6 ms·

doesn't matter who is president in 2020, if the senate isn't blue. And right now, it doesn't look like the senate will even hit 50/50.

metalliqaz 8y ago
The political system in the US biases area over population. The Senate will remain conservative as long as rural states remain conservative, and that will never change.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  I'm not sure I'd bet on that. Cities are almost universally liberal, and even rural states start to turn blue as they get their own big cities.
  - cannonedhamster 8y ago
    Unfortunately without proportional voting being mandated purple states like Texas remain solidly red due to vast gerrymandering purposefully made to deny people the right to their representation by diluting their vote. This is actually the main cause of polarization in the US as candidates need to play to their base instead of moderating to play to a moderate base.
kibwen 8y ago
Fortunately (ironically, sardonically), thanks to the precedents being set by the sitting president, future presidents will be free to declare healthcare a national emergency and divert funds away from, say, the defense department in order to pay for it. A slim majority in the senate and a minority in the house won't be near enough to stop them. The current senate dissolves the checks and balances at their own institutional peril (and no, this isn't a situation anyone ought to be celebrating, except for the authoritarians).
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  > future presidents will be free to declare healthcare a national emergency Well, actually, maybe it is a national emergency? Definitely seems more of an emergency than some wall.
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    So is climate change. We have lots of emergencies to tend to. It is going to get interesting.
cletus 8y ago
So there's a lot I could say about this. First is an example. As much as I, personally, liked (and continue to like) Obama as a person and as much as I agree with most of his policies, at the end of the day he was a pretty ineffective president. Why? Because he could get hardly any legislation passed (Obamacare aka the Affordable Care Act being the principle counterexample). He was a president who ruled by executive order. The White House is the largest and loudest bully pulpit in the country, by far. You can point to Congress and call them obstructionist but the buck stops with you as president to move your policy agenda and change the national debate. And Obama just wasn't effective at that. Again, with one exception. It used to be a fairly popular opinion in the US that health coverage was for those with jobs, basically. That still is the position of a significant portion of the population but it's not as popular as it used to be. Obama did change the national debate on this such that the question became how we should provide health coverage and not whether we should. Go back a decade or more and the Bernie Sanders coverage-for-all policy platform would've relegated him to being a minor player in the primaries, not taken seriously. The fact that he was as prominent a figure as he was is in no small part due to Obama changing the debate on health care (IMHO). The second thing I'll say is that nothing lasts forever. Demographics change. Opinions change. California voted for Reagan. Twice. It used to be a competitive state. Now it's safely Democratic. Florida used to be safely Republican but (largely due to migration from the Northeast) but now it's a battleground state. Let's just say that at some point Conservatives get what they've been hoping for: Roe v. Wade overturned in the SCOTUS. It could happen. Largley though the "damage" has been done already. It won't be illegal. It'll just be a state issue. Many states will legallize it the next day. New York for example has already made moves to enshrine the legality of abortions in state law. Now this will suck for particularly poor people in Alabma but in a way Alabamans will get the state government they seem to want. So let's say that happens. The problem then for Conservatives is they've lost a defining and unifying (for their base) issue. One can argue they're better off politically this way as they'll fracture in the aftermath. I see the current Conservative bent as a desperate last gasp for what is a majority (in their respective states) that's in decline. A lot of damage can be done before this naturally remedies itself but we're not headed to a dystopian Handmaid's Tale future either.
- asark 8y ago

metalliqaz 8y ago

The political system in the US biases area over population. The Senate will remain conservative as long as rural states remain conservative, and that will never change.

rootusrootus 8y ago
I'm not sure I'd bet on that. Cities are almost universally liberal, and even rural states start to turn blue as they get their own big cities.
- cannonedhamster 8y ago
  Unfortunately without proportional voting being mandated purple states like Texas remain solidly red due to vast gerrymandering purposefully made to deny people the right to their representation by diluting their vote. This is actually the main cause of polarization in the US as candidates need to play to their base instead of moderating to play to a moderate base.

kibwen 8y ago

Fortunately (ironically, sardonically), thanks to the precedents being set by the sitting president, future presidents will be free to declare healthcare a national emergency and divert funds away from, say, the defense department in order to pay for it. A slim majority in the senate and a minority in the house won't be near enough to stop them. The current senate dissolves the checks and balances at their own institutional peril (and no, this isn't a situation anyone ought to be celebrating, except for the authoritarians).

madeofpalk 8y ago
> future presidents will be free to declare healthcare a national emergency Well, actually, maybe it is a national emergency? Definitely seems more of an emergency than some wall.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  So is climate change. We have lots of emergencies to tend to. It is going to get interesting.

cletus 8y ago

So there's a lot I could say about this. First is an example. As much as I, personally, liked (and continue to like) Obama as a person and as much as I agree with most of his policies, at the end of the day he was a pretty ineffective president. Why? Because he could get hardly any legislation passed (Obamacare aka the Affordable Care Act being the principle counterexample). He was a president who ruled by executive order. The White House is the largest and loudest bully pulpit in the country, by far. You can point to Congress and call them obstructionist but the buck stops with you as president to move your policy agenda and change the national debate. And Obama just wasn't effective at that. Again, with one exception. It used to be a fairly popular opinion in the US that health coverage was for those with jobs, basically. That still is the position of a significant portion of the population but it's not as popular as it used to be. Obama did change the national debate on this such that the question became how we should provide health coverage and not whether we should. Go back a decade or more and the Bernie Sanders coverage-for-all policy platform would've relegated him to being a minor player in the primaries, not taken seriously. The fact that he was as prominent a figure as he was is in no small part due to Obama changing the debate on health care (IMHO). The second thing I'll say is that nothing lasts forever. Demographics change. Opinions change. California voted for Reagan. Twice. It used to be a competitive state. Now it's safely Democratic. Florida used to be safely Republican but (largely due to migration from the Northeast) but now it's a battleground state. Let's just say that at some point Conservatives get what they've been hoping for: Roe v. Wade overturned in the SCOTUS. It could happen. Largley though the "damage" has been done already. It won't be illegal. It'll just be a state issue. Many states will legallize it the next day. New York for example has already made moves to enshrine the legality of abortions in state law. Now this will suck for particularly poor people in Alabma but in a way Alabamans will get the state government they seem to want. So let's say that happens. The problem then for Conservatives is they've lost a defining and unifying (for their base) issue. One can argue they're better off politically this way as they'll fracture in the aftermath. I see the current Conservative bent as a desperate last gasp for what is a majority (in their respective states) that's in decline. A lot of damage can be done before this naturally remedies itself but we're not headed to a dystopian Handmaid's Tale future either.

asark 8y ago