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Comment by kr7 | Hacker News Reader

> both major parties are moving towards the right

Not on social issues. Trump is a moderate on abortion and gay marriage. Bill Clinton passed DADT, DOMA, welfare work requirements, and his crime bill, and called for a crackdown on illegal immigration. He wouldn't be able to win the Democratic nomination nowadays.

> moving towards authoritarian positions

Unfortunately.

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Trump's positions on abortion don't seem particular thought-through, but he did say that he would nominate SCOTUS justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. I don't think that's a moderate position at all.

And while Trump might be less of an extremist on these issues than his fellow Republicans, the party's elected officials (including his running mate) haven't moved an inch towards the center on abortion rights. Mike Pence governed Indiana, a state with some of the tightest (and most ridiculous, honestly) restrictions on abortion in the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Donald_...

> Trump's positions on abortion don't seem particular thought-through, but he did say that he would nominate SCOTUS justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. I don't think that's a moderate position at all.

'Allowing the states to determine what is allowed' seems more moderate than 'no state may meaningfully restrict something,' no?

I think the public is moving leftward on social issues (with the exception of abortion [0]), but I'm not sure the Republican party has been recently. I mean, the Log Cabin Republicans called the most recent platform the "most anti-LGBT in history" [1]. My sense is that Trump won the nomination by downplaying his personal views on abortion and gay marriage and pledging to nominate conservative justices.

[0]: http://www.gallup.com/poll/170249/split-abortion-pro-choice-...

[1]: http://www.logcabin.org/pressrelease/a-message-on-the-gop-pl...

Progressivism is tricky -- the definition of the word is for continual change. So, no progressive agenda of Year X would be progressive in Year X+20. A successfu progressive in Year X would be pushing progress the margin choices of the day. In Year X+20, a different set of choices are at the margin. No effective progressive in Year X would have the same agenda in Year X+20.

I really think progressivism is just warmed over Marxism and has been for a really long time. Progressives near the turn of the last century pursued alcohol prohibition. Granted, they also pushed for womens' suffrage. A lot of damage was done by Prohibition, though. A lot.

This is incoherent. The Marxists ended alcohol prohibition in Soviet Russia.

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