THEY'RE TAKING OVER!!! politics thread

by **jerseyhoya** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 17:01:52

jeff2sf wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:Between jeff2sf suggesting setting up a new political party around his basic ideological leanings and dajafi asserting he's the new base of the Democratic Party, there's a lot of wanting being disguised as analysis here.

Come on now, JH. I mean aren't you a social liberal? I mean if we took economics and war out of the equation and you had two slates, which are you choosing? If it's Republicans, why?

I think there's already plenty of people that live in the Northeast that are already making this calculus - Republicans generally have a better idea on economics and Dems have a better idea of social stuff.

All else being equal I would vote for the party that was less overtly religious, pro gay rights, pro gun control, yes. But if you look at the real world, these people in Delaware voted against Mike Castle because of his vote on Cap and Trade and because he wasn't forceful enough in wanting to repeal Obamacare and on other pocketbook issues. The Tea Party people might have a strong religious element to it, but in their current incarnation, they're very much pushing a small government (fiscally anyway) agenda, not looking for more government programs.

by **lethal** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 17:10:22

jeff2sf wrote:
dajafi wrote:
jeff2sf wrote:You misunderstand me, I didn't say educated people, I said rich people. The people like you that are Dem should basically invite the rich people into your tent and give them control of the wallet (which means no helping poor people and no fighting dark people) as long as they leave all the social stuff to you. I contend that you'd have a very happy voting group. It would be about 10% of the nation, but at least it would make sense.

I'm not sure it does, or maybe I just don't entirely get what you're saying. I think what you're suggesting is that the two parties become indistinguishable on economic issues--both for free trade, deregulation, fine with inequality/concentration of wealth, unconcerned about negative externalities (e.g. global warming) but the Democrats are okay with two dudes getting hitched and little to no church attendance, and the Republicans are all about preserving precious bodily fluids?

I guess you also might be saying that the Democrats embrace a sort of isolationism and leave the Republicans as the party of the neo-cons and security state fetishists. That at least would be a difference, though probably not one that helps the Democrats win elections.

Not sure that making the Democrats more welcoming to the Koch brothers is that good of an idea for the country or even the Democrats--even if you dispute the premise PtK et al would offer that they're pretty much already there.

I've done a poor job of explaining myself, if PIP's the only one who gets me. But no, the party of the poor (white) people will be the Republicans. They like protectionism, they'd be down with unions, etc. They want to spend like there's no tomorrow. They probably want smaller taxes, but they'll live with it if they get two dudes not marrying and all sorts of other goodies.

So put Dem financial policies (including funding wars) on the Repub ledger, put sane Republican financial policies (limited spending, pro business, an international bent, yada yada yada) on the Dem side.

I think you'd have a lot of coherence there into people's world views. It makes no sense that unions are on the Dem side who loves all nations and colors. It also makes no sense that Republican businessmen are anti-immigration, isolationist, etc.

Its pretty much the Democratic party of Bill Clinton of the 90s.

by **jeff2sf** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 17:10:36

I'm really not sure we can ascribe why people were voting. And small government is now going the way of "children are our future" in terms of banal and meaningless. I'm for small government even though I won't vote for people who are for small government because they don't actually mean what they're saying and I'm more small government than they are.

I'm totally down with a lot of Mitch Daniels' stuff. I don't think Paul Ryan's a nut.

But the people who are voting for you right now like that stuff less than I like that stuff. Doesn't that seem like there's some room to move?

by **TenuredVulture** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 17:10:47

jeff2sf wrote:
TenuredVulture wrote:What you say makes sense if you neglect the last 70 years or so of American history. There's a lot more coherence to a liberalism based on a combination of JS Mill's social philosophy and Keynesian economics than you might think.

Things change.

But changes in party alignment are evolutionary. The kind of coalition shift you're wishing for has never happened. Now, I see where you're coming from, and I think something along those lines may happen, but only if social issues become marginalized as key issues. I could see a more or less cosmopolitan party (pro-immigration, pro-free trade, pro-international cooperation probably Keynesian) and a more parochial party that takes a more isolationist stance in foreign policy emerging.

And those of you predicting/wishing for a third party should get a grip as well.

by **pacino** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 17:13:36

Obviously it seems anything i like is deemed a bad part of the.democratic party by jeff. Whatever

by **jeff2sf** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 17:15:18

Hey now, pac, we're both pro-gay.

by **The Nightman Cometh** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 17:19:35

pacino wrote:Obviously it seems anything i like is deemed a bad part of the.democratic party by jeff. Whatever

I just don't understand why he thinks republicans are obviously better with economics when there is little to no evidence to back this.

by **pacino** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 17:36:40

Not sure why liberals should be screwed over beacuse the daivd brooks of the world cant control their base. What are we to be adding to the party? Less regulation and adherence to a fair and equitable economic system? Dropping unions...why? Have they helped too many people achieve their dreams? And screw the poor people...because who cares because i gots mine. This isbt my democratic party, and its not anything the actual base wants. I think dajafi overestimates the amount of educated in the party...but they obviously have way more influence. Im fine with that because many of them are for the values which i feel make the party come together. Dropping those will fracture our party and leadership will be unable to control message and will be unable to have a clear voice. Sounds familiar...

Oh and i think mp brings up a good point. Why exactly are we alla greeing that those ideas are best? Because so-called centrists say they are? Well i disagree and dont want to give up my ideals for the sake of some votes i really dont even want anyway.

by **dajafi** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 17:50:29

jerseyhoya wrote:Between jeff2sf suggesting setting up a new political party around his basic ideological leanings and dajafi asserting he's the new base of the Democratic Party, there's a lot of wanting being disguised as analysis here.

To be clear, I don't "want" this; I just think it's a partial/conditional description of reality.

What I want, if I'm really being selfish, is a Republican Party that occasionally could get me to vote for them by emphasizing fiscal responsibility and consistent modesty about what government can accomplish--rather than the total contempt they have for the ability of government to help people at home, and total credulity that military force alone can remake other parts of the world in our image.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 18:06:26

jerseyhoya wrote:
dajafi wrote:
jeff2sf wrote:
cshort wrote:I have to think at some point a 3rd party has to form. There are too many disenfranchised people in the center that are getting screwed by the primaries of both parties.

What if the Dems just traded the unions for a bunch of rich socially liberal or at least socially don't care Republicans? Can't that work?

That's basically what has happened. No Democrat over the last couple decades has been really strong for the unions, with some good consequences (education reform gaining momentum) and bad (inequality getting worse and worse; you don't want spending power to get too concentrated in a consumption-driven economy).

The new Democratic "base" is people like us: social liberals with a lot of education and good professional networks. Fifty years ago we would have been Rockefeller Republicans, like my grandfather basically was.

(Right, Paul?)

The Dem base is a bunch of different things. Blacks accounted for 23% of Obama's votes in a the 2008 election, so they'd have to be in the discussion right off the bat. Obama got 11% of his vote from Latinos. Working class, manufacturing unions might not play as key of a role as they did in the past, but Obama got 22% of his votes from union households, winning them 59-39. SEIU, teacher's unions, etc are the new key Dem pillars from the union movement. Obama got about 18% of his votes from people with postgrad education, winning them 58-40. So he won them by a lot, but not by as much as a lot of other key groups. Obviously the rich people matter more as donors, but they aren't the party's electoral base nationally.

Obama won people who did not graduate from college 53-46% and people who did graduate from college 53-45%. Obama won every education segment, although did best among people who did not graduate from high school, followed by people with postgrad education, followed by people who graduated from high school. McCain's two best segments were college dropouts and college graduates.

I work for the AFT, and I :h:

Obama. I do know there are union folks who don't, but people need to get over themselves. Even if the Dems aren't as pro-union as they used to be, there is a clear choice here still.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 18:07:17

The Nightman Cometh wrote:
pacino wrote:Obviously it seems anything i like is deemed a bad part of the.democratic party by jeff. Whatever

I just don't understand why he thinks republicans are obviously better with economics when there is little to no evidence to back this.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 18:09:18

dajafi wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:Between jeff2sf suggesting setting up a new political party around his basic ideological leanings and dajafi asserting he's the new base of the Democratic Party, there's a lot of wanting being disguised as analysis here.

To be clear, I don't "want" this; I just think it's a partial/conditional description of reality.

What I want, if I'm really being selfish, is a Republican Party that occasionally could get me to vote for them by emphasizing fiscal responsibility and consistent modesty about what government can accomplish--rather than the total contempt they have for the ability of government to help people at home, and total credulity that military force alone can remake other parts of the world in our image.

Well said. The Republican party would be respectable if people like David Brooks were allowed to run it. I've heard him say that when he was younger he thought the republicans were right on the big issues, and now he thinks the Dems are. The Economist seems to have drifted in this direction as well. The wing-nuts in that party have made it a grim parody of what it supposedly stands for, IMHO.

by **dajafi** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 18:11:29

mozartpc27 wrote:
The Nightman Cometh wrote:
pacino wrote:Obviously it seems anything i like is deemed a bad part of the.democratic party by jeff. Whatever

I just don't understand why he thinks republicans are obviously better with economics when there is little to no evidence to back this.

I assume jeff is referring to Bruce Bartlett, William Niskanen et al--the reality-based conservatives who care about balanced budgets and are honest about the effects of tax cuts. Not the DeMint/McConnell clap-for-Tinkerbell types who at least claim to believe that tax cuts don't create deficits.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 18:33:51

dajafi wrote:
mozartpc27 wrote:
The Nightman Cometh wrote:
pacino wrote:Obviously it seems anything i like is deemed a bad part of the.democratic party by jeff. Whatever

I just don't understand why he thinks republicans are obviously better with economics when there is little to no evidence to back this.

I assume jeff is referring to Bruce Bartlett, William Niskanen et al--the reality-based conservatives who care about balanced budgets and are honest about the effects of tax cuts. Not the DeMint/McConnell clap-for-Tinkerbell types who at least claim to believe that tax cuts don't create deficits.

Fair enough. FWIW, I get what jeff is saying. I've thought for years that the Libertarian Party is the "missing" party of American politics. I think a lot of Dem voters in the last few elections in the NE have been people who feel, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, that they didn't leave the Republican Party, but the party left them when it got irrevoerably into bed with far-right religious conservatives.

At the same time, I know lots of union guys, and some of them, apart from being union guys, fall very much within the emerging Republican demographic of lower middle class/working class white males. I say emerging really off the top of my head, perhaps it isn't "emerging": I am assuming an old, strict class divide between Republicans and Democrats that probably hasn't been true for years, to the degree it ever was true.

The point is, poor-to-middle class white people have shown a strong tendency to vote against their own interests, and vote for party whose platform promises to eliminate or privatize (and thus make more expensive) social safety nets to the degree they exist, etc. Meanwhile, I read once that 67% of millionaires voted Democratic in the last two presidential elections, which again seems to be against their own interests, except that, since Clinton, Dems don't really run on tax-hike/social programs anymore. They're fiscally conservative too, at least in their public presentation of themselves, just in different ways and less so than the hard-line Republicans.

A good percentage of people I know in the NE I would describe as libertarian: balance the budget, government, and otherwise stay out of everyone's business. Of course, maybe if I went to Church more often, I'd find and meet the social-conservatives who drive the Party.

But there does seem to be a rift there, a rift that widens as the baby boomers die and are replaced by younger folks. I saw a book once, and I curse myself to this day for not buying it or at least not properly noting the title and author. At any rate, this book was by a pair of authors who had supposedly correctly predicted the future rightward shift of American politics even amidst the height of the Great Society days of LBJ, before Vietnam really hit the fan and the economy went down the shitter (so, think 1965 or so), by looking at emerging demographic trends. Anyway, these same two authors had a new book out, around 2004, predicting a pendulum shift to the left; I should have bought it, but even now I can probably guess what they were looking at: as the baby boomers die off and the electorate gets younger, social issues will matter less. During the last national election season, I remember seeing a poll of young "conservative Christians" of voting age, and they, as a rule, expressed far less interest in gay rights issues than their parents, and far more concern with social justice issues. Part of that is just the idealism of youth - some of those polled, when they get old and start working for their money, will suddenly "find religion" on tea party issues like lower taxes, etc., and probably some of them will even at the same time "realize" that homosexuality is an abomination that they need to stop by voting, etc. But not all of them, and probably not even the largest percentage of them.

So, I agree with jeff. Change will happen, slowly over time, but not in the form of a third party, but rather in the form of a yet smaller, yet crazier, yet whiter, yet more regionalized Republican party, and a larger, more conservative Democratic party. We may actually see the reappearance of organized radical left wing parties to make up for the further "middlizing" of the Democratic party.

by **jerseyhoya** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 18:42:32

mozartpc27 wrote:
The Nightman Cometh wrote:
pacino wrote:Obviously it seems anything i like is deemed a bad part of the.democratic party by jeff. Whatever

I just don't understand why he thinks republicans are obviously better with economics when there is little to no evidence to back this.

I think the GOP's policies of lower taxes and free trade are objectively better in economic theory for growing an economy than those of the Dems. Democrats would respond that growing the economy shouldn't be the goal and things like redistributing wealth through progressive taxation to stem income inequality and provide for the meek is a worthwhile goal for society even if it costs you on the growth front. As jeff2sf is idealizing this new political party, I imagine he's figuring on it implementing policies as they say, and not creating large new entitlement programs and starting expensive wars while cutting taxes and freeing trade.

by **drsmooth** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 19:12:07

jerseyhoya wrote:
jeff2sf wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:Between jeff2sf suggesting setting up a new political party around his basic ideological leanings and dajafi asserting he's the new base of the Democratic Party, there's a lot of wanting being disguised as analysis here.

Come on now, JH. I mean aren't you a social liberal? I mean if we took economics and war out of the equation and you had two slates, which are you choosing? If it's Republicans, why?

I think there's already plenty of people that live in the Northeast that are already making this calculus - Republicans generally have a better idea on economics and Dems have a better idea of social stuff.

..but if you look at the real world, these people in Delaware voted against Mike Castle because of his vote on Cap and Trade and because he wasn't forceful enough in wanting to repeal Obamacare and on other pocketbook issues.

So the 30,000-odd DE repubs who voted against Castle made conscious, rational, well-considered decisions to vote against their own economic interests? Because it sounds like you're trying to say they were making rational calculations about the candidate most likely to support policies that were good for them personally, which can't be accurate unless it's your hunch that all of them have annual household incomes over $250k.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 19:14:49

jerseyhoya wrote:I think the GOP's policies of lower taxes and free trade are objectively better in economic theory for growing an economy than those of the Dems. Democrats would respond that growing the economy shouldn't be the goal and things like redistributing wealth through progressive taxation to stem income inequality and provide for the meek is a worthwhile goal for society even if it costs you on the growth front. As jeff2sf is idealizing this new political party, I imagine he's figuring on it implementing policies as they say, and not creating large new entitlement programs and starting expensive wars while cutting taxes and freeing trade.

I don't think I would say this as a pretty died-in-the-wool Dem. I think economic reality is that 3% growth is needed to sustain most any social project you can name, growth and equitable wealth distribution need to be co-existing goals, and I think they can be. It's tricky to do both, and you may need to accept that attempting to achieve both may result in a growth/recession economic cycle - but, then, there is little evidence that there is ANY way of managing the economy that won't result in a cyclical growth situation.

What bugs me is that, over the last 50 years, at the bottom of each bust, the piece of the pie going to workers gets shrunk precipitously, and, at the top of the next growth period, that share of the pie never gets back to where it was pre-bust. In America - sorry for the Marxist terminology I am going to use, but it's the only word I can think of to express what I mean - capital has gotten away with taking, taking, and taking from workers because they've also been able to reduce the price of a whole lot of goods, notably sophisticated entertainment goods, relative to the incomes of those workers. To see what I mean, check out, for example, this ad for color television sets from 1971. A 23" - 23"! - color television is listed as $600. Today, you can STILL buy a television set for that money - only it's bigger. And this, of course, is to say nothing of all the entertainment devices that exist now but weren't part of the landscape in the 1970s.

The point here is that the dropping price of increasingly sophisticated technology, and thus its wider and wider availability in this country, allows capital to plausibly make the claim that "a rising tide lifts all boats." See, we can prove it: in 1971, the average family struggled to afford one 22" color TV! Today, they can afford three TVs, two computers, two video game systems, a DVD player, etc., etc., etc. We're doing better!

What's usually not mentioned as part of this is the increasing percentage of homes that have to have two adults, and not one, working in order to afford a mortgage and a couple of kids when compared to 40 years ago, and the fact that the only reason those electronic goods are so cheap in the USA is because we've exploited, for years, foreign labor markets where items like televisions could be made for pennies on the dollar compared to the prices here. So, in other words, capital has exploited cheap foreign labor in order to keep the labor we have here so occupied with entertainment that they don't notice how much harder they keep having to work for the same basic set of stuff their parents had - a house, a car, and some kids.

I could go on, but I won't; suffice it to say, I'm not anti-growth, exactly, but I am anti- the depressing and ever-widening income gap. It's not just that the gap keeps growing, either; it's that the RATE at which the income gap grows is itself growing. We're talking integrals and derivatives here, or something.

I don't see why increased growth overall must necessarily mean a corresponding increase in the RATE at which incomes gaps are widening, but that is what we have.

And why we need unions, real lefties, Democrats, etc.

by **jerseyhoya** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 19:49:50

drsmooth wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:
jeff2sf wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:Between jeff2sf suggesting setting up a new political party around his basic ideological leanings and dajafi asserting he's the new base of the Democratic Party, there's a lot of wanting being disguised as analysis here.

Come on now, JH. I mean aren't you a social liberal? I mean if we took economics and war out of the equation and you had two slates, which are you choosing? If it's Republicans, why?

I think there's already plenty of people that live in the Northeast that are already making this calculus - Republicans generally have a better idea on economics and Dems have a better idea of social stuff.

..but if you look at the real world, these people in Delaware voted against Mike Castle because of his vote on Cap and Trade and because he wasn't forceful enough in wanting to repeal Obamacare and on other pocketbook issues.

So the 30,000-odd DE repubs who voted against Castle made conscious, rational, well-considered decisions to vote against their own economic interests? Because it sounds like you're trying to say they were making rational calculations about the candidate most likely to support policies that were good for them personally, which can't be accurate unless it's your hunch that all of them have annual household incomes over $250k.

Castle and O'Donnell both favored making the Bush tax cuts permanent. I have no idea what you're talking about.

by **Rev_Beezer** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 20:47:11

Please tell me Runyan won't win. We don't need another meathead "representing" us.

by **jerseyhoya** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 20:55:49

God I hope so

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THEY'RE TAKING OVER!!! politics thread