How do we turn the country around?

We're in the worst shape of my 60 years on this earth, and going downhill fast.

States are passing draconian anti-abortion laws.

They're passing more and more voter suppression laws.

People can't afford insulin, fer gawd's sake.

The country's wealth flows up and up.

The judiciary is full of right-wing whackos.

The Supreme Court is in the bag for corporations, the Christian right and the GOP.

Mitch McConnell rules the world.

We're engaged in endless wars.

The deplorables are ascendant.

And I haven't even mentioned Trump.

How do we turn it around?

Is electoral politics enough?


If anyone reading this voted against Hillary, you need to put your head on straight this time. There’s quite a few purists here on MOL who put this guy in office. And he can’t be mentioned last because everything you listed before him has been his doing. I don’t know if anything can be healed unless this guy is voted out and some reasonable, not perfect, person sits in that White House. For those who holler about systemic problems, you can’t start by keeping Trump in there another four years. Or are you old fogies gonna stage another “revolution”?


I have to disagree about it all being Trump's "doing". It's not. Everything listed above my reference to Trump is just standard Republicanism. 

Trump brings his own abominations, certainly. I don't mean to diminish his own catastrophic contributions.

But it's really Republicanism that's the problem. It has been for a good 40 years now.

And I would say that winning the Senate in 2020 might be more important than winning the Presidency. McConnell has to be made a back-bencher.


Most of what is wrong is on autopilot and has been for quite some time.


drummerboy said:
I have to disagree about it all being Trump's "doing". It's not. Everything listed above my reference to Trump is just standard Republicanism. 
Trump brings his own abominations, certainly. I don't mean to diminish his own catastrophic contributions.
But it's really Republicanism that's the problem. It has been for a good 40 years now.

And I would say that winning the Senate in 2020 might be more important than winning the Presidency. McConnell has to be made a back-bencher.

Yup, totally agree with that


60? You’ll be fine. I’m probably going to be okay too, but I won’t let that Italian passport lapse. 


My kids? Eeeeee. Good luck guys - you’re gonna need it. 


drummerboy said:

And I would say that winning the Senate in 2020 might be more important than winning the Presidency. McConnell has to be made a back-bencher.

The Senate Is as Much of a Problem as Trump (NYT)

... progressives — who have the most to lose if the Senate becomes an even larger obstacle to their preferred policies — have started to brainstorm about reforms that might make the Senate more democratic and representative without changing the Constitution itself.
One path involves statehood. In his book “It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority,” David Faris, a political scientist at Roosevelt University in Chicago, calls for at least eight new states. The first is Washington, D.C. The second is Puerto Rico, assuming its inhabitants agree to statehood. And the next six would be formed from America’s superstate, California. “If the state were more or less evenly divided between left and right, its comparative lack of power in the federal government would be less of an issue,” Faris writes. “But California is now one of a handful of the most left-leaning states in the entire union, and Californians’ lack of voting power and Senate representation means that the country is pulled inexorably to the right.”
It’s a radical solution, and while it might work, it has one clear downside — Republicans could respond in kind with similar schemes for conservative megastates like Texas and, to a lesser degree, Florida. And that’s assuming California voters would sign on to the project. But finding ways to expand the Senate with new members is the right idea, and a recent report from the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, offers an approach that doesn’t rely on extreme forms of constitutional hardball.
To accommodate the demographic trends of the next few decades, the institute calls for expanding the Senate to include other federal units besides states, for the sake of greater democracy and representation: “A modern Senate should reflect a modern federalism encompassing not only states and the federal government but also the district, territories and tribes.”
Under the Roosevelt Institute proposal, Washington, D.C., the Atlantic territories, the Pacific territories and the Native tribes would each receive two senators and a voting member in the House of Representatives. Individual units could still pursue statehood, but the lack of that recognition wouldn’t preclude representation in Congress.

Republicans may be a big part of the problem but the whole political spectrum has shifted to the right over the last 30 years but the conservatives could never have done it without the help of the centrist dems. The Clintons robbed our nation of context.


Klinker said:

The Clintons robbed our nation of context.

These were the other Democratic candidates for the nomination in 1992: Jerry Brown, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and Tom Harkin. Which one(s) represented the context that was stolen?


drummerboy said:
We're in the worst shape of my 60 years on this earth, and going downhill fast.
States are passing draconian anti-abortion laws.
They're passing more and more voter suppression laws.
People can't afford insulin, fer gawd's sake.
The country's wealth flows up and up.

The judiciary is full of right-wing whackos.
The Supreme Court is in the bag for corporations, the Christian right and the GOP.
Mitch McConnell rules the world.
We're engaged in endless wars.
The deplorables are ascendant.

And I haven't even mentioned Trump.

How do we turn it around?
Is electoral politics enough?

 A very depressing list. I feel it more for my 30-something kids than for myself. As I've said before, I've lived through Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Bush/Cheney and never felt this overwhelmed by evil.

While Trump is the most immediate target, I see GOP greed as the overarching culprit. They knew the guy was a career-criminal, even if they didn't live in the NY area. He was/is a giant buffoon, ignoramus, racist, and imposter, fueled by his inheritance. 

But these bastards jumped onboard as DJT appealed to the most awful parts of our identity -  the racism, xenophobia, and general hatred of others who want to do exactly what all of our forebears wanted to do. And the migrants' plight - different from past migration - is funded mostly by our love of heroin, coke, meth. We fund drug cartels.

And so GOPers have no problem presiding over the decay, as long as it results in tax cuts, deregulation, and con judges. No problem for them. They're that cynical, greedy, and unpatriotic.  

Trump remains the epitome of what it means to be a GOPer. 


A few of these migrants' countries should create their own legal drug cartels and take advantage of our taste for various drugs. Treat cocaine as they would bananas and coffee. 

Nothing but a 2020 landslide can halt our progress toward authoritarian government.


drummerboy said:

How do we turn it around?
Is electoral politics enough?

It has to be.  "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."  - Winston Churchill. 


DaveSchmidt said:


Klinker said:

The Clintons robbed our nation of context.
These were the other Democratic candidates for the nomination in 1992: Jerry Brown, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and Tom Harkin. Which one(s) represented the context that was stolen?

 I'm not talking about the 92 election specifically (although eight years of a Jerry Brown Administration would have been quite different) but rather the generational abandonment of progressive values.


Klinker said:

I'm not talking about the 92 election specifically (although eight years of a Jerry Brown Administration would have been quite different) but rather the generational abandonment of progressive values.

A generational abandonment. A Clinton theft. Those sound like different culprits.


Younger generations will vote more and more heavily Democratic and eventually tip the country into a much more liberal orientation.  The current GOP is just hanging on until they die off:


https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-affiliation-among-demographic-groups/

"Millennial voters (born 1981 to 1996) have had a Democratic tilt since they first entered adulthood; this advantage has only grown as they have aged.  Democrats enjoy a 27-percentage-point advantage among Millennial voters (59% are Democrats or lean Democratic, 32% are Republican or lean Republican). In 2014, 53% of Millennial voters were Democrats or leaned Democratic, 37% tilted toward the GOP.  Millennials remain more likely than those in older generations to call themselves independents (44% vs. 39% of Gen Xers, 32% of Boomers and 27% of Silents); still, the roughly two-to-one Democratic advantage among Millennials is apparent both in “straight” and “leaned” partisan affiliation."


Yes, but how to get them to actually vote??


annielou said:
Yes, but how to get them to actually vote??

 One thing to do is tell the people who say voting doesn’t matter to STFU. 

Stuff like this - -


Murica Today talks, I pass it on.


Mitch McConnell rules the world.

That's funny


How do we turn this country around?

Make a left at Greenland.


McConnell, one of the great unsung villains of modern politics. Quietly toxic and reserved as he does his worst. From "Our #1 priority is to make BHO a one-term POTUS" to the Merrick Garland move to the fast-tracking of con judges, he's done more damage than we know. 


McConnell is a good reason for term limits. 

"Our #1 priority is to make                     a one-term POTUS"  Can be attributed to a lot of politicians. I wouldn't give Mitch that particular credit 


#1- Get rid of Trump.

#2- Get rid of McConnell.

#3- Take back the Senate.



Young people have to save themselves and us.  The Baby Boom generation is an utter failure and have proved completely incapable of coming to grips with the one issue that will drive all others for the rest of the century - climate change.  I hope they vote at unprecedented levels.  


You are correct but Greenfield details exactly how it could play out. So rather than just saying "I told you so" what do you suggest?


lord_pabulum said:


Mitch McConnell rules the world.
That's funny

 

It's really, really not.

He remade the Supreme Court all by himself. As he's remaking the American judiciary.

Name me one other American who will have a more lasting effect over the next 30-50 years.



STANV said:
You are correct but Greenfield details exactly how it could play out. So rather than just saying "I told you so" what do you suggest?

I don't know what we can do. We can't change the constitution because that requires 3/4 of the states to assent. There are too many "red" states.

Remember, the Electoral College compact, where states will assign their electoral college votes to the winner of the popular vote even though the voters of a state voted for the loser? Liberals and progressives love it. And it makes sense.

But the compact is based on the constitutional rule that a state legislature may assign electoral college voters irregardless of how their voters voted. This same rule can enable the compact or Republican legislatures to select electors who will vote for Trump, irregardless of their voters preference.


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