I think we're trying to solve different problems, that's what you're confused about. You're thinking in the immediate term, about what's right in front of your face right now making you so scared. That's how you get led around by the nose every election cycle, voting for Republican-lite, solving nothing, leading us further down the road to fascism with every wasted administration.
I'm thinking in terms of solving the long term problem that has brought us to the point of fascism; the corruption and ineptitude of the Democratic party. The Democratic party represents the only potential avenue out of the fascist predicament that the GOP and right-wing Democrats have put us in, but they aren't equipped or willing to actually fight, they need to be made so. The only way that happens is by twisting their arm and not giving into their extortion tactics, they need to be shown that it's not politically viable.
You see the American people as fragile, I do not. I think that's the fundamental difference in our approaches here. You're afraid of personal discomfort, sacrifice and conflict and that's how you operate politically, trying to save your bubble of comfort at all costs. But there is no saving it, and many other Americans and people around the world have been living (and being killed) outside that bubble already for a long time.
We don't live in an era where we get to just be comfortable and pretend everything is fine, the Boomers got that. We live in an era where we have to face tyrants and our democratic institutions have been corrupted pretty much beyond function by the two parties.
The starting point is reform of the Democratic party through whatever means necessary, the rest is secondary until we have politicians willing to fight. Filling political offices with empty suits and fascist-lite politicians is counter-productive. Don't let the lesser of two evils be the enemy of good.
Yes, the ACA was born as a Republican bill, and this was after Obama promised abortion would be the first thing on his list when they got the super majority. Then he simply said it "wasn't a priority any longer" when that chance came. It illustrates exactly why establishment Democrats are complicit in the loss of our fundemental rights, they are willing or prepared to seize on opportunities to fight fascism the way fascists are prepared to seize opportunities to undermine our democracy.
Dems don't want to resolve issues like abortion, if they didn't have that they'd have to start talking about campaign finance reform and election procedures (proving how we vote) etc. It's much easier to just be locked in an unwinnable struggle with other corporate conservatives from the other team.
I never proposed a strategy of voting for right-wingers.
Joe Biden is a right-winger, having a D next to his name doesn't change that. I'm talking about right-wing Democrats.
What do you propose and how will that help?
If you want the party to change, you stop rewarding them for propping up MAGA chuds to make their own right-wing candidates appear more palatable. You draw a line (maybe at something like genocide support) and don't cross it until the Democrats are starved enough to stop their games. The politicians are suppose to work for us, not vice versa, and they simply will not listen until their power is seriously threatened.
I'm listing the two politicians I wouldn't vote for, since it's quicker than listing the ones I would vote for.
Mention Clinton I'm just addressing a potential, since the neoliberal media was trying to float the idea few months back of replacing Harris with Clinton. I've learned not to underestimate the lengths Democrats will go to in order to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I could see them trying to do something stupid like trying to nominate Clinton in the event Biden is convinced to step down. You wanted specifics, so I gave them.
it sounds like you think Biden is the absolute worse choice if you’d rather vote anyone else besides him.
Now you're getting it!
Why are you unable to accept that I'd literally vote for anyone besides Biden or Clinton, that makes no sense.
If he steps down it's not going to be an open primary, so it doesn't matter what my ideal preference is because it's the convention that would be picking the nominee, or it would possibly be Harris.
So I'm saying whoever that party pick is, I'd vote for them, and you're saying that's unacceptable for whatever reason. It's Schrodinger's politician, I don't know who they're going to pick until they pick them, and at the moment that they do select someone I will know who I'm voting for.
What? How is that vague? I'm saying I'm open to whoever replaces him, why is that difficult to understand? It's an incredibly flexible position, dealers choice as long as it's not Biden or Clinton.
Does the super low bar make it difficult for you to try and make me seem unreasonable or uncompromising? Is that what this is? It just breaks the script you had prepped or something?
No one's spreading "FUD", I'm quite certain that less evil Democrats have not stopped our slide into fascism because I've witnessed it. We're living the results of your strategy right now at this very moment. Does it feel like you're "slowly winning"?
Democrats win when the left comes out, not the vapor that is undecided voters.
Anyone undecided about Trump at this point is not worth wasting your breath on.
Accelerationists would be encouraging people to plow ahead with Biden so trump wins…
Not trying to maximize chances to beat trump while there’s still time before the candidate is named.
I think this kind of highlights why the term "accelerationist" is a political fabrication, not an actual movement. No one I've met self-applies that label or wants fascism. I'd guess it's because that term was created as short-hand pejorative to suppress or dismiss those who are trying to create real pressure or who simply can't vote for someone so unapologetically genocidal.
I will not be voting for Biden ever again, but I will vote for nearly anyone else who might replace him because that would be enough of an indicator that Democrats can actually listen when pressed. They need to prove that if they want to win over voters who've been disillusioned by Biden's genocide support.
I think you kind of articulated something that was puzzling me about how uncompromising some people are being about the possibility of Biden stepping aside and how they refuse to even entertain what a boon that would be to democratic chances in November -- it's one thing to say people should vote Biden because you believe he's the only choice, it's an entirely different and more suspicious thing to try and pre-empt the possibility of someone else with less baggage replacing him.
There's signs of actual momentum in the party after the debate to try and find a way to convince Biden to step down (maybe by flattering his ego with his accomplishments or something and making him feel like he'll have a legacy besides that of a mass murderer). I don't see why anyone would dismiss that opportunity, given what we all know about Biden's rock bottom approval.
Anyone/anything. A dog, a pile of sawdust, don't care as long as it's not a genocidal right-winger.
So, voting for the lesser of two evils doesn't work. We've done that for 50 years, and all it's achieved is a political duopoly that's so far to the right that Democrats are now where Republicans were. How does your political strategy of voting for right-wingers change that?
Is all you have to offer "slow the slide into fascism marginally until the general public acclimates to fascism"? Because that's what the lesser of two evils gets us.
Why would that not be the case? People despise both candidates, a new candidate free of all Biden's bullshit would be nothing but good.
At this point I'm convinced people who reject the idea of Biden stepping down want a Democratic loss in November. There's no one actually this committed to Joe Biden.
Biden hasn't changed though. He's still the same old pro-austerity, pro-corporate, "respectably racist" Republican-at-heart conservative he's always been. You just can't see it because Trump is so much more extreme.
Truly.
For anyone unfamiliar with Ohio's gerrymandering woes, This American Life did a really good show on one of the most egregiously obstructed struggles to create a fair district map in Ohio.
The GOP members of the commission just kept shamelessly running down the clock, even on the most fairly divided maps. The judge overseeing the process gave them extensions multiple times. It's a pretty crazy and revealing story. It was depressing at the time, but really encouraging to see people didn't give up on the reform fight.
It's a good podcast, and free too: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/784/mapmaker
Ballot intiatives are always premium legislation, love to see that direct democracy stuff fly over the heads of our two parties.
I support the policies he took from the Sanders campaign to appear more progressive than he is, but he dropped most of those as soon as he got elected.
Almost like we should've elected someone who actually had an established history of fighting for those policies, and not someone who adapted them in a stunted form to win an election.
Corporations love his pork barrel spending though, yeah.
Totally. Gotta kill those kids and bulldoze those homes and cemetaries, destroy those hospitals, kill those doctors to make sure they don't attack!
It's not out of context, it's exactly what he said and meant. And he's repeated that sentiment on multiple occassions.
If you need a more recent example to ignore, in 2022 he attempted to make some kind of distinction between MAGA and non-MAGA republicans because he still is dumb enough to believe there's some contingent within the GOP that's not fully onboard with fascism. Even after the decades of lies and double-dealing, of Republicans pushing to capture the courts and voting consistently to strip Americans of their rights, it hasn't sunk in. Not even after January 6, after the whole party united behind Trump.
He actually thinks there needs to be a balance between "good" Republicans and Democrats, which is a deeply idiotic notion at this point and betrays the fact that he doesn't actually want to achieve any of the progressive policy he cribbed off Sanders to win in 2020.
I dunno, I get this as much from old people too. I think it's less an indicator of age and more an indication of people who aren't great at thinking.
"In my view, we need a strong Republican Party. We need a Republican Party that’s united."
-Joe Biden (~2011)
The man is just incompetent and nostalgic for the "good old days" when Dems and Republicans would play grab ass together and hoodwink the public together to protect the status quo and grow the wealth divide. This whole fascism thing, though clearly signaled decades ago, has him scratching his head. He simply doesn't get it and is too mentally calcified to keep up with the paradigm shift in politics.