***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[RustyShackleford]

But it would be better if the tax benefit for mortgage interest went away.

But to make something like that fly America would probably need to be running a surplus of housing units.

At minimum, much stricter rules about who gets it.

But yeah, the mortgage interest deduction mainly benefits banks and the upper middle class.

 

[RustyShackleford]

 

[kdawg]

It's still a little odd - why does area 7 have an appendage?

Definitely good news though.

 

[TooOlfForThisIsh]

But yeah, the mortgage interest deduction mainly benefits banks and the upper middle class.

My assumption is the same would be true of any student loan interest deduction.

The entire student loan industry is bonkers. From a credit perspective, it’s an unsecured, forward starting cash flow loan made to borrowers without credit history or proven cash flow. It’s an insane product that no third party financial institution would think about getting into without the government guarantee / subsidy.

So, yes, a bit of that economic benefit goes to the bank in terms of risk adjusted return. But honestly I think most banks do it more to win business from the student down the line.

But the other thing it does is ease price pressure on tuition. So effectively it’s partially a wealth transfer from the federal government to schools. And I’m all for funding schools, but maybe there are mechanisms for doing so that aren’t so convoluted and damaging to the credit and lives of so many students?

This country does had many economically ridiculous funding Rube Goldberg mechanisms because of its stupid unwavering belief in the imaginary concept of “economic merit” and because everything needs to involve some kind of market feature - even if that feature is completely contrived, unnecessary, and ultimately harmful.

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[gry60]

According to Pratt's account, as described by the sources, Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump -- "leaning" toward Pratt as if to be discreet -- then told Pratt two pieces of information about U.S. submarines: the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.

The second one is almost equivalent to that one US congressman who, during WWII, publicly revealed that Japanese warships couldn't hit US subs because they didn't place their mines deeper.

 

[kdawg]

 

[Belgium]

I wonder what % of MAL members are just other countries' intelligence agencies. All you have to do to get this man spilling all kinds of information is to stroke his ego.

 

[aepps20]

Glad Alabama went our way. We just have to keep working and push out the noise and nonsense

 

[biggie62]

Need to flip some of the NY districts that were lost.

 

[aepps20]

Need to flip some of the NY districts that were lost.

I believe we will. Hard to hold on to Biden leaning districts when moderates don't exist anymore. We just need to run good candidates

 

[RustyShackleford]

NY is planning on gerrymandering their map

To counterbalance Ohio and NC gerrymandering theirs

Also, George Santos is running for re-election

 

[gry60]

Also, George Santos is running for re-election

Bold move, considering that his campaign treasure is about to plead guilty for wire fraud related to his winning bod for congress.

 

[aepps20]

NY is planning on gerrymandering their map

To counterbalance Ohio and NC gerrymandering theirs

Also, George Santos is running for re-election

Will this get us on trouble like last year? If I recall we tried to match Florida but the NY Supreme Court (Clownmo appointed conservatives) struck down our NY map.

 

[biggie62]

California should gerrymander too. Make all the big city counties extend to all the rural and maga counties to overpopulate them. Part of Oakland and Fresno as 1 county.

 

[Fozz]

California should gerrymander too. Make all the big city counties extend to all the rural and maga counties to overpopulate them. Part of Oakland and Fresno as 1 county.

Man, Oakland is part of Alameda county. That county alone is big AF lol.

 

[RustyShackleford]

California should gerrymander too. Make all the big city counties extend to all the rural and maga counties to overpopulate them. Part of Oakland and Fresno as 1 county.

Voters in Cali put in place a state commission to draw maps in Cali.

I don't think there is the needed support to overturn it.

 

[aepps20]

I like the voting commissions that prevent Gerrymandering or limit it but I wish they existed in every state. Blue States like California and Colorado have these commissions but we could pick up even more seats if they didn't exist.

 

[Based Jesus]

Broadcasting the quiet part out loud again. Fox News is openly hostile to democracy.

 

[rexanglorum]

Honestly, I think that Joe Biden will be fine in the general election.

The old conventional wisdom was that a president's approval rating would pretty much be their share of the vote in their election bid. That conventional wisdom is falling apart. Negative polarization is so strong that a lot of people who disapprove of Joe Biden will still vote for him. There's two blocs of disapprovers who will still vote for Biden.

the first group is the American left which largely voted for Biden in 2020 and I think most will vote for him again. I think Biden has done some good things within a broader political and economic order that doesn't allow many good things to happen. But if a pollster called me (and this is purely hypothetic as I don't answer unknown phone numbers at all anymore) and I'm given a purely binary choice, I'd probably say disapprove, even though I still plan on voting for him.

The second group is the shrinking but still very relevant undecided voters, the people whom Trump charmed in 2016. There are voters who simply are not steeped in all the symbolism and history and nuances and broader contexts as we tend to be. They are unhappy about inflation (and the still largely stagnant wages that come with it) and they overestimate the president's role in determining that. This could be a problem for Biden if 2024 were Trump's first election bid. But the fact is that Trump ran, got elected, and didn't usher in a Producerist neo Jacksonian paradise for "the common man." He mostly governed like any old Republican Party functionary would have. Throw in the legal trouble that Trump is having and I imagine Trump->Biden voters favoring Biden again.

Fragmented media and the way that digital marketing is often based on story telling and sales funnels can be used to great effect in Biden’s reflection bid. Biden does not have a massive win that clearly improved the lives of a majority of voters but he’s got a lot of smaller wins and he can micro target groups whose own lives were greatly improved by a particular win. In addition, the Biden campaign can run ads that are fairly cheap that get particular demographic groups’ attention and those ads could lead to short video or other content tbat puts his Ls into context e.g. SCOTUS striking down broader student debt relief or the expiration of the child tax credit and his ads could end with two calls to action, one about voting for him and another one about what one can do to reverse these Ls and turn them into Ws.

Nothing is a given in politics but Trump needed everything to go right for him to eke it out in 2016 and we already know that not everything will be going right for him in 2024. Moreover, I could see Republicans doing pretty poorly down ballot as well. If they could get much traction in 2022, it’s hard to see them doing better when the electorate is bigger and the guy at the top of the ticket is standing trial ever day.

I saw someone on Twitter a little while ago posting the hopeful book title from the future, it was something like “I Can’t Breath: the Story of COVID, George Floyd, Wild Fires and the making of a new American from 2020 to 2030.”

 

[rexanglorum]

I like the voting commissions that prevent Gerrymandering or limit it but I wish they existed in every state. Blue States like California and Colorado have these commissions but we could pick up even more seats if they didn't exist.

Agreed. The districting commissions should have been an inter State compact triggered by every other State doing the same.

IMO, I think that with enough money for messaging, the districting commissions could be modified and be temporarily repealed pending reciprocal districting commission elsewhere.

The central theme could be something like “the commission was approved before Trump became the head of the Republican Party and now MAGA gerrymandering threatens democracy, vote yes on prop X”

 

[aepps20]

Agreed. The districting commissions should have been an inter State compact triggered by every other State doing the same.

IMO, I think that with enough money for messaging, the districting commissions could be modified and be temporarily repealed pending reciprocal districting commission elsewhere.

The central theme could be something like “the commission was approved before Trump became the head of the Republican Party and now MAGA gerrymandering threatens democracy, vote yes on prop X”

Sadly in Dem states the funding backing these movements are from right wing groups that don't want us to balance gerrymandering in our states to offset what they do with theirs. I also agree with your assessment of Joey's chances. Simply put, a large number of people aren't keyed into the factthat it will be Joey vs Don 2. My dad is very political but when I told him that it would be Joey vs Don 2 he was shocked that Don would be the Republican nominee. In a vaccum some might not like Joey but if it is between him and Trump our side will do what needs to be done. This is why we have to push back against this both sides nonsense because every vote counts. Joe isn't perfect but we've seen what giving Trumo 4 years did to us.

 

[had pants]

 

[IATT]