Willie71 wrote:

proudfootz wrote:

Willie71 wrote:

willhud9 wrote:

There is always an us vs them mentality. It's just split amongst parties more pronounced so than in a two party system. It is naïve to think that all Democrats are in agreement on HOW climate change should get fixed. Most Democrats are in agreement that it should.

Also there wasn't a numbness in 2016. Trump played a populist card, which has been working in other countries that have multiparty systems.

Overall though, having more people united behind a general ideology i.e. liberal tends to be more consistent than squabbling over whether they are progressive enough or moderate enough. Such in fighting is actually why the right has been able to consolidate a lot of its growth in recent years, not just in the US either. Many right wing coalitions have been uniting political despite some minor differences, but the left squabbles over minute details.

You’ve normalized the dysfunction that the rest of the world is appalled with. The left isn’t squabbling over minute details. The left was taken over by moderate republicans in the 80’s and 90’s. The left wants to actually be left again. Propping up a republican who calls themselves a left winger should be rejected.

Obama admitted his policies were Republican policies.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/2729 ... n-in-1980s

The Affordable Care Act is based on ideas developed by the conservative 'think tank' Heritage Foundation and implemented by Republican Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/did-the- ... i_b_551804

The Democratic leadership keep chasing after Republican donors and Republican votes and going ever rightward in the pursuit, leaving their base behind.

I’m not sure why Will is trying to obfuscate here. We have discussed this many times. Third way describes themselves as right wing economically, but socially liberal. No ne is making accusations, or smearing. This is what they say they stand for.

willhud9 wrote:

Willie71 wrote:

proudfootz wrote:

Willie71 wrote:

You’ve normalized the dysfunction that the rest of the world is appalled with. The left isn’t squabbling over minute details. The left was taken over by moderate republicans in the 80’s and 90’s. The left wants to actually be left again. Propping up a republican who calls themselves a left winger should be rejected.

Obama admitted his policies were Republican policies.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/2729 ... n-in-1980s

The Affordable Care Act is based on ideas developed by the conservative 'think tank' Heritage Foundation and implemented by Republican Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/did-the- ... i_b_551804

The Democratic leadership keep chasing after Republican donors and Republican votes and going ever rightward in the pursuit, leaving their base behind.

I’m not sure why Will is trying to obfuscate here. We have discussed this many times. Third way describes themselves as right wing economically, but socially liberal. No ne is making accusations, or smearing. This is what they say they stand for.

Except of course when you in your elitist progressivism decry third way as being not left enough. If I remember correctly you stated that Trump would be better than Clinton because you were mad Sanders didn't win the primary. That kind of whiny behavior is actually common amongst progressives. Its why progressives have a hard time accomplishing anything in this country. They self sabotage any progress because its not progressive enough for them.

Ive mentioned before that my district 7th of Virginia is an incredibly purple district.


Party
Candidate
Votes
%

Democratic
Abigail Spanberger
176,079
50.3

Republican
Dave Brat (incumbent)
169,295
48.4

Libertarian
Joe Walton
4,216
1.2

n/a
Write-ins
155
0.1
Total votes
349,745
100.0

The breakdown of my district. Spanberger won. She also ran on a Third Way platform. Now I would rather have a Congress full of Spanberger's than a Congress full of Brat's. Is Spanberger perfect? No. Does she represent all I want in Congress? No. But was she a realistic candidate who stood a chance at winning my home district? Yes. If she ran on AOC's platform, Dave Brat would have won. Spanberger convinced many Republicans to vote for her.

The problem is in a multiparty system, Brat probably would have won that election. As a liberal living in a financially stable middle class part of the state candidates such as Sanders aren't really liked. In 2016 in my home county of Chesterfield he won 33.5% of the primary and Chesterfield is a little more educated/diverse than the rest of the 7th District.

So as a liberal in a multiparty system I run the risk of my vote ultimately not mattering much as I am diluted by more right wing leaning neighbours. Which is different than our current system how?

My original point was I don't see a multiparty system inherently fixing anything with our system. I admit its broken and corrupt and needs to be fixed, but I think a two party system works fine.

willhud9 wrote:Spanberger won. She also ran on a Third Way platform. Now I would rather have a Congress full of Spanberger's than a Congress full of Brat's. Is Spanberger perfect? No. Does she represent all I want in Congress? No. But was she a realistic candidate who stood a chance at winning my home district? Yes. If she ran on AOC's platform, Dave Brat would have won. Spanberger convinced many Republicans to vote for her.

Hermit wrote:

willhud9 wrote:Spanberger won. She also ran on a Third Way platform. Now I would rather have a Congress full of Spanberger's than a Congress full of Brat's. Is Spanberger perfect? No. Does she represent all I want in Congress? No. But was she a realistic candidate who stood a chance at winning my home district? Yes. If she ran on AOC's platform, Dave Brat would have won. Spanberger convinced many Republicans to vote for her.

In purple areas, what we call swinging seats in Australia, there will always be the problem of having to resemble the opposition in order to have a reasonable chance of winning the electoral contest. On the one hand there is a real risk of being so similar to the opposition that it matters little which candidate wins. On the other there is the real risk of being so different that your chances of being elected become negligible. It's a conundrum.

That said, in my opinion Hillary Clinton lost (ignoring the fact that she won almost three million more votes than Trump) because she represented the status quo. Ever since her husband's presidency the Democrats were basically neoliberals, bought and paid for by Wall Street, the banks and the major corporations. The electorate was sick of more of the same. Trump was no more a Republican than Sanders was a Democrat. He won because he promised to "drain the swamp" and because he allowed - encouraged even - a lot of politically incorrect attitudes like sexism and xenophobia. He was change to those who voted for him.

I can only hope that the change social democrats like AOS and the Burn offer will eventually appeal to the electorate. How this might come about I don't know at all. From where I sit much of the US population is not part of the human species. As such, its behaviour is a pure mystery to me.

As for AOS & co being in any way radical or socialist, I can only laugh. Yes, that's the perception among many in the US now. A few decades ago those alleged socialists would have been regarded as milquetoast.

US_socialist_time_travellers.jpg

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Healthcare, the economy and immigration top a list of issues that voters consider important to their vote for Congress this year. Other issues that at least seven in 10 voters rate as "extremely" or "very" important include the treatment of women in U.S. society, gun policy and taxes. The investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election and climate change rank at the bottom, although roughly half still consider them important.

Nihilist In Chief—The banal, evil, all-destructive reign of Mitch McConnell
https://newrepublic.com/article/153275/mitch-mcconnell-profile-nihilist-chief

In the midst of this January’s historic, senselessly protracted government shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided it was time to put forward his vision of how government should properly function. So he took to the Washington Post op-ed section to deride a modest set of Democratic proposals to institute election and voting rights reform. Instead of doing the right thing and bowing to President Donald Trump’s demand for the partial funding for a wall along the country’s southern border with Mexico, McConnell complained, congressional Democrats were trying to game America’s electoral system to their own permanent advantage.

McConnell’s litany of complaints spun off into labored assaults on proposals to reorganize the Federal Elections Commission (a bid to give “Washington a clearer view of whom to intimidate”) and to make Election Day a national holiday for federal workers, together with six days of paid leave for such employees to work in their local precincts to help get out the vote (or, in McConnell-ese, “extra taxpayer-funded vacation for bureaucrats to hover around while Americans cast their ballots”).

For actually existing ordinary Americans—including the 800,000 or so federal employees plunged into desperate economic uncertainty by the shutdown—this was a singularly bizarre spectacle to behold: The man in Washington arguably most responsible for prolonging the ordeal of the shutdown was now pronouncing that an effort to enlarge the sphere of democratic participation was a venal, bureaucratic power grab, and a brazen affront to the sacred liberty of big-money political donors and their legislative mouthpieces.

Just pan back a moment to savor the larger power dynamics in play here: As he was lecturing Democratic reformers on the folly of voting rights expansion, McConnell was crippling the basic operations of government to assuage the bigoted vanity of the Republican president. Recall that the continuing resolution to finance the government without wall funding at the end of the 115th Congress passed overwhelmingly in the chamber he leads, and that he vigilantly squelched successive House versions of the same funding plan throughout the monthlong shutdown drama for no reason except that he didn’t want to be the person to end it. This isn’t mere lefty hyperbole: At one critical juncture in the shutdown negotiations, Lindsey Graham, the Trump White House’s key Senate liaison, left a conference with the Senate majority leader to blurt the quiet part out loud to CNBC producer Karen James Sloan. Leader McConnell, Graham explained, is “going to let the White House figure out what move they want to make. . . . The Leader is waiting . . . to see what the White House wants to do.”

So much, in other words, for all the sonorous talk of the United States Senate as the world’s most august deliberative body: Its most powerful majority leader over the past decade is an errand boy for both an errant billionaire class of campaign donors, and an errant billionaire president.

What’s more, that’s just how Mitch McConnell wants it. Something of a journalistic cottage industry has sprung up around the recondite question of just what makes Mitch tick, but the uninspiring, mundane answer is hiding in plain sight. Mitch McConnell is the great avatar of the decades-long enclosure of our public life by money. He does not offer a stirring vision of conservative national greatness or even ends-justify-the-means rationales for Senate horse-trading that depart from the disheartening transactional version of our politics that reigns in the Citizens United age. In Mitchworld, you simply pay—and pay, and pay—to play.

continued:
https://newrepublic.com/article/153275/mitch-mcconnell-profile-nihilist-chief

Bigger class sizes make students more resilient.

That was just one of several eyebrow-raising claims that Ontario Education Minister Lisa Thompson made during an interview last week. Her comments quickly provoked a deluge of criticism from many members of the public, educators and the opposition parties.

In an interview with CBC Radio's Metro Morning, Thompson said that businesses and post-secondary educators relayed to her during recent consultations that students are "lacking coping skills and they're lacking resiliency.

"By increasing class sizes in high school, we're preparing them for the reality of post-secondary as well as the world of work."

Thompson was defending the government's recent decision to increase high school class sizes in the province from 22 students to 28. Since that's a board-wide average, some classes — especially important pre-requisites — could swell to as many as 38 or 40 students, educators have warned.

Calilasseia wrote:We all know what this is really about. "Let's handicap the plebs from the start, so that the trust fund kids don't have to do any work to get to the top" ...

Scot Dutchy wrote:Please stop insulting. What do you think is happening when you play outside as kid on your own. Just learn will you. I cant help it that your country is backwards.