You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[A Black Falcon]

I wonder, what would it actually take for America to take action against guns?  More horrendous slaughters, more certainty they will continue happening... it's pretty sad.

Getting upset that governors and mayors are left with the task of implementing sweeping change on a local level was a strange one.  That's their JOB.  What are they complaining about?  That would be like garbage disposers complaining that their work sure is a lot tougher after the parade.  Well of course it is, but that's the job isn't it?  I'm not saying support and coordination aren't a part of it, of course they are (in the same way you hire more people to handle the garbage in preparation for parade day), but geez, if we're really terrified of change because change is hard, we're doomed.

I'm not sure which part you are referring to here, maybe I missed it?  I didn't see all of either debate...

As you might imagine, I thought Warren and Sanders both performed very well, and they're the ones everyone's quoting today, so I'd say they got their names out there.  Once again, I never really considered "name recognition" a big deal when it comes to primaries.  When the dust settles and the party's picked their candidate, do you really think whoever it is, and I mean literally anyone, won't instantly become a household name overnight?  Of course they will.  Name recognition is not an issue right now.  Oh and yes, I clearly want a more progressive Democratic party.  I'm sick of the moderates parroting Republican talking points as their own.

Warren definitely did well in the second debates, yeah.  I still have serious concerns about her ability to win against Trump, but yeah policy-wise she's quite good.

Certainly name recognition and polling will increase once the party has a nominee, yes, but I would think that starting from a higher point is a positive...

As for Republican talking points, that was mostly the moderators doing that, not the candidates.  The centrist candidates were attacking the liberal ones for sure, but you can tell that they're still Democrats.  Some might have gone a bit far sometimes, but that's why I'm not entirely sold on the party's decision to not put anmy effort into trimming the size of the field; the minor candidates can be interesting, or frustrating, to hear from, but either way, debates with just the candidates that actually have a chance would be great.  Probably too scared by the whole Bernie-fans-were-super-mad-in-2016 thing, though, the Democratic Party is refusing to do that.  Too bad.

Trump just quoted some other republican's line "A moderate socialist is still a socialist".  This is the point.  It doesn't matter how far the moderates try to swing their party to seem more "acceptable" to republicans.  That ship sailed ages ago.  It doesn't work any more.  ANY mention of health care change, at all, in any form, is now "socialism" and evil and a violation of God's divine will.  I'm not even exaggerating.  The modern republican literally believes that the Republican party is the party of God, chosen BY God, in this dark and evil time.  THAT is what you have to cut through to reach a republican voter, a religious conviction that their party is right.  You don't do that by putting on a Reagan mask and pretending to be a republican.  You do that by being radical, embracing it, and explaining to the rust belt WHY the republican party has failed them and why democrat policies will benefit them.

I saw a thing recently about evangelicals upset by how Trump swears all the time.  They'll happily overlook things like that, how he's destroying their livelihoods (in the case of farmers), and more, though, since he hates them brown people, and that's all that matters, right?

Anyway though, yeah, the Republicans will definitely try to call any Democrat a socialist as if it's some awful thing, while the left says 'that's fine, America needs more socialism'.  It'd be great if we could actually win in the rust belt with that kind of message, but I'm not convinced we can.  If you go too far to one side, you lose the middle.  What will this lead to, though?  I'm sure socialism does not poll as badly now as it once did, but it's probably going to hurt the Dems with some people... though more probably will be turned off by Trump's policy positions, so that shouldn't be nearly as good for their party as they hope.