Do you have a source for this? I haven't spoken to anyone who has anything remotely nice to say about the communists - it's neutral at best. I don't talk to many people from Kyoto (which is where I imagine this is from?) though so I could just be talking to the vocal minority
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Serious The Politics Thread
- Thread starter Oglemi
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if liz cheney and michael steele were supporting my guy i would be starting to worry about which side of history i was on
Sorry, I don’t have the greatest grip on politics, but I do want to learn as I am getting pretty close to being eligible to vote. Maybe you could explain the goal of the Democrats for me (please not in a joking way)?
EDIT: Also, even if the country truly is on the verge of Fascism, it still isn’t right to make those kind of jokes.
true, not doing everything to keep genocidal fascists out of power is the wrong side of history because liz cheney joined
Democrats support higher minimum wage, protected worker rights (like unions, better hours etc), support government healthcare / college plans, are pro immigration, pro human rights (race, sexuality etc), and are generally in favor of higher taxes to pay for all this stuff. They support these policies at both the state and federal levels. Democrats are also anti-gun and oppose religion in public schools. Democrats are typically pro science and pro-choice (abortion).
Republicans are almost universally the opposite at a Federal level however they are pro "states rights" in that they would rather make decisions at a state level instead of letting the President / Congress / Supreme Court do it so at a state level sometimes oddly Republicans will support Democrat polices. An example is Florida voting for $15 per hour minimum wage.
This is a tl;dr version, there are exceptions between politicians to everything I just said but generally this is what each side wants.
Politics is complicated and messy and sweeping generalized statements are never going to be 100% accurate, but Democrats =/= socialists. The overwhelming majority of Democrats are not, in fact, socialists. The two terms refer to essentially entirely different planes of political ideology. Socialism is an economic theory that states that the means of production (anything that produces goods or capital) should be collectively owned, either by the community as a whole or the workers who operate them. America is not a socialist country. America is a capitalist country. Under capitalism, the means of production are owned privately, either by a single private citizen, a board of shareholders, or any such similar system.
A capital D Democrat refers to specifically American politics, which have existed under a de facto two-party system (some might argue a one-party system masquerading as a two-party system, but for the purposes of this explanation that's neither here nor there) since basically forever. Democrats are broadly neoliberal and at least ostensibly socially progressive, contrasting against Republicans who are broadly traditionalist, to put it nicely. Republicans generally support more aggressive and austere economic and foreign policies, although support for these isn't unheard of among Democrats either. Again, politics is messy.
Things get more complicated when you throw terms like communism into the mix. At face value, communism is the belief that society should be organized without class, without a centralized state, and without money (or at least capital). This becomes confusing as, again at face value, there's little to separate this from anarchist philosophies, although many anarchists are not communist and vice versa. As someone who isn't a communist, my explanation for this is that most self-described communists are specifically Marxist-Leninists. The extreme cliffnotes version of ML philosophy is that, in order to build that utopian communist state, communists should seize control of the currently existing centralized government (forming what is referred to as a Vanguard Party) and use it to steer society towards that goal of a classless, stateless, moneyless society, and erode existing inequities caused by the capitalist system. The problem, as I see it anyways, is that Marxist-Leninist movements never seem to get past the Vanguard Party stage. Whoever ends up in control of that party always seems to become a dictator. I think this may be what Medeia was referring to by far-leftists who eschew democracy in favor of a utopian state, but I want clarification as the majority of "far-leftists" (if we're defining such as anyone to the left of the Democratic party) are not Marxist-Leninists.
None of that latter paragraph is at all relevant to understanding the current political state of the U.S., by the way. Communists of any stripe hold essentially no power in the U.S. Decades of Red Scare and Reaganomic propaganda has pushed the overton window so far to the right that debating the differences between different leftist ideologues is, at least at the moment, pointless outside of understanding politics on the broader international stage.
They ain't doing well in this regard, japanese communist party (which is seen as more of a socialist party) and other left-wing parties fail to attract young voters in Japan, it has a reputation of being out of sync with current times and has a rigid hierarchy :
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...plomacy/liberal-parties-youth-little-support/
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japanese-Communist-Party-seeks-reboot-with-1st-female-leader
I've never taken a Biden victory for granted, but that debate sure doesn't have me feeling optimistic. I hope that the next one goes a bit better.
Thanks for the responses!
MrHands , yeah that’s about what I’ve understood from what I’ve heard. Really the country is eventually going to end no matter who wins just because of the ridiculous spending of both sides.
Divine Retribution , based on Wiki, Neoliberalism doesn’t really have much of a definition, so I can’t really say Democrats are or aren’t that. I’m pretty sure Socialism has a more social-based and non-economic side, which is trying to deal with social problems, which the Democrats seem to make one of their big selling points. While I can now see that the Democrats aren’t really Communist with all the economic stuff, I can’t say ALL Democrats aren’t partially Socialist. If the far-right is more Fascist, it makes sense for the far-left to be more Socialist. Also, based on this “I have no idea how reliable of a source this is”-
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1078448/support-socialism-party-affiliation-us/
it seems a large amount of Democrats support Socialism.
MrHands , yeah that’s about what I’ve understood from what I’ve heard. Really the country is eventually going to end no matter who wins just because of the ridiculous spending of both sides.
Divine Retribution , based on Wiki, Neoliberalism doesn’t really have much of a definition, so I can’t really say Democrats are or aren’t that. I’m pretty sure Socialism has a more social-based and non-economic side, which is trying to deal with social problems, which the Democrats seem to make one of their big selling points. While I can now see that the Democrats aren’t really Communist with all the economic stuff, I can’t say ALL Democrats aren’t partially Socialist. If the far-right is more Fascist, it makes sense for the far-left to be more Socialist. Also, based on this “I have no idea how reliable of a source this is”-
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1078448/support-socialism-party-affiliation-us/
it seems a large amount of Democrats support Socialism.
Biden will win in November. Nothing changed on my end.
Thank you for asking. Warning this post is long. I'll put the important parts at the top.
The Democratic Party historically has been the party of working people. It focuses on legislation that uses the government to advance progressive reforms. Major policies passed by the Democrats have been the New Deal, Fair Labor Standards Act, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), and recently under President Biden - the bipartisan Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Act.
The Democratic Party's official platform can be found here. In addition to workers rights, the Democratic coalition has expanded thus that the party includes civil rights protections due to historical circumstances that will be explained below.
The Republican Party does not have any policies on their platform. Major Republican legislation passed in the modern era has only consisted of tax cuts, 90% of which go to the wealthy and large corporations. The Republican coalition consists of big business, neo-confiderates, and the religious right (also due to historical circumstances explained below). Although if felon Trump wins, it is likely that Republicans will follow the playbook outlined in Project 2025 (full text). Project 2025 is a Christian nationalist agenda that also gives the Republican president supreme power over the entire executive branch. Hence, why people are sounding the alarm about fascism.
Historical context for modern political alignment:
The conclusion of the Civil War led to the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment, which on paper guarenteed rights to freed black slaves. Unfortunately, the old southern confederate states were not really sanctioned or forced into changing their way of thinking. Thus, the Federal government for the next 100 years repeatedly had to "check" the Southern states via all three branches of government. This period was known as "Jim Crow." Jim Crow featured regular terrorism and apartheid conditions for the black population.
In 1964, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with support from both parties (primarily old-union states coalition). This pissed off the old confederate states (which had many Democrats). He also signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The support of Civil Rights during this time anchored support among the Democratic Party from black and marginalized groups ever since.
LBJ did not run for re-election in 1968 due to his failing health and evaporated political capital (fallout of Vietnam War), thus losing that important incumbency advantage to the Democrats. Republican Richard Nixon won the election in 1968, who's campaign is credited as architect of the Republican "Southern Strategy." To put it simply, Republicans tapped into the racial backlash from formerly Southern white Democrats and have been running on it ever since. In the 2020s, the Southern Strategy has expanded to include immigration as the primary political strategy. Hence, why the felon mentioned "immigrants taking your jobs" and "immigrants are raping us" about 300 times during Thursday's debate.
The second re-alignment that has been happening started in about 2010 during the emergence of the Tea Party and "Red Map" strategy by the Republicans. Republicans have pursued aggressive gerrymandering and acquisition of rural local media networks. As such, the Republicans have created a vast propaganda network that dominates rural areas. The effect of that is that Democrats who were once the rural party have been all but purged from rural America. Gerrymandering and the dissemination of propaganda has created more far right districts, which has created a split between the more liberal Republicans that have dominated the suburbs. The liberal suburban Republicans tend to be highly educated, high income, fiscally conservative but socially liberal. As the Republican party has become more rural and socially conservative, the more liberal Republicans have trended more into the Democrats corner. So now there is a growing faction of "Third-Way" or "centrist" Democrats that are very pro-civil rights but do not want higher taxes, nor do they want anything to do with the fascism that the MAGA Republicans are selling. In summary, higher education and urban/suburbanization is increasingly a predictor in party preference.
What Chou Toshio astutely pointed out is that the MAGA Republicans are courting a lot of young men, including young men of color. So the question going forward is whether the education alignment or racial alignment holds. Are young non-white men going to stick with the Democrats? The answer probably lies in the education alignment.
The United States electorate is roughly 40% conservatives, 40% moderates, and 20% liberals. As such, a winning coalition requires the Democrats to get roughly 60-70% of voters that identify as "moderate."
Hope all this helps.
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Having a favorable view of socialism doesn't necessarily mean you are a socialist, especially with how vaguely that question is worded. There are plenty of people who would say "socialism is great in theory but cannot happen in reality for x reason". Socialism by definition is a purely economic doctrine; most socialists are also progressive when it comes to social issues but that's mostly because most socialists care about the welfare of their fellow human beings. The thought process that leads you to socialism also leads you to be progressive on other issues as well. There are fringe forms of socialism that meet the literal definition but are not socially progressive; these ideologies are generally unpopular in most leftist movements.
That said, the far-left definitely is more socialist. The problem is, the Democrats, broadly, are not far left. There are far left elements that collaborate with the Democrats and when you hold our feet to the fire, most leftists will choose a lukewarm neoliberal Democrat candidate over a rabidly hyper-capitalist or outright fascist Republican candidate, but the broad tendency within the Democrat party is towards center-left or centrist policies.
The far right, on the other hand, has a much stronger stranglehold on the Republican party than the far left does on the Democratic party. There's a reason Trump got elected in the first place, and attacks on LGBTQ+ people and other minorities, both legal and outright, have skyrocketed over the past 8 years. There's a reason even moderate conservatives have to kowtow to the alt-right and other fascist elements of the right, whereas I've never seen a centrist democratic candidate give any credence to the "radical left".
Not gonna pretend that I even care about European politics, let alone really keep up with them. However, Argentina's case is a lot easier to understand than you think.
Economy.
People want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. When their money isn't worth the paper it's printed on, whoever is in charge is on the hot seat. It's as simple as that. When Milei fails to deliver on that front, he'll lose the following elections just like Bolsonaro did in Brazil.
A cautionary tale. Another major reason why Bolsonaro lost was because his fanbase is fucking insufferable. Think about the average MAGA supporter. Are they not obnoxious to talk with?
Reality may or may not be a sales pitch. Elections most certainly are.
Trump is such an abysmal candidate that the fact that this is even a race and not a landslide should be a cause for concern. Biden's health is a very serious question and likely one of two reasons why he's not doing great so far. The other is his administration's inability to convey the good things the government has done.
Sticking your head in the sand and quips like those will only alienate voters who would otherwise be willing to learn about Biden's policies.
I rest my case.
what happened is that every self-proclaimed internet radical decided to parrot CNN at a time it desperately wants Trump back for the ratings
Bruh don’t even worry about it man.
Scarborough ain’t out there scolding the left. Not the View, not MSNBC.
In this moment there’s no one panty clutching that young people or colored people are at fault because they were too anti genocide.
And there won’t be such voter shaming coming without looking ridiculous— especially from whiny non-American liberals frankly. Our own liberals are insufferable enough, certainly I’m not going to give shits about the opinion of extra other liberals who are also fucking up in their own countries.
None of the whiny commentator class are saying that because it’s soooooooooooo clear that the Dems have fucked up bad.
Let’s just be patient and see if they got the sauce. It’s never been clearer that this is aaaaalllllllllllllll on them, and for once they seem to know it. It’s incredible— like a fever breaking.
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Not gonna pretend that I even care about European politics, let alone really keep up with them. However, Argentina's case is a lot easier to understand than you think.
Economy.
People want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. When their money isn't worth the paper it's printed on, whoever is in charge is on the hot seat. It's as simple as that. When Milei fails to deliver on that front, he'll lose the following elections just like Bolsonaro did in Brazil.
A cautionary tale. Another major reason why Bolsonaro lost was because his fanbase is fucking insufferable. Think about the average MAGA supporter. Are they not obnoxious to talk with?
Reality may or may not be a sales pitch. Elections most certainly are.
Trump is such an abysmal candidate that the fact that this is even a race and not a landslide should be a cause for concern. Biden's health is a very serious question and likely one of two reasons why he's not doing great so far. The other is his administration's inability to convey the good things the government has done.
Sticking your head in the sand and quips like those will only alienate voters who would otherwise be willing to learn about Biden's policies.
I rest my case.
Of course the economy plays a huge part in a country that was economically mishandled as terribly as Argentina has been for many decades by the Peronists to the point they descended from top 10 to #28 in a century and the population got to deal with a ludicrous inflation percentage and youth unemployment. I specifically mentioned Argentina as a pattern for what happens internationally with especially young male voters in context to Raikoulovers post tho.
Economic insecurity alongside fear of Islam and effective propagandism on TikTok and other social media also plays a huge role for the big shift towards the far-right among young voters in Europe and again especially young male voters (the political dissonance between young men & women is the biggest among all voting eligible age groups).
Economy plays a big part in political shifts towards radical parties and groups in general.
The Biden campaign agreed to and encouraged a debate to happen. CNN isn't some innocent network but they're not to blame for Joe Biden being unable to answer basic questions against a man that should have been lay up.
It's also not just CNN reporting how atrocious his performance was. This is every media outlet and prominent Democrats finally admitting that Biden trying to handshake a wall was not carefully edited footage. They're afraid of a second Trump term and they have nobody to blame but themselves. When Biden ran in 2020 there was an unspoken secret that he would be a one-term president. Why that changed and why Kamala Harris turned into a black hole of charisma isn't something we'll know until someone writes a book about it.
I was being more flippant with that one. I have friends directly involved in the movements in Kyoto— honestly we all know that any pimple of energy is energy at all in Japan.
No inflation, no wage growth, no failing liberals thankfully, but nothing good on the horizon either. I mean LDP bad, REAL bad— they make Biden look like Bernie— but much much better than fascist regime. On the far right, the slightly energized New Osaka Party are libertarian brain rot, but even they’re definitely no Argentina, and that’s like the worst the Japanese right has to put on the board.
Lot of reason I left, but certainly my adopted 2nd home country’s stagnancy would be preferable to living under white nationalism.
If my kids thought Mommy and Daddy were hard-asses on them about their weekend Japanese school before, they haven’t seen nothin’ yet. This brings a whole new dimension to the Asian tiger dad mentality.
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Kyoto has also been one of if not the hotspot(s) of not just the Japanese Communist Party but Japanese Leftism in a broader sense for many decades (they even voted in marxist mayors as far back as 1970), so views there about JCP and other Leftist parties/groups don't necessarily reflect on the views of the country as a whole.
Ahh, the polls. Biden should quit because of bad polls. Sounds like cogent analysis.
A poll came out yesterday showing the felon winning in New Jersey (with laughably shitty non-white crosstabs) which Biden won by 16 in 2020. No Republican has won Pres or Senate election here in over 30 years. We have over one million more registered Democrats statewide than Republicans. But if you believe in the polls that the felon is Orange Jesus, I have a few expensive bridges over the Hudson River to sell you.
I don't get it. Are we fringe, out-of-touch, terminally online doomers who have no presence in the real world or are we such an existential threat to Biden's otherwise rock-solid public image that we can cost him the election by questioning if maybe we don't have anyone at all who's better suited to the job? Or maybe, option 3, are you scared that we might have a point and Biden might end up losing, so you're setting us up as your scapegoat to avoid having to do any tough introspection or face the fact that just maybe you were wrong about something?
Option 1. Who did you vote for in 2016 and 2020?
Going all the way back to 2020, I've never encountered anybody, regardless of location on the political spectrum, who likes Kamala Harris and thinks that she would be a good President. I'm not sure if there's anything behind that besides the usual bigotries and her record on criminal justice, but I doubt that she would have a better shot at fending off Trump than Biden does.
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