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mjdlight's avatar

Simply put, a two party system cannot function with one rational party. The Dems are flawed -- of course - as is every human organization ever created. Harping on their flaws is counter-productive, because they will always be flawed. Either the GOP is replaced by a rational conservative party, or the house will fall. We are living on borrowed time at the moment.

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Terry Mc Kenna's avatar

Agree but re the Dems - they do police their wrongdoers. And they do correct the positions (like Defund the Police - popular with the left but it has mostly been dropped).

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rlritt's avatar

Only a few left wing activists said defund the police. No one actually took them seriously. But the current Republicans want to defund the military and not a word about it on this article or in the Bulwark or even main stream media. It's almost as if they were afraid to talk about it.

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JF's avatar

Dems are, if anything, a little too exuberant to police their own. I think they expect positive results from their displays of integrity, which assumes a rational electorate.

тАЬDefund the PoliceтАЭ was a street protest slogan; as far as I remember it was never a serious Democratic policy suggestion. But I could be wrong.

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knowltok's avatar

IIRC, there were some low level pols who did propose it. Either as a way of shifting funding (maybe fewer Scorpion teams) to better ways to promote public safety, or as a way of starting over on corrupt departments.

Pretty natural response (and horrid sloganning) to a situation where the thin blue line and police unions act to severely retard accountability for bad actors.

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JF's avatar

I canтАЩt remember if the low level pols used those words, тАЬdefund the policeтАЭ. ItтАЩs a sad fact that GOP three or four word slogans have staying power, but similar slogans by Dems are usually duds. IтАЩm not sure if thatтАЩs more reflective of our simple minded electorate or our too-lofty Democratic leaders.

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Substacker's avatar

"Defund the Police" was, in fact, used as the term for proposed legislation in Minneapolis. Whether it was initially intended to advocate reallocation of only a portion of resources devoted to conventional policing, the term was eventually walked back to mean that.

There's tons of evidence that the term handed The Right a pithy meme to beat up on the Democratic Party as a whole.

The Right Wing has long had greater discipline than the Democrats at adoption and repetition of potent memes.

"RINO" is another example of newspeak that effectively crowds out nuanced thought.

That Party seems to have better means to enforce their well-crafted slogans with their unforgiving primary system.

Repetition is Reality (tm).

Since Edward Bernays pioneered public relations, influenced by the insight of his uncle Sigmund Freud, persuasion engineers in commercial and political marketing organizations have aggressively exploited this feature of human cognition.

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JF's avatar

Yes, thatтАЩs retrieving a memory about Minneapolis; shortly after George FloydтАЩs murder. ItтАЩs very frustrating when pithy phrases seem to work for the GOP but not Dems. I thought тАЬBuild Back BetterтАЭ was a good phrase, but it was relentlessly attacked by both sides! Which correlates with your observation that GOP has better discipline over their members. I think thatтАЩs because the GOP is culturally relatively monolithic, compared to the fractious тАЬbig tentтАЭ of the Dems. In an ideal world, a big tent would be a desirable scenario, but it is kind of like herding cats.

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Youngy's avatar

Mind you Pelosi herded her cats extremely well whereas McCarthy is hopelessly trying to herd his face eating leopards ЁЯРЖ

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JF's avatar

Excellent point. No argument there. I suppose I was thinking more about Democratic voters being a more varied and boisterous group, each with a subset of interests.

When it comes to legislators, IтАЩd bet my retirement account that the difference in IQ between GOP and Dems is vast. Pelosi was/is an incredible leader, but she also had better material to work with than My Kevin, insofar as getting them to understand the stakes and importance of unity and seriousness. On Newshour last night (Tuesday) Amna Nawaz interviewed a GOP congressman I had never heard of, from one of the southern states, who was a perfect Exhibit A in that hypothesis.

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Substacker's avatar

"Build!" would have been better. And, of course, dividing the legislation proposed more strategically -- with each component named carefully with its own instantly understandable label.

"Inflation Reduction Act" is an example of a good one (although it was largely a wrapper around policies intended to address climate issues).

Here's one that's too edgy: Exclusively refer to Trump as "

The Joker" to sum up his sociopathy, love of chaos, and criminality with an image that's been drilled into the public mind for 70 years. It has the virtue of also being accurate.

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knowltok's avatar

"It has the virtue of also being accurate."

Uh, no...they wear different colored makeup. Duh.

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Substacker's avatar

Excellent point! :)

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