Official 2020 US Presidential Election Thread

[vivster]

sethnintendo said:

vivster said:

Unions aren't there to protect individuals. They're there to protect all of the workers. Being against unions because it might benefit a few lazy people is like being against universal healthcare because there might be Trump supporters in hospitals.

Any universal safety net will always also support assholes, but that's no reason against it because those safety nets only work when everyone pays in and everyone gets something out. Being selective about who gets it and who pays for it will break everything, see Obamacare.

No policy will always be perfect because not all humans are perfect. So we should drop this idealism really fast to make progress. Idealism is the source of all extremism.

Agree with everything said but don't get "Obamacare" reference

Obamacare was completely gutted to appease Republicans and get it through. It's not even close to what universal healthcare should be. There were more exemptions than inclusions in that bill and that's not how it works.

gergroy said:

vivster said:

People who leave the party now have absolutely no place in politics and should be denounced by any other party they want to join.. It means they have no standards or convictions they follow. The GOP is literally no different than it was 10 years ago, yet then those people were fine with it. At least Ted and Mitch stick with their asshole convictions.

I disagree with this quite a bit.  Maybe the far right was the same, but our politics have become more polarized. 10 years ago, there was a pretty strong center wing of the Republican Party.   Remember, these political parties are supposed to be big tent parties, supporting a bunch of varied, but roughly aligned ideals.  That center has been pretty much demolished  by the tea party and trump.  There are still a few republicans that represent that center/moderate stance like murkowski, Collins, and Romney.  Flipping from representing the center in one party to representing the center in another party shouldn’t be that big of a deal.  The only reason to do so would be if ones political party gets so radicalized that the center is no longer supported... which is increasingly the case with republicans.  Flipping parties doesn’t mean they don’t have ideals, it just means they believe in compromise and focus on the middle ground.  Compromise is not a bad thing, we need to stop punishing politicians for doing it.  It’s pretty much the core problem with politics...

I don't really care which way the singular politicians lean when they all vote along party lines anyway. A moderate can pretend to be a moderate as long as he wants but he isn't a moderate when he votes for extremist policies.

It has also to do with your viewpoint. In my book denying people basic human rights and constantly voting to make workers' lives worse is extremist and exactly as bad as leading an insurrection, if not worse. Republicans have done this for decades. They have hated working class people for a long time and that did not change with an extremist uprising. It's just that they got a bit more overt in their extremism. Before that they were the same human trashbags fighting to make people's lives worse to benefit corporations and themselves.

Republicans have killed their own constituents in the millions for decades, it's just that those deaths weren't as newsworthy as a cop being beaten to death.