The Politics Thread

[DramatistDreamer]

Are there people who still believe that Johnson can produce good results for the people? He seems to over-promise and under-deliver quite a lot.

Also, the assertion that anyone can make about NJ is a long-time blue state when Chris Christie was governor not too long ago seems weird.

I don't know about NYC but many areas had poor turnout, which has had a history of favoring GOP candidates.

I still think it's a weird flex for media to use municipal and non-Congressional elections as some sort of bellwether for midterms, but I guess we'll see. Anti-CRT campaigns flopped in more than they succeeded but this was only half-discussed days after the election. Doesn't sell headlines and clicks, I guess.

 

[JaneAusten]

I was talking about in general. In fact it's been reported, you should know this, that Murphy got fewer votes than Biden did by a considerable margin and democratic turnout was significantly lower.  You live there and  I assumed knew that.

Virginia did have higher turnout. McAuliffe IMO ran a *hitty and lazy campaign. But I am not going to pretend that CRT is not anything but fear mongering. Someone pulled the term out and turned it into something it doesn't mean because the right wants to gin up hatred to local school boards, as if the board members are not mostly parents of kids themselves. You can certainly have concerns about schools and it's natural at this point with over a year of a pandemic but bringing race into it was the GOP strategy.

The democrats don't have a talk radio infrastructure and news networks all over that have been funded by right wing billionaires that the right does. Rush Limbaugh was all over the country on the airwaves for 30 years. And they have purchased spanish radio networks and have been the past several years. The democrats don't have a network of billionaires that have built a party infrastructure(The Koch Network) or media all over the country. It's a problem and has been for years. So lets not pretend this has not been going on. What did Limbaugh do 5 days a week for years on the radio if not gin up hate and fear.  I'd be interested in understanding why now over 75% of the GOP believes that 2020 was rigged when less that 30% believed this after Jan 6th? That message is coming from somewhere. And I know very well what the right is doing at school board meetings because it's happening in the district I live in. I don't have kids there but I have been going to school board meetings now as a show of support for the board.

No one said the democrats are perfect. I certainly haven't but they are a dysfunctional democratic political party, not a party that no longer believes in democracy. For every issue the democrats have had, not once did anyone try to orchestrate the overthrow of an election. THat includes the president aided by his party infrastructure.

Edited November 7, 2021 by JaneAusten

[DramatistDreamer]

I agree with @JaneAusten that McAuliffe ran a lazy campaign. If reports are to be believed, he was hoping for the infrastructure bill to pass before the election to deliver a "win" for him to run on??? WTF! How about telling the people of VA what you as governor plan to do specifically to make life better for constituents and keep reiterating this and the fact that your opponent has no real ideas for improving daily life for everyday Virginians, other than making them afraid. Emphasize that America is at its best when operating on hope and optimism, not fear. Why did he even run again anyway? Part of me wonders whether he was the best that the Dems could do in VA. And don't get me started on that new Lt. Governor. Ugh, I do not claim her. 

I know gun-toting Sears is no Democrat but she is of my ethnic group and neither I, nor anyone else I know, claim her.

What's wrong with the state of VA anyway?

[Max]

 

I can probably best respond to this is list format:

1. If Democratic turnout was low in NJ, that's their fault. Phil Murphy is extraordinarily wealthy, and he could have used that money to fund a state-of-the-art GOTV organization. The state Democratic Party has more money than the state GOP. And Lt. Governor Sheila Oliver (who is African-American) has long-standing ties with the Black community and comes from one of the bluest parts of the state. Furthermore, as a resident of NJ, I can tell you that there was no shyness on the part of Democrats to run on fear, as a frequent commercial advertisement featured a woman tearing into Ciattarelli over reproductive rights and saying that the thought of him becoming governor terrified her. (FYI, Ciattarelli supports a ban on abortion after 20 weeks and favors parental notification laws, but also said he would support writing abortion rights into state law if Roe v. Wade were ever overturned.)

2. I do feel that Youngkin made way too made winks and nods to the MAGA cult, and as such I couldn't support him if I lived in Virginia. However, I do believe that race wasn't the only issue that led to Youngkin's victory. To win, he had to have won over a decent share of Biden voters, and economics and school concerns (independent of anything race-based) appealed to those people. Also, I really think that some in VA just wanted a change, as the Democrats have controlled that state's governorship for 16 of the past 20 years.

3. The right-wing has had a longstanding media ecosystem; IMO, this ecosystem can no longer even be considered "conservative," as it's morphed into a series of MAGA propaganda outlets. But liberals have plenty of allies of their own in the media. MSNBC is a huge megaphone for the left. There's also a ton of vlogs and online publications (The Young Turks and Slate, for example) that provide support. It was long suspected that some once powerful people in legacy media had a liberal bias; witness all the claims of bias that Dan Rather faced, which--based upon what I see on his Facebook page--turned out to be true. (I'm in complete agreement when Rather trashes Trump or cowardly Republicans. But a good chunk of what Rather writes on Facebook has nothing to do with Trump.) And finally, Hollywood is a very liberal place (the below article is just one example of this):

Top Hollywood Execs Give Overwhelmingly to Democrats for Midterms – The Hollywood Reporter

4. The Democrats never did anything as nefarious as what happened on January 6, and I have left the Republican Party. But with all due respect, I'm not sure exactly what it is that you and like-minded individuals want from anti-Trump conservatives? Would you like me to give unconditional support to Democrats (because Tom Nichols and some other former Republicans have suggested this)? Quite honestly, that's extremely hard to do when moderates like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Josh Gottheimer, and Abigail Spanberger are made to feel so unwelcome. What I desperately want to see is a major third-party emerge that consists of moderate Democrats and center-right Republicans that have the courage to stand up to Trump. Sadly, it doesn't look like such a political party will emerge. So in the meantime, there will be occasions when I support the Republican, when I support the Democrat, and when I simply don't vote (or support a minor candidate). It will all depend on the election.

Edited November 7, 2021 by Max

[Max]

DramatistDreamer, governor's races tend to be unique animals, in which it's not uncommon for members of the "wrong" party to win. While this somewhat undermines my argument about Murphy's margin of victory being embarrassing, he vastly underperformed pre-Election Day expectations (which wasn't the case with more recent Democratic governors of New Jersey who ended up losing). And in 2017, he won by over 14 points in an election with only 38.5% turnout. So it certainly appears that there were a good deal of normally Democratic-leaning voters who swinged against Murphy.

Going back to what I was saying about governor's races being unique animals, the governors of Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana are all Democrats, yet those states are solidly red. Likewise, the dark blue states of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maryland all have Republican governors. If you look at the other key indicators of a state's partisan lean--Democrats have won every U.S. Senate election since 1976, won every presidential election since 1992, have a 10 to 2 advantage in the U.S. House delegation, and have majorities in both houses of the state legislature--New Jersey is a heavily Democratic state.

I do think that you have some good observations. Though I don't follow VA politics, I believe the state Democratic party was badly reeling in the immediate aftermath of the Northam scandal. Soon after Ralph Northam's skeletons came out of the closet, Attorney General Mark Herring (who nevertheless got renominated for a second term this year) admitted to also wearing blackface while in college. The biggest blow to the party, however, were the sexual assault allegations made against Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax. Mr. Fairfax, who is Black, was seen as a rising star and was poised for a gubernatorial run in 2021.

So given all that chaos, Terry McAuliffe wound up with the Democratic nomination. When one thinks about it, it's not much of a surprise that he ran a terrible campaign: Due to his extremely close ties to the Clintons, he served as the chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005, a period of time that was arguably the party's lowest point of the past thirty years. He then served chairman of Hillary's failed 2008 campaign. In 2009, he ran unsuccessfully for the VA Democratic gubernatorial nomination. When he was finally elected governor in 2013, he won by a margin of 2.6% against a terribly flawed GOP opponent. (Granted VA was considerably less Democratic eight years ago than today, but also keep in mind that the Libertarian nominee in 2013 got 6.5% of the vote.)

Edited November 7, 2021 by Max

[OzFrog]

Sadly yes. His whole schtick was “Get Brexit Done”, which he managed to do, so that earned him a lot of votes in the north of England. And people tend to view him as “one of them”, although we know that’s far from the truth.

However, now the UK government is signalling it wants to renege on the Northern Ireland Protocol that was signed by both them and the EU at the end of 2019, and that will have far reaching ramifications if that does happen.

This is a brilliant clip from a guy called James O’Brien who is a radio show host - this monologue is searing and brutal…

 

[JaneAusten]

With all due respect, I never said it wasn't the democrats fault in NJ. But the idea it was somehow because of the same people voting again is not true. And you do know in New Jersey a lot of the same CRT playbook is being used. I live in Illinois which is super blue and we just had a GOP Governor  before our current one who did NOTHING. He won for exactly the same reason Murphy s election came close. He also didn't get re-elected.

As for abortion rights, that's not fear mongering Max. states all over the country are preparing for Roe to be overturned. My god look what Texas has done so that's not fear mongering it's the truth. 75% of Americans support Abortion rights but all over this country a party run by mostly white men want to strip our rights. Not only that I now hear that loon who wrote that abortion vigilante law is now insisting the court flip marriage equality and all reproductive rights including birth control. This was never about being pro life it was about being pro control. We now have a bought and paid for court whose also going to strip New York of their gun control laws. I guess states rights matter only when you want to strip women of their abortion rights and the voting rights of PoC. 

CNN is not a liberal ally and MSNBC is garbage also. They have maybe 3 hosts on their entire network that are liberal and Chris Hayes spends much of his time bashing the party itself. I wouldn't generally  mind this if it wasn't aimed at escalating hatred of the party's own candidates and not real criticism.  Those same outlets you claim are our friend, spent 25 years helping gin up dislike of Hilary Clinton over the guy who actually had the affair and helped peddle the birther lie. They are run by big corporations who prefer the tax breaks they get with the GOP. They and the rest of the media and press corp are not on are side in anyway close to the GOP media ecosystem.  You're honestly telling me an internet based show like The Young Turks is the same as having talk radio all over rural America for 30 years spew bile. And the Young Turks are not always an ally anyway.

What do I expect from moral republicans? To do what my friend Peter is doing and my late dad would have done. Vote anti GOP all the way down the ballot to propagate change. If you don;t want to vote for a democrat which Peter has said in some races he can't, he'll write in or skip the race. Peter is one of the most conservative people I know - he lives in Indiana and loved Mitch Daniels. Detested Pence and Trump and disagrees with a lot of what the party is doing and has been doing and is not afraid to criticize. But he also knows the only way to inject change is to burn down a lot of what's there. So rather than reach out to latinos is a positive way what is the GOP doing. Their rich donors are buying up spanish radio stations all over the country to create a spanish version of Rush Limbaughs to spew the same "Democrats are communists" garbage thats been broadcast for years. That's not me saying that that's my friend Peter.

[amybrickwallace]

Yes, yes, yes!!!! It's all about the patriarchy.

[JaneAusten]

 

[JaneAusten]

@MaxI have to say one last thing. I and a lot of other pro choice women have been told for years we're being hysterical and how SCOTUS would never overturn Roe yet they have been chipping away at it for years. WE SEE IT. Same way as PoC are being told their voting rights are fine as we see in PLAIN SIGHT states across the country stripping away rights. How about no abortion laws and let the decisions be made between a woman and her doctor.  Men somehow think that having an abortion is easy peasy and that women don't struggle with that decision. And how nice of your guy to say he's put a law in place to protect women ONLY up to a certain point and then they state is back to telling us what we can and cannot do with our own bodies. I just can't

[amybrickwallace]

I am actually against abortion except in the most dire cases, and I recognize that it is not a one size fits all issue. I also recognize the hypocrisy of old, rich, conservative white men making these laws (including the absurd and potentially dangerous vigilante law) who want to keep women in their place. It's patriarchy, pure and simple.

These are the same men who would be happy to see rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters go away. As a sexual abuse survivor, I have no idea what I would have done had I conceived.

Here in Ohio, laws are being considered that would be even MORE extreme than the Texas laws. It's not so hard to believe once you factor in that the statute of limitations for rape victims over the age of 18 in Ohio is ONE year. No wonder they call us the Mississippi of the North. 

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Edited November 7, 2021 by amybrickwallace

[JaneAusten]

I have zero issue with folks like you who are anti abortion. What I have issues with is anti abortion folks perpetuating their own beliefs on the rest of us.  I also resent the movement lying about things like fetal heartbeats. There is no fetal heartbeat at 6 weeks for example. What is formed is a bunch of cells - there is no HEART. It's an electrical current.

My problem has always been about imposing ones beliefs on another. I will admit I had an abortion years ago and trust me when I say it was the most difficult decision I had to make in my life and that was 20 years ago. It's no ones business but my own why and that's how we should keep it. 

Barry Goldwater was a bit of a kook but he did support one thing I agree with. He was against abortion laws, all of them. Why. Because he said it was a medical procedure between a woman and her doctor. It should not be legislated. This idea that women all over the country are running around having abortions as if it's like going to a cash station is pure garbage. I was in a support group for a long time of women who have had one and no one spoke of it casually. Women can teach children, raise children, but we are not allowed to have autonomy over our own bodies.  But a lot of those who are anti abortion also support capital punishment. Even my former church - the catholics - have finally pushed back against that.

And I wanted to say how sorry I am about your past experience with sexual abuse. That is absolutely horrid. 

[amybrickwallace]

I think you are brave for sharing your story. I also agree 100% that it should be between a woman and her doctor. It's none of the government's nor their vigilante lackeys' business!!

Besides, these same governmental officials would arrange for abortions in two seconds if their wives or daughters were involved. Hypocrisy in the extreme.

[amybrickwallace]

Thank you, @JaneAusten. ❤

[Max]

 

Jane, I am sorry to hear about your difficult personal decision. But I think that there are many people on both sides of the abortion debate who are good human beings and who are doing what they think is best. Jane and Amy, I actually I don't support the far-right abortion laws being passed in many red states. However, it's way too simplistic to assume that what motivates pro-life individuals is a desire for men to control womens' bodies. For goodness sake, 43% of women identify as pro-life, and it's certainly not because they want men to make reproductive decisions for them:

Abortion Trends by Gender (gallup.com)

I find the position of opposition to abortion after 20 weeks (save for the life of the mother) to be perfectly reasonable. And I feel that there are provisions of the proposed New Jersey Reproductive Freedom Act (that Governor Murphy supports) to be highly objectionable:

RFA Key Points.pdf (d2y1pz2y630308.cloudfront.net)

Reproductive Freedom Act - Diocese of Paterson - Clifton, NJ (rcdop.org)

Regarding MSNBC, if somebody took a survey of 100 independents at random and asked them about the partisan lean of that network, I would be absolutely shocked if at least 90 (if not at least 95) classified it as a liberal channel. And I find the CNN primetime anchors of Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon to be highly liberal. If The Young Turks isn't always an ally of the Democratic Party, it's because they're criticizing the party for not being liberal enough; it's not because they're supporting the GOP.

IMO, the "conservative" (in quotes, because I think that most of these people aren't genuine conservatives) media ecosystem doesn't exist to promote conservative ideals (as people like William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, or George Will would define them), or even to elect GOP candidates. Outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, and Breitbart (along with talk radio) gin up a lot of hysteria, but it's for the purpose of lining their own pockets. This ecosystem didn't really exist 35 years ago, and yet that was an era when GOP presidential candidates performed much better and when the country was more conservative than it is today (so if the goal of these media outlets really was to help the GOP and promote conservative ideals, they failed miserably). There are a few--and I mean very few--outlets which genuinely exist to promote conservative ideas in a thoughtful manner. My favorite of these is a website called The Dispatch, which features articles written by prominent anti-Trump conservatives. I also enjoy the National Review, but I'll readily admit that at least half of the articles on its website are written by Trump sympathetic individuals. (Obviously, it's the articles written by the National Review's anti-Trumpers that I enjoy.)

The major reasons why I just can't automatically vote Democratic so as to punish the GOP are (1) the fact that some prominent Democratic moderates don't seem to be welcome in that party and (2) the very big disagreements I have with the Democrats on major issues. There's abortion, which we've spent a lot of time discussing. But I recall you also mentioning your support of Governor Murphy's legalization of marijuana and his raising the minimum wage. On those issues (not to mention many others), my beliefs do not line up with the Democratic Party.

I totally get your point about simply not voting at all or voting third party. In Congressional races, that is what I'm inclined to do. In 2018, as a matter of fact, I voted for the Democratic House candidate, for the sole purpose of penalizing the GOP and having a Congress that would provide oversight against Trump's corruption. In 2020, I didn't vote at all, as I expected a Biden victory and didn't want unified Democratic government. In 2022, I don't intend to vote for a major party House candidate (unless the GOP candidate shows support for Trump's impeachment); I don't want continued Democratic control, but I also don't want to see Kevin McCarthy become Speaker. In state and local races in a dark blue state such as New Jersey, I'm a lot more inclined to actually consider voting for GOP candidates (as opposed to not voting), for all the obvious reasons and because there's a minimal chance of Trump trying to steal New Jersey's electoral votes in a future presidential election.

Edited November 7, 2021 by Max