When a good ol Uncle Joe says it, it’s just a “gaffe.” But when a Muslim woman says something not nearly as bad, it’s a reason to call for not just her job, but her head.
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So we’re adding anti-Semitic slurs to the list, eh?
I get that people at the top of the Democratic party know Joe. I get that he’s a good guy and they can’t square their idea of what “a racist” or a “a chauvanist” or “an anti-Semite” is with Joe. But are they totally blind to the red flags?
I just find this so galling. Like suppose you know someone who is a really good guy but who has a murder conviction. I’m not saying you shouldn’t like your friend who committed a murder, but I surely there is someone else who is qualified to be president who doesn’t have that hanging over their head.
You’re telling me that even in a million old white guys you can’t find one who didn’t win the triple crown* of: anti-Semitic slur; chummy with segregationists; publicly attacked a victim of sexual harassment?
Did a lot of old white guys do things of the sort that Joe is in trouble for? Hell yes they did! But is it so crazy to think you ought to be looking for an exceptional person to run for president? If we could put good-president-possibility on a single axis, the top 100 candidates would be five standard deviations out on in.
Republicans ran idiots and Democrats ran the “well you have to vote for us or you’ll get the idiot”. Finally when Republicans ran the biggest idiot, racist, monster of them all the “you have to vote for us” thing didn’t work. Now Democrats want to run that strategy back. Joe wants to rewind to 2008. But we all know how that ended: eight years later a crazy racist fascist narcissist became president. That’s how it will end again, you crazy idiots!
* In university we joked that the “triple crown” was eating at KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut in one day. That’s about how gross Joe makes me feel.
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As long as the prez helps to keep the money rolling in and the masses divided and mad at each other instead of the oligarchs, the oligarchs are fine with the switch back and forth from Republican to Republican Lite.
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exactly
DNC has to get the fuck out of the way
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With respect, “status quo” would only be centrist if the US Government had been centrist all along. Its firmly right wing neoliberal economic policy that’s been used for the past several decades is anything but centrist.
Democrats have effectively been a right-of-center party since the 1970s ever since it turned its back on the labor movement.
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Stolen seats on the Supreme Court demonstrate otherwise.
Let’s hear a little less about being given candidates and more about how to work to ensure better candidates are nominated. (I think Warren is that better candidate, but you do you—so long as you do.)
You’re not supposed to be given a reason to vote. You’re supposed to show up and vote regardless. Demanding a party give you an ideal candidate without participating every single time is how we got here.
But should Biden does get the nomination and you can’t see the difference between Biden and Trump then your politics are too superficial to be trusted to begin with. Don’t tell people that it “doesn’t matter” — it’s not true, and it’s not how things work.
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I normally loathe political cartoons, but this one sneaks into my feed:
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Yeah. Depends on what means by “centrist,” I guess. The center of the Overton Window is of different from an earlier version of centrism.
I dearly wish that the neoliberal shift you note were more common knowledge.
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Sure, but the point is, many other whom you and I have no control over people simply won’t get out and vote for the same old warmed over plate of poo. A lot of people saw HRC that way, and they’d see Uncle Joe that way too.
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Then we all get the government we deserve.
Yeah, a lot of people will. So what? There’s value is in getting them to vote strategically nonetheless. We don’t need to change their minds, just get them to vote.
Those who say “it doesn’t matter” have surrendered to a lie.
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“Just vote for who we tell you to despite your feelings about our candidate 2020” is not a winning ticket
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But it’s better than “you can get whatever you want by only voting for candidates you do feel good about.”
If you don’t vote, you’ve voted—for your opposition.
At some point, those people are going to have to grow up and move on and get over the fact they can’t get everything they want, and that if they can get 10% by voting for their less than ideal choice, that is still more a win than 0%.
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This is obviously false (as in, does not accord with reality), and only appears true because most people’s primary goal is to avoid the candidate they can’t tolerate winning, even if it means a candidate they actively dislike wins.
This line of reasoning has created a cover for people in power to offer less and less to the people who elect them every election. A rational person gives their mugger their wallet because their life is worth more than their money. A rational person doesn’t tell other people to grow up and feel better about getting mugged.
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Explain how anyone who doesn’t vote gets what they want, then.
Jesus Fire Emblem Restarting Christ, I thought you people were smarter than this. It is not so much a line of reasoning as it is a description of what can happen if you vote regardless of how you feel.
What you are saying gives cover for folk to not vote —which, categorically, I am against, in case it’s not clear.
Politics is not about rationality. If people acted rationally and acted in their best interest, Democrats would have shown up in 2010 and 2014 and all of this would be moot — but that is not the reality we now face.
You want a better candidate than Biden? Don’t rely on me to do the work for ten, get ten to help me during the nomination process.
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I was thinking about this in the car this morning.
Two thoughts:
- Voters are responsible for participating in the voting process to improve their community.
- Politicians are responsible for the campaign they run and the results their effort generates.
Encouragement for #1 should not be a shield to ignore #2.
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Lots of people get what they want without voting. They simply get it (or don’t get it) at the whims of other people instead of throwing their own sliver of power in. Still, your point that 0 = -1 is plainly false. Maybe it feels like a useful metaphor to you to get out the vote.
[emphasis mine] I’m not a representative of the site or the commentariat here. You aren’t arguing with the Boing Boing hive mind.
If your point is that everybody should get out and vote for a rabid weasel over Trump I think you’ll find that the USians in this thread would do just that. But that’s a different point than telling people to “grow up” because they can’t always get what they want.
I think if Americans acted in their own interests both the Democratic and the Republican party would have been consigned to history quite a few elections ago. Neither party looks after the American people.
Gore lost, Kerry lost, Clinton lost. Solid candidates with credentials manage losses against incredible odds. Trying the same strategy over and over while telling the electorate to “grow up” is not working. I’m not going to be illegally voting in a US election, so you can’t count on my help to choose someone else in the primary or the general. But I do think that Biden is a choice that loses in the long term, even if he wins in 2000, which I think is a lot less certain that people believe.
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Yeah, I’m sure addressing them as if they’re children is totally going to help.
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I’m taking 2018 as a hopeful sign that liberal American voters have grown up (by which I mean millennials: the unicorn-farters and firebaggers from my age cohort are probably a lost cause).
Of course, conservative activists learned this lesson 40 years ago, so we going to need some fraction of their patience and determination if we’re going to turn this thing around.
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By voting for the same old plate of Uncle Joe Poo?
Good luck with that.
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So all the kids and latinos who showed up to vote in 2018 for less than ideal candiates like Kirsten Sinema were making a stupid mistake?
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