I know MediaBiasFactCheck is not a be-all-end-all to truth/bias in media, but I find it to be a useful resource.
It makes sense to downvote it in posts that have great discussion – let the content rise up so people can have discussions with humans, sure.
But sometimes I see it getting downvoted when it’s the only comment there. Which does nothing, unless a reader has rules that automatically hide downvoted comments (but a reader would be able to expand the comment anyways…so really no difference).
What’s the point of downvoting? My only guess is that there’s people who are salty about something it said about some source they like. Yet I don’t see anyone providing an alternative to MediaBiasFactCheck…
As an outsider, the Dem party is in a funky spot politically. Whilst it economically is to the right, many of its social policies it endorses are leftist. Their emphasis on equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity is a large part of that, regulation of expressions and policy of migration.
Where I live, most of our political parties are left of the dems economically (basic welfare is not even a debate), but many would clearly be right of them (though usually not even close to the republicans) in social policy.
Yeah, living in a parliamentary democracy means I have to make an effort to wrap my head around how the US “democratic” institution works. The internal structure of the Democratic Party has more in common with our democratic structure than the structure of their “competing” parties. As a result there is more room for difference within the Democratic Party than within a political party in our system, but the political difference between parties in our system is greater than those within the democratic party.
My analysis has long been that there is no political will to implement leftist economical policies in the US, i.e. those that really matter in the grand scheme of things, even though there exists a semi-conscious wish for them within the populace. Please do not misunderstand, increasing equity between people of different backgrounds is important, but important single issues such as gay marriage are insufficient if they do not come along with, or better yet, as a product of equity of material conditions. It was all the same with the feminist movement where social advancements were conceded in lieu of increasing their economical statuses, with the division in measurable quantities, such as income or capital ownership still going strong (note I do not advocate changing the ruling elite from one subset of people to another subset of different characteristics, but instead saying that capital ownership should be transferred from the subset to the whole).
Strengthening the political power of the marginalized by increasing the material conditions of their strata is the best way to make social progress, which the ruling elite of the US is painfully aware and which is why they sometimes are willing to skip the first step and reach the inevitable second immediately. The discrepancy between the people’s wants and needs for leftist policies, again conscious or not, and the actual politics of the US, is deeply connected to the Democratic Party’s willingness to concede these social changes without losing the backing of the capital interests that fund them.