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> As I said... wilfred social science...

I don't know what the point is supposed to be here.

> Here's a nice visual graph that I like: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-to...

> Go put your finger on the republican line and see where it moves.

Ok. I downloaded the gif and went through it frame by frame. What it shows is that the Median Democrat stayed exactly the same during 1998-2011, while the Median Republican moved right the whole period of 2004-2011.

Anyway, this story is from 2014, so it's missing the last 8 years.

> What it shows is that the Median Democrat stayed exactly the same during 1998-2011, while the Median Republican moved right the whole period of 2004-2011.

Now try doing the whole span it's depicting, instead of picking the best years for your viewpoint.

> Anyway, this story is from 2014, so it's missing the last 8 years.

Here's an update that includes 2015 and 2017: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-...

It continues the same trend of median Republican barely moving while come 2017 median Democrat flies off even further left.

> Now try doing the whole span it's depicting, instead of picking the best years for your viewpoint.

What do you think is my viewpoint?

During 1994-1997, both parties were moving left. And during 2012-2014 they were moving in opposite directions. I focused on the period of 1998-2011 because that seemed to be when there was the biggest difference in behavior between the 2 parties.

The claim of incomingpain was that "the democrats moved far left creating the polarization". But this is not supported by the given data. The parties were moving in lockstep prior to 1998, and the Democrats didn't move at all for many years after 1998.

It seems difficult to argue that the polarization was created in 2017, given the data from 1998-2011. Anyway, incomingpain, the one who made the claim, was also the one who linked to the pre-2015 data.

Here's the funny thing: incomingpain said "The republicans clearly moved left and it was the right thing to do." And Republicans did indeed move left 1994-2003... but then they moved back right starting in 2004. They moved right at the same time that Democrats were staying the same. So shouldn't incomingpain argue that backtracking was the wrong thing to do, if moving left was the right thing to do?

I do think that people are so busy being mad about the "Democrats have moved too far left" meme that they haven't really thought about it. The problem being the definition of "too far left". But yeah, I think they've moved to the left because human rights are important.

It would be interesting to go back to Women's suffrage because I'm sure people were having the same discussion. Liberals have moved left while Republicans have stayed where they are. But of course, moving to the left on equal rights for women is not liberals moving too far to the left. It's society course correcting. You don't get to say "Well liberals got women's rights so we get ____" But too many Republicans are saying the equivalent of that (hell some Republicans do https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/22/a... say exactly that.)

Human rights can't be a partisan consideration. It can't be something we compromise over. We just have to evolve as a society, get over it and instead have substantive conversations about the policies that move the needle in people's lives.

What are human rights? To have an abortion? To own a gun? To have a say in what your children are taught? To get money from the government? It all depends on who you ask. Calling something a "human right" is a rhetorical device used to make disagreeing with your political position immoral and even heretical rather than just plain old wrong.

Despite whatabouting away from the women example, some of those can be classified as human rights, and what we currently have on some of those topics you could call a "reasonable rational compromise", even if I personally disagree, but right now Republicans are planning some interesting totalitarian anti-women, anti-privacy type stuff to tackle abortion.

Sometimes your opponent actually is taking an actual anti-human rights position. It's pretty common.

The pro-choice side would say the by banning abortions you are infringing the right of a woman to choose when to have a child. The pro-life side would contend that by enabling abortions you are infringing the right to life of an unborn human. Both positions are framed in terms of human rights and plenty of "reasonable rational" people argue vigorously for each one while viewing those who disagree with them as basically evil.

Framing the debate in terms of individuals' rights is intended to remove the topic from the realm of political discussion and shut down dissent. It also completely drowns out discussion of the societal effects of allowing/banning abortion, which is just as important as the effect on individuals. The same unproductive dynamic plays out in the debate over e.g. the right to free speech.

I want to add that I believe the way forward in this debate (and others) is to acknowledge that both rights are valid but neither are unlimited. The best compromise is to be found by sounding out the limits of each right. That is a political debate, not a quasi-religious one, and one that should be rekindled from time to time to update the compromise to match contemporary circumstances. In this regard, for either side in the abortion debate to enshrine their preferred right in the constitution would be a disaster.

The left doesn't equal human rights, it means more government intervention and currently it means using and abusing small portions of society under the guise of human rights and social justice as a false pretense to expand government control. Liberals have also not 'moved left', the democratic party has abandoned liberals in lieu of progressives, socialists and other people who believe in a more involved government instead of individual liberties in order to garner more votes and retain their districts.

> The left doesn't equal human rights, it means more government intervention

Really? Does "legalize abortion" mean more government intervention? Does "abolish the police" mean more government intervention?

It was actually "replace the police with herds of social (government) workers" and the governments ability to allow people to kill unborn kids in order to lessen government burden by eliminating under privileged classes.

Well, that certainly is a massive dollop of contempt.

How dare the left want to replace armed officers executing black people in the streets with therapists and social workers!

I'm pretty sure the point of my comment was the opposite of "left equals human rights".

"I think they've moved to the left because human rights are important."

If that's the part of my comment you're latching onto, and you're not disagreeing with the notion that Repbulicans don't believe in women's rights, than we're in a much worse place than I thought.

Your entire statement was ridiculous and pompous, but the only thing worth replying to was your incorrect belief that the left represents human rights. So no, I'm not going to sit here and bicker about an ann coulter quote who is known for decades as being purposefully inflammatory for the sake of having people with your point of view bookmark and share her stupid statements in order to prove a point.

Anne Coulter aside, there is a core point here and that is that historically, we've gotten it wrong and I think most of us can agree that looking back we had it wrong. Yes, that Anne Coulter quite is ridiculous but was likely more representative of opinions around the time of Women's suffrage. Is it not possible that we can collectively figure out where we continue to get it wrong?

> Go put your finger on the republican line and see where it moves

This ignores massive societal shilf we've had - which is erosion of worker's rights.

The 'left' used to mean worker's rights, helping the poor, maybe socialism or welfare.

Now you have folks who see themselves as left because they suport trans right, but their solution to 'No parental leave in America' is 'more freee market'

And the left could have had it all. They could have built a coalition of common cause between trans rights and workers rights, with a common philosophical underpinning. Instead, they've shifted to look down on blue-collar workers as "a basket of deplorables".

Contempt for your constituency is not how you build a winning coalition.

> And the left could have had it all. They could have built a coalition of common cause between trans rights and workers rights, with a common philosophical underpinning. Instead, they've shifted to look down on blue-collar workers as "a basket of deplorables".

Is this actually "the left" though? The same people who came up with the insult "basket of deplorables" also came up with the insult "Bernie bros".

Seriously, if the left means Hillary Clinton and does not mean Bernie Sanders, then we might as well just throw all political labels in the trash.

Fair point, but... Is there any significant politician on the left, other than Bernie Sanders, who is actually pro-working-class at the moment?

If so, I haven't paid enough attention to politics to keep track of what's going on. But if not, then I think it's fair to say that the left as a whole abandoned the working class, with Bernie being the exception.

I think most elected politicians tend to betray their constituents.

Bernie has the "luxury" of living in one of the smallest states in the nation, Vermont. He can wage a ground game campaign and not worry about having to raise massive amounts of money for big market TV ads. This makes him less susceptible to corruption than other senators. Also he was never a Democrat in the first place but an independent who decided to run for the Democratic nomination, so he was never fully a part of the the party apparatus.

It's interesting to contrast with how Trump basically waltzed in and took over the Republican party, despite not having been a solid Republican himself in the past. I take this as a sign of how marginalized the left has been from the Democratic party. Sanders has taken over the spot of being the Democratic scapegoat for all their problems, a spot formerly held by Ralph Nader.