But that’s already happened in every election the past 40 years. Dems know younger and more progressive voters won’t turn out at the same rate as older more conservative voters. If the natural result of this is a more progressive dem party, it would have already happened.
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Oh goody! I got a smiley face! TY!
I didn’t say they or some Sanders supporters were wrong. Just that both thought that Kasich/Warren torpedoed their candidate’s chances.
Cool. My vote is in California, so it’s already rendered moot by the EC, and the Dem primary system makes it worthless as well in that competition.
I’m trying to get inside the heads of people with a different perspective than my own on. You believe that the options are autocracy or Biden. I will grant that and agree.
I’d rather my options be autocracy or a Biden that has been pushed farther left. We can still push him now, why wait to push him until after the election when we’ve lost our leverage. Our votes allegedly are trying to be won over. Why the hell would we not leverage that?
I mean, I’m not asking Biden to say #abolishthePolice and cost himself votes. For example, you know what would move Biden to the left, and is popular, and would drive people to the polls during a fucking pandemic…Universal Healthcare. Instead he’s out there pandering to insurance companies by saying he’d veto any kind of bill like that. So, we know that Biden is willing to pander, but for some reason we shouldn’t get him to pander to us???
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I’m quoting you both, because I appreciate your responses, but feel we are speaking past each other a bit on this.
The position that I am taking and the tactic of withholding support as leverage is acknowledging that the campaigns go after voters who are more likely to vote. That’s us! The year is 2020, we are now part of the contingent of old shitty people who are more likely to vote.
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Mount a successful progressive primary challenge.
You can push him now. It’s been happening throughout the primary and is still happening. What you can’t do is what catface and micro want to do, is just assume it’s all lies and his platform is meaningless.
Either you work to push him left, and assume a good amount will be done, or you assume he is a liar at which point you simply doth your anarchist hat, sit back and watch the world burn.
It’s okay to say something negative about Joe Biden. He sucks, I don’t like him, he was like my 13th choice out of 15 candidates or something like that. I’m bummed out that he’s who we got. I donated to Bernie, I voted for Bernie. But Joe Biden won.
Now we have a choice, Joe Biden or Donald Trump. What’s not okay is saying that they are basically the same in terms of drone strikes, immigration policy, healthcare, etc. The chasm between them on almost everything is massive.
How many goddamn times do I have to explicitly state that 80% less is not acceptable but it is better before you’ll stop fucking making shit up and accusing me of it? Fuck off.
It’s okay to not be happy, it’s not okay to create false equivalences with Donald Fucking Trump.
Hey did you know if we get Biden we get him for 4-8 more years and if we get Trump we probably get authoritarian dictators indefinitely? Cool times, both the same!
I see that @skydiver8 took care of this for me. I also specifically recall both Amy McGrath and Charles Booker speaking out about it when there were issues in their primary, so I’m sure if you use Google or search Twitter you’ll find that.
Yeah it’s a shame this number is as high as it is, and unfortunately the fear that the other 68% don’t really care and don’t make it a voting priority is valid. But never the less, we either get Biden or Trump, and Trump appears to be about 5 times worse than the standard Democrat.
We’re not getting it to 0 in the next four years, so clearly trying to take a big step in the right direction and go from there is the right play.
I disagree on this, but even if you’re right and his position is generic Obama-level bad, it’s still 80% better than Trump on droning. It’s still better on immigration. It’s still better on healthcare.
I maintain that if Dems get a bill through Congress on any of these issues there’s ~no chance he’ll veto it. On the other hand, while the POTUS can unilaterally do some things on these issues, even if we had Bernie the Congress would be a huge road block to progress on a lot of these issues.
In other words, regardless we’d have to keep fighting. We should take progress where we can get it and keep fighting. We are happy to have AOC and other progressives winning these primary challenges, even though they haven’t taken over the entire Dem caucus or the entire House. We’re happy to have Bernie even though we don’t have the whole Senate.
We’ve gotta keep building in the House, Senate and within the party to improve our odds of winning the White House. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing in the mean time, we should vote for progress where we can get it.
Gay rights and capital punishment for sure. I’m guessing healthcare, but I don’t know where he was at on that in the 90’s. I am guessing he wasn’t for a public option back then, though.
It’s fair to question any politician’s motives on moving to the proper position on this issue, and to question their timing. However, a significant chunk of society moved in the proper direction on this issue during that time span. I know my positions as a 34 year old in 2020 on gay rights are way better than they were in 2004 as an 18 year old. I would never have been rude or mean to anyone and would have done my best to treat anyone in the LGBTQ community the same as anyone else, but I opposed gay marriage politically (I supported civil unions) and I am not proud to admit that I would be uncomfortable around someone who was homosexual. It was how I grew up and I had to do some learning and growing on the issue.
Look at polling on gay rights in like 2000 vs. now. Should we basically disqualify everyone who was in the wrong place then, or should we actually want politicians who can take in new information, be introspective, and come to a better conclusion?
The feeling isn’t that you’re trying to move him left, it’s that you’re not going to vote for him regardless, or not going to vote for him if he doesn’t move left. And let’s be honest. If Biden said he was going to end drone strikes, @Watevs would say he’s a liar and wouldn’t believe him.
In the blank is: protests, calls to Congress members, donating/volunteering to/for progressive primary challenges, etc.
I tried to move the party left by voting for and donating to Bernie, and donating to a couple progressive House challengers. Once I move, I’ll be phone/text banking for Biden down the stretch.
This is probably not how that would work. At this point he’d lose more votes on the right/center than he’d get on the left for a number of reasons. Here’s the proof: what would he have to say to get you to vote for him? Could he?
How so?
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Joe Biden was not my preferred candidate.
He has moved way to the left in the last 8-12 months, and that’s a credit to progressive activism. His platform would have been considered radical just a few cycles back.
It’s annoying and deeply frustrating that it is taking (many) decades too long, but progressives are slowly winning. If we learn nothing else from Republicans, the long game works.
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So obviously true. X10000
Can we roll the tape all the way back to when this bruhaha started? I think watevs said stuff like Kamala sucks. Biden will drone people. I don’t think he said anything about Trump. Maybe I’m wrong but:
A: Biden sucks
B: I’m tired of your shit. better than Trump.
Seems like it not being ok to criticize Biden.
Ok, let’s just roll the tape. Here’s where we started:
I don’t see anything in here about Trump.
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Too bad Riverman moved out of a potential swing state to a state where his vote for President doesn’t matter.
I get that there is a self-esteem boost associated with being the pure as snow liberal who cares more than everyone else, who is therefore a better person than everyone else, and who therefore isn’t a sellout and a hypocrite. I’ve been there.
But that perspective is ultimately completely fucking useless if you actually want to make the world a better place right now. Grow up.
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I guess my only question is do you acknowledge your “tactic” is already the default position for progressives for the last few decades, especially in primaries and midterms? And if you want to blame people compromising and voting for Biden as a big part of the problem, how much blame do the vote with holders get?
Like how much sympathy would you have for a progressive who with held his vote for Sanders because even though Biden was terrible, Sanders supports drone strikes and a bunch of stuff he can’t support? Did that person somehow win by Biden getting the nomination? Do you think it will force progressives to be better next primary? Or is that person just being a child and not helping the causes he claims to support?
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What fraction of a vote have I given to Trump by failing to move to a state where my vote matters? Seems like half a vote.
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Please note that I have not compared anyone, or their actions to that of a child. So that part of your questioning would have to be addressed to those that have done that.
I have also not blamed Biden supporters or people who have or will vote for Biden for anything, at least that I am aware of. So, I feel part of our interaction is still speaking past each other. If I’ve said anything that you feel could be interpreted that way, I will be happy to address it.
My position is that we(progressive people willing to threaten to withhold their vote) have leverage right now, as a group. The same as any other group. Other groups of voters, or for example the bankers or insurance industry, are leveraging the uncertainty of their support to sway Biden. They are doing that now, and will do so up until November. Why shouldn’t we? It sure seems to be effective, as Biden is wooing the shit out of those groups.
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More people already don’t vote than vote for any individual candidate. Feels like the not voting strategy is the one that hasn’t worked.
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I think the answer is obvious. Your group (younger, less income, more progressive) never vote anyway. Maybe they are not voting this time because they don’t like Biden. And maybe they didn’t vote in the primary because they didn’t like Bernie. But it’s impossible to tell because they never vote 
Like if you were advocating seniors or high income folks to sit out maybe it would lead to some change because people would actually notice that. But you are advocating the group already least likely to vote to continue not voting. Seems like the obvious result will be nothing changing.
And I guess I’ll just ask you directly, what would your response be to a progressive who withheld their vote from Bernie in the 2020 primary? Smart, strategic move likely to yield dividends in 2024?
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If not voting for Biden is a vote for Trump then moving out of a swing state has got to be at least 2 votes for Trump
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Let me address all 3 of your answers.
I’ve seen how an administration that includes Biden treats people that protest(it involves the full weight of the police state doing dirt on comrades and allies). And then ignoring their demands.
No amount of phone calls to a politician lights a fire under them quite like the threat of not having enough votes to win the election. So, it seems that this option gives us less leverage than the threat of withholding our votes does, right now.
And again, supporting primary challengers in future races that Biden is not running in, while a worthy goal, is a scenario that has far less leverage than a group threatening to withhold their vote in the present.
So, AFAICT, you are proposing that we eschew the (limited) power that we have available to us to pull Biden to left right now, for future scenarios where we have even less leverage.
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