151–160 of 229 posts
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> republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending All they have is rhetoric, because their record with respect to actually doing it is not strong. Government deficits increased under every Republican administration in recent memory. They talk the talk, but never walk the walk.
So true. You can apply this to limiting federal government. The GOP used to all be about states rights to self government. It’s so reversed that it feels like that’s never been the case.
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Yeah... "I would do nothing different from Biden"[1] probably wasn't the right message at the peak of Biden's unpopularity. I wonder who came up with that, or if it was genuine. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...
Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? My probably wrong understanding was that people were still angry about the inflationary consequences of dealing with the pandemic and didn’t believe it was tapering off, didn’t believe that unemployment was low, didn’t believe that real wages were increasing. How could they have combated…
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> Remember, the voter decides based on what was already done, not what they say MIGHT be done in the future. How does that explain the outcome of Presidential elections that follow term limits? Donald Trump had no meaningful political record prior to the Republican primaries in 2015--and he was pro-Israel in his first term as well.
Stop thinking voters are rational. I remember the pro Palestine groups were threatening to not vote for Kamala if the Dems didn’t push for a cease fire or whatever. All while the other side was Trump. They didn’t go, “maybe we should do our best to prevent a worse situation“. Even back then I had a gut feeling something like this would have cost the Dems the election.
Biden and the Democrats erased Palestine. There is nothing anymore that Trump could do about it. He can't resurrect the dead. Everything happened because of Democrats, not Trump.
Voters are very rational. They know that Democrats were the bad guys. It's why they currently have a 17% approval rating.
Let's all focus on removing the rest of the Democrats from power and replace them with true anti-Israel candidates. That's the only hope for a modern society.
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This is the classic argument of "only Democrats have agency". 99% of the problem is Republicans, but here we are wishing the Democrats did more. They ran a perfectly fine campaign. Biden passed the biggest climate bill in history. Republicans ran an utterly disgraceful and wantonly malicious campaign based purely on lies and hatred. What I wish is that people voted rationally and maintained an iota of empathy and log…
My position is: Democrats, or someone else, needs to field good enough candidates, and run good enough campaigns with strong enough messaging, to defeat Republicans. What's your stance? "We should just ask the Republicans nicely to stop"? Will that work? What happens if they just keep being evil?
As to how to get Republicans to stop voting for evil? I have absolutely no idea and I'm not sure anyone does. I'm not sure why anyone thinks the Democrats can conjure great people either. I just think that Republicans are the bigger problem by far.
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> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024. The problem is that there was no primary. That really (really) hurt Democrats not only for that election cycle, but for future ones too, where candidates could have made their names known even if they did not end up getting the nomination.
> The problem is that there was no primary. I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate; who can add a final 5-seconds stinger to the end of the many intra-party attack ads against the nominee to say "I am _, and I approve of this message".
I grew up in Colorado, and a visit to NCAR was part of my elementary school education. I think it is so critically important to not only employ working scientists, but also share that science with the public. The republican machine vehemently disagrees, I guess. I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.
Yeah... "I would do nothing different from Biden"[1] probably wasn't the right message at the peak of Biden's unpopularity. I wonder who came up with that, or if it was genuine. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...
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> the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began. And back when we had an actual primary (rigged, with an overcrowded field), Warren was the choice to appease the 'progressive' identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie…
> identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie as an old white misogynist Yes, and I think that error had profound consequences. Democrats got so drunk on “demographics is destiny” they thought it was a good idea to shoot at their own side as long as the targets were “old white guys” and “Bernie bros.” For every white guy that left the party, two brown guys and girls would replac…
Democrats, as controlled opposition, intentionally lose in certain scenarios. FFS, they propped up Trump during his first run with their Pied Piper strategy which elevated him from meme-tier gameshow host to frontrunner, as exposed by wikileaks.
Republicans of course are no better. It's a carefully tuned machine of good cop / bad cop, and enough people fall for it to keep the illusion of democracy afloat.
What we functionally have is a uniparty of capital interests which depends on "idpol" types of division and distraction.
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> Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? For what it's worth, I think a lot of us Americans have realized that we don't understand the partisan dynamics either. Many of us are very confused about the ongoing support for Trump. There's clearly a huge chasm in mindsets, and personally I've made little headway in forming a plaus…
Go tune into reactionary talk radio for a taste. Really listen to what they're saying and just let it wash over you. I'll do this occasionally on long drives by myself when I'm out of range of familiar radio stations. The problem isn't so much differing values in terms of specific policies, but rather a deep chasm of anti-intellectualism that makes them mistrust anyone but their ingroup partisan preachers. Even if yo…
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> The specific issue that caused her to lose the election was her support for Israel. I'm american and I've never heard that. I've only heard her total unwillingness to be interviewed without a script. Perhaps what one hears varies across the country, of course.
> I'm american and I've never heard that. It's been in the news for a while. https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaz...
i meant actually "hear" as in from the large number of americans i see weekly.