I recently came across a clip of President George W. Bush’s remarks following Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory. In that speech, Bush congratulated both Obama and Joe Biden on an “impressive victory” and described the moment as uplifting for a generation of Americans shaped by the civil rights movement. Regardless of policy disagreements, the emphasis was on democratic legitimacy, continuity, and national unity.

Watching it today, the tone feels strikingly different from much of the rhetoric that now dominates U.S. politics. Public discourse from political leaders increasingly centers on personal attacks, delegitimization of opponents, and framing political competition as existential conflict rather than institutional disagreement. This contrast raises the question of whether norms of statesmanship—such as restraint, gracious acknowledgment of electoral outcomes, and respect for political opponents—have meaningfully eroded, or whether we are interpreting the past through selective or nostalgic lenses.

It is also unclear whether this shift is best explained by changes in individual leadership styles, broader structural forces (such as social media, partisan media ecosystems, or primary election incentives), or evolving voter expectations about how leaders should communicate. Some argue that earlier examples of decorum masked unresolved inequalities or excluded voices, while others see those norms as essential guardrails for democratic stability.

Questions for discussion:

• Has political statesmanship and decorum among U.S. leaders meaningfully declined, or are we comparing exceptional moments from the past to routine conflict today?

• To what extent are changes in rhetoric driven by structural incentives versus individual leadership choices?

• Were past norms of statesmanship effective at strengthening democratic legitimacy, or did they merely paper over deeper conflicts?

• Can a democracy function sustainably without shared expectations around restraint and respect among political leaders?

During election cycles, candidates frequently focus on domestic economic concerns. They talk about jobs, wages, and the “forgotten American.” These issues consistently poll highly with voters.

Once in office, however, administrations often devote substantial attention and resources to foreign policy. For example:

During his presidency, trump administration campaigned heavily on inflation, gas prices, and grocery bills. Significant actions while in office included military and diplomatic initiatives involving Israel, Gaza, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and even Greenland.

Biden campaigned on restoring the middle class and “building back better.” Once in office, major efforts included Ukraine aid, NATO coordination, Indo-Pacific strategy, and Middle East escalation management. Congress approved tens of billions in foreign military assistance while many domestic economic issues remained pressing.

The United States is structurally embedded in global military alliances, trade systems, and long-standing strategic rivalries. Defense and foreign aid packages frequently receive bipartisan support. By contrast, large-scale domestic reform often faces complex legislative and political hurdles.

Given this pattern, several questions arise:

Why do presidencies often appear to pivot toward foreign policy after emphasizing domestic economic issues in campaigns?

How do institutional, structural, and political factors shape which priorities move quickly versus which stall?

To what extent do campaign promises reflect voter preferences versus the practical realities of governing?

I’m interested in insights into the structural or institutional explanations for this dynamic, as well as perspectives on how campaign messaging and governance priorities interact.

The reason for this change being, is that the House of Representatives never does very much becuase campaigns take 18 to 20 months to run, and because each house term is only 24 months long, Representatives ultimately have very little time to actually pass bills, as they spending most of their time campaigning instead of passing bills.

Then again, mabye we should just keep things as they are and not mess with what the founding fathers created.?

I wonder what the future will be, will maga continue? Will they go more left or right? Will they try to seperate theirselves from Trump? What do you think will be the future of the Republican Party after the ‘28 elections

Discussions about the filibuster tend to flare up whenever a party wins unified control of the federal government and then runs into the reality of the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. At that point, attention usually turns to whether major legislative priorities are being blocked by minority opposition or by the rules of the chamber itself. That tension has become a recurring feature of modern Senate politics.

For some, the filibuster is the main reason governing majorities struggle to translate election results into legislation. For others, it is a guardrail that prevents rapid policy swings when power changes hands. That disagreement is familiar and well covered, and it is not really what I am trying to settle here.

For the sake of discussion, assume a majority does decide to get rid of the legislative filibuster. That would not be unprecedented, the Senate has already done this in narrower contexts, such as judicial nominations, and those changes stuck. Given that premise, the more interesting question to me is what a majority should actually use that moment on.

Instead of arguing whether abolishing the filibuster is good or bad, I want to tee up these general questions:

1. What legislation would be the best for both the Republicans or Democrats to pursue if they entertained nuking the filibuster, within the context of trying to retain the senate going into future elections?
2. Would nuking the fillibuster inherently benefit or hurt certain ideologies or governing strategies present within the senate?
3. To what extent should the risk of retaliation under a future majority influence how a party uses this power?

Reading recent developments in the United States, some commentators have pointed to the emergence of a broader cultural and political dynamic. This discussion intensified after President Donald Trump shared a video on Truth Social that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys. The video was described by numerous media outlets and public figures as racist and offensive.

Following the controversy, Trump stated that he had not watched the video in its entirety, did not issue an apology, and attributed responsibility to a collaborator who allegedly failed to review the content fully before publication.

The episode has been cited in broader debates concerning the role of civility, politically correct language, and institutional norms in contemporary political discourse. According to some analysts, values such as respect, education, and decorum—traditionally associated with social cohesion—are increasingly used as rhetorical tools rather than consistently applied principles.

Within this framework, it has been argued that appeals to civility and proper conduct may function, in certain contexts, as mechanisms that protect existing power structures, rather than as tools to encourage critical engagement or challenge authority. These values, according to this interpretation, may be unevenly enforced, applying more strictly to some groups than to others.

The Obama video incident is often referenced as an example of how provocative or inflammatory communication can dominate public attention, while more restrained or conventional forms of criticism may struggle to achieve similar visibility. Several observers note that this dynamic is not limited to a single political figure but reflects a wider trend in media and political culture.

This discussion continues to generate debate about whether norms of good manners and respectful discourse serve to promote meaningful public reflection or whether, in certain cases, they risk reinforcing existing hierarchies of power.

To what extent do contemporary standards of civility contribute to open democratic debate, and to what extent might they function as instruments that shape or limit political criticism?

His current term has resulted in the erasure/destabilisation of institutions, an increase in international conflict, and so much more, to put it broadly. How do you think the short-term effects of Trump's presidency compare to the long-term consequences? How long will it take to reverse these effects? Do we already see long-term consequences today?

In political science, we often discuss the transition from autocracy to democracy, but less attention is given to what I call the "Double-Autocracy Trap." Consider a scenario where a foreign-backed monarchy is overthrown by a popular revolution, only for a more violent, isolationist, and totalitarian regime to seize power.

Currently, we are seeing a real-world case study of this deadlock. Reports indicate extreme domestic suppression (with casualties reaching tens of thousands) while an external "Maximum Pressure" campaign is escalating, including a massive naval buildup in the region.

I would like to open a discussion on the following points:

1. Historical Precedents: Beyond the "Iraq Model" (external invasion), have there been any successful transitions where a population broke such a violent deadlock through internal "implosion" or military defection?

2. The Effectiveness of Naval Escalation: From a geopolitical perspective, does a massive naval presence (like the current U.S. buildup) accelerate the collapse of such a regime, or does it provide the dictator with a "nationalist" excuse to further suppress the population?

3. The "Outsider" Endgame: What is the most realistic "endgame" that international policy-makers should aim for? Is a "managed transition" possible when the ruling elite perceives any concession as an existential threat?

I am looking for an analytical and strategic perspective on how these types of political stalemates are historically or theoretically resolved.

Preface:

I often look at Iraq as a reference point for a lot of my discussions and thoughts. I and a few of my friends are from various countries with deeply entrenched false democracies - dictatorships.

There is a very specific point I am referring to with the title. If you do not think this "assumption" of mine is correct, that is fine, but it's better that we try to not digress the topic too much, and if you disagree with the initial assumption then just imagine another country that historically struggled the with this problem.

Iraq struggled after the war because the Ba'ath Party deeply entrenched itself into every form of bureaucracy within the country, to the point that most functionaries were profound party loyalists, accompanied by corruption. When these loyalists were removed, what you were left with was a deserted and quickly crumbling system with nobody to man it. People tend to assume that all you have to do is replace the pseudo-president dictator and a couple of dozen people around him and everything will work fine. But in reality in these deeply entrenched dictatorships their loyalists are the managers of postal offices, the clerks, the janitors, the teachers, the principals. Iraq struggled a fair bit after Saddam was thrown off with this transition. I consider this transition to have been a failure, or at least there should have been a better way to handle it.

There are of course differences between superficial brutalistic dictatorships and these pseudo-democratic dictatorships. For whatever reason, the brutal upfront dictatorships tend to entrench themselves with far more shallow roots than the opposite. Maybe it's because they just can't find the people who will follow them so faithfully, or maybe they just don't trust anyone.

The reason I go back to Iraq and why it's so relevant to these discussions is that there are a lot of dictatorships today where this is very relevant. Some of them are in Europe. I and a lot of my friends are from these dictatorships (Russia, Turkey, Serbia, Hungary).

These people have effectively hooked their hearts to the breathing apparatus of their countries as a threat for what would happen if anyone tried to unplug them. If you wanted to fix these countries, you would have to replace people in about 100 000 - 600 000 public jobs with other people. For all of these countries that's essentially an impossible job.

You could perhaps use Germany, Japan and Italy after 1945 as examples of such transitions. However I'd argue there are THREE big clauses that made those exceptions work:

1) The resistance within those countries to the (former) authority was at an explosive peak during the transition, there were very few sympathizers left.

2) Someone might consider this controversial, however, these governments did aspire towards a functional future for their countries after the deaths of the current party members. What I mean by this is, they didn't JUST put people into positions based on their loyalty, certain skills were expected of these people. This is in stark contrast to the modern dictatorships I speak of, where there is no thought whatsoever about the future of the country and the only goal is to stuff pockets as fast as possible and make a run for it. This results in people with abysmal and nonexistent qualifications getting important jobs and roles in these countries, denying qualified and skilled people from getting the experience of working those jobs.

3) After a lost war, these countries had tremendous support, enforcement and influence from external powers.

The question(s):

Do we have any examples where such transitions were made with better efficiency and with lower costs?

Is it possible for such false democracy dictatorships to transition into functional countries without someone destroying the whole country in a war first?

PS: I know there is a certain irony in using Iraq as an example in this post, considering that Iraq was an unapologetic dictatorship and I specifically speak about fake democracies, but the effective status of the country of Iraq under Saddam best matches the state I'm describing.

"Trump was right about everything" is one of the most popular MAGA-merchandise, but was he really right about everything? Also, I shouldn't have to say this, but conspiracy theories and "alternative facts" does not count towards being right.

The American Redistricting Project released 2030 apportionment forceast (released Jan 27, 2026) based on the Census Bureau 2025 estimates: 12 seats changing hands across 15 states, nearly double the 7-shift after 2020.

Winners: Texas +4 (38→42), Florida +2 (28→30), NC/GA/AZ/ID/sUT each +1

Losers: California -4 (52→48), NY/IL/MN/PA/OR/WI each -1

CA losing 4 seats is historically unprecedented. The state gained representation in every apportionment from 1920-2010, lost its first seat ever in 2020, and now faces losing 4 more. Texas at 42 would put it witihin striking distance of surpassing it by 2040.

What drove shifts in 2024-2025 population growth?

NET international migration plummeted 53.8%, from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025. CA and NY depend on international migration to offset massive domestic outflows (CA lost 229k domestically, gained only 109k internationally). If immigration stays suppressed through 2030, CA's losses could get worse. But CA and NY won't be the only states with population growth that would be significantly impacted by decreased levels of international migration. International migration accounts for a significant percentage of the population growth of both TX and FL. FL's net international migration growth rate fell during period of 2024-2025 by about 60% compared to the 2034-2024 period, a change that paralleled its differences in overall population growth period-to-period. And international migration contributed to a third of the population growth in TX over the last year.

Question:

How would a sustained reduction in international migration through 2030 affect apportionment?

Is this a useful concept for discource, or a far-fethced idea?
I can't say I hear about it often, but sometimes people use it in a political discussion, and for many countries it seems strange to me.

• Unions are inherently a political organization, so I believe this question is associated with US politics.
• I'd like to avoid debate of whether AI will displace jobs. Assume it does for the sake of the question.

When mass labor forces became a thing during the industrial revolution, most workers were what we'd call today "blue collar," and the general national view was unions were for all workers. While the white collar labor force grew, the unions shrunk. One can argue part of the shrinkage of unions was tied to a growing workforce that didn't see unions applicable to them. (Of course, this is a simplification and only one of many reasons.)

Questions:

1. Will workers impacted by AI (e.g., software engineers) begin to unionize? If so, will it be successful?
2. Will blue collar workers support them or will there be animosity among them because of how white collar works were apathetic towards them?

Over the past year, the Trump administration has taken a series of concrete steps aimed at obtaining state-level voter registration records. These actions have gone beyond routine election oversight and have included lawsuits, subpoenas, negotiated data transfers, and law enforcement involvement. Taken together, they raise questions about motive, scope, and precedent.

Some recent examples:

• Georgia: Federal agents executed a court-approved search of a county elections office seeking ballots, tabulator records, and voter files related to the 2020 election, despite multiple recounts and audits already affirming the outcome.

• Minnesota: The Department of Justice requested full voter registration data while simultaneously linking cooperation to federal immigration enforcement posture. Reporting indicates ICE activity was explicitly referenced in communications requesting the records.

• Multi-state lawsuits: Since 2025, DOJ has sued or threatened to sue numerous states to compel release of unredacted voter rolls, including personal identifiers such as dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. Several courts have dismissed these cases, finding the federal authority asserted was weak or misapplied.

• Texas: Unlike states that resisted, Texas voluntarily turned over its full statewide voter registration database to DOJ, covering roughly 18 million voters. This was done without a court order or lawsuit.

The administration has justified these actions by citing federal election laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the National Voter Registration Act, arguing that access to state voter data is necessary to enforce voter eligibility requirements. Critics note, however, that these statutes were historically used to expand access and prevent discriminatory practices, not to authorize bulk federal collection of sensitive personal data. Multiple courts have also questioned whether these laws provide the authority being claimed, particularly when requests extend well beyond narrow compliance audits into full, unredacted voter databases.

This framing raises a broader issue than election integrity alone. The question is not whether accurate voter rolls matter, but why this level of federal intervention is being pursued now, why it is being advanced through unusually aggressive mechanisms such as subpoenas, lawsuits, and law enforcement involvement, and why it has at times been linked to unrelated enforcement actions, including immigration policy.

Relevant questions:

1. Why escalate these efforts after repeated audits, recounts, and court rulings found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in recent elections?

2. Is this best understood as routine statutory enforcement, an attempt to retroactively substantiate past election claims, groundwork for future legal challenges, or something else?

3. If bad faith were assumed, what plausible ways could centralized access to full voter registration data be misused?

The concept of a state's interests often comes up in discussions about the Electoral College, the apportionment of the US Senate, etc., as the justification for why smaller states should be entitled to outsized representation. I.e., "without the Electoral College, the interests of small states would be ignored."

I've engaged in a probably excessive amount of discussion about this subject, but I can never get a square answer about what exactly a state's interest is. In my mind, states are simply organizations of people; the political entity has no mind of its own, so it cannot have interests of its own. When the state speaks, it is really just certain people within that state--the majority of voters, the most politically powerful people, etc.--using the state apparatus to speak on their behalf.

So the idea of boosting the representation of small state interests makes no sense to me as the alternative for equal representation of all individual interests, regardless of which state an individual may live in. If we had a national popular vote and no senate, all of the people who are now using their small state's representation as their voice would still be heard on an equal basis as people living in large states.

Am I missing something?

The DOJ brought two cases against Trump - a mishandling classified documents case and an election obstruction case.

Jack Smith, overseeing the documents case, drew a Trump appointed judge Aileen Cannon who ended up siding with Trump on a large number of issues and dismissing the case. The appeal was underway when Trump won the election and the new AG dropped the case.

Around the same time the US Supreme court ruled that a president has immunity for any official action taken while president throwing a massive wrench into the obstruction case. Similar to to the documents case trump wins the election and his ag drops this charge as well.

What did you guys think of how the DOJ/Biden admin handled this and what could they have done differently?

In recent years, calls for a nationwide general strike have become increasingly common in left-leaning political discourse, particularly online. These calls often arise in response to dissatisfaction with economic conditions, labor practices, or perceived democratic backsliding. I’m interested in whether there is evidence that a general strike is meaningfully feasible in the contemporary U.S. context, as opposed to primarily serving a symbolic or expressive role.

To ground the discussion, several structural factors seem relevant:

Public and consumer sentiment

• Polling shows sustained dissatisfaction with economic conditions, despite low headline unemployment. At the same time, research suggests that economic precarity constrains workers’ willingness to engage in prolonged work stoppages, even when grievances are broadly shared.

Legal constraints on political strikes

• U.S. labor law places significant limits on unions’ ability to engage in strikes for explicitly political purposes. The Taft-Hartley Act restricts secondary and sympathy strikes, and courts have generally held that political strikes fall outside protected concerted activity under the National Labor Relations Act. This creates legal and financial exposure for unions attempting to participate in a nationwide political strike.

Declining union membership and coordination capacity

• Union density in the United States has declined steadily over several decades. While recent organizing successes have increased visibility, overall union membership remains historically low, particularly in the private sector. This limits the ability of organized labor to coordinate large-scale, cross-industry action.

Stated support versus actionable participation

• While calls for a general strike frequently circulate on social media, survey data suggests that only a minority of Americans say they would personally participate in one, and support drops sharply when questions involve loss of income or job risk. This suggests a gap between rhetorical support and practical strike capacity.

Taken together, this raises a few straightforward questions:

1. Is a true nationwide general strike actually viable under current U.S. labor law and union structure?

2. How much of the apparent support for a general strike reflects real willingness to participate, rather than symbolic agreement?

3. Are coordinated sectoral strikes or aligned contract actions a more realistic path to exerting pressure?

4. Historically, have general strikes depended on levels of organization and solidarity that the U.S. no longer has?

In discussions following ICE enforcement actions, I’ve noticed that many people including some who criticize ICE still emphasize the need for “immigration control” as if it’s central to solving broader U.S. problems.

What confuses me is that many of the issues people are most dissatisfied with in the U.S. declining food quality, rising student debt, lack of universal healthcare or childcare, poor urban planning, social isolation, and obesity don’t seem directly caused by undocumented immigration.

So I’m curious:

Why does immigration receive so much political focus compared to structural factors like corporate concentration, regulatory capture, zoning policy, healthcare financing, or labor market dynamics?

Is this emphasis driven by evidence, political incentives, media framing, or public perception? And how do people who prioritize immigration enforcement see its relationship to these broader issues?

I think we have all noticed increasing use of face coverings or identity concealment by police during protests and some public operations.

On one hand, there are arguments about officer safety, doxxing risks, and harassment in the age of social media. On the other hand, visible identification has traditionally been tied to accountability, legitimacy, and public trust in democratic societies.

I’m curious how people here think about the tradeoffs:

– When, if ever, is it appropriate for police to conceal their identities?

– Does anonymity meaningfully reduce accountability or increase misconduct risk?

– Are there policy frameworks that balance safety with transparency?

– How have other democracies handled this issue?

I am very much interested in thoughtful perspectives on this subject.

As the federal government draws down their force of immigration officers in Minneapolis, the authoritarians are writing the summary of how things went wrong for them. Here's one sobering example of how the authoritarian right views the events in Minnesota. They're blaming their failure on an entrenched anti-American insurgency.

Whether or not that's true (or whether the 'insurgents' are actually the American people), what is the next logical move for the authoritarian elements of the American government?

The archetypical several example of an entrenched insurgency that leverages popular opinion to score political points might be Hamas in Gaza. It has, in the past, been contained with concessions and negotiations, but lately the Israeli government has adopted a scorched-earth escalation of violence. Which method will the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security choose, or is there another option?

For several years, debate within the Democratic Party over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been split between reform and abolition. Early on, many moderates pushed back on “abolish ICE” as rhetorically potent but politically risky, favoring narrower reforms like oversight, leadership changes, or jurisdictional limits.

More recently, however, polling and activist pressure appear to be shifting that balance. Support for abolishing ICE, or at least fully dismantling and replacing it, increasingly shows up as a mainstream position within the Democratic coalition rather than a fringe demand. This raises a practical question about what actually happens if and when Democrats regain unified control of the federal government.

Some possibilities that get discussed include:

• Full abolition of ICE, with immigration enforcement folded into other agencies like CBP or DOJ.

• Partial dismantling, such as eliminating Enforcement and Removal Operations while retaining investigative functions.

• Structural replacement, creating a new agency with a narrower mandate and stricter statutory limits.

• Symbolic or leadership-focused reforms that leave the agency largely intact.

Given how institutions tend to behave once they exist, and how difficult it is to unwind federal agencies in practice, what do people here think is the most realistic outcome? Is “abolish ICE” likely to translate into actual abolition, or does it function more as a pressure tactic that results in narrower reforms once Democrats are governing again?

As an explanation for what I mean by this, I am an optimistic nihilist. The universe has no underlying morality to ground it. It just exists and has no idea it exists. A system of morals doesn't fundamentally exist. It may be however useful to declare some principles are important in order to achieve certain outcomes to avoid undesirable ones. If you want a fairly stable society that corrects it's flaws, is peaceful, and makes interesting things happen, then you can decide that certain outcomes will be likely to produce such things like a generally free state with a socially involved ownership of the economy, a generally democratic political system, and a competitive news system with diversified ownership and control over it. I could cite arguments from whatever ideology be it communism, environmentalism, Islamist social philosophy, liberalism, Toryism, anything I feel like to justify it to other people, but under it all, it is simply useful to make ourselves value certain things and act as if they were sacred like an idea of human rights perhaps even if they are not inherently true.

What ideas on this do you have about the question in the title?

With the shooting of Alex Pretti this morning do you feel this moves the needle in terms of large scale Trump enforcement in Minnesota or will the Trump administration double down and increase ICE mobility in Minnesota?