The Hill: "Stephen A. Smith: Democratic Party would need to be ‘purged’ before he would run"

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Tatertot78

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"Stephen A. Smith said the Democratic Party would need to be “purged” before he would run for president under the party.

Smith joined CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, where host Jake Tapper asked him about the continued talk about him running in the 2028 presidential election.

“If you were to run for president, though, would it be as a Democrat?” Tapper asked.

“I’m a registered independent … who leans left,” Smith replied. “I’m fiscally conservative when it comes to my money. I’m socially liberal. I’m liberal when it comes to social issues pretty much across the board.”

Smith has ramped up the idea about launching a presidential bid and has often expressed criticism of the current Democratic Party.

“If I had to run it would be as a Democrat, but I’m not happy with the Democratic Party. So the Democratic Party as presently constructed,” Smith said. “It would pretty much need to be purged in order for me to assume that I would want to be associated with them.”

Tapper asked Smith about whom he would like to see purged from the party for him to seriously be associated with it. Smith said he wasn’t going to name any names regarding whom he would remove from party leadership, but he slammed the far left and “excessive spending” in the past.

Smith argued that the Democratic Party spread messages that weren’t “emblematic of what most Americans are thinking about,” including paying mortgages and buying groceries.
“It’s because of the state of our politics in the nation’s capital, the politicians that we’re looking at and the fact that we don’t believe for one second that they are serving the interests of the American people, nor are they interested in it. People look at me and they know one thing, I would be interested in serving the American people and doing what’s in the best interest of this country,” he continued."


He is spot on with this .... Couldn't have said it better myself.
 
I agree I don't want Stephen A to be president but I feel he articulated the current Democrat party well. The Democrats have a lower approval rating than Trump. That is saying something... The party needs a drastic overhaul and come back more to the middle IMHO.
 
Tatertot78 said:
I agree I don't want Stephen A to be president but I feel he articulated the current Democrat party well. The Democrats have a lower approval rating than Trump. That is saying something... The party needs a drastic overhaul and come back more to the middle IMHO.
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I'm sorry that party doesn't exist.

You accidentally disclose your political leanings when you refer to a party by its McCarthy Era pejorative term rather than its actual name.
 
The Democratic brand seems so irreparable, I honestly don’t see a path forward for them.

And after the new census comes out in 2030, it will reapportion more electoral weight to Texas and Florida due to upward ticks in population, which will make it even more difficult for Dems to dig their way out.

I’ve spent most of my adult life as left leaning w/ “no party affiliation” per my voter registration but I’d prefer to see a healthier, more viable Democratic Party if for no other reason than to pump the brakes on some of the insanity coming from MAGA and the far right. But even the bare minimum is too much to ask from Democrats.

Smith ain't wrong how fucked the Dems are. But he's also wholly unfit to manage a Dairy Queen let alone run a country.
 
JoeMama said:
I'm sorry that party doesn't exist.

You accidentally disclose your political leanings when you refer to a party by its McCarthy Era pejorative term rather than its actual name.
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I am an independent who has voted for Clinton, Biden and Harris. I felt all three were waaaaaay more qualified than Trump. Previous to the Trump elections I usually voted for independent candidates on the national level.
 
Anyone who would just reset us back to milquetoast Democratic politics as usual is completely wrong for this moment.

The Capital class has made their intentions clear: they want to dominate us, they want to work us to death, and they will sell out democracy to make it happen.

Ironically, it's one of their own- JB Pritzker- who has it right. For humanity to have any hope of surviving what Trump has done and will continue to do, the next chapter has to be a reckoning. No more neoliberal bullshit. No more "bipartisanship". No more corporate donors. No more compromise.

When Amazon announced they were going to include tariffs explicitly in the pricing of products, Trump got mad and made them reverse course. The consequences of that reversal are obvious: we're not going to see the actual impact of tariffs on pricing, so businesses will have no obligation to lower their prices once the tariffs are rescinded.

Prices are about to go up and they will never come back down.

Which means we're going to need a massive expansion of the social safety net unlike anything we've seen since FDR. We're going to need Lina Khan On Steroids running the FTC. We're going to need a CFPB that was bitten by a radioactive spider. The SLIGHTEST corrupt business practice happens, those spidey-senses gotta see it and smack it down instantaneously. We need Medicare For All. We need to wipe out student loans. We need Universal Basic Income that is tied to inflation, and we need rent control alongside it to make sure landlords don't just raise rents in accordance with the new income they know everyone's getting.

And we need every single Republican in the country impeached, indicted, and barred from ever holding office again. The party is actively anti-democratic. It surely will seem authoritarian to go this route, but they've proven that if we don't do this they will do whatever it takes to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else.

If we don't go "too far left" the shit this administration is doing will continue to harm innocent people, Democrats will continue to be seen as ineffective, and fascists will just argue that the reason things are bad is because we didn't let them go far enough last time, so they need to be in charge again to finish the job.

And if we have allowed all that to happen, it will mean the voters are too stupid to know better and the Democrats are too useless to teach them. We'll be back here all over again in a decade, at most. And once that happens not a single one of us is making it out alive.

Maybe by then Hip will have figured out I'm right about everything.
 
ICRockets said:
He's spot on here. Shame about his virulent Zionism though.
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I've always considered this a profoundly unfair take.

All that criticism stems from the fact they performed one show in Tel Aviv in 2017.

Yorke emphasized Radiohead's decision should not be interpreted as support of the Israeli government because it wasn't.

His decision was an artistic one: he felt excluding Israeli fans would restrict cultural interaction and be counterproductive.

Think of it this way. They performed in America during the height of the Bush years. It didn't mean they supported our government's evil wars in the middle east. In fact we know he opposed both wars.

It's a fallacy.

Thom Yorke has an amazing record on most issues that matter.
 
Tatertot78 said:
I agree I don't want Stephen A to be president but I feel he articulated the current Democrat party well. The Democrats have a lower approval rating than Trump. That is saying something... The party needs a drastic overhaul and come back more to the middle IMHO.
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The Dems approval rating is partly based on the stupidity of self-flagellating themselves publicly over this bullshit "out of touch" narrative that the Republicans started. It's ONLY the MAGA-Right that they're out of touch with. Unfortunately, that group is also the loudest and most outspoken.

Trust me, they are not "out of touch" with other Democrats.
 
ICRockets said:
Anyone who would just reset us back to milquetoast Democratic politics as usual is completely wrong for this moment.

The Capital class has made their intentions clear: they want to dominate us, they want to work us to death, and they will sell out democracy to make it happen.

Ironically, it's one of their own- JB Pritzker- who has it right. For humanity to have any hope of surviving what Trump has done and will continue to do, the next chapter has to be a reckoning. No more neoliberal bullshit. No more "bipartisanship". No more corporate donors. No more compromise.

When Amazon announced they were going to include tariffs explicitly in the pricing of products, Trump got mad and made them reverse course. The consequences of that reversal are obvious: we're not going to see the actual impact of tariffs on pricing, so businesses will have no obligation to lower their prices once the tariffs are rescinded.

Prices are about to go up and they will never come back down.

Which means we're going to need a massive expansion of the social safety net unlike anything we've seen since FDR. We're going to need Lina Khan On Steroids running the FTC. We're going to need a CFPB that was bitten by a radioactive spider. The SLIGHTEST corrupt business practice happens, those spidey-senses gotta see it and smack it down instantaneously. We need Medicare For All. We need to wipe out student loans. We need Universal Basic Income that is tied to inflation, and we need rent control alongside it to make sure landlords don't just raise rents in accordance with the new income they know everyone's getting.

And we need every single Republican in the country impeached, indicted, and barred from ever holding office again. The party is actively anti-democratic. It surely will seem authoritarian to go this route, but they've proven that if we don't do this they will do whatever it takes to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else.

If we don't go "too far left" the shit this administration is doing will continue to harm innocent people, Democrats will continue to be seen as ineffective, and fascists will just argue that the reason things are bad is because we didn't let them go far enough last time, so they need to be in charge again to finish the job.

And if we have allowed all that to happen, it will mean the voters are too stupid to know better and the Democrats are too useless to teach them. We'll be back here all over again in a decade, at most. And once that happens not a single one of us is making it out alive.

Maybe by then Hip will have figured out I'm right about everything.
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Not everything.

Go research how much money the JB Pritzker family made off of Covid

I said it the other day. The Oligarchy is complete. They only needed a stooge like Trump to fuck over the rest of the country enough that the Wealthiest people could start filling their pockets with anything left over they haven't already taken from us.

Stupid Republicans are clamoring over a 9 day increase in the stock market but are too stupid to recognize that increase is mostly based on the Richest FUCKS buying up the worthless stocks that the middle classes dumped for chump change over the previous two months.

I just wonder who will do the labor when they've forced all of the non-uberwealthy into homelessness
 
HipKat said:
Go research how much money the JB Pritzker family made off of Covid
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I already pointed out he's a billionaire. I can point out when the guy's more right than 98% of Democrats while still believing every cent of his wealth exceeding $999M should be taxed at 100%.
 
ICRockets said:
No it doesn't. He's been hostile to pro-Palestinian protesters since 10/7 as well.
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The only incident I’m aware of is when a pro Gaza heckler interrupted one of his solo shows in Sydney and Yorke’s objection wasn’t to the sentiment expressed but to the disruption of the show.

Which to be fair, I’d want the heckler to shut the fuck up too. I don’t care that it’s a cause dear to me like Palestine. I’m there for the show not some selfish prick trying to grab attention.
 
Tatertot78 said:
I am an independent who has voted for Clinton, Biden and Harris. I felt all three were waaaaaay more qualified than Trump. Previous to the Trump elections I usually voted for independent candidates on the national level.
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A mentally retarded frog is more qualified to be President than Trump. The only thing Trump is qualified for is to lay his neck across the Guillotine.
 
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