She wouldn’t be my first choice because I’m not as far to the left as much of the BBS community here, but she’s undoubtedly smart and talented, and I’d certainly vote for her if she got the nomination.
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Wasn’t that Bernie’s argument in the primary? Those voters didn’t turn out for him either, did they?
They didn’t turn out … in the primary. I don’t put that down simply to DNC rigging or the typical older and sclerotic Dem primary voter; there were failures in the Sanders campaign to draw enough young non-participating voters into the primaries.
General elections work differently, of course, and that’s what Sanders was talking about. If a Dem candidate in the post-Reagan era is talented enough to convince people who don’t usually vote that he’s offering something new and different and progressive he’ll make his margin – even if in reality he’s just offering the same old neoliberal globalist and M-I-C stuff and tacking further right. That’s what happened with Bill Clinton and Obama; Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry – who would have had trouble giving away free ice cream --couldn’t pull it off.
Ultimately, it’s a generational problem that the DNC has more and more trouble controlling with every passing election. They’re still talking about a return to the profligate “normalcy” of the post-war economic anomaly, with fewer and fewer voters over the age of 55 alive to think that economy and lifestyle is ever coming back and an increasing number of voters under that age who know for a fact it’s not coming back. Meanwhile, the GOP is responding to that situation by veering more and more toward fascism. One way or another, time and pressure will settle the matter.
So we have this nail-biter: can a bland backward-looking Third-Way candidate like Biden buy liberal democracy in America enough time so that more dynamic and forward-looking progressive Dem candidates – be they Sanders or Warren or Ocasio-Cortez or Abrams – have a chance to reform and take over the party? Or will Biden blow it and give the regime another four years to destroy liberal democracy and block out those progressive Dems forever?
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It’s full of the privileged ruling class.
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Legacy admissions means you get the same kind of jerk year after year.
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It will be interesting to see the numbers this fall. Given the craziness it may well “work” however unsound a strategy it is. Then they will be convinced it will keep working against someone other than Trump. I am sure those from the right who might consider Biden a necessary evil think Cotton is good enough.
And for those up thread hopeful that after Trump this shit is going to disappear. It is not. He is destroying your country and getting 40% support.
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I think it can work if it isn’t overtly patronizing. The Lincoln Project videos, to me, are bent in that direction. They are targeting veterans, women, the elderly, with really solid arguments.
I wish there was the equivalent for the religious side of things. I think someone could make some awesome christian point-of-view attack ads against mr grab-her-by-the-wherever.
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What was transferred from Europe to Africa was goods to pay for enslaved people.
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Another purely inquiring question:
Would the colonies have been unsuccessful if slavery had been illegal from the start? All of them?
Depends on what your definition of “success” is… Is America, built on enslavement and genocidal land acquisition “successful” as a country? Is “success” defined as building up a wealth disparity that is unprecedented in scope? Is “success” continued racism and poverty? Is “success” electing probably the worst and most corrupt president in history and then being unable to root him out, despite his obvious failures?
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When he says “necessary evil” does he mean it in the theological sense? Does he mean it like, “The fact that children get sick and suffer is a necessary evil that god allows in order to build our characters enough so that he can love us.” or some such nonsense? Maybe he means something like “God had to allow there to be slavery in order to raise up the true godly path of the American White Man and the sin of it therefore doesn’t exist.” or somesuch batshit?
I guess I mean successful in the sense that they would have continued to exist as colonies for the British.
He means that it was justifiable to kidnap Africans and force them to work because it build this country.
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Why is the existence of something “success”?
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This country would not have the wealth and power that it does currently had it not had the “benefit” of unchecked exploitation of an ‘enslaved worker’ class of people for nearly 300 years.
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Maybe “viable” would be a better word. I’m contrasting it with “failed” where a failed colony is one that the colonists later abandon like Roanoke.
Why? I mean I like to think that businesses that don’t exploit their workers tend to do better in the long run. That might just be an optimistic fantasy but it isn’t obviously false to me. Is it not possible that the southern plantations would have adapted some other successful economic strategy?
The colonies existed for quite a while without what we think of as “chattel slavery”. James town was founded in 1607, and the first slaves were not brought in until 1619, and early on slaves were treated as indentured servants until the 1630s/40s when laws which created the racial categories began to be established. Many of the colonies were well-established prior to the introduction of race-based slavery, and then some colonies even banned the slave trade prior to the founding of the country.
The existence of something doesn’t mean it HAD to be that way.
Of course it is. You’re not asking that question, you’re asking others to do the work for you of bringing to attention alternatives to the system that our country was built on. If YOU have an alternative to that, feel free to share it.
But the point is that Tom Cotton is justifying slavery. It’s as plain as day that that is what he’s doing here.
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The answer to that is almost certain that the situation would have been radically different. While “better” is subjective (a huge fucking BETTER for slaves full stop, probably better economics for the masses (better) but not for landowners in the end (worse)). Either way, it doesn’t make slavery “necessary”, just “easy” and “low-effort”.
Expand that thinking out to countries - have countries that have not engaged in the manipulation of workers (or maybe “who did so less”, since I’m not sure if there are countries who did not engage in worker exploitation to some extent at some point?) doing better than those that did, in the long run?
Again, it’s going to come down to the definiition of “better”.
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Right?
Again, I’m of the mind that the existence of something in the past does not justify it. It still needs to be explained, but part of studying history is meant to be seeking out alternatives to what came before for something more equitable and just.
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