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This has been every election since 2012, and the discussion doesn't happen.
No I don't think that's accurate. If McCain or Romney had won I never had a fear that our democracy would have eroded. I certainly wouldn't have agreed with all of their policy choices but both men I think are old guard politicians and would have largely done the job with an undercurrent of honor that just doesn't exist with trump. I never would have had any fear that if they lost the next election they wouldn't peacefully turn over power.
With trump all of that has changed. The only reason his coup didn't work is because most everyone involved was dense as fuck and couldn't come up with a cohesive strategy to get it done. Give him another chance and 4 years to prepare and he will find success.
Biden is not the candidate I wanted, but he's the candidate we've got, and in our broken political system that's as good as it's going to get. We can talk about 3rd parties and changing the system but none of that is happening before 24.
The polls are right about one thing. Trump definitely could win again. That should be very alarming to any rational American.
Ever.
Biden has been the most progressive President in probably 40 years and the most effective since probably Clinton. He wouldn't be my first choice, but even if your silly little one-word retort is true that's a big improvement on the past.
Oh yeah. Building Trump's wall for him and funding genocide are super progressive.
Obama passed the ACA. That's more progressive than everything Biden has passed put together. And no, that's nothing to crow about either.
Obama also murdered people with drones and caved to Republicans when he had the power to pursue a more progressive agenda. He bailed out businesses instead of people. He did nothing about torturing prisoners of war. Don't give me this Obama progressive bullshit. ACA was a republican plan. Obama was not by any stretch of the imagination a progressive. He was an okay President and a great orator, but his policies were conservative democrat.
And yet it was more progressive than anything Biden has passed. Don't give me this Biden progressive bullshit.
Well you're just wrong. Obama was not as progressive as Biden and believe me I was shocked by both. The proof is in the policies.
Oh and being an ally of Israel is universal for both parties. Whoever was in office would've supported them. Obama certainly had some extremely disappointing foreign policy as well.
The ACA remains more progressive than anything Biden has done. If I was wrong, you would have offered counterexamples by now.
ACA wasn't progressive though! I'm working so I'm short on time to pull receipts and probably quick-tempered as well so sorry for being a bit of an asshole. But ACA wasn't a progressive policy. We are still paying insurers instead of providers and ACA isn't particularly affordable but I'll grant it is there for folks who have no other option.
And yet Biden hasn't passed anything to the left of it.
No, no, you don't get it, if you let the fascists win this time, we'll TOTALLY win next time. It'll be Our Turn, or something.
Accelerationists aren't arguing in good faith. They're useful idiots for fascists who'll say anything to discourage voting for viable candidates out of the delusion that making things worse will magically make things better.
"Everyone to my left is all the way to my right."
I'm voting for Biden. He's unpopular and the party's messaging is dogshit, but I'm voting for him. You're fooling yourself if you think our current messaging is going to bring in all the votes we need.
If the party expects us to believe that there will totally be discussion about what the party's left wants this time, maybe there should have been some discussion the last three times they said that.
Basically my take. My view is that we need the old guard centrists to die off and we need to see more millenials and Gen z step into political positions.
It is of course a double edged sword. If you reformed the democratic party to actually adhere to current popular liberal progressive policies you would see a lot more shit getting done. But the millenials and Gen z Republicans are all cartoonishly evil and we are eventually going to have only maga qanon uneducated conspiratards making up the other political party.
The left has to win every election from here to the end of time. The loonies only need to win one more.
Party leadershit makes sure the left never gets past the primaries. The loonies will win before that changes.
There is also a total failure to understand that as much as the online community is solidly to the left of democrats, the policies don't play as well to middle America. I believe in gun regulation, but if a candidate's platform goes too hard on that they will lose MI and PA for sure. UBI? You better believe that's a loser. Doesn't matter how good the policy is, the messaging terrifies people.
I fucking love Bernie. That is a dude with integrity and heart. I wish he'd been elected. But he would've lost the general election (except maybe 2016 - I suspect only Hillary could've lost to Trump, but in hindsight it's easy to say maybe we shouldn't have taken the losing path). Candidates you love but can't win aren't going to help anyone. Biden has proven himself against Trump and no one else has. I'm damn sure happy he's running.
Four decades of moving to the right to (ostensibly) please centrists' notion of middle America, and your poll numbers are dropping against a literal fascist. You need the votes of the left that party leadership hates. We're already funding genocide. How much farther do the right do you suppose we can move?
Who the hell is "you"? I'm not a Democrat if that's what you think.
Fine. Four decades of moving to the right to (ostensibly) please centrists’ notion of middle America, and Democrats' poll numbers are dropping against a literal fascist. Democrats need the votes of the left that party leadership hates. We’re already funding genocide. How much farther do the right do you suppose we can move?
Now can you try addressing this instead of trying to divert?
You run too far left and you lost the rust belt. Who are you picking up to replace their votes? Traditionally the play had been to whine about the electoral college and wish we had a different system, but we don't so the question remains.
But as an aside I don't owe you any fucking explanations and in any event I certainly don't speak for the people you're pissed at. I have one agenda here and that's to keep a fascist from taking over. Democrats and Biden are the means to that end. But I don't actually give two shits about party. I enjoy conversations about this stuff. Gives me interesting things to think about and often new perspectives to consider. But the way you are treating me here is not cool and not fun.
Yeah, unions are super unpopular in the rust belt. It's great how we abandoned them for so long. Moving to the right and away from unions sure helped us there.
2020: "Elect Biden and once he's POTUS then we can push him left!" ... They never pushed him left.
So vote for the white nationalist Fascist instead?? Yeah that's what the left should do.
How about instead you get this drowning US democracy onto the safety of the beach then you can start resuscitating it.
Or maybe the right wing of the party should listen for the very first time.
Maybe the Dems should actually do something to get the voters to turn out to vote.
Hes tried to cancel student debt (and for some people he's been successful), he's taken steps to reform federal Marijuana laws, through his support of Ukraine he has effectively crippled one of our biggest enemies without the loss of a single American soldier, the economy under Biden is rebounding post covid with record low levels of unemployment, he's passed pro lgbtq legislation, improved access to care for veterans, put more minorities and women in government positions, including one on the Supreme Court, than any other president in history. The list goes on.
The meme is that Joe Biden is a confused old man. He is old, but he's one of the most effective politicians in our lifetime. I don't agree with all of his policies but don't get sucked into the lies and falsehoods that are spreading across the internet.
Sometimes I think it's better for people to think about what history books will show in 30 years. When the dust settles and we look back at a president's legacy it's often a much different story than when we were living through it. When Nixon was in the white house the county was divided with many people supporting him even as Watergate blew up. But do we remember the position of those people? No. They were wrong. When emotions were taken out of the equation and historians could go back and look at what actually happened we learned just how much of a racist criminal piece of shit Nixon was, how he killed thousands of service men and civilians for political gain. None of this is disputed, it's just the facts of how things played out. Biden and Trump will get the same treatment. I don't think anyone with half a brain has any illusions about what they will say about trump, but if we solely went by Bidens presidency up to now and gave it that treatment he would be seen favorably. That might not be what you would like to hear, but it's the objective truth.
Now you are correct, the dems need to be hammering the shit out of this message and make sure people don't get fooled by the misinformation that gets spread invariably around election time, but to suggest nothings been accomplished and that the dems haven't done anything is categorically false.
"We're looking into it" isn't an accomplishment. But I'm sure you can whip this into "He's the most pro-cannabis president in the past 730 years!" or whatever nonsense puffery centrists use when they want progressives to accept changing nothing as progress.
If you want your other claims to have credibility, don't mix them with bullshit.
I disagree completely. I think there's a need to do it the right way and so far that is all tracking along. My belief is that he's going to make a point of federally decriminalizing right before the election. Yes it hasn't happened yet, but we are closer than we have ever been and hes the most pro decriminalization president we have ever had. Full stop.
Until it happens, it's not an accomplishment.
Whaddaya know. You said the thing. I don't give credit for pretending to try.
Maybe people should wake the fuck up, think rationally and realised that there is one party in this game that at least has a sense of government obligations to the parts of society that need extra help, and for the greater good, and another party that has taken money from the people and funneled it into the hands of billionaires, openly oppressed the majority of the population and ARE OPENLY FUCKING FASCIST.
But the " Dems aren't doing enough"
Fuck me.
This isn't even considering the captured media landscape, the dark money from faceless corporate interests, the nation states and fucked up billionaire macavellian wanna be dickheads that all flows to keeping the Dems down and the fascist machine rolling.
But the " Dems aren't doing enough"
Fuck me.
Wake up. Look around. Vote. Fight Fascism.
By voting for the party that has been fighting progressives and capitulating to fascists for decades now.
Voting is a chess move, not a love letter.
For progressives, the move is always "forfeit."
Precisely. It was a steaming crock of shit then, and has no credibility as a message now.
The game is rigged, and if you lose people die. Potentially heaps of them.
Then maybe we need to start acting like it and fix our shitty messaging.
Don't be tiresome, you know there's no "we" in the Democratic party. They think they're playing "good cop, bad cop" with the right, and they're not going to realize it's not an act until it's too late.
"We need to fix our messaging."
"Don't be tiresome."
And that's one of the main reasons why Biden is the candidate AND why most people who weren't alive the last time the US had a president to the left of Reagan don't trust the DNC much.