They dropped the ball? At what point did they “drop the ball”? What were the major mistakes of the Obama administration? What part of their policy justified the 2010 tea party revolts?
Right, and part of why I’m proposing this is simply to make it cheaper and thus stretch the spending further. It’s not like everyone is covered under the generous terms my kids get. I mean, outside of Medicaid, who has no deductible or copays? So it strikes me that for the cost of my two kids’ health coverage, you could probably cover our whole family under a plan like I’m proposing. Maybe even more than that.
Agreed. And in 1974, after Nixon resigned in disgrace (following his vice president also resigning in disgrace!), lots of Democrats had to be thinking “okay, *this *is the end of the GOP, for a good long while at least”. And they had great success in those midterms, but then Carter barely beat Ford after the latter pardoned Nixon and claimed in a presidential debate before a huge audience that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” (for the kids: yeah, there was). And then four years later, in roared Reagan. :smack:
It’s extremely aggravating to keep bashing our heads against the wall this way, which is part of the reason for my plan as described in my sig:
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For one, pursuing policies that weren’t very popular. That’s generally how this thing works.
I have other ideas which you won’t agree with on why the backlash to Obama was so swift and devastating, but no need to get complex about it. They passed unpopular bills, they got booted out of office.
That narrative doesn’t explain 2012. And I wasn’t on this board much (if at all) that year, but as I understand it you were pretty convinced of this narrative then, that it would sweep Obama out of office.
And honestly, 2012 is really the thing I now have the most trouble understanding. If you look back at the past 20 years or more, it all fits into a pretty understandable narrative (albeit a different one from the “Emerging Democratic Majority” narrative I had until a couple days ago), except that. Republicans’ image went in the crapper in the second half of the first decade of the 21st century; any Democrat could win, even one with (as Jon Stewart memorably described it) a name equivalent to running in 1944 as “Gaydolf Titler”. Then Democrats did Democratic stuff, and that was too much for a country that just wasn’t that liberal–hence the 2010 wipeout.
The economy was much shakier in 2012 than it is now, and all the stuff you are talking about that really ginned people up against Democrats happened in Obama’s first term (well, except for that high school locker room transgender thing we are talking about in the other thread). If this week’s result was possible in 2016 with a browner electorate and a ridiculous, widely disliked Republican candidate, 2012 should have been there for the taking for the GOP, and I am puzzled as to why it wasn’t.
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Like Obamacare?
Except if you remove the title of “Obamacare” and just talk about what it does, support for it is nearly to a super majority.
What else?
The 2012 difference was that Obama was able to draw a lot of voters who normally don’t vote. Not as many as in 2008, but enough to beat Romney. I thought 2010 presaged defeat for Obama in 2012, but didn’t count on his loyal support.
Of course, once he’s not on the ballot, the Democrats’ weaknesses are exposed.
I have a small list.
When the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School fired Cheryl Perich from her job as a called teacher and commissioned minister, the Obama administration attacked the ministerial exception doctrine at the Supreme Court, and lost.
When Mike and Chantell Sackett started clearing their land near Priest Lake, Idaho preparatory to building a house, the EPA ordered them to stop under the provisions of the Clean Water Act, but then refused to grant them a hearing to contest the claim. The Obama Administration defended the position that the Sacketts could only get a hearing if the EPA filed suit at the Supreme Court, and lost.
When Arizona passed SB 1070, allowing inter alia Arizona state police to investigate the immigration status of an individual stopped, detained, or arrested if there is reasonable suspicion that individual is in the country illegally, the Obama administration filed suit to strike that provision down, and lost at the Supreme Court.
The Obama Administration defended a Great Depression raisin price law that created a “Raisin Administrative Committee” to determine annually how much raisin produce growers were required to “donate” to the committee. The committee would then sell, give away, or export to favored nations the raisins. Marvin Horne sued, and the Obama administration defended the position that raisins should get less protection under the Takings Clause because they are personal, not real, property. They lost.
President Obama appointed Sharon Block, Richard Griffin, and Terence Flynn to the National Labor Relations Board using his recess appointment power, and those individuals ruled against Noel Canning, a Pepsi distributor, for failing to negotiate with a union. Canning sued to vacate the decision because Block, Griffin, and Flynn were invalidly appointed: the Senate was not in recess. The Administration defended the appointments, and lost.
When Carol Bond discovered her husband’s affair, she splashed caustic chemical on the mistresses’ car doors and mailbox. The federal government charged her with violating the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998. She raised the defense that the Tenth Amendment prohibited the federal prosecution because a chemical weapons treaty was never meant to apply to an individual person’s actions. The Obama administration argued that the courts should not even consider that question - Bond, they said, had no standing to raise a Tenth Amendment challenge. Then at the Supreme Court, they abandoned that position; the Court appointed another lawyer to argue it anyway, and found standing. Then Bond (now with standing) appealed AGAIN claiming that her conviction violated the Tenth Amendment, and again the Obama Administration opposed, and again lost at the Supreme Court.
The President’s Executive Order to grant “deferred action.” status to illegal aliens who are parents of U.S. citizens or green card holders was a usurpation of legislative authority, and was ruled invalid by the appeals court with the Supreme Court leaving the ruling in place.
The Obama Administration tried to force religiously opposed small businesses to pay for contraception methods that had the potential of destroying an unborn child in sharp opposition to their beliefs. They lost.
The Obama Administration tried to force an order of Catholic nuns to comply with the procedure of exempting themselves from paying for contraception insurance by filling out a piece of payer directing their insurer to pay out of its pocket. The nuns refused, believing that such an action was merely directing another person to sin. Note that the nuns did not object to their insurer paying: they just did not want to be responsible for directing the insurer to pay. The Obama Administration sued the nuns. And if I let a tinge of anger color my language here, I apologize: but the relevant legal standard to be met was whether the Obama regulation was “narrowly tailored,” to meet a compelling government interest. Get that? It means that the government says, “We’ve done everything we reasonably can to accommodate the religious exercise.” That’s narrowly tailored. Yet when the Supreme Court signaled a disbelief in that claim, hey, magically, Obama’s administration suddenly conceded that well, ok, actually we can just tell the insurer to cover the contraception without making the nuns do it after all!
That happened.
I’m not sure how much effect that had on his party’s political fortunes, but you summed up quite nicely why Barack Obama will never be a Supreme Court justice. He’d have to answer for all of that in hearings and public opinion would turn quickly. There’s a reason most SCOTUS nominees don’t have much of a record.
YOu also have to wonder what Obama’s agenda was that he felt the need to make sure religious employers were complicit in abortion. It was completely unnecessary, yet he fought hard to make it happen.
Addressing the thread title specifically, because of demographic groupings in relation to geography, Republicans are in great shape to control the House and most state legislatures for years to come. The Dems have a fair shot at the White House and a small chance for a slim majority in the Senate if things break just right. With the liberal base clustered in the cities, there’s no way to even gerrymander their way into turning a majority of votes into a House majority. A minority of the nation’s voters will hold sway for as long as I can envision and that doesn’t sound healthy to me since it’s a minority that views progress as something to be reigned in.
Not true, particularly in states where the big cities are not too near the state borders (my own state of Missouri is a bad example). You just draw a big circle with the city at its center and then get out your pizza cutter and make triangular wedges. Just enough of the urban population at the tapered end to override the rural white voters out by the “crust”. It’s definitely what I’d do if I were on one of those legislative committees tasked with redistricting.
NB: As of Friday, Nov. 11, 2016 at 11:59 p.m. CST, I’m unsubscribing from all political threads and will no longer participate in discussions in the Elections board, nor in political discussions in the Pit or MPSIMS. If you reply to a political post of mine after that point, I will not see it; please do not PM me to try to pull me back in to the debate. Thanks!
Obama passed unpopular policies and Obama was easily reelected. Why do you think the public punished Hillary and kept Obama if that was the reason?
It’s funny adaher, I came into this post expecting the typical right wing talking points to be featured by you. Instead, I read a reasonable, moderate, and reality based post that was not focused on bashing the other side, or even claiming how great the Republican side is. While I also despise Mitch McConnell with almost every fiber of my being, his comments are spot on. It was odd, and refreshing to agree with you.
Unfortunately, the discussion has dissolved into the normal partisan BS that resulted in the state of the country right now. We don’t need political party platforms. We don’t need obstructionism. We don’t need party motivated politics. We need solutions that work for the good of the people in the country, regardless of which party it’s coming from.
This is drama-queen horseshit.
If they screw up – hell, maybe even if they don’t – the dems will take power in four or eight or twelve years, and then they’ll have a run and then the Pubs will be back. One or both parties will readjust and change their appeal or policies or whatever to adapt to changing times, just like they have have for the last 150 years. One or both may have internal dissention and upheaval, just like they have had for the last 150 years. But this idea that one or the other party will become irrelevant, slide into history, and the US will become a one-party state for the next thousand years is nonsense.
Most major cities are not in the center of their states.
Okay, but you can still do a half pie. Or maybe it’s something weirder shaped. But you can always sneak in a tendril to have enough city folk to turn a larger rural/exurban area blue. To say you can’t gerrymander is a failure of imagination.
NB: As of Friday, Nov. 11, 2016 at 11:59 p.m. CST, I’m unsubscribing from all political threads and will no longer participate in discussions in the Elections board, nor in political discussions in the Pit or MPSIMS. If you reply to a political post of mine after that point, I will not see it; please do not PM me to try to pull me back in to the debate. Thanks!
I don’t recall who said it, but your post reminded me of something that an African-American comedian said when Obama was elected, but before his inauguration:
Stopped reading after “ran this country into the ground”.
That’s rewriting history just a teensy bit. Just a tad.
I think the point he was making is that you can’t gerrymander any more than they already have, and/or enough to make a difference. Geography (and solidly partisan suburban areas) does put a practical limit on how much you can gerrymander, and AFAICT, blue states with the urban area in the middle, are already heavily gerrymandered (cf. Maryland). Possibly you could squeeze a couple more seats out of New York or Illinois, but the map makes it difficult.
He may be saying that, but I’m saying it’s wrong. Now, it would decimate the Congressional Black Caucus, so there would be a lot of pushback about that, and that might therefore be politically impossible (which is pretty selfish and shortsighted on the part of African American Democrats, by the way) but I’m saying it can be done. Take those urban districts that go 70/80/90 percent Democratic, and put a little tendril into them from suburban/exurban districts that are currently 55% or 60% Republican. Suddenly they are 55% or 60% Democratic. And just take all of the urban votes and repeat as needed. Carving up one safe central urban district can flip several such more marginal Republican districts.
NB: As of Friday, Nov. 11, 2016 at 11:59 p.m. CST, I’m unsubscribing from all political threads and will no longer participate in discussions in the Elections board, nor in political discussions in the Pit or MPSIMS. If you reply to a political post of mine after that point, I will not see it; please do not PM me to try to pull me back in to the debate. Thanks!