Nate Silver says the GOP may win the Senate in 2014

[fskimospy]

That's not remotely true. The House was designed for democratic representation. The Senator was designed to protect the states' interests, and accordingly selection of Senators was left to each individual state. Senators were originally elected by a state's state legislators or appointed by states' governors. That changed only in the early twentieth century with the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for Senators to be popularly elected as are Representatives. (The worst Amendment ever in my view, for it removed the states' representation and paved the way for special interests to rule Congress without opposition.)

I think the confusion here might be due to a misunderstanding of what democracy is. Democracy is a system of government where the people as a whole govern, either directly or through representatives. The question is not which of our institutions are democratic (as all of them are), it is HOW democratic they are. The House was originally designed to be more democratic than the Senate, but even in the past Senate appointments were made by representatives elected by the people. It was still absolutely an institution that (in theory) expressed the will of the people, just one more step removed.

As for the seventeenth amendment, I find it odd that you think the problem with it was that it enabled corruption, considering that the seventeenth amendment was made in response to a perception of corruption in the legislatures.

 

[werepossum]

Look, you don't understand. California is SIX TIMES BIGGER!

It changes everything!

Have to admit I don't understand how 10:1 is democratic representation, but 66:1 is not. Or how specifically setting up a chamber's membership to be selected by only elected officials is somehow considered to be democratic representation, but allowing actual popular election is a problem because of that 66:1 ratio.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

I was saying that your sources were useless in helping your point.

I still believe that you misunderstood my point. Perhaps it would benefit this discussion if you would restate my point based on your understanding.

I do! Here is a CRS report on judicial nominations: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43058.pdf

First and foremost, Obama is clocking in a nomination approval rate almost 10% below GWB, despite his party having control of the Senate for the entirety of his term, unlike GWB who had it for only half. With a friendlier Senate, fewer nominees were approved. I wonder why?

More importantly perhaps, when discussing the filibuster is the delay caused once a nomination moves out of committee (which is when it can be filibustered). Obama's median wait time for confirmation was about 750% higher than GWB's.

I have a tough time concluding the Obama is being subjected to significantly higher obstructionism. You apparently didn't notice the following within the report you linked:

- During the first terms of the five most recent Presidents (Reagan to Obama), the 30 confirmed Obama circuit court nominees were tied with 30 Clinton nominees as the fewest number of circuit nominees confirmed. The percentage of circuit nominees confirmed during President Obama’s first term, 71.4%, was the second-lowest, while the percentage confirmed during G.W. Bush’s first term, 67.3%, was the lowest.

- President Obama’s first term, compared with the first terms of Presidents Reagan to G.W. Bush, had the second-fewest number of district court nominees confirmed (143 compared with 130 for President Reagan) and the second-lowest percentage of district court nominees confirmed (82.7% compared with 76.9% for President G.H.W. Bush).

- The average number of days elapsed from nomination to confirmation for circuit court nominees confirmed during a President’s first term ranged from 45.5 days during President Reagan’s first term to 277 days during President G.W. Bush’s. For district court nominees, the average time between nomination to confirmation ranged from 34.7 days (Reagan) to 221.8 days (Obama).

It appears that your source is useless in supporting your point the Obama's nominations are being significantly obstructed in an unprecedented manner.

No problem!

http://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs-publish.cfm?pid='0E,*P,;< P

Measuing filibusters by cloture attempts, Obama is currently on track to have more executive and judicial nominations filibustered than every other president in the entire history of the United States COMBINED.

But hey, the Democrats filibustered some nominees so I guess they are the same..

Democrats dramatically changed the confirmation process in 2001 by forcing more than 30 cloture votes which was unparalleled up until that time.

During that period, Patrick Leahy-D (Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman ) voted against cloture a record-setting 27 times. Chuck Schumer-D was 2nd place with 26 votes to filibuster Bush nominees. Reid-D voted against cloture on 26 separate occasions. &#8220;Yes, we are blocking judges by filibuster. That is part of the hallowed process around here.&#8221; - Chuck Schumer (2003)

Now the tables have turned and it's the Dems turn to eat the crap they were dishing out for so long. In my opinion, it's hypocritical for Dems to cry foul over filibuster abuse when they're the ones who started this mess in the first place and were the ones who actually set precendent for this type of abuse.

I have read it multiple times, I've got it down quite clearly. There is simply no support for this false equivalence.

If you say so my good friend eskimospy.

 

[werepossum]

I think the confusion here might be due to a misunderstanding of what democracy is. Democracy is a system of government where the people as a whole govern, either directly or through representatives. The question is not which of our institutions are democratic (as all of them are), it is HOW democratic they are. The House was originally designed to be more democratic than the Senate, but even in the past Senate appointments were made by representatives elected by the people. It was still absolutely an institution that (in theory) expressed the will of the people, just one more step removed.

As for the seventeenth amendment, I find it odd that you think the problem with it was that it enabled corruption, considering that the seventeenth amendment was made in response to a perception of corruption in the legislatures.

Under that "logic", we could simply vote for the President and let him appoint everyone else in power.

Yeah democracy!

 

[fskimospy]

I still believe that you misunderstood my point. Perhaps it would benefit this discussion if you would restate my point based on your understanding.


I have a tough time concluding the Obama is being subjected to significantly higher obstructionism. You apparently didn't notice the following within the report you linked:

- During the first terms of the five most recent Presidents (Reagan to Obama), the 30 confirmed Obama circuit court nominees were tied with 30 Clinton nominees as the fewest number of circuit nominees confirmed. The percentage of circuit nominees confirmed during President Obama&#8217;s first term, 71.4%, was the second-lowest, while the percentage confirmed during G.W. Bush&#8217;s first term, 67.3%, was the lowest.

- President Obama&#8217;s first term, compared with the first terms of Presidents Reagan to G.W. Bush, had the second-fewest number of district court nominees confirmed (143 compared with 130 for President Reagan) and the second-lowest percentage of district court nominees confirmed (82.7% compared with 76.9% for President G.H.W. Bush).

- The average number of days elapsed from nomination to confirmation for circuit court nominees confirmed during a President&#8217;s first term ranged from 45.5 days during President Reagan&#8217;s first term to 277 days during President G.W. Bush&#8217;s. For district court nominees, the average time between nomination to confirmation ranged from 34.7 days (Reagan) to 221.8 days (Obama).

It appears that your source is useless in supporting your point the Obama's nominations are being significantly obstructed in an unprecedented manner.

I can only conclude from this that you did not read my previous post, but maybe you are not familiar enough with how the Senate works to understand what I wrote earlier. You are taking the total time to approval, not the time subject to filibuster. You cannot filibuster a nominee until they are out of committee. As I mentioned previously, the amount of time taken once a nominee is approved by committee is 750% higher under Obama than Bush. That is the filibuster right there. You may not consider a 7.5x increase greater obstruction, but you would be in the distinct minority.

It's also quite telling that the only president that had a lower approval percentage than Obama faced a Congress dominated by the other party.

That is obvious evidence for unprecedented obstruction.

Democrats dramatically changed the confirmation process in 2001 by forcing more than 30 cloture votes which were unparalleled up until that time.

During that period, Patrick Leahy (Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman ) voted against cloture a record-setting 27 times. Chuck Schumer was 2nd place with 26 votes to filibuster Bush nominees. Reid voted against cloture on 26 separate occasions. &#8220;Yes, we are blocking judges by filibuster. That is part of the hallowed process around here.&#8221; - Chuck Schumer (2003)

Now the tables have turned and it's the Dems turn to eat the crap they were dishing out for so long. In my opinion, it's hypocritical for Dems to cry foul over filibuster abuse when they're the ones who started this mess in the first place and were the ones who actually set precendent for this type of abuse.

Ahhh, so now when confronted with the fact that Obama may face more executive filibusters than in the previous 223 years of the United States put together your response is YOU GUYS DID IT FIRST. I shouldn't need to tell you how weak that argument is.

EDIT: BTW, is there any reason you basically copied and pasted that passage right out of an ultraconservative senator's website without attribution, and is there any reason why you once again conflated executive nominations with judicial ones?

You asked for differences in degree, they are staring you in the face right now. Now that you've been shown this by objective sources, I anticipate you will admit that characterizing both parties as equal in this is false, and I appreciate you manning up to admit that. It's not always easy.

 

[fskimospy]

Under that "logic", we could simply vote for the President and let him appoint everyone else in power.

Yeah democracy!

Straw man.

My post said nothing as to the merits of that idea, simply that you had a confused sense of what democracy is.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

I can only conclude from this that you did not read my previous post, but maybe you are not familiar enough with how the Senate works to understand what I wrote earlier. You are taking the total time to approval, not the time subject to filibuster. You cannot filibuster a nominee until they are out of committee. As I mentioned previously, the amount of time taken once a nominee is approved by committee is 750% higher under Obama than Bush. That is the filibuster right there. You may not consider a 7.5x increase greater obstruction, but you would be in the distinct minority.

It's also quite telling that the only president that had a lower approval percentage than Obama faced a Congress dominated by the other party.

That is obvious evidence for unprecedented obstruction.


Ahhh, so now when confronted with the fact that Obama may face more executive filibusters than in the previous 223 years of the United States put together your response is YOU GUYS DID IT FIRST. I shouldn't need to tell you how weak that argument is.

EDIT: BTW, is there any reason you basically copied and pasted that passage right out of an ultraconservative senator's website without attribution, and is there any reason why you once again conflated executive nominations with judicial ones?

You asked for differences in degree, they are staring you in the face right now. Now that you've been shown this by objective sources, I anticipate you will admit that characterizing both parties as equal in this is false, and I appreciate you manning up to admit that. It's not always easy.

You didn't refute any of the facts I posted many of which were from your source. Anyway, I'm not going to sit here and argue about who's shit stinks worse...that was never my intention. Fact of the matter is that Dems were the ones who greatly increased filibuster abuse under Bush. Now they act like a bunch of cry babies when this bullshit tactic is used on them in equal, if not greater, proportions.

You may feel that selective outrage over this issue is somehow 'rational'. And I would disagree...in my opinion, it is the epitome of hypocrisy.

 

[fskimospy]

You didn't refute any of the facts I posted many of which were from your source. Anyway, I'm not going to sit here and argue about who's shit stinks worse...that was never my intention. Fact of the matter is that Dems were the ones who greatly increased filibuster abuse under Bush. Now they act like a bunch of cry babies when this bullshit tactic is used on them in equal, if not greater, proportions.

More false equivalence. It is not 'equal' in any sense of the word, as clearly shown.

You may feel that selective outrage over this issue is somehow 'rational'. And I would disagree...in my opinion, it is the epitome of hypocrisy.

Straw man. As I have mentioned several times there are differences of kind and differences of degree. You're trying to ignore the differences of degree because for some inexplicable reason you want to excuse this behavior. You're just helping to enable more bad behavior.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

More false equivalence. It is not 'equal' in any sense of the word, as clearly shown.

Did you not see the words "if not greater"?

Straw man. As I have mentioned several times there are differences of kind and differences of degree. You're trying to ignore the differences of degree because for some inexplicable reason you want to excuse this behavior. You're just helping to enable more bad behavior.

I want to excuse this behavior? How in the hell did you reach that brilliant conclusion as nothing could be further from the truth. It's bullshit behavior. It was bullshit when Dems did it to Bush and it's bullshit when the Reps do it to Obama. Sometimes I really wonder about you.

 

[woolfe9998]

Did you not see the words "if not greater"?


I want to excuse this behavior? How in the hell did you reach that brilliant conclusion as nothing could be further from the truth. It's bullshit behavior. It was bullshit when Dems did it to Bush and it's bullshit when the Reps do it to Obama. Sometimes I really wonder about you.

Why don't you just succinctly explain why you think that differences in the frequency of this "bullshit behavior" are irrelevant? That way, no one needs to speculate about why you seem to be ignoring said differences.

 

[TerryMathews]

Why don't you just succinctly explain why you think that differences in the frequency of this "bullshit behavior" are irrelevant? That way, no one needs to speculate about why you seem to be ignoring said differences.

If it's not acceptable, then the frequency is irrelevant. It's like saying "he only raped her a little bit."

 

[monovillage]

If it's not acceptable, then the frequency is irrelevant. It's like saying "he only raped her a little bit."

I've said a number of times that any tactic that's used successfully by one side in a conflict, will sooner or later be used by the other side. This is a prime example of that.

 

[woolfe9998]

If it's not acceptable, then the frequency is irrelevant. It's like saying "he only raped her a little bit."

No, it's more than 5 rapes versus 10 rapes, where each rape is unacceptable. Yet the frequency off it is far from irrelevant or we wouldn't even bother measuring crime rates to determine the degree of the problem.

 

[TerryMathews]

No, it's more than 5 rapes versus 10 rapes, where each rape is unacceptable. Yet the frequency off it is far from irrelevant or we wouldn't even bother measuring crime rates to determine the degree of the problem.

So the republicans are currently worse rapists than democrats but they're both rapist scum?

If you can't agree with that statement you're a partisan hack or you don't really have a problem with the filibuster.

ETA: where were all of you decrying the filibuster when that woman was filibustering a proposal to require abortions in a hospital setting in Texas?

 

[werepossum]

Straw man.

My post said nothing as to the merits of that idea, simply that you had a confused sense of what democracy is.

Actually my post also said nothing of the merits of that idea; I was merely pointing out that your definition has no consistency. (Were I a proggie, I'd be squealing "Straw man" right about now.) If A electing B electing C = A electing C, that principle should hold true and electing only the President is democracy. Note that this statement is absolutely neutral as to the respective values of A electing B electing C versus A electing C. If this is confusing, the people are 'A', their elected officials (be it a President or a state legislator) are 'B', and the Senators are 'C'.

Note that this is fundamentally different from the Electoral College because electors run specifically for one purpose only, casting a Presidential vote for one stated individual. In voting for an Electoral College elector one is directly casting a vote for President through a proxy; in electing a state representative who then elects a Senator, one had absolutely zero influence over whom gets that Senatorial vote. One did not even know the Senatorial candidates, much less whom one's representative would vote, because the Senators were elected to represent the state's interests, not the individual voter's interests.

But let us review. Your original statement was:

I find that the current supermajority rules for the senate take an already fairly undemocratic body and make it even less democratic. There's always a balance to be struck, but the senate has gone pretty far away from normal democratic principles.

My response was that the Senate was never designed to be democratic. You then stated:

The senate was most certainly intended to be democratic representation, just of a different sort than the house. Additionally, there's really no reason to believe that the framers of the Constitution wanted to give this much extra power to smaller states. When the constitution was ratified the ratio of the largest state's population to the smallest one was somewhere around 10:1. Today the ratio in population between California and Wyoming is about 66:1. There is no particular reason to believe that the founders wanted to give anywhere NEAR that much extra power to small states.

The senate was already designed to offer protection from the whims of the moment through longer terms. The filibuster is nowhere to be found in the constitution, and a system through which 17% of the population can stop all legislation/nominees/etc is excessive in my opinion.

I'm assuming you had a point in posting that. Therefore, again you should defend the concepts that:
(A) The Founding Fathers set up the Senate to be democratically representative, even though the ratio of individual representation at the time varied by a factor of 10;
(B) A ratio of individual representation of 10:1 is acceptably democratically representative, but a ratio of individual representation of 66:1 is not acceptably democratically representative.

To go a bit further back, when the Democrats were filibustering Bush's nominees you supported their use of the filibuster. You made no arguments about 10:1 ratios versus 66:1 ratios. You made no arguments about failing democracy. The conclusion is inescapable: You have no enduring principles, but will twist and turn and argue any point, even reversing yourself, to make the left correct and the right wrong on every single issue, every single time. If one particular metric fails, you simply find another metric and declare that this one is the important one. Pick arbitrary numbers and declare that once again the Democrats are right and the Republicans are wrong when they do the same exact thing. Every issue, every time. "Spinning" does not begin to describe it; your behavior could only be described by theoretical physicists positing higher dimensions. At this point you simply cannot feel that you are fooling anyone here and I cannot believe you are even fooling yourself, so what's the point?

I don't mean to attack you, I'm just expressing the frustration of arguing politics with someone who starts at "Democrats good, Republicans bad" and works backward on every issue, every time. Feel free to say "straw man" and I'll let it drop.

 

[ivwshane]

If it's not acceptable, then the frequency is irrelevant. It's like saying "he only raped her a little bit."

It's a legal procedure is it not? It's acceptability is of no importance which is why frequency is used. However I wouldn't be against a high frequency use of the procedure as long as its for good reasons. When nominees are unanimously approved with the minority parties approval AND the minority party has said, on record, that they have nothing against the nominee and the only reason for the hold up is political AND it happens quite often, then I see a problem.

Are your objections similar or do you just not like the legal procedure? I know your answer and if the republucans take over the senate I know what your response will be when they remove the option

The word transparent comes to mind.

 

[werepossum]

No, it's more than 5 rapes versus 10 rapes, where each rape is unacceptable. Yet the frequency off it is far from irrelevant or we wouldn't even bother measuring crime rates to determine the degree of the problem.

Yet many of the same people currently decrying the Republicans as rapist scum (to further the tortured metaphor) were defending the Democrats as raping for Jesus, if you will. If rape is wrong, then 5 rapes aren't good because someone else committed 10.

There are many people here who believe that filibustering nominees is inherently bad. Those people who contrive ways to make Democrats filibustering Republican nominees good and acceptable while making Republicans filibustering Democrat nominees bad and unacceptable are simply partisan hacks, period. Democrats set records; Republicans broke them. This is politics. And should the Democrats set even higher records against a future Republican President's nominees, every single person here knows that the exact same people once again will be explaining it away. If one's principles break down to "Democrats good, Republicans bad" then one does not really have principles, only a favored political team to be supported in all it does.

So the republicans are currently worse rapists than democrats but they're both rapist scum?

If you can't agree with that statement you're a partisan hack or you don't really have a problem with the filibuster.

ETA: where were all of you decrying the filibuster when that woman was filibustering a proposal to require abortions in a hospital setting in Texas?

Well said, on both points.

 

[woolfe9998]

So the republicans are currently worse rapists than democrats but they're both rapist scum?

If you can't agree with that statement you're a partisan hack or you don't really have a problem with the filibuster.

ETA: where were all of you decrying the filibuster when that woman was filibustering a proposal to require abortions in a hospital setting in Texas?

The mental gymnastics here are incredible. In what universe does it not matter how often a person or group of people do the wrong thing?

Have you ever lied in your life? Even one single time? Well if you have, then you're just as bad as the guy who lies 10x per day, right?

I think the problem is your choice of analogy to rape. You're using something which is so heinous that its gets really blurry when you're comparing someone who does it once with someone who does it three times. If you say the multiple rapist is worse then it sounds like you're trying to excuse the guy who does it once.

Filibustering for the wrong reason is a bad thing to do, but it's not "rape" bad. And yeah, it does matter how often you do it. It matters a lot. You can cause major problems in the smooth functioning of government if you do it constantly.

 

[woolfe9998]

Yet many of the same people currently decrying the Republicans as rapist scum (to further the tortured metaphor) were defending the Democrats as raping for Jesus, if you will. If rape is wrong, then 5 rapes aren't good because someone else committed 10.

The more and more frequent the filibustering gets, the stronger the inference that it's meant as a pattern of obstruction rather than principled opposition to the individual nominee. If you do it from time to time, then it's more logical to conclude that you have a problem with this or that nominee. When you do it all the time, the inference is totally different.

That said, I'm sure there's some obstructionism and some legitimate opposition in the conduct of both parties while in the minority. It's a question of degree.

There are many people here who believe that filibustering nominees is inherently bad. Those people who contrive ways to make Democrats filibustering Republican nominees good and acceptable while making Republicans filibustering Democrat nominees bad and unacceptable are simply partisan hacks, period. Democrats set records; Republicans broke them. This is politics. And should the Democrats set even higher records against a future Republican President's nominees, every single person here knows that the exact same people once again will be explaining it away. If one's principles break down to "Democrats good, Republicans bad" then one does not really have principles, only a favored political team to be supported in all it does.

It's more like I think the dems are bad but the repubs are worse, not that it's OK for the dems to do it but not OK for the repubs. While we sometimes like to view things as black and white, in the real world, there is such a thing as "bad" and "worse" just as there is such a thing as "good" and "great."

I think the filibuster should not be allowed for appointees, period.

 

[TerryMathews]

The mental gymnastics here are incredible. In what universe does it not matter how often a person or group of people do the wrong thing?

Have you ever lied in your life? Even one single time? Well if you have, then you're just as bad as the guy who lies 10x per day, right?

I think the problem is your choice of analogy to rape. You're using something which is so heinous that its gets really blurry when you're comparing someone who does it once with someone who does it three times. If you say the multiple rapist is worse then it sounds like you're trying to excuse the guy who does it once.

Filibustering for the wrong reason is a bad thing to do, but it's not "rape" bad. And yeah, it does matter how often you do it. It matters a lot. You can cause major problems in the smooth functioning of government if you do it constantly.

So we're back to "filibustering is ok, if the right people use it, for the right reasons, and only a little bit."

Yet you accuse me of mental gymnastics? Get real.

 

[werepossum]

So we're back to "filibustering is ok, if the right people use it, for the right reasons, and only a little bit."

Yet you accuse me of mental gymnastics? Get real.

More likely it's ""filibustering is ok, if the right people use it, no matter how often" because the right people are always presumed to use it for the right reasons.

 

[woolfe9998]

More likely it's ""filibustering is ok, if the right people use it, no matter how often" because the right people are always presumed to use it for the right reasons.

You and he both know that is that is total straw man of everything I just wrote. I don't know about him, but you can do better than that.

 

[kage69]

I can only conclude from this that you did not read my previous post, but maybe you are not familiar enough with how the Senate works to understand what I wrote earlier. You are taking the total time to approval, not the time subject to filibuster. You cannot filibuster a nominee until they are out of committee. As I mentioned previously, the amount of time taken once a nominee is approved by committee is 750% higher under Obama than Bush. That is the filibuster right there. You may not consider a 7.5x increase greater obstruction, but you would be in the distinct minority.

It's also quite telling that the only president that had a lower approval percentage than Obama faced a Congress dominated by the other party.

That is obvious evidence for unprecedented obstruction.



Ahhh, so now when confronted with the fact that Obama may face more executive filibusters than in the previous 223 years of the United States put together your response is YOU GUYS DID IT FIRST. I shouldn't need to tell you how weak that argument is.

EDIT: BTW, is there any reason you basically copied and pasted that passage right out of an ultraconservative senator's website without attribution, and is there any reason why you once again conflated executive nominations with judicial ones?

You asked for differences in degree, they are staring you in the face right now. Now that you've been shown this by objective sources, I anticipate you will admit that characterizing both parties as equal in this is false, and I appreciate you manning up to admit that. It's not always easy.

Heh.

Those poor testicles... *shakes head*

 

[fskimospy]

Actually my post also said nothing of the merits of that idea; I was merely pointing out that your definition has no consistency. (Were I a proggie, I'd be squealing "Straw man" right about now.) If A electing B electing C = A electing C, that principle should hold true and electing only the President is democracy. Note that this statement is absolutely neutral as to the respective values of A electing B electing C versus A electing C. If this is confusing, the people are 'A', their elected officials (be it a President or a state legislator) are 'B', and the Senators are 'C'.

Note that this is fundamentally different from the Electoral College because electors run specifically for one purpose only, casting a Presidential vote for one stated individual. In voting for an Electoral College elector one is directly casting a vote for President through a proxy; in electing a state representative who then elects a Senator, one had absolutely zero influence over whom gets that Senatorial vote. One did not even know the Senatorial candidates, much less whom one's representative would vote, because the Senators were elected to represent the state's interests, not the individual voter's interests.

But let us review. Your original statement was:


My response was that the Senate was never designed to be democratic. You then stated:

I'm assuming you had a point in posting that. Therefore, again you should defend the concepts that:
(A) The Founding Fathers set up the Senate to be democratically representative, even though the ratio of individual representation at the time varied by a factor of 10;
(B) A ratio of individual representation of 10:1 is acceptably democratically representative, but a ratio of individual representation of 66:1 is not acceptably democratically representative.

To go a bit further back, when the Democrats were filibustering Bush's nominees you supported their use of the filibuster. You made no arguments about 10:1 ratios versus 66:1 ratios. You made no arguments about failing democracy. The conclusion is inescapable: You have no enduring principles, but will twist and turn and argue any point, even reversing yourself, to make the left correct and the right wrong on every single issue, every single time. If one particular metric fails, you simply find another metric and declare that this one is the important one. Pick arbitrary numbers and declare that once again the Democrats are right and the Republicans are wrong when they do the same exact thing. Every issue, every time. "Spinning" does not begin to describe it; your behavior could only be described by theoretical physicists positing higher dimensions. At this point you simply cannot feel that you are fooling anyone here and I cannot believe you are even fooling yourself, so what's the point?

I don't mean to attack you, I'm just expressing the frustration of arguing politics with someone who starts at "Democrats good, Republicans bad" and works backward on every issue, every time. Feel free to say "straw man" and I'll let it drop.

If you have any frustration it must be with yourself. I always assumed your straw men were deliberate, but it may be simply do to an inability to understand.

Democracy is a sliding scale. Yes, if all of our government were appointed by a single elected representative it would still be a democracy, it just wouldn't be very democratic. I'm not sure how that's at all hard to understand.

Your description of me dovetails with your larger delusional ideas about your political opponents. They aren't people who disagree with you, they are unprincipled evil who attempt to cynically manipulate reality to serve some nefarious purpose. This is why I keep telling you to read The Paranoid Style in American Politics. You fit the description of a reactionary paranoid to a T.

When someone tries to tell you that democracy doesn't mean what you think it means, maybe they are just trying to help you understand politics better.

 

[werepossum]

If you have any frustration it must be with yourself. I always assumed your straw men were deliberate, but it may be simply do to an inability to understand.

Democracy is a sliding scale. Yes, if all of our government were appointed by a single elected representative it would still be a democracy, it just wouldn't be very democratic. I'm not sure how that's at all hard to understand.

Your description of me dovetails with your larger delusional ideas about your political opponents. They aren't people who disagree with you, they are unprincipled evil who attempt to cynically manipulate reality to serve some nefarious purpose. This is why I keep telling you to read The Paranoid Style in American Politics. You fit the description of a reactionary paranoid to a T.

When someone tries to tell you that democracy doesn't mean what you think it means, maybe they are just trying to help you understand politics better.

Clearly you find the Democrats are right and the Republicans wrong on every single issue, every single time, even when they are doing the exact same thing, because I am paranoid. And just as clearly, my saying that you have no principles is paranoia, but you saying the entire South and all Republicans are evil and/or ignorant is merely keen observation. Gotcha. Can't wait 'til you share some more of your principled wisdom!