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(I composed this before reading DQ's post. While I don't mean to disagree, I will only point out that I fully confess my inevitable smug know-it-all-ness and understand that it invites similar responses. I would further point out that this is what I do on these boards for fun, and, on the streets, am much more conciliatory and united-front-ish.
That being said: back to the quibbling!)
It is not surprising that the Confederacy invoked Jeffersonian ideals selectively and hypocritically. It will be remembered that Jefferson invoked Jeffersonian ideals selectively and hypocritically, both in office and in his personal life.
On the one hand, as Citizen Dunkerson has pointed out, the Confederacy prescribed slavery in violation of the state's right doctrine. On the other hand, their very act of secession was the culmination of one strain of state's right theory developed from Jeffersonian ideals. There were, of course, other strains, and from what little I understand of the matters, TJ himself probably wouldn't have gone that far.
Also, IIRC, the government of the Confederacy almost instantly turned around and started squabbling about state's rights WITHIN the Confederacy, stymieing the Confederate government's attempts to centralize the war effort, contributing to their defeat.
Meanwhile, the Union took advantage of the Southerners' absence in Congress and passed a slew of internal development bills that later transformed the US into the world powerhouse we all know and love today, a stunning confirmation, in my humble opinion, of Hamilton's vision.
From everything I understand about TJ, and I admit I haven't studied him much because I haven't been able to stomach him from a young age, his vision of the future of the American republic was one of a decentralized democracy of gentleman farmers, with or without slaves. At his best, he may have yearned for a future free from slavery, but even at his best, his thought was stamped with his position as a wealthy slaveholder and the prospect of the country realizing his dreams of becoming a yeoman farmer republic were definitely smashed in the Civil War.
I don't know. That's how I see it.
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"STATES RIGHTS" seem to be the fall back option for those expousing an unpopular viewpoint that they know can't be accomplished at the Federal level (or a viewpoint that was once dominant and is now in retreat).
There are few politicians from either side of the political spectrum who legitimately based there concerns about government policy on what a state can't or can't do. See the the recent withdrawal of Trans student protections from the White House which incorporated a "State's rights" argument versus news on the same day that the Justice Department would withdraw there "hands off" approach to MJ in states that have recently legalized it.
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"STATES RIGHTS" seem to be the fall back option for those expousing an unpopular viewpoint that they know can't be accomplished at the Federal level (or a viewpoint that was once dominant and is now in retreat).
There are few politicians from either side of the political spectrum who legitimately based there concerns about government policy on what a state can't or can't do. See the the recent withdrawal of Trans student protections from the White House which incorporated a "State's rights" argument versus news on the same day that the Justice Department would withdraw there "hands off" approach to MJ in states that have recently legalized it.
"You have to give people the right to vote
"Whoa whoa whoa! states rights!
"Fine then, we'll just legalize marijuana..
"THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS SOVEREIGN!
"...which one is it?
"The one that agrees with me at any current time!
While I agree that "The Left" often devolves into "holier then thou!" finger pointing, I think it is very lopsided. It seems the left, particularly the mainstream political left, is very quick to distance themselves from Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and well, just about every other movement that isn't backed by wealthy plutocrats. On the other hand, values like Peace, Justice, and Equality go out the window in an instant when they want to look tough on crime, or tough on terror, or whatever. Sometimes these might have a centrist appeal, but often it is appealing only to wealthy donors, and not a broad swath of voters. I think support for Fair Trade Vs Free Trade, and support for an actual two state solution in Israel are good examples.
I think what has been slowly destroying the Democrats is that they are all to willing to embrace war and corporatism that is against anything close to Lefty values, while failing to embrace anything remotely controversial even if it is the epitome of the values they claim to embrace.
At a political level it isn't an issue of being too divisive, it is a failure to adhere to values instead of donor cash.
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Yeap, folks are getting tired of centrist dems telling them, "the war is almost over, you only need to suffer discrimination a little longer, more jobs are right around the corner, etc. Its starting to look like the dems are getting their own tea party as a result.OTOH, even the marginal support Dems give often costs them politically - From the fallout from the Civil Right era through Republicans drumming up votes with anti-gay marriage amendments in the mid-Naughties, possibly even through backlash to BLM & "religious freedom" in this past election.
It's possible full-throated support would have won them more support than they lost, but it's far from obvious.
Its the one thing they haven't tried.
(I composed this before reading DQ's post. While I don't mean to disagree, I will only point out that I fully confess my inevitable smug know-it-all-ness and understand that it invites similar responses. I would further point out that this is what I do on these boards for fun, and, on the streets, am much more conciliatory and united-front-ish.
That being said: back to the quibbling!)
It is not surprising that the Confederacy invoked Jeffersonian ideals selectively and hypocritically. It will be remembered that Jefferson invoked Jeffersonian ideals selectively and hypocritically, both in office and in his personal life.
On the one hand, as Citizen Dunkerson has pointed out, the Confederacy prescribed slavery in violation of the state's right doctrine. On the other hand, their very act of secession was the culmination of one strain of state's right theory developed from Jeffersonian ideals. There were, of course, other strains, and from what little I understand of the matters, TJ himself probably wouldn't have gone that far.
Also, IIRC, the government of the Confederacy almost instantly turned around and started squabbling about state's rights WITHIN the Confederacy, stymieing the Confederate government's attempts to centralize the war effort, contributing to their defeat.
Meanwhile, the Union took advantage of the Southerners' absence in Congress and passed a slew of internal development bills that later transformed the US into the world powerhouse we all know and love today, a stunning confirmation, in my humble opinion, of Hamilton's vision.
From everything I understand about TJ, and I admit I haven't studied him much because I haven't been able to stomach him from a young age, his vision of the future of the American republic was one of a decentralized democracy of gentleman farmers, with or without slaves. At his best, he may have yearned for a future free from slavery, but even at his best, his thought was stamped with his position as a wealthy slaveholder and the prospect of the...
The Civil War is often portrayed as an industrial North versus the agricultural South, but the North was still very much an agricultural society. The North had more livestock, produced more wheat and corn, produced nearly as much tobacco, but clearly lost out on rice. The North was still comprised of 48% farmers, compared to the South's 69%. That's definitely gap, but comparing real numbers we see about 9 million farmers in the North compared to 3.5 million farmers in the South.
If you add the border states to the Union, the production numbers go way up and the Union actually produces more tobacco and almost twice the amount of corn in the Confederacy.
The yeoman farmer was doomed by Jefferson's laissez-faire attitude towards government regulation anyways. Despite post-war efforts of the Homestead Act, Morrill Land Grant University Act, Pacific Railway Acts and Dawes act, which were all put in place to help the yeoman farmer spread out further west, the lack of government interference with corporations put them at the mercy of railroad companies. Heck, even the Freedman's Bureau Bill was intended to make yeoman farmers out of former slaves, but largely failed to have much major success (in regards to education though, it was actually fairly successful and one of the best programs during Reconstruction).
Edit: gonna add another thought in a moment.
Something that's interesting to look at from a labor standpoint is early anti-slavery causes. Working class whites were opposed to slavery in new states (Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, California), because they felt it would be competition for them to get jobs. Why hire white workers when you can buy slaves? Or that good farm land would go to wealthy white slave owners and leave the worst land for white subsistence farmers.
This is part of why there wasn't really a big push for nation-wide abolition. In the North, slavery was already outlawed, so this left new industrial jobs open to white workers. In the South, the poorer farmers didn't oppose slavery because it put them on a social pecking order above the slaves. Politically, Notherners opposed the expansion of slavery because it would limit opportunities for white settlers, while Southerners required the expansion of slavery to maintain enough power in the Senate to prevent any anti-slavery laws.
Anyways, I stand by, not really great debate of Hamilton/Jefferson. It was more that they saw this issue, but because slavery was starting to die out in the 1780's, they kicked the issue down the road to avoid having to deal with it. From 1780-1800 the importation of slaves was decreasing and the overall numbers were dropping significantly. Then you have the invention/adoption of the Cotton Gin, which dramatically increased the demand for labor to pick cotton, but this demand still lagged for a time. By then, Hamilton was long dead and Jefferson would die right about when the new slavery demand would boom.
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Well I never thought I'd hear an endorsement of Sherrod Brown for the oval office, but now I've heard everything. Not sure he could get national presence in four years, I mean Rush Limbaugh thinks Brown is black.
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On the one hand, as Citizen Dunkerson has pointed out, the Confederacy prescribed slavery in violation of the state's right doctrine. On the other hand, their very act of secession was the culmination of one strain of state's right theory developed from Jeffersonian ideals.
While the Confederate states were certainly claiming a 'right of secession', I would argue that there is a fundamental difference between that and other 'states rights' positions in reference to the balance between state and federal legislative power.
Namely... legislative 'states rights' are and always have been a real thing. There are certain areas of the law which are left to state control and others which are under the federal government. Normal 'states rights' disputes are about where that line is drawn.
The 'right to secession' is a different thing altogether, in that it never actually existed. The states entered into an agreement of "perpetual union". In any case, convincingly tracing the evolution of erroneous claims to the contrary back to Jefferson would likely be impossible.
Closest they came was the Civil Rights act and it crippled the party for decades. Still does in some ways. Not surprising they're a little gunshy.Its the one thing they haven't tried.Yeap, folks are getting tired of centrist dems telling them, "the war is almost over, you only need to suffer discrimination a little longer, more jobs are right around the corner, etc. Its starting to look like the dems are getting their own tea party as a result.OTOH, even the marginal support Dems give often costs them politically - From the fallout from the Civil Right era through Republicans drumming up votes with anti-gay marriage amendments in the mid-Naughties, possibly even through backlash to BLM & "religious freedom" in this past election.
It's possible full-throated support would have won them more support than they lost, but it's far from obvious.
Not really, they had basically the same number of presidential victories post civil rights act and controlled various houses of congress roughly the same amount as the republicans since then as well. Governorships and state legislatures....maybe, but thats just as likely the party abandoning areas they thought they couldn't win.
Really. Yeah, it's been back and forth since then, but it was near absolute control of Congress from the Depression to a decade or so after LBJ, but the slide was visible even then.
Literally the only slide in congress was the mid 90's Which is kind of a long time after the fact to blame the civil rights act.
Edit: its not that far off to blame the centrist/rightward shift of the party under the clintons lowering progressive enthusiasm for voting D
Really. Yeah, it's been back and forth since then, but it was near absolute control of Congress from the Depression to a decade or so after LBJ, but the slide was visible even then.Literally the only slide in congress was the mid 90's Which is kind of a long time after the fact to blame the civil rights act.
Edit: its not that far off to blame the centrist/rightward shift of the party under the clintons lowering progressive enthusiasm for voting D
Senate drops from a high of 68 seats in 65 to 54 6 years later. After a bit of a rally around Nixon's impeachment, they lose control for the first time in 25 years in 1980.
The House is more volatile, but the high mark was again in 1965, losing nearly 50 seats in the next election. Recovering more again after Nixon, then bouncing around until the 90's sweep you talk about.I think it's far more of a stretch to blame that loss on Clinton's rightward shift, when the Republican campaign was all about tax and spend liberals and when Clinton's main rightward shift came after and in response to that loss. And I do think it's still reasonable to blame some of it on racism, if not civil rights directly - the opposition to welfare programs, for example, grew as they could be painted as mostly benefiting blacks.
In the 1980 election, we were dealing with a massive energy crisis with soaring gas prices, High unemployment and Iran seizing our embassy. The incumbent party was going to get the boot there, it happened to be the democrats at the time. They lost control for all of 3 terms, didn't lose control of the senate, and then regained control until halfway through clinton's first term when they lost both houses. How is it more of a stretch to blame clinton's rightward shift than it is to blame the civil rights act?
I see we're still arguing about whether the Democratic party not being progressive enough led to the victory of the EVEN LESS PROGRESSIVE Republican party. And how is that going? :P
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I see we're still arguing about whether the Democratic party not being progressive enough led to the victory of the EVEN LESS PROGRESSIVE Republican party. And how is that going? :P
They're making... progress.
If the argument is that the Democrats failed to turn out their base...well, even if that were true, I think Mr. Trump has already solved that problem for them.
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If the argument is that the Democrats failed to turn out their base...well, I think Mr. Trump has already solved that problem for them.
That remains to be seen. I'm generally a pessimist so my vision may be tinted, but I generally don't have high confidence in people's ability to stay passionate about anything for very long.
(I composed this before reading DQ's post. While I don't mean to disagree, I will only point out that I fully confess my inevitable smug know-it-all-ness and understand that it invites similar responses. I would further point out that this is what I do on these boards for fun, and, on the streets, am much more conciliatory and united-front-ish.
That being said: back to the quibbling!)
It is not surprising that the Confederacy invoked Jeffersonian ideals selectively and hypocritically. It will be remembered that Jefferson invoked Jeffersonian ideals selectively and hypocritically, both in office and in his personal life.
On the one hand, as Citizen Dunkerson has pointed out, the Confederacy prescribed slavery in violation of the state's right doctrine. On the other hand, their very act of secession was the culmination of one strain of state's right theory developed from Jeffersonian ideals. There were, of course, other strains, and from what little I understand of the matters, TJ himself probably wouldn't have gone that far.
Also, IIRC, the government of the Confederacy almost instantly turned around and started squabbling about state's rights WITHIN the Confederacy, stymieing the Confederate government's attempts to centralize the war effort, contributing to their defeat.
Meanwhile, the Union took advantage of the Southerners' absence in Congress and passed a slew of internal development bills that later transformed the US into the world powerhouse we all know and love today, a stunning confirmation, in my humble opinion, of Hamilton's vision.
From everything I understand about TJ, and I admit I haven't studied him much because I haven't been able to stomach him from a young age, his vision of the future of the American republic was one of a decentralized democracy of gentleman farmers, with or without slaves. At his best, he may have yearned for a future free from slavery, but even at his best, his thought was stamped with his position as a wealthy slaveholder and the prospect of the...
It's close. Jefferson and Hamilton's breach wasn't just about particular things such as states rights, or even slavery. It was about two contrary views of what the fledgling American Society should aim for.
Hamilton made his views clear by founding the Wall Street Stock Exchange, and building America's first planned industrial city in Paterson, New Jersey after a picnic lunch with Washington and friends by the Great Falls.
Jefferson on the other hand held to a romaticised view of the feudal period with private landowners exercising their own rule and justice with minimal involvement of a central government.
The former saw the United States as an up and coming great nation that would rival the empires of Europe in the mercantile as much if not more than the military sense. The latter wanted nothing that would intefere with his vision of a collection of States that were as loosely bound as possible. It's why the South to this day titles the conflict of the 1860's as "The War of Northern Aggression".
If the argument is that the Democrats failed to turn out their base...well, even if that were true, I think Mr. Trump has already solved that problem for them.
I don't think so. We're currently in a 40-40-20 situation, 40 percent that think Trump is the ArchDevil, 40 percent that think he was sent by God himself to save this country form the evil America-hating Liberals and Towelheads, and 20 percent who aren't decided.
It was to that 20 percent last nights speech was aimed at and in the short term I think he's won them for now, at the very least it's stopped his downward popularity trend. The long term will depend on how many broken promises it will take for that 20 percent to cross him off their lists.
Because Gingrich didn't run a faux populist...In the 1980 election, we were dealing with a massive energy crisis with soaring gas prices, High unemployment and Iran seizing our embassy. The incumbent party was going to get the boot there, it happened to be the democrats at the time. They lost control for all of 3 terms, didn't lose control of the senate, and then regained control until halfway through clinton's first term when they lost both houses. How is it more of a stretch to blame clinton's rightward shift than it is to blame the civil rights act?Really. Yeah, it's been back and forth since then, but it was near absolute control of Congress from the Depression to a decade or so after LBJ, but the slide was visible even then.Literally the only slide in congress was the mid 90's Which is kind of a long time after the fact to blame the civil rights act.
Edit: its not that far off to blame the centrist/rightward shift of the party under the clintons lowering progressive enthusiasm for voting D
Senate drops from a high of 68 seats in 65 to 54 6 years later. After a bit of a rally around Nixon's impeachment, they lose control for the first time in 25 years in 1980.
The House is more volatile, but the high mark was again in 1965, losing nearly 50 seats in the next election. Recovering more again after Nixon, then bouncing around until the 90's sweep you talk about.I think it's far more of a stretch to blame that loss on Clinton's rightward shift, when the Republican campaign was all about tax and spend liberals and when Clinton's main rightward shift came after and in response to that loss. And I do think it's still reasonable to blame some of it on racism, if not civil rights directly - the opposition to welfare programs, for example, grew as they could be painted as mostly benefiting blacks.
The shift is also in America itself. The country as a whole has made a concerted shift to the right since the passage of the Civil Rights Act gave Nixon a landslide victory in '68. (The nuclear meltdown of the Democratic Party, and Nixon's successful bid to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks helped as well.)
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That and a deeply unpopular war that had instituted the draft in the last year of LBJ's term while the Democrats controlled both houses of congress and the presidency.
The shift is also in America itself. The country as a whole has made a concerted shift to the right since the passage of the Civil Rights Act gave Nixon a landslide victory in '68. (The nuclear meltdown of the Democratic Party, and Nixon's successful bid to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks helped as well.)But that's my basic thesis - that it's all tied to racism and Civil Rights. That the shift to the right is largely a response to the attempt to integrate blacks into mainstream society. Leading to white flight from the cities, the rise of private schools as an alternative to integrated public ones, to opposition to government spending, since it could be portrayed as taking white people's money and giving it to blacks. Everything else has followed from that.
The Democratic shift from economic populism to identity politics followed that, it didn't lead it. It was a desperate attempt to put together some kind of coalition that could win when the white Democratic base was turning away from liberal economic policies.
I'm not sure what you mean by "nuclear meltdown of the Democratic Party" though.
The 1968 Democratic Convention was a major case of meltdown. Robert Kennedy had been shot but his delegates remained uncommitted. A major chunk of primary votes had gone to Eugene McCarthy, a major peace advocate. However the DNC gave the nomination to Hubert Humphrey despite the fact that he had not participated in a single primary (He had gotten his delegates all from caucus states). George McGovern took his support in an attempt to run as a third party candidate. The resulting splits in the Democratic Party gave Nixon his landslide victory.
And I'm not getting into the floor show.
I see we're still arguing about whether the Democratic party not being progressive enough led to the victory of the EVEN LESS PROGRESSIVE Republican party. And how is that going? :P
Well, 20 pages ago they were arguing that the party was TOO PROGRESSIVE and that's why people went Republican. A lot has changed since then?
So, the dem's should be more progressive... for white people only?
It's probably a strange combination of both, and the Democrat Party has to find a balancing act between:
Satisfying democrat/democrat leaning older voters, who are reliable, but generally far less progressive
Satisfying younger voters in general, who are far more progressive, but also lead far busier lives and can be hard to bring out in force (and much more likely to hold very high standards for idealogical purity than older (perhaps a bit more cynical?) voters. So a very important and key component for democrats is also a pretty fickle one
Generally speaking Republicans have less to worry about this. Younger voters are not a key part of their base, and although there are people in the party who might want more Christian or Libertarian policies, they might be more likely to swallow there preferences and vote for Republicans.
One highly overlooked thing is that young people don't vote simply because of the registration process. You have to do it months in advance , but once you do you're locked in pretty much for life. I bet if old people had to register they wouldn't have the turn out that they do.
hard to tell how much if that is a bureaucratic appendix and how much of that is to help republicans.
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I read an interesting article on WaPo this morning about generation X that got me thinking about Gen X and political leanings. The idea about age groups is that world events help shape their values and ideals. Gen x then would essentially be split in half with their coming of age experiences. The early Xers experienced the 80's climbing out of economic recession with a looming cold war. This ushered in an age of be independent and take care of yourself thinking. Then you have later Xers who experienced the 90s and the end of the cold war, the falling of the Berlin wall, and a period of relative economic prosperity. This allowed folks to focus more on ideals like corporate responsibility and progressive movement.
Things will get interesting as boomers sunset. Boomers typically fall into traditional ideologies that lean more conservative. Early Xers have less trust or need of organizations like government, religion, and labor unions. This helps explains a more libertarian leaning and tea party movement as early Xers toss the flannel and put on the suit. What will be interesting is where pendulum will tip once boomers pass and late Xers start aligning more with Millennials. Combine a more progressive leaning generation with an increasing immigrant population and America might be heading in a very progressive direction.
All this is my perceptions and opinions of course. I would be interested to hear more thoughts on the subject. At any rate, Id like to see more progressive and more confident candidates appear in the democratic party. Id like to see someone who can produce an idea and not be paralyzed in fear of how they will be perceived by the public and their peers. Kind of like what the Republicans have now, but you know, not an idiot or an a#$hole.
The other aspect of why older people vote more is habit. Once you vote, you're more likely to vote a second time. If you've voted twice, you're more likely to vote a third time, etc. The older you get, the more likely you are to have voted at least once. It just takes one election that you're genuinely interested in and then you're more likely to do continue doing so.
If we were doing pie in the sky ideas, I'd lower the voting age to 8. There's a ton of advantages to it. For one, a lot of policies are going to have effects 20-30 or more years into the future, it's going to affect them more than someone who is 60. If you tied it to a national holiday, parents would just take their kids to the polling place, kid gets a ballot too. Odds are that kids will vote with parents for a while, but then teenage years set in and you never know. Yes, parents will influence kids, but they already do. The younger people start voting, the more likely they are to keep voting pushing up turnout in the long run. 8-17 is approximately 13% of the national population.
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Lets take a look at the life of the american worker if an individual were a corporation.
Their car would be a deductable expense instead of something that gets taxed out the wazoo. Same with insurance.
Time spent commuting to and from work would be billable hours
Their taxes would be cut in half, at least.
When you went to vegas and put 57,000 dollars of other peoples money on a blackjack table, the government would cover your losses, but not tax your winnings.
Corporations aren't against socialism. They're just against sharing it.
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Jesus IT, don't say things like that. You know higher turnout supports Democrats. Republicans catch wind of this idea they will change voting age to 38.
Why don't the Democrats actually do what Obama promised to do when he ran to victory in 08? He talked a big (and vague) progressive agenda, won by a large margin, then backtracked on most of it. Naturally people were not happy, so he got clobbered in the mid-terms.
Democrats can win easily, they just have to do the stuff they promise, not appoint a%+*!#~s like Timothy Geithner, expand the police/surveillance state, and push neoliberal Free Trade policies.
Was it Ellison who said that Trump stole the Democrats main issues and used them to beat the democrats?
The road map to victory is so obvious, it is painful to watch the democrats f$#$ it up so badly!
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Why don't the Democrats actually do what Obama promised to do when he ran to victory in 08?
Because there were enough republicans in the senate to filibuster anything they tried to pass, and the republicans started the negotiations at "we pass everything we want, you pass nothing" and democrats are biologically predisposed towards compromise/ the golden mean fallacy.
Jesus IT, don't say things like that. You know higher turnout supports Democrats. Republicans catch wind of this idea they will change voting age to 38.
Republicans have 19% more kids than democrats.
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You know higher turnout supports Democrats. Republicans catch wind of this idea they will change voting age to 38.
The GOP already has a potential problem there, in that voting has grown continually, except for brief interruptions, since the US was founded.
Sure, 'only' ~40% of the US population voted in recent presidential elections, but that is vastly better than the less than 5% who voted for the country's first ~50 years. Granted, most of the increase came in two surges from giving non-landowners and then women the right to vote... but not all of it. Thus, we might expect continued slow voting growth leading to future Dem advantage.
Given that ~24% of the population are under 18, ~3% are undocumented immigrants, and ~2% are felons who have had their voting rights revoked... that leaves ~30% (rising to over 50% in off cycle congressional elections) who could be voting but aren't. Still plenty of room for continued growth... even without changing laws to allow more people to vote.
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You know higher turnout supports Democrats. Republicans catch wind of this idea they will change voting age to 38.The GOP already has a potential problem there, in that voting has grown continually, except for brief interruptions, since the US was founded.
Sure, 'only' ~40% of the US population voted in recent presidential elections, but that is vastly better than the less than 5% who voted for the country's first ~50 years. Granted, most of the increase came in two surges from giving non-landowners and then women the right to vote... but not all of it. Thus, we might expect continued slow voting growth leading to future Dem advantage.
Given that ~24% of the population are under 18, ~3% are undocumented immigrants, and ~2% are felons who have had their voting rights revoked... that leaves ~30% (rising to over 50% in off cycle congressional elections) who could be voting but aren't. Still plenty of room for continued growth... even without changing laws to allow more people to vote.
One of the best ways the democratic party could help itself is push for Oregon's system of voting.
They simply print 1 ballot for every registered voter in state, mail it to you 2 weeks before the election, and have dropboxes scattered around that are picked up, i think, 2 or 3 times daily.
Most state legislatures, the bodies that decide how votes are cast/collected, are republican controlled.