2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

i.e., they're showing an alarming ability to think in the longer term and use basic tools like the thighbone of a wild pig. sxp

lol

man, politics got especially italianate today, thanks pope

Pierce:

​Way I figure it is this. In their private chat yesterday, Boehner explained to the pope the problems he was having with the flying monkey caucus, and Papa Francesco who, after all, heads a bureaucracy with a long history as a seething cauldron of ambition, scandal, murder and betrayal, as well as a unique tradition of crazy institutional proceedings (See: Cadaver Synod), listened to Boehner's plight and said, mildly, "Jesus H. Christ in a Fiat, my son, these people crazy. Get out while you can." That's the way I'm going to figure it, anyway.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a38246/john-boehner-the-inmates-running-asylum/

yeah I dont know when the GOP decided to switch to the parliamentary form of governance but it seems to be what were working with now

xp

Now's Boehner's chance to throw his hat into the GOP presidency ring. He could run as a moderate. I mean, who knows that else the Pope told him?

Pareene: http://gawker.com/dont-cry-for-john-boehner-1733048706

Because he was dealing with a Congressional caucus increasingly made up of ideologues and idiots, and because he was occasionally forced to betray conservatives in order to stave off catastrophes, moderate pundits occasionally speak, with some fondness, about John Boehner as man who tried his best to keep his unruly conservative colleagues from doing too much damage.

There is no particular reason to feel any sympathy for the man.

John Boehner was and is an unprincipled ward-heeler who simply couldn’t weather the transition of the Republican Party from a corporatist party with a sizable conservative base to a purely conservative party. Boehner came to power when the priorities of the House Republican caucus were driven by what was effectively straight-up bribery, and his power came from his close ties to industry lobbies. This is the guy, as we all ought to be regularly reminded, who passed out checks from tobacco companies on the floor of the House.

Boehner’s problems as speaker stemmed from the fact that the conservative base that the Republican donor class exploited for a generation is now effectively in complete control of the party. Ironically, that control was solidified by the same event, the 2010 midterm election, that put Boehner into the speaker’s chair.

god the last thing we need is another point of evidence for the right wing that they can frustrate and harass their way to victory

They can in the ruthlessly gerrymandered House. Harder in the Senate, and very hard in a national election. My guess is it's 2030 before demographic shifts really put the House in play again, so we've got a long ride here.

The question is, how much more can an even more conservative leadership hamper legislation? Can only imagine how horrific it will be to watch the Tea Partiers face off against Clinton.

nice start to the press conference, really

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11D6AVD3gAI

I've mentioned this story. In 2008 my political reporter friend, in DC for color, hung out on Election Day at the National Democratic Club. An hour after Barack Hussein Obama had been declared the winner. In walks Boehner, not sober. "You guys ran a helluva campaign. My hats off to ya," he said at the bar. Whereupon he bought everyone at the club a drink. My friend said Boehner might've had at least 65 packs of Marlboros on his perosn.

boehner bowing out . . . after the pope comes to town . . . following scott walker's lead . . . taking aim at the false profit, the jackass ted cruz . . . to help further narrow the field? and what's the tears?

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/outgoing-boehner-rails-against-republican-false-prophets-on-face-the-nation/

So they will get a temporary spending bill through apparently, and then likely the new House leader may shut down the government December 11th, when the temporary one runs out. Always the same kind of fun here in DC

ShutDownMas! Wheee!

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_09/the_can_kicked_down_the_road_a057822.php

Elizabeth Warren:

I have often spoken about how America built a great middle class. Coming out of the Great Depression, from the 1930s to the late 1970s, as GDP went up, wages went up for most Americans. But there's a dark underbelly to that story. While median family income in America was growing - for both white and African-American families - African-American incomes were only a fraction of white incomes. In the mid-1950s, the median income for African-American families was just a little more than half the income of white families. And the problem went beyond just income. Look at housing: For most middle class families in America, buying a home is the number one way to build wealth. It's a retirement plan-pay off the house and live on Social Security. An investment option-mortgage the house to start a business. It's a way to help the kids get through college, a safety net if someone gets really sick, and, if all goes well and Grandma and Grandpa can hang on to the house until they die, it's a way to give the next generation a boost-extra money to move the family up the ladder. For much of the 20th Century, that's how it worked for generation after generation of white Americans - but not black Americans. Entire legal structures were created to prevent African Americans from building economic security through home ownership. Legally-enforced segregation. Restrictive deeds. Redlining. Land contracts. Coming out of the Great Depression, America built a middle class, but systematic discrimination kept most African-American families from being part of it. State-sanctioned discrimination wasn't limited to homeownership. The government enforced discrimination in public accommodations, discrimination in schools, discrimination in credit-it was a long and spiteful list. Economic justice is not - and has never been - sufficient to ensure racial justice.

bizarre. something kind of Nixonian about his pathos.

"Pray with me, Henry."

Warren finally nailed it, while on the other side Jeb keeps doubling down on black people and "free stuff," and Trump proclaims folks to poor to pay taxes "winners" while quietly not noting how much he's giving to those who inherit wealth via his plan to get rid of the estate tax

http://gocomics.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c5f3053ef017d3be345fc970c-320wi

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0929-goldberg-boehner-successor-20150929-column.html#navtype=outfit

To replace Boehner, why not Newt Gingrich for speaker?

Jonah Goldberg

Jonah could pass for Newt's illegitimate son imo

Jonah could pass for gun on the bottom of your shoe

man concealed carry has gotten out of hand

Listening to Al Gore discuss environmental policy and citing books and obscure journal articles (by name!), I think he sounds so intelligent and well informed that I understand why he lost.

he's on Chris Hayes.

He was outsmarted by hanging chads.

still get pissed at 'lol al gore invented the internet' jokes. wasn't crazy about him (i remember him from the 80s)(not talking about pmrc) and though i do think it's an outrage he 'lost' i can't pretend that alot of the catastrophes of the bush era (9/11, afghanistan, the financial collapse) wouldn't have happened anyway if gore had won. some awful policy isn't enacted and some good policies are and the supreme court might look different (though maybe not, and it might look worse). it's not like if carter had won in 80 or even humphrey in 68.

pretty sure Rehnquist would still have died of cancer

Hmm feel like a couple things are missing from balls' list of dubyasasters what could they be

o yeah there are plenty of dubyasasters that wouldn't have occurred - the new orleans levees specifically were an issue that clinton paid attention to that bush went 'lol whut' and slashed funding for and a gore administration would have mounted a competent response. i can also believe that while we almost definitely wouldn't have occupied iraq that more ops similar to desert fox might have happened. 9/11 probably still happens (maybe al qaeda was a point of emphasis for the clinton administration grasped that bush's new national security team didn't but considering how much of it occurring was the result of missed signals at lower levels i can imagine it still happens), we still go in afghanistan, and even if gore doesn't continue deregulation or emphasise a 'home ownership society' like bush the damage was done on that front, collapse was inevitable w/o changes the democratic party at the time had no interest in broaching nevermind pursuing. at the same time i can imagine that nobody resigns from scotus during his first term (always thought nobody resigning during bush's first term was maybe a result of some understanding following bush v gore), he loses reelection after republicans attack him for allowing 9/11 to happen, for not winning afghanistan/killing bin laden, and for the recession (and god knows what else). the next guy then gets o'connor's retirement and rehnquist's death then maybe get's reelected and at a minimum probably get's souter's seat (jps might have stayed on the court).

I think it's pretty possible Gore would have prevented it. Not above entertaining the notion that an arrogant stance towards foreign affairs could totally lead to Bush seeing a possibly life changing memo and not taking it seriously, thinking "I'd like to see them try then I could do [exactly what his swiftly and effeciently did]". Gore didn't have this baggage did he? Middle Eastern terrorism is what papa Bush cut his teeth on -- he was head of the CIA. It's kind of in the family. So maybe Gore doesn't have that blind spot.

re: balls's scenario - - I dunno, I mean it's not like Kerry or anybody saw any percentage in running on "Bush let 9/11 happen and failed to win Afghanistan and get Bin Laden" ticket in 2004. no reason to assume gore wouldn't still be enjoying some kind of post-9/11 leadership afterglow. incumbency effects are strong, and he'd really have had to just tank his whole first term to lose IMO. obviously these are all hypotheticals and counterfactuals but i don't think it's that easy to just say gore wouldn't have gotten to nominate anybody to the court.

but yeah the big one here is the Iraq war - even if there were "ops similar to desert fox" that doesn't mean a half a million dead (at least), al qaeda in iraq, total fucking chaos from there, abu ghraib etc. etc. i mean we are talking about an absolute disaster of a foreign policy at every level, that was a pet project of this particular administration from before they walked in the door.

will leave someone else to address the economic collapse - i'm just not versed enough in it. always felt to me very much like black monday 87, where the preceding years of deregulation and gutting the SEC enabled this to happen. dunno how much that applies here though or how different it would have been under gore. definitely would not have gotten the bush tax cut, no child left behind, and various other damaging things. but i bet gore would have seized the initiative to finally do something about those terrifying human-animal hybrids. bush was all talk on that one.

it's not like Kerry or anybody saw any percentage in running on "Bush let 9/11 happen and failed to win Afghanistan and get Bin Laden" ticket in 2004. no reason to assume gore wouldn't still be enjoying some kind of post-9/11 leadership afterglow.

yeah i think you're misunderstanding what republicans would be willing and able to do in a campaign vs what dems would (i mean the gop used 9/11 against the dems to take back the senate in 02). also i think the public cut bush some slack as he'd been on the job less than eight months, gore would've owned it completely and aspects of how the clinton administration (or really the cia) managed to let bin laden 'get away' after clinton put in place a 'can we plz have some degree of certainty of what we're bombing before we bomb it' rule after pathetic cia intel led to us bombing the chinese embassy in sarajevo (plus a pharmeceutical factory in sudan, though that really wasn't a major motivation in the decision). they've dug for some plausible impeachment case (w/ obama and hillary if need be) w/ benghazi and then acted like just because they didn't find anything doesn't mean they can't as outraged as if they did. they repeat the 'bush kept us safe' line despite, yknow, the bloodiest day in america since antietam, and then get hysterical that obama can't claim the same because of ft hood. i have no doubt the party that superimposed bin laden's face over max cleland's would have blasted gore hard and often for letting 9/11 to occur.

no child left behind had considerable democratic support, ted kennedy was a big fan. education policy in general doesn't really line up neatly along party lines - diane ravitch served in the bush I admin, arne duncan might as well work for the gates foundation.

another thing is that it is very very hard for the veep who gets elected to the white house to get reelected. only two men have managed it and jefferson belonged to a different party than the president and won the white house by beating him while nixon had an 8 year hiatus between his vice presidency and presidency.

i admit it's plausible gore could've prevented 9/11, i mean it's plausible james woods could have prevented it and he couldn't prevent sean young from gluing his dick to his thigh. i just don't think it was likely. failures like that are systemic. not that the bush national security team wasn't especially set up for failure on that front (i can still remember reading the 9/11 commission report and damn near losing my shit after reading that condi rice basically didn't know what al qaeda were on 9/11. they'd only bombed a couple of embassies, a us navy ship, and some barracks (and that's just the plans that succeeded) and we'd only already bombed afghanistan and sudan once in response but i guess that escaped the damn head of the nsa's notice cuz she'd decided this century was going to be about keeping an eye on the russkies), but it's not like there'd been a huge turnover at the fbi and cia after 8 months. they bear responsibility but it's comparable to how a commanding officer bears responsibility when a sentry falls asleep at a post.

xpost very few vice presidents have actually gotten elected president in the first place! adams, jefferson, van buren, coolidge, and poppy bush are the only ones that really fit the bill; truman, coolidge, and johnson ran as incumbents after the death of the president and as you say nixon was running after a gap. so basically in modern times the only reference point is GHWB. not a super robust sample size in terms of making predictions about what could have happened in 2004.

re: no child left behind: sure. but it's one thing to say "a thing bush proposed got some democratic votes" and another to say "gore would have also proposed that thing." sorta like the iraq war. similarly i guess if gore had sat down and tried to sell a random war in iraq he probably could have gotten the votes, but he wouldn't have done that. not saying they were just radically different on education or anything, just different priorities, different attitudes, different constituencies. i dunno, maybe it would have amounted to the same thing or something like it. at the time, "we need to have tough standards to make sure our schools are performing" sounded really good to a lot of people.

that's also obama's policy fwiw

I'll try a facile conclusion: had Gore been president, we would've had no Iraq, slightly milder neoliberalism, would've lost the presidency in 2004, and many of the Obama administration victories would've been delayed another 5 to 10 years b/c Obama wouldn't have ever been president.

would've lost the presidency in 2004

This is really debatable though, and requires transplanting the cynicism that came out of GWB's handling of it (and his re-election!) into a timeline without it.

I'm going by history and our not being kind to veeps wanting a second term of their own.

I'm with Doctor Casino on that one - threadbare sabermetrics over a few data points is likely to be less use than the specific circumstances.

Tonight on Counterfactual Theatre

^^^

education policy in general doesn't really line up neatly along party lines

Yeah. Probably needs its own thread, though there might not be enough education-policy geeks on here to sustain one. I've reported/written a lot about education over the past couple decades, and I think it's the most complicated and frustrating of yr major national/social/cultural issues. Even more than healthcare, which at least has some clear ideological faultlines -- single-payer vs. "private market." In education, you have liberal "reformers" and conservative "reformers," who sometimes seem to agree on some things but sometimes are very far apart. And then you have a bunch of more-or-less defenders of the status quo, who aren't ideological so much as institutional, and you have a massive amount of plain old inertia just making it very hard to ever change anything. There are the profiteers -- the people who make and market textbooks, technology, etc -- who aren't necessarily wedded to any one model, they just want to be first in the door. And there's also this very decentralized power structure, where the feds control some things, the states control others, and local school boards still have a huge amount of authority (because the biggest chunk of most school systems' funding is local). Anyway, it's a mess.

Weird all this talk of a spec Gore presidency and zero mention of kyoto protocol, climate change, energy policy etc

Can we talk for a second about an acquaintance of mine who is running against Sean Duffy in Wisconsin?

http://www.kirkbangstad.com/

guh i regret the conjecture now. i was more just (internally i guess) heading off 'didn't we almost have it all?' fantasies that spring up over hypothetical gore presidency so I could defend him against that dumb 'lol he invent internet - NOT' meme.

never allude to that Whitney song again, bro

don't be so emotional