Andy Craig

Agreed though I'd note a constitutional amendment isn't necessary, Congress already has a constitutional power to set congressional election rules and override the states whenever it wants.

Tourism travel is essentially conservative is a plausible theory.

If we had a healthy competitive multi-party system I'd probably be in the center-ish market liberal sort of party. Without getting too far into their particular recent context, something akin to FDP in Germany. But none of that matters in a context where the question is should we be a dictatorship.

Free speech, for example, is something without which you don't meaningfully have a democracy at all. Tax rates, or 'social issues' to some degree, or the fiscal structure between different levels of government, are all things where a system will break if it can't bend.

One of our deep problems is the collapse of a distinction between fundamental rights which are essential foundations to the whole system of government and policy disputes which are properly within the bounds of competitive electoral politics.

This is a reference I know absolutely nothing about, but I accept I'm the weirdo in that regard.

So long as your opponents are allowed to do it, you are right to use the same tools when they are at your disposal. That's not being unfair, it is perfectly fair and essential to the competitive incentives which are a core premise of electoral democracy.

Changing the rules is a policymaker decision in which high-minded reformism is appropriate and much desired. But playing within the rules as they exist to maximize your chance of winning is not just cynical reality but, on the principle of the matter, what any candidate or party is supposed to do.

Ballot access, not a topic which gets much attention, is instructive. I think it should be much easier. No candidate with a reasonable modicum of support should be kept off the ballot.

I've also successfully challenged candidates on their petitions when it was to my guy's advantage. As I should.

Lots of aspects of our election system I don't like. Ballot access hurdles, vague campaign finance rules, and of course gerrymandering.

But I don't think it's reasonable or worthwhile to expect any party or candidate to not play by the rules as they exist for maximum advantage. That's their job.

A presidential election can't circumscribe Congress's impeachment power because it's not a constitutional amendment, in other words.

It goes to how individual elections aren't the ultimate manifestation of popular sovereignty, the Constitution is, and it's bad to conflate the two. The same people elected Congress but more importantly the people make the Constitution which says Congress has this power to use by its own judgement.

Which also goes to a related gripe: POTUS does not properly have a popular mandate anyway, they aren't directly elected. Congress is.

"The masses are asses, time for some republicanism."

Nobody would ever frame it this way, but I'd say it's fair game for Congress to just straight up say "the People got this one wrong and the Constitution says that's up to us to decide."

It's tedious and untrue when people complain that different regions *within the United States* have become so homogenized they're all the same. Maybe if you never leave the airport Marriot and the McDonald's next door.

'Oh they're just doing those traditional costumes and cuisine and stuff for the tourists, it's not Real Authentic Culture.'

That's every place everywhere that has ever hoped to attract tourists going back thousands of years.

Bracketing the big bucket of gender here, "LARPs of dead cultures" has been the essence of tourism since at least ancient Romans going to Egypt to gawk at the pyramids.

Impeachment properly reaches anything rendering you unfit for office, and Congress is the sole decider on that. The democratic accountability for that is in their elections, not presidential ones.

Doesn't go to your point about the relevant facts being publicly known at the most recent election, but at this point it would just be impeaching him in his second term for something he did during his first term, which was the deal with both Nixon and Clinton.

Gotcha. But even bracketing the 14A issue, I'd say it would be totally proper to impeach him again and convict him this time for Jan 6. No shortage of other more recent reasons, to be sure. But getting elected doesn't, in principle, make any difference to if you're guilty of HC&M meriting removal.

Hypothetical it comes out the president was a serial killer... or, more plausibly, serial rapist... decades ago, that'd obviously have to be grounds for impeachment even though it was long before holding office.

This gets theoretically argued b/c it's probably politically moot, but I don't think it's improper to impeach for things prior to being elected. For one thing the last attempt ostensibly failed on a jurisdictional argument that's now moot. But also bribing electors was contemplated as a prime use.

Listen pal if you’re going to be a 30 year old baby you’re going to need to have a Bluesky account

And still not even close to the worst thing a tsar did to his own son.

It's perennially popular to bash parties as the corruptors of idyllic civic virtue. But no parties, no democracy. They are essential mediating institutions. And in part from well-meaning but backfired reforms like the primary system and campaign finance laws, we have essentially wrecked them.

All these same factors made the GOP so susceptible to a hostile takeover, an old guard revealed as impotent in the face of a cult of personality. But for various reasons the more coalitional Dem side didn't have such a figure. So they're left with impotent leadership and no viable challenge to it.

Ironically, the problem isn't that the party establishment is too powerful, it's that the party organization and leadership is far too fragmented and powerless, which means there's nobody to be a locus of accountability for how this scam PAC business is hurting the party as a whole.

To be sure, all of these various parts of the party could wage a campaign against the scam PACs, and they don't try because it's true they are all deeply enmeshed in the same grifter blob. But even if you were Ken Martin, or Hakeem Jeffries, etc. what you individually *could* about it is limited.

What about candidates? They don't really have any control over outside PACs, either. Legally they literally aren't allowed to. And candidates have other fights to prioritize, against their actual opponents. Scam PACs aren't really dependent on them; that's why they pass on so little money to them.