Movement of the political discourse in the last ten years

[Person Man]

In 2005, we were discussing the continued occupation of Iraq because though we captured the country, we could not subdue it. Today, we still have a small contingency in Iraq (do we have at least one functioning combat brigade there?)  and there are growing discussions about returning to the area(at least Syria) in large numbers to restore order. However, the current leadership has no plans to even discuss it and the main opposition talks either about pulling out entirely or sporadically invading retroactively.

In 2005, gay marriage was unpopular and the mainstream left was trying to get a few liberal states to do a less offensive and watered down version of gay marriage, the mainstream right to strongly believed that they could create constitutional guarantees that only heterosexual relationships could be recognized. Gay marriage or the recrimination of homosexual relationships were the ultimate goal of each base but they seemed equally unlikely.


In 2005, marijuana was becoming a mainstream topic of discussion but it was still considered a fringe-left-libertarian position. Now, the issue is much more popular but still is facing strong headwinds and only has been a successful issue in a handful of liberal and libertarian states.

In 2005, there was a major discussion about whether workers could invest their payroll taxes in the stock market instead of participating in Social Security. Now the argument seems to center around whether people who are unlikely to need social security should to fully be taxed by the program.

In 2005, with it being perceived as likely that if Stevens died with one party conservative Government control,  that any replacement would allow a direct challenge to Roe to be  sustained and the mainstream liberal view began to be that abortion should still be legally unquestioned only early in the pregnancy and only allowed past then under administrative circumstances. The mainstream right position was that an abortion would be only granted only if the prosecutor agreed not to prosecute because the pregnancy involved a felony or was critically therapeutic. Now it seems that the mainstream right's position might be that abortion automatically opens up a homicide investigation and that birth control will come under increasing scrutiny. The mainstream left is now full enforcement of Roe v. Wade. Throughout that time, there was also an intensity to restrict research seemed to violate the principle of an abortion ban but that has seemed to have since subsided.

In 2005, the healthcare choices voters faced were either allowing individuals get healthcare on already taxed income to buy their own insurance and have medical tort immunity beyond a certain amount to lower overhead for providers or to allow modest to moderate income households to get medicaid for their children and to maybe allow drug imports and allow medicare to negotiate drug reimbursements.At this point in time, there is a government run market of insurance companies where companies must provide insurance to all who seek it and the government subsidizes the price of insurance for those of modest means and tries to provide medicaid to everyone of low or no means. The main issue now is whether to allow full public enrollment into a medicaid like program and let that be a marketplace option or to privatize the marketplace and remove all interstate trade barriers and regulations on health care financing.

Taxation is now an issue with a lot of change too as the new idea that has gone mainstream in the last 10 years is the  idea of a flat income tax but we did have a flat income tax in the late 80s.

Other issues that could perhaps see a huge change on what goes on and off the table includes the recognition of collective bargaining, labor and wage regulations, tariffs, immigration and the permission to travel to and from the United States.
Where do you see these issues moving by 2025 depending on what happens in November?