And now Trump is droppingthe “Drain the Swamp” rhetoric, now that he’s filling the swamp with his billionaire and far right cronies.
No wall will be built, no Muslims deported, no Clintons locked up. And the ACA will simply be re-named “Trumpcare” with some cosmetic window dressing.
**Clothy **and his ilk are suckers. They are useful idiots who have been utterly, utterly used by Trump. Some of them will wake up and realize this, when every single promise Trump made to them is broken and he laughs in their faces. Others are too stupid to realize they’ve been had.
I sometimes wonder if Clothy has any minority students.
Or perhaps, more accurate to say “for longer than about a month”.
Combine the stupid and the anger with the “feels comfortable saying racist shit because he’s entitled” and I can’t imagine his dojo being a very comfortable place for any but his ilk. Cobra Kai for white Texan racists.
We already bent deeply on that: we have the Hyde act, where the government won’t pay for abortions. That’s a compromise that we can live with. When have the conservatives ever given up anything even close to that on this issue?
:rolleyes: As I figured: when it comes to identifying actual policy compromises with the Right, you’re all vague harrumphing about unspecified liberal intransigence and no actual ideas.
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Is there any issue of significance you’d be willing to bend on for the sake of finding more common ground? And maybe, just maybe finding more folks to come roost on our side of the fence in the process?
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As I said, we already have tons of common ground with many of the actual policy positions that most voters support (especially when it comes to the demographic growth areas of younger and non-white voters, but significantly so with older white voters too). Survey after survey has confirmed that voters in general are already on “our side of the fence”:
So as liberals, “bending” on our policy positions on important issues to compromise with right-wing ideology is the exact opposite of what we ought to be doing if the goal is to attain “common ground” with the voters themselves.
On the contrary, what we need to do is stick to our principles and do a better job of showing the voters that the Republicans whose rhetoric they fall for are not actually the ones interested in giving them the policy achievements that they want.
In other words, “complaining” in the sense of critically analyzing and refuting right-wing ideological bullshit is exactly what liberals ought to be doing to establish that sought-after “common ground”.
Please tell me, specifically, why you disagree with this reasoning to the extent of preferring to go on vaguely kvetching about liberals being so “whiny” and “uncooperative”.
And you’re still too stupid to spell my name correctly, but that’s not unexpected.
Is this the best defense you have? To weakly demand that people who disagree with your particular style of horseshit should be exiled? You’re quite the elitist, aren’t you. And a coward. Please, somebody, anybody, don’t let people disagree with me. Please don’t let them make me feel bad about myself. Again. Oh, lawdy, lawdy, lawdy, somebody please help me do what I can’t do for myself. Somebody please help me. Bwahahahaha!
Your arrogant attitude is why Hillary lost. Thank you. You convinced yourself that Hillary couldn’t lose. And now you’re embarrassed. Justifiably so, I might add. You allowed the pundits, polls, and pinheads to convince you that Hillary couldn’t lose. You allowed the media outlet newsreaders, and their specially selected guests, to convince you that Hillary couldn’t lose. You allowed comedians, and entertainers, to convince you that Hillary couldn’t lose. And now you can’t understand how the people you believed to be beneath you could kick your political ass. Shocking. :rolleyes:
Stopping the conversation doesn’t stop people from voting. But you have no way of knowing that. Keep up the good work.
There is a difference between having a well reasoned debate, and bitching about things that are most certainly going to come to pass.
As I said: TRUMP IS GOING TO BE OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. It’s going to happen, there is nothing you can do to change that, so let’s roll up our sleeves and figure out what can be done to make this country a little less divisive.
Let’s not cut off our noses to spite our faces. Let’s not hope the worst possible for this country simply because Trump is in office and the Republicans have control of both houses. In short: LET’S NOT DO THE EXACT THING REPUBLICANS DID WHEN OBAMA GOT ELECTED!
Let’s, dare I say, be the bigger party. Let us know humility. As doorhinge demonstrates, there is a large segment of Americans that view us as arrogant pricks. And that can’t be good for the party’s image.
Something different has to be done. Because what we’re doing isn’t working. And that different may involve more bending ss distasteful as that sounds. But we’re all supposedly grown ups here. So suck it up, and let’s get to it.
And since you seem to be so determined for me to state specific policy issues, here ya go:
Lay off gun control.
Get tougher on immigration.
Ease up on coal/fossil fuels.
Where you stand on those issues is indeed a political view is it not? What exactly would a political view be other than what relates to government policy?
I agree that more extreme positions like advocating a total gun ban or confiscation of specific currently legal weapons would get much less bipartisan support. But most liberals don’t support those more extreme positions in the first place.
Why should liberals move away from a principled reasonable position that most voters already agree with, just in the hope of seeming less “arrogant” to the minority of ignorant right-wing extremists?
Why should liberals move away from a principled reasonable position that most voters already agree with, just in the hope of seeming less “arrogant” to the minority of ignorant right-wing extremists?
[QUOTE=Grrr!]
Ease up on coal/fossil fuels.
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Why? Not only can a strong case be made for the importance of fossil fuel regulation even if it were unpopular, because of its huge environmental consequences, but studies show that American voters in general support it:
Why should liberals move away from a principled reasonable position that most voters already agree with, just in the hope of seeming less “arrogant” to the minority of ignorant right-wing extremists?
:rolleyes: You seem to think that “humility” requires liberals to cave in on valid policy ideas that already have majority support among voters, just because the disproportionately powerful but numerically inferior radical right wing doesn’t like them. I say that on the contrary, it’s time for American liberals to stop betraying the American people by cringing and “bending” before the talking heads of Fox News and other unprincipled Republican partisans, in the vain hope that they’ll suddenly decide to join us in responsible bipartisanship. Yes, “something different has to be done”: but what that means is that we need to stop abandoning our principles, and start fighting for them.
So, your solution is to have those you disagree with banned? You know what works just as well? Don’t engage. No one is forcing you to click on the threads these folks start. No one is forcing you to argue with them. That’s on you and your own lack of self control. Which sort of makes you own of the snowflakes that gets ridiculed. You don’t care to ignore them you want to deprive them and others who may want to interact with them, for whatever reason, the opportunity to do so peacefully.
No, they aren’t entitled and neither is anyone else other than the owner of the board to use this board. But if they aren’t breaking the rules, even though Colibri has called one of them a troll multiple times, then just don’t engage with those you don’t want to and leave them be. Obviously you and others derive perverse pleasure in slinging invective at those you disagree with. If that’s the case perhaps you are being a bit disingenuous yourself.
Personally, I like engaging with people I disagree with. Even folks like Der Trihs who I think is a bit over the top because I think interacting with a very wide range of views, even those derived from a position of ignorance, is of benefit.
Nonsense, surveys showed no such thing, and nobody who had even an elementary grasp of statistical basics would be foolish enough to claim that they did.
In the first place, it’s absurd to speak of any survey showing that “there’s no chance” of any one of a set of closely ranked outcomes occurring. Surveys are statistical estimates subject to statistical error and random fluctuations.
For example, just as a statistical estimate of a 10% chance of rain is not at all the same thing as showing that there is no chance it will rain that day, a statistical estimate of, say, a 10% polling lead for Clinton over Trump is not at all the same thing as showing “that there was no chance of Clinton losing to Trump”.
And of course, especially as the election approached, the differences in the Clinton/Trump polling numbers were much closer that that, often falling within the polls’ own margins of error. For most of the end of the campaign, Clinton and Trump were statistically tied for the lead. No responsible pollster that I’m aware of ever attempted to represent those results as showing “that there was no chance of Clinton losing to Trump”.
So your ridiculous attempt at a “gotcha” analogy is completely invalid.
This is the classic example of the same kind of dumb-shit reasoning that the President-elect uses. You can’t believe any surveys because the polls were off nationally by less than 2%? (Yes, at the state level some were off by somewhat more than that.)
And, they didn’t show “there was no chance of Clinton losing to Trump.” They showed a tight race where Clinton seemed to have a slight advantage. However, careful people like Nate Silver were saying there was a 30% chance she would lose to Trump…and he even noted that a significant fraction of this probability consisted of scenarios where she won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. He specifically noted that the hopeful claims that she had a firewall in the electoral college that would prevent her from losing even if she lost the popular vote was based on not understanding how states would tip if the race tightened or if the polls were off due to assumptions about likely voters or what-have-you.
If you thought “there was no chance of Clinton losing to Trump”, you only have yourself to blame for not reading good sources of information.
To steal a line I saw somewhere online recently… You know what the call a bunch of snowflakes? An avalanche.
And it’s on the way.
I see Trump as the last gasp of the republican party. Poll after poll shows what little support they actually have for their pet issues and poll after poll shows the next generation is likely to vote overwhelmingly democrat. The only way they stay relevant is through rabid propaganda, gerrymandering and voter suppression (and recently Russia and the FBI).
We’ve all seen that stereotype “racist grandfather” who occasionally says something shocking, to which everyone says “Just don’t say anything. He’s old and set in his ways and won’t be with us much longer.” That’s the republican party. While they’re frothing at the mouth over who goes to which bathroom and how the EPA is evil, the younger generation is shaking their head and thinking “You’re dead in like 5 years but we gotta live here for a long time still. Could you just shut the fuck up already?”
Strangely enough, I have become fond of some of the wingnut blatherers here.
Occasionally they post in Cafe Society, where they can be seen to express appreciation for good music and good movies, and make intelligent comments on fine art. And some of them seem to be good cooks!
Clothahump can come by my place for martinis, and we’ll spin a few sides of Bach or Sonny Rollins, maybe watch a couple of Bunuel films. And he can show me how he makes his gratin Savoyard.
And AFAICT it was valid then too. I don’t think anybody 8 years ago was seriously predicting that the Republican Party would be defunct within 8 years. But the demographic trends that were identified then—declining white percentage of population, younger voters more socially liberal on gay rights etc., increase in non-Christian and nonexistent religious affiliation, increased radicalization of the young by global media and the shrinking of middle-class career opportunities—are continuing now, and they are all chipping away at the traditional Republican constituencies.
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You also forget that as demographics morph so do parties.
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Speed the day, sez I! I would be delighted to see a modern “morphing” Republican Party more actively accommodating racial and religious diversity, social justice movements, gay rights, reproductive rights, and most of all scientific reasoning in education and public policy.
But where is it?? The present-day Republican Party that I see has chosen instead to cling to its shrinking traditional constituencies and stop up the widening gaps with money, media influence, and propaganda provided by its corporate elites. So they’ve got wealthy educated libertarian types embarrassed by the anti-science Bible-thumpers, and union-family ex-Democrats embarrassed by the offshoring capitalists, and so on in an unstable piecemeal coalition cobbled together with Koch money and talk-radio mythology about Demon Lying Hillary and Kenyan Muslim Obama.
I don’t see how that party structure is sustainable over the long term in the face of the ongoing demographic and technological changes. But Republicans can’t “morph” it as a whole, because any changes desirable to one piece of their uneasy alliance will be anathema and betrayal to the others.
As of recent years they’ve held on because they haven’t really attempted to do anything but obstruct Democrats. But what happens now that they’ve actually got to govern? And moreover, govern a nation in which most of the voters fundamentally disagree with their policy positions?
There’s only so much longer that Republicans can fake it by assuring their constituents that deregulation is good for workers and climate change is a hoax and corporate giveaways will restore the US manufacturing base and all the problems are the fault of the Muslims and immigrants and pampered minorities and liberals. :dubious:
The Republican morphing from the top this year hasn’t been in the direction that most conservatives would have been comfortable with a year ago - anti-free trade, pro-Russia, pro-Putin, pro-unfunded massive stimulus package combined with a tax cut, pro-overriding budgetary restrictions, anti-budget balancing, pro-gay marriage (or at least no longer concerned about it at all), pro-Assad, and pro-Congressional term limits. Trump has adopted many Republican and conservative positions recently, but all of these seem like a lot for the GOP to swallow/morph.
I would be delighted to see a modern “morphing” Republican Party more actively accommodating racial and religious diversity, social justice movements, gay rights, reproductive rights, and most of all scientific reasoning in education and public policy.