Elections in 2017

Seeing as Rouhani was the incumbent, just how rigged was it?
Unlikely to be rigged. While the method Iran uses to select candidates is patently undemocratic, their actual elections are pretty good. If the Guardian Council had decided to rig the election, they would have rigged it in favor of one of the hard-line candidates, and that would have been a complete disaster. Remember all the protests in 2009? With Trump and the Gulf Princes trying to ratchet up the anti-Iran rhetoric again, the Iranian government knows their strongest appeal in the Middle East is their (relatively) democratic reputation which is something the corrupt Gulf Princes lack.
Rouhani has an advantage in that he is well liked abroad - especially among European governments. From a purely pragmatic perspective the Iranian government/Guardian Council know that if they can keep Europe favorable to Iran -or at least neutral in favor of Iran- the chance of Trump or one of the Gulf Princes doing something stupid goes down dramatically.
 
So why did Akka say the apparatus was stacked against him?
 
The Guardian Council and Revolutionary Guard aren't particularly fond of Rouhani, but the "deck stacking" consists of little more than Revolutionary Guard aligned media outlets getting grumpy. Nothing like Uganda where Mouseveni would arrest opposition candidates on election day.
For more specifics, you have to wait for him to respond.
 
Congratulations to Edith DesMarais for winning the New Hampshire special election and being the first Democrat to flip a state or federal seat in 2017. She won 52-48, when the GOP carried the district 57-43 in the 2016 election. A shift of 9 points, not too shabby.

Democrat Christine Pellegrino has also flipped the New York Assembly 9 District in Long Island. She won 58-42, when the district was 69-31 towards the GOP in 2016. A shift of 27 points towards the Democrats. Holy moly.

It should be noted that the NY race had 1/3 the turnout of the 2014 midterms, when the GOP won with about 75% of the vote.

With these two upsets, Democrats are a net +1 for change in state/federal seats in 2017. The Democrats have good odds of losing these again in 2018 given a more representative electorate going to the polls, but for now, it's definitely inspiring for those who have wanted to see slipping GOP margins finally translate into a victory.

The real tests will be the Georgia 6th district and the Montana At-Large district in the next few weeks, given their much larger constituencies. Georgia's reporting the Democrat several points ahead of the Republican, while the Montana race has been narrowing and comes just one day after the much-awaited CBO score of the American Health Care Act.

This thread speak at length about irrelevant local US offices

"Irrelevant" isn't the really the term I'd use to describe state legislatures that in most states control redistricting that is essential to Democrats being able to retake the House in 2018, never mind limit laws that serve to suppress the vote. I think control of the US Congress has a potentially global impact too. It's all connected.

The Democrats' failure to realize this (and compete the same way the GOP did in the runup to the 2010 midterms) is part of why the Party is in such an electoral pickle right now. It turned the midterm disadvantage up to eleven. The real fight in 2018 isn't the House and Senate (though these are looking increasingly to be more in play) so much as Governorships and state legislatures with their enormous redistricting power and ability to resist federal initiatives by Trump and the GOP Congress.
 
Rouhani has an advantage in that he is well liked abroad - especially among European governments. From a purely pragmatic perspective the Iranian government/Guardian Council know that if they can keep Europe favorable to Iran -or at least neutral in favor of Iran- the chance of Trump or one of the Gulf Princes doing something stupid goes down dramatically.
I believe the Iran-Airbus deal alone is around €10 billion. If you think about how much fuzz there is about the "€100 billion" Brexit divorce bill or every individual €8-10 billion tranche of the Greek bailout, I think the EU will be favorable with Iran for some more time.
 
So why did Akka say the apparatus was stacked against him?
Because all the religious institutions, which are the highest ranked in Iran, defenders of the Constitution and controlling most of the medias, supported the hardline conservative candidate. I have little doubts that if the results had been very close, they would have fiddled with it, and that what protected Rouhani was that his victory was a landslide, unable to be hidden.

Iran going the way of reformation and liberalization is a formidable potential for the region, and by ricochet to the whole world.
 
Iran going the way of reformation and liberalization is a formidable potential for the region, and by ricochet to the whole world.

Are the next 4 years going to be enough for that ? Also 8 years of moving forward can be easily undone if the next election goes to someone terrible.
 
Are the next 4 years going to be enough for that ? Also 8 years of moving forward can be easily undone if the next election goes to someone terrible.
I doubt 4 years will be enough, but I think the magnitude of the reelection is a defining moment. You don't get absolute majority in the first round by random chance : it means the population of Iran as a whole wants to open up, and it'll be very hard for the regime to prevent it - funnily enough, despite its negative image, Iran is probably one of the most democratic countries in the region (which is a pretty low bar, but still).
 
Are the next 4 years going to be enough for that ? Also 8 years of moving forward can be easily undone if the next election goes to someone terrible.

I think this is indicative of a much longer-term trend in Iran. The younger generation is far more supportive of a permanent detente with the West, if not outright cooperation. The political system there is extraordinarily complex, as is the relationship between Iran and the United States, but I think that Iran will continue a very slow move towards liberalization. You'll probably have the old guard that stands around shouting "Death to Israel!" for a long time, and continued ties to terrorism will be a big hindrance to relations with the West in general, but I think the trend line is unmistakable, even if there are stumbles along the way.
 
I mean continued ties to terrorism never stopped the West from allying inarguably the worst and most repressive regime in the region.
 
I mean the West commits terrorist acts all the time, so concern about "support for terrorism" is basically just pretending that being geopolitically aligned against the US is some kind of crime. The US government and its allies will never make the state sponsors of terrorism list despite its support for various actual terrorist organizations and their own terrorist activities.
 
Well, I never claimed we weren't being thoroughly disingenuous and hypocritical about it ;)

But our politics requires we support apartheid Israel no matter what, which messes up our moral high horse all on its own, and especially as it pertains to Iran.
 
I was refering to Saudi Arabia. Israel's not very good, but they're still better than that. :p
 
Back to USA elections. After three elections in deeply read states, the Democrats have one that they have the proverbial prayer to win.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article152908524.html

How will things turn out?

Well, I never claimed we weren't being thoroughly disingenuous and hypocritical about it ;) But our politics requires we support apartheid Israel no matter what, which messes up our moral high horse all on its own, and especially as it pertains to Iran.
I never understood this attitude. I always thought genocide trumped apartheid.

J
 
But our politics requires we support apartheid Israel no matter what, which messes up our moral high horse all on its own, and especially as it pertains to Iran.

Yes, but the problem with Iran isn't its support of terrorism, the problem is that Iran refuses to play ball on the US-led geopolitical order.

I was refering to Saudi Arabia. Israel's not very good, but they're still better than that. :p

I would dispute that.
 
Of course. Israel sponsors and commits terrorism orders of magnitude larger than what Iran has done, in addition to myriad human rights abuses and gross violations of international law.

That was the point I was clumsily trying to make - the claim that terrorism is the reason we don't get along with Iran is totally bogus. One sad irony of the Trump presidency is how upset some people are that he doesn't use his platform to speak out on human rights, when the U.S. presidency as an institution has a consistently terrible record on supporting human rights. They only ever matter when supporting them aligns with our geopolitical goals. Otherwise, nobody ever seems to give a crap. Trump is in no way unique in this regard, and at least he's not trying to fake it.
 
Of course. Israel sponsors and commits terrorism orders of magnitude larger than what Iran has done, in addition to myriad human rights abuses and gross violations of international law.

That was the point I was clumsily trying to make - the claim that terrorism is the reason we don't get along with Iran is totally bogus. One sad irony of the Trump presidency is how upset some people are that he doesn't use his platform to speak out on human rights, when the U.S. presidency as an institution has a consistently terrible record on supporting human rights. They only ever matter when supporting them aligns with our geopolitical goals. Otherwise, nobody ever seems to give a crap. Trump is in no way unique in this regard, and at least he's not trying to fake it.
That was almost complimentary.

Israel does not sponsor terrorism on a wider scale than Iran, much less hundreds to thousands of times more. You went overboard on that one.

J
 
I think their morale really needs this win.

edit: Also, VA Gov primaries were yesterday. Seems to have been close on the GOP side.
 
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