Your next 2020 Democratic presidential primary thread: Now we're serious

yeah and that jackass

I think you're weirdly passive or willfully misunderstanding this concept.

no i get it of course, and why make it slightly personal??

i myself just don't care about the idea that her sticking it out through super tuesday was harmful, because i don't think it was. I think the landscape would be very much the same as it is today because of Joe Biden's dumb momentum narrative and just people maybe panicking and running for the center.

probably relevant to earlier discussion

@BenjaminPDixon really pulled back the vail on the black democrat establishment. The part about Chicken n’ Beer had my rollin!!

Episode 824 | The Black Democratic Establishment | Why Joe Doesn't Stand... https://t.co/s6qDmsWOrR via @YouTube

— The Public Offender (@publicoffender) March 5, 2020

idgi where there's the other 44%

― Οὖτις, Thursday, March 5, 2020 12:29 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

That poll is from Feb. 23-27. More candidates back then.

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Thursday, March 5, 2020 11:35 AM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, that tweet was pretty misleading. IIRC, the full results of the poll were 40% Sanders, 16% Biden, 16% Buttigeg, 12% Klobuchar.

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lol

xp

preference for Bernie aside, sure hope Biden's concentrated run of gaffes as he has to actually start campaigning, with an unforgiving schedue, starts happening now and not in July

― Webcam Du Bois (Hadrian VIII), Thursday, March 5, 2020 12:52 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it kind of already has been happening

Hadrian, the move wasn't cynical. Biden drifted ahead because the Democratic party has been drifting center for decades and Bernie is talking Democratic socialism which many moderate Dems aren't down with. Also some are convinced (wrongly, I'd argue) that Sanders can't win.

Dems also fear anti-Trumpers might not vote for him. Again...i don't agree, but...w/e.

So they dropped out to help the moderate. Yes, that sucks, and yes, it infuriates me that we seem to never acquire a nominee anywhere near progressivism, but...this is hardly new or controversial. We eat up Bernie easily because we're progressives, lots of voters aren't or grew up being told Socialism is a bad word and you get this wishy washy bullshit candidate, rinse repeat

xxp More pertinent:

#NEW* National @MorningConsult Poll Of Warren Supporters Second-Choice:

Sanders 43%
Biden 36%

*Conducted before Bloomberg dropped out yesterday. https://t.co/DDbtklur1P

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) March 5, 2020

And progressives seem incapable of accepting increments, they want immediate results or they pout

yes, "pouting," that is a good way to describe years-long campaigns to defend rights and expand safeguards against an onslaught of right-wing efforts to do the opposite (through a thousand "incremental" rollbacks)

If you wanna attach a word bubble above my head, i have a pencil

The product of being told to accept "increments" has been the world we live in now - closing in on five decades of ever-spiraling inequality, looming climate catastrophe, unbearable student debt, awful healthcare, yada yada yada.

it's almost as if incrementalism has a terrible track record for securing said rights

xp I get that Neandrathal, by "cynical" I mean that I don't believe those endorsements were made to "help the moderate" so much as "stop the progressive" which yeah may seem like too fine a distinction until you consider that they by and large when polled their consituents want something closer to a Sanders platform

e.g. I don't believe that ambition or careeer preservation will play the same role in EW's endorsement calculations as it did in Booty's

It’s almost as if history books are written as a series of key defining moments instead of increments, because that’s also how human memories work.

If being angry at the state of things fires you up to work harder for y that isn't pouting, that's drive.

If not winning a single battle eads you to spend all your time whining on Reddit about it adopt a fuck it all attitude and say "nothing matters, it's all a lost cause", that's pouting.

I'm not talky about posters itt but i know many progressives who are addicted to this performative nihilism

Obama/Reid/etc. made the correct call to lean on Klobuchar and Buttigieg, both given a chance for a breakout that never came - it's not about cynicism or right and wrong, they did what they needed to do to shore up their political position.

All anyone in the Bernie camp was arguing was for the left/progressives to do the same, on the assumption that Warren and Sanders occupied the same ideological space as Klobuchar/Biden/Butts.

It's cute that y'all think I'm not also affected by these things too.

Tombot otm

xp well we still may see that

I would be pleasantly surprised if that happened.

you consider that they by and large when polled their consituents want something closer to a Sanders platform

... but not from Sanders

Apparently more from Sanders than anyone else?

Terrifying if true!

I have been paying my student loans for 16 years and still have 15k left.

My dad can barely talk due to a stroke, can barely walk due to needing a knee surgery he can't afford even with Medicare, can't afford the speech or physical therapy he needs (nor can we). My job of 15 years looks more and more less secure each day.

Half my friends have to start GoFundMes for basic needs or have chronic painful illnesses they ignore due to expense.

All this stresses me to the point where yesterday i had the shakes from my anxiety but i have to live my life and the constant "lol it doesn't matter, we tried, we failed" shit from pockets of the community don't help.

Xxxpost

worth bearing in mind that many/most extremely online Sanders ppl are quite young and have no concept of how anything good could ever happen

(other than maybe-just-maybe potentially via the one political movement that seems to them to stand for them and apart from the others, and has just had its first major stumble in a long time)

worth bearing in mind that many/most extremely online Sanders ppl are quite young and have no concept of how anything good could ever happen

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Thursday, March 5, 2020 10:29 AM (one minute ago)

the most good thing that has ever happened in the life of anyone now in college or younger is the Obama administration, which has plenty of people on the left explaining constantly how it was actually very bad

Yes, it's the left's fault those arguments resonate.

If you append "but I voted blue no matter who" to "it doesn't matter, we tried we failed" what's the difference?

Those people - I haven't seen them, everyone I've seen has either talked about keeping fighting or how you work outside electoralism - see a non-Sanders outcome ahead as one in which someone who's going to be actively harmful on all the points you list will be elected.

I'm not baiting I'm just musing my guy xp

If Biden strikes a grand bargain that cuts Social Security, I look forward to robbing banks to ensure that my mother has a place to live.

^^solid praxis

The Praxis View

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e3/Transmutation_cover.jpg

the racial animus won’t be there in a Biden admin, so I could def see the GOP capitalizing on the gift they’ve been given and “compromising” (looool) with Joe to decimate entitlements. the winning will never stop.

it's almost as if incrementalism has a terrible track record for securing said rights

It’s kind of the only thing that has worked? Not that there haven’t been people at every stage calling for immediate justice, but the thing is that those calls themselves are at best levers that help move things a little bit. Look at the NAACP’s decades-long legal strategy that eventually got them Brown v. Board of Education. Which in turn became just one more lever to force more change over the next few decades. It’s not that they didn’t want things to move faster, but if you don’t see the value in step-by-step transformation, then you don’t really understand how anything ever actually changes.

every revolution is incremental

Biden has certainly supported bad policies in the past and generally represents a dated approach to politics that no longer applies. But can we take any comfort from the fact that even he has been pushed more to the left in this primary than he was before, and that his administration would likely find roles for younger, more progressive Democrats?

there are turning points and key moments/pieces of legislation/rulings etc. but those are all built on the small(er) steps that preceded them

xp

I'm for Bernie but will vote for Biden if it comes to that, obviously. I worry, though, even if he beats Trump. I worry about the way he views Trump as a fluke that, once vanquished, will reset things back to... the still awful Republicans of the W/Obama years? I'm 35 and all my political life I've seen the right grow increasingly unhinged. Yet folks like Joe seem to still view them as "the loyal opposition", despite many Republicans' view that Democrats/PoC as inherently illegitimate in regards to holding power (such as that move in Wisconsin to sabotage the incoming governor).

I think it is... optimistic to believe that Trump losing will chasten the Republicans into doing their equivalent of the '90s DNC triangulation to the center. If anything, I fully expect them to double-down.

Biden has certainly supported bad policies in the past and generally represents a dated approach to politics that no longer applies. But can we take any comfort from the fact that even he has been pushed more to the left in this primary than he was before, and that his administration would likely find roles for younger, more progressive Democrats?

― jaymc,

I take comfort in Biden not being Donald Trump.

can we take any comfort from the fact that even he has been pushed more to the left in this primary than he was before, and that his administration would likely find roles for younger, more progressive Democrats?

Almost certainly gonna have to find roles for younger Democrats because older ones are, like, dead

every revolution is incremental

― Οὖτις, Thursday, March 5, 2020 12:53 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I might refine just a touch by saying 'every sustainable revolution is incremental'. You can overthrow the government tomorrow if you want (it's easy if you try!) but I don't know that you'd like what ultimately results from that action.

Yeah my concern is Joe rolls over for belly rubs at every chance and all he gets for his trouble is the gop calling him the leader of a socialist movement trying to destroy capitalism and christianity.

And Joe’s just there grinning like a dipshit and thinking “gee fellows glad we’re all friends again!”

his administration would likely find roles for younger, more progressive Democrats?

well, the first part, sure.

Joe still mystified about "what happened" to his good friend Lindsay Graham

Someone is really going to have to explain the Warren appeal to me that takes into account her MASSIVE FUCKING UNFORCED ERROR with her stupid DNA test! Like this is bring glossed over like it’s a completely normal to do and Warren fans have nothing to be smug about. That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen a politician do and I’m Irish living in the UK! Did you think that would never come back to fuck her up again and again and again? What good is a thoughtful policy platform when you shat the bed under zero pressure? Did you think there was any good precedent to be found in politicians doing DNA tests in response to the shithousing of an opponent? What about this made you think she could go toe to toe with Trump in 2020 and come out a winner?

You can overthrow the government tomorrow if you want (it's easy if you try!) but I don't know that you'd like what ultimately results from that action.

crassbloodyrevolutions.flv