mordy otm
― treeship., Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:07 (four years ago) link
That said, I feel really fucking sad. Sad about everything but this was just sort of the key that finally opened the floodgates of the sadness.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:08 (four years ago) link
[marge voice] lisa needs braces[lenny voice] worker's party[marge voice] lisa needs braces[lenny voice] worker's party[marge voice] lisa needs braces[lenny voice] worker's party
― brechtian social distancing (Simon H.), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:10 (four years ago) link
i am sad too man alive. however, i find solace and hope in the fact that our political system—rotten as it is—was able to produce a bernie.
the thing that stood out about him wasn't that he was "radical," it's that he believed, against the odds, that tomorrow could be better than today. he was never "sophisticated" enough to give up on a common sense, compassionate vision of of government.
― treeship., Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:16 (four years ago) link
and honestly it had an impact. it wasn't for nothing.
― treeship., Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:18 (four years ago) link
Yeah I'd like to think Bernie planted the seeds of a lot of young Bernies
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:20 (four years ago) link
I also kind of wonder if the sheer level of unemployment we are about to face could lead to a de facto mass expansion of medicaid that could be a stepping stone toward universal healthcare.
i think a lot of things could happen. one thing is for certain -- having healthcare tied to employment is going to be way harder to defend.
― treeship., Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:23 (four years ago) link
how that plays out in policy, i don't know. anything can happen in the wake of an unprecedented crisis. one thing that bernie did is actually pitch a plausible path forward -- guaranteed healthcare and access to education; a livable minimum wage and unemployment benefits that allow people to live -- and hammered it in people's minds. any proposals that fall short of that are going to be measured against his platform because everyone knows it now.
― treeship., Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:25 (four years ago) link
the value of saying the same thing over and over and over for 30 years....
I have never seen the MSM *hate* a presidential candidate as much as they did Bernie, and you're blind if you can't see that.
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:25 (four years ago) link
i know polls are fallible and we don't know anything but biden consistently beats trump in the polls, nationally and in swing states and consistently has done so more than bernie. now maybe u think he'll be exposed btwn now and nov but i think most ppl know who he is so it's priced it and it will end up mostly a referendum on trump anyway
― Mordy, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:26 (four years ago) link
handling the media well is a skill some politicians have and others don't it's weird to blame the media - an amorphous collection of many different organizations with many different beliefs and ideologies - over the candidate
― Mordy, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:27 (four years ago) link
well let's not get carried away Mordy
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:28 (four years ago) link
why aren't jacobin and democracy now and current affairs the biggest news outlets in the country? why don't they control the discourse? in a world where they do bernie is the candidate for president.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:29 (four years ago) link
the reason why they aren't plays a much bigger role in why bernie isn't
because they aren't going to attract massive advertising dollars from large corporations?
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:29 (four years ago) link
I mean, no question mark, that is THE answer to your question
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:30 (four years ago) link
The media shapes preferences but also feeds preexisting prejudices (if it didn't no one would watch it). This isn't a scenario where it's as simple as "the media convinced people bernie = bad." That might have played into it but there's a lot more going on.
This sounds a bit like an inversion of "the stars incline us, they do not oblige us."
Look forward to out nation's preschools being full of cranky white-haired toddlers yelling about revolution in Brooklynian accents
― cuomo money, cuomo problems (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:30 (four years ago) link
yeah that sounds like a great future tbh
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:32 (four years ago) link
biden consistently beats trump in the polls, nationally and in swing states
This sounds familiar...
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:38 (four years ago) link
the mainstream media - an amorphous collection of many different corporations with one central ideology, that is profit
btwn this and your 'the pandemic hasn't appeared due to any weaknesses in our society', oh boy
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:40 (four years ago) link
Such a large percentage of people, even a large percentage of Democratic primary voters, are so minimally engaged with politics on a day to day basis that I don't believe the predilections of "the media" were any kind of deciding factor in his failure to win the nomination. I do think anti-left bias does exist in corporate media, but it was just one factor here. I don't think Bernie wins the nomination even if he'd been handled with kid gloves, but I guess we'll never know.
― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:41 (four years ago) link
lol you've misrepresented the other side of the argument with this which is that the pandemic was exacerbated by problems in our society i would love to hear this counterfactual tho where our society's problems actually made the pandemic appear was it our exotic wildlife consumption
― Mordy, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:42 (four years ago) link
― Mordy, Wednesday, April 8, 2020 11:42 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink
a completed aside here: we don't actually know where COVID crossed over to humans, we know it wasn't directly from bats. might have been pangolins. but the most common denominator with flu pandemics with a zoonotic origin somewhere in the chain of transmission has historically been factory farmed birds.
so industrial society is to blame for COVID.
heading to my cabin, au revoir
― COVID and the Gang (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:45 (four years ago) link
you say that like its a contemptible thing. but if consequences matter, then the potential costs of four more years of trump & pence seem much worse than the potential costs of four years of biden and whoever he chooses for veep. it's a minor blessing biden isn't running behind trump.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:45 (four years ago) link
Such a large percentage of people, even a large percentage of Democratic primary voters, are so minimally engaged with politics on a day to day basis that I don't believe the predilections of "the media" were any kind of deciding factor in his failure to win the nomination.
Minimal engagement with politics gives the media outsize influence, it doesn't diminish it.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:46 (four years ago) link
you say that like its a contemptible thing.
I say that like it's a meaningless thing. Biden leading now shouldn't give anyone hope.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:47 (four years ago) link
handling the media well is a skill some politicians have and others don't it's weird to blame the media - an amorphous collection of many different organizations with many different beliefs and ideologies - over the candidate― Mordy, Wednesday, April 8, 2020 1:27 PM (nine minutes ago)
― Mordy, Wednesday, April 8, 2020 1:27 PM (nine minutes ago)
Major media organizations are united in their goal of making money for the large corporations that own them. That guarantees hostility to a candidate like Bernie Sanders. Ideological diversity among the specific organizations and people carrying out that mandate only results in relatively minor variation as to when and how that hostility is expressed.
― JRN, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:47 (four years ago) link
my implication was that people are so minimally engaged that they're not even aware of the media narratives, i guess that wasn't clear enough.
xpost
― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:47 (four years ago) link
Trump has the advantage of incumbency, gerrymandering that always benefits the GOP, a larger percentage of the vaunted Berniebros will actually not vote or vote third party this time, etc.. Banking on hatred of Trump to carry zombie Biden across the finish only makes sense if you've been brain-poisoned for the last four years and know the names of more than four people involved in Russiagate.
If the economy is still shit, Biden's chances are certainly improved.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:49 (four years ago) link
the #1 reason Biden is the nominee is he was Obama's veep. that's it. there honestly might not have been ANYTHING Bernie could have done to overcome that.
― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:50 (four years ago) link
at this moment I'm way more worried about Trump winning because of procedural shenanigans related to coronavirus and ballot access than I am worried about Trump winning because Biden's a shitty candidate.
― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:53 (four years ago) link
even a shit economy won't mean much if Biden can't make a positive case for how he's going to improve the lives of people being fucked by that economy - as of yet,, he and centrist Democrats have not shown a capacity to do so.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:53 (four years ago) link
― Mordy, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink
Love how someone, somewhere can pretend the media is just this amorphous random thing when it very clearly as a pack expresses specific views and demonizes others xps
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:54 (four years ago) link
this is where I'm at of late. I haven't found any of the "bernie would have won if he'd done (x)" arguments remotely convincing
― brechtian social distancing (Simon H.), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:56 (four years ago) link
agreed. In fact I thought that was the cw after Biden won a bunch of states he didn't even have a campaign office in? I suppose you could expand on what it *meant* to different people that he was the VP but it's the root anyway
― rob, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 18:59 (four years ago) link
Bernie would have won if he cut off all communication in and out of Richard Branson's private island where Obama was vacationing when he decided to muscle Klob and Pete out before Super Tuesday.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:00 (four years ago) link
even a shit economy won't mean much if Biden can't make a positive case for how he's going to improve the lives of people being fucked by that economy - as of yet,, he and centrist Democrats have not shown a capacity to do so.― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, April 8, 2020 2:53 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, April 8, 2020 2:53 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
if trump wins it's good news because it means the coronavirus didn't shake out as badly as it could have. if projections are correct, there is no way he can win given his "response" to the crisis. not just pitting states against one another, but refusing to acknowledge the danger of the virus until we were well into march.
― treeship., Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:02 (four years ago) link
if Biden can't make a positive case for how he's going to improve the lives of people being fucked by that economy
A whole bunch of people have already voted for him despite this lack of a positive case for how he's going to improve their lives. (Note, I was not one of them.)
It's possible that people don't vote because the candidate made a positive case. Perhaps a whole bunch of people just point at the guy whose name they've heard, or the guy who they think seems appropriately relatable.
Sometimes we fall into the error of thinking that people make their voting decisions the same way we would, if we were in their shoes. It's also possible that we construct post-hoc rationalizations for our voting decisions, that insert a whole I AM RATIONAL MAAAAAN veneer on the same fucking gut/tribal decision all the other schmucks are making.
― cuomo money, cuomo problems (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:03 (four years ago) link
He's going to need people to vote for him who are not Democratic primary voters
― symsymsym, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:05 (four years ago) link
A whole bunch of people have already voted for him despite this lack of a positive case for how he's going to improve their lives.
Not that many actually? And primarily people who would 'vote blue no matter who' regardless.
It's also possible that we construct post-hoc rationalizations
... or we could just be looking at historical elections and the forces that shaped them.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:06 (four years ago) link
thx M, I knew that was gonna be yr sillyass reply. never change
if I was jaymc i'd dig up yr post, but nah
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:10 (four years ago) link
the credulity w/r/t media motivation around these parts by otherwise intelligent posters is just confounding
For some reason it's conventional wisdom that employees of by News Corp, w/o explicit instructions, adapt to that culture for purposes of preserving a profitable political order; but those of Disney, TimeWarner, Comcast, National Amusements? Never!
― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:20 (four years ago) link
i wrote about politics for newspapers at one point in my life. if anything my editors and fellow journalists leaned left and they fiercely guarded their independence from the money side of the business. moreover major media orgs regularly report unfavorably about corporations and other major potential sponsors (not to mention the state). ilx opinions on the media are v shallow imho
― Mordy, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:21 (four years ago) link
this is what should scare you, yes.
― brechtian social distancing (Simon H.), Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:26 (four years ago) link
ilx opinions on the media are v shallow imho
handling ilx is a skill some posters have and others don't it's weird to blame ilx- an amorphous collection of many different ppl with many different beliefs and ideologies - over the poster
― ogmor, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:30 (four years ago) link
i am not blaming ilx for losing the democratic nomination or really for being anything other than what it is
― Mordy, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:30 (four years ago) link
you are making generalisations and inferring from them
― ogmor, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:31 (four years ago) link
"i wrote about politics for newspapers at one point in my life."
All is revealed.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 19:32 (four years ago) link