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by GeneralMayhem 1272 days ago
If you believe in cannabis legalization, which is what this thread is about, then one party is very obviously on your side on that issue, and one is very obviously not. But sure, let's go through the list, just for fun.

> expanded military spending

Democrats don't really vote for this, certainly not to the same degree, but sure, I wish there were more difference.

> global expansionism

Vague to the point of meaninglessness.

> corporate tax reduction

Definitely not the same. Democrats recently pushed for a minimum corporate tax (https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-corporate-tax-plan-th...).

> lessening monopoly laws

Also vague, but not generally true. Democrats will vote for actual antitrust legislation; they won't vote for the Republicans using "anti-trust" as a meaningless scare-word to bash businesses they don't like for unrelated reasons.

> reducing banking restrictions

Maybe in the 90s, but not recently. Who wrote the Dodd-Frank Act, and who repealed it?

> reducing spending on interstate infrastructure

Vague, but not generally true. There are a bunch of major transportation projects (e.g. California HSR, DC's Purple Line) that have been held up for ages because Democrats will vote to fund them and then Republicans will take it away, or because it's impossible to get Republican states/counties to pay their fair share. For telecomms, Democrats will tend to push more for equitable-access programs, whereas Republicans will frame corporate tax cuts as "infrastructure spending" as long as some infrastructure-related companies benefit. Go look at the numbers and priorities in the 2021 infrastructure bill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_Investment_and_...), which passed on mostly party lines, and tell me the parties agree on cutting infrastructure spending.

> cutting education spending

Laughably false. Go look at the per-student education budget per state. (Federal DoE spending YoY is kind of weird because it's washed out by college loan financing; most direct spending on education is at the state level.)

> restricting the ability for fair and equal elections through redistricting

Seriously, you're going to sit there and argue, in the year 2022, that the parties are the same on election fairness? The fact that the Democrats don't aggressively gerrymander is why they don't currently hold the House - the New York legislature could have chopped up Long Island differently to stem the losses. More generally, Democrats consistently vote for protecting ballot access, against Republicans who nakedly want to make it more difficult to vote - and that's setting aside the whole armed-insurrection-to-overthrow-an-election thing, which, last I checked, 90% of the Republican party will still fall in line for.