IMO, Trump 2020 is better than a non-progressive Democrat
In 2016, I was an ardent supporter of Bernie. But come the general, I voted 3rd party, because I was "Bernie or Bust." Many people accuse me of indirectly voting for Trump, allowing "the worst thing ever" to happen (esp since I'm in a swing state that went Trump). But here's the truth as I see it: Voting Democrat regardless of candidate, with their only qualification being "Not Trump," will only increase the USA's slide (deeper) into fascism.
The reality I see is that even if Trump had never entered the 2016 race, 90%+ of the policy, judicial appointments, and everything else that he has done since being elected would be identical no matter which "R" candidate won the race, because all of these things are exactly what the GOP has been doing for decades. In that regard, I consider Trump more favorable than any other R candidate, because he is at least failing to do his "real" job: Hiding fascist, imperialist policy behind a charismatic smile and some clever words.
Ultimately, this is the reason why I don't generally support Democrats either. Hillary's policy wouldn't have been as immediately destructive as the GOP agenda, but it also would not have stopped the march towards fascism. I voted my conscious in 2016, and will do so again in 2020. I just hope there are more people willing to do the same this time around.
I like to picture that the government of the USA is digging a hole. With every shovelful, we're sliding ever closer to a fully authoritarian fascist regime, and the destruction of our planet. While Trump (and the GOP as a whole) has been calling in for backhoes and drills to speed the process....as far as I can tell, only two candidates in the 2020 primary are calling to stop the digging: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. At best, the other candidates are conveying messages akin to: "We need to compromise with the GOP and maybe slow down the rate at which we allow new backhoes to be brought to the pit."
In my mind then, it makes more sense for 4 more years of Trump, than to allow another center-right candidate for his opposition. Because at least Trump isn't able to pull off the charismatic smile and/or intelligent language that the Regan's, Bush's, Clinton's, and Obama's of the world have that allow terrible things to continue behind a cloak of "incremental change." It wakes up those who would otherwise tolerate these horrendous acts, and perhaps inspires them to become more active. By allowing for the political discourse to end with "Anything is better than Trump", it just permits the overall platform to gradually, but continually shift to the right.
And in my mind, it is the total death of real, dissenting voices in public discourse that is far, far worse than Trump winning another term could ever be.
I would love to hear if anybody else in this community has had feelings akin to what I've described here, as I've only been described as "insane" by most of the people I've discussed this with in person.
gonna be really blunt: thinking trump 2020 is better than a democrat is really only something you can think if you're in a privileged enough position where the changing guard won't affect you. for a racial minority, a gender minority, and a poor person like myself, trump being reelected is probably an existential threat, and it's somewhat fucking absurd to me that anyone can say with a straight face that donald fucking trump would be better than some boring centrist like beto o'rourke, joe biden, or cory booker, or a centrist-in-progressive-clothing like kamala harris just because maybe it'll lead to accelerationism.
Aye, I understand what OP is saying, and the civility here is why I come here instead of reddit, but this is a ridiculous thought on multiple levels.
I'd also like to add that keeping Trump because a fucked-up status quo is better than a further slide is a poor argument. If Trump gets reelected, that, more than anything, has solidified the descent of the country. I dont think the US will ever result to autocracy - we simply have too many failsafes to allow for it, and a far too active population. But the system does need to reset, or else be replaced, and keeping trump would be the rough equivelent of keeping a cavity out of fear of the dentist. Itll be unpleasant and damn well unfortunate but at some point youve got to grit your teeth and pull off the band aid.
Mixing metaphors but I think the point stands
We have fewer failsafes now than we've had since the Civil War. The Movement Conservatives have been dismantling them one by one in order to maintain minority rule.
Also, many of the "failsafes" are actually not good failure states to be in. 2nd Amendment failsafes, for instance, means we aren't really a functioning country anymore.
I would argue the bigger problem is that laws simply aren't being enforced fairly.
Trump has broken laws, not just norms. But it doesn't matter because nobody with the power to do something about it wants to. All the laws in the world can't beat 5 justices on your side.
Kind of. The framers of the Constitution didn't view the guarantors of liberty in the document as being any specific rule or restriction. In fact, many of them opposed the idea of a "Bill of Rights" for that reason. The believed the fundamental structure of Constitutional government was supposed to be the guarantor of liberties. They viewed the government as investing sovereignty in the legislature while separating key powers into an executive and a judicial branch to prevent any passing fad or concern from running to far too hard. Liberty was protected by these competing interests having to fight against each other. But tricking people into fixating on individually enshrined "rights" would confuse the issue by making people go all lawyerly and fixate on the rules and laws instead of focusing on the contest between different power bases.
When I say we've eroded safeguards it goes beyond the norms and laws. It cuts down to the fact that the Presidency is now considered the primary branch and the legislature is kind of feckless and useless. The legislators themselves have only weak independent constituencies and are more reliant on party identification, donor support, and branding/mass media exposure than on actual legislative acumen. When the legislature is weak in this way, the executive holds all the cards.
The Republican Party is way worse at this Democrats too. Democrats have a lot of countervailing forces pulling on the party. They have a lot of pressure from rich donor class types, but they have counter-pressure from the Left. The Republicans have none of that anymore. They're fully in hoc to the donor class because their donors not only buy out the politicians, they fund the candidate recruitment process, they create partisan think-tanks, they created a reactionary judicial appointments pipeline, and they developed an insular filter bubble that guarantee voter power is yoked to the interests of the donor class through fear mongering propaganda.
I guess the upside here is that if Democrats take back control there will be good reason to formalize these norms as laws. A bill of alt-rights.
Precisely. Look at what the police and rich people get away with.
My reasoning boils down to: Trump is not as bad as it gets, and allowing the slide to continue will only make the next R candidate that much worse. A centerist Democrat winning might reverse some of the more visible immediate problems caused by Trump, but it opens the door to someone even worse 4 or 8 years later.
To continue your metaphor: Ousting Trump and replacing with a centerist is at best a half-fix. It still lets the rot spread, and in 4 or 8 years, we'll have another, bigger cavity, and the half-fix will need fixing on top of it.
Keeping Trump for another four years means that he'd almost definitely get the chance to nominate at least one more Supreme Court justice - that would allow him to drag the US even further to the right for possibly decades.
That is what many thought about Erdogan 2002-2008.
Trump is just an orange Erdogan. With him, you are living through what Turkey did back when AKP was first elected. So many similarities. Especially the bureaucratic battle vs. the government. Should the short sighted priviledged folks who voted Erdogan b/c "he is a conservative from an Islamist background, but his policies are liberal, he is bringing real free market and personal freedom" understood that, even tho their reasoning was correct for that time period, this kind of movement will switch gears as soon as they get powerful enough, we would be living in a very different Turkey today.
Your reasoning is the same. And what Trump is doing is the same. You will repent it if you vote him because of this reasoning.
I understand your argument, but you are mistaken. Understand that whoever gets elected next, whether its trump, a centerist or sanders, the door to the trumpocracy will remain open regardless. The problems which put him into power aren't ones that can be solved by the next presidency, but for the happenstance of the electoral college. Our broken media, anti-truth and exceptionally proud population, and tendancies towards us-or-them politics are the primary reasons he got elected, none of which are going to go away no matter who becomes the next president.
What will change if Trump were reelected, though, is his policymaking. "Lame duck" terms are interesting - although the rest of the government will be less inclined to work wkth him, so, too, will he be less inclined to restrain himself because he no longer needs to be popular.
Which is all to say, no matter which way you slice it, Trump being reelected is only going to make things worse, no matter who the dems were to put up in his place.
This seems like a really weird argument to me because how is Trump preventing the spread of the rot?
you really have no idea what he's done, do you?
The core reason I say these things, is because centerists still support the vast majority of bad policy that the far right does.... Namely anything that affects socioeconomic status or continuing imperialist warmongering. Yes, centerists won't enact policy that flagrantly violates people's rights the same way a R would, but they also won't enact policy that is meaningful progress in the correct direction.
The best example I can provide is Obama. He is a perfect example of a modern centerist. For 2 solid years, there was a chance to implement real leftist change to counter the 8 years of Bush2, but the best that came of it was the ACA, which at best was a bandaid on a horrible festering wound. And because he was willing to compromise with the right, it allowed the Overton Window to continue the shift right, and enable the Trump presidency.
The only way to actually stop the continuing shift to the right is to elect representatives from the left, who are willing to implement sweeping changes regardless of what the right wants.
I made this point in another thread and another Tildeian correctly pointed out to me that Obama had to work with Congress and the congresspersons who were up for re-election in purple states wouldn't stand for it, so he would never of had the votes to pass the legislation.
We can strive for ideals, but we still have to work within what is real.
So you're willing to acknowledge that one party is going to strip rights away from marginalized groups and one wont.... but you'll say those are the same thing? You answered your own question of how they aren't the same. It seems to be that you don't care who suffers until a leftist is elected.
I'm not saying they're the same thing, by any stretch. What I am attempting to convey is: Trump should be a wakeup call, and should be inspiring hard-left movement, in all elections. If the best that the opposition can provide is a short reprieve from things getting worse, I weep for our nation.
The vast majority of the rhetoric I see being thrown around on various communities is "Anybody but Trump." And I am pointing out that "anybody" will not fix the problem, only a leftist movement can fix the problem.
Forgive me, but it seems you're operating on a supposition that a "hard-left" movement is the both only logical outcome and the only solution that will fix the problems caused by a backslide into Trumpian fascism. Those are huge suppositions to make. Essentially what you are advocating is gambling with the lives and happiness of marginalized people on a chance that it will produce a political revolution, and another chance that this revolution will produce a desirable outcome. What makes you so sure these are the guaranteed outcomes, to an extent that the suffering of others is a necessary sacrifice?
they're not guaranteed outcomes, and in fact i'd bet you that trump will just usher in actual, genuine fascism and not just crypto-fascism sooner than the american people will gain class consciousness and start voting in "hard-leftists" or people who are any more radical than AOC. the problem with accelerationism is that it has like, no fucking basis in reality if you actually look at how strings of elections go. reagan got elected twice and the reaction to him when he fucked off definitely wasn't some hard-left movement even though he was the most conservative republican (and really, the most conservative president) in a generation--instead, we just elected another republican in george HW bush and reagan is still one of the most looked up to presidents in recent history by both sides of the political aisle.
Yes that is the point I'm getting at accelerationism tends to consider a socialist revolution inevitable even in the face of a strongly contradicting historical reality.
As someone in a marginalized community, who is dating someone and friends with people across marginalized communities, the reason the rhetoric is "Anybody but Trump" is because, for us, 4 more years of Trump is likely our rights being at risk for the rest of my life. At best, all supreme court justices survive and we only have to worry about rising hate crimes against our communities, the militarization of the police, and losing our rights and hoping someone restores them. The worst case is a conservative packing of the supreme court that does all of the above, except for at least a generation. It isn't a "we think a moderate will fix all our problems", it's "if we don't elect someone other than Trump, many of us might not live to see a better time." And unless you're in one of the communities most affected by Trump and his policies, you're significantly more privileged than us. I'm happy to vote for progressive candidates in the primary because I agree, progressive candidates are the way to fix the problem. But when it comes to the general, for me personally, voting D isn't a matter of fixing the country, it is about voting for survival.
But he isn't. Just because people don't like Trump doesn't mean they must like the thing that is as far away from Trump as possible. There is no reason why there shouldn't be any turn to the far left. I wouldn't call Beto a "short reprieve from things getting worse" and I would be thrilled to call him president.
Bullshit. Don't state your political leanings as universal or fact.
i'm not going to say that leftism is the only solution to the problems we face--and indeed as far as america goes leftism is basically a nonstarter so even if it was pushing for it outright would be unhelpful--but you're also going to have a hard time convincing me that liberalism in the long term can actually answer most of the problems that will likely challenge it in the future such as climate change and immigration, considering it's straining to do that now in a time it's far better off than it probably will be in the future. just as you say "Don't state your political leanings as universal or fact.", i would caution you to not count on liberalism like we currently have it remaining the norm in a lot of the world if it can't get us out of the mess we're in.
Cap-and-trade as well as carbon credits.
The more the merrier, we should be making it as easy as possible.
The only 'strain' is getting people to put aside the preconceived populist notions they have in their head. Ideas like immigration being harmful or climate change not being real. Everyone seems to thing they know more about immigration's impact than an economist or more about climate change than a climate scientist. Making people realize their own ignorance and to shut up and listen to experts who have dedicated themselves to studying these matters is the real challenge.
cool. how do you intend to get this to be law of the land in most of the world, or otherwise implement large-scale climate policies which are antithetical to business interests around the world and generally quite unpopular if not with the people then at least politicians in most countries of the world? for that matter, how do you intend to do it in the approximately decade-long timeframe we have to avert permanent damage, given that literally nothing that will act to avert such has come of international climate agreements and we're currently on track for at least 3 degrees Celsius of warming based on even current implemented climate policies around the world?
cool. just a question though: how do you intend to do that when 100 million people are trying to come into the global west when a twenty-fifth of that number caused a massive populist resurgence and the collapse of most of europe's social democratic and center-left parties in favor of reactionary, anti-immigrant, euroskeptic ones which are broadly skeptical of democracy? for that matter, how do you answer to the same collapse of social democratic and center-left parties in favor of one which more resemble centrist, business interest ones or actively reactionary, pseudo-fascist ones which have a vested interest in running counter to liberalism in places like south america where there isn't actually an immigration issue at all?
again i caution you: these are questions you might think you just answered--but people have been giving the same answers you just did to people, and it honestly did fuck all in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and now 2019 to stop the forces i'm talking about. you talk about how if we just implement climate policies then that solves the problem, but you didn't answer how we do that in a timely manner given how many interests are against it and given the relative unpopularity of many measures of the sort and the herculean efforts they would entail. you speak of just educating people and making them "realize" their ignorance, but you don't speak of how we do that in a way that ensures they are properly educated, nor do you consider the possibility that some people have an interest in climate change occurring or countries being destabilized by immigration and anti-immigrant sentiments. those types of things are exactly what i mean--those are the sorts of things that will lead to liberalism collapsing under its own weight if it can't reconcile itself with the answers people want or give.
What do you mean by "liberalism" in this context? Do you just mean the predominant left-of-center political movement? Or are you talking about the principle of government limiting its restrictions of freedom to what is necessary? If you mean the former, political parties will change to survive. Just look at what's happening in the Democratic party due to growing leftist political power. If you mean the other, why shouldn't it face new challenges?
both.
only in two party systems or functional two party system equivalents like australia or the UK, where the change is coming from within the parties because the system all but forces it to be that way. even so, you're seeing increasing radicalization in what those parties represent. in parliamentary systems with more than two major viable parties though, you're seeing a trend of partial or total collapse in center-left parties to more genuinely leftist ones who have less inclination toward liberalism, and the same trend with right-wing parties who are losing out to populist or far right parties who support democracy insofar as it allows them to garner power, but would sooner prefer to sell it up the river than to maintain and expand it. which brings us to this:
the failure of liberalism to address the issues of these people and their challenges is why, if nothing changes, liberalism will fail. the issue is not that it faces new challenges--but rather, that it has no answers to the big ones that trouble it and where it does, it's not the answers people want. now, if your interest like mine is in socialism, that's all well and good because liberalism is shit, but if you're a liberal this should terrify you because the system will unravel if it doesn't work to address the issues that are driving many people to radical extremes. part of why the far-right is growing as it is for example because there are many people who feel disaffected, unrepresented, and left behind by liberalism, and they are receptive to the rhetoric offered by the far right of a new system that will actually recognize them and what they feel is wrong in the world. a similar thing is true of many people who have been radicalized to the left--and if liberalism has no answer for either of those things or the realities that drive them like income inequality or climate change or immigration or whatever, then eventually it is destined to collapse and be replaced. more and more people want something more than what the status quo is currently giving them, and the solutions currently are to the far-left in socialism and to the far-right in fascism, not with liberalism.
you just don't bother in the first place, because there's not nearly enough of them for it to honestly matter. leftism is not that widespread and leftists will not ever decide any current US election, and sanders supporters went like 88% for hillary clinton in 2016.
at that point, you're veering into things that are more external issues, and there are many of those that absolutely played a bigger role than disenfranchised sanders supporters or leftists being turned off by the idea of a centrist. if you want to play it safe, there are much larger demographics that clinton did absolute dogshit in that could be shored up or compelled to vote over trying to convince the maybe 100,000 voters in america we're talking about here to vote for a centrist democrat.
They're just as lost as hard R votes. Don't waste your time or energy.
Worth noting that Booker has the secondmost progressive voting history in the Senate, behind only Warren. More a Beto fan myself, but might as well be fair.
What is a gender minority? I haven't come across this term before, and it seems a little counter-intuitive, because there's roughly as many men as women. Does it mean non-binary individuals?
Yes, and transgender people
I'm slightly surprised that transgender people are also considered gender minorities. Wouldn't they be sex-gender alignment minorities, rather than gender minorities - or is this distinction simply considered unhelpful?
I must admit I don't understand what you're asking - English isn't my native language. What is an alignment minority?
If it's helpful though, GSM (Gender and Sexual Minorities) is the most useful term in my opinion. More useful than variations of LGBT+ as it really is a catch-all for anyone that is not cisgender or heterosexual.
If your assigned sex does not align in the more usual way to your gender (i.e. you are transgender) then you are in a minority group when it comes to alignment - but not to gender. A trans woman is still a woman, and therefore is not a minority when exclusively considering that basis, since some 50% of people are women.
If only everyone held that opinion :')
honestly, joe manchin could run for president and if he won i'd take it, because even as the single most conservative democrat in the senate, the difference in how often he votes with trump relative to the average republican is still a gap of like, 40%, which is more than enough to make a vast material difference in the lives of a lot of people. even policy wise--accounting for his positively awful ideas of environmental friendliness and his borderline republican ideas on things like the DREAM Act--his views are still the difference between LGBT+ rights and LGBT+ discrimination, the PPACA versus whatever shitty republican plan there is to replace it, gun control of some sort over literally nothing, and so on.
This would be bad for one main reason. The supreme court. If another supreme court justice on the left side of things passed away and we had Trump, the US would be irrevocably fucked for the next few decades as progressive causes and institutions are torn apart from the top-down. At that point, I firmly believe the US's decline into autocracy would be guaranteed.
And yes, you did indirectly help support Trump's rise to power in the election. That's an unfortunate consequence of our two party system, but it's the reality we live in.
The Supreme Court has changed numbers several times in the 1800s before it was set to 9. I think if Trump was a bad enough two term President, expanding the Supreme Court wouldn't sound so crazy and could be an actual campaign talking point.
A large part of Congress being unable to pass legislation is the Senate filibuster. I'd be surprised in 2020/2024( in this scenario) if a Dem (that isn't Biden/Beto/Klobuchar) wins that they don't nuke it.
The supreme court isn't capped or required to have a specific number at all. It merely requires that congress and the president do their usual vetting process. I believe Andrew Jackson had some success bullying his supreme court by threatening to appoint five new justices and bring it up to thirteen.
Point being, if the court is having issues, the solution is just to start adding more justices. Take it right up to twenty seven of them, have them in three panels of nine and able to hear more cases. All of them rule in on constitutional cases. For other cases, one panel of nine rules, then it can be appealed to a different panel. Pick one of them for the kind of oversight FISA is providing and make it legit. Give the justices a twenty five year term limit.
While I agree the supreme court is the biggest problem, as the sibling posts point out, it is not an unsolvable problem.
And a centerist's appointments won't be much better than an R's on most topics, with the exception of abortion.
they also struck another massive blow to unions (which thankfully most unions have softened the blow against but which still would have probably gone the other way had really any democrat been president in 2016.)
I'm going to have a guess here - you're male, white, educated, relatively well-off (or at least not poor) and straight. You have a not-bad job in a fairly stable industry. You're probably under 30 and you don't have kids.
Because I can see your reasoning and while I don't agree, I don't think you're insane. But also you're arguing from a position of privilege. You can afford another 4 years of Trump, because while he is clearly a dangerous narcissist and possibly a white supremacist, he doesn't really impact you all that much. I'm not American, but I have a lot of friends and some relatives who are. Among them you can count people who are female (duh), LGBT, non-white and some who work with those in poverty and they are, without exception, furious and terrified. Smart, educated people who no longer feel safe in their own country. People who are being affected by Trump. Their legal protections, some very hard fought for, are slowly being chipped away. People who think they are dangerous, deviants, enemies of the state, literal devils, are finding their way into places of power.
I get the whole all or nothing fast-fix approach you're shooting for, but I'm not sure it works in the real world. Or if it does it hurts a lot of people along the way. Are you aware of the concept of the Overton Window? Trump is pushing that way, way right. A centrist candidate might not start making the changes you want overnight, but they'll start moving that window back towards a position where the good, progressive policies become more acceptable to more people. It might take 8, 12 years for the change you want to come, but nations are big things and big things have a lot of inertia.
Major changes are always slow, because the public as a whole moves slowly. For every 22 year old who wants things to change right goddamn now because this stuff MATTERS there's three or four people over 50 who think things are fine just how they are already. Ultimately many progressive policies seem to so often end up relying on a bunch of old people withdrawing their support for doing things how we've always done them. Usually by dying. Sad but true.
I agree with most everything you've said, except for this key point. A centerist will not move the position back....if that was the case, the slide that has been going since the 70's would not be as far to the right as it is now. Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama were all centerists by most definitions.... 28+ years of centerist policy, and it has resulted in the situation that allowed Trump to be elected in the first place.
Re: the Overton window, I will link you my favorite rendition of the political spectrum: http://expressiveegg.org/2017/01/04/the-political-spectrum/
According to your link Obama is moderate-to-far right, which I'd mostly agree with. I don't believe either Bush, or Clinton, to be left of Obama. Which makes sense in the grand scheme of everything moving right for the last 40 years. Elect right wing politicians and you get right wing politics. My understanding is the US doesn't really have much in the way of centrist politicians, let alone a left wing.
The thing is, it's not really a simple left/right scale. Add another axis and things are much easier to talk about.
Agreed, here are my results:
Economic Left/Right: -8.0
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.77
You are correct...when I'm saying "hard left" in this thread, or "progressive," I'm mostly advocating for a politician that, for example, supports something remotely humane, such as a reasonable minimum wage and universal healthcare.
What I would personally like to see in my lifetime, would be a politician that says something akin to "We need to remove all for-profit enterprises from all aspects of our food and water supply, from the farms to the tables." I'm sure that's a much harder sell to the majority. :)
No, not really. Moderate/centerist Dems only "support" them with lip service. They say "sure we want universal healthcare," but then just kind of let it languish, rather than doing anything to make it a reality. As I recall, increasing minimum wage wasn't even a topic discussed on the national stage until Bernie brought it to the forefront in 2016.
There are also far more important topics that centerists rarely take a firm stance on, that we really should be: Things such as working to eliminate American interventions across the globe, dismantling the military-industrial complex, and start implementing real policy to address climate change.
Beto, for example, "thinks the Green New Deal has some good ideas" and supports "Medicare for America" rather than Medicare for All. Mealy-mouthed support at best, he lives up to his reputation as the white Obama. He sounds good, as long as you don't look too far into it.
What? By what earthly definition was George W. Bush a centrist?
Some people consider the neocons' lust for big military budgets as budging them over towards the left side of the political spectrum.
The Overton Window is great to mention but it's not a window of constant width - the right controls the right shade and the left controls the left shade; it can be as wide or narrow as it's allowed to be. The media has at least as much influence as the politicians. The reality of how that works is evident in the polling on a higher marginal tax rate for the rich proposed by AOC. When she first proposed it I think the whole populace had a emperor-has-no-clothes moment. It made perfect sense, but no one in the mainstream had even entertained the idea for 30 years. That is because of targeted messaging by people with money to move the "window" right and the failure of the left to push back. If you really look at the program of influence exacted by the elites like the Kochs during this time- donating money to PBS, buying buildings for universities, the consolidation of media. The Third Way Democrats didn't really push back the whole time - they have just taken the tack of trying to out play the Right at its own game.
So now you have a window controlled by fascists on both sides - hot fascists like Trump who will appeal to imminent fear like when he mentions having "the bikers" on his side or ratchets up rhetoric with global and nuclear powers, and cool fascists who hold centrists hostage from leftward movement saying they are "holding the line" while "compromising" on economic policies that disproportionately effect the very minority groups they claim to protect. When you have someone like Kamala Harris more interested in the economic effects of letting people out of prison or Jake Tapper more concerned about the future of health insurance industry than the people dying from lack of healthcare you know you have a real problem.
Fascism isn't just about violence or threats of the same, it's about the cooperation of the government with business interests and the slide towards greater threats and eventually actual violence to maintain those interests.
That's not what I was doing. Pointing out someone's biases is not attacking them as a person. It's not OP's fault they're in a position of privilege, nor am I blaming them for being so or saying anything about them as a person. There's nothing wrong with being an educated, employed, relatively well-off straight white dude. I am one. But that is a position of privilege, and that privilege is affecting their premises - few other people could argue that 4 more years of Trump is tolerable, whatever the outcome of that might be - which is why I believe their argument isn't convincing.
An ad hominem would be if I said "you're an idiot, so nothing you say matters"
I'm not sure that "there are many minority groups within the US who are directly suffering as a result of Trump and could really do without four more years of that" is all that much of a straw man, is it?
You are right in the sense that who OP is doesn't really matter, and I'd like to reiterate that I don't personally care and am not judging them on that basis, but the root of their argument still relies on them being in a position to tolerate 4 more years of Trump administration, even if the ultimate outcome is positive. It's not even really Donnie that's the problem, he's just a small-time hustler out to line his pockets and he's very likely to die in prison when it all catches up with him, it's the astonishingly shitty (and considerably more capable) people he's putting in positions of power, who are doing shitty things that don't tend to affect well off straight white dudes.
But then sometimes it's helpful to use contrast to make a point. For example, why did I say OP is straight? Because no sane LGBT person would support Trump. Why did I say OP was male? Because why would a sane woman support Trump? (I'm aware there is a significant group of almost entirely white and evangelical women who do support Trump but I think it's hard to make a case that people who vote against their own interests are entirely rational). Why would OP be white? I think that's fairly obvious. Etc. etc.
You say there are a "lot" of people who are not straight white dudes who support Trump but the data suggests that is his biggest demographic. It's important to note that OP doesn't support Trump, however, except in a kind of "might as well burn it all down and rebuild" context.
Sorry, but you can make statements about groups of people, especially when the thing is a fairly simple question - you're either pro-Trump or you're not. Generalisations are a thing. They're sometimes useful, sometimes not. They're not perfect, but I don't think I ever claimed they were.
Let's take an example. Hypothesis: the LGBT community does not support Trump. Let's get some numbers - about 200 people attended the inaugural DeploraBall and Gays For Trump have trouble getting more than a handful of people to their events people to their events. Meanwhile several thousand protested him at Stonewall, and you can find plenty of anti-Trump LGBT rallies apart form that one. So it's perfectly reasonable to say that the LGBT community is about 90% anti-Trump, 10% pro-Trump, and let's be honest, that's probably being overly generous on the pro-Trump side. With numbers like that I think we can safely say that, on balance, the LGBT community is not in favour of Trump. You can reject that claim all you like but the numbers don't lie.
If you want an individual, my cousin is gay and American and she detests Trump, as does her wife. I never see a single positive comment about Trump by any of her friends (gay, straight, trans, whatever) on Facebook. But individuals are pointless to talk about, they're anecdotal and anecdotal evidence is worthless. I like hard numbers not vague stories.
Side note re defining "suffering" - for the transgender community suffering means their entire identity being removed. That's a long way from being offended by a tweet.
fwiw, you don't sound like a Trump supporter. You do sound a little like a Trump apologist, which isn't as bad but I don't believe you to be either, at least so far. I know you'll laugh at this because of what you've said so far, but I do try not to assume things about people.
i made this point upthread: if you think the solution is to make things worse before they get better intentionally, you're probably not in a position where anything the trump administration does is about to affect you. this, as @mat leads with, by the nature of demographics would suggest that someone who can advocate for that is most likely white, possibly well off, maybe educated, and almost certainly straight, because if they weren't even one of those things, their ability to hold such a position would become considerably more tenuous. are there people who are not-white who are accelerationists? sure. are there people who are not-white who support another term of trump? sure. but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who wants to make things worse before they get better who is a minority of any of the types this conversation centers around, because most of those people aren't in a position where they can advocate for something like that without worrying about what will happen to them.
You heard the exact same sentiment back in 2000 with Bush v Gore, and I would say the politics of the past twenty years have thoroughly discredited it: if accelerationism worked, 8 years under Bush 2 would've done the trick. But despite the American public watching the prosperous and peaceful 90's give way to a decade of warfare, human rights violations, international pariah status, and economic collapse under Republican rule, the Obama coalition lost power two years after gaining it, a whole new wave of fascists swept into office, and here we are ten years later, much worse for wear. Every authoritarian elected president makes it that much easier for the next one, and that much harder for progressives who need to spend time repairing the damage instead of moving forward.
If you want progressive policies, vote for progressive politicians when possible, and against reactionaries when not. Don't fall for the both sides bullshit, and don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Corporate Democrats are shitty, but the modern Republican party is literally a threat to life on Earth, not to mention democracy, and they must be kept out of office at all costs.
I wouldn't go as far as insane, but I'd try and take a really hard look at why you're not getting mixed signals on this. Thinking a Trump 2020 presidency would be a good idea is to be so ignorant of what he and everyone around him has done to the US and the world its extraordinary.
Slowing down the descent into fascism is the first step in reversing it. You need to decelerate and stop before you can start moving in the opposite direction and the country can only change so fast. We need to stop the bleeding before we can start managing blood pressure and insulin levels; those will kill us too, but not as quickly.
A moderate president may not be ideal, but would allow for legislation to pass that would get vetoed by Trump. A moderate president would not appoint partisan hacks to lifetime positions. A moderate president would allow us to start to recover from current insanity while building momentum towards a more ideal government. The current administration is causing serious long-term harm that will far outlast the 4 to 8 years it's in charge.
Do not let "perfect" be the enemy of the "good" and do not let "good" be the enemy of "competent".
I don't have enough time to give a deep and thoughtful response, but I would like to point out how distressing it is that no one has pointed to climate change as a huge reason why a non-progressive Democrat is a better option than Trump.
That's going to depend on the Democrat pushing for actual solutions to reduce carbon emissions. If they say they believe climate change is happening and do nothing/very little then that's pretty bad. I don't think it's an issue that can wait anymore.
I think there's one candidate who's declared, Jay Inslee, who has climate change as the number one issue. That said I haven't heard much about him so I'm not convinced he'll actually get many votes.
Well, I did call the Republican party a threat to life on earth, and I was talking about climate change. But yeah, it's make or break time for the future of civilization, and regardless of how the next few decades turn out, people who enabled the GOP knowing full well what they were doing are not going to be remembered fondly. We have a bare handful of years left before things really start going down the shitter, and we can't afford to waste them playing chicken with fascism.
I'm going to post my initial reply to all the other top posters separately, as it is a common thread I am seeing, and would like to discuss separately from the rest of the thread.
The common thread that none of the initial replies touched on, was actually one of my main points: Could someone provide details on why Trump is any worse than any of the R candidates that would have been in his place?
I'll give you a few reasons off the top of my head. This is all common knowledge to me so if you want sources or want to argue about the specifics, I'm not your man.
The majority of your points surrounding his diplomacy would also apply to any other Republican candidate, it's just that they would be more apt in doing these things on the sly. At least now we have better visibility to when they happen. Regarding a few of the other points:
That's the Republican congress, not the president.
IMO, the only good thing Trump did. TPP was a disaster. While he sank it for the wrong reasons, the world is better off with its absence.
This is the best news I've heard all day. Republican legislation is mostly horrible, and anything that slows its passage is a fantastic outcome.
This also applies to the vast majority of the Republican party, and a fair majority of the Democratic party. They only care about themselves, and retaining their power. Everything else is mostly political theater.
Anything that I didn't mention specifically, consider that as message received and mostly agreed upon. Short on time and trying to address as many as I can within reason.
That is a huge, huge assumption. You shouldn't treat it as true to avoid addressing the issue. I have a hard time believing any of the other Republican candidates would have tried to start a trade war with Canada because of thin skin.
Or sinking the Iran deal, that was like 15 years of diplomacy that's just about down the drain now. Cosying up to Saudi Arabia instead, I guess because a worse option didn't exist after North Korea walked away.
Hate to break it to you...we've been allies with Saudi Arabia and supporting their atrocities for a long, long time. This is standard USA behavior, not something unique to Trump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia%E2%80%93United_States_relations
I'm aware of the history. The point of the Iran deal was to help shift the nexus of power in the middle east from SA to Iran, he ruined at least 15 years of diplomacy so we can keep the status quo with SA.
I think this is a strong point.
I say this as an outsider looking in: America has lost a lot of respect in world politics since Trump took office.
Even with the surge of right-wing populism in most of the world, American politics still leans right compared to most of the western world. Where I'm from, all of American politics exists right of our center. Nobody in their right mind would vote for republican policies over here. Less than 5% of our voters approve of Trump, almost 80% think he hasn't improved or has been getting actively worse over the course of the term. He's widely ridiculed.
You guys electing an American centrist (read: right-leaning) politician would maybe not cause you to gain much in terms of cold hard politics, if what you want is Warren or Bernie, but it would at least stop a lot of your allies from abandoning you completely.
"Don't worry, we got this" is a very powerful signal to be sending after four years of Trump.
The easiest way to show an example is Saturday night live. Dana carvey and Bush 1 will Ferrell and Bush 2.these 2 may not have liked being on snl but both didn't threaten the actors, they didn't want the fbi to close down the studio.
The anti anti hate speech is the most obvious and scary thing.
And conservatives are fiscally concerned about spending. Trump shows no concern about spending only targeting certain programs
The military, it seemed bush 2 loved the story of his involvement in the military operations.
Edit
Policies are pretty standard. No republican is going to fund npr. Or raise taxes on the top 10%. It's 100% about there character and the office of the president.
If the argument was w Bush or John McCain pre Sarah Palin vs Bernie... That's a valid point.
We've got a progressive side that is just playing too the masses and throwing Anything out there for show
"We" Don't want what Europe has or is Offering; Dems, Progressives, or Conservatives... no one wants to pay taxes or thier "fairshare". Which is sad because its very probusiness, good for everyone. Bernie Making it 'radical' just makes lots of people not want to bother with it
This current M4A is all showboating
The Current Healthcare Proposals are very limited on the bottom 75% not having to paying anything
The US. government is large. The leader only has a tiny bit of control. The U.S. will continue to do terrible things regardless of who is in charge, just like every other nation-state on this green Earth.
The world is going to burn, so let's burn it down faster? What about all the people who are currently suffering on behalf of the person who is currently in office? Why support a re-election and maintenance of the status quo which includes kids being torn apart from their parents on the facade of national security?
Do you legitimately believe that the Obama administration accelerated fascism in the US?
I understand the reasoning behind your opinion, but I don’t think I agree with it (despite also voting 3rd party in 2016). The whole of the US can’t even agree on whether trump is a fascist or not; you have to be in the very small minority if you thought Obama was fascist or that Hillary would be.
Not directly no. Think of the Democratic party and the Republican party as two people driving a car, and every 4/8 years they trade off who's driving. Since the 1970's (and earlier, but especially since the 70's), the Republican party has been driving us directly towards a cliff. The Democratic candidates largely have not driven us closer towards the cliff....but for the most part, they steer so we run parallel to the cliff, and when the R party gets back in the seat, they continue driving for the cliff.
The only way to make progress away from the cliff is to stop letting the Republican's drive, and electing Democrats that are willing to steer away from the cliff and not just slow the rate that we are advancing towards the cliff.
OP, regarding this point:
A huge part of it is that it's not just the presidency. We need younger and more progressive lawmakers at every single stage of government if things are actually going to change. Dems took the senate, and the House should be next.
Honestly, the biggest threat to this country right now is that we have still have a large chunk of the House of Reps, and a huge chunk of the Senate that's complacent with the fact that a blatantly and openly fascist man is our president right now, and complacent about the corruption, bullshit, and everything else. One of the reasons I respect AOC so much is that she's actually idealistic and smart. Asking questions, disarming critics, and exposing the bullshit in Washington.
Yes, you're right that Trump is exposed the madness far quicker than anything else would have, and I see him as a necessary evil, but I think 4 years of this destructive agenda is more than enough for myself, as a minority. I will not be voting for him (and didn't the first time around) but I do think that he exposed some serious issues with where our system has been sliding in the last 20 years. IMO, it's now time for younger people in all forms of public office. Not the old and corrupt who have been sitting on bribes for 30+ years and letting this shitshow happen.
The problem you identified is real, but until we have about 200+ people like AOC in office, nothing will change. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't start now. I'd be happy with a young idealist who wants to push for green energy, less corruption, and less bullshit as President. But I also think we need to push for more of the same in ALL other branches of government.
You wrote this backwards (Dems have majority in the House, not the Senate), but the next sentence has it right, so I'm sure you know.
I read an article recently that I was thinking about submitting separately, but this might be a good place to drop it: Democrats don’t need any more presidential candidates. They need senators.
The whole thing is worth reading, but I think the really key point is that with the way the current system works, there's a very real risk of a permanent Republican super-majority in the Senate:
This is exactly why I hate the electoral college and the idea of any representation that is not directly proportional.
I never understood why anyone thought it was a good idea to give disproportional representation in any part of the government. What problems does it really solve?
And to those out there who think it's a good idea, then how about we create a new house of congress to represent other minorities - we can give disproportionate representation to LGBT, muslim, indian, asian, african american, musicians, trade artists, buddhists, hindus, yogis and any and all other minority groups. Lets kick it up to 11 if you're so worried about your rights not being represented.
Back when the system was conceived, the disparity was not nearly so large, communication was slower (so proportional representation was a much harder problem), and it was a fair attempt at solving the "tyranny of the majority" sort of problem.
Tyranny of the majority is a real factor to consider, in the sense that if one can consistently maintain 51% of the vote, than they can ignore the will of 49% of the population. I think a different, more modern approach is needed, given just how badly the original method has scaled with time...to the point that we're now suffering under a "tyranny of the minority." One such method I'm recalling (which I may have read in a work of fiction) works along these lines: It takes 70% (or more) in favor of a law for a new law to be passed, and it only requires a 40% (or less) vote to repeal a law. The idea behind this concept is that it becomes much harder to pass laws, and keep them in place, which do not benefit the vast majority of people. It is obviously in dire need of refinement and testing, but I think the overall thought process is in the right place... it provides more leeway than full consensus lawmaking (especially if the idea of representative democracy is abolished in favor of direct democracy), but also insures that if a law barely passes, only 10% of those who voted for it need to change their minds to rescind it.
so, something you really have to consider is that even if you were to switch to a consensus-based system, tyranny of the majority is an inevitable possibility in basically every democratic system because democracy is an inherently majoritarian or at least pluralitarian system and therefore in any such system you can have factions develop which make certain viewpoints effectively impossible to challenge (at least without causing a massive row) if a sufficient number of people take a certain stance and are not willing to budge on it. if, for example, you were to implement a consensus-system in a group of white nationalists and you're the sole non-white-nationalist in that group, the consensus is still probably going to be white nationalism--or, if it's not, it's likely to be a split between you and them because "consensus" won't really be possible.
the best you can really do in any democratic system to minimize the possibility of tyranny of the majority is design around it, and implement checks and balances where possible so that the majority has less ability to fuck over the minority--but even so, there will always be the possibility, because that's just the nature of how democracy is modeled. democracy is, as i said, inherently majoritarian or pluralitarian, and that will generally breed factionalism of some sort eventually.
I'm familiar with the concept of tyranny of the majority I just disagree with how much of a problem everyone seems to claim it is. Do you have a good historical example?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
That's a good starting point, although it lacks specific examples. I would say the following could be a good general rule for whether something qualifies as "tyranny of the majority":
If a democratic (small d, not the party) majority votes to do something that either directly or indirectly oppresses the rights of those who voted against it, it's probably "tyranny of the majority."
Most prominent USA example is probably Jim Crow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
None of these examples have anything to do with locality and have everything to do with suppression of minority ethnicities. Something that the electoral college and setup of the American government is not designed to handle. In fact you could argue that it was designed to contribute to the problem (suppression of minority ethnicities) as diversity is always lower in areas of low population.
Thanks for the attempt but this does not change my view.
Have you heard of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact? You'd like it. So do I, for the record.
Yes and I love it. Can't wait for it to finally enact.
Excellent points. and thanks for catching that early accidental switcheroo. Whoops!
This post resonates with me on many levels. You have laid out many details that I agree with, but did not take the time to write out. I think part of the reason I submitted my post in the first place, is that I have had trouble fully articulating the entirety of what I am trying to convey, without getting caught in the details.
I think part of why I expressed the sentiments I did, as I did, is because ultimately the Republican party (and their voting base) is playing the long game. When they are not in power, they rally their base with the vilest of tactics. When they are in power, they work to consolidate and solidify their power. The entire party functions as one cohesive unit. Even if Trump is voted out of office, the party that enabled his rise will remain. They will patiently wait out the next 4/8 years, then the next R president that wins an election will do virtually everything that Trump is doing (as you have to remember, virtually nothing Trump is doing is against true GOP values), but will do so with vastly more eloquence and charisma.
The only way to head off this problem, as you stated, is to elect progressives at virtually every level of government, until the GOP is dead for good. I agree that this won't happen in one election cycle, however a good way to kick start this process is to choose a candidate that inspires people to work towards this goal, instead of merely maintaining (the pre-Trump) status quo. Remember, Hillary represented the status quo in 2016, while Trump was claiming to stand for significant change. The broader base of people don't want the status quo...they want their lives to get better. Trump won with the (false) promise that he would make people's lives better.
I think you're talking about how politics operates in cycles. It's extremely hard for Democratic Presidents to win after two terms of their own party in power, likewise for Republicans. For Congress, midterm elections side against the party of the President. In that sense, if you elect a moderate Democrat and Republicans elect Bush 2 or Trump, national discourse and policy veers to the right.
You aren't really wrong for that fear since it's been whats happening but I think you have to consider yourself that the American voter base really isn't as Progressive as you or I would like. If you want to make the GOP a permanent minority party that means you're going to have to accept moderate Democrats into the party. Sitting out elections just means politicians can consider you a non-voter and won't represent you whatsoever.
Thus far, Andrew Yang is the only progressive with an extremely good chance of beating Trump with the support he's pulling across the spectrum.
No other presidential candidate strikes me as solution-and-fact-based as Yang does in this compelling interview by Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsEzmFamZ8
a technocrat silicon valley capitalist polling at 1% whose main backers are reddit techno-libertarians, people who vote internet first, and reactionaries who think he can be their Manchurian candidate is the most likely progressive to beat Trump? really? i don't think so.