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I can't help but feel that most Americans do not want radical change from government, in either direction. They want the trains to run on time and that's it.

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You're one of the few people I can read that I think I would mostly disagree with but never feel insulted by, so I appreciate the perspective. I think your view of immigration is too rosy. People who want open borders don't understand how that is going to be misused by the people in power, and no I'm not talking about "diluting" votes. I'm talking about the fact that the bad economic actors who have consistently undercut the American worker by sending jobs abroad are now trying to undermine the American worker at home and call them "racist" and "xenophobic" if they point out that a glut of people willing to work for next to nothing and/or work outside the system will further erode wages. I know you'll say, but we can make laws, to which I'll ask, When have we ever done that when the same people who benefit from this abuse of immigrant workers and American workers own the politicians? You have to work with the world as it is.

The other thing I laugh at is your vision of the Republicans. Yes, there might be some "zealots" among the Republican voters and a few in Congress, some MTG's (who I find to be a half a degree off bubble but still someone of more principle than most). But for every MTG or Rand Paul (who also seems to have a few principles), there are a dozen McConnells, Grahams, Kinzingers, and Cheneys, who blow with the political wind and are more worried about what donors will think than their own party constituents. So I think you paint the Republican Party as something quite different than it is.

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Joe Manchin's job is to represent the people of West Virginia - a very socially conservative state, that leans heavily Republican. He's not an "unelected dictator": he's doing what US Senators are supposed to do, which is represent their *state*.

All the howling and outrage over Manchin as if he should be expected to give the middle finger to the people who voted for him in order to embrace Democratic party discipline is insane to me.

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Apr 19, 2022·edited Apr 19, 2022

I agree it is the worst of both worlds, but for a slightly different reason. What I believe the country needs is a party that is for the average worker, pro social safety net, pro law and order, anti-oligarchy, anti-warmongering, a sane fair immigration system with reasonable limits and enforcement of the border. Instead we have a Democratic Party that is beholden to completely insane cultural wokery, but also to the superwealthy, open borders in practice although they won't admit it, anti-worker, and never saw a dumb war they didn't want to start. And the Republican Party is even more so, just minus the wokeness, but culturally obnoxious in other ways.

Some of my preferences are "left" and some are "the center" but I don't really slot into either of those things easily.

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The GOP don't receive electoral backlash from the insane messages in their media because they are no longer insane when compared with the identitarian left that opposes them. The Democrats' hypervaxx ideology, for example, alienated a breathtaking number of people to the point where the Republican perspective on that issue is actually more correct.

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“ I really want to underline this point: it’s something like a worst-case scenario when your bomb-throwing radicals rule in discursive political spaces but are shut out of actual power - the perception of the party will always be unduly influenced by that domination of discourse, while actual policy never progresses.”

This is surely a feature not a bug. The point of having a few “radicals” who talk pretty but do nothing for the working class is to entice the voters into thinking there’s a chance their interests will be advanced, someday, if only they can vote for more Bernies or AOCs.

The voters just need to try harder! That’s the message. It’s a message that anyone who’s ever been in an abusive relationship is familiar with. Sure these terrible things happen despite the fact that you voted for Democrats. Sure you still have no decent wages, no job security, no pension. You just need to try harder to vote for people who agree with you. It’s your own damn fault. This is why you can’t have nice things. You’re not trying hard enough.

Voters are told, from elementary school on, that we choose the candidates on offer (we don’t—powerful people choose them based on their compliance) and then we get to choose whichever one we like best.

Everyone is indoctrinated with this lie: Your responsibility begins and ends with choosing from among the candidates on offer and if you find that you’re unhappy with the results, it means YOU chose wrong. It means YOU must choose better next time.

Anyone who supports some “left” policies (better wages, health care for all, whatever), is enticed by shills like AOC. Oh she says things people like and so people think they’re finally choosing “a good one” — and not a compliant shill selected by the ruling class to play a role — and then she does exactly nothing.

She does exactly nothing not because she’s outnumbered, or politically inexperienced, or hasn’t learned to do deals.

No. People like her are brought into Congress to vote the way they’re told to vote, and that’s to promote a pro-ruling-class agenda, all the while saying just enough things to make the rubes at home believe “a better world is possible, if only we vote for more people like her.”

It’s a con.

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If you look at the imbedded chart, it's clear that most Americans are firmly in the middle...some lean left, some lean right, but not very far in either direction. That leaves progressives in a very minority position. They can't get anything done because the majority doesn't agree with them

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Apr 19, 2022Liked by Freddie deBoer

It seems to me the “maniacal zeal” with which the Republicans “pursue a right agenda” mostly consists of *talking* about stuff, not so much *doing* anything. They have the same problem as the left - that our federal government isn’t capable of changing almost anything in a deliberate, considered way. The government isn’t in control of the government. There’s one set of things that are fun to argue about and make bold claims about on the campaign trail and then there’s another set of areas in which a unified party might be able to tweak the rules a bit with extraordinary focused effort…and those are two almost entirely disjoint sets. Only outgroup homogeneity bias makes us think the other side is getting more than a small fraction of what they want.

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One of the advantages the Republicans have is that, as the party that views government as a necessary evil, they're ideologically well suited to pragmatism. They expect all their politicians to be corrupt or crazy or mean, and figure it doesn't really matter as long as they get results. Democrats are the party that view government as a force for good in society, and so they want their politicians to be shining lights of hope in a dark world. When they compromise with the other side or endorse outdated beliefs or fail to do whatever it is the left base wants they get pilloried for it.

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I think this post is probably indispensable. If turnout is bullshit and persuasion is the winning strategy then giving a megaphone to the portion of your party that is most out of step with the average voter is a recipe for political suicide.

https://jabberwocking.com/if-you-hate-the-culture-wars-blame-liberals/

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Team D is but the political expression of the class power of the PMC, with a few symbolic IdPol crumbs tossed to their junior coalition partners.

For its part, Team R is the political expression of the class power of local gentry, with a few symbolic crumbs tossed to white Evangelicals.

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I see my democratic friends with children becoming less radical. The more radical democrats I know don't have children. Maybe the former have less time, or maybe when one becomes a parent protection of the child becomes more important than radical politics.

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There is a time for aspiration and there is a time for pragmatism. We have (mostly) emerged from a two year long pandemic (and some pretty egregious leadership as the stinky cherry on that shit sundae). We spent more in the past two years than ever in the history of our country, including during our two world wars, characterized by a lack of precision in delivery and accountabilty, and marked by unprecedented graft that is conservatively estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. Instead of healing the country and the economy, many in power (Democrats and Republicans included, although more of the former than the latter, at least to my perception) want to continue this disgusting, unsustainable profligate spending that presents a true and imminent threat to our nation's solvency.

Here's an idea, for both parties: get out of the fucking way. Stop the rampant excess spending (isn't $3-4 trillion a year enough?!) and let the market forces in our country (including small and medium business, not just the "essential" oligarchies) unleash their potential. They don't need the government's help at any level, except to remove roadblocks that stymie or prevent actual progress.

If there truly is a nationwide mandate for pie-in-the-sky policies that expand an already bloated, inefficient, and arguably unaccountable Federal government to even greater proportions, then the voters will maintain the current majorities for the foreseeable future. Given the recent polls, though, I don't think that is the case. That doesn't mean those holding certain principles shouldn't continue to espouse those principles. Far from it. It does, though, mean there will be a political consequence for adhering to those principles and that should be a price any politician is willing to pay if they are truly principled (versus a weather vane that swings based on whichever way the political winds are blowing).

In truth, at the end of the day, I just want to be left the fuck alone. I don't want noisy, obstreperous, and dictotrial fuckheads of any political pursuasion trying to dictate to me what to think, what to say, how to behave, and to extort my hard earned money to spend without discernable purpose or accountability. I believe in individual liberty, sovreignty, and accountability, and I eagerly welcome anyone from any party that espouses and endorses that perspective.

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I’m a centrist but we have an example today where the view: “but centrists are so afraid of risk and change that the Democrats effectively stand for nothing” is clearly correct: the Biden administration’s COVID policy. Look at what just happened- a Trump appointed judge struck down the public transport mask mandate. Regardless of how you feel about that decision, look at how the Biden administration responded - by doing nothing, and not fighting the decision at all. This is just days after the administration had extended the mandate for additional weeks.

If the Biden administration thought the mask mandate was important then they should have fought for it- immediately appealing to a higher court, trying to get a stay, etc etc. But they didn’t, implying that they didn’t think it’s that big a deal. The fact that so many airlines and Amtrak almost immediately announced they would no longer enforce it strongly implies some back channel communications that the admin wasn’t going to pursue this any further. But if this is what the administration wanted, why did they make the decision to extend the mandate for several more weeks when it was set to expire in March?

The implication from all of this is that the admin didn’t really want the mandate extended but they didn’t want to deal with an internal coalition that would have yelped. So they actually love this ruling because it gets them to where they want to go without having to take direct responsibility. It looks bad no matter what side of the issue you are on - take a stand for what you actually believe in!

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Apr 19, 2022·edited Apr 19, 2022

When I was young and UK entered (instead of leaving) the European Union there was a joke about an hypothetical debate in The House of Commons about whether keeping or giving up "left-hand drive" as all the other EU members presented a "right-hand drive". The joke was that, after a long and heated debate between "leftist" and "rightist", a good compromise was found: cars would use the british traditional "left-hand drive" while lorries and buses would use the EU "right-hand drive". Sometimes it looks like the Democrats have adopted the same kind of compromise

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This is because Left and Right used to be broadly economic terms. Now it’s more social. Most people are still economically liberal but socially conservative. But that’s not allowed. Got to go all in on one, apparently.

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