US Election 2012...the aftermath

[pmp10]

So is it just a comedic hissy fit, or something to produce a lot of interesting sound bites in the next month?

 

20 States have filed to secede from the United States

 

While many in Texas have been outspoken about seceding from the Union for years, in the aftermath of the recent election the first push for secession began in Louisiana and has quickly spread to states including New Jersey and Michigan.

 

The U.S. government allows one month from the date the petition is submitted to WhiteHouse.gov to obtain 25,000 signatures in order for the Obama administration to consider the request.

 

The likelihood of the current administration to even entertain the idea of allowing states to secede is almost non-existent. What is sobering to realize though is that in less than 48-hours there have been tens of thousands of people who have quickly rallied behind this very grassroots approach to request change, autonomy, and a small measure of freedom.

 

As of the evening of Sunday, November 11, here are the current links and numbers of petition signers for each of the 20 states (each petition needs 25,000 signatures within 30-days to be considered by the government):

•Alabama - 3,975 signatures

•Arkansas - 350 signatures

•Colorado - 3,055 signatures

•Florida - 4,033 signatures

•Georgia - 1,629 signatures

•Indiana - 3,194 signatures

•Kentucky - 3,229 signatures

•Louisiana - 12,192 signatures

•Michigan - 2,482 signatures

•Mississippi - 3,171 signatures

•Missouri - 2,196 signatures

•Montana - 2,867 signatures

•New Jersey - 2,485 signatures

•New York - 2,847 signatures

•North Carolina - 3,823 signatures

•North Dakota - 2,508 signatures

•Oregon- 2,678 signatures

•South Carolina- 2,632 signatures

•Tennessee- 2,659 signatures

•Texas- 14,883 signatures

 

I know this is meant for comic relief but it's pretty interesting historically.

US civil war actually was preceded by years of similar movements.

[GuybrushWilco]

The movements have always existed, but the political climate of the early 1860's was a world different from what we have today.

[Calax]

The movements have always existed, but the political climate of the early 1860's was a world different from what we have today.

Yes, and no.

 

Right now many of the more progressive social issues (Womens reproductive rights, health care, social security etc) are becoming very divisive within the nation. Partly because of media influence, but partly because of the gaming of politics. The "Red" states are starting to feel like they're loosing their political power, and thus are getting worried. They're also known to glorify the Confederacy (which is stupid overall), and the most radical (and thus the most out and out zealots) have been rumbling about "THE SOUTH SHALL RISE AGAIN" for decades.

 

Personally, I can see a 2nd civil war happening, but it'd take one HELL of a spark to get it going.

[GuybrushWilco]

I really don't see a second civil war as being likely in the foreseeable future. The issues we have right now are no where near as derisive and deep as the issues surrounding slavery were. Just look at the whole Bleeding Kansas affair, and the state civil wars in Tennessee and Virginia. Also, back in those days the political power in the South was almost entirely in the hands of slave owners, and the modern day confederate supports do not have nearly that hold on power. Also, the general demographics of the South have changed a lot since then, and I think that people are generally more educated as to the negative impacts of a secession or civil war. Basically, the 'South will rise again' people are not nearly big enough and numbers and influence to create a repeat in 1861.

[Hurlshort]

I don't see it happening. You just don't have the state militias or the organization that you did back then, and the people clamoring for secession are a largely uneducated group. In 1860 you had career politicians and military men backing the south. I'll get concerned when you have a couple classes from VMI or Annapolis protesting, instead of Ole Miss.

 

Plus as much as a state may whine and protest over health care reform, it is hardly an issue that warrants becoming a separate nation.

[Raithe]

From the outsiders view of history, the slavery issue for the Civil War wasn't actually a key part. It was a part, and a highly publicised part, but there was a whole lot more to it then that. The economics of the day beyond the slavery were what really pushed the Civil War into happening. The industry in the North and lack of it in the South was a big deal.

[pmp10]

Basically, the 'South will rise again' people are not nearly big enough and numbers and influence to create a repeat in 1861.

Not that I'm expecting anything similar to happen but not all conflicts happen with the consent of the majority.

Some are started by a militant fringe while everyone moderate looks away.

[Calax]

I really don't see a second civil war as being likely in the foreseeable future. The issues we have right now are no where near as derisive and deep as the issues surrounding slavery were. Just look at the whole Bleeding Kansas affair, and the state civil wars in Tennessee and Virginia. Also, back in those days the political power in the South was almost entirely in the hands of slave owners, and the modern day confederate supports do not have nearly that hold on power. Also, the general demographics of the South have changed a lot since then, and I think that people are generally more educated as to the negative impacts of a secession or civil war. Basically, the 'South will rise again' people are not nearly big enough and numbers and influence to create a repeat in 1861.

That's why I said that it would take one hell of a spark. And if the whole session thing takes off with signatures like some seem to think it will, I believe that there will be at least a few politicians who back it (I mean look at the discussions on Rape that were happening).

 

The major thing that'd differentiate a civil war now, vs the previous one would probably be that previously, it was geographical. If you were in the south, you were a Confederate. If you were in the North, you were a Union. Now it'll be more like an insurgancy than anything... which will be messy

[ravenshrike]

Just to start off, Obamacare is now the unstoppable, irreversible law of the land. Plus Obama's promise to drive the coal energy industry out of business now looks to become reality.

 

To be completly honset I think you are better off in the long run with both of those actions - it's time to seriously move towards renewable energy and coal is not a viable option. If the US wants to be the undeniable center of scientific progress and beacon of freedom and hope again, the left-wingers are imho much better equipped for taking you there. Republican policy will help you in the short run, but following their ideology you are basically competing on a commodity (the worlds premiere manufactures) that you have no hope of winning in the long run.

 

So I'm happy for you, but I also hope that Obama realizes that he needs to make concessions and reach across the isle. The amount of doom and gloom in your media is seriously hurting your internal strength and the growing wedge between the political parties and their supporters is a serious problem. To put things in perspective, compared to a European political spectrum, your parties only really cover the right (and are actually very close). If we had the democrats and republicans in Denmark, they would've formed a government together as their ideologies are basically the same compared to opposition.

Coal is a viable option for more than 400 years in the US given the current energy usage curve. That doesn't even begin to consider shale oil.

Funny story: Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, taxes for the top earners were 90%. And Tea Party conservatives often voice a desire to return America to the golden age of the 1950s. Once again, life in the Fox News bubble has left conservatives either a laughingstock or a threat to the nation's economy. Eisenhower, now there's a Republican I could vote for.

Under Eisenhower, the 90% marginal rate applied only to people making more than 4 million current USD per year. Which is probably quite a bit less than 80,000 people/households in 2012. Going to an Eisenhower tax scheme would for the first couple years if not only solely the first year, net an additional 100 billion. This wouldn't even BEGIN to close the deficit gap, let alone start actually pay off the debt. At which point things would be reorganized and the people making that much would just be compensated someway else or quit entirely.

[GuybrushWilco]

From the outsiders view of history, the slavery issue for the Civil War wasn't actually a key part. It was a part, and a highly publicised part, but there was a whole lot more to it then that. The economics of the day beyond the slavery were what really pushed the Civil War into happening. The industry in the North and lack of it in the South was a big deal.

 

Slavery was the single most important issue leading up to and during the Civil War. All of these other issues that are cited, like states rights and economics were issues that revolved around the institution of slavery. The South of the time was largely agrarian, and most of its products were produced through slave labor, so slavery was integral to the economy in the South in those days. During the antibellum years, The agrarian South, was the economic power of the country, and also had the most power in the Congress, and sympathy from most of those to hold the Executive offices, which meant that slavery was safe for them. There was however, an industrial revolution going on at the time, which was shifting the economic might into the North, and also brought waves of mass immigration from Europe into the free states, which was increasing the presence of the free states in the House of Representatives. This was also occurring at the same time as a burgeoning of the abolitionist movement brought on by the recent Dredd Scott case, and all of this made the perfect storm for secession. Many Southern slave owners were worried that the increasing power of the free states, would lead to an outright abolition of slavery, and they lobbied for slavery to be made constitutionally legal in every state and territory. Abraham Lincoln came on board during this time with the promise that he would stop the expansion of slavery into the free states, and this is what got him elected. The Confederate states in their paranoia, decided to secede as a pre-emptive move to protect their economic interests (slave labor) and their states rights (the right to keep people as slaves). So yeah, there were a lot of issues that brought about the Civil War, but every important issue was a byproduct of slavery, and therefore, slavery was key cause of the Civil War. Sorry for the history lesson/rant, but the somewhat popular notion that slavery was just a passing issue for the Civil War, has always bothered me, because it is a major misconception.

[Wrath of Dagon]

By running up the debt until we can't even pay the interest while the Fed keeps creating money out of nothing. Look at Japan, they've been following the same policies US is following now for 20 years since their real estate bubble burst and they're still mired in recession, while their debt is astronomical.

It isn't really appropriate to compare the two. Japan's problems are fundamentally different from those in the US- the Japanese oversave rather than overspend, their currency is greatly overvalued and they have a historical problem with deflation. That's pretty close to the exact reverse of the situation in the US.

Not really, we also had a huge real estate crash, their debt to GDP is even much higher than ours, and our interest rates are also near 0 thanks to money creation by the Fed. And are you saying our currency is not overvalued? With our trade deficits it would've collapsed except the rest of the idiot world is still using it as reserve currency.

 

I really don't see a civil war happening. This is the 21 century, we don't resolve domestic problems with violence, and our economies are tremendously intertwined. However India separated from the Empire, Scotland might separate from England, and all peacefully. It's not the fashion these days to rule people against their will, or to have colonies. We better hurry up though, I saw a projection today in 12 years Texas is supposed to go Demorcrat, so the whole thing will be moot.

[Gorth]

I really don't see a civil war happening. This is the 21 century, we don't resolve domestic problems with violence

Yugoslavia disagrees

 

So does ETA and IRA. Catalonia is considering independence from Spain undoing the old union of Aragon and Castile, Belgium has always been a fragile construct and Liga Norte still wants to apply big scissors to Italy and cut it in half. Ossetia definitely didn't want to be part of Georgia and the Faroe Islands still entertain notions of independence from Denmark (until somebody puts up a balance sheet and shows them the price of independence that is).

 

Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes separation happens peacefully (like the Czecks and Slovaks) and sometimes not so peacefully (a lot of others).

[GuybrushWilco]

I think that it is a real stretch of logic to classify Texas as a colony. Does Texas have equal representation in the Congress? Well actually, it has more than most other states, owing to its large population. So any state that votes for a person who does not win the Presidential office, would therefore me a colony? Does that mean that every blue state during the Bush administration was a colony?

[Hurlshort]

I really don't see a civil war happening. This is the 21 century, we don't resolve domestic problems with violence, and our economies are tremendously intertwined. However India separated from the Empire, Scotland might separate from England, and all peacefully. It's not the fashion these days to rule people against their will, or to have colonies. We better hurry up though, I saw a projection today in 12 years Texas is supposed to go Demorcrat, so the whole thing will be moot.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about Texas suddenly turning blue, I think what you will see if either the Republican party will adapt or it will die, and another party will step in to take its place. It has happened plenty of times before.

[Wrath of Dagon]

If you have no chance of ever again picking the President, then you're a colony, as I posted earlier.

 

@Hurl I didn't make the projection, again it's based on demographics. People in Texas who are conservative now aren't just going to magically change , and they will be without representation. You should know what happened to California, it used to be a swing state, now it has a Democrat super majority.

Edited November 14, 2012 by Wrath of Dagon

[GuybrushWilco]

Can you confirm that Texas has no chance of ever picking the president again? They have many electoral votes, and cast those votes every four years. The current political trend is Democrat, but then again, we elected Bush two times before that.

[Calax]

If you have no chance of ever again picking the President, then you're a colony, as I posted earlier.

 

@Hurl I didn't make the projection, again it's based on demographics. People in Texas who are conservative now aren't just going to magically change , and they will be without representation. You should know what happened to California, it used to be a swing state, now it has a Democrat super majority.

Under this logic, most of the states don't, particularly hawaii, because of how news does projections and campaigns operate via those projections

[Hurlshort]

Yes, but look how quickly the Republican party already changed their tune on immigration. They recognize that they are losing too many minority and women voters, and the white male vote won't carry them anymore. All of us border states hinge heavily on the immigration issue, and if the Republican party can find the right tact, they will be right back in the mix with CA.

[GuybrushWilco]

So if Texas does not vote for a conservative president, then that means that its conservatives do not have representation? So does this mean that its liberal population at present does not have representation? Also, political representation extends to the Congress, the state Congress, and the governor, and not just the office of the Presidency. For a person to say that they do not recognize the legitimacy of a government if the person they voted for did not win, then they pretty much do not support the idea of democracy, and may prefer to live in a single party state where their preferred status quo is always maintained.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Can you confirm that Texas has no chance of ever picking the president again? They have many electoral votes, and cast those votes every four years. The current political trend is Democrat, but then again, we elected Bush two times before that.

I know that because the country is very polarized. Tio win the Presidency, Republicans have to win Virginia, Colorado, Florida and Ohio, there's no other way. All of these states are now trending Democratic, and this will only continue. There are more minorities, more singles, more secular, all of those heavily favor Democrats. The next election cycle it's very unlikely a Republican can be elected, the one after that almost impossible. You might say that if Democrats really screw up a Republican can still be elected. But consider that 2008 was as a bad a year for Republicans as can be imagined, and yet only a couple of red states went blue. I don't expect the blue states to be any different.

 

Yes, but look how quickly the Republican party already changed their tune on immigration. They recognize that they are losing too many minority and women voters, and the white male vote won't carry them anymore. All of us border states hinge heavily on the immigration issue, and if the Republican party can find the right tact, they will be right back in the mix with CA.

Republicans haven't changed their tune, some in the leadership have. If they do amnesty, all it'll do is add another 20 million votes for the Democrats, and antagonize the Republican base to where they'll probably not vote at all. Hispanics are going to credit Obama anyway, and it'll only increase their support for Democrats. You also have to remember at least half of the Republican party is very conservative, and any moderation in the leadeship will only lose the base so that Republicans will become even more of a minority party than they already are.

 

So if Texas does not vote for a conservative president, then that means that its conservatives do not have representation? So does this mean that its liberal population at present does not have representation? Also, political representation extends to the Congress, the state Congress, and the governor, and not just the office of the Presidency. For a person to say that they do not recognize the legitimacy of a government if the person they voted for did not win, then they pretty much do not support the idea of democracy, and may prefer to live in a single party state where their preferred status quo is always maintained.

Like I said, it's not a question of a one time vote, it's a question of never being able to select your candidate. Right now we have half the country that's de facto locked out of selecting the President. Edited November 14, 2012 by Wrath of Dagon

[alanschu]

If you have no chance of ever again picking the President, then you're a colony, as I posted earlier.

 

@Hurl I didn't make the projection, again it's based on demographics. People in Texas who are conservative now aren't just going to magically change , and they will be without representation. You should know what happened to California, it used to be a swing state, now it has a Democrat super majority.

 

I think this is total kneejerk. In the 80s you would have never thought that the Democrats would have a chance in hell of doing anything ever again. Parties, people, and policy change all the time. If the Republican party is losing support, however, then maybe they should rethink their platform. Which they will.

 

This all came at a time of insane stagflation and a very serious economic situation. A dozen years later a Democrat is leading the United States (and being fiscally responsible to boot).

 

Furthermore, I saw more than a few people that took the time to discuss how they were Republican but felt that a vote for Romney was not the way to go. There's plenty of Republicans that didn't like the nebulousness of a lot of the Republican ideas, and downright wanted nothing to do with some of the issues that are strongly associated with the Republican party. I suppose you could argue that this means that these people aren't represented, but if you want to get down to the specifics it's unlikely that any candidate or party will be perfectly represented.

 

I'm pretty staunchly conservative and voted for the Conservative Party in Canada, but based on this election campaign I probably would have voted for Obama as well.

 

 

Tangentially related, I did find this cartograms interesting: http://aidontheedge.info/2012/11/07/mapping-politics-and-the-politics-of-maps/

Edited November 14, 2012 by alanschu

[Hurlshort]

Gotta agree with alanschu.

 

People who go up against incumbents lose all the time. The incumbent almost always has an advantage. That's really all that happened here, Republicans still control the house. Save the panic talk for a few more terms. Reagan to Bush equaled 12 years, and I don't remember hearing blue states talk about how impotent they were during that time.

 

Of course I was pretty young, so maybe I just missed it

[Zoraptor]

Not really, we also had a huge real estate crash, their debt to GDP is even much higher than ours, and our interest rates are also near 0 thanks to money creation by the Fed. And are you saying our currency is not overvalued? With our trade deficits it would've collapsed except the rest of the idiot world is still using it as reserve currency.

That is largely confusing symptoms with causes and treatments. 'Money printing' didn't work well in Japan because the population is (generally) abstemious and would rather save than spend, as such providing them with excess cash doesn't tackle one key problem, that of low internal demand. Thus 'printing money' was not inflationary there, but neither did it cause much if anything in the way of growth and henceyou you could have the theoretically antithetical processes of both providing cheap money and having deflation at the same time. The response in a country like the US where there is a lot more historic emphasis on spending should (should) be significantly different, and cause the classic response of both growth and inflation. Certainly there's no evidence of deflation in the US, quite the opposite.

 

I tend to compare the value of currencies against my own. On that metric Japan's has barely changed (and on a more objective measure is at historic highs against pretty much all their major trading partners; same as here) while the USD has lost around 30% of its value. It could be argued- and I'd agree largely- that the USD is still overvalued in absolute terms but the fact remains that the supposedly similar situations between Japan and the US have resulted in a very high Japanese Yen but a comparatively weak USD. Simply put Japan's response to stimulus spending is atypical and cannot be used as a yardstick for expectations elsewhere. Except, ironically, China which is likely to hit exactly the same sort of issues at some point.

[BruceVC]

I think that the Republicans really need to completely change there conservative message or at least how they say it. I was watching on CNN an excellent post-election assessment by 4 prominent Republicans who are lie on the left and right of the Republican party,see the link below. Carlos Gutierrez put the blame on the far right of the Republican party for the election loss. Anyway Gary Bauer was completely intransigent about how the Republican party should change, he doesn't think they need to change the message to attract the right demographics. People like him just don't get it, I was very surprised (but watch the video, its fascinating)

 

 

 

 

http://politicaltick...-partys-future/

Edited November 14, 2012 by BruceVC

[Guest ichiwcu]

The GOP would do itself a great service I think if they stepped away from the tea party. I am not adverse to fiscal conservatism by any stretch, I have voted for candidates of every party in the past. But their social policies, evangelical ultra-religious and pro-anti-science stances they hold today leave too much of a bad taste for me to ever consider voting for as it stands now. They may hurt in the short term by doing this, but its one step they need to take if they want to survive in the long term, if they consider financial conservatism to be their ideological stance. If the GOP could eliminate the positives the democratic party presents on many or all social issues wouldn't have the problems they do now. Just my opinion anyways. Libertarians interest me. I mean at one level of government its kinda neat and works to some extent, but if it existed on all levels of government, federal, state, county, city... every branch, ect, how would it function as a working government? Just something I think about now and then.

 

Regarding the election, I am glad its over with, there was too much animosity between people who have different political views. They get real frothy in the mouth when they are talking about politics (usually online... where they don't have to look people in the eye). A rule at my house is you leave your politics and religion at the door, because I like to have civilized conversations with my friends and family, and not degrade things down to talking points that were hand feed to people through a 24/7 news organization. Sometimes its best to just take a step back away from it for a while. There is some hope in that we won't have to worry about one side keeping their jobs and the other side trying to make sure the other side looks as bad as possible for the next couple of years. Maybe.