United States Politics Thread 46

[xxx]

I have no sympathy for this guy,
and even less for those who demonize him...
not being American, I have nothing good to expect from them...

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m¿z°³]yÅLk¿LGÅz²°³m´k°T°m¿Xk¿‬°Ä‬²m¿Rz°³GÅLk¿

[keenir]

that may've been the point.

I'm inclined to think this may be the best explanation.

yeah...like in that Nicole Kidman movie where one character points out that the only thing more useful to a person than being assassinated, is nearly being assassinated.

heck, it reminded me, of back during Trump's presidency/first canidacy, of when he incited his audience (at another rally) against the media presence present there - and offered to pay the legal fees for anyone who attacked the media.

...we nearly got more media assaults in that space between the shots & when Trump kept fisting the air and posing for photo ops with a flag in the background, while the Secret Service kept trying to get him to safety.

[keenir]

I have no sympathy for this guy,
and even less for those who demonize him...
not being American, I have nothing good to expect from them...

which "him" is that?

[Ares Land]

I have no sympathy for this guy,
and even less for those who demonize him...
not being American, I have nothing good to expect from them...

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m¿z°³]yÅLk¿LGÅz²°³m´k°T°m¿Xk¿‬°Ä‬²m¿Rz°³GÅLk¿

And yet you're blaming the Democrats, despite being supposedly 'neutral' and there being no evidence. How curious.

yeah...like in that Nicole Kidman movie where one character points out that the only thing more useful to a person than being assassinated, is nearly being assassinated.

Absolutely. Politicians faking assassination attemps on themselves is not unheard of, either.

[xxx]

And yet you're blaming the Democrats, despite being supposedly 'neutral' and there being no evidence. How curious.

I didn't say that...

which "him" is that?

your choice will be mine...

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m²Àk²°Äk¿kÁl¿

[Man in Space]

And yet you're blaming the Democrats, despite being supposedly 'neutral' and there being no evidence. How curious.

I think the small “d” democrats are what he was talking about, not the Democratic Party itself.

[Travis B.]

And yet you're blaming the Democrats, despite being supposedly 'neutral' and there being no evidence. How curious.

I think the small “d” democrats are what he was talking about, not the Democratic Party itself.

I wouldn't consider how xxx capitalizes words to have much weight.

[xxx]

It's all about keeping it lightweight...
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kÁ‬Áe²W

[malloc]

Call me superstitious but it really feels like the Democrats are simply cursed at this point. According to the latest news, Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID.

[Torco]

it's a graceful way to drop out -or make someone drop- of a race tbh.

[keenir]

It's all about keeping it lightweight...

"lightweight" =/= "light"

though I am doubting you know how either is used in a statement, much less a boxing match.

[Linguoboy]

How ironic would it be if, after months of centrist Dems haranguing us progressives to stop criticising Biden and pledge to vote for him NO MATTER WHAT, they end up losing the election because a bunch of them decided to start loudly airing their criticisms of him less than a month before the Convention?

[Travis B.]

How ironic would it be if, after months of centrist Dems haranguing us progressives to stop criticising Biden and pledge to vote for him NO MATTER WHAT, they end up losing the election because a bunch of them decided to start loudly airing their criticisms of him less than a month before the Convention?

I have been of the view that either Biden should just drop out of his own accord or the other Democrats should simply shut up and back him no matter what they happen to think.

[malloc]

How ironic would it be if, after months of centrist Dems haranguing us progressives to stop criticising Biden and pledge to vote for him NO MATTER WHAT, they end up losing the election because a bunch of them decided to start loudly airing their criticisms of him less than a month before the Convention?

Quite. Regardless of how you feel about Biden, it hardly makes sense to demand someone else so late in the election. If they really had such grave doubts about him, they should have brought them up a year ago when the primaries would have given us an opportunity to select someone different.

[Vardelm]

Quite. Regardless of how you feel about Biden, it hardly makes sense to demand someone else so late in the election. If they really had such grave doubts about him, they should have brought them up a year ago when the primaries would have given us an opportunity to select someone different.

His cognitive state was not known by most people at that time and his cognitive decline may have been mostly in the last 3-6 months during & after the primaries.


EDIT: Also, Dems MUST be cursed since I haven't posted in months and this is my 666th post.

[bradrn]

Welcome back Vardelm!

[Travis B.]

Welcome back Vardelm!

Seconded!

[jcb]

(I'm aware that I already replied to some of these, but I have more to say.)

The Democrats may not be ideal, but anyone who thinks that the Republicans are somehow better than them (including the people who think that the Republicans somehow favor the working class or that the Democrats should not be voted for because they are "elitist") is frankly either a fool or an enemy of humanity.

Saying that the Democrats have some flaws does not imply that the Republicans have fewer flaws.

Months ago, when I made a thread pointing out some of the flaws in the metric/SI system, I got replies saying "But the metric system is better than the US customary system!". To which I replied: "Of course it is! I never said that it wasn't, and never implied that countries should switch to the US customary system!, but just because it's better than the US customary system doesn't mean that's it's flawless or couldn't be further improved!" The same logic applies here.

I, myself, find Democrats good enough to continue voting for them, but I also recognize that other people don't find them good enough anymore, and either abstain or vote Republican instead.

This kind of hyper defensiveness reminds me of a Republican coworker who acted the same way when I criticized Trump for any of the numerous objectively bad things that he did that even my coworker would agree is bad, like groping women or cheating on his wife. My coworker would instantly fire back with "But Democrats passed NAFTA!" or "But Hillary Clinton's emails!" or "But Bill Clinton hung out with Jefferey Epstein!" as if two wrongs (the latter one sometimes being imagined or out of proportion to the former one) somehow make a right.

You're suggesting that you know better than this political machine? Have you run any successful campaigns? Do you have any degrees in political science, communications, psychology? What qualifies you to know how a political party should behave? Serious question, not sarcasm.

(1) No.
(2) Have you done any of those things? Why should I believe you?
(3) Why should I believe liberals in general? They've failed to stop the general decline of the American standard of living in the past circa 40 years, and in some ways, have contributed to it. So, despite (because?) of this, I'm supposed to refrain from criticizing them and hail them as political geniuses? No, instead, it makes me think that they're political dunces.
(4) It's telling that you mention higher education but nothing about leadership in unions.

Seriously, your both-sides-ism crap is tiresome

It is not "both-sides-ism" to point out that professional class liberals have different economic interests from working class people, and that professionals use their power in the Democratic party (helped by working class people's lack of power) to advance those interests, and that some working class people rebel against this by voting for the Republican party, especially when the Republican party talks about their interests ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_L4LXiZVpg ). If you can't admit that different economic classes have different economic interests, and that they act on those interests, then frankly, you're part of the problem.

Here, for an example, is a story about how Biden personally intervened in the auto strike last year, walking the picket line, a first for a US president. He pissed off business— one industry guy said “It’s not only anti-business, it kicks 90 years of impartial mediation by a president to the curb.” Probably related: the companies signed a better deal with the UAW a month later. Biden also supported the striking screenwriters and actors. Here's an article summarizing the many things the Democrats have done for labor. But according to you the Democrats are "beholden to capital" and have no bond with organized labor.

Look at this graph: https://jacobin.com/2021/09/labor-day-c ... inequality
It's hard for me to look at that graph and not conclude that Democrats have merely happily managed the decline of organized labor for the past 40 years, instead of reinvigorating it. Note also the inverse relation between the lines.

This is why I've made such a big deal about the US turn toward plutocracy since 1980. For nearly 50 years everybody's life was getting better-- all classes, all races, all sexes. Now only the 10% get better off. It's not just a bad deal in economic terms: it turns out that under those circumstances, the majority knowing that they are not getting the fruits of prosperity and not understanding why, that right-wing authoritarianism flourishes.

(Emphasis mine.) Yes, exactly. This is why I criticize the Democrats so strongly when they try to abandon the working class and appeal to the professional class instead. For example:

The Democratic Party’s top brass has portrayed this shift as a conscious strategy. As New York senator Chuck Schumer put it, “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.”

Democrats think that they can only gain votes by doing so, because they assume that the workers will keep voting for them no matter what (often expressed as "They [workers] have nowhere else to go.") ( https://www.salon.com/2016/03/14/bill_c ... f_the_90s/ ), but they're wrong. Abandoning workers and refusing to act on their class interests teaches them that agitating along the axis of economic class is a dead end that yields nothing. Thus, workers are left in the dust, but still wanting to improve their life, they will actively find another, less savory, axis to agitate along, such as nationality, ethnicity/race, or religion. This also explains the popularity of sexist wealth worshipers like Andrew Tate, scams like cryptocurrency, and gambling ( https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2014/01/001.html ). People are desperate to find something, anything, that will save them from financial doom and the shitty life that goes along with it.

[zompist]

How ironic would it be if, after months of centrist Dems haranguing us progressives to stop criticising Biden and pledge to vote for him NO MATTER WHAT, they end up losing the election because a bunch of them decided to start loudly airing their criticisms of him less than a month before the Convention?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has some strong words on the efforts to oust Biden. (Just one issue is that Republicans can then challenge the vote in multiple states.)

[zompist]

Look at this graph: https://jacobin.com/2021/09/labor-day-c ... inequality
It's hard for me to look at that graph and not conclude that Democrats have merely happily managed the decline of organized labor for the past 40 years, instead of reinvigorating it. Note also the inverse relation between the lines.

It's almost like on your planet, there was no such thing as Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and Trump.