[FEDERALIST] Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Could Be The Left’s Donald Trump

Had to listen to understand what you mean -- and I still don't understand. You find her voice bothersome?

 

Well then, how do you say that Obama is right of Hitler? You are then comparing early 1900 German politics to modern day American politics. So is it useful now? As mentioned, it's for historical purposes and for the purposes of comparing our American president to another country's leader.

The center is just a 0 point. So someone there holds no positions. That is the center that I'm talking about. Once you start adding positions to people then they move from that center. The positions themselves are how people are moved on the chart or any political chart.

 

I say it because it is in reference to something that is not transient.

The center holding no positions is not true. This isn't a graph. A zero value would not exist. If you hold no positions, you cannot be evaluated and thus not on the spectrum. When compared to modern leaders, the "center" loses value. All it would take is an extreme left leader to make everyone right wing.

If I say Obama is "left of center" the center is implied to be traditional american politics.

 

Well, they define it as a chart, so it does have a 0 position. Look here...
https://www.politicalcompass.org/crowdchart?Gandhi=-7.0,-3.0&Mitt+Romney=7.0,6.5&Barack+Obama=6.0,6.0&Hitler=1.0,9.0&Tim+Gatty=-9.38,-6.77&Nathan+Elias=-2.25,-1.9&John+Wilkins=0.38,-1.49&Randy+Zielaskowski=8.88,-5.18&+Anaro+Lexnon=-9.25,-8.21&atelepen=-5.0,-2.72&Konrad+Witte=4.12,-1.03&name=Stalin&ec=-9&soc=9

So yeah, clearly for this chart, there is a 0 position. You are right, someone at the 0 point holds exactly 0 positions.

But between Obama and Hitler a center has to be created, so where is it? What is traditional American politics? The center for American politics didn't start shifting right until Bill Clinton's presidency really if you ask me. As mentioned before, Reagan would not be able to win with conservatives now, FDR would basically be Bernie Sanders economically in today's climate, what era of American politics are we focusing on here? You see how this is an issue?

Again, how you and Bobby are doing it is unscholarly, now, you yourself said the site wasn't silly, they are saying that exact same thing...
"Narrowing the standard political goalposts to accommodate merely the range of mainstream opinion within any given society at a given time is not only historically uninstructive; it is unscientific."

Correct me if I'm wrong, I doubt this is a radical belief among political scholars and thinkers. Without a generally accepted neutral center, you are basically trying to figure out a math equation with no symbols. It makes putting Obama's presidency in historical context hard since you could not compare it to America before or after, only in its window of time, because the center for any country is always moving one way or another. (Edit: This is why Bobby says Obama was a moderate...but before all through his posting career was also far-left...which is it? If Bobby understood how left-right politics works, he could then decide with some finality where Obama placed on this chart and won't have to change it if Ocasio wins in 2020 or something)

If you say Obama is left, that's based on what? You say American politics, fine. Now, what if you talk to a Swedish person about politics and they tell you Obama is a far right-winger. Are they correct?

Do you agree that there are left-wing positions and right-wing positions? If you agree that things like Free Healthcare and education are left-wing ideas then you see how someone could be left of center by adopting many of these ideas in universal terms?

 

LOL K

This is what I disagree with. Someone with no positions is not on the spot as they are impossible to place. Seems simple. If you disagree, I think we will be OK.

It is your inclusion of "center" and what the center is relative to. I think I've made that clear. Right wing in the UK is left wing in USA.

You could go back and read some of my posts where I lay all this out.

 

Well they are impossible to place because it's impossible that someone who is able to take the test would hold 0 positions. It is indeed simple, not sure what the LOL K is for, you said there was no 0 position, I linked you to proof that there was for this particular chart. So yeah, if you disagree I'll be okay with that.

Right, well, the center is just a neutral position. The American center is right of that neutral point. The center for say Sweden is left of that neutral point. This is based on the positions these countries have taken and the structure of these countries. The positions are based on the basic definition of what it means to be left or right. The reason you'd want a universal center is that you'd need to compare each country and its leaders historically and shifting the center on a whim makes discussing regimes and presidencies on a spectrum useless...The idea of a universal center seems simple to me and entirely useful.

 

I laughed at the no positions. Universal center is pretty much impossible to conceptualize and I think almost no one talks I those terms. People in favor of nationalized healthcare and banning all guns are often called far right in the UK.

 

Yeah, maybe it's just me and Mrs B-Bob. We were immediately like "ugh! Could you not squeak pls." Hopefully this is the rare view/listen. We both got to where we literally could not listen to Hillary's campaign voice. So untrained!

Maybe we listen to too many excellent jazz vocalists and know too many theater nerds, LOL.

 

Sure, but that doesn't mean either of those positions are right-wing positions. Again...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics there is a general meaning to 'Left' and 'Right', a universal center thus is easy to conceptualize as simply a point with no positions. It's like the fulcrum on a scale.

The creator of the compass, one of the more popular political charts uses that term...he gives plenty of good reasons as to why it is done this way, because otherwise, you'd be calling Nazi positions liberal...only because they were liberal in Germany 'at the time'.

I mean, any political spectrum chart exists to help make sense of left-right politics. It's not like I'm talking of some radical new political theory here.

Basically, you can't chart drifts through history and make sense of it if you have to base everything on a rather arbitrary center that is always shifting through history. It seems like a simple concept to me.

 

kellyanne's husband quoting conservative icon george will...

 

You're a total idiot with this rambling non-sense. Stop trying to sound intelligent by saying absolutely nothing.

You're a right wing drone that wants to label Hitler as a leftist so you can feel good about your xenophobic ways. See the truth of what you are which is human trash.

 

those have been my thoughts exactly.
as for Alexandria you can tell she is just a young pup, 28 and has a lot to learn on how to answer questions. then again, that would kill her charm as she would be like every politician. But I like that she has the ability to troll. Sad that we live in that type of atmosphere but that's how things are.

Cruz can troll. Beto can't. You have to master the craft.

 

Anyone trying to say dirigism automatically sounds like a drunk perv. Try it.

But yeah, these cats aren't socialists.

 

Nationalize healthcare... in pretty much all developed nation, running at a lower cost and providing universal coverage with better results. But we can’t have it because ...

 

I respond in-kind to bobby's "kid" comments, perhaps you should develop a little history on here before criticizing people on their posting styles or maybe even call out both sides for the insults rather than just the one with whom you disagree ideologically.

No, that doesn't show any such thing. The Presidency has gone back and forth for decades, but that isn't the measure of whether or how much the political parties have moved right or left. Since the 1960s, the parties have become more homogeneous ideologically, with fewer liberal Republicans and fewer conservative Democrats. However, as far as the ideologies of the parties goes, the Democrats and Republicans have both moved to the right, the Democrats slightly and the Republicans in a major way.

The best example is Hillarycare, which makes it doubly hilarious that bobby tried to use it to make his point. When Hillary was pushing that plan, the conservative Heritage Foundation put out a competing plan that they claimed was the mainstream of conservative positions on healthcare. One of its central components was the individual mandate and the ACA was dramatically more like the Heritage plan than anything proposed by the Clintons.

The Republicans have moved right and the difference is dramatic. This is merely a fact.

 

Bernie especially has been at pains to explain that he's a democratic socialist and not a socialist. So an article explaining he's not really a socialist is already starting 3 squares behind Go. And to go on to use Miriam Webster to set your baseline... love the dictionary, but finding the most succinct dictionary description of a philosophy as complex and debated and fraught with history as socialism is is probably a rhetorical trainwreck to come. I find the attempt here interesting though, which seems to find socialism too warm and cuddly so they want to cast these politicians with a new (and foreign!) word that no one will be able to pronounce or remember. But I guess you can make it mean what you want it to mean (though, to me, it sounds like what you'd call the pilot of a zeppelin). It does make me wonder why we were villainizing the USSR for so long by calling them communists when we could have been calling them dirigists.

 

I listened to her again, and I get what you're saying. I think she's a bit overwhelmed by the sudden attention, the interviews, etc., and it has her too pumped up. She needs to have some advice on how to conduct herself in interviews. Speak a little slower and lower her voice a little bit. I don't think she needs to do much differently. She's clearly highly intelligent. She just needs to slow herself down some. Lessons with a voice coach could do wonders for her. I hope someone close to her suggests it.

I don't think anyone sees her as "the New Star of the Democratic Party." They shouldn't. She's 28 and likely surprised herself by winning. Given time, she can make a positive impact in the House and the Democratic Party. I think she has a bright future.

 

The problem is that a "democratic socialist" IS a socialist. What Bernie means to say is that he's a social democrat, a capitalist, he's just too stupid to know the difference between the two terms and he uses them interchangeably. Ocasio-Cortez on the other hand actually is a democratic socialist, a socialist who seeks to see the end of capitalism and have it replaced by socialism.

When people inaccurately use these terms, they seek to muddy the water and make outright socialists not seem so bad by having less radical people described with the same terms.

 

Republicans can use Democratic socialist tendencies to their favor in places with high numbers of Cuban and Vietnamese heritage.