Answers to your three questions:
As far as the rest, the default position should be on the side of less government. We should add it as we need it, but stingily.
In case you missed one of the basic premises of the thread. The liberals didn’t get curb stomped. The moderates did.
Pelosi will seek to stay as House Dem leader
I was almost sad to see senator Milquetoast of Nevada re-elected.
Perhaps senate Dems will have the wisdom to replace him with someone effective.
Actual Conservatives in the USA (i.e. Americans who favor conservative political philosophy on economic and international affairs issues [not on the anti-freedom, anti-American, anti-human rights socially-conservative issues]) can hardly be seen as demons, and I doubt very many folks here would consider them as such.
But the Republicans of the last 15-20 years, OTOH… holy fuck! That’s another matter entirely! They not only eat good little progressive babies, they eat their own babies, and reproduce by shitting demon spawn-spores from one of their 5 scaly blue mouths.
They’re so evil they make the baby Satan cry. They have nothing whatsoever to do with political Conservatism, but will happily trick gullible conservative voters into voting against their own interests by placing them in Congress–the Congress meant for human beings, not these foul, ever-decaying Chthonic beasts who exist only to satisfy the mad lusts of their Unknowable Overlords of Never-Satiated Greed and Avarice.
It’s quite simple. On most issues, according to polls, majorities of people support positions that are in accord with Democratic positions and opposite Republican positions.
Too few Democrats, however, appear willing or able to stand up and vigorously argue for or defend (yes, fearful to defend a popular opinion!) what they believe in. If you are a leader, but you’re counting solely on people who are well informed and in agreement with you, you’re not going to get very far.
Imagine someone who’s fairly ignorant on an issue and doesn’t have much of an opinion. On the one hand, you’ve got one guy who is passionate about and willing to stake out a position and willing to say things about it (regardless of their veracity). On the other hand, you’ve got someone who seems uncomfortable about their position, or is tepid about it, and doesn’t provide much information about it. Why should that person be expected to just support a position that even the guy who is supposed to favor it cannot really seem to get it up about?
Sometimes being a leader means actually leading and not just trying to woo decided voters, but also change opinions and lead people to your position. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but being strong and confident are attractive qualities. At the same time, being a champion of a position also gives people who do already support that position the confidence and energy to support you as a leader.
There’s no need for liberals to start lying. They just need to start being champions of their positions. The problem is that current Democrats are not liberals, and are not really interested in being champions for those positions. Being nice conservatives won’t move ambivalent people, and it won’t motivate people who are looking for someone to fight for liberal positions.
How do you reconcile points 2) & 3) ?
I think some of this is due to the diversity in the Democratic Party. It’s been said that the Democratic Party is made up of different interest groups pursuing different ends, but the Republican Party is made up of different interest groups pursuing the same ends.
There are Democrats on multiple sides of gun control policy, tax policy, trade policy, etc. So the voice of the Democratic Party, as a Party, sounds like, “Well…”
I’m not seeing how they are in conflict. Can you explain the problem you see?
Here, let me parse that to make my point.
What role does health insurance play in your plan here? Can it pay for preventative care at all, or is that prevented by point 2?
You know, you keep saying this but I don’t see any evidence that it’s true. Certainly if you ask loaded questions like, “Do you think you pay too much for healthcare?” Or “do you think the government should be involved in helping people find affordable health care?” you’ll get a majority saying yes. But then, they’ll also say yes if you ask loaded questions like, “Do you think government spends too much taxpayer money?”
So you need to look at general ideology and philosophy of government questions to understand where the sentiments of the American people are. Overwhelmingly, they prefer smaller government to larger government. Overwhelmingly, they want smaller deficits and less spending.
In a 2009 Gallup poll, Americans were asked, “In general, do you think there is too little, too much, or just the right amount of regulation on American businesses?” “Too Much” beat “Too Little” by 45% to 24%.
From here:
In 2009, only 21% identiified themselves as liberals, vs 40% conservative and 39% moderate. This year, I believe the self-described liberals have dropped to 17%.
Face it: Liberals are a small minority of Americans. Obama was elected because he portrayed himself as a centrist uniter. The minute he began stumping for liberal policies, his popularity plummeted. The health care bill was opposed by 70% of Americans. Cap and Trade was opposed by by 70% of Americans as well.
So the only strategy I see for Democrats is to lose the grip of the liberal minority and start working to make incremental progressive gains in otherwise centrist legislation, the way Bill Clinton did.
I predict that if Obama turns to the left and embraces his base and tries to hold firm on liberal policies and vetoes everything the Republicans put in front of him, his popularity will drop into the 30’s and he will face a challenger in the Democratic Party from his right in 2014. Probably Hillary Clinton, her recent denials notwithstanding. She has positioned herself to be able to run to the right of Obama, which will make her a lot more attractive to moderate Democrats and Republicans.
But if not her, someone else will step up. I think the remaining Democrats are going to be a lot less willing to jump off a cliff with Obama this time around, after they saw what happened to the last group who tried it.
:rolleyes: And how exactly could they go farther in rejecting liberalism than they already have? Expel any Democrats who don’t have a framed picture of David Duke on their office wall? There IS no “liberal grip” on the Democratic Party.
The people don’t want the image of Democrats that have been sold to them by the GOP and the Dems have only very weakly fended off.
The Democrats need to learn how to create their own counternarrative with them as the heros, and the GOP as the villains. Us vs Them. They’re just not very good at doing that.
IIRC that 70 % comes from playing with the polls, a good number that opposed the health care bill did so because it was not far reaching enough.
As for the other 70 percent regarding cap and trade:
Your sources are most likely quoting a poll of business owners.
While I disagree, I fuckin’ love this post!
This. (Sad to say.)
My answer to post 70 is in post 58.
Yes, I think “evil” is a criticism, but you seem to ignore that the person doing had far worse and totally valid criticism of the Democrats.
Did the Republicans actually put forth any serious counter-plan of substance and was it actually worth taking the time to read?
Yes, like ignoring the fact that Obama is a declared Christian, actually using his association with a Christian church to make up things about his political philosophy, and declaring that he is a Muslim as an insult and a criticism, denigrating both his declared beliefs and Muslims worldwide?
Besides the fact you ignore of to whom it was she was actually saying “fuck you,” I never said that it was perfectly normal or polite conversation. It was a thread started by a disappointed left-leaning political observer in the Pit, where the rules of language are quite different from anywhere else of the Dope, or in public political discourse in general.
Glad to see you’re about insulting, denigrative and polarizing language and deliberately misleading characterizations and you’re not even in the Pit.
I know you’re doing so for effect, but it’s totally not effective if you do it during your effort to criticize the language of discourse in general.
I’ve suggested internal change for the Democratic party (note the ending of the word you, in your efforts to end polarizing somehow left off); did you read my post, or anyone else’s that has to do with conduct within the political realms and not necessarily conduct here, especially conduct you miss being in the Pit?
WTF?! Of course Libertarians are demons!
“It’s the economy, stupid!”
How soon the Democrats forgot this simple, effective message from the Clinton Era. Social change is best done while you have a contented audience.
The Hard Left is really only 10-15% of the Democratic Party. The Hard, Tea Party, Right is only 10-15% of the Republican party.
The vast middle is dissatisfied.
Lack of solutions from the Obama administration on the problems of the economy are clearly shown in the results of this election. It really is a referendum on his leadership and the new initiatives or lack thereof, of the Obama administration will determine the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.
It is still “The economy, stupid!”
Not sure if you are serious or not. I suppose you could consider fiscally conservative/socially liberal folks to be Libertarians (capital L), but I see them more as Conservatives with some libertarian (small L) tendencies who, generally, are not batshit crazy knuckle-draggers.
I believe that allowing corporations to have their way with our country, as well as deregulating everything under the sun, and greatly lowering (not to mention eliminating) the federal income tax are horrible policies that would certainly lead to tears and bedwetting, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, and the swift ruination of the U.S.
However, I would not consider a moral and thinking person who believes in greatly downsizing the U.S. government, reducing taxes, and deregulating industry (i.e. a Fiscal Conservative) to be a demon. Wrong, yes. Demon, no.
But such people are very rare nowadays, which should be good news–except, the reason they are rare is that most of the former “rational opposition” has been replaced by idiotic monkey-zombies clutching assault rifles with Bible verses etched in tiny (misspelled) writing on the barrels.