2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

[Rover]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

IALTO.

You should check in on Kos, my friend. You and your kind ruled the roost in 2016. Now?

Don't get me wrong, its an improvement that you're lusting after a 30 year old BU alum instead of a rumpled 80 year old guy with yellow teeth! Maybe there's hope for you yet!

However, you're doing the cause a big, BIG disservice by pooh poohing any accomplishment made in previous years. Its like when I had that discussion with trix who claimed the Dems never cared about voting rights until Sanders came along. Why would you expect robust support from the people who were fighting the wars back then if your attitude is that nothing happened before 2016?

[Kepler]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

You're going to get your gold watch, never fear. And I'll ask a favor that Single Payer cover your dentures.

Far-Right (R) vs Center-Right (D) wasn't going to last forever. 40 years -- that's a great run. And like I said, when we've made it to Far-left (D) vs Center-Center (R) you'll have a home. Don't sweat it, brother. You guys may even get a plaque. "They did the best they could with what they had." There's honor there for you to live out your days on.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

The Dems' surrender on fiscal policy in the 80s and 90s allowed the right to portray 36% top marginal rates as "normal." They aren't, they're ridiculously low, and they were predicated on Reagan's trickle down theory which has been completely refuted by history.

It was a radical experiment which failed. We should return top marginal rates to their normal level -- the right can argue Kennedy's 50% and I will argue Eisenhower's 90%.

Clinton especially could have reversed Reagan's tragic mistake after only 12 years of hollowing out the middle class. Instead he triangulated and bequested us another 27 years of it and counting, and in addition weakened America to the point where a fascist like Dumpy could bumble in. I'll give Clinton credit for winning election and thus staunching the bleeding, but he didn't heal the wounds the right has subjected this country to. Obama I will give a pass to since he was busy preventing the Cheney oil regime's predations from triggering a second Great Depression.

LOL

All Clinton did by paying the bills and getting everyone working is set up yet another tax cut by the Republicans. If Clinton had changed the taxes more radically Bush would have cut them even more drastically. Hell, complete financial Armageddon in 2008 wasn't enough to prevent them from passing another 1.5 trillion dollars in cuts to massive corporations for stock buybacks.

So, don't blame Clinton. It's not his fault the American voter is dumber than a post.

[Kepler]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

It's not his fault the American voter is dumber than a post.

What the American voter is not is ideological. The vast majority of our fellow voters could not care less whether our system is capitalist, communist, or a traditional barter economy based on the pelts of R.O.U.S. They want to be fat and happy.

Well, America was fat and happy from the 40s through the 60s, and the common denominator of that period was high taxation on the wealthy and high USG spending for science, education, and infrastructure.

And then the Austrians ruined it for their rich donors.

Bring back the policies that foster the middle class and the voters will approve. The ideological label doesn't matter -- you can call it Christian Patriotism if you like. What matters is it works, that raises up most of the country, and that returns you to power.

Let Rover cower and let the Republicans scream like scalded babies about Venezuela. All that matters is results. Our System Works. Theirs Doesn't. Everything else is moonshine.

[Rover]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

LOL

All Clinton did by paying the bills and getting everyone working is set up yet another tax cut by the Republicans. If Clinton had changed the taxes more radically Bush would have cut them even more drastically. Hell, complete financial Armageddon in 2008 wasn't enough to prevent them from passing another 1.5 trillion dollars in cuts to massive corporations for stock buybacks.

So, don't blame Clinton. It's not his fault the American voter is dumber than a post.

Exactly, something Kep keeps misunderstanding. The journey of a thousand miles has to begin somewhere. 1992 was when we starting winning on the battlefield again after switching generals. 60's liberalism was, unfortunately, out of style by then and by continuing the run on that platform we handed govt over to the Plutes. Clinton was the first time in decades the plutes got punched in the head and TKO'd for awhile. However, the liberal utopia he's hoping for won't happen until arch progressives start winning swing states, which has yet to happen. You might think my fellow BU hottie AOC had just won as governor of Alabama or something. What I've often said, time and time again, is that I want to see some of these people winning at least in purple states or districts because right now the only authentic liberal representing one of these places seems to be Sherrod Brown. If you run uber libs, and they lose, the govt doesn't revert to GHW Bush types. It reverts to Nazis. That's the stakes here.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

What the American voter is not is ideological. The vast majority of our fellow voters could not care less whether our system is capitalist, communist, or a traditional barter economy based on the pelts of R.O.U.S. They want to be fat and happy.

Well, America was fat and happy from the 40s through the 60s, and the common denominator of that period was high taxation on the wealthy and high USG spending for science, education, and infrastructure.

And then the Austrians ruined it for their rich donors.

Bring back the policies that foster the middle class and the voters will approve. The ideological label doesn't matter -- you can call it Christian Patriotism if you like. What matters is it works, that raises up most of the country, and that returns you to power.

Let Rover cower and let the Republicans scream like scalded babies about Venezuela. All that matters is results. Our System Works. Theirs Doesn't. Everything else is moonshine.

The American Voter isn't ideological?

ROTFLMAO

[Rover]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

The American Voter isn't ideological?

ROTFLMAO

Just sit back and enjoy the show.

[Kepler]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

The American Voter isn't ideological?

ROTFLMAO

Not at all. That's what broke National Review's heart when Dump took the GOP nom. All that stuff about small government and states rights that they actually believed "conservative" Americans cared about? Booshwa. Those voters wanted to stick it to the browns and the fairies and that uppity woman who wasn't even pretty. That's not ideology, it's rot gut emotion. There are no conservative Americans. Only reactionaries.

[Kepler]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

The journey of a thousand miles has to begin somewhere.

I do understand this. But I have always felt that when the other side is screaming TEH COMMUNISM!!11!!! when you try to raise the top marginal rate from 32% to 36% then you might as well raise it to 70% because they are already shrieking the roof is on fire.

Exactly the same with ObamaCare now and Single Payer in the future. They are going to scream about anything as STALIN AND LENIN ARE SPIT ROASTING VIRGINIA DARE!!!!11! So, f-ck it, go all the way.

[Rover]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

Not at all. That's what broke National Review's heart when Dump took the GOP nom. All that stuff about small government and states rights that they actually believed "conservative" Americans cared about? Booshwa. Those voters wanted to stick it to the browns and the fairies and that uppity woman who wasn't even pretty. That's not ideology, it's rot gut emotion. There are no conservative Americans. Only reactionaries.

You've got being wrong down to an art today! conservatism is an ideology, an ideology of white power mixed with nostalgia. The National Review never represented anything but think tank conservatism that was used to cover up what really drove Republican voters. Conservatives are as racist now as they were when Nixon deployed the Southern Strategy all those years ago. Trump just made them loud and proud about it instead of hiding behind tax cuts and whatever Ayn Rand bullsh it Paul Ryan is spouting at any given moment.

[Rover]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

I do understand this. But I have always felt that when the other side is screaming TEH COMMUNISM!!11!!! when you try to raise the top marginal rate from 32% to 36% then you might as well raise it to 70% because they are already shrieking the roof is on fire.

Exactly the same with ObamaCare now and Single Payer in the future. They are going to scream about anything as STALIN AND LENIN ARE SPIT ROASTING VIRGINIA DARE!!!!11! So, f-ck it, go all the way.

Look, I understand your impatience for a better world. Really I do. My angle has nothing to do with what knuckledraggers will say. What I'm saying is that if you're selling a product, you have two options:

Salesman 1: Our product has brought a lot of good to people like you over the years and we continue to enhance it to meet your needs in the future, or

Salesman 2: Our competitors say our product is useless at best and dangerous at worst over the last 40 years...and they're exactly right! BUT, we're doing a revamp now and you can totally trust us to get it right this time.

Which one works better for low information people? Not to mention you just labeled the people who bought your product previously as dupes and idiots, something I'm sure will make them real enthusiastic about staying on as customers.

[Kepler]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

You've got being wrong down to an art today!

Well, I hope not only today.

conservatism is an ideology

You're right so far...

an ideology of white power mixed with nostalgia.

You are mixing up the political ideology of conservatism with the cultural movement of conservatism. They are different things, although they are often confused and they are frequently thought to reside in the same people (in reality they rarely do).

Political conservatism, the ideology, is about limited and expressly stated government in which the economic minority of the rich is protected from the numerical democracy of the non-rich with many mechanisms to ensure plutocratic rule. It also frequently explicitly involves agreements between the religion of the elites and the government though in the US we happily dodged that bullet.

Cultural conservatism, the movement, is about social reaction: xenophobia, racism, Bible Thumping sexism and homophobia. It relies implicitly on the assumption of Jeffersonian purity of rural, God-fearing (white, Christian) America against the depraved, urban, Cosmopolitan city slickers. It's the cornerstone of the right in America.

Cultural conservatives are encouraged to think of themselves as economic conservatives by their 0.01% masters because this allows the latter to ram through plutocratic policies which ironically damage those very "salt of the earth" types who profess to believe in it. This is the Great Republican Swindle, and the cultural conservatives still haven't sussed it out.

The National Review never represented anything but think tank conservatism that was used to cover up what really drove Republican voters. Conservatives are as racist now as they were when Nixon deployed the Southern Strategy all those years ago. Trump just made them loud and proud about it instead of hiding behind tax cuts and whatever Ayn Rand bullsh it Paul Ryan is spouting at any given moment.

You are conflating two things. On the latter -- that the American "conservative" masses are as racist now as they ever were -- is absolutely true. In fact they're as racist now as they were when they were Dixiecrats!

But about National Review and the politically conservative think tanks you are dead wrong. William F. Buckley was the polar opposite of the Ma and Pa Kettle racist Dumpies. He was a true believer in the snide Colleridgean-Burkean economic and political conservatism of the British Ruling Class and its cut rate American cousins at Princeton and Yale in the first quarter of the 20th C. That's why he was so appalled and angered in "God and Man at Yale" that that institution had moved on from Herbert Spencer and Charles Sumner. He was still down with that -- an Elitist O.G.

It really was a shock to guys like David Frum and Francis Fukuyama that the Republican masses didn't give a rat's as-s about their Classical Economic Utopia and were just a bunch of racist rubes. It broke their hearts. That's what Dubya and then even worse Dumpy proved to the intellectual right.

The point of all this is Americans aren't ideological. They're not sophisticated enough to be anything more than hill people sharpening their knives and enviously eyeing the valley people, and making up slights to justify their raid.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

Schultz has no clue what he is in for.

Schultz went to NMU and majored in communications. I rest my case.

Schultz is a salesman, not a thinker. He's Trump Lite.

[Spartanforlife4]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

Schultz went to NMU and majored in communications. I rest my case.

Schultz is a salesman, not a thinker. He's Trump Lite.

Wow, never knew he was a Wildcat.

Berry should be the Englestad of the UP with that $$$ laying around.

[MissThundercat]

Re: 2020 Democratic Challengers III: Weekend at Bernie's

Wow, never knew he was a Wildcat.

Berry should be the Englestad of the UP with that $$$ laying around.

As a Wildcat, not sure what Schultz's money goes to, but it's not sports.