Politics The Donkey in the room...the Democrats today

This is a significant bill passed by the Democrats in the House today.

It restores and expands an Obama EO, repealed by Trump, that provided a means for women facing sexual harassment in the workplace to get remedial action. This bill not only applies to workplace harassment, it also gives consumers a more level playing field in legal complaints against damaging business practices.

The House just passed a bill that would give millions of workers the right to sue their boss

The roll call vote on FAIR Act - 2 Repubicans voted "Aye", 183 Republicans voted "No"

As a reminder, these are other major bills passed by the House this year and supported by a significant majority of American voters.

HR 1 — For the People Act of 2019 (protect voting rights and also includes campaign finance reform and ethics reform)

HR 5 — Equality Act (civil rights and equal protection under the law for LGBTQ Americans)

HR 7 — Paycheck Fairness Act (pay equity for women)

HR 8 — Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 (universal background check)

HR 9 — Climate Action Now Act (rejoin Paris Climate Agreement)

HR 1644 — Save the Internet Act of 2019 (restores "net neutrality")

HR 1500 — Consumers First Act (restore the enforcement powers of the Consumer Finance Protection Board that provides $billions in restitution to consumers victimized by banking fraud and other illegal practices)

HR 986 — Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act of 2019 (to prevent insurers from denying affordable coverage to people with preexisting conditions as would happen if Trump/Republican attack of the ACA is upheld).

HR 987 — Strengthening Health Care and Lowering Prescription Drug Costs Act (minor "fixes" to the ACA to overrule Trump's attempt to gut the law as well as to lower prescription drug prices)

HR 2820 - Dream Act of 2019 (provides permanent legal status and pathway to citizenship for DACA kids)​

Coming in the next week or two, three significant gun control bills:

H.R. 1236, the "Extreme Risk Protection Order Act of 2019 (provide grants to help state, tribal and local efforts to remove firearms from individuals determined to be a danger to themselves or others. Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) laws are more commonly known as "red flag" laws)

H.R. 1186, the "Keep Americans Safe Act (would regulate large capacity ammunition feeding devices, such as a magazine or belt, making it illegal to import, sell, manufacture or possess such devices)

H.R. 2708, the "Disarm Hate Act" (would prevent a person convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime from obtaining a firearm)​

A very productive first nine-months for the Democrats elected into the House majority in the 2018 election!

 

There will now be 12 in the October debate. That means two nights with six candidates each. And, higher thresholds for November.

Gabbard qualifies for fourth presidential debate

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DNC raises qualification threshold for November debate

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I would be interested in three nights with 4 candidates instead, but at least it will be better than having 10 of them on the stage.

One thing I would like to see if people talking about why they support one candidate over another. But only using positive items. Like I know that Sanders will be able to get 50,000 people to show up for a rally. Warren has a lot of plans and knows how to get them implemented. Buttigieg knows how to improve Democrats messaging around religion. Biden will be able to build up American businesses and be an unpolarizing President. Yang understands what will happen in the economy once machines and technology make hiring humans too much work.

 

This is a bit of a surprise.....Gabbard announced she is going all in for president and not running for reelection to the House.


View: https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1187580455731654657


She has yet to qualify for the November debate and with a average polling of 1.3 percent on the latest national polls...

RealClearPolitics - Election 2020 - 2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination

...she certainly faces an uphill battle to meet the threshold of 3% in four national polls within the next week. Perhaps she thought the only way to reach that level would be to take the drastic step of not running to keep her House seat.

 

Is there someone who is running against her in the primary? It is hard to get back to Hawaii when you need to be in DC and the campaign trail.

I think she is gambling on a cabinet position or an ambassadorship role, especially if she has some delegates to trade for at the convention. If the moderate Democrats win, she could go on the media/lobbyist path. She is cute enough for Fox News, but too progressive for MSNBC.

 

Tulsi Gabbard, I've never heard of her.

If sex sells soap (the first sexy ads were actually for tobacco products), does it sell politicians?

Link might Not Be Safe For Work / NSFW

Elections - Tulsi Gabbard's lighter side (talks surfing ...

 

I wouldn't know. But I will apologize if the link provides misleading info.

Some interesting questions:

Would hot bikini photos, in our "modern" society, hurt Tulsi Gabbard? Make some folks take her less seriously?
Did the beauty contest photos of Sarah Palin hurt her campaigns? Not for me, I saw her as a glorified airhead regardless.

 

Yep, that's what they are.

 

I was reading through a recent Reddit thread where a large slew of people were seriously theorizing Tulsi Gabbard to have been called out by Hillary as a Russian plant to spoil the election, either by running as an independent candidate or somehow transforming into the VP ticket for Trump.

Came in here to check if that is something that's getting traction, yet nobody's mentioning it in here and I'm about to question my memory on what I read. It seemed so out of the air and a massive reach to even contemplate this scenario, yet they all discussed it as a self-evident fact that Gabbard is clearly a GOP/Russia plant that I felt like I was taking crazy pills.

 

I'm guessing you found a thread where several, perhaps many, like-minded people controlled the thread.

But (related, sort of)....who remembers Ralph Nader? I think he meant well, but I'll never forgive him.

 

Here is the issue behind it...

In their investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, both the Senate Intel Committee and the Mueller report found that it was not just the massive Russian campaign to promote Trump by the relentless "bot" and other attacks of Clinton, but the fact that Russia also was heavily involved in promoting Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, with the assumption that would also take votes away from Clinton.

And, in fact, in several key states that swung the election, Jill Stein received more votes that Trump's margin of victory.

We'll never know if that Russian widespread "bot" support for Stein had an impact that contributed to Stein's vote total or if those voters would have been Clinton voters.

IMO, Hillary's comments were over the line but one can make their own judgement if the possibility of a similar Russian "bot campaign" supporting Gabbard as a third party candidate is a valid concern.

 

Yup. As noted in the article I posted above about Jill Stein and Russian bots...

In two key states that President-elect Donald Trump won, his margin of victory was smaller than the total number of votes for Green Party nominee Jill Stein.

In Michigan, Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes, while Stein got 51,463 votes, according to current totals on the state’s official website.

And in Wisconsin, Trump’s margin over Clinton was 22,177, while Stein garnered 31,006 votes.​

There is really no way to measure the impact of Stein's candidacy in general OR the impact of Russian bots supporting her candidacy.

 

Yes, a perfect storm.

Which Trump won't have in 2020. Should he be removed, which I seriously doubt at least at this point, his stench will permeate any candidate the Republicans might run.

 

If Trump is removed, I worry that there is no Democrat that could win. The Trump base will be extremely motivated and will be out for blood. I think a normal, non-criminal Republican who has an clear anti-Democrat agenda would be even harder to win against.

I still don't know why Hillary mentioned Tulsi. I mean if she came back to run as an independent next Summer, then say something, maybe if she got above 10% in the polls, say something. But it was pretty pointless to say anything now unless she has some evidence.

And I know a few of my friends in Ohio voted for Jill Stein instead of Hillary. It all comes down to the centrist/progressive fight within the Left that isn't getting resolved. The Green Party should be running in the Democratic Party primaries. It will be interesting to see what the Green Party does if Bernie gets the nomination.

 

45 isn't going to be removed because the Republicans have sold their souls.
He will be impeached and then the Dems will move on to voting him out of office.

Hillary mentioned Tusi because she has stopped giving a fuck.
I've noticed over the past year that the careful control that she has kept on what and how she says everything seems have slipped.
Her tweets have been funny and sharp while her comments have been much more off the top of her head.
I almost wish she was like this four years ago.
She would have pissed a lot of people off but she would have felt real.

But yeah, to her Tulsi reminded her of Jill Stein, who is is in Putin's pocket.
I don't think Tulsi is in Putin's pocket but she is a Blue Dog Republican and could easily be a Republican.
Having her run as a third party to split off the centrist Dems would be a classic Putin trick.

 

Meanwhile the 80-90 percent of the country that's NOT part of the same rich white postgraduate cult as you guys remembers that whistleblower releases proved that it was the Clinton campaign that pushed Trump at every opportunity because they believed he would be an easy win. US Media went along with it because, well, they were some of Hillary's biggest donors and worked in lock-step with the DNC to pretend Sanders didn't exist.

But that's an inconvenient fact. Just like it's inconvenient to remember that for decades Wikileaks was practically sainted as THE bastion of truth and justice and freedom in the world. Now it's time to erase those badfacts and pretend it was always different. We've always been at war with East Asia. We've always been at war with Eurasia.

Today the same is happening with Gabbard. The only candidate that's meaningfully anti-establishment, anti-corporatist, and anti-congressional/industrial war profiteering. The only candidate meaningfully challenging the tech giants' absolute control over everything 1/7th of the entire human race sees and speaks about. So naturally she gets removed from google search when she's the most searched candidate in the US after debates, and all hashtags about her erased from twitter and participants shadowbanned the moment they start to pick up any steam.

And once again out comes the same narrative used against Sanders and Stein. Russian plants, misogynist dudebros, white supremacists, throw it all at the wall and see what sticks.

 

Nine have qualified for the next debate to be held on Nov. 20 in Atlanta - Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttigieg, Steyer, Yang, Booker, Klobuchar.

Buttigieg and Klobuchar seem to be on the rise. Booker is gone after the November debate and maybe Steyer as well (he has gotten little traction).

The threshold will be raised again for the December debate -- 4 percent in four national polls (or 6 percent in two early state polls) and donations from 200,000 unique contributors. Only five have qualified to-date -- Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg and surprisingly Kamala Harris. Klobuchar should make it and that might be it.

Five or six going into the Iowa caucus in Feb 2020 is about right. As a reminder, 10 candidates made the Iowa Republican caucus in 2016. Cruz won; eight others picked up at least one convention delegate.