American Politics Discussion Thread

[MJW (ya that one)]

Trump banned from Twitter! GOP should hold on 'till 2028 when they lose TX, DEMs break the third term curse and win with a progressive. This will make them nuke the filibuster.

AK wouldn't nuke filibuster, even if she switches, so GOP stays alive.

The first thing the Dems need to do is hold onto the Senate and House in 2022.  I think the past three presidents had their party in control of Congress at the start of their term and at least one of those flipped at their midterm election.

House is toast for DEMs in 2022. Majority too small and almost always lose seats. Only recent exceptions where 2002 (9/11) and 1998 (caused by DEMs having a bad year in 1996 because of tactical voting because everyone new Clinton would win because of Ross Perot)

[Jowy]

It was such a mess that I didn't believe it was a real coup attempt, but with more info coming out, we were lucky they were incompetent. The nazis were flown in and had planned this in advance, many of them were in the group who forced their way inside. There was a truck near the capitol that was full of guns and bombs (E: 2 guns, 11 bombs, not quite full but still). Security reinforcement was denied before and even during the attempt up to a point (was it Pence who had to approve it in the end?). There's video of cops just chilling on the side of a hallway, letting people walk past them to the inside. I don't think killing the politicians would have prevented Biden from becoming president, but it certainly would have had a massive impact on the country. Something much much worse than 9/11.

[Cyneheard]

Trump banned from Twitter! GOP should hold on 'till 2028 when they lose TX, DEMs break the third term curse and win with a progressive. This will make them nuke the filibuster.

AK wouldn't nuke filibuster, even if she switches, so GOP stays alive.

The first thing the Dems need to do is hold onto the Senate and House in 2022.  I think the past three presidents had their party in control of Congress at the start of their term and at least one of those flipped at their midterm election.

House is toast for DEMs in 2022. Majority too small and almost always lose seats. Only recent exceptions where 2002 (9/11) and 1998 (caused by DEMs having a bad year in 1996 because of tactical voting because everyone new Clinton would win because of Ross Perot)

So let's game out 2022 a little bit, I know what history says but these aren't normal times:
1) 2022 should be the first relatively sane year for COVID and the economy. Biden will get a ton of credit for that. 2002 is absolutely a possible analogy, as the President who got us through a national trauma.
2) Dems are learning their lessons about how to run elections in this new world - Georgia was the clearest example of that new playbook. Ossoff and Warnock ran rings around Loeffler and Perdue, and the people who work on elections noticed. That's also an example of Dem turnoff NOT declining when the President isn't on the ballot (can the GOP say the same without Trump on the ballot?).
3) This GOP is about to have the mother of all fights over Trump/the insurrection/political violence/voter suppression/etc.. Especially since there will be another impeachment vote unless Trump gets pushed to resign first, and we all know that is unlikely. And pressure on GOPers who instigated Wednesday's insurrection attempt isn't going to go away any time soon - they're not going to stay unified at all. Are you so sure that Trump won't be the primary person the GOP revolves around 12-18 months from now?
4) The right-wing media is in for a reckoning. Parler is off GooglePlay and soon to be off Apple. FB, Twitter, Reddit etc are all moving against the worst RW voices (which includes Trump). Their mainstream legitimacy is at an all-time low and they're not getting that back any time soon either.

[suboptimal]

The GOP infighting that occurs is going to determine the outcomes in the House, I think. It's the Senate race that's going to get the most attention and campaign dollars. The 2022 election will see a larger number of GOP seats up for election (13 Dem, 21 Rep) and these are all the senators that were elected simulaaneously with Trump. The seat Loeffler just lost will be in the race, as will Mark Kelly's, Murkowski, Rubio and Johnson (WI).

[Cyneheard]

The GOP infighting that occurs is going to determine the outcomes in the House, I think.  It's the Senate race that's going to get the most attention and campaign dollars.  The 2022 election will see a larger number of GOP seats up for election (13 Dem, 21 Rep) and these are all the senators that were elected simulaaneously with Trump.  The seat Loeffler just lost will be in the race, as will Mark Kelly's, Murkowski, Rubio and Johnson (WI).

You're right, the Senate will get the attention and campaign dollars. That's going to require some discipline on where the $ goes.

So the Way Too Early sense of what that map will be:

Murkowski likely wins the AK seat, but it's less clear which party she'll be caucusing with at that time. That's a wild card.

GA (Warnock), AZ (Kelly), NH (Hassan), NV (Cortez Masto) are the potentially in-play Dem seats, in roughly that order (NH could easily have a strong GOP candidate - Gov. Sununu won by 30 points this year). 

PA (open), WI (Johnson), NC (open), FL (Rubio) are the GOP seats that are most at-risk. Lt. Gov. Fetterman looks to be running for Senate in PA, and he should be a very formidable candidate for the Dems there. IA, KS, OH and SC will all have dark-horse "we're going to send way too much money to these races that still end up going GOP +8" potential. IA should be an open seat, because Grassley would be 89, but he might run again.

Of course, there could always be a crazy primary that makes an opening (see Alabama special election), but let me put it this way: I think for any state not listed above, during an actual midterm election, it'll be really tough to flip anything else. A terrible GOP candidate in OK or ID wins by 8 points instead of 15-20.

[darrelljs]

https://www.kmov.com/news/sen-hawleys-ca...c8e1a.html

[superdeath]

IA should be an open seat, because Grassley would be 89, but he might run again.

There needs to be an age limit on this. Grassley is far too old to be able to represent me or any other Iowan that isnt in a nursing home.

[Cyneheard]

IA should be an open seat, because Grassley would be 89, but he might run again.

There needs to be an age limit on this. Grassley is far too old to be able to represent me or any other Iowan that isnt in a nursing home.

I would love an age limit. It doesn't help that discussing a candidate's age is verboten.

The age limit would be fairly high - but "can't be elected if you're 80+ years old" would prevent these egregious situations from occurring. And no, a lower age limit just isn't plausible - especially as medical care gets better. 

An age limit is a much better idea than term limits for legislators - look at Michigan for an example of that going poorly. If you tell a 40-year old Congressman that they can't run for re-election "because they've been in Washington too long," they're just going to make sure they get a good job in the private sector when they're done, and that usually means "giving the lobbyists what they want." It also hurts when there's zero institutional knowledge - having some members who worked through, say, the 2010 ACA fight is really helpful when health care comes up again. Writing good legislation on a complex issue is hard, and you don't want to only have the staff and lobbyists know how things did/didn't work last time around.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Hey boys I'm back from the capitol, as a card carrying member of antifa you would not believe how easy it was to dupe Trump supporters into charging the barricades and beating each other to death with fire extinguishers. All you gotta do is wear the hat. I am surprised they worked out that it was actually antifa who was actually responsible for the capitol attack.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

2) Dems are learning their lessons about how to run elections in this new world - Georgia was the clearest example of that new playbook. Ossoff and Warnock ran rings around Loeffler and Perdue, and the people who work on elections noticed. That's also an example of Dem turnoff NOT declining when the President isn't on the ballot (can the GOP say the same without Trump on the ballot?).

They had better fucking learn. The worthless Democratic consultant class turned a Gideon's narrow advantage over Collins into a resounding loss, and close race between Harrison and Graham into a blowout, and McGrath/McConnell race was a humiliation top to bottom.

It took some absolutely heroic organizing efforts on the part of Abrams and activists, good tactical decisions by Ossoff and Warnock, and possibly some of the vilest swamp creatures in existence with Perdue and Loeffler, to barely eke out a win. All that effort would be undone in an instant if the consultant class Kramers in and starts trying to put their fingers in the donation pie. 

And no, it was dangerously close even without Trump on the ticket. The Nov/Jan D vote went 2,473,633 for Biden, 2,262,523 for Ossoff (8.5% drop), 2,281,671 for Warnock (7.8% drop). The R vote went 2,461,854 for Trump, 2,211,865 for Perdue (10.1% drop), 2,192,776 for Loeffler (10.9% drop). If the GOP could stilll turn out almost 90% of their Presidential voters, add on the ticket splitters who voted for Biden and R downticket, they are in no way a spent force, even if their god emperor whines incessantly about how he was screwed by the party. The Democratic party had to be completely spooked by a disastrous downticket in November to learn their lessons, and they will unlearn it in an instant.