I don't understand why populism scares people on this board or why it's so heavily mocked, but whatever. I doubt many of you have ever been bankrupted by a medical bill.
So your wondering why a bunch of college educated, middle class white guys (generally) are going to feel that the educated and the experts should make the policy instead of the regular folks? :-p
Just look at the right wing Populism that is going on right now. A cess-pool of xenophobia and racism.
Ah, so it's elitism then.
Sadly, college educated, middle class white guys tend to overlook the fact that they are privileged and far underestimate just how low the bottom goes. Hence the modern Democratic party.
The few middle class white guys who have flirted closely with the bottom from time to time and therefore have a bit more empathy for exactly what it means to live there are sadly, a rarity. Less and less so as time goes on, though, which is why Bernie is gathering support as easily as he has been.
I don't understand why populism scares people on this board or why it's so heavily mocked, but whatever. I doubt many of you have ever been bankrupted by a medical bill.
I don't understand why populism scares people on this board or why it's so heavily mocked, but whatever. I doubt many of you have ever been bankrupted by a medical bill.
Just look at the right wing Populism that is going on right now. A cess-pool of xenophobia and racism.
The movements in the right aren't populism. It appeals to a minority of voters, even within those who usually vote GOP in general elections. A right wing populist movement wouldn't focus on ACA repeal and fighting same sex marriage, as those are issues that polls indicate people are either in favor or indifferent towards.
I'm not willing to declare anyone populist until the bow to the crowd.
We also know that we can't fix it all at once, when half the country wants there to BE NO BOTTOM.
ACA was far, FAR from a real solution. But it was a fucking step forward. It's helping a lot of real people today who, without it, would have been fucked. They're a lot less fucked now. A lot of people are a lot better off, and we've raised the bar a little bit.
Until the GOP actually collapses, the bar can't move more than a little at a time. And if they ever get real power, they're going to throw that bar down so hard we might never come back from it.
The popular movement within the GOP now thinks they can address the bottom by ending regulation, driving wages down, blocking immigration, and keeping jobs away from minorities. The Senate Democrats and POTUS are the tiny, thin line preventing this.
As I've said time and again, modern Conservatives are still hindered by the idea that they are being oppressed when they're told they don't have a right to oppress others.
He's too old and would have almost no power as the president. He'd die of old age before meaningful reform happened. He has no levers to pull. He has no real political power as himself, and less as president.
Also, FDR had a very different congress, and the GOP of the era had a very different makeup. The two eras aren't even close to comparable.
Rym unless the bottom is personal to you, it's hard to fathom. That's just human nature.
And? That won't change with a Bernie presidency. A GOP presidency makes it even worse. A Clinton presidency is one of tiny incremental progress. That is literally the best you can hope for without taking over Congress.
You want real change? Vote straight Democratic ticket in the general elections, and get real active in house, senate, state legislature, and gubernatorial primaries. And expect it to take 20 years to get anything meaningful done. The GOP's influence has to be dismantled at every level of government before ANY real debate can happen between the center and the left.
The president's administrative/executive power and the president's oratory aren't bolted together. That's apologism.
It's reality.
The oratory has almost no effect anymore. Anything even remotely left is crucified in the public spotlight immediately and energizes only the existing base.
The executive power is heavily checked by Congress and SCOTUS.
You want the MOST rapid change possible? Any Democrat. As soon as they appoint SCOTUS justices (Bernie and Hillary will appoint the same people regardless of other factors due to the GOP), wait for the second D term and the no-fucks-given edition of legacy building.
Vote for Bernie in the primary. I will. But you have to swallow the bad medicine and vote straight Democrat in the GEs regardless of who wins. There aren't candidates anymore: there are parties and there are primaries.
"OH my God, I remember these exact same arguments from 16 years ago. No difference between Gore and Bush, and here's a bunch of cherry-picked numbers to prove it! Even if he can't win, a strong showing for Nader will send a powerful message to the Democratic Party and disrupt the corrupt 2-party system! Vote your conscience, don't be a slave to the corporate duopoly! Yeah, right on!!!
And then Bush squeezed out his SCOTUS-assisted victory. And we lost 8 crucial years of tackling climate change. And then there were the wars and Guantanamo and torture and the creation of ISIS. And John Roberts, Sam Alito, and Citizens United. And further deregulation of everything, leading to the great recession. (Yes, I know that Bubba started a lot of said deregulation, but at least he has since admitted it was a mistake -- you're not going to see that from any of the Republicans. Hmm, I wonder, if "progressives" like you hadn't stayed home during midterms because your Dem candidate was a "DINO", maybe he would have had a more reasonable Congress to work with?)
But hey, Gore would've been an incrementalist with a bunch of half measures and Wall Street-friendly policies anyway, so what's the difference?!? You poor fool, after only 16 years, do we really have to explain?
Clinton will mostly continue -- and in many cases strengthen -- Obama's progressive policies and achievements, and from what I've read so far, in most cases she's learned the appropriate lessons since her husband's still-1-million-times-better-than-any-recent-republican presidency. Have you actually read her policy proposals? Some of the nation's most well-respected progressive organizations and voices have endorsed them as more comprehensive (and effective) than what Bernie has proposed.
Vote how you want, but understand that a non-vote for the Democratic nominee in the general election (whoever it is) is effectively a vote for total domination by an increasingly terrifying ultra-right-wing Republican Party. Please think long and hard about what that will mean. I get the whole "don't vote out of fear" argument -- it's romantic and stirs righteous emotions. I'm not immune to it. But, like everything else in life, things are just more complicated than that. When you vote, you're voting both for and against certain things. That's what you do with pretty much all decisions, And often those decisions involve needing to choose something that is not even close to perfect. I don't mean to come off as condescending, but it would be a real shame if you and other millennials aren't able to pick up on that by November of next year."
lol. muppet, do you have any idea how your "airhorn" would affect people who aren't straight white men? I know your life isn't cake, but if the recent violence doesn't clue you in to why "no difference between Hillary & Repubs" rings false to my queer POC female-bodied relative of interned J-American citizens perspective, well...
Vote how you want, but understand that a non-vote for the Democratic nominee in the general election (whoever it is) is effectively a vote for total domination by an increasingly terrifying ultra-right-wing Republican Party. Please think long and hard about what that will mean.
lol. muppet, do you have any idea how your "airhorn" would affect people who aren't straight white men? I know your life isn't cake, but if the recent violence doesn't clue you in to why "no difference between Hillary & Repubs" rings false to my queer POC female-bodied relative of interned J-American citizens perspective, well...
Vote how you want, but understand that a non-vote for the Democratic nominee in the general election (whoever it is) is effectively a vote for total domination by an increasingly terrifying ultra-right-wing Republican Party. Please think long and hard about what that will mean.
this
Indeed. Any vote to the GOP and their ilk brings our country closer to a horrifying mating of Orwell and Mad Max. LITERALLY ANYTHING is better. If there were a chicken running against the GOP, I'd vote for it because doing little/nothing is preferable to the tremendous negative effect the GOP would have with the house and a presidency. We've seen it before.
Vote how you want, but understand that a non-vote for the Democratic nominee in the general election (whoever it is) is effectively a vote for total domination by an increasingly terrifying ultra-right-wing Republican Party. Please think long and hard about what that will mean.
this
Godwin's law isn't exactly relevant when 50% of the viable political parties in the US advocate nativist xenophobia as their platform. The Nazi Party was seen as a joke for a long time in Germany. When Hitler raised its profile, it was seen as a moderately dangerous flash in the pan that could never get real political power, and Hitler himself was widely ridiculed and lampooned. Other than his base and the deep undercurrent of right wing sympathies, most Germans didn't think he was a real political candidate or in any way viable.
We're at a point where public statements by actual GOP candidates mirror literal Nazi talking points, and this only raises their standings in the polls.
Do not underestimate the danger of the Republican party. It needs to be crushed now before it becomes endemic in its current form. The Democrats must win the presidency. The GOP needs to be crushed utterly and repeatedly until it fractures. A centrist hammer is the only tool that has that chance now.
A GOP presidency would be to the fading embers of the far right a breath of air, and they would remain pernicious for generations to come.
Of course people have always said "X is as bad as Y" but Sanders is a bit of an anomaly in our current system. He's not got any peers. Maybe Warren but not quite.
I concede my privilege. I've been handed two handfuls of shit in my life but others have more than they can carry (but are still compelled, daily, to carry it.) I will absolutely recognize that.
Capitalism, though, is going to eat itself. It's going to take us with it. I won't prop up some cardboard cut out progressive and let people think it's helping.
If I'm in the minority in thinking this then no need to worry, yeah?
Clinton only cared about LGBT when it became expedient. Bernie was decades ahead of her. Her whole career has been that way. She lies easily and she's as cynical as any republican.
I agree that the GOP went insane a long while ago and is trying to bring on the rapture, but the truth is that a lukewarm Dem presidency has zero chance of stopping them.
I have no confidence that Hillary would balk at putting Muslim Americans into those FEMA camps I keep hearing about, or whatever equivalent atrocity. I know for certain Bernie wouldn't dream of it and would fight it tooth and nail. I'm not willing to settle for the lesser of two evils any more. I honestly don't understand why anyone has any faith in Hillary. She's an opportunist only.
If we're at the point where we're truly at hazard of an elected president who would incite hate crimes with insane rhetoric, then we've really lost already anyway. It's not as though the republican candidates are hypnotists. That hate is already there and it is seething.
I'm sure that seems melodramatic to a lot of people. I'm not really joking when I say I'm dying so I'm sure I seem more fatalistic than warranted. Maybe it's made me impatient. I truly believe we won't survive unless progressives wake the fuck up damn soon, and Clinton is not the vehicle for that. 8 years of outrage and acceleration beats 8 years of pretending the fire is out. Those nationalist bigots won't evaporate under Clinton. Sanders will at least shine a bright light on their hypocrisy. Clinton will try to bargain with the insane.
Oh, sorry, I must have imagined a leading presidential candidate condoning his supporters beating up BLM protesters. Or even vocally considering internment camps. That Planned Parenthood? Totally was not the target of a terrorist attack. Not saying it only just got this bad; it's been bad for a while. But I was considerably more comfortable when the GOP had a leash on their white supremacists, and weren't asking them to run the country.
If we're at the point where we're truly at hazard of an elected president who would incite hate crimes with insane rhetoric, then we've really lost already anyway. It's not as though the republican candidates are hypnotists. That hate is already there and it is seething.
America has been here before: see civil war, civil rights era.
I do think supporting the worse of two evils as a wake-up call is incredibly... callous to the people most likely to be the casualties of that "wake-up call".
That's legitimate. There's many things that scare or disgust me in the world. But I'm not delusional enough to think that electoral politics will bring about swift change one way or the other. The system was designed to prevent that.
That's legitimate. There's many things that scare or disgust me in the world. But I'm not delusional enough to think that electoral politics will bring about swift change one way or the other. The system was designed to prevent that.
I wouldn't count on that w.r.t. martial law ie, internment. It's perfectly reasonable in the current climate to be worried about that.
Vote how you want, but understand that a non-vote for the Democratic nominee in the general election (whoever it is) is effectively a vote for total domination by an increasingly terrifying ultra-right-wing Republican Party. Please think long and hard about what that will mean.
this
Godwin's law isn't exactly relevant when 50% of the viable political parties in the US advocate nativist xenophobia as their platform. The Nazi Party was seen as a joke for a long time in Germany. When Hitler raised its profile, it was seen as a moderately dangerous flash in the pan that could never get real political power, and Hitler himself was widely ridiculed and lampooned. Other than his base and the deep undercurrent of right wing sympathies, most Germans didn't think he was a real political candidate or in any way viable.
We're at a point where public statements by actual GOP candidates mirror literal Nazi talking points, and this only raises their standings in the polls.
Do not underestimate the danger of the Republican party. It needs to be crushed now before it becomes endemic in its current form. The Democrats must win the presidency. The GOP needs to be crushed utterly and repeatedly until it fractures. A centrist hammer is the only tool that has that chance now.
A GOP presidency would be to the fading embers of the far right a breath of air, and they would remain pernicious for generations to come.
Don't fuck around in 2016.
There were several candidates during the Canadian elections. One of them was this brash asshole who just spoke his mind. He didn’t really offer any solutions, he just said outrageous things. We thought it was funny. Nobody really thought he’d ever be president. It was a joke! But we just let the joke go on for too long. He kept gaining momentum, and by the time we were all ready to say, “Okay, let’s get serious now. Who should really be president?” he was already being sworn into office. We weren’t paying attention!
Churba, the same way that 17,000 employees at my hospital system won't report any of the dozens of abuses or regulatory problems that occur here on a daily basis: they like their jobs. Yes, I've reported tons of shit. No, I hardly ever get any corroboration from jobsworths. It's not like there aren't examples of this everywhere.
I already explained to you why that's bullshit.
On the Time Warner thing, I haven't got my numbers handy. Time Warner covers an awful lot of entities.
That's okay, I don't need your numbers. The totals are public knowledge, and trivially searchable with links back to the actual FEC filings.
While they acknowledge some nuance, Time Warner is among Hilary's top 10 donors to the tune of nearly a half million dollars in contributions. And that's what gets reported. While we certainly can't quantify back room deals and so it would all be speculation, it would also be disingenuous to pretend that they don't exist. Hillary's coverage is certainly complimentary compared to Bernie's on Time Warner affiliates, for example
I wish things would stop going less of exactly the way I anticipate, things get boring.
That's a bullshit dodge. That's their entire career, while we're talking about the presidential campaign, and frankly, I know that it's just the first bit of data that supported your claim. Except it doesn't, because it doesn't follow that because time Warner gave her cash in the past, that she's their pet now.
In any case even if you dismiss her top donators, and I don't, you're still left with the woman herself. She's a smug, cynical, disingenuous politician to her marrow with little to recommend her. Nope.
Irrelevant, because A)It's voting, not taking her out on a date, and B)You're the one who made the claim that CNN is favoring her because they've bought her through campaign contributions, when they provably haven't even contributed to her campaign as an organization.
And I think I'm going to leave the whole attitude of "Well, even if that thing I accused her of was untrue, she's still just a huge bitch" to someone else, aside from pointing out that this isn't a schoolyard, and "Yeah well she's a big meanie" carries a fly's fart worth of weight here.
As for little to recommend her - Well, roughly 75% of the democrats with an endorsement to give think otherwise.
Comments
Sadly, college educated, middle class white guys tend to overlook the fact that they are privileged and far underestimate just how low the bottom goes. Hence the modern Democratic party.
The few middle class white guys who have flirted closely with the bottom from time to time and therefore have a bit more empathy for exactly what it means to live there are sadly, a rarity. Less and less so as time goes on, though, which is why Bernie is gathering support as easily as he has been.
I'm not willing to declare anyone populist until the bow to the crowd.
We also know that we can't fix it all at once, when half the country wants there to BE NO BOTTOM.
ACA was far, FAR from a real solution. But it was a fucking step forward. It's helping a lot of real people today who, without it, would have been fucked. They're a lot less fucked now. A lot of people are a lot better off, and we've raised the bar a little bit.
Until the GOP actually collapses, the bar can't move more than a little at a time. And if they ever get real power, they're going to throw that bar down so hard we might never come back from it.
The popular movement within the GOP now thinks they can address the bottom by ending regulation, driving wages down, blocking immigration, and keeping jobs away from minorities. The Senate Democrats and POTUS are the tiny, thin line preventing this.
Rym unless the bottom is personal to you, it's hard to fathom. That's just human nature.
Obama has been too pandering and circumspect, because he's not really liberal to begin with. Hillary would be the same.
Bernie could be the next FDR.
Also, FDR had a very different congress, and the GOP of the era had a very different makeup. The two eras aren't even close to comparable. Because the president doesn't have the power to do anything that you wanted him to do. Bernie would be equally ineffective no matter what he said. And? That won't change with a Bernie presidency. A GOP presidency makes it even worse. A Clinton presidency is one of tiny incremental progress. That is literally the best you can hope for without taking over Congress.
You want real change? Vote straight Democratic ticket in the general elections, and get real active in house, senate, state legislature, and gubernatorial primaries. And expect it to take 20 years to get anything meaningful done. The GOP's influence has to be dismantled at every level of government before ANY real debate can happen between the center and the left.
Not that i disagree with your timeline in practice, but you're going to see rioting coupled with further economic collapse well inside of 20 years.
The oratory has almost no effect anymore. Anything even remotely left is crucified in the public spotlight immediately and energizes only the existing base.
The executive power is heavily checked by Congress and SCOTUS.
You want the MOST rapid change possible? Any Democrat. As soon as they appoint SCOTUS justices (Bernie and Hillary will appoint the same people regardless of other factors due to the GOP), wait for the second D term and the no-fucks-given edition of legacy building.
Vote for Bernie in the primary. I will. But you have to swallow the bad medicine and vote straight Democrat in the GEs regardless of who wins. There aren't candidates anymore: there are parties and there are primaries.
Hey here is someone who agrees with you Muppet (comments are golden)
Though this commentator echos my points perfectly
"OH my God, I remember these exact same arguments from 16 years ago. No difference between Gore and Bush, and here's a bunch of cherry-picked numbers to prove it! Even if he can't win, a strong showing for Nader will send a powerful message to the Democratic Party and disrupt the corrupt 2-party system! Vote your conscience, don't be a slave to the corporate duopoly! Yeah, right on!!!
And then Bush squeezed out his SCOTUS-assisted victory. And we lost 8 crucial years of tackling climate change. And then there were the wars and Guantanamo and torture and the creation of ISIS. And John Roberts, Sam Alito, and Citizens United. And further deregulation of everything, leading to the great recession. (Yes, I know that Bubba started a lot of said deregulation, but at least he has since admitted it was a mistake -- you're not going to see that from any of the Republicans. Hmm, I wonder, if "progressives" like you hadn't stayed home during midterms because your Dem candidate was a "DINO", maybe he would have had a more reasonable Congress to work with?)
But hey, Gore would've been an incrementalist with a bunch of half measures and Wall Street-friendly policies anyway, so what's the difference?!? You poor fool, after only 16 years, do we really have to explain?
Clinton will mostly continue -- and in many cases strengthen -- Obama's progressive policies and achievements, and from what I've read so far, in most cases she's learned the appropriate lessons since her husband's still-1-million-times-better-than-any-recent-republican presidency. Have you actually read her policy proposals? Some of the nation's most well-respected progressive organizations and voices have endorsed them as more comprehensive (and effective) than what Bernie has proposed.
Vote how you want, but understand that a non-vote for the Democratic nominee in the general election (whoever it is) is effectively a vote for total domination by an increasingly terrifying ultra-right-wing Republican Party. Please think long and hard about what that will mean. I get the whole "don't vote out of fear" argument -- it's romantic and stirs righteous emotions. I'm not immune to it. But, like everything else in life, things are just more complicated than that. When you vote, you're voting both for and against certain things. That's what you do with pretty much all decisions, And often those decisions involve needing to choose something that is not even close to perfect. I don't mean to come off as condescending, but it would be a real shame if you and other millennials aren't able to pick up on that by November of next year."
We're at a point where public statements by actual GOP candidates mirror literal Nazi talking points, and this only raises their standings in the polls.
Do not underestimate the danger of the Republican party. It needs to be crushed now before it becomes endemic in its current form. The Democrats must win the presidency. The GOP needs to be crushed utterly and repeatedly until it fractures. A centrist hammer is the only tool that has that chance now.
A GOP presidency would be to the fading embers of the far right a breath of air, and they would remain pernicious for generations to come.
Don't fuck around in 2016.
I concede my privilege. I've been handed two handfuls of shit in my life but others have more than they can carry (but are still compelled, daily, to carry it.) I will absolutely recognize that.
Capitalism, though, is going to eat itself. It's going to take us with it. I won't prop up some cardboard cut out progressive and let people think it's helping.
If I'm in the minority in thinking this then no need to worry, yeah?
Clinton only cared about LGBT when it became expedient. Bernie was decades ahead of her. Her whole career has been that way. She lies easily and she's as cynical as any republican.
I agree that the GOP went insane a long while ago and is trying to bring on the rapture, but the truth is that a lukewarm Dem presidency has zero chance of stopping them.
I have no confidence that Hillary would balk at putting Muslim Americans into those FEMA camps I keep hearing about, or whatever equivalent atrocity. I know for certain Bernie wouldn't dream of it and would fight it tooth and nail. I'm not willing to settle for the lesser of two evils any more. I honestly don't understand why anyone has any faith in Hillary. She's an opportunist only.
If we're at the point where we're truly at hazard of an elected president who would incite hate crimes with insane rhetoric, then we've really lost already anyway. It's not as though the republican candidates are hypnotists. That hate is already there and it is seething.
I'm sure that seems melodramatic to a lot of people. I'm not really joking when I say I'm dying so I'm sure I seem more fatalistic than warranted. Maybe it's made me impatient. I truly believe we won't survive unless progressives wake the fuck up damn soon, and Clinton is not the vehicle for that. 8 years of outrage and acceleration beats 8 years of pretending the fire is out. Those nationalist bigots won't evaporate under Clinton. Sanders will at least shine a bright light on their hypocrisy. Clinton will try to bargain with the insane.
/soapbox
I do think supporting the worse of two evils as a wake-up call is incredibly... callous to the people most likely to be the casualties of that "wake-up call".
I wish things would stop going less of exactly the way I anticipate, things get boring.
That's a bullshit dodge. That's their entire career, while we're talking about the presidential campaign, and frankly, I know that it's just the first bit of data that supported your claim. Except it doesn't, because it doesn't follow that because time Warner gave her cash in the past, that she's their pet now.
Here's Her donors list for the current campaign, which includes employees and employee families of each company.
Here's their list of recipients from their PAC for both Time Warner and Time Warner cable, Hillary doesn't appear on either list.
Or, if you'd prefer, I can link you to the FEC filings where those numbers are drawn from, but I'll warn you, they match. I checked.
In any case even if you dismiss her top donators, and I don't, you're still left with the woman herself. She's a smug, cynical, disingenuous politician to her marrow with little to recommend her. Nope.
And I think I'm going to leave the whole attitude of "Well, even if that thing I accused her of was untrue, she's still just a huge bitch" to someone else, aside from pointing out that this isn't a schoolyard, and "Yeah well she's a big meanie" carries a fly's fart worth of weight here.
As for little to recommend her - Well, roughly 75% of the democrats with an endorsement to give think otherwise.