Democrats already proposing austerity before DNC even ends
- Thread starter Eacaraxe
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True, but generally people don't. I'm guessing most people's knowledge of Elizabeth 1 is strictly pop culture, being played by Cate Blanchett twice and marrying David Tennant's Dr Who.
If to write historical fact was to commit sedition, and Shakespeare wrote historical fact, then Shakespeare committed ________ ?
We're not even at the level of an historical argument any more, we're debating the validity of modus ponens. You just admitted in the course of two posts both premises of that argument are true.
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Sedition, in any meaningful sense, requires intent (or gross negligence). So let's put it by analogy. One of my grandfathers kept a diary during WW2, which is now in my possession. What soldiers wrote would be checked, and indeed the censors blacked out words in his diary here or there. I defy anyone to credibly argue that this proves my grandfather was hoping to turn his diary over to the Japanese in order to pass them intel.
Censorship has routinely been carried out for centuries for authorities that want to be careful what gets published. If they don't like something, they just lop it: it's not an assumption of ill intent on the part of the author.
By nature of their genders and being thrown into a period of high political-religious turmoil, both had an exceptionally difficult task. They were both, I think, very talented and strong-willed. Mary was surely too committed to Catholicism for her country and thus too repressive. Otherwise she had too short a reign to make a clear judgement: much went wrong, but little of it seems to have been her fault. I think she is perhaps a somewhat tragic character, unhappy and unfulfilled, both personally and as a ruler. Elizabeth was perhaps lucky that for much of her reign things went right (except for near the end), although she ruled cautiously and prudently, and it served the nation well. She really did strive for religious tolerance: that should be applauded and she largely did well there. Her economic, military and political successes are often overstated, and perhaps modest. However, I think where Elizabeth I shines is that she was inspirational: her reign made England feel prouder and more confident, and that's what stuck with people about it in the long run.
What happened to this?
As well as this?
Strange that not even a page ago, English monarchs were hyper-vigilant, ultra-sensitive, authoritarian crusaders for their own power, and the mere hint of speech that may have been considered seditious was cause for capital punishment. That Shakespeare managed to avoid the headsman's axe at all was proof of innocence.
But now we're to believe these were kind, introspective, judicious people who had suspiciously post-Revolution, Enlightenment-era, notions of mens rea, despite having all but expunged the Magna Carta in practice. And even though Shakespeare may possibly, potentially, maybe if you squint and tilt your head enough, have written something someone may have considered seditious, the kind-hearted and forgiving nature of Tudor monarchs adequately shielded him from unjust punishment, so of course he's still innocent and these allegations for which there are literal receipts is mere speculation.
Perhaps calling them the House of Tudor and the House of Stuart is unfounded. I wonder, perchance, if they should be called the House of Schrodinger, instead.
That's just trying to manufacture a problem by being as unconstructive as possible, as evidenced by the hyperbolic and misleading rewording you subsequently carry out.
Back in the spirit of the thread: the Democrat strategy seems to be failing, for reasons that are glaringly obvious to most people.
No, because of the difference between party membership and voting inclination. For instance in the UK, there are about three times as many Labour party members as Conservative party members (and it was more like four or five times, until the UKIP and Brexit parties melted and their followers flooded back into the Tories). But the Tories are ahead in the polls.
The number of registered Republicans went into significant decline in the GWB years, and not entirely coincidentally, the number of registered independents rose by a similar amount. But despite ditching their party representation, those one-time registered Republicans remain heavily Republican-leaning voters. Thus there are lots more registered Democrats than registered Republicans, and registered Independents lean substantially Republican in voting intention.
When the Democrats say they want to pick up Republicans, they mean Republican-leaning voters, not registered party members: because its voters that matter.
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We can also talk about people who describe themselves as "independents" in terms of general affiliation, rather than registration - some 40% of the country. Evidence suggests that most of them aren't, in a way. Of the 40% who call themselves independent, well over half are actually very partisan. They call themselves independents more because they are apathetic or have significantly negative attitudes to politics. That's what's making them disinclined to affiliate with a party, not that they don't strongly lean towards its policies.
We could consider this in terms of the debates on this forum. I'll bet a lot the US progressives here might be reluctant to call themselves Democrats under the circumstances, but they'll go out and vote for the Democratic Party over the Republican Party without any hesitation at all.
You're right, which is why the Democrat strategy of appealing to them is, by all appearances, not at all working. Because if you lean Republican, you're going to just vote Republican. Why would you vote Democrat if you want a Republican?
Because you might view the Republican president as so incompetent that he needs to be removed at any cost.
Well it's not working, because he's popular among people who lean Republican still.
An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters
One of the biggest challenges facing those who seek to understand U.S. elections is establishing an accurate portrait of the American electorate and the
www.pewresearch.org
As reference, Hillary lost with an even split of independent voters, and Biden is trailing in independent voters by a not insignificant margin.
I always wonder how these work. Like...do they just ask the people in the surveys what they are? Do they have to "prove" that they're registered to a party to be counted?
It's just a CBS Poll so I can't imagine they'd have any ability to validate anything the person they are surveying is saying. Not that I'm doubting the survey poll thing they've got there, just kind of curious and talking out loud.
USA
The thing that always irritates me about the way they do polls, they are counting on people actually answering the phone and are also willing to talk to them instead of just hanging up like most people. They only get poll results from a certain personality type. I just either no not answer the phone or hang up, and so do most people I know . LOL
If you do the algebra from their poll results, you find practically an exact match to national party demographic, with maybe a couple percent over-representation of Democrats. It's very unlikely they hit the numbers by accident of sheer volume. They probably try to balance their results to the national demographics on purpose, and they may do so by knowing party registries before making the call.
That data is more than just the question, and it's guaranteed to be manipulated, because unmanipulated polling without a whole lot of knowledge of other variables is basically worthless.
A losing strategy for Democrats. Something that I don't think folks in leftist leaning internet circles get exposed to is that American Conservatives have just as much existential fear as American Liberals do. Leftists think conservatives are driving the environment to hell, rightists think leftists want to disarm them so that the leftist government can become a dictatorship. Leftists think rightists will put the gays in extermination camps, rightists think leftists will abort their babies. Leftists think the rich are destroying the middle class, rightists think the left will destroy the middle class just to keep the poor vote. And so on and so on. "Moderate" my ass. "Moderate" just means you don't agree with every tentpole Republican stance, "Moderate" means you might agree the environment needs cleaning up but you're so afraid of being disarmed that you can't take the chance on voting for the environmentally friendly party.
Chasing Moderate Conservatives is a losing proposition. Moderate Conservatives can and will b!tch and moan over the direction Trump is taking the party and country, but they're still going to vote for him because they can't risk a Democrat president upsetting the particular issue they stand by on the conservative side. There's no trust across the aisle from either side to the other that both are working for the best interest of the country, from different perspectives.
I'll be happy to eat my words if it turns into a winning strategy. But I doubt I'll have to.
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Though it provides little relief or confidence. I know of at least 2 people close to me who voted for Trump in 2016 that are not going to this time due to his shit show. Since they are the only 2 people that were close to me that voted for him, hopefully there are more. ONE of those was all in Pro Trump, so Trump must have done something really wrong to have pissed him off to have lost his vote. I just avoided discussing it with him for the sake of his wife, who also hated Trump, so it wasn't anything I had to say that changed his mind. She just said that he has just been " shaking his head" in disbelief at everything trump has been doing and calling him a "national embarrassment".
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It's calculated shift in lead by district, which is why it looks like Utah went really hard to HIllary when it didn't.
Source is the NYT.