BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

Collins clearly enjoys her role as a fence sitting pseudo moderate which must translate into increased bargaining power for her Maine constituents. How do you quantify the net inflows of federal dollars to Maine during her tenure relative to nearby states represented by Dems?

I'm pretty certain she was promised that Maine would be the site for the expansion of All County Building Supply and Maintenance.

https://www.motherjo...ly-maintenance/

In the remote possibility that you're actually interested in her reasoning here it is.

Her reasoning is pretty flimsy and unconvincing. Her burden of proof argument deals with requirements for a criminal conviction, not for passing a job interview. As for the blah, blah, blah part, the history of people who were not who or what they appeared to be in public is so profuse as to be overwhelming to reproduce.

Basically, all this song and dance boils down to one thing: Republican have been waiting and planning 40 years for this chance, and their fear of losing control in the midterms means biting the bullet and looking and voting party lines, regardless of what you think about the nominee.

And of the remote chance you might be interested in the criminality of your president, here it is.

"When some of our best minds are seeking to develop ever more sophisticated algorithms designed to link us to websites that only reinforce and cater to our views, we can only expect our differences to intensify.

This would have alarmed the drafters of our Constitution, who were acutely aware that different values and interests could prevent Americans from becoming and remaining a single people. Indeed, of the six objectives they invoked in the preamble to the Constitution, the one that they put first was the formation of “a more perfect Union.”

Their vision of “a more perfect Union” does not exist today, and if anything, we appear to be moving farther away from it."

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)

I am not rejoicing tonight because Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed. If anything, I am grieving over the despicable spectacle we've all endured for the past three weeks. I am grieving for what Justice Kavanaugh and his family were put through. I am grieving for what Dr. Ford and her family were put through. But the sun will still come up tomorrow and we can all hope for "a more perfect Union". I think I'll go down to St. Simons Island for a few days and drink some more rum.

It appears that Collins is reasoning from first principles which include this one:

Maine has an exceptionally high poverty rate and thus receives a disproportionately large share of federal dollars. For example, Maine is the 12th most dependent state on federal tax dollars (as of 2014).

Source: The Atlantic

Integrity goeth when the money don't floweth.

I understand why this gets more Republicans to the polls but not why it gets more Republicans to the polls than Dems. If that turns out to be the case, Dems can't blame this continuing nightmare on anyone but themselves and they know it. Talk about self destruction and enabling abusers.

In order to win the Senate, Democrats need to win in states like North Dakota, Missouri, Tennessee, or Texas. These places have more Republican voters than Dems and it’s hard for Dems to win if the Republican voters turn out and support their candidate.

Belgrade Lakes, Me. — My wife and I gathered around the television on Friday to listen to our senior senator, Susan Collins, announce her final decision on the nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Four sentences in, she began denouncing “special interest groups” who’d opposed him for the court, as if the only entities to weigh in on the nomination had been forces on the left. Six sentences in, she was decrying the groups who’d “whipped their followers into a frenzy by spreading misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.” We were in the first minute of a speech that would go on for 44 more.

“Uh-oh,” said my wife. “She’s going to cave.”

I nodded, although what I thought in my heart was — had there ever been any doubt? Ms. Collins, our senator since 1996, has a reputation for being an independent; a moderate; even — what was the term? — oh yes, a maverick.

But if Ms. Collins is a maverick, then I’m an appaloosa.

Yes, she’s shown herself willing to buck her party now and again. FiveThirtyEight reports that she votes in line with Donald Trump 79 percent of the time; only Rand Paul of Kentucky, at 74 percent, has a lower score among Senate Republicans. She’s opposed the president on immigration and abortion restrictions, net neutrality and his policies toward Russia, Iran and North Korea.

But on many key votes, her record is about as moderate as Ted Cruz’s. In January, she provided the Republicans with the crucial 51st vote for the tax bill. She set three conditions: the additional passage of two separate bills to shore up insurance markets for individuals who weren’t covered through their work, along with a promise for Congress to undo the cuts to Medicare automatically triggered by the deficit increase from the tax cut.

She is a very unremarkable women as well as a Senator. She garnered too much acclaim in the past for mostly all wrong reasons. I am not surprised here (she thrives on the attention) but I acknowledge it will be tough for us Mainers to get rid of her -since Maine is old and has very low expectations.

After that bill was passed, Ms. Collins said the promises to her were ironclad, and that if her conditions were not met, “there would be consequences.” But the additional bills never got a vote, and a follow-up attempt to add her provisions to the omnibus spending bill in March was defeated, by other Republicans.

Of course they were.

As a voter in Maine for the last 30 years, I’ve been represented by a broad spectrum of independent statesmen and women. During my first year living here, we had dinner in a Skowhegan restaurant called the Heritage House, and at the table next to ours was Margaret Chase Smith, who, of course, stood up against the tactics of Joseph McCarthy in 1950 with her “Declaration of Conscience” speech. We stood up to shake her hand. I still remember that moment, the sparkle in her fierce eyes. It was like looking directly into history.

We’ve been represented by other mavericks in the last half-century. Senator William Cohen, another Republican, served as the secretary of defense for a Democratic president, Bill Clinton. George Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader, helped to bring about the Good Friday peace accords in Ireland, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. For eight years we had an independent governor, Angus King, who has gone on to represent our state as an independent in the Senate. (My wife and I are public supporters of, and have a long friendship with, the Kings.) Being independently minded is a tradition in Maine, as much a part of who we are as lobsters, moose hunting and whoopie pies.

But there are different ways of being a maverick. For Smith, it meant taking a stand, opposing McCarthy at the apex of his power. For Arizonan John McCain, it meant voting against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, at least when no provisions had been made for the 20 million Americans who would have suddenly found themselves without health care.

There’s another kind of “maverick,” though — the kind of centrist who wants to please everyone. For Ms. Collins, it’s often meant voting with the most right-wing members of her party, even while attempting to occupy some imaginary moral high ground. It’s hard to see what our senator got for her vote supporting the tax cut last fall. It’s just as hard for me to see her vote for Judge Kavanaugh as anything other than a warm embrace of Donald Trump and everything he stands for, her 45-minute speech notwithstanding.

Two years ago, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, she said she would not be voting for him: “I revere the history of my party, most particularly the value it has always placed on the worth and dignity of the individual, and I will continue to work across the country for Republican candidates. It is because of Mr. Trump’s inability and unwillingness to honor that legacy that I am unable to support his candidacy.”

And yet, at some of the most crucial moments of Mr. Trump’s presidency, she has voted to empower him. In giving him a victory on Judge Kavanaugh, she has emboldened Mr. Trump to continue down the very path she claims to detest: denigrating women, bullying opponents, choosing the most combative approach to every disagreement. Based on the judge’s snarling, partisan, bullying demeanor at his hearing, Judge Kavanaugh seems determined to be the kind of justice who is exactly the opposite of that legacy she once spoke of preserving.

In so doing, she has proved herself, in the end, to stand for nothing.

In her Declaration of Conscience speech, Margaret Chase Smith said that Joe McCarthy had debased the Senate to “the level of a forum of hate and character assassination.”

Last week, Donald Trump ridiculed the suffering of Christine Blasey Ford before a jeering, laughing crowd. Three days later, Ms. Collins voted to confirm his nominee, a man who has pledged to bring exactly the same variety of partisan venom to the Supreme Court.

One can only wonder what Margaret Chase Smith would think of Ms. Collins now.

The person for whom you should grieve is Judge Merrick Garland.

If you’re not angry yet, you should be.

Let’s review: Decades ago, a businessman built a fortune thanks in large measure to financial fraud. His corrupt gains helped him become famous. He then launched a political career by repeatedly telling a racist lie, about the first black president secretly being an African.

This lie created an audience in right-wing media that made possible a presidential campaign. During that campaign, the candidate eagerly accepted — indeed, publicly sought — the illegal assistance of a foreign enemy. When national security officials raised alarm with Congress, before Election Day, leaders of the candidate’s party refused to act.

The foreign assistance appears to have been crucial to the candidate’s narrow victory. He won with only 46.1 percent of the popular vote, less than 16 losing candidates over the years had, including Mitt Romney, John Kerry, Williams Jennings Bryan and the little-remembered Horatio Seymour.

Having won, the new president filled a Supreme Court seat that his party had stolen with an unprecedented power grab. This weekend, the president finished filling a second seat, through a brutal, partisan process. During it, the president, himself an admitted sexual molester, mocked victims of abuse.

Together, the two new justices have cemented an extremist Republican majority on the Supreme Court. It has already begun acting as a kind of super-legislature, throwing out laws on voting rights, worker rights, consumer rights and political influence buying. Now, the court is poised to do much more to benefit the wealthy and powerful at the expense of most Americans — and the planet.

This is not how democracy is supposed to work.

The real problem, to be clear, isn’t that the governing party won power with minority support. That’s always possible in our system. The problems are, first, that the victory depended on illegal activity, and second, that the governing party is exercising power is radical ways.

Again, if you’re not angry, you should be, and I realize that many of you already are. The past two weeks, on top of everything that came before, have created a sense of frustration and injustice that I have never seen before from people on the left and in the center. The question now is, What are you going to do with that anger?

Here is my suggestion: Get involved. Do it now. Be smart about how. And help turn the crisis of the Trump presidency into a new day for American democracy.

The only good solution to this mess involves fighting for democratic principles. In concrete terms, this means turning your attention away from the Supreme Court, for now, and toward the midterm elections. The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh is over. The midterms are not, and, one way or the other, they will change Washington. Either President Trump will be emboldened — to fire Robert Mueller, take away health insurance and so on — or he will be constrained. There is no election outcome that preserves the status quo.

And ordinary citizens really can play a role in the midterms. Most important, they can help lift voter turnout.

Remember, Trump has never enjoyed majority support in this country. But many of the Americans who oppose both him and today’s Republican Party don’t vote. In the last midterms, in 2014, only 16 percent — 16 percent! — of citizens between the ages of 18 and 29 voted. To borrow a point Michelle Obama has made to her own children: You don’t let Grandma choose your clothes or your music. Don’t let her choose the future of your country, either.

The easiest way to encourage turnout is with your own family and friends. You should come up with a specific plan about when and where you will vote — which, research has shown, increases voting — and announce that plan to your friends and relatives, presumably over social media. Then ask them to do the same. “Social pressure,” says Carolyn DeWitt, president of Rock the Vote, “is mighty persuasive.”

If you’re still energized, don’t stop there. You can also have an effect outside of your social circles. Look at what happened in Virginia’s state elections last year: Turnout surged 17 percent, compared with four years earlier, and a grass-roots effort was crucial to the surge. In the campaign’s last four days, activists knocked on 1.4 million doors across Virginia. Often, they did so working in groups of friends.

Of course, Virginia was one of the few states holding elections last year. This year, the whole country is doing so, which creates an enormous need for volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls. Groups like Indivisible and Swing Left have helpful, localized advice online.

I understand that many people feel awkward about getting involved in politics. But if you’re one of those people feeling righteous anger today, I think you need to get involved.

Imagine how you will feel if the midterms turn into a resounding victory for Donald Trump. That outcome, I’m sorry to say, remains entirely possible.

Now what?


David Leonhardt at NYT

I promise to do that just as soon as I have time, Winston. But I'm busy right now reading up on the Biden Rule.

Now what?


David Leonhardt at NYT