In regards to how the Republicans have for years acted in bad faith and Democrats have compromised and hoped that by following the rules & norms they would win over voters or at least be respected; but all that has resulted is that the Republicans have gained leverage and frustrated Democrats’ initiatives.
One question that I can’t come up with a decent, or really any, answer to is: from a game theory point of view what radical maneuvers could the Democrats make over the next 2-6 years that would either/both achieve their policy goals or frustrate and limit the Republican power plays that have entrenched their political position with a minority of the country truly supporting their goals?
What I am thinking with this is not responses to specific issues - Kavanaugh nomination, Senate filibuster, playing as politically dirty as the Republicans have done (by dirty, I mean literally railing against a principle when it suits them and then barefacedly adopting or ignoring it when they are passing a law or supporting a candidate). I mean what could the Dems do that the Repubs wouldn’t even realize how clever it was and aren’t prepared to torpedo with procedural maneuvers and talk show rhetoric? Something that most people wouldn’t even realize the significance of until months or years later.
Come on game theorists, the left needs non-reactive clever thinking!
There needs to be some care in pulling any of this off. Anything the Democrats do, the Republicans are likely to escalate, so care needs to be made to ensure that should Congress flip, the Democrats don’t set things up for the Republicans to later take advantage of.
The Senate GOP, for all their dirty play, has at least shown there are some limits they won’t cross, at least for now. The best example is that they haven’t killed the filibuster for general legislation yet, despite Trump’s calls to do so. This hearkens back to Harry Reid eliminating the filibuster for non-Supreme Court judicial nominees. I don’t think McConnell would have eliminated it for the Supreme Court if Reid hadn’t already established that precedent. Instead we probably would’ve had some sort of compromise similar to what happened during the George W. Bush administration when they last brought up the so-called “nuclear option.”
McConnell seems to like to throw Democratic moves back into their faces with metaphorical mustard than to outright blow up the Senate to suit his agenda, or at least that has been his pattern so far. He even used the so-called “Biden rule” to justify what he did to Merrick Garland. Now, he also claimed he would’ve continued to block any SC nominees if Hillary Clinton had won, but given how that didn’t happen we don’t know for sure if that was actually his intent or just political bluster.
Of course, I am not a game theorist, but there is a lot of subtlety going on here that can’t be ignored if you’re trying to come up with a valid strategy.
All fair points. Though I’m not convinced that McConnell only removed the filibuster for SC because of Reid’s action, that was just the convenient excuse. But this illustrates my point and question, why do liberals have to be constantly outmaneuvered by lying conservatives? Why do only the Republican lawmakers get to look “clever” by gaming the system?
I’m not necessarily expecting making rules changes to change the game. At the high end (difficult to do, will require Democratic majorities plus a new president) new laws passed. At the grass roots level I’m looking for things like forcing Republican politicians to own their shit and not be able to dodge responsibility and blame as well as running clever political campaigns to get more Democrats into power at all levels. As rational people wait for Republicans to get embarrassed at their bald-faced lies and contradictions with their own previous positions, the heat death of the universe will come first. So, how do we force them into taking responsibility - meaning the voters hold them accountable? It won’t happen just because they feel bad.
I am beginning to think that to fight bad faith political maneuvering there are few options. One, stooping to their level for the greater good, waiting for a huge societal shift, or violence. The latter two too often go hand in hand often caused by the first. I think there is going to be another civil war in the nearish future and I’m pretty sure at this point the fascists will win because much of the modern left doesn’t have the spine or guts to see it through. I’ve pretty much lost all hope.
I suspect the best Democratic end-game for the current era of American politics may be securing statehood for Puerto Rico. If that were to happen, the added congressional seats and electoral votes would pretty much guarantee Democratic control of the legislative and executive branches for a long time.
Forcing in their (lifetime) judicial appointments by whatever means is probably viewed by Republican politicians as a critical damper against that eventuality. Those appointments won’t prevent long-term Democratic control, but would serve both to hamper things from getting too crazy after the Democratic rise and to pro-actively degrade progress by moving the starting line backwards as much as possible in the meantime.
On the other hand, this Kavanaugh appointment is now sufficiently mired in doubt and controversy that a flipped congress might actually be able to remove him pretty easily in a much shorter time frame.
Votes to impeach don’t necessarily need to all come from Democrats. If new information comes to light through investigative journalism for example, a flipped house could bring charges that might be hard for even Republican senators to simply equivocate and gaslight around as they’ve been doing. I’m not saying it’s likely, but it also doesn’t seem impossible.
Impeachment is the relatively easy part. Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 but was never removed from office. It’s the conviction by the Senate which is the hard part.
Even if the Democrats miraculously retake the Senate, they would still need at least 15 Republican Senators to vote for conviction. Impossible is much closer to reality than not likely.
The White House has begun to more openly dog whistle than ever before, and more rank and file GOP are accepting and repeating those dog whistles, along with blatant support of racist conspiracy theories.
Both sides are galvanized leading up to these midterms. I think that is where the energy for all this is coming from. The crazy fucking far right is trying to scare the left into giving up before we have a chance to do something about all their political victories as of late.
I’m waiting to see what shenanigans will go down with the election beyond gerrymandering and voter suppression. I will not be surprised if they move to nullify or delay elections.
I know a lot of longtime Republican types, who just don’t pay that much attention to issues outside the Republican bubble, who simply don’t think at all about most of the issues you guys seem to be mostly up in arms about. But over time, listening to them, some are starting to realize things are not really right in the party.
They still more or less “hate the cheating dems who want to take our liberty” or whatever, but I do think many are at least becoming aware that a lot of dumb shit is happening on their own team and want nothing to do with that either.
I think those people breaking from the GOP trajectory that it is on would be vital to perhaps causing a lift in the center/right that would give the left the votes. Seems the margins aren’t that huge so isn’t it a simple task to just disrupt by any means? Fund a Third Party voting initiative of crazies that strongly appeal to the single issue voters over the GOP whole not really appealing to anyone who would go Dem?
Meanwhile just need some fascist or racist group to go a little too hard, a little too far, a little too blatantly, and with a little too much support from the Govt that you can spark some kind of wedge that forces people who blindly support the Republicans out of whatever reason to look at themselves in relation to what’s going on and commit or join literally any other group.
