calista241 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 05, 2020 10:45 pmPersonally, I think the roots of today's polarization stem from the Bill Clinton / Newt Gingrich agreement to remove earmarks. Earmarks required members of Congress to actually vote on bills of substance, support initiatives on the other side in order to pass their own projects.
Close, but not quite right. Newt is the right suspect though. Newt Gingrich and his friends did something in 1994 which hadn't really been done before. They centralized fundraising efforts in such a way that the national party organization became the primary source for campaign funds for Republican Congressional Candidates in 1994. That way candidates that were "well funded and safe" could move cash from their campaign war chest to the Congressional (party) fund, which would then allocate it to races it decided were important.
The Republicans won in a landslide in 1994. Both parties have been making extensive use of that methodology ever since.
Forget the congressional pork barrel bringing gub'ment jobs to the congress person's constituents. Now if the congress person finds themselves in a tight race and needs campaign funding... Well, now it becomes a question of how well you adhered to Congressional Party line to decide how willing they're going to be to give you access to those sweet sweet campaign funds.
In the 1990's every member of the United States Congress became beholden to their national party organizations in ways they never were before. Politics ceased being local for them at that point, its about keeping their peers in Washington happy so they'll help fund your re-election bid.
And I'm not sure about a civil war being fought here. Are we polarized, yes, and is there a lot of political anger, you bet. But even a low intensity conflict would not be fought here. People just want to take care of their families, put food on the table, and go to a movie or maybe out to dinner. People who attack their neighbors because of political beliefs will be spending a long time in jail. The criminal justice system, for all its faults, deters a LOT of crime.
They're still rioting and smashing things in Portland. I fully expect they're going to continue to do so regardless of who the official winner is. They also know that the Biden Admin is likely to leave them alone(as will likely pressure the US Attorney's office to drop charges), something the Trump Admin wasn't doing, especially after they deputized the Oregon State Police(and I think some of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department) as Federal Officers, enabling the Feds to prosecute crimes they otherwise wouldn't be able to when the County DA declines to prosecute.
I am kind of curious to see how long the Democrats are going to let that continue to happen before they start to crack down on them instead of doing their catch and release game while leaving it to see how Trump responds(as he appears to be on the way out, despite his protests to the contrary). If BLM and AntiFa keep their
destructive activities to the areas they've been doing things, nothing of any note will happen on the wider stage. If they try to include communities that voted Trump in those destructive activities, all bets are off.
I'd almost be inclined to consider odds on how long it will take after Biden is sworn in for a Federal Building to be attacked by rioters and burned, and which city it happens in. "Of course" it'd have to be right-wing extremists, it isn't like Portland just went through several months of BLM trying to ransack and burn some federal buildings.
Edit to add:
And the Party of Love, Tolerance, and acceptance:
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078
Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future
AOC is the gift that keeps on giving to Conservatives.
Oh and someone replied with:
trumpaccountability.net
Because building lists of people to blacklist always works out well for the groups that enable and encourage such behavior. And such blacklists never ever in recorded history have ended up with very bad things happening.