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Haley is just as crazy as trump. Which is why normalizing him by running worse Dem candidates than we normally would is so terrible.
Suddenly people like Haley and Liz Cheney start being called "moderates" because they're halfway between trump and a neoliberals running with a D by their name.
I’m a conservative moderate independent. I very briefly considered Haley because I heard some good things about her. BUT, her views on abortion and pardoning Trump so we can “move on” as a country feel unconscionable to me.
I really don’t like Biden, but I can’t blame him for running for reelection. Incumbent presidents tend to have an advantage with voters. Part of the reason I dislike him is that my ideal candidate, Warren, is unlikely to run in 2028.
And the thing I admired about conservatives is no longer valid. I can respect that you have a different view than I do, and that you stand by your values. Republicans threw away their values and are set to throw away democracy to accomplish their goals.
And the thing is, I would vote for a literal flaming pile of poop over Trump and Biden certainly is better than that, as much as I don’t like him.
Honestly Biden has been pretty great, and the only really liberal thing he's doing is forgiving student debt. That's not that radical or expensive.
He doesn't go far enough, imo, but with this Congress he can't. I'd love to see a top marginal rate of 80% for earnings over 4 million per year.
I'd consider voting for someone slightly worse and younger, but that candidate doesn't exist this year. There's a hell of a lot worse, more loyal to Putin than America, fascist, and still about the same age.
I disagree that forgiving student debt is a good thing. They signed a contract and they should abide by it. I do think that he should be fixing the root cause: why is college so expensive and what can we do to make it more accessible? Also, why are student loans so predatory? Why can the interest rate exceed inflation?
I would also love to see a high marginal tax rate, but I disagree with the 4 million cut off. We shouldn’t write in 4 million. It should be an equation of X times the poverty rate.
And yeah, there’s no good candidates this year
I don't understand: if you acknowledge that the loans are predatory, why shouldn't the victims be entitled to relief, as is perfectly normal under contract law? Furthermore, about 92% of student loans are considered "federal loans," made up of money from the government.
What is the proper way to handle the situation?
They should be entitled to refinance from their initial principal to a loan with an interest rate of not more than inflation.
If they’ve paid off more than that amount, they should get a check. If they haven’t, they should keep paying the new loan.
It seems like this is just another way to do the same thing though except with more paperwork required by those seeking relief.
What good does it do to effectively make borrowers pay with their time when the government already knows who should be entitled to that relief?
Moreover, it wasn't blanket student loan forgiveness in the EO. The recipients include:
Borrowers with Income-Driven Repayment Plans: The administration proposed changes to income-driven repayment plans to make them more generous. These changes could result in lower monthly payments for borrowers and eventual forgiveness after 20-25 years of qualifying payments.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program Participants: The Biden administration temporarily relaxed the requirements for the PSLF program, allowing more types of payments and loans to qualify. This program is designed for individuals who work in public service jobs for either a government or a non-profit organization, offering forgiveness of remaining debt after 10 years of qualifying payments.
Borrowers Defrauded by For-Profit Colleges: The Biden administration has been discharging loans for borrowers who were misled or defrauded by certain for-profit institutions, under the Borrower Defense to Repayment program.
Total and Permanent Disability Discharge: The administration has also taken steps to streamline the process for borrowers who are totally and permanently disabled to have their loans discharged.
Targeted Forgiveness Initiatives: President Biden announced a plan for broad student loan forgiveness of up to $10,000 for individuals earning less than $125,000 per year, or households earning less than $250,000, and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.
These seem like good measures to me to get people to be able to afford homes and retirement; from a consequentialist perspective, it seems like a faster and more effective way to improve our nationwide economy.
Here’s the thing. We shouldn’t have bailed out big businesses in the first place. We should claw back that money. We shouldn’t have to bail out people with student loans. We should fix the root cause and give them a non-predatory option.
Also, we need reparations for black people.
What would you say to pausing the payments until a solution can be found?
So you and people like you turned 1 of our 2 political parties into a giant dumpster fire that threatens world wide stability...
And now you want to lecture Dems on what kind of candidates we should be happy with?
Why would anyone care what your opinion is on political candidates?
Go fix your own house first instead of burning down half of the only remaining house.
Thanks for displaying what it looks like when one is siloed-off and can no longer muster the good faith required for a simple conversation across ideological lines.
Ironic.
good faith? HAhahahahahaha Man, the early 90's called, laughed and hung up. Newt Gingrich much?
Yes, good faith.
You know, the thing you lack when skipping over the substance of a person's argument, even while rushing to equate them with Newt Gingrich.
That's some fine petard hoisting.
American conservatives haven't done or said a single thing in good faith in the last half a century. You don't get to ask others to do what you're unwilling to do.
Such a sweeping statement is useless on its face. An educated look at an exit pool from within the last week leaves this analysis in tatters.
I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. I just firmly believe in government working for the people. I don’t play party politics.
You have to realize that at the end of the day, we’re all people and that treating people like individuals is better than treating government like a competitive sport.
The "big tent" is just an excuse to move the democratic party right so no matter who wins the billionaires never lose...
That's why the party fights any movement to the left, and takes every opportunity to move right.
I'm sorry you can't understand that, but as a "conservative moderate" I'm sure this isn't a new experience.
Have a nice life
I’m not trying to be a Democrat. And I also don’t believe democrats should move right. That’s something Obama did wrong.
If the middle is 0, one side should be -5 and the other side should be +5. Obama had too much faith in republicans, offering 0 right off the bat, allowing republicans to go to +10.
What should really happen is that the Republican Party should be split into far right crazies and center right, and the Democratic Party should be split into center left and far left.
It is absolutely ridiculous for the Republican Party to characterize the Democrats as “the far left” and throw terms like “communist” and “socialist”. The US NEEDS a socialist and communist party such that the Republican Party can stop mis-using these terms and come back to reality.
I’m sorry if you think I misunderstood, and I welcome any corrections
TL;DR: you're a reasonable person, but one who has no understanding of the game theory of how our political system works.
Here's the thing: you can't just want the Overton window to not be skewed and for all ideologies to be represented by political parties; you have to understand the current fucked-up framework we have that structurally suppresses all but the two most popular parties in order to figure out how to change it to be fairer.
The only alternatives to developing that understanding and strategy -- sitting around whining about it, or trying to burn it down and start over -- range from ineffective to foolhardy.
TIL that there’s a term for the concept I’ve been trying to explain what’s wrong with American politics.
By framework, do you mean FPTP naturally becomes a two party system? Because honestly, we need RCV. And it might be prudent to go back to the system at founding:
Most votes is President, second most is vice.
To be honest, I’m not sure why we have to vote for a ticket.
I think this take is pretty bad. You can disagree with Haley and Trump on a lot of pretty core issues, but trying to say they are completely equal is just plain wrong, in my opinion.
If Haley was elected, I'm positive that I wouldn't like the direction of the country at all, and think things would regress. It also encourages Republicans to run the most extreme candidates, because there's no pull to anything rational when all candidates are treated the same.
With Trump, I'm genuinely concerned about our core institutions surviving again.
I don't view Haley as Moderate, but I don't think Trump is on a politicians spectrum. The man is just chaos and ego incarnate.
List three issues where you think Haley is substantially better than trump.
I have a feeling it's the difference between a heart attack while you sleep and a bullet to the brain.
The results are the same, even if the road is a little less bumpy.
Corruption, demeanor, and leadership.
She doesn't have dozens of lawsuits, she's not a loose cannon who will say anything at any moment (I can only imagine how awful Trump is in meetings with foreign leaders, and his lawyers don't even let him speak in court because he'll get himself in even more trouble), and she can get people around her to believe in things more than her own selfish means.
I get that you wanted policies, but things like this are important too. Haley wouldn't be headlining every day with some dumb shit she said on Twitter.
I feel oddly like I'm defending Haley... I'm not. Her border policies suck, she'll seek to pardon Trump if elected, and I don't see her doing shit on gun control either. Economically she'll do the same as Republicans in that she'll grossly underfund programs and then use their underfunding as justification for closing them, and do nothing to help the average person with tax breaks (those are for companies and upper class only).
I hear you in terms of her policies being shit, but calling the worst President in our lifetime the same as a below-average Republican candidate is just equivocating and makes people less likely to hear what you have to say. There's a lot of Republicans who are sick of Trump and do believe he's a threat to Democracy, but when they hear that people think Haley and Trump are the same, it reinforces Trumps worst messages.
So...
Same polices?
She's just more dangerous because of the veneer of civility?
That's kind of what I meant. You have a small shot at seeing a bullet to the head coming. With a heart attack in your sleep you lay down thinking everything is normal and never wake.
Still think it's a good comparison, the result is still the same.
It’s not just about policy.
Trump installed Kavanaugh and Barrett. Barrett is BLATANTLY unqualified due to lack of experience and Kavanaugh didn’t get a full background check. Like, I get that it sucks. But man the fuck up and wait for the background check or pick someone else. I highly doubt Kavanaugh was the only person on the short list. Trump et al just wants to turn everything into a “OMG democrats are on a witch hunt” moment.
Trump has arguably incited an insurrection.
Trump is blatantly abusing government resources.
I find it hard to believe you think Haley would erode the country in the same way.
I agree... Trump also has a superpower of gathering attention. The dude loves it even when it's all bad. It's a massive gift to Republicans because they can do crazy shit but Trump takes all the air time.
Trump is very skilled at absolutely wrenching attention away from everything else, even if he looks like a baffoon. Haley does not have that gene.
"everyone I don't like is all the same".
How do you extremists get made, anyway?
Haley's domestic policy stance is basically the same as Trump's. They do differ on foreign policy, and Haley is arguably more sane as she isn't obviously supporting Putin's goals.
It's not "extremist" to say that two candidates from the Republican party are similar - they are in fact, similar. Haley's campaign tagline is basically "not Trump".
Haley does not have the Heritage Foundation's 2025 plan in the wings. She would probably not have done a Jan 6th. If you can't see the difference between a fascist and a shitty Mitch McConnell type, the problem with our country is you.
Nuance and details are important. People's bullshit gut checks based on their feelings are not.
[citation needed]
I didn't see that in OPs comment. Would you mind explaining where you gathered that from?
This cat has been lumping 90% of the country together for months now, we've gone back and forth on it before. There seem to be zero colors asides black and white in his eyes.
I've been curious where the hell he came from for awhile now.
It should be pretty damn clear there's differences between an outright fascist and a generic pro-business idiot.
edit for typo
Wonder if them and that ozma person are the same or just part of the same group of idiots? They both give bad takes trying to convince people to either not vote or vote third party. Which means they are either the mentally challenged from r/libertarian and/or r/centrist or outright Trump lovers trying to masquerade as something else.
ozma isn't as bad imo.
This cat is a malicious commenter that shits on almost everything. ozma posts news articles and pushes on some genuinely important issues.
I argue with ozma from time to time, I definitely don't always agree with their stances, but I have no real problems with them. I think people like that are important in a healthy democracy. Not a troll imo.
This one though, has me doubting sometimes.
Pointing out that the Democrats are bad is not the same as saying 'both sides are the same'. Sure, Biden is infinitely better than the alternative, but it would be really nice to have some actually good options instead of just lesser evil
Dude's comment was clearly saying that Trump and Haley were the same. If someone cannot see the very clear and obvious differences between the two, their brainwashing has been strong.
Except I wonder if its brainwashing or just trolling.
Lol the trump x Haley comparison is irrelevant
First because she never really had a chance to win the primaries against the maga cult
And second because even if she did, being part of the republican party these days is more than enough reason to assume she's a fascist asshole. Does it matter if she's a slightly less bad fascist asshole? (And if you wanna reduce it to "everyone I don't like is all the same" that's fine with me)
If you don't acknowledge the repubs trying to fight against the fascist slide inside their own party, you're just helping fascists get what they want. They're doing a political purge. This should be remembered.
If this is republicans trying to purge their ranks, they're doing a shit job of it by putting forth a candidate who openly says she's going to pardon the fascist being "purged" for the sake of moving on and unity. That alone is reason enough to not buy them being different enough to care.
Until they're willing to crush that wing of the party, they're still complicit. And that's not me helping the fascists, that's me not letting the less extreme wing cover for the alt-reich wing they've been cozying up to for years. Hell, the Nazis are openly hanging out with them at cpac....
Probably don't want to just believe that her words reflect her stances. Much like McConnell, she'll say whatever she thinks she needs to say to help accomplish her personal goals.
World is a complicated place, especially when you're trying to not fall quickly to a purge, which is pretty clearly a goal she has. Otherwise she'd be gone by now.
Honestly, at some point the "good" republicans are probably going to have to jump ship and start a new party, because the republican base has shown they're too focused on the trumpist candidates. I'm not confident that any of them have the stones to do it, though. But maybe if they get spanked in November they'll finally see the writing on the wall.
Let Desi Lydic make the case for Haley vs. a moderate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYp2j2dKsjA