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

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

Incremental, honestly lads, the climate hasn’t got time for “incremental”. Just dismissing all radical proposals out of hand without a thought as to why some of them are so radical?

MASSIVE FUCKING UNFORCED ERROR with her stupid DNA test

I voted for Warren in the primary and agree this was just really awful, a true harbinger of her inability to run a successful campaign

I thought it was stupid that she did that but I don't think it actually impacted her run one way or the other. It did call into question her judgement on things to me; but I still voted for her. I don't think the people who didn't vote for her did so because of that.

Warren's DNA test thing was dumb as hell but I'd hardly call it a make-or-break wrt her candidacy/viability as president. I guess I'd like to think that was a teachable moment for her, but who can say for sure.

yeah I agree w akm

But did you think that wasn’t going to be coming up again and again in the general? It’d be months and months of Pocahontas and the worst part would be, it was entirely self-inflicted.

not massive

Maybe I'm just trying to put a rosy spin on a potential Biden nomination, but I'm also trying to answer to people whose support of Bernie is predicated on the assumption that no other candidate could possibly offer anything even the slightest bit progressive. I get why people distrust Biden based on his record, but the direction of the party is moving left, and I have to imagine that any Democratic administration would be shaped by that.

I think she reacted like a human being rather than as a politician. Yes, slightly concerning in terms of her political instincts but also reflective of what I find appealing about her as a politician.

it really didn't bother me but that's me. If i had been told I was part native american growing up I would've believed it until I took a dna test. I probably would not have made a video about it.

it was super fucking embarrassing but i suspect anyone who cares about the Pocahontas shit was voting for Trump anyway

It was lousy political instincts and she could have turned it into something much better about the way many white Americans have been sold a connection to Native Americans through family lore as a way to ignore genocide and land theft but it didn't really matter.

best-case scenario, the legislative landscape breaks down like this:
- House (most progressive)
- Biden presidency (kinda in the middle)
- Senate (least progressive - thx to Manchin, Tester, etc.)

xp

To look on the bright side: if Bernie fails, he's at least definitively proved it's possible to be nationally viable on a campaign funded almost entirely by small donations / not beholden to the special interests that act as a major blocker to the kind of large structural change people generally seem to want and agree would be a net good. I hope we can all agree that is A Good Thing.

Ppl often talk about the left as a monolith but I doubt many think of Bernie as "the ideal candidate"; most would vastly prefer someone less old, less shouty, less white, less male. Someone more demographically pleasing who could build up enough of a base to make that same funding model work could very well deliver what he may prove unable to one or two or three cycles down the line, and he'll have laid a lot of very important groundwork and precedent. (AOC's her own person obviously, but it's tough to imagine her political awakening and small-donor backing without Bernie's 2016 campaign.) So as much as a Biden win would bum me and many others the fuck out, I can't see this as a total loss.

ie a repeat of Obama in '08-'09

xp

it's possible to be nationally viable

? he's never won a national campaign

Vindictive Amy Klobuchar Elected Mayor Of South Bend, Indiana https://t.co/UPZKczd4iG pic.twitter.com/GhPIDDasGJ

— The Onion (@TheOnion) March 5, 2020

? he's never won a national campaign

christ, COMPETITIVE. you knew what I meant.

synonyms, how do they work?

at least Shakey's committed to his shtick