Are things going too far?

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

I kinda think I see where liberals are coming from. They believe the country elected Bill Clinton twice, then elected Al Gore, then Bush won (but should have never been there), then the country twice elected Obama and then a year and a half ago elected Hillary Clinton.

They believe the country is more left than right. That the only reason the Supreme Court is right is because of George W. Bush and Donald Trump putting Alito, Roberts, Gorsuch and another conservative on the courts, and that those should have been Al Gore and Hillary Clinton (or Obama) appointments.

See, this type of arrogance drives me nuts. You say all that, but then your party fails to even recognize mandates for Democrats when they do win elections. I'll never forget 2008, when the Republicans lost the popular vote AND electoral college, and then proceeded to act like the Obama administration had no legitimacy, and were determined to do everything possible to make it a one term anomaly. And then people like you have the gall say that its people like me who just want to cover their ears and ignore the accomplishments and actions of Republican administrations. Honestly Reaganfan, you are part of the problem.

He’ll never see it.

One of the qualities of being a Republican today is a complete disregard of all fact when it does not fit their worldview. Everything is fake news or in some way just didn’t happen.

What are "mandates" and where, exactly, do they come from?  That's not snark; that's a serious question.

There is no question that in 2008, Barack Obama and the Democrats were given a mandate by the voters to undo any number of conservative policies.  Reducing foreign involvements was a mandate.  Financial regulations on big banks and brokerage houses was a mandate.  Establishing some kind of national healthcare was a mandate.  Providing some kind of economic stimulus was a mandate.  These mandates came from the voters who voted for people who said they were going to do these things.  Indeed, the 2008 election marked the effective end of a Democratic Party where the vast majority of Democratic candidates went to extremes to avoid saying that they were "liberal" or "progressive".  (Actually, "progressive" used to mean "Liberal Lite"; now, it means Liberalism on Steroids)

But GOP elected officials were given mandates to oppose much of that by the folks that elected THEM to Congress.  Those millions of Americans (about 46% of them) were against what the Democrats were given a mandate to do, and THEIR voters wanted them to resist implementation of such measures.  Is the overall "national consensus" supposed to bind officials elected on a local or statewide basis from advancing the policies the folks that elected them want them to represent?

I don't deny that, over the years, there has been more deference given to the "mandates" given to GOP Presidents than to Democratic Presidents.  There's a reason for this, and the reason is that until 2008, many, if not most, Democrats sought to minimize their liberalism.  Michael Barone, in his 1996 Almanac of American Politics, made the observation that for decades, the VAST majority of persons in America had voted for Congress for either (A) Republicans, or (B) Democrats who said that they were moderates, or even conservatives.  This is unquestionably true, and it supports the idea that "mandate" received by Democrats over the years was nowhere as clear as the mandate received by Republicans.   This is coupled by the fact that two (2) of our last three (3) Democratic Presidents (Carter and Clinton) often took pains to deliberately cast themselves in as conservative light as they could.  I would argue that neither Carter nor Clinton had the kind of ideological "mandate" that Reagan had.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Like them or not, Republicans are doing what they need to win. If Democrats could be bothered to do the same (without violating basic democratic principles like the GOP does - but they wouldn't need to anyway since the majority of this country is left-wing), this would be a fair fight. Unfortunately, they are too busy pontificating about muh civility and self-congratulating about how reasonable they are.

The country is not left-wing

It is in the center

NY and LA does not dominate American politics

The heartland does

The """heartland""" is the part of the country that demands higher wages and universal healthcare the most.

But not at any price.  Not at the price of abortion on demand, or SSM, or unfettered, limitless immigration.  Not at the price of the sort of social liberalism that conflicts with their consciences.

The Democrats have made that sort of social liberalism litmus tests as to what is a Democrat.  In doing so, they have sealed the fate of the kinds of policies that would actually reverse income inequality and make life for the working and middle classes more bearable and manageable.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Then, by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, their voices were told, "We don't care what you want".

What exactly is your point? That the court system shouldn't upset white working class people, and should tailor rulings to their wishes?

The Court should have not redefined, through Judicial Activism, the meaning of the term "marriage".  To say that "marriage" ever meant, in law, the union of anyone but a man and a woman is making stuff out of whole cloth for a political end.  That, btw, is the difference between Obergefell and Loving.  In Loving, the court upheld the existing right of persons to marry the unmarried opposite-gender partner of their choice; they didn't redefine the term.

I understand that the Court exists to protect the rights of minorities that are not subject to plebescite.  I get that.  But Obergefell was the Court redefining a term in law, with no legitimate legal basis for doing so.  That is legislating from the bench, regardless of what the majority asserts.

Abortion, too, is a decision that created a "right" out of Judicial Activism.  There is, IMO, the undeniable reality that abortion is infanticide; it takes a human life, and the life it takes is no less human and no less inviolate because of the circumstances surrounding the conception.   This is especially true of late-term abortion and partial-birth abortion.  In this case, the argument that a human being (or, at a minimum, a living being at a stage of development we were all once at) is being killed is simply dismissed.  Until Roe, there was never a question as to the state's right to regulate medical procedures, and there was nothing unique or special about abortion (other than the public controversy) to conclude what folks came to conclude on the topic.

As to SSM, while I will not say that there will not be long-term negative impacts to society as a result of this decision, I will say that it's an act whose moral consequences fall on the folks who engage in it.  I don't oppose it because of this nonsense  that it is "an attack on the sanctity of marriage"; I oppose it because I consider it to be an affront to God.  And I have Biblical basis for saying so.  I do view it as a fait acompli, but I'm not going to sign off on it on a personal level if pushed, and making it a defining issue of "Who is a Democrat?" is something that represents a question of conscience for me.

I note that the Democrats will not mind if Linda Sarsour indulges the Jihadist passages of the Quran, or whether Khazir Khan subscribes to Quranic doctrine that would be labeled misogynistic if it came from Christian Scripture.  I note that the Democrats never seem to excoriate Black Evangelicals, even when they are men like T. D. Jakes, or the late E. V. Hill, but they feel free to tee off on White Evangelicals.  Yet if I were to run for office as a pro-life Democrat, I would be persona non grata, almost as if I were one of these alt-right types trying to use a major party for easy ballot access.  The Democrats have made these moral issues definitive; what does that do for someone like me who is not in agreement with the GOP economic agenda?

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Things have been going too far since 2015, if not before then.

I'm ashamed at some of the conditions in this country. I'm a Social Studies teacher - last year I had to teach middle schoolers about the Dylann Roof shooting and the Charlottesville riots... where did we go wrong as a country???

And those aren't even related to Trump, or the GOP. Roof happened while Obama was in office and Charlottesville likely still happens if he or Hillary were President. It's a separate, bigger issue in this country.

I don’t think Charlottesville would have happened with Obama or Hillary as president, especially if Trump never even campaigned. His rhetoric has made racist scum feel comfortable coming out of the woodwork, which is an uncomfortable truth that Trumpie clowns on here ignore, to their eternal shame. It’s not a coincidence that Nazis are seeking GOP nominations  post-2016.

Even if it did happen, I think Charlottesville would be a forgotten story under a different president.