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

Even the suggestion that are four current GOP senators in the Klan deserves some skepticism -- were there ever that many at once in the past? I mean, Robert Byrd, Strom Thurmond, were there others?

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive),

Hugo Black. Robert Byrd. Black's SCOTUS nomination was in jeopardy as a result.

So who do we blame for Dems lack of success in elections yesterday in Kentucky, Virginia, and elsewhere? In Virginia, Dems won seats they were expected to win, but just didn't get the additional seat they needed to win control of the VA Senate. I thought the Kentucky governor race was supposed to have been much closer.

Bevin’s top economic priority is making Kentucky a Right To Work state.

The voter turnout numbers everywhere were low...

Above takeaways from a Washington Post article...

yeah downballot, off-year and uh "outstate" elections (as we city people call them) are bad and getting worse.

Pierce:

There are a couple of lessons that the Democratic Party can take from yet another ass-kicking, this in a freakish off off-year election. (The results in Virginia, where Democrats hoped to overturn the state senate, were particularly painful, and not much of a testimony to Governor Terry McAuliffe's influence.) The first one is an old lesson, but one the party has yet to learn. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has to go, and she has to take her approach to building the party with her. How many times does Howard Dean's 50-state strategy have to be vindicated before the Democratic Party admits that he was right, and that Rahm Emanuel (and DWS) were wrong? Pay attention. These elections are where your next Louie Gohmerts and Joni Ernsts come from. If you want to kill crackpot politics in the cradle, this is where you have to do it.

The second lesson is one more apropos to the set of circumstances surrounding this election. (And, yes, I also am suspicious of the fact that no poll showed Bevin leading prior to the election and yet he won going away. There seems to be one of these in every election now, and the Republican almost always wins it.) Please stop running retreads, what we here in the Commonwealth call "the Coakley Factor." I'm sure Jack Conway is a swell fella, but, like Coakley in Massachusetts and Tom Barrett in Wisconsin, this is the second statewide race he'd lost in five years, and the last one he lost was to Rand Paul. In addition, how can a major political party not exploit the fact that the elite of the opposing party dislikes their candidate? Nominate strategically and then campaign strategically and then vote strategically. The Republicans do all these things at once, and the Democrats seem incapable of doing any of them.

otm

it's kind of shocking that dems are so stubbornly bad at this

as Pierce points out, there are specific people/policies in the Dem party to blame

I need to start checking more for those Pierce articles. I think that's the second longish quote of his I've seen on these boards. Seems v informative

he can get repetitive but he posts 3-4x a day so its worth checking up on

I'm all for the 50 states approach, and dropping Wasserman Schultz, but one also has to consider this, regarding getting back control of the House--

Whenever the Democrats next control the House, it’s likely that their majority will include hardly any seats from Appalachia and the Deep South, which would be a change from any of their previous House majorities. The seats Democrats are likely to target in the future are in places like suburban Philadelphia, Greater New York and New Jersey, suburban Denver, Greater Chicago, Northern Virginia, Las Vegas, Minnesota’s Twin Cities and other suburban areas. These are districts where the number of college graduates is generally higher than the national average and where there are below-average numbers of white evangelicals. It is not outlandish to suggest Carson or Trump would perform poorly in these places.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/how-democrats-could-win-the-house-213318#ixzz3qYEUwSR2

Dems are in part of Northern VA, but parts that are more exurban, and farther from DC, lean Republican now but have sizable numbers of folks who are Dems or who have gone that way

Pierce has flourishes I dislike – his prose is steeped in Mencken – but he's my favorite columnist.

what is rong w/ Mencken's prose, if you please?

Nothing if done well.

Was reading some glass half full articles about Dems success in the New Jersey legislature, Pennsylvania courts, a few mayor elections here and there, suburban Denver...

I mean , in addition to that Politico one.

a victory in Politico

Yeah PA Dems swept the three open seats on the state Supreme Court, and flipped it. I guess this is good news for the next round of redistricting in 2021; they are the tie-breaking vote on an always deadlocked bi-partisan legislative redistricting commission.

Kevin Drum--

I don't want to go all Pollyanna on you, but the basic result of yesterday's elections is that conservatives won big in the South, while liberals did OK everywhere else. Losing Kentucky was a kick in the gut, but I can't work up a lot of surprise when Democrats lose ground below the Mason-Dixon line. It's unfortunate, but it's hardly big news.

Obama To Reject Keystone XL Pipeline In 11:45 ET Statement

I know people were arguing that the oil was gonna get moved anyway, regardless of the pipeline, but that NYT article makes it sound like as long as oil stays below $65/barrell (it's currently at $50) then the oil will stay in the ground

because the cost of moving it by rail would result in a net loss

Environmentalists though are not happy with the released Pacific Trade deal

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-far-reaching-trade-deal-would-lower-tariffs-on-meat-cars-and-drugs/2015/11/05/8e720580-83dc-11e5-9afb-0c971f713d0c_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_no-name:homepage/story&wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202

The Sierra Club blasted the environmental chapter, calling it ‘rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades of environmental progress, threaten our climate and fail to adequately protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal.’”

“I know that past trade agreements haven’t always lived up to the hype. That’s what makes this trade agreement so different, and so important,” Obama wrote in a blog post.

haha gtfo. hopefully congress can still kill this

Im concerned that all the smoke signals of opposition to TPP are just from the people who can get away with voting against it because the votes will always be there for corporate welfare

Pierce:

​Shortly after the president spoke, I got a call from my friend Randy Thompson, whose lovely farm in Humphrey, Nebraska, was targeted by TransCanada as part of the death-funnel's route, and who worked harder than anyone against the pipeline simply because he was fed up with being pushed around.

"It's unbelievable that we were able to do this," Thompson said. "It's like watching the biggest bully on the school grounds getting his nose bloodied. It's very gratifying."

So was the Keystone announcement timed to take the sting out of the TPP unveiling?

Of course it was.

remarkabaly hopeful that for every celebration i'm seeing of kxl's defeat, there's a reminder that the battle against tpp is still ongoing

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/us/politics/appeals-court-deals-blow-to-obamas-immigration-plans.html?mabReward=CTM&moduleDetail=recommendations-2&action=click&contentCollection=Sunday%20Book%20Review®ion=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=article

Conservative 5th Circuit in a 2 to 1 decision written by a Reagan appointed judge...Ugh

Louisiana governor's race ad

Democrat John Bel Edwards going on the air over the weekend with the most provocative attack ad of the year. A female narrator notes that Edwards served as an Army Ranger in the 82nd Airborne Division before noting that Vitter missed a 2001 House vote honoring 28 slain soldiers at roughly the same time that he took a call on his cell phone from the D.C. Madam. “David Vitter chose prostitutes over patriots,” a female narrator says. “Now the choice is yours.”

Tough choice, tbf.

Vitter's response ad:

Vitter is up today with a television ad that shows him sitting with his wife and kids around a kitchen table.
“Fifteen years ago, I failed my family but found forgiveness and love,” the senior senator says to camera. “I learned that our falls aren’t what define us, but rather how we get up, accept responsibility and earn redemption. Now Louisiana has fallen on hard times … And as your governor, I’ll get up every day to fight for you.”

And as your governor, I’ll get it up every day to fight for you.”

For years conservative Louisianans have ignored Vitter's hypocrisy because he voted in Congress the way they want, I am curious what the difference is now:

With the runoff just 11 days away, public polls put the Republican senator down anywhere from 11 points to 20 points. Early voting has already started

I bet he might still win.

I saw that immigration ruling headline and my first guess was 'oh fifth circuit eh' and I was rite

Can the Justice department peel away Anthony Kennedy from the conservatives at the Supreme Court and win?

bump this thread any time someone who has been imprisoned by the US for >5 yrs is found innocent by an actual judge

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/us/04gitmo.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

― youngdel griffith (k3vin k.), Sunday, July 4, 2010 2:40 PM

charlie savage is a great reporter too

― youngdel griffith (k3vin k.), Sunday, July 4, 2010 2:40 PM

Greenwald interview with Savage on his new book Power Wars, examining Obama's presidency in civil liberties and war powers terms.

... in early summer of 2009... there was this difficult case of these Chinese Muslims called Uyghurs at Guantanamo who everyone agreed had been brought there by mistake. And a judge had ordered them freed, and the US government did not think it had legal authority to keep holding them because they weren’t Al-Qaeda – they weren’t our enemies – but there was no place to send them.

We couldn’t send them back to China because they’d be tortured or killed, and China was using its diplomatic pressure to prevent other countries from taking them in. So they decided that they would bring a couple of them – the ones who spoke English the best, and so forth, to the United States, and release them under monitoring, in a Uyghur ethnic community here where I live, in Northern Virginia.

And when the local Congressman, Frank Wolf, found out about that, he sort of went to war, and went down to the floor of Congress and started talking about releasing dangerous terrorists in your backyard, and the Republicans kind of picked up on that theme. And of course the nuance of who these guys really were never really comes through when these things get demagogued like that.

And the White House totally retreated, immediately. And the reason they retreated was the political voices in the White House didn’t want to cause ruffles with Congress. They were trying to pass healthcare reform, and so forth. And they just didn’t want to fight the fight. And so they pulled back from that plan. And that taught Congress that they could be rolled on these issues. And that’s when Congress first imposes restrictions on Obama’s ability to transfer detainees that later get tightened significantly. And he signs them without complaint. That’s the first moment when I think really the turbulence hits. And they sort of display that they lose their nerve.

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/10/42692/

SAVAGE: The first thing Senator Obama does when he clinches the nomination, and his opponent is no longer Hillary Clinton but it’s going to be Mitt Romney, he votes in favor of the FISA Amendments Act which legalizes the warrantless surveillance program and immunizes the telecoms, even though he had said…

GREENWALD: Unambiguously, that he would filibuster that.

SAVAGE: Yes. And I tell the story of that, and some of the behind the scenes-y stuff about that, in a subsection chapter called “Foreshadowing.” So he’s not president yet, but already there we see the shift to “This stuff is okay as long as it has legal authority. It’s not inherently wrong.” And in retrospect, seeing how that played out in many other ways, I think that moment was of singular importance.

The first thing Senator Obama does when he clinches the nomination, and his opponent is no longer Hillary Clinton but it’s going to be Mitt Romney

Obama, always playing the long game

I wrote about Savage earlier this week. If you guys haven't read Takeover, please do.

ten points off for "behind the scenes-y stuff" though

v good Keyes, i didn't catch that

https://twitter.com/CallyGingrich/status/664576323004813312

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/business/trans-pacific-partnership-trade-deal-is-reached.html

Its full 30-chapter text will not be available for perhaps a month, but labor unions, environmentalists and liberal activists are poised to argue that the agreement favors big business over workers and environmental protection. Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the Pacific trade accord as “a bad deal,” injecting conservative populism into the debate and emboldening some congressional Republicans who fear for local interests like sugar and rice, and many conservatives who oppose Mr. Obama at every turn.

― curmudgeon, Monday, 5 October 2015 21:29 (1 month ago)

The whole TPPA text's out; some initial takes (from a NZ perspective) at http://pantograph-punch.com/post/ten-or-so-TPPA-deep-cuts ... investor-state dispute settlements, oh boy.

This will be fun...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-13/house-republican-hard-liners-drafting-contract-with-america-ii-

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are preparing a "Contract With America II" that would call for House votes in the first 100 days of 2016 on replacing Obamacare, overhauling entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and repealing the estate tax.

An early draft of the plan obtained by Bloomberg News also calls for legislation to slash government regulations by 20 percent, cut corporate tax rates and expand offshore oil drilling. Efforts are still under way to finalize contents of the "contract," which lawmakers say they hope will become the basis of House Republicans’ 2016 agenda

just delete every 5th word of every regulatory document

i love how the freedom caucus view themselves as the True Conservatives, willing to fight against everyone including the GOP establishment, but when it comes to putting forward an agenda they list the same exact policies that the entire GOP has been supporting for a decade+

but they REALLY support it

more show votes on repealing Obamacare! it's what the country really needs.

delete every fifth letter, imho - if i've learned anything from image macros shared on facebook, your brain can fill in the rest!