Yeah, in a lot of ways I have a hard time seeing it as well. Let's look at a few issues:

• Gay marriage -- just don't see how this is a leftist issue. It's more libertarian than anything. Nobody is forcing churches or religious institutions to perform the ceremonies, so I just don't see it as some leftist attack on "traditional values."
• Military policy -- The nominee in 2016 was Hillary, a freaking neocon when it came to the use of the military. I don't see how any peace loving lefty could have supported her with that.
• Affordable Care Act -- When it comes to health care reform, this is a pretty far step away from a lefty's dream of nationalized health coverage (like damn near every other first world country has....). Forcing people to purchase a private insurance policy from a private carrier....seems like a solution that's terribly imperfect but leaves much more power to some industries than nationalizing care would.
• Prison reform -- Calls from the left to decriminalize and reduce sentencing sure seems pretty fiscally conservative to me considering what it costs to house prisoners & the fact we've locked up a lot of non violent folks.
• Racial issues -- Let's face it, this one is more complicated than right vs. left. We've always had a vocal segment of our population claiming we're not a racist society and ignoring the racist history of our country, ignoring the fact this country was built on the backs of minorities, not recognizing a complicated issue takes a lot more time to heal from than the passage of a few pieces of legislation. There will always be a part of the population standing against those who call out the ills of a society. It doesn't make them flaming racists (perhaps just ignorant of how complicated the issues are), but it also doesn't make those calling for recognition of racial disparities militant leftists either.

i'm watching the kansas gubernatorial race. it's democrat v republican in a state that's 2/3 republican, but they grew pretty weary of brownback republicanism in practice in their state. 4 running for the democratic spot. quite a wide gap in their views. meanwhile, if kobach wins the republican primary it'll be a case of kansan republicans purging the party of those outside their narrow trumpist viewport.

if it's, say, laura kelly versus kris kobach - a fair chance it will be - i think that'll be an interesting race in kansas. it'll be centrist versus extremist, with the democrat the centrist.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Other than Bernie Sanders I haven’t seen anything from the dems in a long time. The republicans have pretty much been pushing dickish ideas- so that’s what it’s come down to in most races; do you vote for the empty shirt or the dick

Dan...WADR you're a progressive white male who lives in Southern California and voted for HRC. You have stated (threatened) folks on this very forum with strong arguments for California-esque gun control..."or else". You generally respond to the right wing loony toons with denigrations ("you're filled with hate!") and disregard lefty loonies. I'm guessing (please correct me if I'm wrong) you consume a diet of primarily progressive media (CNN, NPR, HuffPo, NYTimes).

It's fairly reasonable to believe that you think that the Democrats aren't moving left and are more 'moderate'.

It's also fairly reasonable to think that an older white gentleman who lives in rural Utah, who voted for Trump, and thinks that marriage should "be between a man and a woman" and consumes 100% Fox News thinks that the Repubs are the moderate party.

From the left, the left seems moderate. From the right, the right seems moderate.

Most folks who identify as independents (and who have done since before Obama) believe in smaller government, equality (of humans and opportunity), the Constitution as written, property rights and individual freedoms. These folks generally see both parties as veering lefter or righter, respectively, regardless of what Donny tweets on any given day.

I mention this only because I see right wingers claiming to be moderates but then condemning gay marriage. Then left wingers claim to be moderates but argue for CA-like firearm regulations and government run healthcare.

Right now it's "in vogue" to identify as an independent/moderate when in reality you're a dyed in the wool progressive or conservative.

Most people who think they're moderate....aren't. As such, they don't see their respective parties as veering left or right.

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My training

If not for the meddling of the DNC, you would have had a socialist as the Democratic candidate for president. I suppose you could say that because the DNC meddled, that's proof that they're not moving left so this may be one of the very rare times that I agree with you.

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I miss YaHey

your evidence?


that part you nailed. just, remember, i live in what has been a solid republican district at local, state and national levels, so, no, i don't think your attempt to paint me into your bubble idea of who i am succeeds here.


no doubt. but one state up lives a former VP who now no longer believes that. urban utah has one of the most vibrant gay communities in the country. so, yeah, there's a white man in the rural south for whom keeping blacks separate from whites seems moderate. i agree with you that "moderate" is a moving target if you look at it from that perspective.


fair point. but i think this is healthy. what we need more of are those who break from party orthodoxy. and that is my point. the democratic party is not "moving left". yes. you're right. the democrats have candidates who are very pro-gun and also very pro-gay rights. who are free traders who believe health care is a right, not a privilege.

the more operative truth is that the republican party is erecting purity tests and the democrats are discarding them.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Dan’s a conservative.

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

well, that's like saying if the russians hadn't meddled hillary would've been president. we just don't know. what i see, today, is that one democrat got primaried by a bernie candidate. so much for the move left.

bernie was the 90 percenter's good angel. bernie was trump without the nationalism and bigotry. their appeals were strikingly similar. not their platforms (except for protectionism). their appeals. what does truly mystify me is how the democrats have not been able to distill and project that "we're on the side of the working man" argument.

i was wrong. i was all for a corporate tax cut. i championed that. and look what happened: wages, in an era of 4 percent unemployement, remain stagnant, while corporate profits are thru the roof, and stock buybacks are the result of that tax cut. it's unprecedented that your wage remains the same at that level of unemployment. never happened before.

so, this is bernie's point precisely. how the democrats can't capitalize on that is gods own mystery. neverheless, bernie's voice remains a minority voice in the party as reflected by results in the 2018 primary. however, the democratic party appears sufficiently elastic to include ocasio-cortez and lamb.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Oversimplify much? HRC won the primary by more than Obama did (and she was a terribly flawed candidate). A better moderate candidate would have won going away. The Dems have almost always rejected the far left candidate (Kennedy/Kucinich/Jackson/Nader/Sanders/...).

You're kidding, right? Then what the hell was that whole, rigging the election to screw Bernie Sanders out of the nomination?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Some fair points there.

RE your 'progressive' creds...see my previous post. A few examples there.

RE purity tests: I think you're wrong there...for example "Abolish ICE" is quickly becoming one in lefty circles. Per NPR Kamala Harris supports it now...likely out of fear that if she didn't that the left wingers wouldn't consider her left enough. The right wingers have plenty themselves and they're equally as ridiculous. I do have a few...I personally don't think someone can consider themselves a moderate if they are:

1) Anti-choice RE abortion
2) Consider California firearms laws reasonable
3) Against gay marriage
4) Pro "war-on-drugs" (a portion of which being against legalization of MJ)
5) Pro government-run-healthcare

That's my personal list of things that I think disqualify folks as being moderates (independents, libertarians, thinkers....whatever) off the top of my head. I think you meet 2 of those. They're products of the thought process based off of the principles I mentioned earlier.

Anyways...back to your OP...yes, the left is going harder left. I think burning shit to shut down someone else's speech, attacking folks on the street, "abolishing" or "banning" things regardless of efficacy....pretty loony toon stuff. The widespread presence is new in the last few years.

Almost as loony toon as the right wingers going after marchers, carrying AR's in public as a "f you", attacking abortion docs, etc. Unfortunately this isn't that new. Right has always been pretty far right and while I think they're lurching further right...but not as much.

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My training

A Democratic Socialist, not a Socialist. They’re two different things. We already have elements of Democratic Socialism, as does every Western nation, and Sanders advocates expansion of such. The fear mongering McCarthyism cries of “Socialist Commie!!!” are laughably inaccurate.

OK, then we agree that both parties are fairly radical when they have power. It's just a matter of timing RE right vs left.

Ideologically they're both assholes. Agreed.

I'm all for abolishing the electoral college...that would certainly fix it.

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My training

Yea, there is absolutely no evidence that at all. Sanders was an incredibly weak general election candidate, Hillary beat him by almost 3 million votes in the Democratic primary alone. That was with Hillary treating him with kid gloves, Trump would have had been able to absolutely pummel him with his comments on Cuba or the Sandinistas. He would have also probably done worse with Black voters (and black women specifically) that were huge for Clinton, then Clinton and that would have been deadly, would not have made up for the white male votes he could have possibly taken from Trump. Would those white males go for him when his pro communist comments were brought up?

Could Sanders have beat Trump, possibly it was such a close election, but Clinton had a much better chance to beat Trump.

I think the democrats are moving a bit to the left, at least in lots of very strong democratic areas. I think the 2020 canidate will be a bit more left than Clinton, not much, but a bit. I say this because I expect that the candidate will have a single issue, like free college or something, that is to the left of Clinton.

While you may not see it, how do you explain so many moderates voting for Trump?

I don't know whether the entire party is moving to the left, but they've embraced identity politics and elements of the extreme left to the extent that many centrist Democrats have chosen not to vote in key places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. My wife, who's a pretty liberal Democrat, remarked at the end of the 2016 Democratic Convention about speech after speech of identity politics and the embrace of the most progressive elements of the Party while there seemed to be a distinct lack of representation of traditional Democratic voting strongholds - like unions. Living here in DC, and knowing a great many folks very much involved at very senior levels in the Obama administration and Democratic Party, the attitude prior to the election was that it would be a cake walk. I can't say I held vastly different views and even assured my nervous friends on the traditionally very conservative Eastern Shore of Maryland there was no way Trump could win. Shows what I know. Whether that was a consequence of a leftward shift or not, I am not sure, but I would assert ignorance of the traditional centrist Democratic forces may have had a hand in this.

As we gear up towards the mid-terms and 2020, I don't believe the Trump folks' assertions either that the Dems are moving to the left, however, as you look at who seems to be emerging as potential candidates for the White House, it's hard to say they are moving to the center. The problem with both parties, in my opinion, is that the loudest, shrillest voices have seemed to carry the day thus far. The difference has been the loudest, shrillest voice on the right managed to eke out an Electoral College victory.

Will be interesting to see how this develops.

I'd say certainly moving left, but I think the country is, with the exception of an ever-shrinking piece of the pub party. Problem for dems is that the energy is mostly from the extremes, and that faction is growing. Very similar to the TEA party problem that caused so much grief for the pubs over the last several years. Here's a couple of observations from a piece out today:

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"As recently as 2007, trade unions and a large chunk of the party’s congressional wing were hostile to immigration reform. Senator Sanders voted against a bill in 2007 that would have given a path to citizenship for 12m undocumented people, on the basis that the proposal also allowed companies to bring in guest workers, undermining unions. On gay marriage, too, as recently as 2008 neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama were prepared to endorse a position that is now so thoroughly mainstream for Democratic candidates that they seldom mention it."
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" Democratic senators have recently proposed plans for universal single-payer health care, free college tuition, a national $15 minimum wage and a federal jobs guarantee for those unable to find employment. This last measure alone could increase the federal government’s payroll tenfold. The senators usually spoken of as contenders for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020—Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders—have all endorsed some or part of this. Twenty years ago a Democratic president declared that the era of big government was over. Now it seems to be back."
-
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2018/07/14/should-the-party-move-to-the-left-or-to-the-centre

You may not see it but lots of other people do.
https://www.google.com/...urther-left.amp.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/...the_left_442626.html
https://www.google.com/...-ryan-saavedra%3famp
https://www.google.com/...her-to-the-left/amp/

Can you link that article?

Hey you Ballwashers keep provoking The Leftist Base and we'll give you 8 years of the Ocasio-Cortez / Pocahontas ticket. :)

So learn to tone down all that hate and vitriol. :)

Damn, dude. Get out of my head.
Recently I've been saying each party is tone deaf. By that I mean they only see the bad in the opposite party and their party can do no wrong.

I'm not sure I buy into that whole right vs left political spectrum thing. I was actually a huge Ron Paul supporter several years ago for a variety of reasons, but most people would say that Paul was far right. These days, I like Bernie Sanders, who comes across as far left. How can that be? Going from such polar opposites. Well, I think the majority of people are somewhere in the middle and they'll vote for whoever they like the most as a person, which is why Clinton lost. She came across as untrustworthy, fake, scripted and a pile of other things. Trump came across as more authentic and I'm sure millions of Bernie supporters voted for Trump just to 'stick it' to Hillary and the DNC.

I wouldn't say that the Democrats are moving left because the establishment Dems (like Clinton and Biden) are firmly against Universal Health Care. The last thing they want to do is upset the Health Insurance Industry and Big Pharma, their main donors. However, millions of Americans are waking up to the idea that Universal Health Care isn't a 'leftist' thing. Sure, if you have a good health insurance plan through your employer, you are perfectly happy and secure and that status gives you something to feel good about, since millions of other Americans haven't worked hard for it like you have. The last thing you want is for some other guy, maybe an immigrant or a drug addict to have that same health care as you, especially if your taxes go up. So despite every other industrialised country having health care, you believe the concept is 'leftist' and vote accordingly. And Sanders would have destroyed Trump in the general election.

exactly.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

well, no dude. it's a myth perpetrated by the right. and you just listed a number of right wing propagandists who're promoting it. bravo.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Wait are you saying that a foxnews opinion piece and the daily wire are not the best sources for what is going on in the democratic party?

you're sort of moving off the point. democrats writ large, as a voting bloc - not a half-dozen party hacks who aren't there anymore - aren't tribal. they aren't trumpwashed. they aren't "putin is less my enemy than the democrats."

their problem is they aren't brainwashed. the reason left wing hate radio doesn't work is democrats aren't prone to tribal hate, as a group (yes there are exceptions, just as there are republicans still in the party who aren't wedded to the cult of trump).

the flip side is that they aren't wedded to an ever-narrowing list of drop-dead requirements to satisfy party orthodoxy (i.e., the wall, as if it's the alamo). why don't democrats have the same fear of getting primaried from the far side of their party? why did only one incumbent democrat lose his primary? because the party broadened. just as did the republican party post-carter.

the other narrative i hear is that the democratic party is at war with itself. this narrative, and the party-is-lurching-left narrative, can't both be true. yeah, there is a far left wing of the democratic party. always has been. the only reason you're noticing it is because it's energized. but if the democrats take back the house in november it will be due almost exclusively to the centrist democrats who're winning the primaries in the districts in play.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

no. those are the more normal ones. i mean this guy, who refers to himself as a "capitalist evangelist".



and whose most recent podcasts are entitled, "liberals: radical, crazy and getting worse," and "have liberals become domestic terrorists."

some people are just so endemically brainwashed that there just is no route back. there's no rope long enough to stretch down to the bottom of that shaft.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA



HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Ho-ly-fucking-shit! I have said this for decades - GOP voters look for the "perfect candidate." Donkeys look for the the "D."

You are delusional.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

this is your default when your thesis loses ground. but i'll stop here; you can have the last word. wind up and throw hard, bro.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I like you. I really do. But, you live in a bubble.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

i like you too. but, your MO is, 2 or 3 posts, then the insults. i can talk it thru. you can't. well, you could. but you don't. and it's not because i'm in a bubble. it's because you can't win a hard side-by-side race. you can only win when the comp is weak. so i'm out.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I thought I got the last word.

You can keep saying that all you want. But, your biggest trait is your dismissiveness. It is the primary trait of the limousine liberal and the one you employ on a regular basis. You never want to actually debate. Never. You pick only the portions of the response to which you want to respond, usually out of context, and fail the address the rest. You do it all the time.

So, keep it up. You and your ilk are the fuel for the Trump supporters. Period. Hard stop. Keep it up and we all get to suffer the consequences.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

This very much points to my theory of being tone deaf.
I like hearing opposing opinions if they are well presented and the presenter is open to discussion.
I have friends who post false stories on Facebook. No matter how politely you point out the article is fake, they assume you agree with the negative aspect of the story and very quickly friends from other circles start piling on the one word labels.
I vote candidate, not party. Just like Republicans, Dems vote party over candidate. And many Dems feel if you are not 100% aligned with their views, you're Neanderthal.
Both parties have the same level of issues. But if somebody skews to one party, they largely ignore their party's issues and claim superiority over the other party.

JSA makes a point that is continually lost on the Dems. Their quick use of labels have even middle of the road people voting for Trump.

I'm butchering a movie scene, but in Platoon an officer knows his troops are overrun so he calls for bombs to be dropped on his location. Then he says "what a lovely fucking war." I think that scene pretty well describes Trump's election.

Never mind. I found it. Ironically, I actually skimmed over that article this morning.

Do you think you quoted it in the proper context?

https://www.google.com/...istory-lesson-219006

if you've ever seen that, especially here in this community, i'd like to see an example. because, not only have i not seen "many" democrats behave this way, i've never seen one behave this way.

can i ask you to consider another possibility? that limbaugh and his ilk basically tell their audiences, you might not be booksmart, but as opposed to the coastal elites who're looking down their noses at you, your needle is pointed in the right direction. they're highly educated. you're not. but you're the salt of the earth. how dare they make you feel inferior!

what's the listener's takeaway? who is really impressing the message on trump voters that they're dumber than liberals?

hillbilly elegy was one of the top-3 best selling books in every state in 2017, often ranked higher in blue states than in red. i think a lot of liberals wrestled to understand the mind of the conservative voter, whereas limbaugh's message, hannity's message, was not to understand why liberals think the way they do, but to sneer at them.

but i'll grant you this: when a person not only willingly abandons his attachment to truth, science, scholarship, but sneers at the "elites" who value such, yeah, there is a point when you force others to reckon with the person you've chosen to be.

and i'm glad you bring this up, because i think it reinforces my point in this thread. when you say, "100% aligned with their views," what views? the republican party did a nice job of bringing in disparate views in the 1980s. now the republican party is doing precisely what you say: purging from the party those who don't align 100 percent with an ever-more-strict doctrine. the democrats happen to be doing, now, what the republicans did well in the '80s: reckoning with the disparate views of a very broad coalition.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I do not listen to Limbaugh because his views are very biased so I will have to take your word on what he says. As I mentioned, my frame of reference is from friends on Facebook. We are friends in real life from high school but that was many years ago. A number of their views and their current circle of friends are very quick to label if you do not agree or if you call out an article that is fake. I see it very frequently.
I think most in the LR are just right of center and I don't think you see the behavior I'm referencing all that often here.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons appears to believe this myth perpetrated by the right. Is he a right wing propagandist too? Or is he under their influence? Maybe he’s just a big Limbaugh or Hannity fan.....
https://www.google.com/...ay.com/amp/777600002

That result can be spinned many ways but no serious person can say it really means anything. About 16K votes to 12K votes. Percentage wise big victory. But vote total is less than 12% of registered Democrats in the district.

Four thousand votes is no evidence of political swings in the democratic party. One day of campaigning put more people in the audience for these guys:

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________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

And this is core to your original point. The republican party has moved far far right,

Except for economic issues where they now seem to be okay with large debt and that was a strongly held "non-negotiable" only a few years ago. I'm not sure if Free Trade is considered left or right but it was certainly championed by the Conservative icon Reagan and now the Republican Party is embracing protectionism and doing away with trade. In my view, it's the Republican Party that has lost it's identify as I really have a hard time trying to figure out where they stand now on a number of issues.

As for the Democrats, I don't think anyone knows since there seems to be a big vacuum in terms of leadership. Not sure if the Party will swing towards the Bernie Sanders spending or the more traditional policies of Clinton.

Surely you must have a wide set of friends that don't engage in that, right? Where do you live now? What about the people that you interact with on a daily basis? My experience differs. Most of my Facebook friends are on the left or middle. They are often appalled by policies nowadays, yet, whenever they post a "fake" story, friends pile on them to not post that crap. My handful of friends on they right pretty much post non-stop propaganda, and tend not to care and don't get called out. My actual friends/colleagues in real life tend to span a wide gamut that still skews left, but almost all of my moderate and conservative friends reject Trumpian politics. Of course, I happen to be in Silicon Valley, YMMV....

 
Most of my friends who are also on Fasebook don't engage in politics there. Those who bring up politics the most, as well as most passionately, are liberal.
I live in Austin(liberal). I'm in construction (conservative).

I skewed strongly towards Republican growing up.

I went independent when Bush Sr. threw his arm out patting himself on the back about passing legislation although it took an extra 6 months
and cost a lot of people their jobs. The issues that are important to me do not neatly align with any one party.

The point that keeps getting made for me is if you tend towards liberal, the view is liberals are being pounded on daily meanwhile they are mostly innocent.
Conservatives often feel the same way.

Hey Midwest. Have you ever heard of the concept of goal post moving? =)


You seem to be universally confusing two concepts:

1.) What you yourself now consider leftist.
2.) Whether the Dem party has moved left over the years.

You wanting to redefine what leftist means is pretty much defacto evidence of a shift left.

They're the future of the party, brohomino: ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

perhaps we're just talking past each other. i absolutely think conservatives are getting hit from all sides, if by conservatives you mean true conservatives who see thru trump's con. my thesis here is a democrat today has the freedom to hold many of your views. a republican used to have that freedom, but does not anymore. i'm differentiating between a republican and a conservative. (and i'm talking about rank and file voters, not the apparatus of either party, which is useless and feckless.)

you think there are "many democrats" who'll pound you for not endorsing 100 percent of their views. i just don't see that. ever. at all. if you look at the party apparatus in my state, california, i would never join that party. but in my district, the democrat running for the US house is a law and order daughter of a cop, a rural, farming gun advocate, a small business deregulator who took down the front-running progressive in the primary. my own republican house member is so scared of his own shadow he is infamous for never saying anything. he'll likely lose in november because he's known as a moral coward even among republicans. this is the sort of person who'll get pounded if he doesn't endorse 100 percent of his party's views.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

The Democratic party is in the midst of a civil war, with its increasingly growing (and rabid) left-wing (not center-left, because that's rapidly shrinking) base wanting to pull it farther to the left than its ever been. So OF COURSE the Dems would like to abolish I.C.E., though cooler heads in the party's leadership are feverishly working to tamp down the calls for abolishment (by the ever-dull NY senator Kristen Gillibrand, for one) and desperately trying to duck any and all questions about I.C.E., hoping the fervor they've demonstrated recently for doing just that doesn't stick around in voters' minds, come November.






Polls show solid support, as it turns out, for both immigration enforcement as well as tightening of the border, the beliefs of the more wild-eyed among the Democrats notwithstanding. No wonder their leadership are hoping that the calls to get rid of I.C.E., as well as calls for open borders among a great many Democrats, will go away soon. (My hope is that both the Dems and the GOP Stupid Party trip all over themselves in the fall.)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Kind of looks like you're just trolling here, but here's more: poll showing change over time in dem support of universal healthcare, and NYT piece covering dem leftward move.
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http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-support-for-single-payer-health-coverage-grows-driven-by-democrats/ft_17-06-23_healthcare_310px/

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Democrats’ Next Big Thing: Government-Guaranteed Jobs


The employment plans, along with single-payer “Medicare for all” health care, free college, legalized marijuana and ever less restrictive immigration rules, are parts of a broader trend toward a more liberal Democratic Party in the Trump era.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/us/politics/democrats-guaranteed-jobs.html
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Are you being serious here? Really? Have you never heard of democrats wanting to abolish freedom of speech all the time on college campuses and our nation, making it against the law to call someone by the "wrong" pronoun. Calling biological men women and women men and yet the pubs are the party that rejects science? News flash, conservatives and libertarians don't have to agree with Trump 100%. I think he's an ass and speaks like an idiot, but it doesn't mean everything he ever says or does is wrong either.

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~Brad

can i just say that, from your posting history, it appears you post ardently for a few days, move away, then a few weeks later return for some ardent posting. and that's fine. but when you start a post with "are you being serious here? really?" i like to think that you'll know it when i'm posting whimsically. that sort of rhetorical question is meant to demean. there's a lot of folks here i just don't ever respond to, because they don't know how to be gentlemen. if you want me to answer any posts of yours in the future, you'll treat this place and the folks in it with more respect. this isn't reddit.

to your point, there are two articles on today's LA times' front page today. here's one, that would appear to echo your view. and there's no doubt that progressives are emboldened in america today. which i welcome, tho i don't typically share their view on a lot of issues. then there's this one, that accurately describes who's voting for whom. so, while there is a progressive wing that is alive, healthy, and loud, the democratic voting base is proving quite elastic. while the democratic party leaders in california want the party to veer left, the voters themselves remain centrist.

and, yes, in this particular case, i'm being serious. really.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I don't think the party is necessarily moving left as a whole, but I think there is a percentage of the far left, say 20-25% who seek to take the party even further to the left. This is how you get legislation like Seattle's head tax. This group tends to be very loud and vocal, and why you have Warren, Harris and others pandering to them.

The real test as to whether the party is moving further to the left won't be the midterm elections as Democrats will probably take over the house (much longer shot in the Senate), but in who they nominate to take on Trump. If they nominate one from the far left like Sanders, than probably get Trump for 4 more years. If they nominate a center-left candidate, and I would look to a center-left governor, maybe a Roy Cooper from NC type, then can appeal to Democrats, Independents and anti-Trump Republicans and would probably win pretty easily.

that makes sense. i suspect the party hacks tend to be further left. both in washington and in california. but the voters tend to be centrist. this is why i won't join the party. i'm in california, and if paid money to the democrats i'd be paying money to help kevin de leon defeat the person - dianne feinstein - i intend to vote for.

however, there are some ideas that some might consider far left that i don't. like a reasonable minimum wage. and social security and medicare (esp now that i'm 61 years old, and have been paying into both my whole adult life!). the party is tacking both left and right. we have both ben jealous and kirsten synema running for governor and senate respectively. jealous couldn't win in arizona; but i suspect sinema would do fine in maryland.

i certainly hope a centrist wins in 2020. however, a centrist won in 2016 and i don't get the sense that republican-inclined voters cared very much whether the D was a hard-lefter or a centrist. a lot of democrat voters took note of that.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

If the Dems put up a decent candidate I would vote for that person over Trump.

whoa.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Believe it or not, I am not that far from center on issues. would you find it hard to believe my vote went for Chuck Schumer for Senate here in NY?

Thanks for the reply. I find it amusing that you think my posting history has anything to do with my views or validity. Sorry if you find asking for clarification or the way I did it offensive, perhaps it was. I wasn't meaning it to be. With that said, yes I was a bit astonished that you would make such a blanket statement while painting the other side with such a broad brush so often in your political posting. In my opionon, you have a very hard time being self aware of your own personal bias especially when it comes to political discussions.

I find myself center to right of center. I would only fail one of the "test" questions given by stal, but I'm pretty self aware that I do lean more right, and I'm okay with that. I'm also aware that some of the right makes my blood boil and there are those on that side that are pretty much morons. I also have much on the left that makes my blood boil and think there are plenty of morons over there. But anyone who has a hard time looking at "their side" and seeing the problems within makes discussion hard or even impossible. The character attacks of the left, the identity politics are causing the center to run away and vote for an idiot like trump.

Now Ben Shapiro in 2020, that would be something!

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~Brad

If you are for abolishing the electoral college, then you are also for the elimination of the Presidential votes for nearly every voter not living in either California, New York and Florida and maybe 3 other coastal states. If you are living anywhere from Nevada to Kentucky, your vote is moot as those states are the only ones that matter in a popular vote contest. And that isn't my opinion alone, its also the opinion of Time magazine and a bunch of other sources from both sides of the argument! http://time.com/...ular-vote-campaigns/

Umm, I don't think you understand how popular vote works. How exactly would a vote in Kentucky be worth less than a vote in California? It does not matter if you "win" states using the popular vote.

If you don't want some votes to count more than others, why would you support the electoral college? Because the EC does exactly that. For example lets say I could vote in Michigan or California, with popular vote it would not matter which state I voted in. But with the electoral college, it would matter.

The Pew Research paper would seem to indicate otherwise.

Pew Research Center, October, 2017, "The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider"



"The Pew report — titled "The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider" — is the latest in a decades-long series of surveys it has conducted to gauge people's views on various key issues, including the size of government, immigration, corporate profits, race relations. The authors of the report note the "divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political values ... reached record levels during Barack Obama's presidency. In Donald Trump's first year as president, these gaps have grown even larger."
Given the way politics gets reported these days, it's easy to conclude that the widening gap is the result of Republicans become more extreme in their views. That is, after all, a mantra among Democrats and the press. The GOP is the party of racist, sexist, xenophobic, right-wing extremists, we hear over and over again, while Democrats are but humble centrists.
The Pew data, however, make it clear that the shift toward the extreme has happened among Democrats, not Republicans."






https://www.investors.com/...to-the-extreme-left/

So, as I contemplate a life of not voting Republican can you give me any example of a Dem Party platform or policy adjustment as it relates to the "lurching" to attract never Trumpers?

Lol! So, zero fucks?

my thesis in this thread is that you've got a lot to choose from if you vote for a democrat, which means there are democrats i'd very much like to avoid, and those i'd embrace.

so, in calif, you'd have to decide whether you want to:

- guarantee every citizen a [fill in the blank] (take your pick of candidates who want to guarantee everyone a home/job/health care/college education/blah/blah)
- build up a rainy day war chest of $25bb or so, against the next disaster (jerry brown)

jerry has infuriated the democrats (who want calif's surplus distributed out to the poor/homeless/etc.), and the republicans (who want it distributed back in the form of tax cuts).

jerry's also a lover of infrastructure, and i guess i am too. he'd rather you not have your taxes lowered, and he'd rather no single needy person get it. he'd rather build roads, tunnels, bridges, trains that break the sound barrier.

jerry appeals to my personal sensibilities as i am by nature: 1) almost irrationally vigilant of a catastrophe and am therefore a congenital catastrophobe; and 2) i love building pathways to take me to the future.

so, while i'm not a democrat, if i were i'd be a jerrycrat. but i can also see how a small govt person would have a problem with my approach. i'd love to see bernie and jerry debate.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Definitely not moving left.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...rging-age-Trump.html

Per the Associated Press, clearly another right wing propaganda machine.

i'm going to ignore your snark, and generally foul manners, for one post.

i'll triple down on your argument. here's front page of NYT right now. here's front page of the atlantic. both supporting your view.

there are articles about how the far left is winning primaries. then there are articles about how that is overblown, that maybe a half-dozen have won significant victories, but generally it's that the primary winner has been the right fit in the district. the democrats either have a party that's now finally inviting all comers, or a party that's in the middle of a civil war, depending on how you look at it. we'll see how that works out.

mine is the minority view; both those on the left and the right will disagree with me. that's why i posted what i did; i'm pushing back on the conventional view. i don't think those who're writing these articles are writing in bad faith. i just think what's getting ignored is: 1) what matters is who wins the elections; and 2) whether these new left wingers are purity testers.

for all the hand wringing about feinstein's challenge from the left, she's going to win that race by 30 or 40 points. across the country that'll be the rule, not the exception.

if the rank and file party member is getting more lefty - if person A was more centrist but is becoming more lefty in his thinking - then yeah, i'm wrong. but if folks aren't changing their minds, and the party is just getting an infusion of lefty blood, then no, unless the candidates elected are more left wing. likewise, if indies or disaffected never-trump republicans come into the democratic party, i don't think that party will swing more right wing, unless the candidates elected are more right wing. there's just a lot, lot, lot more democratic candidates running than ever before, by any party, in any off-year natl election. the ideological range of candidates is broader. but it all comes down to who gets elected.

the party officials, here there are some problems. but that's for another thread.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

First, I’m not being any more snarky than you were with your “bravo!” comment. A post in which you also said all my links to people saying the party is moving left we’re propaganda from the right. So I posted some links from the left. You said in your original post that it isn’t happening. Then you said it was all right wing propaganda. Now your saying it’s just your opinion and you realize it’s a minority view. You’re really stuck in your ideology, brother. And you don’t like it when people point it out.

In a new poll conducted by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, just 33% of those surveyed feel the Democratic Party is "in the mainstream." More than half (56%) consider them out of step.


Just two years ago in 2016, those numbers were far different: 48% mainstream, 42% out. That means the "mainstream" number has plunged 15%, a huge drop in just two years.


https://www.dailywire.com/...now-find-joseph-curl

Norm, thanks for posting that link. Though this was a good thread, I think that was more informative than all of the anecdotal information posted here.

The part you quoted from the bottom link, I disagree with:

"The Pew data, however, make it clear that the shift toward the extreme has happened among Democrats, not Republicans."

In my opinion, the data shows that it has happened in BOTH parties. The graphs on page 12 and 13 sum it up best, but it visualized the same inference I was getting from scanning through the 20 or so graphs.



I was listening to a pod cast recently where they were discussing modern social media technology and its impact on society and they were fearful that this may be the new norm. Mainly because people can create ideological bubbles for themselves.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

i would post my thesis here, but i've already done it three times, it seems like no one is interested in it, which is fine, so i'll leave it up to you all.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

-
Feinstein will likely win, but at every opportunity lately has moved to make herself look more left.
-

http://www.latimes.com/...-20180523-story.html

it's not hard for feinstein to look more left. she's about as right as you can get and still be a democrat in california.

there are only two questions i'm interested in: will the democrats embrace against the breadth of ideas coming into the party - both right and left - or will there be a civil war? what a lot of commentators want is a civil war, because that's more entertaining to write about. but so far i don't see it. that doesn't mean it's not coming.

and, in the end what does the democratic bloc look like after the election?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I thought I understood your position, but, perhaps I do not. I thought your point was that the DNC was not, as a whole, moving left. Instead, it was moving in both directions trying to cater to the far left while brining in some disenfranchised GOP loyalists. Correct? Is that wholly inconsistent with Barry's point?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

"i would post my thesis here, but i've already done it three times, it seems like no one is interested in it, which is fine, so i'll leave it up to you all. "

Don't take it personally. Its a work day and there's a lot of things I could be reading. I skimmed and the pew poll caught my eye.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

For what its worth, the poll seems to be addressing the beliefs of voters. It doesn't take into consideration a lot of points you've brought up, like what kind of voters the leadership is going to try to attract, or a willingness to comprising, etc.


Hypothetically speaking, half the people can have a far left opinion on a subject while half the people can have a far right opinion, which is what the poll shows. What it doesn't take into account is what happens from a political standpoint if one party tries to attract the few remaining in the middle, or if one party is willing to compromise while the other one demands a stringer shift to their position.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

yeah, i think you have it. with these addenda: the true test of the party trajectory is...

1. what happens at the polls, not who makes the most noise.
2. the party's legislative agenda, should it regain power.

i see a lot of articles saying the party is moving to the left. over the last few days i've seen a number of pushback articles saying, not so fast; that's not reflective of the reality on the ground. i may be way wrong, and if i am i'm happy to acknowledge it the day after the polls close. i haven't seen a bunch of lefties winning primaries over centrist democrats. i don't see the purity tests. the democratic party is going to prevail or succumb based on whether the various wings realize this ideological elasticity is a strength or a weakness; and the party's trajectory will be reflected in how the party votes.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman