This is one of the most hilarious cases of deflection I’ve seen here in a long time.
You: Centrist liberals typically side with the far right.
Me: Here are three prominent, recent examples of centrist liberals in major countries taking on the populist right in elections and winning.
You: But Gaza!
I missed this originally, but it's pretty funny. Imagine believing that domestic and foreign policy are separable in terms of determining fascist sympathies and tendencies.
French President Emmanuel Macron named a new government led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier Saturday, marked by a shift to the right 11 weeks after an inconclusive parliamentary election.
The first major task for Barnier, appointed just over two weeks ago, will be to submit a 2025 budget plan addressing France's financial situation, which the prime minister this week called "very serious".
Conservative Barnier is best known internationally for leading the European Union's Brexit negotiations with the UK
The Following User Says Thank You to rubecube For This Useful Post:
They haven't moved right, they've always had questionable foreign policy in the Middle East, that's a US consistency.
You will try and dismiss anything that hurts your narrative, but a black female candidate is a massive deal, not just aesthetic.
What you're essentially saying is you find the Democrats aren't really liberal enough for you and have too much in common with the right.
That's fine for you to have the perspective but it's not indicative of any shift to the right. That's America and they've always been that way.
I just don't get the need to pretend everyone else is moving to the extreme right to justify your own perspectives. Just own them without trying to put others in little boxes.
Last edited by Winsor_Pilates; 10-13-2024 at 08:29 PM.
They haven't moved right, they've always had questionable foreign policy in the Middle East, that's a US consistency.
You will try and dismiss anything that hurts your narrative, but a black female candidate is a massive deal, not just aesthetic.
What you're essentially saying is you find the Democrats aren't really liberal enough for you and have too much in common with the right.
That's fine for you to have the perspective but it's not indicative of any shift to the right. That's America and they've always been that way.
I just don't get the need to pretend everyone else is moving to the extreme right to justify your own perspectives. Just own them without trying to put others in little boxes.
So we're just ignoring what I said about immigration then?
They're perfectly liberal. That's the problem.
Also, how does having a black female candidate improve the life of the average voter? Can you explain the substantive policy changes that result from the race and gender of the candidate?
An 11-year-old girl read a letter to then-President Donald Trump; the Trump administration had deported her mother two years before. An undocumented mother recounted how she crossed the border illegally to seek better medical care for her baby daughter — “When we got to the river, I raised her above the water and we crossed,” she said on national TV. She wasn’t the first undocumented immigrant to address the DNC, but she was the first non-DREAMer — more controversially, someone who crossed the border as an adult.
Four years later, the DNC sounds a lot different, reflecting how public opinion toward immigration in general has soured as concerns over how secure the border is have risen. Gone are the heartfelt testimonies from undocumented immigrants, the repudiation of Trump-era policies, and the calls for better treatment of migrants and expansion of asylum protections. Instead, Wednesday evening’s speakers embraced tougher policies for asylum seekers, praised President Joe Biden’s attempts to negotiate a bipartisan border security bill, and conceded the changed reality of immigration politics since the pandemic’s dawn.
In other words, Democrats’ speeches on immigration and the border were drastically different than the ones at the conventions of 2012, 2016, or 2020 — because reality and the public’s feelings have changed drastically too.
Recent electoral results reveal a pronounced decline in the fortunes of Social Democratic parties. Much of the decline debate has revolved around their rightward policy shifts, which have turned Social Democrats away from their founding principle of equality in an age of increasing inequality. Thus, this article examines the interconnections of these major changes in the Western political economy. In doing so, it contributes to the identification of income inequality as a key mechanism moderating Social Democratic policy offerings and their support. It does so through aggregate-level election results and individual-level survey responses on a sample of 22 advanced democracies, over 336 elections, from 1965–2019. Results reveal that rightward economic movements of Social Democrats significantly reduce their vote share under higher levels of income inequality or when they are combined with rightward socio-cultural movements. The findings provide an important explanation for the pronounced electoral decline of Social Democratic parties.
So we're just ignoring what I said about immigration then?
You're dancing all over the place, I can't respond to everything and will focus only on the point I quoted.
They didn't move right to win votes against far right opponents.
That's the only point being addressed.
Quote:
They're perfectly liberal. That's the problem.
So we agree then. They haven't moved to the extreme right as you said, they're still liberal.
Quote:
Also, how does having a black female candidate improve the life of the average voter? Can you explain the substantive policy changes that result from the race and gender of the candidate?
Again, dancing all over the place.
Your statement was liberal governments are moving right which doesn't fit the democrats. Full stop; that's the only point I quoted.
I don't care if you think they're making empty promises, not helping people etc.
Running a black women when your goal is courting the extreme right voter (your argument) would be self defeatist.
Anyway, moving on.
You can have the last word or put out a bat signal your friends to come help you.
Have the Democratics moved more right?
They're running a black female for president; on a campaign largely focused on female reproductive rights, Healthcare for all and unity through diversity.
Supporting Israel and US policy around the Middle East has always been questionable, that's no new shift.
Not wholesale, no. But they've definitely moved right on some key issues. Immigration for one, both compared to recent years and longer term trends. For example, I doubt a Democratic President would even dream of giving illegal aliens amnesty like Ronald Reagan did in 1986. Harris is also promising tax cuts at a time when US revenue is already exceedingly low. And you didn't really see Obama or Clinton touting their gun credentials or talking up their history of being tough on crime like Harris has. And foreign policy is also more hawk-like than a lot of past Democratic administrations and candidates.
And yeah, they talk a lot about reproductive rights, but their promise boils down to maybe returning to the status quo from 50 years ago, if they can appoint enough justices. That's not really a progressive or transformative argument; it's ceding ground to the right wing because they've done a poor job of maintaining peoples' rights. So even when pushing what are historically left-wing policies, they're doing it in a conservative, defensive manner. Basically, they're letting Republicans dictate the conversation while acting as sort of small c conservatives trying to maintain the status quo from 10 years ago.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to opendoor For This Useful Post:
Centrist parties winning by moving to the right and adopting the policies of the extreme right, and in the process pushing the Overton window even further right, isn't the own you think it is, Cliff.
You're essentially making my point for me.
Which policies of the extreme right are these parties adopting?
I get it - you don’t like any party in the world that isn’t leftist. But this schtick of pretending that parties that aren’t leftist are all alike is weak. It’s the kind of purity-policing that keeps your lot from ever winning an election, and instead falling back on the delusion that you’re still achieving something by ‘shifting the discourse.’ Sorry, defeating the far right means engaging in the messy and unromantic work of electoral politics, not complaining on the internet.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
And the new PM is not from National Rally (Le Pen’s populist far right party). He’s from Les Republicains, a rebranding of the party that Jacques Chirac led for 12 years. Maybe neo-fascists to you, but in normie world a mainstream conservative party.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
Last edited by CliffFletcher; 10-14-2024 at 12:09 AM.
Not wholesale, no. But they've definitely moved right on some key issues. Immigration for one, both compared to recent years and longer term trends.
What timeframe are we looking at? Here’s Bill Clinton’s state of the union address in 1995:
Quote:
All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country...
The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more, by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens...
Hard to imagine any Democrat making those statements today.
As recently as 2005, there was little difference in the stance of Republicans and Democrats towards immigration. In the last decade, it’s Democrats who have changed most. If the Biden/Harris administration is making a course correction, it’s back towards the approach of the Obama years, which was itself much more liberal than under Clinton.
Democrats used to see immigration as a labour/economic issue, and the labour movement has historically regarded low-skilled immigration as a threat to wages and bargaining power. Until recently, border security was a bipartisan issue - the 2008 Democratic Party convention called for improved border security and hiring more border agents. It’s only in the last 10 years or so that Democrats have championed immigration as primarily a human rights issue.
To fix the system in a way that does not require us to revisit the same problem in twenty years, I continue to believe that we need stronger enforcement on the border and at the workplace. And that means a workable mandatory system that employers must use to verify the legality of their workers...
With regard to the most pressing part of the immigration challenge -- the 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. -- we must create an earned path to citizenship. Now, no one condones unauthorized entry into the United States. And by supporting an earned path to citizenship, I am not saying that illegal entry should go unpunished. The path to permanent residence and eventual citizenship must be tough enough to make it clear that an unauthorized entry was wrong and will be punished.
Very different from the way Democrats have been talking about the issue in recent years, when they became hostile to even couching the issue in terms of ‘legality,’ let alone vowing to punish unauthorized entry.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
Last edited by CliffFletcher; 10-14-2024 at 08:25 AM.
Which policies of the extreme right are these parties adopting?
I get it - you don’t like any party in the world that isn’t leftist. But this schtick of pretending that parties that aren’t leftist are all alike is weak. It’s the kind of purity-policing that keeps your lot from ever winning an election, and instead falling back on the delusion that you’re still achieving something by ‘shifting the discourse.’ Sorry, defeating the far right means engaging in the messy and unromantic work of electoral politics, not complaining on the internet.
AltaGuy has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000.
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: At le pub...
Exp:
I think that the fundamental move to the right by the Democrats was in the 90s under Clinton when the Democrats bought into NAFTA. Labour was fundamentally against the agreement, which did indeed speed up the gutting of the American working class. The Republicans - who had been the architects of free trade - were already entirely for it. Ross Perot was the most successful third party candidate in history because he was against it.
Chuck Schumer in 2016:
Quote:
For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.
If you want a return to tariffs and protectionist trade policies, Trump (and Le Pen, etc.) is your guy. Thankfully, there’s nobody in Canadian politics dumb enough to want to turn back the clock on free trade.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
AltaGuy has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000.
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: At le pub...
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
If you want a return to tariffs and protectionist trade policies, Trump (and Le Pen, etc.) is your guy. Thankfully, there’s nobody in Canadian politics dumb enough to want to turn back the clock on free trade.
Not really. Do you believe that? Trump will be bought by the highest bidder. Judging from Le Pen's legal troubles, she probably would be too.
None of the far-right populists actually care whether free trade is fair.
I think people in BC are more concerned with who will deal with the housing crisis, and, although I haven't checked every candidate running, I'm also pretty sure none of the candidates were part of a dictatorship in 1940s Germany.
I think people in BC are more concerned with who will deal with the housing crisis, and, although I haven't checked every candidate running, I'm also pretty sure none of the candidates were part of a dictatorship in 1940s Germany.
Great discussion guys!
What if they cloned him though? And called him Dave Hitler?
'Dave' is a lot less intimidating than 'Adolf.'
__________________ The Beatings Shall Continue Until Morale Improves!
This Post Has Been Distilled for the Eradication of Seemingly Incurable Sadness.
The World Ends when you're dead. Until then, you've got more punishment in store. - Flames Fans
If you thought this season would have a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.
I think people in BC are more concerned with who will deal with the housing crisis, and, although I haven't checked every candidate running, I'm also pretty sure none of the candidates were part of a dictatorship in 1940s Germany.
Great discussion guys!
What will people from BC do without a reserved space on CalgaryPuck to talk about their problems?
