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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 10:05 am 
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It's not just medicare; an awful lot of them need medicaid too, and medicaid's on the block. My favorite little bit of this bill is eliminating all federal funding for special ed by making schools ineligible to be medicaid providers, which is how they're doing it today. Oh, and the Republican congresscritters put back the language exempting themselves and their staffs from any part of this bill; their pre-existing conditions can not be used to charge them non-preferential rates for health insurance.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 11:41 am 
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If i would try to see a political strategy behind what the administration*, i could see 2 possiblities.

1) Put out new versions once in a while, that will be blocked by someone else, so they can say, "We tried, but everyone sabotaged us".

2) Create a version now, that has the Freedom Caucas on board, let it get blocked at the first try, then modify the Freedom Caucas stuff away again, preferably not by scatching stuff, but by adding additional provisions, and then try to spin it in a way that makes it awkward for the Freedom Caucas to withdraw their support**. Like "We gave you everything you wanted, we just had to give the others some crumbs too" and leave it to them to explain the complicated details, why they no longer get what they want, tot he public to them.

* yes i know, arguably that would belong to WGARS
** yes technically they would not have supported it before, but spin it like they had, because it's loosely based on something they have supported

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 12:23 pm 
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I think it's a somewhat simpler calculus than that. Trump has accomplished nothing about which he can brag about to his base, and his base is catching on (however reluctantly). Everyone else openly mocks or dismisses him, and that especially includes Congresscritters from his own party. He needs a win at something, no matter how counterproductive it's obviously going to be, in order to make him feel better about himself.

Edit: and now he can. It's going to be pretty grim for a lot of Republican Congresscritters going forward, and the Senate Republicans are mostly not best pleased, but that's not Ryan's or Trump's problem at the moment.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 11:44 pm 
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McConnell will probably strong-arm the Senate Republicans into passing...something. It's his ego on the line too, now. He's been swearing up and down for the better part of a decade that he'd repeal Obamacare and he's not going to be the schmuck who gave up on it. They'll probably write it so that the cuts don't kick in until 2021, so they'll be insulated from large scale electoral blow-back for the next couple of elections.

On a separate note, it occurs to me that I live in a climate of total political polarization. Here I can vote for a pro-democracy party, or a pro-Beijing party, and I will never, ever, ever vote for a pro-Beijing party. It doesn't matter what any of their political positions are on any issue other than "are you loyal to the Chinese Communist Party". Not on business regulation, not on health care, not on the environment, not on anything. It doesn't matter how incompetent the democrats are. It doesn't matter how unethical they are. I don't care if they get caught with their genitals in farm animals on live television. I will never vote for any politician who professes loyalty to Beijing. It is not going to happen.

If America is approaching that level of political polarization, you're screwed.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 6:16 am 
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Hong Kong has, if i understand the situation correctly, at least multiple parties in each camp, so if "your" party does something outragous, you can always switch to an other party in your camp.

BTW Austria did have extreme polarisation too (and we still have parts of it left). Between the World Wars the 2 camps had a civil war. After WW2 they figured they have to work together which lead to pretty byzantine informal rules. Like if an agency had a director, the vice-director had to be from the other party, or some agencies "belonged" to one party and others to the other. There had been 2 national police forces one for each party. Even things like automobile- or sports-clubs had been associated with a party and there had been at least 2 of each.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 9:02 pm 
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Yeah, there's various different flavours of both camps in Hong Kong, but when I vote I do it with one thing in mind only - getting butts in seats. I therefore have no motivation to learn about the candidates and their records. I only look at the polls and try to allocate my vote to the candidate with the most marginal position.

Americans work out their intraparty differences at the primaries. We may be reaching a stage where the most meaningful elections America are the primaries. People will try to influence their own party by picking from among their party's different flavours, but in the general election, larger and larger majorities of them will always line up behind their party's candidate, even if he's a serially lying, sexual harassing fraudster.

As for the health care bill - the Republicans are now doing exactly what I thought they would do. They are lying about what's in the bill. They are promoting a bill which does not exist, one which does not cut Medicaid and continues to cover pre-existing conditions. Fox News and all the rest of them will follow. If they write their bill so that it doesn't kick in until after 2018, voters won't find out they've been screwed until after they've voted.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 11:15 am 
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If i would live in a US like system and in a district favouring the party i like less, i'd be tempted to join the less liked party, so in the primaries i can support the least electable candidate, to sabotage that party. Sometimes i fear there are Americans, who do exactly that.

Even if voters go to the primaries of the party they prefere, they still will have to make choices between the direction, they want their party to go and the electebility of candidates. So you still get the potential for all sort of results, that don't reflect the wishes of the voters well.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 11:10 pm 
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As someone old enough to remember when Dick Nixon fired the prosecutor closing in on him (a chap named Cox), Trump sacking Comey shortly after a round of grand jury subpoenas were served on Flynn's associates does seem familiar. The endless lies of everyone in the president's party that no wrong was done seem familiar too, as do the steady stream of the president's associates discovered to have been involved in his underlying naughtiness. One wonders if that's as far as the similarities will go.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 10, 2017 12:17 am 
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My five bucks says that the Senate Republicans will close ranks and try to act like nothing happened. McCain and co. like to talk up ethics but when it's time to vote they'll go with the herd. You only get a special prosecutor if enough Republicans agree, right?

Of course, there are always leaks.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 10, 2017 8:25 pm 
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Enough Republicans just might step up out of simple self preservation. Trump is now polling even among uneducated whites and white men, 30 points underwater among independents, and 22 points underwater in general among registered voters (a more Republican heavy crowd than the electorate as a whole). That on top of the backlash to the Anti-Health Care Act would be putting the fear of losing their seats into some Republican Congresscritters right now.

By the way, I was deeply amused at the Democratic Congresscritters' idea that if his Republican neighbor in New York wouldn't do a town hall in his own district to explain the AHCA, then he would do it for him. So far two other Democrats have adopted the idea, and it might just catch on.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 10, 2017 9:23 pm 
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I think the Purple District Republicans are going to be between a rock and a hard place. If they vote against a special investigator, they'll be at risk in the general election. If they vote for a special investigator, the right wing media is going to fry them alive and they'll get primaried by the base, which is a possibility even in purple districts because only the basiest people vote in primaries.

Getting Republican voters to care about the Russia thing is already an uphill battle - most of them don't believe it or don't think it's a big deal. Trumpistas think Comey should have been fired for not prosecuting Clinton and are already blaming the Democrats for "trying to make this about Russia".

The ideal scenario for these guys is to keep a low profile and get reelected on boring local road projects. That's not going to happen. I bet that they were hoping to get reelected by promising to fix the AHCA, but that's not going to happen either. They'll be caught between independents going "cover up!" and the base going "witch hunt!"

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat May 13, 2017 1:00 am 
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The Comey firing breaks on partisan lines just like everything else. 80% of Republican voters are cool with it. So, most of the Republican politicians are simply going to line up with their party. Move along, nothing to see here.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat May 13, 2017 12:46 pm 
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The catch is that Republicans who have to worry that a general election will interfere with their bribe stream will be averse to openly standing with a president who's more than 20 points underwater among registered voters (especially while forced to own the Anti-Health Care Act). Especially since 80% of Republican voters can't really elect a town councilman in most elections; they're too small a minority. So we just might see them do what they desperately want to do anyway, and install a President Pence.

That aside, Comey seems to be hinting that he'll talk to the Senate but only in an open session. That would probably be interesting.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 12:21 am 
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Trump's always been unpopular. He was unpopular as a candidate, he was unpopular when he was inaugurated, and now he's unpopular as president. There seems to be a floor to his unpopularity, his ratings never sink below 35% or so no matter what crazy stuff he does. They gambled on the votes of a rabid fanbase over broad support, and while they might have just gotten lucky, they seem to think it works for now.(1) To get the Republicans running scared, you're going to have to convince them that Trump has become an even bigger liability than he normally is, and that does not appear to have happened yet. I don't think they'll turn on him until after they get their tax cuts, and the voters won't ditch him until after they either get hit by a recession or hammered by whatever Republican health care plan actually passes into law (assuming they aren't persuaded to be grateful for whatever crap coverage they are given because "Obamacare was collapsing anyway").

(1) Incidentally, how many Republican-controlled statehouses are in the process of passing comically restrictive voter ID laws while shutting down all the DMVs in places where poor and brown people live?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 5:49 am 
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Is anything known, how much of the 35% is towards himself and how much is party loyality?

If most of it is party loyality i guess the republicans just need some Brutus, who gets all the blame and gets removed along with Trump and then they are fine.

If most is loyality to Trump personally or to Trumpism, then they are really in trouble.

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