So when a far larger number of Hillary primary voters (as much as 25%) voted McCain in '08 that was... not divisive? I don't recall you getting all hot and bothered over Hillary running again, despite the fact many of her supporters tried to help the opposition get elected.

You should be praising the fact a mere 10% switched sides. Comparatively, that number is incredibly low. Bernie may technically be an old white guy, but his supporters are anything but; they understand that the Democratic party as it currently stands isn't working for its constituents and why they need Bernie--with his impressive consistency and seniority as a politican who knows how to get things done--to be the albatross for that badly needed remodeling. Don't forget that the stereotypical white, middle class college educated straight male "Bernie Bro" is all but a myth.

I should add that Warren is just as good on the policy stuff (in fact, she's probably even better), but she just couldn't win an election. Bernie, on the hand, can. He's pretty much the only one who can unfuck this country, and that's why every single person who considers himself a progressive needs to stand behind him. He represents our last shot for a long time--and given the current problems with global warming, the rise of open fascism and the crumbling infrastructure of American capitalism--he may indeed be our last hope forever.

I don't see how it is Sanders' fault that a bunch of his supporters switched sides out of spite. He encouraged people to vote for Clinton, he endorsed her, sometimes he stumped for her. You can argue he could have done any of these more forcefully or more often, but that's not the same as holding him responsible for 1/10th of his supporters ignoring his Clinton advocacy. To put it another way: those 10% weren't feeling the Bern, they just hated Clinton.

The worst thing about the Georgia abortion bill isn't even that it's a thing; It's that it's clearly being used as bait to get the issue of abortion before this current SCOTUS and repeal Roe v. Wade, which you know they're gonna do.

I honestly don't think Roberts will overturn Roe v. Wade, and even "teen rapist Kavanaugh" has indicated he might not. If RBG goes though, all bets are off. This is one of the reasons rational people need to get behind the Democratic nominee, no matter how centrist or radical they are.

I'd vote for Biden. I wouldn't be happy about it at all, but I'd vote for him. Anything to get this country back to some degree of sanity after Trump. My primary vote will be for either Bernie or Warren, however.

My only two rules about the general election are

1. Vote for the dem nominee, no matter who it is
2. In the unlikely chance it's Gabbard, vote for her but simultaneously look for jobs outside the US


I think that pretty much covers it. I'm undecided for who or if I'll vote in the primary; I'm going to wait until it gets closer before making up my mind.

Joe Biden's track record is terrible, and I'd be shocked if he could actually beat Trump.

His campaign announcement video was one of the most wishy washy bullshit things I've ever seen. It had absolutely zero policy information at all, no platform, no agenda. It was literally just 3 and a half minutes of "Hi, I'm Joe Biden, and you must vote for me because I'm Joe Biden". It's like he forgot that he has to actually win the primaries first before declaring war on Trump and running against him.

I just finished "Knock Down the House" on Netflix, and Joe Crowley talked EXACTLY the same way every single time he's on camera while running against AOC. No policy, no talk of things he's actually gonna do to improve the country, just a bunch of empty "Trump bad, fascism bad, me good" lip service while acting like he's already won the race. You would think the Democrats would have realized after 2016 and Hillary that merely running a campaign without any actual reasons to vote for them beyond "I'm not Trump", but then again, this is the same party that learned firsthand Trump's numerous obstructions of justice through the Mueller Report and thinks that moving forward with impeachment proceedings against him will empower the Republican base to vote harder.

Tulsi is not, I repeat not a serious candidate, I wouldn't worry about her for this election cycle. If Trump wins again though, I could see her being a contender for the 2024 election.

This election will come down to Bernie and Biden, and if Biden gets it Kamala will be his VP. If Bernie takes it I'd guess that either Staci Abrams or Nina Turner would be his pick.


Still one of my favorite Chapo clips:

So yeah, Alabama just got one step closer to banning abortion.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alabama-ab ... 019-05-14/

If the state's female governor signs this into law, she will surely be forever remembered as the biggest traitor to women in American history.

Yeah, totally fucked. They're just trying to get something to move up to the supreme court so that Roe vs Wade's ruling can be revisited and repealed by the republican-dominated supreme court. This is why you sign fucking legislation, not just let a supreme court ruling create the law of the land.

ROTFL at all the libs who think Dems are gonna pack the courts, especially the ones who claimed an ethical imperative for staying home or voting Green in 2016 . That said, I really don't think Kavanaugh or especially Roberts would vote to end Rv.W. And if they actually do, holy holy fuck.

What an odd thing to say. Why... would you expect to remember anything I or anyone on here said in 2008 or 2016?

In 2008, McCain was actually screwed over in a similar way, because Ron Paul supporters behaved the same way and screwed him over. The numbers, though, I don't fully recall or have, I only remember a bitter feud among Ron Paul voters refusing to support McCain out of spite. At the time, I was on the other side, politically, and didn't want Hillary running for other, dumber reasons. I was not aware of Hillary supporters running to McCain out of spite at the time, so I have no comment on that. Ultimately, I'm glad McCain lost to Obama.

But anyway, if Hillary voters ditched Obama for McCain out of spite, then yeah, obviously that's divisive. On top of which, Hillary's perceived history among voters made her a hard sell right from the start in 2016. I only wanted her to be president because there was nothing worse than Trump out there. It's tiring that so many elections have to be "who sucks less," and not, "who will actually benefit society."

Just pointing this out, but these are essentially the same thing in a FPTP election.

If Sanders said "don't vote for Hillary at any cost, even Trump would be better than that [insert sexist insult]" then hell yeah I'd be against Bernie in the 2020 primary. But Sanders virtually begged and pleaded for voters to back Hillary, so the fact 10% of Sanders primary voters (and while I can't back this up with data, I'm sure a decent percent of them wanted Bernie because they thought he'd be more easy for Trump to beat) idiotically voted for the opposition shouldn't negatively weigh on the 2020 election.

The Alabama abortion bill got signed into law today.

Enjoy Roe v. Wade while it lasts.

https://youtu.be/mthj2Z7xqvM?t=3607
https://youtu.be/bX3EZCVj2XA?t=68

John Birch Society lmfao. Look out, boys! Teh commulists have infiltrated the highest levels of American entertainment and academia (ignoring the fact that the US is one of the most mutant right-wing countries in the entire world and has continued to only move further right since FDR), here's some preposterously dated and irrelevant red scare propaganda that even McCarthy would've been uncomfortable to stand behind to prove my point!

That is unless these context-free timestamped vids are meant to be high level satire since the comments are mostly about video game feminism and SJWs ruining Star Wars, in which case o7 to a real one comrade.

Alabama's anti-abortion bill will fail in court because it attempts - as many bills have tried before - to define a fetus as a legal person. That has never worked. Alabama tried to put a bit in there saying that a fetus is only a legal person "for homicide purposes", but not in general. This is laughably stupid and will not survive.

Georgia's anti-abortion bill is even easier to kill. They're trying give the pregnant woman the right to claim child support while she is pregnant, and also claim the fetus as a dependent minor in order to receive a tax deduction. Neither thing is supported by statute, precedent, or any case law. The tax thing in particular is outright unconstitutional.

The real purpose here is to probe what SCOTUS considers a "legal person" to be. The anti-choice crowd is trying to figure out if they can get a fetus to be declared a legal person in some cases so they can try for full legal personhood at a later time. When they lose, they will at least find out what cases don't work, and SCOTUS's reasons for that. They're risking nothing but looking stupid, which they have never had a problem with.

Don't forget GOTV and fundraising as major reasons why these bills are being passed, particularly the Alabama one (which has a delay mechanism specifically timed with 2020 in mind). I don't think we should take anything for granted with the current SCOTUS makeup, but this is all more akin to the proposed ban on gay marriage in 2004 than sincere, seriously-considered legislation.

You know it's a bad situation when Donald fucking Trump is the most sane person in the White House on a potential war with Iran. Genuinely missing Mad Dog rn.

If Biden wins the democratic nomination then there will be two republicans on the ballot in the general election.

Aka an American election.

There's just a lot of people that are sick of thinking about politics. Joe Biden is their choice so they feel safe with a POTUS that doesn't make them have to think about the political system every day. "Make politics boring again". That's what Joe is appealing to. But it's not what we need. We need people to care about politics, to fix our very real problems that got Trump elected in the first place. But Trump may have burnt everyone out of caring, and that could cost the country...

Lately I've been breaking down the political spectrum in an objective manner. Most right wingers think right = more liberty, and left = more tyranny. However, here's how I look at the spectrum: There's far left, center left, center, center right, and far right.

Far left includes socialists, Marxists, and communists.

Center left includes social democrats, greens, social liberals, and moderate progressives.

There's two types of centrists: Moderate centrists and radical centrists. Moderate centrists focus on policies that are center left and center right. Radical centrists include third way people like Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden.

Center right includes libertarians, classical liberals, and moderate conservatives.

Far right includes KKK, fascists, Neo Nazis, and televangelists.

You charted various political positions on a 2d line going from far right to far left?!?!? A PhD in political science is being rushed to you as we speak!

There are all kinds of charts and graphs out there (eg the Nolan chart) that attempt to classify one's political leanings. They're always 3D. No one use the classic right-left line any more.

These charts actually are barely any better than the line at assessing your own personal view though, because they just aggregate your entire philosophy into two numbers, and plop you somewhere on the graph. In reality, there should be several graphs - for economics, foreign policy, domestic politics, social programs, law/constitution, and lots of other things. It is entirely likely, and normal, for the same person to be very liberal socially but very conservative economically, for example. The same person could also have a fuck everybody attitude towards social programs, but still believe the Constitution is a living document that has to be interpreted for the times.

That's essentially a libertarian, or at least a "libertarian" (in real, everyday conversation life, and not floating nontheory).


I'm not surprised you left out all of the various strains of anarchism, and Marxists are communists, speaking both theoretically and practically.

I worked with someone who thought anarchism was far right, and authoritarianism (including tankies, Nazis and cults) was far left.

Unsurprisingly, he also thought education was far left. Claiming some guy has 1D thinking seems like a lame insult, but that's literally how these people interpret the world.

I'm still unable to consider whether Anarchists are left or right wing. But if they are indeed left wing, then I'd include them too.

I also know a guy who is ancap in all but name and he's also said anarchism is "too authoritarian", which is the closest I've ever come to blue-screening irl.

Yeah it's easy to rag on the guy above for kinda stating the obvious and putting it in terms that just really aren't as in depth as they need to be, but it's a super common way of thinking (at least in America, I can't speak to the rest of the world) and even then people tend to draw some really wild conclusions. "Socialism is when the government does things and the more things they do the more socialister it is" is a meme for a reason, and it's usually unironically spouted from people who say that with one side of their mouth and advocate for a total police state on the other.

Hey, at least nobody is arguing that National Socialism is actually left-wing because it's socialist, right?

Oh...

Oh wait...

I think you need to watch this short lecture from one of the most esteemed history and political science professors in the world, Dr. Steven Crowder md (extra emphasis on the d)

The only Steven Crowder I've ever heard of is the conservative political commentator and sometime actor, and he doesn't have a advanced degree in anything. He's mainly regarded as a total hack, and even Fox News won't have him on because he criticized Sean Hannity as not being crazy enough. If you do a search on YouTube, you can find delightful videos of him getting creamed by even marginally educated people whenever he tries to debate them, about anything.

Crowder is like a dumber version of Ben Shapiro. Just as bad views, but at least Shapiro has an inuman way of talking fast and sounding smart to stupid listeners. Why anyone would listen to Crowder is beyond me.

Regarding the 2020 election, I personally hope that Tulsi Gabbard wins. I think she is on the money when it comes to US foreign policy (not fucking up the middle-east), and I really like her statements about the climate, infrastructure, education etc. I appreciate that American politics are way different from Norwegian, so I am definitely speaking as an outsider looking in.

Why would Ron Paul voter support a candidate like McCain? Policy disagreement =/= spite.

While I absolutely agree there needs to be a much more complex and varied way of aligning your own personal political views on a scale of sorts, the very idea of being "socially liberal" but "economically conservative" runs entirely counterpoint to each other, given that social liberalism runs directly into liberal economics due to the fact that conservative economics are heavily skewed in favour of the well-off, and generally affects the not-so-well-off disproportionately negatively. I mean, you can absolutely identify as socially liberal, and economically conservative, but consider yourself as liberal due to your views of social issues being more important than economic ones, but you wouldn't ACTUALLY be liberal in the truest sense. Your social views would be entirely offset by your economic views. They would cancel each other out, thereby rendering your political identity sort of moot if you identify as progressive. Or as conservative, really. Although, how many conservatives identify as such but also identify as socially liberal is probably quite a low number. Also, anarchists would absolutely fall on the far-left of the spectrum, if you're going by that particular yard marker. And Marxism IS Communism, there is absolutely no distinction between the two. Some guy on the right decided "Cultural Marxism" sounded better and would be used with more prevalence in the modern age than going for simple "communism" which has more overt "red scare" influences and would be associated with crazy paranoid politicians from the Cold War.

This isn't the best example, but this is pretty much the reason why we're looking at eight years of Donald J. Trump, because all the way to the Democrat primaries or even all the way to the election, Democrat supporters/voters will pick on every candidate put up by their own side for every reason possible. Too establishment/too radical, too white/male or too minority, too experienced/too inexperienced, agrees with Republicans too often/doesn't seek consensus, etc. Nothing was learned from 2016 and the biggest enemies of Democrats are still Democrats.

Or maybe the DNC should pick a candidate that its constituents actually rally behind, but please go ahead and blame the consumer when they don't want to buy your shit sundae.