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@GnosticChristianBishop
In this case, homophobia and misogyny has Christians doing the opposite, by design.
Whose design?
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@IwantRooseveltagain
No. The Civil War was North vs South, not Republican vs Democrat.
That is not quite true. There some things that you are ignoring.
1. The South seceded because a Republican candidate (Lincoln) won the presidency. The Republican Party was exclusively Northern because of its anti-slavery bent.
2. The Democratic Party split in two in the election of 1860. The Southern Democrats were the ones who were later responsible for seceding. The Northern Democrats favored union. However, during the war, Northern Democrats were more prone to supporting peace with the Confederacy than the Republicans.
3. After the war ended, there was no question in anyone's mind that the Democratic Party was inextricably tied to secession and the Confederacy. For the next two decades, Republicans campaigned by "waving the bloody shirt", that is, attacking the Democrats because they were the party of secession.
There is no historical doubt that the Confederacy was tied to the Democrats. None.
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@GnosticChristianBishop
Traditional Christianity does not require downsizing love for LGBT+ people, or anyone else. In fact, it expressly forbids it. Christians are called to love others as ourselves, with no exceptions.
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@RationalMadman
Interesting. I'll have to see who else runs before I decide. You would have some value as president because you're a contrarian. Breaking an echo chamber can be good.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Republicans, the party, the voters and the politicians, will NEVER live down the fact they supported this guy.
The Democrats lived down the Civil War. So, 150 years from now, the Republicans might live down Trump.
More likely 30 years, though, because that's about how long it actually took the Democrats to live down the Civil War. That makes sense, too, since that's about a generation of voters.
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@Earth
If you're willing to delay it until after the new year, I can join.
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Reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon.
"What do you mean Beethoven's not great?"
"How can he be great if he's never been on a bubble gum card?"
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@MeowRanger
Yeah I totally got your point there. Thanks for reshaping my Point of view.
You're welcome!
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@MeowRanger
I agree with you that Introverts can be happy in their own but my point was to highlight that there can be a way better than staying inside.
Better for who, and better from whose perspective? There are a quite a lot of introverts who are very happy staying inside.
Confidence helps you to face problems in life without much stress which I guess is an aspect for happiness.
Social confidence is not the only type of confidence. Furthermore, plenty of introverts are socially confident. It isn't that I am not confident in my social abilities. It's simply that I derive happiness from many things other than socializing. Too much socializing can be draining.
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@MeowRanger
Introvert here. I don't think social confidence correlates with happiness. I may not feel comfortable in a crowd, but I can find happiness in many things other than people. I could flip the script here and say that introverts are happier because they don't require other people to meet their needs. That would, however, be equally unfair and overgeneralized.
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@Best.Korea
I am not sure if what I do counts as debating.I upset people by posting retarded and weird stuff.Its fun for me.I do sometimes put more effort into it.Sometimes I spend weeks writting the dumbest things I can think of.I write everything down.I guess the key is never to give up. Well, I did become lazy lately.I am like that old man hiding in the bush and throwing poop at people who pass by.I spent months studying the thoughts of leaders like Mao and Kim Jong Il. They were good at upsetting people, and the method of "learning from the best" usually works.
Did you just confess to trolling?
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It's a huge breakthrough, but fusion power plants are still many years in the future. Reproducing these results, scaling them up, and making them commercially viable will take time.
But if they can do it, it will be a huge step forward.
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@sadolite
A Dodge Superbird in perfect condition.
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@Stephen
Sometime after, I think. He started recruiting them in Matthew 4.
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@thett3
Trump has got to go. His loss to Biden permanently broke him. I couldn't vote for him again and if he has lost me of all people I don't see how he could win again. Ron DeSantis may not be perfect but right now I think he's the only person who can beat Trump 1 on 1--the field must be cleared for him immediately.
You're quite correct, but clearing the field would require politicians to not have egos.
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@sadolite
Your context is wrong. He is referring to laws and rules with regard to elections and voting in the constitution. Not the entire document.
I will grant that there is a theoretical difference between terminating the entire Constitution and only terminating part of it. Practically, however, if the parts of the Constitution that govern elections are terminated, the rest will soon follow.
He is saying the 2020 election violated the constitution with regard to laws and rules stated with in it. Namely certifying fraudulent elections.
He is saying much more than that those parts of the Constitution were violated. He is saying that those parts of the Constitution can be terminated.
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@TheUnderdog
Transwomen have female brains, so if they transitioned, they should be classified as women. I define a woman as anyone that is a ciswomen or transwomen.
If I'm understanding you correctly, this would mean that the difference between men and women is brain structure?
I don't think you need to define the terms, "ciswomen" and "transwomen" to define women because it would be like saying to define the Americas as North America and South America, you have to define North America and South America. Or if you want to define water bottle as a container that holds water, you have to define container and water. I don't think you need 2nd order definitions to define first order definitions.
This is true in theory, but not always in practice. For instance, suppose I define boop as "beep" and beep as "boop". While there is nothing wrong with defining boop as "beep", there is a problem if my definition of beep depends on the definition of boop. Thus, defining woman as "anyone that is a ciswomen or transwomen" isn't necessarily circular. However, it still could be circular if your definition of ciswomen or transwoman depends on the word woman. Consequently, I must ask what your definitions for those ciswomen and transwomen are. If they don't rely on the word woman, then great. If they do, your definitions still need some work.
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@Greyparrot
@Sidewalker
firing metal bullets into a crowd is with an intent to killYou say that like it's a bad thing?
You guys do realize that there's a difference between indiscriminate fire into a crowd and firing at the one person breaking in through a window?
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@Barney
They set themselves firmly against conservative values when they nominated him to begin with.
True, but had they rejected him at some point along the way, they might have regained the slightest shred of credibility. If they nominate him in 2024, it will be a clear statement that there is no line they are unwilling to cross, and that they will support him even in the face of certain defeat. Not that that isn't pretty clear already...
But at least they did them democratically, unlike the DNC.
That has the odd implication that the Republican Party is more democratic that the Democratic Party. Meaningless, but funny.
tl;dr: both major parties suck.
I doubt you could find a single person who would disagree.
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If the Republican Party nominates him after this, not to mention all the things before it, then it is truly lost. There is no conservative party in America.
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@Greyparrot
I don't think he thought that far ahead.
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Full quote:
So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!
Trump is saying, clearly and unequivocally, that he thinks that the Constitution can be terminated due to election fraud. Straight from the horse's mouth.
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@TWS1405
It's not a question of watching the news 24/7. It's a question of 30 seconds on the internet for each of them. If Trump and his team can't be bothered to do that, then they are totally incompetent. And where is Trump's condemnation of Fuentes' views?
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@TWS1405
The defense that Trump and his team were too incompetent to do even a 30-second google search to learn who Fuentes was or pay attention to the news about Ye being an anti-Semite or do another 30-second google search to learn who Yiannopolous was does not seem like much of a defense. "He's not deliberately palling about with racists. He and everyone around him are just idiots!"
Furthermore, if he disapproves of the things Fuentes says, why hasn't he said so? His silence is deafening.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Well, Trump is a genius at fooling people into thinking he's a genius.
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I feel bad for Ye. He's completely lost his mind. He needs to get help, but he won't do it. He'd rather be a Nazi. Sad.
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@Stephen
So you don't know either, then?
No, I don't. I don't see why it matters, either.
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@Stephen
Well, in that case, I'll bite. Why does this matter?
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@Stephen
was I barking up the wrong tree?Yes.
Ok. It was a bit of a long shot.
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@Stephen
Let me guess. When someone replies you to wondering why you care about how long it took, you're going to reply with the allegation that there is a contradiction between the timelines found in Mark and in the other gospels. Was I right, or was I barking up the wrong tree?
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@IwantRooseveltagain
I think I will let you have the last word again. I try to be respectful and have good replies for everyone I interact with. However, every post you're making is just another variation of "Republicans bad!" I'm not a Republican, but that is getting tiresome. It's hard to make any progress when that is the only thing I have to work with. Thank you for the conversation and the chance to nerd out about numbers.
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@Greyparrot
Right, and $3225 over 5 years is still peanuts.The condescension is strong in this one Master.
You only say that because you're uneducated!
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@IwantRooseveltagain
No, he had 3. 3 out of 4 budgets. FY 2021, 2020, and 2019(rounding 985 billion)
If you round 2019, sure. However, he was only half responsible for 2021's budget, so he was only fully responsible for one unrounded trillion dollar budget.
Ok, that’s true. But the stimulus package was necessitated by the economy Trump passed on to Biden, including 16% unemployment. Biden passed the stimulus to respond to the economic situation that arose from Trump’s mishandling of Covid.
As I said earlier, whether or not the stimulus packages were justified doesn't change the fact that they contributed to inflation.
That’s an insult.
That's a subjective judgment.
Did it? The high deficits led to inflation and higher interest rates. The poor lost money.
The tax cut was not the cause of the high deficits. It contributed $275 billion to the deficit. The various stimulus packages contributed about $4.5 trillion. Furthermore, the inflation didn't start until after the stimulus packages, years after the tax cut. The poor did not lose money because of the tax cut.
Had they restricted the tax cut to just the poor instead of giving 80% of the cuts to the wealthy, it might have actually helped the poor. But Republicans believe you can’t help the poor even a little unless you also help the rich a lot
I'm not quite sure what you mean. If you mean that there should have been more tax cuts for the poor, I agree that would have helped them. If you mean that they should have had the same tax cuts for the poor but no cuts for the rich, I don't see how that would benefit the poor.
As your own article said - “The TCJA did not pay for itself, nor is it likely to do so in the future. There are many debates to have about the TCJA, but whether it raised or reduced revenues in 2018 should not be one of them”
Then it's a good thing that it wasn't supposed to raise revenues in 2018. As for the "nor as it likely to do so in the future", predictions about the economy are incredibly unreliable.
If the TCJA helped the economy like it was supposed to, it most certainly would have raised revenues at some point. It’s been 5 years since it was signed in December 2017. All it did was make rich people richer.
That is not all it did. It helped the poor as well.
Because Republicans are stupid.
Whether or not that's true, it has nothing to do with the point I was making.
Right, and $3225 over 5 years is still peanuts.
That is also a subjective judgment. It may be peanuts to you. To someone living paycheck to paycheck, it could be a godsend.
The Biden stimulus package did a lot more than give $1400 stimulus checks.“The package will extend a $300-per-week federal unemployment supplement through Sept. 6. The first $10,200 of unemployment benefits received in 2020 will be tax-free for individuals with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) below $150,000”Read your own Forbes article. It did a lot to help the poor, the unemployed and the middle class. Way more than $645/ year.
I never said it didn't. What I said was that it contributed to inflation whether or not it was justified.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Also, the $645 would apply for every year after the tax cut was passed until it expires or is repealed. Since there have been 5 fiscal years since it passed, it would be an average of $3225 for each person in the bottom 80%.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
As an aside, if you expect me to defend how much money Trump and the Republicans spent before Covid, you're not going to succeed. The Republicans have become very fiscally irresponsible.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
From your Brookings article: “The TCJA did not pay for itself, nor is it likely to do so in the future. There are many debates to have about the TCJA, but whether it raised or reduced revenues in 2018 should not be one of them”The deficit in 2017 was 665 billion - This was an Obama FY budget starting October 1, 2016The deficit in 2018 was 779 billion - This budget began October 1, 2017 before the TCJA was signed by Trump on December 22, 2017The deficit in 2019 was 985 billion - https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/financial-report/2019/government-financial-position-and-condition.html#:~:text=During%20fiscal%20year%202019%2C%20the,24.7%20percent)%20to%20%241.4%20trillion.
Ah, I forgot that it was signed in December. So the $275 billion decrease in revenue accounted for slightly more than a quarter of the deficit the following year.
The deficit in 2020 was 3.1 trillion - This budget began October 1, 2019, before Covid arrived. The 2 trillion dollar CARES Act bill passed in 3/2020 but the deficit already exceeded a trillion dollars.
Yes, our spending continually increases even without Covid spending. It's quite depressing.
The deficit in 2021 was 2.8 trillion - This was Trump’s last budget
Yes, but it also would have included the $1.9 trillion stimulus package from Biden.
So why did we do it? It didn’t help poor people the way Clinton did.
It did give poor people $645 each, which is about half of what the stimulus packages did (individually). So it did help the poor. It wasn't a fortune, but it wasn't nothing either.
It didn’t increase revenues. It didn’t grow the economy (annual GDP growth didn’t exceed 3%)
It was supposed to help the economy over the next 10 years or so. Kind of hard to measure that when a pandemic wrecks the economy in the middle of that. Economic policies like tax cuts are about the long term, not the next two years.
All it did was make rich people richer.
Made poor people $645 richer too.
Republicans did it to take care of their donors.
Whether or not you think it helped them financially, it was widely supported by Republican voters, so it wasn't just for the donors.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
You mean Trump’s trillion dollar deficits?
Trillion dollar deficit, singular. He only passed a trillion dollars in 2020. Three point one trillion, actually. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170
And yes, I do mean that one. I also mean Biden's $2.8 trillion deficit in 2021. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58268
And also Biden's $1.4 trillion deficit this year. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58592
Those are the three deficits I meant. The first two had around $2 trillion in excess spending each, and the last had about half a trillion in excess.* There's a good argument that the first couple stimulus packages were justified, but they contributed to inflation justified or not.
*By excess, I mean more than usual. We've had $0.5 - $1 trillion deficits regularly for a decade and a half.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
It’s the price we pay for low unemployment, growing GDP, and supply chain issues related to Covid and the war in Ukraine
Certainly, those are also factors. The existence of other causes does not change the fact that spending excess trillions is also a cause.
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@Greyparrot
Jerome Powell confirmed he is willing to trade a recession for a reduction in inflation.
He is, and I have to agree with him, not that I really want a recession. However, runaway inflation in the long term is worse than a recession in the short term. It's the price we pay for spending trillions of dollars more than usual.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
No, not true. Because the 2017 Tax Law was not anywhere near a flat tax cut.
Nor did I say it was. What I said was that the argument that website used compared absolute numbers to determine the fairness of a percentage cut, which is an unsound argument. You cannot compare absolute to relative numbers.
They cut the tax brackets from 6 to 3 - the top tax bracket got the biggest cut eliminating the 39.6 bracketThey gave enormous tax deductions to pass through income benefiting millionaire and billionaire business owners.They limited the deduction for state and local taxes to $10,000. A deliberate attack on Blue state taxpayers. In California a basic 1500 sqft ranch home costs over I million dollars and comes with a 10,000 property tax payment. That means all your state income tax is not deductible.The eliminated personal exemptions - that’s $4400 per person in a family. So if you have just one kid, the doubling of the standard deduction was completely wiped out by the loss of personal exemptions.They eliminated all work related deductions including the paying of union duesThe biggest tax cut went to C corporations cutting the rate from 35 to 21%The Tax law was a windfall for corporations and wealthy people. Modest income homes got a small tax cut. Everyone else got squat or a tax increase.
As I said, there could be an argument that the tax law benefited the rich more than the poor. You have now made such an argument. What I said was that the argument you presented in the original post was not such an argument.
Oh, Trump had a trillion dollar deficit long before anyone ever heard the word Covid. So what caused his massive deficit?
Actually he didn't. It didn't pass $1 trillion until 2020. But that's nitpicking. It was a trillion if we round up. So let's take a look at the federal budget in 2018.
$3.3 Trillion revenue from taxes.
Spending
Social Security: $982 billion
Medicare: $582 billion
Medicaid: $389 billion
Interest on debt: $325 billion
Defense: $623 billion
Nondefense: $639 billion
From CBO, nondefense is "transportation, education, veteran's benefits, health, housing, assistance, and other activities."
Other: $570 billion
Other is "unemployment compensation, federal civilian and military retirement, some veteran's benefits, the earned income tax credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and other mandatory programs."
The revenue lost from the tax cut was $275 billion. https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/did-the-2017-tax-cut-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-pay-for-itself/
The total deficit (from the CBO link) was $779 billion.
So the answer to your question of what caused the deficit was about 1/3 the tax cut and 2/3 overspending.
We are talking about the 2017 Tax Law and how it’s cuts for corporations and the wealthy caused the deficit to top 1 trillion.Your answer to cutting taxes is to raise taxes. The would suggest the 2017 Tax Law was stupid.
Firstly, the tax cut did not cause the deficit to top $1 trillion. It only raised the deficit to $779 billion. For context, the deficit in 2017 was $665 billion. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/53624
Secondly, the idea behind a tax cut isn't that it will decrease the deficit in the following few years. The idea is that the tax cut will lead to increased economic growth so that the revenue will increase several years down the road, thereby "paying" for itself. Whether this tax cut succeeded in that depends entirely on whether you look at a left-wing source or a right-wing source. However, if one wants to decrease the deficit this year, then one has to raise taxes and cut spending.
We had a balanced budget under Clinton. It can be done.
It can, but it's a lot harder now than it was when Clinton did it. Clinton had the benefit of an economic boom driven by, among other things, the explosion of the internet. Furthermore, the US population at the time was comparatively less old, meaning that Social Security and Medicare spending was lower. Look at the budget for 2019, the year before all the Covid stimulus packages mess up all the easy numbers by adding a bunch of temporary spending.
The deficit was $984 billion. We could raise taxes to pay for it all, if we feel like guaranteeing a recession. It would be political suicide, so no one's going to do that. And if the did, it would be repealed as soon as the next election came. We could cut defense spending, but that's only $676 billion. Even if we cut it to 0, that won't pay for it. And looking at Ukraine and China's saber-rattling toward Taiwan, that doesn't seem like such a great idea. We could cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but that would also be political suicide. We can't cut interest. Are we going to cut SNAP, veteran's benefits, retirement funds, unemployment compensation, or tax credits (the other spending)? Same story. Besides, you wouldn't throw all those poor people, old people, and veterans in front of the bus, would you? We could cut transportation, education, health, housing, or more veterans benefits (nondefense spending). Again, political suicide. You mean you don't like education? You hate health and housing? Capitalist pig!
What can you cut that wouldn't be political suicide? Or how will you explain to people that, just as inflation starts to decrease, they need to pay $1 trillion more in taxes? That won't go over well. Serious question here. What would you cut? Would you raise taxes by $1 trillion? How would you balance the budget?
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@IwantRooseveltagain
As Robert Kiyasoki wrote in his book, you don’t put percentages in your pocket, you put dollars.
True, but it has nothing to do with my point.
To exchange $645 for a trillion dollar deficit is foolish for any middle class household.
The tax cut was not the cause of the trillion dollar deficit. While it added to the deficit, it was far from the main cause.
When the government is broke it has two choices. It can either cut services or increase debt. Either choice will hurt the middle class.
It can also raise taxes. However, you are correct that all the available choices will hurt the middle class, as well as the lower and upper classes. The only long term solutions are massive tax increases or massive spending cuts, neither of which will happen (at least not on the required scale). So on we go adding trillions of dollars to the debt and pretending that it will never come back to bite us. I don't know how it will end, but it won't be pretty.
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@Greyparrot
True, but math is hard, and partisan narratives are easy.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Firstly, $645 isn't exactly a fortune, but I've never heard anyone complain about getting an extra $645. So while it benefited the rich, it also benefited the poor. Secondly, as a math nerd, the methodology that website uses is truly appalling. They're comparing absolute dollar amounts to determine the fairness of percentage cuts. That's apples and oranges. If everyone's taxes get cut by 1%, and I make $100,000 and Jeff Bezos makes $1 billion, my taxes will be cut by $1000 and Bezos's taxes by $10 million. It's the exact same percentage, so it's perfectly fair, but comparing absolute amounts makes it appear unfair even though it isn't. Now, there might be a sound argument that the tax cut benefited the rich more than the poor. However, the argument that website presents isn't it. Their argument is a violation of basic mathematics.
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@ComputerNerd
My opinion is that it will take longer than 5 days. Novice is 408 points ahead of catcat. He will only gain 1-2 points from it.
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@Dr.Franklin
Not a single westerner cares about that. They only care about gays.
I'm a Westerner, and I care about that. I have seen just as many complaints about Qatar's slavery as about their treatment of gay people. Perhaps that is just a reflection of what I read. Still, I don't think it's true to say that no one cares about the slavery.
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@Dr.Franklin
I wonder if 6500 dead slaves would agree with this?
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@Sidewalker
I get all that, but it's a matter of serving the Party's agenda, rather than the serving the people,
Those are not mutually exclusive. For example, if one party passed a bill to get rid of time changes, and the other party opposed it for some inexplicable reason, that would be good for the party that passed it, but it would also be good for the country.
a polarized country is in the politicians interest, it is not in the interest of the people. The task at hand is for the elected officials to work together to serve the people, polarizing, obstruction, divisiveness are politician tools, but they are a betrayal of the people they are elected to serve.
I agree that polarization and divisiveness are bad. I am not defending those. I am defending obstructionism.
Now, I will be the first to admit that obstructionism sometimes causes polarization and division. However, while those are a consideration, they are far from the only consideration. Let's go back to the legalizing murder example. Now, obstructing the bill to legalize murder might cause division. However, I think we would both agree that the benefits of obstructing that bill far outweigh any potential polarization caused by the obstruction. While this is an extreme case, it demonstrates an important point. Politics is all about tradeoffs. Maybe obstructing Bill X will cause division. However, Bill X might be bad enough to be worth obstructing anyway. That would be a tradeoff that we might be willing to make.
Another consideration is that there are many forms of obstructionism, and they are not all created equal. Consider some mild forms of obstructionism like voting against or filibustering a bill. The only people who will even hear about that going on are people who are already very politically engaged, and thus already very polarized. As a result, voting against a bill or filibustering it will have a negligible impact on polarization, so the benefits of obstructing bad bills by those methods will outweigh the costs every time. Personally, I will defend voting against and filibustering bills as a positive good, regardless of which side does it. I believe that a functioning opposition is a sign of a healthy democracy. *
*Note that I said "a sign" not "proof", and "healthy" not "perfect".
Now consider a more controversial type of obstructionism. Let's use government shutdowns as an example. While most people probably wouldn't notice a short shutdown, they will notice a prolonged shutdown when some services close down and the publicity spikes. That will cause more polarization than the previous methods of obstructionism I mentioned. Consequently, there must be a good justification for doing it. In most cases, there probably won't be such a justification; however, there are times when it might be called for. In my opinion, the shutdowns in the last decade probably did not have sufficient justifications. However, it is possible that, under certain circumstances, it could be justified.
Now, I've rambled on for a while, so I should probably make a point somewhere about now. So here it is:
Obstructionism can cause polarization. However, most forms of obstructionism do not, and thus are anything but "a betrayal of the people they are elected to serve." Rather, in most cases, they are serving the people by preventing what they believe to be bad ideas from becoming law. There are also some kinds of obstructionism that do cause polarization and division. In those cases, we cannot immediately dismiss them as a betrayal. Rather, we must look at the justification for their methods. Maybe their methods are justified, and maybe they aren't. However, even in cases when their methods are not justified, we still cannot immediately dismiss them as a betrayal. Why? Because they are not justified - in our opinion. That doesn't mean our opinion is wrong. However, it does mean that the obstructionist can have a genuine disagreement with our opinion and believe that they are justified. They may be wrong, but it isn't a betrayal. Of course, sometimes it is, but we should not be too hasty to condemn without first considering the other side. After all, hastiness to condemn is rather polarizing and divisive itself.
I apologize for rambling on this long. I find this topic to be very interesting, and I wanted to have a more thorough explanation for my stance. Hopefully I didn't bore you or unintentionally trod on your toes, metaphorically speaking.
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@Sidewalker
Let me use an example that I think we can agree on. Suppose a new political party formed and was elected into power. Now suppose that their big idea is to legalize murder. Should that be obstructed, or should all the other parties let it happen out of respect for the will of the people?
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@Sidewalker
That may be true from a Trumper point of view, hating the opposition is the entire agenda,
I am not a Trumper, and I do not hate those who disagree with me. However, I do disagree with them, which is why I think their ideas shouldn't become law, because I don't think they're good ideas.
politicians are supposed to be loyal to and represent the electorate, obstructing the will of the people isn't the job of our elected lawmakers.
What do you mean by "the will of the people"? The will of the people who elected the politicians, which would be the people who want them to obstruct the other parties agenda? The will of the people as in the national popular vote?
Let me ask you a question. Suppose the Republicans won the House, Senate, Presidency, and popular vote. If that happened (ignoring the likelihood of that happening), should the Democrats sit on their hands and let the Republicans pass anything and everything they want out of respect for "the will of the people"? Or would it be better if they obstructed and stopped the Republican agenda, because they think that the Republican agenda would hurt the country?
Obstruction might be effective for Trump, voter suppression might be effective for Trump, but it is not effective for the people or our country.
Which is more effective:
1) Bad ideas being obstructed and stopped.
2) Bad ideas becoming law.
You can pick whatever bad ideas you feel like for those two options.
I would say that it is better if bad ideas are stopped rather than made into law. I think that the country can be hurt by bad ideas becoming laws. So if bad ideas are being proposed, I think it is more effective for both the people and the country if those ideas are obstructed and stopped. Now, I'm sure we have some disagreements on which ideas are good or bad. But in the abstract, would you agree that bad ideas shouldn't become law? And if bad ideas shouldn't become law, then isn't it a good thing to stop bad ideas from becoming law?
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