Roy Moore doesn't concede! (All year.)
Roy seems to have trouble gauging precisely how much people want him.
53.3 from that thread (chris y):
The 2018 new year thread on Unfogged will be indistinguishable from those in past years.
Trump suffers major health issue- e.g. heart attack, stroke, dementia related fall and broken hip. The resulting sympathy and temporary transfer of power to Pence enables Republicans to keep control of Congress.
A nuclear exchange with North Korea.
In hindsight if this doesn't happen then 2018 will look like a fantastic fucking year no matter what happens.
We will become increasingly aware of 15-21 year old white kids who have basically been raised as hard-right quasi-Nazis by YouTube. They will be a minority of their generation but an increasingly vocal and prominent one.
After another 79 articles the NYT will finally get to the bottom of what is motivating the rural heartland white Trump voter.
Trump will say the n-word in public.
I'll be wrong about lots of this:
Dems will gain a bit of ground in the midterms, but not as much as they hope.
Trump will instigate a minor military action somewhere and there will be a lot of discussion about whether it was necessary or smokescreen - most of the active online disputants won't have any idea what the conflict is about or perhaps even where it is. Trump will use this effectively to rally support from some of his base.
Above will provide some cover for Trump backing down on NK in practice (but not in rhetoric).
Juresalem contention will become a fully fledged shitshow, precipitating an even less well thought out "next step" proposal from Trump administration. This will fail.
There will be at least one significant domestic hate crime that grabs the national news coverage for a cycle or two.
Brexit will happen, and it will be worse than expected for the UK. Scotland will begin to try and secede in earnest.
There will be a significant multilateral trade agreement floated excluding the US, it won't get past th idea phase and will generate a lot of bluster.
NAFTA will fail, sort of. Majority of trade will be maintained somehow, but everyone will be able to declare victory in some sense at home. Except perhaps Mexico.
Catalan will get worse, but not resolve.
GOP will continue to push legislative advantage to enact laws benefiting a small percentage of citizens for as long as they can. The economic impact of this will be a problem for several administrations.
China will attempt to step into the international leadership vacuum created by Trump, but won't have an easy time of it.
Trudeau will feel the end of the extended honeymoon created by favourable comparison with Trump.
US corporations will continue to generate a crap load of foreign income.
I already regret participating in this thread. Eyes on the prize, people. No one knows shit so why speak of it. The Warriors will win the title, though.
You'll regret saying that when Trump nukes Pyongyang, Halford.
10: I'm surprised you say you'll be wrong about most of them. Most of them seem so likely it's almost banal. The only one I'd disagree with is the second. If Trump starts a military action, there's a good chance it won't be minor. And I get that people are poorly informed a lot of the time, but I don't think it's literally true that most people arguing over something wouldn't even know where it is.
The Patriots will win the Super Bowl. The Celtics will win the NBA title. To shore up his sagging popularity, Trump will declare war on Massachusetts.
13: that was sort of the point, that the obvious lines today won't actually all play out.
Re: people knowing where places are, I should have specified "before hand"
I blame Moby. He didn't even visit Montreal.
Was 7 inspired by Yggles' tweet of this morning? BC he wrote almost exactly that.
People have a lot of concerns about Dems' spines in the next few years. I think a lot of that is ingrained bitchiness*, but my big worry is that they (and left/liberals in general) will have zero plans to deal with that kind of shit, and keep being blindsided every time militias, alt-right, and the like arise.
*frex, AFAICT nobody who 12 months ago predicted that pusillanimous Dems in Congress would cooperate with Trump has changed their priors based on their firm refusal to do so over the past 11 months.
Olivia de Havilland and Beverly Cleary die.
17 - No! Inspired by a conversation with a fifteen year old kid.
On the same topic, I agree with most of what you say but am not sure what the "Dems" are supposed to do about my hypothesized teenage Nazis. They may be a net political benefit to the party by turning off more and more ordinary people.
In general, I hate "spineless Dems" comments unless they come from people who are actually sitting politicians or otherwise directly and immediately involved in getting things done, and identifying specific people on specific issues who lack said spine. Most Democratic politicians I know of have plenty of backbone and I think almost no Democrat at this point retains broad illusions about the possibilities of bipartisanship -- as shown by the near-total lack of bipartisanship in the most recent Congress. What they don't have are constituencies that match up in all circumstances with the preferences of internet commentators. What this means is that if they ever take back power at the federal level there will be lots of ceaseless bitching by morons, which isn't necessarily a bad thing at all -- likely in some cases a very good thing! -- but will be annoying for me personally and at least in some cases very counterproductive. I guess that's my prediction for 2018 - more ceaseless counterproductive online bitching by morons, maybe some small portion of which will be unintentionally productive.
7, 17.1: Hasn't this already happened?
I guess that's my prediction for 2018 - more ceaseless counterproductive online bitching by morons
Only a global nuclear holocaust could make that prediction fail.
I agree with 20.2.
I must say, though, that our senior senator, who is up for re-election, has been making a pretty big deal about working together with particular Republican senators to get shit done for veterans, and it's going to serve him well. And helps them a whole lot. Several bills passed and signed.
Every whiny moron who thinks he's not worthy of support can fuck right off.
21 - I used the weasel word "increasingly" making the prediction almost non-falsifiable. If we collectively hear way less about teenage Nazis in 2018 I guess I'm wrong.
20. What about the claim that the DNC will not support candidates who can't raise around 100k on their own, thus eliminating the possibility of amateur politicians in poor red places? Maciej Ciegloski has expressed pretty coherent disagreement with this, and actually assembled a list of a few plausible-ish candidates.
Fusion breakeven, or a superior battery chemistry to save us all.
I am actually optimistic that Scotland will pull back from secession now that we have seen how complicated brexit is turning out to be. Also I suspect we are headed for a soft brexit which keeps single market membership.
Trump will still be president but the democrats will retake the House.
Robert Mugabe will die.
What we really need are spineless Republicans voting with Dems. But their constituencies are so narrowly focused that the spineless calculation leads towards surviving primaries not generals.
26 Next time I see something about the DNC and candidates Im going to fucking explode. People should stop using "DNC" to mean the different organizations (which are funded and run differently) that actually get involved in non-presidential campaigns.
But if you're talking about the DCCC, then maybe their threshold is too low, but my God, if you can't put together 100k for a run to represent between 600k and 1 million people, maybe you're not going to have a real shot at winning. A contested congressional race is going to cost at least a million.
That's a different issue than "spineless" and I have no real idea about the policy since I don't know anything about it. I do generally think that a belief in the DNC as particularly powerful or important in candidate selection is a pretty strong tell that the person doesn't know much. State and local races are generally not backed by the DNC at all, local candidates always have to establish themselves (and generally win a primary!) before getting DNC money, the DNC doesn't generally pick or vet candidates, etc. The DNC doesn't even have that much money! There are other organizations that do fund these things, though, even in red states.
Aggggh why am I doing this. I will read the thing you suggest and shouldn't have blathered on before doing so, and probably shouldn't blather on after having read it.
"Democrats Need To Run People Whose Policy Positions Are Identical To Mine In Every Jurisdiction"
Phrase I liked from a Scott Lemieux post title.
2018: I will hate everyone some of the time and hate some people all of the time.
Also we will all double down on the narcissism of small differences because we can.
As noted, we have a marquee race this cycle, and tons of money is going to be sloshing around. To the extent it gets spent by the senator on GOTV, and plenty will, that's going to help our House nominee, and all our legislative candidates as well.
Our Republican House incumbent already has 5 million to spend. It's a six person field for the Dem nomination (primary in June) -- at least 2 are already at 200k.
My comments will increasingly veer towards the tautological and self-indulgent.
A world in which we can go back to doubling down on the narcissism of small differences is the most optimistic prediction yet.
I'm going to find inner calm and bridge the gap between racist Republican assholes and slightly less racist Democratic assholes.
29, 30. OK, DCCC not DNC. Still, one of the big points that made sense to me from demonstrations this year is that it's important for people to run for office. Having people who aren't yet professional politicians running some kind of campaign rather than none in places that seem angry at the status quo does not seem crazy to me.
As a country, we're apparently happy to elect celebrities who want to try politics-- maybe that could get extended to teachers or nurses. I'm not 100% positive about this being a great way to go, but having amateurs try and try with a little support seems both like it could work some places and like a way to make elections saner and more human even where the candidates fail.
Neither of the two candidates in our House race have ever held office before, and both at over 200k already.
Whoever wins the primary will be very happy to get support from whatever party organ does it, but none of the 6 are under any illusion that they don't have to demonstrate several of the different skills involved in running a successful race for Congress.
Money isn't infinite.
38 - literally all political candidates (except incumbents) in this country are amateurs. They raise money (amounts depend on where) run their own organizations, and run. Literally every campaign is run like a startup business. Maybe a candidate gets some money from one of the organized national groups towards the middle or end of the campaign but that at most provides some additional marginal money for GOTV or TV ads - no one counts on it. And there are lots of organizations (but not the DCCC or DNC, who fund after campaigns have gotten started, and generally not for state or local elections at all) who do "here's how to be a candidate" trainings. The Emerge groups for women seem to be especially good. Maybe that's not the ideal model but that's been our model for both parties for decades (the only alternative we've ever worked out are strong party machines run by corrupt insiders, but for better or worse we got rid of those, and essentially no one who is complaining about the supposed perfidy of the Democratic establishment thinks the solution is a stronger establishment party with powerful corrupt machines.
Our state legislture only meets 90 days every other year, and the per diem is lousy, so even the incumbents aren't really professional politicians. They all have other jobs, including being nurses and teachers.
I can't say, though, that 'let's put people who don't know anything about how parties/government/politics works into office' looks like all that compelling a pitch just right now.
I predict my brother will show up with Mexican food and everyone will be more cheerful.
OK, I looked up the thing suggested in 26. I'd forgotten that Maciej Cegłowski is the (generally excellent) blogger and thinker behind Idle Words. It looks like his deal is to raise funds for extreme long-shot candidates in R+15 congressional districts. That's a fine thing to do -- someone should be raising money to make extreme longshot bets on outsider candidates, and it's probably a good thing for the world that someone's taking up that role. But if I am running the DCCC and my job is to husband fairly limited resources towards the goal of winning a majority of seats in Congress (a desperately important goal for the world!) I damn sure better be focused on directing my limited dollars towards where they will do the most marginal good towards achieving that goal, and funding extreme longshots in R+15 districts who have been able to raise like $30,000 on their own is definitely not a good overall strategy for 2018.
I think its good strategy to ensure that extreme long shots at least get some minimum amount of funding - both because of long-term party building, and because you need to have a Doug Jones on hand in the event that the Republican candidate turns out to be a pedophile.
Sure, but there's a question of priority. And these guys aren't Doug Jones (someone who was reasonably prominent and got his own money, though as a fair longshot. The question isn't whether someone somewhere (like maybe say, the 20-30% of people in even extreme Republican districts who are actually Democrats) should be backing extreme longshots (someone should!) but whether there should be some minimum fundraising cutoff before the particular funds from the DCCC reserved for figuring out the most effective way to flip the House become available. I don't know that the $100k raised figure is accurate, but if it's true that the DCCC thinks you need to raise $100k for a general election that will almost certainly cost a minimum of $1m in the smallest media markets before they think seriously about allocating funding to you as a serious, competent candidate that doesn't seem crazy or wrong at all for an organization tasked with a single goal: winning a House majority.
42 did your brother show up? I'm no more cheerful so it's hard to tell.
Counterpoint: Lots of Republican candidates might be pedophiles.
DCCC takes a really long time to say, even in your head. So I thought DC^3; hence DC-3; hence a great big beautiful plane droning all over America pushing bales of money out the back. In conclusion, appoint me Secretary of Propaganda.
whether there should be some minimum fundraising cutoff before the particular funds from the DCCC reserved for figuring out the most effective way to flip the House become available.
Except of course candidates are going to have trouble raising funds if the DCCC has a long tradition of not supporting anyone in that district. I think a cutoff of "wins the nomination of the Democratic party" should be enough to provide some minimum level of party funding.
It doesn't need to be that much, but it needs to be at a level that makes people working in the trenches in deep red areas not feel they have been forsaken. You would probably get more out of that, in terms of long-term strengthening of the party, than from spending those dollars on the marginal TV add buy in a major market.
40:
and essentially no one who is complaining about the supposed perfidy of the Democratic establishment thinks the solution is a stronger establishment party with powerful corrupt machines.
Sometimes, I honestly think this would be an improvement.
"D triple C" is how the cool kids say it. I don't think you could fit enough money in a DC-3 to bribe enough Americans to vote Democratic through a money drop, but I do know that the establishment dems are spineless cowards for not even trying a money drop from a plane strategy.
A DC-3 isn't actually that big of a plane.
Big enough to SAVE THE FUCKING WORLD IN WWII. I bet one could carry all the campaign money for a couple of states at least.
Estimated 2,000 of 16,000 built in operation today (includes military versions and other variants--only about 600 of the original version were built).
You could just do it now and then, in marginal areas. Build the party like nobody's business.
I wonder if there is any other significant boat/vehicle/lane/engine that has had anything close to that kind of mass longevity.
50 - I guess, but I don't really see how "I raised $30,000, got my minimum payment of $50,000 from the DCCC and lost by 20 points" is much different in terms of party-building than "I raised $30,000 and lost by 20 points." Campaigns are largely one-shot deals. I suspect that the main feeling of "abandonment" is caused by consistently losing elections, not by whether the DCCC makes some token effort at funding for a few TV ads or lawn signs or whatever.
With that said, the DCCC is not an all-knowing uber-competent organization so they could probably send a minimum $50,000 to every Dem candidate on the ballot no matter what (though this would cost maybe $21 million out of about a $200 million budget) not spend $21 million on media buys, and maybe there wouldn't be a change in result. At the end of the day I don't think it would make much of a difference either way.
57: I think lots of aircraft are like that actually. My in-laws' aerobatics team flies WWII era planes, frex. I think the plan is to keep the B-52 in service for a full century.
I thought in West Wing they just called it the "D-trip."
90 years, says wiki. But given how Americans are managing the budget these days I can see that getting extended.
Campaigns are largely one-shot deals.
They aren't, though. When my sister ran for state representative, she lost twice before she won. She had the same supporters every time, but each time they were a bit better at it. Campaigning is a skill that takes practice, and especially in difficult districts its going to take some failure before there is success.
Right, but those were people aligned around your sister. The candidate is the campaign. Presumably she learned to be a better candidate, raise more money, and her staff learned with her. That's pretty different than some sort of free-floating party structure gained by providing some token amount of national support to random Congressional candidates who may or may not be one-shot deals, since campaigns (mostly) have to be reassembled each election around new candidates. Again, long-shots should run, and some people should support them! But it's completely unclear that token investment by the specific funds available to the DCCC are a good use of those funds when the goal is majority control of the House of Representatives.
Most Democratic politicians I know of have plenty of backbone and I think almost no Democrat at this point retains broad illusions about the possibilities of bipartisanship
Alarmingly understated. Are they aware they only have an outside chance of taking back power from in incipient fascist movement that, literally, wants to destroy the world?
In general, I hate "spineless Dems" comments unless they come from people who are actually sitting politicians or otherwise directly and immediately involved in getting things done, and identifying specific people on specific issues who lack said spine.
Well, poop.
In December 2018 we will still be relitigating the 2016 Democratic primary. If the Ds fail to take the House it will be because Bernie Would Have Won, somehow, and not because Gerrymandering Works.
Jared and Donald, Jr., will be indicted on multiple felonies. It will be incontrovertible that collusion happened and inconceivable that Trump wasn't involved but he will not be impeached.
Tap-to-pay will become a thing people actually use.
My taxes will go up. Probably a lot.
If the DCCC pledged $50k to the winning Dem in every House district, maybe with some requirements that the money be spent on GOTV and party-building, that would seem to be way more strategically valuable than e.g. $20m in tv ads.
Given that the DCCC is run by the House Democrats, it's reasonable to conclude they're more interested in re-electing marginal incumbents than taking flyers on long shot candidates, incipient wave or no. That doesn't make them bad, just acknowledges that their interests aren't necessarily aligned with the strategic interests of Democrats writ large, or liberals, or the left more broadly.
(They are bad though.)
I'm not generally inclined to make predictions and I'm not going to now, but Halford and Charley are speaking truth on the political stuff. The key point that lots of people don't realize is that American political parties are extremely decentralized organizations. There isn't even really such an organization as "the Democratic party" at the national level; there are state parties, and the various national committees, but they aren't integrated into a single entity with a unified leadership and they operate largely autonomously though with broadly aligned goals. And all of these organizations are separate from the actual campaigns, which are their own individual autonomous entities that make most of the important on-the-ground decisions. There's no one person or organization calling the shots nationally, and the decisions of any individual person or entity aren't all that important in the big picture. (What is important is making sure these different entities work together as well as possible, which is a big enough challenge.)
I mean, the DCCC is one potential source of (incremental) money out there for Congressional candidates, and most of their money comes from transfers from money raised by incumbent Democratic House Members who don't need it because their seats are safe. If you think that there should be some organized payment to extreme long-shot candidates, do it! But at the end of the day the goal of the DCCC is simple -- elect enough Democrats to have a House majority in the next election. That is a good goal and someone should be spending money on it, including an extra $20 million in ads if that is necessary to flip the House. They are not responsible for long-term training of political candidates everywhere (there are plenty of other groups that do just that, and rightly so).
I think I would make an excellent state legislator but a horrible candidate.
Unless campaigning for re-election counts as a skill for legislating, in which case horror all around.
The key point that lots of people don't realize is that American political parties are extremely decentralized organizations.
Honestly, this should be part of the high school civics curriculum. When the parties were less ideologically aligned and partisanship was weaker, this was perhaps more obvious. But now that the parties look more like coherent ideological blocks there's an increasing assumption that they are centralized organizations with coherent power to direct things, and it just isn't so.
"State legislator arrested for pissing off deck" is a much classier headline.
Leaving aside the pedophilia, I think the Republican Party has managed to centralize itself to an extent that it is different from the Democratic Party and its own past. Something like Trump shows that the people who think they run it don't run it, but they did make something solid enough to not break under Trump.
The Republicans are more ideologically coherent, but their central party organization qua party organization is if anything even less powerful (which isn't saying much) because they get more money from huge SuperPACs so the centralized funding organs matter even less than they do for Democrats.
At a certain size, the super PACs are the centralized organization.
Sure, but they are still subject to the random whims of the Kochs or Mercers or whoever. The superPACs probably do help with the ideological discipline, though.
The only legislated accomplishment of Trump's administration is a tax cut aimed at people with money to fund Super PACs. They run the party and can hold it together to do what they want.
Gerrymandering Works
I'd probably vote for someone who took this as their legal name.
And you wonder why you can't have nice things.
I don't think any of us wonder that much. We know all too well.
I'll tell you why you don't have nice things. You aren't airdropping bales of money from an iconic all-American aircraft.
My only direct experience with the DCCC was a phone interview for an opposition research position in the summer of 2008. (I didn't get the job.) They were pretty excited about the electoral map, which was projected to put in play districts they never expected, which was one reason they needed more opposition researchers while the general election campaigns were already underway.
I got the impression that their planning was driven largely around what the projections said. I have no idea if it's run the same way now, but it seems like the case for pouring resources into marginal districts, as far as the DCCC is concerned, comes down to how the competitive/non-competitive distinction is made. I'm sure money is a factor, and you have to field a candidate for anything to happen, but it's probably mostly about other factors that don't stabilize until later.
I guess I wouldn't have a problem with a 50k grant to congressional primary winners. I don't think it actually solves any problem that any campaign actually has: if they're going to be raising and spending 2 or 3 million, 50k is pretty small potatoes. What the current system has going for it is the national stamp of approval, not just on the values of the candidate (and by the way, are pro-life Dem nominees going to get that money?) but also an explicit endorsement of the viability of the candidacy. I'm sure it's a huge disappointment to everyone in a campaign that ruled a losing proposition, but then being part of one that's identified as a real possibility, well, that's a great motivator.
(My state senate district was one of 4 or 5 identified by the state party organ for this as one we could win -- we got a couple of paid party people to help with GOTV, and that was a big deal. My guy got swamped by anti-Hillary feeling, but that was just the unique landscape of 2016 for you.)
Tap to pay is something people have used in the civilized world for most of a decade, at least.
57: B-52s, Tu-95 Bears, Land Rovers. Age of Sail warships lasted a long time: HMS Victory was more than fifty years old at Trafalgar. Military aircraft don't age out as fast because aircraft lifespan depends on cycles not years. The generators at Hoover Dam are still fine.
They're Too young for this test now, but as long as thee's available gasoline I would be surprised if there aren't significant numbers of 40 series Toyota Land Cruisers from the 1960s on the roads in the 2060s. Also Toyota Hyluxes from the 1980s on the roads in the 2080s.
Hi-Luxes definitely. They seem to be almost indestructible. I think Top Gear has dropped them from cranes, submerged them in the sea and demolished houses on top of them without affecting them too much.
I understand that there's no chance of pubic financing of elections in the US, but what I don't understand is "Why?" Supposedly it's not very popular, but as we've just seen Congress can pass unpopular things. Supposedly politicians -- at least Democratic politicians -- hate endless fund-raising, and post-Citizens United they are at a disadvantage. So why isn't their any move to fix it with public financing?
Is there some reason why "the very rich men and women who currently fund political parties don't want to lose the power this gives them" isn't the answer?
72: Bring Back the machine! And the unions!
I understand that there's no chance of pubic financing of elections in the US
With the present lot in office, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see pubic financing of elections in the US.
I can't decide if this is a situation blaming Autocorrect would make the typo more or less embarrassing. (Fortunately or unfortunately it was all me.)
87: I meant to put in my comment that you would probably have a view.
I imagine a great many machine tools would and will qualify too.
Tap to pay is something people have used in the civilized world for most of a decade, at least.
Sheesh, we just introduced the supposedly great and modern system where you insert your card and wait for 10 times as long as the old swipe system used to take, and now you say we're behind the times AGAIN?!
You forgot about how it beeps for you to take out the card. That's the worst noise. No warning or nothing between "Don't remove your card" and "Why haven't you removed you card asshole."
This property tax prepayment thing is generating a lot of excitement around here. People lining up at city hall before it opens like they're trying to get concert tickets or the latest phone. I predict a fun year of people figuring out their taxes.
7: true, our predictions are probably like the retro-future flying cars.
20: what are we to make of a trivial example like RBG being social besties with Scalia? I think that is a sign of not seeing the opposition as being Enemies, and to not see Republicans as Enemies requires som serious privilege.
The turnstiles on the (new, inferior, section of the) metro here (1) take too long to read your (tapped) card and (2) shriek in protest and refuse to read the card if you step too far forward. Thus, by the time the machine has read your card, your forward momentum has carried you into the forbidden zone.
You should carry a selfie stick loaded with your card so you can tap it three feet sooner.
Or learn to walk like the locals, at the speed of geology. But I prefer your plan.
101.2: For RBG, I think that might be a generational thing? A professional woman her age had to have built a career around maintaining cordial working relationships with horrifying men, just on gender stuff. (Did I ever mention that an old friend of mine worked as her secretary for a while when she was at Colombia? He thought she was wonderful, but also had a 'funny' story he liked to tell about having lectured her about being properly affectionate to her husband, which she apparently took in good humor. If she could take that kind of nonsense from a male secretary, and leave him thinking they had a warmly friendly relationship, she could get along with anyone, regardless of their beliefs.)
Of course, she had him killed when she made Supreme Court.
Nah, Chris lived another ten years or so after she was on the court. If she arranged his lung cancer, she was playing a long game.
Sometimes the court sends you a writ of habeas corpus.
An appellate court is a closed environment. Being reasonably socially friendly with your fellow judges (basically, the only people in the world other than your clerks whom you can talk to about anything other than banalities) is necessary to function and for the work environment to not break down completely. An inability to be sociable in that environment makes you a worse and less effective judge and is a failing at the job (as, apparently, Gorsuch is finding out). RBG certainly knew how to take it out on Scalia where it mattered, in significant legal opinions. I wouldn't read anything more into their going to the opera together than that (and that they legitimately both liked opera). Only on the internet do we have the luxury of fully uncompromised contempt for political enemies.
THERE, AND IN THE SADDLE.
Did they both really like opera or did they just feel that as Supreme Court justices, it would be weird if people saw them at a tractor pull?
What's coming up? The gorge, in my throat.
Do I sense a reluctance to try to predict the year this time around? I'm certainly reluctant. I don't feel like I have any idea what's going to happen next year, but the tail risks are unusually numerous. It's Black Swans all the way down.
The big wildcard in 2018 is Mueller. What is he going to do, and what is Trump going to do in response?
Absent Mueller, I think none of these black swans would fly in 2018: War with North Korea; significant new foreign military adventurism by the US; a Trump health scare; Democratic control of the Senate; a serious economic downturn.
But Mueller clearly has big plans, and Trump is going to be extraordinarily dangerous if he's backed into a corner. It's going to be a weird year.
This is a guess, not an assertion based on much knowledge or thought, but isn't the problem woth public financing in the US environment that under current law you still couldn't eliminate private financing (because of the Constitution, suppsedly). So you'd still have to compete with private funds (and raise them) so long as your opponent was doing so, and there would still be the SuperPACs and supposedly non-coordinated campaign funds around. In the one place we do have public financing, Presidential elections, candidates from both parties have rejected it in recent years.
It's like they always said, the constitution is a death pact.
because of the Constitution, suppsedly
What's the consensus among legal types about (a) the money-is-speech line in the first place and (b) the line that fictional/corporate persons enjoy the right to free speech exactly as natural persons do? The first has always seemed weird to me but I'm sure there are probably plausibly justifications for it; the second struck me as an elementary confusion.
Aparently there are a decent number of states with opt-in public financing for state elections. These don't seem on a glance to make governance much better (at least using the metric "Arizona government sucks").
http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/public-financing-of-campaigns-overview.aspx
Arizona is where the Supremes struck down the most "evening" part of that law, however. (If I am interpreting this correctly.)
That said, I have no idea if the period 1998-2011 when it was in effect had comparatively "better" outcomes.
113.1: my prediction is autumn 2018 opens the window of opportunity for a significant economic downturn. I'm not shorting anything, because I have no idea exactly when it will happen, but our lack of a robust regulatory system means it's inevitable LTCM and 2008 will repeat.
118 - I had forgotten about that decision, maybe the least defensible of the Buckley/Citizens United cases (the State can't provide matching funds if a candidate raises more from private sources, because that is state action discouraging private actors from funding i.e. "speaking" as much as they want ... OK.) But, agreed, unclear if the law made much of a difference even when in effect.
116 - generally speaking I think that the "money as speech" thing is plausible in some ways and in some contexts (ie a law banning the Communist party from raising more than $5 in donations would be viewpoint discrimination under the 1st amendment, even if the law only limited expenditure of money) but there is absolutely no reason to have read into campaign finance law the broad restrictions in and post Buckley v Valeo and their doing so has been a disaster (probably overstated and oversimplified by the online left, but what isn't).
McCain and Obama basically killed federal public financing in 2008. McCain used his intent to register for public financing as collateral for primary campaign debt (IIRC), and then when he emerged as the winner, the private money came in and he paid off his debts without opting into public financing. Obama, after speaking favorably of public financing in previous years (IIRC), then decided not to go for it as he was raising record levels of money. Democratic strategists hailed the coming of small donor democracy and the influence of ordinary people in government now that big donors didn't dominate campaign financing anymore. Republicans banked on court cases like Citiizens United.
The history of campaign financing in the US is full of people finding alternative organizations to raise and spend money if the candidates themselves are under restrictions. The legislation that created the FEC was supposed to reorganize campaign financing to close out strategies like creating alternative, additional campaign committees when each committee had a cap, and that structure sort of seemed to work for a while, but I guess some of the adherence to it came down to norms like simply choosing not to raise "soft money", or running the FEC in a more nonpartisan way, and money-as-speech has been eating away at the legal basis pretty much from the very start of the FEC.
ie a law banning the Communist party from raising more than $5 in donations would be viewpoint discrimination under the 1st amendment, even if the law only limited expenditure of money
But would that be because of the donations, or a limitation on the act of donating, or because it was target at the CP specifically, and limited their ability to do anything with money?
The targeting, which makes it "viewpoint" discrimination, but I think a law would be unconstitutional only if it targeted the act of donation, meaning that for such a law to be prohibited by the 1st A campaign donations would have to count in some sense as "speech." But the "in some sense" is doing a lot of work there. The bigger question is whether it violates the First Amendment to impose viewpoint or content neutral limits on donations to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption in the election process, and I don't see much or any reason to read the 1st Amendment as preventing that kind of law.
That sb "unconstitutional even if it only" not "only if"
Obviously, the Constitution means what 5 particular people say it means. Sometimes they say things we like, sometimes they don't.
I'm actually far from convinced that the 14th amendment really incorporates all that stuff, but it's a good thing that at least 5 people disagree with me, so there we are on that. What is "liberty," really, if not the right to shout fire in a crowded theater?
The big wildcard in 2018 is Mueller. What is he going to do
And when. Does he go public just before the midterms, gambling that he'll help bring about his own political backing, or does he gamble that that backing will result anyway, and release after the Dems (maybe!) take the House? If he waits until after the midterms and the Dems don't take the house, I think it doesn't matter what he does, and we'll be living in an authoritarian country.
I can't imagine Mueller thinking that timing like that is within his remit.
I can't imagine Americans thinking Trump should be president. Interesting times.
Arizona is where the Supremes struck down the most "evening" part of that law
Well, requiring candidates to pick up the money at sunset is clearly unconstitutional.
Obvs. Shit like that you do at midnight.
timing like that is within his remit
Right, but he's surely aware of the issue, right? And once you're aware, and you're doing a task that ends when you decide it ends...
Right, but he's surely aware of the issue, right? And once you're aware, and you're doing a task that ends when you decide it ends...
I would think that his goal is to move as quickly as possible (without releasing information too early to cut off other lines of investigation).
Obviously he will have to decide how thorough he wants to be, but given the risk that he could be fired at any moment I don't think he'd want to delay too much.
128: Mueller has a sterling reputation as a nonpartisan professional, much like James Comey.
I think it's reasonably likely that the conservative party will explode as the reality of brexit becomes harder and harder to deny.
Blow up like how? Backbench revolt? No confidence votes? Acting like actual grown-ups? Give a man some hope here.
Hardcore Brexiters go full UKIP, pro-business types align with the right wing of the Lib Dems. It's questionable which, if either, would remain as the Conservative party. It's the Gang of Four all over again.
135. Surprisingly good resignation letter by Andrew Adonis. Of course he's not technically a Tory, but it all adds to the pressure.
From the Adonis resignation letter:
Brexit is a populist and nationalist spasm worthy of Donald Trump.
Ouch.
Its too easy, but I'm predicting a collapse of the cryptocurrency bubble. It will be fun to watch when all the bitcoin "investors" find out what a bank run is.
119: I think this is true, but 2018 is too soon. You need time for the bubble to inflate. Unless the Bitcoin bubble gets large enough to suck in the real finance industry which a) seems impossible, but b) would be hilarious. Is unemployment of millions worth a good gag? Yes, yes it is.
138: Having now read it in its entirety, that was indeed a good letter. Without knowing anything about Adonis, it strikes me as the work of a rat deserting a sinking ship -- but a perceptive rat who knows where the hull has been punctured.
I was interested in this from ajay in 27:
Also I suspect we are headed for a soft brexit which keeps single market membership.
I wouldn't presume to have ajay's knowledge of the situation, but this seems unlikely to me. It looks to me like May's hands are tied, and there is no sensible solution that is politically viable. I'd be happy to be persuaded otherwise.
142: May's hands are also tied by Ireland. Soft Brexit is the easiest way to square the circle on the Northern Ireland.
In seriousness, is there even enough time to negotiate a working brexit at all?
In retrospect, they probably would have better handled Ireland if they knew fucking anything at all about it going in.
It is the dumbest thing ever to happen. It's like bungee jumping by jumping off the bridge and then trying to make arrangements to get a bungee cord while on the way down.
It is definitely the dumbest thing to happen in the first ten months of 2016.
142.2: I don't have vast amounts of inside info on this or anything... Just seems that it's the most likely option. Minimise disruption, give the orcs some flesh to eat like the dark blue passport thing, and fudge something that is still worse than the status quo but not disastrous.
Even if Trump nuked Pyongyang, it was honestly still be less dumb. More evil, but less dumb.
143: I get that it would be insane to have a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, but so what?
The constituency for a soft Brexit exists primarily in Ireland, the EU and the UK political parties that Theresa May doesn't care about.
Admittedly, my view on this is colored by my experience with US politics. I look at the way the Republican Party has rallied 'round the nutjobs, and it's easy for me to see how May can, with her eyes wide open, drive the UK over a cliff.
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Somebody please tell me that this is a mis-reading of poll results. It can't be correct, can it . . . ?
The survey also shows, however, the majority of white Americans -- no matter where they live -- believe that [they're discriminated against]. White people who live in the suburbs are actually the least likely to believe they are racially discriminated against, with just 50 percent of them answering yes, while in rural and urban communities it's a much more popular notion.Specifically, 61 percent of white Americans living in urban environments feel that white people are racially discriminated against, as compared to 63 percent of rural whites.
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150, the difference is that doing hard Brexit requires tons of people to do a lot of stuff. Create new treaties and rules for everything, build customs and other infrastructure at the borders, etc. All this would have to be done by people who don't want to do it, i.e. everyone who works for the government. All the Republicans have to do to damage the country is hire the fox to run the henhouse in every federal agency. Much easier. Brexit is like mandating that 200,000 federally employed hens get together over the course of several years to write, and then carry out, detailed procedures for themselves to get eaten.
151: I do remember us discussing here that it's actually hard to determine systematically what is suburbs and what is city or town or whatever. So it could be an artifact of that confusion.
152: There is certainly an immovable object/irresistible force character to this situation, but I'm still having trouble imagining May backing down on hard Brexit without being crucified by her own party, and therefore, I can't see her backing down.
Procedures only have to be devised if people are interested in having a functioning government after Brexit. There is a strong constituency -- specifically, a big chunk of May's constituency -- that doesn't give a fuck about that. I mean, if they did, why would they have voted for Brexit in the first place? Why do they still support it?
I find Brexit negotiations basically impossible to follow and headache inducing, but doesn't some depend on whether the EU (or Macron and Merkel) just tell Britain to FOAD? I suppose they are probably too consensus-minded to do that and want some continued access to the British market to sell more BMWs or whatever but if I were an EU negotiator it would sure be tempting to go full "my offer is this: nothing."
That poll I linked the other day, showing Germans basically hostile to the US, also showed them totally indifferent to Britain. Adonis says rightly in his letter that getting back into Europe would be the mission of the next generation; but Europe might not take them.
I hope that the new isolationist Britain revives British Leyland. They can make this triangle car again, good for going into triangle tepee garages or triangle igloo garages.
They can also make these cars again. "It's got to seat five people, in comfort, mind, and go nought to 60 in nine seconds." They made a car that could do that!
I did have some schadenfreude reading that recent puff piece of Farage that, despite gushing over him, made him sound like a pathetic sadsack. (As someone smarter than me on Twitter said, "he lives like Kirk van Houten after the divorce.")
Seconding 157. Weird-ass, mid-century British cars? Yes please.
This has been a fun rabbit hole. What happens when the best engineers in the world set out to build a beautiful car? The Morris Marina, that's what.
155: Their position is in fact pretty much just that, although they are willing to hand us some painless euthanasia drugs. Because Brexit was the product of a collective spasm of national self-delusion, like jerking off and expecting to find a real woman holding you when you're finished, it could never have delivered what was promised. But it was also based on the belief that they need us as much -- more, in the brexiteer imagination -- as we need them. Every other country in Europe (except maybe Sweden and Switzerland) was cured of self-importance by 1945. We were driven mad by it.
So it still has not sunk in that
1) there is no such thing as a free trade: we trade on the conditions set by the more powerful party, and that isn't us.
2) The value of Britain to the world outside the EU is largely that we are part of the EU.
3) National sovereignty is a wholly imaginary condition. That's why it's such a powerful idea. But the Left's idea of national sovereignty is an autarchy like Venezuela or Cuba, and the Right's is an imperial power like Britain pre 1914. One is impossible and the other undesirable.
4) The best deal we could possibly get with the EU is the one we had the day before the referendum.
5) the Brexiteers don't want a soft border, or a hard border either. They just hope the rest of the world will fuck off and disappear.
Because "No deal" is the worst possible outcome -- ie, lorries queued up from Dover to London, and a complete breakdown of the Irish settlement, it won't happen, or won't happen quickly. If anything brings it on, it will be fisheries policy.
The Irish settlement prefigures the likeliest medium-term future: we will in fact remain part of the single market because there can't be a border, regulatory or physical, between the two parts of Ireland or the two parts of the UK -- but everyone will maintain that we are not, and it is pure coincidence that British legislation so closely tracks whatever the EU demand. An early example of this is the GDPR. The orcs get their blue passports (and I get an Irish one) while all the little businesses get to keep going.
All this assumes that the EU holds together, survives the upcoming Italian elections, etc. The only way for Brexit to make sense is for the whole EU project to collapse, and there are some loonies who want this to happen.
Learn Mandarin, fellow citizens. It will be more use than Russian.
In the medium term, what we get is likely to be a soft brexit, but presented in a METAL typeface. I don't think that's sustainable over the long term, though.
In the short term, May faces the choice of breaking her party or breaking her country and will probably compromise by doing both.
It is still possible that the great majority of the House of Commons, who are perfectly well aware of what a ludicrous farce this is, may avert disaster and revoke Article 50. But whether the remorse comes before or after the divorce is final, there will still be a voice claiming that everything which goes wrong is the fault of the foreigners, and without them everything would be right. That voice controls at least half the press.
152 is a hilarious summary of why hard Brexit is impossible. Staying is impossible, because Brexit support cuts across the parties. Soft Brexit is impossible because of Tory party politics. Hard Brexit is impossible because the Tories are completely incapable of governing. From this we can only conclude that on the 29th of March, 2019, the contradictions will cause the UK to vanish in a puff of smoke.
In seriousness, is there even enough time to negotiate a working brexit at all?
No. This has been another in our ongoing series...
More detail: it can be achieved by May overriding her stupid ministers and going to Brussels and caving to the EU position on every significant issue. This process has already been started. I suspect this is why ajay thinks we're headed for a soft Brexit, as that is what would result if such an anti-strategy were carried through consistently.
167: Sounds like the least bad available outcome.
If that happens, Britain would be left complying with presumably all EU laws, plus a bunch of US laws via SOX and the like, while having no role at all in making those laws. It would be presumably the largest single economy ever to have so little control of its own affairs. It would be kind of fascinating in its own right.
I guess I should say British organizations, rather than Britain itself, with regard to most regulations.
163: As MC says, thanks. I see it more clearly now, and would look into Mandarin lessons, but I fear that might get me on some kind of list here in the US.
If I were May I'd be scouting for a face-saving excuse for resigning that makes my legacy something other than "she messed everything up even worse", which seems inevitable if she serves out a full term.
Maybe she'll keep deferring with the current workaround of agreeing to stay in accord with EU laws until such time as the Irish circle is squared, then resign March 2019 with "my work here is done".
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NMM2 Sue Grafton. Got as far as Y. There is no god.
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Or there is. "X is for xenophobia" maybe is better left alone.
Apparently it's just called "X". I haven't read it.
2) The value of Britain to the world outside the EU is largely that we are part of the EU.
Doubly so for Ireland, but there are fools arguing for "Irexit," on the idea that since a lot of Ireland's trade is with the UK it'd be better if Ireland economically reintegrated with it. I don't even know where to start.
172: How about carrying out the plan to have the UK leave the EU, but re-jiggering the structure of the UK so it only consists of the Channel Islands or Bermuda, and the rest stays. Bonus: the Royal Family then has to live in Bermuda.
I don't actually know any more than anyone else who reads the papers, except that I get to talk to the people who write the politics stories, and do know a lot more. But the argument from post-imperial stress disorder seems irrefutable. AIMHMHB I was a baby in Ismailia, half way down the canal, in the year of Suez, and when the referendum result came through I realised that the country had learned nothing at all in my lifetime.
179: It's stunningly amazing. They had the best possible set up a country of their size and economy could possibly have and they just completely blew it. No sense of solidarity, just some stupid, misguided idea of their own importance in this world. All for blue passports and sticking it to their neighbors. (Ironically, since US passports are also blue, as an anglophile I interpreted the burgundy ones as a classy British thing. I assumed it was ancient, akin to painting your empire pink on maps. Oops.)
Feel like the Scottish Highlands, Shetland and Orkney should all go back to Norway, their original and rightful ruler. That way they could be part of a country that already has a working relationship with the EU and is heavily focused on North Sea oil and fishing.
And periodic invasions of England.
And if they need a new Jarl of Orkney to act as Viceroy of the Norweigian crown I have someone in mind.
Back off, Halford. I'm already in Norway. The job is rightfully mine.
I'm willing to be lord lieutenant of Hoy or whatever.
184 - settling this dispute is literally what battle axe duels are there for.
Take heart. If you lose, you'll be sainted and they'll build a church to you.
185 and 186 were me, stupid phone. 188 is right: there were probably Pictish or Pictish-like people there before the Norse. And on the mainland, the Norse only held Caithness (hence Caithness Norn) and maybe Sutherland. It's not a very well-documented time/place.
Err, I mean, there were people there since forever and a half ago, and the ones immediately before the Norse had a material culture that largely agrees with Pictishness but there's a lot unclear. (And we've found weird stuff like the Buckquoy Whorl which is probably in Irish ogham, so there might or might not have been a Gaelic presence)
167
As I understand it, didn't doing that lead to a back bench revolt? If May does cave to the EU, doesn't she end up deposed by troglodytes in her party and then Boris Johnson or someone like that ends up as PM?
I stand by my statement that the US is more fucked up in the short-term, with potential to end the world as we know it, but the UK is more fucked up in long-term. There doesn't seem any way to undo Brexit, even if everyone who supported it died suddenly and the UK was left with only radical Europhiles.
I first heard of the Picts in a novel which made them sound mythical. I'm still slightly surprised they were real.
Norway taking back the Hebridies will allow us to call those islands "Sodor" again, an essential step to establishing the \train-based utopia promised by the Thomas prophecy. It has all been foretold.
If Norway tried to impose its drinking laws on Scotland you would have civil war within a week.
I stand by my statement that the US is more fucked up in the short-term, with potential to end the world as we know it, but the UK is more fucked up in long-term. There doesn't seem any way to undo Brexit, even if everyone who supported it died suddenly and the UK was left with only radical Europhiles.
There's (probably*) no way to formally reverse it, but it's the sort of thing that would be euro-fudged if the UK were to totally capitulate, which would probably involve giving up the rebate.
*There's actually some dispute about this from third parties, and it may even go to the ECJ, but the parties are operating on the basis that the notification is irrevocable.
Trump won't be impeached. He might leave office by other means.
The Buckfast Wars would be brutal.
Most Democrats won't run on impeachment. Those that do will win.
195: the guy who wrote article 50 thinks it can be revoked.
We are in fact going to capitulate totally because this government has no cards to play and no players. The task of the May government is to conceal this from the Express/Telegraph readership. In this they may well have the help of the proprietors, who also want to avoid an economic catastrophe.
Even if we do revoke Rt 50 the rebate is gone, I think, forever. The joke is that this would be less of a capitulation than the alternative, since we would still have a (diminished) vote in the EU, whereas with a soft Brexit sold as a hard one we will have no vote in the rules we must follow. But try selling that to the great British public.
In this they may well have the help of the proprietors, who also want to avoid an economic catastrophe.
Whereas this is probably true, it makes one wonder what Desmond and the Barclays thought they were playing at in the first place.
I don't think they expected to win. No one expected them to win. It was, like YouTube algorithms, a way of increasing reader engagement by stoking up the outrage; it was also a way to become a player in the internal politics of the tory party (as Charles Moore did when he swung the Telegraph behind Iain Duncan SMith).
And Desmond, of course, is just a nihilistic cunt.
Murdoch, meanwhile, simply hates Britain and wants to destroy everything symbolic of it: the BBC, the NHS, the Royal Family, the Times. Takes after his father.
Back on that whole DCCC BS, Maciej Ciegloski got hold of their Memo of Understanding with the candidates.
I took 202 as read. Also that the Harmsworths are embodiments of evil from the womb.
OT: There are more Amish people on the plane than I expected.
No one expects an Amish pilot.
An Amish pilot would make me distinctly nervous. Which it shouldn't, because Amish people are totally pragmatic about technology, and she'd be as well trained as anybody else in the job.
Slogan: "We Didn't Start Aviation In Turkey, But We Transformed It."
Interestingly ambiguous, I thought.
And it was going so well until I turned East