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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#290401: Sep 18th 2019 at 1:33:14 PM

[up]x5 To be fair, he did encourage a fair amount of Democratic primarying through Our Revolution. It went pretty much nowhere.

Edited by Ramidel on Sep 18th 2019 at 12:33:35 AM

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#290402: Sep 18th 2019 at 1:34:41 PM

Ya know what?

The notion that Sanders 'must' join the Democrats and be all nice and cosy with the establishment Democrats can go die in a fire.

Because you know what those Democrats (or their predecessors in the same faction) were doing just as Sanders was becoming politically active as a young Progressive?

Using the threat of the goddamn House Un-American Activities Committee and the Red Scare to purge their ranks of their Progressive and Socialist (well... Soc Dem) contingents until Liberals were the most left-leaning credible faction remaining in the party.

The Progressive faction of the Democrats didn't recover to be a credible force within the Democratic party until... *reads notes* A certain Senator from Vermont ran for the Democratic Primary in 2015 and showed young (and old) progressives that there is still room for them in the Democratic Party if they're willing to work with left-leaning Liberals to give voters an alternative to the right-leaning Liberal establishment Democrats.

So Sanders shouldn't work with the Establishment because of the... red scare?

That's a ridiculous argument, if Sanders doesn't want to work with the rest of the party then he has no place in politics. Warren has no problem pushing a just as progressive platform while not idiotically antagonizing them at every corner. Using a program that ended over forty years ago to justify not working with Establishment figures today is absolutely laughable.

Warren's acceptance by the Establishment and other people who normally wouldn't accept a strongly Progressive agendas merely shows how self-defeating Sanders' contrarianism truly is, all he's doing with his rhetoric is driving away voters like myself who either like or tolerate the Establishment.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 18th 2019 at 1:42:03 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
DrunkenNordmann from Exile Since: May, 2015
#290403: Sep 18th 2019 at 1:39:08 PM

Gotta be honest, at this point I have to ask if some people here are actually arguing in good faith.

Because other users and I have repeatedly explained that it's not about criticism and yet what we've been saying has repeatedly been either ignored or misrepresented.

It's getting really tiresome.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:40:14 AM

We learn from history that we do not learn from history
Robrecht Your friendly neighbourhood Regent from The Netherlands Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
Your friendly neighbourhood Regent
#290404: Sep 18th 2019 at 2:16:26 PM

Warren's acceptance by the Establishment and other people who normally wouldn't accept a strongly Progressive agendas merely shows how self-defeating Sanders' contrarianism truly is, all he's doing with his rhetoric is driving away voters like myself who either like or tolerate the Establishment.

Is it?

Do you think the Establishment of the Democratic party would even look Elizabeth Warren's way if they could present Old White Guy Bernie Sanders as their dude instead?

I'm definitely not saying that Bernie's being nasty to the Establishment for Warren's benefit, but Bernie being nasty to the Establishment does indeed lead to them lending support to a candidate who main policy difference from him is that she's not nasty to them and, as a result, Sanders and Warren together work really well at dragging the Democratic Party's Overton Window to the left.

Their shared progressive policies are gaining a lot of popularity and the more Bernie shouts that the Establishment sucks, the more people go 'hey, that's not wrong', the more Warren teases the Establishment to the left and the more progressive voters think 'ok, they're really supporting Warren, maybe they're not so bad'.

Whether that's intentional or just a natural consequence of having two politicians with largely the same policies, one from an revolutionary standpoint and one from a reformist standpoint, it does work out well.

The point, by the way, I was originally trying to make when pointing to what the Democrats were doing when Sanders was first becoming politically active is that there's like forty years of bad blood between Bernie and the Democratic establishment.

And I'll reiterate that and add it's not reasonable to expect him to put all of that aside without the Democratic establishment also doing something to show that they're not the same shitty people they were forty years ago (like, say, by supporting Warren in earnest instead of dusting off the Problematic Old White Guy they used way back when to make Obama more palatable to the shit side of their base).

Angry gets shit done.
NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#290405: Sep 18th 2019 at 2:29:48 PM

The problem is that Bernie rails against the Democratic party as being corrupt, ineffectual, and insufficiently leftist, but then also accepts their support when he needs it.

This displays a level of hypocrisy that is troubling, regardless of whether or not Sanders' positions both in isolation and in comparison to the Democratic mainstream are correct.

"You're bad and I want nothing to do with you" on the one hand, but "I can't become President without your support, so you should support me" on the other.

If Bernie is happy to reject the Democrats when that benefits him and embrace them when that benefits him, what other principled stances is he willing to discard for the sake of expediency?

Edited by NativeJovian on Sep 18th 2019 at 5:30:14 AM

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#290406: Sep 18th 2019 at 2:40:33 PM

[up][up]I don't know if I agree but I do think that's a very compelling point.

Alright, in that case, I'm not going to mind Sanders being as anti-Establishment as he is.

But I still think he should join the Democratic Party, there is no law that Democrats cannot rail against the Establishment. Heck, Warren herself was known for being a pain to the Obama administration. We are a big tent and I really wish Sanders would've been part of it long before this.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 18th 2019 at 2:43:00 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Robrecht Your friendly neighbourhood Regent from The Netherlands Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
Your friendly neighbourhood Regent
#290407: Sep 18th 2019 at 2:44:49 PM

[up][up]Yeah... See...

The key point here is that Sanders doesn't rail against the Democratic Party as such, he rails against the Democratic establishment. He has indeed joined the Democratic party before, but never the establishment.

The fact of the matter is that whether intentional or just out of myopia, this insistence that Sanders join the Democratic party (read: establishment) and stop railing against it is really just (parroting) something that figures supporting the establishment have come up with to create a no-win situation for him.

Either he stops railing against the democratic establishment for the sake of gaining their acceptance and betrays his principles or he keeps railing at them while using their resources and betrays his principles that way.

And that's the way that the establishment always shuts down its opponents: They make themselves the only way to get sufficient clout to affect real change and then demand anyone seeking that clout promise not to change anything.

Do you want Bernie and his supporters to work within the system to affect change or would you rather they remain 'principled' until the moment the pressure gets to much and the molotovs come out?

[up] You're right, he should officially join the party at least. The Progressive faction of the Democrats isn't simply credible again, it's rising to prominence. They could use Bernie to give them some guidance in some areas and they could also use Bernie as an example of what to avoid in some other areas.

[down] (I was responding to you too, when I say your post, but it took some time tongue )

Edited by Robrecht on Sep 18th 2019 at 11:52:15 AM

Angry gets shit done.
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#290408: Sep 18th 2019 at 2:49:14 PM

[up]I mean, I'm literally talking about being a Democrat, as in a card-carrying member of the party.

I don't mind if he's critical of the Establishment, you convinced me of that, but I do want him to be part of the party beyond just joining to run for president.

It seems like you're conflating two concepts, joining the party and no longer attacking the Establishment that are orthogonal. A Sanders with a D next to his name doesn't need to, and probably wouldn't, behave any different than a Sanders with an I next to his name.

(Oh you're responding to someone else, my bad)

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 18th 2019 at 2:49:39 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#290409: Sep 18th 2019 at 2:52:21 PM

I mean, AOC (is that the correct acronym) seems pretty progressive, and although people here have criticized her on things, I don't think nearly as much as Sanders, because she also seems willing to also try and work with the "Establishment" in an attempt to make things better, instead of just railing against how badwrong it is like Sanders does.

I think the larger point being made here is that makes a difference in perception. The same seems to go for Elizabeth Warren.

Robrecht Your friendly neighbourhood Regent from The Netherlands Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
Your friendly neighbourhood Regent
#290410: Sep 18th 2019 at 2:53:25 PM

[up][up]I think we're both in agreement about wanting to give Bernie the D.

Edited by Robrecht on Sep 18th 2019 at 11:55:12 AM

Angry gets shit done.
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#290411: Sep 18th 2019 at 2:58:08 PM

[up] Indeed [lol]

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#290412: Sep 18th 2019 at 3:02:05 PM

I think self-proclaimed "progressives" complaining about "establishment" Democrats is a goddamn dog-whistle, and it reminds me a little too much of Republicans complaining about "elites".

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#290413: Sep 18th 2019 at 3:04:44 PM

Eeeeeeeeeh, while I do think that the Establishment is a rather amorphous term it's not nearly as vague as Republican usage of "Elite". I mean, fundamentally what Progressives are railing against is the Neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party that essentially took over in the 90's with Clinton.

It can be abused but that doesn't make it a dogwhistle.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#290415: Sep 18th 2019 at 3:17:20 PM

The key point here is that Sanders doesn't rail against the Democratic Party as such, he rails against the Democratic establishment. He has indeed joined the Democratic party before, but never the establishment.
That doesn't address my complaint at all. If Sanders' problem is with the establishment rather than the party, then why hasn't he joined the party? He can rail against the establishment much more effectively as a member of the party than he can as an outsider.

The fact of the matter is that whether intentional or just out of myopia, this insistence that Sanders join the Democratic party (read: establishment) and stop railing against it is really just (parroting) something that figures supporting the establishment have come up with to create a no-win situation for him.

Either he stops railing against the democratic establishment for the sake of gaining their acceptance and betrays his principles or he keeps railing at them while using their resources and betrays his principles that way.

Didn't you just draw a distinction between "party" and "establishment"? How can you immediately turn around and conflate the two? Bernie can and should join the party while continuing to criticize the party establishment. No one here is arguing that the party leadership is sacrosanct and everyone on the left should fall in line and stop complaining or leave the party.

And that's the way that the establishment always shuts down its opponents: They make themselves the only way to get sufficient clout to affect real change and then demand anyone seeking that clout promise not to change anything.
And that's the way Bernie Sanders sells his personal brand as the One True Savior: by inventing vague, nefarious enemies like "the establishment" and then promising to fight them to the last, and when he fails to actually accomplish anything he blames "the establishment" and cites it as evidence that the America needs him to be their One True Savior more than ever.

Do you want Bernie and his supporters to work within the system to affect change or would you rather they remain 'principled' until the moment the pressure gets to much and the molotovs come out?
Jesus Christ, false dilemma much? I want Bernie Sanders to work with the Democratic Party, because politics is a team sport and the only way to achieve real, lasting change is to join with other like-minded individuals and work together toward your shared goals. Bernie Sanders remaining independent benefits nobody but Bernie Sanders, because it allows him to craft a personal brand as a principled outsider fighting the good fight against an overwhelming system.

I mean, AOC (is that the correct acronym) seems pretty progressive, and although people here have criticized her on things, I don't think nearly as much as Sanders, because she also seems willing to also try and work with the "Establishment" in an attempt to make things better, instead of just railing against how badwrong it is like Sanders does.
Exactly: AOC bucks the establishment all she likes (she literally started her political career by defeating the incumbent Democratic Caucus Chair in a primary challenge, it doesn't get much more "bucking the establishment" than that), but she's still a member of the Democratic party. No one complains about her the way they complain about Bernie, because she is doing what we think Sanders should be doing.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Robrecht Your friendly neighbourhood Regent from The Netherlands Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
Your friendly neighbourhood Regent
#290416: Sep 18th 2019 at 3:38:06 PM

[up] I don't mind you doing a point by point reply, but could you at least check what else I've posted and/or said in the same post you're replying to?

'Cause, you know, you also quoting LSBK means that you had the opportunity to see the exchange between me and Fourthspartan.

That aside:

And that's the way Bernie Sanders sells his personal brand as the One True Savior:

Edit: Sorry, that was rude, here's something a bit better.

I think this may be a bit too cynical.

I don't think Bernie is all that concerned about 'building a brand'. If for no other reason than that he's been doing this for the last fifty years and he's not really adjusted his policies to be more popular throughout that time, his policies have just gotten more popular in the last decade or so.

Edited by Robrecht on Sep 18th 2019 at 12:41:53 PM

Angry gets shit done.
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#290417: Sep 18th 2019 at 3:45:13 PM

That wasn’t the point being made, the point being made is that Bernie has a huge ego and is a bad team player.

He does believe in his ideals, but he’s got a massive ego and that’s why he refuses to either join the Democratic Party or try and establish a new progressive party, he wants it all (in a political sense) to be about him, he and he alone will save everyone from the evils of the world.

He’s correctly identified many of the world’s evils, where he falls down is his persistent belief that he and he alone is about to combat such evils.

Honestly that’s the most amazing thing about him marching with the civil rights movement, him being willing to play second fiddle to someone else. His occasional racial misstep is nothing compared to his absurd saviour complex.

I guess the civil rights marches indicate that he didn’t always think that it had to be done by him and him alone, I suspect that seeing a lot of other progressive end up either dead or in jail left him feeling like the last man standing at some point.

Edited by Silasw on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:46:17 AM

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#290418: Sep 18th 2019 at 3:48:44 PM

[up]His ego really inflated in 2016. He originally went into the campaign trying to get his ideas out there and start a debate, and then he caught fire. And after becoming the face of progressivism, he let that go to his head and didn't do much of anything to stop his worshippers in the Unicorn Brigade from going full Jerkass.

He really started pushing his brand after 2016 with Our Revolution, putting his name on candidates who were primarying more moderate Democrats.

Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#290419: Sep 18th 2019 at 3:48:52 PM

To be fair, I'd argue it's plausible Bernie developed a messiah-complex well after the main Civil Rights movement. In fact, do we know when he began showing signs of it?

I could see the 2016 election specifically being something that drove him pretty far in that direction. A lot of people were selling him as a messiah-sort of figure and that could have gone too his head.

Leviticus 19:34
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#290420: Sep 18th 2019 at 3:56:06 PM

[up][up] Bernie has also been happy to back deeply regressive Democrats if they boost his ego, look at Gabbard, she’s a racist homophobe in deep blue Hawaii but has been close with Bernie for ages.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#290421: Sep 18th 2019 at 4:04:32 PM

So 538 has some polling information pointing to a truth I think most of us could have guessed: the Christian Right is doing a lot of work to drive liberals away from religion.

Over the course of a single generation, the country has gotten a lot less religious. As recently as the early 1990s, less than 10 percent of Americans lacked a formal religious affiliation, and liberals weren’t all that much likelier to be nonreligious than the public overall. Today, however, nearly one in four Americans are religiously unaffiliated. That includes almost 40 percent of liberals — up from 12 percent in 1990, according to the 2018 General Social Survey.1 The share of conservatives and moderates who have no religion, meanwhile, has risen less dramatically.

At first, it wasn’t clear why so many Americans were losing their faith — and of the available explanations, politics wasn’t high on the list. After all, there are lots of reasons why any individual person would stop attending church that have nothing to do with politics. A church scandal might spark a crisis of faith. You might begin to view a religion’s hierarchies or rules as antiquated, restrictive or irrelevant to your life. You might not have been that religious to begin with.

Social scientists were initially reluctant to entertain the idea that a political backlash was somehow responsible, because it challenged long-standing assumptions about how flexible our religious identities really are. Even now, the idea that partisanship could shape something as personal and profound as our relationship with God might seem radical, or maybe even a little offensive.

But when two sociologists, Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, began to look at possible explanations for why so many Americans were suddenly becoming secular, those conventional reasons couldn’t explain why religious affiliation started to fall in the mid-1990s. Demographic and generational shifts also couldn’t fully account for why liberals and moderates were leaving in larger numbers than conservatives. In a paper published in 2002, they offered a new theory: Distaste for the Christian right’s involvement with politics was prompting some left-leaning Americans to walk away from religion.

At the time, Hout and Fischer’s argument was mostly just a theory. But within the past few years, Margolis and several other prominent political scientists have concluded that politics is a driving factor behind the rise of the religiously unaffiliated. For one thing, several studies that followed respondents over time showed that it wasn’t that people were generally becoming more secular, and then gravitating toward liberal politics because it fit with their new religious identity. People’s political identities remained constant as their religious affiliation shifted.

Other research showed that the blend of religious activism and Republican politics likely played a significant role in increasing the number of religiously unaffiliated people. One study, for instance, found that something as simple as reading a news story about a Republican who spoke in a church could actually prompt some Democrats to say they were nonreligious. “It’s like an allergic reaction to the mixture of Republican politics and religion,” said David Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame and one of the study’s co-authors.

There's more in the link.

Robrecht Your friendly neighbourhood Regent from The Netherlands Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
Your friendly neighbourhood Regent
#290422: Sep 18th 2019 at 4:04:56 PM

Gabbard (..) homophobe

The other wiki disagrees with that one:

"Gabbard is a member of the House LGBT Equality Caucus, and has a 100% record in Congress for pro-LGBT legislation from the Human Rights Campaign, a group that advocates for LGBT rights. Gabbard's position on LGBT issues has changed over the course of her lifetime. In 1998, at age 17, she campaigned for an anti-gay rights organization founded by her father. She continued to oppose gay rights after becoming a state representative, when she testified at a Hawaii legislative hearing in opposition to civil unions. Since then, Gabbard has apologized for her previous stances, and has said that her views were changed by her experience in the military "with LGBTQ service members both here at home and while deployed" as well as seeing "the destructive effect of having governments … act as moral arbiters for their people.""

That said, Sanders associating with her is part of why I think Warren does better (still very much not perfect) on intersectionality and minority advocacy.

Bernie seem to think that, because Gabbard is a WoC (and a Hindu) that shares some of his economic views, supporting her is good, which erhm... Is, you know, better than refusing to support because she's not an Old White Guy, but it also sort of ignores that being a woman of colour does not actually make Gabbard a good person.

Edited by Robrecht on Sep 18th 2019 at 1:12:57 PM

Angry gets shit done.
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#290423: Sep 18th 2019 at 4:08:21 PM

Except I believe her father is still running the organisation and she’s been asked about that and has no issue with it.

She’s no longer openly homophobic because she knows it’d get her primaries, but I’m not buying her change of heart.

I admit that that’s in large part because I refuse to give her the benefit of the doubt, but Tankies don’t get the benefit of the doubt.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#290424: Sep 18th 2019 at 4:11:59 PM

Even if she's not a homophobe, she's absolutely an Islamophobe with ties to Hindu Nationalists who is the exact kind of awful un-progressive Democrat that Bernie should be opposing.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 18th 2019 at 4:12:33 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#290425: Sep 18th 2019 at 4:14:09 PM

[up][up][up][up]I've said it before: we need more Christian leftists who are willing to own their faith and speak for progressive values from a religious perspective. I know why they don't, but freedom of religion and separation of church and state don't mean you have to shove your values in a box.

Shit got real in the early 1900s when Progressivism was a religious mandate. (Of course, it also led to Prohibition, because sometimes people forget that the real world exists.)

Edited by Ramidel on Sep 18th 2019 at 4:32:44 AM


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