I prefer Bernie to Hillary on the issues but that is important.
I am supporting the only Pennsylvania Senatorial candidate who endorsed Bernie Sanders, but despite the fact that Mr. Fetterman showed up at a recent Bernie rally in Philly, he didn’t get on the stage, he didn’t introduce Sanders, and on my searching, I cannot see that Sanders endorsed or even mentioned Fetterman at all.
I don’t blame Fetterman for hitching his wagon to Sanders - they’re both outlier candidates and Fetterman can use the increased visibility of attaching himself to a Presidential candidate (it’s the only thing on his PolitiFact page!) - but would it kill Sanders to so much as release a press release or something?
It’s hard to search for if Bernie is endorsing anyone since the hits overwhelmingly are about who is endorsing him. The relevant results are that he endorsed Jesse Jackson in 1998 and that he he endorsed Rahm Emanuel’s challenger in the Chicago mayoral race - two months before he declared his candidacy for president.
Has he publicly endorsed any down-ticket or local candidates this year?
It was a brain fart for me to use the word “canard” there. I meant something more like “truism” or “platitude”.
That’s possible, but it ignores everything else in my post, for instance that the Democratic Party used to be chock full of Southern conservatives and no longer is, and that Nancy Pelosi is more liberal than any other Speaker in my lifetime.
Yet nationally there is no change toward the conservative position and nationally these laws are facing court challenges. I have been operating under the assumption these laws will not survive the courts, but I could be wrong.
Not doing something does not mean the country’s politics have moved rightward. Frankly, the assault weapons ban was stupid. More intelligent gun control laws have been passed in recent years and survived challenges in many states.
The reason why the Keystone XL Pipeline was such a confusing issue is because it is a reasonable environmentalist’s position to say let it be built. There are many positions that an environmentalist can hold that are good indicators that they are an environmentalist, but are stupid positions to hold. Its like Bernie’s opposition to nuclear power. Nuclear power is the most effective short term solution to bridge us from reliance on fossil fuels to reliance on 100% sustainable energy. It’s also less deadly to the people who produce the power, just ask the families of 1000s of dead and sick coal miners.
What I see is that we did not attempt austerity when we had a recession as the Republicans proposed. Obamacare isn’t going anywhere. Proposals to privatize social security die. Colleges are being made to take responsibility for the way they advertise to students. We are cutting deals with Iran and not invading. We are limiting our involvement in other military conflicts to rational levels.
And you really minimized the accomplishments that have been made nationally such as LGBT rights, the winding down of the drug war, and the willingness to reform the criminal justice system. I hope these serve as indicators of where the left wing can improve things and they work on them. The other topics you have brought up and are only moving left at a snail’s pace at best nationally, but that doesn’t mean we’ve shifted right. From what I see it just means we do not shift left fast enough for you.
If “left” means not getting involved when a country is turning into the next Afghanistan or when a small ethnic population is being systematically eradicated then fuck the left.
On any of probably 90% of positions the average left-leaning person would take (and I do not mean Progressives), Clinton represents those positions. Sanders is probably also a 90% match. In terms of the Presidency, things have never been better for the left. Maybe not the leftmost left. Regardless, nationally, all things are moving leftward nationally. It’s slow, but steady.
I’m sorry your perception is different. It actually really does bother me that people can sound so pessimistic when my perception has never been more optimistic. There’s always a lot more to be done, but we are not devolving on the changes that have come along as the phrase “shifting politics rightward nationally” would seem to indicate.
But yeah, the thing is, the hard left can never be happy. They are constitutionally incapable of it. In this respect and some others, they are similar to their counterparts in the Tea Party hard right. The country is always going downhill, everyone is corrupt, the people running the party adjacent to them are actually way over on the other side of the ideological spectrum.
And specifically on the left, they think there is this huge overpopulation problem with the world on the brink of starvation even though hunger and poverty have actually dropped dramatically in the past 20 years; they think the world is incredibly war-torn even though, as Steven Pinker has shown, this is the least violent era in human history; global warming is all costs and no benefits; Citizens United means, against all empirical evidence, that right-wing billionaires completely own the political system; and international trade always magically reduces jobs rather than creating any by selling more exports. There’s no reasoning with them, so you just have to try to keep them from infecting too many others with their Chicken Little disease.
That’s the $64,000 question, innit? I have some thoughts, but ultimately the goal of asking this question isn’t to find a way to wash our hands of the situation so that we can play the generational blame game; the reason to ask this question is so we can formulate solutions to the problem.
My thoughts:
-The parties don’t have a strong outreach program. I’m 41 and have been involved in politics all my life with various organizations; I have not once been invited to an event held by either party. Not saying that I couldn’t go, but rather, if you want people to be involved, you need to be inviting them to be involved.
-THe main way we hear about elections is through the media, and the media cover presidential elections like a game of Celebrity Survivor, whereas they cover midterms like they cover a high school chess tournament.
-There are few organizations with strong outreach and low entry barriers that invites youth to participate in ongoing political activism.
Now, let’s all repeat: “BUT THEY SHOULDN’T NEED TO BE LED TO POLITICS, THEY SHOULD TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY THEMSELVES.” Of course that’s true. And? Either we throw up our hands in defeat (the true sign of membership in the DNC), or we accept that we live in an imperfect world and figure out the next step.
There was an era in American history during which voting participation was much higher (at least within the eligible electorate, which was obviously smaller then). In the late 19th century, turnout was at a level unimaginable today, but I’m not sure that necessarily made for a better political system.
The superdelegates in New Hampshire went against the will of the people. All six of them support Clinton, despite Bernie winning the primary by 20 points.
Right. No change in public opinion, but a hige change in what state governments are doing. Which is my point.
But now they can’t pass even smart legislation such as universal background checks. Because they are more conservative.
I disagree completely but when you use wiggle-room words like “reasonable environmentalist,” I guess it can mean anything you want.
I am actually pro-nuclear energy myself.
I didn’t minimize them, I specifically pointed it out as the exception to the rule - not that you’d know it when states as disparate as Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee and Wisconsin are all considering restricting bathroom use for transgendered people, a la North Carolina
Sentencing disparities and mandatory sentencing are going away but marijuana is not widely legal even for medicinal purposes and not much has changed on the national front - the Obama administration is famously fucking with states that legalized it, so the war seems far from over and again is out of step with puplic opinion polls on the subject, which meshes perfectly with my assertion that government is farther right than the public is.
THis is a positive trend but like LGBT rights, the exception to the norm and as I said, it’s not transferring over to decriminalization efforts at all.
No, I disagree. They are examples of moving right, not moving left.
Especially when they have oil! And leftists are sick of war of all stripes. Saddam was a monster but that war was still the biggest blunder of American foreign policy since Vietnam. If you think leftists are bad people because they don’t like war and find very few situations where war is the best response, well, sorry.
They’re not happy because they have practically no representation. Can you think of a progressive group similar to the Tea Party? I can’t.
Bernie is a Progressive who will likely lose his race for the Presidency but his hard fight and the results he is making might lead to inroads for actual progressives in national office.
But it hasn’t happened yet and it surely didn’t happen before.
No change in national public opinion? Does this mean anti-abortion sentiment in the states where new anti-abortion laws have passed has not changed either?
That it is reasonable for an environmentalist to hold the position that trying to limit mining of fossil fuels is not the best way to prevent climate change. The energy spent on blocking the pipeline is best spent elsewhere on mitigating the effects of climate change, finding better ways to harness energy from sustainable sources, and to get government to support such efforts. The biggest impediment to that oil’s mining, shipping and refining is Saudi oil production, not preventing some pipeline. It’s minimally effective (to be generous) and pisses people off who thought they might economically benefit from the pipeline.
We could argue over the accuracy or correct implications of what you or I are saying but the main point is that these sets of policies are ones that left-leaning people can make some progress on because of the leftward movement of the American population on certain types of social issues (I would like to note that the mere presence of legislation in a statehouse somewhere doesn’t indicate much at all). Having grown up in the rhetoric of the 80s, I am astounded to see what is happening in these two arenas. This country has changed dramatically toward the vision the left has for this country.
If you think the position of saying “We are not involved in war” is worth allowing an ethnic group be driven from their lands, murdered or sold into slavery when we can quite easily do something about it with minimal cost to ourselves then you are not just avoiding war, you are burying your head in the sand.
No. The Republican Party has become more right-wing reactionary. A qualitatively different thing, at which William F. Buckley would have rolled his eyes (secretly and inwardly, while publicly espousing “fusionism” and “no enemies to the right”).
That chart is not about the Democratic Party, it is about Democrats, the voting base – not the Establishment and elected pols. Those have moved rightward since 1980 in terms of the policies they publicly espouse and work for and the limits they set on the Overton Window. No party where the DLC’s neoliberal/3d-way position is taken seriously by the party elite – and it is, still – can be said to have moved leftward, or anywhere but rightward, in that period.
That description fairly applies to the U.S. intervention in Kosovo and perhaps Somalia, but not to any other post-WWII U.S. interventions abroad that I can think of nor to any currently being proposed.
Is the Tea Party actually considered a good thing? Is rallying supporters with “we’re not going to compromise on our issues” something that really should be promoted? Because that’s really why they have little representation - they can’t stand to compromise.
Every election is a compromise for a progressive. I not only voted for Democrats who were further to the right than I am, but I campaigned for them and donated to them. When were we ever brought to the table to negotiate on any compromises?
And please tell me how you compromise on a hawkish foreign policy, or a penchant for supporting coups of democratically elected governments. Kill slightly less people?
The quote I listed above clearly says that Democrats have moved farther left, and not in relation to Republicans. I don’t see how you can interpret it any other way.
If Democrats really are moving right as you contend, how do you explain the success of Sanders?
The argument of last resort: attack the source. I took your cites at face value (e.g. Guttmacher) and I would have expected the same courtesy. If you think they cite wrong facts by all means counter it with your own.
And, if you recall, he lost, just like McCain before him. That’s pretty strong evidence that the American electorate has not moved right as a whole. If we have a Cruz/Clinton election then I expect Clinton to win easily.
Your argument would have merit if there was any evidence that a Republican administration attempted to push the plan that you think they were high on. Is there any evidence that any high-ranking Republicans ever backed it?
It was shut down numerous times because congress didn’t cut taxes and/or spending enough for Reagan, that guy that you said raised taxes.
Your cite lists the budget as a percentage of overall Federal spending. Here’s a chart of inflation-adjusted EPA budget and it’s been largely flat since 1980. It was slashed by that Reagan guy more than any other president. The chart also shows improving air quality since 1980, evidence that the environment is getting better.
So no, there’s no evidence of growing conservatism there.
Well of course you don’t because you are a spiritual kulak who despises real democratic culture such as that flourished in 19th Century America with a strongly developed ideal of republican citizenship for all its racism, sexism, and other evils and hate it when the people don’t line up nicely to vote the consensus candidate of the latte liberal literati and even dare to ask what sort of a platform she might be standing on. Quite frankly, you and your ilk on this forum would much prefer if we did away with the ickiness of elections where you have the threat that the great unwashed masses just might instill an insurgent and instead prefer that a bunch of Ivy League, ivory tower credentialed experts run everything as in Imperial China albeit on Kantian-Benthamite categorical imperative utilitarian lines as long as there’s a right gender ratio and there were enough blacks, mestizoes, and Australian aboriginals admitted to those colleges by affirmative action. Of course you aren’t the worst example of this, as you have on this forum posters who insist Asians are culturally incapable of democracy but masks her racism by appealing to the cultural relativist “morality” en vogue in our modern-day salons (while in typical shitlib fashion she complains about those stupid inbred hillbilly Americans for not supporting gay marriage and universal health care, despite both policies having been implemented by the time of her post).