Sounds like trump is planning on nominating someone named Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court.

[Trunkage]

Consider, for a moment, in a vacuum, the idea that employers are obligated to pay for contraception. Out of context, the connection is so tenuous, 20 years ago you would barely even be able to explain to someone why you thought that was a given. Even further than that, you think that if employers don't have to pay for contraception by federal law, then it's a disgusting theocracy. That is a million degrees of non sequitur. That is the sort of position you reach when you determine your viewpoint based on politics rather than the inverse. Like, before the ACA, no insurer in the US had to pay for contraceptives. Does that mean the partial mandate makes us more theocratic now? What's the reasoning here?

I mean, I don’t want any employer to be involved with health care. It clearly doesn’t provide financial benefits and bans treatments based on ideology rather than science. It makes things worse than better.

Look, maybe 40 years ago, as contraceptives were still relatively new and the science wasn’t as concrete you might have a point. But in the year 2000? Maybe America is way different... which makes you start looking at what’s different between America and the West. Religion perhaps? But I digress.

And, I want to repeat, it is completely and utterly offensive that someone else religion dictates what medical treatments I get. That is wrong on so many levels. I don’t care if it’s Buddhist, Jainism, Jewish or Christian.

If a health insurer doesn’t want to provide that cover based on religion, I’m more okay with that (relatively speaking.) Or their interpretation of science. Mainly because the consumer has a choice. So, I wouldn’t get forced into your ideology due to your monopoly power. I’d prefer companies providing vochures or something so people can get their own insurance. Or a government making health insurance viable.

Like, the excuse that ‘my religion is important and everyone needs to follow my rules’ is so similar to how Sharia law works. But it’s worse because, in the West, Sharia law effects only adherents. It is BANNED from effecting those outside. Also, the 20 years excuse can get f’d, IMO. Just because that’s how it used to be, doesn’t excuse it now.

My politics and viewpoint is Jefferson’s wall. I know, that’s super offensive. Everyone is allowed to practice religion as they see fit UNTIL they start hurting anyone else. A lot of contraceptives provide medical benefits unrelated to birth control. My wife is not going to stop using a merina just because I get a vasectomy. Birth control is not the main reason why she uses them. Taking that away from her just because a god told you is hurting her.

 

[tstorm823]

A lot of contraceptives provide medical benefits unrelated to birth control. My wife is not going to stop using a merina just because I get a vasectomy. Birth control is not the main reason why she uses them. Taking that away from her just because a god told you is hurting her.

That's not a contraceptive then. Someone take hormonal medications for other purposes aren't being prescribed contraception, a drug is it's purpose. When you buy cold or allergy medicines with pseudoephedrine, you're not buying crystal meth ingredients unless you intend to take crystal meth. A glaucoma medicine might make your eyelashes grow longer, that doesn't mean you're using a beauty product. Medicines are prescribed with a purpose. It's not a list of chemicals that religious groups are exempt from covering, it's a particular purpose. Your wife would be covered.

 

[Silvanus]

There are plenty of reasonable things to impeach members of the Trump administration for. For example: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/impeach-bill-barr.html

Absolutely, there are; but that already wasn't your stated reason, and your stated reason would play terribly.

You just keep making this part up.

I mean, I find it kind of a statement of the obvious to say that calling a general strike on a party-political issue which doesn't command particularly broad support among workers is doomed to failure, and that calling a failed general strike would enact a terrible electoral cost among workers.

 

[Iron]

She’s only a cog in the theocratic wheel. Trump only being another small one. Neither of these two are controlling the cases that the Supreme Court sees.

Like, the US already has laws which protect discrimination against gay people based on religion. We just had a case about business owners not having to pay for contraception based on religion. Pence is pro-Billy Graham’s idea of the workplace. Excuse me for being concerned about religion getting rights it shouldn’t have based on Jefferson’s Wall. Becuase that’s now theocracy... making laws to benefit religious people and hurt others. Sure, not as bad as Iran but it’s already disgusting

Would you respect a person's religious sensibilities, and not demand them to go against them? This is also important here. You seem to focus only on the rights of the secular individuals and not the rights of the practicing individuals. Atheism is a small, dying breed of a lifestyle.

 

[Iron]

Was the Dem's plan to stack the court all along?

 

[Seanchaidh]

Absolutely, there are; but that already wasn't your stated reason, and your stated reason would play terribly.



I mean, I find it kind of a statement of the obvious to say that calling a general strike on a party-political issue which doesn't command particularly broad support among workers is doomed to failure, and that calling a failed general strike would enact a terrible electoral cost among workers.

You keep just filling in details that make your argument sort of work rather than considering alternatives. It's tiresome.

by the way, still happy with Starmer's leadership of Labour?

 

[Silvanus]

You keep just filling in details that make your argument sort of work rather than considering alternatives. It's tiresome.

We're both "filling in details": you're filling in details to create a chain of hypothetical events in which calling for a general strike ends up working (which requires a hell of a lot more assumption, I might add).

by the way, still happy with Starmer's leadership of Labour?

I assume you're referring to the suspension of Corbyn. I don't think that was a good move, no, though Corbyn's response to the report today was idiotic and was practically inviting some kind of censure in the current climate.

Overall, Starmer's policies and voting record are broadly the same as Corbyn's, but he's far more likely to win. So I'm not really happy (I wanted Angela Rayner to lead), but I'm happier than I was a few years ago. We have a chance to actually win, with a platform significantly to the left of that under Blair/Brown/Milliband.

 

[Seanchaidh]

but he's far more likely to win

i think i've had enough of this conversation

 

[Tireseas]

View attachment 1339

Sanders lost on his own though poor strategy and lack of outreach beyond his base, as well as grossly misinterpreting why and how he appealed to a subset of Democratic voters in 2016.

So what happened? Why didn’t the political revolution show up?

This is the sort of thing that political scientists and Democratic activists are going to be examining for years. But there are at least three big conclusions that we can draw that seem relatively well-supported by polling and research.

The first is that the Sanders theory rested in part on a Marx-inflected theory of how people think about politics. A basic premise of Marxist political strategy is that people should behave according to their material self-interest as assessed by Marxists — which is to say, their class interests. Proposing policies like Medicare-for-all, which would plausibly alleviate the suffering of the working class, should be effective at galvanizing working-class voters to turn out for left parties.

But this isn’t really how politics works, at least in the contemporary United States. Political scientists have found that, as a general rule, the specifics of policy positions and campaign rhetoric play little role in mobilizing turnout for a campaign.

[...]

“Most of the field experiments that I’ve seen — the published work in political science, as well as the internal tests within the progressive community — show that talking about policies and issues does not really spur turnout,” says John Sides, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University.

Second, it seems that Sanders and his campaign assumed that his popularity with the white working class in 2016 was about him and his policies — when, in fact, it wasn’t.

“The white working-class voters that Sanders won were mostly anti-Clinton voters,” McElwee tells me.

A regression analysis by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver finds support for this theory. Silver’s data shows that Clinton-skeptical Bernie supporters in 2016 were not progressives who opposed Clinton from the left, but from moderate or conservative Democrats who tended to have right-leaning views on racial issues and were more likely to support repealing Obamacare. These #NeverHillary voters also tended to be rural, lower-class, and white.

[...]

Third, the Sanders-socialist theory rested on a misunderstanding of the way identity works in contemporary American politics.

Americans do not primarily vote as a member of an economic class, but rather as a member of a party and identity group (race, religion, etc.). Trump won the overwhelming bulk of Republican voters in the 2016 general election, despite taking heterodox positions on a number of policy issues, simply because he had an R next to his name. His message resonated with working-class whites, but not working-class people of color, because it centered ethnic grievance and conflict.

This created a big problem for Sanders. His refusal to formally become a Democrat — and harsh attacks on the “Democratic establishment” — were much less likely to resonate with voters strongly attached to the Democratic Party. This effect seems to have hurt him badly.

They put all their effort into a strategy that was based on turnout of groups that don't generally turn out for primaries, younger voters primarily, and lost because they didn't have a strategy turn out enough to give him an outright majority and likely never could. Even Sander's campaign staff know this. Until Sanders supporters understand why he lost the 2020 primary in a more self-critical way, they will continue to lose elections to more moderate candidates.

Sanders Soared Back To Life. But He Couldn’t Close The Deal.

The Vermont senator's famous independence built a movement. It also made it harder for him to adapt to changing circumstances.

www.huffpost.com

And despite all this, I suspect 3-4 posters here will continue to insist of some kind of Democratic party conspiracy, likely with a link to a Jacobin article or some other source that makes its money pandering to Sanders dead-enders too stuck on insisting they could have won if not XYZ, continuing to ignore the older black voters that effectively determine the nominee. They may even link to a NYTimes article from February without actually reading it claiming it is proof. The reality is that that battle is lost, and I say that as someone who voted for Sanders.

As for the Barrett nomination, The GOP majority has shown itself willing to suspend any norm and rule to get a justice appointed. Anyone who thinks the Dems had the real ability to delay the nomination in a manner that didn't hurt the party in the general election is only lying to themselves. Given that that conversation is already ongoing, I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said.

 

[Silvanus]

i think i've had enough of this conversation

There was quite a lot of context around that little snippet-- about how his platform and voting history is broadly the same as Corbyn's.

If pursuit of electoral victory even without compromising on policy is unacceptable, I don't know what to tell you. Politics is probably the wrong game for you.

 

[Seanchaidh]

despite all this, I suspect 3-4 posters here will continue to insist of some kind of Democratic party conspiracy

You had MSNBC hosts talking about how they were going to be executed in Central Park after Nevada, but OK.

If pursuit of electoral victory even without compromising on policy is unacceptable, I don't know what to tell you. Politics is probably the wrong game for you.

You're the guy who was saying Corbyn shouldn't have purged the centrists because it would divide the Labour party and now that Starmer is personally intervening to purge the socialists, you say he's more likely to win. It is exhausting.

 

[Silvanus]

You're the guy who was saying Corbyn shouldn't have purged the centrists because it would divide the Labour party and now that Starmer is personally intervening to purge the socialists, you say he's more likely to win. It is exhausting.

He's not more likely to win because of this. I think this is a bad move, as I already said. It's exhausting being misrepresented and having to dedicate replies to correcting the record.

 

[Tireseas]

One.

You had MSNBC hosts talking about how they were going to be executed in Central Park after Nevada, but OK.

The problems identified are way fucking earlier than Nevada if you even bothered to read what I posted and linked. Some date back to when he launched his 2020 campaign, such as not registering as part of the party you're running to lead.

 

[Seanchaidh]

One.

The problems identified are way fucking earlier than Nevada if you even bothered to read what I posted and linked. Some date back to when he launched his 2020 campaign, such as not registering as part of the party you're running to lead.

I typically don't bother reading very far into your posts, you got me there. The utter irrelevance of "such as not registering as part of the party you're running to lead" vindicates that decision beautifully.

He's not more likely to win because of this. I think this is a bad move, as I already said. It's exhausting being misrepresented and having to dedicate replies to correcting the record.

The way you were treating the idea of purging centrists suggests that this would completely flip that script.

 

[Agema]

He's not more likely to win because of this.

Indeed not. But his hand is somewhat forced, as Starmer can't say the party has zero tolerance for antisemitism and then fail to take action when Jezza continues his years-long habit of not treating it with the seriousness it merits.

But that's the thing, isn't it: Saint Corbyn has the correct socialist values, so we're not allowed to criticise him even when he's wrong.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Indeed not. But his hand is somewhat forced, as Starmer can't say the party has zero tolerance for antisemitism and then fail to take action when Jezza continues his years-long habit of not treating it with the seriousness it merits.

But that's the thing, isn't it: Saint Corbyn has the correct socialist values, so we're not allowed to criticise him even when he's wrong.

The UK is utterly lost.

 

[Revnak]

The UK is utterly lost.

Please destroy the UK. Dreaming of a world with no more English.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Please destroy the UK. Dreaming of a world with no more English.

Can't wait to be angry about the results of this:

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Would you respect a person's religious sensibilities, and not demand them to go against them? This is also important here. You seem to focus only on the rights of the secular individuals and not the rights of the practicing individuals. Atheism is a small, dying breed of a lifestyle.

Those practicing individuals are free to not use the contraceptive healthcare that insurance provides.

But contraceptive care *is* healthcare, and insurance companies that provide healthcare should be providing it

 

[Silvanus]

Indeed not. But his hand is somewhat forced, as Starmer can't say the party has zero tolerance for antisemitism and then fail to take action when Jezza continues his years-long habit of not treating it with the seriousness it merits.

Corbyn's response to this really shows his inability to read a room. The ECHR report didn't assign personal responsibility: literally the only thing he had to do was speak with contrition, or not speak at all.

But if you use your response to the report to give a "but", and point fingers, it immediately makes this a test of Starmer's response in the public eye. And he cannot be seen to equivocate at this point, or it blows up again.