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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Well, I can now vote for the 2022 Democratic Senate candidate with a clean conscience.
Murkowski doesn't owe anyone anything, least of all the national Republican Party. She's allegedly pro-choice. And Alaskan voters are not, by and large, in favor of Donald Trump.
She should be able to vote however she damn well wants. And she made it blatantly obvious that she was punting on this.
I mean, Murkowski, I can totally believe chose to abstain because the alternative was to pull that one guy away from his daughter's wedding for a vote that would've gone against her anyway.
Which. On the one hand, fuck that guy anyway if he was willing to leave his daughter's wedding in order to put a rapist on the Supreme Court. But on the other, well, at least Murkowski's decision was rooted in not wanting somebody to suffer.
She's the only Republican Senator who did something that can be viewed as morally defensible, even if I think she made the wrong choice.
Edited by Gilphon on Oct 7th 2018 at 3:02:41 PM
@Charles Phipps: See, that is a Manchin vote I'd just shrug at. Manchin voting for a dead horse is one thing. But when (as with Kavanaugh) Manchin's vote might literally have made the difference, he should have rolled initiative.
I think that would have been delaying the inevitable - all it takes for the Adept User of Lighting Rods is to haul Pence and Daines in and Kavanaugh gets through anyhow. Plus, while Manchin is ahead in polls that does not mean he'll stay ahead in polls given that West Virginia is a red state.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanThis is false, I mean objectively false. He was not the deciding vote thus so whether or not you like or hate his decision it's simply false to say that it would've made the difference.
No, it won't.
Manchin had a primary opponent, she was a progressive democrat with solid leftist ideas and you know what happened to her? He beat her by 39 points
.
You can be angry about his decision all you want but if you bet against Joe Manchin in West Virginia then you're going to lose. Because West Virginia is not a Blue or Purple state, the only kind of Democrat that's going to realistically do well in it is going to be a man or woman like Manchin who votes with us when it matters and otherwise does distasteful scumbag moves like this.
Absolutely, I don't think any of us need to like him to see his utility. And if the Democratic Party is going to be a national force we need people like Manchin, hell if we had seven Manchin's then Kavanaugh wouldn't be on the Supreme Court and the Democrats would control the Senate.
He may be distasteful but he's a useful and necessary asset.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Oct 7th 2018 at 7:58:59 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangI am sure if Manchin would have run against any other opponent right now, he would lose.
I also don't think that it matters if it was a "deciding vote" or not, because at the end of the day, EVERY Vote is deciding. EVERY SINGLE POLITICIAN who voted pro, no matter from which party, is responsible for the outcome.
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Because, as ![]()
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said, it ultimately didn't matter. He wasn't the deciding vote. If there was a chance he could have been the deciding vote, Murkowski wouldn't have passed on voting.
In a state where 93% went for Trump, any vote against Trump is a sacrifice of political capital. So it makes sense, in a pragmatic political way, to vote along with Trump if it's a foregone conclusion anyway.
I'd be angrier if he was the deciding vote. But he wasn't.
That said...fuck him.
Edited by M84 on Oct 7th 2018 at 8:16:25 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
X3 It doesn't matter in that sense now because his vote wasn’t the deciding vote. It’s still a bad thing for him to do but the point being made is that when his vote is a deciding one he votes the party line. So it means he should reasonably be counted upon for things like impeachment votes (if the other needed votes are there), votes to protect and hopefully expand Obamacare, votes to restore sane taxation, votes to pack the Supreme Court if need be, ect...
I think Manchin is exactly why she passed on voting, she didn’t want this to fail and knew that if she voted against than Manchin might as well and then the vote would fail.
Edited by Silasw on Oct 7th 2018 at 12:22:11 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranThis is objectively false, when he voted it was decided.
Therefore voting no would've just hurt him in West Virginia for a symbolic stand.
Now can you argue that the symbolic stand is worth it? Sure, but it's counterfactual to say that he was in anyway a deciding vote. That was Collins.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Oct 7th 2018 at 8:22:12 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangAgain, I don't think there's any sign Manchin is playing the long game. He really is just a white supremacist scumbag who supported a rapist to the Supreme Court. It's just he's not 100% aligned to the Republican platform.
If he's 70% a Republican, can't we just hate 70% of him?
If he votes 70% of a Republican, what use is he as a Democrat? I mean, yes, he benefits poor white people.
Weee.
That is not "you get a cookie"
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 7th 2018 at 5:52:16 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Weee.
That is not "you get a cookie"
If that 70% are all worthless votes that don't actually change anything and the 30% are important votes that go to the Democratic Party then I would say he's hugely useful to the Democrats, especially considering that there's no way we would get anyone better for West Virginia.
Furthermore he voted against the Obamacare repeal vote each time
, call me crazy but I'm pretty sure that helps people beyond poor whites.
I don't care about whether or not he deserves a cookie, I'm saying that he serves a purpose and we can't afford to lose a Senator over ideological squeamishness.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangAnd again, I think that the very notion of a "deciding vote" is a flawed concept. If Pence had gotten involved than yes, I guess you could call that a deciding vote, because his one vote would literally be used to decide a draw. But if a group is voting about something, every single vote is equally deciding. Just because the press has figured out a couple of people who were "undecided", it doesn't mean that the votes of everyone else was in any way less deciding.
Except if the overwhelming majority of votes are 99% certain, then the decisions come down to people who have not yet stated their vote, or who have publicly said that they're still undecided.
The deciding vote is therefore the last person not on a side whose vote will change whether a motion passes or fails.
Honestly I'm kind of baffled that anyone would argue against the existence of the deciding vote, obviously, every vote has some bare minimum value as a symbol but that doesn't mean they're anywhere close to equally important and that's the difference between a deciding vote and one that isn't.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangThe 70% number is misleading (also not accurate), even the most leftwing democrats vote with Trump (or have Trump vote with them, the two are not differentiated) 10-20% of the time. Out of the Democrats he has the 7th best Trump plus-minus, voting with Trump negative 31% of the time compared to how he should vote if he acturatly represented how his constituents support Trump.
He should be voting with Trump 93% of the time based on how pro-Trump West Virginia is, instead he votes with Trump 61% of the time.
I don’t like him but he’s what we need to see in the likes of West Virginia, hopefully enough people like him will represent areas like that that he and they can split off and form a reasonable opposition to a more left wing Democratic Party.
Edited by Silasw on Oct 7th 2018 at 1:17:56 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranBecause it doesn't matter if your vote change the outcome or not, in any case it reflects what you are standing for. Let's assume that he hadn't been confirmed. That wouldn't have made the votes of all the people who voted for him suddenly okay just because they didn't win, they were STILL voting for installing someone obviously unsuited for the job for political reasons.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/14/joe-manchin-trump-immigration-plan-408981
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) suggested Wednesday that he would back President Donald Trump's immigration plan, potentially giving the White House bipartisan support during a key test vote on the floor.
Given the high likelihood that a Republican amendment codifying Trump's four-part immigration framework will fall short of the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate, Manchin's potential support amounts to a free "yes" vote for one of Democrats' most vulnerable incumbents heading into the November midterms. Manchin opposed the president's proposals to repeal Obamacare and cut taxes, even as he prepares to run for reelection in a state the president carried by 42 percentage points.
Manchin opposed children in cages but the optics there were bad. Manchin just favors sending them back immediately.
Again, BETTER than Republicans.
Like that scene in Elysium where they debate deporting illegal immigrants versus blowing them up.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 6th 2018 at 9:35:13 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.