u/sapphire_glacier

The recent Cornell sexual assault case got me thinking about how consent laws should address alcohol and intoxication. Most people agree that someone who is unconscious or incapacitated cannot consent, but the gray area seems much harder to legislate.

(Noting I used AI to help draft the below)

A few challenges come to mind:

Voluntary intoxication: At what point should someone who voluntarily drinks become legally incapable of consenting?

Existing relationships: If one partner is significantly more intoxicated than the other, when should sex potentially constitute a criminal offense?

Perceived vs. actual intoxication: What if someone appears sober but is actually extremely intoxicated? Should the law consider what their partner reasonably believed?

Both parties intoxicated: How should the law handle situations where both people are similarly intoxicated?

Proving it afterward: Without toxicology results or witnesses, how can intoxication and capacity to consent be established beyond a reasonable doubt?

There’s also an important distinction between behavior that’s morally questionable and behavior that should be criminal. How would you legislate consent in situations involving alcohol while protecting victims and establishing clear, enforceable standards?

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Particularly for candidates who have made it to general elections

It states that the presidential primary is held on the second Tuesday in March or on an earlier date selected by the Secretary of State that is at least 7 days before any other state holds a “similar election,” whichever is earlier. The law explicitly says its purpose is “to protect the tradition of the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation presidential primary.”

Who would be more first-er?

In the recent Ezra Klein / Morris Katz interview, Ezra pushed Morris (consultancy for Mamdani, Platner, Valdez, etc.) on whether he was being hypocritical when he suggested the establishment should be embracing these candidates with different views as part of the big tent strategy.

Ezra, rightfully in my opinion, directly asked him whether he himself (and that coalition) are guilty of that same stone throwing. His answer was more or less “well, our criticisms are valid and theirs are bad faith”.

Curious for thoughts from more mainstream and far left alike.

Ezra Klein asked Morris Katz about this and I found it interesting.

Like if you look at the campaign run by Graham Platner, it was very much this blue collar, salt of the earth guy image, but his support base is college educated white people. Susan Collin’s strongest demographic was young, white, non college educated voters.

You see similar through lines with Mamdani and other candidates who are ostensibly pitched as the candidate for the underclass but yet seem to do best with people in upper middle class / worse with poor voters.

One of the big hurdles Democrats need to overcome (in my obviously correct opinion) is proving that government can consistently deliver on its policies. It is one thing to sign large infrastructure bills and the like, but where are we actually seeing great execution?

Ask most people and they’ll tell you they think it’s sad that downtowns are getting hollowed out, stores and restaurants are closing, they miss the bustling malls, etc.

But these same people, myself included, also continue to order things on Amazon for the convenience.

Is there anything we should be doing or should have done to combat this “failure” or is it actually okay and/or inevitable in your view?

I often hear people make this argument, that increases in productivity should lead to shorter work weeks. But how does that actually work?

Most people currently work as long as they do by choice. I could easily survive on a small fraction of my income, but I work long hours because I aspire to achieve and be able to afford more. Similarly, I can’t imagine a person on the edge of the poverty line choosing to work one day instead of five when they could simply make five times more money working a full week and no longer be in poverty. And if that person is going to do that, then the people that are currently a rung or two above them are going to make the same choice rather than be the new lower class.

The thing causing the work week to be as long as it is based on workers, not employers.

Mixed reactions on the left from what I’ve seen

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/30/platners-campaign-sexual-texts-00943720

E.g. at what point in history would people prefer being poor today ($20k/year) versus being upper middle class at that time.

**Important**: you would retain your knowledge of what the future was like. For example, you would know what iPhones, Netflix, and high speed internet were like even if you’re in the 90s, but cant use this to make money

EDIT: interested in answers for you personally, or for what you think the “average” person might answer

Should we be putting people in positions like DOJ and wherever else possible that will allow us to move as fast as possible in whatever we want to do? Finding ways to delay or ignore courts in creative ways (e.g., the “what are you going to do about it” approach), etc.

I’m fully in this camp fwiw.

A lot of problems and policies work well only if multiple things are addressed in tandem.

- If you expand your population without addressing housing shortages you exacerbate that issue.

- If you add density to neighborhoods without adding public transit options you add congestion.

- If you increase government spending without increasing taxes you run up the debt for future generations.

The obvious answer is “do the things at the same time, that’s what Dems want to do”, but the reality isn’t as clean.

- Immigration policy and housing/zoning policy are set by different levels of government.

- Density can be added quickly while public transit takes much longer.

- Politicians are incentivized to spend but not raise taxes.

- Etc.

How should politicians approach these linked issues in particular when it seems likely only one issue/policy will get addressed? On the immigration question I see a lot of responses that essentially amount to “the solution to that isn’t to reduce immigration it’s to build more houses”.

Okay…but we (blue states) aren’t actually delivering on the housing side of the equation. Should we just force the issue with immigration regardless? Do we allow for increased density in cases where we know we aren’t going to be able to deliver public transit / parking / etc. to offset? Curious how you guys think about this

Democrats = Establisment Dems for this purpose

I’m generally familiar with the recent decision, partisan line vote and response, etc. However, I haven’t wrapped my head around one part of the rationale for disagreeing with the decision.

Is the main issue as you see it that the **result** will be dilution of the black vote, but that the motive for that dilution is partisan? Or, alternatively, is it your view that the actual motive is racial and the ruling now allows R’s to gerrymander under the guise of partisanship but where racial animus is the true driving factor?

You could rephrase this question as: do we think Republicans would dilute the black vote if black people voted Republican at equal or greater levels as white people. And then I guess the follow on question is does/should that matter.

The reason I ask is because for whatever reason I can’t shake this feeling that this is potentially the “right” ruling with the result being unfortunate due to partisan alignment of races (black people in particular) and I’m finding myself in this circular spiral of trying to figure out where I land. Versus most of the time where I just see through to the bullshit of the court.

Curious for everyone’s thoughts.