Addendum: I ask “the fuck do you do about that” because you are one of the people who is smart enough to see through this crap, and you still don’t hold him accountable.
The majority of promises by politicians are in fact kept, or, at least, they try and keep them. The idea of politicians lying is more about pretending to like people and stuff. It is at a completely different level than Trump.
Not that this even matters this time. Trump shockingly did not lie when he said he was going to get rid of the ACA. Neither did Republicans. They fully believed they could do it. They are at an impasse. Believing or not believing Trump has nothing to do with why both liberals and conservatives made inaccurate predictions.
Trump did, IMO, lie about not touching Medicaid and Medicare. He hasn’t even really fought to say that those can’t be touched. That’s a lie. But he very much did try to repeal the ACA, just as he said.
He didn’t have a replacement plan, sure. But we all already knew that. But only because of Trump’s lying track record and his lack of specifics, not because he is a politician.
And I think it is disingenuous to act as if the liberals alone predicted that the ACA would fall. It’s a huge part of why Republicans voted for Trump. Few people predicted it wouldn’t fall. And, frankly, given the information they had at the time, I would count those few as being the most wrong.
The answer is simple. Given the information we had, the ACA dying was the most likely outcome. Now, with more information, it is no longer the most likely outcome–though it’s far, far from safe.
No, this isn’t right. To repeal the ACA entirely would take 60 votes.
I mentioned this in post 10: the Republicans are using the budget reconciliation measure to try to cut down the ACA. The reconciliation process only needs 51 votes and is not subject to filibuster. But, and it’s a big But, there are strict rules about what can and can’t be done through the reconciliation process. It can only be used for a primarily financial measure, designed to implement a budget resolution. Everything included has to be justified in some way as being aimed at implementing the budget resolution; it can’t have a riders that don’t relate to that resolution. But the ACA has things in it that are policy regulation that don’t affect federal spending, so it is difficult to see how the reconciliation process can be used for that purpose. That’s part of the reason for the emphasis in the House and Senate bills on tax cuts and Medicaid funding - those clearly are related to the financial picture. But pure regulation of the insurance industry? hard to see how that’s financial.
Vox has a very good, but very technical, article on it: If Republicans reach a health care deal, it must survive this obscure Senate rule.
[QUOTE=Vox]
Reconciliation was designed to make sure the Senate could more easily pass bills dealing with the federal budget, particularly if Congress wanted to reduce the deficit, without the threat of a filibuster from the minority party. (The process begins with a congressional resolution instructing committees in the House and the Senate to draw up legislation that saves the federal government a set amount of money.) So the special privileges under reconciliation come with conditions.
Those conditions, meant to make sure reconciliation is actually used for bills that affect the budget, are the next obstacle the GOP’s repeal-and-replace effort will have to overcome.
But those restrictions are a hurdle to any plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Overhauling the health insurance system, as the law did, includes all sorts of provisions that have nothing to do with federal spending or revenue. Republicans have already tacitly conceded that they can’t fully repeal the law because of these limitations. But some of Obamacare’s parts that they are most eager to roll back, such as its insurance regulations, could also be tricky to undo under reconciliation’s rules.
[/QUOTE]
So the Republicans are having to thread the needle: how much can they cut from the ACA that meets these strict financial considerations?
Username / post combo!
Are you trying to say that Trump’s lying is not unprecedented in its scope and audacity?
Politicians say things that they do not necessarily believe, they make promises that they may not be able to keep, even some that they know that they probably won’t be able to keep.
For a politician to lie about every single thing he plans on doing is a bit unprecedented. Why did anyone vote for trump over clinton, or vice versa, if you cannot believe anything that either one of them says? Why does anyone bother to listen to them, if you expect that everything that they say is a lie?
The answer, we don’t. We listen with a cynical ear, take it with a grain of salt, if you will. We don’t expect them to be pathological liars making up everything out of whole cloth. We know not to take them at 100%, but we know that what they say at least lends some direction to the politics that we can expect.
With trump, this is not the case. There is not a single thing you can point to to determine what his policies are. He is all over the place, and has promised contradictory things. To us, it seems like he is a liar, and has no place in politics. To your perception of false equivalency, he seems a typical politician. To his voters, he seemed like the guy who was going to fix their problems.
Now, the problem with being a populist like that, is that you engage and mobilize the population. You get them all worked up, telling them what they want to hear. You tell them, “Send me to washington, and I will do this, and that, and the other thing!” and the people cheer and vote for you.
How does this work out when the voter who was at your rally, cheering for your promise to bring back good paying jobs with good benefits and improve healthcare in terms of cost and coverage, and when you get there, you flip your finger at those voters, saying, “Neener, neener, I can’t believe you believed my lies and voted for me!”
If there is going to be any civil unrest in this country, it’s not going to come from the people who voted against trump. It probably will not come from the people who voted for trump and are enjoying the damage he is doing to our country and our reputation, it’s going to come from the people who voted for trump based on his lies, who are forced to realize that they were conned.
No one likes to realize that they have been had, that they have fallen for lies, and it is hard to convince them. They will often times not believe the messenger, and even get angry at those who point out their mistake. But eventually, most people come to the realization that the bill of goods they were promised ain’t coming.
And that is when people get really angry. You may be upset at someone pointing out that you fell for a lie, but you get even more upset with the entities that actually mislead you.
On the plus side, if the republicans keep doing what they are doing, and trump keeps lying his ass off, it should discredit the republican party for at least a few cycles, maybe even a generation or two before it stops being the laughingstock of the country. “You’re a republican? Heh, isn’t that the party of Dumbass Trump?”
Downside, with a completely marginalized republican party no longer able to put up any sort of resistance to liberal ideas, I do fear that the democrats may go too far. With no opposition, they may actually pass meaningful legislation that actually does restrict your gun rights, making your current complaints about a few particular guns that you can’t buy anywhere anytime seem trite. They may pass bills that not only subsidize abortions with your federal tax dollars, but grant extra compensation to the women who have them. They may jack up your taxes to pay for things like education, healthcare, communications, housing, food, and other necessities for those who cannot currently attain them. They may stock the supreme court with justices that would not only overturn citizen’s united, but also hobby lobby and other cases that liberals have found objectionable.
But, that’s the cost of the short term gains you get from gaining power based solely on lies. Your side gets to roll around and laugh at all the libruls tears as the country is dismantled and sold off, but it won’t last long. Soon, the libruls will be laughing at the conservatives as they are forced to live in a peaceful, prosperous nation, with universal healthcare and tolerance and equality for all, regardless of race, religion, gender, orientation, or pony.
Because seriously, if the last 8 years have taught us anything, it is that the republicans are to be defeated and marginalized, not worked with. You utterly refused to work with the democrats while they were in power. We gave you everything you asked for, and you still refused to budge even an inch on anything. So, next time, we won’t even ask. We won’t even try for bipartisanship. We are just going to take our ideas, which are objectively better for achieving the result of peace and prosperity in our nation, and run with them, and if you want to object, you can do so at the ballot box.
The number of people who actually want a smaller govt that does less and leaves their lives poorer and less secure is smaller than you think. There are some ideologues here and there that are willing to see the services that we take for granted go away if it means that they save a couple of points on their taxes, but the majority of people in this country are more concerned about peace and prosperity than they are about a few dollars on their paycheck. It is only that they were lied to that the republican ideas would achieve these goals of peace and prosperity that they voted for them. Once they realize that the goal of republican ideology is wealth inequality and divisiveness, they will reassess their political stances.
The great thing about trump is that his lies are so very easy to show. Most politicians equivocate, so that it is hard to really show that what they said is not what they did. He just out and out lies, giving a much better contrast between what people are voting for, and what they are getting from their politicians. He is making it hard for the republicans to maintain the facade that they are for the little guy, the working class, or really anyone who cannot provide a significant campaign contribution.
TL;DR? People are going to be pissed when they realize how much they were lied to, and they are going to be pissed at the republicans, not the democrats.
What disgusting optimism. That’s the kind of optimism you might expect from someone who missed everything since last October. Do you seriously expect *any *of these people to figure it out? They didn’t at any point in the last 16 years - why the fuck would they start now?
Because this time, the republicans are actually in charge, and people will see how their own personal lives are effected by that.
People don’t know what news to believe, or what politician to believe, but they do see their paychecks, they do see their wallets, they do see their medical expenses. They were promised that they would be helped in these matters, and so they expect assistance in these matters.
I am not saying that all trump supporters will come around. Many of them are quite enjoying the destruction of our country and reputation. They like watching the shit show as people are thrown off their insurance. They are happy about being able to be open about their racism and bigotry. Many are single issue voters, and will never vote for a democrat because they are terriifed that the democrat might one day look at a bill to help curb gun violence, or might appoint a SCOTUS that will not overturn Roe v Wade first chance they get, and so will vote for the r’s even if they know that they will personally be tortured and their families killed, it’s just that important to them.
But, there are quite a number of people who voted fro trump because he said what they wanted to hear. What they needed to hear. They are not ideologues, they are not racists, they are just people trying to live a peaceful dignified life, and they are going to vote for the person that they think will be best for providing that to them. These are the people who are showing up at the town halls, saying “I voted for you to fix obama care, not to take away my health care.”
Those are the people I am optimistic about.
Ultimately, accountability is at the ballot box. Sure we can shake our fist at the scorpion who stings the frog, but really, it’s in its nature.
How to deal with that? Outreach and better ideas and better messaging. I’m going to say that in the 2016 campaign, this was sub optimal on the Democratic side (and the Republican side for that matter). And no, I did not vote for Trump. I also live in CA so it wouldn’t matter if I did. I said before the election that I’d rather have the office vacant than either Trump of Clinton. I also predicted that Trump wouldn’t actually be able to accomplish much and so far I’m comfortable with that prediction. I also predicted that Clinton would win, so my predictions are super accurate!
So far though, in practical terms I think Trump is a net positive today over where we’d be if Clinton were elected, simply because Gorsuch is on the court. That analysis could change of course. Trump is still a shit show of a dumpster fire, IMO.
‘They don’t lie most of the time!’ is hardly a ringing endorsement. But yes I grant that most pols try to do what they say most of the time. But even if they don’t 10% of the time, or 49% of the time, that’s enough to make me deeply cynical.
The impact to Medicaid and Medicare was in the legislation in Congress. That’s not Trump unless he signs it and construing a lack of fighting for it as a lie is a stretch.
No, I’m not saying that his lying is not unprecedented in its scope and audacity. I’m saying that distrust of politicians in general is well deserved. Trump is not unique in that regard. His obvious fibbery is impressive in its magnitude. I and others listen to them to gauge how trustworthy they may be, to gain some insight or indication on what they may do. But I would never take what they say at face value, and while I may curse the scorpion, it’s up to me to understand that it’s in its nature.
Given your previous prediction that the ACA would be removed by Feb-17 I’m going to take this with a grain of salt :). Not saying that it can’t happen, I just tend to eschew making predictions that have this many variables.
I think that’s a valid strategy. It may work, and it may not. I’m totally fine with that approach since my ideal outcome is the federal government doing as little as possible. Lack of bipartisanship helps that end.
But it’s not accurate that Democrats gave everything that Republicans asked for. Republicans didn’t want the ACA at all. I think any machinations about compromise or trading this for that were simply a means to that end.
You must really hate this country if one conservative Supreme Court Justice is worth risking everything we cherish (i.e., “shit show of a dumpster fire.”) Right now I’d give the Right all nine positions on the court if Trump would just go away.
I was one of the ones who thought there’d be a bill on Trump’s desk within a week.
There were a lot of reasons I was wrong, but, primarily, I misunderstood how far apart the donor class is from the Republican base on this issue, and I overestimated the Republican’s preparedness.
I mean, obviously, the dozens of votes to repeal while Obama was president were political theater, but I thought that somewhere in there, they had an actual plan.
Sorry, but I do have to express wonderment at those who did think there was, or ever would be, a Republican plan before their bluff was called. That too was always political theater, and one they had actually dropped for a few years before the Pelosi Conjecture was proven.
And that is what I talk about when I talk about single issue voters. You are more concerned that someone may be appointed to the court that may do something that might possibly impact your ability to purchase any gun, anytime, anywhere than anything else. It is pointless to try to negotiate anything with a single issue voter. No matter what, you will always prefer the republican, because a democrat isn’t going to share your opinion that unfettered access to guns is more important than public safety, jobs, the economy, healthcare, the environment, our standing in the world both diplomatically and militarily, the lives of our soldiers, or the lives of the people in countries we decide to go to war with.
So the president has no leadership role? No impact whatsoever on the legislation passed in congress?
Yeah, but your strategy for avoiding the scorpions sting is to let it sting someone else.
I believe in holding politicians accountable, and calling them out on their lies, and voting them out of office if they cannot be trusted to the extent that there is no way to tell what it is that they stand for.
Obama said he was going to shut down gitmo. He didn’t, but I watched him try, so that’s an over promise, not a lie.
Trump said that he would make a great healthcare plan that would cover everyone at lower cost. That may be an over promise, it is hard to believe tat he would actually accomplish that feat, but if you look at what he is doing, he isn’t even trying, in fact, he is doing the opposite of what he promised.
You are equivocating between over promises and outright lying. They are not the same thing. Making the two out to be the same thing does not make one cynical, it does not make one jaded and cool, it just makes one naive and misinformed.
Well, what I said was, " I give maybe mid February before ACA is removed. Any longer, and those who supported the conservative party will start howling. "
I do hear howling from the far right, complaints that the ACA is still in place. Now, I was surprised by how many moderates there were in the ranks of the republican senate, I was not expecting 3 or 4. So, maybe I was a bit pessimistic, or maybe I was naive when I believed the optimism of the republicans when they said that they would have it repealed in short order upon taking power.
But then I am am used to a party that only over promises, not outright lies to my face, as you seem to be comfortable with in your party of choice, so maybe I was taking the republicans at their word too much. If I keep in mind in the future that anything that a republican says is a complete fabrication that they have no intent upon even thinking about following through on, then maybe I can make more accurate predictions as to what they will do when you vote them into office.
Yeah, but that’s not how it’s going to play out. With no opposition from the republicans, the democrats will get quite a bit of stuff done. Stuff that needs to be done, stuff that will benefit the vast majority of the citizens of the country, stuff that will promote our image around the world, stuff that will help public safety, you know, all the stuff that you don’t want to see happen. Lack of bipartisanship just means that we no longer listen to the conservatives, not that we don’t get stuff done. It’s the party that is currently in charge that can’t get anything done, even while controlling all 3 branches. The only reason the democrats took so long in passing the ACA in the first place is because they tried to work with the republicans, who sandbagged the process as much as they could.
That’s what I said when I said that they refused to compromise. The democrats were elected on many platforms, but one of the big ones was to do something about the healthcare system, and all the problems that people were having with it. The american people had spoken, and they wanted a healthcare bill. The democrats started by using a healthcare bill crafted by republicans, and then allowed the republicans to add about 160 amendments to it. The democrats bent over backwards to get the republicans to support an idea that had overwhelming support from the american people, and the republicans just refused to budge. Not a single one voted for the bill that they crafted.
Next time, there is no attempt at getting your party to do the things that the american people want them to do. Next time, we just do it on our own. Most of the problems with the ACA come from the democrats softening the bill, and weakening it in response to republican demands. The next bill will be better, as it will not be a compromise between a party that wants to provide healthcare to it’s citizens, and a party that prefers that people die due because they are not wealthy enough to afford necessary care than to see the taxes on those who are the wealthiest people in the history of the planet go up by a percent. It will instead be a compromise between what works best, and what we are able to afford, which will turn out much much better.
I think that to start, their plan was simply to repeal. However, after so many voters became dependent on Obamacare, they had no plan.
Yeah, the thing that still surprises me is that they ran on repealing it! It’s not like this was a weird thing that no one expected them to do. Trump said he’d repeal it right away, the Republican leadership was united in their intentions.
I honestly didn’t expect there to be such a disconnect there.
Like, why did they make it a campaign issue if it was something that people opposed? Did they have bad internal polling? Is it just that people don’t like something called “Obamacare”, but they like the actual things? Are people really that misinformed? All of the above, I guess.
Trump ran on making our health care insurance system cheaper, and better, and it would be “easy.” No one would oppose that.
To start, some decent % of the electorate, and a small majority of GOP voters were actually in favor of just plain repeal. I THINK, iirc, the numbers were something like 40% and 60%, but dont quote me.
However, after it actually worked (took about a year) then the support for a total repeal with no replacement became small.
So fucking what? They were in charge in '06 as well. Ooh, we got one fucking congressional term of democrat majority rule. Kudos! That really shows how aware Republican voters are. :rolleyes:
And in what universe are the people who trust Fox News as their primary news source self-aware enough to get beyond that bubble and not just instantly buy into the party line? In what fucking universe?
Again, all I have to do to deflate any sense of optimism here is to remind myself that the current president has to be given his policy briefings on Russia in 140-character snippets, because otherwise he won’t pay attention to them.
With all due respect to those people, each and every single one of them is an idiot. Every single one. And I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the ability of the dems to reach them. If someone believed Trump’s promises, then they were unable or unwilling to do even the most basic surface-level analysis, and unable or unwilling to turn on any news source willing to do it for them other than FOX News, Breitbart, and their ilk. In what universe does this problem suddenly go away now that those promises, which were obviously bullshit from the beginning turn out to be bullshit? What, you think FOX is going to tell them about it? You think they’re suddenly and spontaneously gonna pull their heads out of their asses?
…But you support Trump. You looked at the insane nonsense he spent the entire campaign spewing, and said, “Yep, this is the way to go.” You still think that. Accountability is at the ballot box, and you are refusing to hold him accountable.
If I hear one more Trump supporter say, “If the democrats want to win, they just need a better platform,” I am going to put my head through my bedroom wall. As you’ve made it clear multiple times, you value a candidate who will nominate supreme court justices with your particular interpretation of the second amendment over a candidate who isn’t suffering from multiple clear mental defects and who doesn’t need to get security briefings in tweet length. You clearly don’t seem to care very much about “better ideas” or “better messaging” or “outreach”, you care about being 100% sure that nobody takes your fucking toys away. And that is literally all you care about. What better messaging and better ideas can there be than “our candidate isn’t actually seriously mentally deficient”?
Yeah… No. No, I think “dumpster fire” doesn’t really do it justice. It stopped doing it justice around the time that it became clear that Trump will only pay attention to his daily briefings if they constantly mention him. There may have been worse presidents (give it a year or two), but there has never been, and hopefully never will be, a president who was more fundamentally incapable of doing his goddamn job.
But of course, we have a conservative justice taking the seat that by all rights Obama should have filled (I see that the absurd actions of the republican congress in refusing to let the president nominate a justice to the supreme court doesn’t phase you in the slightest, and you know exactly what I mean by this, so please don’t bring up “but he did nominate someone” or something like that) - instead of a moderate liberal who might, in some NRA member’s cordite-induced fever dreams, overturned DC vs. Heller, which is apparently the most important supreme court decision ever, despite being less than a decade old - therefore, this is fine. It’s fine that the president brags about Israeli state secrets to Russia and thereby jeopardizes US intelligence, needs to get his briefings in the form of self-aggrandizement or tweets, is easily manipulated simply by placing a fake news article on his desk, has pissed off pretty much the entire world, and can’t find a limousine directly in front of him.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49493993/this-is-fine.0.jpg){kind=link}
k9bfriender, you know that optimism of yours? From my experience on the web, I’d argue that Bone is in the top 2% of republicans who post regularly on political forums in terms of intelligence and awareness. He clearly watches news that isn’t Fox, just to bring up a basic example. Procrustus says it better than I could:
[QUOTE=Bone]
‘They don’t lie most of the time!’ is hardly a ringing endorsement. But yes I grant that most pols try to do what they say most of the time. But even if they don’t 10% of the time, or 49% of the time, that’s enough to make me deeply cynical.
[/QUOTE]
“Man, every greek restaurant I’ve gone to has oversalted their Gyros plate. I’m such a cynic, I’m not buying any of it! Sure, this restaurant’s Gyros plate is literally half salt by mass, but I’m so jaded I can’t tell any significant difference.”
:rolleyes:
All other things being equal, if the status quo in everything is maintained except that Trump gets to appoint Kennedy and Ginsburg’s replacement, and in 2020 someone other than Trump is elected, I’d consider that a net positive. If on the other hand some other calamity were to occur because of the Trump administration, then I’d have to evaluate it. But thus far, as I previously had predicted, Trump isn’t able to actually accomplish much. That’s because he’s bad at it.
Not better ideas or a better platform per se, but for sure better messaging. Do you think Clinton was the best ambassador of the Democratic message? I don’t. The election was basically a toss up at the end. A little different turnout, a couple changed minds in key states and Clinton gets elected. I don’t think there needs to be some sea change and take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I think if there was just a tiny marginal improvement in messaging that Clinton would have won. I fully thought she was going to.
But think about it this way - If the Democrats would go full NRA on guns, then folks like me could easily vote for the Democrats. Sure I would hate the tax policy, but I can afford to pay more and I’m right there with UBI, single payer, minority rights, immigration (mostly), and probably a whole host of other issues. I could be biased because I’m in CA, but there are lots more people that I know that are in a similar position. Maybe it’s a net loser of an issue, but the Democrats could pick up more votes if they embraced gun owners. They’d probably get my vote. So I see it from another perspective, the one that says the Democratic Party is willing to risk losing out on all those other important issues so they could oppose gun owners.
I stopped being a Republican when the party supported torture. I think that was worse than anything the Trump administration has done to date.
I actually love this country. Personally I think it’s a bit unseemly to discuss levels of patriotism so I won’t do that. I’m not sure I agree with your calculus. Do you think we are at risk of losing everything we cherish? I had this discussion with a friend that went something like this. I said that thus far, the real impact of the Trump Administration hasn’t been that bad yet. Muslim ban blocked. No wall. ACA still here. No trade war. No border adjustment tax. Sure, international standing and general disdain for the US has grown, but in practical terms that’s not so bad. Hopefully this is the worst of it. Of course, the example given I think on this message board was that if you jump out of a 20 story building, you could say as you pass the 5th floor on the way down, “so far not so bad!”
Ultimately I think the risk of doom is overblown and the country will survive a bad president.
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Yes, the difference between Trump lies (or GOP lies more generally) and Obama lies are so qualitatively different than anyone calling tu quoque is a victim of miscognition.
You seem surprised to finally learn the true nature of today’s GOP. I thought it was in clear view all along.
In any statistic involving the entire electorate a very wide net must be cast. The large numbers of poorly informed voters in this FoxNews era make it futile to use such numbers for policy guidance.
We will probably survive a bad president. Just like we would survive a few Supreme Court justices you don’t like (or I don’t like). Yes, Trump is “Malice tempered by incompetence,” but that’s not really something that brings me much comfort. He’s an embarrassment of epic proportions, and I don’t underestimate to potential for serious fuck ups and many other significant steps backwards. Mostly, he represents to me a constant reminder that 50% of our voters are deplorable fools, and the fact that Trump maybe won’t fuck up things as much as we expect doesn’t forgive those votes. The support Trump gets from the likes of Ryan and McConnell is disgusting and alarming. I’m ashamed of this country. And I’m not easily shamed.