When a Democrat does right-winged shit, their base will let them get away with it, and of course the other side likes it. War, Wall St. bail-outs, warrant-less surveillance, corporate trade deals with no respect for workers… Reagan amnestied 6 million - a Democrat couldn’t do that…
Trump couldn’t start a war without the media going crazy about it. And the right-winged mainstream media (considered liberal, which is a head-scratcher) actually went on live TV to say Trump didn’t go far enough (Syria, Iran)… But they’ll criticize backing away from the Iran deal.
And then after law is established, as a left-winger, if you criticize the conservative shit the Democratic politicians do, they use right-winged talking points! It seems like politics is devoid of ideology, and has become nothing but sport.
Tariffs! Republicans have always thought the answer to every problem is to get rid of regulation, and how the free-market is the greatest thing on Earth… Trump uses tariffs, and they all of a sudden support it? I’ve seen this in many other sites besides this, as well as political chat rooms.
Why do people allow this to happen? What do you think? I think many people trade their individuality for a group. When a group changes, the person all of a sudden changes right along? That can’t be true.
Triangulation. Because they assume “You’ve got no place else to go”. Because many of them are financially comfortable and either greatly benefit from corporatist policy, or are insulated from its negative effects, courtesy of their relative wealth. Because they don’t care how far rightward economic policy goes, so long as it checks their social issues boxes.
Free trade only works if it is also fair trade. China has never played fair so Tariffs might be the only answer, not right or left wing to that. Right wing does not like wars but obviously would be quicker to use war than liberals would be.
A lot of people look at politics as the equivalent of sports. They approach it from the viewpoint that they have a team and they want their team to beat the other team. They don’t really understand the policies involved or whether they’re good or bad. All they know is that when somebody on their team gets elected, it’s a touchdown and when somebody on their team enacts a law, it’s a home run.
Most people only care about a relatively few things that they want their politician to do. Even fewer will pay close attention to whether their politician did what they wanted or tried to.
That leaves a lot of wiggle room for politicians to do what they want and not be held accountable for it. Indeed, I think most count on that. Every once in a while one will get caught out but mostly it works for them. Republican and Democrat.
Democratic voters aren’t as unified or ideological as republican voters.
Democrats are a coalition of liberals (who are very ideological) as well as minorities (whose views run the gamut from liberal to conservative) as well as moderate voters.
So democrats won’t have the same ideological consistency that the GOP has. It sucks but it is how it works.
I think it just goes to show how stupid the concept of political parties is. In order to create a coalition big enough to ensure a shot at election, they basically have no solid platform at all. I mean, they write a platform from time to time, but any time one of their politicians goes against it, they’re like “well, that’s okay, he’s our guy, not the other team’s, he can get away with it.”
You’re right, it’s just sport. Our team versus their team. What the teams do, say or stand for doesn’t matter at all, as long as my team wins and your team loses. If my team does it, it’s good or at least acceptable, if yours does it, it’s evil, hypocritical, or thoughtless, even if it’s the exact same thing. Doesn’t matter if they swap positions entirely, such that a modern day Democrat would be more comfortable in the Republican party of 75 years ago and vice versa.
Word. My consistent position is that the country NEEDS for the Republican Party to no longer exist. People will sometimes interpret this as a desire on my part for a one-party state, neglecting my calculation that a Democratic Party will, in the absence of an opposition party of some sort, inevitably schism.
It would be nice to have multiple parties, but it would be great if there were NO political parties… No little letter next to your name. Let policy define a politician, and allow the voter to actually research their voting record, etc.
It’s a matter of compromise. Unless one party holds an ironclad hold on both houses of congress and the presidency, they have to support something the other side wants if they want some of their own platform advanced.
Let’s say my family is deciding where to go for dinner, and I’m a vegan but they aren’t. My preference would be to go to a local vegan restaurant every time we go out, but sometimes they want a steak. Agreeing to go to the local steakhouse every so often and then ordering a salad doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned my principles. It just means I’ve compromised so that next time we go out maybe they will agree to go to the vegan place.
I wish our political landscape was more like GB, smaller parties with a very focused agenda. In order to win a majority, you will need a majority coalition of parties.
Theoretically I agree with you. Practically it is an impossibility. We’re pack animals and there are just too many advantages that accrue from working as a group. And working as a group always develops at least a veneer of ideology over time( we are “us”, they are “not-us” ).
Partyless politics is, if not quite an oxymoron, pretty difficult to achieve even if it were somehow law.
Of course there are policy issues where sincere people will differ, even though they’re all trying to advance the interests of America and its people.
Trade is a complex issue. Many of us thought TPP was an excellent plan — good for American business and geopolitical power, good for America’s allies, especially important as a limit on China’s ever-growing power, and ultimately good for most American workers. Many people disagreed and had reasonable objections, but it’s absurd to assume TPP supporters were all in the pockets of rich corporations.
The ignorant meme that because Biden and Clinton voted for Bush’s Iraq War Powers, they are warmongers just as brutal as Dick Cheney is utter nonsense. Yet we still have to listen to that easily-refuted meme over and over and over and over and over and over.
Biden’s plan to move the country toward single-payer healthcare is probably more likely to succeed than Bernie’s plan. Yet we have to listen to gibberish on that topic too.
Although some Ds’ views on some issues may seem to align with R views, the gulf on policies between moderate Ds and moderate Rs is quite huge today. HUGE, with an H.
Some of what MortSahlFan writes is not 100% wrong. But the agenda implied by his overall thrust is horridly mistaken. It is confused “same - same” thinking like this which leads to electoral disaster.
Obama supported TPP. So did Hillary. Then Bernie Sanders comes out against it, and then Trump comes out against it… Ralph Nader (remember him?) called it “NAFTA on Steroids”, and then suddenly Clinton said she was against it. C’mon… Just like with other trade deals - they’re going to help ownership, not the workers.
I wish the media would have pushed this on Trump… If you remember in the 1st GOP debate, the moderator said “Mr. Trump, you have supported a single-payer health care system” and he said “It seems to work fine in Canada”… Too bad the media didn’t “bully” him on that.