«12. . .2,1642,1652,1662,1672,1682,1692,170. . .2,5162,517»
What I’m hearing is that you don’t care about others’ theological and spiritual failures... that’s a little bit concerning. Christians, of any denomination, should be concerned about each others’ well-being.
All I hear is that every denomination believe they have the truth, and want you to convert to their beliefs. There can never be a true consensus. Hence, each to their own, in the end. I very much doubt the Old Order Amish are thinking much about what is now happening in the German Catholic Church. It doesn't mean they are bad Christians.
If the Trump platform only works in "right wing states", then it's not worth much as a platform. You're trying to frame Virginia as some kind of super liberal state that a Republican could never win in, but the GOP did better in Virginia in 2012 then in Wisconsin, or Michigan, or Pennsylvania, and you're obviously not characterizing them as deep blue.
It seems like your argument is pretty much entirely based on stereotype, 'pssh, the real American independents don't like globalism, they want a man of the people.' Except plenty of them are pretty fine with free trade-as polling has pretty consistently shown-and some polls seem to indicate that they are the most favorable of free trade between them, the Democrats, and the 'corporate' GOP
https://news.gallup.com/poll/247970/slim-majority-trade-benefitting-workers.aspx
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/18/americans-support-free-trade----and-are-worried-about-the-trump-economy-poll.html
In any case, even if we say that the polls are backwards and they actually hate free trade, it's questionable just how much they vote on the issue of trade anyways-it very rarely is rated highly as a top issue. Trump's wins among the blue collar came far more from his "I'll fight back" kind of message and stuff such as-as you brought up earlier "We'll start saying Merry Christmas again" than skepticism of trade policy. Contrary to stereotype, not every person in Michigan works at an auto plant.
As for the claim that his positions on trade won him those states, perhaps it did do something, but Trump would have lost all three of those states, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, against Barack Obama, hardly a protectionist. All three of Trump's wins there came from Clinton getting fewer votes, not him getting more-in Wisconsin, Mitt Romney actually got more votes in 2012 than Trump did in 2016.
I think if the best spin that can be put on it is that the President maybe possibly helped turnout, then it's not really a strong case. You can try to squeeze in some credit, it's hard to conclusively prove that sort of thing either way, but if the top example of a Trump midterm win won on a Cruz-esque platform with Trump support, it seems to undercut the idea that Trump's platform is the thing that is popular about him.
He really can't be that though. In the best-case scenario of that, it just makes him look incompetent. As you said yourself, Trump has been forced into the GOP by the lack of any ability to work with Democrats, and if that is the case, and he wants to get anything done, he can't just wash his hands and say "I'm third party." Trump identifies as a Republican, ran as a Republican, and loves to brag about his approval ratings in the GOP, he can't drop that ball when it becomes inconvenient. I think we very well could have seen a Trump presidency like you are describing, where he sort of puts himself in the middle and sides with Republicans here and then Democrats there. In that case, I would think it a valid argument to say that Trump is separate from the party and should not take responsibility, but I think we both can agree that that not has been the case at all, Trump has been a Republican President.
If a national populist agenda can't win state-level races, then that's a pretty glaring weakness, and it's one that has to be made up for by national success. If that agenda was racking up big wins in Congressional races at the expense of states, then fine, that's a trade-off that can be argued for-but if it is losing in both, it sounds like it needs to be jettisoned.
Trump explicitly provided external opposition in backstabbing the House bill that otherwise could have gone to the Senate for a vote rather than the independent we ended up with that failed.
"If he doesn't have the votes, he doesn't have the votes" is an extremely defeatist line of thought. The thing one would expect from the guy behind the Art of the Deal is if he does not have the votes, then he needs to get those votes.
It's basically having teammates in the team sport of politics. Do they play a different position than you and have a different job? Yes. Is it their fault if they can't keep up? Yes, largely. But if you want to win, should you be trying to work together? Absolutely-or at the very least, you shouldn't be kicking their shins when they wear the same uniform as you.
Intervention is a pretty broad term as I see it, certainly a war against an invading country would be one, but a lot of places in the world are a mess-it's hard to find a 'good example' if the only interventions one can have are ones in already stable regions, particularly as those are the regions that are less likely to have someone feel the need to intervene.
I agree that fewer poles=more stable, but I don't think there's an arbitrary cutoff, a unipolar system has the fewest and is the most stable because of that.
I don't think that changes anything at all. If you have three, foreign politics is always going to be a constant maneuvering to get a 2-on-1 situation that would benefit both allies by taking out a competitor-no one wants to face two peer opponents at once, and nations will seek to hook up with the one that they dislike less to get around that.
That's why you lock the doors, in this example, that would be structural constraints that make it very difficult to put boots on the ground overseas-basically repealing the nonsense War Powers Act and other unconsitutional war-starting authority given to the President. Unfortunately, not likely to happen.
Africa and the Middle East have always been tumultuous, we're talking about the Iranian Revolution pre-fall of the U.S.S.R. after all, before we even get to the Iran-Iraq War-Africa tended to have larger conflicts in that period as well.
The way I see it, Americans are consistently able to express their opposition to abortion in polls, but any piece of legislation will not face that same scrutiny, because any piece of legislation will have a media spin in presenting it to people unlike the poll that was just a straight set of questions. Just look at Politifact actively lie about the New York abortion law, even to the point where you can prove they're lying by their own writeup.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/feb/01/viral-image/no-new-york-abortion-law-doesnt-let-mothers-abort-/
"I was born at 12:05," reads the text over a photo of a smiling infant. "In New York, it is now perfectly legal to murder me at 12:04."
This post is not accurate, though it has been shared more than 5,500 times and was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
Is the post correct that women can get abortions the minute before a baby would be born?
Flagg called such a situation "absurd."
"If a healthy baby is born at 12:05, the only thing happening at 12:04 is labor," he said. "If it is a vaginal birth, the baby’s head would likely have been crowning for several minutes, and the labor itself going on for several hours or even days. In a caesarean delivery, the mother would have been prepped for surgery for some time."
But a C-section is not always possible, said Danielle Castaldi-Micca, vice president of political and government affairs at the National Institute for Reproductive Health, an organization that advocates for abortion rights. It’s possible the abdominal surgery would endanger the mother’s life or health, she said.
Jen Villavicencio, an ob-gyn in the Midwest who provides abortions, said in a statement to PolitiFact that the post is "inaccurate."
"Abortions are not performed at 40 weeks on healthy, viable pregnancies," she said. "Overwhelmingly, abortions that occur at this point in pregnancy are pregnancies where lethal fetal anomalies have been diagnosed."
In some cases, she said, complications aren’t detected or haven’t developed until the third trimester. Doctors may ask patients if they want to continue the pregnancy and deliver a "nonviable fetus," she said, or have an abortion. There are situations where abortion is necessary to save the mother’s life, Villavicencio said. "However, if a mother’s life is at risk and she is pregnant with a viable fetus, most often delivery is pursued, not abortion. The care becomes about saving both the life of the mother and the fetus.".....
The Reproductive Health Act permits abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy only if the mother’s life or health are threatened or if the fetus isn’t viable. The post doesn’t make clear significant restrictions still apply to the new law; rather, it gives the opposite impression.
Oh you silly pro-lifers, the New York law doesn't allow abortion up to birth, it just...allows abortion up to birth, as the (only pro-abortion) 'experts' we surveyed explicitly say, yet we still rate the claim as false.
Absolute bullcrap 'fact-checkers' like Politifact are held as shining objective standards by a left-wing media, and get undue power in, as the article notes, social media sites like Facebook despite not simply getting it wrong, but actively lying as here.
Or just actively shilling within their 'fact-checks'
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/27/ted-cruz/do-democrats-support-abortion-until-and-after-birt/
"To be clear: killing an infant after birth is illegal, and people on both sides of the abortion debate agree that this act should be illegal."
That's literally not even part of the fact check, they're throwing in political cover for Democrats, and political cover that is, again, an active lie-we have the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act votes to prove it.
Combine active lies from fact-checkers that get parroted by the rest of the media the insane gaslighting of framing, from CNN "a fetus that was born" to how any abortion restriction is flagged as 'extreme' while that label is never, ever put on New York or Virginia, we have a fight where the means of informing the public are overwhelmingly not just slanted against but hostile to a pro-life message-and that is what always has and will continue to hamper anti-abortion efforts in the U.S.
Culture of Life, Phydios, and Lagrodia
Of course there can be consensus! "In necessary things unity, in unnecessary things freedom." While the devil and sinful humans may enjoy throwing wrenches in the works, the Church has a long history of reaching consensus even while throwing the spiritual sword in the face of heresiarchs. Christ prayed that the Apostles would all be one, and therefore it is possible and, indeed, inevitable that the Church become one under its head. Sola totus Christus, not sola scriptura! Verbum factum est.
Culture of Life, Horatius Cocles, The Catholic State of Eire, Lagrodia, and 1 otherBasilicus
Are you suggesting that social conservatives would ever join the Democrats? The Democrats have made clear that pro-life politicians have no place in their party. The Democrats are not going to get more moderate as time goes by, they're going to get more radical. Republicans go back and forth, but the Democrats have been on a steady leftward shift since the 90s that has accelerated over the past 4 years.
On GOP:
Never said that. I'm saying that a conservative platform is not going to work in a deep blue state, and running on national issues is not going to win in a state election. If he had run on a more pro-worker platform he might have won, but again, I think Virginia is a lot bluer now than you seem to think. Stewart also had some personality issues.
I don't think blue-collar workers are in support of trade. And I think it's useless to apply national polling (who knows where they are pulling those samples from) and apply it to every state equally.
Just because it doesn't rate highly doesn't mean it isn't a factor. If you have the same trust factor as your opponent on healthcare and the economy, those ancillary issues that most ordinary people don't spend much time thinking about will become more integral to their decision.
I never said Trump's platform is the thing that is popular about him, and I also defy the repeated attempt to try to apply the Trump platform to state contests. I have repeatedly said that my issue with the GOP is at the national level; the state parties never have, and never will, be part of my argument. There are 50 different state GOP parties and I am not going to go through each one and try and extrapolate the success of some buffoon like Hogan onto why the GOP lost the House. Trump's platform consists of national issues; what I'm saying could work is a populist pro-worker platform. Trump's platform is that kind of platform, but that does not mean his platform can win everywhere, because it's comprised entirely of national-specific issues. This is a "rectangle is not a square" issue. Rectangles can work, a square is a rectangle, but a square is not a good fit in every contest, as Stewart demonstrates to some extent.
I also defy the insinuation that voters go entirely based off of policy. Most politicians don't really run on policy, that run on "this guy wants to do X to your Y, be afraid!" If a politician is a strong candidate with a good message, and they are willing to make the case, they have a good shot at winning. If they're boring or weak, limply embrace Trump in some generic sense, and don't really articulate a pro-worker message, they're not going to win. All of the examples you have pulled in have been races where they did not run on a populist, pro-worker platform, or their candidate was inherently flawed in some way.
The only modern presidents who were really good pseudo-legislators were FDR, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton. In each case they had a party that was firmly behind them and an opposition that was willing to negotiate on matters of mutual interest. Trump does not have much support from his party pre-2018, and the opposition has sworn to his destruction. I just don't understand the obsession with Trump taking a more proactive role in legislation. You can memorize the Art of the Deal backwards and it doesn't mean a thing with polarization this bad.
Once again shifting the blame to another branch that has no role in the crafting of legislation. If the House can't pass a bill, that's their own fault. Ryan "did his job"? Can't even whip votes for his own legislation, then people want to blame Trump? And saying the Senate would have passed it if it had left the House is a big assumption, and not one I think is persuasive, considering the Senate couldn't even pass its own version.
On interventionism and multipolarism:
I didn't say interventions in stable regions, I said interventions that stabilize regions. Afghanistan was hardly in a stable part of the world when the Soviet intervened. The problem with the Gulf War is that it stopped Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, but it didn't address the aggression of Iraq in general. Iraq had become increasingly belligerent because of paranoia over Iran. If you "intervene" in a war and you leave the region in the same way you found it, you haven't really done anything. In Afghanistan the Soviet Union was correcting a chaotic government in order to provide a more effective countermeasure against militants. If Bush had wanted to intervene in Iraq, he would have done something with it. It would be more accurate I suppose to say he intervened in Kuwait, since they were the only real direct beneficiaries of U.S. intervention.
Not arbitary at all. Why does the US have three branches of government instead of just one? Or four? The same principle applies. Letting one power have free reign is dangerous, and inefficient. The US cannot be everywhere at once.
That's literally true of all systems. If you have a machine, and one of the parts isn't working properly, the whole thing doesn't work. But the fewer parts you have, the simpler and more efficient it is, the easier it is to maintain, and the easier it is to repair.
It didn't, but the Austro-Prussian War is simply the reverse of the Franco-Prussian War. You only had two active participants, Austria and Prussia, while a third, France, wouldn't get involved. If France and Austria had worked together, neither of those wars would have been won by Prussia (or at least, they wouldn't have been the easy victories they ended up being, and their cooperation would have served as a more effective deterrent). Likewise, WWI started as a disagreement between Russia and Austria-Hungary over Serbia. The other powers barely tried to get involved until after war had already been declared (I think the technical term for that is "leading from behind").
Similarly, France and Britain before WWII offered no meaningful opposition to Germany taking Austria or Czechoslovakia, and couldn't work with the Soviet Union. Had they done so, Hitler wouldn't have been able to get away with highway robbery before the invasion of Poland and consequently might not have been so bold as to invade it in the first place. The German military was relatively weak to start with, and even France and Britain could have taken it on in a direct fight. Instead they just sat around and waited for Poland to fall. Similarly, I doubt Germany would have bothered if they could not have gotten the secret pact with Stalin on dividing Poland, which Stalin only did because he knew that France and Britain were working on separate appeasements with Hitler, so he decided to get in on the game himself.
I think if two people really want to go to war with each other, no system is going to be able to stop it just by being in place. No one avoids going to war today because they're afraid of the United States, it just usually isn't worth the risk of starting a war period. But having more "cops on the beat" as it were, makes policing the system more effective, in general.
True, but as I said in Iran no one was working together. The only side propping up the Shah was the United States, and very poorly at that. In the ME more broadly, the power vacuum left by the Ottoman Empire was haphazardly replaced with France and Britain, but after WWII they lost the ability and interest in exerting power in the region. The US and Soviets were poor replacements; the US committed little resources during the Cold War to the area, and were more preoccupied with supporting arms to Israel. The Soviet Union's influence in the region was mostly trying to counter US influence due to fears of Israel being a "gendarme of the Pentagon". There was no interest on either side in maintaining regional stability for its own sake. But now you basically only have the US trying to maintain peace in the region, with Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia aggressively following their own, separate agendas. There's no power parity.
As for Africa, I don't know too much about its politics, but I do know that no one has tried very hard to maintain peace or stability since decolonization.
Phydios and Indoinastan
Totus Christus is a great and Biblically-grounded doctrine (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2012/05/christus-totus-why-catholics-care-about-christians), and it's great to see Catholics support it, especially since I've seen other Catholics say "there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church". While I believe that Catholicism is wrong on many points, I am not certain if any of these points are essential doctrines required for salvation. That doesn't seem to be the case. And anyway, "in necessary things unity; in uncertain things liberty; in all things charity". Satan wishes to divide us and pit us against each other; he has had enough fun already.
However, I am not sure how that doctrine conflicts with Sola Scriptura or Solus Christus. I certainly don't see a contradiction. And I'm not sure what you mean by verbum factum est, since that seems to translate to "Word of the". Perhaps you meant verbum caro hic factum est, "the Word was made flesh"?
Basilicus, thank you for spoilering the majority of that post.
Privet from Phoenix partners
I'll continue to spoiler-tag things on a case-by-case basis. Up until now I've only been tagging individual sections of my posts that have spun a tad too long; but there was so much content in my last post that even I had a headache looking at it on desktop. I'm happy to make things more legible for everyone, including myself, but I don't want it to necessarily be interpreted as me doing because I think my discussion is irrelevant to anyone other than 
Roborian.
Your discussion need not be irrelevant to anyone besides Roborian. I don't think it is. But it is bothersome to scroll past when I don't want to read it. Please spoiler your posts.
It would be no different if we were having a discussion of the same duration but with shorter replies. You would still have to scroll past a number of messages that have no importance to you. Not everything on a board will be something you want to read. I will spoiler-tag portions of my posts if they are too long. I am not going to categorically spoiler-tag everything I write.
One can argue light blue for Virginia, but seriously, by no standard is it a deep-blue state: Romney did better there than in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, Trump was within five points there in 2016, and the GOP kept majorities in both chambers (one of which they had held for eighteen consecutive years through the 2017 elections before they finally could not hold on with an unpopular incumbent in 2019.
It just feels like the criteria keep being shifted so that there can never really be an answer. A candidate who is pro-worker and populist would win, except not in that state, and also that candidate was problematic, and also maybe they weren't pro-worker enough. If you need a perfect alignment of the stars to make a certain kind of candidate win running on X platform, then X platform is not very strong.
State level data tends to show the same thing.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/22/trumps-trade-war-gets-poor-marks-in-poll-could-threaten-his-support-in-2020.html
And maybe some blue-collar workers aren't in support of trade-but I'd imagine the ones who are building exports sure as heck are. At best you can argue that a majority of that specific group thinks that way, but then it's still a question whether or not that's their core issue, and whether one loses more than they gains in pushing it. The sort of broad-brush idea that no real voter would ever actually support a candidate off of free trade is extreme hyperbole at best, if not directly wrong at worst.
Sure, I never said it was useless, but there's a big difference between "maybe voters who think that both candidates are equal on healthcare and the economy (not the largest group) might make their decision on trade" and saying that Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio just off of his trade positions.
I mean, I'm going off of your commentary here.
If state parties are not a part of your argument, then we can set that line of discussion aside, but it really looked like they were explicitly part of it.
You're looking for a unicorn here. Every candidate is flawed and every candidate can be blamed on that, if the only person who can prove your point is (ironically given the earlier discussion on Trump) a Saint, then we'll be waiting forever. The criteria seem to shift depending on the contest and its outcome. Stewart, who was basically universally considered to be a Trumpist candidate, gets his severe defeat excused because he was 'flawed' (I don't know what about him could be seen as a bigger issue than anything on Trump's record), but DeSantis, who, as you have said, is more Cruz-like than anything, can have his win credited to Trump's support. But if DeSantis had lost, I feel like you'd be arguing that that was because he was not 'pro-worker' enough. There does not seem to be a stable set of goalposts.
I think the party support of those Presidents is being overestimated, but regardless, that's why I've been citing the most recent President in a slightly less but still deeply polarized era in Obama, making the ACA happen with no GOP votes. Polarization for a President is a two-way street. It makes it harder to negotiate across the aisle, but it also makes it easier to whip your own party into line. Perhaps it was never possible for Trump to negotiate with Democrats, but it certainly was in the realm of possibility to 'Art of the Deal' within his own party.
Ryan did whip the votes, mate, and it did leave the House-May 4, 2017. If the House couldn't pass a bill, maybe it would have been their fault, but they did indeed do so, this is not a what-if situation, it's what actually happened.
No, that was my point as well, perhaps not well worded on my part. You noted that the Gulf War was problematic despite being an extremely effective intervention because "the region was already destablized." I was saying that if good interventionism requires regions that aren't destabilized then it is not worth much, because a stable region is less likely to be intervened in in the first place.
That said, 'address[ing] the aggression of Iraq" is exactly what Bush II did, which we both rightly criticize him for. One can't blame one intervention for not going occupationist and the other for doing exactly that when literally talking about the same nation.
The U.S. is not meant to be everywhere at once, just to be a looming presence for Pax Americana. A unipolar world is one where every other nation knows that any significant aggression raises the possibility of the hegemon coming down on them. A bipolar or tripolar world makes that aggression possible so long as you have the other big boy backing you.
'Inefficient' in particular seems like an odd criticism, it's not as if one is, like a government, establishing three arms of the same body to participate in some kind of task of global peacemaking. The great powers do not have a united goal, they are rivals, and rivals prone to conflict.
This seems another unipolar argument. In a tripolar system, if any one of the great powers 'breaks', you've get massive amounts of blood spilled.
"If France and Austria had worked together" sounds like "If Serbia and Russia had worked together" which leads to "If Germany and Austria had worked together" which leads to "If France, Britian, and Russia had worked together" and you get where I'm going with this.
But there's a contradiction here. On one hand, Germany/France/the UK are criticized for belatedly (we're talking about a manner of days here) getting involved in a matter of Russia, Austria, and Serbia (so realistically Russia and Austria, Serbia was not a power), but in the same kind of situation, France is wrong to not "get involved" in the Austro-Prussian war, and likewise the UK+Austria for the Franco-Prussian. Are other powers supposed to jump in, or not? Them staying on the sidelines is blamed for the continental wars, them interfering is blamed for the World one.
This could get into a very lengthy diversion, but the idea that the UK/France could have rolled over Germany at the time of Munich was not accurate. Germany of 1938 was much farther into their mobilization than were the UK or France, and contemporary accounts had British and French advisers in desperate fear over the prospect of war and telling their governments the same. Chamberlain has been the punching bag of history, but the delay gave greater strength to the Western Allies than an immediate conflict would have brought.
But that's military history rather than international relations theory, and on that note, you have another question of whether interference should or should not happen. When it was Austria/Russia/Serbia, you are critical of the other powers getting involved. When it is Germany/Poland/USSR, are they supposed to or not?
I strongly disagree. Nations pretty much exclusively enter wars that they believe that they can win. The looming presence of the U.S.A. changes that calculus immensely. It's still possible that someone could start a fight, convince themselves that they could win anyways, but that is significantly less likely with the U.S.A. on the other side of the equation than in a scenario where the war would be 1-on-1. Israel's neighbors still hate her, but there's not going to be another Yom Kippur war with the U.S. as sole superpower.
That line near the end is a good one-"no interest on either side in maintaining regional stability for its own sake." In any kind of multipolar system, that will always be the case. If made to choose between strategic advantage for the nation and regional stability just out of the goodness of their hearts, the former will always win. Unipolar systems like stability because instability only hurt the hegemon. In bipolar or multipolar systems, as long the instability is not directly harming a power, they have little incentive to try to fix it, and when that instability may be hurting a rival, they have active incentive to destablize things further.
Yep.
Well, the European position -- "Do as I say, not as I do" -- wasn't very conducive to African peace.
Europeans fight back-to-back wars that claim more than 100 million lives and then chastise Africans for their violence.
Through a series of revolutions, secessions, and ethnic cleansings (on both sides), Europeans create separate monoethnic states and then chastise Africans, living in multiethnic states, for warring against each other when their national borders are totally arbitrary.
On GOP candidates and ACA repeal:
I still think that the trajectory of demographics in that state is so accelerated towards northern urban/suburban voters, largely dependent on the federal government, that rural voters have been completely relegated. The margins aren't what you'd see in the Northeast, sure, but an immovable 5% edge is no more surmountable than an immovable 15% edge. If a conservative Republican ever wins a statewide contest in that state again, I will gladly eat my words. And Romney doing better there is because he was a more moderate candidate, more attractive to wealthier, urban voters. His attraction to rural voters was not significant.
I understand that impression, and I'm really not trying to move any goalposts, there are just so many variables it's hard to address them all at once. Whenever I try to weigh one variable more than another in my argument, in response to a specific thing you've brought up, it looks like I'm shifting the focus to the deliberate exclusion of another aspect, but that isn't my intent. I'll try to put it in as comprehensive terms as possible, taking all of the variables into account at the same time.
(Independent variable: platform; dependent variable: candidate)
If all GOP candidates ran on a populist platform, the ones that are the least disciplined (Stewart, Moore) will fail. And I'm certainly not saying Trump is disciplined, but he's been very fortunate in being able to shape the narrative to fit his purposes, unlike Moore or Stewart who were basically caricaturized (successfully) by the media without any large platform (like Trump has) to combat that narrative.
(Independent variable: candidate; dependent variable: platform)
If all GOP candidates were of the same level of temperament and competency, I think those that had a populist platform (vs. a more free market, anti-labor platform) would do better. Keynesian economics are broadly popular; protections for medical preconditions are popular; social security is popular; pro-labor reforms are popular; pro-environment legislation is popular; infrastructure projects are popular. On the other hand, cutting taxes (even when it is beneficial to the working and middles classes) are controversial, easily flipped into a "they sold you out to the rich" narrative. Everyone likes to have their taxes cut, but if people are able to convince enough low-information voters that their taxes weren't really cut, that's all it takes to negate the appeal.
Everyone loves exports, and plenty of people love their cheap imports too. But fair trade does not equal no trade, just restricted trade. No one likes outsourcing, falling/stagnant wages, or being unemployed. That's why I think the Rust Belt was the deciding factor in 2016, and why they went for Trump but not Romney (whose father was once governor of Michigan). There was also broad bipartisan opposition to TPP by the bases of both parties in 2016.
If I referred to states, it was the federal elections in those states, not their state contests. The only reason I mentioned state contests was because you were complaining about the loss of state houses and governorships while Trump has been in office, and I don't feel like correlation there equals causation. I will gladly admit that he played a role in the House losses though, since his leadership motivated a lot of retiring incumbents, high Democratic turnout, and disorganized and unenthusiastic campaigning by many moderate Republicans in swing districts.
I think his platform was not a good fit for Virginia. Populism depends on the people you're appealing to. Trump appeals to industrial workers in the Rust Belt. His message doesn't play the same everywhere. People in Maine probably liked his anti-establishment appeal, since they have also been known to gravitate in the 2nd congressional district towards Ron Paul. But with Stewart, yes, he embraced Trump and his platform happily. But none of what he did in agreeing with Trump's national agenda translates to Virginia. Immigration and trade don't have an immediate relevance to your average voter in Virginia. Most importantly, Stewart's campaign was characterized (fairly or unfairly) by his support for Confederate monuments, and being that Virginia has a lot of "Yankee" voters in Northern Virginia, I don't know that he should have allowed that to become his signature issue. Trump has certainly supported monuments, but it isn't the foundation of his platform.
Trump helped DeSantis win the primary, so I feel like his success or failure has to be tied to Trump one way or the other. The two issues of his character/platform can't be decoupled from Trump's support, because he wouldn't have even gotten to the general election without him. Contrast that with Rick Scott who won, by a wider margin, without actively campaigning with Trump, but also not running away from him either, and making the campaign more about issues than himself. I think that sort of strategy works much better for a senatorial campaign than a gubernatorial campaign, where who you are as a person is more important (I just believe that's always more important in a race for an executive position, by nature of the office).
The reason I brought up the Florida races was not to tout the success of the populist platform, but to refute the issue of Trump's "unpopularity" being a hindrance to GOP candidates in general. DeSantis has two problems: 1) he was very conservative, more conservative than a normal statewide Republican from Florida, and 2) he was running very close to Donald Trump. I have no doubt that his support of Trump and his conservative style hurt him with many moderate voters; the edge came from the amount of Republicans and pro-Trump independents I believe he motivated to turn out, that ultimately outweighed his disadvantages. Every race is complex, and while you say I like to make very general statements (I do), when we're analyzing specific races I think it's important to look at a race as a group of variables, among which support for Trump or his platform (two separate things) can hurt or help a candidate depending on their personality (Desantis -/Scott +) and the character of the state and its electorate (Florida +/Virginia -). I know it looks like I'm talking about an alignment of the stars, but I really don't think it's that different from any other set of elections.
You can apply the same logic to any pre-Trump race: neither Romney nor McCain had a personality that could compare to Obama's. They were not effective campaigners. Likewise, their platforms were not very well-defined or aggressively championed. In contrast, Obama's campaigns, while not very well-defined either, were nevertheless aggressively championed. Obama made a slew of promises, and regardless of what they were, they galvanized support from his base, and I think his personality is what brought over a lot of independents. Reagan had a very well-defined platform and a dynamite personality, and he beat an incumbent. Likewise to a lesser extent with Clinton against Bush I. Bush II had a better personality than Gore or Kerry, and none of them had very well-articulated platforms. All elections require an alignment of the stars; some just require more alignment than others. That's why I think Trump deliberately waited until 2016 to run, as opposed to '88, '00, or '12.
If you want to strike a deal, you have to have leverage. It would actually be easier for Trump to work with Democrats (if they were willing) because they have plenty to gain and nothing to lose, since they were in the opposition. Republicans were afraid of Trump's immigration policies and ideologically opposed to them as well; they also didn't want to spend on infrastructure. They had little to gain and everything to lose by working on priorities that the party, at that time, opposed.
Then maybe I'm just confused, because you said he turned on them and the bill failed, so I assumed you were referring to March 24, 2017 when Republicans withdrew their replacement bill. Because after they passed one in May, the buck shifted to the Senate, where McCain and others were to blame. So I'm still kind of confused where Trump comes in. Certainly he didn't help any (as I have conceded, he is not a details or legislation guy), but I don't see how he was the deciding factor in its failure.
On interventionism:
It's not that the region was already destabilized that the Gulf War was not an effective intervention, it's that the intervention did nothing to correct that instability. Like I said, if you view it as intervention in the Iraq-Kuwait war, it was a success. If you view it as intervention to stop Iraq from being a destabilizing force, on the other hand, then it was a failure, because Iraq continued to be an issue afterwards. But the underlying cause of Iraq's instability was the 1979 Revolution (I erroneously said 1980 previously, my bad). But rather than attend to that, US policy became fixated on Iraq (for understandable reasons, but no less incorrect).
Interventionism and occupation are not the same thing (another rectangle/square situation). Bush had nothing to replace Saddam with, and so left a huge vacuum of power, leaving the region in even worse shape. When the Soviets went into Afghanistan, they didn't go in and rule it, there was already a pro-Soviet government in place, all they did was remove someone who had illegally seized power within the PDPA and was causing problems. Rather than toppling the Iraqi government wholesale, a better strategy would have been to use a carrot-and-stick approach to coax Saddam into playing ball (Bush I also rejected a Soviet-backed agreement in 1991). One of the reasons Iraq invaded Kuwait can arguably attributed to the Soviet Union's waning influence, as the USSR teetered on the brink of collapse and its footprint retreated worldwide. The fact that the USSR supported the coalition (led by its nominal rival) shows that they were too weak at that point to reign in even their weakest satellite states.
And I don't think that the "Pax Americana" idea actually works out in practice. There have been no major conflicts so far, but there have been plenty of smaller-scale conflicts and issues that make America, in trying to market itself as a "global hegemon", end up looking weak and ineffectual. The Middle-east and North Africa ended up a complete nightmare under Obama, and it has only stabilized somewhat thanks to Russia and to a lesser extent Europe. But the EU and Russia do not have the willingness or resources (respectively) to do that alone.
While it is true that rivalries can be exploited to breach the peace (as happened numerous times during the Cold War), such events were much less common prior to WWI when there were a plethora of roughly comparable great powers. I feel pretty safe in saying that the Great Powers of Europe (+Japan) were much more willing to cooperate outside of Europe than inside it. True, Germany kind of mussed things up under Bismarck, but as I said, I think that proves why cooperation is necessary and effective. The Holy Alliance (cooperating with Bourbon France) after the Napoleonic Wars was very, very effective at suppressing incidents in Spain and Italy. To your point, Metternich failed to prevent the Revolutions of 1848, and is in fact what broke the Concert, but considering those arose from within the great powers themselves, I don't think a unipolar or bipolar system would have worked any better.
And what happens if the unipole breaks? Far easier to depend on 2 out of 3, than 0 out of 1.
I'm not sure I follow this completely. What I am saying is that a majority of the powers in the equation have to work together to prevent war. The powers in those cases were Great Britain, France, Italy, Austria (Austria-Hungary), Prussia (Germany), and Russia. The only aggressor in both the Prussian wars was "Germany" (France declared war, but Bismarck intentionally baited them). If any two of those 8 powers had worked together against Germany, war could have been prevented. If everyone just sits on the sidelines, then of course wars will pop up. The same thing with WWI; everyone just made unconditional pledges of support, and there was no active diplomacy, only passive diplomacy.
No, no. Them joining in during WWI is not where the blame lies. You said it right when you said I blamed for belatedly getting involved. WWI was a disaster because it took everyone by surprise and there was no real objective. I wonder what the popular opinion was on the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, but either the Great Powers should have pressured Austria to drop its demands, or pressured Russia not to interfere. Instead they watched the events unfold, and then declared war. It's like the difference between firing a warning shot at a passing ship versus just opening fire without warning. Austria-Hungary had come under direct attack, linked to the Serbian government. When it issued its ultimatum, Russia mobilized, followed by Germany, while France and Great Britain either remained silent or equivocated when Germany "demanded" them to remain neutral. That's reactive diplomacy, not proactive.
True, the West was not mobilized to the same extent as Germany, but their armed forces were stronger once mobilized. France had the most powerful army in Europe. If they had crossed into Germany while its military was moving into Austria, Czechoslovakia, or Poland, Germany would have had to have split its forces and its ability to mount an effective attack halved. You'll get no argument from me on the issue of Allied leaders lacking the requisite mettle for attacking (which is why the Battle of France was such a disaster), or quality of equipment and training, for that matter. But even a crappy, numerically superior army can be effective against an out-of-position, distracted one.
I believe this is addressed by my comments on WWI above, in greater detail. But it isn't a question of action or inaction, it's a question of cooperation and coordination over reaction and non-communication. I don't think in either case, any of the side powers should have just unilaterally declared war on the aggressor state. I think they should have threatened war and used leverage to de-escalate. In WWI they sidestepped diplomacy and went straight to war, breaching the peace they should have protected. In WWII, they waged incompetent diplomacy and ended up with war anyway. In diplomacy, to quote Teddy Roosevelt, you have to talk softly and carry a big stick. In WWI they skipped talking and went straight to beating each other with big sticks. Before WWII, they spoke softly, but were afraid to use their sticks, and so their soft-speaking was ignored by Hitler. If you're going to talk to someone, the stick is necessary to make sure the other side is listening.
The U.S. did little to prevent the original Yom Kippur War, and it was arguably just as powerful then. Also the U.S. did not prevent any number of smaller conflicts with Israel's neighbors, such as the Lebanon War in 2006. In any case, I would argue the lack of another Yom Kippur War has less to do with the threat of US support and more to do with Egypt drifting into the US security fold, and out of the Non-Aligned Movement. Egypt was the nucleus of all major opposition to Israel during the Cold War. After it made peace and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 happened, the landscape was much different, because Iraq's focus shifted to Iran, Syria's shifted to Iraq, and so forth.
All I ever hear from the US is either "we're working on it", "we strongly condemn XYZ", or "we've got no skin in the game." I don't think that makes the US a very effective hegemon. I also think frustration with US predominance generates hostility and suspicion where it ordinarily wouldn't be. During the Cold War, even if a country didn't like the US, the Soviet Union could still go in and talk to them, if they had worked together, which didn't usually happen. Alternatively, if a country didn't like the Soviet Union, the US could work with them. Now if a country doesn't like the US, there's basically no reliable third party who can help mediate.
I actually agree with you; your point is the same as mine. After decolonization, Europeans cut and ran, washing their hands of the harmful geographic lines they themselves had drawn. I don't chastise Africans for not being peaceful, rather the opposite: I chastise Europeans for not being a force for peace in the region and basically ignoring the vast majority of all the problems still going on there (many of which, again, as you say, can be traced back to the collapse of the colonial system [and by extension, its original imposition]).
When the Republicans also cast them out of the party for supporting “big government”, I hope social conservatives would join the party that at least attempts to reduce abortion through other means.
Edit: Furthermore, Republicans have shifted rightward more than the Democrats shifted leftward. Case in point: They cast universal healthcare out of the party in 1950, only when Bernie Sanders came around 70 years later did it become a mainstream position.
Meanwhile, Rockefeller Republicans are practically extinct, with a few exceptions in oddball states.
And which party is that? Certainly not the Democrats! They're deep in the pocket of Planned Parenthood and its doctrine of time-bomb contraception, which gives it a steady stream of women and girls to be convinced into abortions. Say "safe, legal, and rare" to the Democratic Party these days, and you'll get pounced on. Abortion is a good thing, they say, something to be celebrated, even with "shout your abortion" hashtags.
Not to mention: who has fought every bill raising health and safety standards for abortion facilities? Democrats. Who has pushed for pregnancy care centers to be forced to advertise abortions? Democrats. Who has fought to keep parents out of the picture regarding teen abortions? Democrats.
If you think Democrats want to reduce abortion rates, you're decades out of phase with the party.
I think you're kinda admitting something there-that that sort of 'corporate' Republican does have more appeal to certain kinds of voters. I'm fine with saying that Trump resonates with certain people and Romney with others, in fact, that's kind of my point, the arguments I'm pushing back on are "But I do not thing any independent voter has ever looked at a bland GOP candidate who loves globalism and says "gee whiz, I sure do love free trade! I'll vote for that guy." and "Running on a socially moderate, pro-market platform is not going to win votes; running on a pro-worker platform just might." Noting that Romney was better suited for Virginia seems to concede that point. It's both different strokes for different folks, and different races for different places. (Pun copyrighted.)
Oh I totally get it, elections are stupid complicated and it seems like whenever there's a theory that'll generally explain things there will be some wild outcome here or there that disproves it, I didn't mean to cast doubt on anything, it can just be tricky to keep points straight in this kind of format.
Definitely agreed here. Trump's counter-media gives him a strength that pretty much any other candidate lacks (I could see that flipping on the very small scale if a politician had a great ground game in their district in particular but for all intents and purposes Trump is the only one with that edge.)
I think this is probably the core argument we're on, and it's unfortunately one of the more difficult to really test, just because one never quite has equivalent candidates for easy comparison. Broadly speaking, I think that there is a fair amount of truth to this, with a couple caveats.
Elections
One of those is that I think that, even if one could control for candidates, that populist-wing ones would be more problematic regardless. Both theory and observation lean into this-candidates with a more populist rather than more 'academic conservative', or 'corporate', or whatever you want to call it ideology are more likely to be those with less time in politics and with a greater tendency to break the norm, generally speaking. Those can be viewed as positive traits-but they also feed into a personality type that's a whole lot likely to stir up controversy of some sort or other-just a look around sees that the more populist candidates seem to stick their foot in their mouths in saying certain things a good deal more often. Now, that too can be seen as a positive, 'real talk', or something like it, but in an environment in which the media plainly leans left-wing and has a great deal of cultural power to attack candidates, it is a problem when it comes to winning elections. As you said, most candidates aren't able to set their own narratives, even Trump can only do so to a limited extent, and if you have a situation with the populist and the corporatist (I'll just use that term for the moment, though I think it's not really the only other or my preferred option) being held equal in all other respects, the populist is more likely to lose votes from their tendencies as a candidate.
Ideology
To switch for a moment from the practical to the ideological, I tend to dislike populism as a very 'gratifying' kind of politics. It is built around being, well, popular, and thus lends itself greatly to appeals to the public-even in ways in which the public is stupid. For example, it's pretty well-known that polls show broad American support for reducing spending to balance the budget, but when polled on individual spending items (military, healthcare, etc.), a clear majority of Americans wants spending increases pretty much across the board. Start with that, and then go into pleasing-first tax policy, with the main goals being to make cuts for your base and stick the costs on whichever group they're against and/or you're not seeking the vote of, and you end up with a system that can be very popular, everyone loves high spending and low taxes-very popular, until the bill comes due. The U.S. is still in a period where we have not had to face the consequences of people-pleasing policies, but as the percentage of the budget spent just paying down interest on the debt rises, the bill is going to come due eventually, the hangover after a night out drinking. Ideologues differ on what methods are most effective, but a focus on what is most effective or right off of ideology is one that's likely going to be a lot more robust in the long term than one based on only giving people what they want. A parent who just lets their kid have ice cream for dinner might have their kid be a lot happier with them then the one that watches their diet, but we all know which one is going to end up better in the long run.
Romney/Rust Belt
I think this is another place where the idea of trade as crucial in swinging the election doesn't bear itself out that well. As noted earlier, Romney actually beat Trump in Wisconsin in terms of total votes, it was only that Clinton got far less, and as noted previously, free-trader Obama would have beaten Trump in all three, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.
The other half of it is that Trump did not do disproportionately better than Romney in Rust Belt states than elsewhere. In Michigan, he won 7% more votes than Romney, in Ohio, also 7% more votes, in Pennsylvania, 11% more votes, and then in Florida, not even slightly Rust Belt and a pretty big pro-trade state, also 11% more. (And as noted in Wisconsin Trump actually lost ground.) The Rust Belt did not leap to Trump disproportionately more than other dissimilar states, and I think that the boost he did get is more applicable to culture and rejection of Clinton than trade, which better fits the leap in Florida as well as Midwestern states.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by the state parties not adopting a populist agenda in that case. Regardless, losses on the state level are attributable to an unpopular Trump in the same way the GOP wins at the state level were attributable to an unpopular Obama-the incumbent President's party tends to lose seats no matter what, and if that incumbent in unpopular in a way that mobilizes members of the opposing party, then the losses hit all the harder. Polarization is become more and more prominent, and Democrats ticked off at Trump getting to the polls and voting straight-ticket D gouged the GOP at the state level as well as the federal.
I'm generally fine with this assessment, as above, Republicans embracing a populist agenda would not work everywhere and Virginia seems to be one of those places.
I think that, especially comparing DeSantis to Scott, it's getting down to splitting very thin hairs. Both of the two had their own strengths, weaknesses, level of connection to Trump, etc., and then both won by pretty similar small margins (DeSantis actually had the higher margin of victory, not Scott, though their were third parties in the gubernatorial race.) Both races were certainly complex, but that they had such a similar result even as different as they were seems to show it coming down to the simple explanation, Florida is a light-red state in a heavily polarized time, and voted slightly Republican.
I think Trump had a bit of a combination of luck and running out of time to credit for a 2016 run over deliberate strategy (he did try a run in 2000), but I don't particularly disagree with the points here, Obama was a very good campaigner, much more so than McCain and, while to a lesser extent, moreso than Romney as well. Clinton was a much weaker candidate-I think a theoretical 2016 Obama would have beaten Trump and a theoretical 2016 Romney would have beaten Clinton (McCain, maybe not.)
Before I write too much on the wrong topic-are we talking about Trump applying leverage to make his priorities (wall, trade, etc.) happen, or applying leverage to make the health care bill succeed?
Referring to June 13th, when Trump trashed the House bill, tipping the balance to the Senate ditching taking it up, and setting up the hasty Senate bill attempts that ended in defeat without a legislative plan, and with some extra cover for the dissenters.
Trump just accepting not being the details guy and keeping his mouth shut then and in previous instances where he slapped up the House bill or swerved things in another direction at random would almost certainly have given it a much better chance of coming through into law.
I think, and we might well be able to agree on this point, that Trump just did not like the repeal efforts outside of wanting to put his name on getting rid of 'Obamacare'. His views on healthcare seem to be pretty clearly liberal, and I don't think he was especially choked up over seeing the effort die.
I was going to bring up Soviet Afghanistan actually-as you said, they had a more stable government alternative available, and it still turned into a lengthy, grueling conflict. Vietnam was fought almost entirely within a country with an established government. Frankly, Iraq arguably worked out better than either of those escapades. Having an established government you can back can definitely be a plus, but is no guarantee of success.
On a side note to that, I'd hardly call Iraq either a satellite of the USSR or weak-the Coalition ran it down, but the Coalition was also a pretty historic concentration of fighting force, Iraq was a big dog in the Middle East and arguably one of the most potent militaries outside the big powers on the planet.
There never have not been small-scale conflicts, though, and America appearing to be weak is several levels better than large scale wars. Pax Americana is not even close to perfect, but I really do think us rather spoiled when little flare ups in third-world countries are the biggest threats to world peace compared to the constant looming threat in the Cold War or major powers just going at each other as in the 19th Century.
I think that at some point, having to say many times that it was failed cooperation among the great powers that failed to stop this war, or that one, or that other one leads to a point where you have to wonder if that kind of cooperation is something that ever can be achieved in practice in any significant way over any significant period of time, when the examples we have of it are examples of it breaking down so often that three decades of relative peace that ended in upheaval across Europe is heralded as a great success.
A unipole breaking is a much rarer event than a multipolar system leading to war. No unipole has ever yet come apart at the height of its power-it's their fading that leads to multipolar systems, which themselves are the greater issue.
Bolded the bit. Any system that has to rely on selfless and effective cooperation between nations that always fundamentally have their own interests and benefits at heart is not a system that is going to work.
As above, we can talk about what-ifs on if everyone cooperated in the way we wanted them to, but if that repeatedly fails to happen, we have to question if it is realistic to expect it to.
There seems to be this UN-like thread running through all of this that all of the global powers have a concept of a joint responsibility towards stability and peace. They really do not. If there is a flare-up in Austria, one is not going to get a united front on either pushing Austria to drop its demands or pushing Russia not to interfere, you will get exactly what was gotten, nations falling on different sides depending on what their interests are. Proactive diplomacy is not something that should be expected in a competitive multipolar system of rivals.
Germany would not have been going at Poland in that kind of scenario, just Czechoslovakia, (something that's frequently forgotten is that there was a real possibility of conflict between Czechoslovakia and Poland at the time) which would have been a swifter conquest than some (mostly the Czechs) like to think-the thought of France and the UK at the time was that Czech fortresses would hold Germany indefinitely, which they were simply not properly arrayed to do, especially since Germany sat on their flank after Austria (and note that even with this thought, their military brass was still screaming at the diplomats to delay the conflict, because they were still unprepared.)
You'd end up with not only an earlier conflict, in which the relative stages of mobilization benefited Germany, but one in which German forces are actually stronger-Poland was a decisive victory, but Nazi casualties there were not insignificant. A war at Munich is all but certain to end in an Allied defeat in Europe as severe or morseo than OTL.
That's fine advice, good advice for diplomacy, but it is not anything that indicates that nations which actually start to act that way when they have not before. I absolutely agree that a multipolar system can work if nations cooperative effectively and negotiate well-it's just that that is not what normally happens, and the systems need to be assessed in the realities of what has and does happen rather than what could.
Lebanon was a far smaller conflict, not really worthy of being compared on even ground to the Yom Kippur war, and the U.S. not stopping it when it happened is for obvious reasons-there were Soviets then. I do generally agree though that Egypt's shift was a significant factor in conflicts dimming over Israel, but Egypt's shift towards the U.S. was a shift away from the U.S.S.R. as well and the bipolar system that fed those early wars.
That's true enough, but the loss of the ability for flipping from U.S. to Soviet negotiation is one that I consider to be a very worthy trade off when it comes packaged with the loss of the proxy wars and looming threat of global conflict of that era. The unipolar system is not even close to perfect, as I will freely admit, it's just a heck of a lot better than the other options.
From 1950 to the present, entitlements and mandatory spending as a percentage of GDP have quadrupled from 3.3% to 12.9%. As a percentage of outlays, military spending has gone from over 50% to 17%. It is considered conservative today to simply propose slowing the rate of growth of Medicaid, a program that did not even exist in the 1950s, or to propose expanding the military. Imagine how it would be seen for a candidate to propose spending structured as a 1950s moderate would, outright cutting Social Security and Medicaid by 75% or tripling military spending.
Not the majority of the party now, but the actual left wing by and large does. Down the line that part may grow to be a majority (or perhaps pro life populists will help), as the Republicans begin to support abortion.
Yeah, perhaps on economics (which I support), but on, say... abortion, the GOP has certainly, to their credit, swung rightward, and perhaps on a few other social issues here and there.
———————————
On another topic, I was slowly losing my pro-gun sentiments and becoming open to gun control. With the riots, however, I am now as extreme as ever. We need to be able to defend ourselves.
To quote the Democratic Party's platform:
In its own words, today's Democratic Party "unequivocally" supports "access to quality [abortions]." It calls abortions "core" to "health and wellbeing." It promises to overturn abortion regulations and to provide taxpayer-funded abortions.
This position is light-years worse than the old Democratic position that abortion was regrettable but sometimes necessary. Just consider, by contrast, the 2000 Democratic platform, which said:
"The Democratic Party is a party of inclusion. We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue, and we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party. This is why we are proud to put into our platform the very words which Republicans refused to let Bob Dole put into their 1996 platform and which they refused to even consider putting in their platform in 2000: 'While the party remains steadfast in its commitment to advancing its historic principles and ideals, we also recognize that members of our party have deeply held and sometimes differing views on issues of personal conscience like abortion and capital punishment. We view this diversity of views as a source of strength, not as a sign of weakness, and we welcome into our ranks all Americans who may hold differing positions on these and other issues. Recognizing that tolerance is a virtue, we are committed to resolving our differences in a spirit of civility, hope and mutual respect.'"
Today's left-wing activists would blow up if the Democrats endorsed "personal responsibility" and said, "Our goal is to make abortion less necessary and more rare."
I would argue most Republicans are Rockefeller Republicans. They just don't always show it.
Also on the subject of Democrats suddenly embracing social conservatives:
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/06/22/hamilton-county-auditor-dusty-rhodes-tweet-abortion-and-black-lives-matter-draws-backlash/3235525001/
A Ohio Democrat (county official) tweeted a pro-life message last Friday and was immediately attacked by a fellow Democrat in the same county, who is planning on censuring him and having him (effectively) expelled from the party.
Domestic elections:
Not because of his platform, but because of his temperament. Corporate candidates tend to be blander and less offensive (on that I agree with you; being able to have a temperamental "control" group is probably not realistic, but that isn't a fault in the platform; but it also makes it harder to turn out the base). His "vulture capitalist" past I think actually hurt him with independents in 2012.
Here I disagree with you. Bernie Sanders is definitely a populist, and the media, as "left" as it was (i.e. corporate with a liberal face) was hard-pressed to do anything to undermine him, apart from a few questionable, oddball comments like praising Cuba (which, to be sure, definitely deserve media attention). Mostly they focused on explaining what you mentioned, that his populist proposals were unrealistic and would cost too much (not in raising the debt as with Trump, but in raised taxes). They did try and make him look like a loony toon, but not because of his temperament. The media will use whatever it can work with to protect the more centrist status quo candidates.
The debt has been a topic of doom and gloom for 30 years and has had no measurable impact on the economy. As a percentage of GDP, America's debt is still much lower than that of the other G8 countries (except for Russia, which has one of the lowest in the world). I think America is such an integral part of the global economy that the "bill coming due" is a bit of a phantom.
I feel like this is a tad misleading because Clinton was a very big supporter (you could say almost emblematic) of globalism, free trade, and Wall Street. To say they didn't support Trump over these issues, but over their aversion to Clinton, glosses over her own positions on these issues. Perhaps a lot of those Democratic voters who stayed home you mentioned did so because of that, rather than vote for Trump.
Again, I think a populist agenda would work just fine in Virginia, it just has to be a state populist agenda and not a federal one. Something like increased public spending on infrastructure. Immigration and trade would help Virginia too, but not in tangible enough ways to sway undecideds.
Margin, perhaps; I just remembered Scott's total being over 50% and DeSantis being 49%.
This could certainly be true, it's hard to say with certainty which is the case. Just based on rural turnout I assumed it was a Trump effect.
I guess this is another Rorschach test, where you see luck and I see strategy. But it was only when Trump found out Romney was not running that he announced his candidacy in 2015, which seems like deliberate strategy. As for 2000, I don't think that counts because he dropped out before the Reform Party primaries were over (and he probably would have won if he had stayed in, but the Reform Party was too chaotic and I think that convinced him to drop out, especially when Jesse Ventura exited the party).
Which one? I was talking about the '92 election.
Leverage on getting his priorities onto the agenda in Congress like immigration and infrastructure.
Agreed.
Vietnam, Iraq, Germany, and multipolarism:
A government which completely fell apart after the US backed a disastrous military coup in '63 during the Kennedy administration, necessitating increased US ground involvement afterwards.
I have yet to see any evidence of that. Iraq is bordering on total disintegration along ethnic lines.
On paper. It was highly dependent on Soviet military equipment and advisors, and I don't know how it could be viewed as anything other than a satellite. Compare that to East Germany which had the best military in Eastern Europe, and several Eastern bloc countries which had very powerful economies, unlike Iraq. As you pointed out, the Iraqi military was unable to achieve anything against a still-consolidating Iranian government post-revolution, despite massive advantages in arms and equipment.
You are right in what you say about self-interested nations not being likely to work together, but in all of the issues I cited, their failures worked to their own disinterest. If they had been more intelligent, even as greedy and as selfish as could be, they would have seen that working together was better than ignoring obvious threats. And I do not think that is an issue of the system, but of leadership. And this same hinging point is the biggest weakness of the unipolar system. I return to my policeman analogy: I'd rather have a bunch of police of various levels of competence patrolling a beat than just one semi-competent one. You have to trust that one country can do the right thing in all instances, and that has never happened. I can't think of a single "good" foreign policy move the US has engaged in post-war. From China in 1948 to Syria in the present day, they have all been a string of failures. Systems like the Holy Alliance and Concert Europe have, in my opinion, a much more positive record. Who stopped the Georgian war in 2008, Bush? Nope, it was France. Bush was completely blindsided. Relying on one power to take care of everything is a recipe for disaster. Better to have 8 powers on the watch and hope that at least one will come through and rally the others. It only takes one good leader to get the rest in line, such as Metternich, Bismarck (ironically), or Churchill.
I still think France would have melted through German defenses (I will concede that their leadership probably would have been unable to effectuate this; if someone like De Gaulle had been in charge, then definitely). Like Czechoslovakia, Hitler's generals believed they were still years behind schedule in preparedness and were so against his accelerated time table that they contemplated getting rid of him in 1938. Many German divisions were still using wooden cut-outs of guns instead of actual weapons.
«12. . .2,1642,1652,1662,1672,1682,1692,170. . .2,5162,517»
Advertisement
