A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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For most Republicans, whether they were prominent pundits or everyday voters, there proved to be no contradiction between conservatism and Trumpism. Quite the opposite, actually. According to Gallup, 94 percent of self-identified conservative Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing. This is because conservatism isn’t, for most people, an ideology. It’s a group identity.
A clever 2018 paper by political scientists Michael Barber and Jeremy Pope tested this experimentally. Trump was constantly adopting contradictory positions on issues, and his reputation for saying and doing anything primed voters to believe he really had said whatever you told them he’d said. “There has never been a president (or any party leader) who shifts back and forth so often between liberal and conservative issue positions,” they wrote, and that opened space for a revealing study.
Here’s how it worked: Barber and Pope asked voters if they agreed or disagreed with different policies. Because of the "flexibility" of Trump’s rhetoric, they were able to pick policies where Trump had, at some point, taken both a liberal policy position and a conservative policy position. And so some voters were asked about the policy without a cue telling them what Trump thought, but other voters were asked about the policy and given either Trump’s liberal position on the policy or his conservative one.
The idea here was to see how much of a difference Trump’s positioning made, and to whom. The people who identified as most strongly conservative were the likeliest to move in response to Trump. And the effect was about the same size whether Trump was taking the conservative or liberal position. It was the direction of Trump, not the direction of the policy, that mattered. Interestingly, there wasn’t an equal and opposite reaction among liberals: They didn’t change position.
Mark Sanford, politician, explained why Republicans switch their beliefs as Trump switches back and forth: “People would come up and they say, ‘Look, he’s the quarterback. You got to go with the quarterback.’”
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/12/20690910/donald-trump-justin
-amash-republicans-primaries-conservatives
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Have fun debating yourself.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
tic tac
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Back on cartoons, huh?
Here's what Democrats really believe happened with Clinton's emails...
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Author Stephen King predicted the rise of Trump 40 years ago
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Fox News mentioned AOC more than 3,000 times in a six-week span. Watch this supercut. It’s dizzying:
There’s a reason conservative media focuses relentlessly on Ocasio-Cortez, and to a lesser but still disproportionate extent, Tlaib and Omar. Vilifying nonwhite, female members of Congress electrifies their audience is a way that vilifying, say, Rep. Richard Neal, the powerful but bland chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, does not. The strategy of Fox News and much of the conservative media is to activate white threat in a browning America. Elevating and demonizing extremely liberal, nonwhite, young, female politicians is one way they do it.
This is what House Democratic leadership fears: that Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad, through their dominance of social media and their centrality on conservative media, will become the faces of the House Democratic majority. Centering American politics on the rising power of unapologetically liberal, young, nonwhite politicians is the right’s best hope for holding power: As reams of research show, when white Americans believe themselves losing demographic and political control of the country, they become far more conservative.
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/16/20695031/trump-ocasio-cortez
-omar-pressley-tlaib-pelosi-squad
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by Oonjerah:
I'm an actual, registered Democrat.
But I'm not sure what the topic is. Democrats can post in here,
and talk about themselves ... about why they are democrats ...
or what democrats believe in?
My parents were Republicans.
I was an adult in my 40's before I found out I was a democrat.
I didn't really know what the 2 parties stood for, so I asked a
friend who loves politics what I was.
Republicans tend to be conservative. Democrats tend to be liberal.
Can I even say what those words mean? Not very well.
Conservatives stand for law & order. i.e., Authority.
Democrats believe in human rights and equality. i.e., Freedom.
Anarchists believe in every man for himself?
... oooOO}{OOooo ...
T
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I’m struck at how many people have come up to me recently and said, “Trump’s going to get re-elected, isn’t he?” And in each case, when I drilled down to ask why, I bumped into the Democratic presidential debates in June. I think a lot of Americans were shocked by some of the things they heard there. I was.
Dear Democrats: This is not complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the Democrats and could do the same for the presidency. And that candidate can win!
But please, spare me the revolution! It can wait. Win the presidency, hold the House and narrow the spread in the Senate, and a lot of good things still can be accomplished. “No,” you say, “the left wants a revolution now!” O.K., I’ll give the left a revolution now: four more years of Donald Trump.
That will be a revolution.
More at www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/opinion/trump-2020.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Biden is your only candidate out there that has a chance with polling data that fits any of that criteria, and he's just a white Obama.
Or to put it another way, he's just a Democratic Bush.
I'd say the Democrats have about a 15 to 20% chance of getting Trump out. That number goes down if anybody but Biden is nominated.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I’m struck at how many people have come up to me recently and said, “Trump’s going to get re-elected, isn’t he?” And in each case, when I drilled down to ask why, I bumped into the Democratic presidential debates in June. I think a lot of Americans were shocked by some of the things they heard there. I was.
Dear Democrats: This is not complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the Democrats and could do the same for the presidency. And that candidate can win!
But please, spare me the revolution! It can wait. Win the presidency, hold the House and narrow the spread in the Senate, and a lot of good things still can be accomplished. “No,” you say, “the left wants a revolution now!” O.K., I’ll give the left a revolution now: four more years of Donald Trump.
That will be a revolution.
More at www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/opinion/trump-2020.html
Great article from someone I tend to agree with all the time, Thomas Friedman. He would be my Consigliere if I were president - at least on speed dial. He points out many of the problems that come from Trump that aren't even caused directly by him. Namely, hating him so much people want to go to opposite extremes to balance things out.
I don't know how any rational person could argue with:
"I was shocked that so many candidates in the party whose nominee I was planning to support want to get rid of the private health insurance covering some 250 million Americans and have “Medicare for all” instead. I think we should strengthen Obamacare and eventually add a public option.
I was shocked that so many were ready to decriminalize illegal entry into our country. I think people should have to ring the doorbell before they enter my house or my country.
I was shocked at all those hands raised in support of providing comprehensive health coverage to undocumented immigrants. I think promises we’ve made to our fellow Americans should take priority, like to veterans in need of better health care."
Unless it's because Trump. I do it sometimes myself because he's such a loathsome pos. It might take half dozen presidents before we get past the Trump Effect.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
There’s a reason conservative media focuses relentlessly on Ocasio-Cortez, and to a lesser but still disproportionate extent, Tlaib and Omar. Vilifying nonwhite, female members of Congress electrifies their audience is a way that vilifying, say, Rep. Richard Neal, the powerful but bland chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, does not. The strategy of Fox News and much of the conservative media is to activate white threat in a browning America. Elevating and demonizing extremely liberal, nonwhite, young, female politicians is one way they do it.
This is what House Democratic leadership fears: that Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad, through their dominance of social media and their centrality on conservative media, will become the faces of the House Democratic majority. Centering American politics on the rising power of unapologetically liberal, young, nonwhite politicians is the right’s best hope for holding power: As reams of research show, when white Americans believe themselves losing demographic and political control of the country, they become far more conservative.
Or, yanno, it's their ridiculous Socialist views that are getting them the attention they deserve.
But no... That would mean that women in America, particular minority women in positions of power, have a voice. That goes against everything that the Democrats stand for.
They're victims because they're women. They're victims because they're not white. They're victims even though they hold great positions of power and get paid the same as every old white male colleague.
They're eternally victims.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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