Election 2024 Part III: Out with the old!

[Sommerswerd]

I personally dislike the framing that sees immigrants as valuable primarily because they provide cheap labor, but it will indeed be interesting to see the effect of deporting cheap labor on prices. The next four years may be a useful test case to determine how much "economic pain" is constructed by right-wing propaganda - if inflation stays the same or gets worse but fades as an issue, then the problem is less the state of the economy and more how do we bring mass extinction to the right-wing media ecosystem.

My suspicion is that complaints about inflation and inflation as an issue will fade, regardless of the realities of actual inflation. With Trump in the White House, conservative media will no longer push inflation as an issue and so the electorate will no longer see it as an issue.

There is also the strong possibility/probability that, as is ironically, and repeatedly the case... the policies pursued by the Democratic administration, that got the country through the crisis caused by the prior Republican administration, have the long term effect of creating positive economic conditions, that the incoming Republican administration takes credit for, then promptly institutes policies that crash the economy, that Democrats are then called upon to fix... rinse, repeat...

 

[Gorbles]

So every country with limited visa entry is fascist.

Intentionally and obviously misreading people is probably a habit you should look to grow past.

 

[Lexicus]

I agree that the start of the current schism was the Clinton administration.

Newt Gingrich gets blamed for it commonly, but I have argued that there was an even earlier catalyst.

My take on it has been that what really caused the rift, was that after the Republicans winning near total EC victories in 1984 (Reagan) and 1988 (Papa Bush), the Republicans expected to do the same in 1992 but Ross Perot's unusually strong third party run was perceived to have spoiled it. That led to a bitterness among Republicans that Clinton was illegitimate, having won by a plurality, rather than majority, which was, in their view, made possible only by Perot's candidacy. This bitterness was expressed in the resounding wins of Republicans in 1994 and compounded by Clinton winning in 1996, again in the perception of Republicans because of Ross Perot running (after pledging not to).

That bitterness over the Clinton wins were what fueled/justified the scorched earth approach of Gingrich and the Monica Lewinsky scandal/impeachment, which in turn led to Gore (Donna Brazile)'s disastrous decision to distance Gore's campaign from Clinton, which in turn led to Gore's needlessly close loss to Baby Bush in 2000, which led to Democrats seeing Baby Bush as illegitimate... and so on... you know the rest...

But it all started with Clinton's plurality election upset in 1992.

I think the roots of this go back further. The major catalyst for a lot of the subsequent political trends was the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which white Americans never forgave the Democrats for. The roots of the GOP's derangement I think go back to the downfall of Nixon - there was a resolution at that time not to allow the same thing to happen to another Republican President, which is what in turn led to the creation of a bunch of conservative groups like the Federalist Society (and later, right-wing media including Fox) to recapture the institutions that were seen to be hopelessly "liberal" as they had "betrayed" the President - or at least create parallel conservative versions of them. This was also the origin of the impulse to purge the GOP of RINOs which effectively meant any Republican elected official more committed to the Constitution than to the partisan goals of the party. The end result of that of course has been the complete failure of GOP officials to act the way they are supposed to act under the Constitition - the GOP Supreme Court and the GOP Congress do not check the criminal GOP President in any meaningful way.

I do think 1994 will be the year future historians will point to as a watershed for the end of the American republic - by analogy, Trump would be Caesar, the guy who most people think of as ending the Roman republic, but Newt Gingrich would be Sulla, the guy who actually ended it years before Caesar took over.

1994 was the year that a GOP majority openly hostile and contempuous of parliamentary democracy took over the parliament as it were. You can a draw a straight line from the strategy and tactics the GOP began using then to the present situation.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I personally dislike the framing that sees immigrants as valuable primarily because they provide cheap labor, but it will indeed be interesting to see the effect of deporting cheap labor on prices. The next four years may be a useful test case to determine how much "economic pain" is constructed by right-wing propaganda - if inflation stays the same or gets worse but fades as an issue, then the problem is less the state of the economy and more how do we bring mass extinction to the right-wing media ecosystem.

Yes, but the reality of a large round up is that those more menial jobs will lose their workers. In other parts of the country the losses will be different. NM has a large undocumented population that is mostly employed or self employed at the lower end of the wage scale.

 

[Lexicus]

My suspicion is that complaints about inflation and inflation as an issue will fade, regardless of the realities of actual inflation. With Trump in the White House, conservative media will no longer push inflation as an issue and so the electorate will no longer see it as an issue.

There is also the strong possibility/probability that, as is ironically, and repeatedly the case... the policies pursued by the Democratic administration, that got the country through the crisis caused by the prior Republican administration, have the long term effect of creating positive economic conditions, that the incoming Republican administration takes credit for, then promptly institutes policies that crash the economy, that Democrats are then called upon to fix... rinse, repeat...

Meme edit

Cc @Hygro

My suspicion is that complaints about inflation and inflation as an issue will fade, regardless of the realities of actual inflation. With Trump in the White House, conservative media will no longer push inflation as an issue and so the electorate will no longer see it as an issue.

There is also the strong possibility/probability that, as is ironically, and repeatedly the case... the policies pursued by the Democratic administration, that got the country through the crisis caused by the prior Republican administration, have the long term effect of creating positive economic conditions, that the incoming Republican administration takes credit for, then promptly institutes policies that crash the economy, that Democrats are then called upon to fix... rinse, repeat...

To address this more seriously...in retrospect, allowing the covid safety net policies to lapse, which led to immediate and obvious huge increases in hardship for tens of millions, while then passing spending bills that made longer-term investments where the benefits will be felt over the next decade seems almost like it was designed to cause this outcome.

 

[Estebonrober]

So every country with limited visa entry is fascist.

How's that straw man treating your fists?

Systematically rounding up 11 million people to deport is as linked before fascism 101...

fwiw I would consider a lot of nations fascist under the current construct, including your neighbor and future home nation China.

 

[Senethro]

If your law requires armies of thugs and violence to enforce, regardless of how just that law is, you're still on the hook for the human rights abuses that result.

 

[Theov]

How's that straw man treating your fists?

Systematically rounding up 11 million people to deport is as linked before fascism 101...

fwiw I would consider a lot of nations fascist under the current construct, including your neighbor and future home nation China.

What does it matter if it is 1 or 11 million?
What is your idea then? Everyone is welcome to stay everywhere?

 

[JollyRoger]

What does it matter if it is 1 or 11 million?
What is your idea then? Everyone is welcome to stay everywhere?

As a free market capitalist, I do not believe in government thuggery to suppress the supply of labor. Of course not everyone should be welcome to stay everywhere. The natives should stay on their reservations for instance.

 

[Lexicus]

What does it matter if it is 1 or 11 million?
What is your idea then? Everyone is welcome to stay everywhere?

My idea is the west should be on its knees begging for immigrants to replace its declining population of young people and that going full anti-immigration is, for any Western country, tantamount to committing social and national suicide.

 

[JollyRoger]

I mean the Irish are fairly useless for labor now - they all seem to be employed in right wing media not talking about the potato famine being over and going back to the homeland.

 

[GenMarshall]

So every country with limited visa entry is fascist.

Don’t forget, for leftists, anything that is to the right of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot is “fascist”. Even your miktoast SocDem is labeled as “fascist”. Streight out of Foucault‘s playbook.

“It will be seen that, as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, dogs and I do not know what else…” - George Orwell

 

[Lexicus]

If your law requires armies of thugs and violence to enforce, regardless of how just that law is, you're still on the hook for the human rights abuses that result.

In the US case what's fascist is allowing immigration law to create a floating population of over 10 million people in the country on a permanent basis with no legal protections. The creation of populations with no legal protections really is fascism 101 (@Estebonrober).

 

[JollyRoger]

Don’t forget, for leftists, anything that is to the right of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot is “fascist”. Even your miktoast SocDem is labeled as “fascist”. Streight out of Foucault‘s playbook.

Get the pitchforks. We have a few haystacks to harvest from collapsed strawmen.

 

[Akka]

After 2 weeks, 96% of California's votes have been counted, so it is possible to do some comparisons with 2020 now.

WTH, how come it takes so long ? That's the kind of percentage you should get during the first night.

My idea is the west should be on its knees begging for immigrants to replace its declining population of young people and that going full anti-immigration is, for any Western country, tantamount to committing social and national suicide.

It's funny you say yourself you'd push for replacing one population by another, but that it's not doing that is a national suicide.
True orwellian language.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I mean the Irish are fairly useless for labor now - they all seem to be employed in right wing media not talking about the potato famine being over and going back to the homeland.

Not Lawrence O'Donnell! He's Irish and from Boston too.

WTH, how come it takes so long ? That's the kind of percentage you should get during the first night.

CA is a large state with 39 million people. Most of it is rural.

 

[Voidwalkin]

My idea is the west should be on its knees begging for immigrants to replace its declining population of young people and that going full anti-immigration is, for any Western country, tantamount to committing social and national suicide.

Migration of that scale would break democracy. Fascism would follow.

Migrants would have to accept lower QoL(civil war and millions dead) or a dictatorial wealth redistribution program would have to occur(civil war and millions dead), and to boot, the climate crisis would wildly accelerate in either case(millions dead).

 

[Akka]

CA is a large state with 39 million people. Most of it is rural.

France is bigger than California with half more people and we still get north of 90 % votes counted before midnight. And it's entirely paper, counted by hand and without any electronic machine. That's not a problem of scale, that's a problem of terrible organisation.

 

[Senethro]

Migration of that scale would break democracy. Fascism would follow.

Migrants would have to accept lower QoL(civil war and millions dead) or a dictatorial wealth redistribution program would have to occur(civil war and millions dead), and to boot, the climate crisis would wildly accelerate in either case(millions dead).

Imagine. 80 Gazas along the Mediterranean coast. A collection of Old Towns turned into walled ghettos and concrete hovels thrown up and wrapped in barbed wire.

We're sleepwalking into it either way. Would it really be so bad to attempt integration?

 

[Birdjaguar]

The US has a long history of lots of immigrants. We seem to have survived well enough until Trump.