The difference, of course, being that a war is undertaken by someone who has already sought and gained power by popular consent.
Youâre not paying for the candidate, youâre paying for the forum, youâre paying for the benefit of hearing more diverse voices. If it helps you, think of your tax dollars as being earmarked toward the candidates you like, but couldnât hear before because corporate money was drowning them out. Think of rednecks waving confederate flags as having their money earmarked toward the others. The speech doesnât represent you unless and until you vote for them.
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Did your dad tell you that?
Your naive faith that the current U.S. system is actually democratic is, touching.
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Indeed, given how little coverage and attention libertarian candidates get, I think @goodpasture must be extremely principled. I personally think it would be fantastic to have one or a few principled libertarian candidates to vote for as opposed to our current candidates who are invariably slanted towards their existing corporate funders.
Apparently, principled libertarians donât want candidates who share their views on fairness to get electedâŚbecause that would beâŚummâŚunfair I guess?
Incidentally, this âlibertarianâ free-speech-is-money talking point is brilliant â it takes advantage of the biggest philosophical lacuna in the libertarian edifice to subvert the libertarian desire for democracy and autonomy into support for an authoritarian corporatist regime. Libertarians have never been able to explain why the current distribution of wealth should be considered a fair starting point for future meritocratic competition, and it is exactly the current unfair distribution of wealth that is being used to influence elections to maintain that unfair distribution of wealth.
Really phenomenal propaganda technique, especially so because libertarians seem to tend to consider themselves immune to propaganda.
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That is the cutest snake I have ever seen!
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But I also think itâs important to note that libertarians shouldnât be so terribly opposed to Bernie Sanders as our friend seems to be. I mean, the guy isnât exactly Che GuevaraâŚ
In fact, I think it should be noted that while Sanders calls himself a socialist, heâs not really at all a socialist. I mean, I can appreciate why he calls himself a socialist â rehabilitate the word, move the Overton window. But in reality Sanders is just a Keynsian social democrat whose policies would be considered utterly moderate essentially anywhere else in the industrialized world â or, for that matter, in the United States pre-Reagan.
In fact, his policies seem like theyâre designed to try to enlarge the middle class for the purpose of stimulating growth in our capitalist consumer economy. Really nothing about appropriating the means of production in there. So really, when you think about it, Sanders is almost the opposite of a socialist.
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Every American pays higher taxes so that religious institutions donât have to. Iâve sat in services where either the minister/priest or a âguest speakerâ (during a service) has specifically stated how the congregation is to vote. Every woman, person of color, LGBTQetc. has to pay this extra price. Every right-thinking straight white male has to pay it. Whatâs the difference?
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He calls himself a âdemocratic socialistâ, no?
I thought he wanted to emulate the Nordic Model?
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Iâll defer to you on this â I donât want to get into a semantic argument about the meaning of âsocialistâ and its various flavors.
Iâm mainly just trying to point out that Sanders is not planning on nationalizing any industries or expropriate factories for worker collectives or anything like that. In fact, he seems to be trying to increase the size and wealth of the middle class, which I think would actually have the effect of promoting economic growth and capitalistic creative destruction, etc.
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[quote=âMichael.Lederman, post:118, topic:70876, full:trueâ]
Iâm willing to wager money that whatever Republican takes the primary is our next POTUS
[/quote]I donât blame you.
If a Democrat takes office in 2016, itâll be the first time in modern American history where we do not moronically ping-pong back and forth between Democratic and Republican administrations (in favor of Republicans).
Corporatists love it this way and thatâs how the status quo establishment stays in power no matter who has been in office all these decades. This way the Democrats can play a perpetual blame game against the last Republican administration instead of taking responsibility for their own corporatist right policies against the American people.
The difference in 2015 is the online/offline power of grassroots movements thatâve been slowly, but steadily gaining massive strength in recent years under the radar of the corporate media. The media hasnât been reporting on this fact directly, however, thereâs plenty of strong evidence if one looks at the halo effects. (i.e., minimum wage increases, gay marriage, marijuana legalization, war resistance, beginnings of prison reform, health care reform, etc.)
Iâve detailed this grassroots growth and dynamic here:
This 2015 dynamic will not work in Republicansâ overall favor.
Republicans thrive on low-information voters who are disconnected from reality, facts, etc. and can easily be manipulated through fear (capitalizing on terrorism, âthe otherâ, etc.) via corporate media.
Trumpâs âgrassrootsâ movement is the last throws of a dying breed of hateful, chickenshit, cowardly and (frankly) stupid Americans. They wonât stand a chance up against us head-to-head. We will outsmart them and we will destroy their horrific movement for the sake of this nation and world.
In 2015, thereâs still plenty of cowardly American dolts who are willing to throw away our nationâs freedom and future in the name of cowardly fear and loathing. However, for the first time in our nationâs history, we now have a huge group thatâs spreading information to one another through word-of-mouth both online and offline to combat this ongoing idiocracy.
Iâm not sure our numbers are large enough (and nimble enough) to combat the corporatist media alignment thatâs working in Hillaryâs favor to keep Bernie at bay. However, I do know that if we overcome that huge obstacle, weâll most certainly landslide the Republican end of the corporatist machine thatâs in so much disarray today.
If Sanders wins the nomination, weâll definitely win the presidency. If Hillary wins? You may be right. I could see her losing to a Republican nominee because she doesnât have the grassroots passion and strength behind her that Bernie does.
I know Iâll be holding my nose and voting for Clinton in the general election if she beats Sanders, but I really wonât be able to muster the strength to keep up the work for her on a grassroots level. Like many others, Iâm just not going to sacrifice more of my own money, time and life for yet another Republican-Lite corporatist presidency.
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Incumbent, career politicians love this sort of thing, in fact they love âcampaign finance reformâ in general, because it amounts to an Incumbency Protection Act.
Itâs not just media coverage that gives incumbents an advantage. I used to work for a company that at one time or another employed the children of three governors (two Dems, one GOP) as well-paid âinternsâ.
The governor can fuck with your business in several totally legal ways, so you treat him nice, capisce? Itâs the American way.
Now, you allow challengers something like a 4:1 advantage over incumbents in spending, I might see my way to agreeing with you.
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Iâm totally down with term limits. Maybe set the limit to one term? 
A quick google suggests incumbents massively out-raise challengers right now, so 1:1 would be a big improvement. But yeah, election reform would have to consider addressing the incumbency effect.
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Do you have any data to back this up? Iâm not really convinced that incumbents would prefer their campaign funding to be limited in any way relative to non-incumbents, but Iâm certainly open to evidence.
Not that I disagree with the op-ed you posted, but I suspect @daneel is correct that 1:1 spending would be an improvement in terms of the current situation, and therefore a worthwhile goal. Limiting incumbents to 1/4th of the campaign funding of others might have some justification, but on its face it looks unfair enough that it seems politically impossible. This seems to me like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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Although itâs from an anarchist perspective, this piece offers some good critiques of US democratic socialism (and does a fairly good job in some places of pointing out why âsocialismâ and âdemocratic socialismâ arenât the same just because they share the s-word):
Some of these criticisms are more broadly applicable for the revolutionary left, including socialists who are opposed to democratic socialism.
Point #10 addresses the possibility of Scandinavian style socialism in the US.
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Coupling spending reform with serious term limits, as daneel suggested, is an approach I can support.
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Thatâs pretty cool, but Iâd still appreciate corroboration of the claim you made earlier if you can provide it.
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Interesting article.
Most of what is called âsocialismâ here in the US (and here on BB) seems to be nothing more than a more generous welfare state paid for by more taxes on what is still a capitalist economy.
Under that model, the tax-supported government services remain dependent on a growing, profitable private sector, irrespective of whether the owners of that sector are individual capitalists, the companyâs workers, or its shareholders.
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Thanks! You should have a chat with @the_borderer. I think youâd get on.
I was digging around this a bit earlier and discovered that Democratic Socialists arenât Social Democrats either, apparently.
Itâs been interesting/depressing to see the response to Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party, where heâs been portrayed as âHard-Leftâ, when he doesnât really seem to be anything of the sort, although heâs definitely to the left of Sanders.
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