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robert-c · 5 years ago

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The Pandemic

So far I’ve tried to focus on more fundamental issues that, while currently relevant, are less topical. Today I need to speak about the COVID-19 pandemic.

It should be clear to anyone who is following the real facts, that our response could have and should have been better and sooner, as there were ample early warnings. A global pandemic is a disaster scenario the last several presidents have been briefed about, because all of the experts knew it was a matter of when, not if, one would strike.

It should also go without saying that the primary opinions that matter in crafting a response are those of the medical professionals. Certainly not the “gut” of a “think they know it all”. And certainly not the concerns of multi-millionaires (especially politicians) who are afraid their stock portfolios will lose too much money. It may be possible to cloud the issue of just what could/should have been done sooner, but nothing changes the fact that this president (who deserves no more name recognition) eliminated our CDC liaison position in China six months before the outbreak in Wuhan, and has repeatedly tried to cut funding to the CDC and other critical scientific agencies.

This president’s divisive and ignorant rhetoric came at time when we needed a real leader to help us come together and coordinate a response. Instead, what we’ve been getting are potentially self-serving cure all myths (the malaria drugs which actually had more coronavirus patients die than those not given the drug), definitely dangerous suggestions (that we should look into how we could use disinfectants internally to knock out the virus), strong indications of vindictive allocations of needed supplies (away from blue states and areas in favor of red ones), and attempts to showboat as a leader while doing nothing but claiming credit for whatever good news there actually is (and making it up when there isn’t any.)

Look at what relief this president’s party has provided. A paltry sum for the average citizen (but making sure his name is on the checks), forgivable loans to small businesses with loopholes large enough to allow major corporations to benefit, as well as outright set asides for major corporations in major industries. All while making sure that unemployment funds are not supplemented for the states. While the president has refrained from some of the most heinous suggestions (e.g. that seniors and others at higher risk should just be willing to die to avoid tanking the economy), he certainly hasn’t disavowed those sentiments.

Even so, it is a ridiculous idea even if you are willing to put a dollar and cent value on lives. What sort of disastrous economic impact do you think having 500,000 to 1,000,000 deaths in the US will do to the economy versus perhaps ultimately 100,000 to 200,000 by sticking to our safety measures?

Until now, this president’s buffoonery was something to shake your head at and hope that we could quickly reverse when he is voted out of office. While there would be damage, it seemed like most of it could be repaired. But this pandemic is something we cannot undo. There will be many more dead than needed to be, and many more changes in our society than might have been necessary. Worst of all, more divisiveness, more “us versus them”; because stoking an angry emotional response is the best way to get people to NOT listen to their own reason and rationality. And that is exactly what this president needs to stay in power – people who won’t think things through, who will accept his (ever changing) version of the facts, because it satisfies fears of theirs.

I know the cowardly Republican lap dogs of the Senate won’t ever hold him accountable, but this president has done more to besmirch the office and circumvent the checks and balances of power than any president since Nixon. The lack of principle and courage to even investigate these actions should make virtually every Republican member of the Senate ashamed and rightfully removed from office by the citizens of both the left and the right.

The endless blame games, scapegoating and conspiracy theorizing of this president stand in stark contrast to the sort of leadership President Bush exhibited following the 9/11 attacks. His address to the first responders at “the pile” in NYC was even better than his speech to Congress. It was unifying and connected with people instead of tooting his own horn, or blaming others for our current problems in responding.

An ignorant distrust of science and experts characterizes this president and his hardest core supporters. When their fanciful beliefs were confined to political slander and “junk science” (like vaccines cause autism, windmills cause cancer, or denying climate change) they could largely be ignored as the rantings of the willfully uninformed. But when it comes to a worldwide pandemic that is infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands, and is not over yet, then it rises to the level that can only be described as “criminal stupidity”.

There are real problems for the small businesses and sole practitioners who are closed completely because they are not “essential” and I sympathize as a former small businessman (actually a sole practitioner consultant). But those wanting to rush the opening of the economy don’t really care about these people, or they would have done a better job of ensuring that the aid reached these folks instead of large businesses with deep pockets for campaign donations. This rush to reopen the economy is a self-serving political stunt and panders to the least informed of the electorate.

The bungling of early warning, adequate supplies and testing put America at special risk because we are a nation of “individualists”. Often that individualism is a good thing, but sometimes, like now, it exacerbates a problem. This is when there needs to be trust in the experts and a unifying leadership to encourage all of us “rugged individualists” to think (just a little for a time) about the good of others as well as ourselves. We are not a compliant populace, so the need for leadership by example is all the more important.

We do not have a long history of being ruled by absolute authorities, like the Chinese. After a short initial period of trying to deny the outbreak for image reasons, when the Chinese government accepted the reality of the situation they moved swiftly to impose controls, and they largely didn’t have to worry about public backlash. The Swedes have avoided full lockdowns, and while there is still uncertainty about this policy it seems to be working because the Swedes trust their government and scientific agencies and their people are taking sensible precautions individually because it isn’t an ��all about me” culture.

The US has neither of these situations. The first is our political legacy and the second is mostly an issue of leadership. We have shown in the past that we can come together as a nation and solve problems for our common good. But in every case, we had a leader who showed us the way, who encouraged us to listen to our better angels. We have never endured a crisis with someone who got to his position through the exploitation of fear, anger and divisiveness.

It is my fervent hope that this is not the model for how we go forward, because if it is, we are all doomed; either to die from some natural catastrophe that could have been avoided or minimized, or to fall victim to a dictatorship of self-congratulatory smiley faces – like a Kim Jong Un, whom our president likes so much.

In the absence of scientifically based leadership, I’m calling on all the people still willing to use their brains instead of their emotions to follow the directions and advice of the medical professionals in the field of infectious disease, and ignore the advice of political leaders, looking to score a win with those want a rapid return to business as usual.

For those whose income has not been affected by the closures I encourage you to give significantly to individuals you know have been hurt by the closures. These are the people whose services you used, but cannot at this time. Perhaps the personal generosity of good people can offset somewhat the inadequate and self-serving response that was all our mostly Republican Senate would allow.

#COVID19 #coronavirus #pandemic

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evilelitest2 · 5 years ago

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"because a lot of folks on this site for example are buying into conservative mindsets even as they battle conservatives" Can you elaborate on this a bit more? It is interesting.

Ok so you know how in the build up to the American Civil War a lot of white Northerners were fiercely opposed to slavery but were still extremely racist in terms of their world view, they basically were right for the wrong reasons. A lot of leftists here seem to doing the same thing, they oppose conservatism but don’t actually doubt many of the core principles of conservatism. This is especially obvious when looking at tactics or methods

1) Accepting Right wing Framing of Issues. @randomshoes actually made this observation to me, but I’m going to steal it for this post here

Basically when the Right frames an issue, its often this massively simplistic binary narrative like “Capitalism good, Communism bad” or “The West is totally a real thing and it is good and anything on western is bad” or “Christianity=good, nonchristain=bad” And so many leftists, rather than challenging the binary just accept it but invert it. So I see people being like “Lets downplay the crimes of Joseph Stalin” rather than “actually making it capitalism vs. communism is a massively simplistic way of viewing extremely complicated political movements that emerged over centuries”. Or people going on to these extremely nasty anti Christian movements rather than just accepting

The most extreme version of this is that I sometimes see leftists support literal conservatives because they happen to be opposed to Westernization, like I see leftists justifying ISIS or even Japanese Ultra Nationalist.

2) The desire for everything bad to be traced back to a single unified source. If you ever have the misfortune to watch Right wing News like I do, their world view is one where everything they don’t like from socialism to Islamic fundamentalism to Crime to Hollywood to racial minorities are all one mass that they just call “enemies” ussually led by George Soros or some other antisemitic stereotype. Because a core part of rightist thought process is an embrace of intellectual simplicity and rejection of complexity. They like nice simple narratives with clear bad guys and good guys and where they don’t have to imagine things in a more nuanced or complicated manner.

So it is super infuriating when the left buys into it

Both me and @randomshoes have met leftist who honest to god believe that there is some council of rich white men who are sitting around table being like “ok so the 15th meeting of the Oppressors meeting has met, what are some new ways we can make the world shittier for black people?” There is no secret cabal of oppressors out there, there are systems, that is why its called “systemic oppression”. There are people who want to spread or take advantage of that oppression (see entries, Koch Brothers, Donald Trump, the Entire Republican Party) but the systems go beyond just the right. For that matter, they go beyond capitalism itself in many ways.

To use one concrete example, so many people at my college were 100% convinced that capitalism invented patriarchy and racism which like....no, capitalism doesn’t exist until the 17th century (ish) while racism goes back to like...all of recorded history. Even if we specifically mean “racism based on skin color” well that was invented by the Spanish in their conquest of the Americas and Spain was very much not a capitalist power. Meanwhile patriarchy like...have you studied the ancient greeks.

I could go on through literally dozens of examples of this, but the left can be just as guilty as “all of my problems can be traced to one issue” as the right, though unlike the right at least the left has real actual problems.

3) Utter lack of Nuance. Again if you spend time on right wing media, you notice that they tend towards dramatic demononization vs. idealizing of public figures. Anybody in their circle is good, and those that aren’t are pure evil. because again....complex thinking is literally antithetical to right wing thinking. It would be really really nice if the left could avoid this...but nope.

This can be the sort of Moral Cholesterol thing that I’ve talked about before (and thank you @archpaladin for coining that term), where people are like “oh i morally agree with this movie therefore it is good” or the inverse which is just the most simplistic way you can possibly view art. Or it can be how certain elements of the left views historical figures.

You see this the most with equivocation, I have met leftists being like “oh the US interment camps are equatable to the Rape of Nanking” which like...no....one is bad one is far far worse.

I could write a whole series of post on this one its

4) Embrace of Conspiracy Theories, Pseudo History, Pseudo Science etc

The Right thrives on conspiracy theories, because again...facts don’t care about feelings but I get really testy when I see the left embracing these tactics as well. Again, the right is worse at this, I’m not equivocating, but lets remember Anti Vaxxers were a left wing bullshit theory. Actually the entire “new Age” movement is rife with grifters, conspiracy theorists, and associated bullshit.

I mean on tumblr you will see posts talking about how China really discovered American (nope), how Beethoven was African (nope), how a Jewish lobby controls Washington (ugg) or

I mean just a few days ago, a classmate of mine was claiming that Christianity invented patriarchy and mentioned the example of “like with overthrowing cleopatra” which like....nooo on every possible level

This goes from annoying to outright sinister when you take into account that some leftists are willing to serve as apologists for certain horrific regimes, like I keep finding Mao apologists on this site.

5) Mob tactics. Again, the Right is so much worse about this since they deliberately artificially create mobs for the purpose of mass harassment (cough Gamergate cough) but the left is pretty guilty of this as well, I refer to you that entire contra points fiasco as one example.

6) Not Checking Sources. I swear to god, if I could get everybody on tumblr to change just one thing about their behavior it would be

.....to get ride of the nazis...

but somewhere on the list would be this public service announcement

IF YOU SEE SOMETHING CLAIMED ON TUMBLR.....DOUBLE CHECK IT FIRST

the amount of times i see people just spreading utter bullshit that was just posted on this site which a basic google search could stop is just...ugg

7) Nostalgic. I see a lot of leftists engaging in primordial ism, romanticism and “appeals to nature fallacies. Again you will find a lot of leftists indulging in “oh things were better before modernity” nonsense

8) Fetishistic of violence, especially revolutionary violence, ignoring the consequences that tend to emerge from that. Still better than the right obviously

9) Finally dehumanization. This one i’m a bit understanding of, after all the Alt Right are basically evil, and the Republican are a death c ult at this point, but even so quite a few elements of the left are just a bit too gleeful. And the thing about that militant mindset is that while it might be directed against bad people at first, it quickly can get corrupted.

Take RadFems for example, a group who I’ve always thought were a great example of anti intellectualism, militancy and violence from the start, with their almost Manichean attitude towards men. The thing is that this approach didn’t really hurt any men ,not really but it was this “with us or against us attitude” that lead many of them to go on to become TERFS.

This “the enemy must be destroyed” attitude is like a poison which sort of consumed yourself in it, and leads to hurting those who can’t fight back.

In Short, the left frustrates me when it behaves like the right, who are utterly awful at their core.

#Ask EvilElitest #TERFS #Debunking the Alt Right #Debunking the Left #Capitalism

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arcticdementor · 5 years ago

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“Bourgeois Values,” “Anti-capitalism,” and Restoration.

(Time for another exercise in wasted effort in writing a long post nobody’s going to bother to read.)

Now, I don't exactly like using the term "bourgeois," what with the Marxist baggage and polysemy leading to ambiguity. But, lacking a better term for "bourgeois values" — as used by the likes of Amy Wax — I find myself using the term in this essay.

Now, per the polysemy mentioned above, the values of the "bourgeoisie" have been characterized in a number of ways by different folks from differing perspectives. "Materialism" — particularly in the sense of prioritizing material concerns over spiritual or other non-material concerns — is common, as are "philistinism" and conspicuous consumption. Or, there's also there’s more positive formulations, like that of Deirdre McCloskey, or the description from Wax and Alexander:

Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.

I'd definitely rate this sort of thing as better than the kind of alternative one sees in places like the "hillbilly" communities suffering in the opioid crisis, the "rust belt," dysfunctional inner cities, etc. Now, the criticism of this I see is almost entirely from the left, and mostly consists of posing these values as some matter of "-ist." For example, Elie Mystal attacking Robert L. Woodson's defense of Wax, Alexander, and bourgeois values, as Uncle Tom groveling:

If a white guy said this, the only people defending him would be Nazis, but because a black guy wrote it, it falls to me to point out that this right here has ALWAYS BEEN the argument deployed by House Negroes to justify their position. I PROMISE YOU that if you went back to 1830 and asked the chuckling HNIC how he can live with himself, he’d say: “Look at my back. It ain’t got no scars because I reject undisciplined and irresponsible behavior. Without me, this whole damn plantation would fall apart. Now please excuse me, it’s time for Master to take a dump and I need to be there to wipe his ass.”

I point out that Woodson’s argument is steeped in the long history of coonery not to denigrate Woodson — his own words have done that far better than I could — I point it out to show that large swaths of Black America have adopted “bourgeois values” from the very beginning. Post emancipation, the bourgeois blacks actually won out. Now, most all of us African-Americans have totally adopted the white man’s cultural norms and are just trying to get our share of the rewards.

(I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that it's a foreign imposition of "white man’s cultural norms," and that resistance in favor of defending one's indigenous culture and values against such foreign impositions is valid; I just wish it were applied more consistently and broadly for all rival cultures to "universal culture,” as well as recognizing the tension between rejection of an alien culture's values and yet expecting said culture to provide you with all the benefits of those values all the same.)

But I'd like to push back from the right.

First, there's how the American right has deeply internalized these norms, and how this affects the issue of political organization and activism — or lack thereof — on the right versus the left. Especially the sort of thing David Z. Hines talks about. When you ask you're average Republican voter why we don't do this sort of thing, the usual answers are some variety of "nobody's got time for that; we've got jobs to go to and bills to pay—" (as if the left were composed entirely of college students, welfare layabouts, and paid astroturf) "—and besides, that's Not Who We Are." (As Hines put it: "THAT’S NOT HOW THE RIGHT DOES THINGS, they bellow, by which I assume they mean unpleasant stuff like “winning.”")

I'd like, some other time, to explore this in further depth, but in short, these replies all reduce to the same thing — the tactics are rejected because of incompatibility with the above "bourgeois values."

But our choices aren't only "bourgeois values" — with concommittant dedication to being dignified losers who will somehow win through our willingness to let the enemy destroy us — or Detroit/Middletown. Because, consider, what would Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, think of those sort of "I've got a mortgage to pay" excuses? Or Otto, Fürst von Bismarck, Herzog zu Lauenburg? Charles the Hammer? Godfrey of Bouillon? George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle? What would the sort of man who rated non-material things like *honor* highly enough to risk their lives over them think of this sort of "think of the bottom line" mentality? What about aristocratic values?

I'm also somewhat hesitant about using the term "capitalism" unqualified, for the same Marxist-baggage-and-polysemy reasons as "bourgeois." On the one hand, I've seen people both on the far left and the far right use "capitalism" to mean pretty much anything short of outright Communism, and on the other, there's the "real capitalism has never been tried!" libertarians for whom the existence of a single business regulation renders a system "non-capitalist." Add in that I accept the arguments, by Jim Donald and others, that the Marxist model of "Capital" as entity/class is fundamentally inaccurate, and that "capitalists" are never actually the people in charge.

That said, this is where I have some overlap with what is often characterized as "anti-capitalism." Because I'm against the system which promotes and selects for the above "bourgeois values." Not in the sense of wanting to replace them with some sort of "socialist values," or with the antithesis of Wax and Alexander's list, but in the cause of restoring aristocratic values. As I once said a couple years back at Slate Star Codex:

But competent at what is key. Here, it’s “the aristocratic being overwhelmed by the competent” at making money. After all, there was a previous period where being competent at making money didn’t let you “overwhelm” the aristocrats. And, of course, there’s the issue of how the aristocrat lineages became such in the first place, which was, basically, as warlords. They were competent at being and leading a warrior elite. So there was a time when being capable at breaking faces on horseback was more important than being capable at making money, so the leaders-of-face-breakers and their descendants ruled.

Of course, I now dispute the idea that it was the money-making "bourgeoisie" who actually "overwhelmed" the aristocrats, or that it happened at the time the conventional narrative places it. For example, Wikipedia has it as "the late-16th and early 17th centuries" when the developing urban business class "had become the financial – thus political – forces that deposed the feudal order."

A better model, I'd say, is that changes in military technologies — particularly, the decline of castles — led to a trend of centralization of power away from the distributed feudal hierarchy (with weak, "first among equals" monarchs) towards "absolute monarchy" and the rise of modern states, and that the "bourgeoisie" were an effect, not a driving cause, a useful foil for centralizing monarchs to leverage against an aristocracy based in control of agricultural lands. Aristocracy and "military power in the realm of politics" looks to have still been pretty powerful, at least in most of Europe, through the English Restoration, and through the Napoleonic wars. From the very same Wikipedia page:

The English Civil War (1642–51), the American War of Independence (1775–83), and French Revolution (1789–99) were partly motivated by the desire of the bourgeoisie to rid themselves of the feudal and royal encroachments on their personal liberty, commercial prospects, and the ownership of property. In the 19th century, the bourgeoisie propounded liberalism, and gained political rights, religious rights, and civil liberties for themselves and the lower social classes; thus the bourgeoisie was a progressive philosophic and political force in Western societies.

[Emphasis added.]

Nor is the rise of science as big a factor as some portray; after all, "father of chemistry" and pioneer of the scientific method Robert Boyle was the son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, and it was the restored monarchy of Charles II that chartered The Royal Society out of Boyle's "invisible college." The scientific progress of the likes of Newton thrived under the Restoration aristocratic system. So, I reject the idea that aristocratic virtues are achievable only by reversion to "ignorant superstition" and 1400s technology.

That is, it looks like 1848, and the surrounding decades, were more of a turning point with regards to aristocratic values than any time in "the late-16th and early 17th centuries." The Crimean War, with Jim's favored example of the smearing of Lord Cardigan and elevation of Florence Nightengale, is another mid-19th century case. And, also [https://blog.jim.com/politics/defining-restoration-and-reaction/]per Jim[/l], this looks driven less by "capitalists" as by "priests." Wikipedia, again, has the "capitalists" having ascended to "the upper class" only by the end of the 19th century. And there, it looks to me like the elites at the forefronts of the various social reform movements, most with roots in one or another (mostly Protestant) religious "awakening," were clearly more powerful than "capitalists," whose influence is frequently overstated. That is, in line with Jim's recurring thesis, "warrior rule" was slowly replaced not by "merchant rule," but by the "priestly rule" of the post-Puritan religion, still headquartered in Harvard and Yale, with continuity of organization, personnel, and institutions all the way back to the Roundheads.

I see no reason why "bourgeous values" must inevitably displace "aristocratic values," nor that the latter is, as some claim, fundamentally incompatible with scientific progress. So, how do we of the “Red Tribe” go about prying ourselves away from our stubborn, self-defeating adherence to bourgeous values and shifting the system toward selecting for aristocratic ones again?

#long post #tl;dr #nobody's going to bother to read this #why am I wasting my time on this?#bourgeois values #aristocratic values #what would lord wellington do?#what would charles martel do?

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

There’s nothing like a national election to illuminate the complex and slippery nature of bias at work in the country today. Just ask Pete Buttigieg. Always something of an underdog in the Democratic primary, Buttigieg has started to poll well in Iowa and New Hampshire relative to his national numbers and has proved to be a formidable fundraiser. But as his profile has risen, murmurs about how his sexual orientation might affect his bid have gotten louder and louder.

There are plenty of reasons, of course, why Buttigieg might struggle to gain traction among more voters. His lack of statewide or national political experience is one potential stumbling block. Voters of all races may also balk because he has faced criticism for his handling of the predominantly white police force in South Bend, where a white officer recently shot and killed a black man, and for implementing economic policies that some feel ignore or harm communities of color. And another scapegoat has emerged: Last month, a leaked memo described the results of a focus group conducted by Buttigieg’s own campaign in July, which found that some black voters in South Carolina were uncomfortable with his sexual orientation.

It’s hard to know how much that discomfort truly matters — even a number of the skeptical focus group voters were still open to supporting Buttigieg — and to the extent that it exists, it’s certainly not confined to one group. But regardless of the reasons behind his depressed support, Buttigieg’s candidacy is a case study in the dilemma facing gay and lesbian candidates running at all levels of office today. It’s remarkable, in one sense, how little Buttigieg’s sexual orientation has come up in the primary so far, considering that only 10 years ago, the election of a lesbian woman as Houston’s mayor was enough to make national headlines. Voters’ willingness to support gay and lesbian candidates is at an all-time high, and multiple studies by political scientists have suggested that Democrats are especially unlikely to discriminate against candidates like Buttigieg. “If anything, there are some subgroups of Democrats who would be more likely to vote for a gay candidate,” said Gabriele Magni, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University.

Stop there, and you’d have a pretty rosy electoral prognosis for Buttigieg — focus group skepticism notwithstanding. But it also isn’t the full story. Some Democrats haven’t moved as quickly to the left as others on gay rights issues. And a substantial chunk of Republicans are still comfortable saying they wouldn’t support a gay candidate. As ever, it’s difficult to know what actually keeps a voter for pulling the lever for a particular candidate, but Buttigieg’s sexuality could be a sticking point for some. Experts like Magni said Buttigieg might find it tough to draw support from the most conservative or religious corners of the Democratic primary electorate, not to mention Republicans in the general election. And in a primary driven by voters’ concerns about how electable the candidates are, the perception that a significant slice of voters would never support a gay candidate might be an even bigger hurdle than the reluctant voters themselves.

Just a few election cycles ago, a debate about the electoral impact of a gay candidate’s sexual orientation would have had a clear answer — because being gay was a dealbreaker for almost half the country. As recently as 2007, only 55 percent of Americans said they would vote for a gay or lesbian candidate for president, which is only slightly higher than the share who currently say they would vote for a socialist. But many voters’ qualms about the prospect of a gay or lesbian president evaporated over the following decade, and 76 percent of Americans — including a majority of Republicans — now say they wouldn’t have a problem supporting a gay candidate for president. That’s still not the near-uniform level of hypothetical support the same polls show for a female or black candidate, but it’s also not obviously disqualifying. After all, only 63 percent of Americans say they’d vote for a candidate over the age of 70, which describes the three top-polling candidates in the Democratic primary.

There are plenty of signs, too, that a Democratic primary is particularly friendly terrain for a gay candidate. Political scientists have found in studies and interviews with candidates that gay and lesbian candidates overwhelmingly run as Democrats, in part because Democratic voters don’t seem to penalize candidates for their sexual orientation. A recent experimental study co-authored by Magni found that voters who identify as very liberal and nonreligious were more likely to support a gay candidate over a straight candidate.

The impulse to size up the electoral landscape and run where their support is strongest can partially help explain why gay and lesbian candidates often don’t find their sexuality to be a serious barrier. “When you talk to gay and lesbian candidates, they’ll generally tell you their sexual orientation didn’t matter much in their race, and that’s in part a function of the fact that they tend to run in more liberal areas, like cities,” said Donald Haider-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas and the author of “Out and Running: Gay and Lesbian Candidates, Elections, and Policy Representation.”

But there are still pockets of the Democratic electorate where voters’ views of gay people aren’t as liberal. And that poses a few potential problems for Buttigieg, who has to run a national campaign. A significant chunk of his base is composed of white college-educated Democrats; this is also a subset of voters where his sexual orientation is highly unlikely to be a roadblock, given that several decades of data from the General Social Survey shows that people in this group are especially likely to say that homosexual relationships are never wrong.

But as my colleague Nathaniel Rakich wrote recently, Buttigieg has some fierce competition from Elizabeth Warren for white college-educated voters. And while the groups with whom he might be hoping to expand his support — like religious voters or whites with lower levels of education — are certainly not uniformly opposed to gay candidates, they are groups where his sexual orientation might be more of an issue. People who attend church frequently are much less likely than non-churchgoers to believe same-sex marriage should be legal, according to the Pew Research Center. Likewise, lower levels of education tend to come with lower levels of support for gay marriage.

Voters’ feelings about gay candidates could show up in more nuanced ways as well. The specter of electability, for example, could turn out to be a bigger roadblock for Buttigieg than outright hostility toward gay people. For instance, a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll found that voters were basically split on whether the country was ready for a gay or lesbian president, and only 26 percent said that their neighbors were ready.

To be clear, several experts told me these electability concerns don’t have a lot of evidence to support them, although that may be partially because there hasn’t been a lot of research on how gay candidates perform in real-life elections, and candidates may also avoid contests — like Republican primaries — where they’re all but destined to lose. But discomfort with gay marriage or homosexual relationships won’t necessarily stop voters from ultimately supporting a gay candidate. And Haider-Markel pointed out that the people with the strongest prejudices against gay people are also highly unlikely to vote for any Democrat, which means that in a general election, Buttigieg’s sexuality would probably matter less than the “D” next to his name. Dislodging gut-level intuitions about electability can be tricky business for a candidate, though. That’s particularly true when significant chunks of the electorate — including almost 40 percent of Republicans — are still perfectly comfortable telling a pollster they wouldn’t vote for a gay candidate. It’s hard not to assume that a neighbor’s stubborn opposition to gay marriage will shape their vote in some way — even though in reality, the forces that influence our choice of candidate are far more complex.

This complexity makes it nearly impossible to say for certain whether it’s Buttigieg’s sexual orientation — rather than his age, or his political inexperience, or his policy positions, or some ineffable combination of factors — that has kept him from rising further in the polls. And that will also make it hard to assess, when all the ballots are cast and the Democratic nominee is chosen, just how much Buttigieg’s electoral chances were affected by his sexuality.

But it also means that even if some voters are being held back by Buttigieg’s sexual orientation now, other parts of his biography, like his military service or Christian faith, could still change the way they think about him. The good news for Buttigieg is that there are months to go before the primaries begin, and he has plenty of cash to spend on introducing himself to voters who might currently know next to nothing about him. “At a very basic level, Buttigieg could reduce some bias just by getting voters to see him as a gay man who was also in Afghanistan and goes to church on Sunday,” Magni said. “Sexual orientation is less likely to play a role in vote choice when people move past the stereotypes they have in their mind about who gay people are supposed to be.”

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

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quakerjoe · 6 years ago

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Belief is a tricky thing. Truth is subjective.

When Bill Barr's redacted narrative of what Robert Mueller's trying to tell Congress drops tomorrow, expect the airborne leaflet propaganda to follow — or its modern-day equivalent. The “counter report” prepared by the White House to "answer" Barr's blacked-out version of Bob's work, might as well be loaded onto Lockheed Martin C-5M Super Galaxy military planes and showered over every major American city. Confusion and chaos and conflict is the goal. Also, Rule 12 (enigmas have no solutions). They'll argue it's all too big and too complicated to know what REALLY happened (sorta like his taxes). It's not. There are simply too many peas and not enough shells for Trump’s game, which is why this administration is rolling out Rule 15 (fit the facts to alternate conclusions) and Rule 16 (vanishing evidence and witnesses [behind Barr's color-coded redaction rainbow]). Imagine for a moment you've reached the end of a classic mystery — “Murder on the Orient Express,” perhaps — but instead of Hercule Poirot showing up in the final scene, you get Inspector Clouseau trying to pin the murder of Samuel Ratchett on none other than — DUN DUN DUN — Hillary Clinton. Wait, what? Now imagine for a moment that EVERY OTHER COPY of Christie's classic mystery novel had shipped from Harper Collins Publishing with that Pink Panther epilogue. How could you even TALK about the experience aboard the Express with someone who read the "wrong" version? A good author has to play fair with the reader. This is Agatha, for crying out loud — ALL THE CLUES WERE THERE the entire time if you were paying attention to the plot. Honestly — go back and look. Which begs the next question: HOW IN THE WORLD can anyone buy the load of codswallop Republicans are selling? Cognitive ease. Given our druthers, we follow the path of least resistance. Dissonance is defined as “a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements." As we navigate this post-truth, Apocalyptic nightmare that is the Trump residency, “cognitive dissonance” seems to be an excruciating experience exclusively reserved for Democrats. The "cognitive ease” with which the Trumpanzees swallow Donald's disinformation might be frightening, but the truth of the matter is ... it's just science. The easier your brain works, the more likely you are to believe what you're told is true. For example, if you've heard the "Fake Dossier’s discredited author, Trump hater Christopher Steele” was commissioned by Democrats and responsible for launching the Russia Investigation 1,001 times — it would be EASIER TO BELIEVE than having to recall the investigation began MONTHS EARLIER, once "covfefe boy” Papadopoulos drunkenly bragged about Russian hacking of Hillary — the real inciting incident of this horrific political drama. Don't know the name of the Australian diplomat who alerted US Intelligence to Team Trump's Russian connections? Rule 14: Demand complete solutions. Rule 19: Ignore proof presented, demand impossible proofs. Arguing with idiots is a zero sum game. When you run into someone employing Rule 18 (Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents), or Rule 9 (Play Dumb) it's time to walk away. Odds are, the "true believers” are not "playing." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-by Tom Joad

We all catch the ire that in Star Wars (A New Hope) that "these aren't the droids you're looking for" was an outright lie, using a mind trick, to get the simpletons to believe it, right? They WERE the droids they were looking for. ~Joe

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shotfromguns · 5 years ago

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Good, long thread by @TheMittani on Twitter on “neoconfederacy” in the South:

if you ever wonder why i got politically 'radicalized' it's because i grew up in alabama as an atheist child of two biochemistry professors; at 17 i graduated and moved away forever. reminder: Alabama came within 1.7% of sending a known pedo to the senate~

any '13th dimensional chess' tweets about how the AL leg composed this abortion ban to provoke a court fight has never met an actual neoconfederate this is what they want 100%, it's a white supremacist aristo fertility cult and all the moves make sense when understood that way

source: i have been to an unironic country club debutante ball in dear old mountain brook and folks have no idea how much intergenerational wealth transfer has carried over from the days of slavery in that society's upper class

for context, when i was in high school there were three country clubs, maybe 20k citizens, and zero black students; every street is named after a civil war battle, and 'houses' there would be called mansions anywhere else

best public schools in the state though~

folks have no clue how rich and well-educated the ruling class in alabama is, going to mountain brook means if you don't get into one of the better ivys you're probably a bitter slacker like me legislation like this isn't from stupid hicks, it's the goal

southern aristos can be incredibly intelligent and well-traveled and are all the more dangerous politically because they are happy to play dumb in public with the aw-shucks jesus loving hick routine in order to quietly run an antebellum society and pit poor whites against blacks

it's almost comically effective, I do this stuff all the time in Eve - say laughably wrong things, act like a fool, and then it's much easier to outmaneuver people. The most dangerous enemy is one who is comfortable with being publicly underestimated.

I mean to say, 'ha ha eat my ass look at me I'm so great at spaceship games', please interpret my above tweet as evidence of hubris and ignorance rather than giving up an actual tactic I've employed so often it's been nicknamed the 'tee hee, flounce flounce' by my chief of staff

'I'm the fucking Mittani, I know everything in this game,' another good one wearing red shirts? stupid gimmick, keep doing it because it's a stupid gimmick, it's far better for our competitors/enemies to see me as a joke luv2club? tee hee, flounce flounce, same shit

anyhoo yeah it's the same dance, play god-fearing jesus lover to keep the poor whites on your side, maintain that patriarchy with the complicity of ruling class women who enjoy the economic benefits of neoconfederacy, and live over the mountain so no one spots all the lexuses

it's interesting to see the term neoconfederate finally get some use but it implies that there isn't already an actual working confederate states of america right in front of everyone's eyes that's been there since reconstruction, none of that shit is an accident

if you put 'hail hydra' on statues in every town in the region you don't have to bother saying 'hail hydra' or announce in print that you're down with hydra, everyone who lives there gets it

the issue is not being part of a traitorous conspiracy against the united states government (i mean hydra, not the neoconfederacy, ha ha!) the problem comes when you state it where those not in on it can hear you. Viz: ”Alabama newspaper editor calls for Klan return to ‘clean out D.C.’”

i kind of like the hydra analogy for the neoconfederacy, because all this shit - 'states rights', 'pro-life', 'voter fraud', these disparate causes are actually all the same cause: the ~lost~ cause

southern politics makes a lot more sense when viewed through the lens of pro/anti-confederacy politics; confederate society is based upon a ruling gentry descended from the cavaliers see generally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed actual /aristos/ not merely rich people

so basically you have an entrenched aristocracy that traces their lineage back 10+ generations running a plantation society and fighting like fucking hell to maintain that privilege, privilege most people in the usa cannot even begin to imagine

generic usa high ~net worth individuals~ have nothing on the cunning and unity maintained by ancient proud cavalier aristocratic families in the south with shitloads of money who will do anything to protect the universe they and their forefathers have created (via slavery)

the whole 'the south will rise again' thing is a huge joke because the structure of the society immediately returned to functional slavery as soon as it could get away with it, the south already 'rose' after reconstruction, it's right in fucking the open

if they get away with the abortion thing, they'll gun for brown v board next; these people remember life before MLK and they have not forgotten or forgiven the civil rights movement those behind this aren't hicks, they very smart confederates acting like hicks to fool you.

many old privileged families come with a legacy and a purpose imposed on you from birth it's not a stretch of the imagination that the quest of a lot of these old aristo families is to restore the society to antebellum life and get their privileges (slavery) back

the civil war was only a few generations ago, these families have not forgotten and they have not let their children forget the monuments, the street named for war battles, that's why it matters still to them

southern aristos are pro-life because the whole point of the society is the poor whites fight the poor blacks, and restricting abortion = more labor and poverty to exploit by the gentry the goal of their flavor of white supremacy is about getting rich off slaves, not death camps

not that they have a problem with a death camp or three, it's difficult to communicate how utterly disposable the lives of people outside of their class are, this is a society whose rulers believe that god has anointed them to rule over their lessers

its not rocket science, you take a slaveholding landed gentry and take away their slaves and land (good!) that gentry is going to spend its time fanatically scheming to get its land and slaves back (bad, what we see in southern politics)

anyhoo what i'm saying is that this isn't about random kooks trying to put women 'in their place' (there's a bunch of them too, useful idiots) but part of a broad campaign across generations by a dispossessed cavalier nobility to get all their lost privileges (slavery) back

conveniently the rest of america doesn't have much of an entrenched aristo/gentry culture anymore so the maneuvers of the 'neo' confederates just look like random right wing lashing out rather than a deliberate series of moves to benefit the southern aristocracy

the reality of the modern confederacy reminds me a lot of 'The City and the City' in that it's clearly visible to those raised within it, yet its contour is completely alien to outsiders who don't know how to 'see' it the 'right' way.

shit like Roy Moore being a pedo but coming within 1.7% of winning a senate seat makes a buttload more sense than 'alabama voters will send anything not a democrat', Moore is a proud and loud confederate and Doug Jones is anti-confederate it's the confederacy - always.

Pro-life? Confederacy. State's Rights? Confederacy. Gun rights? Confederacy. Religious Freedom/Gay Cake Stuff? Confederacy. Anti-union? Confederacy. If you're a Cavalier or one of their foremen, it all fits~

Robert Caro basically spelled out in intricate detail how the confederacy works in his LBJ bios but particularly Master of the Senate, read these if you want a primer on actual power and its uses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Lyndon_Johnson

when LBJ shifted to supporting voting rights, the confederacy simply switched its support from the democrats to the republicans. it's a real thing and its moves make perfect sense once you grok the core motivations of the southern gentry and their henchmen~

you see this repeatedly through history where one side stops fighting after a victory and the other side loses but keeps trying to find ways to win, the Union torched the south and moved on, but the confederacy has /never stopped fighting/ using whatever means they have available

tl;dr "it's the confederacy, stupid" also explains those crazy 'obama is the antichrist' memes; if you're a confederate, a black president existing is against everything your flavor of pro-slavery jesus stands for

None of this thread really applies to Texas. I was born in Houston, moved to AL at 10; completely different culture in Texas. Going to rodeos, oil/cattle, science, ranching. When I say the 'South' I'm talking about the plantation society of the Cavaliers.

As a quick example of using the Lost Cause to understand Cavalier political behavior, Lindsey Graham's 'hypocrisy' makes perfect sense. He doesn't give a shit about spewing nonsense or lying to Yankees, all he cares about is Dixie. He's not dumb at all; the Union is his enemy.

Expanded May 17, 2019:

oh yeah and Mitch McConnell was born and raised in Alabama and then Georgia from 8yrs on, so heyoooo

look up how long jeff sessions family has been naming their kids after jefferson davis on his bio dixie is real; it's the confederacy, the political moves the cavaliers and their overseers are making on behalf of the lost cause as plain as day if you know what to look for

just gonna spend Friday night reading Albion’s seed to learn more fun ~cavalierfacts~ like how their royalist gentry is literally all one big interrelated family and coordinates retribution and uses debt to control the poor

“It is difficult to think of any ruling elite that has been more closely interrelated since the Ptolemies” holy lawl (it is a history insult as he’s basically calling the cavaliers a nest of outright incest, the Ptolemaic dynasty was Targaryen-style sibling marriage)

Hey guess what turns out the control of women is deeply ingrained in cavalier society because uh... kidnapping / human trafficking / sexual slavery and a massively skewed male to female ratio lovely people, these confederates

“These patterns did not develop by chance. Virginia’s great migration was the product of policy and social planning. Its royalist elite succeeded in shaping the social history of an American region partly by regulating the process of migration” (p 232) fucking hell it’s all here

May 22, 2019:

by req: another ‘understanding the confederacy’ thing, all the protest tweets saying “the cruelty is the point” are wrong, the point is opportunities for race-based policing (a la weed), disenfranchisement, reinforcing patriarchy, and more labor/babies to exploit + compliance

sure there’s a bunch of cruelty in there too but the whole thing is a means to the ends of rolling back the civil rights movement and restoring the structure of Dixie as the gentry/cavaliers prefer; the confederates may be slavers at heart but they’re not cartoon villains

(they're way worse)

In case I get hit by a bus, I currently think the concept of hegemonic liberty is the most misunderstood aspect of the cavalier mindset, so here’s three key pages from Albion’s Seed~

And the cavalier conception of condescension and deference as two sides of God’s hierarchy and order is a fracture point, that’s why incivility towards one’s ‘betters’ is so provocative - milkshakes would probably work over here, too

Also by hiding and lying about the existence of Dixie, they fragment their opposition into issue-based groups - pro-choice, gun control, voters rights, anti-racism - instead of each opposition group recognizing that they are fighting the same confederate foe

Not like they really hid that much, they had confederate flags flying over their capitols ever since the Civil War until recently, but the Union won the war and moved on, so folks think they’re fighting random bigots and not the CSA

May 23, 2019:

the lack of a concerted effort by the democratic party to win and develop victories in the south has allowed the bulwark of the RNC power to be unchallenged, if you erode the Dixie Wall in the Senate the republicans pretty much lose all their functional power

as the DNC is incompetent one doesn't need to rely upon them, state by state in Dixie voting rights and organization must be pushed to undermine the structure of confederate power, that's the fracture point, that and forcing their true nature as confederates into the open

I'll develop all this crap into more useful tactics on the upcoming blog thing but this is all just-in-case 'yo guys, if I get hit by a bus, take Albion's Seed, drive through Mountain Brook for proof of everything I'm saying (crestline doesn't count lawl) go fight hydra'

as someone will inevitably discover not EVERY street in Mountain Brook is named for civil war battles (there's a lot), the really old money lives on streets named for old british estates/towns + they're episcopalians (anglican 2.0) not baptists, of course

#US history #Slavery #Racism #Capitalism #Misogyny

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Why Are There Democrats And Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-are-there-democrats-and-republicans/

Why Are There Democrats And Republicans

What Republican And Democrats Believe

Why Democrats and Republicans Are Claiming A Midterm Win

Lets start with this example. There are one or more reasons why you chose that person to be your friend. It could be because of how he or she talks, sense of humor, intelligence, educational background, ideology, or other factors.

The bottom line is you made the individual your friend because of one or more factors you discovered in that person that pleases you. This explains why most people would prefer joining republicans than Democrats and vice versa.

Republicans and Democrats have diverse ideologies and beliefs. These beliefs or ideology is part of what draws people to join either political party.

Lets start with Republicans. What do Republicans believe in?

Republicans boast libertarian and centrist factions. But they primarily believe in social conservative policies. They abide by laws that help conserve their traditional values. These include opposition to abortion, marijuana use, and same-sex marriage.

So the Republican Partys platform is generally centered on American conservatism. It comprises establishment conservatives, Freedom Caucus, or Tea Party members, described as right-wing, populist, and far-right.

The Republican Partys position has changed over time. They now transcend beyond traditional values, which often includes Christian background. The Republicans evolved position now includes fiscal conservatism and foreign policy.

Heres a quick summary of what the Republican Party believes in:

Heres a quick look at what Democrats believe in:

Virginia State Legislator And Governor

At the start of the Revolution, Jefferson was a and was named commander of the Militia on September 26, 1775. He was then elected to the for Albemarle County in September 1776, when finalizing a state constitution was a priority.For nearly three years, he assisted with the constitution and was especially proud of his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, which forbade state support of religious institutions or enforcement of religious doctrine. The bill failed to pass, as did his legislation to disestablish the , but both were later revived by .

Jefferson was elected for one-year terms in 1779 and 1780. He transferred the state capital from Williamsburg to , and introduced measures for public education, religious freedom, and revision of inheritance laws.

In April of the same year, his daughter Lucy died at age one. A second daughter of that name was born the following year, but she died at age three.

Red States Outnumber Blue States

In February 2016, Gallup reported that for the first time since Gallup started tracking, red states now outnumber blue states.

In 2008, 35 states leaned Democratic and this number is down to only 14 now. In the same time, the number of Republican leaning states rose from 5 to 20. Gallup determined 16 states to be competitive, i.e., they leaned toward neither party. Wyoming, Idaho and Utah were the most Republican states, while states that leaned the most Democratic were Vermont, Hawaii and Rhode Island.

Also Check: Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In The Senate

Political Coalitions Are About More Than Just Income Redistribution

Posted December 8, 2014

In his 2004 book, journalist Thomas Frank asked: Whats the matter with Kansas? Ever since, many liberals have taken it as an article of faith that if working-class whites only knew what was good for them then theyd vote for Democrats.

The usual rebuttal from political science is to point out that many poorer whites in fact do vote for Democrats. Or, at least, poorer whites are much more likely to vote Democratic than are richer whites. Its just not the case — even in Kansas — that working-class whites are ignoring their redistributive interests in their voting choices. Still, it makes sense to wonder why Democrats win the poorest whites by a nose rather than a mile.

Many conservatives similarly ask: Whats the matter with Harvard? Ive studied the Harvard/Radcliffe Class of 1977 . On the whole, its a fantastically wealth group, with family incomes typically in the top 1% or 2% of the country. Yet for every Republican there are around six Democrats.

With Harvard as well, though, its still not the case that people are ignoring their redistributive interests. In the Class of 77, the richest members are less likely to favor Democrats than are the merely well-off or poorer. Still, it makes sense to wonder why Republicans are in such short supply among Ivy League alumni.

Income and Education

Parties are Coalitions

Kansas and Harvard

Jason Weeden is author of The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind .

The Philosophy Behind Republican Economic Policy

Republicans advocate supply-side economics that primarily benefits businesses and investors. This theory states that tax cuts on businesses allow them to hire more workers, in turn increasing demand and growth. In theory, the increased revenue from a stronger economy offsets the initial revenue loss over time.

Republicans advocate the right to pursue prosperity without government interference. They argue this is achieved by self-discipline, enterprise, saving, and investing.

Republicans business-friendly approach leads most people to believe that they are better for the economy. A closer look reveals that Democrats are, in many respects, actually better.

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Secretary Of State And Secretary Of War

Monroe returned to the Virginia House of Burgesses and was elected to another term as governor in 1811, but served only four months. In April 1811, Madison appointed Monroe as Secretary of State in hopes of shoring up the support of the more radical factions of the Democratic-Republicans. Madison also hoped that Monroe, an experienced diplomat with whom he had once been close friends, would improve upon the performance of the previous Secretary of State, . Madison assured Monroe that their differences regarding the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty had been a misunderstanding, and the two resumed their friendship. On taking office, Monroe hoped to negotiate treaties with the British and French to end the attacks on American merchant ships. While the French agreed to reduce the attacks and release seized American ships, the British were less receptive to Monroe’s demands. Monroe had long worked for peace with the British, but he came to favor war with Britain, joining with “war hawks” such as Speaker of the House . With the support of Monroe and Clay, Madison asked Congress to declare war upon the British, and Congress complied on June 18, 1812, thus beginning the .

Past Jumps In Party Affiliations

The bump in Democratic affiliation following Biden’s inauguration mirrors that of former President Barack Obama’s first term, Jones said.

“That was really the high point that we’ve seen; kind of the 2006-2009 period, when really the majority of Americans either identified as Democrats outright or were independents but they leaned toward the party,” he said.;”Our data on this only goes back to the ’90s, but it’s pretty much the only time we consistently had one party with the majority of Americans on their side.”

Republican advantages, though rarer and more short-lived, followed the Gulf War in 1991 when George H.W. Bush was in office and the 9/11 terrorist attacks during President George W. Bush’s term, according to Gallup. More people also reported GOP affiliation after the 1994, 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.

Whether the Republican Party can regain advantage during the 2022 midterm elections may rely on the successes of the Biden administration, according to Jones.

“A lot of it is going to depend on how things go over the course of the year. If things get better with the coronavirus and the economy bounces back and a lot of people expect Biden can keep relatively strong approval ratings, then that will be better for the Democrats,” Jones said.;”But if things start to get worse unemployment goes up or coronavirus gets worse; then his approval is going to go down. It’s going to make things a lot better for the Republican Party for the midterm next year.”

Also Check: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

Lewis And Clark Expedition

Jefferson anticipated further westward settlements due to the Louisiana Purchase and arranged for the exploration and mapping of the uncharted territory. He sought to establish a U.S. claim ahead of competing European interests and to find the rumored . Jefferson and others were influenced by exploration accounts of in Louisiana and Captain in the Pacific , and they persuaded Congress in 1804 to fund an expedition to explore and the newly acquired territory to the Pacific Ocean.

Jefferson appointed and to be leaders of the . In the months leading up to the expedition, Jefferson tutored Lewis in the sciences of mapping, botany, natural history, mineralogy, and astronomy and navigation, giving him unlimited access to his library at Monticello, which included the largest collection of books in the world on the subject of the geography and natural history of the North American continent, along with an impressive collection of maps.

The expedition lasted from May 1804 to September 1806 and obtained a wealth of scientific and geographic knowledge, including knowledge of many Indian tribes.

Other expeditions

In addition to the Corps of Discovery, Jefferson organized three other western expeditions: the and George Hunter expedition on the , the on the , and the into the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest. All three produced valuable information about the American frontier.

How Did John Quincy Adams Become President

Democrats Vs Republicans | What is the difference between Democrats and Republicans?

In the U.S. presidential election of 1824, Andrew Jackson received 99 electoral votes, Adams 84, William Crawford 41, and Henry Clay 37. Because no one had a majority, the;House of Representatives chose between the three top candidates. Clay supported Adams, ensuring his victory and the bitter opposition of the Jacksonians to all his initiatives.

You May Like: How Many Republicans Voted To Impeach Trump

The Parties Change Course

After the war, the Republican Party became more and more oriented towards economic growth, industry, and big business in Northern states, and in the beginning of the 20th;century it had reached a general status as a party for the more wealthy classes in society. Many Republicans therefore gained financial success in the prosperous 1920s until the stock market crashed in 1929 initiating the era of the Great Depression.

Now, many Americans blamed Republican President Herbert Hoover for the financial damages brought by the crisis. In 1932 the country therefore instead elected Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to be president.

The Democratic Party largely stayed in power until 1980, when Republican Ronald Reagan was elected as president. Reagans social conservative politics and emphasis on cutting taxes, preserving family values, and increasing military funding were important steps in defining the modern Republican Party platform.

Energy Issues And The Environment

There have always been clashes between the parties on the issues of energy and the environment. Democrats believe in restricting drilling for oil or other avenues of fossil fuels to protect the environment while Republicans favor expanded drilling to produce more energy at a lower cost to consumers. Democrats will push and support with tax dollars alternative energy solutions while the Republicans favor allowing the market to decide which forms of energy are practical.

Also Check: What National Policies Did Republicans Pursue During The Civil War

Which Party Is Better For The Economy

Princeton University economists Alan Binder and Mark Watson argue the U.S. economy has grown faster when the president is a Democrat rather than a Republican. “The U.S. economy not only grows faster, according to real GDP and other measures, during Democratic versus Republican presidencies, it also produces more jobs, lowers the unemployment rate, generates higher corporate profits and investment, and turns in higher stock market returns,” they write.

However, rather than chalking up the performance difference to how each party manages monetary or fiscal policy, Binder and Watson said Democratic presidencies had benefitted from “more benign oil shocks, superior performance, a more favorable international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term future.”

Republicans Claim That Raising The Minimum Wage Would Kill Jobs And Hurt The Economy

There is far more evidence to the contrary. Cities and states that have higher minimum wages tend to have better rates of job creation and economic growth.

Detailed analyses show that job losses due to increases in the minimum wage are almost negligible compared to the economic benefits of higher wages. Previous increases in the minimum wage have never resulted in the dire consequences that Republicans have predicted.

Republicans have accused President Obama of cutting defense spending to the bone. This chart of 2014 discretionary spending firmly disproves that argument.

Don’t Miss: Is Economy Better Under Democrats Or Republicans

What Is Thomas Jefferson Remembered For

Thomas Jefferson is remembered for being the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States. The fact that he owned over 600 enslaved people during his life while forcefully advocating for human freedom and equality made Jefferson one of Americas most problematic and paradoxical heroes.

Thomas Jefferson, , draftsman of the of the United States and the nations first secretary of state and second vice president and, as the third president , the statesman responsible for the Louisiana Purchase. An early advocate of total separation of church and state, he also was the founder and architect of the University of Virginia and the most eloquent American proponent of individual freedom as the core meaning of the American Revolution.

Presidential Election Of 1808

Speculation regarding Madisons potential succession of Jefferson commenced early in Jeffersons first term. Madisons status in the party was damaged by his association with the embargo, which was unpopular throughout the country and especially in the Northeast. With the Federalists collapsing as a national party after 1800, the chief opposition to Madisons candidacy came from other members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Madison became the target of attacks from Congressman , a leader of a faction of the party known as the . Randolph recruited James Monroe, who had felt betrayed by the administrations rejection of the proposed with Britain, to challenge Madison for leadership of the party. Many Northerners, meanwhile, hoped that Vice President could unseat Madison as Jeffersons successor. Despite this opposition, Madison won his partys presidential nomination at the January 1808 . The Federalist Party mustered little strength outside New England, and Madison easily defeated Federalist candidate . At a height of only five feet, four inches , and never weighing more than 100 pounds , Madison became the most diminutive president.

Recommended Reading: How Many Seats Do Republicans Need To Keep The House

Early Life And Education

James Madison, Jr. was born on March 16, 1751 ) at near in the , to and Nelly Conway Madison. His family had lived in Virginia since the mid-1600s. Madison grew up as the oldest of twelve children, with seven brothers and four sisters, though only six lived to adulthood. His father was a who grew up on a , then called , which he had inherited upon reaching adulthood. With an estimated 100 and a 5,000 acres plantation, Madison’s father was the largest landowner and a leading citizen in the . Madison’s maternal grandfather was a prominent planter and tobacco merchant. In the early 1760s, the Madison family moved into a newly built house that they named .

From age 11 to 16, Madison studied under Donald Robertson, a Scottish instructor who served as a tutor for several prominent planter families in the South. Madison learned , , and modern and classical languageshe became exceptionally proficient in . At age 16, Madison returned to Montpelier, where he studied under the Reverend Thomas Martin to prepare for college. Unlike most college-bound Virginians of his day, Madison did not attend the , where the lowland climate thought to be more likely to harbor infectious disease might have strained his delicate health. Instead, in 1769, he enrolled as an undergraduate at .

Where Do Democrats And Republicans Stand On The Issue Of Healthcare

Why there’s no Republican primary in South Carolina

The chasm between the parties approach to providing healthcare to Americans couldnt be more vast. Simply put, Democrats have had some form of healthcare reform on their agenda for nearly a century. Republicans not so much. They feel that the status quo is just fine. At the core is a philosophical disagreement about the role of government. Democrats believe that government should be responsible for the people in some ways, and Republicans believe that the less government, the better. In the current climate, this boils down to Democrats wanting to retain, improve, and expand the ACA, and Republicans working overtime to repeal it with no replacement.

Recommended Reading: Did Trump Say Republicans Are The Dumbest

Republicans And Democrats Have Different Views About Compromising With The Other Party

Overall, Republicans are divided over whether Donald Trump should focus on finding common ground with Democrats, even if that means giving up some things Republicans want, or pushing hard for GOP policies, even if it means less gets done. While 53% of Republicans say Trump should push hard for the partys policies, 45% say its more important for the president to find common ground with Democrats.

However, politically attentive Republicans broadly oppose Trump seeking compromise with Democrats even if it means giving up some things Republicans want. Just 39% of Republicans who follow government and public affairs most of the time say it is more important for Trump to find common ground with Democrats; 61% say he should push hard for GOP policies. Opinion is more evenly divided among less politically attentive Republicans.

Democrats, who were asked a hypothetical version of the question about the partys 2020 presidential candidates, are more open to potential compromise with Republicans. About six-in-ten Democrats say it is more important for a candidate, if elected, to find common ground with Republicans even if it means giving up things Democrats want.

There are no differences in these views among Democrats based on political attentiveness. But liberal Democrats are less likely than conservative and moderate Democrats to say it is more important for a candidate to seek compromises with Republicans.

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stretchemersonarchive · 7 years ago

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God Save the King?

By Michael Atchue

I have, thank God, never read President Donald J. Trump’s best-selling book, The Art of the Deal, and in equal measure I hope that I will never have to read it as long as I live. I say this not out of spite towards the President, but because the time to rant about his dastardly moral character or clownish presentation is long gone. The old, stuck-up prude in me might grumble about Trump’s personal foibles -- his ridiculous oratory, his laughable haircut, or that he is hardly any less vicious or crude than the average neolithic caveman -- yet none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things. Neither Trump’s latest absurd tweet, nor his most recent public relations gaffe, or, come to think of it, any bizarre act he undertakes in his apparent obsession with shooting himself in the foot shall have any distinguishable impact on the course of human events, and should be ignored.

What does matter, however, is that President Trump’s much-touted skill in deal-making is perhaps the most pitiful out of any head of state, not just in the history of my great country but of any nation. Instead of bringing people together, as any great deal-maker would, Trump has driven them apart by encouraging violent racial tensions between white and black Americans for his selfish political gain, twiddling his thumbs while hurricanes ravaged Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, and pursuing an approach to international affairs that resembles not an actual foreign policy but more so the folly of a town drunk stumbling through a liquor store. Above all, the most telling sign that Trump completely lacks any sort of dexterity as a negotiator is that every single one of his domestic initiatives have died in either Congress or the courts despite Republican control of all three branches of government.

During his campaign, Trump boasted of his supposed deal-making prowess as a qualification to hold the highest office in the land. Like all successful politicians, Trump no doubt understood that in order to get elected he needed to craft an alluring self-image. Before the Donald’s rise to power, Abraham Lincoln marketed himself as “Honest Abe,” the plain-speaking country lawyer who would address the issue of slavery with good old common sense and integrity. Once Lincoln was elected, this image turned out to be based in fact, albeit exaggerated for maximum political effect. But it goes without saying that Trump is no Abe Lincoln, and his “Deal-Maker” alter ego is a complete fiction.

Throughout his long and storied business career Trump found both great triumphs and great travails, but mostly travails. While Trump acquired a tremendous fortune renovating and re-branding old real estate, properties which he founded outright largely went belly up, leaving Trump in debt. In 1973, he and his father Fred Trump were sued by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department for discriminating against African-American tenants in New York City, and Donald Trump’s own career as a real estate mogul was made possible only because, in his words, “my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars” (Gass). Without Fred’s silver spoon, odds are the young Donald would’ve gone nowhere in the business world, much like a great many untalented but rich young men who leech off their parent’s purse.

With this in mind, we should consider his multitude of failings as President to be a simple continuation of his ineptitude as a businessman. The single most powerful tool at the President’s disposal is America’s vast nuclear arsenal, so any Chief Executive’s feelings towards the military threat posed by North Korea should be the very first thing one takes into account while evaluating their presidency. Trump’s recent announcement that he will meet with Kim Jong-Un in the near future comes as quite a shock to those of us who’ve endured the ghastly horrorshow of Trump galavanting around the world like a god of death, promising to reign, “fire and fury” (Zeleny, et al), down on North Korea if their leader didn’t terminate his nuclear program. Even if a peace summit between Trump and Kim Jong-Un does come about, it’s unlikely to be effective unless those two swallow their pride and abandon the infantile mudslinging that’s defined the past year of fruitless diplomatic mishaps.

It is no coincidence, after all, that just this year the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists turned the hands of the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight - only a hair’s breadth away from the apocalypse. In a chilling public statement, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board referenced “the downward spiral of nuclear rhetoric between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un,” as a primary factor in their decision to set the Clock, “the closest the [it] has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.”

It is thus unfortunate that most Americans have forgotten that critical time in world history -- when the Korean War raged on and on in a bloody three-year stalemate -- for otherwise Trump might actually be held accountable for his blatantly stupid handling of Kim Jong-Un’s regime. In 1949, when President Harry Truman’s State Department made a public affirmation of its commitment to defend America’s foreign allies, out of sheer negligence Secretary of State Dean Acheson forgot to mention South Korea. As a result, North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung -- Kim Jong-Un’s grandfather -- assumed that Truman would not oppose his planned invasion of South Korea, and he promptly attacked the ROK in June 1950. This illegal act of aggression launched a massacre on the Korean peninsula that killed up to three million people, practically destroyed North Korea itself, and brought human civilization to the very brink of World War III.

Just like Trump, Truman was absent-minded and irresponsible as President of the United States. His failure to correct Acheson’s very public blunder ultimately produced a wasteful and catastrophic war that drove Truman’s approval rating down to twenty-two percent, infamously the lowest ever recorded for an American President. Indeed, the Harry Truman presidency, haphazard and rife with internal corruption, became so unpopular that the failed Missouri businessman turned politician was rejected by his own party in the 1952 Democratic primary race. In light of Trump’s massive unpopularity and Robert Mueller’s promising investigation into the President’s alleged misconduct, I seriously doubt that Trump will be able to campaign for his own party in the 2018 midterms, let alone run for re-election. Nonetheless, the historical parallels between himself and Truman are eerie; in fact, too eerie.

Alternatively, the Donald’s record on domestic policy is, by comparison, not nearly as grim. Unlike Kim Jong-Un, none of Trump’s Congressional enemies have threatened to destroy Guam, for example -- although they certainly have designs on bankrupting the Treasury through deficit spending. Instead Trump’s great faux pas as a dealmaker was neglecting to unite the Republican Party behind a health care bill that would pass Congress. Since the GOP has majorities in both legislative Houses, any bill that the party cooked up should have been enacted. Yet because Trump could not bring moderate Republican Senators like John McCain, Susan Collins, and Bob Corker on board with his American Health Care Act of 2017 -- a bill too extreme for these lawmakers to support -- the legislation was voted down, and all of the Republican Party’s subsequent attempts at health care reform have suffered the exact same fate.

Journalist Bob Woodward once asked President George W. Bush how history would judge his administration. By the final year of his presidency, historians had already tossed Dubya into the bottom tier of American Presidents alongside the corrupt Warren G. Harding and the clueless James Buchanan. Bush, who never seemed to think deeply about the Presidency -- or about much of anything, come to think of it -- simply responded with, “History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead” (Hamilton). A facetious truism, but a truism nonetheless. All of America’s living former Presidents - Carter, both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama will have passed on by the time academics establish a fully formed view of who they were and what long-term impact they had upon the United States. The same goes for Trump. As it stands nobody knows what really makes him tick, and he has yet to vacate the Oval Office, leaving it up to him to determine his legacy. But one thing is for sure: this so-called “deal-maker” has proved himself a deal-breaker, one who’s dropped the ball far too many times to put his presidency back together again.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the writing style of that great Anglo-American author Thomas Paine as a direct influence on this piece. I challenged myself to craft an essay in his distinct rhetorical style, and I hope this comes through in my finished work.

#vol3 #politics

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doctormead · 7 years ago

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Death of a Conservative

I was born in June of 1974. Two months later, Richard Nixon resigned from the Presidency. The Cold War was in its final stages and would end before I graduated high school. But its shadow defined my upbringing.

I was raised in a Evangelical Christian, conservative, Republican home. And that is what I was raised to be: a Christian, an Evangelical, a conservative and a Republican. I was never actually told that you couldn’t be a good Christian and be a Democrat. In fact, I was explicitly told the opposite…but there was this underlying attitude in everything every adult around me said and did that said otherwise. I’m pretty sure that the adults in my life didn’t mean to come across this way, but this was the “logic train” that I absorbed over time.

Here’s where the U.S.S.R.’s cold shadow crept in. Russia was the boogieman for every churched kid in those days. We were fed horror stories about religious oppression in the Soviet Union and inspiring sagas about good Christian people who held onto their faith in spite of the danger. We were given pamphlets and Christian comic books about heroes who smuggled bibles behind the Iron Curtain. We were told over and over that the Russians wanted to do that to everyone, and that the U.S. was the bulwark that kept them from grinding all of us under the heel of state-established atheism.

And, if that wasn’t bad enough, Russia wanted to impose its economic system on us. “Socialism” and “Communism” were words to conjure demons by. We heard tale after tale of how poor the Russian people were because of prices fixed by the state. How nobody was motivated to do their best because there was no way to really advance. That the lack of competition kept everything stagnant and miserable. Then Capitalism was set up as the Aslan to Communism’s Tash. Capitalism was why things were so much better in America! Capitalism provides competition and incentive for people to get off their asses and work hard. This creates better, cheaper products which makes everything better for everyone!

This was the dichotomy I grew up. Russia/Communism = evil. America/Capitalism = good. Enter the liberals in general and the Democrats in particular. They weren’t “tough” on the Russians. Worse, they wanted to erode good Christian institutions like prayer in schools which would put us on the “slippery slope” (yes, that logical fallacy got a lot of play in school time lectures and political discussions around me ) toward outlawing Christianity outright. This made them foolish dupes at best and collaborators at worst. And, since no good Christian would stand by while the Evil U.S.S.R. and their liberal sympathizers in the U.S. pushed us down the road toward atheistic totalitarianism, you couldn’t REALLY be a good Christian and be a democrat. Simplistic, I know, but I was a kid and, for an embarrassingly long time, even into my adult years, I held on to that simplicity even if it was only in the back of my mind. To paraphrase John Fischer, this was something that I wasn’t so much taught as something that I “caught”.

But, as I got older, cracks started to appear in the facade of “Righteous Capitalist America”. The benefits of the sweeping, upper level tax cuts and the repealing of economy-shackling regulations that were supposed to “trickle down” to everyone never seemed to reach us. Looking back, we were doing pretty well, but I remember mom and dad seeming to constantly worry about finances. Costs of living kept going up while wages were stagnating for the middle and lower class. As corporations merged into virtual (and sometimes literal) monopolies, I learned that Capitalism doesn’t guarantee competition. It is “good business” to eliminate your competition from the viewpoint of a corporate overlord. Thus an in-theory “free market” can become just as locked in and stagnant as any State run economy. This made it easier for hard-working people to fall into financial trouble and cutting of social safety nets in the name of “fiscal responsibility” and “not encouraging freeloaders” made it harder and harder to climb out of that trouble. And the continual gutting of public education only exacerbated matters.

I slowly grew away from the Republican Party, because, well, they weren’t living up to their hype. Take the War on Drugs. You’d think we’d have learned something from Prohibition. Yeah, they “got tough” on drugs with the “three strikes you’re out” policy and militarizing the police to a fare-the-well. All they actually did was explode the prison population and didn’t really make a significant dent in drug trafficking and use. Drug use is the same between white and black people, but black people are disproportionately arrested and convicted which exacerbates the issue of poverty in that demographic as families lose providers and young people get a black mark on their records that will bar them from many opportunities for the rest of their lives. At the same time, they advocated (and followed through) with cutting assistance programs for inner cities and other impoverished areas, making drug dealing one of the few available means for having an income that is above subsistence level…and the cycle continues. (And, then in the last year, I learn that the War on Drugs was pretty much started by Nixon to target his political opponents: i.e. liberals and African Americans. And this isn’t “fake news”. One of his aides confessed to this.) Then there were the incessant wars overseas (granted with strong support from Democrats in many cases) which, in the long run, only seemed to exacerbate the problems they claimed to be solving. There was also the outright hostility to science. I admit, I was a climate change denier to begin with, but then the evidence finally piled up to a point where I couldn’t deny it any longer and remain intellectually honest with myself. Also, the stifling of research into areas that might hurt their platform (for example, preventing the CDC from even starting to research gun violence/fatalities). The party was gradually adopting a stance that facts should be discounted and ignored when they are inconvenient. Then, to put the cherry on the top of this toxic sundae, there was the courtship of racism When hordes of angry, white southerners left the Democratic party over the party changing to support the Civil Rights Movement, the Republican party tried to bring them into their fold to bolster their voter support. It was subtle. So very, very subtle at first. The used “dogwhistles” instead of obviously racist statements and/or policies to let them know they’d be welcome. And, as they took root in the “Party of Lincoln”, they started throwing their weight around becoming more and more openly racist. It finally came to a head for me half-way through Obama’s first term, when Republicans flat out refused to even try to work with the President or the people across the aisle. Their entire policy was “obstruct everything”. The Republican party no longer represented my ideals…if it ever in fact did. After that, I no longer considered myself Republican or conservative. I was an independent with increasingly “leftist” leanings.

I still considered myself an Evangelical Christian but “cracks” were starting to appear there as well. Evangelical Christianity was the vanguard of conservatism and the Republican Party. They led the charge against the “moral erosion” of our society. As I got older I and got to know more people outside of the Evangelical bubble, I became more and more uneasy. Many of the things that were being railed against by Evangelicals and the Moral Majority were…simply applying the rights of the 1st Amendment to everyone. Prayer in schools? Unless you’re going to give a service for every religion represented in that school, it’s not fair to people who aren’t Christian. And, even if you could do that, it singles out members of minority religions to be picked on (and, if you think minority religions wouldn’t be picked on in school, you haven’t been paying attention). You can make it “all right” in the rules for people to abstain from the opening prayer, but see what I write before about minorities being picked on. When I was in undergrad at Bryan College, there was a program where our students would go to the local grade school to teach bible lessons in their classes. I’m pretty sure they only got away with it for as long as they did because Dayton, TN was pretty insular. Looking back, I cringe at the idea. Yeah, kids weren’t “required” to attend the lessons, but the lessons were held in each of the homerooms. It would be painfully obvious if you left and…minorities being picked on, etcetera etcetera. Gay marriage? Folks, homosexuality isn’t forbidden in all religions (and certainly not in any atheist or agnostic creed I know). If you’re going to have a religious/legal hybrid of an institution in the first place, you have to let it be applied across all faiths or lack thereof across the board to be in sync with the idea of Religious Freedom. I kept hearing respected voices in the church rail against Islam and the stifling theocracies its followers created…but, from the way they talked about other issues, they seemed to be longing for a Christian version of Sharia law: a theocracy where the outward behavior of one sect of Christianity was enforced by the government.

Then there was Evangelical Christianity’s increasing lack of compassion for the poor in our country. Oh, Evangelicals had tons of compassion (and open wallets) for poor people as long as they were overseas, but, if you were poor in America, you were out of luck. The attitude seemed to be that it wasn’t the fault of people overseas if they were poor. After all, they didn’t have all the advantages of living in America - the land of opportunity. But poor people in the U.S.? Well, if they can’t bootstrap themselves up like the American Dream says, it’s their fault. They’re too lazy or irresponsible or “not right with God”. I overheard or participated in many discussions about kids growing up expecting to draw a check like momma or single mothers having baby after baby just so they could get a bigger welfare check. I’m sure that some people abuse the system. Some people always find a way to abuse systems, but it became increasingly hard to believe that so many did that it negated the good such safety nets do. I’ve gotten to meet and get to know some people who had come out of a background like that and they were nothing like the “entitled, lazy welfare-queen” of the stories. At the worst, the poor became scapegoats for the failure of “trickle down” economics. If those leeches weren’t being supported by the rest of us, we’d have much more money, or so went the logic. I heard several people advocate for getting rid of the welfare system entirely and “let churches and private charities take over that job”. The thing was, churches and private charities were around when these programs were set up. If they were doing such a good job of it, government wouldn’t have had to start them. Quite frankly, I didn’t see these advocates for private and church based welfare giving anywhere near enough to the local poor to make the governmental programs redundant. And the racial component of this kept getting more and more pronounced. The “welfare queens” were increasingly cast as black or Latina. Stagnant wages were the fault of all those illegal immigrants who would take pennies for hours of work. The lack of well paying jobs in your area was because they were given to less qualified minorities to meet “racial quotas”.

And, finally, there was the demonization of the “other”. People who didn’t agree with us weren’t just mistaken. They became “The Enemy”, and somehow Jesus’ admonition to “love your enemy” didn’t apply to them. They weren’t to be listened to. They weren’t even to be tolerated. They were to be shouted down and attacked. Grace? Who has time for grace?! There’s a war on, so get down to the battlefield and hold the line at all costs!

Now, I hear you Evangelicals out there objecting to this. “We’re not all like that!” you say. I know, but THIS is the public face of Evangelicalism. “That’s not fair!” you say. “The liberal media just focuses on that minority!” Folks, I know that argument. I’ve MADE that argument for years to my friends outside the Evangelical bubble. Over and over again and, after a while, it began to ring increasingly hollow. I could SEE what was going on inside Evangelical churches. I could hear what my fellow Evangelical Christians were saying and “liberal slant” couldn’t excuse all of that. And, quite frankly, this last election year was the nail in the coffin for me because Evangelical Christianity (mainly WHITE Evangelical Christianity) as a whole showed its true colors for all the world to see. Evangelicals were a major help in putting a mysogynistic, bigoted, entitled bully in the White House. Numbers vary, but the figures I find most likely are 58% for Evangelicals as a whole and 80% for white Evangelicals. Let me say that again. Of the people who identified as Evangelical who turned out for the 2016 Presidential Election, over half of them voted for Trump and a particular subset had over three quarters vote for the Orange Anti-Beatitude. Even if a large population of the Evangelical community stayed home, that’s a pretty damning percentage and no amount of yelling that liberal media is doing a smear job can overcome it. And Trump *still* has strong Evangelical support! I could forgive what happened on election night if it wasn’t for the fact that the majority of white Evangelical Christians still seem to support him in spite of everything he’s done and all the lies he’s been caught out in. Top Evangelical voices like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham still staunchly support him in spite of the fact that he is the opposite of what they’ve been saying a Christian leader should be for years and years. And, you know what? I don’t care why they’re doing so. Because I’m out.

I am a Christian, and it is because of that that I can no longer consider myself an Evangelical. There are no doubt pockets in the Evangelical movement that haven’t been corrupted, but, when the rot is THIS far spread, I don’t see how I can do otherwise. If Jesus and the current Evangelical movement are in conflict, then I must go with Jesus. A huge chunk of Evangelicalism has sold its birthright of grace for a mess of political pottage. And, let me give you a word of warning, Evangelicals. I came to Christ in the age of Billy Graham, a man of grace. If my introduction to Christianity was Franklin Graham and his ilk, I’d have run far, far away. There is far too little of Christ in the lives of these Christians. Think about that. If I was growing up and seeking truth in this day and age, I strongly suspect that I would reject Christianity due to the hateful behavior of His servants. Think about all the young people who ARE looking for truth in this day and age…and how you’re driving them away.

#politics #progressivism

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salkryn · 6 years ago

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If evidence or appeal to reason were going to work on them, they would have stopped supporting him long ago. Any lip service they pay to rational discourse is just that: lip service. At this point, it’s outright fanaticism: any evidence that proves them wrong is ignored or decried as lies. This shouldn’t be a huge surprise, given the type of people that make up his base: conspiracy theorists, “Christian” fundamentalists, science deniers, climate “skeptics”, the right-wing portion of the anti-vaxxers and anti-GMO movements (sadly, they infect the whole political spectrum, this sin is not uniquely Republican), militia groups, etc. All of these groups are comprised of individuals who resolutely ignore any evidence that contradicts their views. Reason won’t work on them, because reason proves them wrong, and their egos won’t let them own up to their mistakes, therefore they never make mistakes and anything that makes it look like they’re wrong is a lie. While there are certainly plenty of examples of that sort of dogmatic thinking in the rest of the political spectrum, conservatives in general and Republicans in particular have deliberately fostered this mindset in their base over a period of decades, because as long as you tell them what they want to hear they will follow you into hell without a second thought. President Evil is just the next logical step in a long march toward authoritarianism by the American right, one they have been following in lock-step since at least the 1960′s with the “Southern Strategy” of getting cozy with racists after the Civil Rights Act passed.

When all was said and done, Fred and Mary Trump transferred more than $1 billion to their children in ways that allowed them to avoid paying approximately $550 million in gift and inheritance taxes. According to the Times report, and with the direct assistance of Donald Trump, the Trump family only paid about $52 million in taxes, a rate of about 5 percent. It’s amazing how rich you can get when you don’t pay your bills. After Trump had wrung the last coppers from his father’s empire in an effort to paper over his failures (which begs the question: How does one go bankrupt multiple times after getting millions from Mom and Dad?), those willing to loan him money were few and far between. Should we ever see the final report from the Mueller investigation, odds are it will begin with the highly mobile decimal point on Trump’s bottom line. This is only part of the problem for Trump today. His entire adult existence, beginning well before he monsooned his way into national politics, is premised on the long fiction of his wealth, power and ability to cut a deal. The Times report strips this mythology to the bone in a way that those crying “fake news” will find difficult to rebut.

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hollywoodjuliorivas · 5 years ago

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ions

Republicans like me built this moment. Then we looked the other way.

Image without a caption

(Brian Stauffer/for The Washington Post)

By Stuart Stevens

March 18, 2020 at 5:00 a.m. PDT

Stuart Stevens is a writer and Republican political consultant who has advised a pro-Bill Weld super PAC in the 2020 election. His book about the Republican Party, “It Was All A Lie,” will be published next month.

Don’t just blame President Trump. Blame me — and all the other Republicans who aided and abetted and, yes, benefited from protecting a political party that has become dangerous to America. Some of us knew better.

But we built this moment. And then we looked the other way.

Many of us heard a warning sound we chose to ignore, like that rattle in your car you hear but figure will go away. Now we’re broken down, with plenty of time to think about what should have been done.

Keep Reading

The failures of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis can be traced directly to some of the toxic fantasies now dear to the Republican Party. Here are a few: Government is bad. Establishment experts are overrated or just plain wrong. Science is suspect. And we can go it alone, the world be damned.

More coverage of the coronavirus pandemic

All of these are wrong, of course. But we didn’t get here overnight. It took practice.

Long before Trump, the Republican Party adopted as a key article of faith that more government was bad. We worked overtime to squeeze it and shrink it, to drown it in the bathtub, as anti-tax activist Grover Norquist liked to say. But somewhere along the way, it became, “all government is bad.” Now we are in a crisis that can be solved only by massive government intervention. That’s awkward.

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Opinion | Trump fans believe him over the media on coronavirus. This is dangerous.

Trump may think he can sugarcoat coronavirus, but media critic Erik Wemple says it is time for the government to speak with one clear voice about public health. (Video: Erik Wemple/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Next, somehow, the party of idealistic Teddy Roosevelt, pragmatic Bob Dole and heroic John McCain became anti-intellectual, by which I mean, almost reflexively opposed to knowledge and expertise. We began to distrust the experts and put faith in, well, quackery. It was 2013 when former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal said the Republican Party “must stop being the stupid party.” By 2016, the party had embraced as its nominee a reality-TV host who later suggested that perhaps the noise from windmills causes cancer.

The Republican Party has gone from admiring William F. Buckley Jr., an Ivy League intellectual, to viewing higher education as a left-wing conspiracy to indoctrinate the young. In retribution, we started defunding education. Never mind that Republican leaders are among the most highly educated on the planet; it’s just that they now feel compelled to embrace ignorance as a cost of doing business. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, as an example, denounces “coastal elites” while holding degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School and having served as a Supreme Court clerk.

The GOP’s relationship with science has resembled some kind of Frankenstein experiment: Let’s see what happens when we play with the chemistry set! Conservatives have spent years trying to cut funds for basic science and research, lamenting government seed money for nearly every budding technology and then hoping for the best. In the weeks ahead, it’s not some fiery, anti-Washington populist with an XM radio gig who is going to save folks’ lives; it is more likely to be someone who has been studying this stuff for decades, almost certainly at some point with federal help or outright patronage.

Finally, there is the populist GOP distrust and dislike of the other, the foreign. Yes, it is annoying that the Chinese didn’t come clean and explain everything to us from the start. But it appears that a Swiss company is helping to jump-start us in testing; and it is a German company that American officials reportedly tried to lure to the United States recently to help develop a vaccine for the virus. We talk about how we need to be independent even as we do all kinds of things that prove we aren’t.

The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.

What is happening now is the inevitable result of a party that embraced fear, weaponized xenophobia and regarded facts as dangerous, left-wing landmines that must be avoided.

Over the past few years, when ramming through conservative judges, Republicans have crowed, “Elections have consequences.” That’s true.

It’s something to think about when sitting at home not watching sports and wondering how long it will be until you can find out if that nasty cold you have is something more.

Yes, elections have consequences. Those of us in the Republican Party built this moment. Now the nation must live with those consequences.

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criticalotterstudies · 5 years ago

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The experience has left me with a lack of faith in the prognostications of pundits and pollsters, an awakening unfortunately not shared by those pundits and pollsters. Indeed, the very people who massively fucked this up the last time around are desperate to convince us today that they know exactly what is going on. One of the most outspoken is New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, a man who is so high on his own supply that in January 2017, he published a book called Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail — three days before Trump’s inauguration.

You might say that a liberal who believes that Barack Obama’s legacy has prevailed is delusional. But that is the description Chait applies instead to his worst enemies, namely anyone to his left. “New Poll Shows Democratic Candidates Have Been Living in a Fantasy World,” says a recent piece of his. Indeed, Chait seems to consider leftists a greater threat than conservatives, sometimes devoting many more column inches to the dangers of campus activism and redistributive economic policies than the rising tide of the right.

Let’s look back at Chait’s record, choosing a random year. How about 2016. His greatest hits include, “Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination” (the reason being, “he would almost certainly lose”), “Donald Trump Is Not Going to Win Michigan” (he did), “Hillary Clinton Isn’t Very Popular, But She’s Winning Anyway” (she didn’t), and “Why Hillary Clinton is Probably Going to Win the 2016 Election” (all together now).

Chait’s latest refers to polling data from the New York Times, focusing on swing states. The results “ought to deliver a bracing shock to Democrats,” he says, given that Trump “trails Joe Biden there by the narrowest of margins, and leads Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.” (It’s worth noting that a recent national poll from the Washington Post shows all three leading Trump.)

It is indeed true that Trump is a more formidable foe than many, for example Jonathan Chait, realized the last time around. But his claim is not that Democrats need to fight him harder — it’s that they need to appear more like him. Characteristically, and in spite of evidence to the contrary, he gestures towards middle ground:

The “center,” of course, is a somewhat hazy concept, subject both to overinterpretation and misinterpretation. Capturing the center isn’t the only reason politicians win elections, and some policies that Washington elites consider “radical” are in fact popular. Nonetheless, it really is true that there are a bunch of persuadable voters who can be pushed away from a party based on their perception that it’s too radical.

...

As helpful as it may be to consider the totality of statistical information, it’s also important to remember that probability is not reality. Even now, the New York Times probability meter leaves Trump with a 95 percent chance of being the president. The inherently hypothetical nature of probability is why it leads to counterintuitive conclusions for those of us who are not theoretical mathematicians, and always runs the risk of favoring outcomes that don’t happen.

What makes policies popular? Public opinion is not some kind of geological formation, solid and immobile.

Even simple predictions make countless assumptions about circumstances — any event is contingent upon infinite factors in its environment and process. But even more troublesome is the observer effect — the name given by science to the phenomenon when measuring a result affects the outcome itself. The results you get are affected by what question you ask, like if you have a preceding suspicion that Biden voters think Warren is too far left. And in the most uncomfortable reality for the political press, when those results are publicized, they have a ripple effect on public opinion.

The idea that moderate candidates do well simply because they represent the will of the electorate, rather than because they are endorsed, supported, and popularized by the party establishment and the media is self-evidently absurd. This is plainly observable in a variety of ways. The media adores Pete Buttigieg, who fulfills their wildest fantasies of a dignified, erudite statesman, but who appears to the rest of the world as a barely sentient robot. His showings in any and all polls fall far short of his rapturous reception by pundits, but his lead over competitors may be a result of his attempted coronation. Meanwhile, the political press continues to comically underreport poll data that shows favorable outcomes for Bernie Sanders, outright declining to mention him even when he comes in first or second.

What makes policies popular? Public opinion is not some kind of geological formation, solid and immobile. You might describe politics as the process of popularization, both of policies and principles. Consider the idea of socialism, which, since the last Sanders candidacy, has risen significantly in popularity among the general population — particularly young people. Probability is hard to measure and even harder to predict, but it’s not the best basis for political action. It’s not necessarily even the best way to play poker.

Reducing politics to electability turns it into little more than a card game, and the pundits playing the odds are just as superstitious as any compulsive gambler. But politics is not a game, it’s a fight. It’s only worth participating if you believe something.

https://theoutline.com/post/8194/ignore-the-polls

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nightcoremoon · 6 years ago

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there's a disturbing trend going around recently in which binarism is being overused.

now when I say binarism I mean in the literal most basic sense. 1 and 0. black and white. good and evil. right and wrong. dark and light. and the like.

people pretend like all values are in absolutes.

discussion of religion lumps all atheists versus all those with faith. this ignores agnostics. this ignores atheists of different faithful upbringings and different societies and different cultures. this ignores the divide between judeochristian entities. this ignores the divide between east & west. this ignores the split between buddhism and hinduism. this ignores the difference in the structure of faith versus mythology. it ignores enmity between different branches of various faiths but mostly between types of christianity: most notably the divide between catholic and protestant. even further it ignores orthodoxy (which I'll fully admit to knowing jack shit about which is why I don't discuss it with frequency). this ignores unitarians and other blended faith. I see cishet white dudebros talking shit about faith and religion as if it's all the same thing, all diametrically opposed to their own philosophy, and assume that all atheists are how they are even though this demographic is still instilled values of fundamentalist christianity. they see the issue as their limited intelligence and their position on atheist as the other side of the coin in which all religious people are on the same boat on the other side. I see ignorant christians lumping "heathens" of every religion and also atheists together as The Enemy™ who are all equally bad and terrible and going to hell for their beliefs. even though that's not even how christianity works. even further I see christians believing the basics of their faith in which jesus forgave all of humanity for their sins and they'll all be pardoned in the afterlife but still turn right around and condemn gays, women, and brown skinned people to hell. sure, there are multiple multitudes of people who don't follow in these demographics, but view the discussion in the same terms, as atheism / science vs religion / christianity, as if terms were interchangeable.

this is just one example.

politics. people see left versus right. they see liberal versus conservative. they see red versus blue. they see republican versus democrat. this ignores the tiers of leaning, apoliticals, and the extremists. this assumes all people on either side are all the same. this ignores all of the more complex situations that can arise from governing masses of people. you'll get liberals clamoring over hilary clinton, bernie sanders, and both of the obamas in spite of all of their questionable deeds which come hand in hand with big government, unable to distinguish the difference between moderate conservatives and outright fascists, who either refuse to compromise with the moderates or don't take seriously the threat of the nazis. and you'll get conservatives shitting themselves in rage at lgbtq rights because they're bigoted assholes incapable of considering dissenting opinions or just bitching and moaning over their guns being taken away and digging their heels in at any left leaning prospects which save lives, adamantly refusing to acknowledge that their paragon of tangerine apathy is an incredibly dangerous sociopath with the mind of a child no matter how many steps down hitler's path he takes, because they can't comprehend that racism affects people other than themselves. and on top of all of that you'll see cynical fucknuggets sneering at everyone because "both sides are the same" because they both feel conviction in their beliefs. you'll get rabid anarchists who all demand that everyone create cryptosocieties because the neoliberalism and liberals are all the same people who will cause nuclear winter when they take control of the country and go to war with russia, the moderate conservatives and the literal mussolini sympathizers are all the same people and should be murdered on sight, and even the rare breed who follow in randist objectivism as if that's a good idea. you get literal fucking communists who have never read a history book in their life who delight in cyberbullying everybody who dares to have an opinion. caught in the crossfire are all of the minorities who suffer to the tyranny of majority which is democracy. there are liberals who love cops and guns, there are conservatives who're black or gay, and they get left behind without a single explanation and thrown under the bus for the sake of "their side".

it's ridiculous.

we've even got this mentality so ingrained we stop acknowledging it. just likes and dislikes on youtube, and no "I liked some aspects of this video but disliked other aspects" selection. "I love this band" vs "this band sucks", no "this band does not appeal to me but I can respect its artistic integrity and I can appreciate that there are people who enjoy it". the line drawn between rich capitalists and the poor workers even though there are people who have money and struggle to make ends meet as well as people who have no extra money but still have a roof, a bed, clothes, a meal, and animals who also have a meal [the middle class and the lower middle class exist, it's not just the upper class and the lower class. also fuck billionaires]. division of intelligent people and stupid people as if there aren't a dozen types of intelligence exhibited in people. I could go on for hours.

it's a problem with humans in general, it seems. our obsession with anally compartmentalizing everything has stretched nearly every aspect of society to the breaking point. every culture in the world I'm aware of has issues like this. and the biggest topical issue right now is gender. uneducated eurocentric white christianized cis people only think there are two, and ignore all attempts to explain that the gender binary is completely nonexistent outside of the realm of social constructs. they shove their heads up their asses and go "blah blah blah I can't hear you" until your mouth stops moving and they regurgitate the same platitudes forcfed into them their whole lives, hands held through everything they've ever experienced, and told exactly what to think at any given moment.

literally nothing in life is a coin flip.

tangential I know but I wanna draw analogues to blizzard entertainment. particularly think of the worlds of warcraft and starcraft... no pun intended. warcraft has horde versus alliance. you got the humans who have gone to war with the orcs forever, the dwarves who support their allies the humans, the gnomes who take refuge with the dwarves, the night elves who just want to keep the world from falling apart, the drainei who are basically just literal stereotypical space jews who want to keep their dying culture alive, the worgen who are just humans who are also werewolves from HyperBritain, and the pandas who joined them but didn't realize they were enlisting in a war against their own people. and that's the alliance. frail tenuous connections based on necessity. then you have the horde. you have the orcs who just wanted a home in azeroth but the xenophobic humans attacked them and started a war, the trolls who all lived peacefully with the orcs, the peaceful tauren [giant cow people] who traded with the orcs, the undead forsaken who were cast out by the humans (for being similar in appearance to the undead scourge of lordaeron who were all used as weapons by literal demons) and taken in as allies by the orcs, the blood elves who used to be what became the night elves before they became literal space nazis like it's in fucking wolfenstein and decided hey let's help out all the people who hate the people who love the people who we hate (the enemy of my friends friend is my friend), the goblins who almost got eaten by a dragon and then begged the orcs for help, and the pandas who were in the same boat as before. an honor bound covenant of staying alive together and resisting the purge from the alliance. but then you also have the evil aliens and the evil demons and the crazed wildlife and the evil dragons and the evil lich king and the evil humans and the evil orcs and the evil elves of all elf races and the neutral goblins that make it absolutely clear that the horde and the alliance are not the be all end all on inherent goodness or evilness. evil is done by the alliance, the horde, third parties; good is done by the alliance, the horde, third parties. there are dozens of "sides".

meanwhile starcraft has terran, protoss, & zerg. all three just wanna live their lives but they're all brought into a war with two kinds of aliens they never met before, and the actions of a few evil people in each group caused a fuckin full scale intergalactic war between all of them. and not to mention the terran fighting each other even though they're all from the same planet, the rogue protoss having their various civil wars, and the collapse of the zerg overmind causing tribal warfare between zerg, and amon who is super super evil and wants to kill everybody in the universe and fuse their corpses together because the xel'naga (gods) left an unclear prophecy, and also the xel'naga themselves. there are a dozen factions of each of the three races ALONE who all hate each other, and not all of them are good or evil. in fact it's left super obvious that the only truly evil people are amon and the only truly good people are in raynor's allies, kerrigan's swarm, artanis' fleet, and uhhh probably valerian's dominion maybe.

and that's just how the world is. things aren't ever simple and easy. there are exceptions to every rule. bickering and fighting and putting things into neat little categories and thinking you're the fucking king of the field are all not helping the situation we're in.

all atheist assholes and all religious assholes are bad. all neoliberals and all fascists are bad. not all atheists or religious people are good but many are. not all people with a political leaning are good but many are. (this ones iffy and I'll make a lot of enemies but... moderate liberals seem to be pretty okay for the most part and moderate conservatives can be okay if they make concessions and fucking listen and the other positions seem to be directly proportional in overall goodness to how much they discount dissenting opinions. naziism is not an opinion, guillotine the billionaires, complicity in fascism is fascism which is bad, tolerating intolerance is a fallacy, fuck trump, fuck every single dumb motherfucker who voted for him, oh yeah and fuck the broken not working two party system). gender is a complex concept beyond complete human comprehension and anyone who thinks they know everything about us is a fucking idiot who should stop talking. stop shoving things into one of two boxes.

we should really think in more like magic the gathering colors. black is the evil demon hell zombie monster fucks. white is the be nice to people but destroy evil brigade. blue is the logic/science/reason/coexist with the scary brutal nature or die/survival of the fittest kind of people. red is the "nature is scary and life is meaningless so let's all just get drunk" aspect of apathetic nihilistic neutrality. green is the "nature is beautiful and we should stop fucking destroying it and then make the world a better place" tree hugging nerds who mean well but can be a bit cold and unfeeling when it comes to those less fortunate. we'll all probably do a lot better thinking in those terms than how we've been doing.

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democratsunited-blog · 6 years ago

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Republicans Lost Their Way Long Before Trump (But So Did the Democrats)

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=3400

Republicans Lost Their Way Long Before Trump (But So Did the Democrats)

There’s been a spate of articles about how Trump has “taken over” the Republican Party. For example, New York Times columnist Charles Blow opened a recent column saying, “In one way, Donald Trump’s presidency has been a raging success: He stole a political party.” And former House Speaker John Bohner said, “There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party. The Republican Party is kind of taking a nap somewhere.”

The thing is, the Republican Party was taken over long ago, and Trump is merely the logical endpoint of that takeover. Moreover, the Democratic Party has also been taken over, and by the same cast of characters.

The fact that it took the election of a narcissistic reality show buffoon to get the media to acknowledge—albeit only reluctantly and tacitly—that the Republican Party is off the rails is one of the greatest stories never told. The fact that they think Trump is the one who did it is a sign of gross incompetence.

So is the media’s tendency to tiptoe around the Democratic Party’s sell out to the same suspects.

Both of these events are historic, important, and blatantly obvious. For the press to ignore them is tantamount to having two stark raving mad uncles hidden away in the national attic, screaming at the top of their lungs while we sit below, wondering why we can’t have a rational national conversation.

Let’s examine each, in turn.

The Republican Party and the Oligarch’s Coup

While rich plutocrats had attempted an actual coup back in the early stages of Roosevelt’s administration, the blueprint for a far more subtle and sophisticated one appeared on August 23, 1971. On that date, Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer who would soon become a Supreme Court Justice, gave a friend at the Chamber of Commerce a memo entitled, Attack On American Free Enterprise System. As with the previous coup, this one was issued in response to the popularity of the New Deal and the Great Society in general, and regulations limiting corporate power in particular. Powell outlined a strategy to defend against the “attack” and to counter attack against “disquieting voices.”

The counter attack was a multi-billion dollar campaign funded by a few rich families and corporations who invested in this coup. They focused on: 1) creating a conservative infrastructure composed of foundations, think tanks, academic chairs, and media outlets; 2) discrediting government in general and regulations in particular, while glorifying free markets; and 3) developing sophisticated messaging to equip candidates and influence the public. In short, they set up to shape polls, change the national political dialogue, and virtually take the country over.

There may have been a few true-believers among the “government-is-bad, free-markets-are-good” gang, but it’s hard to see how. After all, the New Deal and the Great Society policies they railed against, had just delivered the longest, most equitably shared period of prosperity in our nation’s history. One has to wonder if it was that “equitably shared” aspect that rankled them.

A measure of their success is that we are now in the midst of the second longest period of economic growth in US history, but it features the least equitable distribution of economic gains in our nation’s history.

So, from the beginning, the coup sought to divide, distract, deceive, and dissemble in the interests of gaining an ever-larger share of wealth and power. A key component of their coup was to appeal to prejudice, racism, jingoism, sexism, and a host of other “isms” to keep folks from realizing that wealth wasn’t trickling down; supply side strategies were merely enriching the rich; and that deregulating the financial community and the media, while gutting regulations protecting the environment, worker safety, food safety, and drug safety was hurting the vast majority of Americans while benefiting corporations and rich stockholders.

But this divide-and-conquer effort isn’t new. It began in earnest with Reagan, when he kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi—the site of three racially motivated murders by the KKK—with a speech on state’s rights, no less. This should have been the dog whistle heard round the world.

The party continued in this divide and conquer strategy, while they simultaneously ignited an all-out war on government. Again, Reagan was the ideal spokesman. In his first speech as president, he said, “…government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem”—launching a relentless assault on governance that Republicans continue to this day.

While he worked diligently to discredit government, he extolled the virtues of the free market, claiming that it would deliver all good things by pure serendipity, if we could just get government out of the way. He also rolled back FCC rules, implemented a tax cut that benefited the rich, and railed against deficits, even as he chalked up record breaking deficits.

Over the years, the conservative agenda has failed virtually every time it’s been attempted. In fact, nationally, our three attempts to run our economy on their laissez-faire policies has presaged the three biggest economic downturns in our nation’s history. Meanwhile, at the state level, economies in states like Kansas and Louisiana, which adopted the conservative playbook, are tanking, while in those like New York and California—which raised taxes and increased regulations—are thriving.

But rather than acknowledging that their prescription wasn’t working, they doubled down on the lies, the divisiveness, the deceptions and the distractions—not surprising when you realize the whole point of the coup was to disable government for the purpose of concentrating power and wealth among the wealthy.

Again, these are hallmarks of the Republican Party today, and more to the point, they presage Trump’s assault on governance, his appointment of industry cronies while promising to drain the swamp, and his deficit-exploding tax cuts for the rich. But most of all, they were part and parcel of the science-denying, fact-free, lying, truth-shredding GOP since Reagan.

The press—abandoning truth and accuracy as its polestar and replacing them with balance—enabled this whole charade until Trump’s election.

But the only difference between Trump and the traditional Republican Party was that he made explicit, what had been implicit, exposing the rotten, hate-filled, blame-fueled, anti-science core of the Party to sunlight. Republicans initially recoiled at this exposure, but when they saw it didn’t seem to matter in elections, they condoned it, even if they didn’t fully embrace it.

Which brings us to the Democrats

The only way Republicans could have gotten away with such an epic con, is if there were no one calling them on it. And in fact, that’s the case. As noted, what little of the press hadn’t been purchased outright by big corporations, neutered itself by a commitment to being “balanced”—as if fact and fiction could somehow be compromised into truth.

Not only did Democrats fail to take on the very obvious failings of the trickle-down, supply-side con, they embraced much of the right’s agenda, beginning with the DLC sellout under Clinton. As Thomas Frank has pointed out:

Clinton had five major achievements as president: NAFTA, the Crime Bill of 1994, welfare reform, the deregulation of banks and telecoms, and the balanced budget. All of them—every single one—were longstanding Republican objectives.

Democrats did this because they’d become dependent upon campaign contributions from the ultra-rich and corporations. In short, the coup captured both of the major parties.

The present moment

Public attitude towards politicians, politics and government ranges from indifference to contempt to rage. Anger and apathy are the reasons a small minority—just 27 percent—of passionately ignorant voters were able to elect Trump. But as we approach the 2018 mid-terms there is a strong progressive wave playing out throughout the country. Polls show that issues like health care (especially single payer strategies like Medicare for All), gun control, and a backlash on tax cuts for the rich are at the top of people’s concerns among Democrats, Independents and even many conservatives, and Republicans are on the wrong side of all these issues.

But the 2018 election will be about turnout. Trump’s small minority of enraged voters will go to the polls. If the Democratic Party were to adopt a national progressive agenda, turnout would remain high, as it has been in the recent off-year elections, when Democratic candidates ran to the left of center, and the party would win the House and quite possibly the Senate.

But astonishingly, Pelosi and Schumer just announced that their big idea for the 2018 election is a Pay-Go rule, and they’ve refused to embrace Medicare for All and other bold progressive ideas that are supported by a majority of Democrats and Independents.

For decades, Republicans have been holding Democrats hostage when they controlled the White House or Congress by screaming about deficits, all but crippling their ability to do anything bold to address the very real problems of middle class and working class Americans, then exploding the deficit when they got into office to give giant tax cuts to the rich and corporations. Now, the Democrats seem to think it’s a great idea to spare the Republicans the trouble, by preemptively hamstringing themselves with this albatross.

Such gross incompetence would be funny if there weren’t so much at stake.

Read full story here

#Democrats

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