Yet you have Eric Cantor already laying the case that if there will be a government shutdown, it’s Obama’s fault because he and the Republicans are open to compromise, but only if Obama tells the Senate Dems to do what the House says.
It helps that the GOP has a new base of Tea Partiers, many of whom, presumably, would say that a temporary or even permanent shutdown of the federal government is not such a bad thing.
Well the conservatives are chanting the Free Trade like a mantra but the fact is free trade is just an economic tool. If it is benefiting any class almost exclusively and harming others … as can very reasonably argued is currently the case in the US, it is perfectly all right for the injured classes to reject Free Trade on the grounds that it is not benefiting. The middle class does NOT owe the upper classes the right to hog the whole economy, which is what conservatives are essentially arguing for when they chant “Free Trade!”
What the Dems need to do to win is to get out the vote like it is a Presidential election year with an exciting Presidential candidate. This requires two things: an exciting Presidential candidate, which sometimes just does not exist, and getting the voters to the polls.
Trade’s great and all, but the current rules and regulations didn’t fall out of the sky. “Free trade” for what we do now is propaganda. Entire industries are supported with subsidies and other government support designed to protect them from competition. Just as a minor example, what if we relaxed barriers for the immigration of professionals? The AMA would start foaming at the mouth when a flood of international doctors just as qualified as them but who only want to be paid half as much start to set up shop. Won’t happen in a million years, though.
Exactly. Or sugar subsidies. Only regular middle class folk are unprotected, because so many of them are dumbasses and are happily voting away their children’s future cause abortion and teh gay are so fricking EVIL. Not to mention big gubbament. Big corporate though are Mother Theresa on steroids!
If the democrats downplay social liberalism, won’t it be an awful lot like the GOP downplaying religious conservatism? The Tea Party could end up being a serious pain in the neck to the GOP, and was arguably enabled by the neocons downplaying the religious conservative base. Social liberals are a major portion of the democrat base, and you can bet your last dime that the goodwill of gays (for example) toward the democrats is not infinite. What happens when the social liberals get tired of waiting for the eventual renaissance, and decide to try to elect candidates that actually represent them?
They’ll go third-party for an election cycle, get frustrated and come back. It’s happened before.
Your worldview is one hundred percent backwards. Red states benefit much more from federal spending per dollar they contribute in taxes than blue states.
Who’s looking for government handouts, again?
It hurts that it effects actual human beings.
It doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes the disillusioned voters manage to get people like Sharron Angle and whats-her-face the witchcraft dabbler on the ballots.
If there was ever a time in the last eighty years when economic populism by an incoming president was a no-brainer, it was January 2009. But Obama did exactly the opposite and continued bank bailouts, didn’t prosecute anybody, basically became a pr man for the banks. The reason? The Democratic party is effectively as bought and paid for by the financial sector as the GOP is. If you want economic populism, you’re going to have to wait for a political party to come along that has a chance of winning national elections and isn’t a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
Love it. We open our borders to trade with nations that protect their industries and jobs. Then we call it free trade. China can sell poisoned food and dry wall in America. They can sell toys that give lead poisoning to kids. There are profits to be made. That is all that matters.
Dems need to kill the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. They should do it immediately. Then the Repubs will filibuster to keep the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. It will show 2 things, who they work for and how much they really care about deficits.
It doesn’t seem to me that the jobs being outsourced are being replaced with jobs that are as good or better. When an American company replaces an American worker who makes $40,000 a year with a Pakistani or Indian who makes $15,000 to $20,000 a year and pockets the difference, there is obviously no benefit to American workers. You can say the extra cash will be invested which will create more jobs for Americans, but this would only be true if the money were invested in America. In any case, I have yet to see any hard evidence that outsourcing eventually helps to create good jobs for Americans. Given that many American companies are perfectly willing to hire illegal aliens to displace American workers, and to hire specialists to help them avoid hiring American workers, they obviously care nothing about the greater good of the American people.
This Wikipedia articlewould seem to indicate that free trade is a good deal more debatable than you think. The consensus about free trade appears to be largely among American economists, with foreign economists having a lot more doubts.
It’s all very well to talk as though economic forces are as impersonal and inexorable as electromagnetism or gravity, but the simple fact is that you can never entirely separate economics from politics on any level, local, national or international. Someone will always try to rig the game in his favor.
To my ears the cry for free trade sounds like an echo of social Darwinism.