I mean, these aren't really smears. As far as I can tell, both of these stories are actually true. So whether or not Republicans uncovered that Warren has been LARPing being a Native American for longer than anyone knew, or that Klobuchar wants to change her name to Karen and speak to the manager right now damnit -- who cares. That those are actual things they've done is what matters.
Lol, can we talk about how stupid this is? Like I get your vote is in Hawaii so it doesn’t actually matter, but this kind of attitude is why liberals are perennial losers in the US electoral system in spite of having wildly more popular policy ideas. Given the way the US elections are set up this is throwing your vote away. In the primary you should vote for who you align with most closely, but not voting for the candidate that most aligns with your views and has a chance to win in the general election is just insanely stupid. The thing I hate about being liberal in the US is how incredibly unpragmatic other liberals are. For example, I, as a gay man, will vote for the incredibly homophobic Tulsi Gabbard if she wins the primary. Because even though I think she is homophobic (she is), as a democratic president, she’ll be politically pressured to appoint judges that aren’t homophobic. If the people in MI, WI, and PA who felt the same way you did in 2016 had sucked it up and voted Hillary, it’s possible the liberal movement might not be as strong (though I really doubt that, unlike Republicans, Democrats are willing to criticize their own (which is a good thing)), but the Supreme Court would have a 5-4 liberal majority with Kennedy, and with a younger replacement for Ginsburg. 5 justices would oppose citizens united, allowing for impactful changes to certain electoral processes. 5 justices would support voting rights and (more specifically) the voting rights act, making election rigging harder for conservatives. And 6 justices would support women’s health rights, which would prevent it from being in its current tenuous position. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Hillary was a particularly good candidate (she wasn’t) nor am I saying I preferred her over Bernie (I’m probably ideologically farther left socially than either and in the middle, though maybe closer to Sanders economically). But like damn, people really miss the big picture when voting.
And I dislike people nominally on the left who try to voter shame, who don't actually love Democracy or believe in the wisdom of the people.
Like this post? Ex:
Lol
I mean 40-60% of Americans literally don’t vote on any level, even local, and 25% voted for Trump against their own interest so I’m skeptical. Also 1 in 4 Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...ink-the-sun-goes-around-the-earth-survey-says
The Democratic Party is not ideal but lol @ pretending the Democratic Party is anything but a milquetoast center. And I agree liberal activism is important, but do you really gain political force by essentially not voting. Even if Donald Trump is a blight on the Republican Party for years to come (which is almost certainly true), conservatives actually gained political force by stacking the Supreme (and lower) Court(s), letting them continue to do so is a questionable strategy.
This applies to Bernie too. It applies to any politician in a representative republic, so the solution to this is a 100% direct democracy with everyone voting on every issue, which has other issues.
Like with justices that would overturn citizens united? They also can’t win if their constituents can’t vote, so having justices that support the voting rights act, protecting and expanding the black labor / progressives and youth / student progressives the ability to vote would be helpful.
I agree, Democrats need to stop bending over backwards to compromise with Republicans, I think (and hope) after Obama they realize that.
Respectfully friend, I disagree. We would not be looking at this field— the most progressive field in a generation when even the corporate bought candidates have to pretend to like Bernie’s ideas— if Hillary had won. We would not have multiple strong progressives representing democratic socialism, anti-regime change, and even automation urgency + left libertarianism if Hillary had won. Hillary’s victory would have legitimized corporate democratic politics— which, thanks to Trump’s victory, is now on teetering legs. And how did Trump win? By paying lip service to the people’s rage and speaking a bit of truth that neoliberals won’t— Trump was a Republican who said he would protect social insurance, said the US are “bad guys too”, and said that we need to drain the swamp because “I paid you, and you, and you, and you.” He won because he stepped into serving up a bit of democracy, and now it’s up to the left to promise REAL democracy.
I think the issue with that logic is that Dems always read the party moving left as a sign they need to go even more towards the center instead of understanding that it means there’s less center to capture. It’s something the GOP figured out much faster. Warren is my favorite at this point honestly for that reason (and I’d happily vote for Bernie too but he does like to put his foot in his mouth a lot, eg already engaging the “identity politics” thing, which is pretty distasteful to me as a gay man who considers his identity an important part of choosing a President since I’m counting on them to protect me).
I think his candidacy did plenty of that regardless of Trump’s presidency; he clearly activated a segment of the party in the primary that was pushing back aggressively against Clinton and the neoliberalism she represented. I‘d be surprised if they had suddenly stopped speaking up and pushing the party if she had been elected. I will concede that they may not have had as much leverage as they do with Trump but I think it was coming post-Obama anyway.
I am just really really REALLY happy to have this field, and I think we CAN make the arc of reality bend towards justice this time!!
I’m theoretically excited for the field so far too but some I thought had been successfully dragged left like Harris are already walking it back and we still have a loooong way to go. It’s gonna be another exhausting year(s).
When you look at the substance of Hillary Clinton or even the realities facing Americans under the governance of neoliberalism, voting for Trump cannot be called an unwise choice. Is Trump working for them? Of course not. But Trump winning in 2016 made me feel sympathetic for, and believe in the voters more, not less.
Economically, they're basically what Republicans were under Reagan-- the only difference is that they've figured how to cynically weaponize the narrative powers of civil rights justice in order to silence political dissenters. American centrism isn't the center between left and right; it's a far right politics protecting the economic interests of the elite. It wasn't Trump or Bush that passed HW Bush's trade deals, or elimanted Glass Steagall, or deregulated media, or gave us nationwide Romney Care, or gave all of wallstreet in 2008 get out of jail free cards. The Dems are barely better at all on anti-imperialism, and after Trump won the Dems have been attacking him from the RIGHT on foreign policy.
Of course it applies to Bernie too, and Bernie has his issues just like any politician-- but the fact that Bernie is even as good as he is, as consistent as he is, and has fought all those temptations and motivations to the degree he has is the miracle. Well, I guess it's not so much a miracle so much as a matter of numbers that we have 1 man like this probably rise from a history of countless would-be leftist leaders that lost their gambles or were stamped out by power. The fact that he's here at all is more reason to galvanize behind him; not to justify the others.
I agree on the importance of this, but I personally see it as secondary to getting real progressive leftism the mandate of the people-- waking the people up to fight, and solidify behind us-- that's more important. The will of the people is the only thing that can lead to real change— we must use it to delegitimize the politics of radically right-wing “centrism,” and it starts by reforming the Democratic Party.
YESSSS!!!! 100x yes!!
Also, sorry for being slow on the uptake and not thinking about your comment more before but-- if you look back, I didn't ever tell you how to vote or shame you for your vote. I didn't tell you that you were foolish to vote for the Democrat no matter what-- I only told you how I was going to vote. In one little line out of a much longer post. You reacted to my choice. I only criticized voter shaming against people who protest voted or even voted for Trump-- I never attacked people for voting for Hillary or Harris this cycle.
Well in the case of liking a candidate like Tulsi Gabbard and not liking a candidate like Hillary Clinton I think I have a different set of concerns as an American citizen that lives in Asia and whose family comes from Hawaii. My whole world is in striking range of North Korea and I care about a leader’s willingness to meet Kim Jeong Un or how they vote on the Iraq war, or what they did with Lybia. I don’t think we’re going to agree on what makes a candidate qualified there.
So, what concessions are the Bernie contingent willing to give to the more centrist minded Democrats? The centrists aren’t just going to fall in line behind Bernie if he wins the party nomination... kind of like how the Bernie faction didn’t fall in line behind Hillary when she won the nomination. Sanders having some kind of perceived ideological purity doesn’t excuse him from having to bring together multiple parts of the Democratic Party through compromise on a shared agenda.
Good question. So here’s the thing-- we're not asking centrists to fall in line. FDR won almost all of the states. The US has one of the lowest voter turn outs in the world, and the majority of even Republican voters believes in Bernie's platform. We are going to wake up the people, and we're going for the win.
