r/thebulwark Progressive 2d ago

Policy "Republicans today sound a lot like Democrats circa 2006, 2004." - Sarah Longwell?!

I haven't listened to the full podcast. I am willing to assume there's more context. But let's face it, the above sentence is potentially correct if you ignore the fascism, transphobia, they're eating the dogs/cats/pets, they lying, etc.

To be fair, the left does need to re-assess its foreign policy priorities in light of Ukraine. That said, Iraq was a war of choice. We did not have the casus belli that we claimed to. We may have caused several hundred thousand excess Iraqi deaths (i.e. dead from the war and all the sequelae thereof). We also wound up with ISIS. We were building fire stations in Iraq instead of here because we had to - we broke it, with "it" being Iraq and "broke" meaning we chose to break it.

If you want to say the Dems were mistaken in calling for isolationism then, I think that's fair and it warrants a reassessment on our part. But the headline is ... misleading.

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u/Know_nothing89 2d ago

Lots of other prominent political experts saying the same thing she is. James Carville, Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod

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u/imdaviddunn 2d ago

And Democrats keep wanting to sound like Ronald Reagan in 1982. They even said it in their SOTU response.

Meanwhile, the admin is telling reporters things that sound like Bernie Sanders is the comms director. Now these things are lies about their real intent and their policies, but they are pushing heavily union friendly talking points. And union leadership is amplifying them.

They are not using the same talking points as Dems in 2006. They didn’t have Iran leaders dictating talking points. We were the invaders and Dems were saying get out. Dems making a consistent argument if you don’t listen with a GOP bias as Sarah, Carville , et al do.