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The millennial left is tired of waiting: How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff is working to build a generational movement
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- Title
- The Millennial Left Is Tired of Waiting
- Authors
- Ben Judah
- Published
- Jul 25 2019
- Word count
- 2400 words
I'm 32, and this hits the nail on the head for me. My first political memory is of Bill Clinton having something called "impeachment" done to him because of something called a "blowjob". 9/11 happened a week into my freshman year of high school. I have vivid memories of my high school world history teacher, as we were learning about ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, also showing us the progress of the Iraq war in the same region. I graduated college in June 2008 and the entire world economy went to shit a few months later.
I have zero faith in Boomer political leaders. Trump, both Clintons, Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Pelosi are all in their 70s. Bring me Pete Buttigieg, bring me AOC, bring me somebody who understands that the 21st century is actually fundamentally different from the 20th.
36 here, and I largely agree with you, but I would not lump Sanders in with the rest. Check out his history on CSPAN, he's been railing against this neoliberal, warkhawk agenda since he began his political career.
He demonstrates that it's "not all Boomers," but rather just the boomers (and earlier) were willing to sell out their/future generations for a quick buck that are the problem.
He's the only one fully talking about class warfare, which is the hidden cause of the majority of our societal issues.
Generalizing baby boomers as disconnected and oblivious is exactly the same thing as generalizing millennial as entitled and narcissistic. Judge the candidate on an individual basis, based on their proposals, attitude, and record.
Yeah, there's some heavy ageism going on here in this thread. I can understand the sentiment that someone who is older might come with some concerns and criticisms -- that's okay. But if you want to weigh someone's age as the sole purpose for not voting for them? I'm not okay with that. As you say, "it's no different than generalizing millennials" is spot on. Just because he's older doesn't mean he can't empathize and learn about concerns dealing with our generation or with technology.
Saying, "okay, well post-9/11 neoliberalism is what I'm concerned with! Bernie doesn't understand that!" is kind of self-centered, my-experiences-are-more-meaningful-than-yours. Bernie has been fighting the neoliberal machine for decades now. To say that he can't inspire our generation when he did just that in 2016 is also pretty short sighted.
I often re-call Nathan Robinson's arguments on the subject because I feel he summarizes them well in this article:
I believe that diversity is an important characteristic of any elected body that's supposed to represent its diverse constituent. In all aspects of life. Having lawmakers who combine know or think of the ins and outs of all the situations they're creating the laws for is a huge strength. It's a prerequisite for balancing different concerns against each other.
There's a difference between sympathizing and empathizing with something and having lived that reality.
Congress would be just as dysfunctional if it didn't have broad representation of
and all the other things I'm forgetting off the top of my head.
I think we're saying that a young person who's lived the same reality that young people have in many cases is a better person to represent those young people, while others are often best represented by people with other similar characteristics/views/combinations that match them.
We often empathize most strongly with those who resemble us closely. It feels more personal. For that reason alone, having an old person represent a young movement is probably not the best strategy unless they tick a ton of other boxes that combine to being an overall better candidate in the view of the movement one's trying to attract.
Howdy friend -- just wanna say that was a very well written comment and I agree with the overall sentiment that diversity is a core tenant of democracy (and also want to point out that the US is doing a pretty poor job at it, but at least it's getting slightly better, albeit it way too slowly). Also want to point out that, at 28 years old, I am a millennial but I don't want to imply that the things I say should be taken as a generalization of my/our generation.
While I agree with the overall sentiment of diversity, I disagree with the level that age should play in politics and think we need to move beyond glorifying identity politics for the sake of identities. Would I like to have someone in the white house that is gay, like Pete Buttigieg? Absolutely! But do I think that hiring a former Goldman Sachs executive as your national policy director is the way forward in the crisis of our generation of fighting neoliberalism? Fuck no! Would I love to have the first African-American female in the white house in Kamala Harris? Hell yeah! Am I thrilled about the prospect of having someone in the white house that threatened to incarcerate parents of truant children and laughed about it in 2010? Fuck no!
Again, I'm all about diversity, but diversity for the sake of diversity in deciding a candidate is such a low bar. Do I think that there is a perfect candidate that ticks all the boxes? Nope. But for me, voting on candidates that have the best history of moving the needle towards a more equitable future, that want to fight systemic poverty, which would in turn allow for a future with more diversity? All for it. I think that history, policies, and paths forward should speak higher than identity politics.
I've share this article before, but I think it really speaks better than I can on what I'm trying to say:
Current Affairs -- How Identity Became A Weapon Against the Left
I like to think about diversity in much the same way the Norwegian government does when it throws around its ownership stakes in different companies across the world (through the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world that owns something like 1.3% of all the stocks in the world) .
The less diverse a board or company leadership is, the more important it is that the next person placed in those leadership positions has a different background. The more homogeneous a board is, the more value you add by adding new and different perspectives into the meetings or boardrooms where decisions are made. That means weighting background more and other qualifications less to find the right mix for the specific position you're filling at that point in time.
In the words of the Norwegian minister for trade and industry in a debate program earlier this month:
I believe this to be even more true in politics than in business, because your main qualification as a politician is being a representative of others and making decisions on their behalves. That's a package with a host of various skills that can come from all sorts of experiences, demeanors, personalities, and roads taken in life.
A quick response to that last article you linked and similar views:
Surely most people can see that in a room filled entirely of white people, it's very likely the most qualified person to fill the next open seat in that room will be some person of color? Or in a boardroom of all women, chances are the right candidate for the next open seat would be a man?
Surely people don't think that shareholders and companies that maximize shareholder value at the expensive of human rights, environment, worker health etc. would pick someone to fill a role to be "politically correct" rather than that minority candidate of some sort being the best candidate for that position at that time? At least not after having the issue presented this way.
I get that it's uncomfortable that a different background can be a real qualification because many parts of our backgrounds we can't choose ourselves. Other parts of our backgrounds stem from choices we made years ago and can't change now.
As things stand, writing off identity politics as "bad" indirectly furthers and underpins the classical (predominantly white, upper class and male) identity system in place today. I think the fact that those belonging to (or aspiring to) that group being the ones to predominantly share concerns over identity politics as a problem is just another example of how different living an experience and feeling it on your body is from empathizing with those groups.
Otherwise I think we underestimate how much our circumstances and upbringing affects who we end up becoming and what we view as normal, whoever we are and wherever we come from. Otherwise people who share experiences living in a different culture for an extended amount of time don't all seem to say they learned so much about their own culture that they'd never thought of by being entirely immersed and a part of a different one.
Woah there -- I think you missed the first part of my reply that said that diversity is a core tenant of democracy. But if you want make rash generalizations about people that talk about "identity politics" being bad, then I think we're not going to get far in our discussion here.
It's clear that, to you, diversity is of the highest order priority. I'd strongly say that, to me, electing someone that will be able to dismantle systemic injustices (creating more diversity for future populations who've been marginalized throughout the history of the US), fighting neoliberalism (which continues to put working class people around the world further into poverty while the rich get richer) is my priority. Take care of the root causes to fix the branches and leaves. To vote for someone SOLELY because of any form of identity politics while not taking their past politics or future goals into account is folly.
I campaigned for, and celebrated when, Obama was elected. But what we got was a moderate/centrist in "progressive" clothing that continued to ramp up war crimes of his past administration, began the foundation to separate families at the border, fully supported capitalism, failed to get much done when his entire party controlled the house and senate in an effort of "bipartisanship", and hired former Clinton campaign-folk and strong neo-liberals (ex. John Podesta; Tim Geithner) who downplayed progressive policies he campaigned on. Obama was certainly a cult of personality and was well liked, and his presidency was a major step towards a society that has consistently and systematically marginalized people of color, but beyond the medicaid expansion and his overall stats at lowering unemployment (in my opinion), he really failed to change any systemic racism and/or poverty on any drastic levels.
To illustrate what I'm talking about: Imagine you have a boardroom that controls a for profit prison system. You might celebrate and clap when there is representation on that board of people from the LGBT community, people who are women, or people of other races. I say that doesn't matter in the end who is on the board, because prisons themselves are an institution of power, particularly against poor and minority populations in the US. As such, prisons need to be dismantled.
Now, if someone who says to dismantle the industrial prison complex in the US is black (a la Michelle Alexander, Ta Nehisi Coates, plenty of community organized groups, etc.), sure, I think it's important to-- and we should absolutely-- listen to their voices even more, since they can reflect learned experience. But Eric Holder, the US's first African-American attorney general under Obama, only ever issued small guideline changes while maintaining structural, racist biases. Compare that to Philadelphia's AG, Larry Krasner, who is white, who has declined to prosecute many low-level offenses for petty crimes among African-Americans, and is actively working to end criminalization of all drug possession.
That said, I think we just have to agree to disagree here.
As I read it, the point where we disagree is how heavily identity matters in the large mix of qualifications for a position.
To me that point is exactly where diversity goes from being a great ideal in principle to actually mattering in practice. Diversity isn't something to look at only when candidates are extremely closely matched in their qualifications elsewhere.
When the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world explicitly states that their identified best method of maximizing revenue is to set a firm target of at least 40% representation of men and women across all levels of leadership where they have voting rights, that's an incredibly strong signal from someone who owns over 1% of all the shares in the world by value.
Further, the fund has goals for identifying younger candidates, and people with different backgrounds and identities for leadership positions.
(For comparison 23.7% of the 116th congress are women. In Norway, this is 40,8%. Further, the average age of first term representatives in the House in the 115th congress 57,8 years, compared to 43,9 years for incoming members to the Norwegian parliament after the 2013 election)
Essentially, the message is that there are enough qualified people you get to have someone who's obviously qualified for the position and and a background different to everyone else in the room. No one is so many heads and shoulders better a candidate than others that we have to pick exactly that person.
Many people would do excellent jobs on the Supreme Court, but didn't get nominated. I'd argue it's just the same for the presidency. Judges are picked with age as an important qualification because the position is life-time. The same goes for the gender and background of the judges. To me there's absolutely no reason the same weighting used in the judicial branch can't be used in both the legislative and executive branches too.
There are way too many smart and experienced people that we always have to land on that old, manly and white one.
I'm going to be honest, I'm not following the part of your comment about the largest sovereign wealth fund. I don't know about, nor care about, the Norweigan parliament and think that it doesn't have much to do with what we're talking about in terms of diversity of the US politics. That's cool they have a goal to have a diverse board though?
I'm really not sure that what you're getting at here makes logical sense. Age is an important factor in SCOTUS, as you said, because it is a lifetime appointment. But to say that should apply to any other US branch that are not lifetime appointments is kind a leap in rationale.
I couldn't agree more! But voting for someone because of their race/gender/age/(dis)ability status/whatever alone borders on tokenism. Let's get those smart and experienced people -- who want to fight systemic inequalities (i.e. who want to challenge capitalism and/or systemic inequalities) -- into the race to challenge Bernie! I've already said in previous comments issues with some other candidates (specifically O'Rorke & Harris) and I'd support Warren a lot more if she wasn't a die-hard capitalist (or even just didn't say that as much). But to discount him on age and age alone? I stand by my statement that it's ageism.
I agree, and Bernie doesn't have fewer experiences because he's older, he has different ones. The issues that millennials grew up with are different than the issues that Gen Zers are currently growing up with also. That doesn't mean that millennials are out of touch, or that they don't have a good understanding of what needs to be done to help the world, it just means that they have different experiences.
Likewise, millennials don't have experience fighting Jim Crow laws, the initial debate of Roe v Wade, or Nixon's impeachment, while Bernie does. To say that our experiences growing up with the internet or the Iraq war or the PATRIOT act are more relevant, or superior to the things that older people grew up dealing with is just naive. Besides that, presidents need to not only be able to deal with the things that were familiar to them in their formative years, but to react to new things as they pop up. Even if a Millennial or Gen Xer got elected in 2020, the issues that plague 2021 will be very different than that affected the world even as recently as 1990. The ability to adapt to that change is what makes a good leader.
Those are all more relevant to 2019 than your examples. Does anyone over 60 aside from the early pioneers understand computers and the internet the way people under 30 do? Computers are unlike any technology in the history of humanity.
Yeah, of course, is that a real question? I work with network engineers and developers in their 60s that could rattle off what IP and TCP headers are, and how they will be routed through a massive, complex network just by looking at the binary, meanwhile, most of my friends in their late 20s have no idea how to do anything with computers besides logging into facebook. Being young doesn't give you a special insight into technology.
You're comparing people who work in the industry (who fall under my "early pioneers" definition) to random people. I can provide an anecdote too, my parents are 60 and both work in tech but don't know how to do things I would consider basic. Being young only gives you insight into technology in that you've grown up with it and that makes young people a lot more tech-savvy for some reason.
They weren't pioneers, but yeah, they do work in the industry. Most people who don't work with it don't actually know anything about technology though. Your average young person may know how to do basic things like clearing their cookies more often than your average older person, but that's by no means a hard rule. Generalizing people based on their age is just as silly as generalizing them based on their gender or race. I don't like when people do it with young people or old people. What's so difficult about judging people on an individual basis?
Most people under the age of 35 don't really understand computers, honestly. They understand media consumption.
If they understood computers, it wouldn't have taken them/take them by surprise that giant tech companies are always looking for ways to commoditized them, or that governments will spy on citizens if able, technically.
I think it's lack of caring more than lack of understanding. There are plenty of tech-savvy 20- and 30-somethings who have Amazon Echoes and those sorts of things who are fully aware that they're being watched.
Just because they use a tech doesn't mean they understand it. My grandma uses a Firestick, but doesn't really understand how it works, and even points the remote at the TV still.
It's very likely millennials use the tech, but don't really understand it. Even "Full stack devs" in the millennial group hit this wall. I had one who super confused about why DNS was failing (Using a service name somewhere the service doesn't live, and had no idea what a FQDN was or a CNAME). Another "full stack dev" was confused why they couldn't hit IPs outside of their subnets, and didn't understand there is a such a thing as a non-routable network.
They can build a responsive we app, though, but plugging things together. They don't really understand why those parts work together, though, or how to build their own parts.
I've noticed this. People who grew up wrangling IRQs and strange hardware in the 80s, then dealing with broken operating systems and the fledgling internet in the 90s, have already forgotten more than most people under the age of 35 will ever know about computing. Today's systems have become fisher-price toys. Everything is handed over to the cloud without a single thought. All you do is tap on pretty icons, there's no comprehension of the hardware. There's no understanding of what life was like before the internet existed.
That's not to say young people can't know or learn these things. It's just that there's no longer a need to know them just to access the technology or the internet anymore. The old barriers to computing are long gone.
Btw, millennials are up to 38 years old (b. 1981) by pew and a bunch of other generation measurements. Where the young side ends is up for debate, with dates ranging from 1996 to like 2004, but that’s common when the ‘young’ generation’s characteristics aren’t yet clearly distinct.
One guess I have for a sharp distinction between millennials and Gen Z (other than millennials getting the better name for now) is that millennials in many cases grew up with the technology we have, as that technology was being learned by everyone and improved. Gen Z people have more finished products that are typically more user friendly.
To put that difference another way, millennials had to teach themselves how best to use the new technology that came up with them while Gen Z types can use that energy on other things. So I’m a little concerned about your under 30 comment here.
You can raise my number to 40 if you want and my point stays the same.
I had written out a long response to this, but end up writing this "short" comment instead:
It's impossible for Sanders to inspire and engage young people in the way required for the sweeping societal change of his political platform. His chance was 20-40 years ago when he was the right age to champion such a movement.
Many on the left seem to intentionally interpret this fact as an attack on his policy so they can defend that (which is easy) and don't have to engage with just one of the many reasons no-one in their 70s should ever run any country for a host of reasons that all boil down to Too old.
Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, or Dick Chaney can't be the voice of today's youth. Sanders is their age. He's part of the oldies that dominate, alienate and disengage youth from participating in US politics.
Uh, what? I could understand making this comment in like 2014 maybe, but the Sanders 2016 campaign changed the face of the Democratic party, in no small part due to a massive mobilization of and engagement with disaffected young voters. You can't just dismiss him out of hand because he's old. Sure, all else being equal, a young candidate would be preferable, but all else is not equal, and I'm not going to primary for some center-right corporate democrat just because they're under 50. Age isn't everything, a rich young person could be totally out of touch with the issues affecting their generational peers, while an old guy with a working class background might have a better grasp on them.
he also literally changed like, half the platform the democrats stand on. the democrats sure don't stand on M4A and $15/hr minimum wage because they came to of their own accord, after all!
this has literally nothing to do with my point. my point is that the claim that the sanders campaign can't "inspire and engage young people in the way required for the sweeping societal change of his political platform" is fucking absurd, because he literally did do that and it's why democrats currently stand on a large part of the platform that they do. $15/hr minimum wage and M4A and other progressive policies were so taboo even 10 years ago back when it was the kerry/edwards/obama/hillary quadfecta that was big in the party that you would have been laughed out of the party for suggesting those things; now the former is literally a part of the democratic party's platform and the latter is what most of its candidates run on even though it is not explicitly supported by the democratic machinery.
Yeah. There are much younger candidates who are still just following his lead on issues facing young people today.
This isn't to say that I don't agree that we need younger generations to get directly involved in the government (and more involved in general), but to list Sanders literally right next to Biden in a list of Boomers to have "zero faith" in strikes me as silly. At that point, it seems like age isn't just an important factor, but the only factor.
His policies are fine, but I don't want someone who's pushing 80 leading the charge. He's not the best leader for the movement anyway. He's all about himself at the end of the day.
What makes you say that?
Anyone who doesn't support him gets deemed part of the establishment or the 1% (like Planned Parenthood in the primary). In addition, he broke his promise to stay part of the Democratic party after the election and he and his supporters repeatedly poisoned that well even before the primary was over. He did nothing of note until 2016 despite being in Congress for 30 years not because his policies weren't palatable to the Democrats at large but because he always insists on doing things his way, everyone else be damned. If he was serious about changing things he'd work with the Democrats more. I'm surprised the Democrats let him debate with them this time around, honestly. They treat him with kid gloves despite him and his supporters treating them as bad as they treat Republicans, if not worse.
In addition, his excusing of Trump's conduct toward women and insistence on boiling down all issues of race, gender, and sexuality to economic issues is really tone deaf to those of us who have to deal with those issues. People aren't racist pieces of shit because they're poor, just look at Trump.
Well, I did ask.
This is not really something you can lay on Bernie. In fact, he recently basically told his supporters not to harass anyone on his behalf. Do you deny that there are a great number of shills who have been dishonestly presented to the public when they criticized him? I'm thinking of the CNN town hall where every critical voice turned out to be a shill. Planned Parenthood is absolutely part of the Democratic establishment, how could you even dispute that?
Did he not go on a unity tour with Clinton, even as it became obvious how the DNC and associated groups had out their thumbs on the scale for her? Fewer Bernie supporters voted for Trump in '16, than Clinton supporters voted for McCain in '08.
He's known as the amendment king and has a history of working across the aisle on, for example veteran's issues.
Would you say Trump's 'grab em by the pussy' attitude is as worrisome as global warming, the prospect of war with Iran, income inequality, lack of access to affordable healthcare? Bernie isn't excusing anything in that quote, he is contextualizing and trying to focus on issues that will substantively make millions of people's lives better.
One reason this is complicated is because Sanders himself built a career out of that behavior. Sure he might say while he’s running for President that his supporters shouldn’t do that, but when you talk about anyone who doesn’t want to increase the minimum wage to $15 this instant hating poor people (as an example), that kind of undercuts the admonition.
As a leader, Sanders aims to divide. We can see it this cycle too as he talks about how the democratic party is failing people. You can believe he’s right in his criticism, but his choosing to emphasize it gets amplified by a media that is hungry for drama, especially underdog stories where the underdog is fighting the amorphous “man.” That emphasis alienates the activists who have dedicated their lives to causes that align with his. It hurts his effectiveness at trying to unify later on.
Now what I just said comes with context. Sanders is not as bad or divisive as Trump. He is not as regularly and habitually disrespectful to everyone around him. He is overwhelmingly likely to read more than the banner at the bottom of an MSNBC show talking about him. Comparing Sanders to Trump, especially in the wake of Trump’s repeated hateful comments toward women of color (and PoC more generally), is kind of a gimme in terms of “who is worse.” But aren’t we talking about the types of leaders we want to have, not just “meets the quality of being not The Worst”?
Edit: To really hammer this point about divisiveness home, you point out yourself the comparison of people who switched from Hillary to McCain against those from Bernie to Trump. You do so with the effect of undercutting Hillary supporters, recasting the profound heat of ‘16 as though McCain and Trump were equal evils.
But let’s ignore that equality assumption. Isn’t a less divisive approach possible here? Can’t you emphasize that the overwhelming majority of Bernie supporters went on to support Hillary without making it a contest? Why do you have to ignore what Bernie is suggesting just to prove his critics’ point? If you’re a Bernie supporter yourself, as your comment implies, shouldn’t a more persuasive approach be the priority?
Show me a time Bernie said that about someone.
Show me a time Bernie said, after the primary, anything other than to support Clinton. Sanders raises important and pressing issues. The reaction of the establishment is to attack him, and that is what causes the division.
The billionaires that own 90% of the news you read and hear don't like Bernie's ideas very much. They primarily ignore and denigrate him, but also seek to show division themselves with the kinds of baseless claims being leveled in this thread. They're not going to give his ideas a fair shake, they're going to try and distract your attention from the really important issues.
It's hard to do that when you have a sample size of 3 (Clinton 08, Sanders 16, Clinton 16). It just goes to show that Bernie is not responsible for some kind of abnormal division. The whole argument is just a product of the Clinton campaign's hubris - how could you not vote for me, peasants, I am the chosen one.
It’s his famous 2003 clip talking to students. Notice that his starting point is framing the debates as the other side having bad faith. That’s his shtick. It is literally why most of his supporters like him.
Now anyone who responds to this rhetoric with something like “raising the minimum wage too fast or suddenly will reduce work hours for those working at minimum wage, and will have a spillover effect on those who would are or will become near thr new minimum” they get called a shill aiming to help the richest of Americans, because of course someone opposed to minimum wage increases must be against the working man.
What do you exactly object to in that clip? Republicans were arguing in bad faith in 2003 just like they are today. They do want to privatize government services so that rich people can make money from them. Literally a quote from this video "of course honest people will have disagreements, people in this room have disagreements, but we all agree people should have healthcare, right?"
If that's the best you've got it may be time to move on from that particular talking point.
Again, show me Bernie calling someone a shill.
I doubt there was ever going to be an argument that could sway you. You seem to want to be shown things so you can shout them down, not so you can see where others are coming from. Not really worth my time to go digging from the phone here.
I'm not shouting anyone down. I haven't made personal attacks against you, moonbathers, or anyone else. I do think your opinion is uninformed, which is why I asked you to back it up. You showed me a video you said supported your argument. I actually watched it, then asked how it supported your argument. This was a very gentle back and forth, my Tilderino.
Being Canadian, I have no real skin in the game here, and yet I have to say that I am not really convinced by your argument about Bernie either, if I'm being honest, Buckeye.
I have seen you talk of him being divisive and labeling/attacking people unfairly a bunch of times in various political topics here, but I personally have seen no evidence of him ever doing that, and AFAIK that video is the only evidence you have ever provided to back up your claims about him... and I have to concur with Diet_coke that it's incredibly weak evidence at that. The Republicans in the early/mid 2000s were anything but acting in good faith and nothing he said in the video seems out of line or an unfair assessment of the situation at the time (and even moreso now with Trump & Co.), IMO.
I honestly don't know all that much about Bernie or really care all that much about him, and so am absolutely willing to have my opinion changed about him... but from what I have seen of / regarding him in the last few years, there is nothing to indicate what you say is true, and you haven't exactly done a good job of convincing me (or likely anyone else) that it is, either (also just IMO).
Nothing like all the times he talks about "the Democratic establishment" as though they're a boogieman instead of a group of political activists trying to advance an agenda that's pretty adjacent to his own? Or maybe all the times he talks about his policies like opposing them is not just a prerogative of the top 1% but anyone who opposes them is necessarily supporting the agenda of the 1%.
It's an exhausting task to go through his litany of background to find every instance where he or an agent on his behalf has attacked "the establishment" because they are the establishment, as a boogieman and foil to criticize The System and badger people into agreeing with him or looking like part of the evil establishment themselves. I don't have that emotional energy for someone who, like Diet_Coke, I've seen regularly refusing to give even a reasonable inch in discussion. I don't have that emotional energy because it is exactly that behavior and tactic that I find so much a turn off with Bernie's political style.
If they were looking to the best argument possible rather than demanding to litigate every shred of evidence about a particular claim, then this exchange would be very different and I might have that emotional energy to spend here. But as it is, I have other things to do with my time than spend hours looking through videos to support something that almost no one is going to read fairly anyway.
What about me, have I ever come across that way to you? I'm not asking for you to go through Bernie's entire history to provide proof of everything you say, but I have seen you repeatedly say rather strongly worded negative things about him as if they're self-evidently true when IMO they are not... so if you have evidence of what you claim regarding his character and bad-faith tactics I would genuinely appreciate it.
But TBH nothing you just said Bernie has said even strikes me as being bad-faith, or even particularly controversial or out of line with the truth. The Democratic party establishment and certain members of the DNC absolutely, undeniably made efforts to undermine and attack Bernie during the last primary. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/24/here-are-the-latest-most-damaging-things-in-the-dncs-leaked-emails/
And frankly, IMO people who are against efforts like raising the minimum wage in the US do strike me as supporting the agenda of the 1%, whether they know it or not. However that is not the same thing as a "shill" (a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with the person or organization), which you claimed Bernie has called people who disagreed with him about raising minimum wage, but which again I have seen no evidence of him doing.
I think you’re misunderstanding what I’ve been saying. I’m not saying it’s irrational to believe those things, nor am I saying they’re factually one way or another. What I am saying is that if you’re trying to lead that party, like Bernie is, insulting the people trying to work within the organization is NOT the way to work together with them.
I am, and was this entire time, fact agnostic as to the claims Bernie has been making. I’m concerned with the leadership impact of him emphasizing these things as a priority case to the public for why they should support, and adjacently his supporters and a thirsty media picking that up and running with it.
Effectively what you’re asking me to do is prove to you what you believe to be true. But you already believe it. What you don’t believe is that it is counterproductive to emphasize it to those who has been working all this time on other political priorities that he would also support.
How is it rude to say 'show me an example of this thing you say happens all the time, actually happening'?
So then any kind of criticism is divisive, we should all just march in lock step behind our superiors, Chuck and Nancy? I don't buy it. You can't identify the problems within the party without identifying their cause, which is the corrupting influence of money in politics. A loyal opposition is an important role in any ideological organization.
He uses that phrase as a pejorative. Anyone who isn't with him is out to get him, and I'm sure if Planned Parenthood had changed nothing but endorsing him he would have sang a different tune. He didn't use it in a literal sense, he used it in an "anyone who isn't with me is out to get me" sense when you can't seriously tell me Planned Parenthood was doing literally anything beyond routine endorsements and donations for Hillary Clinton.
How did they have their thumb on the scale for her? And his unity tour doesn't erase the three months he spent still campaigning and letting his people throw dirt at Hillary after he had no chance of winning.
Amending things isn't getting things done. Show me something he created like McCain and Feingold's campaign finance bill, or Elizabeth Warren spearheading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He straight-up said Trump's treatment of women isn't a major issue facing America. Treatment of women, by Trump or anyone else, is absolutely a major issue facing America. Just because it's not an existential global warming-level crisis doesn't mean it's not important. He is excusing it, he's saying to not worry about the fact that a rapist is now president (and a Supreme Court justice, and so on) because rich people are screwing us over. Yeah, rich people are screwing us over, but I'm not gonna say "let's not worry about rampant sexism or the profiling of Hispanic people" to emphasize my point.
I don't really get what you're saying her, do you deny that there is a faction of people and organizations that occupy important positions within the DNC etc? Yes, there is such a group and they are called the establishment. How is it a pejorative when it's true? You'll have to show me some evidence of Bernie calling, say a grass roots group opposing him from the left, part of the establishment just for opposing him. Otherwise, I think this is something you're reading into his statements on your own.
Planned Parenthood is a very influential organization, their endorsement is a big deal. The question is, is it the well-connected board or the membership directing the endorsement?
Seriously, do some research. Donna Brazile literally wrote a book about it. If you can't acknowledge that it happened you're the Fox News version of a Democrat.
First, that's moving the goalpost. Second, do some research. I'm not going to Google things for you, but Bernie has a long career of service to be proud of.
You didn't answer my question and I think it's because you know how ridiculous it sounds to rank Trump's boorishness next to major issues that effect millions of people.
Great, that's not really what Bernie is saying either.
No, there's absolutely an "establishment", but they're not an evil cabal like people would have you believe and like he's implying.
I'm not moving the goalpost at all. What has he done? I saw enough during the 2016 campaign to know that I don't like him and I've explained why. It's not on me to keep doing research until I like him. Just because I'm not a Bernie stan doesn't mean I'm the Democrat equivalent of a Fox News watcher.
No, sexism isn't as important as climate change. But he straight up said "Trump's treatment of women isn't a major issue facing America" and that's wrong.
Define evil. They want to see the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and continue extracting fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases until we cook ourselves to death. They're all for endless war and American Hegemony. They're against people having access to healthcare to ensure nobody goes bankrupt because of a medical issue. They're for student debt. They're not as bad as Republicans, but they are not your friend.
You did, but your reasons are not objectively very solid and so you might reconsider putting your opinion out there so strongly.
What else would you call someone who ignores a politically inconvenient truth so they can feel justified in half-baked opinions?
Is it wrong though? In 2 years Trump will be out of office. We'll still be facing a plethora of actual crises.
There is a leap between "changing the Democratic platform" to winning the presidency, much less the tremendous leap from being elected president to winning such a landslide Sanders would need to change the constitution in the ways required to enact many of his keystone policies. (Remember Obama here)
The first leap is from engaging civically active primary voters to engaging the regular people you need to win to become president. This is the first giant hurdle where there's a difference between policy and being an electable presidential candidate. Sanders is the wrong guy for the Oval Office because he's too old to be the voice of a young generation.
You need to be that voice of the generation, if not to win the presidency against someone as weak as Trump as a political candidate, to get the landslide of votes Sanders actually needs. To use the soundbyte feelthebern themselves highlight:
It's easy to forget how old Sanders' is:
For civically active and engaged people (like everyone on tildes is), it may be hard to envision what it's actually like being a regular person who maybe votes every four years, and that's it in terms of politics.
How many plumbers or regular young people does an average tildes-user know? What're they interested in? What're their issues? How do you reach and inspire them politically?
No, age is more than a number and Sanders' number is just too high to be the right guy to fight for the Oval office on behalf of the Democrats. Sure he can be a policy wonk or player in the party apparatus, or even a senior government minister, but Sanders isn't the guy to build a political movement around because he's too old. That goes for anyone pushing 60, much less 80.
There's a reason the candidates in more competitive electoral democracies are younger than their American counterparts. The oldies running the show in Congress, Supreme Court, the political parties is all a symptom of how incredibly strong the power of incumbency and establishment belonging is in the US political system. A system that alienates young people systematically, as if that were an aim to ensure change won't take place stemming from younger voices wanting to make a mark on the future their elected representatives will never see because they're so old they'll be dead.
again, we're not talking about any of those hypotheticals. we're literally just talking about whether or not the claim that sanders "can't inspire and engage young people in the way required for the sweeping societal change of his political platform" is true or not. it is not, because that was literally the entirety of the 2016 campaign. whether or not he can win the white house or enact changes in congress has very little bearing on whether or not he can engage and inspire young people, because he can win without young people and he can lose while engaging more young people than ever (as he did in 2016) and many permutations thereof.
Sweeping societal change requires actually changing society which requires changing the law. That is not about a hypothetical. It is about actually changing society in line with a political platform.
How much of Sanders' 2016 platform is federal law? How much societal change did he accomplish? How effective has this soon-octogenarian's leadership of the left wing of the Democratic party been? What has he actually accomplished?
So moving to that hypothetical we're not talking about, let's look at the real effect of Sanders' 2016 campaign and spearheading the movement in the left wing of the Democratic party. Sure, he shifted the party left, but also the following is due to Sanders:
One thing his 2016 campaign did manage but not pulling out of the primary election when Clinton had won, was to ensure that the Republican party who rallied behind Trump could join Sanders' attacks on Clinton for a month and that the Democratic party couldn't come together behind that candidate to try to win the presidency, majority in the Senate and House.
Personally, I'd argue Sanders is the single largest reason Trump is in the White House today. Had he withdrawn a month earlier, I think Clinton would have won. That's even giving Sanders at least a fortnight to mull over withdrawing and to exert pressure after it was all but statistically impossible for him to gain the nomination.
The legacy of societal change from Sanders spearheading the left wing of the Democratic party since 2016 is Trump rather than Clinton and that policy rather than him being a dominant voice in Congress or a senior member of a democratic government.
That's the hypothetical stemming from Sanders' actions in 2016 to today's reality. I won't get into scenarios where younger blood were at the helm then, or take the helm now.
I'm sorry but this is probably one of the most dishonest, disgusting things I've seen in a very long time. People need to realize that Hillary ran one of the worst campaigns in recent history and her loss is hers and hers alone. She ran such an unsuccessful campaign in fact that she lost to a proto-fascist rapist reality TV star. She didn't even properly campaign in some of the states that she lost because of her hubris and over-reliance on a technocratic obsession with faulty data. No amount of crying over Sanders, Russians, "uneducated masses" or any other scapegoat is going to change that fact.
From Brexit, to Le Pen's rise, to the AfD's rise, to Corbyn's rise to Golden Dawn's rise, technocratic Neoliberalism has been shown to be a resounding failure that excites no one. The right is surging with little opposition and the left is being stopped by the neoliberal status quo that just made one of the most embarrassing losses in modern history after 30 years of horrendously failed economic policies. If all you have is "hey at least we aren't republicans" and "things are actually good because capitalism is working, depsite the mountains of evidence showing otherwise" (which have been the prevailing justifications for voting Democrat for as long as I can remember) then you have already lost.
It really makes me think that most people who rag on Sanders have an agenda of protecting their ego against the 2016 loss by arguing in bad faith rather than accepting that Sanders would have won and would have pushed a progressive agenda and pushed the national conversation even more leftward than he already has (as evidence by every other candidate ripping from his platform that was derided as insanity 4 years ago). His policies excite people and have support among Democrats and Independents as well as moderate (and in a few cases majority) support among Republicans. To rag on him because of some perceived slight (without a shred of grounded evidence outside of fantasy) is lunacy and only works to help the Right.
So, let's have less blaming and more actual good faith arguments not blinded by insanity and hatred, shall we?
Tou do understand the only reason AOC is in office is because Sanders inspired a movement, right?
Totally agree with this sentiment. I also really admire that this most recent group of young representatives seems to be big on developing domain knowledge of the things they're trying to legislate about. We've had so many disappointing laws enacted over the years that outright ignored the intricacies of the domains they worked in (e.g. the DMCA and CFAA), and I'm really hopeful to see much better legislation coming out of Congress as more people with similar attitudes get elected.
I have to agree.
Frankly, most of the democratic field doesn't understand technology at all. They are the parents we call 'twelve o'clock flashers' because every appliance in their home is blinking 12:00 all the time, since they don't know how to set the damn clock. Every time I see 'break up the tech monopoly' come out of their mouths I have to decide to laugh or cry, because that's a classic bullshit 20th century solution to a 21st century problem. No one wants to use the 4th best navigation app. We need to do something, but monopoly busting isn't the solution.
Younger is a plus for me. That's part of why I like Yang and many of the lesser candidates.
See, I don't agree that breaking them up is going to work. The logistics of that are a nightmare to everyone, including their customers, and you want to break up what, ten companies at once? Who is going to break up their gargantuan overseas competitors? You'll have to prove that works to me somehow. I do agree that we need to do something, though - and a push towards open content is just fine with me. So is turning them into utilities under heavy oversight.
Nah, that's not what I said at all. I question if the breakup will have the effects you seem to think it will, or if the concept of breaking up large corporations is even feasible at all in this context. Breaking them up may be light years from 'the right thing' to do. There may be better ways to handle it.
I don't have a plan for handling the problem, but then, neither does anyone who claims 'breaking them up' is the solution, imo. I think that's just parroting old adages. The last time a company was 'broken up' was almost thirty years ago, and it didn't even work then.
I want to see proof that it has a chance of working before I endorse a knee-jerk reaction like breaking up a dozen tech companies as a viable solution. I want to see the implications thoroughly analyzed right down to the numbers and business units and likely effects on the economy over a decade post-breakup for every impacted company and market segment. I want to see precisely how this solves our problems with all of these companies and our data privacy. Then I might endorse a plan to break up the tech monopolies.
As for the competitors, if you fragment all of America's companies, the foreign companies are going to be larger, and likely more agile and responsive and able to control their market segments, potentially putting these artificially-smaller groups of American companies at a disadvantage. I'm sure China would be delighted if we broke up our major tech players. Easier for them to compete.
Breaking up the companies is not the right thing. That won't stop the sale of your personal information. Rather, it just increases the number of entities who have access to your information. The real solution isn't to break up the tech companies, it is to create actual legislation with teeth to protect individuals' privacy rights. Something like GDPR, for instance.
It's relatively straightforward. Break up the following into their own businesses:
You could make a case for breaking Microsoft and Apple into hardware and software divisions as well but I'm not going to fight for those. The gist of it is to break off all the companies that got bought out by the big ones because there's no reason for them to be under one company. What gargantuan overseas competitors are Amazon, Facebook, and Google competing against? No one in the west uses Baidu or WeChat. If you're worried about Huawei and Tencent, if the executive branch actually did their job we could have aggressive oversight over them or outright ban investments by them into American companies.
That's not how anti-trust would work in regards to tech companies. You would break up companies according to their divisions which already exist. Google would be broken up into a search company, an email provider, a video hosting company, android, and so on, since the whole problem with tech monopolization is that having verticals in all these different markets allows them to get away with extremely shady conflict of interest deals.
The issue with anti-trust is regulatory capture that allows formerly broken up monopolies to slowly coalesce again. The solution to that, of course, is a strong, aggressive FTC which actually continually enforces anti-trust laws and ensures a level playing field, which has not been politically popular since the new deal.
Warren was one of the few that warned specifically of a structural mortgage debt issue leading up to the 2008 recession, and was not a politician until 2012.
She is 70, but still seems sharp as a tack, and is not afraid to make some noise. She is again warning about structural issues with debt in the current economy.
It seems a little unfair to lump her in with Clinton & Biden and blame her just because she is a boomer.
I find this to be weird admission of the bizarrely obsessive ageism of the article. It acknowledges that the millennial movement it is championing, was sparked by a wildly un-milennial politician. I like Bernie; he has stood for what he believes in before it was popular. Bernie has defined the current Democratic party.
I believe Bernie should be on the 2020 Democratic ticket. I don't have strong feelings on President or Vice President. He has proven, unlike any other candidate, that he will fight for what he believes in. I like most of the other democratic candidates, execept really Biden.
Disclaimer: I am an old GenZ
Agreed, but Bernie would be completely wasted in the VP slot, the vice president doesn't actually do all that much. The only executive position I could see him being more productive in than he is now as a senator is maybe secretary of labor, but I'd still rather pick Robert Reich (if he'd do it), and leave Bernie in the senate.
Generally, yeah, VP is not the strongest role, but I can't imagine Bernie just chilling like Pence. The VP role is largely what you make it; look at Dick Chaney, he defined Bush 2's presidency. Sure, Pence has, to my knowledge, been as active as a sack of potatoes, but Bernie has been fighting in every political offices he has been in. Also, I really don't want another party split with Bernie and the Democratic establishment.
The VP in recent times has been crucial in helping work with Congress to get policy priorities passed with the legislature. This work is often under the radar, but that doesn’t make it unimportant. The VP in recent times also performs official state roles to allow the president the focus (if he is able to use it, sorry not sorry Pence) to push forward other causes with the bully pulpit.
Just because our current VP doesn’t seem very important doesn’t mean that’s inherent to the role. It always depends on the pick and dynamic with the president.
I might be the minority millennial, but age isn’t the most important factor for me. Relevant experience takes time to get for most people, and I like to rely on a candidate’s record when judging what is the most important to that person. Without much of a record, a trait that is more common the younger you are, I typically get more spooked and the candidate needs to work harder to prove to me what they plan on doing in the highest civilian office in the land.
Do I think younger people bring different priorities and perspectives on that basis alone? Sure, but there’s usually too much else I don’t know yet for me to be comfortable signing on.