Ruy's insight is always way ahead of anyone else. I read this missive from comrade Walz - “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness" - and ran to check Mao's Little Red Book.
Walz's point here is that you shouldn't be afraid of something just because a word has been applied to it, because people don't agree about what the word means. For some people it means free school lunches and the postal service. For others it means slaughtering Kulaks in the Ukrainian snow. These things are either good or bad for different reasons. It doesn't tell you anything about them to just stop with labeling them both as socialist. It you think there is something wrong with feeding school children, say why. Don't just stop the conversation by saying this action is socialist.
The (fallacious) logical form of this argument seems to be some socialists feed school children, some socialists slaughter Kulaks, therefore all people who feed school children slaughter Kulaks.
The argument most market Republicans make is that expansionary government of all forms requires increases the violence capacity of the state. I do agree it's fallacious in nature.
The reality is expansionary government policies have not fully proven to end chronic poverty, but neither have market forces. The liberal middle is getting squeezed both from those who think every government plan is a nefarious plot to oppress the population and those that thing the government needs to expand because big business is exploiting the working class.
My analysis is that as we are rightly moving away from heteronormative standards it's created a socioeconomic turmoil partly due to declining birth rates and expansive social policies, and the combination of both requiring a reliance on large workforce to maintain a tax base that is only getting older. With that said, we are also living in the most technologically proficient world in human history and we are feeding far more people that ever before. So it shouldn't be all doom and gloom.
The *worst* thing Dems could do right now would be to tack to the "Joe Manchin center". That would totally alienate every potential young voter and POC now excited by the Harris/Walz campaign.
The voter file under 30 is highly polarized, more than any other demographic.
My analysis as to why is related to hetero intersexual dynamics. The social order want to promote the achievement of young women in the workforce, and women are outperforming men academically for the last decade. Yet at the same time, women naturally want better.
I'm more inclined to support dual-mating strategy over mate-switching hypothesis, however, for young men seeking a long term partner they are getting tired for the hypocrisy of liberating women from their traditional roles, while expecting men to embrace the traditional roles if they want heterosexual relationships.
Liberals will need to decide if they want to hold young women accountable for their new liberation or forever lose a generation of men.
Because Harris is progressive (very) I do not support her. I don't support packing the courts and changing the courts forever because they can't wait their turn like everyone else, so I was terrified she would pick Shapiro. Now, it doesn't matter how much signaling she does, they are running for the progressive left. I think that's their strategy. They aren't really interested in the center.
I think Harris will adopt any position that looks like it will win. The progressives tend to be politically involved, and may therefore be more likely than other Dems to know Harris's history of adopting radical positions. The rest of the Dems generally know little or nothing about the candidates or most of the actions they have taken in the past 15 years to erode our constitutionally protected freedoms and rights. The Dems I interact with believe everything they hear on Dem media and intentionally avoid exposing themselves to other viewpoints.
What do you consider to be other viewpoints? Fox News, whose top executives have admitted under oath that they didn't believe anything they said about the 2020 election?
There are hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and more in other countries. Each person has a point of view. The majority of them are not carbon copies of the Democrat Party line.
I can't argue with that, but what's your point? I understood this thread to be about news sources. What news sources do you consider to be more reliable than what you call "Dem media"? (Said media including writers like Bret Stephens, Victor Hansen, Mark Theisen etc.)
My first point earlier is that I think that Kamala Harris might be a woke DEI extremist, and the impression that Democrats are moving even half-heartedly to the center (title of this article) has been created partly by Harris pretending to modify her previous positions. Democratic media are also performing their usual role of doing whatever the Party wants them to do, namely get Harris elected before the voters have an opportunity to learn about any policies she actually plans to implement. My third point is that the Democrats I come into contact with "trust" the media that they have been listening to (NPR) and watching (CNN, MSNBC) for decades. They refuse to expose themselves to any other sources of information, whether it be news media or opinions of other individuals that are not pre-approved by the Party. And due to the incredible levels of censorship by the Biden administration and the various orgs within the U.S. "intelligence community," there is a lot of unfolding history that is not covered at all on any mainstream news media. The Democratic Party suppresses news about violations of Americans rights to free speech and a free press. Until Kamala Harris, her handlers, the intelligence "services," the Democratic Party, and the NYT, WaPo, etc. admit that they are intentionally and cynically surveilling and censoring Americans, my operating belief will be that they are all lying.
With respect to news sources I read the Liberal Patriot, but more so I read Substacks by Matt Taibbi, Kara Dansky, Shellenberger, Nate Silver, Colin Wright and others, and also check out CNN (but with great skepticism), the New York Post, and occasionally Fox (with similar skepticism). I read Glenn Greenwald, but I didn't have enough time to read everybody. For news of the extreme woke Democrats I get far more than I want from my local news org and the people I interact with daily. The local media spew out a lot of extreme woke propaganda, but they do also print letters to the editor that criticize actions of the city government and alternate views of controversies. There is a local resistance movement, and there are at least a couple of Substacks that provide more facts and dissenting opinions about what goes on here.
I don't believe anything I read in the corporate media (that includes all cable shows). I get my news from Substack and look for writers that list sources and present some kind of balance.
I'm sorry. I just saw this. If you look it up, you will find that a judge said the exact same thing about Maddow as was said about Tucker. I don't watch FOX or MSNBC ever. I get my news from people who have broken the stories that others wouldn't and have been proved correct. However, I read NY Post, WSJ, NYT, Senator, Compact, Discourse, Just the News, and sometimes Politico. I sometimes watch a clip or two from CNN. I read from the very left (Freddie Deboar) to the middle Racket, The Liberal Patriot, The Free Press, Andrew Sullivan and others and the right (Sasha Stone, Elon Musk, Yuri Bezmenov, and a few others) I listen to Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Matt Orfalea, Bill Maher, Tucker Carlson (depending on who he is interviewing), Ruy Texiera, etc. I am terrified of being brainwashed or manipulated or getting stuck in a bubble, so I make sure to get as much as I can from everywhere. And, if I catch a lie twice, I'm out. I don't understand people who continue to find out they were lied to choosing to trust the same people who misinformed them.
"If you look it up, you will find that a judge said the exact same thing about Maddow as was said about Tucker." How can I possibiy "look it up" when you don't give me the name of the judge or anything about the quote which was allegedly the same?
Good analysis. But the entire problem with Tampon Timmy is that now the (Minnesota-contained) dirt on him is coming out, big time. He IS viewed as a radical prog who is a threat so most rural voters, whether in WI or MN. Moreover, non-Trump elections in WI saw evangelicals stay home. But Trump elections saw them turn out---not as high in 2020 as 2016. I'd bet dollars to a Bill's Donut that they turn out even higher this election.
How exactly are tampons in the Men's room a threat? Are you afraid they are going to jump out of the vending machine and slither up your posterior? I think putting them there is an empty performative gesture. But I think it's equal silly to make them a decisive factor in your choice of President.
Just read an article in the Washington Post about the Tampon Tim "scandal". When I wrote my previous post, I had assumed that the tea pot that held this tempest was Walz making some public announcement or executive order or statute that high school men rooms will henceforth provide Tampons for Trans boys. In fact this was an item added to the budget by the Minnesota legislature, along with hundreds of other items, which Walz signed when they placed it on his desk. Thus the only way Walz could avoid the Tampon Tim label was to veto the entire bill and send it back to the Minnesota legislature until the offending clause was removed. Frankly, anybody who did something like that would have to be kind of weird. If this is the big time Minnesota dirt that Larry is foretelling, I don't think Walz has much to worry about.
A moderately liberal Democrat - or a moderately conservative Republican not named Trump - would be running away with this race. I make up a football example to illustrate the point.
Imagine the Super Bowl is being played this Sunday. The starting quarterbacks for the opposing teams are Tom Brady (in his prime) and Aaron Rodgers (in his prime). But both head coaches decline to play their star QBs. If Brady's coach plays Brady, Brady's team wins easily if Rodgers doesn't play; and vice versa. But neither coach plays his star QB, just as neither major party has nominated its strongest general election candidate. American electoral dynamics are very strange.
There is no 'perfect' candidate, but I think Tulsi Gabbard would have been competitive. BTW, where in corporate media can I read how/why the Biden/Harris admin has placed her on a terror watch list?
As a matter of political reality, the U.S. already has a substantial degree of socialism, most of which is supported by people like me who are not extreme libertarians. Think Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, free primary and secondary education, and progressive taxation (at least at the federal level). But unlike the most extreme forms of socialism, it also has a vibrant market economy. So, without further clarification, I don’t reflexively label “socialism” as being good or bad. But enough is enough, and when I hear ever more of it being promoted by the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party and fellow travelers like Bernie Sanders, I am totally turned off by the thought of their gaining even more power, and in the process stoking the backlash exemplified by Trump and Vance.
I wish it were possible to like only part of a comment. Everything but the last sentence is spot on. It's very similar to my comment above. But the last sentence seems unnecessarily alarmist and vague to me. Thanks to Manchin, the so-called socialists have only managed to pass a small sliver of what they wanted, and only that much because Biden is such a skilled negotiator. I would say you can't really evaluate policy by measuring socialism as some sort of homogeneous quantity which must be added sparingly to the governmental recipe. Each 'socialist' element is very different from the others, and they need to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
Another popular fallacy: If you sneer at a claim, you have proven it to be false. I still want to know what Walz has done which makes him too progressive.
So what do you really want, Ruy? Should Harris/Walz strive for a "Sister Souljah" moment, where they give a big middle finger to some "leftish" cause?
I'm pretty surprised that you think the Dems ought to be more like ten hated centrist, Joe Manchin? How many national political campaigns have you run. Ruy, and how many led to victory?
I haven't seen this much energy from a Dem Presidential campaign since Obama 2008. I cannot understand why Ruy seems to want to compel a step towards a vanishing center and re-alienate millions of potential young voters and POC.
The media keeps reminding us that there's "only" 90 more days until Election 2024. In reality, the Harris-Walz political operatives are probably seeing that as a lifetime, given all that is coming out about Harris's public record and, now, Walz's even more problematic record of Leftist weirdness. No thanks of course to most of the lamestream media still serving less as journalists than as Democratic campaign aides. Let's face it, 90 days is a long time when you have lots to hide, and most of which has and will come out despite the media cheerleading and professional malpractice.
The problem with moving to the center is that nobody knows where the center is anymore. You say, ,I think correctly, in one of your earlier articles, {https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-gops-big-working-class-bet?} that the Republicans are now taking all sorts of positions that used to be thought of as being liberal. So if these positions are getting more votes for the Republicans why should the Democrats abandon them? Should the Democrats now take the Republican position of pulling out of the Ukraine? Would that make them closer to the center? As a former protestor against the Vietnam and Iraq wars, it seems weird to me to call an Anti-War position more conservative. Should the Democrats now start offering to cut Social Security and Medicare, now that the Republicans have promised to keep them? That might get a few votes from the Pence Republicans, who now probably number in the high triple digits. But the Trumplicans, who have now completely taken over the party, will stick with their winning combination of Xenophobia and social welfare entitlements.
I think the position we have to take is Realitarian. If a claim is backed up by evidence and sound arguments it is prudent to assume it is true until proven otherwise. This may seem too obvious to need stating, but it is the exact opposite of Trumplican Orthodoxy. Trump asserted recently that no one was killed on January 6th, even though Tucker Carlson, (their own source) showed somebody killed on Video that was seen by millions of Trump supporters. In the Trump universe, belief is not only completely unhinged from reality, it doesn't even have to be internally consistent.
However, if you are going to be a Realitarian, you have to be willing to consider the possibility that the facts might contradict your beliefs. Neither the Left nor the Right is very good at this right now. What Ruy calls the Cultural left says that you can refute somebody else's position by saying that it insults you and/or your identity group. People on "the Right" make a similar claim when they dismiss an idea by saying it is socialist. Both assertions shut down argument or any appeal to evidence. And so does any attempt to defend a position just because it is "moderate" or in the center. Molly Ivins once said that there was nothing in the middle of the road but yellow streaks and dead armadillos. But these days there is literally nothing in the center at all. Or more accurately the center doesn't even exist as a location, so trying to put yourself there is a doomed self-contradictory enterprise.
The Democratic candidates for Senate in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin are all ahead in the polls and eager to campaign with the Harris/Walz team. The change in the landscape is way more than half-hearted.
Maybe so, but how much do voters really care about who is VP? They mostly do nothing and whatever they are in fact doing is concealed by their own parties.
It's one of those elections where the top of the ticket is not articulate nor well liked in either party and so a VP that was competent, qualified, and not progressive nor paleoconservative would be useful.
Ruy's insight is always way ahead of anyone else. I read this missive from comrade Walz - “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness" - and ran to check Mao's Little Red Book.
Walz's point here is that you shouldn't be afraid of something just because a word has been applied to it, because people don't agree about what the word means. For some people it means free school lunches and the postal service. For others it means slaughtering Kulaks in the Ukrainian snow. These things are either good or bad for different reasons. It doesn't tell you anything about them to just stop with labeling them both as socialist. It you think there is something wrong with feeding school children, say why. Don't just stop the conversation by saying this action is socialist.
The (fallacious) logical form of this argument seems to be some socialists feed school children, some socialists slaughter Kulaks, therefore all people who feed school children slaughter Kulaks.
The argument most market Republicans make is that expansionary government of all forms requires increases the violence capacity of the state. I do agree it's fallacious in nature.
The reality is expansionary government policies have not fully proven to end chronic poverty, but neither have market forces. The liberal middle is getting squeezed both from those who think every government plan is a nefarious plot to oppress the population and those that thing the government needs to expand because big business is exploiting the working class.
My analysis is that as we are rightly moving away from heteronormative standards it's created a socioeconomic turmoil partly due to declining birth rates and expansive social policies, and the combination of both requiring a reliance on large workforce to maintain a tax base that is only getting older. With that said, we are also living in the most technologically proficient world in human history and we are feeding far more people that ever before. So it shouldn't be all doom and gloom.
The *worst* thing Dems could do right now would be to tack to the "Joe Manchin center". That would totally alienate every potential young voter and POC now excited by the Harris/Walz campaign.
The voter file under 30 is highly polarized, more than any other demographic.
My analysis as to why is related to hetero intersexual dynamics. The social order want to promote the achievement of young women in the workforce, and women are outperforming men academically for the last decade. Yet at the same time, women naturally want better.
I'm more inclined to support dual-mating strategy over mate-switching hypothesis, however, for young men seeking a long term partner they are getting tired for the hypocrisy of liberating women from their traditional roles, while expecting men to embrace the traditional roles if they want heterosexual relationships.
Liberals will need to decide if they want to hold young women accountable for their new liberation or forever lose a generation of men.
Because Harris is progressive (very) I do not support her. I don't support packing the courts and changing the courts forever because they can't wait their turn like everyone else, so I was terrified she would pick Shapiro. Now, it doesn't matter how much signaling she does, they are running for the progressive left. I think that's their strategy. They aren't really interested in the center.
I think Harris will adopt any position that looks like it will win. The progressives tend to be politically involved, and may therefore be more likely than other Dems to know Harris's history of adopting radical positions. The rest of the Dems generally know little or nothing about the candidates or most of the actions they have taken in the past 15 years to erode our constitutionally protected freedoms and rights. The Dems I interact with believe everything they hear on Dem media and intentionally avoid exposing themselves to other viewpoints.
What do you consider to be other viewpoints? Fox News, whose top executives have admitted under oath that they didn't believe anything they said about the 2020 election?
There are hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and more in other countries. Each person has a point of view. The majority of them are not carbon copies of the Democrat Party line.
I can't argue with that, but what's your point? I understood this thread to be about news sources. What news sources do you consider to be more reliable than what you call "Dem media"? (Said media including writers like Bret Stephens, Victor Hansen, Mark Theisen etc.)
My first point earlier is that I think that Kamala Harris might be a woke DEI extremist, and the impression that Democrats are moving even half-heartedly to the center (title of this article) has been created partly by Harris pretending to modify her previous positions. Democratic media are also performing their usual role of doing whatever the Party wants them to do, namely get Harris elected before the voters have an opportunity to learn about any policies she actually plans to implement. My third point is that the Democrats I come into contact with "trust" the media that they have been listening to (NPR) and watching (CNN, MSNBC) for decades. They refuse to expose themselves to any other sources of information, whether it be news media or opinions of other individuals that are not pre-approved by the Party. And due to the incredible levels of censorship by the Biden administration and the various orgs within the U.S. "intelligence community," there is a lot of unfolding history that is not covered at all on any mainstream news media. The Democratic Party suppresses news about violations of Americans rights to free speech and a free press. Until Kamala Harris, her handlers, the intelligence "services," the Democratic Party, and the NYT, WaPo, etc. admit that they are intentionally and cynically surveilling and censoring Americans, my operating belief will be that they are all lying.
With respect to news sources I read the Liberal Patriot, but more so I read Substacks by Matt Taibbi, Kara Dansky, Shellenberger, Nate Silver, Colin Wright and others, and also check out CNN (but with great skepticism), the New York Post, and occasionally Fox (with similar skepticism). I read Glenn Greenwald, but I didn't have enough time to read everybody. For news of the extreme woke Democrats I get far more than I want from my local news org and the people I interact with daily. The local media spew out a lot of extreme woke propaganda, but they do also print letters to the editor that criticize actions of the city government and alternate views of controversies. There is a local resistance movement, and there are at least a couple of Substacks that provide more facts and dissenting opinions about what goes on here.
I don't believe anything I read in the corporate media (that includes all cable shows). I get my news from Substack and look for writers that list sources and present some kind of balance.
I'm sorry. I just saw this. If you look it up, you will find that a judge said the exact same thing about Maddow as was said about Tucker. I don't watch FOX or MSNBC ever. I get my news from people who have broken the stories that others wouldn't and have been proved correct. However, I read NY Post, WSJ, NYT, Senator, Compact, Discourse, Just the News, and sometimes Politico. I sometimes watch a clip or two from CNN. I read from the very left (Freddie Deboar) to the middle Racket, The Liberal Patriot, The Free Press, Andrew Sullivan and others and the right (Sasha Stone, Elon Musk, Yuri Bezmenov, and a few others) I listen to Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Matt Orfalea, Bill Maher, Tucker Carlson (depending on who he is interviewing), Ruy Texiera, etc. I am terrified of being brainwashed or manipulated or getting stuck in a bubble, so I make sure to get as much as I can from everywhere. And, if I catch a lie twice, I'm out. I don't understand people who continue to find out they were lied to choosing to trust the same people who misinformed them.
"If you look it up, you will find that a judge said the exact same thing about Maddow as was said about Tucker." How can I possibiy "look it up" when you don't give me the name of the judge or anything about the quote which was allegedly the same?
https://open.substack.com/pub/greenwald/p/a-court-ruled-rachel-maddows-viewers?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=b7l5e
It scares me that some our citizens vote when they aren't informed.
Well, the Democrats can rely on the media to keep them misinformed.
What would you consider to be a centrist position?
How about abortion at 3 months? How about being all in for the trans agenda, but only once children reach the age of majority?
Good analysis. But the entire problem with Tampon Timmy is that now the (Minnesota-contained) dirt on him is coming out, big time. He IS viewed as a radical prog who is a threat so most rural voters, whether in WI or MN. Moreover, non-Trump elections in WI saw evangelicals stay home. But Trump elections saw them turn out---not as high in 2020 as 2016. I'd bet dollars to a Bill's Donut that they turn out even higher this election.
How exactly are tampons in the Men's room a threat? Are you afraid they are going to jump out of the vending machine and slither up your posterior? I think putting them there is an empty performative gesture. But I think it's equal silly to make them a decisive factor in your choice of President.
Just read an article in the Washington Post about the Tampon Tim "scandal". When I wrote my previous post, I had assumed that the tea pot that held this tempest was Walz making some public announcement or executive order or statute that high school men rooms will henceforth provide Tampons for Trans boys. In fact this was an item added to the budget by the Minnesota legislature, along with hundreds of other items, which Walz signed when they placed it on his desk. Thus the only way Walz could avoid the Tampon Tim label was to veto the entire bill and send it back to the Minnesota legislature until the offending clause was removed. Frankly, anybody who did something like that would have to be kind of weird. If this is the big time Minnesota dirt that Larry is foretelling, I don't think Walz has much to worry about.
A moderately liberal Democrat - or a moderately conservative Republican not named Trump - would be running away with this race. I make up a football example to illustrate the point.
Imagine the Super Bowl is being played this Sunday. The starting quarterbacks for the opposing teams are Tom Brady (in his prime) and Aaron Rodgers (in his prime). But both head coaches decline to play their star QBs. If Brady's coach plays Brady, Brady's team wins easily if Rodgers doesn't play; and vice versa. But neither coach plays his star QB, just as neither major party has nominated its strongest general election candidate. American electoral dynamics are very strange.
Agree completely.
Who do you think is the strongest candidate for each party, The "star player" who would run away with this race?
There is no 'perfect' candidate, but I think Tulsi Gabbard would have been competitive. BTW, where in corporate media can I read how/why the Biden/Harris admin has placed her on a terror watch list?
Why do you have reason to believe that is true? Did you read it on Substack? If so, how do you know the writer didn't just make it up?
As a matter of political reality, the U.S. already has a substantial degree of socialism, most of which is supported by people like me who are not extreme libertarians. Think Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, free primary and secondary education, and progressive taxation (at least at the federal level). But unlike the most extreme forms of socialism, it also has a vibrant market economy. So, without further clarification, I don’t reflexively label “socialism” as being good or bad. But enough is enough, and when I hear ever more of it being promoted by the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party and fellow travelers like Bernie Sanders, I am totally turned off by the thought of their gaining even more power, and in the process stoking the backlash exemplified by Trump and Vance.
I wish it were possible to like only part of a comment. Everything but the last sentence is spot on. It's very similar to my comment above. But the last sentence seems unnecessarily alarmist and vague to me. Thanks to Manchin, the so-called socialists have only managed to pass a small sliver of what they wanted, and only that much because Biden is such a skilled negotiator. I would say you can't really evaluate policy by measuring socialism as some sort of homogeneous quantity which must be added sparingly to the governmental recipe. Each 'socialist' element is very different from the others, and they need to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
"ABT" but Walz is too progressive for me.
In what way is he too progressive? Do you have a problem with feeding school kids?
Oh brother. And he loves puppies.
Another popular fallacy: If you sneer at a claim, you have proven it to be false. I still want to know what Walz has done which makes him too progressive.
So what do you really want, Ruy? Should Harris/Walz strive for a "Sister Souljah" moment, where they give a big middle finger to some "leftish" cause?
I'm pretty surprised that you think the Dems ought to be more like ten hated centrist, Joe Manchin? How many national political campaigns have you run. Ruy, and how many led to victory?
I haven't seen this much energy from a Dem Presidential campaign since Obama 2008. I cannot understand why Ruy seems to want to compel a step towards a vanishing center and re-alienate millions of potential young voters and POC.
The media keeps reminding us that there's "only" 90 more days until Election 2024. In reality, the Harris-Walz political operatives are probably seeing that as a lifetime, given all that is coming out about Harris's public record and, now, Walz's even more problematic record of Leftist weirdness. No thanks of course to most of the lamestream media still serving less as journalists than as Democratic campaign aides. Let's face it, 90 days is a long time when you have lots to hide, and most of which has and will come out despite the media cheerleading and professional malpractice.
I'm going to keep asking this. What has Walz done that you call Leftist Weirdness?
The problem with moving to the center is that nobody knows where the center is anymore. You say, ,I think correctly, in one of your earlier articles, {https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-gops-big-working-class-bet?} that the Republicans are now taking all sorts of positions that used to be thought of as being liberal. So if these positions are getting more votes for the Republicans why should the Democrats abandon them? Should the Democrats now take the Republican position of pulling out of the Ukraine? Would that make them closer to the center? As a former protestor against the Vietnam and Iraq wars, it seems weird to me to call an Anti-War position more conservative. Should the Democrats now start offering to cut Social Security and Medicare, now that the Republicans have promised to keep them? That might get a few votes from the Pence Republicans, who now probably number in the high triple digits. But the Trumplicans, who have now completely taken over the party, will stick with their winning combination of Xenophobia and social welfare entitlements.
I think the position we have to take is Realitarian. If a claim is backed up by evidence and sound arguments it is prudent to assume it is true until proven otherwise. This may seem too obvious to need stating, but it is the exact opposite of Trumplican Orthodoxy. Trump asserted recently that no one was killed on January 6th, even though Tucker Carlson, (their own source) showed somebody killed on Video that was seen by millions of Trump supporters. In the Trump universe, belief is not only completely unhinged from reality, it doesn't even have to be internally consistent.
However, if you are going to be a Realitarian, you have to be willing to consider the possibility that the facts might contradict your beliefs. Neither the Left nor the Right is very good at this right now. What Ruy calls the Cultural left says that you can refute somebody else's position by saying that it insults you and/or your identity group. People on "the Right" make a similar claim when they dismiss an idea by saying it is socialist. Both assertions shut down argument or any appeal to evidence. And so does any attempt to defend a position just because it is "moderate" or in the center. Molly Ivins once said that there was nothing in the middle of the road but yellow streaks and dead armadillos. But these days there is literally nothing in the center at all. Or more accurately the center doesn't even exist as a location, so trying to put yourself there is a doomed self-contradictory enterprise.
The Democratic candidates for Senate in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin are all ahead in the polls and eager to campaign with the Harris/Walz team. The change in the landscape is way more than half-hearted.
perhaps both presidential candidates should call a Mulligan and choose different VP candidates now that we’ve vetted them.
Maybe so, but how much do voters really care about who is VP? They mostly do nothing and whatever they are in fact doing is concealed by their own parties.
It's one of those elections where the top of the ticket is not articulate nor well liked in either party and so a VP that was competent, qualified, and not progressive nor paleoconservative would be useful.
I can't see Trump sharing power for the good of the ticket. You sound more optimistic, however, than I am.
I’m voting Kennedy however
She can’t fool all the people all the time that she and her running mate aren’t extremists.
Moved to the middle?
And I can see Russia from my front porch.