Sometimes it's just better to lose an election

Politics & Elections
1

I’ve said this before, but given recent events it bears repeating: elections are like hands of poker. You’re never going to win them all. The key is to go all in when you’ve got a good hand and fold when you’ve got a bad one. Of course, parties never intentionally fold, but it does supporters of parties some good to chill and stop defending a bad candidate and just let him fall and do better next time. This was true of John Kerry in 2004. Imagine what would have happened if President Kerry had to preside over Iraq, Katrina, and the financial crisis. Sure, you can argue that he would have handled those better, but not MUCH better.

Well, that goes quadruple for Donald Trump. Imagine if Clinton had won the election. Would we miss out on ACA repeal? Nope, that law is still standing. What about all the other great Republican accomplishments in the last five months? Oh wait, there aren’t any. One can always rationalize that at least we got a good Supreme Court Justice, but once again, you don’t win every election and you don’t lose every election. Republicans would get their chance to nominate justices soon enough. Again, like poker, it’s not about winning every hand, it’s about winning more with your good hands than you lose with your bad hands. A good Republican President would have passed a lot of important legislation by now.

I’m not sure how anyone could argue that the country or the Republican party would be worse off under Clinton. I say we’d be quite a bit better off in both respects. The party would be licking its chops for 2018, when the map favored us and we had a shot at getting enough states to amend the Constitution without the federal government’s participation. That’s almost certainly not going to happen anymore. we might even have had an outside shot at enough Senate seats to accomplish the same thing, with enough GOP states to make all but the craziest amendments eminently ratifiable. That’s REAL power, folks. 2020 would have looked pretty good for us too. Now we’re headed for losing the HOuse in 2018 and probably everything else by 2020, including state governments. 2020 could end up returning us to where we were in 2008. With a far bolder, more left-leaning Democratic Party.

As for the country, things would be far more stable and it’s not as if Clinton had grand plans to transform the country.

2

Yeah, but a case could still be made.

For the sake of argument, figure Hillary had gotten to name Scalia’s successor – and so it’s now a five-person majority, of Ginsburg and Breyer and Sotomayor and Kagan and X, all tapped by a Clinton or an Obama; and maybe she gets to replace some or all of the over-80 set – but that’s icing on the cake, because, hey, 5-4 already.

Now figure instead that Trump’s victory means that – after tapping Gorsuch to replace Scalia – a GOP-er in the White House gets to replace one of the over-80 set, be it Ginsburg or Kennedy or Breyer. And so, with Gorsuch plus Thomas plus Roberts plus Alito plus X, there’s a 5-4 majority; and, if Trump or Pence or whoever gets to replace two or three of the over-80 types, it’s 6-3 or 7-2. And a near-future Dem in the White House would lack a realistic path back to a majority.

Granted, it may not play out that way. But I sure as hell wouldn’t be surprised.

3

I suspect that they’d block her SCOTUS nominee the same way they did Obama’s. The Court would still be at a 4-4 deadlock. Sure, a lot of people would be angry about it and the press would be foaming at the mouth about how the Senate has gone rogue, but that wouldn’t matter a damn bit to McConnell. Say what you want, but I’ll give McConnell one thing: that ole man is a crafty politician and knows how to get and maintain power. Whether I like it or not, there will probably be a senate office named after him a decade or so from now.

4

Would a more liberal Supreme Court really bother people that much? Other than abortion and guns, I doubt anything the Court does matters to most voters. I think we’ve reached status quo on both of those things, regardless of who gets on the Court. Maybe a little fine tuning, but nothing major.

5

Had Hillary won, the senate never would’ve confirmed her SC nominee. And the GOP would gain senate seats in 2018 and probably gain a bit more state legislature of governor positions. Plus I think the GOP trying to repeal the ACA only to show the public that their ‘replace’ plan means 24 million lose their health insurance, millions more have worse health insurance (higher deductibles and copays combined with fewer consumer protections) and the savings are used to give tax cuts to the rich will reduce desire to repeal the ACA in the future. The ACA now has higher ratings than it ever has now that people are seeing what it does and what they’ll lose if it gets repealed. Plus the GOP on the federal level trying to repeal the ACA has empowered activists to push for single payer on the state level.

Trump winning is good for the dems, it means 2018 and 2020 will be lopsided elections. I could see the dems winning the house in 2018 and the senate in 2020 as well as the presidency. State legislatures will probably be more even by 2020 with about half to each party. Plus 2020 is a census year.

As long as Trump doesn’t do anything too stupid (nuclear war), his presidency will be good for the democrats in the long run.

But voters have short memories, I’m guessing by 2022 the voters will vote the GOP back into power.

6

If I understand you correctly (the poker simile threw me off rather than clarifying things), you’re suggesting that the Republicans as a Party, stop acting like a cross between petulant children and an organized crime syndicate, and turn back into a real political party. I support that thinking, but don’t hold any real hope for it.

Since 1968 and Nixon’s infamous Southern Strategy, the GOP has steadily and purposely worked to eliminate all conservative idealists from their ranks, and have replaced as many as they could manage, with what they think of as “pure pragmatists.” Unfortunately, the thing they decided was LEAST pragmatic, was to stand up for basic principles.

The coalition that they CONSCIOUSLY BUILT THEIR MAJORITY ON, actually never believed what the Republican Party core thinkers once believed in. This is because the CONSCIOUS CHOICE they made back in 1968, was to gain votes by misleading the people who’s votes they wanted. No doubt the leadership back then, were gambling that they could cheat their way into office, then drop the lies, and push through policies which would be opposed at first, but which would blossom so brightly that everyone would be won over to them in the event.

It didn’t work that way, mainly because they were actually wrong about their ideas for running the economy and the government, but since the actual technique of lying to get into positions of power DID work, they decided to continue them.

What they didn’t count on, was that since the only way to keep the lie strategy secret, was to not tell anyone who took office about it, that they would actually cause the entire Party to gradually transform from what they really were back then (basic conservative capitalists) to become what they were PRETENDING to be (right wing racist, misogynist, corporatists). It’s very similar to how living things turn into fossils, to use a science simile.

They PURPOSELY built up the party with people who would do as they did last year, and vote a blustering, offensive, ignorant man into power, simply because he spouted every unthinking diatribe that every angry mob wanted to hear. And the reason they can’t get anything done, isn’t because they aren’t willing to “fold,” it’s because over half of their acquired supporters haven’t even been PLAYING the game that the leadership sat at the table to play, for almost a half century.

Although I disagree strongly with many of the things that Speaker Ryan wants to do, he's more right about one thing, than the bulk of the Party is right now:  being opponents of various things, is NOT the same thing as having a platform, and it certainly isn't a way to run a government.
7

Jonathan Chait made that argument a couple of months ago, and from a strictly political POV, sure, this was a good one to lose.

But the thing is, it’s not a damn football game. The reason we care about politics is that, as the Bushies said, elections have consequences.

The ACA is still standing - for now. But the House passed the AHCA, and assuming it’s still reconciliation-ready after the CBO publishes its score on Wednesday, the Senate will surely pass something. There will be a conference committee, and what comes out will be pretty crappy. It will pass both houses, and be signed by Trump.

If the AHCA needs to be re-voted on, then Trump will effectively kill the Exchanges by killing the CSR subsidies, although the Medicaid expansion would live, at least for now.

So that’s either millions or tens of millions of people who will lose their health insurance.

And then there’s climate change. The Trump Administration hasn’t yet pulled us out of the Paris accords, but give him time. And meanwhile, Trump’s minions are working overtime to undo the things Obama did to reduce our carbon output.

Not to mention, sucking up to the Russians and pissing all over our allies.

Elections have consequences, and while the political winds have shifted in the wake of this one, the consequences are still quite real and quite yuuuuuuge.

8

Addiction experts understand that outsiders cannot stop addictive behavior. The will to do so must come from within. Something extraordinary must occur for that to happen, and that’s often what is called hitting bottom.

Republicans got everything they wanted this election. As a result they are hitting bottom in a way that few people, except for every Democrat, predicted.

Remember the famous idiot general in Vietnam who said “we had to destroy the village to save it?” The Republican Party needed to be destroyed, from top to bottom. It could only be destroyed from within. I think America is stronger than the Republican Party is, so while I will grieve for the damage done to the individuals who must suffer horribly directly due to his insanity, I don’t believe Trump can significantly damage the country as a whole before he discredits the notion of voting Republican.

This shouldn’t be read as my believing that no one will vote Republican. That’s mere wishful thinking. Besides, the true conscienceless nimrods would merely run as Democrats.

9

I think **igor **mostly nailed it.

Overall I sorta agree with the point alongside adaher’s point: it’s possible to win a Pyrrhic victory, even in politics. As the Rs seem to have done with Trump.

Ref this:

I don’t think that’s even a little bit true.

Presidents don’t propose legislation. Congress does. Politics being local, we can assume that had Clinton won by a squeaker instead of losing by one, the hypothetical Congress would be all but unchanged from the real one we have today.

So roughly the same bills will have made it out of Congress and onto the President’s desk by now. Regardless of who was sitting there.

The problem in Congress today, as **igor **almost touched on, is that the essential split between the R factions is now so large and so obvious that they’re actually two (plus?) parties at each others’ throats. Trump did not cause that.
The longer term issue for the country is that the people who voted for Trump are still citizens. They can vote in 2018 & 2020 and … Somebody is going to figure out a way to get those votes directed to themselves. Somebody who’s not an inept clown car. How we as a society harness that anger and resentment and desperation as a force for good not ill will be *the *defining issue of US politics to the mid-century mark, if not beyond.

10

What would you have liked a constitutional convention to accomplish? Which amendments would you have supported?
From a different perspective, I somewhat agree with the OP. 2018 is looking much better for Democrats than it ever would have had Hillary won, and 2020 looks magnificent, in a census year nonetheless. The Republican Party has been exposed as a fraud as has its leadership. This is a great time to be a Democrat.

11

While the Congress has a reasonable chance to switch to a Democratic majority in 2020, I see no evidence that the state legislatures are going to follow suit, (unless the Democrats put up a presidential candidate who brings lots of straight ballot voters along), and the gerrymandering is going to continue at the state level.

12

I agree, the GOP would have been better off losing this election. 2018 would have been a tidal wave in the Republicans’ favor, especially since the economy is overdue for a recession (if the 7-year rule holds true, there should be a recession in 2018-2020.) And maybe the Republicans would have been able to run a hardliner like Ted Cruz in 2020, and won, and President Cruz might have 56-58 seats in the Senate in his favor.

13

While I think “it’s a great time to be a Democrat” is a little nutty, I am also curious what Constitutional amendments are on adaher’s wishlist.

14

And, if you’re going to lose, it doesn’t hurt to leave the keys to a rudderless congress with a walking oppo-research generator leading the way for a few years.

15

Plenty of presidents propose legislation - that’s essentially what makes up the basis for a good portion of their State of the Union speeches. They just don’t have the power to actually introduce them and assign them to a committee without a House or Senate sponsor and cooperation from House/Senate leadership.

For Trump, he doesn’t really have a legislative agenda other than repealing and replacing the ACA (without any real idea of what should replace it other than it cover pre-existing medical conditions and be “amazing”), lowering taxes while recklessly and blindly assuming that economic growth will somehow make up for the massive hole this would create in federal revenue, and getting rid of federal regulations.

16

There’s never a good election to lose. I want my guys to solve problems to the best of their ability, not rejoice that other people’s misfortunes are someone else’s problems.

17

I’m past the point of thinking anything bad the GOP does will cost them votes. If they put up a neo nazi who wants to create a violent, fascist state they will still get 45% of the vote minimum. Hoping that the American people are too informed, decent and concerned about western values to support that was proven to be a failed strategy in November of last year.

The GOP will be alive and well for a long time, and if anything they will get more and more radical, misinformed, reactionary and authoritarian as white people from small towns keep witnessing America becoming more and more liberal, secular and multicultural.

You are probably right in the long term, but honestly it won’t be until the white baby boomers are dead that the GOP will have to rebuild itself as a sane party (white people under 40 are far less republican than white people over 40). That will be 30+ years from now. The next few decades will see the GOP keep enough support to justify their insanity and anti-democratic agenda.

18

“The Mitch McConnell office of being an unethical, disgusting douchebag”? “The Mitch McConnell office of basically destroying American democracy”?

19

I’ve said this before, but had Clinton won she’d have been hamstrung with scandals real, exaggerated, and manufactured, and every legislative failure would have been blamed on her unwillingness to compromise even as Mitch McConnell repeated, “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Clinton a second term.” As it is, with majorities in both houses of Congress and an ostensible Republican in the White House, the GOP now has no excuses left for not fulfilling the agenda they’ve been pushing for eight years, and the fact that they are legislatively constipated is just evidence of the craven mendacity of the extremists who have taken control of the Republican party starting back with Barry Goldwater; the once pro-technology, pro-education, fiscally pragmatic, pro-civil rights (or at least, less against lawful protections than the conservative Dixiecrat-dominated Democrats) has become a party of willful obstructionism, corporate toadying, ludicrous fear-mongering over manufactured threats, and pigheaded ignorance about genuine problems such as labor displacement, energy policy, and global climate change.

It wasn’t good that Trump won the presidency (even if he lost the popular vote) and the GOP dominated the Congressional elections, but now we have objective evidence that many prominent Republicans were baldly lying about their actual intentions and the feasibility of carrying out their ostensible goals. It may or may not change the opinion of many Republican voters, but there is no longer a curtain to hide behind to argue what would be if only they could have control. They now have collective control and the result is inarguably a mess.

Stranger

20

Eight years of a Democrat president with a Democrat House and Senate won’t be enough to undo the damage four years of Trump will do.