***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[whywesteppin]

at least Rex understands if u keep playing da identity politics to folks who just care bout their pockets, and not have a economic

ok.

whether we like it or not and regardless of whether the government tries to intervene to stop free market forces, your job as you know it will be obsolete in our lifetimes.

Democrats need to put forward a serious plan for retraining the work force. the government doesn't need to do the retraining but they should incentive modernization of the labor force.

evidence? people who talk about doing the same job as their fathers, whether it is coal mining or truck driving or farming. if we don't retrain them, we a) lose part of our labor force, and b) lead to a disgruntled generation that will turn to extremist/terrorist groups like Isis and the alt-right. so this is both an economic agenda and a national security issue.

the free market will maximize profits, which will naturally lead to some retraining of the work force, but it is not their goal and they will cut benefits or take other measures that undermine our stated goals.

deregulation isn't a direct fix as it will have both positive and negative consequences.

and inevitably as technology improves and we move into a new economic age we will need more government social programs to buffer the harms of rapid economic turnover (for example, a parent needing to go back to school for a year to get trained for a new job skill).

while Democrats haven't articulated a perfect plan yet, they are doing a much better job than Republicans at recognizing the problem and offering substantial and realistic solutions.

thinking that deregulation is the fix is like a chef adding ketchup to an overcooked steak. it's a decent improvement for the short-term problem but doesn't address the core issues.

overall productivity of our economy is already fine. we need to create an environment that encourages risk-taking (to foster long-term growth) while at the same time mitigating major risks (like someone not receiving preventative health care and unnecessarily losing their contribution to the workforce, or an economic collapse like the housing bubble. in general regulation helps mitigate these risks). adding an extra 1% to gdp sounds good but if it is done at the expense of increased risk of an economic bubble, then it is a terrible trade-off.

 

[rexanglorum]

You missed my point, and talk right pass me.

You are using a person that has routinely shown support for the system of white supremacy and an overall hostility to the rights of black people to argue empathy for voters on the margin that could be potentially flipped. You want people to see their side of things without discussing the elephant in the room. **** like this why socialist sound like snake oil salesmen to so many skeptical liberals.

I don't care what the skin color is, an agent is an agent.

So stop telling me that a person that does not give a **** about my peoples' civil rights, who ignorantly dismisses systemic racism as a trick white liberals are playing on black people, who down plays slavery and Jim Crow, hell who even implies African Americans in those eras should be thankful, is this way because the Dems left him no other choice.

Bull ****.

I get the argument you re trying to make but the supporter of systemic racism is not the same as the turned off apathetic voter.

The desperate Obama flip voter in the Rust Belt is not the same as the vile bigot Southerner who cries that the Dems civil rights policies turn him off.

Ninja does not have the same concern as the blue collar minority. Matter of fact, there are many blue collar people of color would like to also hear a serious civil rights platform from the Dems. But many conservatives, progressives, and the dude you insist on playing devil's advocate for thinks "da identity politics" should not be mentioned.

In this case I am not even looking to address the whole economic vs. racial justice divide. You know my position on the topic, concern for justice is not a scarce good.

I am not even talking about policy, necessarily.


In this context, I am mostly concerned with how Democrats talk about injustice. It is good that they are talking about racism and misogyny. The problem is that they are not all in nor do they talk about it in an intersectional context. For instance, Democrats talk a lot about the difficulties of women and minorities moving from upper middle management to senior management. This is a real issue but it is a message that targets those who already have "made it." It is a message that neglects the vast majority of women and people of color who are no where near that status among the nation's managerial elite.

I am all for Democrats talking about social injustice but please emphasize social injustice and how it affects the lives of large numbers of people. Talk about how white supremacy denies ordinary black folks the ability to accumulate wealth and how it denies ordinary black folks job and educational opportunities. Let's talk about how work associated with women is fundamentally devalued. Let's talk about homophobia and transphobia and how it causes appallingly high levels of homelessness among those groups.

The thing that when you talk about social justice, you'll already lose lots of white voters and a few black and Taino dudes. With those votes lost, you need to galvanize other groups to vote for you. If you go all in on social justice and how it intersects with economic justice, you can pump up turnout and increase you margins with your natural constituencies. The problem is that too many mainstream Democrats go halfway in and talk about social justice in an elite context rather a populist context and it is the worst of all worlds. It alienates a lot of white and self hating minority voters (which I an live with) but it is also so narrow and so annodyne that it turns off young people, working class women and workin gclass men of color and that I cannot live with).

 

[Nouss]

Umm.. the most famous export from NY to the White House was Teddy Roosevelt .

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[ninjahood]

The narrow careerists, feminism coming from the DNC is a loser. It cause young women to tune out, it turns young men hostile and it alienates lots of working men of color, those are groups that the DNC could use to build a progressive coalition all without winning over a single Trump voter. A black guy driving a truck doesn't care how many women make partner at the downtown law firms, a 23 year old mired in college debt and stuck in a series of temp jobs doesn't care much about the machinations of the board room.

ive been spttin this same verse since July 2015

 

[whywesteppin]

Umm.. the most famous export from NY to the White House was Teddy Roosevelt .

A real New Yorker.

A real American.

A real man.

 

[RustyShackleford]

ive been spttin this same verse since July 2015

Bull f-ing ****.

 

[ninjahood]

Umm.. the most famous export from NY to the White House was Teddy Roosevelt .

Trump pretty much crushed that record, especially since he's never held office before this.

 

[whywesteppin]

huh

 

[flyeed]

cool republican president going to get us into a war again

 

[flyeed]

cringing at his childish jingoism to compensate for being a globalist ****

 

[whywesteppin]

what the ******* hell is this speech?

the orange turd is finding new lows.

he's talking about eliminating Isis, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban and eliminating terrorism as straightforward goals.

"principled realism". what ****.

SMH at the simple-minded fools who fall for this ****.

 

[whywesteppin]

he's seriously going back to the overly simplistic approach of the bush era, or even simpler.

the speech on its own isn't that bad but I'm applying "principled relativism" to this horse-****.

 

[flyeed]

How does fighting in Afghanistan affect domestic terrorism again? We have our own white supremacy infiltration in our own government.

Every generation has faced evil and this *** has supported the evils of past generations. Seems more like he's part of the problem.

Let's not forget this administration is in bed with Russia who has interests in Afghanistan too, who knows wtf is going to happen.

Between Iran, China, Russia, Pakistan, and the USA increasing investment there, along with other factions, seems like a perfect solution to achieve peace!

 

[whywesteppin]

also... reading some theories that Russia was behind the attacks on US diplomats in Cuba. trump must be overjoyed.

 

[flyeed]

Time for cable news to get a massive boner over the thought of selling us a war again

 

[rolaholic]

Heh...

 

[whywesteppin]

Time for cable news to get a massive boner over the thought of selling us a war again

time for cable news to fawn over trump because they don't want to appear partisan.

 

[flyeed]

Heh...

Something for EVERY SINGLE ACTION

 

[flyeed]

was about to go hang out with a friend visiting and this dude just ****** up my night

i'm supposed to trust this incompetent dude whose done just about everything wrong with this task and people's live?

 

[flyeed]

let's not forget he was talking about ******* nukes again

 

[EddieDoyers]

Trump pretty much crushed that record, especially since he's never held office before this.

Trump wouldn't want the smoke

 

[whywesteppin]

was about to go hang out with a friend visiting and this dude just ****ed up my night

i'm supposed to trust this incompetent dude whose done just about everything wrong with this task and people's live?

we knew this in November. nothing new.

ok, I'm going to vomit if i have to watch Paul Ryan's spineless ***. what an awful human.

one day he'll condemn trump and now he's praising him for being a visionary.

he wants a condition-based presence in Afghanistan, which sounds great, but that's how you end up somewhere for decades. idiot sheep.

 

[whywesteppin]

Trump wouldn't want the smoke

lol at comparing an incompetent, lowest-polling president of modern history with a man whose face is on Mount Rushmore.