10 votes

Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 24

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Tags: usa, politics, recurring.weekly

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

7 comments

  1. [4]
    Kuromantis
    Link
    Democrats 'Must Be Trying to Lose': Progressives Fume After Report Says Biden Budget Excludes Key Promises This is annoying. The saddest part is that, with only the slimmest of majorities in the...

    Democrats 'Must Be Trying to Lose': Progressives Fume After Report Says Biden Budget Excludes Key Promises

    Progressives are fuming in response to reports that President Joe Biden's forthcoming official budget proposal will not include a public option, drug pricing reform, student debt cancellation, or an estate tax increase.

    "Think how easy it is to make the case for voting Democrat to a young person who has 10k less debt because of you. And how much harder it is to make that case to a young person who expected that and was lied to."
    —Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs.

    As a candidate, Biden said he would: enact a public option to create a government-run alternative to private insurance plans; reduce the sky-high and life-threatening prices of prescription drugs; cancel up to $10,000 of student loan debt per federal borrower; and raise the estate tax, which affects only the wealthiest 0.2% of U.S. households.

    When Biden unveils his official budget proposal on Friday, however, none of those initiatives—which were already considered inadequate by progressives demanding Medicare for All, at least $50,000 of student debt relief, and substantially higher taxes on the super-rich—will be included, according to the Washington Post, which spoke with four unnamed individuals briefed on the matter.

    This is annoying. The saddest part is that, with only the slimmest of majorities in the Senate and House, we can hardly say if they could have aimed for something better.

    6 votes
    1. [3]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. [2]
        spctrvl
        Link Parent
        To be fair, this is the democratic party we're talking about, and those decades of experience have been decades of feckless incompetence and the near total collapse of a once-hegemonic political...

        Do you think these hardened multi-year to multi-decade experienced politicians and the vast bureaucracy of behind them don't know what they can and can't do better than a random internet progressive? Do you think they don't realize what we do about incalcitrant Republicans?

        To be fair, this is the democratic party we're talking about, and those decades of experience have been decades of feckless incompetence and the near total collapse of a once-hegemonic political coalition, that's brought wide swaths of the country under the uncontested minority rule of a widely hated and unpopular republican party, in spite of broad support of democratic policies. Not that I don't think there's political maneuvering going on behind the scenes that we aren't aware (or at least conscious) of, but nobody ever went broke betting on the democrats' ability to blow a ten point lead and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It practically defines them as a party as much as any of their political positions.

        2 votes
        1. nukeman
          Link Parent
          The collapse of the New Deal coalition was inevitable. You aren’t going to be able to keep winning the support of racist whites in the South if you are supporting civil rights for the minorities...

          The collapse of the New Deal coalition was inevitable. You aren’t going to be able to keep winning the support of racist whites in the South if you are supporting civil rights for the minorities being oppressed there.

          2 votes
    2. nukeman
      Link Parent
      To add to what @Loire said, American political culture broadly supports bipartisanship. Critically, many of its strongest supporters are moderates/centrists who came out to vote for Biden in 2020....

      To add to what @Loire said, American political culture broadly supports bipartisanship. Critically, many of its strongest supporters are moderates/centrists who came out to vote for Biden in 2020.

      I’d add that the positions listed aren’t universally popular among Americans. The student loan debt relief is very popular among a major constituency (highly educated postgraduates, who frequently have a lot of student debt, and also vote Dem more), but more mixed among others, and frankly, isn’t a high priority (even me, who has ~$70k in debt, has climate change as my main priority).

      5 votes
  2. [2]
    cfabbro
    Link
    White male minority rule pervades politics across the US, research shows

    White male minority rule pervades politics across the US, research shows

    From county officials and sheriffs to governors and senators, white male minority rule pervades politics in the United States, according to a new report published on Wednesday.

    White men represent 30% of the population but 62% of officeholders, dominating both chambers of Congress, 42 state legislatures and statewide roles across the nation, the analysis shows.

    By contrast, women and people of color constitute 51% and 40% of the US population respectively, but just 31% and 13% of officeholders, according to the research by the Reflective Democracy Campaign, shared exclusively with the Guardian.

    Two factors perpetuate white male control over virtually every lever of US government: the huge advantage enjoyed by incumbents, and the Republican party’s continued focus on mostly white male candidates.

    In primaries for statewide office and the House, women and people of color actually do better than their white male opponents, busting a common myth about white men’s “electability” advantage that has often dogged high-profile women’s campaigns.

    However, because women and people of color have been largely disenfranchised until relatively recent history, most incumbents are still white men, the report explains. And, during the 2020 primary elections, 96% of incumbents won their races.

    Another obstacle to a more representative government comes from the Republican establishment, which does not run candidates reflective of the nation. In the 2020 primaries, 93% of Republican candidates were white, and fewer than one in four were women.

    Democratic candidates, on the other hand, were 44% women and 32% people of color – still shy of a one-to-one match with the country’s overall demographics, but far more inclusive than the GOP’s virtual erasure of entire communities.

    That partisan divide – plus the incumbency problem – bolster a cycle where commonsense policies supported by the majority of Americans make little headway, including popular solutions such as gun control, automatic voter registration and universal pre-K education.

    3 votes
    1. skybrian
      Link Parent
      I think if you compared office holders with their constituents broken down by state and district, you might see patterns that national averages hide. The Senate in particular is heavily biased...

      I think if you compared office holders with their constituents broken down by state and district, you might see patterns that national averages hide. The Senate in particular is heavily biased towards representing low-population rural states and other statewide offices will show up similarly in the statistics.

      Other offices like mayors and city council members don’t seem to be listed in the report, which doesn’t look very scientifically done. (There are six pages, mostly graphics, and no section on methodology or sources.)

      There is another link for the dataset that I haven’t looked at yet.

      3 votes
  3. Omnicrola
    Link
    Video : Watch: Michigan Hotel Owner Kicks Mother Out And Calls Her 'A Dumb Democrat' Particularly pertinent because I live in MI, and while I haven't visited Mackinaw I had plans to as it's...

    Video : Watch: Michigan Hotel Owner Kicks Mother Out And Calls Her 'A Dumb Democrat'

    Particularly pertinent because I live in MI, and while I haven't visited Mackinaw I had plans to as it's supposed to be a very nice place to visit. Usually, I see headlines like that and think "probably a sensationalized headline". Nope. Dude legit threw a customer out for complaining about the water in her bathroom.

    Even IF the lady or someone in her room has deliberately and maliciously caused damage, that's still not how you handle the situation.

    4 votes