2024 ELECTION THREAD

Nixon was pretty tame compared to Bush and Trump.

I read "Being Nixon" by Evan Thomas a few years ago and just thumbed through the book again for this post. Tell me if any of these things sound or look familiar in Democratic Party politics today:

1.) Surged in Vietnam before implementing a ceasefire. More than what Obama did to end Afghanistan.

2.) Improved relations with China. Sure, for leverage against the USSR, but still.

3.) Met with Brezhnev in '73 and signed SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missle Treaty

4.) Upon establishing relations with Egypt (mostly to remove Soviet influence), threatened to withhold aid to Israel after the Yom Kippur War if they didn't negotiate a peace deal with Egypt and Palestinians.

5.) Reacted to high inflation by giving grants to states.

6.) Imposed price-fixing laws after Congress granted him the right to do so.

7.) Created Earth Day upon creating the EPA.

8.) Opposed busing, but enforced mass desegregation of schools. He didn't do enough, sure, but he could've turned a blind eye.

9.) Endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment.

10.) Revised Executive Order 11246 to desegregate government workplaces.

11.) Cooperated with the Soviet space program with a five-year joint program.

12.) Proposed a health insurance mandate for employers in the private sector.

13.) Supported replacing Medicaid with state-run single-payer systems.

14.) Declared the war on drugs, sure, but boosted funding for rehab facilities.

15.) Tapped Rehnquist for the SCOTUS, sure, but also swing voter Lewis Powell and relatively liberal Harry Blackmun.

People have not been voting for a very long time. The Reagan/Bush years had dome of the lowest turnout in history. We're basically in the long run from that election as most people that voted for Reagan in 80 are dead. And nobody ever talks about the impact that those people who sat out in 80 are having today. Why would sitting out now be any different in 2060?

I don't think it's about being further away from centre. While I disagree with many of Luciom's positions, he's clearly well read, well informed, and is in possession of sufficient mental horsepower to formulate a cogent world view. Victor is... not. Unless "everyone bad, everything bad, communists good" passes for a cogent world view, I suppose.

on the issue of genocide!? yeah i think it's pretty easy to say that both sides are bad for supporting it

as for how i'd solve the whole peace in the middle east issue, who cares, i don't have that power, so i'm not gonna do a book report on the subject just to make you happy. a lot of smarter people than i have looked into it over the years, feel free to google around for that if you actually care about anything other than wasting my time.

my view on whether accelerationism was a widely held opinion on the left in 2016? yeah, i don't think it was. i don't remember hearing much of that, and to that point there's the fact that a higher % of bernie supporters voted for hillary than hillary supporters voted for obama in 2008. the idea that accelerationism was some widespread thing on the left really seems like an anecdotal lib grudge thing on your part. like you saw brie suggest it once and its lived rent-free in your head ever since. pretty funny actually

were hillary supporters accelerationists, or just racists?

i don't get what point you're making here, kamala agrees with all of that, except for the blaming biden part obviously

I was taking his suggestion to its logical conclusion - i.e. literally nobody votes (since obviously, no individual person is going to ever be in 100% agreement with the policy platform proposed by any party other than maybe the guy who proposed it), or say, fewer than 5% of eligible voters or something, if we want to put some number on it. Tbh I have no idea what exactly would happen in that scenario, but I suspect that some enterprising authoritarian would find a way to take advantage of the situation to get into and stay in power.

This is gold. Basically the Trump & Kushner "One state, two state, three state, who cares, we'll have it fixed by lunch" solution, then. Boy, you guys sure do have a lot in common with the MAGAs, don't you?

Sigh... you added widely held which nobody said. You claimed to need a citation for anybody saying it.

"I don't know a solution but genocide isn't it" is a totally fine response by an American citizen funding the genocide.

Why did you post a series of quotes where he didn't say it then?

that's what those words mean man

Yup. And he dishonestly edited a quote. Just pure trolling now.

It's...not at all what those words mean.

1) this just uses the plural of the word "progressive." That could mean as little as 2. Not "widely"
2) same for this one with "bros."
3) we've added many "here," so at least I can see why you could be confused, but "many" is still not synonymous with "widely." For example, "many" could mean, 12, which would not mean "widely" in any group larger than, say 24, certainly.

ok, what do they mean? what was he saying?

Just try reading his words again, and when you get a mental image of the concept of "widely" in your head, replace it with the concept of "some."

lol

Hum well not voting at all would not eradicate evil either so what your point ?
Actually you might allowed the bigger evil to be voted in …
How great that is .

Let’s say there are two candidates. One promises to kill 1 million random people. The other promises to kill 10 million people. I say it would be a moral imperative to vote for the one that will kill 1 million.

Everything else is just talking about what the threshold is. Saying you would never vote for the lesser evil though? Just seems like a weird voting strategy. I would actually respect “voting statistically doesn’t matter” people over “I will never vote lesser evil” people.

Utilitarianism is so evil that you should choose the opposite actually.

But anyway voting isn't a one time game so considerations are different.

You aren't playing the trolley game, you can actually they to put the trolley maker out of business

It’s more in the realm of applied ethics than normative ethics. I can think of much more extreme examples if you want to bite the bullet on never voting lesser evil.

The problem with withholding votes is a separate problem than what I’m talking about. It’s not a well thought out strategy because if the party wins, you completely take yourself out of the coalition. Even if the party loses they might hate you too much to try to appeal to you and will just move to the right/center to attract more moderates (Clinton triangulation).

Then there’s antiduopoly types that should spend all their time on fixing the electoral system if they don’t like the two party system, although boring electoral reforms seem to be extremely unpopular in America for some reason.

I voted the lesser evil pretty often, which in Italy means voting very very far from my values (no party is even vaguely libertarian leaning).

That doesn't mean I did it every time, and btw one thing a person can oppose is the voting system itself.

In the USA there is the 2 party system but you vote often, and for many things.

They need your vote not only once every four year. There are many primaries, many seats you are voting for.

You can vote Jill Stein for president but vote a Democratic senator for example, and they do notice those votes

I was actually asking you who you would support and what policies you would support that you think would accomplish an end to the conflict.

If you don't want to answer, that is fine.

Turnout has often been in the 50% in the USA, and far higher in brazil, does that seem to correlate with personal freedoms and democracy to you?

oh right the USA famously does not lock up or execute dissidents