The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Calthrina950]

Thanks for the “nomination.” That thread sprouted another quality post:

BECAUSE THERE WERE NO VACANCIES

That is the obvious answer, and what is more, I am sure Carter when running for president in 1976 expected zero vacancies and planned for no vacancies in a 1977 to 1981 term. Looking further back, the reason Carter got no appointments – a historical fact that greatly shapes the Court to this day – can be seen from the fact that the birth years for Justices who might have been expected to retire between 1977 and 1981 were from (approximately) 1892 to 1902. Of the (five) Justices born in that period:

• Wiley Blount Rutledge (born in 1894) died in an accident in 1949
• William Orville Douglas (born in 1898) died in 1980 but was physically incapable of serving on the Court beyond the 1974/1975 term
• John Marshall Harlan II (born in 1899), died in 1971
• Thomas Campbell Clark (born in 1899), died in 1977 but see below
• Charles Evans Whittaker (born in 1901), died in 1973 but resigned from the Court in 1962

Clark constitutes the key possibility for Carter getting an appointment. If Clark, alongside Goldberg, had stayed on the bench – assuming he did not become too ill to continue his work – Johnson would have obtained no appointments, but Carter would have obtained one in his first year to replace the centrist Texan when he died in June 1977. Given the demonstrable, but generally overlooked, unpopularity of the Warren Court’s decisions even when Johnson was winning a landslide over Barry Goldwater – in one poll, 85 percent of respondents opposed Engel v. Vitale banning prayer in public schools – Johnson ought to have been leery of creating a Court more liberal than the one he inherited in 1963. Nor did Johnson require the extremely liberal Fortas and Marshall for his programs to pass the Supreme Court: Clark himself seldom voted against them and Goldberg was just as liberal as Johnson’s appointees.

Carter’s numerous – in fact unusually so – lower court appointments do not provide definite details as to the ideology of the Justice with whom he would have replaced Clark had he stayed on the bench until his death. However, in ‘A Bench Tilting Right’ from the October 30, 2004 Washington Post, Cass R. Sunstein and David Schkade demonstrate that Clinton’s appointees to all federal courts were comparably conservative to those of Nixon and Ford (and, though none served past 1988, Eisenhower). This suggests a Carter appointee would have been to the left of anyone on the Court between 1991/1992 (Marshall’s retirement) and 2008/2009 (Sotomayor’s appointment), and could have liberalized the Court much more if Clarence Thomas was not on the bench.

The reactionary Trump Court is certainly a child of Carter receiving no appointments, but it is just as much as the Reagan Court, ultimately a child of Lyndon Johnson’s arrogance as David A. Kaplan expressed in kinder terms in September 1989.

Mianfei doesn't post that often. He's been on this forum for four years now, and has only posted 306 times (as of the time of this writing). However, when he does post, he posts very substantive and insightful material that is well-written and contains excellent references. He's contributed more of value to this forum than the combined output of posters like olawakandi, LandslideLyndon, and numerous others who've posted far more than he has.

[Continential]

this

[brucejoel99]

Is there an exit strategy that wouldn't just see us abandon everybody there & allow a(nother) terror group to take advantage of a power vacuum?

Not at the moment, but I do think if we were willing to invest more money in training the Afghan army in modern anti-insurgency tactics and especially helped pay for major economic revitalization programs there aimed primarily at job creation, a withdrawal would become viable sooner rather than later. 

The two biggest problems from what I’ve read are that the Afghan army - despite being larger and better equipped than the Taliban - lacks mid-level officers who have been adequately trained in modern counter-insurgency tactics and worse yet, there is a large class of uneducated young men who lack jobs (making it easy for groups like the Taliban to fill the void by recruiting and radicalizing such folks).  I don’t think places like Afghanistan will ever calm down until you address the latter problem in a serious way and we haven’t (nor did we do so effectively in Iraq).

Obviously, we’d have to maintain full control over how said money was spent - down to the dollar - so corrupt individuals in the Afghan government can’t waste it.  Moreover, any such economic development programs would have to be good-faith efforts to create jobs in Afghanistan and improve the population’s standard of living, as opposed to enriching American private contractors by letting them privilege what little wealth or resources exist in the country.  You’d probably need strict public sector oversight and any construction/resource extraction contracts would have to go to Afghan-owned businesses as a rule...

...or you could just take the politically easy way out and do what we seem to be doing: stick around w/o addressing the root problems causing the country’s unrest until the public has lost enough patience that the US government can get away with just washing its hands of the country w/o worrying about facing a backlash over any pesky post-withdrawal security threats and massacres of innocent people. 

Put simply, we can either stay and change our strategy to an even more expensive one geared toward addressing the economic issues that make the country’s disaffected young men an ideal recruiting pool for groups like the Taliban or we can leave in a year or two and throw the Afghan people to the wolves knowing that the Taliban will likely regain full control of the country a couple years after our withdrawal (if that). 

What we cannot do is leave the country in its current state w/o the Taliban returning to power and engaging in a brutal campaign of terror against the Afghan people.  That’s just not one of the options.  It’s all well and good to say that it isn’t our job to police the world, but we should be honest with ourselves about what that means: If we withdraw now, then we’ll be condemning countless innocent people to brutal deaths at the hands of tyrannical religious fanatics and allowing the country to go back to being a safe haven for dangerous, anti-American terrorists. 

I don’t like the current situation, but I don’t think we can just condemn all these people to certain death.  I respect Dead0man and WMS for at least offering an alternative, but I doubt there will ever be any political will to accept a massive flood of Afghan refugees to the point that such a plan would likely be DOA (and political suicide in most places to boot). 

I’m not a neo-conservative, but I do think that when we invade a country, we have responsibility to stay until we can ensure that it will remain a relatively functional state in the medium-term with at least a more or less democratic government (even if it is a bit rough around the edges).  I know not everyone agrees, but to do otherwise is irresponsible imo.

Sorry, I didn’t intend for this to turn into a mega-post

[有爭議嘅領土 of The Figgis Agency]

Mianfei doesn't post that often. He's been on this forum for four years now, and has only posted 306 times (as of the time of this writing). However, when he does post, he posts very substantive and insightful material that is well-written and contains excellent references. He's contributed more of value to this forum than the combined output of posters like olawakandi, LandslideLyndon, and numerous others who've posted far more than he has.

Characteristically high-effort mianfei doomer sh-tpost (part 2)

[Calthrina950]

Mianfei doesn't post that often. He's been on this forum for four years now, and has only posted 306 times (as of the time of this writing). However, when he does post, he posts very substantive and insightful material that is well-written and contains excellent references. He's contributed more of value to this forum than the combined output of posters like olawakandi, LandslideLyndon, and numerous others who've posted far more than he has.

Characteristically high-effort mianfei doomer sh-tpost (part 2)

Are you saying that I was wrong in my characterization of what he posts?

[有爭議嘅領土 of The Figgis Agency]

Mianfei doesn't post that often. He's been on this forum for four years now, and has only posted 306 times (as of the time of this writing). However, when he does post, he posts very substantive and insightful material that is well-written and contains excellent references. He's contributed more of value to this forum than the combined output of posters like olawakandi, LandslideLyndon, and numerous others who've posted far more than he has.

Characteristically high-effort mianfei doomer sh-tpost (part 2)

Are you saying that I was wrong in my characterization of what he posts?

I was complementing the quality of their Doomer post-GE sh-tpost, not contesting your statement.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

from a post regarding a "certain type" of north dakotan massage parlors

I just published my fourth book on the topic, so I must disagree.

Bored in Bismarck?
How to get a Piece in the Peace Garden State
Return of the Handy:Even more stories from Bismarck
The Art of the Jerk:2 Hands are better than 1

[Horus]

His work on combating AIDS does not absolve him from his war crimes. While you can make the argument that the Iraq War and torture were mostly Cheney's and Rumsfeld's, the buck stopped with him and he deserves to be tried at The Hague with both of them.

He successfully nominated one political hack to the Supreme Court (Alito) and tried to nominate another (Harriet Miers). He botched the handling of Katrina, which I don't believe was done out of racial animus but general incompetence. However, he won reelection on the backs of homophobes and Islamaphobes, and while he's not personally anti-Muslim, his warmongering destroyed the lives of thousands of Muslims abroad. He endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

I am no longer of the belief that a politician can be separated from their politics. Their actions are always a reflection on them as people and while he deserves credit on PEPFAR, his presidency caused more long-term damage than any president since Reagan. It doesn't matter how "nice" he is.

I agree with Dule that we should be governed by exceptional leaders, not your friendly neighbor whose annual Fourth of July barbecues you attend. The rehabilitation of Bush is one of the worst things to come out of the Trump presidency. Neoconservatism and "cowboy diplomacy" are evil and so is Christian conservatism.

[brucejoel99]

for all the Fetterman fans, explain the thought process of somebody who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but is likley to support Fetterman ?. Preferably without claiming they're low information or #populists.

I think the best argument is that there are a lot of Obama-Trump voters in places like Erie, Lehigh, Northampton, Luzerne, Lackawanna, etc. that abandoned the party because of the perceived elitism and lack of interest in working class issues. You run a candidate like Joe Biden, someone from NEPA with a history of supporting unions and working class issues, you see what happened this past election--every single one of those counties shifted back towards Democrats. It's also why I think Cartwright would be a good candidate if he were to win the nomination--voters are not strictly ideological or party voters, they want someone that they trust is going to fight for them and be "their voice" as it were. Fetterman's approach from the beginning has been to go to places that Democrats typically abandon and try to talk to voters. I remember his marijuana listening tour was a big hit because he went to all 67 counties and just listened to what people had to say. I went when he came to Lancaster and opinions were divided since we're a more red county, but a lot of folks in places that vote so strongly for one party don't typically get to speak directly to their representatives in a setting like that. I could tell his presence was appreciated. I think that's the long and short of why he could be a good candidate for the GE. Frankly, I think we have a LOT of great candidates for the GE. I wouldn't be upset with any of them (though I would be a bit disappointed if we nominated Lamb) but Fetterman is my preferred candidate for ideological reasons.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

It was impossible to defend. Impossible.

oh, but a certain type of person will try anyway.  I've heard it a few times.  He was on drugs you see.  Perhaps that would have been a good defense if the jerk cop hadn't leaned on the back of his neck for 8 minutes.

I still feel the Breonna Taylor murder was worse and would have made a much better "example" as she wasn't doing anything illegal at all and the cover up around it was 500% worse.

That's the exact line used. Just got back last weekend from visiting my parents in Florida. Dad golfed with a guy who is retired police, his friends told him that Floyd had drugs so they did nothing wrong. Also said that every other issue, Taylor, etc is the liberal media demonizing them and every shooting is justified, etc. Cop culture is the issue.

it's just a ridiculous thing to say "every shooting is justified", it proves the person has zero objectivity and shouldn't be listened to.  How could it possibly be that "every shooting is justified" unless they think every cop is 100% correct 100% of the time and that's an insane thing to think, especially for a cop.

Maybe Floyd would have died if the jerk cop hadn't leaned on his neck for 8 minutes, but we'll never know and it's certainly not a thing you can assume.  Certainly the public has been wrong on judging cops too harshly too quickly after a shooting, there are still dummies that just know Michael Brown was murdered by Darren Wilson and that's not the case.  On the other hand, for every case like that, there are a dozen times where the cops straight up murdered someone and got away with it.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

This isn't a case of deporting an old man, it's a case of deporting a young man who spent decades on the run from his crimes. If he's a better man now than he was then, he should accept his fate and face the consequences for his crimes. He got to live a full and free life in until the ripe old age of 95, something his victims never experienced. The US owes him nothing.

I would agree with you that the US owes him nothing.  Will you concede that the US owes illegal aliens of all kinds nothing?  (I realize that question is deeper than it seems at a number of levels.)

Here's a story that I think might answer your question, if you're not too dense or ideologically-addled to get the point. When I was a fairly young man, I was able to get a grant established to help Black farmers financially, after I and some of my fellow protesters vociferously protested the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State. Part of the recognition for my activism included a trip to Iraq in the midst of the troop surge - we went to Baghdad, we went to Fallujah, and it was hell. I wasn't sure if I would make it, but I did and met lots of good Iraqis who are now my best friends. In my experience, the Iraq War was always an American thing - and the war on terror was always an American thing. When I was a young man, I remember seeing a lot of images of Iraqis being tortured or executed, and it just never occurred to me to ask myself why. And then, in my early 20s, I found myself at a protest once again. One of the great Iraqis I had met was staying with me in my 1 bedroom apartment in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and he was telling me a story from his childhood:

"My mother leased a piece of land to an oil company in Iraq where she, my father, and my brother worked. As a kid, I was told that these guys were the same guys as the men in a film I had seen in school; they were the ones that stole the oil and took it to Kuwait so that the Americans could use it for their war. My mother said these guys were our friends and that we were being used by those evil guys in Kuwait to put up the money and take away our land to build a big military base. After several years my mother said she was in love with George Bush and that she was moving  to Houston, Texas so that she could be closer to him. They took her land and built it a huge military base. After several more years, my father died."

This story had affected me for many years - I realized that, despite being from Iraq, he was an American, and I owed that same camaraderie I did for fellow Americans. My friend ended up opening a sandwich shop in New Hampshire, where he employs three other Americans. He has given this country much! And this country owed him her respect and her love. He became a citizen in 2016, and proudly voted for Hillary Clinton, marched on Washington in a pink hat, and became a prominent Democratic Party activist, donating over $8,000 of his sandwich shop's profits to the New Hampshire operations of Planned Parenthood. He is a paragon of his community. And yes, he was once an undocumented immigrant.

I recommend you leave your bigotry at the door, because you are clearly showing yourself more willing to defend Nazis than to love your fellow American - and guess what? That makes you the least American of anyone here. Maybe you should consider deporting yourself, since you hate so many Americans-in-waiting.

[F. Joe Haydn]

For your typical 18th century aristocrat there were two main attractions of the Grand Tour: to be educated in the monuments and artworks of especially Roman antiquity and the humanist outpouring of the Renaissance it inspired, and to be educated in the fashions and manners of refined French and Italian high society. England didn't really figure much here, being more bourgeois and with less of a classical heritage than southern Europe. So nothing to do with the Grand Tour really.

Does this mean England was "remote from a continental perspective"? Absolutely not. Anglophilia was huge in France and Germany for much of the century: Voltaire was exiled in Britain and published his Letters on the English comparing the mixed parliamentary constitution, religious toleration and science and industry of Britain favourably to that of absolutist, obscurantist France of the Ancien regime, and Montesquieu and Rosseau visited in his footsteps. Goethe and other German writers held up English literature (especially Shakespeare) as an inspiration to escape from under the tyranny of French classical models. Italian singers, musicians, painters and other artists swarmed over the channel to where there was obscene amounts of money to be made in London's burgeoning market economy that compared favourably to the courts of continental Europe, and a craze for all things foreign and sophisticated.

Then you have the phenomenon of Scottomania at the end of the century with Ossian, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott's Waverley novels, with Romantic artists from across the continent tramping around the Highlands they imagined as the last wild frontier of Europe, more remote to people in Paris (and London and Edinburgh!) than Virginia or Bengal were.

I'm surprised you mention Chopin and Mendelssohn (Queen Victoria's favourite, even wrote an English oratorio Elijah that was his most popular piece during his lifetime) because music is about the most obvious example of what a magnet England was to the rest of Europe. Handel obviously moved there and became a British citizen, performing Italian opera with singers like the castrato Farinelli; JC Bach was known as "the London Bach" for his long stay at the royal court there; the child prodigy Mozart visited on his own "Grand Tour" (and I believe rejected an invitation to move to Britain as an adult); Haydn took London by storm and enjoyed the greatest success of his life in several year-long stays. It's practically a who's who of 18th century music, because as I said above foreign artists could make an absolute fortune in England, the richest country in Europe at the time and in awe of foreign musicians to the exclusion of its own talent.

Yankee Values vs. Identity Politics
What the Right gets wrong about the Left, and how the Left helps them.

I am so sick of the way politics in the US today is framed. Are you a "socially liberal or conservative?" Are you "fiscally liberal or conservative?" Do you stand or kneel? Are you a sniveling "social justice warrior" only concerned with "identity politics," or are you a knuckle-dragging, KKK Men's Rights Nazi fascist?

What happened to wanting clean air and water, safe food and medicine, educational opportunities for all, fair labor practices and a safe workplace? Making sure that all people in all lines of work can have a dignified life, share in the prosperity of the economy, have a decent home, good health, and enjoy a retirement in their later years? Keeping people from going bankrupt because they got sick at the wrong time, or became disabled at the wrong time? Not having to choose between making ends meet and getting quality health care? Making the world better for coming generations? Keeping children safe from violence? Fostering peace and civility? Policies based on evidence and science, like doing something to combat climate change? Working towards a world without war?

I call these "Yankee values." These political and philosophical impulses are why people in New England, the Great Lakes, Cascadia, and California vote Democrat. They have nothing to do with racial, gender, religious, or sexual identity. In fact, these values have their roots in the religious values of the Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and Unitarians who settled the Northeast and spread west. Yankee values do respect racial, gender, and religious equality, but this is because radical egalitarianism was a religious value. It was one of the guiding principles that our republic was founded on. And as this egalitarianism expanded to include more people, the fight to abolish slavery, the fight against global authoritarianism, the fight for civil rights - these grew out of religious values. And they were always considered core American values. Peace, justice, and the American way.

Republicans have been very successful with the message that responsible government working for the common good, working towards all of these goals, will kill the economy and take away your job. Or even worse, give your job to someone "jumping the line" ahead of you. They have framed these debates over good government and a fair society in terms of cultural identity. They tell you that Democrats don't care about us "ordinary folks." They serve the interest of minorities, immigrants, weirdos, atheists, and the global economy at our expense. And they'll call anything that puts the onus on big business and the super-wealthy to be good citizens as "socialism."

Then the Democrats take the bait. The Democrats call Republicans racist, backwards, and ignorant. They also make it about identity. And then it becomes an "us versus them" battle. Donald Trump's supporters say he may be an unsavory person, but he's on "our side." Those who get so upset at him, it's "those people" who are mad because they're losing. And the Democrats, in response, completely lose the plot. They counter by calling Trump's supporters "deplorables," describing themselves as a coalition of minorities, women, and "allies," and counting on demographic changes to create the "emerging Democratic majority." Which only throws gasoline on the fire and increases the divisions in our society.

In the run-up to the 2020 election, we are going to hear a lot from Republicans and right-wing pundits about how great the economy is, how low unemployment is, how we're all paying less in taxes, and how Donald Trump and the Republicans should be given the credit. Even if all of this were true (it's not), there is more to life than a paycheck. We all need a job. We need a paycheck, it's true. But people are falling behind despite earning a paycheck. People can't afford to buy a house, or are losing their homes. People are crushed under a mountain of student debt, or have children whom they can't send to college for a better life. People have to skimp on necessary medical care or mental health treatment because of inadequate insurance. Our children are falling behind the rest of the world due to inadequate primary and secondary education. The future for our children and grandchildren is being ruined due to environmental destruction and climate change.

Thanks to the "us versus them" framing of politics, we're going to hear about how it's only "those people" who are manufacturing pretend problems because they're mad about how much they're losing. "Those people" are inventing issues like climate change, systemic racism, rape culture, and patriarchy because they're a bunch of socialist losers who don't care about "people like us." When really, the only people who have to benefit from downplaying these issues are the ultra-wealthy. The ultra-wealthy never have to worry about whether they can afford a house, get adequate medical care, or get the best education. They don't have to worry about rotting communities or racial hatred because they can just move someplace nicer. They can send their children to the finest private schools without a worry about the public ones. Their primary concerns are the success of their business enterprises, and paying as little in tax as possible. That's not to say the ultra-wealthy are bad people. That's not to say they don't care about the common good. But their interests are not the same as everyone else's.

Now, don't get me wrong: women's rights, LGBT rights, police brutality, the mass incarceration of people of color, systemic racism and bigotry in general, these are vital issues and need to be front and center. But it's time to start framing the debate in terms of the public good, social progress, and opportunity for all Americans. The struggle for justice and equality is an American struggle. This is the struggle of the urban poor, middle class suburbanites, farmers in Kansas, and investment bankers on Wall Street alike. This is about all of us.

Something you touch on that I love to talk about: People often think that today's Religious Right is descended from the Puritans, but that isn't true. In truth, the Religious Right is a mixture of slaveowner culture and Scotch-Irish culture while today's "blue state America" is a mixture of Puritan culture, Quaker culture, and the cultures of various immigrant groups. The Puritans valued education, didn't care for westward expansion, and frowned upon gun dueling.

Yes, exactly!  I studied 17th century English radical religious movements in college as one of the focuses of my history degree. The Puritans and their non-conformist brethren of the day were anti-authoritarian and radical egalitarians. They eschewed the high church liturgy and vestments of the Church of England because they were symbolic of hierarchy. They believed in councils of elders (presbyters) or independent congregational control rather than bishops. They went to war against the king. They moved the American colonies and went to war against the king. Had they lived in the 19th century they would have been anarchists. Had they lived in the 20th century, they would have been communists.

One of the recent political developments that depresses me is what I (and other historians) call the "southernization of White America." Slaveowner culture was based on deference to authority, hierarchy, and patriarchy. We see that in the emphasis on respecting the military, the flag, and the national anthem. We see that in the South's worship of a hyper-masculine, posturing, strongman billionaire. This culture is spreading like wildfire across the country, and I fear Yankee culture going extinct everywhere outside of New England and Cascadia.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Welcome back to Wheel of Fortune, here is our next phrase!

—OU    ———     ——    —    ——T—   ——R———!

See the OP thread (specifically its author) for context

[VAR]

I personally think current prisoners should have the right to vote, but I accept that thinking that voting is another freedom they temporarily forfeit is a reasonable point of view. But saying former prisoners shouldn’t be able to vote for the rest of their lives? That’s just insane, in my opinion, and should not be up for debate at all, and the states which implement seem to do so for transparently racist reasons.

[SevenEleven]

Short but sweet:

Please stop.

You think I'm going to after 17 years?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Short snappy posts are not what this thread is for. F**k off please.

[DC Al Fine]

Short snappy posts are not what this thread is for. F**k off please.

Yeah this thread is for effort posts, not mediocre one-liners.

[Fight for Trump]

Short snappy posts are not what this thread is for. F**k off please.

If you have to scroll to get your point across in an Internet forum, you're either too lazy to edit your post for conciseness, or just engaging in self-indulgence. An Internet forum is not intended to be your personal newspaper column.

(not saying a one-liner qualifies as a "good" post, but still)

[brucejoel99]

1) As folks such as Adam Jentleson have pointed out, we’re still in Act 1 of this fight and we won’t find out how Manchin and Sinema will on this when push comes to shove until Act 3.  There’s still every reason to think that their current position is politically untenable and that nothing is set in stone until the climax of the real fight over nuking/heavily neutering the filibuster (the latter seems far more likely).  

2) Biden hasn’t gotten involved yet, much less gone to the mat for neutering/nuking the filibuster.  When he does, that’s going to be a signal that we’ve entered a new phase of the fight.  By not doing so, he’s essentially telling Manchin and Sinema (along with folks like Jon Tester, Angus King, Chris Coons, Michael Bennet, etc who have signaled that while they don’t like the idea of nuking the filibuster, we’ll have their votes when the time comes).  

3) The Senate Democratic Caucus has been rapidly moving toward nuking/neutering the filibuster.  This year alone, we’ve already seen folks move from being a hard “no” to some version of “I don’t like it, but you’ll have my vote if push comes to shove” (Angus King, Chris Coons, Jon Tester, Michael Bennet, etc) or even from “no” to “yes, it’s time to nuke the filibuster” (Bob Casey, Amy Klobuchar, Dick Durbin, etc).  We’ve been moving in the right direction at a pretty rapid clip.

4) A 50-50 Senate means everyone has leverage and it does make it harder than it would be in, say, a 52-48 Senate to exert pressure on an individual member, lest they switch parties or even just start being as big a pain in the a** as possible out of spite.  

5) Schumer has been keeping his caucus in line.  We’re about to pass a major piece of legislation less than two months after Democrats truly took control of the Senate.  When Manchin tried to wag the dog by lobbying everyone to waste months negotiating a heavily watered down version of the COVID-19 bill, Schumer basically told him to go piss up a rope and made in clear to the WH that a watered-down version was a non-starter (Schumer and Ron Klain have been critical in keeping Biden’s #ModerateHero tendencies in check thus far).  In the end, Manchin fell in line and we got screwed by the parliamentarian rather than by Democratic defections.  

6) It’s a lot easier to put up a united front when you’re in the opposition.  Moreover, the Democrats are a big tent party whereas the GQP, as Yankee once put it, burns its heretics at the stake.  As a result, McConnell has a much easier job than Schumer.  

7) For all the nonsense about the filibuster promoting bipartisanship, it is actually one of the chief obstacles to bipartisan legislation of any sort.  If a Senator knows a bill won’t pass b/c of the filibuster, regardless of what they do, then s/he has no incentive to piss off their party’s base/congressional leadership by crossing party lines to support a bill backed by the other party in exchange for it incorporating some of his or her ideas.  

I mean, if most legislation won’t come to a vote regardless of what any particular Senator does b/c of the filibuster, then compromise of any sort really becomes a high-risk, zero-reward move, regardless of the legislation.  As such, the filibuster is among the most effective tools a Senate Minority Leader has at their disposal for ensuring their members don’t go off the reservation by negotiating with the other side in good-faith or crossing party lines on an important vote in exchange for policy concessions.  Paradoxically, one of the best ways to increase the level of bipartisanship would actually be to nuke the legislative filibuster.  

[Ancestral Republican]

Short snappy posts are not what this thread is for. F**k off please.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

[The Dowager Mod]

Short snappy posts are not what this thread is for. F**k off please.

I guess I need to pack it in and leave then  lol.

[bagelman]

1) As folks such as Adam Jentleson have pointed out, we’re still in Act 1 of this fight and we won’t find out how Manchin and Sinema will on this when push comes to shove until Act 3.  There’s still every reason to think that their current position is politically untenable and that nothing is set in stone until the climax of the real fight over nuking/heavily neutering the filibuster (the latter seems far more likely).  

2) Biden hasn’t gotten involved yet, much less gone to the mat for neutering/nuking the filibuster.  When he does, that’s going to be a signal that we’ve entered a new phase of the fight.  By not doing so, he’s essentially telling Manchin and Sinema (along with folks like Jon Tester, Angus King, Chris Coons, Michael Bennet, etc who have signaled that while they don’t like the idea of nuking the filibuster, we’ll have their votes when the time comes).  

3) The Senate Democratic Caucus has been rapidly moving toward nuking/neutering the filibuster.  This year alone, we’ve already seen folks move from being a hard “no” to some version of “I don’t like it, but you’ll have my vote if push comes to shove” (Angus King, Chris Coons, Jon Tester, Michael Bennet, etc) or even from “no” to “yes, it’s time to nuke the filibuster” (Bob Casey, Amy Klobuchar, Dick Durbin, etc).  We’ve been moving in the right direction at a pretty rapid clip.

4) A 50-50 Senate means everyone has leverage and it does make it harder than it would be in, say, a 52-48 Senate to exert pressure on an individual member, lest they switch parties or even just start being as big a pain in the a** as possible out of spite.  

5) Schumer has been keeping his caucus in line.  We’re about to pass a major piece of legislation less than two months after Democrats truly took control of the Senate.  When Manchin tried to wag the dog by lobbying everyone to waste months negotiating a heavily watered down version of the COVID-19 bill, Schumer basically told him to go piss up a rope and made in clear to the WH that a watered-down version was a non-starter (Schumer and Ron Klain have been critical in keeping Biden’s #ModerateHero tendencies in check thus far).  In the end, Manchin fell in line and we got screwed by the parliamentarian rather than by Democratic defections.  

6) It’s a lot easier to put up a united front when you’re in the opposition.  Moreover, the Democrats are a big tent party whereas the GQP, as Yankee once put it, burns its heretics at the stake.  As a result, McConnell has a much easier job than Schumer.  

7) For all the nonsense about the filibuster promoting bipartisanship, it is actually one of the chief obstacles to bipartisan legislation of any sort.  If a Senator knows a bill won’t pass b/c of the filibuster, regardless of what they do, then s/he has no incentive to piss off their party’s base/congressional leadership by crossing party lines to support a bill backed by the other party in exchange for it incorporating some of his or her ideas.  

I mean, if most legislation won’t come to a vote regardless of what any particular Senator does b/c of the filibuster, then compromise of any sort really becomes a high-risk, zero-reward move, regardless of the legislation.  As such, the filibuster is among the most effective tools a Senate Minority Leader has at their disposal for ensuring their members don’t go off the reservation by negotiating with the other side in good-faith or crossing party lines on an important vote in exchange for policy concessions.  Paradoxically, one of the best ways to increase the level of bipartisanship would actually be to nuke the legislative filibuster.  

Reposting this due to end page syndrome.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Short snappy posts are not what this thread is for. F**k off please.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

There's literally a different thread for one-liners. Just spend half a minute browsing this board and you'll find it.

[Donerail]

Reposting this due to end page syndrome.

Is that the diagnosis? How unfortunate. I hope they find a cure soon.

[Sir Mohamed]

Pretty good effort post.

How D'Amato survived electorally, you say…?

To begin with, D'Amato first won his seat (the Class III seat) in 1980, when the Reagan Revolution allowed him to knock Javits out in the GOP primary. (How D'Amato got to that position in the first place is a story of its own.) New Jersey Republicans haven't had as much luck in contesting the Class I and II seats the state holds, and the incumbents since Case's primary defeat – Bradley, Lautenberg, Torricelli, Corzine, Lautenberg again – have had luck on their side more than a few times. Bradley was a very popular sportsman and Corzine was a very deep-pocketed millionaire in a state that isn't averse to sportsmen and millionaires. When Torricelli's corruption got too much for New Jersey to bear, he was removed from the ticket at the last minute after polls showed he was vulnerable and substituted with Lautenberg instead. Obviously, D'Amato has had his own share of luck.

In 1980, following a primary loss driven by supercharged turnout in D'Amato's native Nassau County, Javits turned around and ran on the Liberal ticket, siphoning liberal votes from Democratic nominee Elizabeth Holtzmann and allowing D'Amato to win by 1% in a three-way race.

In 1986, although nearly every other GOP freshman in the Senate lost and the Mario Cuomo-led Democratic ticket was crushing it in New York, nobody wanted to touch D'Amato, who had deep pockets and a willingness to throw punches. A Gary Hart staffer, Mark Green, happened to win the Democratic primary. D'Amato managed to paint Green as a crazy liberal and won by seventeen points; he was also endorsed by Mayor Ed Koch, who resented Green's previous criticisms of his tenure. (Green later helped David Dinkins knock Koch out in the 1989 mayoral election.)

In 1992, Attorney General Robert Abrams emerged from a bitter primary with Geraldine Ferraro and Holtzmann in which Ferraro refused to concede for two weeks after the election. (Despite Abrams' efforts to get her support, she didn't endorse him until three days before Election Day.) Part of this was attributed to the claim that Abrams engaged in anti-Italian political attacks against Ferraro, and after Abrams called D'Amato a fascist at a campaign event, the Senator was only too happy to exploit the same opening. D'Amato won by one percentage point.

Democrats finally wised up in 1998. Both Ferraro and Green returned to run in the primary, but both were outargued and outspent by the eighteen years' worth of cash Chuck Schumer had stockpiled as a representative from Brooklyn. Schumer then managed to gather the party together following his commanding performance in the primary to focus their attacks on D'Amato. He did everything he could to turn D'Amato's attacks back on the incumbent, already struggling with low popularity after his involvement in chasing the Whitewater whale in the Senate while committing considerable ethics violations of his own, and in September a gaffe by D'Amato was ripped to shreds by the media and put Schumer into the lead for good. (Hillary Clinton offered to campaign for Schumer and did so with what the media speculated was a distinct dislike for the instigator of the Whitewater investigation.) Schumer, of course, still holds the seat.