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serpentstole · 3 years

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I’m wondering what specifically stuck out to you in that podcast as troubling? Personally, I heard some platitudes about troubled times that I hear on all sides of the political spectrum, but nothing particularly “dog-whistle-y”. I understand how ‘blood’ talk can often skew that way but in this case ehhh I think contextually it’s pretty obviously about the abstract concept of “witch blood” rather than something ethnocentric.

I'm going to assume this was asked in good faith, so here's my answer. I took a moment to transcribe the part that concerned me most. I think you may have referred to it as the platitudes that you hear on all sides, so I want to break down what I feel is being said here.

"...if you can't see that our culture has become so extremely poisoned that you need to do something about it, then you need to wake the fuck up, because, you know, on the day that we're recording this today we've seen Vladimir send the tanks in. Well, this is because the West is falling. The West is transforming. And as the West transforms, as witches we have something to do with this. We have something to offer here and something to change, because I can tell you for nothing that the people out there who believe that Biden-style Leftism is going to triumph are in for a very very rude awakening, because the backlash we're going to face from the forces of repression is going to be mighty. And you're going to need people on your side who at the present time you're calling "fascists", "transphobes"... and what are the other meaningless hate words that are thrown around at the moment... "white supremacists"... all of this language is the nonsense language of division."

Just in case people who follow me want to skip my explanation, I'm putting a cut here for the sake of your dashboards. I tried to make it as clear and to the point as possible, but this kind of thing always requires some explanation and context.

So let's ignore for a moment how talking about how The West™ is "falling" is a lot of alt-right pundits' favourite bit of catastrophizing. Things are a mess right now, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people feel like that.

Words like fascist, transphobe, and white supremicist are not meaningless words meant to cause division. They are labels assigned with a purpose. Sometimes incorrectly? Yes, sure these things happen. But at their core, they are calling out a dangerous and pervasive mindset that can cause tangible harm to vulnerable groups.

"Biden-style Leftism" is also, honestly, not that far left. It is barely left. That's why many leftists will treat being called a Liberal™ as either a joke or a personal insult. Biden is literally considered a moderate Democrat and a centrist who is only now starting to lean to the left. We are not talking about the United States' First Socialist President here.

All that in mind, what are we supposed to take from this? That we should be dismissing even a whiff of social progress because the "forces of repression" are going to push back against it? That PoC, people who belong to marginalized religious groups, and the transgender community should be disregarded for the sake of appealing to what few bigots can be brought in as allies? And allies for what, exactly, if the goal is a future in which those people are seen as expendable?

At best, it's mealy mouthed centrism. The most charitable reading of this I can give is that Peter Grey barely understands politics or how insulting his argument is. That he's saying all this on the platform of a known Covid conspiracy theorist is another bad sign, and makes me far less inclined to offer him that charity.

I know I'm getting transparently, undeniably political on my occult blog. I tend to avoid this for reasons I've stated in a previous post, but to summarize: I am often worried about the stink and taboo of what the general public will assume my Luciferianism means might rub off on vulnerable social issues and communities.

The exception I make, however, is for how those politics intersect with occult and pagan spaces.

This is someone who is a well regarded writer and publisher within our community saying that words like "fascist" and "transphobe" are needlessly divisive for witches. He is making this claim only a few years after the Black Flame conference was cancelled because it was discovered some of their speakers had ties to alt-right communities, which was handled (in the opinion of many, including myself) very poorly by its organizers... who are another popular occult publishing house. I got to watch that one unfold in real time, as I was meant to attend it and closely watching the Facebook groups for updates.

As I have said on a previous post... do I think Peter Grey is alt-right? I don't feel comfortable making that call. He could just be misguided, well meaning, and unaware of how damaging and regressive the implications of his words are. He may also be unaware of how often they echo the sentiments of people who dance around the edges of alt-right spaces as a more reasonable looking entry point to those ideologies.

Still. If witches, occultists, pagans, Luciferians, or anyone else try to unite with people who are widely believed to be transphobic, fascists, and racists, you are not going to end divisiveness. You are going to make the community uninhabitable for anyone who doesn't align with their very narrow view of personhood, because you see the people who genuinely wish them harm as more worthy allies in what you want for the future.

And again, I ask, for what future are those people expendable?

It isn't a great look, and I'd be of that opinion even if Lucifer: Princeps hadn't been a huge waste of time.

#ask #asks #answer #answers #occult politics

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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As a European, I'm still learning about Americans and their politics. This whole area in general is not something I'm particularly good at perceiving. I was just disappointed that someone like Jared would have a mindset like that because in my head, him and Sam are the same. But that last bit is on me for being naive. From now on, Sam is a concept not an acted character. I gotta learn how to separate the two.

Jared isn’t MAGA or anything, to clarify -- but he is a very centrist democrat that, frankly, modernly is indiscernable from Bush-era republicans. Misha is further left, but tends to negotiate in towards center when he feels it’s strategic, which people try to skin him over (eg when he said Biden was our best chance and uh--as a fiercely left wing progressive Bernie supporter, respectively speaking, he was right.) This is why Misha’s been the least impacted by the great twitter purge. Jensen kinda hangs ambiguously in the middle, more left leaning but not super vocal or involved. Also, frankly, most homophobic conservatives still saw through the show and considered him “that gay shit” basically. Resultingly, he’s hit more than Misha but less than Jared on his following.

But Jared’s mindset is fairly transparent with his motivation in even thinking about Walker, saying it would be “interesting” to see the struggle of duty versus morality after thinking about kids in cages--eg, the struggles of cops, basically. That’s what he considers progressive right now. And hopefully I don’t have to explain why that isn’t the progressive angle right now.

All actors have had some foot in mouth statements about character takes--and this last one on Eileen could very well be that--but respectively I would have zero surprise if it’s PR lines at this point. It’s not the target audience and they want to pull the hardest-line Jared fans, which overall tends to be a certain ineffable fandom group. And at the end of the day, Jared’s going to have to deal with bringing in the same dipshits that hate on his wife constantly, and I don’t know if he’s fully aware of that.

Jensen’s sexy silence on the finale continues as its own general vindication, as well as him choosing on at least one if not two levels to not be involved in this show. The “kicking and screaming” line tells me there’s been some pretty blunt “no”s even beyond what the articles say. Maybe they’re with excuses like having other things to film. Or maybe it’s just not the kind of stuff he wants involved with.

Misha supposedly is busy on something right now, I don’t know what, and there’s that other movie he filmed for, but let’s be real, he wouldn’t touch copaganda with a 10 foot pole so.

At the end of the day, I fear the audience Jared’s going to be immersing himself with, especially split away from Jensen and Misha more, and the “meet in the middle” propaganda is going to drift him right over the years. Misha with his art based fields is going to continue to break wider left. Jensen’s going to end up somewhere in the middle--The Boys, for example, isn’t exactly Purity Culture passing but it does touch on some stark political realities and social commentaries for better or worse, and he’s going to be surrounded by that kind of dialogue.

S’what I’m seeing out of this.

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years

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At this point I'm only a registered Democrat so I can vote in the primaries. If they weren't an absolute joke I'd probably be a Green; if I lived in the first half of the 20th century I'd be a Progressive or a Socialist; as it stands, I think I'm a left-caucusing independent. I would literally rather cut off my own fingers with a cigar slicer than vote for a Republican, but I cannot for the life of me name a single Democrat in my entire state worth endorsing. Im sure they exist in other states, but Florida is a conservative hellhole; the Democrats' best bet at retaking the governorship is Charlie Crist, our former REPUBLICAN governor who switched parties (first to an independent, then begrudgingly to a moderate Democrat). It's laughable. I'm not an idiot, I understand strategic voting, but there's only so many times you can go for the lesser of two evils when the lesser keeps trying to suck up to the greater; the system is going to collapse if we don't start getting legitimately good candidates again. When are we gonna get our generation's FDR, JFK, LBJ? We thought we had one with Obama in 2008, but it was all empty promises and war crimes. For the record, I don't hold up FDR, JFK, and LBJ as the be-all-end-all of liberal democracy, they all did shitty things, I'm just saying they were effective presidents who tried to make the country better than when they found it; social security, civil rights, voting rights, policies I can get behind (not to gloss over their imperialism and warmongering; I don't respect these men, I respect only about a third of what they actually did)

I need to get out of Florida. My vote doesn't matter here; I live in a red county in a red state that everyone pretends is still purple. I vote blue for damage control only, in the vain hopes that we can get two or four years of course correction before the conservative onslaught continues, but this state is a lost cause. Without federal election standards, every southern state pretty much is. They hold all the cards, they've made it all but illegal to change, they prevent demographic shifts from mattering so the conservatives can stay in power no matter what the people want. You can't change a system like this from within, you can only hope external pressure will force their hands, but no such pressure exists right now. America is a failing state, and I'd be surprised if we make it to 2030 without another major coup attempt. Republicans are sore winners and even sorer losers; they're never gonna accept defeat ever again, they'll challenge everything, they'll go down fighting and take the country down with them, murder-suicide style.

In international terms, I'm part of the Libertarian Left, though that phrase is meaningless in the United States because our Libertarian party is right-wing and our Democratic party is left-leaning-centrist at best. I want to be in the green quadrant, while both major parties are in the blue

God, this country is pathetic.

#rant #political rant #politics #political #political party #political ideology #ideology #independent #democratic socialism #socialism #green #green new deal #leftism #idealism #pie in the sky

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disillusioned41 · 4 years

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Not waiting before such thinking takes firmer hold or begins to be put into action, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is speaking out forcefully against radical centrist pundits, so-called "Never-Trump Republicans," and corporate-friendly Democratic operatives trying to advance a post-election narrative that the Democratic Party's growing progressive base is a faction to be sidelined as opposed to one that should be embraced.

"I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for All is not the enemy."—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

As much of the nation—and the world—celebrated Joe Biden's historic defeat of President Donald Trump on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez gave an interview to the New York Times in which she repudiated those in recent days who have tried to cast a new wave of progressive lawmakers—backed by an army of like-minded supporters and organizers—as somehow dangerous to the party.

Epitomized by a comment that made the rounds on social media Saturday by former Ohio governor John Kasich, a lifelong Republican, the thinking goes that progressives policy solutions (which, in fact, turn out to be highly popular with voters across the political spectrum)—such as Medicare for All, forgiving student loan debt, expanding Social Security, a massive federal increase to the minimum wage, a green energy transition and jobs program, demanding racial justice, and working to end mass incarceration—are toxic politically to Democrats.

"The Democrats have to make it clear to the far-left that they almost cost him this election," said Kasich, who endorsed Biden earlier this year and was given a speaking role at the party's convention this summer, during a CNN interview Saturday. The comments quickly drew ire among progressives, who have condemned the very idea that figures like Kasich should have any say whatsoever in the party's future projection.

"Yesterday," tweeted People for Bernie on Sunday morning in response to the comments, "we officially entered a new era of not listening to anything John Kasich says. The era will continue until further notice."

And Ocasio-Cortez was among those who rebuked the remarks online as she defended her fellow Squad member, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), from the insinuation that progressive House victories in key districts didn't play a large role—as observers have pointed out—in helping deliver the White House for Biden.

"John Kasich, who did not deliver Ohio to Dems, is saying folks like Omar, who did deliver Minnesota, are the problem," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in direct response to his comments. "Please don't take these people seriously and go back to celebrating and building power."

Common Dreams reported Thursday how Omar in Minnesota—just like Rep. Rashida Tlaib in her Detroit, Michigan district—were "major factors" in helping Biden pull away from Trump in those key battleground states.

In her interview with the Times, published late Saturday night, the New York Democrat—who won her reelection with nearly 70% of the vote in her district—elaborated on that dynamic.

"If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election?" said AOC. "I mean, I can't even describe how dangerous that is."

On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez joined CNN's Jake Tapper to discuss the issues she raised in the Times interview and also emphasized the need for Democrats, as a party, to come together in unity:

Progressives like Mike Casca, former communications director for Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign, applauded Ocasio-Cortez for both her critique and outspokenness.

"What I love most about this interview, and AOC," commented journalist Alice Speri on Saturday morning, "is that she says what she thinks, pulls no punches, and puts her name to it. Just imagine if journalists stopped allowing politicians to stay anonymous for no reason other than their lack of courage."

Tana Ganeva, a criminal justice reporter, said: "AOC is so fucking smart. I can't believe there was actually an effort to deem her 'not smart.' This is the smartest analysis I've read in months."

In the interview—in which she acknowledged that internally within the party "it's been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive" since she arrived in 2018—Ocasio-Cortez expressed frustration that the more left-leaning members of the caucus are now under attack for losses suffered by its more centrist members.

What the election results have shown thus far, she said, is "that progressive policies do not hurt candidates. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker."

Instead of blaming for progressives—something that ousted Florida Democrat, Rep. Donna Shalala, did on a caucus conference call after her defeat last week—Ocasio-Cortez said the party needs to have a much more serious look at what led to those failures.

As she told the Times: "If I lost my election, and I went out and I said: "This is moderates' fault. This is because you didn't let us have a floor vote on Medicare for all. And they opened the hood on my campaign, and they found that I only spent $5,000 on TV ads the week before the election? They would laugh. And that's what they look like right now trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss."

Ocasio-Cortez said the party must begin to examine some of its entrenched belief systems—as well as internal power structures—so it can have a more honest assessment of where shortcomings exist and how to better prepare for the future:

There's a lot of magical thinking in Washington, that this is just about special people that kind of come down from on high. Year after year, we decline the idea that they did work and ran sophisticated operations in favor of the idea that they are magical, special people. I need people to take these goggles off and realize how we can do things better. If you are the D.C.C.C., and you're hemorrhaging incumbent candidates to progressive insurgents, you would think that you may want to use some of those firms. But instead, we banned them.

So the D.C.C.C. banned every single firm that is the best in the country at digital organizing.

The leadership and elements of the party—frankly, people in some of the most important decision-making positions in the party—are becoming so blinded to this anti-activist sentiment that they are blinding themselves to the very assets that they offer.

Ocasio-Cortez further explained that while she and others have tried to get other members to modernize their campaign operations, those offers have persistently been rebuffed.

"I've been begging the party to let me help them for two years," she said. "That's also the damn thing of it. I've been trying to help. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they’re blaming us for their loss."

"So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy," she continued. "And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for All is not the enemy. This isn't even just about winning an argument. It's that if they keep going after the wrong thing, I mean, they're just setting up their own obsolescence."

And what if the Biden administration takes the lead of people like Kasich—of whom there is much chatter that he could serve in the next cabinet—and proves itself hostile to its progressive base?

"Well, I'd be bummed, because we’re going to lose. And that's just what it is," responded Ocasio-Cortez, who elsewhere said it is her simple belief that "people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them" and that it's the party's responsibility to show that not in words, but in deed.

"It's really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them," she warned. "When they feel like people don't see them, or even acknowledge their turnout."

#Common Dreams #us politics #2020 election #centrism #aocroptop

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cetospandiglia · 4 years

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Ywsterday (sunday february 14th of 2021) there was an election in Catalonia and I feel like talking about it so I'm gonna explain it briefly (a brief explanation, a long post mayne 10 or 15 min read) for my American & international readers out there. (This will have a clear bias, I'm no journalist. That said, I don't belong to any of the parties discussed in this post.)

First, a bit of context for those completely unaware. Catalonia is a historical region of Spain with its own language (which has been marginalized and banned to various degrees during the last 3 centuries, which stirs controbersy to this day) and a separatist movement that has had moments of relevance and irrelevance along the last ~100 years.

Independence as a social movement has had its ups and downs, 25 years ago it wasn't very relevant but in the 2010s it started gainign traction ending in an unsuccessful unilateral declaration of independence in 2017 which resulted in the arrest or exile of most of the government (President Puigdemont is exiled in Waterloo, vice president Junqueras has spent years in prison now).

With that out of the way, to talk about the players in this election first we have to understand how does one get to be president of Catalunya.

Catalunya, as well as Spain as a whole and many other european countries and regions, doesn't have Presidential elections, they only vote for the parliament members: voters choose a party and once the Parliament is made up they vote for the president. In this particular case, the Parliament has 135 seats so if some party gets 68 seats they have an absolute majority and can govern by themselves in most cases (some things require 2/3 majority but to elect a president and to pass most laws it's just half+1).

The thing is, this election the winner didn't get anywhere near 68 seats, they got 33 so whoever ends up governing needs to pact. It's time to know the players:

To start, we're going to talk about the parties in the previous, independentist government:

THE INDEPENEDENTIST FORCES:

Junts per Catalunya (together for Catalunya) is a big, centrist coalition of organisations with left leaning and right leaning sectors. The left sees them as right wing and they're the only catalanist right wingers, so the rest of the right fucking hate their guts. They were in power for decades (under the name Convergència i Unió, the history of this party is convoluted) since the end of the fascist regime and did a lot of work to reestablish the place and institutions of the Catalan language (Franco was infamously against any languages in Spain that weren't Spanish). This is the party that the exiled president Puigdemont belongs to. Of the main 2 parties in power this was the bigger one until last night.

Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, Republican Left of Catalunya, republican as in opposed to monarchy): Left wing, cataln nationalist run-of-the-mill european social democrats. They defend the catalan culture and language as JxC has done, they were in power as a part of the "tri partit" (three parties) with other left wing forces from 2003 to 2010 to avoid more years of JxC government. Then, independentist movement started to gain traction, the more conservative faction of JxC left and they (JxC & ERC) formed a government together with the complicit votes of CUP.

CUP (Candidatura d'Unitat Popular, Candidature of Popular Unity) is a far-left, socialist, quasi-anarchist organisation that used to have a few members of local councils but didn't even bother going to Catalan elections, then independence happened and have had a few MPs ever since. Not enough to pass any radical laws, but enough so that the JxC and ERC coalition needs their votes to govern: they vetoed Artur Mas, an infamously corrupt president and actually got what they wanted.

ELS COMUNS (the commons?) is neither independentist or unionist, they're a left wing party (less radical than CUP but also with less relevance and votes in the general Catalan panorama, although they have the Mayor of Barcelona). They try to pass progressive left leaning legislature and even though some of them want independence, they don't believe it's a pressing issue for the catalan people. Their Spanish Counterparts, Podemos, are in power as the 2nd, more "radical", left leaning force of a center-left coalition in the Spanish governent with PSOE.

THE UNIONISTS:

PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya, Socialists' Party of Catalunya) is the Catalun branch of PSOE (socialists etc etc español), a center-left party that is currently in the Spanish government. PSC used to have catalanist sectors and when they were in power in Catalunya (as the 1st force of the Tripartit) they passed laws to defend catalan etc (to this day since the death of Franco no regional government of Catalonia has been against defending Catalan). Those positions towards the language and culture probably remain but now they're explicitly anti independence. They're not super left but if you don't count Comuns as unionists, PSC is the farthest left you can go in the unionist side.

PP: the strong Spanish right wing party since the 90s, where all the francoists ended up after the transition in the 70s, they held the Spanish governent '96-2004 and 2011-2018 and do not want to defend catalan. They won't usually say it out right though, they'll say things like "spanish speakers are oppresed in Catalunya", and that's the same for all anti-independentists. In Catalonia, though, they have very bad results.

Ciudadanos (citizens) is basically a split from PP that formed in 2006 in Catalonia to be explicitly anti-catalanist. For a hot second it seemed like they could be the new strong party of the Spanish right but now the party is crumbling and in Catalunya specifically they've gone from 1st force (they still didn't govern) with 36 seats to second to last with only 6. Rumours say that the party will dissolve before the next election.

Vox is a far right party that likes Donald Trump and fucking hates independence and Catalunya, they're a new party and rn the strongest of the spanish right wing forces in Catalunya in 4th place in the parliament.

Now you know all the players I can explain THE RESULTS:

(the big hemicircle is yesterday's results, the little one is last election's)

PSC has had a slight edge over ERC but they haven't been able to reflect that in more seats. Cs has crumbled from first place to 8th. Vox has appeared out of nowhere, but the rise in unionist seats (26) between PSC and Vox is still smaller than the 30 seats Cs has lost.

In the independentist side, ERC has gained 1 seat, JxC lost 2 and CUP gained 5 for a total gain of 4 seats for the independentists.

Even thoug an explicitly far right force has entered the parliament, this election shows a trend towards left wing forces: unionists towards PSC rather than Cs, and independentist towards ERC and CUP.

Even though the JxC+ERC coalition is a mess, all analysts and journalists agree that ERC's Pere Aragonès has the best chance to become the next President. All evidence points to the fact that CUP will have an easier time voting for a leftist President from ERC than a centrist/right winger from JxC, and some rumours say that ERC could be looking for Comuns' support. They don't want independence but maybe they can be brought in to strengthen the left wing stance of this new government.

The opinions of analysts and the rumours I mention come from last night's TV3 election special.

Election results:

If you've read the whole thing thank you and I hope this has been useful 😊❤️

#election #catalonia #europe

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Six weeks ago, when Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race, it seemed like the Democratic Party’s left wing suffered a major and potentially long-lasting defeat. Not only had Sanders lost, but former Vice President Joe Biden had won while casting many left-wing ideas as both unrealistic and detrimental to Democrats’ chances of winning elections.

But if Biden is elected in November, the left may get a presidency it likes after all — or at least one it hates less than anticipated. The coronavirus outbreak and the resulting massive surge in unemployment has moved American political discourse to the left: Ideas that would have been considered too liberal for most Democrats a few months ago are now being proposed by Republicans. And if American politics is moving left, expect Biden to do the same. Biden was often cast as a centrist or a moderate during the Democratic primaries, but those labels don’t really describe his politics that well — he doesn’t really seem to have any kind of set ideology at all.

Instead, Biden’s long record in public office suggests that he is fairly flexible on policy — shifting his positions to whatever is in the mainstream of the Democratic Party at a given moment. So if Biden wins the presidency and his fellow Democrats are still clamoring for more government spending to help the pandemic recovery, Biden is likely to be a fairly liberal president, no matter how moderate he sounded in the primaries.1

Biden positions himself in the center of the Democratic Party

Biden is a centrist in a certain way — he has historically positioned himself in the center of the Democratic Party, between the party’s most liberal and most conservative members. (And he does that positioning generally on foreign policy, economics and social issues.) The center of the party is a moving target of course.

“The best way to understand Biden is as a reflection or reaction to the party’s main planks throughout the last 40 years, rather than leading or shaping it,” said Lily Geismer, a history professor at Claremont McKenna College who has written extensively about the Democratic Party and liberalism. “I don’t see Biden as embodying any of the ideological terms or positions of centrist or liberal, certainly not center-left and not really neoliberal either. Instead I see his ideology as first and foremost a Democrat. He has throughout his career toed the party line rather than an ideological one.”

Serving in the Senate from 1973-2009, Biden was always more liberal than at least 44 percent of his Democratic colleagues but always less liberal than at least 43 percent of his colleagues, according to DW-Nominate scores of his Senate votes. Put another way, he ranged between the 44th and 57th percentile in terms of liberalism among Democratic senators in his Senate years — smack dab in the middle of the party.2

Liberal Democrats have been sharply critical of some of Biden’s votes in the Senate, mostly notably his support for the 1994 anti-crime bill that increased penalties for some offenses and the 2002 resolution to authorize war with Iraq. But on both issues, Biden was within the Democratic Party consensus at the time. Nearly all Senate Democrats (54 of 56) backed the crime bill, as did 188 of the 252 House Democrats who voted on the measure, which was signed into law by a Democratic president (Bill Clinton). A majority of House Democrats (126 of 207) opposed the Iraq War resolution, but the majority of Biden’s Senate Democratic colleagues were in favor of it (28 of 49).

Biden’s tenure as vice president also suggests that he would govern from the middle of the Democratic Party. There is not a clear record — akin to Senate roll call votes — of the positions Biden took in internal policy debates within the Obama administration. And the role of a vice president essentially requires him to publicly praise whatever decision the president ultimately makes. But Biden has described himself as an “Obama Democrat” and strongly defended the administration’s record. And while Obama himself and the Obama administration are somewhat hard to categorize ideologically, the former president and his team generally took approaches that did not satisfy the most liberal elements of the party but were fairly liberal.

When Biden did publicly separate himself from the Obama administration, it was to stake out a position that was within the Democratic mainstream. Take Biden’s announcement in 2012 that he supported same-sex marriages — though Obama had not yet come out publicly for legalizing same-sex unions, the majority of Democratic voters already held this position. And Biden also supported the Obama’s administration push for more lenient criminal justice policies, even as Sen. Biden had been a key figure in the Democrats’ tough on crime posture in the 1980s and 1990s.

That willingness to change with the times was also evident in Biden’s 2020 primary platform. Biden adopted fairly liberal policies — not as liberal as those of Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but more liberal than his pre-campaign record suggested. The Democratic Party is more liberal now than it was when Bill Clinton took office, or even when Obama was inaugurated, and Biden’s platform reflects that shift. Some of Biden’s 2020 policy proposals are notably to the left of the Obama administration’s stances when it left office in early 2017, including Biden’s support for the abolition of the death penalty, halting nearly all deportations of undocumented immigrants in his first 100 days as president and free four-year college for Americans in households with incomes up to $125,000 a year.

The Democratic Party’s center is moving left

It’s hard to measure the precise center of American politics and how it has changed over the last few months. But it’s certainly moved left in response to the COVID-19 crisis — toward way more federal spending. Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican, recently proposed using federal dollars to temporarily boost the pay of grocery store clerks and others in “essential” jobs by $12 per hour. Republicans in Congress supported a $2 trillion economic stimulus provision, which gave many Americans a one-time payment of $1,200 and boosted unemployment benefits by $600 per week. More moderate House Democrats, usually wary of being cast as too liberal, backed the $2 trillion bill and a subsequent $3 trillion economic stimulus bill .

Mirroring the shift in his party, Biden and his advisers are now reimagining his candidacy and presidency — rolling out more liberal policy plans, speaking in increasingly populist terms and joining forces with the most progressive voices in the party. Biden himself has invoked the idea that he might be entering the Oval Office facing a crisis on the scale of the Great Depression.

He recently told Politico that he supported a stimulus that was “a hell of a lot bigger” than the $2 trillion provision passed in March and that he was annoyed with Wall Street firms because “this is the second time we’ve bailed their asses out.” The former vice president is also reportedly considering Warren as a potential running mate more seriously than before because of her experience on economic issues. Last week, he appointed some of the party’s most prominent liberal figures, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, to a team advising him on policy.

“What I’ve heard the vice president say over and over again is this crisis is shining a bright, bright light on so many systemic problems in our country, and so many inequities. It is exacerbating and shining a light on environmental-justice issues, racial inequalities, so many other problems,” Stef Feldman, a top Biden policy adviser, recently told New York magazine.

“It seems clear that Biden gets the seriousness of the moment and the need to change directions in an American economy that was systemically unfair even before it was broken to pieces by a pandemic,” said Jeff Hauser of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank whose proposals are generally more in line with Sanders and Warren than Biden.

But don’t expect Biden to move too far left

We should note three important caveats here. First, some of these shifts leftward from Biden are probably best explained by his need to woo Sanders’s supporters, rather than as a response to COVID-19. Sanders handily won “very liberal” voters and voters under the age of 45 during the Democratic primary — and Biden probably wants those two blocs to be enthusiastically behind him in the general election. It’s likely that Biden, for example, would have tried to appeal to Ocasio-Cortez in some way even if the coronavirus outbreak had never happened.

Secondly, it’s not clear how notable or long-lasting these shifts are. You could argue that Biden is calling for a bigger federal response to a massive pandemic and elevated unemployment levels, and that this leftward shift isn’t particularly striking. And since the former vice president often calibrates his views to match the current consensus, you could see him backtracking from his newfound liberalism when the crisis recedes and/or if polls start showing a majority of Americans are leery of more government intervention to help with the COVID-19 recovery. Those are two fairly unlikely scenarios right now, but at some point more moderate Democrats might shift away from supporting more federal spending in the wake of the coronavirus. If a big bloc of Democrats shifted right, I would expect Biden to follow suit.

Thirdly, Biden’s leftward shifts will likely be constrained by both his own instincts and those of his top advisers. Both Biden and his inner circle are perpetually worried that the Democrats will move too far left on policy issues and scare off swing voters. Some of his top advisers, electoral politics aside, are just somewhat centrist and wary of liberal ideas. Biden himself seems deeply invested in the idea that he can cut deals with Republicans and tamp down the partisan divide in Washington, a vision that is probably in tension with a more leftish presidency.

“Does he stay on the 50-yard line, splitting the difference between anti-government conservatism and progressive populism, and cutting bipartisan deals,” David Dayen of the left-leaning The American Prospect wrote recently. “Or does he surge toward the end zone with ‘Roosevelt’ written on it, transforming the nation through ‘bold, persistent experimentation’ that fills in all the cracks the coronavirus exposed?”3

“Joe Biden is running on the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in recent history. But given the pandemic, he has to look at the New Deal and Great Society traditions in the Democratic Party and go bigger,” said Waleed Shahid, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a left-wing group aligned with Ocasio-Cortez and other very progressive Democrats.

All that said, it seems fairly likely that Biden, if he wins, will enter the Oval Office with Americans struggling through a recession and the public and his party clamoring for the federal government to do more to help those who are struggling. In that scenario, we might look back at how Biden won the Democratic primary — by emphasizing his moderation — and marvel that he became the most liberal president in recent history.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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beesandwasps · 4 years

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Policy Predictions for Biden

Here are my predictions for the likelihood of Biden actually enacting policy which many of his supporters believe he will, based on my reading of his (and major Congressional Democrats’) history. Feel free to respond with your own predictions.

1. Climate Change/Environment

A. Green New Deal (or similar): < 1% B. Cheap consumer-targeted photovoltaic solar panels: 50% C. Punitive measures (Trade or Otherwise) against major polluters: < 1% D. Further reinforcement of the (false) “personal responsibility” narrative on Climate Change: 100% E. Sufficient reduction in greenhouse gases produced in the US by 2030 (the scientific deadline): < 1% F. Significant, but nevertheless insufficient, reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 (or a too-late sufficient reduction, such as by 2050): 25% G: Insignificant reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030: 50% H: No actual reduction in greenhouse gases at all: 25% I. Ban on fracking: < 1% J. Mild, ineffective, but showy restrictions on fracking: 50%

Reasoning: Biden’s public statements show that, despite claiming that he will listen to experts and scientists, he does not understand (or even have the necessary mental capacity to understand) the urgency of climate change. And he has, historically, been very protective of the profits of the rich/corporations, no matter what damage is done to the public. Meanwhile, semi-competent technocratic Democrats like Hillary Clinton favor “personal responsibility” as an approach to environmental issues, and thus favor initiatives like consumer solar panels and home recycling, even though the share of pollution created by corporations is so large that it is literally impossible to solve most environmental issues without addressing corporate malfeasance (and usually unnecessary to do anything else).

2. Healthcare

A. Single-payer (Medicare For All or similar): < 1% B. ACA with expanded Medicaid: 25% C. ACA without expanded Medicaid: 50% D. New bill which is ultimately even weaker than the ACA: 5% E. Let the now-right-wing Supreme Court strike down the ACA and then shrug shoulders and do nothing at all: 20% F. National lockdown over coronavirus: < 1% G. Mask legislation with teeth (and fight cops to enforce it): 20% H. Mask legislation (but not enforce it, so nothing changes): 75% I. Ongoing stimulus (i.e. regular payments): < 1% J. Single stimulus payment(s), each one negotiated separately: 95% K. Contracts to large corporations (such as Amazon) to deliver healthcare-related products and services to the public: 75% L. Free coronavirus vaccine when available: 10% M. Free coronavirus vaccine for the first year (or similar, insufficient limited-time duration) when available: 25% N. Subsidized, but not free, coronavirus vaccine: 25% O. Insufficient price controls on coronavirus vaccine, claimed to be “the best we can do”: 50%

Reasoning: Biden has said that he opposes single-payer, that it is too expensive (despite Obama admitting, when the ACA was passed, that only single-payer is viable in the long term), and that he will veto it. Instead, he wants to spend more money, overall, to patch the inadequacies of the ACA, incidentally continuing to inflate the profits of the parasitical insurance industry. Democrats have heavily criticized Trump’s handling of coronavirus (and rightly so), but have shown in the last 40 years that they will back down on any issue if there is any resistance from the Republican party, so Biden’s policies in practice will probably look a lot like Trump’s, because the Republicans won’t want anything else. Centrist Democrats like Biden have demonstrated since long before the Clinton administration that they are committed to private, corporate healthcare, rather than public, and will not want to set any precedents that a public health crisis can be used to limit the profits of corporations.

3. Political Infrastructure

A. Legislation against gerrymandering: 10% B. Legislation to stop non-criminal voter disenfranchisement: 50% C. Legislation to end prisoner/former prisoner disenfranchisement: 10% D. Legislation against hackable voting machines: < 1% E. Expansion of the Supreme Court: 5% F. Other attempt to undo right-wing influence on the Supreme Court: 5% G. Shrug shoulders about the Supreme Court and say “this is just the way it is, we can’t do anything to oppose it”: 90%

Reasoning: the Democrats had chances to fix most of this stuff before, under Obama. Most of the issues were known at least as early as 2004, and they had a Congressional majority and the Presidency and a supermajority in the Senate and did nothing. This indicates that there are benefits to the Democratic Party in permitting these problems to continue — which means they won’t be fixed this time, either, no matter how much noise was made by the campaign. As for the Supreme Court: the Democrats could have eliminated the filibuster under Obama and acted on their campaign promises; instead they refused to do so, citing tradition, and then used the lack of a supermajority in the Senate from 2011 onwards as an excuse to not even introduce bills which might address problems. Obviously, Congressional Democrats (and the party leadership) primarily want an excuse to do nothing, and a right-wing Supreme Court is the ultimate excuse to do nothing.

4. Foreign Policy

A. Continuing the unwinnable war in Afghanistan: 100% B. Continuing our alliances with right-wing Saudi Arabia and Israel: 100% C. Continuing to provide support (arms/ammunition) for Saudi Arabia’s criminal war against Yemen: 100% D. Continuing drone bombing (including “double taps” and so forth): 100% E. Continuing to saber-rattle against Syria: 100% F. Refusal to sign a trade agreement with the UK if they violate the Good Friday agreement: 50% G. Continuing to call for trade war with China: <1% H. Continuing many of Trump’s trade policies with China but no longer calling it a “trade war”: 75% I. Serious repercussions for right-wing governments (such as Bolsonaro): < 1% J. More coups to install right-wing governments like Bolivia: 75%

Reasoning: Biden has always been a hawk, and despite most Democrats constantly deploring our outrageous military spending, when Sanders recently introduced an amendment to cut military spending by 10% and use the money for social programs, the supposedly more-left-than-Biden Harris would not vote for it — in fact, she voted to increase Trump’s military budget repeatedly. Under Biden or Harris, US foreign policy is going to be just as violent and evil as ever. (Heck, under Obama we destroyed the government of Libya and started a CIA operation to overthrow the left-leaning government of Brazil, which eventually resulted in the basically-a-Nazi Bolsonaro taking power. Biden is to the right of Obama, so things will, if anything, be even worse.)

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thefactsofthematter · 5 years

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can u explain canadian politics real quick i trust ur opinions

this is really long i’m sorry

ok so like most countries, different areas elect representatives to the house of commons, and the party with the most seats (out of 338) wins— their leader gets to be prime minister (which is kinda like president)

we have 5 major political parties, but the first 2 on this list are the bigger ones.

liberal: a centrist party, masquerading as left-wing. led by current prime minister justin trudeau, who most people don’t particularly like because he doesn’t really keep promises or follow through on things, but lots of left-wing voters choose the liberals because they’re the further left of the 2 biggest parties and most likely to win – they’re still counting votes, but it looks like they’ll have about 150-160 seats

conservative: a right-wing party, led by big ol idiot andrew scheer. they’re basically the republicans of canada, and their major campaign points this year have been “we hate justin trudeau” and “support oil industries”—which is why they’re so popular in the prairies, which are full of oil and rednecks (i live here so i can say that) they follow pretty capitalist ideas and don’t care much about the environment or social services – it seems like they’re getting 115-125 seats tonight

bloq québecois: a party that pretty much only exists within québec, but they’re pretty popular there. i don’t know a ton about them, but i think they’re anti-pipeline and seem sort of progressive, but mostly only interested in québec’s best interests. their leader is yves-françois blanchet and as far as i know he seems alright? idk enough about him to have an opinion – they’ve got about 30ish seats as far as right now

new democrat party: one of the actual left-wing parties. it was an ndp politician who introduced free healthcare and stuff— they lean towards socialism. they want to introduce nationwide pharmacare, cheaper tuition, electoral reform, lowering the voting age, and a serious climate plan. they’re led by jagmeet singh who is a super cool guy. – it looks like they’re getting 25ish seats tonight, which is a quite a bit less than other years

green party: another left-leaning party, and their main priority is the environment. from what i understand they’re a little more fiscally conservative than the ndp, but still lean towards leftist policies. they’re led by elizabeth may who is a very friendly old lady and seems a bit like a hippie but i kinda vibe with it – it seems like they’ll have 4-5 seats, which is the most they’ve ever had

(there’s also the people’s party which is a wacky far-right party that no one likes)

ANYWAYS, these parties battle it out in the election and then depending on how the vote splits, a couple things can happen:

a) a party wins 50% or more of the seats. they run a majority government and can basically do whatever they want, because they control most of the house of commons, so everything they propose will pass

b) no one wins more than 50% of the seats. with 5 parties, there’s a chance that no one wins by a lot— in this case, the party with the most seats wins and runs a minority government. they need to get other parties on their side if they want to get anything done, since they have less than half the seats, so everything could get shut down if no one supports them

SO TONIGHT, as the election results come in, it looks like there’s going to be a liberal minority government. they’ll need support from ndp, bloq and green to stay in power, since the conservatives probably won’t agree with them on much. to get this support, they’ll need to cancel the big pipeline they bought, among other things, because the 3 smaller parties are all against it. this is basically what i was expecting and though it’s not ideal bc i support the ndp, this is a decent outcome i think

#idk man i just want proportional representation this system is complicated and dumb #anon #cdnpoli #also no one come for me if i dont know what im talking about i dont like politics #this is what's going on as far as i know

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

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Can you please explain why you like Warren more than Sanders? I was too young to vote in 2016 but I would've voted Bernie in that primary, and I plan to do so this year(I'll vote whoever the Democrat party chooses in the real election, I understand the dangers of not doing so). I don't know much about the differences in their policies except that Sanders is slightly more leftist and a relatively simple comparison between the two would help. And how big of a factor should his age play in my vote?

Thanks for asking!

I think the best place for you to start, if you want everything explained in depth on each issue far more eloquently than I can, is to simply read the Political positions of Bernie Sanders and Political positions of Elizabeth Warren pages on Wikipedia, which outline their positions on pretty much everything you could think of. The main difference in how people perceive them lies in the fact that Bernie has been a democratic socialist for his entire political career, while Warren became a Democrat in 1996, and is viewed by the hard left as still being too pro-capitalist and/or pro-military and/or too ethically suspect and/or untrustworthy and/or could change her mind and betray them again. For a certain subset of people for whom purity of ideology and/or the strength of conviction is only ever demonstrated by never changing your mind and only ever having held the right positions, the fact that Warren’s political positions have changed over time seems dangerous, and that she isn’t as purely “socialist” as Bernie means that she is, in their eyes, a lesser candidate. As I said in the earlier ask, we will never have an American president who is completely free from the toxic elements of American ideology. There are things that I don’t fully agree with Warren on, absolutely. But lashing into her as a secret spineless corporate shill who would completely betray the progressive movement if she was elected has nothing to do with reality, certainly nothing that reflects her actual rhetoric and voting record, and once again demonstrates the tendency of a certain subset of Bernie supporters to completely refuse anything less than their candidate no matter what, and that is… frustrating.

Let me be clear: Warren and Sanders are my top two choices. Policy-wise, they’re the only candidates proposing anything I want to actually see enacted. I completely support anyone who wants to vote for either of them in the primary, and indeed, I ended my last post by strongly urging the anon (and anyone else who identified ideologically with Bernie) to vote for him in the primaries. I myself get a cold shudder at the idea of having to vote for Biden or Buttigieg as the Democratic nominee (even if I don’t think it’ll happen). I don’t want to have to do it, which is why I keep urging progressives to turn out in droves and vote their conscience in the primaries: that way, we won’t even end up in a situation where we have to hold our nose and vote for a nominee we don’t really like, don’t support, and who will continue more ineffective centrist policies that don’t address the real problems in the country. If progressives vote in sufficient numbers, we will get a progressive nominee that we can actively vote for and feel good about, rather than one that we can barely stomach. If we sit home and only let the moderate/centrist white Democrats vote in the primary, that is the nominee that we will end up with. Gross.

So in other words, I am not here to stoke the worrying and self-inflicted factionalism ongoing between Sanders and Warren supporters who have to outdo each other with My Ideology Is Better Than Your Ideology. That was exactly what I was critiquing in the earlier answer. I think both candidates align well with my values, I would vote for either one of them without qualms, and I think they are proposing policies that broadly target the major issues at hand. Destroying one to try to advance the other is unnecessary, counterproductive, and doing half the Trump/GOP machine’s work for them. It is a hollow moral victory in shouting echo chambers on the internet that has no real-world value and helps no one at all in the long run, except for feeling smug that you have The Most Pure Doctrine. Yay. Still not helping us get rid of Trump. So vote for whichever one you want in the primary, and then vote for whoever wins in the general. Like I said above, if progressives turn out in sufficient numbers, we won’t end up with a terrible candidate in the first place.

I like Warren because she has shown a consistent willingness to learn, grow, to take feedback and adjust her policies accordingly, to engage with community leaders, and, frankly, to demonstrate a more nuanced awareness of intersectionality and identity. Bernie has a tendency to struggle with differentiating class and race, dismisses “identity politics” and can confuse it with tokenism, and still holds the position that, essentially, socialism and economic justice will fix everything. Even the left-leaning The Guardian has found some grounds to criticize him on how he has handled this. I think that Warren is more aware on some levels as to how multiple factors inform an individual’s politics, not just economics and social class. But guess what: these are still minor quibbles and the kind of nitpicking that I get to do at primary stage! I’m still completely happy to vote for the man in a general election! Nothing that I say about Bernie here disqualifies him from my support if he’s the progressive candidate that comes out on top! And none of what I say below about Warren should be read as some sort of insidious attempt to prove that Bernie doesn’t hold these positions too/passive-aggressive slam on him, etc. etc. I’m simply explaining what I like about her particularly.

I like Warren because her plans are detailed, workable, based on extensive research, highlight multiple values that I have in common with her, and give practical recommendations as to how to implement them within the existing framework of the American political system (as well as, where needed, changing it radically). Her policy documents specifically highlight the African-American maternal mortality crisis, valuing the work and lives of women of color, protecting reproductive rights and access to care/abortion services, funding, respecting, and supporting Native Americans and indigenous people, supporting the LGBTQ community on many fronts, cancelling all student debt on day one of her presidency (as an academic with a lot of student debt, this is a big issue for me), confronting white nationalist terrorism, getting rid of the electoral college, regulating and breaking up market monopolies, taxing the shit out of billionaires, holding capitalism accountable, fighting global financial corruption and “dark money” in international politics, introducing immediate debt relief for Puerto Rico, overhauling immigration policy to make it more fair and welcoming, fighting for climate change especially as a racial justice issue, ending private prisons and federal defense budget bloat, recognizing that just throwing endless money at national security issues has not fixed them, drastically revising and ending a foreign policy currently based on endless money and endless wars, breaking up Wall Street economic monopolies and misbehaviour, transitioning to 100% clean energy and Medicare for All, reinvesting in public schools, and… I could go on, but you get the gist. She is a lawyer, professor, and senator with public and professional expertise in many relevant fields. She used to teach bankruptcy law and economic policy. She is smart and tough, but can break complicated concepts down and explain them clearly. She has earned the endorsement of black women’s groups and over 100 Latino leaders. And: yes. It’s time for us to have a female president. It just is. I feel strongly about it.

Warren was recently attacked for putting out a plan related to how the U.S. military could drastically reduce its wasteful carbon footprint and help combat climate change, as this was clearly proof that she was in fact just a lip-service progressive and didn’t want to, you know, apparently abolish it entirely and pretend it didn’t exist and personally tell everyone in the military what a bad person they were. I am not a fan of anything about the U.S. military-industrial complex. But if you don’t recognize that it’s largely composed of poor, working-class people of color and/or economically deprived people who have no other career option, that veterans are discarded instantly the moment they’re no use to the war and propaganda machine and that any politician is going to have to reckon with this, and that you can’t snap your fingers and make it go away, then that’s also not helping. Warren has also been attacked for not wanting to get rid of capitalism entirely, as if that is a remotely feasible or workable option in 21st-century America. She has voted for and suggested regulations and wealth taxes and major restructuring and everything else you can think of, she proposed and founded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and so on. But for some people, this still is Just Not Good Enough. Which…. fine. You don’t have to vote for her in the primary if she’s not ideologically the closest candidate to you. Once again, the point of the primary is to pick whichever candidate you like the most and to do everything to help them win, so you aren’t stuck with a bad choice when it comes time for the general. But acting like this is a huge and horrible disqualifier and that she’s an awful corporate hack who will just be terrible (her main crime not being Bernie/competing against him) has nothing to do with reality, and everything with having to win internet woke points and ideological militancy arguments. It’s not helpful.

Since the earlier post went viral, I am now getting random hate or completely bizarre misinterpretations of my argument or whatever else, none of which I will answer and all of which will be deleted out of hand, because I am just not interested in trading insults about this and/or engaging in pointless arguments with people who have already made up their mind. But for some people, it’s apparently really threatening to say that if you only vote for the best ideology in the primaries and then quit in a snit fit before the general election, you’re not helping. You’re not doing anything useful. Everyone who was reblogging the post and agreeing with me was around my age or older; everyone who was reblogging it to slam me was usually a lot younger. And I’m glad that 21-year-olds feel that winning the ideology battle is more important than having a functional government, but: sorry. I’m old and I don’t have to listen to that, and I’m not going to. Perfect cannot be the enemy of good, or even better than what we’ve got now. And let’s be clear: anything would be better than what we have now. It would directly save lives and impact policies, and if you can’t admit that because you’re too hung up on how Elizabeth Warren might Be A Capitalist Pig Who Likes Billionaires, please, please get off the internet and go outside.

Would Warren, Sanders, or even Buttigieg or Biden lock immigrant children in cages and concentration camps at the border and commit deliberate slow-motion genocide by denial of care and access? No. Would they actively roll back Obama-era regulations protecting LGBTQ rights, the environment, climate change activism, and anything else you remotely identify as a progressive cause? No. Would they start a needless war with Iran, build a border wall, stoke Nazis and white supremacists, pander to all the worst parts of American insularism and xenophobia, collude with Russia, lie about everything, destroy all regulations and policies that don’t benefit anyone but the rich, white, and male, fill their administration with convicted felons and homophobes and people who want to rob us blind, and be aggressively incompetent, unprepared, malicious, stupid, angry, and dangerous to both the country and the world? No. So the various attempts to claim that there is “no real difference” between the presidency of a non-Sanders Democrat and Trump are… please, please sit down for a moment and think about what you’re saying. I realize this is, again, a hard position to hold when you depend completely on having The Right Ideology, and nuance, complexity, evolving positions, and willingness to be open to new ideas are not things that are valued in zealots on either the right or the left. I don’t know what fantasyland these people are living in, when they act like not voting for a non-Sanders Democrat against Trump would be a great moral victory or proof that they’re too good for the world that the rest of us have to live in, or think that the election into being about some magical chance to make the entire capitalist global military-industrial system vanish. It won’t. It won’t even if Sanders wins the presidency. Change only comes slowly and systematically.

This is once again, long. So to summarize:

1) If you want to understand the differences between Bernie and Warren from a place outside just what I say, go and read their policy summaries on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Look on their websites, compare their plans, do your own research, and don’t fall into the ideology-war trap just for the sake of looking better on internet arguments.

2) Vote for Bernie in the primary! Please! We want a progressive candidate who will make genuine change! We don’t want one who is just a moderate Republican but has to be a Democrat because moderate Republicans no longer exist!

3) I like Warren for many reasons and will be voting for her in the primary, but will vote for Bernie (or anyone else) who wins the primary and emerges as the nominee. I only wish that all Bernie supporters would give the reciprocal guarantee. There is a subset – again, not all – who are only loyal to him and nothing else, and who seem to feel that if they can’t have him, not voting is a better or more “moral” choice, even if the alternative is Trump.

4) For me, Bernie’s age is an issue. I can’t answer for what it might be for you, but he would turn 80 in the year he was sworn into office. He also did have a heart attack and would have a year of grueling campaigning to go.

5) Factionalism and ideology wars and loyalty to one person, rather than even trying to consider the lives and people that are at stake, that have already been lost, and that continue to suffer from Trumpism, is not helpful, not empathetic, and not more moral. You can sit and feel self-righteous all you want, good for you. People are dying. Refusing to make a change because it can’t be all the change, all at once, is not and will never be how this works.

Anyway. I hope that helped you.

#politics for ts #long post #as a note #any further hate sent to me will continue to be deleted out of hand #go outside and pet a puppy #ideology is great #but it cannot be confused with morality #or replace actual action #the system is terrible #but it is the system that exists #and change will not be overnight #in any case #so yes #okay that's really enough politics for... a while #i think i need some happy fandom land for a bit #stupidassh0le #ask

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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IN THESE TIMES

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE ESTABLISHED ORDER ARE CRACKING.

The day after democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her Democratic primary last June, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary reported a 1,500 percent increase in searches for the word “socialism” on its website. Overall, socialism and fascism have become its most-searched words—a telling commentary. In the midterm elections, Ocasio-Cortez and another charismatic democratic socialist, Rashid Tlaib (D-Mich.), won seats in the House, and universal healthcare emerged as a potent, unifying issue that helped deliver Democrats control of that chamber.

The cornerstone of the passing era is hostility toward taxes, regulation and public investment. The era began with the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, but it was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who expressed its motto most memorably. “The era of big government is over,” Clinton proclaimed in his 1996 State of the Union. The white flag of surrender has flown over the Democratic Party ever since, with an all-too-brief interlude during Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign.

Perversely, it was a demagogic Republican who sensed the emergence of a new era and rode its currents to the White House. He may be a liar and a charlatan, but Donald Trump’s election-turning insight was that voters don’t want smaller government. They want government that works for them—and not for corporations. In addition to xenophobia and white Christian nationalism, Trump campaigned on massive infrastructure investment, “great” healthcare for everyone, taking on the pharmaceutical industry and “draining the swamp” of political corruption. Similar (but authentic) platforms of robust public investments and checks on corporate power have turned Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders into political sensations.

At least on paper, even the Democratic Party seems to be catching on that corruption—defined as the capture of government by wealth and special interests—is the new “big government.” In May, Democratic leadership released a three-page plan for “fixing our broken political system and returning to a government of, by, and for the people,” promising to beef up ethics laws and “combat big money influence.” If these promises are to be anything more than empty gestures, though, there is a long way to go. A May analysis by OpenSecrets showed that incumbent congressional Democrats had taken an average of $29,000 apiece from lobbyists since 2017, while Republicans had taken $30,000. In August, the Democratic National Committee overturned a ban on contributions from fossil fuel companies.

Universal healthcare is a case study in how the current system saps the energy for pushing major legislation through Congress. The majority of Democrats claim to want Medicare for All, but centrist Democrats, beholden to the insurance and hospital industries, are content to tweak Obamacare; they only support universal coverage by some vague mechanism, at some uncertain point.

Progressives, meanwhile, began rallying behind specific legislation in 2015: Medicare for All bills in the House and Senate. Local chapters of organizations like Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and National Nurses United began pushing for single-payer bills in individual states, helping move the issue into the national debate.

That split within the Democratic Party, multiplied across a range of issues, is an unmistakable sign of transformation. The Left is in a phase of intense institution-building similar to that of the Right in the 1970s and ’80s, with new and newly energized think tanks—Demos, Data for Progress, the Roosevelt Institute and the Democracy Collaborative, among others—and an electoral infrastructure made up of groups like DSA, People’s Action, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and Working Families Party.

This progressive resurgence is reflected, as well, in the landscape of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. The five probable contenders in the Senate—Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren—have among the Senate’s most left-leaning voting records, and they’re vying to distinguish themselves by introducing progressive legislation.

Gillibrand is the most striking example, and the best measure of where the Democratic Party’s energy lies. Once a centrist, she has tacked steadily left in recent years and is now one of the party’s leading voices for the #MeToo movement and immigration reform, in addition to becoming an energetic economic populist. In April, for example, she introduced a bill to require that post offices offer basic banking services, like checking and savings accounts and low-interest loans. It’s a partial solution to the abuses of the payday loan industry that could help the estimated 9 million “unbanked” people in the United States.

The effects of all this, as with the effects of the “Reagan revolution” of 1980, will take decades to fully manifest. But they will likely radiate out and reshape our politics for a generation and beyond.

“VALUE VOTERS”

The Republican ascendancy of the past 40 years has been driven by a network of institutions bankrolled by wealthy donors and corporate interests, harnessed to the conservative movement’s passion for a few key issues, especially its hatred of abortion, same-sex marriage and public education. Over the decades, the Heritage Foundation and other quasi-scholarly institutions, in sync with popular rightwing media operations, have given conservatives a unified agenda and framed it as an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. Broadly, the goal was to radically limit the federal government’s involvement in the economy and vastly expand its power to legislate Christian Right morality.

In the 1990s, the Democratic establishment’s “third way” exposed the party’s lack of a similar set of principles. The heart of the third-way paradigm was the idea that the Democratic Party could survive the libertarian and “values voter” onslaught only by meeting the GOP halfway, tacking between right-wing interests and the common good. Bill Clinton’s most influential policy successes, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, the welfare reform bill of 1996 and deregulation of the financial services sector, tended to serve corporate interests while betraying working-class and minority voters.

The Occupy movement of 2011, which pushed economic inequality front and center, was the first sign of a tectonic shift in our politics. The Sanders campaign of 2015-16 was the second. Both cast inequality as a moral outrage, with the same urgency and fierceness that evangelicals bring to the abortion debate. Writing in the Guardian, Sanders denounced oligarchy and called income inequality “the great moral, economic and political issue of our time.”

And it isn’t only about economic inequality. The nation’s moral imagination is broadening as inequality writ large takes center stage. We know too much about the consequences of climate change, especially in the most vulnerable communities, for it not to be a moral issue. The same is true of access to quality education. The many videos of police abuse, the stories of sexual assault, and the protests and movements they spawned—#MeToo, Black Lives Matter, NFL players taking a knee— have helped to galvanize and focus the progressive resurgence, along with Trump’s demonization of racial and religious minorities and his pride in sexual assault and misogyny.

“The old perceived trade-off, between appealing to a broad middle of the electorate and having a transformative agenda, is becoming outdated as progressives coalesce around ideas that speak to the people who’ve been excluded from our system,” says Adam Lioz, political director at Demos Action. “It’s an exciting moment in progressive politics, in that candidates recognize that putting forward a bold platform is actually the pragmatic thing to do.”

This is how new political eras emerge. Just as the capture of government by special interests in the 19th century provoked the rise of the Progressive movement, the pervasive corruption of our politics is now reinvigorating it. The evangelical Right's passion hasn’t faded, but its focus on sex and reproduction no longer dominates national discussions about morality. To talk about inequality and corruption is to talk about right and wrong, fairness and justice. We are all “values voters” now.

Translating progressive values and votes into policy is the task ahead. That can seem like a nearly hopeless prospect, given the current makeup of Congress and the Supreme Court. But it starts with putting forward a strong agenda to frame the debate. That’s what the conservative movement did for the Republican Party in the 1970s and ’80s. Across a range of issues—notably economic injustice, climate change, state violence against minorities and corrupt elections—it’s what the progressive movement is doing for the Democratic Party right now.

ECONOMIC INJUSTICE

With about 28 million people still uninsured in the United States—and with medical bills the leading cause of bankruptcy—the radical inequalities of the healthcare system remain one of the nation’s great moral failures. The number of cosponsors of the single-payer Medicare for All bill in the House, HR 676, is a measure of how decisively leftward the consensus has shifted. From 2013 to 2015, the number of cosponsors fell by one, from 63 to 62. It has since nearly doubled, to 123.

The campaign for a higher minimum wage, led most prominently by Fight for $15, has, since 2014, put struggles of minimum-wage workers front and center, winning a $15 wage in at least 35 cities, states and counties. In 2017, Democrats in the House and Senate introduced the Raise the Wage Act, which would hike the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 and index it to the median wage after that.

Warren and Sanders are the highest-profile progressive advocates in this realm. If either runs in 2020, they will help to set the terms of the debate. Warren has already released a proposal requiring that 40 percent of a corporation’s board of directors be elected by workers, known as “codetermination.” It would also require that social interests, not just shareholder interests, be a key factor in corporations’ decision making.

Warren’s proposal has no chance of becoming law anytime soon, but it has planted a flag for a radical idea (in the U.S. context), attracted media coverage, provoked discussion and shaped the debate over how capitalism is practiced. It’s a prime example of how ideas become mainstream, legislative agendas are formed, and a party out of power remains relevant.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #in these times #progressive #progressive movement #2020 election #democrats #democratic party #bernie sanders #elizabeth warren #alexandria ocasio-cortez #democratic socialism

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mars-the-4th-planet · 3 years

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In reference to my last post, being in support of Democracy in-general doesn't necessarily mean I'm endorsing the current lineup of politicians (many of which including President Biden are compromise candidates who won their primaries in a desperate bid to appeal to centrists) and the exact way the elections are done in my country. The United States is not the best example of democratic governance, for one thing, and for another I'm a Social Democrat so I would much prefer a government more left-leaning and less authoritarian. And instead devoting laws and funds to things that help the disenfranchised working class like raising the minimum wage, combating worker's rights abuses through company regulation and allowing unions to operate freely, allowing a fair playing field for small businesses to operate online by reinstating net neutrality, ensuring universal healthcare everyone having access to affordable college education, addressing and dealing with the problems of climate change and environmental damage in general, ensuring bodily freedoms and equal rights for everyone, changing the immigration process to make it no longer hostile and abusive to asylum seekers which includes the abolition of ICE, combating police brutality by revoking legal immunities for cops as well as other measures to ensure those who abuse their power can be held accountable and face justice, those kinds of policies. Paying for it would be a combination of taxing the very rich (but they'd still be very rich after, don't go crying commie) and reducing military spending by a reasonable amount. After all the military has a lot more money than it can even spend, and as a result military production contractors can get away with exhortation prices that basically scam our citizens.

I also believe that if something's legality is contested by both main sides, it should generally be legal unless a vast majority of the population believe it should be illegal. This includes things like marijuana, owning a regulated type of firearm for self defense assuming one passes background checks, and personal life actions like gay marriage, getting an abortion, and transitioning one's gender. The government's interference in what you can do with your personal life should be limited to what most people agree on. If people are split roughly evenly over the legality of something, then it should probably be legal on a federal level by default in most cases. This is a good measure, I feel anyway, to prevent mob rule/tyranny of the 51% that anti-democratic types are so worried about. I bring this all up because I feel we should strive to avoid an unfair, authoritarian system. That's an important aspect of Social Democracy, at least in my interpretation of it. And no, giving your people access to healthcare so they don't die of preventable diseases isn't authoritarian. They can still just use private healthcare if they have the money and just insist on doing so. Which is fine, the less strain on the system the better right?

The only potentially authoritarian aspect of universal healthcare would be nationalizing drug industries, but that's basically necessary at this point as they take billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies only to sell the returns at massively inflated prices. The people shouldn't have to pay for their medicine twice, and forcing them too in order to Not Die sounds just as authoritarian to me. Not to mention morally bankrupt. Pills, tablets, and liquid doses that cost the manufacturers pennies to make shouldn't cost the consumers hundreds of dollars. That's insane. It's downright exploitative. And because of how pharmaceutical law works right now, it's not like the free market can just create competing industries. They have to wait until patents run out. Well I think they shouldn't get to abuse people like that. Maybe price regulation and decreasing patent time to ensure cheap generic versions of medicine can be made quicker would help as a more moderate option. If that doesn't work, then medicine production should be nationalized.

#btw im basically just venting about politics to myself #I dont expect yall to actually read all of this it is really long lol #long post

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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What Color Are Democrats And Republicans

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

What Color Are Democrats And Republicans

How Is The Democratic Party Different From The Republican Party

Why Red is Republican & Blue is Democrat: States & Party Colors | Democrat & Republican History

Democrats are generally considered liberal, while Republicans are seen as conservative. The Democratic Party typically supports a larger government role in economic issues, backing regulations and social welfare programs. The Republicans, however, typically want a smaller government that is less involved in the economy. This contrary view on the size of government is reflected in their positions on taxesDemocrats favour a progressive tax to finance governments expanded role, while Republicans support lower taxes for all. However, Republicans do support a large budget for the military, and they often aggressively pursue U.S. national security interests, even if that means acting unilaterally. Democrats, however, prefer multilateralism. On social issues, Democrats seek greater freedoms, while Republicans follow more traditional values, supporting government intervention in such matters. For example, Democrats generally back abortion rights, while Republicans dont. In terms of geography, Democrats typically dominate in large cities, while Republicans are especially popular in rural areas.

History Of The Democratic Party

The party can trace its roots all the way back to Thomas Jefferson when they were known as Jeffersons Republicans and they strongly opposed the Federalist Party and their nationalist views. The Democrats adopted the donkey as their symbol due to Andrew Jackson who was publicly nicknamed jackass because of his popular position of let the people rule. The Democratic National Committee was officially created in 1848. During the civil war a rift grew within the party between those who supported slavery and those who opposed it. This deep division led to the creation of a new Democratic party, the one we now know today.

Why Are Republicans Red And Democrats Blue

Today, citizens across the US are casting their ballots, hoping to tip the balance of their state to red or blue, but few stop to wonder from where the concepts of “red” and “blue” states stem. According to Smithsonian Magazine, red did not always denote the Republican party and blue wasn’t always symbolic of Democrats this now-common lexicon only dates back to the 2000 election.

In 1976, NBC debuted its first election map on the air, with bulbs that turned red for Carter-won states , and blue for Ford . This original color scheme was based on Great Britain’s political system, which used red to denote the more liberal party. However, other stations used different colors and designations for a variety of ideological and aesthetic reasons, which often differed from person to person.

“It was a more natural association.”

The color coding we’re familiar with today didn’t stick until the iconic election of 2000, when The New York Times and USA Today published their first full-color election maps. The Times spread used red for Republicans because “red begins with r, Republican begins with r,” said the senior graphics editor Archie Tse, “it was a more natural association.” The election, which didn’t end until mid-December, firmly established Democrats as the blue party and Republicans as the red denotations which will likely hold fast for some time to come.

Democratic Candidate Joe Biden

Reuters: Carlos Barria

The Democrats are the liberal political party and their candidate is Joe Biden, who has run for president twice before.

A former senator for Delaware who served six terms, Biden is best known as Barack Obama’s vice-president.

He held that role for eight years, and it has helped make him a major contender for many Democrat supporters.

Earlier this year, Biden chose California Senator Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate.

The 77-year-old has built his campaign on the Obama legacy, and tackling the country’s staggering health care issues.

He is known for his down-to-earth personality and his ability to connect with working-class voters. He would be the oldest first-term president in history if elected.

According to 2017 Pew Research Centre data, a vast majority of the African American population supports the Democratic party, with 88 per cent voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential elections.

In Recent Election Cycles Independent Political Funders Like Way To Win Have Stopped Funneling Money Through Democratic Party Committees Instead Theyre Directly Funding Local And State

Since the GOP lost to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, the party has mainly sought to eke out wins by mobilizing its declining white and often Evangelical base through strategic racism, Warren said.

But in the 2020 elections, the Trump campaign effectively used misinformation tactics to peel off a few percentage points from voters of color, predominantly Black and Latinx men. For example, Trump repeatedly made claims that he had done more for Black communities than any president since Abraham Lincoln, and leaned on endorsements from prominent celebrities like rappers Lil Wayne and Ice Cube. Trump also appealed to key voting blocs of Cuban and Venezuelan Americans in the swing state of Florida through disinformation that painted centrist Biden as a socialist.

Trumps campaign also started running Spanish-language ads earlier than Bidens did, and was outspending the Democrats up until the final months of the election. These ads, tailored to specific Hispanic nationalities and bolstered bydisinformation on platforms frequented by Latinx voters, may have tipped the scales in some battleground states. The GOP may have also had a leg up because it continued door-to-door canvassing efforts throughout the election cycle, whereas the Democrats ordered campaigners to stop knocking to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus.

* * *

How Do We Use Mascots In Political Communication

The Republican Party featured elephant logos at their 2020 Republican National Convention:

GOD BLESS THE USA!

Donald J. Trump August 24, 2020

Democrats and Democratic candidates have often embraced the donkey as their unofficial mascot:

Happy 150th birthday to the Democratic donkey! Originally intended to be insulting, we embraced the comparison with such a tough, hardworking creature. From protecting union rights to fighting for affordable healthcare, I’m proud to stand with working-class Coloradans.#COPolitics

Chris King June 21, 2020

The animals began in political cartoons and still appear in many of them today. CNN featured both animals in animated political cartoon ads that depicted them as friends:

The Republican elephant and Democratic donkey are longtime friends in CNN’s artful new election coverage ads. https://t.co/vC5meK7Hr4

Adweek August 29, 2020

Some conservative Republicans criticize liberal Republicans as being RINOs and often have no sympathy for these left-leaning politicians. In recent years, some members of the Libertarian Party have unofficially embraced the porcupine as the unofficial animal mascot of the party.

Will these mascots eventually catch on like the donkey and the elephant? Its hard to tell! The stories of the donkey and the elephant certainly have their own surprising twists and turns, and would have been hard to predict.

What Does The Democratic Party Believe In

The Democratic Party is generally associated with more progressive policies. It supports social and economic equality, favouring greater government intervention in the economy but opposing government involvement in the private noneconomic affairs of citizens. Democrats advocate for the civil rights of minorities, and they support a safety net for individuals, backing various social welfare programs, including Medicaid and food stamps. To fund these programs and other initiatives, Democrats often endorse a progressive tax. In addition, Democrats notably support environmental protection programs, gun control, less-strict immigration laws, and worker rights.

Figure 10 Majorities Believe Housing Is A Big Problem Along Almost The Entire Coastal Region

NOTES: Question wording is How much of a problem is housing affordability in your part of California? Is it a big problem, somewhat of a problem, or not a problem? Shading represents the share of Californians who say it is a big problem. Estimates come from a multilevel regression and poststratification model as described in Technical Appendix A. Full model results can be found in Technical Appendix B.

The country has suffered a string of mass shootings in recent years, which has once again put gun control at the center of political debate. About two-thirds of Californians have supported stricter gun control laws over the past two years of PPIC Statewide Surveys. Figure 11 shows that this strong overall support masks an extremely sharp geographic divide. In the rural places in the far north and east of the state, support for stricter gun laws falls below 40 percent. In most of the remaining rural areas-along the north coast, the southern San Joaquin Valley, and the Mojave Desert, support falls short of a majority. But support is above 70 percent in most of the Bay Area and all of LA County, and it exceeds 80 percent in the three liberal enclaves of central LA, the East Bay, and San Francisco.

What Happened: Arizona Turned Blue In The 2020 Presidential Election But The Republicans Still Control The State

Why Democrats Are Blue and Republicans Are Redâand Why Itâs the Opposite Everywhere Else

Reflecting broader democratic shifts, recent decades have seen big changes in politics in Arizona: moving from deep red Republican domination to a particular shade of purple over the last decade. Eldrid Herrington maps how these changes have played out in recent years, the 2020 general election, and what they might mean moving forward.

Following the 2020 US General Election, our mini-series,What Happened? explores aspects of elections at the presidential, Senate, House of Representative and state levels, and also reflects on what the election results will mean for US politics moving forward. If you are interested in contributing, please contact Rob Ledger or Peter Finn .

At 2.14pm on the 6th of January 2021, as Congress conducted its ceremonial Electoral Vote count, Paul Gosar of Arizona was addressing the US House of Representatives, challenging the electoral votes in his own state, when he and his colleagues had to be rushed out of the chamber and taken to safety elsewhere in the Capitol building. Hours later, when the legislature returned, almost all Republican representatives from Arizona persisted in repeating the lie that their party did not, in fact, lose the elections in the state .

Why Are An Elephant And A Donkey The Party Symbols

The Democratic party is often associated with the colour blue and the donkey mascot.

That dates back to Democratic candidate Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign, when opponents called him a “jackass” for his stubbornness.

Instead of taking the nickname as an insult, Jackson embraced it and used the donkey image on his election posters.

It was then quickly adopted by newspapers and political cartoonists.

The Republican’s elephant symbol came along years later.

Many believe it came about, in part, due to a widely used expression during the Civil War led by Republican president Abraham Lincoln.

Soldiers entering battle were said to be “seeing the elephant” a phrase that means learning a hard lesson, often with a profound cost.

The symbol was then popularised by political cartoonist Thomas Nast; an early rendition featured in the 1879 edition of Harper’s Weekly.

Both symbols are still largely used for political campaigns.

A Difficult Transition To Progressivism

In the countrys second critical election, in 1896, the Democrats split disastrously over the free-silver and Populist program of their presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Bryan lost by a wide margin to Republican William McKinley, a conservative who supported high tariffs and money based only on gold. From 1896 to 1932 the Democrats held the presidency only during the two terms of Woodrow Wilson , and even Wilsons presidency was considered somewhat of a fluke. Wilson won in 1912 because the Republican vote was divided between President William Howard Taft and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, the candidate of the new Bull Moose Party. Wilson championed various progressive economic reforms, including the breaking up of business monopolies and broader federal regulation of banking and industry. Although he led the United States into World War I to make the world safe for democracy, Wilsons brand of idealism and internationalism proved less attractive to voters during the spectacular prosperity of the 1920s than the Republicans frank embrace of big business. The Democrats lost decisively the presidential elections of 1920, 1924, and 1928.

Why Do We Have Red States And Blue States

If youve watched the news as a presidential election heats up, youre probably well aware that political pundits like to use the color red to represent the Republican Party and blue for the Democratic Party. A red state votes Republican in presidential elections and Senate races, while a blue state leans Democratic.

No matter which news program you favor, they all use these same colors to represent the parties. So it would be reasonable to assume these must be the official colors of these two parties and have been used for over a hundred years, right?

Surprisingly no. Republicans havent always been associated with the color , nor have Democrats affiliated their party with blue. In fact, the whole notion of consistently attaching a particular hue to each political party is a relatively new concept in the US, not emerging as a common distinction until the 2000 presidential election between Democrat and Vice President Al Gore and Republican Texas Governor George W. Bush.

But why red for Republicans? And why does blue stand for Democrats?

Lets break it down.

Figure 2 The Land Area Of The State Is Evenly Balanced Between The Two Parties

NOTE: Shading reflects share of votes cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election .

In Figure 2, California appears balanced between red and blue areas. But if we adjust the map so that places with more eligible residents take up more space, the blue places with large Democratic cities dominate the map, as shown in Figure 3. The interior may hold a majority of the states territory, but it accounts for a small fraction of its voting population.

Issues For Which Location Drives Opinion

Two of our issue questions showed strong geographic disagreement: housing and gun control. On these topics, the dense urban areas of the state hold far different opinions than more-rural areas.

California is in the midst of a housing crisis. The cost of housing is pricing people out of the state and contributes to high poverty rates . Overall, 67 percent of Californians say that housing affordability is a big problem in their part of the state. Figure 10 reveals clear geographic differences, especially between the coast and the inland areas. In most parts of the Bay Area, concern is remarkably high. This includes the counties of San Francisco , Marin , San Mateo , and Santa Clara , as well as in the East Bay . At the other extreme, concern falls below 40 percent in the most rural parts of the state, suggesting that there remain places in California where neither housing prices nor concern about them has reached elevated levels.

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.

What Year Did The Democrats And Republicans Switch Platforms

4.4/5DemocraticRepublicansRepublicansDemocratsDemocrats

After the end of Reconstruction the Republican Party generally dominated the North while a resurgent Democratic Party dominated the South. By the late 19th century, as the Democratic and Republican parties became more established, party switching became less frequent.

Beside above, when did the South become Republican? Via the “Republican Revolution” in the 1994 elections, Republicans captured a majority of Southern House seats for the first time. Today, the South is considered a Republican stronghold at the state and federal levels, with Republicans holding majorities in every Southern state after the 2014 elections.

Similarly one may ask, when did Republicans and Democrats switch colors?

Since the 1984 election, CBS has used the opposite scheme: blue for Democrats, red for Republicans. ABC used yellow for Republicans and blue for Democrats in 1976, then red for Republicans and blue for Democrats in 1980 and 1984, and 1988.

What were the views of the Democratic Republican Party?

Democratic–Republicans were deeply committed to the principles of republicanism, which they feared were threatened by the supposed monarchical tendencies of the Federalists. During the 1790s, the party strongly opposed Federalist programs, including the national bank.

Red States And Blue States List

Why Red for Republicans and Blue for Democrats? | America 101

Due to the TV coverage during some of the presidential elections in the past, the color Red has become associated with the Republicans and Blue is associated with the Democrats.

The Democratic Party, once dominant in the Southeastern United States, is now strongest in the Northeast , Great Lakes Region, as well as along the Pacific Coast , including Hawaii. The Democrats are also strongest in major cities. Recently, Democratic candidates have been faring better in some southern states, such as Virginia, Arkansas, and Florida, and in the Rocky Mountain states, especially Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Since 1980, geographically the Republican “base” is strongest in the South and West, and weakest in the Northeast and the Pacific Coast. The Republican Party’s strongest focus of political influence lies in the Great Plains states, particularly Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, and in the western states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah.

Was The Donkey Originally A Jackass

Thomas Nast was an American cartoonist who joined the staff of Harpers Weekly in 1862. Nasts cartoons were very popular and his depiction of Santa Claus is still the most widely used version of the holiday icon we see today. During his career, Nast also drew many political cartoons that harshly criticized the policies of both parties.

Nast first used a donkey to represent the Democratic party as a whole in the 1870 cartoon A Live Jack-Ass Kicking a Lion in which Nast criticized the dominantly Democratic Southern newspaper industry as the Copperhead Press. While he did popularize the donkey, Nast wasnt the first person to use it in reference to the Democrats.

Over 40 years earlier during the presidential campaign of 1828, opponents of Democrat Andrew Jackson referred to him as a jackass. Jackson actually embraced the insult and used donkeys on several campaign posters. Nevertheless, cartoonist Anthony Imbert would use a Jackson-headed donkey to mock Jackson an 1833 political cartoon.

However, the donkey never really caught on after the end of Jacksons presidency, and Thomas Nast apparently had no knowledge that it ever was used to represent the Democrats.

Who Are Prominent Democrats

Notable Democrats include Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was the only president to be elected to the White House four times, and Barack Obama, who was the first African American president . Other Democratic presidents include John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. The latters wife, Hillary Clinton, made history in 2016 as the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major U.S. political party, though she ultimately lost the election. In 1968 Shirley Chisholm won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first African American woman elected to Congress, and in 2007 Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to serve as speaker of the House.

Democratic Party, in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Republican Party.

Harper’s Weekly

The Democratic Party Hasnt Put A Lot Of Investment Into Our Communities Its Why Weve Built Independent Vehicles To Reach Our Folks

Tania Unzueta, political director, Mijente

Her experience is illustrative of a broader pattern. Neither political party can claim they are behind 2020s record-high turnout of voters of color, experts told Capital & Main. Rather, grassroots groups across the United States are responsible for expanding the electorate through localized efforts, despite ineffective outreach from the Democratic Party and active suppression by the Republicans.

The Democratic Party hasnt put a lot of investment into our communities. Its why weve built independent vehicles to reach our folks, said Tania Unzueta, the political director for Mijente, a national network focused on engaging eligible Latinx voters in battleground states, including North Carolina and Georgia.

The new generation of voters of color activated by these on-the-ground efforts may have tipped the scales in key states this election, and are likely to shape future races, whether or not the parties decide to engage with them.

* * *

The Democratic Partys path to victory in this election hinged heavily on the fast-growing demographics of eligible voters of color, said Dorian Warren, the president of Community Change, a national network of grassroots political organizers.

This years elections marked the first time that eligible Latinx voters, who tend to show less partisan loyalty than other groups, surpassed Black voters to become the largest non-white voting bloc.

History Of The Republican Party

The Republican Party came into existence just prior to the Civil War due to their long-time stance in favor of abolition of slavery. They were a small third-party who nominated John C. Freemont for President in 1856. In 1860 they became an established political party when their nominee Abraham Lincoln was elected as President of the United States. Lincolns Presidency throughout the war, including his policies to end slavery for good helped solidify the Republican Party as a major force in American politics. The elephant was chosen as their symbol in 1874 based on a cartoon in Harpers Weekly that depicted the new party as an elephant.

From Watergate To A New Millennium

From 1972 to 1988 the Democrats lost four of five presidential elections. In 1972 the party nominated antiwar candidate George S. McGovern, who lost to Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in U.S. electoral history. Two years later the Watergate scandal forced Nixons resignation, enabling Jimmy Carter, then the Democratic governor of Georgia, to defeat Gerald R. Ford, Nixons successor, in 1976. Although Carter orchestrated the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, his presidency was plagued by a sluggish economy and by the crisis over the kidnapping and prolonged captivity of U.S. diplomats in Iran following the Islamic revolution there in 1979. Carter was defeated in 1980 by conservative Republican Ronald W. Reagan, who was easily reelected in 1984 against Carters vice president, Walter F. Mondale. Mondales running mate, Geraldine A. Ferraro, was the first female candidate on a major-party ticket. Reagans vice president, George Bush, defeated Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis in 1988. Despite its losses in the presidential elections of the 1970s and 80s, the Democratic Party continued to control both houses of Congress for most of the period .

Lake Reagan Floods The Us In 1980

In 1980, as Ronald Regan gradually overwhelmed his opponent Jimmy Carter, one TV anchor referred to the Republican victory spreading across the US map like a suburban swimming pool, which the Presidents supporters subsequently dubbed Lake Reagan.

However, this all changed after the interminable 2000 election, when George W Bush eventually overcame Al Gore after 36 days of recounts and controversy.

That year, TV networks had opted to represent the Republicans with red, a system followed by the New York Times and USA Today when the newspapers published their first ever full-colour election results maps.

Archie Tse, the senior graphics editor for the New York Times, told the Smithsonian Magazine that the newspapers decision was not particularly thought out.

I just decided red begins with R, Republican begins with R, he said. It was a more natural association there wasnt much discussion about it.

With the US glued to its TV screens and anxiously scanning newspapers for weeks awaiting the result, colours chosen near enough at random gradually ingrained themselves in the nations consciousness.

And by the time President Bushs victory was finally declared on 12 December 2000, it seemed unforseeable that the victorious Republicans would ever be anything other than red, and the Democrats blue.

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