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Northern Ireland26055 Posts
On June 23 2025 14:10 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 13:29 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 13:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 11:33 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? + Show Spoiler +Donald Trump is a 2x President so there is that.
The Democrats managed to lose 2016 to a Trump that wasn’t yet normalised. That dam was subsequently busted so I think that made it more difficult after the breakthrough.
They then lost to Trump again. They’re not exactly crushing it in the legislature either.
The current strategy isn’t doing super well in winning elections. I think in part because to appeal to a hypothetical independent who might countenance Trumpism, or a centrist Democrat, you have to push the envelope too far right and you lose the left.
It’s the old problem, it’s a cold night, your duvet is too short to cover you sufficiently. Pull it up and your feet get cold, push it down and your top half is getting chilly. Try to grab the mystical swing voters and you piss the left off.
I think it’s a pretty centrist country, run on that absolutely. Just throw some bones to the progressives.
Especially when the progressive positions are actually broadly popular, or indeed sometimes bipartisan. The Democratic Party hates easy wins for, some unknown reason. You can run from the centre, and give someone like Bernie Sanders prominence in an area he’s strong on. + Show Spoiler +
I’m absolutely not saying you do that and you cake every important election. It may be worth a shot though. And you can’t really assess its viability until it’s been tried and failed.
Not sure if you're joking here or not, but we all absolutely know a primary reason is the donor class and the related capitalist incentives. Campaign finance and regulatory capture are bipartisan/pretty universal complaints from voters that both sides are right about to one degree or another. They are also something pretty specifically demonstrating this problem of how the donor class prevents progress the majority of us agree on regardless of who is in power. Ok you got me I was just joking. Nobody can have any position or analysis that differs from yours unless they’re joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition Many apologies on forgetting this I just really thought you were probably saying it sarcastically while implicitly referencing the donor class. I didn't think you were saying it's actually a mystery to you why Democrats don't take the easy wins that would begin to fulfil their promises/help people at the expense of their wealthiest donors' preferences. Of course people can have positions and analysis that's different than mine and also not joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition. Plenty of Zams posts (and some of yours iirc) would be examples of analysis/positions that are different from mine but that I find reasonable to one degree or another. You have to remember that Democrats are closer to Republicans than they are to socialists. If the position/analysis is rooted in politics that oppose mine, it's only sensible to treat it as such.
Fair enough, apologies for the snark.
I think there are two rough classes of donor. One that funds to block politics they dislike (could be socialism, could be right populist), one that believe in the program as it were and want things done according to said program, in a quid pro quo fashion.
There’s plenty of both camps funding the Dems, indeed some fall into both categories.
They aren’t my shoes, but if I’m inhabiting them for a second. I’d be pretty pissed off if I was a particular wealthy donor, or a corporate donor as well. What am I paying for if you’re not winning?
The Dems are by intent and design awful at actualising genuine left wing policy, the thing is they’re also frequently ineffective as a centrist thru liberal bulwark as well.
If I’m assessing them through the latter lens, as I was when I said they hated easy wins, albeit without elaborating as to my reasoning, they frequently shoot themselves in the foot while trying to win from the centre. In ways that don’t even require them to deviate from the centre much at all.
Bit of a ramble, but some of my earlier points really do centre around the Dems not failing to represent my politics, I don’t especially expect that, but they kinda fuck up as a centrist party, in sometimes baffling ways.
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Northern Ireland26055 Posts
On June 23 2025 15:30 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 12:11 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 11:59 Mohdoo wrote:On June 23 2025 08:27 LightSpectra wrote:
What would you do if you found out Luigi was against bombing Iran? Nothing? I have enough sense to know someone who mirrors my beliefs is probably not someone I ought to look up to. Luigi is more of a referendum for me to read whether someone recognizes Luigi was a net positive for human lives and an important step in working class people remember why they have weekends. Luigi didn’t do shit though. Have insurance providers altered their procedures? It was an event that people fucked by the system could have a good wank over someone overseeing it getting their comeuppance, but it didn’t do anything. If it had lead to some kind of societal conversation and protests and anger that reformed things, then sure. It’s just cutting one of the heads of the hydra off, it’ll just grow back. And if you don’t politically capitalise on it you’ve just had some bloke shot in cold blood for no actual benefit. I’m not gonna build a shrine for the guy and light candles, but it accomplished basically nothing useful. United Health is facing a ton of pressure since the assassination (notmurderTM). https://www.newsweek.com/unitedhealthcare-struggling-recover-luigi-mangione-2073305
Well there ya go, seems I was pretty wrong on some things there. Fair enough!
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Two interesting bits of news today:
Republican lawmaker with ectopic pregnancy nearly died amid new Florida abortion laws – but blames the left
"Kat Cammack recounts emergency room ordeal but claims ‘fearmongering’ by Democrats and pro-choice activists sowing confusion among medical professionals"
"Cammack was only five weeks pregnant at the time, the embryo had no heartbeat and her own safety was in jeopardy, but nevertheless the congresswoman found herself forced to pull up the letter of the law on her phone to argue the case and even put in a call to Governor Ron DeSantis, without being able to reach him, before staff relented and came to her aid."
‘There Is No Intel’: Trump’s Attacks on Iran Were Based on Vibes, Sources Say
"Following Trump’s attacks on Iran, an admin official tells Rolling Stone, “The intelligence assessments have not really changed”"
"After President Donald Trump’s decision to strike three Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday, administration officials are barely bothering to pretend the unprecedented — and potentially calamitous — attacks were motivated by new intelligence suggesting Iran was on the brink of having nuclear weapons.
Just months ago, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress, in her opening statement, that the U.S. intel community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and had not reauthorized its nuclear weapons program.
While Trump recently publicly disputed Gabbard’s testimony, according to two administration officials with knowledge of internal deliberations in recent weeks, the president’s decision to strike was not driven by any new U.S. intelligence on Iran.
“There is no intel,” says one of the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “Nothing new, that I’m aware of… The president is protecting the United States and our interests, [but] the intelligence assessments have not really changed from what they were before.”"
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On June 23 2025 23:58 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 14:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 13:29 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 13:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 11:33 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? + Show Spoiler +Donald Trump is a 2x President so there is that.
The Democrats managed to lose 2016 to a Trump that wasn’t yet normalised. That dam was subsequently busted so I think that made it more difficult after the breakthrough.
They then lost to Trump again. They’re not exactly crushing it in the legislature either.
The current strategy isn’t doing super well in winning elections. I think in part because to appeal to a hypothetical independent who might countenance Trumpism, or a centrist Democrat, you have to push the envelope too far right and you lose the left.
It’s the old problem, it’s a cold night, your duvet is too short to cover you sufficiently. Pull it up and your feet get cold, push it down and your top half is getting chilly. Try to grab the mystical swing voters and you piss the left off.
I think it’s a pretty centrist country, run on that absolutely. Just throw some bones to the progressives.
Especially when the progressive positions are actually broadly popular, or indeed sometimes bipartisan. The Democratic Party hates easy wins for, some unknown reason. You can run from the centre, and give someone like Bernie Sanders prominence in an area he’s strong on. + Show Spoiler +
I’m absolutely not saying you do that and you cake every important election. It may be worth a shot though. And you can’t really assess its viability until it’s been tried and failed.
Not sure if you're joking here or not, but we all absolutely know a primary reason is the donor class and the related capitalist incentives. Campaign finance and regulatory capture are bipartisan/pretty universal complaints from voters that both sides are right about to one degree or another. They are also something pretty specifically demonstrating this problem of how the donor class prevents progress the majority of us agree on regardless of who is in power. Ok you got me I was just joking. Nobody can have any position or analysis that differs from yours unless they’re joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition Many apologies on forgetting this I just really thought you were probably saying it sarcastically while implicitly referencing the donor class. I didn't think you were saying it's actually a mystery to you why Democrats don't take the easy wins that would begin to fulfil their promises/help people at the expense of their wealthiest donors' preferences. Of course people can have positions and analysis that's different than mine and also not joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition. Plenty of Zams posts (and some of yours iirc) would be examples of analysis/positions that are different from mine but that I find reasonable to one degree or another. You have to remember that Democrats are closer to Republicans than they are to socialists. If the position/analysis is rooted in politics that oppose mine, it's only sensible to treat it as such. Fair enough, apologies for the snark. I think there are two rough classes of donor. One that funds to block politics they dislike (could be socialism, could be right populist), one that believe in the program as it were and want things done according to said program, in a quid pro quo fashion. There’s plenty of both camps funding the Dems, indeed some fall into both categories. They aren’t my shoes, but if I’m inhabiting them for a second. I’d be pretty pissed off if I was a particular wealthy donor, or a corporate donor as well. What am I paying for if you’re not winning? The Dems are by intent and design awful at actualising genuine left wing policy, the thing is they’re also frequently ineffective as a centrist thru liberal bulwark as well. If I’m assessing them through the latter lens, as I was when I said they hated easy wins, albeit without elaborating as to my reasoning, they frequently shoot themselves in the foot while trying to win from the centre. In ways that don’t even require them to deviate from the centre much at all. Bit of a ramble, but some of my earlier points really do centre around the Dems not failing to represent my politics, I don’t especially expect that, but they kinda fuck up as a centrist party, in sometimes baffling ways.
If you allow yourself to consider them as controlled opposition, then it isn't so baffling.
The ACA is Democrats most heralded accomplishment of our lives. Meanwhile, it was too right-wing for Nixon era Republicans and a HUGE win for health insurance companies.
That required a bipartisan effort to "boil the frog" so to speak.
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Forcing insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and expanding Medicaid by ten million people is not "too right-wing for Nixon-era Republicans". I know you're talking about the insurance marketplace, but ignoring the two aforementioned is pretty dishonest.
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On June 23 2025 21:37 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 15:23 Magic Powers wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? It's giving them a relief that they can say "at least we're not socialists". Americans have been eating the right-wing propaganda for generations. The big bad red boogeyman scares them to death because they associate him with the Soviet Union. They don't realize that being moderate in America means to be economically right-wing, because they're so deep in the capitalist hole that they can't even see the sunlight. We Europeans understand this because we - unlike the US - actually have a number of centrist economies. We know our socialist policies - they're not the Soviet Union type. We just have a more liveable experience because we're not full-blown capitalist, and that's all. Americans are scared of even the slightest touch of red. Unless it's the MAGA type of red. While I'm not denying the level of brain rot that the Red Scares have caused Americans, I really don't think most people are voting Cuomo over Mamdani just because the word "socialism" scares them.
I actually agree. Americans vote the way they do because they're scared of socialism, progressivism, gun control, police reform, school meals, vaccines, common core, trans athletes, pronouns, liberal arts, postmodernism, [insert never-ending list of boogeymen]. It's definitely not just socialism, it's a buffet of scares.
And it's not entirely just right-wingers who are afraid. Occasionally a liberal or a Democrat turns into a full-blown conservative depending on the topic. Right-wingers on the other hand are firmly united against all of it. This is why socialism is a hopeless endeavor in the US, because it's connected to a whole host of other boogeymen that splinters the left into half a dozen camps.
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On June 24 2025 00:02 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 15:30 Magic Powers wrote:On June 23 2025 12:11 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 11:59 Mohdoo wrote:On June 23 2025 08:27 LightSpectra wrote:
What would you do if you found out Luigi was against bombing Iran? Nothing? I have enough sense to know someone who mirrors my beliefs is probably not someone I ought to look up to. Luigi is more of a referendum for me to read whether someone recognizes Luigi was a net positive for human lives and an important step in working class people remember why they have weekends. Luigi didn’t do shit though. Have insurance providers altered their procedures? It was an event that people fucked by the system could have a good wank over someone overseeing it getting their comeuppance, but it didn’t do anything. If it had lead to some kind of societal conversation and protests and anger that reformed things, then sure. It’s just cutting one of the heads of the hydra off, it’ll just grow back. And if you don’t politically capitalise on it you’ve just had some bloke shot in cold blood for no actual benefit. I’m not gonna build a shrine for the guy and light candles, but it accomplished basically nothing useful. United Health is facing a ton of pressure since the assassination (notmurderTM). https://www.newsweek.com/unitedhealthcare-struggling-recover-luigi-mangione-2073305 Well there ya go, seems I was pretty wrong on some things there. Fair enough!
I'd love to say I told ya'll, but instead I choose to humbly sip on my covfefe and put the cup down with a big Joker grin on my face.
"You get what you [...] deserve."
And the people get what they deserve. One way or another.
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On June 24 2025 00:24 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2025 00:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 23:58 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 14:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 13:29 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 13:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 11:33 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? + Show Spoiler +Donald Trump is a 2x President so there is that.
The Democrats managed to lose 2016 to a Trump that wasn’t yet normalised. That dam was subsequently busted so I think that made it more difficult after the breakthrough.
They then lost to Trump again. They’re not exactly crushing it in the legislature either.
The current strategy isn’t doing super well in winning elections. I think in part because to appeal to a hypothetical independent who might countenance Trumpism, or a centrist Democrat, you have to push the envelope too far right and you lose the left.
It’s the old problem, it’s a cold night, your duvet is too short to cover you sufficiently. Pull it up and your feet get cold, push it down and your top half is getting chilly. Try to grab the mystical swing voters and you piss the left off.
I think it’s a pretty centrist country, run on that absolutely. Just throw some bones to the progressives.
Especially when the progressive positions are actually broadly popular, or indeed sometimes bipartisan. The Democratic Party hates easy wins for, some unknown reason. You can run from the centre, and give someone like Bernie Sanders prominence in an area he’s strong on. + Show Spoiler +
I’m absolutely not saying you do that and you cake every important election. It may be worth a shot though. And you can’t really assess its viability until it’s been tried and failed.
Not sure if you're joking here or not, but we all absolutely know a primary reason is the donor class and the related capitalist incentives. Campaign finance and regulatory capture are bipartisan/pretty universal complaints from voters that both sides are right about to one degree or another. They are also something pretty specifically demonstrating this problem of how the donor class prevents progress the majority of us agree on regardless of who is in power. Ok you got me I was just joking. Nobody can have any position or analysis that differs from yours unless they’re joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition Many apologies on forgetting this I just really thought you were probably saying it sarcastically while implicitly referencing the donor class. I didn't think you were saying it's actually a mystery to you why Democrats don't take the easy wins that would begin to fulfil their promises/help people at the expense of their wealthiest donors' preferences. Of course people can have positions and analysis that's different than mine and also not joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition. Plenty of Zams posts (and some of yours iirc) would be examples of analysis/positions that are different from mine but that I find reasonable to one degree or another. You have to remember that Democrats are closer to Republicans than they are to socialists. If the position/analysis is rooted in politics that oppose mine, it's only sensible to treat it as such. Fair enough, apologies for the snark. I think there are two rough classes of donor. One that funds to block politics they dislike (could be socialism, could be right populist), one that believe in the program as it were and want things done according to said program, in a quid pro quo fashion. There’s plenty of both camps funding the Dems, indeed some fall into both categories. They aren’t my shoes, but if I’m inhabiting them for a second. I’d be pretty pissed off if I was a particular wealthy donor, or a corporate donor as well. What am I paying for if you’re not winning? The Dems are by intent and design awful at actualising genuine left wing policy, the thing is they’re also frequently ineffective as a centrist thru liberal bulwark as well. If I’m assessing them through the latter lens, as I was when I said they hated easy wins, albeit without elaborating as to my reasoning, they frequently shoot themselves in the foot while trying to win from the centre. In ways that don’t even require them to deviate from the centre much at all. Bit of a ramble, but some of my earlier points really do centre around the Dems not failing to represent my politics, I don’t especially expect that, but they kinda fuck up as a centrist party, in sometimes baffling ways. If you allow yourself to consider them as controlled opposition, then it isn't so baffling. The ACA is Democrats most heralded accomplishment of our lives. Meanwhile, it was too right-wing for Nixon era Republicans and a HUGE win for health insurance companies. That required a bipartisan effort to "boil the frog" so to speak. Forcing insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and expanding Medicaid by ten million people is not "too right-wing for Nixon-era Republicans". I know you're talking about the insurance marketplace, but ignoring the two aforementioned is pretty dishonest.
A HUGE part of selling the ACA was constantly reminding people it was a Republican healthcare plan.
You could instead phrase it as Nixon's/Republican plans ~50 years ago were to the left of the ACA.
...it’s easy to see that Nixon’s proposals were far more “liberal” than what passed under the Affordable Care Act
ihpi.umich.edu
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On June 24 2025 00:25 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 21:37 LightSpectra wrote:On June 23 2025 15:23 Magic Powers wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? It's giving them a relief that they can say "at least we're not socialists". Americans have been eating the right-wing propaganda for generations. The big bad red boogeyman scares them to death because they associate him with the Soviet Union. They don't realize that being moderate in America means to be economically right-wing, because they're so deep in the capitalist hole that they can't even see the sunlight. We Europeans understand this because we - unlike the US - actually have a number of centrist economies. We know our socialist policies - they're not the Soviet Union type. We just have a more liveable experience because we're not full-blown capitalist, and that's all. Americans are scared of even the slightest touch of red. Unless it's the MAGA type of red. While I'm not denying the level of brain rot that the Red Scares have caused Americans, I really don't think most people are voting Cuomo over Mamdani just because the word "socialism" scares them. I actually agree. Americans vote the way they do because they're scared of socialism, progressivism, gun control, police reform, school meals, vaccines, common core, trans athletes, pronouns, liberal arts, postmodernism, [insert never-ending list of boogeymen]. It's definitely not just socialism, it's a buffet of scares. And it's not entirely just right-wingers who are afraid. Occasionally a liberal or a Democrat turns into a full-blown conservative depending on the topic. Right-wingers on the other hand are firmly united against all of it. This is why socialism is a hopeless endeavor in the US, because it's connected to a whole host of other boogeymen that splinters the left into half a dozen camps.
That's unfortunately been my experience. I know several people that are open to, even enthusiastic for, certain progressive policies like single-payer healthcare, but they refuse to vote for Democrats because they hate their stance on trans rights and gun control.
Sometimes winning elections requires some sensitivity to how the locals feel about this or that issue, which is why purity testing Democrats to death and letting Republicans who are worse on every single topic win in their stead is a pretty terrible idea. And I say that as someone passionate about all three of those issues.
On June 24 2025 00:33 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2025 00:24 LightSpectra wrote:On June 24 2025 00:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 23:58 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 14:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 13:29 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 13:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 11:33 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? + Show Spoiler +Donald Trump is a 2x President so there is that.
The Democrats managed to lose 2016 to a Trump that wasn’t yet normalised. That dam was subsequently busted so I think that made it more difficult after the breakthrough.
They then lost to Trump again. They’re not exactly crushing it in the legislature either.
The current strategy isn’t doing super well in winning elections. I think in part because to appeal to a hypothetical independent who might countenance Trumpism, or a centrist Democrat, you have to push the envelope too far right and you lose the left.
It’s the old problem, it’s a cold night, your duvet is too short to cover you sufficiently. Pull it up and your feet get cold, push it down and your top half is getting chilly. Try to grab the mystical swing voters and you piss the left off.
I think it’s a pretty centrist country, run on that absolutely. Just throw some bones to the progressives.
Especially when the progressive positions are actually broadly popular, or indeed sometimes bipartisan. The Democratic Party hates easy wins for, some unknown reason. You can run from the centre, and give someone like Bernie Sanders prominence in an area he’s strong on. + Show Spoiler +
I’m absolutely not saying you do that and you cake every important election. It may be worth a shot though. And you can’t really assess its viability until it’s been tried and failed.
Not sure if you're joking here or not, but we all absolutely know a primary reason is the donor class and the related capitalist incentives. Campaign finance and regulatory capture are bipartisan/pretty universal complaints from voters that both sides are right about to one degree or another. They are also something pretty specifically demonstrating this problem of how the donor class prevents progress the majority of us agree on regardless of who is in power. Ok you got me I was just joking. Nobody can have any position or analysis that differs from yours unless they’re joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition Many apologies on forgetting this I just really thought you were probably saying it sarcastically while implicitly referencing the donor class. I didn't think you were saying it's actually a mystery to you why Democrats don't take the easy wins that would begin to fulfil their promises/help people at the expense of their wealthiest donors' preferences. Of course people can have positions and analysis that's different than mine and also not joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition. Plenty of Zams posts (and some of yours iirc) would be examples of analysis/positions that are different from mine but that I find reasonable to one degree or another. You have to remember that Democrats are closer to Republicans than they are to socialists. If the position/analysis is rooted in politics that oppose mine, it's only sensible to treat it as such. Fair enough, apologies for the snark. I think there are two rough classes of donor. One that funds to block politics they dislike (could be socialism, could be right populist), one that believe in the program as it were and want things done according to said program, in a quid pro quo fashion. There’s plenty of both camps funding the Dems, indeed some fall into both categories. They aren’t my shoes, but if I’m inhabiting them for a second. I’d be pretty pissed off if I was a particular wealthy donor, or a corporate donor as well. What am I paying for if you’re not winning? The Dems are by intent and design awful at actualising genuine left wing policy, the thing is they’re also frequently ineffective as a centrist thru liberal bulwark as well. If I’m assessing them through the latter lens, as I was when I said they hated easy wins, albeit without elaborating as to my reasoning, they frequently shoot themselves in the foot while trying to win from the centre. In ways that don’t even require them to deviate from the centre much at all. Bit of a ramble, but some of my earlier points really do centre around the Dems not failing to represent my politics, I don’t especially expect that, but they kinda fuck up as a centrist party, in sometimes baffling ways. If you allow yourself to consider them as controlled opposition, then it isn't so baffling. The ACA is Democrats most heralded accomplishment of our lives. Meanwhile, it was too right-wing for Nixon era Republicans and a HUGE win for health insurance companies. That required a bipartisan effort to "boil the frog" so to speak. Forcing insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and expanding Medicaid by ten million people is not "too right-wing for Nixon-era Republicans". I know you're talking about the insurance marketplace, but ignoring the two aforementioned is pretty dishonest. A HUGE part of selling the ACA was constantly reminding people it was a Republican healthcare plan. You could instead phrase it as Nixon's/Republican plans were to the left of the ACA. Show nested quote + ...it’s easy to see that Nixon’s proposals were far more “liberal” than what passed under the Affordable Care Act ihpi.umich.edu
And what happened to Nixon's proposals? All you're telling me here is that Obama was savvy about marketing the ACA.
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On June 24 2025 00:34 LightSpectra wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 24 2025 00:25 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 21:37 LightSpectra wrote:On June 23 2025 15:23 Magic Powers wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? It's giving them a relief that they can say "at least we're not socialists". Americans have been eating the right-wing propaganda for generations. The big bad red boogeyman scares them to death because they associate him with the Soviet Union. They don't realize that being moderate in America means to be economically right-wing, because they're so deep in the capitalist hole that they can't even see the sunlight. We Europeans understand this because we - unlike the US - actually have a number of centrist economies. We know our socialist policies - they're not the Soviet Union type. We just have a more liveable experience because we're not full-blown capitalist, and that's all. Americans are scared of even the slightest touch of red. Unless it's the MAGA type of red. While I'm not denying the level of brain rot that the Red Scares have caused Americans, I really don't think most people are voting Cuomo over Mamdani just because the word "socialism" scares them. I actually agree. Americans vote the way they do because they're scared of socialism, progressivism, gun control, police reform, school meals, vaccines, common core, trans athletes, pronouns, liberal arts, postmodernism, [insert never-ending list of boogeymen]. It's definitely not just socialism, it's a buffet of scares. And it's not entirely just right-wingers who are afraid. Occasionally a liberal or a Democrat turns into a full-blown conservative depending on the topic. Right-wingers on the other hand are firmly united against all of it. This is why socialism is a hopeless endeavor in the US, because it's connected to a whole host of other boogeymen that splinters the left into half a dozen camps. That's unfortunately been my experience. I know several people that are open to, even enthusiastic for, certain progressive policies like single-payer healthcare, but they refuse to vote for Democrats because they hate their stance on trans rights and gun control. Sometimes winning elections requires some sensitivity to how the locals feel about this or that issue, which is why purity testing Democrats to death and letting Republicans who are worse on every single topic win in their stead is a pretty terrible idea. And I say that as someone passionate about all three of those issues. Show nested quote +On June 24 2025 00:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 24 2025 00:24 LightSpectra wrote:On June 24 2025 00:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 23:58 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 14:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 13:29 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 13:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 11:33 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? + Show Spoiler +Donald Trump is a 2x President so there is that.
The Democrats managed to lose 2016 to a Trump that wasn’t yet normalised. That dam was subsequently busted so I think that made it more difficult after the breakthrough.
They then lost to Trump again. They’re not exactly crushing it in the legislature either.
The current strategy isn’t doing super well in winning elections. I think in part because to appeal to a hypothetical independent who might countenance Trumpism, or a centrist Democrat, you have to push the envelope too far right and you lose the left.
It’s the old problem, it’s a cold night, your duvet is too short to cover you sufficiently. Pull it up and your feet get cold, push it down and your top half is getting chilly. Try to grab the mystical swing voters and you piss the left off.
I think it’s a pretty centrist country, run on that absolutely. Just throw some bones to the progressives.
Especially when the progressive positions are actually broadly popular, or indeed sometimes bipartisan. The Democratic Party hates easy wins for, some unknown reason. You can run from the centre, and give someone like Bernie Sanders prominence in an area he’s strong on. + Show Spoiler +
I’m absolutely not saying you do that and you cake every important election. It may be worth a shot though. And you can’t really assess its viability until it’s been tried and failed.
Not sure if you're joking here or not, but we all absolutely know a primary reason is the donor class and the related capitalist incentives. Campaign finance and regulatory capture are bipartisan/pretty universal complaints from voters that both sides are right about to one degree or another. They are also something pretty specifically demonstrating this problem of how the donor class prevents progress the majority of us agree on regardless of who is in power. Ok you got me I was just joking. Nobody can have any position or analysis that differs from yours unless they’re joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition Many apologies on forgetting this I just really thought you were probably saying it sarcastically while implicitly referencing the donor class. I didn't think you were saying it's actually a mystery to you why Democrats don't take the easy wins that would begin to fulfil their promises/help people at the expense of their wealthiest donors' preferences. Of course people can have positions and analysis that's different than mine and also not joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition. Plenty of Zams posts (and some of yours iirc) would be examples of analysis/positions that are different from mine but that I find reasonable to one degree or another. You have to remember that Democrats are closer to Republicans than they are to socialists. If the position/analysis is rooted in politics that oppose mine, it's only sensible to treat it as such. Fair enough, apologies for the snark. I think there are two rough classes of donor. One that funds to block politics they dislike (could be socialism, could be right populist), one that believe in the program as it were and want things done according to said program, in a quid pro quo fashion. There’s plenty of both camps funding the Dems, indeed some fall into both categories. They aren’t my shoes, but if I’m inhabiting them for a second. I’d be pretty pissed off if I was a particular wealthy donor, or a corporate donor as well. What am I paying for if you’re not winning? The Dems are by intent and design awful at actualising genuine left wing policy, the thing is they’re also frequently ineffective as a centrist thru liberal bulwark as well. If I’m assessing them through the latter lens, as I was when I said they hated easy wins, albeit without elaborating as to my reasoning, they frequently shoot themselves in the foot while trying to win from the centre. In ways that don’t even require them to deviate from the centre much at all. Bit of a ramble, but some of my earlier points really do centre around the Dems not failing to represent my politics, I don’t especially expect that, but they kinda fuck up as a centrist party, in sometimes baffling ways. If you allow yourself to consider them as controlled opposition, then it isn't so baffling. The ACA is Democrats most heralded accomplishment of our lives. Meanwhile, it was too right-wing for Nixon era Republicans and a HUGE win for health insurance companies. That required a bipartisan effort to "boil the frog" so to speak. Forcing insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and expanding Medicaid by ten million people is not "too right-wing for Nixon-era Republicans". I know you're talking about the insurance marketplace, but ignoring the two aforementioned is pretty dishonest. A HUGE part of selling the ACA was constantly reminding people it was a Republican healthcare plan. You could instead phrase it as Nixon's/Republican plans were to the left of the ACA. ...it’s easy to see that Nixon’s proposals were far more “liberal” than what passed under the Affordable Care Act ihpi.umich.edu And what happened to Nixon's proposals? All you're telling me here is that Obama was savvy about marketing the ACA.
Savvy at convincing Democrat supporters that using a significant Democrat majority to pass legislation Democrats and Republicans recognized as too right wing 50 years ago is laudable progress.
But again, that required decades of third way Democrats making the sort of arguments you are here and now to slow boil Dem voters into celebrating such a huge step backwards as their biggest accomplishment.
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Democrats didn't have a supermajority. They had 59 votes and Joe Lieberman, who was independent and refused to vote for the ACA if it included the public option.
But that aside, are you somehow insinuating it's Democrats' fault that America moved to the right? I'm genuinely curious how you think that happened. Republicans moved to the right and voters rewarded them with three landslides in a row. Were Democrats just supposed to shut up and lose every election and maybe eventually voters would come crawling back to them? That's what the left in Japan is doing, do you think that's working out for them?
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On June 24 2025 00:50 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2025 00:34 LightSpectra wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 24 2025 00:25 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 21:37 LightSpectra wrote:On June 23 2025 15:23 Magic Powers wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? It's giving them a relief that they can say "at least we're not socialists". Americans have been eating the right-wing propaganda for generations. The big bad red boogeyman scares them to death because they associate him with the Soviet Union. They don't realize that being moderate in America means to be economically right-wing, because they're so deep in the capitalist hole that they can't even see the sunlight. We Europeans understand this because we - unlike the US - actually have a number of centrist economies. We know our socialist policies - they're not the Soviet Union type. We just have a more liveable experience because we're not full-blown capitalist, and that's all. Americans are scared of even the slightest touch of red. Unless it's the MAGA type of red. While I'm not denying the level of brain rot that the Red Scares have caused Americans, I really don't think most people are voting Cuomo over Mamdani just because the word "socialism" scares them. I actually agree. Americans vote the way they do because they're scared of socialism, progressivism, gun control, police reform, school meals, vaccines, common core, trans athletes, pronouns, liberal arts, postmodernism, [insert never-ending list of boogeymen]. It's definitely not just socialism, it's a buffet of scares. And it's not entirely just right-wingers who are afraid. Occasionally a liberal or a Democrat turns into a full-blown conservative depending on the topic. Right-wingers on the other hand are firmly united against all of it. This is why socialism is a hopeless endeavor in the US, because it's connected to a whole host of other boogeymen that splinters the left into half a dozen camps. That's unfortunately been my experience. I know several people that are open to, even enthusiastic for, certain progressive policies like single-payer healthcare, but they refuse to vote for Democrats because they hate their stance on trans rights and gun control. Sometimes winning elections requires some sensitivity to how the locals feel about this or that issue, which is why purity testing Democrats to death and letting Republicans who are worse on every single topic win in their stead is a pretty terrible idea. And I say that as someone passionate about all three of those issues. On June 24 2025 00:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 24 2025 00:24 LightSpectra wrote:On June 24 2025 00:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 23:58 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 14:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 13:29 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 13:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 11:33 WombaT wrote:[quote] + Show Spoiler +Donald Trump is a 2x President so there is that.
The Democrats managed to lose 2016 to a Trump that wasn’t yet normalised. That dam was subsequently busted so I think that made it more difficult after the breakthrough.
They then lost to Trump again. They’re not exactly crushing it in the legislature either.
The current strategy isn’t doing super well in winning elections. I think in part because to appeal to a hypothetical independent who might countenance Trumpism, or a centrist Democrat, you have to push the envelope too far right and you lose the left.
It’s the old problem, it’s a cold night, your duvet is too short to cover you sufficiently. Pull it up and your feet get cold, push it down and your top half is getting chilly. Try to grab the mystical swing voters and you piss the left off.
I think it’s a pretty centrist country, run on that absolutely. Just throw some bones to the progressives.
Especially when the progressive positions are actually broadly popular, or indeed sometimes bipartisan. The Democratic Party hates easy wins for, some unknown reason. You can run from the centre, and give someone like Bernie Sanders prominence in an area he’s strong on. + Show Spoiler +
I’m absolutely not saying you do that and you cake every important election. It may be worth a shot though. And you can’t really assess its viability until it’s been tried and failed.
Not sure if you're joking here or not, but we all absolutely know a primary reason is the donor class and the related capitalist incentives. Campaign finance and regulatory capture are bipartisan/pretty universal complaints from voters that both sides are right about to one degree or another. They are also something pretty specifically demonstrating this problem of how the donor class prevents progress the majority of us agree on regardless of who is in power. Ok you got me I was just joking. Nobody can have any position or analysis that differs from yours unless they’re joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition Many apologies on forgetting this I just really thought you were probably saying it sarcastically while implicitly referencing the donor class. I didn't think you were saying it's actually a mystery to you why Democrats don't take the easy wins that would begin to fulfil their promises/help people at the expense of their wealthiest donors' preferences. Of course people can have positions and analysis that's different than mine and also not joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition. Plenty of Zams posts (and some of yours iirc) would be examples of analysis/positions that are different from mine but that I find reasonable to one degree or another. You have to remember that Democrats are closer to Republicans than they are to socialists. If the position/analysis is rooted in politics that oppose mine, it's only sensible to treat it as such. Fair enough, apologies for the snark. I think there are two rough classes of donor. One that funds to block politics they dislike (could be socialism, could be right populist), one that believe in the program as it were and want things done according to said program, in a quid pro quo fashion. There’s plenty of both camps funding the Dems, indeed some fall into both categories. They aren’t my shoes, but if I’m inhabiting them for a second. I’d be pretty pissed off if I was a particular wealthy donor, or a corporate donor as well. What am I paying for if you’re not winning? The Dems are by intent and design awful at actualising genuine left wing policy, the thing is they’re also frequently ineffective as a centrist thru liberal bulwark as well. If I’m assessing them through the latter lens, as I was when I said they hated easy wins, albeit without elaborating as to my reasoning, they frequently shoot themselves in the foot while trying to win from the centre. In ways that don’t even require them to deviate from the centre much at all. Bit of a ramble, but some of my earlier points really do centre around the Dems not failing to represent my politics, I don’t especially expect that, but they kinda fuck up as a centrist party, in sometimes baffling ways. If you allow yourself to consider them as controlled opposition, then it isn't so baffling. The ACA is Democrats most heralded accomplishment of our lives. Meanwhile, it was too right-wing for Nixon era Republicans and a HUGE win for health insurance companies. That required a bipartisan effort to "boil the frog" so to speak. Forcing insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and expanding Medicaid by ten million people is not "too right-wing for Nixon-era Republicans". I know you're talking about the insurance marketplace, but ignoring the two aforementioned is pretty dishonest. A HUGE part of selling the ACA was constantly reminding people it was a Republican healthcare plan. You could instead phrase it as Nixon's/Republican plans were to the left of the ACA. ...it’s easy to see that Nixon’s proposals were far more “liberal” than what passed under the Affordable Care Act ihpi.umich.edu And what happened to Nixon's proposals? All you're telling me here is that Obama was savvy about marketing the ACA. Savvy at convincing Democrat supporters that using a significant Democrat majority to pass legislation Democrats and Republicans recognized as too right wing 50 years ago is laudable progress. But again, that required decades of third way Democrats making the sort of arguments you are here and now to slow boil Dem voters into celebrating such a huge step backwards as their biggest accomplishment. Democrats didn't have a supermajority. They had 59 votes and Joe Lieberman, who was independent and refused to vote for the ACA if it included the public option. But that aside, are you somehow insinuating it's Democrats' fault that America moved to the right? I'm genuinely curious how you think that happened. Republicans moved to the right and voters rewarded them with three landslides in a row. Were Democrats just supposed to shut up and lose every election and maybe eventually voters would come crawling back to them? That's what the left in Japan is doing, do you think that's working out for them?
Fixed that before you posted, but yeah.
I explicitly said third way Democrats helped Republicans move the country right over the last 50 years. So much so that they have people like you defending the ACA despite it being so right-wing even Nixon Republican plans were to its left.
I'm not going to fit like 1000+ worth of my posts into this, but the gist of it is: In the 70's the radicals/activists started losing ground to the "pragmatic" third way types under the theory that the fighting of the civil rights era was over, it was time to take advantage of those gains and work from within the system (this was where Jesse Jackson's presidential run and the original rainbow coalition came out of).
The ACA example (but there are others like the Black-white wealth disparity) are demonstrative of how collosal of a failure that has been compared to the ~50 years of (still pretty moderate) progress lead by direct actions that preceded it.
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So when Republicans tried to repeal the ACA in 2017, did you call your Congresspeople and ask them to vote for the repeal because it was too right-wing?
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On June 24 2025 01:05 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2025 01:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 24 2025 00:50 LightSpectra wrote:On June 24 2025 00:34 LightSpectra wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 24 2025 00:25 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2025 21:37 LightSpectra wrote:On June 23 2025 15:23 Magic Powers wrote:On June 23 2025 10:52 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm not even denying anything you're saying above. All I've been saying is that your political platform is utterly worthless if it doesn't win elections, and winning elections requires getting independents to vote for you, and most independents aren't secret progressives waiting for true love's kiss to make them politically active.
People aren't voting for folks like Cuomo because they're stupid, they clearly feel like moderate liberalism is giving them something that progressivism isn't. What is it and why? It's giving them a relief that they can say "at least we're not socialists". Americans have been eating the right-wing propaganda for generations. The big bad red boogeyman scares them to death because they associate him with the Soviet Union. They don't realize that being moderate in America means to be economically right-wing, because they're so deep in the capitalist hole that they can't even see the sunlight. We Europeans understand this because we - unlike the US - actually have a number of centrist economies. We know our socialist policies - they're not the Soviet Union type. We just have a more liveable experience because we're not full-blown capitalist, and that's all. Americans are scared of even the slightest touch of red. Unless it's the MAGA type of red. While I'm not denying the level of brain rot that the Red Scares have caused Americans, I really don't think most people are voting Cuomo over Mamdani just because the word "socialism" scares them. I actually agree. Americans vote the way they do because they're scared of socialism, progressivism, gun control, police reform, school meals, vaccines, common core, trans athletes, pronouns, liberal arts, postmodernism, [insert never-ending list of boogeymen]. It's definitely not just socialism, it's a buffet of scares. And it's not entirely just right-wingers who are afraid. Occasionally a liberal or a Democrat turns into a full-blown conservative depending on the topic. Right-wingers on the other hand are firmly united against all of it. This is why socialism is a hopeless endeavor in the US, because it's connected to a whole host of other boogeymen that splinters the left into half a dozen camps. That's unfortunately been my experience. I know several people that are open to, even enthusiastic for, certain progressive policies like single-payer healthcare, but they refuse to vote for Democrats because they hate their stance on trans rights and gun control. Sometimes winning elections requires some sensitivity to how the locals feel about this or that issue, which is why purity testing Democrats to death and letting Republicans who are worse on every single topic win in their stead is a pretty terrible idea. And I say that as someone passionate about all three of those issues. On June 24 2025 00:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 24 2025 00:24 LightSpectra wrote:On June 24 2025 00:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 23:58 WombaT wrote:On June 23 2025 14:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 23 2025 13:29 WombaT wrote:
[quote]
Ok you got me I was just joking.
Nobody can have any position or analysis that differs from yours unless they’re joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition
Many apologies on forgetting this I just really thought you were probably saying it sarcastically while implicitly referencing the donor class. I didn't think you were saying it's actually a mystery to you why Democrats don't take the easy wins that would begin to fulfil their promises/help people at the expense of their wealthiest donors' preferences. Of course people can have positions and analysis that's different than mine and also not joking/malicious/stupid/conditioned/controlled opposition. Plenty of Zams posts (and some of yours iirc) would be examples of analysis/positions that are different from mine but that I find reasonable to one degree or another. You have to remember that Democrats are closer to Republicans than they are to socialists. If the position/analysis is rooted in politics that oppose mine, it's only sensible to treat it as such. Fair enough, apologies for the snark. I think there are two rough classes of donor. One that funds to block politics they dislike (could be socialism, could be right populist), one that believe in the program as it were and want things done according to said program, in a quid pro quo fashion. There’s plenty of both camps funding the Dems, indeed some fall into both categories. They aren’t my shoes, but if I’m inhabiting them for a second. I’d be pretty pissed off if I was a particular wealthy donor, or a corporate donor as well. What am I paying for if you’re not winning? The Dems are by intent and design awful at actualising genuine left wing policy, the thing is they’re also frequently ineffective as a centrist thru liberal bulwark as well. If I’m assessing them through the latter lens, as I was when I said they hated easy wins, albeit without elaborating as to my reasoning, they frequently shoot themselves in the foot while trying to win from the centre. In ways that don’t even require them to deviate from the centre much at all. Bit of a ramble, but some of my earlier points really do centre around the Dems not failing to represent my politics, I don’t especially expect that, but they kinda fuck up as a centrist party, in sometimes baffling ways. If you allow yourself to consider them as controlled opposition, then it isn't so baffling. The ACA is Democrats most heralded accomplishment of our lives. Meanwhile, it was too right-wing for Nixon era Republicans and a HUGE win for health insurance companies. That required a bipartisan effort to "boil the frog" so to speak. Forcing insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and expanding Medicaid by ten million people is not "too right-wing for Nixon-era Republicans". I know you're talking about the insurance marketplace, but ignoring the two aforementioned is pretty dishonest. A HUGE part of selling the ACA was constantly reminding people it was a Republican healthcare plan. You could instead phrase it as Nixon's/Republican plans were to the left of the ACA. ...it’s easy to see that Nixon’s proposals were far more “liberal” than what passed under the Affordable Care Act ihpi.umich.edu And what happened to Nixon's proposals? All you're telling me here is that Obama was savvy about marketing the ACA. Savvy at convincing Democrat supporters that using a significant Democrat majority to pass legislation Democrats and Republicans recognized as too right wing 50 years ago is laudable progress. But again, that required decades of third way Democrats making the sort of arguments you are here and now to slow boil Dem voters into celebrating such a huge step backwards as their biggest accomplishment. Democrats didn't have a supermajority. They had 59 votes and Joe Lieberman, who was independent and refused to vote for the ACA if it included the public option. But that aside, are you somehow insinuating it's Democrats' fault that America moved to the right? I'm genuinely curious how you think that happened. Republicans moved to the right and voters rewarded them with three landslides in a row. Were Democrats just supposed to shut up and lose every election and maybe eventually voters would come crawling back to them? That's what the left in Japan is doing, do you think that's working out for them? Fixed that before you posted, but yeah. I explicitly said third way Democrats helped Republicans move the country right over the last 50 years. So much so that they have people like you defending the ACA despite it being so right-wing even Nixon Republican plans were to its left. I'm not going to fit like 1000+ worth of my posts into this, but the gist of it is: In the 70's the radicals/activists started losing ground to the "pragmatic" third way types under the theory that the fighting of the civil rights era was over, it was time to take advantage of those gains and work from within the system (this was where Jesse Jackson's presidential run and the original rainbow coalition came out of). The ACA example (but there are others like the Black-white wealth disparity) are demonstrative of how collosal of a failure that has been compared to the ~50 years of (of still pretty moderate) progress lead by direct actions that preceded it. So when Republicans tried to repeal the ACA in 2017, did you call your Congresspeople and ask them to vote for the repeal because it was too right-wing?
Among other reasons, unless your actual Congresspeople pick up when you call , it's probably a waste of your time to call them for anything (likely still frequently is when they do). So no.
EDIT: On June 24 2025 01:19 LightSpectra wrote:
Haha, alright then. Glad we're on the same page then.
Doubt it. Unless you're identifying as a third way Dem trying to move people to the right?
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Haha, alright then. Glad we're on the same page then.
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Iranian strikes on US bases seems to have finished without issue. Happy to see it was just performative. Was probably coordinated with the US so ideally this all ends here. Then Israel can do whatever they want without us
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On June 23 2025 15:13 Broetchenholer wrote:
Ahem. Care to lookup the Iraqi Iranian war? Want to make the argument that the Iraqi military was so great compared to the Iranian again?
Yes.
In 1991 Iraq had about 4x the tanks that Iran has now, and about twice the soldiers iirc. I don't know if Iran has a single plane left or not, which makes the air force calculation problematic.
The Iraqi Navy in 1991 was blown up in 1 day. In the Battle of Bubiyan, one navy fighter pilot ran out of bullets and tried shooting a ship with an air to air missile. That is the level of the gap between a US/coalition military and the lone military of countries with "Ira-" at the front of their name. Similarly you can say a 5th grader might be stronger than a 4th grader despite that a high schooler can beat the shit out of either or both of them, and despite that the 5th grader has trouble dislodging the 4th grader when he's at the top of the jungle gym and especially if it's a 4th grader who is weak but several times the size of the 5th grader.
If you think the Iran-Iraq War lasting a decade means Iraq couldn't have had a better military at the time, you have no knowledge of history. This is absurd as saying the German Army wasn't better than the Red Army or that the Grande Armee wasn't better than Tsar Alexander's army, just because those armies didn't win handily, or indeed win at all. There's other factors than what's on paper. The Iran-Iraq War was a slugfest for reasons beyond "oh their armies must have been equal then."
At the time aside, Iran is definitely relatively weaker now than Iraq was in 1991 when they were decimated.
On June 23 2025 15:13 Broetchenholer wrote:
I guess after Iraq had not won anything from Iran despite being supported by the West and the Soviet Union, then had been cut off from the USs teat and bombed by daddy bush, what was left was the 4th best army in the world.
I don't know what the fuck this sentence means except you said "then" "bombed by daddy bush" and "what was left" which makes me think you confused me talking about the Iraqi military in 1991 with the Iraqi military in 2003.
Since I don't actually understand what you're saying so I can't see exactly where the misunderstanding is, here's another note. Iraq's military was stronger in 1991 than in 2003. The strengths of the militaries, again, is not why the "wars" take different amounts of time like occupying Iraq for 8 years or Afghanistan for 20.
On June 23 2025 15:13 Broetchenholer wrote:
Also, your argument that Iran has to be stopped because Iraq had to be stopped is flawed. A) Iraq didn't attack 20% of global oil, he attacked Kuwait. That's a difference.
Not my argument. The argument is neither has the ability to control the supply or production or trade of oil so long as one country with 50 stars on its flag says "No." They simply aren't strong enough. They lack the capability. The reasons Iraq and Iran would have to be stopped in each of their cases is 1) invading neighbors and 2) blockading global trade in acts of war, respectively. It's just a coincidence they happen to be in the same neighborhood where the heart of both issues is not only oil, but the exact same oil produced by the same set of countries. Those that decades ago didn't want Gulf oil and politics and sovereignty to be dominated by Ba'athism, and that now I guarantee don't want their rich peaceful oil trade blocked by the fanatic terrorist sponsors that lead Iran.
"Threat" doesn't mean attack, that's why I didn't say attack. The reason Saddam didn't go further into Gulf states, which produce the rest of the oil that goes out of the Persian Gulf, or the reason that he never got the chance to regroup and go later, is because of Desert Shield and then Desert Storm. The US neutralized the threat first. People whose heads are in the clouds dreaming of leprechauns and rainbows always defer to the rationality of authoritarian madmen when it serves rhetorical purpose. "Sure, he'll invade Kuwait, but he posed no threat to all the other rich oil countries right next door. It was just about not being landlocked, and then he'd stop. Sure, the Ayatollahs might get nuclear weapons, but they just have the right to do that because the only thing they want to do is make sure they don't get invaded, which nobody wants to do. And by the way if they don't get it they'll start mining and blocking and blowing up oil tankers and shooting missiles at US bases so you just know they'd never use nukes or sell or allow them into the hands of the others like how Pakistan shared with the DPRK."
On June 23 2025 15:13 Broetchenholer wrote:
B) Iran has not cutoff anything as a reason to attack them. They might do that as a consequence of being attacked.
Indeed. They might attempt to. In that case, they are less capable than Iraq when Iraq was smashed in a matter of months. So it would be stupid of them to try, it would unite all the people who buy oil from the Gulf against them (further), and they would get smashed handily.
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So assuming the middle ground where the war is as easy as the Iraq war and everything goes swimmingly. What does the US gain from doing that again? You still havn't paid off the loan load the previous war caused.
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Trump seems to be signaling he's cool walking away at this point. If this is the end of our involvement, I'm extremely pleased with how Trump handled it. Stepping in for a moment to entirely remove any hope Iran ever develops a nuclear weapon, then leaving right after, is ideal.
Since optimism is generally proven wrong, I remain concerned something breaks. But hopefully not.
Iran has officially responded to our Obliteration of their Nuclear Facilities with a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered. There have been 14 missiles fired — 13 were knocked down, and 1 was “set free,” because it was headed in a nonthreatening direction. I am pleased to report that NO Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done. Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their “system,” and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE. I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured. Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region, and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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I'm actually really progressive on economic issues: Social Democrat? Democratic Socialism? Fuck the rich, in short: but I have no fucking idea what the Left is thinking. Theocratic madmen using genocidal rhetoric? Decades of terrorism and threats of genocide? Thousands of innocents dead across several countries -- hell, armed proxies that helped a dictator kill hundreds of thousands of people-- and uranium enrichment several times whats required for civilian use? Yawn. They're no threat. It makes no fucking sense at all. Of course Iran is a threat, of course they cant be allowed to get nukes: yes the economic and political fall out is a risk and we dont fully know where it will go, but in balance the risk of inaction is clearly far worse. We dont need to occupy Iran. Decimate their military and defensive capabilities, reduce their nuclear program to a madmans daydream and move on. Arm opposition groups if you have to. It may -- very likely -- get quite nasty. The rolling effects of this could see a lot of people dead and instability across the region for a long time. But its better than a nuclear iran.
Also, theres a tendency in humans to accept and normalise the institutional violence of the status quo: like white supremacists referring to the jim crow south as peaceful, when in reality that 'peace and calm' was predicated on both actual violence every day as well as social violence. Before all this the Middle east was 'peaceful' if by peaceful we mean armed theocratic militias holding millions of people in bondage and threatening millions more with genocide and rape, a near constant flow of terrorism and threat, with the rising tide of tension and brinkmanship and potential disaster that accompanies all that "stability".
If you want peace, prepare for war. Sometimes a bad peace is worse than a good war. Take your fucking pick on the aphorism but the underlying point is the same. What we had before was awful and couldnt last-- and so it didnt. We might be in for a hell of a lot of suffering across the middle east but that cost was always going to be paid and is necessary to get us to a place of genuine stability.
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EPT
