Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[helene_t]

I think that I will focus more on bridge discussions

W00t! The bridge discussions have lost many valuable contributors over the last few years, it would be cool if you could help making BBF great again :)

[y66]

From The dark side of American conservatism has taken over by Max Boot at WaPo:

 

You know how, after you watch a movie with a surprise ending, you sometimes replay the plot in your head to find the clues you missed the first time around? That’s what I’ve been doing lately with the history of conservatism — a movement I had been part of since my teenage days as a conservative columnist at the University of California at Berkeley in the early 1990s. In the decades since, I have written for numerous conservative publications and served as a foreign policy adviser to three Republican presidential candidates. It would be nice to think that Donald Trump is an anomaly who came out of nowhere to take over an otherwise sane and sober movement. But it just isn’t so.

 

Upon closer examination, it’s obvious that the history of modern conservative is permeated with racism, extremism, conspiracy-mongering, isolationism and know-nothingism. I disagree with progressives who argue that these disfigurations define the totality of conservatism; conservatives have also espoused high-minded principles that I still believe in, and the bigotry on the right appeared to be ameliorating in recent decades. But there has always been a dark underside to conservatism that I chose for most of my life to ignore. It’s amazing how little you can see when your eyes are closed!

 

The history of the modern Republican Party is the story of moderates being driven out and conservatives taking over — and then of those conservatives in turn being ousted by those even further to the right. A telling moment came in 1996, when the Republican presidential nominee, Bob Dole, visited an aged Barry Goldwater. Once upon a time, Dole and Goldwater had defined the Republican right, but by 1996, Dole joked, “Barry and I — we’ve sort of become the liberals.” “We’re the new liberals of the Republican Party,” Goldwater agreed. “Can you imagine that?”

 

The ascendance of extreme views, abetted in recent years by Fox News, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and the tea party movement, increasingly made the House Republican caucus ungovernable. The far-right Freedom Caucus drove House Speaker John A. Boehner into retirement in 2015. His successor, Paul D. Ryan, lasted only three years. Ryan’s retirement signals the final repudiation of an optimistic, inclusive brand of Reaganesque conservatism focused on enhancing economic opportunity at home and promoting democracy and free trade abroad. The Republican Party will now be defined by Trump’s dark, divisive vision, with his depiction of Democrats as America-hating, criminal-coddling traitors, his vilification of the press as the “enemy of the people,” and his ugly invective against Mexicans and Muslims. The extremism that many Republicans of goodwill had been trying to push to the fringe of their party is now its governing ideology.

 

That’s why I can no longer be a Republican, and in fact wish ill fortune on my former party. I am now convinced that the Republican Party must suffer repeated and devastating defeats beginning in November. It must pay a heavy price for its embrace of white nationalism and know-nothingism. Only if the GOP as it is currently constituted is burned to the ground will there be any chance to build a reasonable center-right party out of the ashes. But that will require undoing the work of decades, not just of the past two years.

Got a light?

[hrothgar]

Winston, I will answer this question by asking a question….not nice I know….but here goes: When will you, your fellow democrats, congresspeople, and senators accept the fact that Donald J. Trump is the duly elected President of the United States of America and start working to try to help him be successful?

 

"Success" for Trump means

 

1. Corruption and personal enrichment

2. More tax cuts for the 1% funded by slashing entitlement programs

3. More conservative judges packed into critical courts

4. More attempts to destroy Obamacare

5. More attempts to disenfranchise black, hispanics, gays, and the wrong sorts of whites

...

 

There is nothing here that I can compromise with.

 

I accept that Trump won a highly problematic election.

However, I expect to give him the same degree of support that the Republicans provided for Obama.

 

Moreover, I think that the Democrats should be even more extreme and announcing that anything that the Republics do accomplish will be cast to the winds.

[y66]

From Paul Volcker, at 91, Sees ‘a Hell of a Mess in Every Direction’ by Andrew Sorkin at NYT:

 

Paul Volcker, wearing a blue sweatsuit and black dress socks, stretched out on a recliner in the den of his Upper East Side apartment on a Sunday afternoon. His lanky 6-foot-7 frame extended beyond the end of the chair’s leg rest. He added an ottoman to rest his feet.

 

“I’m not good,” said Mr. Volcker, 91, the former Federal Reserve chairman, who came to prominence after he used shockingly high interest rates to help end the runaway inflation of the late 1970s and early ’80s. Long one of finance’s wise men, he has been sick for several months.

 

But he would rather not talk about himself. Instead, Mr. Volcker wants to talk about the country, the economy and the government. And if he had seemed lethargic when I arrived, he turned lively in his laments: “We’re in a hell of a mess in every direction,” he said.

 

Hundreds of books surrounded Mr. Volcker — filling shelves and piled high on virtually every flat surface — as did pink pages of The Financial Times, folded into origami. “Respect for government, respect for the Supreme Court, respect for the president, it’s all gone,” he said. “Even respect for the Federal Reserve.

 

“And it’s really bad. At least the military still has all the respect. But I don’t know, how can you run a democracy when nobody believes in the leadership of the country?”

 

Before Mr. Volcker fell ill, he finished his memoir, “Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government.” The book was supposed to be published in late November, but given Mr. Volcker’s health, its publisher, PublicAffairs, a unit of Hachette, moved its release up to Oct. 30.

 

“I had no intention of writing a book, but there was something that kind of was irritating me,” he said. “I’m really worried about this governance thing.”

[y66]

“I can’t help but ask, one day many years later, when you find your previous awareness, cognition and choices are all wrong, will you keep going along the wrong path or reject yourself?” — Gu Li, a 9-dan Go champion, after losing to AlphaGo, Google’s nigh-unbeatable deep learning AI.

[y66]

From Can the Guy Who Fixed Twitter’s Fail Whale Save the DNC? by Joshua Brustein at Bloomberg:

 

The Democratic party knows it has fallen far behind the GOP in tech savvy. Creative digital strategy was a signature attribute of Trump’s campaign, made possible in part by a years-long effort by the Republican Party to build data infrastructure. Democratic digital operatives bemoan as unethical efforts led by Brad Parscale, Trump’s digital director, to drive down turnout among black voters, as well as the Trump-affiliated firm Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data it obtained through questionable means. They also acknowledge Parscale’s operation as a clever, if relatively basic, example of how to do targeted political advertising. Trump has already tapped Parscale to run his re-election effort.

 

Overall, Democratic candidates spend a smaller proportion of their advertising budgets than Republicans on digital ads. Their counterpart to the Republicans’ data infrastructure, a master list of information about potential supporters known as the voter file, is in dire need of an overhaul. Democrats complain that their innovations tend to disappear after Election Day, when the people who build them move on to other jobs, a phenomenon that one frustrated engineer called “electoral abandonware.”

 

Krikorian’s primary goal is to build a lasting data and tech foundation that Democratic candidates and organizations can use as the basis for their own innovations. Since he joined the DNC, his team has swelled to 35 people, an all-time high for the committee and about a quarter of its total staff. But the DNC hasn’t solved its chronic financial struggles—it had $10.3 million in cash at the end of September and more than $7.3 million of debt and obligations, according to financial disclosures—and is also in deep reputational debt. Many Democrats haven’t forgiven the committee for its failings during the 2016 campaign. They’re skeptical that innovation can come from the traditional machinery of the party instead of via scrappy campaigns and independent startups. For Krikorian, the rancor coming from ostensible allies has been one of the biggest shocks of his first foray into politics. “I probably didn’t do enough research about how much people would hate me,” he said.

 

Krikorian is a soft-spoken engineer who grew up in Queens, New York, to a Syrian father and a Filipino mother. Krikorian, now 40, said that he was always intellectually interested in politics, but described that interest in a way that makes clear why he went into engineering: “The systems problem is super-fascinating,” he said.

 

Krikorian studied and then taught at MIT. After school, he tried his hand as an entrepreneur, first founding a tech consultancy and then a startup that made a tool to measure personal energy consumption. He joined Twitter in 2009 and made a name for himself by eliminating the Fail Whale, a large cartoon creature that appeared whenever the service was overcome by traffic.

 

During the Obama years, the administration began to poach many of Krikorian’s colleagues. In turn, some of his friends tried to lure him to work in government. Krikorian and his wife, a computer science professor at Stanford, took the idea seriously but ultimately couldn’t bring themselves to move to Washington. Later, after Krikorian left Twitter to lead Uber’s self-driving-car division, another friend attempted to get him to join Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Once again, he declined.

The regret kicked in as Krikorian watched the 2016 election results. “This isn’t the world I was taught about when I was younger,” he said. Krikorian called some old friends who had worked for Obama and told them he wanted to get involved. Several months later, he found himself trying to explain to DNC officials how clueless they were about technology. He also considered joining the ACLU. Last summer, the DNC hired him.

 

People who have worked with Krikorian describe him as a soothing, egoless presence. He found himself having to lean hard on these attributes once he started traveling as a representative of the DNC. Early in his tenure, he met with a group of programmers who had worked with Bernie Sanders. They launched into a rant about all the ways the DNC had stymied their insurgent campaign.

 

It was Krikorian’s first real exposure to the leftover bitterness from the 2016 campaign. This bitterness, as well as institutional resistance to jettisoning such traditional strategies as television advertising, has consistently colored Krikorian’s work. Shomik Dutta, co-founder of Higher Ground Labs, an incubator for political tech startups that has worked closely with Krikorian, credited him with pushing people within the traditional Democratic machinery to open up to the wave of new players that has emerged since Trump’s election. “The good news and the bad news is that this is a political problem,” Dutta said.

 

But it will be hard for the DNC to improve its positioning within the broader Democratic landscape, said a senior Democratic operative who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating political allies. This is largely a matter of expectations. The DNC doesn’t control the party’s messaging, and is only a supporting player on the campaign trail. Broadly speaking, the committee just doesn’t have the power to do what many people assume it is supposed to be doing. “It’s a problem that the DNC is a weak organization,” this person said. “It’s an even bigger problem that people expect it to be a big organization.”

 

Anton Vuljaj, a former Google employee who is now a Republican digital consultant, says his party’s superiority in technology came from its forced march through wilderness during the Obama years. People in Republican politics were beset by an urgency to regain power, and donors were happy to fund ambitious projects that would help. This led the GOP to build a data operation that could serve as the foundation of a digital campaign for whatever candidate came along. Then the Republicans stumbled onto a nominee whose approach to digital campaigning was unusually experimental.

 

“I’m intrigued to see how the Democrats will respond to this situation. They’re in the same spot we were,” said Vuljaj. When asked for evidence that the GOP’s edge in tech may be eroding, he drew a blank. “I just don’t see much,” he said.

 

Last month, Howard Dean, formerly a presidential candidate and DNC chair, participated in a public discussion about the intersection of technology and politics. The host was Jessica Alter, co-founder of Tech for Campaigns, a group that has recruited thousands of volunteers and built technology to help Democratic candidates with digital operations. It’s the sort of work one might imagine the DNC carrying out. “We’ve all picked off sections of the pie that really, the DNC should be doing—and we do it better,” Alter said.

 

Dean agreed. “I fundamentally don’t think you can change the institution of the Democratic Party. I think you should ignore it,” he said. The role of the DNC, he said, shouldn’t extend far beyond organizing the party convention. “The Democratic establishment is not going to look anything like it does today 10 years from now. It’s going to become less and less important.”

In a subsequent interview, Dean told Bloomberg News that he thought Krikorian had been making the best of a challenging situation. “If Raffi could do whatever he wanted, we’d be fine,” he said. “This is an internal politics problem.”

 

The pushback from other Democrats has worn on Krikorian. “I want to say you let it roll off your back, but there are 35 people on my team who feel the animosity,” he said. Still, Krikorian agreed in part with Dean’s argument. Krikorian has looked to jettison the DNC’s role in some areas: No one at the DNC should ever code an app, he said, when there are plenty of good developers for hire. Krikorian has also outsourced some modeling of voter data to outside firms.

 

But Krikorian thinks that there are certain things that it makes sense to do only through a centralized institution such as the DNC. He worries that today's political startups are more vulnerable to the extreme highs and lows of the electoral cycle than they'd like to admit. This is something that's likely to become clear only after the next presidential election, when money and energy for campaigning tend to dissipate. “There’s been no evidence from outside organizations that they’ll be able to withstand the boom-and-bust cycle. They all show up, and then disappear, and the DNC is the only one left standing,” he said. “Knock on wood, we win in 2020. But win or not, I want the team in 2021 to be building on top of us, instead of starting from scratch.”

"But Krikorian thinks that there are certain things that it makes sense to do only through a centralized institution such as the DNC." I think this is partially right -- the DNC obviously has an important role -- but mostly wrong -- the most important things require effective, persistent networks. I feel sure Krikorian will eventually figure this out.

[barmar]

Twitter Agog At Dennison Whopper That Californians Are ‘Rioting’ Over Sanctuary Cities

 

There is no lie to big, too small, or too irrevelant for Dennison. He's a one man lying machine who is completely divorced from reality. Maybe there were some posts by alt-right bloggers complaining about sanctuary cities. How this translates to rioting is something only Dennison seems to know.

Everything is a superlative to Trump. Everything he does is the "best" or "biggest". Everything he inherited from previous administrations (including Republicans) is the "worst", like NAFTA, the Iran deal, nuclear treaties (he's threatening dismantling a Reagan treaty with Russia). Refugees from Latin America are all gang members and criminals, the caravan is overwhelming; refugees from the Middle East are terrorists. Even talking about other polticians and national leaders, he regularly refers to being "in love" with them if they're on his side.

 

This is why he generally sounds like a 5 year old to me. No normal adult acts like this all the time.

[barmar]

I figured out the position Dennison has taken on the Kashoggi murder. By claiming we can't afford to lose a supposed arms deal with the Saudis, he is simply saying, See, it's not personal; it's business.

OTOH, I can't help wondering where the US would be if our allies pulled out of important deals every time the CIA assassinated a foreign national. Or how about the torturing in Abu Ghraib?

 

It's right to be outraged, but this really is "business as usual" in international affairs.

[sharon j]

From The dark side of American conservatism has taken over by Max Boot at WaPo:

 

 

Got a light?

 

It's hard to fight an organization that is soaked in secrecy: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/20/house-freedom-caucus-what-is-it-and-whos-in-it/

[Winstonm]

Everything is a superlative to Trump. Everything he does is the "best" or "biggest". Everything he inherited from previous administrations (including Republicans) is the "worst", like NAFTA, the Iran deal, nuclear treaties (he's threatening dismantling a Reagan treaty with Russia). Refugees from Latin America are all gang members and criminals, the caravan is overwhelming; refugees from the Middle East are terrorists. Even talking about other polticians and national leaders, he regularly refers to being "in love" with them if they're on his side.

 

This is why he generally sounds like a 5 year old to me. No normal adult acts like this all the time.

 

What he acts like is a demagogue. https://theconversation.com/the-rhetorical-brilliance-of-trump-the-demagogue-51984

[Winstonm]

It's hard to fight an organization that is soaked in secrecy: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/20/house-freedom-caucus-what-is-it-and-whos-in-it/

 

It's hard for me to understand why people still do not accept this: (from the link you provided/emphasis added)

 

In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites. As I now look back with the clarity of hindsight, I am convinced that coded racial appeals had at least as much, if not more, to do with the electoral success of the modern Republican Party than all of the domestic and foreign policy proposals crafted by well-intentioned analysts like me. This is what liberals have been saying for decades. I never believed them. Now I do, because Trump won by making the racist appeal, hitherto relatively subtle, obvious even to someone such as me who used to be in denial.

 

This, from a lifelong conservative, too. Why some still deny this is a mystery to me.

[Winstonm]

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/president-trump-just-called-himself-152000580.html

[y66]

It's hard to fight an organization that is soaked in secrecy: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/20/house-freedom-caucus-what-is-it-and-whos-in-it/

I see that Dave Brat, the guy who primaried then Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor into political oblivion in June 2014, ranks among the top 5 House Freedom Caucus members in terms of ideological score. He is in a tight race which Nate Silver and the Cook Political Report rate as a toss-up in a district that was once (pre court order) solidly gerrymandered Republican:

 

In 2014, economics professor Dave Brat turned the political world upside-down when he upset House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the GOP primary by taking a hard line on illegal immigration. But four years later, he's at risk of getting swept out by a Democratic wave in a rapidly moderating district anchored by the professional Richmond suburbs. After courts redrew the 7th CD in 2016, President Trump took just 50 percent here, down from Mitt Romney's 56 percent in 2012.

 

In June, former undercover CIA operative Abigail Spanberger crushed a well-funded Democratic primary opponent with 73 percent of the vote in an impressive display of grassroots support. Spanberger grew up in Henrico County (the 7th CD) writing a diary in code. As a pragmatic woman with a non-political resume, she could offer a problematic contrast for Brat, a Freedom Caucus member who complained last year about women "in my grill" at town halls.

 

The top of the ticket could also be a big problem for Brat. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine is highly popular in the Richmond suburbs, while ultra-conservative GOP Senate nominee Corey Stewart is a highly polarizing figure who lost the 7th CD 61 percent to 33 percent in his primary. In 2017, well-funded GOP gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie carried the 7th CD by four points. If Stewart isn't competitive, Brat could suffer if Republicans stay home.

 

Brat, who has shied away from questions about Stewart, has never had to run in a competitive general election before. He's mended fences with GOP leadership and is running with the NRCC's active help. Spanberger has enjoyed help from EMILY's List and raised $903,000 by May. Ironically, the white collar Republicans in the West End Richmond suburbs who long supported Cantor could be the swing voters in this race. It's a Toss Up.

Will Brat go the way of Cantor and Chas_P? The word in the top secret Water Cooler Freedom Caucus is that it could happen which would be swell.

[jjbrr]

But, regardless of his shortcomings, I do think he is working to improve the lives of average Americans and that’s all that is important to me.

 

I'm curious how a racist would describe the "average American" in this context. Surely you meant "average and above Americans" right?

[ldrews]

I'm curious how a racist would describe the "average American" in this context. Surely you meant "average and above Americans" right?

 

Are you accusing Chas_P of being a racist?

[Winstonm]

Oh, look, another Dennison "accomplishment":

 

Stocks tumbled Wednesday, sending the Dow and S&P into the red for the year.

 

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) dropped 3.09%, or 84.59 points, to close at 2,656.10. The index started the year at 2,673.61. The Dow (^DJI) fell 2.41%, or 608.01 points, to close at 24,583.42. The 30-stock index started the year at 24,719.22

[jjbrr]

Are you accusing Chas_P of being a racist?

 

ldrews, let's do an exercise that might be appropriate for a 3rd or 4th grader.

 

You tell me. Do I think chas is racist? Why would I think that?

 

I want you to search this forum for the following criteria:

find words: black

by author: chas_p

display: As posts

 

You can do that by clicking the cog next to the search bar in the top right corner.

 

Read some posts -- there are only a few -- and please let us know what you find.

 

Is chas a racist in your opinion?

[Winstonm]

A step in the right direction.

[johnu]

Dennison Blasts Media ‘Hostility’ After Bomb Sent to Newsroom

 

When I first heard about the pipe bombs sent to CNN and several prominent Democrats, I had some very, very small hope that Dennison would act presidential for more than about 2 minutes. Instead of being President for all Americans, he once again proves that he is the president for only his supporters and to hell with everybody else.

[johnu]

Winston, I will answer this question by asking a question….not nice I know….but here goes: When will you, your fellow democrats, congresspeople, and senators accept the fact that Donald J. Trump is the duly elected President of the United States of America and start working to try to help him be successful? All I’ve seen you do so far is bitch and moan and try to undo the results of the 2016 election because your girl lost.

 

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

 

Poor downtrodden Dennison. He can't accomplish everything he wants because the of the Democrats. Oh wait, that's complete bullsh*t. Republicans control the Presidency, the Senate, the House, and have a majority on the Supreme Court. He doesn't need a single Democratic vote to pass just about any legislation that is proposed. He can issue executive orders, and every department and agency in the Federal government is led by a Republican who was appointed by Dennison. No wonder it is so hard for Dennison to accomplish anything.

 

And why would Democrats help Dennison on his agenda??? So do you mean dismantling environmental regulations and enforcement, suppressing voter rights, actively encouraging facism, racism, discrimination, and white supremacy, attacking the free press, trying to destroy relationships with our allies and acting like a puppet for Russia which definitely is not our ally, personally enriching himself and his family at the expense of the USA???

 

Undo the results of the last election? Who exactly are you talking about? Oh wait, you must be talking about Dennison who thinks he won the popular vote but was cheated because of 10 or 100 million illegals who voted for Clinton.

[ldrews]

ldrews, let's do an exercise that might be appropriate for a 3rd or 4th grader.

 

You tell me. Do I think chas is racist? Why would I think that?

 

I want you to search this forum for the following criteria:

find words: black

by author: chas_p

display: As posts

 

You can do that by clicking the cog next to the search bar in the top right corner.

 

Read some posts -- there are only a few -- and please let us know what you find.

 

Is chas a racist in your opinion?

 

well, let's start at 2nd grade level with you. Reread your original post. By implication the wording assumes Chas_P is a racist. I suggest you learn a little bit more about writing before posting further.

[barmar]

Dennison Blasts Media ‘Hostility’ After Bomb Sent to Newsroom

 

When I first heard about the pipe bombs sent to CNN and several prominent Democrats, I had some very, very small hope that Dennison would act presidential for more than about 2 minutes. Instead of being President for all Americans, he once again proves that he is the president for only his supporters and to hell with everybody else.

I think he actually managed to last about 30 seconds. He made one statement condemning the bombings and saying we should be united against such acts. Then he went off to a campaign rally and returned to his old self.

 

And the President who has spent more time tweeting than governing only managed one tweet about it, just retweeting what Mike Pence said and adding "I agree wholeheartedly". How inspirational.

[Winstonm]

Words matter.

 

In recent years, a term has begun to circulate to capture this phenomenon — “stochastic terrorism,” in which mass communications, including social media, inspire random acts of violence that according to one description “are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.” In other words, every act and actor is different, and no one knows by whom or where an act will happen — but it’s a good bet that something will.

 

Rather than "stochastic terrorism", I think "targeting" is more an apt description as the idea is the demonize, or target a certain group or certain person as an enemy. If someone does decide to act out, this focuses their anger.

[PassedOut]

Words matter.

Rather than "scholastic terrorism", I think "targeting" is more an apt description as the idea is the demonize, or target a certain group or certain person as an enemy. If someone does decide to act out, this focuses their anger.

stochastic

[Winstonm]

thx - fixed