They do have to “consent” the word means a little different 200 years ago, and the Constitution specifically sez so.
Yes, I know where you stand. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong and that would have us focus on the wrong things, but I know your stance. The most damaging things to our electoral prospects are obstacles to voting. We should focus on removing all obstacles and all imbalanced aspects of voting. Then we can focus on getting everyone to vote. If the outcome after doing all of that is losses in elections by Democrats, then so be it. My stance is that the result would be long term gains so great that they would force the Republicans to become sane once again or be replaced by another party.
So, if you actually care about the Democratic party winning, start railing against policies that disenfranchise voters (and there are many, almost universally Republican led), gerrymandering, and getting out the vote. It’s not an accident that when you saw a T-Shirt with nothing but the word “Vote” on it in the past year, it was almost universally a Democrat.
If, on the other hand, you want to mold the Democratic party to be more Republican-lite for personal reasons, keep on keepin’ on. That’s your right as well, but it’s certainly not what the party needs for sustainability at this time.
Trump, H. Clinton, Reagan
You keep talking about Republican-lite but I am talking about the Democratic party in 2006-2008 led by Pelosi and Obama. Do you consider them Republican-lite? The sharp leftward turn on issues like abortion, immigration and guns really happened with Hillary in 2016 and not coincidentally this was the Presidential election when a big gap opened between popular vote and EV performance. The Democrats did not have a significant disadvantage in the electoral college before 2016, in some years they had an advantage.
Cite, please.
But can you blame Carlson for mocking those terms (I’m not including the term ‘reparations’ here) that came from Democrats and the Left? Haven’t we established that “Defund the Police” was an utterly ridiculous and harmful term? I had forgotten about “Abolish ICE” but that’s every bit as bad.
You say they’re not actual positions of the Democrats but can you blame folks who don’t keep up on the minutiae of the Democratic platform (all Righties and most Lefties, too) for thinking that those are actually Dem positions?
I mean… don’t hand the GOP a loaded pistol pointed at your own head and beg them to shoot, ya know?
I’m not a fan of people posting a link as their response and/or with no explanation of what the link is supposed to mean.
In your case it’s even worse than usual because all you did was link to the main page of WaPo. What is that supposed to mean? And why do you think a mere link is a sufficient discussion point?
Those are some really poor arguments.
One and five do provide a reason why the Electoral College is better than direct elections. But those reasons involve trivial issues. Having an unambiguous answer is not a virtue if the answer is wrong. And while runoffs elections might be annoying, they’re not as bad as the wrong candidate winning.
Two and three are wrong. If an electoral college system is good because it supposedly forces voters in swing states to pay more attention to the issues (itself a highly questionable premise) than a direct election would be better because it would spread that effect to all fifty states. The same argument is true about candidates; they could no longer afford to ignore states that weren’t swing states. Democrats would have a reason to campaign in conservative states and Republicans would have a reason to campaign in liberal states; each side would want to reach out to like-minded voters in these states because their votes would be added to the national total rather than thrown in the garbage as they are now.
And number four is just nonsense. States don’t vote. People vote. There’s no reason in a supposed democracy why five million people living in two states should be able to outvote six million people living in one state.
Give us an example of this. What positions on these issues did Hillary Clinton hold that were so radical.
And it has to be something Clinton actually said or did, not an accusation made against her by conservatives.
I didnt, look I said that.
That was a WaPo op-ed agreeing with me, cut off due to paywall, most likely.
However, here is the ACLU agreeing with me.
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-and-citizens-united
Any rule that requires the government to determine what political speech is legitimate and how much political speech is appropriate is difficult to reconcile with the First Amendment. Our system of free expression is built on the premise that the people get to decide what speech they want to hear; it is not the role of the government to make that decision for them.
It is also useful to remember that the mixture of money and politics long predates Citizens United and would not disappear even if Citizens United were overruled. The 2008 presidential election, which took place before Citizens United ,was the most expensive in U.S. history until that point. The super PACs that have emerged in the 2012 election cycle have been funded with a significant amount of money from individuals, not corporations, and individual spending was not even at issue in Citizens United .
Unfortunately, legitimate concern over the influence of “big money” in politics has led some to propose a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision. The ACLU will firmly oppose any constitutional amendment that would limit the free speech clause of the First Amendment.
But here’s the point, those decisions didnt allow Big Money into Politics, Big Money has been part of American politics for many decades. As the ACLU points out- those decisions overturned a fairly recent couple laws designed to stop Big Money in politics. Citizens United was just a return to business as usual, not anything new.
Little Nemo,
The cost and duration of an election is hardly a trivial matter. And you haven’t really addressed no. 2 at all. And you have misunderstood 4. As for 3 if you spread over the resources of a campaign including political advertising and physical rallies over 50 states obviously each state would have relatively little attention.
I am not a supporter of the electoral college per se but I think there are reasonable arguments on both sides. In any case I don’t want a prolonged argument about the electoral college on this thread. Perhaps you can start another thread if you wish to continue.
As for Hillary in 2016, calling for an end to deportation raids would be an example of where she went well to the left of Obama on immigration. Also opposing the Hyde Amendment and stop using the “safe,legal and rare” formulation first coined by her husband ,adopted by Obama and indeed used by herself in 2008.
I agree there’s no point in further arguing over the Electoral College in this thread.
I disagree. The Hyde Amendment was not seeking to keep abortions safe or legal. So Clinton was upholding her stated position when she opposed it.
What Clinton said in 2016 was “Roe v. Wade very clearly sets out that there can be regulations on abortion so long as the life and the health of the mother are taken into account” and “I have met with women who toward the end of their pregnancy get the worst news one could get, that their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy.” So Clinton was saying that abortions could be regulated and she said that late term abortions should be legal in cases where it was a health issue.
Those are hardly radical left wing positions unless you feel that the moderate position on abortions is that they should be illegal.
The same is true about Clinton’s position on immigration. She called for immigration reform not for some radical open border policy. She said that she would continue to detain and deport any immigrant who posed a violent threat to public safety. Again, the only way this is a left wing program is if you consider closing the borders to be the moderate position.
This seems to be the same kind of rhetoric that Republicans use when they call Joe Biden a socialist.
I think you misunderstood my point about abortion. They were two separate points. Hillary opposed the Hyde Amendment. She also modified her own language on abortion.
I don’t want to quibble about whether her positions are"radical left". My point is that she has moved significantly to the left of Obama on those issues and I think it cost her with especially with white working class voters with in the Midwest. I think the Democratic party would be better off if they went back to the Obama positions on those issues. They would definitely be better off if their left wing didn’t keep adopting new unpopular positions on reparations and defunding the police.
I feel the problem was that Obama moved too far to the right. He made way too many concessions to conservatives in a futile attempt to win them over. Republicans took everything Obama offered, asked for more, and then gave nothing in return.
Clinton rightly saw that this was a bad policy. She staked out a position in the center and was willing to work with Republicans but only on a equitable quid-pro-quo basis. To me, this was a better strategy than Obama’s appeasement.
But none of this addresses the main question. If the Democrats are the ones who are drifting off to the fringe, why isn’t this reflected in voting numbers? We had an election just two months ago; people seemed to prefer the Democratic position to the Republican one by pretty decisive numbers. If people are unhappy with the supposed left-wing positions taken up by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, why did they vote for them? White working class voters in the Midwest may prefer Republicans. But Americans prefer Democrats.
The leftwing positions attracts votes in blue states and loses voters in swing states especially in the Midwest. This is not a good trade for the Democrats… It’s instructive to compare 2012 and 2020. Obama and Biden got an almost identical popular vote share but Obama won much more comfortably in the electoral college which is ultimately what counts.
And Biden personally is relatively moderate. He has drifted left on issues like the Hyde Amendment while resisting on others. However the next generation of leaders starting with Kamala Harris looks likely to move even further left. There is a whole array of unpopular issues gaining momentum: as I mentioned defunding the police, reparations, abolishing ICE and also abolishing private health insurance which notably tripped up Harris during her primaries.
Yes, of course I can. Carlson isn’t “mocking” those terms, he is intentionally and dishonestly misstating Democratic Party positions. Last week Carlson was ranting about how all the National Guard soldiers in DC after January weren’t there to protect the Capitol and ensure a peaceful inauguration, they were there to demonstrate Democratic power. Carlson saying that Democrats want open borders, or to defund the police, is the same thing.
Of course I can blame him for spouting bullshit.
Again, yes, of course I can, and do. If people are going have opinions about Democratic Party positions (or anything else, for that matter), they should find out what the facts are first. As someone once said, you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.
[quote=“I_Love_Me_Vol.I, post:126, topic:931092”]
I mean… don’t hand the GOP a loaded pistol pointed at your own head and beg them to shoot, ya know?[/quote]
The GOP loaded the gun just fine by themselves. If they’re going to lie about the Democratic Party, it’s not the DP’s fault.
That’s helpful, but only to a limited degree.
We are living in a society in which there exists an ‘alternative facts’ ecosystems, in which communities can communicate and bond with each other entirely through the prism of perceptions that aren’t real. Worse, among the worst of those perceptions is that a white majority has had their status as a super majority taken (stolen) from them without their permission, and they’re in mortal danger of losing their status as a simple majority. There’s a perception that cooperation and compromise will lead to ethnic and cultural suicide.
If things are really going to change, powerful people who know better are going to have to risk willing to lose clout, influence, and maybe even some of their wealth, to confront these toxic forces. A case in point is in Arizona, where moderate Republicans like Doug Doucey, Jeff Flake, and Cindy McCain confronted the radicalization of the Republican party.
That’s good, but it has to go deeper. Social media companies need to stop tolerating the spread of fake news and stop using “free speech” as a reason not to remove such content from their servers. Similarly, conventional media companies need to stop creating spaces for conservatives who deliberate engage in ‘whataboutism’ and spreading false narratives. Companies like CNN, ABC, NBC, et al. need to ban guests who deliberately use their television time to spread misinformation. The first amendment guarantees that government can’t punish unpopular thoughts; it doesn’t bind the free press from adhering to their moral responsibility to convey factual information and to educate people.
Likewise, political benefactors need to stop funding candidates who won’t commit to supporting democratic principles. There needs to be an agreement among allied groups of donors that if candidates engage in certain behaviors, they won’t receive contributions from people who sign on to such an agreement.
I won’t hold my breath on any of this happening. As I’ve said, I think the next 4 to 8 years will determine the next 40 to 80.
Trump is such a horrible and incompetent person that one would hope that the need to get him out of office would cause people to put aside their political differences to remove him. Some voters may prefer Republican policies but have enough sense to know Trump in office for another four years would have destroyed the country.
RIGHT WING MEDIA IS THE PROBLEM
Most right wingers, even in this economy, are employed. A lot of them aren’t that crazy about what they do for a living, they feel underpaid and overworked. If they own a business, they wish they were more successful so they could worry less and have more. They paid too much to send their kids to college, and they graduate without prospects. They can’t have everything they want, maybe they can’t afford the good steak or the good beer unless it’s a special occasion.
In general, they feel they give more than get. They feel undervalued and under appreciated.
The problem is, that’s human grievance, not white grievance. These are emotions that are common to 99.9% to the people on this planet. Everyone feels this way. Telephone psychics have been exploiting this for ages.
So has right-wing media.
It’s not your bosses fault you are underpaid, the laws and regulations pushed by the Democrats and “the elites” make it impossible to grow a business. Your boss is a bigger victim than you. He’d pay you more if he could, don’t blame him. And don’t blame the pharmaceutical companies for the drug problem in your communities, blame the liberals and their degraded morals.
And your prospects have been strangled by immigrants pouring across the Southern border. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never lost a job to an immigrant, illegal or otherwise, or that you don’t know anyone that has. But you know a lot of hard working Americans have lost their jobs to immigrants because Fox News says so. Just like a lot of them have been brutally murdered by these violent criminals breaching our borders. This must be a real problem, because Fox has a segment every night featuring the gory details of the latest illegal immigrant crimes.
Welfare queens are buying the steak and lobster you can’t afford with your tax dollars and Fox News found both of them and did a feature on them. The reason your kid can’t get into a good college is because less deserving minorities took his spot. It’s too expensive because your kid is subsidizing some black kids education.
And right wing media keeps doubling down on the victimhood narrative, and doubling down again until we are where we are now. Even though you’ve never seen a violent leftist mob, except on Fox, and don’t know anyone that has, they’re coming to burn down your house. You only lost this election because the Democrats, the enemy of you, the reason for your angst and insecurity, the devil behind the world that doesn’t appreciate you, cheated.
Right wing media IS the problem It’s a drug, and a good portion of the population is addicted. They got sucked in slowly, at first it was news that was slanted, just a little bit, in order to make these people feel better about their lives. Then the drug got stronger and stronger, until now there’s stuff out their that’s nastier than fentanyl.
Look at people like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. They may have been conservative assholes all along, but they were quite mentally competent - they were both federal prosecutors. Now they are insane. Literally insane, babbling and drooling about George Soros and commie plots and a massive organized international election fraud plot. And apparently this right wing media induced insanity has affected a large portion of the population.
Like drug addictions, it’s a highly profitable venture for the pushers. Hold your nose sometime and go to the InfoWars website.
The headlines are the typical aggrandizing bullshit (Alex Jones got to visit the moon with Elon Musk, or something) but what is significant is the banner across the middle of the page that says The Globalist Storm is Here, SHOP NOW.
This will take you to the InfoWars Store. It’s not just coffee mugs and tee-shirts. There are hundreds, if not thousands of products — many costing hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. Survivalist stuff, emergency generators and food supply. Spy gear, body armor, furniture with concealed compartments. Nutritional supplements, lots and lots of them. And you can also get coffee mugs, and a bag of “Wake Up America” Patriot Coffee.
Maybe all the Bloomberg’s and Zuckerbergs of the world should buy up Fox News, or something. I’d really like to see some new version of the Fairness Doctrine come into play, but I can’t see how that would happen.
But it’s a public health crisis, a big one. And the people affected won’t admit they have a problem. But fixing this would clear the big hurdle,
Then we could repeal Citizens United and restore faith in our election systems and all that stuff. But nothing’s happening as long Fox and NewsMax and OANN are poisoning the citizenry.
As I’ve pointed out, popular support for the Democratic party isn’t something new. It’s been thirty years now. Republicans can’t plausibly argue this was all due to Trump.