This is a legitimate question and not a gotcha, because I want to better understand the various perspectives involved in this discussion:
For those willing to risk Trump in order to theoretically further progressive causes, what is the hypothetical process by which this happens? Violent revolution? Otherwise I genuinely don’t see a way that his reelection doesn’t set American progressives back 100+ years and cause an unbelievable amount of human suffering. It certainly won’t be incremental, I guess.
There isn’t one unless you bring in a bunch of people from other more educated countries to fill the streets.
It’s a downward slope to concentration camps if Trump wins again and reality comes at you fast. Electing Biden is a downward slope of a much more manageable grade unless you’re first on the list.
You edited your post but you are right I was a bit sloppy in my language. Canada is a democracy with socialist leanings not a true democratic socialist country.
So you mention the higher than past premiums under Obamacare, but the projections for premiums without Obamacare were actually higher.
You also live in the South iirc, so you may have experienced some sabotage, I honestly don’t know. Again, all of this is a great argument for M4A. But that said, it’s pretty clear that ACA did move the ball forward and improve people’s material conditions over the status quo.
Literally nobody here is falling for this weird thing where you pretend Biden (who is vocally against m4a, and has said he will veto it as president) is having his healthcare policy drafted by Bernie. There have been lots of stories about how the left wing people on these committees have been ignored, and even if they weren’t there is no reason to think Biden will take their recommendations.
We did not win. Everyone lost, and it is very much the fault of people like you who spend 50x as much time talking about abstract shit like incrementalism and purity and whatever other buzzwords you come up with than you ever spend actually promoting progressive positions. Basic human rights are being denied, and your contribution to the conversations is ALWAYS tone policing people who are angry about it.
This might be the wrong thread, but I think Biden and Kamala should refuse to participate in a debate. I don’t think there is any upside to them getting on stage with Trump, it further normalizes just how much of a fucking incompetent clown he is. He’s not going to have any kjnd of meaningful honest rebuttal. Put that message out there, Trump isn’t worthy or qualified enough to dignify the event. He needs to release his tax returns and come clean about a whole bunch of things, if he does that, sure debate him. Until then, just be like, nope, we are good, you aren’t worth it.
Agree with this. This just isn’t a normal election. If it had been a milquetoast no-risk VP hired to toe the line (much like Pence) then yeah, it’s dumb to hold a debate.
But people are EXCITED to vote for Kamala. I think the shifting perception is going to essentially be as though Kamala is running for POTUS. She should debate.
I’m actually serious. I keep hearing all these people getting excited about Kamala debating Pence or whatever, and it strikes me as weird and annoying that they aren’t even considering that there should be no debates. Like, Trump is wrecking all kinds of norms and important institutions, hes flouting the rule of law, he has corrupted the DOJ, and he is actively dismantling the postal service to rig the election in his favor, 160,000 people have died and Trump isn’t doing shit about it and people want to see a fucking debate, like this is some kind of normal election? No, fuck no. Debates are for competent adults who respect our norms and meet some minimal level of competency and decency. Trump fall far short of that. He’s a vile wanna-be autocrat who but for the immense amount of wrath he was handed would probably be living in the street somewhere. As far as I’m concerned he has not earned the right to participate in a presidential debate let alone hold the fucking Presidency one more minute, much less four more years.
You’ve been told a thousand times that people don’t trust Biden and that making promises and appointing people to commissions and writing platforms during a campaign doesn’t prove that he will be any different as president than he was for decades in Congress where he has an actual record.
You ignore this constantly and pretend like “team purity” is ignoring all your facts.
It’s always the concern trolling with these fools. Always the concern trolling. It can never just be that the folks they have strategic/tactical differences are ineffectual, that they are wasting their time & resources… it’s always has to be that these folks they have strategic/tactical differences with are counter-productive, are “hurting their own cause” etc//etc/etc.
When asked for any studies/etc for this alleged “counter-productivity” they always, 100% of the time, start in with the hand waving… it’s “just common sense”… blah/blah/blah.
It’s always some stram-man-ish and vague alleged grouping like this “team purity” we have here. Is “team purity” composed of peeps who have significant platforms, like donkeys of national repute, or members of the press which have significant followings… in other words, peeps who could, at least in theory, influence a statistically significant and at the same time pivotal voting demographic? Or…
Is it like, maybe a half dozen ex-poker players on an obscure and tiny forum, with maybe 100 active members total. Good luck getting a straight answer if this “team purity” is (a) a critical mass of influential public figures -or- a (b) handful of us fools here chatting with each other.
This is the exact same gibberish that Team #N pushed on the old 2+2. Calling people personally on that relatively tiny forum the r-word is what got D.Trump elected. Same stupid argument as whining personally about the stupid potato picking the Kop on this tiny refuge for ex-poker players is going to get D.Trump elected.
Just to pile on how stupid, stupid, stupid this whole “anti team purity”/“never say the r-word” so-called argument is, let’s imagine we’re talking over on Chief Planet about last Superb Owl…
P1: “We got to worry about the 49ers exploiting our offensive line!”
P2: “Shush, don’t let the 49er coaching staff know we’re worried about that. That’s why “team coaching” is so dangerous! You’re making the 49ers win !!!1!”
Important for a VP to be well spoken and have good foreign policy. They really have no say on domestic policy, so it’s probably better to not have a Warren as VP. Now if Biden steps down after 2 years that all changes, but I doubt he’s going to step down until the 2024 election or possibly the year of so Kamala can have just under a year as being the president, while there are primaries happening.
I don’t understand what he could do to appease this concern? Not much room to move forward if the answer to every outreach, every speech slot given, every coauthored policy doc is just “he is a liar”.
If he makes AOC the Administrator of the EPA and Bernie secretary of health and human services are we just going to be saying “well sure he will just ignore them”?
FYI I know neither of those appointments will actually happen.
He’ll have to do stuff like enacting policies in line with the policy documents etc. I mean, you are right that no amount of lip-service is going to convince people. It’s just that you’re wrong to suggest that’s unreasonable of us. It’s eminently rational.
