All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[numberthirty]

Well according to the Overton window. Both American parties have BOTH moved further to the RIGHT!

Democrats have move so far to the right, that Bernie is seen as some Radical leftist, when he's a true moderate.
In any other nation, including several I've lived in, he'd be a moderate/centrist.


Democrats Move to the Right (Overton Window)

Exactly.

You have to ignore how bad the Democrats "Far Corner..."(which is actually "Way Over On 'The Actual Far Right Side Of Center...') angle is to even try to frame it that way.

Union members actually said what their specific problem was and why they voted for Trump. It had nothing to do with a Democratic Party shift left.

[Mister Mets]

A few days ago, there was an embarrassing exchange between Brian Williams and Mara Gay of the New York Times editorial board, where they mocked Bloomberg's presidential bid and noted that he could have given every American a million dollars and had money left over.

Thursday on MSNBC's "The Eleventh Hour" with Brian Williams, New York Times Editorial Board Member Mara Gay and the host accepted without question a tweet that (jokingly) said that Michael Bloomberg could have given every American one million dollars with the five hundred million dollars he spent on his short******d presidential campaign. In reality, $500 million divided by 327 million Americans is about $1.53 per person.

"When I read it tonight on social media, it kind of all became clear," Williams said.

The tweet read: "Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. Population, 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and have had lunch money left over."

"It’s an incredible way of putting it," Williams said.

"It’s an incredible way of putting it," Gay said. "It’s true. It’s disturbing."

This is staggering innumeracy, especially when you take into account how many people had to be involved in the editorial decision.

Conservative writer Alex Griswold summed up the political implications.

It would be a mistake to cover the whole Gay/Williams thing simply as an embarrassing math error, rather than delving into the policy preconceptions that made such an error possible the problem isn't that a NYT editorial board member and the former NBC nightly anchor botched math, it's that someone said a fraction of a single billionaire's wealth could immediately enrich every American, and they *didn't bother* to do the math, because of course that's true.

[TheDarman]

Exactly.

You have to ignore how bad the Democrats "Far Corner..."(which is actually "Way Over On 'The Actual Far Right Side Of Center...') angle is to even try to frame it that way.

Union members actually said what their specific problem was and why they voted for Trump. It had nothing to do with a Democratic Party shift left.

Yeah. It mostly had to do with the overall changes to neoliberal policy overall. As I said before, at the time of its inception under FDR, there was also an emphasis on the robust social state. Since Reagan, every Democrat has been fighting continued cuts with Obama being the only president able to actually successfully expand it since LBJ. Without a social state to provide people with the gains of free trade and offset the consequences of creative destruction, there is no real way to mitigate the problems free trade inherently causes. For too long, free trade has not been used as a way to set rules all countries marketplaces play by, but rather a way for companies to shift labor to where it is cheaper and without social safety nets back home for workers who get left behind. Obama’s social state wasn’t sophisticated enough to deal with creative destruction, but the TPP actually did quite a lot to ensure that these other countries’ marketplaces were playing by the same rules with environmental regulation and labor laws.

Also, it is important to note that international scales are tricky. Because there can be further tugs to the right or the left that can make more stagnant parties domestically slide more than they really are. So, if the overall international community shifts to the left significantly, that moves domestic parties rightward on the scale, even if they are both shifting themselves left or right, though perhaps at a slower rate. And, again, the polarization is asymmetric because Democrats are moving quite slowly to the left while Republicans were moving quite rapidly to the right.

EDIT: Did some digging and the Overton Window is actually a flawed libertarian political model. That explains why we never really acknowledged it. It hasn’t really been peer-reviewed properly or supported by data.

[Mister Mets]

Oh, let's hope he's the very last person to get tested. And then turns out to be negative so that he was quarantined for nothing. Wa-wa.

The odds are really likely that he's quarantined for nothing.

His statement was that he was taking an abundance of caution because he would otherwise interact with a lot of people over the course of the next week.

Before the Moderates, and Centrists get all up on their high horses, as if they aren't already.

Obama/Biden gave us Trump.
Incremental Centrists (aka Bowing your heads to media/GOP) gave us Trump.
4 years of Biden, which is probably not gonna be a thing as Trump will eat him. DNC can't protect or hide him then. Will get us another Trump OR TRUMP again.

Because Centrist policies and "Pragmatism" and "Getting things (Vague things) done" is seen as a policy prescription?

The historical norm is for the party in the White House to lose after two terms.

There's little indication that someone more progressive than Obama would have done better.

Hell, a Kucinich might have lost to McCain in 2008.

Well according to the Overton window. Both American parties have BOTH moved further to the RIGHT!

Democrats have move so far to the right, that Bernie is seen as some Radical leftist, when he's a true moderate.
In any other nation, including several I've lived in, he'd be a moderate/centrist.


Democrats Move to the Right (Overton Window)

Democrats have recently moved significantly to the left.

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/182598...ing-trump-2020
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...last-30-years/

On social issues, the party is more willing to back late term abortion and has certainly changed from the 2008 presidential race was none of the candidates was openly in favor of gay marriage.

There are some arguments on entitlements, but Democrats are typically in favor of increased spending. I'm unfamiliar with any category where Democrats want to spend less money adjusted for inflation than in the past (IE- For the purposes of whether we're determining if Democrats have become more conservative, an officeholder wanting to decrease the amount of money an individual on social security receives per year hasn't become more fiscally responsible if they're still supporting a total increase in social security spending because more people are on the program and/ or people are living longer.)

Overton Window is something I’ve never heard of. Not to say it isn’t legitimate, but not even my most liberal professors brought it up (and many of my more liberal professors openly said they were in support of Sanders or Warren). Meanwhile, the concept of asymmetric polarization was a phenomena we studied in every one of those classes and we could replicate ourselves based on the votes on particular bills and/or actionable support for particular policies. It is important to note, perhaps, asymmetrical polarization was a concept that was uniquely explored in the American context. Internationally, that analysis may differ as we all acknowledge that Sanders’ policies are normative in other Western countries. But my perspective is always to look at the American political context for American political action. Perhaps it is narrow, granted, but I think it yields better context at the localized level and allows us to better understand what arguments work and what don’t on our national level.

The Overton window has emerged recently as a concept.

Glenn Beck wrote a thriller about it ten years ago.

It does seem to be a little misunderstood. It was initially an argument for the patronage of think tanks, rather than a method of manipulating the public.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/u...democrats.html

[Gray Lensman]

A few days ago, there was an embarrassing exchange between Brian Williams and Mara Gay of the New York Times editorial board, where they mocked Bloomberg's presidential bid and noted that he could have given every American a million dollars and had money left over.



This is staggering innumeracy, especially when you take into account how many people had to be involved in the editorial decision.

Conservative writer Alex Griswold summed up the political implications.

Bloomberg's entire fortune amounts to $177 per person in the country. But that really doesn't tell you how large it is. At 2% interest, the interest alone on his net worth could set up a trust fund whose interest pays the average annual family income each and every year without touching the principal. He could do this every single day, in perpetuity, without ever reducing his net worth. That's a mind boggling sum of money.

[Kirby101]

I love how a stupid slip up by a cable anchor trying to just fill time has become a major scandal among conservatives. But never a peep about actual impeachable acts going on daily from Trump.

[Steel Inquisitor]

EDIT: Did some digging and the Overton Window is actually a flawed libertarian political model. That explains why we never really acknowledged it. It hasn’t really been peer-reviewed properly or supported by data.

It's used to discredit Democrats by ignoring the domestic context and to shore up leftist credentials with the narrate that the Democrats are conservative so they're not on the left. Completely ignores the barriers they face other countries don't, and is a cheap shot to reframe a debate in their favour as long as you don't look at the details.

[Tendrin]

It's used to discredit Democrats by ignoring the domestic context and to shore up leftist credentials with the narrate that the Democrats are conservative so they're not on the left. Completely ignores the barriers they face other countries don't, and is a cheap shot to reframe a debate in their favour as long as you don't look at the details.

It's also a misunderstanding of where the Democrats are significantly to the left of other countries, especially on gay, transgender and abortion rights, though some surely see the democrats social politics as a 'sop' to maintain 'voters' while ignoring the consequences of 'neoliberal economic policy'.

[TheDarman]

It's used to discredit Democrats by ignoring the domestic context and to shore up leftist credentials with the narrate that the Democrats are conservative so they're not on the left. Completely ignores the barriers they face other countries don't, and is a cheap shot to reframe a debate in their favour as long as you don't look at the details.

As it stands, I’m sticking to my original analysis:

As a Political Science major, I hardly ever get to use the actual “science” that I learned getting my BA. Behold...a perfect opportunity! Did Obama and Clinton cause Trump? Nope, it’s actually a little concept called...

Asymmetric polarization!

In short, the parties have both been drifting further and further into their own ideological corners. Yes! This does mean that all things considered Obama and Clinton were further to the left of FDR and LBJ. This is all things considered though, so we aren’t saying they were further to the left economically. Reagan actually fundamentally realigned what neoliberal policy meant after FDR (the progressive hero) pushed for its implementation on the world stage. Neoliberal policy was thus reshaped to mean more “laissez faire” attitudes on economic stuff, which was never the initial intention—initially the idea was to have robust social welfare states. Obama, especially, was probably as close to FDR as any two-term Democrat has been since, but Reagan fundamentally reshaped this.

Of course, in recent years, “asymmetric” means both sides weren’t drifting as far apart. Sanders is a reaction to this—there is a side of the Democratic Party that wanted to move further to the left. Trump, meanwhile, was a reaction to the right’s persistent push towards the right that hadn’t been stopped since Reagan.

No, the reason we have Trump is because Trump was viewed as less partisan than Clinton, who herself was running on the most progressive platform that any Democrat has ever run on. Trump, meanwhile, made a campaign that was built on populist promises of working on infrastructure, keeping Social Security and Medicare, and not being a social conservative except for the winning issue of abortion (at least with evangelicals). Of course, we now know he never intended to keep them, but Trump represented a shake-up, not just to the neoliberal policies that people felt had left them behind (largely because we were missing the robust social welfare state we initially understood to be necessary), but to the two-party system they saw to be increasingly radicalizing.

[InformationGeek]

Paul Gosar, Rep of Arizona, is also self-quarantining himself along with 3 staff members just like Ted Cruz. Twitter Link

I should point out this particular thing with Gosar's announcement.

1. I am announcing that I, along with 3 of my senior staff, are officially under self-quarantine after sustained contact at CPAC with a person who has since been hospitalized with the Wuhan Virus. My office will be closed for the week.

What's with the name? Why not call it coronavirus like everyone else?

[Tendrin]

As it stands, I’m sticking to my original analysis:

I definitely agree that the Dems haven't moved as much as the Republicans.

[numberthirty]

Yeah. It mostly had to do with the overall changes to neoliberal policy overall. As I said before, at the time of its inception under FDR, there was also an emphasis on the robust social state. Since Reagan, every Democrat has been fighting continued cuts with Obama being the only president able to actually successfully expand it since LBJ. Without a social state to provide people with the gains of free trade and offset the consequences of creative destruction, there is no real way to mitigate the problems free trade inherently causes. For too long, free trade has not been used as a way to set rules all countries marketplaces play by, but rather a way for companies to shift labor to where it is cheaper and without social safety nets back home for workers who get left behind. Obama’s social state wasn’t sophisticated enough to deal with creative destruction, but the TPP actually did quite a lot to ensure that these other countries’ marketplaces were playing by the same rules with environmental regulation and labor laws.

Also, it is important to note that international scales are tricky. Because there can be further tugs to the right or the left that can make more stagnant parties domestically slide more than they really are. So, if the overall international community shifts to the left significantly, that moves domestic parties rightward on the scale, even if they are both shifting themselves left or right, though perhaps at a slower rate. And, again, the polarization is asymmetric because Democrats are moving quite slowly to the left while Republicans were moving quite rapidly to the right.

EDIT: Did some digging and the Overton Window is actually a flawed libertarian political model. That explains why we never really acknowledged it. It hasn’t really been peer-reviewed properly or supported by data.

When union members are still calling out Card Check(and the way it played out specifically...)?

"Mostly" isn't really there in the actual fact of what we see union members saying the issue is.

What they wanted was not about overall policy. It was a specific change to give them something like a fighting chance in a country that is openly against them.

That an administration might not be able to deliver it? That is completely understandable.

To say that you will make it a central priority of your administration and then wind up at "We're Going To Keep Working On That..."?

It is the sort of a tactical mistake that is completely unacceptable in a country where it's Presidential elections are decided by a matter of a few percentage points. Never mind situations(namely, the one that might come to pass this fall...) where a member of such an administration will still potentially have it there with a chance to hobble them years down the line.

[TheDarman]

When union members are still calling out Card Check(and the way it played out specifically...)?

"Mostly" isn't really there in the actual fact of what we see union members saying the issue is.

What they wanted was not about overall policy. It was a specific change to give them something like a fighting chance in a country that is openly against them.

That an administration might not be able to deliver it? That is completely understandable.

To say that you will make it a central priority of your administration and then wind up at "We're Going To Keep Working On That..."?

It is the sort of a tactical mistake that is completely unacceptable in a country where it's Presidential elections are decided by a matter of a few percentage points. Never mind situations(namely, the one that might come to pass this fall...) where a member of such an administration will still potentially have it there with a chance to hobble them years down the line.

Well Trump nominated justices that basically gutted union’s ability to collective bargain, so we saw how well that goes for the Union members going for Trump. It is just a persistent truth I guess that no matter how much one thinks things can’t get worse, they can ALWAYS get worse under Republican leadership.

And Obama tried to get it done, but lack of Republican and independent support led to it not getting to cloture in the Senate and it dying there.

[Tazirai]

I love how a stupid slip up by a cable anchor trying to just fill time has become a major scandal among conservatives. But never a peep about actual impeachable acts going on daily from Trump.

Yeah, this is one "Controversy" that is used to fill air time.
I actually miss the days when the News came on in the Morning, Noon, 5pm, 6:30 National News, and 11 p.m.
You'd get your occasional interruptions from special events. But It's one of the reasons I go to Youtube for anything national now.

I'd rather you tell me where you are politically, do the news, give your opinion, and then move the hell on.

2 hour news has ruined the country even more so than Right/left politics.

[numberthirty]

Well Trump nominated justices that basically gutted union’s ability to collective bargain, so we saw how well that goes for the Union members going for Trump. It is just a persistent truth I guess that no matter how much one thinks things can’t get worse, they can ALWAYS get worse under Republican leadership.

Which doesn't mean that the other flavor of "Leaving Me Out In The Cold..." isn't there.

It's creating a situation where it will be perfectly reasonable for union members to just sit it out when it could wind up being close. Never mind that a lot of the union vote backing Sanders might point to that they might be more inclined to sit out a Biden General.

Never mind that Trump had more straight path to being able to do that when the previous Democratic administration wound up leaving union members without much of reason to be there as soon as the polls opened.