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KomradeX posted:And you can feel the Sorkin influence every time Matt Yglesias write a piece about why sweat shop labor isn't a big deal or every time Ezra Klein goes out and blows some right wing think tank ghoul because he has good arguments or is respectable or whatever. You are projecting way too hard into these people's heads.
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Apr 20, 2017 20:05
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Main Paineframe posted:Plenty of ink was spilled about the Republicans' failures when they were, y'know, failing. Right now they control the Presidency, Congress, more governorships than they've held at any point since 1922, and almost enough state legislatures to call a Constitutional Convention. This is exactly my point. They spent the same amount of time criticizing both parties. It goes back before the 2016 election where there's a lot of analysis about how hard the Dems failed. Leading up to the election, it's just assumed that people know how terrible the GOP is so the media uncritically covered the clown show primary and circus of an election. I have yet to see any "liberal" pundits accurately frame just how lovely the GOP is. It's not the few jingoistic crazies that shout racial epithets and talk about glassing the Middle East that need to be sidelined. The entire party has been actively trying to gently caress up America for a very long time now and have zero redeeming qualities if you aren't either a racist bible thumper or part of the 1%. Like, seriously, they have not presented any helpful legislation or leadership for at least 30 years, but somehow they get to bring out their policy "experts" who spout unchallenged lies and ideas that have already been proven to be complete failures. People honestly don't know this at all, and are shocked when you bring it up. Most people in general aren't politically involved and believe that Dems are simply the left leaning party and Republicans are simply a right leaning party. It's a massive failure on the part of the media, and establishment Dems, for not effectively telling the American people the truth.
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Apr 20, 2017 21:17
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RasperFat posted:People honestly don't know this at all, and are shocked when you bring it up. Most people in general aren't politically involved and believe that Dems are simply the left leaning party and Republicans are simply a right leaning party. It's a massive failure on the part of the media, and establishment Dems, for not effectively telling the American people the truth. The Democrats are simply the left-leaning party (though not nearly enough) and the Republicans are simply the right-leaning party. It's just that left-wing means "good, helpful, cares about people" while right-wing means "gently caress you got mine also burn in Hell". What else are left-wing and right-wing supposed to mean, exactly?
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Apr 20, 2017 21:23
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RasperFat posted:This is exactly my point. They spent the same amount of time criticizing both parties. It goes back before the 2016 election where there's a lot of analysis about how hard the Dems failed. Leading up to the election, it's just assumed that people know how terrible the GOP is so the media uncritically covered the clown show primary and circus of an election. Would you perhaps call them a "basket of deplorables"?
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Apr 20, 2017 21:31
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The West Wing is merely the fruiting body of a serious mold infestation behind the walls
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Apr 20, 2017 21:43
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Main Paineframe posted:Would you perhaps call them a "basket of deplorables"? Alot of centrists are.
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Apr 20, 2017 22:08
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WampaLord posted:If you want to get mad at a TV person for influencing modern politics, get mad at Mark Burnett for creating The Apprentice. Trump isn't president without that stupid loving show.
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Apr 20, 2017 22:22
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mcmagic posted:Trump isn't president without that stupid loving show. Explain why you're so certain of this. Are you somehow under the impression that Obama wouldn't have been a centrist president otherwise?
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Apr 20, 2017 22:47
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Majorian posted:Explain why you're so certain of this. Are you somehow under the impression that Obama wouldn't have been a centrist president otherwise? Because Trump gained the image in pop culture as tough efficient executive person to the average blue collar worker, and it was a major learning process in how to play the media to pay attention to him. Trump effectively polished at being Trump because of that show. If you want to see political Trump pre-apprentice: its his 2000 reform party run, when he had a much less crazy platform including UHC but ended up dropping out of the reform party primaries even though it's prob 1/100 difficulty of winning the Republican primaries. seriously read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2000 it's really interesting because you can see the shadow of 2016 trump but much much less polished
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Apr 20, 2017 22:53
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KomradeX posted:Of course the big difference being that Harry Truman or anyone else in political power never tried to govern like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is how politics actually work. Unlike many modern democrats who act like the West Wing is a how to guide to politics. It's directly responsible for cursing us with Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias. There would be Ezra Kleins and Matt Yglesiases anyway, though. There are some in every generation. The Clintons and Obama would still have been centrists. Rahm Emanuel would have been a centrist. (hell, Josh Lyman is explicitly based on Rahm) There have been idealized odes to governing through consensus, compromise, and persuasion of other politicians since Cicero and Polybius and even before them. Let's dispense with the notion that a soap opera set in the White House that ran for seven years sparked a political school of thought that has existed for millennia. e: Plus Truman had the luxury of running on the coattails of a supremely popular four-term president who died in the last year of the biggest war in human history. The West Wing came about when the country was still in the throes of Reaganism: "This country HATES Big Government and deficits and welfare queens! We HAVE to triangulate with the Right if we're going to survive!:arzy:" I think it's pretty clear that the show as a symptom, not a cause of Third Way dumbassery. Majorian fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Apr 20, 2017 |
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Apr 20, 2017 22:54
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Majorian posted:Explain why you're so certain of this. Are you somehow under the impression that Obama wouldn't have been a centrist president otherwise? Because before that show Trump's image was of a page 6 laughingstock. The show is why he was viewed as a "serious businessman."
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Apr 20, 2017 22:57
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mcmagic posted:Because before that show Trump's image was of a page 6 laughingstock. The show is why he was viewed as a "serious businessman." OH, you meant "The Apprentice." I'm dumb, I thought you meant "West Wing," because I'm very bad at reading. 
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Apr 20, 2017 23:16
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21 Muns posted:The Democrats are simply the left-leaning party (though not nearly enough) and the Republicans are simply the right-leaning party. It's just that left-wing means "good, helpful, cares about people" while right-wing means "gently caress you got mine also burn in Hell". What else are left-wing and right-wing supposed to mean, exactly? I think the problem is that there isn't really a single universally correct definition of "left wing." I think most people in these threads are generally defining it along economic lines (since I think that's where the whole left/right distinction originally came from*), but it's obviously entirely possible for someone to express strongly anti-racism/sexism/bigotry views while also generally being pro-free market capitalism (this is basically where mainstream Democrats stand). Many leftists (myself included) would say that this is a contradiction and that issues like racism/sexism can never truly be addressed without "Big Government" intervention combined with leftist economic policy. One of the biggest issues with the Democratic Party is that it is, undoubtedly, deeply "in bed" with certain corporate interests. An obvious example would be finance; there is zero doubt that mainstream Democrats are very friendly with the financial industry. At its core, the Democratic Party believes that the free market is basically good and just keeps to be tweaked a bit in order to benefit the public. This is probably the biggest core ideological difference between Democrats and leftists (and why it is very questionable to define most Democrats as being leftist). *Let me know if I'm wrong about this
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Apr 20, 2017 23:51
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21 Muns posted:The Democrats are simply the left-leaning party (though not nearly enough) and the Republicans are simply the right-leaning party. It's just that left-wing means "good, helpful, cares about people" while right-wing means "gently caress you got mine also burn in Hell". What else are left-wing and right-wing supposed to mean, exactly? Yeah that's what they mean now. There used to be a little nuance more than gutting taxes for rich people and oppressing minorities. A conservative position used to be being non-interventionist even if the other country has a crazy dictator. Now it's bomb them if they're brown. Democrats aren't a left leaning party, they are a centrist party. Republicans aren't just right leaning, they are extremists. But Americans not spending any time actually following politics and the media constantly "truth in the middle"-ing makes a shitload of non-hardcore Republicans think both sides are roughly the same.
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Apr 21, 2017 05:33
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Ytlaya posted:(since I think that's where the whole left/right distinction originally came from*), It came from what sides of the assembly hall the different factions of the French Revolution sat on in the 1789 National Convention: the absolutists and traditionalists sat on the right side of the hall and the constitutional monarchists and radicals sat on the left side. This then continued in the later French Revolutionary assemblies with different post-Republic factional systems, where the more conservative parts that were previously considered left would literally shift right in their seating after the old reactionaries and moderates were purged / executed / resigned. At least until Thermidor, in which case the opposite happened. The Left-Right duality survived the French Revolution as a useful shorthand on how a given faction felt about the more radical parts of Enlightenment political thought (and later Socialist politics, after Liberalism stopped being a major revolutionary ideology in Europe), and percolated into use by other countries over time and applied to characterize their own social-political systems. America, being a republic based on Enlightenment thought that pre-dates the French Revolution, has an awkward relation to the Left-Right political narrative compared to Continental Europe (as does the rest of the Anglosphere and Latin America, for different reasons). TL;DR it's arbitrary and based off of the aesthetics and ideological heirs of 200 year old politics and how well they fit stenciled on top of another country.
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Apr 21, 2017 06:49
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21 Muns posted:The Democrats are simply the left-leaning party (though not nearly enough) and the Republicans are simply the right-leaning party. It's just that left-wing means "good, helpful, cares about people" while right-wing means "gently caress you got mine also burn in Hell". What else are left-wing and right-wing supposed to mean, exactly? Nah, they have not been since reagan. They have adopted social stances when it got passed in the courts and would win them elections but caring about people was never a part of it.
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Apr 21, 2017 06:51
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The idea of only having two political parties representing the population of a country of hundreds of millions of people is just so fundamentally ridiculous it's really beyond belief to me. I'd wager 90%+ of problems with US politics can be traced directly back to this one crazy idea.
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Apr 21, 2017 09:46
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RasperFat posted:Yeah that's what they mean now. There used to be a little nuance more than gutting taxes for rich people and oppressing minorities. A conservative position used to be being non-interventionist even if the other country has a crazy dictator. Now it's bomb them if they're brown. Nah - the Dems are a center-right party and the Republicans are a right party. "Bomb them if they're not white" has been the mainstream in American foreign policy for about eight decades now - that's why a shitlord like Kissinger is treated by both parties as some kind of bipartisan foreign policy elder guru. The Republicans only seem "extreme" because the Dems have pushed the center so far to the right that the Republicans had to start bringing in the fringes just to distinguish themselves from the Dems.
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Apr 21, 2017 14:57
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mcmagic posted:Trump isn't president without that stupid loving show. Trump is a symptom. His personal success or failure might be due to that TV show and other random contingencies of history, but the success of an outsider/populist/demagogue was inevitable given the slow motion car crash of our system. Without reform, he's just a harbinger. With reform, he wouldn't have been elected. The center cannot hold and it honestly doesn't deserve to
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Apr 21, 2017 15:13
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SickZip posted:Trump is a symptom. His personal success or failure might be due to that TV show and other random contingencies of history, but the success of an outsider/populist/demagogue was inevitable given the slow motion car crash of our system. I agree with this but there is no one else in the GOP who could've done it in 2016 other than Trump.
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Apr 21, 2017 15:15
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mcmagic posted:I agree with this but there is no one else in the GOP who could've done it in 2016 other than Trump. That's details not trends. Let's say Trump doesn't run and Hillary wins this time. Do you imagine that she was going to do anything that would staunch the growing hatred and perceived illegitimacy of our ruling class? If not this time then next time. If not Trump then someone else. The Roman Republic fought off all sorts of challengers until it didn't and wasn't anymore. We're in an unstable system and who knows where the chips will fall when they finally do. Trump's the beginning not the climax
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Apr 21, 2017 15:33
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SickZip posted:That's details not trends. Let's say Trump doesn't run and Hillary wins this time. Do you imagine that she was going to do anything that would staunch the growing hatred and perceived illegitimacy of our ruling class? I think the climax is around the corner at this point: Trump is governing as a Reagan Republican and simply repeating the same neoliberal paradigm the GOP has being instituting on the country since 1980. It's not going to work: the Reagan Republicans have had a couple of ticking time bombs under their feet since they took power in 1980. Namely debt and demographics. The modern GOP is very wedded to white racial idpol and southern evangelical culture which is increasingly untenable as America becomes less white. At the same time inequality, wage stagnation and the gap between income and consumption is producing unsustainable levels of private sector and state level debts which is waiting to explode at this point. Automation is just the cherry on the cake in accelerating the trends, I think a major realignment is gonna be sometime in the next 8-16 years. It's going to be at least as big of a chance as from the new deal era to Reagan. We are basically one or two major economic crisis away and it's being 9 years since 2008.
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Apr 21, 2017 15:58
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If Reagan republicanism gets associated with a president in the 30%s then we're making good progress. But people are idiots and have short memories.
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Apr 21, 2017 16:05
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Typo posted:I think the climax is around the corner at this point: Trump is governing as a Reagan Republican and simply repeating the same neoliberal paradigm the GOP has being instituting on the country since 1980. The issue it isn't such a problem for Republicans, it is also mostly a problem for the Democrats as well (the race issue less so). The Democrats more or less adopted most of that ideology already. Trump (or his backers) knew this and ran a populist campaign because they know the standard line doesn't sell anymore. The major realignment that is going to happen is complete disgust with entire system but there are no options left and everything is continually getting worse.
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Apr 21, 2017 17:08
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Ardennes posted:The issue it isn't such a problem for Republicans, it is also mostly a problem for the Democrats as well (the race issue less so). The Democrats more or less adopted most of that ideology already. Trump (or his backers) knew this and ran a populist campaign because they know the standard line doesn't sell anymore. The Democrats adopted Reaganism in the same sense that the Republicans adopted the new deal under Eisenhower: it was to keep their party political relevant in an era where the opposition won the big ideological battle of the day. But in many ways the adoption is skin-deep, this came to ahead for the Republicans in 1964 with Goldwater and for the Democrats in 2016 with Bernie Sanders. The grassroots base of the party got sufficiently pissed off at the establishment and eventually threw them out on the curb. quote:The major realignment that is going to happen is complete disgust with entire system but there are no options left and everything is continually getting worse.
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Apr 21, 2017 17:18
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Gustav posted:The idea of only having two political parties representing the population of a country of hundreds of millions of people is just so fundamentally ridiculous it's really beyond belief to me. I'd wager 90%+ of problems with US politics can be traced directly back to this one crazy idea. it wasn't the idea. in fact, iirc the washington hated parties. it arose as a result of a poor choice of voting procedure, first past the poll. mathematically, it will result in two party dominance
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Apr 21, 2017 17:27
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Typo posted:The Democrats adopted Reaganism in the same sense that the Republicans adopted the new deal under Eisenhower: it was to keep their party political relevant in an era where the opposition won the big ideological battle of the day. Yeah, but by late 60s, it was clear that Rockefeller Republicanism was starting to weaken with the southern strategy. In comparison, it seems like the traditionalists in the Democratic party still seem to hold all the cards even though there is growing satisfaction with their leadership. I could easily see another hollow centrist being pushed into the spotlight in 2020 with the expectation "there is no way he could lose." The DNC is playing chicken with their supporters, I fully assume they would burn the party to the ground rather it move in the direction of Sanders. If anything everything that has happened since the election more or less shows this. The Tea Party/OWS more or less were just tremors of what is coming, especially since it looks like there is no way to "win" through traditional political channels.
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Apr 21, 2017 17:37
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SickZip posted:That's details not trends. Let's say Trump doesn't run and Hillary wins this time. Do you imagine that she was going to do anything that would staunch the growing hatred and perceived illegitimacy of our ruling class? I agree -- this fight was always going to be fought eventually, and our saving grace is that Trump and Bannon turned out way more incompetent (if still incredibly dangerous) than we expected. If Hillary would have won we would be fighting the exact same fight 4 - 8 years from now, with a way better organized and cunning alt-right -- and likely someone smart enough to know how to use them. But that's the accelerationist in me talking. Maybe in those 4 - 8 years with Hillary in office would have given the Berniecrats long enough cover to take over or reform the party. Hopefully this is a large enough wake up call to start some real reform in this country (although I'm really worried that the dem establishment still hasn't got the memo).
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Apr 21, 2017 17:49
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Feldegast42 posted:I agree -- this fight was always going to be fought eventually, and our saving grace is that Trump and Bannon turned out way more incompetent (if still incredibly dangerous) than we expected. If Hillary would have won we would be fighting the exact same fight 4 - 8 years from now, with a way better organized and cunning alt-right -- and likely someone smart enough to know how to use them. It's possible, but I'm not sure this is 100% a given. Had Hillary beaten Trump, I think there would have been a reaction from the more globalist, technocratic elements in the Right. It's possible 2020's nominee would have been Rubio or someone similar.
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Apr 21, 2017 18:17
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Feldegast42 posted:I agree -- this fight was always going to be fought eventually, and our saving grace is that Trump and Bannon turned out way more incompetent (if still incredibly dangerous) than we expected. If Hillary would have won we would be fighting the exact same fight 4 - 8 years from now, with a way better organized and cunning alt-right -- and likely someone smart enough to know how to use them. In those 4-8 years Hillary would have had all the Berniecrats purged for insufficient loyalty
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Apr 21, 2017 18:21
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Yeah, if Hillary won, she almost would have consolidated power. If anything this is the weakest the DNC has been in the while (but that is only relative since the left is still pretty much powerless). Ardennes fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Apr 21, 2017 |
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Apr 21, 2017 18:29
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The only thing I really blame Obama for the Democratic party decline is when he handed over his grass roots political network to the DNC. OFA (Organize For Action) won him the presidency and could have pressured conservative Democrats into voting for health care reform and Obama's agenda. If it was still chugging along, it could have won Congress in 2010. It could have beat Trump. But instead of having an independent political group pushing his agenda, Obama handed it to the DNC and they took a big poo poo all over it and it fell apart by 2010. drat, even the destruction of the OFA wasn't really Obama's fault. The DNC broke it. But Obama should.have known not to give his baby to a baby eater.
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Apr 21, 2017 18:36
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Ardennes posted:Yeah, but by late 60s, it was clear that Rockefeller Republicanism was starting to weaken with the southern strategy. In comparison, it seems like the traditionalists in the Democratic party still seem to hold all the cards even though there is growing satisfaction with their leadership. I could easily see another hollow centrist being pushed into the spotlight in 2020 with the expectation "there is no way he could lose." in 1964 it looked like LBJ's crushing 60-40 victory put conservatism to rest once and for all. Even in the late 1960s when Nixon used the southerns strategy to win the presidency he governed more or less as a new deal president: creating the EPA and all. In that sense, he was doing the exact thing you are saying the DNC is playing today. Reagan ran 3 times (1968, 1976, 1980) before he got the nom, internal party conflicts takes a long long time over multiple electoral cycles quote:The Tea Party/OWS more or less were just tremors of what is coming, especially since it looks like there is no way to "win" through traditional political channels. https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/berniecrats-took-over-the-democratic-party-in-cali.html The most successful insurgencies of the last 10 years (Tea Party/Trump/Bernie) have being within the two party structure The last time anyone has successfully ran anything outside the two party system was....what before the civil war? Another interesting tidbit: Bernie outright won the white vote in the primaries, the only thing which pushed Clinton into victory was the Clinton brand having very strong resonance with African-American voters, I don't think the centrists can expect to do this permanently because you can only maintain the 75-25 margin among minorities for so long. Also one last thing: the classic mechanisms of control the establishment keeps control over the party are rapidly distinguishing, it used to be control over funding and media. But Bernie showed the power of small donations ($200 mil while refusing to take corporate donations), and Trump's 4chan/FB crowd show how toothless old media is becoming. Those trends will probably accelerate rather than reverse.
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Apr 21, 2017 18:42
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Deadly Ham Sandwich posted:The only thing I really blame Obama for the Democratic party decline is when he handed over his grass roots political network to the DNC. OFA (Organize For Action) won him the presidency and could have pressured conservative Democrats into voting for health care reform and Obama's agenda. If it was still chugging along, it could have won Congress in 2010. It could have beat Trump. But instead of having an independent political group pushing his agenda, Obama handed it to the DNC and they took a big poo poo all over it and it fell apart by 2010. Organize For Action wasn't founded until 2013, and did pretty much what you say you wanted it to. It was the successor of Organizing For America, which was founded at the start of 2009 as a way to quietly absorb Obama's campaign machinery into the DNC. It's just that, aside from the Obamacare push, he barely used either organization, both of which seemed to serve mostly to absorb the Obama machine into the Democratic machine. And it's pretty hard to blame the DNC for that since a sitting Dem president pretty much runs the DNC.
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Apr 21, 2017 19:24
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Obama isn't blameless at all, but he had a lot less freedom of action than people assume. Much of his "majority" in cogress depended on blue dogs barely to the left of Bush. There wasn't a Full Communism Now moment that he missed out on.
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Apr 22, 2017 13:59
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sean10mm posted:Obama isn't blameless at all, but he had a lot less freedom of action than people assume. Much of his "majority" in cogress depended on blue dogs barely to the left of Bush. There wasn't a Full Communism Now moment that he missed out on. Thank god, otherwise Social Security might have actually gotten grand-bargained into poo poo.
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Apr 22, 2017 14:47
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We'd also have ground troops knocking over another middle eastern government, don't forget. The tea party body-blocked a lot of really ugly right wing policy tbqh.
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Apr 23, 2017 03:02
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I think alot of the posts in this thread trend toward the hyperbolic re: how lovely Obama was, but its pretty undeniable he was obsessed with "being the adult in the room" which is pretty emblematic of centrism's overemphasis on optics over ideology (which in itself is an ideology etc) honestly half the time I forget about the aborted grand bargain just because how incongruous it was with Obama's image and democrats' platform. Like what the gently caress was he thinking going for that. answer: doing something big is great even if it's abhorrent
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Apr 23, 2017 03:28
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A big flaming stink posted:I think alot of the posts in this thread trend toward the hyperbolic re: how lovely Obama was, but its pretty undeniable he was obsessed with "being the adult in the room" which is pretty emblematic of centrism's overemphasis on optics over ideology (which in itself is an ideology etc) I'm pretty sure he thought if he gave Republicans what they claimed they wanted, it would totally defang their resistance to him and they'd be forced to engage with him. Like when Republicans said Merrick Garland was exactly the kind of justice that would be acceptable for Obama to nominate, and then Obama nominated Merrick Garland
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Apr 23, 2017 05:08
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A big flaming stink posted:
Yeah, it is was actually pretty amazing what Obama was willing to sign to get some Bush-era tax cuts reversed. Hell, Obama himself was proposing 2:1 cuts of Medicare/Social Security/discretionary spending. It is almost like Obama was practically adopting Reagan-era policy (even Reagan was willing to raise some taxes). Oh yeah and our deficit naturally closed over time and turned out to be a non-issue (and will continue to be a non-issue). Ardennes fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 08:14
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