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- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 18
Sorry, no, twelve former
republican White House lawyers endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a letter released today to Fox "News".
"We endorse Kamala Harris and support her election as President because we believe that returning former President Trump to office would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country," the lawyers wrote in a letter that the signatories shared first with Fox News Digital.
The letter was released on Friday, the day after Harris delivered her nomination acceptance speech in the culminating moment of the Democratic National Convention, which was held in Chicago.
The signatories added that "we urge all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology and join us in supporting Kamala Harris."So contrary to claims made here that "democrats" are the ones claiming that DonOLD would threaten American democracy, it's actually former high-ranking republicans, including White House legal counsel.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-lawye...
No. of Recommendations: 3
There are a significant number of Reps who put country before party. I always did (and still do, though I'm not a registered Rep anymore). Nationwide, there are many speaking out.
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/20/nx-s1-5081167/repub...https://www.azfamily.com/2024/08/20/republican-may... (local mayor from Mesa...this is one of several available links)
https://azmirror.com/2024/08/12/republicans-line-u... (this one includes down-ballot because Lake is a Trumpie, and is not doing well in some polls)
I'm actually having to fight optimism here. The convict has made the Rep party toxic, and many Reps are finding it too repugnant to support the party as long as the convict and his acolytes hold sway. It makes me think Harris can win. But we already know that the GA election committee is Trumpie; questioning the 2020 results (again), and I do not trust them to administer a fair election because of their counterfactual bias. As just one example.
Of course, Harris in the latest Fivethirtyeight is leading nationally about about 4%. In key swing states it's within margin of error (where before the convict was leading Biden handily).
No. of Recommendations: 2
You knew those Reps were there, but they've been covered up, their voices not heard, by MAGA. I would like to have one of those guys on here, fun to talk to.
My MAGA brother talked against rule by minority ( with an aside to his wife - "You know who I think is the minority."), and I just ignored it. How he has come to believe that Dem/Libs are a minority is a strange path I'm sure, but he believes.
No. of Recommendations: 6
How he has come to believe that Dem/Libs are a minority is a strange path I'm sure, but he believes.
I've noticed that right-wing people tend to believe things on faith more than left-wing people. Also, right-wing people tend to be more religious. I see a connection there. The left is less likely to take anything on faith, demanding more rigor (in logic and evidence). The right has no problem with faith, even when it flies in the face of verifiable facts. They have taken that from their silly religions into the political arena, which is horrendously dangerous to a democracy.
No. of Recommendations: 3
How he has come to believe that Dem/Libs are a minority is a strange path I'm sure, but he believes.He's technically not wrong.
Democrats are a minority of the country. As are Republicans. Far more people self-identify as independents than either party - only about 25-30% of the population self-identify as Democrats. And recently, slightly more people self-identify as Republicans than Democrats:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliati...The same is true of Liberals - they are also a minority of the country. As are Conservatives, since about a third of Americans self-identify as moderates. Until very recently, there were also sizably more Conservatives than Liberals - they're more evenly split nowadays, but neither is a majority and a third or fewer of the country are liberals:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/645776/increase-liber...If we put that together and lump in the moderates as "leaners," we find that the "Dem/Lib" is slightly less than one-quarter of the country. A slight majority of Democrats (and leaners) identify as conservative/moderate, so only about 23% of Americans identify as both liberals and democrats. Republicans are more "purely" conservative, with most Republicans (and leaners) identifying as conservative and only a small number identifying as liberal/moderate. IOW, the liberal base of the Democratic party is smaller than the conservative base of the Republican party:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/th...
No. of Recommendations: 15
"Sorry, no, twelve former republican White House lawyers endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a letter released today to Fox "News"."
Why is it that you never see 12 former White House lawyers under Democratic administrations endorsing Trump? Similarly, there are numerous cabinet officials and National Security officials who worked in Trump's previous administration who have openly stated they will not vote for Trump. You have never seen that with any other president, ever.
These were people he personally handpicked and were working closest to him.
It is simply unheard of that so many people with real actual working knowledge of the White House would come out against a candidate so forcefully.
That should give pause to anyone even considering voting for Trump.
It is insane the things his cultists are willing to ignore.
No. of Recommendations: 2
He's technically not wrong.
But to get *RULE* by a minority, they have to vote and be a minority. You can identify, but if you don't vote, you don't have a chance at shaping the field. And when we vote in presidential elections, it used to be that in around 12% of the elections, the majority vote was not reflected by the electoral college. Now the percentage has gone up. So in 12 % of the elections we did have the minority come to rule by the electoral college - and in those times, Republicans won.
Surveying the population is good, but the vote is much more of a determiner I think.
No. of Recommendations: 0
So in 12 % of the elections we did have the minority come to rule by the electoral college - and in those times, Republicans won.
That's a whole other conversation. The U.S. constitution sets us up as a Republic of separately sovereign States that also has a federal government - something that lies between the EU and a traditional parliamentary system nation-state. We've glommed onto that a kind of national election for the chief executive, and it's a kludge. But it's no more "minority rule" than what we saw in the UK, where Labor won a crushing victory with a massive Parliamentary majority but only got 33.7% of the "popular vote." Very few democracies elect a national head of state with direct popular vote - we're just a weird hybrid between a parliamentary system and republican system.
On the matter at hand, although I don't know Lambo's brother, his comment seems to me more a lament that "liberals" are setting policy in the country, even though "liberals" are a small minority in the country. Leaving aside whether the first part is accurate, the second part is actually true. Only about a quarter of the country identifies as liberal. There are far more conservatives than liberals. So it's not all that weird that conservatives sometimes get surprised when liberals are able to obtain their policy goals. I think that conservatives tend to overestimate the degree of power that the liberal faction has within the Democratic party at the federal level, which exacerbates that. But they're not wrong in thinking that liberals are not a majority in the country.
No. of Recommendations: 5
But they're not wrong in thinking that liberals are not a majority in the country.
On the other side of the coin, the sentiments expressed by Lambo's brother seem to assume that Republicans ARE a majority. Which, as you have shown with the numbers is wrong.
And all of this talk about "liberal" and "conservative" is itself an oversimplification. I would call myself liberal on social issues and fiscally conservative. So where would I fit on this one-dimensional liberal/conservative continuum? I'd probably end up in the moderate range simply because a one-dimensional measurement is too simple. Even two dimensions (social and fiscal) is probably too simple. Yet we get stuck with this oversimplified two party system where no one is really happy except the extremists, because that's how our voting system ends up.
--Peter
No. of Recommendations: 1
So in 12 % of the elections we did have the minority come to rule by the electoral college - and in those times, Republicans won.
That's a whole other conversation.
No, that is The Conversation.
I have not sounded out my brother, because he's as little Mount Vesuvius. Triggered, he wants to get angry and spout, but lately what little gets out has nothing to do with the conversation. It could be something as simple as, when we win then the majority is setting the rules, and when you win the minority is setting the rules.
We've gotten ratings of flawed democracy due to gerrymandering and the electoral college, etc. I think a little over half of Dems think they're liberal.
But it still stands that the elections show the electoral college puts a thumb on the scale probably now 15% of the time.
No. of Recommendations: 1
That should give pause to anyone even considering voting for Trump.
None of that penetrates the MAGA cult bubble, and FOX 'news' won't tell them either.
No. of Recommendations: 1
...the commentary from the rabid zombies on that article... wow!
No. of Recommendations: 2
OK, I think this is a good post, and maybe I can respond piecemeal. :)
Here are the trends in party affiliation from 1939 to 2014. Now this would have encompassed the entire Southern Strategy Era. We can say that both Democrats and Republicans suffered and Independents grew. We can also say that except for 2 small spots where they touch, that more people always identified as Democrats than Republicans. That Democrats and Republicans are actually coalitions with things in common I would agree with. and there are always influential groups in coalitions.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/feature/party...The trend has been:
SNIP
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Forty-eight percent of U.S. adults on average in 2020 identified as Democrats or were independents who leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 43% were Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. The five-point Democratic advantage is consistent with the partisan balance Gallup measured over the previous four years, and is similar to the average four-point Democratic advantage (47% to 43%) over the past two decades. SNIP
This trend continues, and I suspect that one reason people become independent is because of the polarization. I tried it, but all you get is an earful of MAGA - who needs that? Conversation is generally precluded. Some MAGAs have hot buttons that come out at parties. Last one was a fellow claiming that Liberals were recommending self-euthanasia for a sexually confused teenage individuals. I looked later and it was tabled to 2027 and it was for people who didn't have a survivable medical condition and a certain depressed condition. I could see why it got tabled.
But in any case, I disagree that there are more Republicans than Dems. My point with the vote still stands. If you can say anything, we can say that this year the Dems and Repubs are more evenly split, but history shows us that is temporary and it will diverge in favor of the Dems, as has happened in the past. But how does that affect RULE? Well, in the last contest, Dems won, therefore not minority rule. We can't ignore the legislature, nor can we ignore how voting affects the legislature and the Presidency. Many Americans have accepted that for four years they aren't going to be happy. I still think we can survive a second Trump term and think I'm more moderate than liberal.
No. of Recommendations: 1
