I got chastised in the other thread for saying the same thing:
“Biden’s answer to Trump isn’t systemic change that will make America a more equitable place. He’s not offering progressive policies like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. His is the vaguest and most centrist of battle cries: let’s go back to, you know, “all those good things”. Let’s go back to a time where racism was a little more polite and white people could pretend America was a post-racial society. Let’s fight for the soul of America by pretending that Trump is the problem, not just a symptom of the problem. Let’s pretend that Charlottesville was a direct result of Trump – an aberration – and not a product of a racism that has always existed in America. Let’s rewind the clock a few years to when everything was just fine and dandy” (The Guardian, 2019).
Wait, did it end well last time?
Weird; I thought it ended pretty F’n terribly.
My guy is the only one who can beat Trump - but he can’t win the primary. Can we just skip that?
Maybe spend a little time telling Dems why you deserve their vote?
Talking about who can beat Trump at this point is nonsense- no one knows. The question is who can unite Democratics.
I love it. Bland centrism lost last time. That means we shouldn’t react by looking for something else. Let’s go with bland centrism again!
Focus on today’s issues - no voter gives a crap about why you should have could have won last time - they care about what you stand for and what you’re going to do for them now.
The election is about the voters- not about a candidate not winning last time - and you know - he really deserved to win.
Here’s the problems and it is a simple one: For a lot of people, life in the US is really hard right now. This is a near-universal situation: if you aren’t very rich things pretty uniformly suck. Any candidate whose platform is basically ‘status quo but I’m not Trump’ is going to run into the fact that for very nearly everyone, the status quo is very bad.
Dear American Democrats: Run a reformer or lose. And when you do, we all do.
And today’s issues won’t be fixed by candidates who have nothing to offer us but bland assurances that if we only do what has utterly failed the country and do it harder somehow magically things will be better. Neoliberalism isn’t even trying to hide its true face anymore. It’s oligarchy and plutocracy and all the rest of the horrible dystopian shit. But it promises to be done by smarter people who pretend to give a shit about us some of the time. It got us into this mess. It is dedicated to continuing the mess. The idea that it is the solution to the mess is a lie which we can no longer afford.
Biden represents the problem. Just like Clinton the things he is willing to step up and own are disastrous, they’re just disastrous slightly slower than what the Republicans want. Anything he could conceivably do something helpful is hidden. Like Clinton it’s all “Elect me, then maybe I’ll tell you what I want to do.” That is not how you inspire voters. That is not the sign of someone with a vision that ends anywhere except with you and me as soylent green crackers to feed the Chosen Few who serve our Masters.
I’m not arguing over the candidates platform- I’m saying show the voters why they should vote for you - the horse race doesn’t speak to them.
I won’t be voting for someone who isn’t a strong progressive- but the guy whining about last time tells people he’s about himself- not you.
Let’s try again. The article is circular nonsense. Here’s what it said once you comb out the logic:
Clinton lost the last election
If we do anything differently this time we are trying to win the last election
That will fail
So we should not do anything differently
If we do the same thing harder BECAUSE it’s what failed last time
In other words, do the same thing harder even if it failed then and will probably fail now. Because attempting to learn from the past never works.
That is Chiroptera-Scat Hemiptera-Conjugating insane. The old white neoliberal failed, but she’s a woman, so going with an old white Progressive man is just trying to do the opposite of spite, so we need an old white neoliberal man as the candidate. The contortions involved in the argument would do credit to an octopus
The real message is “Neoliberals yesterday. Neoliberals today. Neoliberals tomorrow. The Party must be slightly smarter slightly less extreme Republicans now and forever no matter what.”
No thanks.
70% of Americans support Medicare for all.
58% support abortion options in all or most cases.
76% want higher taxes on the rich.
70% want to eliminate fossil fuel use.
2/3 support gay marriage.
And over half support trans rights.
75% think more immigration is a good thing.
And the party that allegedly favors all of those things lost a thousand elections during the previous administration. You know why? Because nobody believes they’ll actually follow through on anything.
The Republicans are basically the devil incarnate, but they tell their base they’re going to fight the Democrats and end abortion and restore the Confederacy take the country back, and god fucking damn them, but they make a big show every second of the day of doing exactly that. They give their base exactly what they promised, and keep doubling down for every inch further off the edge they go.
It absolutely dumbfounds me that the Democratic Party can be so insanely stupid, cynical, and bought that they aren’t willing to put forth a candidate who simply stands up and agrees with the overwhelming majority of voters. Jesus fucking Christ in a rubber bucket, pick a fucking battle and fight it. THE FUCKING NUMBERS ARE THERE. If you don’t have the fucking balls to say “yeah, we’re going to levy a billionaire tax to pay for everyone’s healthcare like three motherfucking quarters of the country is asking for”, you have no business being in the race at all.
I swear I’m gonna have an aneurysm if I don’t put a gun in my mouth before this shit show is over.
It’s because they always, ALWAYS move to what they call the “center” which means moving to the Right. They fight hard and viciously against Progressive candidates and have since at least the late 70s. When they’re in power they immediately give the Republicans most of what they want as an opening position and then negotiate away almost all the rest in the spirit of “bipartisanship”. We are constantly told that anything literally to the Left of Reagan is “too extreme” and any possible progress will be “incremental” and preferably after the next election, and the next, and the next.
After forty years of that the voters stop believing that you will do shit for them and stay home. And then the DLC/DNC/New Democrats/Republicans From Ten Years Ago screech and scold the voters for not being enthusiastic enough and wharrr-garble about how “For every Leftist we lose in the cities [by moving to the Right] we will pick up two in the suburbs” and “America is a Center-Right nation.” This is, of course, guaranteed to motivate the people you want to come out and vote for you.
The problem is, of course, that the Democratic Party started changing its focus from working and middle-class Americans in 1968 when it tossed the Unions out of the Inner Party and started courting billionaires and multinationals. They’ve let the Republicans control the narrative on the economic and class issues because they are fundamentally in agreement with them. Oh, they’re not actively stupid. That’s why they do a few vaguely sane things like trying to preserve Social Security and increase fuel efficiency standards. But they’ve never met a war or mass surveillance program they didn’t like and pushed hard to de-industrialize then nation for longer than many of us have been alive.
You can’t be the Hillary Clinton of 2020 without being a woman. Sadly.
I feel kinda bad for Elizabeth Warren who is far more interesting as a politician than Clinton ever was, but… I don’t feel any woman can win against Trump at this point.
At least that’s some truth from the other half of the global population, that you’ll never, ever, ever take women seriously.
Well beyond that. Let’s not forget that it was the DNC that ousted Henry Wallace before FDR’s final term giving us Harry Truman as president after his death. To think what could have been.
I mean, a woman won against trump last time. By about a million votes.
he’s only president because of a frankly undemocratic quirk of the electoral law that doesn’t make any rational sense in order to placate rural states with low economic and cultural output.
Many men don’t care… they only care that they aren’t emasculated by being led by a woman.
I honestly can’t think of anything less manly than bragging about how you won against a woman on a technicality most of the country doesn’t agree with.
