US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5763

On June 06 2026 03:42 Introvert wrote:


Do you know what "moderate" means in this discussion? It isn't with reference to some abstract ideal you made up. It is relative to the electorate.

On June 06 2026 04:04 EnDeR_ wrote:


So the point you're making is that Americans are so right wing that Trump can be perceived as a moderate in that context? I'm not even disagreeing on this one, just clarifying if that's what you meant.

On June 06 2026 05:34 RenSC2 wrote:

Let's watch how quickly this argument falls apart.

Is your argument that whatever is popular must be the "moderate" position? That's what your argument sounds like.

Do polls matter? If so, then Abolishing ICE is the moderate position. So anyone on the streets screaming to abolish ICE is actually a moderate. People who support ICE are radicals... do you support abolishing ICE or are you a radical? I assume you're also pro-choice and accept it as the moderate position since that one consistently polls higher than pro-life. So Democrats actually have the moderate position on that one and the lack of diversity on that position is a forced moderation by the party to get in line with what's popular.

So maybe polls don't matter, just elections? I would assume you now consider Mamdani to be the moderate mayor of New York, right? He won, he was the most popular, therefore (according to your logic) he must be moderate. Bernie Sanders is the moderate senator from Vermont.

Do you see how quickly this line of thinking falls apart?

The left-right spectrum is not about popularity. It's about looking at the range of possibilities with the moderate position falling somewhere in the middle. However, there should also be a weighting towards objective truth. If the far left says 2+2 is negative infinity and the far right says it's positive infinity, we don't just average it out and make the moderate position 0. There are some objective truths and the moderate answer to 2+2 should always be 4, no matter what's popular or what is being pushed by each side.

The Overton Window is a useful tool for finding moderation, but still flawed. It expresses the range of currently acceptable policies so that some might say 2+2 = 0 and others say 2+2 = 10, but nobody seriously proposes that 2+2 = infinity. Splitting the window can direct us towards moderation, but is far from perfect. It could make the moderate position 5, which is close to 4, but still misses the mark. We can use the Overton Window as a guide, but should still point to objective truths as much as possible to find moderate positions.

Real politics are much murkier and harder to find an objective truth, so I can understand your confusion about what's moderate. Should the government serve the people? Modern good governance says yes, but that wasn't always true in human history. Many Kings, Emperors, and other totalitarians through history have used the government to serve themselves. In modern times, we would not call those people moderates... but there was a time when that was normal.

Trump blatantly uses the government to serve himself and his cronies at the expense of the people. I'd say that's a radical departure from what has been the moderate viewpoint for my entire lifetime. It's the reason why you can get millions of people out on the streets for "No Kings" protests. "No Kings" has been the moderate position for quite some time. Trump is trying to change that and that's a radical departure from moderate.

On June 06 2026 07:22 Introvert wrote:

+ Show Spoiler + Moderate is relative, but sometimes it does slide around, thats true

On June 06 2026 07:22 Introvert wrote:


The thing about stuff like ICE is that dems confuse "abolish ICE" which might poll well for a while, with the policies they are associated with e.g. basically open borders for 4 years. The American people did not stop wanting deportations or border security, the same polls showed that. Moderate is relative, but sometimes it does slide around, thats true

On June 06 2026 08:40 Billyboy wrote:
When you are calling Trump moderate do you count what he says or what he does, because there is a massive gulf between the two.

On June 06 2026 07:41 GreenHorizons wrote:

This is a rational application of the thinking that MAGA could be considered "left wing" under the right conditions.

That Trump won the popular vote by moving some less popular Republican positions toward the "moderate" position is reasonable under that fungible framework. It's part of the reason I suggested it probably isn't really a desirable way to frame politics.

On June 06 2026 13:23 Billyboy wrote:
The basic question was how bad would the other person have to be for you to flip your vote. And your position is basically the Dems would do it for their Trump too. You treat your hypothetical like proof.

And I’m far from the only one who thinks the Republicans dramatically lost their way when they let this imbecile take full reigns with no adults left to keep him even a little contained.

On June 06 2026 07:18 Introvert wrote:


I'm saying that Trump took the side of the majority on most of the hot button topics of the election, while Harris was defending the record of an administration that was deeply unpopular, in large part due to the predictable results of certain policy choices. Trump had been president once before, calling him a fascist didn't work on anyone who did not already believe it. This is similar to a point I made during the election season. If dems really believed he was a fascist, they needed to reach out to people in the middle, at least. Instead, they basically had the attitude that "Trump is bad so you have to vote for us" but they didn't really make a good case. It was not believable.

The things people liked the least about Republican policies of the Romney-Ryan era Trump abandoned while emphasizing the things people do like.

GH is right insofar as he recognizes that I have tried to make the "if the shoe was on the other foot" argument for years now, but it falls on deaf ears even when the shoe has been swapped.

Some striking differences emerged. When we first asked students and postdocs how likely they were to stay in the United States, 93% said they thought they would. When we asked again six months later, 72% said they thought they would—a drop of 21 points in just half a year. Similarly, the share that expected to stay in academia fell from 66% to 44%, and the share satisfied with having pursued a PhD fell from 91% to 76%.

Many of the student and postdocs we talked to had trained as undergraduates outside the United States. That made a difference: When asked whether they intended to remain in the United States, the share of those who answered yes fell 31%, whereas the share of those trained in the United States fell by 16%. Among those trainees outside of the United States, Europeans showed the largest decline (–50 points), followed by Indians (–38), and Latin Americans (–14). That pattern fits an “outside options” story: The young scientists who face the fewest visa barriers and have the most robust alternative labor markets—as is the case for Europeans, Indians, and Latin Americans—are the most willing and able to reconsider their plans. But even among students who had trained as undergraduates in the United States, roughly one in six who had previously planned to stay was now actively considering a career abroad.

Why This Matters
There are three reasons we think the academic talent market is an accurate early warning system for the industrial R&D talent market:

Universities and companies draw from the same talent pool.

The United States built much of its scientific preeminence by attracting researchers from abroad. For firms whose competitive position depends even partly on the U.S. system continuing to train and retain world-class scientists, the question is no longer whether to plan for a different talent landscape. The question is how quickly. A 21-point shift in stated intent is not yet a 21-point shift in headcount. But by the time it is, the planning horizon will have closed.

On June 06 2026 13:23 Billyboy wrote:
The basic question was how bad would the other person have to be for you to flip your vote. And your position is basically the Dems would do it for their Trump too. You treat your hypothetical like proof.

And I’m far from the only one who thinks the Republicans dramatically lost their way when they let this imbecile take full reigns with no adults left to keep him even a little contained.

On June 06 2026 14:24 EnDeR_ wrote:


Ok, I understand what you are saying. Moderate = position with most support. In that specific framing, then yes, Trump may be seen as "moderate" as he reflects the broader American population. And as you correctly identified, that's because America is pretty right wing on average, so that would track.

It is an odd argument to make though. If America elected Bernie Sanders on what you'd consider lefty policies as president, then the same argument would yield that Bernie is a moderate since being elected president is the hardest proof you could produce that his policies enjoy the most support.

While you're here, I would like to get your take on this hbr.org: (they didn't include the data in the post so I haven't been able to check how accurate it is, but let's say it's not miles off for the point of the discussion).

Basically, what they're saying is that your high tech worker pipeline on which America depends for its prosperity is weakening.

These are their findings:


The timing of this tracks with the ICE drive to provide a hostile environment towards immigrants and the Trump administration decisions to mess with scientist funding.



Basically, people doing a scientific career today are your deep tech workers of tomorrow. The fact that these people no longer see America as a good place for them to live has downstream consequences.

For example, the article makes this point:



They are predicting a labour shortage as a result of the policies pushed by this administration.

On June 06 2026 15:20 Introvert wrote:


I've already told you before that while I agree with the broad goals of the administration I don't like the meat cleaver way they went at it. At the same time, there is still a lot of money to be made in the US so that will keep a decent pipeline at least.

See part of why I want a sane Dem party is because people who are "less moderate" can still win. People vote for all sorts of reasons. So I'd rather not have more radical opponents because they might win! And they might view that win as a mandate to do whatever they want! Both Biden and Trump I think have made that mistake. Frustration with the last guy is not carte blanche. What I said was that Trump was closer to the middle than Dems were. I don't want to reduce "the moderate normally wins" to a truism. We've had more conservative and more progressive presidents. Again I would just look at the examples I gave. On all those issues Trump was closer to the center. I am a conservative, I want more right-leaning candidates to win. But I also don't have this belief that there is a silent majority out there just waiting for a true believer of my exact politics. I am closer to most Americans in immigration than most Democrats are, and further to the right than most people in general on reforming social spending. And part of this is because so much of politics is, as the kids say, a vibe.

But I still say if one was trying to defeat a fascist they would soften they policy stances to try and prevent said fascist from winning. That might be the most stark example of being a "moderate."