Post election thoughts and possible future trends

[Tex]

The Electorial College is there to prevent heavily populated areas from dictating an election. Take a look at the map. Almost every big city was blue because they could tap into the welfare crowd and the guilty white vote. Doesn't really speak for most of America.

 

If you didn't have the EC this country would look more like the Hunger Games. Places like Chicago and NY would basically be able to shit on everyone.

[Driver]

You just couldn't make your valid point without throwing in hate could you?

[pavonis]

"Welfare crowd" and "guilty white vote"? Really?

You're an odd and apparently irrational person, Tex. And odd and irrational numbers are usually my favorite. I thought I was a curmudgeon, but you're far ahead of me.

[Tex]

You just couldn't make your valid point without throwing in hate could you?

Look at the strategy of the Democrats. It's brilliant. They target the minorities , give them the illusion that they actually care for them, and then label any white person who isn't onboard a racist. Hell you're doing it now. That's how they win elections and live like kings, quietly laughing behind closed doors drinking champagne .

 

I honestly don't see how liberals don't see how they've been duped. Saul Alinsky lives on.

[Poe Dameron]

And all this is just proving my point about tribalism. Look, I don't just visit loved ones who live on the opposite side of the political spectrum as me. I live in a blue county. My neighborhood is maybe 20% white. I can tell you that ignorant stuff comes out of the mouths of my neighbors all the time. Conspiracy theories, prejudice, assumptions of bad faith, overall dropping of all logic and self-reflection to make their point. I've worked in schools and can find the same thing in the planning rooms. I've worked in offices and it's there too.

 

It's pretty much the same everywhere. Rural areas, cities, suburbs, Hollywood, university campuses. Everyone in their own little tribe. Everyone making an ass out of themselves with their opinions as they echo each other's bad ideas thinking they have a lock on the TRUTH. This group all agree that evolution is a myth. That group all agree a boy can become a girl just by saying so. Lots of dumb opinions out there that are taken as gospel within the groups themselves, but just don't make a lick of sense once you step outside the bubble.

[Tex]

What about people who do believe in evolution but think you can't choose your gender? Or people who are pro choice but aren't convinced that humans affect the climate?

[Poe Dameron]

Getting tougher to find by the day.

[Tex]

Well they do exist. They don't vote democrat and somehow don't hate women, black people, or gay folk.

[Ms. Spam]

The scariest stuff that ever happened to me happened in big cities. My experience with the Klan in Atlanta and Rome Georgia gave me the willies. Been mugged in NYC. Been held up at gun point at Taco Bell twice in Georgia and once in San Antonio. But stuff has happened to me as well in the country. It just didn't bother me quite as much as the city stuff. I can't explain it but on a social justice scale stuff is screwed up in cities.

[Jacen123]

I wish these SJWs on college campuses could have their professors actually "fact check" them once in a while. But that'll never happen since they're the hippies putting these ideas in their heads to begin with.

 

 

I don't really like commenting seriously on political discussions these days, but I just want to say that this is a somewhat unfair statement that I see plenty of people make about professors in general. I'll admit my own bias here because I am a professor, but I also think that this fact means that I can provide a bit of a different perspective.

 

I see statements made about professors "infecting" students with liberalism frequently and I don't deny that some faculty will do this, but it is as unfair of a generalization as assuming that people from rural areas are all ignorant rednecks and that people living in cities are all either on welfare or arrogant ***holes who think that everyone else is beneath them. From my experiences at large state universities, at least, as an undergraduate student, a graduate student, and as a faculty member, a more accurate statement, though still a perhaps unfair generalization, would be that many professors from the humanities and social sciences are overtly liberal in the classroom.

 

As a statistician, I am rightly trained to take anecdotal evidence with a grain of salt, but I have seen plenty of evidence from all of my math, science, and computing professors over the years that I feel pretty comfortable in saying that I have never had an instance of faculty in the hard sciences trying to exert their political beliefs on students, unless you actually consider the need for education and research in these areas to be real political issues. I have seen (and heard of) numerous cases in the humanities and social sciences, though.

 

The only times I recall having discussions on anything political with my professors was in grad school outside of the classroom with the professors I was working on my research with, so the relationship between us was very different than what you see in a large lecture classroom. As such, those discussions were more conversations between colleagues than trying to impose political beliefs.

 

In my own experience teaching classes, since I teach courses about statistical reasoning to generic student body audiences, I try to connect what we are learning about to the real world so that my students can see how useful the material actually is. As part of this, I teach them to be skeptical of bad studies and give them warning signs for bad studies so that they can know what to look for when determining if a study has merit to it.

 

Election season provides a great opportunity to draw these connections between the class and society as I talk about uncertainty, polls, and margins of error. Before one of my classes started on Thursday, my students were talking about the election, understandably, and many were quite anxious about it for various reasons (As a note on this: my university is in a very conservative area of the country and many of the students are from this region). When it came time for class to start, I just told them that it is good for them to be talking with each other respectfully about things like this, but that we had to get back into the material. I did address the election in my lecture, but only from an actual academic standpoint. Since we were talking about confidence intervals and the notion of margins of error, this gave me the opportunity to talk about the election polls and how so many of them were off significantly. I stressed the importance of collecting good data since no matter how good your statistical analysis methods are, if your data is bad, your conclusions are worthless. I talked about a number of ways in which the samples used by most of the polling agencies were likely unrepresentative of the populations they were drawn from (after studying up on this considerably over the past few days).

 

I think making those types of connections between the material and the real world is incredibly important, but I o my best to keep my personal political beliefs out of the classroom as much as possible. Even though I think of myself as being a moderate liberal, I know that I am actually considerably more liberal than that, but I don't agree with the tactics of SJWs even if I actually agree with some of the ideas that form their core positions. For instance, a big topic on college campuses over the past few years has been the rising awareness of problems of sexual assault My freshman class last year was part of a larger program aimed at helping students get adjusted to college and the organizers of that program were trying to get all of the professors teaching these classes to tells their students to go to a film and panel discussion about sexual assault. Being familiar with the film and the fact that it is complete propaganda, I was not about to encourage my students to go to it. Because I think the topic is important one for students to know about, I found a recently published scientific study about the topic. I told my students that they should look at it despite that fact that it is an uncomfortable topic and that, really, that level of discomfort made it even more important for them to learn about it. After giving them a chance to do so, I discussed the study with them, explaining what it did well while also talking about limitations of the study and my skepticism about certain conclusions that they reached. I also framed it as an example of all the things we had been talking about with the construction of surveys and scientific studies and how difficult it actually is to get good information, especially about uncomfortable topics and illegal activities.

 

Besides connecting these topics to the material I am teaching to help students see how important these statistical topics actually are, my goal for talking about things like this is to help the students develop critical thinking skills. Whatever conclusions they reach after developing these skills is up to them, including political issues.

 

Anyway, through this, I just really wanted to point out that there are, in fact, many professors working today who are not trying to indoctrinate students with liberal ideologies even while trying to address important issues that the students are/will be facing.

[Ms. Spam]

 

You just couldn't make your valid point without throwing in hate could you?

Look at the strategy of the Democrats. It's brilliant. They target the minorities , give them the illusion that they actually care for them, and then label any white person who isn't onboard a racist. Hell you're doing it now. That's how they win elections and live like kings, quietly laughing behind closed doors drinking champagne .

 

I honestly don't see how liberals don't see how they've been duped. Saul Alinsky lives on.

You see us as being rubes and this is why we will always have issues because we see those same people who voted for Trump the same way. I know a lot of people in both camps who I respect but I don't paint them the way you do. I read what Carrie, Kurgan, Driver, pavonis, Chalupa, Six and his wife and Pong wrote here during the campaign and genuinely think they are people who have valid points and can be reasonable. They are as wildly different in their views from their own relative needs/values compared to you, Tex. But it doesn't make them wrong or more right.

 

Democrats represent a different set of values and they are not targeting monorities any more than goes beyond the needs of a certain set of people they can represent. This year was just not good for them as the actions did not appeal to a voting group that the DNC needed. Probably miss dealings with the way they did Bernie and his supporters as well as collusion to get Hillary elected was just as damaging as FBI email scandals.

 

What change come out of this will be interesting.

I hate posting by phone.

[Transducer X]

"Has anyone noticed the urban/rural voting percentages? The rural people (who I have been telling you all for a long time that you don't even begin to understand) are getting completely fed up with being called retarded redneck backwoods cave-men. They hate what they see as subsidizing a bunch of programs for minorities in cities while the rural white/brown/black alike struggle a little harder every year and the debt goes higher. I heard a cheer come up when people heard the #Calexit thing."

 

Haha, and then they vote for Trump and prove those people right. I live in Missouri and am quite familiar with them. They are really enjoying this "Gotcha!" moment, believe me.

[Darth Ender]

CM...

 

On your first point, regarding the polls being inaccurate. I don't want to argue semantics, but the polls were actually more accurate for Trump/Clinton than Romney/Obama. Long story short, in 2012 the polls called it for Obama, but polling had the race much closer than actual turn-out. In this election, yes, polls had Clinton winning, but the polls were much closer to the actual vote in terms of percentages. The problem was mainstream media not understanding margin of error and how statistics work.

 

I think points 2 and 3 going interestingly hand-in-hand. I wanted to ram my head into the wall with all of this nonsense about white people voting against Clinton because of whatever -ist you want to call it for all of the reasons you outline. But I think another key stat is Trump picking up a large chunk of the non-white vote, including 30% of the Hispanic vote and in some areas, 30% of the college educated black-male vote. If anything, this could indicate a turn from identity politics.

 

Tex, just curious, what would change your mind?

 

NASA has a whole site dedicated to evidence.

 

How about an article showing how we know it is human generated CO2 causing the issue?

 

Is it independent confirmation from multiple scientific organizations?

 

What about a breakdown of a summary of proof from the US and Britian's science programs that details the evidence?

 

How about a breakdown of common antii-global warming arguments and clear, evidence based reasons as to why they are wrong?

 

How about a specific breakdown on the pieces of evidence?

[The Kurgan]

Sometimes i get pissed at the insinuations that I'm just a Hitler loving redneck racist deplorable homophobe xenophobe climate change denier because I'm cool with Trump being prez, and that's when I lash out a bit.

Honestly, I think this is the real problem these days. People get really put off by this "you're with us or against us" mindset. It's what started turning people off of the neo-cons and the religious right during the Bush years. It's been driving people away from the SJWs in Obama's term.

 

People don't like emotional blackmail. Who'd have guessed?

[Carrie Mathison]

Jesus. Now I know why Pong quit.

 

Tell me about it. I go away for a weekend, and somehow this thread turns into pages of bickering about global warming, of all things. I think it's about time for me to make my exit, from my own thread unfortunately, but first a few replies to some of the posts made before this thing went off the rails:

 

Spam

 

Thanks, and I'm glad you liked my posts. Sorry I've been such a b-tch to you over this campaign season, by the way.

 

I do agree with you that Trump might be thin on the political capital when he enters office, or at least thinner than presidents typically are. That's why it's so critical that he gets a bi-partisan win early.. see my below points to Chalup for more on that.

 

Chalup

 

Obamacare sounds like it might be a good thing to target first, but I'm not sure I actually agree. Reason being, is I actually don't think the GOP intelligentsia really has a complete plan on what to do about it. In reality, they'd like to just turn back the clock to before it existed, but I think it's a little too late for that. Too many people are on it currently, and there are also some really popular provisions like the ban on barring pre-existing conditions, or allowing children to stay longer on the parents' insurance. If you got rid of the mandate (the most unpopular provision) and kept the popular ones, then it'd just fall even deeper into the hole and premiums would go higher. It's kinda a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, and I'm not sure I have the answer yet (or anyone in the GOP does). Clearly something has to be done, since premiums are just going up and up, but I think this might be better as the second issue Trump tackles.

 

I think a better thing to go for first is trade, honestly. Making a strong push to renegotiate trade deals is something that some key Dems (like Sanders) have already said they'd be willing to work with Trump on. Trade is one of those things that has opposition and support in both parties, that doesn't fall strictly on party lines, so it should be fertile ground for a bi-partisan deal. If Trump can get through a bi-partisan deal on trade early, he'll have a quick win and something to immediately go back to Middle American on, especially since trade was one of his biggest issues. Not to mention, trade is one of like 2 issues that we know Trump actually cares about, and has since the 80s, so it's something he's going to put effort into and could help generate the energy to tackle bigger issues, when he's going to have to really confront Congress.

 

 

Lucas

 

You said: "The teeth-gnashing from the Left has been... something. Annoyingly so. I'm pretty firmly anti-Trump and I do have concerns, but good god, get a grip people."

 

And I think having concerns is fine. Being anti-Trump is fine. I think, in the aftermath of this election, Democrats don't need to roll over and just give in to Trump. No, by all means, hold the guy accountable. He said he'd do something about trade and immigration, well hold him to it. Be the opposition. Make that case, when you're running in 2020.

 

But make that case, and not the case that half the country are basically sub-humans, ranked somewhere above raw sewage and below feces. If Trump ends up being a sh-tty president, go to Michigan and Pennsylvania and tell these people that. If I'm advising the Dems, I'd tell them this: give them your vision, why you'll do better, give them a reason to vote for you. You talk to people in these states, and not down at them, and they'll vote for you. After all, they did for Obama. Twice.

 

 

Poe

 

I know you're a big Pence cheerleader and all, and I just have very little in common with Pence's faction of the GOP... but I'll tell you what. I'm willing to give him a second look. I did think (and I admitted this, in the other election thread), that he did a brilliant job in the Kaine debate. I think that was an important moment in this campaign and could've been a point where the bottom completely fell out from Trump if the bleeding hadn't stopped. In that debate, social issues were really only about the last 5 min or so, and the rest was primarily the big-ticket issues; economy, jobs, foreign policy, etc. Pence was polished and prepared on those issues and came out sounding reasonable. I tell pav and Tank below to give people a chance, so I'm going to practice what I preach here. I'm willing to withdraw my prior judgment about Pence and see how things unfold in the administration.

 

Also I do agree with your point that Trump might actually be in a pretty good position to start repairing relations with the Black community, should he choose to. I actually think he might; if I had some more time, I'd add to this, but suffice to say for now, that I agree with you.

 

 

Pav

 

Going back to your first post in the thread- I do think that 538 gets a bit of credibility back after they so horribly botched the primaries. Which I have to say, I give Silver some credit here since he did admit he let his personal emotional feelings about Trump influence his primaries analysis. I'm willing to give him a second look, since he cleaned it up considerably for the general election and his model was much closer than any others (for example, I think Huff Post had Clinton at like a 95% chance or something completely ridiculous like that). His final estimate was around 3-1 odds for Clinton, which it sounds like we both had as well. I think that's probably a solid estimate. Of course, we'll never know, since we can't go back in time and re-run the election 1000 times or something.

 

As to your lack of optimism about a Trump administration- I'd say, let's wait and see what happens. I think from a financial standpoint, no matter who won, you were probably going to be in the same position. I really doubt this election effects you in a real way. Also keep in mind that Trump isn't that ideological. He's certainly not a movement conservative or in the Ayn Rand camp (see my below points I made to Tank). He has even made infrastructure development a top priority and one of his big issues in the campaign. Now, obviously R&D is not the same as infrastructure, per se, but I'd like to think that if Trump likes infrastructure, it probably wouldn't take him much to be convinced on R&D. The GOP has dug in their heels on some of this stuff, but a lot of that has more to do with Obama being in power and trying to keep him from getting any wins, in contrast to real opposition. Not to mention, the GOP historically has been better for some agencies than the Dems; NASA is an example of that. I know NASA is not the NSF, and perhaps the GOP just likes NASA more because the space industry is mostly composed of the contractors as the defense industry. I'm just saying, it hasn't even been a week and you're already throwing in the towel. A little melodrmatic I think, pav!

 

Tank

 

I gotcha now (going all the way back to pg 1). For what it's worth, I've always enjoyed talking to you, even though our political beliefs might be pretty different. Though I'm sure you're not very happy with the results of this election, I think there are actually some 'silver linings' in it for you. First, given that you're now making f-ck you money, it's unlikely that any particular party will ever disadvantage you. Welcome to my world, it's nice here, isn't it? Kick up your feet and have a cocktail. Neither party has ever seriously pushed a policy proposal that negatively affects the affluent, and even when a policy allegedly does, it usually only targets one particular sector (and rarely the rich, at large). And even in those cases, the policies that supposedly target a sector, end up benefiting it in the end. Take Dodd-Frank, which was supposed to be some big clamp down on Wall Street, and ended up just being a huge financial boon to big banks, and really only hurt smaller community banks.

 

Second, and this is sorta related to the last point, but you work in an industry that is nearly immune from economic downturn- that is not to say, of course, that a crash wouldn't have any negative effect at all. But things like manufacturing patterns, and trade policy, acceleration of out-sourcing (or deceleration, I suppose, if Trump has his way), will never have much of an effect on you. Now imagine if you were an oil man or owned a trucking business.

 

Finally, I know you're got a few SJW tendencies (although I've always respected the fact that you usually try and stay level-headed and refrain from going totally off the deep end on these forums), but I really think the social issues are going to be much-ado-about-nothing in a Trump administration. Recall that Trump is a lifelong Manhattan resident that celebrated Elton John's wedding for goodness sake. He's gone back and forth between Democrat and Republican before, depending on when it's politically expedient for him, and he's probably the most liberal Republican to be elected since at least HW Bush, and maybe since Eisenhower (perhaps you can start to see why I was an early supporter here of him). What we do know he cares about, are things like trade and immigration. He's had a nationalist streak in him since the 80s and it's basically the only things he's been very consistent on. He cares so much about abortion and gay marriage, that he mentioned it for like 2 seconds on the campaign. Let's be real here, he doesn't give two sh-ts about these things.

 

The most he'll do is appoint a conservative to the bench, but even that probably won't have much of an effect. The big decisions like Roe ain't going anywhere. What realistically will happen, is probably just a pause on things like gun rights and maybe a few other issues like affirmative action. Social issues may not necessarily 'progress' (or at least, as much as you'd like), but they aren't going to go backwards either. Most likely we kinda just stay where we are for a little while. And with as much strife as we've seen recently, might I suggest, is that really a bad thing?

 

Anyways, the point is just to say, Trump may have won, but life is going to go on in Hollywood. Clinton may have been your first pick, but imagine if someone like Ted Cruz had won from the GOP side.

 

Ender

 

Fair point- I guess I should have specified. State polls tended to be all wrong (sometimes dramatically and well outside the margin of error). National polls fared much better- they were all wrong, but all within the margin of error, and the extent to which they were wrong is being a bit exaggerated. Given that they all pointed in one direction though, this suggests that the way polling is conducted now failed to account for some factor, what that is, I'm not sure. I've seen one suggestion, that polls failed to account for likely voters in certain demographics and they were just "missed."

[Tex]

Well. Bye?

[Poe Dameron]

Obamacare sounds like it might be a good thing to target first, but I'm not sure I actually agree. Reason being, is I actually don't think the GOP intelligentsia really has a complete plan on what to do about it. In reality, they'd like to just turn back the clock to before it existed, but I think it's a little too late for that.

 

My understanding is that there's fairly broad agreement on tax credits, decentralization, and insurance across borders. They seem to go a bit back and forth on preexisting conditions vs. high-risk pools, but otherwise, I thought the broad agreements were pretty well in place.

 

Not that I necessarily disagree that this is the wrong place to start the administration.

 

 

 

I think a better thing to go for first is trade, honestly. Making a strong push to renegotiate trade deals is something that some key Dems (like Sanders) have already said they'd be willing to work with Trump on.

 

Dumb question, but why would he need to work with Congress on this at all until after he’s done? This would seem to fall well under the executive’s purview.

 

 

 

I know you're a big Pence cheerleader and all

 

The funny thing is that his surrender on religious liberty makes me not much of a cheerleader. He was at ground zero for a liberal hissy fit and he blinked, empowering them from then on.

 

What I’ve always been trying to say is that he’s not the stereotypical guy that you believed him to be. But with that being said, I’m glad he seems to have a genuine relationship with Trump.

 

 

 

He's had a nationalist streak in him since the 80s and it's basically the only things he's been very consistent on. He cares so much about abortion and gay marriage, that he mentioned it for like 2 seconds on the campaign. Let's be real here, he doesn't give two sh-ts about these things.

 

For the most part, I agree, he won’t be that conservative on social policy. He pretty much ended the debate on gay marriage permanently in his interview on 60 Minutes last night.

 

Where I think social conservatives can take heart is this: I believe that he’ll appoint at least a solid conservative justice to replace Scalia. Any judges beyond that, I’m not sure about. I’m pretty sure, at minimum, Kennedy will retire within the next four years. And, well, the ghouls are out on a Ginsburg deathwatch already.

 

Really though, I think the biggest immediate change will be that the various departments won’t stick their noses in whatever cause is being championed in any particular place at any particular moment. No more Dear Colleagues letters changing national policy and threatening places with cutoff in national funding for not bowing to laws they just made up.

 

 

 

I've seen one suggestion, that polls failed to account for likely voters in certain demographics and they were just "missed."

 

Wouldn’t surprise me. There’s probably something to the “shy” Trump voter as well. The voters that went to Trump and then went home to take a shower. I said a just before the election that I figured the polls would be slightly off one way or the other.

 

Though one thing I always remind people about polls is that they are snapshot of something that happened yesterday. The polls in 2012 were off by pretty much the same amount in favor of Obama. I knew people that praised the pollsters that “got it right”, but I always believed that they were actually the inaccurate ones and the ones that showed a toss-up were correct. There was movement in Obama’s direction leading up to election day stemming from Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath. Momentum is multiplied in the days leading up to an election. This is rarely taken into account when discussing the accuracy of polls.

 

Remember when I said this:

 

You have to know the media are desperate to change the narrative. This last Trump surge has been well-timed. It may crest on or just before Election Day before Clinton's less motivated voters can be roused to the danger of losing an election they thought was over.

 

I think the unmotivated Clinton voters were becoming aware of the danger, but then the second Comey letter came through, the media declared the election over (it obviously wasn’t as the RCP map was basically a toss-up), and they went back to sleep while the Trump vote solidified and were newly motivated by seeing that the race was closer than expected.

[Guest]

I'm going to split the global warming conversation to a new thread that we can discuss the real topic of this thread without losing the insights from Carrie, or anyone else that isn't really interested in that debate (which seems to be most of us).

[Darth Krawlie]

I'm very interested in her thoughts on potential 2020 Dem candidates.

[Carrie Mathison]

Hey thanks Brando Although I suppose I should make it clear for everyone... I wasn't b-tching or demanding to get the thread split or anything; just merely observing that I didn't have any interest in discussing the route the thread had taken...

My understanding is that there's fairly broad agreement on tax credits, decentralization, and insurance across borders. They seem to go a bit back and forth on preexisting conditions vs. high-risk pools, but otherwise, I thought the broad agreements were pretty well in place.

Not that I necessarily disagree that this is the wrong place to start the administration.

I think there's agreement on things like decentralization and insurance across borders, sure, but we're talking about nibbling around the edges here. Ultimately, it's not going to do much in terms of rising premiums, especially if the clauses on pre-existing conditions and young adults on their parents plan remain. One fix would be to just keep the mandate and raise the tax penalty high enough that people would choose to buy insurance. The tax was never high enough, and this loophole was something I pointed out years ago, before the mandate was even passed, as a reason why it wouldn't work. And lo and behold, just as I thought, not enough healthy people signed up and just paid the tax, and so premiums went up.

Of course, raising the tax will never pass. Another possibility are the tax credits you mentioned. They could presumably gap fill in between the people that are on Medicaid and those that have employer health care. There are a couple of issues with this though- first, as we've seen from the states that refused the Medicaid expansion, it would have to be fully funded by the federal government. I'm not sure we could get this to pass a GOP congress, since it'll be accused of being single-payer (and that actually wouldn't be an unfair criticism). Second, I'm not sure it does much to help rising premiums- costs will keep going up and so the tax credits will have to keep going up. We're already deeply in the hole as it is with Medicare and Social Security.

It's a conundrum. And that's why I caution against Trump trying to tackle it, at least at first. He needs a win to build his capital and then maybe we can try and figure out what to do with health care.

Dumb question, but why would he need to work with Congress on this at all until after he’s done? This would seem to fall well under the executive’s purview.

Well, treaties require signature and 2/3 senate ratification. Then you have congressional-executive agreements, which only require simple majorities from both houses. As to what is a treaty, and what is a CEA, is kinda complicated and I'd have to re-research it (I used to know this stuff off the top of my head, but it's been a while), but that being said, NAFTA was a CEA, that passed Congress in '93 (if I recall, fairly narrowly- at least in the House, and there was a mix of Republicans/Democrats on both sides of the vote).

As an example, let's say NAFTA was to be re-negotiated- I would think the NAFTA Implementation Act of '93 would have to be amended, although I profess that I'm not an expert on this. I don't think Trump could simply sign a new agreement, although I could be wrong (well, he could sign it, but Congress would have to implement/approve it). One thing about CEAs is you have a right to withdraw (as opposed to treaties), and I'm not sure if a vote would be required on that, but I don't think an outright withdrawal would be on the table.

 

That's just one example. Let's say a new tariff was to be established- that again, would have to be done by Congress.

 

I'm not sure Trump really has the power to do much on trade unilaterally, but again, I could be wrong on some of this.

 

 

I'm very interested in her thoughts on potential 2020 Dem candidates.

 

Big topic- I'll try to write some more later as time allows. But let me first say that I was wrong about 2016. I thought Clinton would win, and in my original prediction of the GOP candidates (way back in 2014), I wrote that Christie was best positioned. Now, to be fair, that was shortly after the scandals broke, and before we knew that story would be sticking around a while, so Christie was probably best positioned, at the time. That being said, all of this is to say, that perhaps I have no idea what I'm talking about. I did correctly call the previous elections on this site, right down to the electoral vote count, but maybe I just got lucky. All I'm saying is I don't know that I have any particular insight into 2020, any more than anyone else.

 

I think who the Dems go with in 2020 largely rest on what message resonates in the primaries: a push to go all-in on the minority vote, or a push to reclaim lost voters in states like MI and PA.

 

The former is going to be popular among the Huff Post reading, blogging about SJW stuff, etc., type of voter. The latter is going to be more popular among economic leftists, the type of people that voted for Sanders. If the former "wins," I'd expect to see someone like Kamala Harris on the ballot. Already there's a ton of speculation surrounding her... one disadvantage to her is she's relatively inexperienced, but Obama (and Trump, for that matter), proved that most voters don't really care about that if you say the right things. However, it's something that could be a weakness, especially if Trump is a successful president (if he's not, I think it'll matter very little).

 

Now if the latter proves to win out, then maybe we'll see someone more like Elizabeth Warren. There's this belief among the Dem circles that she can appeal to the white working class and is their leading advocate for economic leftism. I'm not sure that I buy that- there's some evidence that she's actually not that good of a campaigner.. her victory over Scott Brown was in 2012 (when Obama was on the ticket) and the margin was relatively unconvincing, especially when compared to other senate races in MA when Kennedy and Kerry ran.

 

Another possibility might be someone like Cory Booker. I know the establishment is probably hoping for someone like him, but I also know he does not excite the progressives- to them, he's basically another Clinton. Booker appeals more to the first crowd than the second.. what would be interesting is if we saw both Harris and Booker throw their hat in the ring.

 

One of the Castro brothers is also a possibility. I think it may be a little early for them though- they haven't really made their way into a prominent government position yet, so we may be a couple cycles away until they're in their prime.

 

I know Michelle Obama has said she doesn't want it, but people have a tendency to change their minds on these types of things, especially if they're ambitious, and I have no reason to think Obama isn't. If she ran, I suspect it would have a similar effect to when Clinton ran, and a lot of Democrat candidates would refuse to run, leaving her relatively unopposed.

 

If the Dems take the second route (appealing to places like MI, PA, etc), then I could see Sherrod Brown being a possibility. As of right now though, I don't think that route is going to win the day at the primaries. I think the argument is going to be that Clinton lost states like NC and MI due to decreased minority turnout (especially Black turnout), and that the Dems don't really need to adopt a "rust belt" strategy to reclaim working class whites in that area. So if I had to guess, I'd say it's somewhat unlikely that we'll see a Sherrod Brown type candidate, and a lot more likely that we'll see someone like Kamala Harris.

 

Then again, like I said, what do I know....

[Poe Dameron]

I've been meaning to make an autopsy thread about the Democrats for most of the past week. That really is such a big topic and somewhat off to the side thanks to how losing the presidency has exposed just how hollow the Democrat dominance of the last eight years has been. While Obama was running the executive branch, Republicans took over the rest of the country and now Democrats pretty much own nothing except California and some northeast states. Maybe we should spin this one off as well.

 

You pretty much hit all the names on the Democrat side I was thinking. I'll go down the list myself tomorrow probably.

[Carrie Mathison]

It's up to you. You're welcome to keep it in this thread if you want, but doesn't matter to me.

 

I can see where you're going with this though. It's true that the GOP has an overwhelming control of state level legislatures and gubernatorial positions. That being said though- I'm not sure how much that matters in terms of national presidential elections.

 

The Dems run someone a little more palatable to average, working class people and they win MI, PA, WI, etc. These were all won by 1% or less.

 

Hell, even if Clinton (the 2008 version) was run, they may have won. Few people seem to remember this now, but she ran a campaign of heartland America vs. the aloof coastal academic in 2008, going county by county to diners, small town halls, and the like in places like OH. If that Clinton came out this year, who knows?

 

Or, the Dems could just run up the minority vote in NC and FL, with someone like Michelle Obama or Kamala Harris, and then the GOP has the same problem again.

 

Point is, I'm not so sure the GOP takeover at the state level really matters in terms of presidential elections.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

 

 

Chalup

 

Obamacare sounds like it might be a good thing to target first, but I'm not sure I actually agree. Reason being, is I actually don't think the GOP intelligentsia really has a complete plan on what to do about it. In reality, they'd like to just turn back the clock to before it existed, but I think it's a little too late for that. Too many people are on it currently, and there are also some really popular provisions like the ban on barring pre-existing conditions, or allowing children to stay longer on the parents' insurance. If you got rid of the mandate (the most unpopular provision) and kept the popular ones, then it'd just fall even deeper into the hole and premiums would go higher. It's kinda a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, and I'm not sure I have the answer yet (or anyone in the GOP does). Clearly something has to be done, since premiums are just going up and up, but I think this might be better as the second issue Trump tackles.

 

I think a better thing to go for first is trade, honestly. Making a strong push to renegotiate trade deals is something that some key Dems (like Sanders) have already said they'd be willing to work with Trump on. Trade is one of those things that has opposition and support in both parties, that doesn't fall strictly on party lines, so it should be fertile ground for a bi-partisan deal. If Trump can get through a bi-partisan deal on trade early, he'll have a quick win and something to immediately go back to Middle American on, especially since trade was one of his biggest issues. Not to mention, trade is one of like 2 issues that we know Trump actually cares about, and has since the 80s, so it's something he's going to put effort into and could help generate the energy to tackle bigger issues, when he's going to have to really confront Congress.

Well, they may scrap Obamacare, but gotta remember there were republicans who did vote for it, and it has been around a few years, now. And while they do control Congress, now, I don't know that the GOP necessarily has the votes to completely repeal Obamacare. So I don't think the GOP will necessarily go that route. I mean if yet another major overhaul happens, that may actually do damage to the market, and cause major uncertainty. So (and understand I am of the opinion the passage of Obamacare was a mistake), I think the wisest course of action is to fix what is wrong with Obamacare, or remove the parts that are bad altogether, and then pass legislation opening up state lines for medical insurance companies to compete, and offer better coverage for lower prices. Competition, I think, is the only way to really cause major price drops at this point. Not repealing Obamacare.

 

As for opening up trade, I read that Canada and Mexico want to renegotiate terms of NAFTA (which always has been a mixed bag), so this might be a good opportunity to do that. While they are at it, I think this is the time to open up trade with Cuba in a big way, and maybe include them in with NAFTA. It is better to start negotiating with Cuba NOW, before someone else does, like the Russians and the Chinese, for example. If for no other reason, they do have oil. Maybe it could end up being a win-win for all 4 countries.

[Poe Dameron]

I think I am going to spin the Democrat stuff off into its own thread.

 

 

 

Well, treaties require signature and 2/3 senate ratification. Then you have congressional-executive agreements, which only require simple majorities from both houses

 

Yeah, I know. But I was asking what Congress has to do with it immediately? You listed trade as something that Trump could start out with for a bipartisan victory working with the Warren/Sanders wing of the Democrats. But Congressional endorsement of renegotiated trade deals is something that won't happen for probably years if ever.

 

 

 

Well, they may scrap Obamacare, but gotta remember there were republicans who did vote for it

 

Obamacare passed with zero Congressional Republican support.

 

 

 

I think the wisest course of action is to fix what is wrong with Obamacare, or remove the parts that are bad altogether, and then pass legislation opening up state lines for medical insurance companies to compete, and offer better coverage for lower prices.

 

I think it's more a case of keeping the popular stuff and allowing market forces to try and take care of the rest. Basically, tax credits, pre-existing conditions ban, and 26-year-old children provisions stay, but it will largely gut the government's power to direct what goes into these plans (aside from maybe birth control, which Democrats will no doubt scream their heads off about) and try to use that and the ability to buy across state lines as a method for keeping costs down.

 

Essentially healthcare.gov becomes more of an interstate shopping platform than anything else.

 

 

 

It is better to start negotiating with Cuba NOW, before someone else does, like the Russians and the Chinese, for example. If for no other reason, they do have oil.

 

We're just a little late to the party on that one. Not to state the obvious, but Russia and Cuba have been tight since the 1950s.

[Driver]

The real question is-- will Pence be able to open the federally funded Gay re-education camps. That'll go over great.