Right now. I’ll forget it as soon as they do something worthwhile. Hopefully I won’t have to wait too long.
That isn’t the case either.
We would generally be spending tax revenue on the same things: infrastructure, energy, social welfare, and the like.
Given the results of past spending on those things, why would Americans trust the government to do any better this time around?
“Tax and spend” is still toxic in campaigns.
People are willing to support taxing and spending if they think the taxes are fair and if the spending is beneficial to themselves and the country. Hence why for example funding for education is popular.
Message board troll tax. 110%, and we sell one of their kidneys.
If the taxes are on someone else and the spending is worthwhile. Spending on education has gone up and up without a commensurate increase in results.
That’s why another poster didn’t like the comparison to other countries. We spend more on education than most Western countries already. What makes anyone think more would do the trick?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe-education-spending-of-gdp
I was just giving an example on what sort of spending would be popular. And in the United States its probably the inequality of spending on education that is a problem rather.
As for legalizing marijuana, I think we’re still a ways from that, but the Democrats could muddle the issue by doing an end-run using State’s rights - run on the platform of getting the Feds out of banning and enforcing it and turn it over to the States. That way, them that want it, can have it. Them that don’t, won’t. Might be a nice way to pick off a few libertarians as well as (longer term) keep more minorities in the electorate (since they will no longer be convicted felons).
We have no idea where the economy will be in 2016. Are you sure that you can’t imagine some congressional antics that might plunge the entire world into recession over the next few weeks?
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This would certainly be true if we were talking about an Assault Weapons Ban (which is silly and unconstitutional IMO) but universal background checks have support of roughly 90% of the population according to polls and swing state Democrats such as Joe Manchin who sponsered it haven’t been hurt in the polls by voting for it.
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Policywise, I agree with those polls as well, I would go further and have licensing and registration, BUT, politically, we are not going to get any gun control until at least 2017.
Obama won the election by 332 electoral votes to 206. A swing of 63 would have tied the election and it would have gone to the house and Obama would have lost. Any swing greater than 63 would have given Romney the win outright.
Obama won the following states by less than 52% of the vote:
Florida (29)
Ohio (18)+29=47
Virginia (13)+47=60
Colorado (9)+60=69 (Obama Loses)
Pennsylvania (20)
New Hampshire (4)
Iowa (6)
Obama won the following states by less than 53% of the vote:
Nevada (6)
Minnesota (10)
Wisconsin (10)
New Mexico (5)
Now to be fair the margin was under 4% (a 2% swing) only in Florida, Virginia and Ohio (for 60 electoral votes), but you only needed one more state, ANY state) to lose after that and I can see a state like Pennsylvania swinging on the issue of guns.
YMMV
It sounds like you want to fix something thats not broken simply because you want it.
pffft. A unified America? pfft again. We have ABC, NBC, CBS. These are America’s voice around the world, have been for decades. We have voice of America, if you’re looking for something more political.
Considering that drivers between 18 and 21 constitutue so many of our drunk driving accidents, why is this “right”?
I just don’t see Democrats spending an OUNCE of political capital trying to lower the drinking age. Not an OUNCE.
You do realize that we have had tax brackets for over a century right? There are break points in income where you will pay a larger percentage of each marginal dollar of income.
Because going from 35% to 40% isn’t the same thing as going from 35% to 100%. Our taxes have only been lower once or twice since WWII. People STILL got advanced degrees and worked hard. Why do you think they wont?
So you think we have been addressing our budget shortfall by taxing the rich over the last 12 years (since our surplus went to deficit)? This will be the first tax increase on the rich in almost 20 years (and that was following a period of ridiculous tax cuts.
Unless we gut medicare/medicaid and social security, we can’t cut our way out of this deficit. The math doesn’t work (its really simple math (mostly addition and subtraction)).
We can address things like debt and the people you are supporting by things like student loan deductions and dependent deductions. In fact, I’m sure that Democrats would be willing to eliminate the caps on these for an increase in top marginal rates.
Battered spouse syndrome
Progress is hard, its easy to fight against, and most of the time its uncomfortable for most people, but that doesn’t mean its not the right thing to do or worth it. I was actually quite proud of Nancy Pelosi for making the Dems in the House take a tough vote on the ACA knowing they’d probably be punished by the voters. At that time, there had already been months of GOP led attacks, from death panels to other made up crap. She knew it would be a hard vote to take but she made them take it anyways because it was the right thing to do. Now we have health care reform for the first time in 60 years and its thanks in part to her leadership
So let the voters punish the Dems. Principle is often tough. Especially when its the correct thing to do. Contrast that with the GOP, who have no principles and sway at every breeze in the wind. FYI, I don’t consider their faux purity tests to be principled at all, its very obvious that its simply to disagree with Obama. If the GOP had principles, they would stand up for health care, support the plan they wrote, and tell much of their voters that the Civil War is long over and they need to get over their loss
30 years of overspending and borrowing by Reagan Bush and pals. Good luck with that.
Obama won 66% of millennials in 2008, and 60% in 2012 (Romney did 4 points better than McCain, winning 36% in 2012). That is still a pretty lopsided election, considering millennials will make up 40% of the electorate in the next decade.
I’m hoping instead of just one election cycle, there could be a boon of progressivism in the coming decades due to demographics, income inequality and the loss of good jobs, the failure of social wars to distract younger voters from economic issues, environmentalism, etc. So it hopefully won’t be a 2 year cycle, followed by a movement back to the opposite direction, it will be a movement that pulls both parties to the left. Winning democratic seats is not really that great if all you get is a bunch of outclassed corporate democrats.
According to Barney Frank, if the GOP hadn’t gerrymandered the house in various states the dems would’ve won in 2012. The dems won the popular vote in the house by 0.8%, but the seats were redistricted to not reflect that.
The US will likely never be as progressive as western europe, but in 20-30 years maybe on a federal level we will be near the point where some of those nations are today. Functioning health care systems, efforts to help the poor and working class, lower GINI coefficient, etc.
It’s actually a bit more misleading than that.
The overall turnout among 18-24 year olds was also down in 2012 compared to 2008 (about the same for 18-29 year olds, though). It’s not that more of them voted for Romney but that they didn’t show up to vote in the first place.
So, I guess the GOP strategy could be to encourage them not to vote…for the next 20 years. The Democrats have a more favorable but still vexing problem - getting them excited enough to turn out at all.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83510.html
So in both 2008 and 2012 the youth vote was decisive (in 2008 Obama won 9 million net votes, of those 7 million came from people under 29 despite them only being about 1/5 of the electorate). And that is just the start of the millennial’s generation (b.1978-2000) and their influence on politics since almost half of them can’t vote yet, and because voting habits get better with age and older people vote more. They will make up roughly 40% of the electorate for a few decades in the 2020s, 2030s and maybe 2040s.
As I noted, this was reportedly true for 18-29 year olds.
But for the 18-24 year old segment, the percentage voting dropped from 48% to 41%. This is based on Census Bureau reporting, which is unfortunately unavailable online at the moment due to the shutdown.
Don’t be a defeatist! Anything they can do, we can do better!
I don’t know. I think our culture and divisions (racial and class divisions) would prevent the kind of unity that leads to progressive advances along the lines of europe.
I once read an article that talked about how secularism in the US is about 40 years behind secularism in western europe. So in 40 years maybe the US will be as secular as France or Germany are today, I’m guessing those nations will be more like Sweden by that point. Those nations also developed UHC several decades before we did also. I ‘think’ they had old age pensions about 30-40 years before the US too.
America has had a very positive overall effect on France in terms of political enlightenment that, sadly, are not reflected in matters of personal hygiene.
Oh, c’mon! Practically every country in Europe still has painful divisions from national/ethnic/religious conflicts that were over and done with centuries before American independence! That didn’t stop 'em from going social-democratic! It was the class divisions that helped! America’s besetting sin is to deny the existence of such.
:dubious: And did ze Americans invent ze bidet, Monsieur?!