Yes. Whether left, right or center, intelligent people oppose stupidism.
Oh my. Google “Discretionary spending as percent of GDP”, subtract military, and come back when you’re better informed.
Progressives would have preferred to see home-owners helped, rather than rich bankers, but either way allowing financial collapse would have been extremely unwise. Do you disagree?
A treaty like NATO might have led to the defense of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and prevented WWII. In fact, it’s done a pretty good job of maintaining peace in Europe for 70 years. Do you dislike peace?
I’m not sure what “Kill list” is — Plans to execute top terrorists who want to kill thousands of Americans?
But the detention and incarceration are right-wing ideas, not progressive.
They are bipartisan extreme efforts. You’re welcome.
Lol. “Google a completely different metric, subtract some shit, and be better informed.”
Was the unprecedented intervention extreme or not? You may think extremism was necessary, that’s irrelevant. Extremism is extremism.
No it wouldn’t have. Relative peace in Europe can be attributed to different things. I specifically singled out the expansion of NATO, nice rhetorical trick though.
The progressive loves the secret kill list and targeted assassinatoon of American citizens and their children.
Mass incarceration and indefinite detention received bipartisan support.
Yes the right-wing Baltimore City and State of Maryland. Some goofy shit gets said on these boards, that’s for damn sure.
[QUOTE=septimus;21129998
In what sense are most Democratic politicians far left? I see two possibly “far left” positions among the Democratic mainstream:
(1) support for gay marriage.
(2) banning of semi-automatic high-capacity rifles.
[/QUOTE]
The proposals most vulnerable to centrist skepticism as “far left” include stuff like free college for all, a $15 minimum wage and abolishing the ICE.
Speaking as a self-defined centrist, I wish these ideas weren’t being bandied about by Democrats, because they give the right legitimate ammo for riling up their base (as opposed to the complete bullshit upon which they generally rely).
O, I see what you’re talking about, common sense, doesn’t seem to be a lot of that around anymore far as I can see, unfortunately.
I find myself wondering the same things these days.
I find while my views on things have not changed substantially ( but some) whereas I was once viewed as “left” wing I am now considered “right” wing.
To my mind the “left” has gone off the rails, into lunacy.
The “right” which I always considered in the wrong, mainly, now seems benign by comparison.
Frankly I think the whole adversarial political party approach has finally become inane, and is no longer effective.
If one says A the other immediately say B. as you pointed out.
It doesn’t seem designed to accomplish reasonable solutions any longer, if indeed it ever was.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Barack Obama recently the President of the United States?
Obama did that. And got no credit from Republicans for doing so.
Non-U.S. citizens, sure. Those without an ID, no. Too many people don’t have them, and in too many states now, they’ve made it really hard to get one.
Nobody that I know of is asking for a national $17-20 minimum wage. And AFAICT, there’s no evidence that automation significantly reduces the overall number of jobs. Think of the millions of jobs that have been automated in the past 50 years.
There used to be an adage that the two parties wanted the same things, but they believed in different ways of getting there. So the Dems did health care via the Heritage Foundation, Romneycare route: we all want everyone to be able to get decent health care, right? So we’ll do it the conservative way, making as much use of market mechanisms as we can.
Well, we know what happened.
And same thing with climate change: cap-and-trade had worked with acid rain and the ozone hole. But the GOP killed it when the Dems proposed it for carbon emissions.
When the two parties want vastly different things, what’s the middle ground? As blogger John Cole said in early 2009, “Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.”
What color is the sky in your world? The Democrats are at least still tied to objective reality. The Republicans are completely divorced from it. Frankly, if I had the power, most of the right would be confined to a rubber room because they’re insane.
I confess I myself was astonished to hear that anybody believes that the american right wing (aka the conservatives/republicans) have been adopting policies traditionally considered left wing (aka liberals/democrats).
I myself am literally unable to think of any policy position that the republicans stole from the democrats. Aside from endorsing racism, that is. The southern strategy stole that one back in the late sixties.
Roe v Wade was decided by a Republican majority Supreme Court.
The FBI was supported by the Republican party in majority, until Trump, while the Democrats were suspicious that they were abusing their access to phonecall metadata and other stuff.
Yep, so was Teddy Roosevelt, creator of most (?) of our national parks?
The Republican party used to be the party of the North. At this point, I think it’s fair to call it the predecessor to today’s Democratic party. The Southern strategy caused the names to flip, but not the policy.
Centrism is when political actors are willing to compromise, understanding that they might not get everything they want, but they can at least get some of it. The Republicans don’t operate that way because the political mechanisms that influence the party won’t allow it. Republican politics is about refusing to compromise, and labeling anyone who compromises an enemy of the party (and people).
There is no way to compromise with a party that operates this way. It’s a fool’s errand to even think of compromising with Republicans right now. The only choice is to crush them in elections, to show demonstrate in absolute terms that their politics will result in certain defeat. Third parties and centrism are not a solution; they are the friend of the uncompromising right wing. The only compromise that should be made is for left wing and ‘centrists’ to put aside their differences and vote against Republicans. Period.
No. Although the key controversies varied over the decades and centuries, and “business-vs-labor” was never the overriding issue, there is a clear tendency for Democrats to take the side of labor and the common people in matters involving business-vs-labor, compared with their opponents (Federalist, Whig, Republican) who tend to take the side of business. This has been the case ever since Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic Party.
Jefferson’s writings have much other wisdom. More wisdom indeed than all the blatherings of all of today’s Republicans summed together.
I agree that it has taken time for the flip to occur, but right now both parties are probably about equal in terms of how much they focus on the common man, as opposed to the wealthy.
Farmers used to be a core block of the Democrats. They are completely Republican now. In this last election, the Rust Belt went to the Republicans. Obama propped up the banks during the crisis and Hillary was up to her scalp in banking circles.
Democrats are the enemy of business because of their conservationist efforts not because they’re the enemy of business, these days. Trump’s throwing businesses under the bus with his tariffs and he was perfectly happy to suggest propping up the farmers with free money, to keep them afloat.
In another decade it may well be that the flip will have fully completed. Economic policy has been the slowest to convert but I’m not sure that anything else that the Democrats believe in these days can be traced back to the Democratic party before the Southern Strategy.
Jefferson was all about the noble farmer. How many farmers are Democrats these days?
To be fair, so did George W. Bush, way back in 2007. More money for border security. More border patrol agents. The DREAM Act. A bill crafted by three Republican and one Democratic senators, then sponsored by Harry Reid.
After three failed votes to get the bill out of committee, Harry Reid gave up. Bush persuaded him to take one more shot and three weeks later, the bill actually made it to the Senate floor, but failed on an attempt to move it for a vote.