Exilian
Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter => Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza => Topic started by: Jubal on May 03, 2022, 05:45:21 PM
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Somehow this thread hadn't started yet, which I guess shows us that we're not quite in the full Trump news cycle era anymore.
On the other hand, a leaked document suggests that the Supreme Court may well be going to strike down Roe vs. Wade, the decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, so that's pretty horrific. The US does feel like it's in a state where essentially its checks and balances system has broken in ways out of sync with any semblance of democracy, and this feels a fairly landmark moment in that: the vast majority of Americans think some abortions should be legal - only 13% say it should always be illega (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/), which means there probably isn't a single US state where that's a majority view.
There's also of course the midterms looming, where it looks like the environment is Republican-leaning as a result of some dissatisfaction with Biden - he got hit pretty hard politically by the fallout from Kabul and Delta/Omicron, and his ratings have never really recovered. And he's governed from a fairly centrist position (backing away from campaign pledges like forgiveness of student loan debt) which has upset a lot of progressives, whilst it's not really clear who it's conversely satisfied, so that might make it tricky to get the Democrat base to turn out. In general folks I see from the US, and this being me that's mostly Democrat/liberal/left circles, seem to have a pretty despondent outlook at the moment and not feel like their vote is actually getting the things they want done even when they win, which is bad news if you're a party trying to hold power.
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And it's happened: no constitutional right to control over your own body any more in the US. How utterly horrifying.
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Its unfortunate that since congress became paralyzed (maaybe one big new law per two years), and anything one president decrees the next president can undo, the Supreme Court has become the part of the US federal government which can most effectively make broad, lasting changes in policy. Because its not really accountable to anything outside itself, either democratically or logically (the US constitution is rooted in 18th century thinking before the administrative state, truly universal human rights, etc. so constitutional law is either barbarous or intellectually shoddy).
My understanding is that before the late 19th century, it was never a crime in Britain to end a pregnancy before the fetus started to move (the quickening). So these state laws outlawing all abortion (and drafted federal laws sitting in desk drawers) are barbarous even by 18th century standards.
Edit: many US states are now more restrictive of abortion than the Islamic Republic of Iran and most Arab states. Enuf said.
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Yes - I mean, the Supreme Court can very much be held accountable under the US constitution, but only by the aforementioned paralysed congress which isn't going to do it.
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Yes - I mean, the Supreme Court can very much be held accountable under the US constitution, but only by the aforementioned paralysed congress which isn't going to do it.
The only way which comes to mind is article 2, section 4 (https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/) "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." Maybe the justice whose wife was playing Robertspierre on 6 January and did not recuse himself from a case which turned out to involve her could be impeached, but for the rest being an authoritarian and/or misogynist is not a crime. Kavanaugh seems to have a mysterious benefactor who helps with financial problems, but I doubt you could turn that into a bribery charge. And it takes a majority vote among the Representatives and then among the Senators.
Not sure who would have to give their OK for expanding the court, but it would take a solid majority in the Senate to fill those appointments.
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I think court expansion, as numbers of justices are not specified in the Constitution, is just regular legislation - so if you have enough of a Senate majority to remove the filibuster (which is now dead in the water, it's just a question of who nukes it first), plus a house majority and a president willing to sign off, then you can do it.
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A rare bit of good news: Kansas blocked a move to strip abortion protections out of its state constitution, by a very large margin.
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One of the many dangers of the minoritarian elements in the current US federal government is that it makes it hard for people to see whether their side really has a majority of force behind it. As a friend says, Richard III might have kept his throne if he just paid more attention to votes in Parliament. But there are not many ways to get rid of the current radical Supreme Court in the USA within the law. The court can be expanded, but under US law those radical justices sit until they die, resign, or are impeached. And that is a very dangerous situation, because the radical justices will be tempted to keep doing things the rest of the country does not support, and the rest of the country will be looking for ways to get rid of them.
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The GOP held a by-election seat in Minnesota last week, by four points - but it was an R+15 seat in its generic partisan lean. The 538 polling average has had Dems squeak ahead on the generic ballot, too. The 538 expected election outcome is still pretty bad for the Democrats, that said - but largely on the basis of modelling that expects that the actual partisan divide on election day will be more like R +4, because Republicans tend to turn out better and the presidential party tends to lose a bit of ground running up to the midterms. So the big question is how much November will look like polling does now, and how much it'll look like the expected reversions to the norm/mean.
The rumour going around on some parts of social media is that the recent raids on Trump's base in Florida were because he had stolen classified nuclear documents. Which could be both figuratively and literally something of a bombshell, I suppose. It'd be rather hard for Republicans to justify to suburban swing voters, at least.
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I find it hard to believe he'd be quite that stupid. But who knows folks??
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Well, the stuff that got released included that the raid involved documents that the judge authorising the raid couldn't be told the contents of because he didn't have the clearance, so we'll see where that ends up.
It's really hard to know what's going on at the moment, but there are still signs of firedupness on the D side - they won a special election in upstate New York yesterday by a couple of points in an R+4 leaning seat (partisan lean basically is calculated in the US as "how far ahead would the parties be in an imagined world where they were tied nationally in the polls). And they overperformed even more in another more heavily Republican seat, which the GOP held... but not by much, and it was an R+15 lean. Polls people seem to generally expect that the Democrats will do worse in November than they're doing now off the back of anger at Roe v Wade and Biden finally passing his big climate change bill. But then, that public spending might be starting to trickle out by November, and the abortion issue isn't going anywhere fast, so who knows?
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So, state of the race, we're like a month out or something...
Senate: Democrats have it at the moment, 50/50 with the Presidency as tiebreaker, so Republicans only need one seat to flip it. As things have panned out it looks like there are two ultra-close races that might give them that seat, in Nevada and in Georgia. Arizona might well have been another pickup chance for them but Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly looks, if not comfortable, clearly in the lead: New Hampshire also doesn't look as good a chance for the GOP as it might otherwise have been. The downside for Republicans is that they have one very likely loss, in Pennsylvania, and polling suggests three other ultra-close races - North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Ohio. So the easiest Republican path right now is probably that they win both NV and GA, securing them the Senate even if they lose Pennsylvania.
House: Republicans are more clearly the favourites to flip it, but models are mostly assuming they'll lose ground and the GOP will end up winning the popular vote by a couple of points: that doesn't have to be far wrong for Ds to win.
General polling etc: has been good for Democrats for a while, but looks like it's edging back towards Republicans a little recently... so we'll see how that continues.
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Things continue to shift towards Republicans - media narrative hasn't been as good for Democrats which is one of those self-fulfilling prophecy things. Pennsylvania has tightened a LOT, which afaict is largely due to Republicans successfully being very ableist about the Democrat, Fetterman (who's recovering from a stroke) and portraying him as not up to the job. Georgia hasn't tightened so much, so I think the easiest GOP path now might be to hold Pennsylvania and take Nevada. I'm going to say that's a toss-up, and also suggest it doesn't matter a ton.
Why doesn't it matter? Because unless the Democrats win the house AND expland their lead in the Senate, something that'd now require a bunch of polling problems in Democrats' favour, the trajectory of the next two years is pretty similar: that Democrats can get very little done that's non-executive, and will be scrambling to keep the WH in 2024 and hoping to goodness that the margins then are chunky enough that the Republicans don't feel they can just straight-up abolish democracy. Also the Democrats could easily have a rough Senate year in 2024: they've got West Virginia, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin to defend, and their best grounds for attack are like... Florida, Indiana, and Texas, which are hardly promising.
So I think the US is probably set for something like deadlock with a seasonal chance of anti-democratic coups for at least the next half-decade, and who knows what it'll look like after that.
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I'm told that Putin used ablism to seize power the first time: the other candidate for President looked like he was winning, so Putin made some calls and the news started to be full of detailed descriptions of the knee surgery the other candidate was about to undergo complete with gory photos.
I'm told that the current congress could lift the debt ceiling (or mint some trillion-dollar coins, lock them in Ft. Knox or similar, and use them as collateral) but to septuagenarians and useful idiots in newsrooms that sounds too radical.
On the subject of media narratives, I doubt that what pass for journalists in the USA will repent until they are in President for Life Scudder's patriotic labour facilities.
Vox magazine (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23373795/curtis-yarvin-neoreaction-redpill-moldbug) has discovered the neo-reactionary bloggers such as Menicus Moldbug (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement) (link is to RationalWiki).
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The end of campaign shift to Republicans looks quite dramatic. But there are a LOT of toss-ups. Shift the polls two points to Republicans and they take a pretty clear sweep including Arizona, Georgia, even New Hampshire. Shift them two points to Democrats and the Democrats keep the house and Senate.
I'm a pessimist and the media narratives about bad news for Democrats keep pumping out as self-fulfilling prophetic utterances so I'm more inclined to bet that the Republicans will steamroller it, but honestly I'm not sure anyone really knows.
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The Republicans did not steamroller it, in fact. The polls were pretty solid, too: as expected, Nevada is really close, Arizona was tight but Democrat, Georgia is going to a run-off, Pennsylvania was a Democrat win (probably this is the worst polling miss, it was starting to look red in the polling averages but Fetterman actually came out pretty solid). Democrats missed by a few in Ohio and Wisconsin.
We still don't officially know who will win the Senate, but probably Democrats will win Nevada and if they don't it'll hinge on the Georgia run-off. I expect the remaining votes to favour Cortez Masto enough to win though, per reporting from the Nevada Independent (Jon Ralston of the Nevada Indy is one of those fantastic local journalists who actually gets politics in his state in a way few people do). Conversely, Republicans will almost certainly win the house but with a majority of five seats or fewer - frustrating for Democrats because that means that if the NY courts hadn't dramatically overturned their attempted blue gerrymander there, they'd probably be on track to hold the house right now.
Either way - it's unlikely Dems will be able to legislate, unless the Republican house majority implodes itself, so my earlier prediction of deadlock seems about right. But with a tiny majority and with Trump looking weak after so many of his preferred candidates lost (and deSantis looking very strong after crushingly good Florida results), the chance of GOP infighting has skyrocketed which must feel like good news for Democrats. Sometimes, winning the narrative game has real consequence.
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I'm a pessimist and the media narratives about bad news for Democrats keep pumping out as self-fulfilling prophetic utterances so I'm more inclined to bet that the Republicans will steamroller it, but honestly I'm not sure anyone really knows.
Two of the things that US journalists and pundits will never repent of until they are in those patriotic labour facilities are 1) predicting the future for a mass audience is a form of black magic, it can make things which are false true, and 2) journalists are no good at predicting or big complicated analyses, but they can do OK at establishing facts and noting connections on a human scale ("the public housing which just collapsed used concrete from a business part-owned by the Minister's probable lover"). But telling narratives is more profitable and makes them feel good and does not require going out and talking to people who are different from them or saying "I don't know and I don't think anyone can know". For most of the minority of people who follow national politics, its like a soap opera with twists and turns and villains, not a source of facts to guide action.
We also saw the relationship between former guy and the press corps, where each hated the other but one got money and attention for talking about the other, and the other got power and attention. If Americans lose their democracy, that dynamic will have been one of the major causes.
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The Senate remains blue! The Nevada Independent called their state for Catherine Cortez Masto this morning (this morning European time anyway, yesterday evening US time I suppose). Democrats will either hold steady or go +1 depending on Georgia. Getting to 51 seats would give the Democrats a tiny bit of useful wiggle room, notably giving them majorities on key Senate committees rather than even splits, and giving a 1-seat margin for Manchin or Sinema to vote against a given measure while still getting it passed.
The House still looks like it'll be a single-figure-seats GOP majority.
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It seems like the best that could be expected. Maybe if Facebook and Twitter continue to collapse there will be some other good news in 2024.
OTOH, a lot of the key parties are over 70, and there are a lot of heavily armed right-wingers disconnected from political reality. So there could be more black swans like "Mitch McConnel dies of Covid" or "sniper shoots someone I won't name because I don't want the US secret service monitoring Exilian".
The collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange may get some attention from legislators. Its so bad that the authorities in the Bahamas are prosecuting!
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"sniper shoots someone I won't name because I don't want the US secret service monitoring Exilian".
I expect we're fairly beneath their notice (if not, hello there lads!)
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is now the leader of the congressional Democrats - the first black leader of a party caucus in either house of Congress. Definitely a real generation change after Pelosi, as well. On the Republican side, Kevin McCarthy still doesn't have enough votes to become Speaker by all accounts, and it's really unclear who else could emerge who might get the job. Looking weak from the start probably isn't going to help the GOP congress give a good impression to anyone over the next few years.
Polls of the Georgia run-off are showing it essentially tied. Apparently if the Democrats win it, they get a much easier hand on committee appointments (because holding an actual majority not just a tie-break majority gives them committee majorities too), which might make things smoother for them on Senate-only business (like reviewing appointments/judges).
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It seems like the House Democrats made a point of choosing people under 60 for their internal offices (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/30/hakeem-jeffries-elected-house-minority-leader) such as the Minority Leader, Whip, and Caucus Chair this time?
Previously all three offices were held by people over 80.
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Yeah, I've seen speculation that it's likely considered a good time for a shift: the new leadership don't have the immediate pressure of governing and do have a weak Republican majority to try and undermine.
Anyhow, the big news this morning is that Democrats did indeed win the Georgia run-off, with Raphael Warnock currently at a 2.8% lead (51.4-48.6) over Herschel Walker with nearly all the votes in. That's marginally better than his 2020 runoff result against Loeffler, and ensures Democrats have at least one of the Georgia seats until 2028.
Democrats will still need a really big national win/big overperformances by Tester, Manchin, and Brown to hold the Senate in 2024.
On a 2024 note I read through this piece on Ron DeSantis (https://www.aol.com/news/ron-desantis-shifting-political-brand-100027516.html) today, which helped me get a bit more of a handle on where he is on things. I'm not sure how well his playbook will work against Trump, and nor indeed are the GOP primary polls I've seen which seem to be all over the place - literally ranging from like Trump +20 to DeSantis +20. I'm sure DeSantis is much more dangerous to the Democrats, certainly right now, but I can't see Trump losing gracefully which at the very least means a heavy-negatives, bruising primary campaign that may leave whoever wins it with fresh problems.
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And having gained one senator, the Dems have lost another - Kyrsten Sinema is now a registered Independent, though it looks like she'll continue to caucus with Democrats. It puts the party in a very sticky position for 2024, because she'll probably dare them to nominate a candidate knowing that, if they do, the GOP end up winning the seat.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63917462