I have been thinking a lot about the issue of credibility in politics. If someone flat out lies about something and gets busted that is one kind of credibility. To me there is another kind--admiting you were wrong without pointing fingers at the other side (Yes, I am talking about you Hillary Clinton and your Iraq War support. I know you poe as an NRA member here. It came to me in a dream). To me, at least, the person most credible is one who will say "I and my party were both dead wrong on this one. Here is why, and here is what I have learned". I don't have a political party but I swing wide to the left side of the field, and can find every bit as much fault in the DNC as the GOP so it is a little difficult for me to participate in this, especially since I usually have issues around the margins of things I otherwise do support, and many of the things the left has had its fingers in I think were failures was before my time. For instance, I support universal healthcare, and saw the PPACA as a step toward that, but I opposed the mandate, so I have a foot in and a foot out on that one which was in my time, but the Voting Rights Act was a horrible piece of legislation before my time that I probably would have supported had I lived then. Is there something you can point to and say, "Yep me and my party screwed the pooch on that one"? I would expect Iraq to be the most obvious one, but I would like you to try to ground it in something domestic policy wise if you could. Also, can you point to any of the candidates who have done that without trying to assign blame on the other party for their own bad judgment (if it has happened, I haven't seen it yet)?
The only time I have been wrong was thinking Jeb bush would be the nominee. I am never wrong because I do not make predictions on anything. You brought up the gulf war but what exactly would a person be wrong about when both sides could be right. One person could say they thought it was wrong and it turned out wrong while another could say it was right and turned out right. I suppose I was wrong about the supermajority the democrats had because I thought they would have passed way more legislation then just the ACA. But even there, I never claimed they would have.
Your response was a little more process side than I hoped for, but thanks for responding. I know of several republicans/conservatives who now admit OIF was a huge mistake even though they supported it initially. Not sure of an elected pubbies who say this though. Maybe McCain. Not sure he is so ancient history
As soon as I saw your name in the thread I knew that the post was about some hyperpartisan Obama/Clinton bashing, rather than contributing constructively to the thread, which I think is actually a great idea. Here are my two cents: 1) I was wrong on hoping for "hope and change", so were lots of members of the DEM party to run with this theme. As always, many promises were made that could never be kept. 2) I think Obamacare didn't turn out well, although I still support the premise. As soon as Obama folded on the public option, I knew this was going to be a giveaway to the insurance companies. 3) When we bought a house in 2003, I predicted housing to crash, but I didn't anticipate how long the house market could stay irrational. We lucked out and sold in 2007, just after the bubble burst, with a good profit after the sale. This episode taught me that I will never do any prediction om the stock market or housing market again. I rather go with buy-and-hold instead of relying on being lucky with unpredictable timing of the market.
1)Here's a fellow Dem who fell for the "hope and change" line and felt like a Blue Dog Democrat kicked out of the party. But thankfully, that started my political evolution and hence I'm much smarter for it. 2) Here's a hint: If the premise is flawed, then the entire thing is flawed. I too, could only support it with a public option. But knowing business as I know it now, I oppose it on economic grounds as well as fairness grounds(the mandate.) How do you suggest to lower prices with more people using medical resources? You don't. A universal health care is fundamentally flawed, if the objective is to "lower prices" and not "cover everyone". I thought that was the original reason, but it got dropped since it was politically inconvenient(not achievable) so instead they focused on "Hey, now people can have coverage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I won't focus on the unfairness of judging people on a per hour basis, and hence having companies drop them and their own insurance costs go up. I won't focus on how the mandate creates a monopoly for health care companies. No, I'll just focus on the fact that we signed this big law and costs did not in fact go down. A true UHC can only be accomplished Across-State-Lines. It can only be accomplished by segregating the market into smaller groups, hence easier to cover and with less costs to boot. Through segregating the market, the subsidies can target specific groups(the elderly/really poor) and last much longer since you're not putting as much resources into it. That also means we can give people options with their health care again and no longer having men pay for women's tampons! All the ACA is, is a reorganization of health care. Nothing more. There's no "company" or "law" called the ACA. You don't buy the ACA. You just buy insurance. So contrary to the fear, we can reorganize this entire mess and people will still have their plans. This is because I won't "outlaw" it. Nor will it be "grandfathered". You want your crappy plan? You can have your crappy plan.
Don't have a party either. But I used to believe Iraqi war was a smart and swift idea. I was talking about attracting terrorists to the ME region then annihilate them. Oh how wrong I was. It has now become the hotbed for terrorism, and gave rise to the ISIS.
People around the globe have done it, so we need to look at what they have done. The ACA is a crap american version that isn't worth a damn. Yeah it barely reduced costs to the federal and state governments, but premiums are still spiraling out of control, drug costs are through the roof, many states did not opt for medicaid expansion etc. It should have just been modeled after medicare, which actually does reduce inflation of costs (the public option of it anyways). Even if we just repeal obamacare it won't fix a damn thing. Somebody has to be willing to do what has to be done to fix it, but america is so scared of socialized programs we are too paralyzed to progress.
The Democratic Party used to have Hawks in it like LBJ and Humphrey who pushed a pointless and wasteful war. It also used to have racists like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond who supported segregation to pander to Southern racists. Fortunately in the last 40 years or so....those folks became Republicans.
Don't forget Ku Klux Klan Robert Byrd who once said........ He said he would rather "die a thousand times than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels" This is the same guy the Democrats bestowed a......Rare Senate honor for Byrd Fascinating who the Democrats hero's are ain't it.
I have never had a single post removed from this forum due to lack of etiquette. Can you claim the same? In any case, why don't you actually contribute to the thread? Maybe people would reply then in a more respectful way, if your post actually had anything to discuss. Can you come up with something interesting instead of "Obama/Clinton baaad"?
Myself and a lot of other libertarians expressed concern that Obamacare would lead to a a sharp rise in unemployment/underemployment. The latest numbers don't seem to bear that out. This is one of those moments where being wrong is cause for celebration instead of nursing a bruised ego.
The common screed you hear from the democrats about their racists switching sides and becoming republicans is absurd. The democrats, in 1964, were the party of overt and violent racism, and the KKK was their militant arm. The republicans had 100 years of fighting for racial equality under their belts. To believe that any democrat like Robert Byrd (or anyone who thought like he did) would JOIN a party that stood for everything the democrats had fought all that time against (freeing the slaves, giving them the right to vote, civil rights, equality, etc), is absurd. Once LBJ came to the realization that black folks had been given the tools they needed to become a politically relevant group, and that they were beginning to leverage it, he devised his plan. (See his quote about "uppityness".) It was to end the OVERT racism and violent oppression, and institute a covert plan of dependence and subjugation instead, disguised as humanitarian aid. Anyone who opposed would be labeled a racist. Brilliant plan. Take exactly what the republicans had fought all those decades for, and crank it up to overdrive. When they cry foul, label them racists. He said he'd "...have those (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s voting democrat for the next 200 years...", and he's probably pretty close, if the entitlements don't end our republic before then.
I can think of two things that the Republican Party got wrong in the 90's that have lead to a Republican Civil War now. 1) Free Trade, all the time, no matter how bad the deal. The logic of having free trade with economies that are radically different from ours is going to create major imbalances. NAFTA was a dumb move that cost the US jobs that benefited a few, but hollowed out the base of our industry and altered the availability of manufacturing (good) jobs. The same thing applies with granting Most Favored Nation status to China back in the 90's. This was in spite of the fact that China was and is engaged in industrial espionage against us and didn't protect intellectual property. Free trade has a logic to it that works with economies that are similar. Then you get bigger markets with less disruption. We could have had a "NAFTA" with Western Europe or the Anglosphere that wouldn't have cost us the jobs that our trade policies have cost us. Big mistake. 2) Immigration and Amnesty. There's no doubt that the 1986 amnesty was a failure by it's own standards, but the GOP has been trying to replicate it ever since. We've been importing poverty, stagnating wages, that hurt, in a direct manner, the American working class. Although there has been a sizable chunk of the Republican base that's opposed this (and the reason why multiple amnesties have not been successful), the party as a whole regard open borders and amnesty as an important domestic policy goal. The fruits of those bad polices are becoming apparent.
I really expected to see more employers dump their employees onto the PPACA system as well, and the statistics suggest that really did not happen much either. I know small businesses that have done it locally but it doesn't seem to have been as widespread as I anticipated. Based on anecdotal evidence, there seems to have been some slack in the marketplace that was created by husbands and wives being on separate policies through their work that have now migrated to family policies through one or the other's work. Not really sure though
