Ryan Freire wrote: Knight who says Meh wrote: Ryan Freire wrote: Knight who says Meh wrote: Ryan Freire wrote: Doubling down on blaming everything but her own campaign for the loss is sure to work in 2018 What is it about Clinton that causes you to so openly distort the facts about her? Do you know the reason? Are you even aware you are doing it? What is it that causes you to reflexively defend someone who lost against the host of celebrity apprentice? Because I prefer the truth to lies. Mmhmm "Am I out of touch? No its the kids who are wrong!" Still not an answer to any of my questions...
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On display right here: How Democrats lose.
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Jesse Heinig wrote: On display right here: How Democrats lose. It's not any one thing.
Most of it stems from having to give people a reality based platform and somehow make that compete with the best (whatever that is) version of a mythical past when america was perfect (whenever that was)
I was mostly referring to the Internet slap-fight over Hillary (not just here, but all over). It's a specific instance of the general problem of an inability to reach a consensus - or at least what the left would call "diversity of tactics."
No it isn't. This is the second-guessing that follows every failure. A political campaign is a complex event with many, many factors influencing it and so everyone has their own pet theory of what was the most important.
Even on the face of it, your logic is supremely flawed.
1) Democrats are arguing over why they lost
2) That means democrats aren't unified
3) therefore, that explains why democrats lost
You're literally using events AFTER the election to explain the election.
In addition, your argument applies equally to evidence from before to the election if the results had been flipped. I could point to a massive field of republican candidates that led to a fractured republican party, resulting in a loss.
If a theory applies equally as well to the opposite result, it's probably not a very good theory as it doesn't actually tell you why the current result happened.
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Clinton's loss was so ridiculously narrow (i.e. less than 80k people spread across three states) that 'why she lost' can accurately be put down to dozens of different things;
the Comey letter
the Russian hacking
not enough battleground campaigning
too many Wall Street ties
Jill Stein siphoning off votes
Bernie Bros refusing to back her
working class whites upset that 'others' were 'getting too much'
desire for change
et cetera
Had any one of these things been different she likely would have won... because her loss was a ridiculously narrow fluke.
The message I take away from that is... the Democrats do not really need to change much at all. Clinton should have won... and thus, if everything else stayed exactly the same then even just the 'desire for change' factor should be enough flip things back to the Democrats while Trump is in office.
That is not to say that the Democrats can't or shouldn't change things to do better... just that their 'loss' in the last election was so tiny that there really isn't any reason to panic. They're in a much stronger position than many people imagine... which is why the GOP is refusing Trump's call to get rid of the legislative filibuster in the Senate. They know that they are going to need it soon.
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CBDunkerson wrote:
The message I take away from that is... the Democrats do not really need to change much at all. Clinton should have won... and thus, if everything else stayed exactly the same then even just the 'desire for change' factor should be enough flip things back to the Democrats while Trump is in office.
That is the sadist thing I've read in a long time. No matter who you vote for the American people lose.
I don't think folks should get too complacent. My die hard catholic republican grandmother looks 10 years younger since Trump took office. As many dems/progressives getting calls to action from this admin, there are as many righties that are also greatly emboldened by the win. Though as has been mentioned there are numerous factors in any election to consider. Not changing anything isn't a sure shot, but probably what we should expect.
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CBDunkerson wrote: Clinton's loss was so ridiculously narrow (i.e. less than 80k people spread across three states) that 'why she lost' can accurately be put down to dozens of different things;
the Comey letter
the Russian hacking
not enough battleground campaigning
too many Wall Street ties
Jill Stein siphoning off votes
Bernie Bros refusing to back her
working class whites upset that 'others' were 'getting too much'
desire for change
et cetera
Had any one of these things been different she likely would have won... because her loss was a ridiculously narrow fluke.
The message I take away from that is... the Democrats do not really need to change much at all. Clinton should have won... and thus, if everything else stayed exactly the same then even just the 'desire for change' factor should be enough flip things back to the Democrats while Trump is in office.
That is not to say that the Democrats can't or shouldn't change things to do better... just that their 'loss' in the last election was so tiny that there really isn't any reason to panic. They're in a much stronger position than many people imagine... which is why the GOP is refusing Trump's call to get rid of the legislative filibuster in the Senate. They know that they are going to need it soon.
That's a fair assessment of her loss I think.
Worth remembering that Democrats gained seats in both the House and Senate.
The overall losses of Democratic offices, particularly on the state level over the last few cycles are harder to explain on those grounds. That's where the real problems lie, not in the headline races.
Guy Humual wrote: CBDunkerson wrote:
The message I take away from that is... the Democrats do not really need to change much at all. Clinton should have won... and thus, if everything else stayed exactly the same then even just the 'desire for change' factor should be enough flip things back to the Democrats while Trump is in office.
That is the sadist thing I've read in a long time. No matter who you vote for the American people lose. *saddest
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Guy Humual wrote: CBDunkerson wrote:
The message I take away from that is... the Democrats do not really need to change much at all. Clinton should have won... and thus, if everything else stayed exactly the same then even just the 'desire for change' factor should be enough flip things back to the Democrats while Trump is in office.
That is the sadist thing I've read in a long time. No matter who you vote for the American people lose. No, reading about the 15 y/o kid who was killed by police a few days ago was much sadder.
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Irontruth wrote: Guy Humual wrote: CBDunkerson wrote:
The message I take away from that is... the Democrats do not really need to change much at all. Clinton should have won... and thus, if everything else stayed exactly the same then even just the 'desire for change' factor should be enough flip things back to the Democrats while Trump is in office.
That is the sadist thing I've read in a long time. No matter who you vote for the American people lose. No, reading about the 15 y/o kid who was killed by police a few days ago was much sadder. Or the murder-suicide that just happened at a community college 3 minutes from my current location.
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Clinton was defeated by the MOST DISAPPROVED CANDIDATE IN HISTORY! She outspent him almost 2:1, had much more favorable coverage overall, and strong backing from her own party. She was defeated by a walking dumpster fire shat out into a vaguely human form.
If you think she did well enough, and you just have to wait, that is a strong indication the Dems are going to lose again.
Also, people seem to be forgetting a primary reason she lost - The Clinton name is synonymous with outsourcing and economic decline. Most of the country got screwed by Bill Clintons economic policies, and don't want more of the same crap.
America doesn't like the job Democrats have been doing for the past couple of decades. The sooner the party figures this out, and makes SERIOUS CHANGES, the sooner they can stop losing elections.
Fergie wrote: Clinton was defeated by the MOST DISAPPROVED CANDIDATE IN HISTORY! She outspent him almost 2:1, had much more favorable coverage overall, and strong backing from her own party. She was defeated by a walking dumpster fire shat out into a vaguely human form. Also got more votes than him and in any other electorial system would have won. Problem is in america you dont win by votes you win by states
The problems with the electorial college.
Honestly I'd say the most sure way to fix it would be to change to a diffrent voting system that allows the person who actually got the most votes to win (Not that it's liklly to happen any time soon.)
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Kevin Mack wrote: . Problem is in america you dont win by votes you win by states
This is not new information by any means and the fact that the DNC has yet to adapt to this knowledge imparted to 5th graders speaks to profound incompetence rather than some perceived unfairness.
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Fergie wrote: Also, people seem to be forgetting a primary reason she lost - The Clinton name is synonymous with outsourcing and economic decline. Most of the country got screwed by Bill Clintons economic policies, and don't want more of the same crap.
America doesn't like the job Democrats have been doing for the past couple of decades. The sooner the party figures this out, and makes SERIOUS CHANGES, the sooner they can stop losing elections.
I am morbidly curious about where this myth comes from, since:
* Unemployment declined all throughout Bill Clinton's presidency (1993-2001)
* With a few oddities (one spike up and one spike down, both of which quickly reverted to norm), wages generally climbed under the Clinton presidency
* Inflation was stable or slightly declining for much of the Clinton presidency
So, 66 pages in, has anyone changed their mind on why exactly the democrats lost the election? Have you found someone else's argument/pet theory persuasive?
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Irontruth wrote: So, 66 pages in, has anyone changed their mind on why exactly the democrats lost the election? Have you found someone else's argument/pet theory persuasive? Well, looking for actual data to support or refute a hypothesis certainly made me do some evaluation.
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Jesse Heinig wrote: * Unemployment declined all throughout Bill Clinton's presidency (1993-2001) Sure, if you throw 1% of the working-age population -- predominantly those unemployed or under-employed -- in prison for minor drug offenses, none of those people are going to be listed as "unemployed" any more. And then you can hire a lot of guards, and more contractors to build more prisons. This isn't maybe the best way to reduce unemployment, to my mind, but it sure helps the numbers.
Jesse Heinig wrote: * With a few oddities (one spike up and one spike down, both of which quickly reverted to norm), wages generally climbed under the Clinton presidency Are those in terms of % increase in mean USD? Because you can reduce middle-class wages, and then easily make up the difference and then some by increasing the wages of the highest earners. And, of course, your lowest earners are now in prison (see above), so their wages aren't even being factored into the new averages.
In looking at wage increase, you also need to compare that with inflation over the same time period, because if your wages go up 2% and inflation is 3%, for example, you're actually worse off than you were.
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Kirth Gersen wrote: Because you can reduce middle-class wages, and then easily make up the difference and then some by massively increasing the wages of the highest earners. One might even note that this is the big issue behind that pesky wealth disparity everyone's complaining about. The Dow looks good, per worker productivity is high(despite the buying power of their wages being stagnant or falling), people who can afford to own a lot of stocks are making money (which means yay economy! as far as most media/politicians are concerned), unemployment goes down (Because people who lost full time decent waged positions finally had to take a part time minimum wage service job to pay bills).
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Ryan Freire wrote: Kevin Mack wrote: . Problem is in america you dont win by votes you win by states
This is not new information by any means and the fact that the DNC has yet to adapt to this knowledge imparted to 5th graders speaks to profound incompetence rather than some perceived unfairness. Being unable to overcome a built in bias isn't evidence of some horrible flaw.
"You need 55% of the vote, your opponent only needs 45%. Even 5th graders know that, so I don't see why you haven't simply adapted to it."
There is a huge bias towards low population, mostly rural areas built in to our political system. Such areas are by historically less open to change and to new ideas. The rural/city divide goes way, way back.
I know you think this is trivial to overcome with economic policies, because apparently no one votes on social issues or based on tribalism, but I think that's pure nonsense.
It's certainly possible actual better economic policies would help, but you've actually got to implement them, not just talk about them, if you want to overcome existing divisions. And, in the recent past, you'd have to do that over unrelenting Republican opposition.
Kirth Gersen wrote: Jesse Heinig wrote: * Unemployment declined all throughout Bill Clinton's presidency (1993-2001) Sure, if you throw 1% of the working-age population -- predominantly those unemployed or under-employed -- in prison for minor drug offenses, none of those people are going to be listed as "unemployed" any more. And then you can hire a lot of guards, and more contractors to build more prisons. This isn't maybe the best way to reduce unemployment, to my mind, but it sure helps the numbers.
Jesse Heinig wrote: * With a few oddities (one spike up and one spike down, both of which quickly reverted to norm), wages generally climbed under the Clinton presidency Are those in terms of % increase in mean USD? Because you can reduce middle-class wages, and then easily make up the difference and then some by increasing the wages of the highest earners. And, of course, your lowest earners are now in prison (see above), so their wages aren't even being factored into the new averages.
In looking at wage increase, you also need to compare that with inflation over the same time period, because if your wages go up 2% and inflation is 3%, for example, you're actually worse off than you were. Seriously? I'll grant I don't actually see the definitions on that linked page, but it's obviously adjusted for inflation or the 60s numbers would be a tiny fraction of modern income.
And nobody even bothers talking about wages in anything other than median. You have to go looking to find anything else.
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Ryan Freire wrote: Kirth Gersen wrote: Because you can reduce middle-class wages, and then easily make up the difference and then some by massively increasing the wages of the highest earners. One might even note that this is the big issue behind that pesky wealth disparity everyone's complaining about. The Dow looks good, per worker productivity is high(despite the buying power of their wages being stagnant or falling), people who can afford to own a lot of stocks are making money (which means yay economy! as far as most media/politicians are concerned), unemployment goes down (Because people who lost full time decent waged positions finally had to take a part time minimum wage service job to pay bills). Well yes, to some extent. Though it has nothing to do with the kind of statistics obfuscation Kirth was talking about, since that wasn't actually using the mean.
The median actually shows pretty well how the general population is doing. There aren't a lot of tricks you can play with it. It does hide income inequality though, in the sense that it doesn't tell you how far up the higher incomes go. You have to look at other measures for that.
As for your other points: Look at U6 as well as U3 to see a better measure of underemployment. Also if unemployment is dropping because people are taking part time minimum wage jobs in place of their good jobs, you'll see that in the median wage data - more low wage jobs, median wage drops.
Normally, that's not the pattern we see. Not in the downturn, since we then see unemployment rising and wages fall. In hard times, even the lousy jobs are hard to come by. Maybe in the very beginnings of recovery, but generally wages start to rise as unemployment falls. This was finally starting to happen over the last year or so.
It's certainly true that productivity has been steadily rising without an increase in real wages and that profits have been rising with that.
thejeff wrote: Ryan Freire wrote: Kevin Mack wrote: . Problem is in america you dont win by votes you win by states
This is not new information by any means and the fact that the DNC has yet to adapt to this knowledge imparted to 5th graders speaks to profound incompetence rather than some perceived unfairness. Being unable to overcome a built in bias isn't evidence of some horrible flaw.
"You need 55% of the vote, your opponent only needs 45%. Even 5th graders know that, so I don't see why you haven't simply adapted to it."
There is a huge bias towards low population, mostly rural areas built in to our political system. Such areas are by historically less open to change and to new ideas. The rural/city divide goes way, way back.
I know you think this is trivial to overcome with economic policies, because apparently no one votes on social issues or based on tribalism, but I think that's pure nonsense.
It's certainly possible actual better economic policies would help, but you've actually got to implement them, not just talk about them, if you want to overcome existing divisions. And, in the recent past, you'd have to do that over unrelenting Republican opposition. I'm sorry but it isn't the democrats that are going into this with some massive handicap. They can take more electoral votes for granted than the republican party can by far.
Ryan Freire wrote:
I'm sorry but it isn't the democrats that are going into this with some massive handicap. They can take more electoral votes for granted than the republican party can by far.
Which would be fine if the presidential election (despite how much people loving talking about it) decided the entire course of the country. But a lot of those electoral votes are crammed into a handful of highly populous states, most of which have at least purple regions.
So while Democrats might have an electoral college advantage, Republicans probably have an advantage in the House and Senate.
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Irontruth wrote: So, 66 pages in, has anyone changed their mind on why exactly the democrats lost the election? Have you found someone else's argument/pet theory persuasive? I mostly contribute to hear other peoples ideas, and to have a place to occasional chat about whatever is happening in politics that influences this thread. I am pretty sure almost everyone who is super motivated to post in politics thread have stances that they are pretty firm on
MMCJawa wrote: Ryan Freire wrote:
I'm sorry but it isn't the democrats that are going into this with some massive handicap. They can take more electoral votes for granted than the republican party can by far.
Which would be fine if the presidential election (despite how much people loving talking about it) decided the entire course of the country. But a lot of those electoral votes are crammed into a handful of highly populous states, most of which have at least purple regions.
So while Democrats might have an electoral college advantage, Republicans probably have an advantage in the House and Senate. Which is a completely different argument than what that was a response to and doesn't actually change the fact that
1. The electoral college is a known quantity and has been since forever
2. Thanks to the west coast and NY the democrats have a helluva lead in that game every presidential election.
3. At the state level the quoted phrase
Kevin Mack wrote: . Problem is in america you dont win by votes you win by states simply isn't true, at the state level vote numbers very much matter.
Edit: Frankly at the national level, the whole "popular vote" aspect is the sour grapes cry. Its the argument of the student that didn't read the instructions on the assignment but did A REALLY THOROUGH GOOD JOB on what they actually turned in and is mad they didn't get a good grade, despite not following instructions.
thejeff wrote: Ryan Freire wrote: Kirth Gersen wrote: Because you can reduce middle-class wages, and then easily make up the difference and then some by massively increasing the wages of the highest earners. One might even note that this is the big issue behind that pesky wealth disparity everyone's complaining about. The Dow looks good, per worker productivity is high(despite the buying power of their wages being stagnant or falling), people who can afford to own a lot of stocks are making money (which means yay economy! as far as most media/politicians are concerned), unemployment goes down (Because people who lost full time decent waged positions finally had to take a part time minimum wage service job to pay bills). Well yes, to some extent. Though it has nothing to do with the kind of statistics obfuscation Kirth was talking about, since that wasn't actually using the mean.
The median actually shows pretty well how the general population is doing. There aren't a lot of tricks you can play with it. It does hide income inequality though, in the sense that it doesn't tell you how far up the higher incomes go. You have to look at other measures for that.
As for your other points: Look at U6 as well as U3 to see a better measure of underemployment. Also if unemployment is dropping because people are taking part time minimum wage jobs in place of their good jobs, you'll see that in the median wage data - more low wage jobs, median wage drops.
Normally, that's not the pattern we see. Not in the downturn, since we then see unemployment rising and wages fall. In hard times, even the lousy jobs are hard to come by. Maybe in the very beginnings of recovery, but generally wages start to rise as unemployment falls. This was finally starting to happen over the last year or so.
It's certainly true that productivity has been steadily rising without an increase in real wages and that profits have been rising with that. I don't know that the system itself is terribly out-of-whack, just our application of it. What instead of just arbitrarily deciding how many representatives there should be we had a defined number. Like the number of representatives in the US house should equal (no of states) x 10 + 1. So, you would have 501 members in the US house divided up evenly by state population. This would diminish the voting power of states with only one or two representatives. There would be 604 electoral votes with 303 needed for victory. In the unlikely event that the electoral vote splits 302/302 let the popular vote call it.
Basically, I get the need for the protections the electoral college is meant to provide, I think they are useful, but at present time over-leveraged.
Edit: it looks like I may have replied to the wrong post, but I'm too lazy to go back and fix it.
Edit edit: yeah, I meant to reply to the post two above the one I actually did. :p
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thejeff wrote: Note that I was talking about the first President Bush, Reagan's VP. Who looked like the smart one after his son's term and the model of an elder statesman now.
The bar's been dropping drastically for Republican presidents. I'm really kind of terrified of what the next one will be like.
Yeah but when the Dems are smart like this:
Did the DNC claim in court that it has no obligation to have a fair and impartial primary?
Does it really matter that the Republicans nominate a dufus?
*checks last Novembers election results...*
Nope. Doesn't matter a bit.
Or as Fergie said, "Maybe think about anointing a leader who isn't the second most disapproved candidate in history!"
Or as Jesse Heinig said, "While Sanders is undoubtedly super-popular with a big chunk of the electorate, half the election game is about who you're allowed to vote for and who's allowed to vote, and that's party-controlled. So if you aren't endorsed by the party - meaning able to play the corporate shill game - you can't win."
Irontruth wrote: Guy Humual wrote: CBDunkerson wrote:
The message I take away from that is... the Democrats do not really need to change much at all. Clinton should have won... and thus, if everything else stayed exactly the same then even just the 'desire for change' factor should be enough flip things back to the Democrats while Trump is in office.
That is the saddest thing I've read in a long time. No matter who you vote for the American people lose. No, reading about the 15 y/o kid who was killed by police a few days ago was much sadder. That would be sad if it were a rare occurrence.
Quark Blast wrote: thejeff wrote: Note that I was talking about the first President Bush, Reagan's VP. Who looked like the smart one after his son's term and the model of an elder statesman now.
The bar's been dropping drastically for Republican presidents. I'm really kind of terrified of what the next one will be like.
Yeah but when the Dems are smart like this:
Did the DNC claim in court that it has no obligation to have a fair and impartial primary?
Does it really matter that the Republicans nominate a dufus?
*checks last Novembers election results...*
Nope. Doesn't matter a bit.
Or as Fergie said, "Maybe think about anointing a leader who isn't the second most disapproved candidate in history!"
Or as Jesse Heinig said, "While Sanders is undoubtedly super-popular with a big chunk of the electorate, half the election game is about who you're allowed to vote for and who's allowed to vote, and that's party-controlled. So if you aren't endorsed by the party - meaning able to play the corporate shill game - you can't win." It matters. It matters, because I was talking about the next Republican President, not the next Republican nominee. It matters drastically because politics isn't a game. It matters who gets the job.
Guy Humual wrote: Irontruth wrote: Guy Humual wrote: CBDunkerson wrote:
The message I take away from that is... the Democrats do not really need to change much at all. Clinton should have won... and thus, if everything else stayed exactly the same then even just the 'desire for change' factor should be enough flip things back to the Democrats while Trump is in office.
That is the saddest thing I've read in a long time. No matter who you vote for the American people lose. No, reading about the 15 y/o kid who was killed by police a few days ago was much sadder. That would be sad if it were a rare occurrence. Isn't it more sad because it isn't?
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thejeff wrote: Guy Humual wrote: Irontruth wrote: Guy Humual wrote: CBDunkerson wrote:
The message I take away from that is... the Democrats do not really need to change much at all. Clinton should have won... and thus, if everything else stayed exactly the same then even just the 'desire for change' factor should be enough flip things back to the Democrats while Trump is in office.
That is the saddest thing I've read in a long time. No matter who you vote for the American people lose. No, reading about the 15 y/o kid who was killed by police a few days ago was much sadder. That would be sad if it were a rare occurrence. Isn't it more sad because it isn't? It's not how tragedy and human emotion work, at this point it's becoming almost a common occurrence, at some point you start to get desensitized to the monstrosity of the system. This is the sort of thing that the democrats are supposed to be better than the republican on, but this was happening under Obama, and if CBDunkerson thinks that the democrats don't need to change much then I'm pretty sure the establishment democrats aren't at all interested in changing. This is the new normal in America. If you're black or suffer from mental disabilities or both your chances of being killed by the police is going to be five times higher. Adjust your lifestyle accordingly as voting democrat or republican isn't going to fix the system.
Guy Humual wrote: It's not how tragedy and human emotion work, at this point it's becoming almost a common occurrence, at some point you start to get desensitized to the monstrosity of the system. This is the sort of thing that the democrats are supposed to be better than the republican on, but this was happening under Obama, and if CBDunkerson thinks that the democrats don't need to change much then I'm pretty sure the establishment democrats aren't at all interested in changing. This is the new normal in America. If you're black or suffer from mental disabilities or both your chances of being killed by the police is going to be five times higher. Adjust your lifestyle accordingly as voting democrat or republican isn't going to fix the system. It's not the "new normal" in America. It's the old normal. The difference is that it's being caught on video now.
And no, Obama didn't wave a magic wand and fix decades of police abuses (And I'll freely admit that some Democratic city governments are at the least complicit), but his Justice Department was investigating and working to try to change some of the worst offenders. Trump & Sessions are doubling down on backing the cops - stopping investigations and walking back existing consent decrees.
thejeff wrote: It's not the "new normal" in America. It's the old normal. The difference is that it's being caught on video now. having video evidence of these things happening and then having absolutely nothing done is the new normal I'm talking about. Obviously this has been going on for as long as there's been police.
thejeff wrote: And no, Obama didn't wave a magic wand and fix decades of police abuses (And I'll freely admit that some Democratic city governments are at the least complicit), but his Justice Department was investigating and working to try to change some of the worst offenders. Trump & Sessions are doubling down on backing the cops - stopping investigations and walking back existing consent decrees. While I don't think Obama did enough, he did do more then Trump, but this isn't a problem that the Justice department is going to fix on their own. If every police officer that killed an unarmed citizen went to jail for murder (and I'm not saying they should) it wouldn't fix the situation. The training is part of the problem, systemic racism is part of the problem, but I think income inequality is the biggest issue. Police know that they can do whatever they want to black citizens because they can get away with it.
Police don't patrol poor communities to make arrests and hand out tickets because that's where the highest crime rates are, they do it because nobody in those communities is going to be able to resist them in court. They don't bust kids for smoking pot in rich or middle class communities because they could accidentally harass someone important. Black communities are often poor communities and poor communities are at the mercy of the police. You don't behave that way to people you see as your equal or better.
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Guy Humual wrote: thejeff wrote: It's not the "new normal" in America. It's the old normal. The difference is that it's being caught on video now. having video evidence of these things happening and then having absolutely nothing done is the new normal I'm talking about. Obviously this has been going on for as long as there's been police.
thejeff wrote: And no, Obama didn't wave a magic wand and fix decades of police abuses (And I'll freely admit that some Democratic city governments are at the least complicit), but his Justice Department was investigating and working to try to change some of the worst offenders. Trump & Sessions are doubling down on backing the cops - stopping investigations and walking back existing consent decrees. While I don't think Obama did enough, he did do more then Trump, but this isn't a problem that the Justice department is going to fix on their own. If every police officer that killed an unarmed citizen went to jail for murder (and I'm not saying they should) it wouldn't fix the situation. The training is part of the problem, systemic racism is part of the problem, but I think income inequality is the biggest issue. Police know that they can do whatever they want to black citizens because they can get away with it.
Police don't patrol poor communities to make arrests and hand out tickets because that's where the highest crime rates are, they do it because nobody in those communities is going to be able to resist them in court. They don't bust kids for smoking pot in rich or middle class communities because they could accidentally harass someone important. Black communities are often poor communities and poor communities are at the mercy of the police. You don't behave that way to people you see as your equal or better. The Justice Department (and Civil Rights laws) are the tools the federal government has to address this problem.
Obama couldn't and no president could change how police are trained or how they do their job. That is organized on the state (or local) level. The feds don't have control over it. Unless the Courts determine Constitutional Rights are being violated.
Mind you, this isn't "Obama did do more than Trump", this is Obama was working to improve things, Trump is actively making them worse.
And it's not just inequality, it's specifically race. Not just that blacks tend to be poor (which is itself tied to racism), but police target those minority communities in ways they don't target even poor white ones. That "see as your equal or better" - that's at least as much a race thing as a class one. Witness blacks in upscale communities getting harassed by the police, because they obviously don't belong.
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Guy Humual wrote: if CBDunkerson thinks that the democrats don't need to change much What I said was that they don't need to change much in order to win future elections... because by most measures they won the last election;
They picked up seats in the House. They picked up seats in the Senate. They won the presidential popular vote by a significant margin.
The electoral college loss was a statistical fluke.
Quote: This is the new normal in America. If you're black or suffer from mental disabilities or both your chances of being killed by the police is going to be five times higher. Adjust your lifestyle accordingly as voting democrat or republican isn't going to fix the system. Democrats were taking action on those issues. Republicans are now rolling those actions back. If you can't see the difference then you have some sort of political blindness.
The Democrats can and should 'change' to do more, but the claim that they aren't doing anything different than the Republicans has no foundation in reality.
thejeff wrote: And it's not just inequality, it's specifically race. Not just that blacks tend to be poor (which is itself tied to racism), but police target those minority communities in ways they don't target even poor white ones. That "see as your equal or better" - that's at least as much a race thing as a class one. Witness blacks in upscale communities getting harassed by the police, because they obviously don't belong. I'm saying it's both, and you can't make people less racist, but you can make a society more equitable. I saying that at the federal level they could do something about income inequality.
CBDunkerson wrote: Guy Humual wrote: if CBDunkerson thinks that the democrats don't need to change much What I said was that they don't need to change much in order to win future elections... because by most measures they won the last election;
They picked up seats in the House. They picked up seats in the Senate. They won the presidential popular vote by a significant margin.
The electoral college loss was a statistical fluke.
Quote: This is the new normal in America. If you're black or suffer from mental disabilities or both your chances of being killed by the police is going to be five times higher. Adjust your lifestyle accordingly as voting democrat or republican isn't going to fix the system. Democrats were taking action on those issues. Republicans are now rolling those actions back. If you can't see the difference then you have some sort of political blindness.
The Democrats can and should 'change' to do more, but the claim that they aren't doing anything different than the Republicans has no foundation in reality. I didn't say democrats weren't doing anything, I'm saying what they're doing isn't going to make any difference, and so voting republican or democrat isn't going to address the root problems that are allowing this to happen. If you live in New York you can't vote in a democratic governor in Texas, heck Eric Garner was murdered, on video, by the police, in New York, a democratic strong hold, and the only one to face jail time was the person who recorded the video. If the democrats aren't going to fix some of the root causes, like say income inequality, all the DoJ investigations in the world aren't going to fix the problem.
BigDTBone wrote: I don't know that the system itself is terribly out-of-whack, just our application of it. What instead of just arbitrarily deciding how many representatives there should be we had a defined number. Like the number of representatives in the US house should equal (no of states) x 10 + 1. So, you would have 501 members in the US house divided up evenly by state population. This would diminish the voting power of states with only one or two representatives. There would be 604 electoral votes with 303 needed for victory. In the unlikely event that the electoral vote splits 302/302 let the popular vote call it.
Basically, I get the need for the protections the electoral college is meant to provide, I think they are useful, but at present time over-leveraged.
It's not clear to me how much effect this would have.
You're really just suggesting a larger House to match actual population slightly better, right? Representatives are already allocated by population. Imperfectly, because population isn't neatly divided between states. Your number is essentially just as arbitrary as the current one.
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Guy Humual wrote: I didn't say democrats weren't doing anything, I'm saying what they're doing isn't going to make any difference, and so voting republican or democrat isn't going to address the root problems that are allowing this to happen. Ask people in Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Seattle, et cetera if there is no difference between the Obama justice department's efforts to push police reform and Sessions' efforts to revoke those changes.
Ask people convicted on bogus 'forensic' evidence if there is no difference between the Obama justice department's scientific review of evidence standards and Sessions' insistence on keeping methods which have been proven to be inaccurate.
Et cetera.
Whether Democrats or Republicans are in power makes a vast difference.
Guy Humual wrote: CBDunkerson wrote: Guy Humual wrote: if CBDunkerson thinks that the democrats don't need to change much What I said was that they don't need to change much in order to win future elections... because by most measures they won the last election;
They picked up seats in the House. They picked up seats in the Senate. They won the presidential popular vote by a significant margin.
The electoral college loss was a statistical fluke.
Quote: This is the new normal in America. If you're black or suffer from mental disabilities or both your chances of being killed by the police is going to be five times higher. Adjust your lifestyle accordingly as voting democrat or republican isn't going to fix the system. Democrats were taking action on those issues. Republicans are now rolling those actions back. If you can't see the difference then you have some sort of political blindness.
The Democrats can and should 'change' to do more, but the claim that they aren't doing anything different than the Republicans has no foundation in reality. I didn't say democrats weren't doing anything, I'm saying what they're doing isn't going to make any difference, and so voting republican or democrat isn't going to address the root problems that are allowing this to happen. If you live in New York you can't vote in a democratic governor in Texas, heck Eric Garner was murdered, on video, by the police, in New York, a democratic strong hold, and the only one to face jail time was the person who recorded the video. If the democrats aren't going to fix some of the root causes, like say income inequality, all the DoJ investigations in the world aren't going to fix the problem. That's pure nonsense. We've seen it work. It's quite possible to clean up police departments. It's hard and it takes political willpower and leadership, but it can be and has been done. The problem generally is that the local elites benefit from the situation or at least aren't willing to take the political fallout from taking on the police
Justice Department monitoring under Court ordered consent decrees is one of the ways to supply that motivation. The only way for that to happen is on an individual department basis, generally following some egregious case.
Beyond that, fixes for income inequality that ignore the racial aspects may reduce the amount of wealth that goes to the very top, raise the median income and do other very good things - though much of that can still be hampered by racial divisions: Tell the racist that he's a proud individualist who got where he is on his own merits and all these rules are just helping the lazy urban thugs and he'll fight like crazy against such laws. We've seen it again and again.
But even beyond that, if you don't work on the racism, you're still going to see unequal outcomes - redlining, prejudice in hiring and promotion and in schooling, etc. Meaning the marginalized groups will still be at the bottom of the totem pole and still be vulnerable to being victimized by the police.
Hell, just look back at days when income inequality was much less. Cops were abusing black people then too.
Or, as I said earlier, cops in good neighborhoods harassing black residents because they obviously don't belong there.
Guy Humual wrote: I didn't say democrats weren't doing anything, I'm saying what they're doing isn't going to make any difference, and so voting republican or democrat isn't going to address the root problems that are allowing this to happen. It's this common shift from "hasn't solved the problem" to "isn't making a difference" that drives me crazy in these arguments.
No. Voting a Democrat in isn't going to make all our problems vanish. We know that. We've seen that. Voting in Sanders or whatever replacement economics focused candidate you want isn't going to suddenly fix even the root problems with our economics either. Even if it magically did, it wouldn need a separate magic fix to deal with our racial problems.
These are hard problems. There's a lot of resistance. Deeply entrenched resistance, not just from the elites, but in many cases among the very people we're trying to help.
I don't have easy answers. I suspect any improvements are going to be slow and incremental. And even the incremental changes are likely to face serious backlash. They always have before.
Obamacare repeal passes House
This should shake up the political landscape...
CBDunkerson wrote: Guy Humual wrote: I didn't say democrats weren't doing anything, I'm saying what they're doing isn't going to make any difference, and so voting republican or democrat isn't going to address the root problems that are allowing this to happen. Ask people in Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Seattle, et cetera if there is no difference between the Obama justice department's efforts to push police reform and Sessions' efforts to revoke those changes.
Ask people convicted on bogus 'forensic' evidence if there is no difference between the Obama justice department's scientific review of evidence standards and Sessions' insistence on keeping methods which have been proven to be inaccurate.
Et cetera.
Whether Democrats or Republicans are in power makes a vast difference. Again, to this day, the only one that has spent any time in jail for the murder of Eric Garner was the man who filmed his murder. You think that the lives of democratic voting minorities are better in New York under a democratic governor, with democratic senators, and had Hillary won, a democratic president? I don't. Bill de Blasio was mayor of the city at the time. He did end the stop and frisk program. That means the lives of minorities are now slightly less s*~$ty then they were before. The police are still free to harass you, they just can't search you anymore because they felt you were acting suspicious (aka being a visible minority in public).
CBDunkerson wrote:
The electoral college loss was a statistical fluke.
Not sure I would call a 7% failure rate a statistical fluke.
thejeff wrote: Guy Humual wrote: I didn't say democrats weren't doing anything, I'm saying what they're doing isn't going to make any difference, and so voting republican or democrat isn't going to address the root problems that are allowing this to happen. It's this common shift from "hasn't solved the problem" to "isn't making a difference" that drives me crazy in these arguments.
No. Voting a Democrat in isn't going to make all our problems vanish. We know that. We've seen that. Voting in Sanders or whatever replacement economics focused candidate you want isn't going to suddenly fix even the root problems with our economics either. Even if it magically did, it wouldn need a separate magic fix to deal with our racial problems.
These are hard problems. There's a lot of resistance. Deeply entrenched resistance, not just from the elites, but in many cases among the very people we're trying to help.
I don't have easy answers. I suspect any improvements are going to be slow and incremental. And even the incremental changes are likely to face serious backlash. They always have before. What I'd say is the status quo, the establishment democrats and republicans, aren't going to fix the problem of police brutalizing and praying upon the minorities and the poor because that's how they want the system to work. For them the system is working as intended. There are state and private prisons that need "workers" in their factories. Ending the war on Drugs, for example, would be a major step in removing reasons for the police to target minorities, it is after all a very easy to get a conviction through a plea deal as most drug offenses and come with mandatory minimums. Obama released some non violent drug offenders, but resisted changing federal laws or even drug classifications that citing that even in the case of cannabis they needed more study. Clinton didn't show any interest in this either. Now that Trump is in office and his racist little elf Jeff Sessions is AG, things are going to get worse. Sure, they could get marginally better under a democrat, but voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. How about the democrats nominate someone that's going to try for real long term change rather then this marginal and incremental changes to things we already know don't work.
MMCJawa wrote: Obamacare repeal passes House
This should shake up the political landscape...
Let's just hope that the Senate has a bit more common sense then the House.
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