US Politics: Biden vs. Trump and Corona, Thunderdome Society at Its Very Best

[Pecan]

15 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You and I, largely but not completely, want the same thing. Which confuses me when nudging things along almost always seems to be the better path than demanding everything or close to all at once. The latter rarely works. You must know this. 

How is nudging things along helpful for any issues that Democrats care about? If you believe in policies like universal health care, what does that even mean? Obamacare was one great big compromise that has now been almost entirely dismantled. Even employer-based health care is incredibly expensive. How has nudging things along helped with environment standards when Trump has essentially defanged the EPA? Nudging things along does nothing to help restore unions. 

All nudging things along means is to elect centrist Democrats that won't enact any sort of meaningful policies. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Also, in the Bernie-stans aren't real category, some nutter influencing a number of my hippie friends wrote this. They loved it:
 

Quote

Advice to Young Women Biden volunteers. Get a Covid-19 culture from a lab. Put it in your hair and wait to sniffy the pedo candidate to have a wiff. Your country needs you

Please stop pretending like these folks are not all over the place, and they are increasingly self-reassuring. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ThinkerX said:

I'm wondering...

Maybe the democratic party should start pushing a truly gargantuan 'vote by mail'/'absentee ballot' campaign everywhere its legal at the state level, ignore the noise from DC.  

I think this is exactly what they should do where they control all the levers of government. It will have the added benefit of putting pressure on the states that don't. I'd be interested to see if DeWine or Hogan in Maryland or Baker in MA would get behind such efforts.

[Larry of the Lawn]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's a harsh truth my friend. Small changes are better than none, especially when the promised ones are kind of laughable if we're being realistic. 

I'll still smoke a bong with ya, though. 

This is how they string you along.  Completely disagree but we've been down that road enough times.

 

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

No, she wouldn't have been forced to resign.  Ralph Northam is still the governor of Virginia.  As to your question, Warren wasn't my preference.  But if you're asking me to choose between Warren and Sanders, I'll take the former all day every day and twice on Sundays.  Sanders has plenty skeletons in his closet as well - as anyone who's been on the Hill for 30 years will.  If she did the same thing by pretending she was black or latinx, I would equally look over it because I'm a pragmatist.  There's no reason to insinuate I'm holding that to a different standard.

Not the same thing at all.  Northam didn't claim to be the first black governor of Virginia.  If Warren had claimed to be half-black she'd have been booted out of Harvard and never gotten to elected office.  This is a ridiculous comparison.*

*I know because I make them all the time 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, Pecan said:

How is nudging things along helpful for any issues that Democrats care about? If you believe in policies like universal health care, what does that even mean? Obamacare was one great big compromise that has now been almost entirely dismantled. Even employer-based health care is incredibly expensive. How has nudging things along helped with environment standards when Trump has essentially defanged the EPA? Nudging things along does nothing to help restore unions. 

All nudging things along means is to elect centrist Democrats that won't enact any sort of meaningful policies. 

Because the firebrands have been doing such a good job at advancing things. Oh, wait 

2 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

This is how they string you along.  Completely disagree but we've been down that road enough times.

Lol, more like this is the meat and potatoes of politics. The messy parts aren't fun, but the virtue signalling is quite easy. Now, if you will partake from a ways away, my friend. I need to see Ramesses get his ass kicked.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Not the same thing at all.  Northam didn't claim to be the first black governor of Virginia.  If Warren had claimed to be half-black she'd have been booted out of Harvard and never gotten to elected office.  This is a ridiculous comparison.*

So..your saying wearing blackface is more forgivable than Warren claiming Native American heritage on applications?  Because the point is it's at least just as bad.  And I'm not the one making the comparison, but no, she wouldn't have necessarily been "destroyed" if her claim about being half-black was similarly plausible to the story she related about her native heritage. 

[Pecan]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Because the firebrands have been doing such a good job at advancing things. Oh, wait 

 

But tell me how centrist Dem politics have made a difference in anything? 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Pecan said:

But tell me how centrist Dem politics have made a difference in anything? 

The New Deal, the Great Society, the ACA.  All enacted by "centrist" Democrats.  FDR ran on austerity in 1932.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, Pecan said:

But tell me how centrist Dem politics have made a difference in anything? 

Heard of this thing, wait for it, called the Affordable Care Act? 

A centrist president, with the help of a centrist Speaker and a centrist Majority leader in the Senate, got that Republican healthcare bitch passed and turned into law. 

How is the country, a decade later? Would you prefer it didn't happen? 

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

So..your saying wearing blackface is more forgivable than Warren claiming Native American heritage on applications?  Because the point is it's at least just as bad.  And I'm not the one making the comparison, but no, she wouldn't have necessarily been "destroyed" if her claim about being half-black was similarly plausible to the story she related about her native heritage. 

Nope.  My point is that one of those things was used to advance a career, and then defended well after it was clear it was wrong, and then the apology was pretty weak.  Warren could have used her platform to speak up for what she took advantage of but she didn't.

If she had just let it die after the initial push back it would have been one thing.  But she didn't.

I say this as someone who was vocally calling for Northam to resign.

[DMC]

Just now, larrytheimp said:

Nope.  My point is that one of those things was used to advance a career, and then defended well after it was clear it was wrong, and then the apology was pretty weak.  Warren could have used her platform to speak up for what she took advantage of but she didn't.

If she had just let it die after the initial push back it would have been one thing.  But she didn't.

Ok.  I really don't know how I got roped into this conversation.  I don't disagree with anything you said, but I also don't see how it refutes anything I've said.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Heard of this thing, wait for it, called the Affordable Care Act? 

A centrist president, with the help of a centrist Speaker and a centrist Majority leader in the Senate, got that Republican healthcare bitch passed and turned into law. 

How is the country, a decade later? Would you prefer it didn't happen? 

I mean, healthcare is still fucked, millions under insured or uninsured, and millions more will be in the coming months, and you've been dragging the guy who has been pointing out the shortfalls of the system, and saying we're better off voting for the health insurance industry shills who will stall in this for as long as possible.  Rad!

[OldGimletEye]

4 minutes ago, DMC said:

The New Deal, the Great Society, the ACA.  All enacted by "centrist" Democrats.  FDR ran on austerity in 1932.

Am I imagining things, or have left of center parties been getting creamed lately, not just in the US but around the globe?

[Fury Resurrected]

5 minutes ago, DMC said:

So..your saying wearing blackface is more forgivable than Warren claiming Native American heritage on applications?  Because the point is it's at least just as bad.  And I'm not the one making the comparison, but no, she wouldn't have necessarily been "destroyed" if her claim about being half-black was similarly plausible to the story she related about her native heritage. 

See, THIS is why I’m saying you personally aren’t putting the weight you would on it if it was about a different minority. Wearing blackface once is equivalent to you to redfacing for an entire career. Both are inexcusable and resignation worthy. Your whole argument seems to be “at least it wasn’t blackface”

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Am I imagining things, or have left of center parties been getting creamed lately, not just in the US but around the globe?

Nope been going on for a good quarter century now since comparativists started noticing the rise of far-right parties in Western Europe.

[Mexal]

3 minutes ago, Pecan said:

How is nudging things along helpful for any issues that Democrats care about? If you believe in policies like universal health care, what does that even mean? Obamacare was one great big compromise that has now been almost entirely dismantled. Even employer-based health care is incredibly expensive. How has nudging things along helped with environment standards when Trump has essentially defanged the EPA? Nudging things along does nothing to help restore unions. 

All nudging things along means is to elect centrist Democrats that won't enact any sort of meaningful policies. 

Unfortunately compromise is the essence of our political system and it's how the framers set it up. Bernie would have never gotten a single thing passed, even if his ideas were perfect (which they weren't). I'm all for him pushing the discussion and making a change on legislation, but there was absolutely zero chance, in today's political environment, that he could design, push and sell a piece of legislation that would tear down and rebuild a massive part of society. Personally, as a realist, I'll take some change over no change, losing elections and losing the court system for generations (which we're very very close to doing).

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

See, THIS is why I’m saying you personally aren’t putting the weight you would on it if it was about a different minority. Wearing blackface once is equivalent to you to redfacing for an entire career. Both are inexcusable and resignation worthy. Your whole argument seems to be “at least it wasn’t blackface”

Well, yes, my argument is blackfacing and redfacing should be treated the same way.  And while you may view Warren lying on applications as the same thing as the physical act, you're right, I find the latter more offensive as a concept.  A lot of people lie on their applications in the hope of advancement.  The intent is different than going out and dressing up as another race to laugh at them.

[Kalbear]

The only way that the US has ever changed massively and fundamentally is at the cost of massive social upheaval, civil war, or global war. The notion of agitating for it and being upset that we don't have it is kind of insane to me, the armchair revolutionaries willing to send other people to die for their glorious causes.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

Ok.  I really don't know how I got roped into this conversation.  I don't disagree with anything you said, but I also don't see how it refutes anything I've said.

Narcissism of small differences. It really is why the left can't have nice things, when the far left complain that the more practical left aren't really willing to ride or die for some cause. 

Because one of the four issues that got me into politics, LGBQ rights, same sex marriage and civil rights over all, hasn't advanced since I was a 16 year old in 2004 cursing Bush for his reelection techniques. 

I've often thought the greatest pride in my life was that the dean of my department said I was among the best students he'd ever taught, that he personally oversaw my honors thesis defense, and said that he may trust no undergraduate more to ever teach a class of his than me.

Nothing gave me more pride than being one of the junior staffers that helped get a hand of power to strike down an evil insult of a Constitutional Amendment at the state level. If I accomplish nothing else in life, I still did good work. 

 

9 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I mean, healthcare is still fucked, millions under insured or uninsured, and millions more will be in the coming months, and you've been dragging the guy who has been pointing out the shortfalls of the system, and saying we're better off voting for the health insurance industry shills who will stall in this for as long as possible.  Rad!

No. Things are better. Do not let the good be the enemy of the perfect. 

I've been dragging someone who for years has been promising you an empty glass. I am confused as to why you still desire to drink from it. There's nothing there, man. 

[OldGimletEye]

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

Nope been going on for a good quarter century now since comparativists started noticing the rise of far-right parties in Western Europe.

Okay, I'm glad I'm not imagining things. Anyway, it seems to me that many of the problems facing the US left aren't just domestic problems, but ones that are shared by left wing parties all over the globe, leading to the rise of ultra right nationalist parties. A situation that if it continues seems to be pretty disturbing. I have spent some time trying to think how the trend could be reversed,, without coming up with any solid answers. But, its quite possible that appealing to centrist might be quite necessary if the bleeding is going to be stopped.