Historic Poll Devastates Democrats: Worst Voter Approval Rating in 35 Years

JSRG said:

Speaker of the House is nowhere close to the power of the President in terms of policy.

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It’s Leadership of the Legislative (and co-equal) Branch of Government.
Maybe because we’ve gotten used to the Beohners and Ryans and McCarthys that we fail to remember the Rayburns, O’Neils who wielded tremendous power, policy-wise.

Pommer said:

White-people “lost” when other people gained?

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No, that's not what "relative to white people" means. At least not how I understood it.

Take, for instance, the right to vote. The absolute significance of the right to vote within United States laws is arguable. Many people say that the US today is an oligarchy and the right to vote means relatively little in absolute terms of governing the nation.

In that case, the right to vote for non-white people also means at best relatively little in absolute terms of governing the nation.

But that "at best" is only achieved if at least non-whites have the same ability to vote as whites.

So, we can say that in voting and many other ways, black people made gains relative to white people...and still argue that those gains are not absolutely valuable.

Pommer said:

Trump’s a smart guy, politically, (for not being a politician)…if he can convince people that this trait/talent applies to anything he may deign to touch, he’s going to use that until it doesn’t work anymore. But by then, he’ll have everything else in place so that, when the facade crumbles, we’ll all understand that the All-powerful don’t need “permission” of the people, to rule.

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A2SG said:

Oh, I get Trump's skill in the political arena, but it's borne out of personality or charisma, not skill at governing. So I wonder, when Trump is no longer able to actively participate (despite what he may believe, that's the end of this term), who will carry on the agenda of the Heritage Foundation? Who has the personality or the charisma (or sheer hutzpah) to be the next Trump?

I don't see Vance doing it, nor any of Trump's descendants. Or Lindsey Graham. Or Ted Cruz.

-- A2SG, doesn't say a lot for the enduring future some see the GOP having post-Trump....

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Both can be true.

We can have Republican politicians that broadly suck and everyone knows it, yet through gerrymandering and other techniques being put in place, be unable to oust them.

Cruz, for instance.

RDKirk said:

Both can be true.

We can have Republican politicians that broadly suck and everyone knows it, yet through gerrymandering and other techniques being put in place, be unable to oust them.

Cruz, for instance.

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I'm not sure why I was quoted here, since this reply has nothing to do with anything I said. But, I guess I can say I agree that ousting Ted Cruz would probably be a good thing.

-- A2SG, then again, I'm not from Texas, so I never voted for the guy anyway....

A2SG said:

I'm not sure why I was quoted here, since this reply has nothing to do with anything I said.

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Sure, it does.

It can be true that no other Republican "has the personality or the charisma (or sheer hutzpah) to be the next Trump?"

And at the same time, "he’ll have everything else in place so that, when the facade crumbles, we’ll all understand that the All-powerful don’t need 'permission' of the people, to rule."

RDKirk said:

Sure, it does.

It can be true that no other Republican "has the personality or the charisma (or sheer hutzpah) to be the next Trump?"

And at the same time, "he’ll have everything else in place so that, when the facade crumbles, we’ll all understand that the All-powerful don’t need 'permission' of the people, to rule."

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So, does that mean the Heritage Foundation is calling the shots? They're the true leader of the country at the moment?

-- A2SG, sure seems like it sometimes....

JSRG said:

Speaker of the House is nowhere close to the power of the President in terms of policy.

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The President, as presumptive head of his party can speak for the policies that the party would like to see enacted, but he can't originate laws. His duty is merely to see that they are carried out. The Speaker of the House controls the law-making process in the House, and controls the House's responsibility to oversee the President's actions and even to impeach him. If the President does something illegal or unconstitutional, the courts may rule against him but they have no actual power to stop him. Only the House, under the leadership of the Speaker has that power. It's quite a catbird seat.

Of course, things are different now that the Congress has abandoned its Constitutional responsibilities altogether.

Pommer said:

White-people “lost” when other people gained?

Are you sure that you wanna go with this, chief sir?

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What I meant was that white people have stayed about were they were but others have caught up.

BCP1928 said:

The President, as presumptive head of his party can speak for the policies that the party would like to see enacted, but he can't originate laws. His duty is merely to see that they are carried out. The Speaker of the House controls the law-making process in the House, and controls the House's responsibility to oversee the President's actions and even to impeach him. If the President does something illegal or unconstitutional, the courts may rule against him but they have no actual power to stop him. Only the House, under the leadership of the Speaker has that power. It's quite a catbird seat.

Of course, things are different now that the Congress has abandoned its Constitutional responsibilities altogether.

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Yes, right now the Congress believes their responsibility is to pass the laws the President desires. Some of them have literally said so.

BCP1928 said:

What I meant was that white people have stayed about were they were but others have caught up.

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Okay, maybe my glasses were foggy?

Pommer said:

It’s Leadership of the Legislative (and co-equal) Branch of Government.
Maybe because we’ve gotten used to the Beohners and Ryans and McCarthys that we fail to remember the Rayburns, O’Neils who wielded tremendous power, policy-wise.

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Even if Congress is co-equal to the Executive, that's not the question at hand here. It's about the President compared to the Speaker of the House. And it's pretty obvious the President has more power than the Speaker of the House. Even if the branches are considered equal, the status of those two in them is not. The President has far more control over the Executive Branch than the Speaker of the House has over the Legislative Branch. It isn't even close.

It definitely seems to be the President has more power over the Executive Branch than the Speaker has over the House of Representatives... but that's not a point that needs debating. Because even if the Speaker of the House has 100% perfect control over the House of Representatives... that's only one of two chambers of Congress. The Speaker has essentially no role in the Senate. So power over half of the Legislative Branch is completely denied to the Speaker of the House. Even worse, it's the stronger one they don't have control over. The Senate gets to vote on presidential appointees, whereas the House gets basically nothing in return.

BCP1928 said:

The President, as presumptive head of his party can speak for the policies that the party would like to see enacted, but he can't originate laws.

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This might make congress as a whole more powerful, but not the Speaker of the House. The Speaker is one person out of several hundred and their vote practically irrelevant. But, to be fair, the Speaker has a lot of power over their party in the House. So even if their individual vote only counts as 1, they exert real power over the rest of their party in the House. However, we run into the problem detailed above, namely their lack of power over the Senate.

But even if we ignore the Senate, and we suppose that the Speaker of the House had total power over the members of their party in the House. Astoundingly, I would say the President still has more power over the passage of laws.

That's because of the veto power. If the President says no to a law, then you need 2/3 of each chamber of congress to make it a law. No party since the 1960's has had 2/3 power in the House, and it's hard to see it happening anytime in the foreseeable future. So even with the backing of every single member of their party, the Speaker of the House has less power than the President does when passing laws. They have to enlist people of the other party to do it, and they don't have control over that power. I suppose you could say they might have power of persuasion, but surely the President has that power also.

So the Speaker has less power than the President in passing laws even before taking the Senate into consideration. But when we do, it makes their power even smaller, because you need the required 2/3 of the Senate to go with. That puts it more in the ball of the President pro Tempore of the Senate (basically the Senate verison of the Speaker of the House, for those who don't recognize the term), but they have the same problem of so rarely having in their party the 2/3 needed to override the veto. They have to get the other party to sign up for it. And again, maybe they have some level of power of persuasion in trying to convince people, but the President can surely do that as well.

So it seems to me that the President has more power over the passage of legislation than the Speaker of the House and President pro tempore of the Senate combined. Which is incredibly stupid, and is why I'm right with this guy in thinking they need to weaken or abolish the veto power. But that is the situation. And if the President has more power over the passing of legislation than the Speaker of the House and President pro Tempore of the Senate combined, they clearly have more power than just the Speaker of the House.

BCP1928 said:

His duty is merely to see that they are carried out.

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There is a lot of power in this "merely," as we can easily see with how many policies abruptly changed when Trump entered office, when Biden entered office, and when Trump came back (no doubt, the next Democrat--or even the next Republican--will do a ton of changing too).

Not only does the President get a whole lot of power in regards to enforcing law that affect policy, the President also has the ability to simply choose not to enforce a law. Don't like that something is illegal? Don't enforce it! Trump's doing that with Tiktok! There's a law on the books banning it, which Trump has just been refusing to enforce. And now the White House has a channel on a platform that is banned by law. Now, before anyone gets into whataboutisms, one can certainly point to past Presidents declining to enforce laws too (though I don't think any were quite as flagrant about it as Trump). But the fact one can say this about past Presidents also just proves my point about how much power the President has in this area.

And all this is on top of the fact the President already, as noted above, has more power than the Speaker of the House on the passage of legislation!

BCP1928 said:

The Speaker of the House controls the law-making process in the House, and controls the House's responsibility to oversee the President's actions and even to impeach him. If the President does something illegal or unconstitutional, the courts may rule against him but they have no actual power to stop him. Only the House, under the leadership of the Speaker has that power. It's quite a catbird seat.

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Except it isn't a catbird seat even in regards to impeachment.

It is true that Step 1 of the impeachment process is for the House of Representatives to refer it to the Senate. And you only need a simple majority for it, so if we assume the Speaker of the House has absolute control over all of the members of their party in the House, they could easily refer it to the Senate. But then you need 2/3 of the Senate to vote to actually throw out the President. I have considerable difficulty imagining a situation where you could get 2/3 of the Senate to throw out the President but could not get a majority of the House to do so. That means the role of the House of Representatives is a mere formality in the process. So even here, the Speaker of the House doesn't have any real power;.

BCP1928 said:

Of course, things are different now that the Congress has abandoned its Constitutional responsibilities altogether.

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Which again just goes to show how the President has so much more power over policy than the Speaker of the House does.

That's

JSRG said:

Even if Congress is co-equal to the Executive, that's not the question at hand here. It's about the President compared to the Speaker of the House. And it's pretty obvious the President has more power than the Speaker of the House. Even if the branches are considered equal, the status of those two in them is not. The President has far more control over the Executive Branch than the Speaker of the House has over the Legislative Branch. It isn't even close.

It definitely seems to be the President has more power over the Executive Branch than the Speaker has over the House of Representatives... but that's not a point that needs debating. Because even if the Speaker of the House has 100% perfect control over the House of Representatives... that's only one of two chambers of Congress. The Speaker has essentially no role in the Senate. So power over half of the Legislative Branch is completely denied to the Speaker of the House. Even worse, it's the stronger one they don't have control over. The Senate gets to vote on presidential appointees, whereas the House gets basically nothing in return.



This might make congress as a whole more powerful, but not the Speaker of the House. The Speaker is one person out of several hundred and their vote practically irrelevant. But, to be fair, the Speaker has a lot of power over their party in the House. So even if their individual vote only counts as 1, they exert real power over the rest of their party in the House. However, we run into the problem detailed above, namely their lack of power over the Senate.

But even if we ignore the Senate, and we suppose that the Speaker of the House had total power over the members of their party in the House. Astoundingly, I would say the President still has more power over the passage of laws.

That's because of the veto power. If the President says no to a law, then you need 2/3 of each chamber of congress to make it a law. No party since the 1960's has had 2/3 power in the House, and it's hard to see it happening anytime in the foreseeable future. So even with the backing of every single member of their party, the Speaker of the House has less power than the President does when passing laws. They have to enlist people of the other party to do it, and they don't have control over that power. I suppose you could say they might have power of persuasion, but surely the President has that power also.

So the Speaker has less power than the President in passing laws even before taking the Senate into consideration. But when we do, it makes their power even smaller, because you need the required 2/3 of the Senate to go with. That puts it more in the ball of the President pro Tempore of the Senate (basically the Senate verison of the Speaker of the House, for those who don't recognize the term), but they have the same problem of so rarely having in their party the 2/3 needed to override the veto. They have to get the other party to sign up for it. And again, maybe they have some level of power of persuasion in trying to convince people, but the President can surely do that as well.

So it seems to me that the President has more power over the passage of legislation than the Speaker of the House and President pro tempore of the Senate combined. Which is incredibly stupid, and is why I'm right with this guy in thinking they need to weaken or abolish the veto power. But that is the situation. And if the President has more power over the passing of legislation than the Speaker of the House and President pro Tempore of the Senate combined, they clearly have more power than just the Speaker of the House.



There is a lot of power in this "merely," as we can easily see with how many policies abruptly changed when Trump entered office, when Biden entered office, and when Trump came back (no doubt, the next Democrat--or even the next Republican--will do a ton of changing too).

Not only does the President get a whole lot of power in regards to enforcing law that affect policy, the President also has the ability to simply choose not to enforce a law. Don't like that something is illegal? Don't enforce it! Trump's doing that with Tiktok! There's a law on the books banning it, which Trump has just been refusing to enforce. And now the White House has a channel on a platform that is banned by law. Now, before anyone gets into whataboutisms, one can certainly point to past Presidents declining to enforce laws too (though I don't think any were quite as flagrant about it as Trump). But the fact one can say this about past Presidents also just proves my point about how much power the President has in this area. And this is on top of the fact the President already, as noted above, has more power than the Speaker of the House on the passage of legislation!



Except it isn't a catbird seat even in regards to impeachment.

It is true that Step 1 of the impeachment process is for the House of Representatives to refer it to the Senate. And you only need a simple majority for it, so if we assume the Speaker of the House has absolute control over all of the members of their party in the House, they could easily refer it to the Senate. But then you need 2/3 of the Senate to vote to actually throw out the President. I have considerable difficulty imagining a situation where you could get 2/3 of the Senate to throw out the President but could not get a majority of the House to do so. That means the role of the House of Representatives is a mere foramlity in the process. So even here, the Speaker of the House doesn't have any real power;.


Which again just goes to show how the President has so much more power over policy than the Speaker of the House does.

Click to expand...

Fine. Conservatives shouldn't mind a bit, then, if AOC was Speaker of a labor majority House.

JSRG said:

Even if Congress is co-equal to the Executive, that's not the question at hand here. It's about the President compared to the Speaker of the House. And it's pretty obvious the President has more power than the Speaker of the House. Even if the branches are considered equal, the status of those two in them is not. The President has far more control over the Executive Branch than the Speaker of the House has over the Legislative Branch. It isn't even close.

It definitely seems to be the President has more power over the Executive Branch than the Speaker has over the House of Representatives... but that's not a point that needs debating. Because even if the Speaker of the House has 100% perfect control over the House of Representatives... that's only one of two chambers of Congress. The Speaker has essentially no role in the Senate. So power over half of the Legislative Branch is completely denied to the Speaker of the House. Even worse, it's the stronger one they don't have control over. The Senate gets to vote on presidential appointees, whereas the House gets basically nothing in return.



This might make congress as a whole more powerful, but not the Speaker of the House. The Speaker is one person out of several hundred and their vote practically irrelevant. But, to be fair, the Speaker has a lot of power over their party in the House. So even if their individual vote only counts as 1, they exert real power over the rest of their party in the House. However, we run into the problem detailed above, namely their lack of power over the Senate.

But even if we ignore the Senate, and we suppose that the Speaker of the House had total power over the members of their party in the House. Astoundingly, I would say the President still has more power over the passage of laws.

That's because of the veto power. If the President says no to a law, then you need 2/3 of each chamber of congress to make it a law. No party since the 1960's has had 2/3 power in the House, and it's hard to see it happening anytime in the foreseeable future. So even with the backing of every single member of their party, the Speaker of the House has less power than the President does when passing laws. They have to enlist people of the other party to do it, and they don't have control over that power. I suppose you could say they might have power of persuasion, but surely the President has that power also.

So the Speaker has less power than the President in passing laws even before taking the Senate into consideration. But when we do, it makes their power even smaller, because you need the required 2/3 of the Senate to go with. That puts it more in the ball of the President pro Tempore of the Senate (basically the Senate verison of the Speaker of the House, for those who don't recognize the term), but they have the same problem of so rarely having in their party the 2/3 needed to override the veto. They have to get the other party to sign up for it. And again, maybe they have some level of power of persuasion in trying to convince people, but the President can surely do that as well.

So it seems to me that the President has more power over the passage of legislation than the Speaker of the House and President pro tempore of the Senate combined. Which is incredibly stupid, and is why I'm right with this guy in thinking they need to weaken or abolish the veto power. But that is the situation. And if the President has more power over the passing of legislation than the Speaker of the House and President pro Tempore of the Senate combined, they clearly have more power than just the Speaker of the House.



There is a lot of power in this "merely," as we can easily see with how many policies abruptly changed when Trump entered office, when Biden entered office, and when Trump came back (no doubt, the next Democrat--or even the next Republican--will do a ton of changing too).

Not only does the President get a whole lot of power in regards to enforcing law that affect policy, the President also has the ability to simply choose not to enforce a law. Don't like that something is illegal? Don't enforce it! Trump's doing that with Tiktok! There's a law on the books banning it, which Trump has just been refusing to enforce. And now the White House has a channel on a platform that is banned by law. Now, before anyone gets into whataboutisms, one can certainly point to past Presidents declining to enforce laws too (though I don't think any were quite as flagrant about it as Trump). But the fact one can say this about past Presidents also just proves my point about how much power the President has in this area.

And all this is on top of the fact the President already, as noted above, has more power than the Speaker of the House on the passage of legislation!



Except it isn't a catbird seat even in regards to impeachment.

It is true that Step 1 of the impeachment process is for the House of Representatives to refer it to the Senate. And you only need a simple majority for it, so if we assume the Speaker of the House has absolute control over all of the members of their party in the House, they could easily refer it to the Senate. But then you need 2/3 of the Senate to vote to actually throw out the President. I have considerable difficulty imagining a situation where you could get 2/3 of the Senate to throw out the President but could not get a majority of the House to do so. That means the role of the House of Representatives is a mere formality in the process. So even here, the Speaker of the House doesn't have any real power;.


Which again just goes to show how the President has so much more power over policy than the Speaker of the House does.

Click to expand...

In the history of national politics, the Speaker of the House has been able to wield much more political influence over the course of legislation than indicated in the black and amber of the Constitution...particularly in the last half century that I've been voting and paying attention. Maybe always before that.

And for anyone else who has been paying attention, it's disingenuous to claim otherwise.

BCP1928 said:

That's

Fine. Conservatives shouldn't mind a bit, then, if AOC was Speaker of a labor majority House.

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I never said the Speaker of the House was powerless. Obviously it's an important position. But the claim you made was:

"The place for AOC is Speaker of the House--a much more powerful position in terms of policy than President."

For the reasons given up, I do not think the Speaker of the House has as much power over policy as the President does, let alone "much more." The Speaker of the House, despite having some power over policy, has noticeably less than the President does.

RDKirk said:

In the history of national politics, the Speaker of the House has been able to wield much more political influence over the course of legislation than indicated in the black and amber of the Constitution...particularly in the last half century that I've been voting and paying attention. Maybe always before that.

And for anyone else who has been paying attention, it's disingenuous to claim otherwise.

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I never did claim otherwise. "The President has more power over policy than the Speaker of the House" (the argument I did make) is a very different one than "The Speaker of the House has little power" (the statement your arguments appear to try to criticize).

mark46 said:

Democrats need to look to their identity politics and lack of understanding of issues of workers, farmers and other non-elites. They need to dump the emphasis on issues such as insisting that we not be so ignorant as to want to teach our children that there are two sexes and that males should be welcome in girls' sports. They must understand that parents (n school boards) should be as important as teachers' unions in deciding what should be taught to our children. Curiously, we have come far from Obama's inclusive policies and his wish that we do not emphasize race and gender.

===================
Believe it or not, it is not Republican labeled socialist policies that are at issue from 1912 until now. The Republicans are right. Democratic socialist policies have been part of the Democratic Party at least since Roosevelt's New Deal. And we are proud of our success in implementing these policies.

The failure of the Democratic Party does NOT lie in the implementation of a better and better safety net and better and better civil rights and environmental protections. And yes, these were part of the progressive Social Party platform in 1912. The major objection that the majority has opposed over the years is federal ownerships of some industries and mining resources, although we do have AMTRAK.

=====================================================

The Socialist Party's 1912 platform advocated for a radical reorganization of American society and the economy, calling for
collective ownership and democratic management of major industries and resources.
The platform focused on a wide range of issues, including:

Social and industrial reforms

• A shorter workday, more effective inspections of workplaces, and the prohibition of child labor under 16 years of age.
• Minimum wage scales, according to Sage American History.
• Old-age pensions and insurance against unemployment, invalidism, industrial diseases, accidents, and death.

Economic policy
The platform proposed public ownership of major industries and resources, such as railroads, telegraphs, and mines. It also called for progressive income and inheritance taxes to help fund the socialization of industry and advocated for the collective ownership of the banking and currency system.

Political reforms
Key political reforms in the platform included unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women, direct election of the President and Vice-President, and the abolition of the Senate and presidential veto power. The party also sought the abolition of the Supreme Court's power to rule on the constitutionality of legislation and easier ways to amend the Constitution.

Other Issues
The platform supported freedom of the press, speech, and assembly, the conservation of natural resources, and the collective ownership of patents. It also aimed to address the needs of farmers through measures like state-backed cooperatives and progressive land taxes. The party's stance on racial segregation evolved, ultimately adopting a resolution against racism and supporting the organization of workers across racial lines.

The ideas presented in the 1912 platform, while considered radical at the time, reflected Progressive Era concerns about industrialization and inequality, advocating for increased government regulation and social welfare.

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The problem is the Democrats can't do that. Those wild social policies are so wrapped up in the radical leftists wing that has taken over the party that they cant just do Democratic Socialism.

However America at large is STILL politically motivated by economics first. Should the economy collapse or take a severe downturn, we just might see a radical change in the vote. Those Democratic Socialist promises may just get the upper hand.

The thing is if the economy gets hit that hard, those programs wont survive. Those programs NEED a flourishing economy to actually have any chance of success. Capitalism has to be very active and growing. But the left is this country are anti-capitalist. Its a dichotomy that will never work. But Americans will try it, if they get hit too hard with a bad economy.

rjs330 said:

The thing is if the economy gets hit that hard, those programs wont survive. Those programs NEED a flourishing economy to actually have any chance of success. Capitalism has to be very active and growing. But the left is this country are anti-capitalist. Its a dichotomy that will never work. But Americans will try it, if they get hit too hard with a bad economy.

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We have to keep the rich, rich, in order to keep the present system...of keeping the rich, rich!?

Okaaaay.

Pommer said:

We have to keep the rich, rich, in order to keep the present system...of keeping the rich, rich!?

Okaaaay.

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It's all part of the messaging. What rjs has been taught to call "capitalism" is actually oligarchy, in the hopes that he won't notice that what he has been taught to call "hatred of capitalism" is actually closer to real free market capitalism.

rjs330 said:

The problem is the Democrats can't do that. Those wild social policies are so wrapped up in the radical leftists wing that has taken over the party that they cant just do Democratic Socialism.

However America at large is STILL politically motivated by economics first. Should the economy collapse or take a severe downturn, we just might see a radical change in the vote. Those Democratic Socialist promises may just get the upper hand.

The thing is if the economy gets hit that hard, those programs wont survive. Those programs NEED a flourishing economy to actually have any chance of success. Capitalism has to be very active and growing. But the left is this country are anti-capitalist. Its a dichotomy that will never work. But Americans will try it, if they get hit too hard with a bad economy.

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This is not an untrue statement.

BCP1928 said:

It's all part of the messaging. What rjs has been taught to call "capitalism" is actually oligarchy, in the hopes that he won't notice that what he has been taught to call "hatred of capitalism" is actually closer to real free market capitalism.

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This is also not an untrue statement.

At this point, neither party is on a trajectory that can land on a point that is both politically and economically viable.

We are in a similar place as the nation was in 1900...with no Theodore Roosevelt in sight.