I don’t think it’s selfish at all. African-Americans may be loyal Democrats, but they do not feel Democrats are loyal to them. Republicans support minority districts. What do you think will happen if Democrats seek to eliminate those districts to get a more Democratic(but whiter) House? It’s awfully hard to move African-Americans into the GOP column, but a stunt like that would cause a significant shift very fast.
“Republicans support minority districts.” Yeah, gee: I wonder why? That should be black voters’ first clue that this is not ultimately in their best interests.
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!
It’s not African-Americans’ fault that Democrats’ base is now limited to urban centers. They won’t take kindly to having to take one for the team.
You know, adaher, even though I’m a liberal and very disappointed in the outcome of the election, I do feel some small consolation that now the Republicans have to put up or shut up. They’ve spent the last eight years being the party of “No”, and saying they could do it better. Now’s their chance to prove it.
I fully expect them to pursue an agenda that helps the rich get richer while everyone else gets poorer, but I would love to be proven wrong.
That said, I’m not as optimistic that it will be their last chance even if they don’t prove me wrong. My fear is Trump spends the next four years pushing through tax cuts for the rich, causing a bunch of people to lose their health insurance, letting pollution continue unchecked, and antagonizing our allies around the world while doing nothing for the economically vulnerable – and then gets re-elected anyway. With our politics as polarized as they are right now, he could break almost every promise and I’d still expect him to get within striking distance of 50% of the vote just because he’ll be an incumbent with an R next to his name (and I’d expect the same from a crummy incumbent with a D next to his name, just drawn from a different set of voters).
One way or another I hope I’m proven wrong.
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If the Republicans screw up, the Democrats will be elected. And if they screw up, the Republicans again. But I fear that Republicans are going to have the more uphill battle due to demographic change. I’ve argued many times that demographics is not destiny in politics, but the only way Republicans can halt that oncoming train is by governing well and winning the loyalty of a lot of voters that they don’t currently appeal to. There is a large group of voters who will tend to support a party in power as long as things are going well. It’s not at all unusual for popular GOP governors and Senators to win as much as third of the black vote. At the Presidential level, that would mean extremely easy victories for GOP candidates.
That sounds really hard. Why would they not simply press on with fearmongering, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and court stacking? If I were the Republicans I’d tell you thanks but no thanks.
Because it doesn’t work. If there’s one thing all politicians know, it’s that if things are going well they all get reelected. Fearmongering is what you do when you can’t govern well. That’s Plan B. It just seems like Plan A because the Boomer generation can’t produce leaders.
Pajamas Media is certainly a very partisan source, but I think partisan sources are very accurate when it comes to reporting what their own side is thinking:
Some important Republicans are cautioning that the GOP must not raise the deficit. If they follow through on their determination to not raise the deficit, that would be a good sign.
But did working class whites bring them?
In 2012 I think whites w/o a college degree preferred the GOP by 25%. Something like 62-37, something like that.
In 2016 it was a 39% margin. Among working class white men (who made up about 17% of the electorate) it was a 49% margin, which is huge. A 49% margin is about the same as what LGBTs offer the democratic party. Working class white men preferred the GOP by a larger margin than latinos preferred the democrats.
Working class whites pushed the GOP over the top and gave them the upper midwest, but they were just a small part of the GOP coalition. I do not see the national GOP changing their policies, they have always been a plutocratic party and always will. They will push for the same economic policies they always do.
Supply side tax cuts
Weakening the social safety net of medicare, medicaid, social security
Supporting free trade
Removing regulations
Hostility to government spending on retraining or unemployment
I just don’t see the GOP actually doing anything economic for working class whites. They will continue to promote the idea that working class whites are the morally superior backbone of America to get their votes, but they won’t push their economic interests.
I think that’s very likely, although Trump could do some things with Democrats and a few Republicans loyal to him(in which the GOP sorta gets credit because Trump led the effort).
But the nice thing about deficit reduction is that it tends to give people a good feeling about how the government is working and the overall economy. Delivering concrete successes with individual policies is great, but nothing helps a political party win like presiding over good times.
Yes but as a liberal when I hear a conservative say they want ‘small government’, what I personally hear is they want to do away with regulations that keep people safe, dignified and healthy (clean air and water, basic living standards, safety standards, etc), and they don’t want the federal government to intervene when states are trying to mistreat and oppress disadvantaged groups (blacks, gays, women, latinos, non-christians).
The reason I bring that up is you are making rational points, and I’m trying to have a discussion across the aisle. I don’t think small government would have a huge appeal because for a lot of us, that is what we hear when people talk about small government. Liberals and disadvantaged groups are always going to push back against this kind of small government. However liberals and minorities tend to live in large cities, while the people you discuss actually live in the rural areas that desire small government.
I guess it fundamentally comes down to how you view government, and what threats you fear most. For a lot on the left we fear corporate oligarchy, environmental degradation and oppression of the weak and vulnerable far more than we fear the government. For us the government is a tool we use to fight back against these forces. However now that government has been captured by the oligarchs, that doesn’t really work too well.
The problem is that like the ACA, this doesn’t do much of anything to slow the tide of medical inflation.
We spend 2-3 times more on health care than any other wealthy nation. We spend 18% of GDP while every other wealthy nation spends 8-12%. Health care costs are now about $10,000 per capita.
high deductible plans and HSAs will not stop the tide of medical inflation. using the rule of 72, if insurance rates go up 15% a year that means they double in 5 years. In some years the rates go up 30-40%.
Our health system is unsustainable. The only true solution is to decrease costs. Neither party wants to do that because they know the medical industry (pharma, hospitals, physicians, medical supply companies, insurance industry) will push back hard against reducing costs because reducing costs is the same as reducing their share of the market and reducing their income.
So we plod along with a broken system because nobody wants to address the root problem. HSAs and high deductible plans are a temporary solution that at best buy a few more years of kicking the can down the road. What happens in 2026 when a plan with a $10,000 deductible costs $1,500 a month?
The actual policies to reduce costs are not impossible. It is just that nobody wants to enforce them.
Single payer (or a strong public option)
Encourage importation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices from other nations
Encourage people to go overseas for care (surgeries, long term care, etc)
All payer insurance negotiations
Streamline administration of the health system
Demand all prices be transparent.
Use both the public and private market to negotiate based on transparent prices
Streamline care to remove some of the excess costs from too many options
Discourage overutilization (excessive surgeries and scans that are not proven to make people healthier)
So far everything he has hinted at doing like his massive tax cuts for the rich and even his infrastructure project or even the wall points to a huge increase in deficit.
Which is a shame. A true infrastructure program needs to be a jobs program as well. Most of those jobs would not require a college degree, so it’s a way to reward the voting base while at the same time do necessary upkeep.
I don’t know whether it’s because of the election, but I’m seeing more articles in general media about coastal flooding. Trump’s Mar-a-Largo is on Palm Beach. All those offshore islands that are rich peoples’ playground around Miami (and farther up the coast) are doomed. We’re not talking about some distant future. They are already getting quasi-uninhabitable today in many places for many people. It will be very ironic if climate change becomes a top priority simply because it hits where Trump lives, literally.
I disagree that this will be the final chance Republicans get. I believe that within a decade, as baby-boomers retire, and entitlement spending balloons, there will be a reset in US politics. This reset is as likely to destroy the Democrats as the Republicans. Anyone confidently predicting the fortunes of either party are wrong imo. The only prediction that can be made with any confidence is that both parties will probably face an existential crisis. It’s a crisis both parties may well indeed overcome but neither party will be quite the same afterwards.
It’s not? Blue-collar workers get retrained and take new jobs all the time, where I’m from. You seem to be taking a quasi-Marxist line, where every man has a sinecure. Well, you’re not just fighting Clinton Democrats, but Reagan Republicans, then.
You propose to pay for health care on a few hundred dollars a year?
It’s total nonsense. I don’t know how so many seem to take it seriously.
If you give them that coverage instead, they wouldn’t be much worse off if they get a 10k medical debt. There are plenty of bronze level exchange plans right now that cost them a monthly premium and have $6500 deductibles.
As far as regulations go, there has been a long conflict between the grassroots, which simply wants unnecessary and overly costly regulations eliminated, and the politicians, who tend to do the bidding of corporations. Which route Trump takes will be revealing, since the President is the one who primarily influences regulatory policy.
Bill Clinton’s kind of small government went over quite well. While Republicans will want to go further than Clinton did, it wouldn’t hurt to learn from his example.
The problem is that especially with environmental regulations, the weak and vulnerable have been precisely the folks oppressed by the government. The courts have provided some protection, but not enough. The IRS has also achieved a nasty reputation for oppressing the citizenry and it was Republicans who reformed it in 1998 and will have to reform it again sometime in the next few years.
Most average people know that the three biggest threats to their lives are in order, a violent death or injury at the hands of some criminal, the government bureaucracy coming down hard on them, and a distant third, corporate wrongdoing. And even the corporate wrongdoing people are actually worried about is enabled, not prevented, by Democratic policies. Such as abuse of H-1B visas.