Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Comments
There is a what I think is a major money quote in the article and gets at why 1) I don't get why a lot of my friends here get so het up about who ends up being the actual Dem candidate 2) don't get why so many get het up when Trump says he's gonna do this or that:
You get someone who is capable of appointing good people to head the cabinet agencies. Be nice if someone like Warren was doing the appointing as she gets how a lot of that stuff works. But not absolutely necessary.
The president gets a media bully pulpit but it really ain't worth that much cause whatever he or she says doesn't mean it's gonna happen.
ONES SENATORS AND CONGRESSPERSON are far more important! Far far far.
Why do we spend so much time, passion, effort and money on figuring out the actual person who fills the role. It's like a celeb popularity contest with not much there there.
The essential consideration in voting for president: direction of foreign policy and what kind of Federal court appointees will they favor. That's it.
Used to be a popular thing for political operatives to say: governors make the best president. Wish we would go back to that instead of believing they actually will affect domestic policy according to some pie in the sky promises in a campaign. That's just not reality, is not the way it works. Any one of the last ten candidates left standing in the Dem race would have been just fine. No reason to argue about it so much, absolutely no reality to that. It's delusional belief that "messaging" and symbols can get things done.
Edit to add: look at the supposed signature accomplishment of the Obama presidency, for example. What is it? "Obamacare". Doesn't look a thing like what he first proposed. Looks actually more like "Romneycare". Who actually caused it to happen? Thousands of people in government, elected and appointed.
by artappraiser on Wed, 04/15/2020 - 12:23am
Biden should make the goal of rehabilitating the Executive Branch a major part of his effort to assemble a team and develop that work into his campaign. In the face of the present crisis, hitting the ground running is going to be important. Such an approach will also appeal to voters. We are tired of all the winning.
by moat on Wed, 04/15/2020 - 9:31am
I for one was thinking quite some time ago: he should announce cabinet appts ASAP. But I'm no expert political operative on timing.
by artappraiser on Wed, 04/15/2020 - 5:31pm
I have been thinking along similar lines but am not savvy on the dangers involved with doing that too soon.
by moat on Wed, 04/15/2020 - 5:33pm
It looks like Joe got your memo:
Biden says he’s already choosing a presidential transition team
by moat on Fri, 04/17/2020 - 10:12am
Good it's a loaded gun is what it is. I do like the idea of people being given the choice of electing a government instead of a man.
by artappraiser on Fri, 04/17/2020 - 3:51pm
Jan-Werner Müller makes an argument along these lines. His call to find a way to work around the present dysfunction is what I have been saying. In that vein, he says:
"Parallel polis" is the term I have been looking for.
by moat on Sat, 04/25/2020 - 5:26pm
Makes sense especially because those currently in the main government power positions are the ones living in a fantasy world! They don't get much real done, Trump really doesn't do or accomplish anything much that is real, it's all fantasy narratives pretending to accomplish something in order to feed fans, he really is the first postmodern president as one op-ed put it. It's almost all kabuki show. And the GOP in Congress of varying aims and goals, they are stuck following Trum's kabuki, having to be part of the play to keep their place, hoping someday to be able to accomplish whatever they want, they can't right now. Mitch McConnell is about the only one who can try to do some real things.
Usually it is the opposition that is partly living in a fantasy world, trying to sell memes, pie in the sky, while those in power got to deal with reality and getting stuff done. The usual has been flipped on it's head here. People actually running the government behind the main kabuki show actually have to sort of run and hide what they are doing....
by artappraiser on Sat, 04/25/2020 - 5:55pm
While I agree mostly and if I had to choose I'd rather democrats controlled the senate than the presidency I think you're downplaying the power of the president. It doesn't just matter what party control the presidency it matters which democrat controls it. I'll go back to the story of the Bush tax cuts. They were passed with a sunset clause to expire in ten years. Every one was in favor of keeping some of those tax cuts. The republicans wanted all of them, democrats just the tax cuts that affected the lower and middle class.Ried and McConnell were locked in negotiations and Obama got impatient. Biden told Obama to let him talk to McConnell, that he could get a deal. And he did. It was reported the Reid was so pissed to be uncut in this way it told Obama he wouldn't lead negotiations with McConnell ever again unless Obama promised not to send in Biden. Reid reportedly said he could have gotten a much better deal.
This isn't some left wing analysis from the intercept or another left wing site. This was the main stream analysis at the time. While the president can't decide what gets passed or what deals are made in congress they can push the line to the left or the right. All the evidence I've seen is that Biden will be pushing it to the right. Farther right than Obama or Clinton.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 04/15/2020 - 1:01pm
Biden was the Senator from MBNA...
And, boy, howdy, did he come through when the Bankruptcy Bill was being marked up (leaving some must see TV interaction with then Bankruptcy prof. E. Warren..
.
by jollyroger on Wed, 04/15/2020 - 2:12pm
there's upsides and downsides to having a president with that kind of experience, though, Rog. Someone who knows the kind of pressure that individual congresspeople are under from er, paid constituents, also knows exactly what kind of horse trading needs to be done to get one to change their vote on any one thing. Think Bill Clinton working the phones all night to get something passed or the classic, LBJ the threatener...
by artappraiser on Wed, 04/15/2020 - 5:35pm