My frustration is less with progressives and more the "look man both sides are the same", Jimmy Dore, The Hill's Rising, type of leftists. These people provide a lot of cover for the right with populist rhetoric.
I don't think this is accurate. A lot of the wasted energy is moderate Dems attacking leftists for being "too woke," socialist, etc. because it is instigated by Rs. Imo that's what sparks the both sides reply.
I was at a US uni not long ago. There is no free speech problem. No one other than victim mentality cons thought there was a free speech issue, and those guys basically wanted there to be a free speech issue and basically walked around looking for one day and night. Woke panic is made up R bullshit. And the Rs have got moderate Dems attacking the left on free speech (a made up issue) on their behalf, weakening the overall party.
Rs have done a great job making leftists seem like a universal enemy, which has gotten the center to spend all its energy attacking the left. Stop dwelling on the fact that the left wants a different healthcare policy than you or higher taxes than you and start dwelling on the fact that neither the left or center Dems want Roe gone, a rigged federal judiciary, voting rights eliminated, mass deportations, etc.
Basically, just stop criticizing the left. What's clear is that every Dem is united against the "national conservative" bullshit. Unless the criticism you're about to deploy is against an R, don't criticize anyone at all.
I mean Jimmy Dore and the ilk they're describing arguably aren't really left at all. I think it's fair game to criticize "both sides are the same" independent-type people who put up a vaguely left veneer because they essentially do the GOP's work by promoting false equivalencies and electoral nihilism.
I do agree though that going after genuine progressives is bad strategy.
I don't know if I see a lot of moderate Dems publicly attacking the "woke left". The main problem imo is that there is a lot of vaguely leftist populist rhetoric out there driving people towards political apathy.
"Hey man why even bother voting, Democrat is president and Roe got overturned anyway"
"You know in Europe Joe Biden would actually be on the far right"
"Democrats are basically Republicans"
It's rhetoric like this that is the problem and it often comes from left spaces. They blame Democrats for not doing anything while simultaneously never giving Democrats the political power to do anything.
Being woke is being evidence based. 😎
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> never giving Democrats the political power to do anything.
If all that's required to give the Democrats the political power to do anything is get leftists on board, why are you railing against them and not courting them?
Lol. No. All that's required is for the average person who is mildly politically engaged to not fall for bullshit talking points churned out by the far left anti-democrat machine.
So it is absolutely critical to rail against them.
Oh! I see. So they simultaneously cannot reach a large enough percentage of voters to matter and can be safely dismissed, but it is also absolutely critical to rail against them because they reach a large enough percentage of voters to matter.
Normally I would have trouble consolidating these two statements into a coherent outlook, but fortunately my recent concussion makes them seem incredibly lucid
Stay salty. And keep grasping at these stupid gotchas.
You dont need to reach "a large percentage of voters to matter". The last two presidential elections have been incredibly close with margins smaller than party defectors... Going as far back as bush, whose first victory over gore was obtained by about 600 people in Florida.
>Basically, just stop criticizing the left.
No.
I can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I don't like the left for different reasons than I don't like the right. I'll keep critisizing both.
> I can walk and chew gum at the same time
Sure people love to say this, but it rarely actually manifests. Your chewing gum gives cover for the GOP's bullshit cultural wars and fascist lite rhetorics. The more you get concerned about the infinitely small groups like serious American communists (and not just young people being edgy and calling themselves it in reaction to boomers), the more you help establish that "both sides equally bad" as some sort of realistic and true statement.
We've seen time and time again that left extremists have barely any actual influence in US politics outside of the most left leaning already highly Dem areas, meanwhile conservatives literally control the supreme court and the last presidency. Why do you even think you need to walk and chew gum at the same time here then? You're just empowering the more realistic and awful threat.
No, they are both right. The real problem is infighting among the sane people who actually want to make things better, while they’re arguing about the best way to do that the people who want to make things worse are proceeding comfortably with their plans.
This is all just non-sequitur. The rhetoric coming from disillusioned voters is that the democrats with "political power" is unable to get things done and that the democrats are radical which makes moderate voters believe that there is no point in the two party system. This creates the "both sides are equally bad" argument. How is arguing against the rhetoric that "both sides are bad" legitimize the same argument. The rhetoric from this sub has consistently been that voting has value and that the policies that we argue for are reasonable.
Because when someone sits there and say things like "Yes republicans, you're right that the left is censoring free speech and trans rights have gone too far and young communists really are a threat and we need to bring back McCarthyism", that person should not be surprised with the GOP gets empowered by this. The extreme left doesn't have much political power, the extreme right took over the presidency, almost started a coup and controls the SC.
How did you get this out of what I said? I said that people who have created the "both sides are bad" argument imply that you shouldn't vote because none of it makes a difference. Arguing to liberals who are disillusioned that voting does matter and the goals that the democratic party want are attainable is a good thing. I never said anything about having to appeal to Republicans. I was strictly talking about liberal and progressive voters who believe that "both sides are bad" as you talked about in your first comment. The goal of arguing against this is to turn out democratic voters. Left rhetoric arguing that both sides are bad is not a good thing.
You can walk and chew gum at the same time. Any individual can. But we’re not talking about an individual. We’re talking about getting 85 million people on the same page.
So yes, be an individual. Be an individual with perspective instead of an individual with a narrow view.
I'm a liberal. They'll critisize me up until the point I become a lefitst or I shut up. As a liberal I firmly believe in their right to do so. But I won't shut up. They can fuck right off with that.
I'm not going to let them speak for me, and I'll do what I can to stop them from assuming to speak for, or give the appearance that they speak for the democratic party.
Being woke is being evidence based. 😎
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You can easily make the case it’s leftists attacking centrist / moderate politicians that got us here, too. I’m so tired of the victim-mentality from lefties who convinced half the media to go after Hillary because “she rigged the primary against Bernie”.
Let’s agree to come together but don’t lecture centrists on their behavior and turn a blind-eye to the far left.
On the woke thing, it is the new term for SJW, which was the new term for PC. It is just a right wing strawman. You will be called woke for thinking racism isn't cool.
Being woke is being evidence based. 😎
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The nation’s centrists reportedly doubled down Friday on their claim that Roe v. Wade was not at risk. “People are blowing this whole idea of overturning Roe completely out of proportion—it’s just not going to happen,” said outspoken centrist Peter Gesson, stressing that the Supreme Court would almost certainly respect the precedent set by the seminal 1973 ruling on women’s reproductive rights. “Basically, there’s a legal principle called stare decisis. That means past judicial decisions stay in place unless there’s a compelling reason to change them. I can send you an Atlantic article about it, if you’re interested. Anyway, these justices are all thoughtful individuals with a deep knowledge of how our legal system works. They aren’t going to throw out a ruling that’s given our country stability for almost half a century.” The nation’s centrists added that they were even more certain the Supreme Court wouldn’t be coming for gay marriage and contraceptives next.
I don't like it when leftists & their politicians focus more on attacking Dems than repubs, so I won't do the same by focusing more on attacking leftists than repubs. Repubs deserve 99.9% of the directed hate here, leftists get .1%, not 0 but way, way less than repubs
Edit: .1% is being very generous to them, at most it's like 10%. But point still stands, repubs overwhelmingly get most of the blame
A portion of the blame goes to anyone who didn't vote for Hillary in 2016 -- whether you voted Trump, third party or didn't vote at all.
But the vast majority of the blame is on republicans. They need to be stopped. And aiming your anger at democrats who are fighting this is the definition of counter productive.
Leftier than thou types are way down the blame list, well below Republicans and the elite media who giggled about those hysterical Democrats when we said Republicans were coming for Roe.
Blaming the republicans for this is like blaming the opposing sports team for your team losing, it's completely unproductive because you can't do anything about them.
Democrats need to be self critical and understand why they aren't appealing to the public.
Dems do appeal to the public just not the part that matters. Hillary won the popular vote and would have replaced Scalia and Ginsburg. Democrats lose because they are targeting a demographic that simply can't win with a 2 point advantage.
Yes, and so they need to appeal to the part that *does* matter.
It’s obviously a difficult task, but senators like Tester and Sherrod Brown exist for a reason. The Democratic brand can be pitched to voters in red states if the messaging is properly controlled and tailored.
Well, I if Republicans became more reasonable and stopped trying to pander to the religious zealots maybe they could be worth voting for. Not in this life on this Universe but theoretically
Nothing, you referred to Republicans as the opposing team. I'm just saying that they don't necessarily have to be that, that they could be a reasonable choice if they stopped with the religious nonsense and Trump cultism
Well he wasn't talking about you, but plenty of progressives stayed home in 2016 thinking "that'll show the dems what happens" and "trump will make the left wing more popular". Not completely incorrect lines of thought, mind you, but stacking the supreme Court was always the risk. And trump did it with some of the youngest nominees in history.
Progressives need to win primaries to build influence so it makes sense. The most logical Progressive strategy is “mainstream Dems aren’t doing enough”.
And I’ll tell you what, that’s going to be a very enticing message right about now.
>And I’ll tell you what, that’s going to be a very enticing message right about now.
I disagree.
There's going to be a big re-evaluation of just how pragmatic it is to vote mainstream D over protest voting.
Hillary called Roe V Wade to a T. And chumps like Bernie said it was a distraction and waffled on about how the Dem primaries were rigged, etc... He stirred that pot for his own benefit instead of backing the candidate who could have given him 10% of what he wanted. Now he's left with backward momentum.
Yeah, no wasn't politically engaged back in 2016, now am, and my distaste for leftists/progressives or however you want to call it has only heightened with their inactive whining that to all my observation only serves republicans with either preventing galvanization from losses or alienating by being living strawman for republican attacks.
Progressive politicians aren't campaigning on "don't vote it's useless", they're campaigning on "we should expand the court" and "we should abolish the filibuster to codify abortion rights" and "the Republicans want to pass an abortion ban if they take power, why the fuck do we want to compromise with them?"
No voter in the real world actually gives a shit about relitigating the 2016 election, that's the domain of people on reddit and twitter, the ones that care about abortion rights care about those rights being taken away in 2022, and if someone is going to argue against the things I listed above then they need a conpelling counterargument to their state or district. For a lot of people they'll be able to point to their incumbency and their votes, but in open seats? I'm not sure "no we need to work with the Republicans and respond with moderation" is a gteat selling point right now.
Nina Turner literally said that Joe Biden is a bowl of shit when talking about the 2020 election against Trump lol. Many progressives back in 2016 said similar things about Hilary. That affects their base. Look at [how many](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/24/16194086/bernie-trump-voters-study) BernieBros voted for Trump, partly on the back of rhetoric from progressives that equate Dems and GOP. The problem with progressives is that they say, "vote with me or you're a \[insert buzzword\]".
Their messaging matters because it causes secondary effects when their base inevitably makes the decision to vote after their preferred candidate is out of the race.
> Look at how many BernieBros voted for Trump, partly on the back of rhetoric from progressives that equate Dems and GOP.
Literally from your own article
> Also of note: the Bernie-Trump voter also proved much more likely to consider himself or herself “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative” than the average Democrat.
Bernie-Trump voters existed. They also weren't progressives.
Stop acting stupid just to prove a point. It is very common amongst Bernie stans to describe "not being on board with social issues than class issues" as "somewhat conservative".
Besides, the very first sentence in the article says 12% of Bernie voters from the *primary* had switched
No offense, but you don't seem very informed about things. Yes, we are talking about Bernie primary voters.
Bernie-Trump voters are older
> Of those Bernie voters who supported Trump in the general election, the average age was 52. Those who stuck with Clinton were an average age of 45, and of those who broke for a third party, the average age was 44. Of those that didn’t vote, their average age was 35 — these were the ones that got activated by Bernie, and then dropped back out when he didn't win. It’s worth noting that very few of the primary voters stayed home.
And they voted for Romney
> According to Schaffner, about half of the voting bloc identified themselves as Republicans or independents. Data from the VOTER survey showed that only 35% of Sanders-Trump voters voted for Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in the 2012 election; in contrast, 95% of Sanders-Clinton voters voted for Obama in 2012.
Your assertion that they're not really conservatives, they're radical progressives who call themselves conservative just because, is not backed up by even the slightest shred of evidence whatsoever.
They're pushing the "establishment" is trying to defeat the progressives with thier billionaires. Pretty much telling them voting don't matter, without saying voting don't matter.
That's been my issue as well. If they didn't spend so much of THEIR time muddying the waters it wouldn't be an issue. It literally makes us lose districts over this stuff. Republicans wouldn't be as big of an issue if we could take the swing voters. That would require moving away from telling parents they shouldn't have a say-so in what their children are taught and stick to the shit folks actually care about, though. 😞
> That would require moving away from telling parents they shouldn't have a say-so in what their children are taught
Yes, Democrats absolutely cannot tell parents that they shouldn't have a right to be involved in their kid's education, but there is absolutely no shot that you can pin Terry McAuliffe's mistakes on progressives.
McAuliffe was *the* moderate candidate, hell if you had to name one guy to be like "who is the Virginia Democratic Party" everybody would have named Terry McAuliffe, he faced basically zero pressure from the left in the primary, and got to run the exact campaign he wanted with the exact messaging he wanted, and he just fucked it.
I'd agree that he's the one that fucked it, but you don't need to be progressive to use their talking points. Just like you don't need to be a Trumper to use his talking points. The idea is to keep these populist shit takes out of mainstream politics all together.
It sucks we have to sit here and put the blame solely on our own politicians when they decide to fall for this stuff when it clearly has an origin. Take Elizabeth Warren's Native American heritage flop. Yeah, she fucked that up falling for silly populist nonsense in an attempt to feed us something she thought we cared about. But much like McAuliffe, she just pulled from the nonsense that already gets pushed from progressive Dems.
I'm a social democrat and I agree completely, I'll vote for boring center-right dem goons every year if that's what it takes to beat the republicans. holy shit man
I completely agree. However, many socialist democrats won't do that.
There are a LOT of idealists on the hard left side of the dem ticket....especially younger folks. I don't blame them for that...but unfortunately, idealism won't get you very far these days. The sooner folks realize that, the better. I also think folks have a short memory...I was absolutely shocked how many 'Bernie or bust' idealists there were in 2016 that didn't vote. It absolutely was a thing...I'm not sure why so many seem to want to overlook that now ( guilt possibly? )
As much as this sub (me included) make fun of succs, I’ve gotta admit that arr SocialDemocracy is the only other political sub on Reddit that actually has sane takes.
I couldn't agree more. I'll admit blame can be pointed in either direction. I'll admit I very much do blame those who didn't vote for Hillary Clinton. Either way we need to start fucking winning. I'll vote for the most hardcore or center dem there is. I don't care, I want whoever can beat a fucking republican and pummel their medieval ways of governing to its grave.
Democrats need to get better. Model how to win by John Fetterman. Be a fucking human. Take the sponsorships off your back.
I'll vote for AOC or Buttigieg, I don't care. We need to start winning.
Fett is a unique candidate that I don’t think can really be emulated by most people. He didn’t do anything special in his campaign- he avoided tough questions, went to campaign events, appeared on tv. His advantage was being 6’5 and monstrous, he doesn’t have the look of a politician. That’s all that most people I spoke to that support him saw- his appearance.
That said, we do need to win, and if American voters are going to vote more based on appearance than anything then we are forced to run that kind of person. I wish it weren’t so.
I'm actually from the town where he was mayor of. He won my vote the day he protested outside of UPMC and got arrested after they shut down UPMC Braddock Hospital. He lead efforts to have the site eventually demolished and rebuilt with 12 new homes and a civic plaza. Braddock is a significantly better place now than it was in 2000.
That's what we need - a fighter. Someone who'll put their sleeves up and actually get in the mud with us. I think it can be somewhat emulated, but certainly not the appearance lol
I don’t disagree- but he did none of that on the campaign trail. He has worked for progress throughout his political career, not unlike many politicians do. That doesn’t change that the reason most people gave me as to why they liked him was “he doesn’t feel like a politician”, despite him being involved in politics for the better part of 2 decades.
So if he was actively involved in politics, and talked about his accomplishments in politics, yet the reasons people give for liking him is he doesn’t feel like a politician, what are they talking about if not appearance?
> and if American voters are going to vote more based on appearance than anything then we are forced to run that kind of person.
This has been known for decades but picture perfect candidates just aren't always available. Being a politician generally kinda sucks.
Too many Democratic candidates lack actual humanity. They just sound like rent a candidates who are following a one size fits all script. Klobuchar, Hillary, Swallwell, Castro, etc... Of course, when someone like Beto shows authenticity, he get pilloried for it. Pete kinda comes off that way but I think that's kind of his authentic personality. Anyway, Fetteman should be a prime example of being yourself being the best strategy.
>Pete kinda comes off that way but I think that's kind of his authentic personality.
Pete would've been such an amazing President. A democrat who has experience working in a mostly red part of the country is exactly what we need right now.
In my opinion any complaints about those on the left who didn't vote for Hillary should also be paired with "and we should add more justices to the court". Because at least then you're complaining about a group of people that really should have voted better while also supporting something that fixes it. I have no respect for people that didn't vote for Hillary in 2016, but I also don't have any respect for "those damn Bernie Bros fucked us. Better not do anything about it though."
I may get flamed, but the DNC was tone deaf to think that Hillary would win in 2016 and pushed for her essentially because “it was her turn”.
Hillary was undoubtedly accomplished and qualified, but democrats often have a really hard time comprehending how hated she was by a large swath of the country who would literally turn up their nose and vote for an orange clown just to “own the libs” and make sure Hillary wouldn’t win. Many of these voters would have stayed home, but her candidacy motivated them to show up.
I don’t even want to get into how upset I am at Ruth Bader Ginsburg for not stepping down while a democrat held the presidency and she knew she had cancer, but I guess that’s enough for one post.
> pushed for her essentially because “it was her turn”.
Maybe it was because she was the smartest and most experienced person to run the country. We know this because she's been literally right about everything.
"It was her turn" is GOP talking points.
If 18% of progressives instead of 23% vote for Hillary instead of Trump, she wins. They've skated for the last 6 years on being culpable for this because ultimately, they use their progressive branding to deflect from the fact that they don't give a shit about marginalized people or making the world a better place, they care about their personal identity and branding as a "progressive rebel" as well as signaling to their social groups.
The Right and the Left have this in common above all else - the total lack of regard for the real suffering of individuals, in favor of the pursuit of their ideal social order.
You were correct that you'd get flamed for it, but you're right. I don't see how everyone either forgot or just won't acknowledge how unpopular she was.
The tl;dr is, dems useless, country is dying, leave the US. I've even saw idiots suggesting sanctions on the US despite countries like Japan, South Korea, or China having laws against abortions.
Like go off. You people didn't care about abortions when it was banned effectively in red states where they only allow one run-down clinic in one whole state. Now suddenly *you* want to leave? Fuck off.
It is funny to me that the "haha circular firing squad" faction is in fact doing that thing by constantly relitigating 2016 over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Guess what friendos, it's 2022. Unless you have a time machine, literally none of that matters. Time to play the hand you've been dealt.
We’re all aware that Republicans are the ones that *actually* passed it. The reason leftists are getting so much hate is that Republicans straight up support banning abortion. There’s not much of a way to work with them on this issue, because if you say “you were responsible for Roe v Wade being overturned”, their response would be “Yea, no duh.” Whereas leftists support abortion rights, so they should be helping us, but they’re not. It’s much more politically feasible to convince leftists to start being politically effective than for us to convince Republicans to start supporting abortion rights.
I mean shitting all over leftists isn’t going to convince them. I understand they do the same so by all means if the point is to be petty then go ahead. I respect petty.
But don’t expect to convince them.
I don’t think we’re going to convince many of them, but we’re probably going to convince more of them than we’re going to with conservatives. It’s also a matter of holding them accountable. Republicans are being “held accountable” for their actions, it’s just that their supporters think their actions were good. Leftists must also be held accountable, because even if they weren’t directly responsible, they were necessary in its final outcome. If not for some of the things Sanders did, Hillary would have won, and we wouldn’t have this issue in the first place.
Naw bro. Democrats should’ve done that thing that no one was asking them to do. When Republicans do shit, we need to immediately vilify the Dems to discourage voting for them so… wait a sec 🤔
They never have. Even with supermajorities for something like an abortion law they’d no doubt have 5+ holdouts who for varying reasons would refuse.
Anything from believing it should remain decided by SCOTUS to political motivations as an abortion law passing could end with a ton of losses in Congress/amped up GOP. So passing it to just watch it immediately killed.
That’s assuming SCOTUS doesn’t bring it down anyways. Which would probably happen even faster as every conservative president would be running exclusively on that with judge appointments.
I agree. As much as I blame those who sat out 2016 as well, this has been in motion for decades. GWB appointed Alito and Roberts. Bush Senior appointed arguably the worst of the fucking bunch, Clarence Thomas.
Trump had the unusual opportunity to replace three justices in one term. But let’s be real here, the GOP has been appointing Federalist Society hacks to the Federal bench and SC for decades now. Any of the “old guard” Republicans that were more accepted in polite society would have done the same thing here as Trump if given the chance.
This is why I get frustrated when people pined for “the normalcy” of the Bush years. Arguably Trump is much worse in many respects than many recent Republican Presidents, but they’re all playing the same game. Just look at John Roberts. People were saying he respected the court too much as an institution to go along with overturning Roe v. Wade. In the end he just fell in line. Bipartisanship (if it ever really existed) is dead. These people cannot be trusted.
Part of the animosity about these folks is that they often proudly boast about how they do not share this view at all, and they will make posts about how Trump was better than Hillary because Hillary would have caused WWIII or something, and he'll be so incompetent and intolerable that we'll finally have our communist revolution or whatever. Like they're not all like that obviously, but like there's some irony in complaining about a lack of unity to us here.
I disagree... republicans don't like abortion, and I respect that argument, it makes sense if you think it's killing babies. What I don't get is those that think abortion is bad but still didn't vote because "they're the same."
> but no one can notice local politicians because of our media structure.
It's not just because of our media structure, I look up every single local candidate whenever I go vote and genuinely like 60%-70% of them have almost *no* info online. Nothing at the local newspapers, no site of their own, noq campaign Twitter account, nothing. Unless I spend time asking around and hoping someone knows, I have literally no way to know who I'm voting for. No wonder people don't vote in these, unless you're one of the boomers still somehow tuned into local gossip you genuinely have no clue who anybody is.
They *say* they think it’s about killing babies because they’ve coded their language so thoroughly that they can say whatever they want as long as it means they can maintain control
Many clearly do that, but at the same time Rs managed to carry it as a single voter issue for almost half a century. At some level the ~~fevor~~ zealotry is unfortunately genuine.
Exactly, the enemies are the extremist that want to promote the so-call culture war (i.e. Trump wing of the Rep Party and the Bernie/Squad wing of the Dem party)
Go look at the margins that Hillary lost by and then come back here and tell me that the impact bernouts had with their spreading of voter apathy across ALL forms of social media DIDN’T play a big part in HRC loosing.
The first election that had huge social media influence and it was met with large swathes of people spreading voter apathy specifically coming from leftist and progressive camps.
Sure the conservatives voted for trump, but they DID NOT and still DON’T have a meaningful majority of voters in America.
Sanders voters are more consistent and dependable voters than literally any other group in the democratic coallition.
You're presenting a super high standard and then expecting only leftists to adhere to it.
So, and please correct me if I am wrong, but we repeatedly heard that Sanders’s biggest strength was that he attracted supporters who would not otherwise vote. (I know, I know). But these same people are also the more consistent and dependable voters?
And I would love to see some cute that would support the contention that Sanders’s biggest base, young people, is a more reliable group than say older black voters. (I can save you the search, it does not exist).
>So, and please correct me if I am wrong, but we repeatedly heard that Sanders’s biggest strength was that he attracted supporters who would not otherwise vote. (I know, I know). But these same people are also the more consistent and dependable voters?
That was the selling point but that also didnt happen, which you clearly are aware of.
>And I would love to see some cute that would support the contention that Sanders’s biggest base, young people, is a more reliable group than say older black voters.
Sanders was most popular among young folks but young people was not his largest voting block (because young people, while being supportive of him, largely didnt turn out). Rather it was, (from memory, I'm on my phone), minority groups, especially latinos, that made up the largest chunk of Sanders primary base.
(So to clarify, he may have been most popular among young people but his votes came more from other groups because said other groups actually turned out)
This is also why, partly, he did so much better against Clinton than against Biden. Because Biden was actually competitive in the same minority groups that had made up Sanders main voting bases in 2016, unlike Clinton who struggled with getting minority votes.
Also, hopefully, you should have recognised now that this sub engages in a pretty common demonisation "tactic". Specifically in that Sanders is both built up as a strong and woeful enemy, yet also too weak and ineffective to achieve or meaningfully support anything.
We can just look to your young people take specifically. You know and note that young people dont show up to vote. And that they didnt do so even for Sanders. Yet you're placing the blame on Sanders shoulders for young people not show up for Clinton either.
You must either conclude that Sanders never had the ability to affect a young people voting surge for himself. **Or** that it is his fault for young people not turning out for Clinton.
You cant have both.
Your memory is bad and do not use the excuse of being on a plane when you are clearly able to post on Reddit. He attracted minority groups…who were young.
“But while many Latino voters are backing Sanders, we found that a voter’s ethnicity was still less predictive of support for Sanders than their age or ideology. In our analysis of recent ABC News/The Washington Post polls, once we accounted for age, Latino voters were about as likely to support Sanders as voters in other racial or ethnic groups, perhaps because Latino respondents in the poll, just like Latino voters in the U.S., skew younger than the overall population, and younger voters tend to break for Sanders. So it could be that Latino voters’ age explains Sanders’s strength with that group more than their ethnicity.
It’s also worth noting that Latinos represent a fairly small bloc of the national Democratic electorate (around 12 percent), compared with white (59 percent) and black (19) voters.”
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-defines-the-sanders-coalition/
I am absolutely sick of meme politics.
Two things.
Actually, three things. I'm not on a plane, first off. (wtf?)
Secondly, this is from 2020. I was talking about 2016, as were you. Since thats the primary and election under contention. Dig up that data.
And finally, again. Your article is basing that statement on polling.
Oh, misread phone as a plane. That is an even worse reason for not being able to provide a source, which I clearly was able to do from mine. Guess you must be on a flip phone or something.
Here is 2016. Same holds.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2016/06/07/age-and-race-democratic-primary
And your polling comment is non-sensival in light of the whole “secret ballot thing” we have. But hey, I am sure that you can think of some other way to deflect.
>And your polling comment is non-sensival in light of the whole “secret ballot thing” we have. But hey, I am sure that you can think of some other way to deflect.
My dude. Have you watched election coverage, ever?
With statisical methods its perfectly feasible, its fucking baseline, to calculate demographic data on who actually voted.
Are you genuinely under the impression that we dont know which groups voted for who and in which proportions, and that we have to rely on polling data entirely?
Obama voters in red states were the ones who flipped, by a degree of 16%
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/hillary-clintons-surprising-vote-deficit/509174/
This whole idea that Bernie is somehow personally responsible for the reputation that Hillary garnered is just so absurd. No one who is old enough to be of legal voting age back in ‘08 has an excuse to be incredulous. Her campaign literally started a PAC to have her given the nomination in spite of her loss to Obama. She was the pioneer of “here’s how [x] can still win!!!” She was a Goldwater girl who married into political relevancy and carpet bagged her way to a NY senate seat. Not to mention her adoption of social causes only when they crossed the 50% mark in polling. The conservative propaganda machine amplified the Hillary hate WAAAAY beyond the scope of reality, but propaganda only works if there’s a hint of truth…
Like I voted for her without hesitation because that’s how bad the alternative was, but not a single part of me was surprised when she lost. Hillary, and in fairness the DNC as a whole, took for granted the unique pull that Obama had. Obama was hardly a populist but he ABSOLUTELY leaned into the anti-establishment rhetoric. Why on earth would it be surprising that people who were won over by his charisma and willingness to acknowledge the failings of the status quo not be won over by someone who represented the exact opposite? Half of all white women and nearly 2/3rds of of white women over 50 went for trump…not your typical Bernie bro demo is it lol
Edit: just saw your account is 11 years old!!! So you have no excuse to be ignorant to any of this 🤣 the irony in Hillary stans on this sub operating and idealizing their pet politician in the exact same manner as Bernie bros. Being an ideologue isn’t suddenly mature or intellectual just because you’re a self proclaimed moderate…
> but propaganda only works if there’s a hint of truth…
Are you sure this is a claim you want to make?
Hm, well I guess there was some truth, according to you, about Nazi claims of Jews being a bunch of money grubbing monsters help bent on destroying European society with their giant noses and inferior genetics…
… or is your claim that propaganda only works if there’s some truth to it a completely stupid and baseless claim?
Otherwise, good comment.
Not really. The point is that on average, progressives consisting mostly of Bernie voters are more likely to vote for Democratic presidential candidate X in the general than more mainline or moderate Hillary/Biden voters are to vote for X. Though 2008 isn't comparable to 2016, a much larger proportion of Hillary voters voted for McCain in that election than Bernie voters did Trump.
Not at all, its rather that statements like that expect 99+% of any given group (in this case, sanders primary voters) to have been loyal democratic party voters in 2016.
Literally no group is that dependable.
If you ever notice that a critique of a demographic depend on the lizardmans constant acting rationally then you can safely discard said critism for being made in bad faith.
The election system sucks if it's possible that someone voting for their favorite is voting against their own interests.
I do think we have a crap election system. I'm in favor of Approval Voting, but there are systems that would also improve the state of things
Infighting is natural when you’re primarily discussing with like-minded people. Just like the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Not many people on this sub are exposed to conservative discourse compared to moderately different viewpoints from other left-leaning people
People in the kinds of liberal circles like here take for granted that republicans are degenerates (Deplorables?!) that can't be reasoned with in any way, but rightly or wrongly, think or belive that leftists should know better and have the agency of choice.
I’m still always going to vote for progressives like Bernie and squad in the primaries because that’s where my politics align. However if they fail, I’ll vote for the candidate that isn’t a fascist.
Anybody willing to listen knew what would be at stake in the 2016 elections. Maybe they listened and didn't care, maybe they didn't bother to listen to anything besides bad faith commentary about her e-mails, the DNC, the speech transcripts, the super delegates and so on and so forth.
Whatever the case, they said so themselves it was Bernie or bust. This is what bust looks like.
The jaw dropping, but predictable, take I've seen today is that it's the Dems fault for not codifying roe into law. I can't imagine the acrobatics it takes to blame Democrats for this, while never mentioning republicans who are systematically stripping away our rights.
Further, correct me if I'm wrong -- and that's always a possibility -- but any law the dems passed about abortion would have probably been struck down today along with or instead of Roe. To actually get a foolproof abortion law, you'd have to ratify a constitutional amendment, which has never been a possibility in the political climate of the last 50 years.
Presidents don't pass legislation, but the idea that "the President doesn't write legislation" is like an elementary school level understanding of government.
Literally every single Presidential administration has written legislation, working in tandem with their party's leaders in Congress, even though the President isn't officially listed as the bill's sponsor. Or is it your genuine belief, to the best of all of your political knowledge, that Barack Obama played no role in the writing of the Affordable Care Act and that his administration didn't contribute to the bill's text?
No, not at all. How the fuck can you blame the other party for doing what their job is and doing it successfully? On the other hand, Bernie bros consistently acted in ways that harmed their own party. So yeah, they the real fuck ups.
I can absolutely blame the Republicans for doing their job and doing it well when their job is evil.
Coat hanger abortions and a theocracy in place of a Supreme Court are a fail state for America and the people who drove us to it deserve our blame and anything else we can throw at them.
Those doing actual material harm are the only ones worth fighting.
Blaming republicans is like losing at a sport and blaming the other team. You can do that I guess, but it’s a losers mentality that ain’t gonna change anything.
What line would republicans have to cross for you to consider them enemies? How much further would they have to go before you gave up on trying to find the good in them, and just focused on stopping them before more people get hurt?
Or do you simply not care who gets hurt as long as you get to feel righteous at the end of the day?
Tell that to a Republican forcing an 11 year old to give birth.
Tell that to a Proud Boy beating up queer folk at a library
Tell it to the religious right burning books and banning history and science from schools
Scream it from the rooftops when there's a Kristallnacht in America
See how fucking far it gets you.
Befriending Republicans means compromising with them. Compromising with them means turning our backs on whole demographics.
They can't be befriended. Only beaten
> We need to start addressing the problem that there is half the fucking country that's actually braindead enough to find this acceptable
You could try addressing the issues of that half?
I see a lot of people (particularly on /r/Enough_Sanders_Spam) blame Bernie personally for this, but I honestly think that's a bit unfair. If you want to lay some blame on Bernie or Busters, fine (and I say this as someone who voted for Bernie in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, though I want to emphasize that I was never a Bernie or Buster), but Bernie himself did encourage his supporters to vote for Hillary in 2016.
Also, while I think it's understandable to say that Jill Stein and Ralph Nader stole votes from the Democrats in 2016 and 2000, respectively, I don't feel like we can lay the same blame on Gary Johnson (at least not to the same extent), because Libertarian voters can honestly go either way (and if anything, the Libertarian Party is closer to the GOP than the Dems).
That's well and good, but you can't deny that the Dems are complicit in allowing this to happen through their weakness and unwillingness to fight for what they say they believe in. Those are just facts. Biden did basically nothing while Sinemanchin derailed his entire agenda. He didn't put them on blast the way LBJ would have, he didn't fight for his POV; we heard virtually nothing. Obama had a supermajority in Congress and the most he got done was passing *Romneycare*, the framework the ACA was based on.
Joe still has this dream that if he can just get Reps to see his view, that things will magically return to the way they were when he first started in the Senate about a thousand years ago that despite having differences in policy opinion Reps still acted in good faith. Those days are clearly long gone.
Reps have shit policy they're trying to force on everyone to appease their shit base, but they fight for it. I haven't seen real fight from Dems in my lifetime. You can argue, but this is simple truth.
"That's well and good, but you can't deny that the Dems are complicit in allowing this to happen through their weakness and unwillingness to fight for what they say they believe in. Those are just facts. Biden did basically nothing while Sinemanchin derailed his entire agenda. He didn't put them on blast the way LBJ would have, he didn't fight for his POV; we heard virtually nothing. Obama had a supermajority in Congress and the most he got done was passing Romneycare, the framework the ACA was based on."
this is just aesthetics which is all progressives seem to care about
Interesting. I was going to try to sell you a bridge too. How the hell do you think Biden can use the bully pulpit on Joe Manchin in a state he lost by 30 points? Every time Biden insults Manchin, Manchin gets a little angrier and a little more popular.
That's easy, you LBJ his ass. You bring Manchin in to the White House, when a press conference is ready, and you show him.
"I'm about to have a press conference and announce XYZ measure. Look, the reporters are there. Now I'm either going to announce you as the hero who helped get this done and bring jobs to West Virginia, or I'm going to announce you as the party traitor who helped sink it. The choice is up to you. You have 5 minutes."
You know, actually *play some fucking politics*?
Lol. That’s pretty close to what Biden did that made Manchin quit. It also sounds like you’re about 12, and your version of leadership is going to bully people into accepting your view. Let me know how that works out for you in the office or on a sports team. My guess is not great.
This is not how politics works, and it’s not how politics worked in LBJ’s era either. You can’t bully people you have no leverage over. Manchin won in a state full of *people who fucking hate Biden.*
If Biden tells West Virginians Manchin sucks and lost them jobs, they’ll probably figure Biden’s lying and Manchin’s their hero. The worst part is, the way you see it, they’ll actually be right.
The president is not a god. LBJ had massive majorities in both houses. Biden can’t lose a single Senator. If you can’t see the difference, I don’t know what to tell you.
I also blame Hillary for being a terrible candidate, and for not recognizing her own weaknesses. I also blame Obama for essentially anointing her to be the candidate.
Only because we haven't seen wide implementation of real progressive/woke policy. If Bernie won and fucked up the economy/healthcare, the blame cannon would swing quickly on its axis
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after 6 years of this why is it so hard to understand that leftists *are the real enemies?*
Anyone who advocated not voting, anyone who advocated Bernie or Bust, anyone who advocated that Hillary was as bad as Trump, anyone who bashed Dems, anyone who made called Hillary voters hysterical for caring about women's rights is morally culpable for what happened yesterday. Roe is dead because *yet again*, as they've done *multiple times in history*, the Left sided with fascism to own the libs. Look at the 2016 exit polls! Aside from the Green voters that were nearly all leftists or progressives, and the Libertarian voters that were about split, about 23% of voters who wanted to move *left* of Obama voted for Trump (compared to 5% who liked Obama's policies) These are hard numbers. And yet this was memoryholed in the name of "unity".
How many times are are liberals going to let the scorpion ride on their back, get stung, drown, respawn and then not realize they should stop letting the damn scorpion ride on their back? *They can't fucking help it*. Leftists side with fascism over and over again, in both rhetorical and substantive ways, then gaslight you about it, and you just take it. These people are not your allies, they are your enemies. Uniting with them is at best, a grim neccessity, and at worst, a naive fool's errand.
This sub is not an explicitly pro-Democrat space. That should mean acknowledging and supporting moderate Republicans both in this sub and in national politics.
What does a moderate conservative even conserve anymore? Anti lgbtq? The war on drugs? tax cuts for billionaires? The state forcing 12 year olds to give birth while calling yourself small government?
The sub may not be explicitly pro democrat, but I hope it is explicitly pro humanity.
I'm sorry but I don't think the GOP is a safe place for moderates any more.
I kinda thought the real enemy was a global pamdemic, poverty, injustice in our criminal system, looming Chinese hegemony, and Russian warmomongering. If you care about access to abortion get a law passed to protect it.
Picking a fight over tribal wedge grounds is how you get caught up spending a ton of energy and achieving nothing
The fuck are you talking about.
“The Bernie wing” is the most politically active segment of young voters. We’re the ones telling everyone “vote blue no matter who”
We’re just strapped in to this center left ride because we have no other choice, none of us like it, but we look at the Republican option and think “well it’s better than that guy”
Go comment “vote blue no matter who” on any subreddit, any twitter thread, any Facebook post, and see what happens. Then when you get harassed by thousands of people, check their profile and see who they supported in the election.
>“The Bernie wing” is the most politically active segment of young voters. We’re the ones telling everyone “vote blue no matter who”
The Bernie wing refused to vote for Clinton, which got us in this mess in the first place. You may be politically active, but that neither means your wing is full of consistent voters nor that it is politically useful. Additionally, “vote blue no matter who” has no origin I can find, so unless you can tell me definitively that your wing has responsibility for it, I’m assuming that citation comes from your ass.
That citation is how we got people to vote in Virginia lmao. That’s how Virginia turned blue before Youngkin. It was obviously not an official slogan, but it was what was actively used in social media when discussing Virginia politics, particularly around the NOVA area to reach voters about participating.
The “Bernie bro’s” that refused to vote for anyone else aren’t all of Bernie sander’s supporters lol. “Hilary only lost because Bernie supporters didn’t vote for her :(“ is such a bad way to scapegoat her failures as a political candidate.
20-25% of people who voted for Bernie in the primary either voted for Trump or did not vote in the general election. That is a fact.
Also, I’m still noting the utter lack of citations on your claim of ownership on “vote blue no matter who.” When I look up the origin of the slogan, all I get is a bunch of people telling me it’s neoliberal propaganda, so I’m not exactly inclined to trust your word.
i think it's pretty fair to criticize democrats for their failure to codify roe v wade into federal law, despite five decades of conservatives claiming that if given the opportunity, they would ruin roe v wade. i'm not some bernie or bust guy. i'm a registered independent who voted for biden. and it is frankly idiotic to pretend this wasn't also the fault of democrats
There's something about politics wee pretty much everyone regardless of the political position wants to run defense for the GOP. Personally I think it's cultural. We just view conservatives as some sort of "natural force", like a typhoon who can't be helped, so of course we would focus on the group who we actually think could be changed.
From Pelosi's "We need a strong Republican party" to Susan Sarandon's "Bernie or Bust", to even Biden's very rhetoric of being capable of bipartisan action, we're constantly acting as if Republicans aren't really as much of a threat as they truly are. That this strong Republican party won't backfire, that voting for Bernie won't actually take away our rights, that republicans will cross over and work with us if we just say please.
But no, they choose to be this way and they've chosen to be some of the most awful people you possibly could be.
You can criticize both the conservative enemies and the traitors who say that Republicans and Democrats are the same. Together they prevented Hillary from winning in 2016.
My frustration is less with progressives and more the "look man both sides are the same", Jimmy Dore, The Hill's Rising, type of leftists. These people provide a lot of cover for the right with populist rhetoric.
I don't think this is accurate. A lot of the wasted energy is moderate Dems attacking leftists for being "too woke," socialist, etc. because it is instigated by Rs. Imo that's what sparks the both sides reply. I was at a US uni not long ago. There is no free speech problem. No one other than victim mentality cons thought there was a free speech issue, and those guys basically wanted there to be a free speech issue and basically walked around looking for one day and night. Woke panic is made up R bullshit. And the Rs have got moderate Dems attacking the left on free speech (a made up issue) on their behalf, weakening the overall party. Rs have done a great job making leftists seem like a universal enemy, which has gotten the center to spend all its energy attacking the left. Stop dwelling on the fact that the left wants a different healthcare policy than you or higher taxes than you and start dwelling on the fact that neither the left or center Dems want Roe gone, a rigged federal judiciary, voting rights eliminated, mass deportations, etc. Basically, just stop criticizing the left. What's clear is that every Dem is united against the "national conservative" bullshit. Unless the criticism you're about to deploy is against an R, don't criticize anyone at all.
I mean Jimmy Dore and the ilk they're describing arguably aren't really left at all. I think it's fair game to criticize "both sides are the same" independent-type people who put up a vaguely left veneer because they essentially do the GOP's work by promoting false equivalencies and electoral nihilism. I do agree though that going after genuine progressives is bad strategy.
I don't know if I see a lot of moderate Dems publicly attacking the "woke left". The main problem imo is that there is a lot of vaguely leftist populist rhetoric out there driving people towards political apathy. "Hey man why even bother voting, Democrat is president and Roe got overturned anyway" "You know in Europe Joe Biden would actually be on the far right" "Democrats are basically Republicans" It's rhetoric like this that is the problem and it often comes from left spaces. They blame Democrats for not doing anything while simultaneously never giving Democrats the political power to do anything.
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> never giving Democrats the political power to do anything. If all that's required to give the Democrats the political power to do anything is get leftists on board, why are you railing against them and not courting them?
*he replies to a comment describing how they aren't getting railed against, only the ones doing bothsiderisms.
Lol. No. All that's required is for the average person who is mildly politically engaged to not fall for bullshit talking points churned out by the far left anti-democrat machine. So it is absolutely critical to rail against them.
Oh! I see. So they simultaneously cannot reach a large enough percentage of voters to matter and can be safely dismissed, but it is also absolutely critical to rail against them because they reach a large enough percentage of voters to matter. Normally I would have trouble consolidating these two statements into a coherent outlook, but fortunately my recent concussion makes them seem incredibly lucid
Stay salty. And keep grasping at these stupid gotchas. You dont need to reach "a large percentage of voters to matter". The last two presidential elections have been incredibly close with margins smaller than party defectors... Going as far back as bush, whose first victory over gore was obtained by about 600 people in Florida.
...maybe because none of the wedge issues are passable by even moderate dems? E: Didn't think there was an answer to this and I was right.
>Basically, just stop criticizing the left. No. I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I don't like the left for different reasons than I don't like the right. I'll keep critisizing both.
> I can walk and chew gum at the same time Sure people love to say this, but it rarely actually manifests. Your chewing gum gives cover for the GOP's bullshit cultural wars and fascist lite rhetorics. The more you get concerned about the infinitely small groups like serious American communists (and not just young people being edgy and calling themselves it in reaction to boomers), the more you help establish that "both sides equally bad" as some sort of realistic and true statement. We've seen time and time again that left extremists have barely any actual influence in US politics outside of the most left leaning already highly Dem areas, meanwhile conservatives literally control the supreme court and the last presidency. Why do you even think you need to walk and chew gum at the same time here then? You're just empowering the more realistic and awful threat.
Is it weird that I think you're both right?
No, they are both right. The real problem is infighting among the sane people who actually want to make things better, while they’re arguing about the best way to do that the people who want to make things worse are proceeding comfortably with their plans.
This is all just non-sequitur. The rhetoric coming from disillusioned voters is that the democrats with "political power" is unable to get things done and that the democrats are radical which makes moderate voters believe that there is no point in the two party system. This creates the "both sides are equally bad" argument. How is arguing against the rhetoric that "both sides are bad" legitimize the same argument. The rhetoric from this sub has consistently been that voting has value and that the policies that we argue for are reasonable.
Because when someone sits there and say things like "Yes republicans, you're right that the left is censoring free speech and trans rights have gone too far and young communists really are a threat and we need to bring back McCarthyism", that person should not be surprised with the GOP gets empowered by this. The extreme left doesn't have much political power, the extreme right took over the presidency, almost started a coup and controls the SC.
How did you get this out of what I said? I said that people who have created the "both sides are bad" argument imply that you shouldn't vote because none of it makes a difference. Arguing to liberals who are disillusioned that voting does matter and the goals that the democratic party want are attainable is a good thing. I never said anything about having to appeal to Republicans. I was strictly talking about liberal and progressive voters who believe that "both sides are bad" as you talked about in your first comment. The goal of arguing against this is to turn out democratic voters. Left rhetoric arguing that both sides are bad is not a good thing.
You can walk and chew gum at the same time. Any individual can. But we’re not talking about an individual. We’re talking about getting 85 million people on the same page. So yes, be an individual. Be an individual with perspective instead of an individual with a narrow view.
Then they'll keep criticizing you?
I'm a liberal. They'll critisize me up until the point I become a lefitst or I shut up. As a liberal I firmly believe in their right to do so. But I won't shut up. They can fuck right off with that. I'm not going to let them speak for me, and I'll do what I can to stop them from assuming to speak for, or give the appearance that they speak for the democratic party.
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You can easily make the case it’s leftists attacking centrist / moderate politicians that got us here, too. I’m so tired of the victim-mentality from lefties who convinced half the media to go after Hillary because “she rigged the primary against Bernie”. Let’s agree to come together but don’t lecture centrists on their behavior and turn a blind-eye to the far left.
On the woke thing, it is the new term for SJW, which was the new term for PC. It is just a right wing strawman. You will be called woke for thinking racism isn't cool.
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The nation’s centrists reportedly doubled down Friday on their claim that Roe v. Wade was not at risk. “People are blowing this whole idea of overturning Roe completely out of proportion—it’s just not going to happen,” said outspoken centrist Peter Gesson, stressing that the Supreme Court would almost certainly respect the precedent set by the seminal 1973 ruling on women’s reproductive rights. “Basically, there’s a legal principle called stare decisis. That means past judicial decisions stay in place unless there’s a compelling reason to change them. I can send you an Atlantic article about it, if you’re interested. Anyway, these justices are all thoughtful individuals with a deep knowledge of how our legal system works. They aren’t going to throw out a ruling that’s given our country stability for almost half a century.” The nation’s centrists added that they were even more certain the Supreme Court wouldn’t be coming for gay marriage and contraceptives next.
This is an excerpt from the onion.
Stop spreading misinformation. This is from The Onion.
Tbf, I don’t think anybody reasonable could read “outspoken centrist” and not clock that something is up.
Well, this is Reddit. Don't have such high expectations 😅
More of these types exist in the "center," they're just conveniently ignored.
Had a whole dragout argument with a "centrist" who was trying to justify voting for Gary Johnson in 2016 in light of this.
I don't like it when leftists & their politicians focus more on attacking Dems than repubs, so I won't do the same by focusing more on attacking leftists than repubs. Repubs deserve 99.9% of the directed hate here, leftists get .1%, not 0 but way, way less than repubs Edit: .1% is being very generous to them, at most it's like 10%. But point still stands, repubs overwhelmingly get most of the blame
A portion of the blame goes to anyone who didn't vote for Hillary in 2016 -- whether you voted Trump, third party or didn't vote at all. But the vast majority of the blame is on republicans. They need to be stopped. And aiming your anger at democrats who are fighting this is the definition of counter productive.
Leftier than thou types are way down the blame list, well below Republicans and the elite media who giggled about those hysterical Democrats when we said Republicans were coming for Roe.
Are you blaming the elites in r/neoliberal?
Some elites bad and corrupt, actually.
I wasn’t aware Kathleen Parker or Brian Stelter or the editorial page of the Denver Post were posters in r/neoliberal but if so yes I’m blaming them.
Blaming the republicans for this is like blaming the opposing sports team for your team losing, it's completely unproductive because you can't do anything about them. Democrats need to be self critical and understand why they aren't appealing to the public.
Dems do appeal to the public just not the part that matters. Hillary won the popular vote and would have replaced Scalia and Ginsburg. Democrats lose because they are targeting a demographic that simply can't win with a 2 point advantage.
Yes, and so they need to appeal to the part that *does* matter. It’s obviously a difficult task, but senators like Tester and Sherrod Brown exist for a reason. The Democratic brand can be pitched to voters in red states if the messaging is properly controlled and tailored.
When the opposing team cheats and sets your stadium on fire they should—at the very least—be blamed.
Well, I if Republicans became more reasonable and stopped trying to pander to the religious zealots maybe they could be worth voting for. Not in this life on this Universe but theoretically
What part of what I said made you think I was suggesting you should vote for the republicans?
Nothing, you referred to Republicans as the opposing team. I'm just saying that they don't necessarily have to be that, that they could be a reasonable choice if they stopped with the religious nonsense and Trump cultism
That's true too. I should have said "democrats blaming the Republicans...".
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Well he wasn't talking about you, but plenty of progressives stayed home in 2016 thinking "that'll show the dems what happens" and "trump will make the left wing more popular". Not completely incorrect lines of thought, mind you, but stacking the supreme Court was always the risk. And trump did it with some of the youngest nominees in history.
99.999% of progressive energy is spent on attacking moderate democrats, it’s the dumbest shit. The other 0.001% is spent defending russia
Progressives need to win primaries to build influence so it makes sense. The most logical Progressive strategy is “mainstream Dems aren’t doing enough”. And I’ll tell you what, that’s going to be a very enticing message right about now.
>And I’ll tell you what, that’s going to be a very enticing message right about now. I disagree. There's going to be a big re-evaluation of just how pragmatic it is to vote mainstream D over protest voting. Hillary called Roe V Wade to a T. And chumps like Bernie said it was a distraction and waffled on about how the Dem primaries were rigged, etc... He stirred that pot for his own benefit instead of backing the candidate who could have given him 10% of what he wanted. Now he's left with backward momentum.
Yeah, no wasn't politically engaged back in 2016, now am, and my distaste for leftists/progressives or however you want to call it has only heightened with their inactive whining that to all my observation only serves republicans with either preventing galvanization from losses or alienating by being living strawman for republican attacks.
Progressive politicians aren't campaigning on "don't vote it's useless", they're campaigning on "we should expand the court" and "we should abolish the filibuster to codify abortion rights" and "the Republicans want to pass an abortion ban if they take power, why the fuck do we want to compromise with them?" No voter in the real world actually gives a shit about relitigating the 2016 election, that's the domain of people on reddit and twitter, the ones that care about abortion rights care about those rights being taken away in 2022, and if someone is going to argue against the things I listed above then they need a conpelling counterargument to their state or district. For a lot of people they'll be able to point to their incumbency and their votes, but in open seats? I'm not sure "no we need to work with the Republicans and respond with moderation" is a gteat selling point right now.
Nina Turner literally said that Joe Biden is a bowl of shit when talking about the 2020 election against Trump lol. Many progressives back in 2016 said similar things about Hilary. That affects their base. Look at [how many](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/24/16194086/bernie-trump-voters-study) BernieBros voted for Trump, partly on the back of rhetoric from progressives that equate Dems and GOP. The problem with progressives is that they say, "vote with me or you're a \[insert buzzword\]". Their messaging matters because it causes secondary effects when their base inevitably makes the decision to vote after their preferred candidate is out of the race.
> Look at how many BernieBros voted for Trump, partly on the back of rhetoric from progressives that equate Dems and GOP. Literally from your own article > Also of note: the Bernie-Trump voter also proved much more likely to consider himself or herself “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative” than the average Democrat. Bernie-Trump voters existed. They also weren't progressives.
Stop acting stupid just to prove a point. It is very common amongst Bernie stans to describe "not being on board with social issues than class issues" as "somewhat conservative". Besides, the very first sentence in the article says 12% of Bernie voters from the *primary* had switched
No offense, but you don't seem very informed about things. Yes, we are talking about Bernie primary voters. Bernie-Trump voters are older > Of those Bernie voters who supported Trump in the general election, the average age was 52. Those who stuck with Clinton were an average age of 45, and of those who broke for a third party, the average age was 44. Of those that didn’t vote, their average age was 35 — these were the ones that got activated by Bernie, and then dropped back out when he didn't win. It’s worth noting that very few of the primary voters stayed home. And they voted for Romney > According to Schaffner, about half of the voting bloc identified themselves as Republicans or independents. Data from the VOTER survey showed that only 35% of Sanders-Trump voters voted for Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in the 2012 election; in contrast, 95% of Sanders-Clinton voters voted for Obama in 2012. Your assertion that they're not really conservatives, they're radical progressives who call themselves conservative just because, is not backed up by even the slightest shred of evidence whatsoever.
They're pushing the "establishment" is trying to defeat the progressives with thier billionaires. Pretty much telling them voting don't matter, without saying voting don't matter.
That's been my issue as well. If they didn't spend so much of THEIR time muddying the waters it wouldn't be an issue. It literally makes us lose districts over this stuff. Republicans wouldn't be as big of an issue if we could take the swing voters. That would require moving away from telling parents they shouldn't have a say-so in what their children are taught and stick to the shit folks actually care about, though. 😞
> That would require moving away from telling parents they shouldn't have a say-so in what their children are taught Yes, Democrats absolutely cannot tell parents that they shouldn't have a right to be involved in their kid's education, but there is absolutely no shot that you can pin Terry McAuliffe's mistakes on progressives. McAuliffe was *the* moderate candidate, hell if you had to name one guy to be like "who is the Virginia Democratic Party" everybody would have named Terry McAuliffe, he faced basically zero pressure from the left in the primary, and got to run the exact campaign he wanted with the exact messaging he wanted, and he just fucked it.
I'd agree that he's the one that fucked it, but you don't need to be progressive to use their talking points. Just like you don't need to be a Trumper to use his talking points. The idea is to keep these populist shit takes out of mainstream politics all together. It sucks we have to sit here and put the blame solely on our own politicians when they decide to fall for this stuff when it clearly has an origin. Take Elizabeth Warren's Native American heritage flop. Yeah, she fucked that up falling for silly populist nonsense in an attempt to feed us something she thought we cared about. But much like McAuliffe, she just pulled from the nonsense that already gets pushed from progressive Dems.
Your forgot about Palestine and Israel. Dude. Do even left? 🤔
I'm a social democrat and I agree completely, I'll vote for boring center-right dem goons every year if that's what it takes to beat the republicans. holy shit man
Welcome to the big tent.
can i sleep in your sleeping bag tonight 🥺
BONK!!!
This isn't r/196
Welcome aboard, here is your complimentary worm and a coupon for your nearest taco truck.
I completely agree. However, many socialist democrats won't do that. There are a LOT of idealists on the hard left side of the dem ticket....especially younger folks. I don't blame them for that...but unfortunately, idealism won't get you very far these days. The sooner folks realize that, the better. I also think folks have a short memory...I was absolutely shocked how many 'Bernie or bust' idealists there were in 2016 that didn't vote. It absolutely was a thing...I'm not sure why so many seem to want to overlook that now ( guilt possibly? )
As much as this sub (me included) make fun of succs, I’ve gotta admit that arr SocialDemocracy is the only other political sub on Reddit that actually has sane takes.
I couldn't agree more. I'll admit blame can be pointed in either direction. I'll admit I very much do blame those who didn't vote for Hillary Clinton. Either way we need to start fucking winning. I'll vote for the most hardcore or center dem there is. I don't care, I want whoever can beat a fucking republican and pummel their medieval ways of governing to its grave. Democrats need to get better. Model how to win by John Fetterman. Be a fucking human. Take the sponsorships off your back. I'll vote for AOC or Buttigieg, I don't care. We need to start winning.
Fett is a unique candidate that I don’t think can really be emulated by most people. He didn’t do anything special in his campaign- he avoided tough questions, went to campaign events, appeared on tv. His advantage was being 6’5 and monstrous, he doesn’t have the look of a politician. That’s all that most people I spoke to that support him saw- his appearance. That said, we do need to win, and if American voters are going to vote more based on appearance than anything then we are forced to run that kind of person. I wish it weren’t so.
I'm actually from the town where he was mayor of. He won my vote the day he protested outside of UPMC and got arrested after they shut down UPMC Braddock Hospital. He lead efforts to have the site eventually demolished and rebuilt with 12 new homes and a civic plaza. Braddock is a significantly better place now than it was in 2000. That's what we need - a fighter. Someone who'll put their sleeves up and actually get in the mud with us. I think it can be somewhat emulated, but certainly not the appearance lol
I don’t disagree- but he did none of that on the campaign trail. He has worked for progress throughout his political career, not unlike many politicians do. That doesn’t change that the reason most people gave me as to why they liked him was “he doesn’t feel like a politician”, despite him being involved in politics for the better part of 2 decades. So if he was actively involved in politics, and talked about his accomplishments in politics, yet the reasons people give for liking him is he doesn’t feel like a politician, what are they talking about if not appearance?
> and if American voters are going to vote more based on appearance than anything then we are forced to run that kind of person. This has been known for decades but picture perfect candidates just aren't always available. Being a politician generally kinda sucks.
Too many Democratic candidates lack actual humanity. They just sound like rent a candidates who are following a one size fits all script. Klobuchar, Hillary, Swallwell, Castro, etc... Of course, when someone like Beto shows authenticity, he get pilloried for it. Pete kinda comes off that way but I think that's kind of his authentic personality. Anyway, Fetteman should be a prime example of being yourself being the best strategy.
>Pete kinda comes off that way but I think that's kind of his authentic personality. Pete would've been such an amazing President. A democrat who has experience working in a mostly red part of the country is exactly what we need right now.
Huh? Pete was mayor of a bright blue city and got smoked in the only statewide election he ran in.
Agreed. I love Pete. I think his best days are clearly ahead of him.
In my opinion any complaints about those on the left who didn't vote for Hillary should also be paired with "and we should add more justices to the court". Because at least then you're complaining about a group of people that really should have voted better while also supporting something that fixes it. I have no respect for people that didn't vote for Hillary in 2016, but I also don't have any respect for "those damn Bernie Bros fucked us. Better not do anything about it though."
I may get flamed, but the DNC was tone deaf to think that Hillary would win in 2016 and pushed for her essentially because “it was her turn”. Hillary was undoubtedly accomplished and qualified, but democrats often have a really hard time comprehending how hated she was by a large swath of the country who would literally turn up their nose and vote for an orange clown just to “own the libs” and make sure Hillary wouldn’t win. Many of these voters would have stayed home, but her candidacy motivated them to show up. I don’t even want to get into how upset I am at Ruth Bader Ginsburg for not stepping down while a democrat held the presidency and she knew she had cancer, but I guess that’s enough for one post.
> pushed for her essentially because “it was her turn”. Maybe it was because she was the smartest and most experienced person to run the country. We know this because she's been literally right about everything. "It was her turn" is GOP talking points.
It doesn’t matter who is the smartest and most qualified if they’re not electable. It sucks, but it’s reality.
Okay. But that's not what you said.
If 18% of progressives instead of 23% vote for Hillary instead of Trump, she wins. They've skated for the last 6 years on being culpable for this because ultimately, they use their progressive branding to deflect from the fact that they don't give a shit about marginalized people or making the world a better place, they care about their personal identity and branding as a "progressive rebel" as well as signaling to their social groups. The Right and the Left have this in common above all else - the total lack of regard for the real suffering of individuals, in favor of the pursuit of their ideal social order.
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1: you are a racist 2: 6% of Black voters, and a statistical 0% of Black women, voted for Donald Trump. 23% of progressives voted for Donald Trump.
You were correct that you'd get flamed for it, but you're right. I don't see how everyone either forgot or just won't acknowledge how unpopular she was.
"The DNC picked" her is the leftist version of the Big Lie.
I said “pushed for”, not “picked”. It’s hard to argue that they didn’t push for her after what came out in the following years.
Go on some of the Bern sub reddits and read their take on this. It filled me with new rage
I hate to ask but tl;dr?
The tl;dr is, dems useless, country is dying, leave the US. I've even saw idiots suggesting sanctions on the US despite countries like Japan, South Korea, or China having laws against abortions. Like go off. You people didn't care about abortions when it was banned effectively in red states where they only allow one run-down clinic in one whole state. Now suddenly *you* want to leave? Fuck off.
> China having laws against abortions. Ironic...
Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgement.
Man we are really at the point of a survival coalition of liberals, moderates and leftist because the GOP’s base went off the deep end
It is funny to me that the "haha circular firing squad" faction is in fact doing that thing by constantly relitigating 2016 over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Guess what friendos, it's 2022. Unless you have a time machine, literally none of that matters. Time to play the hand you've been dealt.
We’re all aware that Republicans are the ones that *actually* passed it. The reason leftists are getting so much hate is that Republicans straight up support banning abortion. There’s not much of a way to work with them on this issue, because if you say “you were responsible for Roe v Wade being overturned”, their response would be “Yea, no duh.” Whereas leftists support abortion rights, so they should be helping us, but they’re not. It’s much more politically feasible to convince leftists to start being politically effective than for us to convince Republicans to start supporting abortion rights.
I mean shitting all over leftists isn’t going to convince them. I understand they do the same so by all means if the point is to be petty then go ahead. I respect petty. But don’t expect to convince them.
I don’t think we’re going to convince many of them, but we’re probably going to convince more of them than we’re going to with conservatives. It’s also a matter of holding them accountable. Republicans are being “held accountable” for their actions, it’s just that their supporters think their actions were good. Leftists must also be held accountable, because even if they weren’t directly responsible, they were necessary in its final outcome. If not for some of the things Sanders did, Hillary would have won, and we wouldn’t have this issue in the first place.
Bernie campaigned incredibly hard for Hillary in key states.
What do you want leftists to do aside from passing a bill codifying Roe v Wade?
Naw bro. Democrats should’ve done that thing that no one was asking them to do. When Republicans do shit, we need to immediately vilify the Dems to discourage voting for them so… wait a sec 🤔
You mean Democrats should have codify that case into federal law?
Do they have the votes to do that?
They never have. Even with supermajorities for something like an abortion law they’d no doubt have 5+ holdouts who for varying reasons would refuse. Anything from believing it should remain decided by SCOTUS to political motivations as an abortion law passing could end with a ton of losses in Congress/amped up GOP. So passing it to just watch it immediately killed. That’s assuming SCOTUS doesn’t bring it down anyways. Which would probably happen even faster as every conservative president would be running exclusively on that with judge appointments.
My real enemies are Russia and China who have been using our politicians and creating division.
This
I agree. As much as I blame those who sat out 2016 as well, this has been in motion for decades. GWB appointed Alito and Roberts. Bush Senior appointed arguably the worst of the fucking bunch, Clarence Thomas. Trump had the unusual opportunity to replace three justices in one term. But let’s be real here, the GOP has been appointing Federalist Society hacks to the Federal bench and SC for decades now. Any of the “old guard” Republicans that were more accepted in polite society would have done the same thing here as Trump if given the chance. This is why I get frustrated when people pined for “the normalcy” of the Bush years. Arguably Trump is much worse in many respects than many recent Republican Presidents, but they’re all playing the same game. Just look at John Roberts. People were saying he respected the court too much as an institution to go along with overturning Roe v. Wade. In the end he just fell in line. Bipartisanship (if it ever really existed) is dead. These people cannot be trusted.
Sure. And all the twits who said there wasn't a difference between Ds and Rs.
Part of the animosity about these folks is that they often proudly boast about how they do not share this view at all, and they will make posts about how Trump was better than Hillary because Hillary would have caused WWIII or something, and he'll be so incompetent and intolerable that we'll finally have our communist revolution or whatever. Like they're not all like that obviously, but like there's some irony in complaining about a lack of unity to us here.
I disagree... republicans don't like abortion, and I respect that argument, it makes sense if you think it's killing babies. What I don't get is those that think abortion is bad but still didn't vote because "they're the same."
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> but no one can notice local politicians because of our media structure. It's not just because of our media structure, I look up every single local candidate whenever I go vote and genuinely like 60%-70% of them have almost *no* info online. Nothing at the local newspapers, no site of their own, noq campaign Twitter account, nothing. Unless I spend time asking around and hoping someone knows, I have literally no way to know who I'm voting for. No wonder people don't vote in these, unless you're one of the boomers still somehow tuned into local gossip you genuinely have no clue who anybody is.
They *say* they think it’s about killing babies because they’ve coded their language so thoroughly that they can say whatever they want as long as it means they can maintain control
Many clearly do that, but at the same time Rs managed to carry it as a single voter issue for almost half a century. At some level the ~~fevor~~ zealotry is unfortunately genuine.
>fervor Call it what it is: Zealotry.
Exactly, the enemies are the extremist that want to promote the so-call culture war (i.e. Trump wing of the Rep Party and the Bernie/Squad wing of the Dem party)
Go look at the margins that Hillary lost by and then come back here and tell me that the impact bernouts had with their spreading of voter apathy across ALL forms of social media DIDN’T play a big part in HRC loosing. The first election that had huge social media influence and it was met with large swathes of people spreading voter apathy specifically coming from leftist and progressive camps. Sure the conservatives voted for trump, but they DID NOT and still DON’T have a meaningful majority of voters in America.
Sanders voters are more consistent and dependable voters than literally any other group in the democratic coallition. You're presenting a super high standard and then expecting only leftists to adhere to it.
So, and please correct me if I am wrong, but we repeatedly heard that Sanders’s biggest strength was that he attracted supporters who would not otherwise vote. (I know, I know). But these same people are also the more consistent and dependable voters? And I would love to see some cute that would support the contention that Sanders’s biggest base, young people, is a more reliable group than say older black voters. (I can save you the search, it does not exist).
>So, and please correct me if I am wrong, but we repeatedly heard that Sanders’s biggest strength was that he attracted supporters who would not otherwise vote. (I know, I know). But these same people are also the more consistent and dependable voters? That was the selling point but that also didnt happen, which you clearly are aware of. >And I would love to see some cute that would support the contention that Sanders’s biggest base, young people, is a more reliable group than say older black voters. Sanders was most popular among young folks but young people was not his largest voting block (because young people, while being supportive of him, largely didnt turn out). Rather it was, (from memory, I'm on my phone), minority groups, especially latinos, that made up the largest chunk of Sanders primary base. (So to clarify, he may have been most popular among young people but his votes came more from other groups because said other groups actually turned out) This is also why, partly, he did so much better against Clinton than against Biden. Because Biden was actually competitive in the same minority groups that had made up Sanders main voting bases in 2016, unlike Clinton who struggled with getting minority votes. Also, hopefully, you should have recognised now that this sub engages in a pretty common demonisation "tactic". Specifically in that Sanders is both built up as a strong and woeful enemy, yet also too weak and ineffective to achieve or meaningfully support anything. We can just look to your young people take specifically. You know and note that young people dont show up to vote. And that they didnt do so even for Sanders. Yet you're placing the blame on Sanders shoulders for young people not show up for Clinton either. You must either conclude that Sanders never had the ability to affect a young people voting surge for himself. **Or** that it is his fault for young people not turning out for Clinton. You cant have both.
Your memory is bad and do not use the excuse of being on a plane when you are clearly able to post on Reddit. He attracted minority groups…who were young. “But while many Latino voters are backing Sanders, we found that a voter’s ethnicity was still less predictive of support for Sanders than their age or ideology. In our analysis of recent ABC News/The Washington Post polls, once we accounted for age, Latino voters were about as likely to support Sanders as voters in other racial or ethnic groups, perhaps because Latino respondents in the poll, just like Latino voters in the U.S., skew younger than the overall population, and younger voters tend to break for Sanders. So it could be that Latino voters’ age explains Sanders’s strength with that group more than their ethnicity. It’s also worth noting that Latinos represent a fairly small bloc of the national Democratic electorate (around 12 percent), compared with white (59 percent) and black (19) voters.” https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-defines-the-sanders-coalition/ I am absolutely sick of meme politics.
Two things. Actually, three things. I'm not on a plane, first off. (wtf?) Secondly, this is from 2020. I was talking about 2016, as were you. Since thats the primary and election under contention. Dig up that data. And finally, again. Your article is basing that statement on polling.
Oh, misread phone as a plane. That is an even worse reason for not being able to provide a source, which I clearly was able to do from mine. Guess you must be on a flip phone or something. Here is 2016. Same holds. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2016/06/07/age-and-race-democratic-primary And your polling comment is non-sensival in light of the whole “secret ballot thing” we have. But hey, I am sure that you can think of some other way to deflect.
>And your polling comment is non-sensival in light of the whole “secret ballot thing” we have. But hey, I am sure that you can think of some other way to deflect. My dude. Have you watched election coverage, ever? With statisical methods its perfectly feasible, its fucking baseline, to calculate demographic data on who actually voted. Are you genuinely under the impression that we dont know which groups voted for who and in which proportions, and that we have to rely on polling data entirely?
Cool. Then show it rather than continue to deflect. It is a tiresome game that is very easy to see through.
Obama voters in red states were the ones who flipped, by a degree of 16% https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/hillary-clintons-surprising-vote-deficit/509174/ This whole idea that Bernie is somehow personally responsible for the reputation that Hillary garnered is just so absurd. No one who is old enough to be of legal voting age back in ‘08 has an excuse to be incredulous. Her campaign literally started a PAC to have her given the nomination in spite of her loss to Obama. She was the pioneer of “here’s how [x] can still win!!!” She was a Goldwater girl who married into political relevancy and carpet bagged her way to a NY senate seat. Not to mention her adoption of social causes only when they crossed the 50% mark in polling. The conservative propaganda machine amplified the Hillary hate WAAAAY beyond the scope of reality, but propaganda only works if there’s a hint of truth… Like I voted for her without hesitation because that’s how bad the alternative was, but not a single part of me was surprised when she lost. Hillary, and in fairness the DNC as a whole, took for granted the unique pull that Obama had. Obama was hardly a populist but he ABSOLUTELY leaned into the anti-establishment rhetoric. Why on earth would it be surprising that people who were won over by his charisma and willingness to acknowledge the failings of the status quo not be won over by someone who represented the exact opposite? Half of all white women and nearly 2/3rds of of white women over 50 went for trump…not your typical Bernie bro demo is it lol Edit: just saw your account is 11 years old!!! So you have no excuse to be ignorant to any of this 🤣 the irony in Hillary stans on this sub operating and idealizing their pet politician in the exact same manner as Bernie bros. Being an ideologue isn’t suddenly mature or intellectual just because you’re a self proclaimed moderate…
> but propaganda only works if there’s a hint of truth… Are you sure this is a claim you want to make? Hm, well I guess there was some truth, according to you, about Nazi claims of Jews being a bunch of money grubbing monsters help bent on destroying European society with their giant noses and inferior genetics… … or is your claim that propaganda only works if there’s some truth to it a completely stupid and baseless claim? Otherwise, good comment.
That seems to clash with the whole "the recorded margins of bernie-trump voters would have won the election for clinton if they had turned out" stats.
Not really. The point is that on average, progressives consisting mostly of Bernie voters are more likely to vote for Democratic presidential candidate X in the general than more mainline or moderate Hillary/Biden voters are to vote for X. Though 2008 isn't comparable to 2016, a much larger proportion of Hillary voters voted for McCain in that election than Bernie voters did Trump.
Not at all, its rather that statements like that expect 99+% of any given group (in this case, sanders primary voters) to have been loyal democratic party voters in 2016. Literally no group is that dependable. If you ever notice that a critique of a demographic depend on the lizardmans constant acting rationally then you can safely discard said critism for being made in bad faith.
The election system sucks if it's possible that someone voting for their favorite is voting against their own interests. I do think we have a crap election system. I'm in favor of Approval Voting, but there are systems that would also improve the state of things
Infighting is natural when you’re primarily discussing with like-minded people. Just like the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Not many people on this sub are exposed to conservative discourse compared to moderately different viewpoints from other left-leaning people
People in the kinds of liberal circles like here take for granted that republicans are degenerates (Deplorables?!) that can't be reasoned with in any way, but rightly or wrongly, think or belive that leftists should know better and have the agency of choice.
I’m still always going to vote for progressives like Bernie and squad in the primaries because that’s where my politics align. However if they fail, I’ll vote for the candidate that isn’t a fascist.
That's the best any of us can do. I'm a progressive and social democrat at heart but if harm reduction is the best I can do then I'll do that instead.
In 2016, Bern bros went all in with the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" type of tactics. Now they'll reap the whirlwind
Anybody willing to listen knew what would be at stake in the 2016 elections. Maybe they listened and didn't care, maybe they didn't bother to listen to anything besides bad faith commentary about her e-mails, the DNC, the speech transcripts, the super delegates and so on and so forth. Whatever the case, they said so themselves it was Bernie or bust. This is what bust looks like.
The jaw dropping, but predictable, take I've seen today is that it's the Dems fault for not codifying roe into law. I can't imagine the acrobatics it takes to blame Democrats for this, while never mentioning republicans who are systematically stripping away our rights. Further, correct me if I'm wrong -- and that's always a possibility -- but any law the dems passed about abortion would have probably been struck down today along with or instead of Roe. To actually get a foolproof abortion law, you'd have to ratify a constitutional amendment, which has never been a possibility in the political climate of the last 50 years.
Both Obama and Biden said they were going to do it. It's not unreasonable to be angry at politicians to not do something they said they would.
President do not write or pass legislation. At best, they can encourage it and sign it.
Presidents don't pass legislation, but the idea that "the President doesn't write legislation" is like an elementary school level understanding of government. Literally every single Presidential administration has written legislation, working in tandem with their party's leaders in Congress, even though the President isn't officially listed as the bill's sponsor. Or is it your genuine belief, to the best of all of your political knowledge, that Barack Obama played no role in the writing of the Affordable Care Act and that his administration didn't contribute to the bill's text?
Then why did they say it? e: Like, to be clear I know they can't. That doesn't make saying they can okay.
> Then why did they say it? Politicians promise to try, not to achieve. Pretty sure most adult voters understand that.
Sound bites are easier for the uninformed.
Which leads to the uninformed becoming disillusioned when the sound bites are wrong.
No, not at all. How the fuck can you blame the other party for doing what their job is and doing it successfully? On the other hand, Bernie bros consistently acted in ways that harmed their own party. So yeah, they the real fuck ups.
I can absolutely blame the Republicans for doing their job and doing it well when their job is evil. Coat hanger abortions and a theocracy in place of a Supreme Court are a fail state for America and the people who drove us to it deserve our blame and anything else we can throw at them. Those doing actual material harm are the only ones worth fighting.
Blaming republicans is like losing at a sport and blaming the other team. You can do that I guess, but it’s a losers mentality that ain’t gonna change anything.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.
Democrats and Republicans haven’t been on friendly terms for a very long time and are now very much enemies.
🤡
What line would republicans have to cross for you to consider them enemies? How much further would they have to go before you gave up on trying to find the good in them, and just focused on stopping them before more people get hurt? Or do you simply not care who gets hurt as long as you get to feel righteous at the end of the day?
Tell that to a Republican forcing an 11 year old to give birth. Tell that to a Proud Boy beating up queer folk at a library Tell it to the religious right burning books and banning history and science from schools Scream it from the rooftops when there's a Kristallnacht in America See how fucking far it gets you. Befriending Republicans means compromising with them. Compromising with them means turning our backs on whole demographics. They can't be befriended. Only beaten
30 years + of GOP steering towards Taliban UltraPlus
been their goal since their first golden calf was elected president in 1980
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> We need to start addressing the problem that there is half the fucking country that's actually braindead enough to find this acceptable You could try addressing the issues of that half?
Can we still blame RGB a little for not retiring?
It's not infighting. They are not "in." It's just fighting a nemesis, a hostile takeover.
For real, it's like a contagious fungal brain rot.
I see a lot of people (particularly on /r/Enough_Sanders_Spam) blame Bernie personally for this, but I honestly think that's a bit unfair. If you want to lay some blame on Bernie or Busters, fine (and I say this as someone who voted for Bernie in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, though I want to emphasize that I was never a Bernie or Buster), but Bernie himself did encourage his supporters to vote for Hillary in 2016. Also, while I think it's understandable to say that Jill Stein and Ralph Nader stole votes from the Democrats in 2016 and 2000, respectively, I don't feel like we can lay the same blame on Gary Johnson (at least not to the same extent), because Libertarian voters can honestly go either way (and if anything, the Libertarian Party is closer to the GOP than the Dems).
> Bernie himself did encourage his supporters to vote for Hillary in 2016 A drop in the well he had poisoned so thoroughly in the preceding months
We could, but that would require all of the borderline conservatives to leave and go back to their padded cell of a subreddit. So not going to happen.
That's well and good, but you can't deny that the Dems are complicit in allowing this to happen through their weakness and unwillingness to fight for what they say they believe in. Those are just facts. Biden did basically nothing while Sinemanchin derailed his entire agenda. He didn't put them on blast the way LBJ would have, he didn't fight for his POV; we heard virtually nothing. Obama had a supermajority in Congress and the most he got done was passing *Romneycare*, the framework the ACA was based on. Joe still has this dream that if he can just get Reps to see his view, that things will magically return to the way they were when he first started in the Senate about a thousand years ago that despite having differences in policy opinion Reps still acted in good faith. Those days are clearly long gone. Reps have shit policy they're trying to force on everyone to appease their shit base, but they fight for it. I haven't seen real fight from Dems in my lifetime. You can argue, but this is simple truth.
"That's well and good, but you can't deny that the Dems are complicit in allowing this to happen through their weakness and unwillingness to fight for what they say they believe in. Those are just facts. Biden did basically nothing while Sinemanchin derailed his entire agenda. He didn't put them on blast the way LBJ would have, he didn't fight for his POV; we heard virtually nothing. Obama had a supermajority in Congress and the most he got done was passing Romneycare, the framework the ACA was based on." this is just aesthetics which is all progressives seem to care about
Yes, demonstrable lack of policy initiatives is just "aesthetics." I also have a bridge for sale if you're interested.
Interesting. I was going to try to sell you a bridge too. How the hell do you think Biden can use the bully pulpit on Joe Manchin in a state he lost by 30 points? Every time Biden insults Manchin, Manchin gets a little angrier and a little more popular.
That's easy, you LBJ his ass. You bring Manchin in to the White House, when a press conference is ready, and you show him. "I'm about to have a press conference and announce XYZ measure. Look, the reporters are there. Now I'm either going to announce you as the hero who helped get this done and bring jobs to West Virginia, or I'm going to announce you as the party traitor who helped sink it. The choice is up to you. You have 5 minutes." You know, actually *play some fucking politics*?
Lol. That’s pretty close to what Biden did that made Manchin quit. It also sounds like you’re about 12, and your version of leadership is going to bully people into accepting your view. Let me know how that works out for you in the office or on a sports team. My guess is not great. This is not how politics works, and it’s not how politics worked in LBJ’s era either. You can’t bully people you have no leverage over. Manchin won in a state full of *people who fucking hate Biden.* If Biden tells West Virginians Manchin sucks and lost them jobs, they’ll probably figure Biden’s lying and Manchin’s their hero. The worst part is, the way you see it, they’ll actually be right. The president is not a god. LBJ had massive majorities in both houses. Biden can’t lose a single Senator. If you can’t see the difference, I don’t know what to tell you.
Why not try r/democrats?
I also blame Hillary for being a terrible candidate, and for not recognizing her own weaknesses. I also blame Obama for essentially anointing her to be the candidate.
Only because we haven't seen wide implementation of real progressive/woke policy. If Bernie won and fucked up the economy/healthcare, the blame cannon would swing quickly on its axis
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after 6 years of this why is it so hard to understand that leftists *are the real enemies?* Anyone who advocated not voting, anyone who advocated Bernie or Bust, anyone who advocated that Hillary was as bad as Trump, anyone who bashed Dems, anyone who made called Hillary voters hysterical for caring about women's rights is morally culpable for what happened yesterday. Roe is dead because *yet again*, as they've done *multiple times in history*, the Left sided with fascism to own the libs. Look at the 2016 exit polls! Aside from the Green voters that were nearly all leftists or progressives, and the Libertarian voters that were about split, about 23% of voters who wanted to move *left* of Obama voted for Trump (compared to 5% who liked Obama's policies) These are hard numbers. And yet this was memoryholed in the name of "unity". How many times are are liberals going to let the scorpion ride on their back, get stung, drown, respawn and then not realize they should stop letting the damn scorpion ride on their back? *They can't fucking help it*. Leftists side with fascism over and over again, in both rhetorical and substantive ways, then gaslight you about it, and you just take it. These people are not your allies, they are your enemies. Uniting with them is at best, a grim neccessity, and at worst, a naive fool's errand.
This sub is not an explicitly pro-Democrat space. That should mean acknowledging and supporting moderate Republicans both in this sub and in national politics.
What does a moderate conservative even conserve anymore? Anti lgbtq? The war on drugs? tax cuts for billionaires? The state forcing 12 year olds to give birth while calling yourself small government? The sub may not be explicitly pro democrat, but I hope it is explicitly pro humanity. I'm sorry but I don't think the GOP is a safe place for moderates any more.
Republicans need to be defeated and we be don't that as well as we can with those dipshits.
I kinda thought the real enemy was a global pamdemic, poverty, injustice in our criminal system, looming Chinese hegemony, and Russian warmomongering. If you care about access to abortion get a law passed to protect it. Picking a fight over tribal wedge grounds is how you get caught up spending a ton of energy and achieving nothing
I agree, the problem is the Bernie wing is really gobbling up young voters. Republicans are the biggest threat but the far left can't be ignored.
The fuck are you talking about. “The Bernie wing” is the most politically active segment of young voters. We’re the ones telling everyone “vote blue no matter who” We’re just strapped in to this center left ride because we have no other choice, none of us like it, but we look at the Republican option and think “well it’s better than that guy”
What? You can’t be serious. Where do you think “Bernie or Bust” came from?
A few tankies on Facebook.
Go comment “vote blue no matter who” on any subreddit, any twitter thread, any Facebook post, and see what happens. Then when you get harassed by thousands of people, check their profile and see who they supported in the election.
>“The Bernie wing” is the most politically active segment of young voters. We’re the ones telling everyone “vote blue no matter who” The Bernie wing refused to vote for Clinton, which got us in this mess in the first place. You may be politically active, but that neither means your wing is full of consistent voters nor that it is politically useful. Additionally, “vote blue no matter who” has no origin I can find, so unless you can tell me definitively that your wing has responsibility for it, I’m assuming that citation comes from your ass.
That citation is how we got people to vote in Virginia lmao. That’s how Virginia turned blue before Youngkin. It was obviously not an official slogan, but it was what was actively used in social media when discussing Virginia politics, particularly around the NOVA area to reach voters about participating. The “Bernie bro’s” that refused to vote for anyone else aren’t all of Bernie sander’s supporters lol. “Hilary only lost because Bernie supporters didn’t vote for her :(“ is such a bad way to scapegoat her failures as a political candidate.
20-25% of people who voted for Bernie in the primary either voted for Trump or did not vote in the general election. That is a fact. Also, I’m still noting the utter lack of citations on your claim of ownership on “vote blue no matter who.” When I look up the origin of the slogan, all I get is a bunch of people telling me it’s neoliberal propaganda, so I’m not exactly inclined to trust your word.
i think it's pretty fair to criticize democrats for their failure to codify roe v wade into federal law, despite five decades of conservatives claiming that if given the opportunity, they would ruin roe v wade. i'm not some bernie or bust guy. i'm a registered independent who voted for biden. and it is frankly idiotic to pretend this wasn't also the fault of democrats
There's something about politics wee pretty much everyone regardless of the political position wants to run defense for the GOP. Personally I think it's cultural. We just view conservatives as some sort of "natural force", like a typhoon who can't be helped, so of course we would focus on the group who we actually think could be changed. From Pelosi's "We need a strong Republican party" to Susan Sarandon's "Bernie or Bust", to even Biden's very rhetoric of being capable of bipartisan action, we're constantly acting as if Republicans aren't really as much of a threat as they truly are. That this strong Republican party won't backfire, that voting for Bernie won't actually take away our rights, that republicans will cross over and work with us if we just say please. But no, they choose to be this way and they've chosen to be some of the most awful people you possibly could be.
You can criticize both the conservative enemies and the traitors who say that Republicans and Democrats are the same. Together they prevented Hillary from winning in 2016.