TitanTiger

I believe you're right. You saw that whole transformation in real time.

Ha! At some point I just decided that it was impossible to sign up for the whole slate of policy positions from either party and I was just going to stop trying. Sometimes Democrats/progressives have the better take on an issue, sometimes conservatives/Republicans do, and other times some position that borrows from both is best. I also find it impossible to sign on to either party's positions on every issue and follow Jesus. And that's what I'm striving to filter my politics through now.

I don't think I'd make many mid-2000s Republicans happy either. I'm in favor of universal health care, paid parental leave, and closing of tax loopholes that allow millionaires and billionaires to be taxed at lower rates than people who are primarily paid through salary/hourly wages. I'm in favor of incentivizing businesses as well as colleges and universities to have on-site child care or helping people be able to finish their education even if they get pregnant and have children. In short, I'm pretty economically flexible if I think it's a worthwhile investment in people, furthers a culture of life and such. I'm also in favor of more restrictions on high powered, rapid-fire rifles such as AR-15s, red flag laws and other restrictions. I think that undocumented immigrants who have been here for several years with gainful employment and no felonies should be given a path to citizenship even as I think we need to get a handle on the southern border and know/document every single person who comes through. If I thought about it long enough, I could come up with some more examples. I want an alternative to the GOP - yes, as presently constituted. But I'm not clamoring for a return to the GWB years either. I ended up opposing the Iraq War and our rationale for going in there in the first place.

I'm using the label because that's what Democrats have moved to in lieu of "liberal" which was pretty successfully associated with things like being weak on crime, big government, wacko on social issues, and so on. I'd also argue that they moved to "progressive" because they've become fundamentally illiberal the last decade or so, but that's neither here nor there. My assertion is that while some of Trump's increasing of the deficit could be explained (by many) in terms of tax cuts that did benefit a lot of middle class people and spending that had to happen for a once in a century pandemic that cratered the economy, Biden is spending at very high rates even without the pandemic as an excuse. Is it your honest opinion that Biden is governing as a moderate? Or is he governing moderate on some things and more as a progressive on others? How much of the moderate side is due to being held back by a Republican Senate? Do you think he'd show similar restraint if the Dems took the WH, House and Senate this fall? Ok, I'll moderate the comment to "too much embrace of the trans ideology and messaging." Not "full-on." He's not as batshit crazy and radical as trans activists, though that's about one of the highest bars to clear in existence.

I think it's more than a messaging problem. I think it's a governance problem. When you have the L.A. Times cheering on the president for governing as a progressive I think it's pretty telling. They don't see it as a bug or an anomaly, but a feature. And it's a feature that gives people who might not usually or at least automatically support a Democrat in elections pause. I don't think he's actually behaved as moderate as his persona would have led me to believe. The Republicans sold out to their crazies a while back. The Democrats don't have to. Frankly, they barely have to listen to them at all given the shift by the GOP. I wish they'd do so more obviously.

You're right. The Democrats have made ample and obvious efforts to position themselves in the political center to center-left and relegate the Republicrazies to irrelevance for the foreseeable future. All the concerns about handing over the entire Federal government to Democratic control are unfounded. I guess it's just all in their heads.

My guess is that they would write off much of the spending under Trump as being related to the COVID-induced economic nosedive we were in. But again, you seem to be intent on making this a simple binary choice between Biden and Trump, in isolation from all other considerations or worries. That's not how those decisions are made by people who aren't an auto-vote for one party or the other.

The price tags for them are concerning even if the aims are laudable. $4.5 trillion in additional spending over the already record spending levels we're currently at, at a time where tons of gov't spending over the last several years has helped create the inflation situation we're in. That's going to unnerve fiscal conservatives if you can't explain how you're paying for that instead of adding it to the credit card.

Yes, Biden is governing as a progressive. But that shouldn’t surprise you By Doyle McManus Washington Columnist May 16, 2021 4 AM PT Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden campaigning near Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second home in Warm Springs, Ga., in October 2020. (Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images) President Biden’s Republican critics charge that he has foisted a “bait and switch” on voters — that he campaigned as a moderate but veered abruptly to the left after he arrived at the White House. “The bait was he was going to govern as bipartisan, but the switch is he’s governed as a socialist,” House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield complained last month. “He talks like a moderate but is governing to satisfy the far left,” Senate Republican chief Mitch McConnell of Kentucky chimed in. They’re right on one count: Biden is pushing an ambitious progressive program while making it sound, well, moderate. But their charge of false advertising is bogus. Biden never concealed his big-government goals; they were all in plain sight in his platform. It’s still on the campaign website for anyone who wants to check. Candidate Biden called for more than $4 trillion in new federal spending, beginning with an immediate stimulus to help the economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It included massive proposals to combat climate change, rebuild infrastructure, reduce poverty, subsidize child care and provide universal pre-K education. Sound familiar? All those planks resurfaced in Biden’s proposals this year: his $1.9-trillion COVID-19 relief bill, his $2-trillion-plus jobs plan and his $1.8-trillion family-policy plan. To be fair, McCarthy and McConnell may have been too busy to read up on their opponent’s long and detailed program. Their party saved time by not having a platform at all. But surely they noticed when former President Obama released a video last year praising Biden for “the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history.” Or when Biden, in his last big campaign speech, compared his program to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and prom-ised a pandemic plan, a healthcare plan, a climate plan and an economic plan “to give working people a fair shot again.” “None of this should have come as a surprise,” Greg Schultz, Biden’s campaign manager during last year’s primary season, told me. “My only surprise is that people weren’t listening.” McCarthy and McConnell weren’t the only ones who underestimated Biden’s commitments. Plenty of progressives didn’t quite believe it, either. After all, during the primaries Biden had presented himself as a moderate, pragmatic alternative to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Biden’s Democratic rivals chastised him for centrist positions he took decades ago: his 1970s opposition to mandatory busing to desegregate schools, his 1994 vote for then-President Clinton’s punitive crime bill. Those ancient controversies made him sound like an out-of-touch relic. But they were forgetting one of Biden’s most striking features: his adaptability. He is — as critics used to say about FDR — something of a political chameleon. Over 51 years in politics, Biden has always positioned himself at his party’s center — which has required a steady evolution toward the left. The Biden of 2008 who ran as Obama’s running mate was more progressive than the Biden of 1994 who voted for Clinton’s crime bill. The Biden of 2012 who declared himself a fan of same-sex marriage was more progressive than the Biden of 2008. When he pondered entering the 2016 presidential race, he intended to run to Hillary Clinton’s left and Bernie Sanders’ right — a classic Biden gambit to seek his party’s center point. “Biden for President was going to go big,” Biden wrote of the plans for that never-launched campaign in his 2017 memoir. “A $15 minimum wage. Free tuition at our public colleges and universities. Real job training. On-site affordable child care. Equal pay for women. Strengthening the Affordable Care Act. A job creation program built on investing in and modernizing our roads and bridges…. We needed what I called an American Renewal Project.” Sound familiar? By the time Biden ran in 2020, two things happened to push him even further. One was the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it clear to both parties that big spending would be needed to rescue the economy. After Republican leaders, including then-President Trump, approved more than $3.8 trillion in COVID relief last year, GOP complaints about big-money requests from the new president sounded hollow. The second was Democrats’ unexpected capture of 50 seats in the Senate, which meant the new president could pass much of his program without Republican votes. Yes, Biden had promised to seek bipartisan compromises — but now he no longer had to worry about obstructionist Republicans whose only goal was to stop his program in its tracks. And that — not spurious charges of a “bait and switch” on policy — is probably what makes Mitch McConnell so grouchy.

Did you read any of the links I posted, because I don't think the articles I posted were speaking in generalities. For instance, the level of government spending is going to concern centrists - especially those who are in the "fiscal conservative/socially liberal or at least libertarian" camp. And then his full-on embrace of trans cult is going to worry the "fiscal moderate/socially conservative" centrists. I'm not sure what specifics you're asking for here that aren't provided in what I posted. Finally, again, it's not a binary choice. The POTUS doesn't operate in isolation. A lot of different calculus is being looked at. If they distrust the direction of the Democratic Party overall, then they're going to be wary of handing both the Presidency and Congress over to them. If they feel confident the GOP will at least hold one house of Congress, they might vote for Biden (or withhold a vote for Trump) because it will check the progressives. But if they think the Dems are poised to take both houses, maybe it tilts a bit the other way and a vote for Trump is their only way to keep the Dems in check.

I'd say it's several initiatives actually, but I think the transgender craziness carries a lot of weight compared to say, one's stance on tax policy. For many, it flat out renders a person's judgment untrustworthy and I can't say I blame them. And it appears even the progressives seem to think he's governing as a progressive: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-05-16/joe-bidens-governing-as-a-progressive-thats-a-surprise-only-if-you-werent-paying-attention https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/05/joe-biden-left-president-radical-domestic-plans-west-wing So do others, especially if he's given the opportunity by a Democratically controlled Congress: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/01/30/bidenomics-is-an-unfinished-revolution-what-would-four-more-years-mean People don't think about Biden in isolation either. They consider whether to support him or other Democrats, depending on the specifics in their House and Senate races based on what they think may happen if the restraints come off. And I imagine more than a few are concerned that he's slipping mentally (whether it's actually true or not) and that he's being steered behind the scenes. I don't think you can honestly say great efforts have been made by the Democrats to occupy that middle territory and win over disaffected Republicans. They seem to just be trying to hold ground and hope Trump and people like MTG are just repellant enough to help them eke out the win in November for the WH. I think they could do way better if they were willing to. This country is primed to move off this razor thin national split between the parties but neither of them (the GOP especially) seems to care to take it.

And let me add... When you're trying to win over people who normally don't vote for you but might be persuaded to, you actually have to do more than just stay put. You have to make it more obvious that you're reasonable, that you aren't pulling a bait and switch where you avoid answering questions about hot button issues to get votes then go on voting in typical ways that are too accommodating of your far end after the election. I don't think the Democrats have done a very good job or making it clear that they are the party that extends to the center and, at least in some ways or to a degree, just beyond it. The GOP has completely abdicated the space and seems to be doing their damndest to alienate even their center-right flank. But I don't see the Dems making it clear they want to truly represent either.

The cumulative effect of the things I said add up. Kamala's campaign failed not because of this but myriad flubs and missteps, and the fact that Biden was a known and generally trusted entity. But now she's the VP. Again, I'm not saying the Dems are as bad in terms of letting the inmates take over the asylum. I'm saying that the Dems had an opportunity to become the dominant party for a decade or more and have flubbed it by not keeping their own weirdos in check and making it clear they are the party of normal policies - the party that can reasonably represent even centrists and center-right type folks. It only takes taking the idiotic stance on a few of these things to keep folks on the fence rather than coming over to your side.

First let me state, I don't think the Democrats have the number of complete flakes that the GOP has managed to shoehorn in on the Trump coattails. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene is a level of crazy and stupid that it's on its own tier. That said I think of people like Rashida Tliab, Ilian Omar, Ayanna Presley, Ocasio-Cortez make up in volume what they lack in sheer numbers. Appointing/hiring people like Rachel Levine and Sam Brinton to key public facing positions in the administration, representing the US abroad. And for the Democrats at least, I'd say it's as much about positions they are moved to and advocate for that are either new or are now more publicly adopted or deemed acceptable, such as: - The increased platforming of wacko gender identity stuff. Democratic governors vetoing legislation that calls for women's and girls' sports to be reserved for biological females. - The shift from abortion as "safe, legal and rare" to basically no restrictions, with multiple states allowing for abortion right up to the moment of a full term birth. - The statements and positions many of them are taking on Israel vs Hamas (some congressional members even adopting or excusing the "from the river to the sea" messaging). - Kamala Harris in the run up to the 2020 elections not just advocating for universal health care but the elimination of private insurance altogether, even if people like the plan they're paying for. - AOC calling for a 70% top marginal tax rate and stating that "billionaires shouldn't exist." There are more examples but that's just a few I could think of off the top of my head. When people who might otherwise be open to voting to hand the reins of power more fully over to Democrats across the board see patterns like this, it makes them wary. That swath from the center-left to the center-right feels like they can't fully trust the Democrats in power either. They don't want their daughters being denied opportunities in sports or having some one claiming to be a woman with his fully intact penis and testicles showering and changing in the women's locker room at their wife's gym. They have grave moral problems with the idea that you can kill a child in the womb right up to full term delivery. So you end up where we are - the extremes of each party having a outsized and undeserved ability to steer the priorities of the respective parties and gatekeep normal candidates from making it out of the primaries.

I’m not surprised by Trump at all because I never believed the pro-life position was a sincere core value for him to begin with. Trump’s only core value is whatever benefits him most at a given moment - to gain power or more money. He will shift wherever he sees the wind blowing if it gives him a viable path to one of those things. Neither does Kari Lake shock me. She’s an opportunist as well and has no principles. Rick Scott surprised me some. I would say yes, except we have a two-party system and the Democrats are not positioning themselves as a viable alternative for pro-life voters. If anything, they’re staking out even more extreme positions on abortion that are far more liberal than what you see in Europe. So for now, I think they stick with the Republican party and just double down on vetting candidates on their pro-life bonafides. But this just goes to illustrate a point I’ve been hammering home for years now. The GOP has gone through a self-induced frontal lobotomy since 2016 and the Democrats have fumbled away every opportunity to become the dominant party, simply by becoming the party of “normal.” A center-left oriented Democratic Party would gobble up independents right now and keep their liberal voting base as well because so many Republicans have gone Trump crazy. But they just could not resist elevating their own band of weirdos. So the presidential race and congressional races are far closer than they ought to be.