gut;1874089 wrote:Trump really doesn't have anything to do with "Trump's America". The Left certainly has it's share of nutjobs and wackadoos in Congress, different strokes for different folks. The main difference between the two parties is those nutjobs pretty much run the Democratic Party, while the Republican Party is still run by moderate, establishment types.
I may disagree with Obama's policies/agenda, socialist leanings, but he's not a libtard. Pelosi, Reid, Feinstein, Warren, DWS, Sanders, possibly Schumer, even Hillary at her core (despite the front she attempted to present) are mostly all libtards....and that's literally a who's-who of the Democratic Party (I'd suggest it isn't and really never has been Obama's party).
To me, the intolerance and the faux family values, the religious kookism....that's the Republitard contigent but the establishment gives it only lip service in the platform. The libtardism trends more toward economics, fisc, and SJW...and it's front and center on the platform, which has always been scarier and more alarming to me. Ted Cruz is scary (and fake) and Trump is a baffoon (and not really a Republican), but those are the only two clown idiots with any real influence in the Repub party.
I find it fascinating that my perception is that it is almost precisely the opposite.
I think we would both agree that there is a sort of Washington Establishment Consensus that attempts to gain influence in both major parties. My perception is that this Establishment has more of a real foothold in the Democratic Party than in the Republican party but that it is still strong in both. IOW, the right-wing kooks have slightly more real power than left-wing kooks and the Establishment still has most of the power in both.
I think the real power of right-wing conservatism is overblown in the Republican party but that it has more power than the left-wing liberalism really has in the democratic party. For example, Eric Cantor is more conservative than Steny Hoyer is progressive but I don't see power brokers like Steny Hoyer getting primaried in the Democratic Party like they do in the Republican Party. And, when they do they lose more often in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party.
To go through the list of individuals you provided, if Medicare for All is to be considered the litmus test for Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren style left-wing liberalism in America (Mind you, it is probably moderate to conservative in even Canada), Reid, Pelosi, Feinstein, Shumer and DWS all have opposed it. Elizabeth Warren is hardcore on financial regulations but she was a Republican up until the 90's. Feinstein is hardcore lib on guns but can't really be considered hardcore lib on other issues. Reid was more like McConnell - really it was all about doing what ever you can for the blue tribe to beat the red tribe - more pure tribalist than ideological lib.
I will grant you Pelosi as full-on San Francisco lib but still to this day is not for Single-Payer for example.
And again - the Republican party nominated Donald Trump. The Democratic Party rejected Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump is not a traditional conservative but he is definitely a kook. I think Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian-style republican basically summed up my thoughts on what the conservative base was about until they elected trump:
Massie: Well, I'm still hopeful, okay? There are moments when populism lines up with libertarianism. But let me tell you about a realization that I came to when I was in Iowa campaigning for Senator Rand Paul to be president.
You see in 2012, his dad did very well in Iowa, got like a quarter of the vote and a quarter of the vote in New Hampshire, and did very well in Nevada. I ran in 2012 on the same sort of libertarian ideas. Senator Rand Paul had blown a hole through the establishment Republican Party in Kentucky in 2010 on libertarian/republican ideas, and so I thought the libertarian ideology within the Republican party was really catching on, that it was popular. But then when I went to Iowa I saw that the same people that had voted for Ron Paul weren't voting for Rand Paul, they were voting for Donald Trump. And the same thing happened in Kentucky, the people who were my voters ended up voting for Donald Trump in the primary. And so I was in a funk because how could these people let us down? How could they go from being libertarian ideologues to voting for Donald Trump? And then I realized what it was: They weren't voting for the libertarian in the race, they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race when they voted for me and Rand and Ron earlier. So Trump just won, you know, that category, but dumped the ideological baggage. […]
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/29/rep-thomas-massie-we-dont-really-have-21
With that being said, in reality, it seems to me that the Washington Establishment Consensus still has a pretty good foothold in both parties. On the dem-side they shutout Bernie Sanders people for the most part in the post-mortem and on the GOP-side the Establishment shutdown Obamacare repeal.
If the Establishment wasn't really in control then Obamcare would've been repealed but the GOP Establishment never wanted to repeal it just like I don't believe the Dem establishment really wants single-payer - both are just raw meat for the bases of each tribe.
So, I don't really think the kooks are ultimately in control of either party. My guess is that your own views on economics and fiscal policy which are much to the right of the Washington Establishment Consensus (like mine are much to "the left") leads you to conclude that Democrat leadership is full of kooks, etc.
