Its hard to totally separate personal desires from political practicalities. Sure I admit that if I could snap my fingers and have all guns except single shot bolt action rifles and shotguns not used for hunting or target shooting disappear, I would happily do so. But I recognize that there is no way to do so practically without it leading to massive armed resistance and political unrest. So there is no way that I would actually support any laws that would bring about my actual desires.
Similarly I imagine that there are a significant number of Evangelicals who would like every American in the United States to come to Jesus, and run the country purely on Christian principles, but who recognize that the United States is a diverse place, and would not support forced conversions of those heathens who don’t see the light.
I’m not sure where those people would fit in your dichotomy.
Me personally? The entire country would be mobilized immediately to fight global climate change at every possible level. Nothing else matters if that is not addressed. Other democrats? They vary a great deal, being democrats and all.
For republican politicians their real goal is to distribute wealth and economic power upward.
However this is a very unpopular idea so they have to pretend they really are just trying to create jobs. Studies endlessly show supply side economics doesn’t create jobs, but it’s not designed to. It is designed to do what it actually does, redistribute wealth upwards. Tax cuts for the rich and deregulation do exactly what they’re designed to do, make the rich and powerful even more rich and powerful.
I think democratic politicians underestimate how frustrated their voters are by the party’s behavior. We are fighting for our democracy and a lot of them act like it’s 1975 and the two parties both value democracy and the countries well being. I don’t think the democratic establishment can keep a lid on their voters rage much longer. It kind of feels like Martin Luther King Jr and his letter from a Birmingham jail about the frustration of white moderates telling him to slow down and get along with everyone and not rock the boat. The gop is run by criminal neofascists who hate democracy, the climate is dying and people are sinking economically. Now is not the time to sing kumbaya together.
Also I think democrats are more open to very aggressive action on climate change. Like a meaningful fraction of gdp going to it. At least liberals are. More than they discuss in public.
Also I think a lot of democrats would be open to giving illegal immigrants the right to vote.
Such a scheme would never last. How long would it take before enough people complain and then Travelocity notices that of the 4,000 people who booked a particular hotel in the past six months, all 3,722 whites who booked rooms were given them, but that the 278 blacks that booked were all given refunds because they were told there was “glitch” in the system?
How long would it take after ten or so black families were told that the No Vacancy sign was on the fritz before a group sets up a sting operation whereby a black family tries to check in, is told there are no rooms, and then a white dude is sent in and gets a room?
This isn’t 1964. There are people out there checking on this stuff and social media makes it pretty easy.
So, people go on Yelp and say, “They are racists. They won’t let black people stay there.”
You know what happens? The racists have their conventions there. Racists may be a minority, but they are very proud of what they do, and will go out of their way to support other racists.
Look at the current Home Depot controversy. When Trump comes out to protest an extremely obscure boycott of them, Trump supporters all flock to the banner.
Anti-discrimination didn’t just happen, and it wasn’t that racists just stopped being racist. It required laws, laws that people want to overturn, not because they are all enlightened and don’t need them anymore, but because they want to be able to legally discriminate again. If you want to make the argument that people should be allowed to discriminate again, go ahead and explain how that make this a better country, but don’t try to make the claim that people will not discriminate if you get rid of the law, they will, some due to their own prejudices, and some due to the prejudices of their neighbors. If you have a hotel in a predominantly white town, and those white people tell you that if you rent a room out to a black person, then they will boycott you, then do you really have a choice here? Even if racists are a minority of white people, there are still more racist white people than there are black people in your town, so who would you cater to?
There’s absolutely no doubt that there’s a bigger gap between Pub rhetoric and reality…vs Dem rhetorical and reality.
Republicans very often do not believe in what they say at all. They screamed about debt and deficits during the Obama years, and have turned right around and increased the debt under Trump, with their tax bill. They screamed “repeal and replace” for 7 years after the ACA was passed, and had no plan to do any of that. They raise millions on the backs of evangelicals, and turn around and nominate Trump, the most Godless man that has occupied the White House in many decades. They used to position themselves as the true defenders of America, and have now turned themselves over to a Putin toadie. They used to be the party of Free trade, and now are the party of Trade wars and big tariffs.
Dems will exaggerate, and tell lies, just like any political group. But they generally believe directionally in the policies they advocate. They want universal healthcare. They want policies that fight climate change. They want more regulation, and they want a bigger social safety net.
When Dems tell you something, you need to be careful in believing every one of their supporting talking points, because they will shade things a little. But Pubs will tell you the exact opposite of what they plan to actually do once in office. The only time I think Pubs are serious is when they say they want to cut taxes. That’s the only issue where I think they are fully onboard. Other than that, I don’t trust them on any issue.
Though, when they claim that they want to cut taxes on the middle class, or on the working class, that is also a lie. Cutting taxes on the donor class is the only thing that they are serious about, but they are dishonest in that they call them, “Job Creators.”
You know when you answer like this, it does make it a bit difficult. I assume death penalty for telemarketers must be a joke. May I assume it’s the only joke in your post or not?
Removing the cap on Social Security taxability is something I agree with. I also think the tax itself should be deductible as it is for an IRA or contribution to a retirement plan. either that or it should be completely tax free when you receive it ass with a Roth IRA. And while were at it, the medicare tax should be deductible. A health plan paid for by your company is not taxed as income and if you make payments to it, those can generally be done before tax.
You might be in favor of those as well but I doubt most Republicans are or would not say so if they were.
Agree that they are mostly talking about tax cuts for their donors, although I don’t think they are against middle class cuts - it’s just not all that important to them. In general, if they are talking about tax cuts, they are mostly on board with it in some form or fashion.
I think the Trump election helped unmask the craziness in the party. The distance between the rhetoric and the reality is an example of the craziness. There are plenty of other examples.
They will do tax cuts for the middle class, as that is what is required to get the big donations back to their donors, but that is not them being serious about them. Considering that the cut on the middle class expires, and the cut for the wealthy doesn’t makes this very clear.
Couple that with the complete lack of concern about raising fees, sales and excise taxes, fines and other regressive revenue sources shows that they do not care in the slightest as to the financial burden that the middle class is expected to bear for society.
I will agree that Trump coming along has exposed this further. Where it used to be at least a bit nuanced and hidden with fig leaves, now it’s blatant and obvious who they are working for, and it isn’t the people of this country.
I think they support, deep down inside, tax cuts for the rich that are funded via tax increases on the working class, middle class and poor on top of cuts to investments in health care, education, infrastructure, etc.
The Tea Party helped repeal the social security tax cut that Obama made as part of the stimulus. It lowered the employee SS contribution from 6.2% down to 4.2%, saving a worker about $200 for every 10k in income they earned up to about 130k. The tea party helped repeal that.
Also on teh state level I’ve noticed at least in my state that regressive taxes have gone up for things like sales tax. Also again (one data point) in my state they have a flat income tax while in more blue states they have a progressive state income tax.
The flat tax tends to cut taxes on the rich and poor, and icnreases taxes on everyone else.
I guess in theory they support tax cuts for everyone, but in practice tax cuts have to be paid for and they pay for them via tax hikes on the bottom 95% as well as cuts to health care, education and infrastructure.
In Ohio, we had fees raised on everything, along with an attempt to expand the sales tax to all services.
One of the ways that they tried to increase revenue was to impose a $60 fine if you were more than 7 days late renewing your plates or license, a $120 fine for both. That got repealed after some severe pushback and outrage, and moved back to 30 days, and I can’t find any stats, but I’m sure that raised a bunch of money. Every Time I was at the BMV while it was active, there were at least a few people who were surprised by this new expense.
Income taxes is just about the only way to create a progressive tax system, nearly any other form of raising revenue from the population is going to be regressive. So, when the republicans talk about cutting taxes, they are only ever talking about income taxes, and they are never looking to decrease the burden on the middle and working class.
The Tea Party…that was an AstroTurf outfit mostly to whip up fake outrage over deficits, and of course they ended up casting their lot with Trump. After all, they were mostly an uprising of Republicans…
I’m a liberal, but I think that in a certain sense that Democratic politicians are more likely than Republican politicians to lie in a way that they can’t get away with.
Let’s start with the Republicans. Overall the Republicans lie more. The problem is that the Republicans lie about what the consequences of their policies, not what those policies are. Global warming and trickle down economics are two good examples, but there are a lot more. The typical Republican will say let’s drill more and let’s give the rich a tax cut and things will be better. They aren’t lying about wanting to drill more or about wanting to give the rich a tax cut. They’re lying when they claim doing those things will help the ordinary person.
Democrats, even though they lie less overall, tend to go for positions that are easier to show to be incorrect. One famous example is Obamacare and the infamous statement Obama made about being able to keep your insurance if you like it. Some people did lose their plan when those plans were cancelled by their insurance provider. Technically it wasn’t Obama who took those plans away, and in the big picture it was probably a small number of crappy plans. None the less, losing your health insurance plan is a lot more obvious to the person affected than proving the negative effects of global warming or that trickle down economics really doesn’t help poor people.
Installing a ten-ton Ten Commandments in the courthouse lobby looks like theocracy to the Muslim cabbie or Hindu shopkeeper who comes to court for a case. They may well wonder if they’re going to get justice, or if a Christian judge is going to favor the Christian opposing litigant.
Insisting on prayer in a public school or a legislative body sure looks like theocracy when that prayer doesn’t fit your or your family’s religious beliefs. And that doesn’t have to mean atheists: not everyone who offers prayers before class, or a school assembly, or the county council, or the General Assembly, offers an anodyne ecumenical invocation, some feel compelled to drop a couple of Jesus Christs in there at least. The prayer can well be seen as sending the message that you’re one of the “outs” rather than the “ins” who run the place, and again you fear you may not get a fair shake when something borderline needs to be decided.
I recall reading that most complaints/lawsuits about school prayer were not in fact filed by atheists , but by those who follow religions other than a particular sub-set of Christianity. I have often wondered what would happen if one of those schools that had “voluntary student, led prayer” at graduation, football games, etc had ended up with a Catholic student saying a Hail Mary over the sound system - I don’t think it would have gone over well.
The most famous lawsuit over school prayer was filed by Madyln Murray O’Hair, who was certainly an atheist. Don’t know about most of the rest - my impression is that it is mostly from the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and groups like that, who I don’t think follow any particular religion.
Charles Krauthammer wrote an entertaining series of essays, collected in a book called IIRC “On Manger Patrol with the ACLU”, and one of the things he talked about was the difficulty the ACLU encountered was finding somebody with standing, who actually objected to menorahs and Christmas displays and so forth on public land. Most of the people they found said the equivalent of “we’ve done that for years - what’s the big deal?” They were, IOW, a great deal less upset than the ACLU thought they should be.