General Politics Discussion VIII [ARCHIVED] • Page 1039

I've never disagreed with a post in the politics thread more than this one. My grandparents are the most ardent trumpers ever, and without framing it in a policy, I've gotten them to agree to cancel student debt, to medicare for all etc etc. The policies themselves are WILDLY popular and then the well gets poisoned and the media doesn't report it as perfectly fine water is poisoned by villains and here we are.

 

Get David's ass Dave

 

Anyone who doesn't shorten it to Dave is a Cop.

 

Eh...even in polling the policies are always more popular until you get to the part about raising taxes to pay for them. People want their shit and don't want to have to pay for it...which you can be the biggest MMT, debt doesn't matter person in the world and that still doesn't really work.

That could go to your well being poisoned argument with 40 years of "taxes and government are bad" brain worms but yeah

 

Trump paid $3M to gain 87 more Biden votes in Arizona, which translates to $34,482.76 per vote. Wow.

 

Having an entire party apparatus indebted to lobbyists who are steadfastly opposed to popular policies results in the leadership of that party not fighting for those policies, and leaves the opening for the opposing party to define them instead since you won’t. Pretty elementary shit. Fuck a big tent party - tell people you as a party will eliminate all their debt and make basic functions of society free and let people decide whether they’re going to vote for that or not. If dopes like Conor Lamb don’t want to get on board with that, tell them they can register as a Republican.

 

Yeah but isn't this is also a complete and utter failure from dems? The messaging/framing around taxes and how/why they work

 

You mean like telling voters "we only want to raise taxes on every dollar earned greater than $399.999" and having the republican party say IF YOU'RE A JANITOR YOU'RE GOING TO PAY 89% INCOME TAX AND THAT MONEY IS GOING TO GO TO EATING BABIES!!!!!!!!"

Yeah...it kinda has to do with the poisoned well. Ask any person the following questions:

1. Is the economy geared more towards the people who are currently rich
2. Should Marijuana be legalized
3. Healthcare is already a right for the hold, shouldn't it be a right for everyone
4. Is Student Loan Debt currently handcuffing the economy in ways we haven't really ever seen before and does it need to be addressed

And you'll get wildly left-positive answers.

 

It is, and it’s because Dems are beholden to people who don’t want their taxes raised so they allow the narrative to persist.

i don’t want to pay more in taxes because almost all my taxes go to war shit. But if we actually got good public transit and higher education and prepared to mitigate climate change in a real way, etc etc, sign me the fuck up. But the Democratic Party outright refuses to frame it that way.

 

A little bit, yeah. The Reagan Revolution basically ushered in a new era of hating/distrusting the government and taxes, something that is in the roots of the country to begin with, and now the internet has made it hard to break through to people. They all get the same right wing bubble rhetoric about taxes and government incompetance spoon fed to them day in and day out and...I don't really know how you combat that. (My thinking would be pass a program that could be popular and fund it with more debt than tax raises, give it a few years to get popular, and then say "yeah we need to raise taxes to pay for it" or something. It's what we've done with Social Security and Medicare over the years IIRC)

 

Reminder to cut every one of those numbers in half as to the number of people it helps, because it takes 2 doses.

 

I see a much more even split on #s 3 and 4 in conversation, and a lot of people's answer for #1 is not a stronger government to "hurt" industry and "job creators" through regulation but rather to shrink government so that the rich can't use it to rig the economy in their favor.

It's easy enough to refute some of this stuff in one on one convos, but combatting it nationwide to get people to vote better has proven to be tough.

 

I mean, yeah, having a national conversation is hard. But I've been able to sell a million dollars worth of hockey gear to a country that can't legally play hockey so maybe just like...try harder?

 

There are worse people in the world than Obama but most people aren't trying to lionize them

 

Obama is pretty clearly a villain

 

...what country can't legally play hockey?

 

Pretty much most of America at this point lol. Most states have it very heavily restricted to canceled due to covid.

 

Toomey keeping his job in 2016 was my non-Trump #1 anger point....this guy not losing was #2. Fuck Ron Johnson so hard. Coward.

 

Welp, took an official leave if absence from my (non-EMS) company today. I’ve been on furlough since March. This guarantees me my position within the company, but it doesn’t guarantee my location. Plan is to hopefully get that vax in the early round here.

My EMS bosses emailed this morning wanting a full count of our fire department members because they’re now working with the health departments to get all the fire/EMS vaccinated if they want it.

 

Also, anniversary of John Brown’s execution. That guy was super good.