Issues your side does a terrible job of arguing about

[DC Al Fine]

I strongly feel that the entire pro-life message really belongs to the Democratic Party.  That whole "Mommy party", the liberal "bleeding-heart" (conservative word) CATHOLIC  -- that is all about inclusion and nurturing and fighting for the people at the bottom of society - which could be viewed also as fighting for minorities such as a homeless mom, or a refugee, or a transgender woman.

Story time!

When Francis Schaeffer was getting the Evangelical pro-life movement off the ground, the original thought was that they would be more successful in the Democratic party, since they had Catholics and  Southern Evangelicals. The GOP on the other hand tended to be mainline Protestant and had a bit of a  questionable past when it came to 'life issues'. Unfortunately, they got outmaneuvered by feminist groups within the Democratic party and wound up taking their message to the Republicans.

I never understood how on Earth Christianity became a right-wing thing.  The gospel of Jesus is overflowing with grace and kindness and compassion... that to me does not sound like the social darwinism preached by those on the far economic right.

As I alluded to above, the centre-left changed over time, and embraced a worldview that is at odds with orthodox Christianity, but in different ways from the right.

[Thank you for being a friend...]

Yes and very fascinating history too from the period between 1880 and 1920 - with the populists and the progressives - out there in Kansas and Oklahoma, I'm sure they were very devout Christians but then you had Eugene Debs too.  Thomas Frank talks about it in that book he wrote, "What is the Matter with Kansas?"  There seemed to be this, dare I say, liberal economic view from the Midwest at the time.

FDR also won overwhelmingly in the South.  Sure, a lot of those Southerners were very conservative, but just how many of them were Republican on economic philosophy?  The New Deal, it seems, was pretty popular in the South - the white, poor, South, and throughout Appalachia. 

So how do people who want to get into office to help poor Appalachians, white and black, return to that?  Is it just about leadership - do we need another FDR?

[RINO Tom]

(the fact that the Democrats were able to successfully pivot off of "you didn't build that" in 2012 was a minor miracle; by rights it should have been much a more damaging gaffe than it was)

Really? It always struck me as the quintessential example of a perfectly sensible comment that was taken out of context and twisted in the most inane way possible due to the soundbite-obsessed nature of the mass media.

-Agreed.

...wait, what?

OK, if I'm agreeing with Eharding but disagreeing with Nathan, I must be missing something.

Eharding is a populist who is culturally conservative, you are a populist who is culturally liberal.  You both have a lot more in common with each other than the principles of the Party of Lincoln, and the sooner that's figured out by everyone, the better.

The sooner you and others of your anti-inclusion party understand that American political parties have drastically changed in the past century and a half, the better.

LOL, recognizing that populists (which is a pretty word for Robin Hoodites) with some cultural differences have more in common with each other than people with opposed political ideologies is not analogous to acting like parties don't change.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Always nice to see conservatives using beloved folk heroes as insults.

Anyway, since "populism" is a style of politics rather than any sort of substantive ideology in itself, opposition to "populism" as such is always either opposition to something else that presents itself as populism, opposition to Those People having a stake in political rhetoric, or a tacit admission that your preferred policies won't do sh**t to make things better for most people and you're not interested in pretending that they will. I respect RINO Tom enough to assume that in this case it's the first.

[(Still) muted by Kalwejt until March 31]

Yes and very fascinating history too from the period between 1880 and 1920 - with the populists and the progressives - out there in Kansas and Oklahoma, I'm sure they were very devout Christians but then you had Eugene Debs too.  Thomas Frank talks about it in that book he wrote, "What is the Matter with Kansas?"  There seemed to be this, dare I say, liberal economic view from the Midwest at the time.

FDR also won overwhelmingly in the South.  Sure, a lot of those Southerners were very conservative, but just how many of them were Republican on economic philosophy?  The New Deal, it seems, was pretty popular in the South - the white, poor, South, and throughout Appalachia.  

So how do people who want to get into office to help poor Appalachians, white and black, return to that?  Is it just about leadership - do we need another FDR?

-It was the Great Society that created the McGovern counties in Tennessee, not the New Deal. The New Deal was more an inner-city/labor union thing.

The irony of this is that the common trope among NYT commenters is that the 1964 campaign was what turned Appalachia red. Just the opposite! That was what kept it from turning red for a generation!

[Crumpets]

For Democrats

The environment: The Democrats have somehow managed to take literally the one thing that everyone on Earth must share and make it into not only a partisan issue, but one which is associated with upper-class, merlot-sipping, white New Yorkers who drive Priuses. I blame Al Gore. Seriously, there must be a way to argue in favor of environmental regulation from a pro-union, anti-poverty, and even pro-security perspective (as Bernie tried and failed in one of the primary debates).

Religion in general: It seems like there are two kinds of Democrats regarding religion - the smug "I'm so smart, I don't need religion, religious people are backwards," people and the religious left, many of which we see on Atlas. It creates both a tense atmosphere when, for example, a Democratic politician references God in a speech, and serves to push away centrists and independents who have a close relationship with their faith. As the party of inclusion, it seems like we should leave it to the Republicans to try to define where they fit into the religious spectrum, and leave our beliefs up to the individual politician or voter.

Guns: I don't know a whole lot about specific guns, what each kind are used for, and why, as a modern American, one would need each kind. However, I am not a member of congress, and don't try to go on TV to explain why I should regulate something I clearly know so little about. It serves to let that 5% who don't support universal background checks to win arguments (even ones that have nothing to do with the guns themselves) very easily. Basically the flipped version of an anti-vaxxer trying to formulate health spending - even if their numbers are sound, nobody is going to take them seriously because they are an anti-vaxxer.

Deficit spending: Seriously, explaining the basics of Keynesianism is, like, a five-minute task. Why do we let the right define this conversation so much with their "run the government like a family budget" nonsense.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Always nice to see conservatives using beloved folk heroes as insults.

Anyway, since "populism" is a style of politics rather than any sort of substantive ideology in itself, opposition to "populism" as such is always either opposition to something else that presents itself as populism, opposition to Those People having a stake in political rhetoric, or a tacit admission that your preferred policies won't do sh**t to make things better for most people and you're not interested in pretending that they will. I respect RINO Tom enough to assume that in this case it's the first.

I think the problem is really that people have vastly different things in mind when they use the word "populism". Some of this is due to deliberate obfuscation indicative of seriously screwed up political values, but some is also just the product of understandable confusion due to the label's association with rhetorical excess, demagoguery and appeals to hatred of various kinds. But anyway, for all these reasons, I don't think it's a helpful political label and I would never describe myself as a "populist". I think small-d democrat (ie, someone who takes the moral premises of democracy seriously) captures a lot better my views in this regard.

RINO Tom, I consider your implication that I have anything in common with Eharding (an admirer of Donald T***p and H.L. Mencken) a serious personal attack and I'll ask you to either provide evidence of your claims or apologize.

[Thank you for being a friend...]

I completely concur with religion and the Democratic Party.  The Democrats could talk about God a lot more, but they don't.  I don't think the Democratic Party elite is really a spiritual group of people.  They seem to be all Darwin, all intellectual, all professorial, and anything about God is kinda just "the other party's business". 

I'd love to see more Democratic candidates openly mentioning God in their campaign ads.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Funny I was actually going to say abortion. The pro-choice lobby is full of absurd people who just want to portray anyone pro-life as a mysoginist instead of addressing the issue on its merits. Last year NARAL actually protested this commercial.

     This is the first thing that came to mind when I saw this thread. Glad to hear I'm not alone in being concerned with the inanity of this approach that far too many pro-choice people embrace.

[DC Al Fine]

Pensions: I'm fairly left wing on pensions and think our retirement system needs to be reformed. Plans to let individuals self-manage have gone poorly since most people don't understand investments, but... whenever the left talks about pensions, I cringe. They seem to show no understanding of the risks involved in investing, the downsides of defined benefit plans, and generally seem stuck in the 1950's They make the right seem a lot more reasonable than they really are .

Who do you mean by "the left"? In the US the main check on cuts to Social Security and other benefits for retirees are the political clout and competence of the AARP and the sheer percentage of the voting base made up of people who are either at or near retirement age.

Canadian left. Expanding pensions has been all the rage here. Our version of Social Security was just expanded and the retirement age dropped.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Just about all of them.

[Figueira]

I agree with pretty much everyone on this thread, but especially Maxwell and Crumpets. And this post by Nathan, even though it isn't in direct response to the question:

Always nice to see conservatives using beloved folk heroes as insults.

Anyway, since "populism" is a style of politics rather than any sort of substantive ideology in itself, opposition to "populism" as such is always either opposition to something else that presents itself as populism, opposition to Those People having a stake in political rhetoric, or a tacit admission that your preferred policies won't do sh**t to make things better for most people and you're not interested in pretending that they will. I respect RINO Tom enough to assume that in this case it's the first.

I'll think of some of my own examples later.