Simplicitus does this mean anything or just meh?

I'm surely in the minority, but I think this forum has become a little unhinged on the issue of norms. I get it. Trump is awful. He has no respect for norms at all. He is debasing the office and the country at an alarming rate. And he isn't alone. A lot of the GOP is complicit in the erosion.

But what is the endgame? To turn the entire government, and both parties, into a stinking cesspool?

I'm sure that everyone is going to tell me to wake the **** up, that I should get a straw and start drinking from the cesspool if I care about norms because there is no way to win without imitating the GOP. But I just don't believe that the situation for the Democratic party is so dire that it has to abandon all principles.

muh norms

Read up about iterated prisoner's dilemmas. The end game is you get the other side to stop ****ing you over constantly.

Exactly. If the choice facing Mitch McConnell is: (a) don't steal a SC seat, or (b) steal a SC seat and listen to some ineffectual whining, of course he'll steal the seat. If the choice is either (a) or (b) steal the seat and face a procedural war until the balance is restored, the decision could be different.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...03668721246209

Which is different to:
you steal seats and we will steal seats
You cheat and we will cheat
You torture and we will torture

Obstruct, resist etc etc but don't join in

There is no obstruction on par with stealing a seat. There's a reason McConnell calls that his greatest accomplishment. You have to steal seats back, or else there is no disincentive for them to be stolen in the first place.

All the Glenn Greenwald fans I know ****ing hate Sam Harris

although I'm the only Glenn Greenwald fan I know

And Greenwald doesn't like Harris at all:

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-muslim-animus

So maybe you should give Harris a chance, could be right up your alley.

Are we supppsed to have forgotten that you tried to turn 2p2 into a white supremacist hate site?

I think the main value in playing dirty is that it can temporarily limit the GOP's rise to power. Iterated game theory means nothing to these people; they are stealing the government and moving it down a fascistic path as fast as they can. That's their charter; that's their brand. The throttle is open and it ain't closing.

But gerrymandering CA/NY, refusing to seat judges, etc, will limit the damage they impose on the country, and perhaps one day this will all come to an end by giving them a crushing political defeat sooner rather than later. The more power the opposition has, and the more political resistance they encounter, the more difficult it will be to bring the country into full authoritarianism.

The norms of this country are going to suffer one way or the other; I'm not sure that playing nice and taking the righteous path will necessarily preserve them any better than playing dirty will.

You may be able to justify stealing seats. But not on the basis of the prisoners dilemma - the idea that you could get through enough iterations in human lifespan/memory for cooperation to triumph is extraordinary. If the argument is to steal seats with a view to changing an obviously flawed system then it could make a lot of sense.

Not that I'm against prisoner dilemma stategies in many cases. It's a nice, forgiving, cooperation seeking strategy as well as about short term retaliation.

LOOOOOL at the idea that Harley riders give a flying **** where there bikes are actually built. It’s what the bikes represent, nothing more.

Trump might lose a handful of votes from actual laid off Harley employees but that’s it. Most likely half votes as they’ll just stay home and cancel out d10’s non-vote.

i wonder what % of the elected democrats who are advocating the "just let the republicans win" strategy also have chiefs of staff who post virulently anti-democrat memes on their personal social media accounts unironically

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...gn-chief-staff

probably >10%, i mean how else do you explain such incompetence other than pure sabotage

The norms are gone. Democrats can either retaliate or not.

Democrats are about to win the midterm popular vote by 5%+ and they will still be a coin flip to win the house. And that's AFTER substantially every GOP state shredding the voter rolls of democratic voters.

The time to flip **** has passed. That this is even an argument shows why the Democratic Party needs new leadership. While it's voters are suffering real and lasting harm from this hate fueled march to tyranny, Chuck and Nancy are worried about the propaganda minister's feelings.

Gerrymandering seems fine as a strategy, but disenfranchising voters, for whatever reason, might be good tactics, but just seems horrible. Wouldn't the better alternative be to install automatic registration of everyone who turns 18 or something like that. Making it easier for young people and minorities to vote should have the same effect as disenfranchising old people.
Of course it's going to be hard as Democrats don't control enough state legislatures, but that is true for both strategies. So the main thing Democrats need to do is get their heads out of their asses and pay more attention to state politics. I found this episode of planet money on the topic quiet eye-opening:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2...ode-845-redmap

Are there seriously people who think that if Dems play nice on SCOTUS, next time McConnell will say, "Gee, I'll do the right thing even though it's a free SCOTUS seat to steal with no risk."

Wake up. Obama played nice on the ACA, and waited for Brown to be seated after the special election in Mass, thus killing any shot of a public option. What'd the GOP do? Race bills to the floor before Jones got seated... And delay seating him as long as possible.

Do you really think that if Kennedy or RBG retire or pass away in December of 2020, and a Dem is taking over in a month, Trump and McConnell won't ram through a 40 year old deplorable judge if they have 50 seats in the Senate? It's a mortal lock.

It's all prisoners dilemma, and McConnell and his cohorts and the billionaires who fund them sit in fancy chairs around mahogany tables smoking expensive cigars while drinking absurdly expensive Scotch, and they laugh at Democrats' stupidity. They will keep blowing up norms until the Dems make them stop, and I can only think of a few ways to do it and they all involve policy or politics we would all find reprehensible.

It doesn't matter that we won't get through "enough" iterations of prisoner's dilemma if the GOP wins every ****ing iteration by blowing up norms. How many times in a row do you let them win before altering strategy?

How many more iterations before they've locked in one-party rule? A little more gerrymandering, a little more voter suppression, and one more SCOTUS seat could be it.

BUT THAT WAS JESUS' MONEY

They should do that too, I forgot about it (I'm posting from the table in a tourney), but that has to be part of it. Also online voting, Election Day as a holiday, longer hours at polling sites, more early voting, etc.

I agree whole heartedly that voter suppression is horrible... But the GOP is doing it en masse and the only way to make them stop is to inflict the maximum amount of pain on them electorally, until BOTH sides want to make it illegal.

There is probably some chance of deterrence on the narrow issue of monkeying with SCOTUS appointments, and probably some chance of not establishing a new (and worse) norm.

But I am dubious about whether the disciplining effect that is inherent in an iterated prisoner's dilemma is achievable across the spectrum of potential political issues.

For example, if Democrats took aggressive steps to disenfranchise a Republican voting bloc, I am virtually certain it would do nothing to deter the GOP's efforts to disenfranchise black voters.

And how many politicians who ignore and abuse political norms in the short run go on to do good things in the long run? Not many.

I guess this is where we differ. In addition to doubting whether the ends always justifies the means, on issues like voter suppression, I have absolutely no confidence that hard-to-defend means will lead to the desired ends.

Pushing these issues is another kettle of fish entirely. I don't have the slightest discomfort with any of this, although I would want to think through the mechanics and security of on-line voting.

Felons should be allowed to vote, even those who are currently incarcerated. Add that to the list.

The bolded bit nails it. There will be no change, no return to whatever "normal" looks like, until it hits the other side and hits it hard. That goes for voting rights, judicial appointments, getting help from a hostile foreign power during elections, whatnot. If the Dems had been the ones organizing and carefully gerrymandering themselves into a permanent minority majority around the country rather than the GOP we'd have already had a constitutional amendment on the matter.

It also has the benefit of Dems not being a coin flip to take the House when they win the national vote by 5%, so there's that. The difference between this and a prisoner's dilemma is that the effects are ongoing.

Ideally, fighting back would lead to a fair and just solution that enfranchises the victims of voter suppression and ends gerrymandering. But if not, at least it makes the fight over the House a little more fair.

Would you rather play im in a ****ty field that's flat or a ****ty field tilted against you?