cqst

I think you should engage in better political analysis than saying that Republicans start more wars because Democrats are the ones who started WW2 and The Mexican-American war. I just don't really see the value in that. You should instead argue that modern wars, while usually started by Republicans, tended to have large political consensus on both the Democratic and Republican sides.

Modern Republicans started the War In Iraq, War in Afghanistan and consistently push for war with Iran. Most major US Interventions that people dislike happened under Republican presidents, Panama, Grenada, Gulf War 1 & 2, Afghanistan, etc.. but most of these happened with Democratic support.

What I'm trying to say is, your gonna get bombed regardless, but with Republicans those bombs are more likely to be nukes. You should probably just turn off the TV and hope for the best rather than rooting for any side.

Modern discourse in the US about democrats and being "liberal" is usually as a pejorative using the term to describe yourself is usually as a reclamation from the political right in the US and less about being an actual "liberal" as in liberal theory.

You should vote in political primaries where there are many more candidates to choose from.

US democrats are the largest and most successful left party in the world. Our large two party system obfuscates the underlying factionalism within the political parties (progressive cacucus, justice democrats, blue dogs, New Democrat Caucus) kind of reveals this inherent disagreement within our political parties, where members of the progressive caucus and justice democrats can be pretty clearly seen as on the political left.

In the US, social liberalism and political freedom is generally much more popular, as compared to Europe, and seen as being associated with the political left. There is no major socialist political group in the United States, and usually people who claim that there is "no left wing party in the US" want an actual Socialist party, but there are very few examples of successful socialist parties in Western Democracies and tend to be consigned to either being permanent opposition, or forcing themselves to liberalize to the point of not being socialist anymore (think SPD in Germany and Labour in the UK).

I am thankful that the US democrats focus so strongly on issues of social liberalism, think, immigration, abortion, LGBTQ rights, where in Europe these issues are much more controversial especially on issues of abortion and immigration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Europe#Abortion_laws_by_jurisdiction

In the war of rhetoric, people like to use terms to try and bias you to their side.

liberal actually just means "free" and so there are many types of liberalism: social liberalism economic liberalism (as in free market economics) political liberalism etc...

In the USA liberals tend to be highly socially liberal and highly political liberal. Social liberalism tends to be associated with the political left, and when using liberal as a pejorative, it's usually meant to claim that the opponent is "too socially liberal."

US liberals also tend to be associated with the creation and maintaing of a welfare state which is commonly seen as being a left wing concept.

In the US, there is also a large history of debate between what the size and scope of government should be, and how the government should be run. This debate can somewhat be characterized as "liberal democracy vs populism", i.e good governance based on institutions rules and ideas versus well, populism, a decent example is Donald Trumps rhetoric about "draining the swamp." US liberals tend to be associated with institutionalism and supposed "good governance", and populism is commonly seen more as a right wing ideal, so in this area US liberals are considered on the political left as well.

Universal Basic Income reduced child poverty by 30%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_tax_credit#United_States

By making the child tax credit non-refundable it is effectively a Negative Income Tax which is a form of UBI.

'Additional housing fixes the rent problem. UBI puts a temporary bandaid on it. Universal healthcare fixes the medical expenses problem, strong unionization fixes the wages problem. Don’t get me wrong I’d love the paycheck, but it isn’t the solution people think it is.'

All of your points misunderstand what the goal of UBI is. By guaranteeing that everyone earns a certain amount of income, the government is garaunteeing a basic standard of living. So a CTC of $3600 means that everyone is guaranteeed an income of at least $3600.

At first, there will be an inital raise in prices as a UBI will likely increases aggregate demand which will increase prices, but eventually prices would stabilize.

Of course, this only helps people with children right now, and there are barriers to filing a tax return in the United States. But the laws could be change to expand the credit, and it's completely possible for the United States to implement return free filing.

Except that he remains 3rd in line to the presidency, has massive power over how the house is run and so would just backstab democrats after any "deal?"

There is two paths, we can either have a compromise speaker who isn't Mike Johnson, or Jeffries, without massive concessions (not just floor time, actual policy concessions) it makes no sense for democrats to save Johnson from his own party.

No democrat should ever vote to leave this bigot in the succession line to the presidency.

Some fun things Mike Johnson has done:

Called us a "depraved culture" for having high LGBTQ identification:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/11/mike-johnson-america-depraved-high-school-students

Made his daughter pledge her virginity to him at a "purity ball":

https://abcnews.go.com/US/speaker-mike-johnson-daughter-profiled-attending-purity-ball/story?id=105785626

And just read what he has to say about gay marriage:

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-kfile/134019997/