Or maybe she wasn’t a good candidate to begin with. She wasn’t even nominated, so we don’t know how a true, democratically elected, candidate would have performed.

Women got the right to vote in 1920, but it wasn’t until 1968 that minority women were allowed to vote, and 1990 when the Americans with disabilities act passed. Crazy to me how people can look past monumental changes like that.

Wait, do you think that the united states is less progressive than it was 10 years ago? How about 20 years ago? 30?

I don’t think it’s exactly a matter of appealing to progressives, but an inherent difficulty in trying to appeal to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of interests. You end up having to make vague promises in order not to offend anyone, which comes across as being boring or disingenuous, like you are only saying stuff in order to get elected and not because you actually belive in it. Conservatives can have much simpler and more straightforward messaging because their base is much more homogeneous.

I know who my wife is voting for, but even if she voted differently, I would love her the same. It would hurt if she lied about it though, because it would imply a lack of trust.

Yeah it’s in the toothpaste, but is also in the city water. Problem is there are many cities with way more than the recommended limits. It’s one of those situations where the fringe weirdos may actually have had a point.

Illegal immigrants are being paid outside of the system and raising minimum wage only increases demand for employing more of them, continuing exploitation of them. You can make an argument for minimum wage increases, but it doesn’t benefit illegal immigrants.

Conservatives are trying to deport illegal immigrants and stop allowing them in, which may have a motive, but exploitation is not it.

That wasn’t so hard, was it? People tripping over themselves to find a gotcha and forgetting to use a little common sense.

Our economy depends on a base of low cost labor that used to be from kids or young people. It’s almost like Democrats have decided to fill that void with immigrants while Republicans are trying to get back to the low cost labor being from having more kids. It makes sense if your goal is to keep the machine running the way it was designed, or at least how it evolved to operate. Social security, insurance, fast food, service industries, construction would all need overhaul to function without low cost labor being their base. Seems like you could reduce consumerism in general to compensate for the reduced low income work force, but that would hurt the economic numbers and cause an overall contraction in the stock market. Tough pills to swallow for everyone who has accumulated any significant amount of wealth in this system.

How did interracial marriage come to the supreme court anyway? States made laws against it?

There is currently no voter registration card where I’m from. All you have to do is say your name and they check you off. If you aren’t registered in the area, you can bring a piece of mail with your name and address to prove you live in that precinct, or someone to vouch for you, then you are given a ballot and they add you to the registration for next time. But yes it sounds like there is a lot of variation in how states implement or assure the integrity of their elections, and all of them are prone to certain kinds of abuse, whether it’s discouraging voters or vote harvesting or some other illegal mechanism for influencing elections in favor of the established powers.

But you can’t ignore very real problems with increasing the pool of ignorant voters, since whoever has the most access to that pool will have an advantage because these ignorant voters can be taken advantage of simply because they are ignorant. Should people be voting if they don’t know how the system works or what the candidates even stand for? If you can’t be bothered to care about it enough to go through minimal requirements, do we need to go out of our way to shove a ballot in their hands?

And yes, I acknowledge that the kind of thinking I outlined above can be used to repress voters as well. I guess my point is that these policies cut both ways. It’s not such a clear cut answer as “give everyone a ballot”, because that can (and has) very very easily turn into “give them a ballot and suggest who they should vote for”.

ID and citizenship requirements seem like pretty basic requisites to voting, what’s wrong with those?

I heard in a podcast that the main difference between a communist and a socialist is only the means of getting there. The end goal is the same, but communists think it can only happen through violent revolution.

You completely missed my point, let me clarify my example. Two guys got drunk and killed someone while they were driving. One of them was a rich guy with connections, the other was a poor black guy with a criminal record. The rich guy gets a very light sentence and the black guy gets a much more serious charge. In this example the laws were selectively, subjectively, enforced.

This can happen with any law, with every law. I can come up with different examples all day. Every law, and all laws can be selectively enforced.

Ok how about murder? Guy murders someone by hitting them when he is drunk. Rich guy with a good lawyer and connections in the community gets community service, but the poor, black man with a pot possession misdemeanor when he was 15 gets life in prison.

Unjust laws can and should be eliminated, but people using laws unjustly cannot. Speeding is a crime, but it is not perfectly enforced. Cops let family members go more often, good looking people, people they identify with, etc. Speeding is a just law that is not always enforced in a just way. This is always the case.

That may be so, but you can’t just get rid of laws because they could be used unjustly. All laws could be used unjustly.

Yeah I suppose it opens the door for investigations in case of miscarriage since some of the methods for abortion can be hard to tell apart from natural miscarriage. And yeah it could be abused or selectively enforced, and that’s the danger of any laws. We are always walking that line.