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No one in this election is a true “leftist”
UPDATE: With election hoopla at full frenzy, I hear scare-words (like “socialist”) being thrown around. Truth is, almost no one in American politics is genuinely left of center; nearly all fall into the center-right regions, including both of the remaining presidential candidates.
It seemed like a good idea to re-post this graph from the primary days. As you’ll see, this being America, we’re pretty much all capitalists. Our “left” and “right” are merely debates about how much leash we give our capitalism.
Meanwhile, pooh-pooh the idea that Obama’s palling around over there next to Karl Marx. That’s a long, long ways from true. -M
Notice the old labels don’t work any more? Used to be that a fire-breathing politician could cry “LIBBRAL!” and everyone in the room would look shocked as linebackers near a penalty flag. Nowadays, no one looks up. Must be disappointing.
As The Political Compass points out, the old terms don’t express much helpful information:
The old one-dimensional categories of ‘right’ and ‘left’, established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today’s complex political landscape. For example, who are the ‘conservatives’ in today’s Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ?
On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It’s not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can’t explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as ‘right-wingers’, yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.
Two election info links
Two election links you might enjoy (now in the blogroll at right):
First,
which gives excellent analysis of what all the polls together suggest. Take a look at their current trend chart:
And here’s their battleground states table:
Second,
which especially focuses on electoral vote projections, but has many other intriguing projections, as well (538 is the total number of votes in the electoral college).
At left, for instance, is their startling electoral vote projection for 10-10.
Have fun!
Tags: pollster, fivethirtyeight, polls, presidential, Republicans, Democrats, electoral, votes, elections, Obama, McCain, projections, , Monte Asbury
Dazzling: Olbermann indicts elected officials on healthcare-funded campaigns
Watch this video!
Keith Olbermann reveals the numbers behind those Senators and Congressmen and women who have funded their elections with health industry money, and who now deliver the goods by killing the public option.
I believe that Iowa’s own Chuck Grassley (who lately has joined in the “death panels” fabrication) is among the top ten recipients of health industry contributions in the Senate. Sen. Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, received more campaign money from the industry than from his home state.
The public option is the single greatest cost-cutting measure of this entire process. It creates competition for an industry that operates in near-monopoly conditions. It takes the need to make a profit out of the choices doctors offer their patients.
It is good for Americans but bad for health industry millionaires. And the CEOs are calling in their debts.
The politicians who rode industry money into office know what’s at stake: choke the the public option, or find other money to fund your re-election.
Write your elected officials today. Tell them you want the option to choose insurance that doesn’t connect care with profits. You can find their addresses in the right sidebar, under the heading “E-mail.”
They’ve got the money. But we cast the votes.
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