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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Principles aren't necessarily a bad thing in politics. They only become a problem if you are so dogmatic about it that you aren't able to compromise about anything.
"Compromise when you can, but when you can't, plant your feet into the ground and say "no, you move"."
Sometimes the feet planting is important. For example when someone wants you to fund his stupid wall.
Cortez hasn't been in politics long enough to tell if she has a sense for how to compromise and when she doesn't, and if she is able to really research topics thoroughly enough. So I won't judge her one way or another. Though, for the record, she seems to be confused about what her politics actually is. She doesn't seem to be aware that her policies line up with her being a social democrat the most.
Edited by Swanpride on Jan 10th 2019 at 7:32:23 AM
Honestly, this is so common it's not worth talking about.
Decades of Right-wing abuse of the word socialism mean that pretty much any one to the Left of a neoliberal is going to be viewed as a socialist. It's simply another example of Americans using political words in a.... unorthodox manner.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jan 10th 2019 at 10:37:19 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang![]()
And so are people like Pelosi who's brilliant politicking has put Republicans in the bind they're in now.
"Anti-Establishment" in practice means being against anyone who's been in politics for any remotely serious amount of time or anyone who doesn't try to burn down political institutions for the sake of principles.
Edited by LeGarcon on Jan 10th 2019 at 10:42:38 AM
Oh really when?Conversely, unsurprisingly years of being part of the problem makes people not trust you.
There’s good and bad establishment politicians. Andrew Cuomo, for example, is an absolutely godawful establishment politician. But I’d be surprised to see many people call John Lewis establishment, given his track record.
"Establishment" is another of those political buzzwords that you can attach to anything you like to give it a negative connotation.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"AOC is not populist.
For starters, she's not a white guy. And she doesn't overvalue white guys in Whogivesashit, Flyover State like populists have been doing lately.
Hell because of that, you can't even call her a New Deal Dem either, considering what happened to the New Deal.
Re Deadbeatloser22's pointer: I can't help but be reminded for Paul Krugman's op-ed "Manhood, Moola, McConnell and Trumpism" and specifically this section
So yeah, this wall thing is basically Trump's giant penis symbol, and not something whose functionality is in any way important or a consideration.
*Editor's note: After the "discussion" where Trump stated his willingness to shut the government down for the border wall, Pelosi said that this wall is a "manhood thing" for Trump
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanFrankly, I think your position is shockingly American-centric, the rest of the developed world still has organized labor live and well (at least compared to America). The status-quo is not the only reality that can exist, it's merely the one that has been created.
The decline of the welfare state and of organized labor's decline has been most severe in the United States as a consequence of deliberate political action, but the decline is a global trend, as is the decline of welfare systems. (source: OECD data on union membership and welfare)
This is an unavoidable consequence of globalization, and particularly of the declining power imbalance between the developed and developing world, and rising standards of living in many previously poor parts of the world; the prosperity of the West in the 19th and 20th century was intrinsically linked to colonialism and imperialism. As the developing and developed world have begun to engage on more equal terms, what we have been seeing over the past ~30 years is a trend of regression to a global mean in terms of living standards, which I consider an acceptable and necessary tradeoff as a staunch internationalist.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 10th 2019 at 11:11:27 AM
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She's not a populist specifically pandering to white male resentment (for obvious reasons) but she's a populist.
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The wall being an example of Compensating for Something was pretty obvious.
"Higher it has to be higher! And add more gold! It has to be HUGE and SHINY so that everyone in the USA can see it!"
Edited by M84 on Jan 10th 2019 at 11:56:10 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedPopulism means playing to the public and that's a basic element of showmanship. The system in the United States is also very broken with gerrymandering, corruption, votes not representing the people as a whole, and croynism.
I remind people Obama was swept into office on a tide of "Embrace Change."
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.I actually addressed this the last time we had this conversation, and I have personal experience with this area from family in one of the IATSE stagehand unions. The unions that are still standing in the present day are generally white collar middle to upper-middle class professions with members who have globally marketable skills. Consequently those unions were able to adapt to globalization reasonably well, in contrast to their blue collar counterparts.
Which is a great example of principles over practicality in the United States's political system gives hugely disproportionate amounts of political power to rural flyover states; you can't get around having to play ball with those states no matter how much you want to. Which is why I'm pretty much convinced the US political system is doomed to a major systemic crisis sooner or later. There's no way to resolve this problem without a constitutional amendment and/or a breakdown of constitutional order like a civil war or coup, or less dramatically and far more plausibly a slow and gradual decay into illberalism consistent with what we're observing now.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 13th 2019 at 11:22:54 AM
There is a difference between Republicans not knowing the difference between social democrat, a socialist and a communist, and the person who fights for left-wing politics somehow not knowing where she fits on the spectrum.
And the Democrats should advertise with "for the people".
Edited by Swanpride on Jan 10th 2019 at 8:10:19 AM
Funnily enough, The Nation just published an article on populism this morning.
I think it adds a lot of useful context.
One of the most immediate issues I take with that article is that, like many other western sources, it frames democracy as if it's an end in and of itself rather than the historically optimal means of creating a functional society. I'll eventually make a long form criticism of the article so please bear with me.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 10th 2019 at 11:19:08 AM
There really isn't, when I said it wasn't rare? I wasn't talking about Republicans, many many progressives call themselves socialist when what they mean is social democratic.
The vast majority of people associate socialism with "the government doing something" because Republicans have spent years drilling it into the popular subconscious, it's not really something that says anything noteworthy about AOC.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang"Yes, and that prompted me to roll my eyes when I first saw those "Yes We Can" ads. I still liked his actual policy proposals more than the GOP ones, but still."
I mean, that's fair, but without that sort of thing, you end up with a perceived egghead bureaucrat — think underrated losing candidates like Adlai Stevenson. Also, this was during his campaign. When he was actually president, he was way more cerebral than the norm.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Jan 10th 2019 at 11:23:02 AM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."And if I recall, Obama didn't really go all-in on the "anti-establishment anti-elite" rhetoric anyway. My memories of those years are rather fuzzy. Unless you count the fact that he was a black man running for President to be anti-establishment in and of itself.
Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 12:25:28 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised

I see absolutely no reason to believe that, organized labor did not die because some natural law decried it. It did because of the systematic efforts of political actors, and that which was unmade by political actors can be made again.
Frankly, I think your position is shockingly American-centric, the rest of the developed world still has organized labor live and well (at least compared to America). The status-quo is not the only reality that can exist, it's merely the one that has been created.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jan 10th 2019 at 10:28:39 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang