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

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