I fully expect something happened. Something very similar to the accounts of all of the other women that have complained of Biden: that he was overly familiar and affectionate.
To be more serious for a minute, I actually don’t doubt that you are engaging in American politics at least as seriously as the vast majority of Americans, I just find it deeply alarming. There is a deep political rot spreading, not just in the U.S., and I believe that at least some of its origin can be found in the particular mix of cynicism and naivete unmoored from any practical reality that lets you, in Ireland, get drawn into debates about U.S. health insurance and income taxes with the same degree of fervor that people who aren’t covered by UHC and actually pay U.S. taxes feel.
The dynamic kind of puts me in mind of the Ron Paul movement (although Bernie has a much larger base, many of whom back him for more normal political reasons). The cynicism is the perception that the whole system is corrupt, serves powerful interests, politicians are crooks, etc. That’s largely accurate, but it’s coupled with the erroneous perception that Ron or Bernie or whoever, despite being powerful and wealthy politicians in the corrupt system, are actually pure of heart and act only for the good of the people. People don’t want to be, or can’t accept the reality of being, relatively inconsequential agents in a huge political system. Instead, they seek belonging by devoting themselves to their chosen avatar and the cause they represent. Even when the avatar recedes, the mindset remains. Who could cast a vote for some grubby transactional politician who gives slick speeches but, at best, will turn the dial a smidge in the direction of justice and fairness while primarily serving the coalition of special interests that put him in office after you’ve tasted the pure nectar of supporting a noble hero of the people?
It obviously would be great to have a president who cared only about the people and didn’t take money from special interests and cared about the environment and who one could confidently say had never sexually assaulted anyone. The fatal flaw, though, is that the people who come into a lot of power are, without exception, people who seek power as the organizing goal in their lives. (It’s much easier to come into a lot of money by pursuing some other goal than it is to accrue a lot of power as a side effect.) If your standard for supporting a politician is that they pursue power only so they can use it for the people, never cut deals to build their power at the expense of justice, etc., then you don’t end up getting a pure politician. You end up getting a talented grifter who puts on a good enough act to get elected.
The path to justice doesn’t come from noble politicians triumphing over the corrupt special interests. (In 20th century U.S. history, the two great progressive champions are FDR and LBJ–both vile, manipulative human beings you wouldn’t want to be in the same room with, which is fine.) It involves special interests incrementally selling each other out by giving more rights and benefits to the people to benefit themselves in their internal power struggles. Over decades and centuries, the special interests ratchet themselves out of their privileges and we end up with prosperous, vaguely-aspiring-to-be-just-and-free societies. Maybe in 50 years we’ll be even further along. But there are no short-cuts, only dead ends.
Everyone who is voting should be voting for Joe Biden, even if you hate him and think he’s a rapist. I guarantee he’s a garbage human, total asshole, sick money-hungry power-hungry bastard, whatever you want to say. A senile old frotteur. Go on as long as you want. But, if Joe Biden becomes president, I would feel extremely confident that there will be another presidential election in 2024, and maybe the person who wins that election will be 5% better than Joe Biden and will hold an election in 2028 and so on. If Trump has another term to work, there will certainly not be fair elections, and there may not even be contestable elections. I don’t think the Democrats represent my interests in almost any way (I would suspect I disagree with them far more than you do). As a relatively insignificant agent in a vast, vast machine though, it is crystal clear that the right way to exercise my agency is to support a grubby creepy senile transactional politician over the potential end of American democracy. You can try to convince yourself that this isn’t true with elaborate bank-shot game theory strategies to upend the landscape of American politics or whatever, but that’s a far grander strategy than you or I have the power to implement. All you can do is the best you can with what you’ve got, which is unfortunately Biden.
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I’ve been saying for a while that there are a bunch of things like this. Whenever anyone says “whatabout” , “carry water”, “optics”, “bad look” and yeah, “privilege” it’s usually like what you’re saying - some kind of non-content-laden floating bullshit or something like that.
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Seems like an endorsement of Citizen’s United. Or at least a tacit acknowledgment that the political landscape would not be improved in the absence of dark money. They’re all megalomaniacs anyway.
tldr, but I think the political rot in the world is that, while it’s ok for rich educated people to be cynical, it’s deeply alarming when you see it from your inferiors.
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I don’t think the special interests are going to slowly give the people more rights. I think they’re going to continue to horde all the wealth.
This doesn’t really jibe with Biden crushing the African-American vote.
Agreed. But there’s a massive gulf between egregious assaults like rape, which the information known mostly doesn’t support, and inappropriate contact, which the information at hand strongly endorses.
NAACP
GLAAD
AFL-CIO
Yeah, I read it all and my take was right. Is there more than one person on this site from a state that might possibly be in play who isn’t voting for Biden? And everyone seems to think that they are free to call Joe a rapist or a senile old frotteur, but they panic when they see someone else doing it. That might be populism.
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Motives matter.
I don’t know what you mean.
Some people are against Biden for principled reasons. Others solely because he is not Bernie.
Really? The whole thing about Bernie being a cult of personality also reeks of snobbish elitism. imo. With love and respect.
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Let me ask you this. Who could have won the primary that would have deceived widespread support among hardcore Bernie supporters?
I haven’t noticed the Buttigeig supporter being in love with Joe. Is it only the scary Bernie supporters who need to fall in love/line?
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Anyone who voiced full throated non compromised demands for the same policies. Anyone who didn’t waffle on M4A, anyone who denounced the imperial war machine in all it’s excesses. Anyone who made it seem remotely like they were on the same side as us.
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So no one.
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Thanks for the free psychoanalysis. I remain confident, however, that these pressing concerns you have will remain exclusively something for people who disagree with you to contend with. Probably exclusively posters to your left, in fact. I don’t think eg Clovis or ChrisV are going to be getting little essays about the frothy cocktail of cynicism and naivete that prompts them to opine on US politics.
Sanders endorsed Biden, btw, and I wish he hadn’t. But the fact that he has and I wish he hadn’t should give pause to your theory that I regard Sanders as some pure and incorruptible blah blah blah. Assuming that theory is genuinely felt, of course — the last time I spoke about things in systemic terms, you didn’t seem to be a fan. Yet here you are chiding my ostensible Great Man approach to politics in favour of a systemic perspective. Curiouser and curiouser.
I asked in the thread I made and got no answer, btw: If Trump’s re-election indicates a strong chance there’ll be no future elections, what makes you think a Trump defeat would end his presidency? And given that the Republicans’ voter-suppression antics weren’t curtailed by Obama’s presidency, why do you think a Biden presidency is so all-fired important in stopping them? Isn’t that something which, if it’s to be solved electorally, will be solved by downballot votes (if you can stomach discussing this with a non-American)?
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