Actually, the Germans went with the boring centrist(van Hindenburg) who had no spine and no conviction. Who tried to do the equivalent of bipartisanship, and got run over because he was a spineless centrist.
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I assume that everyone who spends time vote shaming in this forum spends an equal amount of time both canvassing for Biden as well as imploring his campaign to make the easy decision to move left and pick up a ton of votes.
No? Oh
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Maybe Biden won in the first place because all these progressives stayed home in the primary because of Bernie’s unapologetic support of drone use? So many of the Trump/Biden are the same arguments work just as well for Sanders/Biden. The end result of that is just never voting, which half the country is already doing and doesn’t seem to be working if you think things are in bad shape.
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You are misunderstanding my position. At this time, I am refusing to pledge my support to Biden. He has until up until election day to move left and win it. Right now, Biden is doing GTO and pandering to banks and right leaning voters and Lincoln Project adjacent peeps because he thinks he doesn’t have them in his back pocket.
Do you think that maybe, just maybe, if Biden thought he didn’t have your support and the support of many many other progressive-type voters, that he would have to move in your direction?
Honestly I don’t give a shit. This exercise is a complete waste of time. Right now the options are a straight up fucking autocracy or not. Get your ass to the polls.
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Because, by and large, the tens of millions of Democrats base their opinions about foreign policy on their ideals and are consistent and not swayed by partisan politics and, by and large, the tens of millions of Republicans are wildly partisan and their opinions on foreign policy are as simple as being against everything during a Democratic administration during a Republican administration?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/08/smoke-filled-zoom-convention-edition-243505
Politico article with the campaign managers of Kasich, Jen, Little Marco and Lyon’ Ted on the upcoming election. It starts off with last three teeing off on the Kasich lady for spoiling their chances in the 2016 primary—the same kind of complaints that some Sanders supporters make of Warren. The article is kinda infuriating—Biden needs a Sister Soulja moment, Biden could end his campaign at any moment by misspeaking and Trump for sure will lose the popular vote.
Campaigns allocate disproportionate resources toward convincing old shitty people in large part because old shitty people, as a demographic, are likely to turn their support into an actual vote. In terms of actual vote EV, convincing one old white dude is the same as convincing four Hispanic 20-year-olds, for example.
I’m not sure we win by making that calculus worse. Also fascism sucks.
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You moved from Ohio to South Carolina, right? Should have moved to North Carolina.
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Holding out hope I can contribute to Lady G’s demise. Current polling is very close to even.
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Stop making posts on the internet and bank for Biden or convince him to move left and pick up easy votes. It’s on you too brother. Godspeed
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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