Trump supporters?

[nospokenword]

8 hours ago, LiamCart said:

Good point in that California obviously was not a state when the Constitution was written.  I still believe that the electoral college is a solid system that is better than a straight popular vote. Wyoming would never have a voice in national politics in a popular vote system.  California, Texas, and New York would dominate everything.  

Um, without the electoral college, it wouldn't matter how big or small a state is. With a nationwide popular vote, what state that voter lives in wouldn't matter. My vote in California would count equally to a person voting in Wyoming. Which is as it should be.

[nospokenword]

8 hours ago, LiamCart said:

Facts in your world maybe. Also, as an American I have a right to debate anything. I'm not going to let any radical left-wing person tell me otherwise since I'm a moderate free-thinker who's not a slave to either the radical right or left. 

Facts are facts. Just because you describe yourself libertarian, it doesn't mean that you exist in a different world with different facts. What you're describing is feelings. If you were truly a "moderate free-thinker," then you'd do some research and learn that Obama turned around a massive economic downturn caused in large part by a bubble that was caused by Bush's neoliberal economic policy. You would also learn that Trump inherited this good Obama economy and that under Trump, economic inequality has accelerated as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Until you actually inform yourself, you don't come across as a free-thinker debating seriously. 

[nospokenword]

8 hours ago, LiamCart said:

Fair enough.  However, I disagree with you on Libertarian beliefs.  Can you tell me one country that was really successful with socialism? I just see from history how socialism destroyed Venezuela and Cuba. I don't trust the government to fairly handle the "common good." I believe politicians will always do what's best for them before the regular citizen. 

Scandinavian countries are thriving under socialism. They are among the happiest countries on Earth. The problem is that the American right wing has conflated socialism with authoritarian communism. They are not the same thing. What happened in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and other communist countries wasn't Marxist or Socialist. It was an authoritarian regime based on single party rule. What we have today in Scandinavia is a true democracy that makes sure that its citizens are not taken advantage of by corporations. It ensures that its citizens are taken care of. It is a model, not a problem. 

[Guest LiamCart]

4 hours ago, nospokenword said:

Scandinavian countries are thriving under socialism. They are among the happiest countries on Earth. The problem is that the American right wing has conflated socialism with authoritarian communism. They are not the same thing. What happened in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and other communist countries wasn't Marxist or Socialist. It was an authoritarian regime based on single party rule. What we have today in Scandinavia is a true democracy that makes sure that its citizens are not taken advantage of by corporations. It ensures that its citizens are taken care of. It is a model, not a problem. 

I knew I'd get hit with the myth that Scandinavian countries are socialist.  They are not socialist countries in any way. They are better described as social democracies and they are free market capitalist countries. They have free trade and low levels of regulation on product markets. The Prime Minister of Denmark has stated that Denmark is not a socialist country, when he spoke at Harvard a few years ago, and in his speech he made it clear that Denmark is a market economy.  Scandinavian countries just happen to be capitalist countries with welfare systems that are more generous. There's nothing wrong with that and I kind of like that model. You will not find Scandinavian countries demonizing the wealthy people by the way. The Scandinavian model is very different than radical leftist state governments that have over-regulated their economies and tax their citizens to death. The type of socialism that leftist Democrats are pushing is nothing like the pro-capitalist Scandinavian model. I'd agree that some Western countries have a more cutthroat form of capitalism but throwing out capitalism all together for some economy killing New Green Deal is not a solution.  

[Guest LiamCart]

5 hours ago, nospokenword said:

Um, without the electoral college, it wouldn't matter how big or small a state is. With a nationwide popular vote, what state that voter lives in wouldn't matter. My vote in California would count equally to a person voting in Wyoming. Which is as it should be.

At face value your idea has merit. I'll have to do more research on the topic.  

[Guest LiamCart]

5 hours ago, nospokenword said:

Facts are facts. Just because you describe yourself libertarian, it doesn't mean that you exist in a different world with different facts. What you're describing is feelings. If you were truly a "moderate free-thinker," then you'd do some research and learn that Obama turned around a massive economic downturn caused in large part by a bubble that was caused by Bush's neoliberal economic policy. You would also learn that Trump inherited this good Obama economy and that under Trump, economic inequality has accelerated as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Until you actually inform yourself, you don't come across as a free-thinker debating seriously. 

Oh I see. Only you know what is true. Everyone else is "uninformed." Believe what you want but Obama sucked as a president. He had very few accomplishments in eight years. I don't believe he's responsible for any true economic turnaround. Fact: The percentage of people participating in the labor force fell from 65.7% to a low of 62.4% under Obama. That is the lowest since 1977. Generally, in a recovery, job seekers rise as jobs re-emerge. Fact: More people (14,573,000) just give up on finding a job than those who found new employment (9,959,000) under Obama. Fact: The labor participation rate for women and minorities declined substantially under Obama. Obama had eight years to fix unemployment so stop blaming the previous administration and the Great Recession on his failure. The official unemployment rate is a lie because the government does not count people who gave up hope of finding a job as unemployed. Fact: Household income has increased since Obama left office. I'm not giving Trump the credit and, by the way, I will reiterate one more time that I'm NOT a Trump supporter, I'm not a right-winger, and I don't like Bush (unless it's a pubic hair bush on a hot man). Lol. By the way, you look hot. 

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, LiamCart said:

I knew I'd get hit with the myth that Scandinavian countries are socialist.  They are not socialist countries in any way. They are better described as social democracies and they are free market capitalist countries. They have free trade and low levels of regulation on product markets. The Prime Minister of Denmark has stated that Denmark is not a socialist country, when he spoke at Harvard a few years ago, and in his speech he made it clear that Denmark is a market economy.  Scandinavian countries just happen to be capitalist countries with welfare systems that are more generous. There's nothing wrong with that and I kind of like that model. You will not find Scandinavian countries demonizing the wealthy people by the way. The Scandinavian model is very different than radical leftist state governments that have over-regulated their economies and tax their citizens to death. The type of socialism that leftist Democrats are pushing is nothing like the pro-capitalist Scandinavian model. I'd agree that some Western countries have a more cutthroat form of capitalism but throwing out capitalism all together for some economy killing New Green Deal is not a solution.  

The problem is that right-wingers in this country (and for the sake of argument, I'll accept your assertion that you are not one of them) refuse to distinguish between "socialism" and "social democracy". They lump them together, and too many poorly educated simple-minded Republican supporters buy into that. There are plenty of people here who point to the number of billionaires we have in this country as "proof that anyone can make it", ignoring that if you're NOT one of the favored top few, you probably have a lower standard of living than people in those "awful" social democracies.

And sorry, but you're wrong about what "type of socialism" leftist Democrats are pushing. We're not pushing for state takeovers of private industry. And the Green New Deal is actually capitalism at its finest: it tells people who pollute and cause the problem of climate change - to the extent that it's caused by humans, ie for the most part - that they have to pay the costs of cleaning up their mess. The Green New Deal, like most progressive environmental policies, aims to align the COSTS associated with the economic model with the PROFITS made under that model.  By contrast, today's right-wing (and many Libertarians) want to privatize all the GAINS made economically, but everyone around the world has to bear the COST that those gains are imposing on the world via environmental degradation and climate change.

Does the GND mean that companies would be less profitable? The money to fix the problem has to come from somewhere. If not from the companies who are causing the problem, then who? 

[BootmanLA]

1 hour ago, LiamCart said:

Oh I see. Only you know what is true. Everyone else is "uninformed." Believe what you want but Obama sucked as a president. He had very few accomplishments in eight years. I don't believe he's responsible for any true economic turnaround. Fact: The percentage of people participating in the labor force fell from 65.7% to a low of 62.4% under Obama. That is the lowest since 1977. Generally, in a recovery, job seekers rise as jobs re-emerge. Fact: More people (14,573,000) just give up on finding a job than those who found new employment (9,959,000) under Obama. Fact: The labor participation rate for women and minorities declined substantially under Obama. Obama had eight years to fix unemployment so stop blaming the previous administration and the Great Recession on his failure. The official unemployment rate is a lie because the government does not count people who gave up hope of finding a job as unemployed. Fact: Household income has increased since Obama left office. I'm not giving Trump the credit and, by the way, I will reiterate one more time that I'm NOT a Trump supporter, I'm not a right-winger, and I don't like Bush (unless it's a pubic hair bush on a hot man). Lol. By the way, you look hot. 

A significant portion of the people who left the workforce during the Great Recession and in the aftermath were people who opted to retire early. It wasn't because of anything Obama did; it's because when you're 62 years old and laid off from a job that paid a pretty decent wage, and a recovery begins, your company's going to fill that job with some 24-year old that they can pay a fraction of what they paid you. That 24-year old's health care costs on the company plan will almost certainly be substantially less, and they're getting an employee who might be around 15 or 20 years. The 62-year old would have almost certainly retired anyway by about 65 or 70 at the most.

This isn't a secret. The SSA noted that the number of people who chose to retire at the reduced benefits age (between 62 and 66) jumped significantly over prior years when the Great Recession hit - because those people faced little prospect of returning to a good paying job, and SS would at least keep a roof over their heads. They're people who would have been in the working-age population for anywhere from 4 to 8 or 9 more years.

You make it sound like 14 million young to early middle-aged people went on permanent welfare. Aside from the fact that there is no such thing any more, that's simply not what happened.

Incidentally, labor rate participation is always diminished for both women and minorities after recessions. For women, there are several factors at play: if she has young children, any job she gets has to cover the costs of child care (something those social democracies pay for, by the way); if she can't make enough to cover that cost, it makes more economic sense to seek public assistance and care for the kids herself. Women also earn less than men for the same work with the same experience (adjusted for those variables, it's still nearly a 10% penalty; unadjusted it's closer to 25% less), they're more likely to be laid off and less likely to be rehired. Minorities just face more discrimination (overt or subtle) across the board in hiring - not at every place, but at enough that it impacts the statistics in a noticeable way.

So there's often a lot more story behind numbers if you care to actually dig and find out what it is. 

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, LiamCart said:

At face value your idea has merit. I'll have to do more research on the topic.  

I applaud you and hope you do this.

Here's where your original thought process has some - though not a lot - of merit. It's true that neither candidate ever campaigns much in Wyoming, because it's pretty much a given that under the EC, it's always going to go Republican. That's just the kind of people who live there. That's three electoral votes the Republican can count on without lifting a finger.

Likewise, Republicans almost never campaign in Vermont, because the state is solidly progressive and the only Republicans to win there are fairly liberal ones, like its current governor. The last GOP presidential candidate to win there was GHW Bush, and that only by a small margin. That's 3 electoral votes for the Democrat.

On the other end of the scale: very little campaigning (as opposed to fundraising) has taken place historically in California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, or Michigan, because those states were considered "locks" by one party or the other. You could, on election night, one second after the polls closed, award those states to one or the other candidate and have no worries you might look foolish later as the results came in. In addition to those nine, one other state in the top ten, population-wise, DOES get lots of attention (Florida), because elections are often close there and the state has gone back and forth between Republicans and Democrats repeatedly over the last 30-40 years.

All the actual campaigning and spending was targeted at a handful of states: those that could flip either way and had a history of doing so, and especially if they had more than 3 or 4 electoral votes. Indiana used to be one. Iowa was one.

One of the things Trump did, in 2016, was push additional states into play, especially Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, all of which he won by infinitesimally small margins relative to the overall vote. But they collectively had 46 votes, enough to put him over the top. That was a campaigning mistake Clinton made and I certainly can't defend it, other than to say that as none of those states had voted Republican in more than 5 elections, there wasn't reason to expect to lose them.

This time, unfortunately, Trump's managed to push even more states into play, but they're all ones that the GOP used to win handily, including Georgia and Texas (both large states with lots of electoral votes). If he pushes them into the Democratic column - along with several others like Arizona, North Carolina, etc. - the GOP strategy of relying on the electoral college to overcome regular, steady losses in the popular vote will be for naught. And while they won't necessarily all flip this year, it's only a matter of time, demographically.

What would change all this is a popular vote. Millions of people voted for Trump in California and even more would have voted for a better GOP candidate there. And if the popular vote counted, a lot of people who skip the presidential race in a state they know their candidate is going to lose might actually show up to vote. Those are votes that currently get wasted. But likewise the million voters who voted Trump in Massachusetts;  hell, in recent years they've had multiple moderate GOP governors and a GOP senator. A broadly popular GOP presidential candidate could pick up 1.5 million votes in MA pretty easily. He could pick up another 2.5 million votes in Illinois. Candidates would be fighting for all those votes.

Conversely: Clinton got over 1/3 of the Montana vote without campaigning at all in the state. If that state's half a million voters were actually up for grabs, the candidates would pay a lot more attention. Ditto Louisiana, my homestate, which no Democrat has carried since Bill Clinton and no Democrat since has seriously tried to reach; but the 750,000 voters who went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 would be a target-rich environment for a moderate GOP candidate or a Democratic centrist more like Bill Clinton.

The reality is that lots of areas where there currently is no campaigning - because the state is considered "safe" for one party or the other - would get attention with a popular vote, not just big states or states with big cities. Because when the margin nationally is only a couple of million votes, you might be able to pick those up almost anywhere with the right message.

And as someone else noted: It's fair. It means Mr. Wyomingite's voice is just as important as Mrs. Texan's or Mr. New Yorker's or yes, Ms. Californian's. 

[rawTOP]

On 10/10/2020 at 9:54 PM, LiamCart said:

Fair enough.  However, I disagree with you on Libertarian beliefs.  Can you tell me one country that was really successful with socialism? I just see from history how socialism destroyed Venezuela and Cuba.

ALL of Western Europe is successful with socialism – at least socialist in the way the Republicans define it – universal health care, strong rights for workers, a comprehensive social services system, etc. No significant person in the Democratic party is suggesting more than what Europe does in terms of socialism.

[120DaysofSodom]

On 10/11/2020 at 1:21 PM, LiamCart said:

Obama had eight years to fix unemployment so stop blaming the previous administration and the Great Recession on his failure.

There hasnt been a single recession under a Democratic president.

[kinkysuBB]

3 hours ago, rawTOP said:

ALL of Western Europe is successful with socialism – at least socialist in the way the Republicans define it – universal health care, strong rights for workers, a comprehensive social services system, etc. No significant person in the Democratic party is suggesting more than what Europe does in terms of socialism.

You’re right, although as you alluded to, we’d call it “social democracy” here, rather than “socialism.” We have Venezuelan-style socialist parties as well, but they’re not mainstream anywhere. From a Western European perspective (and bear in mind that’s broad brushstrokes taking in multiple countries), the US Democrats are broadly centrist to centre-right, and the Republicans are so far to the right that we’ve very little that resembles them. Fidesz under Viktor Orban in Hungary and Law and Justice in Poland are probably the closest, so not ‘Western’ European.

[kinkysuBB]

In fact, in my own country, Ireland, one of the current coalition parties, Fine Gael, is considered either centre-right or a bunch of crazy right wing libertarians in the pockets of big business, depending who you’re talking to.

This same party has, in the last 5 years, campaigned and legislated for both marriage equality and abortion. The current Minister for Finance, from this same party, is about to launch the biggest spending budget in the history of the State, to deal with COVID-19. These are our “arch conservatives”. And most of Western Europe has mainstream parties well to the left of anything we have here.

Edited October 12, 2020 by subBottomKink

[barefootboy]

5 hours ago, TwinkFoot said:

There hasnt been a single recession under a Democratic president.

Twinkfoot makes a good point. The Great Recession happened under Republican rule. Republicans had the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives from 2001 to 2009. Deregulation lead to the fraudulent lending practices that caused the “Housing Bubble” to burst (financial people know that loans are sold as investments and these worthless loans were sold as grade A investments which is what started the Great Recession).  Behr-Sterns was the first major Financial Institution to fail on March 16, 2008 which began the recession.  Therefore,  the recession hit before Obama ever stepped foot in the White House.  

[Close2MyBro]

7 hours ago, TwinkFoot said:

There hasnt been a single recession under a Democratic president.

You're probably to young to have heard of  Jimmy Carter. He's the Democratic president who had the longest and worst depression since World War II, starting at the beginning of 1980, and not ending until two years after Ronald Reagan was in office.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Close2MyBro