"Rich voters continue to trend Republican, rich states trend Democratic."

[Goofball]

All kinds of stuff for the statisticians among the Org to chew on in here. It was very interesting to me to learn that Obama actually carried significantly fewer counties than Dukakis did in '88. I hadn't realized the extent of the impact toward urbanization in the US, particularly with respect to elections. Also didn't realize that blue collar (union) voters tended to favor the Republicans. Seems counterintuitive that they would get the "labour" vote. Lots of stuff to chew on. I'm sure Republican strategists are aware of the problems they are facing, but so far they seem powerless to do anything about it. There are some (bobby Jindal, for example) that seem to be making the right kind of noises to get the party back on track, but for the most part they get shouted down. Linky: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...ition/?hp&_r=0

[drone]

The GOP used the gun control issue to pry away union voters from Democrats. A lot of blue collar workers in the Northeast/Midwest hunt religiously, the GOP used this as a wedge.

[Fragony]

How can this be anything to chew on, if you work hard the sweat on your brows belongs to you.

Not to the meth-addict that hopefully doesn't live next to you

[Goofball]

I don't really understand. Are you saying that the GOP are the champions of the working class?

[drone]

I don't really understand. Are you saying that the GOP are the champions of the working class?

No, they are the champions of getting people to vote against their best interests.

[Ironside]

How can this be anything to chew on, if you work hard the sweat on your brows belongs to you.

Not to the meth-addict that hopefully doesn't live next to you

You do know that social democracy draws most of their support from the working class right? Maybe less now than it used to, if nothing else because the working class itself has changed.

For the US situation to be true because of that, then the working class can't on an instinctual level relate the democrats with social democracy.

Now, the answer in the US has probably with conservative vs liberal considered being the main difference between the parties, rather than political ideologies.

[The Lurker Below]

No, they are the champions of getting people to vote against their best interests.

There is an interesting book that will elaborate on this point if needed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_...with_Kansas%3F

[Xiahou]

I don't really understand. Are you saying that the GOP are the champions of the working class?

One of their better arguments is that you should be able to work hard and get ahead- that resonates with many working class voters. In my office you regularly hear people grumbling about how they should quit their jobs and just go on welfare, or how their unemployed neighbor has everything they do without having to work, ect.

[Ironside]

One of their better arguments is that you should be able to work hard and get ahead- that resonates with many working class voters. In my office you regularly hear people grumbling about how they should quit their jobs and just go on welfare, or how their unemployed neighbor has everything they do without having to work, ect.

The American dream gives another perspective perhaps? The reason social democracy got the worker support is the realisation that the deck is stacked. The welfare neightbour is disliked, but he's worth it if he's the price of restacking the deck.

Personally I've found "the slave and the president" (or Daifugō since by some reason it never got an English name) to be an excellent illustration of the stacked deck in society. The distrinct rule is that the loser(s) (slave) of the last round gives their best card(s) to the winner(s) (president) while getting the worst in return. After that you play normally. So the odds of going from last place to the first in one round is possible, but in practice it's very hard to move more than 1-2 places in any direction. View one round as a generation and you'll see the establishment of an upper class (the winners) and a lover class (the losers) that's quite rigid.

So no matter how good player you are, that biased card trade will entrench you towards you current position.

[Fisherking]

I don’t see an American Political Party that represents the interests of the people, particularly the working class.

Both try, at least to an extent, of presenting them selves as such but they always do what is mainly in the interest of corporations. Even when they throw the people a bone, there are corporate benefits involved.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

No, they are the champions of getting people to vote against their best interests.

Do Hollywood liberals vote against their best interests? Is someone's interests solely their pocketbook?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Hollywood liberals are usually ideologically motivated if they aren't monetarily motivated.

My point is that's the same for the blue collar workers too. The only difference is that the lower classes are considered racist and stupid and must be transformed into Right Thinking Citizens by their upper-middle-class progressive betters. Just as long as the progressives don't have to *interact* with those disgusting people in flyover country.

[Fisherking]

These last four posts are great.

GH you just overlooked one point. The left supports free speech only when it agrees with them. Ideas that go against their agenda are shouted down, suppressed and ridiculed.

Neither party wants to see a free exchange of ideas.

[Beskar]

GH you just overlooked one point. The left supports free speech only when it agrees with them. Ideas that go against their agenda are shouted down, suppressed and ridiculed.

Neither party wants to see a free exchange of ideas.

Best way to think of it from my experiences is that the Left dislikes discriminatory language whilst the Right prefers to use discriminatory language and like you said, the left can shout them down, suppress and ridicule such people. An example would be the BNP and the Anti-Fascists. BNP sprouts some overt racist, homophobia, sexist propaganda, so the anti-fascists shout them down and ridicule them. The concept is from the idea of accepting these things into the 'debate', it legitimises the viewpoints being expressed.

[Fisherking]

That is not debate and it is counter productive. Disdain is not ridicule. If you reject an idea you should be able to explain what is wrong with it.

They also do the same with gun rights.

I am not a supporter of any political party. I only share the idea of strict interpretation of the Constitution with libertarians, in that it is the only guarantee of the rights of the people.

The Republicans claim to support that also, but their actions speak much louder than their propaganda.

The left favors a living constitution, which only means that your rights are what authority says they are, which is none at all.

Both parties embrace Progressivism, in that they view Representatives do what is (supposedly) in the interest of the people, whether the people want it or not. Or in other words, the people are ignorant and we must rule them. Hence, leaders and not representatives at all.

Both parties also contain a large sampling of Neoconservatives and are happy to pursue that agenda.

The American Political System is nothing more than a Plutocracy masquerading as a Democratic Republic. And now it has decided to also be a Security State.

[drone]

I favor a living constitution. Otherwise I'd only have 3/5s of a great grandpa. :D

There is a difference between a living Constitution and an amended one. The living version has a less stringent review process and does not carry the same weight and respect. The amended one is why you have a whole great grandfather.

[drone]

Interpretation has nothing to do with it, you have a whole great grandfather because the 14th amendment says you do. It fixed an existing problem with the original document, and it did so with the approval of the state legislators (albeit with some coercement in the warmer climes). If some random federal judge had ruled your ancestor equal to 1 person, he would have been ridiculed as though he enabled the state to strip you of property for third party gain, or something else just as assinine.

Look at the proposal and ratification requirements for amending the Constitution (Article V), and consider the possible actors. The executive and judicial branches are completely cut out of the picture. Congress can propose amendments, but cannot ratify. Congress can be bypassed in the proposal step by the states with the national convention mechanism. The power to alter to Constitution lies with the people or the States, not the federal government which the document is meant to limit.

[drone]

The constitutional discussion we should be having is the recourse of the people and the States for when all three branches of the federal government neglect or ignore in their oaths. The 16th and 17th amendments have weakened the States' powers and the built-in checks and balances don't work when everyone is getting paid off.

[a completely inoffensive name]

YOu know for being called the Progressive Period, majority of stuff they did was pretty ass backwards.

[ICantSpellDawg]

The GOP has a lot of potential, but yes - urbanization has dented the impact our our attempts to win the Presidency. It is a tough nut to crack in order to figure out how to win, but we already know how to be competitive. Anyway, the Democratic party represents wealthy, highly intelligent hipsters and draws extremely ignorant unemployed urban voters to win elections. The Republican party represents wealthy, established and un-trendy businesspeople and draws ignorant but hard working suburban and rural voters and has been having a hard time building a coalition to win the highest office.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[Fisherking]

Don’t worry so much, it is your turn next. Unless you try very hard to mess it up. But who ever it is they will be just as bad a dud as the one there now.

[Papewaio]

The American dream gives another perspective perhaps? The reason social democracy got the worker support is the realisation that the deck is stacked. The welfare neightbour is disliked, but he's worth it if he's the price of restacking the deck.

Personally I've found "the slave and the president" (or Daifugō since by some reason it never got an English name) to be an excellent illustration of the stacked deck in society. The distrinct rule is that the loser(s) (slave) of the last round gives their best card(s) to the winner(s) (president) while getting the worst in return. After that you play normally. So the odds of going from last place to the first in one round is possible, but in practice it's very hard to move more than 1-2 places in any direction. View one round as a generation and you'll see the establishment of an upper class (the winners) and a lover class (the losers) that's quite rigid.

So no matter how good player you are, that biased card trade will entrench you towards you current position.

There is an English, at least an Aussie name. Presidents and Arseholes.

[Noncommunist]

Someone who's never been on welfare would say that. Smart people like you should be given ten lashes every time you suggest that people on welfare have it easier.

Probably depends on which workers welfare check receivers are being compared to. Obviously, they're doing far more poorly compared to most. However, they might be better off materially compared to someone making minimum wage for a lot less effort. Somewhat analogously, I know a mother on disability that has discouraged her daughter from working because the money the daughter would bring in is too little to make up for the loss in disability money. In the short term, that thinking seems to make sense but in the long run, the gap in the resume and years of lost experience seem like a bad idea.

[Husar]

If people on welfare make more than people with jobs, then the problem are usually those with jobs who make less.
You cannot trust everyone to accept a job because that's economically feasible, not everyone is a homo oeconomicus.

I've heard of people who wanted to accept a job far away, gardening for 3€ an hour, even though the cost of driving there and back would've been more than the wage...
Some people accept horrible jobs just to escape the stigma of being unemployed and so on. To say that welfare is too much just because some people who don't calculate earn even less is not a solid argument in the real world.
It's just too concenient that some are even forced to accept such jobs to lower the unemployment statistics. I think here you still get the difference between your wage and welfare as welfare though to ensure you have the minimum living standard, which is whatever you get as welfare.

[Lemur]

In my office you regularly hear people grumbling about how they should quit their jobs and just go on welfare, or how their unemployed neighbor has everything they do without having to work, ect.

There are four possible explanations for this phenomenon:

1. Your co-workers don't actually know anyone on welfare. (The one person I know taking public assistance is poorer than poor, and has a hell of a time meeting her minimum rent and food budget for the month.)
2. Your co-workers all happen to know outstanding scammers. Unlikely. Also, if you have a criminal bent of mind, there are far more lucrative scams than disability and/or welfare.
3. Your co-workers listen to a lot of rightwing AM radio and/or subscribe to Glenn Beck. In which case empirical reality is a non-issue.
4. Last and least likely, Pennsylvannia may be the only state in the Union that hands out a middle class income to people on welfare. Pretty sure this is not true.

[Goofball]

To further Lemur's point, here is my welfare story that I have direct experience with: I have a family member who is currently on social assistance (what Canadians call welfare). She is on social assistance because she is elderly and has severe health problems, so she is unable to work. She is not quite old enough yet to start receiving her Canada Pension Plan (I think you call it Social Security in the US) benefits yet. She receives $650/month from social assistance, which is the maximum payable to a single (no dependents) person in my province. Her rent is $800/month, and it is a pretty shitty apartment. I and some other family members have been giving her money every month so she can pay her rent and feed herself. We have to give her the money in cash, because our system considers family help to be "income" and if they knew she was getting it they would claw back her social assistance payments dollar for dollar based on the amount we were giving her. She has been receiving social assistance for a little over one year now, and has been audited twice by social workers, who forced her to provide her bank statements to see if she was receiving any other income. So, Xiahou, if you have coworkers who think they would be better off on welfare, believe me: you can safely tell them that they don't know what the hell they are talking about.

[Rhyfelwyr]

From my experience (family members, and though past employment) I've seen a fair bit of how the welfare system works and how people live off it. It is true that some people 'play the system', and can live relatively comfortably on benefits. But these are a minority. Not a tiny minority, but a pretty small one. Once you are settled and have secured decent accomodation, you can do OK on benefits. But not everybody will get that - those who do are mostly families. But even that is no guarantee.

And for most people, living on benefits is extremely tough - especially for the young and single. It is nigh on impossible to get accomodation beyond emergency measures, and you simply don't get enough to live on. Chances are you will have to rely on food banks and the like.