One Succinct Graph

[filkertom]

Rachel and Ezra sum up in one pretty picture why you should vote Democrat, even if the Dems are ticking you off right now (as they are me).

Comments

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

Agreed, but I worry about this generation of Democrats. They're more like Republicans every day. I don't think there are any other choices; the Libertarians are all egotists and the others potential parties are just not there.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

I would think all you'd need is a picture of Failin Palin in the Oval Office. As upset as I may be with how the Dems are doing things, they're better than the alternative.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

An interesting graph. Critical thinking, however, leads me to want to ask questions.

Specifically, those bars seem to represent averages. I'd like to see the data behind those averages. It is possible that large gains from a couple of Democratic administrations could skew the averages strongly.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Well, if you follow the link to Ezra's column (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/why_elections_matter_in_one_gr.html), you'll find the link to Timothy Noah's column (http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/) that he got the chart, and all the data, from.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Me, I've long since decided that I'll vote for Democrats I can stand, but I will not work for the Party. It is too much like participating in my own abuse.

[awfulhorrid.livejournal.com]

I long ago came to the conclusion that both parties have real problems, but with these two being the only real game in town(*) it's a pretty clear choice. I can find policies and statements from members of both parties that worry me or cause me concern. I have to search a bit for examples of these from the Democrats. The examples from the Republicans, however, seem to make up the majority of their platform and it's much harder to find one of their members who rejects the policies that concern me.

(* I like the idea of third party candidates, but for some reason almost all of them have become collections of lunatics even farther out than the main two. As far as I'm concerned, the Libertarian Party died when it nominated Bob Barr for ... well, anything, really.)

[infinitemorning.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely voting Democrat, because voting Republican is cutting off my nose to spite my face.

I do, however, REALLY wish that Barney Frank's Democratic primary opponent wasn't batshit insane, because I would dearly love to see the gentleman dismissed from office. I'm sick of him throwing transgender protections under the ENDA bus at the first sign of the shadow of trouble, I'm sick of his dismissive attitude toward GLBT activists who dare to actually work on behalf of the entire community, and I think it's long past time he retired. Rachel Brown is just not the woman to do it, and I'm not about to vote for Frank's Republican opponent, Sean Bialat, either.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I think this is indicative of more Dem primary problems in general.
For instance, you could make the argument that Blue Dog Dems are just representing the beliefs of their districts, but on energy policy and whole lot of other issues, the polling shows it isn't true.
And there's nobody else better? I can't believe it. It may be that's the best we can do with media concentration of ownership making the propaganda go veering off so far rightward--Faux News loves their straw men--but still.
I keep asking myself, Is this the best that the national Party can do, really??

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

I hold that the income divergence is not due to tax policy as much as it is to the entry by millions of women of the middle and upper-classes, (as well as blacks) into the work force in the early 1970s.

Simply by the laws of supply and demand, if you increase your labor force by 40%, real wages go down because you have more competition, even if the wages paid to the workers are just a bit less--they fall further and further behind inflation as time passes.

At the same time, the inflation rate of the 1970s, began the decade at 6.5% and topped out at 12.5% at the end of the period--wages have *never* recovered from this.

The Reagan administration also gave amnesty to millions of new immigrant workers during the 1980s.

There has been, simply put, a lot more people looking for work in America in economic conditions that have not allowed wages to keep up with inflation. In terms of real money, we make about half as much for a given job as we did in 1970.

Tom Trumpinski

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

One should also be careful in confusing those in power with what happens while they're there. In order for statistics to be relevant, there has to be a causal connection made.

Look at this story, for example:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100911/ap_on_bi_ge/us_poverty_in_america

Simply because poverty increased during the first year of Obama's Presidency does not necessarily mean that it is because he was elected.

Tom

[fredhuggins.livejournal.com]

Dan Harmon (creator of NBC's Community) basically summed up my feelings on the subject precisely - to paraphrase, "Every time I get to the point where I consider myself above any political party, the republicans do something that FORCES me to call myself "Democrat."

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

That's right -- it's all the fault of those damn women, Negroes and Mexicans that the economy is bad.

Nothing at all to do with corporations allowed to become so obscenely wealthy that the CEOs sucked away all the gains the workers should have made in those times.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

I vote Democrat for the same reason I'm no longer a Catholic: Because I'm a woman with a brain and a uterus, both of which I'd like to have final say over.

Every time I've run into some entitled, sheltered white boy (excuse me, libertarian) who tries to argue with me that There's Totally No Difference in the Two Main Parties Dude, I snap back, "Yep, spoken like a MAN who doesn't have to worry about his reproductive freedom." To which this Randian intellectual always seems to respond with a clueless blank stare and an "I don't understaaaand."

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

One thing no one here can say is that I'm a Corporatist.

I am 100% in favor of removing the 14th Amendment rights of corporations and holding the officers and stockholders of American corporations personally responsible for any measurable damage that they have done.

That being said, the laws of economics are Cold Equations--if they had cloned handsome white men and thereby increased the labor pool by 40%, the same drop in real wages would have occurred. I'm describing a historical event, not making a judgment on whether or not it was good or bad.

This can be proven if you look at the numbers--there's nowhere close to a zero-sum situation. Teh "evil CEOs" did not gain enough money in their compensation to make up for what was lost in wages by their workers. The money was not transferred, it simply disappeared, disguised within the inflationary spiral of the 70s, shipped overseas in the early 1990s (when "global trade" was emphasized by both Bush Senior and Bill Clinton), lost by corporate relocation into areas without a history of powerful unions, or vanished during the collapse of the tech and housing bubbles.

After all this time, it turns out the the two men who knew most about the scary future of the economy were ridiculed for their beliefs--Ross Perot (remember the predicted "giant sucking sound" of jobs going overseas during the 1992 election?) and Ron Paul (who has successfully predicted every negative event in the economy for the last fifteen years).

This does not bode well for long-term planning on the part of our government.

Tom

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

You've got it right, really.

There are two parties in America right now--the pro-abortion ruling corporatist party and the anti-abortion ruling corporatist party.

Tom

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

By the way, people in here are once again making disparaging statements about whites, so to counter, I have a joke.....

"What's the new definition of a racist?"

"Someone winning an argument with a liberal."

Tom

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

By this point, if the Democrats ran an actual monkey, I'd still vote the straight simian ticket. Absent a great revolution in their ranks, no Republican will ever -- ever -- get my vote again.

[dysprog.livejournal.com]

It's deeper then just the issues. The two parties are using fundamentally different moral codes. They just don't realize it. That is why Liberals and Conservatives look positivity insane to each other rather then just wrong.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

"What's the definition of a liberal?"

"Don't ask me, I'm too busy fucking Dominican boys."

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

You left out the last line, Lumpy.....

Liberal: "What's the definition of a liberal?"

Republican: "Don't ask me, I'm too busy fucking Dominican boys."

Liberal: "Not that there's anything wrong with that...."

Tom

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

I'll have you know that not ALL liberals are Catholic.