It’s interesting to read how people think far leftist socialist policies are going to make them happier, successful, and possibly more good looking [that’s a joke :)]?
Let’s cut to the chase. This is a wealth grab. YOUR WEALTH. Plain & simple. If government grabs the wealth of OTHERS then what’s to stop them from grabbing more of YOURS? What makes you so special? If you think government today is overly powerful & abusive, then you’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. And if government goes far left, then who’s to say the Republican party won’t follow and get elected? They’re going to play the game and not miss out. Now you have real problems!
Go ahead and choose so called ‘democratic socialism’. You can start today by sending 50% [or more] of what your earn to your local, state, and federal government. Maybe you’ll balk at doing that because the old country club Democrat guard is charge? Don’t! Just keep giving more money, because that’s the socialist answer to everything.
Closing with respect to the smart, intelligent members of the BoingBoing community
Yes indeed, instituting programmes like single-payer universal health insurance, subsidised post-secondary education, stronger consumer and investor and saver protections, stronger banking regulations, and policies that reduce the number of homeless and hungry and that mitigate the effects of climate change will surely place us all on the Ro-o-o-oad to Serfdom (apparently quite a slippery slope). In no time at all the U.S. will become a confiscatory and expropriating Commie hellhole like just about every other politically stable OECD liberal democracy on the globe today.
The political discussion currently underway here and within the Democratic party goes not to the collection of funds via progressive taxation but to the application of said funds. Libertarians and anti-statists, despite their purported genius at understanding economics and finance, always seem blind to that last part (as they often are to the distinction between wealth and income).
The tax cut that our idiot prez gave to the rich could have easily paid for the health care for all, better education, free college for everyone and better gun control. It added about $20 to my paychecks. I’ll give it back and more if it meant those issues I mentioned get enacted.
Long-term the Democrats will win, forever, due to demographic changes in the US. Low-education third world immigrants, and their descendants, don’t vote Republican. Texas will turn competitive within the next couple of election cycles, and then will turn blue, and the same with Florida. There is no Republican path to victory without Florida, and certainly none without Texas. New Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez and Kamala Harris will replace incumbent older white Democrats so the billionaires backing the Democratic party may not get the result they hoped for. It’s going to be something far more progressive and redistributionist than they would have imagined. Depending on your perspective and how you want America to be, we are either doomed, or saved, by mass third world immigration. Either way, new voters are going to bring big and permanent changes.
This was always likely to happen; the Democrats tinker with the process after every major loss, or at least those which they think they should have won. It usually feels like shutting the barn door after the horses have escaped.
I hope there aren’t unexpected consequences. The function of superdelegates was to provide a check to make sure that the nominee is (a) actually a Democrat, and (b) not a Lonesome Rhodes-style charismatic monomaniac. In other words, to avoid what happened to the Republicans last election. Hopefully this compromise, where the supers can have a say on the second ballot but not the first, will still prevent egregious problems.
(As some of the opponents to the change pointed out, the supers also provide extra representation for minorities, who are often the most active people within the local parties and therefore the ones who end up selected as supers. I don’t see that as a huge concern this cycle as the DNC leadership is currently minority-majority.)
I agree; the same safeguards that made it difficult for a charismatic populist candidate like Bernie to clinch the Democratic nomination also would have made it more difficult for a charismatic populist candidate like Trump to win the Republican nomination.
Of course, had Bernie actually won the majority of elected delegates, I’m sure the superdelegates would have either abstained or moved to back him instead of Clinton.
The Dems are to the Right of Reagan on most issues, certainly all economic ones. As you say, Nixon would be one of those dangerously Leftist Democrats the Party is trying to purge. Eisenhower would be a Loony Left Commie.
