Progressives (Liberals)

Well, if that was the case - low countries - I'm not sure that Luxembourg, Belgium and The Netherlands "are still grappling for control".

(Besides that, the term has historically several meanings, under the Habsburg rule, it meant "lands down-here" pays d'embas.)

My first laugh today.

My kids' scores went up significantly (wooohooo!!!), and I have sweet notes from several of them. I'm sorry your town hated you - I hope to hell you always used spell check! LOL!! That alone could have killed your credibility.

So funny, I'm sitting here right now during my summer vacation writing lesson plans to better serve my non-speakers next year.

But, yeah, Rabel...smh

I agree with you about the challenges of immigration. However my strong impression is that the Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden Norway and Denmark) have not yet come to terms with the challenges of immigration, any more than have Germany or France = perhaps even less. I took a tour of Norway last year, visiting Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and some towns near the North Cape, and encountered (mostly in the larger cities) numerous expressions of hostility by Norwegians towards their immigrants, and the troubles they were having in their schools before they imposed a mild form of segregation on them.

It seems more like a home-grown California phenomenon to me. It was preceded by Washington's enacting a similar law:

Obviously it struck a chord with the voters as one of those "let's-take-a-complicated-problem-and-dumb-it-down-so-people-will-support-it" situations.

As I said, I think this one is a bum rap. Liberals tend to have an affinity for the oppressed and when a member of a racial minority gets in trouble with the law we tend to suspect the worst of the cops and the prosecutorial state. But this can lead to a patronizing attitude which simplifies the relations between classes and races. The poor person is always right, the rich person always wrong, etc. I don't believe that Harris abused the power of her office here. If I learn otherwise I will say so.

Walter, you are a good guy and, in my view, a friend.

However you are also a relentless nit picker.!

In the Epilogue of Tolstoy's novel War and Peace there's a memorable anecdote the Author writes to describe some national characteristics. It's about a Russian peasant who, when asked what makes a, then new, steam engine work, replies, "There's a devil in there". When he is patiently told there is no devil in the Machine and the question is repeated, he says "Well, then there's a German in there".

In Denmark, it's even worse. And in Sweden ...

The attacks about Senator Harris’ enforcement of truancy laws are a bunch of overblown hype.

”Many people, particularly white liberals, have suddenly realized that truancy is one of their top concerns now that they can use it as a weapon against Kamala Harris. Jailing mothers for not sending their kids to school sounds scary, but it never happened under her jurisdiction. Struggling families were given resources, counseling, and warnings before ever being brought in front of any legal authority. Two parents were jailed outside of Kamala’s jurisdiction, and after her tenure as San Francisco D.A., because the students had missed a combined total of over 118 days of schools.”

Are you able to source the race baiter that said that?

Black Californians brought it to the forefront and are keeping it in print.

Where were the parents of those children?

So...
Bernie’s not making that big a splash at this time, it seems.

Depends on who you believe.
By all accounts, your preferred candidate is the splashy one. Rightly so. She is a debater, and she definitely manipulated her environment at her debate—with help from moderators...

When it comes to who people trust to fight for people-friendly policies, Bernie wins. And the people win.

I think America is going to get the president they deserve in 2020.

Will they be fooled by tribalist cheering, or will they vote for who will do what they need?

The recent ABC poll has Biden falling, Bernie within 6% of him, and Kamala and Liz at 11%. Other polls with a deep need to make sure Bernie doesn’t bring a halt to their murderous regime say quite different things.

Bernie’s base isn’t going anywhere, but we are up against the greatest powers in the most powerful country in the world.

It’s going to look quite different than what it actually is.

How was that accomplished?

She has honed her debating skills as a part of her education and profession—and the moderators suspended the rules for her. She was uninterrupted though she broke established rules twice.

Again, the MSM is against Biden and will help anyone eliminate him. Biden does not have a chance. Democrats want a woman or a person of color and that is what the MSM will produce, whether they can do the job or not. America's well being could not be further from their thoughts.

I gotta tell ya, bro, you are half right.

There is a powerful faction of the Democratic Party who pines for Biden to be the nominee. Biden is a Republican for all intents and purposes—and he has the power in this weird moment in time to pull rational people from Trump.

But, gnashing their teeth on the other side of this mess are legitimate liberals—progressives, if you will—that would rather let trump grab the ******* thing before they allow the Democratic Party to become indistinguishable from the goddamn Republican goddamn party, goddammit.

So, it’s on like donkey Kong. And, goddammit, btw.

A lot of Republican strategists feel similarly. The small number of "rational" Republicans who might vote for Biden would be dwarfed by the large number of radical Democrats who would support a third party candidacy or sit on their hands (again). If it were one-on-one I think Biden would try to stoop to Trump's level and the results would be predictably cringe-worthy.

Other people in the Republican campaign are hoping for a woman, a dark-skinned person, a "socialist", or a white guy who speaks Spanish, all of which are known to provoke strongly negative, even hostile, reactions in a huge swathe of the electorate — Trump's base.

I wouldn't be surprised if they started burnishing the Howard Schultz campaign as the home for disaffected Democrats.

On a brighter note, anyone going to the campaign rally in D.C. tomorrow?

It appears to me you are merely speculating based on your presumptions about the behavior of large, in some cases poorly defined, groups of people. Indeed to some extent your Group identifications and your predictions are reflexive and identical.


We can all observe the emerging dilemma in the Democrat Primary involving the choice between a presumed safe Biden Candidacy and a more radical one, perhaps chosen in part based on favored left wing group identities. It appears the prospect of a Biden victory is far less certain than presumed , but still not impossible. Meanwhile none of the crowd of more radical left wing candidates has, as yet, shown much ability to withstand for long the critical examinations attendant to a campaign. There is also a danger that in their current fixation on their own issues and versions of them Democrat supporters may find there is much less public support for their favored (and generally only superficially described) programs than they imagine.

On the Republican side there are the still uncertain elements of public reactions to the Trump Presidency. Will our currently strong economic performance have its historical effect on the behavior of voters? Will the evident anxiety associated with Trump's direct engagement of long term, unresolved issues like International Trade and immigration overcome public hopes and concerns over long overdue efforts to address these longstanding issues?

The campaign rhetoric of both sides is usually simplistic and exaggerated, and that is certainly the case now. It often seems to me that the increasingly shrill Democrat rhetoric about the supposed treatment of immigrants at the border; Trump's supposed affection for tanks etc. and their continued beating of the very dead Mueller investigation horse may well persuade many that they are a dangerous and unreliable political force.
I sometimes suspect that Trump may be goading them to produce more of it.

All of these matters are very hard to quantify, and I certainly can't predict the outcomes with confidence. It appears you recognize these uncertainties as well.

Yes.

I'd take issue with that. They're not "my" predictions but opinions from various discussions on news programs some of them as expressed by self-identified Republicans. The intent of my post was to highlight the divisions of opinion within both parties.

I'd hoped that my Schultz comment would tip you off — mere presumptive speculation on my part — it's early enough in the race to allow for projections based on existing trends and hypotheses just waiting to be falsified.