Cruz very explicitly had as an explicit goal the functional end of our democracy. He basically believes the only purpose of government is to enforce religious and cultural norms. He wants to actively destroy the rest of it, and his actions are completely in keeping with that desire.
I don’t see any possible way Trump could be worse for the country than Cruz would have been, except insofar as he probably has a better chance than Cruz in the general.
Do you mean to say that only one of them was forced to do something they didn’t actually want to do?
And I don’t mean vote for a war of aggression, as accurate as that also would be.
I don’t think “myth” is quite the right term. Nader swung both FL and NH to Bush. There were a lot of factors that installed Bush, but Nader’s choice to campaign hard in swing states with mind-bogglingly dishonest propaganda did persuade naive voters who would have otherwise voted Dem. It was was one of the many, but if he hadn’t been a spoiler Gore would have won (so too if so many people hadn’t been disenfranchised, if the lapdog media hadn’t been campaigning for Bush and against Gore, if the SCOTUS hadn’t stepped in, etc.).
oh stop it
To believe the claim by Nader that Bush & Gore were literally identical was naive, yet not only was that claim made, but I heard supporters repeat it. He minimized the harm Bush would cause in ways that only the naive or willfully misinformed could have swallowed, and justified helping Bush by saying “things have to get worse to get better,” which could only be persuasive to the naive, since as we saw, reality doesn’t work that way. While only revealed later, privately he told people he was working primary to defeat Gore, and it was clear from his campaign tactics that’s what he was doing. Naive is a generous term, really.
(You’d also have to be something to back the Green Party candidate when the Dems. were running the most environmentally aware candidate they have every run, but that’s a separate story.)
Do you mean to say that only one of them was forced to do something they didn’t actually want to do?
No.
There were other choices; they didn’t win.
I was criticising the attitude that any vote not for Hillary was for Trump, and the lack of understanding that anyone to the left of Bernie is unlikely to want to vote for Hillary as she currently is.
As for me, I have never hidden that I have anarcho-communist leanings. I made the decision to be supportive of Bernie rather than criticise him for what he isn’t, but now he’s almost certainly lost there’s nothing left for me. I can’t vote anyway.
What anyone else does in the election in November is their business, but I’m out. I’ve got other battles to fight.
If you believe Bernie when he says he wants to bring Democratic Socialism back to politics, and has the means to do so, why wouldn’t you believe him when he says “please don’t write me in; defeating Trump is paramount”?
Why do you think it’s about belief? This is about following the exact same agenda that made you a Sanders supporter in the first place, to the best of your abilities. If you can’t get Bernie as nominee, you go for the next best thing, whatever that might be. And if you don’t think that beating Trump is paramount, then you follow whatever is.
For me, there are lesser evils I won’t vote for as well. Trump is one. In the long term, the damage that a Clinton presidency is likely to do is greater, in my mind, than a Trump presidency. The latter would likely go wrong in spectacular and public ways, will the former will continue corrupt, back-door politics &c. in ways which are not public.
So, if the choice is between Clinton and Trump, I’d prefer Trump, due to long-term considerations.
But I won’t vote for someone I consider to be more than 49% evil. My lesser evils must not only be less evil than their alternative but also less evil than good in of themselves.
So you’re white then? /s
i am also a texan, and yes cruz is truly a loathsome individual. one of the few things john boehner and i are in complete agreement on is his opinion of ted cruz. i understand the nature of the audience here at bb and i knew going in that my post above would be less than popular but it drives me crazy to read or hear people acting as if a democrat, well to the left of any of the republicans running for president, is “just as bad as trump.” the attitude that gets expressed too, along the lines of “we need to heighten the contradictions by electing trump, a few years of complete republican control will show the people how horrible that is and then we can elect or magic unicorn to make things right.” there are millions of real people who stand to be broken under the wheels of that cart and it is a tragedy that it seems so hard for some progressives to get that.
was i a clinton partisan 6 months ago? no. am i a clinton partisan now that she is the candidate of the democratic party running against trump? you better believe i am.
WTF? He speaks out against Israeli state abuse of Palestinians! That’s very far away from the status quo for US politicians on the national stage.
For example?
As has Clinton, though in her role as a negotiator heading the state department there is a limit to what she could say in public (most of it came after). Their actual policies on what is and isn’t acceptable, what should and shouldn’t be on the table, are almost identical.
Ugh. Your efforts to claim their positions are basically the same lead you to make all sorts of distortions.
In SO MANY WAYS, Clinton is pro-establishment, Sanders anti-establishment. Why is that so hard to admit?
There is a vast difference between Sanders and Clinton on Israel. Make no mistake. A President Hillary Clinton would strengthen Israel’s noose around the necks of the Palestinian people. She would not be an honest broker in any process to bring peace to that region.
Ugh. Your efforts to claim their positions are basically the same lead you to make all sorts of distortions.
They are the one who claim their positions, you don’t seem to actually be aware of what they are, more interested as you are in psychoanalyzing them and looking at the past.
A different analysis of that same debate btw: Here is Clinton and Sanders's remarkable exchange on Israel-Palestine — and why it matters - Vox
In SO MANY WAYS, Clinton is pro-establishment, Sanders anti-establishment. Why is that so hard to admit?
It’s not hard for me to admit, it just hasn’t been particularly relevant to any of my discussion thus far. I don’t expect anti-establishment people to have favoured Clinton over Sanders, but I do expect them to be smart enough to not fall for Trump’s faux anti-establishment performance due to their largely irrational hatred of Clinton (given that while she might not be an ideal candidate for these people, her actual policies are far far far closer to Sanders’ than Trump’s are). For many people this might not be relevant, they can safely not bother voting for her in the general election and she’ll win their state anyway, it could well be important in certain states though.
I’m biased, since I disliked Nader pre-2000 (he was always dishonest, even in the 60s), and grew to loathe him when he made up false justifications for campaigning towards young progressives in swing states before the election. These days he’s openly racist on top of it all. This letter from the time enumerates some of Nader’s lies, there were more than the limited set there:
Read the CONCERNED SCHOLARS, WRITERS, ARTISTS AND ACTIVISTS 2000 section.
The most noxious lie was repeatedly claiming Bush and Gore were the same, which was objectively false, but which his self-proclaimed progressive followers/voters naively repeated. His justification for helping Bush by saying things have to get worse to get better, was also popular among supporters, and was probably the second most noxious. I sincerely believe his main goal was seeing Gore lose, which is something some Nader campaign insiders also believed based on things Nader said internally.
So much hearsay and opinion, so little attention to his actual work and record.
Racism? By today’s new standards, maybe, but he’s in his seventies. Like Sanders, he’s clearly for policies that help all working people, including those who aren’t white. Unlike most “liberals” who talk about race, he recognizes and speaks against its classist utility for the elite.
I guess since he’s further to the left than most political figures, he’s supposed to be more pure? Less human? Funny how liberals get more worked up about Nader’s slipups and supposed racism than Clinton’s"super predator " bs AND accompanying de facto racist policies.
I usually like what you write here, but we clearly differ in this one!
Without disrespect to you or wanting to put on a troll hat, I don’t really believe Clinton is that keen on campaign finance reform despite her nebulous lip service and behavior. As the ad nauseum cliche goes, “actions speak louder than words”.
