It's not some simplification to point out that a vote is for the package deal. That's how it works. It's not like Trump governs like some chunk of his supporters didn't want the racism. He's whole hog in the racism. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who puts in meaningful work in opposition to one aspect of their vote, like say a nun who's pro-life but also putting in good work for a social justice organization, but even then a vote for Trump is still indicative of which of those two things are more important to her. But for many people, they expect to be treated as if an empty statement about how they don't support that part absolves them of any responsibility for voting for it. That's about as convincing as all the people who "don't support Trump" or "don't defend Trump" here who nevertheless put in hundreds of hours here supporting and defending him and never criticizing him.

Even for you, you admit you're voting for things you don't support, but you made a value judgment that a vote for those horrible things, like green energy or a public option or taxes on rich people, but against Trump is better on balance than voting against those things but also for Trump. It is perfectly sensible to take Trump voters to task for voting for racism, because they did, even if their vote was mainly about how anti-racism was not something they cared about enough to actually vote for it instead.

Trafalgar was less accurate on nationwide polls than most outlets in 2016. They are a firm that always publishes results hugely biased towards Republicans so it's not surprising that the one time a long shot came in they shout about it from the rooftops, despite the fact they were further away from the actual nationwide numbers than mainstream polling companies, just in the other direction. Their record in the 2018 midterms was even worse - iirc they had R gaining seats when it was the biggest blue wave in a generation.

It's really not remotely surprising that polls that constantly have an R bias appear to have been more accurate when looking specifically at 2016 but it is essentially useless as a predictor for future accuracy.

Racism and bigotry is a part of the Republican Party

It is not a part of Republican policy

R policy is lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, smaller gov't/less intrusion

It's supposed to not care if you're gay straight trans religion of any kind, none at all, rich, poor

Republican policy does not exist in the Republican Party

The only reason I say R > D is because capitalism is effective and efficient

It's corruption that is bad. It's why we don't actively choose to remove the for profit motive for jails, education, healthcare

Should we remove those entirely? No, I don't think so. Breakthroughs happen through research and development. Competition fosters innovation. We just don't remove it for spots where it's clearly immoral (and arguably worse economically) and for that reason I also say D Party > R Party

I am neither. I think labels are stupid and pointless. Gov't/society is supposed to address problems and it literally means dick what your name is. It's actually bizarre to me. Like calling yourself a Christian but cherry picking what parts of the Bible you believe. What? I would argue that makes one an atheist or agnostic...Why align with D or R? I don't need anyone to tell me that a profit incentive keeps people in jail when they need rehab...etc

Fiscal responsibility and low government intrusion are not in any way Republican policy. Those are Republican slogans that have no reflection on how they govern when in power: not now, not before. Every time Republicans have been in charge since Nixon realigned the parties, they've been more than happy to balloon the deficit and intrude on people's lives.

I think TDawg is saying this when he says:

Republican policy does not exist in the Republican Party

I must admit, though, that his post isn't the easiest to understand/follow.

I know he was saying that in the present. I take issue with the implication of his post that the things he listed as policies used to be present in the party. They have only ever been empty slogans when in power, or bad faith excuses for obstruction when out of power.

Pure capitalism is not effective. Look at the wealth disparity in this country compared to many European countries....and that is even with some checks on capitalism in America.

Pure capitalism is efficient. It is efficient in creating extreme wealth disparity.


LOL at you not wanting to remove the profit motivation for jail and education and healthcare. Keep on that same path and see where that leads this country. People shouldnt have to be wealthy to receive adequate healthcare. What kind of monster are you?

you're really bad at this.

this is basically what we're always trying to say. these people come in here and say that they believe in republican policy, and then list things that actual republicans don't actually do or believe in.

it's the same when they talk about judges, "we dont want activist judges!". they absolutely LOVE activist judges, and conservative appointed judges are some of the MOST activist on federal benches.


it's the racism and the bigotry.

Yes. I don't think I said any different. I used specific wording

Government sort has to expand w the population anyway, but when I say Republican policy, I mean what is supposed to be R policy, not what crap is in their platform now. The current R Party is a bunch of RINOs

I've said it a million times and agree with you. Full of **** since Southern Strategy, etc etc...

I may also be confusing things with libertarian principles. One of my favorite posters who I haven't seen in a while (on here or Unstuck), Microbet, said I might be a left libertarian. I don't even think that's entirely accurate, but it might be the closest thing I am were one to label me

I feel like it's ironic how the Founding Fathers gave us the Constitution/Bill of Rights/Declaration of Independence while also being slave owners in a society in full bore acceptance of anyone not white and male being their subjects, beneath them. They were brilliant men, but did all that too...

Maybe we shouldn't be suprised we're a nation of hypocrites. I guess we all are hypocrites no matter what we do...

Not a history buff so I can't comment on the distant past, but I always felt the principles were the most important. Even though we clearly didn't adhere to them in the past, we certainly can try to do better today. I don't particularly care for the size of gov't. I just want optimal government (insert joke here)

as usual, the crazy right makes the Democrats actually look cool. unfortunately they are nothing like your fever dreams. in fact, they are a lot like you!

I'd settle for a government where I felt I got a return on my tax dollars ie universal healthcare, paid post high school education, etc. and didnt live in a society where it is becoming more common for extremely rich billionaires to decide what gets funded instead of via the democratic process.

I apologize that my posts are long, ranty, and confusing/somewhat incohorent, but I think you misread it

I am 100% against for profit jails. I am against for profit healthcare system, but it's debatable to remove it entirely imo. Same with education

EDIT: Maybe I'm wrong here, but a profit motive is supposed to lead to advancement in medicine. I'd like to keep that, breakthroughs from R&D, but remove the part where we're screwing people out of insulin or any procedure of exorbitant cost, etc

We can have a hybrid system (doesn't Japan? I know there's at least one) to cover everyone in a morally acceptable manner while allowing those of wealth to seek their own care in a separate system. I think I'd prefer single payer, but I'm for anything better than the disgrace we have now

Education costing money is absurd to me. It used to be that a HS diploma was good enough. We need to grow the **** up. A college degree, specific training, trades, STEM emphasis, we should WANT to educate our population and your zip code mattering is beyond a disgrace

When I speak on capitalism, I don't want full bore lassez faire. I want our mixed economy to preserve the very best of capitalism and cut out the fat and rebuild a robust welfare system too. But we don't need to bloat gov't. We can have UHC and as it begins to work and change things fundamentally, slowly remove other programs that are waste and not really effective/useful anymore

Apologies again. I don't have the greatest of concentration and have a hard time keeping things short and to the point, but I think you misread my previous posts

In your previous post, you said the profit motive should not be entirely removed from jails, education, and healthcare. That is why I replied in the manner that I did. Just as you did in this post. Yes, profit should be 100% completely removed from healthcare insurance. What actual service do health insurance companies provide? And please dont say keeping costs low LOL.

Yes, my wording can be better. I've been flamed before for the same reason so I don't take it personally anymore. Me fail English apparently isn't unpossible...

You also said it in the follow-up post. You just said once again profit shouldnt entirely be taken out of healthcare insurance and education.

Ahhhhh..... now I get it.... its the old even a broken clock is right twice a day theory of analytics

What odds would you give me to correctly predict every day that it will rain in the vicinity of your house next year?

+1

myths like religion in R party is very strong .
Reality of facts isn’t important .
They rather believe instead of knowing the truths.

I posted it upthread, but they usually don't publish crosstabs, and then they did in a recent poll and it had a bunch of absurd results that Nate Silver pointed out, at which point the public link to the crosstabs stopped working. The one look under the hood revealed pretty obviously bad work.

Forgot to address this

The way I see it is that wealth inequality is both a good and bad thing

Good because wealth increases the ceiling over time. Life is not zero sum

Bad because we don't enforce regulation and taxation with teeth, nor responsibly, and I believe there's plenty of blame to go around for that. So what happens is capitalism chews up and spits out the weak and America does not have a robust or complete safety net. That people go bankrupt or die for being sick is quite possibly the most grotesque thing I can imagine in a country of vast wealth...

In short, capitalism is good. It creates the good parts of wealth inquality for the right reasons. It shouldn't matter how wealthy someone is if everyone is truly taken care of in a morally respectable manner. Everyone isn't denied at least a reasonable shot at a dignified life as AOC so eloquently puts it...

Corruption is bad. It creates the bad parts of wealth inequality for the wrong reasons. It is the main drawback to capitalism, borne out of our own human inclinations, selfishness, greed, egocentric interest in self preservation, both in ego and in reality...Capitalism can exist with less corruption, although I admit the cynic in me loses faith in this every year, along with my sense of humor

I mean, just think about it. Social security is the socialism part of our mixed economy that combatted elderly poverty. Don't quote me on this, but it cut that in half almost immediately. We're still a pretty strong capitalistically based economy, no? UHC is the modern social security. We should have it and we should want it

You seem to think that this is some sort of clever rejoinder but when a polling company has failure after failure, always erring in the exact same manner - as Trafalgar does with its R bias - one event that happened to defy expectations in a way that made the bias somewhat accurate (although again, nationwide they were still less accurate than ~all mainstream polling companies, they just happened to get close on a few important states) is pretty much exactly what the idiom of a broken clock being right twice a day is meant to describe. In fact pointing to that event and using it to argue that other polls by the company are more likely than other companies' to be accurate is just cherry-picking data to get the result you desire and is itself a complete analytical failure.

Our current economy/political regime has a lot of socialism mixed in. Many people, especially those who it likes helps the most have been so ingrained in this country to hate anything socialist, communist etc. like those who were benefiting from Obama care thought it should go.

There are many other forms of socialism, the bailouts, welfare, food stamps, etc in the us. Like my biggest issue in the us, if we went full blown socialist or progressive is the current government uses our taxes so poorly that if they jacked the tax rates to be more like some European countries, that we wouldn’t get all the benefits that those countries get like 6 weeks paid vacation, long term vacation for births, etc. I’m assuming other countries have tremendous waste in their programs but they’re programs are typically much smaller. Like I wish we lived like many of the Scandinavian countries, but they’re like one of our medium states

UHC implies eliminating the insurance industry. I want this. I also want healthcare to no longer be tied to employment. I can't comment on if it was good when the concept originated bc I have no idea, but it is clear to me that right now it is really bad and holding us back in more ways than one. I've commented on this elsewhere in other threads but meh...

I think we can have the best of both worlds. Maybe I'm wrong, in which case I choose single payer before anything, but medical breakthroughs are kind of awesome. The life saving kind, not the we'll take care of problem X while you might suffer symptom A B C D and E and also possibly become suicidal and also possibly die from buying our brand spankin new drug that solves nothing kind. Profit motive goes a way in driving innovation, although perhaps the gov't can fund all that like it does NASA or the military, through which we get awesome **** like GPS and the interwebz