Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 217

CatBus said:

oojason said:

Theresa May, the current British Prime Minister, has called a General Election to be held on Thursday 8th June…

(which is a bit of a U-turn - even for her)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39629603

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/18/theresa-may-uk-general-election-8-june

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-calls-election-times-she-said-there-would-be-no-snap-election-a7688471.html

 

How do you call an early election? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39630209

Is my understanding correct that this isn’t really expected to change anything substantive? i.e. the people, parliamentary percentages, policies, etc, aren’t really expected to change much at all, but this is really more about getting May out from under that “temporary caretaker government” shadow after Cameron left?

Basically what Ryan McAvoy said - unless there some shocks or leaked surprises coming out soon (cough, election expenses fraud and fallout of, cough) it seems the Tories will likely win this. It’d be interesting if Corbyn came out and stated if Labour got in he would reverse Brexit - or stage a 2nd referendum, or give the Scots a 2nd referendum too - but that is very unlikely to happen.

Labour have struggled to get their message across in the media - a majority right-wing media and a frightened BBC - but just haven’t been able to engage with the floating voters or people who would consider voting for them. That said, they struggled to do that with more centrist Labour politicians in charge too. I don’t see that changing - the media like others have said will target divisions within Labour - and not give time/space to the actual message or pointing out failings/shortcomings of the Govt etc.

So, it looks like we’re in for more ‘austerity’ (when it’s actually under the guise of Tory idealogy) on top of the 7 years we’ve already endured - more cuts to local govt services, more cuts NHS and emergency services, more cuts to social care, more cuts to benefits, more cuts to the disabled, more cuts to schools, less job security, more cuts to freedoms, more cuts to free/subsidised legal access, a country of less equality…

and more money to ‘free’ schools, grammars, more privatisation, more pollution, more children in poverty, more pensioners choosing either heat or food, more food banks and use of, more homelessness, more zero hour contracts, more arms sold to Arab states with horrific human rights, and more money to London at expense of elsewhere - and top of that a higher cost of living due to the coming (and already happening) effects of Brexit.

No wonder the Prime Minster won’t go on a tv debate with the other leaders - it’s a no win situation for her (and debating is not her strong point - not from her displays in the HoC anyway).

She just has to shut up and let the media do the work for her (along with an Opposition still infighting).

Fuck.

Bingowings said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

CatBus said:

this is really more about getting May out from under that “temporary caretaker government” shadow after Cameron left?

I don’t think she is seen as a “temporary caretaker government” at all, she was the overwhelmingly popular candidate for Party Leader/PM. I think it’s more about shutting up dissenting voices (of all parties) in Parliament of the “Yes we agree you’ve got a mandate for Brexit, Prime Minister… but not this kind of Brexit!” variety. She’s going to ask the country clearly and directly “Do you want a Brexit on my terms?”. The electorate will most probably answer, “Yes please!” emphatically and she can get on with the business of doing just that.

CatBus said:

Is my understanding correct that this isn’t really expected to change anything substantive? i.e. the people, parliamentary percentages, policies, etc, aren’t really expected to change much at all

Not really, I think things will change quite a bit because the Labour opposition party will most likely be wiped out due in large part to how deeply unpopular their leader (and cabinet) is, which I’m sad to say is probably for their own good in the medium to long term. Hopefully the Lib-Dem party will get back some seats after they were annihilated at the last election.

I think the general consensus is that the Conservative party will win.
This is possibly a misjudgement. When Gordon Brown the most unpopular PM for aeons finally got around to doing what May is doing here after inheriting a gulf war mess from Blair all the Tories could manage was a coalition. They were expected to lose the last election or have to make another coalition with UKIP or some other party.
The secret ingrediant to their majority was Brexit. UKIPers flipped sides to insure they got the referendum. Scotland evicted Labour for supporting the Conservatives and the Liberals lost their nice guy image propping up the Tories in coalition and breaking their manifesto pledges.
We have now a slightly different world. Brexit has happenend, it can’t unhappen so UKIP doesn’t need to exist anymore. Austerity isn’t working and isn’t popular. The SNP need someone the can do business with in Downing Street and May is not that PM.
Corbyn has always been anti-EU (just like Tony Benn). The old Labour zealots that voted Tory to get Brexit may return to the fold now that Brexit is unavoidable. The people that voted Tory as a protest against Blair and Brown will now vote Green rather than vote for the Tories.
My prediction Corbyn will suprise everyone by narrowly winning with the remainers voting against the Conservatives with the same zeal that the Brexiteers voted for them.
That’s if he stays of the hills and doesn’t have a heart attack.

I hope you’re proven right mate.

Jetrell Fo said:

Like the Democrats have never meddled in the elections of other countries.

Are you arguing with anyone here? Just wondering who’s making the claims on the other side.

Ah, the fact that you were singling out Democrats made me think it was a strawman argument countering Republican interference, rather than a strawman argument countering Russian interference.

TV’s Frink said:

The key part is that last paragraph. It means at least some of the dossier was independently corroborated.

Actually I believe several things about the dossier have been independently corroborated, but many of those things were not really related to any of the juicier headline-grabbing details. Just technical stuff, so-and-so Russian person was a agent for such-and-such Russian intelligence service, etc. Nevertheless, so far, the dossier has proven right whenever enough evidence was available to prove or disprove it… which still hasn’t been a lot, yet.

Alderaan said:

I just caught a moment of Harball and saw Chris Matthews criticizing Trump for taking a “blame everything on Obama” approach. Pretty sure he never criticized Obama for taking the “blame everything on Bush” approach for almost his entire presidency.

I think part of the issue is that Obama’s policies were often criticized not directly, but by using oddly specific made-up statistics. By arguing with those imaginary statistics (but not the implied policy criticism), it often ended up making that implied criticism point back to a point in time prior to the Obama administration, whether or not the implied criticism was ever valid in the first place.

For example, RW pundits often said Obama decided to pull out of Iraq too fast, and Obama correctly stated that the pullout timetable was negotiated and finalized by the Bush administration. Does that absolve him entirely of the conditions in Iraq post-pullout? Not at all. Does it mean that the conditions in Iraq were determined by the pullout timetable? It doesn’t really address that part of the question at all. But the pullout itself was absolutely, positively, not his call. By arguing with the made-up statistic, however, he avoided talking about the conditions in Iraq, and also didn’t have to address if the timetable was related to the conditions there. Intentional? Maybe. But I think it falls more on the side of “correcting the record” than “shifting the blame”, when you’re responding to something that’s factually inaccurate to begin with.

Similarly there was a common refrain that Obama created ISIS, which was equally impossible given that it happened before Obama. Does that absolve him of any blame for ISIS-related failures? Not at all, just the creation of it.

Similarly, RW pundits often said that 75 straight months of job growth was impossible, that the feds were fudging the statistics, and the economy was weak. Obama correctly pointed out that the numbers were calculated the same way they always were, and that you can have 75 straight months of job growth and still have a weak economy if you’re starting out from a position of extraordinary weakness 75 months ago, which did in fact exist.

I think the difference here is that, if a criticism is missing the made-up statistics, you can’t dodge or deflect the issue by arguing with the made-up statistics (well, I suppose you could try to argue with reality, but that tends to be obvious). I’m sure there was some blame-shifting under Obama, but at least as far as I can remember, it was much more canny and could certainly be interpreted, much of the time, as simply correcting the record.

Alderaan said:

CatBus said:

I think part of the issue is that Obama’s policies were often criticized not directly, but by using oddly specific made-up statistics. By arguing with those imaginary statistics (but not the implied policy criticism), it often ended up making that implied criticism point back to a point in time prior to the Obama administration, whether or not the implied criticism was ever valid in the first place.

I don’t think the veracity of the blame-assignment is relevant. Partisans are going to be partisan.

Well, sure. But part of the problem of Democrats spending more time arguing against made up conspiracy theories is that they spend less time arguing the merits of the policy. Which means the Dems (and the public) may assume their policies are good simply because the arguments being made against it have no merit. And that’s not necessarily true at all. I wish people had challenged Obama’s policies more on the merit of those policies–it may have actually shifted the political discussion and gotten something changed.

Jetrell Fo said:
Trump is apparently the only President to be the worst human being ever to grace the White House.

Yep, pretty much. Many can be bad, but only one gets to be the worst.