6 ms·

> Not sure why some people consider the Democratic party "extreme". They most definitely seem like a moderate party. The Republican party, well, they're just in

> Not sure why some people consider the Democratic party "extreme". They most definitely seem like a moderate party. The Republican party, well, they're just incredibly laser focused on cutting taxes on the rich. And Republicans would say the opposite. This is why we never get anywhere.

afterburner 10y ago
I don't think we can so easily simply paint both parties as mirror images of each other. The Republican party seems obviously broken.
- ng12 10y ago
  If you're referring to this election specifically I actually envy the Republicans. Trump was able to cut through the party and rally a huge base basically by himself. Even if he loses it's an amazing opportunity for the party to reinvent itself. Meanwhile the Dems double-down on the status quo year after year.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    Obama was the status quo? Bill Clinton was the status quo? Carter was the status quo? JFK was the status quo? How many times were Reagan and Nixon going to run before they got the nod? McCain? Romney? W's singular skill was being the son of a former President. Yeah, Hillary is running for Obama's third term. But otherwise Dems don't double down year after year. That'd be the Republicans. Trump's bull in a china shop approach doesn't change this.
    - ng12 10y ago
      > Hillary is running for Obama's third term Yes. And I consider them both neocons as was the George W. administration. That's what I'm referring to as the status quo. As a lifelong democrat I'm very excited to see what happens to the GOP in the next few years. I don't expect the DNC to change in a significant way.
      - barsonme 10y ago
        As a lifelong Republican I'm not. It's going to be a bitter fight as the GOP either decides to shed its alt-right folk or embrace them and the GOP is going to come out rough either way. There's a definite divide between the moderate GOP and the new, hard right GOP that far surpasses the small, somewhat positive divide when the tea party movement came to be ca 2009.
      - warlox 10y ago
        You do realize that the alt-right, the KKK, and the Nazis stand for genocide, right?
        ng12 10y ago
        I'm not entirely convinced that the alt-right isn't a boogeyman. Not sure what the KKK or the Nazis have to do with anything.
        afterburner 10y ago
        Trump has courted the white supremacist vote. In fact, he was just officially endorsed by the KKK's official newspaper... his whopping 2nd newspaper endorsement!
        ng12 10y ago
        Not really interested in why the KKK supports Trump, very interested in why almost half of voters do.
        afterburner 10y ago
        They might be related...
        mcv 10y ago
        Why the KKK supports Trump is rather telling about what Trump stands for, as is the fact that he has retweeted numerous white supremacists. It's not exactly that it's a one-way street where he can't help that they vote for him; he likes them, courts, them, retweets them, and has never distanced himself from them.
- baddox 10y ago
  Again, you must recognize that the other side will and does say the exact same thing.
  - afterburner 10y ago
    That doesn't make them right, or me wrong.
- barsonme 10y ago
  To _you_ the GOP seems broken. To millions of other people the GOP is fine. To millions of others the Democratic party is broken. If you can't recognize faults in both _you_ are the problem. Nothing in politics--especially subjective issues like this--are black and white.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    This is equivocation which will allow you to dismiss anything.
    - barsonme 10y ago
      I'm not sure how you can some to an objective conclusion on such a subjective issue.
  - imgabe 10y ago
    I'm not going to dispute that both parties have their problems, but the GOP's leadership is actively at odds with the people they purport to represent. That seems pretty broken. The Democrats have, for the most part, at least rallied behind their candidate.
  - afterburner 10y ago
    It seems like it's you who have painted me in black and white. Who says I can't recognize flaws in the democrats? But it seems obvious that the flaws in the Republican party are much, much worse.
  - mcv 10y ago
    Both parties have plenty of faults, but lately the Republicans have refused to even do their job in governing the US, and have promised to undermine the Supreme Court with their misguided power games.
- gremlinsinc 10y ago
  As an EX democrat, I'd say the Democrat party is broken too, the amount of election fraud, and corruption in the party makes it look like the Mafia. The whole system is broken and we need to pass the anti-corruption bill asap, if we're to have a chance to take back our country from wall street. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhe286ky-9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhe286ky-9A EDIT: I say ex loosely.. I voted mostly dem. down the line, but wrote in Bernie Sanders, I'm not fond of Jill Stein something about her doesn't seem right. But I couldn't in good conscience do a protest vote for Trump, and I can never support Clinton, the most corrupt politician of the past 40 years.
  - komali2 10y ago
    I voted for Jill Stein though she is (recently, apparently) anti-nuclear energy, and before that said some silly things about vaccinations and WiFi. There is no perfect candidate other than perhaps yourself. When it comes to third party, you can safely consider your vote a vote for the party values themselves, rather than the candidate in particular. A vote for Jill Stein is really a vote for the major political parties to work on more green legislation.
    - gremlinsinc 10y ago
      I feel that Jill's not that intelligent she's lacking in a lot of areas. Bernie is just brilliant all around. I figured I'll at least pick someone that I can feel confident about supporting, in the end I kind of hope Trump gets it for no other reason than to show the DNC they picked the wrong duck. I actually led the charge on my site PivotAmerica.com to encourage people to go green/vote for Jill, but I don't really think it's possible to break up the two party monopolies anytime soon, and her opinions on vaccines, and nuclear energy are disconcerting. A nuclear power plant is NOT the same thing as a weapon of mass destruction. And you can't just print money like she wants to do for the education plan - Bernie's plan of raising taxes on speculation makes way more sense. But I did throw my vote to down-candidate dems. But Hillary ran the shadiest campaign I've ever seen, and is one of the most corrupt people in the world. I'd say she's worst than Bush / Cheney imho, or at least not far removed in policy. (THey both supported the Iraq war after all).
- dba7dba 10y ago
  From what I heard so far, Hillary was helped/favored ovet Sanders in a very obvious but secret way by leaderahip of Democrat. Isn't that a sign of broken Dem?
  - mcv 10y ago
    That depends on your point of view. Clearly the party has a lot of control over who they nominate, unlike the Republicans, who lost complete control over their nomination process. Perhaps parties shouldn't have such tight control over things; I certainly would have strongly preferred Sanders as the Democratic nominee. Still, it's a party. Technically it is up to the party to decide who they nominate. That they use primaries to make this decision is certainly nice and democratic of them, but it's not a legal requirement, and it wasn't always like that. The thing that's really broken is the entire political system that only offers these two parties as realistic options. But the Republican party has also become really dysfunctional over the past decade or so, where representatives and senators basically refuse to do their job and work to undermine the country by their political gamesmanship.
ionised 10y ago
To an outside observer (i.e myself) both thed Democrats and Republicans (moreso) might seem very right wing.

afterburner 10y ago

I don't think we can so easily simply paint both parties as mirror images of each other. The Republican party seems obviously broken.

ng12 10y ago
If you're referring to this election specifically I actually envy the Republicans. Trump was able to cut through the party and rally a huge base basically by himself. Even if he loses it's an amazing opportunity for the party to reinvent itself. Meanwhile the Dems double-down on the status quo year after year.
- CalChris 10y ago
  Obama was the status quo? Bill Clinton was the status quo? Carter was the status quo? JFK was the status quo? How many times were Reagan and Nixon going to run before they got the nod? McCain? Romney? W's singular skill was being the son of a former President. Yeah, Hillary is running for Obama's third term. But otherwise Dems don't double down year after year. That'd be the Republicans. Trump's bull in a china shop approach doesn't change this.
  - ng12 10y ago
    > Hillary is running for Obama's third term Yes. And I consider them both neocons as was the George W. administration. That's what I'm referring to as the status quo. As a lifelong democrat I'm very excited to see what happens to the GOP in the next few years. I don't expect the DNC to change in a significant way.
    - barsonme 10y ago
      As a lifelong Republican I'm not. It's going to be a bitter fight as the GOP either decides to shed its alt-right folk or embrace them and the GOP is going to come out rough either way. There's a definite divide between the moderate GOP and the new, hard right GOP that far surpasses the small, somewhat positive divide when the tea party movement came to be ca 2009.
    - warlox 10y ago
      You do realize that the alt-right, the KKK, and the Nazis stand for genocide, right?
      - ng12 10y ago
        I'm not entirely convinced that the alt-right isn't a boogeyman. Not sure what the KKK or the Nazis have to do with anything.
        afterburner 10y ago
        Trump has courted the white supremacist vote. In fact, he was just officially endorsed by the KKK's official newspaper... his whopping 2nd newspaper endorsement!
        ng12 10y ago
        Not really interested in why the KKK supports Trump, very interested in why almost half of voters do.
        afterburner 10y ago
        They might be related...
        mcv 10y ago
        Why the KKK supports Trump is rather telling about what Trump stands for, as is the fact that he has retweeted numerous white supremacists. It's not exactly that it's a one-way street where he can't help that they vote for him; he likes them, courts, them, retweets them, and has never distanced himself from them.
baddox 10y ago
Again, you must recognize that the other side will and does say the exact same thing.
- afterburner 10y ago
  That doesn't make them right, or me wrong.
barsonme 10y ago
To _you_ the GOP seems broken. To millions of other people the GOP is fine. To millions of others the Democratic party is broken. If you can't recognize faults in both _you_ are the problem. Nothing in politics--especially subjective issues like this--are black and white.
- CalChris 10y ago
  This is equivocation which will allow you to dismiss anything.
  - barsonme 10y ago
    I'm not sure how you can some to an objective conclusion on such a subjective issue.
- imgabe 10y ago
  I'm not going to dispute that both parties have their problems, but the GOP's leadership is actively at odds with the people they purport to represent. That seems pretty broken. The Democrats have, for the most part, at least rallied behind their candidate.
- afterburner 10y ago
  It seems like it's you who have painted me in black and white. Who says I can't recognize flaws in the democrats? But it seems obvious that the flaws in the Republican party are much, much worse.
- mcv 10y ago
  Both parties have plenty of faults, but lately the Republicans have refused to even do their job in governing the US, and have promised to undermine the Supreme Court with their misguided power games.
gremlinsinc 10y ago
As an EX democrat, I'd say the Democrat party is broken too, the amount of election fraud, and corruption in the party makes it look like the Mafia. The whole system is broken and we need to pass the anti-corruption bill asap, if we're to have a chance to take back our country from wall street. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhe286ky-9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhe286ky-9A EDIT: I say ex loosely.. I voted mostly dem. down the line, but wrote in Bernie Sanders, I'm not fond of Jill Stein something about her doesn't seem right. But I couldn't in good conscience do a protest vote for Trump, and I can never support Clinton, the most corrupt politician of the past 40 years.
- komali2 10y ago
  I voted for Jill Stein though she is (recently, apparently) anti-nuclear energy, and before that said some silly things about vaccinations and WiFi. There is no perfect candidate other than perhaps yourself. When it comes to third party, you can safely consider your vote a vote for the party values themselves, rather than the candidate in particular. A vote for Jill Stein is really a vote for the major political parties to work on more green legislation.
  - gremlinsinc 10y ago
    I feel that Jill's not that intelligent she's lacking in a lot of areas. Bernie is just brilliant all around. I figured I'll at least pick someone that I can feel confident about supporting, in the end I kind of hope Trump gets it for no other reason than to show the DNC they picked the wrong duck. I actually led the charge on my site PivotAmerica.com to encourage people to go green/vote for Jill, but I don't really think it's possible to break up the two party monopolies anytime soon, and her opinions on vaccines, and nuclear energy are disconcerting. A nuclear power plant is NOT the same thing as a weapon of mass destruction. And you can't just print money like she wants to do for the education plan - Bernie's plan of raising taxes on speculation makes way more sense. But I did throw my vote to down-candidate dems. But Hillary ran the shadiest campaign I've ever seen, and is one of the most corrupt people in the world. I'd say she's worst than Bush / Cheney imho, or at least not far removed in policy. (THey both supported the Iraq war after all).
dba7dba 10y ago
From what I heard so far, Hillary was helped/favored ovet Sanders in a very obvious but secret way by leaderahip of Democrat. Isn't that a sign of broken Dem?
- mcv 10y ago
  That depends on your point of view. Clearly the party has a lot of control over who they nominate, unlike the Republicans, who lost complete control over their nomination process. Perhaps parties shouldn't have such tight control over things; I certainly would have strongly preferred Sanders as the Democratic nominee. Still, it's a party. Technically it is up to the party to decide who they nominate. That they use primaries to make this decision is certainly nice and democratic of them, but it's not a legal requirement, and it wasn't always like that. The thing that's really broken is the entire political system that only offers these two parties as realistic options. But the Republican party has also become really dysfunctional over the past decade or so, where representatives and senators basically refuse to do their job and work to undermine the country by their political gamesmanship.

ionised 10y ago

To an outside observer (i.e myself) both thed Democrats and Republicans (moreso) might seem very right wing.