Cont: The Biden Presidency (3)

[Roger Ramjets]

I have to say though, what the US considers "moderate" and "centerist" is considered at least centre right pretty much everywhere else. Joe Biden would likely be on the more central wing of the Tory party here, for example. The Overton Window for you guys is skewed so far to the right it's frightening.

I disagree with that - but even if it was true, so what?

The whole point of centrism is to be where you can be effective because you haven't alienated too many on one side or the other. And that is what true democracy is about. If the US as a whole is more conservative than 'pretty much everywhere else' it doesn't matter, you still need to be in the center of that environment.

You should also realize that the vast majority on the right are moderates who are not where they want to be, but were forced into it by a small minority of radicals because they no choice if they wanted to win. That won't last forever (I'm betting one more Trump loss will break the spell).

 

[Delvo]

Which is why you can see the spittle come from the mouths of some people when the words "Moderate" or "Centrist" are used.
Militant ideologues of any stripe are going to consider those not as militant as being The Enemy. Nothing new here.

You are making this crap up. Lefties merely pointing out the fact that political opponents' political positions are what they actually are and why that's not good is nowhere near your description. In reality, the place to find far worse behavior is always from the so-called centrists/moderates, and mysteriously always aimed left. Your constant schtick here is a pot calling fresh snow black.

If the US as a whole is more conservative than 'pretty much everywhere else' it doesn't matter, you still need to be in the center of that environment.

American politics is a right-wing environment, but the American people aren't. The story of the politicians' decades-long slide to the right is the story of their separation from not only other democracies but also the will of their own people. They aren't doing it to fit in with the country overall. It's just not even a possibility. They keep actually needing to try to hide or distract from how far out it's making them not fit in.

You should also realize that the vast majority on the right are moderates who are not where they want to be, but were forced into it by a small minority of radicals because they no choice if they wanted to win.

True several years ago, but not anymore. Trump didn't just win a primary and then a general election 7 years ago; he's maintained one of the highest within-party ratings in the history of this kind of data being kept, almost the whole time since then, while the reasons why he shouldn't be able to in a sane party have kept piling up, including right through the repeated clear demonstrations that he's making them lose more in general elections. If they didn't want him around and felt helplessly stuck with him, their internal numbers would have looked all along like Biden's look right now.

 

[Stacyhs]

You are making this crap up.

No, he's not.

You are making this crap up. Lefties merely pointing out the fact that political opponents' political positions are what they actually are and why that's not good is nowhere near your description. In reality, the place to find far worse behavior is always from the so-called centrists/moderates, and mysteriously always aimed left. Your constant schtick here is a pot calling fresh snow black.

Your constant schtick of CENTRISTS BAAAAAD and Progressive victimhood is as stale as last week's bread.

 

[dudalb]

No, he's not.



Your constant schtick of CENTRISTS BAAAAAD and Progressive victimhood is as stale as last week's bread.

It also will not help you to win elections.

 

[dudalb]

I have to say though, what the US considers "moderate" and "centerist" is considered at least centre right pretty much everywhere else. Joe Biden would likely be on the more central wing of the Tory party here, for example. The Overton Window for you guys is skewed so far to the right it's frightening.

Which might be rure, but in terms of domestic US politics, is irrevelent.

 

[Brainster]

I have to say though, what the US considers "moderate" and "centerist" is considered at least centre right pretty much everywhere else. Joe Biden would likely be on the more central wing of the Tory party here, for example. The Overton Window for you guys is skewed so far to the right it's frightening.

It always amuses me when foreigners bring this up as if they're baffled how it happened that the country with the responsibility of protecting the free world isn't quite as mellow and laid-back as Europe (which is what they mean by "pretty much everywhere else").

 

[Aridas]

I feel like putting this here, after that last attempt to pretend victimhood over Hunter Biden's laptop.

Hunter Biden’s ‘laptop’ looks more and more like a politically motivated criminal scheme

The story is based on EmptyWheel's round up of a bunch of stuff. A pretty short summation, though, can be -

Marcy's post is, as usual, worth reading in full, but here’s the shortest version of it: Quite a lot of evidence suggests that in 2018 or 2019, Hunter Biden was the target of a successful phish or other hack that gave an outside party access to his iCloud account, his email accounts, and other data.

<snip>

A bunch of media outlets have previously breathlessly reported that the laptop had been "verified" as belonging to Hunter Biden while simultaneously fudging what that means. It means that the laptop, or at least its alleged hard drive, does indeed contain data from Hunter's email and iCloud accounts. There's another obvious scenario, though, and that's the exact hack-and-dump scheme that the FBI was warning Twitter and Facebook off of before the New York Post reported its original scoop revealing the alleged existence of the laptop.

 

[Delvo]

It also will not help you to win elections.

Indeed it wouldn't. Fortunately, it doesn't really exist.

You're the one whose most recent "contributions" here have been another round of false accusations about "hatred" and another one about "drooling" with rage. Find the quotes where I've said anything like that.

Hint: Calling a conservative who wants to pretend not to be conservative a conservative doesn't count. In a political conversation, one observes & assesses people's political positions in political terms. Similarly, calling bribery bribery doesn't count. In a political conversation about a system in which bribery is routine & legal, mentions of the reality of bribery are part of the subject of politics.

Your mission, if your perpetual stream of accusations against progressives weren't false, would be to find where my/our behavior was worse than, or even merely the equivalent of, yours: either repeating the same false accusation about what feelings you must feel dozens upon dozens of times (essentially every time the political difference between us is ever brought up in any way at all), or, better yet, blathering about brains malfunctioning so badly they lose control of bodily functions.

 

[Delvo]

It always amuses me when foreigners bring this up as if they're baffled how it happened that the country with the responsibility of protecting the free world isn't quite as mellow and laid-back as Europe (which is what they mean by "pretty much everywhere else").

They're not baffled by what hasn't happened. They just don't call America's habit of sticking its hypermilitary nose in other countries' business and usually making things worse there "protecting" or a "responsibility".

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

PBS Newshour today covered the House Oversight Committee hearing which had a Hunter Biden piece on the IRS whistleblowers (not to be confused with the Biden Crime family whistleblower who is a Chinese spy or something ). The reporter was pretty one-sided, the IRS guys were sure the prosecutor denying their requests was tainted by Biden and the DoJ etc.

Then came the rebuttal which was a tad weaker by how it was presented but pretty much explained it all.

1) prosecutors often disagree with IRS investigators
2) prosecutor denied a request to search Joe Biden's house -- keep in mind there was no evidence whatsoever Joe Biden was involved
3) prosecutor denied request to question Hunter's young kid's for Christ's sake
4) Joe Biden wasn't even in office during some (all?) of the investigation
5) and here's the kicker, the prosecutor was a Trump appointee

 

[Stacyhs]

Indeed it wouldn't. Fortunately, it doesn't really exist.

You're the one whose most recent "contributions" here have been another round of false accusations about "hatred" and another one about "drooling" with rage. Find the quotes where I've said anything like that.

Hint: Calling a conservative who wants to pretend not to be conservative a conservative doesn't count. In a political conversation, one observes & assesses people's political positions in political terms. Similarly, calling bribery bribery doesn't count. In a political conversation about a system in which bribery is routine & legal, mentions of the reality of bribery are part of the subject of politics.

Your mission, if your perpetual stream of accusations against progressives weren't false, would be to find where my/our behavior was worse than, or even merely the equivalent of, yours: either repeating the same false accusation about what feelings you must feel dozens upon dozens of times (essentially every time the political difference between us is ever brought up in any way at all), or, better yet, blathering about brains malfunctioning so badly they lose control of bodily functions.

If a person is only "Calling a conservative who wants to pretend not to be conservative a conservative" then I'd agree. But that's not what happens. What happens is that anyone not as far to the left as Progressives and closer to the center, even center-left, is accused of really being a conservative.

As for "drooling with rage", some of the anti-moderate/center diatribes I've read in this forum made me want to hand the poster a bib.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Which is why you can see the spittle come from the mouths of some people when the words "Moderate" or "Centrist" are used.
Militant ideologues of any stripe are going to consider those not as militant as being The Enemy. Nothing new here.
I also think, at least in the US..that the moderates hold the balance of power, and that drives the ideologues nuts.

Lad, some of what you consider "centrist" would have Adolf Hitler looking at you strangely and saying "I think you've gone a bit far".

Hey, as long as you indulge in baseless hyperbole, I think I should be allowed to use some that has some actual relation to reality.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I disagree with that - but even if it was true, so what?

The whole point of centrism is to be where you can be effective because you haven't alienated too many on one side or the other. And that is what true democracy is about. If the US as a whole is more conservative than 'pretty much everywhere else' it doesn't matter, you still need to be in the center of that environment.

You should also realize that the vast majority on the right are moderates who are not where they want to be, but were forced into it by a small minority of radicals because they no choice if they wanted to win. That won't last forever (I'm betting one more Trump loss will break the spell).

No, the whole point of "centrism" is to give a "non-partisan" veneer to some extremely ugly right wing politics.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

If he weren't gay, the media wouldn't have been fawning over him, so nobody would be particularly impressed by him even if they had heard of him, which most wouldn't have. (Just think how many other mayors there are whom you aren't praising and haven't even heard of because the media didn't anoint them.)

How sad for you.

"Negative" would be if I'd brought up his job performance, or his behavior in debates, or even his behavior toward his husband. Pointing out the mere lack of anything particularly special & great about him and the fact that there's been nothing to pump him up but the media's gimmickry is entirely neutral because those are circumstances that can also sometimes happen to actually good people.

In a way, the most dismal thing about him is just that... not the stuff I'd point out about him if I were actually criticizing him, not the fact that the media obsession with him alone tells me his policy positions must be the usual crap the media loves, but just the fact that anybody plays along with his media narrative at all just because it's what the media says to do. It's the same old routine with the media's other empty-shell Democrats they've told us we were supposed to love for no reason before. The more the people can be tricked into just downloading whatever thoughts the media chooses to distribute instead of putting a moment of thought into where these ideas even come from or what the candidates will actually be like on the job, the further lost and without hope this country really is.

Media! Media, media, media!

Did the media take your lunch money when you were a kid?

 

[Beelzebuddy]

If a person is only "Calling a conservative who wants to pretend not to be conservative a conservative" then I'd agree. But that's not what happens. What happens is that anyone not as far to the left as Progressives and closer to the center, even center-left, is accused of really being a conservative.

Centrists are conservatives. Not big-C Conservatives, but conservatives. They long for their peak in the mid-nineties, when being vaguely anti-drug and anti-abortion was in vogue. When calling yourself "tough on crime" wasn't immediately recognized as racism. When neoliberalism still seemed like a pretty good idea. That was their time. They don't want to fix things now, they want to go back to the way things were then. They're still grasping for the middle, seeking bipartisan support with literal fascists, only because that's all they've ever done so why change now. That's conservatism. What remains is to argue where the line should be drawn. But that's haggling over price.

The whole point of centrism is to be where you can be effective because you haven't alienated too many on one side or the other.

Consider the people you're trying not to alienate on one side, and the ones you're willing to on the other. Is that really the moral terrain you want to place yourself in?

And for what? It'd be one thing if centrist politics were some unstoppable juggernaut where policies could be enacted with minimal opposition from the peanut gallery, but in case you haven't noticed, Republicans are terrible people who hate you. Where was all that effectiveness in attracting your esteemed peers across the aisle to codify Roe? To pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act? To strike down the lifetime appointments of Beer Bro and Handmaiden to the Supreme Court? How many times do you need to reach out a hand in friendship only to draw back a bloody stump before you get the message that that's a bad idea? They're scum, RR. When they're in power they build concentration camps. Their stated goal is to dismantle Democracy. They wipe their ass with the Constitution. These are not good people. Trying to meet them halfway lands you two steps in hell.

Whereas Progressives are mostly just frustrated that every opportunity for change gets pissed away chasing bipartisanship. If Democrats were to have used even a fraction of the power available to them we wouldn't be in this position. But oh no, can't alienate the goddamn Nazis. That would have been unthinkable in the nineties, the Best Times, so it's just not an option today.

 

[Delvo]

Lad, some of what you consider "centrist" would have Adolf Hitler looking at you strangely and saying "I think you've gone a bit far".

I can't even say anything about his/her own individual positions on any actual issues because I don't recall the last time I saw him/her post one, instead of just another attack on progressives & another whine about the big bad mean hateful progressives allegedly being so hateful & mean just by existing apparently.

No, the whole point of "centrism" is to give a "non-partisan" veneer to some extremely ugly right wing politics.

For some of them, I believe they really do actually believe that "both sides" are just too hostile too each other or too "extreme" and the solution would be a kumbaya session where we all "just get along". I've seen the "whenever there are two sides of anything, the truth must be between them" mantra on other subjects, so I know it's a real thing. (For example, I saw a Creationist pointing at the whoever the Pope was at the time had partially agreed with some aspect of evolution, and use that to say evolutionists should follow his example and move closer to Creationism so they can eventually meet in the middle.)

But they have no real-world basis for that simplistic ideology and no way to deal with real-world situations where the truth or the best solution or such would be outside of "both sides". And it's rare to find anybody expressing that ideology who really actually does dispute both sides to anywhere near the same degree and/or can muster an actual argument for their positions, other than just repetition of the unsupportable general principle itself. And if they did, then that idealized best possible version of a centrist/moderate would be nowhere near the kind whose "centrism" consists of just... what we get here.

Did the media take your lunch money when you were a kid?

Close enough. They've been helping the politicians take everybody's ever since I was a kid... and helping them survive while they keep doing it a bit more all the time... part of the process for which is to push empty-shell politicians at us to tell us we must love them because they've made sure first that those will be the kind of politician who does more of the same...

 

[TurkeysGhost]

The whole point of centrism is to be where you can be effective because you haven't alienated too many on one side or the other. And that is what true democracy is about. If the US as a whole is more conservative than 'pretty much everywhere else' it doesn't matter, you still need to be in the center of that environment.

So the centrists claim, and it was probably true during the Clinton era of peak centrism, but it doesn't really seem to be particularly true anymore. Hillary getting curbed stomped by a right wing carnival barker strikes me as pretty damning proof that milquetoast centrism just doesn't bring the voters to the polls like it used to.

The biggest complaint with the centrists these days seems to be that they refuse to actually update their worldview to deal with how voter preferences have changed, instead pretending like their brand of Reaganism-lite is still the new hotness that everyone loves. Their ability to poach right wing voters by having center-right positions seems dubious at best, and their total intransigence towards the progressive wings of their own party is alienating would be party loyalists.

If anything, they need to triangulate more, but actually look at what's popular these days and not assume that it's the same as 3 decades ago. Probably doesn't help that in many cases it's not just the same politics of the 90's, but literally the same people making these decisions.

When push comes to shove, these people are far more ideological than they let on, and are willing to risk outright defeat than wander even an inch from their neoliberal ideology.

 

[acbytesla]

I hate labels like "conservative," liberal," "centrist," "moderate."

I can't stand these labels. They mean nothing. I have opinions that run the entire spectrum of these terms and you probably do too.

 

[Stacyhs]

Lad, some of what you consider "centrist" would have Adolf Hitler looking at you strangely and saying "I think you've gone a bit far".

Hey, as long as you indulge in baseless hyperbole, I think I should be allowed to use some that has some actual relation to reality.

Fair enough. Let us know when you begin using some that has some actual relation to reality.

 

[Stacyhs]

No, the whole point of "centrism" is to give a "non-partisan" veneer to some extremely ugly right wing politics.

Is this some of that hyperbole that supposedly has some actual relation to reality?