[QUOTE=Weirddave]
I know that big intrusive government plays big here on the SDMB, but thankfully amongst the voters who make up the independents and undecideds (IOW, the people who are going to decide this election) it really, really doesn’t, …
[/QUOTE]
There were enough supporters of big, intrusive government to re-elect Bush.
[QUOTE=asterion]
No, Obama is Dewey. Gotta get your talking points right.
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A charge of “elitism” – aimed at the self-made son of an African immigrant, with a background in street-level community organizing, running against the son of a U.S. Navy admiral, who has never held a private-sector job except briefly as P.R. director for his father-in-law’s beer distributorship. This was not too well thought out.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
A charge of “elitism” – aimed at the self-made son of an African immigrant, with a background in street-level community organizing, running against the son of a U.S. Navy admiral, who has never held a private-sector job except briefly as P.R. director for his father-in-law’s beer distributorship. This was not too well thought out.
[/QUOTE]
But if they can persuade people that the son of a president, and the grandson of a United States Senator from Connecticut, is a homespun down-to-earth Texan who got elected as Governor of Texas all on his own, then the illusion-spinning works.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Maybe they realize that government doesn’t work. As for the rest of it, I can’t imagine anyone who has at least the brain capacity that God gave lint that wouldn’t want not just a cut-my-taxes-and-leave-me-alone president, but an entire cut-my-taxes-and-leave-me-alone government.
[/QUOTE]
You guys just keep proving my point. The red states get massive subsidies from the govt in the form of oil depletion allowances, farm subsidies, tobacco subsidies, highway project pork, levies, delivering mail to bumfuck Idaho for the same price as intra-Manhattan mail, military bases, and on and on. Meanwhile the places they hate like New York send far more money to Washington then they receive back
Then the pubs make govt bigger than it has ever been and cut taxes while a war is going on so we have a huge defecit. Then they treat the red staters like children by talking about guns, god, and gays.
The problem isn’t that liberals talk down to the fly overs, it’s that we treat you like you are fucking adults. Big mistake.
[QUOTE=Giles]
But if they can persuade people that the son of a president, and the grandson of a United States Senator from Connecticut, is a homespun down-to-earth Texan who got elected as Governor of Texas all on his own, then the illusion-spinning works.
[/QUOTE]
Well, to be fair, by the time GWB became Governor even his own family had more or less given up on him and turned their attentions to Jeb (who, by the way, is a phenomenal political candidate on the surface - speaks Spanish fluently enough to give his own speeches in English and Spanish, including apparently off-the-cuff remarks… but is of course now unelectable 'cause he’s a Bush).
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Maybe they realize that government doesn’t work.
[/QUOTE]
It works in all the other industrialized democracies, no reason it can’t work here.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
No pol who supports a universal health care plan that would still leave the private health insurance companies in business can reasonably be credited with even “moderate socialist tendencies.”
[/QUOTE]
Your position on this issue is, as you’ve admitted yourself, somewhat, er…skewed. It’s still an issue that Obama is vulnerable on. All of the polls that show that people favor some type of UHC always leave out the cost. Pointing out that instituting it, even in some type of government/private insurer partnership, would mean raising the Feds budget by an additional 4 trillion dollars(compared to 3 trillion which is what it is now, for everything government does) changes a lot of minds real fast. In addition, your blithe assumption that socializing 15% of the U.S’s GDP could be done without causing massive financial shock waves throughout the country is amazingly naive.
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
Not exactly. They want someone who thinks and feels like they do. A lot of them don’t give a shit about social problems they’ve come to accept as part of life, don’t understand how government works, and are just sick to fuck of it no matter what it might do for them. These want a simple cut-my-taxes-and-leave-me-alone president, who will not challenge or confuse them in any way. Anything more and they feel high-hatted and condescended to.
[/QUOTE]
Paint with a broad brush much? Don’t want to be challenged?
Jesus man, just because I or anyone else lives in “flyover country” doesn’t make someone a rube, hick or instant republican.
I live in flyover country in Indiana, which is generally a blue state! What do I do? I’m confused! Help, I’m stupid!
:rolleyes:
I’ve always said that McCain had better than a 50:50 chance, and nothing I’ve seen changes that. Come election day the undecideds will break 2:1 for McCain. If you haven’t made up your mind before election day you’ll go with the devil you know. Barack Obama will need to overcome that.
In my opinion, the early release on the interweb of exit polls in 2004 convinced many Kerry voters that the election was won, and they elected not to bother voting. President Bush’s voters skew older, and more apt to get their news from traditional sources who witheld exit polling data. In an election as close as that one it may well have made a difference.
The same phenomena will probably affect the next election as well. I hope not enough to matter, but we’ll see.
[QUOTE=DanBlather]
You guys just keep proving my point. The red states get massive subsidies from the govt in the form of oil depletion allowances, farm subsidies, tobacco subsidies, highway project pork, levies, delivering mail to bumfuck Idaho for the same price as intra-Manhattan mail, military bases, and on and on. Meanwhile the places they hate like New York send far more money to Washington then they receive back
[/quote]
Cut all that shit, I think it’d be a great idea. Well, most of it anyway, nothing wrong with the mail or the military, those are legitimate functions of government.
[QUOTE=DanBlather]
Then the pubs make govt bigger than it has ever been and cut taxes while a war is going on so we have a huge defecit.
[/quote]
I’ve never said anything, ever, about GW Bush’s proliferate spending except that it was an abomination.
Blah, blah, blah. Your side treats the blue staters like children by fear mongering about global warming (excuse me, climate change), evangelicals, racists and eeeeeevil corporations. Same old, same old.
Economic liberalism is the childish philosophy of taking what successful people have earned and giving it to people who don’t deserve it. The entire concept is condescending just by being proposed as a serious option.
[QUOTE=DanBlather]
You guys just keep proving my point. The red states get massive subsidies from the govt in the form of oil depletion allowances, farm subsidies, tobacco subsidies, highway project pork, levies, delivering mail to bumfuck Idaho for the same price as intra-Manhattan mail, military bases, and on and on. Meanwhile the places they hate like New York send far more money to Washington then they receive back
Then the pubs make govt bigger than it has ever been and cut taxes while a war is going on so we have a huge defecit. Then they treat the red staters like children by talking about guns, god, and gays.
The problem isn’t that liberals talk down to the fly overs, it’s that we treat you like you are fucking adults. Big mistake.
[/QUOTE]
You’re a presumptuous one, aren’t you? Treating “us” like adults, eh?
All flyovers are Republicans, are they? Or stupid…or both?
When did “us” no longer become part of “all of us” as in, a united nation?
So now it’s “us” versus “you and yours”?
This type of condescension is exactly why people like me can’t tolerate people like you very well.
[QUOTE=DanBlather]
Latest poll has McCain drawing even. I just know OBama is going to lose. He’s just not the type of guy fly over-boy wants to have a beer with. The Dems are going to have to learn to treat the red-staters like the morons they are so they don’t feel patronized.
[/QUOTE]
Jane, you ignorant slut.
First of all, if you use the term “red-staters” in a generalization, you are demonstrating a lack of knowledge and understanding far beyond what the term “morons” normally implies. You’ve clearly picked up a meaningless media term and taken it to heart as if it actually meant something. Does your ignorant use of “red state” mean that you think Montana is wall-to-wall Republican because Bush got the most votes in the Presidential election? Does it really make sense to call it a “red state” even though the governor and both senators are Democrats and the Democrats control the state Senate? And even in the most solidly “red” state, well over 1/3 of the population votes Democrat (but I guess “blue state” Democrats like you consider the “red state” Democrats to be morons, right?).
Secondly, you seem to be implying that all non-Democrats are morons. No, what you have to realize is that the “morons” are the ones who vote a straight party ticket and feel that anyone who disagrees is a moron. When your level of understanding of politics increases to encompass actual issues and people, check back in.
Thirdly, Obama is exactly the kind of guy that most of my swing-vote friends would want to have a beer with. I certainly would, and I’m a “red state moron.”
Finally: “fly-over boys?” I didn’t realize that there were people so unashamed of their self-centered, uneducated point of view that they’d use such a term in public. Actually, strike “point of view” from that last sentence. Ignorance doesn’t count as a point of view.
[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
Paint with a broad brush much? Don’t want to be challenged?
Jesus man, just because I or anyone else lives in “flyover country” doesn’t make someone a rube, hick or instant republican.
[/QUOTE]
Hey, I’m from Iowa myownself. Maybe I’ve been reading too much Joe Bageant lately — he says, and I kind of agree, that a great many (NOT all) working people in middle America are just hopeless, and tired, and don’t want to wrap their heads around any kind of issues they don’t already understand, including why they’re so tired and hopeless.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Economic liberalism is the childish philosophy of taking what successful people have earned and giving it to people who don’t deserve it.
[/QUOTE]
Definitely the way a child might describe it—esp. one whose formative years pre-dated the “lead paint” ban.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Economic liberalism is the childish philosophy of taking what successful people have earned and giving it to people who don’t deserve it. The entire concept is condescending just by being proposed as a serious option.
[/QUOTE]
This is the sort of statement that makes you look like a moron. I’m an economic liberal and I think that the role of govt is to provide a level playing field so that people get what they deserve based on their abilities and hard work, rather than the position in life they were born in. Our current system rewards the CEOs of corporations that lose money with multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses. Money made from capital gains is taxed at rates lower than that earned by hourly workers. The pubs are laughing at you and your ilk. They have convinced you to vote against your own economic self interest by spinning absurd stories about welfare queens, while corporations suck at the govts tit.
[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
This type of condescension is exactly why people like me can’t tolerate people like you very well.
[/QUOTE]
Guns, god, and gays. That’s what is condescending.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Economic liberalism is the childish philosophy of taking what successful people have earned and giving it to people who don’t deserve it.
[/QUOTE]
Let’s just reword that to the opposite and see how it sounds…
“Economic conservatism is the sound and responsible philosophy of letting the well-to-do keep everything they earn because they deserve it all and the poor deserve none.”
:rolleyes:
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
Jane, you ignorant slut.
First of all, if you use the term “red-staters” in a generalization, you are demonstrating a lack of knowledge and understanding far beyond what the term “morons” normally implies. You’ve clearly picked up a meaningless media term and taken it to heart as if it actually meant something. Does your ignorant use of “red state” mean that you think Montana is wall-to-wall Republican because Bush got the most votes in the Presidential election?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, I retract that part of my rant that says EVERYONE in a red state voted for Bush. Oh wait, I looked back and I never said that. Hell, there are probably feminists with a sense of humor too.
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
Let’s just reword that to the opposite and see how it sounds…
“Economic conservatism is the cynical philosophy of letting the well-to-do keep everything they’ve earned because they deserve all of it and poor people deserve none.”
[/QUOTE]
Close, but not quite equal in its simpering idiocy. Let’s try:
“Economic conservatism is the cynical philosophy of letting the well-to-do enslave the poor and allow them to starve like dogs in the streets while they fatten themselves on foie gras and light cigars with $100 bills because they deserve all of it and poor people, who could also be millionaires if they really wanted to, don’t because they don’t work hard enough and because Clinton got a blowjob.”
Every time I see either of the candidates on TV I just say to myself, “there’s no fucking way this is close” and yet…it is.