US Politics Megathread

[Horsemen]

Missed me bruh, I'm not from reddit.

esoc is reddit lite tbh

[Dolan]

esoc is like 4 ppl on 10 accounts, pretending it's a huge thriving community, tbh

[Goodspeed]

I don't think anyone is pretending that

[Horsemen]

esoc is like 4 ppl on 10 accounts, pretending it's a huge thriving community, tbh

Why would three people share one account?

[Mr. Griggles]

esoc is like 4 ppl on 10 accounts, pretending it's a huge thriving community, tbh

Griggly Giggly Goo,
One account is good for you.
Griggly Giggly Wig,
more than one is quite the gig!

[duckzilla]

esoc is like 4 ppl on 10 accounts, pretending it's a huge thriving community, tbh

Now that's a fun question: If I had a second account, which one would it be?

[scarm]

birdkong obviously

[Jam]

[wardyb1]

Manchin and Sinema single handedly going to be responsible for Dems getting annihilated in 2022.

[princeofcarthage]

#Trump 2024, 2028, 2032, 2036, 2040

[Dolan]

There's no political solution in the USA anymore.
Whether it's Democrats or Republicans in power, it doesn't matter for the long-term, big picture.

[wardyb1]

There's no political solution in the USA anymore.
Whether it's Democrats or Republicans in power, it doesn't matter for the long-term, big picture.

Hence the reason the filibuster needs to be eliminated. When political parties actually have the ability to pass legislation, they will become much more accountable to voters.
How can you have a political solution when you need 60 votes? Much too easy for the opposition just to obstruct, while the party in power gets to blame the obstructionists.

With the filibuster gone, Dems can no longer fence sit as progressives and moderates and Republicans will face huge public backlash if they try to pass the legislation they claim to support.

[Dolan]

There's no political solution in the USA anymore.
Whether it's Democrats or Republicans in power, it doesn't matter for the long-term, big picture.

Hence the reason the filibuster needs to be eliminated. When political parties actually have the ability to pass legislation, they will become much more accountable to voters.
How can you have a political solution when you need 60 votes? Much too easy for the opposition just to obstruct, while the party in power gets to blame the obstructionists.

With the filibuster gone, Dems can no longer fence sit as progressives and moderates and Republicans will face huge public backlash if they try to pass the legislation they claim to support.

Do you really think that changing some rules of congress procedure will fix the deep-seated conflicts in American society, the culture wars, the radical hate and polarisation that pits camps against each other right now?
Is that all that it takes, adjusting the rules of congress to make sure the "right people" win and pass legislation and silence the undesirables for the forthcoming future? Is that how politics is supposed to work. If you find that the other side is an obstacle, change the rules of procedure to make sure they have no voice. Then watch society get magically pacified, because you silenced them, right? What do you think would happen if republicans/conservatives are not represented, the whole deadlock gets solved, 100 years of progressive Democrat legislation?

I was saying something a bit different, though, when I said that the current situation in the USA doesn't have a solution that can come from politics anymore. Maybe I should explain a bit, so it doesn't sound like vague, big words. In the post-WW2 timeline, politics has been focused (especially in the West) on solving social issues by assuming that it's all a question of economics. If you create the conditions for people to thrive economically, everything else will just follow suit. It's the Mont Pelerin Society or neoliberal concept of government, which claimed that in order to have a functioning free society (liberal democracy) you need to make sure there's a functioning free market economy that can pay for it. Politics became just a question of what kind of legislation to pass to create the conditions for the GDP to grow.

But the current social conflicts from the USA don't come from a difference of opinion on how to grow the GDP and politicians find themselves unable to solve social conflicts that originate in differences of opinion on moral issues, racial issues, rules of social conduct, etc, questions of how people conceive society itself should be. And the answer of the current neoliberal establishment is: we need to be sly and silence our opponents and we need to throw more money at these issues and they will get settled. As if what's causing some Americans to reject progressive policies is that their income is too low. Or the reason why Polish people vote for parties that also reject progressive Western policies is because their economy is tanking (it's been growing steadily in the last decade). That's how this neoliberal mindset thinks about these issues: wherever you find some people having "problematic attitudes", this must be caused by some economic problems; address the economic problems, attitudes will change too. This tunnel vision that the neoliberal mindset has when it comes to what causes social conflict makes it blind to and unable to solve issues that come from anything outside economics.

That's why these conflicts can find no solution in politics. At least, not in the way politics is done right now.

[Goodspeed]

I think campaign finance law is the reason

[wardyb1]

There's no political solution in the USA anymore.
Whether it's Democrats or Republicans in power, it doesn't matter for the long-term, big picture.

Hence the reason the filibuster needs to be eliminated. When political parties actually have the ability to pass legislation, they will become much more accountable to voters.
How can you have a political solution when you need 60 votes? Much too easy for the opposition just to obstruct, while the party in power gets to blame the obstructionists.

With the filibuster gone, Dems can no longer fence sit as progressives and moderates and Republicans will face huge public backlash if they try to pass the legislation they claim to support.

Do you really think that changing some rules of congress procedure will fix the deep-seated conflicts in American society, the culture wars, the radical hate and polarisation that pits camps against each other right now?
Is that all that it takes, adjusting the rules of congress to make sure the "right people" win and pass legislation and silence the undesirables for the forthcoming future? Is that how politics is supposed to work. If you find that the other side is an obstacle, change the rules of procedure to make sure they have no voice. Then watch society get magically pacified, because you silenced them, right? What do you think would happen if republicans/conservatives are not represented, the whole deadlock gets solved, 100 years of progressive Democrat legislation?

I disagree with some of your 2nd/3rd paragraphs but also have some points we agree on there but I'm not much interested into going into that side of things. The quote above though I take issues with.

The problem with the filibuster is that it means politicians are absolved from doing their job. For instance without the filibuster, the GOP from 2016-2018 would've been answerable to their own voters for: not passing an infrastructure bill, not passing healthcare reform, not passing immigration reform, not passing gun legislation etc. If they stand by their views, they should pass the legislation to back it. To quote Hamilton: "They don't have a plan, they just hate mine". If they passed healthcare legislation, it would either suck and they'd get annihilated at the polls or it would be good and the country would be better off for it. Which is how society should function.

I have no wish to see legislation passed that silences either side and good luck getting it through the courts and making it constitutional. BUT if a party wants to attempt to pass that sort of legislation with a majority vote then I believe they should have the right to. Because guess what, that is how democratic societies function. All of sudden, the party trying to pass the legislation now have to actually vote for it and put their name to it, so it has to have the full support within the party. They have to make sure it is popular and that they won't get massacred at the election booth for it, and they have to make sure they won't get actually massacred for it because when governments pass some sort of authoritarian legislation which is what you seem to be suggesting then the people can rise up. (Good thing that 2nd amendment exists, right?)

In the end, the fact that politicians can stand up and act like they can't pass legislation because of Senate rules designed in the Jim Crow era and then changed to allow politicians to not even put in effort in participating in the legislative discussions is a joke. It's not like its part of the constitution or some bullshit, it is literally just the Senate telling themselves what to do. Ridiculous.

[Dolan]

Are you implying that the reason why American society is deeply divided right now is because the filibuster exists and the Senate is unable to pass most of the tabled bills? And if the filibuster was removed, then these deep divisions in American society would get solved by the Senate being able to pass more legislation?
What I was arguing is that it doesn't matter which party would adopt it and which legislation would get passed, because what's at the root of these disagreements in American society is not solvable through politics anymore. You can't solve social conflicts born out of fundamental moral disagreements by launching more infrastructure projects or hiking the minimum wage.

I don't necessarily disagree with the point that this filibuster practice has a negative impact on their Senate's ability to pass laws, though this is nothing new in the world of legislative practice. There are lots of countries which have very strict constitutional limits on what kind of majorities are needed to pass critical legislation. So you need supermajority to override any procedural tricks that seek to block such legislation. But I doubt that this is the root cause of what made US politics so polarised.

[Goodspeed]

The filibuster is not even close to the biggest problem but it's a relatively easy one to solve and it's currently directly preventing progress so it makes sense to discuss getting rid of it. But until you fix campaign finance law and elections to make the democracy more representative, everything else is a bandaid.

[wardyb1]

Are you implying that the reason why American society is deeply divided right now is because the filibuster exists and the Senate is unable to pass most of the tabled bills? And if the filibuster was removed, then these deep divisions in American society would get solved by the Senate being able to pass more legislation?
What I was arguing is that it doesn't matter which party would adopt it and which legislation would get passed, because what's at the root of these disagreements in American society is not solvable through politics anymore. You can't solve social conflicts born out of fundamental moral disagreements by launching more infrastructure projects or hiking the minimum wage.

I don't necessarily disagree with the point that this filibuster practice has a negative impact on their Senate's ability to pass laws, though this is nothing new in the world of legislative practice. There are lots of countries which have very strict constitutional limits on what kind of majorities are needed to pass critical legislation. So you need supermajority to override any procedural tricks that seek to block such legislation. But I doubt that this is the root cause of what made US politics so polarised.

Can I ask where you get "hold politicians accountable = american society is divided because of the filibuster" from any of my words?

[Dolan]

Well, then your reply wasn't addressing the point I made. You were just talking about something different here than what I had in mind when I made that argument that I don't think the USA's problems are fixable through politics anymore:

Hence the reason the filibuster needs to be eliminated. When political parties actually have the ability to pass legislation, they will become much more accountable to voters.
How can you have a political solution when you need 60 votes? Much too easy for the opposition just to obstruct, while the party in power gets to blame the obstructionists.

Tbh, it's not even clear that voters make such a simple connection between their vote and specific federal legislation passed by their representatives. I doubt ordinary voters closely follow what bills get passed, which representatives voted and in what way, etc. I think voters mostly align with a party based on pre-existing attitudes and agreement with a general party line.

[Snuden]

Dang! This thread should be a live feed into the presidents office.

[Snuden]

Senor Presidente, we have found the brightest minds on ESOC, here is their take on how the world really work.

[Snuden]

"Prepare the situation room!"

[princeofcarthage]

Ban

[Snuden]

Leader of the bunch is PrinceOfStupidity, he serves french fries for the Mumbai pleb, so he obviously know of what he speaks.

[Jam]

freedom fries