5 ms·

He's probably not extreme enough. A classic liberal is basically viewed as a republican these days.

by mesozoic 7y ago

conception 7y ago
A "center" dem from today is 100% a 1980's republican. Their platforms are basically indistinguishable.
- jlawson 7y ago
  1980's Republicans supported sanctuary cities, gay marriage, free college, and socialized health care? No, they didn't. Data shows that the American left shifted far leftward over the last 30 years, with the left edge going the furthest. The Republicans shifted leftward only a small amount. Here's Tim Pool covering the data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grXCooL3-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grXCooL3-M Listen to Bill Clinton in the 90's basically laying down the Trump line on 'illegal aliens': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnOpGI0qRhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnOpGI0qRhA
  - hindsightbias 7y ago
    Sanctuary cities didnt need to be a thing because Republicans didnt care until the 90s. Buchanan wasnt the norm, he was out there. College was practically free then. And ever hear of Nixoncare? The left today is a caricature of the left in the 60s and early 70s.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      The right isn't happy with the right, the left isn't happy with the left, they aren't happy with each other, who is happy in this political landscape?
  - pessimizer 7y ago
    Bill Clinton and the New Democrats were the rightward shift in the Democratic Party.
    - ataturk 7y ago
      You and I remember the '90s very differently. Clinton's term saw a big push against private firearms ownership, a crackdown on "militias" that had sprung up resist big, overbearing government, incidents like Waco and Ruby Ridge that fueled anti-government sentiment, culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing, a dark incident that still has conspiracy overtones. There was a huge push against right wing "militias" but that was just code for "punish uppity conservatives" mainly. Same as now, but now is actually worse because they have refined their methods. Clinton presided over the dotcom bubble era and got a lot of mileage over "balancing the Federal budget" which was a complete lie from beginning to end. He never balanced anything, it was all projections. He also kicked off the housing bubble by allowing deregulation of banking and credit, which led us to the near total crash in 2008. Everyone blames Bush for that, but it was Clinton's policy change that led to it. That was maybe Clinton's one market-friendly move but boy did it blow up in our faces! The banking and credit industry got what they paid for. I see little to nothing "rightward" with any Democrats in my lifetime. I just see a monstrous effort to consolidate and centralize power and thereby limit the effectiveness of individuals in our society. Like Obama, Clinton wanted everyone dependent on government. I also think about poor Elian Gonzalez who got shipped back to Castro's Cuba so that his communist indoctrination could be completed. How does that square with the "take in all the immigrants legal or illegal" doctrine of today? All I can think is that Clinton's DOJ was bending over backwards to placate the Cuban government because they adore communism and want to be more like them.
    - jkoudys 7y ago
      As a Canadian, it's crazy that anyone could think of the Democrats as far left. Our Conservative party stopped fighting against gay marriage before the Democrats did.
  - mcv 7y ago
    The Republicans did not shift leftward, they shifted far to the right. In the 1980s, the Dems and Reps overlapped quite a lot. If you go back far enough, they even switched position (Eisenhower was effectively a social democrat, for example, while pre-WW2 Dems were racists). The US didn't even have a meaningful left in the 1980s, and has recently been developing one because people were horrified by how far the country had moved to the right.
    - jlawson 7y ago
      You can flatly assert that, but it'd be more interesting if you made an argument or cited some evidence. On what issues have the Republicans shifted to the right since, say, 1985?
      - mcv 7y ago
        Taxes. Since 1980, they have lowered taxes to ridiculous extremes. Deregulation of businesses. Doing everything to give large businesses, CEOs and large shareholders free reign, while undermining the middle class. Income of the middle class has been pretty much stagnant since about 1980, while incomes of the top 1% has gone through the roof since then. Wealth inequality has gone way up. I recently read that in 1970, Republicans still supported Basic Income.
      - jkoudys 7y ago
        This is a comments section. If you want citations, read articles. It's impolite to demand someone here be held to that standard. We know from context that these are opinions, and everyone has the opportunity to provide citations if they want to, but don't demand them.
  - croon 7y ago
    > Data shows that the American left shifted far leftward over the last 30 years, with the left edge going the furthest. The Republicans shifted leftward only a small amount. Here's Tim Pool covering the data: No it doesn't [1], using data from [2] and [3]. Maybe double check information you get from youtube pundits, especially those with an egregious agenda. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-polarization-is-asymmetric-and-conservatives-are-worse/373044/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-pol... [2] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Vital-Statistics-Full-Data-Set.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Vital-S... [3] https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/ https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarizati...
    - jlawson 7y ago
      Atlantic's chart from Poole says the Republicans now are far more right-wing than they were in 1955. That was during Jim Crow and Operation Wetback, when the US's immigration policy was formally, "whites only". I mean, seriously? Moreover, they ignored everything since 2012, when the social justice movement really gto going only in 2013 [0]. Which means they're not even really addressing the meaningful recent leftward lurch. This is exactly the kind of obvious manipulation I'm talking about. Leaving out 7 years of data that are the core of the entire argument. [0] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/the-nytimes-is-woke.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th... The Pew data, which is what Tim Pool was working from, and which comes from an extremely reputable source, stands strong and it reinforces what I've said.
      - croon 7y ago
        > Leaving out 7 years of data that are the core of the entire argument. The study was published in 2014, and it's not uncommon to have no finalized data for the year prior on all sources you want to aggregate. There is no grand conspiracy. > The Pew data, which is what Tim Pool was working from, and which comes from an extremely reputable source, stands strong and it reinforces what I've said. Again, no it doesn't. And how could it if it was published in 2014, going by your assertion? Poole used congress voting records, and racism isn't the only (do I even need to state this?) conservative metric. Regarding your link I don't know what you think it means. That terms and concepts that come into the discourse are discussed more? I'm not shocked.
mcv 7y ago
Republicans are not remotely classic liberals. Unless by "classic" you mean "stuck in the 19th century".

He's probably not extreme enough. A classic liberal is basically viewed as a republican these days.

conception 7y ago

A "center" dem from today is 100% a 1980's republican. Their platforms are basically indistinguishable.

jlawson 7y ago
1980's Republicans supported sanctuary cities, gay marriage, free college, and socialized health care? No, they didn't. Data shows that the American left shifted far leftward over the last 30 years, with the left edge going the furthest. The Republicans shifted leftward only a small amount. Here's Tim Pool covering the data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grXCooL3-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grXCooL3-M Listen to Bill Clinton in the 90's basically laying down the Trump line on 'illegal aliens': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnOpGI0qRhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnOpGI0qRhA
- hindsightbias 7y ago
  Sanctuary cities didnt need to be a thing because Republicans didnt care until the 90s. Buchanan wasnt the norm, he was out there. College was practically free then. And ever hear of Nixoncare? The left today is a caricature of the left in the 60s and early 70s.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    The right isn't happy with the right, the left isn't happy with the left, they aren't happy with each other, who is happy in this political landscape?
- pessimizer 7y ago
  Bill Clinton and the New Democrats were the rightward shift in the Democratic Party.
  - ataturk 7y ago
    You and I remember the '90s very differently. Clinton's term saw a big push against private firearms ownership, a crackdown on "militias" that had sprung up resist big, overbearing government, incidents like Waco and Ruby Ridge that fueled anti-government sentiment, culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing, a dark incident that still has conspiracy overtones. There was a huge push against right wing "militias" but that was just code for "punish uppity conservatives" mainly. Same as now, but now is actually worse because they have refined their methods. Clinton presided over the dotcom bubble era and got a lot of mileage over "balancing the Federal budget" which was a complete lie from beginning to end. He never balanced anything, it was all projections. He also kicked off the housing bubble by allowing deregulation of banking and credit, which led us to the near total crash in 2008. Everyone blames Bush for that, but it was Clinton's policy change that led to it. That was maybe Clinton's one market-friendly move but boy did it blow up in our faces! The banking and credit industry got what they paid for. I see little to nothing "rightward" with any Democrats in my lifetime. I just see a monstrous effort to consolidate and centralize power and thereby limit the effectiveness of individuals in our society. Like Obama, Clinton wanted everyone dependent on government. I also think about poor Elian Gonzalez who got shipped back to Castro's Cuba so that his communist indoctrination could be completed. How does that square with the "take in all the immigrants legal or illegal" doctrine of today? All I can think is that Clinton's DOJ was bending over backwards to placate the Cuban government because they adore communism and want to be more like them.
  - jkoudys 7y ago
    As a Canadian, it's crazy that anyone could think of the Democrats as far left. Our Conservative party stopped fighting against gay marriage before the Democrats did.
- mcv 7y ago
  The Republicans did not shift leftward, they shifted far to the right. In the 1980s, the Dems and Reps overlapped quite a lot. If you go back far enough, they even switched position (Eisenhower was effectively a social democrat, for example, while pre-WW2 Dems were racists). The US didn't even have a meaningful left in the 1980s, and has recently been developing one because people were horrified by how far the country had moved to the right.
  - jlawson 7y ago
    You can flatly assert that, but it'd be more interesting if you made an argument or cited some evidence. On what issues have the Republicans shifted to the right since, say, 1985?
    - mcv 7y ago
      Taxes. Since 1980, they have lowered taxes to ridiculous extremes. Deregulation of businesses. Doing everything to give large businesses, CEOs and large shareholders free reign, while undermining the middle class. Income of the middle class has been pretty much stagnant since about 1980, while incomes of the top 1% has gone through the roof since then. Wealth inequality has gone way up. I recently read that in 1970, Republicans still supported Basic Income.
    - jkoudys 7y ago
      This is a comments section. If you want citations, read articles. It's impolite to demand someone here be held to that standard. We know from context that these are opinions, and everyone has the opportunity to provide citations if they want to, but don't demand them.
- croon 7y ago
  > Data shows that the American left shifted far leftward over the last 30 years, with the left edge going the furthest. The Republicans shifted leftward only a small amount. Here's Tim Pool covering the data: No it doesn't [1], using data from [2] and [3]. Maybe double check information you get from youtube pundits, especially those with an egregious agenda. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-polarization-is-asymmetric-and-conservatives-are-worse/373044/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-pol... [2] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Vital-Statistics-Full-Data-Set.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Vital-S... [3] https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/ https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarizati...
  - jlawson 7y ago
    Atlantic's chart from Poole says the Republicans now are far more right-wing than they were in 1955. That was during Jim Crow and Operation Wetback, when the US's immigration policy was formally, "whites only". I mean, seriously? Moreover, they ignored everything since 2012, when the social justice movement really gto going only in 2013 [0]. Which means they're not even really addressing the meaningful recent leftward lurch. This is exactly the kind of obvious manipulation I'm talking about. Leaving out 7 years of data that are the core of the entire argument. [0] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/the-nytimes-is-woke.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th... The Pew data, which is what Tim Pool was working from, and which comes from an extremely reputable source, stands strong and it reinforces what I've said.
    - croon 7y ago
      > Leaving out 7 years of data that are the core of the entire argument. The study was published in 2014, and it's not uncommon to have no finalized data for the year prior on all sources you want to aggregate. There is no grand conspiracy. > The Pew data, which is what Tim Pool was working from, and which comes from an extremely reputable source, stands strong and it reinforces what I've said. Again, no it doesn't. And how could it if it was published in 2014, going by your assertion? Poole used congress voting records, and racism isn't the only (do I even need to state this?) conservative metric. Regarding your link I don't know what you think it means. That terms and concepts that come into the discourse are discussed more? I'm not shocked.

mcv 7y ago

Republicans are not remotely classic liberals. Unless by "classic" you mean "stuck in the 19th century".