I've already said, the Democrats will turn left or they won't get votes. It's not even something I have to do, we saw it happen to Hillary.Lil devils x said:
[POLITICS] If Trump is Innocent, he should prove it
- Thread starter Saelune
- Start date
How will them turning left win conservative seats? The biggest issue holding back Beto from taking Ted Cruz out was Beto's support for medicare for all, that was why he wavered on support after due to what happened during his congressional run.crimson5pheonix said:
I would love to live in a reality where we could win conservative districts with progressive agenda, but that will never happen. The only time that Democrats had a majority, it was a conservative majority, not progressive. How do we win districts where the voters there are terrified of progressive agenda? That is what we actually have to do to win enough seats to pass anything.
EDIT:
Have you even gone through the voter surveys from those districts to see what they are actually asking for? You cannot apply what people in AOC's district want to all districts or you will lose them all. You have to look at what the voters in that district want and offer it to them.
What held Beto back was being another half-assed centrist who gave tepid support maybe-kinda for left wing policies and a whole lot of vapid fundraising platitudes. Thus, he lost to a sneering homonculus of a senator. And unfortunately wants to try for president, which if he makes the nomination will be the Democrats taking the L again.Lil devils x said:
You would have to be delusional to think that a progressive could have beat Ted Cruz with all of the conservative voters here. He literally lost over medicare for all according to the data from the election. You are ignoring what the people in these districts will vote for all together and assuming you know better than they do which gets us nowhere. You can take a good look at Jill Stein's numbers if you want to see how much support a progressive gets on the national level, she has been running for some time now and how well has that turned out?crimson5pheonix said:
I still think Bernie is the best shot we have to convince conservative voters to vote for a progressive, though I still think he will have one hell of a fight. I could be wrong though, they have been moving right, not left as of late due to the same disinformation campaign that convinced you Hillary was worse than Trump. They are working hard to make socialism a dirty word right now and it appears to be just as effective as it was for them to convince you that the Clinton Foundation that saved hundreds of millions of lives was a " pay for play" profit scam for the Clintons. If anything this last election proved was that it doesn't matter how much good someone has done, how many people they have helped, people will believe the lie over everything else.
The smear campaign against Bernie has already been effective enough that Bernie likely will not even win the Primary and they will pit Biden in. I see that as a huge mistake, but what will it matter anyhow if they do not do something to better address the disinformation blitz.
Just to point out, the first campaign against Bernie was instituted by Hillary and the DNC, before you go talking about all the good she did. She's the one that kneecapped Bernie in the first place.Lil devils x said:
Her trying to win the primary does not suddenly take away the hundreds of millions of lives she helped save. The DNC and Hillary's campaign did some underhanded shit. Obama's campaign did some underhanded shit. EVEN Bernie's campaign has done some underhanded shit. I am not even sure if there is a campaign that has never done some underhanded shit. Trying to win is pretty much what politics is about. HOWEVER, Just as "Bernie Bro's" does not take away from all the good Bernie has done, neither does Debbie downer from the good work Hillary has done.crimson5pheonix said:
This is still not addressing how to combat the "disinformation blitz" to actually get someone like Bernie elected. Right now they are convincing the population that Bernie is a senile, delusional, crazy old man that will bankrupt the economy with his " dangerous" socialist ideas. Go ahead and explain how we can combat that to have him win the primary and then go on to beat Trump's constant BS afterwards?
Because you're not chasing conservative votes, you're chasing everyone else, something the DNC hasn't figured out yet and should have been illustrated beautifully by Hillary's campaign where she won the coasts that were going to vote for her anyway and abandoned everyone else, so she lost.Lil devils x said:
If they stop trying to win conservative districts, they lose all of those seats entirely. You act as if they haven't run progressive candidates in those districts, they HAVE done that and lost repeatedly. I see this all the time here in Texas. When they run progressives they lose everything. A complete blow out You are forgetting the majority of the population is conservative, at least until the babyboomers are gone, but then we have to deal with this whole new influx of Holy rollers and alt right recruits to worry about.crimson5pheonix said:
Your plan of only running progressives = lose everything.
Beto seems to me for all the world like an scion of the overprivileged who thinks political power is his birthright, not a tool to do good. But he's very charismatic, and you can't say that about Ted Cruz.crimson5pheonix said:
Can I ask what you consider "better" to be?crimson5pheonix said:
Well the last 30 years of running conservative Democrats hasn't worked, so why keep trying that?Lil devils x said:
I'm not sure about "very", though the bar is set extremely low with Cruz. Otherwise, accurate.Agema said:
Medicare for all, a living minimum wage, and a drastic decrease in foreign intervention would be a nice start. My hope beyond hope is to see the military budget get hacked to pieces, but that's genuinely a hard pill to swallow.crimson5pheonix said:
Thank you - interesting stuff.crimson5pheonix said:
I read about a speech Bernie gave in Trumpland covered by Fox, suggesting the Fox commentators were about to tear strips out of Bernie before being caught wrong-footed about how well a lot of what he said went down. Don't know how true that really is rather than a journalistic confection, but if it is, it's a big deal.
I think the Democrats have made a genuinely terrible job at appealing to a huge number of Americans they could win over. Part of the problem I think is that both parties have a set of core activists, and the party ends up dancing to the tunes of the core activists. In ways, sadly, that's often also a good electoral tactic, because it's often about motivating the enthusiasts to turn out more than providing a wider vision for the country. What I think Bernie and others reveal is that there are potentially a large number of Americans who can be won if only they got the messaging right. However, I suspect most of that party top brass like Pelosi (and of course in the last election represented by Clinton) are so totally in the pockets of the status quo that they're more interested in shutting that message down rather than using it. The Ocasio-Cortezes are perhaps a start, but it probably also needs people a little more from post-industrial and rural areas. The fear, however, is always that they scare progressives who are otherwise highly invested in a lot of the status quo - potentially often big donors often from the corporate world.
A question for the strategists and media-men. I'm certain that simply giving up on defending the platform and running someone else out of fear of attack ads isn't the way forward, though.Lil devils x said:
The opposition are going to attack whoever the Democrats put forward. You do not get to avoid that by fielding the most tepid, uninspiring, inoffensive candidate you can find.
Yes, but if you frame the question as a balancing act between the boring establishment and the hedonistic communists, people will forget to ask if either of those viewpoints offer anything of value in the first place.Silvanus said:
The only people who hate socialism are the greedy and the misinformed.tstorm823 said:
'Hedonistic communists'? You realize that's an oxymoron, right? Capitalism is the hedonistic side. The one that is supposed to allow for the luxury of the dollar. If anything, it is the push away from luxury that usually puts people off communism.
Bringing this back to the topic of the report, something interesting just popped up in my feed.
And it brings up an interesting point that seems to be getting left in the shuffle. Not an indictment of Mueller, mind you, just that the framework in which the report was made requires that we adjust our 'bottom line' fixation somewhat. Simply put, the legal framework Mueller was working with did not actually allow him to conclude that the president committed a crime. So - to borrow from an oversimplification in the video, "they were allowed to rule 'not guilty' or 'not not guilty', and they ruled 'not not guilty'". What makes this important is that we've been wont to think of the latter as saying that the evidence was inconclusive, when in fact it's quite the opposite.
Flat out accusing Trump of a crime was never on the table for Mueller due to the DoJ's policy not to indict a sitting president. As far as Mueller was concerned it wasn't the job of the investigation to level that accusation at a time when extant policy forbade the case from going to court. Instead, he saw the purpose of the investigation as "to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available". So saying that the report didn't say "Trump committed a crime" is a moot point because that is not an accusation that Mueller felt he was allowed to make in the first place. And when you understand the framework that he was working with, it forces you to take another look at the specific findings, and those...well, "wow" sums it up rather neatly.
Source. Nexus here meaning "a nexus between the act and an official proceeding"
And it brings up an interesting point that seems to be getting left in the shuffle. Not an indictment of Mueller, mind you, just that the framework in which the report was made requires that we adjust our 'bottom line' fixation somewhat. Simply put, the legal framework Mueller was working with did not actually allow him to conclude that the president committed a crime. So - to borrow from an oversimplification in the video, "they were allowed to rule 'not guilty' or 'not not guilty', and they ruled 'not not guilty'". What makes this important is that we've been wont to think of the latter as saying that the evidence was inconclusive, when in fact it's quite the opposite.
Flat out accusing Trump of a crime was never on the table for Mueller due to the DoJ's policy not to indict a sitting president. As far as Mueller was concerned it wasn't the job of the investigation to level that accusation at a time when extant policy forbade the case from going to court. Instead, he saw the purpose of the investigation as "to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available". So saying that the report didn't say "Trump committed a crime" is a moot point because that is not an accusation that Mueller felt he was allowed to make in the first place. And when you understand the framework that he was working with, it forces you to take another look at the specific findings, and those...well, "wow" sums it up rather neatly.
Source. Nexus here meaning "a nexus between the act and an official proceeding"
I'm sure there are non-hedonistic communists out there, but the vast majority of people on the "far-left" part of the spectrum treat physical satisfaction as the moral imperative. The average person advocating for socialism will also unrestrict practically any version of sex or drugs so long as done by consenting adults. They would disparage any religious, philosophical, or moral judgment that makes it's adherents think less of themselves for pursuing their base desires. They would defend the environment with romantic pictures of waterfalls and rainbows, and condemn industry for being unnatural and destructive. And of course, paint a picture of fat cat capitalists getting rich directly from the pain of others in order to condemn that wealth too. The underlying foundation of the modern left isn't just fairness and equality. The belief that I think binds all those positions together is the idea that pleasure is virtuous and pain is evil. That, philosophically, is hedonism.Saelune said:
And there are certainly hedonistic capitalists, but most of the people advocating for the virtues of capitalism in America are philosophically Christians. And there are certainly Christians who betray Christian virtue, but Christian virtues aren't hedonism. Prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity. Greed is sinful, lust is sinful, pride is sinful. Those of us who advocate capitalism do so with the confidence that people have used and will use their capital to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. We see that over the last couple centuries, mankind has for the first time experienced a world that isn't dominated by whoever is most violent, where society is guided to where people en masse point their capital, and it's raised civilizations out of misery by the virtues of people. If I believed most people are violently selfish, or believed people saw virtue in their own pursuit of pleasure, I surely would advocate for communist control of the world's resources. It's because I see most people as virtuous, kind, and generous, that I believe capitalism is an effective system.
Ok, but there are powers designated to indict a sitting president, specifically within the legislature, and they came up with even less indictment than the people who couldn't do anything in the first place. The investigative forces of the legislature have also investigated these things and found precisely nothing, and unless something drastically changed in the last day or so, are declining to move towards impeachment given the Mueller report's release.Asita said:
Here's the situation: nobody investigating has put forward any evidence that Trump committed the underlying crime of conspiring with Russians to illegally influence the 2016 election. We now have some official evidence that Trump may have wanted to undermine Mueller's investigation, which people are framing as obstruction of justice. And you think it works against Trump to know that the investigation never had the power to bring Trump to justice in the first place. May I ask what justice Trump obstructed by wanting to (and failing to) stop a prosecutor that couldn't indict him in the first place?
This is all right-wing BS. Capitalism goes against Christian teachings anyways, and Trump is no Christian, but he is idolized (a sin mind you) by Right-Wing Christians which is mostly a redundant term.tstorm823 said:
If you think Communism is hedonistic, then you don't know what Communism is.
Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless for free, that's socialism, and it is not capitalism.
To the former paragraph, I hope you're not talking about Nunes's little stunt, as the U.S. Intelligence Community and even the House Intelligence Committee itself openly disputed its accuracy even before it was released. Additionally, declining to move towards impeachment is not indicative of the lack of confidence you're implying, as the Impeachment process has to clear both houses of Congress, and the senate is currently packed with Trump loyalists who have consistently been bending over backwards to protect Trump for the last year or so. It's also worth noting that while Mueller's report says it didn't find enough to establish conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, we see in report that there is ample evidence suggesting it. This ties into another bit that tends to get lost in translation, which is the operative phrase "did not establish". Common parlance would take that to mean lack of evidence, but in law it has a much more specific meaning as definitively proving beyond a reasonable doubt. As the report itself chooses to emphasize in its introduction: "A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts".tstorm823 said:
To the latter paragraph, I believe we went over this on the first page of the thread. Obstruction of justice is a procedural crime that is not predicated on the existence of an underlying crime. It is entirely contained within the act of trying to illegally influence an investigation, regardless of the reason. To repeat my own explanation:
In the case of the report itself, perhaps I need to clarify one particular detail. When I say that the report could not find Trump guilty, I mean that purely in the sense of technicality due to the DoJ's policy not to charge a sitting president with a crime. Point of fact, the report actually lays out a good ten counts of obstruction of justice, but rather explicitly refrains from making the charge because of that selfsame policy.
Perhaps the most apt phrase I've been hearing thrown about with regards to this is that the report is a roadmap. Essentially "we can't charge him now due to extant policy, but when we can charge him, here's what you charge him with".
No.tstorm823 said:
To use the simplistic notion of politics as a combination of social liberalism - illiberalism and economic preferences (capitalism - socialism), a substantial chunk of the "far left" are actually quite illiberal in various ways.
It is generally liberals who are in favour of easy legal access to drugs and sex - but bear in mind liberal in this sense runs all the way from the far left, through the centre, to a large chunk of the political right and libertarianism. "Physical satisfaction" however is not the moral imperative. The moral imperative is personal autonomy: the right to do with yourself what you wish without interference (assuming it does not harm others). Some people may choose physical pleasure first and foremost, however plenty of liberals will disapprove of it even if they accept the legal and moral right to do so. The reason for this is a distinction between a personal morality and the morality of imposing law: for instance things like lying and cheating on your spouse are usually held to be immoral, but not deemed appropriate for legal intervention.
In terms of advocating anything most of them will be Christians, because Christians are 80% of the US population. Although "Christian" doesn't necessarily answer that much: there's a ton of difference between the viewpoints of an average east coast Episcopalian and an average deep south Pentecostalist.
That prosecutor did not have the power to indict Trump himself, but his evidence would inevitably to go to Congress and could justify a potential impeachment, thus there was a still a very real threat against Trump's presidency from it.
Again, as I've said before, defending Trump by saying he hasn't been convicted of a crime is damning with faint praise. His conduct (as per the report and a great deal else over the last few years) indicates ignorance, corruption, venality, nepotism, willingness to abuse power, and complete disinterest in honesty especially to the public. This is the sort of thing we have spent decades claiming to resent in our politicians, and instead it's being endorsed by support for him.
For an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, there was a case where an off-duty Marine was approached by a group and asked if he was "proud." Not knowing what they were going on about (and rather ironically being one of "the few, the proud, the Marines") and also not knowing that the Proud Boys were having some kind of event nearby, he didn't know how to answer. As a result, they attacked him for being a "Nazi", by which I mean a Proud Boy, by which I mean someone who didn't know the right answer when a group of strangers approached and asked if he was proud.Agema said:
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2018/12/18/im-mexican-marines-bewildered-after-being-called-nazis-beat-up-by-alleged-antifa-mob/
Or a teenager assaulted in a restaurant for wearing a MAGA hat: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-teenager-maga-hat-attack-san-antonio-viral-video-a8432581.html
Or maybe a middle aged man at another restaurant: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2019/02/25/maga-hat-assault-cape-cod Some reports claim the woman behind this assault was also an illegal immigrant.
Maybe an elderly man this time, again for wearing a MAGA hat: https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/crime/jersey-mayhem/2019/02/26/maga-hat-nj-man-assaulted-shoprite-cops/2993220002/
How about a younger black guy at a Cheesecake Factory, this time assaulted by the employees rather than other patrons for, you guessed it having a nice family dinner while wearing a MAGA hat: https://www.kyma.com/news/restaurant-employees-fired-after-attacking-man-wearing-maga-hat/745878181 That one is from the distant past of Mother's Day last year.
Yep, all dangerous folks who needed to be prevented from engaging in violence through proactive violent self defense. On the upside the ones happening at restaurants weren't all that serious on the whole, but I mean there have been a double digit number of "someone minding their own business assaulted for wearing a MAGA hat" incidents already this year..
This has always been my complaint about people who support "punching Nazis" - that they are very, very poor at limiting their targets to actual Nazis. They also like o try to expand the definition of "Nazis" arbitrarily to justify violence against anyone they disagree with.