The Trump Presidency

[Drewbacca]

My first instinct was to get snippy with you, but the more I thought about it, the more defensible your position seemed, and the sadder I got. Everyone on the list except Bernie and, to a lesser extent, Warren, is just a less-experienced Clinton. Harris, Booker, and especially Cuomo would just be the same warhawking, corporatist, tepid neoliberal centrist but without Clinton's resumé.

Granted, that resumé includes two remarkably shitty presidential campaigns, so I'm not sure her chances of winning an election would be any better than those of the other hopefuls, but as far as actual governing goes, she's the ideal of which Harris and The Rest are inferior copies.

Despite my trolling of bbobb with the pochahontas name earlier I think Warren could be a phenomenal leader if she put together a decent platform and was willing to barter with the economically disenfranchised (Trump and Bernie both did this well last campaign). I’d prefer more boring candidates like Reagan or Johnson though. Political theatre has gotten so ridiculous.

[Drewbacca]

I’d happily take a centrist on either side over this new breed of extremist. I wish that didn’t also come with a minefield of warhawks though.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Yeah, but they might at least actually work for it instead of expecting it to be handed to them and losing to a cartoon of the worst conceivable candidate ever.

Agreed!

Despite my trolling of bbobb with the pochahontas name earlier I think Warren could be a phenomenal leader if she put together a decent platform and was willing to barter with the economically disenfranchised (Trump and Bernie both did this well last campaign). I’d prefer more boring candidates like Reagan or Johnson though. Political theatre has gotten so ridiculous.

That is Warren's platform. She has been by far the most outspoken and the most successful Wall Street reformist in the current Senate.

I’d happily take a centrist on either side over this new breed of extremist. I wish that didn’t also come with a minefield of warhawks though.

The rhetoric of your post gets to why there is no non-hawk centrist. Rampant imperialism has become the center; occupying Afghanistan, selling arms to the Saudis, etc, is seen as normal, non-partisan, unideological. Any contrary position is, then, already "extremist."

You don't get to be a neoliberal who opposes occupation because these terms constitute each other.

[Drewbacca]

I actually agree. In the same way socialism attracts cult of personality dictatorship a centrist agenda will attract a confluence of oligarch runaway greed. There is a middle ground I feel — Canada does an okay job of balancing this. I think either way one key measure of success of any philosophy should be quality of life. Because outside of mission driven cultures (winning a war for example) people spending their time doing peaceful activities is kind of the end there.

Re: Warren

I’d need to see more economic tenacity towards non-Wall Street capitalism. SMB and low to middle class movement is the sweet spot.

[A Robot Bit Me]

For any "Roe vs. Wade isn't REALLY going away" skeptics:

What It Takes to Get an Abortion in the Most Restrictive U.S. State https://nyti.ms/2O2ytfD

This is the form the repeal will take: incremental restrictions, all of which are now safe from SCOTUS striking them down for 30 years, until abortion is, while still legal, unfeasible for most.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

Not trying to gotcha or anything as boring as that, I'm asking because I honestly don't know. For all these states that make getting abortions hard, is it equally as hard to get a morning after pill?

[Satsuki]

But the incremental restrictions are in place, and have been in place in the south for decades? I absolutely don't deny that restrictions exist, I mean, duh, the data is there. But most of these restrictions were implemented by state governments and will continue to do so if states continue to vote in rigid conservatives. The system in place we have is a clusterfuck, I agree - but these lack of rights were endorsed long before Trump or the new SCOTUS appointee were on the scene. My issue is, and will continue to be, where were advocates when we needed them nearly a decade ago? Guttmacher states that there were 401 state level restrictions on abortion from 2011 to 2017, and we've have an increase in restrictions since. This didn't appear in November of 2016, this has been a long time coming. That was my initial scoff at the deluge of twitter outrage - not that the policies exist and will continue to grow, but that people only started to care recently.

[Rumpy]

Everyone is whipped up into politics now so there's a lot more talk on issues. "People only started to care recently" is because of that, more peiople are paying attention (and Trump's a great poster boy for Oh Hell No attention getting). And yes, restrictions have been being pushed for a long time. That's what the battle has been for decades since RvW (amd many of those restrictions are stupid obnoxious and gross). Now with the courts being stacked more conservatively, these state laws will easily escalete to the higher court where a major shift can absolutely happen. The hardline conservatives have come to grips that they've been largely washed aside on this social issue in public discussion, so they've moved way more aggressively on locking this down in the law books.

[Rumpy]

Not trying to gotcha or anything as boring as that, I'm asking because I honestly don't know. For all these states that make getting abortions hard, is it equally as hard to get a morning after pill?

The morning after pill isn't the abortion pill. That's a completely different medication. MAP is pretty much a super dose birth control pill. Conception doesn't happen right after intercourse, that's why there's a window to take this pill. It doesn't kill a fertilized egg, it stops an egg from being fertilized. There are some super hardcore people that are against any type of contraception so they'd be against this stuff being available, but from a rational standpoint, the Pro-life crowd shouldn't care about the MAP. I haven't looked into if there's a war on the MAP.

[Drewbacca]

They would care. Anything after nut is life to them.