Was liberalism rejected in the midterms?

eohrnberger said:

I think you are discounting how serious these skeletons in her closet are, not to mention her failed performance as SOS.

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While I'm not especially thrilled with her, the "skeletons" will be some manufactured crap ("what difference does it make?") and pictures of her looking frumpy.

Cardinal said:

I just don't see it, but okay.



The republicans have done themselves in by isolating themselves demographically, which is why you're going to see an epic, continued push for voter ids in the coming years.

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Voter ID is a violation of the right to vote in my view. I'm hoping that it gets more and more flack and it won't fly at all in California and some other states. And I think that you're right about Republican demographics. I think it's still based on the old 19th century "political machine" for immigrants however in my view the advantages have slipped from good jobs and a place to live to a broader economic aid situation; medical included, that I don't like one bit. Noncitizens should have to work, but of course both parties have nearly stripped this country of good paying day to day jobs that the backbone of the country supported itself with.

I wnet in to vote the other day, and I picked up an "I Voted" sticker and just put it on my shirt pocket without looking at it: turned out it was in Vietnamese...

man

jet57 said:

I think that the only ones that are going to care about any skeletons will be the Republicans, Fox News and right-wing radio. Nobody's perfect. I think that she has to offer is going to be a lot more different than the usual right-wing.

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What does Hillary have to offer? Seriously. If two years from now, Obama is just as unpopular as he is today, how does Hillary differentiate herself from him? How does she excite the electorate? Sorry, but Hillary is as old-guard as McCain was in 2008. And will likely suffer the same fate.

eohrnberger said:

I think you are discounting how serious these skeletons in her closet are, not to mention her failed performance as SOS.

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She didn't fail as SOS. And again, when it comes to the field, nobody's gonna care about Hillary's goofings.

Fletch said:

What does Hillary have to offer? Seriously. If two years from now, Obama is just as unpopular as he is today, how does Hillary differentiate herself from him? How does she excite the electorate? Sorry, but Hillary is as old-guard as McCain was in 2008. And will likely suffer the same fate.

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I think that Hillary's not going to care what the right-wing thinks. I think she's going to blow her agenda through the door with teh same ferver as FDR had. THAT was Obama's failing: he tried to be goodie two-shoes about it.

Hatuey said:

Your hyperbole is noted. However, even Libertarian scholars agree that a society with large amounts of poverty leads to anomie. :shrug:

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Is it really hyperbole when my property is taken by force and later given to people in need? Why is it justified to take my property against my will to help George when the government is the party doing it, but not justified when anyone else takes my property against my will to help George? Anyway, I don't see what libertarian scholars agreeing with has to do with anything.

jet57 said:

I think that Hillary's not going to care what the right-wing thinks. I think she's going to blow her agenda through the door with teh same ferver as FDR had. THAT was Obama's failing: he tried to be goodie two-shoes about it.

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That's not what I asked, but it does lead to another question though. What agenda does she have that is going to blow through the door?

dogtowner said:

I am an American and I say yes.

Economic ? Failed. Change.
Foreign ? Failed. Change.
Domestic ? Failed. Change.

Only liberals in the fringe can fail to see this being willfully ignorant.

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Economic failed? really? when unemployment rate is under 6%, stock market is booming, deficit has been cut in half? What do you WANT?

Foreign - I'd give a C grade, not fail

Domestic - not sure what you mean by this. There are so many issues under this.

Hatuey said:

Ah - what indications do you have that liberal programs have failed?

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"In November 2012 the U.S. Census Bureau said more than 16% of the population lived in poverty, including almost 20% of American children,[7] up from 14.3% (approximately 43.6 million) in 2009 and to its highest level since 1993. In 2008, 13.2% (39.8 million) Americans lived in poverty.[8] Starting in the 1980s, relative poverty rates have consistently exceeded those of other wealthy nations.[9] California has a poverty rate of 23.5%, the highest of any state in the country.[10]

In 2009 the number of people who were in poverty was approaching 1960s levels that led to the national War on Poverty.[11] In 2011 extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, was double 1996 levels at 1.5 million households, including 2.8 million children.[12] This would be roughly 1.2% of the US population in 2011, presuming a mean household size of 2.55 people. Census data for 2011 showed that half the population qualified as low income.[13]

In 2011, child poverty reached record high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels.[14] A 2013 UNICEF report ranked the U.S. as having the second highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world.[15]"


That's from WIKI. The bolded part alone demonstrates the failure of the war on poverty.

jet57 said:

I think that the only ones that are going to care about any skeletons will be the Republicans, Fox News and right-wing radio. Nobody's perfect. I think that she has to offer is going to be a lot more different than the usual right-wing.

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Hillary is nothing more or less than a left wing representative of establishment status quo. Hillary is very much in bed with Big Business, old Washington establishment, and even the military/industrial complex. When you get Hillary you get the good old boy/girl network and the favors, and the back channel short cuts and all the inside staffers and advisors and paybacks and all the semi-royal wheeling and dealing that has, is, and will be, ****ing over everyday Americans for decades. Why in the world anyone would want another Clinton, Bush, Paul, Kennedy or any other family member of political careerist families is completely beyond me.

God help us if the best Democrats and America can come up with is Hillary Clinton.

eohrnberger said:

I think it's far too early to say that Hillary's going to be a shoe in, and in addition to that, she's got an incredibly long and heavy caboose of skeletons in her closet she's gotta drag across the finish line; finally she's going to be quite a bit beyond the media age when most presidential candidates run for the presidency. All that, doesn't seem to me, to add up to being 'a shoe-in'.

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Just a minor point - it's "shoo-in" not "shoe-in"

More major - there is no other Democrat stepping up who can challenge Clinton; and on the Republican side, I see only Jeb Bush (if he decides to run) and Susanna Martinez (who has said she doesn't want to run) as people who might beat her. Not sure either would get through the Republican primaries, and Bush has a lot of baggage in his name as well.

Hillary Clinton did a good job as NY Senator and as Secretary of State. She's too conservative for me; she's even more conservative than Pres. Obama, who is a centrist himself; but I would vote for her over any of the likely Republican candidates at this point.

Fletch said:

What does Hillary have to offer? Seriously. If two years from now, Obama is just as unpopular as he is today, how does Hillary differentiate herself from him? How does she excite the electorate? Sorry, but Hillary is as old-guard as McCain was in 2008. And will likely suffer the same fate.

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I'm in a very conservative county. Our Democratic club had a booth at the County Fair. We sold ALL of the Hillary buttons we had. There is a LOT of excitement about her candidacy out here.

US Conservative said:

So a handful of initiatives that passed in lefty states, while the dems lost House, Senate, and Governorship's was "fine"?

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Yes, that noted "lefty state" of Arkansas, which is now represented entirely by Republicans.

I don't think you could miss the point more if you tried.

paddymcdougall said:

I'm in a very conservative county. Our Democratic club had a booth at the County Fair. We sold ALL of the Hillary buttons we had. There is a LOT of excitement about her candidacy out here.

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If you say so.

Henrin said:

Is it really hyperbole when my property is taken by force and later given to people in need? Why is it justified to take my property against my will to help George when the government is the party doing it, but not justified when anyone else takes my property against my will to help George? Anyway, I don't see what libertarian scholars agreeing with has to do with anything.

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By force, what nonsense. You live in a society of laws. You don't like those laws? You're under absolutely no obligation to live within it. :shrug:

Hatuey said:

And yet, we've never been richer as a society. Or do you think we were better off before the 1960s? Please tell me you do.

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Greetings, Hatueuy. :2wave:

I disagree that we have never been richer as a society than we are today. In the years after WW2 ended, we became the center of manufacturing for the entire world. The pent-up demand for goods exploded in the US, and the City of Detroit was one of the beneficiaries , becoming the greatest manufacturing city on the entire planet, with the highest per capita income in the United States. Today, it's a national disgrace. We have fewer Americans working in manufacturing than we did in the 50s, although our population has more than doubled. As a result, nine out of the top ten occupations in America pay less than $35,000 a year.

Prior to the 60s, there were not 50 million people on food stamps; and millions of others relying on government Section 8 to help them pay for a place to live, many of them in ghettos. We are subsidizing school lunches to ensure children have enough to eat, and some districts are even sending children home over the weekend with pack-packs of food to ensure they don't go hungry.

While I agree that some are more wealthy today, the average American is not. For a long time, US consumers attempted to keep up their middle-class lifestyles by going into increasing amounts of debt, but they are tapped out, and the middle class is slowly shrinking. In response. retailers are closing thousands of stores across the country, and those jobs are gone.

Bottom line, at least from what I see, we are not better off today than we were in the 60s, and I'm sad to see it.

Hatuey said:

By force, what nonsense. You live in a society of laws. You don't like those laws? You're under absolutely no obligation to live within it. :shrug:

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:roll:

The combination of liberalism, socialism, obamaism was rejected in that election. The phony bull**** in Ferguson, Missouri didn't hurt the conservative cause either. People are sick to death of that crap. Too bad it couldn't have happened in 2012.

Henrin said:

Tell me though, how is a product actually legal when you can only sell it using legally approved channels?

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By that idiotic rationale, alcohol isn't "actually legal."

Kobie said:

Yes, that noted "lefty state" of Arkansas, which is now represented entirely by Republicans.

I don't think you could miss the point more if you tried.

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I dont believe you stated this was in AK, but in any case it was a drop in the bucket, Kobie. A drop in the bucket.

Kobie said:

By that idiotic rationale, alcohol isn't "actually legal."

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If the only way you can sell a product is to use government approved channels that are taxed and regulated is the product actually decriminalized or did the government just figure out a way to control and tax the product? If someone can still get arrested for selling the product not in a government approved manner is the product actually decriminalized? No, it's not.

Do you think that is freedom? Well, I say it's authoritarian bull****.

Fletch said:

"In November 2012 the U.S. Census Bureau said more than 16% of the population lived in poverty, including almost 20% of American children,[7] up from 14.3% (approximately 43.6 million) in 2009 and to its highest level since 1993. In 2008, 13.2% (39.8 million) Americans lived in poverty.[8] Starting in the 1980s, relative poverty rates have consistently exceeded those of other wealthy nations.[9] California has a poverty rate of 23.5%, the highest of any state in the country.[10]

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Poverty in America: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

Daniel Slesnick found, using consumption spending, that the poverty rate fell from 31 percent in 1949 to 13 percent in 1965 and to 2 percent at the end of the 1980s. One rough indicator of the decline in poverty is the range of items that most poor homes now contain—from color TVs to VCRs to washing machines to microwaves—compared with the relative lack of these items in poor homes in the early 1970s.10

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In 2009 the number of people who were in poverty was approaching 1960s levels that led to the national War on Poverty.[11] In 2011 extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, was double 1996 levels at 1.5 million households, including 2.8 million children.[12] This would be roughly 1.2% of the US population in 2011, presuming a mean household size of 2.55 people. Census data for 2011 showed that half the population qualified as low income.[13]

In 2011, child poverty reached record high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels.[14] A 2013 UNICEF report ranked the U.S. as having the second highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world.[15]"

That's from WIKI. The bolded part alone demonstrates the failure of the war on poverty.

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Poverty in America: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

According to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate declined from 22.2 percent in 1960 to 12.6 percent in 2005. Most of this decline occurred in the 1960s. By 1970, the poverty rate had fallen to the current level of 12.6 percent. It then hovered between 11 and 13 percent in the 1970s, fluctuating primarily with the state of the economy.11 A longer-term perspective leaves a more positive impression. For example, according to one estimate by Christine Ross, Sheldon Danziger, and Eugene Smolensky, more than two-thirds of the population in 1939 was poor by today’s standards.12

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Poverty

The population in poverty was approximately 45% in 1870, it declined to around 30% by 1910, only to reach about 45% again in the mid 1930’s and decline again to near the 30% mark by the early 1950’s (Ornati 1955; Hurst 2004).

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Poverty data based on an official government definition was first collected for 1959. Using that measure (discussed below),

The U.S. poverty rate fell significantly from 22% to 12% between 1959 and 1969. Since that time, according the 2000 Census figures, the poverty rate decreased from 13.1% in 1989 to 12.4% in 1999.

Today the national poverty rate is about what it was in the mid-1970’s and half the rate of 1959 (Hurst 2004).

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You honestly have no clue what it is you're discussing. Raw numbers don't paint an image of anything. In raw numbers, we have more people living in poverty because we've also tripled our population in the last 100 years. However, in the general scope of things even the children living in poverty have daily access to food, shelter and basic social necessities. So again, not only is your understanding of the poverty alleviated flawed, it completely ignores how these things are measured to begin with.

No. But the output of the persuasion scientists was swallowed hook, line and sinker.

Hatuey said:

You honestly have no clue what it is you're discussing. Raw numbers don't paint an image of anything. In raw numbers, we have more people living in poverty because we've also tripled our population in the last 100 years. However, in the general scope of things even the children living in poverty have daily access to food, shelter and basic social necessities. So again, not only is your understanding of the poverty alleviated flawed, it completely ignores how these things are measured to begin with.

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If people are better of why do most households require both parents to work to make ends meet? Sorry, I just love flipping liberal arguments. The great thing about general arguments like this is that they are easy to flip.

polgara said:

Greetings, Hatueuy. :2wave:

I disagree that we have never been richer as a society than we are today. In the years after WW2 ended, we became the center of manufacturing for the entire world. The pent-up demand for goods exploded in the US, and the City of Detroit was one of the beneficiaries , becoming the greatest manufacturing city on the entire planet, with the highest per capita income in the United States. Today, it's a national disgrace. We have fewer Americans working in manufacturing than we did in the 50s, although our population has more than doubled. As a result, nine out of the top ten occupations in America pay less than $35,000 a year.

Prior to the 60s, there were not 50 million people on food stamps; and millions of others relying on government Section 8 to help them pay for a place to live, many of them in ghettos. We are subsidizing school lunches to ensure children have enough to eat, and some districts are even sending children home over the weekend with pack-packs of food to ensure they don't go hungry.

While I agree that some are more wealthy today, the average American is not. For a long time, US consumers attempted to keep up their middle-class lifestyles by going into increasing amounts of debt, but they are tapped out, and the middle class is slowly shrinking. In response. retailers are closing thousands of stores across the country, and those jobs are gone.

Bottom line, at least from what I see, we are not better off today than we were in the 60s, and I'm sad to see it.

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I think you should look at it from the point of necessity. Are our poor actually poor? Can we call them "poor" when they have purchasing power that exceeds or matches that of virtually any country dealing with the global recession? Can our poor be considered poor when they have cellphones, access to the internet and cheap restaurants with more nutritional value than whatever you're bound to find in 3rd world countries? Of course not. This myth that we've somehow become poorer is just that. It's a myth. The poor in the 1950s couldn't afford televisions, they couldn't afford vehicles or for that matter anything the working class could. Today? They can.

As for the second part of your post, it has absolutely nothing to do with social programs. It has to do with the 'free market' giving credit to anyone who asked for it for whatever reason. That's an entirely different discussion. People wanted to buy on credit and they ignored frugality in search of the proverbial American Dream.