Who is this “Democrats” that you are trying to steer, by shitting on Biden? Democratic voters?
You have one. I am steerable. I am going to vote in the Democratic primary soon. Presumably, the person who wins in the primaries will have the nomination. Who should I vote for instead?
Because relentlessly trashing Biden as a way to get a replacement, without bothering to even figure out who that replacement might be, during the middle of the process which literally requires and only requires that voters agree on a replacement, seems a little not-quite-matching-the-priority-you-are-claiming-is-the-priority.
(I know, Bernie Nevada it’s not that simple et cetera I know. The point that I’m making is that Bernie was an identified person who people could vote for. No one was relentlessly making memes about how Hilary was bad without bothering to support anyone else in particular, and then claiming they were just looking out for the Democrats because they were just concerned she wouldn’t be able to beat Trump, and explaining all the ways she sucked and waiting for someone else to figure out who instead.)
She doesn’t have the political capital to sustain a presidential run, but I’d love to see her at least put her name out there. Similar to Yang in 2020. But she’s going to follow the rules and not run until 2028.
My biggest gripe with Biden is that he’s too old. He was old in 2020 but I still vote for him because I was against Trump.
That’s what this election is. Are we voting for democracy or fascism?
Democrats haven’t put out a decent candidate since Obama, and I say that as someone who was a conservative when he was up for election. Hillary was just…awful. 2020 was an election to put Trump out of office, not necessarily to put Biden into office.
I’m not saying Biden is a bad candidate but he isn’t great either. But compared to Miami Mussolini, yeah I’ll be voting Biden.
Yeah, Katie Porter is a badass. Biden will clearly do better in the general election than she will, but she’s absolutely great.
Gavin Newsom seems great too. Unfortunately it seems like the people who are choosing to run are fairly limited. Hey @ira@lemmy.ml, should I be voting for Dean Phillips instead?
Because, at the best… Philips is a younger, dumber version of Biden. At the worst… he spent the entirety of his career toeing the party line.
He’s as milquitoast and boring as Biden. The only thing I can commend him on is primarrying Biden.
I’d love it if any of a dozen progressives got in there. But 2016’s primary made it clear: the DNC will never allow a progressive candidate.
Which is why we’re stuck with a candidate very, very few people actually like; who can’t do the one thing he campaigned on when it actually matters (work across the aisle. Not his fault, except to say he’s out of touch if he thinks the republicans actually care.).
Biden could barely keep his own party in line; even when they had nominal control of the house and senate.
You’ll notice three things about all the. It legislation: they were from that period where they had control, they were extremely hard to get passed, and most of them are barely adequate to maintain the status quo rather than reverse anything.
You’ll also notice that Biden sure loves to take credit for all of that when, while he did do some heavy lifting; he was far from the only one doing the heavy lifting.
Nobody likes a boss that doesn’t acknowledge hard work. Worse, you’ll notice he doesn’t accept equal blame when the rest of the party can’t get shit done.
But 2016’s primary made it clear: the DNC will never allow a progressive candidate.
Kind of, yeah. But let me complete the picture that that forms one accurate portion of:
A self-described socialist, with genuinely good genuinely left-wing ideas about taking on Wall Street and corporate crime and fighting for the rights of working people, came within a realistic distance of being the nominee. If he’d won the nomination, he would almost certainly have won the general if he didn’t get assassinated. He was the most popular politician in American politics for years after 2016, and he’s still to this day half a generation later more popular than both Biden and Trump.
Yes, the DNC is full of corporate-cash-infused criminals who did everything they could to tank his chances, and their corrupt efforts succeeded and ultimately handed the election to Trump. That is the sad nature of big money politics in the United States; “we” as leftist reformers are up against a corrupt system.
BUT EVEN WITH THAT HE ALMOST FUCKING WON
It was extremely close. A socialist was almost the Democratic nominee. All these “good leftists” who are talking about how useless it is to engage within the system somehow miss the lesson from that, and somehow conclude that “well, we tried one time and it didn’t work, time to move to exclusively whining on the internet about how I wish it was different, full-time.”
I cannot get my head around how the lesson of Bernie Sanders can possibly be anything other than that genuinely good people can have a realistic shot within the rigged game that is American politics. Taking home the lesson “well yeah but he didn’t win, the one time that passionate internet people all got together and voted in the primary for someone who was fuckin great, so forget the whole deal” seems cynical, defeatist, and doomed to self-fulfill the prophecy that nothing good is going to happen in US politics and things are going to steadily get worse and worse.
Thanks guys
(Edit: Oh, I got carried away talking about Sanders – it’s wholly untrue that Biden didn’t get anything done. Even with the Republicans arrayed against him determined to not allow him to do anything, and even if “well we better stand back and if the Republicans take over then oh well” is about the most backwards reaction to that situation you could imagine, if it was true that they’d conspired to destroy positive progress during his term and succeeded.)
Just to clarify, I’m not advocating anything other than a political solution. Rather, just an observation that the DNC in its current form will never allow progressives in power.
But there is appetite for progressive policies; which is precisely why they tolerate literal fascists at the table. as blackmail.
The good news is, assuming the fascists don’t absolutely destroy the country, the other arc is destroying their political party; at which point progressives can fork off from the centrists and make a genuine run for it; and drag the country back into not sucking.
Unfortunately, right now we’re more likely to get wrecked. Biden is starting to slide right just to get things done. Without getting the same back. (Fortunately, republicans are too fucking stupid to capitalize on that.)
The DNC has actively opposed the addition of challengers on primary ballots in select swing states, idk why we’re pretending they’re an indifferent actor in this.
Who is this “Democrats” that you are trying to steer, by shitting on Biden? Democratic voters?
You have one. I am steerable. I am going to vote in the Democratic primary soon. Presumably, the person who wins in the primaries will have the nomination. Who should I vote for instead?
Because relentlessly trashing Biden as a way to get a replacement, without bothering to even figure out who that replacement might be, during the middle of the process which literally requires and only requires that voters agree on a replacement, seems a little not-quite-matching-the-priority-you-are-claiming-is-the-priority.
(I know, Bernie Nevada it’s not that simple et cetera I know. The point that I’m making is that Bernie was an identified person who people could vote for. No one was relentlessly making memes about how Hilary was bad without bothering to support anyone else in particular, and then claiming they were just looking out for the Democrats because they were just concerned she wouldn’t be able to beat Trump, and explaining all the ways she sucked and waiting for someone else to figure out who instead.)
I would 1000% support Katie Porter.
She doesn’t have the political capital to sustain a presidential run, but I’d love to see her at least put her name out there. Similar to Yang in 2020. But she’s going to follow the rules and not run until 2028.
My biggest gripe with Biden is that he’s too old. He was old in 2020 but I still vote for him because I was against Trump.
That’s what this election is. Are we voting for democracy or fascism?
Democrats haven’t put out a decent candidate since Obama, and I say that as someone who was a conservative when he was up for election. Hillary was just…awful. 2020 was an election to put Trump out of office, not necessarily to put Biden into office.
I’m not saying Biden is a bad candidate but he isn’t great either. But compared to Miami Mussolini, yeah I’ll be voting Biden.
Yeah, Katie Porter is a badass. Biden will clearly do better in the general election than she will, but she’s absolutely great.
Gavin Newsom seems great too. Unfortunately it seems like the people who are choosing to run are fairly limited. Hey @ira@lemmy.ml, should I be voting for Dean Phillips instead?
One point of correction: Biden would do better in the primary. If it were Porter v Trump, Porter would win, hands down.
I believe they were saying the Democratic National Committee should put forward another candidate (Gretchen Whitmer?).
I believe they have two other candidates put forward. I never hear people saying “Yay Dean Philips”. Just going after Joe Biden.
Because, at the best… Philips is a younger, dumber version of Biden. At the worst… he spent the entirety of his career toeing the party line.
He’s as milquitoast and boring as Biden. The only thing I can commend him on is primarrying Biden.
I’d love it if any of a dozen progressives got in there. But 2016’s primary made it clear: the DNC will never allow a progressive candidate.
Which is why we’re stuck with a candidate very, very few people actually like; who can’t do the one thing he campaigned on when it actually matters (work across the aisle. Not his fault, except to say he’s out of touch if he thinks the republicans actually care.).
Biden could barely keep his own party in line; even when they had nominal control of the house and senate.
You’ll notice three things about all the. It legislation: they were from that period where they had control, they were extremely hard to get passed, and most of them are barely adequate to maintain the status quo rather than reverse anything.
You’ll also notice that Biden sure loves to take credit for all of that when, while he did do some heavy lifting; he was far from the only one doing the heavy lifting.
Nobody likes a boss that doesn’t acknowledge hard work. Worse, you’ll notice he doesn’t accept equal blame when the rest of the party can’t get shit done.
Kind of, yeah. But let me complete the picture that that forms one accurate portion of:
A self-described socialist, with genuinely good genuinely left-wing ideas about taking on Wall Street and corporate crime and fighting for the rights of working people, came within a realistic distance of being the nominee. If he’d won the nomination, he would almost certainly have won the general if he didn’t get assassinated. He was the most popular politician in American politics for years after 2016, and he’s still to this day half a generation later more popular than both Biden and Trump.
Yes, the DNC is full of corporate-cash-infused criminals who did everything they could to tank his chances, and their corrupt efforts succeeded and ultimately handed the election to Trump. That is the sad nature of big money politics in the United States; “we” as leftist reformers are up against a corrupt system.
BUT EVEN WITH THAT HE ALMOST FUCKING WON
It was extremely close. A socialist was almost the Democratic nominee. All these “good leftists” who are talking about how useless it is to engage within the system somehow miss the lesson from that, and somehow conclude that “well, we tried one time and it didn’t work, time to move to exclusively whining on the internet about how I wish it was different, full-time.”
I cannot get my head around how the lesson of Bernie Sanders can possibly be anything other than that genuinely good people can have a realistic shot within the rigged game that is American politics. Taking home the lesson “well yeah but he didn’t win, the one time that passionate internet people all got together and voted in the primary for someone who was fuckin great, so forget the whole deal” seems cynical, defeatist, and doomed to self-fulfill the prophecy that nothing good is going to happen in US politics and things are going to steadily get worse and worse.
Thanks guys
(Edit: Oh, I got carried away talking about Sanders – it’s wholly untrue that Biden didn’t get anything done. Even with the Republicans arrayed against him determined to not allow him to do anything, and even if “well we better stand back and if the Republicans take over then oh well” is about the most backwards reaction to that situation you could imagine, if it was true that they’d conspired to destroy positive progress during his term and succeeded.)
Just to clarify, I’m not advocating anything other than a political solution. Rather, just an observation that the DNC in its current form will never allow progressives in power.
But there is appetite for progressive policies; which is precisely why they tolerate literal fascists at the table. as blackmail.
The good news is, assuming the fascists don’t absolutely destroy the country, the other arc is destroying their political party; at which point progressives can fork off from the centrists and make a genuine run for it; and drag the country back into not sucking.
Unfortunately, right now we’re more likely to get wrecked. Biden is starting to slide right just to get things done. Without getting the same back. (Fortunately, republicans are too fucking stupid to capitalize on that.)
The DNC has actively opposed the addition of challengers on primary ballots in select swing states, idk why we’re pretending they’re an indifferent actor in this.