Right, usually the best we can do is to elect someone who will shift the center of gravity in the right direction to create an environment where we can even discuss legitimately progressive ideas.
When I was young and Reagan was in office American politicians weren’t even seriously considering ideas like universal health care and marriage equality and legalizing recreational use of marijuana. Being branded a “liberal” was all but a political death sentence to anyone running for national office, and a Jewish candidate who proudly identified as a “Democratic Socialist” would have been all but unthinkable.
Mostly at this point i’m sick of cries of ‘mysandry’ because it comes off a s smug and shorthand for ‘I don’t want to listen to what you have to say.’ I expect that approach out of assholes, not people from here.
Apologies if I got on a tear with you involved man.
Good question. Getting us the fuck out of that mess was why I voted for Obama. Lost all hope for change at this point.
And yet, on the social side, the pendulum did swing quite a bit left after Bush- the government just hasn’t caught up yet. I’m pretty sure that rewarding them for their broken promises will send a clear message that we don’t actually care if they do.
Thats more than a bit unfair comparison wise. Wasn’t Umbridge essentially a death eater? I don’t support Clinton, but I don’t think sh’e’d intentionally fire the country into a new dark ages. She’s power hungry, not stupid.
No, she was just so power hungry that she didn’t care who gave it to her (and may not have actually known it was Voldemort controlling the Ministry of Magic).
From my interpretation, Umbridge was merely calculating and more than a little power-hungry until Voldy came back to power. She jumped on the Voldmort express because she thought it would be the quickest means to an end.
But that’s just what I drew from the story, and of course it’s up for debate.
(Interesting that my autocorrect changed “Voldmort” to “Cold-hearted”.)
Curious. Then again it’s been… well a long flipping time since i’ve bothered with the books.
I can see a parrelel but it’s an imperfect one since i don’t think Hilary is that stupid. Dumb enough to think her hitching herself to corporate interests? Certantly? Pandering to racist assholes like trump has done? Nope.
She certainly looks the part! Perhaps a little bit less *ahem svelte than one might expect for a seeker, but you can just sense that she’s quite at home in the air. And she has that determined look in her eye, like she’s just spotted the snitch!
The added roundness helps for wind resistance somehow that’s difficult to explain in layman’s terms, but is very convincing. There’s also a presidential version.
[quote=“GilbertWham, post:107, topic:79465, full:true”]
Well, until they actually do that, or at least try, we’ll never know, will we?[/quote]
Yes, of course that would be great. But.
I’m no expert in the ideology of the Democratic Party of the United States, so I may be wrong. However, my understanding is that the Democrats held the House and Senate for ~40 years, from the early 50’s until Newt Gingrich came out with the so-called “Contract With America” in '94. Since then it’s been hit and miss, mostly miss. And the Democrats moved their platform more to the right when they saw that the Republicans were winning.
The point I’m trying to make is that I’m not convinced that the general population would vote for Democrats even if the Democratic Party was, as a whole, overtly for all those things that Taibbi recommended (or that Sanders stands for). If it were as easy as that, people wouldn’t have put all these Tea Party Republicans in power. Even though the Democratic Party may not be as progressive now as it was, say, when LBJ was president, they sure are a whole lot more liberal than the current crop of Republicans.
So, if you know how to get the general population vote for more liberal politicians, please explain.
It’s a social/marketing problem. Political parties in theory exist so that the shared interests of a group can be represented, but that’s not what they do, they’re run by party bosses, and they’re sold via marketing techniques as a lifestyle choice/social identity/tribal token (the GOP does this more, though the Dems aren’t above it). So you tell the blue collar worker scraping by that he’s better off with organized labor, universal healthcare, and good social insurance policies, and that the whole country would be enough better off with these that it’d even be good for the economy and securing a better future for him and his kids, and he rejects it out of hand because his identity is tied into being “conservative” which he believes is good because it means loyalty and patriotism and strength and maybe Jesus/NASCAR/country music/guns/whatever else they’ve turned into politicized tribal totems, all things he wants to identify with. He also gets an added bonus of looking down/kicking down those poorer/worse off than him so he’s better than someone, but that’s not at the top of his consciousness, that’s more subtle. Just putting out a better choice and explaining why it’s better isn’t going to get that many people to hop aboard the thing Taibbi offers, because people aren’t particularly rational actors, especially in politics.
