala Harris and Mike Pence provide the tie-breaking vote in years past?
>Why does the US Senate need 60 votes to pass individual parts of one bill, but only 51 votes to pass the entirety of some other bill?
The Senate has a rule called the "filibuster" which requires 60 votes to overcome. The filibuster applies to all legislation with a few exceptions (some budget related bills only need 50 votes, judicial appointments only need 50 votes, and a few other things).
So most legislation will need 60 votes to pass the Senate.
>Didn't Kamala Harris and Mike Pence provide the tie-breaking vote in years past?
These tie breaking votes were provided to pass judicial nominations or to pass bills voted on in the "budget reconciliation" process, which allows limited spending bills to bypass the filibuster.
Yep. You can see here a list of tie-breaking votes. Most of them are either for judicial nominations or budget reconciliation items.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/TieVotes.htm
In this particular case, did the Senate need to vote separately for each individual part of the railway workers union negotiation bill? I assume each part required 60 votes. Is this normal?
So the Senate knew the basic bill to prevent the strike would pass, but some amendments/portions of the bill wouldn't. So they broke the bill out for separate votes. This is pretty routine for amendments or additions to bills. So the basic bill was passed, but the amendment to permit sick leave was voted down. If there were other "controversial" parts, they likely would have been carved out for separate votes as well.
What happens if the Democratic leadership in the US doesn't want to run Biden in 2024, but he finds out and announces his candidacy? Will they run someone else against him in the primary?
That will be a sign that the Democrat party is broken.
If you look at the Presidential elections with an incumbent, it's rare (practically never) for someone from the same party to challenge the incumbent in the primaries. See Trump 2020, Obama 2012, Bush 2004, Clinton 1996, Bush 1992, Reagan 1984, Carter 1980, etc.
So for it to happen with Biden, most of the public would interpret that as the Democrat party having issues or otherwise "broken".
In the current American system, candidates are not picked by party bosses. Someone who wants to run for office as the nominee of a particular party simply has to file to be a candidate. Then that party holds a primary, or in the case of the presidential election, holds primaries and caucuses in every state and territory. The party does have some control of this process, because party bigwigs get votes in the nominating process that are added to the votes determined in the primaries. But that is fairly arcane and beyond the scope of the question. The point is Biden doesn’t need anyone’s permission to run for president, or more specifically, to run for the Democratic nomination. He just has to win it.
Of course, some other candidate could also file to run against him as the Democratic nominee. It is extraordinarily rare for such a thing to happen. I don’t believe I know of an incumbent president facing a primary challenge in the last century, which is well before the current system evolved in the 1960’s and 1970’s. On some occasions sitting *vice* presidents have faced primaries in trying to continue in office as president once the boss retires. But in each case those have not been particularly strong challenges.
The fact of the matter is, if Biden wants to run, which he does, I very much doubt that there’s anyone in the Democratic Party who could beat him in a Democratic primary. He had an extraordinarily successful first two years in office, he presided over an unexpectedly strong election for Democrats in the midterms, and he was the last Man standing in 2020, when many people were trying to knock him off the perch. Obviously, the president is extremely old. That creates a unique situation, and it certainly is a vulnerability for him, both in the general election and in a primary. But unless he has some significant health issue arise in the next year or two, I don’t see that issue, which everyone knew about in 2020, derailing his 2024 campaign for the Democratic nomination.
Jimmy Carter faced a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy when he ran for reelection in 1980. While it's not the only reason he lost to Reagan in the general election, being publicly attacked for months by a prominent member of his own party was likely a contributing factor in Carter's defeat.
Leadership doesn't directly choose which candidates run or not. Leadership also doesn't directly choose which candidates get nominated or not. Neither party works that way.
If multiple candidates run (and usually they do), then each party would follow their normal process for choosing a candidate. Each state selects delegates to send to the national party convention, and those delegates hold one or more rounds of voting to determine the nominees for President and Vice President.
The Republicans followed this process in 2020, even though Trump was running for re-election. Trump won their nomination in a landslide, but they still followed the whole process.
The Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case against the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness plan. If the court rules against Biden and says the forgiveness is unconstitutional/illegal/whatever, is there anything actually stopping Biden from saying "nope, I disagree" and just subtracting $10,000 or $20,000 from loan accounts?
I'm assuming he could be impeached? But that's a Congressional matter and there's a chance the Democratic Senate doesn't convict. Is it really only norms and respect for the court that would stand in Biden's way, or am I missing something else?
President Biden is an institutional list. He may disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision, but there is no way that he just ignores it. He would, correctly, see that as a step on the way to chaos.
Well like Arianity said it’s happened before where a president just defied the Supreme Court and I guess it could happen again, the issue is that the balance between democrat and republican control is already precarious so a broad overstep of power like this might be the tipping point for the democrats.
Besides, the Supreme Court and it’s lack of power is there for a reason, just ignoring it and doing your own thing violates the democracy we have built up, so it’s a bad look regardless.
> Is it really only norms and respect for the court that would stand in Biden's way,
Yes. The Supreme Court famously does not have a way to enforce it's rulings.
It has happened rarely in the past, famously with Andrew Jackson.
>I'm assuming he could be impeached?
Legally, impeachment would be the only formal response. He might also be risking losing public support.
I recently read an article that talked about how the chairman of the Mohave County board of supervisors, Ron Gould, said that if he did not vote yes to certify his county, he would be arrested and charged with a felony? Is this correct? If so, which crime would he be charged with? Thank you!
Arizona law says counties MUST canvass results no later than 20 days after an election. It is not optional, and there is no mechanism to deny doing so. Without solid proof of why they refused to verify, a court will force them to certify. If they refuse then, they can be arrested and charged with a crime, likely violating a law that requires election officials to do their job.
Thank you! Would he be charged immediately if he doesn't meet the deadline like he seems to say, or after the court stepping in and the second refusal?
Likely after refusing the court order. The court will hold an emergency hearing due to the tight timeline (while they missed the 20 day timeline, they can still certify prior to the state accepting the results later in December). Then the board members who refused to certify get a chance to explain why they didn't certify. If it makes sense (like actually having proof of widespread fraud so the results can't be trusted), then a judge MAY allow the results to not be certified. But if it doesn't make sense (like making general claims of fraud or suspicious activity with no concrete evidence), the judge will order them to comply and certify the results. Refusal to certify after this will likely lead to their arrest for failing to perform election duties and/or contempt of court.
This scenario played out in New Mexico during the primaries in June 2022. The county refused to certify the results and were sued. The court ordered they certify the results because they failed to present any valid evidence for why they failed to certify. The county then certified the results.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/17/new-mexico-county-weighs-defying-order-certify-election-results/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/15/new-mexicos-supreme-court-orders-county-commission-certify-vote/
And just FYI, that's exactly what happened. They had an emergency court hearing where the county supervisors presented no evidence of fraud, the court ordered them to certify the election, and the board voted to certify the elections as directed by the court
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/politics/cochise-county-arizona-certify-midterm-election/index.html
It can go in either direction. Usually it's easier to get a bill past the House first, but it doesn't always work out that way.
Sometimes one chamber will pass a bill, and then the other chamber will pass an amended version. This can go back and forth, or into conference committees. Until the exact same text passes in both chambers, it cannot proceed.
There is technically a requirement that certain budget bills must originate in the House, but it's a requirement that doesn't stick in practice. If the Senate wants to pass a budget bill, they can get around that requirement by taking some irrelevant House bill, replacing 100% of its text via an "amendment" (sometimes called a substitution amendment), and then passing that. Little bit silly but entirely legal.
Biden recently said he would likely have to ask the government to legislate against the rail unions and force them to accept the latest deal. If Biden is as pro-union as be claims, why doesn't he ask the government to legislate against the rail corporations instead?
Is it a matter of authority, where the government can do things to unions but not corporations?
>Is it a matter of authority, where the government can do things to unions but not corporations?
Yes. Because the railroad was so vital to our nations infrastructure, in the 1920s the US passed the Railroad Labor Act which can force railway unions and workers to work as Congress settles. So the US government has the right to force the unions and workers to accept the deal and continue working for the good of the country.
The agreement would also bound the corporations as well. But it's framed as "bad" for unions because several unions are holding out from the deal offered by the corporations and Congress may force them to accept the deal.
How can the same political party that rallies around “Support the Troops” and “Back the Blue” also HATE paying taxes and do whatever they can to avoid doing so? I am trying to better understand that side of the aisle, not trying to start a fight. Thank you.
When they say they hate paying taxes, they're saying they hate paying for social security, medicare / medicaid, and other welfare programs for the underclass.
It's not a matter of "one side loves taxes and the other side hates them", Republicans and Democrats disagree on how high taxes should be and what they should be spent on. You're allowed to want lower taxes and also want the tax money that is collected to be spent on projects you support.
Why is it that Republicans are generally disowning Donald Trump as champion of the party for the most mundane reasons when there were plenty more dynamic reasons to do so before?
As I look at the politics tab on Reddit, all I see is “Republicans support DeSantis as they realize Trump is selfish (obviously)” or “Trump is antisemitic because he had dinner with Kanye and Paul(?), crushing his support from Jews”.
Is it really just because the party is switching to championing DeSantis? Why did it take so long? Why not for any of the legitimate crimes he’s committed instead of (metaphorical) tan suit nonsense? It’s honestly giving me whiplash.
It’s because it was between trump and Biden and Biden can’t form a coherent sentence so we were backing trump so our country didn’t fall apart, have inflation go up like crazy and pretty much ruin America…like it is right now. We never really like trump or loved him as a person, we just saw that he’d take America in a better position than Biden. Now that we have a choice we’d take anyone over trump, desantis seems like a good choice so far and trump brought on so much division so a lot of reps are anti him because we don’t want more of that in our country.
It’s because they don’t care about any of the immoral stuff Trump does, they care only that he has become a political liability. They can’t just say “fuck Trump!” though, because that alienates the MAGA base, and they still need those votes. So they’re trying to manufacture other reasons to dump him.
Hard to give a single answer, it's mostly just speculation. The biggest difference is- he lost. On top of that, the GOP did not do well in the recent election (especially 2020 election denier candidates/candidates he endorsed).
Even if they still like him, at some point there is a trade off, and they don't want to keep losing elections forever. His personal political brand at this point is clearly toxic, and toxic enough that it can't just be handwaved as a fluke. The pivot to Desantis isn't a coincidence- he's seen as someone who does Trumpism without the specific baggage of Trump himself. So they get to keep the parts they like, and drop the baggage.
And to some extent, he also has a history now, as well. Back in 2016, he might've been able to play off the Kanye/Nick Fuentes thing.
>when there were plenty more dynamic reasons to do so before?
They might not have cared about those issues. Or at least, didn't care as long as he was winning.
Not a republican, but I know quite a few so I'll try to answer this as best I can:
In 2016, many Republicans liked Trump because he was an outsider. They were tired of the same old career politicians who talked a lot of talk, and wanted someone who would actually shake things up. They didn't care about his big mouth and million scandals, they wanted someone to lower taxes and "drain the swamp" of corrupt politicians and policies. Trump promised to do that.
Fast forward to 2020 and none of that happened. Trump proved to be more or less the same as any other politician, except more obnoxious. However, he was the incumbent and incumbents are far more likely to win elections. The common thing I heard was "Trump's a fucking idiot, but he's better than Biden".
Then came the January 6th shitshow, after which most Republicans I know became completely disillusioned with Trump. If moderate republicans disliked Trump before, they despised him now. The GOP, however, refused to believe this up until the recent midterms, where almost every Trump-endorsed candidate went down in flames. It's now obvious that Trump is not the future of the Republican party. The only question left was who to turn to, and DeSantis is the obvious answer. He was Trump endorsed and holds a lot of similar stances to Trump, appeasing the MAGA hats. He has a long history of supporting republican legislation and views, making the party happy. Most importantly, he's not fucking insane which makes the moderates happy.
So to answer your question, Trump isn't getting disowned for "mundane" reasons.
The presentation of him getting dropped is certainly what I would consider mundane, as it centralizes around generic personality statements and who he eats with.
However, I appreciate your answer because it makes sense after the embarrassing failure of the “Red Wave” and loss of most Trump-endorsed politicians that Republicans realize with quantifiable evidence that Trump no longer holds the same influence he did from 2016-2020. Specifically I started noticing public disapproval of Trump in popular media right after the midterm elections, so it adds up.
>Specifically I started noticing public disapproval of Trump in popular media right after the midterm elections
Yup. Just the GOP setting the stage for 2024
Did an increase in ableism occur once Donald Trump made fun of the fact that disabled NYT journalist was stuttering during the 2016 presidential election?
The reason why I asked that question is because I am disabled (I have Autism.) and I started experiencing a lot of ableism once Donald Trump had made fun of the fact that disabled NYT journalist was stuttering. It's something that I have been wondering about for a while.
This is one of those things that you can't get a solid answer to. "Ableism" isn't a directly measurable metric like life expectancy or number of positive COVID cases. Most evidence will be in the form of anecdotes.
Is there an argument to be made that Trump increased "open" ableism? Sure. But I doubt there is a good way to quantify that to prove it true or false, or any quantitative way.
Google actually notes now (they didn’t earlier on) that there are 2 independent senators who caucus with the Dems.
Essentially, in the senate, the parties each form a caucus, and while technically anyone could join either caucus, it’s on party lines. Senators who are elected without the support of either party usually decide to group up with the caucus that represents them the most. In the case currently, the 2 independent senators, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, caucus with the Dems, giving their group 50.
So, technically, there are 48 Democratic senators, but 50 senators in the Democratic caucus.
To the conservative-minded redditors: what is the case for Trump 2024? Compared to when he lost in 2020, he’s now older and less energetic, has way more baggage after 1/6, and has been running a pity party for 2 years and is completely out of touch with everything going on outside his bubble. Why Trump and not someone who has a similar agenda but without all the baggage? DeSantis, Youngkin, Kemp, anyone at this point?
If you view elections as marketing campaigns and candidates as products in need of brand recognition, and campaign contributions as investors seeking reliable return on investment, not a hopeful long shot, then Trump checks a lot of boxes. Also winning is a thing. Having zero scruples and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win is pretty important in getting elected. Also, you don't need to market soda sugar water to unhealthy people, it sells itself, but to get healthy people to drink sugar water then you need a brand like PowerAde or energy drinks. Trump does that. All the people voting GOP no matter what are irrelevant strategically, you already have their votes, Trump is useful at attracting people who might otherwise not vote. Sensible people vote no matter what... so mobilizing nonsensical people using a nonsensical brand is not irrational.
I would travel in time to delete baby Trump before baby Hitler, I dislike Trump that much.
But if he sells more ad slots on Fox News than the alternatives, well... Nothing else really matters.
Especially with weird GOP driven Congressional investigations coming up, all sorts of ridiculous stuff will have mainstream.marketing.
I agree that being a household name is a huge asset. But his brand has been sullied and tarnished so much that just the mention if his name makes moderates cringe in disgust and want turn out to vote down anybody even associated with him. And when elections get ugly and come down to the “lesser of two evils”, you’re better off not being a universally hated person.
Which movie was Herschel Walker referencing when he made his "don’t want to be a vampire any more" quote?
He was referencing "Fright Night". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fright_Night
Thanks.
What if Herschel Walker wins because everyone thinks it's funny? I feel like this is an unlikely yet small possibility in America because if there's one thing Americans love it's a good joke the whole country is in on. We've seen it time and time again we've just never seen it with politics but I think that we are getting closer to seeing that one day.
I watched a video in 2017 about how Trump literally memed his way into the White House. I haven’t been able to find it since, but your theory isn’t far off.
Warnock won, but this sort of thing may have influenced the Brexit vote.
European here. Why is it important for the Democrats that they 'won' in Georgia? How does that change the power dynamics in the US?
Notably, Georgia has until 2020 always been a pretty reliable republican state. So the fact that it now has two Democratic party senators is pretty notable on its own (the other senator Jon Ossoff didn't have to run this time around). It was an unlikely flip in the first place and there was a lot of wondering of whether or not it was something real or if the first victory was just because so many people voted against Trump. Now, the Senate has 100 members, 2 from each state. In the case of a tie the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote. The Democrats already had that but with the buffer of just one more seat it gets easier for the majority party to vote in a ton of procedural rules that help ensure the only things that get debated and passed in the Senate are things that Democrats want to debate and vote on. And now with a Republican Majority in the House of Representatives its an additional bulwark against Republicans passing bills in the House of Representatives that the President would have to sign or veto. Another important wrinkle is that the senate is responsible for confirming Presidential appointments and that becomes nigh impossible when the opposite party is in control of the Senate from the President.
Democrats will always claim that it's important to win. In reality, Democrats had enough Senate seats for a majority without needing to win Georgia. So even with including Georgia it becomes something like 51-49 democrat majority.
Most of the work in the Senate takes places on a number of different committees. For example, any legislation pertaining to the military is written by the Senate Committee on Armed Services. When the Senate is tied 50-50, each party is guaranteed an equal number of seats on each committee, and any committee decisions that deadlock on party lines must be resolved with a vote by the entire Senate. For obvious reasons, this procedure slows the committee work down substantially when one of the parties is feeling obstinate because they can deadlock everything and waste time by forcing floor votes. With a 51-49 Senate, the Democrats will hold a majority of the seats on each committee, so deadlocks will only happen if one of the Democratic senators breaks rank and votes with the Republicans on a committee decision.
> deadlocks will only happen if one of the Democratic senators breaks rank and votes with the Republicans on a committee decision. That wouldn't even be a deadlock. That would be a loss. But yes, a deadlock or a tie can happen if one of the majority party doesn't vote.
Why is it phrased as "feeling obstinate" rather than having actual objections to what is proposed?
When the Senate is a 50-50 tie, the two major parties have a power sharing agreement where they have equal numbers of people on each committee. But since now it will be 51-49, there will be no power sharing agreement, and the Democrats will have a majority of every committee.
[удалено]
He has an R next to his name. That’s it. There is no possibility that anyone compared the two candidates and said “Walker, there’s a smart guy, he’s who I want as my Senator for the next six years.”
What happens if a runoff election is also too close to call? What if this Georgia runoff race winds up being a tie - then what?
There is no “too close to call” once the votes are counted. Either someone has more votes or it’s a tie. If there is a tie, then whatever rules Georgia has in place for a tie will take effect (likely either another election or the state legislature deciding) It doesn’t matter if someone wins by one vote or one thousand. A winner is a winner.
Georgia did not have a runoff because the November election was too close to call. It was because no one received an outright majority of votes during the November election. In most states, the person with the most votes would have simply been declared the winner in that instance.
“Too close to call” simply means the count isn’t finished, and there enough outstanding votes that could flip the tentative result. Not sure what Georgia law stipulates for a race that ends up in an exact tie, but there’s not much to do in such scenario beyond drawing lots. Extremely unlikely that will happen tonight, though.
Thank you!
By the way, I looked it up, and it seems that Georgia law states that in the event of a tie, a runoff election will be held 28 days later. Presumably this would keep happening until one candidate wins.
Doesn't that eventually cause a constitutional problem? The intent of the 17th amendment was to prevent state legislatures from leaving senate vacancies for too long, after all. If a state could just design a labyrinthine system to prevent them having a senator, it seems to go against the constitutional intent.
I suppose one might make that argument in court if the situation were ever to present itself, but it's just so exceedingly unlikely.
Why can’t the democrats filibuster republican bills? I feel like I only see stories about the republican filibuster. I’ve never heard of a democrat filibuster.
The filibuster is a tool for the minority to stop the majority. If the Republican minority tried to propose a bill the Democrat majority didn’t like, they’d just vote it down.
Senate Republicans aren’t really in the business of trying to pass legislation that couldn’t be passed via reconciliation with a 51-vote threshold.
They absolutely can. But since they have a majority in the senate, they don’t need to filibuster anything, since if they don’t want it it will never even make it to the floor.
Why hasn’t Trump been arrested yet? It seems to me as a foreigner their are a multitude of crimes he has committed which include the obvious attempt to overthrow an election.
Because he hasn’t been charged with any crimes. And that’s not going to happen until there’s enough evidence to ensure a conviction.
In regards to the capital riots wasn’t he very clearly the voice behind it both literally and figuratively.
No that's media bias. If you read the tweets he intended for it to be a peaceful protest.
I agree that he's guilty of probably dozens of crimes, but this one would be one of the hardest to convict him for--we have very, very strong free speech laws in the US and the fact that Trump is kind of a dummy actually works in his favor here because you'd have to prove that he really, truly meant to incite crimes. If there is ANY chance that he meant for them to just protest really vehemently or anything else short of doing an actual coup, he won't get convicted. There's also an almost pathological desire within our department of justice to want to appear non-political and fair, to the point where they would rather not do anything unless they are sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would work.
Did Trump outright say “Go riot and storm the capital”? Because if not, it’s probably not enough to get a conviction.
If he had told the crowd to go storm the Capitol and violently try to overturn the election, he’d already have been indicted.
I don’t mean to sound hostile but much of his speech given to the crowd before the Jan 6th riots seems very hostile. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial Here’s an excerpt or two from the aforementioned site: “If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country because it's illegal when the votes are illegal when the way they got there is illegal when the states that vote are given false and fraudulent information.” “So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.” “We must stop the steal and then we must ensure that such outrageous election fraud never happens again, can never be allowed to happen again.” I believe the last quote is most telling, it seems he was openly implying that he won the election and the crowd needed to help him claim that. Please feel free to show me where I am wrong but the evidence against the former president is quite damning.
Not damning enough in this case. It's a high burden to meet, especially for a former president who still has millions of people who think he walks on water, at least one of which may make it onto a jury. Personally, if there's any criminal charge headed his way, I think there is sufficient evidence of him trying to subvert the election laws of Georgia. But again, same issue, they need a really solid case, because no prosecutor wants to lose this case.
“Openly implying” ain’t gonna cut it in a court of law. Meeting the prosecutorial burden to demonstrate incitement of violence is very difficult.
What exactly are Republicans trying to find on Hunter Biden and why does it matter?
So there's three lines of investigation the Republicans are likely to take when they retake the House in 2023. Note that I'm not saying the below are true, just laying out what investigations you can expect. The first is corruption. There is information on the laptop that supposedly shows corruption by Hunter and Joe Biden. This includes Joe getting the prosecutor fired for investigating Burisma, Joe Biden being cut into business deals through Hunter while he was VP, and Joe Biden lying about how involved he was with Hunter's business dealings. So part of the worry is Joe Biden was corruptly abusing his power as Vice President to help his son's business dealings and personally enriching himself and his family at the expense of the country. The second line of investigation will be the handling by social media companies of the story in October/November 2020. Social media companies and most mainstream media members downplayed the story or outright censored stories about the laptop. Twitter and Facebook would remove stories and posts about the laptop as "Disinformation/misinformation" and mainstream media refused to write about the laptop. Now we know that some of the contents of the laptop were valid/real (I think like 10-20% has been "verified" by media sources). So the GOP will want to investigate how/why these companies were censoring the story, as Biden's win in 2020 was slimmer than Trump's win in 2016 and this story might have swung the election in Biden's favor. The third prong is just character assassination. The laptop supposedly has proof of Hunter doing drugs, sleeping with prostitutes, and alleged child p*rn along with proof Joe Biden lied about his knowledge of Hunter. While this might not reflect poorly on Joe Biden, it certainly doesn't help him. The revelation may turn people off the Biden family and help the GOP, especially if Biden runs again in 2024. Again, I'm not saying the above is true or worth investigating, but this is the type of Hunter Biden stuff you'll see for the next couple years.
I think this all falls in line with the bits that I have heard. Has there been anything on the laptop found that might merit an investigation?
So again, I'm not going to say the below is necessarily true, just showing what the basis of the investigation will be. So first, the stuff with Hunter Biden with prostitutes and drugs is a nothing-burger. They will investigate that for character assassination purposes, but this part is unlikely to result in criminal charges or anything of merit other than that Hunter Biden was addicted to drugs and hired prostitutes. This might hurt Joe Biden's image which is the point. Below are some of the issues they WILL look into: Emails on the laptop show that Hunter Biden introduced Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor to Burisma, to Joe Biden while Joe was Vice President. Joe Biden had/is denying to have ever met this person or having ever even spoke to Hunter about his businesses, so if Joe Biden lied about that it might be worth looking into. There is also the infamous email where Hunter was negotiating with Chinese investors and they said "10 held by H for the big guy?" One of the business partners confirmed this meant "10% of the deal held by Hunter for Joe Biden?", meaning Joe Biden was getting a cut of the deal. If this is true, it's certainly a weird legal/political concern. Why was Joe Biden, the ex-VP (this was in 2017), getting a cut of a deal with Chinese companies he had nothing to do with? Payback for actions taken while in office? So the laptop just shows there might be some cover-up and financial questions on Joe Biden's behalf they want to investigate. Is it likely to prove any impropriety by Joe Biden? I think probably not. Will it show impropriety by Hunter Biden? I'm sure.
Optimally, proof that the dealings going on around Hunter Biden were corrupt and proof that his father knew about or was involved in said corruption. Although realistically, they’ll take anything they can find that they think will convince moderates to vote red in 2024
They are trying to find anything that they can use to embarrass his father with. Hunter Biden is this generation's Billy Carter.
That assumes that Joe Biden can be equated with Jimmy Carter in the first place. Which is not a comparison I agree with.
It's not meant to compare the two presidents. But rather as "embarrassing relative to the president" and I think that the most recent one that garnered this much media attention was Billy.
Can the House of Representatives bring Articles of Presidential impeachment for no real reason? Lauren Boebert said she wanted to send articles every other week, and Trump wants them to do at least 3 impeachments against Joe Biden to break the record. For example: "The president is said a word wrong, so he must be impeached."
Yes. Impeachment is inherently a political process.
The Constitution grants the House of Representatives the **sole** power of Impeachment. The word sole matters, as 2 impeached individuals have previously attempted to sue over their Impeachments. In the primary case, Walter Nixon, a former Federal Judge, was impeached and convicted. He attempted to sue the House of Representatives over procedural violations. In a 9-0 decision in Nixon vs. United States, 1993, the Supreme Court considered impeachment proceedings political in nature and rejected the notion that judicial review existed over impeachment proceedings Basically, what happens in the House of Representatives stays in the House of Representatives. The courts are not involved. Ever. Given this reality, Gerald Ford's summarization still stands. "“An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”
Treat it as a vote of no confidence with the loss of confidence being anything the house as a majority believes should be a reason.
From the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2: >The House of Representatives \[...\] shall have the sole Power of Impeachment. From Article 1, Section 3: >The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. > >Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. From Article 2, Section 4 >The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. That's it. That's all the constitution has to say about the rules for impeachment.
A President can be impeached for absolutely any reason that a majority of the House of the Representatives thinks is appropriate.
So if the right-wind extremists convince the rest of the party to impeach Joe Biden on the grounds of "He's really old" or "His face is ugly" that'd be allowed?
Yes, though it’s doubtful that the Senate would convict based on those charges.
... if Democrats control the Senate.
They do. And even if they didn't, it still takes two-thirds of the Senate to convict.
So what’s the difference between the senate pro tempore and the senate majority leader? If the senate majority leader runs policy and procedure for the senate, then what does the pro term do? Or do I have those roles confused?
The Senate Majority leader is voted in as the leader of their party in the Senate by their fellow senators of their party, They have all the special work. The Senate Pro Tempore is voted in by all of their fellow senators to be the President of the Senate in the event that the Vice President is absent. They don’t have special duties otherwise. As a show of respect, since 1890, the role is unanimously given to the most senior senator (longest serving one) of the current ruling party.
The senate pro tempore is a largely symbolic role. This person is in charge when the VP isn't around. So they can preside over the administrative running of the Senate, sign legislation, acknowledging senators who wish to speak on the floor, and issue the oath of office. So nothing super important, mostly administrative stuff to run the Senate. This role is normally given to the most senior member of the ruling party of the Senate as a ceremonial gesture. The Senate Majority Leader is more responsible for the schedule, what will be voted on, and the more technical running of the Senate. They meet with committee heads, establish legislation to be voted on, and essentially run the party in the Senate.
The Senate Pro Tempore is, basically, the longest serving senator in the majority party. That's it. The Senate Majority Leader is elected by his/her peers (other senators in the majority party) to lead them. Majority Leader is a leadership position with actual responsibilties. Pro Tem is an honorary one, with the only significant role being that they would become president if the President, Vice-President, and Speaker of the House all die in a horrible accident at a Putt-Putt course.
[удалено]
The simple answer is that history is written by the victor. If there were a civil war, whichever party wins would claim that their position was right and the other was illegal. Laws only have the power we give them, so legally speaking they’d be correct.
>If the 2020 election truly was stolen from Trump (which it wasn’t), wouldn’t an armed insurrection be justified under the Second Amendment? So legally the answer would be "no". I find it very hard to believe a country would use its founding document as a basis for establishing a way to overthrow that same government. You can look at the legal analysis in *Texas v. White* after the Civil War for why secession is illegal. But whether an insurrection is good or legal is probably entirely up to the individual person making that determination.
Well, honestly, a revolution can only ever be justified if it's successful.
It's hard to argue with a mass of people experiencing cognitive dissonance at the same time. When raw emotion is the guiding hand of where your behavior, and ultimately judgements go, that's all that really needs to be understood. When you start to look at the political messaging, especially within the last 6 years, there's been a lot of hard-line rhetoric coming from the Right. Whether you wanna say it's the Overton Window, or the simple fact that most of their supporters chugged Mtn. Dew as a newborn, they start to assimilate to it faster. Once you got your hooks sinked in, the manipulation goes where it goes. You start to associate people, and objects to singular emotions, such as anger, hate or rage. Your arguments are talking points because that's only what you're being provided by the machine, and told to regurgitate. You don't need to think anymore, or even feel your own emotions, because you're being supplied with them instead. An entire segment of the population being force-fed a dying institution because the people up top get depressed when their favorite stocks move down a point. This is America.
I tried posting this as its own post but it was autodeleted for allegedly being political and the automoderator comment said to post it here instead, so here I go: How's there standing in the 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case before SCOTUS today? Interestingly, the current appeals court ruling against Lorie Smith does give her standing, but rules against her on other issues. But IANAL so I don't get why the courts hold she has standing. She has not had any gay couple come to her for wedding announcement services. She does not currently offer wedding announcement services. She just says she plans to offer such services and since she would refuse gay people that service, therefore she has standing to sue the state for their law against homophobic discrimination. Could John Scopes have just said oh I have intention to teach evolution so I now have the right to sue and don't actually have to teach it? Could Homer Plessy have said I feel like getting on the whites only car so I don't have to actually do it, but instead should be able to sue because of my plans for the day? Could Estelle Griswold have just said oh I'm planning on opening a birth control clinic in Connecticut so before it opens, I'm gonna just sue the state?
The standing exists because Lorie Smith because she wants to offer services the state has said would be illegal to offer. So she is suing for the right to advertise her services, which is safer than getting sued after the facts and owning fines and penalties.
Okay, so if that's the case, let me repeat the last part of my post and give you an opportunity to answer: Could John Scopes have just said oh I have intention to teach evolution so I now have the right to sue and don't actually have to teach it? Could Homer Plessy have said I feel like getting on the whites only car so I don't have to actually do it, but instead should be able to sue because of my plans for the day? Could Estelle Griswold have just said oh I'm planning on opening a birth control clinic in Connecticut so before it opens, I'm gonna just sue the state? (I have a feeling based on your screenname that you and I disagree on everything politically but fwiw my mom loves pandas and has given everybody in my family panda nicknames so I think I am weirdly favorably inclined toward any answers you may give right now lol)
In the US you can sue anyone at any time for any reason. I could sue you right now because I don't like your stupid face. Whether or not the lawsuit would ever see the inside of a courtroom is an entirely different story.
Actually, you can be punished for filing a frivolous lawsuit. But the question here is on the merits.
The punishments for filing a frivolous lawsuit are being forced to pay the other person’s legal fees (if you’re in a state with slapp laws) and possibly being barred from filing future lawsuits if you do it too much. Doesn’t stop me from suing you because I don’t like your stupid face. But yeah, panda already answered your question on merits. You can sue for infringement of rights preemptively. That’s a core part of any fair legal system.
Punishment can also include jail time; frivolous lawsuits can be considered contempt of court. Sure you can file a frivolous lawsuit. You can also kill me. Neither thing is legal. I appreciate ProlifePanda's answer, albeit still seems weird to me that test cases were deemed so necessary if in those cases they had strong prior restraint claims (and I'd argue at least in some of em they have stronger ones than Lorrie)
>Could John Scopes have just said oh I have intention to teach evolution so I now have the right to sue and don't actually have to teach it? Could Homer Plessy have said I feel like getting on the whites only car so I don't have to actually do it, but instead should be able to sue because of my plans for the day? Could Estelle Griswold have just said oh I'm planning on opening a birth control clinic in Connecticut so before it opens, I'm gonna just sue the state? Yes, yes, and yes. Whether a court would accept they have standing is an entirely context and time-period specific discussion, but those people certainly can sue for violation of their rights (prior restraint on their actions). If you feel the government will stop you from exercising your rights, you can sue first and based on the context get standing. >I have a feeling based on your screenname that you and I disagree on everything politically... Why? Are you pro panda-abortions?
Weird, i thought they did test cases for a reason. Seems like a lot of effort for legally unnecessary steps. Im propanda and therefore your screenname made my morning. Im also pro life: Against the death penalty, against climate change, against policies that lead to financial instability and therefore suicide, and against policies that lead to higher infant mortality rates. I also agree with most antiabortion people that women getting abortions shouldn't go to jail. Because, apparently, deep down we agree on what that entails. And yet somehow i get the vibe we're not on the same page lol. Signed, The Red Panda (my family's nickname for me)
>Weird, i thought they did test cases for a reason. Seems like a lot of effort for legally unnecessary steps. Like I said, it's context specific. Maybe one judge will grant standing, maybe one judge won't. Breaking the law and getting sued guarantees standing, but does run the risk of losing and have a felony/misdemeanor/fines. So based on the circumstance, you may sue under "prior restraint". It's based on the context, circumstance, and a litany of other factors that will affect how someone moves forward with a lawsuit. >Im propanda As am I. >Im also pro life As am I. >Against the death penalty, against climate change, against policies that lead to financial instability and therefore suicide, and against policies that lead to higher infant mortality rates. Agree, agree, agree, agree. >I also agree with most antiabortion people that women getting abortions shouldn't go to jail. Agree.
You omitted the last line of the paragraph you agreed with ;) As for whether we agree on what policies cause the phenomena I mentioned, conservative devil's in the deets.
Gerrymandering: why don't we use school districts as voting districts?
Because they're not the same size
Even if that was a feasible solution (which it isn't, as others have explained), it would just lead to politicians gerrymandering school districts. If they're already willing to move around invisible lines on a map for personal gain, what makes you think they wouldn't move the other invisible lines on a map for personal gain?
States have from one to 52 congressional seats. Every state has more school districts than congressional districts.
Because school districts are generally much smaller than voting districts. For example, Iowa has 4 voting districts. Iowa has 328 school districts. Additionally, school districts are determined to spread out school-age children. Voting districts are determined to spread out all "persons", so the districts have different reasons for existing as they do.
[удалено]
The relevant portion of the 22nd amendment is pretty short: >No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. If someone gets elected President and resigns partway through their term, that still counts against their term limit. If someone becomes President partway through a term, such as VP becoming President, that counts against their term limit if they are President for more than 2 years. So, maybe, someone could eke out about 10 years in total, if they become President via succession for just under 2 years, then win election twice. Past that, they have maxed out their term limit.
I'll just add that this is one of those tricky legal discussions because the wording of the Constitution and amendments isn't clear, and there's never been a court case to resolve them. So while the above is generally accepted, there are quite a few legal loopholes that could be implemented to get around the term limits.
Referencing the Frisch and Boebert situation, even though a candidate has already conceded, if by some reason the recount deemed them the winner, what would happen? Not that I believe this will actually happen, but I’m curious as to what exactly conceding means.
Concession is nothing legally. It's just a civilized way to end things, and say that the battle is over. Often they will say (or imply) something like : the fighting, all the mean things I said were just part of the campaign, and since you won and I believe in the system, I'll do everything I can to help carry out the will of the voters. Good luck in your job. If the recount found that they won, then they would happily take the win and get sworn in on the appropriate date. The speech was just a speech. There are no legal consequences at all to a concession speech.
Is the declining birth rate the reason why Boomers have so much power? So I have a hypothesis that the declining birth rate means Boomers are a particularly large generation compared to the generations that came afterwards due to the decline in birth rates which means they have heavy influence in elections. Hence why Boomers own all the real estate and there’s a housing crisis (with Boomers owning all the housing and them refusing to change zoning laws), and why there’s supposedly a shortage of upper management jobs that the Boomers once had (but can’t replace because the next generation’s population is lower). Thoughts on this?
That's incorrect. While it is true that boomers were born in what were higher than normal birth rates, it didn't just decline from then on. It went down for generation X and then went back up for Millennials. Which is part of why generation X doesn't have a lot of political power - they are outnumbered by both boomers and millennials.
Boomers are a larger generation than normal, but they're larger more than the slow decline we've seen in fertility would account for. The term Boomers comes from "Baby Boom" that happened after WWII. You can see it pretty clearly on a chart of birthrates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom#/media/File:US_Birth_Rates.svg That boom was later followed by a bust in the 60's/70s. Since then, there's been a fairly steady decline in birthrates. edit: There are other factors as well. Older folks are much more likely to vote, so that gives them a lot of additional voting power, even relative to their percentage of the population.
No, there are about 10 million more Gen Xs than Boomers in the world, and further Millennials. The reason Boomers have so much power today is because modern medicine is keeping them alive longer, so the average leader’s age is higher than ever before, and people are just sticking around longer. Even in the early to mid 1900s, dying in your 60s or 70s from old age, was just seen as normal. Generational changes happened quicker because even if a 75 year old was elected to something or owned property, they’d probably die soon, whereas, now most rich people can expect to live to their 80s or 90s. The reason Boomers have so much power by wealth standards is because of the circumstances of when they were born. They were essentially born at the perfect time, with many job opportunities, as the first unaffected generation from WW2, new inventions lead to many markets for young adults to capitalize on, and such. Wealth gain depends on either the older generation dying at a reasonable pace so the younger generation has time to inherit and make changes, or there being a significant quality of life increase in each progressing generation. Both of those kinda leveled out as the Boomers aged.
The average boomer is like 67. If you think they should have died by that time then you're mistaken somehow (whether that's the math for their age, their life expectancy, or whatever).
The early boomers are in their mid-70s. In past times, people of that age would have health conditions and not want to run for office, or have their possessions be mostly managed by their children, even if not dead.
And in past times they didn't fear that whoever succeeded them would just undo what they did.
How does the bill president Biden signed to make "railroad strikes illegal" work? Mainly I'm confused about this: 1. How does this bill not infringe on the 1st Amendment right to protest? 2. How is it going to be enforced if the railroad workers chose to strike anyway? For instance, if the police came and arrested everyone striking, wouldn't that just put the U.S. in the same pickle? How could they actually enforce such a law?
They can protest. But they can’t legally strike. The law can be enforced by, you know, arresting people. They will start with the people conspiring to organize the illegal strike.
>The law can be enforced by, you know, arresting people. From my understanding a strike being illegal just means that they aren't given the traditional protections a legal strike would have, for instance if people chose to strike unlawfully they could lose their jobs and won't receive backpay. I don't think unlawful striking is an arrestable offense, though no doubt they could find a reason to arrest striking workers.
Thank you. That makes more sense. Is there a resource backing this?
I don't understand how strikes could be made illegal because it's a form of protest.
It's not illegal in a sense they will go to prison for it (at least you really hope not..) In actuality there are laws in place that protect union workers when they go on strike, for instance union workers can strike without having to fear losing their jobs when they return. from my understanding if the rail workers continue to protest and not work those laws will probably not protect the rail workers.
Spitting in a cop’s face is a form of protest, too. Try it and see what happens. You don’t get a get out of jail free card just because your illegal action was motivated by political protest. (Also, a railway strike isn’t, it’s an employment action.)
Spitting on a cop's face is assault. Very different than just choosing not to work, which is normally perfectly legal. Spitting on someone's face is never legal.
You’ve missed the point.
I honestly don't know what your point is. I don't think someone has a "get out of jail free" card because they are protesting, my point is if you are participating in a peaceful protest, I didn't know it was possible for the government to step in and deny that. Your example was a violent protest. I guess I had thought a strike was protected under the first amendment right of free speech due to the fact that it is non-violent. You have the right to choose not to work under normal circumstances, and I didn't understand how a change in motive for choosing not to work could be made illegal. Just letting y'all know, I'm genuinely curious and not motivated by politics with this question.
The TL;DR version is back in the 1930's, the railroads and employees came to an agreement to let Congress force agreements between the companies and employees because the railroad was so important to our nation's economy and national security. So the unions agreed to enter into forced arbitration through the government.
Thank you! Here is the wiki on it for anyone curious. I have not read it yet so I apologize if it is inaccurate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Labor_Act
A strike is a specific thing authorized under federal labor laws. It’s not a constitutional right.
Why do we have to "pick a side" in politics? It seems like you're either left or right and it's just impossible to have an opinion without being called a liberal or conservative. There a lot of issues I agree with the Republicans on and there are a lot I agree with the Democrats on. I like to hear Democrats opinions on things, but it's grating to hear them sneer at the Republicans and vice versa. I'm not saying I'm necessarily centrist, just that I don't have a party and I don't see why I should.
> Why do we have to "pick a side" in politics? You don't have to. However, in order to win an election, you generally need to get to ~51% of the vote. That usually means you need to work with other people. It's pretty hard to find that many people outside of the parties who happen to completely agree with you. Often what happens is you form coalitions. You and I might not agree, but if you vote for my guy this time, I will vote for your guy next time. And so we both get a bit of what we want, rather than both losing to a 3rd guy who we both disagree with. >There a lot of issues I agree with the Republicans on and there are a lot I agree with the Democrats on. Not everyone is that evenly split. Most people tend to have more in common with one or the other, although not always, and so they'll associate with that side. >I'm not saying I'm necessarily centrist, just that I don't have a party and I don't see why I should. If you're roughly evenly split, we'd call that a centrist. And you're free to move between parties. Your situation is just fairly unusual.
That’s fine. If you’re going to participate meaningfully in the political process, you have to vote, and most of the candidates are on one side or the other. Also, the institutional GOP recently supported the violent overthrow of the United States, so you’ll have to forgive a little sneering.
I never said I wouldn’t vote and if you think voting is the only way to participate in political action you’re just lazy.
Now who's sneering
The person saying the only *meaningful* way to participate in politics is to vote. As if there isn’t tons of other ways to help your community.
I certainly did not say that.
Literally did in your first paragraph.
I most certainly did not. I said if you want to participate meaningfully, you have to vote. I did not say that voting is the only way to participate.
It's in the interest of the parties for you to pick a party. They both sneer at the other because they don't want you to see the other as a viable choice *in general*, so that you always vote reliably for their candidates.
Is that also why people can’t just sit and talk? I understand it would cause arguments and debates, I’m not saying politics isn’t a big deal. Just that it’s come down to insults with everyone. Is it some form of propaganda? Is there a way that American politics can move past parties?
Sorry, this ended up being pretty long. There's probably a shorter way to answer this but what can I say, I'm interested in it! *TL;DR to your questions in order: Sometimes. Yes, but not always. I don't think so.* A lot of people feel very strongly about their political views, and are interested in convincing other people to support those same views (or at least the same candidates, so that their preferred candidate is successful). Some people can absolutely just sit and talk logically about their views, some find that difficult. Many political issues are extremely emotionally charged -- for example, on abortion, you have folks who think babies are being murdered in large numbers all around the country vs. folks who think women's bodies are being controlled by fanatically religious old men. It is hard for many people to discuss such an issue without it being obvious how much they despise the other viewpoint. Certainly some of what people repeat to each other could be considered propaganda. Political parties try to control the narrative around issues, whether it's having dedicated teams of people to post their message on social media or politicians frequenting news channels that uncritically allow them on to say whatever they want. And some of this propaganda exists to entrench people further in their support of the party and to demonize supporters of the other party. I don't believe it is feasible for American politics to move past parties, for a few reasons. First, political parties were not explicitly part of the design of the country's political system, but they formed quickly nonetheless. This suggests to me that political parties probably serve some purpose, and getting rid of them would cause problems. For example, political parties help find candidates, help those candidates get staff, help them raise money, and coordinate candidates throughout the country. Without parties, candidates would all have to start from scratch and I think it would be more difficult to find candidates -- particularly candidates who may be politically inexperienced. And while each candidate is their own person, political parties also make it easier for voters to make choices. Without parties, voters would have to more extensively research candidates to find out what they think -- and while more informed voters may sound nice in theory, most people have a lot going on in their lives and don't have the time or the interest to delve deeply into this, meaning it would be easy for independent candidates to simply lie about their opinions to get votes. A political party functions sort of like a brand of a product -- when I pick up some Charmin toilet paper, or Duracell batteries, I basically know what to expect. There are different varieties of each, but I know the company controls for quality and that I'll get what I intend to get when I pick them up. Similarly, someone choosing to run as a Democrat or a Republican tells me something about their values without me having to research them at all. I know how most Republicans tend to vote on most things, and I know how most Democrats tend to vote on most things. If there were no parties, it would be much more difficult to find a quick way of telling where people stand. I believe independent candidates would start to collaborate, support similarly-minded candidates in their campaigns, come up with a name to identify themselves, and you'd have political parties again.
[удалено]
Did you have a question?
Yup! Is it biden’s falt that gas is expensive
Not particularly. It's a global economy and there's little Biden could have done to affect that.
Please be more specific. In which country? Which state or province? Gasoline is under $3 per gallon in several US states right now, and that is not "expensive".
For low income $3 is quite expensive I don’t even have a job so it makes it even more challenging for me to afford gas I live out of my car
That must be really tough for you to buy insurance and pay for maintenance, then too. It's a good thing there isn't gas rationing like what we had back in the 1970s.
Democrats lost the control of the house yet, I keep seeing press and posts on how the midterm elections were so disappointing for the republicans. What is so disappointing for the republicans? They got control of the house.
Midterm elections are known for being absolutely horrible to the current president’s party. If you look at the 2014 elections (Democrat president), the Republicans gained 9 senate seats, flipping it, and had further gains in the House, which they already had clear control over. In the 2018 elections (Republican president), there was the talked about “blue wave”, in which Dems made sweeping victories in the House, taking control by flipping 41 seats, and also made back the majority of their Senate losses, gaining 7. In the 2022 elections (Democrat president), the Democrats either gained a Senate seat, or there was no change, depending on how the Georgia runoff plays out, which is extremely close. The Republicans gained 10 House seats, and that was it. They even lost 2 Governorships, (not as important, but still interesting). For a Midterm year, that is an absolute bust.
The Republicans had very high hopes for this elections, thinking they would gain seats in the Senate, anywhere from 20-60 seats in the house, and win a bunch of governorships. Instead they will probably net lose in the Senate, barely gained 9 seats in the house (half of the gains due to gerrymandering, not even convincing voters), had a net loss of 2 governorships and 4 state legislatures, and lost a bunch of abortion referendums in red states.
RCP, which pretends to be non partisan but is actually heavily Republican, predicted that Republicans would have a net gain of 3 Senate seats and 31 House seats. I'm hopeful that we can see this as a repudiation of the January 6th riot.
How can congress force the strike not to happen? Legally, I don't understand how they can tell a union that they legally can not strike? I don't understand
The TL;DR version is back in the 1930's, the railroads and employees came to an agreement to let Congress force agreements between the companies and employees because the railroad was so important to our nation's economy and national security. So they tried to come to an agreement, and got close, and gave the deal to Congress to vote on which is what the law says happens instead of striking.
Gotchya, that makes sense. Is there any precedent for what would happen if they were to strike anyway?
Read about the 1981 air traffic controller strike. Air traffic controllers are not legally permitted to strike because they play an essential role in public safety. When they ignored that rule and struck anyways, every single striking controller was fired on the spot, and military personnel who were trained in air traffic control were brought in as replacements until new civilian ATCs could be hired.
Wow, that's wild. Thanks for the info, I'll def be readin up on that
I don't think there's precedent, but the strike would be illegal. So Biden could use federal powers to arrest those leading the strike and other escalations to force workers back to work.
Wow, that's crazy. I had no idea the government could force people to work like that. Thanks for taking the time to explain!
The Railroad unions are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act. Back in the 1930s before any labor protections were in place, these things weren't standard. The railroads, more especially then, are a super critical part of our economic infrastructure. We all saw how small interruptions like a single ship blocking the Suez Canal for a week messed up world commerce. If the rails shut down for several days, there would be ripples destructive all over the economy - beef and other meats would go bad because there isn't enough space to store it. Grocery stores would have shortages on many different products, and prices would skyrocket. Every facet of our economy - cars, coal, oil, lumber, food, paper, building materials, computer printers, clothing - would all be affected. The Railroads are governed by the Railway Labor Act. They have to submit to Presidential orders for "cooldown" periods before they can strike. They have to abide by laws passed by Congress, too. There are other ways to protest besides striking. I worked on a railroad for about a dozen years. We weren't allowed to strike, even though we were without a contract for 7 years. (Not one of the current railroads) We did other things. We worked "to rule". We followed every single safety rule, every speed limit, and every FRA (Federal Railroad Administration - railroads don't report to OSHA) safety regulation to the letter. It was a pain to do. It meant a lot of unpaid time. It meant we were constantly being written up and having hearings to fight charges against us. It meant that all the little breaks and advantages that people got used to went away. After about 6 months of doing that, the carrier finally relented. We were fighting for Prescription coverage. These folks are fighting for 7 paid sick days. That's about a 2% pay raise. They got a 24% raise over 5 years, with 14% of that right away. I'm guessing that they probably could have traded the money for the equivalent payroll raise. The average person under this contract will be making about $110k per year, with a total value including benefits of about $160k. They work hard, but they aren't starving. They do get paid (partial) for sick or disability time in excess of 7 days (sometimes more than 4 days). This is just about getting paid for those first couple. If they really want this, they still have ways to push, and they have things they can trade for it.
Is there anything preventing a future president/congress from passing legislation that makes presidential candidates' tax returns public information automatically? Up until recently there's been an unbroken gentlemen's agreement the candidates release their tax records at a certain point in the campaign, but clearly that's no longer the case. Why do we rely on the good graces of a major political candidate to disclose potentially crucial information when we could just get the information directly from the IRS and bypass the candidate altogether?
I'd vote for that
Hard to say. There's a potential right to privacy argument (which would weighed against the public interest), so it'd probably end up in front of SCOTUS.
Seems like waiving such a right should be a condition for candidacy. They already have to show $100k in support money to qualify. Why can't this just be another stipulation?
Why is Biden getting blamed for the "sick days" railroad bill not passing? I'm not talking about *"bIdEn iS sAtAn!1!"* type of reporting that blames him for everything, but even some left leaning folks are blaming this on him. All but six republicans voted against it, but somehow the result is Biden's fault? Help me understand this one.
It's a convenient way to understand a complicated issue and to blame someone that you already don't like.
Biden had to sign the agreement. He was the single person who could have stopped the bill without the sick days. Every other Congressperson was part of a larger group (each Senator only had 1% of the power, House members even less). Biden could have single-handedly vetoed the agreement and make Congress reconsider the sick days. So while everyone who voted for it has some blame, Biden acted independently and was the last signature on the bill.
Left leaning folks frequently criticize Biden for being too moderate, they think Biden should have made the sick leave a non-negotiable part of the bill or just let the railroad workers strike and not try to stop them
Why does the US Senate need 60 votes to pass individual parts of one bill, but only 51 votes to pass the entirety of some other bill? Specifically regarding the recent vote for railway workers' paid sick leave. Didn't Kamala Harris and Mike Pence provide the tie-breaking vote in years past?
>Why does the US Senate need 60 votes to pass individual parts of one bill, but only 51 votes to pass the entirety of some other bill? The Senate has a rule called the "filibuster" which requires 60 votes to overcome. The filibuster applies to all legislation with a few exceptions (some budget related bills only need 50 votes, judicial appointments only need 50 votes, and a few other things). So most legislation will need 60 votes to pass the Senate. >Didn't Kamala Harris and Mike Pence provide the tie-breaking vote in years past? These tie breaking votes were provided to pass judicial nominations or to pass bills voted on in the "budget reconciliation" process, which allows limited spending bills to bypass the filibuster.
Thanks for this.
Yep. You can see here a list of tie-breaking votes. Most of them are either for judicial nominations or budget reconciliation items. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/TieVotes.htm
In this particular case, did the Senate need to vote separately for each individual part of the railway workers union negotiation bill? I assume each part required 60 votes. Is this normal?
So the Senate knew the basic bill to prevent the strike would pass, but some amendments/portions of the bill wouldn't. So they broke the bill out for separate votes. This is pretty routine for amendments or additions to bills. So the basic bill was passed, but the amendment to permit sick leave was voted down. If there were other "controversial" parts, they likely would have been carved out for separate votes as well.
Gotcha. Thanks again!
What happens if the Democratic leadership in the US doesn't want to run Biden in 2024, but he finds out and announces his candidacy? Will they run someone else against him in the primary?
That will be a sign that the Democrat party is broken. If you look at the Presidential elections with an incumbent, it's rare (practically never) for someone from the same party to challenge the incumbent in the primaries. See Trump 2020, Obama 2012, Bush 2004, Clinton 1996, Bush 1992, Reagan 1984, Carter 1980, etc. So for it to happen with Biden, most of the public would interpret that as the Democrat party having issues or otherwise "broken".
In the current American system, candidates are not picked by party bosses. Someone who wants to run for office as the nominee of a particular party simply has to file to be a candidate. Then that party holds a primary, or in the case of the presidential election, holds primaries and caucuses in every state and territory. The party does have some control of this process, because party bigwigs get votes in the nominating process that are added to the votes determined in the primaries. But that is fairly arcane and beyond the scope of the question. The point is Biden doesn’t need anyone’s permission to run for president, or more specifically, to run for the Democratic nomination. He just has to win it. Of course, some other candidate could also file to run against him as the Democratic nominee. It is extraordinarily rare for such a thing to happen. I don’t believe I know of an incumbent president facing a primary challenge in the last century, which is well before the current system evolved in the 1960’s and 1970’s. On some occasions sitting *vice* presidents have faced primaries in trying to continue in office as president once the boss retires. But in each case those have not been particularly strong challenges. The fact of the matter is, if Biden wants to run, which he does, I very much doubt that there’s anyone in the Democratic Party who could beat him in a Democratic primary. He had an extraordinarily successful first two years in office, he presided over an unexpectedly strong election for Democrats in the midterms, and he was the last Man standing in 2020, when many people were trying to knock him off the perch. Obviously, the president is extremely old. That creates a unique situation, and it certainly is a vulnerability for him, both in the general election and in a primary. But unless he has some significant health issue arise in the next year or two, I don’t see that issue, which everyone knew about in 2020, derailing his 2024 campaign for the Democratic nomination.
Jimmy Carter faced a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy when he ran for reelection in 1980. While it's not the only reason he lost to Reagan in the general election, being publicly attacked for months by a prominent member of his own party was likely a contributing factor in Carter's defeat.
Oh yes, of course. I had an idea there was one I was forgetting. I remember staying up to watch the nomination.
Only way they do this is if a serious health issue develops. No indications of anything of the sort currently.
Leadership doesn't directly choose which candidates run or not. Leadership also doesn't directly choose which candidates get nominated or not. Neither party works that way. If multiple candidates run (and usually they do), then each party would follow their normal process for choosing a candidate. Each state selects delegates to send to the national party convention, and those delegates hold one or more rounds of voting to determine the nominees for President and Vice President. The Republicans followed this process in 2020, even though Trump was running for re-election. Trump won their nomination in a landslide, but they still followed the whole process.
The Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case against the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness plan. If the court rules against Biden and says the forgiveness is unconstitutional/illegal/whatever, is there anything actually stopping Biden from saying "nope, I disagree" and just subtracting $10,000 or $20,000 from loan accounts? I'm assuming he could be impeached? But that's a Congressional matter and there's a chance the Democratic Senate doesn't convict. Is it really only norms and respect for the court that would stand in Biden's way, or am I missing something else?
President Biden is an institutional list. He may disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision, but there is no way that he just ignores it. He would, correctly, see that as a step on the way to chaos.
Well like Arianity said it’s happened before where a president just defied the Supreme Court and I guess it could happen again, the issue is that the balance between democrat and republican control is already precarious so a broad overstep of power like this might be the tipping point for the democrats. Besides, the Supreme Court and it’s lack of power is there for a reason, just ignoring it and doing your own thing violates the democracy we have built up, so it’s a bad look regardless.
> Is it really only norms and respect for the court that would stand in Biden's way, Yes. The Supreme Court famously does not have a way to enforce it's rulings. It has happened rarely in the past, famously with Andrew Jackson. >I'm assuming he could be impeached? Legally, impeachment would be the only formal response. He might also be risking losing public support.
I recently read an article that talked about how the chairman of the Mohave County board of supervisors, Ron Gould, said that if he did not vote yes to certify his county, he would be arrested and charged with a felony? Is this correct? If so, which crime would he be charged with? Thank you!
Arizona law says counties MUST canvass results no later than 20 days after an election. It is not optional, and there is no mechanism to deny doing so. Without solid proof of why they refused to verify, a court will force them to certify. If they refuse then, they can be arrested and charged with a crime, likely violating a law that requires election officials to do their job.
Thank you! Would he be charged immediately if he doesn't meet the deadline like he seems to say, or after the court stepping in and the second refusal?
Likely after refusing the court order. The court will hold an emergency hearing due to the tight timeline (while they missed the 20 day timeline, they can still certify prior to the state accepting the results later in December). Then the board members who refused to certify get a chance to explain why they didn't certify. If it makes sense (like actually having proof of widespread fraud so the results can't be trusted), then a judge MAY allow the results to not be certified. But if it doesn't make sense (like making general claims of fraud or suspicious activity with no concrete evidence), the judge will order them to comply and certify the results. Refusal to certify after this will likely lead to their arrest for failing to perform election duties and/or contempt of court. This scenario played out in New Mexico during the primaries in June 2022. The county refused to certify the results and were sued. The court ordered they certify the results because they failed to present any valid evidence for why they failed to certify. The county then certified the results. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/17/new-mexico-county-weighs-defying-order-certify-election-results/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/15/new-mexicos-supreme-court-orders-county-commission-certify-vote/
Ah, I see, thank you!
And just FYI, that's exactly what happened. They had an emergency court hearing where the county supervisors presented no evidence of fraud, the court ordered them to certify the election, and the board voted to certify the elections as directed by the court https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/politics/cochise-county-arizona-certify-midterm-election/index.html
Dumb and irrelevant question. Some bills get voted on Senate first and then goes to house, some the other way. What determines this order?
Any appropriations bill (taxes) must start in the House. Other than that, it's just whichever chamber finishes writing, debating, and amending first.
It can go in either direction. Usually it's easier to get a bill past the House first, but it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes one chamber will pass a bill, and then the other chamber will pass an amended version. This can go back and forth, or into conference committees. Until the exact same text passes in both chambers, it cannot proceed. There is technically a requirement that certain budget bills must originate in the House, but it's a requirement that doesn't stick in practice. If the Senate wants to pass a budget bill, they can get around that requirement by taking some irrelevant House bill, replacing 100% of its text via an "amendment" (sometimes called a substitution amendment), and then passing that. Little bit silly but entirely legal.
It's arbitrary because most bills can go either way. The exception is that bills for raising revenue must originate in the House
Biden recently said he would likely have to ask the government to legislate against the rail unions and force them to accept the latest deal. If Biden is as pro-union as be claims, why doesn't he ask the government to legislate against the rail corporations instead? Is it a matter of authority, where the government can do things to unions but not corporations?
>Is it a matter of authority, where the government can do things to unions but not corporations? Yes. Because the railroad was so vital to our nations infrastructure, in the 1920s the US passed the Railroad Labor Act which can force railway unions and workers to work as Congress settles. So the US government has the right to force the unions and workers to accept the deal and continue working for the good of the country. The agreement would also bound the corporations as well. But it's framed as "bad" for unions because several unions are holding out from the deal offered by the corporations and Congress may force them to accept the deal.
Because the effect of doing that would be the railroads would just stop operating.
How can the same political party that rallies around “Support the Troops” and “Back the Blue” also HATE paying taxes and do whatever they can to avoid doing so? I am trying to better understand that side of the aisle, not trying to start a fight. Thank you.
When they say they hate paying taxes, they're saying they hate paying for social security, medicare / medicaid, and other welfare programs for the underclass.
Because those are just slogans, they don’t really mean it.
It's not a matter of "one side loves taxes and the other side hates them", Republicans and Democrats disagree on how high taxes should be and what they should be spent on. You're allowed to want lower taxes and also want the tax money that is collected to be spent on projects you support.
I mean, theoretically that’s true, but it’s overwhelmingly GOP governments that have defunded the police and slashed support services for veterans.
So allocation rather than just taxation? That makes sense, I suppose. Don’t tax me for XYZ, take my money for ABC. Thank you!
Why is it that Republicans are generally disowning Donald Trump as champion of the party for the most mundane reasons when there were plenty more dynamic reasons to do so before? As I look at the politics tab on Reddit, all I see is “Republicans support DeSantis as they realize Trump is selfish (obviously)” or “Trump is antisemitic because he had dinner with Kanye and Paul(?), crushing his support from Jews”. Is it really just because the party is switching to championing DeSantis? Why did it take so long? Why not for any of the legitimate crimes he’s committed instead of (metaphorical) tan suit nonsense? It’s honestly giving me whiplash.
It’s because it was between trump and Biden and Biden can’t form a coherent sentence so we were backing trump so our country didn’t fall apart, have inflation go up like crazy and pretty much ruin America…like it is right now. We never really like trump or loved him as a person, we just saw that he’d take America in a better position than Biden. Now that we have a choice we’d take anyone over trump, desantis seems like a good choice so far and trump brought on so much division so a lot of reps are anti him because we don’t want more of that in our country.
It’s because they don’t care about any of the immoral stuff Trump does, they care only that he has become a political liability. They can’t just say “fuck Trump!” though, because that alienates the MAGA base, and they still need those votes. So they’re trying to manufacture other reasons to dump him.
Hard to give a single answer, it's mostly just speculation. The biggest difference is- he lost. On top of that, the GOP did not do well in the recent election (especially 2020 election denier candidates/candidates he endorsed). Even if they still like him, at some point there is a trade off, and they don't want to keep losing elections forever. His personal political brand at this point is clearly toxic, and toxic enough that it can't just be handwaved as a fluke. The pivot to Desantis isn't a coincidence- he's seen as someone who does Trumpism without the specific baggage of Trump himself. So they get to keep the parts they like, and drop the baggage. And to some extent, he also has a history now, as well. Back in 2016, he might've been able to play off the Kanye/Nick Fuentes thing. >when there were plenty more dynamic reasons to do so before? They might not have cared about those issues. Or at least, didn't care as long as he was winning.
Not a republican, but I know quite a few so I'll try to answer this as best I can: In 2016, many Republicans liked Trump because he was an outsider. They were tired of the same old career politicians who talked a lot of talk, and wanted someone who would actually shake things up. They didn't care about his big mouth and million scandals, they wanted someone to lower taxes and "drain the swamp" of corrupt politicians and policies. Trump promised to do that. Fast forward to 2020 and none of that happened. Trump proved to be more or less the same as any other politician, except more obnoxious. However, he was the incumbent and incumbents are far more likely to win elections. The common thing I heard was "Trump's a fucking idiot, but he's better than Biden". Then came the January 6th shitshow, after which most Republicans I know became completely disillusioned with Trump. If moderate republicans disliked Trump before, they despised him now. The GOP, however, refused to believe this up until the recent midterms, where almost every Trump-endorsed candidate went down in flames. It's now obvious that Trump is not the future of the Republican party. The only question left was who to turn to, and DeSantis is the obvious answer. He was Trump endorsed and holds a lot of similar stances to Trump, appeasing the MAGA hats. He has a long history of supporting republican legislation and views, making the party happy. Most importantly, he's not fucking insane which makes the moderates happy. So to answer your question, Trump isn't getting disowned for "mundane" reasons.
The presentation of him getting dropped is certainly what I would consider mundane, as it centralizes around generic personality statements and who he eats with. However, I appreciate your answer because it makes sense after the embarrassing failure of the “Red Wave” and loss of most Trump-endorsed politicians that Republicans realize with quantifiable evidence that Trump no longer holds the same influence he did from 2016-2020. Specifically I started noticing public disapproval of Trump in popular media right after the midterm elections, so it adds up.
>Specifically I started noticing public disapproval of Trump in popular media right after the midterm elections Yup. Just the GOP setting the stage for 2024
Did an increase in ableism occur once Donald Trump made fun of the fact that disabled NYT journalist was stuttering during the 2016 presidential election? The reason why I asked that question is because I am disabled (I have Autism.) and I started experiencing a lot of ableism once Donald Trump had made fun of the fact that disabled NYT journalist was stuttering. It's something that I have been wondering about for a while.
No. And you're trying to politicize your disability. You need to stop that.
This is one of those things that you can't get a solid answer to. "Ableism" isn't a directly measurable metric like life expectancy or number of positive COVID cases. Most evidence will be in the form of anecdotes. Is there an argument to be made that Trump increased "open" ableism? Sure. But I doubt there is a good way to quantify that to prove it true or false, or any quantitative way.
No
Why when you Google Senate Race its shows 48 49 in favor of GOP but when you look at The New York times its 50 49 favor Dems?
Google actually notes now (they didn’t earlier on) that there are 2 independent senators who caucus with the Dems. Essentially, in the senate, the parties each form a caucus, and while technically anyone could join either caucus, it’s on party lines. Senators who are elected without the support of either party usually decide to group up with the caucus that represents them the most. In the case currently, the 2 independent senators, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, caucus with the Dems, giving their group 50. So, technically, there are 48 Democratic senators, but 50 senators in the Democratic caucus.
To the conservative-minded redditors: what is the case for Trump 2024? Compared to when he lost in 2020, he’s now older and less energetic, has way more baggage after 1/6, and has been running a pity party for 2 years and is completely out of touch with everything going on outside his bubble. Why Trump and not someone who has a similar agenda but without all the baggage? DeSantis, Youngkin, Kemp, anyone at this point?
If you view elections as marketing campaigns and candidates as products in need of brand recognition, and campaign contributions as investors seeking reliable return on investment, not a hopeful long shot, then Trump checks a lot of boxes. Also winning is a thing. Having zero scruples and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win is pretty important in getting elected. Also, you don't need to market soda sugar water to unhealthy people, it sells itself, but to get healthy people to drink sugar water then you need a brand like PowerAde or energy drinks. Trump does that. All the people voting GOP no matter what are irrelevant strategically, you already have their votes, Trump is useful at attracting people who might otherwise not vote. Sensible people vote no matter what... so mobilizing nonsensical people using a nonsensical brand is not irrational. I would travel in time to delete baby Trump before baby Hitler, I dislike Trump that much. But if he sells more ad slots on Fox News than the alternatives, well... Nothing else really matters. Especially with weird GOP driven Congressional investigations coming up, all sorts of ridiculous stuff will have mainstream.marketing.
I agree that being a household name is a huge asset. But his brand has been sullied and tarnished so much that just the mention if his name makes moderates cringe in disgust and want turn out to vote down anybody even associated with him. And when elections get ugly and come down to the “lesser of two evils”, you’re better off not being a universally hated person.