ExRx.net

Okay, I'm in England but I still find this interesting, anyone watching this live? Any predictions? Any Thoughts? I don't have enough knowledge of the Amercian political system to have an opinion, but ideology wise I wish luck to the democrats. Lecture is 5 hours so better go, but hope to see some thoughts in the morning!

Basically most of the Democrats are about the same as your conservative party, or Torres I think you call them. There may be a small handful more conservative and another handful more liberal. But their ideologies are very similar.

The Republicans are more conservative, some much. much more conservative. This is even more so now than it used to be in years past. The last few years the main stream of the Republican party is a lot like the BNP. Just substitute Mexicans for Polish, middle eastern, Indian, or whatever. They feel the same about Muslims. The BNP probably has a more nationalist flavor than some Republicans, but not others. It's also much more corporatist over here.

Your labor and liberal parties would be in the Green party over here. The Green party never gets more than 5% of the vote just to give you an idea. So this should give a pretty good frame of reference.

So the short version is just think Torre vs BNP, and that's what's going on here.

Oh dear, I didn't think it was that different. I knew republicans were conservative but thought they would be in line with our conservatives.

This seems strange that the government is so far away from the population. Whereas here, our MPs try to represent the constituency in which they come from. Like a lot of Labour MPs come from working class backgrounds in working class areas, not so many now but at least its slightly representative. I did American politics for a year in sixth form (the first year was uk politics), and couldn't get over how different it is. It's like a sort of gameshow during election time, the amount of money spent is incredible.

I'm quite surprised by that too, in particular the BNP comparison.

I knew that the Democrats were on the right like the Tories, but I didn't think they were anywhere near the BNP in terms of being so far right.

I mean are you sure you have that right Ironman? I know you're an educated guy and obviously very poilitically minded, but BNP policy is to get rid of everyone not of Anglican origin. All ethnic groups except white British would have to leave the country (it's a little more complicated than that but that's basically the idea). It's the old racist slogan "send the buggers back" put into policy. Would the Democrats in America really want that?

The Labour party in our country were traditionally a lot more left wing than they are now, Tony Blair caused a big shift to the right when he came in by using a lot more free market goings on. Loads of hospitals and schools which used to be state funded are commisioned to the private sector now. So Labour are more centre-right these days.

It scary to think a party as far-right as the BNP could ever control anything

Would that be the same for Canada, I thought that Republicans=Conservatives and Democrats=Liberals. For Canada anyway.

They DO represent the people in their area. People are just that conservative here. The more conservative half of America views the UK and the rest of Europe as socialist. So it's just very different here. I would probably be mainstream in your liberal party, but over here I'm some kind of a pinko commie loon.

No, no, not the Democrats. It's many of the Republicans (but not all) that are a lot like the BNP. The Democrats are like the Tories. For example the Democrats were for health care reform, and the Republicans are against it. The Tories don't run on a Platform of dismantling NHS though.

Yea, Labour is much further to the right than it traditionally had been. They also have a lot in common with the Democrats now, where as before only the most liberal Democrats would have been at home in the Labour party.

The more BNP-like Republicans can't really take over anything other than their party. The government will remain fairly gridlocked here. So all the most crazy stuff they want won't get through. A party coming to power here just means they have a majority, however small. It's not like there where they literally do come to power.

The campaigning has always been really bad here, but now it's even worse. Corporations can spend an unlimited amount of money on advertisements now. They can also secretly funnel it through front companies who do not have to disclose their donors. So a big company can take billions of dollars and use it on ads to put out propaganda to suite their interests without having to worry about pissing off half of their customers in the process.

Which particular issues are focused on depends a lot on the region. So it can be nuanced. So in some places it's anti-abortion, anti-gay issues, somewhere else it might be anti-immigration, somewhere else it might be more free market, pro corporation stuff.

I'm not very familiar with Canadian politics. I talk to plenty of Canadians, but they never talk about it. The world news never really covers their elections either. All the election coverage seems to focus on the US and UK. It could be that most of the world news done in English comes from BBC journalists. But all I know about Canadian politics is that it is skewed further left than the US. I'm not sure how they line up. I would guess that most of our Democrats would be in your conservative party, and some would be with the liberal party. Where as the Republicans would mostly be further to the right than anything you have. But that's kind of a guess because I know so little about the politics there.

As far as I know, you have a lot more social programs than here, and there isn't a substantial anti-abortion/anti-gay/Christian values type movement there. So that pretty much puts you in line with the Democrats policies or further left. But correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know a lot about it. So there may be a lot more to it that I don't know about.

What you said seems right. I don't really even follow Canadian politics that much unless it has something to do with the military.

sorry sorry, when I said democrats I meant republicans. I knew they were the further right party.

I always thought the democrats were further left than that, it sucks that both the major parties are on the right.

even though labour are further right than they used to be, they're still left enough to make it possible to vote on an ideological basis; if you're on the left vote Labour, on the right vote Tory.

Well, you can see what happened. It's not so much that the people hired the Republicans, but rather that they fired the Democrats. There are hard times going on over here, and the main concerns were that the legislators were NOT listening to the peoples input. They did NOT want mandates forcing them to buy health insurance (and the prices have risen greatly), did not appreciate the back room deals with no transparency, etc, and dissaproved of other legislation they did not want. You can argue all you want whether the bills themselves were any good, but the fact remains that the general public did not want them, and with the economic situation the way it is, the vote was really "throw the bums out", and if this group isn;t any good, we'll throw them out too.
Tim

Ain't that the truth! That's the way I see it too. People are super pissed. More than they've ever been. Most people mentioned being really disgusted with both parties. Congress has an approval rating under 20%. That's how I feel. I support the Democrats, but I can't stand them for the most part. To me, the only thing worse than a Democrat, is a Republican.

But regardless of how I feel about politics, I really hate the fact that nothing ever gets done. Congress is broken and nobody ever does anything about it. I think most Republican voters feel the same way too.

To be honest though, I'm actually rather pleased with the results. The people who held everything up and neutered all the legislation to the point where it did a quarter of the good it could have, that never held Wallstreet accountable, didn't pay attention to where the TARP money went, didn't hold the banks feet to the fire, didn't do anything for home owners, and put their careers above all.....are the ones who LOST THEIR JOBS. It's those conservative blue dog democrats that got voted out. I don't care if they got replaced with very conservative Republicans. They could have replaced them with Nazis for all I care. Good riddance!

This is one political thread where I actually agree with everything that's been said!