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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
To clarify a bit on the discussion of The Young Turks from last page, the general consensus here is that TYT is the left-wing equivalent of Fox News — propaganda disguised as news, and just as morally reprehensible, even if we agree with their ultimate positions more often than not. The name itself is a reference to a historical group of real people in the Ottoman Empire during the early 20th century, who billed themselves as liberal revolutionaries. The problem is that they also conducted systematic genocide against minority groups (primarily Armenians, but also Greeks and Assyrians) once they'd assumed power. Modern day Turkey continues to insists that this totally wasn't genocide, and Cenk Uygur, the main personality behind The Young Turks (and himself Turkish-American) has an inconsistent history with the subject. (For years he denied it entirely, then he backed off and said maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, and within the last year or two he's finally started calling it a genocide.)
So, tldr, The Young Turks are assholes. They're hard-left assholes, but they're still assholes, so we treat them as such even though we're sympathetic to their political leanings.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Dems prepare to force Trump to reveal private talks with Putin – Key chairmen met with the House general counsel in a bid to put any subpoena fight on firm legal ground
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/16/dems-trump-putin-private-talks-1173275
What part of "they actually have a reason to oppose him" is so difficult to understand?
Mc Connel is supporting him because he's stuck between a rock and a hard place (and is a gigantic coward), the Supreme Court has no such restrictions.
And there are Republicans opposing him over it, and I would not be surprised if more start.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangEdited by Kamiccolo on Feb 16th 2019 at 11:56:40 AM
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They have really good reasons to oppose him ... and yet, they still aren't.
Corporations already aren't paying the taxes they owe to the government, so ... you want a politician who's going to give them an excuse to pay even less. Sounds like a winning economic policy there, sure.
Corporations should help support the infrastructure and communities that enable them to make profit. This is not a difficult concept. Additionally, trickle down economics has been thoroughly debunked. Lowering taxes on the lower end of the spectrum means that consumers spend more money, building a robust economy and supporting small businesses.
Lowering corporate taxes results in stock buybacks, not new jobs.
Edited by wisewillow on Feb 16th 2019 at 3:02:21 PM
I'm going to want some data on this, because things like Medicare for All
have high levels of support. So your claim that the electorate prefers policies at or to the right of Obama seems highly suspect.
Not to mention that the Democratic base has been going progressively to the left so ignoring that is bizarre, chasing mythical moderates while alienating your core base seems like a rather terrible idea.
You sure are quick to throw out terms like "basic economic knowledge" without any elaboration or citation.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 16th 2019 at 3:04:49 PM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangThe citizenry of the USA suffers under the delusion they are centrist. If you poll them on actual policy, and what kind of society they want, they are reliably deep red social democrats.
What AOC is succeeding in doing that a whole lot of her predecessors failed at is to get the media to actually describe her policies, rather than just call her "a radical leftist".
Sure, they are calling her a radical leftist, but they are doing it in the form of "A radical leftist who wants to tax income above ten million at 70%!" and "A radical leftist who wants medicare for all"... which is a dire political mistake, because both of those are really popular policies.
Heck, calling her a radical leftist who wants to do a green new deal is possibly the dumbest thing I have ever seen the gatekeepers of the overton window ever do, because the new deal is regarded as one of the best things to ever happen to the USA.
The data comes in both voting patterns and exit polls. Let us start with 2016. Primary: Clinton eviscerated Sanders despite treating him with the kid gloves and not taking the many cheap shots she could have taken while he never stopped complaining about her Wall Street speeches; in particular
she had a much stronger base in Latino voters, African-American voters, and highly educated white voters. Support for Sanders was very much limited to 18-29 year old white people in upper income percentiles. Montana: Steve Bullock, a bluedog democrat somewhat to the right of Hillary, won the gubernatorial race by 4 points. Montana voted for Trump by a whopping 21 point margin with 274,000 votes to 174,000 votes. The blue dog Democratic governor of Montana got 14% or 76,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton. West Virginia: Same thing. Democratic governor wins by 7 points whilst Hillary lost by 43 points. North Carolina: smaller gap but still the same story. Democratic governor wins by a few votes whilst Hillary lost. Maggie Hassan: Moderate democrat that actually got more votes than Hillary Clinton. Her moderate Republican opponent also got significantly more votes than Trump. Exit polls indicated that 74% of voters
◊ wanted either roughly Obama's level of policies (well within the moderate sphere) or something to the right of Obama. Only 18% wanted more leftist policies.
As for 2018. Far left candidates of the like embraced by Sanders and Cortez were crushed
handily
around the country. The moderate New Democratic caucus in the U.S. House endorsed 37 candidates in primary races, and 32 earned the nomination — an 86 percent win rate. By contrast, Our Revolution, the grass-roots organization founded and run by Bernie Sanders’s backers, had a win rate under 40 percent in the primaries. Once the general election rolled around, 23 New Democrat-backed candidates flipped House seats to help gain the majority, while not a single Our Revolution-endorsed candidate captured a red seat. None. Zero. To quote the article:
"Speaking of zero, our team watched every one of the 967 ads that Democrats ran in competitive House districts since Labor Day, and just two candidates mentioned either Medicare-for-all or single payer, and of those, neither won. In the primary season, activists hounded Democratic candidates to endorse Medicare-for-all, the centerpiece of the Sanders agenda, and a fair number complied. By the general election, most of those candidates were in full retreat after a series of studies estimated the required tax bill at $32 trillion and noted other negative side-effects."
Edited by Kamiccolo on Feb 16th 2019 at 12:38:40 PM
The US has a really, really bad corporate tax regime, for reasons which basically boil down to "Politicians write themselves campaign donation checks by giving firms tax breaks". If you just got rid of all of those - Which, yes, you should do, because they are an insane distortion on your economy, you would massively raise the total corporate tax take, which is not a thing you want to do as a side effect of another policy. Maybe you want to do that deliberately, but you should not do so by accident.
So there is a good argument for a general reform of corporate taxes, where you calculate how much money you currently collect from corporations, as a percentage of corporate profit, set the tax rate to that, and go "No exemptions, rebates or breaks whatsoever".
Which would involve a pretty large drop in the official rate.
X4 All your data is about politicians, not policies. Let’s take a recent example, Florida in 2018 voted to restore voting rights to felons (a left wing policy) while electing republicans to both the governor’s mansion and the senate seat. Weed legalisation has seen similar results.
Americans like policies to Obama’s left and politicians to his right, it’s fucking weird.
Edit: In other news, the 2016 libertarian VP candidate is looking at running for the Republican nominee, he was heavily critical of Trump in 2016 and seems to be continuing in that direction.
Edited by Silasw on Feb 16th 2019 at 8:44:13 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

(Page Toppers - Part of a balanced breakfast!)
Edited by Bur on Feb 16th 2019 at 10:07:20 AM