The Politics Thread

[DRW50]

Yes, also where they booed Cornyn and attacked Dan Crenshaw and his staff (no tears left to cry on that front...). In past years people would say oh these are the extremists, not the people in power. That is far from the case now. They run everything. @JaneAusten talked above about the basic stupidity of voters that I've been thinking about ever since. I keep hoping they will not just welcome fascism because of gas prices and inflation, but it's hard to hope for anything beyond waking up in the  morning.

[Juliajms]

Yes, MS was on a Sunday discussion panel I used to watch as a teenager. I can't recall the name of it. Tucker was on it too, but that was before his human suit started slipping. I always liked him.

I'm worried about this too. These prices have to be hitting the lower middle class and working poor really hard. In a reasonable society we would just raise the amount you can make while getting food stamps and hand out $500 gift cards to people under a certain income.  In this country we will do nothing because the Republicans will block it. I think we should force them to block an aid bill instead of not even trying to pass one (as far as I know).

[DramatistDreamer]

Meléchon and the political left gained a lot of seats in France, which looks as if the French voted to be a check on Macron who has alienated a lot of French voters. The worrying aspect is the fact that Le Pen’s party got so many seats, because I believe that she is a wolf who has been trying on sheep’s clothing as of late. She is the same xenophobe nationalist who has only triangulated and softened her positions to seem more palatable to a larger number of voters than her usual base. Macron is largely responsible for the loss of the majority of loss of seats. It’s never a good thing when your constituents refer to you as a Napoleonic figure. Here is the result, an erosion of his party’s presence in government.

A reminder of the history being made in Colombia.

[Vee]

Fascinating stuff, DD - thanks for this, and please give us more.

[JaneAusten]

I don't know what the balance was before, but I believe LePen's party won 87 seats and Melenchon's 131. But I do believe France had been down this road before I think with Mitterand. Not with LePen of course but with not having a majority in Parliament.

I hope @Catcan come back and share the perspective from someone closer to the situation

It's quite interesting what is happening in Latin America. Columbia, Chile, Bolivia. and it looks like Lula most likely will beat Bolsonaro in Brazil. That certainly is a bit different than the rest, but still interesting. 

Edited June 20, 2022 by JaneAusten
Clean up merged posts

[Cat]

Thanks for your shout-out! I cannot add too much to what you and @DramatistDreamer have contributed here. As you guys already noted, the triangulation of French politics continues. The results are largely in line with presidential voting preferences a month or so ago, so the National Assembly will be fairly representative of how French people actually vote -- for better or for worse. That is always the risk in democracies -- as we know all too well.

54% abstention rate -- oy. Better than 57% in 2017, but still not great. Sometimes I wish we could do what Australia does which is make people to do their civic duty. Some French people feel disenfranchised that they'd rather stay away. France also has a tradition of "voter blanc" where they vote blank or spoil their ballot in order to register discontent.

Here are some of the results:

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Head of Ipsos polling was on France 24 (English-language French cable news) last night. He said a few interesting things:

-Le Pen's Rassemblement National outperformed polls and came in with more seats than expected. This is usual. Le Pen supporters tend to be suspicious of pollsters/don't like to say publicly that they will vote for them. 

-Macron's party Ensemble! outperformed the polls. Ipsos was expecting less seats for them (around 220). Nevertheless, they did not get their majority, and as far as everyone is concerned, that is a big loss for the party. They also lost key members of Macron's cabinet in this election. Some voters polled hid the fact that they would vote for Marcon's party, perhaps out of embarrassment. This suggests, of course, that Macron himself is not popular.

-Mélenchon's NUPES came second in terms of largest grouping (as expected) but underperformed in terms of number of seats. Some voters maybe changed their mind at the last minute, or didn't go to vote at all (usually younger voters, and poorer ones fit that latter category).

-Les Républicains, the traditional centre-right, came fourth and that was better than they expected. They will likely be Macron's party's coalition partners to vote in certain parts of his agenda -- but they will demand something in return.

 

So Mélenchon's Nouvelle Union Populaire is officially the opposition, but he will be lowkey pissed that he didn't get the chance to be prime minister. This union will do its best to make things uncomfortable for Macron's government. It's not at all clear if this union can hold, though. Mélenchon is far-left (I would even say extreme-left) and some of the Greens and Socialists in his union are not. They disagree on climate policy and European Union, which are pretty important subjects. They're not too crazy about him either. He is also rather pro-Putin, which makes France's policy towards the war in Ukraine kind of up in the air.

 

As for Macron, his arrogance and assumptions cost him dear. After a close-run presidential election, he should have been humbled and hit the campaign trail. He didn't really show up to shake hands in the provinces in the final days of campaigning, which he should have. Instead, he flew to Kyiv this weekend to meet Zelenskyy in hopes it would burnish his credentials. After running to and from the Kremlin in the run-up to this war, Macron kind of burned some bridges with a few of his Western/NATO allies, so this was an attempt to be on-side. But it didn't work in terms of the legislative elections. People were preoccupied with poor (or shut down) public services, Paris wealth centralisation, and inflation. They don't like his glossy Parisian image or his top-down kingly style. He will have to show humility while still retaining his leader qualities -- I'm not sure he knows how to do that.

 

On my side, I voted tactically in both rounds -- each time for Macron's party. I have always been pretty centrist and fearful of polarising extremes on both sides. Tactically, because my view on Macron has definitely waned over the years. I once thought his idea of bringing Putin/Russia in from the Cold and into the European fold was bold -- in more recent times, belatedly, I realize that he (and I!) were fools to even think that. Also, his policies tend to be surface and superficial. It is frustrating because the Presidency has (had?) a lot of power to implement its agenda, but Macron is more concerned with how he appears than actual outcomes.

He also cannot quite grasp the idea of a dispossessed France with access to few resources, working two jobs in a gig economy, and disrupted/divided/let down by technology, to various extents. Not everything can be automated and solved by going online -- sometimes citizens need a human on the other side of that call to public services.

 

 

---------------

 

As for Colombia and LatAm (I hope you don't mind me talking about this too, I am really interested in the region and do some work on it as part of my job) -- there is a leftwards move in the region as a whole for sure. Even though inflation is high (and most central banks in Latin American have exercised rather prudent, independent monetary policies since June 2021 in an effort to tame it), Covid left a lot of people completely battered and hopeless. If not dead. LatAm had some horrific death rates. People there want better quality of life and more spending on public services, many of which are in ruins. Painful racial and social divisions became too much to bear during the pandemic.

The risk with some left-leaning governments is inflationary economic policies and the real risk of violence or military coups coming from the right-wing. I'd like to think military coups are a thing of the past in LatAm, but you never know. In the West, it feels like the 1970s all over again sometimes... well, the 1970s were an exceptionally horrific and dark time for most of Latin America.

Finally: Biden will have to work with these governments, autocratic or not. He really mishandled that Summit of the Americas a week or so ago.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Cat

[DramatistDreamer]

Colombia stands apart from the other Latin American countries, with the exception of Brazil that has the highest number of people of African descent.  Colombia comes in second, with the second highest number of people of African descent in Latin America.
Márquez Mina became Petro’s running mate because she came in second only to Petro in the primary. Her personal biography as well as her career has energized a core group of the Colombian electorate— people who normally don’t vote, voted! Those from the rural community that Márquez Mina hails from, as well as other rural and poor areas who have been marginalized for decades voted.
It wasn’t just about the pandemic leaving people behind…people in Colombia have been left behind and marginalized for years by candidates from the same political parties that usually win, time and again. It’s the main reason why the first group of candidates to get knocked out of the presidential race were the two candidates from the two traditional political parties in Colombia.

[Cat]

Didn't mean to imply in my previous post that the pandemic was the only factor behind this result -- rather the drop which overflows the cup for many people. The levels of inequality are massive in Colombia and the rest of the region, entrenched for centuries/generations through slavery, repression and civil war. In that context, Márquez Mina's win is all the more impressive.

[Vee]

Thank you for these invaluable discussions of the view from France and various points overseas.

Your daily dose of bad:

Thread:

 

[DRW50]

The media will always look for a black Republican to proclaim diversity and how the GOP is the party of the future, when primary voters have much less interest:

Due to Hunt's loss, this is the man who will be running against Sanford Bishop...

 

[Noel]

OMG! That picture screams patriarchy laced with a dash of heteronormativity. I guess I'm not diggin' the outfits for some reason.

 

[DramatistDreamer]

Interesting and hopefully a blueprint to a successful end run around these conservative court decisions.

[MichaelGL]

Re: Todays SC decision 

Today is a day that will forever live in infamy. Such a shame of what this country has become, due to the minority being in control. 

Edited June 24, 2022 by MichaelGL

[Noel]

Yep, and the orange orangutan is the one who appointed the three justices who I'm sure wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. This Supreme Court is not balanced at all. Not the way that it's intended to be with nine justices. 

[Fevuh]

So I'm a gay male.  I have spent the last half hour crying.  I do not know why, other than it pains me to see someone treated with less respect, and be treated truly not equal/unequal.  I identify with it.  And I see a group of people - Republicans in general - that somehow have the market cornered on what American means.  And it disgusts me.  

I posted on Facebook about this decision.  And said the Republican party completely disgusts me now.  I already have 2 replies from people I knew in High School telling me that I'm gay - so my opinion doesn't matter because this doesn't even affect me.  And to go *** my boyfriend.  I didn't TAG anyone in my post, and  both replied to MY post, and THEN TAGGED ME ON their page and started their OWN discussion with threats and disparaging comments.  They 100% without prompting just CONFIRMED what I said in general about Republicans.  

It's what discrimination is.  You know it's there.  You KNOW it's there.  And no matter how far we seem to progress, it always rears its head.  I already KNEW how you felt, I just ignore it and hope I'm wrong.  Well, I'm not wrong and they just proved it.