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RINO Tom
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« Reply #400 on: December 04, 2018, 10:53:35 AM »

^ Wow, that was a very good post.
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« Reply #401 on: December 04, 2018, 10:40:18 PM »

The entire point is still to protect small states from the laws of a small number of mega states. The states have some independence of one another and the senate is the chamber of Congress meant to represent their interests. The people’s house is meant to represent the interests of the large states. Our constitution is set up that way purposefully and just because one party or the other has a disadvantage in that chamber for a time doesn’t mean you should abolish it.

But gl pushing that as a policy platform in...senate races. Lol.

Any argument that considers states as meaningful and independent entities is still colossally stupid. We're at a point with mass communication, mass culture, nationalized politics, etc. that there's no reason to consider states as truly independent collections of constituencies rather than some arbitrarily binned groupings of people. Put another way: we're at a point where most states have a large amount of variance within their constituencies, to the point that the differences among states are becoming meaningless so long as you know a person's education level, race, and gender. There isn't much difference in the political leanings or the between Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport Iowa, or between Fairfax County, VA and Prince George's County, MD, between Wendover, Nevada and West Wendover, Utah, etc. But the current representation system we have treats ridiculously them as totally separate political entities. So, any type of system which tries to do some fair weighting of "states" as if they had some sort of meaningful political identity is trying to weight something which isn't well defined enough to be meaningful. Keeping a system of political representation which is based on trying to balance out some weird political variables that don't really exist is horrible and indefensible when it creates massive inequalities in other ways, e.g., giving the 40 million people of California as much political representation in a major body of Congress as a state that's almost 1/80th its size.

I don't really care about the Connecticut Compromise. It's a product of a bygone era with incredibly different political needs and realities, and its mere existence isn't a sufficient argument for why it should continue to be followed. It's telling that all arguments in favor of incredibly biased systems of proportionment are justified by arguments that are ultimately "this is the way it is", or "this is the way it was", without ever giving an argument for why that is right or desirable.
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IceSpear
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« Reply #402 on: December 05, 2018, 05:25:11 AM »

We really do need to move on from the WWC. This is only going to get worse. I don't like the "economically moderate" suburbanites we're getting in exchange but our base of urban voters and minorities is progressive enough to keep the ball rolling on Medicare For All, ect.

There's zero evidence these suburbanites are actually "economically moderate". That's just media framing and incorrect perception.  Studies have shown Romney-Clinton voters to be more liberal on economics than Obama-Trump voters, with far less racial resentment.

In any case, we saw candidates that weren't hiding being progressive like Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke do really well in those "moderate suburbs." Both of them made big gains on even Hillary's gains in those areas.

Okay this puts me in a position to make a point I haven't fully made on here since the election.

If I were to list people who would be the most likely to benefit from left wing fiscal policies, the suburbs would be towards the bottom of the list. But, 2018 made clear that our partisan divide is cultural rather than policy based (it somewhat has been since 1980 but prior to that the divide was less intense and more importantly less secular; it's escalated more the past cycle or two) which is why the bolded paragraph is true. There's not much the Democrats can really do about it either. With our politics so cultural, I don't expect anything but gridlock for the forseeable future. At this point, Dems are best off focusing on being progressive without catering to a specific region, waiting for the dam to break, where the Dems would take advantage of the contrast between them and the GOP.

With that said, I don't think it's productive to just sit there and call Republicans racist. There's obvious truth to it but shaming people into voting for you since the other sides mean comments is not a winning strategy. Credit to the Dems for avoiding this in 2018 though.

Shaming people for racism may not exactly be a winning strategy, but codding voters with racist views would constitute a moral abdication. A lot of populist left-wingers think that we need to wholly focus on economic issues and like to join right-wing calls for "abandoning identity politics." This is a two-fold mistake. First of all, if you aren't willing to call out people for supporting racist policies, you will end up inherently coddling their racist views. New Deal Democrats had no problems doing this for several decades when they ignored race issues to avoid alienating white Southern labor. Some people are displeased with the fact that economics is no longer the center of politics and how much the partisanship has come to revolve around identity and cultural issues. That leads into point number two; these people stopped voting Democratic due to cultural grievances and racial anxiety. Boatloads of studies support this conclusion, and ignoring the fact that these voters have high degrees of racial resentment is foolish.

They're angry at an "urban elite" they feel ignores them and suffer anxiety over the country's changing racial demographics. That's why they vote Republican, not for practical economic reasons; the Democratic economic agenda would be far more helpful for them objectively speaking. They just don't care because it's not their main concern, they're motivated by far more psychological abstractions that lead to a sense that America is changing, that they're becoming strangers in their own country. Yes, globalization and all of its attendant effects have played a role in this, but in order to maximize success with these types of people, the Democrats would actually have to emulate Republicans on cultural and social issues, and that's simply a no-go.
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IceSpear
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« Reply #403 on: December 05, 2018, 05:28:43 AM »

WWC are afraid of Mexicans stealing their land, "disagree" with homosexuality and transgender people, and want the country to be whiter in all regards. We've known this for decades. But some people still have a fetish for seeing Arkansas and West Virginia go blue on maps from 1996. It's not economic anxiety, it's their extreme disgust that America is becoming a diverse, inclusive country and they don't want to see that happen. All this enamoring over "Make America Great Again" is a clear indication that these people think America isn't great.... and have they ever articulated why? The economy is certainly better than it was in 2008, 2009, and onwards. Is it because they want to curb mass shootings? Well, obviously not. Is it because they want to stop workplace discrimination against LGBTQ? No, not that either. Is it because they want to alleviate the misery and paint migrants go through every day in domestic work and at the border? Definitely no. So what are they trying to make great "again"? Sounds like MAGA, for them, is just a big F**k You to anybody who isn't a white right-wing populist depressed former iron worker in Flopville, Michigan. Oh but I'm sure all the Republican'ts and moderates will tell me how wrong I am.

Bernie supporters and socialists need to understand that their base doesn't lie in WWC of these areas, it lies in the multi-ethnic working class, youth, and economic left in cities and many suburbs. Y'all want to find people who have an axe to grind with capitalism and moderate third way liberals? Well, look to urban people of color and not to rural-industrial lily white communities in the midwest. Just because those whites like the concept of unions and vote for state initiatives concerning medicare and welfare and marijuana DOES NOT mean they A.) want it for other communities or B.) means they will support a President who has those policies. These state ballot initiatives pass in places like Missouri because they don't have the Democratic Party attached to them, and it's in no way the Dems fault and moreso the result of poor welfare whites association with them, for some reason, as an anti-white party that is supported by black welfare queens and land-thieving immigrants. These are the WWC, sorry about it. 
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Technocracy Timmy
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« Reply #404 on: December 06, 2018, 08:55:35 PM »

The sign of a truly great political analyst is the ability to think outside conventional wisdom.

At this time in 2014, if you or I had told a room of prognosticators that in four years Donald Trump would be President, Alabama would have a pro-choice liberal senator, and Rick Scott would unseat a popular three-term senator off high approval ratings and winning over Hispanics, we would have been laughed out of the room. Politics is a field in which the unexpected becomes the norm in a single moment, and anything can happen. What's stopping Michael Bennet from being our next President? What's stopping Jim Costa from running? What's stopping Phil Batt from launching a primary challenge to Trump?

The answer, of course, is that all of these things could happen. I'm sorry that your mind is so closed that you can't accept opinions different from yours, but when we get President Michael Bennet on January 20, 2021, or when Parker Griffith announces his Presidential campaign, we'll see who gets the last laugh.
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Chancellor Tanterterg
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« Reply #405 on: December 09, 2018, 10:28:39 PM »

Like Black Lives Matter, the idea isn't that men don't have a future, the idea is that women will have a larger say in the future than they do in the present/did in the past. This is not about putting white men down (at least outside of the fringes of Twitter), it's about addressing the fact that women still don't have the same opportunities and privilege as men in American society, even if we are ahead of many countries in the world. Sometimes, people have to use bold wording to get others to pay attention. Just like for me, as a music educator, saying "all subjects are critical to education" doesn't grab anyone's attention like "music is critical to education." I'm not saying "math, language arts, science, etc. are irrelevant", obviously. On a similar note "the future is for all people" might sound nice, but it doesn't address sexism.
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« Reply #406 on: December 13, 2018, 08:55:12 AM »



I have no use for any form of conservatism that doesn't embrace and cherish Lincoln's legacy (even if it disagreed on some of his methods). Conservatism at its root base is and should be about the opposition to arbitrary rule and the inequity that results from it. There is nothing more arbitrary than the slave powers who embraced and abandoned ideology when convenient for the preservation of their cash maker. They didn't give a damn about state's rights when it came to Northerners who objected to being forced to hunt down their slaves for them, or when it came to being forced to accept them bringing their slaves north as "protected property under the constitution". There is nothing conservative about political expediency for personal profit!

Conservative is not and never has been about smaller government uber alles (That is libertarian not Conservative). Conservatism is for restraining the imbalance created by the overbearing weight of the federal government and the detrimental effect that it has on the federal system by usurping powers from the people to the government and the states to the Washington DC. Conservatism would never endorse the abolition of government though, nor even of the federal government. Conservatism is about restraining the bureaucratic state and its rules because it is arbitrary and not elected. 

The simple fact of the matter is that we have had an alliance of convenience with various groups who ever the course of the last 70 years have hijacked conservatism. Eliminating the GOP will not solve the problem because American Conservatism as it presently exists, is fundamentally rotten to the core, completely out of touch the current needs of its voting base and hopelessly contorted by extremists who are pulling the thing in five different directions and trying to exterminate everyone who disagrees with them.

Conservatives have let neo-liberals (emphasis on liberals) dictate our economic policy to the point where the greatest disruptive force (something conservatives would naturally oppose in terms of a foreign threat or social upheaval) has come from within in the name of unrestrained Creative Destruction and free trade. We have let our foreign policy be dictated by the Wilsonian Left, so that now we have a whole generation of people who despise the right and the Republican Party because of a war embraced and fought for Wilsonian justifications. We have let the religious right dictate social policy to the point that rather being an ideology based on the stability of faith, family and community, its known for divisiveness and hate.

American Conservatism is one big clusterf@%K and it did not have to be this way. When we started allowing each faction to pull us in five different directions at the same time and also demand purity with each knew set of demands, you end up like the spokes on a wheel shooting out in every direction, but the key thing is you are being pulled further and further apart. You cannot be for smaller government and be in people's bathrooms and bedrooms and other country's business. You cannot be for the stability of faith, family and community and perpetrate the greatest economic upheaval since the Great Depression on large swaths of rural and urban America and embracing radical proposal to abolish/eliminate government.

Conservatism was about being the voice of reason, about checking the radical impulses of everyone else and fighting for that simple family in that simple village who just wants to live their lives in peace. But how many times has it been us who has busted in the front door and ripped them apart? We bitch endlessly as Conservatives about broken families being the root cause of poverty, yet how many times have conservatives sent their fathers to die in foreign wars or come back suffering from PTSD and told you are on your own, meanwhile the kids and wife suffer b/c smaller government!?  How many times have conservatives locked their father's up for ridiculous lengths of time in the name of the war on Drugs? How many times have conservatives sent the father's job to China and told them to "work harder or be smarter next time"?

"Movement Conservatives" have done more to destroy the American Family in the past 30 years then Liberals ever could have dreamed. For 30 years, we have been perfectly fine with using government to break sh**t and then are the first ones to cry foul when someone one wants to use Government to fix it. And yet you wonder why every person of color hates us and why the youngest generations of Americans are coming to devour us alive?
 
It is not the Republican Party that is the problem, It is not even Donald Trump (he is just the manifestation the chickens coming home to roost) it is American Movement Conservatism, its inconsistencies, its simultaneous extremism and conformity with impossibly inconsistent sets of demands and its complete lack of awareness as to the damage it has caused. 
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« Reply #407 on: December 13, 2018, 09:01:10 AM »

Had meant to post that myself at some point.
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YE
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« Reply #408 on: December 19, 2018, 09:21:01 AM »

Barack Obama's Presidency was failure.

On the domestic front, his anti-growth approach to the economy, which consisted of increased taxes and unchaining regulatory agencies ensured that his presidency would be one marked by anemic economic growth. The fact that his economic recovery after the Great Recession was the weakest in 70 years is a testament to this fact. His largest achievement, Obamacare, has been a failure. From causing millions of Americans to lose their insurance, to the economically harmful employer mandate/regressive individual mandate, and skyrocketing healthcare costs, Obamacare failed to improve the American healthcare system.

On the international stage, from ignoring the threat of Russia, to putting distance between us and Israel, and engaging in the ineffective/dangerous Iranian Nuclear Deal, Obama's approach to foreign policy was a record of weakness and naivete.


I do find this an unfairly harsh judgement.

Obama took office in the wake of something that was more than just a recession; it was an economic event that caused longstanding structural damage to our economy that was caused, unquestionably, by Republican economic policies that sought to create a "boom" economy that was fueled by inflated housing values, and not by real growth in the economy.  It was Republican policies that caused housing values in America to soar far out of proportion to what working people actually earned; a certain amount of the housing crash was an inevitable correction that the Republican economic policymakers of the Bush 43 administration should have known would occur. 

I personally believe that the main problem with Obama's Stimulus policies was that they didn't go far enough.  In that regard, the GOP is to blame, because they did not want Obama to succeed.  They wanted more of the same that created the problem.  If the Democrats have become a party which worship secularism, the GOP has become a party that worships capitalism to the point of Social Darwinism.

The insurance that Obamacare caused people to use was, for the most part, junk insurance with inadequate coverage; something that people could present to get them into the hospital in a pinch, only to hear soon afterward that they aren't covered.  The GOP has long governed America in a manner where they have been unconcerned for the masses without health insurance, or who were plunged in to medical bankruptcy due to catastrophic illness; they have opposed any and all proposals that included universal coverage.  And they have refused to consider legislation designed to fix the flaws in Obamacare; they WANTED it to fail and WORKED for it to fail.  And they have no plan that will, indeed, ensure healthcare access to all that will not bankrupt people.  (I thought, at one time, that Trump actually had some ideas that would fix the flaws in Obamacare, but he's apparently cast his lot making deals with the Freedom Caucus, which is not what I had in mind when I voted for him.) 

Obama had his flaws.  His foreign policy failed to extract us from any number of foolish foreign entanglements, and some of his accomplishments don't look as good in hindsight (although the Iran Nuclear Deal WAS a positive on balance).  And he wrecked the Democratic Party; the Clinton's takeover of the party apparatus was accomplished, in part, because of Obama's neglect of the party, itself.  I certainly didn't enjoy the social liberalism, not at all.  But the GOP Congress dealt with him with ill will, unconcerned for the common weal.  Their whole goal was to work to see him fail, and they were pretty open and honest about that.  I abhor "The Resistance" Congress to Trump, and I view the concept as un-American, but a certain amount of that is a response to "The Obstruction" that the GOP presented Obama.  There was never ANY good will extended Obama by Republcans.  None at all.  They wanted him to fail so they could get back in power, and they didn't really hide it.  In that regard, Obama may have been better off being more like Trump; giving more crap to his opponents that he got from them. 

I suppose my assessment of Obama is mixed because of my mixed outlook (economic liberal, social conservative) on issues.  He's not Mount Rushmore material, but the harsh judgements on his Presidency by Republicans are purely partisan.  Compromise and achievement on the part of Republicans during the Obama years would have been wonderful for America, both practically and socially, but Republicans were no better at putting the whole of America ahead of partisanship then than Democrats are now.

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DC Al Fine
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« Reply #409 on: December 21, 2018, 06:21:12 PM »

Anti-death penalty. I admit in principle that it can be used justly, but I don't see it happening in modern America, outside of some truly extraordinary circumstances.

As for the pro-life thing, I get irritated when people try to equate the death penalty with abortion. Other than killing, they have next to nothing in common.
Since they both involve killing, they have a lot in common. It is disingenuous to say you are pro-life if you support murder which is what you do if you are pro capital punishment or pro war.
If you are pro death penalty, what if a woman is pregnant? Is it right to spare her life? Do you think that any pregnant women are killed in war? It is, therefore, logically inconsistent to call yourself "pro-life" and support capital punishment for pregnant women or war if there's any possibility that a pregnant woman could result from civilian casualties, which inevitably occurs during war.

I think part of the issue here is one of language: the phrase "pro-life", because it is a political slogan rather than a rigorous description has a certain degree of vagueness to it. Indeed, based on the meaning of the words alone, being "pro-life" could be defined as vegetarianism. In a similar vein, "pro-choice" could be defined as referring to the choice of incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs (or practically any topic for that matter). But that's not how language works. Both phrases clearly, and specifically, refer to abortion.

This carries with it some important distinctions between different types of killing that are clearly relevant to both its moral and legal ramifications. Not all killing is the same. There is a real distinction between willfully killing an innocent person on your own volition and between killing someone in a war and between killing someone as a sentenced execution. War, if it is just, is in defense of yourself or of other people. That's of course not to say we've always waged only just wars, merely that it is another question with its own set of complicated moral issues and clearly distinguishable from abortion or capital punishment.

As for the other point, when was the last time the US executed a pregnant woman? I think the course of action here is obvious for a pro-life death penalty supporter (not that I even support the death penalty but the logic remains): wait until after she gives birth before executing her. Yes, that means that child will grow up without a mother, but so would any other child whose mother is executed.

If supporting either the death penalty or war, in principle, in your opinion precludes being pro-life due to the fact that pregnant women may be killed (which is very unlikely with the death penalty anyways but I digress), then so do a wide range of other things from planes to trains to automobiles (all of which have killed pregnant women before).
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YE
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« Reply #410 on: December 28, 2018, 05:12:52 PM »

Bernie Sanders is trash. No accomplishments after decades in Congress, failed to build alliances and coalitions, and criticizes everybody’s record when all he does is grandstand, protest, and leave the hard decisions to everybody else. Then when you question his ideas he gets defensive and crotchety. Why would anyone want this idiot to be President?

You are part of the problem.
Nothing I said was a lie. Sanders touts his ideologically pure record but it’s been at the cost of doing nothing significant in his centuries in Washington and having no coalitions in place to get legislation passed as President. Meanwhile he will criticize real leaders who have brokered deals and passed meaningful policy as being establishment. He can miss me with his bullsh**t.

Sanders easily has gotten the most progressive stuff done out of anyone on the Democratic side in the last Congress (which obviously wasn't able to do that much), and has a lot more bipartisan amendments than most other congressmen.  This is not surprising due to his massive political influence that he has accrued, but is also a testiment to his ability to find heterodox conservatives to work with.

I will vote for O'Rourke if he is the nominee and urge other people to do so, but he hasn't done jack while in Congress, so your argument is dumb.

You're right that coalitions to enact Sanders policies haven't existed for a long time, but he's the reason why they are now starting  to exist, thus demonstrating his long term efficacy.

He's the primary factor that shifted the Democratic party dramatically in favor of M4A, one of the few people in favor of real financial reform, one of the few people in favor of taking the big steps needed to tackle the urgent problem of climate change. 

If you disagree that things like that are needed, that is fine.  But other people have a right to tell you why they believe you are wrong without you calling them cultists or trying to silence criticism in the name of party unity.

It's smart to form coalitions to move the ball down the field.  That's why progressives united with centrists to vote for Obamacare, despite it being deeply flawed heritage foundation Romneycare, because it was a step in the right direction that helped millions of people if it didn't address the fundamental problems.

The "big tent" is bad, though, if it results in losses rather than gains - if Democrats and republicans conspire to deregulate industry, cut social security/medicare, go to war in the middle East, etc, as certain members of the democratic big tent have often been inclined to do.

In my view, someone who willingly goes along with that big tent in those scenarios is making an obvious mistake.  You should always be putting pressure on people to do stuff that will move America forward, whether they are in your party or not.

This includes urging people to vote for Hillary Clinton, but it also includes not being afraid to have a frank discussion about the flaws in someone's political record and/or platform.
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« Reply #411 on: December 28, 2018, 11:49:23 PM »

The new Democratic coalition has more wealthy suburbanites in it then before, but you'd have know nothing about American politics to believe that poorer and working class people aren't essential pillars of the party. For one, do you really think the party's black voters, who are chronically cursed with economic and social malaises, will forgive a Thatcherite agenda from the party? What about the party's huge base of young people living in rather precarious economic situations? And so on.

People have a very short term memory. They seem to be under the impression that the old Blue Dogs were uniformly Non Partisan League style vulgar populists who said politically incorrect things but fought against the elites, when in fact they were largely corporate shills, owned by Wall Street and special interests. The "new Dems" - the likes of, say, Spanberger or Slotkin - are not ideal, but if anything they are to the left of where centrist Dems used to be. In fact, the most explicitly right wing Democrat on economic grounds is Jeff Van Drew, who is not remotely from the school of Dems that people like hofoid are most scared of.


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« Reply #412 on: December 29, 2018, 05:36:03 PM »

In 2016, actual serious analysis of the TPP showed that agriculture would have been the sector of the American economy that would have best benefited from the deal. This was always true, just not part of the TPP discourse because it didn't matter for the election. Of course, agriculture is an industry dominated by Republicans, so the political benefit was disproportionately in an area where very few votes were put into play. Meanwhile, the largest sectors with potential downside in the deal were much swingier. This made the deal politically asymmetric.
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Chancellor Tanterterg
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« Reply #413 on: December 30, 2018, 12:13:09 AM »

The world is a smaller place than it used to be, and much more interconnected. Americans on both sides of the political spectrum feel free to criticize the 'liberal world order' but don't hesitate to take advantage of its boons in the form of a higher standard of living. People underestimate the value of it because Western policy in recent years has (wisely) been to attempt to nip potential threats to it in the bud rather than waiting for a real crisis, which admittedly has in recent years led to overreactions and poor decisions. But it is not possible anymore, as it was in the past, for America to hide behind its oceans without severe economic consequences in the long run.

But beyond the economic argument, don't you all think it is time to stop pretending that our moral obligation to each other as people ends at a arbitrary border or ocean? What is the moral difference between the Kurds (or the Ukrainians, or Estonians) as opposed to Floridians or Hawaiians that make the freedom of the latter worth my and my kin's blood but not the former? Believe it or not, my hometown is closer to Tallinn than it is to Pearl Harbor, and my great-grandfather, who died for the latter, was born closer to Kurdistan than to what would become his. Nationalist isolationism is a weak enough moral code on its own, and only more so in a multi-ethnic society like the United States. Pragmatic restraints are necessary at times, but to believe that those born beyond a border do not deserve even a moral consideration is ignorant at best and inhuman at worst.
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« Reply #414 on: December 30, 2018, 12:04:28 PM »

"muh minimum wage increase!" is a silly argument that really misunderstands how two-party politics works in this country now

McCaskill lost because she was associated with the Democratic Party, for decades. Initiatives for minimum wage increases, medicaid expansion, and independent redistricting commissions can win because voting for those doesn't (directly) enact other disagreeable parts of the Democratic platform. There's no cross-pressure, e.g., gun restrictions, abortion, land use regulations and conservation, etc. that's being applied to voters with a singular ballot initiative.

That's not true when talking about a politician. There's zero doubt that McCaskill is in favor of a higher minimum wage, but there are a lot of other things she would endorse that many pro-wage increase workers wouldn't approve of. Hell, there are tons of positions that voters probably assume she holds because some Democrat in Massachusetts holds them; Republicans ran ads against multiple Democratic Congressional candidates saying they advocated for M4A when in fact they didn't, but the ads stuck because those candidates were running under the Democratic brand. The truth is when dictating which coalition a voter is willing to empower, they're increasingly voting on which identities they want to empower, which makes voting for a wage-hike candidate who supports abortion much more difficult than voting for a wage hike without a face/label/party affiliation attached.

Stop acting like voting for banking regulations would have earned her another 75K Hawley votes in the Bootheel or other garbage like that. Missouri isn't a state that's impossible for a Dem to win statewide in but it's damn hard and it gets harder every year, for reasons that are largely beyond a candidate's control and being repeated in countless other states. Voting for a labor-friendly ballot initiative takes less cross-pressure than supporting a labor-friendly candidate, and if you can't understand that you're going to misunderstand a lot of American politics.
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« Reply #415 on: December 31, 2018, 09:19:00 AM »


"Anyone who isn't a loser is an actual sociopath" sort of very far-left thinking there huh?

In fact all Democrats are neoliberal 1%-ers. They support empowering girls, but in reality getting women to be financially independent is a capitalist play to increase the supply of wage labour slavery and to make salt of the earth Purple heart populist Purple heart Rust Belt workers miserable (those corporate hags won't marry them!). Heck, actually opposing slavery is the neoliberal stance. It was the neoliberal Lincoln who opposed slavery out of economic reasons (he had to placate his 1%-er Northern industrial donors!). Less slavery means more wage slavery! Only the 1860s Democratic Party platform on women and blacks can save us from the evils of Sunbelt billionaire neoliberalism.
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« Reply #416 on: December 31, 2018, 02:43:33 PM »

I do understand what McCaskill is getting at. Many on the left have fallen for AOC's understandably appealing policy platform without adequate consideration for legislative logistics or political convention. We have absolutely no way to know for sure that AOC will be a remotely effective legislator, and thus I find the glorification of her a bit premature. I didn't particularly like the fact that AOC was campaigning cross-country before even winning election to her own district; obviously, that's her prerogative given the national profile that she accumulated and given that she didn't need to focus on her own district to win, but it rubbed me the wrong way. Additionally, AOC's response to McCaskill's criticism was terribly lacking in political nuance; suggesting that the passage of a minimum wage increase indicates that it takes a more liberal candidate to win a federal race in Missouri is a pretty objectively bad take.

However, McCaskill absolutely should not have used the terms she did to describe AOC; in general, I don't like any person calling another person an "object" or a "thing," unless that person is objectively reprehensible (while AOC is just a political dissenter). I don't know why McCaskill even felt the need to discuss AOC in the first place, especially in such a hostile way; I really don't want to think that it's partially out of bitterness from her own loss, but it does somewhat appear that way. (Not to mention that I think that AOC's critics are only bringing her more attention and appreciation the more that they incessantly talk about her.) Also, in defense of AOC, just as I said that we should not excessively praise her before she proves herself in Congress, we should not tear her down before we give her a shot at legislating. Maybe she'll prove to be more effective than some of us worry she will be.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #417 on: January 11, 2019, 06:08:27 PM »

Honestly, a very good candidate for the name of the thread, not because of this post alone:

History is made by flawed people, because people as a whole are by nature flawed. That means you have good people who sometimes do horrendous things. At the same time you have bad people do on occasion something great.

Andrew Jackson is a horrible person, but he is credited with the expansion of government for better or for worse beyond just a select group of elites.

Now here is the kicker that undermines a lot of what this thread was saying. If Yankees are the anti-authority/rebellious/egalitarian ones, than why was the whole of the 19th century defined by a largely New England centered party that almost always sided with the elites, versus a party based in the South and west that was almost universally defined at its core of opposing the elites?

The OP got one thing right, Yankee values were in fact defined by religion and the reason why these values and this group are losing ground to Southernization is because said religion has waned substantially in its influence to almost nothing. These regions of the country vote Democratic, because they are secularized not because they are "Yankee", and we live in a political era that is polarized based on religious fervor.

Now lets look at the dirty laundry. 

Part I: Immigrants and Religion:

These supposed egalitarian Yankees, were aghast by Catholicism, their opposition to the Church of England was because it was "too Catholic" in its trappings as much as anger at hierarchical control and they disdained such influences. So what happens when a bunch of Irish Catholics start arriving by the boatload in Boston. 1) You discriminate like crap against them and 2) you move to Michigan/Illinois/Oregon.

 For the ones that remain, you try to use compulsory public education to teach them the King James Bible and then you try to keep them from voting (And you thought the South were the only ones who believed in restricted voting rights). Early Federalists and Whigs (which yes included Plantation Owners in the South as well) were very much against expanded voting favoring land and wealth requirements, because it would mean ceding power and control to those low class and later largely Catholic immigrants. Once the immigrants started to be exclusively Catholic, then the class divide among Yankees evaporated and both joined forces in a political alignment defined by religious identity. Later on they would use rivalries for jobs and political influence among more recent immigrant groups as a wedge against the Irish political machines.

This dynamic lasted for over 100 years until the Great Depression and the Greatest Generation swamped out the WASP-Yankee led political machines in the cities of the North and even whole states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Anti-Ethnic politics also helped to galvanize support for Prohibition as well, which united Calvinists both North and South in support in the 1920's. Just as the same two groups (Northern Yankees and Southern Plantation Society) locked arms to pass the Immigration laws in the 1920's, as well.

Part II: Native Americans. While it is easy to think this is something that was exclusive to Southern originated folks, you must never forget that there is a reason why Native American Groups hate Thanksgiving (Yankee originated) as a holiday and often protest on that day. From the time of the landings on Plymouth Rock all the way until end of the 19th century, guess who was just as zealous if not more so in persecuting the indigenous peoples of America? You guessed it! This also was motivated in part by religion and it also a joint project carried out by people both North and South just like prohibition. 


Abolitionism: Yankee culture has one redeeming quality that sustains it about most everything else and it is the reason why modern day Progressives will engage in any amount of historical revisionism to latch onto the group while shirking off any traces of their other antecedents (Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson say hello). Groups that supported abolitionism did so for many different reasons over the course of the period leading up to the Civil War, but it should be noted that it was not because of widespread egalitarianism, it was for most of them, again because of theology. Some believed that slavery ran contrary to God's will, for others it was simply more practical, slavery was an impediment to spreading the gospel to the enslaved peoples. Contained within this was extreme levels of 19th century cultural Imperialism and white supremacy that would make most on the left sick. But history is full of good things being done by a mixed group of people, some of whom are doing so for the wrong reasons.

There is a reason why Republicans have for most of its history been a party hostile to immigration, whether it was based in New England and fighting for abolition or based in the South and fighting for the end of abortion. Over the course of that same period Republicans have generally been the party most favorable to business interests as well.

Yes when you shift your base from one group to another, some other aspects of the political culture will change as well as a result and that leads to others shifting subsequently in reaction to that. However, the reason why the North is Democratic and Republicans began the migration to the South with the Southern Strategy to begin with is because Yankee culture was on the decline in the 20th century.

1. Massive Immigration and low rates of birth meant that percentage of the population that was Yankee was declining.
2. Further complicating things is the Germanification of the North over the course of the early to mid 20th century through a combination of displacement and inter-marriage. That is why those census maps show so little English and so much German in the Northern States, when accounting of course for reporting bias in those surveys.
3. The loss of political clout and the dethroning of pre-New Deal era political machines meant that the Republicans could no longer sustain themselves in the region while being shut out from the South and Southwest.

The effects of this process meant that the Republicans no longer had a firm base that could dominate their base region of the country anymore and not only that but internally were no longer majority Yankee by the strictest definition of the term, as a lot of German, and even and other non-Yankee whites had joined the party by the 1950's.

Over the same period of time, secularization had a substantial impact on the same group of voters and so you had a now secular group of people on the one hand and a Republican Party that is becoming more and more Catholic over the course of the mid 20th century. Tribalistic rivalry based on religion had been what had kept Yankees Republican for so long.

The Republican's Southern Strategy and the shift towards a more Catholic base in the North were reactions to the decline in power of the Yankee demographic, and then by shifting served to intensify that political realignment over the coming decades.

I have long been of the opinion, that our present political ideologies and also the parties themselves share interwoven antecedents and origins and to try and latch onto one and say this is where all good things came from whereas all bad things came from everything else, is in my opinion a dangerous example of historical revisionism.
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FEMA Camp Administrator
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« Reply #418 on: January 11, 2019, 06:10:03 PM »

Honestly, a very good candidate for the name of the thread, not because of this post alone:

He'll never get the credit he deserves thanks to the liberal elite.
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GeorgiaModerate
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« Reply #419 on: January 15, 2019, 01:20:18 PM »

NATO may protect western 'corporate' interests (whatever that means) by proxy of defending Western interests, but aboveall it is a collective security organization, built to prevent the sort of 'creeping' aggression which caused the Second World War. The fundamental premise is that if powerful countries (like France or the United States) join their own security at the hip to the security of weak nations (like Czechoslovakia or Estonia), then potentially dangerous aggressive nations (such as Germany or Russia) can be effectively deterred from taking even minor aggressive steps. If anyone in this thread thinks for a moment after the examples of Georgia and Ukraine that the people of the Baltic states would be living in relative freedom and prosperity today had NATO been disestablished at the end of the Cold War, they are deluded. Further, if anyone in this thread believes that the cost of stationing barrier troops in Europe to shore up the alliance is not worth the liberty of Europeans or preventing the potential cost of global conflict, they are both deluded and have a seriously misaligned moral sense. The only reasons anyone would have to support U.S. withdrawal from NATO is either a fundamental lack of understanding of the way the international system works or a vested interest in the advancement of Russian autocratic influence in Europe, or both.
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Wells
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« Reply #420 on: January 21, 2019, 01:23:37 AM »

Being gay isn’t about having sex, you self-righteous door stop.

How does it affect me that “in the privacy of your own home” you spout bullsh-t about gay folks being “less than?” That I need make it clear to you how your internal biases would end up affecting your actions and the environments with which you interact is a huge mark of your blindness and—yes indeed, I’ll say it!—your straight privilege. I’ll let you ponder it some more. Roll Eyes

As for what I would have you do when your religion seems plain as day about its views on gay people? Well, that’s an easy one! Use your own f-cking brain, look past the dogma, realize that regarding a whole category of people as “less than” for no damn reason is a manifestation of hatred, and denounce your stupid religion, or at the very least denounce the tenets of it that preach and encourage discrimination. Why do that, when you “truly believe?” Because what your “word of God” says is wrong and harmful. It should not take that much brainpower to realize, though I guess it’s easier to let God think for you, isn’t it?

Anyhow, yes. You should be ashamed, and I will not stop being a thorn in the side of people like you until you realize you’re wrong. Not gonna happen, you say? Then I guess I’ll see you in hell. I respect your rights as a human being. But, for good reason, I have no respect for who you are. To you, by virtue of nothing more than who I love, I am unworthy. I don’t need to put up with that. And so that others won’t have to, there’s no way I’m going to let it go unchecked, either. That’s why we need a “pro-LGBT agenda” in school. You people do damage, and it’s no longer okay.
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #421 on: January 25, 2019, 02:11:23 PM »

Imagine if after the new Democratic House was sworn in, the Supreme Court stepped in and basically said that they were the new legislative House body and the House could just be ignored. And they later backed down after massive public outcry and let the House take control again, but then the Senate went ahead and voted on some bills stripping the House of most of its powers and abilities to pass legislation (obviously after abolishing the filibuster) and bypassed the House and just sent said bills to Trump's desk to sign (which the Supreme Court says was OK.) And if the House ever did anything they didn't like would just pass another bill bypassing the House stripping it of its power. And then when Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, etc. announced their campaigns, the Republicans in the Senate just went ahead and disqualified them as candidates. And as a result of that and any other remotely serious Democratic candidate being disqualified Trump's 2020 opponent ended up being that perennial candidate who's in federal prison for mail fraud and got almost 40% of the vote in West Virginia in 2012.

If what the Maduro-created National Assembly did (and frankly the Republican Senate has MORE democratic legitimacy than it does) is OK and his "re-election" was democratically legitimate, then all of the above is perfectly OK as well, as would be Trump's re-election in 2020 under those conditions.
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« Reply #422 on: January 26, 2019, 03:23:42 PM »

Not surprised to see that Bernie derangement syndrome is alive and well, and many of the same people who complained about Hillary being held to an unrealistic standard hold Bernie to a similarly unrealistic standard. He's not a saint, and there are votes and statements of his worthy of criticism. (While I get what he's saying about white voters being "uncomfortable" with black candidates, i.e. xenophobia and racism are not the same thing, I think he could've used better wording, which is a common issue for him.)

However, the attacks on him "not being a Democrat", not doing "enough" for Hillary in 2016, being too old, being too "soft" on guns and/or Russia, and the mere fact that some DINOcrats in states like KY, OK, and WV voted for him come across as nothing more than people holding a grudge on him from 2016 for committing the act of domestic terrorism known as challenging Hillary to a primary, and continue to blame him for her loss, when he's one of the last people who should be blamed.
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Sprouts Farmers Market ✘
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« Reply #423 on: January 28, 2019, 11:15:40 PM »

A bit off-topic, but still: it's becoming more obvious that the media for the next two years is firmly going to be siding with the right on just about anything. We can already glimpse a peek of what the treatment for Hillary is going to be like.
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Joe Republic
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« Reply #424 on: February 01, 2019, 12:01:15 AM »

Rick Santorum is a colossal douchebag, I'm happy for him that his Daughter pulled through though.

I'll bet Bella doesn't think he's a douchebag.

That ought to count for something when you think about it.  Rick Santorum walks a walk that would make many people here crap in their pants if they were actually faced with the same situation.
Using this girl to promote an anti-abortion agenda is disgusting.  She was born into insanely unlikely financial circumstances that allowed for exorbitant amounts of money to be spent to keep her alive.

We have a healthcare system that would deprive her of such care in nearly every circumstance.  Yet you would want to force a poor mother of someone like Bella to give birth, incur debilitating medical expenses that would stop at some point due to inability to pay, and then be forced to watch her daughter suffer and die.

I sincerely pray to God that Bella is a lesbian, because I want Rick Santorum to have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise up a hellbound abomination.

You claim you support some kind of universal healthcare and are given an approximate choice at the voting booth to work towards that goal...but you say no.  Instead, you vote for A system where personal wealth means your dud of a child will be raised up and used as an example for the good, Godly pro-lifers while the children of the poor are neglected..and if not while children, certainly once they make it to adulthood.

“16Then the LORD said to Moses, 17“Say to Aaron, ‘For the generations to come, none of your descendants who has a physical defect may approach to offer the food of his God.

18No man who has any defect may approach—no man who is blind, lame, disfigured, or deformed; 19no man who has a broken foot or hand, 20or who is a hunchback or dwarf, or who has an eye defect, a festering rash, scabs, or a crushed testicle.

21No descendant of Aaron the priest who has a defect shall approach to present the offerings made by fire to the LORD. Since he has a defect, he is not to come near to offer the food of his God. 22He may eat the most holy food of his God as well as the holy food, 23but because he has a defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, so as not to desecrate My sanctuaries. For I am the LORD who sanctifies them.’”

“Yeah..that one..yeah.. the cripple...give him food but...just keep him out of site.  I don’t want him desecrating my sanctuary.”
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