I could see myself being a Libertarian if they didn’t say stupid stuff like “the market will regulate corporations”. Grow the fuck up. The market is absolutely and completely dominated by the corporations. There is no free market.

PS, the “grow up” comment was aimed at the party, not at you.

The sad hilariousness of this really comes into play when you look at the compromises of the opposite three points that OP suggested. If I try to do the same style of justification explanations you gave as to why those would be uncompromisable:

Immigration: people have a right to… Jobs? (Firmly debunked that immigrants are “taking American jobs”). People have a right to not have to see non-Americans in “their” country?

Culture war: people have a right to… Ignore racism? People have a right to be as ignorant as they please? People have a right to be saved from others confirming their sexual identity and feeling peer pressure to do the same?

Trump gets to be president: people have a right to… Fascist leadership if they willingly elect it? People deserve the “best president ever”?

It’s absurd that these are political issues if you take a half a step back and examine the 6 points in isolation. 3 of them are concerned with individuals making their own choices or the safety of humanity as a whole. 3 of them are about nationalism or controlling information and education, basically the definition of “putting myself and my beliefs above the rights of others”. How the hell did we even get into a situation where this is what we are choosing between? Or rather, a situation where roughly half our country actually thinks this is a choice and not just blatantly obvious based on basic morality.

This is why they’re known as wedge issues because there’s no compromise.

Actually, I think they have it exactly right. The problem is Republican voters views and priorities have been misaligned with their respective party representatives for at least a decade.

This is no more evident than in evangelical voters jumping through hoops to justify a detestable candidate of poor morals.

What Trump, the tea party before him, etc represents to folks that adore them is quite different than what those things are.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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…

I am willing to compromise and allow trial by combat to be reintroduced as a valid judicial process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat

Trial by combat (also wager of battle, trial by battle or judicial duel) was a method of Germanic law to settle accusations in the absence of witnesses or a confession in which two parties in dispute fought in single combat; the winner of the fight was proclaimed to be right. In essence, it was a judicially sanctioned duel. It remained in use throughout the European Middle Ages, gradually disappearing in the course of the 16th century.

So that was before the US became a country.

Wikipedia sadly doesn’t mention it, but a few years ago, some Brit decided to challenge what IIRC was a traffic infraction and demand trial by combat. The judge issued a ruling that trial by combat was no longer permissible, so it’s officially off the books in the UK under case law.

kagis

Vehicle registration violation.

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/trial-by-combat-one-mans-attempt-to-beat-a-33-motoring-fine-c7a9c9944d93

Is Trial By Combat Still Legal?

Citing a law from 1066, a man requested a fight to the death to settle a $33 motoring fine.

In 2002, in Suffolk in England, a 60-year-old man didn’t tell the country’s motoring authority that his motorcycle was off the road. That authority, the DVLA, can fine individuals for things like not paying road tax and similar admin things.

The man, Leon Humphreys, was fined £25 ($33) for his small infringement, but the man didn’t pay and was taken to court.

Trial by combat

Almost a thousand years earlier, in 1066, William the Conqueror introduced the right to trial by combat – a fight to the death to resolve disputes using swords or other weapons such as pikes.

The thinking behind this was that God would back who was right, and they would win. Elderly people and women were allowed to nominate a champion to fight on their behalf.

You couldn’t just demand trial by combat with anyone. Rather, it needed a genuine legal matter to be resolved, and was one official way of resolving that matter. It let God decide the outcome, apparently, and the guilty party would pay the ultimate price.

Humphreys decided that instead of paying the fine, he would call upon the ancient law, saying;

“I believe the right to trial by combat is still on the statute books… I am willing to fight a champion put up by the DVLA if they want to accept my challenge – but they must remember it is a fight to the death… I am reasonably fit and not afraid of taking anyone on in a fight.”

A spokesman for the British courts simply said of the matter;

“I am not aware that anyone has the right to demand trial by combat these days.”

And the DVLA responded;

“We have never dealt with a request for trial by combat before. We are looking into the legal issues.”

The courts unsurprisingly rejected the request for trial by combat, which hasn’t really been used much since around 1300 when trial by jury replaced it. Mr. Humphreys never got his deathly fight, and all DVLA clerks remained safely at their desks.

Instead, he was fined £200 ($265) for not paying the fine, and a further £100 ($133) in court costs.

However, British courts don’t bind the US, not since independence, and last time I looked, it still hadn’t been resolved in the US. WP doesn’t have any clear case law prohibiting it, though the Brits came close:

Proposals to abolish trial by battle were made in the 17th century, and twice in the 18th, but were unsuccessful.[23] In 1774, as part of the legislative response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament considered a bill that would have abolished appeals of murder and trials by battle in the American colonies. It was successfully opposed by Member of Parliament John Dunning, who called the appeal of murder “that great pillar of the Constitution”.[24] Writer and MP Edmund Burke, on the other hand, supported the abolition, calling the appeal and wager “superstitious and barbarous to the last degree”.[25]

At the time of independence in 1776, trial by combat had not been abolished and it has never formally been abolished since. The question of whether trial by combat remains a valid alternative to civil action has been argued to remain open, at least in theory. In McNatt v. Richards (1983), the Delaware Court of Chancery rejected the defendant’s request for “trial by combat to the death” on the grounds that dueling was illegal.[50] In Forgotten Trial Techniques: The Wager of Battle, Donald J. Evans set out the possibility of a trial by battle in the setting of a lawyer’s office.[51] A tongue-in-cheek motion during 2015 for trial by combat in response to a civil suit was rejected in 2016.[52]

In 2020, a man named David Zachary Ostrom requested a trial by combat in response to a custody and property dispute with his ex-wife over their children.[53] Following Ostrom requesting trial by combat, he was court-ordered to be administered a sanity test and was temporarily restricted from parenting rights. Upon successfully clearing his sanity test, Ostrom’s parenting time was restored. Ostrom has since admitted that he initially made the request for trial by combat in order to attract media attention to his case.[54]

Now, IIRC there are some limited forms of dueling – not to the death, but fights – that are legally sanctioned in at least one state, IIRC Oregon or Washington state.

goes looking

Washington. And, Texas being Texas, Texas also has a sanctioned form.

https://texascriminaljustice.com/what-is-the-mutual-combat-law-in-texas/

In some ways, Texas has had a reputation in the past as the Wild West. If you have ever wondered if two parties in the state can fight without worrying about the legal consequences, the answer is yes. Texas is only one of two states (Washington state being the other) where mutual combat can be an affirmative offense in specific assault cases.

Most people know that it is against the law to punch or otherwise assault someone. But did you know that the Texas mutual combat law allows, in certain situations, for two parties to fight and injure one another without legal consequences, to a certain degree?

The law behind certain mutual combat being allowed is Texas Penal Code 22.06. The law states that a party charged with assault can argue that the alleged victim consented to the fight. This defense may apply in the following circumstances:

• The fight did not result in serious bodily injury

• The alleged victim was aware of the risks but consented

Consent does not have to be overtly verbal; all that is required under the law is that you had a reasonable belief that consent was given. However, you must prove as the defendant that consent was reached before the incident. Your Texas criminal defense attorney will review the case evidence to determine if consent can be proven.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/mutual-combat-states

Washington state is one of only two states in America where mutual combat is totally legal. Most states do not have a specific law relating to mutual combat, leaving consensual fights in a sort of gray area. Washington state, however, does have a law legalizing mutual combat.

The Washington state law regarding mutual combat does lay out one provision that makes fighting legally a little challenging: To be legal, a fight has to be overseen by a police officer. Most of the time, police officers have something better to do with their time than watch a couple of guys brawl.

The police officer is supposed to act as a referee by breaking up the fight when an obvious victor has emerged. The police officer also must keep bystanders from being injured and property from being damaged. This would make the fight illegal.

So I think that either a judge would need to have a different interpretation of the legality of dueling or impact on the right to trial by combat than that Delaware judge – which might happen – or the trial by combat would need to occur in Texas and be constrained to not incur serious bodily injury – like, no killing or maiming – or be in Washington.

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/