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theCalamity posted:I simply do not have confidence that the Democrats, as a whole, can accomplish much. They had opportunities to codify Roe v Wade, but did not. They had an opportunity to protect our voting rights and failed to do so. They had many opportunities to actually make things better, but didn't. Some of these Democrats are flat out against the goals that I want and I don't want to give them the power to destroy the things that I want to see happen. I think you've entirely missed the point. This isn't about political parties at all! The question should be what you, personally, are doing to win people over to the policies (not political parties) that you personally support. The important part is not to change people's preferred political parties, but rather to change their policy positions and what policies they find important. Once that's been sufficiently done, the political party stuff will work itself out one way or another. If there were fifty million single-issue Roe v Wade voters, then I guarantee you that Roe would still be active law right now one way or another. Failed Imagineer posted:Except that policies which fall under a generally "leftist" umbrella are insanely popular in both the US and UK when polled in a reasonably neutral fashion. They just get absolutely monstered by a compliant media apparatus during election season. How do you solve that? Apparently you don't, planet just dies instead You solve that by getting people to care more - a lot more - about those policies! Policy polling, where people are asked "do you support X, yes/no?" isn't particularly important. What is important is how strongly people support those policies, how much they care about them, how much they're willing to center their political decisions around those specific policies. A policy position held by a minority of the electorate can still become a political priority if the minority of diehard supporters cares a whole loving lot more than the majority who vaguely kinda sorta opposes it when the pollsters remind them it exists. Naturally, if people are changing their mind about the policy because the TV said so, then they didn't feel especially strongly about their initial position in the first place. The kind of super soft support that can be swayed by a few commercials and a couple of skeptical sounding news anchors is politically meaningless. It basically doesn't exist. Josef bugman posted:But they don't as a matter of course. The GOP is not changing their PoV on anything and they continue to weild influence across wide swathes of the USA despite not winning the last presidential election. The reason you can't vote for anyone who represents you is because so few people share your particular political views and priorities. Voting is the end of the political process, not the beginning. You get out there and change people's minds first, and then the electoral landscape (including not just who wins but who's even available to vote for) shifts in response to that.
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Oct 27, 2023 13:56
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Alkydere posted:Yeah, both the alcohol thing and yet another way COVID fucks people up sounds absolutely horrible. Especially since the trigger seemed to be hearing aids. My grandfather needed hearing aids the entire time I knew him since I was a child but he refused to wear them. Finally he admitted that he'd always just had horrible hearing so he never developed the mental barriers to tune people out since if they needed something they'd yell at him. I mean, we don't know the exact details, but in this shooter's case, his family identified something was wrong pretty early and the army forced him to go get in-patient mental health treatment for two weeks until he was declared stable enough to leave. That's actually pretty on the ball as far as mental health treatment goes and the opposite of everyone just telling him to tough it up. It's just the follow up and access to guns that enabled the shooting.
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Oct 27, 2023 14:05
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The Top G posted:Who are these people you encounter that are so knowledgeable & passionately opinionated about the various styles of socialized medicine programs? People I’ve met just want to pay less for—or even afford—their healthcare. I can't speak for the specific types of programs that was mentioned by Killer robot, but it's common to see [large] shifts in polling for medicare for all healthcare when you start getting into more specifics. Here's an AP article that briefly discusses it: https://apnews.com/article/4516833e7fb644c9aa8bcc11048b2169 Kalit fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 14:07
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Byzantine posted:I'm in Kentucky. You get that there is some irony in talking about all the things your vote can’t, or hasn’t done, while you also have a fantastic counter example, Beshear. A lot of Kentuckian lives are much better because of those 5000 votes he won by. A lot of women have access to safe abortions because of those votes. Refugee lives are better because of those votes.
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Oct 27, 2023 14:09
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:You get that there is some irony in talking about all the things your vote can’t, or hasn’t done, while you also have a fantastic counter example, Beshear. I'd like to add on that saying your vote doesn't count is self-defeatist. I bet a whole lot of Georgians didn't think their vote counted for poo poo until 2020 when all of a sudden the state flipped. Just because Dems lose a lot in Kentucky, doesn't mean your vote doesn't count. At a minimum, it shows the party what level of support they have in the state. If things start getting close like they did in Georgia, then the party has more incentive to take notice and invest more. Dems have won in strange places the last 6 years or so. Nothing is impossible.
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Oct 27, 2023 14:20
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:You get that there is some irony in talking about all the things your vote can’t, or hasn’t done, while you also have a fantastic counter example, Beshear. Beshear's great but this isn't true. Abortion is completely illegal in Kentucky in all circumstances. One of the big issues in the current governor's race is that the Republican is opposed to creating exceptions for rape and life of the mother (and he keeps waffling on this instead of saying it directly) but regardless of who wins theres almost no chance of the GA creating those exceptions
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Oct 27, 2023 14:31
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There is finally a "real" primary challenger for Joe Biden. Dean Phillips from Minnesota is a moderate Democrat who ran and unexpectedly won in a blood red district. He's only been in office since 2019 and is running primarily because he believes that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy and that Biden might not be able to beat him. He thinks that Biden has catered to the left too much and abandoned the center, which will hurt his ability to win a general election. He also believes that Biden and Trump are both too old and there needs to be a younger person making a generational argument against Trump. https://twitter.com/CBSMornings/status/1717718226132520968 In other moderate Democrat news, one of the last remaining pro-gun Democrats in the House was Jared Golden from Maine. Following the mass shooting in Maine, he has now reversed his position and supports expanded gun control, including magazine limits and a ban on assault weapons. https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1717664937294627265 In Republican House news, the new Speaker has put out his policy platform. It's the Bible. https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1717718043525099743
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Oct 27, 2023 14:36
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poo poo, is Congress going to pass a law banning clothes made from two or more materials?
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Oct 27, 2023 14:44
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HisMajestyBOB posted:poo poo, is Congress going to pass a law banning clothes made from two or more materials? Nah, this is the Supply-side Jesus, New Republican translation. The one that says "If we hate the gays enough and put enough melanin in concentration camps we will be rewarded in the afterlife!"
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Oct 27, 2023 14:49
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If someone like selec or whoever believes that participating in elections lends legitimacy to the system that demonstrably doesn't care about legitimacy, ok, fine, whatever. I think that's weird and contradictory, but it's at least A Position. But even if your vote doesn't count or you think complete Republican victory is inevitable, that's not a reason to not vote! If voting changes nothing, then it can't hurt to vote. If voting usually changes nothing, but a black swan event causes an election to actually matter, then not voting hurts. This is all setting aside the fact that even if the Dems will fight to the death to preserve capitalism, there are objective differences in their policy toward vulnerable people that the Republicans openly want to harm. If you straight-up don't care about the near-term well-being of LGBT people and women with reproductive health issues because capitalism will eventually destroy the world, you're an rear end in a top hat.
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Oct 27, 2023 14:50
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quote:He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich. Sounds like it’s time for wealth redistribution.
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Oct 27, 2023 14:51
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Kaal posted:Sounds like it’s time for wealth redistribution. poo poo, maybe the Mormons were right all along.... I should have remained a devout member and refused drinking wine so I could have been rich!
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Oct 27, 2023 14:54
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They don't even care about the golden rule, so why would they care about that?
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Oct 27, 2023 14:54
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Main Paineframe posted:The reason you can't vote for anyone who represents you is because so few people share your particular political views and priorities. Voting is the end of the political process, not the beginning. You get out there and change people's minds first, and then the electoral landscape (including not just who wins but who's even available to vote for) shifts in response to that. Sure, but I also believe that we shouldn't have to vote alongside doing all of that if none of the options are palatable level of "less bad" as it were. Everyone is going to have different lines on that level but I think it is more than a bit strange to demand people vote when none of the options are ones you agree with even on some things or on things that directly damage you.
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Oct 27, 2023 14:58
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Matt Gaetz just put out a video where he seems to claim that the Republican Chairman of the Ways and Means committee is a closeted gay man that has asked Republican members of congress to keep his secret. However, he called Gaetz a liar and now Gaetz is outing him to prove that he has been lying for the last 20 years. There have been rumors about him being gay for a long time, but it is sort of similar to Lindsey Graham in that there has never been any direct proof. It's not clear if Gaetz has any direct proof, but either lying to tell the world he is gay or outing him as gay are both pretty wild moves to make because he was mean to you. https://twitter.com/mattgaetz/status/1717676347781263688
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Oct 27, 2023 14:59
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:In Republican House news, the new Speaker has put out his policy platform. It's the Bible. The new Lot Clause is really going to make residents in popular locations rethink their dislike of tourists. Well, as long as those tourists are staying with hot relatives. Can't wait to replace my flood insurance with rainbows either. Man is that going to confuse some people who want to hate the gays but also want dry carpet. Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Matt Gaetz just put out a video where he seems to claim that the Republican Chairman of the Ways and Means committee is a closeted gay man that has asked Republican members of congress to keep his secret. However, he called Gaetz a liar and now Gaetz is outing him to prove that he has been lying for the last 20 years. Has any Representative ever worked harder to get expelled from the chamber? Gyges fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 15:02
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:There is finally a "real" primary challenger for Joe Biden. Dean Phillips from Minnesota is a moderate Democrat who ran and unexpectedly won in a blood red district. He's only been in office since 2019 and is running primarily because he believes that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy and that Biden might not be able to beat him. He thinks that Biden has catered to the left too much and abandoned the center, which will hurt his ability to win a general election. He also believes that Biden and Trump are both too old and there needs to be a younger person making a generational argument against Trump. I don't think a three-term House member qualifies as a "real" primary challenger to the incumbent president. At a skim of the political press, they're describing it with phrases like "vanity project", "mid-life crisis", "quixotic", and "not likely to represent a genuine threat to the president". Aside from his general lack of public profile, there's also the fact that he missed the filing deadline in Nevada and chose to kick off his campaign in New Hampshire (which is unlikely to get any delegates this cycle). There's also the fact that one of his key advisers is Steve Schmidt, the McCain 2008 campaign manager who's spent the last decade and a half bouncing from long-shot candidate to long-shot candidate, trying to shed the stink of being the guy who convinced the McCain campaign that Palin would be a good VP pick.
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Oct 27, 2023 15:05
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Main Paineframe posted:I don't think a three-term House member qualifies as a "real" primary challenger to the incumbent president. At a skim of the political press, they're describing it with phrases like "vanity project", "mid-life crisis", "quixotic", and "not likely to represent a genuine threat to the president". Aside from his general lack of public profile, there's also the fact that he missed the filing deadline in Nevada and chose to kick off his campaign in New Hampshire (which is unlikely to get any delegates this cycle). There's also the fact that one of his key advisers is Steve Schmidt, the McCain 2008 campaign manager who's spent the last decade and a half bouncing from long-shot candidate to long-shot candidate, trying to shed the stink of being the guy who convinced the McCain campaign that Palin would be a good VP pick. That is why "real" was in scare quotes.
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Oct 27, 2023 15:06
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Gyges posted:Has any Representative ever worked harder to get expelled from the chamber? In typical republican fashion he will not accomplish anything, sadly
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Oct 27, 2023 15:07
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Gyges posted:The new Lot Clause is really going to make residents in popular locations rethink their dislike of tourists. Well, as long as those tourists are staying with hot relatives. The GOP lacks the spine to remove him . The whole party basically folded to his tantrum against McCarthy, why wouldn't he keep going?
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Oct 27, 2023 15:08
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Matt Gaetz just put out a video where he seems to claim that the Republican Chairman of the Ways and Means committee is a closeted gay man that has asked Republican members of congress to keep his secret. However, he called Gaetz a liar and now Gaetz is outing him to prove that he has been lying for the last 20 years. Matt Gertz is going to have a WILD few days on Twitter I bet.
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Oct 27, 2023 15:09
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Josef bugman posted:Sure, but I also believe that we shouldn't have to vote alongside doing all of that if none of the options are palatable level of "less bad" as it were. Everyone is going to have different lines on that level but I think it is more than a bit strange to demand people vote when none of the options are ones you agree with even on some things or on things that directly damage you. Well, because this is the US politics thread, this discussion is about the American political system. I suggest you take your grudges against Labour and the UK political system in general to one of the UK threads, instead of trying to interject them into US politics discussions. Or if you want to have an electoralism discussion in general, I'm pretty sure there's a dedicated electoralism thread already in D&D. I severely doubt that Starmer's Labour is literally indistinguishable from the Tories, but it doesn't really matter anyway, because here in this thread we're talking about Republicans and Democrats, and thus whether it's an imperative to vote against theocratic white supremacist fascists who openly want to end democracy, ban abortion, and all sorts of other horrible things.
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Oct 27, 2023 15:14
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Josef bugman posted:I think it is more than a bit strange to demand people vote when none of the options are ones you agree with even on some things or on things that directly damage you. Ah my bad I was assuming you were pro-LGBT rights and pro-choice. I guess it makes sense to not vote if there aren't any parties conservative enough for you. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 27, 2023 15:16
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It is also kind of darkly hilarious that Gaetz is also insisting that he is doing nothing wrong because he is just stating a fact about a person and not in a malicious way. Then, he starts to say, "There's nothing wrong with being gay," but catches himself and stops. It's like an ouroboros of pettiness and cynicism. "How am I hurting him? I'm just outing the fact that one of the most powerful Republicans in the House is gay. That is just a literally true fact. Are you implying that just being gay by itself is bad?" followed immediately by: "Not that I think being gay is good. Obviously it is not, but he is lying and that is bad. That is what I am focusing on. I am just stating some facts about what he is lying about." Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 15:18
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Is Smith one of those virulently homophobic politicians or is he just a generic Republican (yes I know that probably means the same thing, but some are worse than others)
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Oct 27, 2023 15:23
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The amusing tidbit is that, if Santos is expelled, Gaetz becomes even more important because the Republican majority goes from 4 to 3.
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Oct 27, 2023 15:23
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FlamingLiberal posted:Is Smith one of those virulently homophobic politicians or is he just a generic Republican (yes I know that probably means the same thing, but some are worse than others) He has basically a 100% anti-gay voting record, but his public rhetoric isn't virulently homophobic. He's mostly focused on mild homophobia and grieving about state's rights when it comes to gay issues. When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage, his statement denouncing it was mostly about the concept of democracy, legal precedent, and state's rights. quote:“As the son of a preacher, I have never wavered in my commitment to the biblical definition of marriage, and in our state, more than a million Missourians voted to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Until today, it was the right of each state to determine how they wished to define marriage.
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Oct 27, 2023 15:27
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Main Paineframe posted:I severely doubt that Starmer's Labour is literally indistinguishable from the Tories, but it doesn't really matter anyway, because here in this thread we're talking about Republicans and Democrats, and thus whether it's an imperative to vote against theocratic white supremacist fascists who openly want to end democracy, ban abortion, and all sorts of other horrible things. You would be wrong. But your point is well taken, this is not really the place for this. burnishedfume posted:Ah my bad I was assuming you were pro-LGBT rights and pro-choice. I guess it makes sense to not vote if there aren't any parties conservative enough for you. Again the people I can vote for over are not pro LGBT. They are in fact anti T in a lot of ways. That's part of the problem.
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Oct 27, 2023 15:37
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Thanqol posted:Biden was never going to be elected and Pass Socialism. But if Clinton beat Trump in 2016 then the Romney wing of the Republicans would be ascendant and they'd be focused on budget deficits and economic policy rather than the domionist stuff they are in now, and the democratic party would need to move further to the left to compete. I don't see why this would be the result of a Trump loss. Trump's loss in 2020 didn't revitalize a moderate faction in the party, why would his loss in 2016 accomplish this? And why would the Democrats move farther to the left to compete with a party that's moving farther to the middle? It's possible that your narrative is the real counterfactual but it seems just as plausible to say "if Clinton beats Trump in 2016 then a more competent and more scary extremist Republican runs against her in 2020" or "if the Republicans move toward the center, the Democrats move toward the center to try to keep their share of voters in the middle."
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Oct 27, 2023 15:47
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"The center" these days includes support or at least toleration for homosexuals, so as someone who lived through the 90s, it seems pretty goofy to say that things haven't gotten better, even as there's still a long way to go.
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Oct 27, 2023 15:50
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Civilized Fishbot posted:I don't see why this would be the result of a Trump loss. Trump's loss in 2020 didn't revitalize a moderate faction in the party, why would his loss in 2016 accomplish this? On the first point, the point was that it takes multiple cycles. Regan won twice then Bush won. That’s 12 years of one thing. We haven’t seen that long term success from the Democrats in my lifetime. If the Republicans moved toward the middle why would the Democrats also move toward the middle? That’s just not how Overton windows work at all.
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Oct 27, 2023 15:57
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:In Republican House news, the new Speaker has put out his policy platform. It's the Bible. Looking forward to him banning interest on student loans/mortgages and setting up a public fund to feed, house and provide medical care to anyone who needs it.
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Oct 27, 2023 16:05
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uPen posted:Looking forward to him banning interest on student loans/mortgages and setting up a public fund to feed, house and provide medical care to anyone who needs it. He prefers the book of Job I'm sure.
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Oct 27, 2023 16:10
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:On the first point, the point was that it takes multiple cycles. Regan won twice then Bush won. That’s 12 years of one thing. We haven’t seen that long term success from the Democrats in my lifetime. This has nothing to do with whether Clinton defeating Trump in '16 would, as claimed, energize the moderate wing of the Republican party. Fork of Unknown Origins posted:If the Republicans moved toward the middle why would the Democrats also move toward the middle? If you're a voter in the middle, and the Republicans move toward you in middle, you might start thinking, "hmm, the Republicans are now closer to my beliefs than the Democrats." That's very dangerous for the Democrats - they might not only lose your vote, but lose it to the enemy. To cancel that out, the Democrats can move toward you as well. Why should they move to the left, away from the voters who are now being more effectively wooed by the Republicans, and toward voters who would never vote for the Republicans anyway? What I'm describing is just a case of median voter theorem - if you have politics along one axis, and voters always support the closest party to their own position, and only two parties, then the party closest to the median voter always wins. Distance from the median voter is a luxury, and an electoral disadvantage. I'm not saying real life politics actually always work this way, but I don't know why we should believe they actually predictably work the other way, where if the Republicans move toward the middle, the Democrats move to the left. Fork of Unknown Origins posted:That’s just not how Overton windows work at all. The Overton Window is a label developed by a libertarian think tank to describe which policies the public will accept as imaginable or sensible, it doesn't describe how politicians or parties choose their positions in relation to that public sentiment. Nervous posted:He prefers the book of Job I'm sure. If our politicians are gonna be Bible-heads, that's a good book to choose. Lincoln read Job a lot, maybe helped him with the courage to constantly call out bullshit. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 16:12
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:There is finally a "real" primary challenger for Joe Biden. Dean Phillips from Minnesota is a moderate Democrat who ran and unexpectedly won in a blood red district. He's only been in office since 2019 and is running primarily because he believes that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy and that Biden might not be able to beat him. He thinks that Biden has catered to the left too much and abandoned the center, which will hurt his ability to win a general election. He also believes that Biden and Trump are both too old and there needs to be a younger person making a generational argument against Trump. I wouldn't say that the Minnesota 3rd is blood red, they voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Republicans in the 3rd were hanging on to a thread based on Rep Ramstad's and Rep Paulsen's reputations as a moderate pro choice republicans. It just came at the end that Paulsen couldn't seperate himself from the national republican party and demographic changes crushed republicans in the western suburbs. Min Sec State has a bunch of historic voting result maps where you can see how things have changed over time https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/election-results/ 2008 peak Obamamania  2020 gently caress trump Biden is good enouigh i guess  Going down the western/southern suburbs of Maple Grove, Plymouth, Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Edina!!! and Bloomington are now all reliable blue voters.
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Oct 27, 2023 16:21
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I dont think 8 straight years of Obama made Republicans go towards the middle (McCain and Romney presented themselves as statesmen rather than outsiders). Losing multiple elections energized the fringe anti-government movements to become the main base of the republican party, and the same people who hated losing to Obama now believe that it is impossible for them to lose elections. If the process is universal, that losing elections makes parties similar / towards the electorate of the last election, then why did Trump- an anti-Obama in many ways- win? Why has the "anti-uniparty" political faction become ascendant, counter to the argument being made?
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Oct 27, 2023 16:22
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Gerund posted:I dont think 8 straight years of Obama made Republicans go towards the middle (McCain and Romney presented themselves as statesmen rather than outsiders). Losing multiple elections energized the fringe anti-government movements to become the main base of the republican party, and the same people who hated losing to Obama now believe that it is impossible for them to lose elections. Parties have often historically reacted to a disappointing loss by doubling down and assuming they weren't pure enough. Concluding that what the people need is to really see the (crazy, horrifying at the time to the middle) difference to win them back. Parties will eventually get tired of losing and do whatever they have to do to become more competitive. The GOP had invested a lot of time and effort catering to their fringe to get them to keep voting every election, its going to take a lot of time wandering the political wilderness and getting their asses kicked before their base finally allows the party to do what they want. The longer it takes for the crazy right fringe to lose their grip on power within the GOP, the better for us.
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Oct 27, 2023 16:29
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doesnt the Bible have a debt Jubilee? so Mike supports Dark Biden cancelling all that student debt, right? Also the musk thread said that dem prez challenger got birdbanned, so the dude either personally slighted musk or musk is bending the knee to dark biden.
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Oct 27, 2023 16:32
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James Comer's first impeachment hearing was criticized by Republicans for bringing in witnesses who refused to lie under oath and undercut the charges made by the Republican panel by saying that there was no evidence for many of their claims. That bad experience has apparently burned him and the reason the second impeachment hearing still has not been scheduled for almost two months is that they are considering not having any more hearings and just moving forward with a vote for impeachment instead. They want to do more private depositions in the hopes of finding something because the public hearings have so far accidentally disproven several of their claims and giving Democrats chances to cross-examine the witnesses and grandstand has embarrassed several members of the committee. https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1717919986952405187 quote:Mike Johnson points to a Biden impeachment, even if the facts do not
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Oct 27, 2023 16:35
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It absolutely does not matter to these people what's in the Bible. You can't own them by quoting scripture that contradicts their hatreds and bigotries. They don't give a gently caress and neither should you.
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Oct 27, 2023 16:36
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