Election 2020

[Pseudo Stupidity]

DSM: This is literally a thread about the election. It is the place to talk about the election and the actions of the President Elect.

YLM: Biden won, Biden is shitty, it's good and cool to point out the ways he is shitty and how he could be less shitty. This thread is specifically about the 2020 election, which Biden won, so when he does nepotism people will talk about it.

Obviously Biden is going back to the good ol' days of...damn that was just 4 years ago? Well he's going back to that, complete with all the incestuous awfulness that made the good ol' days so good. I, for one, can't wait to be told it's bad to complain when nothing gets better and everything only gets worse and get yelled at to continue voting blue no matter who. Let's all just go to brunch.

[Kaelik]

Exit polling did show high support among the populace for various progressive policies such as Medicare for All, legal weed, etc., but Biden's share of the vote was a lot smaller that those policy's popularity. It'd be nice to think it's just progressives making protest votes against the current two party situation that caused this to be the case, but it looks more like it's a bunch of people who like the idea of progressive policies, but still vote GOP down the line.

I mean it probably doesn't help that the democratic party has made very clear for 30 years running that they also don't support those policies.

0) Electability discourse is a suckers game because absolutely no one can ever prove anything.

1) I am a sucker.

2) "Why didn't the people who want legal weed vote for the candidate who said he was against legal weed instead of the other candidate who said he is against legal weed?" Is really not a compelling question. It matters that democrats explicitly disendorse extremely popular issues that people agree with. Biden didn't get rock bottom Latino voter support because all the people who voted for Clinton in 2016 suddenly realized they actually want to build a wall, it happened in part because when Biden was asked "what are you going to do to close the concentration camps that were started when you were Vice President?" he answered with "Vote for Trump." that was just one (televised and covered) random event, but it reflects a broader trend across the Biden campaign, his surrogates, and his supporters who aren't surrogates, that the campaign spent the vast majority of it's time an energy assuring everyone it was right wing and had all the same policies as the republicans, but wasn't incompetent/vulgar/buffonish.

There were entire sections of the campaign devoted to arguing that Joe Biden was the real anti-Chinese candidate, the real successfully coup Venezuela candidate, the real pro police giving cops more money candidate, the real pro fracking candidate, ect. And he wasn't much better on other issues like promising his public option wouldn't cover anyone who currently has health insurance.

It's really hard to figure out what the millions of people who didn't vote for Trump in 2016 but did in 2020 knew and didn't know about various policies of either candidate, so it's hard to say what was or wasn't definitive in their choices, but presumably some fraction of people who voted for drug legalization or answered a poll question in favor of M4A but voted for republicans did so because they believed (correctly!) that the Democratic presidential candidate was against those things. Are the republicans worse? Sure! But the finer distinctions of weed policy between Trump and Biden are harder to understand, impossible to communicate in a general messaging campaign, and neither party is spending millions of dollars to inform them about this distinction even if it was massageable.

Republicans lie. If Democrats want to win more voters, they should definitely adopt the only truly successful campaign strategy a Democrat has used in my lifetime: Barack Obama's 2008 strategy of lying to people that they are progressives who will do good things for them.

I would also accept actually doing good things, but uh.... that's clearly off the table.

[MGuy]

Change takes a fuck load of time and effort and there's absolutely no reason each and every self proclaimed leftist/left leaning person shouldn't be making every effort to normalize agitating for more progressive moves to be made right here and now.

Well, here is a gaming forum, so maybe NOW, but maybe not HERE. Again and still, if you respect democracy then not every proposal that gets listed as 'leftist' is popular - not even among leftists.

If you can drum up the energy to post whenever you feel the need to downplay progressive moves then you could instead use that same energy to promote them. To date you seem more interested in doing the former instead of the latter.

Even if you didn't think "every" progressive move was worth promoting you could promote ones you're in favor of. Instead, to date, you seem to have been on a pattern of accepting how things are now and I guess twiddling your thumbs until someone else does the work to make it publicly acceptable. I do not care what your wife thinks if she isn't being helpful. The insight that there is going to be a reactionary response to any move you make is so obvious it was implied without thinking on my rant about healthcare. Insurance companies are not going to cede power. Any move you make to get rid of them whether directly or indirectly is going to be reacted to and fought. I'm sure your wife is in a privileged enough position that she doesn't see how fighting right now can be worth it and is content to let other people do the groundwork so that she "might" be in support of policies that get normalized.

The conundrum you speak of doesn't have anything to do with what you do personally. What you choose to promote here on elsewhere on your own time doesn't have network suits or religious activist groups breathing down your neck. If you're going to feel like you have anything to say, if you care about progressive policies, then you should be promoting. To date I don't even know what you stand for and what I think you stand for I'm sure you wouldn't agree with if I spelled it out. What I do know is you spend a lot of the text on how and why we should not have expectations until progressive ideas just magically come into being widely accepted.

[PhoneLobster]

This seems a lot like this is founded in the "love me I'm a liberal" divide again. People really need to listen to the song and wrap their head around it. Back in the 70s in the USA people understood that liberals were not leftists or even allies of leftists, and indeed were often the worst opponents of everyone to the left of Reagan.

But I guess when the liberals helped wipe out the leftists and decided to steal the "yeah sure we ARE the left now, we were always the left there is no other left" glory for themselves everyone just let them rebrand liberal to something less reviled and forgot about it.

Now its causing confusion as liberals espouse liberal "ideals" and "strategies" and fail to understand why people, well, to the left of Reagan, are displeased with them.

[Mistborn]

Pictured PhoneLobster

[Kaelik]

Joe biden reportedly considering amy klobucher for ag. Because the best person to address systematic police rioting across the nation is definitely the person made the decision not prosecute george floyd's killer when he murder someone before floyd who explicitly had to withdraw from consideration as his VP because her name was too toxic.

Another instance of failing upward in the democratic party and giving the job to the worst possible person because they have a recognizable name.

[Josh_Kablack]

as a business (no literally I'm a business, I don't know if you guys do that over there, but I AM a business)

Please elaborate.

Game On,
fbmf

I don't know how you guys deal with business entities, wages and tax.

I struggle to understand how I deal with business entities, wages and tax.

But I will try to explain this as I understand it.

I do know the outline of the tax portion of this (but not how the CARES Act nor the we-will-never-pass it HEROES Act dealt with such):

At the smallest end in the US of A you are a 'Sole Proprietorship" or "Joint Spousal Partnership". A lot of handymen, barbers and folks who drive Uber on the side fall into this, as do a fair number of somewhat larger operations. You are the business, and you just file an additional schedule (Schedule C) with your personal Income Tax forms at the end of the year. If you are filing a Schedule C, you do not pay yourself wages, but you are responsible for paying the correct amounts of Federal Income, FICA, State and Local Taxes on the income you receive from the business in a manner very similar (but with a couple weird little differences) to how you would be taxed if it were wages. For tax and legal liability purposes you are the business. I can give you half-decent if out-of-date and unofficial advice about how to file these sorts of taxes. It sounds like you are probably the Australian equivalent of this.

The other options are a Joint Partnership, S Corporation, Limited Liability Corporation, or the almighty C Corporation.

LLCs, S-Corps and Partnerships are all pass-through entities, where the taxes owed on corporate income are paid on the personal returns of their owners, but there are various legal restrictions on how they must be formed and which tax forms each type of entity files varies. I understand the very basics of these. While they may be a closely held business, they are separate entities from the owners, and only corporate assets are subject to legal liability.

C-Corps are the bad guys in our current cyberpunk dystopia, there is no limit to how big they can get, and they can be either publicly traded or owned by private equity. They are very separate from their owners, and must (at least in theory) pay corporate income tax, and then the owners must (at least in theory) pay capital gains taxes on any dividends or returns from their portion of the profits. This is frequently framed as "double taxation" and a reason to incorporate as one of the more restricted options in the prior paragraph.

[Josh_Kablack]

Now, what stopped that happening for you?

The Democrats. Sure, there are probably some issues to do with the structure and relationships of state governments in the US being a bit different. But in the end the Democrats, certainly the current leadership, are shit at being an effective opposition party that gets any actual policy goals achieved.

Well, relatively recent history indicates they are pretty shit at policy goals when they control all levels of government.

Oh.

I completely understand why you would think this. And it makes a lot of sense to an outsider. And sure the *Democrats* were (and remain) perfectly capable of fucking up pandemic response this bad. And sure the *Democrat* have been a shit opposition party at least since I've been old enough to vote.

But what actually stopped our states from mounting an effective response was in fact our system of federalization and our exceptionalist attitude of rugged individualism over collective action.

well, that plus Betsy Devos paying armed protestors to mob state capitals to demand our weaksauce lockdown end way too early.

[MGuy]

So I see now that dead's reference to defund the police wasn't just a random example. There seems to be a read on the last election that a number of centrist dems and former republicans are spinning that appealing to progressive ideas is what cost centrist dems votes. I am surprised this is being seriously considered an actual accurate read on this election. You have people who voted Biden but voted red down ticket not because they were repelled by defund the police but because the dems decided the people they were going to appeal to were republicans. The Lincoln project? Inviting Republicans to speak on their behalf? These were not appeals to the left. These were appeals to people who are conservatives who would have voted any other republican president in office but Trump just happened to be rude enough to offend them. It is beyond me how you look at a marketing campaign pretty explicitly intent on snatching reds up to vote for Biden and then blame fucking progressive causes for those people not voting blue down ticket.

[...You Lost Me]

YLM: Biden won, Biden is shitty, it's good and cool to point out the ways he is shitty and how he could be less shitty. This thread is specifically about the 2020 election, which Biden won, so when he does nepotism people will talk about it.

++ to this, but I get the feeling you and I disagree about what "understanding the reality of the democratic party" is. Like Emmanuel's position on life-prolonging care is not "fuck old people", and he will not be yeeting himself off a cliff on his 75th birthday. Maybe I'm using a bad definition of the word Doomer. I'm using it to describe reality-warping rhetoric with the express purpose of making things sound significantly worse than they actually are. Preaching unrealistic dooooooom isn't praxis, it's going to set us back.

[MGuy]

So one could let their animating energy being making the effort to get people to be ok with nepotism or, or, or, they could let their animating energy be agitating for something better than a continuation of the same shit that most Americans have shown a distaste for. If we're going to talk about praxis ask yourself what practical effect challenging kaelik on his point had. At best you got people to be a little bit more ok with the incestuous nature of these appointments. I do not see what good that does.

[Whatever]

Joe biden reportedly considering amy klobucher for ag.

Doug Jones still seems to be the preferred choice for AG, but they're floating "moderates" like Klobuchar (and also considering her for Agriculture) in case they need to make a deal with McConnell to get nominees through. Which is terribly stupid, but it's Biden's standard "I trust Republicans to be as fair and decent politically as they are to me personally" stupidity.

[Kaelik]

Joe biden reportedly considering amy klobucher for ag.

Doug Jones still seems to be the preferred choice for AG, but they're floating "moderates" like Klobuchar (and also considering her for Agriculture) in case they need to make a deal with McConnell to get nominees through. Which is terribly stupid, but it's Biden's standard "I trust Republicans to be as fair and decent politically as they are to me personally" stupidity.

Doug Jones is one of those examples of the best we can possibly hope for from a Biden admin, which is I think, precisely why people are suggesting he consider a host of extremely shitty choices, because all his advisors are representatives of huge Tech/Financial companies and/or the most horrific members of the Obama's admin like Rahm, Ernest, or goddam Larry Summers (who last I heard has been agreed will not be part of the Biden admin because progressive groups demanded the concession as part of endorsing Biden, which I believe is an event that happened after politics was on suspension in this forum, but he was Biden's chief economic advisor before that and might still be advising his choices in transition.)

[fbmf]

Today's Study Question:

What are the pros and cons of Democrats getting to 51 (or even 50+KH tier breaker) in Senate?

Game On,
fbmf

[Whatever]

Pros: Dems could tell Mitch McConnell to shove it

Cons: they won't

[Pseudo Stupidity]

Pros: Dems could tell Mitch McConnell to shove it

Cons: they won't

Another con to add on is that if the Democrats get the senate they'll have control of the house, senate, and presidency, which means they will bear full responsibility for the shitty COVID-19 response and the economy tanking even though they won't truly deserve all the blame for it.

Another pro: they could have a better response if they control the senate. I'm not sure if they would do it if they could, but it would be possible.


Mguy already addressed YLM about the weirdness of quoting his post at me, but I'm seconding that because he hit the nail on the head. My problem with YLM is that he bitched at Kaelik for informing people of the (shitty) reality of the situation even though he also did his little half concession thing.

[Shatner]

Today's Study Question:

What are the pros and cons of Democrats getting to 51 (or even 50+KH tier breaker) in Senate?

Game On,
fbmf

Pros:
[*]Able to actually get legislation passed, including a competent COVID economic relief bill.
[*]Able to pack the supreme court so the 6-3 of insanity can be neutralized.
[*]Able to pass legislation to curb the number of avenues for another soft coup attempt by a future administration.
[*]With a not-hostile supreme court, it'd make a lot of state-level corrections of corruption, voter disenfranchisement, and institutionalized bigotry as well as bolstering the social safety net and civil liberties possible. This is because cases could be filed to strike down, say, an unfair abortion restriction or restriction on Medicare expansion with the knowledge that when it rises to the supreme court, it won't be presided over by an egregiously conservative, partisan court.
[*]For that same reason, attempts to expand Obamacare via legislation won't be a doomed effort as it'd no longer be pre-ordained to have a suit filed against it and be dragged before the 6-3 court of today.
[*]Oh, and as others have said, getting to wrest power from McConnell, which is an unalloyed good.

Whether the Biden campaign actually, competently pursues any of the agendas above is a matter that can be debated, but having majority control of the senate (even if just 50-50 with the VP tie-breaker) is a necessary prerequisite for making it even possible.

It's a very big deal. I'm really hoping things work out in Georgia.

I honestly can't think of any substantive cons.

[Orion]

Joe Manchin (D-WV) has already promised not to pack the court or kill the filibuster, so those dreams are probably dead even with two Georgia wins.

[...You Lost Me]

Mguy already addressed YLM about the weirdness of quoting his post at me, but I'm seconding that because he hit the nail on the head. My problem with YLM is that he bitched at Kaelik for informing people of the (shitty) reality of the situation even though he also did his little half concession thing.

Hmmm, given the whole conversation was about whether Kaelik used "reality-warping rhetoric", it feels a little weird to claim that I'm bitching about "(shitty) reality" and not... well, the rhetoric which makes something non-shitty sound shitty. If you're gonna say things that I already addressed, I'm gonna quote myself addressing them.

What are the pros and cons of Democrats getting to 51 (or even 50+KH tier breaker) in Senate?

I agree with most people saying that packing the courts isn't going to happen. But the Con of not getting 50/50 is probably even bigger. Given the amount of resistance Trump has, I'm skeptical that Biden will be able to confirm any cabinet positions that are not explicitly Republicans, or whether his administration will be full of people in acting positions.

[...You Lost Me]

I don't think this has been brought up yet, but someone showed me this pic from the Democratic Socialists's M4A twitter account. These are the outcomes of house races as they relate to M4A.



Relevant races seems to be:

• Mucarsel-Powell (FL) and Shalala (FL) did not campaign on M4A. Both of them lost in D+6/5 district
• Finkenauer (IA) did not campaign on M4A. She lost in a D+1 district.
• Porter, Cartwright, Kirkpatrick, Levin, and Golden all campaign on M4A. They all won in R+1 to R+3 districts

A couple big asterisks: First, doesn't look like Golden actually campaigned on M4A, though he was still a co-sponsor of the M4A bill, so this isn't a perfect record. Second, Mucarsel-Powell and Shalala were both in the Miami-Dade area, where a bunch of Cuban migrants voted Republican because they viewed Democratic policy as too socialist. I also know that Shalala doesn't speak Spanish, but I don't know how big of a deal that was, given she lost by less than Mucarsel-Powell (2.8 pts versus 3.4 pts).

That all said, I find this pretty exciting. At the very least, this is evidence that supporting M4A is not an act of political suicide. It's also a strong enough result that it might convince more Dems to run on M4A in two years.

[Kaelik]

I'm going to assume all of this is 50+VP because Democrats have already lost enough that it is impossible for them to get 51.

Pros:
1) Biden can probably replace any retiring judges with judge candidates, who while they definitely leave much to be desired, even the bad ones still improve the judiciary by diluting the cases that are heard by republican judges who are worse, and there are usually a few good ones in there.
2) We don't have to hear about the republicans new plan to hold up the budget or the debt ceiling every year.
3) There would be a half ass shitty COVID relief bill instead of no COVID relief bill.
4) Republicans would not have control over any committees to do pointless Benghazi style theatrics on the Biden administration all the time.

Could go either way:
1) Biden would not be able to appoint his cabinet without republican votes. If all of his cabinet positions are literally left vacant for 2 years that would be an improvement over Biden getting to appoint anyone, because the acting heads can be put in place without Senate approval, basically have all the same power, and are going to be picked primarily from career bureaucrats in those departments already instead of whatever dumbass corporate lawyer, CEO, or senator wants to leverage a cabinet position into lording power over their friends and enemies and then retiring to a 7 figure bonus fake job at one of the companies they did favors for while in office.

On the other hand, Biden might genuinely sit down with McConnell and fill out a cabinet they can "agree" on which is just an even worse version of what he was already going to do with the grifters.

Cons:...... I mean. Maybe the cabinet.

I guess here's a list of things that definitely will not happen even though people will tell you they will:

1) A good COVID relief.
2) Any kind of court reform.
3) A Public Option that Biden has already stopped even mentioning.
4) Voting Reform Bill.

These are all precluded by the unwillingness of senators to support them and the unwillingness of Biden to push senators to support them. In some cases they would straight vote against them, IE, court reform, the Public Option, good COVID, in the case of Voting Reform everyone would vote for it but it would require removing the filibuster, and like 3/4ths the Democratic Senators would personally strangle their own children to death before they abolished the filibuster.

That all said, I find this pretty exciting. At the very least, this is evidence that supporting M4A is not an act of political suicide. It's also a strong enough result that it might convince more Dems to run on M4A in two years.

Only if it is drilled into the skulls of every democrat in the house on a daily basis for two years, because otherwise conventional wisdom will be what the house leadership of 80+ year olds who want to murder poor people say it is.

[...You Lost Me]

Only if it is drilled into the skulls of every democrat in the house on a daily basis for two years, because otherwise conventional wisdom will be what the house leadership of 80+ year olds who want to murder poor people say it is.

Posting on TGD counts right?

[MGuy]

Sure. If posting is your only expression of political action between elections then using your energy to dismiss the idea that M4A is untenable in a place where a number of posters have insisted this is the case is good.

That aside I've heard that Joe has outmaneuvered Trump's attempts at sabotaging his transition by doing his own fundraising and assembling his own team of experts. Foreign policy under Biden is probably not going to be all that different from Obama's. I don't know what he's going to do about Covid. I do know he's apparently been meeting with these experts though. I am curious about who the experts he is listening to are or rather if there is anything worth gleaning from the people he's assembled.

[Hicks]

Like, is it worth spending political capital on a Federal effort to 'defund the police' when most police funding is handled as the state and local level?

Of course. For example: Desegregation was a federal mandate.

[Kaelik]

Like, is it worth spending political capital on a Federal effort to 'defund the police' when most police funding is handled as the state and local level?

Of course. For example: Desegregation was a federal mandate.

Also deaddm is basically saying "segregation is really a state issue, so that's why we should support a president who promises to increase segregation on a federal level"

You cant defund the police on a state level when the federal government funds them and the president is promising to increase their federal funding.