Democrats are realizing they must become more moderate
economist.com
economist.com
Unsurprisingly, the Democrats are already basically a moderate party.
Different ways for different slices of life. Who'd'a thunk it?
If you actually poll people on individual issues, rural people often agree with the Democrats. The parties aren't particularly representative of people's underlying opinions.
Most people in the USA have brain rot and are incredibly uninformed and stupid.
No, I don’t think that is the case, its not that people believe that it is common, the issue is that the Democratic Party has stated that they want women to have that ability to make that choice all the way to birth. That position is a disconnect with the electorate. Majority of the populace wants elective choice up to 3 months, then it falls off dramatically.
It’s like asking the public about monetary policy - they have opinions but they’re all shaped by the media and the fact that they know nothing about monetary policy to begin with. Most Americans really know nothing but will have opinions anyway.
This is the issue I’m talking about. When they are informed - their opinions change dramatically.
Well that might be your opinion, but in my experience everyone I know that sit on the pro-life side of this debate seem to have concern for the fetus driving their opinion, more than “finicky woman choice being dramatic in the final moments” being the driver. I think that is why polling dramatically starts shifting at the point within the pregnancy where the fetus starts developing into the recognizable human form.
It’s easy to disconnect the humanity from a fetus when it’s physical characteristics are no different from other animals. However, once it becomes recognizably human, it makes it more difficult for people to be advocates of abortion choice.
The democrats don’t want to acknowledge this moral difficulty. They even try to avoid words like “baby”, “person”, and “child”. Recently was some news around President Biden’s slip of the tongue on the topic.
https://twitter.com/DanODonnellShow/status/15215217089261854...
Thinking more generally, do you think abortion should generally be legal or generally illegal during each of the following stages of pregnancy.
Then compare those stats to this question:
With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life?
A majority identify as pro-choice, but apparently do not believe that choice should extend past the 3 months of pregnancy.
A conservative court has found that there is no right to privacy in the constitution and affirmed that stare decisis is dead while opining that the court went too far not only in affirming abortion rights but in protecting gay and even interracial marriage laws, and even gay sex. This means that basically any prior case that was decided in a way that deviates from present conservative thinking is on the menu. Before it was merely abhorrent that a minority among the supreme court believes Texas has a right to criminalize gay sex in Lawrence v Texas. Now they can if they choose merely redo that one.
So that's whats going on with the red team now please do explicate how the left has undergone a more radical swing. I don't see an idea more radical than tax the rich and give everyone health care with more than single digit support.
If you compare a Democrat from 40 years ago to one today you would see a 20% uptick in support for gay rights and a substantial uptick in the desire to spend tax money on healthcare, and a smaller uptick in support to raise taxes to support the former.
If you compare a republican from the same era you would find 10% of them now want a white supremacist christian ethnostate and 40% of them are supportive of the idea of killing their wrong thinking neighbors in order to live in Republican Town and even more would gladly part ways with the US of A if they could do it at the ballot box.
It may be challenging to assign weights to these dissimilar changes in positions but one of them is pretty clearly more extreme than the other.
This sounds completely insane. Can you point to a source that actually backs this up?
"39% of Republicans, agreed that "if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.""
"two out of three Republicans saying President Biden was not legitimately elected"
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/06/01/poll-finds-support...
"70% of Republicans believe in the great replacement theory"
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-02-24/a-q...
"A Quarter of Republicans Believe Central Views of QAnon Conspiracy Movement"
Both sides have a substantial portion that believes that there could be a need for violence. Unfortunately the Republican side believes this because they think liberals are replacing them with brown people, qanon, and election lies.
Meanwhile liberals like myself believe it because we have relatives who are talking about cleaning their guns to make ready to kill Democrats. Personally I have directly followed alt-right communication on publicly available social media platforms including gab and parler and the videos they share. It's not really a secret that the crazies want to whack us.
Also, Of all the people I know, one person fell into the QAnon conspiracy hole, but promptly climbed out. I just don’t buy all of this baloney that Republicans are huge extremists now. It doesn’t track with my experience and reality at all.
A VERY substantial minority on the order of 1/4 of those who self identify as Republicans believe in the core tenets of the qanon conspiracy and most think the election was stolen. These are facts that you cannot reasonable refute by telling me you a reasonable fellow associate with other reasonable people.
You may believe that a core tenant of qanon is someone believing leftist politicians are “evil”, and you might get 25% of republicans agree with that. Does that mean all of that 25% who believe leftists are evil also believe that leftist politicians are reptilian shapeshifting pedophiles that eat baby brains on sundays in a pizza restaurant basement?
Doubtful.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32129721
To address more directly the point you referenced directly.
The study is discussed here
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-02-24/a-q...
But if you want to skip the analysis and go to the meat of it, it's here.
https://www.prri.org/research/the-persistence-of-qanon-in-th...
16% of Republicans completely or mostly agree the government media and financial worlds are controlled by a global network of Satan worshiping pedos who run a global sex trafficking operation
22% completely or mostly agree that a storm is coming that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.
18% completely or mostly agree that things are so far off track that American patriots may need to use violence to save our country.
From the second source
> To assess overall belief in QAnon, PRRI created a composite measure from these three questions and identified the following three groups:
QAnon believers: Respondents who completely or mostly agreed with these statements.
QAnon doubters: Respondents who mostly disagreed with these statements.
QAnon rejecters: Respondents who completely disagreed with all three statements.
There were plenty of anti-abortion democrats 40 years ago, though you’d hardly find many now. Same with anti-immigration democrats; etc etc. It seems like both parties have polarized quite a bit on the issues and moderates got left without a voice in either one.
Yes, during the historical aberration of the long 1930s-1990s realignment, on even the most salient political issues polarizing the public, neither major party was particularly coherent.
That's...not a normal, stable, or desirable condition.
I don’t think party purity tests are a net good for our republic.
Tell me, have you been polled?
If so, have you given feedback beyond a yes or no to a misleadingly framed question?
Asking if I have gotten a poll is a non sequitur. It's not a meaningful question so I see no reason to answer. The plural of anecdote isn't data.
Have you been polled?
Have you not?
I am tired of people hiding behind pollsters imagined legitimacy, particularly when we have the technology today to literally ask everyone what they think.
And yet... Never do I seem to run into anyone who responded to one of these polls.
Have you?
Easy answer. Yes or no.
Also you would still get less than 100% response rate even on your initial poll. After you got in the habit of burning billions of dollars to harass literally every citizen in the US constantly you would find your sample size dropping precipitously as people found ways to block your calls.
To get a statistically valid sample of 338M people you need as little as a few thousand respondents depending on desired accuracy. It makes sense therefore that the chance of a single poll actually calling you personally is very low. In fact 100 polls reaching 100,000 distinct individuals still has only 1 in 3000 chance of someone personally calling you. Small wonder if your phone isn't ringing off the hook.
Despite dodging those and every sort of automated asshole calling my phone and being on the do not call registry I have still received a call. The answer is yes. This still proves nothing. I haven't refuted your position by saying yes as I'm sure you will now agree.
Legislation is literally the parcelling up and selling off of the liberties of everyone around you. This is not a task that should be undertaken haphazardly. To really do it, you should be grappling with questions of "Does this policy make sense across the board, rather than localized to where I am?"
Polls never drill into that level of detail. Ever. At best they provide a passing narrative confirmation that makes a nice sound byte. Case and point:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32141104
If you're sitting here, telling me it's too much work to talk to everyone to actually get a representative sample, then don't come back and try to justify the legitimacy of one policy over another based on the fact that a bunch of people with nothing better to do than respond to cold called political polls (who may or may not even be voters) is truly representative of the will of the people. I'm sorry. When it comes to writing off liberties, I'm in the school of thought that the extra work is necessary, because this isn't something that should be streamlined, especially given there is precious little track record of any streamlining be applied to rectify bad law..
I write my Congressional representatives on issues that weigh heavily on my conscience. Multiple times if I don't feel the point is getting across enough. I've got a couple more letters to get written in light of current events, in fact.
Your polls, don't reflect that. Or for that matter, any of the streams of communication that actually end up in a Representative or Senator's mailbox, which to be quite frank, are far more indicative of what the People want, than any Call Center with a script is ever going to get. I don't even care if the Rep/Senator is of the opposing political party than the issue I'm concerned with. Reigning in extreme right/leftness can only happen under the pressure of reminding said individual they are still representing a hefty constituency that differs on platform, and if they like that seat, they'd best pay attention.
Polls are not grounds for policy.
You said
>--------------------------------------------
particularly when we have the technology today to literally ask everyone what they think.
>--------------------------------------------
In turn I said
>--------------------------------------------
To get a statistically valid sample of 338M people you need as little as a few thousand respondents depending on desired accuracy.
>--------------------------------------------
Now you say
>--------------------------------------------
If you're sitting here, telling me it's too much work to talk to everyone to actually get a representative sample
>--------------------------------------------
You know what I said and you knew what I said.
The broader context is the parent poster, rather than you, attempted to dismiss legitimate sources by asserting without evidence that polls are worthless.
He made the statement thus
>--------------------------------------------
You put too much stock in polls. The average (or even intelligent) person does not have time for polls. Trusting these numbers is to believe in FUD.
>--------------------------------------------
To which you answered
>--------------------------------------------
They are right...
>--------------------------------------------
They aren't right and you aren't right. Polling is an imperfect tool. Changing how you phrase a question can change the answer. Getting a representative sample is an imperfect science. This is good cause to ask how it was used vs misused lest a manipulative author come to the preordained conclusion. It is not however good cause to dismiss the entire notion of polling and ask no-one nor that we somehow as you said ask "literally everyone". Nor is it reasonable to determine what the people want by looking at the contents of your legislators mailbox.
They will no doubt be full of letters from a passionate self selected minority rather than representing in any way shape or form a representative sample.
You can say polls aren't grounds for policy but they are a damn fine tool to find out on average what the potentially millions of constituents think as opposed to the 12 people that wrote letters and if you want a substantial portion of those millions to vote for you then you had better at least understand what they think even if you intend to defy them because you know better.
Sealioning refers to the disingenuous action by a commenter of making an ostensible effort to engage in sincere and serious civil debate, usually by asking persistent questions of the other commenter. These questions are phrased in a way that may come off as an effort to learn and engage with the subject at hand, but are really intended to erode the goodwill of the person to whom they are replying, to get them to appear impatient or to lash out, and therefore come off as unreasonable.
Your question "Have you been polled?" Is an example of sealioning. You don't actually want to know if I have been polled. You don't think any possible answer would illuminate the discussion. You don't intend to make any actually arguments to the validity of polling other than a casual dismissal. You have no intention on engaging in any actually substantial debate or discussion.
I started this subthread with substantial points with sources. Answering a manipulative insincere question with a reason why the question made no difference isn't itself sealioning.
Basically Democrats need an actual leader since the only person who could unite the party right now: Obama, doesn't seem to care at all anymore and everyone else is just after career preservation.
This is less so now than it was in the past now that the Dixecrats have left the Democrats.
In this entire article, just one mention of the word "inflation."
In 1992 Democratic strategist James Carville coined the expression "It's the economy, stupid." He was talking about then-incumbent George HW Bush's inability to do anything substantive to relieve the economic pain the country was going through.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid
Looks like Dems will be on the receiving end of "It's the economy, stupid" this time.
He could have started by at least acknowledging inflation was a thing and started working to combat it. They spent a year BS’ing the country about it and ignoring until they just couldn’t anymore because everyone whole works for a living was seeing it first hand.
The fear has been that if you go left, you won't own anything. But then introduce companies like Blockrock that take advantage of owned assets during inflation to leverage more debt to outpace the consumers ability to buy their own assets.
So becoming more moderate it to admit something. This isn't about having a well function economy that is based on innovation. This is just speculative meta game that has ursped innovation itself as a profit mode.
This doesn't include the impact of global trade and the ultimate effect on an economy that doesn't produce anything for itself. We need factories that can make goods to the exact needs of the user. Not arbitrary mass manufacturing that only winds up in the landfill on a couple years.
Want something endless to drive the economy that doesn't rely on making endless junk? Look at the mobile game industry, digital goods, entertainment, blueprints and simulated protypes.
Going "right," does not trend towards progress. The democrats must become more "conservative." The fundamental flaw of speculation is the reliance on previous investments and the inability to liquidate to switch towards renewables.. etc... etc...
What's surprising is the tone of the pro-Democrats responses here: vitriolic but without real substance except whataboutism aimed at republicans. HN is the highest quality online agora I know, which to me is hinting that even the upper ranks of US voters are caught in this process.
I find this rhetoric concerning since it isn't all that different than the hysteria about Obama's "FEMA camps" and when republicans just kept calling him Hitler over every little thing. It's fundamentally disconnected from reality and I personally see it a consequence of consuming too much propaganda. You might counter this with the whole "election overturning" thing but at the end of the day, he stepped down and stopped being president when he lost, even if his whining still persists.
How about calls to use the courts to arrest enemies? Bizarre rhetoric about treason. Support for the murder of the VP because he wouldn't support a blatant coup.
The Russian collusion angle has to do with the fact that a literal Russian spy met with the Trump campaign, then Trump opined on TV that maybe the Russians could "find" Hillary's emails, then Russia which had a distinct horse in that race then made at least attempts to interfere in the election by hacking and by promulgating dinsinfo on social media in part with the help of data harvested by a Republican think tank.
This perception of corruption was furthered when he made positive statements regarding Russia and Putin including telling the world he believed Putin's statement over the word of our intelligence apparatus and deepened when he was caught withholding aid from the Ukrainians whom had been initially invaded lest we forget in 2014 not 2022.
None of the above is even slightly controversial. What is lacking is specific proof that there was any quid pro quo between Trump and Russia without which is closer to a denial by Al Capone that he knew or had ordered specific hits than a legitimate protestation of innocence. At best He and Putin had interests that aligned with minimal coordination needed and he stood to gain by the illegal actions of a foreign power he had aligned himself with.
Furthermore although the Russia angle was a source of division and much interest on both sides of the aisle it has little to do with support for Trump. Trump is and was a charismatic figure to middle to lower class white America because he told them accurately that they had been left behind in a playing field dominated by the rich and powerful who had long been tilting the game board so that most of the wealth created in large part by hard working Americans ended up in their pockets.
He just managed to put most of the blame on the left and brown people and forgot to mention he was one of the rich elites screwing the little guy and intended to deepen and broaden the corruption that allowed them to keep doing this.
Compared to this Russia was a side show.
Yes, do you remember why they were invaded? The US fomented and funded the 2014 coup, which immediately triggered the invasion - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957. This was orchestrated by US intelligence.
So of course US intelligence wasn't very fond of anybody disrupting their play in Ukraine. No surprise then that they went after Trump as hard as they did for as long as they did, until he was gone.
Trump is more of a broken clock than a foreign policy genius, but on this one (and on the dangers of offshoring too much to China) he was right. We were neck deep in shenanigans in Ukraine for a long time, and he came in and fucked the game up for 4 years. Once he was gone, the game was restarted and here we are. Delayed, but back on the playbook.
Also, thinking it was a bad idea to install a puppet government in Ukraine (and not wanting to continue playing along) isn't "Russian collusion" either. All of our fuckery in Ukraine is why we're staring down the barrel of WWIII and a very, very cold winter too. So on this one, Trump was right.
Nothing "triggered" the invasion of Ukraine but Putin's greed. He himself said in an essay that it necessary to steal Ukraine sooner rather than later not to preserve the security of Russia which is rendered inviolable not by buffer states but by 1200 nukes but because it would be impossible to steal it later without fighting NATO. Assigning blame to the US is like blaming a wife's talkative friend for the beating her abuser handed out because he feared rightly that her "vacation" was really her fleeing his clutches. It's deeply offensive.
A stopped clock may be right twice a day but Trump was not. His sol meaningful action in that area was an attempt to sell Ukraine on a politically manipulative investigation of his domestic rival in exchange for the supplies already authorized by congress. He did nothing. He did however repeatedly according to his own people repeatedly express the desire to torpedo NATO which would have served to embolden Russia.
We can probably credit both his handlers and the voters who rejected his second term for him not having a worse effect.
These are unrelated coincidences in your mind?
An enemy of the US finances and foments a coup in Mexico and the leadership that takes over is hostile to US interests, and friendly to our enemy.
What would the US do? Would we just "honor the sovereignty of Mexico" and let it go?
Meanwhile we won't even let countries thousands of miles away determine their own path, let alone a bordering nation. We're beyond hypocritical on this.
"Speech control" is not a thing. There is no policy being proposed by democrats which restricts speech.
Protecting the rights of individuals is not just a concern for those individuals:
* 71% of people surveyed in the US support gay marriage in 2022. https://news.gallup.com/poll/393197/same-sex-marriage-suppor...
* 71% of people surveyed in the US support keeping the government out of abortion decisions. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/broad-us-support-abortion-r...
To my mind, AOC is a moderate. Joe Manchin is an extremist. And calls for Democrats to become "more moderate" must inevitably mean that actually-moderate Democrats would better align themselves with cynical political movements which provide thinly-veiled cover for alt-right/MAGA propaganda and unfettered crony capitalism.
Abso-f'n-lutely not.