What do we Dems do with the House once we get it?

Discussion in 'Elections & Campaigns' started by btthegreat, Aug 9, 2018.

  1. btthegreat

    btthegreat Well-Known Member

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    There is no question in my mind that we will take the house with about a 10-15 vote margin and most of those gains will be in purple or red hued states, and I suspect the Senate will stay in republican hands with even a vote or two to spare of republican votes to spare. The real question is what do we do with the House besides stop Republican initiatives?

    The first question is whether Pelosi gets the gavel back and it is to be a very complicated question indeed. Several of the moderate or red hued Dems may have to commit not to vote for Pelosi , when in fact that she is the absolute best option to kill future impeachment hearings. Pelosi was adamant against impeachment hearings on Bush and she is against impeachment hearings of Trump. Meanwhile the progressives will demand Pelosi support such hearings to win their votes because that is what they will have promised the base.

    Pelosi will try to walk a fine line re-openning the investigations into Russian hacking and meddling and possible Trump connections but discourage any talk that those hearings should lead to articles of impeachment ( exactly what I support myself by the way) while she plots to pack the Judiciary commitment with Dems who are likewise skeptical of impeachment.

    I think there will also be an 'anybody but Pelosi' movement based on the idea that Republicans have turned her into such toxic presence that she is dead weight. There is another complication. An awful lot of the winning candidates in these primaries have been WOMEN, who are sensitive to this notion that there is much harsher standard applied to Democratic women politicians in national media than men and Hillary Clinton is exhibit A of gender bias that Dems were too silent about. They and the Womens political action groups will be watching very carefully to see how Pelosi is treated. It would be a very rare act to push the very woman out of speakership that largely maneuvered the party into a position to best take back the reins. Normally the party rewards the leadership team that saw those gains, not ditch them to the curb.

    Personally, I don't know that there is anyone better capable of sheparding the kind of legislation most likely to force difficult choices on to the GOP and Trump while avoiding the cocky misteps of newfound power. Nancy well remembers the Henry Hyde impeachment debacle that lost the GOP its majority. That woman is not stupid, she understands the legislative process and she can count votes. I am not sure she can survive this pincher movement.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2018
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  2. Gatewood

    Gatewood Well-Known Member

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    Why do our Dems always miss the (heh) elephant in the room? The big problem with Nancy Pelosi is quite stark and ultimately practical in nature, which is that she has mentally lost it. Juat as it was obvious to thinking people paying attention back in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was too physically ill to be president it is equally obvious that something seriously has gone wrong with Nancy Pelosi's brain. The Dem Party leadership won't openly acknowledge it but too many camera lenses too often have caught her exhibiting severe bouts of senior dementia.

    So from a practical political issue the answer is easy. If you are a Dem who actually cares about the health of your party going forward but remain obsessed by identity politics then replace her with another woman or at least with a gay male. There, problem solved. I am sure that many supposedly straight Dem House of Representative males would cheerfully exit the closet in order to gain the speaker-ship.

    If you are a right of center citizen however then you encourage Dems to hang on to blatantly senile Nancy Pelosi with both hands for the . . . BAD . . . of the Dem Party.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2018
  3. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Its fairly obvious what the democrats will do if they get the house.

    They will stop all progress on anything for the next two years.

    That will be their only goal. There is simply no way they would ever work with Trump even on something they like, they hate him that much.

    Then the economy will turn downwards again and Trump will put the blame squarely on the democrats ensuring him an easy victory in 2020 where we take the House back and get stronger in the senate.
     
  4. TrumpTrain

    TrumpTrain Banned

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    Thank God, it ain't gonna happen:

    RealClear Politics
    GOP's Special Election Wins Counter Media Spin

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a..._election_wins_counter_media_spin_137760.html

    The media narrative from Tuesday night's special election in Ohio's 12th Congressional District is that even a loss is good news for Democrats. What's been under-reported is that Republicans won the vast majority of the 11 special elections for U.S. House and Senate seats held since the 2016 election.

    One of the races, in California’s 34th Congressional District, was won by a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Democratic district. In the remaining 10 special elections, where Republicans were defending seats, eight were won by Republicans.

    The media narrative is that Democrats’ “success” in making some of these races close has broader implications for the November midterms. Not so. Only in Alabama, where Doug Jones beat flawed candidate Roy Moore, and in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, where Conor Lamb beat Rick Saccone, can Democrats claim true victories.

    Special elections are a minority party's dream come true. They are all about turnout, which poses a challenge given that they are held at off-cycle times, and involve open seats. Incumbents usually have enormous advantages of money, name identification and organization. However, since the 2016 election, the advantage was negated in five of the 11 special elections. These were held to replace Cabinet appointees in the Trump administration, all of whom had strong support in their home states and districts: Jeff Sessions, Mick Mulvaney, Tom Price, Mike Pompeo and Ryan Zinke.

    Another factor in the closeness of some of the 11 special elections stems from the typically low turnout, which gives third-party candidates more influence. In the PA-18 race, for example, Lamb’s surprise victory was partially due to a right-of-center Libertarian candidate who got 1,379 votes -- a potentially pivotal number since Saccone lost by just 627 votes. In Tuesday’s OH-12 election, Green Party candidate Joe Manchik drew 1,127 votes, a total that may have prevented the mandatory recount for Democrat Danny O'Connor, who trails Troy Balderson by fewer than 2,000 votes.

    The numbers tell a different story than the one proffered by many in the media. Spotlighting them supplies a valuable counterweight, which President Trump himself provided Wednesday. In a tweet, he said that “Republicans have now won 8 out of 9 House Seats, yet if you listen to the Fake News Media you would think we are being clobbered.”
     
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  5. TheGreatSatan

    TheGreatSatan Banned

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    It would be a shame if Americans elected globalist Democrats who do not have their best interest at heart.
     
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  6. Crawdadr

    Crawdadr Well-Known Member

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    If the Dems win they will do nothing. That will be their goal. I dont know if that is a winning strategy for them. Though I think they will miss the mark by about 2 votes and not get the majority.
     
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  7. TheGreatSatan

    TheGreatSatan Banned

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    If the Democrats win they will do everything they can to make life miserable in America to blame it on Trump
     
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  8. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    That would just make them GOP-copycats.
     
  9. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Impeach the Childlike Emperor and get to work on single payer healthcare and free or maybe income- & academic performance-based graduated-tuition higher education. Even if they can't get those reforms in right away, it would make sense to start hammering it all out early and get it ready for a sensible president (which Pence very probably isn't, assuming he survives the process).
     
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  10. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Pelosi should run for President. She'd win by a landslide. Mitt Romney should be her running mate.
     
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  11. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The Democratic Party's solution to millions of college graduates who can't find jobs is to have 10s of millions of college grads who can't find jobs.
     
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  12. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    We need a skilled workforce, and public education today obviously isn't cutting it.
     
  13. Ronstar

    Ronstar Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If Dems win back the House:

    1. restart the collussion investigation.

    2. subpoena Trump's tax records from the IRS.

    3. reinstate higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations

    4. Pass Medicaid for All.

    5. Legalize marijuana.

    6. Pass tax incentives to buy hybrid and electric cars

    7. Pass tax incentives to buy solar panels.

    8. Pass tax incentives to buy geothermal hvac systems.

    9. Codify NAFTA into Federal law.
     
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  14. raytri

    raytri Well-Known Member

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    Given that the GOP would still hold the presidency and the Senate, simply blocking further damage would be a big part of the job.

    As far as Pelosi, I think she is the Democratic equivalent of Mitch McConnell, in that she is apparently very good as a parliamentary manager, but is a lousy public face of the party. I think she is old and out of touch. So regardless of who might replace her, I think it's time for Democrats to move on and get some new blood.

    After that, Democrats can use the House to launch meaningful investigations of various issues, rather than the GOP-led whitewashes produced by the likes of Devin Nunes. I hope those investigations are conducted impartially, and are not simply partisan witchhunts.

    I think the House can also push hard against Trump's abuses of power without necessarily leading to impeachment, simply by doing their job: standing up to his excesses as a co-equal branch, rather than rolling over for him the way Nunes et al have done.

    And then there's using the House to demonstrate how Democrats might govern, by passing bills that would actually solve problems, even if they know the bills will not pass the Senate or be signed by Trump.
     
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  15. raytri

    raytri Well-Known Member

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    Sure. That's why college-educated adults age 25-34 have the lowest unemployment rate of any educational group, and the more education you have, the lower your unemployment rate. :roll:
    https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cbc.asp

    Do you just make up stuff that sounds good?
     
  16. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    Man, what an agenda! You guys should run on this!
     
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  17. btthegreat

    btthegreat Well-Known Member

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    We completely agree. I am just wary of overreach and unless the public is pretty overwhelming in their desire to see impeachment. Hyde made that mistake and lost the trust of the voters.
     
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  18. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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    I like #4, Medicaid for all !!! :clapping:
     
  19. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    Evidently, you've never heard tell of this thing, you know, called the Senate.... Or, for that matter the guy who must sign this crap... But hey, nothing says progress like wasting everyone's time.....
     
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  20. btthegreat

    btthegreat Well-Known Member

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    You do the right thing, expect others to do the right thing, and deal with the disappointment when it does not happen. That's what we expect voters to do - until they get sick and tired of waiting and waiting and waiting and then they decide to make a change so that progress really moves. That is what passing those bills is about.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2018
  21. Pycckia

    Pycckia Well-Known Member

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    How about fixing public education?
     
  22. webrockk

    webrockk Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Trump: I too have a pen and a phone.

    and the short-sighted morons could not say a word...

    hehehe
     
  23. perotista

    perotista Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A couple of things. Bill Clinton's impeachment didn't cause the GOP to lose its majority. The impeachment was at the end of 1998. The Republicans held the majority in the House from 1995 through 2006. As for legislation that might embarrass the Republicans, Mitch McConnell If the GOP retains the senate will use the old Harry Reid trick of tabling every Democratic legislation that comes from the house.

    The bigger question I have, since the Democrats have made this basically an anti-Trump midterm campaign without any real initiatives or ideas, exactly what outside of regaining power do they hope to accomplish? I agree being just anti-Trump and not standing for anything else is probably more than enough to win back the house.

    What to do with Pelosi? That up to the democrats. She is toxic for sure and just mentioning her name in a congressional campaign, like in my Georgia CD-6 was enough for the GOP candidate to pull it out. That election went from being about Trump, a loser for the GOP, to being about Pelosi, a winner for the GOP.

    I would add this, whomever takes the reins if not Pelosi, will soon be vilified as much as Pelosi. I wouldn't let that enter the equation. Trump hasn't accomplished much at all. Outside his tax cuts, what else has he done. Legislative wise I mean. Replacement and Repeal of Obamacare failed, due to the Republicans and not the Democrats. DACA is no where near to being solved although Trump made some proposals. I really don't see much at all of Trump's agenda that needs to be stopped since he basically hasn't had one.

    The wall, well nothing there either.
     
  24. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yeah but in their defense they do that anyway.
     
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  25. jack4freedom

    jack4freedom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Are they also collectivist? Come on, use your big word, don't hold out.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2018

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