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US PoliEra 2020 |OT5| Guidance recommends quarantining PoliERA
- Thread starter Brian McDoogle
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It is really hard to take someone seriously as a leftist when they spent their whole career doing the bidding of Delaware shell corporations and did what he did to Anita Hill.
All it does is a keep a status quo wherein a whole lotta black folks poorer than you and me suffer and die without dignity, I ain't really into this kind of pragmatism when all it does is put us on the DNC approved merry go round wherein we can only vote for "safe" candidates because every single republican one from now one will just be "explicit white nationalist but smarter"
When the options are pragmatism vs voting for Trump (and a non-vote is the exact same as voting Trump)...pragmatism is far more appealing.
They defended the fired Sanders campaign staffer who used his twitter account to perpetuate homophobic jokes, AIDS jokes, many sexist attacks, etc.
Bernie Staffer Mocked Warren’s Looks, Pete’s Sexuality
The private Twitter account of a newly promoted campaign staffer indicates that at least some of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ most toxic support is coming from inside the house.
www.thedailybeast.com
Relax, it won't be 5 months to get the TrumpChecks. It'll be 6 1/2 months, you know, to time their arrival right before voting.
Well, if you think we, and poorer black folks than us in general for that matter, should let Trump and the GOP straight up commit genocide through targeted economic and legal policies because the Democrats don't move fast enough for you, IDK what to tell you.
And a whole lot of black folks poorer than us told you they want Biden just a month ago, so I feel good about following their lead in being pragmatic.
True, but is it enough for me, someone who lives in Chicago to vote in November for Biden, which I probably will, as opposed to me actually calling people and having the energy to drive to another state to go canvassing for Biden.
Honest question, since I want socialism to keep growing - what would make a socialist electable? If Bernie had the same policies but was "more likeable", is that the key, or is it more about moderating policies?
No Biden did, and when it is primary season, we should be filtering for whether the person actually represents our class interests.
Read these two back to back.
If you want debate, you're getting it. I don't know why you thought your initial post (a call to the thread to ask why an anti-identity-politics podcast was bad) wouldn't get replies.
Virtually everyone in this thread voted for Warren or Sanders, so spare me
Canvassing for Sanders clearly didn't do jack shit, so there'd be no loss in productivity.
At this point, with the options we have, I don't see what's wrong with harm mitigation when the harm is so potentially devastating (just look at the situation we're in now, for example), and that's besides Biden's relatively progressive platform. I voted for Bernie, but he's not getting the nom no matter how much money he's still leeching from folks. Focus on the GE and stop corpse puppeteering a dead candidate.
That sounds like a really bad gamble on his part. A measly 1.2k 5 months down the line after everyone is unemployed. Seems like the damage would already be done and people would need a lot more by then.
We're talking about the people that voted for him though. You said they weren't the real left. And do you presume to know their class interests better than them?
Why?
It doesn't make what he did OK. I'm gay and what he said and posted was fucked. His being gay doesn't give him license to make homophobic jokes, AIDS jokes and sexist attacks.
The point remains that Chapo is trash and their defense of that turd is just one of many, many proofs of that.
Probably have to be moderate on social issues. But then I'm pretty sure they get destroyed in a democratic primary. Or they can wait for the GOP to become super radioactively unpopular (ala 2008)
Likely also have to use more nationalistic framing
Right, I don't feel that you can be a leftist and, in the primary, vote for someone who is so anti-left. He's against medicare for all and said he would veto it if it miraculously passed without him.
Bold move cotton. By that time a lot of people will be on the streets.
It's being able to sell policies. Bernie's attitude of "XXX of my policies is self-evidently good, and you're corrupt and in the pocket of wall street and the establishment if you don't see it that way," is toxic.
AOC is a great example of a good policy sales woman.
That merry go round ends when the voting rights are actually pushed in the South (somehow), and the GOP gets beat into conforming.
Politically that's the only shot right now, and Biden brings the nation closer to that.
Apolitical, I'll let organizers figure it out. I'm liking the worker protests though?
Don't start at the top? The president is always going to be the most compromised vote because they have to represent the entire party. If you want more socialism get more representatives and senators
He didn't say they were self-evidently good, he made points that it was comparable to what the rest of the developed world was doing and it was necessary to protect people
It doesn't but I never liked the lack of that context here back when people talked about it when the story broke, it's kind of the difference between hateful malice and just being an enormous asshole.
I'm not talking about just Medicare for All; but even that is one where single payer is not the only silver bullet that could be designed; and there are other countries in the developed world with universal coverage that is not single payer. The Bernie campaign treats single payer with the same zeal as Grover Norquist does his no tax pledge.
I think his style, rhetoric and inability to coalition-build did more to hurt him than his policy positions. Also "if everyone stays in I can win with 30%" was a bad strategy since he (nor did any other candidate) had no ability to control who could stay in the race and for how long.
That's being worked on, but with the amount of people who have said "I like Bernie's policies but not XYZ about him", I think it's a bit silly to cede the possibility of winning a presidential primary.
I'm curious how him being gay exempts him from the AIDs and sexist jokes? IMO, that's pretty fucking malicious.
That's not really what he said. And if you're separating out that many people as "not left" then don't be surprised when your movement dries up to fucking no one.
There's more to getting leftward progress than simply voting for some policy on paper.
It's actually not.
His twitter account was overflowing with malice, including homophobia. His posts were way beyond asshole and well into corrosive internalized homophobia, extremely dangerous and toxic AIDS jokes and over the top sexism.
Honestly you'd know more than me on that, so I'll believe your take on it.
Bernie fucked himself over. He ran the same divisive campaign as last time. This is the worst time for that shit. People want to unite to take down Trump. If he had come out with a campaign touting how he works with others and compromises to get things done and welcomed other democrats to the movement, etc, then he likely could have won. Instead he kept spouting off about how he's against the establishment on both sides, etc. It's an awful time for that.
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There's definitely loads of evidence throughout historyto the contrary on this point, unfortunately.
My understanding of your comment was that the lack of context turned his seemingly malicious comments to just asshole comments.
If I misunderstood your position I apologize, but to me that's how your post comes across.
It's just going to have to take a more talented, likable politician. Bernie has trouble telling people the kind of answers they're looking for because he tries to brute force everything with his stump speech in a way that makes skeptics think he's either shallow or clueless. I think AOC has better political instincts than both Bernie and Warren, but the campaign against her started so early.
I've been queer, out and engaged in activism for a very long time, yes.
And if you're taking my word on it, it's fair to come to the conclusion that Chapo is in fact trash for their defense of that fired staffer, wouldn't you agree?
I wanted Warren, but at this point, you're goddamn right I'm voting for damage mitigation. If Trump wins after all the blatant corruption he's already displayed, there's a terrifyingly good chance we won't have a republic anymore.
It's for my own self interest, too. Would I do even better under Bernie? Likely. But under Biden it'll at least be massively better than under Trump. Having a blue Senate, a Supreme Court pick or more, and more democratic federal judgesre also good reasons for me.
And hey, maybe Biden will have a VP pick I can get excited about.
But to me, being in a position of feeling that Trump winning is acceptable to you is in itself a form of privilege.
It's for my own self interest, too. Would I do even better under Bernie? Likely. But under Biden it'll at least be massively better than under Trump. Having a blue Senate, a Supreme Court pick or more, and more democratic federal judgesre also good reasons for me.
And hey, maybe Biden will have a VP pick I can get excited about.
But to me, being in a position of feeling that Trump winning is acceptable to you is in itself a form of privilege.
He literally didn't even try to win black voters where most of them live. Even showed contempt for them last time around when he said his people at a rally "were too smart to not vote for him" the day he got blown out by black voters in SC (as I recall).
Just run a socialist who moved on from the Colbert "I don't see race" bit and you're at least gonna compete.
It's interesting because pragmatism generally means some survive, not all. But even the some is more than none. The whole "perfect vs. good" debate.
Not that Biden is a leftist, but if being shitty to a woman disqualifies someone from being one, say goodbye to Bernie and Cenk.
I am but one political observer, and not necessarily so analytical at that, but I can try to guess at what I think would make a socialist electable:
1. Needs to be a young white man with Obama-level charisma. Voters love good-looking, young, rock star politicians. He'd need to be white because if he's brown or black, his policies will be seen as racial redistribution, and he'd need to be a man because women apparently can't get elected to be POTUS in this fucking country even if they're the best choice for the fucking job.
2. He'd need to explicitly frame his policies around white voters. To do that, he'd have to either a) find a way to appeal to Midwestern farmers and West Coast techies at the same time, or b) create a new coalition that basically cuts out most of the Midwest besides IL and maybe MN and win a bunch of states that have burgeoning urban hubs full of voters who are susceptible to a socialist message without scaring them away by threatening to take their private health care plans away right off the jump. You see NC and AZ are starting to come toward us because of Charlotte/Raleigh and the Phoenix area/Phoenix burbs (specifically Chandler and Tempe). He'd have to activate voters in TX as well, maybe a place like Nebraska, where Omaha is becoming a bigger tech hub (he'd at least have to be the type of guy to consistently take NE-2), and other places that are growing those fields.
3. He'd have to incrementalize his policies. You can't nationalize everything in this country from the jump. You can't just take private health care away right off the bat. Yeah, socialists are going to have to learn that incremental progress is a reality in a country that basically is defined by being very, very, VERY racist and sexist.
That's my take.
If I'm just looking at the history of black folks in the United States, there are two ways to get positive change:
1. Incrementally via becoming a major player in party politics.
2. Throw bodies at the issue.
We are what, thirteen percent of the population here? We don't have the bodies to throw, and unless a significant amount of the white population has a vested interest in the same thing that we do (like, say, having the value of their labor undercut by slavery), we really don't have a whole lot of options.
All I can do is play the best hand that I can play even though the dealer dealt a fucked-up hand of cards. The best hand that I can play still loses sometimes, like in 2016, but it's often the best hand.
The vast majority of black households have been suffering economically for forever now. That "some" is much smaller.
Want to win a presidential primary? Find a socialist who old african american women trust and who they'd feel comfortable having in their churches. That is the key to winning.
Yeah, I briefly believed that he might have learned some lessons from 2016 and would make an improvement at selling himself better. He didn't and I wasn't gonna bother with somebody like that.
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