pjwestin

If it’s a straight line from Nixon to Trump as you say, then why claim Republicans are environmentalists with Nixon as your example?

I'm not claiming Republicans are environmentalists, but if you want to know why they got so much worse on the environment, the answer is the Ratchet Effect. The thing you misinterpreted as, "both sides bad," explains exactly how we got here. In Nixon's era, environmental issues weren't considered particularly partisan. Nixon, Ford, and Carter all had generally the same outlook on using the federal government to regulate corporations on the environment.

Then comes Regan with a lurch to the right. He tries to de-fang the EPA and hundreds of employees resign en mass. But he's not all bad; he is instrumental in passing the Montreal Protocols, which effectively fixed the hole in the ozone layer, but he's much worse than his predecessors. H.W. Bush was a little worse than that. He continued Regan's deregulation campaign, and while he held several climate summits, he made no substantial moves on the climate.

With Clinton, we can see how the Democrats stopped the Party from moving back to the left on environmental issues. Clinton was, economically, very similar to Regan and Bush, and placed the corporate profits above the environment. He tried to make some progress with the Kyoto Protocols, but it was mostly ineffective, relying on cap-and-trade policies that did little to reduce emissions. Then it was the next Bush, who pulled us back out of Kyoto and was generally worse on all fronts for the environment. Next came Obama, who certainly has a mixed history on the environment. He put us in the Paris climate accords, but also went heavy on coal and fracking, plus approved the Keystone Pipeline. Finally we get Trump, who is a climate change denier and Captain Planet villain, which was interrupted by a brief interlude from Biden, who put us back in the Paris accords for a few years but also expanded American oil production.

Do you see how, over time, the Republicans move farther and farther to the right on the environment? Do you see how the Democrats fail to bring us back to the left when the retake power? That's the Ratchet Effect. Democrats aren't nice environmentalists that just want to fight the evil Republican polluters, they're constantly shifting right with the Republicans. This is true for immigration, the economy, crime, and if guys like Gavin Newsom get their way, it will soon be LGBTQ rights as well. Your binary, black-and-white view on these issues just doesn't reflect history or reality.

Well, there are a couple of differences there. First, Trump is an excellent media manipulator. Every moment that pundits thought would be a campaign-ending gaffe became free publicity. He got the equivalent of $2 billion in free media coverage from CNN alone.

Second, Trump didn't actually say or do anything that would upset the donor class like progressives do. He was more vulgar and crass, and the RNC was certain he would cost them the election, but he wasn't an existential threat to billionaires the way Bernie was.

However, if you want an example of how the RNC behaves when someone like that is running, look at the 2012 Republican Primary. Mitt Romney was the frontrunner, but the base was unenthusiastic about him and looking for someone different. Ron Paul polled in second place literally the entire campaign cycle, but the pundit class gave him no coverage. They wrote endlessly about Chirs Christie, Rick Santorum, and even Herman Caine, all of whom had brief moments as the frontrunner, but they completely ignored Ron Paul. His staunch libertarian beliefs threatened the defense industry and Wall Street, so the media and the party just pretended he didn't exist. (For the record, Ron Paul was a wack-job and I'm glad he never became president, but the Bernie parallels are strong).

...except the centrists and neoliberals went to Trump. Hillary and Harris both spent their campaigns courting them, and they both lost. Biden, for all his faults, had Bernie help him craft a progressive policy agenda and won. The Democrats undermine the progressive wing of their own ostensibly left-leaning party in primaries and other intraparty conflicts, then get to the general elections and get wrecked because neoliberals would rather vote for the Republicans than pseudo-Republicans.

Democrats didn't flip on gay rights until Obama

And Obama didn't flip on gay marriage until the end of his first term. Biden came out in favor of it, which forced Obama's hand, but it wound up being the right move; it energized the base when enthusiasm was starting to wane. Then, under Obama's leadership, they continued to do nothing to establish gay marriage at the federal level.

No, dude...just...no. You tried to claim that saying, "a Republican founded the EPA," and, "Republicans ended slavery," were the same, even though there was a century of history between those events. More importantly, Nixon is exactly the person you don't want to make that argument about, since Nixon is the very person who pivoted the party towards its modern strategy of using the politics of racial aggrievement to get working-class whites to vote against their self-interests. Going back to the Civil War, or even the early Civil Rights era, things get ideologically murky, but you can draw a straight line between Trump and Nixon.

First reply: "Giving Nixon credit for the EPA means you support Republicans and therefore Trump."

Second reply: "NIxon was so long ago he doesn't count."

You can't have it both ways. You can't claim pointing out a good thing Nixon did means I support modern Republicans while also claiming Nixon happened so long ago that he's not connected to modern Republicans.

It's also just factually wrong to say, "it was so long ago, its like saying they're the anti-slavery party." Nixon represents the turning point for the Republican party, where they abandoned their support for Civil Rights and embraced the Southern Strategy. He's basically the turning point for where the Republicans became the party we know today. He's the reason it's bullshit to point out Republicans are the party of Lincoln.

If you're talking about the Respect for Marriage Act, that was passed a decade after the Supreme Court established gay marriage as the law of the land. The overturning of Roe made Democrats decide that they should codify gay marriage, since they saw how badly failing to codify abortion rights turned out. It also reopens the door for Civil Unions and passed with large Republican support, so I wouldn't exactly call it a huge win for Democrats.

As for the EPA, I'm not sure what you're talking about, but you are absolutely incorrect. Nixon proposed the EPA and NOAA through executive order, and it was later ratified by Congress. It's possible you're referencing some sort of dispute Nixon had with Congress on how they intended to create the EPA, but he absolutely supported it; it was his idea.

Eh, I saw a lot of the same shit on Reddit. I think you'd have to go back at least 7 or 8 years to find a version of Reddit that wasn't trash.

That is absolutely not what I'm saying. I'm correcting objectively false claims you're making; environmental laws were not all Democrats, the Democrats did not do anything at the federal level to pass, "full gay rights with marriage," and the meme and OP did not say, "both sides bad." Those points are a statement of fact, not an argument.

That is absolutely not what I'm saying. I'm correcting objectively false statements you're making; environmental laws were not all Democrats, the Democrats did not do anything at the federal level to pass, "full gay rights with marriage," and the meme and OP did not say, "both sides bad." Those points are a statement of fact, not an argument.

Well, .world has a lot of users who understand this, but the loudest voices (who are often times moderators) are definitely Democrat apologists. Then again, some of the other instances, like .ml, have the opposite problem, and are full-blown tankie/authoritarian apologists, so it's kind of a, "pick your poison, damned if you do, damned if you don't," situation.