US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

we won't get Reagan Dems back in the fold for good by sucking Wall Street cock. why is this still being debated?!?

― Dziękuję bardzo panie robocie (Eisbaer), Thursday, 5 May 2011 16:54 (33 seconds ago) Permalink

we're talking about two difft kinds of moderates, both of whom exist w/in the big tent

No results found for "heigl-lohan democrats".

^^^ that's exactly what I've been saying. Reagan Dems don't necessarily MIND sucking up to Wall Street.

xpost

also: lots of Reagan Dems went red (e.g. Krauthammer, Phil Gramm).

Better dead than red, etc...

Reagan Democrats were mostly white, northern and tended towards certain social conservative stands - there was a racist tinge to them too as indicated upthread. They loved when Reagan derided the 'welfare queen' in '76 and Clinton bashed Jackson w/Sista Souljah.

After years of being accused of being indifferent or being escoriated for being racist, ppl like this love nothing better than righteous indignation aimed at ppl of color since they feel it absolves them or something.

Ronald Reagan’s strong defense policies as well as his optimism in American culture

It's funny how, after a real career in the Navy, Carter was derided as a downer for his 'malaise' speech and Reagan, who served making propaganda movies, came around and said, 'fcuk it, drive as much as you want - it's the American way and we need to be proud to be American again', thereby indirectly conceding the lack of confidence that Carter was aiming at. I remember all the Reagan lovers waving their flags in '84 - they were dimwitted ppl who mainly related to the world by emoting, not through much cognition.

Awful lot of generalizing in those paragraphs.

Yeah, but that's the way I remember it. I remember getting into huge arguments over July 4th weekend w/friends of my family in '84 over 'Reagan Democrats'.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/kenworthychart1.png

I have not read anything that's ever convinced me that reagan democrats were ever a 'thing'

ford got 22% of dem votes, reagan 26% in 1980 and 1984

white working-class Northerners weren't in the bottom third of the income distribution during Reagan's presidency.

also, presidential voter turnout declined thru the 70s and 80s compared to the 50s and 60s. i think a lot of traditional blue collar democrats just kind of checked out of politics (my parents did) during that time.

I just think personifying these things is lazy and misleading. there are large trends in late 20th century american politics w/r/t race, income, party, but when we say 'reagan dems', without having a strict definition or statistical evidence that this is a 'group' that operates w/ some uniformity, we just get a muddled idea of the larger picture. can you be a 'reagan dem' if you're not in a union? if you're an independent? if you're in virginia?

I just think personifying these things is lazy and misleading

You're right and I admit I'm just channeling my 16 yr old self - hardly my most circumspect iteration - but what I'm getting at are probably independents or moderate democrats who had voted Dem before and who self-identified at the time as 'Reagan Democrats'.

Lazy and misleading political commentary is the norm among professioanl journalists, and this fact is taken full advantage of by partisan hacks at think tanks.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2011/05/daniels-in-the-lambs-den.html

Speaking of lazy commentary, this piece on the "alleged" non-scary possible Republican candidate Mitch Daniels and the Dana Milbank one in the Washington Post overlook his real Bush administration resume--the wrong numbers on the cost of the wars; the effect of teh Bush tax cuts,etc. One piece mentions but goes lightly on his defense of his attack on planned parenthood-- there are other places to birth control.

Daniels is scary because these guys give him legitimacy

get birth control

Daniels is also scary because he's so boring. He has the sort of face which would remain expressionless as he ordered the defoliation of El Salvador.

On Tuesday, at the Gilded Age Upper East Side mansion that houses the nascent Bloomberg View, Daniels lunched with a baker’s dozen of journo-pundits ranging politics-wise from rightish (Peggy Noonan, Ramesh Ponnuru) and leftish (Michael Kinsley, Josh Marshall) to neitherish (Mark Halperin), and outlet-wise from mass market (George Stephanopoulos) to niche market (me). Afterward, the informal consensus of the leftish contingent was summed up in this exchange:

“If we have to have a Republican…”
“…this one seems like he’d be better than the others.”

Yuck

relax guys republicans hate that guy. no shot.

George Will can't breathe without mentioning his name with an eroticized whisper.

ew

I thought they hated him for being "calling a truce" on social issues, hence the current grandstanding in IN.

*being all

so its like, "he wants to give all the money to the rich, but doesnt hate gay people"??

relax guys republicans hate that guy. no shot.

― goole, Thursday, May 5, 2011 8:36 PM (

Since he dropped Planned Parenthood they don't hate him anymore.

so he's a postmodern xp

hes syrian, so, it aint happening

more 'bipartisan' budget-massacre horseshit:

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011/05/claire-mccaskills-profile-in-cowardice.html

Afterward, the informal consensus of the leftish contingent was summed up in this exchange:

“If we have to have a Republican…”
“…this one seems like he’d be better than the others.”

These sorts of guys are never the nominee.

hi guys

i would like to read some articles/essays/blog posts about how and why the rich have a disproportionate influence w/ elected officials, and what, if anything can be done to change that.

thank you in advance!

max

koch bros funding wisco cheating

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_3bffef6e-774e-11e0-a6a5-001cc4c002e0.html

^let's just call this 'exhibit A'

okay now reading this and...Wow!

I really hope Wisco Republicans don't get away with this

unbelievable. actually, no. totally believable.

caption time!

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c163/wvferrell/loldicks.jpg

bushco hunting for osama in lacrosse, wi

Obv I want to see more info come out, but Jefferson's severely deluded.

Only 200 sworn affidavits sounds small when you compare it to the entire list of 60,000 signatures...not so much when you compare it to the smaller size of the signers they were actually able to get in contact with...and exclude those that maybe agreed they were duped but wouldn't sign an affidavit.

Or the peopke they couldn't get in touch with cuz they're dead.

max, krugman's column today might be sort of what you're looking for. read "scare-mongers" and "deficit hawks" and "fear-mongers" as "gop status quo" and "koch catamites"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1&hp

"By looking for trouble in all the wrong places, our political class is preventing us from dealing with the real crisis: the millions of American men and women who can’t find work."

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/06/news/economy/april_jobs_report_unemployment/index.htm?hpt=T2
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/06/markets/commodities_oil_silver/index.htm?hpt=T2

hmm

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/06/markets/Markets_newyork/index.htm

The jobs recovery picked up speed in April, as business payrolls swelled and the unemployment rate rose as more people returned to the workforce.

fell, right?

apparently it went up

no, I'm not 100% sure how/why either

i see it went up but it's a confusing sentence

ha

It's back up to nine percent, actually, as more local governments shed employees and kids return from college.

I never really thought about it, but we have Republicans slashing government jobs left and right in the name of trimming waste who then turn around and blame the President for the unemployment rate's increase.

"Why aren't you doing anything to help the 55,000 people I just severed?"

heard on the radio yesterday that the reason the rate went up is because to be counted as "unemployed" you have to be actively seeking work. so as available jobs fell, less ppl became unemployed because they gave up. now that there's an uptick in jobs, unemployment sees a transient increase as well

the total tax burden is at its lowest since 1958

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2011-05-05-tax-cut-record-low_n.htm

wonder how many questions about that the gop candidates will get asked at their next little debate