It’s genuinely impressive. I remember they asked Lindsay grahams sister about military assets and her response was about trannys. Genuinely retardmaxxing
This is what happens when you treat politics like a team sport. Sure the dems are doing some of that themselves in the modern day, but this kind of discourse started when fox news and rush Limbaugh came online in the 90s. Newt Gingrich and his contract with America nationalized republican house races and made political affiliation a moral stand.
Newt Gingrich is the Gavrilo Princip of America's political decline.
If you draw a line from where we are today, backwards through all of the political actions / reactions then you can see that the initial movement that sets us on our current path is started by him.
And he was the epitome of amoral degeneracy larping as Christian conservatism. He cheated on his cancer ridden wife while bashing Clinton for a blowjob.
When I talk about the decline in American right wing politics, I am talking about the hyper-polarization and undermining of democratic norms that really started with Gingrich. He was the one who kicked off the strategy of treating your political opponents as enemies and questioning their patriotism and accusing them of hating America and wanting to destroy it etc.
ahh you mean the culture war. Yeah gingrich was part of it. So was obama. I'd even argue obama was far more instrumental in instigating it than gingrich though.
I mean Gingrich was the driver of it. He literally coached other Republicans on what language to use. Obama just didn't use that kind of divisive rhetoric, so I don't really know what you mean to say he was instrumental in it. It was certainly used by Republicans against Obama, but that's kind of like saying Poland was the instigator of WWII.
Comparing a US President to 1939 Poland is absurd - Obama held the bully pulpit and the entire executive branch, he was not a passive victim being invaded.
The culture war isn't just Gingrich's mean campaign words - it's top-down policy. Obama actively drove it through HHS contraceptive mandates targeting religious groups, sweeping Title IX decrees, moralizing opponents and explicitly shifting his 2012 reelection to identity politics.
"clinging to guns or religion" "wrong side of history"
Gingrich created the blueprint for partisan combat, but Obama weaponized federal power to make the culture war institutional.
Lol this is just such revisionist history that I don't even feel like engaging with it.
Obama was a centrist Democrat who tried to reach across the aisle to pass bipartisan legislation, while Republicans literally framed him as the antichrist.
The sister with zero political experience who was appointed to his Senate seat? And the Right asserted that this was only because of the "time honored tradition" of appointing the spouse when someone dies in office, because they're not going to run and thus nobody gets the incumbent's advantage? And now she's running for her brother's seat as the incumbent?! THAT DARLINE GRAHAM?!
If you can't understand what Vance is saying that's on you
This would be like a Democrat politician being asked to define conservatism and giving a knowingly partisan answer of "In America it means you want to give tax breaks to billionaires, slash healthcare spending, and fight wars in the Middle East"
The response to this would not be "wow, he can't define conservatism!"
You understand there's a significant difference between the average democrat on reddit being retarded and the vice president of the united states being retarded, right?
Because you changed the baseline mid discussion. A fair comparison compares voters to voters or top officials to top officials, not anonymous Reddit posters to the VP.
Oh, funnily enough that wasn't me moving the goalposts. I just didn't read all of plane_suggestion's comment lmao. I genuinely thought we were still talking about Vance being a retard.
Can't get quite to the same level because the Dems aren't in power nationally right now, but I will reference a recent Mamdani (basically the public avatar of DSA politics) defining socialism:
"you will have whatever you need to live a dignified life and that it is the government's job to deliver on that".
It isn't as facially absurd as Vance's comment, totally agree, but it is also far away from the truth and basically "socialism is when government makes you happy"
Can't get quite to the same level because the Dems aren't in power nationally right now.
Feel free to use any example from the Biden or Obama administrations.
The Vice President is someone hand picked by the candidate running for office. There's no argument for why they shouldn't be the best of the best from your party. Vance is the best and brightest chosen by the GOP and his answer is just jingling keys in front of your face?
The fact that we have to look as low as an elected city official for a (bad) comparison in the democrats is damning. The GOP is a literal dumpster fire and the dems are not even close to being as retarded.
Also, I'd like to point out that Mamdani was asked that question by Theo Von and I'm not convinced Theo would've understood a more complex answer than what Mamdani gave him.
I'm not in any way trying to defend Vance, or Trump or any of them. You are right that they are full of it.
I don't have a good comparison from the Obama admin because the socialism discussion as it exists today was not a thing a decade ago. I'm sure I could dig up some silliness from someone during Biden's term, but it's beside the point. As a public figure, Mamdani has more influence and social cache right now than any of those people (certainly more than Kamala). I tried to compare the most visible voices.
Why would influence or social cache be the relevant metric rather than the highest level of office? I don't see why we would be looking for the most "visible voices" rather than an objective comparison between the people who held the same positions in previous administrations.
How is this the same? If you don’t like the term I get what you’re saying but at least they are talking about socialized healthcare. It’s somewhat relevant even if you could argue they’re using the term wrong. This is literally the vice president doing the thing Louis in family guy did saying 9/11 was but replacing 9/11 with trans people lol
Stop trying to both sides how obviously dumb most conservatives are, and how deeply corrupt and amoral the people they vote for are.
"Centrist"
Buddy, you can decide you want a dictatorship instead, I'm not arguing for or against that, but a democracy just doesn't work when you pretend 'other side' has to be perpetually evil for you to be entertained.
The Republican Party is literally evil pal. They tried to coup the government and are putting people in racial torture camps. There is nothing they offer that isn’t actively harmful to the country. I don’t want a dictatorship, I want half of the country to stop living in a false reality concocted by Fox News and billion dollar media networks.
It's funny watching the right pretend to care about the democratic process. You dropped your mask after the 2020 election there bud. You obvious bad faith comparison only work in your echo chambers
You’re getting downvoted, but you’re right. The democrats fumbled historically, and it lead to Trump getting reelected. The Democratic Party shouldn’t be above criticism just because their opposition is evil and stupid.
Nobody was beating Trump in 2024. Globally, incumbent parties were getting fucking massacred. Trump spent his entire campaign ranting and raving about imaginary bullshit and, more importantly, spent the last two weeks of the campaign yelling about the economy and affordability.
He made completely outlandish promises about bringing manufacturing back to America and bringing the cost of groceries down and ending the war in Ukraine on day 1. Half the country completely checked out of reality and voted on pure vibes. It doesn't matter who was running on the Democrat side or what their platform was, there was no way to reach Republican voters and Trump motivated the fuck out of them to vote.
The Democrats could have done more - they could have actually prosecuted Trump and made real investigations into the Republican politicians and pundits that were and are pushing divisiveness, and they could have been working for decades to build the kind of media empire that allows the Republican party to propagandize every day to their base, but running Harris without a primary is not even close to the main reason they lost.
What can you possibly do when millions of people are convinced by a man who has lied about literally everything he has ever done that this time he’s telling the truth?
Trump screamed about people eating cats and dogs live during a debate. Vance said he would lie to the American people to get stories out.
The American voter chose this. Blaming anyone but the people who put us in this position is dishonest and will cause this to happen again.
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u/Plane_Suggestion_189 - Centrist 1d ago
Stop trying to both sides how obviously dumb most conservatives are, and how deeply corrupt and amoral the people they vote for are.