Joe Biden ruled as too incompetent to face charges
- Thread starter Butler1000
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The 1850s was a tumultuous shift in American politics. Slavery was so fractious that it even split the Democratic party between Northern elements and Southern elements.
In your opinion, do regional parties support the healthy functioning of a democracy? I don't know what to think of a party like Bloc Québécois.
You would have to define "healthy functioning of a democracy" - bearing in mind Churchill's quip that "democracy is the worse system of government known to man, except for all the others".
There is unarguably "bad" democracy where nothing can possibly get accomplished - i.e. 18th century Poland or the current GOP House of Reps. That aside, the system appears to work.
Holy kamoly! You and Mitch have discovered Simon Ateba. That's like a junkie discovering an even purer and more intense form of heroin that Tucker Carlson level heroin.
Happy times are ahead for you!!
She also re posts this instant classic.
Depends. The attempt to subvert the 2020 election is pretty bad and there should be criminal consequences.
Everything else?..... Jean Carroll, Trump's multiple frauds, stealing those documents and hiding them in his toilet?
Let's assume that those are politically motivated lawsuits and are designed to keep Trump in the media spotlight, day in/ day out for months in the worse possible light. Sure, there's a downside for the Dems in that it motivates Mitch to post multiple times a day to tell us how Judge Engoron is corrupt. But the Base would always vote for Trump in any event and the narrative that he is "persecuted" is already embedded into their psyches.
But every time Trump is on TV ranting about Engoron and every time Alina Habba fucks up another cross-examination and every time Trump gets shit-wacked with another optimally horrendous courtroom outcome, a few thousand more moderate Reps in swing states decide that they can't vote Trump in November.
And that's a worthwhile enterprise. The GOP did it successfully against Hillary and they attempt incompetently to do the same thing using Hunter Biden. The Dems just do it a lot better now, because they're smarter and they have many more Trump fuck-ups and frauds to work from.
So if it really IS just political maneuvring, it's pretty damn effective and that's worth a clap on the back any day.
Oh you think it's NOT effective? Why did Trump only get 60% in the SC primary, despite being what passes for the "incumbent" is today's shappy GOP?? And why are most Haley voters not going to vote Trump under any circumstances? In South Carolina of all right wing strongholds?
The USA is probably more split along rural vs urban divisions from what the elections say. Up here we have much stronger regional identity. East coast, Quebec, Ontario, Prairie and B.C all have pretty distinct cultural frameworks. There is some Urban v Rural, but that really is everyone hates Toronto more than anything.
As a result they can change the landscape. The Reform Party brought conservativism back into Canada from the Red Tory era where there was little daylight between the two major parties. The NDP was a rural based party from the Prairies as well. The Bloc was the Fed arm of the separatist movement, but that is essentially dead now. Its there now mostly as a reminder that that uglness could flair up again.
So in the sense they send real representation to Ottawa for local issues I think they do serve a valuable place.
The thing is a Regional party in the USA that managed to take say 40 seats on the House and 4 in the Senate could become a very real power broker on some issues, even in the sense that it would cause the two majors to have to work together more to blunt them. And reduce the threat of further erosion of their duopoly.
I thought the Liberal Party drew most of their support from urban areas.
Butler, I will ask you because you won't go into a defensive posture. Isn't it correct that Quebec gets direct subsidies from Ottawa? Would that mean one of the purposes of Bloc Québécois is to ensure Quebec's interests?
One can say Florida with its amount of seniors is subsidized by Washington, but these are programs that target individual citizens wherever they might reside. It's not directly targeted to a State after separatist movements. U.S. anti-poverty and education programs also have less of a regional flavor and target communities.
As Valcazar always asks, what does that third party look like? What third party platform would be successful? It's a very idealistic notion until you have to gain enough votes that put the party on the map.
I have held some hope that a third party Presidential candidate could possibly pull enough votes away from the two parties to win. However, I don't think that third party would gain traction in Congressional races.
Yes, Biden received 96% of the South Carolina vote. However, he was up against Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips.
In my opinion, Nikki Haley is a formidable politician and an incumbent in South Carolina in her own right. She's certainly not liberal on most matters.
Trying to break down the meaning of the S.C. primary beyond Biden won handily, Trump won by a solid margin is mostly conjecture.
Mercedes Schlapp and her husband are leaders in CPAC. She said she "brought" him to CPAC this year and took him away from South Carolina.
Mercedes Schlapp | C-SPAN.org
It's not a good idea to go dumpster diving on Twitter.
And yet, Genocide Joe will blow an easy election.
Joe Biden's moral collapse on Gaza could help Donald Trump win
Joe Biden is the main enabler of Israel's carnage in Gaza. Morally and politically, that could mean disaster
Joe Biden's moral collapse on Gaza could help Donald Trump win
Joe Biden is the main enabler of Israel's carnage in Gaza. Morally and politically, that could mean disaster
The Liberal party has virtually no chance in the Prairies. Its either NDP or Conservatives out there. The Liberals are very much an east coast and Ontario/Quebec urban/suburban party. In a way they are a regional party as well.
Every province recieves transfers. We also subsidize the Maritimes. Quebec is "complicated" to say the least. But demographics are slowly changing the province.
I think you could see the rise of a Texas based party, with tendrils to nearby states, rising over immigration policy, and continuing over other social issues. They would have financial backing and "identity" to draw on, no doubt. That would be my first thought. Add on a dozen already elected reps and a charismatic leader and quite a few could come up the middle. We saw it in Canada with the Reform Party. They took the mantle of the CCP but really they are still that party. So it can happen. Especially with a weak President. Imagine if Biden steps down within a year of a win. Harris just wouldn't have the political capital and the Dems would be under fire over it. If the GOP was weakened as well after a Trump loss and dithering while Harris fucked up border policy it can happen.
I will add in to this the USA is really heading for a more isolationist mood. The GOP supporting an unpopular war would very much add to the stew. Lots of hot spots to cause this.
She is either going to end up the VP, or will wait and this is the practice run before 2028.
Wyatt he lives there,lol...Mercedes Schlapp and her husband are leaders in CPAC. She said she "brought" him to CPAC this year and took him away from South Carolina.
Mercedes Schlapp | C-SPAN.org
www.c-span.org
It's not a good idea to go dumpster diving on Twitter.
The problem is that "Fiscally conservative, socially liberal" has weak support in the US population. (It is very popular in media commentary, though.)
To be DJTs VP you have to be willing to be humiliated and fully bow at his feet. Pence did but thankfully listened to conservative legal scholars at the end.
Tim Scott did show he's willing to be humiliated. DeSantis is starting to show, as is Haley, that they won't be humiliated. Starting. Let's see how they end.
Dems swallow their pride too. But they don't have the pres candidate humiliate them.
Yup.
People tend not to realize just how much things were getting torn up politically in the 1850s.
The 1856 election had three parties with the rise of the Republicans and the final appearance of the Whigs as a formal party.
1860 had four parties winning states with the Southern Democrats splitting off to be more pro-slavery and the Constitutional Unionists as the last gasp of the whigs.
1864 was still during the war and Lincoln runs on a unity ticket.
You still get some wobble in the two party system for a while after that, until the populists rise up briefly in the 1880s.
The Bloc is a bit of a weird unique case because it grew out of the movement to the referendum in the 90s.
Once that failed and started to fade, it has been kind of bereft of identity.
It vaguely reflects being "pro quebec at the federal level" but that means it is somewhat ideologically incoherent.
I think in a parliamentary system, regional parties have a place, but there are two forms of that.
One is a purely regional party, focused on the region itself.
The other is a federal party that reflects a regional sensibility. Think of it as being a stronghold for that party.
That can sometimes lock that party out of power because it can't expand, but it can also act as a nursery to give it some local power and a stronghold to fall back on if it loses steam, without vanishing. It can then either gradually expand nationally or it can fuse with another party (either being swallowed or become a new entity entirely). The Conservatives in Canada are the result of that kind of splitting, retrenchment, and rebirth.
