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Whistling Past the Graveyard
Is it possible this election result is exactly what we need to get past some of the divisiveness in our politics?
Work with me here. As things stand right now, it appears we’ll have a President Biden/Harris, with a Republican Senate and a narrower margin in the Democratic House (and a hopefully reliable Supreme Court).
It’s a very different situation than if Biden had swept in with coattails in the House and Senate, or if Trump had expanded on his Electoral College vote from 2016. Neither party can claim a mandate for, well, anything really. With Congress divided, neither party will be able to push through anything too stupid. The situation will almost demand compromise and working with the opposite party.
Maybe if we can get a year or two of the Congress actually working as a legislative body to do the dirty political work of compromise instead of just demonizing each other and screaming “racist” and “extremist” at the other side, we can drain some of the poison from the system.
Yes, I know, I’m a naïve Pollyanna.
But maybe this is really one last golden chance to save the American Experiment from flushing itself down the drain.
Published in General
You probably meant “tough.”
I think compromise is impossible when one group want to go left and the other wants to go right. One group will prevail and it should be gracious in victory.
Or as I once heard: We’ve come to the fork in the road. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total annihilation. Let’s hope we have the ability to choose wisely.
Its the best that could come from this outcome. My trust in either party moving past this is fairly nonexistent. I could see Sen McConnell trying to find ways to move towards consensus, but I could also see the Dems spurning any outreach.
One thing is for certain, Durham and any Biden prve found nothing, I mean will find nothing.
Too often the left’s idea of “compromise” is like a home-invader who wants to kill you and your family, and the “compromise” is to kill just your spouse and half the children.
Interesting that Durham didn’t want to influence the election. That won’t be a concern very shortly, so if he still does nothing we’ll know that he and Barr are both swamp creatures and white-wash artists.
What are the chances of compromise with this happening?
I agree that if Trump loses the presidency, keeping the Senate is still a good result also because Biden will have SQUEAKED out a victory. This was no trouncing.
McConnell will have a tough job. On the one hand, he has to block BS and defend our institutions from the slate of colossally bad ideas that we’ve heard from the left over the past 2 years. But he can’t make it seem like he’s leading a purely obstructionist majority or the GOP risks alienating the public (who has a withering opinion of the Congress, not entirely undeserved) in the next round of elections in 2 years when they can try for more seats in the House and Senate. I don’t envy him the task.
Or (maybe it’s an and) convince all conservative federal judges over 60 to take early retirement so that he can replace them with conservative federal judges in their 40’s.
We got a preview during the riots and looting of how Democrats handle those who break the law. Election cheating will follow this pattern.
Executive orders are going to be how they get things done. They’ll work around Cocaine Mitch.
At a minimum, Biden will bring back all of the Obama-era regulations to make sure the government’s jackboot is on the neck of the economy.
He’ll also hand over palettes of cash to Iran just for the hell of it, because Democrats hate Israel.
I don’t think that I feel like my mom did after the 1980 election (her=liberal, very). The word “disenfranchised” was used a lot. I (not liberal) didn’t get it… did my mother not realize what a “bad” President Jimmy Carter was? Guess not…
OK so now it’s 2020 and, and… I am not disenfranchised at all, though most of my State is red, the population centers are blue and thus the State is as well. I have neighbors who are blue and, hey, it’s the USA, we’re free to be whatever we want to be. Fine.
But Donald Trump isn’t (wasn’t? Is it too early?) a bad President. And he didn’t run a bad campaign, given 2020… I’ve always considered Biden bad at everything, so I’ll expect not too much from him. If Congress goes red, nothing will get done and well have a stable 2 to 4 years ahead of us. The Dow likes stability.
Yes, this – the way it looks for now, anyway – would be less-bad than an All-Dem “sweep.” But still, that’s not how it SHOULD be, except for some pretty obvious cheating.
Then the GOP has to play the Demo-rat game and take every single order to the courts. Maybe Trump and Cocaine Mitch gave them a chance with all the confirmations.
Woody Allen’s speech to graduates!
Just like we had to hear for four years about “80,000 votes in three states are why Trump is President”, I’m looking forward to the final calculation of how many tens of thousands of votes across three states gave Biden the Presidency.
Right now the margin in Wisconsin is 20,500.
I heard it in a Paul Ryan speech years ago, but couldn’t remember whom he was quoting.
It’s a hilarious essay, as most of his are, if you have a certain sense of humor. Another line from it: “Government is unresponsive to the needs of the little man. Under five-seven, it is impossible to get your Congressman on the phone.”
I haven’t looked at my feed (except something at the very top) in over 2 1/2 years.
Tough question, or tough job. Will congress take back its legitimate role from the bureaucracy? If so it could be good because one couldn’t be sure Trump would have done that. Would he have gutted the bureaucracy and tried to force legislative authority back to the legislature? If he comes out on top he’ll have some obvious reasons to do so even if it wasn’t one of his top priorities.
This is not only cheering, it’s probably closer to an accurate prediction than all the emotional catastrophizing on the right today. As conservatives, we generally tend toward pessimism, but we should also recall that worst-case scenarios rarely play out in reality.
I feel we are in a worst-case scenario.
The Dems didn’t gain seats in the House; they lost them. While it ain’t over, apparently, it looks like the GOP will hold the Senate. Biden will have won by a razor-thin margin, which does not translate to a mandate for much in the way of transforming the country.
The blue wave didn’t happen, ergo, not the worst-case scenario by a reasonable-length chalk.
I don’t believe Biden actually won until all the voter-fraud situations are not just identified, but RESOLVED.
It’s charcoal grey instead of pitch black but …
Remember the TEA party and what happened when they gave the GOPe a boost? They turned a lot of seats, but immediately they were told to go to the back of the bus and vote the party line. I’ll look into my cloudy crystal ball and predict that the GOPe will again take advantage of successes in which they had almost no part and go back to business as usual if Trump loses. When Trump said “drain the swamp” he didn’t say the “Democrat swamp”. We’re in for a rough ride.
That means that Biden gets to appoint a whole bunch of people who will destroy this country. Sure, it’s nice to hold the Senate and increase numbers in the house, but that Executive Branch is increasingly important.
You want another Eric Holder? You want another James Comey? More Brennans and Clappers? Because you’ll get even worse with Biden.
Some of those positions are subject to Senate confirmation, but many aren’t.
Plus it’s us, not the Democrats, who believe that a president should get the people he wants.
What makes anyone think that, if Trump is gone, the Senate won’t go back to its regular reaching across the aisle and losing with dignity? Even the worst progressive legislation will easily get to Biden’s desk thanks to our craven “mavericks”.
What is the statistical probability that 23,277 votes are all for Biden? I mean really? With Trump getting 12% of Black votes?