News

Leftism isn’t about being anti-capitalist, though the two can and do overlap quite a bit. Left wing politics is more about what they support as opposed to being against something: pro-human rights. Pro-equality and equity. Pro-education. Pro-healthcare. Pro-environment. Walz is pro all of those things, and his track record exemplifies it.

It may seem like splitting hairs, but the distinction is important. It’s the right wing that only exists in opposition. Their only platform is what they are against.

Compared to many of his Democratic colleagues, he leans much farther left than most. That’s why it’s odd to say he’s not of the left. He is a capitalist who owns not a single stock, bond, real estate, and he doesn’t take money for speaking or have book deals. He’s a lefty capitalist, which is pretty much a diamond in the rough.

Regarding the profit incentive: providing free school lunches or medical/ hygiene supplies does not hurt profits. As the meals/supplies will still have to be sourced from the market, it probably will now be a few big contacts with big suppliers that will cover entire school districts.

The costs of these contracts will be a public burden unless they implemented a specific focus tax to pay for it, so it will come out of various broad tax pools. This means everyone pays a little bit so every kid has something to eat. Even if you don't have any kids or if your kid gets homemade lunch packs. This is where the "social" aspect comes in.

Other countries, many of them European, actually go a step in the other direction: if you do not have kids, you actually pay a premium on your income tax. And that is generally accepted, because for society to live on, obviously kids are necessary. And if you don't support society by raising kids, you at least help cover some of the associated costs. These premiums are explicitly used to fund kindergartens, schools etc..

An often valid capitalist criticism of public large contracts on infrastructure such as this is that the public offices tend to be notoriously bad negotiators, accepting worse deals than private companies would. This is because there's little to no incentive for them to reach good terms. It also makes the process more vulnerable to corruption and politicking on a grander scale. These are not guaranteed to happen, good governance can definitely avoid this. But public governance simply isn't that great to begin with in many areas.

But I’m not a pure socialist, so I don’t pass the purity test to be of the left. Be consistent!

We should be so luck to ever see a time where the president doesn’t need to make a hard decision. Don’t think that’ll ever happen.

What samus12345 said, and people don’t like a woman who behaves the same way a man would in a professional environment - and I mean someone who is demanding, disciplines, is decisive, and holds people to expectations. A good boss does those things, tempered with understanding and leeway as needed. People expect women to hide all that behind some sort of female softness, or they call her a hard-nosed bitch or worse and they don’t respect her the way they would a male in the same position.

Misogynists think that, and there are a lot of them out there.

It’s a concern because that’s how things generally work.

Sure, you can wish we don’t have ancient, out of touch older people running for office, but you’ll have just as much success with that by banging your head on the keyboard. So you should be concerned until things turn out otherwise.

All true, though keeping the fascists at bay in four or eight years will never not be a concern IMO.

I see the logic of it. He's the governor of arguably the most important state of the election. If you think he could help win in Pennsylvania without costing too many votes from the only other 6 states that matter it would be a good pick

Obama and other establishment dems