That’s fair. I come at guns with my weird Canadian perspective but I do think different classes of weapons is reasonable. Here, rifles are treated vwry differently from handguns which are basically allowed in a locked storage box at home (with ammo in, if I remember my firearms license training correctly, another locked box) or in the trunk of your car while you are on the most direct route to a firing range or coming home from one.

We have almost no gun crime. In America, I’ve had guns drawn on me twice by cops (understandably nervous cops, I would be nervous too if everyone had a handgun!) after being pulled over for speeding and one time a dude I met at a Sharks game pulled one on a guy who threatened us with a knife.

That just seems like a ridiculous way to live. I’ve had a blast shooting off guns in the bush, drunk and high in Oregon but as much fun as that was, definitely doesn’t outweigh the whole “guns are just around and yeah, school shootings happen” thing.

You mean “your” 3 points. I am not three points.

Anyway, I went to the Republican 2024 platform. There’s a lot of fluff but, as evidenced by tonight, their big issue is immigration, which is the first 2 items in the platform.

Then there’s generic fluff about inflation, tax cuts for the working class and boosting manufacturing, claims both parties make. (Also about energy but I already included climate change in the Dems column.)

Nonsense about stopping ww3 (yes, a level headed leader like trump is what we need to do that.) Then "stop charging donald for his crimes. Back to immigration. Then random attack on cities, despite urban voters voting Dem. Then generic silliness. Then climate, then culture war etc…

So, what would you say are the two non immigration issues on the Republican side?

Real tough. (Which kind of makes me roll my eyes when fellow Canadians criticize the American Right on immigration.

We have a points based system, you get points for education, skills etc. (And some specialized seasonal programs etc.)

That being said, we do take in a boatload of refugees so maybe you can claim asylum?

Okay, “secret” confession, I’m a Canadian too. But I can’t stop watching American politics, much like I can’t help but look when passing a car crash.

I think a more reasonable compromise would be to give Republicans most of what they want on immigration reform.

I strongly agree here. I think this is actually what the Harris campaign is doing. I really hope she smacks donald around on this after he stopped a pretty Right leaning border bill from happening. While I didn’t love it all, it does seem much more humane/realistic than donald’s current “Deport 'em all!” mantra.

I am bothered by how few people seem to grasp this fact.

Yeah, some of the responses in this thread have been predictable but still disheartening.

would do the obvious deal and sacrifice their dilatory approach to immigration and in particular border security.

100%. It just seems like the progressives are losing the war for the sake of being in the moral feel good category, witness the rise of the Far Right in Poland, Germany, France and probably others that I’m too ignorant to know about (sorry!) That being said, reading over this thread and you can kind of see why the Progressive parties are in a bit of a bind, we do seem allergic to the notion that we might not get everything we want.

That’s fair.

Again, I’m not trying to argue for one side over the other. I’m just saying that from their point of view, both sides have some sense of legitimacy. I tend to agree with you that abortion should be available to all who want one because it’s not my damned decision to make.

But yet again, for the pro-lifers, murdering babies, no matter how good the results etc might be is fundamentally wrong.

The reason why it’s worse if she’s pregnant is because you took away her choice and opportunity to have that baby

To each their own I guess. I personally would feel horrible about killing a child not just removing a temporary opportunity or something. I’m not saying it’s the same as an abortion, just that we on a fundamental level do understand that the fetus isn’t just a clump of cells.

Ahaha, I really enjoy this comment.

I think you’re right, most folks are middle of the road but damned if I can think of a way to get the middle to actually dominate politics…

The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them

Nah, though there is an irony to arguing that the notion of two sides means we view each other with suspicion right after deciding what I believe because of the question I asked.

Just like you, I get that there are two major political parties, one of which will hold power, both of which view the other as the enemy. I asked this to see what the general consensus would be as my friends and I played a similar game and were stymied pretty quickly.

Your example of pushing is still assault and non-consensual, pretty easy to call a difference there.

So are you saying that me pushing a pregnant woman down the stairs is the same as doing so to a non pregnant woman?

why not leave it up to the people who may or may not get an abortion?

Again, I’m pro-choice. But, the pro-life response is simply that the unborn child doesn’t get a say in the matter. We don’t allow people to murder their born children even though it’s their own child. The pro-life movement just argues that the definition of child should include those who have yet to be born.

I mean, try asking any pregnant mom about whether the thing kicking around inside them is alive or not…

I think this is absolutely the best and most well thought out response. As you might expect, I disagree and agree with parts. I don’t actually think a “compromise” like I outlined would ever happen but I was kind of curious about the responses. (Most have been “nah”.)

I just don’t see any way in the current political climate that actual compromise of the type you outlined is possible. The current dynamic is basically any policy achievement while the party you didn’t vote for is in power is a win for the “other guys” and is a loss for “us.”

Yup!

Half of America seems to think so. And whether we like it or not, we live in a pluralistic society.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that’s a pretty iffy claim when we’re getting into what counts as life.

If I push a pregnant woman down some stairs and cause her to lose a baby, we all still view it as a despicable act, much worse than if she’d not been pregnant.

I personally am all for abortion rights but I’m not arrogant enough to decide everyone else is absolutely wrong and I am the arbiter of what is and isn’t life.

I mean, depends on “won.” The far right (RN) had more votes but had fewer seats after Ensemble and the NFP withdrew candidates competing against each other. But then those two parties couldn’t work out a Prime Minister who would survive their first No Confidence votez which I think would trigger another election, one in which the RN would be at a substantial advantage…

So on this one, I think Macron actually did compromise by putting in a Right wing PM who is not Far Right and who will mostly be governing with Ensemble/NFP…

Ironically, that is almost exactly how the pro-life movement feels about abortion.

I mean, if you look at the responses in this thread, most folks have put their compromise as getting everything they want on the Dem side of things…

Though, you’re not entirely wrong on the compromise thing. It’s one of those things people say they want until they realize that means giving up on what they want. You might enjoy this old 538 article about it, which has this painful pair of paragraphs on the subject:

But how much does bipartisanship actually matter to voters? Americans have long said they prefer that the parties work together, and respondents in Morning Consult’s poll were no different. For instance, 85 percent of voters said it was very or somewhat important for legislation to have bipartisan support, 69 percent agreed that policies with bipartisan backing were the best policies, and 62 percent disagreed with the idea that it was a waste of time for politicians to seek bipartisan support. What’s more, there were no meaningful differences between how Democrats and Republicans answered these questions.

However, polls also show that many Americans are willing to scrap bipartisanship if it means passing legislation that their party prefers. For instance, a 2019 poll from the Pew Research Center found that despite majorities of Democrats (69 percent) and Republicans (61 percent) saying it was very important that elected officials be willing to compromise, members of both parties thought it was more important for officials from the other party to compromise than it was for officials from their own party to do so. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats thought it was very important for Republican lawmakers to compromise compared with just 41 percent of Republicans. Likewise, 78 percent of Republicans thought it was very important for Democratic lawmakers to compromise compared with 48 percent of Democrats.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-do-americans-really-care-about-bipartisanship/

What would you say are the big three priorities for either side?

Admittedly, 538 was pretty good about showing their work after. While individual events suffer from the unfalsifiability issue, 538 when Silver was around, did pretty good “how did we do for individual races/states” and compared their given odds to the actual results.

Silver made a prediction. That’s the deliverable.

I see what you’re not getting! You are confusing giving the odds with making a prediction and those are very different.

Let’s go back to the coin flips, maybe it’ll make things more clear.

I or Silver might point out there’s a 75% chance anything besides two heads in a row happening (which is accurate.) If, as will happen 1/4 times, two heads in a row does happen, does that somehow mean the odds I gave were wrong?

Same with Silver and the 2016 election.