Author Topic: Politics  (Read 594514 times)

G M

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Re: Politics: Cognitive Dissonance of the American People
« Reply #1050 on: September 12, 2014, 06:34:42 AM »
Americans are demanding economic growth from a President whose entire economic focus throughout his political career prior to being President was on anti-growth policies and rhetoric.

Americans are demanding military action in the Middle East from a President whose rise to power was based on promising to ignore these risks an just remove us from all military involvement in the Middle East.

Wouldn't it have been better to have chosen a President who had prior interest, experience, and/or expertise in these areas?

Most voted for Obama because they thought they were gonna get free sh*t.


DougMacG

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1052 on: October 05, 2014, 04:18:35 PM »
Working the inner city today on a Sunday afternoon I once again witnessed the Democrat political machine working up close and personal.  They asked me if I was Eugene.  I wouldn't confirm.  They asked me if I was going to vote Democrat, and I said, that's personal, isn't it?  Then she accused me of being the landlord because I was (white and) working on the front step.  I said, a friend of the family.  Then she started asking little kids who lives in this house, does your mama live her?  The kid said no but my grandma does.  I told the kid her Grandma (on kidney dialysis) is sleeping.  They dragged her out anyway, and started asking, who else lives in this house and started working on getting absentee ballots out so people wouldn't wait to learn something before voting the party line now.

My point unfortunately is that, as chair of a Republican town elsewhere, I know the Republicans have nothing at all like this operation n place - a paid, assertive, don't take no for an answe,r block worker on every block.

By the way, Eugene passed away.  I wonder if he got a ballolt anyway.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2014, 04:20:25 PM by DougMacG »

ccp

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1053 on: October 05, 2014, 04:21:42 PM »
Now I understand why you have Al Franken.

The bullies are Democrats.

DougMacG

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1054 on: October 05, 2014, 08:36:38 PM »
Now I understand why you have Al Franken.

The bullies are Democrats.

Yes.  And we have Obama.  This lady identified herself as working for the [Keith] Ellison campaign and was most certainly working the entire ticket including Sen Franken and Gov Mark Dayton.

objectivist1

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Horowitz: Hold Obama & Democrats Responsible for National Security...
« Reply #1055 on: October 06, 2014, 11:48:08 AM »
Republicans Should Frame National Security as Issue #1.

David Horowitz @ RedState.com - 10-06-2014

Since 1945 Republicans have not won the popular vote unless national security was the primary issue. But security issues were virtually absent from the 2008 and 2012 elections. This gave victories to Barack Obama, the most anti-military president in American history. Fortunately, the prospects for 2016 are looking marginally better because Republicans are now actually focusing on the fact that an anti-military presidency has ominous consequences for the 300 million Americans whose safety is the primary responsibility of the commander-in-chief.

That said, there is much to be desired in the Republican message, which is tepid, diffuse and easily missed. When Politico wrote a story about the recent change in Republican strategy it was all about the shift away from the tax-cutting emphasis of recent years, rather than towards the national security issue.

So let me describe the reality we are actually facing, which is a necessary preface to the way the Republican Party should be framing its strategy and should be emphasizing the dangers of having a Democratic president like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton – or for that matter a Democratic Congress – leading us in wartime.

I will leave out of this wartime equation the threats from Russia and China, which Obama and the Democrats have done so much to foster. I will focus only on the threat posed by Islamic jihadists, who at this moment can easily penetrate the borders that Obama and the Democrats have done so much to wreck. And carry with them chemical and biological weapons, and – if Iran builds the bombs which Obama the Democrats have made almost inevitable – nuclear weapons as well.

This is easily the greatest terrorist threat in our history, far greater than what transpired before and after 9/11. ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist armies now control territory (and attendant resources) from Afghanistan through Iraq Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Somalia and other regions of Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Why has this happened? Because Obama and the Democrats have waged a ten-year war against the war on terror, against American military strength, against an American presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, and against the very idea that Islamic forces have declared war on us. For ten years Democrats have been determined to treat terrorists as individual criminals, arrest them and try them in American courts where they will have all the protections of the American legal system that they are seeking to destroy. So hostile has Obama been to the very notion of a “War on Terror” that he has purged the very term from the official government vocabulary and replaced it with “overseas contingency operations” which describes exactly nothing.

To create the power vacuum which Islamic jihadists have filled, Obama had to defy the advice of his Secretary of Defense and his intelligence advisers. He did this in part by absenting himself from nearly half his daily intelligence briefings, and in part by saying no to absolutely crucial measures that his military staff proposed for countering the threat from ISIS and other terrorist groups. Obama saw to it that America would relinquish its military base in Iraq (a country that strategically borders on Afghanistan, Syria and Iran) or to keep the 20,000 American troops stationed there as his Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff urged him to do.

Obama hated the Iraq War so much that he was willing to betray all the American soldiers who gave their lives to keep Iraq out of the clutches of Iran and safe from the terrorist threat. If Obama had just listened to the advice of his military staff, there would be no ISIS today. Obama’s deliberate, calculated surrender of Iraq (and soon Afghanistan) and failure to stop Syria’s Assad when he crossed Obama’s red line is the greatest and gravest dereliction of duty in the history of the American presidency.

And make no mistake, Obama was not alone. For ten years the Democrats have been sabotaging the war on terror, beginning with their disgraceful scorched earth campaign against President Bush and the War in Iraq and continuing with their full-throated cry for the abandonment of Iraq after Bush had won the peace and contained the terrorist threat. Their support for Obama’s appeasement of Iran and Hamas, his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and his diplomatic assault on Israel, America’s only true ally in the Middle East, is not only a national disgrace but the heart of the crisis that is looming on the international horizon.

If Republicans fail to articulate the sources of this crisis, and specifically to indict Obama, Hillary and the Democrats for their betrayal of America’s interests and their failure to protect the American people then Republicans electoral prospects will be dim, and with them, their country’s future.

David Horowitz is the author of Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan For Defeating The Left (Regnery 2014).
« Last Edit: October 06, 2014, 11:50:59 AM by objectivist1 »
"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1056 on: October 06, 2014, 12:44:17 PM »
A strong analysis there.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1057 on: October 09, 2014, 08:02:17 AM »
GOP Senate Majority? Then What?
It's Time for New Leadership
By Mark Alexander • October 8, 2014     
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." --James Madison (1792)
 

If you've been holed up in some alternate universe for the last six weeks, you may have missed the collective consensus of political pundits and prognosticators that, in the upcoming November 4th midterm election, Republicans will pick up at least the six U.S. Senate seats needed for majority control.

If the current polling trends are borne out by the only poll that really matters -- Election Day -- then Republicans will win enough Senate seats to claim majority status. Still, an old farmer would no doubt caution, "Don't count your chickens 'till they hatch."

Indeed, nobody should assume Republicans will control the Senate come January, and one need look no further than all the reputable polling ahead of the 2012 presidential election for the reason. Remember how the major polling firms, along with Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Michael Barone and others, were predicting a Mitt Romney win?

How did that turn out?

Over in the House, the GOP is striving to achieve its "Drive to 245," which would mean increasing the party's 233-seat majority to a level not seen since 1946. But Republicans will be fortunate to hold on to the number of House seats they have now.

While I certainly hope Republicans win a Senate majority next month, they must resolve to do more than merely slow the "rule of lawlessness" that now defines Obama's presidential modus operandi. They must use a majority to pass popular conservative legislation -- from tax reform to energy deregulation to border security -- through both chambers and place it on Obama's desk, daring him to veto it.
 
Of course, Obama has already committed to bypass Consitutional Rule of Law, saying, "Where Congress isn't acting, I'll act on my own. ... I've got a pen ... and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward."

And indeed, he has demonstrated he will do so, with executive orders constricting Second Amendment rights, and supporting his so-called "climate change" agenda, enacting regulations for his "war on coal" and continuing to stiff-arm the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The most egregious examples of Obama's executive order abuses include his repeated rewrites of the so-called "Affordable Care Act," in an effort to assist the re-election campaigns of congressional Democrats.

The fact is, if Senate Republicans do attain majority status, and the House GOP maintains its current majority, those achievements will not have been earned through "Republican Leadership" so much as handed to them by way of Barack Obama's colossal failures in both domestic and foreign policy.

As Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, observed this week in her Wall Street Journal analysis, "In a year when Republicans are operating in such an enviable political environment, why aren’t their U.S. Senate candidates holding big and impressive leads? Why does it look close? Why are party professionals getting worried?"

What does she mean by "enviable political environment"?

Lets review the short list of failures:

Obama's administration is now defined by his litany of lies and legacy of scandals, most notably the failure of his so-called "economic recovery" plan; his unparalleled foreign policy malfeasance; his "Fast and Furious" gun control play; his long list of ObamaCare lies; his IRS Enemies List; the dramatic resurgence of al-Qa'ida; the Benghazi security failure and subsequent cover-up to protect his 2012 re-election bid; his hollow "Red Line" threat to Syria; the "Russian Spring" in Crimea; the Middle East meltdown in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Jordan and Gaza; the disintegration of Iraq; the rise of the Islamic State; the VA death panels cover-up; the immigration crisis on our southern border; the malfeasance and long-overdue resignation of Eric Holder, the most lawless attorney general in our nation's history; and now, his downplaying of the Ebola threat, his utter unwillingness to address both Enterovirus D68, which is killing children nationwide, and the pandemic threat of jihadist Bio-Bombers.
 

Despite the significant advantage this should give Republicans in the upcoming election, Noonan writes, "Republicans aren’t achieving lift-off. The metaphor used most often is the wave. If Republicans can’t make, catch and ride a wave in an environment like this, they’ve gone from being the stupid party to the stupid loser party."

Charles Krauthammer notes, "[Obama’s] agenda died on Nov. 2, 2010, when he lost the House. It won’t be any deader on Nov. 4, 2014, if he loses the Senate."
So what happened in 2010 that stalled Obama's agenda?

Clearly, the 2008 election of an ideological Socialist to the Office of President came with some unintended consequences for Obama and his Leftist cadres across the nation. Chief among those was the emergence of the grassroots Tea Party Movement ahead of the 2010 midterm election.

While the GOP rolled out its "new and improved" platform modeled after Newt Gingrich's successful 1994 Contract with America, it was the Tea Party that singlehandedly repopulated the House with a substantial number of genuine conservatives, thereby restoring Republican control.

Regrettably, the "establishment Republicans" in the House virtually excluded the new conservatives from significant House leadership positions. The resulting fratricidal infighting thwarted additional gains in 2012 and enabled Obama to buy a second term as president.

Has the GOP learned any lessons?
 

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, on schedule, rolled out the latest version of the party's Key Principles last week. To his credit, first among those is this: "Our Constitution should be preserved, valued and honored." Priebus is genuinely committed to conservative principles. Recall that he had The Patriot Post's Essential Liberty Pocket Guide distributed to all RNC convention members in 2012, and he held one up for display during that event.

However, the first of the GOP key principles should state, "Our Constitution should be upheld as the supreme law of the land, and our leaders should abide by their oaths 'to Support and Defend' it." 
To that end, the current Republican congressional leadership receives mixed reviews. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is committed to conservative principles, scoring better than 80% in the American Conservative Union ratings. Notably, however, Speaker of the House John Boehner did not make the 80% ACU cut.

Despite McConnell's rating, if the GOP does luck into a Senate majority, I believe it's time for new leadership in both chambers.

Why?

Krauthammer notes, "[R]egaining the Senate would finally give the GOP the opportunity, going into 2016, to demonstrate its capacity to govern. ... [C]ontrolling both houses would allow the GOP to produce a compelling legislative agenda. ... If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the party of no? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform."

He is correct, but producing a compelling legislative agenda would require outstanding leadership -- which neither McConnell nor Boehner have demonstrated.
As Noonan writes, "It’s good to win, but winning without a declared governing purpose is a ticket to nowhere. ... Republicans need to say what they’re for."
The fact is, both McConnell and Boehner have failed to clearly articulate a unified governing purpose. Thus, gaining a Senate majority and retaining the House majority may be for naught if not under spirited and principled new leadership.
Winston Churchill wrote, "If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver."

However, there appears to be no important point to make under the current GOP leadership, and neither McConnell nor Boehner seem to have any idea what a pile driver is.
 

"A leader," said Ronald Reagan, "once convinced a particular course of action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets rough." Clearly, he was just such a leader.

Under the current GOP leadership, there has been neither a clear course of action nor the necessary determination to stick with such action.

Let me restate: Any Republican gains in November will not be earned through "Republican Leadership" so much as handed to them through Barack Obama's colossal failures.

It is long past time for young and fresh Republican leadership in both the House and Senate -- and there are rising leaders who are more than capable of making their case.
Pro Deo et Constitutione -- Libertas aut Mors
Semper Fortis Vigilate Paratus et Fidelis

ccp

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1058 on: October 09, 2014, 08:50:25 AM »
If they win I wonder who would or could be a majority leader.

New polling show Roberts drawing even in Kansas.  I don't care for him much as apparently Kansans don't either but he is better than a guy who is almost certainly a liberal disguised as an independent.


DougMacG

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Politics, Two midterm elections have hollowed out the Democratic Party
« Reply #1059 on: November 09, 2014, 09:47:47 PM »
This article sparks a number of interesting points.  While it seems that Republicans have a limited number of good potential candidates with great executive experience, Democrats now hold 18 governorships?!  The crowned prize of California was just held again by Jerry Brown, 76, so it will be 2026 at the earliest before some new, up and coming Dem can win and govern two successful terms of experience in the country's largest state as preparation for future leader of the free world.

"Meanwhile, Republicans control governorships in Florida, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia and Massachusetts. Democrats were hoping to knock off Republicans Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Rick Scott in Florida and Rick Snyder in Michigan. All survived. In Ohio, John Kasich won by the second-largest margin in state history"

Mentioned previously, Governors Hickenlooper (D-Colo) and Walker (R-Wisc) are ascendant if they win and they won.

Andrew Cuomo (Gov. NY) who I don't know much about is, they say is too tied to the Clintons.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/two-midterm-elections-have-hollowed-out-the-democratic-party/2014/11/08/0366c60a-66c9-11e4-9fdc-d43b053ecb4d_story.html
« Last Edit: November 09, 2014, 10:05:26 PM by DougMacG »

DougMacG

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Republicans and Hispanics
« Reply #1060 on: November 09, 2014, 10:19:09 PM »
Despite holding a pretty hard line views on immigration, Texas Republicans won about 45% of Hispanic votes. 

(This is partly due to low turnout due to the turn-off of Hispanics to Democrats.)

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/11/my-biggest-election-surprise-patrick-over-van-de-putte-abbott-among-hispanic-men.html/

objectivist1

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The Vanishing White Democrat...
« Reply #1061 on: November 19, 2014, 04:45:24 AM »
The Vanishing White Democrat

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On November 19, 2014 @ frontpagemag.com


It wasn’t all that long ago that the Democrats were predicting the end of the Republican Party.

With the rise of Obama, James Carville began peddling a new book “40 More Years” promising that the Dems would rule for generations.

Just this year Carville predicted that the Republican Party would become extinct if it lost to Hillary Clinton. But it was the Democratic Party that was going extinct in Carville’s own backyard.

Republicans began winning Senate seats in Louisiana for the first time in a century in just the last ten years. If Landrieu loses, then both of the Louisiana’s Senate seats will be unprecedentedly held by Republicans.

And Louisiana isn’t an outlier. Bill Clinton couldn’t stop Arkansas from going full Republican with two Republican senators and a full suite of Republican representatives for the first time in history. That’s all the more amazing in a state that only had two Republican senators before that for over a century.

The Democratic Party is going extinct in places like Louisiana, Arkansas and West Virginia. It’s vanishing because the working class White Democrat is becoming extinct.

Even Carville hedged his bets while predicting the end of the Republican Party by joining FOX News.

A generation ago, white Democrats outnumbered white Republicans. Today it’s the other way around. Under Obama, barely a quarter of white people still identify as Democrats.

Republicans didn’t just win a few elections. They swept across entire legislatures in western and southern states. They took state senates and governorships in places like New York and Illinois. It’s not that Republicans had a particularly compelling message, some did and some didn’t, but that Democrats had assumed that enough white voters would continue showing up to prop up their rainbow coalition.

They were wrong.

The latest Pew poll shows that 74 percent of Democrats support ObamaCare, but only 29 percent of white respondents do. The Democratic Party is becoming a party without white people. Under Obama, the Democratic disadvantage among white voters doubled without any corresponding gains among minority voters.

Meanwhile Republicans increased their share of white voters. And that’s only telling part of the story.

The nation’s largest party is “none of the above”. Independents began to decisively outnumber both parties under Obama. Hispanic voters are increasingly identifying as independents. So are white men.

And though the independents come from both parties, they increasingly swing Republican in key races.

The Democratic model depended on the combination of an overwhelming minority vote combined with a second place showing in the white vote. That model may no longer be feasible, especially in states with a shortage of unemployed white hipsters with PhDs and protest signs who know all the latest social warrior mumbo jumbo but can’t change a flat tire.

The Democrats had to bet on turnout and changing demographics to salvage the situation. They played up racial tensions to increase turnout and championed open borders to shift demographics and those tactics only deepened their problems with white voters.

Tribalism helped Obama win a second term, but it didn’t fix the underlying flaw in the Democratic model. And it actually worsened the situation. The more the Democrats sounded racially divisive notes, the more they alienated white voters, not just by abusing them, but by ignoring their concerns.

ObamaCare became emblematic of a party that tuned out what used to be its base. And so its base left forcing the Democrats to discover that they couldn’t actually win without white voters.

Republican congressional candidates won 64 percent of white working class voters. Landrieu won just 18 percent of the white vote; 22 percent among white women and 15 percent among white men. That’s less than the amount taken by a second Republican candidate in the race, Rob Maness.

Those numbers alone indicate why the Democrats won’t put any real money behind her. If Landrieu can’t even compete for the white vote, then there’s no reason to waste good money on her.

Mark Pryor won only 31 percent of white voters. Nunn won 23 percent of white voters. The Dems didn’t do this badly everywhere, but where they lost it was usually because the white vote sharply tilted away from them enough to offset their overwhelming minority percentages.

The Democrats have a white voter problem. The party is betting that it won’t outlast Obama because it confused its own propaganda with reality and decided that white voters hate Obama because he’s black.

It was never Obama’s race that was the problem. It was the Democratic Party’s embrace of leftist radicalism at the national level while waging identity politics wars along the lines of race and gender.

Republicans don’t have a problem with black people. Democrats do have a problem with white people.

The party is now under the sway of an elitist class of white leftists for whom “white people” is an insult, not a group of voters. And by “white people” they mean the sort of voters who conclusively tossed them out in West Virginia, Nevada and Arkansas.

The elitists of the new Democratic Party envision themselves as the white protectors and organizers of a minority country whose property and rights they will redistribute as they see fit in a new Socialist order. There is absolutely nothing in this creepy little vision that appeals to anyone except the grubby Grubers frustrated at having to work so hard to dupe the insufficiently stupid American voters who won’t just let them play with their health care toys without insisting on tediously voting against higher taxes.

It’s this elite that steadily began alienating white voters with its policies. The situation became critical under Obama not because of his race, but because he fully endorsed their insane power grab.

Now the Democrats are hoping that Hillary Clinton can save their party, but first she has to decide who she is. Hillary has tried to play up racial appeals to white voters before overcorrecting and going the other way. At times she sounds like she wants to appeal to working class voters and at other times she returns to her native element pushing the policy toys of the technocracy.

Instead of the Democratic Party’s Great White Hope, Hillary more closely resembles Mary Landrieu veering between accusations of racism and support for the Keystone pipeline. The left’s attacks on Landrieu for supporting the pipeline only highlight the impossible dilemma of any Democrat trying to run to the right of Obama and Nancy Pelosi. They have to either abandon their voters or their party.

Unlike European parties, American politicians were supposed to put loyalty to their constituents ahead of loyalty to their party. The Democratic Party put its own politicians in the impossible position of being defined by a centralized party seeking to eliminate anything reeking of conservatism while expecting them to win in conservative parts of the country. The Dems didn’t lose. They committed suicide.

The Democratic Party has moved so far to the left that it has alienated all white voters who aren’t on the left and its botched programs like ObamaCare are even beginning to alienate minority voters. Minority support for ObamaCare has hit a new low. Finding white support for ObamaCare requires a microscope.

But the Democratic Party can’t change. It has become dependent on a small donor class of men like Bloomberg, Soros and Steyer whose ad buys and think tanks dictate their agenda. To win, Hillary, Biden and any other candidate must first win over billionaires whose priorities of gun control, no pipeline and lots of big government are exactly the things that have pushed the Democratic Party to the edge.

James Carville was half-right about the 2016 election. If Hillary doesn’t win it, one of the big two parties may go extinct. But it won’t be the Republicans.

"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

DougMacG

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Re: The Vanishing White Democrat...
« Reply #1062 on: November 19, 2014, 06:05:14 AM »
Whites are a shrinking majority, but still a pretty big group to offend and lose with all the division politics.  If you listen or study the Obama speech that rose him to prominence, it was all about unifying not dividing, where getting elected was all about dividing into groups.

The racial gap and the gender gap both cut both ways.  As pointed out, the difference is that the Republicans desperately want the votes of the groups they have been losing, and the Dems don't seem to give a damn groups outside their targets.

Crafty_Dog

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George Friedman: Obama and the nature of failed presidencies
« Reply #1063 on: November 24, 2014, 02:40:30 PM »

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On Obama and the Nature of Failed Presidencies
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - 03:01 Print Text Size
Stratfor

By George Friedman

We do not normally comment on domestic political affairs unless they affect international affairs. However, it is necessary to consider American political affairs because they are likely to have a particular effect on international relations. We have now entered the final phase of Barack Obama's presidency, and like those of several other presidents since World War II, it is ending in what we call a state of failure. This is not a judgment on his presidency so much as on the political configuration within it and surrounding it.

The midterm elections are over, and Congress and the president are in gridlock. This in itself is not significant; presidents as popular as Dwight Eisenhower found themselves in this condition. The problem occurs when there is not only an institutional split but also a shift in underlying public opinion against the president. There are many more sophisticated analyses of public opinion on politics, but I have found it useful to use this predictive model.
Analyzing a President's Strength

I assume that underneath all of the churning, about 40 percent of the electorate is committed to each party. Twenty percent is uncommitted, with half of those being indifferent to the outcome of politics and the other half being genuinely interested and undecided. In most normal conditions, the real battle between the parties — and by presidents — is to hold their own bases and take as much of the center as possible.

So long as a president is fighting for the center, his ability to govern remains intact. Thus, it is normal for a president to have a popularity rating that is less than 60 percent but more than 40 percent. When a president's popularity rating falls substantially below 40 percent and remains there for an extended period of time, the dynamics of politics shift. The president is no longer battling for the center but is fighting to hold on to his own supporters — and he is failing to do so.

When the president's support has fragmented to the point that he is fighting to recover his base, I considered that a failed presidency — particularly when Congress is in the hands of the opposition. His energy cannot be directed toward new initiatives. It is directed toward recovering his base. And presidents who have fallen into this condition near the end of their presidencies have not been likely to recover and regain the center.

Historically, when the president's popularity rating has dipped to about 37 percent, his position has been unrecoverable. This is what happened to George W. Bush in 2006. It happened to Richard Nixon in 1974 when the Watergate crisis resulted in his resignation, and to Lyndon Johnson in 1967 during the Vietnam War. It also happened to Harry Truman in 1951, primarily because of the Korean War, and to Herbert Hoover before World War II because of the Great Depression.

However, this is not the final historical note on a presidency. Truman, enormously unpopular and unable to run for another term, is now widely regarded as one of the finest presidents the United States has had. Nixon, on the other hand, has never recovered. This is not therefore a judgment on Obama's place in history, but simply on his current political condition. Nor does it take failure to lose the presidency; Jimmy Carter was defeated even though his popularity remained well in the 40s.
Obama's Presidency

Of the five failed presidencies I've cited, one failed over scandal, one over the economy and three over wars — Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. Obama's case is less clear than any. The 40 percent who gravitated to the opposition opposed him for a host of reasons. He lost the center for complex reasons as well. However, looking at the timing of his decline, the only intruding event that might have had that impact was the rise of the Islamic State and a sense, even in his own party, that he did not have an effective response to it. Historically, extended wars that the president did not appear to have a strategy for fighting have been devastating to the presidency. Woodrow Wilson's war (World War I) was short and successful. Franklin Roosevelt's war (World War II) was longer, and although it began in failure it became clear that a successful end was conceivable. The Korean, Vietnam and two Iraq wars suffered not from the length, but from the sense that the presidency did not have a war-ending strategy. Obama appears to me to have fallen into the political abyss because after six years he owned the war and appeared to have no grip on it.

Failure extends to domestic policy as well. The Republican-controlled legislature can pass whatever legislation it likes, but the president retains veto power, and two-thirds of both houses must vote to override. The problem is that given the president's lack of popularity — and the fact that the presidency, all of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate will be up for re-election in two years — the president's allies in Congress are not as willing to be held responsible for upholding his vetoes. Just as few Democrats wanted Obama campaigning for them, so too do few want to join the president in vetoing majority legislation. What broke Truman, Johnson and Nixon was the moment it became clear that their party's leaders in Congress wanted them gone.
Acting Within Constraints

This does not mean that the president can't act. It simply means that it is enormously more difficult to act than before. Gerald Ford, replacing Nixon but weakened by the pardoning of his predecessor, could not stop Congress from cutting off aid to South Vietnam during the final Communist assault. George W. Bush was able to launch the surge, but the surge was limited in size, not only because of strategic conditions but also because he had lost the ability to force Congress to fund alternative expansions of the war. In each of the failed presidencies, the president retained the ability to act but was constrained by the twin threats of an opposition-controlled Congress and his own party's unwillingness to align with him.

At the same time, certain foreign diplomatic initiatives can continue. Nixon initiated negotiations between Egypt and Israel that culminated, under Carter's administration, in the Camp David Accords. Truman tried to open negotiations with China, and the initiative's failure had little to do with opposition to a negotiated settlement in Korea.

The president has few domestic options. Whatever Obama does with his power domestically, Congress can vote to cut funding, and if the act is vetoed, the president puts Congressional Democrats in mortal danger. The place where he can act — and this is likely the place Obama is least comfortable acting — is in foreign policy. There, the limited deployment of troops and diplomatic initiatives are possible.

Obama's general strategy is to withdraw from existing conflicts in the Middle East and contain and limit Russian actions in Ukraine. The president has the ability to bring military and other pressure to bear. But the United States' opponent is aware that the sitting president is no longer in control of Washington, that he has a specific date of termination and that the more unpopular things he does, the more likely his successor is to repudiate them. Therefore, in the China-North Korea model, the assumption is that that continuing the conflict and negotiating with the successor president is rational. In the same sense, Iran chose to wait for the election of Ronald Reagan rather than deal with Jimmy Carter (who was not a failed president).

This model depends on the opponent's having the resources and the political will to continue the conflict in order to bargain with the president's successor, and assumes that the successor will be more malleable. This is frequently the result, since the successor can make concessions more readily than his predecessor. In fact, he can make those concessions and gain points by blaming the need to concede on his predecessor. Ironically, Obama used this strategy after replacing George W. Bush. The failed president frequently tries to entice negotiation by increasing the military pressure on the enemy. Truman, Johnson and George W. Bush all took this path while seeking to end their wars. In no case did it work, but they had little to lose politically by trying.

Therefore, if we follow historical patterns, Obama will now proceed slowly and ineffectively to increase military operations in Syria and Iraq, while raising non-military pressure on Russia, or potentially initiating some low-level military activities in Ukraine. The actions will be designed to achieve a rapid negotiating process that will not happen. The presidency will shift to the other party, as it did with Truman, Johnson and George W. Bush. Thus, if patterns hold true, the Republicans will retake the presidency. This is not a pattern unknown to Congress, which means that the Democrats in the legislature will focus on running their own campaigns as far away from Obama and the next Democratic presidential candidate as possible.

The period of a failed presidency is therefore not a quiet time. The president is actively trying to save his legacy in the face of enormous domestic weakness. Other countries, particularly adversaries, see little reason to make concessions to failed presidents, preferring to deal with the next president instead. These adversaries then use military and political oppositions abroad to help shape the next U.S. presidential campaign in directions that are in their interests.

It is against this backdrop that all domestic activities take place. The president retains the veto, and if the president is careful he will be able to sustain it. Obama will engage in limited domestic politics, under heavy pressure from Congressional Democrats, confining himself to one or two things. His major activity will be coping with Syria, Iraq and Russia, both because of crises and the desire for a legacy. The last two years of a failed presidency are mostly about foreign policy and are not very pleasant to watch.

Read more: On Obama and the Nature of Failed Presidencies | Stratfor
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objectivist1

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Matthew Vadum: "Ferguson in Flames"
« Reply #1064 on: November 25, 2014, 06:02:25 AM »
Ferguson in Flames

Posted By Matthew Vadum On November 25, 2014

Grand jurors in Ferguson, Mo., refused to indict local police officer Darren Wilson yesterday, heroically resisting pressure from President Obama on down to lynch an innocent police officer who fought off a violent attacker.

The decision is infuriating left-wingers across America because it rebuts the underlying assumption they embrace which is that white police racism caused the death of Michael Brown, a young black thug who tried to seize Wilson’s gun in an attempt to do the officer harm.

As fresh rioting was already underway in the St. Louis area, the decision also angered President Obama who could barely contain his hostility in a disgraceful, unprecedented television appearance following the release of the announcement about the non-indictments. Obama urged activists to refrain from using violence. The president himself bears direct responsibility for fomenting the combustible situation, however.

The county’s elected prosecuting attorney, Robert McCulloch, calmly explained the process in detail last night that the grand jury employed in choosing not to return indictments in five potential charges from first-degree murder to lesser offenses.

McCulloch is a white Democrat who has come under heavy fire from race-baiting members of his own political party. His partisans hate him because he does not share their antipathy for police officers, and presumably, because he is the wrong color. McCulloch easily secured the Democratic nomination for his office in a primary election four days before Brown was killed. In that contest, he handily beat former state public defender Leslie T. Broadnax, a black woman, by a margin of 71.4 percent to 28.6 percent.

McCulloch said many witnesses gave testimony that was not believable. Witnesses fabricated events, admitted they were in error, clung to discredited factual accounts, or gave evidence inconsistent with the physical evidence.

McCulloch said grand jurors were “the only people who heard every witness … and every piece of evidence.”

“These grand jurors poured their hearts and soul into this process,” he said. The grand jury consisted of nine whites and three blacks and was meeting every week since Aug. 20 to hear evidence in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. The panel convened for 70 hours and heard from 60 witnesses.

Perhaps in a conciliatory gesture to those who wanted Wilson strung up, McCulloch referred to the death of Brown and the events surrounding it as tragic. Obama too used the word tragic.

But that is the wrong word.

Recall that Brown, an 18-year-old black male, was killed in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9 by white police officer Darren Wilson after he attacked Wilson and tried to grab his handgun. Brown’s defenders characterize him as a gentle giant even though a few minutes earlier he was captured on video committing a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store, roughing up a much smaller clerk in the process. At autopsy Brown’s height was 6′ 5″ and his weight was 289 lbs. As previously reported, autopsy results were consistent with witness accounts that Brown reached for Wilson’s gun during their fateful altercation.

Brown’s death was not tragic. He was a villain. The evidence shows that he initiated potentially deadly force against an officer of the law and suffered the consequences of his actions. Grand jurors only needed a little bit of evidence to indict Officer Wilson. The evidence needed only to establish that probable cause existed to charge Wilson with a crime. The prosecution couldn’t even satisfy that low legal bar. The Wilson case may never have made it to a grand jury at all were it not for the antics of left-wing racial grievance groups working with and taking directions from the Obama administration.

The decision not to indict Wilson is not a tragedy. Far from it. The decision is just, proof that the grand jury system that was created to prevent governments from railroading unpopular defendants still works.

The tragedy is that Wilson had to be subjected to a three-month-long circus in which he was wrongfully accused of being a racist, murdering cop. He was demonized in the media day in and day out, a process that continues in the nation’s newsrooms even after last night’s announcement.

Petulant, as America’s childish Commander-in-Chief is wont to be when he fails to get his way, Obama sounded angry that grand jurors failed to indict Officer Wilson. The plot by Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Obama operative Al Sharpton to lynch Wilson in the courts failed.

Coming across like a Latin American caudillo, Obama sounded disgusted with Ferguson police and police forces across the nation in a press briefing last night.

Instead of accepting the grand jury’s wise decision, Obama set about stoking the flames. After spending months stirring up racial antagonism, Obama pontificated as if an innocent bystander of the events.

The decision “was going to be subject of intense disagreement not only in Ferguson, but across America, so I want to just say a few words suggesting how we might move forward,” he said, without noting that Wilson’s use of justifiable force against Brown became a national issue at his instigation.

Ignoring the fact that the death of Michael Brown had everything to do with his threatening, abusive behavior and absolutely nothing to do with his race, Obama implied cops hate minorities.

“We need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face as a nation,” Obama said, even though no broader challenges that we face as a nation played a role in Brown’s death.

“The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color,” he said, without noting that he and his comrades-in-arms in the world of community organizing have created distrust and disharmony where none previously existed.

Obama then blamed white people for Michael Brown attacking Darren Wilson.

“Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country,” Obama said even though there is no evidence that the residue of racial discrimination played any role in Brown’s death.

“And this is tragic, because nobody needs good policing more than poor communities with higher crime rates,” Obama said. “The good news is we know there are things we can do to help, and I’ve instructed Attorney General Holder to work with cities across the country to help build better relations between communities and law enforcement.” Obama said this even though the case at hand provided no evidence that there is a problem between communities and law enforcement.

The president then pivoted to make a pitch for affirmative action in police departments:

That means working with law enforcement officials to make sure their ranks are representative of the communities they serve. We know that makes a difference. It means working to train officials so that law enforcement conducts itself in a way that is fair to everybody. It means enlisting the community actively on what should be everybody’s goal, and that is to prevent crime.

These are mere policing platitudes Obama is lip-syncing as he advances the notion that only black police officers are suited to work in black communities. We do not know that it makes a difference. In fact, enforced diversity can be deadly.

We know that in the rush to furnish communities with cops of the correct skin color corners are likely to get cut and people will die as a result. Economist John Lott found in a 2000 study that the apartheid approach to police staffing led to increases in violent crime, especially in black neighborhoods. This is because the forced lowering of standards put less-qualified officers of all skin colors on the streets.

Even though the justice system ultimately worked in Ferguson, Obama pretends there is still a problem because there aren’t enough blacks in the local constabulary, in his view. He urged communities “interested in working with this administration and local and state officials to start tackling much-needed criminal justice reform,” even though the Brown-Wilson saga does not prove any reform of the criminal justice system is needed.

Obama continued ignoring the facts, insisting there is a problem.

“We have made enormous progress in race relations over the course of the past several decades … but what is also true is that there are still problems and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up,” Obama said, again ignoring that there is no evidence of a problem.

“Those who are only interested in focusing on the violence and just want the problem to go away need to recognize that we do have work to do here, and we shouldn’t try to paper it over,” he said without proving there is any work to be done. “Whenever we do that, the anger may momentarily subside, but over time, it builds up and America isn’t everything that it could be.”

It is as if the psychosis our troubled president suffers from regarding Ebola, the virus Obama is lovingly importing from West Africa, has spread to other issues as well. Only Obama and his fellow travelers say there is a problem in Ferguson.

The mass hysteria over Michael Brown’s death that Obama and his allies generated continues.

It is yet another success for America’s first Alinskyite president.
"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

ccp

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1065 on: November 25, 2014, 07:06:14 AM »
Agree completely with above post.  Most of us agree with Mark Levin's comments from last night's radio broadcast.  What he takes away from this is youth should not be robbing stores, strong arming store owners, punching police officers and reaching for their guns. 

Yet we have the left desperately turning this around to suit their agenda. 

Time for center and right of center political leaders to start calling out this charade.  We know the left won't do it.   

DougMacG

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Re: Politics - Ferguson
« Reply #1066 on: November 25, 2014, 08:42:46 AM »
St. Louis County Police Sgt. Brian Schellman said this morning that at least 61 people were arrested. Charges ranged from burglary to trespassing to receiving stolen property.

As of 8:30 a.m., area hospitals reported a total of 23 injuries including three admissions and two gunshot victims.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/in-ferguson-businesses-burn-police-cars-torched-as-violence-much/article_a3b95e2f-2087-520d-a25a-88e12f2c1dd9.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The chaos started when the first account of the incident said he was shot in the back, from a distance, for no reason.   Gradually we found out that isn't what happened. Because of the rules of the system, the officer's account of it didn't come out until now. 

I wonder how many innocent people the police in that area have been shooting that people would widely believe the first story?  How often when the innocent people are shot in the back for no reason by the police does the justice system fail to hold the officer accountable and people have to take to the streets for justice?  Relative to the ongoing level of crime against each other, the answer to those questions is pretty close to zero.

Recently I heard an ad on liberal-radio looking for protesters and donations to fight against the police state.  Maybe we will find out from the arrest who these people really are and where they are from.

Another question comes to mind, if all these people in this community are really so anti-big-government and dissatisfied with the status quo, why did they just vote 94% Democrat?   (See Ferguson State Senate district 14   http://enr.sos.mo.gov/EnrNet/)

Crafty_Dog

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Cong. Trey Gowdy anally rapes Prof. Gruber
« Reply #1067 on: December 09, 2014, 11:21:21 AM »


https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153066350620579&set=vb.21472760578&type=2&theater

I'd say the Joint Committee that will be investigating Benghazi is in good hands  :-D

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1068 on: December 15, 2014, 09:37:48 PM »
Maybe I am missing something but it would appear the Stupid Party is at it again, letting Forked Tongue Warren stand alone against the economic fascism of the taxpayers guaranteeing Wall Street's gambling with derivatives again.   This should be our issue as well!!! :x

objectivist1

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Al Sharpton - Shakedown Artist...
« Reply #1069 on: January 04, 2015, 04:41:14 PM »
I've long suspected that this is exactly how Sharpton and Jesse Jackson make their money.  Here are some specifics:

http://nypost.com/2015/01/04/how-sharpton-gets-paid-to-not-cry-racism-at-corporations/
"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1070 on: January 04, 2015, 07:40:50 PM »
Please post on the Race thread on SCH too.  Thank you.

objectivist1

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"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.


DougMacG

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Re: Tell Your Rep: Boehner Has To Go!
« Reply #1073 on: January 05, 2015, 09:28:47 AM »
I sent that suggestion today to my RINO friend and congressman.  The vote for Speaker is tomorrow - Tuesday.

Given his seat on the House Ways and Means Committee, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell he is interested in rocking the boat.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1074 on: January 05, 2015, 09:53:36 AM »
I'm represented by a progressive Dem.

objectivist1

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Mark Levin: Why Boehner Needs to GO NOW!!
« Reply #1075 on: January 05, 2015, 06:02:51 PM »
Here's Levin's excellent 5-minute rant from his radio show tonight about why John Boehner needs to be fired as Speaker of the House:

http://therightscoop.com/mark-levin-on-why-johnny-boehner-shouldnt-be-speaker-he-acts-like-nancy-pelosi/
"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

objectivist1

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John Boehner - The Indefensible Man...
« Reply #1076 on: January 06, 2015, 05:59:29 AM »
John Boehner: The Indefensible Man

By: Daniel Horowitz
      
January 6th, 2015

___________________________________

As the dramatic House vote for Speaker draws near, there is one salient observation overlooked by the Washington political class.  Nobody – not one member is willing to publicly defend or vouch for Boehner as a bold and effective leader of the Republican opposition or as a spokesman for the party’s conservative platform.

It’s no enigma why we are not seeing a cheerleading squad for Boehner; his actions are indefensible. If he privately told Obama to go ahead with executive amnesty, what else has he told him?

It’s no enigma why we are not seeing a cheerleading squad for Boehner; his actions are indefensible.  If he privately told Obama to go ahead with executive amnesty, what else has he told him?

But still, isn’t there anyone who is willing to go to bat for him?

While watching the drama unfold on Monday, we witnessed debates over tactics, questions about “alternative” candidates, and predictions whether the coup would succeed or whether it was a good idea.  But one thing we didn’t see was anyone defending John Boehner.  Even his supporters refuse to defend him.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA), a down-the-line establishment foot soldier, was the first member to publicly and formally put out a statement announcing his intention to vote for Boehner.  His rationale?  There is no alternative.  Let’s put aside the fact that this is a straw man argument.  We have a loyal Boehner member who can’t muster anything positive to say about the Speaker, and in fact, he explicitly says that we need stronger leadership.

What about Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), a member who represents a district next door to John Boehner in Ohio?  He launches into a long dissertation on the importance of showing unity and being in support of something!

Wow – these are ringing endorsements of John Boehner.  As if to say, “Hey, look, we have to be for something and show unity, and we don’t really have an alternative, but if we did I’d be on board the effort to fire Boehner.”

Even Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), one of Boehner’s fiercest lieutenants, couldn’t conjure up anything positive about Boehner other than assailing conservatives as “unprofessional.”  I guess the unprecedented number of constituents melting down the congressional switchboard were also unprofessional?

Consider this for a moment: none of the major conservative organizations even put out massive email blasts and campaigns encouraging people to call their members.  This is solely the voice of the people. Moreover, this was a sleepy Monday, coming off the longest Holiday season of the year.  Yet, members were receiving hundreds of calls demanding they oppose the sitting party leader. These were Republican voters.  One member said he couldn’t even get ahold of his own office because the lines were jammed.

Ironically, the stenographers for the establishment in the Republican-leaning media relentlessly mocked a poll showing that 60% of GOP voters want a new Speaker.  It will be interesting to see if these people can recognize reality when it slaps them in the face.

But there is one other important nugget in that poll, as observed by pollster Pat Caddell:

“The alienation among Republican voters is so high,” says Caddell, that conservatively “a quarter to one-third of the Republican party are hanging by a thread from bolting.” Caddell argues that GOP voters’ attitudes are “so anti-establishment,” and they give Republican leadership poor ratings. [Breitbart]
Boehner might win the vote tomorrow. But he has forever lost the people of his own party.

Boehner might win the vote tomorrow.  But he has forever lost the people of his own party.  His policies and actions as Speaker are indefensible, as clearly demonstrated by the lack of public defenders of his record.  You can only go so long being perpetually at war with the base of a party before the thousand cuts become mortal wounds.

The elites in the GOP establishment and the gutless conservatives who are enabling them should be careful what they wish for.          


Daniel Horowitz is Senior Editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative.

- See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/01/john-boehner-the-indefensible-man#sthash.jVBAqzIg.dpuf
"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

objectivist1

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Boehner Survives - Not Good...
« Reply #1077 on: January 07, 2015, 05:22:16 AM »
Boehner Survives

Posted By Arnold Ahlert On January 7, 2015

The ideological differences between the establishment GOP and the party’s conservative wing became more evident yesterday during the latest election for Speaker of the House. Hours before the vote, a “dump Boehner” movement aimed at denying the Ohio Republican a third term appeared to be gaining momentum. “A fresh start often requires change, and I believe that change should start with the election of a new Speaker,” wrote Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) on his Facebook page.

Change didn’t happen. Boehner was reelected by a margin of 216 votes out of 408 votes cast.

The revolt against the status quo yielded at least three representatives willing to challenge Boehner for the job. Taking up the effort were two Florida Republicans, Rep. Ted Yoho and Rep. Daniel Webster, and conservative stalwart Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas. Gohmert frequently appears at events hosted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center and was a featured speaker at the Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend in 2014.

And while the odds of them winning were low, their efforts were not in vain, as the number of Republicans willing to challenge Boehner got larger. Early Tuesday it was reported that 10 Republicans were against Boehner’s reappointment, but by the time Yoho spoke with Fox News the number had grown to 13. By afternoon two more defectors had joined the ranks, including Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), who had originally indicated he would vote for Boehner. Another defector was Texas Rep. Randy Weber. He voted for Boehner in 2013, but indicated that Gohmert was now his first choice. “Let’s all get behind Judge Louie Gohmert for Speaker!” Weber wrote on Twitter. “He has my vote! He’s not afraid to take the fight to the president & his veto pen!”

Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), who shocked the GOP Establishment when he defeated former Majority Leader Eric Cantor in that state’s primary, expressed the sentiment of his rebellious colleagues, contending Republican leadership has “strayed from its own principles of free market, limited government, (and) constitutional conservatism.”

Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), who was also a featured speaker at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend in 2014, illuminated one of the primary examples of GOP straying. He released a statement explaining that Boehner and President Obama

crafted the CR/Omnibus, a $1.1 trillion spending bill which funded the government for 10 months and blocked our newest elected Republicans from advancing conservative policy and delivering on campaign promises. With this vote, Republicans gave away the best tool available to rein in our liberal activist President: the power of the purse.

A majority of rank-and-file Republicans also expressed disdain for Boehner’s leadership. A national telephone survey conducted Dec. 26-30 revealed that 60 percent of voters who voted for Republicans in 2014 either “definitely” or “probably” wanted their congressional representative to vote for someone other than Boehner. Those who definitely wanted Boehner deposed comprised 34 percent of the vote, while 26 percent probably wanted someone else. On the other side of the equation, only 11 percent definitely wanted to keep Boehner, and 15 percent probably wanted him to remain.

The Speaker didn’t fare much better with regard to specific questions. By a margin of 52-37 percent, the respondents indicated they didn’t trust Boehner to fight for the issues most important to Republicans. He got hammered even harder when asked about his effectiveness in opposing Obama’s agenda with a whopping 64 percent agreeing that he was not effective, compared to only 24 percent who thought he was. Boehner couldn’t even get a majority of Republicans to agree strongly or somewhat that he “has the best interests of the American public at heart, rather than special interests,” with only 44 percent saying he would watch out for the public, barely edging the 43 percent who thought he would cater to the well-connected.

Boehner needed a simple majority to get reelected, but for much of the day it was impossible to determine what the actual number would be due to outside factors. They included Rep. Michael Grimm’s (R-NY) resignation following a guilty plea for tax evasion, a dozen Democrats attending former New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s funeral in Manhattan, and several lawmakers unable to reach Washington, D.C. due to bad weather. At the very least the rebels were hoping to force a second round of voting for the first time since 1923, when Frederick H. Gillett (R-MA) needed nine ballots to win reelection as speaker, according to the Congressional Research Service. Gillett ultimately prevailed.

In the end, so did Boehner. Shortly before 3p.m. EST he secured his reelection, topping Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who got 164 votes. And while conservatives fell well short of securing enough votes to force a second round, the number of dissenting Republicans had grown to 25, the largest number of naysayers since the aforementioned 1923 vote.

“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad,” Boehner said, taking the gavel from Pelosi. Before handing it over, Pelosi made one more push for the Democratic agenda, promising to introduce legislation that would raise taxes on wealthy Americans and businesses, boost spending on infrastructure, and focus on voting rights. “We invite our Republican colleagues to join us,” she said to the scattered applause that is perhaps the best indicator of her chances for success.

By contrast, Boehner promised to make the economy his party’s top priority. Toward that end he will reintroduce measures that passed in the House with bipartisan support during the previous Congress, but ultimately died in the then-Democratically-controlled Senate, when former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) amply fulfilled his role as obstructionist-in-chief.

And while Republican rebels made their voices heard, there was no real opposition to Boehner’s reelection in terms of alternative choices. Webster earned 12 votes, falling well short of threatening Boehner despite being the largest single challenge in years, and Gohmert received three votes of support. Several other GOPers received votes as well.

In a statement, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) expressed one of the establishment GOP viewpoints for supporting Boehner, explaining that he was willing to give the thrice-elected Speaker a chance to “negotiate with a Senate which, for once, is not an automatic adversary.” Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) offered a different take. “He led us through a period where we’ve increased our majority, substantially,” he said.

Despite Boehner’s victory, Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH) was frustrated. “The American people are going to give us two years to try to get things done, and we have to be serious about it. We have to be focused on it, and things like this are a distraction,” he contended. “The debate about this is important, but we had this in November. To have a handful of folks gin this up with talk radio is really, really unfortunate.”

When a survey showing 60 percent of the electorate who voted Republican want someone other than Boehner running the House, the notion that a “handful of folks” are “ginning” up animosity rings exceedingly hollow. Moreover the real “gin-meister” might be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who dismissed conservative concerns as “scary” right around the time the survey was conducted. “I don’t want the American people to think that if they add a Republican president to a Republican Congress, that’s going to be a scary outcome,” he said during an interview with the Washington Post just before Christmas. “I want the American people to be comfortable with the fact that the Republican House and Senate is a responsible, right-of-center, governing majority.”

McConnell pushed the envelope even further. “There would be nothing frightening about adding a Republican president to that governing majority,” he added. “I think that’s the single best thing we can do, is to not mess up the playing field, if you will, for whoever the nominee ultimately is.”

Not messing up the playing field is the essence of establishment GOP thinking. And it is that thinking that more than likely led to Obama being reelected, despite getting 7.6 million fewer votes in 2012 than 2008, when Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan managed to garner 1.3 million fewer votes than John McCain and Sarah Palin. That would be the same John McCain and Sarah Palin facing a “hope and change” Obama in all his euphoric glory, not the Obama saddled with a dismal economy, skyrocketing debt, and numerous scandals. Romney lost nonetheless, in large part because the GOP base stayed home, not willing to invest the time and energy to vote for yet another “unfrightening” candidate.

Furthermore, it was Obama himself who framed the 2014 election as a referendum on his agenda, and the electorate “rewarded” the president and his party with the loss of 9 Senate seats and the largest Republican majority in the House since WWll. That voters wanted to bottle up that agenda is inarguable. So is the idea that millions of Americans yearn for genuine leadership.

Unfortunately, the reelection of John Boehner indicates establishment Republicans are content with the status quo, and Americans will undoubtedly hear a familiar GOP refrain about being only “one more election (of a GOP president) away” from making real changes. As for the GOP base, many of whom jammed the phones urging their representative not to vote for Boehner, and who believe as Bill Gheen, founder of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, put it, that his reelection is “a vote for amnesty,” will yet again be seen as people with no other place to go in 2016.

The GOP has two years to convince that base, along with other Americans, they are worthy of the electorate’s ongoing support. The reelection of John Boehner as Speaker of the House is not an encouraging first step.
"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

objectivist1

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Boehner Lies Again - Punishes Dissenters...
« Reply #1078 on: January 07, 2015, 05:30:31 AM »
Boehner Moves To Punish Dissenters, Despite Past Statements

Posted By Alex Pappas @ The Daily Caller.

Speaker of the House John Boehner is apparently punishing Republicans who voted against his re-election Tuesday, despite previously saying he would not do so.

Reps. Daniel Webster and Richard Nugent are both losing their seats on the House Rules Committee, Politico reported Tuesday evening. Both Florida Republicans voted for Webster instead of Boehner earlier in the day.

Such moves seem to contradict recent statements made by Boehner and his office.

Asked last week if any Republicans who voted against Boehner would be punished, spokesman Michael Steel told The Daily Caller by email: “Boehner has said publicly that there will be no retribution for ‘no’ votes.”

In September, USA Today reported that Boehner “shot down fresh rumors that he will face a revolt from conservatives when he seeks a third term as speaker in January, and he dismissed suggestions that his leadership team would strip committee assignments from any GOP lawmaker who voted against him.”

“I just don’t think it’s necessary,” Boehner said of punishing dissenters.


Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who voted for himself for speaker on Tuesday, called Boehner a “sore winner,” citing the reported punishment.

“After being told that we should now all come together and work together, we have been told late today that two of our Congressmen are being taken off of the committee they were on, simply for voting like their voters wanted,” Gohmert said in a Tuesday statement. “So, it appears before we can work together, we are now going to have another fight. It would be a shame if the Speaker of the House who has so much power is a sore winner.”

This isn’t the first time Boehner has been accused of taking away committee assignments from disloyal Republicans. In 2012, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash and Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp lost seats on the House Budget Committee. Arizona Rep. David Schweikert and North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones were also booted from the Financial Services Committee.

Webster — who is being kicked off the speaker’s powerful Rules Committee — won a surprising 12 votes to replace Boehner on Tuesday.

Here are those that voted against Boehner:

1. Rep. Justin Amash voted for Jim Jordan
2. Rep. Brian Babin voted for present
3. Rep. Rod Blum voted for Daniel Webster
4. Rep. Dave Brat voted for Jeff Duncan
5. Rep. Jim Bridenstine voted for Louie Gohmert
6. Rep. Curt Clawson voted for Rand Paul
7. Rep. Scott DesJarlais voted for Jim Jordan
8. Rep. Jeff Duncan voted for Trey Gowdy
9. Rep. Scott Garrett voted for Daniel Webster
10. Rep. Chris Gibson voted for Kevin McCarthy
11. Rep. Louie Gohmert voted for Louie Gohmert
12. Rep. Paul Gosar voted for Daniel Webster
13. Rep. Tim Huelskamp voted for Daniel Webster
14. Rep. Walter Jones voted for Daniel Webster
15. Rep. Steve King voted for Daniel Webster
16. Rep. Thomas Massie voted for Ted Yoho
17. Rep. Mark Meadows voted for Daniel Webster
18. Rep. Rich Nugent voted for Daniel Webster
19. Rep. Gary Palmer voted for Jeff Sessions
20. Rep. Bill Posey voted for Daniel Webster
21. Rep. Scott Rigell voted for Daniel Webster
22. Rep. Marlin Stutzman voted for Daniel Webster
23. Rep. Randy Weber voted for Gohmert
24. Rep. Daniel Webster voted for Daniel Webster
25. Rep. Ted Yoho voted for Ted Yoho

Politico reported that “more punishment is likely to come for others that crossed Boehner.”
"You have enemies?  Good.  That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

DougMacG

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National Journal: The Emerging Republican Advantage
« Reply #1079 on: February 09, 2015, 10:15:25 AM »
Not sure if I fully believe this but there is some truth to it.  R's have lost the last 2 Presidential elections, but also have taken back the House, Senate, Governorships, and State Legislatures.  Dems own certain demographic groups but are losing ground in others.
--------------------------

The idea of an enduring Democratic majority was a mirage. How the GOP gained an edge in American politics—and why it’s likely to last.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-emerging-republican-advantage-20150130

Excerpt:  Democrats today...are being severely undermined by two trends that have emerged in the past few elections—one surprising, the other less so. The less surprising trend is that Democrats have continued to hemorrhage support among white working-class voters—a group that generally works in blue-collar and lower-income service jobs and that is roughly identifiable in exit polls as those whites who have not graduated from a four-year college. These voters, and particularly those well above the poverty line, began to shift toward the GOP decades ago, but in recent years that shift has become progressively more pronounced.

The more surprising trend is that Republicans are gaining dramatically among a group that had tilted toward Democrats in 2006 and 2008: Call them middle-class Americans. These are voters who generally work in what economist Stephen Rose has called "the office economy." In exit polling, they can roughly be identified as those who have college—but not postgraduate—degrees and those whose household incomes are between $50,000 and $100,000. (Obviously, the overlap here is imperfect, but there is a broad congruence between these polling categories.)

DougMacG

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1080 on: February 10, 2015, 09:06:13 AM »
Michael Barone notes that the author of the article I posted yesterday, The Emerging Republican Advantage, was previously the co-author of the book "The Emerging Democratic Majority".  Funny how political things that seem unchangeable change.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/02/10/the_democratic_majority_that_emerged_--_and_disappeared_125552.html

[Democrats who won iun 2006 and 2008] had a chance to extend those by coming up with policies generally deemed successful and which held their disparate coalition together.  They failed on both counts. Big government policies -- the stimulus package, Obamacare -- proved generally unpopular. And other Democratic policies began splitting the party's coalition.
...
Republicans looking to 2016 should be aiming not at creating a permanent partisan majority but at developing public policies that could, unlike Obama's, be successful and enduring.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1081 on: February 10, 2015, 09:39:59 AM »
Reps should be in full-throated "Charge!" mode right now, dumping bill after bill on Obama's desk.

 :cry: :cry: :cry:

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1082 on: February 10, 2015, 10:44:48 AM »
Reps should be in full-throated "Charge!" mode right now, dumping bill after bill on Obama's desk.

 :cry: :cry: :cry:

Back to the default grovel mode.

DougMacG

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1083 on: February 10, 2015, 12:28:58 PM »
Reps should be in full-throated "Charge!" mode right now, dumping bill after bill on Obama's desk.
 :cry: :cry: :cry:

A (DEMOCRAT) filibuster is stopping the amnesty reversal funding bill in the Senate.  R's control the House and have a majority in the Senate and that makes a total of zero branches of government under Rep control.  Get ready for gridlock.  We need to win the White House before anything good can happen, and even then we need to be someone able to reach the people and pressure moderate Dems (a vanishing species) to break in the right direction. 

http://jamiedupree.blog.wsbradio.com/2015/02/08/immigration-impasse-rolls-on-in-congress/
"Three days in a row last week, Democrats sustained a filibuster in the Senate against that DHS spending bill, refusing to allow the House-passed GOP plan to even be brought up on the floor for debate and amendments". 

I agree 'dumping bill after bill onto Obama's desk' would be the right politics to play right now, but they can't really do that and it would not shame this President into signing any bill that weakens his power or agenda anyway.



 

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1084 on: February 10, 2015, 05:17:10 PM »
Of course Obama won't sign these bills-- but that is not the point.  The point is to put Obama and the Dems on the record and to show how Reps would govern -- so as to win the presidency.

DougMacG

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1085 on: February 10, 2015, 08:21:12 PM »
Of course Obama won't sign these bills-- but that is not the point.  The point is to put Obama and the Dems on the record and to show how Reps would govern -- so as to win the presidency.

Agree.  But are you saying the R's should change Senate rules and end the filibuster over legislation certain to die at the next step?  Keep in mind they have roughly a 50-50 shot at holding the Senate in 2016.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1086 on: February 11, 2015, 12:32:41 PM »
Difficult question.

Are all of the bills the Reps should be passing devoid of sufficient Dem votes to override the filibuster?



Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1088 on: March 02, 2015, 09:29:14 AM »
I'm not noticing any solution to the illegal amnesty/wrok permits issue being offered here, but politically it raises questions that must be addressed.

Squandering a GOP Majority
House Republicans walk into Obama’s immigration trap.
March 1, 2015 5:49 p.m. ET
WSJ

A majority in Congress is a terrible thing to waste, but only two months into their largest majority since the 1920s Republicans are well on the way. Their latest mental breakdown is over their attempt to overturn President Obama ’s order ending deportations for some five million illegal immigrants.

Once again the fight comes down to recognizing political reality, or marching off a cliff to almost certain failure. The Cliff Marchers refuse to vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security without a provision barring the enforcement of Mr. Obama’s immigration orders going back to 2012. But the House bill has failed to get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate. That puts DHS on the cusp of a partial shutdown.

On Friday the House and Senate voted to fund DHS, but only for a week and only with the help of Democrats. Speaker John Boehner ’s plan to fund the department for three weeks came crashing down when 52 Republicans revolted. The revolters effectively put Nancy Pelosi in charge of the House. So the GOP will now consume itself in more recriminations as it squanders more of its first 100 days.

The sad if predictable irony is that this is exactly what Mr. Obama hoped to incite with his November immigration order. He wanted to goad an overreaction that made the GOP look both anti-immigrant and intemperate enough to shut down the government.

The double irony is that, in shutting down part of DHS, the Republicans would also give Mr. Obama an opening to claim the political high ground on national security. He’d blame the GOP for putting at risk the defenses against a terrorist threat that his own policies have allowed to proliferate.

The smart play now would be for Republicans to fund DHS and move on to more promising policy ground including the budget. Texas and other states that oppose the order have already won a legal victory when a federal court issued a preliminary injunction against implementing it. The Administration has appealed, but even if it wins in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the issue is likely to go the Supreme Court.

The Cliff Marchers dismiss this as surrender and are insisting on a long fight over the immigration order even if it means a partial DHS shutdown. (We say partial because some 85% of DHS’s 240,000 workers are deemed essential and would still report for duty even if the government deferred their pay. The core security functions of DHS would continue.) The GOP dissenters say they’d prevail over time as the public came to see Mr. Obama’s fealty to his immigration diktat as the real cause of the shutdown.

Miracles do happen, but in every previous shutdown the voters blamed Republicans more than Mr. Obama. And if there is a terror attack, good luck explaining that Congress isn’t to blame because those DHS workers were supposed to be on the job even if they weren’t being paid.

Some of the Cliff Marchers are also demanding that Republicans break Senate rules and cashier the filibuster to pass the House bill. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy picked up that theme Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He pointed out that 57 Senators, including four Democrats, had voted to oppose Mr. Obama’s November order.

But busting the filibuster on policy would have ramifications far beyond this fight. Republicans would have to violate Senate rules, which require a two-thirds vote to change a rule midsession. They would also exceed what even Democrat Harry Reid did in breaking the filibusters for executive nominations.

Most important, this would remove what has long been a procedural barrier to narrow liberal majorities rewriting labor and election laws to hurt conservatives. If Republicans are going to throw out the filibuster, it should be done based on more than the desperation of a rump group in the House.

The immigration fiasco raises the larger question of whether House Republicans can even function as a majority. Some backbenchers are whispering that they’ll work with Democrats to oust Mr. Boehner as Speaker if he doesn’t follow their shutdown strategy. Some are also plotting to take down a procedural rule, which would mean handing control to Democrats.

Mr. Boehner has made mistakes, one of which is bending too much to the shutdown caucus. But let’s say the no-compromise crowd did succeed in humiliating the Speaker, and he resigned. What then? Whom do coup plotters want to put in charge?

Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan has support across the House GOP, but why would he want to run a majority that is hostage to the whim of 50 Members who care more about appeasing talk radio than achieving conservative victories?

Republicans need to do some soul searching about the purpose of a Congressional majority, including whether they even want it. If they really think Mr. Boehner is the problem, then find someone else to do his thankless job. If not, then start to impose some order and discipline and advance the conservative cause rather than self-defeating rebellion.
Popular on WSJ
================================

Also see  http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-gop-faces-familiar-dilemma-on-homeland-security-funding/2015/03/01/f5f41e5e-c038-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html
















« Last Edit: March 02, 2015, 11:12:46 AM by Crafty_Dog »

Crafty_Dog

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ppulatie

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Reagan
« Reply #1092 on: October 02, 2015, 06:56:21 PM »
Here is a link to youtube with Ronald Reagan's greatest lines, one liners. etc. As each video ends, another begins.

https://youtu.be/Rd_KaF3-Bcw?t=45s

In 76 when Reagan ran for the Presidency, he was ignored in many ways. Beginning in 79 to 82, I was stationed in England at RAF Bentwaters. I missed out on the 1980 election, so may of these one liners I missed, as well as other things.

Watching this, I realized that it has been 27 years since Ronald held office. How I miss the man, his compassion, his humility, and his patriotism.  Watching these videos, I once again realize what a National Treasure he really was. And, how someone like Reagan comes along once a generation.

From my perspective, what made Ronald so special, he did not apologize for America. He saw the greatness of America and the potential for the future. A future that has been squandered for three decades since.

When I look at the politicians today, none come up anywhere to near his standard. They are afraid to exhibit to Americans what makes America special. They must deny those same values.

I will ask a question for pondering............is a part of the appeal of Donald Trump similar to the appeal of Reagan in the 1980 election? (That was an election he had to fight for until the final month and weeks when in the debates, he took control.) Frankly, in my own case, the answer is YES. Donald trump presents a view of America that was great, lost its greatness as did the US in the 1970s, and now wants to bring back that greatness.

Sure the differences exist from then to now, both societal and political. But though the differences exist, in many ways the causes are the same.

I apologize for any appearance of maudlin feelings. It is just that this brings back to memory a period of time when the country was going through a really tough time, and then comes this 'simple man" with "simple beliefs" came to the world stage. With Ronald, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, the world was in a much better place after they left the stage.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2015, 08:37:56 PM by Crafty_Dog »
PPulatie

Crafty_Dog

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« Last Edit: October 02, 2015, 08:37:44 PM by Crafty_Dog »

ppulatie

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1094 on: October 02, 2015, 08:49:00 PM »
BIG Dog,

Still watching more videos of the Great Communicator. Some actually give me an "allergy attack".    :oops:

Will we ever see another like Reagan? Probably not in my life time.

PPulatie

DougMacG

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Vox: Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble
« Reply #1095 on: October 23, 2015, 05:14:56 PM »
Liberal writer on a liberal site goes into excruciating detail about the trouble Dems are in.   Kind of sad, really.     :wink:

The NY state senate is R controlled?!  The largest non-Calif state with unified Dem control is Oregon with 1% of the US population.  Republicans have unified control of 25 states.  Thank you President Obama.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9565119/democrats-in-deep-trouble

Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble.
Updated by Matthew Yglesias on October 19, 2015, 7:00 a.m. ET @mattyglesias matt@vox.com

The Democratic Party is in much greater peril than its leaders or supporters recognize, and it has no plan to save itself.

Yes, Barack Obama is taking a victory lap in his seventh year in office. Yes, Republicans can't find a credible candidate to so much as run for speaker of the House. Yes, the GOP presidential field is led by a megalomaniacal reality TV star. All this is true — but rather than lay the foundation for enduring Democratic success, all it's done is breed a wrongheaded atmosphere of complacence.

The Republican Party doesn’t want to believe its voters agree with Trump. But they do.
The presidency is extremely important, of course. But there are also thousands of critically important offices all the way down the ballot. And the vast majority — 70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state — are in Republicans hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Indeed, even the House infighting reflects, in some ways, the health of the GOP coalition. Republicans are confident they won't lose power in the House and are hungry for a vigorous argument about how best to use the power they have.

Not only have Republicans won most elections, but they have a perfectly reasonable plan for trying to recapture the White House. But Democrats have nothing at all in the works to redress their crippling weakness down the ballot. Democrats aren't even talking about how to improve on their weak points, because by and large they don't even admit that they exist.

Instead, the party is focused on a competition between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton over whether they should go a little bit to Obama's left or a lot to his left, options that are unlikely to help Democrats down-ballot in the face of an unfriendly House map and a more conservative midterm electorate. The GOP might be in chaos, but Democrats are in a torpor.

Democrats have been obliterated at the state level
The worst part of the problem for the Democratic Party is in races that are, collectively, the most important: state government.

Elections for state legislature rarely make the national news, but they are the fundamental building blocks of American politics. Since they run the redistricting process for the US House of Representatives and for themselves, they are where the greatest level of electoral entrenchment is possible.

And in the wake of the 2014 midterms, Republicans have overwhelming dominance of America's state legislatures.

In what Democrats should take as a further bleak sign, four of the 11 states where they control both houses of the state legislature — Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois — have a Republican governor. This leaves just seven states under unified Democratic Party control.

Republicans have unified control of 25 states. Along with the usual set of tax cuts for high-income individuals and business-friendly regulations, the result has been:

An unprecedented wave of restrictions on abortion rights
The spread of union-hostile "right to work" laws into the Great Lakes states
New curbs on voting rights, to further tilt the electorate in a richer, whiter, older direction
Large-scale layoffs of teachers and other public sector workers who are likely to support Democrats
Admittedly, one of the Democrats' seven states is California, which contains more than 10 percent of the nation's total population. But Texas and Florida combine for more people than the Golden State, and the GOP also dominates Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina — all of which are among the 10 largest states by population. Democrats' largest non-California bastion of unified control is Oregon, home to only about one percent of the American people.*

As of 2012 or so, Democrats thought they had a solution to this. Hard-right GOP governors in places like Wisconsin and Florida had become unpopular and were clearly overreaching — reading a wave driven by the poor economy in 2010 as an ideological mandate for sweeping conservative policy change. And that worked in Pennsylvania's 2014 gubernatorial election — Tom Wolf rode a backlash against then-Gov. Tom Corbett's hard-right policies to victory. But Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Rick Snyder, and even Maine's Paul LePage were all reelected. And while the old plan didn't pan out, no new one has risen to take its place.

The GOP is flexible
Liberals accustomed to chuckling over the ideological rigor of the House GOP caucus won't want to hear this, but one of the foundations of the GOP's broad national success is a reasonable degree of ideological flexibility.

Essentially every state on the map contains overlapping circles of rich people who don't want to pay taxes and business owners who don't want to comply with labor, public health, and environmental regulations. In states like Texas or South Carolina, where this agenda nicely complements a robust social conservatism, the GOP offers that up and wins with it. But in a Maryland or a New Jersey, the party of business manages to throw up candidates who either lack hard-edged socially conservative views or else successfully downplay them as irrelevant in the context of blue-state governance.

Democrats, of course, are conceptually aware of the possibility of nominating unusually conservative candidates to run in unusually conservative states. But there is a fundamental mismatch. No US state is so left-wing as to have created an environment in which business interests are economically or politically irrelevant. Vermont is not North Korea, in other words.

But there are many states in which labor unions are neither large nor powerful and non-labor national progressive donor networks are inherently populated by relatively affluent people who tend to be emotionally driven by progressive commitments on social or environmental issues. This is why an impassioned defense of the legality of late-term abortions could make Wendy Davis a viral sensation, a national media star, and someone capable of activating the kind of donor and volunteer networks needed to mount a statewide campaign. Unfortunately for Democrats, however, this is precisely the wrong issue profile to try to win statewide elections in conservative states.

Republicans have a plan
Any serious article about the prospects for Democratic Party policymaking in 2017 starts with the premise that Republicans will continue to hold a majority in the US House of Representatives. This presumption is built on four premises:

The natural distribution of population in the United States tends to lead the average House district to be more GOP-friendly than the overall population.
GOP control of most state legislatures lets Republicans draw boundaries in a way that is even more GOP-friendly than the natural population distribution would suggest.
Incumbents have large advantages in House elections, and most incumbents are Republicans.
So-called "wave" elections in which tons of incumbents lose are typically driven by a backlash against the incumbent president. Since the incumbent president is a Democrat, Democrats have no way to set up a wave.
One striking fact about this is that the presumption of continued GOP control is so solid that you don't even get pushback from House Democratic leaders when you write it down. Privately, some backbench Democrats express frustration that the leadership has no plan to try to recapture the majority. In their defense, it's not like anyone outside the leadership has a great plan either.

But this isn't just a parochial issue for the House Democratic caucus. It means that the party's legislative agenda is entirely dead on arrival at the federal level. And it's particularly striking that this stronghold of conservatism comes from the exact institution that so frequently generates embarrassing headlines for the GOP. House Republicans act extreme in part because they know they can get away with it.

The GOP, by contrast, has basically two perfectly plausible plans for moving its agenda forward. One is to basically change nothing and just hope for slightly better luck from the economic fundamentals or in terms of Democratic Party scandals. The other is to shift left on immigration and gain some Latino votes while retaining the core of the party's commitments. Neither of these plans is exactly brilliant, innovative, or foolproof. But neither one is crazy. Even if you believe that Democrats have obtained a structural advantage in presidential elections, it's clearly not an enormous one. The 51 percent of the vote obtained by Barack Obama in 2012 was hardly a landslide, early head-to-head polling of 2016 indicates a close race, and there's always a chance that unexpected bad news will hit the US economy or impair our national security.

Winning a presidential election would give Republicans the overwhelming preponderance of political power in the United States — a level of dominance not achieved since the Democrats during the Great Depression, but with a much more ideologically coherent coalition. Nothing lasts forever in American politics, but a hyper-empowered conservative movement would have a significant ability to entrench its position by passing a national right-to-work law and further altering campaign finance rules beyond the Citizens United status quo.

The first step for Democrats is admitting they have a problem
In some ways, the Democrats' biggest disadvantage is simply their current smugness. A party that controls such a small share of elected offices around the country is a party that should be engaged in vigorous debate about how to improve its fortunes. Much of the current Republican infighting — embarrassing and counterproductive though it may be at times — reflects the healthy impulse to recognize that the party lacks the full measure of power that it desires, and needs to argue about optimal strategies for obtaining it.

On the Democratic side, the personal political success of Barack Obama has created an atmosphere of complacency and overconfidence. If a black guy with the middle name Hussein can win the White House, the thinking seems to be, then anything is possible. Consequently, the party is marching steadily to the left on its issue positions — embracing same-sex marriage, rediscovering enthusiasm for gun control, rejecting the January 2013 income tax rate settlement as inadequate, raising its minimum wage aspirations to the $12-to-$15 range, abandoning the quest for a grand bargain on balancing the budget while proposing new entitlements for child care and parental leave — even though existing issue positions seem incompatible with a House majority or any meaningful degree of success in state politics.

Whatever you make of this agenda substantively, there's no way to actually enact it without first achieving a considerably higher level of down-ballot electoral success than Democrats currently enjoy.

But instead of a dialogue about how to obtain that success, Democrats are currently engaged in a slightly bizarre bidding war between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to see whether Congress in 2017 will reject a legislative agenda that is somewhat to the left of Obama's or drastically to its left. The differences between them are real, of course, and at least somewhat important.

But the much more significant question facing the party isn't about the White House — it's about all the other offices in the land. The problem is that control of the presidency seems to have blinded progressive activists to the possibility of even having an argument about what to do about all of them. That will change if and when the GOP seizes the White House, too, and Democrats bottom out. But the truly striking thing is how close to bottom the party is already and how blind it seems to be to that fact.

* Correction: Earlier versions of this article said that Minnesota or Washington was the biggest non-California Democratic-controlled state, but in fact the Republicans control one legislative house in both of those states
« Last Edit: October 23, 2015, 05:35:58 PM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #1096 on: October 23, 2015, 06:39:50 PM »
Good article making an important point.  May I ask you to post it as well in The Way Forward thread?  Thank you.

Crafty_Dog

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Biden nails it
« Reply #1098 on: February 22, 2016, 01:41:50 PM »