have control in the U.S. nothing will change.

As long as the 1% control everything that happens on this planet nothing will change.

Greed is a deadly disease and it has infected every nook and cranny on this planet.

Money is power. The money has had so much favorable legislation that the masses are now fairly easily controlled.

And one of the things that has contributed to their control is the politics they have fostered - extremism and confrontation.
Since they are getting what they want, I can't see it changing. The left has never and probably will never unite.

system is broken and there is no point in voting.

This is what many believe (Carlin believed this and it was a detail I disagreed with him on), sure, it is broken as hell, but to NOT vote for ANY dem vs anybody is suicide.

To not vote is exactly what the Koch's want you to do...count on it.

I am gonna get tougher everyday on Hillary naysayers, or whoever.

What if Joe Biden ran against her, would he be bad too to so many?

think about the alternative, my god.

eom

Hillary

Rand Paul

Ralph Nader or whoever is the 3rd party candidate, or a green candidate of your choice

what do YOU do?

eom

eom

take the senate.

A month later there are signs in your local cafe "we dont serve Blacks here"

maybe it says "we dont serve "N" word here"

I could go on and on with the Jim Crow agenda people like them have, but you get the point...

so are you still OK with that vote?

never mind that Women will have to go to back alleys for abortions, will not have equal rights, etc.

still?

eom

I have long said the only way to get righty to grow up and realize which political philosophy is literally killing him or her and which one benefits every single aspect of their life, is to let them have what they THINK they want

The rightwing utopia would drive all non rich rightys right into our loving arms, they would be whining and crying like the little babies we know they are...

But much pain would be involved for all of us while this is happening...

eom

we can get back to business as usual and not have these monstrously expensive elections that run into each other and require 24/7 fundraising.

No, I will absolutely vote as I've done for the last 58 years.

is going to vote, I am proud to be among people like you.

I just fear that so many wont, and some of the liberals will take a stand, throw away their vote at a time when the alternative simply wont work, we wont survive the alternative.

My kids and grandkids are pretty good about avoiding Mom/Grandma's wrath and usually report in that they just voted. I can't tell them WHO to vote for, but I can at least get them off their duffs to show up at the polls.

Actually, several of them work campaigns and wouldn't miss voting for the world.

Until the 1% can be contained, nothing will change.

things have gotten so of course the normal ebb and flow isn't going to bring things back to anything like normal.

it takes something epic, as in the 1860s or the 1960s to make a dramatic change.

the demographic changes might well make that happen, but it's a slow process.

i think the 2020 census results and reapportionment will prove very interesting. republicans continue to go after key states in order to ensure gerrymandering powers, but eventually they will lose and things will shift in a hurry once that dam bursts.

but that will only mean that democrats become the dominant party. money in politics won't change and policies will take a long time to really get more genuinely liberal.

i'm 50, america will be just the kind of place i dreamed of living in by the time i'm dead.

Not until a lot of old farts leave this earth and take their prejudices and war mongering with them will you be able to make changes.

Amy Walter writes "What gets people to the polls, especially in mid-term years, is anger and antipathy."

So, anger is a motivating force to get people to the polls and Republicans have the advantage at the moment.

I am. I am angry the Kochs and their think tanks have taken over our country and written our laws for us. A good example is Wisconsin and the damage done up there. Look at the South and the extreme changes that have been made to their laws governing women, children and minorities. We can't live that way...we simply can't.

So, yes. I am angry because I now have to spend so much time watching what they are up to rather than listening to the evening news and reading the daily paper like I did in the days of Walter Cronkite and his ilk. Not many of those guys left. I'm angry what they plan to do to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I'm angry that those same children are strapped down by college loan debts. They were so proud to get those degrees, but those have turned out to be bitter/sweet pieces of paper that aren't helping them get the jobs they should be getting. The end product wasn't what they paid for, not because they aren't intelligent and well-educated, but because the 1% have screwed up the job market.

If there are Democrats like me, they will show up at the voting booth and they will show their support up to election day. But, I will not be donating right now because those 150/day emails will explode to 300-450/day when they pass the word around that, "Hey, she gave me some money! Send her an email!" It is totally out of hand.

and by that I mean exactly what it sounds like.

it's pretty hard to compete. Am I right on that count? One good possibility would be that their listeners get burned out and shut them off.

I have a neighbor who is a TP leader. She's been pretty quiet of late. Not sure if she is plotting their next moves or if she has finally seen the light.

I think the comedians have done a lot to shame the TPrs who follow FOX. FOX is such a joke that some of their commentators are morphing into something close to human. Or, is that a trap?

and, sadly, it is only getting worse, not better ...

the partisanship. It used to be that you saw a half hour of news in the evening, and you spent maybe as much reading the newspaper. That was it. The rest of the time you just lived your life--went to work, shopped, recreated, spent family time, whatever. Today we are bombarded 24/7 with the Latest Breaking News!!!

I sometimes wonder about these crises both parties bring up. I think they are good fundraisers and once the end of the week or month comes and they've supposedly met their goals, the crisis(es) disappears.

Getting cynical in my old age, I guess.

never watch any of it. The vast majority of people who watch TV news watch a network news program on ABC, NBC or CBS. Each night, each one of those networks has millions more viewers than the whole of cable news combined. Yes.
Not that the networks are great guns, but the point is most people who watch the news still watch a mainstream news program and call it a day.

For a lot of reasons.

I remember how Watergate first came up in my 11th grade social studies class. It wasn't until the print media got involved that it became something.

Anyway, yeah, I would like to be 16 again, but only if I could be 16 knowing what I know now!!

It's been 40+ years in the making. There's always been sides, but in the end everybody's been reasonably content when compromises are reached. Now it's all ambush politics--only our side is right and true and moral, and it's victory or death, with those who compromise being seen as traitors.

And it's getting worse, since people in each camp only believe in what their chosen media sources say. It's been "true" that facts have a "liberal spin," but some of that has always been confirmation bias (reflected in the conservative maxim, equally old, that "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged by the facts&quot . Now it's easier to just never see facts that don't have a liberal spin, or flip the maxim to "only things with a liberal spin can really be facts." There's no need to see facts that cause cognitive dissonance. The set of facts we see here is often complimentary to us and complementary to the set of facts the political opposition sees.

It's been known for the better part of a decade that online, esp. anonymous, discussion groups are eventually driven by extreme-oriented members to the extremes. To some extent this happens with media sources, too. It's also a big plus that given texting and Internet reading habits, fewer people bother to remember facts, fewer people read to the end of articles to see even the full set of facts presented in a single article. It's easier to rewrite history. It's easier to forget history. And if you don't remember what happened 10 years ago, claims about then are easy to believe if they're in accord with what you want to believe. That makes it very easy to be manipulated. And most manipulation is towards the fringes, not towards the center. The center's not holding. In American society, it started falling apart seriously in the '60s, with cracks from the '30s ("all or nothing politics," "moral politics" that are taken to be unbounded and long-term instead of short-term aberrations like temperance). It really speeded up in the '80s. It's gotten worse with the Internet and proliferation of news "sources."

A while back there was an old-timer here (I think s/he's still here) who objected to some set of facts that was a "* was bad for doing this, Obama's good for doing this" kinds of stories. Always good for popcorn because they often require either an obvious bit of hypocritical flip-floppery or simple denial of facts and I find both amusing. So this old-timer insisted he'd remember if * had done whatever it was, and only somebody who hated Obama would argue otherwise--"my guy good, their guy evil incarnate". He said such articles would have been posted here and hadn't ever been. So * couldn't have done something good. A Google search turned up half a dozen posts (out of the first 10) in which that particular old-timer posted comments to articles from 2008 and before condemning * quite forcefully for the same program as evil incarnate because * did it. Not only did he fail to remember that such articles had been posted for years, but that he had personally responded to them over the course of years. He was not pleased when I posted links to the past-him that proved the now-him wrong. His choice was simple: Say he was flip-floppily inconsistent, that both presidents were right or that both presidents were wrong.

It's worse with younger DUers.

For all its good points, I think the Net has brought about a lot of our problems with attitudes and hatred. I suppose what frustrates me the most is the hatred that is aimed at Obama and his family. Actually, it doesn't frustrate me as much as it scares the bejeebers out of me.

"They" walk among us.

It has been building my entire adult life, pretty much the 40 years you speak of, and it has gotten progressively worse.

The only thing I would disagree on is the general "they both are the same" elements.

No saying extreme left people are not completely recalcitrant, too.

But, to the extent that you have extreme elements driving things it is VERY heavily weighted with the republican party.

I donate once in a while but use a separate email address when they need an email. I never give my actual phone number.

First time I get a call asking for a donation, I tell them take me off the call list. And they do & never call back. At the bottom of those 150 daily emails is an un subscribe link, remove them all. Or make a new email address

We do have a problem with Corporations lobbying, writing laws to benefit their Corp. Some politicians seem like they work for the Corps instead of 'the people'

We have another major problem with so many 'for profit' businesses using OUR federal & state money for their businesses. Health care businesses, war contractors, drug businesses, prisons, Schools, student loans, IMO these 'for profit' companies take way to much of our Federal and State taxpayer money and make massive profits from a large percent of it.

Meanwhile our country is bled dry, many states say they are broke. We do have major problems but Obama and his Admin. work hard for us & have made a big dent in a lot of Americas troubles.

sorry this is so word-ie but I have to mention again, 150 emails a day!! I think you'll feel a lot better if you can make that stop right away. good luck

One thing I found interesting was that on one petition, I used my first initial. It didn't take long for that configuration of my name to start showing up in others' fundraising blurbs. I wonder if they share names as a favor, or charge for mailing lists?

IT is nice that so many think this nation will survive much longer. I have to admit I'm not among those ranks but since I'm an old guy I suppose my opinion doesn't matter all that much.

Why do people assume this nation will continue? At this point its already unrecognizable compared to Eisenhower's administration and there is little chance that Ronald Reagan (or Barry Goldwater for that matter) could get the GOP nomination by this point.

And the seas continue to rise.

We have played out the string, believing that we are somehow special and that things will work out in the long run. Good luck with that. I fear for my grandkids.

And, I'm here to tell you that your opinion matters very much BECAUSE you are an old guy. I know, DU grumbles about old men, but they are a special group which refuses to change and still wants to live in a white America. Those days are long gone. We may be old, but we've seen a lot and have every right to speak our mind.

The GOP isn't even recognizable. Also, in those good old days (never thought I'd be like my Grandma who spewed politics to anyone who would listen), people respected each other. The GOP hates more than any group I can think of and that is sad. They pretend to be so patriotic and religious, but then watch to see who gets the bigger slice of pie at the potluck dinner. The only time most are supporting the military is when they are marching off to war...that beloved sound of "kaching-kaching" ringing in the background.

Hang in there, fellow elder. We both still have a big job ahead of protecting our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so speak up. We may have to help that pendulum swing back to a better scenario, but as long as we're alive and kicking, we should be able to work together to make it happen.

I thought that maybe things would cool off after the 2012 elections but I was obviously mistaken (I never took the GOP's "rebranding" effort seriously). If Hillary runs and get elected, the Republican hate machine will still be cranked up to go after her 24-7-365 and will treat her much like they have Barack Obama- except it will be misogny, not racism. I guess that I like to think that- at some point- the public and maybe even the M$M will tell the Republicans to put up or shut up. My ultimate hope is that, until the Republicans return to some modicum of sanity, that they get reduced electorally to a fringe minority in Congress- where they can carp and complain but can't throw any sands in the gears and prevent things from moving forward anymore. Hopefully, the public will wise up to the point where they vote to shut the Republicans out election after election until they straighten up.

it does help keep the ridiculous RW laws from being voted on. I've never seen so many off-the-wall ideas come out of that group in my voting life.

Hopefully, they are digging their own grave.

Even if we have a democratic house and senate.

They will run the gov't and compromise with him just like Dems have always done.

They may be a little more to the left than they have been before but not so far as to paralyze the country.

Republicans cannot handle a democrat as president. They view any democrat as president as illegitimate.
Imagine of Bush VS Gore had been Obama VS Mc Cain??

For years and years the republicans have won elections not on the issues so much but on saying the other candidate is "Not In the Mainstream" or that they are the lesser of 2 evils. So I think where most democrats don't like republican presidents they don't view them in the same good vs evil lens as the republicans.

So I think it can settle down. But only if republicans win. The democratic party is not as crazy.

Rand Paul? Maybe if someone can appeal to his libertarian side, we can have some agreement. But he's shown that he can be ramrod strong when it's something he disagrees with on those libertarian principles.

Christie? Santorum? Perry? I don't see any of them willing to compromise.