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[smjjames]

Your core mistake is assuming that the Democrats are a "liberal" party. Liberal by US standards, perhaps, but certainly well to the right of most of the major "liberal" parties in Europe and elsewhere when it comes to economic policy. Hell, they're to the right of many European conservative parties on economic issues.

As a nation, we've been scared off of any substantial shifts to the Left for decades because Socialism became a dirty word. But we've apparently made our peace with Fascism, because a disturbingly large number of people are totes okay with a hard shift to the Right.

Seemed more like a shift towards TheoFascism due to all the religious nuts. Back in 2012, Santorum was pretty far to the right, then the Tea Partiers came and he's a bit less far to the right, and then Trump. Also, Europe is going through a similar shift to the far right.

As for the democrafts chasing after the republicans, I don't really see them moving off the 'centrist' to the right, seems more like the democrats trying to stay close to the middle while the republicans widen the gap.

[mainiac]

It's a bit of an exageration to say that the democrats aren't liberals.  The centrist sellout PPI for instance also favors a carbon tax, the AMT, the EITC and immigration reform*.  Basically they are fighting the last war, these are the positions they staked out when Obama was running.

*(of course this immigration reform called for favoring high skilled immigration over low skilled immigration along with the general strategy of bring them out of the shadows.  This puts them squarely in line with the supposed "left" not just in the US but also in europe.  Because liberal hearts stop bleeding when it's an issue of immigration or free trade helping poor people.)

[DragonDePlatino]

So Last Week Tonight's segment on youtube this week is about the Border Wall (and the existing border fence built by George W Bush).

That was fantastic. John Oliver really put the idiocracy of the wall in some simple terms.

[smjjames]

So Last Week Tonight's segment on youtube this week is about the Border Wall (and the existing border fence built by George W Bush).

That was fantastic. John Oliver really put the idiocracy of the wall in some simple terms.

Youtube captions suck.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/trump-campaign-manager-faces-new-allegations-of-pushing-sexu#.yymXb7PQK1

Yeesh is kind of my only response to this...

Trump is either oblivious to the whole thing, is willfully ignorant, or he knows and doesn't give a damn.

[MarcAFK]

Nixon was more liberal than today's democrats. Apart from the whole Vietnam thing.

[hector13]

Nixon was more liberal than today's democrats. Apart from the whole Vietnam thing.

And the mixed-race babies thing...

[Shadowlord]

It probably helps make things clearer to say what kind of liberalism you mean*. Like socially liberal (civil rights, women's rights, "gay rights," and so on)? Economically (libertarian capitalist to socialist etc)? Or Anti-Authoritarian?

* I realize that I did not do that in my last post either.

[Descan]

... Why the quotation marks?

[Shadowlord]

Because that term is outdated, although you probably read it as scare quotes, which wasn't my intention.

[Strife26]

Nixon was more liberal than today's democrats. Apart from the whole Vietnam thing.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution 
29/50 Democratic Senators and 82/209 Democratic Representatives voted for the current generation's Nam.

[Shadowlord]

But how can you vote against stopping Saddam from giving nukes to Al Qaida!? Think of the children!

[smjjames]

I wouldn't say that it's a 'Nam in terms of body count (then again, injuries that wouldn't be survivable in the 60's/70's are potentially survivable today), but in terms of it being a mistake and clusterfuck, yes.

[Shadowlord]

That Wikipedia page, interestingly, says it was only about enforcing UN resolutions - the bill said nothing about war, if you want to believe Wikipedia.

Correct me if I'm wrong: Iirc Colin Powell tried to convince the UN that Saddam had a new WMD program, the UN didn't buy it and told us to go away, and Bush went "You're either with us or you're against us" (but didn't invade New York to take control of the UN :V), and then invaded on the basis which was in my last post. Wikipedia called it "pre-emptive self defense," except we were never in any danger from Iraq until we knocked Saddam over.

[Wolfhunter107]

Donald Trump finally names foreign policy advisors

[mainiac]

Nixon was more liberal than today's democrats. Apart from the whole Vietnam thing.

And the Cambodia thing...
Or sabotaging the 1968 peace talks because war was good politics...
Or that whole coup in Chile that we were just arguing about...

But I'm guessing you mean his domestic policies where he supported a health insurance reform and signed the EPA into existence. 

So, the EPA.  Nixon signed it but the EPA was also a product of the time, a democratic congress wanted more conservation efforts and Nixon went along with it.  Compare that to "today's democrats" who want to broadened power for the EPA (carbon regulation) and just won a very long and contentious political battle over the scope of the EPA.  And the EPA in Nixons time wasn't regulating carbon.  So democrats are not only supporting a policy more far reaching then what Nixon supported but they were supporting it when it was politically difficult, unlike Nixon.

And then we have Nixon's healthcare policies.  He didn't have an individual mandate, instead he had an employer mandate.  And he wanted to replace medicaid with block grants to states so that the south could start taking healthcare away from black people.  There would be cost-sharing, but in those state run block grant programs.  There was nothing the equivalent of the exchanges with the income based subsidies.  Compare that to what the left wing of the democrats got the right wing of the democrats to agree to: subsidies to the poor, expansion of medicaid, cost sharing through the insurance pools.

And of course the whole war on drugs and tax cuts for the rich.

Nixon wasn't a reliable conservative in a way that kinda reminds me of Trump, TBH.  He was very politically expedient, eager to play "the great game" even though it was an anachronism.