Except its barely at all like the right-wing populist European parties (who’ve only very recently become welfare chauvinist after espousing more traditionally market liberal positions) and far more akin to New Deal liberalism or traditional American left-wing populism of men like Huey Long with a better commitment to racial and sexual egalitarianism. By nationalism, I mean traditional American civic nationalism, not xenophobic, chauvinistic racial nationalism.
How are the Democrats conceding what’s made the GOP unacceptable? They sure as Hell won’t be advocating gutting Medicare or Social Security under my plan.
The last thing Democratic Party is to go further down the path of the Third Way and events since the commencement of the Great Recession have shown the ridiculousness and obsolesence of “fiscally conservative, socially liberal”, Wall Street Journal-Economist elitist centrism.
It will take Democrats to stop the elitist attitude Obama has towards working class white Americans about their fears of Islamic terrorism [and use the term!] (which while well founded, are a little more than other groups just as working class whites feared communism a little more than the other groups), and it will take the national party stopping picking fights over transgenders in girls’ bathrooms, or gay wedding cakes. Additionally, the issue of PCness helps Trump or any other Republican immensely.
Hillary is and was more popular with white voters than Obama. Its a shame the activist base of the party is trying to push her and the party so far to the left. I really don’t wanna see a left-wing version of the Tea Party. If Hillary can break with the rising left of the Dems, she can get back voters who woulda gone Obama in 2008 except for how out of touch he seemed with working class whites (yes some of who may have thought he was Muslim, and southern Democrats who are more conservative than other Democrats also fell for that, but Obama fed the perception himself by treating Israel so poorly even tho Israel is broadly popular in America, and touching Radical Islam with kid gloves, making some think Obama had a view of the world at odds with America). If she wins by enough, I bet she gets back one or two of AR, KY, WV, or MO. Also, she was beating Jindal in a Louisana poll, a state which Bill won twice, the second time 52-39.
What utter nonsense! Higher-income people tend to vote Republican; this is due in part to the fact that income correlates with age; the age-party correlation is as strong as the income-party correlation.
But adaher doesn’t know any of this, and seems to assume that the super-educated (who tend to vote for the rational good-spirited party) are also the super-rich and therefore the super-rich are Democrats! :smack: Methinks adaher knows few well-educated people, and few super-rich.
Obama didn’t treat Israel poorly at all - disagreeing with Netanyahu is not treating the country poorly - and he has killed tons of radical Islamists. You’re just repeating bullshit myths.
here’s the truth about Obama’s worldview. Aside from being wrong, it also feeds the “Obama’s a Muslim” perception.
What adaher could be referring to is that the serial blue states, or states that have voted Democrat at least 5 times since 1992, tend to be spectacularly richer than red states. While in those states, the rich usually vote more GOP, with 2008 being a notable exception, enough vote Democratic to perhaps feed the elite rich liberal perception. Obviously, its good for Democrats to have both rich and poor supporters. You can’t win otherwise, but some of those rich ones are San Francisco Prius-driving types.
That article is a laughable partisan hack piece. The biggest problem with Obama’s worldview is that he is not firm enough in his views and thinks mere “pragmatism” or “postpartisanship” will carry the day.
There is a correlation between poverty and lack of psychological development. That does not mean that there is blame to be portioned out. It is just a statement of fact. No need to get all up tight about it. And everyone goes through the different levels, and everyone generally has unresolved issues left at lower levels than what they self identify as.
Please don’t try to pick a fight or make up any accusations, just sharing information. If you’re interested in developmental psychology or spiral dynamics I can recommend the AQAL map. But I’m not interested in “defending” it or “arguing for it”, either you like it or you don’t.
Actually I take that back, Qin. I don’t think you should click the link or read any of the stuff that I wrote. I think it is much better if we just don’t communicate at all.
That link is crap analysis. Some people don’t like Obama’s rhetoric on Islamic terrorism – he doesn’t use the phrases you want, or whatever. But he still kills lots and lots of radical Muslims – he’s made a political choice to avoid certain rhetoric because he thinks it benefits the fight against radicals. If he chose to use “truthful” (if that’s what you want to call it) rhetoric and call them Islamic radicals, and radical Islamists, or whatever, that would also be a political choice – yes, politicians choose the words they use, whether “truthful” or not, for political purposes.
You can disagree – maybe different rhetoric would be better (though I don’t think so). But what he calls terrorists has nothing to do with his policies against them – and he’s proven much, much more effective at fighting terrorism than Bush. He’s kept America much safer IMO than Bush, and much safer than it would be under any of the Republicans.
Count me as someone who doesn’t see his rhetoric as a problem. Obama remains a good speaker, if not in the class of Clinton/Reagan, and is able to explain the problem more than well enough, and his UN speech still stands as a quite adequate rallying cry for the world to confront ISIS.
His real problem is the same one all Democrats have had in the post-WWII era: no plan, no strategy. He knows he wants to “confront” ISIS, but he doesn’t have any idea how to defeat ISIS.
There’s no opinion about it: He has absolutely factually kept America far safer than Bush did. Now, one might debate how much of that is due to his policies, as compared to simple luck of the circumstances, but the safety itself is indisputable.
The people who seem most sure of how to defeat ISIS are the ones I’m most scared of – all of their plans would greatly weaken America. Doing nothing is far better than doing what Graham wants, as is Obama’s actions so far.
IMO ISIS is unsustainable and will inevitably collapse at some point. I don’t know exactly when. A ground force led by the region might accelerate their collapse, and I’d be for supporting such an international force provided the great bulk of it consists of Middle Eastern troops. US-only (or almost only) troops might defeat the present iteration of ISIS, but will only accelerate and strengthen the next iteration, at great cost to America.
Perhaps, but helplessness in the face of threats is not something Americans appreciate in a President. Obama seems to realize that, so he vows to destroy ISIS, and he even laid out a four point plan that just ratifies what he’s already doing. So he won’t be Carterized by this, but Democrats are still going to take damage from it.
For better or worse, Americans prefer a bold plan to throwing our hands up. For the first time, Americans now support the use of ground troops. It’s coming in the next administration regardless of who wins.
Cite that Americans support the use of ground troops? I hope you’re wrong about it, since it’s my buddies that will bear the brunt of it, and our country that will be enormously weakened by it.
EDIT: Here’s the cite (it’s a small majority). Uggh. This small majority is very wrong. More war will just do further massive damage to this country, and get so many more Americans, including my friends, dead. No more war, no more dead Americans overseas for nothing but making things worse.
Uggh. adaher, your position will result in my friends dying for nothing but to increase the chaos in the Middle East and to greatly weaken America. Uggh.
ISIS cannot be allowed to control land. Now they are even using a Libyan air base to train pilots.
If you have better ideas, then I’d like to hear them. Americans will not tolerate your plan of inaction, however preferable it might be in the short term. BTW, I do acknowledge that at least for now, we’d lose less lives not fighting ISIS, and if we hadn’t started this war with them in the first place they might not be waging a terror campaign now. But our course has been chosen and the President has said clearly, many times, that we must destroy ISIS. Not destroying ISIS is not on the agenda.
So, what’s the best way to destroy ISIS? Who answers that question to the satisfaction of the voters will have a big leg up. Clinton, for her part, is at least sticking to tough rhetoric:
If avoiding an expanded war is your top priority, may I suggest a donation to Rand Paul’s campaign?
Wouldn’t one of the biggest disruptors of turning red states to blue as per the OP would be to have a kindergarten class (or an unbiased arbitrator) redraw districting lines to something that makes geographic sense? AKA remove egregious gerrymandering.
What Would It Take To Turn Red States Blue? More Republicans dying of old age… http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/the-gop-is-dying-off-literally-118035 There are less registered republicans every year because the average age of republicans is much older than the average age of democrats and they are dying off.
So if we just wait a little longer for the old republicans die off naturally the red states might turn blue. Republicans in the media also aren’t attracting new younger members. Fox has an older audience and they are losing ratings- in part because they are dying.
Republicans need to remain old fashioned and humorless.
Shows like Fox aren’t funny, young people are watching Bill Maher and John Stewart, not fox news. Why aren’t any Republicans funny or cool? I can think of lots of funny politically motivated democrat comedians, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Bill Maher but Republicans just are never funny or even interesting. There was Rush Limbaugh (unless he’s died) but he isn’t really funny or cool and now he is old, people like my grandparents used to watch him and now they are dead.
So to turn Red states Blue Republicans in the media, just have to keep being themselves- old, unattractive, and uncool so as not to attract young voters, and keep dying of old age.
I’m worried about the long-term. Invading will do great damage to America in the long term, and greatly strengthen extremists like ISIS (and their inevitable successors) in the long term. Invading could only harm the extremists in the short term.
I judge by actions not rhetoric. No matter what he says, ground invasion hurts America and strengthens extremists. It doesn’t matter if he says we must destroy ISIS – invading would be disastrous.
If you include the inevitable successor extremist groups to ISIS, then the best way to destroy them is to rally the region to lead a force to expel them, and support the region and neighbors in stabilizing Syria and Iraq. The US should not be the leader – any US led coalition will be doomed to fail, just by the nature of the population’s sentiment towards the US.
Based on his more recent rhetoric (and the pressure that being part of the war party would require), I trust him less to avoid war than either of the Democratic candidates.
And what does that have to do with ground troops? It’s really, really easy to destroy an airbase using only air power. Boots on the ground are completely irrelevant for that particular job. If we haven’t destroyed it already, the only reason is that we don’t want to piss off Libya. Is that the right decision? I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with avoiding a ground war.