No, it makes fundamentally worthless for progress to occur. But that’s the end game for liberals, just keep things afloat enough to not affect their bank accounts.
If your moral purity means you cannot make allies, and always are angry and disappointed seeing the cup half empty rather than half full, then you will ALWAYS lose. That has been the political reality of this country since its inception.
Hillary’s arrogance towards the left and refusal to meet half way and offer something of meaning to them cost her the election. She has her own moral purity issues that she couldn’t put aside. When left wingers working within the Democrats are being told they should leave and start a new party by third way liberals there is a problem, and it isn’t with the left.
It seems like the establishment Democrats are better at capitulating to Republicans than negotiating within their own party. They are acting as if Millennials are still college age unreliable voters when half of them are mid 20s to mid-30s and having a hard time, and they are failing to see the demographic shift.
Seeing the cup half empty would be a vast improvement for a lot of people and third way liberalism is failing to deliver meaningful improvements to their lives. Offering us more of the same won’t win anything.
Shouting abuse at those who felt they were pushed away won’t bring them back to your side. That is why WE are losing.
Fuck, I feel like Brian trying to negotiate between the Peoples front of Judea and the Campaign for Free Galilee.
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All that righteous Purity means absolutely nothing when you’re sitting on the sidelines and The Barbarians are pillaging the country. Enjoy.
Tell Hillary that, not the people who are trying to find a solution.
BTW, purity in my case is close to anarcho-communism. I have never demanded that from Bernie or Hillary. Trying to meet Hillary half way is like Zeno’s paradox though.
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Why don’t you tell it to all the people getting robbed, hurt, and killed by this beast in office and his minions, that it’s all really okay because your moral Purity is intact, and that’s the most important thing.
I first voted in 1980 and I don’t think I have ever cast a vote for a Federal candidate that wasn’t anything but just “least bad that could actually win”. That’s realism rather than idealism.
For reference, regarding who I said was the better option to vote for:
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Well your strategy of being practical doesn’t mean anything either. Trump won. You think that if everyone just did what you think is best then things would be better. Other people think that if everyone just did what they think is best things would be better.
You say we shouldn’t beat up on people who mostly agree with us, but basically the only thing you’ve done in this thread is tell people who you think mostly agree with you how wrong they are.
I’m pretty sure that giving a pejorative name “moral purity” to other people having their own opinions isn’t making it better.
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How does voting for neither major candidate make things better?
I think we should probably both start by acknowledging that there’s nothing I can say that will convince you that there is any point in choosing not to vote for a major candidate. I have no interest in convincing you of anything, but I’ll try to answer your question.
In 2016 the platform for the democrats did not include introducing a single-payer healthcare system. A few months ago I heard that pretty much everyone considering a run for the democrats in 2020 was coming out in favour of single-payer health care, because politically it’s seen as kind of a necessity. Individual races have shown a number of firsts, like the first openly transgender candidate winning (over an openly transphobic incumbent). Senator Gillibrand has sworn off corporate PACs. People are getting energized to effect real change.
The people who couldn’t vote for Clinton because they thought she was a corporatist are getting what they want. It worked. The Trump situation is terrible, but it can’t just be blamed on people who cast their vote in the last election, it’s the result of decades leading up the point that American became a literal kakistocracy where both parties picked their least-liked candidate and then the least-liked of those two won. Maybe if progressives had abandoned the Democrats sooner then America would be better off.
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I’m sure the people who will die because they lost Healthcare, or if Trump starts a nuclear war, will find your “long game” rationalization very reassuring.
I’m sure the people who still wouldn’t have gotten healthcare under Hillary, or would have continued to go hungry because she wouldn’t touch the minimum wage, or the kids in the middle east she’d continue to bomb, or the people in prisons because she doesn’t care about reform, or any number of people Hillary didn’t care about wouldn’t have been particularly happy either.
Again:
She was a worthless candidate and anybody still standing for her is an idiot.
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You seem lost in the distinction between candidate and party. I stand for a Democratic Administration rather than a Republican one. Republican administrations can be depended on to do more evil than Democrats. I always vote for Less evil. Who the president is actually has much less to do with it. Whether it a basically competent technocrat like George HW Bush or complete asshole like Trump, the party machine is what rules. The majority of what’s going on in DC now would be no different under any of the GOP candidates. And had Bernie won the presidency he’d have found himself herding Democratic cats, just like many Democratic presidents before him.
The idea that thinking long term is something to be dismissed is a little incredible. I think there’s a broad concensus that thinking long term is better than stumbling from crisis to crisis (and American elections have basically all been crises since at least 2000).
My country formalized our current universal healthcare in 1984, replacing piecemeal arrangements from the past. This happened largely because the ruling party was worried that a third party that stood for healthcare might start to pick up steam if they didn’t act. All those people who voted for that third party - who made them seem important enough to worry about - they are the reason my family and I have healthcare today.
If you want to use a pejorative to describe people who tell you what worked elsewhere, I’m not sure “moral purist” fits the bill.
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I’ve met quite a few Millennials who seem to think that long-term thinking is downright evil. Their reasoning seems to be, “there’s no hope at all for us in the long term, so let’s confine our thinking to things that will best prolong our comfort in the short term, rather than wasting time on false long-term prospects that will just send us down the toilet sooner.”
Presuming that your country is parliamentary because most sane countries are, the function of more than two parties is completely different than in the US. Our coalitions are formed before the election rather than after. Therefore refusing to be part of a coalition leaves you completely voiceless.
Too bad you don’t live here so that you can tell the people suffering that you believe it’s worth it and it’ll be okay in the long run.
Given that the party chair was for all intents and purposes a Clinton staffer during the primaries, it’s understandable. Furthermore, the candidate’s tone-deafness, complacency, pursuit of big-money donors, and refusal to acknowledge that it’s not 1992 anymore was and to a certain extent still is reflected in the attitudes of many in the party establishment.
If you want a Democratic administration or Congressional majority in the future then you should be demanding that the party listen to Sanders supporters (especially Millenials) rather than brushing them off as petulant sore losers. Otherwise, it’ll just be more instances of the party acting like nothing has changed, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory time and time again unless they luck into candidates with the charisma of Obama or Bill Clinton.
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I said earlier I’m not trying to convince you of anything. The only thing I’m convincing you of is that you are smarter and more moral than I am. You don’t need to try to bully me into feeling bad.
I am not the judge of what’s worth what to Americans. Americans who vote in American elections are. All I’m saying is that I’m not so down on people who decide to use their vote in a democracy to express their own democratic will. I didn’t even get a vote in the American election, there’s no point blaming me.
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