7000'th post tag!

Look, I'm fine with compromise and all that, but compromise something other than my ability to afford the cost of living. That's all I'm saying. /debate

Again, how do you expect to get progressive policies if people don't vote for progressive politicians? I think taking the small wins to help as many people as possible until we have the votes for the big progressive policies makes sense. Like, even under your best case scenario of Bernie successfully primary-ing Joe Manchin and somehow the Dems still hold his seat, we still have to wait until 2024 for that change.

What about the people who are suffering today?

My solution is taking the best road that is available. Yours seems to me to be something akin to accelerationism, and in order for accelerationism to work, things need to get a lot worse for people before they get better. As much as you seem to like painting things over with a bleak brush, there are improvements that can be made through compromise. We don't need to wait until voters start voting progressive to take action and improve conditions for workers.

So this might be an interesting exercise: If you had to rank our last 10 presidents (Joe Biden doesn't count since he just started his term) from best to worst, what would be the outcome?

Here's how I'd order the overall quality of the jobs they did:

1. Lyndon Johnson
2. Barack Obama
3. Ronald Reagan
4. Bill Clinton
5. George Bush Sr.
6. Jimmy Carter
7. Gerald Ford
8. Richard Nixon
9. George Bush Jr.
10. Donald Trump

To lay out a case for my top three picks:

Of course I have to rank the only Texas Democrat to hold the presidency best. His presidency ended on a sour note thanks his fateful, and horrible, decision to send combat troops into Vietnam, but to me, and to many historians I might add, his more lasting legacy was policies like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (desegregation, etc.), the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, major increases in education funding and such like this. The Johnson-era anti-poverty programs have, over the subsequent decades, saved far, far more lives than his military debacle in Vietnam cost and I've personally benefited from some of them.

Obama's legacy strikes me as similar to that of Johnson in essence, but on a smaller scale: not that many people would claim that the Obama-era foreign policies were generally good or successful, but the Recovery Act and auto bailouts did end the worst recession we'd faced since the Great Depression up to that point and the Affordable Care Act gave 20 million more people access to health insurance. This overall positive economic record though is blemished by the infamous sequester deal struck with Congressional Republicans in 2011 that slowed down the pace of economic recovery (the moral of which being that no, compromise is NOT just intrinsically a good thing).

Of Reagan, I would say the opposite of the above two cases is true: the Reagan-era fiscal policies resulted in large-scale de-unionization that has caused the American worker serious long-term harm and ultimately brought whole regions of the country to ruin. However, Reagan's foreign policy, though unduly aggressive I would argue in some areas, was ultimately successful in bankrupting the Soviet Union and thus averting a third world war. By drastically increasing military spending, Reagan pressured the Soviet Union into an arms race they couldn't afford, with the eventual result being an end to the Cold War. By simultaneously cutting income taxes drastically though, especially for wealthier people, he effectively forced subsequent presidents to find ways of moving the federal budget more toward balance in ways that proved painful. Perhaps if taxation had simply remained where it was...

And as to my pick for worst, well...yeah, Trump inherited a nation that was finally starting to really recover from the previous recession and turned it into the most diseased nation on Earth, facing down an even worse recession, greatly increased the budget deficit not only of pandemic-induced economic necessity but also just to needlessly save corporate America on taxes, shattered our alliances abroad in favor of closer relationships with police states, militarily occupied American cities, separated migrant children from their parents to make a political statement, attempted to stage a coup to stay in power beyond the end of his term, and brought the nation to the brink of civil war. And also presided over the single most corrupt administration in the history of this country and enjoyed the dubious distinction of becoming the only U.S. president ever to be impeached twice. So yeah, not a success.

What would be your picks (and, if you wish, why)?

I'd say a moderate democrat would actually be at the right border of the CSU, the more conservative part of the political union that is Merkel's party. And those already feel like they're 3 decades behind the rest of the country...

It's a tough one for sure.

The first two are the same as yours, but then it gets all wonky. Reagan disqualifies himself due to taking away all the negotiating power workers had and deregulating so much that inequalities in the US exploded from those. Carter disqualifies himself by being the one who armed the Taliban against the soviets - and I don't think I have to explain why that disqualifies him, doubly so because he has no regrets for it. Ford was very sub-par, so was Bush Sr. Bush Jr. was a warmonger and at the start of the split between the US and the rest of the world diplomatically. Nixon watergates himself out and Trump running uncontested for the last spot, so the third spot basically falls to Clinton by default.

Hmm, I cannot find not one GOP that is in favor of M4A.  If the GOP worked so hard to get rid of the ACA, I am not sure why they would favor M4A especially since they become budget and fiscal responsible when a Dem is president.  So you are saying moderate Dems are against M4A but the really conservative GOP is gung ho.  Can you show the data on this because I cannot find it.

My example of what Compromise can do is the reality.  You have not provided any real example where no compromise gets anything done.  You either get something done or you get nothing because right now and in the past, that same problem you seem to believe can be solved by advertising to the people is a fantasy. 

You let me know when that Bernie infused adverts start convincing people to call their GOP Senators and demand that they vote for Bernie progressive policies or when a Progressive candidate runs in a GOP leaning state and actually win. When that happens I will stand up and cheer but until you really have not provided anything that moves forward.  It would seem that if the change isn't big enough you do not see any movement but if the working poor isn't making their vote count then guess what, nothing change.  It all start with the people voting elected officials that support progressive polices instead of voting the safe bets we see time and again.  2 shots and Bernie did not get pass to moderate Dems.  He could campaign as a independent and not even budge the national vote.  

Ideals and policy are great but in the end vote counts.  If you do not have the votes you get nothing done.

Since Lyndon Johnson was mention this was the results of the 1964 election which preceded all his great society polices

1) He won the electoral college 486-52 (he won 44 states and dc)
2) Democratic party controlled house 295-140 (67%)
3) Democratic party controlled senate 68-32

I am quite certain the conversation would be way different if Biden had that but sadly that not the case which is why they trying to get the best bill that will pass and not the bill many of us would like too see.

This is a pretty misleading account of the history:

First of all, Johnson ran on what he called the "great society" program in 1964 and won those overwhelming supermajorities needed to enact it at least in part on that basis. (Of course it didn't hurt either that his Republican opponent that year was proposing nuclear war.)

Secondly, it's also worth pointing out that many of those Democratic Congresspersons you see in those numbers were conservatives because the Democrats still politically dominated the U.S. South at the time as a residual consequence of the legacy of the American Civil War. It's not as though the actual ideological skew was as far to the left as those sorts of numbers for the Democrats would suggest under today's circumstances, in other words. There were TONS of proverbial Joe Manchins back in the 1960s, whereas now he's one of a kind in the Senate, by contrast. The "great society" programs were enacted over more political opposition than it may at first appear to look strictly at what the party balances were back then is what I'm trying to communicate.

Your not even trying, I wasn't talking senators I was talking Rep voters, about 50% of Rep voters were in favour of M4A in early 2020, in the whole electorate it's about 70% back in early 2020

https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/494602-poll-69-percent-of-voters-support-medicare-for-all 

The strategy is to keep informing the people of each senator constituency opposed to M4A and see how they fair politically once their constituency knows what's up, even Rep voters are starting at a high 50% approval for M4A, this can be encouraged to grow with a concerted information program that's bound to put the pressure on senators

So far compromise has achieved next to nothing for the working poor for many years, including slam dunks like a universally accepted gun control plan that is supported by the vast majority of American voters (not senators) which the Dems have compromised so much, nothing actually gets done, always the compromise and appeasement with the Dems that have born abysmal results over decades