without stupid wedge issues, the white working class in america kinda doesn't have any real reason to vote republican anymore. the continuing extermination of the evangelical right and the rise of minorities as a significant demographic is going to change the country big-time, I guarantee it.
Boehner: Nation on the path to default if Obama doesn't give concessions for ACA
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without stupid wedge issues, the white working class in america kinda doesn't have any real reason to vote republican anymore. the continuing extermination of the evangelical right and the rise of minorities as a significant demographic is going to change the country big-time, I guarantee it.
Elaugaufein
Member
It's pretty obvious the US is right leaning.
Obama, who has by fairly normal standards been a centre to centre-right president despite running on a platform that might qualify as centre-left is decried as a socialist or communist quite frequently.
Even in other relatively right 1st world countries, like the UK or Australia, that particular dog whistling is saved for parties who are at least actually genuinely leftist (e,g. in Australia it's applied to the Greens sometimes) and even then its usually viewed as pretty silly (people here generally believe the Greens are more left than they actually are but very few people believe they are communists) .
Obama, who has by fairly normal standards been a centre to centre-right president despite running on a platform that might qualify as centre-left is decried as a socialist or communist quite frequently.
Even in other relatively right 1st world countries, like the UK or Australia, that particular dog whistling is saved for parties who are at least actually genuinely leftist (e,g. in Australia it's applied to the Greens sometimes) and even then its usually viewed as pretty silly (people here generally believe the Greens are more left than they actually are but very few people believe they are communists) .
I blame the cold war and baby boomers. Their fight against the evils of communism has never abated apparently. I can't imagine it makes a lick of sense to any american who was born in the 80s and beyond
equippedwithtowel
Member
Yes, but being left behind by the republicans still does not push the american population past center right, the Democrats are center right by any reasonable assessment.
Issues such as gay marriage and decriminalization are individual rights issues only opposed by the "libertairan" contingent by a tremendous act of collective cognitive dissonance. To really assert that the american zeitgeist has moved to center left would require a substantial shift towards support for much greater social and economic involvement by the state.
CoffeeJanitor
Member
Both. GAF leans left the the right in American politics has been terrible for at least 5-6 years.
Liberty4all
Banned
Evangelical Christianity isn't being exterminated exactly but its fracturing into left and right leaning versions of it:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-Letter_Christian
The "good news" is that the left leaning portion is alot more in line with where many North Americans are today.
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
I seriously doubt Boehner is willing to fall on a sword for the same tea party that's made his speakership hell the past few years.
The President could simply direct the Treasury to issue bonds in order to cover the spending already authorized by Congress. However, he would almost certainly face a near-immediate legal challenge, causing the validity of any bonds issued in that period to be placed into doubt. However, since the upshot of that would be the erosion of confidence in the inviolability of US Treasury debt, also known as the exact thing the President would be looking to avoid, that strategy isn't exactly ideal.
There's also the whole trillion dollar platinum coin gambit people have been talking about for the past few years, but that's even less likely to actually happen.
You Are Viewtiful
Member
Why not? Catering to that caucus is the only reason he still has a job. He won't put the clean CR up for a vote precisely because he's worried about getting ousted by the Tea Party.
Manmademan
Member
he's decried as a socialist or communist by a very vocal fringe, or the poorly informed- i.e. those that don't actually know what socialism is, they just think it's bad. The majority don't think this.
A guy walked into an elementary school during class a year ago and blew the faces off of a couple dozen children. When there was the question of whether we should have a conversation about how to prevent it, every American grabbed their gun and said they'd rather live with dead children than not be able to pretend they're John Wayne.
How anyone can say this is a center-left country is beyond me.
How anyone can say this is a center-left country is beyond me.
Bullshit.
Most Americans called for bans on many guns and stricter laws. It was the NRA that prevented it.
Manmademan
Member
correct. the majority were in favor of moderate gun control restrictions. unfortunately republicans are in charge of the house of representatives, and completely controlled by a minority that doesn't want the government doing ANYTHING, especially if that anything is gun control.
TestOfTide
Banned
To be fair, the health care one shows that before you have people like luntz framing the conversation, people are generally progressive. Most people felt that the government should be in charge of making sure people have health, but then when democrats start taking that as their position, people who would otherwise be for it sudenly became against it because they were told to be against it because they don't want to consider themselves liberal.
It's the same thing with "pro-life". Most people are against the republican positions regarding abortion, but will call themselves pro-life because they are told that pro-choice means allowing third term abortions.
When people are asked about specific provisions of the ACA, they are almost always in favor, but when asked about obamacare, show opposition.
Look at the gun control debates. 90% of people were in favor of the background check bill, but NRA convinces people that the gun control bill wasn;t simply background checks and thus were less in approval of the senate bill.
Whatever popular issue democrats decide to show interest in next will automatically jump to 40% disapproval simply because it's something democrats want to tackle.
equippedwithtowel
Member
That has to do with the level to which a well mobilized fringe can paralyze or co-opt the legislative apparatus of America.
The real metric is overall american views towards the characteristic tendencies of social democracy, not individual rights issues that have been hijacked by social conservatives as the key divisive elements.
The majority of Americans - and Republicans - supported stronger gun control measures.
ScottSullivan
Member
I've got a question. By What metric are we measuring how left or right america is? I don't think it's fair to just measure it by how leftist much of europe is. Is there some kind of standardised, non biased scale all of the statements in this thread are coming from?
It has to do with what kinds of policies you want and how much control you think the government has.
Usually, more progressive policies (abortion, gay marriage, gun control) and the more government involvement (roads, schools, social services), the more left you're considered.
Really, America is quickly becoming a mew leftist country. The problem is that the right still has a major hold on key districts and keeps restructuring things in their favor.
Manmademan
Member
you can also point to polls which show that the majority are in favor of what the ACA actually DOES when you speak individual measures. When you ask them if they like Obamacare, suddenly approval drops like a rock because republicans spend so much time demonizing it.
What you're seeing with those polls is how effective the conservative BS-machine is, convincing the ignorant that "obamacare" means government controlled healthcare that will kill grandma with death panels.
Elaugaufein
Member
Yeah, I'm aware. But my point was that this wouldn't even make sense as a tactic in a centre-left country, Obama is sufficiently right-wing that it's ridiculous. Then again I've also heard people calling him a communist nazi or a socialist fascist without any trace of irony so its possible the people saying some of these things are detached from reality.
equippedwithtowel
Member
There are objective (if not standardized) indicators, but the placement of states on such a scale will be inherently relative to some degree.
TestOfTide
Banned
After posted I editted to add gun control and the ACA. I would add Syria as well, but that was different because unlike stuff like health care reform, Syria never had a majority in favor of intervention outside that crazy 40%.
Manmademan
Member
This is exactly what it is.
There is a VERY nasty streak of anti-intellectualism within the US, and it tends to be concentrated in conservative areas (read: rural areas and the south). Conservative politicians frequently cut as much funding from education as possible, demonize "ivory tower liberals" in academia, and scientists and the scientific method when it comes to things like evolution and climate change.
This is how we've come around to the most important qualification for president being "who would you like to have a beer with" and not "who actually understands what the hell he's doing."
The conservative media machine also coordinates it's talking points and becomes a self feeding echo chamber, where anything outside of AM radio and Fox news are painted as "the liberal media that can't be trusted". It's not uncommon to find conservatives who ONLY get their news from these sources and take bizarre conspiracy theories as fact. Right wing politicians are fully aware of this and are free to say whatever they choose to whether it's true or not, since the RWM will never actually call them out on it.
the majority doesn't fall into this category, but those who do are vocal and attract attention far outside of their actual numbers. The US primary system is also partially at fault here, since joe sixpack doesn't actually pay attention to those- but the lunatic, frothing at the mouth tea party fringe certainly does, making moderate republicans extinct or very close to it.
Elaugaufein
Member
It's very hard to set an objective standard for left-wing in any case. Winning one battle tends to lead into another , the concept of gay marriage wouldn't even have occurred to people who were fighting political battles against slavery.
It can also be messy. In many ways Australia is left of the US (e.g we have single payer healthcare), but you'll likely have marriage equality before us because we just elected a center right government and even our center-left party tends to meander around in its support due to some of their leadership being fairly conservative on some issues.
Ludicrous Speed
Banned
Democrats and Republicans need to get their shit together. This is embarrassing. I know Obama wanted to be tougher in his second term, but this isn't helping. Fuck!
Democrats and Obama have their shit together. This is strictly on Boehner and the Tea Party. No one else.
Bam Bam Baklava
Member
Are you kidding me man? Explain how Democrats and Obama could get their shit together. What besides giving into outrageous demands can they be doing?
Ludicrous Speed
Banned
Nope. Definitely not. Obama, Democrats, Republicans. They're all in this shit together. Obama doesn't get a free pass here.
equippedwithtowel
Member
I'm referring to classical liberal versus social democratic tendencies, which are somehow often overlooked in the discussion of categorizing left versus right.
Complistic
Member
I really hope we default so the republican party can finally disappear. I'd be worth whatever problems defaulting brings to get rid of them. Any reasonable person can see this is 100% a problem manufactured by Boehner.
Grover Cleveland
Member
Why would Obama willingly neuter a law that he spent a year fighting for and risked his Presidency over after it's been litigated, approved by both houses of Congress, and (mostly) re-affirmed by the highest court in the land?
Obama's being perfectly reasonable here.
j_k_redtail
Member
His bluffing. Boehner is biding his time, because his only hope at winning this thing is in the small chance that Obama and Reid screw up massively. He can't be seen capitulating before October 16, at which point the shutdown will end and the DL will be increased. He has to say these things to keep his conference united.
If puts a clean CR on the floor beforehand, he won't be able to deliver any votes for a DL hike and will be effectively neutered.
If you have to take a bullet: try to take one bullet, and not two.
Manmademan
Member
you can't be serious. Obama capitulating here would break the political process as we know it even more than it actually is. Forget the ACA. what if this was literally ANY other law republicans decided they didn't like? Because that's what this would turn into if house republicans got their way. Every year a refusal to show up to work, shut down the government, until something they did not like but did not have the support to actually overturn was removed.
Obama and the senate are doing EXACTLY what they're supposed to. This mess is on house republicans and no one else.
In this instance, he does.
The only reason the government is shut down is because of Boehner. Obama and the Democrats literally can't do anything.
Or rather, anything they do would just undermine the entire democratic progress.
Elaugaufein
Member
The Democrats don't actually have a choice here. If they grant a concession here you may as well abolish two branches of the government of your choice, because whichever party is in control of only one office will be able to block anything they please, so you should save yourself that hassle and make it so that whoever's in control is in control*.
*I think this is a terrible idea. I live in a state with a unicameral legislative body in a country with a bicameral federal one. Whoever wins the state election gets to do whatever the heck they want for 3 years at the federal level you at least get some checks.
No it wouldn't. It really wouldn't.
Complistic
Member
I'd easily take a functional government over it.
For the future stability of our democracy Obama's only option is to not compromise. If he does, one house of congress could continually blackmail the administration by threatening to shut down the government or not raise the debt ceiling to get concessions that they would have no chance of getting through the democratic process. Its not democratic and anyone who thinks that the republican tactics are legitimate are simply un-American.
Bullshit. Obama and the Dems are being completely reasonable here. If they give in to this blatant hostage taking, government shutdowns and risking default will be the new normal.
No way. Most Americans stood idly by and let the NRA dictate the terms of the debate.
I should be clear: I have no empirical evidence. it's all anecdotal, and obviously that's not fair of me to characterize an entire population based on it. But at the end of the day, nothing changed and most Americans don't care, so I mean, it's a moot point.
TestOfTide
Banned
Democrats currently do have their shit together (even though the clean CR is a huge compromise). They currently have a plan and have stuck with it so far. They passed a clean CR that ends the shutdown and intent to support a clean debt limit increase.
Republicans meanwhile can't even get their message straight. Earlier this week, the shutdown wasn't a big deal, but as soon as old people can't visit a memorial that's suddenly a travesty and the shutdown that for weeks the Tea Party was cheering for earlier is suddenly Obama's fault.
you might as well say "I AM NOT PAYING ATTENTION AT ALL" in big bolded text.
Manmademan
Member
some would argue that's actually preferable- have a party voted in, accomplish their agenda and let them succeed or fail on their own merits.
As it stands- nothing has been done this year. literally nothing. And it's been this way since 2011. it's nonstop gridlock and grandstanding. This works fine for people who do not want the government doing anything, ever (that would be the tea party) but bad for people who would like their government to actually govern.
ThatCrazyGuy
Member
Nope. This is on the GOP, or the like the 35 extremists.
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