OK we have this week's Democratic gameplan to unseat Donnie. He's an enemy of democracy. Boiled down here: When I asked Burns whether he was concerned about the issues of democracy and human rights getting politicized over the course of the 2020 campaign, he dismissed the point. “You have an American president who is refusing to stand up for democracy, refuses to support our democratic allies in Europe … and coddles dictators,” he said. “This is not only fair game. It’s essential that people speak out about this.” Whether this will translate into votes at home is a different question. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/democrats-have-found-their-battle-cry/593881/
I don't know if I agree with you, because I don't know dick about antifa, but keep it up. We need more non-trolls disagreeing with the collective.
He'd better attach domestic points to that argument. Dems aren't going anywhere if they make people in other countries their main emphasis. Americans are damn near as narcissistic as their leader. They want to hear about how unappreciated and great they are.
I'd like to see more evidence that Antifa cares any more about the Democratic process than Trump. Anti-fascism is good, but a Trotskyite socialism, while anti-fascist, isn't exactly amenable to democracy.
Also, healthcare. Republicans have nothing to offer. Even worse, they want to eliminate OCare potentially throwing millions back into HC chaos. This is easily understandable even to the Economically Anxious. One of the great things of Trump's racism is that he won't even leave Obamacare alone. Anything the Kenyan Commie did must be overturned.
Boloni who customarily does not make a #bothsidesdoit argument, did so in this case. That was why it was contrarian. For you to match what he did, you'd have to drop the #bothsidesdoit routine and explain why one side is doing something better than the other. That would be interesting, yeah.
It's a two party binary system. It's like if the World Cup was only the US and Canada. The US would start winning a bunch of World Cups ... but that doesn't mean that they're a better team. If we had a multi party system like most other countries, Trump and his goons would only be at like 20% tops. It's precisely our binary system that creates a winner take all situation on the right. If people think back to GOP primaries, the guy was only getting like 20-30% in the early states. But the system is such that this is all it takes to create a pathway to controlling one of the two major parties. And this doesn't even mention the 50% or so of people who don't register and don't vote. When you take that into account, you start to realize just how weak and unpopular these parties are as far as public approval.
That is structured in favor of the GOP. Remember, the GOP has won the popular vote in the Presidency only once since 1988. It routinely is the less popular of the two parties, but is competitive because it benefits from the electoral system. That point constantly seems to be overlooked. Trump acts as if he speaks for the people, to the point where he tries to squash all dissenters, but he's a minority ruler. The majority rejected him.
Well, turn out is what 60-65%? That means that if they split that vote each party gets about 30-32.5%. That means that 35-40% "rejects both parties"
Or rejects the notion of voting, period. There may be no party, and no candidate, who can get those people to show up.
Not really. The way I look at it there's really no conservatives in this forum. I look at this medium more as left wing internal debate and housecleaning. I frame things a little differently when I'm out in the wild. I'm very aware that right wing reactionaries love to weaponize left wing self criticism. But it's rarely genuine, and mostly just about scoring points, so I try not to feed that. My favorite is like if someone like Farrakhan says something crazy about gay people, the right goes crazy as if they suddenly care about gay people. Tim Pool is a perfect example of a leftie who went so far down the rabbit hole of left wing self criticism that he completely forgot about the right and has in the process converted himself into a mascot for the right. But this is big soccer .... just a handful of liberal posters who've known each other for awhile. Should be able to do some self criticism here without enabling the right. Besides, the problems on the left are internal and should be addressed from within in forums like these where progressives are talking amongst each other.
For hypocrisy, that doesn't beat Trump/Fox criticizing AL Franken about his sexual-abuse accusations. That's as rich as it gets.
"Should be" and "are" are still quite a ways off from one another, sadly. Which is how you get "illegal" notions like hashtag-bothsides applied to reasonable comments.
You mean, like Yemen drone strikes Yemen drone strikes until Trump becomes President, when support for the Saudis increases and drone strikes increase, but then silence? That's not reasonable, that is the intent to deceive. Or willful self-deception, since I can't read minds I can't judge which. But I know when I am being hustled, as a general rule.
Do you seriously think I stopped caring about that (by the way, it's more than drone strikes, it's enabling genocidal blockades and supporting the KSA AF directly)? You guys STARTED caring. Now, it was triggered by a member of the vaunted journalist class being dismembered and various sources yapping about the war THROUGH the administration transition, but I'll take what I'll can get.
You made headway during the second term of Obama's administration with your arguments. I wasn't the only one listening.
Saw a book in the library today that argued that the two party system largely creates polarization. That is, polarization is largely structural. If the book is still there tomorrow, I'll look into it.
I'd believe the proposition. The number two already gives you the basic ingredients to create polarization. I don't know much math, but there is something call trilineal polarity. I don't know polarity works with more than two axis points, but conventional wisdom would tell me that if you had 7 parties, it would dilute the force of the 1v1 dynamic. Not to say that those systems aren't messy and chaotic too, but probably not as polarized. Another bad feature of our system is that it doesn't punish bad ideas, which is what I was getting at earlier. There's no competition and no choice ... or at least people perceive it that way because 3rd parties are marginalized. This means that you can retain voters even when you suck because you have single party monopoly on the right, and single party monopoly on the left. Because of this, the raw numbers of how many people vote GOP doesn't tell you much about whether they actually like their party. Personally I think the whole thing is a house of cards and the only thing propping it up is the duality. GOP only exists as a polarized contrast to the Dems. I think there's millions of GOP voters yearning for something different to vote for. I was reading a pol sci paper recently that was making a connection between this government that doesn't represent us and the mental health crisis in the country. The idea is that in today's society we're desperate to express our values politically, perhaps much more than previous societies. Possibly linked to affluence, which frees up the mind to worry about broader societal issues. And since our archaic political system can't satisfy this demand, it's triggering record levels of anxiety and alienation.
There's a distinct reason that no new democracies copy our Constitution. It relies on adherence to norms and respect for institutions. It's too easy to collapse. Most all newer democracies have gone the proportional representation route, including Iraq, whose constitution the US State Department pretty much wrote for them. I think that the defunct Blue-Dog Democrat's would be a very popular platform if they weren't branded as wusses by either party.
I understand what you are trying to say, I just don't think it is a good comparison. This gets brought up a lot. Both parties would decrease in support. But it is not the reality, so when talking about Dems v. the Reps, it is not really all that relevant. Sure, but you stated that the Reps have sold their souls for short-term gain. My point was that they sold their souls starting from 1994, or even further back, so what they are doing today should be viewed in the context of what they did in 2016 and 2010 and 2004 (Kartina) and 2000/01 and 1994. As mentioned elsewhere, their messaging is better, in part because it is exclusionary, but also because it is simpler (excluding everybody is simple). Yet, as ceezmad said, the have only won the popular vote once since 1988.
Per Wikipedia, 27 of them are still around. The Blue Dog Coalition "advocates for fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense and bipartisan consensus rather than conflict with Republicans". It acts as a check on legislation that its members perceive to be too far to the right or to the left on the political spectrum I'd say compromise may have been possible when they started in the mid 90s. But at least since Obama, it is just a green light to embolden these Trump-slurping Republicans. And wasn't Heath Shuler one of them? As a Redskins fan I can say - f#ck that guy! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition
Here's one for the "Interesting if true" file. In the 2016 elections, future Blue Dogs accounted for over half of the Democrats’ gains in the House.[27