- Feb 7, 2011
- 7,914
- 2,279
- 118
- Country
- 'Merica
- Gender
- 3 children in a trench coat
Because they care both parties care more about making headlines than governing.
Biden helps avert railway strike.
- Thread starter CastletonSnob
- Start date
I agree there's a lot of headline-grabbing, and I certainly do not think a lot of the headline-grabbing is useful governance.
However, another perspective is that a party goes into office with an agenda and have limited time and political capital to enact anything. That agenda and the bigger needs of there here and now matter more than reversing every policy that the previous administration did. When Trump set about trying to destroy Obama's legacy, it was little more than petty vindictiveness because Trump just hated Obama that much. But that's also a large part of why Trump was relatively legislatively ineffectual. He did this at the expense of things that he was elected to do, like "build the wall", or repeal major legislation such as the ACA. In much the same way if the Democrats waste their efforts reinstating a load of Obama-era laws, they too run risk of delivering less than they would if they pursued more pressing aims.
Right. Except people were warning them that this situation was likely to arise.
In fairness to Biden (ugh), Trump broke a *lot* of things and there's *many* situations likely to arise.
And...?
There's an infinite amount of fixing and improving for governments to do, and for each and every individual issue there will be "people" warning the government that there will be a situation likely to arise. The time and effort they spend trying to fix one just means that an issue they deprioritised in favour of it blows up instead - and the same will be said for that too: "Why didn't they do anything, they were warned!"
Eh, it's fair to say that there's a lot to fix, but what they want to fix might not align that well with what the people most urgently need fixing.
To be sure, rather Biden than Trump, but that's not a huge endorsement.
To be sure, rather Biden than Trump, but that's not a huge endorsement.
that is what party discipline is for.
anyway, 'political capital' can be gained as well as lost by action. that there is some limited amount that must not be squandered is trite nonsense. especially so as an explanation of the inaction of the Democratic Party of the United States when it had both chambers and the presidency.
Party discipline only goes so far. If for instance a party relies on two awkward people whose removal from party representation would likely result in their seat falling to political opponents, there is no way to rein them in. And besides, it's kind of funny to read a man constantly complaining about the Democratic Party's attempts to control the politicians elected under its aegis suddenly calling for "party discipline".
The second is a weirdly unrealistic statement. That something can be gained and lost does not mean it isn't limited: I get paid every month, but that doesn't mean I have infinite wealth. Political actions are supported by some voters, politicians and interest groups, opposed by others, and some couldn't care less. The nature of political activity is that some actions will cost more support than they gain in one or more areas. The end result of too much of this activity is that a politician or party tends to lose power, and a party that loses power enacts nothing at all.
- Feb 7, 2011
- 7,914
- 2,279
- 118
- Country
- 'Merica
- Gender
- 3 children in a trench coat
It is THEIR JOB to fix those things. ALL of those things. The fact that they're bad at doing their jobs doesn't mean that you shouldn't criticize them for being bad at their jobs.
This is true, although oftentimes the voters punish political parties for doing their job. Specifically with regulation, Obama enacted a raft of regulations (such as the EC pneumatic brakes thing) and the Republicans made quite a successful line of attack out of it.
Because there's no way to quantify or demonstrate to the voters how many potential disasters have been averted. Enacting precautionary regulations doesn't tend to drive up a politician's popularity. But "red tape strangles business" has been a potent attack line for quite a few years, regardless of whether it's nonsense or not.
This is absolutely not to say the regulation shouldn't have been brought back, or that the Dems shouldn't have tried. It's just to say that the idea that political parties can just launch everything they want to, and the good ideas will attract support and political capital on their own merit, is categorically untrue.
(...of course, part of the reason we're in this situation is that the Dems have consistently failed to put forward a coherent argument in defence of what they're doing).
In many cases, it isn't nonsense. In many cases, meaningless red tape gets applied with the support of the biggest players in the industry because it prevents new competition from threatening them. That argument absolutely doesn't apply to an ancient railroad company maintaining its break systems, but regulation can be good or bad, and depending on context, a good regulation can become bad, the nonsense is in trying to assign a hard and fast rule to the concept of regulations.
In their defense, there isn't a coherent argument in defense of what they're doing with regulations, nor should there be. If you have 1000 regulations, you need 1000 arguments to justify them, 1 singular argument to justify them all is destined to be incoherent.
Hence the "regardless" of whether it's nonsense.
Maybe sometimes regulation would strangle the little guy to the benefit of the larger. Much more often I see sensible, consumer-friendly or ecological regulation vocally opposed by the big guys because it would prioritise something other than profit.
The UK and US right wing is often dead set against both kinds of regulation-- hence the Republicans repealing this brakes rule, or the UK Tories watering down basic quality standards checks in trade-- with the same arguments.
I'm sure that'll be convincing to the average voter.
Do you have a significant administrative role in an organisation?
I do. I pour hours into fixing things that don't work properly, or improving things that work okay but could be better: discussing, negotiating, working out what's possible and how to do it. No matter how much time and effort I put in, there's always something more to do. I know I'd be really pissed off with the unfairness of someone distilling all my time and efforts as "X didn't work, you suck". Thus I am inclined to extend some empathy towards people in a similar position, including politicians. Maybe they do suck. But the mere fact of something going wrong is not, per se, enough to prove that case.
Getting a bit off-topic, but wasn't at least some of the watering down of regulations in UK trade the result of setting their trade on fire due to Brexit, and scrabbling for anything to fix some of it?
That's a few badly dressed outlaws from being something out of a no budget dystopia film.
Partly, yes.
There's also general hardcore Conservative Party ideology in there. As has been noted, the plan to make the UK a post-Brexit success was "Singapore on the Thames", a radical downsizing of the role of the state and extreme economic libertarianism, which is what such Tories want anyway. Although as one of the UK's most notable businessmen opined, given that everyone with an eighth of a brain knew that British voters wouldn't give them the slightest chance of passing such a colossal downgrade of public services, what sort of moron ever thought it was a good idea?
I believe the reduction in standards/quality control was a core part of the reason some Tories campaigned for Brexit in the first place.
This is all the kind of stuff that was advocated for in Brittania Unchained, that quasi-Randian screed written by Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and Chris Skidmore in 2012. In short: shred regulation and employment law to boost growth. Brexit was seen as a big step for exactly this-- deregulation was planned long before we left.
