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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Mmhmm. I can't not vote for Democrats no matter how I feel about their politics, because to vote for Republicans is literal insanity. This is not a recipe for getting sound policy (from either party).
Edited by Fighteer on May 19th 2022 at 2:48:32 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The only way this can reasonably be fixed is if the Republican party loses horribly in the midterms and in the 2024 election. Losing the majority of their seats would be the only way to really destroy them, and open the door for the Democratic party to create a second party more attuned. I mean, the Democrats already have all the old Rockefeller Republicans that can make up the center right, and progressives and other left leaning groups to make up a center left party.
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"![]()
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Which that itself is part of the polarization when one alternative is "destroy the other party and let the survivor replace with a better one".
Is something I have saying for a while but it means polarization is kinda low key afecting dems too in the sense that voting for party is becoming a death-or-life struggle for every-single-thing meaning the way to chose become sweker.
In short, republican madness is eventually afecting dems in other ways.
Edited by unknowing on May 19th 2022 at 3:01:34 PM
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"They cannot be allowed to have the majority, ever again. They've shown they're willing to destroy people's rights that have been fought for over the past generation, just to keep their own pathetic power and evangelical white supremacy. They are a threat to themselves and others, and thus, the party itself must go the way of the Whigs.
Edited by ScubaWolf on May 19th 2022 at 3:18:13 PM
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"The Republicans are sort of reforming by taking advantage of Trump's defeat and mixed performance of his preferred candidates to move beyond their diehard but increasingly unsustainable white voter base, and try to widen their coalition by recruiting POC into their coalition; preferably Latinos and Asians whose traditional cultures make them more inclined to agree with typical Republican talking points.
I already twice shared an excellent Newsweek article
that explains how, as someone else put it, the Republicans are happy to fund and run community centers for non-white areas with festivities, voter registration, and election polls if it means "owning the libs" down the line.
We should be careful not buy too much into the liberal-left meme that "Republicans are the party of white male Evangelical Christian supremacy", because that strongly implies that the GOP is resting on its laurels, unchanging, and unwilling to change its tactics.
On the other hand, there's still five months under November 8. The current election results show a mixed-bag rather than a clean sweep for either party. I would argue that we shouldn't simply assume that the Republicans will deliver a 2010 style wipeout at the end of May.
Edited by FluffyMcChicken on May 19th 2022 at 12:26:49 PM
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Yeah, that is the part im taking about polarization: we are pretty much saying "Dems must dominate in every area because every step taken will be bad" is pretty much republican delenda est a this point.
Which I get way but seriously "win so hard the party will self destruct and the dems will create another sane party" dosent sound fesable in any way posible.
Edited by unknowing on May 19th 2022 at 3:27:35 PM
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"And that's a huge part of the reason the Democrats are so fucking bad at PR on the national level. Their platform for decades (with the blip of Obama) has boiled down to "at least we're not them, right?" and "If you elect us, we'll protect Roe v Wade and other similar and incredibly important decisions...but not enough to actually try and make them settled law, that's not a priority, it'd mean we could lose our leverage over the voter base!"
Wishy-washy milquetoast garbage aimed at people who haven't been relevant in decades, combined with an assumption that "of course minorities will vote Democrat, why should we put any nation-wide effort into dealing with their issues?"
I mean...the Fifth Circuit Court just decided that the SEC has no power to enforce decisions without going through the courts. If they keep that up with other agencies and the Supreme Court just goes "yeah, sure, that sounds good" each time...that could strip the federal government of basically all of its power to actually do anything that isn't specifically stated by Congress.
This is a pattern that can and will lead to deaths, injuries, uncontained disease outbreaks, the courts getting so clogged up with procedural government agency actions that nothing else can happen in any reasonable timeframe...it's just full on cruelty for no discernable reason. There can't possibly be any definable goals from this because if it gets followed through, the US will just fracture and collapse.
The Democrats do actually need to get loud and direct and specifically call these things out on every level and explain the consequences.
Edited by Zendervai on May 19th 2022 at 3:36:08 PM
I'm just gonna say it one more time because apparently we're circling this drain again: Democrats don't have bad PR, you're just not the target audience.
The vast majority of Democratic-leaning and legitimately independent/undecided voters do not want to hear about burning down capitalism and replacing it with a socialist utopia. They don't want to hear about how megacorps are the sign of a broken society and justice cannot be done in a culture that tolerates the existence of billionaires. They don't want to hear that Republicans are the enemy and must be destroyed to save democracy.
Making that your message will not win you elections, and then you can't do shit because you're not the ones in power.
In a two-party system, you have to aim for wide appeal or you will lose. You do that by aiming your messaging toward the middle of your base, not the far end. Most of us here in this forum (myself included) are undoubtedly on the far end. That's not a bad thing, but you have to acknowledge that, or else you end up with unrealistic expectations and a warped perspective on what's actually going on in politics.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Okay, so what is the Democrat messaging? What are they championing? What are they condemning? What is their clear and coherent platform? What are the achievements of the Biden presidency that they're telling everyone about and banking on?
Because the only thing the average person seems to know anything about is the withdrawal from Afghanistan and some garbled mess about the Covid response. They're trying to target low information voters, seemingly without actually saying anything, and from what I've heard from some of my relatives, they have no goddamn clue what the Democrat platform even is beyond just pointing at the Republicans and going "not that".
The few times they've bothered to try and make a clear stand, they stop talking about it right after it happens, meaning that the low-information people have no idea that anything even happened.
If their PR is just not aimed at us, why is it seemingly failing to get anything across to the people it is aimed at? It could be very easily explained by the whole thing about them banking on just not being as bad as the other side.
Edited by Zendervai on May 19th 2022 at 4:29:52 AM
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Here's the problem, and I'm going to be perfectly blunt. If we're not the people the message from the democratic party is to, then why the hell should we even keep this system? Why shouldn't we burn it to the ground right now. Give me a damned good reason, because all you're doing is convincing people that burning it to the ground is the BEST idea. In other words, rethink what the hell you're trying to tell everybody before you start encouraging extremism with that nonsense. Because if neither side is representing a large amount of the population's views and we're stuck with a 2 party system, why should we even vote? Why should we even pay taxes?
Edited by ScubaWolf on May 19th 2022 at 4:36:45 AM
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"If you can't vote for something, vote against something. That's really where we're at currently. Not voting accomplishes nothing. All it does is send the message that there's no point in satisfying your needs.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If you’ve got a secret “destroy the two party system and replace it with a functioning multi-party democracy” button don’t hold out on us, press the dam thing.
You totally should be trying to change/break the system, but that destruction has to be done in a way that doesn’t cause things to get worse, which means the system destruction has to hit Republicans at least as hard as it hits establishment Democrats.
This is a different point to above. Because it starts with the premise that progressives are an unheard majority, rather than a growing minority that have to work with liberals and conservatives until they become a majority and can work alone.
As for why to vote? Because right now that’s the best weapons we’ve got for burning the system to the ground, it’s a slow burn and the fire has to be kept lit, but it’s the best weapon we’ve got and we need to use it every chance we get.
Taxes I’d argue should be paid out of a sense of civil responsibility, because that’s how we fund and support society, it’s how we help others. There’s also the self-interest reason of the IRS coming and kicking in your door.
But on the general point of big rebellion, there’s no reason not to engage in it if it can get the support needed. If you discover the ability to organise a general strike so as to being about positive change then don’t delay out of hope that current practices will be enough, do it.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranBroadly speaking, it's difficult for me not to ascribe to the cynical belief that the general public, even those who don't actively want harm for its own sake, doesn't care about anything important and would not be motivated by anything not pandering directly to them.
I hope that isn't true because if it is, it's a lost cause.
My musician pageWhat you call pandering they'd say is important to their lives or values. Most people aren't plugged into the news, most people don't understand why X causes Y. Heck, I barely understand why X causes Y half the time. Most people don't understand why this thing they want to happen isn't happening.
This isn't new. It's the same story since democracy was a thing.
If you want to win, then you need to meet these people where they are, unite over shared values, smooth ruffled feathers over not shared values, possibly coax them to change their minds over those not shared values, and organize so that they can advance those shared values.
Well, when I say "pandering", I should clarify it sometimes seems like "nothing short of outright bribes."
My musician pageIn the forthcoming revolution, let us not forget which part of U.S. society has been hoarding guns. Let us also remember that this part has already tried revolution and talks about it constantly. Are we sure we want to be grouped with them? The horseshoe effect looms.
If we lose, we might as well give up on progressivism for the foreseeable future.
Edited by Fighteer on May 19th 2022 at 5:35:29 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Edited by ScubaWolf on May 19th 2022 at 2:44:06 PM
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"