monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Re: izzythepush (Post 6938129)

Boris Johnson threatens BBC with two-pronged attack

Pelosi some time ago expressed the view that Impeachment, if it occurs, must have a clear criminal foundation and there must be a level of bipartisan support for it. Now they are proceeding without meeting either condition .

No More Nice Dems

...So why do [Republicans] keep winning state races? To put it another way, why do Democrats—the party of prosperity—keep losing to them? Can this be changed? How much does it matter?

Meaghan Winter’s All Politics Is Local: Why Progressives Must Fight for the States looks into these questions with remarkable clarity and tenacity.

...Winter’s starting point is that effective political engagement at the state level is not only intrinsically desirable but that, “especially ahead of redistricting, there is no way for a political party or social movement to win long-term without building strategic power in cities and states.”

This might seem obvious. The maps of most congressional districts are determined by state legislatures. After the midterm election of 2010, Republicans used their state-level wins to ensure dramatic partisan overrepresentation in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Virginia, Indiana, New York, and Michigan. This guaranteed a Republican majority in the House of Representatives that could be undone only by an election like the 2018 Blue Wave. Gerrymandering was also applied to statehouses. This gives the GOP a continuing advantage, in states like Wisconsin and Ohio, in the redistricting that will follow the 2020 census.

Nonetheless, the importance of regional politics hasn’t been obvious, or obvious enough, to the Democratic powers-that-be: as Winter writes, “for years, it has been an open secret in political circles that Democrats and progressive interest groups have prioritized federal candidates and policy at the expense of the states.”

Winter suggests that this is because, first, there has been a generational conviction among baby boomers that federal politics is the most instrumentally effective. And second, the liberal political apparatus is “largely guided by the moral whims of rich people.” She gives the billionaire presidential candidate Tom Steyer as an example. Liberal megadonors with private foundations are reluctant to invest in uncharismatic, long-haul grassroots projects. They are typically afraid of appearing “political.” Instead, they favor ameliorating the plight of the visibly needy:

Quote:

As David Callahan, founder of Inside Philanthropy, said, most foundation grant makers end up “thinking like a social worker instead of thinking like a Bolshevik,” the very opposite of the approach taken by those doling out the Koch and Mercer fortunes.

Thus the problem isn’t money: “The annual spending of centrist and left-leaning foundations far exceeds the annual spending of the conservative Heritage Foundation or the Scaife Family Foundation.” The problem is that, for around half a century, right-wing donors have spent their money more productively. They have created and supported entities (the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, the State Policy Network, Americans for Prosperity, the Federalist Society, etc.) dedicated to developing durable structures of power and fanaticism. Most significantly, they have gradually taken control of state offices—the offices responsible not only for redistricting but for elections and voter registration, for state jurisprudence, and for the local regulation of abortion, health care, workers’ rights, and gun safety.

It can’t be disputed that this effort has worked. Indeed, it has produced a kind of Bolshevik dreamland in which a few billionaire hypercapitalists and libertarian extremists oversee a sizable cadre of professional ideologues and organizers who do the boring, technical, and persistent work of radicalizing, training, rewarding, and controlling conservative legislators, policy theorists, media figures, propagandists, administrators, evangelists, and judges. This produces a self-sustaining vanguard with real power, real expertise, and a ferocious dedication to victory that increasingly surpasses any allegiance to the ethical and civic norms associated with a modern democracy. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, intellectually dishonest judicial rulings, and systematic disinformation are now essential Republican tactics. There’s a reason why the GOP, for all its substantive uselessness, is such a formidable political foe. It plays to win...

Hightor has proven himself to be a conservative Republican.

You're definitely conservative by our standards.

British standards. European standards.

You seem to be completely unaware of the fact that politically America is a lot further to the right than the rest of the developed World.

It's not rocket science.

You quoted a far right poster who rubbished Corbyn and lied about him.

You may be overjoyed that Trump will be gutting the NHS and killing British people, but I'm not.

You seem to be completely unaware of the fact that politically America is a lot further to the right than the rest of the developed World.

Corbyn was long vilified by the right wing press as being on the 'loony left' before he even ran for head of the party, so he was at even more of a disadvantage than other Labour leaders.

The point you were trying to make is a load of bollocks.

...especially as you've already expressed your opposition to UHC.

Why did the party choose him as its leader? Was he as left as Red Ken? Was it just a reaction to the leadership of Tony Blair?