they won’t in nov
This read requires you to believe that the SC is actually independent of the political parties. I no longer in any way believe that. I also strongly suspect McCain passes a bipartisan election bill in the wake of Citizens United if it happens in the first place.
The GOP would be a way different party if McCain had gotten to shape it from 2008-2012 frankly. This timeline would be massively different. Establishment GOP candidates losing to a black guy twice broke the back of the more respectable establishment GOP… once the Tea Party got going a Trump style candidate was borderline inevitable.
It’s kind of like how HRC losing to Trump is probably the reason why Bernie and Warren probably have 60% of the total Democratic primary support between them IRL.
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So, as long as it’s not Bernie, losing to Trump twice will empower the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to overcome the establishment? Are you trying to get me to vote Trump if we have a not-Bernie, not-Liz nominee?
I mean, 100% of Presidents have been impeached over the last one term.
67% of presidents born in 1946 were impeached. The indignity!
We don’t have to lose to Trump for the moderates to be fucked. They’re all the way fucked already, and there’s really no way to go back for them.
Checking in with my NeverTrump father who likes Romney and who said the impeachment was unfair even though he doesn’t like Trump…
He says Romney’s vote only solidifies that he shouldn’t have been impeached by Dems in the first place, and he thinks Romney is doing the right thing and good for him.
I attempted to clarify, doesn’t that mean the impeachment was proper? Answer: no, because Romney is only voting for one article, and this will not be discussed farther because he’s now taking a news break for an hour. End of discussion!
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My dad’s got a bad dose of FB too… 
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Are you familiar with the beach vendor paradigm? It’s used to explains inevitable extremism across domains and industries.
It’s better with visuals, but basically
You are the first person to set up an ice cream stand on the beach. You want to capture the most consumers. Where do you set up the stand?
Most would say in the middle. Get equal amounts of visibility and traction from the full beach.
Now let’s say your competitor wants to set up their own stand. Where? Well probably next to yours. This is still the biggest place to siphon foot traffic.
But you can only do that so many times before you’re cannibalizing the traffic into unsustainability.
So the next shop is put in the middle, but not the true middle, it’s put into the new middle on the left or right side of the old middle. But for those consumers, it is the only middle they now know. That stand in the true middle is far to the right/left of where they are now.
This happens over and over again until we end up with Fox News viewers who legitimately believe their position is that of a true centrist/moderate, and most American actual moderates being branded (and believing!) they are socialists despite any functional country laughing at how right-wing all but the most extreme (lol) American liberals actually are.
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Many people around here will downplay Mitt’s move, but Trump and some senators are working with very thin margins. Some GOP voters likely fell in love with Romney in 2012, and if 2-3% follow Mitt’s lead and abandon Trump, that’s enough.
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I don’t think Kennedy retires under an Obama presidency.
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I like all of that, but I think the real problem for moderates is that their proposed solutions are now mathematically unworkable.
There was still an feasible possibility of just tapering off emissions to deal with climate change, small tweaks could be made to prevent inequality from getting much worse, and infrastructure could be rebuilt a little bit at a time… back in 2000. Even in 2008 it was getting a little tight but it wasn’t completely out of control yet.
But then we didn’t do a single goddamn thing for 20 years, and now all the math is different. It turns out that when you have real deadlines you have to meet procrastinating creates situations where you have to do things faster than is absolutely optimal politically… and that’s where we are now. Like a college kid with 4 papers and a final at the end of the week with his/her scholarship on the line we’re going to have to bust our asses to catch back up.
That’s just how it is now. I seriously hope I get to be moderate again some day. Nothing would make me happier than being conservative. That would mean pretty much every ice cream stand to my right had shut completely down. I’d love to be the equivalent of an Eisenhower Republican in my old age. That’d be goddamn glorious.
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I saw something the other day saying that Kennedy was “pressured” to retire, despite reports that he had been considering it for a while. I’ll see if I can find it
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It wasn’t so much he was pressured as the Trump clan did a full court kiss-ass press to assure him he could safely retire.
Sinema is a yes.
I swear to god, Manchin
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Has Manchin voted?
Maybe, but maybe Souter and Stevens don’t both retire under McCain.
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He wont reveal his vote until its time to vote
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Jesus, nothing worse than hearing a man whine through jowls
Manchin announces he is a yes
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