General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Impeachment is a lost cause at this point. Focus on 2020. [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)(Bolero now beating away in my mind). but the reasons why the nation takes off in August, including congress, have geographic and deep-seated social factors at base, and even biological. It's the slowdown season in many ways. But worse, though summer heat makes people angrier, it also makes us meaner, more reactionary, and less caring about others and in general.
Nancy could technically have canceled the August recess, but she couldn't cancel the electorate's summer doldrums and, now, distractions due to unusual heat. If the past and current polls are predictors, most of the citizens who don't want to hear it now should be more receptive after the weather cools down. Even those of us who don't know how to read electorates' pulses can read explanations of long patterns and wonder if and just how they apply this time.
Speaking of the hottest summer on record ever in many places, global warming is advancing to its own inexorable drumbeat that can't be turned off. Among its threats are a scary-real one to liberalism in government. Just check a global ideological map against the observation that climates that make life unusually difficult tend to result in more conservative societies.
It's not too much to wonder if leaving people a period to notice the heat, huge utility bills, stressed landscaping, water shortages, and so on, uncomplicated by constant political yammering for attention, has become incorporated into our strategy. It unquestionably is Democratic Party strategy to let the media connect the Republicans with the atrocities against migrants, in a daily beat, without constantly distracting the coverage with partisan political discussion.
I've wandered beyond the usual small, CNN/MSNBC-delineated, range of political discussion here, but that's because I paid our power bill this morning. You can bet, though, that leaders in both parties are very aware of the effects of global warming on populations and have read not just books on it but studies they've commissioned on how it will affect (is affecting) American politics short- and long-term.