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turnip kid posted:Why do so many moderates think a braying death cult is a decent alternative to people fighting for $15 minimum wage? I live in Chudland and if you're genuinely asking the answer is twofold. One, and this is only for those old enough to remember, but the dems have been in control in their regions for decades prior to them flipping gop and they still live in economic squalor. They don't have to be Engels to see that things are worse. The much larger reason is that conservatives actually do have a project. That project is of course the construction of a fascist white ethnostate, but it's a long term goal with measurable milestones. That looks like "progress" because it is in fact moving toward something. There is no neoliberal project because we live in it, it's here already. "America is already great". Even if you're in the bourgeoisie, you're well aware that your position is tenuous if and increasingly when things turn downward. Your only two political choices are those telling you things are fine when you know they aren't and conservatives willing to point to "others" whose fault things aren't better. In the absence of a political solution, blame is at least more palatable than throwing in with the people who got you here. The tl;dr is that people throw in with the gop because the dems will straight up tell you they have nothing to offer and there is no real democratic path to any other choice.
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Nov 8, 2021 22:33
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Flesh Forge posted:this is a pretty good insight tbh, you can't win people over by telling them that this is as good as it gets. Even if you tell them it isn't and it could be better, the dems have amply demonstrated that they are not in a position to deliver it. Remember that Obama won these regions handily in 2008 by saying things could be better and delivered nothing at all. The one thing that could be construed as accomplished, the ACA, was at best a wash and at worst a negative even before active sabotage by red state governments. The democrats haven't, and I think to the politically aware we would say by design, accomplished anything at all in our lifetimes. It's not like your average citizen in Chudland isn't aware the chuds are insane, it's that they rightly don't perceive the democrats as a political alternative that can counter their narrative and political agenda. It's increasingly obvious even to the nonpolitical in these regions that there simply isn't a way to vote your way back to a functioning political system and that the momentum is firmly to the back of those with a far right agenda and project. Voting democratic is only seen as trying to impede their march, not in favor of a project of their own, and it's simply obvious that impediments or not, the right will eventually get their way despite anything you do.
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Nov 8, 2021 23:21
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Flesh Forge posted:neither party is interested in the huge segment of eligible voters that just don't vote, because they're not as white and don't have any money If you accept the premise of representative democracy, the people who don't vote are objectively doing it correctly.
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Nov 9, 2021 11:41
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Griz posted:NY has been on a centralized electronic system for years now, the days of paying your cousin's sketchy friend $60 to dodge your $30 inspection are long gone. In my state the dem governor put in vehicle inspection stations in the 90s and the next time a gop governor got in they were all torn down and that was the last of that
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Nov 10, 2021 23:35
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:I mean, because of our wonderful and never-wrong Supreme Court, they literally can just do whatever they want in the primary, right? If I understand the ruling correctly, because our parties are technically private corporations they can straight-up change vote totals (in the primary, not the general) and it's completely legal. Of course that's much harder to do with a caucus, where a lot more info is publicly available... oh, and on a completely unrelated note, they're getting rid of those for some reason! Nothing weird there! Parties are not and have never been required to have the candidates chosen by the electorate and the primary system is a recent invention. The idea is that it's to the party's benefit that they nominate the most popular candidate so therefore an election is the best way to gauge that popularity. On the other hand, if the party doesn't care about winning or doesn't actually serve its electorate then obviously the primary system would need to be rigged. There's a reason the dems have historically not allowed popular sentiment to determine the nomination and why the gop has and that's that the democratic party is not and has never been a populist institution. This isn't in dispute. The most recent shift from the New Deal coalition to the donor class might make the uninformed believe that the New Deal coalition was a populist one but it was only such in contrast to what it's become and was a shotgun wedding at the time of its inception. In short, primaries are allowed to be rigged affairs by design and if that becomes too much of a hassle, they'll simply stop having them at all and will transition to telling you who the candidate is. That's how the system was designed to work.
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Nov 15, 2021 06:08
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vyelkin posted:it's really funny because it's not wrong to say that the Republicans put in the SALT change to gently caress over blue states, but also repealing it benefits millionaires, almost as if the Democratic base in blue states is millionaires It's mostly illustrative as to the level of opposition one would face in actually taxing the rich. Honestly if you can't get this to stick in what was a pretty normal tax code change to facilitate the transfer of wealth upward you won't get anything.
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Nov 18, 2021 08:42
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ELTON JOHN posted:you go and tell that to beneficies in an integration program who suddenly dont have any support You act like the dems are in favor of those programs. They aren't. There are two parties, both want the same thing but the GOP are twenty years ahead of the dems. They are both moving toward the same outcome, one is not opposition for the other. The GOP has a political project and thus are building the society they want while the dems have a grift and as such have to pretend the political system works to give themselves the air of legitimacy and it is in perpetuating that fiction that the dems normalize the actions of the vanguard GOP. You can always use the argument that voting for the dems is preferable because they're less bad than the GOP. That's true, they are, but they are not in opposition to it but merely behind it, and voting for them is a vote for the same thing only later because they don't believe in anything different. It's like getting to choose between stage 4 cancer and stage 1 cancer without having the choice to treat the cancer. If you have to pick one you'd rather it be stage 1 but without any kind of treatment it's obvious how this all ends. ClassActionFursuit has issued a correction as of 02:41 on Nov 23, 2021 |
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Nov 23, 2021 02:32
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CaptainACAB posted:Lmao no he was an absolute dipshit but that's still the funniest Obama nickname That's the thing though, ALL of the absolute dipshits were right about Obama
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Nov 25, 2021 22:20
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CaptainACAB posted:Nah the ones who said he was a communist we're, unfortunately, totally wrong. Ah yes, sorry, I did forget about them which I guess is ironic because they completely purged the normal dipshits from every position of power within the gop in that period of eight years In fact now that I think about it, it's those very dipshits that the dems actively courted to elect Biden (the suburban whites who just couldn't stomach Trump but are otherwise GWB-era republicans). At this point they've all but evaporated into the ether It's wild how quickly even the nonpolitical are becoming radicalized, it sure would suck to be the party of the status quo in such a time
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Nov 25, 2021 22:35
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ArmZ posted:Republicans haven't won a popular vote in the presidential election since 2004. This has to be my favorite lib argument. It's like yeah no poo poo it's because republicans know how to win elections. It's specifically designed not to be the popular vote to prevent exactly what the democrats have done which is to write off everyone who isn't an urban elite. It's set up to ensure that a party can't govern nationally from an urban enclave it's the entire point.
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Nov 27, 2021 18:39
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Vomik posted:I honestly think dems explicitly have decided a strategy of always being out of power so they can fundraise. From my understanding the business of fundraising/consulting in order to lose elections which helps the next round of fundraising and consulting is pretty much the only reason the democratic party exists. It's the one area where there simply isn't a counterpart in the gop. Not that there aren't republican fundraising emails and marketing, but that the roving bands of consultants who are paid to lose big and then explain to the party why in a way that never puts blame where it belongs, those consultants don't exist on the right. Again, the difference between a set of people for whom its a grift and those for whom its a political project
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Nov 27, 2021 19:13
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Trabisnikof posted:Those exist for the GOP but the structure is different. The GOP guys do a bunch of direct donor outreach ripping off their organizations directly while the Dem model has the organization itself ripping itself off on consultant fees. I'd love to read more about this if you have handy sources. I've read a lot about election grift on the dem side but I always assumed the gop was strictly massive amounts of dark money in exchange for quid pro quo. I'll readily admit that I'm working backward from if you're winning five times as many elections as your opponent nationally, the money is made in the governance, not the lost election. You make an interesting point that when I see astroturfing on the gop side its for causes or referendums (and I have no idea the effectiveness of their efforts nationally) but with the dems it's usually for a candidate (who loses) and usually to suppress a progressive rather than to beat a republican. In the end I mean to say that it makes sense that the dems would learn to monetize losing elections since they were doing that anyway.
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Nov 27, 2021 20:38
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Trabisnikof posted:Good stuff Interesting stuff, thanks. I wonder what the math looks like post-Trump schism but we're a bit close for clear-eyed analysis. Thanks again.
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Nov 28, 2021 13:30
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At first blush this might seem false but when I actually think about I can't remember a politician telling me they'd do anything to improve my life at all.
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Dec 6, 2021 01:17
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Flesh Forge posted:"a lot of republicans are really sick of what their party has become and are going to vote democrat" another thing I have heard with my own ears Serious question, I'm in a deep red state and while this sort of Romney 2012 republican was common up to 2018 or so, they pretty much went extinct in the run up to the election and I've heard nothing from them since. Has anyone spotted one in the Biden era?
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Dec 7, 2021 14:19
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Thoguh posted:Yes, Joe Biden. Silent Majority indeed
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Dec 7, 2021 23:52
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Johnny Cache Hit posted:I wonder if it’s the other direction - pretty much the only public language disingenuous liberals use is “inclusive language”. so maybe people don’t necessarily disagree with the values in that kind of political speech, they just recognize it immediately as a shibboleth identifying someone that doesn’t give the slightest poo poo about their material conditions, and they react with the appropriate disgust. It's this.
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Dec 12, 2021 15:41
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Honestly those numbers are way better than I would expect.
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Dec 20, 2021 16:48
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I get it, especially the fact that there's simply a floor of support and that combined with the internalized concept that there are only two options. Still, even with those two facts in play, I'd expect it to read as "even by the standards of this is a democrat and I will always support democrats in opposition to republicans, do I think that this democrat is doing a good job?" and by that measure I'd say no, he's not. I mean to say I'd expect Biden voters to see that even by their expectations he's doing a poor job, even if they still feel that any other alternative is probably worse.
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Dec 20, 2021 16:57
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vyelkin posted:really seems to me like 40% of voters are ride or die for the dems no matter what, 40% of voters are ride or die for the republicans no matter what, and the remaining 20% just hate whoever is currently in charge because nobody ever improves material conditions Obviously true, though I'm surprised so many throw in for the democrats because the republicans do actually deliver for their base whereas the dems, not so much
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Dec 20, 2021 16:59
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Paradoxish posted:republicans only deliver for their base in some really specific ways that require you to be a religious lunatic or a fascist or just wildly racist in ways that even a lot of Americans can't stomach Yeah it's obvious I'm way underestimating the ability of Americans to perceive of politics outside of RvD. You're 100% correct
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Dec 20, 2021 17:05
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vyelkin posted:well yeah asinine bullshit is the only thing to be swayed by when nobody ever does anything to actually meaningfully improve your life Precisely. If no option will actually benefit you, you're left with only trivial differentiators to choose from and in America it increasingly is spite. I haven't heard of anyone voting for any other reason since 2008 since that was the last time anyone promised to do anything at all for them (and they didn't). Since then it's all been about who you want to see owned
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Dec 20, 2021 17:11
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zegermans posted:drat that's very inciteful Quite to the contrary, it hasn't incited anything
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Dec 20, 2021 17:13
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oscarthewilde posted:lmfao that the democrats in 2021 prove schmitt's claim that liberalism's focus on form and procedure paralyses them from actually changing anything. What more does liberalism have to accomplish? We live in a unipolar wholly neoliberal world, their project is complete. Liberals only have to defend the status quo, they have nothing left to build.
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Dec 20, 2021 17:40
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Big Mad Drongo posted:Glad to hear that our deep dive even further into legislative disfunction and authoritarianism is at least going to be full of lols. I was worried the GOP still had some modicum of party discipline but I suppose that's focused purely on existing congressmen and not the up-and-coming class of pyschos. The gop has party discipline, they're simply responsive to their electorate. It might get "taken over" by qanon crazies but those crazies still vote and work along lines toward the party project which is a white Christian ethnostate. Anyone who steps out of line is disciplined just fine, look at Liz Cheney. The crazies who have staying power will be assimilated into the party structure just like the tea party before them. The fact is that the gop is a functioning party, for better or for worse, because they are actually trying to do something and are doing it via the political process. They'll survive and continue their work with or without Trump. The fact that they have no opposition to speak of does make them look stronger than they otherwise would, of course. The dems will get destroyed in 2022 (and beyond) mainly because they don't differ from republicans in any way that materially benefits voters and have absolutely no beliefs that aren't negative reflections of republican beliefs (iow all of their positions are just "well if you don't believe what they say about [some culture war bullshit] then you're with us"). They can only get so far being the other option to the gop without actually having anything they want to do.
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Dec 22, 2021 23:55
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CaptainACAB posted:So do you all think there will be another election after 2024, or do you think the GOP will keep the useless rump of the Democrats alive to preserve the kayfabe? This question comes up all the time itt and I genuinely wonder how the asker can live in America and not understand the relationship of party politics to power. First off even in single party states there are elections. So if we take the famous quote to be true: Julius Nyerere posted:The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them. The disconnect (and I think the question of whether there would be further elections) occurs because the democrats do not care about winning elections so if you live in a blue state and transpose this concept to a red one, there's the natural assumption that the same might be true there but that's not the case. The gop has a political agenda and because of that needs to and tries to win elections. Even in the reddest state the gop still plays to win while the dems don't play at all. The dems don't play because they only care about the donations and there aren't any to be had in the hinterlands. They have no policy they want to enact, they have no political project of any kind, and have no interest in doing anything that doesn't directly lead to them making more money. That means they don't participate in elections in places where they can't compete and they have an incentive to both lose and to make competitive races they could easily win because that drives donations. So the dems need elections too but only for fundraising but the gop especially need elections because they need legitimacy for the exercise of power. The only time power wants to abandon the democratic process is when there is two (or more) competing visions for the use of state power and there's a chance you might lose it later should you seize it now. As long as there is only one politically viable movement in America then elections will continue.
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Dec 29, 2021 08:48
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Constitution says you can be elected President only twice but it doesn't say how many times you could be elected Vice President or hold the office of Vice President. That's completely wrong. The 12th amendment says the VP cannot be someone ineligible for the presidency.
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Dec 29, 2021 08:52
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Femur posted:What is the right's movement? Punishment for how shits its become? To use shorthand, the creation of a Christian ethnostate. One could elaborate, but it comes down to the usual stuff of neoliberal economics with the state serving only to back their interests at home and abroad, and socially a situation where white christians have at least de facto but ideally de jure dominance in civil society. Think Jim Crow south as a model.
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Dec 29, 2021 09:11
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CaptainACAB posted:i don't disagree with any of this, but i really do think it's ascribing way more sanity to the 2021 GOP than the 2021 GOP actually has. the republican party has been fully taken by the qanon psychos now. that is mainstream political thought. this is not regular rear end poo poo anymore, we are controlled by either qanoners or insane christian dominion Certainly. There are fringe elements in every movement, but again I think you're giving them more power than they have in actuality because you're looking at it through the lens of how dems handle those same elements. In dem world, fringe elements are excluded early on in the process because they rock the boat and threaten the profit model. That's the whole point of working hardest to discredit anyone on the left. Any leftward policy is a direct assault on their profit center. In the gop fringe elements are good to an extent. They drive electoral turnout and bring more radical elements into their movement and once elected further their political project. But also, as a functional party, they are able to both absorb and co-opt these radical movements and stop them before they get too out of hand. Trump himself is an excellent example of radical campaigning and more or less bog-standard republican governance once elected. He can and did move the needle but certainly didn't upset the apple cart. Fringe elements can and should drive the party to an extent but the party itself is disciplined enough to focus on their long term goals. They also serve as red meat for the base, who they need to keep engaged and feel they are getting what they paid for. In the end these extremists mean that the democrats are indeed less effective since they attract the kind of opposition that could otherwise be directed at their political project at a higher and more effective level. They serve as both a vanguard and as a lightning rod to deflect from more mundane political machinations that serve to continue their political aims. A thought experiment would be this same conversation about the tea party and how it is now those same fringe elements seen as the establishment that the qanon crazies rail against. From the outside it can seem chaotic and cannibalistic but from the inside it's simply a way to keep the party relevant, a way to remove Jeb!s from the bench in favor of exciting new blood that keeps the party fresh and moving toward their goal. It's the same reasoning as releasing the iPhone knowing it will kill your iPod sales.
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Dec 29, 2021 09:47
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Doctor Jeep posted:what about if the president and the veep resign at the same time and then the speaker of the house (trump) becomes president? That is ambiguous but in every case the law only applies if those in power care to enforce it. After all, the qualifications to be a congressional representative are insufficient to be president (35 vs 25 years of age) so there is always a chance that the speaker could fail to meet the requirements to be president. In all cases of succession, if someone fails to meet eligibility requirements it passes to the next in line, this is in Article II. HOWEVER, one does not have to eligible to be president to act as president. That's also explicit. So an ineligible speaker could "act as" president while the apparatus works out who will "be" president indefinitely. Of course if it came to that one might say that what the rules say don't apply because let's face it, that's simply an obvious power grab. The whole point to following the rules is to maintain legitimacy and if you're willing to violate the rules that blatantly then you're past the point where you believe your ability to exercise power exceeds the need for that power to be perceived as legitimate. The Rubicon is crossed and at that point you simply dictate terms as to how things are going to work and deal with the fallout in arenas outside of politics.
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Dec 29, 2021 11:13
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ELTON JOHN posted:can a dog be president tho I literally deleted that line after typing it because it's a digression but actually illustrative of exactly how such a situation would play out. *GOP installs a dog as president* "There's nothing that says a dog can't be president!"  *Dems moan and bitch, maybe say that the president has to be citizen, then the gop congress passes an act giving citizenship to dogs* *Dems throw up their hands and say there's nothing that can be done* It's why the dems will be destroyed in 2022, there's no dog to fundraise against this cycle. At no point will the dems ever admit the system has flaws, the only path to change runs through the ballot box, and if the system gave us a dog (with Nazi sympathies), well, you just have to vote against the dog (and give us money to run the campaign against the dog). We will not be rolling back any of the dog's policies.
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Dec 29, 2021 11:33
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Crowsbeak posted:Thinking the Republicans will be any more competent then the tories in the UK is I think a form of coping to get oneself to still vote Democrat when the time comes. They’re a giant mess that is largely held together by loyalty to Trump. His death will see them return to their civil war. The main difference between the American system and every other parliamentary system is that there are only two options. The republicans don't have to be more competent than anyone other than the democrats. That's it, that's the only condition. They have just have to try harder than a party which has written off 60% of states as unwinnable or not worth the effort.
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Dec 29, 2021 19:11
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Crowsbeak posted:If you think the American people are really going to go with GOP if they gently caress up. Well there’s a reason JBE rules Louisiana. It's not like the gop, the politicians in it, or its policies and political agenda is popular, even among the people most likely to vote for them (white suburbanites), it's the fact that there isn't an alternative. In a choice between a political agenda you are opposed to and a party that won't advance it but also won't reverse it, you're eventually going to lose out simply via attrition. To put it another way, the limiting factor to republican dominance is general moral repulsion of republican governance. Obviously one could choose not to vote at all if there isn't a suitable candidate or vote dem in the mistaken belief in harm reduction (which is literally the only democrat sales pitch) but in the post-Clinton era that has now twice led us to the point we find ourselves in 2022, where we voted for harm reduction and the harm has not been reduced. When that happens the gop will make gains by virtue of being the option that isn't "no things are fine actually"
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Dec 29, 2021 20:35
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ProperGanderPusher posted:I wonder what he means by “pro-family”. Pro-family means abortion is illegal and no government assistance to single parents
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Dec 31, 2021 04:04
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Mayor Dave posted:There's way too many words on this page, they all boil down to "the democrats are going to get destroyed in 2022" so just say that in the first place To be fair, some of the words were "Why don't we convince republicans that they're actually Marxist-Leninists?"
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Jan 2, 2022 19:32
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Jan 4, 2022 23:07
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Gene Hackman Fan posted:Oh you mean the law that gives a shitload of money to insurance companies for the privilege of denying claims? No kidding. I would like you to elaborate on how a republican-created plan to give tax dollars to CEOs first pitched by Republicans when Clinton was thinking about UHC would be repealed by Republicans because this is something I would legit like to see charted out. Yeah the "failure" to repeal Obamacare is a prime example of the republican party's ability to pander without endangering the grift. The whole point is to "fail" to repeal it. One would note that they did remove the penalty for not carrying insurance which is unambiguously good. I'm not sure exactly what conservatives meant when they used to harp on the ACA because if it's not the penalty for being uninsured, what's left? I just chalked it up to the fact that conservatives in general lack any nuanced understanding of anything and never examined it any further.
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Jan 10, 2022 02:10
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DoubleDonut posted:have the dems rolled back *any* republican policies in the past thirty years From the top of my head
Goddamn it's sadder than I would've guessed
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Jan 11, 2022 22:08
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I thought the part that repealed SALT was in the part they split off and passed but I'll admit I haven't been following it closely. Cursory Googling suggests that you're right which, while good, goes to show just how little dems can actually deliver for their donors
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Jan 11, 2022 22:28
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Minecraft Holmes posted:Dubya undid Clinton's big military spending reductions and that's remained unchanged/only increased since True, but the question was a when the last time an incoming dem admin reversed a change made by the outgoing republican one. If I were to criticize the Clinton change I'd mention that he was only continuing the work started by the GHWB admin which went back on his "no new taxes" pledge once the Reagan tax cuts had become unsustainable. Looking back on this it's absolutely wild that GHWB or Clinton cared at all about a sustainable budget, financialization was complete by the end of Clinton's term and the concept of sovereign debt had clearly lost all meaning in the 80s, hemming and hawing over tax policy seems so quaint in retrospect. That was a long-winded way of saying that GWB was right to prioritize political projects over fiscal responsibility and anyone with any sense would do the same
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Jan 11, 2022 22:50
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