Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

As you know, the truly committed are never deterred by inconvenient facts.  Even worse, the CM is now so out of date it needs a good refresh just to be marginally relevant.  Maybe we need to switch to that more prescient Marx: Groucho

(03-23-2021, 09:22 AM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

As you know, the truly committed are never deterred by inconvenient facts.  Even worse, the CM is now so out of date it needs a good refresh just to be marginally relevant.  Maybe we need to switch to that more prescient Marx: Groucho

Marxism is itself obsolete. It applies well to countries in the earliest phases of industrial development in which peasants are becoming industrial workers and making the difficult transition from the village to the urban slum. Early capitalism produces egregious wealth but also great hardship, and some countries have done better than others in making the transition much less severe. India may have retarded its emergence into an industrial power because it cleaved as long as it could to the cottage-industry stage (which is good for dispersal of opportunity and not disrupting rural life as much) and may have avoided a proletarian revolution for that. Not concentrating industrial activity in a few giant cities (with giant slum areas and large numbers of semi-literate proletarians susceptible to demagogic appeals from radicals) is one way to ensure:

1. an emphasis on consumer goods to which workers can relate (clothing, shoes, housewares) as opposed to luxury exports and 'producer goods' or raw materials. 
2. fewer examples of highly-visible, self0indulgent plutocrats that get publicity that satisfies them (Here is my palace and my yacht) but offensive to people working to exhaustion on meagre pay and living in disease-ridden, firetrap slums.
3. less potential for the concentration of political powers in an elite that has no clue about its unpopularity.

India may be poor, but its Gini coefficients (measures of economic inequality, whether in wealth or income) are some of the better in the Third World.

Obviously, formal democracy, a rarity at any time in Marx' life, is far better than despotic and dictatorial styles of governance in resolving economic and other distress. 

Once societies leave the era of early industrialization they enter the consumer society, a necessity if a social order is to find a market. Henry Ford may have been a vile man, but he knew enough that he had to make cheap cars for the masses. Workers who have automobiles, furniture, ovens, refrigerators, radios, phonographs, and livable flats have something to lose other than their chains.  

Today the problem of economics is not under-production that creates shortages that allow easy profits by meeting them. Shortages now come almost exclusively from disruptions in the supply chain (although global warming could make a gigantic mess of the food supply, which could make all the consumer goodies that we can now get cheaply moot). Surfeit is no more of the menace than is shortage. Maybe it is possible to enhance profits by depressing wages and inflating the costs of necessities, but that eventually becomes an obvious sham.

(03-23-2021, 09:22 AM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

As you know, the truly committed are never deterred by inconvenient facts.  Even worse, the CM is now so out of date it needs a good refresh just to be marginally relevant.  Maybe we need to switch to that more prescient Marx: Groucho

Yes, and to John Lennon too

Polling Data https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls...-7320.html
Poll...................................Date..............Sample......Approve....Disapprove...Spread
RCP Average......................3/1 - 3/23......--..............53.3.........42.3.............+11.0
Rasmussen Reports............3/21 - 3/23....1500 LV.....48............50...................-2
Economist/YouGov.............3/20 - 3/23....1267 RV.....51............43..................+8
Politico/Morning Consult.....3/19 - 3/22....1994 RV.....57............40................+17
Reuters/Ipsos....................3/17 - 3/18....1005 A.......59............35................+24
The Hill/HarrisX..................3/12 - 3/14....2839 RV....59............41................+18
Gallup................................3/1 - 3/15......1010 A......54............42................+12
NPR/PBS/Marist..................3/3 - 3/8........1082 RV....48............43..................+5
CNN...................................3/3 - 3/8............RV........50............44..................+6

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-09-2021, 10:02 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-09-2021, 09:52 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-09-2021, 02:59 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-09-2021, 01:46 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]I am an old anti-war protester going way back, but I am becoming more sympathetic to such involvements, at least without bombing (probably) or troops on the ground by the USA. The great war of our time is not against an alliance of invading fascists or monarchs, but the people rising up for freedom against an alliance of local tyrants all over the world. For example, if the people of Burma ask us for help in overthrowing their Myanmar tyrants, we should answer them and give them what they ask for. I'm afraid local people power alone is usually no match for armies, unless there are strong defections from them to the people. Right now the people everywhere just want to be free, and they aren't getting this.

Yes, of course. You are sympathetic to petit-bourgeois conceptions of freedom.

And social-democratic ones, which you are also not sympathetic to.

Because social democracy is absolutely invariably a backdoor to rhe most rapacious forms of Capital (Scandinavian social democracy for example, which  is funded by extremely high regressive taxes s well as domestic businesses that operate in Africa etc.). Social democracy is one of the worst variants of capitalism.

It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

A whole three full generations for an entire social logic to work itself out! You've really got me there.

Quote:Michigan - Market Resource Group, March 15-18, 610 likely voters, MoE: 4%

Approve 50%
Disapprove 41%

(the poll connected elsewhere, and a correct link has been made available ).

Quote:

Quote:*snip*

Yeah, here’s the actual link to the poll.

https://www.mrgmi.com/2021/03/23/mrg-mic...opinion-4/

It doesn't change the color. The color for Michigan is rather pale, but note well: a gap of 9% approval and disapproval is a big margin under most circumstances, and it is much bigger than the narrow margin (just under 3% of the Biden win in 2020. The map does not really change for this.

Quote:New Hampshire - University of New Hampshire, March 18-22, 1744 registered voters, MoE: 2.3%

Approve 53% (nc)
Disapprove 45% (nc)

https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent...nter_polls

Not all that surprising. New Hampshire has had low ceilings and high floors for both Parties and their pols for a very long time. Joe Biden can win this state by 5% in a close election, but for him to win it in 2024 by 10% or so he will need a D blowout. That would be about 400 electoral votes.

An 8% positive gap between approval and disapproval is good at any stage for so polarized a state.  

Approval of handling COVID-19: Biden 60-38 in March. It was  42-58 for Trump in January.

More on former President Trump:

1. According to this pollster he never had higher favorability than approval, although he got close twice, in the spring of 2019 and the spring of 2020. Those were not the right times for being nearly even, let alone above, in favorability.

2. It is now at 37-55. I don't have the numbers for October and November 2020 around Election Day, but the negative gap in New Hampshire was large enough to suggest that Trump had no real chance to win the Granite State in 2020. It is even worse now after his claims that he and his supporters have been cheated. To go further on this is to rehash the overall election, which is no longer relevant in this discussion which seems to point more to 2024 than back to 2000.

3. Speaking of 2024, New Hampshire voters by an overwhelming majority think that the Republican Party (59-37%) believe that Republicans would be wise to move away at the least from the personality of Donald Trump. Only 2% of Democrats and only 34% of Independents think that Republicans would be wise to stick with Trump. But 74% of Republicans apparently have no problem with Trump as their Party's leader.

If I were a conservative Republican, I would recognize that the Democrats know something that the majority of 'my' Party don't know. Getting 74% of 45% of the population, 34% of 10% of the population, and 2% of 45% of the population suggests about 42% of the vote overall, which is close to "Mondale 1984" territory. Americans have tended to live in partisan echo chambers, so it is easy to see that Republicans who still live in an echo chamber in which the can't imagine anyone voting against Donald Trump and his concept of America unless a traitor.

It may take a smashing defeat for Republicans in New Hampshire and elsewhere to recognize how toxic Donald Trump is.  But he is that.  

4. 66% of Republicans want Trump to run for President in 2024. Only a microscopic 1% of Democrats do, and a small 22% of Independents. That is very low for Democrats who might have cause to see Trump as an easy person to defeat. I have suggested that Trump might go down to a landslide defeat and take a raft of Republican elected officials down with him in 2024...

I'm sure that plenty of Republicans would have been delighted to have Dukakis winning the Democratic nomination in 1992 or Mondale winning the Democratic nomination in either 1992 or 1996. Neither was a menacing figure and had lost big. Trump is a mencing to Democrats for what he did after the election.

5. It is a long time (just over 42 months) to the 2024 election). If nothing happens between now and 2024 except that Joe Biden chooses to run for a second term, then the overall map suggests that President Biden will be re-elected solidly. Assuming that nothing important happens between now and November 2024 is a huge assumption devoid of justification. If I saw polling numbers like this in March 2024 as shown for about a third of the states as on this map I would see President Biden as a shoo-in. But this is March 2021 and not March 2024. (By the way -- the pale pink shade for Texas is effectively a tie). Biden has a distinct lead in a favorability poll in Pennsylvania, so that leaves little opening for any Republican. I do not show favorability ratings for genuine swing states, but I can discuss them to the extent that I see them relevant.  

6. So much about one small state? New Hampshire gets so treated very often because it is relevant far beyond its region.



Key:

30% red shade: Biden up 1-5%
40% red shade: Biden up 5-10%
50% red shade: Biden up 10-15%
60% red shade: Biden up 15-20%
70% red shade: Biden up 20-25%
80% red shade: Biden up 25-30%
90% red shade: Biden up 30%+

50% green shade: tie

30% blue shade: Biden down 1-5%
40% blue shade: Biden down 5-10%
50% blue shade: Biden down 10-15%
60% blue shade: Biden down 15-20%
70% blue shade: Biden down 20-25%
80% blue shade: Biden down 25-30%
90% blue shade: Biden down 30%+


It is approval ratings, and not favorability ratings. Favorability ratings are relevant when they are blatant  (as in states that are not close and usually do not get polled, like New York Rhode Island or Oklahoma) because the states rarely decide an election, but they always must defer to approval. Would I use a favorability rating for Illinois? Sure. Wisconsin? Absolutely not. (The poll for Pennsylvania is favorability, and the gap is significant).

I have removed a statewide poll for Missouri because that poll looks spurious  for reasons that have nothing to do with the results. The pollster in question has shown no new polls of Missouri.

(03-24-2021, 04:28 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

A whole three full generations for an entire social logic to work itself out! You've really got me there.

I wouldn't give up yet.  If the Chinese Communist Party insists on not listening to the people, something like a proletarian revolution could yet occur.  Expecting the result to mesh with the Marxist ideal?  Well, maybe you should give up.

(03-25-2021, 03:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-24-2021, 04:28 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

A whole three full generations for an entire social logic to work itself out! You've really got me there.

I wouldn't give up yet.  If the Chinese Communist Party insists on not listening to the people, something like a proletarian revolution could yet occur.  Expecting the result to mesh with the Marxist ideal?  Well, maybe you should give up.

Well, I have pretty much predicted all the major events and trends since I started as a planetary prophet in 1971. The progressive decade I predicted for the 2020s is off and running, and we'll see if it goes farther, as I expect, and that the resistance to it is strong, possibly leading to conflict of one size or another, as I expect, and we've already seen its precursor, as I expected too. The Fall of the Wall in 1989, the attack in 2001, the great recession of 2008; all that, I predicted within a month or two. The vast refugee problem I predicted starting in 2011, after the revolutions I also predicted, has taken hold beyond my wildest dreams, and it's still happening, as the third world pours over the borders of the first world due to revolution and climate change--- as I predicted. So what's ahead for China? We may have to hang on and stay alive to see it. But watch the mid-2030s. I see another Chinese revolution pretty well inevitable then. I doubt it will mesh with Einzige's dreams, though. Maybe someday, John's Lennon's imagination will prove out, at least. But it could take centuries. Our reincarnated selves could witness a truly-Aquarian world organization developed in the 2160s. And it will have teeth, too! That will be a start.

(03-25-2021, 03:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-24-2021, 04:28 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

A whole three full generations for an entire social logic to work itself out! You've really got me there.

I wouldn't give up yet.  If the Chinese Communist Party insists on not listening to the people, something like a proletarian revolution could yet occur.  Expecting the result to mesh with the Marxist ideal?  Well, maybe you should give up.

The Chinese Communist Party are State capitalists who cannot divest themselves of Marxist rhetoric without losing legitimacy. This can and will bite them in the ass down the line, as they export the very thing that will end up destroying them. This is why they persecute actual Marxists in their territory, e.g.

https://www.ft.com/content/fd087484-2f23...016697f225

Quote: After a series of kidnappings and arrests both on and off China’s most prestigious campuses, a total of 42 people remain in detention, including 21 students and recent graduates, as well as activists, social workers, trade-union staff and Jasic workers. Many have lost contact completely with their families, while relatives have been pressured by police not to speak to the media or to contact lawyers.
The story of the Jasic workers, and the students who supported them and set the issue aflame, highlights a paradox at the heart of modern China. While the country is controlled by a Communist party government that trumpets Marxist rhetoric, its economy has flourished since the 1980s partly thanks to the development of “state capitalism” — a liberalisation that has allowed private markets and mass consumption to thrive within strict parameters set by the state.
Last May, President Xi Jinping gave a speech to mark the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, proclaiming him “the greatest thinker of modern times”, and arguing that the 19th-century German philosopher “pointed out the direction, with scientific theory, toward an ideal society with no oppression or exploitation”. Yet China’s government has turned a blind eye to worker exploitation as the country has become a global economic powerhouse, with income inequality exceeding that in the US.
“The objection of many on China’s new left — not just students — is that China is a socialist country in name but capitalist in reality, and that inequality, pollution and corruption are a consequence of this anomaly,” says Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese history at the University of Oxford.
The state’s concerted oppression of young Marxists partly reflects the tension within the Chinese Communist party’s own origin story: that it has not preserved the communist ideals behind its revolutionary success under Chairman Mao. In 1978 the party formally ditched the idea of class struggle, deeming it too divisive, and instead prioritised economic development.
“The students’ commitment to a purer form of Marxism only serves to highlight the CCP’s own drift from its roots,” says Jude Blanchette, author of a forthcoming book on China’s neo-Maoists. “This, crucially, has been why the left in China has always presented more of a challenge to the party leadership than the right.”

I don't even particularly like the Chinese student Left, as they are Maoists and I'm a left-Communist. But you can see the contradictions at play there, working themselves out.

And the parting on the left, is now parting on the right, and the slogans are replaced by the bye, and so it goes.

(03-25-2021, 03:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-24-2021, 04:28 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

A whole three full generations for an entire social logic to work itself out! You've really got me there.

I wouldn't give up yet.  If the Chinese Communist Party insists on not listening to the people, something like a proletarian revolution could yet occur.  Expecting the result to mesh with the Marxist ideal?  Well, maybe you should give up.

Worth remembering: the Commies' predecessor, the Kuomintang, began as a left-wing Party and went to the Right, too

(03-27-2021, 03:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-25-2021, 03:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-24-2021, 04:28 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

A whole three full generations for an entire social logic to work itself out! You've really got me there.

I wouldn't give up yet.  If the Chinese Communist Party insists on not listening to the people, something like a proletarian revolution could yet occur.  Expecting the result to mesh with the Marxist ideal?  Well, maybe you should give up.

Worth remembering: the Commies' predecessor, the Kuomintang, began as a left-wing Party and went to the Right, too

This may be the right time to mention our WEIRD-ness, and how different and rigid the Chinese model is and has been for centuries.  I doubt we will be subsumed by the East, nor will we crush them. The US-Soviet duopoly was much less logical than the emerging one, but a manifest China isn't going to happen either.

(03-28-2021, 07:53 AM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-27-2021, 03:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-25-2021, 03:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-24-2021, 04:28 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

A whole three full generations for an entire social logic to work itself out! You've really got me there.

I wouldn't give up yet.  If the Chinese Communist Party insists on not listening to the people, something like a proletarian revolution could yet occur.  Expecting the result to mesh with the Marxist ideal?  Well, maybe you should give up.

Worth remembering: the Commies' predecessor, the Kuomintang, began as a left-wing Party and went to the Right, too

This may be the right time to mention our WEIRD-ness, and how different and rigid the Chinese model is and has been for centuries.  I doubt we will be subsumed by the East, nor will we crush them. The US-Soviet duopoly was much less logical than the emerging one, but a manifest China isn't going to happen either.

• WEIRD, an acronym for "Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic", cultural identifier of psychology test subjects
  

"Rich" of course is a relative term, considering that poor people in western countries are often rich by comparison to others. "Industrial" harkens back to the Industrial Revolution, which distinguished western countries from others a century or more ago, but no longer does. The Information Age has largely superceded the Industrial, especially in western countries. In The West, industrial is yesterday. "Democratic" when applied to such countries as the United States also is somewhat doubtful, but applies when compared to many third world and second world countries.

But given these caveats, it is natural for us to assume that ours is the way of the future. It was birthed 240 years ago in an Age of Revolution, which aimed to free the world and not just its own country, and is itself only a foundation rather than a goal that would define a fulfilling society. Before this time, western countries were not WEIRD, but were just like all the others in spite of some emerging differences. 

This emergence continues everywhere now. It seems clear that the common people in many countries are rising up for democracy and greater prosperity, and are becoming more educated thanks to diffusion of knowledge through the information age. So I would suggest that this is true in China and the Far East as well as in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Latin America and Southeast-Asia, and even in Africa. But everywhere, even in Eastern Europe and (to some degree) in the USA and UK, the tyrants of old have made a comeback, and they routinely crush the people. The powers of the old model have yet to be deposed by the rising people-power. I doubt that the centuries and millennia-old model of authoritarian power and gross inequality can be sustained for much longer. But, our hopes are often dashed.

It's always amusing to see that Eric The Green is a Rumsfeldian neoconservative behind the veneer of hippie.

(03-28-2021, 07:53 AM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-27-2021, 03:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-25-2021, 03:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-24-2021, 04:28 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

A whole three full generations for an entire social logic to work itself out! You've really got me there.

I wouldn't give up yet.  If the Chinese Communist Party insists on not listening to the people, something like a proletarian revolution could yet occur.  Expecting the result to mesh with the Marxist ideal?  Well, maybe you should give up.

Worth remembering: the Commies' predecessor, the Kuomintang, began as a left-wing Party and went to the Right, too

This may be the right time to mention our WEIRD-ness, and how different and rigid the Chinese model is and has been for centuries.  I doubt we will be subsumed by the East, nor will we crush them. The US-Soviet duopoly was much less logical than the emerging one, but a manifest China isn't going to happen either.

Ultimately I see Japan, which is the closest nation in eastern Asia (half of Korea is under an ultra-reactionary society degenerating from an early-industrial level of economic development; Taiwan still styles itself as the Republic of China)  to being WEIRD much more dangerous to America's superstitious, reactionary, authoritarian types. Like Classic X'er, whom I can imagine doing horrible things to people whom he cannot recognize as Americans because they believe in or are something very different from he.   Japan does much well, such as elementary education, science, and commerce... many Americans would chafe under the Japanese legal and penal system. In most countr5ies, organized criminals tend to go to more prosperous countries to ply their dreadful trade; the Yakuza emigrates to poorer countries that don't put offenders on a fast track to long prison terms for violent or property crime. Many Americans could live with that, though, and they are not entirely of East Asian origin. 



The People's Republic of China abandoned Marxism except as symbols... but maintained the dictatorship. Such is good for material prosperity as China has never known, but it is still soulless. 

Despite being much poorer than America, Japan beat the crap out of the USA for almost a year, and lost its war with the USA and China due to the brutality of the gangster regime. Switch the role of criminality and decency in the Second World War, and Japan beats the crap out of America to the extent that some Japanese military official dictates terms in the White House. Let's see... Alaska becomes a prefecture of Japan; the Philippines becomes semi-independent; Japan annexes Guam outright; Hawaii has its former royal family restored the West Coast of the United States becomes Canada-style dominions of Japan. (OK, that is part of a hint on an alternative-history novel in which the Axis wins WWII, The eastern United States gets recovery under the "Rommel Plan" that fits the Christian Democratic ideal of the German CDU. The word "Dekluxification" (German Entkluxifizerung" ) takes the role of "denazification" in the real world.  That's different from the plethora of novels in which the bad guys win.

(03-28-2021, 07:57 PM)Einzige Wrote: [ -> ]It's always amusing to see that Eric The Green is a Rumsfeldian neoconservative behind the veneer of hippie.

It goes back to the American Revolution, which saw its emerging USA as a shining city on a hill that would be an example to the world, a phrase Reagan often used; and later to Manifest Destiny in the 19th century and to the Munich Doctrine in the 20th that says the West needs to stand up to aggressors and avoid appeasement, and even more to the French Revolution whose early Girondist leaders offered their military services to any people seeking to recover their liberty, a cause Napoleon took upon himself for his own glory (the new boss not being much better than the old). Once launched, The Western WEIRD revolution has continued, in fits and starts, to shape the world and overturn the old authority, whether by imperialism, or by dissemination among the people rising up for liberty and the spread of tech.

That's the best way, but sometimes genocidal tyrants can't be moved, and the people need to take up arms, which also usually doesn't work out too well. And the USA can help the people rise up, but should only do so if asked by the people and their alternative state, and not through unprovoked invasion, preventive war or bombing-- unlike what Bush and Rumsfeld proposed and carried out in the People for a New American Century project.

Polling Data https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls...-7320.html
Poll....................................Date...............Sample......Approve....Disapprove....Spread
RCP Average......................3/1 - 3/28........--..............53.4.........42.9.............+10.5
Rasmussen Reports............3/24 - 3/28......1500 LV.....49............50................-1
Reuters/Ipsos....................3/24 - 3/25......1005 A.......53............41................+12
Economist/YouGov.............3/20 - 3/23......1267 RV.....51............43................+8
The Hill/HarrisX..................3/19 - 3/22......2858 RV.....60...........40................+20
Politico/Morning Consult......3/19 - 3/22.....1994 RV.....57...........40.................+17
CNN...................................3/3 - 3/8.........RV.............50...........44.................+6
Gallup................................3/1 - 3/15.......1010 A.......54...........42.................+12

There was a poll done recently in Georgia about who believed what.  Most Republican believed in the Big Lie.  Most Republicans beloved there was a love fest at the capitol on January 6.  In short, Earth Two is alive and well among those that get their news from Republican leaning sources.  Most Republican politicians have no choice but to avoid being primaried by going along with it.

I don't think it will work.  Almost by definition, those that are still listening to Republican sources are still Republicans.  The number of Republicans are going down.  If you choose to win the primary, which you almost have too, the general election will get you.  Traditionally the party that holds the White House gains power in the mid term elections, but will the people really vote not to solve the crisis problems?  If it is crystal clear that obstruction is holding up Biden's agenda, will they gain voters by being obstructionists?  Are the Republicans going to hold on to obstruction obviously enough that the Democrats can kill the filibuster and get much of their agenda through anyway?

That doesn't mean things are not on a hair's edge.  If one Democrat wants something, he can hold anything on the legislative agenda hostage.

One of my daydreams is that Haris publicly announces she will not vote for the Democrats if the public is not backing a bill big time.  If the Republican want to be partisan, so be it, but if the people want something to pass she will stay with the people.

I don't know that it will break the partisan desire of the Republicans to vote against the interests of the people who are electing them, but maybe?

(03-29-2021, 04:00 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]There was a poll done recently in Georgia about who believed what.  Most Republican believed in the Big Lie.  Most Republicans beloved there was a love fest at the capitol on January 6.  In short, Earth Two is alive and well among those that get their news from Republican leaning sources.  Most Republican politicians have no choice but to avoid being primaried by going along with it.

I don't think it will work.  Almost by definition, those that are still listening to Republican sources are still Republicans.  The number of Republicans are going down.  If you choose to win the primary, which you almost have too, the general election will get you.  Traditionally the party that holds the White House gains power in the mid term elections, but will the people really vote not to solve the crisis problems?  If it is crystal clear that obstruction is holding up Biden's agenda, will they gain voters by being obstructionists?  Are the Republicans going to hold on to obstruction obviously enough that the Democrats can kill the filibuster and get much of their agenda through anyway?

That doesn't mean things are not on a hair's edge.  If one Democrat wants something, he can hold anything on the legislative agenda hostage.

One of my daydreams is that Harris publicly announces she will not vote for the Democrats if the public is not backing a bill big time.  If the Republican want to be partisan, so be it, but if the people want something to pass she will stay with the people.

I don't know that it will break the partisan desire of the Republicans to vote against the interests of the people who are electing them, but maybe?

It seems that Biden learned the lesson of 'too little, too late' and is working on a consistent pattern of big wins with Democrats alone.  The infrastructure bill will prove that true or not, because it has to pass.  If the GOPpers have no intention of building things for their constituents, as I suspect, then Biden will bless abandoning the filibuster (or forcing it to the floor as a speak-a-thon), and pass it with Dems alone.  If it plays that way, the Republicans are dead for the next cycle.

Let's see who and how many play chicken with their political futures this time. Bets? Anyone?

(03-29-2021, 04:51 PM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]It seems that Biden learned the lesson of 'too little, too late' and is working on a consistent pattern of big wins with Democrats alone.  The infrastructure bill will prove that true or not, because it has to pass.  If the GOPpers have no intention of building things for their constituents, as I suspect, then Biden will bless abandoning the filibuster (or forcing it to the floor as a speak-a-thon), and pass it with Dems alone.  If it plays that way, the Republicans are dead for the next cycle.

Let's see who and how many play chicken with their political futures this time. Bets? Anyone?

I'm waiting for a big round of court cases.  Mostly, Fox is being sued by Dominion for reporting on the Big Lie.  That case will involve recordings of Fox repeating the Big Lie, and of their recanting that the Big Lie was a big lie.  Secondly, in Georgia Trump himself is in line for participating in voter fraud.  If those court efforts go as the 50 to 1 cases before them, it gets really hard to perpetuate the alternate version of the truth.

But judging from the fanatics wading through here, the ability of people to ignore the truth is bottomless.