Also, I haven't paid attention much, but I assume GOP doesn't think there was voter fraud for these elections?
Current Affairs General US politics (ie, not POTUS related)
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And as I've posited on here time and again, Rush Limbaugh and everything that came after him, including the rise of Fox News and worse, is the number one reason for where we are right now. Yes, there has to be a market for that. But the disinformation campaigns of the last 30+ years is so entrenched now that it's difficult to see a way to reverse it.
Just realized I could have also posted this in an Everton thread and now am thoroughly depressed
Bingo
Martin Alvito
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I wholeheartedly agree. That said, the process will throw up those candidates until the evidence stacks high enough to suggest that it's a bad idea. It's not even that the elites in the parties are unaware of what was plain to see; it's that
I've been saying for fifteen years that it will have to get blood-in-the-streets bad. The level of economic inequality we have in this country has historically been unsustainable across time and space, and we have a lot of institutions that are more or less designed to perpetuate and exacerbate that inequality.
Historically, those have been the conditions for popular uprising. It's been happening all around us on a micro-scale - riots in Ferguson, Baltimore and Portland, and the invasion of the Capitol itself. There are a lot of deeply dissatisfied people out there, and for cause.
Martin Alvito
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To finish the above thought - it's that the party elites will go along with the current process until they collectively determine it's in their best interest to change it.
I haven't heard them claim it, but then again I've never heard a winning candidate allege fraud.
They cannot benefit from scrutiny of the vote, and the process of disallowing ballots is a lot messier than you probably think even after all the media coverage of the Broward County process in 2000.
It is worth noting that LBJ was manifestly guilty of election fraud in a 1948 Senate primary. There isn't much in the way of evidence for systemic voter fraud these days, but then again no one has ever been able to conclusively prove after the fact that Daley rigged elections in Chicago either. Smart tactics are by definition smart because they are hard to prove.
It's worth noting that here, I have to sit down at a table and fill out a ballot by filling in circles with a #2 pencil in full view of everyone else while elections judges circle the room, then deposit the ballot in a scanning machine. There are some sophisticated ways to manipulate that, though when I look at the precinct numbers year-over-year I don't see evidence of such.
I will tell you that I was floored the first time I went to vote after moving here. For all I know, local pastors and priests are telling their flock how to vote and the judges are there to name-and-shame those that don't toe the line, or local business owners that vote "wrong" get griefed by the city council on permits and property valuations.
I haven't heard them claim it, but then again I've never heard a winning candidate allege fraud.
They cannot benefit from scrutiny of the vote, and the process of disallowing ballots is a lot messier than you probably think even after all the media coverage of the Broward County process in 2000.
It is worth noting that LBJ was manifestly guilty of election fraud in a 1948 Senate primary. There isn't much in the way of evidence for systemic voter fraud these days, but then again no one has ever been able to conclusively prove after the fact that Daley rigged elections in Chicago either. Smart tactics are by definition smart because they are hard to prove.
It's worth noting that here, I have to sit down at a table and fill out a ballot by filling in circles with a #2 pencil in full view of everyone else while elections judges circle the room, then deposit the ballot in a scanning machine. There are some sophisticated ways to manipulate that, though when I look at the precinct numbers year-over-year I don't see evidence of such.
I will tell you that I was floored the first time I went to vote after moving here. For all I know, local pastors and priests are telling their flock how to vote and the judges are there to name-and-shame those that don't toe the line, or local business owners that vote "wrong" get griefed by the city council on permits and property valuations.
Martin Alvito
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Those numbers are, indeed, crazy. In Republican strongholds like Toms River where Democrats had gotten some traction in recent years and won elections, the Democrats got absolutely annihilated. They gave back their gains with interest.
This is because it's about the culture wars.
It's always been about the culture wars
Martin Alvito
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It depends.
The Democrats could decide, for once, to pull together rather than in different directions. This election says that they can hang together, or hang separately. Many of the Democratic members of the House need only fear a primary challenge from the left, as a result of decades of tactical redistricting, but at the same time none of them can wield real influence without a majority.
The Democratic coalition has always been an ungainly beast, and it has the problem of forever having new interests arise that it has to service. The political attitudes of the Republican voting bloc are much more stable. I'll refrain from saying the nasty words I might say about why that's the case.
yea, problem is that I thought it had gotten very bad, seems like it can get way worse.
And America could be in trouble too.
Martin Alvito
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Reagan's repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was a disaster, and it is possible to draw a line directly from that to today's political climate through the gerrymandering of the House to create safe seats while disenfranchising the opposition's voters as much as is possible. The conversion of television news from public service to profit center did not help either; companies figured out that they could more or less bribe their way to favorable coverage, or at least suppressing negative coverage.
but would the fairness doctrine have had any remit over the likes of Fox or Rush Limbaugh?
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