People who confuse the welfare state with socialism.

The issue here is that very similar sounding terms can have quite varying definitions.

Examples:

liberal vs. classical liberal vs. neoliberal

socialism vs. democratic socialism vs. social democracy

No names then. Alright.

I don't know what people self identify as but there are certainly people who waste no time attacking Warren every time she reiterates that she's a capitalist. I assume in nearly every case they just don't like Warren for other reasons, or they believe she should embrace the socialist label like Bernie/AOC/DSA candidates as if it's necessary for signaling her commitment to generic good progressive policies, or they feel like the outright rejection of the label is somehow an attack on those who accept it, or some combination of those factors. I distinctly remember at least one post that appeared too drunk on the socialist kool-aid because it was attacking market based capitalism in all forms but I think the poster otherwise had a history of being more supportive of democratic socialism than full blown socialist government. So I think there are probably posters who self identify as socialist but if pressed to define it would have an idea in their heads that falls well short of seizing all means of production for the working class.

You can figure it out by what I said instead of trying to bait me into a flame war.

Id probably agree since i would not even call Bernie a socialists. I dont want to get myself into another socialist argument though. Just wondering who calls themselves one but cant define it.

Paul your original comment was provocative and inflammatory. No one was trying to bait you into a flame war you tried to start one all on your own and then acted like a punk coward when asked to name names.

I reported that for transparency sake.

If you and others don't understand why stupid flame wars aren't interesting to me. That's on you.

And if you think that saying people are confused by what socialism is and the welfare state is inflammatory then that's on you too.

To be honest I have thought about this pretty much never. I'm going to try using 1 for this post and see how it goes.


I like everything about Bernie, except for his age, and it concerns me that he missed his chance. But you're right, if his platform would work and cause a historic change then it's worth going for. Unfortunately I just don't see it happening this time. 2020 is going to come down to a razor's edge between Trump and whoever the Dem nominee ends up being, and finding a way to flip those key districts is to me what everything depends on.

But hey at least we both want the same thing, which is a defeat of Trump.

Stinkubus was right. Asking who you mean is not starting the flame war. If you did not want to get into a flame war then you should not have lit the first vague match.

Odds being able to speak Arabic will be the major FOX talking point if he ever makes it far in the primary?

He's essentially a gay socialist islamist

you did fire the first shot tho and you did respond like a punk coward when asked to name names

be a baby and report this one too

i meant that trump's just a guy in relation to the system- and simply removing him from that system isn't going to address what created him in the first place nor solve why a reality tv game show host with no political experience was able to become the most powerful politician in the world.

this of course differs from his growing status as a cult leader, where his followers increasingly ignore his crimes and lies in the ultimate hope that he'll empower or save them, without realizing or perhaps even caring that they're being manipulated by a narcissist.

how come with democrats there's always a 'but'? they could have passed single payer, but... they could have repealed the tax cuts, but... and then there's always some intricate story as to why they had to settle for some right-wing compromise.

when he took office president obama was the most powerful and popular person in the entire world who later gained a (albeit short) supermajority in congress, and i should believe that he couldn't use all his newfound political juice to publicly pressure some blue dog dems? what dem politician in their right mind would have wanted to take on obama at that moment in time?

incrementalism is just capitulation to the right. obama stood down when it mattered most which is why the left and liberals only end up getting compromised half-measures that republicans then dismantle. if this is the best to expect, how is that winning?

this has been echoed by around four or five different posters, but anyway: even if the dem nominee was hickenlooper he'd still be labeled a socialist despite being the most conservative candidate in the field. the guy literally publicly drank fracking water and is best friends with john kasich yet to the right he'll just be a communist who wants to turn their beloved usa#1 into venezuela.

The people who just point the dictionary definition of socialism are the one's who are wrong here. In the first place, Socialism was around a long time before Marx and at first meant basically a scientific approach to social theory. The economic definition also goes back well before Marx and there are such things as Ricardian Socialists who more or less just prescribe to the labor theory of value, though Ricardo did advocate for worker control of production. That's another distinction, "socialism" never means exclusively state control of production.

And then there's the point I made last time it came up. If anyone says "I'm a capitalist", no one ever says "lol, you don't even know what it means if think the Post Office should exist."

Asking people to define nebulous terms like “capitalism” seems like a strange exercise.

But "socialism" gets the #1 from Webster cut-and-pasted and QED?

IOW, THAT'S THE POINT!

The terms are squishy. Which is why i would say since there are no definitive lines except towards the extreme most people are both on a sliding scale.

Has any candidate besides this one talked about SCOTUS reform at all? (I'm seriously asking, it seems like something that's been talked about among the posters here, but not so much in the national conversation yet)

Hi Yang Gang-ers:


https://twitter.com/AndrewYangVFA/st...46979611463680

That doesn't really change the urban area thing.

It would turn swing states into just regular states though.

That was interesting 15 Supreme Court Judges and 10 selected by the President and the remaining 5 confirmed by the court itself. He is right the Supreme Court is to political

It's a really interesting idea in theory, but I wonder how it works in practice.

Like, what happens if you were to get all 9 current judges together, having to agree on 5 more judges to unanimously confirm to the court? Who is the type of judge they agree on?

There's an underlying assumption here that, like, Sotomayor is just to "the left" and Gorsuch to "the right" and they can agree on people who are in "the middle". But it's more like, two of them have wildly divergent opinions on how the Constitution should be interpreted; what is "the middle" of that?

If the new justices have to be unanimously chosen, what happens if they can't choose one, or 1 judge wants to be a dick and refuse to seat anyone else?

I think the 18 year term limit where one new judge gets appointed every 2 years is probably the more fair way to go. But what happens if you get a Merrick Garland situation where the senate won't appoint anyone? Maybe the president gets to appoint a temporary judge until a new one is confirmed by the senate, like with cabinet positions.

Dems should probably try to eliminate the congressional approval of justices since they will continue to approve Republican choices and the Republicans are probably never going to vote to approve a Dem appointee again.

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