Let's get Trump out of office and increase democratic engagement in order to hold Biden to the right path and ensure mistakes like the Trump presidency never happen again!
Let's get Trump out of office and increase democratic engagement in order to hold Biden to the right path and ensure mistakes like the Trump presidency never happen again!
For the moment, it's just talk. But this is a very encouraging conversation between these two guys. Worth watching in its entirety. In the past few weeks, Biden has already done some...
For the moment, it's just talk. But this is a very encouraging conversation between these two guys. Worth watching in its entirety.
In the past few weeks, Biden has already done some surprising-and-encouraging things as his nomination became more and more assured ... adopting Warren's bankruptcy plan (effectively acknowledging she was right 15 years ago) ... promising a female VP (pick-Warren-pick-Warren) ... now beginning to adopt many of Sanders' more liberal ideas.
It may all be just strategic politicking. Hell, it probably is. As long as he actually follows through on some of these new ideas he's adopting, I could warm up to the guy.
Also she's in her 70s, which seems like a bad move when the President is also pushing 80. Especially in our COVID era, we need to remember that actuarial risk is a thing. We also need to groom...
I also see Warren as an unlikely VP pick given the Senate situation.
Also she's in her 70s, which seems like a bad move when the President is also pushing 80. Especially in our COVID era, we need to remember that actuarial risk is a thing. We also need to groom younger leadership because the gerontocratic bias in our government is getting pretty extreme.
While Biden may be able to work with people, I'm worried about his campaign's ability to do so. Twitter is a bad representation of the real world, I know, but all I've seen since Bernie dropped...
While Biden may be able to work with people, I'm worried about his campaign's ability to do so. Twitter is a bad representation of the real world, I know, but all I've seen since Bernie dropped out is Biden supporters doing exactly what they always accused "Bernie Bros" of doing. If they want progressives to vote for Biden then they'd better get on enticing them to do so, not yelling at them preemptively for not voting for him.
As a Bernie supporter, I will say the exact same thing I said to people who incessantly complained about Bernie supporters on Twitter. Forget about them. You aren't doing yourself a favor by...
Twitter is a bad representation of the real world, I know, but all I've seen since Bernie dropped out is Biden supporters doing exactly what they always accused "Bernie Bros" of doing.
As a Bernie supporter, I will say the exact same thing I said to people who incessantly complained about Bernie supporters on Twitter. Forget about them. You aren't doing yourself a favor by reading tweets and making inferences off of these interactions. You don't know if these are truly real people. Or even more, actual Americans. I'm not even talking about Russian trolls, but rather every foreigner who feels their 2 cents are worth the same or more as actual Americans who live in the US.
Don't make political decisions based off of random people's interactions online. Engage with your community, your friends, your family and let that inform your opinion on what is best for the country. I find Twitter will just display the worst piece of shit hot takes, out of thousands of interactions, because their ML models figure that is what is going to cause you to make an interaction with their site, and hopefully drive you to come back for more. Making inferences about reality is impossible through Twitter. If you do let it inform your opinion of reality, you end up no better informed than someone who watches infotainment 24/7.
(sorry for the rant, before I got on Tildes I checked Twitter and closed it after 5 minutes out of disgust.)
I've basically starting blocking and unfollowing everyone who shows up in my feed with an explicitly political username. Usernames that reference to any politician, political slogans, rose emojis,...
(sorry for the rant, before I got on Tildes I checked Twitter and closed it after 5 minutes out of disgust.)
I've basically starting blocking and unfollowing everyone who shows up in my feed with an explicitly political username. Usernames that reference to any politician, political slogans, rose emojis, donut emojis, avatars with campaign logos and no picture of a person or pet on them. All of them. . . BANNED!
It's not psychologically healthy to base your entire personality on your political orientation. And it's not psychologically healthy to be absorbing the malformed thoughts of a bunch of people whose lives revolve around ranting about things, even things that are obviously true.
A lot of political Twitter reminds me of an anecdote in Thus Spake Zarathustra. He posits a person who escapes from an insane asylum and is determined not to go back. He decides the way to avoid people thinking he's crazy is to pick a position that nobody could possibly argue with, that the world is round. You can't think someone is crazy if they think the world is round right? What an obviously correct and non-crazy thing to think! This person then goes hectoring people everywhere about how the world is round and they MUST acknowledge this basic truth. Why can't you accept that the world is round? What's wrong with you!? Why are you walking away from me? Do you not agree that the world is round? Hey! HEY! DON'T WALK AWAY FROM ME YOU FLAT EARTHER!
He is promptly sent back to the asylum.
Granted, the thing that is "obviously true" is different based on the stripe of political animal, but the way they interact is the same. They think you're disagreeing with them thinking the true thing rather than just thinking they're crazy because they're acting crazy.
I think this is a major disconnect people have. I can only speak for myself. I believe this holds for my friends and a lot of the people I organize with, but it is always dangerous to talk for...
It's not psychologically healthy to base your entire personality on your political orientation.
I think this is a major disconnect people have. I can only speak for myself. I believe this holds for my friends and a lot of the people I organize with, but it is always dangerous to talk for other people. I think you and a lot of other people talk about politics in opposite way that I and many other leftists think of it. I don't define my entire personality on my political orientation, I define my political orientation based on my identity. I am loud and obnoxious on twitter about public education because my mom is a teacher, because my closest friends are teachers, because I know their pains and struggles. Anything that affects people's lives is going to be political. Your personality is so deeply entwined with your political orientation it is (IMO) impossible to separate the two. It is why a lot of leftists don't care who Bernie endorses, because it was never about Bernie. Bernie was just the first time that a politician actually represented our views. We don't really care about Warren, or Biden, or Bernie, or Castro, etc. We care about M4A, we care about ending private prisons, or whatever policy is important to that individual. We are talking about the aspects of our identities that are under attack.
tl;dr: I know my personality and what is important to me, and based on my personality that means I tend to support demsoc or socialist candidates, not the other way around.
The most frustrating tendency among online Leftists is the adoption of this posture as if they're the only ones who have ever been hurt or genuinely care about issues. This is not unlike right...
Exemplary
I am loud and obnoxious on twitter about public education because my mom is a teacher, because my closest friends are teachers, because I know their pains and struggles.
The most frustrating tendency among online Leftists is the adoption of this posture as if they're the only ones who have ever been hurt or genuinely care about issues. This is not unlike right wing evangelicals trying to pretend they own the idea of spirituality or morals. It's a load of self-serving crap either way.
My mother was a social worker. My mother-in-law has a degenerative lung disease that costs my family serious money every month in medication and oxygen. If she ever so much as catches a cold it becomes a touch and go situation involving intubation and extended hospitalization (and all the associated bills). She can't work. She is wholly reliant on public assistance and the kindness of friends and family. My wife's entire adulthood has been spent trying to manage her mother's illness.
My sister-in-law is a paranoid schizophrenic who has been in and out of homelessness and can't be trusted to manage her own finances. My wife and I have monthly conversations where we have to figure out if it would be better for our niece to be in foster care or under the care of her mentally ill mother and whether or not we should call CPS because we know if we adopted the poor kid directly neither us nor the child would be safe from her mom. My wife literally works on international human rights issues where she has to travel to help journalists while being tailed by secret police. One of my closest friends is a special education teacher. I have friends who are professional union organizers. My cousin is an immigration rights attorney. Almost all of my friends work on healthcare or human rights or economic development issues in some capacity.
So when you come up and start implying that unless people buy into your shtick 100%, then they must not really care--as if nobody else's lives or livelihoods are under attack--it takes a great deal of self-control to refrain from telling you to go fuck yourself. You don't even seem to realize just how insulting it is to talk to people like this. It minimizes their experiences and concerns. It doesn't sound like you actually care, it sounds more like you're not bothering to listen to anyone else, understand where they're coming from, or learn why people might not want to jump on board the bandwagon. Bernie wasn't the first person who ever cared about these things. Bernie was just the first one that drew your attention, which is a different thing. There have been people doing this work for ages and they will continue to do the yeoman's work of making this broken world marginally less shitty, bit by bit, after his campaign sputtered out.
Believe it or not, most of us are personally affected by political issues. It does not then naturally follow that one must become abrasive and abusive about it. That's a choice, and it is a self-defeating choice that works against your likelihood of achieving these goals. This is the entire reason people get upset when the people who claim they care about these things behave in ways that make our lives and the lives of people we care about harder over "distinctions" that mostly amount to empty sloganeering without the foggiest notion of how they're going to do it. People who actually understand the things at stake are not willing to make gambles over ideological pissing contests. People who actually want universal, free-at-the-point of service healthcare care less about whether its called "M4A" based on whatever arbitrary standards you've decided constitute "true" M4A and they care more about what that means in terms of benefits people can access, compensation for healthcare workers, capacity for the healthcare system to absorb additional load, etc. But if anyone tries to talk about how this might be hard or how it might not work, what's the response? That they want to kill grandma or they don't really care about healthcare as a right.
If so then why are we still so divided over what we should do about it? If we're all suffering under the same medical system then why did the solutions we vote for range from (IIRC) 'lower the...
If so then why are we still so divided over what we should do about it? If we're all suffering under the same medical system then why did the solutions we vote for range from (IIRC) 'lower the minimum age for Obamacare from 65 to 60 years' to 'eliminate private healthcare and employer insurance and then replace it with a fully government run medical system?' If we're all suffering under the same economy then why do moderates seem to have been so meek to public college until Sanders? How come we disagree on whether the debts of these should be wiped or not? How come we disagree on the sources of these changes (Campaign finance, anyone?) Something's gotta be different, right? If you didn't like Bernie you could always have backed Warren right?
This is a lot of questions and I'm not really sure what the general thread between them is supposed to be? The gist of it basically that politics is hard, there's lots of trade-offs involved, and...
This is a lot of questions and I'm not really sure what the general thread between them is supposed to be? The gist of it basically that politics is hard, there's lots of trade-offs involved, and people have lots of disagreements over what the right balance of trade-offs is.
If we're all suffering under the same medical system then why did the solutions we vote for range from (IIRC) 'lower the minimum age for Obamacare from 65 to 60 years' to 'eliminate private healthcare and employer insurance and then replace it with a fully government run medical system?'
Extend Medicare to everyone was always on the table. McGovern was talking about it back in '72. McGovern also got soundly trounced in the general election, which is why it was hard to propose it again. It's been more than a decade since Obamacare was being discussed. In that time, most of the most conservative Democrats have gone and underlying economic realities have gotten steadily worse. But really, most of the progress is just generational. Nobody born after 1980 gives a flying fuck about McGovern's loss. Nobody born before 1980 can seem to forget it. This is one of the main reasons you see primary voting results break down so starkly by age. It's also why the African American vote is so strongly establishment-biased. They're mostly really old.
If we're all suffering under the same economy then why do moderates seem to have been so meek to public college until Sanders?
We're not all suffering under the same economy though. Some people are doing better and some people are doing worse. Some people don't like college and don't want it. Lots of them are inherently suspicious of the government actually executing on things to their satisfaction because they're convinced its incompetent or corrupt.
If you didn't like Bernie you could always have backed Warren right?
Depends. Lots of people are just scared of change. This is especially pronounced among moderately high earning professionals, since the way our welfare state is set up it basically means they pay for most of it while receiving almost no (directly visibly) benefits while still not quite being rich enough to feel financially stable. If someone comes up promising new programs, all they imagine is more taxes and no benefits. And FUD from corporate interests reinforces that theme.
Alright, this was better than your first reply but you're still just trying to push this into a very personal fight without adding anything of substance. This argument stops here (and that applies...
Alright, this was better than your first reply but you're still just trying to push this into a very personal fight without adding anything of substance. This argument stops here (and that applies to both you and @NaraVara).
I agree with this. I have always had my personal principles, and it's only in the past year or so that I have discovered the politics that reflect those principles (largely thanks to DSA and the...
I agree with this. I have always had my personal principles, and it's only in the past year or so that I have discovered the politics that reflect those principles (largely thanks to DSA and the Bernie campaign). When politics decides who gets rich and who dies homeless on the street with medical bills they can't pay, I think it makes sense to get angry about politics.
Technically, it is all talk until he's elected and follows thru. But absolutely yes, I was hugely encouraged by the fact that Sanders' endorsement was an actual conversation and long-term effort...
Technically, it is all talk until he's elected and follows thru. But absolutely yes, I was hugely encouraged by the fact that Sanders' endorsement was an actual conversation and long-term effort to search for ideas and common ground between the two, rather than just "if you like me, then vote for this guy, or we get more Trump".
That said, I did find it an interesting Freudian slip on Biden's part, when he actually named the six committees, he said the 'economy' one twice and neglected to mention (I'm assuming) the 'healthcare' one.
I left the democratic party. The centrists they push don't represent my beliefs. I'll most likely fall in line and vote for joe, like I did with hillary but isn't that just telling the DNC they...
I left the democratic party. The centrists they push don't represent my beliefs. I'll most likely fall in line and vote for joe, like I did with hillary but isn't that just telling the DNC they can push whomever they want? force it down my throat?
My state is where as unaffiliated I can still vote in the primaries, but the democratic party is not for me anymore.
Who do you imagine "they" are? The "taking my ball and going home" routine every time things don't go well is why the Left is chronically frozen out of power. With no sense of determination or...
The centrists they push don't represent my beliefs.
Who do you imagine "they" are? The "taking my ball and going home" routine every time things don't go well is why the Left is chronically frozen out of power. With no sense of determination or willingness to fight through even the most minor of set-backs, what kind of change did you think you were going to enact? Did you think one guy over one election was going to radically transform the deep structural problems our country has over a term?
If you were actually committed to these ideals, the occasion of losing an election is cause to take stock of what worked, what didn't, and figure out how to organize and build power in the background so you can come back stronger next time. But if you lose and tell yourself "Oh I didn't get my way so this game isn't for me" you're never going to get your way.
This discussion about Scrub mentality was written about fighting games, but it might as well be about why the Left will never win. Centrists recognize this is a game with actual stakes and they play to win. Leftists think the stakes are all abstract and play to signal how right they are. It's a textbook example of being so shackled by self-imposed handicaps that they have no hope of actually improving.
im not taking my ball and leaving. as an independent I can still vote in whatever primary they hold. I'm sick of being in this abusive relationship where I have to vote what they tell me to vote....
im not taking my ball and leaving. as an independent I can still vote in whatever primary they hold. I'm sick of being in this abusive relationship where I have to vote what they tell me to vote. Bernie was never going to get the nomination, ever. He isn't a dem. Biden is the left over meat that has been sitting out all day that isn't exciting but yeah, if it came down to it you'd eat it.
My brother who is a much smarter person than I am can't even give me one reason he is excited to vote for joe aside from "return to normalcy"
It's more than a bit weird that we need to be excited to vote for a politician. These are executive leaders, not rock stars. Excitement is important as a strategic goal in that it will increase...
My brother who is a much smarter person than I am can't even give me one reason he is excited to vote for joe aside from "return to normalcy"
It's more than a bit weird that we need to be excited to vote for a politician. These are executive leaders, not rock stars. Excitement is important as a strategic goal in that it will increase turnout, but needing to personally be excited to do a civic duty makes no sense. It's like needing to "be excited" about who Chipotle hires as a chef. If you're a hardcore Chipotle nerd sure, but why is this a thing for anyone else?
Talking about "voter excitement" the way you are makes sense either if you're a political analyst, or if you're rooting for a system which promotes the kind of mindset that got Trump the...
Talking about "voter excitement" the way you are makes sense either if you're a political analyst, or if you're rooting for a system which promotes the kind of mindset that got Trump the presidency in the first place.
I'm French and I'm sorry your political system is awful, but if you can't get excited at the idea of kicking Trump out of the white house and replacing him with anything ranging from Jean-Luc Picard to a hamster with a top-hat, then buddy, what have you been paying attention to the past years?
To be fair. I would be very excited to vote for Jean-Luc Picard. Pre-Locutus, preferably. The man had some baggage to sort through after that whole thing.
To be fair. I would be very excited to vote for Jean-Luc Picard.
Pre-Locutus, preferably. The man had some baggage to sort through after that whole thing.
Not here to argue about any politicians record or policy platforms, just want to say that this isn't really an effective argument to make to most leftists since most of us don't think Obama or...
Did you know that Joe's policy platform is already much more left than Obama's or Hillary Clinton's in a lot of areas?
Not here to argue about any politicians record or policy platforms, just want to say that this isn't really an effective argument to make to most leftists since most of us don't think Obama or Hillary were remotely liberal.
The reason I wrote what I wrote is because, in my experience, many of the times people make arguments using Obama, it is acting under the assumption that he is viewed positively by leftists. In my...
The reason I wrote what I wrote is because, in my experience, many of the times people make arguments using Obama, it is acting under the assumption that he is viewed positively by leftists. In my experience, when people say to me "Joe Biden is more left than Obama" the underlying message is "You don't like Joe? Well, you like Obama, and see how Biden's platform is further left than Obama? Checkmate." when the reality is that I and a lot of leftists felt betrayed by Obama's presidency that advocated for sweeping changes that never really came. That is where I don't see it being an effective argument.
I also don't agree that Biden being further left than Obama ended up or than Hillary was shows the party is moving left. From my (admittedly not perfect) memory, Obama campaigned a lot more liberally than Biden. He just didn't follow through on his promises. Which, from the stories of organizers I talk to, was when a lot of leftists realized the answers didn't fall in the Democratic Party, because the Democrats don't actually believe anything they say. In 2016, it was Hillary or Bernie. Those are two extremes where the average voter falls closer to Hillary than Bernie, but I don't know very many people who were actively excited by her policy positions, just that she wasn't Trump. 2020 fielded a lot more candidates so it was easier to find a candidate closer to the "avg" voter. I believe if a candidate ran with Biden's current policies, they'd have won the dem primary in 2016.
I like what Biden has been doing lately. It seems like he is actually listening to Bernie and Warren camps and making concessions. It might make me begrudgingly vote for him.
I think it might be better to get away from presidential politics and learn more about local politics. We talk about presidential campaigns because it's just easier. This is especially true on...
I think it might be better to get away from presidential politics and learn more about local politics.
We talk about presidential campaigns because it's just easier. This is especially true on Tildes where people come from all over. That doesn't mean it's a good way to spend your time.
I feel much the same way. Horrified my center-left democrat mom by half-jokingly commenting the other day that I might have to join the DSA. I think that, in the end, I'll probably vote for Biden...
I feel much the same way. Horrified my center-left democrat mom by half-jokingly commenting the other day that I might have to join the DSA. I think that, in the end, I'll probably vote for Biden because of how utterly, mind-bendingly shit the alternative is, but I won't be excited about it unless Biden and his camp commit to a whooooole lot of concessions to the left.
I sincerely hope there's some truth to the rumors that there are efforts underway to replace Biden with Cuomo. Cuomo is probably just as bad as Biden politically--maybe even worse in some...
I sincerely hope there's some truth to the rumors that there are efforts underway to replace Biden with Cuomo. Cuomo is probably just as bad as Biden politically--maybe even worse in some ways--but at least he's not the total embarrassment that Biden is every time he opens his mouth. We've totally clowned ourselves nominating a borderline-senile guy with multiple sexual harassment allegations after we just spent 4 years bashing the Republicans for doing the same.
A Cuomo-Warren ticket would be an amazing "unity" ticket. Centrists would love Cuomo, obviously. Bankers would love to get Warren out of the Senate and possibly lose her seat to a Republican. Even progressives would generally see a Warren VP pick as a begrudging compromise. Importantly, there would be genuine enthusiasm for this ticket.
Unfortunately, this probably makes too much sense to actually happen.
I'm just saying, if you actually watch a full length clip of Biden speaking, he's fine. Seriously, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1XUeJA0-f0&feature=youtu.be and tell me he's senile...
borderline-senile guy
I'm just saying, if you actually watch a full length clip of Biden speaking, he's fine. Seriously, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1XUeJA0-f0&feature=youtu.be and tell me he's senile or whatever. Yeah, the compilation videos can him seem like a bumbling idiot but that's the magic of video editing.
He's reading a teleprompter... Even Trump can do that well. It's all the more glaring that he's doing so since Sanders seems to be mostly talking off the cuff.
He's reading a teleprompter... Even Trump can do that well. It's all the more glaring that he's doing so since Sanders seems to be mostly talking off the cuff.
Honestly, I don't believe he is reading a teleprompter here ... at least, not exclusively. He's also ad libbing a lot. There are several little flubs and mistakes that are not "teleprompter-like"...
Honestly, I don't believe he is reading a teleprompter here ... at least, not exclusively. He's also ad libbing a lot. There are several little flubs and mistakes that are not "teleprompter-like" mistakes ... like when he names the six working groups, he says 'economy' twice and skips the 'healthcare' one. That's an honest (and Freudian) slip.
Either way, broadly speaking, I think he's old and his brain is no longer 100%, but he's still very sharp and much more inclined to verbal lapses than true mental ones, and this video is a fair representation of his brain at work.
Great to see an endorsement so early. I am very curious to see what, if anything, comes of these joint policy committees their campaigns are forming.
Let's get Trump out of office and increase democratic engagement in order to hold Biden to the right path and ensure mistakes like the Trump presidency never happen again!
For the moment, it's just talk. But this is a very encouraging conversation between these two guys. Worth watching in its entirety.
In the past few weeks, Biden has already done some surprising-and-encouraging things as his nomination became more and more assured ... adopting Warren's bankruptcy plan (effectively acknowledging she was right 15 years ago) ... promising a female VP (pick-Warren-pick-Warren) ... now beginning to adopt many of Sanders' more liberal ideas.
It may all be just strategic politicking. Hell, it probably is. As long as he actually follows through on some of these new ideas he's adopting, I could warm up to the guy.
Biden has been, if nothing else, a bellweather for wherever the center of the party is. So this isn't at all surprising.
Also she's in her 70s, which seems like a bad move when the President is also pushing 80. Especially in our COVID era, we need to remember that actuarial risk is a thing. We also need to groom younger leadership because the gerontocratic bias in our government is getting pretty extreme.
While Biden may be able to work with people, I'm worried about his campaign's ability to do so. Twitter is a bad representation of the real world, I know, but all I've seen since Bernie dropped out is Biden supporters doing exactly what they always accused "Bernie Bros" of doing. If they want progressives to vote for Biden then they'd better get on enticing them to do so, not yelling at them preemptively for not voting for him.
As a Bernie supporter, I will say the exact same thing I said to people who incessantly complained about Bernie supporters on Twitter. Forget about them. You aren't doing yourself a favor by reading tweets and making inferences off of these interactions. You don't know if these are truly real people. Or even more, actual Americans. I'm not even talking about Russian trolls, but rather every foreigner who feels their 2 cents are worth the same or more as actual Americans who live in the US.
Don't make political decisions based off of random people's interactions online. Engage with your community, your friends, your family and let that inform your opinion on what is best for the country. I find Twitter will just display the worst piece of shit hot takes, out of thousands of interactions, because their ML models figure that is what is going to cause you to make an interaction with their site, and hopefully drive you to come back for more. Making inferences about reality is impossible through Twitter. If you do let it inform your opinion of reality, you end up no better informed than someone who watches infotainment 24/7.
(sorry for the rant, before I got on Tildes I checked Twitter and closed it after 5 minutes out of disgust.)
I've basically starting blocking and unfollowing everyone who shows up in my feed with an explicitly political username. Usernames that reference to any politician, political slogans, rose emojis, donut emojis, avatars with campaign logos and no picture of a person or pet on them. All of them. . . BANNED!
It's not psychologically healthy to base your entire personality on your political orientation. And it's not psychologically healthy to be absorbing the malformed thoughts of a bunch of people whose lives revolve around ranting about things, even things that are obviously true.
A lot of political Twitter reminds me of an anecdote in Thus Spake Zarathustra. He posits a person who escapes from an insane asylum and is determined not to go back. He decides the way to avoid people thinking he's crazy is to pick a position that nobody could possibly argue with, that the world is round. You can't think someone is crazy if they think the world is round right? What an obviously correct and non-crazy thing to think! This person then goes hectoring people everywhere about how the world is round and they MUST acknowledge this basic truth. Why can't you accept that the world is round? What's wrong with you!? Why are you walking away from me? Do you not agree that the world is round? Hey! HEY! DON'T WALK AWAY FROM ME YOU FLAT EARTHER!
He is promptly sent back to the asylum.
Granted, the thing that is "obviously true" is different based on the stripe of political animal, but the way they interact is the same. They think you're disagreeing with them thinking the true thing rather than just thinking they're crazy because they're acting crazy.
I think this is a major disconnect people have. I can only speak for myself. I believe this holds for my friends and a lot of the people I organize with, but it is always dangerous to talk for other people. I think you and a lot of other people talk about politics in opposite way that I and many other leftists think of it. I don't define my entire personality on my political orientation, I define my political orientation based on my identity. I am loud and obnoxious on twitter about public education because my mom is a teacher, because my closest friends are teachers, because I know their pains and struggles. Anything that affects people's lives is going to be political. Your personality is so deeply entwined with your political orientation it is (IMO) impossible to separate the two. It is why a lot of leftists don't care who Bernie endorses, because it was never about Bernie. Bernie was just the first time that a politician actually represented our views. We don't really care about Warren, or Biden, or Bernie, or Castro, etc. We care about M4A, we care about ending private prisons, or whatever policy is important to that individual. We are talking about the aspects of our identities that are under attack.
tl;dr: I know my personality and what is important to me, and based on my personality that means I tend to support demsoc or socialist candidates, not the other way around.
The most frustrating tendency among online Leftists is the adoption of this posture as if they're the only ones who have ever been hurt or genuinely care about issues. This is not unlike right wing evangelicals trying to pretend they own the idea of spirituality or morals. It's a load of self-serving crap either way.
My mother was a social worker. My mother-in-law has a degenerative lung disease that costs my family serious money every month in medication and oxygen. If she ever so much as catches a cold it becomes a touch and go situation involving intubation and extended hospitalization (and all the associated bills). She can't work. She is wholly reliant on public assistance and the kindness of friends and family. My wife's entire adulthood has been spent trying to manage her mother's illness.
My sister-in-law is a paranoid schizophrenic who has been in and out of homelessness and can't be trusted to manage her own finances. My wife and I have monthly conversations where we have to figure out if it would be better for our niece to be in foster care or under the care of her mentally ill mother and whether or not we should call CPS because we know if we adopted the poor kid directly neither us nor the child would be safe from her mom. My wife literally works on international human rights issues where she has to travel to help journalists while being tailed by secret police. One of my closest friends is a special education teacher. I have friends who are professional union organizers. My cousin is an immigration rights attorney. Almost all of my friends work on healthcare or human rights or economic development issues in some capacity.
So when you come up and start implying that unless people buy into your shtick 100%, then they must not really care--as if nobody else's lives or livelihoods are under attack--it takes a great deal of self-control to refrain from telling you to go fuck yourself. You don't even seem to realize just how insulting it is to talk to people like this. It minimizes their experiences and concerns. It doesn't sound like you actually care, it sounds more like you're not bothering to listen to anyone else, understand where they're coming from, or learn why people might not want to jump on board the bandwagon. Bernie wasn't the first person who ever cared about these things. Bernie was just the first one that drew your attention, which is a different thing. There have been people doing this work for ages and they will continue to do the yeoman's work of making this broken world marginally less shitty, bit by bit, after his campaign sputtered out.
Believe it or not, most of us are personally affected by political issues. It does not then naturally follow that one must become abrasive and abusive about it. That's a choice, and it is a self-defeating choice that works against your likelihood of achieving these goals. This is the entire reason people get upset when the people who claim they care about these things behave in ways that make our lives and the lives of people we care about harder over "distinctions" that mostly amount to empty sloganeering without the foggiest notion of how they're going to do it. People who actually understand the things at stake are not willing to make gambles over ideological pissing contests. People who actually want universal, free-at-the-point of service healthcare care less about whether its called "M4A" based on whatever arbitrary standards you've decided constitute "true" M4A and they care more about what that means in terms of benefits people can access, compensation for healthcare workers, capacity for the healthcare system to absorb additional load, etc. But if anyone tries to talk about how this might be hard or how it might not work, what's the response? That they want to kill grandma or they don't really care about healthcare as a right.
If so then why are we still so divided over what we should do about it? If we're all suffering under the same medical system then why did the solutions we vote for range from (IIRC) 'lower the minimum age for Obamacare from 65 to 60 years' to 'eliminate private healthcare and employer insurance and then replace it with a fully government run medical system?' If we're all suffering under the same economy then why do moderates seem to have been so meek to public college until Sanders? How come we disagree on whether the debts of these should be wiped or not? How come we disagree on the sources of these changes (Campaign finance, anyone?) Something's gotta be different, right? If you didn't like Bernie you could always have backed Warren right?
This is a lot of questions and I'm not really sure what the general thread between them is supposed to be? The gist of it basically that politics is hard, there's lots of trade-offs involved, and people have lots of disagreements over what the right balance of trade-offs is.
Extend Medicare to everyone was always on the table. McGovern was talking about it back in '72. McGovern also got soundly trounced in the general election, which is why it was hard to propose it again. It's been more than a decade since Obamacare was being discussed. In that time, most of the most conservative Democrats have gone and underlying economic realities have gotten steadily worse. But really, most of the progress is just generational. Nobody born after 1980 gives a flying fuck about McGovern's loss. Nobody born before 1980 can seem to forget it. This is one of the main reasons you see primary voting results break down so starkly by age. It's also why the African American vote is so strongly establishment-biased. They're mostly really old.
We're not all suffering under the same economy though. Some people are doing better and some people are doing worse. Some people don't like college and don't want it. Lots of them are inherently suspicious of the government actually executing on things to their satisfaction because they're convinced its incompetent or corrupt.
Depends. Lots of people are just scared of change. This is especially pronounced among moderately high earning professionals, since the way our welfare state is set up it basically means they pay for most of it while receiving almost no (directly visibly) benefits while still not quite being rich enough to feel financially stable. If someone comes up promising new programs, all they imagine is more taxes and no benefits. And FUD from corporate interests reinforces that theme.
You don't need to be sarcastic and passive-aggressive like this. Nothing productive can possibly come from that.
Alright, this was better than your first reply but you're still just trying to push this into a very personal fight without adding anything of substance. This argument stops here (and that applies to both you and @NaraVara).
I agree with this. I have always had my personal principles, and it's only in the past year or so that I have discovered the politics that reflect those principles (largely thanks to DSA and the Bernie campaign). When politics decides who gets rich and who dies homeless on the street with medical bills they can't pay, I think it makes sense to get angry about politics.
Depends. Are they sporting some deep cuts or are we talking some basic-ass Naruto shit?
Technically, it is all talk until he's elected and follows thru. But absolutely yes, I was hugely encouraged by the fact that Sanders' endorsement was an actual conversation and long-term effort to search for ideas and common ground between the two, rather than just "if you like me, then vote for this guy, or we get more Trump".
That said, I did find it an interesting Freudian slip on Biden's part, when he actually named the six committees, he said the 'economy' one twice and neglected to mention (I'm assuming) the 'healthcare' one.
Here's the livestream of the announcement.
I left the democratic party. The centrists they push don't represent my beliefs. I'll most likely fall in line and vote for joe, like I did with hillary but isn't that just telling the DNC they can push whomever they want? force it down my throat?
My state is where as unaffiliated I can still vote in the primaries, but the democratic party is not for me anymore.
Who do you imagine "they" are? The "taking my ball and going home" routine every time things don't go well is why the Left is chronically frozen out of power. With no sense of determination or willingness to fight through even the most minor of set-backs, what kind of change did you think you were going to enact? Did you think one guy over one election was going to radically transform the deep structural problems our country has over a term?
If you were actually committed to these ideals, the occasion of losing an election is cause to take stock of what worked, what didn't, and figure out how to organize and build power in the background so you can come back stronger next time. But if you lose and tell yourself "Oh I didn't get my way so this game isn't for me" you're never going to get your way.
This discussion about Scrub mentality was written about fighting games, but it might as well be about why the Left will never win. Centrists recognize this is a game with actual stakes and they play to win. Leftists think the stakes are all abstract and play to signal how right they are. It's a textbook example of being so shackled by self-imposed handicaps that they have no hope of actually improving.
im not taking my ball and leaving. as an independent I can still vote in whatever primary they hold. I'm sick of being in this abusive relationship where I have to vote what they tell me to vote. Bernie was never going to get the nomination, ever. He isn't a dem. Biden is the left over meat that has been sitting out all day that isn't exciting but yeah, if it came down to it you'd eat it.
My brother who is a much smarter person than I am can't even give me one reason he is excited to vote for joe aside from "return to normalcy"
It's more than a bit weird that we need to be excited to vote for a politician. These are executive leaders, not rock stars. Excitement is important as a strategic goal in that it will increase turnout, but needing to personally be excited to do a civic duty makes no sense. It's like needing to "be excited" about who Chipotle hires as a chef. If you're a hardcore Chipotle nerd sure, but why is this a thing for anyone else?
True, but you know who will be excited to vote for a politician in November 2020? Trump supporters.
you are sounding like a robot. "need to vote one way" dude even you cant drum up any voter excitement for joe
Talking about "voter excitement" the way you are makes sense either if you're a political analyst, or if you're rooting for a system which promotes the kind of mindset that got Trump the presidency in the first place.
I'm French and I'm sorry your political system is awful, but if you can't get excited at the idea of kicking Trump out of the white house and replacing him with anything ranging from Jean-Luc Picard to a hamster with a top-hat, then buddy, what have you been paying attention to the past years?
To be fair. I would be very excited to vote for Jean-Luc Picard.
Pre-Locutus, preferably. The man had some baggage to sort through after that whole thing.
Oh yeah, me too. He's in the "great" extreme :)
I just want some concessions from joe to the left wing.
Not here to argue about any politicians record or policy platforms, just want to say that this isn't really an effective argument to make to most leftists since most of us don't think Obama or Hillary were remotely liberal.
The reason I wrote what I wrote is because, in my experience, many of the times people make arguments using Obama, it is acting under the assumption that he is viewed positively by leftists. In my experience, when people say to me "Joe Biden is more left than Obama" the underlying message is "You don't like Joe? Well, you like Obama, and see how Biden's platform is further left than Obama? Checkmate." when the reality is that I and a lot of leftists felt betrayed by Obama's presidency that advocated for sweeping changes that never really came. That is where I don't see it being an effective argument.
I also don't agree that Biden being further left than Obama ended up or than Hillary was shows the party is moving left. From my (admittedly not perfect) memory, Obama campaigned a lot more liberally than Biden. He just didn't follow through on his promises. Which, from the stories of organizers I talk to, was when a lot of leftists realized the answers didn't fall in the Democratic Party, because the Democrats don't actually believe anything they say. In 2016, it was Hillary or Bernie. Those are two extremes where the average voter falls closer to Hillary than Bernie, but I don't know very many people who were actively excited by her policy positions, just that she wasn't Trump. 2020 fielded a lot more candidates so it was easier to find a candidate closer to the "avg" voter. I believe if a candidate ran with Biden's current policies, they'd have won the dem primary in 2016.
I like what Biden has been doing lately. It seems like he is actually listening to Bernie and Warren camps and making concessions. It might make me begrudgingly vote for him.
I think it might be better to get away from presidential politics and learn more about local politics.
We talk about presidential campaigns because it's just easier. This is especially true on Tildes where people come from all over. That doesn't mean it's a good way to spend your time.
I feel much the same way. Horrified my center-left democrat mom by half-jokingly commenting the other day that I might have to join the DSA. I think that, in the end, I'll probably vote for Biden because of how utterly, mind-bendingly shit the alternative is, but I won't be excited about it unless Biden and his camp commit to a whooooole lot of concessions to the left.
Edit: too tired to not repeat a word apparently
I sincerely hope there's some truth to the rumors that there are efforts underway to replace Biden with Cuomo. Cuomo is probably just as bad as Biden politically--maybe even worse in some ways--but at least he's not the total embarrassment that Biden is every time he opens his mouth. We've totally clowned ourselves nominating a borderline-senile guy with multiple sexual harassment allegations after we just spent 4 years bashing the Republicans for doing the same.
A Cuomo-Warren ticket would be an amazing "unity" ticket. Centrists would love Cuomo, obviously. Bankers would love to get Warren out of the Senate and possibly lose her seat to a Republican. Even progressives would generally see a Warren VP pick as a begrudging compromise. Importantly, there would be genuine enthusiasm for this ticket.
Unfortunately, this probably makes too much sense to actually happen.
I'm just saying, if you actually watch a full length clip of Biden speaking, he's fine. Seriously, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1XUeJA0-f0&feature=youtu.be and tell me he's senile or whatever. Yeah, the compilation videos can him seem like a bumbling idiot but that's the magic of video editing.
He's reading a teleprompter... Even Trump can do that well. It's all the more glaring that he's doing so since Sanders seems to be mostly talking off the cuff.
I don't believe you've ever seen Trump attempt to read from a teleprompter if you're trying to compare the two.
Lets be real, Trump delivers the State of the Union address perfectly adequately.
Have you ever seen or heard someone who was senile before?
Honestly, I don't believe he is reading a teleprompter here ... at least, not exclusively. He's also ad libbing a lot. There are several little flubs and mistakes that are not "teleprompter-like" mistakes ... like when he names the six working groups, he says 'economy' twice and skips the 'healthcare' one. That's an honest (and Freudian) slip.
Either way, broadly speaking, I think he's old and his brain is no longer 100%, but he's still very sharp and much more inclined to verbal lapses than true mental ones, and this video is a fair representation of his brain at work.
Almost every candidate says they're not running until they run.
The primary is already over though? Most of the candidates announced their runs before July 2019.